The Tale of the Lost Shawl

I have been graduated for exactly four weeks now, and so far, it's...alright. I had a lovely two-week vacation from work, which caused me to decide that my new goal in life is to become rich enough to not have to work anymore (Brandon: wow babe, that's a really original life goal. I don't think anyone else has thought of that before). I have now been back at work for two weeks, and it has been hectic, to say the least. We have driven down to Massachusetts with my friend Andy so that he and I could perform at the annual Crane Concert to benefit a scholarship for seniors at my high school (have I ever told you guys I'm 1/2 of a folk-singing duo?) We have moved apartments and somehow condensed everything from our previous place into one bedroom at the new place. We once again have roommates (which, as awesome as they are, is a big adjustment). We have had to find a temporary home for Skipper and Boots because they cannot stay at the new apartment (we're only here temporarily and will hopefully get them back from Brandon's mom soon). Brandon was flown out to Frankfurt, Germany by a company that we are anxiously waiting to hear back from in regards to a sweet job for him. And I have been trained on approximately 50,000 new things at work in 1 1/2 days and now am supposed to be responsible for all of them starting Monday. No pressure.

Despite all of this, there are a lot of things I have not done: I have not written out my thank you cards from graduation, or my graduation announcements (sorry everyone - I promise I appreciate everything you've done); I have not called to shut off the electricity at the old apartment - actually, correction: I have not successfully called to shut off the electricity. I have called roughly 10 times, and each time I get a busy signal. What business still has a busy signal in the 21st century?; I have not finished unpacking from the move; and I have not written any new blog posts about any of these wonderful things: until now.

Side note: Brandon, being the wonderful human being that he is, has just brought me a glass of wine. This could get interesting.

The story begins almost exactly two years ago, when Brandon and I had been dating for a mere three months and decided to move in together. He was 21 and I was 20, and we felt like this was a good idea for three reasons:
1. we were crazy about each other and being in each others' space 24/7 sounded, frankly, heavenly.
2. Our new apartment was big enough that we each had our own room and our own bathroom.
3. After four months we would be starting our year apart due to him studying in Montreal for the fall and me in Dublin for the spring, so if we ended up hating each other we only had to live with it for the summer.

Luckily for us it seems to have worked out so far.

My dad came up to help us with the move and he, Brandon and I set about the task of packing up my books, yarn, and spinning wheel and moving me from my dorm on campus to the school apartments one town over. At the time of the move, I had been working on this shawl:

You can find the blog of the knitter who completed this one here.

It's The Cap Shawl from my #1 favorite knitting book of all time: Victorian Lace Today by Jane Sowerby. This book was my introduction to lace, which is now my absolute favorite thing to knit. At the time I first laid eyes on it I was unsure of spending $30 for a knitting book. I was working at Northampton Wools, and I now shudder to think what my life would be like if the other ladies working there hadn't convinced me it was a worthwhile purchase. I had been working on the shawl for about four months, and was a decent way through it. The shawl is circular, starting in the middle and working slowly outwards with each row becoming longer and longer, so even though it looked like I was most of the way done, I still had many hours of knitting ahead of me. The pattern was complex, hardly even a pattern by the strictest definition of the word; this was a piece to work on without a tv show or conversation in the background - just you and the wool and your thoughts.

My hand-drawn pattern notes

At the time of the move I was keeping the shawl in a regular plastic grocery bag, as part of my ultra-sophisticated knitting project organization system. In direct violation of my ultra-sophisticated knitting project organization system, I left the bag very near to a pile of trash piled up in the room.

After we were all settled in to our new apartment, I began hunting around for my shawl, wanting to continue working on it. Huh. It wasn't with my other knitting stuff. Hmmm....it wasn't with the kitchen stuff. Nor was it with my clothes, books, or any of Brandon's stuff. Uh-oh.....I thought back to the last time I remembered having it: when I placed it down on the floor, semi-close to the pile of trash. I thought about Brandon and my dad, each of them having gone out on several trash runs to the dumpster throughout the move. I thought, and thought, and then very quickly worked hard not to throw up. Oh god....it had been thrown out. My beautiful shawl, months in the making, each of the 66,000 stitches lovingly handcrafted by my nimble fingers, gone, forever. Face ashen, I stumbled into Brandon's new room and tried to keep my voice steady as I told him the news. Then, I broke down and sobbed.

Brandon and my dad both felt terrible about what had happened, and, not knowing which one of them was responsible, I couldn't bring myself to be angry with either of them. That hangdog, guilty look gets me every time. Slowly, I moved on from the loss. I took the Jane Sowerby book down off the shelf and flipped through the pages, imagining which shawl I might start next. I fingered lace-weight alpaca in my new LYS, Kaleidoscope Yarns, and began to see new projects coming together in my mind. I have made two more shawls since then, and am working on a third.

This picture of an adorable ferret sleeping in bed like a
human is here to break up the tension of this terribly sad story.

Flash forward two years, to last weekend. Brandon, Andy and I had a lovely 3 1/2 hour car ride down to Massachusetts and arrived just in time for sound check at the Crane Concert. We opened the show with four songs, one of which I wrote last year, and had a lovely evening listening to all the acts that followed, including my mom's band which featured a song with my dad on the trumpet. We had a blast, and went home sleepy around midnight. The next morning Brandon and I had brunch with my parents and then began packing up for our trip back to Vermont - we had to move out of our apartment that weekend and needed to get back. I looked over my home yarn stash, thinking I could use a new mix of yarns to throw into the stash I keep in Burlington. I grabbed some baby alpaca I bought years ago for a super secret project that may or may not be featured in a later post, some baby alpaca lace in case I want to start any new shawls this summer (sensing an alpaca theme? Good, you should be), and then my eyes fell on something right in the front of one of the cubbies. It was a little white plastic bag that I hadn't noticed before. Curiously, I picked it up, untied the handles, and looked inside. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was my beautiful, half-finished shawl! I ran out to Brandon and my dad and shouted the news in both of their faces. Their expressions quickly changed from confused to elated as they realized that they were not horrible people after all, but good and wonderful people once more.

I have no idea how this miracle occurred, but I am too excited to care about the particulars. Now that we're moved in I have begun working on it once more, putting all other projects on hold. Unfortunately, circular lace-in-progress looks kind of like some sort of weird hole-filled bag, but I promise I will post a better picture when it's completed!

Have you ever lost a precious project? I'd love to hear your lost and/or found stories!

The Sweater From Hell

Like most relationships, it started out so well. We hung out together every day for several hours, we went on trips together, we made memories and watched movies and spent quality time with friends together. We were inseparable. But then, about five months after we met, everything went horribly, horribly wrong. I am speaking, of course, about this:

I hate you.

Let me back up. This time last year I was studying abroad in Dublin freaking Ireland, and it was amazing and wonderful and I miss it every single day (for more info, visit my other blog, The Fair Green Isle). When packing for my trip, the amount I could bring was very limited, so alas, most of my knitting supplies had to remain behind, scared and lonely in my childhood bedroom. But I was going to be there for four whole months; I couldn't just NOT knit for that long! So one of my first orders of business upon stepping foot on the sweet, winding streets of Dublin City was to scope out a potential temporary LYS (Local Yarn Shop). And boy, did I strike gold. In the Powerscourt shopping center off of Grafton Street, there was a small yarn shop charmingly named This Is Knit. It was bright, cozy, and had very friendly and knowledgeable staff: I quickly made myself at home.

Doesn't it look inviting?

I had an idea for a project while I was in Ireland: to make myself an "Ireland" sweater. Knit with wool from Ireland, needles from Ireland, I would make myself a long, thick, warm, cowled, cable-knit sweater, and I had found the perfect pattern several weeks previously in a European knitting magazine back at home. I was undaunted by the fact that the needles were from England. I was unphased by the fact that I had never attempted a sweater of such complexity before. I was in Dublin freaking Ireland, and I could do anything. How wrong I was.

By the time the semester was half over, I had the front and back of the sweater completely finished. It was a little odd with its variegated brown colors, but I was love with it, and I was euphoric in my triumph. Only the sleeves left to go! I would have it finished by the time I got home, and then have all summer to worry about blocking it and sewing the seams before it got cold again. Hooray! Then, approximately 30 rows in to the first sleeve, I did a small double take. There were five edge stitches on one side, and six on the other. How could that be? I went back through the pattern, scrutinized every stitch I had made. They matched up. But I MUST have missed something, so I frogged the sleeve, gave it a few days to give me fresh eyes, and tried it again. This time 18 rows in, I had seven edge stitches on the right, and eight on the left. What was going on? Five tries later, I had had enough. I was defeated. About the third attempt, I began trying to just fudge the pattern, make it work, cast on an extra stitch, something, anything, to get me through this stupid sleeve. It all ended the same way: a pile of crimped yarn, cruelly unbound, lying in a puddle in my lap.

The Debbie Bliss yarn, Glen, pre-puddle.

After I got home, I took this pesky pattern to my real LYS, Northampton Wools in Northampton, MA. The owner, Linda, sat with me for a half hour, looking it all over with a practiced eye. Eventually, she told me there was simply a mistake with the pattern and that I would just have to fudge it. A mistake! I'm not crazy! The person writing the pattern (upon whom I now wish great personal ill (just kidding)) made a mistake, and made me waste tens of hours on an asinine problem - but I'm not crazy! I quickly went to the magazine's website to let them know of the mistake and see if there was anything on the forums for solving this problem - finally - FINALLY - I might get some answers! And then, after all my agonizing, all my searching, when I thought my pain was finally at an end, I got a tiny little email, letting me know ever so sweetly that the editor's inbox was full, and my request for access to the forums could not be delivered. After much cursing and a small (read: large) temper tantrum that was awesome to behold, I threw the stupid thing in a bin and hoped to never look at it again. 

Early this semester, nearly a year later, I briefly picked it up again and tried to figure out where I was, remember the pattern again. It felt brand new again, and for a bit I thought I might actually make it. However, finding myself becoming immersed in the old frustration, I quickly allowed myself to get distracted by an awesome lace shawl (to be featured in an upcoming post), and here it lies, still, to this day, a sad little unfinished sleeve.

I still want to finish this sweater - very much so. Maybe some day after graduation, when things calm down a little bit (yeah, right), I will take another crack at it. For now, anyone who has any knowledge of the Charlotte pattern from Verena magazine's Winter 2010 issue, please let me know.

What knitting - or writing, crafting, painting, etc. - skeletons lie in your closet? 

In The Middle

I am familiar with being in the middle. Born the middle of three daughters, I am of the opinion that the middle is a great place to be. At the very time that I was driving my older sister crazy, I knew exactly how she felt because my little sister was doing the same to me. When I was a jerk to my little sister, I knew what she was going through because my older sister had treated me the same way. This has given me a unique perspective on life, and I feel it has made me better able to see different points of view, and has made me a more compassionate person. However. Being in the middle is not always the best thing.

Anyone who has ever undertaken a lengthy project can attest to this: the middle sucks. You've already figured out how to accomplish what you need to, and now you've lost interest completely. You've already put hours/days/weeks/months of work into it, with the same or more left yet to do. What once was exciting and new is now boring as hell, and the idea of stabbing yourself in the eye with a spoon is preferable to spending one more minute on this stupid godforsaken project that you never wanted to start in the first place.

I have now been working on my Capstone project for two months, and we have two months left to go. And it shows. Morale is low, motivation is even lower, and the stress and craziness of finishing school and finding a job is sucking up all the time and energy we have, leaving none behind to work on our project. As producer, I am tasked with getting my team out of this bog, while I'm drowning in it right alongside them. I'm in it so deep it's hard to see the way out, and harder still to drum up the motivation to start the long, hard slog. So what's a girl to do? As with most things in life, I turn to knitting.

Looking around my apartment, I see a dozen projects that are waiting patiently for me to finish them after I put them down for 'a short break' during that boring middle section. Here's my wall of shame:

The beginning of a sweater.

A scarf I started last week.

A scarf to match some fingertip-less gloves I made.

Detail

A lace scarf I started in high school.

A lace shawl started several years ago.

A lonely mitten.

A silk scarf for my mother.

Same scarf for my mother.

Musical gloves for my mother - sorry Mom!

The sleeve from the Sweater from Hell - look for this
again in an upcoming post!

Had to bring knitting to see Star Wars
Episode 1 in 3D, and this was it.

I only got this far because I ran out of yarn :(

So clearly, I have been defeated by the dreaded middle a time or two in my day - this doesn't even cover the projects sitting at my parent's house! So, here are my three tips for getting over the hump and actually finishing projects, knitting and otherwise:

1. If you can afford to, give yourself a break from it; however, avoid giving yourself an open-ended break. Set a time or date when you will get back to it, and make sure you stick to it.

2. Try to remember the things that you loved about the project in the beginning - make yourself fall in love with it all over again. Staying enchanted can help you finish it!

3. Try looking at it from a different angle. Sick of that stupid cable running up the front of your sweater? Put that part on a stitch holder and get cracking on those sleeves you've been dying to try. Getting bogged down in paperwork? Switch to a more hands-on part of the project for a bit until you're refreshed and ready for another go. When becoming bored and/or frustrated, working on a different part of the same project can help to keep you interested and sane.

How do you guys get over that hump in the middle of a big project? I'd love to hear your ideas!

The Knitter's Next Journey

I think it's time. It's been coming on for a while now, but I think the time might actually be just about here. With each new craft project I complete, I feel a sense of extreme happiness, pride, and relief, followed almost immediately by a feeling of shame and guilt. The words, "I didn't really create this" scroll across my brain and I dump the shawl/scarf/hat/sweater into the closet. Whenever people compliment my knitting and say that it's amazing that I can do stuff like that, all I can think to myself is that I'm a liar.

Ok, yes, technically I did create the thing that people are looking at. Technically, I picked out the yarn, needles, and pattern and then used my two hands to carefully stitch hundreds of little loops together and create the object that now can be used as a warmth-provider/beautiful accessory. Sometimes I have even spun or dyed the wool myself (I feel a bit better about those). But the truth is, when it comes down to it, that all I really did was follow a set of very well-written instructions. Someone else put tens or even hundreds of hours into writing that pattern - trying different techniques, working out the math, sketching and swatching and probably cursing in frustration at the stupid pattern that simply WON'T come out the way it is in the imagination. 

Am I proud when I finish a difficult or particularly satisfying project? Yes, of course. The look on my mother's face when she opened her cross stitch sampler Christmas present was priceless and I wouldn't change it.

But in the end, it's not really my own work. I often can't sell it, and my sense of accomplishment only reaches skin deep. So, what's to be done? Wallow in my feeling of un-accomplishment for the rest of forever? Don't think so.

In less than four months, I will no longer be a college student, but a graduate, an alum, an adult (well, kind of an adult). I will be moving to a new city, with a new apartment and (hopefully) a new job. Let's focus on the new apartment aspect. In my mind, I don't really picture most of the apartment, I only have vague images of what it might look like that are a bit fuzzy around the edges. But one room/space stands out clearly in my mind. Lining the walls are bookcases with knitting books and novels, as well as sketch books, how-tos and magazines. Above and around a counter space with a sewing machine are storage spaces, cabinets, and drawers with craft supplies neatly categorized and cataloged. Natural light from a large window splashes onto a large wooden table with graph paper, pencils, and yarn scraps strewn about it, and one entire wall is made up of corkboard with various sketches, swatches, and half-finished pieces pinned to it. Next to the window, a computer screen shows design software with the beginning of a sweater, and a comfortable chair in front of it affords a view of the bustling city street below. The word "studio..." softly whispers it's way across my mind whenever this happy daydream takes me, and a sigh of longing inevitably escapes me. This is my next goal, my next step in the knitter's journey: design.

The first knitted item I created without a pattern -
 a felted bag for my Nana to hang from her walker and carry
items with her. Closes with velcro, handles button on.

Seeing in Color

I have been knitting a pair of black and white mitts for my mother F.O.R.E.V.E.R. This pair of black and white mitts, to be exact.

I have been working on these puppies since Christmas. Why, you might ask? It may have something to do with the fact that it is my first attempt at fair isle, and the completed mitt took me three tries to get right. Well, three tries once I found a good yarn. I actually purchased and twice tried another yarn before finding this one and beginning. And in fact, it still isn't right, as the top is too loose and will have to be redone upon completing the second. As you can see, it has been a bit of a frustrating road.

At first, I was excited about the pattern, the yarn, the fact that it was perfect for my mother and I knew she would love it. It was a challenge, and I love complex and visually stunning knitting patterns. The enemy was tension. For the life of me, I could not get my tension correct or even. I couldn't get the hang of carrying the yarn behind without pulling too tight, not understanding the concept behind it. I tried and tried, getting over halfway done at one point and having to frog my way back to the beginning. My optimism is running thin, and it is taking longer and longer to get anything done with them because I am so fed up. I still love the pattern and cannot wait for the completed product, but the amount of effort is not stacking up in solid results.

Luckily for me, there is such a thing as Mochi Plus, by Crystal Palace Yarns. :) I bought this from Northampton Wools a few months ago, and have been dying to try it out ever since. The colors are amazing, the softness is divine - it was exactly the sort of yarn therapy I needed. So yesterday on the way back to school from a quick weekend home, I whipped up this cute little hat with earflaps (it still needs to be blocked and have the ends woven in). It was easy and fun, and just what I wanted - great results with very little time and effort.
Luckily I still have two more skeins of this yarn left, so I can make another little something before having to buy more!

I also took a little time to spin, and finally finished up some alpaca that I have been working on for months now.
Although I got myself into a little rut with the mitts, all I needed was a break to get me back on track feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the first Knit for Those in Need meeting on Saturday! :)

Keep Knitting!

Lesson Learned

Tip to all: When sort of making up a pattern as you go/pulling stuff from other patterns WRITE WHAT YOU'RE DOING DOWN AS YOU GO!!! I can't for the life of me remember what I did, and deciphering the one or two notes I made is proving to be impossible. Solution: Make them again and keep track as I go this time. It will actually be good, as there is one thing about this first pair that I really dislike. The thumb hole is too close to the open pattern, and so when they are on your hands the pattern pulls towards the thumb. I think I will add a few stitches to the thumb hole side, which should rectify the problem. I may have to keep this pair instead of selling them/giving them away, because the pulling actually is pretty bad (oh darn!). However, making another pair will have to wait until after Christmas, because I have oodles of Christmas knitting to do! There are (hopefully) four lucky people who will be getting handknit gifts this year, and more if I can manage it. My dilemma at the moment is physically getting to the yarn store - hopefully I'll get there before going home for Thanksgiving this Friday! I am so excited to see my family, home friends, and pets, it's ridiculous. But anyway, until I get a chance to get to the yarn store, I'm working on my second large lace shawl project. I can't remember if I posted a picture of it yet or not, but just in case, here it is:
I am roughly halfway through with it (partway through the wavy part between the petals), although it is hard to tell because each row gets longer and longer. At the moment it is taking me a half hour to knit one row, and I have about 540 stitches on the needle. It is a lot of fun to knit, but is one of those patterns where focus is necessary, so working on it while watching a movie or talking to people is out of the question. I can't wait to see what it looks like when it's off the needles!

Knit on,
Hannah

Finally!

I have FINALLY finished the fingertipless mitts that I have been working on for what feels like forever! The pattern is an adaptation of two other patterns that I have used before, and I will try to figure out how to write it up and post it at some point. There are some things I am not too pleased with about it, and I will be tweaking the pattern the next time around. Hope you like them!

Knitting Rut

For the last few months I have been in what I like to call a knitting rut. This is where I may be knitting what feels like constantly, but I never have the satisfaction of seeing a finished product. This generally happens when:
1. I take on very large projects, and
2. When I start many different projects, and then feel the need to bounce around among them.

I am currently working on a large, complex lace shawl that feels as though it will never be done, and am now beginning not only my Christmas knitting (of which there is a lot), but also working on Knit for Those in Need (updates on this later) and those fingertipless mitts which for some reason still are not finished. I am also working on spinning some dog fur, which was taking precedence as it is being done for money, until tonight when my spinning wheel metaphorically shit the bed. Sigh. This is the second time this has happened; I think a very important nut/bolt may be stripped, and I am very worried that it may cost me large amounts of money (that I don't have) to repair. Looks like I know what I'll be asking for for Christmas this year.

So, this slump is getting very frustrating, and I am hoping to remedy the situation soon. I think the trick is to pick one project and stick with it until it is done - fingertipless mitts, here I come! :)

Knit for Those in Need

The event I put up in the sidebar did not leave a lot of space to explain the project my roommate Liz and I are working on right now, so I thought I would post about it as well!

Living in Burlington, winters become frighteningly cold, frighteningly fast, and anyone walking around downtown can see that we have our fair share of people in need of warm clothing as the temperature starts to drop. To address this problem, Liz and I thought it would be a great idea to combine two things we love - helping people and knitting! To this end, yesterday we went to our local yarn shop, Kaleidoscope Yarns (an AMAZING store, by the way), and picked up a skein each of Cascade Yarns Ecological Wool to get our project going. This is a bulky-weight yarn made of 100% undyed Peruvian Highland Wool; It is soft and warm, and very reasonably priced at $15 for roughly 437 yards. We are both working on simple garter stitch scarves right now, and we welcome anyone who would like to join us!

Our long-term goal is to get a group of people working on this project with us, and, depending on the response we get, try and team up with COTS, our local homeless shelter, Kaleidoscope Yarns, and our school. According to the COTS website, they are urgently in need of blankets for twin- or double- beds, for anyone who is feeling ambitious :). For now Liz and I will simply be walking around Burlington handing out our wearables, and we will take it from there. Our vision for the future involves the yarn and needles being paid for by the school (we're poor! lol), and an organized group meeting to teach classes on knitting techniques, enjoy each others' company, and knit for charity together. For now, though, we are just starting small and seeing where it takes us!


If you are interested in helping out:
We are looking for warmth over fashion - no acrylic yarns please! :)
Feel free to make anything you would like, in any size you would like - all donations are appreciated!
If you do not want to spend the money on postage to send your knitting to us, feel free to do the same thing in your own area! (Please make sure you are being safe if you choose the walk-around-and-distribute route over the donate-to-local-shelter route).
Level of knitting skill does not matter. Garments need to be functional, not perfect. :)
If you do decide to mail your knitting to us, please just put a note in your package specifying that what you are sending is for Knit for Those in Need.

Thanks for your help, and keep knitting! :)

The Stuff

These are some pictures of some of my work - both completed and in-process.



This is a hat that I made for one of my best friends, Ian. He picked out the red Peruvian wool, and the black is some stuff I had lying around that I decided to add some stripes with. It's always fun getting two different yarns of different weights to work in the same pattern! :) I actually ended up making this hat twice, because the first time I vastly miscalculated the size of Ian's head. No offense Ian.



This is my WONDERFUL roommate/best friend Liz wearing the "Weasley" sweater I made for her over the summer. This was so much fun to make, from beginning to end. Karen and I spent ages at a Webs tent sale finding just the right yarn in just the right color, and after that it knit up in about three weeks! The hardest parts were finding the yarn and adjusting the pattern for the bulky yarn we settled on, but other than that it was a breeze. This pattern came from the book Charmed Knits: Projects for Fans of Harry Potter, by Alison Hansel. That book is a godsend!



I had been dying to make a scarf with a leaf pattern for some time, but I was waiting until I found yarn that was the perfect shade of green. I finally found it for three dollars a ball with only two balls left in the backroom at Webs! The pattern comes from knittingpatterncentral.com, a great source for free knitting patterns.



This was my first serious foray into lace knitting, and I turned into a bit of a fanatic. For the month and a half it took me to knit this shawl, my day almost literally went: go to work, knit during lunch break, come home, knit until bed. I think there was some food thrown in there too, every now and again. This was bliss to create. The pattern came from a book that has become a staple of my knitting library: Victorian Lace Knitting Today, by Jane Sowerby. This incredible book is worth every penny, with beautiful pictures, helpful instructions, and tons of historical information about knitting in a time when patterns were only just becoming mass produced. I HIGHLY recommend this book, and am in fact working on another shawl from it at the moment. (I estimate I have roughly 40-50 hours of work left on it, which becomes difficult during the school year :(). And thanks to my friend Brooke for being the beautiful model on both this shawl and the leafy scarf above! :)





This is some yarn that I have spun. The silver is unknown fiber (I suspect merino top, but it was so long ago now that I don't remember), the green is merino and wool, and the white is Great Pyrenees dog fur. My friend (and Karen's sister-in-law) Judy works at a Pyrenees rescue shelter and owns several of them herself. A few years ago Judy helped organize a fair about Pyrenees and rescuing them in particular, and Karen and I went to support her and do a spinning demonstration to show how the fur of this amazing dog is a wonderful, warm, beautiful fiber to work with. And they shed like crazy, so it works out perfectly!



This yarn was so much fun to spin! (Although I had a spinning wheel malfunction when I was 2/3 of the way done which reduced me to a hysterical mess for about an hour. Ahh, nothing like fiber to put you in your place).




These fingertip-less mitts are a work in progress right now, and are partially of my own design. The design down the center is a modified version of a lace bookmark pattern that came in a knitting Day-to-Day calendar that I bought a few years ago. I changed a few things around and combined it with a basic pattern for fingertip-less mitts that I got from an unknown source (Karen, probably), and viola! The white is paper that I put in them to show what they will look like when they are done. They are knit in Noro silk, but I am going to line them with some white and fluffy angora that Karen spun up for me - she's the best!

The Dream

Most people probably don't know that I became a business major so that I can start my own yarn shop when I graduate, but that is indeed my plan. With all of the classes I am taking and all that I am learning, my dreams are becoming closer and closer to reality, and I like to think that I am only 3 years away from realizing this goal. My amazing friend Karen and I have been talking about starting our own store for years now, and tonight my noggin is working full force on ideas for this amazing place that we will own and make awesome. Hopefully this blog will be a place to expand my thoughts and ideas, get feedback, and talk about all things fiber! :)


When I close my eyes, I see a picture of the store in my mind. I know where the doors are placed, and what they look like. I know what kind of wood it has. I see squashy armchairs surrounding a coffee table that has knitting magazines and a bowl full of needles and spare yarn for customers to fool around on and figure things out. This table and chairs ensemble is in front of a stone fireplace (whether or not it will be a working fireplace remains to be seen). When you walk in the door, the cash register is to the left, the yarn is up and to the right, and the whole place has an open, sunny, light feel. In the back there is a door leading to an office, another to a bathroom, and stairs leading up to the small apartment that I will occupy. Out front there is a porch with a rocking chair or two on it, and baskets full of our sale yarn, while in the back there are french-style doors leading to a small grassy, out-door area with a bench where customers can relax and knit outside. This is where we could grow our dye plants. We could also have some of Karen's bunnies out there in outdoor hutches (or inside on rainy days), and customers could feed and pet them. We could sell the babies from the shop as well.


Karen and I would both teach classes, of course, probably with me teaching the basics and Karen teaching advanced techniques (she's a way more advanced knitter and spinner than I am). We have also been kicking around an idea for a Breast Cancer Knitting Retreat, where women who are battling/have battled breast cancer can come for a relaxed weekend of knitting, spinning, group/individual therapy, and general wellness with other women who know what you've been through. There are many reasons why this is a great idea, but two of my favorites are: 1. knitting is a great past time for anyone who will be spending a lot of their time either waiting in doctor's offices/hospital rooms, or resting at home incapable of much activity, because it gives you something repetitive to do to take your mind off things and keep your hands busy, and you have wonderful, beautiful things to show for it at the end. 2. the motions necessary for using a drop spindle require you to stretch out your arm and chest, which could be good exercise for someone who has had reconstructive surgery in that area (note: we should probably do more research on this to make sure it is helpful instead of harmful before we advertise it as such). This program is something that really excites me and I think would be very rewarding and wonderful to set up.

Other ideas:

Knit for the homeless - this is something my roommate and I are planning on starting this winter. The two of us are simply going to knit plain scarves, hats, mittens, etc. and then walk around in downtown Burlington and distribute to those in need. Depending on how it goes, I may want to look into starting something on campus where we get involved with COTS or something, but we'll start small.

Selling local yarn - in addition to selling commercial yarn and our own yarn, I think we should have as large a supply of local input as possible. Everything from dye plants/dyes to handmade shawl pins to yarn to roving from local animals. Make our shop a place where the community can support us and we can support them!

Customer Input - Allow customers to fill out a survey telling us what products they would like us to sell. If they have a favorite yarn, needle, or notion that they would like us to provide for them, they can let us know and we'll do our best. I have also been thinking about how cool it would be to give our phone numbers to our regular customers (such as the knitting group if we end up starting out in Montgomery), and if the inspiration hits them or they really need something at a time when we're not open they could call us and we could open the shop for an emergency session.

So many ideas are swirling around in my head, but that's enough for the first post. Please feel free to comment with any ideas or thoughts you have!