Thursday, June 29, 2017

Glacial Knits Episode 5: The Long Winding Road



Today, Jonas and Sari share their finished objects and works in progress, talk a bit about their recent trip to Omaha, NE, talk about penguins, and how much they love the show Class, and introduce their Outlander yarn club. Sari takes you on a tour of the dyeing studio. Jonas is hugely cryptic about yarn swaps.

Welcome Craftystockinette from Detroit, MI to our Ravelry group.

What we're knitting:

Jonas
  • WIP
    • Still working on the Angularity shawl by Josh Ryks out of Hazel Knits Divine in “Leaf Fall” and Hazel Knits Artisan Sock in “Wild Rice.”
    • Swatching for the Lane Mitts by Jensen Reyes out of Malabrigo Worsted in the  "Stonechat" colourway as part of the Gilmore Girls swap with Odd Duck Swaps of Ravelry.
Sari
We discuss the new season of Dr. Who and our excitement about the Who-verse spin-off Class. Jonas and Sari also discuss their excitement about the American Gods TV adaptation.

We mention again where to find us:

Sari

Jonas
You can find these videos on Sari’s blogs at:
Sari’s yarns can be found at: http://girlwhocrafted.com
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Friday, May 5, 2017

Glacial Knits Podcast: Episode 4 - New Glacial Home


SPECIAL ANNOUNCMENT: The podcast is now on iTunes. You can find it here!

No new members for our Ravelry group.

 Sorry for the delay in getting a new episode recorded. Turns out moving and unpacking takes time. We will be in our new place for a while. It has a craft room (which needs organizing)! And a dye studio area (that needs to be fully set-up)!

 What we're knitting:

 Jonas
Sari
We discuss the Parasol Protectorate and Custard Protocol books by Gail Carriger. Sari and Jonas finally watched Star Trek Beyond and enjoyed it. Sari talks about her first few hours of playing the game Firewatch, and Jonas expresses his excitement to get into Bloodborne. Jonas and Sari also discuss their excitement over the upcoming premier of the American Gods TV adaptation.

 We mention again where to find us:

Sari

 Jonas

You can find these videos on Sari’s blogs at:

Sari’s yarns can be found at: http://girlwhocrafted.com

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Monday, May 1, 2017

Glacial Knits Podcast: Episode 3 - Better Late than Never?




Show notes:

We talk about our Ravelry group and welcome our new group members:
  • dees
  • DunneMacroom

Thanks for joining us! We hope to see some more of you there! This is our last episode at our current apartment. We are moving!! The moving is also the reason for the brevity of the episode.

What we're knitting:

Sari
Jonas


We mention again where to find us:

Sari



Jonas



You can find these videos on Sari’s blogs at:

Sari’s yarns can be found at: http://girlwhocrafted.com
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Saturday, February 18, 2017

Glacial Knits Podcast: Episode 2 - Mechanical Carpentry



Hopefully the podcast is now or will soon be on iTunes! Still working out a few kinks.

Show notes:

We talk about our Ravelry group and welcome our new group members:
  • 1to1
  • kolson111322

Thanks for joining us! We hope to see some more of you there!

What we're knitting:

Jonas

Sari

We talk about the yarn shelf that Jonas built for Sari and show a video of the shelf.
Sari talks about the Mama Bear Plus Handcrafted Yarn Swift Jonas bought her for her birthday so her reskeining process is easier

Sari talks about yarn dyeing and shows some recent yarns and a little bit about her process:
We mention that we've been watching a ton of figure skating, talk about Yuri on Ice, and encourage you all to watch 4 Continents (which is right now as I'm finally getting around to posting this, so.....)

We mention again where to find us.

Sari

Jonas
You can find these videos on Sari's blogs at:
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Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Glacial Knits Podcast: Episode 1 - Irrelevant and Irreverant



Hi all,

 I know I've basically stopped blogging (I realised it was taking up a lot of time and wasn't giving me a lot of joy, so I cut back on it), but I'm hoping that this will be the beginning of a new era of talking about my crafting.

 Jonas and I have decided to start a podcast. It likely won't update often (our goal is once a month right now) since we're both so busy with things, but we hope to bring you our unique perspective on knitting, sewing, yarn dyeing, running an indie yarn company, and our adventures in Minnesota and beyond.

 The video quality isn't the best because my camera is old and the lighting is terrible because I live in a land of perpetual winter darkness, so please forgive us that. We promise we'll get better at this as time goes on.

 I'll try to get us on iTunes ASAP, but for now you can see us on YouTube.

 Show Notes (such as they are):
What We’re Knitting
Sari

Jonas


Future Knitting
Sari mentions the “Just One More Row” podcast and their “12 in 17” contest.
Sari’s 12 (or 11 in the case of apparently she counted wrong) yarns chosen by random sequence generator.


Jonas talks about three coloured shawls and hats. If anyone has suggestions for 3-coloured shawls that a dude can wear or assistance in Sari and Jonas actually wearing shawls without looking ridiculous, please let us know!

·         Three Irish Girls Adorn Luxe in the “Eddi and the Fae”, “Seelie”, and “Unseelie” colourways
·         The Girl Who Crafted Bulky Wool Single in the “My Head is Aching in GMT” colourway.

We mention again where to find us”
Sari

Jonas

You can find these videos on Sari’s blogs at:
 http://girlwhocrafted.com/blog
 http://girlwhocrafted.blogspot.com

Sari’s yarns can be found at:  http://girlwhocrafted.com
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Wednesday, September 28, 2016

WIP Wednesday: Mitten Ho and some yarn Déjà vu

Hi there. Not much to say on today's topic, honestly.

If you'll remember back a few weeks ago, I talked about the Irish Moss Toque I completed using Gale Woods Farm Finn yarn. Although I loved it and it was a lovely hat, I couldn't quite get it to fit right (it ended up slightly too short). That, combined with having another 110 yard ball of yarn left over and not being sure what to do with it, led me to thinking about possibly trying to make something else with it, a cowl or else a hat/mitten set.

Since my shawl was getting really big and I wanted to have something more portable to knit in airports for my trip last week (I ended up not actually knitting since the knitting didn't fit in my carry on bag anyway, so the point is moot, but whatever), I decided to try to find a hat/mitten set that I could use to knit this yarn. I finally settled on the High Peaks Mittens and Hat by Anne Hanson. It was published as part of Knitspot. It looked like it would work well with this thicker, more roughspun yarn and I figured I could make the yardage work out.


High Peaks Mitten work in progress--Mitten 1​​
 
I didn't swatch since the gauge was the same as the one I ended up with for the previous hat. That said, it turns out that either I should have or else the pattern is written for someone with hands bigger than mine since this one mitten is slightly too big for me. The reason the picture doesn't look the best is that (a) it's MN fall so it's basically always kind of dark outside and (b) the mitten is wet because I wanted to see how big it would be after blocking. I think I either need to take out stitches and cast back on or I need to use smaller needles. The idea of knitting what is essentially aran weight yarn on 3.5mm needles is laughable, but I actually do think the fabric on the 3.75mm needles is too open (at least pre-washing.) I'm trying to decide if I want to just go ahead and cast on the second mitten on the 3.5mm needles or cast on the hat or move on to the next project and decide what to do about the mittens once the first mitten dries.

I'm also trying to decide if I actually like these mittens. The pattern is easy and is made with all purl and knit stitches and no cables or anything, but it's really puffy and it seems to look okay in all the project photos I looked at, but I don't know if I actually like it in my yarn. Fortunately, as with the hat project in this yarn, I managed to knit one mitten in like 3 hours, so if I want to keep changing my mind at least I'm not ripping out days of knitting.

Thoughts? Do you like it? Try to find something else and find another yarn for this? The pattern was, in my opinion, rather expensive for what you actually get. It's very much a beginner pattern and while it's well written, it's bare bones and definitely something I feel like I could have just made up on my own instead of paying $8 for. I'm not against paying designers, of course, but I don't at all believe this was an $8 pattern so now I feel like I'm obligated to try to knit this with SOMETHING for SOME reason. I just...don't love it in this yarn at all.
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Saturday, September 17, 2016

Crafting Firsts: I Published A Pattern!!!

I debated whether to consider this post a crafting first or a finished object, as it's technically both, but since technology prevented me from actually publishing on Friday (and since I have work travel next week so I don't know if I'll get to writing my Monday post where I'd ordinarily cover the crafting firsts segment) I thought I'd just publish today and sort of consider it both? That's unimportant, really.

What is important is what crafting first I've completed.


​
 
Just now (like, 15 minutes ago) I published my first ever knitting pattern on Ravelry. Now, I never really thought I'd be the sort of person who would be a pattern designer of any sort. Too much to think about with fitting and moving parts. Plus I'm not one to think "I have this stitch pattern in my brain," it's just not how my brain works. But yet...

Here's how these mitts came about. I've spent the past four months listening to (and LOVING) Maggie Stiefvater's book series "The Raven Cycle." As part of that I dyed some colourways to honour some of the characters of the book, and one of them "Blue Lily" has rapidly turned into one of my absolute favourite colourways. Inspired by this, I wanted to dye the Knit Picks Capra that Jonas bought me for Christmas a few years back that I'd been saving until I found exactly the right colour for it to be. This was that colour. It needed to be this. So I dyed the yarn and found myself with 100g of DK weight merino/cashmere that needed to be knit into something Blue Sargent would approve of. As a short aside, I'm not one for fingerless mitts. Where I live, if it's cold enough to need something on your wrists/hands, it's cold enough to need your fingers covered. That said, I did think a few times last winter while I was working from home and my house was frigid that I could perhaps see the utility of the fingerless mitts. Plus, fingerless mitts are TOTALLY something Blue would wear regularly, probably even in the heat of the Virginia summer. 

Add to all of this that the Knerd Girl Knits podcasts's ongoing bad-ass women KAL was focusing on women in books during July and August and one of the challenges was to knit something inspired by a women in a poem or a poem by a woman. Since I'm not usually one for poetry, I didn't have any ideas...until I remembered that book three had a song (about Blue) running through it, thus making that bit a poem both about a woman and written by a woman. So it qualified. The problem was, there wasn't anything at all inspired by Blue that I could find on Ravelry. Or, at least nothing that would work with my yarn or would match up well with the poem. It was then that I pulled out my big book of cables, started browsing Ravelry to see what some other people were doing with fingerless mitts, and started thinking.

The ideas actually all came together really quickly. I browsed the books, found two cable patterns that matched up with the images that I wanted, drew a sword/knife pattern onto some graph paper and made a chart. I still didn't know how to put it together, but I did a bunch of swatching and then a bit of math and then started trying to do it.

I made myself the goal of designing the whole thing during the course of the summer Olympics as part of the Ravellenic Games. I thought that was appropriately ambitious, as the mitts knit up really quickly, but also I would have to push myself to do the calculations and math needed to put it all together. There were, as with all pattern designs, a few stumbles as I changed my mind, ripped back, and once ripped out an entire mitten because I needed to change the position of the thumb, but they knit so quickly that I accomplished it easily within the timeframe. Honestly, I think actually writing the charts and doing the layout took me more time than actually designing the mitts!

So, at long last, after much ado and explanation. I present to you, my first (and quite possibly only) knitting pattern, Lily Blue Mitts.


 

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Wednesday, September 14, 2016

WIP Wednesday: Daenerys (Round 2)

Let me preface this post by saying that very little of what you're about to read below is typical for my crafting life.

So I've started knitting another Daenerys. It's not that I'm not a re-knitter, I've knit several things more than once, it's that I'm not usually one for essentially chain knitting the same pattern. Especially when that pattern happens to be a rather large shawl. However, I've been wearing the other one around and gotten many, many compliments on it. During one of those wearing/compliment sessions, a long-time friend of mine who's really helped me out and who is also crafty (so understands that crafting takes time and energy) and is a freelancer (so understands that people need to be paid for their crafts) asked me if I would be willing to make her one. Because she is who she is (knitworthy, a good friend, someone who will appreciate it, someone who has done a lot for me, etc.) I said yes. We settled on a price (much lower than if just about anyone else asked me, but I'm the one who set it so I'm obviously fine with it) and she picked some yarn.


WIP Daenerys shawl in the Knit Picks Chroma "Drawing Room" colourway.​​

She wanted a gradient like mine, but didn't think she was going to like the feel of Kauni, so we settled on knitting it in Knit Picks , which was the first reasonably inexpensive gradient yarn that wasn't Kauni that I could think of off the top of my head. Because she tends to wear a lot of greys and blacks and neutrals, she knew she wanted something that would complement, so she decided on the Drawing Room colourway, which is described on the Knit Picks site as "an elegant group of pastels". I don't disagree with that statement. I will say that this is 110% NOT my colourway, but I do think it will look lovely on her and I admit that it is knitting up rather pretty.

I've worked with Chroma before on my Frostfangs hat and mittens, but they seem to be sourcing it from somewhere new, since it has a different feel to it. It's a bit more slippery feeling, as though it had acrylic or more nylon in it, but according to the label the fibre blend is the same. I definitely like it less than it's predecessor, which, sadly, seems to be the way of many things with Knit Picks these days. It's also different in that the colour repeats mirror one another instead of simply repeating in sequence, so that's an added bit of fun. My biggest concern is that the colour repeats aren't that long, so as the rows get longer there are fewer rows of each colour (which is logical), and I fear I may get to a point where a colour only takes up one row or, worse, part of a row. I bought 2 balls of yarn since she said she'd like hers bigger than mine (and it's fingering weight instead of sport), and I'm nearly through one and the colours are really only taking about 2 - 2.5 rows, so we'll see how things go. I'd like to not have extra yarn since I will never do anything with this colour, but I also know I need to stop before I get to a point where the colours get muddy.

The pattern is easy now that I've done it one and a half times, and I've memorised the main chart. It's still a lovely shawl pattern, really. Not much more I can say about it that I haven't already said.
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Monday, September 12, 2016

Crafting Firsts: PODCAST!!!!!

A bit of old news, but since I'm still excited and it's technically still relevant, I'll happily bring it to you all here!

Back in June, I attended Zombie Knitpocalypse just a 90 minute drive down the road in Rochester, MN. While I was there, I had the opportunity to meet some lovely people, as usual, but I spent much of my time getting to know some of my favourite podcasters (and now favourite people), Susie and Danie from the Prairie Girls Knit and Spin podcast and Sarah from the Cultivate and Create podcast.

Over dinner the first night of the event, Jonas was relaying to the table how I had asked (demanded) that he go to the hardware store down the street (where we shop a lot, so it wasn't like this isn't a place he ever has to go again) and get me one of each of the colour cards from their (admittedly small) paint colours section. This is because when I dye yarn I get the picture of what colour I want in my head and then I translate that into a visual cue based on the colours on the paint cards. Sarah loved this idea, and since part of what she is trying to do with her podcast is really get at the various ways that people express creativity, she asked if we could do an interview about my creative process. So we did!

I've thought at several times about starting a podcast of my own, but since you all can see how reliable I am at updating a blog regularly, I figured it might not be the best idea. Plus I'm not sure that me (and my monogamous knitting self) doing a solo podcast would actually generate any interesting content, especially when I'm working on big projects. So I've never done it, and Sarah's podcast was the first time I've gotten to appear in that medium. I had a lot of fun, and it sort of made me wish that I had a crafty friend locally who would be able to come up with more content than I could and also hold me accountable to actually doing things on time (and that I even had said time in the first place) so I could podcast. Of course, as soon as I got back to my room after recording I thought of six million things I didn't say or should have said differently, but listening back to it after it was released, I think it sounds better than I thought it would after my original critical remembering...which is normal.


After you listen to that, be sure to check out Sarah's most recent episode where she announces a coupon code for my shop and a way you can enter to win a skein of my new favourite of my hand-dyed yarns, "Blue Lily" (more on that in a week or two!). I love the format she's chosen for the contest, and hope that I can take some of the great info that's coming to me and make even more exciting things happen in the shop, so check out Sarah's podcast, contribute to the discussion for a chance to win some yarn, and stay tuned for even more awesome!

Thanks to Sarah for letting me hijack her podcast. I had a blast, and I'm so glad we had a chance to meet at ZK!
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