Knitting Pipeline is sponsored by my Longaberger home businessn and Quince & Co.

Knitting Pipeline is sponsored by Quince & Co. and Knitcircus Yarns

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Episode 259 Little Leaves and Mittens

Listen here or use the Flash Player on this site for current and past episodes. Flash Player is not compatible with Internet Explorer. Try a different browser like Safari. Or jaunt on over to iTunes to find the show there.

This episode is sponsored by Quince & Co and Knitcircus Yarns.

At Quince & Co  all our wool yarns are 100% grown, processed, spun, dyed, twisted, and labeled here in the USA.  Our natural fibers wool, linen, alpaca, and mohair are not chemically treated or mixed with petrochemical fibers such as nylon. Enjoy springy goodness in your knitting with www.quinceandco.com.

Knitcircus celebrates fun, a passion for knitting, and the delight of beautiful yarn.


Treat yourself to a gorgeous, hand-dyed, gradient yarn in saturated colors with smooth color transitions throughout the skein. We are hosting a Pick Your Gradient Shawl KAL through September 2016.  www.knitcircus.com.

Knitting Pipeline is a Craftsy Affiliate. I enjoy taking Craftsy classes and have learned so much while taking them at my own pace. If you visit the link in the sidebar prior to purchasing a class or supplies I receive credit for it. Thank you!

You can also find me here:

Ravelry: PrairiePiper Feel free to include me in your friends.

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Twitter: knittingline




Pipeliner Notes

Thanks to everyone who has been in touch with me in the past few weeks. A special thank you and welcome to new Pipeliners who have introduced yourselves in the Welcome Thread.

As always thank you also for the 5 star ratings and reviews on iTunes. Thank you to Babsknits17 for the most recent new review.


From NellyFenwick in Muncie IN

Just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed the video on the quilted table runner. There wasn’t any thread for it in Ravelry so I thought I’d send a message.

You always inspire me. The runner seems more ‘wintery’ than ‘Christmasy’. I think you could easily use it well into January or February. Now if you could just inspire me to get the weeding done….

You mentioned near the very end that you were getting knots in your thread when you were hand sewing. I think I may know the answer to that one. My mother taught me that it is in the twist inherit to the thread and to always keep the end from nearest to the spool nearest to the needle. Also too, every 10 stitches or so, roll your needle a bit between your fingers to help take any other extra twist out that you may be creating in your thread. Any knots caused by the twist will usually come out easily if you insert the tip of your needle into the loop of the knot to hold it still while gently pulling the needle end of the thread.

Thank you again for your inspiration and being so generous as to share what you are crafting.

From Fiddlesticks2

Hi Paula I just love your podcasts! I am listening from the beginning, and am on show #7, and I would like to see the show notes, but I can’t seem to find them that far back. Can you direct me to the url for the beginning show notes?

Also a little tip if no one has suggested it. I like to put my patterns in the clear sleeves to be put into notebooks. When I am using the pattern, I use white board markers to highlight my progress and make notes. When I am done, this wipes off fairly easy.

Thank you for a great podcast!

From RamonaFireHorse who wrote a lovely letter…this was just at the end of it.

…I was wondering if you had any future plans for another Craftsy-along or a Quince-along. I have sooooo many Craftsy classes where I have not taken the time to make the projects to learn the technique.

Thank you again so much for creating the podcast. I really appreciate you.

With much gratitude,
Ramona

From Trustitches (Trudi)

Picot edging

Good afternoon Paula,
I loved your newest completed shawl from Helen’s Shawl Society. Slowly but surely I’m getting through them.
Could you please explain how you keep the points of the picot edging ‘pointy’? Do you use wire blocking and also pin each picot out?
Thank you so much for all of your inspiration.
Kind regards,
Trudi

I block with pins only on the first blocking. I don’t have blocking wires. On subsequent blockings I rarely pin them out and they still look like picot but not quite so orderly.

From Cori who is irocknits.

Hi Paula . . . a question for in depth examination

So I love your podcast and often you will put out a myth for folks to debunk so here’s my latest query.
Does it really “hurt” your yarn to cake it up for weeks, months or years before actually knitting with it? Years ago, my knitting mentor, and local yarn guru here, used to tell me, “never wrap your yarn balls too tightly, if you drop them from a height of 8-10 inches off the table, they should not bounce.” Makes sense, right? Don’t stretch and pull and wrap your yarn too tightly. HOWEVER, with the advent of yarn swifts and the proliferation of ball winders it seems to me that if you “cake” a skein of yarn up, it certainly hasn’t been given a stress test in it’s journey to a center pull ball and therefore isn’t going to be harmed by a rest on your shelf for say, a year or two. What’s your take? (and your listeners as well). I have heard several podcasters make reference to only caking up yarn immediately prior to knitting, which in my world, completely slows down the process, if I’ve got to stop and go wind yarn in the middle of a project. I’ve even heard of knitters who re-skein yarn from a cake and “no one got no time for that!” LOL A sister in the knitterhood, Cori

I’ve heard this too and I usually dismiss it. I wanted to think about it for a few weeks before responding. And also do a little research. The Principles of Knitting by June Hemmons Hiatt did not say anything about it that I could find. I believe that if the cake is wound properly without straining the yarn then there is nothing to worry about. I’m not even certain you would have something to worry about if the yarn were wound too tightly. In my experience, wool yarn, tends to want to go back to its natural state. If you have ever tried stretching a sweater or another garment that is knit to proper gauge and keeping it there…you may have found it is not so easy to do. Shawls that are knit at a loose gauge are another story. Let’s give wool credit for its resilience and strength.

Let’s hear what the Pipeliners have to say and thank you, Cori, for the question.

Events

Hannah Fettig of KnitBot

Hannah sent me a Farm Spin Dye Knit T-Shirt and samples of the gorgeous yarn.

I’m so excited to announce that Hannah will be vending and signing books at the Knitting Pipeline Maine Retreat! She will be there on Tuesday afternoon during our vendor fair.

Knitting Pipeline Maine Retreat “Getting to Know you” thread. Please chime in if you are going to the Maine Retreat.

Nature Notes

My husband is the hummingbird whisperer. He takes the feeder in at night to keep it out of the hands of raccoons and then he takes it out in the morning. The hummingbirds come out to him immediately and start feeding while he still has the feeder in his hand. I have to get a video of this! The air is filled with hummers most of the day. I can look out into the trees and see them zipping back and forth. The juveniles are out and on their own now. Soon they will be migrating south for the winter.

We have had a bountiful tomato harvest from our two plants. I highly recommend the heirloom variety Caspian Pink. We have grown it before and it is our favorite tomato. The other plant, Boxcar Willie, is not that distinctive or special. We are planning on sticking with Caspian Pink next year. The tomatoes are HUGE, firm, and delicious. They are great for slicing as there isn’t a lot of liquid in them…unlike Boxcar Willie. One day I noticed a very large tomato hornworm Manduca quinquemaculata on the Caspian Pink and it had obviously been eating tomato leaves. Tomato hornworms are bit fat green caterpillars. They are the larval stage of the sphinx moth also called hummingbird moth. This one was unusual though as it was studded with what looked like grains of white rice. I came inside and looked it up online and found right away that the white “grains” were eggs of the Braconid wasp that will kill the hornworm. It is a good practice to leave both hornworm and the wasp eggs as future wasps will also take care of other garden pests. I showed my husband and we both agreed that we just couldn’t leave that horrible hornworm there and I let him deal with it. Now every morning he patrols the two plants and he has found a few more. I don’t ask what he does with them.

I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and listen. Anne Lamott.


Needle Notes


Mittens using Brown Sheep










Little Leaves by Alana Dakos




Quince & Co Lark

Madeleine Tosh

The Blethering Room

WIP Wrangling

From Woolyeyes

Instead of actually physically frogging projects, I spent time this week digitally frogging projects. I had 47 WIPS on Ravelry. 47. Not counting the vanilla socks I’ve never started project pages for. I went through the project pages and either marked them as Hibernating (I may want to work on them one day) or Frogged (I never really started them or I definitely won’t be finishing them).

Then I put the active projects in project bags and put them in a basket where I can see them in my living room, ready to be worked on. And then put a bag in my pocketbook for when I’m having lunch at work or waiting for my daughter. It’s a small start but at least I only have 25 in my project pages now!

From Annie97

Great topic!

I still use your old Project Zero plan, Paula! But, about a year ago I realized that I somehow had 16 WIPs in various stages of not-quite-done. Then I realized that it wasn’t just WIPs, it was books and other projects, and it really bothered me - I felt like I had picked up a bad habit of not finishing what I had started, so I used my blog, and made a page where I have been tracking all the WIPs to at least have a handle on them.

I’m down to two now from that original Big List (full disclosure: I actually have four WIPs, but two of them were not on the original list - I’ve been knitting other things throughout the year or I’d be done by now :-D). I looked at all of the WIPs and made the Frog/Finish decision. Some just needed blocking, some were frogged, and the rest I have been plugging away at over time. I’m really jazzed that I’m down to two WIPs (Quick Sand and Rhiannon Socks). Quick Sand has my attention at the moment - the Rhiannon Socks will be the last of the original WIPs from the Big List.

I’m more of a monogamous knitter so I’ve usually chosen one of the WIPs on my original big list to work on along with whatever current project I have going. I work on just the selected WIP until it’s done (blocked). Then I take a victory lap, chose another WIP, and the process starts over :-D Like you, I generally have what I call train knitting, which is easily portable and is usually whatever socks I’m working on.

For me, casting on all the things equates to too many African violets - all of a sudden it’s not fun anymore, and I’ve discovered that I really do not enjoy having to spend substantial time just trying to figure out where I was on a WIP project that I let sit - sometimes for years.

Angelus Novus by East London Knits/Rene Callahan: Hip Hip Hooray for my Rowing Out Progress!

Giveaway! 

For Over The Moon Book and Sweet Degrees of Thanks Collection Notecards





Written and illustrated by M. Paula Survilla

To enter to win a copy leave a comment in the Over The Moon thread on Ravelry (not on the blog or on the episode thread.) Tell us who you would read this book to.

I am not planning on shipping overseas because the book is an odd size and somewhat heavy. If you live abroad I will gift you patterns of your choice on Ravelry. That leads me to a question. My sister’s young grandchildren have moved to Poland—with their parents of course! She recently went to UPS to send a care package to them. It weighed 4.8 lb and the price to send it via UPS was $300. She didn’t send it. If you have any ideas about how she can ship to Poland please let me know. She is so upset. Any ideas?

In the Piping Circle

Waukesha Games


I met Clair! Congratulations to Clair and her daughter Beth on their solo competition 1st and to their band Dundee Scottish for 2nd place in Grade V.
Celtic Cross Pipes and Drums in the competition circle at Waukesha



El Paso Corn Festival Parade on September 10.

9/11 Memorial Walk and Service

Have a great week, haste ye back and hold your knitting close.

2 comments:

PegS said...

Hi Paula, I have some experience with yarn being wound too tightly, so wanted to add my 2 cents to your discussion with Cori. A couple years ago, I went to an LYS (which is no longer open) and bought a beautiful single skein of yarn to knit mittens for my mother-in-law. The woman in the LYS offered to wind the yarn and I was happy to let her. As I watched her struggle with the swift and ball winder, I had a feeling the yarn was being stretched beyond normal limits, but, as a new knitter, I said nothing. The yarn ball was tight like a basketball and stayed that way even after much of the yardage was knit out of the center.
I knit the mittens but they were floppy and inelastic - more like cotton than wonderful wool! I still gave them to my MIL but quickly followed them up with another pair, knit with yarn that I hand-wound. Since that day, I hand-wind ALL of my yarn, even 800-yard skeins of lace-weight.
I agree that wool is typically forgiving and bounces back but it has limits, too.
Thanks for such a great, informative podcast!
Peg

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About Me

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I play the Great Highland Pipes, knit, observe nature, and read. My name on Ravelry is PrairiePiper. Find me on Instagram as KnittingPipeline.