Episode 34: Baby Hiccups and Short Rows

Hello dear Knitters! Thank you joining us for episode 34! In this "in the classroom" podcast, Marcy and Kim share their knitting, present a research paper on short rows, revisit their year long goals from January and talk about a little bit of uber craftiness. Grab your knitting, a refreshing beverage, get comfortable and join us!

Episode 34 Audio

 

Pippa at 11 weeks old, what a baby doll!

What's in our Lesson Plan?

• On the PA System
• Show & Tell
• A research paper on short rows
• How are we doing on our year long goals? 
• We are uber crafty
• What's on our Black Board?

On the PA System

• We are co hosting the "Summer Stripe along CAL," along with 4 other lovely podcasts. Head on over to the group page on Ravelry to learn more about it and get striping! PS, there are some lovely prizes that you can win!
• Stash Dash is continuing and you can still get in on the fun. This year Kim is finally keeping track of her meterage and she's doing quite well! When we recorded she had a little over 7K meters and her goal is 10K. 

Show & Tell

Pippa in the Marian Dress.

Marcy has finished the Marian dress by Taiga Hilliard and it is gorgeous! It is for Pippa and the colors look great on her. She's a lucky baby girl! Marcy is continuing to work on her ...a hint of summer top by Isabell Kraemer. She is using Claudia Hand Painted Yarns Linen in the lemon ice and caribbean blue colors. She did have a little "hiccup" with this project. She ran out of one of her color ways and since it's older stashed yarn it is not easy to find. There were a few people on Ravelry that did have it, and one of them was kind enough to sell her a skein, but when it arrived it was the WRONG color! She is figuring out a way to make it work. ***Do you hear the cute baby hiccups during this portion of the podcast? 

Marcy has a new CO, the cancun boxy lace top. This adorable tee incorporates the Boxy sweater by Joji Locatelli and the cancun boxy lace top by Erin Kate archer. She is using Knit One, Crochet too Batiste yarn in the Gray color. Right now it is pretty much all she wants to work on!

Lace boxy, each of the stitch patterns are very addicting like strips.

Kim has labeled herself the "Boring Knitter," for this episode. She's been busy finishing things and hasn't cast on anything new and now she doesn't have much knitting! She is planning a "cast on party" for this weekend  because this is a ridiculous state of affairs! 

Afterthought Everything Sock- I'll separate for the toes at
the color change.

She did recently cast on the Afterthought Everything socks by Erica Kempf Broughton. This clever $2 pattern from Ravelry allows you to knit a very long tube (or 2, if you choose!) and do afterthought toes and heels later. This gives you lots of plain knitting time. Kim is not actually following the pattern, just using the smart idea because she needs sock knitting for travel, wait time and watching movies. She is using the discontinued yarn Kertzer On Your Toes 4 ply with Aloe Vera in the Teal print and unknown colorway.

Kim is also continuing to work on the "I'll never be finished," Flutter Sleeve Cardigan by Pam Allen. However, the 2 aren't getting along and the sweater is currently in a time out. I want to make it clear that the yarn and pattern are wonderful, this is user error!

Research Paper: Short Rows

Marcy recently encountered a new short row method and thought that it would be fun and informative for us to do a research paper on the super useful short rows. Short rows are used for vertical shaping and 3 D contouring in items such as sock heels, sleeve caps, the back top portion of sweaters and bust darts. There are many other uses for them as well and once we know and understand more about them, we can swap one out for another and  also insert them into our knitting with wonderful results. Here are a few things that we covered:

• There are 3 "families" of short rows: 

1. The "trap a loop of working yarn across from the turning point" family which includes: Yarnover (YO)short rows, Wrap and Turn (W&T) short rows and Shadow wrap short rows.
2. The "turn and slip" family which includes: German and Japanese short rows, and
3. The Wrapless short row which is in a family all by itself.

• We used the following sources for our research: the online knitting zine, Knotions, the youtube channel by Roxanne Richardson and Interweave.com. We also used Wikipedia...and I'm going to let you look that up all by yourself!

  

  Our short row sample swatch. From the top: shadow wraps, yo's, wrapless, German,
  Japanese, W&T without picking up the wraps and W&T with picked up wraps. We like
  the Wrapless best, how about you?

2017 Year Long Goals

In our last episode, we decided to revisit the goals that we set in January and see how we are doing with them.  You can see the goals here. We are both doing pretty well with them (except for Kim and record keeping...oy!) Did you set any goals for the year in January? How are your's going? We can all revisit them in late December and see how we did and then get ready to set NEW goals for 2018!

Spinning BFL downstairs

My bulky bobbin for plying (BFL, Merino and Polwarth 2 ply.)
This ended up being almost 450 yards.

We are Uber Crafty

Kim has been spending a lot of time spinning late. She moved her spinning wheel downstairs and it has really impacted the amount that she is spinning. All of the skeins are 2 ply and the last 3 have been spun woolen in a supported long draw. Yay! More Stash Dash meterage!

What's on our Black Board?

The answer is that we don't know! Marcy is going back to work on 8/1 after 6 weeks of maternity leave and Kim has a trip and a birthday coming up. We will be back ASAP though and I'm certain that we'll have loads of knitting, spinning, weaving, crochet, sewing and yarn dyeing to share with you.

Thank you so much for joining us! We appreciate each and every one of you spending time with us. We hope that your knitting and making are going really well and that you're enjoying your Summer! Happy Knitting!

Episode 33: Our 1st Post Mortem

Welcome to episode 33 everybody! In this "in the classroom" ep, Kim and Marcy share all of their FO's, WIP's and do a really thorough post mortem on their Cullum Tees. There's spinning and hand dyed yarn...and happy baby noises! Grab your knitting, a soothing beverage, get nice and comfortable and join us!

Episode 33 Audio

Marcy, Pippa and Kim after recording,
we are both wearing our Cullum Tees

We both think Pippa is SO cute!

 

 

 

 

What's in our Lesson Plan?

1. On the PA system
2. Show & Tell
3. Goals?!
4. We are Uber Crafty
5. What's on our Black Board?

On the PA System

• We did a quick re introduction for new listeners and reminded everyone that we thoroughly introduced ourselves and interviewed each other in episodes 1 and 2. Also, the segments in the podcast are school themed because Kim is a credentialed teacher. 
• It's Tour de Fleece! This spinning event runs concurrent with the Tour de France cycling event. Kim is spinning a lot right now, but not participating in TDF. If you're interested, search for TDF on Ravelry a/o Instagram and I'm certain that you can find a team to join and learn more if you are interested.
• We are participating in the Summer Stripe along CAL (or SSACAL,) with some other podcasters and you can read all about that here. Marcy has been reading through the FO thread and really likes JazzyJava's socks. We thanked Emily, akamilie on Ravelry, for her kind shout out on her fun podcast, AndersMill Knits. Kim has also been watching Simply Stash Less video podcast with Karen and highly recommends it. (The other 2 podcasts that are hosting the SSACAL are Giddy Knits and HudsonValley Knits; we'll talk more about their shows in ep. 34.) 
• Stash Dash is still going on and Kim has been consistently posting her FO's. Will she meet her 10K goal by August 22nd?!? We shall see!
• Marcy learned that Habu Textiles is moving their operations to Portland, Oregon, which is excellent news for those of us on the West Coast. What a phenomenal field trip that would be!

***We metion Carson Demers and his new book about knitting ergonomics.

Show & Tell

Marcy finished and gifted the adorable Yemma's Dress that she knit and sewed for a friend's baby. She is continuing to work on the ... A hint of summer top by Isabel Kraemer. The pattern called for German short rows and that was a new technique for her and she really enjoyed using them. This is a striped tee and so it works for the Stripe along CAL. Marcy is almost done with the cute as can be Marian dress by Taiga Hilliard that she is knitting for baby Pippa.

"Hey, let's get a few pics in our new tops!

Wait! We are on the wrong sides!

Now that's better!

Marcy and Kim did an informal KAL with the Cullum Tee by Isabel Kraemer. We both finished our tops and decided to do a thorough post mortem. We will have full notes about each of our sweaters on our Ravelry pattern pages, and a short summation below. Marcy's page and Kim's page. 

1. How was the PATTERN? We both thought that the pattern was well written and easy to follow. Kim said that she appreciates the detailed shaping on the back, shoulders, and sleeves and she was also very happy to get to the lace and knit in the round.
2. How about the YARN? Kim used the yarn that the pattern called for, Quince & Co Sparrow, which is a fingering weight, 100% linen. She had a love, hate, love relationship with it! The #1 thing to know is that this yarn needs management! Hand wind into balls and don't pull too much out at a time. Marcy used KnitPick's Lindy Chain yarn and had a completely different experience with this cotton/linen blend. It was a joy to work with and she bought it on sale and was able to knit the entire top for $15!
3. How was the KNITTING experience? Did we make any mods? We both made some mods. Marcy really enjoyed the experience. Overall, Kim didn't love it due to all of the tangling issues with the yarn.
4. How's the FO and FIT? The good news is that all that both Marcy and Kim are really happy with their finished tops. It's so interesting how different they look due to the yarn differences. Kim's is bigger, although she knit a smaller size. Yarns vary SO much! Also, blocking does wonders with linen! They said that they would knit it again and also use the yarn again. 

Kim reviewed the goals that she had set last time:

1. To weave: Nope, no weaving. However... she did BUY yarn to weave with! (F)
2. Spin 2 skeins: YES! (A)
3. Finish the Cullum Tee: YES! (A)
4. Finish the St. Patty Socks: YES! (A)
5. Finish the Flutter Sleeve Cardigan: No, but she is working on it... so (C)

The 2 skeins of handspun that Kim finished.
On the right is the short forward draw.

Kim also finished a top that she designed. It is still a prototype, because she wants to tweak a few things. She used the now discontinued Cricket yarn which is a 50/50 cotton/linen yarn. She is also swatching for several new tops which she will talk about next time after she decides which one to CO. 

Goals?

No, new goals this time. Kim has decided to take a break with the goals and to just enjoy and play with her yarn! However, in our next podcast we are planning on reviewing our yearly goals and seeing how we are doing so far. 

We are Uber Crafty

Kim finished spinning 2 skeins of 2 ply yarn. The 1st was spun short forward draw and the fiber was a huge mix of leftovers from previous spins, but was probably mainly polwarth and silk. The 2nd is fiber that she bought at Stitches West this year and is from Shaky K Fibers. One was BFL top and the other was a blend. She's really happy with the finished skeins and is looking forward to knitting with them (brioche?) 

Spinning by the pool. 

Some of the newest skeins of hand dyed and over dyed (on the bottom
right,) skeins.

She has also been doing a lot of hand dying recently and having a blast playing with color and new dyeing techniques. She's done some immersion dyeing on the stove top in a pot, some solar dyeing in large mason jars and also some over dyeing using both methods and only submerging 1/3 of the skein into the water.  

What's on our Black Board?

Marcy has really enjoyed learning a new short row technique for her ...a hint of summer top and so she is going to do a Research Paper on the ever so useful short row. We will review the different types and their applications. In addition, as always we'll be sharing our FO's, new CO's and WIP's. 

Thank you for joining us! We hope that your knitting and making are going extremely well and that you are enjoying every moment of your creative life!