F.O. Hamble by Isabell Kraemer

Pattern:  Hamble

Hamble 

Designer:  Isabell Kraemer

Yarn:  
Rosy Green Wool Cheeky Merino Joy (100% Merino)
Colourway:  Edelweiss (1 skein)

O-Wool O-Wash Sport  (100% Merino)
Colourway: Cuckoo Flower (2.5 skeins)

 Pigeonroof Studios Silky High Twist Sock (80% Merino, 20% Silk)
 Colourway: Railroad Stake (held double)

Needles: 3.5mm

Ravelry:  my notes

Added Notes:

1.  Designer Isabell Kramer is popular for a reason.  Her patterns are well written, fun to knit, and produce a garment that fits well.  When Hamble was published I happily cast on, knowing that this sweater would get a lot of wear.  I have to admit that I am delighted with the finished result.  The hardest part about this pattern was knitting the neckline.  There are increases on both the purl and knit sides, and the increases I made on the purl side were creating holes in the fabric.  I found a great tutorial that demonstrated how to do this properly.  Once the neckline was created the pattern was straight forward. 

2.  I played around with different colours for the contrasting coloured stripe before I picked the Pigeonroof Yarn.  For example, I loved how these two skeins looked together, until I started to knit the stripe and realized that there was not enough contrast between the two. 

Old Rusted Chair Sock Yarn: Colourway Spring Forward

I tried several yarn combinations until I found the fingering skein of Pigeonroof High Twist Sock.  I have been holding onto this skein for sometime as the yarn is gorgeous, much too beautiful to knit into socks.  As this is a fingering weight skein I doubled it, and it worked perfectly with the sport weight yarn.

Much better!

3. The Yarn:  This was my first time using Rosy Green Wool and the experience made me want to knit a whole sweater's worth. It is the softest merino I have ever felt. It's one of those yarns that you want to keep squishing as you knit with it.   O-Wool, a yarn I bought at Rhinebeck a couple years ago, is a lovely yarn too, and was a good match with the Rosy Green Wool.  Look at the variety of colours that are available.

O-Wool Sport

O-Wool is certified organic by the Global Organic Textile Standard.  You can read more about what that means on the O-Wool website.  If you are lucky enough to go the Maryland (this coming weekend) or Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool festival you can see O-Wool in person.  If you want to try either yarn the owner of O-Wool sells both yarns online.  Trust me when I say both yarns are worth buying.

4.  I was halfway through my second sleeve when disaster happened.  I spilled the remains of a Tim Horton's coffee on my sweater and the coffee seemed to hit every inch of my sweater, especially the cream upper body.  Luckily I was just entering my house when it happened and I was able to submerge it immediately in water, so thankfully no lasting damage was done!

I love the feeling of getting a sweater off the needles.  Since this is a sport weight sweater I still will get a lot of wear out of it before summer.  Instead of focusing on the two remaining sweateres I have on the needles I promptly cast on another one.  I have so many projects on the needles at the moment.  But I am enjoying every one of them.  More on that later....

As a side note I have been quiet on my blog recently as life has been extremely busy.  I hope to get back to a regular schedule soon, so thanks for sticking with me.  

Happy knitting!

F.O. Goldfinch and Some Works in Progress

Until recently I was probably the only knitter who hadn't knit one of Andrea Mowry's patterns. Happily I can say that I just finished a pattern of hers called the Goldfinch Shawl.  This well written pattern was so much fun to knit. The shawl was knit in three colours of sport weight yarn, and I enjoyed every second of it.  I definitely see another Andrea Mowry pattern in my future.  Do you have any favourites?

Pattern:  Goldfinch
Designer:  Andrea Mowry

Yarn:  O-Wool O-Wash Sport (100% certified organic merino)

Colourway: Coral Reef, Porcupine, Wood Dove

O-Wool O-Wash Sport yarn

Needles: 4.0 m

Ravelry: my notes

Notes:  This was my first time working with O-Wool and I have to say that I was impressed.  I saw this yarn for the first time at Rhinebeck last year and loved it immediately. This yarn is so squishy, it comes in some gorgeous colours, and after being blocked is super soft.  A sweater knit in this yarn would be heavenly.  

I am one of those knitters who absolutely loves blocking my F.Os.  Here is the before and after of my Goldfinch Shawl.  Can you see how the lace just opened up after blocking?  It's like magic.  The shawl grew a bit and is now the perfect size, about 70 inches across.

Before blocking

After blocking

Now that I am done the shawl I am focusing on completing two spring cardigans.  The first one is the Goode Sweater by Julie Hoover knit in Purl Soho's Linen Quill, in the Oatmeal Grey colourway.  This yarn has such an interesting combination of fibers... 50% wool, 35% alpaca and 15%  linen/flax. I am so excited to see how this knits up and blocks.

Linen Quill by Purl Soho

The second cardigan I started is from Hannah Fettig's new book called Texture.  There are so many delicious sweaters in this book.  I predict that I will be knitting more than one pattern from this collection.  I chose the Eventide Cardi, a simple cardigan with a seed stitch stripe.  I thought that this subtle pattern would be the perfect choice for yarn I have had in my stash for some time.  The yarn I chose was String Theory's Caper Sock.  This yarn line was one of the first yarns I bought years ago when I got back to knitting.  The colourways are so pretty and it was hard to choose just one colour.  The colour I picked was Kiwi, the most gorgeous tonal green.  Knitting with it brings me joy.  This yarn is 80% merino, 10% cashmere and 10% nylon, a supersoft combination.

So I am going to try to focus on these two fingering weight cardigans for the next while and not get distracted by the many beautiful patterns that get published each week on Ravelry.  Wish me luck!  Happy knitting everyone!  Thanks for stopping by.

Rhinebeck Weekend: Part Two

I had such fun last weekend when I went for the first time to Rhinebeck, to attend the New York Sheep & Wool Festival.  The event lived up to to it's reputation.  The crowds were huge, the food lines were ridiculous and the variety of yarn for sale was incredible.  I present to you, my dear friends, some photos I managed to take when I wasn't being caught up in the crowd.

Me and my Rhinebeck sweater

Bartlett Yarns:  Sport

Dragonfly Fibers Gradient Set

Dragonfly Fibers Pixie Yarn:  "Vote"colourway

Harrisville Yarn

Bijou Basin Himalayan Trail Yarn

One of my favourite booths was Fiber Optics which had so many knitted samples.  Here are just a few of them:

Holey Chevrons by Stephen West

Party on My Needles by Joji Locatelli

Lamina Wrap by Ambah O'Brien and On the Spice Market by Melanie Berg

Fiber Optics Paintbox Gradient that came home with me

I also really enjoyed the O-Wool booth and was quite taken by some of their samples:

The Girl In Me in O-Wool 

Balconet Shawl in O-Wool

I couldn't resist this gorgeous yarn and ended up buying some.

I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to attend this festival (and a special thank you to my husband for going with me).  If I ever get to go again here are some tips I want to remember:

Things I Learned As A Newbie:
1.  Although the gates on Saturday don't open until 9a.m. a line up does start to form around 8:00 a.m.  I sat in my car keeping warm until about 8:15 a.m. and when I lined up I wasn't too far back in the line.  The bonus with coming early is you can park quite close to the entrance and then go back and forth to drop things off during the day very easily.
2.  There is more than one entrance.  Figure out what vendor is your top priority to visit first and figure out which entrance is the closest to where you want to go.  
3.  Prepay your entrance fee online before you go.  It saves time.
4.  If you want to get close to Miss Babs yarn (in Building C) you MUST GO RIGHT AWAY.  As a rookie I lined up at the wrong entrance, and by the time I got to Building C I couldn't even get near the booth. The line up was already out the door.  I tried several times during the day to get to Miss Babs, but the crowds continued, and the line up to pay stayed ridiculously long.  I didn't really care that much...I was just curious to see what the fuss was all about.  Best to stay two days next time and visit the booth on the Sunday.  (Same applies for Jennie the Potter).
5.  Go to Rhinebeck with a pre-made list of the basic things you want to walk away with.  There are so many temptations everywhere you look and it really helps to keep some focus.  For example, I knew I wanted a sweater's worth of sport weight yarn and I ended up with O-Wash Sport by O-Wool.  I also have a weakness for fingering weight yarn and I had promised myself not to buy any as I have enough to last me a long time.  The only fingering weight yarn I bought was at the Indy Untangled show and it was Voolenvine Yarn.  How could I resist? Enough said.
6.  Time your lunch early.  I lined up at about 10:45 for the infamous Aba's Falafel and the line up was quite short.  Later when I walked by there was at least an hour wait.
7.  Same for the Apple Cider Donuts.  Don't wait until lunch time.  Why waste precious time in a line when you can be looking at gorgeous yarn?

The infamous Apple Cider Donut

8.  Wear your hand made sweater/shawl/socks etc.  It was so fun to admire everyone's beautiful knitted/crocheted items.
9.  Make sure you spend time going into the town of Rhinebeck.  It is so beautiful and the restaurants are amazing.
10.  Take time to visit all the sheep, alpacas, etc. at the show.  There were sheep shearing events and even a dog show.

11.  And one last tip...next time go also on the Sunday.  From what I hear it is way less crowded.  There were so many knitted samples in all the booths that I would have liked to look at them more closely and take way more photographs.

I will continue to remember many happy moments that I experienced at Rhinebeck.   It was so much fun.  Do you have any tips to add to my list?