Tag Archive | crafts

Manos del Uruguay Alma

I have a new shawl to show you, but the point of it is the yarn. A couple of months ago, Fairmount Fibers offered me a skein of the new Manos del Uruguay yarn, Alma, to review. I’m pretty sure you all know how much I love Manos yarns, so you also know I was eager to take this one for a test drive and see if it lived up to my expectations!

Alma is a single ply fingering weight yarn in 100% merino. It’s labeled superwash but they still recommend you hand wash and dry flat. The colors are all named after inspirational attitudes, like Humility, Generosity, Passion, and Sincerity. I chose Resilience to remind myself that I am resilient! Well, that and I liked the colors in the photo. They also designed the colors to pair well together, with complementary solids and multi-colors. Patience would have gone wonderfully with Resilience!

I noticed right away that Alma has the same soft fluffy feel as all the other Manos yarns I’ve used. It’s lightweight and airy, feeling almost puffy like cotton candy. It’s kind of plush, if a light fingering can feel plush. Maybe that’s partly because it’s a single ply? Whatever the reason, I love it. It felt warm and comforting in my fingers, gliding smoothly but not too hot or heavy in my lap as I knit. I chose to knit the Imagine When shawl by Joji Locatelli.

fullsizeoutput_22d7 I chose this pattern because of the best part about Alma: the yardage! It’s a generous 546 yards per 100 grams, which means you have plenty of yarn to make a good-sized single-skein shawl. I knit the pattern with no modifications and ended up with six grams left. Honestly, I love everything about this yarn. It did have one knot in it, but that’s within normal standards, and it washed and blocked beautifully.

fullsizeoutput_22db I’m not completely convinced I chose the right pattern to show off the yarn; I’m wondering if something more stockinette-based would have been better. But this was a fun pattern to knit — I guess I really am learning to appreciate short rows — and I loved having the yardage in one skein for a nice big shawl. The yarn retails for around $30 per skein, which I typically pay anyway for my good yarns, so I’d buy this one in a heartbeat. Especially since I can feel good about buying Manos yarns, which are hand-dyed by artisans and help support families in Uruguay! It’s available in yarn stores now, and you can find the closest one to you here, or find it online now.

Thanks so much to Stitchcraft Marketing and Fairmount Fibers, the North American distributor of Manos del Urugay, who sent me one skein of Alma (retail value: $30) for free. I received no other compensation for this review. All opinions and photos are my own.

Sun Glitter Shawl

Aug18

Way back in June, I cast on a shawl for a knit-along that Under the Olive Tree Knits was hosting. It was a summer-long KAL and she’s offering the pattern free through the end of August, and there are prizes if you follow the rules found on her blog (among other places). I’d been wanting to knit this shawl anyway, and I had the prettiest skein of yarn for it, and I thought I’d have no problem finishing a one-skein shawl in two months. Well. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I’ve had an eventful summer, and my knitting mojo hasn’t always been present, plus other things have taken precedence to this project. But I’m happy to report that after returning from vacation, I committed to this shawl and finished it yesterday!

This was a fun, meditative knit. I love how she designed those lace triangle sections, and once I got the hang of the pattern, it was easy to take it with me anywhere. And the yarn is gorgeous! I love the hints of purple and yellow.

I do wish I’d checked my yardage more carefully before picking my yarn. The skein I chose was 100 grams but only 400 yards, and I ran out of yarn on the last right-side row of the lace pattern. Instead of doing several rows of garter before binding off, I just did two rows of garter and the bind-off in a complementary yarn, and I don’t even notice the slight color difference. Still, if I make it again, I’ll make sure to find a more generously sized skein.

Now I’ve got a case of finish-itis — I’m ready to pull out another shawl WIP before I cast on something new!

Pattern: Sun Glitter Shawl by Under the Olive Tree Knits

Yarn: Concorde by Less Traveled Yarn in color Lagoon

Colorado Yarn Stores

Aug15

I really only meant to go to one yarn store during our Colorado vacation. Looking back, I’m not sure why I thought that was reasonable, or even feasible for me. But that was my plan, and since I’d gotten in trouble at the Loopy Ewe the past two years, I was going to avoid them. Instead, I chose LambShoppe in Denver. It was in a cute but busy part of town, and the boys weren’t interested in joining us, so they dropped me and the girl off at the curb. The store was small but had lots of fun yarns, both big names and small. The saleswoman immediately asked how she could help me, and I cheerfully said, “Just let me look at the yarn!” I try to focus on local dyers when I’m buying vacation yarn, and I found quite a few choices. Unfortunately, the saleswoman was one of those who thinks she needs to engage every shopper frequently, and that bugs the crap out of me. Still, I found some good stuff.

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But then! As I was pondering my choices on the table there, that same woman walked by and said, “Oh, you need to get out of your box and try something new!” She’d already annoyed me enough that I replied, “How about I do what I want?” I mean, seriously. Let a knitter pick her own damn yarn, am I right? Anyway, beautiful yarns, if not all local. The woman’s one saving grace was that she found me a second skein of the Manos Locura Fluo (the crazy neon one in the middle). I’m collecting skeins for a sweater!

I thought I was good and happy but then we went to Colorado Springs, and we had some extra time, and darned if we didn’t end up at another yarn store. Ewe and Me was a little hard to find, and the font is hard to read on the sign outside, but I’m so glad I found it! It was a BIG store, with a huge table down the middle with comfy chairs for the boys to sit in. The women chatted with me at first but then let me browse at my own pace. And the yarn! So much local yarn, so much gorgeous yarn!

I saw small dyers I’d only followed on Instagram, like The Lemonade Shop and Artistic Yarns by Abi, plus ones I’d never heard of. I bought six skeins, I think, plus that fabulous mug. And another size 5 circular needle for shawls. And maybe an enamel pin.

That was plenty, right? It really was! I would have been happy to leave it at that. Except on Sunday the boy and I were on our own, and we went to Longmont to check out a guitar store. And there happened to be a yarn store a few doors down. Sigh. Three more skeins went in my bag. But one of them was Dragon Hoard Yarn, who I’d just started following on Instagram! She was doing a trunk show there so of course I had to grab a skein.

That’s how I ended up with this beautiful, extravagant assortment of yarns to feed my stash!

Now, let’s see if I can restrain from buying more new yarn for a while!

The Sunny Side of the Street

Aug6

It may be Monday but things are looking up, guys! We found an apartment for the girl to share with two other girls, with cheaper rent even, and they’ve got furniture so she just needs stuff for her bedroom. And we were able to rent an SUV for the week through the insurance claim on the damaged car, so we’ll have room to move everything without having to drive a U-haul. I’m breathing so much easier now, and I think we might be able to relax and enjoy our vacation, as soon as we get her moved in anyway.

I finished my stress project, my Comfort Me Cowl, and I love it! The pattern was so simple and fun, and the yarn is gorgeous. Now I just need some cooler weather to wear it. But honestly, I’m not in a hurry for that.

I AM in a hurry for vacation though — Mountains here I come! We’ve got someone coming to stay with the dogs, so they’ll be happy-ish. I know they’ll miss us but I hate having to board them. At least this way they get to stay in their happy home.

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Guess I better start planning my vacation knitting!

Stress = a new project

Aug2

Yesterday was Not a Good Day. Not as bad as Car Accident Day on Sunday, but not great. It was more stress piled on to to all the other things we’ve dealt with this summer, and my nerves are just about at their breaking point. I needed some serious comfort knitting, so I pulled out some colorful worsted and cast on for a new cowl.

The pattern is simple and easily memorized, so I can just sit and knit without having to think too hard. The needles are bigger, so I’m not gripping them as tightly as I’ve been doing with my fingering weight WIPs. And the yarn, oh, it’s so pretty! It’s mystery yarn from a destash, so I have no idea of the brand. But it makes me happy to knit with it, and it’ll make me happy to wear it!

Happy Friday, friends. Hope your week’s been better than mine!

There is knitting happening

Jul31

I have gotten a lot of sock knitting done in the last couple of days. Thanks to a careless, speeding, idiot driver, we are currently a one-car couple. Everyone but the car is fine, thank goodness, but since the idiot did not have a current insurance policy, it’s all being covered by our policy, so we’re trying to save a little bit of money by carpooling for now rather than renting a car. Especially since we’ll have to rent a vehicle soon to take the girl’s belongings to college. (My car Edward just won’t hold as many boxes as the smushed car would have, alas.) Anyway, like I said, I am grateful that we are all unhurt and we have good insurance that will help us get it all sorted out. Eventually. Until then, I am knitting in the car while the husband drives me to and from work!

I’m loving these Apothefaery socks and who knows, by the end of the week, I might have a completed sock!

I also have a completed shawl as of last night. I bound off my Imagine When shawl and used up almost all the skein, hooray. Unless something else unexpected comes up, (and considering how the rest of this summer has gone, it might) I should have it blocked by the end of the weekend and have pretty photos to share soon! Until then, here are cute dogs.

Duncan & Grace love each other!

I hope your week is going better than mine, and that you are also getting lots of knitting done!

FO: Bobble Hat

Jul28

For all my talk yesterday about selfish knitting and making what I want to make, I spent my knitting time yesterday and this morning making a bobble hat. I’ve made maybe eight or ten of these already, for my former co-workers. They’re meant to represent the pombe yeast tetrads that they study in their research lab, and even though I’ve left that team, my former boss still asks me to make a hat for each new member. As annoying as I find bobbles to be, I’m happy to do it because A) I adore her and B) I love it when people ASK for handknit items. I had the yarn in my stash and I hadn’t made a hat in ages, so it was kind of a nice treat.

It’s based on this pattern but I made modifications to make an adult size and to adjust the placement of the bobbles, so you can see the details on the Ravelry project page. And now it’s done and I can go back to my previously scheduled fun knitting! Happy Sunday!

A Dog Sweater

Jul24

I made a sweater. For my dog. I never thought I would be the type of person to dress up my dog, let alone to make a sweater for my dog, but there you have it. Really, the only reason I did it is because I was asked to test knit a pattern, and they wanted people with bigger dogs and they’ve seen my Instagram and I definitely fit the bill. It was a complicated pattern with a lot of math but the actual knitting went quickly and soon Jack had a handsome sweater.

As you can see, there’s a lot of fabric bunched up in front, so either my measurements were off or my knitting was off. I don’t even know. And it’s fine, it goes on and comes off and he was very patient with me during the entire ordeal.

Every time I had to measure him, he dutifully got up and stood still, for a short time anyway. When I had to try it on him, he let me manhandle him to get it on. I also tried it on Duncan, our big horse of a dog to see if it would fit him as well.

It looked better on Jack. And I have to confess, I found him quite enchanting in the sweater and for a brief moment thought I would make another one in hopes of getting a better fit.

Then I woke up the next day and had come to my senses. Jack is fine with one sweater!

Feeding the stash

Jul9

Do you like yarn? I like yarn. I like my current stash, I like yarn in stores, and I especially like new yarn that arrives in the mail after I’ve had a bad day. Yesterday I had TWO packages waiting for me when I got home. The first had these goodies from Izzy Knits:

Isn’t that logo the cutest?? For some crazy reason, I agreed to test knit a pattern for a dog sweater. Yes, a sweater for one of my dogs. A sweater he will very likely not want to wear longer than two minutes, and that I’ll have to protect from the other dog chewing on it. Still, he will be very handsome during those two minutes.

The second package was yarn from an Instagram/Etsy destash. There are no tags so I have no idea who made what, and I don’t care a bit. Because OMG look at my pretties:

They’re all fingering weight except that one bright pink variegated skein, which I think is worsted and will become an awesome cowl. The others will feed the stash for now. That neon yellow is the softest; I think it must have some cashmere in it. No idea what to do with it, since I can’t/don’t wear that color, but maybe mixed in with something else, it’ll work out.

Today we’re finally getting someone to look at our broken AC again, after a week of a warm, humid upstairs. Here’s hoping I go home to a cool(er) house! At least I know I’ll go home to dogs, and that’s pretty good.

Happy Tuesday, friends! Hope it’s a good one!

The Loopy Blue Socks

Jul6

My socks are done! I needed mindless knitting while I watched Rafa at Wimbledon today and my sock fit the bill perfectly. All the ends have been woven in and they’re ready to be tucked away for fall.

fullsizeoutput_21b5 The yarn is from The Loopy Ewe Seasonings Series in the color Kara’s Hanauama, and I loved knitting with it. It feels tightly plied, nice and sturdy, and the coordinating mini-skein was perfect for the main color.

fullsizeoutput_21b4 These socks took me exactly a month to make, and I used exactly half of the main color, so I’m totally going to make a pair of shorties from the rest. And now I’m left with four shawls in my WIPs. I’m thinking I need to add some variety in there! More socks??