Worldwide Knit in Public (WWKIP) Day celebrated its 10th Anniversary last Saturday, June 13. Danielle Landes started WWKIP Day in 2005 as a way for knitters to get to know each other. Local knitters organize and publicize events. The number of local events has grown over the years. In 2005, only 25 events were held. In 2015, knitters in at least 56 countries organized a total of 882 events!
It’s been a few years since I’ve gone to an official WWKIP Day event. I try to go somewhere in public and knit on that day, but I don’t necessarily try to find a group. This year, however, the knitting group I attend at my local library held an official event. The knitting group usually meets in a meeting room. For the WWKIP Day event, we met in the main sitting area at the library. The library publicized the event in a couple local papers and had signs up in the branch for a couple of weeks beforehand. Nearly 20 people came, and most were people who had seen the ad in the paper. Many didn’t know the library had a regular knitting group!
The event at the library was 1 pm to 3 pm. I didn’t arrive until 1:45 because just as I was about to leave the house, Chris and I started talking about plans for the end of June. We decided to buy tickets to view the Space X Falcon 9 launch from the causeway at Cape Canaveral. I bought those tickets, then booked a nearby hotel. The launch is at 11: 09 am, we have to be there at least an hour before launch to take a bus to the viewing location, it’s a 1.5 hour drive to get there from our house, and we aren’t exactly morning people! Once I finished those plans, I headed to the library. This is what it looked like when I got there:
I spent a pleasant hour knitting and chatting, then went over to my LYS and spent another two hours knitting and chatting. It was a lot of fun!
I finished the Emergency Scarf on June 1, but I haven’t blogged about it yet. I didn’t write a separate post about it; I didn’t include it in my FO Friday post. I wanted to write something a little different for this project, and I wasn’t sure how to do it. I’m still not sure what I’m going to write, but now that two weeks have passed, I think I’m ready to try.
Stacy modeled this scarf for me, since it perfectly matched her outfit!
About this Project
Once upon a time, all the way back in 1996, a pretty little tortoiseshell kitten was born. She had a brother in her litter. He was black and white. They had a rough beginning, but then someone found them and took them into a house as foster kittens. When they were about 8 weeks old, their foster mama put them in a carrier and brought them to a different house. A man and a woman at the new house petted them and snuggled them. Then the tortoiseshell kitten and her brother went in a carrier again and went to yet another home, where the new man and woman lived.
The adoptive mama called the tortoiseshell kitten Pepper, because she looked like freshly ground pepper. She called Pepper’s black and white brother Puck, because he was a mischievous little sprite. These were not the names the foster mama called them, but Pepper and Puck soon forgot that they used to be called Elvis and Priscilla. Pepper liked her new mama. To be honest, Pepper just liked people. Everyone who came into the house was a new friend. She ran up to everyone and greeted them with a loud meow. Most people petted her, and that was nice.
Pepper and Puck moved with their new mama and papa to another place a few months later. Mama stayed in that house for a while, but the papa moved out. A while later, Pepper made friends with a visitor to the house. He didn’t just pet her; he let her climb on him and sleep with her head on his shoulder. This was how Pepper told mama that he was a nice guy. Pepper was happy when he became her new papa. He petted her a lot.
A year passed, and mama and the new papa moved a long way. Pepper and Puck rode in the car with mama and papa for hours and hours. The car was scary, and Pepper was happy when she could sleep on papa’s lap, even if he was driving. The new place was nice. Pepper and Puck always lived inside before. The new place had a screened in patio. Pepper could see outside, and catch little lizards that snuck onto the patio.
Pepper and Puck moved with mama and papa three more times after that. Tiger joined their family after the first of those moves, and Pepper wasn’t happy about Tiger. Even when he was little, he thought he was the boss of everyone. Pepper was really the boss! She reminded Tiger of this as often as she could.
Mama and papa didn’t move again. Pepper got to live in one place for a long, long time. This house had a whole fenced in yard and on really good days, mama or papa would let Pepper out in the yard. She liked to sleep in the grass, chase lizards, and eat grass. Sometimes she tried to slip through the fence and see if the grass was better over there, but mama or papa always picked her up and brought her back to her own yard.
Mama made Pepper nice beds to sleep on. Pepper was especially happy with the bed on top of the refrigerator. She could see everything that happened in the kitchen and dining room. Tiger didn’t usually try to come on top of the refrigerator, so she could stay away from him.
Pepper got older, as happens to everyone. Her hips didn’t work as well and it was hard for her to jump up to the counter to get to the refrigerator. Mama and papa put a chair near the counter so it was easier for Pepper. Eventually, Pepper couldn’t jump on the chair. Mama and papa moved her bed to a table in the living room. When Pepper couldn’t jump on the table, they put a chair, and then a step beside the chair.
After a while, Pepper got sick. She didn’t know what was wrong, but she went to the vet an awful lot. Everyone at the vet was nice to her. Pepper talked to all of them, and they pet her and cuddled her. She liked the massages she got. Her hips felt a little better after the massages.
One night, Pepper did not feel well at all. Mama looked worried. Eventually, mama brought Pepper to the other vet, the one that is open at night. Mama brought her knitting with her. Mama often had knitting. Pepper liked the knitting. The balls of yarn were a soft place to sleep.
After that visit to the vet, Pepper started sleeping in mama’s office at night. Pepper liked being away from Tiger. She liked having her own litter box, food dish, and water. But Pepper didn’t like being in only one room. When morning came, she was ready to get out of mama’s office and wander around the rest of the house.
Pepper saw mama knit the scarf, and it seemed like it was done. It was still sitting on Mama’s desk though. Pepper heard mama say that the end needed to be woven in. The scarf sat on the desk for a long time. Pepper never did see the end get woven in.
Pepper’s eye was bothering her, so she went to the vet again. Mama kept putting drops in Pepper’s eye, and Pepper didn’t like that. She wished mama would stop with the drops. Then Pepper started feeling worse, not because of her eye, but because of the other sickness. The one she’d had for a long time. She stopped eating. Mama seemed worried. Mama put food on her finger and tried to get Pepper to eat it. Pepper sniffed the food and licked her lips. It smelled good, but she didn’t want to eat.
Mama brought Pepper to the vet again. The vet looked worried too. The vet took tests. Then the vet put warm things all around Pepper. That was nice, because Pepper felt cold.
Pepper didn’t know it, but mama was at home worrying about Pepper. Mama made chocolate chip cookies and ate too many of them. She wove in the end on the Emergency scarf that had sat on her desk for so long.
Later that day, mama and papa came to see Pepper at the vet. Mama brought the new bed she’d made last week, the one that was Pepper’s new favorite bed. Mama and papa pet her and cuddled her. It was nice to see them, and Pepper purred as she went to sleep for the last time.
I just stumbled across the Year of Projects group on Ravelry. This is a blog-along group. Participants make a list of crafting goals for the year and post weekly updates on their progress. The Year of Projects runs from July 1 through June 30, so we are almost at the end of the year. Some participants run on an annual schedule, however. I decided that I will participate on an annual schedule. I already made a list for 2015, but I haven’t been reviewing it or updating it. Now you’ll get an update post every Sunday. Since I already post a WIP Wednesday post, I think the Sunday post will probably just be a list with completed items crossed off, but that may change!
Previous Posts
Since it’s been awhile since I’ve written about my goals — and I haven’t really reviewed them myself since I wrote them — I thought I’d link to the posts I wrote back in January.
Apparently, I never wrote a post about my Stashdown plans. I thought I had!
Current Status
Stashdown
I set the goal of knitting from stash. I would not buy new yarn, except for weaving yarn. Uh, yeah. turns pink That hasn’t happened. There’s been much acquisition of stash, and not all of it is for weaving.
UFOs
Here’s the list again. If I’ve finished or frogged the project, it’s linked to the relevant blog post. If it’s not linked, I haven’t finished it.
After I made this list, I found another project. I need to stuff and assemble a Baby Blue Monster.
2015 Goals and Plans
Knitting
Knit myself a sweater
Improve my finishing techniques
I haven’t done a sweater yet, but I never intended to make one until the fall, so that’s okay. In July, I’m attending The Knitting Guild Association meeting in San Diego, and I’m taking a two-day Finishing class with Arenda Holladay!
Crocheting
Learn to read crochet patterns
Learn all the basic crochet stitches.
Make at least one non-granny square crochet project
The Cotton Candy Corriedale was a breed-specific fiber, but I haven’t been thinking of it as part of that project and I did not write a separate blog post about it. The Cormo that I’m currently spinning is the first fiber that I’m counting as part of the breed specific spinning project. The updated Breed Specific Inventory is no longer correct. I never received the fiber from Little Barn. I ended up filing a complaint with PayPal to get my money back. I’ve also bought some fiber from other sources since. I’m no longer sure that I want to process the Mystery Fleece. I’ve brought it to demos and it’s nice to have an unprocessed fleece for that purpose.
Weaving
Continue playing with color and weave drafts
Learn pick up stick drafts
I finished the Ravenclaw and Slytherin Houndstooth Scarves this year, which goes to the color and weave goal. My OWL proposal for the current term of HPKCHC was to weave 8 scarves using 8 different color and weave patterns. I haven’t started that yet, but plan to start this week. If I complete the 8 scarves, that will pretty much fulfill the color and weave goal. I have not started on pick up stick drafts.
Dyeing
Finish dyeing the MAPLE LEAF Shawls
pH / water source experiment
None of this has happened.
Projects
I only had a few project goals for this year.
Dishcloth Advent Calendars
I need to complete 18 copies of 25 different patterns.
I started another pair on the trip to India, but haven’t worked on them since I got back.
Layette
I haven’t done anything with this project.
Other Finished Projects
This is a list of all the projects I’ve finished so far this year. I’m omitting anything already listed above. These projects don’t necessarily fit into any of the goals I wrote in January. I was surprised that there’s so few! I guess I’ve been more on target than I realized 🙂
I’m collating the above list into one so that I can more easily post on Sundays. I’m also adding some goals. I’ve taken on additional projects and I’ve acquired a floor loom! I’m not including a stash-related goal. I don’t plan to acquire more yarn this year, but who do I think I’m kidding?
On Saturday, June 6, Stacy and I attended the Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival (website) in Franklin, Indiana. This is a two-day festival, held on Friday and Saturday, but we were only able to make it for the Saturday since we were at Greencastle, Indiana’s First Fridays program on Friday afternoon and evening. We had a wonderful time at the Fiber Festival, and had plenty of time to visit all the vendors. We did not have enough time to take any of the classes at the festival; if we were able to go both days, we would have taken at least one class.
Animals
I love going to fiber events held at county fairgrounds or similar outdoor venues because animals are always present at these events. Hoosier Hills is such an event. When we drove through the gate of the fairgrounds, we saw the alpaca and llama pen on our left. It was the first place we visited. This area was organized by a local 4H chapter. They set up the lawn area as an obstacle course and at three times during the day, the 4H members led their alpaca or llama through the course. My favorite obstacle was the hula hoop. The child held the hoop up and the alpaca jumped through it!
The 4H was raising money by taking pictures of Festival attendees with an alpaca.
Of course, Stacy and I had our picture taken with an alpaca! This one is named Hapi (pronounced happy). He’s about a year old and a rescue. When his owner rescued him, he was quite nervous around people but now he’s super friendly. If you look closely, you might be able to see the little piece of straw sticking out of his mouth.
Hapi’s owner told us he gives kisses. I’m sad this picture is out of focus, but it is still funny!
On the opposite side of the lawn area was a pen containing a one-week-old kid and his mama. This little goat was hilarious. He came running over any time I bent down to take a picture, but didn’t want to be petted. He needed to check out everything in the pen and he was the boss of everything. When a llama in an adjacent pen stuck its head through the bars and started eating the straw in the goat pen, the baby ran over and jumped on top of the bale, like he was the king of the pen!
Food
I didn’t get any pictures of the food, but did want to comment on the available food. I only saw two food trucks: ice cream and kettle corn. This is the kind of food I expect at events like this, and assumed we would have to leave the fairgrounds to find a restaurant in town for lunch. But then we went into one of the vendor buildings and discovered that the 4H was selling food. They had burgers, hot dogs, chips, and bottled drinks. And they had vegan vegetable soup. I was so thrilled! I’m a lacto-ovo vegetarian and fairs tend to be hard re: food. I expect to eat snack food like kettle corn at worst and unhealthy food like greasy pizza at best. Every once in a while, I’ll stumble on to something really worth eating like grilled corn or the various offerings of the Artichoke booth at Maryland Sheep and Wool. I’ve never found vegan vegetable soup at a fair before! It was delicious. It looked like it was homemade, and was full of vegetables like potatoes, carrots, lima beans, peas, and more, all for only $2 for a cup!
Vendors and Shopping
Just over 50 vendors attended this festival. Perhaps 1/3 of these vendors also attend The Fiber Event in Greencastle, which takes place two weeks before Hoosier Hills. The rest were vendors we hadn’t seen before. I had three goals for shopping at this event: Good for Ewe Mirrorball yarn (this is a yarn manufactured in Indiana, which I bought from Nomad Yarns (website, Ravelry group) at last year’s Fiber Event) so I can reknit the Begonia Swirl Shawl that got felted, yarn to knit a shawl for Stacy, and maybe some breed-specific spinning fiber if I happened across any I don’t already have. I did purchase these things and then some!
I only bought three other skeins of yarn. The blue skein on the left is the Good for Ewe Mirrorball I needed for my replacement Begonia Swirl Shawl, which I purchased from The Clay Purl booth. The blue skein in the middle is from Knitted to a T. It is laceweight Opulent (70/20/10 Baby Alpaca / Silk / Cashmere) in the Sapphire colorway. At 1312 yards for 104 grams, it’s a very fine weight of lace yarn! This is the yarn for Stacy’s shawl. The brown skein on the right is from Ballyhoo Farm in Kentucky. It is undyed Shetland wool from “Cake.” I love yarn where you know the name of the sheep who grew the wool!
The fourth skein, the pink one, was a door prize. It is a skein of Bartlett Yarn, provided by Copper Centaur Studios (website, Facebook). I rarely win anything, so was excited to get a door prize! I didn’t know until I was writing this blog post that Bartlett Yarns is a family-owned mill in Maine that’s been around since 1821. That’s pretty cool!
Tools, etc.
I got these notecards from Ballyhoo Farms. All the photos are from their farm. I got to sort through a stack of cards to pick 10 for my set, and it was truly hard to pick! The one on top is Cake, the producer of the wool that became my skein of yarn.
I was about to order some more Knit Picks cables, so was glad to run into a booth selling them. Now I won’t convince myself to spend $50 at Knit Picks, so that I can get the free shipping. I got the Wacky Woollies umbrella and the two buttons at the same booth as the cables. I bought the two shawl pins at The Clay Purl booth when I bought the Mirrorball yarn. They are handmade by Lisa Thyr of Wool’s End. Her business card doesn’t have a website and I couldn’t find her on Google Search, Etsy, Ravelry, or Facebook. Her work is beautiful and I had a hard time picking just one or two shawl pins!
The three remaining items on the right hand side of the photo — the Christmas ornament, pen, and earrings — are all from Bur Oak Studio (website, Facebook, Etsy). The artist is Jennifer. She makes all kinds of beautiful items from metal knitting needles. She has signs for identifying plants, bracelets, necklaces, magnets, bookmarks, and more. Stacy bought me the pen as a gift; I bought her a Christmas ornament as a gift.
I’ve seen some knitting needle jewelry before, but Jennifer had some unique items and an eye for putting everything together. Even her containers of pieces and tools were pretty to me. (I took these pictures with permission of the artist!)
At The Fiber Event last year, I bought 4 hand-turned crochet hooks from Sistermaide. This year, I bought 5 more. I love these hooks. They are well made and pointy, which I find helpful since I still crochet very tightly.
Fiber
I bought 7 new-to-me breed-specific fibers from Dyed in the Wool. Sandy and Benita (host of The Fiber Pusher Podcast (website, YouTube, Ravelry Group)) are incredibly organized. They had many different kinds of fiber (at least 50), and the best way to buy it that I’ve ever seen. I wish I’d taken a picture of the set up. They had a couple of poster boards with rectangles drawn on them with a sharpie. Each space on the board was for a different kind of fiber. The name and inventory number of the fiber was at the top of the space. The price per ounce was on the bottom of the square. In the middle of the box, they attached two samples of each fiber, one unspun and one spun. When they sold out of a fiber, they taped a piece of paper marked “out of stock” over the space. Inside the booth, the big bags of roving and top were arranged by inventory number. I took some time looking at the board, then read off all 7 inventory numbers for the fiber I wanted. Benita went into the booth and weighed out the 4 ounces of each fiber, as I specified. Each fiber went into its own grocery-style bag and Benita wrote the fiber name and weight on the outside of the bag. She wrote all the bags first, before she started weighing, and passed the list of fiber to Sandy so I could pay while Benita was weighing.
Stacy and I were joking that it looked like I was carrying around a miniature flock of sheep, so I took this picture of the flock out in the grass. I had to leave them in the bags, though. It’s summer in Central Florida, which means it rains for an hour or two every afternoon. It seems as though the grass is never dry! A few of the fibers I bought were single-animal. The name in quotes after a breed name is the name of the sheep!
Back, l to r: Baby doll Southdown, Fresian “Poppy,” Dorset. Front, l to r: Romeldale, Suffolk “Gavroche,” Polypay, LincolnFolk “Marshmallow Jr.”
LincolnFolk is a breed I hadn’t heard of before. It is in development by Richert Ranch, crossing their Suffolk x Hampshires with Lincoln. On her blog, Benita has a post about visiting the farm to buy fleeces. That blog post includes a picture of raw fleeces from Marshmallow Jr., Poppy, and Gavroche. Marshmallow Jr is the second raw fleece you’ll see as you scroll down the post. Poppy is in the middle, the last of the black fleeces pictured. The very last fleece pictured on the blog post is Gavroche. I don’t know if any of the pictured fleeces are the source of the fiber I purchased, but it’s fun to see raw fleeces from the same sheep!
I recently finished spinning Cotton Candy Corriedale dyed by Sassy Bee Fibers (website, Facebook). I bought that fiber at The Fiber Event last year; this year, I bought three fibers from Sassy Bee.
from top to bottom: Corriedale, Nylon, Tencel blend in Poseidon (3.8 ounces); Merino, Inego silk, Mohair lock blend in Aquaman (4.0 ounces); Corriedale, Bombyx Silk, and Nylon blend in Lotus (4.3 ounces).
We thought we were done shopping for the day. On our way out of the fair, we stopped back at the competition table to see who won the various prizes. Many of the fleece entries were gone, either sold or picked up by whoever entered them. One of the remaining fleeces was a beautiful, black Alpaca. The woman at the competition booth told us the fleece was so stunning that the judge wanted to buy it! The person who entered the fleece did not plan to come back to pick it up. Her son was in a car accident; she dropped the fleece off at the festival and went straight to the hospital. As a result, we weren’t able to get much information about the fleece. Neither Stacy nor I wanted an entire Alpaca fleece, so we decided to split it. We bought the fleece, and I carried it over to the Ohio Valley Natural Fibers booth and dropped it off for processing. Before I dropped it off, I took a quick picture, but this really doesn’t do the fleece justice! I can’t wait to get the roving back from the mill, but it will take a while. Their current processing time is about 3 months.
FO stands for Finished Object. Since I started blogging, I’ve been posting WIP Wednesdays and posting individual posts for finished objects when I finish one. Many craft bloggers write FO Friday posts, so readers know when to expect posts for finished objects. The FO Friday posts I’ve seen aren’t usually as detailed as the posts I’ve written for my finished objects and they almost always include multiple items.
I have so many blog posts planned that I thought I’d go with FO Friday posts for a while. I’m going to include multiple projects in a single post, but include many of the details that I’ve included in individual post. The “About the Project” section will be shorter. If I have a pattern I want to discuss in greater detail, I’ll write a separate post about it rather than including it in the FO Friday post. I’d like to hear your thoughts on FO Friday posts versus a post per project. Which format do you prefer?
Knitty published the Clapotis pattern in 2004. It seems like everyone’s knit it — Ravelry has more than 22,000 project pages for this pattern. I’ve had it on my list of things to knit forever, but never gotten around to it. It’s not a difficult pattern to knit, but as many have noted the middle section seems to go on and on and on. The pattern has three sections: increase section, knit straight, decrease section. The “Knit Straight” section is a 12 row repeat and you are supposed to knit it 13 times. I only knit it 8 times. I tried to knit it 9 times, but ran out of yarn before finishing the decrease section and bind off. In order to knit the entire 13 repeats the pattern prescribes, I would have needed at least one more ball of yarn. The yarn I used is discontinued and the company is out of business. No one on Ravelry had the same yarn in their stash, so I couldn’t try to trade or buy another skein. I didn’t want to rip out the entire project, and it looked like it would be big enough, so I forged ahead. I ripped out the entire completed decrease section (more than 3/4 done) and the 9th straight section repeat so that I could reknit the decrease section and bind off.
Super Secret Shawl
Official Stats
Date Started: April 7, 2015
Date Finished: June 1, 2015
Pattern: Self-designed
Yarn: 880 yards Knit Picks Gloss Lace in Winter Night
This is my first attempt at designing anything. It’s straightforward — a single stitch pattern and a rectangular shawl. My single biggest snafu was estimating yardage. I measured and weighed the swatch to calculate the yardage I used to knit it. I used that information to calculate final dimensions and yardage for the shawl. These calculations were off by a significant margin. I probably needed another skein of yarn to get the dimensions I wanted. I cannibalized my swatch to get a couple extra inches. I will be doing some research on yardage calculation and trying again!
