Knitting the Blues

Weekending

My weekend was pretty low key, solitude was my friend as I was home alone for much of it and glad I was because I had a plan to get a lot done. Did I? Well, I may have and it may even be actually near what I anticipated getting done, but not quite as much or exactly what I wanted to accomplish. Capeesh? Or Capisce? Something like that.

Anyway, I spent my weekend with yarn, I have a fair amount and a looming deadline to get it ready for storage. Usually, when a project comes up or flies back into my radar I can check the stash on Ravelry or hop down to the basement and go on a search. The stash in the basement, up to a certain point in time, is organized by weight, which helps, but nothing is marked and then there is a bunch of yarn that has been purchased and not added to my virtual stash tracker. My goal for the weekend was to take care of that and to organize and store itall in marked containers so that if I have to go into a storage unit to look for something I will know exactly where it is.

In my mind this was going to be a day of just cataloguing the new stuff, moving things around and making sure there was room for the rest and marking the boxes and adding that info to Ravelry. Then I started and in my usual 'take any job and make it as difficult and time consuming as you can' fashion morphed it into a gigantic venture of making sure all of my projects were linked to the yarn used for it and the correct weights of leftover yarns were logged in so that I can find that info at the click of a button.

Because......... you know.

I have LOADS and LOADS of partial skein leftovers from years and YEARS of knitting. Some I ditched, but many I added in. By added in I mean a lot of them never made it to my Rav stash page, the info was usually on the project page, which helped, but I was adding yarns to the stash, finding some of the projects to weigh them against the yarn I found so that info would be correct (ish) on the project page (because I like to know how much yarn is actually used for a project! I try to put all the info I can on a project page because it can be helpful and that is what Ravelry is, a resource that is driven by user participation and information and I'm doing my part).

I could have done all that and not had photos of the yarn. THAT would be a totally normal thing to do. THAT is reasonable. THAT would never fly in my world, though. I reeeaallly wish it would.

So I am working in batches and wondering over odd balls of mystery yarns that I want to keep, but can't remember why I have them or what on earth I made with them. That is annoying me.

I love the idea of having this all set up and keeping up with it from now until forever. It suits my perfectionist tendencies. And now I want to knit ALL! THE! YARN!!! RIGHT! NOW!

Twenty-eight. After this is the fabric, quilting and sewing patterns and tools! And the deadline, it looms....

Let There Be White Light!

You know when you have a yarn in your stash that you bought just because you loved it and then it sits there, wallowing away, because 1) if you knit it you won't have it any more and b) (heh) you are worried that you will knit the wrong thing with it and it will be gone forever?   Maybe you should have left it on the shelf until you find the perfect project, then it won't be sitting there taunting you with its prettiness, but sometimes it is a yarn that is either hard to come by or isn't readily replaceable, not a mass produced brand or color.  (Even still, maybe I should be stocking up on those yarns, too.  Remember Rowan Magpie?  Everybody loved it and yet POOF!  Gone!  And I never did get all the colors I wanted.  Anyway-back to this yarn.)  Well, as you probably have guessed, I have some of that yarn and a few months ago I found a sweater that might be worthy of it.  The yarn is Koigu KPPPM in two colors.  The sweater is Tempest (ravelry link).  After mulling it over for a while I pulled the Koigu out and decided to photgraph it and write a blog post about how thinking it all over.  That was back in October or something.  I took the photos and was so disappointed in them that the post never happened and while I kept thinking about it (every day) I let other things take precedence.  See, the thing about Koigu is the color and the depth of colors in one colorway and the thing about blogging them is the photography and how it never shows it well.  At least not when I take the pics.

Can you see the difference in these colorways?  Can you see the green in the blue or the blues in the greens or the subtle periwinkley purple in each of them?  How could you in that picture?  And I tried all over my house to find a spot that would reflect enough white light to capture the prettiness of this combination.

When the opportunity came up to take a short workshop on photographing for the internet I jumped on it.  While I still do not get most of photography, like depth of field, aperture, or ISO adjustments, I did get to try a white box.  How cool!  You see, not only does the amount of light matter, but the quality of the color of the light.  White light reflects colors so much better, so when you take a picture in a room with green walls the light reflected is green and has an effect on the color of the photo.  Now, most of our cameras have adjustments for that, but they aren't perfect.  In a white box with white lights you have less to fight.  It provides a light that simulates a bright, overcast day, which is preferred.  So I learned.   So I came home and made one!   I got the instructions to make one just like the one we used in the class.  With a box, box cutter, white tracing paper, tape, and a piece of poster board I came up with a passable box.  My tracing paper has a bit of a yellow tinge to it so I want to replace it with white vellum and I am using OttLites, but I would like to get some inexpensive spot lights.  I think as long as you use day-white light bulbs you can use any lamp.  While I can't claim a miraculous change in my photos, I'll give you a little idea of the difference.

   

So, can you see it?  That the blue has greens in there and the green has some purply blues in there?  Can you see how I think they would stripe well together and how I wanted to buy them and knit them together and why I didn't wait to buy them, because it is Koigu and may never show up again?  It is time to see what I learn from the swatching......

Seven.  You can make a white box, too!  Here is a bit of a better one, I might try this one as well.  Where will I store all of this stuff?

M is for Mohair?

Oh, to just get "M" out of the way!  Maybe I should have posted "M" as Mindblock.  Or Meditations on "M".  (See that last period?  In the instance that the "M" is in the quotation marks, which is appropriate to placement of the period?  Inside the quotes or out?  I've done it both ways, waiting for some english teacher or grammar geek to call me out.  I love grammar, but do not know what is the correct period placement in that context.  Discuss.  Back to the subject at hand.)  How about Mental case?  Oh, wait!  I should have gone with ME, ME, ME! as this is what my blog is all about anyway.  Or Mine.  Anyway, I'm going with the saga of the Mohair (and silk) that is presented to me in the discontinued Rowan Kidsilk Spray.

Mohair and silk.  Anyone that has knit with Rowan Kidsilk Haze has an opinion about it.  Not that easy to knit, depending on the project, you cannot deny the beauty of the finished product.  This yarn yields a lustrous cloud whose deceptive light weight is warm and cozy.  My Birch shawl is around my shoulders most days and evenings as I sit knitting, blog trolling or television watching.  I have it on right now, next to the fire, with Patriots playing.

The photos of the yarn above are Kidsilk Spray, the same yarn as Kidsilk Haze, but a space dyed variety in lovely colors.  When it was first released I purchased one ball of the blue (above right) to check it out.  And then it sat.  I dug it out while looking for my Kidsilk Haze stash, I have the urge to knit a few different garments with it.  When I found that Spray I knew just what I wanted it to be.  But.  I only had one ball.  No problem.  There is little you cannot get on the web, so I went a-searching.  Missing a ball band I went to look at my Ravelry stash page and found that it was color number 573.  Looking at color cards (click on the color cards), it looked as though that was correct, but in my searching every example of color 573 looked like the ball above left.  Now, you are thinking dye lot, and you are probably right, BUT! Even taking dye lot into consideration that is quite a hefty difference.  

This is the color I could find around the net.  On ebay, in Ravelry, pretty much everywhere I could not find an example of KS Spray that matched mine.  Actually, even the examples of KS Spray that I found claiming to be color #573 had a wide range of blues, some bright and some almost grey.  While some of that is certainly photography and moniter issues, this yarn just was not consistant.  I wonder if that is why they discontinued it.  So I purchased five balls of the above yarn from a Raverly member willing to sell and I love it and will love the sweater it is planned for, but I just know if I could find five balls of this:

I would pounce on them!

Totally different topic:  You cannot imagine how fortunate I feel these last few days.  New Hampshire is under a state of emergency with over 200,000 customers still without electricity, most of those without heat.  Shelters are filling up as people who have toughed it out for a few days are leaving their cold homes for a bit of warmth.  Most of our town is still without power, many businesses have been closed for days and while we have lights and heat, my next-door neighbors and their entire street are dark.  Why our power returned in only about 12 hours I cannot imagine.  Schools cannot open, either they are shelters, have no power, or so many streets are not passable because trees have not been removed and are still on power lines and busses and cars cannot travel them.  Two weeks is the time frame I am hearing for power to be returned to all customers.  Warnings about space heaters, carbon monoxide poisoning and fires are on the news, but anybody that needs reminding is probably not hearing them.  I am thankful to be sitting in my warm, lighted home.  Posting to my blog, watching a football game, hunger stemmed by a dinner of swordfish, ribs, rice and salad.  Now I will make a pot of tea.  All of this we take for granted as our normal and our right.  Keep that and our friends and neighbors in mind as you heat your water for coffee and take your nice warm shower.  We forget what it takes to have our daily comforts, don't we?

Seventeen to go.  I know!  I hear you!  You'll just have to wait and see what I am knitting with that KSS!  That might be my next project or another with some Kidsilk Haze that I have.  Still *M*editating on it.