Page 58 – Elliebelly Knit & Dye Works

One Skein Projects – Pattern Giveaway!

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Joyce Makes Art

Get your needles ready! On the heels of our one-skein yarn giveaway contest, several of the designers whose patterns were included in the contest have been gracious enough to offer a free copy of their pattern to readers of this blog. Post the patterns you are interested in in the comments below (make sure to include your Ravelry ID or your email address so I can contact you) by Thursday July 17 and we will draw for winners. And make sure you show these wonderful designers some love!

First up, we have Fèe by Tabismiles on Ravelry, knit from one-skein of fingering weight yarn. Fèe is a beautiful pattern and Tabetha has a lot of great patterns on her website. I am very taken with this pattern. Even though I swore off anymore queue additions, it made its way in there. Tabetha is on Facebook too.

Kelly, otherwise known as Gunard on Ravelry, has this awesome hat pattern called Rainbow Trout (best name ever for a hat). You should stop reading this post right now and click on the Rainbow Trout link to go see all the amazingly colorful, charming hats people have knit from this pattern. Kelly has a Ravelry group here and is transitioning to the name Pekapeka Designs. Her patterns are just wonderful!

Liz Corke has the final pattern of our giveaway (and a brand new baby!) This is Storm Warning and it is so perfect! It is also knit from one-skein of fingering weight yarn and I have some of my silk-cashmere yarn dyed with black beans to a beautiful gray blue set aside for it. Liz's website is here, with lots more tempting patterns, and she blogs here. I am desperately trying to keep myself from casting on Storm Warning until I finish up a couple of projects.

I love all three of these patterns and am grateful to their designers for being willing to share them with us! And, they are the perfect lead in to the next knitalong on the Elliebelly Group on Ravelry, which will start September 1. It will be our self-indulgent September KAL, and we are in the process of searching around for the perfect one-skein pattern for it. Whether you've knit with us before or are new to the group, please stop by and check out the KAL thread. There are lots of amazing ideas for a pattern, but we're going to have to narrow them down and make a decision by the end of the month so we have all of August to gather our yarn and prepare. We would love to have you join us!

Lida. A Lace Shawl in Progress.

Posted on July 9, 2014 by Joyce Makes Art

Lida makes my heart beat. I don't usually knit complex lace, but this pattern, by Bristol Ivy, was beyond my ability to resist.

I am not accomplished enough to knit this pattern while I'm talking, watching tv, or engaged in any other activity, so I haven't found a lot of time to work on my Lida. But I have been able to finish the set up rows and the first lace repeat. It is so lovely. I cannot wait until it is grown up into the perfect triangular shawl and it is mine, all mine, to wear.

One note about taking on this pattern if you are a newish knitter. It is very clear and well written, but it is written for a more advanced knitter and assumes you can internalize the lace pattern, which is set forth in one section of the pattern, into the appropriate place in the rows, which are set out separately. And, with each repeat of the pattern, you increase the number of lace pattern repeats you set inside of each row. If that sounds confusing, it's because I am definitely not one of those advanced knitters who does this intuitively. I have to think it through carefully. And, since I seem to be destined to knit a bit of this and then set it down for several days or even a week before picking it back up again, I wrote out a version of the row repeats with the lace pattern included in brackets within each row. If that sounds like something that might help you with this pattern, my notes are here.

I'm taking Lida along as my knitting project on a yoga retreat later this month. I don't have any illusion that this is going to be a quick knit, but I do want to try to work on her as I find time over the next few months. Some of my simpler projects get more attention, as they are perfect for carpool lines, airports and doctors offices, but Lida owns my knitting heart right now.

Citron: All Over But The Shouting

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Joyce Makes Art

This is Citron. And it’s almost done!

All that I have left is the cast off. At 500+ stitches, that’s probably going to be a long hard slog. But, my Citron looks like a beautiful, big slice of Meyer Lemon. It has that deep, rich, yellow color and it’s incredibly soft.

I can’t pretend this pattern is the most exciting knit around, but I understand why it is so popular. The result is beautiful. I suspect it would be pretty no matter what yarn you used, but the gently variegated color way and the cloud of cashmere and silk on my needles is perfect for Citron.

Typically, you wouldn’t think this was a great project to finish in the middle of summer in the Deep South. However, since every restaurant and grocery store down here cranks its air conditioning to sub-arctic temperatures at this time of year, I think Citron has some summer potential. I’ll let you know how that works out once I get past the cast off.

Knitting Nae. Part Two.

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Joyce Makes Art

I'm a lot less nervous about knitting Nae than I was when I showed it to you last week.

You may recall that I was concerned, after the first few inches, that I had made a mistake in substituting a thick and thin handspun yarn for the tightly twisted fingering weight yarn the pattern was written for. And, I was also worried about the color placement.

Now that I'm 25% of the way in, I'm finding that the yarn and the colors are both working. I know this to be true because my 15 year old daughter, the intended recipient, is most pleased with it. And as those of you with daughters know, they tend to freely express their displeasure when something isn't to their liking — even daughters as nice as mine. So I'm relieved about the way it's working up and particularly happy about how the stitch pattern, which involves a 3" band of moss stitch across the top and a triangle of stockinette below looks when it is worked up in handspun.

It's organic, in a charming sort of way. You can envision it coming off the wheel of some centuries-ago Scottish Highlands knitter (well, except for the riotous colorway) and being knit into this comforting little pattern, a bit of warmth to throw around the shoulders and chase away the chill.

Unfortunately, these photos, which catch the stitch definition nicely, don't get the colors right. That is probably because I took them while we were sitting in the stadium for the local 4th of July baseball game. Thankfully, we were in the shade. But it didn't do much for the colorway, which is more accurately shown in the photo below, from the first post about Nae.

Nae is a quick knit, which is a good thing because I can't wait to see it finished. I'm hoping to work on it later in the month when we go on vacation. In the interests of full disclosure, I seem to have four or five projects, all of which I seem to have deluded myself into thinking I'll "find" time to finish while we're away. But Nae is first in line and I'm looking forward to it!

And The Winner Is…..

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Joyce Makes Art

The winner of our one-skein giveaway is……(drum roll please)….

That would be Chris, I-hook on Ravelry, whose pattern choice was a crochet shawl called Over the Willamete.

I'm so glad Chris won! I loved this pattern when she posted it, even though I don't crochet. It's going to be a pleasure to send her the yarn, and Chris, I hope you'll have time to work it up soon and you'll share it with us when you do! Many thanks to Jenn Wolfe Kaiser who wrote the pattern and was kind enough to let me use her photograph.

And thank you to everyone who posted their favorite pattern. There is an amazing variety of inspiration and ideas in your comments! I've added so many of your ideas to my queue. Perhaps one of them will find its way into our Self-Indulgent September Knitalong, later this year. I wish I could send each of every one of you some yarn for your project!

The only remaining question is what yarn to send. The pattern calls for a fingering weight yarn and it seems to look lovely whether it is worked up in a solid color or a more vibrant colorway.

I finally decided this pattern needed a luxury yarn and chose a skein of Elliebelly BFL CashSilk Sock, a yarn I've been for myself and friends, but haven't ever sold. The blend is 70% Blue Faced Leciester, 20% Silk, and 10% Cashmere, and the yarn seems to have all of the best qualities of each fiber, plus a nice stitch definition. I hope it will be a good fit for this pattern, or whatever you choose to make with it Chris!

Several of the pattern designers whose designs were included in the comments have kindly offered copies of their patterns to readers of the blog, so stay tuned for a post later this week and a chance to win some of these wonderful patterns.

Nervously Knitting a Nae

Posted on June 28, 2014 by Joyce Makes Art

Only three more days to be entered in our one-skein yarn Giveaway. Click Here, to be take to that post. Leave a comment by June 30 and be entered in the drawing!

There is no way the beautiful handspun from our last post was going to stay unknit in my stash for very long. Last night I cast on a Nae shawl.

Nae is an absolutely wonderful, and free, pattern. But in my haste to get to work with this yarn, I'm not sure I made a good pattern selection. Nae is written for a fingering weight yarn, like a Madeline Tosh. This yarn is heavier than fingering, more like a dk weight, but it is a thick and thin spun and it moves seductively back and forth between a heavy fingering and a light worsted weight. It's not going to give me the crisp, precise stitch definition that may be what Nae is all about as I look at it now.

A second problem I may have is color placement. Nae is essentially a big triangle. You start knitting in one corner, increasing until you hit its full length and then decreasing from the point of the triangle until you end in the opposite corner. As you can see from the yarn off the skein, I dyed the roving with a longer run of blue-purple, a shorter run of yellow-orange, and an abbreviated area of green where the colors mingle. At the start, with just a few stitches on the needle, I'm getting lengthwise stripes of color. As the number of stitches increase, I'm not quite certain what I'll get, and I'm not sure it's going to work. So at this point, my Nae is a question mark — will the fuzziness of the stitches or the way the colors play out or both doom this project to disaster?

EIther way I am already in love with this pattern and will be knitting a Nae. And the yarn is heavenly. It's soft and pretty and whether this is the perfect pattern for it or not, I'm sure there will be one out there. I am eternally optimistic, so I'm going to knit for a bit before making a decision. In the picture above, you can see the corner start of Nae, in blue-purple on the left. The top border of the shawl is a 3" deep border of moss stitch.

The stockinette triangle blooms out from beneath the moss stitch band (and is edged with a two-stitch garter border to avoid rolling) from in between the two stitch markers. It's difficult to see at the moment, but if you look carefully, you may see that I'm up to 5 stitches in between the two markers. Rather than increasing every other row per the pattern, I'm increasing on every fourth row for a looser shape and my plan is to increase to about 50 body stitches, or as long as the yarn holds out.

Finally, a word about the needles I'm knitting with. These are Darn Pretties from Dyak Craft, and I have no affiliation other than the fact that I seem to be tithing these days to the nice people who handcraft these needles in Vermont. The needles are made from a laminated birch product. I love knitting on them. Needles are a very personal choice. For me, these needles have just the right combination of slip and tooth. The yarn moves when I need it to, but never slips off the needle at inopportune moments. This is my fourth project on Darn Pretties and they have become my needles of choice. This particular pair is in the Hazelnut colorway. I was lucky enough to get a set of them from a Ravelry destash, and I do mean lucky because the waiting list to get your own custom made set runs north of eight months. I've been on the waiting list for "a few" needles since early this year, and can't wait for their arrival.

Keep your fingers crossed for my Nae and if you have any thoughts or suggestions about possible patterns for this yarn in case my Nae bombs, please leave them in the comments.

Roving Into Yarn

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Joyce Makes Art

If you've come here looking for the Yarn Giveaway, Click Here, to be take to that post. Leave a comment by June 30 and be entered in the drawing!

I played around with some Blue Faced Leicester roving several months ago, using leftover, random dyes. There wasn't a plan for it, just eight ounces of pretty wool that had never made it into a dye bath. When it was dry, I asked Momofana on Ravelry if her spinning services were for hire, and indeed they were.

She is such a lovely spinner! This yarn is everything that I could have hoped for and has a wonderful texture that goes from fingering to sport and should work to emphasize the colors when it is knit up. The colors are unintentionally reminiscent of the tall garden iris in my front yard and the way they have been plied makes them exceptionally luminous.

This yarn is next in my queue, although I don't have a project in mind. It would make a lovely infinity scarf or perhaps a hat and pair of mittens. I can't wait to find some time to search for the perfect project that is worthy of this yarn!