Along with the wool, they have milk cotton, and a huge selection of acrylic (motorbike included in shot for scale).

I did not investigate the needles and notions, but they seemed to have a fair selection of straight needles at the counter. Everyone was very friendly, and as helpful as they could be when we did not share a common language. Through our guide, I learnt a new word in Vietnamese; “len” is wool.

Prices were very low – I bought some grey sportweight wool yarn at $15USD for 500 grams.

I am planning to knit it in Colourmart cashmere in a dark grey (yes it is a colour I wear a lot).

2. When I check my stash of the yarn above I realised that I did not have enough – only 3 cones, and the pattern requires 5! I’ve been encountering this problem a bit recently, and think that the trend of increasing ease is going to result in it occurring again.  Oversized garments require more yarn… Luckily, within 24 hours the internets have supplied me with 2 more cones of yarn.  Perhaps not a Christmas miracle, but it makes me very happy all the same.

3. It is finally starting to warm up in Sydney, and no cardigans have been required this morning.  We have had an astonishingly cool December (more like an early spring) with heaps of rain.  The sun is shining right now, and I have already been to buy the seafood, fruit and vegetables for tomorrow. The forecast for tomorrow looks good for swimming (which is a key part of the Australian Christmas experience).  I’m off to make béarnaise to go with tomorrow’s roast beef,  some last minute Santa sacks, and a cherry cake for breakfast tomorrow.

Happy holidays to everyone!

Filed under: Blogging, Food, Life, Yarn ]]> http://travellersyarn.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/its-starting-to-feel-like-christmas/feed/ 3 chaleur-07 travellers yarn chaleur-07 Colourmart 3/7 derby grey http://travellersyarn.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/its-finished-i-had-enough-yarn/ http://travellersyarn.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/its-finished-i-had-enough-yarn/#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 01:37:18 +0000 travellersyarn http://travellersyarn.wordpress.com/?p=1358 Continue reading »]]> As written, the neck is a little bit too long.

I’ve made mistakes in the front cable – the bottom diamonds do not quite have the same proportions as the top three.

The sleeves are too short – another knitter said they were like flippers.  The yarn sheds like a great big sheddy thing.  See my black t-shirt below.

But I love it.  Technical notes here.

Judy’s magic cast-on is meant to be invisible, but it quite visible the way that I did it.  Perhaps next time I should try doing it when I can concentrate, and am not busy having people over for lunch?

One thing that I adore about my Nuvem is the size of the scarf  – this is no skimpy shawlette.  It can be worn a variety of ways, and uses a whole skein of Wollmeise Lace with only knitting and increases, no purling at all – what is not to love?  So if you have a spare skein of Wollmeise Lace lying around, what are you waiting for?The photos were taken by the lovely Jane.  More technical details on Ravelry.

We went on a family holiday to a small country town in NSW.  Those of you who read the last post,  will be delighted to know that global community of knitters came through for me, and I secured enough yarn to finish my Nesselrode, all in the same dyelot.  During the holiday I manged to finish the front and the back,  and was champing at the bit to get going on the neck.  To my mind, the generous neck is an important feature of the pattern, and I was happy to compromise on sleeve length to get the neck right.   Despite owning plenty of pairs of  3.75 mm needles (one of the perks of being a former yarn shop owner), I did not bring them with me.

Anyhow,  I noticed that there was a haberdashery shop¹ in this small town and I decided to go an buy the 3.75mm needle from it.  When I ran into the store, desperately trying to avoid getting wet in the sudden downpour that had just started, I was ignored.  There was one woman working in the store who was busy chatting to her only other customer about recent social events.

I perused the yarn (small, very dated selection) and even smaller collection of patterns, most of which dated back to the 1980′s.  I eventually found the knitting needles, and could not locate a 3.75mm needle, or even a 3.50mm needle that I liked, so I went up to the counter with a 4.00 mm needle and a 3.00 mm needle and waited to be served.  The ladies chatted, and I learnt more about the recent bowling club dinner.  I waited.  I wondered if there had been some improbable cosmic intervention, perhaps due to the storm, that had rendered me both invisible and soundless.  The ladies chatted.  I cleared my throat after another 5 minutes, and the customer collected her change and finally left.

The (presumed) owner of the shop finally greeted with a curt “hello”.  I asked politely if they had a 3.75 mm circular needle or double pointed needles. The owner said “they don’t make that size”.  I was surprised by that statement (especially since I had many pairs of the non-existent needles at home in Sydney), but chose not to directly contradict her.  I instead said “I’ll just check the pattern, I did think that they specified 3.75mm needles”.  When I opened the pattern, the owner sneered “Oh, its an American pattern”, in a tone of voice which suggested that Australia was at war with the US, and I was an enemy collaborator.

Despite being quite affronted, I knew that I wanted to get moving on the neck, so I purchased the 3.00 mm needle for $4.95 (figuring that I could knit looser, and that having the inside of the neck a bit smaller would be OK), and left and stewed a bit.   I have had pretty uniformly positive experiences yarn shopping around the world, but if I were a beginner, the owner’s rudeness would have been truly off-putting.   My lack of forward planning is especially annoying when you can purchase 15  sets (US sizes 0-15) of DPN’s here for $9.84.  Get together with your mates to meet the order minimum, or purchase some buttons, and needle rolls.

Of course I got back to the holiday house, and looked at the pattern again, and realised that while I had been seeking the 3.75mm needle for the neck, that I had, in fact, knitted the body of the sweater on completely the wrong sized needle.  Apparently, when I decided to knit to the underarms in the round, I decided to use the sizes recommended for circular needles (4.00mm – intended to be used on the outside of the turtleneck) instead of 4.50mm needles indicated in the pattern for the body.  Luckily, Nesselrode is a pattern that has a lot of ease, and the error is not fatal, even despite the slightly firm nature of the knitted fabric.  It has been a lot of knitting so far, and there wasn’t much chance of me unpicking it.

The last question is – do I knit the sleeves on the recommended size needles, or do I continue on with the mistake?

1.  I’ve decided not to name the shop because they have no other internet presence, and I don’t want their only mention to be about rudeness.

I sent several begging private messages to people on Ravelry who had this colour (2607 Wintry Mix)  and dyelot  (9062) listed in their stash.  I was happy to pay them for their yarn (a premium even) and their postage, but no takers.

I posted on several ISO yarn forums, and the silence in response was deafening.   I emailed WEBS (where I had originally purchased the yarn), but they had no more in the dyelot.  They did have 4 balls in another dyelot, which I ordered, hoping that it would be a close enough match – tweedy yarn and all.  When that yarn arrived, I realised that no – it really did not match.  Now, I am not an expert enough photographer to highlight the lack of matchy-matchyness, but you will have to believe me, the colour change would be notable.

So, desperation struck me (perhaps coupled with the overwhelming feeling that this predicament was entirely of my own making, and predictable to boot).  I trawled all the projects in Ravelry which had been made in Wintry Mix, and sent private messages to people for their leftovers (offering Paypal, swaps, Wollmeise, children and undying gratitude in a mix of the recipient’s liking).

I then had a 3am brainwave (which I am ashamed to admit, I actually acted on at 3am) and started emailing all the yarn shops where people had listed that they had purchased Berroco Blackstone Tweed (in the matching colour and dye lot) to see if they had any stock left that matched.  Most did not reply (with the notable exception of Jimmy Beans, who replied within 8 hours on a Sunday!)

Finally, thanks to the magic of the internet I struck gold.  Today I received my first parcel, courtesy of Elizabeth – 37 grams of precious Berroco Blackstone Tweed in 2607 in dyelot 9062.  Thanks to the intervention of Janelle, Common Threads a wonderful LYS in Encinitas CA will be sending me the remaining required 3 skeins.  I should note that at this stage I have just finished knitting the front and back, and have used 7.2 balls of yarn, without a the generous turtle neck knitted, nor either of the sleeves.  There might be some more begging for left-overs yet, and my complete confidence the propensity for Berroco to overstate yarn amounts might well be misplaced…

Apart from my idocy in setting out to make a sweater where I did not have the yarn in the quantities specified, this sweater is notable in that I’ve tried out quite a few new tools on it.  The first is the Lantern Moon Interchangeable Needles, in rosewood, that I purchased from Yarn Over.  They appear to be out of stock now, but I’m sure if you ask them nicely, they will get some in stock for you.

These are not a cheap interchangeable set, but they are very pleasant to knit with.  I particularly like the swivel on the cable, which seems to to minimize problems with the cable unscrewing.  There is however, a notable omission in the set -  I knitted the sweater in the round to the arm pits, and them split for the front and back, and realised that the set does not come with cable caps – that led to me needing to use a stitch holder (which I really don’t like needing to use). Hopefully Lantern Moon will sort that part out in the near future.The next tool that was new to me on this project is the Wanda (look at the bottom of the linked page). You can see  it floating (seemingly disembodied in the photo above) – or here is a shot of them that I ganked from Lacis’s web page.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am an advocate of cabling without a needle.  However, there are some cables that don’t play nicely without a cable needle, and Nesselrode has one of them.  The fact that there is actually a video on the pattern page from Berroco, that illustrates the particularly tricky cable; should have been a clue.

This photo gives you a much better idea of the complexity of the cabling exercise.  In any event, I had bought the Wanda because Nancy Bush told me to, and it turns out that it makes a fabulous cable needle, and it fits neatly in my little kit of  knitting tricks.  They cost only USD $12 for a set of 3, and I strongly recommend that anyone who will be  cabling, or picking up stitches, or tinking with slight lace “design features”, buy one now, and thank me for their extra sanity later. There is something very pleasing about the hand feel of a bone needle, and the experience has made me interested to find out more about them.

These socks have been a disappointment. They were finished in January 2010, and this is only their second winter. Apart from the massive hole in the right heel, there are heaps of pills, and if you look closely at the left heel, it is extremely thin, and a wear away from disintegrating.

The socks also seem to have shrunk with washing (and I wash on a 30°C in a very gently front loader, and never put hand-knitted socks in the dryer).  No more socks without nylon!

Pattern: A Classic Sock (made by me, many, many times). With a touch of “sheep’s eye” from Folk Knitting in Estonia.

Needles: Addi fixed 80cm 2.5mm.

Yarn:  Louet Gems Fingering – most emphatically not a great yarn for socks. Finished January 2010 (and blogged a little here) and worn out by July 2011.

It might help that his favorite casual scarf seems to contain the same colourway (which I’ll wager is Noro Cashmere Island in 8).  I had to kinnear a photo to record the moment.  I’ll apologise for the quality, but I was trying to avoid looking like a weirdo public transit knit-wear stalker, despite acting like weirdo public transit knit-wear stalker.  Here’s the photo in its original context.

What inspired me to recall this photo?  Our family has been struck by a Norovirus, first afflicting older daughter, and then younger daughter and me simultaneously (all I can say is, thank goodness for a house with two bathrooms).  We are all better now, but when I was trying to figure out how many of our friends and family we had possibly exposed to our vomiting bug, I came across the name of the culprit, and it made me think of the hat on the train.

Here I am on Sydney Rd, Brunswick, having just met up with the lovely Soozs (and her very friendly children) for delicious Lebanese pastries at A1 Bakery (really, really worth a visit).

I was determined to wear my hat and overcoat despite the unseasonably warm weather.  The next day we went to the McClelland Gallery, which is about 45 minutes out of Melbourne.  If you like sculpture a little (or a lot), then this sculpture park is for you.  There is an exhibition of current Australian sculpture on at the moment that was seriously mind expanding, which finishes on the 17th of July 2011.  Even once the current exhibition ends, there are lots of works in the permanent collection that I really, really liked.

The sculpture in the picture above is by Ken Unsworth, and is the sibling of a much loved similar work that used to be on display at the Art Gallery of NSW.  I’ll admit, the hat only came out for the photos – the weather was much too warm to need it! The drive to and from the Sculpture Park is also accompanied by freeway art.It is hard to take photos of the sculptures as you are barrelling down a freeway!  This one is by Callum Morton, and when I first saw it, I commented to the Fireman that it seemed like the world’s worst location for a hotel.  It was only on a closer view that I realised that it was a sculpture!

The hat even came with me to the footy at the MCG, but it still wasn’t really cold enough to need to wear it (and yes, it appears as though I really am that pale!). Pattern: The Amanda Hat, a free pattern. No alterations, although I used a lot more yarn than specified.

Needles: Inox fixed 5.5 mm 80 cm long.

Yarn:  Bouton D’Or Legende in Fantasia (colour 1147). I like this yarn a lot, I lovely soft wool/alpaca blend.  I had purchased 2 skeins from Lil Weasel, and ran out of yarn.  I emailed them, and they were able to send me another skein in the same dyelot. As I said before, a fantastic yarn shop.

She will probably be wearing these socks in Melbourne next weekend – we have a weekend away at the beginning of the school holidays.  The Fireman is working down there quite a lot at the moment, and we will meet up with him, and show the girls the sights.  Of course, I would love suggestions for craft shopping and eating (especially good Thai, Malaysian or Sichuan) – any suggestions?  We are staying in the city if that affects  your recommendations…

As for the Mizzle, the consensus was to frog it.  I was able to secure a matching skein of Wollmeise, and I plan to make something much larger from it, something that can be flung over my shoulder.

Pattern: “A Classic Sock”  from Folk Socks, by Nancy Bush (of course).   Ravelry notes here. Kid’s size 8-13. Knitted magic loop.

Needles: Knit Picks fixed 2.5 mm 80 cm long.

Yarn:  Yarn Workshop Kakadu, dyed with Ashford acid dyes in Hot Pink.