The other 'opinionated knitter'

... is me. Yes, Elizabeth Zimmerman is the original opinionated knitter - after all, she did write the book. But I'm going to launch into a typed tirade here, expressing my own opinions about knitting.

Since the previous post, I've again reframed my yarn stash - it is now a Yarn Bank, into which I have been making deposits for years and from which I've begun making some withdrawals. The part of my stash I'm working on now is a Fair Isle cardigan from Alice Starmore's Fair Isle Knitting book. That book was published in 1988. I just ordered the yarn for the sweater from Jamieson and Smith within the last five years (more than fifteen years after the book was published). The color numbers are still the same, and I was able to order exactly what I needed based on Alice's list! Try that from any of the new, trendy yarn producers - try to get something somewhat similar even two years later. I'd be very surprised if you can do it.

I inadvertently found myself at a couple of other knitting blogs a few minutes ago. The bloggers were all a-twitter about the Colinette or other Very Expensive Yarn they're working with. I just don't see the value in those. I have made a couple of cardigans from an eyelash yarn by the Great Adirondack Yarn Company (which is a more-or-less local more-or-less equivalent of Colinette for me). They have not withstood the test of time, to say the least. The eyelash portion is sagging away from the button plackets, the ribbings look horrible. The yarn for each cost over $150! That is outrageous. More recently I've worked with some Noro Silk Garden yarn. It is a very nice yarn, lovely to work with. But each ball had a knot in it that resulted in a sharp color change in what is supposed to be the graduated subtle color changes that characterize Noro. Yet, it costs significantly more than $100 for enough yarn for a garment. I don't think I'll ever spend that again.

Just for comparison - a day or two ago I checked the prices for jumper weight yarn at Jamieson and Smith. A 25-gm ball of yarn is just over US$ 2. Two dollars! (1.65 British pounds) (Of course, it will cost you $5.60 if you buy it from Meg Swansen's Schoolhouse Press.) The Alice Starmore cardigan I'm knitting calls for 32 balls of yarn in 13 colors. If I ordered the yarn today (which I could because they're still available), it would cost about $70. A lot of money, to be sure, but it is classic yarn that I know will look as good in ten years as it does when it's first blocked after finishing. And it's spun consistently, and is, in my humble opinion, more enjoyable to knit than the Noro because there aren't the skinny-thick-slubby inconsistencies not to mention the sudden changes in color from where the yarn is knotted in the middle of the ball! In yarn that retails for over $15 per 50-gram ball!

Not familiar with Jamieson and Smith? Take a look:
Jamieson and Smith - yarn vendors from Shetland, UK

And speaking of EZ - I just took a look at the Schoolhouse Press site [EZ's daughter, Meg Swansen's knitting empire] to see what they have for wool these days. (Hence the addition of the price above.) I am almost positive that the "Sheepswool" and "Rangeley" yarns they peddle are, in fact, Bartlettyarns, from a mill in the middle of Maine - "Sheepswool" looks very, very similar to Bartlettyarns's "Fisherman yarns"; "Rangeley" colors all echo Bartlettyarns's other lines, Rangeley, Glen Tweed, and "Shetland." The cost at Bartlettyarns - $7 for a 4-oz skein. I'm shocked, shocked I say, to see the price is the same at Schoolhouse Press. I just wonder, though - what's wrong with saying where the yarn is produced? Why make it seem like Meg's got some primary role in its creation when it just comes from Bartlettyarns (and did even in EZ's time, I'm pretty sure)? Give credit where it's due.

Okay, so I'm jealous. I have not created a life in which I make my living from knitting, so I find fault with many of those who do. But to get back to the original point I wanted to make: As the economy affects us all and makes us look more pragmatically at how we spend our money, well, I'm going to be more frugal and wise in my yarn choices.

the burden of the stash

Maybe I should have called this blog 'the yarn stash' because sometimes I feel like my yarn stash is the overdriving force in my life.

A few weeks ago, as I was putting away clean laundry, I realized that with nearly every item a thought along the lines of 'I really don't like this' arose in my mind during the folding. At about the same time, I came to a realization that as much as I love knitting lace and looking at knitted lace and feeling like an accomplished knitter when I finish knitting lace, the fact is that I don't have much occasion to actually wear knitted lace. And I don't do the kind of housekeeping one must do to keep lace doilies and antimacassars and curtains looking good.

I assessed my feelings of being completely dissatisfied with my current wardrobe (aside: this has to do with buying cheap clothes and gaining 20 pounds in the last year, so most of the clothes that I at least like don't fit, so I needed different clothes that fit, but I didn't want to spend much money, hence the dissatisfaction) and combined that with an analysis of the yarn I have accumulated over the last 15-20 years and concluded that, if I focus, I do have the wherewithal to create some actual garments that I actually would like to wear without actually spending any more money. (Or maybe a s'kosh for the occasional knitting needle.)

And so it came to pass that I began to focus on creating garments rather than shawls, doilies and curtains. I do intend to incorporate lace insets, sleeves, and what-not into the garments I'm designing and creating, but the mint-green Ogee shawl has been set aside once again. Although, come to think of it - I think maybe I could make it into a curtain and call it (almost) finished! Hmmm, I'll have to think more about that.

Meanwhile, I designed and knit a vest out of some off-white cotton chenille that I've had since about 1995 - a project that took about three weeks start to finish. (I do believe it is by far the fastest I have actually completed something knitted, and that includes design time!) Now, I'm well into a hooded tunic that I'm adapting from a pattern in the Spring/Summer 1999 Vogue Knitting. (Adaptation required because the yarn on hand doesn't quite match the yarn used in the magazine project.)

The thing is - if I didn't have this stash of yarn, I would feel much more free to just keep knitting lace, nevermind that I'd never wear it, or put it on a table or whatever. The stash (well, the part that's not laceweight) has become both a resource and an obstacle. And until six words ago, I didn't think the word 'resource' would be how I'd describe it. But actually that's what it is. Is it possible that in this little essay I have come to terms with my stash?

I wanna blog about knitting lace

I recently finished a one-hank adaptation of Marianne Kinzel's 'Rose of England' pattern. So much emotional, physical, psychic stuff came up during the process of knitting and what followed, I decided I'd like to blog about my knitting. (Above is a photo of me wearing the piece as a headscarf at my niece's wedding.)

I think it really came out lovely. It's knit of now-discontinued Grignasco Regina, a 100% merino laceweight that I purchased some years ago. After I got my first skein of it, and it was noted at Patternworks that it would be discontinued, I bought up as much as I could. I still have three hanks of a taupe color and a couple of other single hanks that I'm looking forward to using.

Meanwhile, I'm currently knitting a stole using an Ogee pattern from one of Mary Thomas's books. The yarn is Shetland 2-ply in kind of a mint green. Two or three years ago I had knit a piece that had seven repeats across and was 12 repeats long. I designed a transition center pattern and knit a few rows of that. Now, I've started a second piece that, once it's twelve repeats long, I'll merge it into the center, and it will be done. Photos later.