Like many other knitters, I fell in love with Kristin Drysdale's Ingeborg Slippers the moment I first saw them on my Instagram feed. It turns out they are as fun to knit as they are to pad about in. So I put together kits.
For my slippers I used Upton Yarns DK Weight Bluefaced Leicester spun from the wonderful fleece of the flock at Two Sisters Farm. The pattern calls for size 3 needles, but I found that to get the correct gauge I had to go up to size 6s (I tend to be a tight knitter). I used light blue Glacier Bay, dark blue Delft, and for a blaze of contrast, bright orange Tiger Lily to finish the edges.
The kit includes those three colorways, and of course, one of my very happy hand printed project bags.
Any orders placed between now and Friday will go in the mail the day they are ordered (as long as the order is placed before 3:00 - I still need time to pack them up and get to the Post Office - but I will do my best!).
Look at who else will be there! How did I get on this list?
Look at who else will be there! How did I get on this list?
Since returning home from the boat my life (and apartment) have been taken over by preparations for the Slater Mill Knitting Weekend in Pawtucket RI (and yes, I did get the vending dates wrong in that last post - vending is Jan 21 and Jan 22). I feel a bit like I just accepted an invitation to a fancy dinner only to realize that I have nothing to wear.... Luckily the beautiful DK weight BFL spun from the 2016 Two Sisters Farm fleeces came back from the mill, and I have been (gleefully) hard at work. So, if you are in the neighborhood next weekend, please stop by.
This is just the neatest of the epic piles of newly dyed BFL that have taken over the apartment..
For people still on my coopworth gansey yarn wait list, fear not, I do still have 2016 yarn available and but for a small sample it will not be going to Slater Mill. Efforts to fill orders for those on the wait list have been preempted by the mad work to have yarn to sell in person, by the following week will be back to normal. I'll be sending emails to folks in the order they expressed interest. And with time already running out on this rotation home (seriously, how does it go so fast when I'm home?) I will probably still be filling wait list orders when I get home again in March. I thank you all for your patience and understanding of my (frankly ridiculous) day job.
And in totally unrelated news, I have been hesitant to mix politics with business because to my New England raised sensibilities doing so is just impolite, but strange times and all are forcing a bit of a rethink on that one. Today I worked up the courage and called the offices of a senator and a member of the House of Representatives. It's baby steps in terms of political involvement, but it wasn't nearly as scary in reality as I had made it seem in my head. I encourage everyone to give it a try. It may be yelling into the wind, but maybe if enough of us yell....
Now that we are in Costa Rica for the winter and the engine room thermometer measures 100 degrees it seems impossible that only during my last rotation (when the boat was in Alaska) I was thinking about what to layer under my coveralls to stay warm, but I really was, and my solution was a pair of armwarmers in a random rib inspired by the geological formations of the Endicott Arm in Southeast Alaska.
With a little bit of shaping for the forearm and the simplest of holes for the thumb they are lovely and simple to knit. When I wrote up the pattern I realized how little yarn the three accent colors actually required and so I decided to make up a few kits. And once I decided to make kits, I got a little carried away, but in a good way.
I talked Sam into drawing a crossed pipe wrench and set of knitting needles, which I then turned into a block print.
And on a lazy Sunday morning printed flour-sack muslin bags.
And once there were bags, there had to be stitch markers. So I got in touch with Wendy at Blue Dog Workshop (a fellow Mainer) who has made lovely stitch markers for me in the past, to see if she might have any charms that fit the emerging theme. She had the perfect charm in mind, and was happy to pair it with a light blue bead the color of glacier ice. (I wish I had taken a better photo of just the stitch marker before I left - I could not be more pleased).
All in all, I had a lovely time putting the kits together and am really pleased with the results.
In addition to working with my Romney > Cotswold fingering weight yarn for the kits, I also got to dye this year’s worsted spun DK weight Bluefaced Leicester from Two Sisters Farm in Woolwich, Maine (I feel like I earlier mis-identified the farm as being in Waldoboro, which is one town over).
The yarn is lovely and lustrous and soft and also the perfect weight for knitting Kate Davie’s Epistrophy, which has been on my “to knit” list ever since Yokes was released. I will admit that I dyed the Aspen and Tongas color ways with my Epistrophy in mind.
Sadly, I had to return to the boat before I gathered my courage to cut the steek, but it is almost finished, and I really enjoyed the pattern and am very happy with how it is turning out.
