Regular-coloured Friday

Well, while the Western world seems to be going wild with shopping lust (my inbox was going insane with deals today), for me it was a pretty normal Friday: work and more work, and some dishes at the end. I'm finally getting pretty close to casting off the edging of my worksock sweater (hopefully I'll get to post some pictures soon!), and the doctor's sweater is eagerly awaiting some attention. Even better, I'll finally get to cast on my Prism Shawl once this cardigan is done :) I don't have a shawl yet and I have a fierce love of gradient colours so this will be a double-win!
And for fun, a little info on the technique that's been slowing me down on this edging: short rows. Now, don't get me wrong, short rows are actually fantastic for shaping - in fact they're my favourite new technique for set-in sleeves. But they just aren't very exciting for building a collar! A short row is just that: a row that you don't knit all the way across. Often they're used for wedge shapes (Bernat has a lovely toque pattern that uses their Roving yarn), and that was what I used them for in my collar. You come to the point at which you wish to turn, and slip the next stitch without knitting it. Then bring the yarn to the front, slip the yarn back, and turn your work. You'll have a loop of yarn around the stitch, and when you're done with the short rows, you'll pick up the loops and knit them with the stitches that they were wrapped around.
With that, it's time to finish up this sweater. I'm rewatching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and movies like this are pretty much perfect for knitting. Happy weekend :)

Thankfulness

I'm doubly out of my depth when it comes to this particular weekend holiday - I'm not American, and I'm actually in a country that doesn't have a Thanksgiving at all. However, I'm of the mind that you can always be thankful and with casual weather reports coming from friends and family in Canada, and the news from Buffalo and other parts of New York, today I'm still so thankful for England's mild winters! The grocery delivery man looked at me like I was crazy when I said we were loving the nice weather - I guess not everyone has my perspective on it! - but since I get to train all winter in just a regular pullover and tights and not three pairs of pants, a balaclava, a toque on top of that (and a scarf), and three shirts, I am thankful for it! It's pretty much perma-fall here; for my Manitoban readers, you'll understand how weird this is to get used to since we have about a week and a half of fall before winter puts the smackdown on.
Just popped a few more items into the shop, so take a trip over there and check it out! Also on my worktable today, my "fly by the seat of my pants" worksock cardigan edging. The dear sweater that is relying on my pattern intuition suffered through one front edging that looked miserable once it was all done up, so of course it was removed and frogged, and I'll be giving it another go today. A good way to spend another cloudy day!

A thought on jobs

I'm pretty new to the whole self-employed thing, and let's be honest, it's not even my full-time job. While saving money for our wedding, I worked two jobs for about seven months and that seems to have stuck; I always have fingers in too many pies. It's safe to say that if I could be hired to quote old Simpsons episodes and listen to rock music, I'd be raking it in, but everyone knows it's the greatest challenge of adulthood to find a job you love. ANY job - motherhood included of course - presents the wildest demands at some point, and you find yourself wondering just how you got saddled with this mess. Finding a happy place in employment is an ongoing mission of mine, and while I was wedding planning I stumbled across A Practical Wedding, which has so much more than just wedding discussions. This blog post by their founder pretty much nails it; Meg is a great writer and I often find her advice inspiring and encouraging, partially because she pulls no punches and is very honest.
I'm going to keep this post in mind as I frog the edging on a sweater today. I do love what I do, and it's a wonderful thing that I get to yarncraft every day - whether it's for the shop or just for me and the doctor :)

NEW listings

Happy news, all! I have finally put some goodies on my virtual shelves! Two new cowls are up in my shop on Etsy, which you can find right here. I am so excited to finally launch this! It's a small start, but I'm going to be following up regularly with some new pieces so there's more to come!
The first listing is the lovely brown and variegated cowl I posted about last week; it's squishy and comfy and I love the colours together! I'm casting off a creamy white version that'll be up in the shop soon too.
The second listing is a credit to the doctor: a Magic: the Gathering inspired cowl. I love the mana symbols in MTG and thought working them into some more sophisticated pieces would be a good way to show off MTG accessories without being tacky - you don't always want your MTG gear to be so flashy, but you still might want to work it into your wardrobe. Or you just love green and trees, as I do.
Remember when you're checking out the shop, if you've got a custom idea you think we could work on together, shoot me a message! I love getting creative with the yarn :) And enjoy my modeling...clearly I missed my calling.

Knits and purls

Our trip to Stonehenge yesterday was beautiful! Although the doctor is new at this British driving thing, he picked it up surprisingly quickly and we had a nice little drive down to the site. It rained on and off (of course) but as we got to the stones, the sun dipped below the cloud bank and lit up Stonehenge so beautifully, it was amazing!
I got to put down a few rows but sadly it gets dark very quickly now that it's almost winter solstice! Today will be a better day for knitting since we've got Lord of the Rings (the extended editions) going and no plans to leave. I'm hoping to finally cast on for the Tanis Fibre Arts Holiday Knit-Along - I've had the yarn kit for the Four Seasons spring toque for a long time and I'm feeling more like a shawl than a toque so the Prism Shawl it is :)
Keep your eye on the Single Double Treble Etsy shop for some new items on the shelves tomorrow! What better way to start a week than with some cozy knits?

Field trip!

My knitting is going to love this: today we're renting a car and heading off to Stonehenge! At least two hours' unbroken knitting means that I'll be able to put some mileage on my second cowl - cream Cascade Eco with the miscellaneous fancy yarn. I sewed on the buttons for the brown cowl yesterday so it just needs a good blocking. I love how the cream one is coming together already; the blues and turquoise look fantastic against the cream background.
The Magic: The Gathering cowls I blocked last week are pretty much ready to go so I'm looking forward to posting them in the shop!

Roving

No longer just a yarn, roving is what I'm doing for the few days a good friend is visiting from Canada! I get a chance to roam around the city a little more and go for more pub food too. We all need a little more sausage and mash in our lives, let's be real. Also, my favourite pub has mulled cider now, and that is a beautiful thing. Today my quest for a winter jacket continues - I couldn't fit mine in my luggage when I moved and it turns out I need something a little thicker than my bargain leather jacket.
On our adventures for the next few days, I'm hoping to come across some buttons for the cowl I finished up day before yesterday - it's a beautifully cozy mishmash of soft Cascade Eco and miscellaneous sparkly and shiny yarns and I'm really looking forward to putting another one together!

Ribbit

I set myself to frogging a sweater yesterday, and that sounds sad and all but this particular sweater has been waiting for frogging for at least a year and a half. Probably longer. For those of you going, you did what?! "frogging" your knitting just means you undo it. I've been told it's called "frogging" because it makes a ribbit sound as you pull up the stitches. This yarn (Cascade Eco, so soft and lovely) is a little too sticky for that - as I pulled the knitting apart, the fibres tended to bind a little bit. There was some pulling, but no name-calling - it's not that sticky. So the yarn on the left and right is from the sweater (which was knit with the wrong size needles and ended up being twice as wide...oops), and the lovely shiny exciting stuff in the middle is some fantastic novelty yarn I've had for three or four years. I haven't had the heart to break into it just yet but I think it's time. I think these yarns are going to be fabulous friends in a new cowl.
On a slightly unrelated note, I get my groceries delivered here; it's a great option for me since we don't have a car and I loathe pack-muling loads of groceries around. I've done it before, and it's brutal. Anyway, I order them online and they show up, it's lovely. Except for when I ended up with whole shrimp for our pad thai. Let's be clear: these are cooked, but full-bodied shrimp. Eyes, legs, the whole thing. Honestly, I almost considered getting my husband (aka the doctor) to pick up shrimp from the store on his way home so I didn't have to deal with the scary nightmare bag of bodies on my counter. But I put my big girl pants on and dismembered 0.3 kg of shrimp and was able to show off a pile of body parts when the doctor got home. I know he was proud.

The inaugural

It's a rainy morning in England, becoming a more common sight (for me) as the weather cools down ever so slowly. Since right now in Manitoba it's snowy, windy, and somewhere around -25 Celsius with the windchill, I think some rain is alright.
This blog is the result of a few things: first and foremost, I'm finally able to devote more time to yarncraft, which means I'm actually going to be stocking my poor lonely Etsy shop, Single Double Treble knit and crochet. It's been waiting a long time for this! Second, I've been told my family sometimes likes to know what I'm up to - as they're in Canada and I'm not, I'll save some postage.
Because this is my first post, I'll give myself a little Q&A session.

Q: Why yarncraft?
A: To be cheeky, why not yarncraft? But mostly because I've always enjoyed artistic creation - I've been drawing ever since I could hold a pencil, and trying to sew ever since my mom would trust me with a needle. My sewing has never taken off, but creating with yarn appealed to me despite my initial problems with finding the right gauge. Anyone who's ever crocheted knows that if your hook squeaks while going through the stitch, it's TOO TIGHT! My grandma tried for hours to correct my technique but I still kept producing trapezoids instead of rectangles and squares. I shelved the hobby for a few years but came back to it in high school when I received my grandma's yarn stash after she passed away. A labour-intensive, partially finished afghan of the provincial flowers is still patiently waiting for me while I knit sweaters, toques, and other winter things.
Q: Got a favourite yarn?
A: Usually I'm an equal opportunity yarncrafter, but I will say that anything with a colour gradient is my favourite. I love James C. Brett's Marble Chunky - it's a super quick knit and the striping is tons of fun. It's also pretty cuddly. The Fibre Company's Acadia is one of my favourites for feel, it's so soft and the coloured flecks make a nice contrast. One of my favourite standbys is Bernat Satin - there's a ton of colours, the yarn really is pretty satiny, and it's affordable, which is currently one of my top criteria for choosing yarn. Coming from North America where Bernat is more prevalent than here in the UK, I'd say it has been one of my go-to yarns in the past. Maybe not as high-end as some of the fun fibers, but it's pretty hardy.
Q: OK, so what about hooks and needles?
A: I'm at a bit of a crossroads with this one. I prefer wood (for both) because it's comfortable to hold and the yarn moves easily across it. However, I do have some decent metal needles, and in a few cases my wooden ones have been too smooth and my yarn has fallen right off - this was a problem when I was doing some cables on my lovely Marion cardigan (a pattern by Andi Satterlund). On the other hand, while plastic needles are almost always the cheapest in the store, the circulars I have aren't very good quality (the join between cable and needle has a gap and keeps pulling and catching the yarn), and I've broken crochet hooks before (yes, more than once).
Q: Favourite project?
A: So far, that's likely been my first worksock cardigan, currently residing in Canada. It's too big on me but it's comfy, durable (Bernat Super Saver), and it was born out of inspiration by another cardigan I saw on my way to work one day. I've tried to make another one using top-down construction (the first pattern was all separate pieces) and haven't had the same kind of success, but I'll give it another go when I get some more grey marl. You can never have enough comfy cardigans.
I'll give an honourable mention to my Bernat Temperature KAL scarf from 2013 - with the excessively cold winter last year, once that scarf was finished, it was probably about six feet long - long enough for me to wrap it around my head, across my face, and around my neck. It is hands down the most efficient piece of knitwear I own, and it kept me warm for the half-hour walks to and from work in -30 windchill...or colder.

Maybe you're not riveted by yarncraft discussions (I know my husband isn't), but I promise I'll diverge from time to time. Don't forget, some of these yarncraft discussions will be about new items in my shop! And it's always good to have an inside track on big comfy scarves.