Sam Loves Sweaters

It is not supposed to reach almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit in New Jersey. Ever. It's not natural. But one awful week in July it did. And it drove me to embrace my greatest knitting foe: cotton. Cotton and I do not normally get along. It hurts my hands, dries out my skin, and it just isn't the same as my beloved wool. But it was 99 degrees outside and my The Throwback cardigan was just...too warm and wooly to think about working on- especially when our air conditioners were just struggling to keep the apartment barely tolerable. So my husband and I hatched a plan to keep cool in the heat. We would hit up a new (to me) yarn store in Montclair for some emergency cotton yarn so I could knit the adorable Rift Tee by (instert her name here), and then we'd go to an indoor mini golf place. So, let the reviews begin! Yarn Shop Review: Yarnia, Montclair NJ The Vibe So, I started knitting pretty young. I also have a lot of social anxiety. So going to new yarn stores (or co

First things first: I love fair isle. A lot.  It is one of my absolute favorite things to knit. I love choosing colors, how they play against each other, the twisting of the yarn and the sense of accomplishment when the pattern begins to emerge.  So, when Yarnia decided to do a Soldotna  (designed by Caitlin Hunter)  knit along, it didn't take too much to convince me. Yes, I had been avoiding it because even a normal sweater is cropped on me. Yes, I wasn't so sure about how the pattern looked. But I had finished the color work on The Throwback by Andrea Mowry, and I was (am) in the middle of stockinette island without the ability to start KareKare yet (need to spin more yarn). But what really sold me is how its a fairly cheap sweater to make. I spent about $68 bucks on the yarn for mine, and it can be used as a nice transitional piece (or if Rhinebeck is too hot for me to wear any of my three longer sleeved sweaters). So here is a lovely picture of mine in progress. I

This is the sweater I picked out for my 2019 Rhinebeck sweater- way back in January. I have historically had issues finishing sweaters for Rhinebeck on time. Now that I'm a little older, a little wiser, a lot more experienced with knitting, and free from the depression and burn out that I struggled with, I got a little faster. But I didn't finish this sweater until July 5th. (My belated honeymoon in Puerto Rico really gave me my mojo back). The Yarn First things first: the yarn.  The yarn I used for this project is the periwinkle sheep watercolors II sock yarn in "11 Ways to Dry a Chili Pepper". I bought this yarn at Rhinebeck 2017. It was my second sweater quantity of yarn purchased at Rhinebeck (we don't speak of the one I knit with the first. Someday I will write up a review of that pattern). I love this yarn. It's a nice 2 ply 100% Merino wool yarn. I am sad to see on the yarn page on Ravelry for it that it won't be represented at Fiber Festi

So in my first post, I wrote about how I am working on successfully transforming a gorgeous Romeldale fleece into a sweater. The early parts of the Tour de Fleece went really well. I had had hand carded over 150 rolags in preparation for the Tour, and I was really good about carding up more to make sure that I wouldn't run out. This is after spinning about 75 of the 100 rolags  I hadn't even thought of what I would do if I ran out of bobbins. After all, I could use my trusty ball winder- a decade old Knitpicks one- to just wind my singles into cakes. Unfortunately, that ball winder died a tragic death midway through caking a full sized skein (560 yards) of Miss Babs Yowza. Now, the Yowza tale is for another post (a future review of The Throwback sweater and Miss Babs yarn), but the ball winder breaking put a serious cramp in my Tour De Fleece. So, I bought a new ball winder off of Amazon. BIG mistake. I thought it would be great because it is wooden and it looked so n

Over 10 years ago (how has it been that long?) I got bored over winter break from college. So, I learned to crochet. Both of my grandmothers had tried (unsuccessfully) to teach me to knit over the years, and it hadn’t stuck. But the urge was still there. So, I picked up a book and some yarn and a hook….and it worked. To a point. My gauge was- and still is- atrocious in crochet.  So that summer I tried to learn to knit, from the venerable and wonderful Stitch n’ Bitch by Debbie Stoller, after all, her book on crochet taught me to crochet. This time knitting stuck. It stuck hard. My grandmother from Virginia was THRILLED. She had knitted for us for years- blankets, socks, and our beloved Christmas stockings. This was in the early days of Ravelry, when you had to send an e-mail to request to be added. I resisted it for a while. Then I joined, and the obsession grew. I learned what I liked- wool, colorwork- and what I don’t like -cotton, bobbles. I learned patience and perseverance an