Swatch This Space: The Great Colinette Felting Experiment - Shimmer 5

The Great Colinette Felting Experiment was born because, unlike with other yarns, I couldn't find enough info on the felting of it online to guide my way into committing any of my precious yarn to the wash machine.

It pains me to swatch anything (too impatient and I don't knit a lot of fitted stuff and plus, Ravelry - some of you know what I mean!).  But Colinette - well, I'm not a wholesaler, I (should) live on a budget, and at over 20-25 American per skein, well - you do the math ('cuz I try to avoid it).  Also, I'm new to felting and kinda a sceerdy-cat about it.

Note:  The postings regarding felting are going to be edited as more information is gathered, they are not standalone blog posts.

So, shall we commence?  Shimmer 5.

Here is Yarndex's info page on Shimmer 5 - Colinette seems to be discontinuing it, but not sure.  HA!  Here is Ravelry's page on Shimmer 5 (not sure if this will work, but I'm gonna try).


My notes about Shimmer 5:  I just love the gloss on this yarn.  It's really subtle, and "shimmer" is a great adjective for it.  I have tried (tried, I tell you: see this Rav posting) to substitute Shimmer 5 for Point 5 in Colinette patterns, to limited success.  "Limited" in this case meaning no success with fitted garments.  Also, because of the rayon content, it doesn't have the give that Point 5 does.

But pretty!  It is so effing PRETTY!

So here are my Shimmer 5 swatches prior to felting - I did one in moss stitch and one in stocking stitch.  And I have to apologize to those of you who do metric - my trusty measuring thingee is in inches with no metric.  I will try to do conversions at some point.  (be gentle on the layout here, I am new to adding pictures and placing them and how this looks in multiple browsers, and I'm trying, people, I'm trying...)

After felting:

ANNNDDDDD: so you can see what the purlside vs knitside differences are in texture, and I'm making these pics big for you to see detail:

Yes, I know it says "money" colorway, ha.  It's Monet but I seem to always type Money...

SHRINKAGE STATS:

These are coming soon.  I have to consult with the statistics guy at work, 'cuz really I don't do math... not even knitting math.

 Happy clicking and hooking, y'all! 
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Chptr 25: In Which Our Hero Models the "Opie", with Eye-rolling Resignation

This is really a poncho. Really! Great drape for a scarf, though, don't you agree?

Pattern: Opie
Pattern Book: Colinette Akashya #51
Ravelry Pattern Review Page: hit me

Yarns I used for this one, and they look spectacular paired - Colinette Giotto colorway Dusk (#77) and Colinette Silky Chic Colorway Castagna (#128).

Future plans do include frogging the poncho and making two shawls out of it BECAUSE:

A)   It's really, really fuzzy.  And funky looking.  And I DON'T live in Berkeley or Portland (anymore). And I have to wear what I knit to work (well, I don't have to, but my hobby and my clothing allowance are one and the same, which gets complicated when it's time for new underwear), and if I could reproduce the look I got from the HR admin when I walked in the door wearing this (see below), I totally would.  Double take, eyes bulged, and then eyes rolled.  Shoulder movements were also involved. 

and...
B) Again with the downward growth of garment!  When I finished it, it was well above the ground (see above) but after a couple of hours, it had stretched so far I looked like I was wearing a bedspread, and that fringe was acting like a Swiffer and sweeping away my footprints.  Which could work on a covert operation in the woods, but which prompted more eye rolling at the office.  (Admit it, though, you love the red boots.)

So, a planned posting on Looped Yarn Works in Dupont Circle, DC.  LOVE!


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Come Here Often?

This is one of those items that looked smashing when initially done, but had problems:

1. The yarn was so heavy the jacket pulled way down and the flounce ended up around my widest part (Stacy and Clinton would have a LOT to say about that).
2. The seams were a nightmare, even when you're loosey-goosey about seams and rarely even care if stitches match up.
3. And, most importantly, I kept thinking I could improve it by doing this, or that, or the other, and it just turned into the Jacket That Never Was Finished And Caused Persistent Underarm Chafing.

However, I do love the colors.  I love that Colinette tries, how they try, to give us patterns that kinda sorta make Point 5 wearable in sweater form.  Someday I may find that pattern.  As cute as it is, there's that stretch thing - and I blocked the mo-fu out of this sweater - knit it small, blocked it stretched out like a masochist on the rack for a fun weekend, hoping-hoping-hoping that would eliminate the vertical stretch.  And it didn't work.

So there you have it.  Ravelry page with more pictures (of my cat helping) here.

Enjoy your knitting! I'm off to check out Looped Yarn Works in Dupont Circle - very excited!

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Yep, More Socially Conscious Peer Pressure: 10/20/10 - Wear Purple to Support Gay Youth

Sometimes Chester doesn't get how very very blond he is...

And although Chester's mama sort of feels like it's way too much like caving to peer pressure,* she will be wearing purple today specifically for a friend's daughter who is an out lesbian at 15 (go girl, and boy do I love her parents) and experiencing bullying at a high school in a liberal, affluent, NPR-kinda neighborhood. Glee aside, it's still a rough road out there and sometimes I'm really glad I was in denial until college... This one's for KP!

Colinette Shimmer 5 in Florentina colorway - tried to make the Marilyn jacket from the Colinette book "Rock Gods and Movie Stars". Wasn't working on me, but it made a cute Chester pic before it got unraveled. (more another time.)

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* ETA: for my ex-US friends and folks reading this down the road of time, in the USA in September/October 2010 there have been a rash of suicides of teens who are gay or who were thought to be gay. One of the outcomes of this has been the "It Gets Better"/Trevor Project, delivering messages of empathy and hope to youth who might be contemplating suicide because of homophobia. Another has been a day of wearing purple to show support for youth who are considering that their sexuality is not 'straight' (whatever that is anymore) and who are experiencing bullying by other teens, or family, or anyone...

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Chptr 22: in Which Our Hero Reminds Us We Are Interfering With His Nap

Or just wants to remind us he has teeth.

You decide.

Colinette Tagliatelli scarf: 2 skeins, simple k2 p2 rib, Fresco colorway.


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Hot Child in the City (not)

No freakin' clue why, but this song has been going through my head for a few days. Nick Gilder? Why couldn't it be Nick Cave? I mean, really. Sometimes I want to give my synapses a good talking to...

So. This was taken Sunday, October 10, 2010, on Penn Ave in DC. The vestish long drapey thingee is actually Iris Schreier's "Chevron Ruana" from her book Lacy Little Knits. Which I own, and am knitting something from, but can't find! ARGHHHHHH!!!!!! My one knitting book that's MIA.

The yarn, hold your breath, is Colinette Tao in the Madras colorway (#153). Here. Breath again. This yarn is sooooooo beautiful - warm golds with glints of dark amethyst and deep turquoise. The Tao yarn is a single-ply, fairly smooth, nice silken cord. I've made some shawls with it, and loved them, and making this solely with about 8 skeins of luxury stuff was an investment - let's not talk about what I don't have in savings because I'm wearing a couple hundred dollars worth of yarn (and hours of knitting). Ok, changing the subject...

Iris' book will be linked here once I consult with my webmistress about how to do my Amazon Associate hookup. (ETA! WOO HOO - figured this out on my own!) I am a jump-right-in kinda girl - I DON'T read the manual - give me the quickstart guide every time, please. However, I will say that if you haven't knit an Iris pattern prior to knitting something in that book and figured everything out on your own, you probably should at least cruise through the intro. And swatch. Yes, I know, it sucks. But there's less super-direct instruction in her patterns than I was used to and more reliance on the techniques in the intro ("K 5, P 3: end of row is 8 stitches" vs. "knit until it's about 5 inches measured the Iris way").

That said, and this was the first thing of hers I knitted, and I did NOT swatch, and I barely skimmed the intro, I'm happy. I had to start the damn thing about 5 times (swatching would've taken about 3 false starts off that), and if I had to do it over, I'd sew up the armholes a bit tighter, and maybe make the whole thing a little smaller 'cuz the yarn stretches out.

But this pattern + this yarn is a total winner. Especially if you dig looking like a bohemian kinda funky chick and are in denial that you're middle aged (even though you're dressing like a crazy old aunt).

And a shout out to Chico's. Damn, I never thought I'd say that. If you are going the Statement Piece route (and this is a Statement Piece), they have great plain tanks and tops and pants to set off the color. Jewelry's a little pricey - I like the sale counter at TJMaxx or Marshalls. Or Etsy.

OK. Dogs need walking and I just remembered something I forgot to do yesterday at work... crapola. Happy Wednesday and happy clicking.

ETA - Ravelry page on this project here
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A Reluctant Muse

I'm in sooooooo much trouble for this. But doesn't it look perfect on her?

Thanks, babe. I love that you wear what I make. Grateful and please please please spare my life.

Colinette pattern Oreneta in Giotto yarn, sunrise color way. More at this post.

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"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father...

Oh, the sad sad things I do when I'm bored... with too much Colinette Point 5 in Alizarene.

So this week, I've been home sick (nothing long-term, I hope, just a bad tick bite and subsequent infection) and bored. (And here's my plug for a Lyme vaccine - get ON it, medical science!) I bastardized a hat pattern, not sure what I'll call it yet (I'm thinking "Helga"... I'm thinking "Bollyhat"...) but once I figure out a name and what the heck I actually did (was watching Glee DVDs, listening for the cheery 'ping' of work emails coming through), I'll write it down.

Meanwhile, I have this awesome Tarina Tarantino pin that I haven't done jack with since I wore it to a par-tay a year and a half ago, and it looked like it could work on this! Or not. Or not? Hmmmm....

Anyway, someone is getting a lovely set of scarf and hat - or maybe I'll keep it - I think there's enough yarn to make Shasa (my 18 month old Tibetan Terrierist) a little sweater. I do believe in a diverse representation of my work, but she's just not old enough to dress up and sit still yet.

Chester has informed me, through his agency, that large rhinestone pins will not ever again be permitted in a photo shoot. Or else.

Happy Saturday!

Coming soon, I think: Lots of yarn in small living quarters - tips and tricks, and Yarn Project Management 101. I'm negotiating with the spokesmodels.

And, because I can:

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No Animals Were Injured During This Photo Shoot

I crocheted this.

Yes, I can hook. Hooking for longer than I care to admit - taught to me by my mom's mom, who was a crocheter of MAD SKILZ.

I made this afghan for Mom in the crochet option that comes with the kit, to honor Grandma O. I also chose a kit with the colors "English Garden" because my mom grows roses. (there's a typo on the picture. oops.)

Will this ever be used as an afghan? Not sure - it IS dry-clean only. I am astounded it made it into the family room and onto Mom's TV chair; I thought for sure it would be relegated to the more formal living room (where currently the grandkids' Legos live).

One of the heartfelt things I love about creating stuff by hand, is it takes time and you can love so much while you're making it. When you're done the love is all kind of tied up in the project and if you're lucky, the project shows the love and is treasured.

Hormonal much? I hear Judy Collins singing "Send in the Clowns"... but it's all true. Yarn can be love. No wonder I have a whole bathtub full!

Happy Fall, my friends.

PS - Chester's union rep called. A mandatory day off.

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HECK YEAH - Real Men Wear Pink

So. Here is something that takes about 2 hours to knit (Russian-style, did I mention how fast we Russian-style knitters are?) and can only be called a statement piece.

The yarn - my beloved Colinette brand Point 5 yarn in colorway Alizarine (probably also known as PeptoBismal swirl) in the Pansy scarf pattern from the Colinette pattern book Artyfacts.

Should this be the post where I spell out my frustration with getting Colinette yarn in the US in all colorways? In the past three years, almost every store in these United States that used to carry it, stopped. So seeing it in person in the US is not easy. The one place in the US that seems to maintain a strong relationship directly with Colinette is Flying Fingers Yarn Shop in Tarrytown, New York.

I have yet to make the pilgrimage, but must someday climb on the Yarn Bus! (People. If you click on no other link, you have to check this out. Truly a case of real life trumping fiction - I could not make this up.) It's been featured in The New Yorker magazine. I'm just faux-intellectual enough that this gives me goose bumps...

Gotta give props to Flying Fingers. They have saved my everloving behind a couple times when I haven't had enough of a skein to finish a project - and owner Elise shares my deep love of all yarns Colinette. The other great Colinette lover on the planet seems to be Sarah Durrant, of Australia, and she is also great at figuring out how to finish a project when you can't find that one last skein of something Colinette.

Colinette yarn is exported from Wales. Now, for you lucky Celts and Brits and Scots and Welshies, and for world travelers, there's this place where all the yarns are produced. Mad textures and colors - solids, stripeys, lots of fiber, lots of fun... true fiber artistry. The Colinette Mill Shop (ye olde mille shoppe, I'm picturing, a la Disney theme park for knitters) in Wales. And if you live in the UK or other select countries you can order their products online at the Colinette website. For really good prices! But I, alas, live in the US, and so have never seen ART or Hullabaloo, and unless I get to Tarrytown someday, I'm giving up all hope.

ORIGINS OF COLINETTE: From what I can find, Colinette Sainsbury is a real live person, an artist from Italy, and I've heard one person say they remember her selling her handpainted yarn out of a pushcart in Covent Gardens. Urban myth says her son now runs the business, and I'm glad for that (a world without Colinette - how would I exist?), but this distribution issue and the huge price discrepancy between EU prices and everywhere else (is shipping REALLY that expensive, and I know, I know, I know the distributor needs to make a living) - rough for a customer to navigate and unless you're really a freak, like me, you can move right along at the LYS (Local Yarn Shop) and start fondling the pretty stuff one bin over. Maybe they are staying small by design? This whole thing makes sense to someone, and I wish that I was in the know... rant rant rant.

OK, enough ranting about the sumptuousness of Colinette and the current sad state of distribution at retail across the US. I'm just trying to say that if I had to pick ONE YARN BRAND EVER to knit with, I would have a hard time saying goodbye to Noro and Artyarns, but it would be Colinette, hands down.

Sigh. Any updates as to the state of US distribution would be appreciated in the comments section under this post. Please note the date you make your update - many thanks...

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Colinette Rossetti Shawlesque Jacket - and they are Liberty Boots. Zappos. LOVE!

ETA: this is me at Mautner Gala 2009 in what is probably considered vintage (15 years old - ? Leslie, is that vintage?) Laura freakin' Ashley dress that I have decided I will have until I die or explode, whichever comes first. The shawl-jacket thingee is (but of course) a Colinette pattern, Rossetti, that I finished in one week (do not try this at home, I made a lot of mistakes in it) using Colinette yarn Parisienne in colorway Marble and Colinette yarn Tao (how do I love Tao, let me count the ways) in colorway (where did this name come from?) Whirley Fig.

The shawl was perfect though - it's lightweight from the lace yarn and still drapes well from the weight of the single-ply dk-weight silk yarn. The pattern is basically a long rectangle with slits for where you will insert the two smaller rectangles that are the sleeves. 4 seams to sew to put three pieces together. Totally doable.

You do have to pay attention while knitting with the lace yarn. More of a books on tape or NPR knit than a catch up on True Blood knit.

You can wear it upside down or right side up - depends on how much of a collar you want. And how much you want hanging around your knees.

This pattern gets-

Four stars for simple construction
Two stars for understandable pattern (the lace stitch has gotten me questions on Ravelry (friend me, I'm "puppycatrancher" on the Rav), which are hard to answer because I knit in the Russian style which is fairly obscure -'cept in Russia, I'm guessing- and this pattern is written in English for English-style knitters).
Five stars for the ba-gorgeous Colinette yarns
Five stars for a pretty pattern book (Nostalgia)
Five stars for a garment that you can wear in four seasons and dress up and dress down ('cept not waaaaay down - I don't even see Zsa Zsa Gabor walking the pooches in rhinestone collars in this - wait! I do. But not me. Let's say this pattern and your Orioles ballcap - never gonna work.)

and, oh yeah, the boots. My 45th birthday present to myself, found them at Zappos (BIG SHOUT OUT TO ZAPPOS - the friggin' president of it emailed me personally when an order got screwed up - and yeah it was him because I had an in to him ain't sayin' how, it wasn't some form response) along with the matching Tarina Tarantino jewelry!

Felt like such a princess that night (thanks, Sheila, for making me go)!

I had my makeup done professionally for the first and so far only time in my life, and was wearing false eyelashes... if my boobs were bigger and if I had a tan, I would have felt like Queen Latifah at some awards night. (and some love to the B and the single ladies and the Queen [she shows up at 3.28 looking totally amazing] and that fierce Jane Lynch show. and to my own true love who purports to be ring shopping...oops, who said that?)
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More prettiness...

So - whadaya think?  I got this funky app to watermark my pix. Typedrawing.

Yarn is my beloved Colinette Giotto in Raspberry. Pottery from some little shop in Avignon (ah, Avignon, sur le pont...)

Of course, I still love mahjohngg.  and knitting.  but the competition is getting fierce!

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Pretty

So. This is one of many UFOs (UnFinished Objects) hanging around in my conscience, project bin, to-do list. It's the yarn (brand: Colinette, yarn: Giotto, colorway: raspberry) that lured me back into knitting a few years ago. It was in a sale bin (how? why? does it matter?) at Knit+Stitch=Bliss had it at deep discount and I stared at it (because even at discount, Colinette is pricey, at least here in these United States) and suffered my first case of yarn sticker shock.

Yarn lust had struck. The next day, I went to the yarn shop at lunch and coveted. I googled. I researched what I could do with 1 skein of Giotto. (Not enough.) Did they have 2 skeins? They did!... And there went the 50% discount and thus began Serious Yarn Addiction.

But admit it... Pretty.

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Christmas is coming, let's pretend the stash is fat!

Yes, it is barely autumn. But my new toys (iPad and an awfully pretty mahjong app) are making it gosh-durn hard to take my 3 month timeline seriously. I mean, the leaves haven't even turned and I still don't know what all the bonus tiles look like so why knit?!

Therefore, friends and fellow fiber freaks, I issue a challenge to you: post your dream list of finished objects to gift at the end of this year. Go a little crazy - you can pare it down later and get real, but indulge yourself with me and roll around in a fantasy jacuzzi filled with Colinette, Noro, Artyarns... Silks, kid mohair, baby alpaca... (dammit, now I'm drooling, and it's sooooooo not attractive.)

I will start. [ahem]

for mom - machine washable something that she won't ask how much the yarn costs (she hasn't figured out that how much the needles & miscellaneous supplies cost would probably cause a seizure - "how much is in your retirement fund?! And you paid how much for that set of Addi Turbo Clicks?")

For dad - well, 3 years ago I gave him some Great Adirondack Yarn for Xmas that was supposed to become a sweater. Didn't. Various reasons, probably none of which are that he has a lazy and distractable daughter ("oooh, is that silk?" -casts aside daddy's sweater which is getting boring and not measuring to the gauge swatch i didn't bother to knit). Last year I bought a crap load of Eco Wool ('cuz It was Friday night and I had just got paid and it seemed like a good idea at the time) rationalizing that it was machine washable (it's not, I was hallucinating that little portion of the label, go figure) and it seemed like a good yarn to start my first cable project on (it was, but key word here is "start"). So for dad, hmmmm, something (anything) that makes it through mom's criteria and that he might use. I'm thinking afghan. I'm thinking family room. I'm thinking Lion Band Yarn.

For my sweet sweet beloved - let's see. A) I have three promised objects on the needles (OTN); B) this blog is monitored by beloved; and C) I have no clue.

This is harder than I thought! Must do research and return!

Happy clicking!

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