Author: Rebecca Tyrrell

At The End of My Yarn > Articles by: Rebecca Tyrrell

A bit damp

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

Hot, muggy heat is the pits. It’s not even that hot outside, comparably, but the humidity seeps through the plaster walls of the house and lingers for days. One of those weekends that you can only manage the bare minimum of…anything, really. If it weren’t for my dog, I probably couldn’t summon the energy to move.

If you ever hear me griping about being cold in the winter, please feel free to reach through the screen and slap me.

Oddly enough, the weather makes me think of socks. Really. Mostly about how I can’t abide the thought of wool on my feet right now, ,but also about the vast majority of sock patterns I see are for crew socks and longer, and hardly ever for ankle socks. Is it some sort of sock-knitter thought process that ankle socks are lesser socks? Is it something about their shortness? Am I think too hard about sock patterns, and seeing bias that isn’t really there? Is the muggy atmosphere inside the house making my brain cells stick together? Is it only the second official day of summer and I’m already pining for fall?

Good neighbors, and bad neighbors

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

Had one of those surprising productive weekends. Bit violent, though.

My former neighbors, who got evicted last September, had apparently messed up their house so bad (ergo, why they got evicted), that when they left the owner of the house had to gut the inside and rebuild it from the floor up. Turned out to be a shame for me and my neighbors who live in the surrounding houses, because the flock of insects that fled the house being literally torn apart converged upon ours. My neighborhood is single-family houses, but it’s an older area so the houses are all close together. I have to tell you, nothing makes you feel more disgusting than cockroaches in your home, even if you know it’s not your fault. I’ve since gotten rid of them but as I was looking in a drawer in my living room, I saw evidence of where they used to be and flew into a cleaning rage. A pure, explosive, cleaning-out-entire-drawers, getting rid of things I probably should have kept, tossing out things that I really should have donated but needed it out of my house right now dammit cleaning spree. The dog hid from me, the house lifted off the foundation due to the weight it lost (not really, that would be horrifically expensive), and I felt much better at the end of it.

Which brings me to my other point, because this blog is not my diary. I recently ordered some Neighborhood Studio Sock yarn from Neighborhood Fiber Co. Back when I was in college in DC I would go to Knit Happens, which is sadly closed now, where they would stock local spinners and dyers and I would buy the most vibrantly colored, tightly spun sock yarn. That yarn has been in the back of my mind for years (but not the socks I knit from it, because that was back when I had no idea about gauge so my socks were all given away to a friend of mine with much larger feet), and recently I saw a list of minority-owned fiber businesses floating around on the internet and I saw that I could order directly from Neighborhood Fiber Co. myself. I jumped on the chance, and brought back some good memories of college. Now, several years after I graduated, I can knit socks that fit, so these beauties are mine! I’m not a soapbox girl, but if you’re looking for a way to support your neighbors especially at a time like now, you can hardly do better than some stunning sock yarn. And remember, sock yarn doesn’t count as stash.

Tudor Roses

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

“He also left behind daughters, but they do not concern us.” -Dominic Mancini, regarding the daughters of Edward IV

“Time has told me to keep an open mind on history, and an open heart. I wrote the historical account for Tudor Roses fifteen years ago, and since then I have read and thought further on the subject. Sometimes a hitherto unseen text can prompt an alteration in an historian’s view. It is rare for a single line to have such an effect, but that is what has happened to me; the line jumped out from the page and completely altered my perspective.” – Tudor Roses, 2013 edition, Alice Starmore

Rarely outside of Alice Starmore’s work do I find a emotional theme in a knitting book. Of course, at this point we know her work better than to think it would be vapid, but in addition to the normal history section, Tudor Roses goes into the experiences and feelings of the Tudor women the patterns are based off. Each pattern starts off with a letter written by Alice’s daughter Jade as if Jade were the historical figure, and until I read the prologue, I really thought they were actual historical letters, translated into modern English.

The patterns themselves aren’t so much based off what the women of that dynasty actually would have worn, but off the general feel of the times. For instance, the first pattern in the 2013 edition (some patterns were changed, and others added between this edition and the 1998 version), Elizabeth Woodville, is a long-sleeve button cardigan with a smoothly curved bottom edging that would fit perfectly against a long skirt, but would also pair well with a pair of jeans. When I first cracked open my copy, I was pleasantly surprised that some of the patterns included side shaping. I love Alice Starmore’s patterns, but up until now they’ve been lacking in the shaping department, at least as far as my tastes in design go. The attraction for me in her work has always been the texture, between her Fair Isle and her cable work, but to see actually fitting incorporated made me think I had gone to knitter’s heaven. Elizabeth of York even combines stranded colorwork and shaping, which nearly knocked me flat.

The styling can be a bit off-putting, with Margaret Tudor in particular pairing a classic buttoned and cabled pullover with a very modern looking angular, almost spider-like metal choker, but that was the only instance that had me tilting my head.

The Tudor dynasty is one of my particular areas of nerd, along with knitting (really, you say?), cooking, Egyptology, the American civil war, and the paranormal, so I can only blame the fact that I hadn’t seen the inside of this book because for a very long time it was out of print. It used to be one of those books that libraries were loath to carry simple because they knew it might get stolen, so imagine my delight when I saw it was back in publication, and at a very reasonable price.

Sock Knitting Master Class

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

“For Sock Knitting Master Class, I asked fifteen renowned sock knitters and experts to contribute their designs and sock-knitting knowledge. In addition to the spectacular patterns, you’ll learn a variety of design approaches and techniques that will provide the foundation for creating beautiful socks of your own. While some designers begin by choosing a skein of yarn for its color, fiber content, or structure, then design a sock that makes the most of these properties, others begin with an idea for a particular stitch or color pattern. (…)

However they begin, the most successful sock designs follow the Bauhaus principle that form follows function. In socks, this means that each part — cuff, leg, heel, instep, sole, and toe — has a pleasing design that accomplishes the necessary function. The true art in designing comes from the integration of the different parts into an overall plan that is greater than the sum of its individual parts. ” — Sock Knitting Master Class, Ann Budd

Considering all the sock knitting books I own, and I own quite a few, and all the patterns I’ve seen in those books, this is the first one that made me gasp out loud at a pattern. Anna Zilboorg’s Half-Stranded Socks. It may just be the gorgeous photographs, but I took a sock yarn stash dive as soon as I could, looking for two solids (or semi-solids) that would work. I got as far as casting on for the first sock, when I really thought about it an realized casting a few stitches and knitting a long, thin toe band an a dark yarn late at night wasn’t something I really had the mental spoons for at the end of a work day. Also, in the near distance I saw my Firefly socks from A Knitter’s Book of Socks, staring at me with their bright colors, almost-done first sock on handy circular needles and I just felt like a monster. There will be another time, though. The construction of the Half-Stranded socks really is pretty clever. You cast on for the toe band, pick up stitches for the top half of the foot and knit the stranded pattern on the instep, put these stitches on a holder once you get to the gusset, then pick up the other stitches for the bottom of the foot that you’ll knit in one color, then join at the gusset and knit up from there for the rest of the sock. The though process there is so that if you end up with a hole from wear in the bottom of the foot, you can just snip a stitch and re-knit the bottom without loosing the rest of the sock. Reminds me of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Moccasin Socks from Knitter’s Almanac. Me, however, being the basically lazy person I am, I’d probably just darn any holes that appear. But it’s nice to know I have options. I love that richly stranded pattern, though.

There are a lot of really wearable patterns in the book. I know, you figure it’s a book of sock patterns, so yeah, you reckon they’d be wearable, but in a book like this where designers are trying to come up with a real showstopper to show off their design skills, there are bound to be one or two designs that are hard to imagine seeing regular wear. Like, for instance, Up-Down Entrelac by Kathryn Alexander. Don’t get me wrong, they’re certainly striking, but looking at them I can’t help but think they’d be a bear to knit tight enough to fit. Entrelac, at least for me, is tough enough to pull off as it is, but on the photo used in the book, you can tell that the finished product is already starting to bag out on the foot of the model. Certainly statement socks, though!

In this book the actual knitting techniques (the Master Class bits) are spread out through the pages, instead of clumped together at the beginning like I usually see. The book is packed with detailed instructions on different methods of sock knitting, such as different heel and toe structures, and the pros and cons of each. Definitely worth taking a look at if you want to push your sock knitting to the next level.

Alice Starmore’s Book of Fair Isle Knitting

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

“If I were asked to contribute a brief definition of Fair Isle knitting to a comprehensive encyclopedia of needlework, (…) I would also point readers to an atlas of Scotland. They would find that in the group of islands known as Shetland, Fair Isle is the most southerly member, a tiny speck on the map, barely three miles long by two miles wide.

Just how this speck came to give its name to one of the best-known forms of knitting in the world is a fascinating study, part fact and part speculation. The development of this knitted art is reasonably well documented, but it’s origins are not definitely known. There are several theories of origin, but none of these is convincing. After carefully researching the subject, I have developed my own theory. However, before presenting it, I want to look briefly at the history of Shetland, since Fair Isle’s strategic location, trade and foreign contact have all played fundamental roles in the history of Fair Isle Knitting.” –Alice Starmore’s Book of Fair Isle Knitting

This book is much lighter on knitting history than Aran Kntting, but also it seems to me that there is far less historical buildup of bullcrap and half-baked theories based off anecdotal data for Alice Starmore to purge on Fair Isle than on aran knitting. Of course, Alice being Alice we get a history of Fair Isle, both the knitting technique and the island itself. She shows us examples of Fair Isle knitting from the 1920s, and uses them to illustrate how the patterns used in traditional Fair Isle have developed over the years.

“In Fair Isle knitting there is only one absolute rule about the use of color: Never more than two colors — a pattern and a background color — are ever used in any one row. The reasons for this rule and both practical and aesthetic. First, given that we only have one pair of hands, restricting the colors in a row makes the knitting easier and faster than if many colors were used. Second, carrying more than two strands in a row produces an uneven, bulky and unattractive fabric. ” –Alice Starmore’s Book of Fair Isle Knitting

By that notion, any color pattern using more than two colors in a row shouldn’t be called Fair Isle, and instead it should be simply colorwork knitting, but the terms now can be considered interchangeable to someone who hasn’t made it their lives’ work to straighten it all out. Please don’t tell Alice I said that, though.

The patterns themselves are full of carefully chosen color, depth, and nuance, and are timeless in themselves, but don’t expect much in the way of shaping. I get it, though. Fair isle is notoriously difficult to incorporate shaping to fit. Me, personally, don’t love the idea of investing so much time into a sweater project to have it fit me like a sack, but that’s where the use of slightly negative ease comes into play. Again, the fact that the gauge given for the patterns is so much tighter than my own loose gauge that it takes a little bit of math and gauge swatch configuration to be able to knit one of her patterns without much alteration, but that’s the price one pays to knit a heirloom piece.

Cool, summer Breeze

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

More of a moss green color in real life. I was thinking about how long it’s been since I posted a photo of my socked feet online and the foot fetish people might be getting desperate. Whatever floats their collective boats.

Pretty happy with how they turned out. I made the heel flap a little shorter than the pattern calls for and decreased the gusset stitches every row instead of every other row. I think my main issue with knitting heel flap socks is the excess fabric in the heel and ankle area that just bags on me. Increasing the rate of decrease seems to have done the trick. I wore these to bed and they stayed on my feet all night, which is some sort of record.

I had to be really careful with the photo, though. Tried my best to crop out my terrible backyard mowing skills, but then spent an hour and a half on my little .01 acre mowing and weeding the tar out of it. Red as a beet by the time I finished, but feels like a productive Memorial Day for me.

Eastern Market

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

Also known as ‘don’t sit so close to me!’ Or so close to my face. Or right up against my skin, making me think of ‘it puts the lotion on the skin, or it gets the hose again!’ Right. Turns out that…interesting…yarn color choice I made, not quite perfect but too close to me-colored to be an article of clothing makes a decent Eastern Market Tote.

I tried using the circular needles I found at the grocery store, but not surprisingly the cables are joined oddly, which didn’t lend itself to smooth knitting, especially not in a cotton-blend yarn. The cables on the grocery store needles are hollow plastic tubes, and the diameter of the tube is almost the same as the needle, which makes for an awkward knitting experience. Wasn’t expecting much from random grocery store knitting needles, so not much of a shocker, The metal needles with the hard plastic cables work much better. I need another market bag like a I need a hole in the head, but I’m glad I found a good use for it. Did my first provisional cast on with a crochet hook, too!

Speaking of yarn, my local yarn shop is opening up again! Only for a few days a week to begin with, but it feels like a light at the end of the tunnel. They’re only letting a few people in the store at once, because we all still need to be careful, but I have a feeling I’ll end up there this coming Saturday. I…really…don’t need more yarn right now, but it feels like a civic duty, you know?

Aran Knitting

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

“Fifteen years ago I wrote this book with the intention of demolishing some of the myths surrounding Aran knitting. The publication of this new Dover edition is a natural point at which to look back over the years to assess how well I succeeded.” Alice Starmore, Aran Knitting New and Expanded Edition

Reading through the preface, which I assure you is for once a preface worth reading, I find the root of my fear of writing about Alice Starmore, and I now think I was building it up in my mind. Hopefully. Please don’t come after me. Alice!

She’s one of the most technical writers regarding knitting that I know of, and the depth of her technical knowledge and research is obvious after reading only a few paragraphs to start. And also why she’s so protective of her patterns, and how they are reproduced. “In 1993 my book Fisherman’s Sweaters was published. Among the many pattern motifs I created for it was a heart for a design called Nova Scotia, and a sculpted, cabled anchor for a design I called Mystic (…) Hearts and anchors are common motifs so I wanted to inject them with some originality. The results I produced were unusual, individual — and highly personal, but it did not prevent them from being lifted stitch for stitch from Fisherman’s Sweaters and used in an other book called The Great American Afghan (…) The Great American Afghan purports to be a showcase of Aran patterning, yet there in the book — and featured on its front cover — are three examples of my published work that have no connection with Aran whatsoever.”

The first section of this book dives deeply into the history of Aran knitting and the Aran isles, She then moves into more of the myths regarding Aran knitting, such as the pervasive rumor that the different patterns and cables in a sweater allowed the wearer to be identified if they drowned at sea and washed ashore. To Alice, it’s easy to tell that there is a “Blarney Factor” to be considered every time you hear of that particular tale.

Speaking of patterns and cables, the rest of the book is filled to the brim with plenty. Chapter two reads like a step-by-step guide to knitting cables, starting with simple right and left crossing rope cables, and goes all the way down to textured cable outline and lace-and-cable combinations.

After that master class, she goes in the patterns themselves. Now, the patterns are when I run into a bit of trouble, mainly because my own knitting gauge is very loose, and hers is very tight. For instance, for her Aranmor, she uses size 8 needles and a worsted weight wool and gets a gauge of 19.5 stitches to four inches, a feat I’m very sure I couldn’t manage, unless I went down to size 1 or 2 needles, and wanted to chop off my own hands by the end of the gauge swatch because they seized up so bad. That’s a personal problem, though. On the one hand, a tightly knitted sweater is great at keeping warm, but the fabric itself is difficult for me to replicate. However, I haven’t tried since college, so I think it’s due another shot.

All kitted up

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

Last weekend I picked up a yarn kit at my local yarn store, Untangled Purls. With the current climate, it felt like a clandestine, furtive meeting. I knocked on the door (the phone was temporarily down), she hustled towards the door, she handed me a mysterious package, we both looked around to make sure no one had seen us….or at least it felt that way.

They’re doing a current promotion (I suspect both for revenue and because they are bored out of their minds) where you suggest an artist or a specific work of art, choose from a range of price points, and they build a kit that is valued at more than you paid. I went with Alphonse Mucha, but in hindsight I should have asked for Edward Gorey. Not that I’m complaining about Mucha, though. They gave me a few skeins of Manos Del Urugary Fino in a range of grays and blues, and a larger skein of Manos Del Uruguay Alegria in a slightly faded red, and the pattern for Good Vibes by Nadia Cretin-Lechenne. They also tossed in a mybaggee see-through project bag, a cute little lip-balm, and a rosemary sachet. I was slightly concerned about the bag at first, only because I thought sock needles might poke holes in it, but now that I spend some time with it I don’t think it’ll be an issue. Not a paid promotion, of course! Just me raving about a cool new project, and a great way to support my favorite yarn store! If this carries on for much longer I’ll see what they come up for Edward Gorey.

Ruby on a rainy day

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

Finished! And in just enough time to be wearable for only a few weeks until summer comes. Well timed, me. I skipped the bobbles that are meant to mimic roses (I think), mainly because I’ve never been proud of my bobble-knitting skills, and also I didn’t particularly want a row of bobbles marching down the front of my sweater, a bit too anatomical for me. Sorry! The pattern as written has a bobble in the cables between each a cable crossing all over the sweater.

I used black tuxedo buttons for the front, and grosgrain ribbon instead of satin ribbon. Skipped the bows at the top of the ribbons, because I’m also not too proud of my bow-tying skills.

There’s something comforting about a fitted sweater. It’s the first one I’ve knit that turned out as well as this one did. It’s a surprisingly quick knit, too, even if you take the million times I had to re-knit the back. It helps considerably if you actually read the pattern before leaping in headfirst. Let’s see…knit the back three times, and the left front twice. Got the sleeves in one go, though.

As soon as I finished this, the designer posted her yearly spring sale on her tee patterns, so I ended up with….well…five new patterns in total. Hard not to overdo it a bit, considering the current small business climate. Excuse me, I have some serious knitting to do.