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lwoodIf you click on the first cut, you may well be awash in fiber-related detail. The second cut picks up after that, and may suit non-knitters better.
Also of note? We made the local paper!
Day One: Friday, 5 October 2007. Class: Icelandic Shawls with Marilyn van Keppel
On Friday,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
erynn999 drove faeryl and I to Ballard, a neighborhood of Seattle known for its large Scandinavian population. This is where the Nordic Heritage Museum is, housed in a former elementary school.
faeryl and I had the same Friday class, Icelandic Shawls with Marilyn van Keppel.
Marilyn van Keppel's claim to fame in the knitting world is that she has translated two books of shawl patterns from their native tongues to English. Her classes would both focus on creating scale models of a shawl in a given style, that one might understand the techniques before applying them to a full-sized garment. This is helpful in applying her translations to the original-language works, which will become important in a moment.
We were instructed to bring four colors of laceweight yarn, three sizes of needles (US 2/3.0mm, US 6/4.0mm, and US 8/5.0mm), and one crochet hook (US F/3.75-4.0 mm) Today, we would discuss the shawls of Iceland, as described in the book Þríhyrnur og Lansjöl, or, in English, Three-Cornered and Long Shawls, by Sigríður Halldórsdóttir.
I bought my materials at San Francisco's Imagiknit a couple days before the conference, as they're easy to get to from my office. I thought I'd try new tools and materials to cover up the holes in my yarn and needle collections: 24" Addi lace needles for the smaller two sizes, but as the Addi Lace don't come larger than US 6/4.00 mm, for the US 8/5 mm needle, I pressed an already existing Addi Turbo into service. For the crochet hook, I settled on a Brittany crochet hook made from birch: the company is in Elk, California (on the coast due west from Ukiah), and strives for good service and environmental responsibility--of which I wholly approve.
For my yarn, I chose Malabrigo's new baby merino laceweight in white, black, a pale grey/white ombre named "Polar Morn", and a bright red named "Sealing Wax". I had recently acquired from Icelandic laceweight from Schoolhouse Press, but I wanted to save it for a full-sized project, and anyway I had only bought two colors when the instructor wanted four.
Now, when one buys Three-Cornered and Long Shawls from Schoolhouse Press, one will receive both the original Icelandic book and its English translation, and indeed it is impossible to knit from the English translation alone. The rights were only granted contingent upon the conditions that the books be sold as a set, and that the charts would not be duplicated although their symbols could be translated.
What particularly annoyed me about this from a scholastic perspective is that van Keppel never translated the accompanying essay, which I'm told discusses the history of the shawl in Iceland. Apparently it had taken so long to get the rights from the original author's daughter that the translator lost interest before completeing it. However, this doesn't detract from the knitting value of the paired books. Another problem with the translation that annoyed me where it would not annoy someone who only came to these books for knitting patterns is that, in the translation, instead of a proper lower-case eth (ð), whoever did layout substituted a lower-case delta--actually, that tells me that the layout was probably done on a pre-OS X Mac (translation is ©2003) that hadn't been hacked up to properly deal with Icelandic characters, but that's a really obscure quibble.
For instructional purposes, and as the paired books were not listed as a prerequisite to the class, we were given a handout describing a small shawl. This sample, like many in the book, is triangular: one begins the main body with a provisional cast on along the two bottom sides of an isoceles triangle and decreases throughout, and completes the main body by grafting the last few stitches together at top-center, which will rest on the nape of the neck when worn. The body is on a stockinette ground, and employs a fascinating single decrease (sl 1, k2, psso2) that I hadn't encountered before--NB that it's three stitches to two instead of two to one.
Once the main body of the shawl is completed, the provisional cast-on is picked up and a lacy border is worked and bound off by a crocheted chain. In an adult-sized version, the tails of the triangle should be long enough to wrap around one's self and tie together in the back, making a handy jacket.
While Marilyn van Keppel is a competent teacher, it was apparent that she's not as enthused about the Icelandic shawlmaking techniques as she is about the Faroese--of which, more in the Sunday report.
At the end of the session, she led the class through the simple algebra that could be used to expand the sample shawl pattern from doll size to adult size.
Yarn Review: Malabrigo Lace
Malabrigo Lace is a spun single, 100% baby merino wool, theoretically available in all of their colors. However, there are some distribution difficulties, at least along the West Coast of the US. As such it can be hard to find in your Local Yarn Store--neither Imagiknit in San Francisco nor Churchmouse in Bainbridge, WA (see Monday for more on this store) had a wide color selection.
This is soft for an all-wool, so soft thatfaeryl had to be shown a label before she quite believed it wasn't hiding angora among its fibers. My scale-model shawls are blocked and drying even as we speak, but even before washing, the baby merino wool had appreciably bloomed--like, but not to the degree of, a mohair-bearing yarn. However, the fuzzy mohair-like bloom brought with it the shadow of the well-known Perils of Mohair: welding. Even wrapped into hanks, before balling, this yarn has a tendency to stick to itself that can cause consternation and hair-tearing at the ball-winder. It will unravel (unlike mohair) but may argue and, rarely, refuse to cooperate. Two days later, I had to take my whole sample Faroe shawl apart and start over which went well enough until the cast-on row simply--wouldn't--BUDGE, and so the yarn had to be broken and discarded. Still, it comes with the rest of the Blessings of Wool: good stitch definition beneath the bloom, the bloom keeps you warmer for the trapped air, and the rest of it. I liked it well enough, and Marilyn van Keppel was delighted over it, so I hope supply improves soon!
Needle Review: Addi Lace
Skacel Knitting, manufacturers of the Addi needles, have recently expanded their circular line to include wooden tips (the 'Natura' line) and another metal-tipped line optimized for lace knitting (the 'Lace' line). I picked up a couple pairs of the lace-optimized needles, and I'm pleased with my purchase.
weds asks: "So, do these make a lightsabre noise when you remove them from the package?" Yes! Not only that, but one may sharpen them on starlight and knit nine fate-strands into one with one swift motion!
The lace-optimized needles are the result of a manufacturer listening to knitters' feedback about a product's viability for the task at hand. For all practical considerations, I can agree with this review in Knitters' Review, especially about how these needles make much less noise than regular Addi Turbos. I haven't compared them to the Knit Picks Options as the other reviewer has, but they worked well for the two shawls I knitted this weekend.
That ends the knitting geekery portion of this report--next, the mad social whirl.
Halfway through the all-day session was lunch. While the conference did have a boxed lunch option,faeryl and I wanted to spend our lunches with erynn999. The only problem with this is that the museum, housed as it is in a former school, is in a heavily residential neighborhood, so there's no restaurants within easy walking distance, even given a 90-minute lunch break. So, Erynn picked us up and we all went to a nearby Greek restaurant.
In a special shout-out todpaxson, jon_decles, and bearmum, let the record show that erynn999, faeryl, and I did split a "Never on a Sundae" for dessert--a baklava sundae with chocolate syrup and a pickled cherry.
After the class's second session had also wrapped up,erynn999 collected us and off we went to Kasbah, a Moroccan restaurant with an all-prix fixe menu. The food was excellent, the belly dancer fetching as she flirted with erynn999, and if you, too, want to spend $25/person, I can wholly recommend it. Just remember, if you go, traditionally the food should all be eaten by hand (bread is provided for some, not all, courses), and with the right hand at that (the other hand traditionally goes to rather less savoury neighborhoods). Sure, they have forks--but if you, Gentle Eater, disdain forks at Chinese and Japanese restaurants, consider doing so here, as well.
Then we met back up withalfrecht at erynn999's house, and watched the Christmas Episode of Invader ZIM before bed. However, with the insanity that had been her past two months, erynn999 was Officially Out of Spoons, and asked that we take her car to class tomorrow instead of being dropped off so she could get more sleep, in hopes of being social afterwards.
This would complicate things, but not horribly, as you, Constant Reader, will soon discover.
-- Lorrie
Also of note? We made the local paper!
Day One: Friday, 5 October 2007. Class: Icelandic Shawls with Marilyn van Keppel
On Friday,
erynn999 drove faeryl and I to Ballard, a neighborhood of Seattle known for its large Scandinavian population. This is where the Nordic Heritage Museum is, housed in a former elementary school. faeryl and I had the same Friday class, Icelandic Shawls with Marilyn van Keppel. Marilyn van Keppel's claim to fame in the knitting world is that she has translated two books of shawl patterns from their native tongues to English. Her classes would both focus on creating scale models of a shawl in a given style, that one might understand the techniques before applying them to a full-sized garment. This is helpful in applying her translations to the original-language works, which will become important in a moment.
We were instructed to bring four colors of laceweight yarn, three sizes of needles (US 2/3.0mm, US 6/4.0mm, and US 8/5.0mm), and one crochet hook (US F/3.75-4.0 mm) Today, we would discuss the shawls of Iceland, as described in the book Þríhyrnur og Lansjöl, or, in English, Three-Cornered and Long Shawls, by Sigríður Halldórsdóttir.
I bought my materials at San Francisco's Imagiknit a couple days before the conference, as they're easy to get to from my office. I thought I'd try new tools and materials to cover up the holes in my yarn and needle collections: 24" Addi lace needles for the smaller two sizes, but as the Addi Lace don't come larger than US 6/4.00 mm, for the US 8/5 mm needle, I pressed an already existing Addi Turbo into service. For the crochet hook, I settled on a Brittany crochet hook made from birch: the company is in Elk, California (on the coast due west from Ukiah), and strives for good service and environmental responsibility--of which I wholly approve.
For my yarn, I chose Malabrigo's new baby merino laceweight in white, black, a pale grey/white ombre named "Polar Morn", and a bright red named "Sealing Wax". I had recently acquired from Icelandic laceweight from Schoolhouse Press, but I wanted to save it for a full-sized project, and anyway I had only bought two colors when the instructor wanted four.
Now, when one buys Three-Cornered and Long Shawls from Schoolhouse Press, one will receive both the original Icelandic book and its English translation, and indeed it is impossible to knit from the English translation alone. The rights were only granted contingent upon the conditions that the books be sold as a set, and that the charts would not be duplicated although their symbols could be translated.
What particularly annoyed me about this from a scholastic perspective is that van Keppel never translated the accompanying essay, which I'm told discusses the history of the shawl in Iceland. Apparently it had taken so long to get the rights from the original author's daughter that the translator lost interest before completeing it. However, this doesn't detract from the knitting value of the paired books. Another problem with the translation that annoyed me where it would not annoy someone who only came to these books for knitting patterns is that, in the translation, instead of a proper lower-case eth (ð), whoever did layout substituted a lower-case delta--actually, that tells me that the layout was probably done on a pre-OS X Mac (translation is ©2003) that hadn't been hacked up to properly deal with Icelandic characters, but that's a really obscure quibble.
For instructional purposes, and as the paired books were not listed as a prerequisite to the class, we were given a handout describing a small shawl. This sample, like many in the book, is triangular: one begins the main body with a provisional cast on along the two bottom sides of an isoceles triangle and decreases throughout, and completes the main body by grafting the last few stitches together at top-center, which will rest on the nape of the neck when worn. The body is on a stockinette ground, and employs a fascinating single decrease (sl 1, k2, psso2) that I hadn't encountered before--NB that it's three stitches to two instead of two to one.
Once the main body of the shawl is completed, the provisional cast-on is picked up and a lacy border is worked and bound off by a crocheted chain. In an adult-sized version, the tails of the triangle should be long enough to wrap around one's self and tie together in the back, making a handy jacket.
While Marilyn van Keppel is a competent teacher, it was apparent that she's not as enthused about the Icelandic shawlmaking techniques as she is about the Faroese--of which, more in the Sunday report.
At the end of the session, she led the class through the simple algebra that could be used to expand the sample shawl pattern from doll size to adult size.
Yarn Review: Malabrigo Lace
Malabrigo Lace is a spun single, 100% baby merino wool, theoretically available in all of their colors. However, there are some distribution difficulties, at least along the West Coast of the US. As such it can be hard to find in your Local Yarn Store--neither Imagiknit in San Francisco nor Churchmouse in Bainbridge, WA (see Monday for more on this store) had a wide color selection.
This is soft for an all-wool, so soft that
faeryl had to be shown a label before she quite believed it wasn't hiding angora among its fibers. My scale-model shawls are blocked and drying even as we speak, but even before washing, the baby merino wool had appreciably bloomed--like, but not to the degree of, a mohair-bearing yarn. However, the fuzzy mohair-like bloom brought with it the shadow of the well-known Perils of Mohair: welding. Even wrapped into hanks, before balling, this yarn has a tendency to stick to itself that can cause consternation and hair-tearing at the ball-winder. It will unravel (unlike mohair) but may argue and, rarely, refuse to cooperate. Two days later, I had to take my whole sample Faroe shawl apart and start over which went well enough until the cast-on row simply--wouldn't--BUDGE, and so the yarn had to be broken and discarded. Still, it comes with the rest of the Blessings of Wool: good stitch definition beneath the bloom, the bloom keeps you warmer for the trapped air, and the rest of it. I liked it well enough, and Marilyn van Keppel was delighted over it, so I hope supply improves soon!Needle Review: Addi Lace
Skacel Knitting, manufacturers of the Addi needles, have recently expanded their circular line to include wooden tips (the 'Natura' line) and another metal-tipped line optimized for lace knitting (the 'Lace' line). I picked up a couple pairs of the lace-optimized needles, and I'm pleased with my purchase.
weds asks: "So, do these make a lightsabre noise when you remove them from the package?" Yes! Not only that, but one may sharpen them on starlight and knit nine fate-strands into one with one swift motion!The lace-optimized needles are the result of a manufacturer listening to knitters' feedback about a product's viability for the task at hand. For all practical considerations, I can agree with this review in Knitters' Review, especially about how these needles make much less noise than regular Addi Turbos. I haven't compared them to the Knit Picks Options as the other reviewer has, but they worked well for the two shawls I knitted this weekend.
That ends the knitting geekery portion of this report--next, the mad social whirl.
Halfway through the all-day session was lunch. While the conference did have a boxed lunch option,
faeryl and I wanted to spend our lunches with erynn999. The only problem with this is that the museum, housed as it is in a former school, is in a heavily residential neighborhood, so there's no restaurants within easy walking distance, even given a 90-minute lunch break. So, Erynn picked us up and we all went to a nearby Greek restaurant. In a special shout-out to
dpaxson, jon_decles, and bearmum, let the record show that erynn999, faeryl, and I did split a "Never on a Sundae" for dessert--a baklava sundae with chocolate syrup and a pickled cherry.After the class's second session had also wrapped up,
erynn999 collected us and off we went to Kasbah, a Moroccan restaurant with an all-prix fixe menu. The food was excellent, the belly dancer fetching as she flirted with erynn999, and if you, too, want to spend $25/person, I can wholly recommend it. Just remember, if you go, traditionally the food should all be eaten by hand (bread is provided for some, not all, courses), and with the right hand at that (the other hand traditionally goes to rather less savoury neighborhoods). Sure, they have forks--but if you, Gentle Eater, disdain forks at Chinese and Japanese restaurants, consider doing so here, as well.Then we met back up with
alfrecht at erynn999's house, and watched the Christmas Episode of Invader ZIM before bed. However, with the insanity that had been her past two months, erynn999 was Officially Out of Spoons, and asked that we take her car to class tomorrow instead of being dropped off so she could get more sleep, in hopes of being social afterwards.This would complicate things, but not horribly, as you, Constant Reader, will soon discover.
-- Lorrie
