Fashion: Yarn Style

Celebrating Clear Air and Bricealuscious by the Sea!

 

It rained last Wednesday, clearing the skies at last and allowing us to venture out and breathe again! The rain also helped the firefighters to completely contain the fire in Butte, so Thanksgiving became a real day of gratitude for us in California. It was so touching reading all the stories of people driving hundreds of miles to bring trailers to the homeless fire victims in California. That day, we made donations to support both the people and the animals who needed shelter.

 

 

Since my husband works at a Black Friday company, which has now become Black Thursday, we stole a few hours together to picnic on the coast Thanksgiving morning before he went back to work. We had chicken salad with hearts of palm, egg salad sandwiches, German bread and brie, berries, chocolate cannoli and champagne as we enjoyed the beautiful blue skies once again.

The day was amazingly sunny and clear and we had a wonderful time basking on the rocks as well, looking at odd little stones and peering into tide pools.

 

 

The seals were sunbathing nearby, so we were careful not to get too close. It makes me happy just watching them!

 

 

It is interesting how much we take the basics in our lives for granted, such as breathing clean air. I had no idea of how important that was until I had lost the ability to do so and I suddenly felt like a character in an apocalyptic science fiction movie wearing a particle mask to work. Even the coast here had air quality in the 160 level, filled with breathable particles damaging to the lungs, while the normal range is 1-50. So this has been a huge relief and refocused me on the importance of simple things in life such as health, safety and shelter. I hope the victims of the fire will find a place to settle soon, I can only imagine how difficult it must be for them.

 

 

The last time we visited Bean Hollow, my husband challenged me to use the colors there as an inspiration for a shawl. So when I knitted my briochealuscious shawl, I chose the pink for the iceplant flowers (Fuse Fiber's Pink Drink), the green for the iceplant leaves, (Olann's Pear) and the blue for the sky and water. (Fuse Fiber's Verdigris).

 

 

The brioche in the shawl creates a luscious, squishy fabric that makes it a wonderful wrap to wear in the wind, but I needed a coat as well to keep out the cold, as it is November now!

 

 

It was really satisfying finishing this project and I recommend it as a great way to practice brioche knitting. It was a very well-written pattern, but not an easy one to execute, as the brioche rickrack edging is challenging and time-consuming. But I feel it was worth the effort.

 

Knitting Through the Smoke in California

photo from New York Times 

For the past week, we’ve been barricaded inside our homes in Sunnyvale, California, waiting for the smoke to lift. I opened the door to put out the garbage yesterday and had a giant coughing fit, so now I am even doing laundry in our garage wearing a face mask. Apparently, breathing the air outside is equivalent to smoking four packs of cigarettes, so I wear the mask every day to work. When days are difficult, I seek something positive to focus on. So I am knitting through the smoke to remind myself of the people I love.

 

 

It helps that it’s Christmas knitting season, and I’ve received some silly birthday requests. When I asked my brother David what he wanted for his birthday, he said hats for his two baby daughters and a hand knitted card for him.

 

It was no problem whipping up the Zebra and Bear hats above using a “Top This” kit. But knitting a birthday card? I never heard of that! Not that I was going to admit that to my little brother. Once he threw down the gauntlet, there was no way I would back down. Especially when he mentioned he wanted sequins. Manly Sequins?  Irresistible!

 

 

After a month of puzzling over the problem, I bought a conventional birthday card and used it for structure. Then I sewed together gauge swatches in the manliest colors I had. Using the zigzag stitch on my sewing machine, I created a patchwork of gauge swatches for the outside of the card, and then zizzagged the fabric onto the card itself at the edges, folding down the raw sides of the swatches into the join so that they didn’t show. Then I embroidered his name on the inside of the card with sequins.

 

 

This was a very time-consuming project, but I chuckled the whole time. I purchased the sequins in Paris, then put it all together here when I got back and realized I wasn’t going outside any time soon.

 

 

Bernhard had begged me for a hat while we stayed in Paris because it was so cold, and he received so much enjoyment out of wearing the Bankhead hat I made him that I’ve resolved to knit a bunch of hats as Christmas gifts. And now that the only exercise I have been getting the past week is walking up and down the hall of our 1200 square foot foot home, I’ve been knitting a hat while I walk. There’s a bright side to everything, right? With my knitting bag looped over my arm, I pace the hallways, knitting a hat on a 16” circular needle while my husband chuckles from the couch and the cats chase me from behind. In this way, I’ve completed the Mon Ami hat, designed by Kay Jones, for my brother-in-law.

 

 

My brother, Levon, is getting the Bousta Beanie hat that I knitted in Shetland, spindrift.

 

 

 Next up is a hat for my father. He took one look at the hat Bernhard was wearing in Paris and asked for one for himself. After a lovely afternoon visiting yarn boutiques together, he picked out this gorgeous skein of Lore by the Fiber Company at Le Tricoteur Volant.

 

 

But more about that shop later.

  

With all this hat knitting to keep me occupied, there’s little reason to go out of doors. While we are praying for rain, I am more than a little grateful that I have this knitting hobby so I don't go stir crazy inside four walls!

A Luminous Trip to La Bien Aimée follows a lost knitting disaster!

 

I have been lucky enough to spend some great time knitting in Paris, with somewhat mixed results. On the one hand, I lost half of a sweater in a cab ride on the way to a knitting meetup with my Anny Blatt friends. (Sob!!!) On the other hand, earlier I got to join a knit night at L’oisivethé, presided over by the owner, Aimee, and later, I visited her store. So the positives have at least balanced out the negatives!

 

L'oisivethé 

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s how ephemeral life and even my projects can be. That’s the whole reason I’m in Paris to begin with—as my father and I grow older, it’s really important for me to spend time as I can with him. We’ve been to several museum exhibits and a performance of Beethoven’s seventh symphony, and in the meantime, I’ve been squeezing knitting in here and there.

 

Unfortunately, the sweater I’ve been laboring on for almost a year now on size 1 needles is living it up royally without me, riding around the best neighborhoods in Paris in the back of a taxi. I can’t blame Vilma for her great escape. Who wouldn’t want to live in Paris all year round? You can see her lurking in the photo below, curled up in my hands but really eyeing the exits at the Musee d’Orsay and planning a break for freedom:

 Yes, the bottom half of Sarah Hatton’s Vilma sweater is now swanning around Paris, flaunting her sleek Finest fibers without my grubby hands on her any more. But I have a plan. Vilma's sleeves are at home, and with a little ingenuity and luck, I can knit a fair-isle body that will compensate for my 3 lost balls of yarn. Vilma is gone, but Nicole, as I will name the ingenious creation I may someday cobble together with scraps of yarn, may live on.

 

Sarah Hatton’s Vilma sweater

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/vilma-5

 

As I struggled to deal with Vilma’s flight in a late-night cab, I consoled myself with a visit to La Bien Aimee. It truly is a paradise of hand-dyed yarn near La Place d’Italie. The store awning and bags are hued bright yellow to commemorate Aimee’s signature Yellow Brick Road color:

 

And I did buy a skein of the yellow for a future shawl on LBA's merino sportsweight base. The colors from left to right are Yellow Brick Road, Jonna, and Hegelia.

 

 

I could not resist buying some sock yarn at La Bien Aimee since the last pair I knitted in the BFL sock base turned out so well:

 

These are Kate Atheley’s Jarvis socks, which I finished recently and really adore.  I wanted some light-colored speckled yarn, which was available in 2 minis, and then I also picked up a great skein of purple speckled grey on BFL touch sock.

 

1 skein Andromeda, 2 small skeins of Blush + Yellow Brick Road mini skein

 

My father decided to pitch in for my upcoming Christmas present, so as a bonus, I walked away with two really gorgeous colors: The LBA sportweight merino in the vintage colorway, plus a skein of the yarn LBA only sells at their shop. Allure, in dark purple. The allure is a 70% alpaca, 20% silk, 10% cashmere base and the colorway is “The Flying Knitter”, which is the name of a yarn boutique in a different part of Paris.

 

My German cousin-in-law, Annette, had taken the train over to see me and my husband here for a few days, so as she’s a knitter, we were able to spend a lovely "crafternoon" together:

 

 

We also attended the knit night at L’oisivethé on Wednesday, where we had a lovely meal and knit with a welcoming group. The menu was simple, with soft-boiled eggs and toast “soldiers” and a wonderful pot of tea for me:

 

 

Annette and I sat at a table with several accomplished French women as well as a Portuguese gal who was fluent in English and French as well as her native language. It was a really lovely evening, and by some weird coincidence we all seemed to be knitting with the same colored yarn! 

 

 

Well, I’m off to search the internet for ideas on a colorwork panel I can insert into my Wilma turned Nicole sweater, now that I’ve lost 3 balls of the long-discontinued yarn that makes up the body of the sweater, above. Keep your eyes on your knitting, readers. You never know when it may be getting ideas of it's own....