Eskimimi Knits knitting blog

the Eskimimi Knits blog has been a little bit quiet these last few days as I have been industriously experimenting, working and constructing various tools, so I can bring you this:

Eskimimi Knits yarn

I want to thank everyone who posted words of encouragement and support at giving dyeing a go.  I have worked hard this past week to develop techniques and practices that help me to make the kind of yarns I’d like to be able to buy.

 I have been skeining, winding, dyeing, mixing, heating and designing all hours of the day and night and was up until past midnight last night putting the finishing touches to the yarn, adding ball-bands, etc.  Now that everything has been photographed, checked and re-checked a million times or more, I’m slightly giddy to present to you my little shop

Eskimimi Knits yarn shop (click to visit)

I’ve been trying out all sorts of colours, mixing and blending, dyeing and handpainting, and I am really very pleased with my resulting yarns. I have managed to get the level of saturation I have been looking for, as well as some more subtle blends.  I love colour so very much, so this yarn just ticks all of my boxes. The reason I wanted to dye up some yarn in the first place was because I just couldn’t find the fresh colours that I craved as a knitter.

Selection of yarns I have dyed

It was also a bit of a thrill to see my yarn page on ravelry as I begin to enter the yarns that I have dyed into the Ravelry database, for people to search, discover, and (hopefully) stash:

Eskimimi Knits yarn page on Ravelry

So, I’d now like to declare the Eskimimi Knits yarn shop officially open. I’d appreciate any feedback, thoughts, etc that you might have.  What do you think of the yarn names, colour choices, etc?

It’s so exciting for me that I am in danger of overwhelming you all with pictures, so I’ll limit myself to one last one and not give into the temptation of posting pictures of every single skein of yarn.

Eskimimi Knits hand dyed yarns

I hope that you’ll be able to pop by the shop and have a look around.  And again, thanks to everyone for their encouragement, and thanks to everyone who pops by now and again to read this little blog of mine.

Over the last couple of days my kitchen has turned into an occasional dye studio whilst I don rubber gloves and play with yarn and colour – possibly my two favourite things, and now I get to combine them. I blame Kismet’s Companion who started me down the path to Kool Aid dyeing, which led to experiments with food dyes and citric acid and now on to professional dyes.

As well as my first experience with professional dyes, I now have my first experience with laceweight yarn:

Satsuma Lace yarn, dyed by Eskimimi

This solid-dyed 100g of fine lace-weight yarn was actually completed five days ago, but it has taken me that long to hand-wind it into a ball.  Ok, I haven’t been winding constantly all that time of course, but it seems like I have been winding it forever, and I breathed a sigh of long relief when I wound the last 200 yards or so this afternoon.  If it takes that long to wind into a ball, how long will it take to knit? I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

The other yarn I dyed was a fingering weight sock yarn of 75% wool and 25% nylon – my favourite hard-wearing fibre combination for soft yet strong socks.  This is a super-saturated, rich semi-solid range of greens.  It’s a vibrant, rich green and I absolutely love it.

Broccoli Sockoli, dyed by Eskimimi

I’m going to be dyeing a few more skeins for friends over the next few days, but I am also thinking of listing a few yarns on Etsy if I am able to part with them. Every time I look at the rich colours I think of all that I could knit with them, and my mind is alive with all of the colours and combinations, variations and techniques I want to try out on the next skein of yarn.

Of course, it is time-consuming, requires patience, time and concentration, but I realise now why people love hand-dyed yarn – there is just an extra liveliness in a hand-dyed skein that is hard to explain but easy to appreciate.

Hand-dyed

Sleepy Hollow socks, knit in Regia Stretch colour

Ah, socks.  Socks for me.  I started these a few months ago but came to an abrupt stop after the first of the pair when I lost my collection of socks needles.  I finally managed to replace the set and cast on for the second sock right away.

I really like the construction of these socks and the way the sole and heel are knit.  They are top down and feature a ‘footprint’ that is the same as an actual foot – that is it is narrower across the bottom of the heel than it is across the underneath of the ball of the foot.  I’m going to have to take a picture of the sole of the socks when I can rope in a deputy photographer as my contortionist skills were limited to laying on the floor with my feet on the wall to try and get a picture of the socks being worn:

Do not adjust your sets, this picture is not upside down, I am.

I am hoping to use the same sock construction for some plain stockinette socks in the future as I love the way it hugs the foot in all the right places, widening at the point where the foot itself widens, and there’s no need to pick up any stitches or break and re-join yarn. Supoib!

Sleepy Hollow

One of the first patterns I truly loved was Sharon Emery’s October is for Spinners scarf. It isn’t because the design is fashionable or likely to become one of my wardrobe staples, but the forming and execution of a concept is wonderfully realised in this piece of knitting art.

Image © idyllicchick, click to go to the Rav pattern Page

From the Ravelry Pattern page:

Arachne, the original spinner, is portrayed here in a twisted stitch pattern from Barbara Walker’s Third Treasury of Knitting Patterns. The scarf begins on size 6 US needles using four stands of lace weight yarn held together. While the scarf progresses threads are dropped and the needle size is increased as the consistency of our spinner’s web is interrupted by neglect and disrepair.

The spider’s web becomes less consistent and the uniform quality degrades with tiredness and age, ending in a disorganised and unpredictable texture, reminding us of the powerful forces of age and decay. But I also like to look at it another way, literally. Viewing it from the other end the scarf could also represent the learning curve of a knitter. The first, disarrayed stitches, incomplete, dropped loops, slowly finding consistency and uniformity through practice and refinement.

image © idyllicchick

As a piece of art, though, I like the original sentiment, perhaps along with the belief that you need to learn something, master it, before you can deconstruct and un-learn it in a meaningful way. The free-form scribbled figures of great artists do not come without years of meticulous observation of their subject and perfecting life study portraits, and so perhaps with this pattern. I don’t think I could knit this scarf without a considerable bit of experience and confidence behind me, and perhaps I am approaching that stage now.

Sharon Emery’s wonderful pattern October is for Spinners, is available as a free download from Hanks Yarn. There is also a group for a perpetual October is For Spinners KAL on Ravelry for anyone wanting to read up on the pattern and other’s experiences and work-arounds.

All pictures used with kind permission from the pattern designer, Sharon Emery.  Find her here on Ravelry.

Click here to see other blogs tagged with knitcroblo2, blogging about this same topic for Knitting and Crochet Blog week. (May take a few hours to update on Google)

Lace knitting is like a regression. It essentially harnesses and brings under control the one thing you try to avoid as a new knitter – holes. Terrible when created accidentally, some crazy knitters make these holes on purpose, arranging them into intricate and beautiful patterns.

I have dipped my toe into the frothy pool of lace knitting before, but only a little. A simple feather and fan scarf is the most complex piece of lace I have attempted so far, but I have decided not to be afraid of any knitting techniques anymore.  What’s the worse that can happen?  I take my toes back out of the frothy lace pool and instead visit the frog pond.  So, armed with two absolutely gorgeous skeins of Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn, I had a look through some lace patterns and found a design which I liked the look of, Ailsa Daly’s Red Emperor scarf, freely available for download from her website ‘Knitabulous‘.

I have so far completed one of the edge panels of lace, and have enjoyed the knitting very much.  I haven’t found the knitting too taxing – I can still listen to an audiobook whilst I knit, I can even listen to my other half without waving my hand in his direction in the internationally recognised knitter’s gesture of ’shhh! I’m counting!’

Red Emperor lace stole - border lace design

Looking at the edge panels on the knitabulous site I realise how much comparative length is given to the stole by blocking.  The lace portion I have knitted so far is completely different in its dimensions to the finished stole as pictured, which I think is a slight shame as I like the almost 3D appearance of the cockleshell shaped motifs in the border and I now have vague concerns about having enough yarn to make an adequately long stole, but I have sworn not to get too upset if I end up with a short but beautiful rectangle.

Either way, whether this stole is due to become my favourite knitted object ever, or simply an exercise in learning another aspect of the knitting tradition, I am no longer scared of lace.  It’s just a series of yarn-overs and various decreases, reined in with a little bit of concentration.

scarf, pre-blocking

A couple of days ago I finished a scarf made from some yarn which had been hanging around me, ignored, since I started knitting.

A simple feather and fan scarf it was simple enough to knit, but exciting for the fact that it gave me my first opportunity to try and block some simple lace.  I wanted to really open up the lace pattern so tried to block the scarf quite aggressively, and here are the results:

Marialis End-to-End Scarf from Designer One Skein Wonders.

In lieu of blocking wires I used a technique that I’d heard mentioned once in which embroidery thread is run long the outside stitches and then that sturdy thread is held in place by the pins pushed into the surface upon which you are blocking the item. I’d really love to get some blocking wires one day, but at the moment an old skein of embroidery cotton provided a much less expensive alternative, and it seems to have worked very well.

Feather and fan lace, now opened up and uniform in pattern

Considering the lack of trust I had in this skein of yarn I am not unhappy with the resulting scarf. The colour settled into a striping sequence where brown waves of colour emerge from each side, looking not unlike tiger stripes, and although I might not choose to try and tame such a yarn again, at least the sequence stayed consistent throughout the knitting, which I am grateful for.

I have blocked a few things before. In fact, I block most things, from socks to cushion covers, just because I like them in their perfect flat form, but I have never used the process of blocking to fundamentally alter the structure and appearance of a piece of knitting beyond tidying and refining my stitches and the drape of the fabric I have created, or to stop a bit of curl on the edge of some stockinette.

The power of blocking never seems to be stronger than when it is applied to a piece of lace. So, when I finally cast off this crumpled piece of serpentine untamed mess I decided that I was going to block it rather aggressively. I was going to block this scarf to within an inch of its life.

You may look relaxed now... Wait until you see my pins

Currently, if you were to visit Castle Mimi, you’d find seven 1ft foam boards linked together with a very, very long scarf stretched between countless pins, propper up against the hallway wall.  It’s in the hallway as this is the only wall long enough to accommodate its length.  Amateur to lace blocking that I am, I hadn’t accounted for just how much added length you can get out of lace by blocking it.  I had assumed it would be a decent amount, but I had clearly underestimated when deciding upon the finished length of my knitting (a scientific decision arrived at by the following calculation:)

ul= f² x Q
___________
a

where: ul= unblocked length, f = how fed up I am of this scarf, Q = finish time of Question Time with the lovely David Dimbleby and a = alcohol quota.

Inputting the relevant values gave me a finished unblocked length of about 5ft.  I’m looking forward to unpinning the scarf and seeing what the actual finished length will be.  I can’t quite tell how the scarf will look at the moment as the background of the child’s foam hopscotch tiles I am using as blocking mats is breaking the patterns of the colours and the lace pattern up too much for me to be able to discern what the finished result will be.  I’m looking forward to the surprise because I think it is either going to be shockingly busy or absolutely wonderful.