Yarn buying habits – a personal reflection

Posted on June 23, 2015 by knitigatingcircumstances

Recently, I wrote a paper (for my MBA studies) about digital marketing and the yarn industry. While writing the paper, I looked at the range of producers in the sector, in particular new entrants. I also researched how people buy yarn, for example, what kinds of things influence when and how we buy yarn. This made me think about my own patterns of buying yarn. I don’t have a record of all the yarn that I buy and where and when I buy it; some people use Ravelry’s Stash function to keep track of this, but I am not that organized. However, I do have records of all of the projects that I have knit since joining Ravelry in late 2007, and of which yarns I used for each project. I looked at 2008, the first full year that I was on Ravelry, and discovered to my amazement that every single project I finished knitting in that year was made with Rowan yarn! I had only just moved to England in August of 2006 and was still very thrilled to be able to walk into my local John Lewis store and buy Rowan. That seemed the height of luxury at the time to my yarn-buying self.

I then compared 2008 with last year, 2014, and a very different picture emerged, as you can see from the below:

I must point out that these charts show the percentage of projects made with each yarn and NOT the amount of yarn bought; nonetheless, they show a pretty compelling trend. To me, the most interesting thing about the 2014 distribution is that with the exception of Rowan and Noro, which is a Japanese yarn company founded over 40 years ago, each of the other yarn companies I have used in 2014 is a new company: Madelinetosh started in 2006 and Brooklyn Tweed, Quince & Co and The Uncommon Thread all started in 2010. More than 80% of the projects I knit last year were made with yarn from companies that didn’t exist 10 years ago. New entrants into the sector are rapidly changing the market, at least for premium yarns.

I didn’t show pie charts for 2009-2013, but I am a pretty eclectic yarn user. During these years, in addition to lots of Rowan and the companies above, I knit projects using Debbie Bliss, Cascade, Studio Donegal, Hanne Falkenberg, Blue Sky Alpaca, Malabrigo, Mirasol, the Plucky Knitter, Blue Moon Fibre Arts, BC Garn and Wollmeise.

Though my Rowan projects have fallen from their 2008 pinnacle, I still find it a great product. In particular, I am totally in love with Kidsilk Haze, Felted Tweed DK and Fine Tweed. As long as Rowan keeps producing these (and maintaining quality), I will keep buying them. This year, I have so far made four projects, and two of them – the spectacular Soumak Wrap and my Gossamer pullover – used Rowan yarn. When I lived in Australia and Germany, I considered Rowan a luxury product; now that I’m in England, it is more like the standard for me – I use it as a benchmark to compare yarn prices and qualities.

I realize that my yarn-buying profile reflects the fact that I am willing to spend a lot for yarn. In my mind, both yarn and books fall into my entertainment budget. Let’s say that the yarn for a new sweater costs 100£. Well, if that sweater will take 100 hours to knit, then I am spending 1£/hour on entertainment. A bargain! (Compare to a cinema ticket!) A cashmere cowl that costs 120£ but takes only 10 hours to knit is very luxurious but still costs 12£/hour for knitting enjoyment. While I might splurge now and then, my general idea is that if the yarn costs less to knit per hour than a cup of coffee in a nice coffee shop, then it’s a good deal. This kind of thinking (where I consider the yarn as entertainment rather than part of my clothing, or gift, budget) is perhaps reflective of the fact that I am still more of a process knitter than a product knitter. On the other hand, for the past few years I have made fewer impulse yarn buys. I tend to buy yarn for a specific purpose and this seems to be more in line with a product knitter.

I think that part of my willingness to buy expensive yarn reflects the fact that I am knitting less these days. When I am knitting more, then I am conscious of cost and try to use more yarns that are good quality but affordable, like Cascade 220 for instance. I seem to be edging now into a more active knitting phase and I find that this is accompanied by a wish to search out some new affordable yarns (Quince & Co, while very high quality, is pretty affordable; it is moving up fast in my go-to list.) Having two daughters in university is another compelling reason to seek out more affordable yarns, or at least to knit fewer luxury projects. It is good to have a selection of yarns to knit with, and some of them should always be outrageously luxurious to the senses, because knitting, like cooking, is a sensual art. How about you? Are your yarn buying habits changing? Are you buying more, or less, luxury yarns? Do you calculate cost per hour of knitting (surely I’m not the only one)? Do you plan every purchase or are you an impulse buyer? Do you only buy local, or organic, or machine-washable? Inquiring minds want to know…….

Happiness is orange yarn

Posted on June 14, 2015 by knitigatingcircumstances

My orange yarn finally decided what it wanted to be when it grew up.

I bought five skeins of this beautiful silk blend from The Uncommon Thread back in February. As I wrote in this post, the yarn has a mind of its own and I had to wait for it to come to its own conclusions. We finally decided on Laelia, a lovely, lacey cardigan designed by Hanna Maciejewska, of Hada Knits. (Thank you, Laril, for sending me a link to your beautiful Laelia; it definitely helped us decide.) I’ve had my eye on Hanna’s designs for a while; she’s got a really great style.

This cardigan has a cool construction technique. You start with a provisional cast on at the back center neck, and knit the lace for a bit; then, you unravel the cast-on, put the live stitches back on the needle, and knit some more lace in the other direction. Now you have a rectangle with live stitches at both ends. You pick up along the long edge, and – voilà – you get this:

Isn’t it clever? I love it! Then, you start knitting, incorporating raglan increases as you go. This is where it stands as of this morning:

As you can see, the lace pattern runs down the front edges of the cardigan, while the back and the sleeves are in stockinette stitch. The best part about the design is that there is almost no finishing involved.

Here it is, molded into the actual cardigan shape (as much as is possible given the limitations of the needle length):

In the photo below, I’ve held it up so that you could get an idea of the shaping at the front edge and shoulder, and also so that you can see the lace pattern better. (Ignore the pesky hose that wanted to be in the photo.)

I love everything about this one so far. Happy pattern! Happy yarn! Happy knitting!

The Escher Cardigan Modification Chronicles – Part 2

Posted on June 7, 2015 by knitigatingcircumstances

It’s finished!

In my last post, I chronicled my first attempts to modify the collar of the Escher Cardigan. This lovely design, by Alexis Winslow for Brooklyn Tweed, has a very interesting and fun structure. I knit most of this cardigan exactly to pattern. I made two very simple modifications, and one slightly more complicated one.

The first modification was merely technical: I decided to knit the upper and lower edgings separately and then sew them together. In the pattern, you knit the lower edging first, and then knit the upper edging, while joining it to the lower edging stitch by stitch at the ends of each row using short row construction. I found this a bit fussy (though I am sure it gives a neater edge) so I knit the upper edging back and forth. Here you can see how it looked before I sewed the edges together:

The second modification was a very tiny one: I used I-cord bind-off instead of a rolled garter stitch edge around the entire edging. To do this, I put the lower edging on a long needle to hold the stitches live while I knit the upper edging. Then, I sewed the two seams, and knit the I-cord around the entire joined edging. (This edging had almost 600 stitches, and took me four days to finish!) Here is how I did the I-cord:

*K3, sl 1 k-wise, k1, psso, sl all 4 sts back on left needle; rep from * until all sts have been worked. Four I-cord sts remain on needle. K4tog, break yarn and draw yarn through final st.

The I-cord looks great and very professional on both sides – this is important because the collar rolls back so both sides are visible. Here is a good photo that shows the I-cord:

For those of you who carefully read the last post, you can see in the above photo that I carried through on my threat to rip out the upper edging and start again – the shoulder decreases now line up with the triangle. If you recall, the issues I had with the upper edging were that the shoulder decreases in the pattern were too close together and that I needed more stitches on the needle to accomodate my gauge and to put a bit of extra “give” into the shawl collar. Due to all of the extra fabric between the shoulder decreases, I couldn’t get the back neck to narrow anything like it does in the pattern.

Alexis WInslow has a great photo of the back collar and shoulders on her blog post about Escher. It is the third photo from the top. Let me make this clear: I think this looks great. I love the pattern and that’s why I wanted to make this cardigan. But, it was clear that I couldn’t get the collar and shoulders of my Escher to mimic hers. This is due in part to my row gauge, which is always long, and meant that the edges of the triangle on my back were significantly wider (though they did line up with my shoulders). It is also due to having wide shoulders and wanting the shoulder decreases to shape the collar AT my shoulders rather than at the shoulder blades. I tried a number of things to fix this in my first attempt, which you can read about in my last post. Ultimately, I ripped out that attempt (about 5 inches worth) and started again.

The biggest problem with my first attempt was that I went way overboard with adding more stitches. I didn’t count, just picked up so it “felt” right. I ended up with 258 stitches picked up for the upper edging, compared with 186 specidied in the pattern for my size. This time, I was more modest with 218 (57 on each end and 104 across the back) – an increase of 32 over the pattern. I moved the shoulder decreases out to line up with the edges of the triangle, thus having the width between the shoulder decreases at least five inches wider than the pattern.

I decreased for four inches, and then knit four rows as set, and then started increasing. I put the increases at the same place as the decreases, except that I reversed the sides, so that the wrong side became the right side (since the collar would “fold over” when worn). Here you can see the shapings from the right side:

and from the wrong side:

I continued increasing right out to the very edge, and this gave the collar enough “give” so that the shawl collar lies beautifully:

The problem with knitting something in this shape (like any shrug-type garment) is that until you’ve finished and blocked it, the final fit is a bit of a crap shoot. But when you get it right, it’s pretty cool:

I left out the button hole because I was modifying the collar significantly enough that I wasn’t sure how to get it placed right. I have a lovely twig-shaped pewter shawl pin (a Christmas gift from Emma) that works perfectly:

I think it looks great both closed and opened. It is also quite cozy and warm and surprisingly easy to wear.

I had a few comments from people regarding my perseverance with this pattern; I don’t see it that way. I did do some ripping and put an awful lot of thought into how to modify the collar properly so that it fit me. And I did have conceptual problems with the upper edging instructions. However, the pattern is mostly crystal clear, and very clever; I really liked knitting this. Alexis Winslow’s blog post was extremely helpful (especially her photos of blocking it – not intuitive by any means without being able to see it). And Brooklyn Tweed has superior customer support. I also had wonderful help from Ravellers, particulalry Alice (Ellisj on Rav) – thanks Alice! It worked!