Tag Archives: people

Summer of Basics June highlight: The planners

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Summer of Basics June winners: The planners

Being away for so much of the first month of Summer of Basics was SO HARD, but I’ve also really enjoyed submersing myself in the Instagram feed over the past few days and getting caught up. There have already been so many amazing statements and contributions, plans, and even finished garments! As always, you’ve made it hard to narrow it down to just a few to feature here. For example, I was struck by the thoughtfulness of @saltairarts’s chosen three, the motivation behind @ephie_jg’s participation, @bookishnathalie’s decision to not overthink it, just let it happen. (“That in itself is enough of a challenge for a control freak like me.”) Among so many others! But I’ve settled on the following THREE as the June prizes winners (in no particular order):

TOP: @thestoryclubpdx
TSC had a nice, ambitious plan to stretch her skills in three directions: hacking a sewing pattern, doing some natural dyeing, and knitting her first adult-sized sweater for herself. Then she made a very sage and clear-eyed decision about that sweater.

BOTTOM LEFT: @moorejamknits
I loved what JM had to say about coming from a long line of black women who knitted (about that not being an anomaly!), and how her SoB 3 picks have been influenced by the women who handed down their skills — and their garments — to her.

BOTTOM RIGHT: @anelementallife
Sara, a school teacher, talked about how and why summer break is a struggle for her, and how she’s using SoB to lend some structure to her time off, while also filling some gaps in her closet.

Congratulations, you three! In addition to the magnificent plans you’ve embarked on, you’ve each won a full set of Fringe Supply Co. notebooks: 1 large notebook, 1 pocket notepad, and 1 leather-covered memo book, each in the color of your choosing.* Please email contact@fringesupplyco.com with your choices and your mailing address!

And three more participants have each won 1 leather-covered memo book** in the color of their choice, via the random blindfolded scroll-and-tap method: @kerknits, @weliketosew and @ebbandsew. Please email contact@fringesupplyco.com with your color choice and your mailing address!

July’s winners (prizes TBD) will be all about works in progress, the actual progress made, and how you share about it. So keep those #summerofbasics posts coming!

*A $70 value. No substitutions and cannot be redeemed for cash.
**A $32 value. No substitutions and cannot be redeemed for cash.

 

New Favorites: Dianna’s dream sweaters

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New Favorites: Dianna's dream sweaters

It’s always fun to see a designer really hit their stride, which is how I feel about my friend Dianna Walla’s recently released mini-collection, Fog & Frost. It’s five pieces that feel completely true to Dianna, and while I love the hat and the mitts, I can’t stop looking at the sweaters! They’ve got me fantasizing about sweater weather in the thick of TN summer—

TOP: Mountain Hum is a fitted colorwork yoke sweater with a slight vintage vibe, which makes stunning use of a gradient yarn in a large-scale feather-like motif

BOTTOM: Polar Night is its sweet, slouchy cousin, with a hybrid raglan-circular yoke bearing a more understated stranded design

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PREVIOUSLY in New Favorites: A little something to knit

True Confessions and Our Tools, Ourselves

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Funny moments in Our Tools, Ourselves

If there’s one installment of Our Tools, Ourselves that pops into my mind on a regular basis and makes me laugh every time, it’s the interview with crocheter-stitcher-knitter-sewer Tif Fussell (aka Dottie Angel) with one of the funniest confessions of all time. And of course, the whole series is a trove of wit and wisdom!

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PREVIOUSLY in Our Tools, Ourselves: Jenny Gordy of Wiksten

Top photo © Tif Fussell

Meeting my Blog Crush: Rosa Pomar

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Meeting my Blog Crush: Rosa Pomar

Actually, I can tell you one thing we’re doing — right off the bat — is going to Retrosaria Rosa Pomar in Lisbon, a shop I’ve longed to visit for years and am proud to count as a Fringe Supply Co. stockist. I “met” Rosa on Instagram shortly after learning to knit, and wrote about her blog awhile back — a post a few of you cited when I asked for your favorites. The hat pattern of hers that I knitted in 2014 is still one of my all-time favorite knits. I knitted it Portuguese style, as taught to me by Brooke, and as much as I LOVED that, I somehow haven’t done it since — so I’m excited to relearn from Rosa and to finally get to see her beautiful shop and yarns and get to spend some quality time with her. Definitely check out these links and especially her Instagram feed @rosapomar.

*Which has probably already happened by the time this posts! 

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Squam part 2: Knitting, dyeing, hiking, wearing

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Squam part 2: Knitting, dyeing, hiking, wearing

Squam Art Workshops takes place at an old summer camp in New Hampshire, on the shore of Squam Lake (where On Golden Pond was filmed). It’s actually two camps, built one right after the other in the late 1800s by a civil war widow and her protegé, and combined into one after the death of the older woman. It’s about as picturesque a place as you could ever imagine, so you spend a lot of time just ogling and photographing your surroundings, from the rustic cabins with their screened porches and iceboxes (literally) to the docks and the woods and the paths and the phone-booth cabin and the dining-hall window … and the list goes on. My first afternoon, before my cabin mates arrived, I wandered around shooting Fringe bags everywhere, from the woodshed to the wheelbarrows. It’s the sort of place that makes everyone look like a brilliant photographer.

On the second and third days, I taught my cables class. And on Friday afternoon, when my second class let out, I was overcome with that school’s-out-for-summer feeling. I’d be working like a madwoman before I left, then teaching (which I sincerely love and enjoy) and then suddenly I realized I had almost 48 hours to just enjoy the place and the people and my cabin mates, which this year were Kristine and Adrienne from Verb, my beloved pal and two-time cabin mate Mary Jane Mucklestone, and Jessica Forbes, the co-owner of Ravelry, who’d I’d met briefly on many, many occasions but had never gotten to spend any time with. She is a HOOT! So there was a lot of dock-sitting and knitting, porch-sitting and knitting, fireplace-sitting and knitting. On Saturday, MJ and Adrienne and I hiked up to the top of Rattlesnake (point? ridge? peak?) and took in the incredible view of the lake. This is MJ at the tippy-top, below right:

Squam part 2: Knitting, dyeing, hiking, wearing

But I’m getting ahead of myself. So Friday afternoon: Class is over, I’m done teaching, and I’ve come prepared. The really hard part about teaching is not getting to take classes, when you’re surrounded by all these people learning to block print and macrame and make beautiful journals and … so many temptations. But before I left for camp, it occurred to me there might be the slight possibility of dipping a little something into Kristine’s natural indigo vats when her students were done. She was very sweet to indulge me (even though it was really wrong of me to ask) so these little bundles are what I had packed in my bags, just case:

Squam part 2: Knitting, dyeing, hiking, wearing

And here’s how they turned out:

Squam part 2: Knitting, dyeing, hiking, wearing

The upper one is the white linen shell I had sewn just in time for Squam last year. And the smock is my once-white State Smock, which was getting a little “ring around the collar”-y. The both came out almost exactly as I had imagined them, and I can tell you that dyeing with a few friends and a can of beer, on the wraparound porch of a lodge building overlooking a scenic lake, is one lovely way to spend a Friday afternoon. My biggest thanks to Kristine for the dyeing and to Mary Jane for the beer!

So I came home with two new-again garments, but I know you’re wondering how my ultra-minimal packing list played out in the woods. Here are all the ways the contents of my suitcase got worn (with a bonus tee I bought at the gift shop while I was there) —

Squam outfits

The cardigan was frequently in my bag (or over my shoulders) just in case, but it was mostly too warm for it. I wore the clay pants 5 out of 6 days, and the jeans only once. Those pants are PERFECT in this setting, and barely even showed dirt. And it was fine that I only had my Chucks with me — even on the bouldering part of the hike. (Although I did also have flipflops for shower shoes, basically.)

For the full inventory/origins on the garments, see my packing post. And to see the real-time Story of my week in motion, watch the highlight reel in my Instagram profile. I’ll be watching it anytime I need a moment of peace.

Squam part 2: Knitting, dyeing, hiking, wearing

PREVIOUSLY: Squam part 1, Gauge (and other) lessons

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Squam part 1: Gauge lessons

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Squam part 1: Gauge lessons

I have so much to tell you (or show you) about my six days at Squam Art Workshops (aka art camp for grown-ups) that I’m breaking it into two parts! First, let’s talk about my classes. This year and last, I’ve taught a class called In the Company of Cables, which is ostensibly a class about how to knit cables but is really a class about getting comfortable with reading charts, tracking your progress, fixing mistakes, seeing the pattern in a way that often frees you from needing to keep referring to the chart, and so on. Which is good, because this year all but six of the people who signed up already knew how to knit cables! I’m always saying you should take classes from people you find interesting, even if you already know the thing they’re teaching, because there’s always something to be learned in amongst all the dialogue that happens in a knitting class. I say that, and then I freak out a little bit when people who already know everything I’m teaching take my class! So hopefully even the pros in the room picked up a good tip or two. I certainly enjoyed spending the day with both groups, and feel very honored that people would want to listen to me yammer on about something they already know. So thank you to everyone who signed up, beginners and lifelongers alike!

(Gravest apologies to the half of the cutie-pie sister duo I accidentally cut off in the only still photo I took of Friday’s group! Everyone is in the frame in the video version found in my Instagram highlight reel.)

In Friday’s class, we had an amazing demonstration of why gauge matters. For myriad reasons, I don’t ask my students to swatch for the hat that I teach, but they do have homework. They’re asked to cast on 90 sts and work the first few rows of the pattern before coming to class. Everyone uses the identical yarn, Osprey, and size US8 needles. Obviously, because everyone’s tension varies, everyone’s finished hat size will vary, and my hope is that everyone winds up with a hat that will fit someone they know. But I do state that if you know yourself to be a loose knitter, cast on 80 stitches instead, so your hat won’t be gigantic. Check out this photo:

Squam part 1: Gauge lessons

Am (@oystersandpurls) is on the right, and she cast on the prescribed 90 stitches. Am is a tighter knitter than me, so her hat is smaller than my pattern/samples. Brienne (@brienne_moody), on the left, is a loose knitter so she cast on only 80 stitches, and her hat is still bigger than my samples! Think about this for a second: the hat on the left has 10 fewer stitches and is significantly larger than the hat on the right, even though they were knitted in the same yarn on the same size needles. Fortunately, they both still fit: One is a slouchy beanie and the other is a fitted skullcap. But it was an incredibly vivid example of the difference gauge makes in the finished dimensions of a project — even a little hat.

(And how cute are they with their matching toffee Field Bags? I just noticed that.)

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PREVIOUSLY: Squam 2017 reflections and outfits

New Favorites: Thea on a roll

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New Favorites: Thea Colman knitting patterns

The lovely and talented Thea Colman seems to have really hit her stride lately. Witness these three recently released patterns:

TOP: Brennivin is a gorgeous and cozy cardigan with a narrow shawl collar (pictured unfolded) and just a little bit of non-lacy lace patterning up around the shoulders

BOTTOM LEFT: Oban Sweater is the pullover version of her Oban hat, with such a simple but highly effective stitch combination — even more effective spread out across a sweater

BOTTOM RIGHT: Water is a Flint MI fundraiser in the form of a hat pattern — a fabulous cable hat at that. All proceeds are going to help kids affected by the water crisis in Flint, via an initiative led by an 11-year-old — just go read about it! And there’s also a campaign afoot to actually knit hats for these kids; more on that in Thea’s Ravelry group.

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PREVIOUSLY in New Favorites: Sweatshirt sweaters

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