Gift Knitting

I have written that I have finished a few things but not shown them here as they were for gifts. When knitting for an expected baby, there are quite a few months for making, especially if you work gradually and don’t put it off until the last minute. I was surprised by how many items I had made. I knitted seven things and sewed three garments. Except for one sewn item, all the makes were from stash, mostly leftovers. I only made one pair of booties, even though the mother loves my hand knit booties. I just didn’t have it in me to make more but I know I should. I did make three hats though. Plus a dress and two jackets. I am really pleased with everything I made and the mother loves them, but she is very knitworthy. 

 

 

In August, I showed a baby jacket that I had sewn. Here are the first two I made. For the first one I purchased fabric and binding and made it exactly as the pattern. I used my serger to finish all the seams but decided it would definitely be better lined; which I did with the next one. (The third one I made reversible.)

I then made a dress with left over fabric, and I had buttons in stash.

 

On a yarn crawl I was given a skein of yarn that I loved the yarn but couldn’t think what to do with as I had just the one skein but a baby jacket was just right with enough yarn left over for a hat.

 

I had just one skein of tweed yarn used in the blue and tweed jacket. In the pattern only the yoke is striped but when I knew I was not going to have enough of the tweed for the sleeves, I used it all up on the body and then worked the rest of the sleeves in blue. Came out pretty well I think. 

 

The pink hat is a pattern I have made before as it is a good hat for babies as it stretches. The yarn was left over from a charity hat and there was still enough left over to use in the multi-coloured hat. The pattern for that is Golden Pear and is a good way to use up small amounts of yarn.

 

I had purchased the white and lilac yarns used in the dress specifically so I had baby yarn in my stash. I had used them both in other baby knits but still had a full skein of the white left. Perfect for this dress pattern.

 

What Is Going On in the Yarn World

There has been an interesting development involving a yarn dyer that I want to write about, but won’t name, because this post is about the dynamics, gas-lighting, lies and assumptions that are being made on all sides, and how this actually affects future purchasing decisions.

Currently, this person is being talked about on Ravelry, Reddit, and Twitter as well as individual accounts on Instagram.

Basically this dyer has been taking money for orders and then not fulfilling the orders. Apparently, she has always been a slow/delayed shipper but now it has come to the point of nothing being shipped while still taking money for subscription boxes. These have been an especial problem because the next quarter’s payment has been taken before the original delivery date of the current quarter’s box so subscribers have paid for two boxes without being aware there is a problem and that they are not going to get anything.

Of course, customers started to ask when they could expect to receive their order and were told that it would be coming, they were inundated, packing will happen this weekend, most of them went out, etc. etc. -  basically string customers along. And this is when it caught the attention of the wider internet because customers were not getting what they ordered and wondered if they were the only one – turns out they weren’t by a long way.

But this is where it gets interesting, plenty of evidence that orders are not being fulfilled but people are defending her. The head of a large company posted about not casting aspersions on businesses that were trying to do the right thing while dealing with supply chain issues, a supporter denied the truth of the spreadsheet of unfulfilled orders as there were no receipts, another supporter called a person a knitler because they weren’t content to wait for their order.

In the be aware threads, there is occasional speculation, “I wonder if”, a poster then repeats it as a definite, this gets picked up by a different medium and suddenly it is fact.

Also I have noticed people who like to make fun of what is going on screenshot individual posts from various mediums that are taken out of context and get their rabid fan base riled up over the content. This is rather funny, seeing people getting their knickers in a twist over a post that is taken completely out of context or involves an inside joke.

But how does this affect future purchasing? Obviously, people are not going to buy from the person who is currently in trouble, but they are also put off purchasing from the rabid supporters. The ones who come into discussions with all guns blazing because they want to stop anything bad being said about their friend/acquaintance. Regardless of how loudly or quietly you have been supportive, if you don’t come back and say sorry I was wrong or sorry I did not know, you have alienated many future purchasers. Other dyers are affected as it makes people very wary of purchasing online directly from dyers. Especially as in many of the cases of problematic dyers, purchasers are told they are ordering yarn that is in stock, which later turns out to be untrue. So how can you trust any dyer that says yarn is in stock?

The repercussions of a problematic dyer ripples out to many in the crafting industry.

Two Cardigans

I finished the lace cardigan and took photos of it and the other cardigan I finished in August. I am very happy with them both and can’t wait to wear them.

The first one I finished is Aureed and I chose this pattern as one of the podcasters from the Yarniacs podcast made it in 2021. Her talking about it frequently and seeing the pattern page made me want to make one and I cast on on January 5^th. I used mademinetosh Tosh Sock and there were already some other projects made with this yarn, so I knew it would work. Funny story about this yarn. I had purchased four skeins on the 2014 Yarn Crawl for a specific pattern as I had calculated that would be enough. Worried that it wouldn’t be, the week after the yarn crawl, I went back to the store and purchased another skein – I ended up using all but 8g of the fourth skein. Also, after buying the yarn I swatched for my original pattern choice, didn’t get gauge and didn’t feel like messing about with gauge and pattern so the yarn just sat in my stash until I decided it needed to be knit up and I chose Aureed. Of course I didn’t get gauge but it was easy just to follow a different size.

The fronts are shaped with short rows and I was a bit worried about this as my short rows aren’t the neatest. I used Shadow Stitch short rows and they came out almost hidden. Blocking of the pick up row and the front band made a big difference to the look of the garment. the first photo is a bit goofy but does show off the fronts.

 

The other cardigan finished was a lace cardigan I started in March 2020. When I purchased a load of yarn in a going-out-of-business sale in 2019, my intention was always to have a project on the needles with sale yarn until it was all used up. This project extended that aim quite a bit. Although now I only have two amount left, one of which has a pattern chosen and swatched.

Anyway, back to this project. In the sale I bought two skins of Findley by Juniper Moon, a laceweight yarn that I knew would be enough for a cardigan. A search of Ravelry came up with a lovely lace cardigan, OregonCoast Cardigan and I purchased the pattern. This is not the best written pattern, for a start it is 19 pages (15 for paper saver pattern) and the pages are not numbered! The instructions about gauge are wishy washy and not for a new lace knitter. Comments on Ravelry said that the chart is confusing as it doesn’t state from which row to start the pattern repeat as it is not row 1. (I decided to use the written instructions.) The front band is finished by working the last stitch of the band with one stitch of the body. You do this all the way around until you reach the other side of the band at center front and then you graft (or weave as she calls it) the two ends of the band together. The problem is that you have a join right at the front which she states in the pattern will be half-stitch off. I marked the center back stitch, worked to that point and then rejoined the yarn to the other end of the band and continued the decreasing/joining so that I ended up with the seam at center back. No worrying about a seam showing.

One change I made which was due to personal style and not the pattern is that I wanted longer sleeves and I worked twice the number of rows before the shaping.

Despite these issues, I made a successful garment and am very happy with the end result. It is just annoying when you pay for a pattern and it has issues. I would not recommend this pattern to anyone who had not made a lace garment before.

 

A Little Bit of Shopping

I’m sure I am not the only one who wants to support small and/or new businesses but does not want any of the items they sell.

Last weekend was the Vista Fiber Fiesta. I have attended for a number of years whenever I have been in town but it has changed from a nice size festival with so much choice to a small event hanging on by its nails.

I would like the festival to continue and to grow, but growth is not happening. The organizing group changed this year and I hope with one festival under their belt they will start to promote this event to vendors.

This year I went with the specific purpose of buying to support vendors so that they will return and tell others to come and sell their wares. The difficulty of buying for the sake of buying is actually choosing something that is not going to weigh you down every time you see it in the stash. So I was very surprised to see amidst the sea of colour a skein of white sparkled yarn as I had this in my head as something to buy. The other yarn I purchased was a show special and it is likely that I will need it for my blanket.

There was a stall selling project bags – I do not need project bags – but they were selling packets of fabric left over from their bag making. These were a good price and fabric that you wouldn’t find in Jo Anns. I was very good and only purchased one pacakage.

So at the end of the day, what seemed like a tough choice because I didn’t really want anything, turned out to be good additions to my stash.