Forbidden Woolery

Wow, 2011 was quite a year!  It started with pure joy.

Hi Baby!

And ended in heartbreak.

Rob Dalsing, you will be missed

In between, there were fiber festivals and Stitches East, a cross-country move, and so much more!

Although absolutely insane, with many highs and lows, 2011 was a fantabulous year for Forbidden Woolery.

What’s in store for 2012?  New patterns, new yarns, new colors, new shows, new projects, lots of knitting and spinning, and hopefully lots more blogging about all of the above…

Are you excited?  I am!  What are your goals for 2012?

After what seems like an eternity, Forbidden Woolery’s Pattern Shop is now up and running!

First up, Tidepool Vest. I wrote this pattern back in 2009 and it was my first submission to Knitty. I think I made it through quite a few cutting rounds, because it wasn’t rejected until a few weeks before the fall issue went live.

Tidepool Vest is a simple, striped vest with lots of shaping, deep garter ribbing, and a v-neck. It’s meant to be worn with minimal ease, so it can be layered. It’s perfect for a chilly office to give that tired “office cardigan” a bit of a rest, or to layer under a jacket any season of the year.

I love to wear this vest with jeans and boots in the winter, or paired with some slacks and heels for work.  It’s extremely versatile and easy to wear

The sample shown is knit using one skein each of Dream in Color Smooshy and Cascade Heritage, plus a very little of Knit Picks Bare sock yarn.  But it would be absolutely perfect knit up in Forbidden Woolery’s Footloose sock yarn, or any of our other fingering weight yarns, including Twinkle for some added drape, Pride for some sparkle, or our new Gluttony line, a 4-ply BFL fingering weight yarn with lots of shine.   Check out the shop today for some inspiration!

After giving my mom a pair of handknit socks (from handspun yarn, no-less), she immediately requested handknit socks in black, grey, and navy to go with all her pants.  I knew I was going to have to find something special to knit to hold my interest through all those dark colors.  When the IK Winter 2010 issue arrived at my doorstep with several pairs of *fabulous* socks in it, I instantly needed to cast on for the Pinked Socks…you know how it is.  I had just spent a lot of time at the dyepot, and fell in love with a new colorway, Winter Dusk.   I love the variation the purple/pink undertones give the gray and, paired with some Knitpicks Stroll in black, knew it would work perfectly for either the mom-requested black *or* gray socks.

Pinked Socks with black as the main color

Pattern: Pinked Socks (IK Winter 2010)
Yarn: Forbidden Woolery Footloose, Winter Dusk, 1 skein (used about half)
Knitpicks Stroll, black, 2 skeins (but didn’t use all of either)
Needle: Knitpicks Harmony DPNs, US1
Modifications: None. I did work them two at a time, on two sets of DPN’s, so I wouldn’t get second sock syndrome. I knit each cuff, then each leg, then each heel/foot, then each toe. It worked out quite well, if I do say so myself!

But giving these away to my mom didn’t serve my selfish purposes at all – *I* wanted a pair of these socks!!!  Luckily, there was enough of each color leftover to make another pair, using the opposite colors for the main and contrasting colors.  I liked the Winter Dusk better anyway, and, of course, wanted to show off my colorway.  So off I went on Pinked Socks v2.0

Pinked Socks with Winter Dusk as the main color

I absolutely love the way this pattern shows off the variegation in the Winter Dusk colorway.  It still amazes me each and every day what comes out of the dyepot, and it gives me a little thrill to see it all knitted up.  Here’s a closeup of the toe:

I love the variegation in the Winter Dusk colorway

Being colorwork, and therefore double-stranded, the socks are uber-warm and the Footloose base is so sproingy and soft.  These socks definitely get two thumbs up!

Last weekend was an anniversary of sorts for Forbidden Woolery.  At the W.O.O.L. retreat in 2009, I vended for the very first time.  It was a small retreat with a “Vending Hour”, but it was one of the most amazing experiences of my fiber life.  Up until that point, I had only ever sold my yarn and fiber online.  There’s a little thrill that still goes through me every time I get an email telling me I have a sale.  But there’s also something inherently discouraging in having an online shop.  It’s so easy for a shopper to look at your product and just keep clicking on.  They can’t feel the softness of the fiber or the sproing of the yarn and fall in love the same way they can in person.  There’s no personal interaction – the human element is missing.  And, as a seller, you get no feedback on your product.

So when I actually got to interact with shoppers for the first time, I was so completely uplifted.  And to hear positive feedback from other dyers I have immense respect for was indescribable.  I let them convince me to vend at the Chancellor’s Sheep & Wool Showcase in April 2010 as part of the Indie Oasis, a group of independent dyers and artists, including Bittersweet Woolery, Into the Whirled, and Stitched By Jessalu.

I spent weeks dyeing up stock, and worked until 2am the night before the show, finishing up my yarn display case, sticking labels on shopping bags, weighing and pricing braids of fiber.  And, finally the day arrived.  I had no idea what to anticipate – would shoppers react positively to my product?  Would I make any sales at all?  And what happened absolutely blew me away – I couldn’t have had a better day.  Beautiful weather, wonderful people, and a reaction to my product and branding that was beyond expectation.  And I was hooked!  I knew for certain at the end of that day that this was my calling.

Last weekend was the 2011 Chancellor’s Sheep & Wool Showcase.  Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t anywhere near as nice as the previous year – it poured for most of the day and while a lot of hard-core fiber enthusiasts still showed up, the foot traffic suffered considerably.  Honestly, I was cold and miserable for pretty much the entire day.  I had planned to show off my newborn son to my friends in the Indie Oasis (and wooing shoppers into my booth, of course!), but he ended up spending the entire day in the truck with my in-laws while I shivered in my booth, alone.

The day wasn’t a complete wash-out though.  The women of Indie Oasis were awesome, as always, and my new booth set up was well-received.  I made some great contacts and, even though it was a very slow day, I still felt a sense of renewal and confirmation that this is, in fact, my destiny.

I didn’t take many pictures – wandering around in the mud and cold rain to take photos wasn’t high on my priority list.  But I did snap a few shots of the booth.

The set-up was a little cramped and backwards, because of the rain coming into the booth.

Forbidden Woolery Booth - Clermont

Here are the new batt and yarn displays.  Both are a little emptier than I’d planned, but a newborn takes up a lot of time!  I’m really excited about how they transformed the look of the booth, though.

The new batt and yarn display

And the fiber – my cascading waterfall of color that I cherish so.  There were lots of new colors this year that I’m really excited about – Sunnydale, Kreacher, and Dobby to name a few.  I went heavy on the Harry Potter colorways to celebrate the upcoming release of the final movie in July.

Yummy Fiber

The next festival is the Long Island Fleece and Fiber Fair on May 21st.  I hope to see you there!

As featured in the current (Winter 2011) issue of KnittySpin magazine!!!

One of my favorite things to make for the shop is my self-striping batts. Because of my unrestrained nerdiness, I currently carry them in Harry Potter house colors (which conveniently coincide with several professional sports teams) in superwash blue-faced leicester, but hope to be branching out to other colors and fibers throughout the festival season this year.

I’ve played with these batts at length, and decided it was finally time to put together a tutorial on how to use them.  I pulled out the camera, excitedly dusted off the spinning wheel, and got to work!  This superwash BFL is wonderful for socks, so that is what I’m making.  I used two one-ounce batts to make one sock.

Here is a self-striping batt in the Slytherin colorway – green and silver:

When unrolled, you can see there are two colors sitting side by side:

The first thing you need to decide is how long you want your stripes to be.  I want lots of thinnish stripes of equal-ish width throughout my sock, so I divided each batt into eight (8) sections. Because I want them equal-ish, I started by dividing the batt in half:

I then divided each half into half again, and in half again, until I had this laid out in front of me:

To preserve the color changes and create the self-striping look, you want to spin all of one color and then all of the second color in each strip before moving to the next.  You can do this in one of two ways (that I’ve figured out, anyway) – either by spinning from the fold, or by starting in one corner of the batt and working your way to the opposite corner.  I prefer the latter method – I find it less finicky than spinning from the fold.

Now, seeing as how I’m an OCD-type A-perfectionist, I like to switch hooks on my bobbin every time I change colors.  After I finish spinning all of the strips in both batts, I end up with a bobbin that looks like this:

The most obvious way to preserve the color changes is to knit with the single.  However, I’m not a fan of singles, and certainly not for socks.

To create a 2-ply yarn, I would spin each batt onto a separate bobbin and then ply them together.  You can work with the unevenness in length of color between each bobbin to create a barberpole effect, or you can preserve the color changes by matching up the colors as you go (e.g., if I run out of green on Bobbin A, I break the green on Bobbin B and unwind Bobbin B until I find where the grey starts, and rejoin to continue plying in grey from each bobbin.)

However, for socks, I prefer a 3-ply yarn so I navajo-plied the single off one bobbin.  This is my favorite way to ply in general.  The finished product is 380 yards of 16wpi:

I chose a simple ribbed sock with a German heel and a French toe to show off the stripes I created.  They’re not completely even, but it actually makes me love it more!

Well, hurry up and try it yourself!

I just ordered Gudren Johnston’s new book – The Shetland Trader – Book One. I first saw mention of it on Brooklyn Tweed, as Jared Flood is responsible for the stunning photography. I won’t post any pictures here, for fear of stepping on someone’s toes, but you have to check them out!

All the designs incorporate an aspect of traditional Shetland lace knitting, as that is where Gudren is from and what inspires her knitting. However, her ability to modernize the traditional patterns is what makes her work truly stunning. And, especially important to me, most of the designs in the book are knit with fingering or laceweight yarn. As I become a more experienced knitter, I truly gravitate towards garments made in lightweight yarn as opposed to worsted weight as the majority of them seem to be.  If you look at the yarns I carry here at Forbidden,  you can see that I carry this opinion all the way to the bank, so to speak.

The first design that caught my eye and caused me to want to purchase the book is Laar. It’s a beautiful cardigan knit in lace yarn on US3 needles. Which you know means it has amazing drape, even without the 50/50 merino/silk yarn it’s knit in. I just stocked the shop with a crazy-soft lace yarn that’s 70% alpaca, 20% silk, and 10% cashmere. Originally, I purchased the base yarn so I could design a pair of gloves that have been swimming in my head since Thanksgiving in my new Winter Dusk colorway. Now I’m thinking that the Peter Rabbit colorway would make a mighty fine Laar. What say you?

But one design does not warrant a $23 purchase…at least not for me. So then there is Norie, a very cute, slouchy beanie-hat combining lace stripes with garter stitch accents. I think I can dig up some DK weight yarn from the stash for this. If not, I’m sure I could refigure for some Indulge Sport.Plivver uses fingering weight yarn, as well. At this point, I thought, “Are you kidding me?” This book is perfect for me! I could probably knit just about every garment in here! Granted, Plivver won’t fit me until next fall brings handknit weather again, but I just made up a queue yesterday of everything I want to knit, not including baby knits, and I have more than enough to keep me busy until this would fit me again! The lace body combined with the ribbed cowl neck is striking, and I think that drapey Twinkle or super soft Lush would be the perfect yarn to pair with this design!

And then I saw that

I could truly gush forever. But you just have to check it out for yourself.

The dyepots have been bubbling on overtime here at Forbidden Woolery.  Not only am I addicted to seeing the beautiful colors emerge, but it also keeps the entire first floor heated when I have three burners going in the kitchen!  We managed to not turn our heat on until just before the first of November – a new record!!!

I’ve been listing lots of goodies over at the shop…go check it out!  Here’s a sneak peek:

Great Pumpkin, Horcrux, Yellow Brick Road, Emerald City, Pumpkin Pasties

All these yarns are in my “Twinkle” base – 65% superwash merino, 35% bamboo.  The natural anti-bacterial properties of bamboo make it a perfect sock yarn, but the drape of this yarn is absolutely stunning – perfect for lace or even a sweater.  At 460+ yards per skein, the possibilities are endless!

I’ve also been listing lots of fiber.  Next up are batts – self-striping in Harry Potter house colors, as well as my special “Northern Lights” blend of Dorset and Coopworth and “Just Breathe” in superwash BFL with a touch of Angelina for some glitter.

Northern Lights Batts at Maine Fiber Frolic in June 2010

And the dyepots aren’t slowing down by any means.  Stay tuned for lots more yarn in every base and a ton of fiber – including the new-to-Forbidden Polwarth!

And because that’s just not enough activity, I’m also finishing up the schematics for a new design that I just can’t wait to get on the needles!

Isn't this just begging for some colorwork?

Stay tuned!!!

The new site is still under construction, but soon to come are all kinds of fibery posts.  I’ll most likely cross-post between here and my personal knitting blog, See Leann Knit, at least where all things Forbidden Woolery are concerned, until the site is fully functional and I get the hang of this WordPress thing!  Bear with me, please!

But, of course, what’s a knitting blog post, without a picture, so here’s one from today’s adventure to Mood, where I got sucked into the world of belt buckles for the newest design I’m working on…