barfgreen.com!

Hi! I have some cool news to share :)

When I started BGIB (new initialism?!) (PS did you know there’s a difference between acronyms and initialisms? nerd time…), I decided to choose a free, easy to use platform (wordpress!) so that I could try out blogging without a lot of complicated setup – or consequences, if I didn’t stick with it for very long. I started writing way back in June 2013 (whoa)!

Since I’m planning to continue blogging this year, I thought it might be time to spruce up my blogging space a little bit. Sooooooo… (drumroll)…

From now on, you can find me over at barfgreen.com!

You’ll find all of the blog posts I’ve written here over at the new space, all the comments everyone has left, all the photos – and whatever is to come in the future :) I hope you’ll consider following me over to barfgreen.com! I’d love to hear what you think. Thanks for reading, and happy crafting!!

Neon Confetti Irresistible!

Hi! Happy January! Is that a thing that people say? Happy January anyway :)

So far I’ve spent quite a lot of this calendar year eating nachos (YES) and watching the West Wing on netflix (YES) with my favourite person :) I have not been doing any knitting (broken record: no-crafting-for-wrist-healing-for-as-long-as-I-can-stand-it-so-that-hopefully-it-really-heals-this-time).

But! I did do a little bit of knitting back in mid-December that I haven’t shown you yet. (It was a bad idea wrists-wise, but I can still show it to you. Yeah!)

Remember this neon yarn that I gushed about (from Vancouver’s RainCityKnits) which I picked up at this summer’s Fibrations festival in Victoria?

I love speckley, sprinkley yarns like this one, even though I sometimes have a hard time finding patterns that really make them shine. I’m using it to make (Guelph’s) Ash Kearns’ pattern, Clincher, and I’m still pretty obsessed with it. (Also kind of pleased that both the yarn and the pattern are by Canadians :) )

I think the combination of yarn and pattern here is FANTASTIC. Kudos to RainCity dyer (and lovely person) Krista for doing such a beautiful and non-pool-ey dye job!

Project glamour shots time? I think so.

Neon yarn + simple, addictive pattern + bright happy project bag = COME ON

Finally, regularly scheduled cat leg cameo:

Yeah. I really, really love how this yarn is knitting up, and when I’m back in fighting form knitting-wise, I’m going to be all over this prettiness. It just makes my heart happy!

2014 in review!

Check it out – WordPress has this cool “year in review” feature that compiles a bunch of statistics from a blog over the last year. Neat!

Click here to see the complete report.

My blog is pretty tiny right now (in terms of traffic, commenting, that kind of thing), but that’s okay with me. First, because even chatting with a few friends (YOU GUYS!) is still lovely – and nicer than chatting just to Miss New Zealand… Second, because it means there’s still lots of room to grow!

I’m still thinking about the how’s and why’s, but I think I’d love to make growing the blog a little bit a goal for 2015. It might be challenging, especially if my arm strain issues continue to prevent me from crafting as much as I’d like to, but I really enjoy blogging so I want to try!

I’m not normally a big “resolutions” person, but I do like the idea of goals and targets (which you could argue is just semantics… but it’s a meaningful distinction to me. I think goals and targets communicate an intentional flexibility and aspirational quality, while resolutions have kind of a more rigid, “to be broken” feeling that can set you up for feelings of failure. ANYWAY!).

I have a few others in mind for this coming year that I’m still mulling over. What about you? Are you thinking about goals, craft-related or otherwise, around this time of year?

The best: I won some yarn!!

Yarn contests. They are ALL over the internet. Blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter, and even Instagram: they’re all fertile spaces for bloggers, yarnies, indie dyers, and designers to share yarn, patterns, and other prizes with the people who follow them. I can’t even count the number of yarn contests I’ve entered over the years. A couple of weeks ago, I WON ONE!

This package arrived…

…with my prize in it!

The contest I won was run by Anna from Mythic Yarns, and my prize was this gorgeous skein of merino, cashmere and nylon yarn (Anna also very generously added some delicious chocolates to my package!). The colourway is called “The Golden Fleece”, and I REALLY love it! The golden, slightly mustardy yellow with little hints of white throughout is super super pretty. Miss New Zealand definitely approved!

I am SO excited to use this pretty pretty yarn. It’s totally my kind of yellow, and it’s lovely and soft as well! You should definitely check out Mythic Yarns. (Here’s their etsy store!) I love a lot of the colourways – and their names! Like, “Aphrodite was made of seafoam?” and “LEPRECHAUN BARF”!! – so creative :)

I feel crazy lucky to have won!! Yay :) Yarn is the best thing you can get in the mail, I think.

By the way, Anna, the dyer at Mythic, is also a pattern designer. She recently released a very pretty fingerless glove pattern that would pair perfectly with my winning yarn, or with most fingering weight yarns you might have in your stash. Check out Twisted Scarlet!

And on that note, I wish you all excellent luck in entering yarn contests in the future; I hope you win something someday too!

Happy Christmas!

Happy holidays, no matter what you celebrate! I hope you’ve had a good break, or at least some time with family, some tasty food, and some rest. Ideally, I hope you’ve had hugs and lots of yarn to squish :)

My holiday has been lovely, with so many good things, and LOTS of snacks. No knitting (wrists, ugh), but lots of Ravelling and thinking about future projects.

Aside from all the holiday niceness above, I also got this package in the mail yesterday…

It contained yarn :) I’ll show you what was inside soon! Happy, happy holidays.

Chevron Blanket: Forest Heather or Bust!

Last time I updated you on my Heirloom Chevron Throw, it looked like this (ugh, this photo is blurry because my corner of Canada + November = dark all the time!):

Since then, I’ve made some fun progress! I finished the last rows of the 4th stripe, in Cascade 220 “Irlande”.

After I finished the last full chevron, the next bit of the pattern is to work two corner triangles to square everything off, using the last colour. I really love changing colours in striped projects. It just always feels really momentous!

The last colour is also Cascade 220, in “Forest Heather”. I’ve been pretty impressed with the Cascade 220 colourways that I chose for this project, especially the Heathers, because they’re actually fairly layered and interesting. I think of Cascade 220 as an affordable workhorse yarn, and I think it’s been just right for this project. Good drape, enough squish factor, and lots and lots of colours to choose from. I’m so pleased with how all the colours are looking together! It’s definitely a greeny-goldy bonanza. Not colours that would make everyone happy, but I really like them.

Of course, somebody still thinks this project is JUST for her, so when I spread it out to look at my progress and take a few photos, she opportunistically jumped up and settled in. Sneak!

To Sale Shop or Not to Sale Shop?

Hi! Are you keeping an eye out for yarn sales right now? I’m not a big fan of the craziness of Black-Friday-Weekend-Whatever shopping, but I have noticed some pretty tempting yarn and fiber sales being mentioned on twitter…

For example, did you know that RainCityKnits (a huge favourite of mine) is offering 20% off ALL of their yarn for the next few days? AAAH! See this tweet for the deets!

I’ve been plotting and planning to order some RainCity Merino Worsted for a while now. I want to make the NEON SKI BONNET with it, for several reasons:

1. Neon.
2. Cool stitch patterns and construction
3. POMPOM RIGHT?!!
4. It will make me look even more like an adorable tiny child.

This image of the hat is from the designer, Lacey Volk’s, blog:

Ooooh yes. So! I know I want to use RainCity’s yarn and Lacey Volk’s pattern. The remaining questions are:

1. Which colour of yarn?!!
2. Should I buy it now, while it’s on sale, even though it’s right before the holidays (when I should be buying things for OTHER people…)?

Colour-wise, I’ve narrowed it down to…

Lemon Yellow

Electric Coral

Kelly Green

Wasabi

OR Apple Green

(**ALL images of RainCity’s yarns belong to them and are from their Etsy shop, which you should go and check out!**)

I just cannot decide which colour or whether to hold off until the New Year… it’s not like I don’t have PILES of yarn already, and I have plenty of projects on the needles. Even if I got the yarn now, I wouldn’t have the hat ready super soon or anything. But it’s so pretty!!

What do you think, readers? Would you pick it up now, or wait until later? Which colour would you choose? Leave me all of your opinions in the comments! :)

Chevron blanket update… and blanket surgery!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about my chevrons blanket (aka Heirloom Chevron Throw by Jocelyn Tunney – the pattern is FREE)! Despite still having generally terrible wrists/forearms, I’m managing to sneak in tiny bits of knitting here and there (mostly because I am not typing very much right now – my typing job is on hold for a little while, so I can stand a bit more knitting as a result). Here’s the blanket with gratuitous cat blanket thief!

Looking good! Wait a minute… what’s that in the apple green stripe?

Ugh! A weird little tuft of yarn! At first I thought maybe I’d done a bad job of felted-join-ing, but upon closer inspection, I remembered that it was just a felty nep in the yarn, and when I knit it in, I’d thought it would blend in fine. But because everything else is so smooth, it’s REALLY obvious. And annoying. I decided I could probably fix it with some surgery, by cutting the yarn, unpicking the few stitches where the nep was, and grafting with new yarn… weaving in the ends on the back for close to seamlessness.

EEP!

I worked on figuring out the kitchenering with contrasting yarn, to make it easier to see what was going on. Then I tied on the right colour of yarn to the contrast yarn, and gently pulled/guided the correct yarn through. (I really should have taken more photos… but it was intense.)

A little bit fuzzy, but:

Pretty good, right?

This is the spot I fixed! Could you tell?

I am loving this blanket, even though it’s sooooo slow going. 20 more rows (10 more ridges) of this colour and then I’ll be on to the final triangles to square it off!

What are you knitting these days??

Neon Confetti Obsession!

I had a tendonitis flare up this weekend (SIGH), probably from too much computer work on Friday, so I haven’t been able to knit a single stitch this weekend. But I’ve been thinking thinking thinking about what I’d like to cast on next. Not that I’ve finished anything recently – sloooowest progress on my Chevron blanket and my hexagons blanket and my greeny-gold Cold Mountain and my spinning and everything else…

BUT. I’ve been thinking about this yarn.

Remember this? I picked it up back at Fibrations in August (which is when I took those sunny photos). It’s a 75% superwash merino, 25% nylon blend sock weight from the FANTASTIC Rain City Knits (seriously go over there right now… if you love bright colours and rainbows and happy saturated yarn… you’ll be into it.)

IT. IS. SO. PRETTY!!! So cheerful and happy and amazing.

I wound it up.

It’s not even depths-of-winter yet or anything (and even when it is, where I live, it’s not super cold). AND I like cold, gray weather. But this bright yarn is making me super happy! LOOK at all of the little speckley coloured bits! It’s mostly pink, yellow, and blue, but then there are surprise flashes of green! and orange! and purple! Loooooove. I think the colourway is called Confetti.

I’m pretty sure I’ve decided what I want to make with it: Clincher! Here’s a picture from the designer, Ash Kearns’ blog (which you should definitely check out):

The pattern requires a little bit of contrast yarn for the loops, which are added at the long, cast of edge of the shawl’s triangle shape. I’m thinking of using some bright blue that will complement the blue bits in the Confetti skein! Very excited. Now if only my dumb body would co-operate!

Share Season: Juniper Moon 2014 Spring Share Time!

Hi! It’s been a hot minute since I last posted! The last month has kicked me right in the butt.

I got the BEST mail recently: YARN MAIL! My 2014 Juniper Moon yarn share arrived! YEAH!

(Are you familiar with Juniper Moon and their yarn CSA? 2015 is the last year they’ll be offering shares, so if you’re into it, get one while they still exist! There are other similar systems now, but JMF is the original and, in my opinion, the best.)

Anyway – my share yarn! Ooooh :)

This is 100% cormo wool – cormo is a breed of sheep, and they grow wool which is squishy and soft and amazing. I love it. The 2014 share is the 5th annual share I’ve had the pleasure to receive (mostly as gifts from my amazing family – Hi Family!). This year, the share came with a super cute stamped project bag and a customized measuring tape! It also shipped in a box, which my cat was very interested in.

Shareholders have the option to have their yarn sent to them undyed (I did that last year!), or to have it dyed in a very limited range of colourways which change each year. This year, I went for the Orchid colourway, which is this gorgeous gray-toned mauvey colour.

I have some fairly firm plans for this yarn. Every year I’ve had a share, I’ve knit a sweater out of it. (Here’s 2010 (blue), 2011 (pink), and 2012 (green) – I still have last year’s undyed 2013 share waiting to be knit up, because I focused on finishing Shepherd last winter!)

 

The 2014 yarn share in Orchid is, I think, destined to be a cardiganized version of Knitty’s Beatnik pattern. I am a huge fan of the Beatnik cables, but am also a committed cardigan wearer. (Check out this amazing version!) I may not have it finished this winter, since I have such drastically reduced knitting time (to keep my wrists healthy), but knitters are patient people, right? ;)