Monday 18 March 2024

The Sale Post

This is it.  The ads for my equipment are up on Kijiji and are available as follows:




These are available through Kijiji.  Contact me there.  

And a few more bits available here.  Contact me at canadianneedles@yahoo.ca if you are interested.


Flick Carder $10  Like new pending



Ashford Hand Carders  $10 Like new

I do have a set of mini combs as well that need a repair on one handle.  Free to a good home.

Book Section



A Spinner's Book of Yarn Designs with an untouched set of control cards, $10 pending



Fleece and Fibre Source Book $10 pending



Big Book of Handspinning by Alden Amos $10 Pending



Yarnitecture   $10 pending


The Intentional Spinner and Spin It a guide to making yarn, $5 for the pair pending


The Craft of Natural Dyeing, A Dyer's Garden, and Hands On Dyeing, $10 for all 3 pending

And an holdover from my weaving things


Handwoven Table Linens $10

The Fibre Section

 The entire fibre section is Pending.  If the sale does not go through, it will be noted.


West Coast Wools, one full 100 gr , one partial, $10 for the pair



2 packs 100 grams each, Silk Hankies $10 for the pair


Fellview Fibres $10


Fellview Fibres Gradient set $10



200 gr Polworth Top, In Silk Fingerwolle, 50 gr.  The first was gifted to me at a time of great sorrow and I have loved knowing a friend cared so much. I have treasured it and will be given to a random purchaser.




400 gr English Leicester Locks $10



5 available  225 gr Blue Faced Leicester Combed Top $10 per bag



2 available  Oatmeal Blue Faced Leicester $10 per bag



2 available  Dark Blue Faced Leicester $10 per bag


1 available Wool and linen $10 per bag 


2 available Finn Top $10 per bag


3 available Superwash Wool $10 per bag


1 available Fine White Shetland $10 per bag


1 lot misc. wool fibres $10 for the lot. All bags have been used at some point and are not full bags but it is still a significant amount of fibre.  

I would be interested in selling the whole batch of fibre for $200, that is $40 dollars less then for all the items as shown.  The entire fibre section is Pending

Please contact me at canadianneedles@yahoo.ca if you are interested in anything listed here.  Items will be removed as they are sold.  

Pickup is in Mundare east of Edmonton. I no longer have a car and cannot really deliver or mail. If any of these items remain in May, they will be sold at the Mundare townwide garage sale.  Books remaining at that time will go to the library book sale for their fundraising.   

   

Unpopular Knitting Opinions

On Ravelry and on Youtube, my two main sources of other people knitting content, there are occasionally threads and vlogs about unpopular knitting opinions. I take these tongue in cheek as I am hoping you will here too.

When I started knitting to finish a colour and get it out of the way on all parts of the sweater before moving on to the next color, who knew I would be doing something amazing.

Sleeves are sometimes seen as the tedious bit before you get a sweater.  Sleeve Island is a familiar thing to many knitters.  I am here today to say nay.  

(Unpopular opinion rearing its head)

I love knitting sleeves! After that long row of knitting across the body of the sweater, sleeve knitting is really marvelous. It goes so quick and with a pattern such as this, it is hypnotic.  
    


(End of unpopular knitting opinion.)

I don't actually believe knitting opinions need to be popular or unpopular.  How we feel about certain things in knitting is entirely our own. The term just makes me smile as I think it does most people.  I am pretty sure it is meant to.  This is our hand work.  We can take it and it can take us wherever we choose to go.  There are no knitting police.  Our choice of needles and hooks, what we make using them, what yarn we use,  all those things are ours to decide.  It is the action of our hands, the thrill of making that unite us.     

I have one pattern repeat to finish and this sleeve is done.  It took almost no time to knit last evening and it was hard to make myself stop.  I had to because one finger was trigger locking, but not to the point of pain. That actually means that I went on a bit too long so I am going to sit a day out to let the tendons heal.  

That is okay.  I will stash dive.  It is time to do that for the health and well being of my stash.  I may also pull out certain yarns for knitting some summer like things.  We shall see.  

Oops.  I almost forgot to say there was other knitting besides the sweater.  Sock knitting has been my warm up knitting in the morning the last few days.  


I need something plain, with no thinking needed before coffee in the mornings and this blue and green combination makes me happy.  Starting a day with happy is the nicest thing.

So off I go, diving deep into the yarn.  With a second coffee to make sure I am really awake.

Friday 15 March 2024

Noro is the perfect way to end a day.

Because I am an adult, I picked up Utkiek and sorted it out.  


But only because I am an adult. All that adulting did not make me happy to have to do it, but it was nice to be past it. I find I have to be really careful checking the counting.  It is so easy to just count to four when the patterns says count to three and then do something.

I did work on it for a good chunk of the day too, and made good progress.  I should be able to get to the end of this colour on the body today and maybe even get to start of a sleeve. After that, all that remains from the overfull bag of yarn that I started with is green.  

I love this part of the progress of a garment.  You remember the pile of yarn you started with and here you are, with just a few skeins remaining. All it was was a pile of string wound into a ball, and you turned that pile into something else.  Magic. Pure magic.

 After supper, I picked up the Noro again.  It is such a calming thing to work on, just knit, knit, knit across the row and back   
 


letting the wonderful colours of Noro happen.  I do love Noro, even the weird sections.  It's a good way to end a knitting day.

I am reading Richard Osman's fourth Thursday Murder Club mystery, The Last Devil to Die, at the moment.  I recommend the whole series. They are extremely well written and in the world of the lighter end of crime fiction, that is something to be treasured. I love books that make me laugh out loud and touch my heart at the same time.  Long may he write more.


Thursday 14 March 2024

Time out

Utkiek and I are not speaking to one another at the moment.  It isn't the sweaters fault, nor the yarns.  


No.  The fault lies solely with the knitter.  She cannot count.  

The little brick pattern is 3 knits and one slip stitch.  Sounds easy, right?  It would be if she actually did three knits and then a slip rather than four knits and a slip.  The first two sets were done right but this third tier of bricks is off.  I have to rip out the two and a half rows that I have completed.

Sigh.   

There are times when you know you just have to listen to that voice inside your head that says 'Step away from the knitting."  You know that if you don't do what it says, you will mess up everything.  I listened and searched for other knitting.

I thought about going back to a sock, but decided that might be too complicated.  So I did this.


Looks like a scarf but it is going to be a t shirt in the line of this pattern from Noro Knitting Magasine Spring Summer 2013 or Recalibrate .  

I'm going to wing it for this top.  I love the shape of the top and the way the colours flow, but I don't like the width of the center panel of the Noro Top and I don't like the gauge of Recalibrate.  So, I am aiming for a top like them, but my own way.  

The happy thing is this part is Noro, always nice to work with and secondly, if I get bored of the top or garter stitch, I will have a scarf that can be sewn together to form a cowl.