When I fist saw Elizabeth Zimmermann’s green sweater in  Twist Collective, I knew I had to make it. Took a bit of celestial alignment – I picked up the pattern in Wisconsin and knew I needed something warm for Iceland* – but here it is.

It really is hard for me to knit anything as written. But I didn’t make many changes on this one; decided on ribbing as a hem treatment instead of a facing and narrowed the sleeves slightly by removing an inch for the armhole depth. I alternated decreases every 2nd round then every 3rd round for a longer sleeve, since the length of the sleeve is dictated by the number of stitches picked around the armhole and I had picked up fewer.

The pic above is a little fuzzy, but shows something I always, always do when working armhole steeks – work a three needle bind off before finishing my steeks with crochet and cutting them open. The resulting steek flows over the shoulder.

For giggles, I tried something new this time and picked up stitches for the sleeves through a column of stitches. It worked – the little facing created by the steek selvedge is forced to the wrong side and lies flat without any steaming or blocking whatsoever. I love it when things work as anticipated.

I also experimented with picking up both the right side and wrong side of the faced neckband using two circulars – most of my finishing is done at night and visibility with such a dark colour can be an issue. Instead of sewing down the live stitches, doing it this way allowed me to close the neckband using kitchener stitch.

Only buttons and loops are left to sew on! Which is excellent because I am leaving for Iceland tomorrow morning! I will be posting often, because I promised my family I would – my favourite cousin might even make an appearance in the comments!

*yes, I have other sweaters. I just needed a NEW one!

I’ve been away. Can you guess where I’ve been?

One more clue…

And a last one – come on, this one gives it away!

Marcel and I recently spent a few days in NYC – we didn’t stay long but had just enough time to visit a museum, take in a play on Broadway (my first!) and attend SpinExpo. Oddly enough, Mars opted not to follow the knitters to the latter venue…

SpinExpo is a trade show for industry professionals, much like Pitti Filati. Exhibitors range from yarn mills, companies selling ideas to RTW (these are mostly oversized swatches which include design details such as necklines and closures) to contractors specializing in knitwear. As far as we were concerned, the trend exhibition area was the area of most interest.

Most swatches are knit by machine. Some employ techniques familiar to hand knitters, but less commonly seen such as using both the right side and wrong side of stranded colorwork.

This textural effect was created using short rows along the center section. A crochet row is later to control the gathers created.

Short rows and cables, followed by stitches picked up from either side.

More short rowed cables, this time in fancy sparkly yarn.

Tuck stitches – these are formed in a manner similar to brioche knitting whereas stitches are slipped while executing yarnovers; the slipped stitches and corresponding yarnovers are knit together in a subsequent row. Note how the elongated stitches also appear thicker than the regular stitches, due to multiple strands being knit together.

And some applied I-cords. All in all, a worthy visit.

Congratulations to Natalie S.! She will be receiving a Sam and Samira kit in the mail within a few days.

I’ll be travelling quite a bit this year – in addition to the trip to Iceland I mentioned earlier, I’ll also be attending KnitEast as one of the teachers. It’s being held at the historic Fairmont Algonquin in St.Andrews By-the-Sea in New Brunswick. I was only there for an afternoon back in 1994, and it was truly beautiful – I’m really looking forward to going back.

One of the classes I’ll be teaching is entitled ‘Knitted Quilts’ and I’ve been preparing by knitting swatches which will best illustrate the techniques we’ll be covering. The goal of the class isn’t to follow one of my patterns in this style, but rather for the students to learn the knowledge to translate pieced quilts into knitting patterns. Nine patch squares such as the swatch shown above are some of the simplest but more involved patterns are possible by using vertical joins such as can be seen in the beginning of an ‘Ohio Star’:

Speaking of Ohio, Robin and I returned last week from our annual road trip to Columbus, where the industry’s summer trade show is held once a year. We drove to Toronto to meet up with the lovely Julia Grunau of Patternfish fame, and the three of drove down together. As you can imagine, this resulted in a lot of driving for Robin and I  - about 30 hours worth over a period of one week for the two of, and some 18 hours for Julia. But we wouldn’t miss it for anything – it’s the one time of year we can count on meeting face to face with all those we usually only interact with through email.

Once I returned, I had planned on choosing a raffle winner immediately but that proved futile since I wouldn’t be able to ship it as long as Canada Post is on strike – or rather, since Canada Post locked out its striking union workers (the rotating strike which was in effect before the lock-out slowed things up, but this effectively brings everything to an halt). It shouldn’t last too long, thankfully – the last time it happened, the government legislated the workers back to work and we expect the same thing will happen before soon. Luckily, the yarn and magazines are also in stock in our Maine and can ship out to any destination in the world (except Canada, of course). As soon as packages can mail out again, I’ll pick a winner so anyone who hasn’t signed up for the newsletter yet still has a few days.

After months in the making, www.stdenisyarns.com quietly went live last Friday. Customers everywhere can now purchase securely copies of the last 2 magazines as well as our yarn and more.

To celebrate, we’re holding a raffle for our newsletter subscribers – as many of you have been waiting eagerly for us to list the pattern for Sam and Samira from our now sold out premier issue, we’re holding a contest for a kit containing all the yarn needed to make both dolls as well as the pdf pattern. To enter, create an account on stdenisyarns.com and subscribe to the newsletter – purchases are not necessary.

Good luck!

While we put the finishing touches on this little web site of ours, I thought I’d pop in and share some of my exciting news – I’m going to Iceland!

You can imagine how thrilled I was when Ragga approached me about this. Not only that, but I soon received a care package directly from Iceland care of Ragga containing yarn samples, her latest dvd and what has to be the most charming note I have received in a long time:

She also included a small stack of gift cards to give away to potential tour guests; each of these have a value of 15000 kronas (around $130 usd). If you would like one, please let me know by emailing me at info [AT] stdenisyarns [DOT] com and perhaps we’ll see each other in Iceland!

Or rather, photograph/upload/edit/format/save/choose/insert/save in the case of yarn pics, and proof read endlessly in the case of the new magazine.

Yes, you heard correctly – the new magazine is done! It was printed last week and copies are making their way to their warehouses as I write this. The new website is also nearing completion, hence the interminable process of uploading product photographs. But I’m very close to being done and I have a carrot dangling in front of me to urge me towards the finish line: a few yards of cotton lawn fabric so that I may sew a summer dress.

Anyone looking for the new magazine in Canada will most likely find it in the same stores that have carried it in the past. In the US, it might be a little bit more complicated – you see, we recently decided to strike out on our own and to distribute ourselves in the US, as we have done all along in Canada. So, we are starting from scratch – right now, I don’t know which US retailers have been carrying the yarns and magazines, but I will add their listing to my website as I learn who they are.

In any case, I think you’ll like the new mag – As before, you’ll find patterns from Pam Allen, Jared Flood, Laura Grutzeck, Robin Melanson and Carol Sulcoski. We’re also joined this issue by Franklin Habit, Kirsten Kapur, Cecily Glowik MacDonald and Barbara Prime (see the blogroll for links to their websites). Stay tuned for teasers!

I know at least a couple of you have been wondering where I’ve been – I’m not going to give a blow by blow account of the last year, but I will try to explain my absence jut a little bit.

Mainly, the move and subsequent renovations ended up being much more time consuming than anticipated – in retrospect, selling the old house and finding the new one went fairly quickly (some work was needed to ready the old abode for sale but, painful as living in dust and paint is, it was done in a few weeks). We didn’t have to live through multiple open houses, and that was great.

The renos on the new house were a different story. We began with unfailing optimism – the company we hired had built a new porch for the old place as well as built an addition for Marcel’s sister’s house, so what could go wrong? Well, plenty. The first week seemed ok but everything seemed to slow down afterwards. We foolishly followed the recommendation to pay on an hourly basis, as a fixed estimate entailed a 25% surcharge. It soon became evident that if we didn’t hover constantly, grave mistakes ensued – actually, mistakes happened even if we hovered all day. The alarm system was short circuited, a too small window (by 7″!) was purchased and installed, cement poured through the cracks of the kitchen floor into the basement, the tiles in the kitchen were installed incorrectly twice, wiring stuck out of the wall in odd spots, cabinets were installed then uninstalled because of lack of organization, pieces had to be thrown away because of cutting errors while some that were installed have chips from being cut with the wrong tools. On and on. Later, when we hired someone else to complete plastering and painting the spare bedroom, he asked why we had such a large bulkhead in the room (we believed it was an air return for the forced air heating system) and asked if he could make a hole in order to see inside and perhaps shrink it. We agreed and he did – and found that not only had they not changed the tape on a conduit inside, but had not even connected it and so hot air was being blown into the ceiling. Then, he looked into the aforementioned air return… and saw that it wasn’t connected to anything at all. It had been been boxed in and plastered for no reason at all.

The other disappointing thing that happened of late was my having to cancel my trip to NYC for Vogue Knitting Live, as I don’t have the necessary papers to teach in the united states. It’s unfortunate, but the repercussions could be huge if caught working without the proper visa – it usually entails being barred from entering the country for 5 years. With family and friends across the border, it’s a risk that I cannot afford to take.

All was not so dark, however – the new house is only a couple of blocks away from Marcel’s sister, Monique. She’s one of my favourite persons in the world and now that we live so close to one another, we can work together – she is the new administrative director of St-Denis Yarns. She’s turning into a knitter, too – her first project has been the bear claw blanket, which she is making with some modifications out of nordique. We’ll blog that one of these days. The pullover above is for her, which she’ll model when it’s done. Speaking of models, her sons are also born models – expect more boy patterns in the future.

I’ll leave you with a sneak peek of the next magazine (soon! I promise!) – A photograph of Tanis wearing one of the sweaters:

Ttfn!

I never usually post if I don’t have an image of some sort, but I think I’ll have to make an exception this time around – I’m just much too tired to find an image or to take one, but there’s no catching up to emails under these circumstances so I’m hoping a few of you will see this post and understand.

In short, the renovations are still in full swing. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, but there’s so much left to be done that it’s hard to tell when it’ll be over. I know a lot of you are waiting for issue 3 of the magazine and I promise you will love it – my friends have really outdone themselves – but it will have to wait a little while longer. I mean it… only a little while longer.

Thank you for your patience. In the meantime, I’ll take any support I can get – yes, renovations are that hard.