Come to the Rav Meet-Up at Pgh Knit & Crochet!

24JanApril 14, 2015 By Stephanie

One thing I really really really ought to learn is that after Christmas comes January. Christmas is not the end. Christmas is not a wall. Christmas is just a point in time and then… January comes.

And if something important is happening in early in the new year, you really have to be able to see past Christmas to get ready for it. I really need to learn this because I do it every year!

Please tell me you do too. Tell me I’m not the only one who has trouble seeing past Christmas… please?

Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Feb 10-11-12

The Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival is coming up on Feb 10, 11, 12. It’s a fabulous event — the entire (enormous) ballroom of the Four Points Sheraton in Mars PA* is turned into a dreamscape of fibery goodness. And I am soooooo looking forward to it!

There are wonderful classes, a fabulous market, and some incredible cool events. But more important than that — and by far the coolest thing about doing a festival like this — is that I get to meet so many SpaceCadet customers! I love it when people come up and introduce themselves, show off their wonderful SpaceCadet projects, and I can finally put faces to names. It is such a treat, getting to meet so many people who are almost already old friends. How often in life do you get to do that?!?

So if you live anywhere in the Western Pennsylvania area, please come! And please wear your SpaceCadet project. I may have seen the pictures, but I would love to see it — and you — in person! Here’s the info again:

Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival
February 10,11,12, 2012
at the Four Points Sheraton, North, Mars, PA 16046

The Ravelry Meet-Up

And if you are coming on the Friday (Feb 10), please do come to the Ravelry Meet-Up! It’s being organised by my friend Natalie, my sister-who-now-knits-a-bit, and me, and I know there’s going to be some pretty cool fiberistas attending: I can’t wait to meet up with a bunch of fiberista friends: the lovely Karrie of the KnitPurlGurl video podcast; Stacey Trock of Fresh Stitches; Cosy Cornelius-Bates and Gwen Erin with whom** I did Pittsburgh Indie Knit & Spin

Please come! We’d love to have you there! Here are the details for the Meet-Up:

Ravelry Meet-Up
Friday, Feb 10 at 6.30pm
in the Cranberry Room (located off the main atrium via the hallway to the left of Legends pub)

It’s by RSVP only and today is the LAST DAY to reserve your space, so please go and send me a Ravelry PM (private message) right now!

So there you go — the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival is only about three weeks away. And I am so excited about it!

But am I ready for it? No. Did it sneak up on me after Christmas? Yep, yep it did. Am I presently dyeing like a woman possessed? Ohhhhh yes!

Because I really, really, really need to learn that after Christmas comes… January.

*Did you spot that? It’s in Mars! Mars! Makes a SpaceCadet feel right at home, that does.

**My high-school English teacher would be so proud.

A Shop Update to Banish the Mid-January Blahs

19JanApril 14, 2015 By Stephanie

It’s cold and grey outside and keeps trying to snow, but nothing sticks and it just ends up looking… ugly. We are officially into the mid-January blahs. And, as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing to do but just hunker down and wait for spring.

Fortunately, there’s also new yarn in the shop: warm rust BFL, rich purple cashmere, and some wonderfully daring variegated yarns. Does that sound a bit better? Yeah, me too. Click the button below to see them!

Orbiting the Fiber Universe, 17 January 2012

17JanApril 14, 2015 By Stephanie

Another wrap-up of all the great fiber arts news that’s caught my eye of late…

You know my world is about colour — I talk about it all the time. And I am convinced that working with beautiful colour makes everyone else’s world better too. So I just love this quick guide to choosing your own colours for for crochet patterns, from Stacey Trock of Fresh Stitches. And of course, everything she says works for knitting too!

You’ve probably heard about those programs that teach inmates to knit and crochet, right? Personally, I can’t get enough of them, probably because I so wholeheartly believe that the fiber arts are life-enhancing. But this article — where inmate are able to use knitting to reach out to kids who are facing the same tough situations they once faced — really touched me.

The number one thing most of my customers tell me they love is the colour of their yarn. And the close second is always the softness. But, if you can step beyond those two essentials for a moment, come and have a look at these amazing crocheted wire sculptures by Ruth Asawa. Just breath-taking. (And, when you’re done, you run straight back to soft and colourful, I promise!)

I loved this knitted Happy New Year sign from Mansha Friedrich in Hanover, Germany. What better way to set yourself up for a year of fibery goodness?!?

Do you speak Finnish? Or wait… is it Danish? No, Norwegian? Or… oh well, whatever it is, I bet you will loooove this knitted wallpaper as much as I do. Knitted walls for the win!

And now, for something really, really important. It’s not fiber related but, people, this has totally changed my life. Seriously, it has. Read this article about olive oil — or, even better, click the link at the top of the page and listen to the actual radio programme. And then, go out, scour those labels and find yourself some olive oil that was mechanically processed. And watch your life change. Well, we use a lot of olive oil in our house (a lot) so it was life-changing for us, but I promise it will at least improve yours a bit.

…No, seriously, do it. It has changed. my. life.

Oh! and something really exciting happened — I finally got Pinterest! I mean, I’d taken a little wander through it before and I thought it was pretty but… meh. Another social networking site? Another thing I’m supposed to keep up with? Yeah, I wasn’t that into it.

But then this week, it finally clicked. It’s for bookmarking webpages, but better. Instead of a dropdown menu full of words that all jumble together, it’s visual, so I can remember instantly what it is and why I saved it. Every pin clicks through to the original source. And it’s social, so I can see all the cool-tempting-interesting stuff other people are bookmarking and grab it for myself — the colours, the images, the ideas. Half the stuff in this post came from Pinterest. And… it’s so beautiful. Really, really beautiful.

I love it. I’m hooked! If you’re already hooked too, please come and follow me. And if you’re not yet hooked, just click on that link and play around a bit. Once you realise it’s for much more than just looking at pretty pictures, I bet you’ll be hooked too.

Everything You Do, You Learn Something New

13JanApril 14, 2015 By Stephanie

When I started the SpaceCadet’s Mini-Skein Club, I set it up with two options — the Gentle Mix (mostly semi-solids and gently varigated colourways) and the Wild Mix (mostly wildly variegated yarns). Everyone’s mini-skein project is unique to them and to the colours they love, so I was excited to give the club members the chance to tell me which mix of yarns they’d prefer.

For the first shipment, I wasn’t quite sure how wild to make the Wild Mix, so I stayed on the conservative side (…the conservative side of, y’know, wild). But then feedback I got told me the club members were ready to go further. So for the next shipment, I was ready to really push it. They wanted wild, they would get it — because I can do some crazy colour combinations!

I chose five of my most variegated colourways…

And when I looked at them one by one, they were wild — they were ka-razeee. Here’s an example of what I mean by a highly variegated colourway…

And here’s another…

And another…

See? They’re pretty wildly variegated. And pretty different. And if they were that variegated and different on their own, I expected them to really explode off each other.

But then something really weird happened…

I put them all together and they suddenly looked… tame! Well, maybe not tame exactly, but somehow a lot gentler, a lot more blended. Certainly the collection was not as explosive as I thought it would be…

See what I mean? What happened?!?

I took the little bundle apart and set each yarn on its own — and they each looked wild again. Put them back together and… they seemed subdued. And I had to do it a couple of times before I realised what was happening.

Here’s the thing… A wildly variegated yarn looks wild because the colours within it are so unrelated to each other. They contrast, they compliment, and they make each other pop. Put a few of these colours together and something beautiful happens!

But where each yarn contains a whole rainbow of colours, those same shades are likely to appear in other wildly variegated yarns too. So when you put several such wildly coloured yarns together, the rainbows all start to blend into one another, to reflect one another. Even colourways that look incredibly different can actually begin to… coordinate with each other.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…

So I sat down and rethought the options, and here’s what I realised: those of you who choose the Gentle Mix are doing so because you want to create a mini-skein project that blends gently from one yarn to the next. And those of you who choose the Wild mix are aiming to create a project with an overall effect of exciting contrasts.

And I want to make sure the SpaceCadet’s Mini-Skein Club parcels help that to happen, so I’m going to slightly change the way I choose the yarns that go into the two mixes. The Gentle Mix will stay mostly as it has been but, for the Wild Mix, I’m going to choose colourways that will make the whole parcel more contrasting, rather than just focusing on variegated yarns. That will mean more semi-solids in the Wild Mix than there were before, but don’t worry — the overall effect will still be wild.

And you’re going to love it, because the mini-skein project you’re going to make with the new Wild Mix will be crazy colourful and eye-poppingly gorgeous! And isn’t that what you were aiming for all along?

Selfish Knitting Month

10JanApril 14, 2015 By Stephanie

It was Brenda Dayne — she who creates the fabulous podcast Cast-On (you do listen to it, don’t you? Don’t you?!?) and who just knit this hat with SpaceCadet yarn — who introduced me to the concept of January as “Selfish Knitting Month”.

For knitters and crocheters, the months leading up the holidays are almost always about making things for other people. All our own projects come to a screeching halt as we realise there’s only a few months left(!) and begin to work like mad on our gifts instead. And then, come January, all that is over. And it is time to return to our own projects, our own knitting and crochet. The idea of Selfish Knitting Month magically turns January from cold and dull into something welcome, warm, and cosy. Time to knit for ourselves again!

And I have really taken the Selfish Knitting concept to heart in 2012, in two ways. The first was actually at the end of December, as I was coming up with the newest colourway for the members of InterStellar Yarn Alliance. I wanted to create a something that would be a real treat for the members… to welcome in the new year with something so luxurious and indulgent that it would single-handedly banish January’s cold and grey post-holiday funk.

I saw cold days ahead and they transformed into a warm, moody plum; I felt a bitter wind, and it was a streak of blue-purple; the welcome respite of a cosy fireside became a rich vein of copper gold; and the whole colourway shot through with dramatic streaks as dark as the blackest night. And to make it extra special, I laid all these colours down over the sparkles of Lucina.

The colourway, in honour of the month, is called “Selfish”. …Well, would you give it away?!?

And the other way that I took Selfish Knitting concept to heart? Well, it wasn’t voluntary, and it wasn’t so much me as my body that made the decision. After a December which was just insanely busy and in which everyone except me seemed to come down sick, my body decided enough was enough. This past week, I’ve been sliding ever-so-slowly downhill, until finally this weekend, I succumbed to cold chills, shakes, and muscles that made my neck and shoulders seize up solidly. I have spent the past two days mostly in bed, propped up gingerly on pillows, moving as little as humanly possible.

Except, I could knit. And as painful as my shoulders and neck were (oh, and they were!), it’s been a truly welcome respite to just sit quietly and knit — without having to stop for work-demands or family-demands or… well, not for anything except for another round of painkillers. Selfish or what!? Yep, deliciously so, and it felt great. I took my skein of Selfish and cast on Karrie Steinmetz’s Walnut Grove. When I can sit up well enough to take photos, I’ll let you see how it looks.

So, Happy Selfish Knitting Month! What are you doing to celebrate? Have you cast on something fresh and new, just for you? Leave a comment and let me know, or even link to you project on Ravelry — I’d love to see!

Oh, there was supposed to be a shop update today, but — for obvious reasons — it will have to come a bit later this week. Keep your eyes open for it. And if you liked the look the of this yarn and would like get in on the Yarn Alliance yourself, spaces will open sometime around the end of the February or beginning of March. Make sure you’re on the mailing list to be the first to hear about it!

…And if you’re in the Alliance, your exclusive email with a chance to get extra skeins of Selfish will be coming soon, so watch your inbox!

The Best Resolution of the Year

06JanApril 14, 2015 By Stephanie

Fresh new year. The first week of a fresh new year and it holds so much possibility. Sparkling and brand new. Beautiful, perfect… like freshly fallen snow.

And we try to fill the space of those possibilities with resolutions. I will lose weight. I will read more. I will stop smoking. I will pay down my debt. I will… I will… I will…

The thing is that, while also those resolutions promise to lift us to a higher place, they start the year out by reminding of the things we most dislike about ourselves. It’s a strange way to set out into the newly fallen snow.

My friend Natalie and I were discussing resolutions last week. Mine were all of the usual sort, the sort that pulls you down before bringing you back up by kicking you in the backside. And her resolution… well, it stopped me in my tracks. “I’m going to knit something green each month of 2012.”

Green is Natalie’s favourite colour — favourite like an obsession. She says, “You know my green sweater?” as though anyone could know which green sweater she might mean. So it wasn’t that that surprised me. It was the simple positivity of her resolution. Her resolution is about doing something she loves, in a way she loves, more often. Now that a resolution that feels worthy of the brand spanking new year.

So y’know what? I’m rethinking my own resolutions. Maybe I can afford to ditch all the self-improvement ones (because, really, they’re on the cards already regardless of the time of the year). My life is so busy that I rarely get the chance to sit down and knit as much as I’d like. So maybe I could resolve to… just knit more. To just knit when… well, when the knitting calls to me. As resolutions go, it actually feels pretty radical.

And pretty uplifting. The way resolutions should.

So what are your resolutions for the new year? Do you have any that you’re especially excited about? Or one that is just simple and uplifting and fibery?