Tales of a Keyboard Biologist

Color River — Pradera Finished

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As a crafter, somewhere along the way, you figure out what really motivates you to dive into a project.   At the beginning of my knitting adventure, I spent a lot of time with different techniques, making different kinds of garments, working with different tools, trying different yarns.  As a part of that process I discovered something really important about myself:  I am a product knitter.  I really love the end result (and getting there) far more than I love the journey. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy knitting or that I don’t enjoy learning.  Its more to say that I just really really enjoy the process of having something completed that I can hold, wear, share or gift 

I’ve been knitting now for the better part of 20 (?!!) years.   That is more than a little amazing to me.  Few of my hobbies have that kind of staying power.  More recently than the “I’m a product knitter” realization, I’ve discovered something else:  it’s all about color.  I love color.  I love changing colors. I love planning out garments with different colors.  I particularly love color when applied to a really lovely yarn.   But it’s all about the color.

Pradera at an angle. A river of color.

Pradera exemplifies both the color and product points of view.  I love how the scarf flows from soft aqua to deep burgundy.  From the arrow point to the arrow fletching.   This knitting was not complicated at all, but it was engaging.  And easy.  And the product and the color make me happy.

Pradera in the vertical dimension

Of course, it is now well past the point of merino scarf weather (at least outside — my office… well… that is another story) but I am still excited about this project. I can imagine it over a black turtleneck, keeping me warm and wrapping me in a river of color that is missing from the Midwest when scarves are in season. 

A few details about the project…  I ordered the yarn and pattern from Kitterly.   I am not usually a kit knitter, and this was an impulse purchase — I was happy with both the process an and the purchase.    The pattern is bog simple to follow.  If you can increase and decrease, this project shouldn’t cause you any distress at all.    Yarn management is the only complicated thing about it.  It is worked with two strands of yarn held together, which means that you are either juggling two balls or working from both ends of the same color.  Neither is hard, but with a singles yarn (as Manos del Uruguay Clara is) it is easy to end up with tangles that require some effort to unwind.  I also found that this yarn didn’t love the whole center pull ball concept as much as others — again, I think this is because it’s a singles yarn and winding it onto a ball has the potential to add a bit more energy and increase tangling potential. 

Finally,  feel free to knit up that swatch (particularly with the beginning or ending color) as there is plenty of yarn left over.  The pattern isn’t wasteful, but you’ll have a comfortable buffer and still end up with a scarf of the dimensions described in the pattern.  It’s hard to tell from my pictures, but this scarf is easily 6″ long after you block it.  Like most superwash projects, it won’t seem that way while knitting, but it will relax during the blocking process.

Take Me to the River

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Pradera has proved herself to be good, simple, happy knitting.

Pradera in Progress: Starting the Third Wave

When it comes to me and knitting, I’ve tried many things, but the projects that make me the happiest are inevitably those that aren’t that hard to knit, but give me a way to wrap my eyes and hands around a lot of color.  Pradera has been keeping me company while I enjoy some couch potato time.   Simple knitting, big needles, rapid progress and color progression that occurs fast enough to keep me knitting to see how its all going to come together.

I’m finding the Manos Clara to be a yarn with lovely hand with the spirit the Manos yarns I knit with 15 years ago (!) — in other words, exactly what a hand dyed singles yearn should be — full of variation and surprises.

I’ve just added in the third color, which will give Pradera a dark blue shift before wrapping up with some purply tones. 

Given how fast its knitting up, I still have some hope that there might be enough cold days in March left that I might be able to complete it and block it and wear it at least once before spring comes!

Color Therapy

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It was delightful to have some completely unseasonable February weather.   T.S. Eliot aside, I’ve never really thought April was the cruelest month.   For me, it’s always January and February where the midwest is generally cold and grey.  I love the changing of the season, but the grey weather gets me down from time to time.

So, right before we got the burst of spring like weather I got drawn into one of those ads on Facebook for a kit at Knitterly.   I feel like Facebook really has my number when it comes to popping up their ads.  Color and texture and simple design.  Usually I ignore.  But after what seemed like a million days of grey weather, I clicked on the bait and ordered a kit for Pradera.

Manos del Urugay Clara in Petroleo, Black Forest, Esmerelda and Velvet

These colors spoke to me.  Blues and greens and purples that dabble in the jewel range.  Lovely soft watercolor variations.  Clara is a single ply, 100% superwash merino yarn.   Delightfully soft and a bit of tactile deliciousness, but also practical from a washability point of view.

The project itself is a simple chevron shape, done in stockinette, the only complication being carrying two strands of yarn at a time.  I can’t remember the last time I cast on something with US Size 10(!) needles. 

I converted Esmerelda into a center pull ball… cast on and knit a bit.  It is as lovely and simple to knit as I had hoped.   This may become my “conference call” knitting… my attempt to do yoga at work.

Tactile Happiness

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When you don’t knit and craft as much as you used to — and you are me — it is easy to give yourself “treats” so that the time you do spend crafting is even just that much more delightful.

This is how I justify my subscription to Sundara’s luxury yarn clubs when they come by.    I have a serious thing (addiction?  adoration? infatuation?) with her fingering silky cashmere.  The yarn base provides the “oh my god does this feel amazing” part and Sundara provides the “this color is the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen” part.    I’ve done several projects with this yarn and if someone told me I could never knit with anything else… well, perhaps I’d be sad for a moment to have my choice limited, but I wouldn’t feel like I was missing out.

The last subscription finished some time ago, but I still have some yarn and a project or two to tackle.  And this one seems perfect for early spring:  Apricot Cream

Apricot Cream Shawl in the Ribbing Phase

It seems a bit odd in the shaping, does it not?  This is one of those patterns where I am looking forward to seeing how an innovative designer makes something work out in a delightful way for a simple garment.  As a side note, this picture was taken outside on my balcony in FEBRUARY and THERE IS NO SNOW and IT IS LIKE SPRING — which would be worth taking pictures about even if there was no knitting.

I’ll admit, the ribbing is beginning to get a bit monotonous (as it always does for me).   But the yarn is so amazing that I really look forward to sitting down with this project. 

Very Pretty Sundara Sport Silky Cashmere in “Everlasting Blossom”

This picture is more true to the actual color.  I love this color in  spite of myself.  It’s a bit paler than I go for (I am the queen of jewel tones) and perhaps a bit yellower than I should wear, but it’s so subtle and beautiful and blends so well with itself that I love it anyway!

Happy Monday, All!

Time Flies

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It’s wild for me to thing that I started this blog in 2002.  At the time, it felt like the start of a whole new era for crafting and sharing crafty ideas.  At the beginning, though, I wasn’t really thinking so much about crafting.  I was thinking about information technology and how it intersected with biology and making the transition from the bench to the keyboard.  That’s actually where my blog handle came from — a friend at the company I had started to work for suggested that we were doing biology by computer now… keyboard biology.  And I liked that.  And hence the Keyboard Biologist was born… with the intention of posting links to things of interest to similar sorts of people.

At the same time, I started to find this great community of crafty people and got inspired by the fiber and fabric arts.  Turned out that I thought it was a lot more fun to talk about knitting than about bioinformatics.  I could take pictures, play with color, knit along with others and share what I had learned.   The blog gave me a creative outlet outside my job that I’d never had before, and connected me to people around the world in a rich and diverse community that I learned from and drove me to try all sorts of new things.

Knitting, Spinning, Crochet, Weaving, Quilting, Origami, Book Making, Dying, Tatting… lots of wonderful things.   I added parenting to that list when my daughter came into the world almost 10 years ago. 

The kiddo, social media, a new job focused around medical informatics and other new opportunities pulled me away from the blog… in the last couple of years, it seems like the time has whipped past and only a few projects have resulted.  The work life balance shifted in the work direction and the creative time diminished.   And the unhappy politics of the US is weighing on me. 

And… wow… it just feels like something is really missing.   Something that exercise and meditation don’t bring me.  The color, the texture…. the headspace that is entirely different.  

So it feels like it’s time to come back.  Time to write and be creative and find that woman who is the crafter and creator of fibery things.

Electric Pink Zig Zag Scarf

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A very bright scarf.

Do not try to adjust your screen! This scarf really is just as loud in person as it is in the photo. Well over a year ago, I was taking Ms. Z through a LYS to look for something for a pattern I wanted to work on. As she was walking through the store with me, she found the Knitted Wit Haute Pink and wouldn’t put it down.

I’ll be the first one to say that I love me some bright color. And this has to be about the brightest pink I’ve ever encountered. But there was no way I could figure blending that in with my current wardrobe and work life style. And she’d been asking me to make her something. So…

Ms. Z, would you like to have a scarf made out of that yarn?

Yes, yes, yes, Mama!

Now, a smart knitter would probably have just decided that a 6 year old getting a scarf should get something simple a single color in garter stitch. But I am not that knitter. And I get very bored knitting simple scarves and never finish them. So…

What would you like your scarf to look like?

Pink and purple with zig zags!

Hmmm… Okay. Do you see a purple yarn that you like?

This one! This one! This one!

“This one!” turned out to be Knitted Wit Her Majesty, a beautiful rich purple that I might have picked for myself. But combined with Haute Pink was going to be visual lightning to the eyes. But, I decided, this was her scarf. And I want her to love color and play with color and be creative. And given some of her school art projects, I think she has wonderful color sense. So…

Okay. We can get that one, too. Now, how do you want your zig zags to run?

I want them to go the long way and for the edges to be zig zaggy!

(I am probably paraphrasing that last statement, but she did make it very clear that she wanted horizontal zig zags).

And so it was that I came home with whatever I was looking for and two skeins of Knitted Wit DK Superwash Merino (I am not completely impractical. Small children need to have washable knitwear, even if Mama needs nice yarn to knit with).

I started to troll Ravelry for some ideas. I am mostly a lazy knitter and if someone else has done an horizontal zig zag scarf with DK weight yarn, I am more than happy to pay for a pattern and take advantage of their effort doing calculations. It didn’t take me long to find something that would help me out — Stephen West’s Creekbed, which had the extra added bonus of being a Knitty pattern, and, therefore, free.

Just as I love me some bright color, I also love me some Stephen West. His patterns are not only beautiful, but well engineered. Creekbed is clearly not something that immediately screams flaming hot pink yarn, but given Mr. West’s color trajectory of late, I thought he might not disapprove if I used his design as a starting point. I did a little bit of swatching to figure out how to get a nice long zig zag that was a visible design element. And then started to think about stripes.

As per usual, I could not just do alternating simple stripes. I thought with a very cool and a very hot color, it would be more fun to do something that created a gradation effect and might give the scarf a more mod look. (The observant among you will notice that the stripes are not completely balanced… i.e. that I did not repeat the widest pink strip in the purple, nor did I repeat the narrowest purple stripe in the pink. The wise among you will speculate that I ran out of pink yarn. And I would not deny that.)

Ms. Z and a very loud scarf.

Ms. Z and a very loud scarf.

This scarf should not have taken me two winters to knit. But it did. The fabric was a tad stiff after first being knit up, but it softened out nicely after blocking. It also bled A LOT when I soaked it. But mostly it just leaked into the water and didn’t change the color of the fabric. If you are using this yarn, I’d encourage you to wash it separately from other things until it doesn’t bleed anymore.

Of course, Ms. Z is getting this scarf just as it is starting to warm up here in Chicago. So it’s good that it’s a little longer than you might normally consider for a small child. (She’s about 4′ tall and the scarf in the picture is wrapped around her neck twice). She was super excited about trying it on and is looking forward to wearing it to school tomorrow. I am going to have to find someway (that doesn’t involve a black Sharpie) to indicate it is hers. Perhaps I have entered the era of getting some fabric labels printed up.

I liked this yarn a great deal and would happily knit with it again. Blocking this scarf seems to have revved up my blocking mojo again and hopefully soon I will be sharing more pictures of the other two projects that I completed this winter but just haven’t got into the blocking bath.

Purple Cowl

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This summer has actually seen quite a bit of knitting. But all the knitting has been for things that prefer some cooler weather. A few weekends ago, long before we really wanted it to show up, that cooler weather made itself known. So I got to model a project that would have looked pretty uninspiring if not displayed in the context of an actual person.

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This cowl is making me deeply sad at the moment because I can’t, for the life of me, figure out where I put the pattern. It’s such a lovely simple pattern that knits up quickly and makes a lovely product. I can remember where I bought it from and why I picked the yarn but I can’t tell you the name of the pattern. Much sad. (You can click the picture to embiggen if you would like to see a bit more of the eyelet detail.) At least I can tell you that the yarn is Jill Draper Aurora in “Petunia” . Sadly, this very pretty lace weight yarn (70% wool/30% silk) is now discontinued.

Wicker Park Street Art

Wicker Park Street Art

I liked the mural behind me so much that you get a bonus, not so flattering picture of me so that you can enjoy the mural, too. This kind of urban artwork always makes me happy that we live in the city.

Spider and Pumpkins

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A couple years back, my sister in law introduced me to Perler Beads. Given all the crafty things in my upbringing and my deep and significant relationship with craft stores, I’m surprised that I didn’t discover them on my own. These wonderful little plastic beads can be used to create all sorts of fun pixel art — all you need is an iron. While I keep telling my husband that the growing collection of beads and tools is for my kiddo’s entertainment, the truth is that I really enjoy playing with them, too!
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Two spooky spiders and a friendly pumpkin were the result of about 30 minutes of mother/daughter time. We’re saving the owl and the bat for a future session.

Right now they seem to have a collection of fun little Hallowe’en focused kits. I was able to pick a bunch up for not very much at Joann’s, where they have much of their Hallowe’en stock already on sale. They also have a couple of downloadable 3D ideas that seem like they would be a whole lot more fun to make than the conventional gingerbread setup!

Rivolo Redux

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There are vanishingly few knitting patterns that I have made more than once (with the exception of my basic sock pattern). Rivolo is one of those patterns. The last version I did was in a lovely fuzzy brown baby alpaca and the pattern was obscured a bit. This version was knit with Briar Rose Fibers “Grace” — (which doesn’t seem to exist any more… it is a fingering weight bamboo, merino, nylon blend that I picked out at Michigan Fiber Festival long time ago) — the yarn has a nice hand when knit with and the colorway has an earthy quality that was unusual for me to be interested in when I bought it.

 

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Rivolo in Briar Rose Fibers “Grace”

 

This yarn also blocks well and even with the significant variegation in color in the yarn, the lace pattern is distinct and clear. The finished scarf is rather longer than suggested by the pattern. I cast on (unfortunately, I have no record of when) and just kept on knitting until I was close to running out of yarn.

 

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Rivolo Lace Pattern Detail

 

After blocking the lace detail holds in well. The fabric is both soft and crisp and has a little hint of shimmer which could give this scarf the opportunity to dress up and go out. It’s hard to tell from the picture, but this scarf is at least 6 foot long, so should be good for warmth and wrapping as well.

This is one of those projects that I start off thinking its for me, but by the time it is completed, I know it is for someone else. So it is almost time to send it off to it’s final destination.