EYF2019 Yarn Update, or I Have Never Bought This Much Yarn In Such Little Time

A bit late, but I have been manically knitting away on my next design, which I hope to release in May. 

The truth is, I did not expect to buy this much at the Edinburgh Yarn Festival.

I bought way less last year, and with most of the vendors being the same again this year, I thought I would be fine.

I actually needed to purchase extra luggage for the flight home in the end. I am somewhat horrified at myself. I did also bring back the motor for my electric ball winder and some beer for the husbear, but still! I came home last year with 15kg suitcase.

I purchased 12 SQs: 10 for sweaters and 2 for shawls. It came to a total of 3.75kg yarn.

I will briefly talk about each yarn, going clock-wise from top left.

Wishbone Yarn Flax Flower

I purchased this because I love the color, and because it is 10% linen. I'm hoping to design a lightweight top for this yarn while I am in Australia next month.

Myak Cotton-Yak Laceweight

I bought 8 skeins because it is limited edition and I do not know what I want to do with it. My greatest fear is running out of yarn on a project, so I made sure this would not happen.

I am unlikely to design with it because it is a limited edition yarn.

Kettle Yarn Co Beyul Fingering 

Linda gave them to me in exchange for my sample of the Australian Under Wrap. I will be designing with the yarn, and I cannot wait to start working with it.

It is a merino-yak-silk blend, and if I had to choose an all-rounder yarn blend, this would be it.

Lotus Yarns Linen 100

I need a replacement sample piece of my wrap, and originally I was going to use this. I have decided against it, so I will probably destash this.

Stolen Stitches Nua Worsted

Words cannot begin to describe how much I love this yarn. I am already more than half way through this lovely, squishy pile of yarn, for a cardigan design that I hope to release in May.

It makes beautiful fabric, it smells so good and clean, and I literally cannot wait to be able to try on my cardigan.

I highly recommend this yarn, and its fingering weight little sister.

Hey Mama Wolf Sock Yarn

I bought 2 skeins last year that I have not used, but I could not resist buying some more.

There is 20% Ramie in it, which makes it suitable for socks, but I am thinking a lightweight top.

Ysolda Deimos

I purchased this for Anne Hanson's Chevi cardigan pattern. I have loved this design since I saw it the first time, but I never found the right yarn.

I squished this right before my class with Anne at the festival, and clearly it was meant to be.

At the Make Wool event, I dropped by to get @aleongtimetomake another skein, and I just had to grab an extra skein for a shawl for myself too.

Travelknitter Merino Silk 4ply

I decided that I would continue my 'tradition' of purchasing Larissa's EYF special color this year, so 2 skeins came home with me.

The Border Mill Alpaca Rose (see cone on left side of photo)

Honestly, the only reason why I bought this was because it is a blend of rose fibre and alpaca. I have no idea what I am planning to do with it either.

Myak Baby Yak Medium

I plan to design a sweater-coat to be released sometime towards the end of the year.

We travel a fair amount, and I need to replace my winter coat, so I thought this would be perfect.

Edinburgh Yarn Festival 2019: The Highlights

True to form, I did not take very many photos. There are a couple on my Instagram stories and a few more on my feed, many of them thanks to the lovely friends I have. 

I will be writing separate posts in the next few days about the classes I took as well. 

I started off the festival with the annual trip to up to Arthur's Seat, led by Grace (Babbles Travelling Yarns).

It is such a great way to deal with the jet lag: fresh air and sunshine and Story Time with Grace!

Darcey (@dmawunker) brought her version of my Australian Under Wrap design with her! And she even loaned it to me for the day even though she must have been a wee bit concerned that I would not return it to her. She chose Plucky Knitter cashmere for it, so it felt amazingly luxurious.

Many of you said really nice things to me about my first design, and while I cannot remember all of you by name, I am very grateful.

I arrived at EYF feeling kind of down about how little I had accomplished so far this year, and it means a lot to hear that you like the work I am doing. There will be more patterns coming!

Plus my sample now lives with Kettle Yarn Co., which I am very excited about.

I also bought piles and piles of yarn. Even prior to being medicated for ADHD, I have never bought this much yarn in this little time. I think I bought as much as triple what I bought last year.

With the exception of 2 of those piles, most of them will be for design work, however, and I have already cast on for a new design. In fact, the radio silence is partially due to my crazy plan to finish the pieces for an over-sized and long worsted weight cardigan in 2 weeks. For the record, I am actually doing pretty well, with half the body already complete.

I also talked to a bunch of different tech editors, and I am pretty sure I have found The One. So fingers crossed!

Sample Knitters Wanted

I am looking to hire sample knitters on a project basis. I have a steady stream of patterns that I will be ready to start sending out from mid-April.

Criteria:

• Have a Ravelry page or Instagram that shows your previous projects. 
• Experience with sock knitting and general experience with projects that suffer a lot of wear and tear. (I generally design for a relatively tight gauge.) 
• Experience with plant fibre yarns (blends and not). 
• Experience with laceweight-to-sportweight yarns. (These are typically what I design for.) 
• Experience with sample or test knitting preferred. 
• Own a scale.

Common Themes in upcoming Mathemaknitter patterns: 

• Lots of stockinette and garter stitch. 
• No finishing work required. (If there is any, I prefer to do that myself.) 
• Modular construction. (I am happy to split projects amongst multiple knitters.) 
• Mostly garments. 
• Mostly laceweight, light fingering, and fingering. 
• Mostly larger projects. I rarely knit anything less than 800-900 metres and so far, have not designed any either. 

Rates:

• Minimum: SGD0.22 (approximately EUR0.143 or USD0.162) per meter. 
• Meterage is calculated by weight of item in grams multiplied by the meters per gram as per yarn label. 
• I will pay for swatches also, and expect that you show me a photo of your swatch before we proceed with the project. 
• Rates go up based on weight of yarn (cobweb-to-sportweight will be more) and complexity of fabric. If I ask you for finishing work, such as seaming, I will pay you hourly, separate from knitting the fabric. 
• Unless I tell you in advance, usually I will be happy for you to keep the remainders. 
• Copy of pattern via Ravelry if self-published. 
• If you are knitting multiple pieces of fabric for 1 project, I will pay you every 2 pieces. This means that if you are knitting 4 pieces for me, plus some finishing work, I will pay you for the first 2 pieces, next 2 pieces, then finishing work, and finally, shipping costs. 
• If you are knitting a single, very large item, I will pay every 300m. 

Other Logistical Details:

• Except under unusual circumstances, I will ship or drop-ship the yarn to you. 
• I will pay for shipping back to me. 

If you are interested, please email me mathemaknitter@gmail.com with the following things: 

• Link to Instagram or Ravelry. Both is better. You are not required nor expected to have many followers, as this is simply for me to get an idea of your skill level. 
• State your favorite kinds of fabric to knit, e.g. stockinette, lace, brioche, colorwork. 
• State your favorite fibers to work with. (This is just for my reference, in case the right project comes up. It does not have an impact on whether I will ask you to knit for me.)
• State how much time you generally get to knit each week. 
• State your location. 

If selected, I will ask you to send me 2 swatches of stockinette in the same yarn but different gauge, before proceeding. I will pay for the swatches at the rate of SGD0.22 (approximately EUR0.143 or USD0.162) per meter and cover the cost of shipping. You are welcome to send me swatches from previous projects if you have 2 in the same yarn.

(I will be at Edinburgh Yarn Festival in 2 weeks, and I would be happy to meet you there for you to show me your swatches, if you like.) 

Why I Write My Patterns and Lay Them Out in LaTeX

Today's @yarnlovechallenge prompt is Draft, so I thought I would talk a little bit about my workflow here. If you are interested in any of the things I write about below, please get in touch via email. 

Separate Calculations from Text

Screenshot of pattern development workflow

   

I write my patterns and grade them at the same time.

But I keep them separate while working on them.

The numbers, including stitch counts, measurements, and yarn requirements are in a spreadsheet, and I have code that import the numbers into my pattern.

This means that I always have a one true source, and I never get them confused while changing stuff, and it saves me a great deal of time I would otherwise spend on checking.

Inspect Code, Not Output  

Screenshot of my editing workflow

I do not like visually inspecting things to see if it was done correctly, because my spatial skills are deficient. I cannot tell if the font size is correct by looking at it, but I can read my code and see if I formatted it correctly.

Program My Diagrams  

Screen grab from Australian Under Wrap

I am no artist, and struggling with spatial stuff means that I do not feel confident with drawing at all, whether with pen and paper or digitally.

In LaTeX, I use the TikZ library to develop my diagrams. I write some code, compile it, and I can reason about my code versus what was compiled, and iterate until it is perfect.

I can also reuse my code. It can be really awesome for modular designs, because you can perform shifts, flips, and rotations with math rather than drag and drop.

LaTeX Makes Sensible Decisions For Me 

I do not have any experience doing layouts or things like that, beyond being frustrated by Word or Powerpoint.

By using existing libraries, I can rely on decisions made by someone else who has thought long and hard about how to make documents look good, without giving up control of the document. I can still muck around and change stuff, but so far, most of the time the defaults look quite professional.

Reusing Text 

Screenshot from Australian Under Wrap

Even though I am just starting out, I find that there there are many chunks of text I would like to re-use across patterns, particularly in the Techniques and Abbreviations section that most patterns have.

I have put together a separate file that I use across patterns, so that my text for things like how to do different cast-offs remain the same. And, should I come up with a better way to write something, I can update all of them with a simple script to recompile all the patterns for me.

It was really useful when I was obsessing over my bio section too.

Happy Year of the Pig! Here's to more content!

I aim to produce more knitting and crafting related content this year, and I am kicking this off as the other New Year begins. 

Nodding piggie in a Grab Car. Picture taken by Husbear

I have been thinking for some time that I should be able to write more about knitting. I knit a lot, I think about knitting a lot, and therefore, I should have content.

And I do, I just have not been writing it out.

I had forgotten that the only way to write more is to write more.

Now that I am writing this post, I feel that I have so much to write about. The knitting software I have been working on, the patterns that I have finished, and most of all, the knitting I have been doing.

It feels so good to say that. In 2018, I barely knit at all. It was the first extended dry spell from knitting I have had in my (admittedly short) knitting career.

I have finished a shawl already. I will most likely finish a skirt this month, and hopefully a cardigan before Edinburgh Yarn Festival. That will be as many items as I finished last year.

I will be back in a few days with more, but this is a start.

Japan Yarn Shops 2018

This is by no means an exhaustive list of places, just the ones I managed to get to.

Walnut Kyoto & Tokyo

I went to both, because, why not? But I have to say that you probably don't have to.

It's a good stop if you are a fan of Amirisu magazine because they have lots of Amirisu samples, and they're a flagship for Brooklyn Tweed and Quince & Co, I believe.

Avril Kichijoji (Tokyo)

I only went to the one in Tokyo. I decided against visiting the one in Kyoto because I did not buy anything in Tokyo. They have a lot of novelty yarn, which is so not the kind of thing I knit with.

Update: yarnoversteffi kindly gifted me the thing I most wanted from Avril in our Singapore knitters Christmas yarn swap, so that was awesome.

Ananda (Tokyo)

This is much more a shop for weavers and spinners.

They have a lot of hemp, lots of animal roving (the wool is from New Zealand though) and quite a selection of natural dyestuffs.

They do carry silk, but they were not able to tell me the yardage per 100g or anything like that, so I didn't get any. It's possible that I was unable to explain to them what I was asking, so maybe you will have better luck.

Moorit (Tokyo)

They have more rustic-type yarns than the other shops in Tokyo that I managed to get to. It was nice, but they did not have much stuff I was likely to use in the next 6-12 months. They stocked some Scottish yarns, but I am planning on attending Edinburgh Yarn Festival again, so I didn't get any of it either.

And-Ito (Tokyo)

I made it here because they have coned yarn, and that's something I keep an eye out for because I do have a knitting machine. They had a good selection of finer, lightweight yarns suitable for tropical weather, including Belgian linen.

And they also had DK weight cotton cashmere, which I am very fond off.

Hobbyra Hobbyre (Kobe)
I stumbled on this one by accident.

The shop is adorable, and I picked up some of their house brand yarn, including a lovely linen blend.

EYLUL (Osaka)

This was my favorite. They carry a good mix of hand-dyed European/American yarns as well a good selection of warm weather friendly ones. They are also a Zealana stockist.

They also carry Saredo recycled yarn, which was something I had been looking for.

A Tidy Stretchy Chain Bind-off, or Create More Loops!

This post started off as a comment to Kwerkii in a Ravelry group, but I decided that I would expand on it here. I would also like to thank Holly Chayes for sharing her favorite bind-off trick, because it was the inspiration for what I share here. 

When binding-off x stitches, you create (x-1) loops across the edge (because the first 2 stitches bound-off only create 1 loop). I propose that for a nice, stretchy bind-off, create more loops!

In this post, I will use the following abbreviations:

• YPCM: Yarn used per extra stitch bound off, in centimetres 
• YPS: Yarn used per extra stitch bound off, in terms of bound-off stitches 

YPCM is the length of yarn required to bind-off an extra stitch. 

YPS is different from the others, because it is a measurement that controls for gauge. 1 YPS basically means 1 wrap around a needle. If you knit a stitch, that is one 1 YPS, and the same if you purl.  

Therefore, the traditional Long-tail Bind-off has a YPS of 1, because to bind-off one more stitch, you knit the stitch, and then pass the previous one over. You only 'add yarn' once. 

To give you an idea what YPS looks like for other Bind-offs: 

• Long-tail bind-off: 1
• 3-stitch I-cord bind-off: 3 
• JSSBO: 2.5 (0.5 extra because of reverse and purl yarnovers eat a bit more yarn) 
• K2togtbl bind-off: 2 
• 1 by 1 tubular bind off with grafting: 4 

A sideways lace edging is super stretchy, but difficult to obtain a YPS measurement. It creates a longer outer edge than the inner edge that is being bound off, which gives the inner edge more room to grow. 

(These numbers are not calculated by measuring yarn used, but instead by counting the stitches made to bind off an extra stitch.) 

When you use a stretchy bind-off, you are using a technique that has a higher YPS, which consequently leads to a higher YPCM. 

When you increase the needle size, you increase the YPCM but not the YPS. It will usually be faster than switching to a stretchier bind-off, because you will not need to make more stitches.

Create More Loops! 

If you increase the number of loops in the bind-off edge to more than (x-1), you will increase the YPS and YPCM. 

With the K2togtbl bind-off, this can be done by knitting an extra loop (or stitch, depending on how you see it) into the stitch on the right needle at regular intervals. Theoretically, to achieve the same YPS as the JSSBO, you will create this extra stitch every second stitch you bind-off. 

I have actually never done that. I usually find that a loop increase of about 10-20%, or an extra 1-2 loops every 10 stitches, is sufficient -- this means a YPS of about 2.1-2.2. On my current mitten WIP, that seems to be enough so that I just slide my mittens on as opposed to feeling the tight edge as I tug it over the widest part of my hand.

Create More Smaller Loops for Cuffs! 

By choosing the correct needle size, you could have a Long-tail bind-off that has the same YPCM as a JSSBO. It does not mean that the former is equivalent to the latter, especially in terms of good finishing. How you add the extra yarn does matter, and in my opinion, that is why some people (myself included), have trouble getting JSSBO to look good. 

There are 2 kinds of stretchy edges that we commonly need in knitting. 

The first is what we need for blocking things like lace, where we want to open the edge up. We want to have the ability to stretch, open up, and stay that way. 

The second is what we need for things like cuffs and hems. We want it to have give, but to shrink back once we pull it over the right body part. 

For the latter, I like to suggest that you need a relatively high YPS while carefully managing the resulting YPCM so that you do not have a flaring edge. 

We can do that increasing the extra loops, to have a YPS of 2.3-2.4, and decreasing the needle size. 

Final Note: 

I will be back with photos at some point. I need to get a lightbox as I have trouble getting the close-up shots required.