That’s my Polar Chullo, which you can now find in the new Winter 2009 Edition of Twist Collective.  The yarn pack is available here.

A lot of thoughts of movement went into this:  The natural colorway moves back in time with a retro feel.  The bears move their legs from one motif to another as they amble around.  Some of the bears get just a bit leaner as they wander around toward the top.  They’re “stranded” – they can’t help it!  But it’s just by a stitch – can you find it?

If you’re moved to knit the design but want different colors, I’m busy putting a few alternate colorways together.  At 9 sts/inch, I’d recommend either Spindrift or Baby Ull (which I used for my Postwar Mittens, which were knit at exactly the same gauge.)  Here are some colorways to consider and I’ll add more as they become available:

Some traditionally-inspired Spindrift possibilities:

My delight with Spindrift at 9sts/inch has prompted me to start carrying it at Kidsknits.  Both of these colorways are available and I’ll post more as my Spindrift stock expands.  (Link to be posted shortly.)

Some Baby Ull options:

Just the tip of the iceberg, my darlings!

Remember “Home Ec” class?  If yours was anything like mine, maybe we shouldn’t even dredge those dreary memories up.  Fast forward to 2009 and I bet you’ll be impressed with some of the ideas that are swirling around the “Family and Consumer Science” (no kidding!) classroom these days.

Son # 2 came home the other day with a mission: He had to make something useful out of garbage.  He was so excited!  Not that I’ve sold the dear boy on  “Waste Product Re-engineering”, but he does enjoy a creative challenge.  Check out what he came up with as a present for his knitting-obsessed mom:

Does that sweet, beastly face look familiar to you?  If you spend much time cruising the Pet Food aisles, it might.  Check out the back of the dpn bag:

Yep, it’s made from a large size dog food bag.  Turns out those suckers are made with some pretty tough, reinforced stuff.  By the way, that’s an old Dale of Norway zipper you see there at the top.  You might also consider recycling an old zipper from a unwearable pair of jeans.

#2’s process was pretty simple: Outline a rectangle on the bag, around the dog’s face, that’s about the same width as the zipper.  Cut it out.  Find another interesting portion of the bag; cover it with your first rectangle; trace around your first rectangle and cut the 2nd rectangle out.  Wash and dry both rectangles.  Fold about a half inch seam allowance down along both top edges of the rectangles and pin those edges on either side of your zipper, with the right sides of everything facing up. Sew those top edges in place over the zipper.  (#2 used a sewing machine with a zipper presser foot.) Fold the bag in half, with the right sides together, zipper at the top,  and sew around the 3 loose sides, using a similar seam allowance.  Trim the corners close to the stitching.  Turn it inside out.  Voila!  A dpn bag with a pedigree!

I’m just past the base of the neckline now.  I think it really helps to put a marker on either side of those steek stitches so that you know exactly where to make your decreases:

Last week, all eleven new Heilo colors arrived.  What fun! Delving into that colorful pile of woolly goodness brought back memories of leaping into piles of freshly-raked leaves and revelling in nature’s colors or filling goodie bags from the candy store’s long bank of jelly bean bins and delighting in all the tasty combinations. Oh, the colorwork possibilities!

Two of the “new” colors are returning friends: you’ve seen white 0010 and wine 4246 before.

heilo wine 4246

They’re old favorites which were discontinued for a while, only because they were so beloved that they were sold out.  Now, they’re back; hopefully, for a nice, long stay.

Some of the allegedly new colors will seem very familiar – even suspiciously familiar!

From the top left, we have the new orange red 3237 – a slightly less saturated version of old, discontinued burnt orange 3418, to the right.  In the middle, on the left, we have the new sunglow 2126 – again, a slightly less saturated version of old, discontinued gold (aka goldenrod) 2427.  On the bottom, that’s the new asparagus 9145, which is – you guessed it – slightly less saturated than the old fern green 9155.  Smart cookies like you see a pattern developing here, yes?

So, why move to the softer, less saturated colors?  First of all, they’re more wearable.  For instance, if you walk down Park Avenue in a sweater knit entirely out of the old gold 2427, people might try to flag you down for a ride; make it out of the  softer sunglow and not only will folks stop calling you “taxi!!!!”, but you’ll also have a more flattering sweater that will go with more things. Plus, the sunglow, orange red and asparagus are still lively enough that they’ll happily “pop” in your colorwork.  And, they’ll even play nicely with some of the truly new, more muted colors, below:

Heilo yarn at Kidsknits.com

Here we have petrol 7062 (above left), light steel blue 6642, (bottom left), plum smoke 5062 (top right) and orchid 5042 (bottom right).  Wonderful, wonderful colors, but rather odd names.  Yes, that really is a photo of yarns that really do have those official Dale of Norway color names.  But, if you’re surprised by how much green there is in light steel blue, or you’re wondering if all the orchids in Norway are as greyish looking as this orchid, you’re not alone.   Apparently, these colors were given their English names many months ago, by someone who had only seen a pdf of a digital photo showing these colors; it was much later that the actual yarns hit the American shore and American eyes.

Which brings me to the ultimate “great color, weird name” mismatch:

Heilo yarn at Kidsknits.com

On the far right, at the top, we have…drumroll, please…dark salmon 4624.  Oh, yes we do!  Whadyamean, it’s there, really, it’s right there, right above the ever-popular blossom pink 4203.  Oh, okay, so that color might have a lot more in common with your raspberry sorbet dessert than your (dark) salmon appetizer. And, yes, you would be entirely in the right to return any Norwegian salmon that showed up at your table looking that pink.  Perhaps it’s more the color of that lovely rose between your date’s teeth?  Anyway, it really is a beautiful color.  Just stick with the numbers and you’ll do fine.

When they don’t have to rely upon distorted, third-hand, transatlantic photos, it seems the folks at Dale US can quite adeptly  name their colors. The middle color on the left is their new mist 2425, which came out last year in Baby Ull so, apparently, they had a better peek at that one before naming it, for it truly is reminiscent of the lightest grey seen in the mist on a foggy morning.  Just for comparison sake, it’s sitting between the old standby, light sheep heather 2931 (top) and the classic sand heather 0004 (bottom).  For further comparison, in the middle, we have natural 0020 on top, off-white 0017 (newly discontinued) in the middle and the happily-returning white 0010 on the bottom. “White” – hmmm, now there’s a color name we can agree upon!

Mary Ann Stephens' "Vancouver" by Dale of Norway

All three of my sons play football,  so I’m a very busy spectator, this time of the year.  Vancouver is the perfect project for my purpose – simple enough that I can blast through the stockinette portions without missing any action on the field, yet interesting enough at some points to make it appealling to a geeky knitter like me (or you, perhaps?).  And, it gets me into the Olympic spirit…even if I am just lollygagging on the bleachers.

I’ve read the pattern through and it seems pretty straight forward.  However, there are little things here and there that I thought I’d mention to you; things I’ll tweak a bit in mine that you might want to consider, too.

First, as always, we need to consider what needle sizes we’ll use.  Patterns really never tell you this, they merely suggest a starting point for testing as many needles sizes as you find necessary until one of them finally gets you the precise, indicated gauge.  Really, these needle size suggestions in patterns, although a standard step, are really misleading, at best.  I think there could be many more happy FO’s if we entirely did away with needle size suggestions in patterns.  If you want to end up with a sweater made to the specified dimensions, try various needle sizes – not merely the suggested size – out in your own, personal knitting tension until you find the right ones for you.  (Hint: I’m using different sizes.  I might even use a third, different size for the stranded work, too…we’ll see!)

Obviously, my yarn color is different, too.  Had to be! (BTW, that’s Daletta “mist” 2425 you see there.  Nice, huh?!

I’ve also made one minor change in where I put my markers, but I’d like you to consider it, too, for I think it makes things a good bit more foolproof.  I know it will save me from a fair bit of frogging!  The pattern has you place one marker right in the middle of each side.  Actually, with the ribbed panels going up the side, it’s super easy to see right where the middle of each side will be.  The real issue, to my mind anyway, is knowing immediately when to switch from stockinette stitch to ribbing and when to end the ribbing and revert back to stockinette.  It would really be nice to know that in real time, rather than several rounds after I goofed! Rather than use one marker at each side, I use two – one on each end of the ribbing.  Plus, I color code them – red (ok, magenta) means “Stop the stockinette!”, green means “Go back to stockinette!”.   And, dahlink, I just know you love my high-end stitch markers, yes?!

Have any of you seen the ready-to-wear version of the Dale of Norway Vancouver sweater? You can see a great photo of it here.  Now compare that one to the handknit version shown in DofN’s Vancouver 2010 Book 213 here.  Notice anything unusual?  Yes, exactly!  The ready-to-wear one has that funky black toggle that’s lined up on the v-neck’s diagonal, interrupting the horizontal motifs.

Of course, it does have a practical purpose: it keeps the v-neck closed up and cozy.  Plus, I suppose toggles are quite *de rigueur* these days. I’ve been told it’s quite the “upscale”, leather (oooh, leather!) toggle, too.  But honestly, even though I really do like some toggles, you’ll never see me wearing a black, cockeyed toggle smack dab in the middle of a pastel sweater!

Okay, now that I’ve gone way out on that limb, I suspect that some of you might really like that toggle.  Come on, don’t be shy – speak up!  I’d love to know what you think of it, either way.  Interestingly (okay, surprisingly) I’ve already had a couple of customers ask me if they can get it for their handmade versions. I’m looking into it with folks at DofN and I’ll let you know, either way. If it makes some knitters happy, I’d be happy to get it for them (if I can.) I do know many knitters are determined to make exact replicas of the DofN ready-to-wear sweaters, and if that’s what makes it fun for them, I’m all for it.  But for my own knitting, I’m the exact opposite (as you probably could have guessed from my Vancouver virtual swatching, a few posts below ) – mine simply *must* be different!

So, there are two things I wanted to discuss with you guys:  First, just what do you think of that toggle?  Am I just blind to the sartorial splendor of cockeyed toggles? Could be.  Second, what will those of us who have nixed the toggle idea do to effect a similar, practical type of cozy closure on our v-necks?  Well, a few ideas come to mind.

The first thing that popped into my mind is probably the cheapest and the easiest:  a snap, maybe two snaps.  Simple and unobtrusive, yet tasteful and effective. Too simple, perhaps?  Okay, how ’bout a mini I-cord toggle loop worked into the edge of the v-neck at that same point and a (hopefully tasteful) button… even a toggle button, if you’d like…right there on the other side of the neck edge, so that you’d get that same amount of closure, but in a less visually interrupting way.  Of course, you could always just sew the darn toggle on straight.  Other ideas?

Birds of All Feathers Bag, by Mary Ann Stephens, copyright 2009

The “Birds of All Feathers Bag” pattern is for sale as a downloadable, personal-use PDF through Ravelry.

The first time I was out in the world on my own, I encountered one particular problem: Apparently, I was too friendly.  I had grown up in a medium-sized upstate NY town where it had always seemed perfectly normal to smile and wave “Hello!” to anyone who walked by, whether you knew them or not.  Invariably, they’d at least wave back. Often, they’d stop to chat and we’d end up sweetening each other’s day, if just by a bit.

As I moved from my safe, sleepy hometown of Binghamton to my bustling college town of Baltimore, I was stunned to see peoples’ reactions to a simple “Hello!” Most anyone who had been leisurely strolling down the street, eyes on the horizon, suddenly quickened their pace, focused narrowly on their shoes and gave me a wide berth.  Some were terribly confused and asked “Do I know you?” And some definitely got the wrong idea altogether!

Eventually, I caught on, reigned in the “Hello!”s a bit and now even manage to live happily in frenetic, anonymous metro NY.   But I’ve always missed the open-hearted nature of Binghamton.  Since last April, that friendly hometown attitude has seemed a fading relic from a very distant past.

It was shocking to read the headlines of April 3, 2009: “Shooting Rampage Ends with 14 Dead in Binghamton”. It was such sad irony to see that this horror occurred at the American Civic Association of all places, a spot where birds of all feathers would regularly flock together. Recent immigrants of myriad backgrounds had been taking English classes at the ACA – some while they held down multiple jobs – as they worked to fit in and contribute to the local fabric. They were killed by a fellow student who had obviously lost his mind. It was so unfair!  More than that, to me, it became absolutely heartbreaking as I read that their slain teacher was none other than dear Mrs. King.

I think every Binghamtonian of my vintage knew Mrs. King.  She was mother of 10 bright, active, wonderful kids, including my old friend Beth, and you really couldn’t go anywhere around Binghamton without seeing Mrs. King’s van zipping here and there as she took the kids, and plenty of the rest of us, one place or another.  I first met her because she was my Girl Scout leader (and a wonderful one, at that!) Oddly enough, as busy as you’d think she must have been with 10 kids, she was also the one you were most apt to run into as substitute teacher here, volunteer there, chaperone yet again.  She was intelligent, enthusiastic and famously patient. She had a phenomenal memory, too. The last time I saw Mrs. King was at an old friend’s wedding.  Mrs. King hadn’t seen me for at least a decade, yet she reminded me of umpteen sweet, silly things from my childhood that I had entirely forgotten.  She even recalled and giggled with glee over some minute details of the fabulous (well, we thought so) department store diorama Beth and I had made for French class. I remember the delightful time we had building it, with Mrs. King’s abundant support and encouragement.  I suspect she remembered every project every one of her 10 kids ever did.  I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if she had remembered countless details of all of the thousands of us she touched – she cared that much! We’ll certainly always remember and be inspired by her.

No one could ever have more enthusiasm for a fun project than Mrs. King, and my old hometown could definitely use some enthusiastic support, so it seems only fitting that a portion of the proceeds from the sale of my hopefully-tons-of-fun “Birds of All Feathers Bag” project will be donated to the Broome County United Way fund for the ACA victims in Mrs. King’s memory.  I hope you’ll join in the fun.  Thanks!

I really want to make the new Vancouver v-neck, but I’m not the copying type. As much as I like the light blue model…

Vancouver 2010 V-neck by Dale of Norway

I feel the need for a different colorway. So…

My custom Vancouver colorways using the same Daletta yarn

I’ve been playing around with some possibilities. Whadyathink?I have some favorites in mind, but I haven’t narrowed it down to just one.  Which one do you like best? (And will someone please get that nice girl a decent pair of shades?!)

Vancouver 2010 Book 213

Just a quick post to let you know it’s here; I’ll post links as soon as Phil gets a chance to add it to the site. (BTW, it’s $13.95 + s/h)

Update:  here’s the link to the Vancouver book on Kidsknits.com.