"Quack" pattern

In the last post, you got a dramatic introduction to these squeaking, felted ducks. Here's the pattern:

Materials
-- About 40 g (65-70 yds) of feltable worsted weight yarn.
For the yellow duck, I used Peace Fleece (70% wool/30% mohair) in 'chickie masla' for the body and a rust-colored Bartlett fisherman's yarn (100% wool) for the beak and feet.
For the mallard duck, I used Lamb's Pride Worsted (85% wool/ 15% mohair) in "Sandy Heather" for the body, unknown colorways or dark brown, white, and dark green for the neck and head, Peace Fleece as the beak, and the Bartlett for the feet.
-- Size 10 needles. Straight or circular for the body. Double-pointed or circular for the legs.
-- Darning needle
-- Stuffing for the body. Wool roving, recyled t-shirts, etc.
-- dog squeaker from the pet store (optional)

Sizing
-- Knitting gauge: 14 stitches and 20 rows = 4"
-- Size before felting: 14.5" long and 5.5" wide when sewn together (11" wide unsewn)
-- Size after felting: 12" long and 4.75" wide

Abbreviations
k = knit
p= purl
k2tog = knit the next two stitches together
kfb = knit in the front and back of the next stitch
ssk= individually slip the next two stitches knitwise, then knit them together
sl1 wyif = "slip 1 with yarn in front," which you'll do by bring the yarn to the front and slipping the next stitch purlwise
ch 3 = "chain 3;" I use this in the bind off for the webbed feet. You'll knit one stitch, slip it back to the left needle, knit it again, slip it back again, and knit it a third time. It leaves a little chain of 3 stitches on the right-hand needle.
bind1 = "bind one off;" when you have two stitches on the right needle, use the left needle to lift the first (right) stitch over the second (left) stitch. It will bind off that first stitch.



Pattern
The duck is knit back and forth on two needles. You'll cast on at the tail, increase for the body, decrease for the neck, increase for the head, and then decrease for the beak. This will give you a flat, contoured piece that you seam together at the bottom, leaving a space for stuffing. You'll felt it, stuff it (including a dog squeaker if you want), and then use the cast on tail for seaming.

Tail
Cast on 5 stitches, leaving a tail of about 10" (this will be used for seaming)
Row 1 and all odd rows: purl across
Row 2: kfb 5 times (10 stitches)
Row 4: {kfb, k1} 5 times (15 stitches)
Row 6: {kfb, k2} 5 times (20 stitches)
Row 8: {kfb, k3} 5 times (25 stitches)
Row 10: {kfb, k4} 5 times (30 stitches)
Row 12: {kfb, k5} 5 times (35 stitches)
Row 14: {kfb, k6} 5 times (40 stitches)

Main Body
Knit in stockinette (knit the even rows, purl the odd rows) for Rows 15-33, or about 3.75"

Shoulders
Next, you'll decrease for the shoulder. If you're doing the Mallard version, change to a brown yarn half way through the decreases, around Row 40.

Row 34: {k2tog, k8} 4 times (36 stitches)
Row 36: {k2tog, k7} 4 times (32 stitches)
Row 38: {k2tog, k6} 4 times (28 stitches)
Row 40: {k2tog, k5} 4 times (24 stitches)
Row 42: {k2tog, k4} 4 times (20 stitches)
Row 44: {k2tog, k3} 4 times (16 stitches)

Neck
Knit in stockinette for Rows 45-55, or about 2.5". If you're doing the Mallard version, change to green yarn halfway through the neck, around Row 50. I also embellished it by duplicate stitching in white on Row 49 (you could knit a row of white instead, but I didn't think of it until too late).

Head
Row 56: {kfb, k3} 4 times (20 stitches)
Row 58: {kfb, k4} 4 times (24 stitches)
Row 60: knit
Row 62: knit
Row 64: {k2tog, k4} 4 times (20 stitches)
Row 66: {k2tog, k3} 4 times (16 stitches)

Beak
Change to the beak color yarn (orange for a yellow duck, yellow for a mallard).
Row 68: k2, ssk, k2tog, k4, ssk, k2tog, k2 (12 stitches)
Row 70: knit
Row 72: k1, ssk, k2tog, k2, ssk, k2tog, k1 ( 8 stitches)
Row 74: ssk, k2tog, ssk, k2tog (4 stitches)
After Row 74, break the yarn and draw it through the remaining 4 stitches.

Seaming
Next, you'll sew together the two edges of the duck. Turn it inside out, pull the two edges together, and seam it with a sturdy stitch. With the mallard, I sewed with the yarn ends so that each color section was seamed with matching yarn. Make sure you leave a few inches unsewn - I left a few in the middle of the body - so that you can turn it right side out and stuff it. You don't need to bother sewing in the ends. In fact, I like leaving long ends for the body, so that I have some felted yarn to sew up the opening.


Legs and Feet
The legs are a little tricky to explain but quick to knit. The basic idea is that for each foot you'll pick up six stitches in the middle of the body, knit an inch or so of I-cord (I did it with double-knitting), and then bind off decoratively for a webbed foot. You'll need two double-pointed needles or one circular needle for this.

Here are the detailed instructions: Turn the duck so that it's on its back with the head towards you. You'll start with the right leg. Pick a general spot about halfway lengthwise on the body and halfway widthwise between the seam and the right side. Pick up six stitches for the leg; three will be on one row, and three will be two rows further back. You can put all six stitches on one needle for I-cord if you want. Personally, I prefer double knitting for this many stitches. To do that, pick up the stitches with your left needle in the following order:

1 3 5
2 4 6

When you start knitting, you'll alternate knit and slip stitches as follows:
{k1, sl1 wyif} 3 times
On the first pass, you'll be knitting the front row and slipping the back row. When you turn your work and come back, you'll be knitting the back row and slipping the front row.

After completing about an inch or two of leg (I did 6 full rounds of knitting, but you might want more), you'll bind of with kind of a decorative picot that gives a webbed-foot look. Here's how I did it:
k1, {ch3, k1, bind1, k1, bind1}2 times, ch3, k1, bind1
Break the yarn and pull it through the remaining loop. Sew the yarn tail inside the leg to hide it. If you like, you can use the cast-on yarn tail to tack the leg down a little and secure it more the body.

Now, repeat for the left leg.

Felting and Finishing
You can hand-felt the duck in warm water, but it's much easier to toss it into the washing machine for a hot wash. It might need more than one cycle. When it's felted to your desired density, let it dry and then stuff it, including a replacement dog squeaker from the pet store if you want. Sew up the opening using the felted ends of yarn.


Enjoy!!

lucky ducky

Wait .. what's that? ...

It's a duck!

And another one! How precious ...

OMG! The dog!!

Doggie says: Mwa Ha Ha!!

Oh man, I crack myself up. If you didn't figure it out by now, I made my dog some felted duck toys. They have dog sqeakers inside and everything! I'll put up a post with a pattern later today or tomorrow ....

Joshua Tree

En route to Mountain Man's fieldwork in California, we stopped for a day of climbing at Joshua Tree National Park. Between the insane shapes of the Joshua Trees and the drama of the granite jutting into sky, it's an amazing landscape to experience.


It was also quite chilly in the evening and early morning, so I was glad to have finished my latest Storm Cloud Shawlette on the drive there. The colors of this yarn -- Fleece Artist Somoko in 'Olive' - seemed to particularly resonate with this landscape, and it will forever remind me of my visit to Joshua Tree.


I may take a break from knitting my shawlettes, but then again, maybe not. I like having a project on the needles that I don't have to think about (by now, the pattern is completely ingrained in my mind!), and I like that I can use sock yarn this way. Also, the shawl is a lovely thing to snuggle around my neck on a chilly morning ...

or to drape across my shoulders. I find that it's much easier to wear a half-circle shawl this way than any of my stoles or triangular shawls.

Arizona Harvest

Autumn is the season that triggers the most beauty and memory for me. I think back to my childhood in Connecticut, where autumn meant soccer fields covered in fallen maple leaves, crisp mornings, fresh apple cider, pumpkin picking. I think back to my years in Vermont, where it meant frost on the garden, shorn corn fields, and brightly colored hills.

Now that I live in Phoenix, I'm adjusting to a very different sense of the season. We celebrate the coolness, but to us that means the first dips into the 80s (although today it's back up to 95). And we have our own version of fall colors, but it's the crimson of ripe prickly pear and the sunset hues of the Red Bird of Paradise, not the foliage of turning trees.


We also have our autumnal harvest. And in this post, I thought I'd share with you some of the foods that I've been "wildcrafting" and picking from right in my neighborhood. Some of the harvest comes from desert plants, like the prickly pear above, which I peeled and juiced for some very colorful drinks.

Some of it has a Mediterranean flavor, like these GORGEOUS olives. They've been sliced and soaked in water for a week, and then they'll go into a brine until they lose their bitterness.


Then there's the exotic sweetness of several Middle Eastern plants, such as dates, pomegranates, and carob pods. The carob trees are one of the most lovely shade trees in my neighborhood, and I think that most people don't even know that the pods are edible. Most people just seem to grow the pomegranates ornamentally as well.


The dates in particular have been intruiging to me. I've found four or five varieties growing in this neighborhood. Most of the palms are too tall for me to harvest, and I just pick up the dried dates from the ground (they're softened and extra delicious after a little soak in warm water and triple sec!). But there are a few trees that are still low, so you can see what they look like on the palm:



Our own yard will become fruitful in another couple of months when the pecans and citrus begin to ripen. And even more so in a few years, when our newly planted fruit trees -- meyer lemon, fig, persimmon, apricot, blood orange, apple -- begin to bear. In the meantime, what I've taken advantage of are the banana leaves. We trimmed quite a few in the course of this weekend's yardwork, and they impart a lovely, grassy flavor to baked Thai or South Indian dishes.


Also, we pruned a few of the craziest, weepiest branches off of our hackberry trees. Rather than tossing them out, I stripped off the leaves and wove a wild, freeform basket. I was very proud of my Mother Earthness, indeed!


By the way, I should mention that I'm not sneaking into peoples' yards to pick these things. I just take small samples from trees that hang over the street, or I ask the neighbors, or I pick from trees that are planted around office buildings and clearly ignored (e.g. they leave olives littering the sidewalk). It's been a real eye opener to see how many edibles are planted in this area, and especially to see how few of them are put to good use.

I hope you're enjoying your own harvest season, wherever you may be!

Warm Colors, Feburary Baby Sweater

I tend to gravitate towards cool, forest colors like green and blue. But the universe seemed to be shouting at me with warm reds and oranges when we went up to Oak Creek Canyon: flowers, sunsets, lichens, even our climbing gear. My knitting fit right in!


I was working on a February baby sweater, knit for a friend of mine who is about to have a baby girl. The yarn is a naturally-dyed DK wool from Table Rock Llamas, picked up last fall at the Taos Wool Festival.

I followed the pattern reasonably closesly, although, as you know if you've knit it yourself, her pattern is vague enough that it requires a bit of creative interpretation. Here are a few of my minor changes: larger gauge and size, eyelets around the yoke ... hmm, I think that's all I can remember at the moment

I love this little pattern, and I think it was a sweet match for this sunset-colored yarn. I'd like to make one for myself for this winter!

chickie

Squaaaaaak!!I've been playing around with quite a few projects this week. Nothing fully finished and ready to show off just yet, but I've got this little chick as a teaser. It's knit in Peace Fleece, colorway "chickie masla." More to come soon!

mountain bliss

With Phoenix still hovering near 100 degrees, Mountain Man and I headed north for the weekend. Our destination was Oak Creek Canyon, a beautiful, forested area between Sedona and Flagstaff. It was gorgeous and rugged country.

For Mountain Man, the primary point of the trip was the rock climbing. For me, the deal was sweetened by the fact that chilly, fresh air is conducive to both the wearing and the production of knitted items. Here's an early morning snapshot from our campsite this morning, where I was happily doing both!

You may recognize the blue storm cloud wrapped around my neck. But the kerchief is making its first appearance here. I whipped it up a few months and am not sure how it fell through the blogging cracks. I actually get a great deal of wear out of it for rock climbing, gardening, driving with open windows, and so forth. It does the same thing as a bandana, with the extra panache of a hand-knitted item!


The yarn is Be Sweet's Bambino, a 70% organic cotton and 30% bamboo blend, in the color 'dark denim.' This is a company that I feel good about supporting, as it pays a fair wage to women artisans in South Africa. And the yarn? Lovely, soft, and substantial, with a bit of shine from the bamboo.

All in all, it was a very fine weekend. Mountain Man was blissed out by the rocks. I was blissed out with all the knitting time. And Isis? Well, you can see for yourself ....

Black Walnut Dumpling (bag)

When I was back in Connecticut late last month, I went on a walk in the park with my dad. We passed under some black walnut trees whose branches were heavy with walnuts, and I had my dad whack a bunch of them out of the trees with his cane!

It was a sweet and lighthearted moment, and I was happy to come home with those gorgeous, fragrant nuts. (Kitty took an interest in them, too)

I gave the hulls a good boil and a two-day soak, and then I tossed in a huge hank of wool yarn from my local market in Vermont. The yarn started out with one strand of white wool and one strand of gray. It came out as a warm, marled brown.

Now, about this time, I'd seen the dumpling bag in the autumn issue of Interweave, and I couldn't wait to cast on. I used size 10 needles since that's what I had. I made two other main adjustments: First, to make it more of a purse size, I added an extra increase row so that it was 80 stitches around. Second, instead of the handle in the pattern, I cast on provisionally, then picked up stitches on one side, knit two long strand of I-cord, twisted them, and kitchener stitched them to the picked up stitches on the other side.


Before felting, the bag was 12.5" wide, 9"deep from the V, and with a 20" handle. After felting, it was 11.75" wide, 8" deep, and with a 21" handle. Don't ask me how it ended up with those dimensions -- it should have felted down much more, and the handle should have gotten shorter, not longer! All I can guess is that I'd slightly felted the yarn during the dyeing. Something was definitely off, because my initial swatch -- which I'd done with a small swatch that was barely dipped into the dye -- felted much denser than the bag itself.


You can see for yourself how texture and color varied during the course of this project: (1) gray marled yarn, (2) brown dyed yarn, (3) big swatch unfelted, (4) small swatch felted, and (5) finished bag (note: those two swatches didn't start out at the same size, but you can still compare the texture).


All the same, I'm going to get a lot of use out of this bag. I've been using it as my purse for the last few days, with a kilt pin as a closure.

goodbye Vermont, hello desert

In the last few weeks, I found a dissertation topic, survived/celebrated a family wedding, said goodbye to my beloved Vermont, and drove the three thousand miles back to Arizona. It's been a scattered, whirlwind time. So, as sad as it is for me to be back in the desert, there's also a relief that comes with settling down again.

I spent much time knitting, but it, too, was scattered. Take these three shawls for the wedding. Two weeks before the wedding, the bride asked to borrow my wedding shawl. I happily and joyfully blocked it out and readied it for her. But I thought she might like to have a shawl of her own, so I set scurrying about to see what I could put together in that time.


My first idea was a storm cloud shawlette in a delicate lace yarn. I cast on with the silk/alpaca laceweight that you see in the top of the picture, but it just didn't work. Too light. And, doubled, too clunky. I probably wasted 8 hours of time on this project before I had to admit to myself it wouldn't work.

By that time, I had only one week left before the wedding. I overnight ordered the ivory mulberry silk that you see in the bottom of the photo. I designed another half-circle shawl to show it off. And it would have come out beautifully, if I'd only had enough time to finish it. Instead, in my haste I was splitting stitches and making beginner mistakes that I thought were a decade behind me. I couldn't pull it off in time. So now I have TWO unfinished, unnecessary shawls.

I did finish one shawl for myself to wear to the wedding. It's, of course, another storm cloud! This time in the silvery, sparkly kidsilk night yarn, which is a silk and mohair yarn with a bit of spangle thrown in. I'm not modelling it, though, because it displeases me.


I switched up the stitch pattern (from elongated garter to elongated stockinette) and it looks dreadfully boring. Blah color. Blah texture. To make matters worse, the shape has changed with the stitch pattern (I just thought I could block it any which way -- not true), so now it's too long and not wide enough, and that damn ruffle falls in a less proportionate place. Nothing worse than boring, except boring with a bad ruffle.

But I did have one success: simple ribbed hats for the bride and groom, as a reminder of their Vermont wedding. I went down to the Green Mountain Spinnery for the yarn, which was an excellent visit that I'll post about later. Here's a little aerial shot where you can see the beautiful texture and color well:


I knit matching hats for the happy couple, and they seemed quite appreciate. Success at last!

Seacolors

The most marvelous part of my trip to Maine - other than seeing my friends, of course - was our visit to Nanney Kennedy's farm. I first read about her in Shear Spirit and then tracked her down at Maryland Sheep and Wool, and that set the stage for this visit in Maine.

Nanney is an oracle, an incredible swirl of energy and movement, an extraordinary sheep farmer, dyer, spinner, knitter, thinker, activist, entrepreneur.

When we pulled up to her farm, she was up to her elbows in yarn, working all stages of her dyeing from the solar dye vats to the final rinse in an open-air bathtub.

Yarn rinsing in the outdoor bathtub. Photo by Kristen Von Minden

Everything was so vibrantly alive and intense: the colors of the yarn, the sparkling midday sun, the green pastures rolling down to the forest, and the conversation, which excitedly ranged from color theory to sustainable agriculture to the politics of information. The experience was almost surreal in its beauty and vividness.

Barn, with yarn drying. Photo by Kristen Von Minden

And I can't even begin to express how inspired I was by Nan's energy. Everything that she does -- from being an sustainable and politically active farmer, to developing her innnovative solar dyeing methods, to coordinating with local craftswomen to make sweaters and blankets, to starting up an internship program -- is infused with conscientiousness for her animals, her environment, and her community.

Daisy the donkey, protectively watching over the flock of sheep.

The visit got me thinking again about the ways in which we weigh different meanings of greenness - organic, sustainable, local, natural - and the degree to which these words capture the meanings we want them to. Her wool is no longer certified organic, but it's as sustainably-produced as you can imagine. Her dyeing isn't called 'natural' because she doesn't use plant-based pigments, but it incorporates mineral pigments and seawater and is incredibly low-impact. It really emphasizes, for me, how keywords are no substitute for getting to know your producers personally.


In the end, I can't imagine any yarn being more sustainably created. Oh, and did I mention how superlatively gorgeous and soft they are? If you're interested, you can find her Seacolors Yarn and Maine blankets on her website, Get Wool. Or even better, check out her show schedule (including Rhinebeck!) and see her wonderful yarn for yourself ...

Storm Cloud Shawlette Pattern

(This pattern is also available as a PDF document and as a French translation on aufildesenvies)

This airy, half-circle shawl is roughly constructed like Elizabeth Zimmerman's pi shawl. It's very, very simple and can be knit at any gauge and to any size. The two versions here - a plain one in gray mohair and a ruffled one in blue wool - can be worn draped over the shoulders like a small shawl or wrapped around the neck like a scarf.



Here's the intuition behind it (more specific instructions are below): You start with four stitches, which will be in the center of the half-circle. The shawl is then shaped and enlarged by doubling the stitches at increasing intervals. For the stitch pattern, I've used an elongated garter stitch; on the right side, you always do a row of yarnovers, and on the wrong side you usually knit the knit stitches and drop the yarnovers, except when you need an increase row, when you knit all the way across.


Materials:
-Fingering weight yarn, at least 150 yards (For the grey version, I used about 150 yards of handspun mohair. For the blue version, I used about 210 yards of wool dyed by the Northeast Fiber Arts Center).
- Size 8 circular needle. Length doesn't matter too much.

Gauge
With fingering-weight yarn on size 8 needles, I got 4.5 stitches and 6 rows to the inch. But this pattern will work with any gauge.

Size
The grey version is 36" wide and about 14" deep. The blue version has a ruffle added around the edge, to make it 41" wide and about 16" deep. Note: I did not block these!



Pattern
Cast on 4 stitches
Row 1 and all odd rows: K1, [yo, K1] to end
Rows 2, 4, 10, 20, 38, and 72: knit across (this doubles the stitch count)
All other even rows: knit the knit stitches and drop the yarnovers

The best way to remember where to put the increase rows (i.e. Rows 2,4,10, 20, 38, and 72) is to count the number of plain garter ridges between them. The first two increases have no plain ridges between them. The next two have 2 plain ridges, then 4, 8, and finally 16.

For the grey version, I bound off after that 16th plain ridge, which is to say after row 70. For the blue version, I did the final increase at row 72, then knit 12 more rows (still in the elongated garter stitch pattern) for the ruffle. The more rows you knit after that last increase, the less pronounced the ruffle will be.


Use a flexible bind-off, or at least bind off very loosely.

I didn't block either of these shawls, because I like the texture as is. But you could block if you wanted to make the elongated garter stitch look lacier.

Blue Storm Cloud

As I come into my last two weeks back east, I'm traveling quite a bit to see friends before I go. Montreal. Connecticut. Now, Maine. I love the earnest classic-ness of this place


And it's fitting that I brought along my new blue Storm Cloud to photograph by an ocean inlet. This one is a little larger than the first one, with a pronounced ruffle that makes it gives it real kinetic energy.


The yarn is about 200 yards of a lovely fingering-weight wool, hand-dyed by the good folks at the Northeast Fiber Arts Center in Williston, VT. I stopped there one the way home from a fantastic trip to Montreal to see Kim, who used to be in my knitting group in Phoenix. It was a pleasure to visit someone I could "talk knitting" with, and a treat to find this yarn on my way home.

I immediately cast on when I got home, and I was finished in a few evenings' worth of knitting. I love this simple pattern. And I'll have it posted for you in the next day or so, now that I have photos and measurements of two of these small shawls.