Tag Archives: The Yarns of Rhichard DeVrieze

More for feet

by
2

Think of these as my Orange Creamsicle socks. Orange on the outside with my icy ghostly pale feet on the inside. They are my version of Virginia Rose-Jeanes Vanilla Latte Socks. The Vanilla Latte pattern is wonderful, as is. I just made a few modifications.

If you haven’t already figured it out from my prattling on about knitting with discontinued yarns and unavailable patterns, I am no spring chicken. Some of my socks are almost assuredly older than you. I mostly enjoy wearing my handknit socks, not to my hot yoga classes, not to my children’s pre-COVID playdates, but in bed. A hot water bottle might do as well, I suppose. In fact, he-who-will-not-be-named bought me one for Christmas. No joke. He was sure I would like it. But I like to wear my socks in bed. This pair is totally warm and cozy.

The Vanilla Latte pattern is really not vanilla at all. It includes some items of knitter’s choice by supplying 3 toe shapes and 3 heel stitches. I chose the Eye of Partridge heel cuff and the round wedge toe. I modified the pattern to make a long cuff. And I worked a knit 3 purl 1 rib through the whole cuff and the top of the foot, not just for the initial 1 and 1/2 inches that the pattern calls for. I’d like to say that I planned out not shifting to the knit 6, purl 2 pattern the designer sets out for the rest of the cuff and the top of the foot. I just forgot to shift to it at the appropriate point. By the time I was a few inches beyond the shift, I was liking the look of knit 3 purl 1 and decided to simply continue on that path. Instead of fingering weight, I used my favorite sportweight sock yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock Mediumweight.

My cold feet are enjoying these socks. A lot. If you’d like to see Vanilla Latte as the designer intended, check here.

These next foot warmers need to be modeled on feet first. Because when you first see them off-foot it doesn’t make you want to knit them.

These are Mone Drager’s Bea’s Slippers. I’ve been wanting to knit them for a number of years. I’d seen some project pages that made them look odd in an interesting way. I found the construction intriguing. And my busy beautiful skein of worsted weight Fynn, from The Yarns of Rhichard Devrieze, was looking for a home.

These were a total hoot to knit! After finishing one I was skeptical that feet would find them comfy. I was wrong.

These slippers start at the toe with “your favorite toe-up cast-on.” Personally, I don’t have a favorite. Judy’s Magic Cast-on is decidedly unmagical for me. I don’t exactly know what a “Figure 8” is except on ice. With help from Brown-Eyed Bab’s excellent photo tutorial I can manage a Turkish cast-on, so that’s what I used.

Knitting these socks produces some interesting stresses on the fabric as you knit. I’ll just leave it at that. Maybe that was a function of the fact that apparently I eschew all magic when it comes to knitting, including Magic Loop technique. Please ignore (I do) that laddering on the cuffs. I typically don’t get ladders in my 4-needle doublepoint work. I’m blaming those interesting stresses, even though by cuff time they’d faded. A bath in Eucalan helped some.

Here’s to warm feet and a happier New Year!

A few new shawls

by
5

This is Kirsten Kapur’s Cladonia minus its lovely loopy picot edge because, alas and alack, I ran out of yarn. So, mostly alack. I was determined to give the edging a try. With ten inches remaining I ran out of yarn. ARGGH. Honestly, though, I’m not a big loopy fringe person so I’m totally satisfied.

As cool a shawl pattern as this is, and it is, my guess is what captivates is this yarn. This yarn is Gauge Dye Works MCN fingering yarn, self-striping. I’ve had the yarn long enough that my ball band is from the before-times when this company called itself Caterpillar Green. Here’s my skein of their Olive Branch colorway.

It’s spectacular yarn.

I am very pleased about the name change because I knit this shawl in late July and early August during the height of a serious gypsy moth infestation in my neck of the woods. The assault of the caterpillars and their frass (as in from-r-ass) was totally disconcerting. Usually I save a ball band until I’ve completed a project. This one I discarded quickly. It conjured up evil feelings as I contemplated having to abandon our deck for almost two months while the wiggly ones ate our big oak tree. Ugh. Back to the sublime. My pretty shawl. Here’s a close-up.

Cladonia is easy peasy worked from the top down. The lace work at the end is simply accomplished. And by then a knitter is committed to the project and that helps concentration.

With Gauge Dye Works yarn the yarn does all the color work. You find the end with a length of undyed yarn, snip it off, and then–at least in Olive Branch–you’re good-to-go. Triangle and half circle shawls work well. And by poking around on Ravelry or participating in the Gauge Dye Works group you can see how various yarns work up in various patterns.  My skein was 170 grams, just under 600 yards.

Here’s Cladonia spread out to to show off its full wingspan of 54 inches across the top and 27 inches at its deepest. This yarn makes the somewhat boring stockinette main section of the shawl interesting. You can’t help but look forward to the next color shift.

If you’re interested in purchasing Gauge Dye Works yarns your best bet is to sign up for their emails. Because once a batch becomes available it sells out super-fast. The price is, well, a lot. But I think it’s totally worth it to have this much of a yarnie adventure.

It’s definitely time for me to post my version of Laura Aylor’s Summer Camp small shawl. In a calm non-jewel-toned moment awhile back I purchased two off-white skeins of Rhichard DeVrieze Peppino. That’s his wonderful merino fingering weight yarn. So I had 450 yards of yarn that begged to be combined with something else. My something else turned out to be a 438 yard skein of Wobble Gobble‘s merino fingering weight.

Summer Camp is very lightweight. I wanted something that I could wear on cooler summer evenings while being feted at the pizza place in the back of the BP station, a major Hillman activity hub that also houses a Subway. It could even dress up my Dollar Store shopping trips. Not that there’s been any out-on-the-town dates of late. Or any non-essential shopping trips. Not this year. But we can still knit!

Summer Camp is a wonderfully clear pattern. Aylor even includes a row-by-row stitch count chart, laid out stripe-by-longer stripe. I started mine with the solid color so that the scallops in the bind-off would end in the speckled Wobble Gobble.

Here’s a closer look at the Wobble Gobble I used. Wonderful yarn.