Yarn Traveler

While I certainly don’t feel as though I have *mastered* lace, having one whole project under my belt (I did finish the other Cranford Mitt, to complete the pair) has given me the confidence to attempt another new project.

Durning one of my many pattern searches on Ravelry, I came across a pair of Bubble Bobble mittens. Knowing how much Matt likes Bubble Bobble (he was heartbroken that he couldn’t be one of the first to try out the new console at Ground Kontrol), I offered to make them for him (modified into fingerless gloves, without the bubble).

In the interest of full disclosure, I had already promised to make Matt a pair of fingerless gloves. We’d even gone so far as to pick out the yarn (Malabrigo sock in the alcaucil colorway, bought at the delightful Socktopus store–store review soon). The actual yarn looks nothing like the photo on the website; in real life it’s much darker. I thought it was rather drab and blah at first, but seeing as it was the color that Matt wanted and it was yummy Malabrigo, I wasn’t going to complain. As I spent several hours winding the hank into a ball by hand (why, oh why didn’t I pack my winder?) I fell in love with this yarn. The color reminds me of scarab beetle shells; iridescent shades of green and black, sometimes changing to olive, all with that beautiful Malabrigo sheen.
It’s impossible to for me to capture the true depth of the colors, but this at least shows you how far off it is from the grey color on the website. While you’re at it, take a look at that perfectly round ball of yarn! Boo-ya!

So, when the Bubble Bobble mittens came along, you can understand my eagerness to commit to a challenging new project like colorwork because it means that Matt will get his mitts, and I get the Malabrigo (insert evil genius laughter here).

However, this has turned into an even greater challenge than I had anticipated. First, I don’t have a lot of experience with colorwork. Aside from stripes (which I’m not counting), I’ve only made one other two-color project. It was this felted bag, a combination of the Skull Knitting Tote and the Lopi Tote.

Since it was felted, I knew that most of my mistakes were going to be smoothed away in the felting process, and it turned out really well. It became Matt’s knitting bag, when he actually knits. The mitts on the other hand, will not be felted, and they will have five colors each, not two. Time to step up my game.

The second major challenge I faced was the fact that my yarn selection here is tragically sad. Had I been at home, I would have happily ordered some Palette from Knitpicks, and been on my way. Perfect colors, perfect weight, terrific price…US shipping only. Over here, my selection is limited at best, and since most UK stores and websites don’t carry a lot of the brands that I could think of as alternatives, I was stumped. I did find a few possible yarns, but they were often £4 to £5 per skein. Since this project was going to take at least seven colors, that would make them £35 mitts. Even if the dollar is gaining strength against the pound, that’s more than I wanted to pay for mittens.

Knitmap to the rescue! I found The Handweavers Studio, and according to their website, they sell their yarn by the gram, as little as 10 grams.

Another aside here…The Handweavers Studio website is awful (it’s a freaking geocities site for f*ck’s sake!). Sadly, it is typical of the quality of most UK websites. The Brits need some designers and developers *like whoa*! This is what I have to work with people! How is someone supposed to research products with out of focus photos and no freaking product information!! Click the Catalogue link, I dare you! One would expect to see product photos, product listings, prices, etc. am I right? Nope! You get some text (center justified text at that) telling you that you can order online (via email) or by mail (WTF?!), but they don’t tell you what they have! All this site needs is a dancing GIF and liberal dose of Comic Sans, maybe an embedded midi file to top it all off.

To be fair, the store itself was a spinner or a weaver’s dream come true. That’s part of what makes the bad website so frustrating! They have a goldmine, but no one is going to discover it. They have the potential to have a thriving online business, but not with the site they have now. The store has bags and bags of roving, and shelf after shelf of single-ply yarns/threads in every color you can imagine. They have wheels, spindles, and looms galore. They even have a great book selection.

While you can technically knit with just about everything in the store, most of the yarn wasn’t your typical hand-knitting yarn. Most of the stock is really (really!) rough wool, meant for rugs. You wouldn’t want any of that stuff near your skin. Anything that was soft enough to wear (they did have a very small stock of cashmere for £40 per kilo) was often thread weight or lace weight. I love me some tiny needles, don’t get me wrong, I just wasn’t ready to take on this project in lace weight yarn.

I did manage to dig up these yarns.
It’s 100% Shetland wool (which means it’s scratchy as hell, but I harbor hopes that it will soften with washing) approximately fingering/sock weight. At £30 per kilo, I paid less than £9 for all of this. How much I have exactly I don’t know, since I wasn’t allowed to weigh them separately, and they didn’t have the yardage listed on the tubes. I’m hoping it’s enough, although I expect I can always go back for more if I need it and still keep the price of the mitts in the reasonable range.

So that was one challenge down. I have the supplies. On to the swatching, which will have to wait for the next post because this one is already ginormous and rambley.

Filed under: Works in Progress on January 28th, 2009