podcasts

Episode 171

June 18, 2017June 18, 2017 by Sara

This episode includes the following segments: Yarn Lover at Large, The Front Porch, The Back Porch, and Off the Shelf.

Yarn Lover at Large

Georgia O’Keeffe Living Modern exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum
Thread Cult episode featuring an interview with exhibit curator Wanda Corn

“to fill space in a beautiful way”

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The Back Porch

Bousta Beanie by Gudrun Johnston. Knit in a lovely kit from Foster Sheep Farm yarn.

FullSizeRender 7 — Willow Tank sewn from ice-dyed muslin that I acquired from a vendor at the Steel City Fiber Festival.

The Front Porch

The #summertopmal will continue until I record Episode 172 — so you have about two more weeks to create and chatter on the Ravelry thread.

Another Tsumuzikaze top, this time in drop dead lovely Samite (bursting fig).

Off the Shelf

As I thought more about Georgia O’Keeffe, I grew curious about any ekphrastic poetry that may exist. A little searching led me to a collection by Jessica Jacobs. In this episode, I read the title poem of the collection, which was awarded the 2015 New Mexico Book Award in Poetry. Click the link below to see an image of the painting that inspired the poem.

link to image of Pelvis with Distance
Pelvis with Distance: a collection of poems by Jessica Jacobs

Arrows and Doorways

The design for this super-cozy cowl was inspired by textiles in a hotel lobby. Concentric geometric shapes kept playing in my mind until finally I was able to chart the pattern and get it onto my needles. The interplay of this chevron-like patterning has a mesmerizing effect–while you’re knitting and when you wear the finished accessory.

Knit up a cowl with yarn from your stash, adding some magical new mini-skeins from your advent calendar, or exchange leftover yarn with a friend. The design invites frequent color changes, and makes an ideal knit for the advent season. It could be just as striking knit with two high-contrast colors.

While most cowls of this type are seamed within a band of a single color, this pattern incorporates a technique called stranded donut grafting, an incredibly clever and completely seamless graft that allows you to maintain colorwork patterning so that your starting and ending rounds are undetectable. Really! With many possibilities for color play and a new technique to add to your skill set, this cowl pattern is really an opportunity for knitters to level-up!

NEW PATTERN DESIGN!

ONE DARK BLUE NIGHT

This hat is the third in a series of patterns inspired by teachings in Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run with the Wolves. This time, I drew inspiration from Estés’ retelling of a Japanese tale, Tsukina Waguma or “The Crescent Moon Bear,” in which a young woman travels to the cave of an incredibly intimidating and ferocious bear. She makes several journeys to the cave, leaving food and quickly retreating, until “one dark blue night,” she musters the courage to stand her ground and ask for what she seeks--one hair from a moon-shaped patch on the bear’s chest--which she is granted. The young woman returns, triumphant, to the old healer who has sent her on this quest. She believes this single hair is the magic ingredient in solving the problem that plagues her. She holds it forth, but the healer tosses the hair into the flames. The young woman is in despair until she realizes the true lesson of her quest: that using her determination, courage, and patience, as she did with the crescent moon bear, will help her to confront the challenge at hand.

The moon phase motif of this colorwork hat is meant to capture the magic of a dark blue night--when the moon shines brightly overhead, the frosty air sparkles with possibility, and we succeed in summoning accumulated wisdom from deep within ourselves so that we can apply it to our own healing. Choose colors to conjure a wintery night sky, or select a palette of your signature colors.

Available on Ravelry December 20th.

Yarns at Yin Hoo

Episode 171

“to fill space in a beautiful way”

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