Pink Sundae Camisole: an adventure

Many years back I bought the book Sensual Knits by Yahaira Ferreira. Of course, it wasn’t that simple. Let’s try this again, shall we?

Many years back, I was in Fabricville in Sherbrooke with my daughter and I saw a knitting book for sale with the most amazing garments in it. I needed to buy it. It was a French translation of the above-mentioned book, Tricot tendance, but I figured my grasp of that language was good enough that I could figure it out. I was wrong. The language of French knitting is obtuse, indecipherable and non-intuitive. The token francophone in my knitting group prefers English patterns because they are so much easier to read. As a result, Tricot tendance was cracked open only so that I could admire the patterns I figured I would never knit.

Fast forward a couple of years when I was visiting my daughter in Toronto. We made a trip to the Purple Purl and on a whim I asked the store clerk if she had Sensual Knits by Yahaira Ferreira. She did not, but she could order it and mail it to me in Quebec. So I plunked down my debit card and not too long after got my very own copy and gave Tricot tendance to my daughter, whose French really is much better than mine. The first pattern I attempted was “Lily-of-the-Valley Opera Gloves” by Olga Buraya-Kefelian. I had knitted one all the way to the wrist when I found the on-line errata for the bobbles, so I ripped back to the cuff and redid it. They turned out quite nice and I wore them for the premiere of my husband’s opera. They are opera gloves, after all.

I was on holiday in the Caribbean at the time, hence the shorts and sandals. That jade bracelet met an untimely end on that trip when it fell on one of those polished stone floors and shattered. I was quite devastated.

Recently I purchased way too much yarn from KnitPicks during one of their sales, including four different colourways of Diadem fingering. It’s a problematic yarn: gorgeous in the skein, but not so great once you get down to working with it. It’s soft and silky (50% baby alpaca-50% silk) but has barely any twist to it and fuzzes terribly. My first attempt at winding some off the swift into a cake resulted in a horrible tangle that took me an hour or more to tease apart. The fingerless mitts I knit with it lost all their sheen after they’d been washed and blocked, and stretched so much that I had to undo the ends and make them smaller. So I figured that Diadem would be more suited to something else, and hit upon the “Pink Sundae Camisole” by Angel. It’s been in my Ravelry queue for a long time, just waiting for the perfect yarn to come along.

 

My first attempt at joining in the round resulted in a möbius strip. As a result, I started again by knitting five rows and joining for the picot round. Five rounds later I rescued the live stitches from the provisional cast-on and made a nice finished picot edge. Then my problems began in earnest.

I have a very bad habit of not reading patterns correctly. I blame this on a) impatience, b) presbyopia, and c) the steps not being itemized so that you can’t miss one. I saw the bit about knitting in stockinette for an inch, so I did that. Just as I was nearing the end, I looked at the picture and saw the lace at the bottom. Oops! Back I frogged to the edge join. Then I dutifully followed the directions: *k2tog yo* every other round twice. When I got to the first knit round, I realized I had too many stitches. It wasn’t even a manageable number. So, back we went to the edge join.

Because of my experience with the first ball of Diadem I wound, I was very careful to wind my unravelled yarn onto an empty toilet paper roll. I’m glad I did.

Very carefully, I reknit the lace round. This time I was missing two stitches. I figured I could live with that. After the second round of eyelets, I made a kfb into one yo at each side, bringing me back to the right number of stitches. Suddenly it looked huge. I see from the picture that it fits over the model’s hips, and I’m making the medium size, which is what’s shown in the photo. So it should work, right?

Tune in, folks, for the further adventures of the Pink Sundae Camisole.

The Ladies’ Field Trip - or - More Grist for the Mill (where “grist” means fleece)

Ever since I discovered qiviut, I wanted to knit with it. First there was a handkerchief-sized piece of knitted lace in a yarn shop in Picton, Ontario about five years ago: I picked it up and let it fall and it just floated back to the counter. It was the lightest, softest wool I had ever experienced. The shop owner was very happy to tell me about the yarn and would have been even happier to sell me some, but it was prohibitively expensive and only available in tiny quantities. So I passed.

Qiviut and I did not cross paths again until the 2013 Toronto Knitters Frolic where I overcame my frugality and bought a skein. It was enough to knit a pair of wrist warmers with a tiny ball left over, enough probably for a handkerchief.

 

They are so soft and warm—I feel like I have kittens on my wrists.

Imagine my delight when I discovered that the home of Magic Tundra Qiviut is a drive of just over an hour away, in Adstock, Quebec, near the formerly bustling metropolis of Thetford Mines, home of the largest open-pit asbestos mine in the world. I tried in vain to organize an outing during the summer when my daughter was visiting, but I persevered and finally, last Monday, several of the members of The Knitters of Lennoxville hopped into a van and made the trip.

We had perfect weather for an outing. Most of the deciduous trees had lost their leaves, but the larches stood out golden against the dark green of their cousin conifers as we drove through some of the most beautiful scenery in the Eastern Townships. The GPS failed us at the end of our journey, instructing us to turn left on Rang 14. We realized the error as house numbers got bigger instead of smaller; so turned around, finally pulling in at a farmhouse with a large barn in behind. The daughter of the house was outside when we arrived and notified her parents that they had visitors.

We were greeted by Lorraine and her husband Gilbert, names that work equally well in either English or French (they are respectively one and the other) who took time out of their busy work day to show us the entirety of their milling operation. Gilbert also told me the story of how they became the successful business they are today: a story of serendipity and perseverance.

In 1967, a small number of musk oxen were introduced to Old Fort Chimo in northern Quebec where none previously existed. The operation involved several biologists and a vet and lasted for a dozen years or so while the herd increased in number. The biologists lovingly cared for the animals and brushed their great hairy coats often, saving the soft, downy under fur in garbage bags until there was a warehouse full of them. In 1980 the herd was released into the wild and has continued to thrive, now providing a major source of hunting and food for the Inuit of Kuujjuaq.

In the meantime, our friends Lorraine and Gilbert had started a mill to make angora yarn from angora rabbits. They weren’t doing very well and at a certain point the bank refused to refinance them. They were looking bankruptcy in the face, the prospect of selling their farm and moving to a city where they could find jobs to support themselves and their children, when the question of what to do with all this musk ox fleece came up. Gilbert jumped at the opportunity, buying it all and going about learning how to mill qiviut. The timing couldn’t have been better. The couple suddenly experienced a renewal in their business, the bank was willing to lend them more money, and this allowed them to survive the recession that hit a few years later. Once the bags of brushed fleece ran out, Gilbert made a deal with the Inuit, trading necessary goods (rifles, ammunition, canned goods, etc.) for the raw skins from musk oxen killed for food. It has proven to be an excellent association.

Gilbert showed us a skin he was in the process of shearing. The underfur is very dense, but the individual hairs are extremely fine. He shears huge chunks of fur off and lets it dry before Lorraine washes it in fabric bags in a regular agitator machine.

Once dry, the coarse guard hairs are separated from the soft fleece. This is done by hand and Gilbert and Lorraine employ their own kids plus the neighbour’s daughter for this task. They are paid by the bagful of cleaned fleece.

The carded fleece then goes through a motorized drum carder where it is further cleaned and/or combined with other fibres. Here is the conveyor belt with a 50/50 blend of qiviut and cashmere fleeces ready to be turned into roving.

The belt moves along very slowly and a soft bat comes out the other end. Gilbert gathers it up and sends it down a hole to collect as a rope of roving in a bucket.

There is another machine where four ropes of roving are blended together, producing a thoroughly homogenous fleece before it can be sent through the spinning machine and made into thread. The thread will later be plied and dyed and turned into salable yarn. Working by themselves, seven days a week, Gilbert says they produce about a kilo of finished qiviut in a month.

Lorraine has several knitting machines and programmes them to make sweaters, blankets and other large items. The only handknits are mittens and gloves, which she hires contract knitters to make. Here is one finished blanket from 100% qiviut, approximate cost $400 CAD.

Not really set up to sell from home, Lorraine nonetheless had a bit of inventory on hand for us to choose from. I ended up buying some 100% qiviut in a worsted weight, a 50-50 blend of qiviut with merino in a 2-ply lace, and a luxurious fingering called Queen: 70% merino-10% qiviut-10% cashmere-10% silk. I have no idea what I’ll make with these beautiful additions to my stash; I may just tuck them in the collar of my shirt to feel them next to my cheek for a while.

One of my fellow knitters asked me if the field trip had turned out as I had expected. I would have to say it was better. Not only did I get to indulge my yarn habit, but I am now friends with two wonderful people whom I would love to know better. The qiviut is just frosting.

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Thank you Philippa for the photos. You can find out more about qiviut and Cottage Craft Angora at their website: http://cottagecraftangora.com/