Ondos Legwarmers

Another sample design for my "Surfista Collection" is done! The "Ondos Legwarmers". Now time to finish writing and editing the pattern and get it ready for sale. Here are the some photos from the shoot I did on the beach this week.

Ondos is Spanish for those soft wave impressions that you find in sand from the water or wind flowing over it. With these legwarmers I tried to bring the feeling of that natural motive with a lacy fabric so as to not be too hot to wear in mild weather. Perfect to wear on the beach when those sea breezes begin to pick up. A draw string worked into the band order to keep them from slipping down while you’re walking. 

The lace detailing allows it to stretch for most sizes, and warm but not be too warm. Just right for a cool breezy day on the Ecuadorian coast.

The ribbed band at the top is doubled and then knit together. This allows an i-cord to be passed through and tighten to prevent them from slipping down.

The pattern will be for sale on Ravely once this testing knitting is done. 

Club de Tejido

So it turns out that I'm not the only knitter in town. I'm the only knitter that knows more than a long-tail cast-on, knit, and bind-off. Most days, as the cool season approches us here in Ecuador, I have had a project in my bag, which I pull out during my lunch hour, or when the power is out in the village. The teachers at the school where I work have noticed, and the handful that could do some basic technequies began showing up with their knitting needles and knitting near me non-chalantly. After a little while they started asking me questions about what I was doing, how I acheived the effects I was getting. These questions evolved into after work get togethers, and now we have a knitting group that I'm teaching of about 5 women depending on the day.

While teaching for free isn't usually an exciting prospect, the ladies are tons of fun, and teaching is something I enjoy. Right now I'm teaching one girl how to purl by giving her a ribbed hat to work on, two others have moved up to color stranding. And another woman is practicing different cast-on techniques.

Another interesting thing about teaching a knitting class in Ecuador is learning the knitting termonology in Spanish. Maybe for my next pattern, I'll offer a Spanish version as well!

Cotton Yarn Madness

Oh my poor poor knitting blog has been so abandoned. But don't let that make you thin I've abandoned knitting. Far from it, I've been learning to adapt to knitting in a whole new way. Let me explain...

Over a year ago, I decided to move from New York to South America. Don't ask me why, it was very 'by the seat of my pants'. I've been travel blogging faithfully this whole time if you'd like to read up on that adventure. My travel blog is "Aventuras de Abril".

Knitting here has required some... adjustments. I came expecting beautiful hand spun alpaca to be coming out of my ears, and that does exist, just not where I live on the hot humid Pacific Coast. For all that loveliness you have to go venturing up into the mountains where the llamas live. Finding anywhere that sells yarn at all has been an adventure in itself.

The closest city to me is La Libertad, a one and a half hour sticky bus ride north. For the majority of the time I've been here, I've only been able to find one cotton blend. It's a fingering-weight made up of 4 2-ply strands held together. It's super cheap, and comes in a million colors. It is the ONLY yarn EVERYONE here seems to sell. That's been all fine and dandy, but after a while, you start to really want something with some more stretch and bulk to it. Last weekend, a yarn miracle occurred and a fabric store in La Libertad decided to actually start carrying some machine spun wool acrylic blend! The fact that I'm so excited about that should let you know how dry the yarn well is around here. And I'm not even sure what it is really. It doesn't feel like 100% acyclic, and it is definitely not 100% wool, so I'm going with that it's a blend. None of the yarn around here is labeled with a company name, a yarn-weight, yardage, nothing, so it's all guess work. I bought 10 skeins when I was there out of fear that they would sell it all and not have any yarn at all the next time, which would not be surprising considering my experience yarn shopping thus far.

So what can be done with the ubiquitous cotton fingering weight yarn? Well, I've tried to be as creative as one can be in a one-yarn town:

Lace Beret: The lace blocked well, but the lack of stretchiness in the cotton made it keep falling off my head after a couple weeks. Gifted to a friend with a bigger head. 

This one came out nice. Wavier edge then I'd like, but good. Started to turn yellow (fault of the yarn? Don't know), so stopped using it.

Nice, but again trouble with the ribbing holding it's stretch.

Very nice :) Color work seems to be the way to go with this yarn.  Makes for a totally smooth fabric.

Decided to stick to the technique I know works with this yarn. More colorwork! And isn't my model adorable :)

I discovered in the last couple hats that the yarn makes for a good soft fabric for slouchy hats, which I love.

I thought it would work, but... meh.

Total disaster. I was realing missing working on a nice lace pattern shawl, so I thought I'd see how this cotton stuff did. Not not good. Constantly curling, refuses to hold it's blocking, and the completely solid colors make it super boring.

OK... this yarn curls too much for my taste.

I've decided this is where it'll have to stay for now with this yarn until I find something else to knit with. Colorwork, and slouchy hats. My favorite anyways, so why mess with it

So my monogomous relationship with this cotton stuff is about to end, and I'm super excited. It's like discovering that there are more ice cream flavors in the world then just vanilla! But I have to say, I don't think I did too bad considering my selection of fiber!