Hi, and welcome to Make Good, the podcast about yarn and knitting from Scratch Supply Co. We're recording today in downtown Lebanon, New Hampshire, and we're really excited to be here. I'm Karen.
Jessica:And I'm Jessica.
Karen:It is like the most hot, miserable, humid, gross summer week.
Jessica:Hot as hell in here.
Karen:Yeah, man. But it's dry heat.
Jessica:It's terrible out there because I'm just melting in this humidity.
Karen:You know what that means, though?
Jessica:What falls almost here? Oh, you're right. It totally does.
Karen:At least in New England, this happens every year. It's like the last gasp of summer is just the least pleasant. It's just humid and hot, and it makes you want to think about sweaters, for sure.
Jessica:I definitely want a lot full of.
Karen:Wool, but it's actually true.
Jessica:People filtering through the store lately in sticky, sweaty shirts because they've been out on the trail or something pop in and they're like, I'm ready to start looking at sweater patterns. We just have to start early because sweaters take time, and if you time.
Karen:It exactly right, by the time the sweater gets big enough, it has started to cool down a little bit.
Jessica:The break in. The weather is coming. I know it.
Karen:So that means it's time to think about our rhinebeck sweaters.
Jessica:Yay. Rhinebeck sweaters are my favorite thing.
Karen:I was talking to a knitter a week or two ago and mentioned something kind of off hand about rhinebeck, and that knitter said, okay, what is rRhinebeck? We've talked about this a little bit before, but what Rhinebeck is first of all, it's a town in upstate New York. When knitters talk about Rhinebeck, what they mean is New York Sheep and Wool, which is a big fiber festival, and it happens about halfway through October every year.
Jessica:It's a magical wonderland for fiber enthusiasts, whether you're a shepherd, a sheep herder, a farmer, or a knitter, or spinner or crochet or weaver. Anyone who likes natural fibers loves going to fiber festivals. And anyone who loves seeing hand knits also loves going to fiber festivals. This is like prime people watching Friends. It's the best.
Karen:But we want to talk specifically about planning for your rhinebeck sweater.
Jessica:What did you knit last year?
Karen:I knit the cladonia by Katherine Clark. It was published in Pompom I want to say last fall, maybe last summer. And it was all over color, work, fingering weight. And I talked about this a little bit, too. I actually liked the sweater in the example picture so much that I ordered the kit and then spent the entire weekend having people think that I had yanked the sample sweater and was just, like, making off with it. You designed your own last year?
Jessica:So I feel like design is a strong word because it's not like I ever created a finished pattern. Somewhere in one of my project bags, I have a little notebook with a bunch of chicken scratch numbers and measurements, and kind of vague direction to myself, but I did. I knit my own sweater, in the very least, and I liked it a lot. It was a pullover. I used Julie Ashlyn's bouquet yarn, which is a wool and alpaca blend and very soft. And because of the nature of a bouquet yarn, it lets you knit at a looser gauge, but still have like a kind of solid fabric so you don't feel like everyone can see your underwear underneath it. And I appreciate it, the lightness and the loftiness of the fabric I had created. Because it was hot. Yes, it was so hot on the Saturday of the festival that I wore that, and I felt like a sheep needing to be shorn. It was a lot of animal hair all over me.
Karen:It makes me feel like I am in good company as somebody who responds very strongly and very negatively to the heat, to look around and see a bunch of other people who are determined wearing their sweaters and their faces are red, but they knit the thing and they're going to wear it. And I'm like my people. Yes. And if you are not in the sort of geographical area or haven't ever had a chance to attend Ryan Beck, it can be a total roll of the dice on a weekend halfway through October. It could be chilly, or it could be in like the low eighty s. You really don't know.
Jessica:You could get snow. It could be rain.
Karen:Yeah.
Jessica:You have to dress for all seasons is basically the message here.
Karen:There is a tradition around rhinebeck sweaters, which is that a lot of knitters knit themselves what they call a reinbeck sweater, whether or not they're actually going to rhinebeck. And it's just the sweater that they are knitting to kick off their fall winter knitting season.
Jessica:Do you have a vision for what you're going to make this year? Are you making one?
Karen:Yes. And I don't know. I don't know yet. But I feel like knitting Karen's eyes.
Jessica:Are like saucers right now.
Karen:Well, I realized when I finished my oak moss, that was the first sweater I had finished since like November of last year. Really?
Jessica:Yeah.
Karen:I think the last one I finished before that was my barn heart, which was like forever ago. Like, I've been starting and frogging and starting and frogging and getting distracted and putting things aside and whatever. And now that I've got my sweater knitting bug back, I can't narrow down what my next project is going to be. I've been really enjoying texture, but I think maybe I want to do some color work. I don't know.
Jessica:You're spoiled for choice. How about you?
Karen:Do you have a plan?
Jessica:Not a solid plan yet. I have lots of thoughts and I'm leaning toward not a sweater proper this year. Last October, it was just so hot. And because of the type of sweater that I knit for myself, I didn't wear anything under it but a bra. So it wasn't like I could just whip off my sweater to cool down, and I foolishly didn't pack, like, a tank top or something in my bag. So I was just committed to the sweater. And this year, I would like some more options because I really loathe being hot. I will have sweaters that I will bring with me, obviously, and if that's what I wear on any given day at the festival, then that is my Brine Beck sweater. But I'm also considering knitting maybe a short sleeve version of the great Gingham ragland, because I knit my cropped long sleeve version, and that might make the trip to Rhinebeck as well. And I loved it. I really loved that pattern. But maybe I will warm weatherize it and just do it in short sleeves, and it will go quicker without big balloon sleeves to knit. And if the weather is really warm over the weekend, that will be the thing that I wear to the fairground. If it's not, maybe I'll wear that with a cardigan over it or something.
Karen:Yeah. Oh, that's smart.
Jessica:Right now, it's low key, ambitious.
Karen:I think we need to talk about how there isn't actually an official rhinebeck sweater, right?
Jessica:But there are many rhinbeck sweaters.
Karen:It's a thing designers plan for.
Jessica:Designers will release a pattern on their own and call it their rhinebeck sweater. For the year, designers will collaborate with hand dyers, and they'll come up with palettes and color combinations and maybe host knit alongs and do something special to make knitting the sweater an event in and of itself. And that's their rhinebeck sweater. But none of these are like the rhinebeck sweater.
Karen:A lot of designers will for their rhinebeck sweater. They'll release it sometime around July, August to give people time to knit it, and it will be a knitters pattern. And I don't mean that in the sense of a pattern for knitters. I mean that in the sense of, like, it will have something distinctive or technically interesting or something in it that will make somebody who's thinking about knitting it go, oh, if I wear that at Rhinebeck, all the knitters I'm surrounded with are going to see how cool this is.
Jessica:It's like your calling card to the group of knitters who are all like, yes, this is my aesthetic this year. You are all there together, and you're going to be spotting each other across the fairgrounds and in the barns and in line for maple creamies or coffees or whatever you're getting. At any rate, you'll be in line for the baked potato van at Rhinebeck, and you'll be like, hey, our sweaters match. We're twins.
Karen:It's so much fun.
Jessica:Oh, instant besties.
Karen:And a lot of times, designers will plan a meetup, because the other thing is, New York sheep and wool is two days long. There are other events beforehand that sort of creep into the week before and designers will designate a meetup time for everyone who has knit theirs. And then you get to spot everybody wearing it on that day because they'll try to get everybody on the Hill and they'll take a big group picture.
Jessica:It's pretty impressive. It's quite the sight. If this doesn't sound interesting to you, though, you don't like knitting to deadlines because it's too much pressure or you don't have time this year, or nothing is really speaking to you. We have secrets about rhinebeck sweaters. Any sweater that you wear to the Sheep and Wool Festival is your rhinebeck sweater.
Karen:I would even go as far as to say any sweater you wear on that weekend, wherever you are in the world, is a rhinebeck sweater.
Jessica:It's the sweater in your heart, very cozy. No one's going to ask you when you knit it. I mean, that's wrong. Someone might ask you when you knit it because we're nosy knitters and we all want to know what we're all doing. But there's no requirement that it be freshly off your needles to be your sweater for the special time.
Karen:Oh, especially this year, because we're in year three of the Pandemic, and there was no New York Sheep and Wool in 2020. We were there in 2021 and it was lightly attended, relatively speaking. I think people are going to come back kind of in force this year. And so there are probably some people who have been saving up Ryan Beck's sweaters.
Jessica:They have a sweater stockpile. Yeah, sweater stash.
Karen:They have the sweater they cast on in June 2020 when everybody thought it was just going to be a two week thing and then be over. And they've been waiting to wear it around the knitters, and they are going.
Jessica:To wear it nonstop. So if you are the kind of knitter, though, that is inclined to knit a sweater for the event, and like Karen said, you don't even have to attend to be knitting this event sweater. You probably fall into like one of two knitter personality type groups. Cohorts the first one I'm going to identify for you is the group sweater Knitter. And you are all about patterns released as the Brine Beck sweater. No matter who the designer is, there is some amount of appeal to this collaborative knitting process that's going on at varying degrees of frantic over the next eight weeks to get sweaters ready for people to wear them at this event.
Karen:It is really fun to have this variation on a theme where everybody's knit the same thing, but they've done it their own way, in their own colors, with their own spin on it, and here you all are with the chance to appreciate what you've each done. It's super fun.
Jessica:Now, some people will do it Karen style with her cladonia. They will use the original colors and yarns. But you're going to see such a wide range of aesthetics for the same pattern. It's really exciting to see people's creative interpretations.
Karen:If you do use the original colors and someone asks you if it's a sample, say no and then just run yoink yank.
Jessica:Just lean into it.
Karen:Yes. Say no. Of course not.
Jessica:So you might choose this project because you're super into the design, but really it might just be about the community aspect for you. Lots of knitters are like, I like knitting the most current released thing. I like following these trends and these aesthetic waves that happen, and it's fun to get excited with other knitters about a project. So if you're like, I just want to be knitting with my people, then a designated rhinebeck sweater knit along type event sounds ideal for you because you will have that community kind of floating around you as you work through your pattern.
Karen:It can also be really nice to have like a built in support group if you run into something that either you have a technical question about or you just feel the ick about where you're like. Wow. The yoke was really fun and now I'm here doing this. I don't know. Stocking at the body and just the thought of knitting it is making me want to tear my hair out. Maybe the knitters who have gone before can recommend a very compelling podcast for you to listen to or something like that. It can also be really inspiring to see the yarn choices that other knitters have made.
Jessica:Another component of being a natural group sweater knitter is that you want to be wearing something at the festival that other people are going to immediately recognize. Like, for you, this might be your awkward turtle knitter ice breaker opportunity where you're like, I don't really talk to people unprompted, but I want to be able to do that at this fun Mitter event. Having some common finished object is a great opportunity to dive into conversations about that thing with someone that you want to talk to and might feel a little shy about doing so otherwise.
Karen:Yeah, we hear from people all the time, they're like, I do this, but I don't have a group near me, I don't have friends that do this in person, I don't have anybody to geek out about knitting with. This is your chance. You can go to these events by yourself and make friends immediately.
Jessica:These are your people.
Karen:Also this year we are going to be there.
Jessica:So we are your people.
Karen:We are also your people. Sometimes it can also be really inspiring to see how other knitters have styled or altered the pattern. Oh, for sure.
Jessica:This isn't just like a wooly farm event. This is fashion. This is very slow fashion, and people put a lot of care into the things that they make and wear. And this is the opportunity to show it off to fellow people who most appreciate your efforts. They understand how much energy and how much of yourself you put into this thing that you're making and they appreciate it. And they are going to shower you in compliments and adoration over your color combinations and your beautifully blocked finished objects. They love your sweater almost as much as you do.
Karen:They will also share in your I barely got this done. I was blocking it in the trunk while I was driving here or I didn't even have time to block it or look at this wild thing that I did. Those are also people who want to have that conversation.
Jessica:Oh, yeah. A lot of decompression about our sweater stress at this event as well. And then also like the fun kind of micro events. Meetups are fun and group pictures are fun and other social events that might be organized by a designer within the festival, but they're not like an official festival event. Everyone's meeting for apple Cider Donuts in their XYZ sweater and we're all going to take pictures and have donut sugar all over our faces. That's a thing and it's super fun.
Karen:So if you've picked a pattern and you think, hey, this is going to be my rhinebeck sweater, I don't know if it is really a Reinbeck sweater, go to the designer's social media as it gets a little closer to the event. They may have a meet up planned, but not everyone who knits a reindeer sweater is knitting an official or likely to be a group rhymeback sweater.
Jessica:Yeah. If everything we just talked about except for the Cider Donuts was like low key horrifying to you, you're like, I don't participate in that way.
Karen:That's cool too.
Jessica:You can still have a rhinebeck sweater. You might not be interested in any trending patterns ever. That might just be your personality type and it's valid. It's great. You have your own aesthetic, and it might not be what is on a hot right now page anywhere, ever. And good for you.
Karen:People are going to be excited to see it anyway, 100%.
Jessica:Maybe even more excited. They're going to see your sweater and be like, what is that?
Karen:Two years ago, I knit the Ten show, which was probably never a super popular pattern, or if it was, it wasn't at the time that I cast it on. It has a little bit of color work up in the top. It's kind of like a geometric color work design. There was one other person wearing a tenshot at Reinbeck that year, and every time I saw her, I was like, friend, because it was like a little.
Jessica:Secret tiny cool kids club.
Karen:That was the year you went really deep for your ride back sweater.
Jessica:Oh, I almost forgot about that sweater. I knit a sweater called Auto Otto by a Canadian designer, and it was a steeked color work sweater that had a shawl collar and it was a lot of fun. I love that sweater. I made super long ribbed sleeves and I hand stitched in a piece of ribbon on the inside of the steek panels to secure it. And it's just a great sweater. And I definitely did not see a single other person wearing it there. And I didn't care because I loved my sweater. The stars aligned for me with that project because I don't think it was newly released and I've never seen it on anyone else, like in person. But I found it, so I must have been on a deep dive. So like that deep dive, you might have a really specific vision of what you want a sweater to be. So you'll get lots of wear out of it. You know you're a cardigan person or you know you're a shawl collar person because your necks always cold or like whatever those elements are, and they're just not elements that are showing up in this year's set of popular mainstream designs that's okay, knit it anyways and make something that you are super going to love and want to keep wearing.
Karen:Definitely do not knit yourself a sweater that you know in advance you will only wear one time. That way lies madness, or that way.
Jessica:Lies gift knitting that you get to be in on.
Karen:You could pick a pattern that's kind of out there.
Jessica:Last year, my favorite person that I saw from a bar and then on repeat was someone who had knit themselves. I think it was a romper. It might have been two pieces, but it was like bell bottoms, halter top, bold purple, bright colors. It was like a whole hand knit look, and it was amazing. And I was like, that is a level of commitment to stockinette that I don't have in my heart. I think because my legs are long. Like, I just can't knit pants that long. I barely got through my shorts. So I had great admiration for that knitter and didn't see a single person in anything even remotely similar. It was amazing.
Karen:And maybe this is like, where you live in the world, has a very short sweater season, or like what you do for work is not really conducive. I don't know, maybe you work with small children and you're not going to wear your hand knit sweaters to get lollipops stuck to them. This is your time to really wear this out and get people looking at it.
Jessica:Wherever you fall on the spectrum of knitting styles for an event you do, you it's so good. Whatever project you end up choosing, you can go off book too. Tweak it just a little bit to make it particularly special to you in some way. For example, you could use your crazy math skills and turn a pullover into a cardigan by sticking it, which is super fun. And maybe a little adrenaline knitting for you. You could also take a cardigan design and just turn it into a pullover. Totally doable. People will be like, that looks really familiar. I've not seen that pattern. And you'll be like, I hacked it, made it my own.
Karen:You could go with a color combination that is, I'm going to say unconventional, but is what speaks to your heart, and no one can stop you.
Jessica:That's right. Proud peacock. You could knit your rhinebeck sweater with special yarn. Maybe it's yarn that you got at a past rhinebeck and it's just been hanging out in your stash or from your backyard sheep. Or hand spun yarn that you have spun, or someone you know has. Or hand dyed yarn that someone you know has died for you. Like something that's just kind of special and unique and just for you.
Karen:You could take a color work pattern and use the shape of it, but recharge the colorwork to make it be something completely different. Tin can knitz has the strange brew pattern that's designed for that, but I see people do that with a lot of yolk motifs.
Jessica:This last week, I was helping someone pick out yarn for a cardigan that had a big band of color work around the middle. And there were eagles in the color work in the written pattern. But when I looked through projects, somebody had taken out the eagles and put in bigfoot all the way around the middle of their spider.
Karen:It was very cool. You could go deep in time and.
Jessica:Do a vintage pattern that could be fun and exciting. It also might require a little bit of math if you need to change sizing at all, but that could be a great look.
Karen:You could knit something that a designer you really like, put out a couple of years ago and you've kind of just been waiting for an excuse to knit it. Excuse found it's. Your reindeer sweater.
Jessica:Yeah. We've talked a little bit about how there's all of this pressure to constantly be knitting new things and for designers to be putting out new designs, which is all fine and well and good, but people have amazing back catalogs. And maybe you have not explored 15 years worth of design from a designer that you like or you just learned about. But there are some really great things in there that you want to wear.
Karen:You could do a small group knit along with like a friend or a small group of friends where you all knit the same thing. Sometimes you'll see that, like, people will come to rhinebeck together wearing the same sweater, and sometimes it'll be multiple days of different the same sweater. They'll all wear their sweater number one on Saturday, and then they'll all wear their sweater number two on Sunday. And you're like, I saw you yesterday.
Jessica:You just keep matching.
Karen:Yeah, you planned this. It's great.
Jessica:Finally, you could forego sweaters entirely. We call it rhinebeck sweaters. But you can knit anything to wear to this event or wear the weekend of the event to just feel like you are your best knitting self. It could be a shawl, it could be a hat, it could be shorts. It doesn't matter. If it makes you happy and like, kind of rounds out a hole in your knit wardrobe, then do it. We want to see your sweaters. We'll be there. And we're thinking of maybe doing some lowkey planning of a time to get together and meet with us. So we would love to see your sweaters. But if you just see us walking around and shoving donuts in our face, totally come talk to us about what you're wearing because we love it. We want to know about all your knitting adventures.
Karen:What's on your needles, Jessica?
Jessica:Well, still my Easy V. So I have to say that last week I may be overestimated the speed with which I would work through the body of this sweater. I have not wanted to touch it. It's been so hot and it's so big. It just sits in my lap and makes me wish I was sitting in the river. So I'm moving along slowly, but there's hope I will get through it. What's on your needles, Karen?
Karen:I am back on the Sunshine on my Shoulders. I think last week I said I had finished or I was about to finish my oak moss. And I'm really excited about this sweater, but I am not. 95% humidity. Excited to put it on my body, but soon. So I picked my sunshine on my shoulders back up. It's bottom up. And I got through the color work in tarja chart, and now I'm ready to split for the shoulders. And there is more in targa, but it's only two colors at a time, so I feel like I've done it.
Jessica:You've turned a corner here.
Karen:Yes.
Jessica:That's pretty exciting.
Karen:I think. I'm not going to get a ton of wear out of it in the winter.
Jessica:It's going to be a transitional season piece.
Karen:Yes. And I'm still really liking the dapple. That is nice yarn.
Jessica:It's pretty great.
Karen:Hey, Jessica.
Jessica:Yes, Karen?
Karen:Are you ready for a letter?
Jessica:I am.
Karen:Let's do it. This week's letter comes from Ollie. Hey, Ollie. Hi. I'm a new listener and a pretty new knitter. I'm currently knitting socks with a great skein of hand dyed local yarn. But I'm worried that I won't have enough. I'm making the villain vine favorite socks in the large size, and I've got 366 meters. The pattern asks for at least 365 meters. I think I'm in trouble here. What can I do to make sure I have enough yarn? I can't get another skein because I got it while on vacation.
Jessica:That's such a nail biter feeling to not know if you're going to have enough yarn to finish your project. So. I feel for you, Ollie. I had to look up these socks because I wasn't familiar with them and I needed some more information to think through your issue here. So it looks like the pattern calls for 365 meters for the small size and there are multiple sizes and you're making the large, so your yardage is definitely short. You have, I guess, two options here. And I don't know how far into the socks you are, and I don't know if you're knitting them one at a time or two at a time, but here is what I would recommend to you. These are not super long socks, but they are constructed top down. So if you're going to knit them and you want them to all be in one color, you're going to need to make the ankle, like the leg of the sock, even shorter than it already is, to make sure that you have enough yardage to knit a foot size that will fit the feet that these socks are intended for. Alternately, you could knit these socks top down as it's written and knit until you run out of yarn. I would recommend either knitting them two at a time for this or splitting your yarn in half. Like use a kitchen scale and work from two balls of the same number of grams. Knit them top down and when you run out of yarn, use some other yarn to knit your toes and you'll have fun different colored toes to your socks and it will be like a secret because that part of the sock will be inside of your shoes. Yarn chicken can be super stressful, but it's not the end of the world. There's always a creative knitter solution. Yeah. Good luck with your socks, Ollie. Let us know what you decided to do and how they turned out.
Karen:I think that might be it for us this week. Oh, it definitely is. You can listen to us anywhere. You get your audio podcasts, possibly, where you're listening to us right now.
Jessica:Rate and review us. It helps other knitters find us.
Karen:You can follow us on Instagram at makegoodpod.
Jessica:A big, huge thank you to our Patreon supporters. You're amazing. We love you. You enable us to do this every week without taking on advertisers.
Karen:You can go to our website, makegoodpod.com, to check out the show notes or send us a contact form if you have a question, you can also email us at [email protected] and please include your pronouns.
Jessica:We'll talk to you next week. Bye.