Katie Rempe: Can a simple bobble predict your knitting future? Bobblemancy might be the key to unlocking your creative potential.
Discover Bobblemancy in this episode of Knit a Spell with my special return guest, owner of Skein Shop Sasha Ogden! Yay!
Speaker: Light from Lantern presents Knit a Spell. I'm your host, Katie Rempe, designer, knit witch, and your companion in this magical making podcast. Together, let's explore the enchanted world where knitting meets the magic of the craft.
Katie Rempe: I really appreciate you coming back so that we can expand. On Bobblemancy. For those folks that are just joining us and maybe didn't see the first episode where you and I talked all about bewitching bobbles last season, that is where this whole brainchild started.
Do you recall?
Sasha: I do recall that was so much fun and I never thought that I would be thinking about bobbles so much. They were not really something that I loved knitting before now, but the more we talked about it, the more ideas we came up with how to use them in really magical ways. And so now I'm excited about bobbles.
Katie Rempe: I loved how you described baubles as they're little warts on your knitting. They're cute. We love them. We also talked all about my designs that had baubles and how baubles could be used different magically.
All of that leading to Sasha wanting to create a gamified version of a pattern using dice. After the show, we went back and forth on a couple of emails with a few ideas.
Sasha: have been a little over complicated.
Katie Rempe: If you watch the previous episode, we talk all about how we love to layer on lots of things in one idea. So instead of doing it all in one pattern, we thought let's break them out into different patterns.
And thus, Bobblemancy is born as a concept, but many patterns are being designed under this idea. So let's expand on what this idea of Bobblemancy is. Do you have vision of what you feel like it is?
Sasha: Yeah, I feel like Bobblemancy is using your knitting in the same way that you use any other divination tool to bring an element of randomness and stimulate your subconscious a little bit and see what kind of meanings you can pull out of it.
Katie Rempe: In the last episode you mentioned what we're doing is very similar to Geomancy, and if you Google it, this could definitely be like, a pattern of baubles that is like a knitting chart as opposed to this divination system. I never thought about divining a knitting chart before, but why not,
right?
Sasha: we are! Divining knitting charts!
Katie Rempe: Divination is an old hat sort of a thing, but using baubles as the tool or way to Predict, read, interpret the information is a little bit new. So we are designing patterns that are offering frameworks so that you can ease into it and then go on this journey with us as we get a little bit more detailed.
Sasha: Absolutely. Do not feel like you need to be, like, a divination nerd. I think it's important to get into this because we are learning about it as we're making the pattern so you can totally get in on the shallow end with us and go as deep as you want.
Katie Rempe: Sasha is going to be rejoining us at the end of the season, because at that point, we are going to go from just introducing this fun concept to you all to the patterns that are currently in the work.
If you're not following Knit A Spell on Instagram, that'll be a great place to follow and keep up on photo progress pictures. And of course, on our Patreon as well.
Do you think Bobblemancy is the key to our knitting future?
Sasha: It totally could be I know you do like your horoscope for knitters. And to be honest, until you started doing it, I had never thought about using divination tools to inform my crafting.
Katie Rempe: Hopefully this idea will help others jog their creative inspiration. And I'm sure as we are explaining these concepts, folks will think of their own ways to be like, Oh what if you did this? In which case feel free to comment and share them with us, because maybe the next pattern in the series could offer something like that.
Count Your Blessings Cowl
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Let's introduce our first pattern. We wanted to do one that is just super basic, and it is going to be called Count Your Blessings.
Katie Rempe: And this is going to be a cowl out of worsted weight yarn.
Sasha: The Count Your Blessings Cowl, it's gonna be so cool. And because it's worsted weight, it's gonna work up really quickly. It's the kind of thing that you could make. As a blessing for a friend or a family member.
What you'll do is you will choose a number that represents what you want to show your appreciation for or bring out more strongly in your life and then we'll have charts and instructions about how to knit your baubles to reflect that number throughout your entire cowl.
Katie Rempe: We'll have a full guide for anyone who's not familiar with some of the concepts or you want to refresh your memory. These will be great starting points to jump off from there. A quick little design, so that you can really just bring that wish to fruition because what you concentrate on expands, right?
Sasha: absolutely. when we were talking about baubles in our previous episode we talked about how it's like a thickening. It's where everything comes together and makes a little extra. If you think about as you're knitting, each bobble really working your blessings and your wish for that cowl.
Katie Rempe: Let's say you want to do a cowl for Creativity and growth because you're looking to learn things. Maybe you're going back to school You want all of that energy to grow within you. So maybe you pick the colors the color three otherwise known as the number in which case all the times that you're knitting those bobbles.
You're thinking of those things you want to create and grow and
the creative teamwork that will come together to help these flourish. And then anytime you wear it, you will then bring that back with you. Or you'll at least remember that empowering feeling that you felt as you were knitting it.
It's very interesting to see the mindset of something that we were in while we were making it, even if you weren't really aware of it, how that comes back later when you're done and you look at it and you're like, oh, I was, really angry when I knit this or oh, I was on vacation when I knit this and it was so nice.
Sasha: That was a question actually that some non knitters had for me one day. I was like, sitting in public knitting, as you do and they were like, does it matter? Where you're knitting or what you're doing. And I'm like well, it doesn't, I mean, like, I take my knitting everywhere.
I, just like to knit a lot, but I do tend to remember, like, where was I? What was I doing? And it's not that if you asked me, I couldn't go, this shawl, I was knitting it here, or here. But I pull it out of my closet and all of a sudden all of those memories come back to me.
Intention to Finish
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Katie Rempe: That's like really, I think the essence of why I feel knitting is so powerful. And not, just knitting, but of course, anything you take the time to make, no matter how it comes out, you still have generally good feelings about it because at least you finished it.
That's actually another theme that I want to talk about this whole season is let's get into finishing projects.
Sasha: Yes.
Katie Rempe: Everyone talks about the joy of starting projects, and even us, we're talking about starting a new project. But, I think the real magic, especially if you're trying to do an intention work like this, comes in intending to finish it, and intending to do it quickly. Life happens, maybe you get distracted, whatever.
But have the intention to come back to it when you can. Because, All these unfinished projects in our periphery, even if you're not really thinking of them,
Sasha: Oh, it's mental clutter.
Katie Rempe: Yes, it's like a little crack in the vase and like eventually you gotta patch that up a little bit. Cast some things off.
So that you can feel better about casting things on later.
Sasha: Absolutely.
HiKoo Simplinatural
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Katie Rempe: So you can look forward to grabbing our pattern, the Count Your Blessings Cowl in the description. We'll make sure to put a link to where you can gain more information about that. And we are also going to be knitting it out of a very special yarn.
Do you happen to have the yarn with you, Sasha?
Sasha: I absolutely do. This is SimpliNatural by HiKoo and I just love this yarn. It is So soft, so nice to work with, but has a good tight ply so that, your stitches are really going to show up and it's going to wear well and last. It has a little bit of silk in it, so it's got a beautiful shine as well.
I love that it's all natural fibers. There's a time and a place for every yarn, but especially for something small like this that's only going to take one skein, and you're going to be wearing it close to your skin. Oh, it just feels so good.
Katie Rempe: a nice opportunity to splurge a little bit, or use that one or two skeins of higher end yarn maybe you have, or a little specialty yarn, or maybe this is the opportunity to treat yourself.
Sasha: I like to use projects like this to audition yarn. If I'm thinking about, oh, I would love to make a sweater, and Simple and Natural is on my list of possibilities, and I go, it's so expensive, and what if I don't like it? Find yourself a little one skein project, work it up, then you know whether you like working with it, you know what stitches look good.
Maybe you have a little bit left over that you can swatch at the end and see if you like it in the gauge for your sweater project.
Katie Rempe: I love this concept of auditioning the yarn. I never thought about that. And what a way to do it in a project that I mean, it's a cowl, so gauge is it's not that important so it's a good way to learn without any bad results.
Sasha: Totally. It's so low stakes. Just enjoy it.
Katie Rempe: Sometimes it's good for us to remember that knitting is fun. It's fun.
That we can, enjoy it and use it as a magical tool, not just something to, use as a tool.
Take our mind off things, although that can be very magical too so hopefully these types of patterns that we're making, like the count your blessings cowl, is going to inspire you to just be a little bit more aware of the knitting as you're doing it.
Bibbidi Bobbledi Boo Cowl
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Katie Rempe: Out of the many ideas that we had the next exciting one that I was like, oh, we have to do this, was you mentioning gamifying the pattern and having basically like a die, one dice? One dice? One die? A die?
Sasha: A singular die.
A cube of numbers, if you will.
Katie Rempe: Yeah, to then roll and allow that to determine the design to some degree in yet another pattern. So this one is our Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo cowl. Do you want to break down this one for people?
Sasha: Absolutely. The idea with the die is that this is where the divination really comes in. This is where you're bringing in that element of randomness but you. can rest assured that your cowl is going to be beautiful, because we're going to design it so that no matter what your numbers are, it looks good.
So you'll be rolling the dye to decide how many baubles you'll be knitting. You'll be rolling the dye to decide where those baubles will go. And if it sounds complicated, it's not. It's going to be one of those things where You roll it, you fill in two numbers, and then you're off and knitting for another several rounds before you have to think about it again.
You could roll the whole cowl, in one setting, and then just knit.
I like to do it one chunk at a time. I've done die rolling patterns before
Katie Rempe: Good to know we're not that unique.
Sasha: But these, this was like, oh my gosh, okay, hang on. Do we want to get into it? Because I will,
Katie Rempe: Maybe.
Sasha: So there was this amazing designer who unfortunately is just not producing that much anymore, but she did some knitting RPGs that were loosely themed from her love of Dungeons and Dragons.
And she was big into the color charts of double knitting. And so you made a character who had items And then as you went on this adventure, you would roll your die to see which monsters are you fighting? Or what does the scenery look like?
And then you knit that into your scarf
as you go. the die rolling was the super fun, intriguing part. I didn't want to do that all at once. I would roll the die and then knit just that one little chart. And then get excited and roll the dice again.
Katie Rempe: Keeps you going. That element of surprise to look forward to. That's smart because, for me, that's when a lot of my momentum runs out from a project, and I'm like, okay, I get it. I could knit it or I could learn a new thing from this other one.
And then that's where the problem lie.
Sasha: If you want to be able to just roll all your numbers and then take your project to knit night and not have to bring dice with you,
Katie Rempe: sure, absolutely. And it would actually be interesting to hear From our listeners, are you a person who would rather roll them all at once and lay it all out so you know the road map ahead? Or are you more like a Sasha and you like to roll on the go and let it unfold as you knit? I would actually be really interested to know what people's preferences in general might be because Often.
I think people don't like an element of surprise. However, mystery knits are very popular. So what the heck do I know?
Sasha: At the end of the cowl, when you're done knitting the whole thing, you will be adding up all of the numbers that you rolled and then simplifying them down to get one number. one digit. I'll show you how to do that in just a minute. But then you can refer to the numerology charts that we'll provide for you.
And that will be your answer to your question or your advice for the situation for what you should maybe think about in your crafting, like Katie likes to do with her divination.
Katie Rempe: The knitting is revealing itself to you. And even if you don't have a particular intention or an idea, you could knit it as What is my upcoming, energy forecast for knitting for the rest of the year? You can do it loose.
We'll make it very easy for you to succeed on this because, not everyone, likes the element of a surprise with their design, and this is a pattern that is not going to have a finished look. It's going to be unique.
Sasha: Yeah, like we can knit them and post our project pictures and yours is going to look totally different. And I think that's the coolest thing. that fascinates me.
Katie Rempe: It's a way that people can also feel a little bit like a designer.
Sasha: You've knit something totally unique in the whole world.
Katie Rempe: If you knit one and you're like, oh, I love this concept. How can I expand on it? You could maybe end up noticing patterns of numbers you're rolling a lot.
Maybe that's an extra layer of a message for you. Maybe you look at it when it's done and you see A face, or a figure, or a symbol that's another layer. These are just jumping off points to help inspire our knitters to divine anything. Everything. Bobblemance everything!
Sasha: Everything. The only divination tool you'll ever need.
How to Simplify Numbers
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Sasha: So I promised I would tell you how to simplify your numbers.
Katie Rempe: Oh, yes.
Sasha: It is the easiest math. Even people who are afraid of math, you can do this math. Whatever number you get, you just add all the digits up and that'll give you a new number. And you keep doing that until you only have a one digit number. I'll use the example of my lucky number 58, so the digits are 5 and 8.
5 plus 8 is 13. That's still a two digit number, so we're not done. 1 plus 3 is 4. Fifty eight simplifies down to a four in numerology.
Katie Rempe: Numerology is one of my favorite things to work with as a ninner because it just works so much with the math and everything.
Sasha: And you can do that with any number. Going back to the count your blessings cowl, if you wanted to choose a number that had real significance to you, maybe it's your birthday, you could add up all the digits in your birthday, or maybe it's your house number. You could add up the numbers in your address, or any number.
Katie Rempe: If you're making a cowl for your mom or whatever, add up their birthday and then it's like a numbered gemstone in a way. Maybe you make it out of the color of their birthstone to add another
Sasha: Aw, that would be so cute!
Katie Rempe: Hopefully knitters who are listening are inspired by this too, because I'm sure there's many ways that you can use these patterns to inspire you in a variety of ways. So we look forward to hearing from everyone on how they might interpret this as well.
You can get more information about our free pattern, which is the Count Your Blessings Cowl in the description. We will be designing the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo Cowl over the course of the season, as I said, so we'll be releasing more information there, but.
By the end of the season, it will be ready for you and we'll have samples and colors and it'll be so fun. So that'll be a fun revisit to reveal all the fun stuff in a later episode with Sasha.
Sasha: I just love doing this with you, so thrilled to have an excuse to come back and talk about magic and making more.
Katie Rempe: I have to say, you are a big inspiration, to continue as a solo host, because it's just so much fun to talk to fellow knitters and magical makers so I appreciate you showing me that I have the ability to do this on my own.
Sasha: Aw, thanks. It is absolutely my pleasure.
Follow Sasha & Skein Shop
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Katie Rempe: Before we go, Sasha, tell everyone where they can find out more about you and Skeinshop, your amazing online yarn store and all that good stuff.
Sasha: Oh, thanks. Yeah. So Skein Shop. com is my online store. We ship six days a week. That's really what we pride ourselves on is super fast shipping. I know when you place your order, you want your stuff. I do have an Instagram for the store, although I'm so bad at Instagram.
Every once in a while, I get a message from somebody who goes. I saw your Instagram and I'm just not sure if your store is still open?
Katie Rempe: Oh.
Sasha: So don't take the Instagram as a sign of whether or not things are going well. We're always rockin and rollin here.
and
Katie Rempe: Just
go right to the website.
Sasha: And we have lots of SimpliNatural, so when you're ready to make your cowl,
One of the things that I love doing for people is help them choose their colors.
I know it's so hard when you're shopping online because you can't see things in person. You can't hold them up next to different things. So if you just email me, you go, I'm trying to choose between these three colors. Can I just see them side by side? Happy to do it. I love taking pictures to help people.
Or, if you go, oh, this red, and I just can't tell from the photo, is it like more of a purply red or a brownish red? We will have that conversation. I love it.
Katie Rempe: That is a really nice service to offer. And I know your saying is that you're the. First choice in
second your
Sasha: your first second choice.
Katie Rempe: Yes, your first second choice in yarn stores when your yarn store doesn't have it go to skein shop
Sasha: Yeah, I want you to, I want you to shop your brick and mortar first. If you can find it there, please support them. They're so important to the community, but If you can't,
I'm here to help.
Katie Rempe: and not everyone is lucky enough to have a yarn store or close by so that is helpful too.
Weekly Color Reading
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Katie Rempe: As always we will link everything in the show notes so that it's super easy to find But before we go, I want to pull a little color card
to help love this. help us knitters See what is in store for us. So I am choosing from a color swatch of fluffy fingering here from Ewe Ewe yarns.
And they all have fun color names and everything. So let's see what's in store. Oh, okay. So here we have. Red Velvet.
Sasha: Gorgeous.
Katie Rempe: It's this deep red, this is such a delicious color.
Maybe it's just because of the name makes me think of cake. Red Velvet. You have any feelings or thoughts on this
Sasha: Oh, I absolutely have feelings and thoughts. So I think this is such a great portent for us moving into fall. It's a really rich fall color. And when I think velvet, I just think of all that cozy just,
Katie Rempe: Lush.
Sasha: Exactly. Really lush. So I think this could be asking you to treat yourself.
Be a little luxurious. Lean into those little things that just make you feel like a million bucks.
Katie Rempe: Fall back in love with your knitting a little bit this week. If you've been having a break, this could be the time where you come back around and find that passionate element in there again. Ooh, get your blood pumping for knitting.
Sasha: Oh, yeah. You've got the red for, all of that kind of fire energy
Katie Rempe: If you have any reflections about our color for the week, you know how to get in touch with us. Leave a comment or send me an email knitaspellpodcasts at gmail. com.
Remember, the party doesn't have to end here. You can join Sasha and I at the KNit A SPelll After Show on Patreon!
Woo! We are going to continue the talk all about fun baubles, witchy wisdoms, and knitting nonsense that you will definitely want to come over and enjoy. It's just five dollars a month to join us on Patreon, and every episode this season has a fun after show like this, I very much appreciate everyone who's already joined us on there.
That is all for this week. Join me next week when my guest will be Heather Walpole from Ewe Ewe Yarns. We're going to be talking all about demystifying yarn labels.
Sasha: such a great topic.
Katie Rempe: You didn't even know how much there is to know about a yarn label until you watch this episode.
Tune in to find out. Thank you again, Sasha, for joining me and until next time, Merry Make, everyone!
Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, consider sharing it with a friend, leaving a review on iTunes or Spotify, and supporting us on Patreon to enjoy exclusive content. You can also subscribe to the Light From Lantern YouTube channel to receive a notification whenever a new episode of Knit A Spell is released.
And as always, I'd love to hear your feedback on this episode, so be sure to leave a comment on YouTube or on Patreon. See you next week!
