Warty Bobbles

Yellow Yarn

Sometimes you just have to let the yarn speak for itself.

Yellow Yarn And Sunshine

A giant box filled with giant skeins of giant yellow yarn arrived today!

 

It sounds like the beginning of a fairy tale.   In fact, as I unpacked the yarn, I was reminded of Rapunzel’s legendary tresses and the Miller’s daughter who was reputed to spin straw into gold. 

 

The yarn is Cascade’s Magnum and the color (9463B) is the golden yellow of growing things:  daffodils and corn and summer roses.  It is destined for the cropped cable turtleneck in the new winter issue of Vogue Knitting (where it is featured in this exact color of this exact yarn) which is similarly destined for Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat – that is, I hope to wear it there.  Maybe that is the fairy tale part!

 

But today the sun is shining – it is cold-cold-cold, but that is the price of sunshine in winter here.  And whipping up a cozy bright yellow sweater seems like the kind of magic I can manage.

New Knitting

January:  new year, new president, new knitting

I have bought yarn.  And I will ‘fess up right away that some of it is for a lace shawl.  No sense in wearying anyone with my rational.  Pretty much it was just the sheer beauty of Knit Picks’ “Riverside Café” lace-weight yarn set:  cappuccino (baby alpaca), Oregon Coast heather (merino), basalt (merino), sterling (merino/silk), cumulus (baby alpaca/silk), bare/cream (merino/silk).  When they arrived, I arranged them in a basket and left it on my dresser –for all the world like sleeping kittens – and petted and plotted. 

An Elizabeth Zimmermann Pi Shawl!  Perfect!  And then came the theme:  gulls.  Gull stitch, feather stitch, gullwings lace…Perfect! 

The fact that I can even contemplate gray yarn when the sky looks as if it were knit of gray yarn and even the shaggy fir branches are hardly green in the dim winter light (kind of like gray thinking about green)….But perhaps it is a blessing to be able to see beauty in gray at this time of year.

I have not cast on yet – am holding off until I finish one or two (okay, maybe one) other project(s).  I have contented myself with planning the color arrangement, the stitches.  And late one evening, when I was too tired for even simple knitting, I wound one skein into a ball.

Other new knitting:  a scarf (yes, another scarf!) for the son of my dear friend, Judy.  He is going back to college and they live in the Midwest where it is bitterly cold!  And I fell head-over-heels for the sun-golden cabled cropped turtleneck pullover in the new winter Vogue Knitting (page 53) –because it looks so fun, bright, and cozy (and it is rather dull, dim, and dank here – and will be for weeks).  Have ordered the yarn, but it has not come yet. 

I also ordered my Valentines present (from my charming husband):  Signature needles.  Mmmm.   Like jewelry.

Speaking of occasions:  Happy Birthday, Sarah!

 

Knitting Rock Stars

We are a little bit famous this week – Sarah and Pelagia Fiber Arts and I.  Sarah was interviewed by a reporter from our Tacoma paper, The News Tribune, and was part of a feature called “Mompreneurs” which told about five local mothers of young children who have their own businesses.  We felt the reporter, Debbie Cafazzo, caught the essence of Pelagia Fiber Arts and were pleased that we came off sounding kind of cool!

In the course of the interview, Sarah mentioned the upcoming Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat (to be held in Tacoma next month).  The reporter, who had not been familiar with the event, became interested and said she may do a piece on it.  Sarah told her there would be “knitting rock stars” there. 

For example:  Nancy Bush, Cat Bordhi, Sally Melville, Elsepeth Lavold, Lucy Neatby, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (the Yarn Harlot herself) – all internationally know knitting designers, teachers, authors.  Wow!

The first time Sarah and I encountered knitting rock stars in the flesh was a few years ago at Stitches West.   We knew, going into it, that it was a big event and we must have recognized names in the class listings, but we were unabashedly star-struck when we started seeing them:  the knitting rock stars themselves (Lily Chin, Nicky Epstein…we actually had a class with Maggie Jackson that first year).

 I will never forget my first glimpse of Eugene Bourgeois of Philosopher’s Wool (he is a remarkably wooly man himself – I recognized him from quite a distance!). 

We will be attending Stitches West for the fourth time in February and do not get quite as fluttery over the knitting rock stars (though we still whisper:  look! There’s so-and-so! to each other).  Taking their classes is always a bit of a thrill, though – and I gain new respect for them when I hear them talk about knitting!  They really are that good!

Thinking about Sarah’s comment to the reporter, though, I began to wonder if Ms Cafazzo (who is not, I understand, very familiar with knitting) understood what Sarah was saying.  I mean, maybe she thought “knitting rock stars” meant Rod Stewart casting on a sweater or Keith Richards cabling a sock on double-pointed needles between sets….

Freeing The Fiber

Every now and then I decide to change my ways.  Not just a slight shift, but a total 180-degree life-altering maneuver.  And, as I am not above slinking back into old habits, I have decided to share my newest knitting-related resolution:

I am going to rip back freely.  From now on.

I have always been reluctant to rip back –even in the case of a glaring error (or a flashing neon light monstrosity of an error).   And I have sometimes let sleeping errors lie (as in the case of the botched cast-on row in the ribbed cuff of a lace cardigan – I always notice that ugly little ridge!) and sometimes I have made little corrections or intentionally repeated the error (making it a “design element”) and sometimes I have gritted my teeth and ripped back.

But I always considered ripping back the last resort.   Until recently.

What prompted this change in attitude?   There was no particular “ah-ha” moment, just a gradual realization that ripping back is as properly a part of knitting as swatching is –especially if one designs much of what one knits (as I do).  It seems pretty obvious – it IS pretty obvious –but it has taken me a long time to realize it.

So, what took me so long?  It is not that my stitches seemed too precious to pull out or that I minded re-doing the section.  I simply had trouble giving myself permission to take the time to do it!  

I have decided that my knitting is valuable enough to rip out.  Or rather, that my knitted pieces are worth the time and effort it takes to get it right.

Since I came to this realization and resolution a few days ago, I have been afforded several opportunities to put my new policy into practice (thank you, mischievous knitting sprites!) and it has gone fairly well.  Very little cussing on my part.  To my shock and relief,  family life did not come to a crashing halt because I spent another hour or so on a jacket front.   And the jacket front looks much better.

 I discovered another reason why I like knitting:  when something goes wrong, I can figure out what the problem is and I can fix it MYSELF.  In this computer age, that is something ! (don’t get me started on the indentation crisis I went through writing this blog post…) 

 

 

 

Winter Night And Stockinette Beasties

Our snow is gone and night is black and cold, flattened against the windows from 5:00 on through the slow dark hours.  It should make for good knitting conditions, but it is making me restless this evening.  I have been sitting by the fire (in the wooden sewing rocker I like to knit in when daylight streams through the dining room window), rocking and knitting a lace pattern that has not settled into my brain yet. 

 Being distracted by nothing in particular has made me edgy and I thought I might switch gears for a little bit.  So, I got out my new little notebook computer (My Pet) and checked my email, checked out a couple of things on Ravelry, and decided to post pictures of the stuffed animals I made for Max out of stretchy gloves.

So, here they are – Stockinette Beasties (that I did not have to knit!) from Happy Gloves by Miyako Kanamori.

New Technology And One More Scarf

I am typing this blog post on my new mini notebook computer!  It is a sleek little beastie (about 10 x 7 inches) and it allows me to work away from my desk!  I have not been this excited about the liberating aspects of technology since we got our first cordless phone!  (Hence all the exclamation points!) 

“My Pet” (as I call it) was a Christmas gift from my husband and his mother (many thanks!).  George – who is far more technologically savvy than I – has been getting it all set up for me and so I am really using it for the first time now.  While sitting at the diningroom table!  (Sorry, the exclamation points just keep popping up!)

Meanwhile, I have finished George’s Noro Garden scarf – and so my Christmas knitting for 2008 is officially complete (unless I take pity on Sarah and knit some on the scarf she is making for her husband, Jeff).  I have knit 1 x 1 ribbing everyday for almost two months now and it feels a little odd to just stop doing so. 

Perhaps I was building up a pleasant little obsession without realizing it.  Perhaps that is why I started thinking that maybe I wanted a Noro Garden scarf myself.  They really are beautiful scarves – strikingly beautiful.  And I do enjoy wearing scarves during the winter.  And I have only one handknit scarf of my own.   And I actually had half the yarn I would need for one more scarf – nice sandy taupey colored Noro Garden.  I started thinking about buying two more skeins in blues – what a nice beachy combination that would be!

Then, I remembered the partially done light blue scarf I had packed away in hibernation (or, more accurately, aestivation -- as I had given up on it when the weather turned warm a couple of years ago).  So, in an aura of post-Christmas thrift and New Year’s Resolution-type self-restraint, I decided to dig it out and see if it would satisfy my craving. 

I opened it up and was not particularly thrilled.  Not even a little.  It was okay, but not at all lovely.  The color was pretty and the yarn in the skein (Crystal Palace Merino Frappe) felt good, but the 15 inches or so of tight basketweave was not appealing.  It looked kind of felted and ratty.  Sarah concurred.  And since I do not really like knitting basketweave (it is neither interesting nor mindless), I decided not o finish the scarf.

But why not rip it back and begin it again as something loose and lacey?  A simple faggotting on larger needles, perhaps.  A quick project, a nearly mindless project, a fresh project!  And for good measure, I decided to send the money I would not be spending on more Noro Garden to Knitters Without Borders.