Warty Bobbles

My Dad's Cable Hat

So, the wool cable hat I am knitting for my Dad is nearly done.  (Huzzah!)  Cables eat up a lot of time – and a lot of yarn (I will have to ravel the swatch to finish it!).  But it has all been worth it – the hat is gorgeous (at least, I think so!).  And nearly done.

 

The interesting thing about this project is the number of “incidents” that have occurred in its making.  Numbers going awry, for example.  Ribbing-to-cable-column issues that sort of sprang up out of nowhere.  Cables twisting the wrong way (and requiring “surgery”).  More little mistakes than I usually ever make.  For most of one evening, Sarah and I both firmly believed that 5+7=13!  Really.  And it was like I would suddenly see something wrong – the number, the ribbing, the cable – like it just sort of happened.

 

I am a better knitter than that!  Pretty careful and double-checking-all-the-time-ish.  And yet these errors would just appear.  Oh, I fixed everything, but it has been maddening.  At one point, I thought “This hat does not want to be finished!”  But now I have a different theory.

 

I think the spirit of my Grandpa is hanging out and playing around. 

 

It sounds like eccentricity gone a bit deep, but it just came to me the other day.  See, the hat is for my Dad who has been recovering from a terribly serious bout of pneumonia that he suffered last spring.  And surely Grandpa has been watching over him.  Now, Grandpa was a clever man who enjoyed a bit of mischief.  Dad is doing well now and maybe Grandpa has been sort of casting around for entertainment.  And here was a nice cabled hat to play with.

 

I have no hard-and-fast philosophies about spirits in our world, but I know Grandpa! 

 

 

One Stitch At A Time

I confess that I am a little stressed out over my knitting.  I can tell because I keep hitting a sort of “knitter’s paralysis.”  I sit down with my four knitting bags surrounding me and there is a perfectly balanced gravitational pull acting upon me from my 7 (or 8 maybe – if you count the Owl Cable Gauntlets that are in an embryonic state – and is there any more potent pull than that of an embryonic project?  I should count it twice!) or maybe 9 active projects – such that I cannot move. 

It is like the Vulcan Death Grip.  I start to reach for the Cabled Hat and am stopped by an invisible force emanating from the bag where the Owl Q’mitl is snuggled up with the embryonic Gauntlets.  The pull from the Baby Kimono is thwarted by the force of the Green Sweater.  And as I lean ever so slightly toward the Bridgeport Fingerless Gloves, I hear Gwen’s Dress crooning like a mermaid (from across town at Sarah’s house!).

Pretty soon my eyes are bugging out and my breath is ragged and my fingers are twitching in empty air. 

So, I go make my Christmas card list or email my friend who has a new grandson or throw a load of laundry in the washer.  And walk calmly back to the knitting bags, look at them sternly, smile at them sweetly, sigh a little (best to keep them guessing) and sit down, close my eyes, and grab.  

 

The Needles Are Listening

Shhhh.  Don’t tell my knitting needles that Christmas is coming!  In fact, if you could avoid the word “November” while in the vicinity of my knitting bag, that would be great.

A lot of them (the needles) are tucked up like good children in wooly nests of half-finished scarves or hats or sleeves and might not hear you anyway, but just in case….

You see, they are such troopers – they would be up and out in a moment, clicking excitedly about just the perfect (fill in the blank) for (fill in the blank).  And like Dorothy in a twister, I’d be at the yarn store with an armload of alpaca and maybe something sparkly to go with it.  It’s like that.

It is just that (I’m going to have to whisper now) I am not knitting gifts for Christmas this year.

Too many other knitting commitments.  Things in the works and things that have to get into the works pretty soon.  Design projects and a few “shoulda been done by now” pieces.  I think even my family will understand how things are this year.  But my needles, well, that’s a different story.  They love to come out and play – especially around The Holidays.  There is the thrill of knitting in secret -- being plunged into the knitting bag when someone walks into the room – and the added privileges of going everywhere with me (the breakfast table, Bible Study, the theatre) and sleeping in my room every night like a favorite pet.

So, we are just not going to mention “November.”  And I will try to keep them entertained with projects that are already underway.  Keep’em happy, that’s the ticket.  Because a resentful needle is a dangerous needle!

(Note:  I really did find this in our living room -- it was not staged!)

How Do You Eat An Elephant?

The classic answer is, of course: one bite at a time.  It is sensible advice whenever one is feeling overwhelmed (not actually eating an elephant – it’s a metaphor! though if it were a chocolate truffle elephant…). 

 After hanging up my knitted mask on Halloween, I began feeling a bit overwhelmed by the number of projects I have on the needles.  So, I decided to list them out by project parts -- that way I can check things off and feel some sense of accomplishment.  It will also help me work to a milestone (like the end of a cuff) on one project before shifting to another project.  Otherwise, I tend to jump from project to project erratically.  6 rows of a  sweater back,  twice through a lace pattern, 2 rows of a blanket….It’s kind of a low-key panic.

So, I have (take a deep breath) 9 active projects going.  Three are gifts (so there are deadlines).  One is a sweater that I am doing along with our sweater workshop class (so I can’t really slack off on it). In addition, I am test- knitting Sarah’s “Bridgeport Fingerless Gloves,” designing a quechquemitl (like a small poncho)for our beginning knitters, and designing a baby dress for our layette class (January) .  Then, there is the Humble Cardigan and the Zany Zcarf (both for myself – but also design projects). 

These are all things I gotta get done – okay the last 2 are ones I would just like to have done so I can wear them, but that is legitimate, too.

It is kind of bizarre that my method of dealing with fragmentation (i.e.  having 9 projects going at once) is to break things up into about 70 parts!

 

Binding Off The Second Eye

I am on another deadline.  This time it is an owl that is going to Portland.  Tomorrow.   That is why I was binding off the second eye at 1:00 in the morning (I have not sewn them onto the facial disk yet).  I still have to make the feet and I am half-way done with the second wing.

The owl is Hansi Singh’s design.  Masterful – and challenging with lots of shaping with short rows, increases and decreases.  The eyes begin with casting on 4 stitches and then joining in the round.  Yeah, it’s like that.  But it works and the owl is charming.  (I will photograph it when it has 2 full wings, feet and eyes that are attached – which had better be sometime tomorrow morning before we drive to Portland!)

I have complicated my process somewhat by making the owl sort of tweedy – holding  together  2-3 strands of yarn.  And I decided that it needed white bars on the wings.  So, last night I was knitting with my Peterson’s Field Guide to Western Birds at my side.

The reason I stopped working on the second wing and jumped ahead to the eyes was a point of confusion  --  rooted in my assumption that the wings would be symmetrical (in shape and in relation to each other), as well as my tendency to think of the “right wing” as being on the right from the owl’s perspective (the way I might refer to my “right arm”) instead of on the right side from the knitter’s perspective, i.e., facing the owl.   So, yeah, I started making the “right wing” on the left side of the owl.  And since there is some nice shaping to make the wing particularly wing-like (not symmetrical like a leaf), it seemed to matter.  Fortunately, I caught the error before I actually began the asymmetrical shaping, so I painstakingly reversed the shaping directions (having experience with “make right side as the left reversing all shaping”). 

It was somewhere in the process of knitting the wing (with 3 strands of yarn and a color change and white bars added) while working the shaping backward that I let my eyes wander ahead in the directions and re-read the instructions for the “left wing” which said: Work the left wing identically to the right wing. 

Identically.  Not symmetrically.  Not “reversing all shaping.”  Not a mirror image of the asymmetrical wing, but a twin to it.  The same wing worked twice.  Fiendishly clever – the wings would have a quirky realism with one wing sort of swooping toward the body while the other shrugs away from the body.  You gotta hand it to Ms Singh.

And so, what was I to do but finish the “right wing” with the shaping done backward and then commence the “left wing” – again with the shaping done backward (i.e., identically to the right wing).  While holding 3 strands together and managing the artsy color change and putting in those blasted white bars – all on the opposite side from the “right wing.” 

About half-way through the “left wing,” my brain was quite done being twisted around all of this and I retreated to the eyes.  Joining 4 stitches in the round and increasing drastically to make the circles – in slippery gold rayon! – was, well if not exactly a piece of cake, a more straightforward challenge.  I have not looked at the instructions for the feet yet –perhaps the toes are crossed?

But tonight, I have to bust it out.  Back to the wing – where I am running out of one of the 3 yarns and will have to get creative.  Maybe all the asymmetry will work in my favor – one could argue that the light shines differently on the swooped wing than on the shrugged wing.  And I will have to make the feet – crossed toes or no crossed toes. 

And although it is already quite late in the evening, I do have the eyes of an owl.  They are in a Ziploc in my knitting bag.

 

The Hat That Went To London

In our last episode, the Wartybobbler had (almost) a week to design and knit a warm yet cool hat for her son (who is studying abroad) which was to be sent along with her daughter (who was flying to London to visit the son – which, oddly enough, sounds like something Pussycat, Pussycat did in a nursery rhyme, but we digress).

And so, TA-DA, we present The Hat That Went To London!

 

(modelled by a family member who is not in London and who wishes to remain anonymous)

I thought I might write about the agonies I go through as I try to get a hat to fit “just right.”  And the inexplicable irony that one can walk into a department store and buy a hat marked “men’s” and it will fill any guy well enough – but try to knit a hat specifically for a guy even if you have a good idea of his head measurement and can try it on a variety of family members who also have heads (which you can pretty much guess are slightly smaller or slightly larger than that of the intended recipient)….Well, Sarah says that store-bought machine-made hats are stretchier. 

Anyhow, I only had to rip back the hat twice. 

Once when I, knitting it in the round, apparently failed to “join being careful not to twist” and had a charming wool mobius going.  And since I had to start over anyhow, I flapped about in agonies over the size and added cast-on stitches (which turned out to be the right thing to do – so I forgive the mobius). 

Once when I had finished the hat and started trying it on random family members.  And it was too short. 

 

Okay, except on Gwen!

 Grrrrrr.  This was Monday night and I had been feeling almost smug because I (thought I had) finished 24 hours before the hat was due to fly to London. Sarah actually ripped it back for me and I worked on it that evening (after we taught our knitting class) until I was too tired to continue. 

So, there I was Tuesday afternoon, madly knitting away -- gritting my teeth and glancing at the clock.  The usual routine.  And 20 minutes before we had to leave for the airport, I cast off and wove in the ends.  And we stuffed it onto the head of the nearest family member we could find (who wishes to remain anonymous) and took a few pictures.

And then, The Hat Went To London!  In the “ta-da” knick of time.  As usual.

 

So, I Got An Inspiration....

I have been chugging away at lace (for both our lace class sharf design and for the Joyful Ferocity) and stockinetting myself to sleep at night with the Humble Cardigan and the dress for Gwen.  And suddenly, I have a nice wooly hat project – with a deadline.

I think I have mentioned that my son Geoff is studying at The London Dramatic Academy this fall.  And my daughter Sasha is flying out to visit him there next week.  So, I thought we could send along some little things – hand-written notes, a picture Max made at school, comics clipped from our local newspaper, that sort of thing.  And then I got an Inspiration:  I could knit him a nice wool hat!  A hat is quick -- and I have (almost) a week to do it.

So, off to Lambs Ear Farm we went (Sarah and I).  The hat has to be warm.  So we got some Rowan Scottish Tweed dk and some Cascade 220 Superwash (for the ribbing – softer than the Tweed).  The Tweed is a melding of golds with flecks of yellow.  The Superwash is olive. 

The hat has to be warm.  But it also has to be cool!  Hence the edgy gold colors.  And I plan to make it up as a ribbed watch cap with a quirky cable emblem-sort-of-thing.  One ribbed hat (which I have yet to design – although I started swatching today) in (almost) one week.  Not unreasonable.

Although, I am going to the zoo with the grandbabies tomorrow.  And to the theatre in the evening.  And Saturday is the Oktoberfest dinner at church.  And Sunday is my son-in-law Jordan’s birthday…. Well, it is always like that, isn’t it?

But there is nothing like a deadline – that hat has to be on the plane with Sasha on Tuesday evening! 

Autumnal Projects

It is officially and unquestionably autumn here.  Sunday evening, we ate dinner outside on the back deck (lamb bbq – mmmm!) and lingered well after dark.  The rains are coming and we will not have much opportunity to eat dinner outside until next summer.

(poignant pause)

BUT my autumn knitting is in full swing:  my Zany Zauberball Zcarf

And my Humble Cardigan (which kind of looks creepy – like a sweater body part – hanging off my needles!)

We ordered yarn for our class kits from KnitPicks and also chose some yarn for a cabled sweater for Max (deep green) and 3 shades of purply-pink for the prototype for our cabled quechquemitl.  And while we were doing so, I shamelessly ogled the lace yarn (they were having their lace yarn sale at the time).  Sarah let me ooh and ahh for a while, but told me sternly that I did not need any lace yarn (true), that I had plenty of lace knitting on the needles (also true), and that, in case I had not heard the first time, I did not need any lace yarn (sigh).

But, bless her heart, she secretly ordered me some anyway!  As a surprise.  It is just for petting at the moment – I have been carrying it around with me so I can admire it.  I am not even letting myself envision what it might become.  Just yarn for yarn's sake (at the moment).

KnitPicks Shimmer (70% Baby Alpaca/30% Silk) in Eucalyptus.  It even smells good.

A Tale Of Two Swatches

So, I like to swatch (I think knitters fall into 2 categories:  those who enjoy swatching and those who don’t – although most knitters see the necessity, but then there are those who never-ever-ever swatch so it is best not to generalize about knitters – but I digress). 

Oddly (I think), my favorite time to swatch is late in the evening, often while watching a movie.  Now, since swatching usually involves math, a lot of counting and measuring, following unfamiliar instructions, maybe translating a pattern into a chart, maybe getting up to hunt through some knitting reference books – well, it seems like something I would choose to do during the day when my eyes and brain are fairly fresh and when I do not mind jumping up to go dig out a different book or a different set of needles and when I am not distracted by pirate ship battles or shrieking mummies or Hugh Jackman with his shirt unbuttoned (these last refer to movies I might be watching in the evening, not life in my neck of the woods…). 

But the way of the knitter defies logic.

Most recently, I have been swatching lace weight yarn for the Joyful Ferocity and for the lace sharf we are designing for our lace class.  Both are edgings.  The Joyful Ferocity swatch came out so perfectly that I can just keep going with it and make the whole edging.  Kind of Fairy Godmother magical – and since it is “Godmother’s Edging” why should I have expected less? (though, the Joyful Ferocity is capable of magic tricks of its own!)

The lace sharf edging is another story.  Nothing looks right.  Since we want this edging to be worked along the entire edge (i.e. picked-up-and-knit) rather than worked in short back-and-forth rows, joining as one goes along (which is how 99.9% of lace edgings work), even finding patterns to try has been difficult.  Nothing looks right.  I attempted some drop-stitch patterns, but the loose dropped stitches just sort of melted into the surrounding stockinette (I think the fine yarn on size 6 needles just couldn’t hold it – works for most lace, but not the dropped stitches).  I tried a decorative bind-off – and it made a heavy chain that will not do.  I leaf through stitch dictionary after stitch dictionary.

But I swatch on.  I am going to try some mesh patterns.  And maybe a crochet chain loop bind-off (a lace shawl tradition, even if purists dislike the knit-crochet mongrel).

And I remind myself that I like to swatch.  Might be watching Australia tonight.

How Fares The Joyful Ferocity?

The Joyful Ferocity has a mind and spirit of its own!  It is the jacket commissioned by my dear friend, Joyce (hence the name) – more months ago than I would like to admit.  It is decidedly the most spirited piece I have ever made – playful, mischievous, a bit willful.  Like a character in a Frances Hodgson Burnett novel.

The back skirt did a 180- degree flip. 

The yarn for the sleeve lace and gussets disappeared from every yarn shop and vendor we encountered – and then finally popped up at the Oregon coast (ironically, the lower sleeve gussets refused to let themselves be worked upon at the Oregon coast, though they emerged from my needles quite obediently once we were home again). 

The top sleeve gussets and back triangle played hide-and-seek – that is, we were laying out the pieces to block and sew together when we discovered triangles of emptiness and realized that there were no gussets where the gussets should be!

The right sleeve has been leading Sarah a merry chase for weeks!  She has had to rip it back 5 times – sometimes it is the lace pattern playing games, sometimes it is the break for the lower sleeve gusset being persnickety.  We have sat over that sleeve and sighed deeply more than once.

And, of course, like the parents of a particularly charming and naughty child, we ADORE the Joyful Ferocity and can hardly wait to see how it looks when it finally (in its own sweet time) comes together.

(I suddenly recall that most of the Burnett characters were orphans…)

Gwen's Sacque

I have photos of Gwen's sacque:

The sacque is one of the patterns we have designed for our layette knitting class.  I am planning to complete other pieces when we are on our vacation at the Oregon Coast.  Sarah and I are also designing a lace piece for our lace knitting class (also to be worked on while at the Oregon Coast).  It means starting a new lace shawl-let! (which, as we all know,is one of my favorite things to do!)

Meanwhile, I have been envisioning a shell sweater based on Art Nouveau -- I have some lovely Blue Moon yarn (Socks That Rock -- sock-weight merino -- and Luscious Single Silk -- thick merino/silk -- both in stormy gray (Manly,yes, but I like it too! colorway) and some Habu silk in the lemon (not the rind, but the juice of a lemon).  I am not supposed to take them to the Oregon Coast to play with (see last paragraph for reason why).  I may, though.  Shhh, don't tell Sarah!

July Knitting And Adventures

For the past three weeks it has gone like this:  teach knitting class Thursday evening, then pack up Friday morning and head out for 2-4 day trip, come home, unpack and deal with “home stuff” (and maybe go to a baseball game or the circus), get ready for Thursday class – and repeat the cycle!

We had a great time camping with the kids (I knit beside the campfire).  We enjoyed our get-away to the Mountain Home Lodge in Leavenworth (I knit on the deck in the mornings!).  And we had a good time visiting my parents in Oregon (I knit in 90+ degree heat on a pavilioned platform built out over the Willamette River ).  I did get some good car-trip knitting time, too. 

Mostly simple knitting – the kind that travels well.   I knit and knit and knit on the two blankets I am making for Gwen – and yet they do not seem to be any bigger!  I also finished the skirt for the Joyful Ferocity (jacket) – which, in itself, is an accomplishment as it is the size of a stole is knit at 6 stitches to the inch.  I also completed Gwen’s Sacque – which is kind of like pink frosting!  (I will post photos soon)

I spent several hours un-knitting and re-knitting the face of the Hansigurumi owl one afternoon when I discovered that I had attached the right side of the facial disk askew – and while a cock-eyed owl might be endearing, the fact was that that there were not enough stitches to make the rest of the head correctly and it would probably make the whole thing wonky.  So, our came the stitches for the beak and the neck.  Re-do.

I also ripped back and re-did the sleeve gusset for the Joyful Ferocity because of a single column of stockinette stitches that made the right side border obviously wider than the left side border (another “right side gone wrong” – more than a coincidence?).

Sarah (and Gwen) and I attended the Tacoma Raniers Stitch-and-Pitch night.  I discovered a charming yarn shop in Leavenworth:  Wooly Bully Yarns (and bought some gorgeous kettle-dyed alpaca yarn by Araucania and Rachel Matthews’s highly hilarious Knitorama -- oh, knitters, let us never take ourselves or our Hansigurumi owls too seriously!). 

But many of my July adventures have been of the non-knitting variety:  hiking, swimming, tube-floating down the Icicle and Wenatchee Rivers , blubbering rather too loudly at the movie Up, hooting the Mariners to a slump-breaking victory at Safeco Field just the other night….

And now I have written a rather long-winded blog post – that would probably have been more welcome as 3 or 4 separate pieces delivered in a timely fashion throughout the month of July!  But now we are caught up -- and I am ready for quieter days with fewer adventures (of the non-knitting variety) and more knitting (of the adventurous variety!).

July Fourth

July Fourth dawned bright and beautiful (unusual for us) and I told myself that since it was a holiday I would knit only “for fun” projects that day.   I do not know why I thought I would have time to knit!  Family badminton tourney, family bbq, family fireworks in the cul de sac. 

But before everything kicked off, I did a little swatching.

My skein of Green Cay Calypso (from Creatively Dyed Yarn) had been calling to me for days.  It was my last yarn purchase at Stitches West this year (I had already surpassed my budget): 510 yards of gorgeous variegated merino sock yarn (like a handful crayons from the 64 box – all the really interesting colors).  I had planned to make it up into a summer top of some sort.  All those shades of green spiced with berry hues.  Mmmmm.   Especially appealing since I have been knitting lots and lots of pink yarn….

So, when we needed a skein of yarn to wind as a demo in our knitting class Thursday evening, I brought the Calypso (Sarah said, Mom, I know what you are doing – you are planning to swatch!).  It wound up into a most enticing cake of yarn and I carried it around with me for two days.  Thinking, thinking….

So, the morning of July Fourth found me playing with these delightful baby cables in my delightful summer-green Calypso yarn.  It actually took me a couple of days to decide on a sweater design – partially because I realized that 510 yards might not be enough and I would need to supplement it with another yarn.  I let my mind wander a bit as I studied the yarn.

Linen.  And since there are undyed stretches in my Calypso: natural-colored linen.  In a lace pattern – maybe Fir Cones (one of my favorites).

So, I ordered some Euroflax from Paradise Fibers (Spokane). 

And I am back to my pink baby projects.  The Calypso dangles tantalizingly in my thoughts – and I take it out and pet it every now and then.  But I can wait – until the Euroflax arrives…

Puddles of Pink

Yesterday, Sarah laughed and said, "Mom, you have piles of pink all over the house!"  And, indeed, I did.
Although I prefer to think of them as "puddles of pink."

Fronts and back of Gwen's Kimono:

Gwen's Dress Bodice (left) and Gwen's Toque (right):

Gwen's Cradle Blanket (in front) and the Swatch for Gwen's Sacque (in back(:

Gwen's Booties (just have to sew up the second one!):

And the Best Puddle of Pink!

Knitter's Archeology

The Joyful Ferocity is our major design project.  Even with our pink distractions, we have been plugging away faithfully at the sleeves (Sarah) and the jacket skirt (me). 

On Monday, we had both come to “okay, what’s the next step?”  (Explanation:  even though we plan out the piece in detail at the beginning of the design process, we have to work out the techniques, make adjustments, swatch for stitch numbers, etc. as we go along)  So we reached into the appropriate knitting bags and dug out notes, swatches, photocopies of stitch patterns, needles, balls of yarn –and began the archeological process.

Hmmmm.  A partially-knit sleeve gusset.  A ball of gold silk/wool.  Size 5 needles – double-pointed, 2 sets of circulars.  A diagram with numbers (and a lot of arithmetic on the back).  Several pristine copies of lace patterns – all pretty similar.  It gets a little dicey if vital clues (needle size or a page number reference without a book title) are missing.  Or if there is some unexplained artifact in the bag – a tube of beads or a ball of yarn that is not on the design chart.

It takes a while, but we can usually re-construct our intentions.  And then we might shift things around anyhow – add a color, switch to a different stitch pattern. 

It is always sort of aggravating to go through the archeological stage – and I make all sorts of resolutions to complete projects (or, at least, stages of major projects) in a timely fashion.  But I confess that I get a little triumphant when I resurrect a project and am able to move on as if the lapse had never happened.

Baby Fits

I am taking a break from my provisional crochet cast-on (125 stitches of ribbing in a bamboo/cotton yarn that splits when you look at it – and I probably should have done the crochet chain more loosely…anyway, my eyes were starting to cross).  

I have had an uninterrupted afternoon of knitting – unless you consider laundry, “here, Mom, hold the baby for a minute” (ha! who on earth can hold a 3-week old baby for a mere minute?), the call from the college kid who has lost her cell phone or running out to get a car lubed (husband who was supposed to do so was on the phone dealing with lost cell phone situation) to be interruptions. 

Anyhow, I have had some time to work on Gwen’s layette pieces and so I have been pulling my hair out over the usual “how big to make it” issue.  One would think that sizing knits for a baby would be easy.  After all, knits stretch to fit and babies can be counted upon to grow – and the sensible thing is to make the layette pieces a bit largish and figure the baby will grow into them at some point.

Oh, that it were that simple! 

In my experience, babies come in a dizzying variation of proportions.  Long arms, short legs, big head or short arms, long torso, chunky feet or skinny legs, big head, short torso….And it is all well and good to have a lovely sweater that fits well – except for the arms.  Or a hat that fits around the head, but slides down over the eyes.  Or booties that are the right length in the foot, but too loose around the ankles. 

Then, throw in the temptation (which I cannot resist) to make matching sets: sweater, booties, bonnet.  I have this insane optimism that they will all fit the baby at the same time!  I could blame the publishers of hundreds of patterns which show a baby wearing the set of matching pieces (probably the sweater hangs open winsomely because it won’t close around the chubby belly while the hat has been stuffed with polyfil and the booties are duct-taped on).  But I should know better myself by now.

Even doing my own designs with the baby nearby to measure whenever I need to do so, I run into the same issue – because of the fluid variables of baby growth and knitting time.  Maybe her foot is 3 ½ inches long today (she has sweet kangaroo feet!), but will it sprout a half inch overnight?  The night I manage to get the second bootie done? 

 

Good heavens, I find myself stressing out over the cradle blanket I am knitting – biting my lip and wondering how long she will be sleeping in a cradle?  4 months?  Okay, it seems like I can get the cradle blanket done before it becomes obsolete – so maybe I had better go work on that second bootie – immediately!

Matinee Jacket Update

The Matinee Jacket is nearly done and I have photographic proof:

 

 

I am dragging my feet on the finishing work, as usual.  I have told myself (quite sternly) to do one bit each day.  So, I three-needle-bound-off the shoulders one day, picked-up-and-knit the right button band the next day, etc.  I sewed up the booties, too:

 

 

 

I am still knitting the bonnet (done in the same sweet and simple eyelet flower pattern).  And the poppy-colored blanket is a long way from complete:

 

 

I am waiting until the baby is born (which could be any day now!) to buy the buttons for the jacket and the ribbon for the bonnet – I am thinking red if it is a boy, fuchsia for a girl. 

 

 

 

More Arithmetic

One of the benefits of being a designer is the regular opportunity to find one self to be wrong.  It is humbling and good for the soul. 

I was blessed with such an opportunity a couple of days ago when I swatched up the box pleat for the Joyful Ferocity and realized that I had planned only enough stitches for a single fold (like a book) and would not have enough stitches for the return fold (unless you have made box pleats, either sewing or knitting, this will probably not make much sense without diagrams– but trust me, it was wrong).

So, puzzle, puzzle, puzzle through the arithmetic.

Then, last night, I was working on the bonnet (to go with the matinee jacket) and got to the end of the first pattern row only to find that something was amiss.  Surely, the designer had not intended it to have half a scallop on the left edge – but I had run out of stitches!

Now, when I something comes up amiss, I do not automatically assume errata.  I painstakingly exhaust all other possibilities:  my own mis-counting, mis-reading, mis-understanding.  Lots of counting and arithmetic goes on.  But in this case, I simply did not see how I could make it work using the number of stitches I had been directed to cast on. 

So, I sifted through the pattern instructions looking for the smallest possible amendment that would set everything right.   (this is like the scene in the movie where the bomb-defusing hero has to decide whether to clip the red wire or the blue wire)  The instructions said to keep 3 sts at the beginning and end of each pattern row in stockinette.  What if I changed that to 2 sts?  Shazam!  Suddenly, all the numbers worked! (like the scene where the computer guy hacks into the main frame and all the gobbledy-gook on the screen melts into lists of CIA operatives)  Yes!

 

 

Not Arithmetic

Tempted as I am to regale everyone with details of the two hours I spent working out the numbers for the next portion of the Joyful Ferocity (that is, what followed once I had the 372 stitches on the needles), I will not. 

I will just say that I did indeed get it all worked out:  there are 3 sections of a 14 stitch +8 repeat pattern, 2 box pleat sections that had to be placed where they will be centered on the entire skirt section -- the piece I am working on is only a portion of the skirt section – and a rather rapid decrease on one end.

It was something of a triumph.

Other triumph-esque moments in the past week:

1. Holding up the Joyful Ferocity piece at our knitting class (in order to show the pick-up-and-knit technique) and hearing them all say “Ohhhhh..!” with one voice.  As if I were knitting fairy raiment!

2. Discovering how I can move from my email to the rest of the Internet without closing the email and using the “Mom’s Internet” shortcut on my desktop.  I can just click a button on the toolbar!

3. Well, one would think there would be more than 2 little triumphant moments in the week, but I cannot think of any others….Like if I had managed to finish the sleeves for the baby sweater -- one would think I could finish sleeves that are about 6 inches long, for heaven’s sake!

An Awkward Silence

It has been almost 2 weeks since my last blog posting.  It happens from time to time, but coming back always makes me feel awkward – as if I had walked out the room in the middle of a conversation and was gone a really long time.  I guess this is where the “bio” part of “blog” (even a knitting blog) comes to the fore.

My Dad, who had been having considerable health issues for several weeks, suddenly developed a very serious case of pneumonia.  He and my Mom live in Oregon and so George and dashed off to be with them (and my sisters).  Dad is recovering now and regaining strength daily, much to our relief! 

There has been little time for knitting over the past 2 weeks and absolutely no time to even think about writing about knitting!  But patience is part of knitting – patience on the part of the knitter and also on the part of the knitting itself.  It has waited for me and you, gentle reader, have waited for me.

And so, back to knitting!

I completed a 62 x 6 inch piece for the Joyful Ferocity yesterday – something like 20,520 stitches, not counting the I-cord border that was worked along with it.  And how did I celebrate?  By knitting a round on the Gull Pi Shawl.  I blocked the Joyful Ferocity piece and today it should be ready for the next step:  the picking-up-and-knitting of 372 stitches along the I-cord border.  I think I will treat myself to another round of Gull Pi after that!

 

Sometimes You Have To Play A Little

I love my “knitting work” – commissioned (or non-commissioned) Pelagia Fiber Arts pieces or teaching our knitting classes.  But is means there is a certain amount of “have to do” in my knitting life these days (kind of like it is always December with Christmas looming).  Sometimes I have to give myself permission to experience the recreational side of knitting. 

 

And it was pretty easy to do so when I found Hansi Singh’s designs – especially the delightful sea creatures.  Sarah and I, charmed and intrigued, ordered several Hansigurumi patterns, as well as her book Amigurumi Knits, immediately! My daughter, Sonja, asked me if these were stuffed animals and I said they are knitter sculptures. 

 

Two patterns were free downloads: the Paper Nautilus Shell (which are egg cases for a type of octopus) and the Juvenile Sea Nettle.  I tackled the Paper Nautilus.

 

Hansi Singh must be some kind of 3-D knitting genius!   The piece was challenging in that it involved short rows, picking-up-and-knitting, shifting from working flat to working in rounds, and grafting – a lot of workshop for a sweet little spiral that curls in the palm of my hand!  Interestingly, my “fun and playful” piece was a lot more difficult than my current “serious” work – and still it fully satisfied my re-create-tional needs.

 

 

Joyful Ferocity Update

And what of the Joyful Ferocity? 

A little history:  the Joyful Ferocity was commissioned by my dear friend, Joyce, back in autumn.  She sketched an exquisite line drawing of a flowing jacket-type garment and chose our Dawn color way (wisely, to my thinking, as she has golden coloring herself).  Sarah and I went straight to work on the design – we even made a mock-up from t-shirt-type knit yardage to get the draping just right.  We chose yarns and stitches.  We began knitting…and then, quite abruptly, the Joyful Ferocity went dormant. 

I could render rationalizations (Christmas, family, knitting conferences, Front Room Knit Studio classes…), but the truth is that it just slipped off to sleep all on its own.   For weeks, we walked passed it on tiptoe.  We would whisper to each other (a bit mournfully): o, the Joyful Ferocity. 

And then, about three weeks ago it woke up.  And we picked it up and started knitting it again. 

Clearly, the Joyful Ferocity knew itself to belong to Spring.  I should not be surprised:  the colors are cream, lilac, pink, gold, the green of new leaves.  Now, it is unfurling like any spring flower.  We are very excited – without giving too much away, I can say that it has a medieval fairy-tale feel to it, strong lines and a shimmer of enchantment.

 

Management Issues

I am hiding from the left-front of the Joyful Ferocity.  I could say I am just taking a break, but if I am going to be a slacker I might as well be honest about it.

It is not the left-front’s fault.  It is actually a beautiful piece and it is fun to knit –but there are management issues that are wearing me down.  Left-front is 10 inches wide.  It will be 17 inches long.  Not large.  But complex – oh so complex!  Five balls of yarn hang from it (oh, the twisting and wrapping ‘round and the un-twisting, the un-wrapping ‘round!).  Two of these yarns have beads which need to be shoved up (and down) as needed (or not needed).  One of the yarns is a chunky crinkle that could probably eat the other yarns.  There are four stitch patterns –which means that there are four charts to follow.  One of these patterns is a mammoth:  39 stitches wide and 32 rows high. 

The management issues (keeping track of the stitches, the rows, the beads, the yarns) take as much time as the knitting.  It goes kind of like this:

Knit, knit, knit, wrap a yarn, knit, slide a bead, knit, knit, wrap, knit, knit, brrrng-brrrng (phone call), knit, knit, what?! oops, un-knit, un-knit, knit, knit, knit, wrap, slide bead, knit, knit, wrap, knit, mark this chart, mark that chart, move the line marker, turn, un-wrap, un-wrap, un-twist, un-twist, catch the ball of yarn that is rolling under the table, un-twist….

I think I need an administrative assistant!

Gull Pi Shawl: The Beginnings

So far so good. 

 

The Gull Pi Shawl is 40 rounds old and actually looks a little like a lace shawl.  I began on double pointed needles (9 stitches cast on) and once I got past the wind-chime stage (when the wooden needles are so loosely held together with the wisp of knitting that they clatter like wind-chimes), it went along easily.  At about round 25, I held it up to George and said:  hey, it looks like a ratty little bag.  And he agreed. 

 

Fortunately, it was time to increase again and with 144 stitches I figured I could move up to a circular needle.  After the increase round, I knit onto the circular needle and the stitches fit around – barely.  So, now it looks like a furry spider web.  Or a crafty wall- handing from the ‘70s.

 

I am not sure how distinct the lace patterns will be – even when it is blocked.  The careful patterning may blur into a sort of general holeyness and only I will know that there is any method to it.  Of course, the fact that the stitches were chosen because of their gullish connotations ( gull wings, alternate feather stitch, inverted gull stitch, razor stitch – for the clams with gulls eat – flying wings, bird’s eye edging, and gull egg – which is an invented bobble stitch) is already kind of obscure and cryptic.  Though when the shawl was in its “ratty little bag” stage, it did kind of look like a young gull.

 

A Cast-Off Stole And A Cast-On Shawl

The cast-off stole is, of course, Sonja’s Pelty Stole which we finished at Stitches.  We (shamelessly) made her wear it to the hotel lobby bar where we (shamelessly) made her parade to and from the ladies’ room in it – and the rest of the time we gazed at her wearing it in (shameless) admiration of our own work.  At some point, when I can get Sonja and the Pelty Stole and a camera all together in the same room, I will get a picture to post.

Now that the Pelty Stole is done, I am free to knit the projects that have been whimpering in their various baskets and bags.  Out comes the Short-Row Tapestry Stole!  Out comes the baby blanket and matinee coat!  Out comes the Joyful Ferocity (which means my dear and patient friend, Joyce, can look for it to be done for spring wear)!  And out comes the lace yarn for the Gull Pi Shawl!  Much rejoicing.

Working out the arithmetic for the Pi Shawl was of those nice chewy challenges.  I do all my figuring on scratch paper (it’s not that I distrust calculators, but I am highly suspicious of myself with a calculator) and it was pure delight when the numbers just melted into suitable repeats.  Like magic.  There were some non-magical moments as well, certainly, but really it mostly fell into place. 

I do think I need to take a class in transposing patterns written for back-and-forth rows to in-the-round instructions, though.  My final brain twist of the evening was to get a wrong-side row of twisting to work out on a right-side row!  I did a little research and a little experimenting and think I have it figured out.  I made notes so I will recall what I decided to do when I finally get to where I need to do it.

I have worked 13 rounds now and am up to 72 stitches (one begins at the center and increases outward).  I have had to cast on 3 or 4 times to get it right, but cannot really complain as the cast-on is a mere 9 stitches.  Having read The Yarn Harlot’s recent blog about her lace shawl beginnings and re-beginnings and re-re-beginnings – well, I cannot compete with that!

 

Progress Is Good

I am chugging away at the Fairytale Yellow Sweater – and it is going smoothly and quickly.  A truly enchanted project!  I just hope it does not turn into a frog (ha ha! an unintentional knitting pun mixed in with a literary metaphor!  it doesn’t get much wittier than that!).

Meanwhile, I seem not to have sewn up the Forbidden Summer Sweater.  I wake each morning and think maybe today will be the day, but so far…Well, I know I am up against a deadline (Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat – one week away) which means I can rely on a nice burst of panic in about 5 days.  Why waste my limited supply of self-discipline on something that can be carried through with adrenalin?

Sarah and I are diligently working on Sonja’s Pelty Stole.  Progress can be measured in quarter-inches.  This kind of project cannot be left to adrenalin (we’re not going to be able to bust it out in the eleventh hour).  Caffeine is the answer.  Better start now (3 weeks until Stitches West ).  Fire up the espresso machine, George!

Focus

Focus.  Discipline.  Reason.

Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat is less than two weeks away and Stitches West is only 2 weeks after Madrona.   It is time to take stock. 

It is possible that I will not be able to complete everything I had hoped to have done in time for these events (actually, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in you-know-where that I will complete everything I had hoped to for these events).   So, I have to take a clear hard look at my projects and make some tough choices – and then apologize profusely to the ones that are simply not far enough along to make the cut and throw myself into the ones that are reasonably near completion.

It is all very logical and should not be too difficult (once I get past denial, I am not without good sense in these matters).  It is not as if I were going to jettison these slow-blooming projects entirely, of course.  I will just have to set them aside for a couple of weeks.  But I won’t get to bring them to the knitting conferences (well, I could bring them in a bag, but I won’t be wearing them!).  So, it is kind of heart-wrenching.  Letting go of a vision – no matter how trivial – makes me sigh deeply and wonder what went wrong. 

Of course, nothing really went wrong – it is just that whole “only 24 hours in the day” thing.  And the fact that designing and knitting takes a lot longer than knitting from a pattern.   All very simple, logical, reasonable.  And yet it gets me every time!

But all drama aside, I am making the tough choices:

Forbidden Summer Sweater:  all the knitting is done –just the sewing-up, weaving-ends-in, blocking.  It makes the cut.  Bonus: it should be the right weight to wear during classes and in the swelter of the yarn markets.

Magical Bulky Yellow Fairy Tale Cropped Sweater:  working up quickly (the magic being in the “bulky” and the “cropped”) and I am working it straight from the printed page (i.e. no fiddling about with design).  It makes the cut.

Bella Bells Cape:  hmmmm.  Probably ¾ done.  But I still have to figure out the shaping on the shoulders. And I can’t do that until I finish the 2^nd gusset.  And the coordinating gauntlets are not quite done. Questionable.  Set aside.

Sonja’s Pelty Stole:  Sonja is accompanying us to Stitches West to have fun – she would really, really like to have her stole to wear there amongst all the knitters (she is not an active knitter herself) and she has been patiently awaiting this piece (having not had it for 2 other occasions where she would have liked to wear it).  Guilt tips the scale (and blows logic out of the water).  I have to at least try…It makes the cut.

Short-Row Tapestry Stole:  this piece is free-form and a total joy to work on, but I have no idea how far along I am (it is that free-form!).   It will be stunning when it is done.  But when will it be done?  Who knows…?  I will set it aside until I complete the other pieces.  And if (metaphorically) I finish my “vegetables,” I can have “dessert!”

So, that is the state of things.  Time to focus!

 

 

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.

My Christmas Scarves Saga

We had a lovely Christmas – a very rare White Christmas!  In fact, we had snow on the ground for two full weeks.  Our family festivities were merry and bright and we are all pretty well exhausted.  There were full stockings, full bellies, and full hearts all the way around.

The family was indeed surprised – and pleased! -- to receive the handknit scarves which Sarah and I had been toiling over in secret since mid-November.  We are, I confess, still finishing my husband’s scarf (he knew we were knitting them, but did not suspect that we were making one for him, as well) and Sarah’s husband’s scarf – such is the fate of husbands, I fear, to be perpetually understanding!  But the other four were completed and wrapped in good time.

These scarves are the Noro Silk Garden ones that I first saw on the Yarn Harlot’s blog.  The exquisite tapestries that I raved about in early November, but could not justify making when I calculated that I would have to knit a foot of 1x1 ribbing (of 6-inch width) everyday for the 6 weeks before Christmas in order to make a scarf for each family member.  Well, I caved in and called Sarah and she agreed to knit half of each scarf – and since she would not be receiving a scarf and since George said it was fine if I did not make one for him, that brought the number of scarves down to five.  With both of us knitting, the amount of scarf per day came down to a reasonable 4 inches (each). 

So, we bought a whole lot of Noro Silk Garden (mmmmmm…) and knit 1x1 ribbing – yards of 1x1 ribbing.  Day after day of 1x1 ribbing….

When Sasha came home from college, production slowed as I could no longer knit scarves openly at home – at least when she was around.  I was making stuffed animals for my grandson out of stretchy gloves (very cute! from the book Happy Gloves by Miyako Kanamori) in the evenings and after a week of being home Sasha commented that it was strange not to see me knitting.  There were loud complaints from the family because I was making gifts for Max, but not for the rest of them.  I pointed out that I had said I would not be knitting Christmas gifts and that these stuffed animals were just a fun little hand-sewing project that I enjoyed doing for goodness’s sake and couldn’t I do something I enjoyed at Christmastime for goodness’s sake and if I couldn’t make sweet little stuffed animals for my own grandson at Christmas then well for goodness’s sake!  Or something like that.

In my heart, I felt a little like a rat.  It had not been my intention to declare that I was taking a year off from knitting Christmas gifts and then turn around and do so after all.  But I realized that I could not let anyone know I was making gifts because I had written about these particular scarves in my blog and they would probably figure it out – especially once they realized that I would not divulge details about anyone’s gift and it became clear that I was undoubtedly making the same thing for everyone.  So, I was stuck with my initial declaration and the occasional pained look from one or another of my children.

So, my experiment with Not Knitting For Christmas was a failure.  But the Gifts Lovingly Knitted For Christmas were a success.  And I have discovered that simple knitting can be soothing – particularly at this festive and frantic time of year!

 

Max's Second Thanksgiving Sweater

I finished Max’s sweater last night (and tonight I am finishing it again – more on that in a moment).  It is knit from a super-bulky single-ply Peruvian wool is a gorgeous teal with hints of purple (Cascade Magnum).  As Sarah said, the sweater knit up “in about five minutes” -- 2 sts/inch and 3 rows/inch.  It is our own improvisation of a drop-sleeve pull-over (basket weave worked in the round to the armholes and then a ribbed yoke and short funnel collar).  Simple sleeves – though I ended up leaving the cuff open (i.e. I did not sew up the first 2”) because it would have been kind of tight otherwise.    

 

It took me longer to finish because I kept putting it off.  Finishing is not my favorite anyhow – and with yarn as thick as my finger and stitches the size of marshmallows, well, I figured it wasn’t going to be pretty.  I decided to sew it up with a finer yarn and it actually worked out well enough.  I also put off weaving in the ends (could I have just left them hanging like dreadlocks and call it a design element?).  But last night – with Thanksgiving looming and that nagging I-just-want-to-finish-something feeling that overwhelms me from time to time when I have a number of projects going – I settled in front of a movie and just did it.  Not too bad – though I hope everything stays put (a perpetual anxiety I have about woven-in ends).

 

The sweater is kind of a beast, but I like it.  It can stand by itself (almost).  It is kind of like armor and I am hoping Sarah will knit up the Viking Hat kit she bought at Stitches West last winter.  With his Scandinavian/German coloring, Max would look positively Wagnerian!

 

We put the sweater on Max this evening and it was all very nice.  Except.  Except that it was a little short.  It is generous through the shoulders and the length of the arms, but the body looked skimpy. @$#%&*$#.   Nothing to do but heave a great melodramatic sigh, pull the sweater off the child, dig out the remaining tangle of gargantuan yarn and do a pick-up-and-knit ribbing around the lower edge.  Naturally, there was a knot in the yarn and I had to cut and re-attach it.

 

When I get done posting this blog, I am going to drag myself back to my knitting, finish the ribbing, and weave in the 4 dreadlocks.  Hopefully, I will not have to finish this sweater a third time.

Keeping Current

Sarah helped me update the photos in the margin of my blog page – so that they would show the projects that are not only “on the needles,” but are ones I am actively working. 

These projects-in-progress do not really look like much.  The lace is scrunched and the ruffles are shapeless.  Some are just a few rows of pattern or simple ribbing.  A nearly-done sock looks like a sock, of course – as would a sleeve, if I had one nearly done!  My favorite photo is the Afghan of Guilt which is knit in the round, growing ever larger as four stitches are added on each round.  It does look like a giant reggae hat at the moment.

The two newest projects are Max’s Thanksgiving sweater – yarn like rope knit on size 11 needles (2 stitches to the inch!).  It should take me about 5 minutes to knit – or so Sarah claimed in the yarn shop.  The second unforeseen project is a blue tam for my own sinter wear.  I like tams – they suit my head shape and they don’t give me “hat hair.”

I mentioned the yarn shop and the unforeseen nature of the two latest projects. 

Sarah and I ran an errand and ended up at the yarn shop.  We ended up at the yarn shop the way a leopard ends up at a water hole.  And, like the leopard who leaves the water hole with a belly full of gazelle, we left the yarn shop with a bag full of yarn.

True Confessions

With all this blogging about Guilt Afghans and Neglected Lace Shawls, I feel I need to come clean about my actual Active Project Status.

At present, I have 6 Active Projects.  That means I have 6 separate knitting pieces in bags that I haul into the living room each evening – or in the afternoon, if I have it together enough to do so.  I do not work on all 6 everyday, of course (that would be crazy – okay, probably best not to start drawing that line, but I mean it would mean a pretty fragmented knitting experience).  But on any given day, I probably work on 3 or 4, at one point or another. 

My system works, mostly.  Really, it does.  It is not that I get bored with a single project (although I sometimes claim that raising a family has left me with the attention span of a gnat).  The fact is that some projects are better suited to one knitting situation than to another.  For example, an excruciatingly simple project (like the current Guilt Afghan which is 6 rows or knit followed by 6 rows of purl worked in ever longer rounds) is perfect for car trips around town (when someone else is driving, of course) or anytime that it is inconvenient to follow a chart – it is also good for totally engrossing conversation since it requires minimal attention. 

It would drive me stark raving mad (oops, forgot we were not going to go there!) – that is, I would find it mind-numbing to work it in a quiet room or in front of a ball game or a movie.   That is the time for charted lace or cables or some pleasant color work.  Now, anything really complicated (like Kitchnering a sock toe) or that requires my full attention (some stitch patterns are just like that!) is best done in alone in a quiet environment when I can dedicate my brain to it.

A typical evening might run as follows:

In the early evening (while I am still fresh) a few rows of the Bleeding Heart pattern of my lace shawl (true lace knitting with pattern work on both right and wrong sides done in a fine merino)

Then we put on a movie and it is time for the main course – a multi-colored cable pattern for a Rappé (I have become comfortable with the pattern and the color work is fairly obvious)

For dessert (as I finish my tea after the credits roll), a simple ruffle for my poncho done in a nice chunky yarn (easy on tired eyes)

So, a time for everything and everything in its time.

The trick is not to let too much time slip by between work sessions on any (even the simplest!) project.  A few days is okay;  a week can be deadly.  A couple of weeks means it has moved into some other part of my brain and I will have to jump-start something in my cerebral cortex to get going on it again.  At this point, it has lost its Active status and is, hmmm, Resting, let’s say.  After a few months it is legitimately Neglected.  Though one should never give up hope, certainly. 

My Active Projects are kind of like those Tomagachi-things that were so popular with the kids a few years ago.  I have to tend to them regularly as if they were living creatures – or they go into “sleep mode.”  So, having 6 Active Projects at once is living on the edge.  It requires some conscious effort to get to each of them every few days.   Right now, the lace shawl is teetering a bit. 

It is a juggling act and it requires an odd kind of discipline – the sort of discipline a gnat might understand as it hops methodically about!   And it requires an odd kind of patience because progress on each piece is slowed by progress on its sister pieces.  Weeks go by without my completing anything!  But I seem to be okay with that.   The crazy, er, quirky thing is that I frequently finish 2 or 3 projects within a few days.  Perhaps  --  on some mathematical level I cannot fathom – I am subconsciously balancing out the work on each project!

 

Afghan Guilt Day

Yesterday was Afghan Guilt Day.  Seeing it in print, I realize it looks like an international day of observance – political awareness rallies, demonstrators with signs!  Actually, it was the day Sarah and I set aside to deal with neglected afghan projects.

An afghan is a fairly easy project to neglect because it tends to be big.  It seems pretty wimp-ish to give up (even temporarily) on, say, a sock or a baby sweater, but setting aside something substantial – like an afghan – seems almost sensible.  One has to pace oneself.   And a sock wears out, a baby sweater is out-grown, but an afghan lasts forever.   In theory, at least.  So, what difference does a few weeks – or months or years – make? 

Well, my two neglected afghans were/are/will be wedding gifts.  According to etiquette, a wedding gift should be given within a year of the wedding date.   I am several years past that deadline on both.  Hence the guilt. 

Sarah’s afghan was/is/will be a baby blanket for her son Max.  Max is 20 months old and while he might not out-grow an afghan before it is made, Sarah (as I just found out yesterday) has reason to knit a second baby afghan for a blessed event in early May.  Hence the guilt.

So, yesterday, we dug out the afghan projects.  Sarah’s was still relatively fresh and soon she was knitting productively.   Mine required a bit of study, but I deciphered my notes (I will say I am a compulsive note-maker when I knit – fortunately!) and figured I could move ahead.   I chose to start (or re-start) the simpler of the two since I am in the process of doing several other pieces that use lace patterns and do not want to over-tax my brain – a little humility is a good thing. 

I had just begun to knit when I found that the cheap plastic circular needle it was on had broken.  (Mother! What is that in your knitting! – Sarah does not approve of cheap plastic needles)  I retrieved the stitches and announced that we had to make an emergency run to the yarn shop.  I checked to see if I had the right size and length in my supply of needles and, of course, I did not.  So, we left Max (who was fortunately asleep) with my husband, George (who was fortunately at home) and dashed off to the yarn shop. 

I congratulate myself on purchasing only 2 skeins of yarn while buying my circular needle.  They are for a collar to go with the poncho I am knitting – I had not originally planned to make a collar, but became inspired at the shop.  Technically, that is not “starting another project,” of course. 

And now I am virtuously chugging away at the afghan.  

And we will not, at present, discuss the wisdom of scheduling Sweater Guilt Day or Shawl Guilt Day or Vest Guilt Day or Scarf Guilt Day…. 

The Sweater I Did Not Knit

This is the story of The Sweater I Did Not Knit. 

It is not a story about a sweater I considered but decided against knitting.  Nor is it the story of a sweater I began but did not complete (a common enough “yarn” – some people have skeletons in their closets; we knitters have skeins in our closets).  This is the story of a sweater brought into being without my knitting a stitch.

If you read my blog earlier in the summer, you may remember my mentioning a Beach Sweater for Max.  Somehow in the flurry before my daughter Sonja’s wedding, I was struck by the idea that Max should have a sweater (handknit, of course) for our trip to the

Oregon

coast in August.  I said to Sarah:  we should knit a beach sweater for Max.  And she (also caught up in the pre-wedding flurry) agreed.  After all, we had a couple of weeks before our trip.  And baby sweaters are small.  And, certainly, Max would look adorable toddling on the beach in a sweet little sweater. 

So, I found a pattern in an old book (we would have to size it down, as the smallest measurements given would fit a 3-yr-old).  We escaped from the family and dashed off to the yarn store.  The pattern called for several colors of yarn, so we got to play with color combinations for a while (we had chosen a summer-weight cotton/tencel yarn).  Bought several skeins of all 5 colors we needed and headed home. 

Neither of us is fond of knitting stockinette for any length of time.  So, we came up with a texture pattern for the body and sleeves of the sweater and a variation for the upper-body and upper-sleeve.  We measured Max and calculated the sweater size.  We decided a garter hem would be loose and beach-ier than the ribbed one in the pattern.  And then Sarah offered to swatch.   We both enjoy swatching a new yarn and pattern, so I did not feel badly at all letting her do so.

Once Sarah and swatched the yarn and we calculated the stitch numbers, Sarah said she would go ahead and start the sweater.  Now, Sarah and I work on joint projects all the time.  We knit with nearly identical gauge (genetic maybe?).  She had bailed me out on Max’s Easter Sweater when I could not face the endless stockinette wasteland.  We fully intended to knit this sweater together – maybe passing it back and forth, maybe one doing the body and the other doing the sleeves.  True partners.  After all, we had made the design decisions together, worked the calculations together – certainly we would both do the actual knitting. 

Except it didn’t work out that way.  Sarah would say: I am going to leave the sweater here for you to work on.  Or: When I get to the color change, I’m going to give it to you to knit.  Or:  Don’t you want to start the sleeves?  But somehow, the sweater was never left with me (or maybe it was….for a day or two…).   I admit I began to feel a bit badly, but the truth was that I had my own project going:  a capelet for Sasha (daughter #3) which I also hoped to have ready for our Beach vacation.  So, Sarah got to the color change part, saw me chugging away at row after row of moss stitch, sighed, and kept knitting.   Thus it went with the sleeves (by that time we were at the Beach!).  I did finish Sasha’s capelet in time for her to wear it once on our vacation.  I’m afraid Max’s Beach Sweater never hit the sand.  Home again.  And it was time for the sewing up.  Sarah and I have very different versions of why she ended up doing all the sewing up – so I will judiciously print neither.   At the very end, prickling with guilt, I begged to sew in the ends.  And I did so. This is the story of The Sweater I Did Not Knit

And Sarah (feeling a bit used – though I maintain my intentions were honorable) said I had better write about The Sweater I Did Not Knit – and put in a picture of Max in his Beach Sweater That Makes A Good Fall Sweater Too.  And so I did.

 

 

 

Lace and Russian Novels

Knitting a Lace shawl is much like reading a Russian novel. 

The thought occurred to me – rather out of the blue -- as I was tinking back and re-working a row of lace (I had a lot of time to mull over the similarities while the other side of my brain was working on keeping the yarn-overs from escaping and wriggling the point of my needle into tight little knit-three-togethers )  The random thought sprouted into a full-grown theory!

Lace Shawls and Russian Novels.  The start up is ridiculously easy.  Every yarn shop I have ever visited has lovely lace-weight yarn (which is always an incredible bargain when you price it out per yard) and every book shop has Russian novels (also a bargain priced by page).  Yet, there is an elite quality to both. And one has only to lift the skein or book to find oneself engulfed in an aura of intellectualism and virtue:  why, yes, I am a knitter of lace shawls and a reader of Russian novels (even non-knitters and lackadaisical readers will be impressed when I casually let it drop in conversation).  Somehow, the fact that I am making a HUGE commitment of time on a chance encounter never enters my head and I leave the yarn/book shop feeling ridiculously triumphant. 

The beginning is romantic and I am buoyant with adventure and ambition.  It only takes me a few days to wind the 1800-yard skein into a ball and to cast on 400 stitches – about the amount of time it takes me to chug through the first five chapters of the novel.  Casting on is not my favorite part as there is so much counting and re-counting.  And in the first few chapters, I cannot quite figure out who is who.  But these little frustrations are offset by the knowledge that I am fully embarked on the project/read of a lifetime.  Even though my shawl is but a little stringy worm, I savor the fine merino, the gradation of colors the skein promises.  Soon, I will begin to see it play out into a delicate fabric.  Likewise, I note the fine prose and subtle descriptions.  Soon, I will begin to figure out who the characters are and what they are doing.

Slowly, I become comfortable handling the yarn (thread-like stuff that sticks to itself even as it sort of bounces about and slides off the needles) and familiar with the pattern (which is probably a repeat of 24 ever-varying rows that read something like an African dialect of clicking “k2togs” and sibilant “pssos”).  Slowly, I figure out that the characters are eating breakfast, then luncheon, then dinner, then breakfast again.  Slowly, my family becomes resigned to me muttering my “African dialect” in the living room – though they do dissuade me from trying to cook borscht.  Lace shawls and Russian novels tend to take possession of my mind.

Time passes.  There are many stitches in each row.  There are many words on each page.  My shawl is ten inches long and, by some mystery familiar to knitters everywhere, has been ten inches long for days -- even though I knit every evening.  By the same sort of witchery, my bookmark sits a quarter of the way into the novel, day after day after day even though I read faithfully.  

As weeks pass, the romance pales.  I never actually lose my love for my lace shawl – any more than I lose interest in my Russian novel.  It is not even a matter of losing patience.  It is pure wantonness on my part.   Monogamy practiced upon a lace shawl that never gets any longer or a Russian novel that seems to get longer by the day wears on the nerves.  Other yarns beckon, other books call. 

I cast on a sock and open a murder mystery. 

There are several lace shawls still on the needles tucked into baskets behind closed cupboard doors – the Russian novels stand more boldly naked on the bookshelf in my study, bookmarks wedged securely in place.  I never actually give up on them;   I just let them rest.  

There always comes a day when my appetite for lace-weight yarn or hearty prose returns.  Most likely in a yarn shop or bookstore.  I would like to say that I run home to my not-exactly-forsaken projects and books, but…. Well, there is room in my heart for many passions (of the fiber and literary sort, I mean, and if one is going to practice a little indiscretion, there are certainly worse ways to do so!).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grandmotherly Knitting

Grandmotherly Knitting:  September 3, 2008

 

Two Beliefs:

 

1)      Surely one of the great satisfactions of being a knitter is knitting for those we love.

 

2)      Surely one of the lesser (but still significant) satisfactions of being a knitting grandmother comes when one is able to share photos of her grandchild in hand-knit garb.

 

So, without further justification, I give you Max!

 

Autumn Knitting

It is September 1st , as well as Labor Day, and as far as I am concerned, the beginning of autumn – the equinox in a couple of weeks will only confirm what is started today. Weather-wise, summer has left the party early this year anyway (she came late, too, like a much-anticipated but over-extended celebrity making a publicity appearance). There is a nip in the air, a golden gleam in the afternoon light, and night advances with a little more authority.

Enough rhapsodic anthropomorphisms! And back to knitting.

Autumn is the knitter’s season. Sweaters are chic, socks coquettish, gloves/scarves/mittens poetic. Wool is well-respected in winter (and appreciated even in spring around here), but it is positively romanced in autumn. Just writing about it makes me want to go plunge my hands into a basket of yarn.

Fortunately, while at the Oregon Coast, Sarah and I talked ourselves (twice) into going to the bright and well-stocked yarn shop, Yarn For All Seasons. And, with rather unseasonable rain and wind urging us to think warming thoughts, talked ourselves into buying yarn for autumn knitting (both times). So, I am well-supplied with a selection of purples and grays for a cozy poncho (the Jane Eyre version of a sweatshirt) and another basket of blues and taupes for…well, for something. Not quite sure what yet.

I admit to a cuspish quandary as I am not quite ready to let go of my remaining summer knitting – my lace shawl and the Forbidden Summer Sweater. And there are a couple of autumnal projects in-process that I should resurrect. And there is a Pelagic piece that I set aside while in “summer vacation” mode which should be completed. With autumn comes a school-days sense of duty.

So, I might have to content myself with petting my autumn yarns today. I could ruminate over the poncho design, too. I could maybe swatch a little -- just to get a taste of autumn.

Summer Days

Summer is hurtling through my life.  In the morning, I think “oh, today, surely, I will post those Columned Beaded Flagon stitch photos.”  And then the day gallops away with me and bedtime comes and I have not done so after all. 

The college kids are home, Sonja’s wedding is less than a month away, the grandbaby is at our house for a couple of days...so the verbal part of my brain is pretty much taken up with family.  Also, summer weather has arrived – and after the dismal spring we have endured, we are spending as much time as possible outside.  My computer is, inconveniently, inside.  

Anyhow, here are the promised photos:

 

 

Stockinette Wasteland (Max’s knit shorts to be worn with the matching sweater for Sonja’s wedding) continues.  Sarah worked on it for a bit, too, and I am just about ready to start the individual legs.  Still many rounds of stockinette to go. 

And, somehow, I seem to have begun 3 new projects! 

I had just bought Max 2 sunsuits on sale.  Hmm, perfect for the Beach in August.  Except that it tends to be a bit cool on the

Oregon

coast, even in summer.  Now, if he had a summery, beachy sweater to wear on top – nothing too heavy, but substantial enough to protect his little arms from the wind…. 

Next thing I know, Sarah and I are at the yarn shop with a “Young Shrimper’s Sweater” pattern from my 30-yr oldish Family Knits book.   Max would wear about a size smaller than the smallest size given, so we had to do a little figuring.  Sarah started the sweater with the understanding that it is to be a team effort (esp. as it needs to be done by the beginning of August).

While at the yarn store, I seem to have bought 1800 yds. of lace-weight wool in a sort of beachy variegated color way.  Now, I seem to be swatching lace patterns for a stole when I probably ought to be knitting the Stockinette Wasteland.  Oops.  I think of it as stole-en knitting time.

Thirdly, Sasha asked if it would be possible for me to knit her a little summer capelet.  Well, I dove into that like a penguin into freezing water!  

So, there we are.  Or, at least, there I am:  knitting bits of several projects on the deck in the sunshine.  As often as I can manage!

 

 

Merry Christmas, Jordan!

I have knit a fair amount in the past couple of days – due to a brief road trip to Portland – and am refreshed!  Renewed in spirit and re-energized in mind.  Like a withered houseplant that has been watered at last.  

Even better, I have finished Jordan’s socks!!

I had completed the actual knitting about a week ago and had only the toe kitchnering to do.  Well, day followed day without a quiet day-lit half hour so I could settle down and finish the job (that rich tweedy sock wool has been the most difficult yarn to see!  it just melts into the shadows – and the difficulty I had differentiating between knit and purl stitches on the needles slowed my progress and made the relatively simple pattern fatiguing to work).  When I packed my knitting for the road trip, I left out the socks – figuring I would not be kitchnering in the car.  But then I remembered that we would have a free morning and decided I might just get it done then.  So, I packed the socks.

What I did not pack, however, was kitchnering instructions.  I have kitchnered many times, but can never quite remember how it is done.  Even when I do get going, I have to have total silence so I can talk each stitch through (front needle: knit off, purl on;   back needle: purl off, knit on – over and over and over).  So, there I sat with time and daylight and two lovely socks knit down to the toenails – and nothing but a vague in-and-out idea of how to finish them! 

Viva technology!  George pulled out his iphone, hit the Internet, googled “kitchner instructions,” and there it was.   I copied the essentials down on a 3x5 card and stitched away.  Wove in the ends.  Done.

Last night, I wrapped the socks in a red bow and added a “Merry Christmas, Jordan” note.  I left them by the coffee maker where he would find them in the morning. 

Now, I am free to work on the No-Longer-Forbidden Summer Sweater guiltlessly.  I can devote my stockinette-knitting-capacity to Max’s pants (knit in the round – kind of like knitting a sock for a baby elephant).   I can start another pair of socks…. wait, who said that?  SOCKS?  After the heel fiasco, the interminable rounds of hard-to-see pattern work on size 4 needles, the inevitable “2^nd Sock” issue, the usual agony over sizing.  Really? Really?!

I confess I did have a sock-hankering as I walked down to get the newspaper this morning.  A brief hankering, but if it persists, I have half a sock on the needles in my stash.  A cheery self-patterning yarn in autumn colors – if I started it up again now, I could have them done in the fall….toasty toes by the fireside….

 

 

Sorting The Stash

Sarah and I have been cleaning out my studio and her art room. It has been a process and is still not quite done. We tackled my studio (sewing and knitting and other needlework, including beading) first and it took about two weeks to get it cleaned out and re-organized. Her art room (sewing, knitting, costume design and various art media) has been gutted, painted, outfitted with new shelves and cabinets (thanks, George!) – and now we are in the putting-everything-back-in-a-logical-order stage.

The process has required us to dig into our yarn stashes and the hidey-holes where projects go to hibernate. The yarn stash issue has been straightforward and actually kind of fun – as we bought containers and sorted it all by hue. Some yarn we tossed -- mostly from my antediluvian stash – but most of it has been petted, reminisced over, and tucked in amongst its color cousins.

The hibernating projects have presented a different challenge.

A lot of: oh, ye-e-e-s, I remember this-s-s-s….
A little bit of: okay, I’m pulling something out of this bag and you are going to laugh!
A bit more of: oh, yeah, I’m supposed to finish this.
A bit more honesty: oh, yeah, I’m never ever going to finish this.

We have learned a few things about ourselves as knitters – like that neither of us can knit further than half-way on a scarf. That we both like to start lace projects (and would finish them, we swear, if more prosaic knitting did not get in the way). That we are immovable when it comes to unfinished gift projects – that we can neither knit them nor give them up! Though we both agreed that she could give up on the leg-warmers (well there was only one and it was about an inch high and probably too big around) she was making for me for Christmas 2006 or so.

In all, I would say we ripped out a third of the languishing. It was kind of freeing, of course. And we have more needles, now! We agree that chefs and gardeners are lucky – bland casseroles and unplanted petunias meet a natural and timely end. Half a scarf knit in garter stripes of fuchsia mohair and variegated “melon garden” ladder novelty yarn lives forever.

The Urge to Swatch

I really (really, really, really) want to swatch. And I cannot justify it. I am in the middle of a couple (okay 3 or 4) projects – including Jordan’s socks (I just have the toes to go).

I told myself I would NOT start the summer top I am designing from the yarns I bought in Spokane UNTIL I finish Jordan’s socks. Somehow, when I speak to myself so severely and set a clear limit, I usually settle down in a self-disciplined manner and finish what I have in hand. To put it another way: when I speak to myself as if myself were a child, myself generally starts to behave like an adult.

Well, so why am I blogging about swatching when I ought to be knitting the toes of Jordan’s socks? Because I hit a snag. I ran out of reinforcing nylon. There is no knitting those toes until I get to the store to buy another card of reinforcing nylon – so, suddenly, all my self-discipline has evaporated.

And the only reason I am at my computer instead of swatching the funky self-patterning yarn that I plan to use for the body of the summer top is that I am supposed to be organizing committees, programs, etc. for the club I will soon be presiding over. So, I settled virtuously at my computer to work all of this out for the up-coming meeting – figuring the lists of names, the problems to solve, the shear weight of responsibility would drive way all swatching urges.

But I cannot get onto my internet. No email. So, I cannot access the information I need to do the club work.

So, here I am: cannot knit Jordan’s toes without the nylon, cannot run out to the store to get the nylon (napping grandson), cannot work of club organization….

Swatch a little, murmur the knitting sprites. They have no more concern for the projects in my knitting bag than for the piles of dirty towels in the laundry room or the stacks of dishes on the kitchen counter. Shame on them.

Then, a light goes on in my mind and the angels in heaven coo: there is the linen yarn to wind, the lovely variegated linen yarn for the accent gussets of my summer top. Winding yarn is not swatching. It is not even knitting. I don’t even particularly like winding. It is practically the same thing as organizing or cleaning or laundering – sort of a prelude-ish maintainance thing. Virtuous, really.

I suspect that the knitting sprites are coo-ing just as contentedly as the angels, but as long as we are all in accord….

Max's Easter Sweater: Done!

Max wore his Easter sweater to brunch on Easter as planned. And we have the photos (with his Aunt Sonja)to prove it.

Only the most heartless critic will notice that there are no buttons or button loops and that the naked button band has a rather unfinished look to it. And I might as well confess that there are a couple of yarn ends running loose in the left sleeve. And it is a good thing that he is a nice squirmy baby -- the rumpled state of the unblocked wool seems but the natural result of pre-toddler tusseling. The point is that he was able to wear the sweater. Triumph!

It was a near thing. We had a busy weekend – Sasha home for Spring Break, Sonja’s affianced, Jordan, being baptized at the Easter Vigil mass at our church Saturday night (his family came up from Oregon for the occasion and we had a celebratory dinner that evening), the usual egg dyeing. Not a lot of knitting time as Zero Hour drew close (i.e., the 11:00 am brunch reservation).

I finished the Fair Isle button band Saturday afternoon in the car (Sasha drove) while we did the last minute errands. Sarah (who has more nerve than I) began binding off the button band in church while we waited for mass to begin. It was a long service and none of us got home until nearly midnight. Sarah took the sweater with her and stayed up til 2:00 am finishing the bind-off and sewing on the second sleeve. When she, her husband, Jeff, and Max showed up at our house Easter morning, she handed the sweater off to me and I began sewing down the button band while the family hunted for Easter eggs. In the car on the way to brunch (my husband, George, drove), I finished the binding and wove in the more obvious yarn ends – arriving rather woozy but triumphant.

It is a mystery to me how we manage to get these things done in the absolute “Ta-Da!” knick of time. It completely boggles my mind how often it comes down to the final minutes. As if any kind of normal mind could unconsciously calculate how many minutes it will take the family to locate 59 Easter eggs and how that number might relate to the time it takes to sew down a button band. This project was begun weeks ago – moving in mystical inexorableness to the moment the car pulled into the restaurant parking lot Easter morning.

I did complete the sweater this week: buttons, button loops, button band edging, woven-in ends, blocking. Text book.

Now, I have to start the matching pants and socks– so Max can wear the entire outfit at Sonja’s wedding. So, the chances of the mother-of-the-bride kitchnering in the back of the church while the guests arrive…?

"Spokane Ferocity" Part II

The “Spokane Ferocity” was designed to be a fun wear-with-a-t-shirt-and-jeans sort of thing. Maybe “dress it up or down” like in the fashion magazines. Mostly, it was a design challenge! A marvelous learning experience as I fussed along merrily with calculations and swatches and graph paper. Rather than try to detail the journey, I thought I would pick a few “postcard” views:

1) Unexpected Delight: the piece of cable I used as a single motif that came out looking like a wild spider

2) Unexpected Dilemma: how do you make a color change in a cable pattern flow organically?

3) Foresight Rewarded: I think I have finally grasped the fact that the human body is round – not flat like the paper on which I sketch my design – so I left a little “dead space” at the edges and the piece when worn looks rather as I expected it to (without motifs lost in the underarm region or the split hitting in an unfortunate place)

4) Recovery From Lack of Foresight: all that amazing yarn ends up being rather heavy (cables, acrylics, bramble stitch in Noro) hanging from 3” straps of bamboo yarn (read: great danger of garment stretching over time!!), so I used a linen stitch for the bodice and then threaded ribbon along the straps to reinforce them (the fact that the linen stitch gave me serviceable strands to thread through was sheer luck!)

5) Praise For Crab Stitch: I love crab stitch edging! So tidy and stabilizing – like a good governess or administrative assistant

It is always a relief when the garment I have designed – with such an investment of time and a gutsy chunk of disposable income – turns out to be wearable! I even find I can wear it with either side as the front, as I originally desired – though I confess that intending a piece to be reversible or somehow wearable in different ways is one of my favorite safe-guards. It gives me a second chance if the “front” is catastrophic.

So, resister the “Spokane Ferocity” as a success, possibly even a wardrobe staple (I have kind of an odd wardrobe).

As always, thanks to Sarah for some good advice along the way.

Stockinette Wasteland

Am I a process knitter or a project knitter? Somewhere in the middle, but probably closer to process. There are scads of chic sweaters, cool leg-warmers, fetching coats, etc. that I would love to wear, but which I could not get myself to knit – all the way thru to the end (“Mère! Look at all that stockinette!” says Sarah, aghast – she knows me so well – and, oddly, keeps popping into my blog veiled in parentheses).

Oh, I could start them easily – am sorely, sorely tempted at times! But I would bog down in Stockinette Wasteland (I hear The Who echoing in my brain whenever I hit that phrase – the howling line from “Teenage Wasteland” – the title of the song actually being “Bubba O’Reilly”, of course, and my son and husband would be scrambling to be the first to correct me on this one if I had not said so). Knitter know thyself! When I hit a large patch of Stockinette, my brain starts to jump around like a puppy eager for something to chew or wrestle or chase. My idea of “TV knitting” is a nice regular cable or an established lace pattern which repeats in less than 2 dozen rows. I take my simplest knitting in the car (when I am not driving) for errands around town because I can usually put it down and take it up again easily – which is essential because whoever I have conned into coming with me to drive (so I can knit) gets impatient if he or she has to stand in the grocery store parking lot in the driving rain while I “just get to a stopping place.” Good stockinette knitting time, but I cannot contrive enough errands to get me through anything of length in less than 6 or 7 years.

So, flash back to the Easter sweater for Max. A cheerful band of Fair Isle color and then 7 inches of stockinette. Fine Ivory yarn, running at 8 stitches and 10 rows to the inch. 217 stitches across (fronts and back worked at one stretch). Get out my trusty pencil and paper: 15,190 stockinette stitches!! And that is only up to the armpits! There is the rest of the body and the two sleeves to go….

I do not usually clock my knitting. What is the point, after all? But I have developed a sick fascination with the numbers on this one (remember, the puppy-like brain needed something to chew on) and estimated that I was knitting maybe 40 stitches at minute. Imagining myself going full-tilt without breaks (pencil, paper, long division): something like 6-7 hours of stockinette. Just to get to the armpits.

Stockinette Wasteland, Stockinette Wasteland….We’re all wasted!

A Swatch From February

When I first seriously considered starting a knitting blog, I did what I presume any wise knitter would do: I swatched. That is, I wrote a few "mock blogs" (in secret -- didn't even tell my family I was trying it out). Then, feeling rather like a first-grader, I showed George and Sarah what I wrote and they said "go for it." We tusseled with blog names for a few days, the rest of my family kind of rolled their eyes and smiled, Sarah figured out all the techno stuff and here we are.

One or two of the swatches are a bit out of date -- having been written a month ago -- but tell a bit about who I am as a knitter. My process, as it were. Oh, dear, I am getting all serious about myself (rather like a first-grader again -- or, at least, like I was as a first-grader, kind of fervent and bookish). Anyhow, the following bit was written on a tempestuous winter day (not a bit like today's sunny almost spring day) and is about the genesis of a sweater that is now about 5 inches long:

February 5th:

The weather forecast for the next week is mid-30s to mid-40s and rain. Every time I look out the window it is raining from a different direction. The gutters are overflowing. It is midday and there is hardly enough light to knit by.

In February, gardeners turn to seed catalogs and knitters turn to yarn catalogs. In the perpetual twilight, it becomes easy to visualize poppies and exotic begonias, cotton sweaters in party mint colors and frothy lacy stoles for bare arms on summer nights. I even sound like a catalog! A vintage one, maybe.

What do people who do not garden or knit think about in February?! I suppose that is why murder mysteries were created.

My thought, when I pulled out the Dalgarn booklets, was to entertain myself while eating lunch. Cherubs in knit ensembles. I was not planning a project, certainly. And, at first, nothing leapt out at me anyhow – in case I had been planning a project, which I was not. I was a little disappointed in spite of myself. Too early, really, to get excited over spring knits.

Except I kept going back to a rather simple, vintage-y cardigan and pants set. Baby blue with a geometric border. My first impression was that the pants were shorts – and when I realized they were not, I thought, “Too bad – it would make a darling shorts set” and turned the page. But my brain did not move on to the next page. Quite without my permission, it started to plan: make the pants shorts, knit it in ivory with greens for the border, Max could wear the cardigan at Easter with khakis (if the shorts were not done yet) and then wear the suit in its entirety at his Aunt Sonja’s wedding in July. Brilliant.

Out came the yarn catalog that carries Dalegarn Ull (which had just arrived – a sure sign). A quick consult with Sarah who concurred – though she has the flu and is on some trippy cough medicine and may deny it all later. An intense discussion over shades of green. A few mad dashes in other color directions and then back to the greens. Bring on the laptop computer and the credit card. Deed done.

Outside, the rain is still slashing heartlessly against the gray pavement, trees, houses, cars. But in a warehouse somewhere there are boxes of baby-soft yarn in ivory, kiwi, sky, and a whisper of light green.

But Can She Knit?

It occurs to me that someone who has not seen me in my leather chair surrounded by yarn may wonder, based upon my heel flap nonsense, whether I have much knitting experience at all. Questions such as “How on earth did she get the first sock past the wretched little heel flap?” and (mischieviously) “What does that first sock look like?” Well, I have knit socks successfully in the past and the nearly finished sock does, indeed, look like a nearly finished sock.

Typically, though, I do not knit socks. Typically (at present), I knit wraps and shrugs and such that I have designed myself using 5-15 different yarns and, perhaps, as may stitches in a single piece. I also knit hats, scarves, sweaters from patterns. My knitting daughter, Sarah, and I have a small business, Pelagia Fiber Arts. You can check out our website (pelagiafiberarts.com) and get a better idea of our particular style.

I promised to open my knitting bag to you and let you know what is “on the needles.” I am finishing a Pelagic shrug called a Chillarmour (we tend to refer to the pieces we make for our business as “Pelagic” and we name each style). It is our prototype and I am anxious to get it done and start a new one without the design flaws we have struggled with in this one!

Also, I am knitting a cabled tunic (a brilliant Filatura Di Crosa pattern) in a deep teal-y blue merino– it is a sea of cables and I love every minute of it! (I notice I have trouble writing about my knitting projects without using exclamation points to excess) Also, I have begun designing and knitting tabard-like vest in Pelagic style (i.e., 8 or so different yarns and a mix of stitches) which I fancy I will have done so I can wear it at Stitches West.

Domestic harmony requires that I also mention the Fair Isle sweater I am knitting for my husband, George (a patient and understanding man who, I might add, did receive a lovely hand-knit alpaca Fair Isle tam for Christmas), though I admit I have not touched it in, well, a while. With impeccable knitter’s logic, I have tried to make up for the delay in finishing his Fair Isle sweater with the promise of a gorgeous Aran sweater – after I finish the Fair Isle, naturally. And then there are the socks, of course.

I seem to conclude each entry with those dear socks.