Yan Tan Tethera*

The year in pictures

2011-11-21T11:52:00.006-05:00

Today, I have scrubbed a bathroom, sterilized several kitchen implements, vacuumed, finished plying some singles that have been sitting around since the summer, and looked at this blog for the first time in several months. Obviously I am motivated to get my life in order.

In this spirit, here's a survey of my knitting year.

The much-ripped-out sweater from last winter is making its final trip to the frog pond, since once I finished it I determined that wearing it makes me look either like the Michelin Man or like someone attired as a knight to attend a Renaissance Faire. (There's a Renaissance Faire right near us every summer, so you could argue I have the perfect outfit, but I think I'll give it a pass.) I hope to transform the yarn into the cabled sweater I originally envisioned, instead.

I made an Aeolian shawl.

I made a sweater.

For a while, there was no one to wear the sweater, because we were on a journey of adoption filled with heart-wrenching ups and downs.

In October, that changed. I made a hat to match the sweater. The hat had great racing-stripe pooling that the sweater did not.

And there was, finally, someone to wear it.

I should emphasize that this yarn was dyed (by the dyer mentioned in this post) based on one of Monet's "Houses of Parliament" paintings, so it's a very manly pink that you see there. We wouldn't want anyone to think our son is a sissy.

This week, I finally finished the baby blanket I started in the spring. (That's Knitpicks Chroma Worsted used to make the Ten Stitch Blanket.)

The baby is very contented with this blanket. I put it over him last night and he slept for four-hour stretches, a record for all of us, and not bad for a five-week-old.

And his birth mother says she will treasure the Aeolian shawl forever.

I've started a Trellis, but for some reason I haven't had much time to work on it.

Loom-ing problems

2011-07-15T09:58:00.003-04:00

Here's a post I seem to have written in July, but never got around to posting.

Last Christmas, I finally lowered my defenses and allowed my husband to get me a loom.

It seemed inevitable, not least because my husband, who has become enamored of all my fiber-related gadgets, has been eager to get me one for a couple of years. And I thought it would be a good idea, seeing as how I'm drowning in fiber and weaving, as we all know, uses up yarn much more quickly than knitting does.

It does, that is, if you actually do it.

Weaving has made me realize anew why knitting is a craft that appeals to me. You can be spontaneous in knitting. You can fudge knitting. And if you mess up, you can rip it out and start again.

Weaving, on the other hand, requires organization. It requires advance planning, working out all your measurements: how wide? how long? how many strands of yarn in the warp? It requires warping. Can we talk warping? It took me two days and I had yarn stretched out over the whole length of the living room. Then I missed one strand. Then I wasn't sure I loved the colors. No recourse, when you're weaving, unless you want to abandon the whole project.

Weaving reminds me of sewing. I was never a good sewer. It requires a kind of detail and fussiness that I've never naturally been good at. With knitting, I can work to master the details and feel a sense of accomplishment. With sewing, I feel there are people who are just naturally better at this kind of thing than I am.

I also confess to a prejudice against the woven product. I mean, how many scarves, table runners, placemats and dish towels does a person need? This is patently foolish since I feel not at all limited when turning out socks and shawls and hats ad nauseam as a knitter, but psychologically the possibility of the occasional sweater offers a vent and a way to avoid the threat of repetition.

When I originally wrote this, I was still working on a weaving project that I started in January and finished in July. I have to grudgingly admit that I kind of liked it when I was finished -- enough that we actually use it (despite its raggedy beginner edges). And I was really proud of my fringe.

I promptly warped the loom with thick cotton to make dish towels.

I got about two inches away from finishing my first dish towel -- and put the loom aside for another 3 months.

I sort of admit that I may weave some things that I like, particularly when I start using thinner yarn - the thick wool and cotton I used in my first two projects make weaving rather slow going.

But I'm not sure it's about to replace spinning and knitting in my craft pantheon - and I'm not sure how much time I'll have to pursue it.

Though I have conceived a project to weave cushion covers for our IKEA dining room chairs, using some twine-tough heathery tweed yarn in two contrasting colors, that definitely has potential.

Postal blues

2011-01-27T16:51:00.004-05:00

I have a friend who is a brilliant silk artist.

She started out painting silk scarves as a hobby. Now, she does glorious hand-painted mandalas. I can't copy the pictures from her website, but I promise you it's well worth going and browsing for a while. (The site is in German text, but my friend speaks English like a native; I'm not sure why she's never gone bilingual with it.)

Over the years, as she has honed her talents, she has given me at least half a dozen stunning scarves. I blogged one of them here. But I also have elephants, seals, floral patterns, abstractions: a cornucopia of beautiful silkiness.

One day last summer, I looked at some fiber in the spinning pile, and realized that it wanted to be a shawl or scarf for my friend. (Never make a gift for someone unless the fiber tells you that's what it wants to be.)

The fiber came out in her colors. I got about 325 yards of chain-ply from three ounces of merino-mohair blend (Spunky Eclectic, once again, colorway "Flowering Weeds").
This being me, I started spinning in early June, thinking I might get it done for her birthday at the end of the month.

I finished knitting the shawl in October.

Before blocking. Note how little of the yarn is left over: it came out just exactly right.

During blocking.

After blocking.

The pattern is Ishbel, by Ysolda Teague. And I wish I had taken some better photos of it. But I blocked it, and then waited another month or so to weave in the two ends (would hate to rush anything), and then I just wanted to get it in the mail.

I sent it in mid-December, thinking that she might possibly have it in time for Christmas. Though I am usually pretty scattered about Christmas and gifts (I am great at thinking of nice things I would like to send people, and not very good about carrying through on my plans), I did manage to get a few things in the mail this year. Even a couple of Christmas cards, though only a couple.

Of course everything takes ages to arrive internationally, especially over the holidays. Still, thanks began to trickle in from people. But earlier this week, I realized I'd never heard from my friend. And after some thought - you hate to push someone to acknowledge a gift they might not have liked! - I wrote her on Facebook to ask if she had gotten a package from me.

Wouldn't you know: it never arrived.

She, being an optimist, assured me that she sent a friend in Florida a package at the start of December, and he only just got it this week. So we hope it went surface mail, and might show up in a week or two.

But wouldn't it just figure that when I finally get around to acting on a nice instinct and making something for someone who has made me so many nice things over the years, it vanishes without a trace...

UPDATE, Jan 31: All it took was a little griping for the postal gods to take note! It arrived today, about seven weeks after I mailed it, with the airmail sticker still on it. And the recipient was very happy.

Ripped (out)

2011-01-10T10:25:00.002-05:00

I have spent months letting potential blog posts drift across my mind like those zips at the bottom of cable news channels, adding a layer of ephemeral complexity to an already overcrowded prospect.

I am finally, though, moved to commit words to screen out of sheer frustration. After years of functioning as a reasonably competent knitter, I seem to be losing my ability to complete the simplest of tasks.

It began with these socks. Slippery Socks, from Knitty.com.

These were conceived as a house present for a friend who brought me to her country house last fall. (LAST fall. That would be 2009.) While I was there she admired, extravagantly, the hand-knit socks I was wearing. So what better house present could there be than a pair of socks, made in autumn-leaf colors to commemorate our weekend of "leaf-peeping?"

Now, I have been known to knock off a pair of socks in a matter of weeks. See my last post. I can even knit socks faster than I can photograph them, as evidenced by this image of a half-knitted, toeless sock that was actually completed six months ago and has been in regular rotation since.

And these "leaf-peeping" socks were moving along swimmingly. Only, I realized, as I made my way up the leg of the first (toe-up) sock, that they might be a little big. I tried them on and realized that they were a little big ON ME, and would therefore be able to do double duty as a sleeping bag for my petite friend.

I responded as I usually do. I put the unfinished sock in the corner for a number of months, as punishment.

Some time THIS fall (we're talking 2010 now), I finally ripped it back to the toe and started a whole new sock in a whole new pattern: Leyburn socks, which I'd been wanting to make for a long time. (I liked the way the Slippery looked, but I found the pattern a little fiddly.)

Well and good. Yet somehow, I ended up having to rip out these socks several times.
The first sock was too big, again. Ripped back, reknit. Then I started the second sock. Messed up the heel. Ripped back, reknit. Realized I had left out some pattern increases. Ripped back, reknit. Realized I had left those increases out of the first sock, too. Ripped back, reknit.

I got into a veritably manic state about these socks. I wondered if they would ever be finished, or if I would be condemned to continue knitting them for the next ten years.

Finally, they're done. I think one of them is still too big. And the floats look awfully loose. They might benefit from a spin in the washing machine. But I have entered the "it's-the-thought-that-counts" stage. This represents a terrible loss of knitter's pride. Obviously I have reached a new low. But I did a great job on the packaging.

So, those socks are all ready to send off. And this weekend I was faced with the prospect of wrapping up other unfinished objects, and catching up on spinning. Logically enough, I woke up on Saturday morning suddenly inflamed - perhaps "consumed" is a better word - with the realization that I had, in my stash, the perfect yarn with which to make a sweater I've had my eye on: Debbie Bliss's Divided Front Tunic. Somehow it takes several weeks for ideas to percolate in the brain until the notion of "yarn-being-saved-for-sweater" and "sweater-I-want-to-knit" bump up against each other and prompt the chemical reaction that leads to immediate, willful casting on -- without even swatching. (Cue ominous music.)

I knit all Saturday morning. Then I calculated the yardage and realized that if I knit the pattern in the size I'd chosen, I wouldn't have enough yarn to finish.

So I ripped out my work from Saturday, and cast on again, one size smaller. Still without thinking to MEASURE what I'd ripped out.

By the end of Sunday, I had about 10 inches of the back. At which point I actually looked at it and thought it seemed generously proportioned, even for a loose-fitting garment. When I measured, I discovered that I was so far from getting gauge that my sweater was not a size M, but a size XXXL.

I will not let myself be defeated. I want to wear this sweater while the weather is still cold. So I am pledged, today, to rip it out again and hope that the third time is the charm.
But I long for the days when I simply sat down and knit, and made things that fit.

Monkeying around

2010-06-07T11:56:00.000-04:00

Some time in April, I saw a post on Ravelry asking if anybody would be willing to make socks in exchange for sock yarn.

Anyone who knows me in the real world knows that the last thing I have time to do is make socks. Plus, I have several things on my needles for other people. One of them has lingered there for two years.

So, of course, "I can do that," I thought.

Funnily enough it was a kind of "aha" moment. I still think of myself as a beginning knitter, a newcomer to the hobby. Not as someone who can knock off a pair of socks in a couple of weeks. But this, I knew I could do. And I was invigorated by the prospect of knitting for a knitter, for someone who would really get it.

The clincher was that she and I have the same size feet (as in, large). It's so much easier to knit socks when you can try them on. (One of my projects that's languishing on the needles is a pair of socks I started for a friend; after I finished one foot, I discovered that the sock fit me, and would therefore be far too big for my friend. I will probably just start over.)

The person requesting this is a talented dyer who wanted a pair of socks knit with her own yarn to wear to a fiber show, and didn't have time to knit them up herself.

The result: I got to knit a pair of Monkey socks with some really lovely hand-dyed yarn in a wonderful spring-like palette, with every stitch a little fleck of a different color.

I finished one sock and then learned I had to find a new place to live. In a month. Which I did. But it meant the second sock was right down to the wire. I finished it on a plane flight, and express-mailed it to make sure it would get there in time.

In the haste of finishing, I overlooked one small detail. I miscounted the number of pattern repeats on the second sock. I knit an extra one. When I realized this I almost cried. It was too late to rip it out and fix it. Knitter's dilemma: do you tell the recipient or not? I decided not to. Somehow I felt it would tarnish the socks for her if she knew they were different sizes. And after all, knitting stretches; both socks fit me perfectly well. I have opted to let her know this way: Angela, if you ever see this blog, my apologies for the mistake, and the deception. I promise if I ever knit you socks again, they will be perfect. But think of this as the endearing detail that lets you remember they're hand-knit.

It would behoove me to post pictures of the gorgeous yarn I got in return for doing this project. Unfortunately, it's in a packing box, along with the rest of my life, on its way to my new home.

But I did get a picture of the new sock with a Monkey sock I made about three years ago out of Koigu PPM. The pair has held up really well, and given me a real appreciation for this pattern. (The new socks were knit with size 1 needles - 7 pattern repeats for the leg and foot, where the old ones, on size 2 needles, took 6. But both fit equally well.)

Memorial

2010-01-22T01:36:00.005-05:00

I cast on for Bitterroot on a Wednesday night, although (because?) I had other things on the needles I needed to finish.

On Thursday I learned that the son of close friends was killed in the earthquake in Haiti.

Funny I never finished this post, which has been lingering in my "edit" box for months, perhaps because it touched on weightier subjects than I really felt like going into.

It was clear to me, though, that the shawl was meant to go to my friends as a remembrance of the child they lost, or simply as a hug. It seemed all the more predestined when I took another look at the epigraph that opens the pattern, which is about a grieving mother.

Knitting it was certainly a way to work through my emotions about it. And the yarn reminded me of the person who died: bright and vivid and unusual, knitting up like a flame.

What struck me particularly was the way that the uneven, handspun yarn knit up into a fabric that was much stronger than the sum of its parts: all the thick and thin bits evened out into a shawl that was strong and bright. Something there about the way that memory glosses over life's unevennesses until we're left with something much firmer than it seemed at the time, and the ups and downs that once seemed so important (my yarn is breaking!) don't really matter. A parable of human relationships.

This shawl was a big part of my winter, and then was finished, and transformed from its chrysalis-like unblocked state into a wide-winged butterfly, and sent off to my friends, who said (perhaps tactfully) that it did bring comfort.

Edited to add: I see that this post went up with the date I originally started it: January 22. Today is June 3. That's indicative of the speed of my knitting life these days.

FO for the New Year

2010-01-04T16:29:00.003-05:00

I haven't posted for months. Here's what I've been doing instead.

That's 90,000 words of a manuscript. One chapter left to go. And that chapter better be done by the end of this week, is all I can say.

I did knit in the meantime. In fact, I have all kinds of FOs. I almost feel that if I hadn't been knitting, I might have managed to finish Chapter 10 as well. Except that I only picked up the knitting when I couldn't bear to sit in front of the computer screen any more.

When last seen, I believe I was crowing about the fantastic finishing job I had done on my Surface. Alas, reality set in. It's beautifully finished, true. It just doesn't look very good. I've worn it all of once. I should have made it longer. And drapier. Now I have zero incentive to knit the wrap - why bother, if I'm not convinced about wearing the sweater?

Belinda, however, is a keeper.

Even if the red part came out bigger than the yellow part. (I followed the directions to a T, but bound off a few rows earlier than directed, since I had already used up more of the red yarn.) This one gets a lot of wear.

I have blogged before about our fascination with hedgehogs (image at the very bottom of the post; scroll down). It was therefore difficult to get my husband to let me give this little guy to his intended recipient, pink though he be. (The hedgehog, that is, not my husband.) He seemed to go over well. One of those gifts where you have to tell people you really made it... (though that was probably only necessary since no one in my family would ever imagine I would or could make a stuffed hedgehog).

And one more Christmas present. I so wish I had remembered to take a picture of this after I blocked it. It's the Man (or anyone) Cowl by Michael Wynne of thisboyknits. I took this pre-blocked picture because I was so jazzed that I managed to use up almost all the yarn. (After, that is, I had ripped out a couple of inches of cowl when I miscalculated the first time through.)

This was a great impromptu use of my handspun (Spunky Club, Myrtle, BFL). I thought I'd whip it up as a simple last-minute gift, and ended up loving it more than most of the other gifts I gave.

I subsequently received an action shot to prove that yes, my brother is wearing it. But it looked really great blocked.

And there was one more gift I totally forgot to photograph: another pair of felted clogs (by request). I didn't photograph them because I only barely got them finished and felted on New Year's Eve, just in time to fit them to the recipient's foot and then leave them to dry before we all left for the airport at 6 a.m. January 1. Obviously, I have a complex relationship with deadlines.

Now, I'm working on socks. And Chapter 10.

My Sock Summit

2009-08-14T11:52:00.002-04:00

Viewing all the sock yarns that were submitted on Ravelry's "Dye for Glory" page (alas, since taken down, but here are the winners) sent me into some kind of psychedelic haze markedly similar to that induced by the ingestion of hallucinogenic drugs. I left my greedy perusal of the 201 yarns on that site with a sense of exhaustion, itchy fingers, exhilaration, addiction, and a need to knit socks.

Now, of course, I have sock yarns. A lot of them. In fact, I issued to myself a temporary sock-yarn-buying moratorium (along with the theoretical moratorium on acquiring spinning fiber that I keep threatening to make a reality by suspending my fiber club memberships. Thank heaven I'm too much of a procrastinator to act on that one).

But there I was a week or so later, in the yarn shop in Kirkby-Lonsdale, which seemed to me to have come up in the world considerably since I was last there. This was because 1. they had Peruvian yarns in addition to their Brigantia (they're my sole source for the latter) and 2. the nice lady behind the counter, who was knitting a sock, was on Ravelry. Now, how can you resist a fellow sock-knitter on Ravelry?

Ergo: my sock summit.

Not that I've started actually knitting a sock with it, you understand. We're still at the petting stage while I forge away on Belinda and on the several pounds of raw Swaledale fleece my stepfather bought me as a surprise present. (Gotta love those surprise presents.)

Surface Tension (Backlog)

2009-08-14T00:06:00.000-04:00

[I post rarely enough that you'd think I wouldn't forget to post something I've already written, but here this is: written two weeks ago, saved, and abandoned. So I'm posting it now. Waste not, want not.]

Here's my current debate: whether or not to knit the wrap that is such an integral part of Surface.

The wrap was one of the things that drew me to the pattern in the first place. And I've already cast on for the darn thing. But here are my reservations:

- I'm not sure I will have enough yarn.

- I'm not sure whether, once completed, it is actually going to look all that great. I have pored over the pictures in the vain hope of figuring out what it is like actually to move in a sweater with an extra wrap buttoned around your shoulders. Does it scoot up when you move your arms? Can you wear a coat over it? Does it strain the buttons out of alignment (which it appears to do in one of the pictures), or ruck up the collar?

(I should note that at this juncture I am not 100% sure the sweater is going to look all that great either. It's lying on the floor drying as I write. It's certainly the best finishing job I've ever done, and I'm inordinately proud of it, if you didn't figure that out from my last rather conceited post on the topic, but I remain uncertain as to whether it cuts across my body at its least flattering point. Even my husband has come to share my anxious anticipation, or at least he is nice enough to say that he does.)

- I am concerned that this sweater, densely knit, is already going to be one of the warmest garments in my possession. Every time I try it on it seems almost suffocating (of course, it is the month of July, which doesn't help). I realize that in winter I may sing a different tune, but the idea of adding an extra layer of insulation seems tantamount to gilding the lily.

- The wrap represents a huge amount of knitting, and it seems a shame to go through all that for a garment that, if completed and found wanting, will not be very useful for anything else.

All this sounds like talking myself out of it. The issue is critical at the moment because I'm packing for a month away and I have to figure out what knitting to take. Queries to Ravelry on the shawl topic have been inconclusive.

Edited to add: I didn't bring the yarn with me. And I haven't regretted it. The callus on the back of my right ring finger caused by forcing the needle through all those p4togs may, however, be with me always.

Thy Hand, Belinda

2009-07-31T14:51:00.004-04:00

I planned to finish Surface before I left for a week in New Mexico. And I was close: only three rows to go on the final button band and sewing on the collar. But I wasn't going to schlep a heavy sweater on the plane. So instead, I brought along my first Kidsilk Haze and the pattern for Belinda from the second Mason-Dixon Knitting book. (This was, of course, the same ball of Kidsilk Haze that took a scenic tour of the hotels of China without ever emerging from its plastic bag.)

I started it on the plane to Dallas and knitted and knitted and knitted, and at the end of several hours of flying I had a total of about ten pattern repeats and thought it might be the most boring knitting I'd ever done and it was going to take me well into 2010 to finish the thing.

What I didn't realize, however, was that Belinda turns out to be the perfect social knitting. Its very mindlessness is an asset when you are sitting around the dining room table, or visiting your aunt, or engaged in some long and important discussion with your brother. It is, in short, the ideal pattern to bring along on a family visit: it keeps you grounded while requiring no mental focus at all. And it keeps growing.

The only issue I have with Belinda, in fact, is my association with the name. It immediately summons to mind Dido's final aria from Purcell's opera "Dido and Aeneas," an aria which she sings either right before or right after she has taken the step to kill herself (the opera is elliptical on this point, but I like to think she has just been bitten by the asp): she reaches for her lady-in-waiting/confidant and sings, "Thy hand, Belinda! Darkness shades me. On thy bosom let me rest. More I would, but death invades me. Death is now a welcome guest." Then begins the aria, beautiful, simple, stately, and running like an incessant soundtrack through my head every time I pick up this particular piece of knitting. As much as I love the aria, it's starting to drive me a little crazy.

Here, for reference, is Dame Janet Baker as Dido in an ancient black-and-white clip. I can only hope that sharing this particular tune will help me move on to some other internal musical accompaniment. Certainly it can't hurt: Dame Janet, at any rate, is pretty fantastic.

Applying that College Degree

2009-07-19T12:53:00.006-04:00

There's a tipping point in making a sweater when the pieces that have been slowly accumulating for so long suddenly come together and become a garment. For me this is a time of obsessive fascination. I've been used to the idea of the thing, the color of the yarn, the easy familiarity of carrying it around in various stages of completion, and suddenly, here it is as something I may or may not wear. How does it look? Will it actually fit? Will I actually dare to wear it to the office, or is this going to be another winter-Sunday-in-the-country garment, pilling happily in my closet, unseen by all but my husband?

The intoxication of this process is only intensified by my concentration on finishing skills. Finishing is not something I am naturally good at. I am a big-ideas, creative-insight type person who tends not to be so great at the detail work, though it's true that once I've finished a piece of writing I can spend a considerable amount of time going back and tweaking prepositions and commas. But things like measuring, sewing, carpentry, hanging pictures -- things that require precision -- have never been my forte. So to achieve some degree of ability at putting together a sweater that looks halfway decent is a source of quiet but not inconsiderable pride.

It reminds me of a college course I took in Homer's Odyssey which required, as its final project, a research paper analyzing the philology of 90 lines of the original Greek. As someone who has always learned languages solely for the purpose of reading literature in them, and tends to gloss over the specificities of arcane verb conjugations or moods, I was more than a little terrified by this paper, but I wanted to write my senior thesis on the Odyssey so I pretty much had to take the course. I spent hours in the classics library surrounded by incomprehensible tomes (the joke "it's all Greek to me" very quickly gets tired in that context), but the upshot was an A paper that remains one of my proudest achievements in my four years of college, because it was so utterly out of character.

So it is with me and finishing. On Friday I executed my tidiest button band yet, and I had the same feeling of incredulous pride that I had then. This may be only the second time that that classics degree has had such direct bearing on my current daily life. (The first was an assignment to write about the Greek Islands based on my putative expertise in all things Greek. I didn't complain.)

Yesterday, however, took some of the wind out of my sails. As I was on the fourth or fifth row of the wrap/capelet that goes with the sweater, my Knitpicks Harmony Option needles BROKE. I tried and failed to pick up the lost stitches (the wraps in the blister part refused to look right in the picked-up part) and had to start over again. That's 242 stitches, in blister stitch, a couple of days' work, and I'm ashamed to admit what a bad mood it put me in, especially after I had re-started and made a mistake in the second row that will require tinking back to fix. If I'm going to neglect my work for my knitting, at least let me have something to show for it.

Myrtle

2009-07-08T11:20:00.003-04:00

Meet Myrtle. This is my latest installment of the Spunky Eclectic fiber club. I'm usually several months behind. Wish she'd held still for the picture-taking (ha).

This is my jetlag yarn since I started spinning it the day I got back from China in a valiant effort to keep awake. It worked. The colors seemed appropriate for jetlag, too: a core of smokey gray BFL, with stained-glass greens and maroons and blues blossoming out of it, muted and rich and dreamy. This just how I felt: full of all the colors and memories of the trip, and moving through a fog.

Spun into 3-ply sock yarn (310-plus yards, 16-18 wpi), it all turned a kind of heathery gray. Though there'll be at least one red stripe. I'm thinking socks for a man. The question is: which man?

I am at a crossroads with my fiber club. Until now, I have justified it as a monthly expenditure that isn't exorbitant and makes me happy whether or not I can keep up. But I may have reached the proverbial tipping point. The other night I went into my box of fiber and felt like I was drowning: too many plans, too many ideas, too many small hanks of variegated yarn. I may have more fiber at this point than is fun to keep around. I'm torn because I so enjoy getting the monthly shipments, and then following on Ravelry what everyone else does with them. But I will never have enough time to catch up. Until the recession claims my job - and then I'll have to sell all the fiber so we can eat.

Furthermore, I don't spend all my free time spinning. I also knit. I have developed a knitting callus: a bump on the back of my right-hand ring finger. I hold the yarn in such a way that my two last fingers curl under and the ring finger presses against the needle, and the p4tog of Surface requires enough pressure to create an actual sore spot. The unsightliness worries me less than the idea that this might lead to some horrible form of arthritis when I'm 65.

My professional blog gets more hits in a bad week than this blog has gotten in its entire existence. This gives me a deceptive sense of freedom about posting here, which I have to keep reminding myself not to trust. But it also makes this blog a poor platform for the kinds of things I'd like to vent about in my private life. Like Wimbledon. Did it bother anybody else in the US that you couldn't see some of the important matches live, because NBC took over broadcasting at noon (Eastern Daylight Time) from ESPN and went back and re-broadcast the earlier matches from the morning before airing the final one of the day (by then, also on tape)? In the age of the Internet, does it really make sense to punt on live coverage? Or do I, in my tennis fan-dom, represent such a small part of the population that it's insignificant? Obviously, it says something that I only get around to posting about this days after the final match is over.

Chinese Yarns

2009-06-30T21:26:00.003-04:00

China was amazing.

Of course, the one thing I brought too much of was: yarn. Somehow when I thought of those 14-hour flights and all the internal flights I thought I'd spend my whole time knitting. I didn't stop to think that I might be sleeping. Or reading. Or working.

I did finish both sleeves of Surface. I even ended up liking the blister stitch. (You're right, rubbishknitter: like bubble wrap. Now I keep poking my fingers into it, happily.) But three whole skeins of yarn traveled back and forth to Asia untouched.

My great regret, besides not buying the Shantung silk, was not being able to check out the yarn booth at the fabric market in Shanghai. Actually, I regret not buying the Shantung silk a lot more. I'll have to go back for that.

Late Lace

2009-05-30T15:36:00.003-04:00

The pace of my blog posts here reflects the pace of my finishing in the last months. A colleague at work had a baby and I thought I'd whip up a quick little baby gift. After all, that Mason-Dixon baby kimono doesn't take any time at all, right? Alas, I have had even less time than "no time at all" in the last couple of months. By the time I finished it the baby had almost outgrown it. (Her father tactfully described it as "snug," but was touched by the gesture.) Worse still, I did a truly crappy finishing job. An heirloom it ain't, handspun or no. But here 'tis.

This is made from the leftovers of the BFL I spun up for my mom's birthday shawl last year... well, the spinning happened two years ago. How time flies.

And the post I linked above (but hey, I'll link to it again for good measure) also documents a cliffhanger: the time I ran out of handspun yarn when my Melon Shawl (from Victorian Lace Today) was nearly completed.

Fortunately I can report a happy ending.

A little blurry, but hey, it's done.

It's a sign of my current state of overextension that I finished this on vacation in March, but didn't block it til May. What kind of obsessed-knitter behavior is that?

Gratuitous vacation shot to distract me from my woeful lack of knitters' OCD:

This is Tulum, Mexico, before swine flu, but not before drug-related violence that kept the tourist crowds to manageable proportions. Please note that this is a last-minute vacation booked on Travelocity. On a Wednesday night, my husband found an amazing deal for flight plus four nights in a really nice hotel in Coba, and we flew on Friday morning. And it was one of our best vacations ever. Muy bien.

In other travel news, I'm leaving in a week for China (there's a temptation here to insert lots of exclamation points and smiley faces to indicate the monumentality of this news in blog terms, but I am resisting). And on this blog, as nowhere else, I can discuss the all-important question about this trip: what knitting do I take for a 14-hour flight? (Plus sundry other three-hour flights once we get to Asia.) I'm thinking I'll be able to finish my Surface: I just have the sleeves and the collar to go, and then the wrap. Even that monstrous wrap might be doable in 28 hours of flying, though the dreaded blister stich (which requires a string of p4tog every six rows) has put off better knitters than I, and I'm not sure my fingertips would survive several consecutive hours of it.

(A side note: I worry a bit about this sweater. It looks like it could either look really cool when it's done, or really weird and homemade and never, ever get worn.)

But I can't only take Surface - there has to be some variety. I'm wavering between the Belinda wrap, which seems like nice thoughtless travel knitting, and the Leyburn Socks. (I'm so used to Ravelry that it's frustrating to try to find non-Rav images on the web for blog purposes. All you Rav readers know where to find better information.) My urge is to compromise and take both, but I'm not sure how much yarn I'll have room for in my luggage. And the sad reality is that this is a work trip and I'll probably spend most of my time on the computer, and get much less knitting done than I hope.

New Day, New Wheel

2009-04-02T22:36:00.002-04:00

This yarn is called "New Day" (from Spunky Eclectic). I call it "Eye Candy."
I first looked at it and thought, "Orange." But when I spun it up it turned into streams of butterscotch and toffee, lines of spun sugar like French pastry chefs make into baskets on top of their desserts, caramel and toffee and the inside of a Butterfinger bar. I wrote on Ravelry, but I'll say again, that spinning it did for my eyes and fingers what eating all those delicious sweet things would have done for my tongue. Except that I didn't feel sick afterwards.

And I wasn't planning to spin it up at all. But then I got, wait for it, my new wheel.
My new Lendrum DT, my Christmas present, for which I'd been on the waiting list since December, arrived in mid-March (I think I was really lucky only to have to wait a couple of months). And when I pulled it from its box and assembled it (such an elegant well-planned and well-made thing; two screws, basically, and you're ready to go), I wanted to spin some appropriate fiber, and there was my new Spunky Club installment sitting right there, appropriately called "New Day" to mark a new beginning.

When I began plying I briefly considered changing the name of the yarn to "Spice Market." Maybe it was because the lighting was different, but I started thinking of tumeric and curry powder and cardamom and cloves and saffron as I blended all the colors together.

But "Eye Candy" won out when I noticed a strong family resemblance between it and a newly-opened box of Girl Scout cookies. (Samoas, of course.)

Meanwhile, I outed myself as a spinner at work. It says something about me, I'm not sure what, that I freely post in a public place about my spinning and yet I've been extremely shy about telling people who know me in person. But I made it pretty public now. I think for most people the idea seems so weird that it's not even worth commenting on; it's as if someone said, "In her spare time she enjoys taking walks on Mars."

finish line

2009-03-26T20:22:00.003-04:00

It was more than two years in the making (!!!), but I finally finished my Chanel Crossing sweater.

I am thrilled it's done.

But I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

I don't know if I can really call this a design, but I came up with my own pattern, with help from Barbara Walker and Ann Budd. Of course, when I was halfway through I found almost the same sweater in Jean Frost's Jackets, which took the wind out of my sails somewhat.

The issue is that the yarn was so fine the whole thing took ages and ages. And then there was the border. Oh, the border. That crochet border. I started it last January (that's January, 2008), and realized at some point that I was crocheting backwards. Which meant it took me six weeks or something like that to get halfway through and realize that I'd done it too tight and it was curling up in places in a way I wasn't going to be able to block out. So I did what anyone would do. I punished that sweater. I put it away for a whole year. When I took it out I was a little abashed at how easy it was to rip out the border and put it on right - mainly because I was crocheting the right way...

I am going to make one more modification and sew the backing ribbon down the buttonhole side to reinforce the buttonholes, which are stretching. Here's how I reinforced the buttons. Don't laugh at my sewing skills. Oh, OK, go ahead and laugh at them.

The thing about this sweater that was supposed to be so cool is [recapping ancient history here, but I doubt anyone reading this now still remembers it. Even I don't remember writing it] that it's a three-color tweed but it actually uses five different colors, so the sleeves gradually shade from one tone to another, and the body gradually shades from a different tone. However, the result is so subtle that, well, you don't even notice it. It looks a lot more conservative than I'd intended, and is thus not really my style. But I am determined to make it my style, because I put a lot of work into it, and after all, it is wearable; it's not like I created some embarrassing thing.

Mostly I'm thrilled it's done.

I've been writing a lot of blog posts in my head lately. I got a new spinning wheel, and if that's not something to blog about, what is? I also finished a shawl and am just waiting to block it. And I even have a couple of batches of finished yarn.

(This is "Perfect Storm," 8 oz of Wensleydale from Spunky Eclectic, spun as a three-ply for a total of 274 yards.)

However, I've been swamped at work, and furthermore I'm about to start a professional blog for work, which may deliver the coup de grace to my struggling little plant of a blog over here. I mean, there's only so much a girl can write in a single day, and I feel like I'm testing that limit more days than not.

I'm not giving up this blog, though. I may be one of the few people I know who keeps a blog as a private space rather than a public one, but I really like having a place to display my knitting and spinning work.

Size matters, redux

2009-02-06T13:22:00.010-05:00

I have been spinning for nearly 2 years now, but sometimes I suspect that I have no idea what I'm doing.

Example: I see on Ravelry a gorgeous specimen of a Morning Surf Scarf, out of the Spunky fiber club's August 08 installment, Thermograph. So I decide I want to spin fat singles and make one just like it.
So I spin these.

I've said it before: my idea of "fat" in spinning seems to be like an teenage girl's idea of "fat" in body weight.

Then, I cast on. Those singles seem awfully thin, so I cast on a lot of stitches. As a result, rather than a slender scarf, I get this.

Still, it's knitting up pretty nicely. But then I panic, because I've finished the first 2 oz of my 4-oz hank of fiber, and the scarf clearly isn't going to be long enough. So I quickly engineer a trade on Ravelry to get more of the fiber. At the same time, I spin the other 2 oz.

Clearly my concern about running out of fiber affected my spinning. Because while the first 2 oz yielded about 250 yards, the second 2 oz yielded about 500 yards. Even I can't call them "fat singles" any more.

And the scarf keeps groooowwwinggg.

Then, a little late in the game, I decide to test-block a swatch. Which grows from a little over 3 inches in length to 4.5 inches in length. Since I now have 5 feet of unblocked scarf, this gives rise to concern about the length of the finished product. I'm putting off the final blocking, in fact, because I'm scared.

Meanwhile, I have another 4 oz of Thermograph sitting there minding its own business. I decide to change gears and spin up a chunky yarn for this cowl. I decide to chain-ply it to preserve the colors. I need about 150 yards, and as I spin I keep thinking, "spin chunky! spin chunky!"

Well, I did.

Here's what I got: under 50 yards of super-bulky 3-ply yarn.

The thing is, I don't even care that I don't have enough for the cowl I wanted to make, because it may be my favorite yarn I've ever spun.

Elephants

2009-02-01T18:09:00.005-05:00

I had a vow in January not to start anything new until I finished up what was already on my plate.

Here's all I have to show for that.

The great thing about these scarves is that they photograph so well. In person, however, I fear that my elephants look a bit like anteaters. Since the recipient is 3 years old, I am hoping that her critical faculties are not yet finely honed enough to take exception to this zoological abomination. Or, I hope she likes anteaters.

Meanwhile, I chafe at my self-imposed restriction by spending my time, not finishing my four other WIP's, but planning out all the zillion projects I will start when they're done. (Does swatching count as "starting something new"? Does spinning? Of such questions are the Talmudic debates of the fiberholic engendered.)

Here, for instance, is something pretty that arrived in the mail.

(Organic merino, colorway "Twilight" from Spunky Eclectic.)

Tactile

2009-01-18T14:42:00.005-05:00

I started to say that I am a terrible blogger, but anybody who has followed my halting progress here over the last year already knows that.

But I am particularly terrible at the moment because I have for weeks neglected to say a proper Thank You for one of those wonderful fiber-karma gifts that descended on me from above.

It started when the redoubtable Maia launched a contest on her blog to commemorate her 200th post and help publicize the launch of her fiber studio, Tactile.

She asked readers to leave a post saying what they were thankful for.
I said I was thankful that after 20 years of full-time self-employment, I got my first-ever real job this year, in this economy.
And I am also thankful for my wonderful husband for putting up with the fact that the job is in another city.

Now I can also be thankful for the fact that I won a prize - a gift certificate to Tactile.

Because of my two-city commuting life, I don't have all the Tactile fiber I got with me to photograph at the moment. (It may be that some extra fiber fell into my basket when I went to use the gift certificate. Funny thing about that.) So I can't show you the merino/tussah (colorway Heliotrope), or the wool top, which are waiting for me at my other home.

But I have the baby camel, in the Slate colorway.

And the yak down sample in the colorway Kelp, in the topmost photo, which came as an extra that I didn't even order.
This stuff is addictive.

And getting this prize out of the blue like that, at a lonely moment late one night, was especially wonderful.

Thank you, Maia.
And thank you to my job and husband, who seem to me to be at least partly responsible.

Xtreme Xmas, home edition

2008-12-29T11:58:00.013-05:00

If I have had even less time than usual to post, it was because I had the harebrained scheme of knitting half my Christmas presents. And that was before the entire family, somewhat at the last minute, decided to come visit us for the holidays.

The Christmas presents went down well.

L is wearing a handspun hat made with Spunky Eclectic "Pie for Everyone" fiber, and an illusion scarf with shy magic butterflies that, in repose, look like this:

She and her sister also got some slippers.

Which fit.

Since Aunt Yan Tan Tethera inexplicably could not devote 20 hours a day to knitting, a couple of presents did not get finished. We are still working on an illusion scarf with elephants for L's sister.
And this, for her mother.

Meanwhile, when we weren't cooking for the hordes, we spent our time corrupting the young.

She figured out drafting pretty quickly, and she made, plied, and Kool-Aid dyed this yarn almost on her own (with a little help from Aunt YTT).

Turns out she already knew how to knit.

So we coached her mom.

Yes, it's all fiber, all the time in the Yan Tan Tethera household.
Even baby W got a Toasty Topper:

Happy Fiber Days to all.

In praise of asymmetry

2008-10-26T12:37:00.003-04:00

This summer I bought some plain-Jane grey fingering-weight yarn so I could make myself a pair of socks from Cat Bordhi's much-praised New Pathways for Sock Knitters.

The first one fit OK. But it was, like most socks I make, a little loose. So I took a daring step. I made the second one in the next size smaller.

It felt like heresy. After all, everything is supposed to match. But I reasoned that I would never know if the smaller size fit me better unless I tried, and I could always rip out the one that didn't fit.

Lo and behold, the smaller size fit much better. The discovery was liberating. It cast all of those slightly baggy handknit socks in a new light. Maybe my feet aren't as big as I think? Maybe I like a snugger sock than most patterns allow for?

But it was also liberating in that I had no desire to rip out the bigger sock. I had knit a lot of nice memories into that sock (starting with the yarn, which I bought at this wonderful store).

And this in turn freed me from the obligation to have everything match. I have long tried to reconcile my basically improvisatory nature with my anal-knitter side: the side we all need if we are going to get, say, the two fronts of a cardigan to match. I thought the anal knitter was somehow good for me. Well, this just in: my inner anal knitter has left the building.

Take the next thing I knit: these felted clogs. I made a mistake knitting the first one. As a result, the foot opening is bigger than it's supposed to be. Came time to knit the second one. Should I duplicate the mistake? Or should I rip back the first one and fix it?

My new persona, Deliciously Bad Knitter, did neither. I knit the second one "right" to see which one I liked better.
Deliciously Bad Knitter (DBK) not only relishes the sense of transgression this involves. She is learning more. More about sizes. More about preferences. More about experimentation. I kind of like the clog I knit "wrong," which is easier to slip on and off. Does it bother me that the two clogs are slightly different? Not a bit.

There's no stopping me now. DBK is actually an antidote to the very anal-knitter, or anal-spinner, side of me that spun several hundred yards of merino fiber into fingering-weight wool on a hand spindle this summer, improvising a Lazy Kate with two dowels stuck through a laundry basket, much to the wonderment of my parents, who were on vacation with us for a week.

After finishing up that lot (I didn't think to snap a picture of the laundry basket, probably because my hands were otherwise occupied, I had this.

At which point DBK took over. It wasn't really deliberate. It was karma.

Now, these socks are pretty much the same size. Followed the same pattern (Tibetan socks, "Coriolis" architecture, from Cat Bordhi's book; not that you can see much of the patterning detail with this yarn). But symmetry?

I call them "Night and Day," because the colors evoke another unequal pairing: two things that always go together, but that don't, technically, "match."

But they are my all-time favorite knitted socks. So far.

Rough Fell

2008-08-30T08:43:00.011-04:00

On the hoof.

In the shed.

In the bath.

Got fiber?

And back in its natural habitat.

This breed is not necessarily a handspinner's best friend. The rougher outer fibers (which I spun up) create something that feels like packing twine.

But there is something incredibly cool about turning fiber from the sheep you see around you every day into yarn you can actually knit with.
And it should make a perfect rug.

(Admission: the sheep in the first picture is not literally the same sheep from which I got my fiber. But it came from within a mile of this sheep.)

Color in Spinning

2008-07-22T21:28:00.008-04:00

Creative chaos is the name of the game around here.
This is what happens when you love to buy fiber but have very little time to spin.

Color in spinning is a fascinating topic. I've read a book or two, but learning by doing seems to be the best way to go.

For instance, I would not have predicted that this yarn, which seems pretty uniform in color

would turn into this strongly striped scarf.

Nor would I have thought that this roving (an anonymous merino-tencel or perhaps even merino-silk blend I got at Rhinebeck)

would blend with another fiber that looked all graphite-colored to become this scarf.

This is made of 3 different yarns - one two-ply graphite (Nuit Noire from Zen String), one with one ply of each fiber, and one two-ply with the Rhinebeck roving. Extra credit to anyone who can tell which part of the scarf is which.

Finishing

2008-01-27T12:23:00.000-05:00

New year.
New job.
New city.

I have lots of reasons for my silence. No time to post. No time to knit. I am lucky to get one row a night done on this pretty thing

(Swallowtail Shawl by Evelyn Clark)
which was due by my mother's birthday. Which was two weeks ago.
I only have 8 rows to go.

(This is, obviously, what I am making with my beloved handspun laceweight BFL. It's my biggest handspun project to date, and giving it away is a supreme act of generosity because I love it so much. Perhaps that's another reason it's taking me so long to finish.)

I wanted to end 2007 with a post about finishing. Better late than never.

I was very despondent about my finishing skills after my first Baby Surprise Jacket (see here).

But I made two great strides before 2007 was over.
For one thing, I made a second BSJ that I was much, much happier with than the first one.

The reason? This:

I can't remember where I read a blogger's description of reinforcing the button band by sewing ribbon tape on the reverse side of the button band and doubling the buttons. But I tried it. And it worked like a charm (and even went through the washer and dryer like a charm). As a result the sweater seemed to me much crisper, neater, and, well, more finished.

The other stride involves the poor languishing still-unfinished Chanel Crossing (most recently blogged about here). It's all sewn up, ends are woven in, and the border is kicking my ass. I'd love to be able to wear this to my new office before it gets too warm, but I'm not counting on it.

But the revelation here involved CROCHETED SEAMS.
Now, my first knitting book, and therefore my touchstone, was Maggie Righetti's Knitting in Plain English. I still think this book is delightful. But some of its outspoken views are, well, not my own. Primary among these is her repudiation of the crocheted seam. If I remember correctly (I can't refer to the book since I have loaned it to a new knitter), she equates crocheting the seam on a knit sweater to pouring canned chocolate sauce all over a delicately flavored soufflé. Or something along those lines. So I read that and vowed I would never crochet a seam.

Well, Maggie, you are wrong, wrong, wrong. Because if I had tried to stitch-seam the sleeves on a three-color tweed jacket, I would have basically gone mad. You can't even mattress-stitch these pieces properly, because of the way the colors vary at the end of every row.

Instead, I got this.

This is a shoulder. It may not look all that great to you, but believe me, no other sleeve I've set in, or rather attempted to set in, would withstand such close scrutiny.

And on the inside, the seam is a nice straight line.

(Sorry for the crap photo. I guess you'll have to take my word for it.)

There are different ways to set in a sleeve, many of them involving the equivalent of grafting, and I will continue to hone my skills in them. But I can guarantee that this jacket would never have looked so crisp had I not crocheted those seams.

For photographic proof that the whole thing DOES look good, though, you may have to wait another couple of months.

Spin Cycle

2007-12-04T10:41:00.000-05:00

One amusing thing about being a beginning spinner is that you have no idea what you are doing.

I have been sitting since Rhinebeck over my 4 ounces of Blue-Faced Leicester roving, spinning away and wondering why I wasn't getting through it faster.
After I filled two bobbins I began plying it. It still seemed pretty irregular, and I thought, Well, I'll have some coarse handspun to make into a shawl for my mother.

Then, when I started spinning on my spindle and it did seem to go faster - I spun up the whole 4 oz of the Spunky Fiber Club's November installment in a few days - I just assumed I was getting better.
It wasn't until I had finished all of the Spunky Club roving (Falklands wool, 212 yards total)

and was back at my wheel finishing the BFL that it dawned on me that I had actually spun laceweight.

You'd think I might have noticed before then, but no, I thought it was going to turn out pretty chunky.
262 yards, 21 wpi, and I still have quite a bit of the 4 oz hank (from Cloverleaf Farm, colorway "Jewels") to go. I hope I can hit 400 yards.

Actually, I just hope I can keep spinning this fine, now that I've gotten all self-conscious about it.

Corn Dogs

2007-11-30T18:58:00.000-05:00

You know you have entered a new stage of fiber addiction when you start using implements that make your spinning wheel feel high-tech.

I was forced to leave my wheel for a few days with two bobbins of gorgeous BFL singles on it, only half-plied. This was such a wrench that thinking about plying kept me awake a couple of nights.

Meanwhile, this month's package from the Spunky Eclectic fiber club arrived.

Falklands wool, in the color "Pie for Everyone."

And I still haven't touched last month's installment. Because I am still spinning the BFL I started after Rhinebeck. The BFL I thought I would be done with in a week. (Yes, there has been limited fiber time this month.)

In my frustration, I turned to a $15 implement I had bought on a whim for just such an eventuality, but never learned to use.

I learned to use it.
I divided the fiber into four equal sections, and divided two of those sections lengthwise, and spun them on the spindle to create reasonably equal amounts of fiber.
What I got were two corn dogs.

Two unequal corn dogs. (Here's what was left over from the larger one after plying.)

I guess my skills at dividing roving equally are even more low-tech than my technique for spinning them.
Note the nod to Chinese take-out in the creative use of chopsticks.

I then turned to my trusty Lazy Kate. Size 10, if you were wondering.

Once I had plied the yarn, I went for the niddy noddy.

And presto - a very small, and rather overtwisted, skein of yarn. (About 93 yards.)

The yarn is having a bath now which should calm that twist down nicely. You could hear it fizz with relief as it entered the water.
2 oz. down, 2 to go.

I get back to the wheel on Sunday. It's going to feel like a Cadillac after this.

Chance of rain

2007-11-19T14:10:00.000-05:00

Or so they said in yesterday's weather forecast.

What a perfect day for sitting and knitting and spinning. Unfortunately I have to work.

I got nothing for the blog this week. I'm still slogging away on the divine Chanel Crossing. Here are some sneak preview pictures (blurry, as befits sneak preview pictures. This is the blog equivalent of those first-run movies you can buy on DVD from some guy on the street who taped it in the theater on his pocket video camera. You want them in focus, you have to wait for the official premiere).

My husband looked at me last night as I inched my way up the second sleeve and said, "Is that the sweater you wanted to finish for Rhinebeck?"

I think I detected a faint note of derision in his voice, but perhaps it was merely incredulity. I hope it was incredulity that I would wear something so glamourous to Rhinebeck, rather than a hint of doubt that I would finish this by Christmas.

Handspun Harlot Hat

2007-11-12T19:11:00.000-05:00

Three years ago I never would have dreamed that you could make this

into this

by way of this

thanks to this.

When I saw Stephanie's post about a spontaneous hat I knew that was what my handspun wanted to be.
It was my first actual cable project too, so I can cross that one off my list.

And I think I even have enough yarn left for a scarf.

Gloves & Monsters

2007-11-08T10:41:00.000-05:00

Here's a belated Halloween post showcasing my mismatched handspun handwarmers.

Same number of stitches, different levels of spinning skill.
Result: one handwarmer fits a human hand. One looks like it was made for the Incredible Hulk.

The arty flower shot is a tribute both to our fall crocuses (a highly recommended flower, sending up bright splotches of white and purple in the carpet of fallen leaves) and to this Halloween-season classic.

Rhinebeck

2007-11-01T16:25:00.000-04:00

I did not finish my sweater in time. (In fact, I haven't even finished the first sleeve. I have, however, knit the sleeve cap twice, and am working on attempt number 3.)

I did not take any pictures.

I did not eat fried artichokes. (My friend and I found it notable that the line for artichokes was as long as the line at the fleece shed.)

I did not buy any yarn.
I did not even buy wool carders, though now I wish I had.

I did not buy the gorgeous shining electric green bamboo roving that I had in my hand at the start of the day, when I had forbidden myself to buy anything til I had cased the joint. When I went back to get it, every scrap of their bamboo was gone. (Still kicking myself over that one.)

But I did buy other things.

Clockwise from top: 4 oz of Blue-Faced Leicester roving; approx. 4 ounces of a tussah silk/merino blend as creamy and rich as ice cream; 5 ounces of a wool blend whose provenance I forget; and one lovely, shining, Romney fleece.

A fiber orgy.

Getting my first fleece was a rite of passage. After waiting in line for an hour, hundreds of ravenous fiber hounds fell on this room full of fleeces like Bridezillas at a wedding-gown sale. I roamed rather haplessly up and down the aisles, pushing past overstuffed bags of fleece and the warm bodies of people thrusting their hands into them (one woman was testing locks by spinning them up on a drop spindle), feeling like a fraud and not sure what I was supposed to be looking for. (I wanted Blue-Faced Leicester, but I think most of that was in the separate BFL area.) At one point I saw that Amy King (aka Spunky Eclectic/Boogie Knits) was right next to me, going toward a fleece with such an air of fierce determination that I didn't have the nerve to say anything to her. She definitely seemed to know what she wanted (evidently she got six fleeces).
But after all that I did find a fleece that spoke to me, a Romney with a wonderful shiny luster and great crimp. And after some inner debate, and the requisite testing of a lock for crimp and strength, I headed toward the check-out with that and a cottony Corriedale. I made myself put the Corriedale back - one whole fleece is plenty for a beginner to deal with. Let alone a beginner who right now has more work than she can handle.
I adore the Romney.

And I got right to work spinning the BFL.

(This is an old picture - my first bobbin is now full.)

Originality

2007-10-13T11:50:00.000-04:00

What little fiber time we've had around Yan Tan Tethera this week has been all knitting, all the time, as I try to get my sweater done for Rhinebeck.
I have to start accepting that it ain't gonna happen.

The body is blocking now, but I only have a few inches done on the first sleeve. And such a tough work week ahead that my husband just laughed incredulously when I outlined everything I had to do.

Being me and stubborn, I am unwilling to face facts on this one (add it to the long list of unpleasant realities about which I am in denial), so I will probably knit furiously at every opportunity, and end up wearing my Faroe to Rhinebeck, draped around my shoulders since it is not likely to be cold enough to actually don such a garment.

As I struggle with the end of this sweater, I keep thinking about what makes a design "original" or not (something that's discussed quite a bit on Ravelry).

I've been playing with the idea of a Chanel-ly tweedy jacket-y sweater for a long time. I also had some yarn in various colors that I originally meant to use for a brocade sweater, then perhaps one in stripes. One week this idea and this yarn came together in a three-color tweed stitch pattern I found one evening when playing with Barbara Walker. So I figured out the kind of jacket I wanted, consulted Ann Budd, changed everything Ann Budd said, and started knitting.

I had gotten partway through the body when someone gave me Jean Frost's book of jackets and I found a jacket in the same stitch pattern in there. This month, I even saw it in the Knitpicks catalogue.

Now, mine will fit differently; I'm going for a more tailored look. (Let's be honest: my design skills are pretty embryonic at this point, and I'll just be thrilled if it fits.) But it will look similar.

For me the distinctive thing about my jacket is how it uses color. Each panel blends four colors together in the three-color tweed: two of the colors are the same throughout, but I use three different colors for the third color, so that the overall color shifts from bottom to top, wrist to shoulder.
(After all, Kaffe Fassett's originality is in his use of color, not so much in the shapes or styling of his garments.)

And goodness knows, I'm wrestling with measurements, sleeve tapering, I-cord cast-ons and finishing details that I'm figuring out myself, with plenty of reference to other sources. I certainly didn't use anyone else's pattern to make it.

So will my sweater be original?
At any rate, it probably won't be finished.

Here, for comic relief, is something I did finish: some wristwarmers with my first handspun. Since the yarn got less chunky and more even as I went along, one of these is sized for me, and the other one is sized for the Incredible Hulk. (Same number of stitches in both.)

As for Rhinebeck: I've got my button and bag. And anyone looking for me will know me by my Monkey socks.

Spun Out

2007-10-01T12:41:00.000-04:00

After a rough week I couldn't muster the energy to make it to the Spin-Out, which I'm sure was amazing. Instead, I had my own private spin-out in front of the Mets games on TV, which were by turns exciting (on Saturday) and devastating (on Sunday). I am heartbroken.

On the bright side, literally, there is fiber. I have to say one more thank you to Kit Kat Knit for sending me my first roving as a prize. There was something liberating in having this wonderful fiber given to be out of the blue (or whatever color the Internet is). First, it's awfully pretty.

Then, because I won it, I had a sense of freedom about experimenting with it. I also have some roving I bought from Knitterly Things, but I was worried about messing it up. But because this was a gift, I got to luxuriate in it. As a result, and because it has so many vibrant colors, I figured out more about spinning with colors, striping, plying, etc., than I would have in weeks of careful spinning with undyed roving, and I had much more fun than I would have had in anxious spinning with non-gifted roving. So it has turned into an exceptionally appreciated gift.

My anticipation about the finished product was so intense that it was but a short step from this to this:

For all my excitement, I was a little disappointed at how chunky and homemade it looked, in comparison to other people's amazing homespun yarns.

Then, the fantastic guest blogs by Laurie over at The Yarn Harlot (these things can keep a beginning spinner awake at night, kind of like Christmas Eve for a small child, but more involved) led me to one of Stephanie's own tutorials, this one on predrafting.

Oh. So THAT'S what "predrafting" means.

So I went back to my wheel.

Before and after:

Left: the first skein of handspun from KitKatKnit's roving: about 112 yards, 6 or 7 WPI.
Right: the rest of the handspun I spun after I read Stephanie's tutorial, with about one-third as much fiber: about 140 yards, 10 WPI.

Strike another blow for the power of the Internet.

Handspun / Tag

2007-09-29T11:35:00.000-04:00

I just got tagged by KitKatKnit. And here I was preparing a post about how she lured me further down the fiber path.

(To refresh your memory: KitKatKnit had a contest, which I won. And she generously sent me this as a prize.

Then came this.

And now the roving looks like this, and like this:

So how can I pass up being tagged? The meme is Seven Odd Things About You, or something along those lines. Here goes:

1. When I am a passenger in a car, I somehow always end up riding with my shoes off and my feet up on the dashboard. I always try to remember not to do it, since if an accident released an air bag my knees would go through my teeth.

2. There are three things I have always wanted to learn to do and never have (though I have made peremptory stabs at all three): play the piano, ski, and speak Russian.

3. My favorite Chinese Szechuan dish is pickled ox tongue and tripe, which we originally ordered because my husband loves to be adventurous about weird food, and which I thought sounded kind of disgusting.

4. When I was about 13 I fell madly in love with Ernest Hemingway and set out to read everything he ever wrote. I have never quite gotten over him, either.

5. I am double-jointed and trained myself as a child to be able to bend only the top knuckle of each finger while holding the rest of the finger straight, a skill that has no known application apart from showing other people that you can do this weird thing, which usually kind of freaks them out.

6. I am one of those superstitious flyers who has to read the safety instruction card every time I board a plane, to ward off mishap.

7. It was not until this week that I told my husband I had a blog, although he knows absolutely everything else about me.

I'm not sure about passing on the meme - it feels a little like a chain letter, and I wonder if most bloggers haven't already participated in these memes by now. But I guess it's all in the blogging spirit, and since I was pleased to be tagged, I will pass it on and tag the following people.

Born Knitty
HPNY Knits
Half-Soled Boots
Der verlorene Faden
Dolores at The Panopticon (I figure Franklin has already been tagged for hundreds of these, but Dolores might be willing, nay, even eager, to share some personal tidbits with her readers).
Knitterly Things

And YOU, if you're reading this, and want to. Post the rules, write your list on your blog, tag seven other people, and within two weeks you will get 10,000 postcards from all over the world... or something like that.

Astrid Furnival, knitting artist

2007-09-24T08:30:00.000-04:00

Since I began this blog, I've been intending to post about an artist who's inspired me (and who, without knowing it, gave this blog its name).

I can't believe that with all the current interest in knitting, nobody seems to have discovered the work of Astrid Furnival.

Astrid is a knitting artist. She hand-dyes yarn with natural dyes from plants she collects herself, and knits them into unique sweaters and hangings.
The above image is a portrait of Samuel Palmer, the British visionary artist (click on his name to see the original portrait she was working from). Below, you can see it in context - as a sweater.

Get a load of the wrong side of the piece. Astrid cares not a bit for weaving in ends. (Note that this sweater is at least 15-20 years old, and has been actively worn for years with no ill-effects.)

I wish I had more shots of Astrid's amazing sweaters and hangings. She did one that was a whole set of indigo variations on the Navajo word for "blue." She did this wall hanging, based on the Chanson de Roland, which now hangs in a museum in New Mexico. (Sorry for the lousy photo - you can see it a little better if you click on it. Note the dimensions: 56 inches high, 108 inches across.)

But the work I know best and the one that inspired the name of this blog is a set of sheep-counting rhymes from five different regions of Great Britain. Each of the five panels is dyed with plants from the region in question.

(I'm not going to win any awards with these bad pictures - but at least they give some idea. Again, you can see them better if you click on them. Note the all-important Yan Tan Tethera, center (Borrowdale) panel.)

It seems to me that, with all of us knitting fanatics out there, Astrid (who now lives in France) should be poised for wide recognition (or at least a spread in Interweave Knits). An enterprising publisher could do an amazing book of photographs of her pieces that knitters would snap up.

I hear that she is not working much these days because of problems with her hands. All the more reason to celebrate her underappreciated oeuvre.

How Lucky Can You Get?

2007-09-23T08:57:00.000-04:00

This luscious yarn arrived in the mail yesterday. Handpainted from Painted Skeins in the most perfectly beautiful autumnal colors.

It came to me courtesy of KnitMap, a great new site that's basically an interactive map of LYS's all over the world. You can use it to post reviews and, if you're planning a trip, find a yarn store anywhere you happen to be going. It's a fantastic resource and very well designed.

And as if that weren't enough, Stacy, whose brainchild this was, holds weekly raffles for users - and, out of the blue, I was one of last week's three winners.

Now, I would be recommending KnitMap eagerly in any case. But in this rosy "Afterglow" (that's the name of the colorway), which bathes the site in a downright romantic haze, I feel impelled to send everyone I know there, and to spend hours there myself, in sheer gratitude.

Hours, that is, when I'm not knitting socks.

My First Handspun

2007-09-17T10:48:00.001-04:00

It's the baby steps one is always most proud of. After one gets good at walking, one just takes it for granted.

Here is my first very own yarn.

I'm not sure it's even enough for a hat. My spinning guru recommended doing a 5x5 swatch, but I am sure there's not enough for a swatch and anything else.

Spinning lessons are incredibly cool. When I started knitting a couple of years ago, I was stubborn beyond reason about wanting to figure everything out myself. Each lesson - gleaned from books, the internet, trial and error - was hard-won, and a source of pride. For some reason, with spinning I feel just the opposite - I am really enjoying having someone show me how it's done. Of course, this is partly because I found a teacher whose emphasis is on the creativity of the process, on continually playing with the yarn, trying different variants, remembering not to be limited by the conservative or conventional.

By saying all that, I just might be able to convince people that the big chunks of undigested fiber that are visible in this yarn were left in as the result of a deliberate choice. Yup. I'm creative that way.

As far as knitting goes: since I have decided to try to finish my "Crossing the Chanel" cardigan/jacket for Rhinebeck, there may not be a lot of very photogenic knitting going on around here for a while. I truly love this sweater - I keep caressing the fabric as I go. But it is a slog. And I'm not sure the result, however well it may turn out, is going to be commensurate with the effort. Anything that progresses this slowly should end up as some magnificent Alice Starmore creation (by Margene) that reveals some of the work that went into it.

But I do have my second, improved Baby Surprise Jacket to show, though still unseamed and un-buttoned:

This one is a definite improvement on the first one (ugh, that neckline makes me cringe). I went down to size 4 needles, so it is more likely the baby may actually be able to wear it within the next 12 months, and since I had been through the pattern once I had figured out the slight trickiness about how to pick up the lower ten stitches on the RS rather than the WS of the jacket.

But by now I am heartily sick of these jackets. And I still like other people's better. (Oh, wait, that's Margene again. Hm, maybe it's just that I like Margene's knitting?)

The reveal

2007-09-06T17:36:00.000-04:00

My downstream sock pal has received her socks.

Imagine the challenge, the intimidation, of knitting socks for the woman who makes this. And this (which I can't wait to emulate). I was practically paralyzed with anxiety. I am delighted that she likes them.

I am planning to work a new pair of these socks using her own yarn (since, after all, these were created for her, and Vesper socks should really be made with Vesper Sock Yarn) but rejiggering the pattern on the leg. The pattern I used is Charlene Schurch's, and though I like it, I want to design one of my own. Once I've done that I will post it here.

Other knitting news is slow, in part because of a cross-country trip over Labor Day (though the stranded-in-the-airport part of the trip was actually quite conducive to slog knitting) and in part because of an existential crisis regarding the Minimalist Cardigan.

To wit: is this the right yarn?
For while I am learning to reconcile myself to the handmade aspects of my knitted creations, I am also learning that yarns have certain distinct properties. I have read about this kind of thing, but have acted as if I were somehow above it. I do swatch to get gauge, so I suppose that galloping ahead knitting a pattern with a yarn that is not recommended for it is a kind of compensation for that (for me) atypical demonstration of knitterly irresponsibility

But after my experience with my Banff, I have vowed to be vigilant. (Remind me to tell you about that some time.) The lesson I learned with that is: if you suspect that the sweater is not going to look as great with the yarn you're using as it does in the pattern, STOP KNITTING.
(I haven't even photographed the damn thing. Too depressing. It's perfectly OK, but Banff is designed to be knit in a heathery tweedy yarn, and in a smooth plain-colored yarn it just looks, well, nondescript. Add to this the fact, which I also suspected from the get-go and wilfully ignored, that a sweater that looks cute and darling on a small frame is not necessarily quite as cute and darling on a woman six feet tall. Large and baggy, more like it.)

Now, what drew me to the Minimalist Cardigan was its groomed, tailored quality. But I have a feeling that with the yarn I'm using, I am already getting something, well, less sophisticated. I divide my clothes into country clothes and city clothes, and I want this to be a city sweater, and yet as I knit I seem to hear a rural twang emanating from the stitches. (Is that a hayseed I see before me?) So I made myself stop and consider, carefully, because it hurts a lot less to frog a couple of inches than a whole sweater (stay tuned for Banff, Part Two).

And if I could ever learn to use this camera indoors, maybe you could see what I am talking about. Point and click, my foot.

A final, if tangential, warning to beginning knitters. When you make two identical lace doilies, and you want to make them the same size but you don't have enough blocking pins to block them side by side, BLOCK THEM TOGETHER. That is, lay one atop the other and insert a pin through each crochet loop along the border. Do not, I repeat, do not, block them one after the other.

I rest my case.

Fiber Goddess (On Being Finicky)

2007-08-28T23:22:00.000-04:00

My spinning wheel lives at our house in the country, which is fine, except that I thought, Where am I going to find anyone to teach me how to spin in the country?

This question was idly bruited over dinner with friends, who answered: oh, about two miles down the road.

Down the road, at a house tucked behind a thin veil of trees, there is a house where there used to be a fiber shop filled with needles, yarn, books. There used to be a flock of sheep. There used to be eight looms. Now there are only three looms, and the fiber shop has closed; and the woman who used to run the looms, breed the sheep, sell the fiber said, when I called her, Sure, she would be happy to give me lessons.

I find knitting a good discipline because it requires a certain amount of picky detail, which is not something that comes naturally to me, and which, as a result, I have instinctively sought out at different times in my life to counterbalance my tendencies to soar with grand ideas into the clouds. But there are aspects of the discipline of knitting that make me itch: writing down a pattern, for example. I like the idea of making things, less the idea of regulating what is made.

I think of fiber gurus, however, as having a natural ability to focus on details and write down patterns. So it was an unexpected gift to find that the fiber guru who just happens to live down the street embraced the creative part, rather than the finicky part. She dreamed bigger than I did. She pulled out bags of silk fiber, skeins of merino, thick handspun like colored dredlocks. She talked about dyeing without keeping track of the dye lots, combining different fibers to see what happened, buying a whole fleece that we could prepare together.

At one point as I was spinning I said, embarrassed at my beginner's yarn, Oh, it's not very even.

And she said, I've never spun an even yarn. You want an even yarn, get storebought. The whole point is that it's not even. I mean, why am I going to all this trouble?

Which is a nice comment on the quality of being handmade - the unevenness and un-finickiness of which is part of what I enjoy about knitting in the first place.

(This might even reconcile me to the wobbliness of my Baby Surprise Jacket. And after all, the buttons are pretty cute.)

On finishing

2007-08-23T12:41:00.000-04:00

My knitting eyes are bigger than my stomach.

I dream of great creations; wonderful intricate sweaters with involved color work; giving friends elaborate gifts I made,even designed myself.

I finish knitting a sweater: the stitches look even, the rows are flat and neat, and I am happy.
Then I sit down to sew the pieces together and am forced to remember that I have not been doing this very long.

I have taught myself patience in the last couple of years. I have learned how to mattress stitch, and how to join stitches to rows along a seam, stitch by stitch, matching the colors to the stripes. I have learned to crochet a border. I place buttons carefully, making sure they are evenly spaced and aligned with the buttonholes.

And yet, when I am done and survey the finished product, I only see its imperfections. The buttons always gap a little, the seams are sometimes harder and stiffer than I would like, the edges are not crisp. It looks, well, homemade.

Now, I realize that the homemade look is part of the charm of a hand knit. And I love my friend who wears the sweater I designed and made for her all the time, embracing its imperfections. But still, I feel I've brought my knitting to a level that I should be getting crisper, happier results.

The only sweater I've ever been thoroughly satisfied with is my Faroe.

Catching some rays

2007-08-14T12:38:00.000-04:00

To mitigate the recent sock focus of this blog, I thought it was high time to allow in a ray of summer sunshine in the form of the Baby Surprise Jacket, here catching some rays at the local lake.

This little sweater has been ripped out so many times it has earned some sun privileges. One problem is that it's so deceptively easy that I think it's the Log Cabin Blankie and therefore forget to count. I had to rip out many rows after spending an hour blithely chatting on the phone to a friend while knitting, figuring I had just AGES to go until it was time to make the increases around the waist. Not. Ages.

I added quite a bit to it last night after this picture was taken, but most of that will have to go too. To anyone who hasn't made it yet and wants to, I definitely recommend reading this before you start. I looked at the page briefly, but not carefully enough to see that it anticipated the problem of picking up stitches on the wrong side of the jacket, which I solved rather maladroitly with a row of plain knitting that looks and feels odd in a fabric of garter stitches.

Fortunately I have another new baby to knit for, and more yarn left over from the Log Cabin, so I am going to plunge right into a second one to enjoy the thrill of getting it right the first time. I hope.

Happy Feet

2007-08-08T10:24:00.000-04:00

From the moment I signed up for Sockapalooza, I assumed that I would be one of the ones whose sock pal went AWOL. It seemed to me that through the law of averages one would have to do several swaps in order to get a pal who came through.

So I was thrilled when I first heard from my sock pal. And even so, I was so focused on knitting for my own pal that on some level I didn't quite believe that at the end of this process there would be a pair of socks for me.

Imagine my surprise.

My Sock Pal is Traci, who doesn't have a blog, and who did a fantastic job with these socks. They're beautifully knit, with my favorite short-row heels, and altogether so tight and compact it puts me to shame. I love the bright confetti-colored yarn and the not-quite-basketweave inlay pattern she chose. And they fit absolutely perfectly. Thank you so much, Traci. I will cherish these always.

Monkeying around

2007-08-07T15:53:00.000-04:00

Hey, hey, we're the Monkeys...

The only square thing about these socks is their toe. (It didn't help that I almost ran out of yarn and had to decrease a little more abruptly than planned on the last 3 rows.)

It turned out that what imprinted on these socks was not opera but Anthony Trollope, since Can You Forgive Her is my husband's and my current read-aloud book (even though I've read it already - there is no such thing as too much Trollope). Victorian novels seem to make the best summertime read-aloud books, probably because they were written to be read aloud in the first place. The only problem with knitting and reading aloud is I only get to do it every other night because we take turns reading.

On another note: lest anyone think I was exaggerating about the size of my Sidewinders, I submit this:

These two socks are knit for the same foot.
Exhibit B:

Now, I am well aware that the engineering of the Sidewinder requires a whole different kind of measurement (since a knit stitch stretches differently on the horizontal than on the vertical). And I appreciate that the Sidewinder extends considerably farther up the leg than do most socks (which is an advantage when you are more than six feet tall, like me). But still: that is one big sock.

What I did this summer...

2007-08-04T11:38:00.001-04:00

...so far.

A rainy summer can be oh so productive.
The Kitchen Sink Bag

Hanging out by the kitchen.

The Sockapaloozas. I confess it was a bit of a wrench to send them off – I did it very quickly on my way to an appointment, and didn't even document what I put in the box with them. I really hope my sock pal likes them. She is traveling til mid-month, so they will be waiting for her when she gets back.

The ubiquitous Monkey Socks (in what I have dubbed the Margarita colorway) - now nearly done.

Thanks to an international plane flight, and then an opera CD I had to listen to, these have been zooming along. (I listen to a lot of music. The initial reason I took up knitting, little realizing it would become a mania of its own, was that I wanted something to do with my hands while I listen to music. One side effect, sometimes positive and sometimes not, is that I always feel I am imprinting something of the music into whatever I’m knitting at the time. My very first sweater is associated for me forever with the amazing Steve Reich, whose subtle repetitive patterns enhanced the apparent monotony of an all-over K5, P5 rib. But the opera I had to listen to yesterday wasn’t very good, so I hope my Monkeys are not tainted by it.)

My first, huge Sidewinder.

It does fit, but it's loose on the foot, and oh my is it enormous.

My So-Called Scarf, in progress.

The yarn is gorgeous, and I’m so pleased with the way this scarf shows it off. But my decision to knit it double-stranded, combined with the fact that I only had size 9 needles on my voyages, have resulted in a dense, tweed-like object that resembles, at the moment, a lengthy and rather unyielding oven mitt. I’m debating whether to live with it like this and see what soaking it in Eucal can do for it, or to try it again on, say, a size 13. (I suppose I could always USE it as an oven mitt.)

Now, looking back on my earlier list of goals for the summer, I am amused at my fickleness. I met pretty much all the sock goals. The other goals? What other goals?
And I now have a whole new list for August - things I would like to do in an ideal world where the unpleasant task of earning a living did not intrude into the daily creativity, and I had enough time to write AND to knit. Let's see how far I get.

EZ’s Baby Surprise Jacket. I have leftover yarn a-plenty, and two new babies to knit for. I am hoping to knock at least one off at next week’s Stitch and Pitch.

Another Ida doily. My aunt and her husband have birthdays two weeks apart this month, and these will fit their house perfectly. They live in a late 18th-century edifice which they have been laboriously and lovingly restoring for about 10 years now, so the combination of old-fashioned and homemade that these doilies represent should work well for them. (Though I have to shake a lingering feeling that giving my aunt something I made myself smacks of the fifth grade. Maybe I should add some popsicle sticks or something to get the proper effect.)

My tweed jacket (tentatively dubbed "Crossing the Chanel" for its various inspirations)

is just waiting for a burst of energy. I love the way it looks – this is one where I caress the fabric a lot as it emerges – but it’s a slow knit.

And then: Emerald Seas? This competition? (I don’t read this woman’s books, and they don't appear to be my kind of thing, but I’m a sucker for a competition.) Something with the linen in my stash? Or my long-coveted bamboo top (SWTC Bamboo is on sale here)? Or shall I just plunge into my first cable sweater from this book?

Here's what else we did this summer:

saved the lives of three adorable baby hedgehogs.

Socks on the Rocks

2007-07-22T14:13:00.000-04:00

The completed socks enjoy the view on vacation.

The completed socks take time to smell the flowers.

Hey, says Sock #1, this picture makes me look fat.

Yeah, says Sock #2; how come she didn't bring along the sock blockers?

Yeah, says Sock #1, just because SHE is running around in the same pair of jeans with no makeup on for days on end doesn't mean she should let US go.

Yeah, says Sock #2, we have appearances to keep up. Besides, how can the people appreciate that we are symmetrical and our patterns start on our respective insteps if she doesn't take a proper picture?

Yeah, says Sock #1, or see that YOU have a little hole where the stitches come together in the short-row heel.

NO WAY, says Sock #2, that's YOU. Besides, what about that slightly raised half-row on the reverse side of your sole where she forgot to knit to the end of one of your stripes and ended up with an extra half-row of twice-slipped stitches?

LA LA LA LA, says Sock #1, I CAN'T HEAR YOU. AND BESIDES YOU CAN'T EVEN SEE THAT FROM THE OUTSIDE, SO THERE.

Hey, Socks, I say, look at the great quote I just found about what the local knitters around here used to do to THEIR socks!

“Stockings were knitted by the farmers and their families for their own use. Those made from local wool were worn every day, but 'holiday stockings' were made of worsted. The heels of the stockings were apt to be worn thin by the rough clogs so the heels were smeared with melted tar then dipped in turf ashes which when mixed in with the wool became hard yet flexible enough to resist friction.”
Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby, The Old Hand-Knitters of the Dales. Yorkshire: The Dalesman Publishing Company, Ltd., 1969 (first printed 1951)

Melted tar and ashes to make you nice and strong! I say. What do you think about that, Socks?

NO NO NO NO, say the socks both together, and head off with a new unity of purpose to enjoy the rest of their vacation.

Starting by climbing a tree.

Must-Have Knitting Tools for Summer

2007-07-22T14:08:00.000-04:00

For the home cook/knitter who has everything... except her ball winder when she is on vacation.

Faced with wonderful new yarn which must be swatched immediately, without a ball winder, without even a Nostepinne, the intrepid knitter turns to....

... the Basterpinne.

The advantage: if you encounter any kind of roast fowl on your travels, you're all ready.

And they're off...!

2007-07-01T17:49:00.000-04:00

Me and my socks and my husband are taking our marbles and going off tomorrow to spend a month working (thinking, writing, composing) in our favorite place in the world.

I have no idea how much I will post over the next four weeks. Any pictures will likely be green. And possibly high in fiber content.

(This is just a sampling of last year's batch.)
ETA: We are not sheep farmers. We just happen to be going where the sheep are.

Alchemy

2007-06-28T15:07:00.000-04:00

A comment in a form on Ravelry.com got me thinking. The thread was about yarn bargains, and one person said that whenever she's bought bargain-basement yarn she ends up regretting it.

I write this as someone with definite yarn-snob tendencies.

But one thing that always appealed to me about knitting is the idea of making something wonderful and valuable out of something relatively inexpensive. There's a kind of magic in taking some ordinary yarn and a couple of sticks and creating a wonderful handmade sweater or pair of socks. Part of the joy is the act of transformation.

Don't get me wrong: I'm a sucker for expensive sock yarn. But I was dismayed when I began knitting to see how easy it was to spend $100 on the materials to make a sweater.

My favorite sweater I ever knit is Alice Starmore's Faroe. Now, I think I would love this sweater no matter what yarn I had knit it in. I had a thing for this sweater from the moment I saw the design in Fishermen's Sweaters. But I confess there's a special frisson in knowing that I made it out of Paton's Classic Merino that I got on sale, and the whole thing cost me between $30 and $40.

The idea is: it's an heirloom because I made it into one, not just because I made it out of gorgeous yarn.
The yarn for my sock-pal socks was bought at the same sale, very inexpensively. Same alchemy. I hope.

Sock on the -looza

2007-06-24T09:29:00.000-04:00

Sock #1 celebrates its new, completed form by lounging on the grass.

Sock #1 heads for the mint patch and dreams of mojitos, chanting, "par-TY! Part-TY!"

Sock #1 asks if we can grill tonight.

Sock #1, rebuffed, chastened, and exhausted from all its activity, catches some rays in the lawn chair.
"Does this color make me look fat?" it asks.

Birthday

2007-06-22T14:46:00.000-04:00

My husband was so pleased last year when he got me a swift and ball-winder (not having any idea what they were, but being assured by some clerk that a knitter would like them) and saw what a huge success that gift was.

So this year he went one step farther.

After my initial two hours of child-like delight (it took me at least 45 minutes even to think of opening any other presents) we started watching the instructional video which also has instructions for assembling looms. "Hmm, is weaving next?" he said.

"I may now have enough addictions for one human being," I said. "Spinning is just as bad as knitting."

"What do you mean?" he said. (He really loves my knitting. I'm not sure exactly what pleases him about it so much, except that it's a relatively new interest and he likes seeing how far I've come in a couple of years. He also likes the whole hand-made low-tech gadget element of it. Well, he likes gadgets, period.)

"You know all those boxes of yarn upstairs?" I said. "Well, now there will have to be boxes of roving as well. And then it will be spun into yarn. And then I will have to knit that."

"Oh," said my husband.

Of course, before that vision is fulfilled, I will actually have to learn how to spin...

Things I have learned from Ravelry

2007-06-21T10:16:00.000-04:00

-- I am terrible at keeping count of the number of skeins used in a project. Skeins? How many skeins? It's just a bunch of yarn. I will never publish a design at this rate.

-- Monkeys rule.

-- The design for the Noro Fitzgerald sweater is fundamentally flawed - it's not just me (or rather, my husband) who has trouble with the collar spreading out too wide. (It looks so nice and casual in the pattern picture - little does one know how much tugging and adjusting is needed to achieve that effect.)
(This is one I have been meaning to attack with a crochet hook - I think it can at least be improved.)
(And I can't find my picture of it at the moment, so you will just have to take my word for it.)

-- It is possible to lose two hours of your life in the blink of an eye.

-- So THAT'S how you use Flickr.

-- Even though, after a couple of years of watching everyone else's blogs from the sidelines, I feel a little like an outsider in this whole knitting scene, I am just as much a "real" knitter as anyone. (This one is taking a while to sink in.)
I even got an invitation! Me! To Ravelry! Just like the real bloggers do!

Convalescent

2007-06-21T09:20:00.000-04:00

My husband left to drive to the country on a mysterious errand around 7 this morning, so I got up and came out into the living room and knit while listening to the Goldberg Variations. And enjoyed that sense of peace of one who is recovering from something.

You see: as soon as my friends left, I came down with a terrible case of startitis.

After all those days of not knitting, running around New York, trying to get my work done at night while playing hard with my friends all day, and even jaunting up to Boston overnight for work, I had a physical craving to play with yarn.

It overcame me on the plane back from Boston when I started this.

Everyone recognizes this by now - it's the first of a pair of Nona's Sidewinders.

I hope it's not contagious.

And after my friends left, the floodgates opened. I sat down with four skeins of yarn to play with. And I started this.

It's the Kitchen Sink Bag from Knitty.com.

There are some patterns that spark, in the heart, an unreasonable obsession - one sees it and knows one has to have it. This is one. It's a good thing I feel that way, because this is a tough knit - or else I am just not very good at forcing fat needles through the backs and sides of obdurate stitches. But I keep going back to the picture of the bag, which triggers my fantasies of summer: the perfect container for a beach towel, the sunscreen, and a nice fat book.

There is only one cure for Startitis. And that is to finish something.

Alas: in the inky pit that is black sock yarn on knitting needles, which swallows up stitch definition, ideas of order, and, at times, sanity, I briefly lost my way and, for a few ribs only, purled where I should have knit. So I have to rip back two or three rows to eliminate a handful of raised stitches. Therefore, finishing will have to wait til later today. (Though it seems a waste of valuable time that could be spent knitting, I do have to do some actual paid work, as well.)

So I present: 99% of a sock-pal sock.

Slow Mail Day

2007-06-15T00:54:00.000-04:00

I should be attending to this.

(The Jitterbug says, Hey, shouldn't I be on my way to Susan by now?)

Instead, I have been doing things like this.

And this.

(Extra credit: Name that ballet!) (Photo credit: Paul Kolnik.)

Having friends in from out of town can make you fall in love with the city all over again.

But it does make it hard to get to the post office.

Everyone's a winner

2007-06-11T01:36:00.001-04:00

Drum roll please...

The correct answer to the contest question: my clever idea for masking the change from one color yarn to another overlooked the fact that mosaic stitch and stockinette have different gauges, so there was a rippled stripe of looser knitting, where I did stranded K1 K1 K1, creating a major pucker down the center of the sole of my sock.

Four people got the correct answer, so as promised I drew names out of a hat. Here are the results.

The grand prize of a skein of Jitterbug sock yarn, colorway Ruby, goes to Susan (sb).

First runner-up of two skeins of yarn in the same colors I'm using for my socks: Alli Gator

Second runner up of two skeins of yarn in contrasting colors suitable for stranded or mosaic sock knitting: Helga (Mythen und Sagen).

And for the last-place finisher: the bad news is that you don't get sock yarn. The good news is that you get four skeins of Debbie Bliss Cotton Cashmere in contrasting colors, plus a little extra for seaming. It goes to Cindy in Oregon.

Thanks to everyone for participating. And sorry to be slow in posting the results. I thought I would have plenty of time to post before my four house guests arrived for the week... but I forgot about the part about cleaning up the house all day Saturday. (So that I could apologize for the mess when they arrived, all the while secretly thinking, You have no idea how bad it REALLY can be...)

Oh, my out-of-town friend said when she saw the yarn closet. You knit?

Sock and Contest update

2007-06-05T17:01:00.000-04:00

We're heading up the leg into the home stretch. I can't decide if it's too busy or not.
Plus, there are two tiny gaps on the foot that are driving me crazy.
Well, we have some time til August, so if I have to rip, I have to rip. I just want to make sure I'm happy with it before I send it off.

No correct answer has come in yet in the Sock Contest (see below). Reminder: a skein of gorgeous sock yarn (2 socks' worth) goes to one person with the right answer to my test question about the mistake I made in designing my sock pal's sock. Very few answers so far, so it should be easy pickings.

Maybe if I add another hint?

Here it is: I followed the directions exactly. That is, the mistake is something within the directions that I didn't figure out, rather than a mistake I made by not following the directions closely enough.

Sock-er Contest

2007-06-04T13:40:00.001-04:00

I just spent a week in Maine with my new nephew, who will be two weeks old tomorrow. The sock was very impressed with his beautiful feet (though it got a little worried, since it was already ripped out once for being too big, and these feet appeared to it to be very small indeed. I reassured it that it was indeed the perfect size for its intended recipient).

In honor of the baby, and of the general Sockapalooza spirit, and of hearing for the first time from my sock pal – I have a sock pal! I am sooo excited! – I am holding my very first contest. A skein (2 socks’ worth) of top-quality sock yarn is waiting for the person who can correctly answer my following sock-design-related question.

To pose the question, I have to go back a little into the history of my sock-pal sock. I initially tried to decide between horizontal and vertical stripes, and (as you can see) ended up opting for both: vertical stripes on the sole, horizontal stripes on the top.

I had to rip out my first attempt since due to knitter error it was miles too big.

Here’s how I set out on Attempt #2:

1. I am doing the sole in a slip-stitch pattern, while the horizontal stripes are plain stockinette. (I’m sure most of you know that the slip-stitch pattern for vertical pinstripes is K1, slip 1, K1, doing two rows in the round for each color – with color B, you slip the stitches you knit with color A, and knit the stitches you slipped.)
Since the vertical stripe slip-stitch pattern knits up much tighter than the horizontal pattern on the top of the foot, I threw in two extra rows of the slip-stitch on the sole alone (back and forth once in each color) every few stripes.

2. To deal with the switch from one color to another, which occurs in the middle of the vertical stripes on the sole, I decided, when the color changed, rather than K1A, slip 1B, K1A, etc., to do K1A, K1B, K1A, K1B: that is, stranded knitting rather than mosaic knitting for the four stitches immediately around the color change. This made a firmer join, and I already knew from swatching that there is no visual difference between K1, K1, K1 stranded knitting and K1, slip one mosaic knitting.

3. I got rid of my original idea for a diamond pattern on the top of the sock; in the smaller, svelter size it no longer seemed to need it.

After I had gotten about halfway up the foot of this sock, I had to rip the whole thing out again.

And here is my question:
Why did I have to rip it out?

All the information you need to answer is included in this post. In short, I should have known better – but the answer was only evident to me with hindsight (and with the faulty sock in my hand).

Send your answers to me at diva341 - at - mac - dot - com by noon on Saturday, June 9. If there is more than one correct answer, I will determine the winner by drawing a name out of a hat or some other appropriate container, like a knitting bag.

As for my sock: attempt number 3, I’m pleased to say, is just ducky. In fact, we’re up to the heel turn.

Since roving's been my pleasure

2007-06-04T13:06:00.000-04:00

Anyone else share my childhood memories of American folk songs? Ever since this luscious roving arrived, the tune "A-roving, a-roving, since roving's been my pleasure, I'll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid" has been circling, and circling, and circling, in my head.

(It circled so much that I just Googled it and found the lyric given as "ruin" rather than "pleasure." I stand by my childhood memories and, I believe, the Fireside Book of Folk Song, but if spinning is as addictive as knitting, "ruin" may well be equally appropriate.)

Anyway, this beautiful roving arrived courtesy of Susan, whose contest I won. And because I am only just about to stick my toe into the world of spinning, she generously added some roving more appropriate for a rank beginner. Plus, this wonderful and clever sheep tape measure. I am agog. Thank you, Susan!
(And thank you, Wayne Thiebaud, since your painting was the reason I won the contest. I should knit him a pair of socks or something.)

In the interests of paying it forward, I have an idea for a contest of my own. Stay tuned.

oooh, baby

2007-06-04T12:46:00.000-04:00

My brother and sister-in-law would kill me if I posted an actual picture of the infant WSM.

But here, at least, is proof that my knitting was put to good use.

Are those the most beautiful hands you ever saw?

Now that I'm back from a week of intense baby-tending (and tending-baby's-two-older-sisters as well) in Maine, I will endeavor to catch up on some blog business.
(The coincidence that Franklin went to Maine at exactly the same time I did to see his niece, born the day before my nephew, may be amusing only to myself, but because I love Franklin's blog I will take any communality I can get.)

Contests

2007-05-22T15:11:00.000-04:00

Ah, the thrill of victory. I never won anything before.
KitKatKnit had a name-that-painting contest, and I got lucky.

I am extra lucky because the prize is roving, and one of my goals for this summer is learning to spin.

Thanks, KitKatKnit!

Which brings me to the next contest. Skeins Her Way is having a contest that is more of a helpful motivator for her blog readers, asking each entrant to post a list of his/her knitting goals for summer.

I wondered whether "goals" meant "things you think you actually will do" or "things that in a perfect world you would do, along with solving world hunger." But Ali's own list left no doubt. It's the latter.

So here are my goals for summer.

Learn to spin.
Finish my Angela shawl.
Finish my tricolor tweed jacket-in-progress.
A linen sweater/jacket of some sort with that great linen in my stash, in a lace pattern.
A pair of socks with my still-untouched Tequila-Sunrise-colored Koigu PPPM.
A pair of felted slippers.
Finish my sock-pal socks.
And experiment with the neat stuff Nona is doing with the sideways sock. I am completely inspired.

This list may seem modest, but if I am doing everything else I hope to do this summer, I won't even get that much done.

PS: Still no baby.
Edited to add: BABY!!! THIS MORNING!! 8.5 pounds, still nameless, born in bed before the midwife even got there. (!!!)

Baby Knitting

2007-05-21T13:36:00.000-04:00

We interrupt the long string of Sockapalooza posts for an important message.

See this? This is a completed baby blanket.
Stephanie says on good authority that baby knitting has to be finished for a baby to be born.

So like a good knitter, I finished my nephew's blanket on time. Down to the crochet border.

So where's the baby?

He was due to arrive on May 18. Note that it is now May 21. My brother assures me that if my sister-in-law were carrying any lower, he would actually be waving out at the rest of the family. But he is still inside.

I am hoping that posting images of his birthday gift will act as an inducement for him to make an appearance.
Because I am going up there on Friday, and I want to meet a baby. (At this rate, I might be present for the birth!)

See that knitting, kid? How can you resist?

Thanks, I needed that

2007-05-20T14:28:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure how much of what I might term extracurricular matter I am going to be posting on this blog. Knitting is, after all, an escape, dammit; my knitblog is the last place I feel like confronting real life.

My enforced semi-anonymity only reinforces my feckless irresponsibility. In fact, I am half-tempted to construct a fantasy blog life in which I am doing all the things I wish I were doing in real life (like, staying home to raise a child and finish my book, rather than dealing with an extremely stressful career and trying to squeeze in the book and family on the side). It could be a kind of Second Life, only with knitting.

Out there in the real world, however, I am half-crazed right now with stress and the twin spectres of major decisions and life change looming out of the mists ahead. So this post (scroll down to May 19) couldn't have come at a better time.

In my blind reactivity and my constant drive to move ahead, fast, I can't even stop and get the size of a sock right. Take a deep breath and, like the lady said, Stop trying to run the show. (And try not to worry about the application package I sent out last week - if I messed up the sock, how badly did I screw that up?)

Size matters, part II

2007-05-20T14:12:00.001-04:00

^&*$#^(#&$*

They're too big.

I've been blithely measuring on my own foot, thinking that my feet are about the same size as my sock pal's. But they're not. They are the same LENGTH as my sock pal's. But hers are more than an inch narrower. And I've been worried these are too loose on MY foot.

GRRRRRRR.

I'm far enough into these that I'm considering knitting the whole thing.
Silver lining: that way, I can make sure the pattern works. I can then knit her a new, cleaner, smaller pair without any of the minor glitches that have emerged in this pair. (They will also go faster, being smaller.)
And then I will have a nice new pair of socks from Sockapalooza as well, which will help compensate if I remain a sock-pal orphan.

And I don't know if I can face frogging AGAIN!!!!!

Tale of the Toe

2007-05-20T12:40:00.000-04:00

I’m not sure I’m lovin’ this.

The Bear stoically endures modeling a work-in-progress.

But back to the abovementioned (or, to be more precise about this layout, belowmentioned) Eastern Cast-On. Thanks, Interweave (and Ann Budd): once again, you have revolutionized my sock-making. The provisional cast-on I’ve been using for toe-ups until now is fine, but equipment-intensive (I always find myself wanting to cast on at moments when I don’t have waste yarn or a crochet hook handy). Furthermore, the toes of my sock pal’s sock are black, and the thought of trying to unzip and pick up all those teeny tiny stitches, given the tendency of black yarn to be invisible, was causing me some concern (even with Wendy’s post about unzipping reassuring me that I’m not alone in my lack of fluency in this technique). But now: wrap the yarn around the needles, knit into it, and you’re off.

(Of course, it took me about an hour of obsessive, dead-to-the-world, hunched-over-in-some-no-doubt-bizarre-and-embarrassing-posture knitting in a local café to figure out how to do it. Those line drawings always make it look so deceptively easy, and I always feel stupid for not being able just to pick up the needles and whirl away on my first try. I have the same problem with cookbooks.)

The toe with which I finally emerged from the coffee shop, blinking blearily at the light like a waking groundhog, not only gleefully resisted all my attempts to photograph it (being black), but also proved, on inspection, to have been knit for the full-sized cousin of the beloved bear who is modeling my current attempt above. Somehow I had misremembered my sock pal’s foot as being 10 1/2 inches in diameter (an extreme overstatement), and this particular toe, character-ful as it was, would have been too big even for that. Rrrip.

A black cloud? A UFO? You decide.

Anyway, now I am heedlessly plunged into my toe-up, multi-colored and multi-designed sock. And I am just not sure about it. On the one hand, I may have figured out how to fix the discrepancy between the slip-stitch sole and the striped top of the foot by adding a couple of extra rows on the sole at intervals; and adding a slip-stitch pattern on the top of the foot (I am thinking of a diamond inset with my sock pal’s initials. Tacky? Tell me) will help even up the discrepancy further. If I like the pattern, that is. Right now, it is that diamond, in particular, that I am unsure of. But without it, the top of the foot may look just too plain. I might have to go back and add some ribbing or something.

Top (note the questionable inlay diamond beginning to emerge at the center)

One thing is working the way I planned: the slip-stitch makes a nice thick sole.

Bottom (in which my hand demonstrates that it got a manicure since the last photo op. However, it now thinks this picture makes it look pasty, and fat. There’s no pleasing it.)

Given the number of times I’ve ripped so far, I have a new concept – I think I will document, not places I’ve knit the sock, but places I’ve frogged it. Yesterday, for example, I frogged in the break during an opera performance. Too bad I didn’t have a camera.

PS - I see Blogger now saves drafts automatically. Gosh, they were listening.

Mad at Safari

2007-05-17T19:02:00.000-04:00

I just spent half an hour crafting a wonderful post. Believe me, it was a work of literature. Then, just as I was preparing to publish it, I hit TAB and Safari froze. I waited, I cajoled, I swore, but there proved no way to fix it except by hitting Force Quit, and my whole lovely post was lost forever.

I can't even summon up the energy to recreate it (plus, I am now heading out to meet a friend for dinner). I will content myself with posting a picture of the latest swatches of what I am now terming "foot sweaters" -- socks that, as a result of my design ambitions and my yarn, are fated to remain dense, veritably garment-like creations. Fortunately my sock pal has winter in her part of the world.

The swatches are being modeled by my fingers, which are threatening to go out and embarrass me unless I give them a manicure pronto. Poor fingers.

(The back story, short version: thanks to some of your kind comments on my last post, I had a Eureka moment and decided to try my hand at stranding to see if K1-K1-K1 in two colors would yield a less dense fabric than slip-stitch knitting. The answer: not with this yarn, it won't.)

In lieu of my meditations on knitting, Ancient Greek, and the joys of mastering the Eastern Cast-On from Interweave (oh, it was a good post), I will leave you with a picture of an actual FO to remind myself that I do occasionally finish things. Here is what I might call my husband's hospital doily (since that's where most of it was knit), last seen in an embryonic form with its friend the seashell. I think I messed up the pattern, but it is only noticable in a couple of places.

Houston, we have swatches

2007-05-10T09:57:00.000-04:00

First, thank you all so much for all of your supportive feedback. Wow.

And in defense of my sock pal - she did not say she was picky about yarn at all. In fact, she is open to anything. But her blog is extremely impressive and shows she is a true connoisseur. So I am all the more anxious to come up with something classy.

With this in mind, I am asking for more advice.

After all of your support, I have been swatching away with my chosen colors. I am drunk on these colors. I can't believe I had this yarn dormant in my stash. Against the black, the blues just sing out. Unfortunately I am not having much luck photographing it with my old camera. But maybe this gives some, blurred sense of how pretty it is. Here's Swatch #1. (Note: I made up a pattern as I went along, just to see what a pattern would look like - I would never knit anything this wonky into a real sock!)

I loved this swatch after I made it. But it is also a dense and unyielding fabric, and not very sock-like. Then, of course, I realized that with mosaic knitting, I was going to get a whole different texture with a flat swatch than I would with a swatch in the round. I also realized that horizontal stripes were going to be a lot more malleable than vertical stripes. So I made this (again, with a make-it-up-as-you-go pattern inlay just to see how it would work):

I love this even more. I do note that the mosaic section pulls on the yarn a bit - I will have to design around that. I think I am going to do some kind of medallion over horizontal stripes on the top of the foot, and then on the leg do an all-over mosaic design.

So here's my new question. I love, love, love these colors and will definitely make socks out of them. But it still makes a very dense and heavy sock - this is clearly a winter sock. I wish I could post a sample for everyone to feel, but failing that, here's my question - should I make these for myself and make something light and airy for my sock pal? Would you be disappointed to get a heavy sock in the sock swap, rather than something lacy you could wear with sandals? (I am actually not a big fan of socks with sandals, but you know what I mean. And I lived for 11 years in Germany, where the style is not uncommon.)

Advice welcome. And thank you all again for your comments. I am new to this blog thing and not sure about the etiquette of replying to posts that say "no reply" in the address field, but please know that every single one was very much appreciated.

Sock advice

2007-05-08T13:43:00.000-04:00

OK, all you sock-knitters out there: I need advice. I have signed up for Sockapalooza, my very first sock exchange, and I am excited. (Still waiting to hear from my own sock pal, but I am fully prepared to be one of the sock-less orphans; the fun is in taking part.)

So I read my sock pal's preferences and I immediately thought of a perfect yarn I already had in my stash, which is in just the colors she said she liked. After a few days of ruminating what keeps coming to mind is a mosaic sock in two colors, with this beautiful blue-green combo set off against black. (The greens don't really come out in this picture.)

Here's my dilemma, though: my sock pal is a real sock-yarn connoisseur, and this isn't a particularly marquee yarn. It's an Italian wool (70%) and polyamide blend, but it isn't Koigu or Schaefer or silk or mohair or handpainted or any of the other special yarns we all know and love.

So that's my question: if I really want to spoil my sock pal, should I get some new and finer yarn? I would love to try Lorna's Laces or some of the boutique hand-painted yarns. I'm not being stingy, and I don't care about the cost - I just want to make something she will like. But I think a mosaic sock in this yarn could be gorgeous.

What do you all think?

Size Matters

2007-05-07T23:07:00.000-04:00

I am a little over six feet tall, and while I am not fat - with size inflation, I'm a size 10 these days - no one would ever call me petite.

I remember a conversation after Christmas one year with my former roommate and dear friend, who is about 5'3".
My mother had gotten me a leotard I wanted - but in a size M.
I asked my mother why she would get her six-foot daughter a size M, and her response was, "But you are so lovely and slender!" (This is mom-speak for, You are no longer the 200-pound mama you were in college.)

I was shaking my head about this to my roommate, who said, Well, my mom would have gotten me the size L.

Which just goes to show that size is in the eye of the beholder. Particularly when the beholder is a mom.

So. I know this story. I know I am a big person. My husband is taller than I am, and has bigger feet.
And then I went on-line to order sock blockers, and had to choose between S, M and L.
Well, I thought, I might knit socks for other people. If I get an L, it might stretch medium-sized socks out of shape. But if I get an M, it could be used for both medium and large socks.

What was I thinking?!

I have condemned myself to a permanent case of The Socks that Ate the Sock Blockers.
(My Sockapalooza sock pal has the same size feet I do. No help there.)

Note how the socks appear to be slinking away in shame.

The moral of the story is: when in doubt, go large. No, the REAL moral is: when in doubt, get both.
Stay tuned for the Size L sock blockers, no doubt coming your way in a future post.

915 words to go...

2007-05-07T18:14:00.000-04:00

Blogger won't let me upload any of my pictures - what is going on???
A blog without pictures is like, well, a lot of writing.

"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversation?'"

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

And for my next trick...

2007-05-01T21:34:00.000-04:00

I said to my husband that one fascinating thing about knitting is how hard it can sometimes be to grasp very simple concepts. Then, once you've grasped them, they seem elementary.

Take knitting in the round. A friend of mine recently embarked on her first-ever sock, and said it took her a long time to figure out how to join the ends and make it work in a circle. I completely empathize. I had the same problem myself.
And I remember my confusion trying to figure out how NOT to knit in the round on a circular needle. The idea of just turning the thing around seemed, well, complicated. (I am not usually dumb. At least, I flatter myself that this is the case.)

The concept that has occupied my brain for the last few days is the crochet border.
I had an epiphany about the possibilities of the crochet border when I found myself in Sioux Falls, South Dakota the other week. Had I realized that Sioux Falls, South Dakota is the home of two wonderful yarn stores and, even more amazingly, Knitter's magazine, I might have made an effort to get there sooner. As it was, pure happenstance, serendipity, and a new friend led me straight into the Knitter's offices, where I tried not to hyperventilate as I fingered the original shawls that were photographed for this beautiful book. (It was hard to keep a tremor out of my voice as I attempted a normal conversational tone - Oh, yes, I get to talk about knitting with experts and peruse 25 gorgeous shawls every day.)

Rick, the editor, matched my offhand tone as in 15 minutes of casual conversation he dispensed more knitting wisdom than I had heard in 15 months. The greatest revelation concerned the possibilities of crochet. I confess that I had thereto had more than a trace of knitter's snobbery about crochet. Granny squares, afghans, you know (I am not alone here). Then I saw a stunning jacket spread across Rick's desk (I wish I had a picture), with exactly the border I have been dreaming of for the jacket I'm currently working on. (A jacket very like one I later found in this lovely book. Yes, I have become a paid endorsement for XRX books. Except they do not pay me. They get it on merit.)

So when I got home I decided the first thing to do would be to apply a crochet border to my all-but-done Log Cabin Blanket.

Well, I sat there for two days with various printed resources, trying to figure out how to put on a crochet border on my sample Log Cabin swatch. I got something that looked like an I-cord, but knottier; and I got something that looked kind of like a mess. My swatch looked like one of those ragged potholders children produce in third grade. Or maybe first grade.

And tonight, thanks to my third source, which had a different set of instructions on how to do the same thing, it suddenly fell into place and I crocheted a border.

(My husband was fascinated by the crochet hook. "What is that elegant little implement? And you only need one of them?")

It was just as thrilling as riding a bicycle for the first time.

I am ridiculously in love with this border. The whole thing still looks like a potholder, but it is not the border's fault. The border is a thing of excellence: firm, solid, shapely, pleasing to the touch. I hope that it may bring even the wonky stripes of my Log Cabin into line (though this Gee's Bend-like sample swatch is beyond hope).

My husband could only laugh at my absurd delight in my crocheted border. I attempted to explain to him that my mastery of the crochet border meant that I would not have to use a 40" circular needle to pick up a few hundred stitches around the edge of the Log Cabin (actually, I was thinking about an applied I-cord, but I referred to the circular for dramatic effect). This was either beyond my powers of explanation or his ability to comprehend, although I explained it two or three times, with increasing emphasis. He was, however, genuinely happy for me.

Slogging

2007-04-28T22:29:00.000-04:00

It was a beginner's mistake.
I thought, Oh, I will knit lace, and I will use this lovely twilight-colored misty yarn.
(I may have mentioned that I have a thing about saving money on yarn. I feel there's a particular creative alchemy in creating something wonderful from something that didn't cost very much. When I buy really expensive yarn, I get nervous. As a result I regularly buy whole bags of yarn at yarn sales and from Knitpicks. That, I can justify. So it's really no big deal that I have four large boxes of yarn in the top of the closet. I just think of the money I saved on it.)

Anyway, I bought this.

Then I picked out a beautiful lace pattern and sat down to knit my first lace shawl.

I didn't have any problems; I zoomed along; I kind of enjoyed the process.

BUT.
A big part of my enjoyment of knitting lies in my sensuous delight over what I've already knit. I like to spread it out, touch it, feel it, look at it as I go. Call it my own take on process knitting.
Now, I know lace does not really reveal itself until it's been blocked.
But even a mother has trouble loving THIS.

The problem, obviously, is that in my inexperience I chose the wrong yarn. I think variegated lace is fine, but when it goes from white to dark blue like this you can't see the pattern at all. And while I rather like the speckly effect the variegation makes on the sides, the pooling in the middle, and the stripes around the border, are just plain ugly.

See?

Now, I know exactly how to fix this. When this lovely shawl is done, before blocking it is going to have a little bath in some blue dye. (I may even graduate from Kool-Aid to real, grown-up dye.) That should take care of the contrast problem and help the pattern to pop - right now you can hardly see it at all! - while retaining enough variegation to be interesting. (And if I hate that, I'll just overdye the whole thing black.)

The problem is that I have to finish it before I can do that. But I'm only about 1/3 through, and I tell you, it is hard to stay motivated with a project you don't enjoy looking at. A finicky, high-maintenance project you don't enjoy looking at.

Now, however, comes the slog-along - a chance to come clean and, I hope, find some moral support as I continue to slog toward the finish. I know it's going to be worth it when it's blue. And done.

Add "picky speller" to that list

2007-04-15T23:25:00.000-04:00

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Aww, it's my first cute blog-test-type thingie (is there a better name for these things?). For years I have taken these tests and now I have somewhere to post the results. A real Kodak moment.

But I still prefer "sophisticate" to "sofisticat." (I also say "tomah-to." You got a problem with that?)

Sock it to me

2007-04-09T23:27:00.000-04:00

A call to help from serious bloggers - how do you take attractive pictures of your own feet in socks? Mine always come out looking like my legs were by Botero. They're not that bad, honest. (Or maybe I'm just in denial.) Until I learn better sock-photo technique, thank God for the Crop tool.

These are the most recent socks I knit, but with some of the first yarn I bought. It was my very first yarn expedition in New York. I googled "Yarn Store New York" or some such and landed on Alison's blog. Wow, I thought, imagine that, here's a woman who has a whole blog about knitting; how cool. (Reader, I was naive.) Alison had taken a trip to New York and listed all the yarn stores she'd visited, and thus I made my way to Downtown Yarns, which was not at all conveniently located to my residence, but sounded properly hip (into image? me? oh no). My journey was rewarded with some cherry-red alpaca and a pattern that replicated almost identically a sweater I'd loved that burned up in our house fire. (Another story for another day.)

And there, by the cash register, just happened to be some sale yarn that had my name on it. In fact, it literally had my name on it (hm, somehow I knew that my pretext of anonymity on this blog wouldn't last long). So I bought it, thinking a) it would make a nice sweater and b) one big skein would surely be enough for the airy, short-sleeved sweater I would make of it. (See "naive," above.)

Fortunately it sat in the stash so long that I was able to learn what sock yarn was, and, equally importantly, how to make socks, before I picked it up one day in a train riding through the Alps and cast on my toe. (Since I have already confessed being into image, I will also confess that I would have cast on at least an hour earlier had I not had to overcome my reluctance to pull out a knitting book to find the instructions for casting on from the toe up. Somehow when you're sitting on a fast train through the Alps it seems far more sophisticated just to whip out your needles and cast on from memory. There is something rather, well, touristy about rifling awkwardly through the pages of a book - a book in English, no less - to figure out what you're supposed to be doing. But sock-lust finally won out over sophistication.)

Alas, I fear that these socks' beautiful crisp colors have gotten lost, or leeched, in the translation from iPhoto to Internet. Yet pale shadow though they be, I aver that these photos justify my ever-firmer preference for the short-row heel (see how the stripes match up?). As for the self-styled sock photo - just wait til my sock blockers come in for some real blog fodder. Until then, well, at least I can furnish proof that I knit both of them.

Knitting for Knieces and Knephew

2007-04-03T20:46:00.000-04:00

My colorful knitting history, continued: here are my second and third sweaters, made for my two nieces.

(These are from patterns at The Yarn Co., which has a whole archive of projects, but which I later started effectively boycotting because I found them a little snotty in the store itself. And I belatedly realized just how expensive the yarns were that their patterns called for. And then through reading blogs I learned that lots of other people felt the same way. But they sure do think up some cute kids' sweaters.)

So then it was announced that my brother and sister-in-law are unexpectedly expecting number 3.
Fortunately I had just been waiting for an excuse to log-cabin.

A work-in-progress. (It needs a border. And perhaps one more round of stripes, first? And, of course, those ends have to be dealt with).

I had visions of creating a beloved baby heirloom like Alison's inspiring blankies.But as I said in a previous post, I fear my log cabin is pretty wonky. Don't ask me why I can turn out sweaters with no major problems, but I can't manage a basic log cabin.

Let's hope that baby boy won't notice that his stripes are wobbly until he's already fallen in love with them.

Back to the Beginning

2007-04-03T19:15:00.000-04:00

Now that life is settling back to normal (or maybe I'm just getting used to my husband being in the hospital), I wanted to go back and pick up where I began. My original plan for this blog was to start off with my archived knitting content, but since life threw us a curve ball right after my first entry, I ended up posting an unexplained knitting picture and never went back to explain it.

It's tied up with how I started knitting. For some reason, some time in 2004, I started thinking I wanted to knit. I am not sure what brought this on. I had no idea about knitting blogs; I didn't know knitting was a trend; I didn't have a particular pattern I wanted to knit, or any friends who knit. I had once knit a sweater in high school, advised by my mother: it was white mohair, knit in horizontal garter-stitch stripes; it was hideously unflattering and didn't want to stay on, and I never had the urge to knit again. (The fact that I started with a sweater might have been an indication, though, that there was actually a knitter inside waiting to get out.) But the concrete impetus, I believe, is that I have to listen to a lot of music, and I thought that having something to do with my hands might help focus me better.

Anyway, over Christmas in 2004 my husband and I were visiting my parents in New Mexico and I ventured into one of those big chain craft stores at the mall, since I figured that was where people bought yarn and needles. Needless to say, I ventured right back out again, empty-handed. Mind you, I was innocent of the appeal of the LYS, but I certainly knew that nothing this store was selling was particularly speaking to me.

Lo and behold, when I mentioned my quest to my mother later that day, she said, "I have yarn! I have needles! Take them all - I never use them!" And she pulled me upstairs into the small sewing room off her study, where I never had much occasion to go. There, indeed, was a lot of yarn. (I didn't learn the term "stash" until later, but my mother certainly had one.) It was the stash of someone who had intended to take up knitting again and never quite gotten around to it: bags of yarn discolored by years of sun, lots of bright colors and a good amount of acrylic - but it was yarn. She pressed into my hands a copy of Knitting in Plain English, and I went back downstairs with needles, some baby-blue superwash wool, and this eminently sensible, down-to-earth book. It was New Year's Eve of 2004/5: my stepfather went to bed early, my mother and my husband dozed, and I knit away at a long swatch of blue stockinette (though I didn't know the words "swatch" or "stockinette" yet). Little did I know that with this simple act I was ushering in a year of yarn addiction.

Scroll ahead a few months. By now I was a confirmed Knitter, an avid reader of blogs, a nascent stasher: you know the signs. I had made a sweater for myself and sweaters for my two nieces (of which I will, of course, eventually post pictures) - nobody told me beginners were supposed to start with hats and scarves - and I was starting to realize I could knit anything I wanted. And then I found Larissa's post about starting a pinwheel blanket. And I was hooked. That was the first project I truly obsessed over. I couldn't stop thinking about pinwheels. (The baby didn't hurt, either; we were in the process of an IVF (one of many), and I wanted some of that baby mojo.) I couldn't wait to start. I couldn't even wait to go buy yarn, so I took out the old blue superwash my mother had given me and cast on. (I reasoned that this was a practice pinwheel,which I would give to my stepniece, whose baby was expected later that month, so that I would not jinx our IVF, but I did go out and bought some - totally inappropriate - cotton yarn for another pinwheel that I intended to knit if it turned out I was pregnant.I may have scared the baby away with that cotton, come to think of it.)

Anyway, we didn't get pregnant, but I did finish that pinwheel, and I loved it more and more the more I worked on it. It was definitely my favorite thing I had ever knit. I documented its first moments off the needles.

(This is also a picture of twilight in June at our country house, in the time after our old house burned down, when we were having drinks at the battered patio table from my grandmother's house (since refinished and as good as new), sitting in front of the trailer we'd set up on our property while the new house was being built, and everything was dusk-blue and summer-new.)

I was just worried that it was too small. What I didn't know is that superwash grows. (I only figured out that it was a superwash property when I began reading about other less happy "growing" experiences (I think the Harlot documented one in one of her past books, as well). Anyway, it certainly doesn't matter when a baby blanket goes. And was I ever proud to see my blanket among the others in Larissa's gallery. (Check out the detail.)

I had a hard time sending it off. But the nice thing was that it ended up being a gift from my mother to me to my stepniece and thus to my stepfather's first great-grandson. And my stepniece was so pleased and surprised that I was glad I had followed through on my instinct.

So that's how I really started knitting.

Questions for Sunday

2007-04-01T11:31:00.000-04:00

Question: How long do frozen strawberries survive in the freezer?

Answer: quite a long time, if your definition of "survive" involves making them into a smoothie.

For the record, mango sorbet has a much shorter shelf life than frozen strawberries. (The time frame we're talking about is around a year. I blush. The sorbet was beyond blushing. Out it went.)

Question: What is wrong with the corners of the strips on my log cabin blanket?

Oh, it may look all right, bright and colorful, and I'm sure that new baby nephew-to-be will love it when he arrives in May. But just compare it to the precision of THIS.

Clearly I am not grasping something here. My strips are too fat, and wonky. What am I doing wrong?

And the KAL is closed so I can't even send out an SOS for advice.

For the record: I found our good camera. But it still won't take a close-up of the whorls and dimples on my shell. And I fear I have ruined my doily - I think I got off by one stitch a couple of rounds back. I haven't had the time or mental energy to fix it, or to do much of anything else knitting-related, for that matter.

My husband was in the hospital for 12 days. THAT'S 12 FREAKING DAYS. Now he is in a rehab facility. This is getting really old, for both of us. I finally succumbed to the stress and am now as sick as a dog.

shell game

2007-03-26T16:44:00.000-04:00

My friend came to visit and saw my doily emerging from my needles and said, Oh, it looks like one of those shells, and then neither one of us could think of the name of what kind of shell it was. After she had left I realized that I actually possess such a shell, and ransacked the apartment til I found it. Then I tried to get a picture on our crappy old camera.

Separated at birth, n'est-ce pas? If I had more size 1 needles the big one wouldn't even be suffering from triangulation. I may have to go and get some more anyway before this doily is through - it has gotten big enough to be a pain on the three needles.

Here's what my friend made for me. It's not knitting, but it's an exquisite handcraft, so up it goes. Extra credit to anyone who can name that tune.

(I think that extra credit is pretty much impossible, given the way it's folded. Also, as my husband immediately pointed out when he saw it, there's no bass line.)

Surprises

2007-03-19T16:10:00.000-04:00

The problem with a new blog is that it's like a new friend: there's a lot of potential to be developed, and a lot of groundwork to be covered. And I had outlined in my mind some of the ways I wanted to inaugurate this new relationship, in part by showing some past knitting content in an effort to establish myself as a knitter of at least some attainments. (After the backlog is exhausted, the pictures are going to be fewer and farther between - I have not been exactly a speed queen of late.)

Today, however, I find myself more in need of an old-friend fix. My husband broke his leg yesterday and is in the hospital awaiting surgery, and I am back and forth between the hospital and home. (He is OK, except that his leg is broken - he has been musing how best to answer the standard query of the hosts of nurses and doctors passing through his room asking, "How are you?" since the reply "Fine, thanks," doesn't quite seem to cover it, but he is, actually, fine.)

What I am about to write will sound callous to anyone but a knitter. If I were to write it to an actual, off-line new friend, it might be enough to dampen the nascent spark of friendship forever. Yet any knitter would understand me in an instant. Here's the thing: I have no knitting. I left all of my knitting at our country house on Friday, since we were supposed to go back out on Sunday night. "Stop carrying around that knitting bag like a security blanket," I told myself when I left to drive into the city. "You will not have any time to touch it for the next 24 hours." And now: hospital waiting rooms, visiting hours, nights home alone, no time to go to the country to reclaim my things - and NO KNITTING. I believe that even my husband would be reassured were I to be knitting at his bedside. It would provide a nice, homey sign of normalcy.

For two years I have hardly ever taken a step without my knitting bag. As a result I leave for a weekend laden down as if for a journey of several months: computer bag, knitting bag, handbag, and a bag for clothes. Pack mules travel lighter. But there is a point to this excess, and I have just proven it: the point is that one should never find oneself stranded in this situation, with NOTHING TO KNIT. All I have in the apartment are several knitting books, two cheap skeins of sock yarn, and parts of two cashmere skeins I dyed with Kool-Aid. (Yes, I dyed cashmere with Kool-Aid. But look how great they look.) But no needles.

So this afternoon I walked from the hospital to a little hole-in-the-wall knitting shop (thanks to this comprehensive map by the unknown but heroic Amber, I discovered one I didn't know that was within walking distance) and bought cotton thread and needles so I could attack those skeins of sock yarn and also follow the Knit-Off by playing around with these.

And now I am breathing a little more easily.
Maybe I can teach my husband to knit during his enforced period of bed rest.

To Begin at the Beginning

2007-03-17T18:42:00.000-04:00

I like to knit. I like to read blogs. My favorite blogs are those that include lots of personal detail, often wholly extraneous to knitting (see Crazy Aunt Purl); that are regularly updated (see The Blue Blog); that contain lots of inspirational knitting content (see Eunny, now ascended to the knitting Empyrean of Interweave Knits); and that are a gathering point for lots and lots of knitters (the beloved Harlot). My blog will have, and/or be, none of these things. How is that for a welcoming opening?

First, for various reasons, I am compelled to blog anonymously. I am not going to make a big deal out of hiding my identity, and in fact anyone who knows me should have no trouble recognizing me from whatever I am going to write here, but my public identification for this blog’s purposes will remain -- rather coyly, I fear -- a simple YTT.

Second, I am not going to pledge to blog regularly, because I know myself and I won’t do it. Knitting is a fantastic creative outlet, but I have other outlets. Indeed, I sometimes fear that knitting is an ersatz, a machine for creating security blankets behind which I can then hide. Last year I went several months without knitting at all or even perusing a knit blog, and it was actually a sign that my creative stars had aligned in a most positive way in another house. For better or worse, those stars have since drifted back into other constellations, and here I am, knitting again with a vengeance. But what I mean to say is that silence here is more likely to be a good sign than anything else.

Third, I am not a crack knitter. I am a rather obsessive and erratic knitter who plunged headlong into this hobby about two years ago. I am the kind of knitter who will spend several hours mapping out the beginning of a new design and then get tired of it and think Oh-what-the-hell and end up winging something that should be approached with particular attention, like a sleeve cap. I am the kind of knitter who will obstinately pursue a pattern in yarn that is clearly not ideal for it, simply because I have the yarn and I want to knit that pattern, dammit. I am the kind of knitter who obsesses about my own designs and then throws away the whole concept when something new crosses my radar and grabs my attention. I will probably not be very good at helpful tutorials and things like that.

Fourth, I am not part of any knitting community. Offline, I have a couple of friends who knit, including one who I am delighted to see seems to have caught the knitting bug (there’s a difference between people who occasionally knit sweaters and people who have adopted “I Knit” as a part of their identities). Online I am an inveterate blog-lurker and observer and not-quite-stalker (I plead guilty to staring at a couple of familiar faces from the so-called blogosphere at knitting events in the last couple of years). But I do not have a large circle of knitting friends to blog with and meet at The Point and gift with socks. And in fact, I am not looking for a huge readership. I am throwing this out onto the Internet partly out of curiosity, to see what comes of it. I am perfectly happy to be the sole witness to this particular tree falling in the forest, and if anyone happens to stumble along and catch me in the act of observing, so much the better.

To inaugurate a new blog by announcing that it will be impersonal, irregular, un-useful, and not geared to readers smacks strongly of the dyspeptic. Ah, well, the knitting world loves characters. Here is another one for the cast list. Hypocrite lecteur: welcome.