Archive for December, 2007

The genius of others

December 22, 2007

Pattern: February baby sweater, from Knitter’s Almanac
Yarn: Sundara Sport Merino (temporarily discontinued), in Lemon-Lime
Yardage: 225 yards, or exactly one skein
Needles: 3.5 mm, US size 4, random bamboo jobs I got on Ebay

This sweater is a product of two geniuses, neither of them me. One of the things I love most about Elizabeth Zimmermann’s patterns is that though the construction is positively genius, the execution is simple enough for just about any knitter to manage. It takes a devious mind to make something simultaneously so simple and so counterintuitive.

The yarn, though done little justice by my sad, sad camera, grown yet more temperamental with age, is also a product of genius. In real life, it positively glows. The variations are far more subtle than my camera was willing to capture, but I think it looks like a ripe Bartlett pear more than the lemon lime moniker it’s been hung with. It was smooth and pleasant to work with. I am finally beginning to understand that yarn snobs may have something of a point. The difference in quality between a finished product made with excellent yarn and one made with decent yarn is immeasurable. I’m not ready to go over to the Dark Side just yet – workhorse yarns have their place, and I love plain, basic wool, and even acrylic blends (gasp!) – but I do see more reason than I used to for using a high quality product in my knitting.

Thanks to the fabulousness (is that a word?) of yarn and pattern, this simple little sweater is one of my favorite knit products ever. Yay! And now I can send it on to the wee babby for whom it is intended.

You may have noticed that this sweater, unlike EZ’s original, has short sleeves. That’s because, with only one skein of yarn, I knew I was going to run out, so I saved the sleeves for last and knit them simultaneously from the center and outside of the skein. I think it’s still super cute, and will work well over a long sleeved tee to keep a wee one warm.


Hello. I am a washed out picture of a yoke.

So hooray for genius that is focused and specific!  Hooray for people who see potential in the domestic arts and can transform necessity into beauty!  Yay for babies and sweaters and beautiful colors!

Posted in Finished Projects, Kidswear, Knitting, Sweaters | 8 Comments »

All the holidays

December 20, 2007

Festive, no? I can’t show you the many gifts I’m currently finishing up (and I accidentally sent one off without photographing it, anyway) so here are a few miters.

I found myself with a bunch of little short ends and yarn leftovers, and as I was puzzling over what to do with them, it hit me that a blanket of mitered squares might be just the ticket. And it is. Many of these little yarn ends aren’t even enough to edge a baby jacket, but they’re enough to form a little bit of a square.

It won’t be a quick or steady project. I’m just using it to eat up my yarn ends, and the supply varies, as does the color and weight of the yarn in question. It appeals to me on many levels, though. The frugality of the project and visual similarity to quilt blocks makes me think of Laura Ingalls and Ma and prairie practicality. At the same time, the fact that the leftovers are mostly from luxury yarns, the wild colors and patterns, and the silliness of using fingering and sport weight yarns to make a quilt makes me think of bubbling champagne, Zelda Fitzgerald, and the tension between the practical and the frivolous in modern hand knitting. It’s not an art project, but it’s verging on one.

It’s full swing into the holiday season here, and I’m feeling a similar pull between festivity and gloom. I like the holiday season a lot, actually. I love gift giving, and I love lights and winter clothes (such as they are in a temperate climate) and warm beverages and soups. I love all of this, but I cannot love winter, because I do not like darkness or deadlines or the fact that I get sick around this time every year. We have the promise of a stressful January as well now, and I’ve come down with something ugly that could spoil our plans to drive down to L.A. for Christmas. It’s settled in my chest and head and makes me crabby and tired and wheezy.

But I still love the holidays. Even the word holiday makes me feel happy. Hopefully that happiness will override the stress of the season.

And this week I can show you a now blocking February baby sweater! Yay!

Posted in In progress, Knitting | Leave a Comment »

MacGyver

December 10, 2007

So, I’m minding my own business, working on a few last minute gifts, listening to the radio on iTunes, and a song comes on that annoys the bejeebus out of me. I set down my size 1 needles and my project on the couch, walk over to the computer, change the station, and in the five or so seconds that I’m up, Eleanor runs by the couch, trips, falls over, and lands smack on my needles. She’s not hurt at all thanks to the fact that toddlers are made up of at least 63% Rubbermaid®, but I look down and see one of the needles lying in two pieces.

I’d like to think I’m a calm and sensible person, but in actuality, I turn a funny shade of blotchy pale and start sputtering incoherently. Then I say something well thought out like, “Argh!” or “Blerg!” Then I storm to my bedroom to cool down for a minute, and while I’m in there muttering about how everything always happens to me and wondering why toddlers can’t try to fall in more convenient places, it hits me that my needles are made of bamboo.

I’ve got some sadly broken and bent metal needles that will never be restored. I’ve snapped the entire bamboo segment off of a pair of Addi Natura circulars. But a small segment off of a bamboo straight needle is thoroughly manageable. I sternly remind myself that Elizabeth Zimmerman had occasion to sharpen needles on flipping rocks in the middle of nowhere, and what is a broken bamboo needle to your only pair of knitting needles on a fishing expedition, anyway?

Luckily, I have tools in the bathroom. With the help of a nail file and buffer, I soon have a working pair of needles again. They’re of entirely different lengths, but so what? I feel like MacGyver.

I organized my stash this weekend. Compared to many knitters, I believe my stash is relatively modest, but I’ve still accumulated a fair amount of yarn. The stash organization was a two hour undertaking, but well worth it. I laid out all the yarn I have and separated the yarn that already has a purpose. Then I recorded the amount and purpose of those yarns in a little notebook. I also rewound a lot of skeins that were taking up too much space or getting messy. The nice part of this was realizing that most of the yarn I have that does not have a specific purpose is leftover yarn. I’m not just acquiring for the sake of acquiring. The bad part of this is that I now have a list of projects that I have yarn for, a prioritized list, and no excuse to buy more yarn until I’ve made a nice dent in the list.

The largest segment of stash without a specific project in mind is my collection of fingering weight wools. I love these yarns, and have acquired them whenever I’ve had opportunity, but they’re a very motley collection of colors. Actually, the colors are a lot like motley. Since I was organizing, I tried a swatch of several of these colors together and found that while I love the colors I have, I do not love them together. I have several options, but I think that I will eventually need to acquire more fignering weight wool (oh, the hardship) if I want to use the wools for Fair Isle. Anyway, judge for yourself – here’s a swatch based on the Enid cardigan from last winter’s Interweave Knits. And my apologies – I was unable to get a good shot of the true colors, but I think the weird combos are obvious enough.

The background color is Rowanspun 4 ply in Jade, the greyish color is Rowan Yorkshire Tweed 4 ply in Sheer, the purple is Rowanspun 4 ply in Turkish, the grassy green is Jamieson Spindrift, the bright red is Rowanspun 4 ply dyed with various shades of red Kool Aid, and the dark red is Rowanspun 4 ply in Blood. I have seven skeins of Blood, ten of Jade, three of Turkish, two of Sheer, and one each of the Kool Aid and grass yarns. Basically, a lot of lovely yarns, but not so lovely together. I suppose I could also try doubling the Jade to make the Tangled Yoke cardigan or something, but I’m not really sure what to do. If anyone has ideas, either of additional colors or projects, I’d be more than happy to hear them.

One final picture, yet another in the handknits in action series. I wore Maude Louise this weekend, and one of the things I like most about this cardigan is that there are so many ways to wear it. I’ve never really shown this in any of my previous pictures. I tend to leave some portion unbuttoned, but no matter how you wear it, it’s really quite flattering. So here’s Maude, prim and buttoned up on top.

I hope you’re having a fairly stress free holiday season thus far! Take care.

Posted in Craft, Knitting, Nifty Stuff | 1 Comment »

Arts and crafts

December 6, 2007

Very, very occasionally, a book will grab me so that I can’t stop thinking about it. I go through my day living and thinking and breathing the issues that the book brings up for me. Usually it’s a book about history or theology, or some other deep issue that I want to look at in new ways. KnitKnit is the first knitting book I’ve read that’s grabbed me by the guts in this way.

I went off to art school in 1997, all bright eyed and bushy tailed and full of romantic ideals about Art-with-a-capital-A. In retrospect it’s kind of funny that I’d hung my hat on Art in this way, because I always planned on being an illustration major, and illustration is not usually given a place alongside the Fine Arts that make up Art-with-a-capital-A. I am, by nature, a narrative person, though, and the narrative aspects of illustration really captured me and combined with my love of wielding a brush and making images. I wanted to tell stories with pictures, to play with medium, to create and learn and make huge messy mistakes.

That’s not what art school is like, of course. I went in after choosing art over my other great loves of history and writing and found myself bereft without their company. Many artists are extraordinarily talented but uninterested in much more than honing their craft, and it became very difficult to go on viewing their (beautiful, remarkable) work with an unjaundiced eye when I came to know the personal limitations of some of the most talented people. It changed my ideas of art and life and craft, and when I dropped out in 1999, I left a pretty frustrated person who no longer felt sure she wanted much to do with the art world.

I took up craft when I found oil painting to be a difficult art to maintain with small children about. I’ve never thought of my work with sticks and string as art. It’s craft, something I do because I am compelled to make things, and because it fills a particular void. I’m occasionally thought of taking up the sticks to make something that combines art and craft, but I’ve not done so yet.

Enter KnitKnit. Sabrina Gschwandtner has found knitters who are already doing just that – perfecting their craft to create art. Not just any art, either. The art in this book reminds me of what drew me to art in the first place: an opportunity to play and learn and say something in a way that is tangible and touchable and visceral even without words. It’s art that doesn’t worry about whether it’s Art-with-a-capital-A.

I don’t think art and craft have to sit at opposite ends of the room, of course. Almost every great artist must first perfect her craft, and craft is the basis of art. But the two can be separate and often are. Art is one of those words that it’s nearly impossible to define, but I’ll do the best I can and say that to me, art is something that means more than what it is. In other words, no matter how lovely the sweater, if the meaning of the sweater is to be a sweater, then it is not art. A sweater that has a poem about domesticity knit into it might be a sweater, but it’s also art.

KnitKnit covers many knitters who happen to be artists and many artists who happen to be knitters. There’s work I wouldn’t call art, but it’s all innovative and interesting. One of the things it brought up for me is the memory of setting out to create without a specific end in mind. Art as exploration; exploration as art. Somewhere along the way, I lost my sense of direction, and I don’t often sit down these days to play when I create. I’d forgotten that art can be fun. I’d come to see the scene and not the joy of creation that drove me to art in the first place.

It’s not often I owe a book a debt of gratitude. But right now, I owe something to KnitKnit. I think the best way to repay it is to play.

For an actual review of KnitKnit, as opposed to my meandering thoughts, check out Needled.

Posted in Craft, Miscellany | 3 Comments »

Dapper Herringbone Scarf

December 4, 2007

I should be ashamed of myself for even daring to call this a pattern, but a few people have asked about the scarf I showed in my last post, and I figured I’d just quickly explain what I did. There is absolutely no skill involved in coming up with this, because I just used a Barbara Walker stitch pattern and made it about as wide as I wanted. (For those with Barbara Walker’s first Treasury, the stitch pattern is the Woven Diagonal Herringbone on page 96 of my edition.)

I made my scarf with two skeins of Cascade Luna. It’s pretty short, though, (43 inches) so I’d recommend 4 skeins for a more normal length scarf of about 7 feet long. The stitch pattern is perfect for a scarf because it’s reversible, and it has enough interest to keep a knitter pretty well occupied with a result that is not too flashy for even the most conservative of fashionable gentlemen. (Of course, it would work admirably for a woman, too. I am just pleased to have found something that works even for someone like my husband, who does not like frippery on his handknits.)

So, the pattern, such as it is.

Yarn: 4 skeins Cascade Luna
Possible yarn subs: Rowan All Seasons Cotton, Cascade Ecological Wool, Malabrigo Worsted, Knit Picks Main Line (about 336 yards of any of these)
Needles: One pair 5 mm needles (U.S. size 6)
Gauge: 17.5 st to 4″ in pattern (this does not need to be terribly precise)

Please note: All slipped stitches are slipped with the yarn in front.

Cast on 24 st

Row 1 (WS) and all other wrong side rows: Purl across.
Row 2: (Sl 3, k3) 4x.
Row 4: K1, * sl 3, k3; repeat from *, end sl 3, k2.
Row 6: K2, * sl 3, k3; rep from *, end sl 3, k1.
Row 8: (K3, sl 3) 4x.
Row 10: Sl 1, *k3, sl 3; rep from *, end k3, sl 2.
Row 12: Sl 2, *k3, sl 3; rep from *, end k3, sl 1.

Repeat rows 1-12 until you feel the scarf is of a good length or you run out of yarn. You should have just enough for a scarf slightly over 7 feet long if you use 4 skeins of Cascade Luna. Wet block the scarf and then wear. Swell!

January 2nd edit:  Orata over at Feather and Fan made some really excellent adaptations to this pattern.  Her version is called the Prismatic Scarf, and it works really well with any variegated yarns as well as eliminating any possible tendency to curl.  My version blocks pretty flat, but it does want to curl, as will happen with any stockinette based pattern.  The Prismatic Scarf evens out the knits and the purls to a happy medium.  Hooray for happy endings!  I actually think I’ll be making a second version using the Prismatic pattern (and some fun yarn).

Posted in Free Patterns, Knitting, Scarves | 6 Comments »

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