Archive for February, 2009

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The God of Rainbows

February 6, 2009

…is what Liam wants to call the jacket I’m making him.

Back, back, back, when I was just starting to knit bigger projects, Liam designed an octopus sweater for himself.  It was, well, really something, and my execution was also really something, but man, he loved that sweater.  He wore it over and over again until it was a pilled mess that wouldn’t even fit over his head.  The experiment made it clear to me that if I let the kids design their own clothes then they will treasure them considerably more than clothes we buy them at the store.  I find it hard to knit for growing kids, though, as they, as likely as not, will have gotten two sizes bigger in the time you’ve been knitting for them.  Anyway, I never have finished poor Gabriel’s sweater, so blithely discussed in the Octo-Sweater post of long ago.

But.  I’m feeling a lot more confident this year, and also in less of a rush, as Gabriel received something like four bulky jackets for Christmas.  And so I’ve started early on next winter’s sweaters, with the confidence that I’ll actually follow through this time.  (I’ve probably just jinxed myself, and next winter you’ll find me writing about how I failed to finish the kids’ sweaters yet again.)

Anyway, back to Liam’s jacket.  He has had a vision.  He asked me for a sweater that was grass green at the bottom, that turned into sky blue above, and that had 8 rainbows with 16 clouds.  He asked me for this, and I thought about it and then I tried to talk him down a little.  We settled on either one rainbow and two clouds across the back, or two rainbows, one on each shoulder.  Then I let the idea marinate.  I figured he might change his mind within a few hours or a few days, but a couple of months later, he’s still set on the same idea.

So, God of Rainbows it is.  I told him that I’d heard of a Goddess of Rainbows, Iris, and promised to look it up and see if there’s a god of rainbows.  (Turns out, in Australian Aboriginal mythology, the Rainbow Snake is the Creator.  Nifty!)  I decided on the Tomten pattern as I could easily imagine how to make a sky on that one that would look interesting, because the Tomten is a pattern that grows with a child, and also because little boys in Tomtens look like rock stars.  I’m going to make the jacket mostly green (Liam’s favorite color), but the upper torso will be pale blue.  I’ll add the rainbow after the fact, both for ease, and in case Liam ever wants to remove it.

He chose to have pockets, so I made the linings pale blue, and I’m planning on using the light blue for i-cord edging as well.  He wants the sweater sans hood, which is a good choice for boys, I think. I may even try to do a zipper again, though I think he’d be happy with buttons.

This will be a unique sweater, but if last time is any measure, it will be a loved sweater.  And man, I love this green.  It’s Cascade 220, Palm, and it’s just delectable.  Bright, but not super bright, and just so danged happy. Whoever the god of rainbows might be, he’s one jolly dude.

Posted in In progress, Jackets, Kidswear, Knitting, Sweaters | 3 Comments »

Resembling ripe lemons and egg yolks

February 5, 2009

Let’s talk about yellow.  The most noticable color on the spectrum, it’s been largely mistreated for years, misused, and under appreciated.  Until recently, when I thought of yellow clothing, I thought of that hideous pastel yellow that comes out in spring, often paired with pastel pinks or blues, or a set of primaries, often used in stripes.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with these yellows, but I’ve never found them appealing.  Yellow is a color that I can wear, but usually don’t.

But lately, I’ve been drawn to yellow.  It seems like yellow’s finally getting its due – it’s been used lately by designers in such interesting and attractive ways that I can’t help seeing its virtues.

I was trying to figure out why yellow’s been so mistreated for so long.  It is a difficult color for many people to wear.  A little goes such a long way.  But that can’t be the only reason.  A trip to the dictionary indicated that our discomfort with yellow goes back a long way.  Yellow is cowardly, yellow is morbidly sensationalist, yellow is envious, yellow is sallow, yellow is an offensive racial slur.  Yellow is the color of jaundice, poisonous beasties, gall, quaratine, disease, stinging insects, old age.

But yellow is also the color of filling foods, first light, hair browded in a tress, precious metals, fluttering songbirds, chattering monkeys, taxi cabs, Spring.  It’s not a color that is willing to be passive.  Yellow is loud and boistrous, even in its more muted shades.  There’s something a little bit uncomfortable about a color that is so indecently itself at all times, but there’s also something enticing about yellow.

When I was a small child, yellow was the only color I couldn’t pronounce.  I called it reh-roh, which probably made me sound like Scooby Doo.

The word yellow comes from a line of words leading back to the Indo-European gelwa, which meant to shine or glisten.  Yellow was not much distinguished from green in its early etymological stages.  It’s funny to think that so much of how we see color derives from how we say color.  The distinctions we make between, say, blue and purple, are fairly arbitrary, and need not have existed.  The etymological course of gelwa shows that it developed into words meaning white or green in some languages.

I’ve been craving something yellow lately, but I’m not sure what.  It’s not actually a color that I have a lot of.  I’m going to think on this a bit more, but I think there’s a lot of yellow in my future.

Posted in Color, Future Projects, Inspiration | 9 Comments »

Mathy Math Math McMatherson of Mathland

February 4, 2009

Oh, my aching brain.

I’ve never taken college level math because I chose to go to art school, and that meant I could stop taking math classes after 10th grade, which I did.  Then off I went to art school where I blithely enjoyed classes that involved little math other than some very basic geometry required to figure out how to build frames and stretch canvas and such.  Little did I realize that I was going to, in this order, become disillusioned with art school in my sophomore year, get knocked up, drop out, and want to transfer into a liberal arts university years later.  Had I known those things, I might have gotten a math requirement out of the way.

As it is, after 15 math-class free years, I’m trying to get back in the saddle and finally rope the steer that is college level math.  (Yeah, that’s an awkward metaphor.  I’m going with it.)  Only, it’s been 15 years since I’ve taken any math class, so my steer roping skills are a bit rusty.  Hell, my riding skills are rusty.  I have to go back over things I’ve already learned before I can take Statistics.  That’s how I ended up in the second Algebra class of my life, about 15 years after the last one.

I actually kind of, sort of like algebra.  Kind of.  Well, as much as I like any math.  There’s a theoretical quality that is at least engaging.

But what this means is that I’m doing a lot of math homework, and then I’m sitting down and doing a lot of math to write up patterns, and now my artsy fartsy pseudo intellectual brain is overloaded and I think I may die of math. Seriously.  If I have to look at more numbers I may spork my eyes out.

I want to knit now, thank you.

Posted in Design, Miscellany | 4 Comments »

Satisfaction

February 3, 2009

All who told me that it was likely my Soft Tweed would stretch enough were right.  I remembered that the stuff stretches, of course, but really, you should have seen the sweater before blocking.  Everyone who saw me knitting it kept saying, “Wow, is that for a little kid?”

Ironically, though, based on my experience with the disastrous Willow coat, I assumed the sleeves would stretch more than they did (while distrusting the body to stretch enough), and I made them a bit too short.  I’m not worried, though.  Mr. Kninja’s Seamless Hybrid was a bit shorter than was ideal, and earlier this month I finally got up the nerve to cut into it and open up the stitches and extend the bottom bit.  To my surprise, it doesn’t show.  I had expected that since the sweater was knit from the bottom up, opening it and knitting down would be a problem, but it’s really not.  So, with that in mind, I’m going to open up the sleeves and extend the ribbing.  I have just enough yarn left that it should work.  As a result, modeled photos will have to wait.

I’m playing catch up a lot these days, though, so here’s something I finished a little while ago.

Nora’s blanket!  I used the cast off from the Hemlock Ring blanket and a little leftover Amoroso Malabrigo for contrast.  It’s certainly a noisy piece of fabric, but she loves it and has been dragging it everywhere.  Dolls snuggle under it, tea parties are held on top, and it’s an essential component of bed time.  And the boys like the fact that it can also be put to use as a bottomless pit of molten lava!  We need to find the melty Anakin figurine and take his picture on this blanket.  Win!

I’m not too fond of how the blanket looks, but since the person who requested it loves it, I think it’s a success.

A few words on the pattern: the Pi Shawl is, of course, a brilliant recipe for creating round knitting.  I used the very most basic form for this blanket, not even adding the eyelets on every sixth row that would make it look more even, but it’s endlessly customizable, and I expect to make more round things this way.  You could make quite a large blanket with about four skeins of Malabrigo.

Also, on a related note, Pauline is up on the Malabrigo website, along with the other Malabrigo Junkies winners.  Spiffin’!

Posted in Blankets, Design, Finished Projects, Knitting | 1 Comment »

Sweaters!

February 2, 2009

I have two new sweaters.  Two!

The first is pretty obvious – I got the last skein of Andean Treasure and finished up my McQueen Knockoff.  Only two years in the making!

The Andean Treasure is a very good yarn for the price.  The baby alpaca is soft and warm and feels very nice against the skin, and the heathered qualities of this line make cables stand out in a starker relief.  The color in the above picture is not quite accurate.  The shade I chose, Ember, is a red and black heather, and the black is stronger in real life than it is in that photo.  I’ve been wearing the sweater quite a lot, and there’s a little pilling under the arms, but it’s not enough to get worked up about.  All in all, I’m very happy.  I needed a sweater of this sort – something pretty and basic that would work as a warm transitional top.  I don’t have enough of those in my wardrobe.

Here’s the story of sweater number two:  It’s actually been warmer here lately, but the other night it got really cold again.  I was huddled in layers of wool, wishing I was warmer, and then I grabbed Mr. Kninja’s Seamless Hybrid and pulled it on.  And it was WARM.  So warm.  That’s when I realized that I don’t have a big cozy pullover and that a pullover is warmer than even the warmest cardigan, and I knew I wanted one immediately.  I thought about my stash and how frustrating it was that I did not have enough yarn to make a big pullover and then I remembered the six skeins of RYC Soft Tweed.

Those skeins are the color of raw pork, I thought.  They’re funny looking.

I’m cold, I thought.  I want a sweater!  That is enough thick warm yarn for a smallish pullover.  Forget the color, I thought.  Make the sweater.  Dooooo iiiiiit!

It wasn’t hard to pick a pattern.  I’ve been crazy about Kate’s o w l s sweater ever since she posted it.  (I am not alone.  I think it may well be the most popular finished object on Ravelry with over 2000 loves.)  I grabbed the yarn and immediately cast on for an extra small, even though I wear a small, because I wasn’t sure I had enough yarn otherwise.

I had just enough yarn for an extra small, as it turns out, and would not have had enough for a small, so it’s probably good that I made the extra small.  Probably.  It’s a little, well, va-va-voomish.  Perhaps rather too much so.  The sweater is currently wet and blocking, but even with the way RYC Soft Tweed grows, it’s still really small.  On the other hand, it is a very warm pullover, which is exactly what I wanted.

The slapdash nature of this project leaves a number of things up in the air.  Things like, “Should I wear a sweater that is actually too small for me?  Should I wear pink, or should I try to dye this thing?  Does it turn out that raw pork is the one shade of pink I can wear?  Oh, ew, I think it does.  Is it OK to have pink owls?  Is it a problem that the only buttons I have that are both the right size and number to make the owl eyes are a pale lime green?”

These, and other questions, will be answered when the sweater is dry.  In the meantime, I can say that o w l s is a fast, beautiful, well written pattern, and everyone should make one.  I’m sure I’ll be making one in my own size when I have the yarn for it.

So those are the finished sweaters, but I’m also finishing up my Transparency sweater and I have the yarn to make Liam a Tomten jacket.  Also, remember poor Gabriel’s languishing cabled saddle shoulder cardigan?  I restarted that thing more than five times, and I’ve decided it’s a wash.  I had a talk with Gabriel, who is a very sensible child, and he said, “It’s better to have a sweater than to wait around and never have the PERFECT sweater,” so we decided to scrap the sweater o’ doom and design something simpler and faster.  He settled on a saddle shoulder pullover with cables up the arms and a contrasting yarn on the cuffs and neck.  We’ll make it a little big, since the child grows like it’s going out of style.  We already have to shop for his shoes in the Men’s section.

I love sweaters.  It’s nice to think there are so many yet to knit!

Posted in Future Projects, Knitting, Sweaters | 6 Comments »

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