gotgauge?

Heeere's EUGENE

2010-09-08T14:32:00.010-04:00

I bought Eugene (accent grave on medial "e"), must be twenty-five years ago, at the close-out sale of a South Hill beauty shop (how did I come to go there?), and she's graced my Cornell offices forever since then, getting chipped a handsome bit or two moving from Rockefeller to Goldwin Smith. And today I brought her, with the last of my office furniture, home, where she will model hats in our retirement. I think adult hats will suit her better than these baby bonnets, but she was eager to get started in this new avocation.

We've got two "Baby Lotus Hat"s, one "Eva's Hat," and one Tri-peak baby hat, all from ravelry downloads, a weekend's messing with my stash, mostly Dalegarn Baby Ull, but the tri-peak is a buttery Great Adirondack combo I long ago got on sale from Knitting Etc., and don't know the sub-species name of. Buttery (repeat).

I'm launched on a decidedly not buttery --unless it's wire-haired-terrier-in-your-butter buttery--Shetland Heather (Jamieson's) jacket for Elizabeth. Connie C Chinchio's "Ithaca Jacket." Moving from Great Adirondack to Shetland Heather, I almost had to put on gloves and skin cream, but soon enough grew used to the scratchiness, assuring myself that it will blossom into greater softness when I block it. I'm leaving it at home for ten days, while I fly off to Chicago, as it's cumbersome for flights and back seats; so need to start a contained project for my travels. BTW, the "Grouse" color of this wool is fabulous--with a deep red and a yellowy-green tucked in the strands. When I look it's there, when I don't look, I've seen a lot of U. S. Open while doing a ton of stockinette.

Beginning a run of baby hats

2010-08-26T12:51:00.007-04:00

I'm going on a hat jag, baby and children's hats, to see how much of my stash I can put to good use, what designs I'll come up with, and how fast I can complete each bonnet.

Last night, watching (listening to) the Met's Zefferelli production of Turandot, I did this sweet "Baby Lotus Hat" (see ravelry for free download). I'll find a head to put it on when it dries. This is in Dalegarn Baby Ull, of which I have mucho, at 8 stitches to the inch.

Dream in Color Cardigan

2010-08-24T20:08:00.007-04:00

Such a springy, unsplitting, easy yarn to work with; the second sweater I’ve made with the same colorway, same machine-washable yarn.

I’m still following the “cartoon” for measurements from Beth Brown-Reinsel’s Gansey book, but otherwise, just knit as I go, this time including the texturing from Starmore’s Celtic Collection (k-p-k-p-k-p- on one side, and k on the reverse): a nice nubble. The cabled circle with the bobble in the middle is also from her Celtic Collection.

about six stitches to the inch on #6 needles

I’ll get another picture when it’s dried and be-buttoned, and--wowser-- on someone, instead of flattened like a bug.

ECO is here, ECOis here

2010-08-19T07:05:00.028-04:00

Cascade's Ecological Wool--"Eco"-- is (FINALLY) stuffing the shelves at Knitting Etc. And we should all go empty those shelves as fast as Hickory stuffs them. This yarn does anything you want it to and does it fast. And inexpensively. You won't believe how much yarn you get for how little money. 478 yards: when you wind it into balls, you need to make at least three balls. It goes on and on and on, this yarn does. (This may well be why Hickory was reluctant to stock it: she can't earn much. But our gratitude must count for a lot.)

I fell under Eco's spell when I was away on leave last year, away at WEBS in Massachusetts, where Eco went on sale (!). A knitting friend and I emptied a few shelves, and Eco has been my buddy ever since. It's my default yarn: whenever I ponder what to do next and no baby present or intricate new pattern needs to be done, I fall back on my big ole stash of ECO.

You can knit it at suggested gauge--fourteen to sixteen stitches per 4 inches, on #9 or #10 needles--that will go fast and glorious. Or you can as comfortably knit at a smaller gauge for a denser fabric. This latter is what I so often find myself choosing. Since now I know that I get five stitches to the inch with a number six needle, I don't even need to do a swatch; just start knitting and thinking of what I'll do next.

Yup, knit then think is not the obvious order for doing a project, but with ECO I'm so eager to get going, that I think of the person I'm knitting for, his or her circumference, and off I go, planning on the way.

I just finished the owl jacket at the top of the page, for one of my twin grand daughters (for both of them, one at a time, that is), transposing the "mooody owls" from a ravelry.com mitten pattern, choosing Alice Starmore fair isle patterns, and coming up with a few of my own. As you can see from the photos below, I have favored the un-dyed tones (with a pinch of red someone gave me). Hickory is now selling both the un-dyed and the intriguing dyed or "colored" yarns (nicknamed "Eco + ").

Here are pictures of most of what I've done with ECO this year, with dear departed Yogi sleeping in the sun for scale in this first picture:

This is a pattern called "Pakuna," and I nicknamed it "Zebra Pakuna," to send to my daughter in South Africa. A friend modelled it; afterwards I added a Latvian braid to cover a few of the rough edges:"Pillow" and "Back Of"--for a friend who'd once made a pillow for me.

And, below, experiments with Barbara Walker "mosaic" stitches:

Baby Ben's Vest

2010-08-15T09:50:00.007-04:00

Couldn't be simpler, which is good because I was so excited by the news that I had to produce a welcoming present instantmediately and without delay, pronto. A friend, who for a moment until the final adoption papers are signed shall remain known as Ithaca Red, attended the birth and cut the cord of her son Ben, a very few days ago. I learned on the 13th of his arrival ( on the 10th), and knitting all night (not really), while watching season 4 of "Lost," my size 4 needles shaped this boxy and boy-y little vest. Made with leftover Cleckheaton 8-ply (superwashable) wool, it's soft and springy with twisted rib edges, measures almost square (11' w x 13" h); and I'll go get a shirt to go within--off to Target.

owlmost finished

2010-08-12T13:28:00.006-04:00

I'm on the second sleeve, so the sweater should be ready to block before bedtime tonight. With twisted ribbing for the bands, the edging lies nicely, with the modified v-neck. DebDot picked out the wooden twig buttons. And I've got a little owl face on one sleeve--but won't do more owl heads on the other sleeve, as the intarsia was a clumsy bother while I was working with twelve-inch needles and several many lines of brown yarn. So, other adornments on the second sleeve.

Owls in Progress

2010-08-10T11:14:00.006-04:00

On to the sleeves (and tiny owls running along the center), then front and neck bands. I'm stuck at home today since the Volvo's getting its 100,000 mile check-up, so...bring on the sleeves.

The Owls are coming

2010-08-10T09:26:00.003-04:00

and now some "moody owls"

2010-08-09T11:37:00.008-04:00

I found "moody owls" in a mitten pattern, on ravelry.com, which I'm using for the nine-inch owls on this sweater for the GIRLS. This weekend, recuperating from a very intense, filling, attuned week of a writing workshop at Cornell, this weekend when I could hardly lift my chin off the table after leading my way through many people's lives-in-writing, I knit ten inches of this latest Eco Wool sweater.

You can't yet see the owl faces (they don't yet exist), but there'll be two stern and two meditative ("angry" / "sad" ?) owls, four all together. So far, just wings and white bellies. I continue making up the sweaters as I go, a fine way to stay interested, and this weekend I didn't even need anything interesting, just the motions, the yogick rhythms. To be continued.

The back and bebuttoned front of that mosaic sweater. To hide the goofs on the neckline, and to give nice open neck space, I'm pinning down the red inner neck--a design feature always revises the mistakes....

sans buttons

2010-08-05T13:49:00.009-04:00

Well, this is a mixed bag, a good experiment, but with some dopey mishaps that mute its success as a sweater. In my attempt to finish the sweater during my "free" weekend, I got lazy or careless around the neck. After deciding I couldn't do an elaborate mosaic during all the shoulder decreases, without losing the pattern for the decreases, I did something so simple (I do like topping the sweater in the lightest two color choices to hand) as an alternate pattern, that I stopped paying attention, in several ugly ways or with several ugly results, which I won't elaborate on, but which make some iffy spots along the neckline. (I get into "whatever" moods some times.)

Then, something that's NOT my unmindful fault, because I knew to use very cool water bringing this sweater to its blossom, the #$%^ red yarns bled a little bit. Nothing life-threatening, already invisible as I lay it out on the blocking board. So I think this mishap might be negligible.

I've got some buttons in my stash which will do very well. So, once this sweater dries, I'll put them on and post a final picture.

Now on to BLUE OWLS--very significant.

The Mosaic takes shape....

2010-07-31T13:30:00.006-04:00

What a day this is! I was planning on driving a lot this weekend, going to Connecticut for a night with my mother, and on to Boston for a baby shower, then back again by Sunday evening. But metal on metal sang out to me yesterday morning, as I drove the dog to the doggie hotel: brake pads without padding. Since I couldn't get the pads refitted in time to leave town, I have an entire unscheduled Ithaca weekend in my lap, and I'm having THE BEST time--I keep chuckling. I started watching "Lost," on my computer via netflix; never saw that while it was running on television. And it's the perfect companion to knitting this mosaic sweater.

Time now for Season 1, Episode 13...and the second sleeve. Then, bringing the pieces all together, I'll knit either a raglan or a saddle shoulder, and probably use a very light color combination and an elaborate 44-row pattern called "Odin's Eagles."

Stay tuned. Oh my I'm having a nice weekend (and the dog's still at the doggie hotel).

Fairy Castle Cardigan, Baby Surprise Jacket, and MOSAIC sweater

2010-07-28T17:07:00.015-04:00

This Misti Alpaca, a discontinued four-ply baby alpaca I got at a WEBS sale last year, has blossomed into this lovely "Fairy Castle" cardigan for the girls. Very light worsted, and light weight, and soft! This is the third “gansey,” using Brown-Reinsel’s system of proportions for setting the size. I put “gansey” in quotations, because really I used B-R’s sizings and very little else. One would never do a gansey in baby alpaca, nor pock it with such lacy, permeable design features. I knitted the plain bottom section, got heavy bored, wandered through Barbara Walker’s Second Treasury, where I (re-) found her “Gingerbread Castle,” and started immediately. I did her “Cam Cable” for the front panels, and did her “Totem Pole” eyelet pattern for the sleeves. LOVE IT. I like picking patterns as I go along.

And the eyelets outside the button bands are from Kate Gilbert’s “Samantha.”

The bottom picture has the buttons I’ve now sewn on (good taste, Hickory) . Very simple, light, almost dissolving into the sweater.

So, I finished that beauty last week, and immediately knit a little "Baby Surprise Jacket" for the gender-surprise Doyle baby, whose shower I'm driving to in Boston this weekend. Well, I’m a grumpus, because EVERYONE loves the Baby Surprise Jacket, but I’m not a fan of this sweater, though it’s cute enough and will do for the newborn baby .. I did attached i-cord all the way around, even the shoulder seams (with three needle bind-off to get a little eyelet going there), which takes the unfinished look away. I did it asymmetrical (thanks, Ysolda on ravelry.com), kept it gender-surprise with the pastel yellow/green/blue/tan of the yarn. The yarn, Schaefer's Nichole, is soft, washable, springy, very easy to knit with. And the duck buttons enforce its baby appropriateness. I’ll find a little shirt or onesie to put under it, and I’ll have a nice baby shower gift.

And now, I'm off and running on a Mosaic sweater for the girls. After seeing Barbara Walker, the gifted and eminent Barbara Walker, the Barbara Walker who "unvented" the mosaic, to counter her dislike of fair isle, posing in her own mosaic sweater, in her interview in Fall, 2010's Interweave Knits, I thought, ah ha, a nice way to continue using my ridiculously large stash of Cascade Eco-Wool. And so, here I go, once again using only the sizing proportions from Brown-Reinsel, choosing different mosaic patterns (from Walker's Second Treasury), and knitting and slipping. I put this in-progress piece atop my Tunisian rug, which will now become inspiration for patterning:

Loving the Summer and anticipating the Fall

2010-07-23T09:47:00.033-04:00

It's been MONTHS since I've thought to blog about knitting, so please excuse--if you've ever been checking this blog--the lacuna (nice word and the title of a fine Barbara Kingsolver book I just finished, with a narrator who's almost a lacuna himself, whose journals are edited and published by a retiring violet named Violet). Here I am, on the verge of recovering my scanner, whose cord has been missing for thirteen months, and whose substitute cord it doesn't quite appreciate so there'll be no scanning for yet another block of time, un-urgent scanner I seem to be.

Here's a book NOT to buy: Annie Modesitt's 1000 Hats; the title provides quite a come-on for using your stash, right? But there are only ten "prize winning" patterns, all the nine hundred and ninety others are images only. That book is going back to amazon.com later today, for sure.

So, it's the hot middle of the summer, and my girls, who turned five this past weekend, have no thoughts of sweaters, only of mud-dancing, ballet dancing, and biking:

But with a bit more futures-planning, I've been knitting for kindergarten:

First, the second self-designed gansey, done in Dale Falk for washability and natural ivory coloring. It came out smaller than I'd wanted, in part from the pulling together of the elaborate cables, in part from natural un-mindfulness. But it will fit them this winter.

That one will be a cardigan after I do the steeks, which you can't see. My first steeking, I, so far, think steeking is a waste of time. But at least I'll know how to do it.

Then, here's the "wonderful wallabee," which I did originally for a store sample, with dibs on it for Christmas. I taught a class or two of this design, used Schaefer Miss Priss, and know they'll like the pouch pocket and hoodie:

And here's the first self-designed gansey I did, in Madeline Tosh DK, a wonderfully soft machine-washable wool. Again, I did this as a store sample, and will be teaching a class in designing your own gansey, with Barbara Brown-Reinsel's book as a fine guide, in the fall; and stealing back this sweater for the girls a bit after that:

My favorite new sweater for the girls: I've just finished a self-designed alpaca (in Misti Alpaca 4 ply) cardigan. But it's wet and blocking in the basement, so I'll post pictures and further descriptions in a day or two.

Other non-kindergarteners sweaters and so forth: among the many projects I've knit since January, a nice alpaca beanie:

a store-sample baby hat and finger-less mittens:

and Connie Chang Chinchio's "Ithaca Jacket," again, for the store FOR NOW, but going, if it suits her, to dil Schuyler, after I've taught the class in the early fall:

And, the girl's version of Ryland's Vest (by Hickory), with ruffles from Stitchionary:

And now it's onward with more Kindergarten Cardigans.

Knitting Through the Snow Storm

2010-02-26T11:33:00.013-05:00

Though I'm determined to get out, further, that is, than the driveway to shovel out my car, I've not been able to drive--yet--to Massachusetts, which had been my weekend's destination. So, between reading student papers, eating Irish oatmeal, and laughing at the way the snow drowns/covers/entraps Khikho, I've switched between reading Charlotte Bronte's Villette and knitting a pillow that says "Pillow," not that there'd be any mistaking what it is. It started as a double-strand sweater, which I'd abandoned in January as being too thick even for someone in January, and, with winter whimsy, became a "Pillow...Back Of." I used, as I have several other times, the lettering font from unionpurl's Peruvian Chulla, closed the two ends, one with Kitchener stitch, one with three-needle bind-off, and I've got me a birthday present for a wonderful ole friend, whose chuckles I hear already across the snowy divide of Ithaca to Connecticut.

Also did this "Montreal Tuque," out of stashed Blue Sky Alpaca.

And am now going to while away the afternoon doing "Fiddlehead Mittens."

And, if the plows are my friends, I'll go tomorrow to Massachusetts.

Alexander, this one's for YOU

2010-02-16T15:52:00.010-05:00

Just want to share (pictures of) this satisfying sweater, made with Cascade Ecological wool, undyed (except for the red bits), rough and tumble. On size 6 needles, at 5 stitches to the inch, I got a heady dense texture. Big as the fabric is, to fit my fine tall son (50 inches circumference), the knitting flew along. I picked and chose motifs as I went and my fancy found them. I did some hidden red in the turned hem (you'll never find it in these pictures), and had to restrain myself during the two weeks of knitting from putting in too much red: I wanted to keep it in valuable abeyance, with a Latvian braid here and a tiny stripe there, ending with the inside of the turned collar. I found the medieval cats on a medieval pouch (ravelry), took a dragon graph out of Meg Swansen's Sweaters From Camp, and generally had a nice time.

"Ah, la belle chose que de savoir quelque chose !" Knowing how to knit sweaters without patterns.

I'll give this to Alexander next weekend.

Home again, home again.

2009-12-28T07:52:00.010-05:00

I came home yesterday from Christmas visits in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and first uploaded pictures, mostly of my four-year-old granddaughters' besotted pleasures. In the above two-shots, the girls are on their way to bed on Christmas Eve. Even though they look beyond excited, they fell asleep in three minutes, and stayed asleep for eleven hours--if only the knowledge that Santa comes to those who sleep worked every night of the year, heh.
The day after Christmas, and more subdued, Ainsley gets ready to go tromping in the snow, in the Eco Wool sweater I made up last Spring. It's such a winner, I stopped at WEBS (end-of-year blowout sale), on my way from Massachusetts to Connecticut, to get more and still more of these yarns to make more, larger and smaller, same and different. I do like the turned in and hemmed and wide neck, so will repeat that, when I get to making more of these.

And I wish this picture of my mother, graciously, laughingly enjoying her Xmas mittens, was a better or truer picture of her,...But it's not. The mittens on the other hand are perfect. Baby Ull and the Twist Collective "Postwar Mittens" pattern. Mom and I (and the mittens) went off to see "Young Victoria" (I think that's the title) and have dinner at a boutique Spanish restaurant.

And now I'm home, the new snow started, and almost stopping, and I am getting to work organizing my life--not too modest an ambition. With only the afterthought heel to go on my own Christmas stocking (couldn't quite get it done by the 24th, heh), I'm also getting ready for new knitting projects.

Christmas Stockings and mitten

2009-12-17T08:29:00.020-05:00

The stockings are modifications or take-offs of "Judy's Colors" stockings, all knit while leading a class in these handsome stockings, at Knitting Etc. I got a bit excited, wasn't able to exit the stocking mode. These are for my DIL, Schuyler, my son, Alexander (with the requisite purple dinosaur, Mary), my daughter, Elizabeth, and her housemate, Kevin, both Seattle doctors on duty over Xmas, so needing stockings to stave off self-pity.

The mitten (whose partner is in the works), is for my mother, who power walks every morning come rain or come freeze, and who, then, will appreciate the warmth of the Dale Baby Ull stranded knitting. The pattern, Postwar Mittens by Mary Ann Stephens, is available at Twist Collective, and designs a mighty elegant gant.

*Why is all the above underlined? Go figure.*

Maggie Goes Samantha

2009-11-08T20:21:00.005-05:00

Maggie, who's had this sweater for a year, has grown into it. Her mom just sent this picture. Are they a dear combination!!

May the force be with you, Gooser

2009-10-27T12:06:00.007-04:00

After consulting with Alexander, who has an excellent memory of the possible self-consciousness of an eleven-year-old, I decided not to knit Gooser a Star Wars hat for his birthday, which is today, since he might feel a little un-brave wearing it to middle school, but, rather, to give him a pillow, which he can enjoy in the privacy of his own bedroom. Stormtroopers and R2D2s, yes. Cant wait to give it to him, along with some beef jerky, late this evening, when I get home from teaching the Samantha (dress/jacket/tunic/sweater) class, session one. I know he'll love the beef jerky, and he can pretend to love the pillow, whether or not. (I had Huron County buffalo jerky for him, very special, but Yogi found and devoured it, just before he died; and that's the truth.)
And here's the match to Eliza's Norwegian Star hat, for Ainsley. Mailed last week, these hats might be on their heads when I see the girls this weekend. I'll get to attend their make-up dance class on Saturday morning, after an overnight with Mom, at Dawn's School of Dance, where I got to go every Monday while living in Northampton last winter/spring. It's a hoot and a half. (Not that they'll be wearing their hats in class, but maybe when we go trick-or-treating later on Saturday.)

Hats

2009-10-18T10:51:00.007-04:00

Aside from afghan squares, of which I've now completed about thirty-five (of sixty-three), I seem mainly to be knitting hats, hats, hats. All containable projects, easy to pick up and put down (and take dog-park walks with). This blog has subsided; and I don't know when I'll resume thinking about knitting enough to write more, so for now, here are the various hats on and off needles. And a little vest, the fem' variant of Hickory's "Ryland's Vest, " pattern soon available at knittingetc. newsletter, my ruffles an option. To identify the hats here, you could go to my "projects" page, my sort of knitting history, at ravelry.com/people/lyndabogel (at least I think you can go there).

Doing Scales. . .all summer

2009-07-30T18:35:00.014-04:00

I'm off of real music, and on to scales, doing every scale I can find, both in Barbara Walker's Learn-to-Knit Afghan Book, and, quickly, beyond--beyond to her anthologies of stitches, treasuries. I'll be using her book to teach afghan - making this fall, so am getting a jump on the blanket. It's an excellent book, helpfully graduated in technical challenges--one starts with a striped garter stitch square, moves through various textures, cables, laces, slip stitches, keep on movin', until one has--if one pays no attention to the passing of years--sixty-three eight-inch squares. (And then you just have to put them together.) No problem.

So, I'm blocking the first dozen, and will take pattern libraries to Michigan, when I go in about a week, as well as balls of this Cascade 220 superwash.

The only other thing I've done this month, I think, is this little sweater for baby Isaac, across the street (also in Cascade 220 superwash).

I'll be teaching four knitting classes this fall. In addition to the afghan, I'm teaching two sweater classes, the Cayuga Cardigan, and Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket. Later in the fall I'll offer a Christmas Stocking class.

Saia's off to the Funny Farm

2009-07-22T11:52:00.005-04:00

Saia's off to the Funny Farm as soon as they cross-wrap her arms/sleeves around on the back.

Heh, here's a six-weeks baby in a six-to-nine months "Samantha."

Goodbye to WEBS !!

2009-06-30T13:50:00.011-04:00

I think we've had three parties at WEBS in the last week: not only do we love to knit, we love a send0ff. And, lucky me, I'm the one being sent off. In the top picture, I'm wearing a present that I think is not originally a hat, but reminds me of what one wears to Ithaca's 8-sided school house, back in the days when one knit without a commercial alternative.

The other pictures feature the four tiaras I was given; and you'd need to know the Princely Prince Charles story to understand why so many great minds thought alike in giving me tiaras: "I'm a Winner."

I have made wonderful friends at WEBS, staff, teachers, and knit-along regulars. Such a snappy community, of edgy, witty, concerted, varied women. We learn from each other, about slip stitches and canine lupus and matters of the heart. What a rich six months for me!

Sharon, Barbara, Kathy, Marlene, Rina, Pat, Pixie, Beth, Jenny, Gail, Nicole, Dori, Louisa, Karen, Leslie Anne, oh my: thanks for sharing, laughing, and commiserating.

bathroom pictures

2009-06-23T08:03:00.012-04:00

Good morning, Kangaroo yarns. I guess I won't be showering early this day. All my beauties have aired overnight, and feel ready to be wound today.
Above and below: wool with a bit of tencel, for sheen, a la J-Knit Stunning. We did two parcels of this, at 450 yards apiece, so lovely Sharon Burke and I can do identical scarves, a pattern that Dori Betjeman designed and displays at WEBS. I think this forest floor color range might be superb; it's the one I'm probably most excited by, maybe because I know what garment it's heading toward.
The other green colorways yarn is Green Mountain Spinnery's wool/mohair blend ("Mountain Mohair"), a 140 yd skein Gail had given me. It was my first try with the green blendings of dye.
And here's the kid silk haze. I'm not a little relieved to witness it fluffing up and drying away from the sodden matted plops it was yesterday. Gail and I set two chairs on her porch about twenty feet apart and strung this out, so we could, after tying it neatly along the ways, make long colors before it would repeat. Dyeing it in two bowls, I created at first what looked like the leftovers at a beauty shop. But it seems to be becoming. Will be tricky to wind, no?
Trying a range of reds on "O" merino wool, which I bought yesterday at the Shelburne shop, Metaphor Yarns:
And here's sock yarn Gail gave me, the same yarn she dyes her sock yarn for WEBS:
And now, on with the day.

Samantha Six

2009-06-22T10:38:00.008-04:00

This one touches on majesty. The button choice is rare. Samantha remains my favorite girl baby present. Drat, the color of the photo doesn’t get the deep raspberry, mixed with hidden tone of blue. dark. Look deep into the top right corner of the front, and think even darker.

This Kate Gilbert pattern always draws me. This one for baby Saia Mizrahi, born on 2 June. The bold reds will take well into November and February. I can't wait to meet her, on my return to Ithaca next week.

I spent all afternoon dyeing, with my WEBS friend Gail Callahan, the fine KANGAROO DYER, whose new book on hand-dyeing will be published in January by Storey Press. (See her ETSY shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=57917; and her web site: http://www.kangaroodyer.com/index.htm

Gail and I had a fabulous three hours. I got to dye that "O" wool, some Green Mt Spinnery Wool/Mohair, some wool/tencel that's exactly the same as J-Knit Stunning (for twin scarves a Webs friend and I want to do), some Kid Silk Haze, in long variegations (by winding the yarn around two distant porch chairs), and a silk scarf. I'm off to hang them now, so I can wind them tomorrow.

Mo's Aran Sweater Pillow

2009-06-10T10:04:00.009-04:00

What a great present for Mo, who’s brought me several Irish sweaters from her Galway travels over the years. This centers on and begins with the “three-hour aran,” a one-sided allusion to the sweaters she brings stateside every year. Then I running-stitched the sweater onto a twelve-inch stockinette square. Then knit a forty-eight-inch border, about two inches wide, with one fat cable running around between garter stitch edging. To ease the boredom of doing the edge, I simultaneously knit another, plainer–to not compete–12-inch square, using the “blackberry” bubbles to echo the popcorn on the sweater.

Thought I’d have to find a weenie 12-inch pillow, but with the edging of course the outcome is a plush 14-inch throw pillow. I stayed up late, for me, last night mattress-stitching it all together. and LOVE IT. (And Mo will love it.)

I used WEBS' Valley Superwash, and #6 needles. (I knit/closed the pillow into the pillow covering, so even though it's all washable, I'm not making it easy to do that: don't drink wine next to this one, Mo.)

I salute those who have knitted an entire aran afghan (see Great American Aran Afghan on ravelry and elsewhere), for such a long-running and intricate project. I’ll never do one, but will do lots of pillows in the future, both aran and fair isle (I already have some plans for fair isle sweater pillows), and who knows what else.

a little catch up

2009-06-03T17:09:00.015-04:00

I've been busy in May, with a three-day wedding, a niece's Yale graduation, and Elizabeth's becoming Doctor Bogel. I've also been spending more money than I can tally with three dogs having Lyme disease (blech; the nicer person would feel sympathy for the dogs; I feel sorry for my bank account). Yesterday, I got myself tested for Lyme disease, at the Northampton ER, and seem not to have it, since no one's called me with positive test results: and I'm the only one with health insurance.

In the interstices, at the top of the page, is a three-hour aran sweater I made on Tuesday. Three-hour sweater! faster even than a baby sweater for this one is a one-sided, 9-inch "allusion" to "real" sweater. It will get sewn onto a square--which I'm in the process of knitting, to become a pillow. From The Great American Aran Afghan.

I've also made progress on Luella, the cotton vest cardigan:

And worked up a little demi-tam, out of yarn I dyed, in Gail Callahan's workshop at the MA sheep and wool festival: an organic wool from the Green Mountain Spinnery. The hat took one skein, of undyed gray, and I dyed a second skein, of white, which I'll knit another hat from.

Here's a version of Kate Gilbert's "syncopated cap," done in Regia sock yarns:

Tonight I listen under the stars (and knit onward making the aran pillow?) to my dear friend's two-person Blue Grass band, The Don't Tell Darlings, on tour in my part of Massachusetts. Have a listen: http://www.myspace.com/donttelldarlings

Luella

2009-05-19T16:54:00.007-04:00

I just started this one, which I'm aiming to give to Schuyler, should it fit (I've been having challenges lately about who fits what, what fits whom). A summer robin's egg blue vest, in cotton with a touch of rayon for drape (Berroco Touché). It's a free Berroco pattern with the regional name "Luella." When I noticed pretty much everything I've knitted this past month has been in tones of brown, I thought it advisable to lighten up color wise.

I'm now mother of Doctor Elizabeth, while she, just back from Africa, without even her internal clock readjusted during graduation rituals in Boston, has taken wing to Paris, to hike in the French Alps with a dear high school friend, before returning to NY and MA, and driving west to Seattle. But she's clothed, should it be intemperate, in new sweaters from moi.

That's Connie's design, and isn't it a beauty! Fleece Artist Woolie Silk 3-ply.

So now, onward to Spring colors, and armless fast-knits.

Zebra Pakuna

2009-05-15T17:59:00.012-04:00

Four-fifths of this sweater is a rush, a dash, a few evenings’ stockinette. Then, as though I’d come to the great jungle river, there’s the cautious slowing down, the tediousness of wrapping each strand over the other, the switch-ups, the sleep-inducing slog of the corrugated ribbing. But, having finished that and so feeling sassy, I’ll not complain, except to say I’m not complaining. Quite a bit of satisfying edge and collar work to do, which pulls the sweater together.

Thanks to Pat Ocelet, top, and Dori Betjeman for modeling this sweater at WEBS. (Dori is the knitter's guru, the fearless leader of my Advanced Fearless Finishing Class; Pat O is a knitting pal in several weekly drop-in-knit-alongs, also at WEBS.) It was excellent to fit the sweater onto actual bodies, since the asymmetry made it challenging to envision how it would suit a person, and where to put the single button.

We opted for no button, so the recipient could place the --what's it called?--where the lines fell right.

As you can see from the two bottom pictures, after photographing friends at WEBS this afternoon, I added a braid at the left neckline, to cover the awkward transition from corrugated ribbing to stand-up collar: a successful little trick.

I modified the pattern--Berocco, #277 Pakuna--to fight boredom, by putting in the various lines of contrasting color all about. I didn't use Peruvia (though it's very nice), but kept plugging away at the Cascade Eco Wool I'd bought much of during WEBS' April sale.

And I thought of this as being, in an abstract sort of way, an homage to zebras, and a present to Elizabeth on her return from South African Safari (zebra...). I still believe in the zebra allusion, but don't think the sweater's going to fit Doctor Liz, think it will be a bit small.

If that's the case, Schuyler will get a Zebra Pakuna (and if it doesn't fit or suit her, on to my next smallest friend...).

Knitting Notes from Abroad

2009-05-12T08:27:00.006-04:00

Here's Elizabeth and Camille, a woman she met this week while on budget safari through Kruger National Park, in South Africa. On their way to the Park, before the sights became lions eating Water Buffalo kill, and thirty passing elephants, and one hundred tree-grazing giraffes, and impatient hyenas, on their way, they got to know each other while they knitted. E's been doing row after row of her baby blanket (due date for little Mizrahi is 5 June), and Camille was doing socks, with yarn she'd found hand-dyed in Scotland.

What brings us together and where: the contest winner of the week.

(And Camille, who works in London, is a 2002 Cornell graduate, an English and Classics major: small world, small stitches.)

Tonight Elizabeth will be home, in Boston, after two months in Africa, and will be DOCTOR LIZ on Sunday. Party time in Beantown for everyone who can make it.

Icelandic Improv and Fearless Finishing sampler

2009-05-08T11:56:00.012-04:00

I whipped this Icelandic goodie up, after mis-gauging my gauge. That is, I’d started to make a (Lopi) patterned Icelandic sweater for my full-grown son, but soon noticed I’d miscalculated the gauge swatch. So, I took off boldly to make a sweater that fit the gauge. Added lots of Balkan braids, left the neck opening large, so, even though this (Cascade0 Eco wool is quite soft, no neck would be scratched for this project. At the finish, the arms were longer that the body, proportionately speaking. So, I cut the body (with two lines of live stitches on needles), and added a few inches and another braid (to hide the 3-needle bind-off), and VOILA. For some lucky seven-year-old. About four nights of knitting pleasure. And I’m on to another Eco wool project, a Nora Gaughan sweater, having bought mucho at WEBS’ sale, one of the bargains of the world, even when it’s not on sale. Yogi with a summer buzz cut labors to absorb the sun, unimpressed with the sweater.

Here's a first photo of one of the two sampler sweaters, knitted during Dori Betjeman’s “Advanced Fearless Finishing” class at WEBS. I haven’t even finished the zipper, but someone loaned me a bear yesterday at WEBS, so I snapped this picture.

six sweaters in one week

2009-04-28T16:45:00.012-04:00

Of course the title lies, but it gets one reading, doesn't it? Three of the sweaters would fit (will fit) teddy bears. They're samplers, as it were, from classes I've been taking, to try out techniques in a small space: four kinds of pockets, steeking, double pick-up neck edging, tubular cast-ons and bind-offs, invisible hems, knitted bias edging for the zippers, on and on. These best-dressed teddy bears, belonging to Ainsley and Eliza, will be the envy of shabbier toys. Three of the sweaters are "real," and have been being juggled one against another for several weeks.

Norah Gaughan's "Manon," in heather brown Cascade 220 super wash, and Connie Chang Chinchio's "Varese Hoodie,"in the variegated Nova Scotian Fleece Artist (woolie silk). Both of them quite wonderful, better of course in life than in the photos. Thanks to NICOLE at WEBS for modeling them today.

I'll post teddy bear sweater pictures another time (it's 95 degrees here at 5:00 p.m.), and the sixth sweater is a Zimmerman one I started and disliked in March. But I'm hell-bent on finishing all six this week.

Cabling at six thousand miles

2009-04-18T10:06:00.005-04:00

Ain't it a little mystery that Elizabeth, down under in Lesotho, southern Africa, can learn how to cable--working on a baby present for her best high school friend--while six thousand miles from Knitting Etc., her knitting mother, and a knittinghelp.com video !! She emailed this picture, to brag about her first cables.

ooops

2009-04-16T08:33:00.009-04:00

I've overlooked this poor knitting blog, perhaps because I've been jumping from sweater to sweater to hat to "fearless finishing" projects during the last month. And been working on "real life." But here's one of the four sweaters I've finished, or almost finished, the only one I've got pictures of yet: Connie Chang Chinchio's "Far Afield Vest," from Interweave Knits (Fall, 2008). Modelled by pals at WEBS, the vest was an Easter present for my friend and DIL, and still wants its belt. Knitted in Cascade's Eco Wool--on super sale at WEBS--

I'll snap some of the other projects, even if they're not quite finished, and enter another "got gauge" hello...soon.

Elizabeth knits and so do I

2009-03-14T11:14:00.009-04:00

I had my last, last visit with Elizabeth, before she leaves for two months working at an AIDS and tuberculosis hospital in Lesotho, southern Africa. After seeing her last Sunday at Alexander's, and seeing her overnight in Boston on Tuesday and Wednesday, with my mother, I met her at WEBS yesterday, for a two-hour stitch and bitch: she's decided to relearn how to knit, to make a blanket for a dear friend's first baby--a good occupation during twelve-hour flights this week, and post-stress evenings in her little apartment in Lesotho. After I'd devised a pattern, with texture, cables--variety--for her, and after choosing the super-wash Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran, we sat in one of the classrooms at WEBS, having a knitty visit. So, above, she is casting on and garter stitching a border. We'll hope to post pictures of her cables and so forth as the weeks go by.

And I've made beautiful headway with Connie's Varese Hoodie:

Though I had another five inches, yesterday, to finish the back, and though these colors aren't true, you get the idea.

Connie's Varese Hoodie and tube scarves

2009-03-09T17:30:00.011-04:00

My yarn, to knit Connie Chang Chinchio's "Varese Hoodie," for Elizabeth's birthday JUST ARRIVED (and I have to go to Boston for two days, darn, as I'm chomping at the bit to start this). The yarn, in ""Woodland," is Fleece Artist Woolie Silk 3 ply, not an easy yarn to come by, especially in some of its most earthy tones. But I found a seller in Oregon, who sent along a lovely small zipper pouch, as a bonus for spending (almost ) $100: nice.

While I rubbed my needles together waiting for the yarn, I made inordinate use of the Addi Express, an odd "machine," aka turn it clockwise for half an hour, ouch, that knits tubes of a modest circumference. Some years back, Hickory demonstrated for me by "knitting" a mohair scarf, which I gave to my mother, whose friends in her retirement community quite coveted. So, I asked Hickory to send the machine to me in Northampton, and to send a few balls of Filatura di Crosa Multicolor, a mohair/acrylic delicacy. She sent eight skeins. I worked them all into these scarves; then, like the obsessed princess who couldn't think of Rumpelstiltskin's name, made scarves for my grand daughters, scarves for their Lady Alexander dolls, blankets for their Disney fairies--what a way to bust stash!

I'm very ready to resume hand knitting. I've almost finished the February Lady Sweater, which I hardly like at all, though I'm wild for the Jamieson's Grouse Shetland Heather. I can only hope the finished sweater makes me think less often, than it does now, of shapeless old ladies milking the cows in Michigan while they crochet toilet paper cozies.

w-i-ps

2009-03-01T11:25:00.006-05:00

I'm going to hear my favorite Estonian composer this afternoon, Arvo Part, at Amherst College, instrumental and choral works. ( "Lynda, who are your two favorite Estonian composers?" "Arvo Part and . . . .") Preceded by a docent-led tour of relevant Orthodox icons in the art museum's collection. So, will leave behind my computer and its school work as well as at least five works-in-progress, all of them in the smidge, you can hardly see what they will become shapes. So, a little help from me: Zimmerman-derived February Lady Sweater, lace descending, in a rough Jamieson's yarn that will counter the wimpy lace; two fair-isle hats, one in Jamieson's spindrift, one in WEBS Valley Yarns Deerfield (alpaca and silk); and the Blue Sky Alpaca fair isle cowl I'm "designing," quotes to indicate that I'm just doing a twenty-six inch long tube (nine or ten inches around), with patterns that strike my fancy as I go, and the yarn that's left over from two bigger projects from years' past.

Hickory and Steven kindly loaned to me their Addi Express, which arrived on my front porch Friday night along with eight skeins of varied multicolored mohair. I immediately set up the machine, and made a few of the scarves, requested by my mother for her admiring friends, who've liked the tube scarf Hickory showed me how to do a few years ago (that is, Hickory made it for me). Saturday morning, when my grand daughters were over, Ainsley and I made a third; and the girls made off with that one and one that I'd done, dashing my initial hope to take a picture of the mass of scarves--gold spun out of straw, as it were. When I make a few more I'll post a picture.

Valentine's Day Sweater #2

2009-02-22T16:37:00.004-05:00

I'll add some text in the next day or so, but wanted to post the pictures of Valentine's Day sweater #2, and its happy recipient, Eliza. My grand daughters had a sleepover with me this weekend, which was marvelous fun, but our night was a bit "short,' and I'm a bit wasted. More later.

Oh, am working now on a sweater for my daughter, the Februrary Women's Sweater, grown up from E. Zimmerman's February baby sweater. I'm working it in Jamieson's Shetland Heather ("Grouse"), and will go pull stitches now, eager to get to WEBS tomorrow to buy a longer needle: I started with a 27-inch lantern moon, and have gone from about 60 stitches to 306, and there's just NO ROOM on the cable.

Valentine's Day sweaters

2009-02-12T15:07:00.008-05:00

Well, I fell short of my goal to make two Valentine's Day sweaters, for Ainsley and Eliza, in time for Actual Valentine's Day. But did finish the first one, and am going to work long tonight on the second. I particularly liked the heart motif I found in volume three of Barbara Walker's invaluable books. The sweater, in size 6 for growing three-year-olds, is considerably bigger==longer and wider--than I'd hoped or expected, so the second one I'm now working on I'll do in the round (an irrelevant modification for size purposes), and shorten and narrow a tad, and probably do completely different yokes while keeping Walker's hearts: my grand daughters are in the height of their appreciation for hearts and pinks and purples (and fairies and princesses and and ).

Another nice break

2009-02-01T17:32:00.005-05:00

Another nice break from knitting the Puzzle Jacket came with Saturday's morning with Ainsley and Eliza (while the 'rents did some errands and took themselves out to lunch). We did art work, at my house, cuddled under fairy-princess blankets while watching (some of ) MULAN--which was probably the scariest film they'd seen, so we paused and talked about warriors and Huns and why, why, why.

And made Mulan Muffins, to top off our luncheon.

Turn down the thermostat

2009-02-01T17:20:00.007-05:00

I finished this afternoon--3 1/2 weeks is trying to spend on one project. But now, let February do what January did, and I don't care how cold it grows (tiddlely pom), I've got this jacket for all winter weathers.

I'm both sick to death of knitting it and rueful that the project's over (sort of like the end of a teaching semester). I'm going to read a book as a transition back to unobsessive life, letting the fingers regain full blood flow, and the mind wander somewhere else.

It's snowing hard

2009-01-28T10:28:00.007-05:00

Can't go to the library, the snow's too dense to drive, and too wet to walk in. Excuse number one on this "definite snow day." So, I took lousy pictures of my w-i-p: top picture looks like I've got excessively shiny clean teeth and am sending tons of glowing love outwards.

Went, as is now my wont, to Tuesday's knit-along at WEBS, where the prospect of no leaving home today brought out twenty-five women to knit ensemble for three hours. I do this also on Thursday mornings, and knit my twelve-row repeat as assiduously as I can, having now crept a third the way up the second sleeve. My aim is to finish this sweater before February 1, or on February 1, when WEBS is having a special pre-Super Bowl knit-along, from 1-4. My goal: to have finished the sweater by then, so I can steam-block it with their blocking board and fine steamer. (If I were, instead, to wash and block this monster at home, it might take a week to dry.)

I talked my way into admittance to a special knitting class, starting in late winter: Advanced Fearless Finishing, led by WEBS' knitting guru, the go-to teacher for design and serendipity: Dori Betjemann: here's the course description:

Advanced Fearless Finishing

The Fearless forge on... to pockets, pocket linings, zippers, hems, facings, and other edging options! Certain cast-on and bind-off methods beyond the basic ones will be studied, and students will learn when to select (or substitute) them to enhance a garment structurally (not decoratively - that’s another class!). A toddler-sized sweater, hat and swatches are the projects, and homework is necessary. Your hard work will be rewarded when you apply these techniques to your knitted garments!

I'm skipping the two prereqs, even though Pixie, the head of WEBS education and a fine fellow, said my "sixty sweaters mean nothing," --OUCH--in terms of the graded sequence of skills taught in the two earlier classes. But I think the only thing I don't know, that's taught in the second class, "Fearless Finishing," is how to alter stair-stepped shoulder directions to short rows using the 3-needle bind-off. I can figure that one out, right?

Anyhow, I might find a second class to take as well, so I can bring new expertise back to Knitting Etc., yay.

Okay, enough snowy-day blogging. I'm going to do some school work!

Decorative Welts

2009-01-26T16:02:00.007-05:00

I'll post better pictures, when I finish--I still have an arm and some front bands for the left side to knit--but wanted to show, among other contrasts, the "decorative welt," connecting cabled front band to front body, and arm to body. Among the things these pictures don't show: the attached i-cord, on the other side, the edge side, of the cable band.

not spending money

2009-01-26T11:58:00.009-05:00

I've been living in Northampton, a sprint, a dash, from WEBS, for three weeks now, and am so proud that I've bought only a single set of Lantern Moon circular needles (and those with a Christmas gift certificate), to enhance the now endless experience of knitting "Puzzle Me This": even on size 8 needles, this jacket is going into its third week. I've made a vague phrased resolution to spend almost nothing, which will make the meaning of "nothing" and "almost" interesting to parse as the weeks go by. I'm loyal to the core to Knitting Etc; I've brought a generous but not overwhelming stash with me, and want the challenge of devising projects in relation to that stash; and I'm on a budget, as doubtless we all are more conscious of being on these last many months.

Since I can't make a dash for "Puzzle's" finish line, since it's a steady and lengthy haul, I took a break last night and started a lovely and popular-on-ravelry beret/toque/tam: "Selbu Modern."
The pattern's picture is above, not my hat's pic, which will follow. I'm using about five colors of Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift, which I brought along with me in my sabbatic stash. And enjoy being on size 2's after all the almost-aerobic workout of knitting the Noro Kochoran, a thick yarn on an only mid-sized needle. And oh, that sweater/jacket is dense.

My favorite discovery working with this "puzzle" pattern: when you do a three-needle bindoff in reverse, the "wrong" way, it's called a "decorative welt." Much of my joy in knitting is in the language, and this phrase lifts my spirits, connecting with make-up artistry and costume parties: "No problem, don't worry, it's okay, it's just a decorative welt."

while I'm knitting that Puzzle...

2009-01-17T10:11:00.011-05:00

I'm plugging away at "the Puzzle" sweater, will finish today the body, and get to add some cables as I start the arms--hoorah for difference. Meanwhile, I wanted to share some elephants and other past sweaters, adorning Baby Ryland (who's about to pop out of his elephants) and Ainsley and Eliza, around Christmas time. Sweaters and Sweeties: what's a nicer combination?!

w-i-p

2009-01-12T12:03:00.009-05:00

In the frozen tundra of winter, a reasonable person ought never complain about bright sunlight. But I've found a minor gripe ( and can always gripe, when push comes to shove): In the sunlit air above my lap, as I knit this morning, the short angora bits on my Kochoran sweater-in-progress swirl like sperm without direction, lifted, lilting, looking to make a nose sneeze, landing gently on my dark green fleece vest. Yogi, above, has no sperm, so he unwittingly chooses to sleep next to the angora bits: "It's a lovely day to lie near this sweater." Pheromones at work.

If the angora rabbit's hair is so long, where are these spermy bits coming from? And how does she keep her hair on?

Committed now to "The Puzzle"

2009-01-09T14:10:00.012-05:00

I paddled by all the sweater patterns I was contemplating on my last blog entry, and will sink or swim, instead with "Puzzle Me This," from Cheryl Oberle's new book, Knitted Jackets. My "Puzzle" will only somewhat resemble this photo, given the Noro yarn I'll be using, and given that I'll make it about four inches longer (and given that I don't have long blond hair or earrings). I sacrificed a pattern with vertical-running lines, which would be more "flattering," but am otherwise happy with the prospect of this project. Elongated (vertical) slip stitches will break up the body's garter stitch, while the texture of the cables, on the front borders and the sleeves, and the saddle shoulders will create narly texture (I did a "Gretel" slouch beret with cables in this yarn last winter, and, though you hardly see their definition, the cables make the beret rock, to my mind--and these cables will be a prize to knit after a long body experience with garter and slip stitch. So, stay tuned.

I will get going on this during evenings this weekend, since I'm not going to Boston this week (but next, when I have evidence of all the shots my dogs require to enter a new "boarding experience": I have to ask my Ithaca vet to fax the shot records to me somewhere up here).

I had dinner at my son, d-i-l, and Ainsley and Eliza's home last night, testing the "Tibetan" in Tibetan Terriers, by leaving the dogs out in a snowstorm, as the temperature sank to 23. We offered them shelter in the garage, somewhat warmer, but they , instead, romped for three hours in the fields, or sat facing into the blowing snow, stoic, majestic, patient (and, yet, eager to go home when I finally emerged). How I love being "neighbors" with my kids! Ainsley was proud to bestow on me her Christmas gift, candles she'd dipped at Yankee Candle, and wrapped in hand-colored paper. Eliza wondered where my knitting was, and requested some more stuffed- animal blankets, "because I take very good care of my animals."

tredding water

2009-01-06T18:04:00.013-05:00

I've got the world's last 2000 yards of Noro Kochoran #46, a discontinued colorway: I won't tell you where I am in Massachusetts, so you don't come steal it. I swatch and can't decide.

I've got the last nasty cold of 2008: ditto. I hawk and blow and sit down to rest.

Without, yet, the energy to commit yarn to needle, to begin a sweater/coat with this Kochoran, I wander ravelry, choosing and rejecting, and rechoosing just the pattern I want, and one I can have in an instant not a return U.S. mail. I'm both too tired and sniffly to knit and too impatient to wait for olde-fashioned presses (such as SchoolHouse) to pack up and post a tiny pattern.

Tonight, the options I hover among are "The Dream Coat," one that is perhaps too frisky and "many-colored" for this Josephina, though the vertical lines and the mitered squares are both appealing:
And the Adult Surprise Jacket, that ubiquitous Baby jacket of Elizabeth Zimmerman, grown up by popular demand. My reservations on doing the ASJ have to do with the mess I made of the one BSJ I knitted a year or so ago: I couldn't make sense of the stitch marker placement for the decreases, so didn't have a precise set of lines, one of the trademarks of the sweater. Were I home, Hickory or Suze could explain to me in a heartbeat.

But I'm somewhere in Massachusetts, uncertain and tired.

And there's "Imogen," even the name--especially the name?--I love, another vertical (knit side-to-side) jacket:

And "Tilt," a cardigan with vertical lines below (sort of like the base of the Einstein coat), with wonderful diagonal yoking, and i-cord seaming :
That's sort of where I am in Massachusetts. If anyone is reading this and has a shareable opinion, please share (ldb4@cornell.edu).

I probably won't start knitting until the weekend, as, when I've got the zip and zing, I am setting up my schedule of working in the mornings, on a sabbatical grant book project, going swimming and to Weight Watchers; swinging by WEBS to, daily, not spend a penny. And catching my granddaughters, with six other three-year-olds, doing third position, tap, boogie-woogie, and tumbling, at "Dawn's School of Dance," the hottest show in Pioneer Valley on any given Monday night. I'm going to Boston overnight, to see my daughter before she flies to Seattle for a week of interviews for next year's residency programs; will pop down to Connecticut for lunch with Me Mum. And keep getting organized about my "real" work, with a library carrel at Smith College across the street (do I give my whereabouts away?).

Remember, opinions please!

Merry Smishsmash: A smattering of hats

2008-12-24T06:56:00.010-05:00

Merry Christmas, with a few of the hats I've been doing this month.

Just a word: I've not been posting in part because the pictures I'd upload would reveal Christmas presents best left unseen until Christmas.... And in part because I've been finishing my Cornell semester and trying (with little success) to organize my house in advance of renting it out for the six months I'll be in Massachusetts on sabbatical leave. The regularity of a row of stitches corrects the opposite: the confusion of moving photograph boxes from closet A to storage stack B, of heave-ho'ing ink stamps and Easter seals and worn dog brushes, of schlepping things to the dump, the Library book sale, the Salvation Army.

Tonight's a breather, as we gather for family time and time with friends. On the 26th, it's back to packing.

Undone

2008-11-22T12:53:00.011-05:00

A few of my favorite unfinished sweaters. Undone: them and, in different ways today, me. So none will get finished quite yet. I'm off to sit in my first movie theatre in about five months, me the film professor. The newish Woody Allen film, Victoria, Christina, Regina, whatever-a. Leaving this sweater, above, needing buttons and crocheted button loops, so it will another day become Dawn Paige's little side-to-side sweater, in Kaffe Fassett's Regia sock yarn.

And leaving this sweater, below, which will keep trekking upwards to become my sister's Christmas vest, based on a pattern in the new Knit One Below, "Curves and Columns." On the needles in two heathers of Cascade 220, and having bedevilled me earlier with short rows forever at the beginning, this is the, I do believe, fifth attempt to knit my sister a Christmas vest--my third pattern, two rejected or rejecting me, and my third attempt to get this one going.
But something is done: "Habitat," for I don't yet know whom; the Jared Flood hat with a superfluity of cables. Resting on the dogs' biscuit jar. Knit in Lavold Classic AL, alpaca and merino wool.

Off to the movies.

Caillum and snowmen

2008-11-22T10:11:00.006-05:00

Another present has come home to roost, photographically. Meet Caillum and his mother, Mirja, ready for the Chicago winds. Pops Ted is one of my son's best friends from college, Cambridge, Ithaca, and beyond, a fellow I've loved for years. Caillum has dutifully donned or been covered by a sweater that will suit him better after the new year, but what a nice oversized thank-you-note photo, which makes me laugh. I made the neck of this sven sveater big so big baby head wouldn't struggle getting inserted, but it looks like I was over-generous in conceiving of Caillum's circumference. Brilliant child, beautiful family, chill-beating sweater.

Not Knitting on Halloween

2008-11-03T08:35:00.009-05:00

I could have been knitting for hours on Halloween, as I basked in the sun at EXtra Mart in Greene, NY. But there was too much activity at the gas station, and too much sun, too much sadness, and too much peacefulness, as I waited for Carl Wrench to come to my rescue.

I had been driving for forty minutes, leaving Ithaca for Massachusetts, deep in thought, as I’ve been all week, for the untimely death of a young cousin; when I hit a football-sized boulder-- “BAMMM. . . . DAMN” -- and wended a mile down the hill to Greene’s corner gas station. I had not cried yet for this death, but wept then, deflected tears, at the blow out; which was just a blow out, but was just too much, just then. Just for a moment.

Then I let go of the annoyance, the delay, the inconvenience, and absorbed the sunny wait. While I waited, the price of gas in Greene went from $2.94 to $2.87. A mother and son in the Freihoffer’s Cookie truck overfilled their tank, so Greene’s Gus had to spread absorbent sand and sweep it up. I greeted a guy in an orange sweatshirt, the perfect match to my orange fleece: “We’re the great pumpkins.” He had no reaction; maybe didn’t like being called “great.” Three people told me I had a flat tire. And Carl Wrench was too busy over in town doing end-of-the-month car inspections (“they always wait till the last moment”), to come before noon. But there was lots of sun, and an Old Codger.

After his ancient Ford pickup stopped at the pump next to my car, he descended from the driver’s seat, preceded by a cane; he descended so slowly that the price of gas went down another nine cents, to $2.78. If he could see at all, he had time to see every thing below knee level before his bowed legs got out of the pumping bays. And one tire caught his eye. To the tire itself and to no one in particular, he spit and affirmed: “The bottom of that tire is flat.”

Well, that did it for me: joy in the gruff ongoing of this ancient woodsman, delight in the image that I might drive on the other parts of the tire. I loved that dirty Methuselah, that coffin dodger, that cunning fellow, whose wispy gray beard highlighted his toothless mouth, whose legs were as stiff as the jeans overalls he’d been wearing since May:

“Yup,” I replied, “the bottom of that tire is way flat.”

And I just kept basking, until Mr. Wrench helped me on my way.

On my way to Halloween with my son, my d-i-l, my grand daughters, aka Flying Turtle and Butterfly/Fairy.

On my way to seeing dancing girls in some of the sweaters I’d recently knit .

2008-10-31T07:50:00.006-04:00

If you read this blog, you've seen the likes of this sweater/jumper before: this is my fifth "Samantha," Kate Gilbert's delicate gift for baby girls. My first, for one and the other of my grand daughters, was in a very large, four-plus, size; then I did three little baby sizes; now this one, about an 18-24-36 months size (it grew a little as I washed and blocked it), in soft salmon (Filatura Di Crosa Zara), machine washable wool.

I'm off to visit my twins for Halloween--one's a turtle, one a fairy/butterfly, both with wings/carapace homemade with gusto and glitter glue--so will pack and mail Samantha when I return. Its recipient is Maggie, the newly adopted daughter from Colombia of a favorite mentor/doctor in Boston, of my daughter (quite evidently I haven't yet met Maggie--or her parents; but hope to, at least at my daughter's graduation next May from medical school).

I liked knitting for this little person, the idea of her.

Happy Halloween.

Improvisation

2008-10-19T12:30:00.018-04:00

Last weekend my sister asked me to knit her an interesting vest. And so I did.

As we cruised through a LYS in Connecticut where we were sharing a family reunion, she drew close to various turquoises, some Noros with variegated blues: "those would all be fun, turquoise, or something else bold and primary, perhaps variegated."

I had my assignment, as well as some freedom of choice, in patterns and in yarns: dandy.

But some things went awry in the course of that straight-forward project.

Back home at Knitting Etc., I drew close to Schaefer's turquoise "Susan," knitted up in a beaded scarf as well as in a knitty.com sample vest. I liked this Schaefer glistening cotton, even if I wasn't going to go with the pullover vest pattern. I liked the turquoise base of this variegated Schaefer yarn.

On the internet I found a Classic Elite cardigan vest pattern with enough interest to keep me knitting--lots of right twists for faux cables, eyelets composed out of k2togs, slip stitches, yarn overs, and so forth: see above, Wicked Eyelet Rib Vest.

Okay, I've got my pattern, free on ravelry. It calls for or recommends a lot of cashmere: $$$$.

I'll get my yarn in Schaefer mercerized pima cotton, Susan: $$.

Ooops, the shop's out of the turquoise-based colorway. I'll substitute "Althea Gibson," in violets and beiges, not so bold and not so primary, but that's okay. . . . .

Off I went for four hours with right twists to create my faux cable ribs, having a good enough time with this fairly springy cotton. But even after changing from Addi metal needles to bamboo needles, I was unagile with the slipperiness of the cotton, which made me brace it against thigh or chest or grasp backloads of it in my left hand. But that's okay. . . .

The slipperiness, the not turquoise, the not cashmere, the not inexpensive cotton alternative to the expensive cashmere. (But my sister's pretty rough and tumble, go as you go, with her clothing, so I was thinking a machine-washable alternative was going to have a safer future in Wisconsin than something from a special goat.)

Wrestling with this world of ambivalence, after four hours I stretched back and stared at about six inches of the faux cable, watching it flop about.

And then admitted to Suze that I didn't like it. She and I let forth with its old-lady qualities, its tame colors, its overstretchiness: it doesn't shape, it sags; it doesn't drape gracefully, it hangs like donkey ears.

What to do?

Of course, and two hours later:

"The Wicked Eyelet Mesh Bag."

(With thanks to Ashlee's grocery bag pattern for the top, and to untold caps for the circular-with-decreases bottom.)

Or perhaps it's a legless bathing suit.

Finished; now what?

2008-10-09T20:40:00.006-04:00

I like this even more than its imperfections warrant. Guess I became good pals with the sweater through all the seed stitch, oh lah, so much seed stitch. Off you go, Aran Cables with Heart.

out with the old, what's the new?

2008-10-09T10:48:00.010-04:00

Today I think I can and will finish the Aran sweater that 's been hanging about since August. I've finished one saddle shoulder insert, need to do the other quickly, attach arms to body, work the collar, sew on heart buttons, block, and Ta-dah. I've so enjoyed working with this superwash Dreams in Color yarn, even if the cables are less pronounced than they'd be if the yarn were not variegated. The yarn has a spring, that's pleased me through a harrowing amount of seed stitch.

Tomorrow I leave for a long weekend, with friends and relations in Connecticut, so will want to find a new project for the road--not actually for the road, since I'm my own driver, but for quiet times while away. I have nothing pending but this pink Aran sweater, a rare moment of clean transition, a chance to plan.

Big Nameless Baby in Chicago

2008-10-06T06:35:00.006-04:00

To be fair, Ted and Mirja have probably named him by today (when Social Security wants it in writing), but their little boy, born on the Thursday evening of October 2, arrived a week late and a name short and a pound heavier than he might have had he been born on my birthday in September. I lept to my needles, and kept myself off the street over the weekend by inserting snowmen and snowflakes on this superwashable one (was actually on the street Sunday morning for our neighborhood Block Party, so am speaking metaphorically).

POROM times two

2008-10-01T19:04:00.006-04:00

Here are two "Porom" hats, designed by Jared Flood (at brooklyntweed), knitted from my stash in Blue Sky Alpaca. Blocking them on balloons works nicely. The first, on the right over a purple balloon, had a few mistakes, but was also larger than it should have been, larger not in the amount of slouch, which will be fine, but in the ribbing brim. I'd gotten gauge with needles one size smaller than the pattern had suggested, yet still, the softness of the yarn, I think, the give, made it harder to get tight enough stitches.

So, Porom over the pink balloon is knit on yet smaller needles--4 and 6, rather than the pattern's 6 and 8-- and I think it will be a good fit. And it has no mistakes, which is desirable when its recipient is Hickory, the owner of our yarn shop. Heh. She won a lottery/raffle we had at one of her baby showers, where everyone predicted the date-0f-birth of the Steven and Hickory's baby. The prize for the winner is anything she'd like knit from my stash.

Hope it suits her.

Baby Maren

2008-10-01T13:19:00.007-04:00

Now this is a treat, to see one's little "Samantha" top go far away and come back, photographically. I don't know the woman, but suppose it's baby Maren's grandmother, in Connecticut, where baby Maren, who lives in Florida and whom I also do not know, was recently visiting.

Paul Newman just died

2008-09-27T10:53:00.010-04:00

Paul Newman just died.

Why does my sadness that he has died settle me down, when I've been in a headless chicken snit since the Presidential Debate (my lordy, isn't this a world of fluid chatterers!), not sleeping till three hours after the commentators gave it a rest. Knitting this little hat (Jared Flood's Turn a Square) was my "keep it together" project for attending to the debate, but though I've now got a slightly-short-over-the-ears cap, I have hardly kept it together, roiling for a spoil.

Paul Newman just died. Ohhhhhh. What will I knit to honor and grieve for him? Something gold-- for the lion in his middle name (Leonard) and his ambition into gently grizzled old age.

I knit this hat because everyone else is knitting it, a model (by Melanie Towner) stands at the check-out desk in Knitting Etc., so I didn't have to wander around looking for a Presidential Debate project. It should be a little deeper/longer, though the circumference will suit pretty much any adult head.

I don't particularly like all the (Cascade 220) green, or that particular dark heather green, though I chose it to pick up on the greens in the Noro Kureyon. It's, ah, okay, a sort of "whatever" little cap, that got me through the evening. And I do like Jared Flood, his blog (Brooklyn Tweed), and his gift/ free download of this pattern.

And I liked learning the jogless jog--what was that Seventies movie about doing it without touching, in Paris, the touchless touch,as it were? Or do they do it without talking? Or speak without names? Too bad it's not Paul Newman, for neatly connecting here on his death multiple times . Instead--it comes to me-- Ultimo Tango a Parigi/ Last Tango in Paris, it's Marlon Brando, before he ballooned into Jabba the Hutt (when he was still jabbless Jabba?).

Paul Newman just died.

The Sting
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Cool Hand Luke
Hud
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The Long Hot Summer
Torn Curtain
The Verdict
The Color of Money
Mr. and Mrs. Bridge
The Hudsucker Proxy
Road to Perdition

Whew, each one of those encapsulates or calls back to me a vivid moment in my life.

Long Live Butch Cassidy.

2008-09-25T07:37:00.005-04:00

I don't yet know if these completely suit the dancing girls, but legwarmers are rolling off my needles nonetheless, as the perfect knitting through the dog park in the early morning project--stuff a few colors into the pockets, and go, round and round the park, back and forth the needles.

some solutions

2008-09-21T11:38:00.009-04:00

These little mis-matches definitely solve the leg warmer puzzle. From Kat Coyle's Boho Baby Knits, knitted up in Rowan Wool Cotton, these are the new blueprint for many leg warmers to come. I'll finish up pairs from some of the other singlets, ones the girls have approved of the fit of, but then go to town with the BOHOs--perhaps sewing in a little elastic. Thirteen inches long, knit flat and seamed, eight rows of 2x2 ribbing at top and bottom: what can be simpler?

I'll top the purple one with another two inches of white 2x2 ribbing, so one could fold it over (or not), throw away the Cascade Fixation pinky, and complete the Dreams in Color all in ribbing pair.

And the Cable/Heart Aran continues apace: I'm crawling up the two sleeves, for a saddle finish.

Sample leg warmers

2008-09-10T10:26:00.008-04:00

Scrimpy first leg warmers, about to be mailed to the twins, so we can learn what textures they prefer and how long to make them (I did not bind off, awaiting news of leg lengths, which I find curiously hard to envision or mentally measure at this distance).

The light pink one, worked in Cascade Fixation (cotton and elastic), was the first one I did. I opted for elastic content to ensure that it would stay up. It's butt ugly, the 2x2 ribbing at the bottom does not grab, the stockinette of the body is boring, and the 1x1 ribbing for the top--which I'd probably extend so one could fold it over as a cuff on the thigh--is marginally better than the rest. Overall, stitches don't look clean and interesting.

The next, worked in a colorway from Dream in Color--a superwash hand-dyed yarn I bought two years ago, and am using mainly for the slow and elaborate Aran sweater I'm back to work on--I like. I did it all in 2x2 ribbing, wonder if it's too thick, and too short (one of those is remediable).

The third, another superwash, is at work in Lamb's Pride superwash Bulky, odd bits stashed from numerous sweaters. It's even thicker than the Dream in Color (Classy).

We'll see. Leg warmers are certainly not interesting to work on. Yet I did get to master the Magic Loop method of little rounds, so find myself eager to make fancy mittens, perhaps even some socks, now that I've got a speedy way to (continue to) avoid double-pointed needles.

And, here's the second Big Sven Sveater, done like the first one in Louet Riverstone. I made up some different-from-the-pattern fair isle patterns for the yoke, and stuck in a few lines of alternative colors across the body and the arms. Mastered the short rows along the upper back, and did 2x2 neck ribbing as soon as I came off the fair isle yoke (the neck was too high on the first one, so I had to turn it twice, instead of once, having mis-measured. I did inattentively misdo the Kitchener stitch under one arm, so can show the class what NOT to do (and will fix it myself before sharing it with Ainsley and Eliza, after the class studies the two samples).

I'm wandering and wondering what big and contained new projects I'll undertake. I want to find a good sweater to make for Elizabeth, for Christmas, make myself a vest, make varieties of , as I said, mittens, socks, and tams/hats. We'll see. My knitting picks up as the Fall semester picks up, each activity compensating for the other...or something.

Legwarmers and more: I'm back

2008-08-31T10:39:00.018-04:00

Anyone with suggestions for little-girl leg warmers, to help them stay up? I'm not short of suggestions, from ravelry.com, for how to make little leg warmers, but before experimenting would appreciate ideas on good yarns to use or how to sew in above-the-knee elastic --which sounds binding and too primitive a solution. I haven't begun to look around, have just "faved" a bunch of tubish patterns from ravelry. But my three-year-olds are about to start ballet and tap class, so must must must have a range of leg warmers to fill out the leotard and tights, ballet shoes and tap shoes outfits, a crucial accessory, no?

As two-year-olds, with a dancing mother's encouragement, they prepared, as in the accompanying photo; now they're ready for Dawn's School of Dance every Monday. If I can become mistress of the leg warmer, I could supply their little friends as well. Appealing leg warmers will also be good for living with the lower thermostat settings this winter. My D-I-L predicts a cottage industry in leg warmers, once I get them right. So, help please.

Six weeks since an entry here, and more of that time I spent not knitting than knitting; but as I return from heaven-on-earth, the family compound on Lake Huron in Michigan, and sense overnight crispness in the air, my fingers increase their twitchiness, my lap no longer abhors being covered with wool bits, and I re-engage my need to stitch.

Since I'll be teaching two new classes in the upcoming weeks, I've done test runs of "Big Sven Sveater" and of a Christmas stocking. And will do more Christmas stockings before starting that fun class in ten days. This second Sven Sveater will remind me what I didn't like about the pattern, help me to make it a smooth project for the upcoming SvSv class; doing a few more stockings will help me get used to a little bit of double pointed needles, which will help me learn to love them for doing all the leg warmers.

I've also got a handsomely intricate aran sweater on the needles--of course, for the twins--with hearts and cables, and a #4 needle, and a not easily available hand-painted superwash yarn in variegated pinks/violets.

Bring on Autumn and bring on the leg warmers!

Fifty-three Sweaters

2008-07-15T18:24:00.006-04:00

It's been a month since I've touched yarn to needle. The closest I've come to knitting in all this long time: yesterday I brought all my stash from the back yarn room to the living room, to sort, record, dispose of, and. . . get ideas for knitting?

Sorting stash reminds me of nothing so much as going through family photographs, for the sometimes hesitant recall of where that was (from), the cringe at having made such a choice; the longing for involvement with that seven hundred yards I bought twenty months ago at the little shop outside Milwaukee, but I'm sure there's not enough for what I envision. Nothing direct or unencumbered about this sorting, it's not like putting away winter clothes, not even like choosing to Salvation Army this and to keep that. Those can be crisp choices.

Now that I've got wireless connections with my laptop, I have the prospect at least of taking the laptop into the living room, and typing onto some site at Ravelry exactly what amounts of which yarns I have. Then it will be done. Will I do this tonight?

Will I ever knit again? (You bet I will, for I see dollar signs as well as textures in the yarns that surround me.)

I have found four sweaters, each one finished and totally forgotten, but each in a baggy in the stash. How peculiar. I now add those four to the ones I've got better in my mind, and in my photo records, and announce with wonderment, that I've knitted fifty-three sweaters in the last two years, along with multitudes of smaller items; fifty-three sweaters since I started knitting in August of 2006.

Will I ever knit again?

I have been teaching, film studies to high school students at Cornell, intensively for three-plus weeks, the major reason why I've not been knitting. All day, every day. But before, when was real life any bar to my knitting?

Will I ever knit again?

Probably, to speak with some prescience, never with the productiveness, expansiveness, devotion of these last two years.

motley aran

2008-06-11T08:23:00.004-04:00

I started this one in Huron City, when I stayed longer on vacation than I'd planned, six days longer, and had only one book of patterns, Starmore's Children's Collection, and only one yarn stash--Rauma 3-ply strikkegarn-- necessity is the mother of . . . . Yarns left over from the elephant Christmas stocking.

A little classic Aran, done in motley: knit from the bottom up, in the round, going as long as one color lasted, shifting, up we go. All was seed stitch, triple cables, honey comb (a bruiser, every stitch cabled), slow going. The saddle sleeves were a finishing first for me. The defects of this sweater: it's a rough yarn, will need to be worn over turtle necks for comfort; it's a strange thing to have all the switches of color; for some reason, it's very wide compared to its length.

Anyone know a round and chubby four-year-old who'll fit it?

final footnote about "Jenny Wren": A day passed with no activity after I moved the in-house basket to the front stoop. Then the couple returned, overstuffed the nest, and laid a few tiny eggs.

I was away for a few days, and on my return: no wrens, and cracked eggs. I don't know if some other bird ate the eggs. But there's no one left around my house. hmmm

Elephants for Little Lee

2008-06-01T11:43:00.012-04:00

But first a note about Jenny Wren. It's cute, having Jenny Wren dash in and out. But sometimes, Cute Is Not Enough.

Now is Sometimes, though I'm still not sure how to curtail that nesting. In a basket atop my kitchen cabinets, where she's made her nest. Really won't do, as much for babies' sake as mine. So I put the basket outside, NEAR the house, for Jenny's and pete's sake, but outside. We'll see what happens.

And elephants for Little Lee: worthy Alice Starmore elephants, now embedded in a simple and washable raglan sweater, and marching around a modified "Judy's Colors" Christmas Stocking. One to outgrow, the other to enjoy annually.

Just as I have satiated myself with Samantha jumpers, so, now, am I mistress and past-mistress of l'éléphant. On to fresh pastures.

Jenny Wren

2008-05-31T13:56:00.022-04:00

Please note, that the entire time it takes me to share the lore, legends, literary heritage, and Audubon factoids about Jenny Wren, Jenny Wren flies in and out of my house, nest materials in beak, making anew her nest (where inside I'm not yet sure), while Hubby pads the nest outside my window, more cautious? happy to make do?

I've been gone thirteen days, slept at home last night (with the front door closed), opened it up this morning, . . . and in comes Jenny Wren. She and her male bested the cardinals in competition for the robin's nest at my window, so I've got visual access to her, as she, immediately this morning, re-entered the living room: what memory, what what? brought her right back in as soon as she was able? (But she shall not make a nursery in my doggie treat jar again).

So, googling around on House Wrens, I'm beginning to take offense at others' characterizations:

"[Another] thing about House Wrens is that they are not too choosy about where they build their homes. " Clearly, my Jenny is very choosy, discriminating, and tenacious of her homestead.

Here's a pair of "Jenny Wren" socks: but when I say "here" and the image appears "there," above, it means I can't figure out how to interpolate where I want the photo into the blog.

http://www.knitzi.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=80&products_id=265

And here's Paul McCartney's "Jenny Wren" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36dtjxUMWdM

with lyrics:

Like so many girls, Jenny Wren could sing
But a broken heart, took her song away

Like the other girls, Jenny Wren took wing
She could see the world, and its foolish ways

How, we, spend our days, casting, love aside
Losing, sight of life, day, by, day

She saw poverty, breaking up her home
Wounded warriors, took her song away

(solo) verse, chorus

But the day will come, Jenny Wren will sing
When this broken world, mends its foolish ways

Then we, spend our days, catching up on life
All be-cause of you, Jenny Wren

You saw who we are, Jenny Wren

In the nineteenth century, in Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, Jenny Wren is "a child — a dwarf — a girl — a something, " the put-upon and old-before-her-time daughter of an alcoholic father, orphaned by her mother's death. The following tells her story using quotes from the book:

A parlour door within a small entry stood open, and disclosed a child -- a dwarf -- a girl -- a something -- sitting on a little low old-fashioned arm-chair, which had a kind of little working bench before it. "I can't get up," said the child, "because my back's bad, and my legs are queer. But I'm the person of the house. . . . You can't tell me the name of my trade I'll be bound. . . I'm a doll's dressmaker." Her real name was Fanny Cleaver; but she had long ago chosen to bestow upon herself the appellation of Miss Jenny Wren."

[Miss Jenny Wren describes how she finds the fashions for her dolls] "Look here. There's a Drawing Room, or a grand day in the Park, or a Show, or a Fete, or what you like. Very well. I squeeze among the crowd, and I look about me. When I see a great lady very suitable for my business, I say 'You'll do, my dear!' and I take particular notice of her, and run home and cut her out and baste her."

"Then another day, I come scudding back again to try on, and then I take particular notice of her again. Sometimes she plainly seems to say, 'How that little creature is staring!' and sometimes likes it and sometimes don't, but much more often yes than no. All the time I am only saying to myself, 'I must hollow out a bit here; I must slope away there;' and I am making a perfect slave of her, with making her try on my doll's dress. Evening parties are severer work for me, because there's only a doorway for a full view, and what with hobbling among the wheels of the carriages and the legs of the horses, I fully expect to be run over some night. However, there I have 'em, just the same. When they go bobbing into the hall from the carriage, and catch a glimpse of my little physiognomy poked out from behind a policeman's cape in the rain, I dare say they think I am wondering and admiring with all my eyes and heart, but they little think they're only working for my dolls!"

[Miss Jenny Wren tells of the shining children] "For when I was a little child," [she said] in a tone as though it were ages ago, "the children that I used to see early in the morning were very different from any others that I ever saw. They were not like me: they were not chilled, anxious, ragged, or beaten; they were never in pain.. ."

". . .such numbers of them too! All in white dresses, and with something shining on the borders, and on their heads, that I have never been able to imitate with my work, though I know it so well. They used to come down in long bright shining rows, and say all together, 'Who is this in pain? Who is this in pain?' When I told them who it was, they answered, 'Come and play with us!' When I said, 'I never play! I can't play!' they swept about me and took me up, and made me light. Then it was delicious ease and rest till they laid me down, and said all together, 'Have patience, and we will come again.'"

[Miss Jenny Wren is blessed with friendship] It being Lizzie [Hexam's] regular occupation when they were alone of an evening to brush out and smooth the long fair hair of the dolls' dressmaker, she unfastened a ribbon that kept it back while the little creature was at her work, and it fell in a beautiful shower over the poor shoulders that were much in need of such adorning rain.

Only slightly later than Dickens, round about the turn of that other century, appears E. Cobham Brewer (1810–1897), with his Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898:

Jenny Wren,

the sweetheart of Robin Redbreast.

“Robin promised Jenny, if she would be his wife, she should ‘feed on cherry-pie and drink currant-wine’; and he says:—

‘I’ll dress you like a goldfinch,

Or any peacock gay;

So, dearest Jen, if you’ll be mine,

Let us appoint the day.’

Jenny replies:—

‘Cherry-pie is very nice,

And so is currant wine;

But I must wear my plain brown gown,

And never go too fine.’”

But the finest, oddest account I can find, in its original 1820 facsimile is this child's reader:

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JENNY WREN
A very small book,
At a very small charge,
To learn them to read
Before they grow large.

I CAN GIVE YOU ONLY THE website, and promise it's worth your visit: http://www.archive.org/stream/lifedeathofjenny00yorkiala

sunrise and sunset: I can't come home.

2008-05-27T14:33:00.010-04:00

I won't post knitting pictures this time, as the photographed images I snapped are of surprises, for Steven and Hickory. Those I knit during my first--my only scheduled, intended--week in Huron City. But I failed to leave the shores of Lake Huron. I am failing to not thrive. I have to be back in Ithaca by Saturday night, and that may well be when I get back (if I can remember to check the internet late in the week to ascertain when Saturday appears).

Having but little stash left on my vacation, having used most of it for the Baby Lee surprises and an Irish Hiking Scarf, in Berocco something or other with silk that was 50% off at the Knitting Etc Spring Sale, I am now knitting an Alice Starmore Aran sweater in multiple colors, with a fine (and surprise) yarn, one I have about thirteen skeins of, but each skein a different color. I've just built the in-the-round bottom, up to four inches, in Navy; and am taking a break after a long morning's mindfulness (there's not a five-stitch sequence of the same stitch in the whole bloody garment (dash it all for the too attractive picture that snared me: if it's not a single cross cable it's seed stitch or 1 x 1 ribbing or 3 x 1 cabling)).

But I stayed in Michigan precisely for the slowing down, the mindfulness, the solitude. My sister and brother-in-law, with whom I spent a wonderful week walking, talking, reading, and (me) knitting, left on Sunday, when I was leaving. Now I'm left. Now it's me, the three dogs, and the weather.

Ah, the weather.

It dropped from 86 degrees ( a very ominous and sudden 86 degrees) to 38 degrees, in the course of the evening and overnight. That's almost fifty degrees. And now it's about fifty and blowing to beat the band, in a full sun. Weather is a chief occupation up here, in Natechuh. At dawn I was sitting with my coffee at the picture window in the master bedroom thanking the weather tides for lowering the temperature and picking up the drama: big white caps, fourteen shades of gray and blue, something akin to a howl, backsides of baby leaves getting a whatfur.

I've made a fire in the "frpl" (furpull, realtor ad speak). I wore two sweaters, a sweatshirt, and my down jacket, to walk with the dogs up and down, up and down the beach this morning. I'm all for all the weather we can get.

I've read the four books I brought, to prepare for summer school teaching, last week. Our books in the family cottage have been standing here for centuries; well, decades. I've either devoured, tasted, or outright refused each one over multiple years. There'd better be one good book at the Port Austin Library, ten miles away, because I found Waiting--that I borrowed from the family cottage next door, after exhausting my own exhausted book shelves--well, like waiting. It performs what it says it's about. I kept waiting. From the first sentence, the guy is waiting, for the seventeenth summer in a row, for his wife to agree to get a divorce. At the start of the book he's a doctor; two chapters later, he's waiting to become a doctor. Ho hum, don't think I'll revisit that book tonight. Maybe I'll write a book.

Okay, no knitting pictures. But some pictures from where I am, to save me the trouble of finding words to explain why I have not come home. (I'll be back here, in Huron City, for perhaps three weeks in August, with lots of kids, mother, grandchildren, cousins. Now all is quiet.)

Off to Huron City

2008-05-18T18:48:00.008-04:00

Now (Kylie) I'm a bit more back up to speed: four sweaters in the three weeks since I finished, and breathed hard after, the heffalump fair isle. All baby and size four-year-old sweaters, in Colinette Cadenza and Schaefer Susan cotton. Tomorrow I'm off for a week in Michigan, to read, and to knit a Hickory-and-Steven "Little Lee" surprise (it wouldn't be a surprise if I was coding that comment to a certain Zimmerman sweater, now would it? That's not what I'll do on the shores of Lake Huron, by the birch-wood fire, following the lapping waters to set my stitch rhythm; no, something else).

I did a few sweaters at speed, adding a ruffle here and there, a picot neck line, but mostly happy to go fast after the attentiveness of the elephant sweater. Then this fourth Samantha, for a fourth little girl, this one not yet among us.

With my front door and kitchen windows open against the mildness of May, I yesterday entertained a new critter, one who gave new meanings to her name: House Wren. Her first swing through my living room was a mistake, with much snorting and bopping off surfaces. But she liked it, and grew certain of her ways through the house. Since I spent much of the day at my computer in the nearby study, I'd catch glances of her swift departures, hear twinkles of her busyness in the kitchen. Gathering ghosts of old leaves and dried pansy stems for nesting, she and her mate (and two cardinals) were busy outside my study's picture window, nattering about who would build on last year's robin's nest on the front stoop light. Only later in the day did I find that she'd been building her nest in the dog's cookie jar, ajar; laying down a day's work over the Greenie treats.

That's my HOUSE wren. I've had to close those passages: since I'm leaving tomorrow, the house will be shut up, and she'd be a wreck trying to get to her new nest. While the goings and comings lasted, though, I felt ever more a part of the great outdoors, none of that winter shutting off from nature. Imagined I was in a Belize rain forest.

Elephant Caravan complete

2008-04-26T14:07:00.005-04:00

Whew, that took me a good coupla weeks, what with completely losing the yearning to knit. I had a bad cold for a while, and...April has been one better Spring day after another. As each day passes and I tend to all the garden beds, names, hibernating over the winter, mystically spill out of my mouth: ". . .Helebore. . .astilbe. . .," instead of "K2tog...with right sides facing...Alice Starmore...."

Yet eleven elephants have gathered, all (but buttons) is done. Now I can wait to see when knitting calls again to me. For now, the pear trees want pruning, little sedums whose surrounding ground has eroded, want replanting. My mother, who's moving, wants some steadying help; my students want me to assign and read their last essays. (And all that wanting makes me want to knit; heh.)

The elephants are coming

2008-04-01T06:29:00.007-04:00

After a breather, after doing a silly scarf--for which I learned a new cast-on and enjoyed Berroco Pure Merino Nuance--I'm happily knitting a fair isle cardi, with elephants from an Alice Starmore pattern. Pretty fine elephants--and, though for a child, the sweater is in NOT pastels; in super soft Blue Sky Alpaca. Pleasing work-in-progress.

Samantha Two and Three

2008-03-14T09:46:00.003-04:00

This Raspberry w-i-p, which I'm knitting for a store sample, is knit in Classic Elite's Wool Bam Boo, very silky to work with. The Zara Ivory one, below, is ready to wear, if I find an infant girl.

Samantha One finished, Samantha Two begun

2008-03-09T11:44:00.008-04:00

Hi, I have little to say--must stick with my Sunday workload, so later I can knit--but wanted to post the finished Kate Gilbert "Samantha," in a size 4 years, for Ainsley and Eliza (who are far from four years old, so this tunic will have some storage time before being useful, I think (it does look big, and "relaxed" when I washed it, even bigger)). I modified the pattern a little--changing the sleeve cuffs, to imitate the smocking on the body; and adding a row of yarn overs/K2togethers, near the base of the body.

Wondering about next projects, I found in my knitting stash some white Zara, frogged from an earlier lace project gone awry, and invisibly cast on to make another Samantha, in a tiny baby size (3-6 months). That's tonight's knitting pleasure.

Here--in the first, the white image--see the afternoon's back; I just like this so much I need to share. Plus, one of the dogs, perhaps in protest that I was for hours on the computer rather than feeding his face, ate this same back off the stitch holders; lah dee dah, neither he nor I drew blood or stitches, so all is well.

Swaddling in his Xmas Stocking

2008-03-03T16:38:00.006-05:00

Just got this nugget of a picture in the mail, Eamon Schopfer semi-swaddling in the Xmas stocking I made for him. With his Auntie Em, whom I've known since she was almost as new as her nephew. Love that hair!

Samantha

2008-03-02T15:43:00.005-05:00

This w-i-p is the Kate Gilbert "Samantha" tunic I just got the pattern for at Knitting Etc., and dove into with eagerness to be knitting at a smaller gauge (#'s 3 and 4), after Cayuga Cardigan, Central Park Hoodie, Little Einstein Jacket, plus a few hats and scarves, all at # 7 and above. Even with a lot of stockinette, this sweetie has the delicacy of a smocked dress, and entertains me enough. You can't yet see its true prospects, of picot hems, from turning under and sewing in place the invisible/provisional cast on, or the little dance of stitches on the front panel edges or the little trick down the sleeves, etc.: trust me, it has its touches. I've been away visiting my mother and my son and d-i-l (who loves her new Central Park Hoodie), and the twins--to die for-- and have managed at the ends of the days to do this much of Samantha (again, the one curse of the single woman driving: can't knit for those four-and-a-half hours; though I'm listening to Three Cups of Tea, which I'd not have time to read at home, so it's a fine trade-off).
I do wonder what the hell I'm doing knitting all the time; it's a powerful question that fires through my mind, when I'm not knitting. Many are the answers and questions grafted on to that first one, but I'll not explore them here.

Anyway, my Samantha-in-progress, and the Little Einstein, with orange borders and ribbed sleeve cuffs.

I have an eye appointment in the morning, and wonder if I can knit in the doctor's office while I wait for dilation to subside. We'll see.

This is how gray it's been

2008-02-24T17:28:00.007-05:00

So the sky out my livingroom window looks blue in that picture; what you need also notice, however, is the Amaryllis I potted on 1 November--that's more than three-and-a-half months ago--has grown three-and-a-half feet of stalk, all of it seeking vainly for sun, up and up and finding none. The sun bursts out today and so do the three blooms. Three-and-a-half feet of stalk is how gray it's been. Which is also probably why I've gotten so much knitting done.

Central Park Hoodie in two weeks. (Its buttons aren't as shiny and contrasting as the picture suggests; the Jamieson's Shetland Heather (Cedar), with a dull overtone (a nice dull, which reminds me of the fine distinctions among grays I've been making these last three-and-a-half months), has character and subtlety, and clear cables.) And an Einstein Coat, for one of my grand daughters, in two days.

When I settled in to grade papers all afternoon today, the sun poured so through my west-facing study window I couldn't see the computer--where the student papers lurk and pant. . . . I had to take a second walk at the dog park.

But now, settling in with a dwindling light, I'll finish--not the papers; that's for tomorrow morning-- that Einstein Coat, knit with Noro's Silver Thaw, while semi-watching the Oscars tonight. Think I'll put an i-cord or other stitch around the border to hold the many-colored coat together (visually).

momma said there'd be days like this

2008-02-12T06:32:00.000-05:00

There'd be days like this, my Momma said. When, with too little sleep bolstering me, I couldn't, I wonuldn't (even though I had to) do my work. I tried for all the hours of the morning: I read papers, I read poems, I revised syllabi, I devised new essay topics, and had miles more to go before I could sleep. But those woods drew me in, those skeins tugged at me, that still seat on the sofa beckoned; and I was gone, from the desk, from duty, from the day's determined path. Couldn't, wouldn't. I caved, I gave over to crisp cables. (But, she rationalizes, it's "work, " so it's okay. I'm teaching a class on making this sweater; I HAVE to make one.)

So, yesterday was a struggle between ought to's and want to's, and the want to's won. With many nice cables a-building, and a good night's rest, I today return, relieved, to work. The dawn now is tinging everything with a rose hue, the same rose hue hidden in the Jamieson's Heather Tweed Cedar yarn I've been knitting with: nice.

Rib and Stripe Scarf

2008-02-06T10:19:00.001-05:00

At play with three skeins of Kureyon (Noro), following the shifting combinations of rust, black, brown, green, green, and green. A pacific evening or two, in k3, p1. Before washing, as one knits, the stiff yarn grows into a recalcitrant sea cucumber--how I know this without ever working with a sea cucumber? But a softening wash and blocking dissipate the worry that I'd be sporting marine life in winter.

Now, onward through a Central Park Hoodie, in Jamieson's Shetland Heather. Since I'm now teaching the Hoodie at Knitting Etc., and since why not?, and since someone's got a birthday upcoming, this is a sensible, pleasing whim. I also don't quite know what to do with some new and prominent batches of Noro staring at me; so, in the mean while....

Annie Thing Goes

2008-02-01T11:19:00.000-05:00

. . . . In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking,
But now, God knows,
Anything Goes.

Good authors too who once knew better words,
Now only use four letter words
Writing prose, Anything Goes.

I bought Annie in 1986 at Harrod's, thinking of Cole Porter and of my daughter, one who "fathered" this big-headed girl, and one who got the doll on my return from London.

This morning I needed a model, since I can't well take pictures of my own head: ANNIE! To show off "Gretel," a tam I just whipped up in some new Noro Kochoran. This tam has rhythmic cable patterns, can be made in three degrees of "slouch": fitted, regular, and slouchy, and. . . is hilariously voluminous in this most generous size. To shrink the brim, I'll look either to steam it, or sew in elastic .

The Presidential debates these last two nights were perfect listening posts to knit this hat by: I'd stab the ball of Kochoran with my cable needle when Republicans revulsed me--lots of stabbing; and, last night, purr along during Obama/Clinton's convivialities.

I've been sick for two weeks, so tired and be-virused I didn't even knit. So taking my friend Suze's suggestion to start small, I did this hat, am working on a Noro Silver Thaw scarf, and am now re-energized enough to design a sweater. Let the ice storm continue!

take a deep breath

2008-01-21T06:58:00.000-05:00

I went to help my son and d-in-l and granddaughters through their misery, as misery went through both ends of my granddaughters and d-in-l and son. When I arrived, my d-i-l was in the hospital, too dehydrated to be safe at home, the girls, though on the mend, were confused and anxious about "puking on my pillow," and my son was white, freezing, and too weak to give me much of an update. For a day and a half I was helpful and happy playing with the girls and performing the satisfactions of a Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy. DIL came home, weak but hydrated, son slept, . . . I got sick, and sicker. And spent thirty-six hours between bathroom and a mountain of blankets. We're all on the mend now; I've crept home, so I can start my teaching semester tomorrow, shaky, shaky, listening during my long drive to stories of The Plague in 14th-century England, and knowing a bit about contagious diseases (Ken Follett's World Without End ).

Last night, I sat for hours on my sofa wondering if I'd ever want to knit again, and worrying about absence of desire, especially in the face of the gorgeous NORO yarns which had arrived in my absence (of desire, of presence): three bags full, from the fine sale at Seattle's Little Knits ( http://www.littleknits.com/ ). I especially love the colorways of Kureyon's "172" (is desire re-emerging? or is it rue, that I'll watch this yarn forever, burping and never touching needle to wool?).

While I wait for a stable and calm intestine, and for my NORO's fate, I'll re-draft the syllabi for the two classes which begin tomorrow. Sometimes work must bring desire in its wake.

I'm off to care for the sick

2008-01-17T09:20:00.000-05:00

Here's some doggerel wisdom, while I'm away, caring for sick relations.

Woman's life is but vain
For 'tis subject to pain,
And sorrow,
And short as a bubble.

'Tis a hodge-podge of business,
And money, and care,
And care, and money,
And trouble.

But we'll take no care
When the weather proves fair.
Nor will we vex now
That it rains.

We'll banish all sorrow
And strand 'till tomorrow,
And knit, purl,
And knit, purl again.

Little Bits

2008-01-14T17:23:00.001-05:00

I finished up the little bits today: sewed the hanging loop on the Christmas stocking, for a baby being born in a few weeks; sewed buttons on a second "Dawn's Baby Joy " sweater, in Noro Silk Garden Lite, which will go with other goodies for the baby into the Christmas stocking; knitted two scarves for my two granddaughters; garter-stitched two blankets for the Kuhnergens' beds--the Kuhnergens live in the girls' Christmas doll house--and sewed buttons on the Cayuga Cardigan. Truly, tomorrow is for fresh fields and pastures new.

I thought about relations between fishing and knitting, fishing and Christianity, knitting and praying. I thought about knitting as a process of defying the mandate for a professional purpose, for defying the good daughter's productive life; about knitting as process and yet having for me the satisfaction of visible and sharable products, things I can point to, delight in, and move along from.

Grammy, this yarn is very soft.

2008-01-14T11:24:00.000-05:00

A six-day trip away from the computer and the dogs: lots of sleep, having to find new ways to wander mentally. I left the Cayuga Cardigan blocking at home--finished that little fella in five days--and will sew on buttons this morning. With a pit stop at WEBS in Northampton, I spent my Christmas gift certificate and entered the contest to win $100.00 gift certificate. (Knit one of one hundred scarves for the UMass Hockey team, with yarn and pattern WEBS gives you; return it, get entered into the drawing at the end of January.) While visiting with my granddaughters, I pretty much finished the scarf; it's in the mail now back to WEBS ("I'm a winner").

Ainsley and Eliza spent some time "knitting" with me: when can they learn to do the strokes? Is there a knitting school for toddlers? We sang songs about knitting, and hugged the yarns, stacked markers on needles, and looked through translucent green rulers. The notions and the motions hold great appeal.

I'm off now for a knitting stint of odds and ends.

Woke up this mornin'

2008-01-06T09:55:00.001-05:00

I woke up this morning feeling that in my last post I'd unjustly characterized , meanly characterized even, TERRA's Black Walnut, as mud-in-January-thaw. The January thaw out my window this morning is gobs uglier than any yarn. Though the picture from Fibre Company's website doesn't help amend such a characterization, knitting through a long evening while attending to both sets of Presidential N.H. debates softened my images of the kettle-dyed yarn: it's a yarn of CHANGE.

The changes, predominantly of browns slipping into varieties of green, include interesting tans, like dead maple leaves on the forest floor.

I've finished the back and the two front panels, and ten inches of the two sleeves; the pieces sit semi-composed on my coffee table looking, for all the world, like . . . Black Walnut (I think I've seen a black walnut). And I'm writing a little about the yarn because I really want to be working toward the end of the sleeves, NOW, but have to do stuff with the pile of papers to my left--correspondence, bills, deposits, scheduling for next semester, etc.

Another way to make a stockinette knitting project more interesting than otherwise: listen to an audio cd (this advice is hardly more than a duhhh suggestion, but last evening was the first time I'd ever done it, as I listen to books on cd only when I'm driving, not a time I'm usually kntting (though once on Rte 88, . . . but we won't go there) ). Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth and its semi-sequel, World Without End , will now accompany much winter knitting. Building English cathedrals in the twelfth century commands a relation to stone even more patient and intimate than mine to the bagfuls of Noro yarns I'm planning to design work with.

And now for something completely different:

Caroline Gilman (1794-1888)

A popular writer of domestic and religious pieces.

My Knitting Work

Youth’s buds have oped and fallen from my life’s expanding tree,
And soberer fruits have ripen’d on its harden’d stalks for me;
No longer with a buoyant step I tread my pilgrim way,
And earth’s horizon closer bends from hastening day to day.

No more with curious questioning I seek the fervid crowd,
Nor to ambition’s glittering shrine I feel my spirit bowed,
But, as bewitching flatteries from worldly ones depart,
Love’s circle narrows deeply about my quiet heart.

Home joys come thronging round me, bright, blessed, gentle, kind;
The social meal, the fireside book, unfetter’d mind with mind;
The unsought song that asks no praise, but spirit-stirr’d and free,
Wakes up within the thoughtful soul remember’d melody.

Nor shall my humble knitting work pass unregarded here,
The faithful friend who oft has chas’d a furrow or a tear,
Who comes with still unwearied round to cheer my failing eye,
And bid the curse of ennui from its polished weapons fly.

Companionable knitting work! When gayer friends depart,
Thou hold’st thy busy station even very near my heart;
And when no social living tones to sympathy appeal,
I hear a gentle accent from thy softly clashing steel.

My confidential knitting work ! a trusty friend art thou,
As smooth and shining on my lap thou liest beside me now;
Thou know’st some stories of my thoughts the many may not know,
As round and round the accustom’d path my careful fingers go.

Sweet, silent, quiet knitting work ! thou interruptest not
My reveries and pleasant thoughts, forgetting and forgot!
I take thee up, and lay thee down, and use thee as I may,
And not a contradicting word thy burnish’d lips will say.

My moralizing knitting work! Thy threads most aptly show
How evenly around life’s span our busy threads should go;
And if a stitch perchance should drop, as life’s frail stitches will,
How, if we patient take it up, the work may prosper still.

Cayuga Cardigan

2008-01-05T09:59:00.002-05:00

This very simple, good-for-your-first sweater, has the home-grown title--Cayuga Cardigan--and the home-grown designers--Meredith Small and Hickory Lee--to seduce anyone who's cold in the Finger Lakes. My yarn--The Fibre Company's Terra -- imitates lots of mid-winter nature--if you stand too far back, it's tomorrow's thaw and mud; more benevolently, it's everything that pokes through the snow. Closer, more discriminating looks uncover the soft greens, blues, even burnt umbers in the "Black Walnut."

I'm knitting up a store sample, for Knitting Etc., before teaching the First Sweater class which will KAL make it. On #9's, it's a fast knit. I'm doing a final edit on the pattern, which comes in four sizes; and encourage anyone with a yen for a classically plain sweater, with a little waist-shaping, borders and bands in seed stitch, and a huge choice of worsted weight yarns, to have at it--check with Hickory (knittingetcithaca.com) for a pattern. One can watch Presidential debates or listen to Jacqueline DuPré's thunderous Elgar or meditate on the last stand of the Christmas tree, still bedecked but without I remembered to turn on the lights: there's nothing too attention-grabbing about this stockinette snuggle. (So pick an interesting yarn, nothing too monochromatic.)

Entrelac scarf

2008-01-04T11:02:00.000-05:00

This entrelac scarf, in blues and grays, like a hypnotized patient--hoho thisa way, hoho thata way--slinked along in Rowan Tapestry yarn. I did this one to learn the technique, basing this 9-inch-wide scarf on the clearly described patterns for a much more voluminous entrelac stole, in Scarf Style (Pam Allen). A nice late-Christmas present for Me Mum.

Now that it's blocked, I've cleared the decks for New Year projects, having finished all but one, . . . two, . . . no, three of my WIPs: the Dragon-Skin Wrap, the Cayuga Cardigan, a Kid Silk Night scarf.

I'm getting excited about the range of choices I'll have for subsequent projects as I tick off the few remaining ones I need to finish before leaping forward. I've got a Jaywalker sock started, in Kaffe Fassett Regia sock yarn, and expect to do considerable two-stranding work, in both Rauma's 3-ply strikkegarn and Jamieson's Spindrift, but haven't figured out what or the wonderful colorways awaiting my viewing pleasure.

A single long strand

2008-01-01T07:57:00.000-05:00

"I always wonder what it would be like to belong to a species — just for a while — that isn’t so busy indexing its life, that lives wholly within the single long strand of its being. " (Verlyn Klinkenborg, NYTimes, Dec. 31, 2007)

In the single long strand of the Dragon-Skin Wrap I was knitting last night lurked a twist, where I'd cast on the back neck band: as midnight approached, I tried to untwist or double-twist that crucial hiccup, to will it not to be important, even as I was trying to visualize how the back could, apparent to the pattern-writer but not apparent to the pattern-executer, knit down from the top of the recently joined two fronts. Not indexing my life at midnight but staring at what becomes of that single strand of the sweater's being, I . . . went to bed.

Happy New Year. Complexity will somehow resolve itself with the light of morning: I turned the entire left front on the needles, and VOILA the single long strand of the Dragon-Skin Wrap is all heading in the same direction, knots, twists, and hiccups all gone.

Moral: go to sleep.

(Interweave Knits: Holiday Gifts, 2007; Zara yarn)

And here's a chubby beauty, my fourth Christmas Stocking, by Judy's Colors (Nordic Fiber Arts). I'm not finishing a late Christmas present, I'm actually early for a February almost-baby. I've decided to knit Christmas stockings as baby gifts, since they'll suit the bambino/bambina for years instead of for two months, as would a baby sweater I'd otherwise knit. This one is a third as large again as the pattern called for (120 stitches cast on instead of the pattern's 80), so my friends can tuck the baby inside the stocking when it arrives: it's a stocking it's a swaddle.

I'm a winner

2007-12-30T09:35:00.001-05:00

Not everyone loves a winner, but a strange lot do, as I found when I won the Princely Prince Charles contest.

A few years back, after puffing up my forty-three front steps carrying the groceries, and grabbing for the phone, I was told by a very London-y voice that I'd won an internet contest I hadn't recalled entering:

Trip for two to London, 4- or 5- star hotel in Mayfair (the boutique Hotel Chesterfield), dinner here, The Lion King there, an Elvis Costello concert , a Driver (not as in golf but as in an ubiquitous automobile and very-impressed-with-my-winner-status chauffeur), a 50th anniversary celebration concert at Royal Festival Hall, AND a pre-concert champagne reception with Prince Charles.

I'm not kidding.

And cousin Carol and I made the most of it, laughing all the way. Another cousin sent me a kid's princess tiara, which I wore on the flight over. In the airport that tiara helped me get front seats in Economy, those ones reserved for babies and me, with extra leg room. Part way through the flight, the stewardess, emboldened after conversing with her colleagues, asked, "We were all wondering. What's with the tiara? Having tea with the Queen?"

("Thanks, my dear , for the set-up question:") " No, I'm having champagne with the Prince.")

They loved a winner and gave us a magnum of champagne and moved us into First Class.

And so it went, on and on, people rubbing up against me to catch the winningness of it all.

I win lots of things; winning begets winning. That little snow gal, with the Latvian braided scarf, was a winner at Knitting Etc.'s First Annual Tree Ornament contest.

Winners irk lots of people. How obnoxious is this blog!

Where do you get the time to knit all of those amazing pieces???

2007-12-28T12:30:00.000-05:00

Title: such is the question from my cousin in last night's email, and the string of answers, none of them inclusive, leads me about by the nose today. I'm going to jot and peck away at answers.

How much that TAM looks like a clock-face.

Knowing my cousin and/or knowing my own powers of projection onto my cousin, I sense aggressiveness and accusation; and since I'm quite out of touch with my cousin, I'll absorb and erase her aggressiveness and take it into my own super-ego: why do you knit so much? Don't you have better things to do (or as my mother answered when someone asked her if she knit: "Only if I can't find a book or a piano or anything else to do").

Some people would not even consider wanting or needing to "justify" why they spend their "time" knitting. Lucky ole them.

I've got a family history so encasing, boxes of duty, professionalism, purpose, community values, and other "shoulds," that I like to poke holes (with needles?) into it, to breathe with more room.

Every week I assure (someone/self) that I've done my work, been accountable for all my responsibilities; that the rest of the "time" is mine.

Two questions perhaps: why is time something I might be stealing? Why knitting ? (instead of writing? gardening? other things more or less purposive?)

The "form" that "content" takes is knitting these last sixteen months. The "content" is desire, delight, pleasure, self-soothing, experimentation, amazement, amusement, solitude, space to mull.

Then there's that pesky bit about the cost of knitting--but now I get to teach knitting and gain store/yarn credit in repayment, so money, that horrible necessity, almost gets ex-ed out as a concern.

Where do I get the time? What else have we but time? I'm sixty-two, my children are launched, my profession secure and oh-so-well-known, so lovely and so manageable. I'm in the world's luxurious position of being able to CHOOSE for many of my hours. This year I choose knitting.

And am drolly entranced that knitting chose me. My daughter-in-law reminds me that when I started knitting--on the beach of a family vacation in August 2006, with two wondrous new-knitting cousins ("what fun to share this vacation craft with Ellin and Chris!"), a way to parse the "time," to visit, to focus our sandy moments together)--I insisted somewhat dismissively that this was "just a vacation" interlude....

A month and eighteen hats and six scarves and the originary felted bag later, I was knotted in the knitting life.

How to mark time? Thirty-six sweaters is what kind of measure or equivalence for sixteen months? Tams, scarves, slippers, socks, mittens, xmas stockings? instead of days, weeks, hours?

--There is no clock when I'm knitting (or in the Forest of Arden). I live much in a world of marked time, to knit is to enjoy a different world.

--I knit to find out why I knit.

"Dog, you want to go out? Let me finish this row--aka, just a minute"

My only reluctance to drive 4 hours to see my granddaughters? That's a goodly part of a sleeve I can't be knitting.

I teach film studies, but haven't gone to an out-of-school movie since July (because I can't well knit in the total darkness). So, I have all that previous-movie-going "time."

A lot of chitter-chatter about time and knitting. But I'm going to continue it another "time," as it's interesting and somehow important to me, but now I must knit.

Pausing after Christmas

2007-12-27T12:02:00.000-05:00

I'm joining the online world of knitting reflections, reflectors, not knowing what shape this journal will take, but, having valued connecting with others through their blogs and having just posted a couple dozen "projects" onto my ravelry.com community ("lyndabogel"), I'm using these subdued post-Christmas days to egg myself on to greater technological literacy. (I'm still battling this blog's desire to translate everything I type into question marks (???), as though this virtual alter-ego questions whether I have anything to say: "Just keep knitting, Nemo, keep on knitting. The over-examined life is not worth living." But am perhaps on a winning track this second day of trying.)

My second pre-Christmas season of knitting had as many exacting deadlines as the first, particularly the pressures to knit three Judy's Colors' Xmas stockings as well as the Braided Blues sweater for my son in a two-week space, punctuated as well with entrelac scarf, Kid Silk Night scarf, Dragon Skin sweater for one of my granddaughters, a "warm Rauma hat" for my daughter, Elizabeth, a few extra moebious (pronounced "muhrbious," folks) baskets, and a few pairs of mittens. Yikes, no wonder I can hardly stay awake sitting here at the computer. That million-stitch marathon culminated in four days of family Christmas visiting. Now all have departed, all needles lie silent, I have read a book (Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia (which I can't figure out how to italicize)), and slept many hours.

Instead of looking back or inward at finished knittings, I'm thinking that I'll tumble forward into knitting socks, socks (or at least socks). A year ago, still quite a novice, I tried Magic Loop socks, knit one sock, semi colon or full stop. What's the attraction when it's so awkward for a beginner? Now, having knit the Christmas stockings and one pair of socks on double points, I'm ready for the more minute scale of socks. Will start with some green colorway self-striping Collinette Jitterbug, that I won at a KnittingEtc. open house, and have just found already wound into a ball. Off I go--oops, I have to find a pattern.

2007-12-26T13:33:00.000-05:00

TRULY satisfactory "Braided Blues" sweater for my son's Xmas yesterday, done in Ultra Alpaca (Berroco), under the gun, alternating with my knitting three xmas stockings at the last minute. My blog "compose" doesn't work, without I translate every letter I write from a question mark back to a letter। I must find help, for in the quiet of post-Christmas I'd indeed like to try blogging about the knitting life.

2007-12-26T13:13:00.000-05:00

Get gauge and maybe I'll be able to write a post: aaaargghhhh