Luella

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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?