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?

Committed now to "The Puzzle"

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

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

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

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

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

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 .

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

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?

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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.