we clearly need to overthrow the Weather Czar. this is crazy.
Good grief — we’re in the midst of days and days, after days and days, looking ahead to days and days, of rain. Gray skies, cool temperatures (60 yesterday), drenching downpours, what happened! It was just very very hot, what happened here? And, of course, my beloved central Texas is going up in flames. My beloved oldest daughter is packed and ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice, and nearly had to do so. A place I’ve loved a lot, Bastrop, is mostly just gone, burned up (that fire, which is still burning, is visible from space). They haven’t had rain in months and months (and before that, just a whisper of rain), and they broke all the heat records this summer, and well, that’s just a recipe for the disaster that’s unfolding there.
yeah. terrifying.
If only I could be involved in the redistribution channels — it’s obvious, redirect all of our rain and cold weather down to the scorched, killing, devastation and destruction going on. I don’t believe this, but there’s a way it feels like the Biblical end times these days. Earthquakes and hurricanes, raging out of control fires and deadly drought, and don’t get me started on things of a politically-induced nature.
Sunday I finished my adorable little red number, my featherweight cardigan. I keep thinking I can surely get a photo tomorrow, surely tomorrow it won’t be so gray and gloomy and shadowy, but tomorrow hasn’t come yet. It’s fabulous, I couldn’t be happier with it. The color is great, cheery, powerful, the fit is wonderful, and the fact that I love wearing a cropped sweater that ends at my waist is priceless.
While I wait for the yarn to arrive for my three new sweaters (me! knitting three new sweaters!), I’m spending my knitting time powering through the blanket I’m making. It’s Anne Hanson’s Totally Autumn pattern, in a rich chocolate brown Cascade 220 Heathers. This is the project that went through the trauma in Turkey of my having to pull out the needles at the Istanbul airport, so I’ve kind of recovered from that disaster and now see the end in sight. The work will come to a standstill when my sweater yarns arrive, but maybe I’ll just try to put in X number of rows per day on the blanket so it’ll eventually get done, instead of languishing.
Busy busy busy times for me — appointments this afternoon, seeing a play tonight, breakfast tomorrow with my oldest friend from Alabama, writing group tomorrow night, fly off to Chicago early Friday morning to visit Marnie, home on Monday, poetry group Tuesday night. AND I’m trying to finish the details for my trip back to Vietnam and over to Borneo, during the first two weeks of October. Which is just three weeks away. Yikes. Busy busy busy.
how long has it been since I had a finished object! finally — meet my beautiful new shawl:
Traveling Woman shawl by Liz Abinante, size extra-large. Madelinetosh yarn (Tosh DK), colorway byzantine [rav project page]. I love this shawl, even though it took me forever to finish. I started it before I went to Turkey, way back in May, and thought I might finish it before/during the trip. Ha! Ha ha ha! Ha! There’s absolutely no reason it should’ve taken me this long, but it did. I’d like to get a photo of me wearing it….one of these days.
It’s my second Traveling Woman shawl (the other was with madelinetosh yarn too, actually, tosh merino light in a gorgeous silver gray color called Tern), and the biggest lesson I learned there was to use a much stretchier bind-off. I didn’t go with Judy’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off, though I kind of wish I had. Instead, I used this one and it’s better than my regular old bind-off, but probably not as stretchy as Judy’s. If I make another Traveling Woman shawl, I’ll try Judy’s.
I think one thing that helped me get this project finished was that I needed a break from stockinette sleeves in laceweight yarn. Yeah. Compared to that, this project was dreamy and oh-so-fast.
This has been a very slow year for FOs, I must say, and all of them have been primary colors — blue, yellow, and red, plus a vivid green. Time for some neutrals, I think.
ma belle amie — Kty strikes again. 
Yesterday I was reading a wholly compelling story in the NYTimes about a man who lives with schizophrenia; he has learned strategies to talk back to his voices and leads a difficult but full life. The whole article was moving, but there was one line that gut-punched me. At one point in his life, the man sat in his bedroom with a gun in his lap, ready to end his life. His wife walked in and said ‘I know you feel like quitting, but what if tomorrow is the day you get what you want?’ A long long time ago, in another life, I’d reached that point too and in a letter, someone said that we keep going because tomorrow we might round a corner and see someone standing there, holding flowers just for us.
I am by no means in that terribly hopeless place, but you know how life just kind of grinds sometimes? World news is terrible, your personal life hits a bump, something freaky happens like you get a hug that breaks your rib, there are too damned many flies and crap it’s hot and muggy. It’s been a long time since you had fun, just some plain old fun. You’re in the grinding uphill part of the rollercoaster, and have been for quite a long time. Nothing’s wrong really, nothing’s terminally bad, there’s plenty of hope lingering in the corners, it’s not like that, but boy. Grind.
Zen Garden Sea Lace -- and why yes, dear Kty, I do think it would be gorgeous!
Today’s bouquet of flowers was brought to me by my favorite living Parisian, Kty, who happens to be on holiday right now. We’ve never met in person, but if you’ve read this blog for long you know of her because she shows up in comments and in posts (like me, her birthday is in November so she feels like my sister or something). One of these days I’m going back to Paris and taking that lovely woman out for a glass of wine or two or three. I just got an email from Kty asking me if I didn’t think a certain pattern (Kozue, which she gifted me) would look beautiful in one of the yarns in my stash, the one shown to the left.
Oh, the many things about her email that transformed my day. The thought behind it, I’m just grinning and feeling like maybe the world is ok, despite all the awful news (note: must stop reading the NYTimes). Maybe we hold each other up, maybe we give each other little smiles, little nudges, and it helps hold the world together. The tiniest things can be just the thing someone needs; I always know that but I don’t always remember it.
I’ll cast on asap and will post a WIP photo. Tonight I’m having dinner with two friends, one of whom is moving back to the UK (boo), and tomorrow night’s my poetry group, but my fingers will be itching to get going. Merci beaucoup, Kty.
how is it already mid-June?! Who knows where the time goes?
What have I been doing! Working, working [out], being social, going through the hell of transferring my professional site to a new domain (don’t get me started), eating good summer food, and just doing everything except documenting it all. Oh, and a bit of knitting on my gorgeous red featherweight cardigan, want to see?
that color is amazing
Of course the little cardigan is as light as a whisper, a breeze, a feather, perhaps. I can’t wait to finish it so I can wear it. Even though it’s laceweight yarn, the large needles make it go pretty quickly so I’m not being bogged down by all the stockinette. I’m going to do some waist shaping since my waist does have shape.
Tomorrow morning I’m going to walk over to St John the Divine for the 4:30am Summer Solstice Concert. The Winter Solstice concert was so amazing, and I imagine the summer solstice concert will be, too; sitting in the very dark gothic cathedral, listening to live music as the sun slowly comes up and pours through the stained glass windows….even worth getting up that early, I imagine. We’ll see. Should be a great weekend.
And the same to you, my friends. A great weekend.
general goings-on about knitting, blah blah blah
So I’ve kind of been on the outs with knitting. Me and her, not getting along. You know, when you first meet her she’s dazzling — multifaceted, challenging, gorgeous, fun, you just can’t get enough of her. But then one day you get kind of tired of all her stuff, the way she just won’t get along with you at times, the way she gets to be a bore. And then someone else comes along! Someone who’s fun in an entirely different way, someone who changes your life, and there’s just not enough interest for the old one.
OK, I’m bailing on my little story. Basically, I’ve been so getting into the new physical changes I’m undergoing, the reorienting of my 52-year old head toward actually having a physically active life, that I’m kind of antsy. Do I want to sit there on the couch? Not really. I’d much rather be doing something. Or (shh, I feel kind of bad about this) trying on different outfits and thinking I look cute. It’s a gorgeous day. I want to be outside in it!
And then there’s the way all the WIPs are just a pain in the ass for one reason or another. There’s my blanket, which underwent the traumatic pulling-out-the-needles debacle in Turkey. I haven’t had the heart to face that one. There’s my lettuce green Rock Island Shawl; 71 repeats of the motif? Really? Getting kind of sick of it. There’s my giant and very heavy byzantine Traveling Woman Shawl — gosh, it’s hot and the rows are so long.
But you know, those 71 repeats aren’t going to do themselves, and that green is such a great color, so I picked it up this morning and got going, only to make some kind of mistake, and then in tinking back I made a GIANT mistake, and I just put it away. Bah. I really wanted to knit, but everything sucks.
And my darling girlfriends, you know the remedy for that. A NEW WIP! I’m making myself a red little number — the Featherweight Cardigan, which will look so adorable and great with my other adorable outfits. I’m using the stunning yarn I bought at Rhinebeck, Spirit Trail Fiberworks Clotho, colorway dragon’s blood!
COLOR LOVE
And in my new version of myself, the one who takes care and does what’s best for myself, I’m starting off with a generous swatch. Taking measurements. Even doing math (not math!) if necessary, which always cracks me up that that’s some kind of daunting thing. I teach statistics to undergrads, for heaven’s sake.
One great thing about swatching is that I also get to see if the combination of needle and yarn feels good in my hands, too. I hate using some of my old aluminum-ey needles with laceweight, but I’ve done it when it was the only pair I had on hand. Never again. And then there was the Denise needles disaster with my Dark & Stormy, where every stitch and row was just too hard.
So I’ll do a bit of swatching, but then I’m heading outdoors. Central Park is calling my name and I cannot resist her charms today. Happy Saturday!
Would ya like to buy an o? No? Then could I interest you in a 9?
Every time I do something like this — shh….wanna peek? — I think of this:
Ah. The little kids years, such fond fond memories, to the soundtrack of Sesame Street and Mister Rogers, and Raffi. Baby beluga in the deep blue sea….
OH YEAH. Here’s why I stopped by. Want to see my progress?
so lush! it's going to be so big and blankie-ey
love the horseshoes, such fun to create
My Traveling Woman obviously, madelinetosh obviously, colorway byzantine (maybe not so obviously). But now I have the song in my head:
would ya like to buy an O? circular and sweet? looks just like a donut, really good enough to eat….it’ll cost you just a nickel (a nickel!) a nickel, shhh, a nickel right, so buy the O and take it home tonight don’t ask any questions…
Maybe that’s not really a good lesson for little kids to learn, now that I think about it.
angie, you’re beautiful, but ain’t it time we said goodbye?
I finished Katie’s socks — the pattern is Angee, by Cookie A, and the yarn is the ultrasoft and super washable KnitPicks Felici (colorway: green vegetables, in the most obviously-named color ever). Katie picked the pattern when she was here, and it was fun, like all Cookie A socks.
angee, in knitpicks felici
I did round 1 swatching for my Mothed sweater and didn’t like the fabric; I need to swatch again, going down a needle size. It was just too thin and kind of gauzy, and not what I’m going for, really. I persist, like a real grown-up knitter!
Other parts of the NE got snow, and we were supposed to but mercifully we didn’t. It is gray and drizzly, though, so it’s that kind of April Fool’s Day. I hope you aren’t fooled today (unless you want to be)!
oh happy, sunny day. oh how i’ve missed you.
I had breakfast with Will this morning, which made me so so happy. We see each other every week (he only lives a couple blocks away from me), and it’s usually over a meal or a beer. Starting my day with him was especially wonderful. And you mothers out there, you’ll get this: he still smells like my boy.
Will refuses to have a straight photo made; I have literally hundreds of photos he took at arm’s length with every possible facial expression you could imagine. Plus extreme close-ups, some of which freak me out if I accidentally run across them, like his nostril. So I asked him if I could take his picture, and at the very last second he copped this sneer. Too bad, because his smile is gorgeous.
bagels & lox, a cafe au lait, and my son. sneering. c'mon, will, show me your beautiful smile.
And then, not to make so damn much out of the simplest hat in the whole world, here’s the finished hat, on my head. It’s the dreaded “shot in the bathroom mirror” pose. And this will officially end my discussion of Marnie’s hat.
so slouchy! i love it. marnie wanted it because she has long hair and often wears braids, pinned up like katie davies (needled) does. this should cover her.
adorable, fast, fun, and well, adorable. not me, the hat. though i am fun.
I have loads of work to do so this is quick. I decided not to do the Knit Crochet Blog week, though i did it last year and had a blast with it. I don’t know, I’m just not feeling it this year. But I do look forward to reading everyone else’s posts!
Happy Monday y’all. I hope it’s as sunny where you are as it is in NYC today. Glory. Bliss. Sun.
Sunny day, sweeping the clouds away / On my way to where the air is sweet, can you tell me how to get, how to get to, wait. This has nothing to do with Sesame Street.
I was all ready to swatch my new sweater yesterday morning when I had my wonderful weekly phone call from Marnie, who reminded me that I was going to make her a hat — she’d already picked the pattern and the yarn, and in the way things work with a 52-year old mind, I’d been excited about it and then forgot. This happens to me at least three or four times a day. Marnie’s coming to visit me for a long weekend (and to see Will) in a couple of weeks, so I’ll get to give it to her personally. Check it out, it’s the “My Striped & Slouchy hat” (rav link here), knit in Cascade 220:
such a sunny hat!
and with such a wide ribbing -- two stripes wide, great for covering her ears
It reminds me of eggs, eggs and cream, butter and cream, daffodils. I get such delight from knitting the stripes — nothing is cheerier than stripes, in the first place, and anything with white is just wonderful. Red and white (my fave), yellow and white (my new fave), blue and white, black and white, gray and white, all really great.
I have one more set of stripes — it’s very slouchy — and then the decrease section, which decreases very very quickly. It’s cute, and couldn’t be simpler to make. I am watching the old HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (I’d never seen it before), and this hat is so simple I don’t have to look at it at all while I’m knitting, which is good because the show is entirely absorbing. There are scenes I have to look away, so when legs are blown off, or guts are visible, I just check my knitting until it passes. It’s an amazing program, you’ve probably already seen it. It got into my dreams last night.
Here’s my very last attempt to get the colors photographed in my Saroyan, and it failed. I really wish you could see it, because it’s the most wonderful shade of olive green. Sigh.
IT'S NOT BROWN!!! grrrrrr!!
I hope you have a great spring Sunday, and your colors are true!
why? and on top of that, why are all today’s whys about technology? I’M NO LUDDITE!
- WHY did Firefox move the refresh button to the other damn side of the bar?! I don’t buy their “we wanted to clean up the real estate” explanation. They could have as easily put it in the address bar on the left, as on the right, when they were moving it off that toolbar. This is irritating me so much, I may just abandon Firefox altogether. GOOD GRIEF.
- Twitter. I have it, my posts go out on my Twitter feed, every day I get notifications of new complete-strangers following me (why?!). I just don’t really get it. When I worked in midtown, it was fantastic for letting me know exactly where the cupcake trucks were parked at any given moment, but beyond that I just don’t get it.
- iPad. I can’t believe I’m saying that — I’m a devoted lover of all things new and technological, usually an early adopter. I have 5 computers in my tiny home, and there are 2 of us here. I have a laptop and my Droid, and I did have a Kindle but I gave it to my son. I can get a new Kindle for $139, or I can get an iPad (or something like it)….but why?! Why would I get that? I know people who have an iPhone and an iPad (and one person also has an iPod). So much redundancy! I just don’t get it. With my droid and my laptop, why do i need an iPad, besides the coolness of it?
- Why I cannot capture the green in my Saroyan. No matter how I photograph it, in what light, and do how much post-processing, it looks brown. It’s not brown, it’s green. It has streaks of gold and brown in it, but the thing is green. I just tried again, thinking that maybe, perhaps, mysteriously, it would photograph correctly now that it’s finished blocking, but no.
this is pre-blocking, but it doesn't matter. it took so much fiddling to get it to turn out at all green. this color is NOT right. WHY???
Really. Why. It’s not like it’s some extreme color, or in an extreme setting in terms of light, with one color blowing out everything else. I do not understand this one little bit.
I am finishing our taxes today, and I’m going to do some housework, laundry, all that jazz, and figure out my next knitting project. I’m thinking of making the mothed sweather (rav here, knitty here), in a very pretty espresso-brown wool (with a bit of cashmere in it). I’ve done a couple quick projects recently (saroyan, obviously, and my killer red shawl) so I think it’s time to get a bigger thing underway. Happy Saturday y’all, whatever you’re doing!
the first FO of 2011 that isn’t blue! WHEE!!
Well! What in the world happened (besides everything that’s happening in the world). It was just one of those weeks, no need to say more because everyone has them. I owe so many people emails — lots going on and not nearly enough time. In the midst of it all, during some middle-of-the-night wide-awake hours, I finished my shawl:
-
- close-up of the body-to-edge transition, very nice! click to enlarge this one, for sure.
-
- here’s the top edge
-
- and here’s the tip of the shawl
-
- it’s such a vibrant color, and a very nice length!
The pattern (LaReine, by Angela Tong) is simple and straightforward, but somehow I never could wrap my mind around how she came up with it. The alternating lacey bits are really lovely, and easy to do but not boring — just a very nice combination. Despite everything this week threw at me, and despite my state as a result, I was able to work on the shawl and not be bored but not be too challenged. I went up a needle size and always run out of yarn, so I stopped short 12 rows and went straight to the border.
And the yarn — Okay Knits Sena — was wonderful. The very subtle shifts in color were never jarring and give the color such life; there were bits of light pink, bits of orange, a couple of dark almost purple flecks, but no long runs of shading. The end result is such a lively and brilliant color. This colorway is sweetie-pie, but to me it’s like a cherry lifesaver. I highly recommend the yarn, and hope to score some more (I love the bubblegum colorway she has in the shop right now).
I won the pattern and the yarn in a giveaway on the pattern designer’s blog; she’s a new designer, and the yarn is dyed in Brooklyn by a young woman who is in medical school. Support them if you’re in the market for a shawl pattern or yummy yarn.
Spring seems to have arrived in Manhattan, though I worry that I’m tempting the gods with such hubris in making such a crazy claim. It’s only mid-March, there’s certainly at least one more winter blast to come. Back to it for me — I hope you’re having a good weekend!
crazy weekend in this world.
Dinner with Will and weekly phone call with Marnie. Knitting (with increasingly slow progress because the rows are getting longer of course). Movie-watching. Walking. Sleeping. Earthquakes and tsunamis and nuclear meltdowns. TV watching. Reading. Sleeping. Losing an hour.
progress on LaReine -- my "I need something red" shawl. I came back to my knitting spot with a cup of tea, and the shadows were so pretty I didn't want to lose them with extra lighting.
How to summarize a weekend like that? I hope there was something brilliant in your weekend.
how was your weekend? mine was sunny with a bit of red.
Aside from our trip to Chinatown, we had a quiet weekend. Saturday’s weather was sunny and soul-soakingly beautiful, and yesterday’s weather was crappy — hanging, gray, low pressure, finally raining — which made it perfect for a bit of knitting. After doing enough housework to feel satisfied, and making a couple loaves of bread, I sat down for an afternoon of knitting. I have small projects on the needles that I need and want to finish, but yesterday I just needed to be looking at red.
glorious!
This is the LaReine shawl, by Angela Tong, and the yarn is Okay Knits Sena, colorway sweetie-pie (isn’t that a perfect name?). I just love the color of this yarn, it’s as cheery as cherry lifesavers. Red like candy. I won both together on a giveaway on Oiyi‘s blog (oiyi is the designer). The pattern is quick and easy (and fun); it’s been a while since I knit a little shawl and I’d forgotten just how much fun they are, starting with 3 stitches and expanding out so quickly.
Lots lots lots lots of work to do all at once! Hope you’re facing a good week –
forget your troubles, c’mon get happy…
Light’s coming, spring is coming, happier days are coming, it’s all just right there. I can see it, and I can tell that it’s just beyond the shadow of tomorrow, and you know? That’s enough! Here are some things that are making me very happy right now:
- Marnie’s husband Tom knocked it out of the park yesterday, in celebrating her birthday: yesterday he made her breakfast in bed, and mid-morning he showed up at her office with a tissue-wrapped mystery birthday box and a tulip and a box of gluten-free cookies. When she got off work at 12:30, he took her to the butterfly sanctuary to give her summer warmth (they live in Chicago), then to private ballroom dancing lessons, then to the movies for the Oscar-nominated animated shorts, followed by a sushi dinner, ending with a night at the Belden-Stratford hotel, a historic place. Nice way to celebrate my daughter, sweet son!
- Tomorrow I’m heading out to the Delaware Water Gap for a day trip, to help me not sit around dwelling on the historical details of the date for me. I also bought two pots of daffodils, which have always made me so happy — who can be too sad when they see daffodils! What amazing things they are.
- My daughter Katie is hilarious. She keeps a blog but it’s private, so I can’t just give you a link but I’ll paste her most recent post here, to give you a laugh too:
Dear Adele,
I hate you. My husband and I were watching you on Letterman earlier this week performing “Rolling in the Deep” from your new album, 21. He asked, “Why is it called that? Is she 21 or something?” To which I replied, “No way! She’s much older than that.” I looked it up. You’re not. You’re 22 now. I hate you. You’ve won 2 Grammys and are widely accepted as being awesome, and you’re only 22. Your videos seem to be saying, “Hi Katie, I’m Adele and I’m 6 years younger than you. What have you done with your life?” Well, Adele, I organized my files yesterday and today I’m going to clean the kitchen.
I hate you. Stop being so good.
Sincerely,
Katie
I can’t read that without cracking up, no matter how many times I read it.
- Ongoing scheduled and spontaneous meetings with Will — twice this week already, including last night’s spontaneous get-together at a neighborhood pub. Very sweet.
my frequently-worn handknit sweaters: Dark & Stormy, Peasy, and Mondo Cable Cardi. Unending love and adoration and disbelief, my hands made all that fabric, one little stitch at a time
ignore the fact that this photo looks like a catfish, this is the current state of Will's black socks. I stupidly just tossed it in my bag and a bunch of the stitches fell of the needles. OOPS. Not happy making, but the picture makes me giggle.
So what’s one difficult little day in the midst of all this? Tomorrow will come and go, and it’s embedded in all kinds of things, all kinds of life all around it. I always know this, it just sometimes gets kind of dark in here.
in the corner for a time-out, madelinetosh. you are in the naughty file today.
“Lori! You are an editor! You missed a gross misspelling in the post title!”
No I didn’t. Ha, so there. Fooled you. It’s defeat, yes, and it’s de feet. Last night I pulled on my beautiful lovely wonderful favorite socks, my kai-mei in tosh sock, and what did my shocked eyes see?
NO!!!!!
I finished them April 29, 2010 (my anniversary, coincidentally!), so I haven’t even been wearing them a year. And they’re in rotation with all my other handknit socks, which I only wear during cold weather, so this is entirely unacceptable I must say. Really. Perhaps Tosh Sock is not meant to be used for socks, silly me. Do I take good care of them? Why yes I do. Handwash, air dry, lotsa care. Maybe I have bad feet? Why no I don’t.
Of course the only remedy is to make another pair of kai-mei, but I’ve learned my lesson and won’t be using Tosh Sock for socks, ever again. I’m all about the process, love knitting, loved making the kai-mei especially, but I don’t expect to get just a few wearings before the yarn disintegrates. For heaven’s sake.
I had big trouble with another madelinetosh yarn (merino, in this case), which I used for my Mondo Cable Cardi. I’d had it on for maybe 2 seconds (3, to be generous) when the whole thing turned into a giant thick pill. All that work, and it looks like a bad sheep’s fleece. I could continuously scrape off the pills, but I’m not kidding, the pilling happens faster than I can get them off. It’s strange to be complaining so bitterly about a yarn I’ve been so in love with; I do still adore the colors, she’s an amazing colorist, but the yarn bases have now let me down twice. Hmm. That’s a lot of money to pay.
Anyway, one more turn of the feet, and another Cookie A sock (angee) — here’s Katie’s next pair. One sock down, the other sock is now at the mid-foot region.
Katie's Paddy Socks -- Angee (CookieA of course)
This is KnitPicks Felici, in the sold-out colorway called green vegetables. It hasn’t been the best quality — there have been a number of places where the plys were abraded and the yarn was down to a lone-ply holding itself together. What’s up, you yarn makers you?!
fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again. (*smack*)
Katie’s favorite color is green — at least theoretically, if not in actuality (though maybe in actuality too…). She’s a pretty Irish girl, she has green eyes, people do associate green with her, and she’s very proud of her Irish heritage. The name she was born with – Katherine Kennedy Galloway – pretty dang Irish, right? Her maternal grandmother suggested the name Katie because she loved the Disney movie Darby O’Gill and the Little People. Which my kids adored when they were little, too.
Anyway. Sidetracked. When Katie was here, we went through my stash and I sent her home with some pretty yarns to get her own stash going. She saw this green KnitPicks Felici, which I’d bought when I got the pink Felici for Marnie’s socks. Actually, I’d bought the green specifically to make socks for Katie, but then it got buried in my stash — you know how that goes — and newer yarn, newer projects, life, time, all intruded and I forgot all about the green yarn until we saw it. She’s knitting her first pair of socks, so I cast on this new green pair for her, hoping that we’d both hit the heels around the same time so I could walk her through it before she went home. Here’s the current status of the pair I’m making for her….and boy, does that springy green lift my winter-laden spirits. I’m dying for lack of color in the city, so I just glance at the socks and imagine the spring:
soft to touch, happy to look at, GREEN.
This is a Cookie A pattern, Angee, so it fits my sock-knitting mind. Top down, fun, and attractive. The Felici colorway is called ‘green vegetables’ and I really like the particular shades of green. Katie should be wearing these by St Patrick’s Day, to be sure. After all, I finished Anna’s birthday socks in one week, so I can certainly get these knocked out, despite everything that’s going on in my life.
We’re looking at a sunny, mild weekend (40s! Whee!), and I may be going shopping with Will on Saturday. The boy needs a winter coat in the worst possible way, and I’m not fooled by this temporary respite from winter. Oh no, not me. I’ve fallen for that before, thinking winter was over in April. Ha. As our former president said, “fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
I just like to pretend he was a comedian, and he meant to say the things he said (now that he’s out of office and can’t hurt us any more).
how far could you go, if you really really REALLY had to?
I was going to include “cutting off your arm” in the post title but thought better of it. Last night I watched the movie 127 Hours, with James Franco. He’s been nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. I always think I don’t like him, but every time I watch him I really really do like him; maybe one of these days my automatic opinion will match my learned opinion. Anyway, it’s the movie that’s about that real-life guy who was climbing all by himself and his arm got crushed by a giant rock, and he eventually had to cut off his own arm to save himself and get out of there. GRIM, right? I had little to no interest in seeing it — (a) I had my automatic opinion about James Franco, and (b) I thought who wants to watch a guy cutting his own arm off, not me sister.
It was amazing. It was just amazing. I couldn’t speak when it was over, for quite a while. It’s a visually stunning movie, with wonderful editing and sound editing, but the thing is that it is really about what it’s really about. I mean, it’s not about a guy cutting his arm off (though he does). It’s really about facing yourself, facing life, facing it all, in a very real and rare existential moment. I get extremely irritated by people’s whining about “but what does it mean, it has no meaning, blah blah blah” the luxury problems of spoiled wealthy people. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t true existential moments, moments of facing the abyss of what it really all means, and what it means to be here, and that in some fundamental way it’s just you and that moment, alone. And that’s what the movie is brilliantly about, and it’s brilliant. James Franco is brilliant. The soundtrack is brilliant. Everything, I completely loved it. It’ll take a while before I can watch it again, and I hope it stands up to a second viewing. You’ll want to have your knitting with you so you can look away and concentrate on something else during some of the more difficult scenes, but you shouldn’t let them make you miss seeing the movie.
So what’s the sweater part of the post title? Two unpleasant things:
- I’m frogging my Eve’s Rib Shrug. It’s just been such a pain in my ass the whole time, and it’s not going to look the way I thought it would in the wholly misrepresentative photos (i.e., it won’t be as long as it seemed and the actual shape isn’t flattering to my (*cough cough stomach*) figure. I love the yarn too much to let it languish. So yay to making a decision but damn to all that time wasted. I’ve learned that Carol Sunday’s way of writing patterns simply doesn’t work for me, and it’s not worth it. It’s a shame, because her designs are often truly gorgeous.
- I’ve also decided with regret that I’m just not young enough to pull off the Laar sweater. There’s the ample bosom situation, but more importantly there’s the fact that I’m just too “mature” for the style. And I’m tired (see above) of putting in so much time and ending up with something I don’t like. So now I’m considering my sweater queue and yarn I already have in my stash, and as I promised myself, I’m taking my time with the decision. No more leaping without looking. My regret isn’t that I’m too old for that particular style, it’s just that it really is a beautiful little sweater and I have such lovely yarn for it. But one thing ravelry teaches us is that there’s always another sweater.
My precious oldest daughter Katie arrives in NYC this evening, and she’ll be staying with me until Wednesday. She’s on a family mission of import and urgency and probable sorrow, but it’ll be so good to have her here. I don’t get to see her….or any of my precious kids….nearly often enough. Intermingled with the moments of difficulty that bring her here will be lots of love and laughter, plenty of knitting and stash-pawing, some movie watching and card playing, probably, and lots of good food.
OH! Also, just to feed any schadenfreude out there about the high life in NYC: this morning I woke up and went to the bathroom only to find brown water dripping [again] from the ceiling, running down the pipes, dripping down the wall, splashing in the windowsill, bulging the ceiling. The guy who lives upstairs has bad plumbing and we always have to pay the very icky price. So happy waking up, Lori! Just in time for company, too. NYC, you’re such a charmer.
from poe to kafka to aqua socks. it’s one of those days.
I was thinking about how my posts seems to veer between thoughtful ones — a run of those — and knitting ones, a run of those. (With daily boring ones scattered in between, of course.) So that made me think of a pendulum, and how there are emotional states that go with both ends, too. Introspection is, for me, associated with quieter, more melancholy moods, though not exclusively of course. My brighter moods can be introspective too, but it’s the quieter moods that lead me to write more introspective posts. When I’m dashing about with little time to think, well, it’s pretty obvious that it’ll be the shallower posts, the “here let me show you this thing” posts that are more prevalent.
So then, thinking of one end of the pendulum made me think of a pit of melancholy, which took me then to Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum, which opens with these great lines:
I was sick, sick unto death, with that long agony, and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence, the dread sentence of death, was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears.
And then that reminded me of Kafka’s deeply horrifying story, In the Penal Colony. And then, after all that descent into horror, I remember: wait! I was going to show you some pretty socks!
Anna's 20th birthday socks, Komet
They’re the Komet socks by Stephanie van der Linden. If you think the color is familiar, you’re right. I originally bought this color — Sweetgeorgia in summer skin — and I must’ve been drunk or insane, because I bought it specifically to make these socks. But I bought it in worsted weight. WHAT was wrong with me. I’d planned to make socks for my youngest daughter Anna, who turns 20 early in February, so I showed it to her when she was home over the break. I actually gave her a choice of this color or another, and she picked this color.
The day after Christmas, I picked up the yarnWHAT?! Worsted weight, was I insane (I ask myself this question a lot)? I immediately went online and ordered a skein in sock weight. And I just got it yesterday, almost a month later. Note to self and to y’all: don’t order from Sweetgeorgia if you need something in anything approximating a hurry. I’ll have to get the socks in the mail by Saturday 2/5 to get them to her in time, so I’ve got to focus and get them done. Other people can knock a pair of socks out in that amount of time, I just don’t know if I can. I imagine I’ll be knitting all weekend. Like that’s a bad thing.
Another snowstorm last night — what’s that, the 3rd one so far this year? And today’s only the 21st? Hope it’s warm where you are, and if it’s not, I hope you get to stay inside and knit.
i know i’ve said this before, but this time I REALLY MEAN IT.
Even though, as they say,
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Screw it. I’m making plans anyway. For once in my life, I’m going to just take my time and do it right. (Mister Rogers has a song about that — I like to take my time, I mean that when I want to do a thing, I like to take my time and do it right. I mean I just might make mistakes if I should have to hurry up, and so I like to take my time. That came entirely out of my memory, by the way.) I’m making plans, I’m taking my time, I’m going to do math (gasp! No! Not math!), I’m going to measure myself (get the smelling salts, gussie, ma’s fainted), and this time, I’m making a perfect sweater.
Geez, what a long-winded way to get here. In the wake of my gorgeous-but-large Dark & Stormy (which I will get into shape this weekend), I want to be thoughtful and slow and careful with the next one. I’ve now made three sweaters — my mondo cable cardi, my Peasy, and my Dark & Stormy. I adore them, they’re all gorgeous, but I did them my usual way, getting a wild hair, willy-nilly ordering some yarn and yes, making a little swatch, but then plowing ahead blindly. It’s a wonder they’re as good as they are.
Next up: Gudrun Johnson’s gorgeous Laar sweater, in dragon’s blood red. Here’s hers:
so beautiful!
One lesson I learned on Dark & Stormy: use needles you enjoy working with, even if it means you have to go buy new ones. I absolutely hated every minute of using the Denise needles, and believe it took me much longer to make that sweater, in part because of the needles. The constant difficult scootching, ugh.
So I’m making a substantial swatch, I’m measuring all the critical areas of my body for fitting this sweater, I’m making adjustments to the pattern so it fits ME (especially since I look absolutely nothing like the gorgeous model), and if I goof, I’m ripping. If it’s ok but meh it’s not quite right, I’m ripping.
I’m making a public vow. Promising myself. Yeah.
i think i’ve milked this for all it’s worth. time to move on.
Well this was quick and easy, even including my brain-damaged goofiness that required a bit of frogging and starting over. Sheesh. It’s been a rough new year for finished objects. (Speaking of, I’m going to deal with my too-big Dark & Stormy this weekend, believe me you’ll know how that goes. ) So anyway, this is my new project, officially known as “a very braidy cowl” (pattern here, rav page here, my rav project page here, ta-dah!) and designed by Maryse Roudier. Mine is named Oh, Marcia. Enough — here it is:
Marcia, Marcia Marcia - a very braidy cowl
The color’s not quite right; it’s more aqua than that, but I don’t have my laptop and I’m lost without all my junk. So this is just the raw shot out of the camera, unadjusted to righten-up the colors. The yarn was lovely to work with (SweetGeorgia superwash worsted, colorway summer skin….shoulda been summer sky if you ask me but she didn’t), and this pattern used .8 of a skein. I haven’t blocked it yet, I just finished kitchenering it together and wanted to throw this up before I head downtown. Will I be wearing it, on this dismal gray day? Why yes I will.
If you ever need a very quick gift that looks much more difficult than it is, this would be your project. Size 8 needles, less than a skein, a few hours’ knitting, and organic braidy yummy soft warmth is yours (or theirs!). Of course, if you make it, you’ll read the whole thing before you start, unlike me this time, so you’ll see the “cast on provisionally” before you start. You’re just so good that way, maybe one of these days I will be, too.
oh, and p.s.: when i pulled it off my head after trying it on, it rested for a second on my head, covering my ears, so i can tell you with authority that it’d make a damn fine earwarmer, too. or hair thing to hold your hair off your face when it’s driving you up the WALL man, and those scissors would just take care of it but then the husband wouldn’t like that because he likes long hair but today it’s driving me NUTS…oops.
oh poopy day (oh poopy day), oh poopy da-a-ay, I’m glad you’re gone (oh yes I am), so glad you’re gone (you’re really gone)…:)
BOY am I glad it’s a new day. Thank you for your sweet comments on my last post; as always, you helped me feel less alone. I really do know, intellectually, that everyone has experiences like mine. But when you just keep doing one wonky thing after another — even though, especially though, you know better — you start to think it’s just you, man. At least I do.
The last comment was from Naomi, who gave the very best name for days like that. They’re poopy days. Yes they are. Poopy, poopy, poopy days. I like that so much more than crappy days, or shitty days. Those two descriptors are as foul as the day itself. But a poopy day, well, you kind of have to laugh a little, feel a bit lighter about it. It’s just a poopy day.
And the good thing about poopy days (or weeks, months, seasons, or years) is that they end. At some point, finally, they do end. This morning I woke up back to my old self, and thus endeth the poopy day, and hallelujah for that. Last night I put in a bit of time knitting my new cowl while I watched an incredibly poopy movie (The Company Men, as cliched and idiotic as you’d expect). Thank heavens for knitting, it salvages lost hours. At least I got something done while wasting time on a stupid movie. Want to see?
oh, marcia cowl -- in sweet georgia worsted
Something’s gone wrong with my big flash for my camera; I’ve replaced the batteries twice, so it’s not battery-related. It’s really too fancy for me — I don’t understand any of the settings, so I’m sure I just goofed with a setting or something. But you can see the result in my photo, which is not well-lit. Maybe my flash is having a poopy day, so I should just wait to see if it’s better tomorrow.
The cowl will be wonderful, I can tell. Just using the brilliant sunny yarn is enough to lift gray spirits, and when I wear it out into the winter, I know that it’ll lift gray spirits too — mine and anyone who sees it, I hope. Because oh yes, winter continues.
I spent the morning grading stats papers — not as much fun as you might imagine — so now I’m going to get to work on a little bit of house cleaning before settling back to my knitting position. Which is my favorite position of them all. Oh yeah? Yours too? You’re in my tribe.
Marcia Brady + Willie Nelson + ELO = I need a break.
Last night I picked up Eve’s Rib, since I was on my “finish a sweater, whoo!” high. I hate that bitch. That’s really all there is to say. It’s the most ridiculously-written pattern. I frogged everything I did last night and put it back in Time Out. I didn’t sleep well last night and woke up feeling out of sorts and icky, and decided that what I needed was a quick-to-knit project. A bit of success to keep me on the knit wagon that I’d so recently fallen off of.
So I looked through my queue and my stash for inspiration, and decided to knit the Very Braidy Cowl. As it was surely intended to do, it made me think of…Marcia, Marcia, Marcia. I watched her a lot, when I was a kid. My parents were divorced, back when that was just beginning to think about maybe coming soon losing stigma. Our culture — at least mine, in Texas — wasn’t ready to go there yet, so being the divorced kid was kind of shameful. I didn’t know anyone else whose parents were divorced, and wouldn’t for quite a long time. So I watched The Brady Bunch. I don’t remember particularly identifying with or liking Marcia Brady (I had a very intense thing for David Cassidy so the Partridge Family had a different vibe for me), but she’s pretty iconic, isn’t she. My cowl, therefore, is named Oh Marcia.
ah....
And winter is getting me down, man. I’m from a place where winter is more of a concept than a reality, so this thing that just goes on and on and on is hard to take. Usually I skip along with it, but I’ll kind of get slammed here and there and feel like I can’t take it another day. That’ll last for a few days, then I’m back to being ok with it (unless it drags on through the end of April, and then that’s just ridiculous). So, I prowled my stash for something guaranteed to lift my spirits, something that would remind me of blue skies while I’m knitting and wearing Marcia (I guess I’ll call it that, for short). Luckily I have two skeins of this amazing Sweet Georgia worsted that I bought in Brooklyn, while shopping with Sherlock. The color name is summer skin.
So then THAT made me think of two songs that I love, Blue Skies (performed here by Willie Nelson of course) and Mr Blue Sky (ELO of course!). What a post. Marcia Brady, winter, Willie Nelson, and ELO. I tried to weave those pieces into something that made sense, but there’s only so much I could do. Off to knit….
Well! This was really the year of sweater knitting; I finished five sweaters this year. Last year I made two, so this was a dramatic increase. It was nice to start the year off with a sweater, even if 90% of it was completed last year. My first FO of 2011 was the Dark & Stormy cardigan, designed by Thea Colman, knit in Madelinetosh vintage (colorway baltic). The pattern was a birthday gift from my friend Kelly, and I absolutely adore the sweater. This’ll stand in until I get a nice shot of me wearing it:
Continue Reading–248 words totally
Well! This was really the year of sweater knitting; I finished five sweaters this year. Last year I made two, so this was a dramatic increase. It was nice to start the year off with a sweater, even if 90% of it was completed last year. My first FO of 2011 was the Dark & Stormy cardigan, designed by Thea Colman, knit in Madelinetosh vintage (colorway baltic). The pattern was a birthday gift from my friend Kelly, and I absolutely adore the sweater. This’ll stand in until I get a nice shot of me wearing it:
just gorgeous, in every way
It seems to be a blue year, this year; while I was waiting for some yarn to arrive, I knocked out a quick braidy cowl, which I named Oh, Marcia. So corny. It’s the Very Braidy Cowl, in Sweet Georgia worsted (colorway summer skin):
Marcia, Marcia Marcia - a very braidy cowl
In exactly the same colorway, but sock weight (which had been my intention when I mistakenly bought the worsted, above), here’s a pair of socks I made for my youngest daughter Anna’s 20th birthday. She really loves handknit socks, much to my real surprise, which makes it such fun to make them for her. This pattern is Komet:
the komet pattern (free on rav), in Sweetgeorgia tough sock, colorway summer skin
SO MUCH BLUE. Something very different was called for……red. Here’s my “I need something red shawl” (aka LaReine Shawl, by Angela Tong, in OkayKnits Sena, colorway sweetie-pie). I absolutely adore this piece, and wear it all the time:
it's such a vibrant color, and a very nice length!
I had this absolutely gorgeous colorway of madelinetosh’s Tosh Merino Light called filigree, so I used one skein of it to make a Saroyan. I loved the pattern, and loved the yarn, but for some reason it won’t photograph correctly, no matter what I do, what kind of light, etc. So trust me, it’s a gorgeous olive green, not so brown:
IT'S NOT BROWN!!! grrrrrr!!
If this wasn’t the quickest and simplest hat pattern in the world, I don’t know what is, but the yellow and white combo really lifts it into “Wow! Where’d you get that hat!” status. Made for Marnie, the pattern is “My Striped & Slouchy Hat“, knit in Cascade 220.
adorable, right?!
These socks — Angee, by Cookie A, knit in KnitPicks Felici (colorway: green vegetables) — are for my oldest daughter Katie, who (a) loves green and (b) picked the pattern. I love knitting for my kids. Knitting the hat above and the socks below was a great antidote to winter.
angee, in knitpicks felici
It took forever, but I made a second Traveling Woman shawl in tosh DK, colorway byzantine. It’s gorgeous, drapy, squishy, and warm:
Traveling Woman Shawl, by Liz Abinante, in tosh DK
A very very quick little knit, I cranked out the Fetching mitts in a couple hours. The yarn is so soft, Cascade Eco Duo (70% alpaca, 30% merino), in the vanilla colorway. It’s a fun knit, and I know the mitts will be luscious to wear but I don’t know how they’ll hold up, given how soft they are (and the yarn is loosely-spun singles). Still, look:
you wouldn't believe how soft these are!
I love this hot little number: Hannah Fettig’s featherweight cardigan, in Spirit Trail Fiberworks’ “clotho,” colorway deliciously called dragon’s blood. This is a wonderful little sweater, I see why everyone has made it.
the color is dragon's blood
This was without a doubt the fastest sweater I’ve ever knit; it really just took 13 days, even though there was a 15-day break in the middle while I was gone to Vietnam and didn’t work on it at all. This is my Wintry Mix sweater, designed by Amy Herzog, knit in the recommended yarn (Berroco Blackstone Tweed).
Wintry Mix, by Amy Herzog (yarn: berroco blackstone tweed, in evergreen)
A second Thea Colman design, this one the Vodka Gimlet — but since my colorway was Oz (Plucky Knitter Primo Worsted), I named my sweater Ozma’s Delight. I can’t express how much I adore this sweater, I’ll probably wear it every day:
sweater LOVE
When the weather started smelling cold, I realized I don’t have a warm hat, so I knocked out A Hat for Eudora, designed by Alexandra Tinsley. The pattern was a birthday gift from Kelly, and the yarn is Cascade 220. I call it my Berry Welty hat.
the hem facing is blue and purple, but only I get to know that!
Here’s my Laurayana sweater — Ayana by Amy Herzog, pattern gifted by my friend Laura. This was knit in Cascade 220 Heathers (color, montmartre, which is much more dusty lavender than it looks here).
really such a comfortable sweater to wear.
For my youngest daughter Anna, a pair of handknit socks — the only kind of socks she wears, which cracks me up given who she is, otherwise. Not a handknit anything kind of person!
Kai-Mei (pattern by Cookie A), in KnitPicks Stroll Tonal (golden glow)
Her foot is at least a couple sizes smaller than mine, so that sock is stretched pretty far to fit over my foot!
Bali Ha’i may call you … “Come away…Come away.” I wish my knitting would call me. 
The post title comes from my daughters; Katie did a series of posts in December and we were so thrilled to get such regular posts from her. In January, the series was over and unfortunately so were the regular opportunities to hear from our Katie-girl. So Marnie suggested a few series options, one of which (since Katie is a new and enthusiastic knitter) was called “Knitta, please!” Katie actually wrote a post with that title, and showed her Habitat hat, by Jared Flood (her project page on rav, but she’s well into the cables now…..new picture please, Katie!)
So I loved that title, knitta please, but had no thoughts of co-opting it until it seemed such a perfect fit with what’s on my mind. So with gratitude (and apologies) to both daughters, I’m saying Knittas, please. Insight requested.
I don’t know what’s happened to me. I have fallen off the knit wagon and cannot seem to climb on again. It’s not the oft-reported loss of “mojo” one hears about so regularly, it’s something else. It’s not a sudden dislike of the endeavor. It’s not disinterest in what I am working on. I know what all it’s not, but I don’t know what it is.
Some of it may be due to the shift in my work life. Up until last July, I worked Monday through Friday, very clear division between at-work and not-at-work. When I was at work, I was daydreaming about knitting, and when I was not at work, I was knitting. Not-at-work meant whee! I can knit! I have this couple of days and I’m going to knit knit knit! OR, I’m home for the day, I’m going to [finally] spend the evening knitting! The time not-at-work felt like a reward, like the time that was FINALLY mine to spend however I wanted before I had to go back to work so I’d better get. on. the. stick!
Now, I wake up whenever I wake up, I drink some coffee, maybe have some toast, poke around on the internet, brush my teeth, and settle into working (notice that “get out of my pajamas” was not on that list ). I sit on the couch, my corner of the couch where I used to knit all the time, with my laptop on my lap. I’ll sit there for long hours at a stretch, focused and working hard. At some vague point — either when my mind won’t do it any more, or when dinner is ready, or when I have an appointment — I’ll kind of stop working. After dinner, after the cleaning up, I don’t seem to be picking up my knitting, and on the weekends, I sometimes work (sometimes a lot), but I don’t seem to be spending every spare moment knitting.
i miss you!
I’m at the last cuff on my Dark & Stormy, I want to finish that tonight, weave in ends and do a little finishing task and get it blocking tomorrow. I don’t have buttons, and the weather is so dismal I don’t feel like wandering around the button district so I don’t know what I’ll do on that front (ha, front, get it?). I absolutely love this sweater and cannot wait to wear it. It fits very well, it’s comfortable, the color is amazing (especially in dismal old winter), and it’s my birthday sweater. What’s not to love?! And I’m very close to finishing Eve’s Rib, if you remember that one from so long ago; I could easily have two new gorgeous sweaters like *that.*
I know it’s not a race — ravelry and blogs can make it very clear how much/how fast/how whatever everyone else is knitting. I know, who cares! In the time I’ve had Dark & Stormy on the needles, other people have started and finished two sweaters. OK, maybe they knit faster, maybe they have more time available to knit, and also see the “I know, who cares!” line above. But the thing that gnaws at me is the knitting ennui** I’m experiencing, the knitting malaise**. And there are two reasons I’m so troubled by it:
- I want it back! and
- This is, after all, a knitting blog and I worry that you’ll get fed up with the very clear lack of knitting that’s going on around here. It’s just that I like you, and really like having you around.
So if you have any advice for me on this situation, I’d really love to hear it. Has it ever happened to you?
** ennui, how often does one get to use that word?
in heaven there is no beer, that’s why we drink it here. and when we’re gone from here, all our friends will be drinking all our beer!
I think I’ll start with the “not beauty” so I can end on a high note, on the last post I’ll ever write in 2010. We’re 5 days past Blizzardgeddon – the idiotic name the media gave to our big storm last Sunday – and boy is the bloom off that rose. For real. Here’s a shot out my living room window (shot through a filthy living room window, I apologetically add), of the view of my street. It’s made even worse by the fact that tomorrow morning trash is picked up, so it’s all out at the curb. Days like this I have to repeat over and over to myself “you love NY, you love NY, you love NY.”
looks like a set for a post-apocalyptic movie, doesn't it?
It only needs blood-dripping zombies staggering down the street to complete the gloomy lifeless feeling. Good thing I don’t feel gloomy and lifeless. Or zombie-like.
So here’s the beauty. My 3rd daughter has figured out that a very easy gift for me is yarn. She sometimes gives me a book – I’m so very very easy. The easiest person in the whole wide world. Here’s what she gave me for this past Om Day celebration — Berroco’s new Ultra Alpaca tonal, 2 skeins:
430 yards, worsted weight.....GO!
So soft, so beautiful, such a long queue to fit it into. There are worse problems.
And I’ll end unexpectedly, since this is a fancy day of anticipatory celebration (yay new decade! wait…last year actually startNever mind.). You get to decide whether this is beauty or not beauty. For me, it’s beauty all the way. It’s my favorite polka of ALL TIME, “In heaven there is no beer”. I used to polka around my bedroom to this when I was pretty little, and yes I was ‘unusual.’
See you next year!
dunh dunh dunh! the return of knitting content!
I promised that knitting content would return, since this is after all (ostensibly) a knitting blog. The truth is that I haven’t felt much like knitting lately, and I haven’t had much time, either. But I have been making steady progress on my birthday sweater, pattern courtesy of my friend Kelly (dark and stormy cardigan, by thea colman, yarn is madelinetosh vintage, in baltic). Knitting the 3″ wide front band takes a long time, since it goes continuously up one side, around the collar (with a big section of short rows to make the wide cardigan collar) and back down the other side, in 1×1 ribbing. Maybe it’s just me, but 1×1 ribbing is the slowest thing to do. ANYWAY. Last night I finished the collar and bands, so I just have the sleeves to do.
cables and twists, so beautiful! and the way the cables drift into the ribbing at the bottom, really great.
look at that great collar - loose bindoff is critical here
the front of my beautiful birthday sweater -- unblocked, obviously!
So that’s been fun. I know I always get bored with sleeves, which seem interminable, but I hope they feel relatively fast, after the long slog of the collar and bands. Stockinette will be welcomed again.
And here are a few obligatory shots out my window, since we’re in Blizzardgeddon, as they call it. Silly.
snow out the back window
view from my front window. in the windowsill: two brass horney toads, a tibetan singing bowl, and a porcelain star-shaped box full of pins. my stuff.
see that van? its alarm went off most of the evening. i really hope their battery died.
The wind is gusting like mad, and I’m watching pedestrians being blown around, or trying to walk forward but being blown backwards. And once again, I’m glad to be working at home.
wanna see what I got in Laos and Cambodia? Do ya? Huh? No? Then can I interest you in a WIP?
This’ll be a me-heavy post, so apologies for the seeming-narcissistic episode of me! Me wearing this! Me wearing that! Hi, it’s me! Enough about me, here’s a shot of my earrings…..on me! Anyway…..
I picked up a couple of small souvenirs on our recent vacation; I always buy a pair of earrings, and every time I wear them I get a rush of the place. The cool black ones I bought in Diocletian’s Palace, in Split (Croatia); the onyx and mother-of-pearl ones I bought in a little shop in Cusco; the heavy ones I bought in Udaipur, in India…such wonderful memories. This time, though, I bought two souvenirs, one from Laos and one from Cambodia.
my Khmer kroma, and Lao earrings
The scarf is called a Kroma, and you see them everywhere in Cambodia. They’re always checked, like this, and they’re quite often red. They’re always wrapped around people’s heads, to keep them cool, but they’re multipurpose items. They can be rolled into a pad and placed on your shoulder to cushion a yoke, or on your head to cushion a heavy basket; they can be used to carry babies and fruit; they can be worn around your neck, like a regular old scarf. It was the most distinctively Cambodian thing I could think of, that I could incorporate into my everyday life. I bought this at the big Central Market in Phnom Penh, and I have already worn the hell out of it.
lao earrings
These are heavy, and I’m having to train my earlobes to wear them. I’m definitely not a Buddhist (or art) scholar, so I’m absolutely guessing here, but I do wonder if there is some kind of Buddhist symbology in the design. Maybe not, but the wheel makes me wonder. I bought these in Luang Prabang, from a woman who sold her handwork on the sidewalk.
And now for the &c. Here’s where I am on my wonderful sweater (excuse my wet just-out-of-the-shower hair):
hi! look at my sweater!
(oh! see my earrings there?!) I’m at the waist now, so I’m hauling. I spent yesterday knitting, so I got a lot done. Here’s the back:
look at the pretty cables!
I’ve got another post percolating in my mind, but I probably won’t write it today. Yesterday, I watched a bunch of movies while I worked on my sweater: M, by Fritz Lang, Elf (for a complete whiplash-inducing change of pace), and three about Joseph Cambell. One of the Joseph Campbell movies was called Sukhavati, which means the place of bliss. So I’ve been thinking about a lot of the things he talked about and have something to say, but will do that later.
some of this, some of that, not a lot of snappy gray matter activity.
I can live with the drug and porn spam comments that my lovely spam catcher silences for my dear old blog. I do get tired of reading about drugs and penises, but they’re so routine and boring. Really, spammers? Really? What are you thinking.
But a lot of spam comments are just mean – like, “you can’t do better than this?” or “Real stupid post, you should just quit.” GOOD GRIEF. Every one of them sounds like the mean voice that occasionally squeaks around in the dark corners of my mind, and you know, that squeaky voice doesn’t need any help.
My new camera battery came today so I show you where I am with my really lovely sweater-in-progress:
moving down the body now - sleeves are divided
And the blanket I took with us on vacation, I got a lot done on it, though I’m only about 1/3 finished at this point:
you can't tell, but i got a LOT done!
When I left, I had finished only 2 repeats I think. Anyway. Feeling kind of dazed and stunned right now, so this is a half-assed post. I’m still hit hard by the reverse jet-lag, and the lack of sleep is accumulating; on top of that, I have a lot of work to do – good, of course – and I’ve spent the day buried in it. Now I have to head downtown for my monthly writing group, and I can’t imagine that I’ll write very much that’s coherent.
Oy. Boring myself here.
in which i make much ado about really unimportant things.
I’ll give her this – she’s cheap. The price range for circular needle sets is pretty wide: Addi Turbo set, around $260; Knitpicks set around $85; and good old Denise comes in around $50. If you hang around the Ravelry forums, there are always a lot of people selling their Denise set “barely used,” and this seems instructive. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone sell their Addi Turbo set.
Well, not being overwhelmingly endowed with money, and preferring to spend any spare money on yarn rather than needles (a trade-off I’m reconsidering…easy to say since I have a nice enough stash at this point), I bought the KnitPicks Harmony set, and the Denise set. I thought that would give me all the possible options I’d need. I bought these before I knew much about knitting, and was just dazzled by having All! Those! Needles! In two neat little packs!
I’ve been knitting my Dark & Stormy sweater on the Denise needles, because it’s the only one I had available; my others were being held hostage in other UFOs. And when I first started knitting, I thought I absolutely adored Denise!! The lightweightness of the needles, the pleasing sound/feel of them clicking together, the ease of adding more sections to the cord as the sweater grew, the joins that seem awfully sturdy.
But I’ve been hating on them as the sweater grows. It feels like I’m knitting with drinking straws; that hollow straw-like cord connecting the needles is about the same size as the needles, so it really requires both hands to scootch the knitting around. I’m not liking that one little bit, I must say. It’s seriously slowing down my progress. I’m just about to divide for the sleeves so the rows will become shorter once that happens, but it’s taking me too long to get a row done. I may just have to stop at Knitty City this evening and pick up a better needle.
And in a stunning coincidence of technology FAIL, I went to take a photograph of my sweater for this post, but my camera battery seems to have thoroughly given up its little electronic ghost. When I got home from my vacation Saturday night, I put it in the recharger….plenty of time for a thorough and deep recharge for heaven’s sake! But when it’s in the camera, it still says it’s completely uncharged. Just as I was realizing that, I plugged my headphones into the headphone jack of my laptop so I could listen to music and the jack quit working. The headphones work, I tested them in my iPod, it’s just the jack in my computer. WTF electronics. Why do this expensive thing to me now, at Christmas.
Sorry for the lame-o griping. There are certainly much bigger things in the world to be griping about, and also plenty of wonder to appreciate. These are just like having a pebble in your shoe.
i fell down AGAIN but this time my computer also took a spill. dammit.
….ARGH. I was typing this post and got up to put my coffee cup in the dishwasher and somehow my feet got all tangled up in something, wires, footstool, pile o’ shoes, and I fell down hard. And this disaster caused my laptop to go flying, and land on an angle, on one of its corners, and as I hit the floor (hard) I was thinking “oh no! not my computer!! not now!!”
I now smell like coffee, my hands are shaking, my knees are all bruised, and my laptop is a bit out of whack. The top closes, and it seems to be working, but it’s kind of wonky. We always take it when we travel, because we upload the day’s photos and tell the day’s stories on our travel blog, so the timing of this little accident sucks. So far so good, though, so I hope the indestructibility of my ThinkPad continues.
Anyway, I’d written some of the post already, but now I’m kind of shaky so instead of reconstructing it, I’ll just leave this photo of where I am on my new birthday cardigan – the “52 is not dark and stormy” Dark and Stormy sweater by Thea Colman:
1 skein of yarn
Except for the rows where the cables do their biggest crossing, I cable without a cable needle now. The little twists, the easier crossing rows, it’s just me sliding stitches off the needle and rearranging them. Cool. Quick and easy, and no longer scary. I love the yarn (tosh vintage), the color shadings are fun (baltic) and make me happy. The design is simple and great fun to knit, and not boring — we’ll see what I’m saying when I hit the sleeves, of course.
So I’ll leave it here, at this point, and pick it up when we return. Off to put fresh sheets on our bed, put away the laundry, run the dishwasher, and pack. We’ll leave at 5 in the morning! WHEE!
i love cee-lo green, and i love brooklyn brown ale, and i love my family. wait, that’s not the right order.
- Cee-Lo Green. Maybe you caught him on The Colbert Report, singing a modified version of his big hit (replacing the “f*^ you” with “Fox News”). I’m not embedding the video here in case you’re offended by the F word (in which case don’t click his linked name….but really, you’re missing SUCH a great song, maybe you can just pretend he’s saying Fox News or something).
- Brooklyn Brown Ale – man, if you like a very hoppy beer, this one is GREAT. I don’t drink much, never more than one drink of anything, and this one will be my new go-to ale. YUM.
- anticipating my trip….I leave Thursday morning for Phnom Penh, as I keep saying. Because I am so so SO excited!!
- knitting. See posts on this blog for evidence. I don’t need to tell y’all about this one.
- Y’ALL. My friends, my deeply loved kids, strangers who just aren’t friends yet. All a y’all.
lots to get done, getting lots done. pumpkin pie and cranberry bars, tandoori chicken and packing for laos, and lotsa deciding. i’m the decider.
Just a quick update note here – lots to do, lots getting done. SUCH AS
sturm und drang - i prefer storm and shadows
Progress on my 52nd birthday sweater! It’s looking so good; I put it on my footstool to go take the cranberry bars out of the oven, and when I came back the shadows were so dramatic I thought I’d snap the photo. I got nearly this far yesterday, only to realize I’d done the small twisted-stitch cables all wrong so I frogged the whole damn thing. I’m beyond where I was, so alles gute (where is all this german coming from!! i don’t speak german. though i am descended from a bunch of germans, all of whom were named Frank Peters, who arrived in Texas from Hanover in the early 1800s). ANYWAY. I love my sweater. It’s darker than it looks in that photo; the sunshiney parts are so blown out, but the other parts are so dark that the combo just freaked out my camera.
tandoori chicken with grilled onions and zucchini
Look at the yummy dinner I had last night – garlicky tandoori chicken, making my mouth water just remembering it. I’m not kidding; my salivary glands in my jaws are having painful spasms.
And here’s the “stuff” part of the post title. I decided to take the afghan I’m knitting for my vacation knitting.
the pattern is Totally Autumn (Anne Hanson) and the yarn is Cascade 200 Heathers
It’s a simple pattern, no extra gadgets are needed (cable needles, materials to hold sleeves, markers, nothing). Plus, I really want to get it done, and when I’m at home I seem to be more likely to work on sweaters now that I’m a dedicated sweater fiend. This way, I’ll get it done, it’ll be more special since I completed it in Laos and Cambodia on our vacation, and when I get home I can dive headlong into my sweaters. For my “just in case” knitting, I’ll take the purple owl eyes scarf. I can’t imagine that I’ll finish this afghan, but you never know.
Hope you’re having a great Sunday, a lovely weekend, and doing some happy knitting.
i love these two things and have to give them away. it’s the PROCESS it’s the PROCESS it’s the PROCESS (repeat over and over until I convince myself…..)
The two women in my writing group asked me to knit scarves for them. I finished the Lace Ribbon Scarf for Susan, made with my leftover Rowan Felted Tweed from Peasy (which, by the way, gets a compliment every single time I wear it, including from my physician yesterday). So here’s Susan’s scarf:
lace ribbon scarf (Veronik Avery), in Rowan Felted Tweed
And here’s the beginning of Marian’s scarf; she chose the Tiger Eyes Lace Scarf by Toni M. Maddox, and she chose Curious Creek Fibers Meru from my stash, in a deep purple colorway named Purple Martin. The yarn is laceweight, half silk half merino; since (a) I want to finish the scarf pretty quickly and (b) I like the heft of the scarves made with fingering-weight yarn, I am holding it double. See?
the pattern is called tiger eyes, but it looks like owls to me!
i really like it - and it's great fun to knit!
Really – it doesn’t look like tiger eyes, does it? It’s owl faces all the way. Right?
And my birthday gift, that thing in the long rectangular box wrapped in silver paper?
my birthday present - turtlegirl was right, it was a swift!
Of course I immediately put a skein of yarn on and wound it up – the Wollmeise that Tammy gave me. It took, like, 3 minutes, and I was grinning the whole time. I used to have a swift (which I kept permanently mounted on the castle of my 48″ 8-harness jack loom, ah the good old days) and I’ve really missed it.
I have too much work to get done before I leave for Laos – 2 giant manuscripts (one which needs to be re-ghost-written) and a couple small projects – so I’d better quit farting around here and get to work. Happy Tuesday y’all!
the knitting on the bus goes round and round, round and round, round and round the knitting on the bus goes round and round, all the way to the DMV. i am so goofy.
Well, knitting changes my world, that might be a more appropriate statement. You ask, “Lori! How does knitting change the world?” (indulge me.) Here’s today’s deal. I have to go to the DMV to renew my driver’s license, which is hilarious since I don’t drive. But anyway, have to do it. And can’t do it online this year, because I have to have the eye exam. So I’ll take the bus to the Harlem branch and guess what, it’s raining today. Everything about this sounds awful.
BUT…..
While I’m on the bus, I’ll knit.
While I’m waiting on the interminable DMV line, I’ll knit.
While I’m on the bus coming home, I’ll knit.
I can’t wait.
Today and tomorrow are going to be all-rain-all-day, and I have the headache to prove it. So naturally, being the enormous fan of my birthday that I am, I immediately worried that Saturday was going to be rainy too. 
Rain won’t ruin my birthday, but it’d be nice if it were a pretty day. Right now, the forecast is for a sunny Saturday, yippee!! 52 I’ll be, yippee!! I’m extremely silly about birthdays, and always know (and remember) everyone’s. If you let me know yours, I’ll be silly about it too. I’m not sure why I’m like this; it’s not like my birthday was anything special when I was a kid. I just think it’s the one day of 365 that you get to be special, and don’t we all need that? One little day where we think about how glad we are to be here, where other people might even think they’re glad we were born too? Anyway, that’s how I think about it.
katie’s a knitter! she really, really is.
Maybe it’s because I think knitting is hard to learn; I learned to crochet when I was 5 and it was so very simple, but knitting was awkward and scary. Took me a long time to learn how to relax with it. Or maybe it’s because I’m a really crappy teacher-of-knitting, who knows. Whichever, I haven’t had a lot of success teaching people to knit – although Marnie picked it up very easily, as she does with all creative endeavors.
So I was a little anxious about teaching Katie to knit, since I’m not historically very good at it, or something. But y’all? She picked it up from the get-go. I should’ve had more confidence in the fact that (a) she’s very creative, (b) she’s my kid, and (c) her paternal grandmother was a great knitter, and Katie’s a lot like her Mama G.
doesn't she look like an old pro????
the yarn is Bearfoot, by Mountain Colors, apple green (Katie's color!)
garter and stockinette - her first-ever knitting!
I’m just blown away by her speed of picking it up. We got the yarn at Hill Country Weavers – Bearfoot, by Mountain Colors. It’s her learning swatch, so she’s getting her knitting and purling down, and I’m about to teach her how to kfb and bind off, and then she’ll start her first project, the Gathered Scarf. I’m just amazed at her; I came out of the shower this morning and looked down into the living room and saw her sitting in a chair with her feet up, just knitting away like an old pro.
I’ll have a huge wrap-up post when I get home, full of pictures and stuff. For now though, I’ll close with a picture of one of my dear ravelry friends, Kelly. We met for coffee yesterday morning and it was just wonderful. Only the first meeting of many to come, that’s my plan:
me and Kelly - look at her fantastic cardigan!!! she wore it because she knew how much i love it. hi kelly!
We’re making bread and chili today, and hanging out and knitting. Tonight, handing out candy to little tricksters, and tomorrow morning, I fly home. It sure went by too fast.
knitting. ravelry. katie. travel. joy.
My morning ritual (like yours, probably) involves drinking my 2 cups of coffee while catching up on email and other web stuff. Of course this includes Ravelry. I scan through my friends activity page and investigate projects that look interesting. Nothing newsy there. But as I was doing that this morning, it hit me that one of the really great things about knitting is that it always meets you where you are. Just learning? Plain old scarves are in your realm of possible while also being just a little bit of a challenge. Getting better? Lace, shawls. Getting better still? Garments. Getting better still? Yeah, there are still more techniques, more complicated patterns, more horizons. That’s one of the many things I love about our shared passion.
The whole purpose of my trip to Austin is to soak up as much of my daughter’s time and attention as possible – plus, I’m going to meet Kelly in person, very cool. My Katie girl and I will chat, play games, run some errands, give candy to trick-or-treaters, bake a LOT, and just hang out together, and I know the time will be too short. Still, I’ll need to have knitting with me so while I’m packing this morning I’m considering which project(s) to bring. Definitely the lace ribbon scarf; I hope to finish that, for sure. The flights from NY to Austin are long and I have a connection both ways – in Charlotte NC going down, and in Houston coming back. Lots of good airplane/airport knitting time, yay!
At the end of today’s journey will be my daughter’s smiling face, and [finally] good Mexican food. See y’all later -
and p.s. I woke up with Neil Diamond in my head singing “Love on the Rocks.” No, my marriage is NOT on the rocks. I can’t get the song out of my head now. This may be a long day.
i always hate it when people say this to me, but maybe they’re right: worse things DO happen at sea.
So I’m looking on the bright side here. The glass is half full. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. And other inane and trite platitudes as well.
I cannot stay asleep any more. Last night I went to sleep around 11, and woke up at 12:34. (no kidding) Then I was awake at 1:15, 2:20, 3:30 (was wide awake for at least 45 minutes that time), 5:00, and 5:30. Finally I just got up. What the hell – may as well knit. So, in the spirit of the above-mentioned platitudes, look at all this knitting time I have created in a day! Who needs sleep anyway – apparently not me! I’ve been saying I wish I had more hours in the day, and now I do! Lucky lucky me! (maybe my glass is more than half full, maybe it’s overflowing!) All those exclamation points!
Don’t tell my other projects ….. shh ….. but I started the Laar swatch. Again in the spirit of overflowing glasses, swatching is the best thing in the world! Not only do you get a better sense that your sweater might fit, you also get to play with that new yarn that’s whispering/calling/shouting at you all the time. You get to free two birds with one, um, act! So much nicer than killing two birds, what a violent saying. So in my middle-night knitting, I wound one skein of my yarn into a ball and cast on:
my Laar swatch, with Clotho
The subtle shifts in color are really going to make this fabric gorgeous. I can’t wait to block the finished swatch and see what happens with the yarn. Laceweight yarn on size US6 needles produces such an airy, light fabric, very very pretty. But making the swatch is definitely relieving some of the ‘must cast on now’ pressure, which is great because I need to finish my shrug and my scarf.
And now, the source of this title’s post. From The Life of Brian (the best part of that Monty Python movie, in my opinion): “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” The post title comes in at the end of the song, and always made me and Marnie crack up. Worse things happen at sea, what a bizarre and hilarious line:
Happy Friday y’all!
good in the mouth, good on the needles, good on the eyes, good to wear, not so good on the elbow. ouch.
Since I was out of town last weekend, I didn’t get to stock the freezer with homemade bread and sweets. But I didn’t have time to make bread yesterday, so I dashed off a quick batch of butter pecan shortbread cookies. Here’s the recipe I used (wonderful but lots of butter!), and here’s the result:
slice and bake - so easy - and pecan brown sugar shortbread, so delicious
Next up on the delicious hit list – looming yarns and their associated projects:
next on deck
MAN THIS IS KILLING ME. I want to grab needles and cast on for the five projects that will use these glorious yarns. Let’s go around the circle:
- top left, that pale, pale pink? That’s madelinetosh’s tosh merino light, in the porcelain colorway. I’m going to make the Austin Hoodie, designed by Connie Chang Chinchio – designed especially for this yarn, I believe. I’ll have a lot of new experiences with this one, including set-in sleeves and a hood.
- that red, on top? That’s my new Okay Knits Sena, in the sweetie-pie colorway. I’m going to knit the LaReine Shawl, designed by Angela Tong. No new experiences, but loads of pleasure with the fun design and gorgeous yarn.
- that brown(ish), on the right? That’s madelinetosh’s pashmina, in the silt wash colorway. I think I’m going to make the Katrina Ballerina Lace Layering Cardigan, designed by Nicole Feller-Johnson, but I’m not sure on this one, like I am on the others.
- the red, on the bottom — of course that’s my new Spirit Trail Fiberworks “clotho” in the dragon’s blood colorway, which I’ll use to knit Gudrun Johnston’s beautiful little Laar sweater. Thanks for your thoughts on that one! Right now this one is the most fun to think about.
- and last but certainly not least enticing, the fawn-colored laceweight wool on the lower left is the Jamieson & Smith Shetland Supreme, which I’ll use to knit either the Madli’s Shawl mentioned in the previous post, or the Tree of Light Shawl. Still pondering that one, and don’t want to give short shrift to the gorgeous yarn.
I’m just going to put all these yarns away, out of my sight (in the hopes that my age-related memory loopiness will help them slip out of mind) until I finish the Eve Shrugged and the Lace Ribbon Scarf. I want to finish the shrug, and I need to finish the scarf, and that’ll only happen if I give them both all my spare time and attention.
Do you continually massage your ravelry queue? Mine is extremely organized, and I regularly go through and reorder the items on the individual tabs (e.g., socks, sweaters, shawls), and then reorder the top items on the queue as a whole, matching them with stash yarns. In a way, this keeps my obsession going (the downside), but in another way, it gives me a way to play with projects without actually casting on too many at once (the upside). The top of my queue is now dominated by sweaters, a fact that tickles me.
A downside issue that warrants my attention…..I’m getting knitter’s elbow in my left elbow. It hurts, a lot, and I know I’d better slow down and do something about it before it gets so bad I can’t knit. THAT WOULD BE AWFUL. Since I spend so much of my day hunkered over the keyboard with long hours of focused attention, and then much of the rest of my time knitting, I hold my elbows in one position for long periods. I’m trying to stop very regularly – predetermined intervals so I don’t forget, like every page, or every couple of rows – and stretch out my arms, flex my hands up to further stretch the muscles and tendons, and breathe while I’m at it. [I forget to breathe.] This part is not so delicious.
i love chocolate cake, and yellow cake, and lemon cake, and shetland cake. wait….what?
What’s your favorite kind of cake? I love chocolate cake with chocolate frosting (old school, nothing fancy like ganache, I’m from Duncan Hines territory), and I adore a very nice yellow cake with chocolate frosting. YUM. The only time I’ve ever had red velvet, it was so dry it made me choke and really, I don’t see what the hubbub is all about, bub. It’s chocolate. But it’s red. OOOOOH.
My favorite kind of cake, though, is a yarn cake. (I’ll bet you knew I was heading here, because you’re real smart that way.) I had a little bit of time between scheduled meetings so I wound one skein of the Shetland Supreme into a cake. You know, after a period of overindulgence you just kind of crave something really, really simple? After the overindulgences of dragon’s blood and byzantine and avocado green, my brain was twitching for a beautiful wool in a natural color. Oh how I wish I could just cast on a shawl with this, right this minute:
shetland supreme cake, DELICIOUS
I’m thinking about Madli’s Shawl, from Nancy Bush’s Knitted Lace of Estonia book. Of course this book was the source of Marnie’s wedding shawl, which was both a pleasure and a nightmare to knit……I blame the nightmarish part on the cobweb-weight lace yarn, which was not my favorite. But I think the fawn-colored lace weight yarn would be beautiful in this pattern:
Madli's shawl
I’d have to do some hard searching to find sheaves of wheat, or piles of hay, or tall prairie grasses to stand near for my FO photograph, but if it comes out the way I imagine it, it’d be worth the effort. All those nupps…..I’m still a-thinkin on it.
I’ve come a long way on my Eve Shrugged, but I’ve still got a ways to go. I thought I was ready to bind off but nope, still a few inches to knit.
man, this thing just goes on and ON. that's like miles of fabric, or so it feels on my lap.
The part at the bottom will be the collar, and the bit above that is the body, with little sleeve stumps sticking out the sides. As Jocelyn describes, this is a bit of origami, the assembly of it.
here's kinda sorta what it'll look like. kinda. sorta. but with more sleeve.
The pattern stitch is still enjoyable to knit, and the yarn still delights, with every subtle shift in color…bronze, gold, red, purple, pink, all gorgeous. But I am getting a bit tired of the project, I’m so fickle like that. Startitis, my friends. The siren song of new yarn. Bali Hai…..
where do YOU buy buttons? would you share?
One of the things about living in New York is that you can find anything here. And there are “districts” for so many things – the flower district, the handbag district, the sweat pants district (kidding, but maybe there really is one!), the garment district, even the button district. If you’re in the mood to spend a lot of time poking around, wandering, going in and out of dozens of shops, you really can find anything here.
But it takes that kind of effort, unless you get lucky in your first stop. Sometimes the idea is daunting, and I can’t even begin. I need buttons for my new sweater……ugh, it’ll take a lot of walking, wandering, poking, I wish I could just walk into a supersized store and pick up what I need. Like snaps, for instance – I don’t need special snaps, just large plain snaps. If I lived somewhere else, I could just drive over to JoAnn’s, park, run in and pick up snaps, and head home.
At Rhinebeck, I was specifically hunting for handmade buttons. Sure, Tender Buttons has all kinds of amazing buttons, and I can always go there, even if it’s on the east side and so not that simple to get to. I could do that. I’d pay an arm and a leg, too, because they’re Super Fancy, but I could always do that. But I’d like to find a source for beautiful handmade buttons, and I did find some at Rhinebeck but I needed 11 and could only get 6.
So I feel a little bit bad, complaining about buttons when I live in a place with a button district, for heaven’s sake, but here I am, complaining anyway. Do you have a good online source for beautiful buttons? Handmade buttons, in particular? I don’t want the kind that are made with that plastic modeling clay you buy at Michael’s, and bake. If you have an online source you can recommend, please let me know!
This morning I woke up just before 5am – wide awake – so I made some coffee and sat down at my computer to catch up on ravelry, blog friends, etc. As I kept thinking about it, I started thinking that maybe the Laar sweater wouldn’t be nearly as flattering on me as it is on this beautiful skinny model:
I have a much more busty shape than the model, for one thing, and I’m probably 25-30 years older. I am not sure if the style is too young, or if it would work on a bustier figure. I’m starting to think the answer is no. I bought this yarn for it:
Spirit Trail Fiberworks - Clotho (colorway dragon's blood, isn't that deliciously named?), 3 skeins
I don’t know. I’m thinking the answer is no. No one else has made it yet, so I can’t see different versions of it. I have a bunch of other things in my queue, so maybe I’ll work on them (and finish my Eve Shrugged) and by that time, someone with my shape will have made it.
edited: Thanks to Karie’s comment below, I’m much more confident about the Laar sweater! And thanks to a new plug-in I installed that lists related bookmarks in my del.icio.us account, I found a site I’d bookmarked a long time ago and forgotten about Sawyer Brook….and promptly bought two different sets of buttons as potential elements of my future Laar sweater:
Anyway – other button sources anyone?
Popular posts: