in which i solicit your true and honest opinion, whatever it may be.
The title of this post reflects my constant state about everything, but in this case it’s really more about buttons. I haven’t been working on my Audrey in Silt sweater for quite a long time, since I started (and then upsettingly re-started) Marnie’s Moby sweater; I want to finish Marnie’s and get it off to her so she can wear it while she still lives in Chicago. More on that one in a second. But for now, I have a question for you about the buttons for my Audrey sweater. Over on knitspot, Anne Hanson frequently mentions Moving Mud as a source of buttons for her sweaters, and she always says the buttons she receives are more beautiful than what she’d have selected for herself. Since my Audrey sweater is really so beautiful, and I feel so inadequate about selecting buttons, I thought I’d give this a try, and commission the artist at Moving Mud to just make some buttons for me. I sent her my swatch, told her how many and what size, and just trusted her. They’re handblown glass buttons with a shank. I’ve placed them on the sweater — what do you think, honestly?
there will be 12 buttons -- this is just the first 5
I want to say what I think, but I don’t want to influence your opinion. I realize that seeing a few of them on an unfinished sweater lying flat on a table is a different thing than seeing them all on the sweater, on a real body, but I ….. well, what do you think. I am happy with Moving Mud, she was wonderful to deal with, so any concern I have isn’t about her and her business, it’s just about these particular buttons. What do you think?
Marnie’s sweater is coming right along:
the sweater body, blocked and dry. even though the waist draws in quite a bit, it's still not as tiny as marnie's waist. but it should look nice on her!
that rope cable will travel up the arm, all the way to the shoulder.
I’m very fuzzy-headed today and having a hard time getting my brain to work. I really need to get to work, and want to (I’m editing a great manuscript, such fun to read), but it’s like being encased in cotton today, everything’s kind of fuzzy and far from me, and I’m not feeling sharp at all. I hate days like that…..and hope yours is crisper and better!
Please, really do tell me your honest thoughts about those buttons. Perhaps my sure/unsure thing is about today’s fuzziness, but I don’t think so. I’ve had them for weeks now and still feel unsure. What do you think?
in which I recount my history as a sweater knitter
Somehow I have become a sweater girl, knitting them almost exclusively. I’m thoroughly surprised by this, but think it’s primarily due to a couple things: (1) my friend Kelly, who inspires me with her sweaters, and (2) a few successes. Here is my sweaterography:
- Peasy – successful on all counts (though now it’s big, since I’ve lost weight, and it’s not the most flattering style on me, I now know.) Love the yarn (Rowan Felted Tweed) and would definitely use it again.
- Dark & Stormy — successfully knitted but unsuccessfully sized. Will be frogging. Love the yarn (madelinetosh vintage) and didn’t have huge problems with varying colors, but the FO is heavy. Very, very heavy. And that’s probably one reason it grew a couple sizes in blocking (and yes, I swatched and blocked.)
- Mondo Cable Cardi — successfully knitted but the yarn sucked, to be frank. Madelinetosh merino let me down in every way possible. The colors were so variable between skeins it was shocking; the yarn base itself varied wildly from skein to skein; and it turned into a giant pill within minutes of finishing it. Fail, but not because of my knitting. This one really put me off madelinetosh yarns.
- Featherweight Cardi — ding ding ding! We have a winner. This one was a win in every possible way, and I wear it a lot. I enjoyed the yarn a lot (Spirit Trails Fiberworks, clotho) and would use it again.
- Wintry Mix — ding ding ding!! A second big winner! I wear this a lot. Berroco Blackstone Tweed is a luscious yarn, and so far it’s holding up well.
- Vodka Gimlet — ding ding ding DING! The biggest winner of them all, I struggle every day to decide whether to wear this, or my Wintry Mix. The yarn is amazing (Plucky Knitter Primo Worsted) but trying to get it is an exercise in such frustration that I probably won’t use it again, to my endless disappointment.
Laurayana, sweater front
ready to roll -- madelinetosh pashmina, in siltwash
living out of a suitcase and feeling pretty happy about it!
So I’m just home from a 2+week vacation, and next Thursday I leave for a week in Austin with Katie. What should I be doing this weekend? Well, things like household chores, catching up with work, getting ahead with work so I can play more with Katie, things like that. Responsible things like that. Responsible grown-up things like that.
Instead, when my husband finishes work this afternoon around 2, we’re throwing overnight bags in the car and driving upstate, back to the Phoenicia area in the Catskills. It’s a great getaway destination for a New Yorker, and a place we go a few times a year. We’ll eat at Brio’s, stay at the Phoenicia Lodge, tramp around Woodstock, drive over to Hunter and poke around Hunter Mountain, walk in the woods and take pictures, relax. I already have lots of photos in my flickr account of the Phoenicia area, but I know I’ll take some more. In fact, the photo in the masthead was taken in that area, around this time last year. I’m sure I need one or two more photos of leafy scenic splendor.
I’m getting close to separating my Ozma Gimlet at the sleeves, another 1.5″, but I think I’ll take the yellow featherweight cardigan. My days of being able to wear the featherweight are drawing to a close, so maybe I can hunker down and get it done quickly enough to wear it before it’s too cold.
it's such a great color, isn't it, brilliant for gray days? sauterne.
such soft, soft fabric -- hard not to touch it all the time!
sigh. so gorgeous, really. my ozma gimlet.
I’ll definitely take a photo of my Wintry Mix sweater while we’re there. It’s so luscious….hope y’all are having a great Friday!
Never EVER underestimate the power of a nice apology. You’ll win friends and admirers.
DANG IT. I just got an email from The Plucky Knitter — providers of the yarn for my forthcoming Vodka Gimlet — letting me know that due to circumstances beyond her control, my yarn won’t be shipping next week, as promised, but instead mid-October.
Now first, you’d think that since I have three other sweaters ready to cast on, plus a scarf underway, plus a blanket mid-way, this could not come as bad news. You’d be wrong. The color of the yarn I chose (Oz) is just this gorgeous emerald green as you’d expect. Oh so beautiful, breathtaking, I can’t wait to see it. So I was all geared up to be bitter. Indignant. Self-righteous. Mad. Peeved. Pissed off. And all the other synonyms. But her email was just so upset and sorry, and genuine, and filled with remorse from someone who doesn’t usually have to write emails like that, that I couldn’t even be mildly bitter. It’s OK, Sarah. It’s OK. I somehow like you even more, after receiving that email.
It doesn’t hurt that she’s going to include a skein of a new yarn she’ll be stocking in November (Plucky Rustic, an aran-weight wool), and that I get to participate in a private shopping event in her online store, just for those of us who were impacted. You know? That’s what I call customer service. Yay for Sarah, leaving me a bigger fan just as she tells me my yarn will be one month late.
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- Berroco Blackstone Tweed in Evergreen, for my Wintry Mix (Amy Herzog)
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- Cascade 220 Heathers in Montmartre, for my Flux (Signe S. Simonsen)
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- Malabrigo Lace in Sauterne, for another Featherweight Cardigan (Hannah Fettig)
Yeah. I’ve got enough to do. Kelly is helping me work my way through figuring out what size Wintry Mix to knit, given my slightly-different gauge. I have a reliable way of understanding gauge backwards; mine was 19, should’ve been 18, so I thought I was knitting bigger and looser. I teach stats to undergrads, but this is beyond me. And then when you add in ease, well…..boggle. I just can’t figure it out.
And on this post, I log off for the day. A few more hours of work, then some dinner and knitting…..something. Whee!!
I’m finishing the Mondo Cable Cardigan. When I left it, the body was finished and I was 3/4 finished with one sleeve. Since yesterday, I finished that sleeve and started and finished the other. (I know!!) The collar will take me a bit of time, but it’s only 128 rows of 26 stitches, so I should finish it today, easily. Then I’ll soak and block it and run out for buttons and giant snaps.
Continue Reading–1 words totally
I’m finishing the Mondo Cable Cardigan. When I left it, the body was finished and I was 3/4 finished with one sleeve. Since yesterday, I finished that sleeve and started and finished the other. (I know!!) The collar will take me a bit of time, but it’s only 128 rows of 26 stitches, so I should finish it today, easily. Then I’ll soak and block it and run out for buttons and giant snaps.
I get it, you sweater knitters who churn them out. When you finish, you have a substantial piece of clothing. Not a little scarf, not a wee hat, not toasty socks. A substantial piece of clothing. That you made, all those thousands of little stitches. I get it.
“My Love” by Paul McCartney is playing in my ear right now, which always makes me think of my daughter Katie, who loves that song so much. Hi honey.
I’ve got the menopausal lady sleep pattern, which means not-sleeping pattern. I fall asleep easily and then start skipping stones around 2, usually. Awake…… maybe a bit of sleepAwake…..maybe a bit of slAwake…..maybe a bit ofAwake. Finally I just get up. What the hell.
Random and scattered thoughts. Thursday around 5:15 I was sitting in a friend’s office and said, “Look! If we were in Texas I’d say there’s gonna be a tornado, it’s that tornado bottle green sky.” We both laughed (haha, tornadoes in Manhattan haha), and I hoped to get home without getting caught in torrential rains. Turns out? Two tornadoes hit the area. Someone died. Lots of trees died too. Always trust a Texan when she tells you it’s a tornado sky.
All summer, the elevator in our building has been out of service because the coop board decided to update it. All summer, it was supposed to be worked on. Here, at the last hour, the elevator team has decided they’d better get on it, and since the deadline is just passed (of course), they’d better work all hours of the day and night, 7 days a week. There’s a big table saw set up by the mailboxes; the hallway is all tile and marble, hard surfaces, and our door is just feet away. So the whine of the saw, the loud voices of repair men shouting up and down the elevator shaft, not much fun.
Off to make a pot of mint tea. One thing I figured out yesterday is to really use knitting as a true meditation. I do a breathing meditation — breathe in deeply to the count of 4, hold it for 2, breathe out slowly to the count of 6. I sync that count with knitting and man oh man does it work. Try it the next time you’re stressed and frazzled. Think it’s that time for me, too.
announcement to texans and new yorkers: nobody likes you if you think you’re the best.
Maybe, in your life, you once had a relationship that was unsatisfying, but there wasn’t really anything wrong with the person. Everyone said Oh, s/he’s so great, such a nice person, funny, etc. I did once, and I agreed with them! Still, “perfect” as he seemed to be, it was not a good relationship for me. Around that time, I heard Joan Baez sing a song that included the line I used as this blog post title: a saint is hard to live with at home. It cracked me up, it felt very familiar and personally true, and obviously it stayed with me.
This line came to mind this morning when I saw the following article in the NYTimes:
we're perfect
Yep – that’s what it says. More city preschoolers are perfect. Test scores show. To me, that suggests that the tests are imperfect, or imperfect for assessing what they need to assess. Had I seen those data, I’d have written an article pointing out the problems with the test. But New Yorkers – you know how they are – instead say that we’re just perfect.
As a Texan, I really get that, and it’s one thing I find dear about New Yorkers. Well, dear and really irritating. Just like people get irritated (or worse) with Texans for their/our grandiose views of themselves (ourselves). NYers and Texans should either get over ourselves, or at least keep our mouths shut a little more often. 
And look at this – what do we see in my gigantic knitting bag next to my place on the couch:
peasy and mondo, mixing it up together in the bag
That’s my Peasy sweater (I’m knitting a sleeve right now) and my Mondo Cable Cardigan (also on a sleeve). Two sweaters! But lost in sleeveland, the seemingly endless land of stockinette tubes. Yesterday I did a little Peasy sleeve knitting, then a little Mondo sleeve knitting, then back to Peasy. It didn’t feel like too much of a break, switching to the other. I don’t have a purse knitting project going right now, and I keep thinking I ought to cast on something small and quickly-finishable, but then I know I’d just do that instead of sleeves, and the sleeve-knitting elf hasn’t found my apartment yet so if it’s going to be done, I’ll have to do it.
Everything there is to do in this world has a bit that’s less fun than the others. I read an article by Jane Patrick in one of the first issues of Handwoven, where she talked about how much she hated sleying the reed (I think that was the detail). Then she realized that’s a necessary task, she’s always going to have to do it when she weaves, so she tried to reorient herself to the idea. That happened to me when I took my intro stats course as an undergrad – at first I hated it, but I realized it would be my essential tool so I found another way to think about it, and now I adore stats. So my mission is to find another way to conceptualize the endlessness of sleeves.
Happy Thursday, y’all.
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2nd lesson in 2 days about knitting – i feel like such a grownup!
Well, aren’t I glad I did this – I dutifully completed my (first) swatch for my beautiful new Peasy sweater. Last night I wet blocked the swatch, and I just unpinned it, got out my measuring tape, and checked my gauge. Using a 3.5mm needle, my gauge should have been 22 st and 30 rows = 4 inches. But I got 23.5 and 31 rows = 4 inches. Here are my lessons learned:
1) because I now know from my Wowie Zowie sock lesson that what seems like a small difference can actually be a very large difference,
2) I need to go down a needle size, and
3) the fabric is going to be absolutely gorgeous, with the most lovely hand and drape ever.
Madelinetosh is not in danger of being toppled from the top of my favorite- yarn- ever list — especially not with tosh merino light in this world — but Rowan Tweed has scootched immediately to a close second. I think I’ll knit a Manu with Rowan Tweed after I finish my beautiful Peasy and an Austin Hoodie with TML. I also have enough yarn for an Inaugural sweater.
Oh dear. I think I’ve just become a sweater knitter.* Good thing I live in a place with a long cold winter.
With a nice long weekend coming up, I have knitting plans that include finishing Marnie’s wedding shawl and getting it blocked, doing some work (you know, instead of saying work I’d rather say ‘fun’) doing some fun on my Wowie Zowie socks, and maybe I’m just sayin maybe getting going on my Peasy. Last night was the first major festivity associated with leaving my job; 20 people I work with came to a little party for me, and it was quite amazing. Much toasting and fete-ing and love; hugs and kisses from each one at the end. Tonight is a drinks farewell with my boss’s boss and my best work friend, Thursday night is my writing group. Not much will happen until the weekend but it’s all going to be fun. When it’s good, life can be really, really good, you know?
*disclaimer and acknowledgment: knitting a swatch does not guarantee becoming a sweater knitter…there is still the ability to be in it for the long haul, the perseverance to finish all the fiddly bits, and (for some sweaters) the ability to assemble pieces. The jury is still out on me with these parts!
help me choose!
SO! Freedom is coming, along with more time to knit. Halle-freakin-lujah, that’s all I have to say. My last day at work will be July 7 (or sooner, if I get everything done). Marnie’s wedding is July 17 (but I’m heading up there on the 15th). In the short run, here are my deadlines:
- finish all my work stuff
- finish knitting Marnie’s wedding shawl
- finish an online course (6-weeks in length, week 3 begins today, which means it ends on Marnie’s wedding day)
So everything is coming to a head on July 17, and after that? Complete and total freedom, for a while, anyway. I’ll have to be scurrying around trying to line up work, and I need to do some deep house cleaning, but relatively speaking, I’ll have the luxury of some free time, which I haven’t had in …. um …. oh, since 1994, more or less.
green ishbel
My first goals will be to finish my Mondo Cable Cardigan and my lettuce green Ishbel. And whatever small sock-ish project I’ve got going, too.
I recently realized that all the projects I’ve been knitting I rate as “piece of cake” or “easy” when I complete the rav project page, so I want to challenge myself. Of course there is more than one way to challenge yourself – choose a technique you haven’t tried, a more complicated pattern than you’ve tried, or a larger project that requires stick-to-it-iveness. And here’s where you come in.
So many of my best rav friends make sweaters – lots of sweaters (I’m looking at you, Kelly and Jocelyn, among others). I’ve started several sweaters but never even finish the back, or up to the sleeves (until now with the Mondo cardigan). I start thinking it’s going to look dumb, or homemade, or that it won’t be flattering. And then I frog. So I want to commit myself to starting and finishing a sweater, but I want to give myself the best shot at sticking with it and ending up with something I love.
If you are on ravelry, here is my sweater queue (though obviously I’m not committed to the order, at all!). I have sweater quantities of Classic Elite Princess, KnitPicks Shine Sport, Madelinetosh Pashmina and TML, and Valley Yarns Sheffield. Have you made any of the sweaters in my queue? Or another sweater that you truly, truly love and wear a lot?
I’m inclined toward these – one you’d vote for?
[poll id="2"]
OR, of course, just tell me your fave!
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