Aubergine

I wish I was knitting

We've had a few days of rain around here and I'm missing my knitting needles.  I admit I believed that my baby would be dressed in an endless supply of hand-knit items, but in reality that hasn't happened.  The one sweater I made while I was pregnant is still too big for her and that's good because it doesn't have buttons yet.  I started a blanket for her when she was about a month old, but I stalled out at some point and it hasn't seen the outside of the project bag in a while.  I really envisioned myself knitting away while breastfeeding, but I was never able to figure out how to hold the baby and the needles at the same time, so that never happened.  Too bad, because I did spend a LOT of time breastfeeding for those first few months.  Now that she's eating real food she mostly wants to nurse at night and first thing in the  morning and  she has no patience for my milk during the day.

So I'm not knitting.  I still have a stash and a lot of projects in process, but this may be the first fall in a long time that I'm not actually knitting.  But that doesn't stop me from thinking about knitting.  So to make me feel better about getting lost on Ravelry this chilly morning, I thought I'd put together a little fantasy project list.  What I would make if I was knitting right now.  

• Lace-edged baby blanket (in progress - Ravelry link), from the book Booties, Blankets and Bears by Debbie Bliss.  In Plymoth Worsted Superwash Merino in mahogany, slate and sage (I made up those color names - I can't find the yarn tags).  
• Also in progress, Juno Regina shawl in a stunning hand-dyed silk.  Right.  Like I have the brain cells to be knitting lace. I'm in the center "simple" part of the pattern and I got lost the last time I tried to knit on it and had to rip back.
• Eyelet Yoke Cardigan, in a pretty hydrangea pink yarn I found on clearance someplace.  The pattern was chosen to coordinate with the next sweater...
• Shalom Cardigan, (in progress) with long sleeves, in bulky baby alpaca.  This is going to be the softest hug of a sweater if I ever finish it. This project is the third incarnation for this yarn and I think this was the project it was waiting for all along.  I'm having to do a lot of re-figuring of the pattern and I got stuck at the calculations for the body.  It probably isn't all that hard, I just need to sit down and deal with it.  I started this one while I was pregnant also, and imagined sitting up in the night nursing my newborn, us both wrapped in the soft soft cuddle of alpaca.  And then I realized nursing in bed was going to get us both a lot more sleep.  But now that the weather is turning cool again, I can see myself pulling this around my shoulders in the evening *before* bed.
• And over  my knees I'll have my Ripple Blanket, which I'm working in bulky instead of worsted because I thought it would go faster, but it is still taking forever.  I think I started this one in 2009 and I'm still only half-way through it.  At least it is nice and warm on my lap while I work on it.
• Chloe Sweater, pattern by Never Not Knitting (and how does she manage that with little kids?).  I have yarns in similar but not exact shades to the pattern photo. While looking for the link to that pattern, I fell for this Very Cherry dress by the same designer.
• Berry baby hat. (Ravelry link) Every baby needs one of these.
• Any of the hats from Twisted Wooly Toppers, either for me or the girl.  I'm torn between Brownie and Lollie. Though I'm not sure I could pull off Lollie's topknot.

Alright, that'e enough. I have so many more projects in process or bagged up with pattern and yarn at the ready, but this is getting depressing.

Come on, tell me what you are working on.  Or not working on and wish you were.

not enough eyeballs

I wish I could figure out a way to knit and read my book at the same time.  That would be awesome. 

It must be turning to fall - I am feeling a great desire to knit.  Oh, and read.  At the same time. I know!  I need to find someone to read to me while I knit!

December days #10: unraveling

I had a dream on Sunday night about doing yoga, and feeling my body bend in a way that it does not in my waking life.  Later, I realized the dream was about my need to let go of some things, unclench.  Find my flexibility again. 

I've also been listening to that Deb Talan album (over and over and over and over) and there's a song called Unravelling with these lyrics: "A river of tangled string/you are unraveling..."  The song is about something else, but the imagery of a river of tangled string appeals to me.

I set up this photo this morning, with an idea in mind of the act of unraveling.  I had a sock project that I've been disliking, so I tore in to it (more cleaning up) so it could be my model.  My cat found this nearly irresistible.  I may get home tonight to find that she's completed the un-knitting for me.

just call me she-bear

Ok.  I have my yarn supply for the winter.  I have my projects planned.  I have a stack of books to read that's almost as tall as I am.  I have a journal to catch all my ideas, and a good pen.  We have firewood for the fireplace.  I'm even putting on the pounds like a good bear.  And I got invited to join Ravelry this morning, just in case I need help keeping track of all this yarn and what I'm making with it.

If you need me, I'll be tucked up in my warm, cozy cave.  Just follow the balls of yarn and the sound of clicking needles.

'Tis the season

There is something about fall that makes me want to knit.  My craving for yarn seems to hit about the same time every year.  Is it that my hands are cold?  That I'm feeling the chill in the air, but can't grow a winter coat, so I start wanting to make one for myself?  Or just that quiet settling down, nestling in, preparing for the long dark months when I'll be more still, have more time for quiet, contemplative pursuits?

I'm still working on the sweater for Lisa that I started in July, but miles and miles (OK, 17") of ribbing does get a bit boring after a while so I've been switching out that project with others.  I needed a smaller project for traveling in September, and splurged on this extravagant silk to make an extravagant floral scarf from the Vogue Knitting anniversary issue (the magazine photo and the shop display were so decadant, it wasn't even fair.  There was no resisting).  To make the flowers, you knit the same pattern over and over (and over) from the three different yarns, and also it is on tiny needles that make my hands tired after a while.  So I'm not flying through this one either.  And really neither of these is filling my desire to make my own self something warm.

So I've been considering these spiral knee-high socks to wear with my new favorite Frye boots.  My store-bought knee-high socks keep falling down, and I suspect that socks custom-shaped to my calf would help that problem.  But although I have several projects worth of  sock yarn already, I do not have enough of any one color that would work well in this pattern.  And careful reading tells me that the pattern is sized quite a bit too small for my calf measurements, so some reworking is in order before I start.  I do know how to do that now, but it takes some time and attention, both of which have been in fairly short supply lately.  And also I picked up a copy of the fall SpinOff magazine, where I found an article about spinning sock yarns, so now I'm thinking about spinning, rather than buying my sock yarn.  Yeah, like I have time to do that...

Or perhaps I should make these pretty lacey cashmere mitts.  These would keep my cold hands warm.  And I know I have some cashmere fiber in my stash somewhere as well, so I could spin the yarn for these, too!  But it is undyed, so I'd also have to dye it.  Yeah.  I don't even like to deal with dyes.  I do love the colors of natural dyes, but I haven't found much patience for it in the past.  So that's a recipe for a stalled project.

Of course, I also already have several projects already waiting on me - yarn and pattern all neatly bundled together, which includes a shawl, a sweater, and several pairs of socks (just not knee-high, though I could probably adapt them).

I realize that I have a distinct lack of focus where yarn-related projects are concerned.

July 10: new sweater

I started a new sweater last night, for Lisa, although I'm not quite done with the last knitting project that I've been working on.  I do this near the end of craft projects.  Cast about for the next thing, get seduced by the newness of it.  Get some momentum going before I wrap up the last thing.  I think I don't like the pause in between - I want to keep in the flow of action.  This new yarn is so pretty and green, so soft.

This sweater project will be much different than the red sweater I made for me recently.  For one, a much simpler stitch pattern.  Inches and inches of rib.  Also, according to the information in the pattern instructions, this pattern will fit Lisa perfectly with no adjustments.  I read into that some metaphor about how Lisa fits more neatly into the world than I do.

June 15: the red sweater

Without fanfare, I finished this red sweater recently that I started back in October.  Actually, I finished it enough to start wearing it back in March, but I kinda skipped the blocking and detail finishing and then I decided the hood maybe needed a few more inches.  So I fixed it up and it properly last week.  And then I started wearing it.  And now, as is normal for my current favorite item of clothing, it can often be found flung over the back of one of the kitchen chairs.

Although there are a couple of things I'm not completely happy with, from a craft-person's perspective, from a wearer's perspective, it is perfect.  Well-fitting, warm, cozy and soft, and a perfect color.  The re-work of the pattern turned out great - it fits me "like it was made for me" and it was!  Lisa tried it on the other night and it looked ridiculous on her.  Her waist is not in the same place, and my hips are much bigger.  It looked like she was wearing a tutu.  On me though, the curves are perfectly matched.

knitted in

This shawl has been knitted on while waiting for an airplane to take me to my sick  mother.  While sitting beside her in the hospital.  While sick myself in a hotel in another country. In classes listening to lectures. In my living room, while I tried to create a bit of quiet personal space in a house full of loved but loud and energetic guests. At the end of hard days of work while I ponder how to solve problems that seem unsolvable.

For something that has so much stress and tension knitted into it, it is really a beautiful thing to look at. 4.5 balls of yarn down, 7.5  more to go.

OM

A friend told me recently that she's too stressed and busy to knit anything complicated.  She craves a very simple pattern in a sensual yarn.  Not me.  When I'm stressed and distracted, I crave knitting that forces me to pay attention.  Put all of my brain power on this task, stop it from spinning on things I haven't done, don't know how to do, or can't control.  Call it meditation on needles.  I am in that mental place in my life just now, and I have begun the perfect project for it:  The Wanderlust Hoodie from the Fall 2006 issue of Interweave Knits.

Usually I will find a pattern that I'm interested in knitting, remember one of the several projects already in progress, feel guilty, pick up one of said projects, setting aside the new crush, eventually forgetting it.  Recently, though, I started keeping a knitting journal, and making notes on things I'd like to knit, trying to pair up some of my yarn stash to projects, writing them down so I don't forget my plans.  One of the reasons I tend to have a lot of yarn around is because I buy it with a plan, forget the plan, but then don't want to use it for something else because I might, at some point, remember the plan and wish I still had the yarn.  Sad, eh?

Anyway, I saw the hoodie in the magazine when the issue came in the mail, and dog-eared the page, then set the magazine aside to file.  Not long after, I was surfing around some knitting blogs and came across a post on the Fathom Harvill blog about the very same hoodie pattern that I'd marked.  She'd modified it a bit, most notibly removing the bobbles.  I also have "an anti-bobble policy" and seeing what the sweater looked like without them was even more appealing.  Plus, it was a nice complicated cable pattern, had waist shaping, which was something I've been wanting to try, was knit from a pretty bulky yarn (quicker to knit) and she'd knit it in such a pretty red.  I'm such a sucker for the look of the cover, the label, the example photo.  Wine, books, knitting patterns.  If the design and color draw me in, I'm all over it.  I checked out the subsitution yarn she'd used and discoverd it was much more affordable than the recommended yarn in the pattern.  Ignoring the stash of yarn in the other room, I ordered enough for the sweater.  I ordered a dark maroon-red, which may or may not be the same color she'd used.  Probably it is.  Before you accuse me of being a copy-cat, take a look in my closet.  Plum, brown, black and blood red.  Those are my colors.  I bought myself a red sweater from Gap a couple of years ago, but it wasn't the right red, and I only wore it once.  It went out in the last closet cull.  This is the right red, and I can't wait to wear it.  It will look great with my favorite jeans.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  I got the yarn and did a little dance in the kitchen while Lisa laughed at me.  Then she admitted that it really is beautiful yarn.  It has a little bit of variation from the dying process, and shifts between the black-red of the black krim tomatoes we grew this year, though cherry, and up to the brighter red of pomegranate skins.  M, you reading this?  You know how perfect this range of color is for me.  Because I want this sweater to really be perfect, I swatched.  Usually I make a half-hearted attempt at swatching, jump into the pattern with not enough information, and realize part-way in that something is off, before getting frustrated and either abandoning it or ripping it out.  Another reason I have a lot of yarn around here.  I wanted to avoid that, so I swatched.  A big swatch, even, a full cable pattern repeat.  I went down a needle size, got stitch gauge, but my row gauge is pretty short of the pattern.  Why is that?  My row gauge is always off.

So, armed with this information, I jumped in to the pattern.  Astute readers may notice here that I skipped a step.  I knit about 5 1/2 inches of pattern, to the point where the pattern read "knitting should measure 7" from cast-on edge" before I admitted that the row gauge thing might be a problem.  So I set the work aside and slept on it.  The next morning, I re-took all of my measurements, compared them to the schematic in the pattern, and realized that not only was the sweater going to be oddly short, it was also going to be too tight eveywhere except in the bust (now that's ironic, if you know what I look like).  And then I went to work.  And thought about the damn sweater all day.  I came home and ignored it, and got a good night's sleep.  Then the next morning I got out my calculator, my measurements, and the pattern, and refigured the whole thing.  I re-calculated all of the shaping for the next size up tp my row gauge so that the slopes would be correct and the narrowest bit would actually hit my waist.  I compared the length and width of all the pieces to the real me shape and confirmed that they were going to work.  I checked my math three times.  The sleeves may be a little long, but I'm used to that and prefer slightly long sleeves. Then I ripped out everything that I'd knit and cast on again.

I'm very proud of myself.  I'm  not really very good at math, and re-figuring a knitting pattern has always felt like a daunting task  But with a little bit of focus and a lot of desire, high-school algebra came back to me, and I worked it out.  I'm now 5 1/5 inches into the back again, and the correct number of rows remain to that 7" check in the pattern to get me to 7".  And it looks beautiful.  I have the cable pattern memorized now, because I've knit the repeat three times between the swatch, the first back and the second back, but it is still complicated enough that I have to pay just the right amount of attention to keep me concentrated and not just distracted.  I have spent the last two mornings in the studio, curled up in my desk chair, pattern and knitting journal and coffee spread out across my desk, watching a DVD or listening to music, knitting away on this beautiful thing.  And when it is time to get ready to go to work, I am calm and centered and focused, having spent 2 hours or so at my meditation of choice.

This photo is for Meriko

The Clapotis, she is done. 

With just a bit of knitting elbow to show for it.

I admit that I planned my outfit around this scarf today.  And that I wore it around the house last night, after sewing the ends in.

I love wearing handmade things.  Made by me or someone else - doesn't matter.  The other day we had a conversation on my vanpool about the difficulty of finding ready-to-wear clothing that actually fits properly.  We're all too wide, too short, too varied.  "It was better," I said from my perch in the front passenger seat, needles sticking in all directions from a pair of fingerless gloves in progress, "When everyone made their own clothes."  Silence from the van.

Then from the back, "So says the woman sitting up there knitting her own socks."

"Gloves."

"Whatever."

Whatever indeed.  I'll keep making my own things, thank you.  Once in a while for others, but this scarf is all for me.