TT820: Classy Knitting

And another thing! (What I learned at VKL, part 2)

2011-10-26T13:53:00.000-07:00

My latest object of lust: Carbon-fiber Blackthorn DPNs in an embossed leather carrying case.

My second workshop at Vogue Knitting Live was "Finishing Tips and Tricks" with Cirilia Rose. In many ways, it echoed the encouraging and positive tone of Janel Laidman's "Creating Your Own Stitch Patterns" session, and amplified the message that I think was my major takeaway from the entire weekend:

You don't have to do it "the right way," as long as the way you do it works.

One of Janel's tips was to have what she called an "ugly swatch" to work out new ideas with. If you need extra stitches, cast 'em on; if you need fewer for the pattern repeat you're toying with, cast 'em off--don't waste time casting on and working a bunch of set-up rows, just keep on knitting! Revolutionary, revelatory...and totally obvious once someone points it out to you.

Likewise, Cirilia shared some of her own secrets, preferred approaches, and insider knowledge from her time on the Berroco Design team. I mean, she worked with frickin' Norah Gaughan! That's probably like having a master class every day at work. Seaming, weaving in ends, and joining new yarn (especially using methods that reduce the number of ends you have to weave in) were the big subjects, but we also talked about closures and edgings--you know, the little things that can make or break a finished garment. The best thing I learned? Cirilia loves buttons, and she told us she often doesn't make a decision on closures until a garment is finished--which means no knitted-in buttonholes! Instead, she uses snaps and puts the buttons on as decorative, not functional, features. That makes sense in so many ways. It's way easier to reinforce a big ornamental button on a sweater coat, for example, if it doesn't have to actually BUTTON anything; not only that, but you're not forced to make your sweater close with just the number of buttons you actually have. That's a major consideration for those of us who have weird quantities of antique buttons from lord-knows-where, and no way to get extras. Another idea from VKL that was revolutionary, revelatory...and totally obvious once you think about it.

Cirilia's was probably my favorite workshop of the weekend, since it was the one where I had the most fun and felt the most at ease. Even though I'm pretty extroverted, I'm still subject to occasional and surprising bouts of extreme self-consciousness. I usually have a cocktail or two, if that's socially acceptable and even remotely appropriate in the setting, and just fake it til I make it, but whoof! That social anxiety does a number on me when it does hit. It's another good reason to take some knitting with me wherever I go--I've always got something I could be doing if I don't feel up to talking to people.

Luckily, the opening night reception and marketplace preview did have cocktails. (Actually, they had all the champagne you could drink, alongside an actual buffet of candy and chocolates, and dozens of vendors selling yarn and knitting accessories of every imaginable kind.) After a glass or two, I felt loose enough to start chatting up the folks in the Blackthorn Needles booth--their carbon-fiber DPNs use stealth-jet technology to create a VERY nice knitting experience. I now lust for one of their custom sets--see image above, which doesn't really do them justice. I was also in the mood for love, so I took home practically the first handbag I set eyes on, a Betty Knitting Tote from Atenti designs in what I am told is a one-of-a-kind fabric and color combination. But she looks a little something like this:

Ain't she sweet? Mine is done in a tomato-red velveteen wallpaper pattern with a taupe ground and lining--a bit like the orange one in back. But nicer, of course.

That was pretty sneaky, VKL--get a bunch of knitters drunk and hopped up on sugar, and then put purses and yarn in front of us. We didn't stand a chance! I am proud to say, however, that I stayed strong and did NOT buy any yarn. One day at a time.

Want to see something pretty?

2011-10-06T12:14:00.000-07:00

Good news for you Cecily fans out there: The jacket has landed. Cecily is now officially a twinset! Check this beauty out...

Photo (c) 2011 by the lovely and talented Meg Rice.
Click on the image for super-duper detail...or here for more modeled shots.

The long-delayed and hotly-anticipated (by me, at least) Cecily jacket was definitely worth the wait. It's an awfully sweet knit, if I do say so myself. It's got a sort of kimono vibe going on, which I'm into these days. The motif is called Lotus Lace (thanks yet again, Barbara Walker Treasury!) and the inset of it at the high waist has an obi-like effect that's awfully flattering on any figure, not to mention really comfy to wear. Fans of Amy Herzog's Fit to Flatter series--and I know you're out there, because I just learned how to read my blog stats, and a LOT of you are coming here from her site, so thanks, Amy!--will know that this design will work especially well with top-heavy proportions. It's got a long vertical line from neck to waist, simple shoulders, and a draped lower half that balances wide shoulders with lace edging. Sleeve length is, of course, adjustable to your preference: Work the lace trim just an inch or so after picking up the sleeve stitches for a cap sleeve that broadens the shoulders visually, or work them down to bracelet length if you want more coverage for cool autumn evenings.

Sadly, I've just found out that the sample colorway, Pearlescent, is back-ordered until the end of the year, but don't let that discourage you. There's a kit-builder feature on the Knit Picks site you can use to select similar colorways from their other sock yarns--just drag and drop!--or a different colorway of the Stroll Tonal yarn I used. Cecily will also work beautifully in whatever solid or semi-solid sock yarn you've been stashing away in sweater quantities. (Don't lie, I know you do this. Oh, no, wait, that's ME...) Make yourself something pretty, already!

Things I Learned at VKL: Part 1

2011-10-02T11:30:00.000-07:00

So, I said in an earlier post that Vogue Knitting Live was well worth the time and money for me; I also said that the staggering amount of stuff I learned there would be continuing to soak in for several weeks. As always (just ask my husband, ha ha) I was correct about this! I'm a huge believer in the idea that the more you give the world, the more you get back, so I'm going to share the wealth over the next few posts. No trade secrets, mind you--that wouldn't be fair--and some of it I couldn't tell you, you'd have to experience it for yourself. Just ask Nicky Epstein, the next time you see her, what they do for fun in the little desert town where she grew up...she is a 24-karat laugh riot, that one. Trust me, though, when I say that ANY of these instructors are well worth taking a workshop with. Whatever I say here is seriously just the tip of the iceberg!

My first class was "Creating Your Own Stitch Patterns" with the gentle and lovely Janel Laidman. Maybe it's because she's a font of quiet inspiration and understated genius, or maybe because all of us showed up at 8:00 am on Friday totally pumped for VKL, but you could really hear the gears turning as we all started paging through her stacks of stitch dictionaries and scribbling on our graph paper. I had signed up based on the class description, not even realizing that Laidman was the designer of the Rivendell sock, a pattern that I already had in my Ravelry library--a lot of her work has that graceful Art Nouveau sensibility that I really like. Rivendell was one of those patterns I bought more to learn from than actually knit; it's that pretty.

This class was really a subtle one. I wish I could describe it effectively, but it's hard to convey what we covered and how it helped. The general effect, for me, was like when someone comes into a room where you've been reading and turns on the light, or changes some little setting on your monitor so the text is suddenly bigger and clearer. Just a steady accumulation of little "aha!" revelations, plus some friendly encouragement, and some time spent focusing on how stitch patterns are constructed, and a bunch of really instructive swatches. Doesn't sound like much, I know, but the cumulative effect was quite something. I left the room determined to buy a copy of the Japanese stitch dictionary I was working from, as well as some highlighter tape. The highlighter tape alone has been a revelation, in fact--I'm working a stranded-colorwork pillow cover from a big ol' chart right now, and the little "taste" of tape that Janel handed out to everyone in class went right onto that. Now I can't believe I ever thought of attempting to work from a chart of any size without this stuff. It's amazing! So simple, so straightforward, and so helpful.

I brought some inspirational materials with me to the class--just a couple of scraps of things I've been holding onto, thinking they'd be nice to translate into knitting--and I expect I'll be continuing to play with those until I figure out what they want to be. The best part of the class, I think, was just hearing from someone who does this all the time the steps she follows when she's working up something new, and seeing how well they work. Thanks, Janel, for an inspiring and useful VKL session!

So...how was your weekend?

2011-09-26T15:21:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, here's what I did: I staggered into my house, dumped all the stuff I was carrying on the floor, pulled off my shoes, and collapsed. First on the couch, then into a hot bath (which got stone-cold by the time I mustered the energy to climb out of it), then into bed. I never, ever sleep on my stomach, but still found myself lying with my face plunged between the pillow piles on Saturday night, thinking "Oh, this feels unusually niiiiiizzzzzzzzzzzzz...."

What wrecked me? Vogue Knitting Live. Between the pre-party at Unwind, which I attended with a new-knitter friend who then came over for (YUM!) chicken and dumplings, and the three looooonnng days of lectures, demos, classes, steel-willed resistance of the opportunity to purchase even yet still more yarn (I limited myself to some decadent silk ribbons and a handbag), and inter-knitter mingling that followed at VKL, I'm absolutely bushed. I also think I'll be digesting all the lessons, discoveries, and facts from this for several weeks to come. Here are some of my initial thoughts on the event, though:

1) I should not have to work this hard to sign up for something I'm paying this much to attend. The worst, and yet most fixable, problem was the online interface for class selection and signup--Vogue Knitting, I love you, I really do, but speaking as an information scientist, your usability could use some serious evaluation. No calendar view for classes and workshops, so you could actually SEE what's happening in which time slot and avoid conflicts when selecting things? The "schedule" printed on the back of my conference badge doesn't list events in day/time order? The conference-at-a-glance listing in the program booklet is organized by instructor...and they're alphabetical by first name, even though the badge "schedule" lists them as first initial, last name?? Whoever is doing this stuff for you is really bad at it, and it's probably costing you a lot of money in the form of failed registrations from frustrated, not-so-Web-savvy knitters. Please, please address these issues! We will all be grateful.

2) One jerk per thousand knitters...that's not half bad. Lots of folks were, shall we say, taken aback by the discovery that the parking garage at the Century Plaza Hyatt was unable to process credit card payments for most of the weekend. Yes, that was a bummer--but really, nothing to pitch a fit over. The fact that I only saw one person the whole time being kind of nasty about any of the difficulties we all coped with (never-ending lines at Starbucks, not enough staff in the bar and restaurant to manage the lunch rush, especially on the weekend, confusing signage and late-arriving speakers and really mediocre banquet food at the Gala Dinner) just goes to show you how great knitters in general are. I'm proud to be one of ya. Not only that, but the big stars of the knitting world that I met there (Nicky Epstein, Cookie A, Cirilia Rose, Amy Singer, Kristy Porter, and many more) were even nicer than the average knitter...not to mention funny, whip-smart, and generous with their time and considerable knowledge.

3) Thinking about knitting, talking about knitting, and actually knitting all day is frickin' intense. We all say we'd love to spend all of our days knitting, but now I'm not so sure. This program was eye-opening in so many ways, especially for me as a fledgling designer--I have a much better sense now of what this would be like as a full-time job, for one thing. As I was heading home after my last workshop (a really fun session on menswear design with Josh Bennett, aka boymeetspurl, who is a terrific teacher and made us all feel like we were design geniuses), I realized why my chaotic state of mind felt so familiar. It was just like when I first went back to grad school for my PhD: I went in thinking I was really something special, with my awesome test scores and my generous fellowship funding, but then I got hit with this tidal wave of expert knowledge and high expectations and I just did NOT feel READY for it. It was really destabilizing for a few months there...but then the next time I gave a preservation workshop, I realized that what I'd learned in those few months had been a huge advance, and that I really did know my stuff even before that. The next time I teach a class or do a knitting demo myself, I bet I'll have that same feeling again, too...

VKL was absolutely worth the time and money and mind-bending effort for me, in short. I'm tired but happy. Pictures of all my fun acquisitions from the event to follow!

My startitis is flaring up.

2011-09-21T23:35:00.000-07:00

The seasons must be changing--I can barely sit still, and I've got hourly urges to start on something entirely NEW and FUN and QUICK TO KNIT (and for that last one, read "Ha! Fat chance!"). I don't have startitis on a regular basis, but when it does hit, it wallops. There'll be a work in progress on every horizontal surface in the house, and our dinner will be served later and later every night, because I'm too busy casting on or ripping back to put the potatoes in the oven.

In one way, having multiple projects in the works is a good thing. I have loads of yarn in my stash. The only way I'm going to get through this stuff is if I actually make a thousand different things with it. I'm also fairly organized about the business; for instance, I keep decent notes about needle size and gauge and where a given project is generally headed, so if I put something down I have a way of re-orienting when I pick it back up.

There are only so many needles in my collection, though, and right now my circulars case looks like the Popular Fiction New Hardcovers shelf at the public library on Memorial Day weekend. All the good stuff is checked out, man! I swear by interchangeable tips (with all the lace and cable knitting I do, I LOVE my pointy pointy Knit Picks Harmony Wood Options*) but don't want to get in the habit of having piles of projects with capped cables lying around, so I only have two pairs each of my favorite sizes of needle tips. (OK, I might have three pairs of US #4s. And I'm not counting the fixed circulars. Also, all my spare cables and caps may possibly be attached to WIPs. But whatever.)

Last night I had another frenzy of sketching and scribbling before I went to bed, in the little "Daydreams and Nightmares" notebook my friend Katie gave me for Xmas last year. (Thanks, Katie!) I don't think you can get the notebooks anymore, but check out the hot Weimar-era fashions these ladies on the cover of the exhibition catalog are wearing...there's yet another potential new project in there somewhere, don't you think?

I daydream about these Weimar-era outfits, I tell you what!

This really can't go on, though. Vogue Knitting Live is coming up at the end of the week, and I'm counting on being able to work on a few things while I listen to brilliant folks like Nicky Epstein and Cirilia Rose drop science on needlework (Cirilia made a really nice comment on a project of mine on Ravelry loooooong ago, and I have had a pathetically intense knitter-girl-crush on her ever since, which I hope I will not get tipsy enough to confess to her during the gala dinner. Because I requested to sit at her table for the gala dinner. Is that stalkerish? It seems a little stalkerish of me. Geez, I hope she's not reading this...). At some point the startitis has GOT to turn into a fever of finishing, because my holiday knitting should probably get underway, um, well, last week...?

*Full disclosure: I'm not endorsing a product I got for free--these needles are my personal favorites. Although I do sell patterns through Knit Picks, and sometimes receive yarn support from them for new designs, I want to be clear that I buy ALL my own needles and knitting tools. Especially when there's a sale on.

Bearing with the Dog Days

2011-09-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

The Book of Common Prayer puts the end of the Dog Days of summer anywhere from August 17 to September 5, and most other calendrical references have them running from sometime in early-to-mid July to August-ish, so strictly speaking, the Dog Days are already behind us. But if you're using the phrase loosely, to mean "it's extra-hot out and I don't seem able to make myself finish anything I start," well, we're still in the thick of THOSE. I'm grateful to be avoiding the Texas heat, to be sure, but the San Fernando Valley heat is giving it a run for its money this year. We've been having triple-digit temperatures, under clear blue skies with those huge cottony towers of cloud that never settle down where we are here between the mountain ridges. Summer's making its last gasp now, and the silvery light of LA is wearing down to brass a little bit more each day. There's not lots to report on the new-projects-and-patterns front, I'm afraid; my nose is to the grindstone, but you won't be seeing the results of all that work for a while yet. Think of me as still being on summer vacation for now, if you will.

The Peabey the Polar Bear pattern, however, is up and ready for download in my Ravelry Shop or on Knit Picks (where you can order the yarn at the same time--one skein of their sport-weight organic cotton is enough to make two cute little bears!), if you want to get started on your holiday knitting. Who isn't dreaming about white Xmases at a time like this? And who wouldn't want a fuzzy wee polar bear peeping out of their stocking, or prowling around the menorah? Peabey's also a great baby gift for any new Virgos you may know--it's soft and doesn't have any small parts to choke on. Yay for no choking hazards!

Just FYI, 50% of the proceeds from individual Peabey pattern sales will be donated to Polar Bears International and the International Association for Bear Research...so if you really hate polar bears, and supporting bear research and conservation, I guess you shouldn't buy a copy. Maybe you're more of a dog person?

P.S. Check out the poll I just added at the top of the page...let me know what you'd like to see from me next!

Going with the flow

2011-07-06T10:55:00.000-07:00

Living in a new neighborhood--and having only one car--means finding new pretty-much-everything. A lot of our favorite shops and service providers from before our Texas detour are still in business (like our beloved dentist and our butcher and the Russian tailor who altered a vintage tuxedo so perfectly it looks like it was custom-made for my husband, not some Norwegian guy in Seattle in 1959), but the day-to-day stuff? We need to find new places to get all that. New grocery store, new dry cleaner, new bike repair shop, new vet where we can get flea medicine and our strangely-hard-to-procure cat food* and for me, a new yoga studio and LYS.

Having found those last two already, I've discerned a distinct uptick in my productivity.

I got my office mostly set up, at last, and can now sit and knit and work on the computer in there--you know, have an actual WORK day when I'm at home. And out of nowhere (or "now here," perhaps? That feeling of finally being settled?), I had the wherewithal to churn out a new project that I've been kicking around in my head for ages. Freed by daily yoga classes, and fueled with that messload of found angora from down the street, a little stuffed polar bear materialized over the course of a single morning. I sketched out the basic concept many months ago, but thought it was going to stay on the back burner for a lot longer than this! I do, after all, have a ton of work I'm supposed to be doing. Finalizing several other knitting projects I embarked on earlier this year are actually not even the first on that list. So why start a new one?

Well, the new yoga studio plays a part in that, too, I think. In trying to get the most out of the summer unlimited plan I signed up for (kind of forgetting that I would be out of town for over half of July, with two conferences and my grandparents' 75th wedding anniversary to attend), and trying out all the teachers to find my new favorite one, I've been practicing nearly every day. And gee, wow, surprise surprise: I actually FEEL better physically, find it easier to focus, and tackle projects big and small with much greater ease when I'm doing that. I'm also much more receptive to the idea that some days you can do a thing--stand on one foot with your arms in the air, do a backbend without clonking yourself on the head--and some days you can't, and you just do what you can on any given day.

It's a lesson I keep on learning and re-learning in yoga, as well as in my research and writing and knitting: Go with the flow. Hit a wall? Go around it. If there's a finish line way ahead of you, chances are you can run downhill to it tomorrow, instead of struggling uphill today. (And if you must struggle uphill, better to do it in short bursts than Sisyphian marathons, where you end up with the perception that all attempts at the thing are doomed to be unproductive.) Sometimes you just need to do what's coming EASILY. Look how cute it can be when you do!

And what could be a better reminder to go with the floe (tee-hee) than a polar bear? Pattern coming soon; check here or on my Ravelry page for updates on that...

*I do not know why it has to take three phone calls, a faxed authorization from our former vet, and a 15-minute drive to buy a bag of melonfarming kibble, but it does. There must be something really good in this cat food. Maybe I should try smoking it. We live in California, I bet smoking cat food is legal here...

Three bags full

2011-06-28T12:34:00.000-07:00

The "got done" list has had some pretty major things on it this month. Foremost among them: "Moved from Texas back to southern California." For the most part, that's a hallelujah-level accomplishment, but I do miss my Austin knitters terribly. Every day, in fact. Even more than my colleagues at school, and collectively and in their way, at least as much as my husband, my knitters have been my steady source of moral support and entertainment and friendship and inspiration for the last five years. I'm rather lost without them right now...I know that'll get better with time as I establish some new routines and networks here, but in the meantime Saturday mornings will find me feeling wistful and bereft.

Despite that, I know I'm in the right place, because I received an unmistakeable sign shortly after we arrived at our new home. I essayed a casual stroll to the end of the street one late afternoon with an eye to cadging some of the bountiful crop of apricots on a neighbor's tree, which didn't pan out, sadly; I'll have to steal my fruit from someone else if I'm going to learn to make jam this summer. Three doors down from us, though, I found some curbside treasure. Three big green tin buckets overflowing with plastic bags of vintage angora and camel-blend yarn--can you believe it? There was a For Sale sign out front, and a pile of other tempting things like tacky old paintings in cheap frames, so I strongly suspect this was someone's attic stash, untouched for decades. It's all DK weight and in immaculate condition--the bags are rather dusty but the yarn inside is perfect and it's evident this wasn't a smoking household. I dashed home for some grocery bags and nabbed the lot.

The labels are intriguing, too--does anyone out there know anything about a Brix-Schulenberg yarn mill in North Hollywood, circa sometime long ago? Google's been no help, and LA phone and business directories from the late 1930s don't have any businesses by that name. I may go downtown and check the microfiched directories from later decades at the LAPL when I have a free afternoon. This yarn seems like it must have a backstory, doesn't it? It certainly has a cute angora bunny on the label, and it's just as soft as can be...and I have maybe three sweaters' worth of the stuff now. So much for my pre-move de-stashing efforts!

My Got Done List

2011-05-03T21:03:00.000-07:00

I don't have To Do lists anymore. They're too stressful: there's always more stuff To Do. Even if you run around all day To Do-ing, more To Dos inevitably get added to the list, and then you still have a To Do list, and you fall into bed feeling like you didn't Do anything, even though all you did was To Do all day. Sucky! So a while back I decided to flip the script, or suborn the paradigm, or turn my frown upside down, or whatever you want to call it, and now what I have instead is a Got Done list. It's ever so much better.

Just compare. Here's my To Do list, which is pretty much unchanged since September of 2009:

--Write and defend dissertation proposal
--Research and write dissertation
--Figure out how I'm going to make a living as an academic/archivist
--Tidy up around the house
--Clean out litter box

And here's what's on my Got Done list, JUST KNITTING-WISE, for the last six weeks or so:

--Socks for Andy U. to welcome him to the Center for Home Movies board of directors--check!

(I have noticed that it adds to the sense of accomplishment if I put "check!" after every item on my Got Done list. This, however, is optional, if you're of a more Calvinist bent and feel that a good thing done well is reward in itself, and saying "check!" is needlessly jaunty.)

--Hat for Skip E., ditto--check!
--Hat for Darren M., to say thanks for returning my lost sketchbook...
--check!
--Design, knit, finish, and block new sweater design for the Hill Country Weavers/Madeline Tosh design collection--check!
--Help out with photo shoot for HCW/MT project--double check!
--Write up pattern for HCW/MT project and send to tech editor--check!
--Finish knitting sample of jacket that coordinates with the Cecily camisole, block, and attach buttons--SUPER CHECK on that, because finishing projects promptly after principal knitting is complete was also a New Year's Resolution-type deal for me...
--Write up pattern for Cecily jacket and send to tech editor (pics and pattern coming soon!)--check
--Start on second Madeline Tosh project...--checkity check-check check!

And that doesn't even include some of the more typical To Do list stuff that I also actually Got Done, like figuring out how to cancel our gym membership and submitting some conference proposals and conducting field work for my dissertation and making travel plans for my very-busy-July (during which I have promised myself that I will Get Done some knitting for ME! Me me me me!) and trying out some bran muffin recipes and finding a graduation gift for my husband and--oh yeah--eating sleeping and bathing more or less regularly. Yay, Got Done list.

Now I'm going to publish this post (Oooh--check!) and then go work on that last Got Done item for a few more satisfying garter-stitchy minutes. And then I'll roll over and go to sleep, feeling pretty good about the Got Done list, and putting the To Do list out of my mind entirely.

P.S. I also cleaned out the litter box SEVERAL TIMES during the last six weeks. You're welcome, cats.

On your marks, get set, SLOW!

2011-04-09T12:55:00.000-07:00

I was recently in New Orleans for a conference, where I won a race by coming in dead last. It was a slow bicycle race, where the object is to take the greatest possible amount of time to get to the finish line without falling over or touching the ground. After many years of intensifying focus and improving balance through the practice of yoga, it would appear I am now a NATURAL GENIUS at slow bike racing. What a splendid moment that was, when I crept wobblingly, and well behind the competition, across that chalk mark on the pavement! And what a splendid metaphor for everything that's been going on in my life lately. Almost everything I've lost in the past few weeks has turned out to be a win, one way or another. And it's definitely involved some very slow progress toward goals that were pretty humble, but still counted as triumphs.

The most significant loss was of my little green sketchbook, which I take with me everywhere and fill with notes and drawings and incomprehensible-to-everyone-but-me scribblings on various knitting projects in progress. (I posted a scan of one sketch here a few months ago.) One minute I was knitting and taking notes while I waited on the Aviation Blvd. Metro platform in Los Angeles, then the train came and I was seated on it with my suitcase and my knitting and my handbag...but no sketchbook. I looked around under the seats and asked if anyone had seen it, but it seems all anyone saw that day was more of my badonkadonk than they were expecting to while I crawled around looking for my little book. Poof, it was gone. With all my meticulous stitch counts for the project I was right in the middle of inventing, and everything. Such a bummer. I called the Metro Lost & Found number and discovered I'd need to wait at least three days before coming in person to their office to inquire about any lost item.

A week later, when I was back in town, I took the airport shuttle back to the station where I'd lost it (and risked a hefty fine by going back up to the platform without a valid ticket) to see if by any chance it had fallen between the train and the platform, and was still down there on the tracks. I was seriously willing to climb on down to get it if it was there, too. Although I'd bought a new notebook the day after I lost it, the green one had over a year's worth of ideas and notes in it, and I'd had time to realize how much I wanted it back. Enough to jump in front of a speeding train! (Well, almost. There's a schedule for the inbound trains, so I'd know if I had time to get back up or not, and anyway, I figured I'd at least try to find a Metro employee and ask for help first. A fine I could probably talk my way out of, but getting arrested is another matter.) No such luck. The next day, I checked at the Lost & Found office; no luck there, either, but the woman I spoke to was extremely nice and put my name and number on a list of people who'd lost stuff, just in case it did get turned in later. Meanwhile, I tried to forget about it.

Here's where the loss turns into a win, though: Out of the blue, about a week after this (and almost three weeks after I'd lost it), Jared Flood emails me and tells me someone got in touch with him via Facebook to report a lost notebook. Jared's name was the only one in it--on the page where I was laying out my idea for the Hill Country Weavers SHELTER pattern collection--and obviously, he's easy to Google, so the person who found the notebook got in touch with him. Jared figured out, based on the description of the page with his name on it, that the design was probably mine, and put me in touch with the finder. (Jared also noted that the person had said "that the book was full of good but time-intensive ideas, which I had a good laugh about. He's clearly not a knitter.") I emailed the dude, whose name is Darren, and he got in touch pretty quickly and sent my notebook back to me, politely demurring at the suggestion of any kind of reward, even though he just moved to Oregon and I'm sure he could use stuff in his new place. He's gonna get a hand-knit Koolhaas whether he likes it or not--HA! Take that, super-nice-guy Darren!

All of which is to say that a loss isn't always permanent; nor is it always a bad thing. A slow bike race, furthermore, is a much-needed reminder of how HARD it is to slow down--to NOT go barreling toward a goal that, most of the time, is as evanescent as a chalk line on the pavement. You're probably just as likely to crash a bike going fast as going slow (well, I am, anyway), and it sure hurts less if you're going slow. As for "good but time-intensive ideas"...do I ever have any other kind?? Isn't knitting just the hugest, best, most time-intensive idea ever--a slow string race, if you will? And if knitting isn't the most time-intensive idea ever, then getting a PhD surely must be. So I'm win/losing every which way here.

Samuel Beckett wrote: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." In that spirit, I have now written my email address and phone number and "reward for safe return!" in the front of all of my sketchbooks, so I can fail better the next time I lose one. (Or win. Or whatever.)

Winter flowers, cash and showers!

2011-02-22T17:44:00.000-08:00

Wowsers. Remember that scholarship I received last year from the good folks at Jimmy Beans Wool? Well, it's that time of year again, and for this round of scholarships, they've recruited a bunch of incredible sponsors, and boosted the award amount to a whopping $3,000 in tuition money for knitters and crocheters with college bills to pay. I was thrilled to be awarded $800 last year, so I can only imagine how great it would be to get three G's. Three cheers for Jimmy Beans! Please encourage any crafty college kids you know to apply; full details are here. It's such an easy form to fill out, and such a great program. The scholarship information page also has downloadable fliers for posting at your school or LYS. If you're not in school yourself, help spread the word--you could put some very deserving student on the road to a huge windfall!

Speaking of windfalls and weather, we've either been having a sneak preview of spring, or else we're taking a pass on the rest of winter here in Austin. We had a teensy bit of the snow and cold temps you may have heard about on the news--including one inch of snowfall over a Thursday night when I was out of town, which was all melted away by the time I got home Friday afternoon. It did get chilly enough for a few days to shut down the schools, which everyone called a snow day (even though it was more like a sleet day, or a "dagnabit it's colder than I'm used to" day). Since then, though, it's pretty much been sunny, muggy, and pushing 80 every day. Punxatawney Phil must be down here on vacation or something. Go home, groundhog, and let us have our six more weeks, please! It'll be a hundred here soon enough, and I miss the snows and cold rains of my Seattle childhood, I really do.

I've been making my own wishful winter weather on my needles, though: everything I've made lately either looks like winter skies (I'm off the orange and back on the gray now) or works for winter wear. I worked up a pullover version of my new Hill Country pattern in some Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend in a lovely variegated range of mother-of-pearl tints, which turned out terrific. I also got to experiment with a brand-new yarn from Knit Picks, Aloft, which I turned into a downy-soft cowl in a lace pattern that looks like thunderclouds massing on the horizon.

Clusters of tiny blue beads and a fringe of the same complete the cloudy-with-a-chance of rain theme. Complete details and pattern link are on my Ravelry page, here, and you can download the PDF directly by clicking on the link at left--just $1.99 gets you charted and written instructions (knitters, you have been heard! I do try to provide written instructions for charts whenever possible in my patterns) for this little lovely. Imagine, a cozy little thundercloud you can put over your head any time you want! Now, if only I could figure out how to knit myself a snowdrift before summer comes...

January

2011-01-04T10:28:00.000-08:00

Republican coin, c.225-212; (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien)

The ancient Roman god Janus is closely associated with doorways, beginnings, and transitions. His two faces--one looking back to the past, one toward the future--are also a potent symbol for archives and archivists, who collect and care for the records of the past to serve as a continuing resource for the future. For a knitter, the sense of Janus could be embodied in a cake of yarn, with its two ends, or even a single stitch, which is at once both knit and purl, its two faces opposed and integrated. Of course, the month of January is named for Janus: the old year closes here just as the new year opens.

Looking back on 2010, I see some things that definitely color my view forward into 2011--in generally positive ways. For one thing, there's my FO tally (with links to Rav project or pattern pages, where applicable):

2 Dewey baby pullovers
1 Elsie baby cardigan with beaded yoke (which one of the cats threw up on...sigh)
1 Beverly cardigan for Abbe
3 Larkin baby blankets
1 Otto bear (for little Henry Marcel)
1 Chiana sweater
2 Constance cardigans (adult sizes...one of which I haven't even taken pictures of)
1 Constance baby cardigan
2 tall Billington bags
3 small Billington bags
1 Herringbone vest for Steven (which I started in 2009 and set aside until finishign it in March, 2010, so I'm counting it as a 2010 FO, dang it!)
1 Althea cardigan
1 Althea skirt (which I just realized is not listed in my Ravelry store...fixing that now!)
2 Hill Country dresses
3 Cecily camisoles
1 Cecily jacket

...And I think that's about it. It's interesting to see how many false starts I had among my new projects for 2010: Dewey, Elsie, Chiana, Constance, and the men's vest pattern are all lingering in the prototype phases, really, and not truly finished designs yet. They all still need a certain something. But Billington, Larkin, Hill Country, and the Cecily camisole are all things I'm quite proud of.

The pledge I made to contribute $1 from the sale of each Billington bag pattern to the Center for Home Movies yielded great results--over $300!--and is a big step toward the goal for the CHM year-end fundraiser. (We can always use a little bit more, though--even $5 or $10 makes a big difference to a small organization like this one, so feel free to click that link and pitch in to CHM or another charity of your choice through the Network for Good!) I'm already thinking about what my next pledge project might be--I found this experience really gratifying, and think many of the people who purchased the pattern liked that they got to help a good cause at the same time.

The Cecily jacket will probably be the next pattern release I do, and the first pattern I release in 2011. I'm very pleased with that one, and just need to write up and size the pattern. (Um, and get it test-knitted, tech-edited, photographed, laid out, and...whew. I'm tired already.) The lightweight camisole-and-jacket twinset will make for nice springtime knitting and wearing. And of course I have new projects cooking all the time, especially when life is going well and I have time to sort of soften my focus and let the new ideas drift in...

Last but definitely not least, I want to announce the winner of my very first blog giveaway! It's CelticCastOn, who shared a great story about the dollhouse her dad made, which kinda sorta ruined the Santa myth for her but is now a treasured heirloom toy to be passed on to her little daughter. Kelly's a great knitter and will no doubt make something amazing with whatever she gets from HCW with that gift certificate. (Be sure to post a link to that here when it's done, Kelly!) Everyone's comments on that post were terrific; I can't tell you how much I enjoyed reading about the smells, recipes, handmade and homemade treasures all of you remember from years past. (Also? The cat getting stuck in the Christmas tree and the mom who set her hair on fire with sparklers. Love it!!) Thanks to all of you for making my first blog giveaway so much fun for ME--I've never gotten so many comments on a post and love how connected it made me feel to those who are reading. Expect the giveaways to continue in 2011!

The end of loose ends is in 2010!

2010-12-30T13:09:00.000-08:00

How much do I hate weaving in ends? Sofa king much. I've let some FOs sit, unworn or ungifted, for months on end while I work myself up to the task of weaving in, like, four ends of yarn on the underarms and sleeve hems. Whenever possible, I spit-splice or weave in the ends as I join new yarn, using this method I found online (thanks, aija and JP from Article Pract!).

The worst problem with hating to weave in ends is that I'm not actually particularly good at it when I actually get around to doing it. Looking at the wrong side of my work is usually like looking at Joan Rivers without makeup on--kinda yucky, but...it sure shows how much work went into it. If it's a garment I will be wearing myself, I've even been known to just tuck a random end that I overlooked back down the sleeve if I know it's not going to work itself loose. I hate that I do this and it makes me feel very, very lazy--also a touch unprofessional. It's strange that weaving in ends bugs me this much, because there are other pretty tedious finishing tasks that I'll do with relish, even: Sewing on buttons or ribbon linings for plackets, knitted-on i-cord, even seaming, which many people despise (and which many of my designs, especially the garments, don't require). I just love a pretty and well-finished garment, but when it comes to the loose ends--ugh. I'll willingly settle for the outer appearance of good finishing.

Now that we're here at the end of the year, though, I'm calling an end to that thing with the ends. It stops here. Today. Right now. FOs are going to get FINISHED when they're done, and I'm going to love how it feels to snip that last little tail before moving on to the next project. I am resolved! 2011 will be The Year of Literally Tying Up Loose Ends. It's going to be awesome. Look how great it looks when I do it--the twinset above was blocked the morning after I cast off, and I had it all done right down to the buttons THAT DAY. Yay, me.

As I look forward to that Year of Literally Tying Up Loose Ends, it reminds me to remind all of you that there's just one more day left to enter yourself in my first-ever blog giveaway! Skip back to my last post and leave a comment with your favorite homemade holiday memory (doesn't have to be a winter holiday either, btw; I'll accept DIY firecrackers for the 4th of July or Guy Fawkes Day, or the hand-drawn cards you got from your kids for Mother's Day, or what have you). I'll put the names in a hat on New Year's Eve and draw for a free pattern and a gift certificate to Hill Country Weavers!

(Um, we may just have to tackle "blocking things as soon as they're done instead of leaving them unblocked on the dress form for several weeks" in 2012. Baby steps...)

Merry Xmas!

2010-12-25T07:35:00.000-08:00

Season's greetings, everyone! In the holiday spirit, here's a little of the ol' red-and-green for you, Austin style...

The red is some lovely scarlet bougainvillea, and the green is my Hill Country dress--the pattern for which is now available! I'm thrilled to announce the release of the "Hill Country Does SHELTER" collection, which is an amazing group of patterns created for the new Brooklyn Tweed wool yarns. Just click on the link to visit the Hill Country Weavers e-commerce site and check out all of the patterns; Jared Flood's going to do a special post about it on the Brooklyn Tweed blog, too. There are hats, sweaters, legwarmers, and other accessories featuring all of the colors in the SHELTER range, and all with a dash of uniquely Austin flavor. They're each available as individual PDF downloads, or grouped in two PDF e-booklets at a generous discount off the single-pattern price. The layouts are gorgeous, with loads of great pictures of the designs themselves and the South Congress district that Hill Country Weavers calls home. WARNING: You may have a hard time choosing just one. I want to make them all myself. Especially Sarah Rose, Elizabeth Cobbe's sweet lace-edged cardigan...

Can I just tell you how great it's been working on this project? First of all, I'm in fabulous company: There are two Elizabeths (MightyGoodYarn and Elizabeth Green Musselman of Dark Matter Knits fame), a Kathy and a Kourtney, an Emily, and Suzanne herself, owner of Hill Country Weavers and all-around amazing lady. As the impresario of this project, Suzanne not only created her own beautiful woven blanket design (AND adapted it to scarf size, so she actually made TWO projects), recruited the local designers and photographer (the fabulous Meg Rice, who you may know as winemegup on Flickr), researched graphic designers and printers and photo shoot locations, oh my!, and brought the whole thing home in a matter of what, four months?

The finished product looks really amazing, and being a part of it might just be the best gift I get this Christmas. To celebrate the launch of the collection, and make this a gift that keeps on giving, I'm announcing my first-ever blog giveaway contest! Just comment on this post with your favorite homemade holiday memory (mine is the taste of my mom's peppermint pinwheel cookie dough). On New Year's Day, I'll pick a name at random from all the commenters. The winner will receive a free pattern of their choice from my Ravelry pattern store (you don't need to have a Ravelry account) and a $50 gift certificate to Hill Country Weavers. (That's enough for several skeins of SHELTER yarn, or both pattern collections. Not that you have to get those exact items, but I'm just saying...)

Tidings of comfort and joy to all of you!

New pattern: the Cecily camisole

2010-12-12T11:54:00.000-08:00

It's been several months since I last announced a new pattern here, but it's not because I haven't been designing. My needles have been quite busy, in fact, and you'll be seeing the results of that over the next few weeks, starting with this lovely (if I do say so myself) lace-edged camisole: Cecily!

Cecily is knit in Crystal Palace Panda Silk, which is a perennial favorite of mine. It's a fingering-weight blend of wool, bamboo, and silk, and these fibers work together to amazing effect. The bamboo gives it a nice weight and a little bit of shine, the touch of silk adds to the drape and smooth hand, and the wool is superwash merino--so you get a durable machine-washable fabric of beautiful color, breathable lightweight warmth, and elegant drape. Delicious!

The cami is worked in the round from the bottom up, with no seaming. Princess darts at the front and back gently shape the waist, while short-row darts and pretty paired increases and decreases create a beautifully fitted sweetheart neckline at the top. The tapered garter-stitch straps are worked from the upper edge and joined with two short grafts or a three-needle bind-off--you can also use purchased lingerie fittings and satin or grosgrain ribbon in a coordinating or contrasting color for adjustable fabric straps if you like! The pattern's sized from XS up to 2X, to fit busts measuring 28-48" with slight negative ease for a sleek silhouette.

And as usual, it's named for a librarian or archivist or other information-science-y sort...in this case, rare-books store employee Cecily Farr from 84 Charing Cross Road. This movie is based on Helene Hanff's nonfiction memoir of the same title, and is absolutely charming--a little bit funny, a little bit sad, and very much about how important books and the people who work with them can be in our lives. There's also a bit of a Christmas theme running through it: the action begins shortly after World War II, when England was still under rationing. Helene's annual Christmas hamper full of hard-to-come-by delicacies--a thank-you to a London bookstore's staff for the volumes they've sent her throughout the year--is the subject of many of the letters sent between Charing Cross Road and Helene's various New York apartments over a forty-year period. I think this is a lovely equation of food for the mind and food for the body--the sense that books and food can both sate a certain kind of hunger. In the 1950s, Cecily Farr might have worn something like this as a warm underlayer beneath a blouse or cardigan as she worked among the shelves of the unheated store...nowadays, it'd be a feminine accent to a structured blazer, or look great on its own over a pretty summer skirt.

Ravelry details and more images are here (Cecily Camisole pattern page) and here (project page, including lots of WIP pics). Love it so much you want to make it right now? Just click the button! PDF pattern with charted and line-by-line written instructions for the lace motif is just $4.00, and it's a quick knit too--you could cast on tomorrow and be done in plenty of time for Xmas.

Back to the five and dime...well, almost

2010-11-27T11:05:00.000-08:00

They call the East Bay of San Francisco "the nickel-dime" for its 510 area code. Just a few hours to the East, and a few thousand feet up, you're in the 530 area code, which the Reno-based Jimmy Beans Wool calls home. I was staying with friends at Lake Tahoe for the Thanksgiving holiday, so of course I paid them a visit in between drop-offs and pick-ups at the Reno airport, thinking of "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" the whole time...

I've never needed an excuse to go to a yarn shop, of course, but I had a good one for visiting JBW in person: Several months ago, I was the grateful recipient of a "Beans for Brains" scholarship sponsored by Vogue Knitting and Jimmy Beans Wool. It was so great to be able to say thanks in person to some of the people who made it possible--although the weekend's very heavy snowfall made it impossible for at least one important person, proprietor Laura Zander, to make it in to the shop that day! The photo above really doesn't do it justice; we encountered white-out conditions on the highway, and I'm kind of amazed that flights were taking off and landing at all that day. (I should note that this picture was taken from INSIDE the cozy, yarn-filled shop and flipped. It was too dang cold to be standing outside with the camera.) It also doesn't do the store justice--"Endless possibilities" is right. Although it's no more than a few hundred square feet, the retail space is a real wonderland of tempting yarns, with an inviting sitting area next to the shelves of books and magazines. And then behind it, and filling another huge space two doors down, there's the whoa-inducing stock from which their vigorous online and mail-order business draws. Holy smokes, that's a lot of yarn.

The lovely Bethany, who was giving me a tour of the operation, was very patient with me while I geeked out and asked all kinds of questions about the organizational scheme for their backstock. (Sorry, Bethany; the librarian training just kicks in and takes over at times like these.) I spent a pleasant, but not nearly long-enough, interval browsing in the store and chatting with Bethany, her fellow cashier-on-duty-that-day Jeanne, and other members of their very friendly staff while knitting a few rounds on my latest project. Snowy weather: Bad for driving, awesome for knitting!

I've gotten spoiled by the great LYSes here in Austin, and thus am frequently disappointed when I visit shops in other towns, but JBW really delivers the goods in their store as well as online--and I'm not just saying that because they gave me a scholarship, I swear. It was really everything I look for in an LYS: nice roomy layout, great selection (including stuff I don't see at home), inspiring samples and swatches everywhere, perusing and petting encouraged. The place was so delightful, I just couldn't resist picking up a few skeins of new yarn while I was there. Guess that de-stash diet will be a New Year's resolution-type thing...because I know the next time I'm in the five and dime, I'll definitely be thinking about going back to Jimmy Beans.

Not necessarily the neutral

2010-11-20T10:54:00.000-08:00

The end of the year is a great time to take stock of the ol' stash. There's holiday gift-knitting to do, and the days between paychecks seem to be lengthening in lockstep with the winter nights, so using what's already on hand feels blessedly thrifty. I could lose some serious amounts of daylight pawing through the bags and bins in that closet I keep hidden from my husband (um, and the drawer under the daybed, which I just now realized has also somehow gotten filled with yarn). It all feels so nice and looks so pretty...and it can also say so much about you, if you're looking closely.

Something I noticed on this most recent trip through my assembled reserves was that they've undergone a distinct spectrum shift. I've never been much of a colorwork person, relying mainly on texture and shaping for whatever visual interest I feel a design needs, but I do love color, and the color I love most is gray. For one thing, it makes my somewhat-indeterminately-colored eyes, which some people say are blue but I prefer to think of as gray, look REALLY gray when I wear it. (There's a certain shade of sea-green that my eyes will totally reflect if I wear it close to my face, too, which is kind of a neat phenomenon, but I haven't see much of this hue in current fashions.) Gray doesn't seem like a neutral to me at all; "neutral" implies passivity, a background that just sits there and lets a real color take the stage, whereas I find gray to be much more protean and responsive than that. It can so easily be two colors at once--blue-gray, green-gray, violet-gray, cream-gray, putty, oyster, pinkish-gray in mauve and lilac, brownish-gray in oatmeal and mushroom. Charcoal, slate, off-black, silver, sweatshirt heathers...gray's got a lot going on. It's been my default color for a long time now--so long that perhaps I've started to take it for granted.

I've dabbled recently with green (see for instance Decimal and Myrtle, and my recent dress design for the new Brooklyn Tweed SHELTER yarn), but that's been more a marriage of convenience than a real, deep attachment. Green yarn felt right for the project, I knitted it, and then I kept on walking. Green is a supporting character, an accent color, not a cornerstone of the ol' wardrobe. (This might explain why I have so many green handbags, I now realize. Like five of them. WAY more than any other color, including gray.) In my mind, green goes with stuff; stuff doesn't go with green. What I saw when I started piling yarn up on my floor, though, was a whole lot of orange all of a sudden. Whoa! How'd that happen?

Without even realizing it, I've started a love affair with orange. I'm cheating on gray with vermilion, coral, tangerine, and sunset, with carmine and copper and rust. It's not that gray doesn't still inspire me--it does. I'm working on something in pewter-colored Panda Silk right now, and loving it. But orange seems to be pushing a different button in my brain.

Looking back, I guess you could see it coming. First we moved to Austin, where the college football fans bleed orange and you can't throw a rock without hitting something in the UT colors. Then I snapped up a bunch of fluffy coral-rose yarn at a swap my knitting group had a while back, along with a couple of balls of discontinued terra cotta Shine Sport. That yarn drew me to it, but still felt uncharacteristically...orange. This year's Althea sweater and skirt was my first big fling, though. I actually swatched that yarn in another color called Platinum--a pale gray that just didn't do it for me somehow--and then switched to Tiger Lily when it came to the real knitting. And now, I can't seem to quit this color. I bought some variegated gray-and-blue Berocco the other day, swatched with it, felt meh about the results, and then traded most of it back for store credit. Which I ended up spending on fiery orange-red Regia 4-ply sock yarn.

I think that Regia is going to end up being my trip knitting while I'm holed up over the holiday next week, and I'll be honest--it feels a little like I'm taking my mistress on vacation with me while my wife stays home and looks after the cats. I still love you, gray; I really do. I just needed something new, something that made me feel...alive. I never meant to do this, but I've fallen in love with orange. Perhaps it won't last. Perhaps I'll always be turning back to the colors of cold sea and stormy skies. At the moment, though, it's all about my darling Clementine...

Ta(l)king Shelter

2010-10-23T15:10:00.000-07:00

There's an old joke about the weather here in the Hill Country. "Austin has four seasons: almost summer, summer, still summer, and Christmas." They're not lying. It's well into November, and I drank my coffee in shirtsleeves on the side porch this morning, on the lookout for mosquitoes. The customary wicked heat notwithstanding, Austinites do love their wool, and we're blessed with not one but several great yarn shops and a thriving craft community. One of those shops, Hill Country Weavers, was hand-picked by Jared Flood (a.k.a. Brooklyn Tweed) to be one of the brick-and-mortar flagship stores for his new yarn line, SHELTER, and the collection of new accessory patterns he's created especially for those yarns.

It's a product with an interesting story, and well worth reading about if you're hearing of it here first. Jared has put great care and effort into creating a yarn line made from American-raised wool that's dyed and milled in American facilities. It's his effort to help sustain and revitalize the centuries-old American textile industry, which I think is pretty cool. The hues and hand of the yarn are a wool-lover's dream, and Jared's new designs for it offer his usual combination of elegant style, luscious texture, and wearability.

You can surely imagine, therefore, how excited I was to be invited, along with an impressive group of other Austin-based designers, to contribute a pattern to a collection of new designs described as "Hill Country does SHELTER." Inspired in part by the beautiful creations of Church Mouse Yarns, another one of the brick-and-mortar SHELTER merchants, these new designs use all of the colors in the SHELTER range, with a distinctly Texas touch. Starting with some of Jared's favorite design elements--garter stitch, chevrons, texture that really sings--I swatched our sample skein in a motif called Welting Fantastic. (This being the Thanksgiving season, I'll express once again that I'm thankful for the Barbara Walker Treasury. Where would I be without it? I can open to almost any page and the designs practically create themselves.) This stitch is so easy to work, flat or in the round, and it creates wonderful effects in Shelter--a scalloped cast-on edge, a feather-light and drapey fabric with enough spring to keep it from sagging--and its pairing of rising increases and falling decreases is reminiscent of the gently rolling terrain for which the Hill Country around Austin is named. I immediately called dibs on the rich, grassy green color called Tent, and got to work sketching and prototyping a garment that would capture some of that famous Austin spirit. Here's my first stab at the design from my little sketchbook, which I always have with me:

That sketch and my original swatch, in turn, became this:

Hey, it looks just like the picture! (Sometimes I even surprise myself when I do that.) I'll be sure to let y'all know when the collection becomes available--we're shooting to have it ready for in-store and online purchases before the holidays. That's perfect, because this below-the-knee length is eminently suitable for the brief Austin Christmas season. The pattern's written in such a way, though, that you can also make it in Almost Summer and Still Summer versions--a hip-length pullover and a mid-thigh tunic that would be great worn over leggings with your favorite cowboy boots. Three out of four ain't bad, right? So maybe for the holidays this year knitters everywhere will be telling one another: "Gimme Shelter!"

Corking it

2010-10-14T12:26:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned that I travel a lot? Well, I do. I mostly love it: I have friends all over the place, so out-of-town conferences and symposia are a great opportunity to visit with them. Seeing places where I COULD be living often makes me more appreciative of the qualities of the place where I DO live. And after all, if you don't travel, you have to keep visiting the same old yarn shops over and over and over again...where you can't use the "souvenir yarn" exception if you're on a de-stash diet.

Airports and planes are great spaces for knitting, too. There are the long hours of seated waiting to fill, and I like the poetic symmetry of knitting while traveling--the yarn goes in yard by yard as the journey goes by mile by mile. I have yet to encounter airport-security static over my needles or the contents of my notions bag, which I guess makes me pretty lucky, because I actually use my knitting as a defensive weapon on plane trips. That is, it's a very ready excuse for not engaging with a chatty seatmate--"Ooh, what are you making there?" "Sorry, can't talk...counting..."

My latest trip was a real jackpot from a knitting-on-the-road standpoint: Two domestic connections followed by a transatlantic flight, then a bus ride to the train station, THEN a train ride to the lovely riverside city of Cork, Ireland--which is home to a button factory. Observe!

Ooooooooohhhh yeah. That's the stuff. I splurged, needless to say, on a few additions to my collection. Buttons are great souvenirs--no matter how many you buy you can always find room for them in your luggage. Like loose gemstones, but cheaper, and less likely to get you rapped at by an indignant Kanye West! (If you stick to the vegetable ivory, that is. If there's such a thing as "conflict buttons," I don't want to know about it. La la la la la, I can't hear you...)

The conference kept me pretty busy, but I got to prowl around the town of Cork a bit and really liked what I saw. Aside from the button factory, there's also the Butter Museum and the view from my hotel room, which was of a decommissioned cemetery, with a beautiful line of tombstones canted up against the hedge.

But I think this was the sight that really made me want to live there:

Now, if the Button Factory and the Butter Museun were all INSIDE the heliotrope-painted Library House, I would know I had arrived in a heaven designed especially for me...

From Cork I detoured back home (more train, more bus, more airport, more driving, more knitting throughout all of the former) via the small Virginia town of Culpeper. This is where the Library of Congress has their National Audiovisual Conservation Center facility, and also where the fiber-friendly out-of-towner can pay a visit to Dog House Yarns & More, a great little shop that opened earlier this year. I had the pleasure of meeting the proprietor, Rosanne, and her husband Fritz, along with a couple of their weeknight sit-and-knit regulars, all of whom made me feel right at home after two Saturdays in a row away from my regular knitting group. Local hand-dye studio Blue Ridge Yarns is well-represented in their stock, and I couldn't resist a bundle of their Footprints sock yarn. 100 yds of semi-solid for heels and toes is paired with 300 yds of gorgeously coordinated handpainted color. I got a new colorway called Redbud, which combines beautiful maroons, rusts, and browns with a loden green for the accent color. It'll make lovely autumn socks for someone...maybe me!

Thankfully, the end of this long trip (just about) coincided with the end of our blazing-hot summer in Austin. A few days after I got back, the temperatures had dropped down to the high 80s during the day, and the nights and early mornings have started to get that fall crispness. It's making it much easier to keep cranking away on my latest project: a dress made with the new woolly Shelter yarn recently launched by Jared Flood, of Brooklyn Tweed fame. More on that next time!

A word about Althea

2010-09-02T12:20:00.001-07:00

A fellow-Raveler (who happens to have a family full of Altheas herself) just asked me how my new Althea cardigan and skirt patterns got their name. Well, their namesake is third from the right in this photo--she's the determined-looking woman in the patterned frock who's looking right at ya:

For those who don't recognize her on sight, that's none other than Althea Warren, who was City Librarian of Los Angeles, CA from 1933-1947, and president of ALA from '43-'44. During her tenure, Warren led the Victory Book Campaign, a nationwide book drive that eventually directed more than 10 million volumes to those serving in the armed forces in WWII. This project was totally in keeping with her philosophy as a librarian, which was distinctly populist. "Not all of a person's reading is or should be in pursuit of information," she wrote, in an article on "The Needs of Readers." As someone who reads at both the high and low ends of the literary spectrum, I'm down with that. Of course, Althea Warren held that opinion at a time when it was still pretty radical--when many library board members still felt that libraries should be places for people to "better themselves" or address "the higher interests of society," and that putting mystery novels and penny dreadfuls on the shelves would attract an unruly class of patrons. This debate about the fundamental public role of libraries, and how that should shape their acquisitions and services, continues to this day--it's a fierce 'un!

To pay tribute to Althea Warren, then, I designed a knitted outfit that's bold in color, but entirely straightforward to knit and quite serviceable to wear. Think of her when you wear it--and while you're at it, you could even donate a book to a soldier in her memory.

(Image courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library's photo collection.)

Who's got two needles and a scholarship?

2010-09-01T13:41:00.000-07:00

<----- This girl!

I'm very pleased to be able to share the news about the scholarship I was just awarded from Jimmy Beans Wool and Vogue Knitting. Now in its second year, the Beans for Brains scholarship program is providing some much-needed tuition support for the many college students out there who also happen to knit and crochet. It's the first program of its kind, and JBW and VK deserve a big pat on the back for coming up with it.

I'm pretty sure I'd think that even if they hadn't awarded one of the scholarships to me. (But they did, so a huge THANKS to you, Laura, and all the great folks at Jimmy Beans!) Having paid off the loans and debt from two college degrees myself before heading back for a third, I'm a big fan of scholarships--and ones that take care to recognize special talents and well-rounded students are just the berries.

It's nice to see the link between craft/creativity and academic achievements being made, too. I've grown considerably as both a knitter and a scholar since starting the degree program I'm in now, and I think those two pursuits have informed one another in some interesting ways. For one thing, practicing and communicating about both knitting and information science was radically transformed by the Interwebs, which continue to have an influence on trends in both fields. (Examples? Ravelry. Google. Discuss!) Absorbing difficult new ideas can be discouraging, but as I plowed through the really dense articles and books for my introductory doctoral research and theory class, I'd tell myself that if I could learn to knit lace, then the theoretical traditions of information science should be cake.

Perhaps most importantly, though, I've been publishing knitting patterns pretty regularly for the last few years, and that has definitely made me more comfortable with the idea of publishing in general--one of the imperatives in academia ("publish or perish," they say). Whether it's a journal article or a charted lace design, you're putting yourself out there when you publish. You know your readers are going to be a bunch of people who have a keen interest in the subject, often know waaaaaay more than you do about it, and won't hesitate to call you out--publicly!--on the bits you get wrong. The work ultimately has to stand on its own, and you have to stand by it. Scary, right? It really can be...but for me, having a sort of alter ego who publishes knitting patterns (and has to push out the occasional revision-with-apologies when a sharp-eyed knitter finds one of the goofy errors that are entirely my fault, and occur despite, not because of, the efforts of my fine technical editors) keeps the academical me more philosophical about the peer-review process, and the inevitable setbacks and rewriting that good, responsible scholarly publication entails.

For Jimmy Beans and Vogue to be sponsoring an award that recognizes students who knit, then, means to me that there might be a lot of people out there for whom knitting (and crocheting, of course!) is more than just a retro hobby. It's a true creative outlet, an intellectual challenge, and maybe a way of working on something that engages the "play" part of your brain while the "school" part is chewing on something tricky. It's also what I do on the bus to and from campus, and with my best non-school friends here in Texas, so it's a way of staying sane and grounded and having something other than my research interests to discuss at cocktail parties.

BTW, the nice photo that I grabbed for this post appeared with the front-page article on my receipt of this award that my school paper ran (slow news week, I guess!). It's by Tamir Kalifa, who is clearly a very talented guy. He gets extra points for somehow minimizing the infamous Knitter's Double Chin...but someone gets points off for naming the image file "DOM2010-09-01_Knitting_Lady." Yowch--apparently, even though I'm a student, I'm a lady now, and my girl days are behind me. In all fairness, though, I think I have underpants that are older than the reporter who interviewed me for the article. I may in fact have been wearing them when that picture was taken.

Yellow is not my color. Oh, wait, I guess it could be.

2010-08-30T14:38:00.001-07:00

Aunt Lydia's Design Studio
Originally uploaded by snowdenbecker

When I look at a picture like this from a vintage pattern book (in this case, "Aunt Lydia's Design Studio," from sometime deep in the 1970s), my first thought is neither "Looks comfortable!" nor "Boy, don't I wish I my crochet skills were up to something that complex!" nor "That model is clearly bereft of any kind of undergarments." No, friends, these are secondary notions. The first thing to churn to the surface in my brain is actually, "Does it come in any color BESIDES yellow?"

I have friends who look amazing in marigold, sunshine, canary, butter, and topaz, but I never have. In fact, I've never given the hues that fall between green and red on the color wheel much of a shot. Lately I've dabbled in orange, which would feel considerably more daring if I didn't live in Austin, Texas. Burnt orange and white are the UT Austin colors, and Austin is heaven for orange stuff: If something orange is very, very good, when it dies it will wake up and find itself here, whether it is a car or a cardigan, yarn or yard equipment. It's really only natural that, as I enter my fifth year of seeing people wearing UT shirts ALL OVER THE PLACE (including to their actual classes AT the University on non-game days, which seems to me kind of like wearing the band t-shirt to the concert of that band...but hey, maybe I'm wrong about that), I would be coming to accept orange as something wearable, even by me. Burnt orange I still don't know that I love on me yet, but I've gotten daring with some stuff in the vermilion and tangerine families lately, if you can believe that.

The next logical step would be for me to branch out into yellow, right? Well, I might want to count St. Moritz (Ravelry details here) as that step. It's my design contribution to the new book Knitting it Old School, edited by my pals Caro and Stitchy, which is sure to be the must-have pattern book for this fall. (I've provided an Amazon link just off to the left there, for your convenience. Wasn't that nice of me? Just click on the li'l ol' Buy Now button, kiddo...THERE you go!) They asked me for some ideas for a vintage-inspired piece and then sent me the yarn to make it with, and I was, I must admit, kinda sorta horrified when I opened the box and saw exactly what "lemon ice" looked like. There was just an awful lot of yellow in one place there. More than a law firm's worth of legal pads. More than a cageful of canaries. Like a handful of highlighters had leaked all over a nice bag of cream-colored yarn, maybe. OK, not as bad as that last one, but whew, definitely more yellow yarn than I'd ever thought I'd be using on one project.

As I swatched it, I fretted. Yellow is so LIGHT. I'd have to wash my hands each time I picked up this project! The beginning of the garment would get all soiled, and the end of it would be all bright and fresh! I'd have to keep it in a plastic bag if I took it anywhere, in case I spilled on it! And waaah, I don't like yellow! As it turned out, working this yellow garment ended up instilling some better knitterly habits in me. You should always wash your hands before picking up a knitting project, after all, and ladies, if you're putting your knitting in a handbag that has EVER carried makeup, too, you should put it in its own clean bag. (So sayeth the girl who has had to gently rinse lip-liner crumbs out of a ball of lace weight cashmere.) And of course the color grew on me. (Who saw that one coming? OK, cleversticks; you win. You're smarter than me.) This stuff really DOES look like lemon ice--even though I was working on it during two of the eleven-point-five wicked hot months we have here in Texas, it didn't seem like as steamy a lapful as other (less refreshingly-colored) sweaters I have knitted. The upshot is that knitting with yellow yarn is now on the list of things I won't automatically rule out, which makes me feel ever so adventurous and broad-minded and whatnot.

In fact, I had such a good experience with this yellow yarn that the very next week I ordered a bunch of yellow sock yarn to test-knit my Myrtle design in, figuring I'd give the finished garment to one of my yellow-wearing friends. But when THAT yellow yarn arrived, it was--I'm truly sorry to say this, because I love the company I ordered it from, and they're usually quite tasteful with color--Fuh. Gly. Like, it REALLY looked like a highlighter leaked in there. I couldn't even swatch with it--this yarn was way, way over my yellow limit. So I had my friend Stephi dye it green. Baby steps, folks, baby steps...

RIP Panache...but viva la Capra!

2010-08-05T10:59:00.000-07:00

Oh, keeping secrets is SO hard, especially when they're SO good: Not too long ago, the fabulous folks at Knit Picks very kindly offered me the chance to test-knit their newest yarn, Capra, which is a merino wool-and-cashmere blend DK. And let me tell y'all, this stuff is primo! It's also finally available, so I can finally talk about it. I've created a new design especially for Capra--two new designs, in fact. The Althea sweater pictured above (in a fab FO photo by Splityarn/Caro Sheridan) is available now, and a matching skirt will be coming as soon as I can make the finishing touches on the pattern. Together, they make a gorgeous and cozy knitted outfit that's perfect for autumn (just check out that delicious Tiger Lily orange--it makes me feel warmer just looking at it! Oh, no, wait--I feel warm because it's still 100 degrees here in Texas. Will autumn ever come??), but they work equally well as separates.

Capra's been a long time coming, as far as I'm concerned, because the yarn that made me a Knit Picks customer in the first place was Panache. Ah, Panache. Now, THERE was a yarn! A decadent blend of wool, silk, and cashmere, it was perfect for hats. I took one tender pat of it at a knitting circle meeting, demanded to know where it came from, and then darted home to Google "Knit Picks," which I seriously had never heard of before that day, and order enough Panache for half a dozen watchcaps. (Now is as good a time as any to thank Staceyjoy Elkin for her Marsan Watchcap pattern. It's the Platonic ideal of knitted hats, and the fact that she's made the pattern available for free is something to be truly grateful for.) And some Alpaca Cloud lace yarn. And, um, I may have gotten some sock yarn with that first order, too; I really cannot recall, your Honor.

But then the dark day came not long after that--or not long enough, as far as I was concerned--when Panache was discontinued. Sniff, sniff. I still have a couple balls of dark gray in the stash that I'm saving for a very, very special project someday. A cabled cozy for a gold brick? Baby sweater for a newborn empress? No, I mean something REALLY special...in the meantime, I'll be using Capra to feed my cashmere-blend jones. And lest you think this post was all one big commercial for Knit Picks, well, coming up with the Althea pattern and the Billington Bag have both reminded me of how great it is to work in something other than fingering and lace weight yarns. Althea works up super-quick--I cranked out the below-the-knee skirt in just over a week--and it's well-suited to any DK weight yarn you like. The Sublime cashmerino-silk DK is a particular pleasure to work with, in my experience. (Just make sure you're not mixing balls of the DK and the aran, like I did on the prototype for my Harriet sweater.) So go to town! I already told you that you can't have the last of my Panache, so you better find something else out there you like to knit with...

Now available: The Billington Bag

2010-07-30T17:21:00.000-07:00

It's finally ready! My first handbag pattern...and she's a peach. The Billington Bag (click for Ravelry details) is now available for download through my Ravelry store; it'll also be available shortly from Knit Picks. It's a felted wool bag with fabric lining and cute little button feet, perfect for carrying your latest knitting project around. The extremely groovy texture comes from a twisted-stitch motif in one of the Barbara Walker treasuries, which I just cannot get enough of--the design practically invented itself as I looked at the chart in the book!

Billington the bag is named for our current Librarian of Congress, Dr. James H. Billington. He's a heck of a guy--check out his 40 honorary doctorates in addition to the one he earned as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford!--but I hold him in special esteem for the work he's done to acknowledge important works by amateur filmmakers, having named several remarkable home movies to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. (One of my all-time favorites is "Disneyland Dream" by Robbins Barstow, who is also a heck of a guy. You can watch it in its entirety via the Internet Archive.)

I'm particularly excited about this pattern, because it's the first one for which I'm pledging a portion of the proceeds to a cause that's really important to me: The Center for Home Movies. CHM runs the annual international Home Movie Day event, which is coming up on October 16 this year. On Home Movie Day, film archivists in cities around the world set up venues where members of the general public can bring in their family films (and sometimes videos) for inspection, assessment, and best of all, viewing. Many people haven't seen these family memories for decades (if ever) due to lack of a working projector or concerns about their condition, and they're therefore at risk of being lost due to neglect or simple ignorance of their rich contents. Several of the home movies now on the National Film Registry were re-discovered through Home Movie Day events, but every film that's shown at a Home Movie Day is special in some way.

In fact, home movies are stereotyped as being boring and badly shot, but I think they're actually a lot like handknits: They may run to hundreds or even thousands of yards, they're rich in color and visual texture, and they become so much more meaningful when they're handed down from generation to generation. All home movies and handknits are one-of-a-kind--not mass-produced--and so they uniquely reflect the people who made them, as well as the place and time in which they were made. They also take a little extra care and special handling to look their best, but the effort of storing them carefully and preventing snags and tears is definitely worth it. Showing them off to people who appreciate them is a special treat, too!

50% of the net sales from Billington Bag patterns will go to CHM to help support their work on preserving, presenting, and encouraging the use and study of historic amateur media. I've been involved with CHM since their very beginnings, and know how much they can do with even the smallest contributions. I hope you'll take a moment to mark your calendar and make plans to check out the Home Movie Day nearest you this year. You can bring your knitting!

$1.99 PDF download for Billington Bag pattern (includes separate PDF with chart enlarged to 11 x 17"). Ravelry membership not required.

Photos this post (c) 2010 by Caro Sheridan/Splityarn. That's her adorable cat, too.

Let's Learn to Knit. (Or we could just knit.)

2010-07-21T13:46:00.001-07:00

Let's Learn to Knit
Originally uploaded by snowdenbecker

I spend a fair amount of time in secondhand stores, antique malls, charity shops, and what have you--for a bunch of reasons, but mostly because whatever "them" is, they don't make "them" like they used to, and junk shops are where you can usually find "them" if you want/need "them." I'm talking about things like buttons, eyeglass frames, book bindings, dishes, hankies, and clothes, mostly, because those are the things I like and tend to bring home after one of these excursions, but now and again I'll nose around in a bin of something that's not on my list, and my fancy will get tickled by it.

The booklet whose cover is pictured here was a recent find of this nature--I came across it (and a couple of other gems from a few decades later, which I might also feature here eventually) in a bin of patterns and craft books at the charity shop in the little town in Washington State where my parents live. (You can see the Clallam County Extension Service stamp on the front cover there.) It's a sweet and serious package of information, and somewhat disingenuously named; they sneak quite a bit of general social-hygiene medicine in with that spoonful of craftsy-fun sugar. Just look at this list from page 1:

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
1. To combine knitting with a fabric (all right, very good, just what one expects...)
2. To draft or chart a pattern for a knitted garment (yes, perfect...)
3. To knit in a hem (that's useful stuff...)
4. To shape shoulders by turning (also useful...)
5. To make knitted trims (ooh! what a treat!)
6. To develop more poise (what? wait a second...)
7. To select accessories (oh...OK...)
8. To take measurements (yeah, but...go back...what was that about poise?)
9. To share skills, interests, and abilities with others (um...sure...I guess)

Readers are firmly instructed to "Read this bulletin from cover to cover before you start your project," which means that before you even get to plan your combined-knitting-and-fabric project, you must dutifully absorb all of pages 2 and 3, which is headed "A More Charming You." There's advice--well, rules, really--for "Entering a room," "Sitting prettily," "Rules for pretty hands," and then strict guidelines for selecting and deploying gloves, handbags, hats, shoes, and hosiery. Dear me. The 4-H Knitting Advisory Committee seems pretty determined to make the combination of knitting and fabric the exclusive province of those young ladies who have already demonstrated they can hold a clutch purse at the proper angle and won't spoil their nice entrance by looking down at a chair as they sit in it. The ass-kicker? The last page of the book is a self-assessment form, where you're encouraged to note which aspects of your knitting are "well done" or "could improve" and make suggestions for yourself. The best criterion on the list, I think, is "Selection - style suitable for age/purpose." I tell you, I've definitely seen some "could improves" for that one out there, haven't you? This checklist is the best part; it's actually why I decided to buy the book.

It all makes me extra-grateful for my knitting group, which I think is entirely composed of ladies and gents who do look down at their chairs as they sit--there might be someone's knitting needles there, after all!--and which tends to get extremely salty, conversation-wise. (Salty language isn't even covered in this booklet.) We do all have good shoes, though! Knitting--and learning to knit--has obviously changed a lot in the last few years, as a single glance at the "learn to knit" section of the bookstore shelves will tell you. Just uttering the phrase "stitch and bitch" would probably have got you chucked out of the 4-H Knitting Advisory Committee back in the day. Much as I like vintage styles and "Mad Men" and all that, I'm glad this booklet and the attitudes in it wasn't part of my introduction to knitting. I do know people whose grannies or aunties taught them to knit as part of a general pursuit of appropriate and ladylike activities, and were very stern about how things ought to be done, but I wasn't one of them.

They really don't make them like they used to, but that's not always cause for regret.

Mere yarn (less cash!)

2010-07-01T12:44:00.001-07:00

Cashmere recycling project
Originally uploaded by snowdenbecker

I've written here before about how I try to knit in accordance with my values. By that I usually mean my SOCIAL values--which tend to be far more ssk than k2tog, in case you're wondering. I like to support independent shopkeepers, organic and humane fiber sources, and post-consumer recycled content when I buy yarn. I hang on to scraps, and give away a decent portion of what I make. What's more, I think of the act of knitting is itself as a form of thoughtful and conscious consumption--making a garment helps remind one of how much time and energy goes into the making of all things, and is a compelling argument against wasting that time and energy.

Social values are only one influence on the choices we make, though; economic values are a separate, and as often as not competing, factor. Sure, it makes economic AND social sense for me to borrow knitting books from my local public library or the LYS co-op collection. But by the same token, it's hard to justify the cash cost or carbon footprint of 100% cashmere fiber, much of which comes from overseas and is gathered under unknowable conditions. So aside from the occasional taste of cashmere in a blended yarn (some of which I do happen to be using right now, for a secret project to be unveiled in August) I've never indulged in the stuff. Until now...and that's because I found an unbelievable bargain that DIDN'T require me to mortgage my conscience.

While prowling the racks of a Salvation Army* shop in Ann Arbor, MI last week, I found not one but two very nice 100% cashmere sweaters--fully-fashioned, barely worn, with no awkwardly placed moth holes or nasty stains. They were heavenly soft, and in gorgeous colors--a deep cerise and a brilliant heathered azure. The kicker? They were on sale: pullover sweaters were 2 for $5, and it happened to be student-discount day, which gave me an extra 33% off. Jackpot! By the time I was on the plane home at the end of the week, I already had the red one halfway dismantled and the first sleeve entirely frogged. Can I even begin to describe the visceral pleasure to be had in brrrrpppping out a seam, pick-pick-picking at the top of the piece to get it started, and then ripping and winding, ripping and winding, until you have a grapefruit-sized ball of luxurious (gently used) laceweight cashmere? FOR TWO LOUSY BUCKS?! Well, you have to feel it for yourself, but this is what that looks like...whee!

It still needs to be soaked and hung to get the kinks out, but in case you couldn't tell, I'm hooked on recycling cashmere sweaters now. Stay tuned for what this bounty turns into. There's ounces and ounces of both colors--plenty for a lace shawl or scarf, and probably even a garment. I'm definitely thinking a lace project for the blue stuff, since it's more of a color that I would wear. And maybe the cerise will turn back into a sweater eventually.

Whatever they become, these will be projects that just feel right in every way; you can't put a price on that. (Although if you did, it would be $3.71.)

*Sorry, Melissa. :-} Goodwill still rules!

Globe-trotting

2010-06-15T14:37:00.000-07:00

Between one thing and another, I've covered a lot of time zones lately, and it's been exhausting. It's not that I mind the travel itself--airports and airplanes are excellent places to knit for hours at a stretch, and you gotta love that--but it does make it hard to settle down long enough to get the real work of your life done, and falling behind is stressful.

I think this last round of excursions was worth the tsuris, though: Among other things, I got to pay a visit to Knit Picks headquarters in Vancouver, WA, which made my week. Actually, maybe my month! Here's me with Stacey W., who coordinates the KP Independent Designers Program:

We may look extra-happy because we were just about to enjoy some delicious burgers. (Mine was a veggie burger with bacon, which I think says a lot about how Complex and Nonconformist I can be when I try.) Or it may be because when you walk out of the Knit Picks office suite, you go by this ENORMOUS wall where they have all of their yarn lines, in all of the colors--current and future--which is truly a thing to behold. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon at KP, which is part of the Crafts Americana group, so I got to see not only where they shoot photos for all of their catalogs but also sneak peeks at some of the new quilting fabrics for the fall and winter. These include some awesome knitting-inspired prints--stockinette and fair isle snowflakes--that I can't wait to order when they become available. They'd be perfect for making sachets to go with one's handknitted woolens for the holidays!

It was super-neat to see the call center and the offices and just have a sense of the whole operation behind this company. I have a little bit of a fetish for knowing where the stuff I buy and use comes from--that's why I loved going to the farmer's market back home in California, where I knew my tomato guy and my wheatgrass-juice lady and our bread dude all by name, and they knew me. Since almost all local yarn shops are independently owned and operated, that rapport is pretty easy for knitters to achieve on a retail level, as it were, and you can get a great feel for indie dyers and spinners just from their web sites and Etsy shops, but I find it can sometimes be hard to get a personal sense from online retailers. Now I really feel like I'm part of the Knit Picks family, even though I'm still "independent," and that's great.

It just so happened that the day I was there was the day I passed a real milestone, too--sales of the Agatha pattern had just ticked past the 1,000 copies mark. Apparently, it's one of the biggest sellers among the IDP designs, which makes me prouder than I can say. That news was a bit of a surprise, though, in part because there are so few Ravelry project pages for Agathas--only a couple of dozen, which is just a tiny percentage, even if less than half of the people who download the pattern actually cast on for it. Sure, I can always track the sales numbers online, but somehow a pattern isn't really out there in my mind until I can see that people are making it. I'm hoping that people will post more of them over the next few months. And if you're not on Ravelry, but you have pictures of an Agatha you've made, send 'em to me! I get such a kick out of seeing what a design looks like in other colors, other textures, other sizes, or with changes to the shaping or style. It's almost like those crazy applications where you can see what you'd look like with plastic surgery or different hairstyles.

Which reminds me, now that I'm back from my travels, it's DEFINITELY time for a haircut. And maybe, just maybe, a little quiet time to sit and knit without having to worry about putting my seat back and tray table up for landing...

On the needles: Constance

2010-05-07T10:06:00.000-07:00

It's amazing what you can do with leftovers. After that intense spate of baby-blanketing, I had four balls each of Simply Cotton in Marshmallow, Malted Milk, and Toffee left over, and a new idea for a sweater, so I put 'em all together and here's what I've got so far. She's called Constance (in honor of Constance McCormick, whose phenomenal collection of cinema scrapbooks is now housed at the University of Southern California library, and Constance Winchell, probably best known for her work as Columbia University's reference librarian and her authorship of the comprehensive ALA Guide to Reference Books--but she also worked early in her career for the Merchant Marine supervising lighthouse libraries, which is probably one of the coolest jobs ever).

Turns out this prototype is a practically perfect match for the lovely brown mother-of-pearl vintage buttons my pal Margie C. sent me the other day, too. Margie is a fellow collector of buttons who really understands my fondness for them and sends me ones she thinks I'll particularly like...by which I mean, of course, that she is a total enabler. (Thanks, Margie!) I'm on the threshold of needing a larger tin for my ever-growing collection right now, but if I use these ones for this project, I can probably put that off until after I've come home from my next visit to my parents' place.

Although it used to be one of my favorite playthings, it's been years since I pawed through my mom's button tin, and I'm looking forward to poring over it again soon. Many of the buttons in it reportedly came from my great-aunt Marguerite, who was profligate in peculiar ways (for instance, if a button fell off a coat, she would just get a new coat--but she would save the buttons from the old one). My mom's been adding to it for decades now, and it's one of those things that I would probably try to grab if the house were on fire.

On blocking, being blocked, and (future) blockbusters

2010-05-03T11:31:00.000-07:00

Well, I didn't see any Myrtles in New York, although apple trees were in bloom everywhere, and all the city's charms were pretty much at their peak. I did get to School Products for a lunch-break snoop-around, and Purl Soho was cute as a button but also crowded as hell--while their quilting-fabric counterpart down the block was oddly deserted. Nothing grabbed me this time around at any location, but browsing was an end in itself and I fully expect to return and dump a bunch of cash there on some future visit. The exception, of course, was Tender Buttons, where I scored some vintage emerald-green glass jobbies and some indigo shuttle-shaped shell buttons that I plan to use with fabric I got at Fancy Tiger in Denver and will, I swear, make a blouse of. Someday.

On the same "someday" list, but much closer to the top, is my dissertation proposal. After qualifying and advancing to candidacy, and then forcing my nose to the grindstone immediately after that to finish a dissertation grant application on time, I felt...tired. The grant application required me to sketch out my dissertation project in some detail, but not quite as much detail as the actual, formal proposal submission requires, and getting over that hump has proven to be pretty daunting. So daunting I haven't done it yet, even though it's been months since I qualified. (I didn't get the grant, either, as I found out a couple weeks ago.) Blech, right? Worse yet, I haven't been feeling particularly productive on the other side of my brain--the knitting side--so it's been a time of genuine doldrums, at least until recently. I've been cranking away on a proposal draft that is not there yet, but GETTING there, and I have a new sweater project (Constance--Rav details here, Flickr pics of WIP here) underway. Whew. As good as it feels to block a finished project, or to turn in a finished draft, it feels even better to be UNBLOCKED at last and starting on something new and exciting.

Also exciting, but not very new--it's been in the works but under wraps for over a year now--is the forthcoming Knitting It Old School book, edited by the lovely and talented Caro (aka Splityarn) and Debbie (aka Stitchy McYarnpants). That's the cover above, and you can pre-order it from Amazon now to ensure that you get it ASAP after the August 30 release date. I've got a sweater pattern in it, which I can't show you in its entirety (you have to buy the book, sillies!) but will give you a little tiny peek of here to get your motors running:

It's lovely, if I do say so myself--WELL worth buying the whole book just for that ONE pattern, really! That said, I've also seen lots of the samples and some sneak previews from the photo shoot and I can personally guarantee that this one is worth spending your pennies on. It's got all the flavors of yesteryear, but the designs are definitely up-to-date in terms of execution, sizing, and yarn choices. And the other contributors' names? Oh man, I'm keeping some very good company here. Almost out of my league, you might say. It's enough to put me back to work on that dissertation proposal--with a PhD in hand I *might* just feel like I'm qualified to be in this club!

Are the Myrtles blooming in New York yet?

2010-04-07T10:11:00.000-07:00

I'm on the road this week--off to NYC for a symposium--and no trip would be complete without a little bit of knitting-related shopping. I'm hoping to hit at least one of the following favorite spots while I'm in town...

School Products Co. ("The Oldest Yarn Store in Manhattan"--I'm going to try to resist buying an entire pound of their laceweight silk.)
Tender Buttons (Mind-blowing--and budget-busting--selection of vintage, imported, and otherwise incredibly special buttons...I dropped a bundle last time I was there, so will enter with care!)
The Habu showroom (I took a class on reading Japanese patterns with one of the Habu reps while I was in St. Louis last fall, and also saw their trunk show. Amazing stuff, and always inspiring...)
Purl Soho might get a look-in, too, if I'm in the neighborhood...they're tiny, but SUCH a cute shop. I know I'll get some great ideas about color and styling while I'm there.

No matter where I go, I'm going to be keeping an eye out in the hopes that I get to see one of my designs "in the wild"--whether it's Myrtle, Decimal, Agatha, or something else. It hasn't yet happened that I've caught a glimpse of someone actually wearing a sweater they've made from one of my patterns, but I secretly (OK, not so secretly now, since I'm blogging about it on the freaking Interwebs) keep hoping for that moment. It's going to be so great when that happens. If you live in New York, have made one of my sweaters, and DON'T want some crazy chick running up to you and insisting on taking your picture, you may want to avoid wearing the thing for the next few days. Or at least try to avoid the above-listed "danger zones," which I've provided as a courtesy to those who want to maintain a low profile. You never know where I might be, though--and I won't hesitate to stalk you like a cheetah on a sick gazelle if I see so much as a flicker of dayflower lace! You have been warned...

Being fruitful

2010-03-15T14:47:00.001-07:00

Folks around me sure do seem to be fertile these days--there have been half a dozen single births or pregnancies announced among my circle of friends in as many months, plus one set of twins that's still on the way. Whew. It's made for quite a lot of baby knitting, as you can imagine.

For the last couple years, my go-to baby gift has been the Otto bear by Ysolda Teague--it's super-cute, safe for infants, and a fun knit. (For slightly older kids, I've created a sweater for Otto that they can use to practice buttoning and unbuttoning as a step toward learning to dress themselves; click here to download the PDF for free from Ravelry.)

A slightly younger friend from my knitting circle went through the Year of Friends' Weddings in 2009, so HER friend's recent pregnancy announcement is probably the start of a Year of Friends' Babies for her, too. She said if I wanted to come up with a baby blanket pattern for her, she wouldn't mind test-knitting it. At the time, I was finalizing the pattern for the Beverly cardigan, so my first reaction was "Nah, thanks all the same"...but inspiration struck, I swatched, and less than twenty-four hours later I emailed her a draft of the pattern for a leaf-lace baby blanket that echoes, with some improvements, the one I made for my nephew S.T.B. several years ago. Whaddaya know--designers can be fruitful, too! I prototyped this one in two machine-washable sport weight cotton yarns (Simply Cotton and Shine, both from Knit Picks) and the final version of the pattern is being tech-edited as I write this.

The Larkin Blanket (Ravelry details here) is named for the poet and librarian Philip Larkin, whose short poem "This Be The Verse" is, in my own personal opinion, pretty right-on about the unintended consequences of parenting. Its first line alone might be off-putting to many--as might the last line. (And depending on your job, that link might be considered NSFW, too.) Nevertheless, its overall tone of genuinely mixed anger, resignation, compassion, and reconciliation will also remind some people, as it does me, of how they (sometimes) feel about their own parents, and the daunting idea of becoming a parent in your turn.

I think most of my friends would get where I'm coming on this, and not think it's weird to name a baby blanket for the guy who admonishes us "Don't have any kids yourself." It's a cold, hard world out there, one where comfort is going to be hard to come by. For my friends who have decided against following Larkin's advice, and for their new babies, the Larkin blanket represents my hope of making the world just a little warmer, and a little less inhumane.

As for me, I'm switching to bottled water until this all baby-having business blows over.

Chiana: The Sweater

2010-03-12T13:52:00.001-08:00

Chiana lace jacket - neckline
Originally uploaded by snowdenbecker

Last September, I had the great pleasure of seeing two friends (who are also cherished colleagues of mine from the film archive world) get married at a beautiful site in the Adirondacks. The bride was rowed by her brother across a lake to the ceremony, and the entire wedding party met their canoe at the boathouse and downed a shot of craft bourbon before proceeding up a winding path to the altar. After Chad and Diana (collectively, Chiana) exchanged vows, we milled around in the tree-ringed clearing, drank champagne while the sun set, and got a closer look at Diana's beautiful dress--a vintage Mexican lace find from eBay that fit her perfectly right out of the mailbox.

The marriage of two archivists, let alone two film archivists, is a rare thing, and one that's well worth commemorating. My envy over the dress was also something that needed to be channeled in a more productive way. I can't spend every day trolling eBay for vintage wedding dresses for myself, after all, and even if I found one, what would I do with it? I didn't wear a wedding dress to my OWN wedding, and wearing a wedding dress at any other time is just too too Havisham-y, don't you think?

Hence, the Chiana sweater: Antique-cream cotton yarn in two different lace stitches, with flared hem and sleeves and a deep Edwardian v-neckline with a wide ribbed collar and placket. I'm still looking for just the right tiny little buttons to finish this prototype off, but when it's done I'm hoping it fits the bride as well as her dress did. And when the Chiana pattern's eventually released, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to support film preservation projects, which Chiana will definitely approve of!

What I've been up to...

2010-01-17T13:00:00.001-08:00

Vintage buttons 1/17/10

Lately I've been trying to figure out a difficult design problem for a new pattern. It's not going that well, and it's frustrating. However, it makes me glad on a daily basis that my 8th grade algebra teacher, Mrs. Rita Gary, took such pains to make sure that I succeeded in her class. Turns out knitting is one of those things that you use algebra for ALL THE TIME. Thank you, Mrs. Gary, wherever you are!

To get my mind off my troubles, there's nothing like a little bit of antique-mall button-box prowling to cheer a girl up. Here's my latest crop of finds, hiding all my aimless pattern-brainstorming scrawls...

Resistance is futile

2010-01-13T11:47:00.000-08:00

Wow, so, Myrtle's really taken off! It seems that lots of folks are casting on for Ravelympics and various KALs, and the projects gallery is absolutely blooming with works in progress. It's really gratifying, and quite tantalizing, to see each new picture posted. First of all, the colors just knock me out--despite the fact that my favorite color is gray, I really do love seeing the all luscious greens and oranges and blues that are being used. I can't wait for the first poppy red or marigold yellow to appear.

In case you had an inclination to be that first poppy red, or marigold yellow, or amethyst or peach or periwinkle or chocolate or whatever, you should know that Stacy over at Tempted Yarns has made a special offer--25% off custom dye orders of her Good Grrl fingering weight superwash merino for those who are making a Myrtle. 4 skeins for the price of 3 means you can make a Myrtle in any size, in any color you care to dream up with her, and maybe even have enough left over for a pair of matching socks! Those are some of her colorways above, but check out the Tempted Yarns site for lots more. She's obviously got a great eye for the hues. Me, I'm already eyeing that Blue Steele colorway and I should really stop looking at it NOW because I feel a new project coming on...uh oh. Might be too late.

Testing, 1, 2...

2010-01-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder what I sound like? You can have a listen over at the Knit Picks podcast! Kelley from Knit Picks and I chatted a few weeks ago about their new Independent Designers Program, which officially launches today and is, I think, a very good thing for all parties. I'm chuffed as anything to note that among the other featured designers they invited to get the program off the ground is SweaterBabe, who is, like, totally famous and stuff. Squee!

One of the things Kelley and I (OK, mostly me--I'm like one of those Chatty Cathy dolls, just pull the string and I'll keep going until you smash crucial parts with a rock) talked about was the generational difference between knitters who started long ago, and those who are just picking it up now, when there's an Interwebs and Ravelry and whatnot. Kelley and I actually started knitting at the same time--literally decades ago!--but I think that generational difference has less to do with how long you've known how to knit, and more to do with how you knit now.

First of all, how mind-blowing is it that there are people out there who have never experienced knitting without Ravelry? There's a generational difference for you, and a profound one. I remember when I first heard about it from Splityarn, who was still knitting with our gang here in Austin then. Every week after that, the first topic of discussion around the knitting circle was "Where are you on the waitlist?" We didn't even really know what Ravelry was, but we wanted in on it!

Second, how many of you consider yourself well-acquainted with a knitter you may never have even met--someone you've friended on Ravelry, or whose blog you follow, or whose pattern you made after it appeared in Knitty? Lots of hands are going up out there, I can tell...

As I see it, the knitting community has gotten both way bigger AND way closer in the past few years. It seems like there are more people knitting together, in knitting circles and local groups, but also in virtual ways like knitalongs and NaKniSweMo and KIP Days. It also seems like we identify more strongly as people with a common interest--as knitters--now that we have more means of communicating and community-building around that shared interest. By that token, I'm definitely a new-generation knitter: I've known the mechanics for a long time, but now I think of myself as someone who DOES knit, not just someone who CAN knit.

Kelley and I talked about how I'm also a new-generation designer--someone who's benefiting from the fact that you can self-publish online, a pattern here and a pattern there, and thereby connect directly with the Great Knitting Public. It's so much easier for us this way--no long submission processes, no endless publication lead times! We also get instant feedback, most of it positive, which is so profoundly inspiring.

In fact, I say this a lot, but it bears repeating: I wouldn't be putting out patterns at all if it weren't for the knitters in my group, who I see every week, and for every single person who actually takes time out of their day to write a comment or fave a project. That's to say nothing of the people who actually MAKE something from one of my patterns--either just as written, or with their own modifications. It's a genuine treat for me to see how something looks in a different color, or with different choices for fibers and shaping and closures; it's like I get to experience the fun part of designing, the play and the possibility, all over again!

For example, just check out the WIP pics of the first two Myrtles being made by Ravelry users: reanbean and Northknitter are working on their projects in Massachusetts and Sweden, using colors that are totally different from one another and from my own prototypes of this design, but they could not be more delicious to look at. This may be a designer's proprietary pride, but viewed all together, I think they look even more beautiful than any of the individual projects. Thanks, Internet; thanks, Ravelry; thanks, Knitty; and thanks, knitters everywhere.

Everything old is New Year's

2010-01-04T11:30:00.000-08:00

Happy 2010, everyone! I rang in the new year with an old friend, who was in town for a gig with his band (well, way OUT of town, as it happens, but here in Texas we just call any destination less than 300 miles away "yonder" and drive to it--carbon footprint, carbon schmootprint!). The resultant hangover notwithstanding, I put the finishing touches on the latest iteration of the Myrtle cardigan, got some pics of it at knitting on Saturday (including this absolutely gorgeous one taken by its recipient, above), and posted the pattern on Ravelry. It's been doing really well and I'm incredibly gratified by all the super-nice comments people have made--it's gotten my year off to a great start!

The funny thing is, although it seems to have struck some sort of sympathetic note with all those Ravelers, there's very little that's actually new about Myrtle. It rather slavishly follows my usual design formula:

1. Discover some yarn you love unreasoningly and realize that you HAVE to make something with it right NOW.

In Myrtle's case, this was a skein of Nantucket Red sock yarn from Cherry Tree Hill that I picked up at our group's swap. I don't even wear this color, normally, but for some reason I grabbed a bunch of coral-y reds that night. Go figure!

2. Ditto for a stitch pattern, usually from a Barbara Walker or Nicky Epstein book.

For Myrtle, this was Dayflower Lace, a really classic motif that's fun to work and easy to memorize. I came across it in a pocket stitch dictionary one of my professors had right around the same time I got the yarn.

3. Combine with a certain amount of alcohol and think of a librarian-y name for it.

A friend's beloved cat, which was named Myrtle, died around the time I was working on this and it just felt right.

4. Pour into a cardigan with 3/4 length sleeves.

Someone remarked to me recently, "You seem to make a lot of cardigans." This is true. I also wear a lot of cardigans. They're simply the best kind of sweater. And 3/4 length sleeves are the best kind of sleeve, because long sleeves are too long and you have to keep pushing them up if you're cooking, or if it's too hot in your office (or in Texas in general, which it almost always is).

4.1. Realize you don't have enough yarn and scramble around until you find more.

I only did this for the very first Myrtle, though. For the next two, I had enough left over to make a pair of matching socks if I wanted to. The green stuff you see above was originally an, um, intense yellow that my good friend Stephanie over at Spinning Colors overdyed for me, and it is even more delicious in person.

5. Attach vintage buttons.

These are some of the ones I picked up in St. Louis in November. Another eye-candy shot here from its new owner shows them off nicely!

6. Write up, release, repeat!

For Myrtle, this turned out to be a particular challenge, because of the lace motif, and because there were a bunch of little things in the prototype I realized I could/should have done differently, but I eventually pulled it off--the different-sized one I worked up purely from my calculations turned out perfectly. I hope to add a few more sizes at the top of the range to this pattern at some point in the future, since I kind of pooped out at 2X/48" bust for this one. Stay tuned, curvy ladies!

I even noticed that I'd made this sweater, like my previous design Decimal, in an orange version and a green version. Spooky, huh? Resolution for 2010: Try something a little different! But still the same, since this seems to be working for me...

(The Myrtle pattern is $5; includes charted and written instructions for lace.)

Tiny clothes, translated

2009-12-21T20:36:00.000-08:00

You've heard that phrase, I'm sure--"When you're holding hammer, everything looks like a nail?" Well, when you're holding a pair of knitting needles, everything starts looking like a sweater. I think Pedro Almodovar's best work to date is Volver, mostly because of Penelope Cruz's absolutely mouthwatering...cardigans. The Matrix could just as aptly have been called The Latex, but the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar was certainly rocking some edgy deconstructed knitwear looks in there, too. And when we were watching The Road, I kept thinking I'd have an easier time of things than most in a post-apocalyptic cannibalistic society, because I could knit garments that would keep a person warm even in a nuclear winter.

So of course, during Fantastic Mr. Fox, what really held my attention was the meticulous set dressing and the puppet-sized costumery. Particularly the cute reverse-stockinette, broken-rib, long-sleeved shawl-collar cardigan Felicity Fox is wearing over her pajamas when the Fox family is driven underground. Someone else on Ravelry was asking about it, and I'd obsessed about it pretty much continuously since I saw the movie (making little sketches and even swatching with some merino-silk DK I didn't have a project in mind for yet). I felt like the pattern was practically written in my mind already, so I decided it was worth a quick detour from my other projects to finish it and post for the (at least) one other person who just hadda, hadda have it. I'm getting the Fastest Knitter In Town to rip out a prototype for me so I don't get hopelessly behind on the stuff that's hanging fire in the meantime. Pics coming soon! In the meantime, enjoy imagining what this charming garment will look like on the human variety of fox...

And it sure is a good thing FKIT can help me out on this right now. I just found out a dear friend back in CA is pregnant with twins (hooray for her and her own fantastic Mr.!), so I've got a whole passel of baby knitting on the docket, too! Ysolda Teague's Otto is my go-to for baby gifts, and I happen to have enough Baby Cashmerino in the stash to make a pair of 'em. On the other hand, I haven't made a blanket for a while, so I'm thinking maybe it's time to use that Serenity pattern I downloaded ages ago...who knows? Maybe both! Because you know I have so much free time...

Happy endings

2009-12-11T13:38:00.000-08:00

Now, I am not one of those people who hated the Sopranos finale for being all postmodern and unresolved, and my favorite movie ending of all time is the one in The Italian Job. (The 1969 Michael Caine original, of course. Watch it, you'll die laughing when the credits roll.) All the same, I'm starting to realize that if things have to end, I'd rather they end happily. Call me old-fashioned, but I love it when the guy gets the girl. (And when the girl gets the girl, too--I heart Ellen and Portia! No on Prop 8!)

I also love it when I finally find my glasses/car keys/laptop charger after hunting all over the house, or when I get to the end of my workout and the sauna at the gym is NOT out of order anymore. Or the other day when it was cold and raining, and I was bummed about having to take the bus home, but then I found a soaking wet dollar bill on the sidewalk by the bus bench. Even little tiny happy endings like that can make my entire day.

My latest happy ending is Beverly. That was the project I frogged all the way from the hem to past the underarms when I realized it was all too small, and wrong, and just...bad. So discouraging. I put it aside for a while, then took a deep breath and started over a couple of weeks ago. Today, I put the very last finishing touches on it--and there were a LOT of finishing touches, let me tell you! Beverly is equal parts simple (top-down, seamless construction, all stockinette) and super-fancy (details like satin ribbon facing on the fronts, tiny hook-and-eye closures, tulip-hem sleeves, and beaded embroidery and appliques). Ravelry details are here. Between the silky alpaca yarn and the vintage-y style, it's like an instant heirloom.

The only little teensy thing I don't love about how this turned out: I wish I'd used more contrasty beads for the embroidery. These are too matchy-matchy, and they get kinda lost in the trim. But that's not enough to ruin it for me--not even close. I'm officially ending the Beverly saga with "and she lived happily ever after"!

THE END.

Introducing Agatha!

2009-12-01T13:04:00.001-08:00

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I went the entire day without knitting. On the other hand, I think I was eating or drinking (or both) for 18 straight hours, so the day wasn't a total loss. I co-hosted a big group dinner with a friend--I provided the turkey, she provided the house. A good time was had by all, mostly because there were three kinds of pie and the turkey, thank goodness, did not come out all dry. My thank-you note to my co-hostess will come in the form of the sample sweater I made for the Agatha pattern...now ready for download from Knit Picks!

I've also created an addendum for working this design in lace weight yarn. That's what I used for the very first version of the Agatha design. I do love how it turned out, but, whew, that's a LOT of tiny little stitches on tiny little needles. I can't imagine doing that again, especially after having made two more with sport and light worsted weight yarns. Those seemed to fly off the needles after the lace weight version. BUT, if you have 1700-2400 yards of merino lace singles (or comparable yarn with which you can get 30 sts/48 rows to 4" in stockinette on US size 3 needles!) lying around, and you're a glutton for punishment, hey, have at it with my blessing! The addendum will be free for the first 100 Ravelers who download it, and then just $1.00 after that. (You will still need to get the original version from Knit Picks to get the instructions, charts, etc., but that won't break the bank.)

Doing the hard good thing

2009-11-19T14:38:00.001-08:00

Vera - front view
Originally uploaded by snowdenbecker

First things first--Vera is finally ready for prime time! Like Adelaide, she has been tech-edited, and thereby much improved, by the wonderful Hadley (Ravelry: hadleygetscrafty) and some extremely patient test-knitters. So that wasn't too hard for me, and I hope it'll be good for you! This design was originally made for Rowan Calmer, a longtime favorite of mine, and between the chainette construction of the yarn and the ribbing, it's a great stretchy cardigan to wrap up in for autumn (which has FINALLY arrived here in Texas). It's a $3.00 PDF download from Ravelry; the pattern includes charted and written instructions for the leaf-and-vine insets, and it's worked bottom-up with seamless set-in sleeves--practically no finishing required.

Second things second: Today I had to frog out half a sleeve and the entire body of a sweater-in-progress. Everything was the right shape, but it was just too small--the fit wasn't right for the style, and I knew if I went ahead and finished it as an XXS, I'd be so frustrated at not getting it right. So, rip rip rip up past the armpits, wind wind wind the yarn back onto the ball, and start from square one. Maybe one and a half--the shoulders and upper back were fine, and I had a lovely swatch to start with...

This is only the latest in a string reminders about something my husband says: Anyone can do the easy thing. Most people can do the easy good thing, and everyone does the easy bad thing more often than they should...but sometimes you have to do the hard good thing. I've done a couple of projects now where doing the hard good thing--ripping out hours worth of work--became inevitable. I wouldn't say it's gotten easier, but I've never once regretted it, or felt it wasn't worth the extra effort in the end. And hey, any excuse to put off doing more work on my dissertation!

New pattern, new prices

2009-10-15T10:51:00.000-07:00

I must be a grown-up now: My first professionally tech-edited pattern is up and ready for download from Ravelry. You can buy it right now for $3.00 with the button below, in fact! Adelaide took some extra effort, because the construction method is a little unusual (worked from the borders inward, and then up from the hem, with no seams). Having convinced myself I had the math right, I wanted to make absolutely sure.

Hadley (on Ravelry: hadleygetscrafty) came highly recommended, had reasonable rates, and was available when I contacted her, which might be the most important thing. She turned the job around quickly and did really terrific work. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship! Hopefully, you all will benefit from her efforts without ever being truly aware of it. You'll just think I'm an awesome pattern-writer who's naturally perfect with math stuff. Riiiiiiiight...

Some of my older patterns will get the professional tech-edit treatment in the near future; they'll also be updated to include suggestions and improvements from folks who have worked from them already (things like new charts and schematics, technique refinements, etc.). Rest assured that if you've bought a pattern from me in the past, revised versions will always be available to you AT NO CHARGE. The way I see it, I'm not giving anything away (after all, you already bought it), and I'd rather my best work was available to everyone--not just whoever wants to shell out twice for the same pattern.

Last but not least, after having a "back to school sale" in late August/early September, I've decided to drop all my pattern prices to $3.00--permanently. Go crazy!

Placid, and full disclosure

2009-10-01T09:10:00.000-07:00

Here I am, starting the day off right: With my knitting, the New Yorker, and a cup of coffee on the deck of our cabin by the lake at the Sherwood Forest Motor Inn near Lake Placid, NY. There were ducks and herons, and we went canoeing every day while we were in town for a friend's wedding. (A certain quantity of maple-nut fudge was also consumed.) It was a timely break, falling as it did in between submission of my written qualifying exams and my oral defense, the last stage in the qualifying procedure for my PhD. I passed my orals last week, and am pleased and relieved to report that I have now advanced to candidacy. Yay, me!

So, that at least partially explains the long gap between posts. That, and the fact that it's STILL getting up into the 90s around here. Knitting must be done indoors, and even then anything bigger than a sock will give you a seriously sweaty lap. I have, however, been kind of cranking them out lately--I finished the Vera-scarf-inspired Adelaide in time for Amy Singer's visit to The Knitting Nest (OK, all except for two buttons. Which I finished day before yesterday--that still counts! Final FO pics coming soon for that.) I think that pattern's just about ready for posting now, too--we'll unveil it for the Hill Country Yarn Crawl. Maybe get a KAL going for it or something...

I also finished Myrtle 2.0, with improvements made to the all the little things that bugged me about the first one. I mirrored the lace panels on either side of the front and back, inserted more lattice panels where I had ad hoc stockinette sections before, simplified the shaping, and worked out a more reliable way to keep the stitch count right on the set-in sleeves, which was difficult originally because the stitch count for dayflower lace changes pretty much every row. I even worked up the chart for the lace pattern, so I'm about halfway done writing up the pattern for multiple sizes, too. Whew. But that's not all! I've also written up instructions for Agatha and charted THAT lace pattern, too (getting to be an expert at this here charting stuff). Which leads me to my most exciting update...

FULL DISCLOSURE: Agatha will quite likely be the next pattern I release--and the first one I release as a sponsored knitter, with yarn support from KnitPicks! I was approached by a representative of the company several weeks ago with this generous offer--and after I got over my initial conviction that they must have me confused with someone else, I was thrilled to accept. It's probably clear from my Ravelry project page that I'm already a KnitPicks fan (especially of the oh-so-soft Alpaca Cloud: there's the shawl I made for my MIL, and the Laverne sweater I just finished for my pal Lisa--plus a dozen or so hats for friends in the late, lamented, lovely Panache, which they don't sell anymore). So it's not like I'm compromising my values here. In fact, I think KP really helps me knit in harmony with my values--for instance, I chose Shine Sport as an alternative for Decimal because it was a way more affordable option than the Rowan Cotton Glace I worked the original in. Life's too short to knit with cruddy yarn, but when you're talking about shelling out $100 for materials just for size XS, you know you're going to be pricing a lot of people out across the entire size range. And they have organic cottons, too!

Not all my future patterns will feature KnitPicks yarns. I support my LYSes faithfully, and those who know me know I'm powerless to resist good fibers, whatever the source. When I do design with KnitPicks in mind, though, you can be sure of two things: 1) I truly think that it's the best yarn for the project, and 2) KnitPicks was generous enough to provide me, an independent designer, with the support I needed to make it. Thanks, KnitPicks!

Wishful knitting

2009-08-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

Who wishes fall would hurry up and get here, already? I do...

And then winter should come, too. As soon as possible. Please. Is anyone up there listening? At least call it quits with the 100-plus temperatures for a while, OK? Pleeeeeeeeeezzze?

I'm on TV!

2009-08-19T08:28:00.000-07:00

OK, well, maybe it's not TV exactly. But I finally decided to support Ravelry by becoming an advertiser on their Patterns page--which means that my cobbled-together ad (pictured at right) for the Harriet sweater pops up in prime placement one out of every 11 times you load the page. It's unreasonably exciting for me to see it up there and I've been checking my click-through stats obsessively, of course.

In honor of the occasion, I'm having a "Back to School" sale on all my current patterns--they're 40% off for a limited time only, so if you've been wanting to buy one (or two or three), now's the time! I regret that back-to-school-sale pricing applies to the patterns only; I can't do anything about the cost of the yarn, kids. :-)

Is that your stash, or your furnace?

2009-08-09T11:22:00.001-07:00

It's happening again...there's a WHOLE lotta yarn in the stash. Some of it is destined for projects that are already on the needles, some of it is for imaginary stuff that's yet to be...but it all reminds me of that thing we learned about in 8th grade science class: Potential energy.

You remember: The car that's barreling down the road while the driver texts her BFF has kinetic energy--probably more than enough to kill the li'l ol' pedestrian who's on her way to the bus stop, where she's planning to get a few rows of knitting done before the #5 comes.

The yarn in the pedestrian's project bag, on the other hand, has potential energy--to roll away into the grass clippings behind the bus-stop bench, or to bounce down the bus steps and under the seating reserved for seniors and mobility impairments. Or to become something that generates warmth, particularly in the area of the wearer's heart. (Awww...) Look at it that way, and the yarn cupboard in my home office has more BTU's than the closet with the water heater in it--potentially, anyway.

According to the one-for-you, one-for-me principle, having just finished that sample for the still-very-secret book project and my pal's Laverne, I'm due at least two sweaters of my very own. (Doesn't matter in the least that it's 105 degrees out every day here in Texas. Call it wishful knitting.) So I'm working up my new merino lace singles into a sweater pour moi. I've done the front edgings and worked down past the sleeve-separation point now...and the great thing is, this yarn is really living up to its potential energy. Because I spend my days working on my doctoral research--work that can be by nature a solitary, incremental, open-ended, and frustrating leap of faith in one's own intellectual abilities--knitting like this offers an extra comfort now.

It just feels good to have a vision for something, pick up my yarn and needles, cast on, and start working doggedly in that direction. I may not know just how I'll answer my research questions (yet), but I do know how to pick up and knit the right number of stitches to start working down from the back neck edge. I may waste time referring back to all my disorganized research notes during my qualifying exams a few days from now; nevertheless, just like referring to the chart for that lace pattern, eventually I'll know it well enough to wing it. I can tell as this new sweater takes shape that it really is turning out the way I want it to--that I finally have the knack of translating my mental picture into a physical object that matches it just so.

As each fat cake of yarn in my stash dwindles down to a nugget, I see myself as activating its potential energy, channeling it with great precision and accuracy (and pointy pointy needles) in the direction where I want it to go. And that, in turn, is reassuring me that I really can reach my own potential when it comes to the giant hoard of articles, books, case citations, and research materials piled up around my desk. Now all of that seems less like an unmanageable morass, and more like just another stash I'm working my way through...one skein at a time.

So much more than meets the eye...

2009-07-31T14:25:00.000-07:00

July's steaming toward the finish line, and I've spent more than half of it away from home--which means plane trips, which means some nice long uninterrupted stretches of knitting (and reading dreadful celebrity gossip magazines, thanks to which I now know who AnnaLynne McCord is and what chicken cutlets are). Yay, I've been productive!

I finally finished the Laverne sweater I started for one of my best gal pals, which worked up great in KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud--the finished fabric has a super-silky hand and gorgeous drape, but the laceweight yarn should stave off that pesky alpaca drooping problem...

I also handed over the finished sample for a book project I was honored to be invited to contribute to. It's a sweater, and it's in Knit One, Crochet Too BabyBoo in Lemon Ice--which is absolutely not a color I would have chosen if I were making something for myself, but it ended up surprising me. It showed texture beautifully and had a great shimmery depth, even in a pastel hue. It also looked terrific with these pretty periwinkle vintage buttons I picked up on one of my trips this month. Wish I could say more than that, but I've been sworn to secrecy--rest assured you'll hear about it when the book comes off the presses!

I also cranked out another Otto bear for a friend who's expecting, and made him a little sweater and pants out of stash yarn. That's fast becoming my go-to baby gift. Ysolda Teague's pattern is so fun to knit, it's cute as can be, and stuffed animals are conveniently gender-neutral...

My next big project, knitting division: I started on a duster-length sweater using the graphite-gray merino laceweight that Stephanie dyed up for me earlier this month. I decided to resist the Hannah Fettig trend (charming as the Featherweight sweater is, I think it's too short for my figure, and it would look too plain if I just extended it), so I am playing around with the Fernfrost lace pattern from an Anne Hansen shawl I liked as a border, and am going to see where that takes me. Next big project, rest-of-life division: Finishing my qualifying paper and taking my qualifying exams, which should be happening over the next few weeks. Expect even fewer posts than usual during that time!

(Oh, hey, if you like the sweater, you can score a copy of the pattern via the Ravelry pattern store by clicking here:

You need not be a Ravelry user to use it!)

The "mal" in Malabrigo

2009-06-17T17:21:00.000-07:00

I won't be the first to say this: Malabrigo has enormous goodwill among knitters, because it's soft, offers great yardage for the money, and comes in such pretty, pretty colors. I've used it on more than one project and it's a pleasure to touch (um...just don't ever try to frog it).

However, Malabrigo seems not to be as well-liked by LYS owners and yarn buyers, because their supply chain seems to be a *wee* bit erratic. They're victims of their own success, apparently, and either can't (or don't bother to?) meet demand. People come into my local store on a daily basis wanting to buy Malabrigo laceweight--or any weight--and find that all they have left is a sad few hanks, and no word on when more will be coming. The order was put in months ago, and no one is answering the phone at Malabrigo, and the shop owner has thrown her hands up in despair.

Those of us who've had an eye on this summer's hottest pattern, the Featherweight Cardigan by Hannah Fettig, have started to feel this pain too. I want to make this sweater (or, OK, maybe something of my own design, but along these lines, and with this yarn) but not in pale yellow or bright pink Malabrigo--which was all my poor LYS could offer.

UNTIL NOW. Spinning Colors proprietor and crackerjack kettle-dyer Stephig has come to the rescue! She's offering a nearly indistinguishable laceweight 100% merino in some of her signature colorways, in a 950-yd. skein, for $20 (just one is enough to make the Featherweight in size Small). The color shown above is Jade; she's also got variegated Amethyst, Glacier, and Be Mine in stock. I have touched this stuff, and it's the real deal--downy-soft and superfine. Get your own before she stops answering her phone, y'all!

Well, that wasn't so hard after all.

2009-06-07T18:05:00.000-07:00

Just 19 days later, Vera's done. And just as I'd hoped, working on something completely new helped me get back in the saddle on the old stuff, too--I'm making progress already and should be done with at least one of those projects by the end of the week, or maybe even sooner. I'm in a better groove with my "real" work, too. Things are looking up! (Including me, apparently, in this picture. Suggestions on how I could look ANY dorkier are always welcome, har har.) Thanks to those who made supportive and thoughtful suggestions on the whole feeling-bleh-about-working situation--it totally helped!

So, a word or two about Vera: This is a sort of remake, as I mentioned--same yarn, same stitch patterns, but with some structural changes/fixes and subtle improvements. It's worked with only two seams, one across each top shoulder, so finishing is really minimal. The body is in one piece up to the underarms, where the sleeves (worked separately) are joined, decreased on right-side rows up to the cap, and then the fronts and back are worked separately with the sleeve cap stitches decreased in seamlessly. The collar is squared off in the back, sort of like a sailor collar, and worked flat in one piece across the fronts and back neck after the body and sleeves are done. I've left the front open, but fastened it with a pin; it could be belted, snapped or buttoned if you feel you need closure. More pics and some additional pattern details are on Ravelry...

(If you are interested in test-knitting this for a larger size (44-54" bust), let me know! It'd take about 14 balls of Rowan Calmer, but there's no deadline.)

Setbacks, letdowns, doldrums...

2009-05-25T11:58:00.000-07:00

Is it just that summer's starting? Or that I'm a better envisioner/ponderer/starter than a finisher? A preference for process over product? The lingering effects of end-of-term burnout? Or what?

The charting software I got is not *quite* what I wanted, and the dress form I finally allowed myself to buy is back-ordered until the middle of next month. I've got four projects either on the needles or waiting to start, and am just not that into any of them anymore. Ditto for the conference presentations, peer-reviewing and writing of journal articles, and qualifying paper that I'm supposed to be wrapping up. There's no shortage of deadlines and to-do list items, in other words; just a total lack of enthusiasm for the "do" part. That feeling of reluctance to stand up when your leg's asleep? I have it for my brain.

It would feel really good to Get Something Done, but instead of finishing an already-started thing, whee! I'm starting something new. Vera's an open-fronted, ribbed cardigan with a leaf-and-vine panel and squared-off collar, in Rowan Calmer, which is incredibly stretchy and soft. I made the original about six years ago, when I was just getting back into knitting after a long hiatus, and it's been my go-to for the slouchy pajama topper on a chilly night. The original was worked in pieces and seamed, but the updated version is worked flat in one piece to the underarms, with sleeves set in seamlessly.

Start the clock--we'll see how long it takes to finish this. Or anything.

The end of all-nighters is nigh.

2009-05-06T00:22:00.001-07:00

I'm *thisclose* to finishing my projects and classwork. Hoo. Ray.

My end-of-semester treat to myself? Trip to Vegas and a new piece of knitting software. Either one could make me a millionaire--or cost me thousands! (Because I'll need to buy yarn to go with all those charts and graphs I'll be making once I learn how to use it, of course.) Mwah ha ha ha! Also, I get to knit instead of writing papers and doing research--for a few days, at least.

And when I get back, the now-traditional, semi-annual, complete and total overhaul of the ol' home office space to release all the pent-up mojo from the last four months. My new dress form should be coming soon, too. Can't wait.

Harriet pattern now available!

2009-04-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

I'm sure no one was holding their breath, but in case you were, you can let it out now: I've just posted the pattern for the Harriet cardigan for sale in my Ravelry store. The published version covers a range of sizes from 30-54" bust, and includes instructions for making the sweater with or without the contrasting collar (without, it's a simple v-neck). What's of greater interest, perhaps, are the additional instructions for customizing the fit to avoid the giant-armholes problem that's frequently encountered in top-down raglan sweaters, especially in larger sizes. As you can (kind of) see from the image below (which is less nice than the image above, because the image above was taken by my more-talented friend Stephanie Gage, while I took the other one), it has a smooth, snug fit at the underarm in all sizes.

It's a simple enough trick--it just involves tweaking where and how often the increases are worked for the sleeves and front/back--but I think it gives great results, and might make the top-down raglan a much more successful style for people whose upper-arm and chest proportions differ from the so-called average. Since publishing Decimal, I've gotten a lot of comments indicating that this is a major area of concern--not just for larger knitters, but for anyone who has thinner arms/thicker torso or vice versa--so I want to emphasize that this pattern is designed with a great deal of care to maintain proportions and fit across the entire range of sizes. It's a classic silhouette that should be flattering and very wearable on everyone.

Hope y'all like it!

Myrtle

2009-04-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

Another one is off the needles! This lace cardigan--named Myrtle for the usual reason, as well as for the crape myrtle trees that will start to blossom around here soon, and in honor of a friend's recently deceased cat--is worked from the bottom up in a fingering weight merino from Cherry Tree Hill, with set-in sleeves that are joined at the underarms and worked along with the upper body and shoulders for minimal finishing.

Unfortunately, the version shown here is most definitely a prototype. It's got about a million mistakes in it that will need to be corrected before a publishable version of the pattern will be ready. But I do love the color--Nantucket Red--and the dayflower lace pattern (which I first saw here, thanks to one of my professors)...

Carma

2009-03-20T11:23:00.000-07:00

Named for the intrepid California State Librarian (1951-1972) Carma Russell (Zimmerman) Leigh, this is a delicate jacket worked in laceweight silk that was held doubled while knitting. I love the drape and hand of the finished fabric, but found working with a double strand to be kind of a pain, frankly; also, this particular ink-blue color bled onto my fingers and stained my nails while I worked it. I'm tring to find a fingering-weight silk or viscose blend I like, so I can achieve a similar drape and texture for the next one without all that mess.

Best thing about this project, I think, is that it was totally seamless--worked top-down from a provisional cast-on at the lower edge of the back neckline with set-in sleeves that are picked up and knit after the front and back shoulders have been worked about 1/3 of the way down. Barbara G. Walker's Knitting from the Top describes this technique, but I think the description and illustrations in French Girl Knits by Kristeen Griffith-Grimes are a bit better--and her book includes some nice projects knit this way, too. The pearly antique-white collar edging is picked up and knit in one piece with mitered decreases at the corners. I finished it off with matching Dorset buttons made following this tutorial. These ones were only 1/2" wide and extremely fiddly (not recommended, frankly, although I think they really look nice). And there's crocheted shell-stitch edging all the way around, which is a total case of "if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail": shell stitch is the only thing I can do in crochet, and I only just learned it, so I kinda went to town on this one.

I like to think that the (extremely pretty) Carma might have worn something like this as a bed jacket around the time she got her degree from the UC Berkeley School of Librarianship in 1930. In this day and age, it'd be a perfect summer top over a sundress, or worn over a lacy cami and jeans.

Additional project details are in Ravelry...I'm currently working on a larger-size prototype, after which this pattern will be made available for test-knitting. Let me know if you're interested!

Welcome, Knitty readers!

2009-03-11T13:38:00.000-07:00

Howdy to everyone who clicked over here from the just-now-live Spring issue of Knitty! That was awfully nice of you. And thanks to the truly stunning number of you who have already queued or faved the pattern on Ravelry, or written with kind words or comments on the Decimal sweater. Wow. I'm overwhelmed.

Would you look at that!

2009-03-02T15:56:00.001-08:00

Some astute readers may have made the connection between my username on Ravelry--TT820--and the names of some of my sweaters--Laverne, Shirley, Harriet, Adelaide, the forthcoming Clara and Carma, etc. I admit the connection might have been a little harder to make when you consider the pop-cultural resonance of the first two names, though. And the image above, in which the sweaters worn by Laverne and Shirley respectively resemble their eponymous counterparts in my Ravelry store, will only make it harder to convince you that my designs weren't inspired by this very album cover...but they weren't.

Harriet, on the other hand, owes her name at least in part to this lady:

That's former Oregon State Librarian Harriet C. Long, for those who didn't recognize her right away. I think she looks like an awfully nice lady, don't you?

(Thanks to Frank's Vinyl Museum and The Oregon State Library for these images!)

Busy, not lazy

2009-03-02T08:15:00.000-08:00

Aside from checking Knitty constantly to see whether the new issue is live yet (it's not), I've been writing up the pattern for Harriet, learning to crochet*, and making socks for the two newest members of the Center for Home Movies board of directors. Oh, I'm also enrolled for a full courseload, have a book review half-written for the AMIA journal, and am trying to get to the gym every once in a while. So I've been productive, if not vocal over here on the ol' blog...

*OK, I wouldn't say I have learned to crochet. I've just learned to crochet these. But that's not bad for a confirmed knitter!

Eeeeeeek!

2009-02-02T17:32:00.001-08:00

In other news, I just found out the pattern I submitted to Knitty for their Spring issue was accepted. Needless to say, I'm excited to the point of constant shrillness about this. I can't even try to act cool about it...nor can I tell you anything about the item to be featured, as one of Knitty's requirements is that it be previously unpublished.

But I think it's not giving TOO much away to provide this picture of a finished version of it that I gave to a friend...

Let the countdown to early March begin!

Harriet

2009-02-02T16:11:00.000-08:00

I finally got those last few balls of yarn I needed and finished the latest design: Harriet, an allover cable cardigan with contrast collar. The fantastic photo below is by Stephanie Gage, who in addition to her mad skillz behind the lens is also a talented fiber artist.

I got so antsy waiting for the yarn to come in that I knitted a whole other Harriet for my pal Jene (b.k.a. "T-Bone"), which is collarless but, I think, equally pretty in this strawberry-ice-cream pink. They're both made with Sublime cashmere/merino/silk, which is absolutely delicious yarn to work with--highly recommended for cushiness, color, and shine.

I'm finishing up the math for all the in-between sizes now, and will probably have the pattern ready for sale in the next week or so. The final version of the pattern will include instructions for both neckline variations, in case you're wondering...

Just call me Lance Armstrong

2008-12-29T12:49:00.000-08:00

Harriet continued apace until I hit my now-traditional stumbling block: I ran out of yarn. As you can see, she's currently sleeveless, and has no button band, although she's coming together nicely and I'm hard at work on the contrast collar in the meantime.

But of the--let's see--nine sweaters I've knit in the last year or so, ALL NINE OF THEM have required either another trip to the LYS, or a prowl through the "will trade or sell" stashes on Ravelry, or an emergency order from some online stockist who had the last of the dye lot. In a few instances, this has not been a surprise; for example, sometimes I'll buy a single skein just to swatch with, like the results, and then be off and running on a new design that very night which requires a return trip to the shop the next day to buy up the rest of their stock in that color.

Occasionally these shortages are due to superstition, or wishful shopping: I buy the smallest amount I think might conceivably be usable, usually to keep myself under some magic number of dollars-spent-per-visit. Most of the time, though, it's a simple matter of me chronically underestimating how much yarn I will need, and zipping through my supply much faster than I thought I would. Me and Lance Armstrong: extra-fast, but perennially short one ball.

With Harriet, I got tripped up by the all-over cable pattern, I think. That really eats up the yardage. On the other hand, it makes for a lovely, springy, dense and stretchy fabric, which in turn obviates the need for shaping in the pattern, and is therefore totally worth it. I'd have finished this dang sweater tomorrow if I hadn't run out of yarn. Making a virtue of necessity, though, I've ALMOST made up my mind to order enough extra to make a matching skirt. That ought to take, like, three more balls, right? Maybe four?

Harriet

2008-12-24T14:30:00.000-08:00

The latest work-in-progress: Harriet, a top-down cardigan with allover cables and (eventually) a contrast collar. Inspired, variously, by a mushroom-brown dress off the sale rack at Anthropologie that I kind of liked, but not enough to buy; a twinset worn by some fictional 1920s women's-college dean in a BBC mystery-novel adaptation; and eight vintage jet-glass buttons that my friend Lynn gave me on their original card. They're almost too fantastic to take off the card, really, but I'm gonna.

Stay tuned, because I think my Xmas gift from the ol' ball and chain might be knitting-related, too...

Quit calling me...

2008-12-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

Anyone who knows how much I travel (and therefore how many hours I spend sitting on airplanes and in airports) will not be surprised to see yet another new sweater finished this week. This one was cranked out on the way to, from, and around Edinburgh, Scotland, where I was attending a conference last week. This one's called Shirley, since she's built on the same chassis as Laverne, but with some key variations that give her her own personality altogether.

Shirley features elbow-length sleeves, lace trim at the hem and cuffs in an easy-to-memorize pattern, and a scoop neckline with a vintage-inspired tie collar. The pattern is now available for download through my Ravelry store:

Shirley's worked in Rowan Kidsilk Haze, which I can't seem to stop using lately, even though it means I will have to put this cloud-soft garment away for 90% of the year (or else be known as "that weird girl who always smells like sweaty wool"--which, for all I know, I might be already). KSH is pricey but totally worth it for the fantastic texture, loft, and warmth of the knitted fabric. And you only need a few balls for a sweater, so it's not THAT obscene an indulgence. Have I finished justifying this yet? I think so. Let's move on, shall we?

I can't talk about having been in Edinburgh without mentioning K1 Yarns, where I spent a very pleasant afternoon (and, um, a fair number of GBP) knitting, chatting with shopgal Sarah, and watching Scottish knitters and Edinburgh tourists come and go. A highly recommended stop for the knitter abroad in the UK--they have an outpost in Glasgow, too, although that city was all about the used bookshops and cheesemongers for me.

Adelaide is complete!

2008-11-30T11:13:00.001-08:00

I finally sewed the buttons on this Saturday at my knitting circle. One of my knittahs, Stephi, was kind enough to take some pictures for me (which turned out way better, of course, than any pictures I have taken, because she actually knows what she's doing with the camera). Thanks, Stephi!

Adelaide is a long jacket-style, shawl-collar sweater with bracelet-length sleeves and pockets with contrast trim that matches the collar and hem edging. It's knitted in what I think is a pretty innovative way: from the outside of the border inward, and then up from the bottom hem in one piece, with practically no seaming. The collar stitches are caught in as you knit up the body. I still need to tweak the pattern a bit and size it up for M-2X, but it's ready to go in size S if anyone wants to take a crack at it; just email me or ping me in Ravelry and I can send you the pattern.

After I get back I'll be boxing this up to send to Thee Accidental Dater...hoping it brings her warmth, if not reliable non-crazy companionship, during the cold East Coast winter.

Laverne 2

2008-11-28T09:05:00.000-08:00

Having given away the first Laverne to my adorable sweater model, colleague and friend Lorrie D., I decided I wanted one for myself. So I made a white-on-white version, which you can see here. This one uses the modification provided in the pattern for longer short sleeves (the original Laverne has cap sleeves) and it also uses the same color for the body and ribbed trim.

I wore it this week and discovered two things: 1) Mohair REALLY keeps you warm, and 2) Fuzzy sweaters totally make your boobs look bigger. I guess that second one counts as more of a RE-discovery, though. Here's to ya, Jane Russell!

Adelaide will have buttons. And pockets!

2008-11-05T12:51:00.000-08:00

Just so you all (that's right, I'm talking to all four of you who are reading this) know, Adelaide will be one of those sweaters that you can actually carry stuff around in. She'll have a couple of pockets in the front. Won't that be nice? It confounds me that I can leave the house fully dressed--sometimes wearing as many as four or five separate garments--and still have no place to put my car keys. My husband does not have this problem. Men's clothing tends to have pockets; women's clothing tends not to have pockets. Sucky!

I also found some very nice buttons for this sweater on Monday at Silk Road. Sometimes the buttons come first with a sweater; I have a stash of buttons scrounged from various junk shops and antique malls that I paw through as part of my design process. Other times, though, I get all the way to the end of the knitting process with no buttons, and then have to go hunting for something I like. That can be hard, either because I've just gone ahead and made buttonholes of an arbitrary size that whatever buttons I do get will need to fit through--or I've rashly worked up the garment without buttonholes, in which case I have to figure out whether to use snaps or a zipper or some other closure, and just use the buttons for show.

Buttons are definitely on my top-100 list of Inanimate Things I Like a Lot, though. And "finding just the right button for something I'm knitting (or may be knitting soon)" is definitely in the top 50 of Feelings I Like to Feel--lower than "mixing the perfect ratio of gin and tonic" and "coasting downhill on my bicycle on a sunny day" but just a bit higher than "decisively stapling the corner of a finished term paper."

Next up: Adelaide

2008-11-01T20:26:00.000-07:00

Now on the needles: Adelaide, which will be a shawl-collared jacket in muted shades of pink and green. After the ultrafine mohair of Laverne, the chunky Araucania wool is a big switch. I experimented with a swatch of slipped-stitch color work for the body of the sweater, but the verdict from The Ladies this morning was that I should stick with plain stockinette and save the color changes for the garter stitch border. (Thanks, Ladies! Good advice, as always.) I'm just about ready to start working the short rows for the collar and the buttonholes nowl; first I have to double-check to see which side the buttons are supposed to go on--I can never remember that.

Special thanks to Jene for the sardine bowl...

Introducing: Laverne

2008-10-30T12:29:00.000-07:00

Laverne's a sassy young lady--she's got contrast trim, a scooped neckline, and a bright corsage applique that says "I'm not afraid to cause a little stir in the stacks."

As shown here in size Medium, Laverne uses three balls of Crystal Palace Kid Merino and less than one ball of Rowan Kidsilk Haze (plus a few scraps of sock yarn, 10-20 yds each, for the flowers). Size range is XS-3X (30-54" bust), and variations for 3/4 length sleeves and short row bust shaping to fit fuller figures are included.

Pattern is worked from the top down in stockinette on circular needles, so there's practically no seaming or finishing after the knitting's done. If you're a quick knitter, you can crank Laverne out in less than a week.

Buy this pattern on Ravelry or directly from this site! Just $5.00 for the PDF download...