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FUZZY GALORE |
The clapotis is done!! Isn't it stupendous?
I still can't quite believe it :-).
It's big, it's soft, it's warm, it's the best blankie I've ever had.
Almost enough to reconcile me to regular shawl wearing :-).
Actually, the fact that you can just roll it up a bit and
wear it like a big scarf is what makes it so much more wearable.
I could see spending the whole winter in it.
And yet just about a week ago I felt like it would never end. I was sitting on the couch working yet another section and something popped into my head: la vie est un long fleuve tranquille. An old French movie, very funny, whose title loosely translated means 'life is a long slow river' (which of course the movie demonstrates is far from true). Probably it was the clapotis name which brought this up from the dank depths of my subconscious, since 'clapotis' in French means the noise of water dripping, or the noise of a body of water lapping its banks... But anyway, I felt like this would never end, that I'd be floating along on this endless cruise forever. It wasn't really unpleasant, I don't know that I'd have the energy right now to do something demanding, but it was definitely an experience of time suspension. I haven't spent so long on a project since the last 4-year sweater :-). So I guess it was good that I made something so huge that I got to that Zen spot of doing something just for the sake of doing it, without any thought of ending on the horizon, getting totally detached from the goal.
But wouldn't you know, even though it looked like the middle ball change
was just a few inches away, it seemed I didn't have much left, and
when I weighed the rest it looked like I should really start
decreasing for the final triangle. I had a small spasm about it,
ended up backing off one section which I should in retrospect have
left in, but sure enough, I have a small
bit left but not more. I highly recommend the weighing of
the initial triangle, if you don't use the exact yarn recommended,
or even if you do.
The distortion that happens as you drop stitches makes it
impossible to accurately gauge when you should start decreasing again,
so you're either counting rows or weighing, or you'll be ripping a lot,
those end triangles are a lot bigger than they seem.
And of course I experienced the happy acceleration, back-to-the-stable effect,
that decreasing with every row toward the end brings, and I finished
in a lather. So much for Zen-ness. Maybe I should just think
that I've had the best of both worlds - detachment from the
goal followed by an exciting and very satisfactory finish.
So now, after I've painstainkingly un-knit every dropped stitch by hand, detangling the mohair bits one by one, do I get to watch and snicker while other more sensible people's silk versions fall apart? Somehow I think not. But I'll try to keep myself warm with the secure feeling of knowing that even if I totally messed up and dropped the wrong stitch nothing much would happen. And knowing that all that fragile-looking framework of ladders is actually as firmly attached as steel cable, and unlikely to ever shift in the least. Sigh. One must wrest satisfaction out of the wrong choice, somehow.
Mmm. I wonder what a teeny-weeny silk-blend hand-spun clapotis would look like...
Still feeling very much under the weather, and not doing much for fun.
I pondered some of the sewing to be done, and instead
picked up one of those back-burner things that I'd been
contemplating for... years. I love the way Northwest Indian
clothes often have a simple trim of pearl buttons,
especially with stark black and red designs.
So last time I ordered loads of vegan fox
nose buttons, I threw in a batch of these little ones. And I proceeded
to sew them around the neck of a simple red velours top
I had lying around. That was Vogue 7264 by Sandra Betzina if
you care, something which I keep coming back to because
it's so easy and it fits (as opposed to other non-SB Vogue patterns, but
that's another story). And this red velours number is a good version,
reminding me happily of my 70s youth,
comfy but an easy dress-up upgrade on my usual.
So you'll notice that I'm angling these pictures artistically,
which should tell you something. My beginnings were less than
stellar, and there's still a hiccough on the left shoulder
where I started 5 times. But when I finally got into a rhythm
I think it got tolerable, and I achieved an 'artistically handmade' look
rather than just 'drunkenly slopppy'. Check out this detail
for a better view.
OK, so y'all have been knitting way too much, and we haven't
been able to do hardly a thing :-).. We're nowhere near
the acquisition of a Christmas tree, which would basically mean
we'd have to skip dinner or something to take the time to choose
properly. But I've been looking
wistfully at something every time I go to Crystal Palace,
the funny holiday
garland
and I've finally managed to make one. Ahhh! It's so cute,
and fuzzy, and... It's a nice shot in the arm of 'finished project'.
It really did take less than an hour, which is amazing, even
among this crowd of competitive easier-than-thou designers.
So I made another. They're addictive...
Winter knitty is finally out, and our
Peruvian
hat is finally there!
We're somewhat disappointed, because we managed to get Alfred, a former professional model, for a great photo session in the garden. Alas, this series was deemed inappropriate for publication because of the t-shirt, rejected as 'not seasonally appropriate'. Sheesh! It just so happens that both of our closest New England friends (Alfred and our downstairs neighbor Mary) both wear t-shirts (always black t-shirts) in all seasons and all circumstances. It's a Puritan thing, not a seasonal thing. And beside something like half the US population lives in states where New Englanders can get away with the year-around t-shirt thing, but I guess it looks different from Canada.
But I saw Mary outside a couple weeks ago in a jacket and nearly fell over, I didn't know she even owned a jacket, but she explained that it was because she had a cold. Yes, that was a couple days before both of us fell victim to some sort of horrible bug, sheer coincidence I'm sure :-). But anyway, I'm feeling sorry about it all, because Alfred was so cute with both hats, and the pictures deemed worthy were incredibly hard to get, Rose not getting easily into a sweater either and Fall colors not being easily come by over here, and more to the point imho the details of the hat show better in this. But then, that's what editors are for, right? Anyway, we're still feeling really icky, our boses are ztuffy and our sroats are zo zore...
Finally felt guilty enough to finish the hat I promised last year
for Naomi's baby niece. My ideas of the size of a baby head are
more than a little hazy, so I hope my preliminary net survey
came to something. Naomi had gotten some nice Mission Falls
cotton from Creative Hands, the store in San Carlos run by
Priscilla's sister Lynn (isn't the knitting world totally
incestuous??). I liked the slubs, which made this much more
pleasant to knit than most cottons. I of course just about
tripled the gauge. And I love the pattern,
which is an antique version of a
pixie hat
from Crystal Palace. The picture is cute (and everyone loves the
baby who's now finished college), but it fails to show the very interesting
sides. I'd been boggled when I saw the original in their samples and noticed
how nice it looked. And I found the design interesting and easy to knit too.
Sigh. Some day I'll make one for myself..
The clapotis isn't exactly going great,
but it's definitely going.
After slogging through the ever-slowing increases, I'm now at
least on an even keel. More satisfying, I finally got to drop
some stitches. Not easily mind you, the slight bit of mohair in
this yarn means I have to coax most stitches loose, the original's
silk mix was definitely a better choice. I'm probably wasting my time
with the twisted stitches for stability, this puppy isn't going anywhere.
But I kind of like
the results, it's got life. It's definitely more interesting than a blank
expanse of stockinette. And the thrill of the forbidden dropping
is helping me gain momentum. We might like this one just fine
when it's done.
I had one small flash on genius here, if I say so myself: I weighed the knit part just when I was ready to transition to the straight section. Which means that I can knit straight until just about exactly 47g of yarn are left on the second ball, thereby insuring that I finish gracefully, not wasting any yarn and not re-knitting the end triangle 5 times groping for the right place to start it. Feeling very self-satisfied about that idea.. And even had it before it was too late too ;-).
Finally getting around to the
Clapotis knit-along
hosted by Moth Heaven.
I signed up... oh well, when the weather was still very hot :-).
But the point of a knit-along is to prod your conscience so that
the project makes the leap from wish to knit at some point, right?
I'm not sure to what extent I don't love this shawl based entirely
on a pang of picture-induced
homesickness, but I definitely want to be sitting in a Parisian
cafe with it on in the not-too-far future... And besides I love
the concept of dropped stitches, it combines happily a work-around
to my lace impairement and my childhood fascination with stocking runs
as the epitomy of sluttishness. So appropriate for an elegant
Parisian project..
I'm delighted with the yarn, which is something. We went to the usual Labor Day quilt show in Marin, and while on a whirlwind tour of the booths came across Nancy Finn (Chasing Rainbows, Willits CA) who it turns out was selling her wonderful dyed silk ribbons. Not to be pulled into distracting projects, we bought a couple skeins of her beautiful yarn instead, in the 'madrone' colorways that'd go well with most anything we have, a mostly wool singles softened and deepened by a bit of mohair. I'm not sure at what stage I appropriated it, but I think it was at the one of figuring out something concrete to do with it :-). There seems to be just about enough yardage for a clapotis, if you don't look too closely.
But the rest of this project is not exactly off to a good start, in fact the Halloween time-frame is cutting a little too close to the bone. We won't mention a small thing like having my heart set on a yarn that gives a gauge that's off from the pattern by 25%. Things like that can be overcome, especially in an item that by definition requires no fitting. However we set off on a Friday night cross-bridge expedition, which I don't need to explain was likely to take 3 times longer than the usual, and did. Having talked Rose into not only giving up any stakes in the yarn she'd first picked, but into driving as well, I was looking forward to a good long stretch that should have carried me at least till the first shoulder. Ha!
I miraculously managed to leave with the yarn, the pattern in print, a couple size needles for swatching, a ruler for gauge, scissors, and spare yarn for markers... And I couldn't for the life of me figure out anything. The stockinette swatch went well enough. As soon as I got to row 3 of the real pattern I was in trouble. kfb? wtfit? OK, I could sort of figure that one out, but pm?? Purl Moderately? Mischieviously? Machievalously? Madly? Plus there was actually a paragraph in English there that made sense, only it mentioned markers and I couldn't figure out where they were at all from the pattern. You can probably guess the rest of the story here, from my putting the two together, but it didn't make any sense while breathing diesel fumes. A good potential knitting stretch wasted in frustration.
After digging the various bits out of the back seat, I tried again at home with the trusty Vogue Knitting. I found kfb all right, but pm kept bugging me a while longer and necessitated a look at the knitty abbreviations. Then I valliantly set off beyond row 3. Decided that the kfb pfb increases look like hell on the sides. I know this is supposed to be worn mostly rolled up, but there's a limit to the edges I want to look at. So I decided to do a neat purl the last/slip the first selvage, and substitute increases where you pick up from under the bar between stitches. Excuse me, sts. Anyway, a few inches later, it seemed I was knitting a pouch. A pouch almost good enough to make a thong-th-thong without short rows. More throwing about of perfectly good yarn. The only thing I could finally figure out was that the increases I was using were just tight enough to pull in the edges. So back to the drawing board, this time with simple backward-loop increases. They'll show, but if I'm going to unravel 20% of this as I'm done I should hardly worry about a bit more of a lacey effect, should I?
This last actually seemed to do the trick. We put in a non-subtitled movie, and I was off. Not doing so badly so far. I calculated that I need 12 sections between unravellings, and I'm up to 4. I almost ripped an inch last night when I figured out that one section is a stitch short, but I was being an idiot on a frustration track, I'll just increase and nobody will be the wiser. If someone both notices and says something about it, I'll just slug them. Without getting on a long tirade about the evils of excessive abbreviations in knitting patterns (especially patterns published on the web, like a few bytes will make a difference..), I figured out something else. This one is a personal failing: I find patterns where every row increases to be simply depressing. You should be making progress, you are really, but you feel like you're going slower and slower, like knitting in some molasses nightmare. This is the one argument against the otherwise much more sensible top-down method of sweater construction. Ah well, at least here I'm looking forward to a good long stretch of no-increase knitting when I get to the end of this section...
Meanwhile, I had checked out Knit Lit (ed. by Linda Roghaar, Molly Wolf) from the library. I hadn't bought it because my eye hadn't been caught by anything when I flipped through it before. I'm glad. It's kind of the MTV of knitting... I don't think anything goes over 5 pages, most pieces are a couple pages. Even if you get a list of knitting celebrities to contribute, how deep or even interesting can you get in less than a couple pages? Not at all in this case. It didn't even do as bedside reading. It'll remain one of the few books I've ever stopped reading in the middle, but the format definitely encourages that. One good quote applied to me acutely and painfully though: 'I don't know what they mean by virgin wool, but this project is beginning to feel like a tired old whore'...
You appear to be a Knitting Goddess.
You are constantly giving and are unconcerned with
reward, you simply want others to love knitting
as much as you do. If someone wants to knit
miles of novelty yarns, you are there for them.
If someone wants to learn short row shaping,
you can help. There are no taboos in knitting,
only opportunities to grow. Everyone should
have friend like you around if they want to
learn to knit, and there's a good chance that
your passion has rubbed off on a few others.
http://marniemaclean.com
What Kind of Knitter Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Whew! That's pompous enough, don't you think :-)? So far I've only found 'goddess' and 'guru' in other blogs, no 'diva' mercifully :-), and nothing lesser. Do they only have what they think people will like, or do people who get 'knit-wit' just don't put up these things?? Title aside, I don't like this much, seeing how I'd much rather be knitting novelty yarns myself than selflessly leaving the fun to others. In any case, I do have a ridiculous passion for quizzes, but my favorite is still:
Which of Henry VIII's wives are you?
this quiz was made by the proper Victorian ladies at Spookbot
The main reason I'm letting myself go and posting this here
is that I am indeed feeling sneakily like
a knitting goddess this week. Finally managed to finish
a granite poncho
which is looking to be The Item Of The Year.
I'm sure some of you must know what I mean, not just something
decent finished but something you want to even sleep in,
it makes you so happy. It's good when it happens every year,
which for some of us, goddesses and all, isn't a given.
This brings up an odd dilemna. Remember how I bitched about my old grey scuzzy windbreaker last winter? Turns out that it's perfect to wear over this - the color looks like it means to match, the armholes are roomy enough that I just get a bit of draping as the poncho elegantly snuggles into it. Lucky break, since that means I can wear the apple of my eyes even when the weather turns to howling gales, the norm in San Francisco if you had Sunny California delusions. So here I am, still bitching and still wearing...
Hey! Inspired by blogging, in a strange twist of art influencing life,
I attacked the stuck Poof hat. Of course it helped that Alfred was
over, winding the warp of one of his wonderful silk projects,
and creative conversation was soothing my frustrations. No doubt
the new glasses also helped me feel like I could grope my way, Superwoman-like,
through such a confusing tangle. So I managed
to take out the unfortunate attempts at tacking the folds into place.
And wouldn't you know, in a perfect case of giving up resistance
achieving the ends desired, the hat turned out much more like
what I envisioned when I did nothing to it but roll up the brim.
In an even better
stroke of luck, Alfred turned out to be both photogenic and
a willing model, and patiently stood in the mud with his head in
the lemon tree while I teetered on piles of slick bricks to try
to get even with him while shooting. Made me wonder about photographer
size in general - are tall guys favored like basketball players?
did Imogen Cunningham climb on chairs to shoot
people taller than herself? Must have been quite a sight with
that cape...
We're also having a spate of pre-mother-in-law-visit housecleaning,
much more thorough than we usually manage, needless to say.
This allowed me to get my hands back on a
stitch pattern I had in mind, and I dropped the cleaning to
work on a sample for an evening scarf
I'd had in the back of my mind. Worked out just as well as I hoped,
right off for a change. You can have the
pattern, I'll
get to the whole scarf when I have a place to wear it :-)...
What's pleasurable anticipation without a bit of deadline stress
to balance it?
So we've stopped running out of yarn, the new glasses have arrived and I feel like a woman with a new lease on life, and we've actually finished a bunch of stuff. This would be good, if it weren't that these days finishing something on the hoof, so to speak, means that one also must write up the pattern ;-). This is a much more laborious process, needless to say, makes weaving in ends look like a picnic. And I'm nowhere near done with that. At least both of us are getting better at taking notes as we work, but that sort of emphasizes to yourself how many times you really rip before you get somewhere. Constant updates on the site, with stock hung up by Homeland security and whole containers of needles being x-rayed at a snail's pace, don't help with my feeling that I spend my life on the computer and don't get anything accomplished. But let's give a try at summarizing...
First, Fall caught up with us for a few days, in between heat waves
and suffocating clouds of burned up poison oak from Napa valley.
I was very happy to be
able to wear the Poof capelet for real, not just for photo shoots.
Ha! I was toasty as anything around the shoulders, but the middle of me
froze. Goose bumps on the arms, shivers on the belly. I could always
wear a big sweater underneath, which kind of isn't the purpose.
So Rose whipped up some of the
arm warmers we'd been seeing.
Much better... Now I see the point of them. And I like that she made
them with thumb holes, so they also function as fingerless mittens,
something I've wanted for a long while.
It is better
to have them match the capelet of course. And it'd probably
be even better to just have a sweater, but this year we must
try to fit into capelets. Ah, how weird fashion is :-)...
I shouldn't be ungrateful though - as I'm writing this I'm wearing
the new cloud poncho,
and it's a marvel. I adore the Merino Frappe,
even if my favorite colors keep getting discontinued, and it makes
a perfect complement to pajamas. Looks perfect with
my pink poodle and grey Eiffel tower ones too. Who knew? I guess it
pays to stay open-minded to these weird fashion things.
Meanwhile Rose, who's much more focused than I am, whipped out
a little kid poncho in a blink.
Used the Musique yarn,
which we knew was printed but didn't realize is also thick and thin.
Very busy looking results, but works well for crochet because it's
not too heavy, and did best with a simple stitch pattern.
This is for her niece Annelise, who's 9 and rather small,
but is also a budding weaver. We're not so secretly hoping
that this will get her interested in crochet too, you can't
get them too young. She'll get it next week, as she comes
to deliver the hamster we're sitting while she goes surfing in
Hawaii (something's wrong with this picture, but never mind).
Hopefully we can manage to keep the new neighbors' friendly kitty
out of the house while he's here.
The Poof hat is still hung up. That is, it'd done crocheting, after a complete redoing, I did have a false start with the lone ball left of a defunct dye lot. But the big problem is now that I'm having trouble with the putting together. I thought it'd be easy to shape, but it's subtly too soft, I mean limp. I need to play with the folding some more before it's ready for a picture, but I'm hung up on the awful task of taking out the current tacks without nipping the body. Morality: pin things as you try them on, preferably using safety pins. Sigh. I knew better.
I keep running out of yarn for everything... I ran out about 2/3 of the way through a crochet Poof hat, which makes an incredibly plush texture. Worse, I think that this dye lot is defunct, so I may actually be 0/3 way through. I'm half-way through a great crochet Trio bag, this one a very elegant black and white (we have to fake it sometimes). Sigh. I knew I should have started on the crochet poncho instead, then I'd only have run out once..
So as not to be left behind, Rose hates the beginning of her shawl/poncho, which has some tricky cabled thing that makes the width decrease dramatically, in an otherwise fairly stretchy piece. She's going to finish it first on the current end, then rip the beginning, and re-knit from that point in the other direction to get the same yarns in without the cable. At least, that's the plan, we'll see when she gets there for real.
Maybe we'll manage to actually finish something soon. It doesn't help that I'm feeling totally blind - went cheap last year on new lenses, and consequently am suffering a very bad case of scratchitis (just over the warantee deadline), so bad as to leave me with a permanent itch to wash them, it's as if I had a tablespoon of schmaltz on each eye. Sigh. Note: avoid Lenscrafters in the future. Since I've been avoiding Lens for Sore Eyes since the time where they switched my sphere and cylinder (8 vs 1 diopter, I nearly fell off my chair throwing up), and then told me I'd get used to it, that leaves no local cheaper options...
Apparently, my cataracts are progressing nicely, that is I can look forward to surgery in the next 20 years, as could have been predicted from decades of CRT use interspersed with asthmatic steroid abuse. No noticeable color changes so far, but it's probably a good thing I tend to like warm colors on the whole. I've been wondering too about Ott lights, which tout themselves as 'true color'. Don't seem so to me at all. Halogen is the light that gives colors closests to ones in real sunshine as far as I can see, and I think energy use is comparable, although there's a huge difference in price. Am I totally off the wall here in thinking that fiber people are being hoodwinked about this?? Test for yourself...
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