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FUZZY GALORE |
Wow! We're moving! Found a palace, twice as big as our current place, with really wonderful landlords we already know. It's great to live with someone with the same vices than yours, no sneaking the latest purchases into the closet past the eagle-eyed husband if you see what I mean. But sometimes you can develop one of those relationships with stuff that are worthy of all kind of psycho-labels. Like, not to get too specific, when you go to the Monterey fleece auction and come home with five more fleeces, as if you needed any. We got into that last one on the basis that I'm supposed to be teaching a spinning class at Atelier next month, and what, I'd need some fleece for that, right? Ha! So now we're swimming in fleece, it's creeping out of the closet like something out of a horror movie, we have piles in various stages of drying all over the place, Juliette can hardly find her food bowl, and as we card it the pile grows ever bigger. Sigh.
So what's in this for you? An entire fiber room/office, bigger than our current living room. Reunion with Rose's furniture which had been languishing in storage for nearly a year. Including a lot of chairs, since we also share another vice of picking up furniture on the street, this one inherited from our mothers. Which in short means space and means to have knitting and spinning classes at home! Since Priscilla has left us for that grad school on the East Coast, harumph, we just haven't had as much fun with group knitting. Time to do something serious about it :-).
The bag was a breeze. I think the name "weekend bag" comes to mind, especially
as in its initial state it looks large enough to hold a long weekend's worth of stuff,
even for a French woman. [I know what you're thinking, but rumor has it my
leetle sister is finally able to read this, so I had to put it in a tease just for her, OK?]
I made it huge, trying to keep my jitters in check with
the image of enormous floppy hats that full down to little ones. I made it
shallow, because I think knitting bags are much more sensible that way.
The colors that were attractive in the ball are incredible together.
It's looking like a really kick-ass african market bag.
The good news is that we finally have a digital camera of our own and it seems to be working pretty well. Not the best resolution, heinous for printing, but hey, it's cheap and it's easy :-). We do have the geek aborrhence of buying hardware, what with the fact that the boss ought to be paying, and the agony of knowing that anything we can afford is obsolete before it even hits the mailbox. Sigh. Still, expect to see many more images in the near future, we've got quite a bit of pent-up photo desire here to take out on the innocent public.
Now for the fulling of the bag. Ha. Basically, when this gets wet it gets really unwieldy. The holes expand much faster than the yarn, which is not the idea. Which means a washing machine is out, I'm afraid it'd end up distorting it and then I'd never be able to get it back together. Initial tries on the board are not promising, the bag's too big in proportion, and the rubbing also tends to distort unhappily. Mmm. What was I saying about crochet being good fulling material again? I feel a try-out of Judith McKenzie's toilet plunger method coming on. Stay tuned...
Whew. Finished the vegan fox. That wasn't so bad. Then wrote up the pattern and
submitted it to the upcoming new magazine, knitty.com, which promises to be great.
I'm sure those of you who
put up with these ramblings have gotten the point that I'm not the most precise
of knitters... Bad enough to work it out, but to keep track?? Ha! I don't think
a brilliant career as a pattern designer is ahead of me :-).
But I am pleased
that I managed to make this into a beginner pattern, it's only not suitable as
a first project, all the complexity is in the yarn really.
On the other hand, the fox is the funnest thing I've done in a long while. I have left a trail of weird soft-sculpture behind as I grew up (I remember a pizza slice, a pumpkin, strangely most of these were food items :-)). But all of them were presents and are long-gone, they were made before I learned to take pictures before I hand stuff over. I'd think that crochet is the easiest to make this kind of item with, it's much more sculptural. But in this case the crochet version turned out too heavy. Even the final knitted version is quite warm, perfect for an August evening in San Francisco, although it looks really sparkling in the sun.
Had a really fun photo session at Crystal Palace, where Susan Druding has been doing quilt shows and quietly turning into a professional digital photographer. The dog was leaping up and trying to chew the fox, which should be taken as quite a compliment. And the wind was blowing the fox off the top of the car hood repeatedly. At least, nobody will be able to complain that our setting wasn't industrial enough :-).
So, what next? Got some Tekapo and Fizz from Susan, and am going to attempt a fulled crochet bag. Fulling is fun, and all the knitters are doing it. It does make bags much more functional, since stuff is not as likely to fall out through the cracks, even knitting needles, and the bag takes on a structure as if it was both padded and interfaced. But I think the crochet people need to discover the joys of fulling too. And frankly, if you're going to make something most of whose detail will be obliterated, there's no point in not making it as fast as possible. Crochet makes a thicker fabric than knitting too, so that's a better place to start for an item that needs to be sturdy.
My colors are very warm, and I'll be using 2 strands at a time, I saw a fulled sample of that knitted and it looked great. I had a brief thought of granny squares, but I think that it'd be a waste to full them, the details wouldn't show as much. I don't know. Maybe I should make a couple and full them, experiment. Wait, this is supposed to be a fast project :-)...
Sorry I've been offline for a bit, we had an impromptu vacation (it's hard to get elderly kitty care), which turned out because of price and proximity to be on Vancouver Island. Great place, lovely weather, fun kayaking (even in the Victoria harbor!), excellent seafood everywhere, wild beaches, we had a ball. So what if Victoria is getting totally overrun by the familiarn Monterey-like ugly hotels on the beach, and what Elizabeth Poole calls condo-fungus (pops up overnight, looks vile, hard to eradicate)? The woods and coastline are worth it, and it turns out the knitting was too.
Fortunately for our budget, I didn't realize till too late that Treenway Silks is in Victoria (on a nearby island actually). Their stuff is absolutely superb, the Treetop Color Harmonies are almost single-handedly responsible for the current revival of handyed fibers on the US market. They've certainely inspired me to take up dyeing. Although hopefully they've gotten better at one thing: when Alfred recently ordered a couple kilos of silk worm cocoons from them to celebrate one of his rare paychecks, they sent them labelled "dead insects for educational purposes", which had to raise a few eyebrows at customs :-). Hey, it's OK, they arrived...
Anyway, while we were walking around, we stumbled upon the Beehive Wool Shop, well worth a detour if you're in the area. It's a huge and pleasant space, lots of books and patterns, enormous amounts of yarns of all types, helpful staff. Since the Canadian dollar is for some unfathomable reason hovering around US$1.50 these days, even the most luxurious stuff seemed affordable. We did manage to resist most of that, but succumbed to the widest assortment of cheater sock yarns we've ever seen (both of us carrying socks-in-progress for travel). I was also very interested to see the best selection of good Patons yarns since Straw Into Gold closed. These are cheaper but quite good yarns, and I've missed having them available. I got some smashing wool boucle (to mix with eyelash) at $1.99 a ball (US$1.33?), only restrained from a sweater's worth by the prospect of packing it. I also snuck in a few balls of very good acrylic and superwash merino, in case I should be called upon to do the Auntie thing soon, and produce some baby sweaters.
A fascinating part of our trip was a short stay at a working farm, Fairburn Farm in the Cowichan Valley, run by some lovely Slow Food people. They used to be a sheep farm but have recently downscaled that part, although I had to put on my glasses after a shower and check that the white lumps across from my window were indeed some rare StCroix sheep. What they had in abundance were water buffaloes, chosen for their ability to produce "mozzarella di buffala" and their winning personalities. We particularly frolicked with the babies, 6 months old but nearly 300lb, who were all too eager to chew on our t-shirts, lick our toes with big purple raspy tongues, and snuffle happily in our faces while getting their head scratched. Even at that tender age they'd figured out that if they butted the humans as hard as they do each other the pets wouldn't last long. You haven't lived till you've scratched one on the belly, seen the beautiful brown eyes turn glassy, and had it drop to the ground for better petting. These are the goats of the bovine world, inquisitive and charming, I'll never look at another cow again.
We were of course doing some industrial espionage on the local sweaters, having read Priscilla Gibson Roberts' excellent book on the subject, and are feeling psyched about trying some. They're a bit heavy for our climate, but the zipper generally available is a very practical key to climate control. The interesting part to me was that PGR documents many examples of older sweaters with only geometric bands, but it seems the model favored by current tourists has a big pictorial motif, leaping whales and ravens and whatnot, and so that's the only model available off the rack. Harumph. Well, being tourists ourselves we couldn't quite complain, could we?
What have I gotten myself into? Having found out about the upcoming
Knit-Out 2002 and Crochet
events, I thought it was absurd that San Francisco was omitted from the list,
what with the ferment of interest that seems to have seized us. So did I act
all mature and send a polite suggestion letter? Nooo! I went and volunteered
to put one on. So here's the scoop: Park Branch Library,
on Page near Cole, October 5th, 1-5pm. Whew.
I do know plenty of knitters who might volunteer to teach, but can always use more. Write me if you're interested, please! Hopefully we'll get a small grant to provide people with needles, cheat sheets and lists of resources. Not to mention cookies :-). The room is fairly large, holds 100 people in theory. It's not very bright, almost no natural light, but it's free, and the librarian was very nice about it. I hope it'll do. And I have contradictory impulses, one that it should be a huge success, and the other that throngs of thousands please not show up :-). I'm sure y'all will hear more about this as we approach the time.
The birthday party was really fun (mountains of food, old friends, singing by the campfire till 3am etc), and the pants a rousing success. First, Abigail loved the print, it turns out that she's really into calligraphy. They collectively found a few characters that were known, including one that means 'mountain', a very nice word to have around imho. The calligraphy is indeed right side up. Whew. And the pants fit quite well. Not so well that I didn't have to take in the waistband elastic by 4"(!), I guess people who're used to hard waistbands don't realize that loose elastic just falls off entirely :-). And I also took up the legs by 1 ½", they were just too long. Next time, I'll also lower the front waistband by an inch - I know a common fit problem is that most waists are not horizontal, but since mine angles backward it didn't occur to me to notice hers angles to the front... But it was nice to sit under the redwoods and sew by hand, and to have her so pleased at having it work out. She was a bit recalcitrant about trying them on at first, too many traumatic shopping experiences I think, and I was getting anxious about it on my side, there was much more cooperation after we found out that they were very close. I guess I should work on the tact side of seamstressing, people were a bit too amused by the 'off with your pants!' instructions...
Meanwhile, I have also thought more about the fox. Ripped again, the crochet is just too heavy, and this time balled up all 3 yarns together, much easier than having it all in a pile to stay organized for an indefinite time (ha!). I tried doing a wide idiot-cord approach, but it's too annoying - the knitting gets just tight, and this should be very loose and fluffy, I don't like doing it. Mercifully, I figured this out before I did the whole thing like the previous 2 times. Is there hope for this old dog? Anyway, the next rev will I think be knit flat, and seamed up, hopefully without causing undue pulling. I generally disapprove of knit seams, but I'm damned if I knit in the round on 12 stitches for several feet. At first I thought stockinette wouldn't be suitable, because garter stitch would certainely show off the texture better. But this stuff is Fuzzy enough (get it?? a pun for Anne :-)) that it doesn't matter. And it's occured to me that stockinette, which rolls naturally, might be in fact a better choice for an object that supposed to be round in the end.
Aaack! Up early because the busy summer birthday season is upon us. I wanted to make pants
for Abigail, because she's not only a big girl but a short one, and I know that means
good pants are almost impossible to come by. I dug up an old pattern from a Burda magazine
for that body type, and adjusted the butt a bit to make sure there'd be plenty of room
(nothing like a present that rides up your ass). Found some suitable fabric at
good old Far Out,
purple because she likes it, kanji characters because her daughter's
chinese and so it's a household theme. We looked long and hard at the print, compared
it to my own black and red japanese shirt which we know is upside down, and think we found
the correct way, that remains to be confirmed... I'll report on whether they fit :-).
Went to a knitting workshop at Ladyfest and had a great time. Why me at a beginning workshop, you ask? Simple: I'm tired of knitting backward, I want to learn the regular way, at least so I can teach it. I really can't show anyone how I knit, it's too embarrassing, and it's not doing them a favor. Imagine having to translate every single instruction to your twisted point of view... It's not like I don't produce the same fabric as everyone, it's just that my method can best be described as 'continental Turkish', ie I hold the yarn in my left hand but my stitches end up twisted on the needle compared to western methods.
So the teachers were in a band, the quails, which is really cool, and they worked really well together. They were very encouraging to the audience, explaining that they themselves learned while drunk :-), and it was good that there were more of them than a single person so they could spend a lot of time showing stuff individually. They only had an hour and a half, but had people cast on, knit in garter stitch for as long as they could (English right handed throw on straight needles), and how to cast off. Important that last point, one of them made a scarf before she realized that she couldn't stop because she didn't know how to cast off... Everyone seemed to get it by the end, no matter how ankward they felt at first, which is excellent.
The really cool part is that they not only brought needles and yarn for people to keep, but
they also made us knitting bags! And aren't they cute? They're totally right too,
it's a good idea to have a proper bag to carry your knitting around, and it certainely
doesn't need to be very high-tech to work fine. And it makes one feel so much more..
professional :-). So we gathered email addresses, and hopefully this eager group
will meet again in neighborhood cafes, I'm really looking forward to it. It'd be really
fun to have some live new knitters to corrupt...
I'm flustered. That'll teach me to do something completely off the top of my head, of
course. But I don't know what to do next, really. I should start by explaining that
I have kept from my childhood an unhealthy fixation on fox collars.
While I was in grade school, my mother and I were
living in an overly posh neighborhood, which was positively awash with fur-wearing
ladies. A big game in my school was walking softly behind them, and running one's
hands on the furs without being detected and whacked with the obligatory matching
crocodile bag, not to mention ducking slaps from interfering pedestrians behind.
Believe it or not, I was a regular champion at this, not something you'd normally expect from
a big klutz :-). In fact I also held the class record for number of times running
one's hands up and down the 1st grade teacher's seal-skin coat
while she walked from the back to the front of the
classroom, getting back to my seat before she turned around
even though I was also the slowest runner on record.
I was appalled at this neighborhood carnage, having come from a long line of fur-hating
women: my grandmother was one of the pioneer wearers of fake fur in the 50s, even though
she worked her whole life in fashion, and my mother used to whisper
"pauvres betes" (poor beasts)
to the same ladies at the grocery store. I was especially horrified
by something only the old ladies wore, entire foxes including dangling paws,
open jaws and beady eyes
which I think really dated from the 30s.
So naturally this led to perversion in my adulthood, and an enduring fascination with the most disgusting manifestation of all, the dangling foxes. I am a hypocritical carnivore too, prefer what I eat not to be looking back at me. But anyway, I noticed years and years ago a knitted version in Threads which I thought delightful, and even got the pattern, but never found suitable yarns. I have actually seen a couple foxes up close, victims of bloodthirsty European hunters, and thought something along the lines of orange mohair would be most suitable, it's very light fur with very long guard hair. But the recent influx of good eyelash seems to have finally brought what was needed. I naturally have lost the pattern in the interval... But Susan Druding, who suffers from the same childhood traumas, helped me find a mix of yarns among next season's offerings that is so totally perfect that I just had to try it. A very light and fluffy merino yarn for the undercoat, a brazen dense fringe for the bulk of the coat, and a halo of dark leggy polyester for the guard hair. Yumm!! Do check out that detail shot.
The problem of course comes from -how- to do it. The first version was very generously wide and knitted, and looked pretty good. But Rose pointed out truthfully that the tail looked more like a beaver tail. Riiip. I tried in crochet, because that's easier to do in the round without fuss, and I like the results well enough. But the crochet is denser, and I think leads to a too-small object. Too heavy also. Sigh. I'm now thinking that I should do a very big knitted idiot cord, in the lines of Meg Swansen's glove fingers, and that it might yield something closer to my ideal. I guess that 3 tries would not be unreasonable, for me :-). I've also had some good thoughts in between - scored some teddy bear eyes that should give the right beady touch, and had a long session at the local drugstore that yielded I think an adequate mouthpiece (tortoise shell hair clip) so we can have it bite its tail properly. Onward.
Happy Bastille day. Rather than go downtown for a day of French music (kind of
an oxymoron..), I stayed home and sewed. Went to visit Paula yesterday,
and not only does she have everything already laid out for her departure
for Spain more than a week ahead (!!!), but she's made half that wonderful
wardrobe herself. Talk about inspiring. She's lucky she lives in Sacramento,
already an oven for quite a while at this time of year, so she's quite aware
of what will be appropriate for Sevilla ;-). But I love her stuff, a lot
of linen, a lot of simple designs, all very cool and in interesting combinations.
And I took some
measurements off the Eskandar shirts from her sister, which do look quite nice
on me. I must have some of his t-shirts - his own necks are regrettable, but the good
part of sewing is that we can fix that in a flash.
Anyway, a month ago I think Rose and I wandered over to Far Out Fabrics and got some great Japanese seersucker hot off the bolt. I don't understand why almost all US seersucker now comes in polyester blends, maybe to punish us for being unfashionable on 2 counts? That's a top entry for Unclear On The Concept since by definition it won't wrinkle (has it become fashionable to sweat while I wasn't paying attention??). But this one is all cotton, thin stripes of texture, and comes in a classic Japanese print and in a couple also classic colors (this one is 'inamoriso' which Alfred says means madder red, it's very un-US). She's been asking for bell-bottom pants, which I don't like, but it's a childhood thing, what can I say. I got a likely candidate, Burda 8769, and bravely slashed 2" off the top (she insists on low waists), not to mention 2" off the bottom (Mom's not a tall German woman either). All slightly nerve-wracking. Added some pockets of course, what were they thinking?
The pants look great. Perfect for hot summer weather, even though we're having quite
a fog period right now. Excellent fit on the butt, snug but not too lewd,
no bagging and no panty line.
Wide enough at the bottom to be different but without
causing tripping up the stairs. Definitely a Japanese look, in the best way. Aaaah.
I didn't really mean the former entry. Looking at it closer, the front band pulled up. Not a whole lot, and less after blocking, but still. So I ripped again (I thought it was weird there were so few revs). And did it again with a double strand, which was all it needed. Sigh. Now it's really done. I have to confess I also often go in and out the door several times in the morning, picking up different items each time.
Very nice vest though, looks great, excellent fit. Also, many of my closest spinning friends would swear that, because it was spun as woolen as I could make it, it'll fall apart quickly. But after nearly 7 years of being moved across the country and knit and ripped and tossed in bags and slept on by the cat and generally abused, it's holding up quite nicely, without a single pill in the making. Even a few wearings with the backpack rubbing directly on it aren't doing anything bad. I did pay close attention to removing the few second cuts, so there. In short, woolen seems to be just fine, it's light, it's thick, it's just what a sweater should be.
Of course, when it's really foggy my arms feel a bit cold, that's always been my problem with vests. What can I say, in my youth before acupuncture improved my circulation I answered to 'Popsicle Toes'. So you can't expect my blood to make it all the way down those long arms and keep an even temperature going. And a finished and wearable vest keeps you a lot warmer in a general way than a sweater in the bag with not enough yarn to finish. I will confirm, in case you wondered, that there was emphatically not enough yarn for sleeves of any kind..
Finally finished the sheepy vest. I've been way too busy on Fuzzy, and only getting in very little desultory knitting in between stints at film festivals and so on. I used the yarn single, and single-crocheted a kimono band, it gives something a bit thinner than the body, which I like (and will look perfect when buttoned) but still very firm and stable. I did 5 rows for the front band, with buttonholes on one side, and only 2 rows around the armholes which was enough to bring them in but not so much as to widen the shoulders even more than their marginal size already. Did I mention before that all knitters should know how to crochet? Even if you don't want to do a whole thing with it, don't like the look or whatever, it's much faster and more reliable for trims, edges and bindings. I know there are people who can just pick up the perfect amount of stitches and do perfect buttonholes the perfect distance apart the first time around, and not have things stretch and distort soon afterwards. But I'm certainly not one of them.
It only took four tries to do the front band, which is a record for me :-). Let me see, one try just for the hell of it, one try to start from the other side to end with less obvious chaining and tighten up the front because it was sagging, another try to tighten it up enough. Then a long ponder about what was still wrong.
The problem is that I had neatly (if I say so myself) mitered the back neck. So I had a band that lay down very nicely. The problem being that I hadn't planned on that, the back went all the way up, so the shoulders got pushed back by the width of the band, and consequently the front boinged up. I know there must be a technical term for that, but you know what I mean, you've all seen it before. Rose tried to tell me it could be a design feature, and in fact I do have an Issey Miyake vest that does that and that I like. But it irked me, I'd gone to a lot of trouble to get things just right and have bust darts so it'd fit perfectly, and there I was boinging all the same, with the darts way off and the shoulders looking way too 80s.
So try four, no mitering in the back neck and it truly is perfect! Not to mention that the linen shirt Rose found me at Goodwill for $3 is great with it, and it also works fine with my collection of winter turtlenecks. Very rustic looking, rough and right off the sheep, just what I wanted. Aaaah.
Now I should probably wash it, after lugging it around for ?six? years it probably needs it... But hey, I'm not afraid, I abused it carefully before I got knitting :-).
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