In-vesting

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I recently bought yarn for two projects, both of them vests. Emma said I was “in-vesting”. I had wanted to make a plain v-neck vest for myself for some time, and had settled on this pattern:

© My Favourite Things

This is the Vest No. 2 – Spring Edition by My Favourite Things. Some weeks ago, I received a newsletter from Loop London, saying they had just received a shipment of yarn from The Uncommon Thread. I love TUT yarn. Years ago, I knitted the fabulous Livvy Pullover in TUT’s Lush Worsted. I clicked on the Loop link and discovered that they had both the Uncommon Everyday base and the Cloud Fingering base in one of my favourite colours of theirs: a deep saturated red called Debauchery. How could I resist?

Later that same day, I discovered that John Arbon Textiles was having a sale, and I purchased a kit to knit Shruff’s End, a vest pattern by Thea Colman:

© Thea Colman

I have been thinking of knitting this pattern for Doug. When I received the newsletter from John Arbon, my finger mysteriously pushed the buy button. And the kit is very pretty:

I started with the red vest (because one should never keep red yarn waiting). However, I soon realised that the Cloud Fingering yarn is definitely not fingering weight, more like sport weight or even DK, and combined with the Uncommon Everyday, I end up with a worsted weight gauge. I determined to go ahead anyway, and to knit the 4th size instead of the 5th to make up for gauge mismatch. Knitting on US8/5mm needles, I flew through the upper part of the vest (its knitted top-down). I joined to knit in the round and knitted down a few inches before trying it on, only to discover that it was HUGE. I have only supremely unattractive photos with which to demonstrate its hugeness, so you will just have to believe me.

I was highly annoyed, and threw the vest in a corner for a week while I pouted. After the success of my previous sweater, in which I also had to modify for my gauge, it is probably good to fail with this one; it will keep me humble. I had a big debate with myself about whether to rip it all out and start over, or whether to rip it out to just before the fronts and back are joined, and then take out an additional 4 rows, which would remove 12 stitches from the whole. I chose the latter.

When I had knitted it back down to where I was before ripping, I tried it on and discovered that the width was much better, but that I really should have put in breast darts. I ripped again, and added 4 sets of short rows at 5, 10, 15, and 20 stitches in from the side seams. I think that will work and the fit seems good. I am now doing the armhole ribbing, and will follow with the neck ribbing before knitting the rest of the body. This is partly to make sure I can judge when the yarn will run out, and partly because I am flying to Johannesburg again tomorrow and I want to finish the finicky bits before then.

It will apparently be pouring down rain the whole week I am in Johannesburg, so I may be able to finish it while I am down there.

Collar de Pilar

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Without further ado, here is my finished Collar de Pilar hand-knitted tee:

I am crazy about this top. It is fun to knit. It is fun to wear. In fact, I’ve been wearing it everywhere since I finished it.

The tee was designed by Kate Davies. I loved this design as soon as I saw it, and purchased a kit from Kate Davies’ shop in 2022. This was just before I caught Covid, and I put the kit away; my covid-induced brain fog led me to choose very simple patterns for some time afterwards. Recently, I needed a project for a long plane trip, found this kit in a box, and realised the time was ripe to cast on.

I knitted it in the original colour scheme using Kate’s own Milarrochy Tweed yarn. It is the first time I’ve used it for a garment, and I was a little worried that it would be itchy next to the skin. I finished it as the pattern suggests, with a dab of hair conditioner in the rinse water, and it bloomed and softened beautifully.

My gauge was off for this. The pattern calls for a stockinette gauge of 28×36. My washed and blocked swatch gave me 24×40 with a US3/3.25mm needle. I know that I could have re-swatched with a smaller needle size and probably have gotten gauge, but I liked the way the fabric looked and felt with the size 3, so I decided to keep it.

To account for the different stitch gauge I knitted a size 4, instead of a size 6. Because my row gauge was also off, I added about 10 plain stockinette rows before starting the patterned yoke. It was a bit of a gamble, but I tried it on multiple times while knitting, and I think the fit is perfect.

I was surprised that it looks good with many different outfits, and have worn it both for work and play.

I highly recommend this pattern. Kate also gives instructions for long sleeves. The university has closed for 5 days for Easter. Yay! A mini-break. I have a new project on the needles, a new book to read, and the flowers are blooming. What more could I ask for?

Working weekend

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Doug has been working hard on a research grant proposal and this weekend is crunch time. He has been completely glued to his computer screen the whole weekend, occasionally lifting his head to mumble something about “multi-scale hierarchical dependencies” or “brain-state dynamics and connectivity plasticity.”

I had hoped to be showing you my new sweater today, because I finished knitting it a week ago. I managed to put off grafting together the underarm stitches for a full week, because I am terrible at grafting and I had to psych myself to do it. (The knitting itself is the fun part.) Yesterday in the bright early morning sun, I sat at the table and grafted the underarms. Of course, it took only half an hour, which is vastly disproportionate to the time I spent procrastinating about it. At that point, the sweater looked like this (from the reverse side, of course):

As it was a beautiful, sunny day, I took it out into the garden to weave in all the ends:

Then, I gave it a bath:

Finally I blotted out all of the water with a few iterations of towels, and laid it out to dry:

I didn’t even bother pinning it because I think it fits just right. It is dry now, and beautiful, but I have to wait until Doug is finished with “cellular and circuit mechanisms in a causal developmental model” before showing it to you.

Small happy things

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There are lots of big unhappy things happening across the world and it is easy to get lost in them. But there are many small happy things as well. You just need to pay attention and you will find them. Here are some I’ve noticed today.

There is a beautiful pair of jays building a nest in the top of a tall tree right outside my bedroom window. When I wake up in the morning, I watch them very busily working in tandem to some internally programmed choreography. Our garden is filled with hard-working birds right now, but these jays pull me in. They are so earnest.

There are also frogs in our small garden pond this week, very actively reproducing. This used to be a yearly occurrence in early spring. One day the pond would be literally frothing, as a host of frogs came from out of seemingly nowhere to mate. We called it “frog-f*cking day” and it was the sign that spring was here. I always wonder what the cue is; how do they all know which day to congregate? For weeks afterwards, we could watch as the tadpoles hatched and grew. There have been no frogs in our garden for the past 4-5 years; we thought they had gone for good. But here they are again; big, fat, healthy frogs churning up the pond. Maybe they know something we don’t?

Doug decided to make his own yoghurt again. He used to make it all the time, but hasn’t in many years. The yoghurt is luscious, light and creamy and delicious. We have been eating it with a spoonful of Leah’s home-made jam. Leah made this jam with peaches that we bought late last summer in the Okanagan, perfectly ripe and juicy and sun-kissed. We were on a road trip, the four of us, to enjoy some gorgeous scenery and to go wine-tasting and buy the wine for Emma’s wedding. Leah also used fresh vanilla and cinnamon that Emma had brought back for her from Kerala, where she had travelled for a friend’s wedding. Each bite of this is not only delicious, home-made goodness, but reminds me of summer and peaches, mountain lakes and gorgeous wines, family road trips and weddings.

Yarn and knitting are a happy place for me, and what can be happier than the gorgeous colours and patterns emerging now as I knit the yoke on my newest project? The design and yarn are from Kate Davies. I mostly stopped doing colourwork since I had covid in 2022, as brain fog made it really hard to concentrate. I am loving every stitch.

Small happy things are everywhere if we take the time to notice them.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

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My dad was born on March 2, 1936.  Today would have been his 90th birthday.  When he was a boy, his family lost their farm in the Dust Bowl and migrated to California.  I suspect this contributed to his love of Steinbeck. He joined the Army, was a paratrooper (I cannot believe my dad jumped out of airplanes), did a tour in Europe, and then came home and went to University. He got his PhD in Sociology and spent most of his working life teaching and researching; he specialised in race relations and civil rights.  I probably became an academic because of him.  (I remember thinking as a child “If Dad can get a PhD, then I can too.  I will get three of them!”)

My dad loved the outdoors, especially the mountains. He loved to hike. He had a very dry sense of humour and told a great shaggy dog story. I was very gullible and nearly always believed his stories, especially the ridiculous ones.  He loved jazz and went to see it live whenever he could, often with my sister.  He was fascinated by politics and history, and he read anything and everything on 20th century American politics.  Even near the end, after 12 years with Parkinson’s and cognitive decline setting in, Daddy could beat us all at quizzing – as long as the questions were about politics.

Dad taught me three important lessons in life. First, question authority. Second, always check your sources.  Third, and most importantly, be kind.  Happy Birthday, Dad! I miss you!  I’m glad you can’t see what’s happening down here.

Handle with care

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Yesterday we went into London to attend Collect 2026, the annual International Art Fair for Contemporary Art and Design, hosted by the Crafts Council at Somerset House. It has been a few years since we were last there, and as always, it is a completely lovely and inspiring way to spend a day. My impression is that there was more textile-based art this year than previously.

I was blown away by this piece, Monument, by Studio Sumakshi Singh:

The exhibit placard reads, in part: “Copper zari is threaded onto water-soluble fabric to create a life-sized rendition of a column from Delhi’s 13th-century Qutab Minar complex. Using Indian braiding, lacemaking and other embroidery techniques, the base is then dissolved, leaving only the delicate structure in its wake.” The gossamer fabric it creates casts amazing shadows which flow and interact as people walk past the hanging. I took this photo to try to capture both the item itself and the shadows. It is a truly amazing piece.

Another stunning piece of textile art is The Life Above, by Kamila Ahmed:

It is hard to capture how vibrant the blues are. From the placard: “Drawing on heritage embroidery and Jamdani weaving, Ahmed combines hand-wrapped silk warps and embroidered surfaces to create dialogues between transparency and density, fragility and resilience.” Both of these pieces, which draw on heritage, culture, traditional craft, city landscapes and architecture, and highlight decay and beauty, destruction and resilience, seemed particularly powerful yesterday in the light of world events.

On a more whimsical note, I loved the lace-making of Jingyi Li, whose lace recreations of household items, were charming:

I completely adore this beautiful chair, also by Jingyi Li, which combines handmade filet lace and a vintage woven cane chair. It was one of my favourite pieces of the exhibition.

Looking at the photos we took, chairs were definitely a theme:

Here are some other photos from the afternoon:

It is so inspiring to see such beautiful craft. It gives me hope for humanity. Today, I am enjoying a quiet day with my own crafting, working on my Collar de Pilar sweater, designed by Kate Davies. Here is a progress photo taken this morning. Yay! It fits.

I’ll leave you with a photo of spring flowers and blue skies in London yesterday, the last day of February:

The Sheep Detectives: This one’s a no-brainer

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A movie about a herd of sheep who try to solve the murder of their herder? A herder who spent his evenings reading murder mysteries to his sheep? A herder played by Hugh Jackman? This one is a no-brainer, folks! I am all in for this, and if you are reading this blog, there is a non-trivial chance that you are too.

Not sure? Watch the trailer:

When Doug showed me this trailer, I thought it was a joke. But, hooray, it looks like it’s the real thing! Who could have guessed that what I needed now was a Babe/Miss Marple mash-up? Even with no sheep, it would have had me with “herder murder”.

On the intersection of, for example, knitting, AI, and the Olympics

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I spent the weekend watching the Winter Olympics and knitting. These two go together, and have since the 2006 Winter Olympics when Stephanie Pearl-McPhee posed a knitting challenge: cast on a project during the opening ceremony and finish it before the closing ceremony. On the night of the Opening Ceremony, February 10th 2006, Emma and Leah and I sat on our couch in our living room in Potsdam, Germany, and began to knit, while watching the Opening Ceremony. Doug spent some time searching through our photo archive and managed to find a photo. That was 20 years ago!

I showed the photo to the girls and Emma’s comment was “That couch looks a lot smaller than I remember it.” Ah, perspective. I completed the knitting challenge that year, casting on and then finishing a pullover for Emma before the Games ended. In 2006, I had not yet begun this blog. However, many years later I wrote a post about that sweater. I wanted to link it here, so I Googled “knitigating circumstances winter olympics”. And this is what Gemini had to say:

Let’s break this down.

  1. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee has apparently been writing my blog for the last 14 years. This is presumably because her own blog is so phenomenally successful that she felt sorry for me. Thanks, Stephanie!
  2. My blog is about the intersection of knitting and sporting events. Well. I learn something new every day.
  3. AI is able to write so well that, for example, it uses the term ‘for example’ 8 times within 2 sentences. Do I fear that AI will mean the death thrall of creative expression? Not so much after reading this.
  4. People use AI to ask medical questions. After seeing this summary of my blog, do I want to trust my health to an algorithm? Do you?

As an aside, a few weeks ago I was searching for a post I wrote long ago about opportunity costs. This is what Gemini had to say then:

I rest my case. By the way, Tatiana Rowson and I have written a book together. You can read about it in this post. (We are very proud of it.) Tatiana is not a knitter and would be surprised to be accredited with writing a knitting blog. You can also see the post I wrote about the sweater I knitted for the 2006 Olympic challenge here, and the opportunity cost blog post here. If you are in to the intersection of knitting and the Olympics (the London Summer Games, in this case) you can read my post about attending the games with Doug and the girls (and my knitting) here.

To go back to my Olympic knitting, I am not doing the challenge this year, but I do have a new project I am working on. Two weeks ago, I cast on for Kate Davies’ pattern Collar de Pilar, as a good travel knitting project. I took it with me to Johannesburg. I lost my Kindle on the flight down, and therefore spent all my spare time knitting instead of reading, so I am making good progress.

Yesterday, I knitted the sleeve ribbing (I am making the short-sleeve version) and I am very close to joining the body and sleeves.

If you have some free time, I highly recommend that you put down your phone and go for a walk. Or watch TV while knitting. Or whatever else rocks your boat. It will make you smile like Leah.

The one with lots of books and not much knitting

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It’s been hard to post here lately. Anyone who reads the news should understand why. The world is grim. I have to sort through the bad stuff to reach a peaceful place in my head, from which to write a post. The sun is shining through my windows this morning, so let’s give this a try, shall we?

Leah was here for a month. We are trying to rearrange the house, and we took advantage of the extra free labour to move furniture, assemble furniture, disassemble furniture, move books, move more books, and move even more books. (I don’t even know where my yarn is currently.) Then we all got sick, Leah especially. Despite this, we did manage to do some nice things. We went to a wonderful concert at Wigmore Hall of Bach concertos, spent an afternoon at the British Museum, did lots of book shopping – spending time perusing both Blackwells in Oxford and Foyles in London. Leah took a backstage tour of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, which she raved about. We did a lot of cooking and had a few lovely dinners out:

And we braved a very icy day in Oxford to find Lyra’s bench (if you are a Phillip Pullman fan, you will know what I’m talking about):

My Christmas was filled with lots of books and not much knitting. I did get a lovely little yarn kit in my stocking (Santa knows me well) for a Sonsie hat, designed by Kate Davies. I put aside my knitting ennui for a few days to knit up this lovely project. Here it is, keeping me warm in the Oxford Botanical Gardens.

As usual for a bookish family, my gifts were mostly books. Jacquard’s Web by James Essinger, is a fascinating history of how Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented a weaving loom operated by punch cards, and how this idea led to the development of the computer and sparked the information age. It is really well written and engaging – I picked it up to read a few paragraphs and was instantly riveted. My very first job was working on a research project, coding punch cards. Now there’s a job that doesn’t exist anymore. Other nerds like me will undoubtedly enjoy this book. To go along with it, I also received a socio-economic history of textiles, The Fabric of Civilization; How textiles made the world by Virginia Postrel. I haven’t started this one yet, but it looks great.

I also received Spectrum: Heritage patterns and Colours, which is a publication of the V&A Museum. Oh my, I love this book! Methinks that someone must have noticed me drooling over it in the V&A gift shop. This book includes photos of fabrics in the V&A collection, organised chronologically from the 15th century to the present. Each fabric is accompanied by a colour grid, which shows the relative proportion of each colour used in the fabric and labelling it with a CMYK number (an international standard printing code for colour). Here is a link to the book, where you can look inside at some of the pages. It is so gorgeous! I could literally spend hours looking through these pages. The forward suggests that this book would be of interest to interior designers, but to me, it’s all about knitting patterns. I don’t always feel confident putting colours together, but I think this book is revelatory.

Another gift (can you sense a theme here?) is a copy of Kindred Knits by Aleks Byrd, along with one of her project bags.

I love Aleks’ designs and this new book of hers contains both lovely designs and family history. Aleks came upon a treasure trove of sketchbooks made by her grandmother, Hilja, before she left Estonia at the start of the war in the 1940s. Inside were knitwear photos, sketches, and stitch patterns. Aleks has drawn from the sketchbooks to create some beautiful knitwear utilising Estonian motifs and techniques, as well as to learn more about her family. It is a beautiful book to dip into. I especially like this pattern, Rändaja:

© Laine Publishing

I am now trying to find some new projects to work on. I am thinking of making a men’s version of Thea Colman’s Shruff’s End Vest for Doug.

© Thea Colman

I am flying to Johannesburg next week, so I also need to cast on a light-weight travel knitting project. I’ve got some ideas, but first I have to unearth my yarn.

While we have been walking in the icy cold, Emma and Justin are enjoying a sunny honeymoon! (With occasional clouds.)

Please be safe, everyone, and be kind. The world could use a little kindness right now.

On shawls and museums

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Emma came to visit for a few weeks and while she was here, she finished knitting a gorgeous shawl:

This is the Field Shawl, designed by Maxim Cyr. I think it looks smashing, and it is unbelievably cosy and warm. Emma is turning out to be quite a good knitter. Next up: probably a sweater, but which one?

You may remember that, on her last visit, Emma and I went to the Unravel festival in Farnham, where we both purchased yarn for a new shawl. I blogged about it here. We realised, just as Emma was about to leave for the airport to go back to Vancouver, that we have now both finished knitting the shawls with the yarn we purchased at Unravel, and ran outside to take some photos. It was starting to drizzle and Emma put on Doug’s gardening shoes (“Just don’t get my feet in the photos, Dad”.)

We were very busy when she was here. Both Doug and I were working, and we spent every free day running around London with Emma, mostly visiting museums (as one does). Emma’s friend Julianne joined us for an afternoon at the V&A. We saw a cool exhibit on disability and design, and then went to the Marie Antoinette exhibition. It was not the best lighting for photos, of course, but here are Emma and Julianne towards the end of the exhibit which featured Marie Antoinette-inspired fashion. We called these the “wedding cake dresses”:

We also spent an afternoon at the Saatchi gallery, ate at some excellent new (to us) restaurants, went to the last evening of the London Jazz Festival at Cadogan Hall, window shopped, wandered through multiple book shops which led inevitably to buying books, raced through Paddington Station numerous times, and got stuck in massive Black Friday crowds. (Who knew Black Friday was a thing here? Why is it a thing here?) The highlight was probably the Cecil Beaton exhibit at the National Gallery. It was amazing and beautifully curated. The inscriptions next to the photos were worth the price of admission alone.

It was a lovely visit with Emma, which as always feels too short although we packed in a lot of stuff.

Emma is now back in Vancouver and Leah will be arriving in a few days. The girls are sadly in complimentary distribution this holiday season. I’ll sign off with more photos of shawl silliness.

Emma throws the shawl up and it gets tangled in a tree above her head.
Let’s try that again!
Emma dared me to include this photo.

Happy Sunday everyone!