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!

Mittens to the left of me, mittens to the right

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Last December was not a good month for me and for the first time in over a decade, I didn’t publish a mitten post. Well, it’s time to get back on the wagon. There are so many new mitten patterns being published now, and I hate to say it, but many of them look samey-samey to me. To help cut through the mitten haze, here are some that stood out from the crowd for me.

Rosie Mittens by LE KNIT by Lene Holme Samsøe:

© LE KNIT by Lene Holme Samsøe

The Rosie sweater was a huge hit for Lene Holme Samsøe this year. While I think it is gorgeous, I am unlikely to knit it. The oversized, drop shoulder look isn’t so good on me. But these Rosie Mitts are charming! Here is a good way to knit the exceedingly pretty Rosie pattern in a smaller canvas. I can imagine these in so many different colour combos, some soft, some bold.

Skating Ring Mitts by Ainur Berkimbayeva:

© Ainur Berkimbayeva

One of the things that Purl Soho do so well is to make classic patterns with well-thought out design. This is a fairly simple concept, beautifully articulated. I am not exactly sure why I find these so appealing; nevertheless, appeal they do. Perhaps it is the matching set of hat and cowl, which while being matchy-matchy, is definitely not samey-samey.

On Two Wheels by Claudia Fiocchetti:

© Claudia Fiocchetti

What can I say? These are fun! I am often critical of self-striping yarns, but I love how Claudia Fiocchetti has used them to great effect here. If you know anyone who cycles, this is a wonderful gift. If you cycle yourself, be indulgent and knit a pair for you!

Spot Mittens by Anne Ventzel:

© Anne Ventzel

I love these mittens, just like I love the sweater they are based on. I have really been enjoying Anne Ventzel patterns; I knitted both her Robinia sweater and Robinia mittens last year (blogged here and here). I like the crispness of the geometric pattern, particularly in this blue and white combo. Such a great photo, too. It not only makes you want to knit the mittens, but also to sit and have a coffee and chat with Anne.

Stanford – mittens by Sara Ottosson:

© Sara Ottosson

Oh my, look at the fantastic interplay between the garter and mosaic stitches! See how the garter on the thumbs continues up the side of the mittens, making a boxy structure? I love these so much! I would love them even if they weren’t in this eye-popping colour combo. But of course, they are, which makes them irresistible.

Grønmo by Lanja Khon-Engheim:

© Lanja Khon-Engheim

Sometimes, all it takes is a beautiful cable pattern. Knitted in this lovely natural shade, the cables pop, and look very intricate and organic. Non-knitters will be agog and won’t believe that you knitted these yourself. Just don’t knit them in front of the telly.

Juicy fruit short by knittinglotta:

© knittinglotta

These are Leah’s favourites. She sent me a link with some barely disguised hinting. It is such a pretty pattern, and extremely cheerful. It makes me think summery thoughts even in the midst of winter. I have a feeling these will end up on my needles sooner rather than later.

Underglow Mitts by Melanie Berg:

© Melanie Berg

These are so dainty and elegant. It’s a very beautiful stitch pattern and Melanie Berg lets it do all the work. No need for any extra flourishes here. Just a soft yarn and a great stitch. The hemmed cuffs are a nice touch.

TractorBaby by Tonje Haugli:

© Tonje Haugli

In all of the time that I have been writing these mitten posts, I have never featured a baby mitten. But look at these! Aren’t they adorable? I love them! I could eat them up! They are so, so sweet. I dare you to look at them and not smile!

I hope you’ve found something you like. If you have another favourite, drop me a line in the comments. And, in case you are interested in the previous mitten posts, you can find them at the below links:

Merry Mittenmas! (2014)

A dozen great patterns for fingerless mitts (2015)

Mittens! (2015)

To gusset or not to gusset (2016)

It’s mitten time again (2017)

A show of hands (2018)

Warm hands, warm heart (2019)

Mittens redux (2020)

My mitten post for 2021 (2021)

Mittens galore! (2022)

You had me at mittens (2023)

A long delayed Wearability Wednesday post

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Emma is home for a visit and it reminds me that the last time she was here, we took some photos for a Wearability Wednesday post. It was in February and really cold out, so of course I made her pose in the garden in a summer tank. But since she got a hand-knitted garment out of it, I felt it was not overly cruel.

Wearability Wednesday is an occasional series of posts (published on Wednesdays) in which I take another look at a previously knitted item, and examine it from a wearability perspective. Do I wear it? If not, why not? If yes, how do I style it? Has it held up? This time I am going way back to 2012, when I knitted Laresca:

I blogged about this tank here. The pattern was designed by Corrina Ferguson and was knitted with Rowan Panama, a cotton, linen and viscose yarn. I wore this for a while, but very soon grew out of it. However, when Emma was last home, we discovered that it fits her very well:

Kudos to Emma for modelling this in February, and pretending not to be freezing. This was one of the fastest photo shoots ever.

Emma wore this top many times over the last summer and, each time, she thought “I need to get a photo of this for the blog”. It never happened. Even when I was visiting Emma, with my camera at hand, we forgot to take any Vancouver summer photos of Emma wearing this. However, just the fact that we forgot to photograph it multiple times, demonstrates that it is, indeed, wearable. It does, in fact, get worn. Just not by me.

Maybe I knew it would end up in Emma’s wardrobe because it is not my normal colour palette, but is one which she often wears. Sometimes she wears it with jeans, sometimes she dresses it up a bit. Given that she lives in Vancouver, she often wears it like this:

It’s hard to believe I knitted this 13 years ago. I think it still looks contemporary and pretty. I’m glad it has been given a new life.

This scarf has travelled wide

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I finished a project last week.

This beautiful colour-blocked shawl is knitted in stockinette stitch in Ito Sensai, a beautiful laceweight silk mohair yarn. I bought it as a kit from Loop London some time ago, and was charmed by the soft green colourway; outside of my usual bright pops of colour. Depending on the background, these shades can be muted or can shine:

I cast it on on my way to Tucson in July 2024 to visit my mom and stepdad. Since then, it has become my travel shawl – the project I take along on my travels, weighing nothing and fitting easily in a small bag. This scarf went with me to Tucson, Vancouver, Johannesburg (twice), Geneva (twice), Copenhagen, Aarhus, Edinburgh, and Berlin. Here it is in Tucson in the summer desert heat:

Here it is in February in the Johannesburg summer sun:

And here I am knitting it in the midst of a Copenhagen winter, all bundled up and drinking wine while my friend, Erun, cooks dinner:

It is a perfect travel project, fitting into a tiny bag, just slightly larger than my Kindle (and weighing the same).

And now it is done, and I get to wear it. Yay! Isn’t knitting cool?

It creates a lovely, soft, sheer fabric:

I have been enjoying wearing it the last few weeks in the beautiful, autumn weather we are experiencing here in the English countryside.

I suppose I will need to find another travel project now. Any ideas?

Pink is the new brown

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Literally, in this case. You may remember I knitted a brown Sabai top earlier in the summer (blogged here), and now I have knitted a pink Sabai top:

Pink is the new brown. And it looks completely amazing with red. (What can I say? Bright colours are my jam.) In fact, I am pretty sure that I can pair it with almost everything in my wardrobe. It looks especially good with my A Walk in the Park Shawl (blogged here).

I finished this one the day after returning from Vancouver (just under a month ago) and have already worn it many times, proving it’s versatility.

I made this one to be ever-so-slightly looser than the brown one. I added a few more rows before increasing at the sides, thus lowering the armholes a bit. (Note that many people found the armholes too low and did the opposite; check your row gauge before starting the increases.) I also added one extra set of increases, giving me an extra 4 stitches once joined in the round. And I made it 2″/5cm longer.

The pattern, by Susanne Müller, is super easy to follow and results in a nice top for the summer, which also looks great as a base layer under a jacket. This may be why there are thousands of Sabai tops in knitter’s wardrobes (over 5000 today on Ravelry alone). It has really nice features, which feel both elegant and casual.

I used Knitting for Olive Pure Silk held double, the same yarn that I used for the brown one. I love this yarn. It comes in fantastic brights, and also great neutrals. The only real trick is knitting it double. I wound two balls together before knitting to try to avoid knots. I still managed to tie it all into an inexplicable knot; as you can see, I had many hands to help me with the untangling.

Now I just have to keep Doug from “borrowing” my shawl. I suppose I will have to knit something for him.

Happy Thanksgiving to all you Canadians out there!

The best holidays include a wedding

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Our trip to Vancouver culminated in a wedding! Emma and Justin were married:

It was a beautiful day and the wedding was fun and intimate. Emma looked fabulous in red. Our cousins, Rikia and Cam, hosted the wedding and garden party reception in their home; thus saving Emma and Justin, in Rikia’s words, “from the wedding industrial complex”. It was lovely.

My mother, Marylou, flew up from Arizona. It was so nice to have her there! She looked very stylish.

Leah baked five dozen little wedding cakes in the shape of rings. They were flourless chocolate cakes with an apricot and Triple Sec filling, covered in a chocolate caramel ganache and dusted in gold. I ate 6 of them (not all on the same day). They were to die for! She also provided the necessary drama on the day, when a workman fell through the ceiling of her home on the morning of the wedding. We are very grateful to her for taking one for the team, thus ensuring the rest of the wedding day went perfectly. Leah looked absolutely amazing, especially given that she had a hole in the ceiling and had to move into a hotel.

Emma declared “no speeches”. Astonishingly, everyone behaved. Instead, we just had fun and it was smiles all around.

Even the ceremony itself was full of laughter:

It was a beautiful day. Here is a radiant Emma with her dad:

In addition to the wedding, this holiday also included a new baby, a visit from my mom, multiple birthdays, a road trip and our anniversary. It was really nice to spend time with my mom in Vancouver:

We also celebrated our wedding anniversary while we were there. On the day, Doug and I re-created a photo taken on our wedding day. The photo was taken in the back garden of Doug’s childhood home on the Seymour River in North Vancouver. The home was sold the year after we were married, and the current owner was happy to let us into her garden and take photos. She remembers Doug’s dad, Jim, with great fondness and we had a good time reminiscing about the house and garden and river. Thank you, Shamshad, for letting us recreate this lovely memory 34 years later!

It was taken in the same spot, although the bench is different. As you can see, the bench is narrower and our bodies are wider than 34 years ago, so it is a much tighter fit. While we were there, we took many photos, including this one:

We were happy to carve out some time to spend with old friends while we were out there:

And I even managed to get in a little bit of knitting. You know you have good friends when they drape you in fairy lights so you can see your knitting when the sun goes down:

I managed to finish the project I was working on in this photo, and am very nearly done with another, but you will have to wait for my next post to see it. I will end with a great photo of Emma. After the wedding, she and Justin went back to the restaurant where they had their first date, and Justin shot this photo. Emma is wearing her wedding ring, and a denim shirt over her wedding dress. Lovely!

What the best dressed baby is wearing: the Pacific Northwest edition

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I haven’t been writing here much lately, as life has been very busy (in mostly good ways). I promise to report more soon, but for now, I bring you a finished project:

I knitted this sweet little baby cardigan for my niece’s baby, who was born a few weeks ago. It is the gramps pattern, by tincan knits, which I have knitted once before for another wee babe. It’s such a classy sweater for a little one, complete with shawl collar and pockets. I used Big Bad Wool Weepaca, a worsted weight yarn in 50% alpaca and 50% wool, which is super soft and washable, so good for a baby knit. The main colour is Olive Ewe, which gets a lovely pop from the rich purple shade, Prince. The buttons were serendipitously in my button box, purchased some time ago for a vest for Doug and never used. I knitted this in the 6-12 month size and used 2 skeins of the green and one of the purple. I am super happy with it.

As you might have guessed from the title of this post, said baby lives in the Pacific Northwest, in Vancouver to be exact, and we are also here, to celebrate many things, including his birth, multiple birthdays, an anniversary, and a wedding. Last week, Doug and I and both girls took a road trip to the Okanagan, reviving many memories of road trips over the last 3 decades (yikes! where do the years go?).

Emma and her partner, Justin, have enjoyed quite a few wine-tasting holidays there, and Emma was happy to take us on a wine tour of their favourite vineyards.

It is a beautiful drive from Vancouver to Kelowna, with mountains and lakes and sunshine and great views. We visited 5 wineries and bought some lovely wine, we visited with family, and we went swimming in the lake. On Doug’s birthday, he even tried paddle boarding for the first time, thus disproving the old adage; it turns out that you can teach an old Doug new tricks!

With the baby sweater out of the way, I have picked up my second Sabai top, which is almost done. I hope to finish it soon, even in the midst of the whirlwind.

Summer tank, summer weather

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Deciding to knit a Sabai top, designed by Susanne Müller, was the easy part. Deciding to use Knitting for Olive Pure Silk (held double) was easy too. Even knitting it was easy. Choosing the colour was hard. First, though, the finished project:

I looked through my knitting projects from the past 15 years or so, and the only other thing I knitted in brown was a cowl for Doug. This colour is not in my normal colour wheelhouse. I started with a text sending Emma links to the pattern and the yarn. We texted back and forth for a while and couldn’t decide. This was followed up by numerous discussions with Emma, and again no decision. A few days later, I checked the yarn shop and they had re-stocked and had more colours in stock. Thus started a new round of texts of which the below is a small sample:

I still couldn’t decide. Then, one day out in the garden, with the sun shining down so that my screen was barely visible, I handed the phone to Doug, said “Pick a colour now!” He picked Dark Cognac, I hit the order button and that was that. Until I opened up the package and discovered that Dark Cognac was not the lovely deep bronze shade I was expecting but a pretty mid-range brown. I consoled myself with the idea that it would look good with my checked suit. And it does:

I still don’t love the shade on me, but I am starting to appreciate it. I can use it to tone down my wild African print palazzo trousers (top photo), create a classic look with a suit jacket, or even pair it with more brown-y tones to look casually beige (which is apparently chic, if sort of boring).

I knitted this is the 4th size (Large) with two strands of Knitting for Olive Pure Silk held together and US6/4mm needles. I followed the pattern exactly. It is a very easy, well-written pattern. I found that in order to knit with two strands of the silk, I had to first wind two balls together on my ball winder; otherwise, the yarn quickly evolved into a knotted mess. If you look at the comments on some of the thousands (literally) of projects on Ravelry, you will find that many knitters found that there was too much space under the arm and therefore started the underarm increases early (it is knitted in one piece top down). I had the opposite problem as my row gauge was tight, so I added rows before starting the increases. I think it fits fairly well.

It took me three weeks start to finish to make this. It would have been two weeks except that when I packed to go to Potsdam, I tucked the last ball of yarn away somewhere in my house, and then couldn’t find it when I got back home. It took me a week to find it!

I knitted almost the entire top while watching the French Open. Hmm. Wimbledon starts tomorrow. Maybe I should make another one? But which colour? Never fear: I took Emma’s advice and pre-ordered the yarn in Pink Daisies.