bazinga – 1. A catchy phrase to accompany your clever pranks. As popularized by Sheldon Cooper (The Big Bang Theory). 2. A short post highlighting something that Emma and Kelly think is freaking fabulous.
This is the Celestarium Shawl, designed by Audry Nicklin. (Photos copyright by Jane Heller.) It is in the latest issue of Twist Collective, a really fabulous online knitting magazine. When I first saw it, I thought “OK, it’s a pretty shawl,” but as shawls don’t usually capture my attention so much, I flipped right by it. But I came back to it because it is pretty; I like the round shape, I like the drape, I like the use of beads and eyelets. I think the yarn is lovely – it is Blue Moon Fiber Arts Seduction in the colour Haida.
But then, I read the description, and, well, it had me:
“Celestarium is an accurate view of the night sky from the North Pole in the form of a pi shawl. Eyelets and beads are used to represent the stars. The center bead represents Polaris.” [from the Ravelry project page]
This is so cool. I sent the link to Emma and she agreed – totally cool. Emma spent part of the summer studying early scientific treatises on the stars for her summer internship, became enthused, and has been studying astronomy at UBC this fall. We are both geeky enough to think this is an amazing idea for a pattern.
Doesn’t that just make your heart stop? Absolutely freaking fabulous.
This has been a rather jumbled few weeks chez Knitigating Circumstances. I have been felled with the flu. It is one of those viruses of the cycling variety which knocks you over for a day and then tricks you into thinking you are on the mend before once again knocking you over. This has been going on for some time. Instead of spending my sick time knitting like a maniac, I have spent it propped up in bed reading. Thus, I have done a lot of reading the past two weeks but not so much knitting (or answering comments to the blog; apologies to my readers).
I did, on one of the days in which I believed I was on the mend, make it in to London, to Loop, to attend an afternoon’s class with Franklin Habit. Franklin has a lovely and very funny blog, writes a column for Knitty magazine, teaches knitting classes all over the world, and knits beautiful things for his lucky niece Abigail. I was fortunate to take a class with Franklin at Knit Nation last year, which was about different traditions in lace-making. I have attended classes with great instructors, mediocre instructors and get-me-out-of-here instructors; Franklin is firmly ensconsed in the former category. This class was about how to interpret and use knitting patterns from the late 19th century. This period, when knitting patterns were first being published, was before the introduction of standardized terms, needle sizes, sizing conventions, abbreviations, etc, so the patterns from this period are unique and quirky and often need deciphering.
Franklin brought along many of the pieces he has reconstructed from old patterns and written about in his Knitty column, including the fabulous Pineapple bag and Eleanor Roosevelt’s mittens. It was great to see and handle these pieces, and I really enjoyed the class. (One of the other people attending the class, Jennie, posted about it on her blog here; you can see that I am in one of the photos wearing my Killybegs cardigan. She also has a nice photo of the Pineapple bag, and a great beaded coin jug.) If you are ever in London, be sure to stop by Loop, they have great yarn, a really good selection of knitting books, sofas and chairs you can curl up and knit on (I’ve done this many times and they never kick me out) and an endless stream of nice people coming through the doors.
This week, unfortunately coinciding with my being sick, was also Thanksgiving. This is a big holiday in my house. I haven’t lived in the US for over 20 years, but we always, wherever we are in the world, have a big Thanksgiving dinner and invite many people from many cultures and nationalities. My daughter Emma is away at university, and we just experienced the first Emma-free Thanksgiving in 19 years. Despite the fact that I take great joy in Emma growing up and spreading her wings, it was very sad to look around the Thanksgiving table and not have her here. (She was also gravely missed in the gravy-making portion of the evening- get it – Emma’s gravy is divine. This year the gravy turned out awful. Really awful. Theo, a good friend who has been to many of our Thanksgiving feasts, was sitting next to me and after tasting the gravy he whispered to me “Let’s hope that Emma is back next year!”)
Thanksgiving is also a time for reflection. It has been cold and wet here in the UK as the winter sets in, and this has made me think of all of those in the New York area who were affected by Hurricane Sandy, many of whom have lost their homes and belongings. I lived in this area for more than 20 years, in various homes in New Jersey, Long Island, Manhattan and Brooklyn, so it was with sadness and incredulity that I watched the path of destruction on the news. My sister, Romi, has owned a garden and landscaping business on Eastern Long Island for more than 20 years. She has been busy clearing rubble and distributing goods to affected areas since the hurricane swept through. Romi has started a charitable organization called the Hamptons Hurricane Relief Fund, which you can find here; she says they especially need warm winter items like hats and mittens. If you have a pile of warm wooly knitting on hand, please think of sending it to those who need it. Also, don’t forget that Hurricane Sandy caused added misery to Haiti, a small country already reeling from natural disasters; there are many charitable organizations at work in Haiti who could use donations.
Thanksgiving also always leads me to reflect on the waistcoat-that’s-not-meant-to-be; but first, let me digress. Doug is in charge of the Thanksgiving turkey. He makes the best stuffing on earth. I am allergic to gluten, so he makes his stuffing from corn bread, and adds tons of dried fruit and nuts – apricots, figs, prunes, cherries, macadamias, pistachios, pine nuts, pecans – as well as onions, celery, herbs, butter…. yum, yum. It is absolutely mouth-watering. Every year, when he is preparing the turkey, and the girls and I are acting as sous-chefs, he asks for the yarn and needle to truss the bird up with. And here lies a knitterly story.
Seventeen years ago, when the kids were babies and we were living in Potsdam, in the former East Germany, Doug was stuffing the Thanksgiving turkey and we realized that we had no kitchen string to tie up the turkey. “Hold on a minute,” I said, and ran to my knitting basket. I grabbed a ball of cotton yarn and a darning needle and ran back to the kitchen, and Doug trussed up the turkey. The yarn and needle ended up in the kitchen drawer instead of back in my knitting bag, and has been used every year since then to truss up the turkey. Here is a photo of Doug, preparing the bird this year:
And here is a close-up in which you can see the little ball of yarn:
Every year when we truss the turkey, I think about the knitting project I stole that ball of yarn from. It is destined to never be finished. In 1992, Rowan published its 11th Book of Patterns and in it was the Cones Waistcoat by Kaffe Fassett. I had never knit a Fair Isle pattern before and thought that this would be the perfect pattern to start with. We were living in Australia at the time, and were untenured university lecturers with student loans to pay off (read: we had little money), so ordering an expensive knitting kit and shipping it to Australia was a luxury. I eventually caved in and treated myself. In 1994 when Emma was a baby and I was pregnant with Leah, Doug had to go into the hospital for surgery. I had just received the knitting kit in the post. I took it with me to the hospital, and while Doug was in surgery and in recovery afterwards, I alternately walked Emma around and cast on and started knitting the Cones Waistcoat. I was not good at knitting Fair Isle, and the waistcoat was probably doomed from the start.
As I watched Doug truss the turkey a few days ago, once again having my yearly think about the waistcoat-that’s-not-meant-to-be, I realized that I had it tucked away in the bottom of a closet upstairs, and ran to get it and photograph it for the blog.
That’s as far as I got. And it’s as far as it’s ever going to get. I’m not even sure why I’ve kept it all these years. I was kind of astonished when I pulled it out to discover how big it is; it’s definitely two sizes too big (at the very least) for me now. I guess I have forgotten how breast feeding and pregnancy (in this case, both simultaneously) can change your shape. You can see from the back that I didn’t really know what I was doing:
Hopefully, I am now a bit more skilled as a knitter because there are a lot of Fair Isle patterns out there that are calling my name. This has been something of a mishmash of a post; reflections on Thanksgiving, hurricanes, the flu, antique knitting patterns, and the waistcoat-that’s-not-meant-to-be. Good wishes to all of my readers. I am now off to plop myself in bed with a good book, my knitting, an antique knitting pattern or two, and a piece of pumpkin pie, and reflect on my blessings.
My daughter Leah is into medieval history in a big way. For a long time we have been discussing designing a sweater based on medieval motifs. Leah and I thought that we had come up with an interesting design for a bottom-up yoked pullover with some Anglo-Saxon text worked across the yoke. We spent a long time discussing texts, colour schemes, yarn choices, etc. We also discussed shaping and style. We had picked out a nice, deep red for the body of the pullover, and planned to make the text in a brown wool on a parchment-coloured background in a circle around the yoke.
As an aside to this discussion, Leah asked me whether we could work a small pattern into the pullover, around the neck and sleeves, in gold and red. She was inspired by Anglo-Saxon jewellery.
The above piece was buried with an Anglo-Saxon princess over 1300 years ago. This photo, along with a brief description, is from the BBC, A History of the World – an online archive of objects from the British Museum, which you can find here. Here is another example, the Canterbury Pendant, also Anglo-Saxon, circa the early 7th century.
This type of cloisonné work, using garnet and gold, was popular in the period. The above photo, can be found, along with a description of this piece, on the webpages of the World Gold Council, here. If you run a search for Anglo-Saxon jewellery, or for Early Middle Ages jewellery, you will find many such pieces.
Leah asked if we could try to recreate the look of this technique for a narrow colour band around the neckline and cuffs of the pullover. We searched for some appropriate yarn. I wanted to use Cascade 220 for this pullover, and we found what we thought would be the perfect colours, which we ordered from Get Knitted in Bristol (along with the brown and parchment colours for the text planned for the yoke).
As they didn’t have all colours I wanted in stock, I waited a few weeks for the delivery. (They have very nice customer service, by the way.) In the meantime, I had these pictures of Anglo-Saxon jewellery fermenting in the back of my brain. One day, while rooting around Ravelry (my favorite occupation), I came upon a pattern for a pair of mittens, called Frank, designed by Lauren Osborne. The Ravelry link is here.
I don’t know why, but as soon as I saw these, they reminded me of the medieval jewels. I reasoned that one repeat of the design, knit in gold and red, would have much of the same feel as the jewellery I was trying to replicate. My yarn arrived, and one night, while Doug and Leah sat watching a movie, I cast on a swatch and knit one pattern repeat from the Frank mitten pattern.
Isn’t that great? Leah and I both fell in love with it. It wasn’t, however, appropriate to our original conceptions of the pullover design. The cloisonné pattern was intended to form a very narrow ring near the neckline, just to add a bit of colour and flair to the main design element, which was intended to incorporate text from a medieval manuscript. This pattern repeat is 25 rows long, and coupled with the width of the Cascade 220 (a worsted weight wool), the resulting pattern was too wide.
However, the more we looked at it, the more we loved it. Leah and I decided to put aside the medieval manuscript idea for the moment, and knit a pullover based on this pattern repeat, with the inspiration of the Anglo-Saxon jewellery in our heads. Now we had a lovely band of colourwork, the yarn, but no sweater design. The original idea, for a yoked pullover, didn’t mesh with this swatch. (The pattern knit in this wool is about 4 inches wide. I didn’t see how I could incorporate a 4 inch pattern into a yoke without having decreases as an integral part of the pattern. Furthermore, I didn’t feel as if the yoke was the appropriate placement for this pattern.) I was left with two options; one, to design a pullover from scratch to incorporate this pattern, or two, to find a pullover design which I liked, into which I could incorporate this band of colourwork. Again, Ravelry came to the rescue.
I had a pullover in my queue on Ravelry, which had been there for a very long time, always with the intent to make it some day for Leah. It is the Astoria pullover designed by Marnie MacLean (Ravelry link here). Here is a photo:
I love the shape of this and, once I started thinking about it, I couldn’t stop imagining it in deep red, with the gold and red pattern from the Frank mittens in place of the colourwork band. Interestingly, just as I cast on for this project, Blair – one of the readers of this blog, who is a fabulous knitter and great blogger, posted her Astoria pullover. Her blog, Blairistan, is great; go read it. She and I have such similar tastes in sweaters, it is uncanny.
So began Leah’s Medieval Gems pullover. There ensued a lot of math (some of which will be described in the next post) and some knitting, and some ripping, and some re-knitting (some of which will also be described in the next post).
This was followed by some general admiration and photo-taking:
and also much fitting and refitting:
Since these photos were taken last weekend, I have ripped out and reknit the neckline, and am now considering re-ripping and re-re-knitting the neckline. I have also knit down to the waist, and am about to rip and re-knit down to the waist, adding more waist decreases. Despite all of the fiddling, both Leah and I are thrilled with how this one is developing. This has been the anatomy of a design; stay tuned for the rest of the story.
I have been working on a really great knitting project which I had hoped to blog about today. But if truth be told, I have had a stressful week, and I have just had a lovely dinner (cooked by Doug) and have a glass of good wine by my side, so I will instead write a quick post about two recently finished projects, and save the new sweater for another day.
Those of you familiar with this blog will know that I am not big on knitting socks, gloves, hats, mittens, shawls and all of those other non-sweater items in the knitter’s repetoire. I have an affinity for knitting sweaters. But those other things are really good at keeping one’s hands, feet, head and neck warm. In October, I finally got tired enough of cold hands to knit up some fingerless gloves. My feet are still cold, and likely to remain that way.
First up, I knit a pair of very cute mitts for my daughter Leah, who is working a bit of a red vibe lately.
They look great with Leah’s coat (from Desigual). This pattern is for the Nalu mitts, designed by Leila Raabe (the pattern is available for free on Ravelry). I knit them with Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino, which is a blend of wool, microfibre and cashmere. I used one ball of yarn to make the pair, and had just a few metres left over. I would like them even better if they were an inch longer, but of course then you would need a second ball of yarn.
I knit these with a smaller needle than called for in the pattern. I used a 3mm instead of a 3.25mm, and the slightly tighter gauge works well. These mitts are fun to knit and fun to wear. I think that Leah has worn them non-stop for the last three weeks.
Leila Raabe is one of the designers working with Jared Flood at Brooklyn Tweed (if you don’t know Brooklyn Tweed it is well worth checking out – Jared is a great designer and photographer and has put together a really skilled and creative in-house design team). Leila has had some lovely designs published in the last few years and has been on my radar for a while (mostly for her sweater patterns, of course). So I was very happy to test drive one of her smaller patterns. The design is very whimsical and eye-catching, and I highly recommend it.
For myself, I also chose to knit with Baby Cashmerino, but in a completely luscious grey. This grey has to be seen to be appreciated; it is rich, gorgeous, luminous (and I just happened to have two balls of it sitting in my stash). I chose to knit the pattern called Green Thumb, by Diana Foss. You can find it on her blog, Mooseknits. These mitts are knit in 2×2 rib, and are ambidextrous (both mitts are identical – there is no distinction between the left and right one).
The ribbing makes them very stretchy and warm, and the Baby Cashmerino is lovely and soft. I also knit these with a 3mm needle, which is a size smaller than the pattern calls for. Like the Nalu mitts, this pattern also calls for one ball of yarn, and so the mitts are short. I made these longer, adding 8 extra rows of rib before the thumb gussets and including the optional five extra rows at the fingers. This means I had to break into the second ball of yarn, but to me the extra length was worth it. Given the tiny needles and the rib, there are a lot of stitches in these; each mitt has over 5000 stitches. (Yes, I counted; I am a nerd that way.) The thing that makes this pattern is the thumb gussets:
Aren’t they great? I love this; such a simple, but innovative design. Once you see them, it seems so obvious that a thumb gusset is shaped just like a leaf pattern. I really think these are incredibly elegant. I have worn them every day at work, thus keeping my hands warm while sitting at my desk typing.
Hopefully, next week I will bring you my totally cool new project; in the meantime, I am here with warm hands (and cold feet).
Recently I’ve spent some time researching hats. I am not much of a hat knitting type. I did knit the beautiful Peerie Flooers hat, designed by the talented Kate Davies, which I documented on the blog here. But other than that, I don’t think I’ve knit many hats. I vaguely recall a few beanies knit flat in chunky yarn and then sewed together; these I made for various children, and were not pieces of knitted beauty. But because I am drawn to knitting sweaters, I don’t think too much about knitting hats (or socks or scarves or mittens for that matter).
A few months ago, my friend Maria was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was, in her own words, about to get the “full meal deal” – surgery, chemo and radio. Maria lives on another continent. If she lived close by, I would babysit for her daughter and bake treats. As I live so far away, the only thing that I could think to do was to try to knit her some chemo hats. I started looking at hat patterns and reading endless forums on the topic. I found many of the hats that are designed specifically for people to wear during chemo are hats I really don’t like. Obviously, there are special criteria for chemo hats – they should not be remotely itchy, they should provide good head coverage, etc. But, I think that when you are feeling crappy and have lost your hair, that is not the time for a non-stylish hat. That is the time for a beautiful hat that lifts the spirits and feels good.
Once you start to search, you realize that knitters all over the world are knitting thousands of hats, many of them quite beautiful, to give to mothers, sisters, girl friends, even total strangers, undergoing chemo. (Lots of chemo hats are knit for children and men as well. Cancer is an equal opportunity disease.) One of the more interesting observations I read online, in a Ravelry forum on chemo hats, was from a woman who had undergone chemo twice. She said that it was important to realize that the recipient was going to wear clothes while wearing their hat. It seems like a silly thing to say at first, but what she meant is that the hat should fit in with the recipient’s wardrobe. If you are making this hat for a person who only wears black, do not make a pink hat with flowers, she said; try to make something that suits their style.
While knitting for Maria, I spent time thinking about her. I have a story to tell about her that readers of this blog may appreciate. Many years ago, when my children were little, Maria spent a summer in Berlin, doing a residency with a firm there. She had arranged housing for the summer, but this option fell through shortly after she arrived. We invited her to come and live with us for the summer. It was a completely lovely summer and we had many great times together. Maria always looked good. I mean always. Her clothes were so perfectly coordinated. She had outfits for every occasion. She always looked stylish. Everything always matched. She had arrived at our house with an ordinary suitcase. How could she always look so good, for a whole summer, living out of a single suitcase? When I asked her, Maria replied, “Oh, that’s because I make a list in advance of what I will pack.” “Well,” I replied, “I make lists, too, but I can never seem to pull off a travel wardrobe like you have.” And then she showed me her list.
Maria pulled out a sketch pad. In it she had made a list of every single item of clothing, including shoes, jewelry, belts, etc that she packed for the trip. Following the list were pages and pages of sketches, each sketch showing a complete outfit, with all accessories included, made up of different combinations of items from the list. One sketch would show Maria in a flowered dress, with a little cardigan and pretty shoes and handbag. The next would have a pair of trousers, a blouse, and matching shoes, belt and earrings. I have never seen anything like it. The list was composed of 2-3 dresses, a skirt or two, 3-4 pairs of trousers, t-shirts, blouses, 3 pairs of shoes, etc; each item was designed to match as many other items as possible. She must have had a different outfit sketched for each day of the summer. I have never forgotten it, and never lived up to it. Every time I pack a bag I aim to be half as successful as Maria, and never manage it.
After a few days of searching hundreds of hat patterns, I hit on the first hat I would make. It is the Zelda Cloche, designed by Alexis Winslow. It was published in the Winter 2011 issue of Knitscene. I picked this because I thought it had great style and panache. Also, it was fairly close fitting and it came down over the ears. I think a slouchy or floppy hat would not really suit the chemo triple purpose of keeping the head warm, covering up the loss of hair, and being non-irritating. Here is a photo of me, modelling it:
I chose to make it out of Quince & Co Lark. This is a 100% wool yarn, and many would argue against using wool for a chemo hat, but it is a very high quality, extremely soft wool that I thought would hold its stitch definition, respond well to being washed and hung out to dry frequently, and would look nice. I bought it in Black and Taupe because I think that these colours will suit Maria’s wardrobe. The hat is very easy to make, with an intuitive pattern. I took the finished hat to John Lewis and spent an inordinately long time picking out the button.
I wanted to make two hats, and really struggled with the second. I wanted to make the second with a different yarn. I couldn’t find any cotton yarns that I was happy with. I finally settled on the Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino DK. This is a blend, 55% wool, 33% microfibre and 12% cashmere. It is machine washable (though not machine dry-able). I had it in my stash in bright red, but didn’t think this would be a good colour for Maria, especially while undergoing chemo, so I went out and bought some in a dusty blue, almost a grey blue.
Even after picking out the yarn, I had a tough time narrowing down a pattern. I finally decided on the Odessa hat, designed by Grumperina. It is a very pretty hat, simple but stylish. I liked that it was quite different than the Zelda cloche. I wanted to knit very different hats, so that Maria would have options, or in case one didn’t appeal or feel right. Leah and I debated for a while about whether to include the beads or not. I was pretty sure that beads were not a great detail for a hat intended for use during chemo. Leah maintained that the hat was much lovelier with beads. I ended up trying it out, knitting a few inches with the beads. Yes, they looked really pretty, and they stayed on the outside of the hat, so that the inside remained smooth and soft (the Baby Cashmerino is really wonderfully soft). Leah is modelling the hat in these photos.
The Odessa hat is supposed to take one ball of Baby Cashmerino. I knitted the hat an inch longer than the pattern called for because I wanted to make sure it provided good cover. As a result of this, I used up a few yards of yarn from a second ball. Probably, if you don’t knit in some extra length you won’t need the extra ball, but I would suggest buying one anyway – whether you need it or not, you will knit easier for having it in reserve, and afterwards you can make matching gloves.
If you know of someone undergoing chemo, a knitted gift is very comforting, for the knitter as well as the recipient. Though hats have an obvious function in this case, a soft shawl or blanket, or cozy socks can be just as nice.
