Monthly Archives: November 2013

In remembrance of knits past

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Yesterday, I came across this photo of a sweater designed by Marc Jacobs for the Fall/Winter 1985 edition of Vogue Knitting:

389_2__mediumI stared at it in shock.  Why?  Because I knit this sweater, and like many of my early knits I have no idea what happened to it.  I didn’t even remember it until yesterday.

I bought every issue of Vogue Knitting the instant it hit the news stands.  I was living in Washinton DC at the time, working as a paralegal in a law firm while taking time off between college and graduate school.  I read this issue and instantly knew this sweater was for me.  I remember shopping for the Lopi yarn.  I knit the sweater in a deep charcoal grey, and the colour panels in yellow, orange and red.  It was absolutely fabulous.  I loved it!  It was so completely 1980s too.  I was young without much cash; I could never afford a designer label but I could walk around looking like a million dollars in that sweater.

The sad thing is, so many knits disappeared over the years.  Why?  I can think of a few reasons.  I was considerably thinner then, what would now be a size 0, I think.  Once I hit my late 20s I began to put on weight and then pregnancy sealed it, so I am now a fairly average size.  Perhaps as I filled out I gave some sweaters away?  Second, some things definitely got eaten by moths over the years and were regretfully and lovingly retired.  Third, I have always been a wanderer.  I was born in California, and have lived in Michigan, Florida, New Jersey, Long Island, Manhattan, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Boston and Tucson before leaving the US over 20 years ago and moving to Australia, Germany and the UK.  And in many of those places, I would shift houses frequently.  With all of that moving, things are bound to get lost or left behind.  Moving aross continents is expensive so you tend to whittle away all of your belongings each time you move.

Another factor is that back then I was definitely a process knitter; I knit for the sheer joy of it rather than for the finished product.  But now, how I wish I had all of my early knits carefully packed away.  (Regular readers of this blog may recall the posts I wrote two years ago about the beautiful clothing knitted by my mother and grandmother that my mom has carefully kept all of these years.  I promise, I am now reformed.)

So, here’s to all the knits I’ve lost!  You kept me sane in crazy times.  You made me happy. I learned from you and became a better knitter.  We had fun together while it lasted.

The well-dressed tortoise

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Today’s episode of Surfing the Knit brings you the tortoise suit:

Solent News & Photo AgencyYes, this is a photo of a tortoise in a chicken suit.  Today, the Guardian had an “in pictures” segment called “Wooly suits for tortoises“, tag-lined “Keen knitter, Katie Bradley from Vancouver, Canada makes woolly suits for pet tortoises”.  (We shall politely ignore the fact that these suits are crocheted, not knitted.)  There is no text, only fourteen photos each showing the above fearless tortoise posing in a different outfit.  The outfits range from the odd (a reindeer costume):

Solent News & Photo Agencyto the disturbing (a cheeseburger costume):

Solent News & Photo AgencyThe photos are credited to the Solent News & Photo Agency.

A quick internet search shows that Ms. Bradley not only crochets costumes for tortoises (which she sells on Etsy) but rescues them as well.  You never know what you will come up with when Surfing the Knit.

Knits in action

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We have just returned from a short break to Watergate Bay in Cornwall.  Most people seem to prefer the beach in summer, but give me a cold and windswept beach any day:

20131112_160050Not only is a cold and windy November beach bracing and exhilerating and restorative, but it is also a great place for knits in action.

20131110_163720The soft focus in the photo above is because we took this in a soft and steady drizzle.  Frequent readers of this blog will notice that, under the down vest, I am wearing my Killybegs cardigan, designed by Carol Feller and knit in Donegal Aran Tweed from Studio Donegal.  Here is another shot, with our hotel in the background.

20131110_161356The rain began when we were a good thirty minutes walk down the beach, and came down steadily.  I am here to tell you that wool is truly a miracle fabric: not a single drop of water penetrated this beautiful Irish wool.  I remained warm and dry and cozy.  It wouldn’t withstand a downpour, but was considerably more wind and water-proof (and attractive) than a fleece.  (Now that I have put in my plug for wool, note that on the next day, I wore a fleece sweatshirt, proving that nobody’s perfect.)

On the second day, we went for a long walk along part of the Coastal Path, which winds along the cliffs above the beach.  It is beautiful in any time of year, but on a windy autumn day it has a special appeal:

20131112_11595420131112_11433420131112_113627Observant readers will notice two handknits in these shots. I am wearing my Wintergreen cowl, knit in seed stitch with a double strand of Malabrigo worsted, and I am also wearing the wonderful Peerie Flooers hat designed by Kate Davies.  This hat was one of the first projects I documented on this blog.  It is very appealing to wear these knits in action, and I get quite a bit of satisfaction out of wearing handknits.

20131111_131412You can see in the above photo that the cold and wind do not discourage the surfers.  They are a die-hard lot; we stood be-hatted and bundled and watched the wet-suit wearing surf fanatics play in the waves.  This is the same beach where Doug and I flew kites on our August trip to Cornwall.  We refrained this time, due to back problems, but the kite flying crowd is also undeterred by the cold:

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Doug was in charge of the camera on this holiday, but I made a point of taking a few photos of him so that we could prove he was there.  They all turned out uniformly awful, except for this one:

20131111_134558This beach is also the site of Jamie Oliver’s restaurant, Fifteen, where we had a very nice dinner.  I was impressed because they made up a special 5-course taster menu for me that was not only gluten-free but also without meat.  Since we were staying at the hotel and didn’t need to drive, we had the 5-course taster menu with 5 wines, including a nice talk with the young sommelier-in-training about each wine.  It was fun.  Note to self: someone who gets drunk on her second glass of wine should not order 5 of them.

20131111_211456(Perhaps 5 glasses were also more than enough for the photographer?)

We booked this holiday to celebrate our 22nd anniversary (a little late, since the anniversary was in September).  It was a lovely break from routine with great food, beautiful beaches, long walks, and plenty of time to sit by the fire and knit.

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Sometimes you need a quickie

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All of my knitting projects lately have seemed endless.  I keep picking time-consuming projects, and this is exacerbated by my new schedule which means I have much less time in which to knit.  The result has been that I occasionally feel as if knitting is a slog – not the desired outcome for a pleasurable pasttime.  I was in need of instant gratification; hence, the quickie.

I also have two daughters at university, which means little disposable income.  So, I did a search through my stash yarn.  I found two and a bit skeins of Rowan Cocoon, a chunky wool in a soft grey, no doubt left over from when I knit an Owl Sweater for Leah (which will be the subject soon of a Wearability Wednesday post).  I didn’t feel the need to search for a pattern and just grabbed a set of needles and improvised a pattern for a cowl.

IMG_8054I used a US 10.5 needle and cast on 272 stitches, joined in the round, placed a stitch marker to mark beginning of round, and then knit in a 1×1 rib reversible cable stitch:

Rows 1-3: K1 p1 all the way around

Row 4: *Put 4 stitches on cable needle and hold to back, K1 P1 K1 P1 from left hand needle, and then K1 P1 K1 P1 from cable needle, then K1 P1 (four times)*, repeat from * to end

Rows 5-7: K1 P1 all the way around

Row 8: *K1P1 (four times), put 4 stitches on cable needle and hold to back, K1 P1 K1 P1 from left hand needle, and then K1 P1 K1 P1 from cable needle*, repeat from * to end

This made a thick, lovely, wavy fabric:

IMG_8051Blocking it, however, really pulled out the fabric quite a bit, revealing the cables (and adding quite a bit of length).  The unblocked measurement was 22″x5.5″ (for a 44″ circumference) and the blocked measurement was 28″x6″ (for a 56″ circumference).  I sort of like the look of the fabric better pre-block, but the truth of the matter was that it was too thick and bulky to look right as a cowl and didn’t easily double up around the neck.  Here is the finished cowl:

IMG_8101These photos were taken in a 5-minute window between rain showers, so are not the best, but you can see from the above one that the pattern is truly reversible so that the back and front sides are the same.

IMG_8104Alas, one quickie was apparently not enough to assuage the instant gratification urge, so I dove back into my stash yarn pile, and came up with a skein of Noro Kureyon.  I decided to knit the Campout Fingerless Mitts pattern by tante ehm, which is available for free.  Here is the finished pair of mitts:

IMG_8106I decided that I wanted to be clever and use up every last bit of yarn from the skein, so I knit the two mitts at the same time (more or less) pulling the yarn from one end of the skein for one mitt, and from the other end for the second.  First, I cast on and started knitting the first mitt using the end from inside the skein:

IMG_8082Then, I put the stitches on holders:

IMG_8086Then I cast on the second mitt using the end from the outside of the skein:

IMG_8089(Ignore the red yarn which was used as a provisional cast-on.  The mitts are constructed by starting with the garter stitch band around the top, grafting the two ends together and then picking up stitches and knitting down in stockinette stitch.  If I knit these again, I wouldn’t bother with the provisional cast-on and grafting; I would just sew the two ends together.)  I then continued to knit the second mitt, pulling the yarn from the outside of the skein:

The whole point of this exercise was to make the mitts as long as possible without needing to break the yarn, or wasting any yarn.  I needn’t have bothered: towards the end of the second mitt, I encountered a knot in the yarn:

IMG_8110I decided to stop the second mitt just before the knot, and thus had to end the first mitt at the same length; without the knot, both mitts would have ended with this dark blue colour around the end.  As an aside, there seem to be two types of approaches to knitting with Noro.  The first approach always tries to make the colour changes match, so that both mitts would have the same colour progression, or both sleeves on a pullover, etc.  This involves buying more Noro than you need, and cutting out the bits you don’t want and coordinating the colour runs across the garment.  The second is to let the colours be and just knit.  This is the approach I prefer, and leads to mitts that don’t match.  I kind of like them that way.

IMG_8107Now that I’ve got this out of my system, I hope to go back to my longer projects with more enthusiasm.  I’m heading off to Cornwall for a few days holiday.  Given the grey and rainy weather, there should be plenty of time to knit.

On giant squids, gnomes, and garland

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“Surfing the net” has become a major time-sink for many across the globe.  It is an incredibly addicting past-time.  As a knitting fanatic, my surfing tends to be rather topic-specific.  This post marks the start of a new series here at Knitigating Circumstances called “Surfing the Knit”.   The series will be a forum for me to point out the stories and photos that have caught my eye during my frequent forays into knit surfing.

1. Giant knit squid

WordPress have a feature called “Freshly Pressed” in which they pick a few posts every day from the millions of WordPress blogs, and highlight them.  This week one of the Freshly Pressed posts was about Knit Bombing.  It is from the blog Knits for Life, and you can find the post here.  Here is a photo of the amazing knit bombing project that Lorna and Jill made:

img_2196Isn’t it fabulous!  I think this is among the best knit bombing that I have seen.  Check out the post on Lorna’s blog linked above, and also Jill’s post on her blog, The Dapper Toad, which you can find here.  These posts give lots of photos and a detailed tutorial into the making, installation and reception of this great example of street art.  By the way, Lorna notes that the city arborist told them the tree had been improperly pruned, which exposed the bark to sun damage, so the squid is actually good for the tree.

2. Gnome mittens

Spillyjane is a Canadian designer best known for her whimsical mitten and sock designs.  You can find her on her website, Spillyjane Knits. In March 2010, Spillyjane released a pattern for the marvelous Gnome Mittens:

4404471837_827673e99c_nThese mittens went right into my favorites file on Ravelry.  I have enjoyed looking at the projects people have made using this great pattern.  SpillyJane includes instructions for fingerless mitts in the pattern, and later released a pattern for Gnome Socks.

Today, as I was busy Surfing the Knit, I found some other designer was offering a virtually identical pattern for sale. (It is featured on Ravelry and on her website and her Etsy page.)  I must admit to being flabbergasted!   As far as I can tell, the new person claims to have come up with the design independently.  I  know that this happens sometimes (in knitting and in science).   I was surprised enough to do a little digging and found a good post on the subject on  Dull Roar.  I am not going to delve into a discussion here of copyright (which I am by no means an expert on), or of probability or design features or identical charts.  Instead, I thought I would direct you to look at Spillyjane, who makes some of the cutest mitten patterns ever devised IMHO.  If Gnomes, don’t do it for you, how about her Flamingo Mittens:

flam02_small2Or the lovely peacock design of her Mystery + Manners pattern:

mysmanfla01_medium2This design is available for free, by the way, in the Fall 2010 edition of Knitty: you can find it here.  Incidentally, Spillyjane released a brand new mitten pattern just days ago, called Circuit:

KAH12_medium These are published in the excellently-titled Doomsday Knits: Projects for the Apocalypse and After.  If you are after an interesting mitten (or fingerless mitt) pattern, then head to Spillyjane and spend your money there.

3. Garland

Stefanie Pollmeier writes the blog reWOLLuzza.  She is a long-time follower of Knitigating Circumstances and a frequent commenter here.  Stefanie has recently made the foray into knit designing.  I like the fact that she posts about design and also about the whole process of responding to calls for submission and the intricacies of bringing a design to market.  Here, for example, is a discussion of the submission stages for a hat design.  I don’t know a lot about these aspects of the design process, so I find it useful.  I also admire the fact that she writes these posts in English (if I tried to write this blog in German you would be laughing, believe me).  This week in my knit surfing, I noticed that the lovely new-ish knitting magazine, Pom Pom Quarterly, has a new issue out.  And on the cover, is a beautiful design by Stefanie called Garland:

cover-358x500Here is a better picture to show off the design elements:

image_medium2Isn’t it lovely?  Congratulations, Stefanie!

And that, dear readers, concludes Surfing the Knit today.  Stay tuned for further segments!