Monthly Archives: September 2014

In defense of boring

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I once overheard a knitter responding to the question: “What’s the most difficult type of knitting?”  “The boring kind,” was her response.  She went on to say that she liked to knit lace and stranded patterns – the more complicated the pattern, the more colours used, and the smaller the needle size, the better.  Sometimes, however, boring is good.

2-IMG_9854There is nothing quite so boring, and yet so uniquely compelling as knitting in stockinette in the round.  Stitch after stitch, well over three hundred on the needles at this point, with no end of the row, no need to turn the needles, no purling, no counting, no thinking.  It may be boring knitting, but boring knitting can be mesmerizing.  It is sometimes just what the doctor ordered – a little bit of Zen, an escape from stress, time to let your mind wander.  And when the colour is as rich and lovely as this, it’s a bit of eye candy too.

In a break from my Zen-knitting today, I spent some time “Surfing the Knit” – another mesmeric activity but definitely not as productive.  I’ll bring you a few tidbits here:

  1.  Ginger Twist Studio has an announcement on her blog for a Historic Music Knitting Event in Edinburgh on October 6th.  Here is a brief description: “Knit one, pearl 1942! A Stitch in Time: Lost Knitting Songs from the World Wars is a musical lecture about knitting (yes, knitting!) songs that were written during WWI and WWII in both North America and Britain.”  How cool is that?
  2. I found the most amazing site today.  It is in Beta now, and they are looking for comments, so please check them out.  It is called Yarnsub.com.  I was looking online for substitutes for Brooklyn Tweed Loft (I love Loft, but can’t always dish out for the expensive stuff) and came onto this page.  It lists the characteristics of the yarn you are trying to match, and then rates each of several substitutes according to weight, texture, fibre content, gauge, etc.  I love this!
  3. And here’s an interesting one: “As part of the Great British Bioscience Festival, BBSRC is running Knit-a-Bug: The Great British Bioscience Knitting Competition. BBSRC invites knitters from across the country to get creative with bioscience by knitting bacteria and viruses that can impact human and animal health. ”  I think I’ll stick with my Zen-knitting, thank you very much.

Two is not too many

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A few weeks ago, the lovely Dayana of Dayana Knits, published a post about her WIPs.  (For those not in the know, a WIP is a work-in-progress.)  She started the post with a photo of all of her WIPs piled on top of each other in a neat stack.  Since Dayana is a very accomplished knitter who chooses interesting and challenging projects, the pile was very pretty, with lots of colour and fancy stitchwork.  This started me thinking about my own WIPs.  Now that I have finished off Leah’s sweater, I have only two!  These two:

On the bottom is Exeter, an amazing double-breasted heavily cabled jacket designed by Michele Wang for Brooklyn Tweed.  When done, it will look like this:

copyright Jared Flood/Brooklyn Tweed

 

Both sleeves are finished, washed, and blocked, the back is very nearly done, and I have started on the ribbing for the left front.  The front pieces, which include the collar, are both large and fiddly, however, so there is still much to be done.

The WIP on the top is the gorgeous Soumak Scarf Wrap designed by Lisa Richardson for Rowan 54.  When finished, it will look like this (except, of course, on me!):

copyright Rowan Yarns 2013

There are seven pattern repeats in this shawl and I have finished 5 1/4 of them.  Close, but no cigar!  That also does not take into account all of the ends that will need to be woven in:

Dayana commented in her post that “nothing is quite so pleasing (and yet so alarming) as piling them all on top of each other!”  Dayana’s alarm was no doubt due to the fact that she had quite a few projects on the go (I counted; it was 7).   I, too, was alarmed but for a far different reason.  I cast on for the Soumak Wrap on September 13, 2013!  That was (just) over a year ago!  And, I cast on my lovely Exeter on February 17, 2013!  Clearly, this is a case of the never-ending knit!

So I ask you, Dear Reader, what do you think was my immediate thought upon reading Dayana’s post?  Was it to devote my efforts to finishing off these long-lingering projects?  I fear not.  My very first thought was:  I have too few WIPs!  Yes, I am the very same knit blogger who once wrote a post about the utter insanity of having too many WIPs.  However, as I am sure we can all agree, when it comes to WIPs, two is not too many.

That leads us to this:

A clever knitter, faced with two never-ending projects, would cast on for something quick – a hat perhaps, or some speedy mitts.  So what did I do?  I decided to knit a turtleneck sweater in fingering weight yarn.  Above, you can see the “turtleneck” portion of my new top-down knit-in-the-round turtleneck.  The pattern was designed by Hannah Fettig and is called the Lightweight Pullover. When it is done, it will look like this:

copyright Quince & Co

I am knitting it with Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light in Tart.  Perhaps next September, it will show up in a post about long-lingering WIPs!

Klaralund

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Wearability Wednesday is an occasional feature on this blog, in which I re-visit something I’ve knit in the past and discuss it from a wearability standpoint.  Do I still wear it?  Why?  Or why not?  Has it held up to time?  How do I style it?  Today’s post goes back to a pullover which I knit eight years ago, in the spring of 2006.  Unfortunately,  I can only find one photograph of it from that time, so please ignore the bewildered expression on my face and the washed-out colours (this was before we moved to a digital camera, so we were unable to take 40 photos to get one good shot):

This is the Klaralund sweater, designed by Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton for Noro. It is knit in Noro Silk Garden.  The above photo was taken in October of 2006, shortly after we moved to England.  Here I am wearing it, eight years later and twenty pounds (egads!) heavier:

I have documented elsewhere on this blog my troubles with a repetitive stress injury (deQuervaine’s tenosynovitis) that led to me being unable to knit for more than a decade.  This was the second sweater I made after I was able to take up knitting again.  I wore this sweater to death!  For the first few years after I knit it, it was the go-to item in my wardrobe.  Jeans, check!  Klaralund, check!  Ready to go.  Why did I wear it so much?  I liked to wear hand-knit sweaters and I had very few to choose from at the time.  I loved the colours.  It was easy, un-fussy, but pretty.

At some point, however, I stopped wearing it.  Until Doug took these photos a few weeks ago, I hadn’t had it on in years.  Why did I stop wearing it?  First of all, I think I had worn it so often that I had become bored with it.  Second, as the years went on and I knit more and more, I had a growing pile of hand knits to wear, so it had some competition.  More importantly, however:  this sweater is shapeless.  It is four rectangles sewn together.  There is no shaping whatsoever.  The combination of dropped shoulders and no waist shaping means that it is baggy and shapeless.

There is nothing particularly wrong with shapeless sweaters.  In fact, over-sized sweaters without waist shaping and with dropped shoulders are right in style now.  The past few years, however, has had me knitting a succession of shapely, curvy sweaters for me and the girls (for example, Livvy for me, Venetian Audrey for Emma and Peloponnese for Leah).  Compared with them, my Klaralund felt sloppy.  Another reason may also have to do with ego – it is nice to wear a hand knit sweater that shows off your expertise.  Klaralund can be made by a total beginner.

Now that I’ve put it back on though, I think I might resurrect it.  It is still comfortable and easy.  The colours are still bright and interesting.  It has even held its shape (in a shapeless kind of way).  I can still fit into it, despite the extra weight!  Furthermore, it brought back a bit of nostalgia.  I knit this before Ravelry existed.  When I was considering making this sweater, I put ‘Klaralund’ into a search engine and discovered that other knitters were doing the same – this was how I discovered knitting blogs for the first time.  For me, this sweater marks the beginning of the internet in my knitting life.  Who could have guessed that the internet would have so totally changed the knitting community and the way I think about knitting?

So, perhaps the next time I go walk by the river on a windy day or sip my morning coffee in the back garden, I may just pull Klaralund out of the closet.