I am here to report that I am ALL FIRED UP! There are so many things to be fired up about these days, it is like a Thanksgiving feast. What has got me fired up? Let me count the ways.

American politics. I can hardly believe I have said this. Less than a month ago, I was in Tucson and found that I could barely stand to watch the news. US politics has been a dreadful pit of negativity for so long, that I was in danger of succumbing to death by doom scrolling. Now, I am filled with hope. How absolutely inspiring to see policy and joy replace posturing and hate.

Leah is here! A visit from one of the kids is always lovely. We have been quietly enjoying the last week with her, cooking, talking, reading, and lots of Olympics watching. We have also managed to have some fun. Doug and Leah took an amazing cooking class taught by Ryan and Liam of Orwells Restaurant. We completely love Orwells and always enjoy chatting with Ryan and Liam who are fun and super knowledgeable and very down to earth. Both Doug and Leah had a blast. Here is Leah filleting a turbot:

Leah and I have had some fun visiting her favorite London spots: the British Library and the British Museum. We hadn’t been to the British Library in a while, and had a grand time.

The Museum was super crowded, but we picked our rooms carefully, to avoid the crowds while still hitting Leah’s favorites, like the Assyrian exhibits. We chose a great day to be in London, and spent time just wandering around, soaking up the sun and people watching.

Leah will be here for another week and a bit, so we still have time for fun and exploration. And Emma will be coming next month! Good times!

The Olympics. Okay, I admit to being a complete sourpuss about the Olympics before it started; I was just not into it at all. In general I think the event is too big and too commercialised, and I get annoyed at all of the emphasis on medals, and stupid commentators who say things like “Oh no, so-and-so has screwed up and now has to settle for a silver medal. Fifteen years of struggle have been decimated in a moment.” I admit, however, that once it started, I have rather enjoyed watching it. In particular, I have enjoyed watching the athletes themselves cheering on their competitors, being joyful and friendly and exhibiting sportsmanship. Maybe this joy thing is contagious, no?

Actual Firing Up. Doug’s birthday is coming up, and for his gift, we bought him a Barrel Firing Workshop. Thus, while I have been metaphorically fired up, Doug has been literally firing up.

The workshop took place over two Saturdays. On the first day, they learned how to do terra sigillata, a technique for coating the greenware to prepare it for firing. Here are Doug’s pieces before firing (top shelf):

The following weekend, they wrapped the greenware in a variety of organic matter – coffee grounds, seaweed, avocado and banana peels, etc. In the barrel firing the organic matter oxidises and gives colour in unexpected ways. The piece below incorporates a scrap of knitting (something I had frogged) which he has soaked in an iron oxide solution, in addition to wool and banana peel.

They chopped a lot of wood (Doug, having actual experience chopping wood, was the primary axe wielder in this task). The prepared pots were placed in the 45 gallon barrels, surrounded by sawdust, and then covered in wood and set to blazing. The fires were carefully tended to make sure the temperature was right (about 700C).

The next morning, all was revealed. The barrels were opened, the pots were dug out of the ashes, and carefully washed. It was a great moment of discovery, because there is no way to predict how the pot will fire or how the colours will develop.

Here are Doug’s finished pots:

Cool, huh? We are firing on all cylinders here!

Knitting. I want to end by saying I am fired up about knitting. I must admit quite truthfully that this does not apply to actually doing any knitting. In fact, over the last two weeks I have negative knitting content. How can that be? I have knitted 8 rows and ripped out 12. Alas.

However, I am totally blown away this weekend by these two new knitting patterns, and that is getting me all fired up for the fall knitting season:

The top pattern is the Lilleke light sweater by Aleks Byrd and the bottom one is the Paulie Cardigan by Amy Christoffers. Wow! Seeing these two patterns pop up in my feed made me so happy.

Leah loves Aleks’ pattern. She is here for 10 more days. Doug’s comment this morning when I showed him the pattern was: “Can you knit that in 10 days?” Ha ha! Oh ye, unrealistic one; I laugh at your naiveté.

I am enjoying being fired up (in a good way) these days. How about you? Any patterns firing you up?

The last time I posted, I was in Geneva, wishing for warmer weather. Beware what you wish for! Shortly afterwards, I ended up making an impromptu trip to Tucson, where it was 43C. Ouch! That is hot. Boiling hot. After seventeen years in England, I have clearly acclimatised to cooler temperatures (and lots of rain).

Doug and I used to live in Tucson, and now my mother and stepfather, Stuart, live there. Stuart, who is 90 years old, broke his shoulder in February. He has been recovering slowly. Then he and mom got covid again, and he ended up back in the hospital. Mom, too, although briefly. I had hoped to visit them in the autumn when it was cooler out there, but decided I needed to go right away. I’ve just returned from a 9-day trip out there. It was great to see them. Stuart is very frail, but hasn’t lost his sense of humour and lovely smile.

I also got to see my two step-sisters, Jocelyn and Alison:

Jocelyn had just finished knitting a small blanket (literally finished the day before I saw her) and of course, I had to take a photo:

You go, Jossie! She has already started working on her next project, a temperature blanket. Funnily enough, she and my sister, Romi, who lives in New York, discovered that they were in the same temperature blanket group on FB. (Romi’s blanket will be massive; I’ll show you a photo when she’s done.)

And, of course, I got to spend a lot of time with my mom:

The above photo, and the one of me with my stepsisters, were taken by Ben Weissman.

Despite the stress, and the heat, not to mention getting covid again, which I know from experience can really take it out of you, mom is looking great:

As always, when I am travelling, I spent most of my packing time trying to figure out what knitting projects to take with me. In my last post, I had cast on the Hør no 19 tee, in a rich blue linen by Kalinka. A linen tee is a pretty good project for hot weather knitting, so it went in the bag. Mom and I spent the first part of my trip glued to Wimbledon in the early mornings, which made for some good knitting time. You can see that I am making some progress. This is a fun project to knit, with a very intuitive pattern, and some interesting shaping.

I didn’t think it would be good for airplane knitting, however, so before I left I did some stash diving for a very small, lightweight project which could be easily carried in my handbag and knitted on the plane and in crowded airport lounges. I remembered that some months ago I had purchased a kit from Loop London to make the Osaka shawl. I ordered the colourway called London Blues. This shawl is so lightweight and sheer and gorgeous, and makes for good travel knitting:

Despite being knitted in silk mohair, it is also suitable for hot weather knitting, because it weighs almost nothing.

I am now back home, and feeling a bit jetlagged and travel-punched. I figure that gives me the perfect excuse to spend the weekend knitting. I had planned to continue working on the linen tee, but last night I had a knitting idea. It was one of those ideas which may turn out great and may be completely crazy. I am going to settle down now for some serious swatching, and will report back to you later.

If you are somewhere hot this weekend, keep some cool summer knitting close by.

Doug and I are in Geneva. We were expecting some sunshine after a cold and rainy spring in England, but apparently we are bad weather attractors as it is rainy and overcast here and apparently now hot and sunny back home. I am expecting this will reverse itself as soon as we step on the plane to head home.

That is the most I shall complain, however, because I am here with old friends, and that is always a good place to be. We spent two days attending a great linguistics workshop in a beautiful villa on the banks of the lake. The cooler temps meant that my piping hot sweater came in handy, and Doug snapped a cool photo:

We only brought carry-on luggage with us, so I had very little space available for knitting. So, I decided to start something new to bring with me. I ordered some lovely blue Kalinka linen before I left:

And I cast on for the Hør no 19 top by Lone Kjeldsen:

I have got the first two pattern repeats done. The photo below is a bit deceptive as it looks somewhat like the yoke of a top being knitted top down, but is in fact a top being knitted in the round bottom up.

Here is a closer view of the stitch pattern:

The linen is scrunchie and a bit hard on the hands to knit. It is also a fairly dark blue which for me means I need good lighting to see what I am doing. However, the linen gets softer once it is washed, and continues to get softer still with time as it gets worn and washed.

I am here for another 4 days and it looks like the thunderstorm-y weather will continue. But I hope to spend time chatting with old friends, eating good food, strolling by the lake (possibly in the rain), lounging and reading, and knitting.

Have a good Sunday, everyone!

Doug: “Hey honey! What did you do today?”

Kelly: “I bought more yarn.”

Doug: “Good. We wouldn’t want you to run out.”

This past week I have had time to knit again and it has been both glorious and frustrating. I decided that first on my list was to finish the piping hot sweater, a design by Lily Kate. I had finished everything but the sleeves in December, and since then it has sat, rather forlornly, next to the couch. From there, it would occasionally send out guilt vibes, tempting me with its wild shades and trying to make me give up the book-writing.

I managed to put in one of the sleeve caps, and the piping treatment down the shoulders looks great:

However, I was having doubts about a number of things. The stitches for the sleeve cap are picked up and then the cap is shaped with short rows. The pattern calls to pick up a stitch in every other row along the arm scythe. Normally, I would aim to pick up 2 stitches for every three rows. I was fretting about this, thinking that the sleeve cap would be drawn in and bunched if the pick up rate was too low, but I decided to trust the pattern (especially since I was knitting with the specified yarn). As it turned out, I think the edge of the sleeve cap looked okay:

But (you knew there was a but coming, hmm?), there was some bunching along the body adjacent to the sleeve, which is apparent in the photos here. See the wrinkle in the above photo? I was quite unconvinced that this was going to work, but I also didn’t want to rip it out and pick up more stitches because I think that the sleeves were already a good width and the sleeve depth was also good. In addition, it was really hard to judge the fit of the shoulders and sleeve caps with only one side worked. So, I knit the other sleeve cap.

These photos look weird because the sweater is so bright that it is hard to capture the contrast between the red and the pink, so we pushed the exposure. It means that all of the wrinkles in the sweater are prominent and the shading is off (which also makes my face look green). I think, however, it demonstrates the general problem. The fit across the shoulders is good, and the width of the sleeves is good. The decrease rate on the sleeve is working. (Note that I’ve changed the decrease rate from the specified once every 4 rows, to once every five rows.) However, while there is no bunching on the sleeve itself, the sweater is bunching on the bodice along the edges of the sleeve seams. I told Doug that I could probably fix this with plastic surgery to enhance my bust, but he claims it would be easier (and cheaper) to rip and re-knit. You can see the bunching on the back, as well, just where the stitch marker is:

After looking at these photos, I sighed. I may have sighed repeatedly and rather dramatically. I contemplated ripping out both sleeves and using a different pickup rate. This thought was very disappointing. In the first place, I wasn’t convinced this would actually solve the problem. In the second place, I was also certain that the sweater was too short, and I had already resigned myself to ripping out all of the ribbing at the waist, and adding an inch or two in length.

After engaging in this sighing behaviour, and drinking coffee, and watching a Lovejoy repeat, during which self-pitying may have occurred, I was struck with an epiphany: When in doubt, block!

My lovely ‘piping hot’ is now stretched out and pinned, having had a bath and a beauty treatment. Time will tell if this works. I will have to wait for it to dry. If it works, it will be all speed ahead. If not, I will swear a bit, and rip out both sleeves, and the waist ribbing. It might take tequila.

Now that I have finished writing the book, I also find myself with time to have fun. Our friends, Philip and June, have been in the UK for a month and we were able to spend their last day with them in London. (June writes a great blog.) We had a wonderful day. We spent part of it at the V&A, where we saw the Fragile Beauty exhibition of photos from the collection of Elton John and David Furnish. The exhibit hadn’t opened yet, but they were having a preview day for members, so we got to see it before the crowds descended. It is a remarkable and eclectic collection. I like this photo June took in the stairways of the V&A:

We had a great meal and then caught the early show upstairs at Ronnie Scotts.

London was bopping for a Thursday evening and we had fun walking around and people watching. Here’s another photo by June:

I have the rest of the weekend ahead of me, and I have managed to stymie my knitting plans by doing a pre-block of the piping hot sweater. Oh no! What will I knit?

It is hard to blog about knitting when no knitting is getting done. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed a significant drop in knitting output. Not to mention blogging output. Perhaps you also noticed that I have frequently alluded to the fact that I had a big project on my plate. A non knitting-related project.

That project was a book! Co-written with a fantastic colleague, the book is about how to make smart personal leadership decisions and navigate midlife career transitions as we lead longer and healthier lives. We completed the book a few days ago. All of my evenings and weekends for months have been consumed with writing, editing, and thinking about this book, which has left little time for knitting. Now that the book has been submitted, I want to knit ALL THE THINGS.

The book, by the way, won’t be published until next February. I will give you a heads up when it gets close to publication. I am very excited to have written a book. I am also excited to have finished it and able to devote some brain space back to knitting. I have just looked at my projects page and can see that in the past year, since we signed the contract to write the book, I have only completed three knitting projects: two t-shirts and a hat.

It is time to get knitting again! If only I had some nice yarn, or pattern ideas, or cool WIPs, or knitting clubs with mystery knit-along projects…