I promised myself I would be good. I would ignore the beautiful pile of Rowan Fine Tweed in 10 luscious shades. I would have will power. I would calmly knit away on the two long, endless (but lovely) projects currently on my needles. I would most definitely not cast on something new. I am here to tell you: I have no will power. I could no more resist casting on this project than I could my first sip of morning coffee.
I am mesmerized. Completely ensnared.
It began with the pattern, the Soumak Scarf Wrap, designed by Lisa Richardson for Rowan 54:
I saw it and coveted it. Despite trying valiently to stop buying more yarn, I put in an order for the wool. And then, the wool arrived:
This wool is Rowan Fine Tweed. I love this yarn. My third ever post on this blog, way back in October 2011, featured the 7 shades of this yarn I had just purchased to knit the Peerie Flooers Hat by Kate Davies. The post, I may add, was titled Yarngasm.
So, given the gorgeous pattern and the fabulous pile of wool, I can see in hindsight that I was seriously underestimating it’s power to ensnare me. I thought just to cast it on and knit a few rows. Once the pattern began to emerge from the needles, I got pulled in. Look at this:
Be still my heart!
Even the reverse side is wonderful:
Absolutely mesmerizing! Knitters, you have been forewarned: resistance is futile!
It’s definitely past time for another Wearability Wednesday post, and as today is not only Wednesday but also cold and grey and very autumnal, I’ll take the time to write one. For those of you new to this blog, Wearability Wednesday (WW) is a semi-regular series in which I look back at some item I have knitted and examine it in terms of its wearability (I use this term mostly in its stylistic sense and not in terms of durability). I am interested in whether the item actually gets worn, and if so, how it gets styled. I recently wrote a post about dresses, in which I highlighted lots of great new dress patterns, so I will use this post to examine my Folded Mini Dress:
I loved this pattern, designed by Lynne Barr for her book, Reversible Knitting: 50 Brand-new, Groundbreaking Stitch Patterns, as soon as I saw it. I knit it in the late summer of 2011. I finished it while on holiday in Umbria, Italy, to celebrate my 50th birthday and my 20th wedding anniversary. My daughter Emma took the photo above and my friend, Mark, the one below. We were experiencing a heat wave and it was nearly 40C when we took these pictures. I am surprised I managed to smile.
When I was knitting this, I was having serious problems with the pattern running way too big. You could have fit two of me in the first try; I had to rip the whole thing out and start again. I switched to a smaller size, and also switched to smaller needles, and still had to add nearly twice as many decreases. I documented it all on my Ravelry page which you can find here. It looks a bit tight in the photos above, but mostly that is because I was sweating madly in the heat and the dress was plastered to my body.
So, here we have a gorgeous dress. How often have I worn it? Well….never. Why? Isn’t it obvious? This dress is much too short. Despite having gone to great lengths to make the dress more fitted, I didn’t shorten it, and in fact am pretty sure that I added some length to the pattern. Perhaps I am very long in the torso. Whatever the reason, this dress looks fabulous as long as I don’t move. Heaven forbid, I should sit down!
At first, I consoled myself with the fact that this dress was not made to be worn by itself as in the above photos. First of all it is wool; knit with the lovely Rowan Felted Tweed, one of my favorite yarns. My plan was always to wear it with a T-shirt underneath, and tights and boots. With tights on, I reasoned, it won’t really matter if it’s a bit short. Earlier this spring, I grabbed Leah and pressed her into camera duty, and we had a photo style shoot for this dress. This is how I envisioned wearing it:
I really love it fashioned this way. I think it looks fabulous. I am wearing it with the leather jacket AnElissa bought me for my 30th birthday. It is stylish but well-loved and worn-in. The necklace was a gift from my Dad over 30 years ago and matches perfectly. The boots are Valentino, and I splurged on them nearly 20 years ago, and love them to pieces. But the fact remains that the dress only looks good here because I have tugged the skirt into place and then not moved until the photo was taken. If I take a step, lift my arms, or sit down, this dress moves out of the “looking great” stage and into the “mom, you’re embarrasing me” stage.
I have spent two years trying to decide whether to rip the dress out, all the way down to the top of the folded cables, add another four to six inches of cables, and then re-knit the bodice. I actually have plenty of yarn left over in the same dye lot. I also know it would go much faster the second time. The pattern has a lot of fiddly bits along the armholes and neckline. This is because the dress is designed so that it could be worn with either side in front, and also so that it can be worn inside out (the reverse side is equally cool). This is one of the things that really attracted me to the pattern in the first place. It is very, very clever. (In fact, the whole book is full of reversible designs, and is really great; I highly recommend it.) I am pretty sure that I would always wear it this way, however, which means if I were to re-knit it, I could get rid of the fiddly bits, and just pick up around the arms and neckline for ribbing in the standard fashion.
Somehow, though, there is always something new to knit, and the thought of ripping and re-knitting this (yet again) just doesn’t appeal. So what to do? Is this beautiful dress destined for the frog pile? Well, it should be noted that a dress which is too short on a 52 year old, looks pretty damned good on an 18 year old:
See! She can jump in it! She can walk in it!
She can even sit in it!
Clearly, the solution to this Wearability conundrum is to give the dress to Leah! Way to go, Leah! You lucked out big time!
My knitting progress over the last few months can be described, if I am being very generous, as slow and steady. This might have worked wonders for the tortoise but it’s not winning me any prizes. I am simultaneously working on two projects which are both progressing very slowly, for very different reasons. First is the lovely Exeter jacket, which I hesitate to admit I cast on over six months ago! My knitting on this has been very off and on, with emphasis on the off. I finished the sleeves months ago, and have been plodding away on the back. I am now just 3 inches shy of being finished with the back:
You can see why it is slow knitting; it is densley cabled, and the pattern is intricate and not easily memorized, with lace inset into the cabling. I also find that the yarn, Brooklyn Tweed’s Shelter, is hard on my fingers, and because of this I can’t knit on it for long. I should point out at this junction that I have already washed and blocked the sleeves and discovered that the Shelter transformed beautifully after washing. I will have to finish this jacket, and wear it for a bit, before I can make an appropriate judgement on this wool.
Though finishing the back will be a big milestone with this jacket, there is still a lot of work left. The fronts are double breasted, and have pockets, and the collar has endless amounts of ribbing. (In case you have forgotten, you can see photos of the pattern, designed by Michele Wang, here.)
The other project on my needles is the beautiful Viajante shawl, which is a cross between a shawl and a poncho and a cowl, and is designed by Martina Behm. This is knit with one skein of Wollmeise Laceweight yarn. I can hereby testify that these skeins are never-ending; surely some magic is afoot because I knit and knit and knit and the ball never gets smaller. Luckily, the yarn is beautiful:
And you can already tell that this piece will have fabulous drape:
Despite knitting on this for months (almost three of them) I still have about a third of the skein left to go. I had Doug snap the photo below so you can get a sense of the current size of this. For some reason, I seem to be glaring at it unhappily.
Now I am a reasonable being; I know that if I just keep at it, I will finish both of these projects (and right in time for the fall). That doesn’t seem to keep me from wanting desperately to cast on something else. Maybe something really small and fast, I tell myself, like a pair of mitts. I can finish them in a week and get right back to these two monsters. Unfortunately, just today I have received an order of yarn which I made over a month ago:
This is a great big pile of Rowan Fine Tweed, destined to be a Soumak Scarf Wrap, designed by Lisa Richardson:
This is clearly not a small, fast project. I would be crazy to cast on another endless project right now, wouldn’t I? But just look at it; isn’t it gorgeous? And look at this yarn:
I am trying to emulate the tortoise – slow and steady wins the race, slow and steady wins the race. On the other hand, it’s not a race. Fortunately, I just do this for fun. I can knit whatever I please. Maybe casting on something new (or dreaming about it) is the knitting equivalent of stopping and smelling the roses? Stay tuned to this space – sooner or later, I’ll finish knitting something.
In my last post, I shared the first day or two of a surprise holiday to Cornwall and Devon. We were, quite unexpectedly, given the use of an apartment in Plymouth for a week (Thank you, Raj!). Our second day in Plymouth fell on the Bank Holiday Monday, the last official day of summer holiday. It was also, by lovely coincidence, Doug’s birthday. We spent the morning lazing around the Hoe, a beautiful public park right on the waterfront in Plymouth (and a 5 minute walk from our apartment).
Plymouth has coffee shops spread along the waterfront and is prime people watching territory. We grabbed a table, I took out my knitting (but of course) and happily spent the morning watching the boats and the people sail by. (Doug alternated his people and boat watching with reading a mathematics journal – there is no accounting for taste.) The girls often lamented the fact that there is a dearth of outdoor pools in England, so I include here a photo of Plymouth’s newly restored Lido. Not too shabby, huh?
In the afternoon, we hopped in the car and drove out to Salcombe, along the Devon coast just east of Plymouth. We picked it for the same reason we picked Rame the day before – we were hoping to avoid the traffic by staying close to town, and the guide books said it was pretty. They did not lie.
Question: Can one find a nice spot to sit and knit in Salcombe?
Answer: Most definitely!
We didn’t have any plans for Doug’s birthday dinner, but while walking through Salcombe, I found a restaurant, called dickandwills, that looked really promising. First, the sign said that it had “possibly the best view in Salcombe”. I love that! “Best view in Salcombe” would not have turned my head, but that “possibly” really grabbed me. (By the way, the view is amazing; click on the link and check out their photos.) And the menu was mouth-watering. The restaurant was closed for that break between lunch and dinner so there was no way to determine if they had a table free. I wandered into the Salcombe Deli across the way, and while purchasing some gluten-free treats, I casually asked the owner if he could hazard a guess as to availabilty at the restaurant that evening. He picked up his phone, called the restaurant’s owner at home, and booked us a table! Our whole trip followed this pattern; I couldn’t believe how nice everyone was. If you are ever on the South Devon coast, go and eat at dickandwills. The food was fabulous, the service was great, the views impressive, and the price reasonable. It was a perfect birthday dinner.
On the Tuesday, we drove to Watergate Bay, just above Newquay on the Cornish coast. Our mission was twofold: I wanted to show Doug the amazing beach at Watergate Bay:
and the lovely Watergate Bay Hotel, which you can see nestled into the cliffs on the photo above. I once spent 4 lovely days here for a knitting retreat! Since then, they have added a spa to the hotel, and its former glory is now surpassed.
The hotel runs a surfing school, and the beach is filled with wetsuit-wearing water sports enthusiasts all year round. (My knitting retreat was in January – there was ice on the beach, and there were surfers even then.) Jamie Oliver’s flagship restaurant, Fifteen, is also there right on the beach. (We tried to get in, without a reservation – they said “We have a free table 5 weeks from now if you want it.”) This is a very windy beach (note that I am wearing my Neon cardigan while standing on the beach in August). This brings us to my second reason for bringing Doug here – it is the best kite flying beach around!
The big kite in the foreground is ours, and that is me flying it! These kites are so big, and the wind so strong, that you have to fight to keep your feet on the ground. They are a blast to fly, and also hard work. Can you tell that I am having fun?
I am not as good with a camera as Doug is; I tried to get a good photo of him flying the kite. He is also better at flying a kite. He does these figure 8 moves where the kite comes crashing down to earth, only to swing around at the last moment and zoom back up to the sky. I managed to get one photo just as he is stopping the mad descent; it takes a lot of strength – you can see his foot leaving the ground. A second later, his whole body was pulled skyward.
On the Wedensday, our destination was St. Ives. This is a town on the Cornish coast famous for being an artist’s hub. There are over a hundred art studios in St. Ives; some are rather touristy, but many are very good. St. Ives also has beautiful beaches, twisted cobblestoned streets, tons of restaurants, coffee shops and bars, and wonderful people watching.
I was unfamiliar with the British beach scene, and so got a kick out of the colourful windscreens surrounding every towel! I also enjoyed some of the configurations of people on the beach – like the giant circle below. All they need is some fabric squares and they could form a quilting bee!
While Doug was busy with the camera, I was chatting with people and – you guessed it – knitting away.
Here I am working on the endless (but lovely) Viajante shawl. I fear I shall never finish this baby! (I include these knitting photos because, after all, this is a knitting blog; I don’t want my dear readers to abandon me for my lack of knitterly content!)
In addition to the fabulous scenery, Doug had an ulterior motive for bringing me to St. Ives. The absolutely top thing to do in Cornwall and Devon, is to have a cream tea. A traditonal cream tea consists of two lovely homemade scones, strawberry jam, to-die-for clotted cream, and a pot of tea. This is a treat I always pass by because I have coeliac’s disease and thus can’t eat gluten. Doug had spent time carefully searching the internet for the best gluten-free tea in Cornwall, and had found it here:
This is the tea room, which is right on the waterfront in St. Ives. We started with lunch, and I had a crab sandwich, which was served on gluten-free bread. It had nothing but crab – lots and lots of crab – no filler, no celery, just crab, on homemade GF bread, with homemade citrus mayonnaise served on the side. And cole slaw made with real clotted cream. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. And that was before the cream tea was served:
These scones were simply perfect. If you are ever in St. Ives, gluten-free or not, you should have a cream tea here. I must also point out that we shared the best pot of tea I have had in ages. Yum! (Totally worth the 2 -hour drive from Plymouth and the hassle with parking.)
Replete from a fabulous lunch, we returned to the car and drove westward along the coast from St. Ives. This is the most beautiful drive. The scenery in this part of the world is truly breath-taking. We stopped in the very cute town of Zennor, which has a lovely church set against the backdrop of rolling hills.
The Coastal Path, which runs for hundreds of miles along the Coast, has a very beautiful stretch between Zennor and St. Ives, which is about 7 miles long. I would love to have hiked it, but at this point in the trip I had developed achilles tendonitis and wasn’t up for it. The path looks like this as you lead out from Zennor:
and has views like this:
That stretch of path is definitely on my to-do list.
The next day, we drove home, but we took a slight detour to drive through the Dartmoor. The Moor is wonderful. Realy, truly wonderful. If you ever get a chance to go there, take it up.
The moor is famous for the wild ponies which roam freely, and in abundance:
And, scattered throughout the moor, are a few very tiny, very picturesque villages.
Driving through the moor takes forever, because every hundred feet or so, you feel obliged to stop the car and stand in awe drinking in the view. If you are Doug, then you must also grab the camera. At one point, he pulled over, took the camera, and walked off; he was gone for 30 minutes. Does this bother me? Not at all:
One of the secrets to a good marriage is to have complimentary hobbies!
For only a five day holiday, we squeezed a lot in! Now that Cornwall and Devon are on our radar, we will definitely return. And I will return to this space soon with real knitting content. Promise!
Last week, a colleague unexpectedly offered us the use of an apartment in Plymouth for a week. Plymouth is on the Southwestern coast of England, from which one can explore southern Devon and Cornwall and the moors. We have never been to that part of the country. How fast do you think I said “Yes”? We rearranged our calendar, hopped in the car, and took off.
This is the last Bank Holiday weekend of the summer, which means traffic. Lots of traffic. The highways were packed driving down here, so we got off the main drags and toodled along little country roads, making a 3.5 hour drive into 7, and enjoying every turn of the road. Since we are staying here for a week, we decided to stay close to Plymouth for the first few days until the holiday crowds diminish.
Yesterday, we drove onto the Torpoint car ferry and explored the little villages on the Rame peninsula and Whitsand Bay, just west of Plymouth. The guidebook said that GPS devices were unreliable out here. This is certainly true. Here is the road the GPS told us to take:
We stopped in the charming little town of Cawsand:
Cawsand has an interesting pirate vibe happening; apparently it has a history as a smuggling port. (Dig the parrot!):
We chatted with some locals about the best place for a walk and they pointed out a stretch of the costal path which leads from the tiny beach at Cawsund, up through a lovely wooded path filled with ferns and glimpses of sea, and lined with flowers:
The trail led to the top of the rise and beautiful views:
We found a little folly and spent some time watching the sea and the boats.
Since this is a knitting blog, it is my duty to tell you that knitting may have occured at this point:
What a spot to knit! Here is a better parspective:
We were on a promintory. So, although it looks like I am sitting with my back to the view, I am actually gazing out at a glorious expanse of blue water. Now, here is the funny part. I am afraid of heights. I clambered onto this piece of rock, took out my knitting and sat there happily knitting away; Doug took some photos; I enjoyed the view. Then, I looked down, and realized that I was sitting at the very edge of a 30-foot drop and I hadn’t even noticed! (Emma and Leah, are you reading this? Are you thinking “Who are you and what have you done with my mom?”) This is where I sat and knit:
Egads! I was totally oblivious, blown away by the views, and now it gives me goose bumps to even think about it.
After our walk, we drove farther west along the beach, checking out many of the towns. We stopped at the town of Polperro, which was overrun with tourists, and looked as if a mad PR guy had designed the place for maximum tourist expenditure. I found it kind of creepy, but id did have some great views at the bottom of the tourist crawl:
Today is Doug’s birthday, so I am off now for a quiet day by the seaside with my guy.
I spend an inordinate amount of time checking out new knitting patterns. I pay attention to trends, see what’s happening with colour and shape. I have a favorites list where I keep track of anything I especially like. This includes things I would like to knit, things I would love to wear, things that would look good on my daughters, men’s knits, garments that I think are interesting or arresting or different, knits that utilize interesting construction details, etc. This week I noticed that the two garments I had just favorited were both dresses.
The first was the Bryn Mawr dress by Alex Capshaw-Taylor (of worldknits), published in the latest issue of Interweave Knits:
I think that this is gorgeous. I want to knit it; I want to wear it. I really love this dress. It jumped right away onto my “Must Knit” list.
The second dress is one that combines a really tailored look with some positive ease. It has very sophisticated details, like in the saddle shoulders and colour blocking, and a gorgeous line, but also looks so comfortable. This was knit by RIlilie (here is a link to the Ravelry project page). She has knit two of them, one in lime and cream and the other shown below, that are prototypes for the pattern which will be released in September. This would look great on either one of my daughters, but they might have to fight me for it. Rililie’s blog, knittingtherapy, can be found here.
copyright rililie
I love the ease of this. It is knit with a wool and cotton blend and has such great drape. I could see wanting lots of these in your summer wardrobe. All you need is a strappy pair of sandals (flats, nonetheless) and you’re set.
Then, the new issue of Twist Collective was published, and once again, I noticed a cute dress:
This is Ossel, by Alison Green. It reminds me so much of a dress that I knit for myself in the early 80s with all-over cables. Knit in worsted weight yarn, with cables within cables and a moss stitch background, it should be chunky, but as you can see from the back, this one is clingy and sexy:
So, what’s going on? Is the dress really making a comeback among knitters? Ravelry has a feature in its Patterns section, where you can enter a common category, like “socks” and it will tell you the top 100 patterns that are trending in this category. I frequently type in something (like “cardigan” or “fingerless mitts”) and see what the top patterns are. I noticed long ago that this doesn’t work well for the category “dress”. Why? Because if you do, virtually all of the top 100 dress patterns are for babies and toddlers. Apparently, knitters knit dresses mostly for the under-3 crowd. (There is an advanced search option, but that misses the point I am making here.) I tried this yesterday and there were only 7 adult dresses among the top 100. These included Still Light (#3), Caviar (#25) and Allegheny (#48) which are all discussed below. The other four are either beach cover-ups or tunics. Despite this evidence, there are some knockout patterns for knitted dresses being released. Here I present a selection of dress patterns released within the past few years that have caught my eye. (There are tons more, so please run your own search too.)
Still Light, by Veera Välimäki of Rain Knitwear, is a very popular pattern. As of today there are 1456 Still Light projects on Ravelry. The original pattern, shown below, is knit in alpaca, but this has been knit in every imaginable yarn and in many different lengths. It has an interesting and unusual shape and is really a great, throw-something-on-to-walk-to-the-shops kind of dress. Easy and comfortable but still fun.
I love the Caviar dress, by Yoko Johnston. If I was a few decades younger, I would knit this in a minute. I think it is adorable, and at the same time looks so comfortable and wearable that you could live in it:
The Allegheny dress, by Thea Coleman, published in Brooklyn Tweed’s Wool People 1, is a great classic office dress. It has lovely features including a chunky, assymetrical cable, fake belt detail, and a cowl collar:
Kirsten M. Jensen is a colourwork master. I love her knitting, and her way with colour and pattern is amazing. (Her Sant’Angelo sweater is a masterpiece; I aspire to it. Some day when I grow up I want to knit like her.) She designed the cute Mekko dress which is “inspired by the Marimekko designer Annika Rimala and her iconic graphic designs as well as the mod styles of the 1960s.” I love it:
(I showed this post to Doug and Mekko was his favorite. Do you think this is because it is so short? Or, do you think it’s because he can remember the 60s and it makes him nostalgic. Hmm….)
Another dress that recently caught my attention is Icon, by Kari-Helene Rain of Purl Alpaca Designs:
I think this has lovely lines, and I love the way it flows. I would definitely not make it in alpaca, however, as in the photo, nor in a natural coloured yarn. I can picture this in a beautiful silk blend hand-dyed yarn in a vibrant jewel shade. Red, anyone?
Emma loves the dress pattern called 50 Shades: Ash, designed by Allison Hendrix. This has very similar lines to the Icon dress, but is distinguished by its deep, plunging back.
I think I would have some problems with all of those buttons down the back. They may be hard to sit on, but there is no denying they look really cute. It is a young, stylish, sexy dress with lots of swing.
The very talented Sarah Wilson of The Sexy Knitter has two dress designs that I really admire. First, is the Principesa dress, which I have showcased on this blog before:
It also has a sexy, plunging back. The front of this dress is really classy, however. It is a great combination, with a stylish front view and a sexy back:
At my age, I love the classiness of the front view, but have troubles with the undergarment question. What could you wear under this? So although Emma is drawn to this for it’s plunging back, I could easily see knitting it for myself with a back that matched the front. It would be uber-elegant and clingy. In a totally different vein, Sarah designed the absolutely fabulous dress Miss Holloway, inspired by Mad Men and vintage 60s style:
photo copyright Emily Brewer
Another fabulous pattern is Audrey Totter, designed by Kristen Hanley Cardozo of Knitting Kninja:
I think this is so elegant and beautiful. I love the gauzy scarf, which makes a really dramatic statement, but I’ve noticed knitters making it without; as you can see, the dress has gorgeous lines by itself. Thus you can make this as a wonderfully fitted but simple shell, or add the scarf for a real statement piece. (I do know if I wore this, the scarf would get tangled around my legs as I walked; I would love to wear it to lounge against my collection of vintage cars, though – I wish!)
Another really cute dress pattern using colourwork is the Woodstock dress by Heather Dixon:
I think this is a great office dress. I love the striped side panels, and also the little shock of colour at the pocket linings. I would, however, make this in a yarn with less of a halo; I think it deserves a crisper silhouette.
I am going to end this post with a dress I simply adore. This is the Katie Summer Dress by Andrea Rangel:
This is a fabulous dress! Look at the back:
Wow, if only I had beautiful, toned arms like this model, I would never take this dress off! Andrea Rangel is a fairly new designer who is creating some really cute and clever designs. She is really someone to keep an eye on.
So, is this the beginning of a strong new trend in knitted fashion? I don’t know, but I sure hope so.
A few days ago, I pulled my half-knitted Exeter jacket out of storage to start knitting again. I was about a third of the way up the back when I put it away a few months ago. Exeter is a very densely cabled jacket. In addition to the cable pattern, which requires some concentration, the jacket has some slight A-line shaping. The perrenial problem I face when I try to start up again on a project that has been put away for awhile, is trying to remember exactly where I was when I stopped knitting. In the case of Exeter, the 16-row repeat of the cable pattern is fairly easy to read from the knitting itself; a few minutes of thought and I could figure out which row of the repeat I should be on. The decreases for the A-line shaping are a different matter. How many sets had I made? When to make the next one? Easy peasy. Here is the piece I was working on:
See the little green removable stitch markers on the right side? I put a stitch marker on each decrease row. This means that I don’t have to count. I always know where the decrease was made.
Perhaps this doesn’t seem revolutionary to my fellow knitters. Perhaps you have always been marking your knitting this way. However, this is a new thing for me, discovered about a year or so ago. This is the way I used to keep track of increases and decreases:
I would write everything down. The one on the left is from my Laresca pullover. It has a chart, in which I note the left side decreases, center decreases and right side decreases in three columns; each row is numbered and circled as I finish the row. The one on the right is from the purple pullover I knit for Leah; this is just the sleeves. I write down every row, numbering each one in turn, and then putting an arrow under each decrease row. You might be able to make out that the first sleeve was too tight, so I ripped and started again. The second I called “sleeve – mach 2”. After finishing it, I knit the second sleeve making the decreases on the same rows.
This is the system I used for years and it has a number of very big drawbacks associated with it. One – it means I have to interrupt the rhythm of the knitting every row to grab a pencil and make notations. (This is a bigger drawback than you may think. The rhythm of knitting is intrinsically pleasing and part of the reason I knit.) Two – I sometimes forget to write down a row. This can be disastrous. Three – it makes my knitting much less mobile as I have to juggle paper and pencil in addition to knitting. And four – if I lose the piece of paper, I am screwed. I cannot tell you how often I have done that – I usually make these scribbles on the backs of receipts, or on napkins, or other such scraps of paper.
It was about a year ago that I noticed (in a way that it sunk into my psyche) that the really good knitters whose work I admired on Ravelry always marked everything (increases, decreases, buttonhole placement, pattern repeats, etc) ON THE KNITTING ITSELF, rather than on a piece of paper. I bought lots of removable stitch markers and I have never looked back.
Above is a photo from when I was knitting the Audrey sweater for Emma. You can see that I use different colour removable stitch markers – green for decreases and orange for increases. I cannot even begin to tell you how much easier this makes my life. For example, I almost always increase and decrease at a different rate than the pattern calls for. If I do this, and don’t keep careful track of what I did, then I can’t make a second sleeve to match the first, or match the front to the back of a sweater. Now, I don’t worry about it, the markers show where everything happened, and I leave them in until all of the knitting is done.
To me, these removable stitch markers are nothing short of a miraculous tool for the modern knitter. Why did nobody tell me this when I started knitting?
Now, I will indulge in what may seem like a sharp change of topic. (It won’t be, but you have to stay tuned for the punch line.) In June, we went to Lebanon for a fabulous family holiday. My husband is a second generation Lebanese-Canadian. His grandparents immigrated to Canada circa 1905. Doug has been to Lebanon many times to visit with his extended family there, and finally succeeded in convincing me and the girls to visit. (I have always been worried about the political situation there which I felt would not be safe.) It was the most lovely family holiday I can remember, with beautiful scenery, fabulous food, and lovely people.
Our cousin Amira planned a great day of extended sightseeing, which ended up in the late afternoon in Byblos (Jbail). Here is a snippet from the Wikipedia entry for Byblos:
Leah is fanatical about history and standing in Byblos was a magical experience. You can stand on the site of Phoenician, Roman and Crusader ruins, along a beautiful coastline. Among the ruins here are the Temple of Baalat Gebal built in 2700 B.C.E. and Byblos Castle, built by 12th century Crusaaders (from the remains of Roman ruins). Byblos is also thought to be the birthplace of the alphabet.
Please note, dear reader, as evidenced in the above photo, how very tiny these stitch markers are. How, you may ask, could this help in the aforementioned predicament? My response: never underestimate the ingenuity of a knitter!
Sitting here in limbo
But I know it won’t be long
Sitting here in limbo
Like a bird without a song
– Jimmy Cliff
The girls left yesterday to move to Canada for university and I am officially an empty nester. Instead of throwing a party, I am feeling rather sad. As a matter of fact, the very thought of their imminent departure has had me in a state of both melancholy and crankiness all summer, and as a result I have not been getting much productive knitting done. Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I interrupted my lovely Exeter jacket to knit a Haruni shawl, which I interrupted to knit a Neon cardigan, which I interrupted to make a Viajante shawl/poncho, which I interrupted to make an Enchanted Rock cardigan. The only one I have managed to finish was the Neon. I can’t seem to commit to any one project because I am melancholic and cranky in equal measures. (Did I mention sad? I am also sad.)
Over the weekend, I decided (rather foolishly) to continue in this interrupted vein to quickly knit a skirt for Emma in the few days before she hopped on the plane. The skirt was very cute – Chevrolette by Antonia Price:
I didn’t have the time to source out any yarn for it, however, and we ended up picking out something that didn’t quite work. It was too tweedy and rough, it hurt my hands to knit with (thus not lending itself to a quick project) and my gauge was too big. I knit like a mad woman on it for a day and a half before realizing it was a futile pursuit. I really like the pattern, however, so I will search out some better yarn for it and make it later in the year.
Despite the fact that I have so many projects on the needles, I keep staring at my knitting basket, wanting to knit something but feeling unmotivated by everything. Now that the girls are gone, I am thinking I need to get my knitting mojo back on track by knitting things that are deeply appealing to me now, even if it means putting some things aside, being selfish or being unproductive.
I realized this morning that I am not enamored of the Enchanted Rock cardigan at the moment. I think it is the colour, which while it looks lovely in the photograph:
really doesn’t suit me. I have decided to put it aside for now. Maybe when I am finished being cranky and out-of-sorts, it will once again appeal to me. I am also putting away the Haruni shawl. I am not liking the variegation in the yarn:
I have actually knit it up to the point where the lace pattern begins, so quite a bit more than this photo indicates. I have realized that all of the Harunis which I like are very simple and plain, with no variegation in the colour. I think that later I might continue with just a little ruffled border and then end up with a small shawl that I could wear more like a scarf. Again, I am not in the mood for it now, so into the basket it goes. I will not feel guilty about putting it aside, even if it is Wollmeise.
This leaves me with the Viajante and the Exeter. I feel as if I keep knitting and knitting the Viajante but the ball of lace never seems to get any smaller. It will be beautiful, however, and it is mindless knitting, so I will persevere. Also, it is purple which is intrinsically pleasing, so it can stay. Right now, however, I will pull out the Exeter jacket again, which I adore completely, and hopefully it will kickstart my knitting mojo. For those of you who can’t remember, here is a photo of Exeter, which is designed by Michele Wang:
I have both sleeves finished:
and about six inches of the back. It is the type of knitting that takes concentration, and I haven’t been in the mood to concentrate on much of anything for a while, but maybe that is what I need right now to keep me distracted. Besides, I can’t wait to wear this and envision snuggling up in it all winter.
If these two don’t push my buttons, I have some other projects simmering on the back burner. I have wanted to knit the Maxfield Cardigan by Amy Christoffers for a long time now. Here is a photo:
I bought the yarn for this months ago. It is Skein Merino Silk Sport, which is 50% silk, 50% merino and 100% lucious:
And if these aren’t enough to keep me happy, I am busy trying to find the perfect sweater to knit for Doug (my options will be the subject of a future post) and I am seriusly considering the Soumak Scarf Wrap from Rowan 54, designed by Lisa Richardson:
In a change of subject, I would like to thank Vi (pronounced Vee) from Girl Meets Yarn who nominated me for a Word Press Family Award. I hadn’t heard of Vi before, but I went and checked out her blog which is really cute. It is hard not to like someone who not only knits and writes well, but plays the flute in a marching band! Thanks, Vi!
And I thank all of you, dear readers, for putting up with my rather distracted and poorly crafted post today. Hopefully I shall pull myself out of limbo soon, get some knitting done, and remember how to write.
Last August, while on holiday in Vancouver, I wrote a post about the lovely yarn and buttons I had just scored to make the Enchanted Rock cardigan, designed by Jennette Cross. Here is a photo of the cardigan:
Although I was excited about the pattern and pleased to have been able to purchase the identical yarn (The Fibre Company Acadia in Strawberry and Amber), something else always managed to catch my knitting fancy and I never started the project. A few days ago, while my brain was still on holiday (read my last post), I decided, rather foolishly, to cast this on. I was met immediately with a simple road block. The cardigan is knit from the top down, utilizing a provisional cast-on with the pink yarn. I have of course used a provisional cast-on before, but not very often and truth be told, I couldn’t remember how to do it. Well, as we all know, this is exactly why search engines were invented.
So, I searched for provisional cast-on and found tons of sites, all with detailed instructions for the many different techniques for making a provisional cast-on. But, please recall dear reader, that my brain was gone; I looked at many different sets of instructions and they were beyond the capacity of my severely diminished reasoning. And then, I found myself looking at this post by TECHknitting. If you don’t know TECHknitting, you should. This site is a veritable encyclopedia of knitting know-how. The post starts with a description of what a provisional cast-on is (I love this! – she calls it “a casting-on designed to be taken out” – a totally brilliant and succinct description.) The page ends with very detailed instructions. In between, however, is the part that caught my eye. I will quote it here in all it’s brilliance:
Q: Provisional cast on seems like a lot of trouble–is there another way? Yup, I think so. I myself hardly ever use a provisional cast-on. Instead, using waste yarn, I make a regular cast-on and knit a couple of extra rows. Next, I switch to the “real” yarn. When done, I snip one stitch of waste yarn, ravel it out, and there are loops of real yarn waiting to be picked up. These loops are nice to work with because they’re tensioned perfectly to the fabric. In other words, because the real yarn loops come from a couple of rows into the fabric, they aren’t distorted by the casting-on.
Even without a brain, I could see the advantage of this. I just find some extra yarn (this being a not difficult task in my household) and cast on like I always do. I don’t need to know how to do a provisional cast-on, or learn anything new. So I did:
The blue yarn is the little bit of scrap yarn I picked up around the house. It will be cut off later, and the stitches will be slipped back on the needle so that I can knit the trim with the amber coloured yarn. Fantastic! Believe me: You will make your life so much easier if you take a bit of advice from the experts!
(I must, however, admit to you that I knit the first 8 rows of this cardigan 4 times, ripping out each time, growing more and more frustrated, before I figured out the pattern and got it right. So it seems as if a brain is still a useful part of one’s knitting arsenal.)
My body might be going to work every day, but my brain is definitely on holiday. It all started, in a predictable fashion, when I went on holiday with my family last month. When you are on holiday it is a very good thing if your brain comes along for the ride. Luckily, my brain cooperated and I spent a week in which I never thought about work. The day we got back, we all came down with a ghastly bug, which meant we spent a week being truly, horribly ill and then two weeks being queasy, pale and shaky. Unfortunately, work intruded on this time and I dealt with it as well as I could, but my brain decided it was still off-duty thank you very much. And this was followed by a heat wave which is now stretching into its second week. I love the heat so am not complaining, but clearly my brain has used this opportunity to put up a metaphorical “Off fishing” sign, and shows no intention of returning to duty any time soon.
When I packed for my holiday, I took far too much knitting. I took my Neon cardigan, which was done except for the finishing, and I took the back of my Exeter cardigan, a densely cabled piece. Both of these required more than the normal amount of concentration. Why did I take them on holiday? I am not sure. I think I imagined sitting by the side of the pool with my feet up, gazing at the view and knitting. What I didn’t realize was that when you go somewhere new (Lebanon) to visit family that you have never met, and furthermore, when that family runs into the hundreds of people, you don’t spend your time gazing at the view and knitting. I loved absolutely every second of my holiday, and Lebanon is truly a wonderful, magical place, full of absolutely fantastic people. It was not the place to take the kind of knitting that demanded concentration.
Luckily, at the very last minute (while the taxi was pulling up to the door), I threw a skein of Wollmeise Lace-garn into my bag, and printed out a copy of the pattern for Viajante, a shawl (of sorts) by Martina Behm. This is the skein of wool:
It is really a gorgeous blend of purples and blues which I had purchased at Knit Nation 2010 in London. That venue, by the way, was the first time I had ever come into contact with Wollmeise yarn. They had the most amazing display of wool that I have ever seen, before or since, and practically started a stampede by yarn buyers. I kid you not; it had to be experienced to be believed. While there, I purchased three skeins of Wollmeise Pure, and then couldn’t resist this skein of Lace-garn, even though I had no plans for it, and don’t often knit with laceweight yarns.
A skein of Lace-garn has 1591 metres per 300 gram skein. My skein weighed in at 338, so it has even more. (Wollmeise skeins are often generously overweight.) Do you have any idea how long it takes to hand wind that many metres of laceweight yarn into a ball? Answer: it takes a very long time. Eventually, the whole family got into it. Emma and I took turns winding while a number of cousins lent a hand. (Note that this was done by the pool, in front of a lovely view.)
Viajante is a completely gorgeous pattern. It is a sort of a combination of shawl and poncho, and is a really clever, original design. I loved it the minute I first saw the pattern on Ravelry. Here are a couple of the pattern photos:
copyright Martina Behm
copyright Martina Behm
Even though I loved this pattern straight off, and even had the perfect yarn for it sitting in my stash, I still had no intention of ever making it. This was for two reasons. First, the idea of knitting this enormous shawl in laceweight in stockinette seemed like an act of torture. Surely, I reasoned, it would take a year to knit and cause me to pull out all of my hair in the meantime. Second, even though I think it is completely gorgeous I really couldn’t visualize myself actually wearing it.
Enter Rachel. Rachel is a colleague of mine at the university, and the only one who knits. She gave a talk a few months ago, and I went to hear it. The talk was truly fascinating, but I must admit I could not keep my eyes off the Viajante shawl which she had just finished knitting, and which she wore to give her talk in, in an obvious ploy to make me jealous. As soon as the talk was done, I ran up and asked her if I could touch it. “Here,” she said, pulling it off, “Try it on! I knew you would want to.” I was completely smitten. Would I wear this? Absolutely. I decided at that point that if I was ever insane enough to want to knit endlessly in stockinette with laceweight yarn, I would knit myself a Viajante.
Viajante can be worn as a poncho or as a shawl. It is knit in a tube. It is totally mindless knitting (and when I say that I really mean it – there are hundreds upon hundreds, maybe even thousands, of tiny, laceweight stitches on tiny needles knit in the round). It is the perfect “my brain is on holiday and I can’t be bothered to think about anything” knitting. You could knit this while sleeping if necessary. You could definitely knit it while laughing and talking and eating fabulous food with hundreds of newly-met relatives. You could also definitely knit it while recovering from the flu and barely hanging in there. You could certainly knit it in 30+ degree heat with humidity, even while imbibing gin.
So, my friends, here you have it: what to knit when your brain takes a holiday. Do yourself a favour and send your brain packing today. You won’t regret it.
