Knit-A-Ganza Summer 2012

Summer is made for knitting. So are winter, spring and fall for that matter. I had a busy summer of embarking on new projects, finishing older ones and just enjoying the craft. Here are a few of the newly finished items.

This scarf was finally completed this summer. I believe I began it in 2003 and worked on it when we traveled to New Zealand. Then it kind of languished. I guess this proves that even after a long pause, things can come to completion. Knit in mitre pattern, the scarf is made from alpaca yarn. It is called the Van Gogh Stole.

This is a close up of the beaded fringe. I think the prospect of this fringe is what kept me from finishing for so long. It wasn’t actually that bad.

About a million years ago, we made a pilgrimage to Morehouse Farms retail store. I believe we were actually meeting with the authors for a book we had under contract. I bought the yarn for the Kentucky Sweater. I have always loved Morehouse Farms Merino. It is barely even plied and soft and warm. It is so little processed that there are bits of straw to be found. That doesn’t bother me at all. I love it and the smell of the wool left by the lanolin still in it.

I began this sweater when Ellie and I traveled out to California to look at schools. It was April 2010 and we were checking out Occidental. We stayed in Pasadena and Alex drove up from Camp Pendleton for the weekend. We also got to see my longtime friend, Ann Harnagel. I remember how irked I was to discover after four inches of knitting in the round that I had done the second most stupid knitter’s trick and twisted my cast on. Off went the entire mess only to begin again. The pattern required a bit of attention and there are two rows which were mistakes, but I don’t think anyone but me can find them. I don’t usually leave mistakes, but they would have been a bear to fix.  The sweater knit up small and I wasn’t sure I really liked it despite the fuchsia and green brightness. I blocked it larger and all is well. Should be comfy with blue jeans. Not my favorite finished project, but it may grow on me.

This sweater is knit with Seacolors Yarn. I had the yarn, but started the sweater last year when I was going to the New York Sheep and Wool Festival. Nanney Kennedy always has a booth there and I just love her yarn and patterns. I figured if I started a sweater with the yarn, I wouldn’t feel the need to buy any more . It pretty much worked. The pattern is the Low Tide Crossover Vee Pattern from the book, Shear Spirit. I was almost done with the sweater in April and went onto Etsy to see if I could find some buttons. I found these gorgeous glass buttons made by a woman named Nikki Ella Whitlock. Her site on Etsy is Inspirali. She is amazingly talented. Check out her blog. Anyway, I found the buttons I wanted on her Etsy site, but when I wrote her she had just sold them. I explained to her that they were to go with a sweater I was making and she said that she had sold them to a neighbor and would just “run round to see if they would switch”. They did and I have the gorgeous buttons. Next week is New York Sheep and Wool so I may just wear my new sweater.

Baby sweaters are fun to knit. They go so fast. This one is knit with yarn from my friend and former colleague Doris Cooper’s father’s sheep. The yarn was sport weight. I picked a stitch pattern out of Barbara Walker to give the sweater some texture and designed the pattern on Sweater Wizard. I love collecting buttons and it is always a treat to find some which are just perfect in my inventory. It is a cute little sweater. I have no idea what I will do with it.

Knitting socks is a love/hate kind of thing. I love the turning of the heel and the fact that it is such a small project. I don’t actually love wearing hand knit socks. It sounds awful to say, but I like my colorful Little MissMatched socks better. I do like knitting Wendy Johnson’s patterns and this comes from her book, SOCKS FROM THE TOE UP. This is the Lace Socks pattern which I have now knit several times. It has a simple repeat which is fun to do and the socks are very pretty. These are knit in Lorna Lace’s Sock Yarn and I love the colors.

Here’s another extended project. I actually have no idea when I started this sweater. I know I bought the pattern at Stitches East from the Great Yarns! booth, but I have no idea what year it was. It was, however, quite a long time ago. This sweater was not that much fun to make. The yarn is an extremely soft alpaca and the colors are gorgeous, but the body is very wide and required yards and yards of stockinette. There is a knitted cord defining the entrelac which was a b*tch. The entrelac was fine and I just alternated whatever colors I wanted. I hope this will be something I enjoy wearing, but it is very, very wide. Of course, the pooch in the photos is just gorgeous.

I expect there are a few other things which I made this summer and which have slipped my mind. You might say I was nonetheless pretty busy. I want you to know that I could never do this without the unfailing support and unwavering commitment of my feline compatriots, Zoe and Xena. They know what knitting is really for.

Summer Knitting and WIPS

There is a bag of brand new yarn sitting in the Blue Room* waiting for me. This yarn was bought in April at Webs in Northampton when I was at the Friends of Smith College Libraries board meeting. This yarn was was purchased to make two sweaters for Ellie. One is an adaptation of a design by Fiona Ellis from her book, Inspired Fair Isle. The other is a pattern I saw in Knitter’s I believe that just looked like something Ellie should have. Ellie was with me and approved both choices and picked her colors and yarn.

I have written about my yarn diet which has been ongoing (sort of) for the past three years. Having accumulated a shocking amount of yarn, I decided I needed to stop purchasing. I felt almost nauseous at the thought of so much yarn. Like I had eaten a big, heavy meal and needed to go on an instant diet. There have been a few caveats to this diet–one is purchasing yarn with which to knit Ellie sweaters. I have written about that previously I believe. There have been a few other slips, falls off the wagon so to speak. One was a little problem with the Sock Yarn Club at Knit Purl in Portland, Oregon. I couldn’t keep up with the Sock Club, but I loved the way they packaged the kits. I could knit socks for a very long time with the stockpile of sock yarn which kept growing until I finally got the strength to not re-up. Another too big meal until I pushed away from the table.

So, the bag of new yarn is calling to me, but I am not listening. My fingers are in my ears. NaNaNaNa!  I have decided instead that I need to devote the summer to working through my WIPS (works in progress to non-knitters). I think it is the logical extension of the yarn diet.

Scattered about the Blue Room and in the Yarn Corner in our basement are a panoply of projects in various states of completion. I always have multiple projects on needles, but I also have to confess that I stall out sometimes and things just sort of sit. Using the new yarn for Ellie’s sweaters as the carrot, I am going to try to finish off some of these lingering projects. I can’t work on Ellie’s sweaters until I knock off a few WIPS.

The first one I picked up again is a mitred scarf kit in alpaca that I must have started close to eight years ago. I know I was knitting on it in Auckland which must have been back in 2004 or so. I picked it up a couple of weeks and have finished knitting the squares and am in the process of crocheting the edging. It gets a beaded fringe and then it will be done. That will be one down. One less bag of yarn sitting around the house.

The next project I re-commenced is also in alpaca. It is called Jaywalking by Twisted Sisters. Knit on size three needles, this thing has taken on a life of its own.

It is ultra wide and required long row after row of knitting on small needles. I have finally finished the body and am working on the “corded tuck” which I don’t quite understand. After that I need to do the entrelac and then just seam it up. I am going to nail this one once and for all. Than I shall move on to another and another. I want to get my total of WIPS in progress under control by August 1st so I can have begun working on Ellie’s sweaters before she returns from Peru. It is my plan.

*While we hardly live in a mansion, we have developed the habit of naming the rooms in our house. We have the Blue Room, the Green Room, etc. It is kind of fun to me to call them colors rather than by purpose.

Hedgehog Mitts

Hedgehog mania doesn’t stop with dictionary phrases or cute pictures. Amazingly, I found a pattern at Morehouse Merino for Hedgehog Mittens. I had to order the pattern.

Before I could begin the hedgehog mittens, I had to finish the sweater Ellie requested. This was the outcome of a visit to Northampton. Ellie complained of the cold. It is really cold in Northampton. She actually asked if I would make her a sweater. Given that none of my children have been willing to wear things I had knit for them since they started dressing themselves, this was a big deal. We headed straight in to Northampton Wools and bought some gorgeous purple Merino and a pattern of Ellie’s choice. It turned out quite nicely. I am pleased to report that Ellie wears her sweater constantly.

Emboldened by this triumph, I began the hedgehog mittens. I felt a certain impetus to knit quickly lest Spring overtake me and the warm weather obviate the need for mittens. The need for speed was somewhat hampered by the fact that the hedgehog mittens featured quills on the back of each hand. Each “quill” required using a cable cast on to cast on four stitches and then binding off each of the four stitches. A plain knit stitch separated each quill and each row of quills was separated by a row of knit stitch. Nonetheless, it was a little like climbing up and down hills with my needles and geometrically increased the number of stitches knit for each mitten.

Well, the mittens are done. They look pretty cute. They are wrapped and ready to post to the girl. Let’s hope for some cold weather for just a bit longer.

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The Spirit of Creativity

Taking pictures of things I have made is not something natural to me. I am not an archivist by nature. Everyone in my family will say that I have little tolerance for hanging on to stuff. They always accuse me of giving their (unused) treasures away if they can’t find something. At the office, I used to have regular clean up days where we disposed of outdated files and documents. I used to love to say, “This isn’t the Library of Congress.” That probably bugged a lot of people who don’t share my proclivities.

However, visual recordings of things I have made are often revelatory. I will look at a picture and say to myself, “I made that?” I won’t recall making the item, but very often (and I don’t meant to sound boastful), I will be surprised at the creativity involved in what I have made.

I felt that way today when I put on a sweater which I hadn’t worn all winter. Needless to say I have a lot of sweaters and with the mild weather, this very warm sweater hadn’t had a turn. I love this particular sweater for several reasons. First off, I love the color and the texture of the yarn. It is a warm fuchsia color and, because the yarn is Manos, the color and the thickness of the yarn are a bit uneven. It looks very warm and a little rustic, but just a little. The pattern I used to make the sweater is from Elizabeth Zimmerman. It is her Bog Jacket.

Anyone who has read or knit from Elizabeth knows that her instructions are a bit intuitive and she offers lots of suggestions for modifications. The Bog Jacket is a bit boxy and one of the modifications I made was to tailor the waist so that the jacket fits with more style. Another alteration I made is to fold back large cuffs at the sleeve. I chose to knit an attached i-cord all around the edges, up and down the front, around the bottom of the jacket and at the folded back sleeves. The i-cord is a lovely navy blue from the same yarn. I really like the contrast of the deep pink with the dark navy. Finally, I chose to make the front closing from i-cord which loops on each side of a frog closing.

Putting on the sweater was a bit like looking at a photo, I was intrigued and amazed that I had created what I had made. This made me think about creativity. When am I most creative and when do I feel like I have nothing imaginative to give? A big part of it has to do with stimulation. The more outside stimuli I take in, the more ideas I seem to have. It doesn’t necessarily have to be related to knitting or crafting. It is the stimulation of having any kind of idea or inspiration. It just seems to get the neurons firing and Bang! Pow! New ideas keep flooding into my head. These ideas may be business ideas, they may be ideas about what to cook and, very often, they are ideas for something I want to make or some new way to do something I have done before in an innovative way.

Creativity is a state where I feel alive and energized and my mind is working overtime. It is a state of excitement and fulfillment. It feeds on itself. Feeling a lack of creativity is a dead zone. It is self-inflicted because it means that I have not put myself into contact with experiences which challenge me and expose me to new ideas.

The Bog Jacket in Manos

The Yarn Diet

 

It frightens me when I calculate the number of years since I became a knitter. When people ask me how long I have been knitting, I shrink from responding. How in the world could someone as young as I am have been knitting for over forty years? That is a lot of stitches. You know how they always like to calculate how many times something could go around the world? Well, maybe the corollary to that is how big a garment I could have knit with all those stitches—a blanket which could cover our house? An even larger building? Perhaps the town of Rye Brook?

Of course the by product of all those years of knitting has been yarn accumulation. Knitters go to yarn stores. Knitters see yarn they can’t live without and they buy it. It accumulates at a rate that can never be matched by output. Knitters may be more or less forthcoming about how much yarn they have. Some revel in excess, some squirrel their yarn away in discreet caches. Some inventory their stockpile, others go to their maker leaving relatives to sift through bewildering scavenger hunts of half-finished projects and orphaned treasures.

 I believe I have written about this before, but at the beginning of 2009 I went on a pretty serious yarn diet. It had become clear even to me that my stash was a lot like my own private yarn store. Now, I think there are a lot of knitters with this situation. They may or may not be open about it, but I had started to feel like I had just ingested way too many desserts. There was yarn everywhere. I had yarn in plastic bins under my bed. I had a dresser full of yarn. There were three large plastic bins of yarn in the Blue Room and more yarn in plastic bins in the basement. I felt a little ill when I thought of all that yarn and it was time to go on a diet.