Knitting on Impulse

Moved!

2007-02-15T10:42:00.000-06:00

The deed is done. I just about expired with anxiety during the import / export process, but it's all there now - I will be at http://impulsivearts.typepad.com/knitting/ from now on. The feeds are processed and available, Bloglines and other aggregators appear to be picking it up just fine.

I am very excited about the new possibilities - such as hosting my free pattern pdf's right on the blog, etc. etc.

See ya there!

Valentine Date

2007-02-13T23:07:00.000-06:00

Today being one of the two days of the week on which both kids are elsewhere occupied for a few hours, Rob and I played hooky from all the stuff we could and should have been doing, and went on a date.

We began with a little trip to the top, where it was simultaneously snowing, densely foggy, and brilliantly sunny.

The falling snow muffled all sound, making for an eerily magical atmosphere.

Since we couldn't see where we were going, Rob felt it would be an excellent time to introduce me to my first black diamond run, which admittedly, didn't look all that bad down the initially visible five or six feet. It got different in a hurry. I'm proud to say, I only fell down once, and none of my gear came off. Truth be told, a modest interlude of stark terror was an effective antidote to the chronic worry that's been niggling around my psyche for the last few days - sort of clears the pipes, if you will.

The medicinal effect was undeniably heightened by knitting and beer, though.

(Yes, I forgot my sunglasses.)

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

2007-02-12T11:20:00.000-06:00

This weekend was.... not like last weekend. So I knitted. A lot. All the way to the underarm division point.I joined the second ball at what I though was the second purple stripe, and it was actually the first, which means the sequence is no longer precisely regular. I think it looks just fine, and I am going to call it a design feature. Organic. Artistically asymmetric. Shunning the ploddingly predictable. I will, however, try to make the sleeves match one another.

I love these colours - I can't believe I am just now "discovering" Noro.

As for the weekend.... this is a fickle sort of business. My response is to analyze the events in detail, sort the data, and formulate a plan. I divide things up roughly as follows: First: factors beyond my control - concurrent events, weather, dumb luck. Not much to do there but bring plenty of yarn. Second: things I could do differently, in order to be more attractive to potential customers. This requires some thought to distinguish between genuinely useful improvements and wise business choices, and the fact that one simply can't (and shouldn't) be all things to all people.

And there is always another day,

another magical country to be explored.

I Do Still Knit....

2007-02-09T08:52:00.000-06:00

Thank-you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who commented so kindly and thoughtfully yesterday. It helped a great deal to see the issue with fresh eyes. My initial misgivings centred around the belief that giving is best done with "no strings attached." (That and the whole discomfort with money thing - I suspect that women's relationship with money and (under)valuing their work would be great material for a blog essay.... but I digress).

I can however, wrap my mind around the concept of story. It seems to have considerable commonality with blogging - putting oneself out there in narrative form - saying, "this is me - read me.... or not". Blogging too, must strike that delicate balance between authenticity and TMI. And as Rachel said so eloquently, a small business has a story, which is an integral part of the product, and if told with authenticity and integrity, need not be manipulative.

Now for a bit of knitting. My knitting mojo has been discombobulated this week. The Silk Garden Clapotis is halfway through the second ball, waiting for the third to arrive in the mail, in case the colours at the transition are too wildly contrasting and require creative splicing.
(The yarn does splice beautifully, and I can see it would be fabulous for felting - I have to pry the dropped stitches apart to get them to unravel.)

The mohair/silk scarf is pretty, but definitely a product, rather than a process knit. (I bet it would be a lovely process knit in the recommended Icelandic wool, though.) I have set myself the task of finishing one repeat a day in order to stifle the urge to chuck it to the bottom of the WIP pile. (There are 37 repeats, not counting the borders, so the idea of wearing it to a show this month is pretty much out.)

The grey sweater with the mathematical sleeves has stalled at the 2/3 point in the face of a recent epiphany: I hardly ever wear wool pullovers. Indoors, I invariably grab a cardigan for warmth - because I like to take it on and off throughout the day - I get a little chilled sitting still at the bench or the computer, and then when I hustle around cooking or chasing kids, I get too warm.... And an outerwear pullover needs to be a bit on the roomy side for layering. Therefore, I am debating whether it is remotely possible to reinforce and cut a hemmed border. Would the added bulk of picking up stitches along the double thickness be unsightly? I suppose I may have to knit a little test hem and try it.

While pondering that dilemma, I did the only sensible thing, and started another cardigan.This is Noro Kureyon, purchased at the same time as the Silk Garden, when Ram Wools had their anniversary sale. I'm not entirely sure how long it's going to be, since I have 1000 yards of Aran weight yarn, and I'm knitting it at a tighter-than-ball-band gauge (inspired by personal experience and the Catherine Lowe philosophy of knitting - tighter gauge really does yield a more shapely result.) It will be a simple stockinette cardigan, with slightly fancy ribbing at the borders. I think I will go with circular raglan shaping, so as to keep the striping consistent across the upper body and shoulders, and then steek down the middle. (The body ribbing is, of course, knit back and forth, since I am actually planning ahead this time).

And a little crochet project from this week, which is coming with me to the Fairmont:

So I've Been Thinking

2007-02-07T15:39:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking for some time about the idea of "giving back". One of my remaining moral misgivings about this big life change is the fact that I have left a fundamentally humanitarian profession (and one within which I invariably gravitated to caring for the neediest and least privileged segments of humanity) for something that consists, on the face of it, of making pretty baubles for folks with a decent disposable income.

In all fairness, the Other profession was also a large bureaucratic machine, in which the opportunities for individual difference-making were far more limited than one might imagine. (Not to mention the fact that it was not-so-slowly destroying my health.) And I have been pleasantly surprised, and at times even astonished, by the degree to which the love and passion and meaning which I pour into the things I make transfers to and affects the people who purchase and receive them. But I also cannot escape the fact that the ability to choose to do something I love, and be paid for that, is a rare privilege, and one that depends on circumstances largely not of my own making.

The majority of the world is concerned with basic survival - finding food and water for themselves and their children, avoiding armed conflict. They can't afford to be choosy about "fulfilling work" - they struggle to find anything at all that will generate enough to barter for their next meal. I think I have learned enough rudimentary economics to let go of the belief that hanging onto my own misery would somehow atone for theirs, but I absolutely cannot accept this happy life as though it were somehow all mine to keep.

So, starting now, 10% of all my net sales profits will go to Medecins Sans Frontieres. (And of course, as a knitter, I will send the numbers to Stephanie for Tricoteuses Sans Frontieres.) I suppose it might be prudent to wait for the end of the year, tot up the numbers, see if my business is in the black overall, etc. etc. but I feel a sense of urgency to just get on with it.

Which brings me to one other small ethical dilemma: should I advertise that fact? I see folks advertising that "a percentage of all.... goes to...... charity" all the time, but to do it myself feels uncomfortably like a marketing ploy. I'm not even sure if it is truely an ethical issue, or perhaps simply reflects my innate discomfort with self-promotion.

Not So Fast

2007-02-06T12:57:00.000-06:00

The good news: the pattern (Meg Swansen's Lace Shawl from the Fall 2005 Vogue Knitting - sorry about leaving out the details earlier) is dead easy and this mohair-silk is incomparably lovely stuff.

The bad news: I am finding it mindbogglingly finicky yarn to knit with. Most definitely NOT the "knit without looking" sort of project I had in mind, and unless there is a very steep kinesthetic learning curve, I don't have a snowball's chance in Hades (or right here, for that matter - it's been worryingly warm for the last week) of tossing this oh-so-fetchingly over my shoulders before the end of the month.

This represents an hour's knitting:

Now, I'm no Wendy, but I normally zip along at a pretty respectable pace. Granted, I had to redo the provisional cast-on (my first ever) a couple of times, but still.... Yeesh. It's the k1p1 into the double yarnovers that is getting to me - that second yo loop just glues itself to the following stitch, and the little hairy bits stick together, looking for all the world like a single loop. Thankfully that maneuver only occurs on two of the 8 rows in the pattern repeat.

Weekend Recap

2007-02-05T08:53:00.000-06:00

The weekend was a resounding success - so much so that I don't have any knitting to show you! Not only were sales good, but I had some lovely serendipitous conversations that were validating and encouraging in areas where I had harbored deep self-doubt. As for my "high end" worries - the hotel staff could not have been more gracious and welcoming, and I felt completely at home in that environment. Odd in a way, and reassuring - because I have never partaken of social elitism or its trappings - even the forms normally taken for granted in my former profession - and I half feared I would be out of my depth in an environment with such extreme wealth. It appears that professionalism and people skills will carry the day.

I am exhilarated and exhausted, and have a large "to do" list to tackle before next weekend - but there will be knitting. Because hotel lobbies are exceedingly drafty in winter - and an artist who knits really ought to have a selection of stunning cardigans and scarves with which to warm her shivery self.

Sitting Knitting

2007-02-03T09:38:00.000-06:00

I've given careful thought to what to do with my hands today while the throngs of ski tourists wander by en route to the spa, the slopes, their rooms. Knitting of course, but it has to be simple enough that I can appear engaged with my surroundings, ready to make friendly eye contact at a moment's notice. And, ahem.... a classy and upscale project. Each of the series of informative emails which I have received from the Arts Council and the hotel itself have gone to great pains to remind me (all the artists, not me personally) that this is a "high end" venue, and that our presentation and appearance should reflect that esthetic - specifically, "no torn jeans or tacky t-shirts", "cleaning up any mess we make" and "showing up on time". And "did we mention, this is a high end venue". I'm not entirely sure what to make of this, but I can only assume that the level of conscientious professionalism I take for granted is not necessarily universal in the artistic community.

Well, I think the Silk Garden Clapotis will make the grade. And if I finish the second ball (the third is in the mail), I plan to start this - it's a simple pattern, relying more on big needles than complexity, but still very pretty:

Though not in Icelandic wool, rather this:

I think laceweight mohair / silk qualifies as "high end"!

Silent Poetry

2007-02-02T08:33:00.000-06:00

I do not partake of poetry nearly as often as I intend to. While that would be fine stuff for a resolution, this day of silent poetry reading is also a way to remember.

Initial

Out of infinite longings rise
finite deeds like weak fountains,
falling back just in time and trembling.
And yet, what otherwise remains silent,
our happy energies—show themselves
in these dancing tears.

Rainer Maria Rilke, via

Normal!

2007-02-01T08:41:00.000-06:00

Wow - who knew there were so many phone phobes in the world? I feel totally validated and normalized! (And also still bereft of my birthday present - guess I'll have to suck it up and feel the fear one day soon.)

Not much knitting of yarn going on for the last day or so, as I have been working to finish up a couple of necklaces and round out my earring collection (as well as about a million humdrum business-ish tasks - but it's a very good thing as an entrepreneur to have many pressing things to do, because it generally means things of an income-generating nature are happening. Or about to happen.) I figure these weekends will be winners one way or another - either I will be busy selling my work, or I will have eight quiet hours of knitting each day.

Speaking of yarn, I am doing a terrible job of responding personally to comments this week, so I will mention that the Silk Garden colourway is No. 249 - described online as "rose & brown", although there is a lovely blue section that is considerably larger than the rose bit. Here's a gratuitous close-up:

While we're on the topic of blue ( just brimming with original segues today...) remember this?

It is one of my favorite colour images this year, but just didn't lend itself to a stranded colour pattern (though I agree absolutely with Judy's suggestion about dyeing.) The theme of rushing water over translucent blue-green ice worked its way into this necklace, instead:

The stones are chrysoprase and Peruvian blue opal, and the droplets are crocheted in fine silver.

Mostly News

2007-01-31T08:36:00.000-06:00

But first, a progress pic:

This is most of the first ball - I love the colours, but I can clearly see that two will not be enough. Here's hoping I can still get the same dyelot.

First bit of news: I have made the leap to Typepad for my jewellery / other art blog - and am liking it so much that I plan to move this blog over as well. I'm going to take my time, though and get the formatting and extras exactly as I want them before exporting all my posts. If you care to check out the jewellery blog, it can be found here: http://impulsivearts.typepad.com/impulsivearts/

Second bit of news: My portfolio was apparently well received, because I was notified yesterday evening that three of the four high end hotels in Whistler have selected me to display and sell my work in their lobby this month. The event is called "Made in Whistler" and is a component of an arts festival running throughout February as part of the lead up to the the 2010 Olympics. I will be working every Sat/Sunday in February from 11 am to 7 pm. If you happen to be in Whistler during that time and care to do a little blog-stalking, here's my schedule:

Feb. 3&4 Hilton

Feb. 10&11 Fairmont Chateau

Feb. 17&18 Hilton

Feb. 24&25 Four Seasons

I'm off to flit about in a (happy) tizzy of last minute preparations!

Weirdness

2007-01-30T08:45:00.000-06:00

The Silk Garden Clapotis is indeed knitting up in addictive fashion.It is actually about twice this big now, but there is no point in photographing it in the wee dark hours. I'll shoot it again around noonish today.

I adore the subtlety of the colour changes.

--------------------------------------

Since Sherri tagged me a few days ago, I suppose the time has come to step up to the plate and confess Six Weird Things About Me. (My darling husband's reaction was "only six?")

1) I am an autodidact. (I discovered that term recently, and I think it sounds vastly more sophisticated than "self-taught".) I taught myself to knit around age 10, and have learned the craft entirely from books, trial-and-error, and now blogs. Though I KIP freely, I have never had the experience of knitting in the company of other knitters. I never felt wistful about that until I entered the blog world; however, with small children and a limited budget, I'm not likely to go jetting off to fibre festivals any time soon, so blogging will do for a while yet.

2) I am phone phobic. (Though after reading other memes, I was gratified to see that many admirable, high functioning folk share this weirdness.) I have no difficulty once I am actually engaged in conversation, but I will procrastinate and strategize endlessly to avoid making the call. DH generously gifted me a long-coveted dressform for my birthday last November, but the company does not fill online orders, and I will have to call their 1-800 number. I still don't have my birthday gift.

3) The texture of baked-in raisins makes me queasy.

4) Despite spending a decade and a half mucking about with human bodily functions, I find loose moustache hairs to be stomach-churningly gross. (My Beloved has a moustache.)

5) My upbringing was almost entirely cut off from Western pop culture. I have therefore spent my adult life acquiring musical tastes in highly eclectic fashion, but with the rare privilege of "discovering" the greats with fresh ears. My husband finds this amusing:
Me: "Ooh - that's a catchy tune."
Rob: "It's the Rolling Stones, dear..."

6) I have one far-sighted and one near-sighted eye. This was not discovered until around age 12, at which point I began a long and painful journey of wearing bizarre looking glasses which gave me chronic headaches. I finally bought contact lenses once I had my own money - which solved the headache problem, but still did battle with the accomodation process my brain had developed. I settled in my late 20's on wearing just the left lens because it was more comfortable that way, and last year, through some quirk of the aging process, discovered that I no longer needed them at all. So at an age when other folks (hi K!) are acquiesing to bifocals, I am at long last, correction free. This pleases me no end.

That's that. I am not tagging anyone, because I am acutely shy and anyone I know well enough to tag has already done it.

Conformity

2007-01-29T09:14:00.000-06:00

I am, by nature, a bit of a non-conformist. In knitting terms, this means that I have an active (though often subconscious) reluctance to knit the patterns that take blogland by storm, the ones "every" knitblogger knits. This, regardless of how lovely, how ingeniously constructed the pattern - it's not a condemnation of the design, just a innate tempermental avoidance of crowds. It took enormous last-minute gifting pressure to get Fetching on my needles (and for the record - I loved the pattern and plan to make more.)

So it was with the Clapotis. As much as I admire Kate Gilbert, I just couldn't bring myself to conform to that degree. Also, most of the ones I was seeing were done in bright variegated yarns, which are not my cup of tea. Plenty of other nice wraps out there, I thought. Then I saw Caro's scarf version in Noro Silk Garden and was instantly, hopelessly, besotted, and when Ram Wools had their amazing anniversary sale the other day, a couple of skeins fell into the shopping cart.I ought to be finishing up the WIP's currently on the go, but I need a little break from grey stockinette: Plus, I woke up in a cold sweat the other night, remembering that Caro said two skeins weren't quite long enough. I then proceeded to spend the wee hours wondering how long that dye lot will still be available, and reminding myself that ordering a single skein at full price plus shipping would negate all the savings that justified the original purchase, at last coming to the realization that I must knit up the two skeins I have Right Now so as to find out for myself before it is too late.
This is also my first Noro adventure. So far, so good - hopefully the rumors of quality improvement are true, because I am in Love with this yarn.

Saturday Ski

2007-01-27T17:10:00.000-06:00

I am not naturally tempermentally inclined toward downhill skiing. I adore the mountains - give me miles and miles of trail, a water bottle, and a good pair of runners and I'm in heaven, but this business of falling down a steep hill in semi-controlled fashion runs absolutely counter to my nature. Nevertheless, one can't live in Whistler without skiing, so I have persisted (or rather, Rob has persisted in shoving me out the door.) I am therefore happy to report that for the first time this season, I felt a sense of genuine joy and anticipation on the ride up that almost entirely obliterated the customary anxiety.

It would be difficult not to be happy up here - the temperatures are mild, thanks to an inversion, the sweet smell of pine is in the air, snow conditions are marvelous, and the sun is blessedly brilliant.

Perhaps this is what all the fuss is about.

The Top of the Matter

2007-01-26T08:37:00.000-06:00

It has been warm and misty here in the valley this week. It's the kind of air that hugs your shoulders like a lace stole, settles sweetly on the tongue with every breath. Snowy things also settle in this unusually warm weather:In these short winter days, the close dim light can become oppressive though, and one gets the urge to rise above it all.
A quick trip to the top puts things back in perspective and we are fortunate enough to be able to ski the 1200 m (4000 ft) drop straight back to our door (arrow):

Functional Swatching

2007-01-25T09:03:00.000-06:00

Thanks to all who left such lovely compliments on the sleeve shaping. Really, it's a natural extension of the circularly knit, custom fit sweater approaches developed by the likes of Elizabeth Zimmerman and Barbara Walker, and I'm not at all sure that it hasn't already been done (what hasn't?), but thus far I've only seen it hinted at in the descriptions of patterns for sale. I really ought not to wax too poetic about its qualities until I have a finished garment to wear and wiggle in, but what excites me most is the possibility to fine tune and personalize the fullness of a sleeve cap for any given armscye - because this method matches row for row, there is no agonizing over ease along the seamline. It may, however, take me several sweaters to find my absolute ideal fit.

On the evenings when my brain gets too fuddled for math (sick kids, lack of sleep), I've been entertaining myself with the Dulaan sweater:
I'm keeping this one dead simple - straight sides, dropped sleeves. I am steeking the armholes, but when I write up the pattern, I will include the option of flat knitting the upper portion of the sweater. This little pullover is a great blank canvas for experimenting and playing - the stranded knitting is necessary for warmth and wind resistance, but the actual patterns can be as simple or complex as your heart desires. I opted for two colours, because I am sick to death of weaving in ends, but you could easily work in different colours or even yarns, as long as they were wool and of similar gauge. Think functional swatch.

The Set-In Top-Down Short-Rowed Bell Curved Sleeve Cap

2007-01-23T12:50:00.000-06:00

Or SITDSRBCSC for short. It worked!

Exhibit A: the shape of the short-rowed sleeve cap as set out in EZ's The Opinionated Knitter.

I used this method for my Love the Yarn You're With sweater, and it did produce a very tidy and shapely sleeve cap, but for a close fit on my big boned shoulders, it was a little tight. Also, EZ's method starts with an inch or so of plain knitting around the full circumference of the arm, and I wanted to develop a method that would start the short rows immediately after picking up stitches, so as to ultimately be able to match sleeve and body patterns in an invisible row-for-row manner.

So I set about to reverse engineer a sleeve cap shaped like this:

It really wasn't that difficult, though it took the better part of a day of writing out the numbers in columns to get a visual grasp of the concept. The general idea is to consume one body row (stitch) for each sleeve row, while simultaneously expanding the sleeve at a varying rate of increase.

Here's the sweater with the first completed sleeve cap:

The full on view of the cap:

Leaning the decreases toward the body produces a tidy, almost invisible join:

I had a small crisis of confidence when I tried it on, because there appears to be just a titch too much ease in the sleeve cap. However, when I tried on the first sleeve cap method, it initially seemed just right, and then after finishing up both sleeves and snugging in the neck opening with ribbing it wound up a bit tight, so I have high hopes that this will in fact, be just right in the end.

Pensive

2007-01-22T12:56:00.000-06:00

It's snowing hard again today - though hard is hardly the word for it - enormous toonie-sized flakes twirl down to smooth and soften all over again the tracks of boots and plows. The igloo we built yesterday will soon be a deliciously secret cave under a swooping curve of snowdrift.
The close, gray clouds and soft snow absorb sound and light, making for a slow, pensive sort of day. Thoughts half-formed for weeks have space to take shape - like this:

Since leaving the Other profession, my senses are heightened, and I can see my children in ways that were previously obscured by anxiety and busyness and struggle. I look directly in their eyes, and watch the exquisite passage of delight, curiosity, opposition, comprehension - and they see that I see. I smell their hair, trace the curve of little necks bent intently over projects, linger over extra-tight hugs and the perfect fit of a small head under the hollow of my clavicle at storytime. There were many days Before when I would feel frighteningly disconnected, as though a dark veil hung between me and my family. The veil is gone now, and though I still do not fully understand who and what I am, I know with certainty that this is better.

Goofing Off

2007-01-19T13:18:00.000-06:00

There was no shortage of things to do this morning, the most urgent being to polish up this,in time for today's submission (fortunately, I can hand-carry it.)

There's reams of computer work I should be doing, a house which is in dire need of organizing, and a sadly neglected coil of fine silver casting longing glances at a pair of size 00 needles. Even the poor Dulaan sweater is merely inching along:

Instead, I went skiing.

Because really, what is the point of living here, if you're too busy to ski? Also the twenty pounds that have attached themselves to my waistline over the last year are not going to melt away by the power of wishful thinking. (Believe me, I have tested this method extensively and feel I may speak with authority on this point.) The conditions were fabulous, the crowds were minimal, being early on a weekday, and I feel so much better. Now back to work!

Work work work

2007-01-18T08:42:00.000-06:00

I spent a goodly portion of yesterday turning a corner of my living room into a photo studio, so as to create a series of 8x10 glossies of my work. (Amazingly, the printer did not run out of ink, jam, or otherwise thwart this effort.) The portfolio gets turned in Friday, and then we see what happens. (You'll be the first to know if something happens.)

As a result, I didn't get much knitting done, so here's a wee bit of crochet from the other day:

Opportunity

2007-01-17T08:34:00.000-06:00

I'm beginning to see a pattern to this business of creative entrepreneurship. There seem to be flurries of intense activity engendered by pop-up opportunities, followed by lulls during which one thinks all those long overdue daily life and paperwork things can now get done because it is going to be months until the next big push, and suddenly another opportunity comes flying in the window and the deadline is Three Days Away and everything goes on hold again. Not that I'm complaining! Opportunity is a very very good thing, with spin-off benefits like food and clothing. It just makes things feel perpetually scattered.

I have still managed time for some walking:

With the cold temperatures over the last week, Fitzsimmons Creek has begun to bloom with ice, and the effect is simply mesmerizing.

I have also managed to accomplish my daily knitting increments:

Dulaan:

More swatching in Lopi:

I know, it's a bit skinny for a legitimate swatch - I wanted to play around with gradually contracting and expanding a cable as a shaping device, and I think the effect is quite satisfactory. This particular cable is a bit unusual - you place all the cable stitches on a dpn, rotate it 180 degrees and knit them off. The purl side is hidden in the twist and it makes for a nice little 3-D effect.

Daily Increments

2007-01-16T08:33:00.000-06:00

It appears that my attempt to demonstrate, by way of that little photo documentary, that steeking is not so scary, has failed miserably. A round of tranquilizers, anyone? Seriously, it is fascinating what a mythical beast it has become in the collective modern knitting consciousness, considering its humble origins as a shortcut construction method for every-day work wear. Ah well, I'll make wider steeks on the Dulaan sweater. Those have a more reassuring look about them, since the cut edges are so far away from the working stitches.

Speaking of the Dulaan sweater, I did get a start on it over the weekend:Knitting time has been pared down considerably of late, and likely will be scarce for the next couple of weeks, but I figure if I set a goal of one motif per day (usually 5-8 rnds) the project will at least progress, albeit slowly. After swatching and measuring, I opted for 192 stitches around, which gives me lots of potential variety in terms of pattern repeats. I'm choosing smallish motifs from Sheila McGregor's "Traditional Fair Isle Knitting" as the mood strikes me.

I haven't forgotten to swatch, either:
This is the Teetering Ovals pattern from Barbara Walker's third treasury (another Christmas gift from my sweety) and I love it. I think this will be the centre panel on my cabled Lopi sweater, with the loose cables on either side. As for the remaining motifs - I'm still pondering and waiting for it all to gel, which is fine, since I've got plenty to work on in the meantime.

Steek Day

2007-01-15T08:33:00.000-06:00

I managed to clear a space in the chaos that has reclaimed our condo (why is that battle never over?) and pulled out my sewing machine to do the deed. Better knitters than I have expounded upon hand stabilisation methods, including simply trusting the wool to grab itself; however, until I move on to authentic Shetland wool, I feel most secure with machine sewing. (Besides, if it was good enough for EZ....)

1. I got brave this time, and made a measly 4 stitch steek. (I've seen EZ use only two, but I'm not quite ready for that yet.) Below you can see the four stitch column, with pins inserted up the middle to ensure I don't lose my way on the dark gray yarn. (BTW, a couple of commenters and family members think this sweater is blue - does it look that way to anyone else? I'm wondering about my monitor.) I chose good cotton thread (no polyester sullying my wool), and the widest zigzag setting, with the centre mark of the presser foot aligned between the two stitches to be stabilised. (I haven't seen zigzag discussed as a means of stabilisation - I find it preserves the elasticity of the knit fabric, while also functioning similarly to two rows of straight sewing.)

2. I sewed down the two stitch column on each side, being careful to reverse for a short way at top and bottom to be sure to catch the edge stitches. Red denotes the cutting line, and green is the space in which stitches will picked up for the sleeve.

3. The deed is done!

See? Not so scary!

No Steek Today

2007-01-13T18:58:00.000-06:00

Instead we've been working on this:

The final frontier of project Downsize Our Lives: the books. Rob and I each did a preliminary cull before we moved. (I got rid of obselete medical texts, he parted with tomes like "The World's Most Offensive Jokes" and "My Jedi Journal". It's a pilot thing.) Since our storage space has turned out to be substantially less than we had hoped at the time of the move, the day has come for the final cull. There are three boxes in the car waiting to go to Goodwill, the two in the chair are also leaving, and the rest..... We'll be covering one wall (at least) of the bedroom in shelving. Really, how could we part with Tolstoy, and Dickens, and Timothy Findley, and Margaret Atwood, and all the other truly great authors who have graced our imaginations. (The Yarn Harlot also made the cut.) We were ruthless, we really were, but there are some books you just can't part with.

But every day's a good day when it ends like this:

Especially when you watch it from the hot tub.

Scattered

2007-01-12T10:54:00.000-06:00

I've been feeling a bit discombobulated the last few days. There was a wee bit of unpleasantness earlier in the week - not extremely serious, though alarming enough, and thankfully resolved with an appeal to ethics and the rule of law - that nevertheless caused us to reflect on the fact that money is power and in choosing to do with much less of the former, we may need to give careful thought to fall-back strategies for asserting our right to exist. (On the plus side, my chronic existential guilt for having achieved socioeconomic success has abated slightly. ) It was all very stressful, and today's post will therefore be a little... scattered.

Firstly, the plain knitting portion of the gray sweater zipped along faster than expected (funny how mindless knitting seems to accrue all at once) and I have now reached the day of reckoning: time to sew and cut the steeks. (Pictures of that process on Monday).

After the steeking comes the Day of Math. I plan to chart out a variety of approaches to short-rowed, top down, set-in sleeves in order to compare their shapes, and ultimately work out a formula to mimic the classic bell curve.

Secondly, the latest swatch:It's nice enough, and a successful experiment in filling in the yo holes with M1's (this is supposed to be outerwear, after all), but it just isn't as deeply ribbed / embossed as I would like. No matter, I've got several other motifs in mind that will be closer to the effect I'm looking for.

Third, and last - for all the poor snowless folk out there:

As of today, a record-breaking 28.4 feet has fallen since November 1st. The snowfall in the first 11 days of January already exceeds all previous records for the month. Sidewalks are reduced to corridors between 8 ft high snow-plowed walls, dump trucks are hauling away tons and tons of the stuff to make room for daily life, and the skiing:

Is incredible. (For real-time mountain top views, check out the web cams.)

While I couldn't help laughing at Seattle shutting down for an inch or two, I have to admit that snowclearing infrastructure makes all the difference in the world. Every time it snows here, armies of plows descend on the town around 5 am, scurrying about like manic insects, so that by the time most people leave the house, the roads, parking lots and sidewalks are clear and tidy. It's really quite amazing to watch, and intimidating if you are walking early in the morning because they are mostly operated by 20-something males working on commission, and therefore go like stink.

Shawl Pins

2007-01-11T08:50:00.000-06:00

I finally pulled together some uninterrupted time at the bench this week (amazing how challenging it is to get work time when working from home) and created some shawl pins:

These are sterling silver and not over heavy - no. 1 weighs 5 gms and no.'s 2 & 3 are around 9 gms each. Being relatively new to lace knitting, I don't have many shawls to try them on, but I use my prototype regularly to close buttonless cardigans, decorate scarves, etc. and have found it very versatile.

These are available for purchase: No. 1 is $30 (Canadian), No.'s 2 & 3 are $40 each. Postage costs: Xpress post (14 business days to the US, 3-5 in Canada, with package tracking and insurance): anywhere from $12-$14 to the US and Canada, a little more internationally. Regular small package mail is in the $2-$6 range to the US and (inexplicably) $10-12 within Canada. Since these are small and actual postage varies so drastically, I will obtain the actual cost from the Canada Post site prior to invoicing.

To purchase: email me regarding the pin of choice, your address and preferred shipping option, and I will send you a postage quote prior to generating a Paypal invoice.

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Number 3 has been sold.

Number 1 has been sold.

Number 2 has been sold.

More in the works - meanwhile feel free to email me if you would like something similar to those pictured above.

Guinevere Usurped

2007-01-10T17:54:00.000-06:00

Or at least her sweater. By me. Remember my little baby girl (all 160 lbs of her)?

Or, as she appears now, in her winter coat:

Back when we lived on the prairies, in suburban single family dwellings with fenced yards, she used to sleep in the laundry room and spend the better part of the day outside with her best buddy Lightning (rest his soul). They would dig holes and roll in the mud and snow, and by spring, her coat would be thoroughly felted and stinky (she has ultra sensitive skin, and hates brushing with a passion, though we always made an effort to keep up with it). And since it was awfully hot for her, we always had her shaved right down in the spring.

We thought when we moved to Whistler that we would have to keep her coat short year round, in order to make her bearable to live with as an apartment dog. I had the brilliant idea that the poor dear would need a warm sweater for those long winter walks, and before we moved, ordered 25 balls (let's not get into what that cost) of Alafoss Lopi in a nice heathered ecru.

It turns out that a) with the occasional trip to the groomer, her coat stays quite nice when she spends her days sleeping on the couch and stealing food off the counter, b) she is bone lazy and protests mightily when forced to walk more than a block or so from home (the first year we had her, we worried that she had some hidden orthopedic problem, but it is apparently a trait of the breed), and c) it never really gets all that cold here. So she doesn't actually need a sweater (nor would she likely tolerate it, in any case).

I, on the other hand, would love to have a thick cozy sweater as outerwear for mild winter days - a longish one with big squashy cables, roomy enough for layers, but shapely enough to be distinctly feminine.

The first swatch:
I am looking for big, curvaceous cables that suggest a sort of free spirit that could go looping off wildly at any moment. I have a fiercely intricate Aran design in mind for another day, but for this sweater I want sensuously organic curves rather than primly mathematical knotwork.

Cheap Cashmere?

2007-01-09T09:10:00.000-06:00

I came across this article via the Worsted Witch. (A fascinating blog I would never have found if Juno hadn't linked it some time ago.) The article discusses the horrific environmental toll on China's grasslands, as goat herders respond to North America's insatiable demand for cheap cashmere. It got me thinking about the yarns I have used with bits of cashmere content, and where that might come from. The downside to inexpensive yarn (perhaps inexpensive anything?) is the abusive practices that are sometimes the means of keeping costs down. It did make me resolve to think more carefully about where my fibre comes from - and I'll be avoiding cheap cashmere in future. (Though not throwing away the small amount already in my stash - that would serve no purpose.)

Plain

2007-01-08T08:33:00.000-06:00

The gray sweater is past the waist, traversing the bust and heading for the shoulders.

I had a moment of indecision at the waist, as it was time to leave behind the texture patterns, and move into plain stockinette. For some reason, stockinette feels like a sort of design mediocrity - I was tempted to abandon the plan and go for Fancier! More Intricate! The rational part of me quite likes the effect, though - I think the contrast showcases the knit-purl patterns very effectively. Plus, the point of this sweater was to permit myself the luxury of playing with the mathematics of the sleeve cap without having to match up patterns.

I also opted to steek the armscyes so as not to interrupt the soothing rhythm of plain knitting in the round. (I'm all for soothing things right now - the excess of the holiday caught up with my head and my stomach this weekend.)

Here you see the underarm stitches held on one of my trusty KP Options cords, and four steek stitches cast on above them.

Swatch of the day? Maybe later on. As I said, I didn't feel like much of anything requiring original thought this weekend.

Magic

2007-01-06T10:18:00.000-06:00

Yesterday saw an enormous amount of snowfall. Listening to the radio reports of highway mayhem (as happens on a Friday evening when the folks from the Lower Mainland decide that bald summer tires will do just fine in a blizzard just this once, and since they are important and in a hurry to get to the slopes, the double solid line on the blind curve doesn't apply to them) and the collapse of the BC Place stadium roof, we snuggled up safe and cosy by the fire and thought how tremendously thankful we are to live here.

In the morning though, comes the magic.

Chaos and Creation

2007-01-05T16:05:00.000-06:00

The school holidays wind down this week, not a moment too soon. Although I love having the whole family home together, the lack of routine is starting to take a toll on peace and serenity. Not to mention my work schedule (or lack thereof).

In spite of the chaos, I did manage to finish up phase 1 of the collaborative project last night, and the results are posted over at my jewellery blog.

The exercise resolution is coming along - it works out that each round of the charcoal sweater must be paid for with 5 sit-ups, 4 push-ups and a chin-up. Not an unreasonable plan time-wise, though I'm really feeling the muscles today!

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Swatch of the day:

A gauge swatch for the next Dulaan sweater. I want to write up a simple pattern for a child's sweater that will also serve as a low-stress introduction to both stranded colourwork and steeking.

String Bag patterns

2007-01-04T20:34:00.000-06:00

So wouldn't you know it, just as Charity kindly linked to my string bag pattern, the new Blogger template disappeared my own link. Sigh. It's back now...... (in the sidebar, under Original designs).

Sedentarily

2007-01-04T12:41:00.000-06:00

The biggest downside to this life of creativity is the fact that I now spend great swaths of time just sitting - at the computer, at the bench, on the couch.... And while I always made time for formal exercise when I was working in an office, working from home is much harder to define. It's tempting to feel that every hour of the day is (or ought to be) a work hour, followed by a sinking sensation of wastage as the tasks of daily living encroach on that. Leaving the house for an hour or two to exercise feels like a grievous waste of already eroded work time rather than the wise allotment of personal time it used to be - so I end up not doing it. The result, of course, is that my once svelte physique is now oozing over the top of the one pair of pants I can still squeeze into. Bleh!

So, my latest resolution: Log my minutes of sedentarianism (sedentariosity?) and for each minute spent sitting, I will do a push-up, sit-up or chin-up, or spend one minute in aerobic activity. For example, having swatched, blogged, and worked on my website this morning, I logged 180 minutes of sitting. Now I have to ski today. No excuses (the snow's too heavy, I find the crowds intimidating, it's pouring rain, yada yada yada....).

Speaking of swatching:

I took the chevron pattern from yesterday and worked it in a series of needle sizes from largest to smallest. I think the pattern maintained its crispness and integrity nicely, which means that varying gauge is a viable shaping strategy for this stitch.

Sedentary tasks for today: finish the collaborative jewellery project, do a pile of website work, and continue reinstalling all the blog bits that got lost in making the leap to the new Blogger template. I spent several hours yesterday restoring it to a semblance of its former self - I'm not entirely clear how this constitutes "new and improved", although it does seem like future edits will be easier to do with the new template format. Maybe.

Third Day And Still Swatching!

2007-01-03T13:51:00.000-06:00

Here's the second swatch:Definitely getting closer to what I'm looking for. It's a bit fiddly to work, but not horrendously so, pulls in a bit like a ribbing, and transitions nicely to stockinette. I tried a couple of purl ridges after establishing the initial pattern - they don't disrupt the shape, but add a bit of texture, and I like the way purl rows soften a colour transition. I'm presently on a quest to mix and blend colours without the added bulk of stranding.

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Another progress shot (this time with a decent amount of natural light):

I am love love loving the process of this knit - the reassuring elasticity of good wool, the deliciously deep charcoal colour with just a hint of tweediness to give it life and dimension. It's going to need a good blocking to counteract the bunching tendencies of the purl stitches, but if lace behaves itself, I see no reason why this won't.

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And a peek at my other project for this week - a collaboration with a local glass artist:

First Swatch of '07

2007-01-02T11:53:00.000-06:00

Having resolved to swatch this year, I took that a step further, and decided to try to do it on a daily basis. Not obsessively so (because then I would miss a day, like I just did yesterday, and think the whole business was ruined and give up in a little puddle of stymied perfectionism) but mostly every day. It's just more likely to get done that way. What I have done in the past was to wait until I was actually ready to start a given project and the fever of getting on with it was upon me, and then the swatching felt like a huge ordeal standing between me and casting on for my heart's desire. The plan now is to swatch steadily for projects in the vague "what would happen if?" stage and by the time I reach the "nothing else on the needles, must start NOW" stage, the prep work will be done.

Here's the first one:

The goal of this round of swatching is to explore patterns that will blend two colours (probably a handpaint and a closely related solid) in an intriguing, non-pooling fashion, and transition smoothly to stockinette. (I am not going to use up expensive handpainted yarn on swatching, though.) Jury's out on this particular swatch - it has potential, but not exactly what I had in mind.

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Progress on the charcoal sweater:

It is quite a challenge to adequately photograph monochromatic texures, especially with natural light so scarce this time of year.

Out of the Starting Blocks

2007-01-01T13:29:00.000-06:00

The first new project of 2007:

The project: a gently fitted wool sweater, just roomy enough to layer over a long sleeved T-shirt, featuring hemmed borders and cuffs, understated knit-purl patterning, and just a hint of brushed alpaca for tactile luxury.

Yarn: Elann's Peruvian Highland Wool (just a wee bit more expensive than KP's Wool of the Andes, but far superior colour and feel) and a tiny bit of KP's Suri Dream.

Design goals: 1) Work out a seamless replica of a fully rounded set-in sleeve cap. 2) Explore traditional Scandinavian knit-purl patterns. 3) Try out hemmed cuffs and borders.

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Happy New Year!

Resolutions

2006-12-31T12:27:00.000-06:00

This has been a year of enormous change and upheaval, and I think the only thing I can say with certainty at the start of 2007 is that I am no longer certain about the vast majority of the things I used to think I knew, particularly about myself. And while that is an undoubtedly profound realization, it doesn't go far towards generating a tidily bulleted "to do" list for the upcoming year. I've launched into uncharted waters - this will be the year to sail them.

In the midst of that, I find myself paradoxically clear and specific about what I want to accomplish as a knitter. Perhaps this relates to Elizabeth Zimmerman's famous statement: "Knit on, with confidence and hope, through all crises."

Knitting Resolutions for 2007:

1) I'm not making any formal resolutions about knitting from stash because it's a moot point - our budget simply won't allow for extravagance, and I have enough of this and that to tide me over. Any purchases will likely be good workhorse wools for specific design projects that require something not presently in the stash.

2) I want to grow my design skills, and to that end, my motto for this year is restraint. By which I mean, I resolve to set aside the obsessively overachieving impulse to try to make every project the most wildly inventive, intricate and originally dazzling thing EVER. (Also the corresponding neurosis that nice yarn would be wasted on anything but.) Rob gave me a copy of "Knitting in the Old Way" for Christmas, and between that and my little EZ library, I want to try all the shaping and construction techniques, and play with form and fit until they are firmly under my fingers. That means a series of sweaters that are simple and elegant, with one or two delicious details. For now, I intend to reserve intense intricacy for little projects.

3) Colour. Two to a project. Maximum. I wove in over 500 ends (seriously!) for that little cropped cardigan, and I am SO done with ends for a while. Not forever, but for a while.

4) Spinning. I will dig out the spindle. I may not get to be any good at it, but I will start.

5) Dyeing. Same idea as no. 4 - no pressure to do great things, but I will do the research and get started.

6) Swatching. Not just the bare minimum required to establish gauge before getting on with the good bit, but swatching for its own sake - to explore technique and texture and colour in miniature. I might even blog and gather them into a personal reference library.

7) Gift knitting. I will regularly add items to the 2007 gifting box, and will NOT be caught short next year. Seriously. I will also get DS's stocking done for Christmas 2007.

8) Knitting for DH and the kids. Primarily DD, since the men of the family are Delicate Flowers in the skin department.

9) Charitable knitting. I will get my five Dulaan items done (and mailed In Time), and design a free sweater pattern for the project.

And that's about it. I have a small number of WIP's to finish up, and I'd like to make enough socks to wear handknits all the time, (DH too, if he can get over his wool-next-to-the-skin thing).

As for the uncharted waters - I do have a compass, but it's a little like Jack Sparrow's - and I'm not at all sure where it's taking me.

We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Life

2006-12-29T10:41:00.000-06:00

But not quite yet. We're still in leisure mode, but with a growing sense of anticipation, optimism and renewed energy for 2007. (Which means that some day soon there will be another introspective bit of philosophizing - but in a happier way. The muddling fog is starting to clear just a bit.)

As for the Christmas recap - it was altogether lovely. The snow fell all night in enormous lacy flakes, drifting down pillow-soft onto the magic forest. (Then several hundred pounds of magic fell off the third story roof all at once, nearly ripping our balcony right off, but the nice maintenance guy with the big shovel saved the day.)

The children were thrilled with their Christmas Eve robes (a slight variation on the usual pajamas),

and as per tradition, we slept all together in front of the tree on the pull-out couch. (Actually, the kids slept, and Rob and I squirmed about in the little bits of space they left us, adjusting our aching backs as best we could. Tradition is important.)

Christmas morning, the stockings were opened with delight, and freshly baked croissants (yes, the real thing, made from scratch) were then consumed with large dollops of Nutella. Mr. and Mrs. Claus pulled themselves together with a pot of strong coffee, then started into the mimosas. As per tradition, the gift opening was savored one at a time, with rapt attention given to the recipient, followed by oohing and ahhing and hugs of gratitude all round. This year was much more restrained financially, but no less joyously abundant.

Speaking of gifts, I can now blog this:

A knitted Babe, with big blue eyes, and an unruly mop of blond hair, just like her new owner. I knitted her in DK, rather than fingering weight, and converted everything to round knitting, including i-cord for the limbs. The sweater was worked up from leftover sock yarn. DD was thrilled to bits, and immediately pulled out her new sewing kit in order to work on expanding her wardrobe.

Boxing Day, we headed down to the city for a slightly belated (but also wonderful) celebration with the in-laws and the cousins. While there, I finished up FIL's knit-to-order bedsocks:
They turned out just right, but as much as I love the man, I will NEVER ever again knit plain dark navy socks on size 0 needles in splitty superwash wool. Ever.

We arrived home around suppertime last night, and fell into bed early, exhausted and slightly dyspeptic with merriment. One more cup of coffee now, and the post-Christmas excavation begins!

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like....

2006-12-23T18:29:00.000-06:00

If there's a happier place to be this time of year, I'd be hard pressed to think of it!

Wishing you all Peace, Joy, Love, Light and Hope now and in the year to come.

Love the Yarn You're With

2006-12-22T16:08:00.000-06:00

Here, modelled on the slopes of our personal patio avalanche zone, is the Andean Silk sample pack sweater. The name, of course, refers to the song - because I would much rather have had a bag full of blues and blue-greens, but with a little determination, managed to come up with something that I like very much and that suits me (which is saying something, as the red/orange spectrum is not friendly to my complexion.)

Pattern: my own, worked in one piece to the armscyes, sleeves picked up and worked down in the round. I discovered the concept of short row sleeve caps in Elizabeth Zimmerman's kangaroo pouch sweater, although I believe the idea has been explored by a number of designers. I used woven stitch to blend the stripes, which had the pleasing effect of making the contrasts less jarring.

Yarn: Knitpick's Andean Silk - I purchased the (one of each colour) sample pack on sale a number of months ago, and used 14 different colours in this sweater. Of these, I used almost all the (three) blues, most of the dark purple, and varying amounts of the others. The sweater itself weighs around 420 gms, which would put the actual yardage at a little over 400 yards. Maybe 450, considering the number of ends I wove in and snipped.

Closure: In the end, I opted against buttons, and devised a hammered sterling silver pin:

I am quite pleased with the pin - it's my first go at pin making, and I think I will work up more in future. (It occured to me after the fact that one could quite easily thread stitch markers onto the wiggles, too - decorative and less prone to loss.)

Fetchingly Last Minute

2006-12-21T14:14:00.000-06:00

I am probably the last knitter on the planet to get on board with these, however, last night at supper I was mulling over what to give DD's teacher that I could finish by tonight. I was going to go with jewellery, but then she was kind of "eh" on what I was wearing at the school earlier in the week, so I had a crisis of confidence since I don't really know her all that well. The last thing I need is another looming knitting deadline, but I remembered Charity blogging about Fetching as a quick knit and an ideal teacher gift, so 10 minutes later I had located and printed the pattern, dug out one of my remaining balls of Andean Silk and cast on. (Yes, there is a good reason for the name of my blog.) And this morning, I present:

Pattern: Fetching - Knitty 2006

Yarn: KnitPick's Andean Silk in Olive - 1 ball, with about 5 yards to spare.

Gauge & Needles: I chose to knit these a little small at 22 st / 4 in. on 3.25 mm bamboo dpns. (Also, those were the largest dpns I could find last night - should I even admit that?) I wear size 6 to 61/2 gloves (ladies small) and the recipient is quite petite, so I figure they should work.

They certainly fit me perfectly.

Modifications: Just the bind-off - I replaced the picots with a simple 2 stitch applied I-cord. I'm happy with the effect - smooth, tidy, and comfortable.

Time: 4 hours from start to finish - definitely an authentically last minute project! Also an excellent choice for small amounts of luxury fiber - mine took 91 yards.

Back in the Real World

2006-12-20T08:47:00.000-06:00

We are - finally - back online. I fervently hope the repair job was sturdy, since there is another hurricane equivalent coming to the coast in the next 24 hours. Up here in the mountains we just tend to get magnificent snow and a mild breeze, but all of our cabled and wired type services originate down in the storm zone. So if I don't blog for another week, you'll know why.

Where to begin? The happy sweater is finished and I am thrilled with the result, but it deserves a) a post of its own, free of whining about winter storms, and b) to be photographed in daylight. Remains to be seen how much of that will filter through the clouds today, but I will get out the camera as soon as I can.

The show. I realized after reading Rosemary's comment that it might be an idea to actually say where it was, since I have some readers in the Lower Mainland. I had planned to blog the details Friday morning but.... you know. It could have been worse, the power was out to the site of our venue (Function Junction, just south of Whistler Creekside) for all of Friday, and came back on in the absolute nick of time. As far as the show itself, the foot traffic was disappointing (we were competing with 60 cm of fresh powder) but we made a few sales and the feedback was very encouraging, we covered our costs and learned a ton, the kids had a blast at daycare (which they hardly ever get to go to) and Rob and I had a whole weekend of adult conversation just like an actual date. All good.

I gave Rob the job of documenting the weekend in pictures.
That was it. Just the one. (Which pretty much sums up the difference in our respective approaches to photography. I have virtually paralyzed our computer with the number of jpg's stored on the hard drive whereas, if left to his own devices, Rob would still have plenty of room left on the camera card six years after purchase.)

Christmas knitting. Sigh. I think number 2 child will have to wait another year for his proper heirloom stocking. Talk about second sock syndrome. Somehow I managed to cast on 165 stitches, count it three times to ensure it was 144, and knit the plain facing for several hours on 2 mm needles before discovering (last night) that I had 21 too many stitches, and since I had already spent a full couple of days creating the intricate charted design for 144, there was no form of fudging that could save me. And I still have two other gifts to finish by Friday. Not going to happen. Baaaaad mother. (Liam of course, could care less, particularly since his "temporary stocking" is twice the size of his sister's magnificent hand-sewn masterpiece.)

Help! The Sky is Falling!!! (Internet is down for an extended time)

2006-12-18T10:57:00.000-06:00

This will be quick, since I am paying rather dearly for access at the moment. A severe winter storm has knocked out Internet access to the entire North Shore area since Thursday night - Shaw and Telus are being worryingly vague, but rumor is that it was a fairly nasty event and could take up to a week more. (Try to imagine the happiness flowing through a world class ski resort that can't take web reservations the week before Christmas.) After begging door to door, I have managed to find a back room in a hotel that is on an alternate system - but it costs rather a lot.

Anyway - Merry Christmas to all, and many apologies to anyone who has emailed me since Thursday night, particularly Lorna to whom I owe money. For anything urgent, try my gmail address: robruth.cox@gmail.com as I will attempt to check it every day or two.

Scottish Monochrome

2006-12-14T13:35:00.000-06:00

My KP order arrived yesterday:

Some DK merino for the hat version 2.0. I plan to knit this at a very tight gauge for warmth, as well as wind and water resistence - it is not uncommon to ride the lift on the bottom half of the mountain in pouring rain, especially early and late in the season.

Fingering weight for the mittens - the white is merino, the black is merino with a bit of silk. I am completely thrilled that Lorna is in the process of procuring the Sanquhar pattern leaflets from Edinburgh for me - what a marvelous thing this blog community is!

And one tiny little splurge snuck into the shopping cart: a couple of balls of Suri Dream for a soft snuggly neckwarmer.

It's an interesting thing, this business of giving up the comfortable income in return for more time to create (though unless the weekend goes exceptionally well I may be scuttling back to the salt mines in the New Year, but I'm trying to think happy thoughts...). Suddenly there is far less money for raw materials. But while I occasionally cast a longing eye at the scrumptious yarns floating around blogland, it is an excellent opportunity to connect with knitting's more traditional roots - taking ordinary, serviceable wool and using texture and pattern and ingenuity to create things of beauty. Not such a bad thing at all.

This week hasn't seen much knitting - mostly frantic polishing and tagging and boxing and preparing for the weekend. Today's task is to do a dry run of my display set-up - pictures tomorrow. The happy sweater is down to the last cuff, and eleventeen thousand ends to weave - with any luck I may have an FO for tomorrow as well!

Snowy Lichens

2006-12-13T10:03:00.000-06:00

While poking around under a tree felled by a recent windstorm, it occurred to me that blue and red aren't the only colours that look handsome in a minimalist pairing with white. First iteration:

Much better:

Silent Night

2006-12-12T10:37:00.000-06:00

One of my very favorite Christmas albums is Count Your Blessings, a (seemingly) unknown little gem recorded live at the Glenn Gould Theatre in 1993. The women (Holly Cole, Rebecca Jenkings, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Jane Siberry, and Victoria Williams) restore a sense of authentic, raw intimacy to carols that have become trite with commercial abuse over the years. Their rendition of Silent Night in particular, reduces me to helpless weeping - it is imbued with a womanly vulnerability that connects deeply with my own experience.

Christmas 1999. I was pregnant for the first time, and Rob was away for six months on a particularly nasty peacekeeping tour in East Timor, having been given a week's notice to sail. We found out we were pregnant three days before he left. I had come within a hair's breadth of miscarriage, my only contact with my husband was by email, the misogynist element in my workplace had ramped up his bullying by a considerable degree, and all in all, I was feeling more lonely and vulnerable than I ever had in my life.

Shortly before Christmas, it fell to me to assist with the delivery of a young woman with advanced HIV whose lifestyle and racial origins had relegated her to the outer margins of the marginalized in our (not entirely idyllic) community. The child was to be apprehended by Social Services shortly after birth, there were layers upon layers of waterproof barriers in place, and all the facts of the matter pointed only to sorrow and hardship and disease.

But the babe was beautiful - robust, alert, innocent, perfect - and there was still that moment - that magical moment where he came to rest on his mother's breast and their eyes met, and all her damage and torment and self-loathing fell away and she loved him as purely and truly as any mother on earth.

Later that evening, I attended a Christmas concert - symphony and choir and sing-along carols, and an auditorium filled with well-heeled "nice" folk. It was blandly pleasant enough, but somewhere in the middle of Silent Night, my own experience and the day's events coalesced and it was all I could do not to shout at the top of my lungs that we were completely missing the point.

The Story, at its root, is about the terrifying vulnerabity of an unwed woman in a patriarchal culture, pregnant by someone not her fiance, and in imminent danger of drastic marginalization or even death. The scene of radiant motherhood by the manger was preceded and followed by danger and uncertainty and darkness - its commemoration is poignant and beautiful for precisely that reason. Mary had far more in common with that young woman in hospital than with smiling facades of well-modulated upper middle class goodness.

How is it that "Christmas Spirit"- both religious and commercial - has come to be a sort of blandly generic form of cheeriness - shiny, plastic, and conflict free? The season has been polarized into the"fortunate ones," who have the money and energy to keep up the facade, and the "less fortunate" who receive their annual hamper of dutiful good cheer. The fact is that we all live with darkness in various forms, and it is no shame to acknowledge that.

If we did, perhaps we would also have less need to be territorial and defensive and fearfully correct about form and custom. We could simply be and notice and gratefully celebrate and share our moments of Light.

The Busy Season

2006-12-11T08:30:00.000-06:00

This weekend was the big push to get packages ready for mailing (sigh - I remember years when I've had them at the Post Office by October. I think those were non-moving years.) I couldn't resist getting a little creative with the wrapping, particularly since we don't have much room now to be storing leftover Christmas wrap.

The string bags are full of the cookies that Rob has diligently been making late at night for a month now. Since the gift baking is finally complete, we indulged in some of our own, and let the kids get in on the act.

Ah, the happy excess of childhood!

There was knitting too, but only a few forearm rounds on the Happy Sweater, which looks like it will make it all the way to the wrists, and with any luck will be done later in the week. The big push this week is preparations for showing my jewellery at a local artisan market on the 16th & 17th - polishing, printing, packaging and general fretting because it is my first fair/show/opportunity-to-be-rejected-live-and-in-person. Hopefully there will be a little knitting in there too, otherwise next week will be a full blown Christmas sweatshop (of the sort I promised myself I wouldn't allow because it is SO not Christmas spirit-ish, but.... live and learn.)

PS - DD just noticed that she was not included in the gingerbread photos and this is apparently Grievously Unfair, so:

Again With the White Death

2006-12-10T12:49:00.000-06:00

So after Friday's little destructo-fest, Rob and I had a chat about the remaining stuff presently not jammed under shelter. The table and chairs (we originally harbored notions of winter barbecues in this mild coastal climate) appeared to be well beyond the avalanche zone, and in any case, the chairs were tipped up in such a way as to deflect any stray snowballs from the glass table top. Besides, the worst was over - the other section of roof had never dumped anything too big on the patio.

Guess we'll be rethinking that.

White Death Hurtles Down From On High

2006-12-09T10:08:00.000-06:00

OK, maybe that was a little overwrought, but still.... This guy's been hanging over our heads three stories up for over a week now.

We've gotten used to the regular "swish-thud" on our patio as the snowy convergence of three major pieces of the building's roof lets go, but with the combination of record breaking early snows and a day of steady rain, our private avalanche zone rather outdid itself yesterday.

What I didn't get a photo of (because a workman was already dismantling it) was the mangled balcony railing, with twisted metal protruding at rakish angles and the plywood barrier (the glass blew out weeks ago) dangling in splinters. (It appears to have ripped up a section of roof on its way down, as well). One of the end trays of our barbecue is rather more twisty than is strictly optimal, but thankfully, that appears to be the extent of the damage to personal possessions. Needless to say, we don't really use our patio in winter!

Snowy Sanquhar

2006-12-07T09:09:00.000-06:00

I am impatiently awaiting my KP order, so as to have another go at the hat, this time in a more practical shape and a more finely detailed design. And since I am ordering the wool in advance this time, rather than making do with scraps, it will have coordinating mittens. It must be the combination of my Scottish blood and all the black and white around me - I have been obsessed with Sanquhar since reading Nanette's post. I plan to unvent a pair of fingering weight mittens before tackling laceweight gloves, though (and the former will also be more practical at present.)

Christmas Rose

2006-12-06T11:18:00.000-06:00

With leaves melting quietly into earth in the secret places beneath the snow, branches now reveal their silky naked skins.

The hot-headed passion of red settles into mature grace when left to dance alone on the white-cold snow.

And sometimes in the depth of winter, a rose blooms.

Creeks and Cords

2006-12-05T14:33:00.000-06:00

Once I got to elbowish level with the sleeves, I simply couldn't go on until I knew how much cuff yarn I'd have left.It went through a few iterations, but I think this complements the two colour ribbing of the waistline reasonably well, and should block out nicely. (It appears to draw in a little more than appears strictly perfect, however, this yarn is not super elastic and has the potential to sag, so I think it will be beneficial to start slightly tighter. We shall see!)

I finally had the opportunity to try out an edging I've been coveting for some time: the I-cord bind-off (aka applied I-cord).

I like how neatly it attaches at the back, too.

I decided against buttons in the end - I think I'm going to have a go at creating some nifty silver clasps.

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Today's little piece of happy:

And the display format I settled on:

Candles in the Dark

2006-12-04T08:39:00.000-06:00

As a child, my favorite aspect of December was making things. My mother and I spent long hours together creating - not gifts, but detailed and finely crafted decorations - sewn, glued, embellished, embroidered, crocheted. It was a pure, unhurried kind of happiness, utterly unsullied by deadline and obligation - if a project wasn't complete by the end of Christmas, we simply carried on the next year. I kept it up for a while after leaving home, but somewhere during the years of my adulthood it dwindled away - or I failed to tend to it - creation for the sake of its own self-evident joy gave way to perfectionism and deadlines, and even our baking this year has all been sequestered in the freezer for gifting.

So this December, I plan to indulge (actually I started yesterday, but couldn't quite articulate the reasons at that moment) in a little piece of no-strings-attached beauty each day - sometimes created, sometimes simply photographed, because both looking and creating are kinds of Noticing, ways of intentionally participating in Being. This year I need more acutely than ever to touch the real things around me, find solid ground beneath my feet. As the winter solstice approaches, these are my candles.

I'm still finalizing the practicalities of the format (the man of the house is concerned about Holes In The Wall), but I think I will attach the photos to wide ribbons hanging on either side of the fireplace, and they can accumulate over the month. Something like a personal Advent calendar.

Just Because

2006-12-03T13:41:00.001-06:00

Fire on the Mountain

2006-12-02T10:39:00.000-06:00

Here's this morning's sky:

I love the way the early morning sun sets the snow on fire.

And since the sky looked like this yesterday,

and it wasn't very cold, and I was over my cold, and there was no excuse in the world left not to - the world's weeniest skier took to the slopes yesterday. I did not take pictures, because I was not at all sure a sensitive piece of electronic gadgetry would survive the experience. Actually, I wasn't at all sure I would survive the experience, but I didn't fall getting off the lift, and after a painfully snowplowish start, the muscle memory kicked in (not that there was a whole lot to remember - I was only ever an advanced beginner when I last strapped on skis 7 1/2 years ago) and by the bottom it was not so bad. Fun, even.

Christmas kicks into full swing at our house today, as the tree goes up. Technically it began the evening of Nov. 30th, when Rob and I stayed up into the wee hours wrapping tiny tidbits accumulated through the year and stuffing them into the kids' Advent calendars. Now that Liam is old enough to comprehend and compare, it's a strategic exercise in symmetry (is a wind-up penguin equivalent to a turtle, for example) but I so love the behind the scenes process of creating magic.

Moo

2006-11-30T08:32:00.000-06:00

Somebody (I feel badly I can't recall who, but I'm also not inclined to search the archives of every blog in my roll) blogged these the other day. (Edited to add: thanks for the comment, Caro, now I remember!) Which is the only way I ever would have discovered them, since the link is tucked in fine print at the bottom of the Flickr page. Anyway, I've been casting about for a nifty, artsy business card idea, and this fit the bill nicely. Here's what I sent off last night:

North Wind

2006-11-29T08:31:00.000-06:00

The cold front has brought windy temperatures well below what Whistler is used to (though still mild compared to the prairie winters we endured for the last 6 six years), but with that came the sun. The (happily abundant) snow is transformed from soft dove grey to dazzling, blinding white, last week's enormous, delicate snowflakes covered up by dry powder that wisps and swirls off the drift crests.

I am beginning to understand why Scandinavian sweaters are primarily two toned, white and blue / red / black designs. This is not weather to inspire subtlety and shading. But neither, in my experience, does this particularly blustery cold call to mind primly stylized snowflakes and rows of dancing children. It's beautiful, but it feels wilder and less orderly than that.

Race to the Wrists

2006-11-28T08:43:00.000-06:00

The sampler pack sweater is ticking right along, and the great sleeve race is on.

Will the yarn last to the wrists, or will I have to settle for some sort of fractional look? More to the point, will I be able to make the "best" colours last? Because I have plenty of mouse gray, carrot orange and anemic lavender left, but I'm not going to use those exclusively for the last half of the sleeves. I sometimes think I should learn to love all colours equally, but I am savoring my bits of blue, and the nice dark cranberry. It's a bit like when I was a kid, hoarding the last bites of chicken to assuage the discomfort of finishing the plateful of rutabaga that we had to eat because it would be wrong to waste food even if the original veggie was the size of a small car, and woody enough to construct a house with (and why oh why did those prairie church ladies with farms never gift the economically challenged with edible produce?)

But I digress. Here's a closer look at the shoulder shaping, in which the short rows form a bit of a design feature in their own right:

Playing

2006-11-27T08:35:00.000-06:00

I should have been knitting FIL's socks, creating motifs for DS's Christmas stocking, sewing a funky patch over the hole in DD's jeans, or preparing for the artisan market I'm showing at in three weeks time (more on that one another day). But all these deadlines and obligations have been seriously drying up the creative well, so this weekend I took time out for a little infusion of happy.

I am in love with short row shoulder shaping. It is much like turning a heel - elegant and clever, and best of all, I can line up the stripes by eyeballing as I go, rather than spending hours with the calculator extracting hypoteneuses from curvy lines.

Winter Wonderland

2006-11-25T14:25:00.000-06:00

The daytime temperatures have dipped just low enough that it looks like Wonderland is finally here to stay for the season.

Spontaneity

2006-11-24T13:02:00.000-06:00

OK, the thing about drawing spontaneously with needles and yarn is that it's a heck of a lot more work to erase than the flickering pixels.

Lesson learned: when stranding black yarn behind white over very long intervals, weaving it ever so sparingly is still too much because it shows. A lot. Actually I knew this, but opted for a bit of magical thinking regarding the power of blocking. Also some reverse logic about how maybe it wouldn't show so much once I stretched it over my head. Right. My deluded state extended right through weaving in all the ends, darning with white between the stitches and the black strands (not successful enough), and complete wet blocking. I'm not quite ready to tackle the frog job yet.

So I started this.

Remember a few months ago (spring? summer?) Knitpicks had a very brief half price sale on the sampler pack of Andean Silk? I succumbed. The ill fated hat above was constructed from the black and white balls, and this is most of the rest. I'm working up a little cropped cardigan along the lines of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Kangaroo Pouch sweater (so named for the steek and short row construction method, not any pouch like attributes of the finished garment.)

The thing is, I really want a blue cardigan, and I have exactly three balls of blue: navy, turquoise, and sky. The trick is to arrange them so as to pull out the blue hues in the other colours, which I am doing according to the purely intuitive method of how the mix feels as I proceed. Spontaneity (as already demonstrated) is not without risk, but I find the emotional connectedness in this form of colourwork satisfying on a whole different level than mathematical planning. The one concession to quantitative reality is the kitchen scale, which helps me ensure I save enough of a given colour for the sleeves.

Black and White

2006-11-22T08:31:00.000-06:00

I found this week that I just couldn't bear to sit in front of the artificial flickering screen and graph more delicate shades of gray. I won't wallow in introspection, but suffice it to say that this sense of uprooted, unsettled, uncertainty will take as long as it takes - in the meantime I crave whatever bits of solidity I can find, and I elected to play with tangible yarn and needles this time around.

I've taken to walking in the mornings lately, while the temperature is still low enough to transform the precipitation into a soft white wonderland. Contrast is the dominant theme now.

I did a whole bunch of swatching and fiddling yesterday, and finally settled down to begin this:

With any luck I should be able to photograph the FO later today. (Hint: it's for me, and just in time for opening day on Blackcomb.)

Mother-in-law Bed Socks

2006-11-21T08:42:00.000-06:00

Requested for Christmas: one pair of fine gauge, very warm, snug fitting, ankle-length bed socks, made to measure.

Pattern: my own (sort of - these are basic ribbed socks, top down heel flap construction. I took the opportunity to experiment with using the heel flap as a miniature colourwork canvas - this is a traditional Shetland FI motif.)

Yarn: Knitpicks Essentials sock yarn - superwash wool with a dash of nylon.

Gauge: knitted at 8 stitches per inch on 2 mm (US 0) dpns.

Notes: from my perspective, this was a successful project (although I still don't really enjoy doing stranded colourwork flat.) Christmas morning will reveal whether they are quite up to snuff.

Scraps of Sunshine

2006-11-20T08:10:00.000-06:00

It's getting harder and harder to feel creatively motivated in the dim gray light, so I went for a little walk yesterday to soak up the few rays of natural illumination filtering through the interminable deluge. And received this gift with great delight:

There's not much gold at the end of our rainbow, but a good bit of silver to play with:

And a flawless droplet of citrine soothes the soul like condensed sunshine.

Opening Day

2006-11-18T12:08:00.000-06:00

Despite a week of pouring rain, Whistler mountain is opening today (a week early) and DH is off to fulfill his lifelong dream of attempting to ski every single day of the season. I on the other hand, being a far less experienced skier, plan to wait until Blackcomb (the mountain on whose slopes we live and with whose runs I am at least moderately familiar) opens next weekend.
It's been seven years since I last strapped on skis and now that we have kids, DH and I will be skiing solo until their lessons start in mid December, so I think I'll stick to familiar terrain for starters.

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Thanks to everyone for the lovely compliments on Turkish Delight - it was a very satisfying project (and hopefully will be a welcome gift, too). Speaking of projects, I have finally reformatted the first two String Bag patterns into PDFs, and added some decent pictures to boot - the links in the sidebar now take you to their location in QuickShare. (I really must check with the webmistress to see how hard it would be to host them on my jewellery site.)

Turkish Delight

2006-11-16T11:58:00.000-06:00

The scarf is complete, and I am tremendously pleased with the result:

Pattern: my own, composed of a variety of traditional Turkish knitting motifs. These were adapted from charted motifs documented in Anna Zilboorg's Simply Socks, as well as authentic Turkish socks in my own collection.

Yarn: fingering weight. Red: Fleece Artist Blue Faced Leicester in Sangria Green/gold: Red Bird's Romney lambswool in Lichen

Construction: knitted in the round from either end, grafted in the middle (note the half stitch misalignment on the right - an unavoidable result of the graft, but scarcely noticeable):

A row of single crochet provides a lovely crisp border:

Gauge: 7 stitches and 6 rows to the inch on 3.25 mm (US 3) 16 inch Addi circulars.

Length: Almost exactly six feet, including the tassels.

Notes: I would choose a tighter gauge for a sweater, but this worked very nicely for a scarf - the pattern definition is still crisp, and the scarf drapes fluidly despite the double thickness. Overall, I couldn't be happier with the end result.

Bear Knitted

2006-11-15T09:39:00.000-06:00

Someone made midnight rounds of the patio and garden last weekend:

I figured initially on basic gray and white, but if you look closely:

The highlights and shadows of the snow refract the light into a cloudy day spectrum:

Just right for creating the differential shading of the pawprint's weight distribution:

For a brighter effect, you could interpret the snowy background as strictly white:

Or go with gray after all:

Forty Knitting Days Left 'Til Christmas

2006-11-14T10:01:00.000-06:00

And the gift production centre is ticking right along, with several scarves in the final stages of completion:

First, The Magnificent Turkish Scarf, blocking by the fireside.

The blocking board consists of packing box cardboard cut to size, taped together and covered in saran wrap. Not especially elegant, but it seems to be doing the trick, and there was a dearth of six inch by six foot strips of polished hardwood lying about the house. (Anyone who has a better idea, please sing out - I have a feeling this won't be the last of its kind....)

Second, more KP Panache - this time in mistake stitch rib:

And the final KP Panache scarf, in the Little Pyramid stitch pattern:

I do like the Panache - it knits up quickly, and the cashmere blend is soft enough to please the most die-hard "wool is too scratchy" recipient. (I hope).

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I was tremendously gratified by the number of folks who downloaded the PDF for the third string bag pattern (and special thanks to Vicki for the mention in her blog!) - I hope to have the first two bags done up in nicely formatted (and rephotographed) PDFs by the end of the week.

Metal Monday

2006-11-13T10:19:00.000-06:00

Last week I had a go at making a few things for knitting, rather than with knitting:

I dipped into my stash for some pearls:
And stones:

And put a bit of metal-working to good use:

I couldn't resist playing around with a bit of textile texture:
Which coincidentally, would happily accomodate any bobbles not being put to use in an actual textile.

Remember

2006-11-11T10:56:00.000-06:00

I was overwhelmed by the kind and thoughtful and personal responses to yesterday's post, and I want to say a little more about life and not feeling so alone and all those things.... but today is not the day.

Today is for this. Not for the politicians who play self-indulgent games of Russian roulette with the fate of the world, but for the ordinary men and women who voluntarily face injury and death, compelled by a personal sense of duty, loyalty and community. And because what we forget, we are doomed to repeat.

Midlife muddling

2006-11-10T10:53:00.000-06:00

I turn 39 today, which I suppose renders my unsettled sense of self something of a cliche. All I need now is a sports car and a new hair "system" - oh wait, that's men. What exactly is a woman supposed to do when she can no longer ignore the fact that her Successful Career doesn't fit?

It's not that the disquiet happened overnight - more that I finally stopped patching up the cracks, took a deep breath, and let the whole identity thing blow apart to see what would happen. I was rather hoping for an immediate epiphany, but I am still in pieces, and it is darned uncomfortable. It is dreadfully tempting to scoop up the shards and jam them back into the familiar mold, (miserably successful is, at least, safe and stable - not to mention socially acceptable) but I think I am supposed to learn something here in this place of uncertainty.

I hate uncertainty. I am the sort of person who flips ahead in a suspenseful novel because I can't stand Not Knowing for the span of time it would take to read to the end. (Quite possibly, this is a personality trait I need to confront - it certainly bugs the heck out of my father, a published author.) I have very few excuses not to ride out the storm - my husband is astonishingly supportive (I guess miserably successful is not actually that much fun to live with), the kids are thriving with the enhanced maternal attention and energy. All that's really left is my stuff - pride, insecurity, fear, self-doubt. You know - the shame of being The Woman Who Couldn't Take the Heat. The Woman Who Had Babies and Copped Out. Or something.

Here's to an epiphanous '07 !

Meanwhile, in lieu of enlightenment, I received some lovely instant gratification:

A ball winder:

And (once Canada Post brings it), a Mini-Me:

(OK, the torso is exactly the same as Me, but the thighs are a LOT smaller. Which is nice. )

And last, but certainly not least:

Epiphany schmiphany - we live in Whistler, and we have SNOW!

String Bag No. 3: Streamlined and Simple

2006-11-09T12:31:00.000-06:00

This bag knits up very quickly - I have streamlined the construction techniques for speed and simplicity, without sacrificing a tidy, polished appearance. It's perfect for last-minute gift giving – fill it up with homebaked goodies or eco-friendly odds and ends, and after the holidays, the recipient will have an excellent alternative to shopping with plastic.

I have created a PDF of the pattern - it is hosted for the moment at QuickSharing, so you have to put up with a few ads - just click "Download File" and it should come up just fine. Plans are in the works to add a knitting subdomain to my jewellery website, which will allow me to host my design archives in my own space - that probably won't happen until after Christmas, though.

For anyone who prefers to read the pattern straight from the blog, here it is:

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Materials: Any sturdy cotton or cotton blend in approximately DK weight will do – I used Aunt Lydia's Denim Quick-Crochet (75% cotton, 25% acrylic). Yardage: around 150 to 300 yds, depending how long you choose to make it.

Needles: I used 16 inch, 4.5 mm (US 7) circulars for the body, and 3.5 mm (US 4) DPNs for the cord.

Gauge: Approx. 4 rounds of the lace pattern to the inch – you really can't go too far wrong with a bag like this, however.

Pattern:

Body: With circular needles, cast on 64 stitches (a cabled cast-on gives a firm and attractive edge) and join in the round.

Rnds 1-3: knit, placing a marker at the beginning of the round.

Openwork pattern:
Rnd 1: *yo twice, k2tog; rep from *
Rnd 2: knit, knitting only once into the double yo – I find it easiest to slip the first loop off the needle and knit into the second.

Repeat these two rounds to desired length: 20 repeats makes a nice gift bag (as pictured), 30 would be a good capacity for a full-sized shopping bag. Hint: this is a very stretchy pattern, so be sure to pull it firmly lengthwise to measure.

Decreasing:

Rnd 1: as above
Rnd 2: *k2tog; rep from *

Continue until 8 stitches remain. Leaving a long tail, break the yarn, and run through the remaining stitches, drawing up tightly and knotting securely. Weave in ends.

Cord:
Using 2 DPNs, CO 3 st, *k3, do not turn. Slide sts to right, pull yarn to tighten. Rep from * until cord length equals the bag circumference plus another couple of inches. Thread through the top row of eyelets, and graft or sew the two ends together securely, weaving the tails inside the cord.

As always, please email me with any questions!

Sodden

2006-11-08T07:56:00.000-06:00

I nearly faltered this week in my resolve to find colour projects in my present natural surroundings. It has been dumping rain for a week now, you can't see past the tops of the trees or across the street, and the foliage is mostly on the ground in sodden heaps. Like this:

Chocolate, lavender, and a touch of cream - who knew soggy decay was so delectable?

And the pattern:

Knitting Sunshine

2006-11-07T08:17:00.000-06:00

Ah, the coast. It's been raining buckets for days, and the news is full of flooding rivers, and slides and evacuations. The sky has been twilight-dark at midday, but The Scarf is bright enough to chase away the gloom:

And, with a weekend's knitting under my belt, it is a little more than half done:

I am a couple of inches into the second half which, when complete, will be grafted to the first. (Assuming my kitchen scale method of halving the yardage was accurate - otherwise there could be some frogging first). Despite the horror of Making The Same Thing Twice, I am thoroughly enjoying the process - it is so lovely to do colourwork with fingering weight instead of worsted, and I have been able to use one of my very few Addi circulars for this project. They really do make an enormous difference.

Tiennie got me thinking about counting stitches with this post - a quick bit of math revealed that the finished scarf will contain around 36,000 stitches! If only a novel were that fast.

Equanimity

2006-11-06T08:29:00.000-06:00

It's a condition I have wished for as long as I can remember, deeply envying those cooly gracious folk with hearts tucked safely inside an impeccable, impenetrable exterior. To be able to work daily in a sea of urgent, clutching human need and suffering and emerge serenely whole at the end of the day, flicking the last clinging droplets of pain from my flawless psyche as I drove home - I never did manage it. And truthfully, though I knew every day that it was a flaw and a weakness, I did not try as hard as I might have to overcome the lack, because I feared a loss of acuity - I couldn't bear the thought that I might miss something, trample it by mistake.

As it turned out, force of will and endurance alone cannot create a sustainable kind of living, and as I have been gifted with a child driven to make war with every routine and boundary, I am clearly not off the hook for this lesson.

I know there are ways and systems I ought to resume: meditating and reframing and cognitive restructuring and "not letting", but right now I have this urge to just write the word over and over, push it into metal, say it out loud - perhaps if I keep the idea imminent long enough, I will find my own path to make it real.

Out of the Mists

2006-11-04T10:43:00.000-06:00

As is the way of the coastal mountains, the snow turned to heavy rain yesterday. We mostly couldn't see past the trees across the road, but for a brief magical moment:

Snowy Comfort or How I Made Peace With Red

2006-11-03T10:52:00.000-06:00

I have decided to press on with the scarf. Two things helped with this decision: firstly, all the very thoughtful comments (thank-you!) and secondly, the fact that it snowed yesterday.

I feel colour in a very visceral way, and I realized that indoor lighting on a rainy day made the scarf look like 70's shag carpet, which (for me) is a lonely and dowdy and sad sort of colourway. But softly overcast natural light reflecting off brilliant white snow transformed it into lichens and berries, and treasures on the forest floor, and this:

These are colours of comfort and harmony. So all is well, and the scarf will go on.

Dilemma

2006-11-02T08:15:00.000-06:00

I am fretting - to a ridiculous degree - about the colours of the Turkish scarf. Here's yesterday's beginning:

It is a complex and ornate pattern, so I really wanted it to show clearly, yet not be so contrasty as to seem overly busy. I was hoping for a rich red/gold tapestry sort of effect. I'm worried the values of the two colours are too close, the brown/gold is too green, the whole thing is too hideous.... It goes to show how strongly oriented I am towards blue / green and neutrals - my confidence goes completely to pieces when I have to work with red. (I wouldn't have done it at all, except this person loves the red / gold / brown range.)

I found myself late last night poised over the "buy" button for this (another colour in the same yarn as the red, which could be an advantage):

And then I backed away from the expensive-handpainted-who-knows-what-this-colour-will-turn-out-to-be-in-real-life ledge and went to bed. Where I dreamt tormented knitting dreams, and this morning am still no closer to making a decision. I could also get a fingering weight yarn in a solid colour - I think it would need to be a pale gold - darker than cream, but light enough to contrast clearly with the red. Or maybe what I've got is just fine and I am losing my mind.

Honest opinions? Ideas? If I'm going to order more yarn, I need to make a decision soon, because time is running out. (Next year, I'll start Christmas knitting in January. Definitely. Or give everyone dishcloths. )

The Colour of Water

2006-11-01T08:18:00.000-06:00

The dominant impression of autumn invariably seems to be the brilliant oranges and reds of the foliage, but there are also subtler hues hidden in the rainy shadows. Last weekend we took a little family hike:

On the way, we crossed one of the glacial creeks that feed Lost Lake:

I was struck by the contrast between the turbulent bits and the silty gray-green of the still water.

Pixellated:

The palette:

And the pattern:

The geometric pattern is adapted from an authentic Kurdish sock found in Anna Zilboorg's book. (I've been spending a great deal of time in that book while designing the scarf, and though this pattern won't fit in that project, it's one I've always admired.) I tried not to overthink the arrangement of the colours - I find I can easily get carried away with the mathematics of sequence and contrast.

I Feel Randomish - How 'Bout You?

2006-10-31T08:27:00.000-06:00

Parents of children in the Zoboomafoo age bracket will recognize the reference. (Sorry if you only just got that song out of your head.) Facing an evening of trudging about in the cold and dark with a small pink flying unicorn for the express purpose of collecting a sizeable bag of simulated food substance containing every chemical known to turn said unicorn into Attila the Hun, I feel.... distracted. (Just call me the Grinch of Hallowe'en.) So, here are a few random ramblings:

1) You may have noticed I took the plunge yesterday and installed Haloscan to host the comments - primarily so that I would have the capacity to reply personally to comments, especially questions. It was pretty much painless, with one huge exception - contrary to their assertion in the pre-installation blurb, the old blogger comments DO disappear. Apparently they would come back if I were to uninstall Haloscan (which kind of defeats the purpose) but otherwise they remain locked in an inaccessible corner of cyberspace. This makes me sad. I have them all in my email archives, but the blog now looks all bare and lonely and monologue-ish - it's the warm and funny and caring interactions that make a blog real. Sigh.

2) I have Sixteen gift projects lined up (maybe 17, but I think I've pretty much talked myself out of that one.) As of today, I have completed 2 1/2 (I'm supposed to be on number 8).

3) Progress on the Magnificent Turkish Scarf:

I plan to knit the scarf from each end and graft in the middle - no upside down motifs, and no wastage of precious yarn.

4) Progress on DD's gift:

Kind of Hallowe'en-ish as is, don't you think?

5) Sneak preview:

I originally intended to work up a string bag pattern for Christmas that would be a masterpiece of holly leaves or silver bells, or some such. Then I came to my senses. What do knitters (me especially) really need at the beginning of November? Something fast. This fits the bill perfectly, and looks good. I just have to test knit it one more time, and will post the pattern (along with a list of ideas for environmentally responsible things to put in it) later this week.

6) Sarah asked (though you can't see it any more, so I can't even retrieve the link) whether I intended to post a pattern for the sari silk shell. Truthfully, that particular garment was made long before I really thought about anyone else being interested in my designs. (But I wouldn't rule it out :)) I can tell you that the key to sari silk is knitting it along with another, more "regular" yarn. In the case of the shell, I alternated rounds of SS and Estelle's aran weight silk. If you don't mind a bulkier weight, you can also strand it together with another yarn - in the case of the vest, I used a worsted weight wool.

2006-10-30T18:14:00.000-06:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Free Spirit

2006-10-30T08:11:00.000-06:00

It's Monday, and time for a bit of metal:

I love the challenge of creating fluid waveforms with knitted silver "fabric". This particular piece grew out of my present internal struggle to define my path, and come to terms with my inability to plod forward in a straight line. Society places great value on folks who have an unwavering direction in life, working at a single profession for decades, always at peak productivity, invisibly absorbing child-rearing and loss and illness, never questioning whether there is any other way to live. But life - real, organic human life - is about cycles - circadian, menstrual, yearly, lunar, birth and death, health and illness - and diversity - one child could raise themselves, another needs focused moment-by-moment parenting to thrive. Surely living in harmony with these rhythms is more than just weakness and acquiescence. As for veering side to side - how else does one discover the extent of being without testing their limits on all points of the compass? I cling to the belief (backed up both by faith and chaos mathematics) that this seemingly random oscillation is, in reality, a cohesive whole, with meaning and identity, and a strange, complex beauty.

Sky Fashion

2006-10-28T09:54:00.000-06:00

It would seem that gray is the new blue this season:

Now if only the temperature would drop a few degrees......

Virtual Swatching

2006-10-27T08:19:00.000-06:00

A squashy little bundle arrived yesterday:

My first yarn purchase in months (sob), this is destined for the one really ambitious gift on my list. I have enough hard-won self-knowledge to be (somewhat) realistic about the feasibility of grand Christmas intentions, but there is a certain someone who, more than anyone, will intimately appreciate the work and thought involved. (Equally importantly, this person is also the most likely to unconditionally forgive me if life gets in the way of the exact deadline.)

The yarn is fingering weight Romney lambswool from Red Bird Knits in the Lichen colourway. I love the warmth and subtle shading - the plan is to combine it with Sangria from Fleece Artist (also purchased from RBK some time ago):

I want to create a stranded colourwork scarf, utilising some of the fabulously intricate patterns from Anna Zilboorg's Turkish socks book. I had a little crisis of confidence though, because the Lichen has more green than I thought, and the last thing I want is a screamingly "Christmasy" look. I was hoping the gold and brown would complement the red in a rich and subtle mix.

I dug into the stash and came up with an alternative:

Pretty, but rather loud (the yellow-orange is even brighter in real life). Also, I will quite possibly require pharmacological sedation if I have to spend any more time with ORANGE right now.

So I turned to my trusty photoeditor for a bit of virtual swatching (this will also answer Judy's question about my process for extracting palettes from photographs.)

First, I used the simulated watercolour function to pixellate the photo:

This helps me pick individual colours out of the optical mix.

I created a rough approximation of the Lichen palette:

And superimposed a simplified pattern sampled from the reds:

There's no substitute for actual swatching (or in the case of a scarf - beginning) but the approximation does look close enough to my intended effect to make it worth putting the yarn on the needles.

Just One Measly Scarf

2006-10-26T07:20:00.000-06:00

I made The List weekend before last - of handmade (mostly knitted) gifts to complete in time for Christmas. I decided that I would finish them all by the end of November, so as not to ruin December with fretting and frantically knitting through the nights. I tallied and divided and counted and allotted and generated a tidy little 6 week project chart. And as we approach the end of week 2, I am now seven gifts behind schedule.

Given that, you'd think I would have used my knitting time yesterday making gifts, or perhaps finishing The Sleeve That Never Ends. Nope. In a fit of denial (or something) I did this:

Because when I walked down to the insurance place (having finally dug up enough documentation of my lifelong citizenship to be able to change over my driver's licence) it was cold. And I realized, tragically and inexplicably, that I do not own a wool scarf of my own and instead had to borrow this:

My husband's Air Force issue, deadly-itchy-lowest-bidder wool scarf. As I trudged through the drizzle, I pondered the pruritic irony that a reasonably accomplished knitter with a modest stash would not own a Decent Scarf.

There's an oddly guilty sensation that accompanies knitting for myself between September and Christmas - sort of like going to stores between Halloween and Christmas Eve: "Can I gift wrap that for you ma'am?" "No, um.." mumble mumble, "it's actually just for me." Plus I am Seven Gifts Behind. Maybe they'd all like dishcloths.....

Promise of a New Day

2006-10-25T07:25:00.000-06:00

So you may have noticed that, yesterday's grand statement of intent notwithstanding, nothing has actually changed around here. Yet. The thing is, yesterday was One Of Those Days, and I was feeling like - well, like this:

Nothing catastrophic, just the lingering effects of a particularly nasty virus, combined with a few months of cumulative fatigue and stress. But when I sat down to the computer after lunch, and announced in sepulchral tones that I was going to switch to the new beta version of Blogger, and wouldn't it just be my luck if the whole blog vanished to an inaccessible backwater of the space-time continuum, and heaven only knows how you go about making a backup - DH all but dragged me bodily from the keyboard. Clever man. Anyhow, once the two inches of rainwater recedes from my sputtering candle stub of rational thought, I'll get on with the aforementioned improvements.

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It's Wednesday, and time for a colour project. While the autumn foliage has been spectacular, I've just been spending a little too much time with Tomato Red and Carroty Orange of late. I'm in the mood for something quieter, more subtle, soothing, even hopeful - and what could be more hopeful than the glowing dawn of a new day?

I have always been fascinated by the colour progression of sunrise:

The subtly graduated palette:

I am disinclined in this case to superimpose a "pattern" - I think I would let the colours speak for themselves in a progression of blended stripes or waves. (Though perhaps not in a sweater - seeing as the most vivid hues would highlight the midriff....) It could however, make a stunning scarf or shawl.

Practically Knit

2006-10-24T07:36:00.000-06:00

The little fall jacket has a (mostly) complete sleeve, waiting now for a fitting. I'm not sure my present approach to the cuff is going to work - the tried and true method would have been to decrease abruptly on the first round, for a gathered effect above snug ribbing. I was afraid that with such thick fabric, the effect might be a little stiff, and opted instead to decrease within the cuff along the seam line, and drop down several needle sizes to tighten the gauge. I'm not positive it's going to be snug enough - although, since DD is highly opinionated, it could well be just right. (I was advised in no uncertain terms at the last fitting that there were "too many strings inside" - I couldn't agree more.)

Though I continue to like the design, working it has become a chore. Normally I would relegate it to the time-out pile, and indulge myself with a newer and more exciting project - but this time I can't. This is practical knitting - a warm jacket for my own child in an increasingly cold season, and since we have presently chosen a way of life that necessitates a very tight monthly budget, knitting it from the stash was the responsible thing to do.

I wouldn't begin to suggest that we are suffering real hardship here, only that knitting for purposes of thrift and practical need throws a very different light on a traditional craft which has been overtaken by impulsive acquisition and luxury consumption. I have been working my way through Ann Feitleson's "The Art of Fair Isle Knitting", and was particularly struck by the hardship expressed in the personal interviews. Knitting is certainly about creative expression and visual and tactile pleasure, but it is also about discipline, persistence, and self-sufficiency, and it doesn't hurt to connect with the latter.

Crafting protection from a harsh climate with our own hands restores a sense of immediacy in our relationship with the natural world - and by extension, creates a greater awareness of the fragility of life without push-button climate controlled dwellings. I think that's why projects like Dulaan benefit both the recipients and the knitters.

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On a completely different (and far less philosophical) note: I plan to tackle the somewhat daunting business of switching to the new Blogger platform, and checking out Haloscan for comment hosting. Quite possibly it will involve some weirdness and/or republishing, so apologies in advance to any Bloglines subscribers who get multiple copies of this post over the next couple of days.

Autumn Inspirations

2006-10-23T07:27:00.000-06:00

We survived the Lower Mainland traffic and arrived safely home last night. It must be the cumulative time spent in small towns across Canada, because my tolerance for aggressive big-city driving culture has dwindled to almost nil (and yes, I know Vancouver is mild compared to Toronto or Montreal). The game of chicken required for each merge, lane change, or street entry, in which two cars accelerate full throttle at the space in question, the "loser" acquiesing only at the last split second before fiery death - it makes me crazy. Especially with the kids in the car. I want to stand up and scream "People! Could we not have a civilized social contract here, in which I let you in to "my" lane in a safe and timely fashion, in the full and certain knowledge that you will do the same for me another day, and the timings would all even out such that the 0.03 seconds you added to your Two Hour Commute by not trying to kill me would invariably be gained back in reciprocity?"

I read somewhere that crowded driving conditions trigger primal territorial instincts and aggression, so I suppose not much is going to change that. Well, bike paths and responsible urban planning would help, but that's an uphill battle after the fact. It does make me terribly thankful to live in Whistler, where we are privileged to have a safe and healthy living space that is also within walking or biking distance of everything we need, and fully connected by well-constructed paths.

Speaking of thankfulness, here's a bit of Whistler autumn eye-candy:

I couldn't help but dive into the tourmaline and ruby:

And the black eyed Susan got a sparkling black tourmaline eye:

My goal for today - finish this:

before the colours which inspired it disappear under a blanket of white.

Weekend WIPs

2006-10-21T14:28:00.000-06:00

I had intended to post this on Friday, but Blogger was being recalcitrant, and we needed to get on the road, so here I am. Trying hard not to feel self-pitying over my inability to attend a festival which, until this year, I didn't know existed. Funny how that works - one of the perils of the information age, I suppose.

The schoolteachers were professionally developing yesterday (though judging by the way DD's teacher sounded on the phone Thursday afternoon - it was one of those days - I think a day of heavy drinking or a trip to the spa might have been more to the point), so we elected to spend the long weekend in Vancouver with Rob's sister and family. We intended to head to the Aquarium today, but the wee bug the kids had last weekend seems to have caught up with me, so the cousins had to content themselves with running amok together at home.

There has (except for today) been knitting:

This is some of that South African handspun wool I have been hoarding for ages. After one too many chilly scarfless mornings at the bus, I decided that, in spite of the looming Yuletide gifting deadlines, I could probably justify whipping up a scarf for me. The simple chained ribbing combined with the thick-and-thin single ply yarn produces a pleasing effect that is rustic, yet feminine.

Speaking of looming chilliness, how is it that a sleeve, which is less than half the circumference of the body, can take twice as long to knit??

This might have something to do with it:

I gave up knitting in the ends after the first inch or so, as it was both screamingly tedious and making the underarm awfully bulky, but there's still no getting around the process of snipping and switching every round. Not to mention a day's worth of weaving in once it's all done.

Any guesses what this is?

Hint: it's a gift.

And finally, Friday morning's sunrise:

I never tire of watching the mountain wake up.

Anniversary

2006-10-19T07:21:00.000-06:00

I discovered this poem via Mamacate:

Petals in the Dirt

Ellen Dore Watson

Your words circle, mine batter. You're a ramp, I have
no wheels. The kid who gets the brunt of our love asks us not to bicker. Think
of all the people who have lost their right
hands! The friend who says: Hug me twice,
it could be a while till the next bodyI can touch. Then there's the man who claims he wants
steady, needs steady, but each woman's a lake
he's big enough to swallow. How will hunger like that
ever learn to use a napkin? When you bring me
tenderness, it looks like one more thing
I don't have time for. Maybe when it comes
to love, the happily long-married are the biggest
fools. I'm fervent but off-and-on about my roses
--how many of us are delirious when the twenty-sixth
blossom does its gorgeous thing? I wonder
if when I get home those petals will still be
luminous and melting in the dirt. I'm thinking
maybe I need them. I'm saying what would I do
without your mouth?

--from This Sharpening

Eleven years ago today, I married the love of my life. I have written about our wedding before - it was wonderful and romantic, and entirely indicative of our mutual inclination to walk away from the crowd and do what we believed in, rather than what was expected. We have faced plenty of adversity over the years - prolonged separations, pregnancy complications, colicky-baby-crankiness syndrome, ongoing parenting challenges - and have emerged from each stronger, more settled, more robust.

Now that we have embarked on the next big adventure, turning our backs on the North American dream of working round the clock just to leverage the largest possible mortgage, shelving lucrative careers and moving into a tiny apartment in order to be where and who and what we believe in, now that we have pared down all the trappings of identity and success to the bare essentials, we realize more acutely than ever that this marvelous many-layered gift of being "us" is all that ever mattered.

In the Groove

2006-10-18T07:13:00.000-06:00

The piles of chaos are slowly melting away. I think it's something like erosion - it may take thousands of years, but eventually the mountains wear down. Or perhaps more like the end of the ice age, with little patches of floor and counter appearing as the boxes slowly recede.

In any case, my bench emerged yesterday, and I spent a happy morning with CBC on the (newly unearthed) radio, sunshine streaming through the window and the mountain view to inspire me. It was a lovely bit of "in the groove," such as I haven't had for far too long, and I finished up a couple of WIP's and one new piece.

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Thanks for the lovely comments on the scarf, although I feel compelled to mention that it is ... ahem... possibly not actually for me. Shhhhh......

Mmmmmm... Cashmere

2006-10-17T07:22:00.000-06:00

Sunshine burst the clouds after days of driving rain,

and out of the shimmering mists came:

A simple textured rib in KP Panache - understated, elegant, squooshy-warm and oh-so-soft:

A perfect fit.

Steek Snipping

2006-10-16T07:03:00.000-06:00

We awoke far too early yesterday, to the piercing cry of "MOM - I have to puke!" Racing barefoot to the bathroom, I got DD appropriately positioned, flipped on the light, and looked down to see the bloody skinless corpse of a little vole in the middle of the floor. I have no idea how we missed stepping in it, but with luck like that under my belt, it had to be an auspicious day for steek snipping.

The Fall Cardigan, body finished and shoulders seamed:

In my neverending quest to avoid ever lining up two flat edges of knitting to be seamed, I worked out a way to do the short row shoulder shaping and the three needle bind-off all at once, without breaking the yarn. I was quite pleased with the results, particularly the way the pattern flows smoothly across the join.

I stabilized the sleeve steeks with my trusty little Elna. I know the purists cringe at machine sewed steeks, but we can't all use authentic Shetland wool for every bit of stranded colour work (it's "sticky" enough to stay put with less secure stabilization methods) and steeking is such an elegant way to avoid both two colour purling and seams.

Took a big breath, and snipped:

Now it's on to the sleeves. Which will be somewhat tedious compared to the body, because of this:

Ten different colours, changed every round, and even I couldn't justify stranding them all together, so they get cut and reattached every time. On the body, the yarn change occurs in the middle of the centre steek, so this wild nest of loose ends will disappear with a swift stroke of the scissors come zipper time. No such luck for the sleeves. I plan to knit the ends in as I go, weaving in the new yarn before the join, and the old yarn after, so as to reduce bulk.

Misty Mountain Morning

2006-10-14T09:34:00.000-06:00

There's all sorts of good things going on at our little abode: my wallet turned up, along with DD's homework folder - What Kind Of A Mother loses her daughter's homework??? - they were both stowed in the same "safe" basket, which apparently migrated and burrowed under a stack of clothing during the chaos of the unpack. Also, we can now eat at the dining room table, cook in the kitchen, and sit four abreast on the couch.

AND - for the first time since August, I have live Saturday Sky technology. At the moment it involves downloading the camera to the desktop, formatting, saving to floppy, sticking the floppy in the laptop (which has the internet connection), uploading the photo to Flickr (because the wysiwig version of Blogger can't run on the ancient laptop), and inserting the Flickr code in the post - but I Can Do It - and it doesn't cost me $11 and an hour of my life.

So, without further ado, I present A Misty Mountain Morning:

Some folks call the gray drizzle depressing - I choose to see it as perfect sweater weather.

Two Stranded, One Handed

2006-10-13T07:20:00.000-06:00

I normally knit two stranded colour work holding one yarn in each hand, picking with the left and throwing with the right, but having heard tantalizing rumors of knitters who hold both yarns in one hand, I thought I'd give that a go for this project. As usual, I forged ahead and came up with a method that worked for me - I have no idea if this is "right". I find the continental style considerably more efficient, so I simply tensioned both yarns in the left hand, extracting them alternately with my index finger:

It works well. So well, in fact, that I would love to be able to use the technique in all stranded colour work, but there's a little snag. Knitting with one strand leaves a bit of slack in the unknitted strand - this is quite manageable when the pattern is only 2 stitches long, and the colours are being consumed at equal rates, but it seems to me that longer carries and more complex patterns would require constant retensioning of the yarns, which would reduce efficiency considerably.

I'd love to hear from anyone out there who has another one handed method, or could suggest ways around the differential tension issue.

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The house? The good news - I can cook, and there is now space on the couch to squish 2 adults eating at the coffee table. The bad news - my wallet is MIA. Nobody has used the credit cards, so I'm holding out hope that it was knocked off its "safe place" and got buried in debris, but I'm a titch stressed nonetheless.

The Simple Life

2006-10-12T10:09:00.000-06:00

There's not much knitting going on for the next couple of days (actually, I plan to work on DD's cardigan when I sit down for breaks, but that's about it) and here's why:

Before the truck:

After the truck:

"Unpacked":

There's not a square inch of clear surface at the moment, and the kids' room remains packed to the roof, although Basil clearly considers that advantageous:

We'll get there. In spite of the huge task ahead, it is a tremendous relief to be done with the business of other people traipsing through our space, handling our stuff (not always carefully), commenting (how small the space is, how much work we have ahead of us - Duh! - how much fabric and yarn there is, etc. etc.). As an intensely private introvert, I find this intrusiveness to be one of the hardest parts of moving.

----------------------------

Thanks for all the encouragement on the cardigan. To answer Netter's question, DD loves the way it looks - which I suppose is really all that matters. She has the good fortune to have a complexion which looks smashing in brilliant reds and oranges, so I am confident it will look great on her. It also occured to me, while walking through the Village early this morning (sans camera), that the cardigan reflects the current fall colours almost exactly - the brilliant reds, orange and yellow, a touch of green and the intense blue sky. I'll have to get a photo in the next day or two - perhaps this wasn't such a crazy idea, after all.

Comfort Zone

2006-10-11T07:20:00.000-06:00

Well, it's all in - all 9000 lbs of it. Wall to wall, floor to ceiling throughout the living room and the kids' bedroom, plus a huge chunk of the common storage area downstairs. I'll post photos later in the week - the unpackers come today, which should also be an adventure, since there's nowhere to set anything. Nevertheless, it is a warm fuzzy to have our stuff at last - the bed with the firm mattress, my beloved stove with the accurately calibrated oven temperature (I burned a lot of stuff last month) - it's starting to feel like home rather than playing house.

In spite of all the disruption, I did have the foresight to take some knitting photos before the Day Of Many Boxes. I've been frantically knitting up a warm cardigan for DD, since the mornings are getting frosty, but not yet frosty enough for a winter jacket - and I've managed to do it from the existing stash.

Some time ago, in an effort to expand my colour sense beyond my favorites (analagous blues and blue-greens, neutrals, blue-and-neutral), I pulled out my copy of ColorWorks by Deb Menz and picked a hexad scheme - essentially six hues evenly spaced around the wheel. I weighted the selection towards the warm side, and ordered some Wool of the Andes from KnitPicks:

I was a little disappointed in some of the colours, which were flatter and less attractive than they had seemed on the monitor, and I found the contrasts so jarring.... it went to the bottom of the heap for some time. However, it was also the only really suitable yarn in the stash for a hardwearing child's cardigan, and to my relief, DD was highly enthusiastic about the colour scheme.

I wanted to tone down the effect as much as possible, so I alternated the highly saturated with the flatter colours:

And put the whole thing on a background of charcoal gray (from my seemingly never-ending stash of Briggs and Little Regal - not the softest stuff, but the KP yarn is fluffy enough to compensate):

I am still ambivalent about it - it's so far out of my comfort zone, but I think I have successfully dodged the potential for garishness. It is knitted in the round, with a steek up the front for the zipper, and the 2 stitch stranded pattern means the carries are just long enough to make an extremely warm fabric, but not so long as to snag with hard wear. It's also very quick to knit.

Find My Happy Place

2006-10-10T07:09:00.000-06:00

I was managing a blissfully ignorant state of optimism about today - right up until the movers popped in yesterday for a brief reccy of the apartment. I've come to take DH's doom and gloom pronouncements of "it'll never fit" with a grain of salt, because year after year he says that about what I want to take with us for holidays (mostly kid stuff), and year after year I'm right and he's wrong because I am A Good and Resourceful Packer. But when the seasoned professional stood in the middle of our living room just shaking his head.... They arrive in 2 hours time. I'll let you know how it went tomorrow, IF they don't bury my laptop.

Meanwhile, I'm going to my happy place:

Thanksgiving

2006-10-09T09:05:00.000-06:00

There's a lot of thankfulness going on in our home these days, and this being Canadian Thanksgiving, I thought I'd share a bit of it with you. Here, in no particular order (and by no means a complete list), are some snippets of gratitude:

Rob. Who came home last week, ending an exceptionally stressful month of single-parenting. Although we were all tremendously pleased to see him, no one was more jubilant than Winnie:

Let's just say she wasn't a top priority for attention during that month.

Bunny rabbits. At one point, when DD and I were locked in a death spiral of increasingly outrageous behaviour followed by increasingly outraged responses, I paused to take stock and decided that a "just because" bit of positivity was needed. Taking a cue from Lee Ann, I pulled out my sample pack of Andean Silk (KnitPicks, impulse buy at half price this spring) and stayed up late one night making this:

Which created the desired response:

She sidled up to me the next day to say, "Mom, I really appreciate you going to all the work to make such a nice bunny for me."

Getting up every morning and throwing open the blinds to see an everchanging version of this:

(Also gazing upon said view from the hot tub and pool just down the hall from us, knitting on the patio on sunny afternoons, working at my bench... you get the idea.)

Looking forward to winter for the first time in nearly a decade:

But most of all - my family - healthy, whole, and together:

My Sky

2006-10-07T10:26:00.000-06:00

A brief flash of blue sky on an otherwise grey day last week:

Our task for the Thanksgiving weekend: tidy the condo and move all the furniture up against the walls in preparation for Tuesday. I'm (uncharacteristically) optimistic, whereas Rob, who actually watched the truck load in MJ, keeps pointing out that the boxes from the kitchen alone will occupy about 1/3 of our present living space. Thankfully this moving crew did a better job of labelling than the last one, who wrote "miscellaneous" on almost everything, although with boxes jammed six deep floor to ceiling, one can't exactly pick and choose which to open first.

In any case, it should make for entertaining blogging. One of the best things about having a blog is that life events that would otherwise be merely aggravating are magically transformed into Amusing Personal Anecdotes. Assuming I can find the computer, that is.

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Thanks so much for all the lovely compliments on the Greek Chic sweater. There's a tremendous sense of satisfaction and self-sufficiency in finishing up a garment, snipping the last thread, and walking out the door in it five minutes later. I've kept careful pattern notes for future consideration, and I may develop it in self-published form at a later date.