Fire on the Mountain

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spontaneity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: