You’re the top…
… you’re the smile/ on the Mona Lisa…Look at this hoard of loveliness, courtesy of my wonderful LSP. That’s a 2 pound bag of gourmet beans in the middle there, people, just in time for a week in sole charge of a three year old. (The beans are for me, not him. They’re medicine.) Nestling cozily around the beans are a skein of beautiful sock yarn hand-dyed by Lisa Souza, colourway Wild Thing, and three skeins of Kureyon (2 x 95, 1 x 147), immediately destined for Lizard Ridge. And around the outside, some delicious teas, a sampling from a great page-a-day knitting calendar, some yoga mints and lip gloss, a lovely ruler with pressed flowers on it, five beautiful glass bead stitch markers, a floral calendar, Zen and the Art of Knitting, a bonsai potato kit (subtitle: Zen without the wait!) and my very own “I’d rather be knitting” bumper sticker. Plus the Mona Lisa, with sticks and string. Wow!
LSP, you’ve outdone yourself. I completely see why you were nominated for Best Secret Pal. You’re also eerily perceptive, since you managed to include colours of Kureyon I’d been eyeing up for Lizard Ridge, my husband’s very favourite tea (Moroccan mint green) and mine (English breakfast), and a card with one of my favourite old roses (Centifolia), all without any blog-hinting from me. Thank you so much!
It’s Biggles!
If you haven’t already found them, you need to check out the knitting pages on the V and A website. There you can find the pattern for this devilishly stylish WWII balaclava helmet, “made with ear flaps to ensure good hearing during telephone operations”. Just what this helmet is intended to protect you from is unclear to me (unwelcome advances? being taken seriously? Crazy Aunt Purl’s alien beams?). I’m thinking, though, that it would been the ultimate prophylactic against social diseases… especially if worn with these (which, according to the pattern, allow you to dispense with your knee caps. I thought I must have misread that, but I checked it twice).
In addition to these escapees from Rose-Kim’s What the Hell is This? Thursdays, you can check out some less absurd vintage patterns. You can also admire a collection of knitted art, and even submit your own images.
Half a Lizard
Some visual evidence of knitting progress for you at last: the first 12 squares of Lizard Ridge.
The photo’s a little dark, but you can see a rough pattern emerging: half blueish squares and half reddish (although I have only 5 blue to 7 red at the moment). I’m through all but one of the balls I bought for this project, and have begun knitting squares from the yarn left over from the squares in the photo. The remnant squares are very satisfying, if unpredictable, to knit: I never know where the colour sequences are going to take me. I’ve frogged a couple of attempts which really weren’t working, but I’ve also just finished one I like as much as any of the squares in the photo.
Once I’ve finished the remnants, I’ll have a much better sense of how much more Kureyon, and in what colours, I’ll need to finish the project. My current best guess is that 2 balls makes approx. 2 1/2 squares, but I won’t be able to use all the scraps from every ball — or at least not without having some eyeball-scorchingly unmatched squares! I think I’ll be trying to introduce a little more variety into the colour range with the remaining balls I buy — some more greens and earth tones, probably.
Finally, a big thankyou to my lovely Secret Pal for the e-giftie and your sympathetic comments on my last post. They both brightened my day, and I’m very grateful. I haven’t decided what to put the giveanything.com gift card towards, but I’m thinking that one of the Vogue Knitting on the Go books might be in my future…
I don’t know what to say
I haven’t posted in a few days, and this was going to be an upbeat post. Deb left me a comment that cheered me up about Rosedale, which has been stalled while I decided what to do about the contrast rectangle on the back. Carrying the yarn across the back of the contrast area has given it the consistency of a board, and messed up the tension on the adjacent stitches, and I’m enough of a perfectionist to be bothered by both these things. Apparently, I’m not the only person to have problems with this part of the pattern, which is encouraging to know: I’d put the unsatisfactory result down to my deficient colourwork.
But I’m not feeling very upbeat. I wasn’t sure whether I’d blog this, but here goes: I’ve just had a miscarriage. It’s my fourth, in fact, and my third within the last twelve months. I have no idea why, and neither do my doctors; all the tests have turned up nothing.
I’m trying not to generalize the misery. My life definitely doesn’t suck: I realize my great good fortune in having a patient, tolerant, funny and utterly decent husband whose few small quirks (pathological attitude to sleep, for example, and an inability to hurry up when required) are really very easy to live with, and who somehow–miracle of miracles!–manages to put up with me, my moods and my morning grumpiness. And I have my son–charming, offbeat, affectionate, smart as a button, and healthy as a horse–which is an enormous consolation many of those in the recurrent miscarriage boat don’t possess. Miscarriages aside, we’re healthy. We have a house we like, jobs that engage us, for the most part, and we’re financially stable. We’ve been lucky.
But this year has been spectacularly bad. Two miscarriages, my mother’s rapid and painful death from cancer (a cancer, what’s more, triggered by medical hardware used to repair an injury caused by a careless driver who hit her when she was crossing the road), and now another miscarriage. There’s also been a plethora of troubles, small and large, in the lives of people I care about and hurt for: bereavements, health worries, anxieties over children. I hate this year. I’m afraid to contemplate the ways it could have been worse, in case I make them happen. I just want to sink its feet in concrete and drop it into the sea.
I’m going upstairs now to spin up some merino roving. The spinning helps: it’s part physical therapy, part hopeful reminder that, with patience and gentle encouragement, the snarls and tangles can smooth themselves out and become something useful and beautiful. And if you have any good luck mojo going spare, send it our way, OK?
This irrelevant fact courtesy of my biology paper
Ever wanted to know why wool and other animal fibres are stretchy, and silk isn’t? It’s all in the structure of the proteins, apparently: the protein chains in wool and hair form a helix, making them flexible and elastic, while fibroin (silk protein) is a strong but much more rigid pleated sheet. Some fibres, such as those produced by spiders, have both helical and sheet peptides, making them both strong and elastic.
Thought 1: Strong and elastic? Sounds ideal to me.
Thought 2: How many spiders would it take to make enough yarn for a sweater?
Thought 3: Would spider yarn pill? And could it be machine washed?
Steal this meme
Jess left me another comment, with the very sensible suggestion that I apply my overwhelming stash to making gifts. In return, I’m going to steal her meme. That’s gratitude for you.
1. Flip to page 18, paragraph 4 in the book closest to you right now. What does it say? The book closest to me is volume 3 of a translation of Proust, and page 18 is one very, very long paragraph. In fact, I think that paragraph goes on for several more pages. This is my husband’s book, and no, I haven’t read it.
2. If you stretch out your left arm as far as possible, what are you touching? A fish tank. And my cat, with his nose pressed to said fish tank.
3. What’s the last program you watched on tv? The BBC dramatization of Mrs Gaskell’s North and South.
4. Without looking, guess what time it is. Naptime for my son. (And guess what? I was right!)
5. Except the computer, what can you hear right now? A babbling tank filter, and a babbling three year old (currently counting to 12 in Italian. We are not Italian. He has picked this up from our next-door neighbour.)
6. When was the last time you were outside and what did you do? Twenty minutes ago, with my son, coming home from Ikea. We collected a couple of pretty autumn leaves. Then we spent ten minutes on the steps, while I tried to coax him into the house with promises of bananas.
7. What are you wearing? A gloriously cosy oversized soft blue possum-merino sweater from NZ, jeans, wool socks and sheepskin slippers.
8. Did you dream last night? If you did, what about? I had an extremely strange dream in which I accidentally caused the death of Britney Spears on a boat, and was charged with her murder. During the same dream someone also offered to foretell my future, and told me I wouldn’t have any more children.
9. When was the last time you laughed? Ten minutes ago, on the front steps of the house.
10. What’s on the walls, in the room you’re in right now? Two block-mounted exhibition posters from the museum where I work.
11. Have you seen anything strange lately? Not that I can think of, unless you count the more surreal moments of parenting.
13. What’s the last film you saw? Nicholas Nickelby.
14. If you became a multimillionaire, what would you do with the money? The usual, I think: pay off mortgages (mine and those close to me), save some, give a wad to good causes. Pay for no. 15.
15. Tell us something about yourself that most people don’t know. I’m considering going back to school — to med school, to be precise. I’m currently doing premed courses.
16. If you could change ONE THING in this world, without regarding politics or bad guilt – what would it be? I’d have my mother back again.
17. Do you like dancing? Yes.
18. George Bush? Only for town dogcatcher.
19. What do you want your children’s names to be, girl/boy? No comment.
20. Would you ever consider living abroad? I am living abroad! I have lived abroad (in Britain and Canada) for the last ten years.
21. What do you want God to tell you, when you come to heaven? That I can see the people I’ve loved who have died.
22. Who should do this meme? Everybody should do this meme. I tag you all.
Knitting progress: More squares for Lizard Ridge (11 and counting).
Rosedale stalled at collar, since I’m considering frogging back to the start of the yoke and leaving out the contrast rectangle in the middle of the back.
Located Charlotte shawl for aunt, which I had mislaid some time ago.
Spun some nice Kool-Aid dyed merino superwash roving bought from a local spinner (in defiance of stash diet). Planning to incorporate it into a scarf, but more on that in another post.
Much playing with stash, and planning projects.
Stash diet
Call it guilt. Call it mindfulness. Call it the shock of recognizing you can no longer close the yarn cupboard door without leaning on it (and, what’s more, that your overflow yarn drawers are, well, overflowing). Call it what you will: I’ve decided I need to reduce my stash.
So I’m going to join Stashalong, on a month-by-month basis.
Priorities for the stash diet are going to be:
- UFOs. I’m bending the rules a little to permit yarn purchases necessary for finishing projects already underway, such as Lizard Ridge, for which I’ll need some more Kureyon and something else (probably Briggs and Little) to sew it up and crochet the edge.
- Clearing out stuff I will never voluntarily knit for myself or those I have to live with. In this category go an assortment of orphan balls in respectable fibres (mostly pure wool or mohair blends) which I inherited from somewhere or someone, and either don’t much like, or can’t imagine ever finding a use for. I’m thinking charity knitting: the Red Scarf project for those nice enough to be scarfworthy, and blankets for the rest. My son’s preschool, which occasionally solicits yarn donations, will be the beneficiary of anything too nasty for blankets.
- Yarn I have stashed for sweaters, to expedite the emptying of my stash cupboard.
- Yarn for shawls.
- Yarn for socks.
At my current rate of production, I will be on this diet until 2009.
I’ve seen the future, and it is…
… Glade, from Rowan 40. I’ve read posts raving about this pattern, but I wasn’t convinced until I saw it at the local needlearts fair last weekend. And it is beautiful: all subtly coloured stripy scallops that remind me of Florentine paper. Never mind that I’m already drowning in yarn. Never mind that it would cost an arm and a leg — although I was planning to substitute Madil Kid Seta for the specified and mystifyingly expensive Rowan KidSilk Haze, which would cut the cost somewhat.
Checking out Miriam Felton’s online shop recently, I happened upon a couple of her sock patterns I hadn’t seen before: Eleanora and Blessing. I love historical textiles, and anything reproducing them or inspired by them. I also love the book that Miriam quotes as her source for the images of the originals, Richard Rutt’s History of Handknitting. (I love it for itself and its subject, of course, but also because its author is/was (a) a man who was out as a knitter, and (b) in his non-knitting time, an Anglican bishop, which is interesting.)
As chance would have it, I used part of the same textile that inspired the Blessing sock as the design for some needlepoint (currently languishing in a drawer, awaiting both an alternate source for the yarn I began it with, and the patience to complete it. Mea culpa.) So I’m going to have to make the Blessing socks — and the Eleanora socks too, because I’m a big enough history nerd to think having socks styled after those worn postmortem by a woman who died of the plague in the sixteenth century is very cool. It’s Hallowe’en, people: creepy-r-us.
Actual knitting progress over the last day or so: Rosedale needing only collar, zip facing, a little grafting under the arms and a zip. Have begun another Lizard Ridge square in Kureyon 40. Languishing in bed with a cold is not without its benefits.
Raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens
My LSP, who is clearly the doyenne of spoiling (spoilenne?), wants a few more non-fibrous hints as to my tastes (along the lines of “kitties, walking in the rain, basil pesto”, s/he says — and in fact, LSP, yes, yes, and yes to all three of those). So here goes with a stream-of-consciousness list of things I love (Freudian analysts, please refrain from comment):
Green flowers. Peonies. Parrot tulips. Irises. Poppies. Cats, but not dogs. Rich deep colour. William Morris. Raoul Dufy. Van Gogh. Anything old: the older, the better. Stained glass. Ikons. Northern Renaissance art. Japanese woodblock prints (Hiroshige and the like). The sea. Boats. Sailing. Rowing. Sea shells. Nineteenth century novels, the more detailed and meandering the better. Mark Rothko. Hiking in the woods in fall. Trees. The countryside. Old churches. Old churchyards. Deserts. Desserts. Islands. Turkey (the place, not the bird). Russia. The smell and taste of vanilla, oranges, and almonds. Silk fabric. Japanese fabric. Historic textiles. Museums. Mozart. Dusk and dawn. The colour of the sky at night. Snow. Heavy frost. Walking at night with my husband. Snowshoeing. Pearls. Lace. Filigree. Anything delicate and intricate, really. Train trips. Thai food. Turkish food. Any cuisine that’s new to me. My elderly Italian neighbour’s homemade cake and zucchini flower fritters. Homegrown grapes. Picking apples. Making jam. Yoga. Sitting on the porch and watching the snow fall, in silence. The silence after a heavy snowfall. My sheepskin slippers. Playing cards with my in-laws . Drinking tea with anyone who’s willing. Listening to my son laugh. Watching him sleep.
Gratuitous yarn shot
Originally uploaded by The Ravelled Sleeve.
A glimpse of my recent experiments with swift and ball winder. That’s the Alpaca with a Twist Fino in Ruby Slippers (doesn’t that sound like the name of a pedigree animal?) at top left, which I’m planning to use for Seraphim. Clockwise from there: some yummy recycled sari silk, two skeins of Koigu PPM, and the green and plum Hand Maiden sea silk. Plus some teeny squash for seasonally appropriate colour — well, it is Hallowe’en.
The swift and ball winder work very well, I’m happy to say — but it’s a serious business winding a couple of kilometres of lace yarn, even with mechanical help. Phew. I think I may have ballwinder’s elbow.
