Wow it's been a long time. Well I've been so busy working on Breezy Cables I haven't had much time to write. That's not totally true, I have also managed to wasted a lot of time trying to find the perfect pattern and yarn for a sweater for a certain baby I know in Austin. I know, not a week ago I promised that I wouldn't be knitting any more gifts for other people for a while. Well, I lied.

As much as it frustrates me, I love knitting for friends. It's the perfect way to experience designs that you love, but know wouldn't suit you. The best thing is knitting for your super skinny friends. There are a lot of patterns that require very little yarn, yet have a lot of impact. I'm thinking of patterns like Ms Marigold and Green Gables from Zephyr Style. The smallest sizes require less than $20 of yarn. There aren't that many items that cost less to knit than to buy in a store. With just a few alterations, either of those sweaters can look very fancy and time consuming to the giftee, but they're not.

I also spent a lot of time dithering over whether or not to splurge on yarn for myself. Webs is having another great sale. It took at least four hours over two days to commit to purchase six skeins of Noro Transitions from Webs. Before I could go through with it I had to have several possible patterns for a sweater. It was a great deal, with shipping less than $90 for 800 yards of the most amazing yarn in all wooldom. Not cheap, but considering that Transitions is a bulky weight combination of camel, mohair, cashmere, silk, angora, and wool at 50% off the regular price I couldn't pass it up.

That's the worst thing about sales. You get so excited by the discount that sometimes you buy things you don't even want. I restrained myself. I have wanted to try Cash Iroha for over two years and it was on sale as well. I almost gave in, but the only colors on sale are shades of blue. I think this is progress. I have thirty five skeins of a crazy furry brilliant orange yarn that I got on sale from a craft store for a dollar a ball, because I convinced myself that I really needed a big fuzzy neon orange floor length coat. When I got home I realized that I did not. But it was 85% off.

I'll try to post some pictures of Breezy Cables tomorrow.

What did you knit for Armageddon, Daddy?

Everyone seems to be thinking about the apocalypse. Every other conversation I've had recently somehow works itself around to gloomy prophesying. Maybe it's the war that seems to have no end. Maybe it's the fact that no one in politics or out seems to have a clear vision of an alternate future. It also maybe that I spend to many hours perusing the websites of esoteric doomsday cults. Oh well, there's always knitting.

I mean really what do you knit for the dystopian future? I'm thinking of baclavas with openings adjusted to fit gas masks. I wonder if Habu has thought of distributing yarns created from Kevlar. I mean Dale of Norway already has a yarn coated with Teflon. It seems like a logical progression of protection, from rain to shrapnel.

I don't really believe things are that bleak. For every action there is ultimately some sort of reaction. You attack and weaken Iraq and you strengthen Iran. Similarly in politics and culture the actions of one generation produce a reaction in the next. At this very bleak political moment, the very radical nature of the current administrations ideology is sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Or so I hope.

Swee Pea and Me

This is my favorite neighbor kitty. She appeared one day a few months ago hiding under our deck. She was just a few months old. She was terrified of me. I tried to feed her and she stuck around for a while. One day she disappeared and I didn't see her for several months. Then one night I heard blood curdling screams. The big bruiser kitty who lives down the street had chased her up a tree and was attacking her. I had never seen a cat fight in a tree. I was amazed that they could go at it like that and still hang on. I finally separated them, and they both ran away.

Ever since then, Swee Pea has appeared at my doorstep every time I step outside. I thought she might be homeless, but she doesn't act like she's starving. My cat food just isn't good enough for her. So I guess she has a home. She seems to know when I'm feeling down, because she'll appear out of nowhere and begin nibbling my toes. Too bad kitties don't need sweaters. I could get inspired.

My mother does need a sweater. Will she get one? My mother is convinced that I will never finish her sweater. Her fears are quite reasonable. Every other sweater I have started for my mother has ended in disaster. The first one, which was a lovely tank knitted in her sorority colors (pink and green), failed because I ran out of yarn and I couldn't get more to match. The next was what I thought was a pretty bias design. I was making it up as I went along and using very fine yarn. I didn't realize how boring it looked until I was well in. I tried to stick it out; but no, my mom ended up with another scarf.

This time is going to be different. I am committed. If I can knit for friends, I must be able to do this. I think my standards are too high. Instead of just finishing a project I no longer like, I just give up. I cannot do that again. My mother doesn't need anymore hats or scarves or gloves, and she doesn't wear shawls. She will have her birthday sweater.
When, I don't know.

Fiasco

Okay, I'm giving up on the Hex Coat from Knitting Nature. I simply can't take it anymore. I haven't written much this week because I've been so frustrated with myself. I thought everything was going swimmingly. I had finished everything except the seaming and the hexagon trim. I had been in such a hurry that I didn't worry too much that the coat seemed a little long. Not just that, the armholes seemed long as well. I finally decided to try it on my mother (this was supposed to be her birthday present). Oops. What went wrong?

I had knitted a swatch. I thought I carefully measured the gauge. I obviously did not. My stitch gauge was right on, but my row gauge was off, way off.

When I thought about it, I realized that I usually don't depend on my row gauge that much because most patterns are written in a way that makes row gauge almost superfluous. You knit until you reach a certain length and then do armhole shaping, knit until you reach another length, do shoulder and neck shaping, and then bind off. If your row gauge is slightly off, you still get a fitting garment.

The hex coat pattern doesn't work like that. Once you start the armhole shaping you knit until you have completed so many rows, then bind off. Now, if I had measured better and realized that I was off, I could have adjusted things, but I didn't figure it out until I had gotten too far. I looked at the knitting I had done, and thought about how unpleasant it had been (all that repetitive, mind and finger numbing moss stitch). I just couldn't face knitting the top half over again. So I have given up.

I am now knitting Breezy Cables from Interweave Knits, Spring 2006 for my mom.


I didn't like this sweater when I first saw it in the magazine, but when I started desperately swatching for my mother's sweater, I really loved the way the pattern looked in my chosen yarn (Knitaly, by Colorado Yarns). Mom's birthday present is no longer slightly belated, but I would rather knit an entirely different garment than knit the Hex Coat again. I'm about 2/3's done with the back and I am so happy knitting something that I enjoy. Cables make me happy. Even if it takes longer, it's so much more fun.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I just love this time of year. Most of the knitting magazines begin publishing things I would actually think of knitting. New yarns come out. And, it's early enough to make ambitious plans for holiday knitting.

Here are a few things that I just can't wait to begin:

Coral Crossing from Interweave Knits, Fall 2006

I really want to knit it in Classic Elite Miracle, but I'm afraid that it will stretch out of shape, especially at the bottom. I've wanted to try this yarn for a long time, and there is a gorgeous new green this season.

Fair Isle U-Neck Pullover from Vogue Knitting, Fall 2006

This is a great modern shape. I think it would be perfect for my niece. I'll probably change the colors. Maybe something acid to change it from classic to funky.



Mohair Sweater from Junya Watanabe's fall 2006 collection

I have loved this from the first moment I glimpsed it while thumbing through the Vogue Fall Collections review at a local bookshop. I looks easy to knit. The main difficulty will be finding the right yarn, so it looks kind of trashed. Then of course there are the sleeves. I love too long sleeves, but that long might just be annoying.

I also want to try several new yarns: Pure, a new soysilk yarn by South West Trading Company (it looks luscious); Gloss, a new fingering weight merino/silk blend from Knit Picks (blah colors, but oh so cheap); and Di.Ve Autunno, a lovely variegated merino.

My eyes are always bigger than my fingers or my bank account this time of year, but I think anticipation is the best part of the process of knitting. Seeking out the perfect yarn. Swatching endlessly. Searching for the right pattern or designing your own. I enjoy the actual knitting, but every row I complete makes me think about how I will do it differently next time. I wonder what this stitch would look like in a different fiber or weight. I think that's why I give most of my completed garments away. To make room for what comes next.

Can You Knit Just One?

I know I can't.
I'm knitting the Hex Coat from Knitting Nature by Norah Gaughan on a deadline. I foolishly gave myself two weeks to complete it. I still have to knit the arms, seam it and do the hexagon trim and I was supposed to finish yesterday. I always underestimate the time it will take me to knit a large project, but this is ridiculous. I suppose I could finish it on time if I did nothing else. But I have a big problem that I am finally ready to admit to myself. I am simply unable to work on one item without constantly being overtaken by the irresistable urge to begin something else.

I think the problem is that knitting makes me think about knitting. And when I'm stuck in the middle of a long mindless stretch of simple stitches, my mind wanders. I just have to swatch that yarn that has been sitting in a drawer for six months. Once that's done, I've got to look at all of my pattern books and magazines for hours until I convince myself that I still have no idea what to do with it.

In the past two weeks when I should have been working on the coat, I have knit two hats and begun three more, finished the front of another sweater and a purse, and made too many swatches of ugly yarn in ridiculous colors that looked really good in the store because they were on sale.

So know I am making a promise to myself. No more. Don't get me wrong I'm not talking about forever, just until I finish this coat.

Inaugural Address

This is my first ever post on my new blog (or any blog for that matter). I've been thinking about starting a one for quite some time, somehow today seemed the perfect day to take the plunge. While this is primarily to be a discussion of knitting and other fiber related fun, what inspired me today is my two day immersion in that dark dank place otherwise known as the family court system.

Today a person very close to me lost custody of her three children. I sat in a dingy hallway for eight hours yesterday and seven more today so that I could testify on her behalf for what seemed like three minutes. In those fifteen hours I learned more about the way the legal system perverts parental love than in the last thirty years. I witnessed dozens of little dramas, some reeking of Jerry Springer others more like Shakespeare, all of them tragedies. All I know today is loss. Everyone lost. One man lost because he used the worst of himself for what he believed were the best motives. One woman (my friend/sister/love/heart) lost everything.

I watched one woman stand alone, with her whole family arrayed against her. They had a lot of good reasons, and in their place I might of been one of them. She was almost a stereotype, just out of jail, no secure place to stay, no real place to care for her kids. Maybe on drugs. Maybe a little crazy. I probably wouldn't want her to have her kids either, but neither did I want her to be so alone.

I saw another woman, at first glance, well put together. As my eyes passed over her I quickly noted, blond, upper middle class. Not only didn't my heart bleed, I didn't pay her a second thought. Later a teenage girl entered with a large group of clearly affluent people. They had at least three attorneys and a couple of paralegals in tow. She asked one of them if she could see her mother. As she ran to the blond woman I had dismissed and hugged her with an intense longing I looked at the older woman again. I noticed that her shoes were a little worn and her clothing while selected with care was clearly a little old. She didn't stand a chance.

I saw a third woman. A well preserved formerly wealthy woman in her sixties who had to beg her husband to sell their country club membership so that she could have some money to pay for her health insurance.

I saw a couple of attorneys jousting over whether, in the joint custody agreement, the child should move from house to house every week or every three and a half days. I wanted to scream, " How about every hour. "

I have never had children and probably never will. My experience of the last two days certainly doesn't encourage me. It isn't the tales of those who have lost that saddens me most. It is what you must do to win.

Okay, this is no way to start my knitting blog, or maybe it is. For me knitting is about connection. I love to knit for myself, but I usually end up giving everything away, even items begun as presents for myself. You take your love and embody it, transform the invisible into the tactile. A scarf is a hug. A hat a kiss on the cheek. Gloves are like tracing the fingers of children with your own in that glowing amazement that such beings are possible.