Knitting on Impulse

Knitting Life

Late knitting:

 

About 2 weeks ago, Rob requested a custom designed earflap hat for officiating at the bobsleigh and skeleton track - colours to match their navy blue jackets, extreme softness and warmth(worsted superwash merino), and patterning with a cool, not-at-all-girly Nordic flavour, incorporating the sliding logo if possible. It turns out that kettle dyeing a really dark and impeccably colourfast (don't want it bleeding into the grey when washed) navy took a fair bit longer than anticipated and he is stuck with a black ball cap this week.  The yarn is finally ready, so there's still hope for next week's World Cup races - I guess I'll be swatching and charting today!

Get On With It Knitting:

 

Leafy hat 2.0, waiting for me to chart the revised design. 

Pleasant Knitting:

 

Puttering along on the first sleeve - still an enjoyable process, but I'm mentally ready to be wearing it and knitting something else.

Disappointing Knitting:

 

A classic example of that concept driven knitting I was talking about a few days ago.  "Wouldn't it be a cool idea to use a giant gradient-dyed skein of mohair boucle as the colourwork for a yoked pullover?"  Except that in real life, the shoulders look huge and 80's and not at all Me.  It fits well, and I did finally work out a top-down round formula I like, but unless I think up a way to balance the visual weight of the yoke, I will never wear it.

Crazy Knitting:

 

I have recently rediscovered the sensual joys of handmixed organic tea poured gracefully from a warm and curvaceous pot.  So much more satisfying than the prosaic teabag in a mug.  But the pot cools off rather inconveniently before I am finished with its delights, which leads me to believe some sort of insulating cover might be in order....  Until now, I put tea cozies in the same category as the pink poodle toilet roll cover I crocheted in my pre-teens.  (It clashed magnificently with our 70's bathroom fixtures, but was nevertheless granted a place of honour by my doting mother.) The last thing I need at the moment is another project, but I might have to give it a go.  Anyone got some fabulous pattern suggestions?

So It Turns Out...

that trying to to dye a large quantity of finicky specialty skeins while simultaneously waiting on one staying-home-sick kid and shuttling the healthy sibling to and from school was.... unrealistic.  Normally Helpful Dad is working 14 hour days at the Olympic sliding track - bobsleigh and skeleton training this week and World Cup next (though I did dispatch him to the post office with packets of yarn when he came home for a short break.) There will be new yarn on Sunday - I managed a full complement of the colourway of the week yesterday, and a few rainbow sock skeins today... just not the dozen or more I had hoped for.  (They are awfully labor intensive - but so much fun!)  Next week I'm going to bow to reality, forego dyeing altogether and play catch up with a house teetering dangerously on the edge of complete squalor, but there will be more fraternal socks after that, I promise.

Have I showed you the aerial view I took of the sliding track last summer?

 

Built for the 2010 Olympics, it promises to be a very exciting addition to the international sliding circuit. It's the fastest track ever built (by a long shot - they are looking to break 150 km/h next week; until now it has been rare to break 140, even at one of the faster tracks like St. Moritz), and scares the pants off of most of the teams presently training on it.

Randomness

Sweater knitting:

I've completed the body of Oblique to the underarms, and started on the first sleeve.  I'd love to have it done by Friday, but I rather suspect that's not going to happen.

I'm still mulling over the whole business of the ganseys and fit, (and whether I ought to apologize for blurting out that many of real-life offspring of Fisherman's Knits have a less than attractive sillouhette. Because I would hate to make anyone feel bad.) Interestingly, the project pages from Aran Knits have much leaner and shaplier forms - perhaps because it was published a few years later, with a mind to changing fashion?  I would LOVE to knit St. Brigid. (As an aside, if anyone wants to sell me their copy of Aran Knits for a price I could actually afford, or perhaps barter for yarn, I would be eternally grateful.  Shocked and stunned, but eternally grateful.) In any case, both Faroe and Inishmaan should be relatively easy to modify to a more flattering shape (and really, weren't traditional ganseys knitted to the dimensions of the wearer anyway?) 

So why am I determined to knit Starmore ganseys when there are so many lovely modern Arans out there?  Firstly, because her designs have that indefinable spark - a kind of fierceness rooted firmly in the traditions of a cold and windy land. Secondly, and likely because of those traditional roots, they are truly practical outerwear: high but non-constricting necklines, room for layering and vigorous movement, densely packed patterns that insulate the body. None of those great expanses of reverse stockinette that may elevate a single cable to artful magnificence but allow the frigid wind to whistle through with impunity.

Speaking of chilly:

 

Early morning mist over Fitzsimmons Creek - and it was bitterly cold today.

 

Not cold enough to dampen the Australia Day festivities, however:

 

That was 08:20 this morning, outside the Longhorn. This would be only a tiny portion of the Aussie contingent in Whistler, most of whom were going about their work as lifties and ski instructors, whilst similarly decked out in flags, face paint and assorted paraphenalia. 

Winter Rose

But first, a wee announcement. I'm slowly clueing into the fact that if I have to apologize for being late week after week... it probably means there's something wrong with my schedule.  The present reality is this: IF the ambient humidity is zero, and IF there are no glitches or meetings or appointments or school events or birthday parties or big errands AND nobody is sick.... I can get the yarn up Thursday evening, No Problem.  Right.  Starting next week, I'll continue to dye Monday and Tuesday, but I'll put the yarn up the following Sunday evening, with an immediate email to those on the yarn updates list, and a detailed blog post on the Monday.

This week's colourway comes from one of my favorite photos of the fall of '07:

 

There was another rose from that day that was more crisply perfect and fairytale-ish, and I made it into a notecard, but I love this one in a different way.  It is more complex, more mature - a rose enjoying the fullness of its rosy essence, displaying a rich array of hues granted even greater magnificence by their frosty crown.

 

As you can see in the mosaic, the pale early morning light makes both highlights and shadows of lavender and blue, layered over a rich variety of pinks and reds - some saturated, some fading gracefully into brown.

The sparkle of merino-silk captures the frosty aspects particularly well:

 
The Essential Merino fingering shows a rich array of pinks with splashes of lavender (have I mentioned how much I love this new yarn? So plump and lively.)

 

The sock yarn gives a little more time to the lavender frost:

 

while the BFL's creamy undertones bring out the gentle shades of pink:

 

There are two sweater packs this week:

Cruiser disappeared right off the mark, but as of this posting, the BFL sport is still available, displaying those deep blue shadows as randomly scattered flecks over subtle washes of dusky pink:

  

There's a single skein of mohair-silk:

And last, but not least, a couple of new Leafy Mitt colourways, and some Socks of Fraternal Happiness.  The full rainbows have been snatched up, but I can always make more next week! I envision these knitted toe up from opposite ends of the skein, so as to express all the hues of the colour wheel melting slowly up one sock and down the other.  Like so:

Stark Raving Ambitious

Thank-you, Paula, for that very apt turn of phrase! Despite the fever/total body pain/exploding head business that kept me mostly pinned to the couch yesterday, I managed a good bit of knitting on Oblique, galvanized into action by the thought of permission to start another sweater (or two.)  (I know, Margene - very future-focused and not at all Zen of me!) I also thought I might tell you more about my sweater plan for the year, which I have only mentioned in bits and pieces for fear of jinxing it.

I'm slowly trying to reconcile my attraction to concept knitting (distinct, I think, from process knitting) with the reality of no clothes/no money/lots of yarn (not to mention no storage space for a growing collection of unwearable garments.)  I have spent a lot of time over the last few years pursuing cool knitterly ideas without regard to whether they would be remotely flattering on me... with predictably dismal results.  In addition to the obvious criteria like fit and compatibility with my own body shape, the rethinking process also involves being brutally honest about the sweater formats that I will actually wear on a regular basis.

My sweater needs fall into two categories: indoor and outdoor.  Since I no longer work in overly air conditioned offices, I don't need prolonged indoor warmth - long sleeved pullovers are pretty much never practical.  I get the most value out of layering pieces: short sleeved pullovers over cotton camisoles or shirts, and cardigans. Outdoors is another matter: here in the coast mountains, winter temperatures tend to hover just below the freezing mark, with plenty of chilly damp in early spring and late fall - perfect for robust wooly sweaters.  We run most of our errands on foot, and I routinely wear my Winter Wonderland sweater in lieu of commercial winter gear. Hence my focus on traditional fisherman's ganseys, which are designed for practical use in cold weather (and have the added bonus of being part of my Celtic / Northern European heritage.)

So,

Outdoors: big, wooly, practical, traditional. I think both Faroe and Inishmaan fit the bill.

Indoors: cardigans and short sleeves.  Oblique gets the cardigan tick, and I realized the other day that virtually any long sleeved design can be converted to short sleeves, with the added bonus of seriously diminishing the time spent on Sleeve Island.  My plan to work through Elizabeth Zimmerman's neck/shoulder shapings will fall into the short sleeves category - probably with a smidge of texture or colourwork for interest. And in flagrant violation of all my thrifty, use-the-patterns-you-already-own resolutions, I just paid the exorbitant shipping and exchange rates for a copy of Norah Gaughn's new summer collection because I am completely in love with Flower Child  (here's the non-Rav link).

One other thing - why do you think it is that the Starmore sweaters so often look WAY shorter and wider (and consequently, to be brutally honest, dumpy) in project photos than they do on the models in the book? Are people failing to check row gauge or block them appropriately, or are the modelled ones perhaps knit longer than the pattern indicates?  Mine will most definitely be knit long, because I am long waisted to begin with, and nothing ruins the warming effect of a big sweater more effectively than a draft up the small of my back.

Lastly, (and then I really will stop talking!) my proclamation about not publishing my own sweater designs this year wasn't entirely accurate.  I want to do the Little Knight sweater and to work up version 2.0 of the Mystery cardigan - but I'm going to take my time. Mostly I want to hone my skills on smaller designs; for example, Leafy hat 1.0 is done and 50% satisfactory:

 and version 2.0 is about to begin. Fortuitously, the hat finished within the same skein size used for the Mitts (though the mitts do use less -the hat used most of the skein), which means I could offer a double-sized skein for matching sets, or you could just get a single and make the hat instead. (My other stark ravingly ambitious plan is to work up a unique single skein design for each of my yarns..... )

Delerious

Yesterday I pulled up CNN's live feed of the inauguration while I worked, and the joy and release and hope came flooding through the screen with such power that I was transfixed.  As a Canadian, the closest experience I could relate it to would be watching the celebrations on the rubble of the Berlin Wall (admittedly an overstatement in some aspects, but for the race issues, perhaps not.) I have avoided seeing presidential speeches for the better part of a decade, but you can't help but hear excerpts on the news, and I'm sure I don't ever remember all this talk of love and tolerance, inclusiveness and communal responsibility.  Amazing.

Today.... let's just say I feel a little bit bad for doubting my daughter who spent much of the last several days complaining of a poorly defined tummy-ache. No vomiting, fortunately, but I'm definitely not hustling around Getting Things Done. I've been putting the time to good use knitting, which left my mind free to wander (cue the scary music), and came to the conclusion that my choice of sweaters for the year should really be guided, at least in part, by my rather extensive library of books by Designers I Admire.  Which is how I came to be plotting how to complete both Faroe and Inishmaan (sorry if you're not on Ravelry, but I'm not about to take photos of a Starmore publication for the blog) before the end of the cold weather, how to incorporate a few discreet mods to create waist-to-hip silhouettes more like / \ and less like ( ), and which of my own yarns might be appropriate. (Also how divinely chic Faroe would look with my black ski pants whilst spring skiing.) What do you think: admirably ambitious or stark raving mad? 

Transcendent

Walking this morning, after dropping the boy off at Whistler Kids; a lovely section of the Valley Trail.  Resolved to excercise, cold and blue shadows, acutely aware of ice and slipping, my runny nose, dog walkers; difficult to find enough light for hand held photos... Detached. Ordinary. Cold.

Then, round a corner, a sudden explosion of sunshine beckons:

In an instant, blue frost becomes a dazzling halo, every limb aflame with white light:

 

Nearby, the magic corridor... someday I will travel it to countries unknown, but today I am content to breathe the light.

 

Suddenly, the air is full of birds, singing, dancing, swooping close and skipping at my feet...

 

And I am reconnected, filled with the joy of awareness, Real once again.

Soundtrack for the day (discovered via Brenda Dayne):

by Toronto band Enter the Haggis.

Fraternal Happiness

Over and over again, I am discovering that (creatively speaking) things inevitably work out best when I do what I love, rather than struggling to make what I think someone else might want. This week's epiphany was about socks; specifically, the fact that I really have no personal attachment to socks with identically matching stripes, and trying to dye them for that effect was frustrating and unrewarding. (I just assumed other, ie. normal, people would prefer them, so I kept trying to find a way to make it work.) The Leafy Mitt kits are fraternal though, and are turning out quite lovely as such, so why not socks? 

Hence, this week's collection of Socks of Fraternal Happiness.  They feature long washes of colour melting into one another in stripes of gently and randomly varying widths. The colour scheme is consistent, so each pair will most definitely "belong" together, but there will be no way to make them precisely identical. 

  

I had so much fun with these that my mental sock block disappeared altogether and all sorts of other creative ideas began to percolate around fraternality - yin and yang, warm and cool... you'll see next week.

I also spent a little time on the other side of things, playing with near-solids: successively kettle dyeing layer after layer of hue to create deeply saturated colours with subtle depth.

And there are more Leafy Mitt kits to choose from.  The Leafy hat is undergoing a little reworking, but coming along. I think it will be possible to get a hat and a pair of mitts from a double-sized skein... that's all in development. 

Three happy things:

1. (Re)discovery of the potential of fraternal socks.
2. A husband who has infinite patience with knots and tangles.  Apparently all the competitive sky diving he did in his 20's has a practical application!
3. Saturday morning rituals: family snuggles, reading together in bed with strong coffee and a morsel of dark chocolate.

More Happy Things

1. A day of designing with tea and podcasts was every bit as lovely as I had hoped.  I won't show the hat until it's complete, but it is coming together in a very satisfactory fashion, with some elegant radial geometry.
2. "Fuzzy" snow... and bright low angle sunshine to make it visible:
3. Unexpected kindnesses.

New yarn will go up later today... I'm just pretending that Friday is Thursday.  Or something.

   

Back to the Happy

Well, that last one was a little whiney, wasn't it?  I'd spent the better part of the day at a committee meeting for a public art project - very cool stuff that involves breaking new ground for connections between oft-estranged parts of our community, but several hours of intense and careful "relating" pretty much drained me of all psychic energy.  (And then a skein of yarn went wrong, which I tend to take very personally.  I can be totally sanguine about a botched lump of silver or gold, but wool waste?  Insufferably tragic.)

It left me reflecting though, on the importance of my connection to my body for the peace of my mind.  In a social setting, every nerve and fibre is directed to listening, observing, watching for cues and inflections, taking the emotional temperature of the room moment by moment, visualizing the shape of the ideas as they build, choosing my own words with care.... and I have no awareness whatsoever of my physical being.  When I come home, I fall back into myself with a sigh of relief, only to discover that while I was gone, my shoulders migrated to somewhere up around my ears, my face and neck muscles got busy and locked themselves into a solid mass of knots, and that fabulous posture I resolved has morphed southward into an awkward combination of fetal position and slouch.  Sometimes my hands ache - I can only presume from fidgeting.  It is really quite startling, and I would love to find ways to stay physically present and grounded in social settings.

Getting back to the happy thing, have you seen the blog, Three Beautiful Things? It is a lovely idea, and to my sensibilities, more spontaneously joyful than the traditional "gratitude" list. I think perhaps I need to incorporate something along those lines to refocus my resolve to practice contagious happiness and personal optimism. How about Three Happy Things?

1. The dyeing is done and hung to dry, I have the house to myself, and I'm going to spend the day drinking tea, listening to knitting podcasts (a rare treat), and playing with Johanna's excellent suggestion to develop a Leafy hat to go with the mitts.

2. Giving: I made good on my plan to put customer names from the previous month (one entry for each order) into a random draw for a $25 gift certificate to the store.  My daughter was very excited to be the one to pull out the name, and Susan (blogless) was the lucky winner.     (Despite a fit of anxiety that I might botch the whole social construct of the internet giveaway, it was just fine and was happily received. One more fear unfounded.... check.)

3. The Sweater. It is pretty, entertaining to knit, I have memorized the pattern AND can work on it while doing other things without screwing up. The lace panels are relatively narrow, and on the rare occasion that I do make a mistake, it is immediately apparent when I get to the next stitch marker, so I have only a short way to tink.