Knitting on Impulse

Laughter

My daughter and I had a wee spat last night. It was pretty basic stuff, beginning with her present tendency to find all aspects of her brother's corporeal presence unbearably irritating, and brought to an abrupt climax when she punched him to make her point. She put forth an impassioned defence based on the assertion that she was merely "swatting" him, swatting being a benign, non-punishable action completely different from the punch of which she was so unjustly accused. I, the implacable judge, pointed out that she was three feet away from me when she struck him, with a fist, hard enough to hurt, and no amount of semantics was going to commute the time out. She pronounced me the Worst Mother in the UNIVERSE, stalked to her room and dove under the bedcovers.

Normally at this point, I disengage. She grumbles for a few minutes, picks up a book, regains control, and all is well by the time she emerges. Nothing further said. Lately though, I've been increasingly aware that the golden age of my absolute authority is quickly winding to a close and the scary vortex of puberty is looming. I wondered if I could find a way to stay engaged in the middle of her anger, to do something wise and wonderful and Good Mother-ish to ease her way back to self-control. (And truthfully, there are some very good reasons why this is a particularly thorny challenge. Mainstream parenting advice works brilliantly on my son; on the girl - not so much.) 

I walked to the side of her bed. She shouted at me to go away, buried herself in the duvet, and I stood there, trying to imagine what I could say. What one of those really Good Mothers with the perma-smile and perfect children would say. (The intellectual comfort of a legitimate diagnosis doesn't stop me from judging myself against their scrubbed and polished soccer-mom perfection.) Totally blank. A minute went by, and still nothing. And then I had a completely childish impulse of my own to just stay there, quiet as a mouse, and see what might transpire.

The minutes ticked by. There was a little wiggling, and finally a curious face poked out to see what was going on. A moment of stunned silence... and then helpless giggles at the absurdity of the whole thing. She threw her arms around me and we laughed until the tears ran down our cheeks.

It was magic. I'm not sure why I feel compelled to write it down here, except that I want to mark the moment, remember that sometimes it can be this way.

Water's Mesmerizing Lens

 

I love the forest in any weather, but it seems more vividly alive in the rain, as if the veil between spirit and substance were rendered translucent by the dripping, rippling mist.

The Landscape of Dog

Of sand dunes rippling into distant lands:

Of glacial valleys falling to the sea:

The dog lies dreaming.

 
(And maybe also pouting in a dramatically long-suffering sort of a way, because I was being all freakish and sticking the big camera right in her face. At least I didn't use the flash.) 

Beginner's Mind

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind there are few!"

Shunryu Susuki

That pretty much sums up my creative focus right now. Since the wool business naturally slows a little at this time of year, I've elected to drop the store update frequency to every other week for the next three months, and indulge in some of the learning and exploration that inevitably seems to fall to the bottom of the Doing list during the busy season. I've set myself a loose curriculum of knitting, poetry, garment design, geometry, photography, and the math and physics of natural pattern formation.

Beginner's mind is a wonderfully illuminating way to approach knitting, and I have to credit Teva Durham with opening my eyes to that aspect.  Early in my foray into blogging, I felt intimidated by the prevalance of extreme expertise in the online knitting world - there seemed to be a superior way to do everything from casting on to cabling, and I felt a frisson of anxiety showing my work, lest I be looked down on as gauche and unworthy. I was knitting Teva's ballet top from Loop-d-Loop, and did a bit of a double-take at the use of kfb as the increase stitch. Nevertheless, I suspected that a cutting edge designer might have a reason for using a "beginner's" increase, and followed her directions to the letter. Indeed she did, and as the garment progressed I was transfixed by the way every single stitch served a mindfully choreographed purpose, both functional and esthetic. In that moment I realized that every loop and technique has its own intrinsic character and beauty - the key to successful design is a full and mindful understanding of each.

Which partly explains the slow progress of the Mindful Swatching series - I embark on a topic, and just as the post is nearly complete, realize an entire possibility or property I've overlooked. I'm on no deadline though, and hurry would defeat the purpose of this journey. (Admittedly, the recent rainy twilight hasn't entirely facilitated photography, and more Ott lights aren't in the budget just yet.)

Even on a dim and drizzly day, however, there is an inexhaustible supply of subjects worth a closer look:

 

Mud and Tulips

I suspect our little strip of dirt, shared as it is by kids and dog, may embody the very definition of gardening in adverse spaces. Nevertheless, beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

 

 
 
  
 

Inside and Out (Courtesy of the Girl Child)

 

Above: found in the yard and gifted to me by the girl. Perhaps I should buy a lottery ticket? Speaking of lotteries - we very rarely indulge in a 649 ticket, but a few weeks ago, the prize was over 18 million, so Rob picked one up. Just in case, you understand. As invariably happens, I couldn't help pondering what we'd do with the winnings, and felt a sudden surge of anxiety as to whether I'd have to quite dyeing yarn or could simply justify getting a really nice studio. Which I suppose means I've done a pretty OK job of choosing my second career. (We didn't win, so I was spared the agony of indecision.)

Below: I'm not entirely sure what inspired it, though our dog is obsessed with creating craters in the flower garden, and our cat is most definitely the boss of the dog, Perhaps Basil is simply graphically demonstrating the horror experienced by my poor bulbs - like a sort of an empathy exercise.

The Glorious Three Part Tulip

We're crying uncle here. Rob is still seriously functionally restricted by his back injury, I've come down with some sort of a thingy consisting of exhaustion and a splitting headache, and we decided conceded that it might be best to just postpone the yarn update to next week.

Thankfully, I'm still able to do quiet things like knitting and computer work.... and took the opportunity to give the blog a long overdue update and decluttering. What do you think?

The surviving tulips are finally blooming:

I feel a red phase coming on.  You've been warned.

This is even better, though - just look at the stunning display of three part symmetry:

It is tempting to say it expands to six parts, but when you really look closely, it's three all the way. 

Casting On and Binding Off to Match: The Rolled Edge

Rolled edge coils smoothly

Resilient and strong willed

Beware flaccid yarns

Technically speaking, it doesn't matter precisely how you cast on or bind off (as long as you do it loosely), because the very edge of the fabric is hidden in the roll, but there is still lots of scope for exploration.

The elasticity of your yarn matters a great deal. The worsted weight BFL above is a tightly spun wool  - its roll snaps into place like a coiled spring.

A less elastic fibre combination like the camel-silk will roll too, but it also doesn't take much handling to relax it.

Clearly, swatching with the chosen yarn is critical - left to its own devices, how far will it roll, how determined will it be to stay put?

Round knitting has circumferential tension to hold things in place... like folding back a cuff:

Which could negate the roll, as easily as preserve it. The tension will be greatest when the circumference is smallest - so the effect would be greater at the border of a wrist than a hip; more prominent stretched (like a hat band) than relaxed.

The rolled edge can solve the problem of cast on/bind off tension for an elastic edge (as long as you cast on or bind off the roll loosely) and provides a more robust edge surface for heavy wear (TechKnitter has a great treatise on why this is so.)

It resolutely maintains the stockinette gauge inherent to its nature, however:

Which makes it a prominent design feature, rather than an unobtrusive beginning or end. Will the ribbing spend its functional life around a head, fully expanded to match the roll, or is it destined to stretch over a heel or hand, snapping back to hug the smaller body part?

Will the roll be a stabilizing asset or a bunching-in liability on the edge of an expanding stitch like garter or seed?

Resources:

TECHknitter (Really, that's all I could find. Most knitting resources seem to treat this as a sort of a default, no-brainer edging.) 

Anything to add?

Mindful Swatching: A Knitting Education

It seems, in the knitting world, that it is common to categorize oneself as either a "process knitter", or a "product knitter". I've never been able to fit comfortably into either camp. I am definitely a process thinker - I love to wrestle with a problem for the sheer mental satisfaction of solving it, whether or not it ever translates into an object or action, but when it comes to bringing an object into being with my two hands, I am definitely product focused. 

I will happily play for hours with the math of sleeve cap solutions I may never knit, but committing my fingers to an object that will not ever serve a useful purpose in its own right (like say... a swatch) makes me crazy. Paradoxically though, I don't really incorporate a knitting technique into my conscious repertoire until I've actually knit it, which effectively limits my knitting education to the number of garments I have time to make.

Clearly, I must swatch to learn, but how to make it palatable, purposeful, exciting? Mindfulness would be a good start - looking deeply into the inner nature of each stitch and technique, celebrating its beauty with photos, poetry, conversation, and whatever else comes to mind. I think it's worth trying.

I've got a loose plan to work through specific topics and/or problems, ferreting out every idea and solution I can find, and contributing my own where the inspiration strikes. I'll link to, rather than attempt to duplicate, the many thousands of wonderful tutorials out there, though I don't rule out making something of my own if there seems to be a gap. I would love to hear about your discoveries and experience, and I'll put the posts in the sidebar of the blog as a reference, so comments will add immensely to that. For starters, I'll be referencing TechKnitter a great deal, as I love her thorough, academic approach to the subject.

Posts will happen as often as they happen - likely weekly-ish, but that will depend a great deal on how many swatches I need to knit and photograph to come to grips with a topic. The project will last until I run out of stuff I don't know - quite possibly forever.

I realize there are other formal database projects out there - knitwikis, and the like - this is simply my attempt to systematically imbibe a body of knowledge in a way that feels good. (Though an informal swatch-along might be fun, eh?)

Feedback, ideas, suggestions?

(The first installment will go up immediately after this introductory post.)

Spring Mountain Morning

I love this time of year: the sun is up just early enough, the air is crisp, the tourists have gone home for shoulder season, and I have the mountain all to myself.

After seeing the kids off on the bus, Eowyn and I head home via the base of Blackcomb mountain and wander the newly green runs as far and wide as we wish.

The sun has just crested the peaks, making colours rich and brilliant as light spills down the hill, the grass is dazzling with dew diamonds,

and the air is fresh and fragrant and twittering madly with bird song. It's hard to describe how it smells, tastes, feels.... like clarity. Like hope, new ideas and unlimited possibility.

Eowyn likes it too.