Knitting on Impulse

Mercurial

For the record, I am a complete non-believer in astrology. I have an open mind and all, but the logical scientist in me simply can't see any plausibility in the notion that everyone born at a particular time of year has the same personality, destiny, etc. - there are way too many biological variables with far more immediacy than the nebulous emanations of an indistinct blip in the sky. Nevertheless....

Aug. 1: the Shadow phase of Mercury's retrograde progression begins. Soon after, our beloved 16 year old stove blows up, with a dramatic display of sparks and spitting. This is suboptimal for a home dyeing business, but in the interests of saving money, we try various fixes with diminishing levels of success, until at last the corroded wiring harness tells us in no uncertain terms what to do with ourselves.

Aug. 20: Mercury's retrograde phase begins in earnest. Rob researches, I concur, we order a new stove - flat-top, since that's just about all that is available anymore if you don't have gas and want a decent quality oven. 

Aug. 23: Computer monitor begins to act strangely.

Aug. 25: Computer monitor goes to sleep for the last time. Problematic, since many critical business things can only be done from the PC to which it is attached, and the laptop is a convoluted workaround at best. (My father is reading this and thinking "if only she'd gotten on with solving the full networking issue like I TOLD her to, she'd be able to access all those files....")

Aug. 26: Stove arrives. After installation and celebration, we read the instruction manual and discover a plethora of restrictions that were not apparent anywhere in the sales information. These restrictions will cut my dyeing efficiency in half, as well as forbiding numerous forms of cooking we enjoy and promising dire consequences if you so much as look at the damn cooktop wrong. I do further internet research and discover that hating flat top stoves is not an uncommon scenario. Tears and recriminations and feeling stupid ensue. We discuss the possibility of exchange with Sears and are cheerfully advised that it will be an expensive logistical nightmare. Undaunted, we peruse the coil top possibilities and find three acceptable options, all of which are labelled "in stock" but can't actually be delivered for several months. With the business at stake, we have little choice but to make do, and begin researching hot-plates with which to augment our brand new techno-stove and regain the level of usefulness provided by the extinct one. (I have a serious rant in the works about cooking devices designed for the needs of a consumer base that rarely cooks and is predominantly concerned with appearances. Later.)

Aug. 27: Having decided the stove issue, we take a deep breath and turn our attention to ordering a new monitor. I do many hours of research, determined not to make another expensive error. Choice made, go online to order - the website shuts down for 24 hours for technical difficulties just as I reach the checkout page. Starting to feel a nagging sense of doom.

Presently: still waiting for the monitor to arrive, and until it does, I am on gmail, which is forwarded with considerably less than 100% reliability from my regular mail. If you need something urgently and I seem to be inexplicably ignoring your emails - try robruth DOT cox AT gmail DOT com. Just for the next few days, though I wouldn't entirely rule out a landslide crushing the truck in which our monitor is travelling - after all, Mercury is still in retrograde until the 27th of September. Not that I believe in that superstitious crap, of course.

Life goes on, dyeing has resumed, the tantalising promise of 5 productive hours a day is just around the corner, and I'll get back to proper blogging once I can download the camera to the proper computer.

As the Canadian Air Force motto says: Per Ardua Ad Astra (colloquially translated: Do It The Hard Way.)

Behold the Glory of the Stove

 

Dyeing shall now recommence. With vigour.

Whistler is rife with rich people renovating their kitchens, and money is tight, so we intially held out for an inexpensive second hand option. And kept missing. As the days turned into weeks, I couldn't help but point out that Not Dyeing was generating essentially the same effect as Spending Money. (We weren't missing it in dire fashion for cooking, since it's still barbecue weather here.)

Rob did some magnificent research with the help of Consumer Reports and we wound up spending about half what we thought we'd have to, and...perhaps I shouldn't jinx it by saying too much because it only got here a couple of hours ago.

Anyway, it came highly recommended, it boiled the kettle with aplomb just now, and I shall put it through its paces tomorrow!

19 Days of Summer Left

And I am feeling not entirely unlike this (complete with a house that never seems to be 100% free of dirt and sticks):

I'm guessing the mama barn swallow finds it challenging to multitask.

We're just back from a whirlwind trip to see my parents, consisting of two 12 hour car trips bracketing 3 days of severe overeating. We travelled with two kids, a large dog, and an elderly, incontinent diabetic cat who can no longer stay home alone, intense heat all the way and no A/C.  The drive was remarkably harmonious, albeit terrifically hard on the digestion... but it's the only time the kids ever get fast food, and tradition must be adhered to.

(I prepublished a few blog posts for security reasons, so as not to advertise our absence to the world, though it never stops me from feeling all weird and inauthentic when I do.)

My goals for the next couple of weeks are to make the most of the remaining family time, and chip away at dyeing and design projects, but primarily focus on clearing the decks to hit the ground running come September 7. I'll blog more about my plans for the coming season as time goes by - suffice it to say that there will be a greatly expanded range of colours, cool designs to make with them, long overdue patterns published, and photos for sale in various forms. Also a bonus resolution to be approximately 1000% better at responding to comments.

Macroscopic Colour

One of my favorite discoveries about the new lens is the enhanced capture of colour, particularly the subtle nuances of the forest floor.

I do love nature's neutrals.
  

Love and Linking and Food for Thought

When I cleaned up my blog format a few weeks (or was it months?) ago, one of the things I pulled out of the sidebar was my enormous blogroll - not for a lack of wanting to support fellow bloggers, but because it had become massive and unwieldy (not to mention outdated with sadly abandoned blogs) and I thought I wanted to review and organize it in a more useful format. Which, like everything in my life, is taking about sixteen times as long to accomplish as originally intended.

A couple of readers lamented at the time that they had found the list useful in their own exploration and discovery, and it occured to me that it might be interesting to integrate some of my own review process with a series of blog posts. I don't know that I'll get through every single blog on my roll in this fashion, but I thought it might be fun to post about a few of them every week that particularly inspire me, and I'd love to hear about your own discoveries and inspirations along the way. My collection process has been more than a little haphazard - there are large gaps in the continuity between blogs, Twitter, and Ravelry, and I still run across people whom I correspond with via email whose blogs, tweets, etc. I have completely missed picking up. Twitter now has Follow Friday, so I thought I'd try for Fridays in my own project.... perhaps not every single Friday, but most.

Enough preamble.... here's some blogs that challenge me to think deeply about what I do:

Abigail Doan is a writer and artist who posts about a variety of textile artists, with a particular emphasis on environmental art, sustainability, and the role of individual belief and creativity (as opposed to business jargon and legislation) in eco-fashion.

Red Thread Studio is written by Elaine Lipson, a writer and textile artist who is passionate about Slow Cloth, a textile concept inspired by the Slow Food movement, and dedicated to the promotion and revival of qualities such as mastery, patience, process, tradition, and mindfulness in the fibre and textile world.

Existential Neighbourhood is written by Jane Dunnewold, whose book Complex Cloth became the bible for textile surface design (and has just released a new volume, entitled Art Cloth) Her blog takes an insightful look at the creative process, particularly as it reflects a search for meaning and understanding.

Abby Franquemont, whom I am sure is no stranger to any of you, but whose passionate post on the importance of retaining core "making" skills in a civilized society still resonates with a resounding Yes to the gut belief that the creation of textiles by hand is so much more than idle entertainment.

There's some very nourishing food for thought in these blogs - what sites nourish you?

Blue Velvet (aka Household Cavalry Blue)

I never got around to telling you about this colourway. Between the hazy chaos of the last of the school holidays and the fact that our 16 year old stove has definitively signalled its intent to embark upon the Long Sleep, dyeing is, shall we say, sporadic at the moment. (No worries - all will be corrected by the start of September, at which time the currently incubating Grand Plans shall be implemented and the wool season begun in earnest.)

In the meantime, though, I thought I'd tell you about Blue Velvet. It was conceived as an intensely saturated cornflower blue sapphire shimmering on a bed of soft velvety grey, and the final result lived up to this vision rather nicely. During reskeining though, Rob pointed out the startling resemblance to his Canadian Air Force dress blues. While "uniform blue" is more prosaic than the colourway deserves, there is a fascinating (albeit possibly apocryphal) history to this particular uniform.

Back in 1917, the Russian Imperial Cavalry had ordered an enormous quantity of custom-woven blue material  from Burberry's of London for their dashing new uniforms. The Russian Revolution put an end to that little sewing project, and Burberry's was left with the cloth. Fortuitously, the RAF was in need of new uniforms, the price was right (nothing like a stash sale), and our own Royal Canadian Air Force (now the CAF) followed suit.

I waffled for a long time about naming the yarn for the original Russian regiment, but simplicity and the lack of absolute historical certainty won out. Nevertheless, I am very proud of this colourway, and though it gives a dignified first impression of understated nobility, those saturated jewel tones shimmer and glow as it moves in the light.

Summit Sock:

Mere Sock:

 

Macro in Motion

We took the kids down to the Vancouver Aquarium last week, to their enormous delight, and The Lens (I'm starting to think it really needs a name - suggestions?) came along. It was a challenging environment, resulting in a plethora of blurry fish pictures, but I managed a few nice images when all was said and done (and many more that aren't print quality, but will be fabulous inspiration for colour.)

 

 

Happy Monday!

The Griflet Hat

Like so much of what I knit, this design grew from a functional idea.

When winter's chill deepens, and a breeze begins to blow, the ears get painfully cold, and a regular hat doesn't quite do the trick. Unfortunately, neither do standard earflaps - left to dangle at the sides of a hat, they tend to funnel, rather than repel, the wind, which rather defeats the purpose.

Griflet features a knitted on border that pulls the flaps and hat brim together, snugging in the edge just a little to create a secure cocoon. The increase in warmth is dramatic, providing enhanced protection for the face and back of the neck as well as the ears. 

The original prototype was created for my son, whose love of all things brave and knightly led to the graphic, textured design, and later the name - Sir Griflet was one of King Arthur's lesser known knights.

 

His sister immediately wanted one, being an active, outdoor soul:

and it turns out to be eminently appropriate for adventures of the grown-up kind:

 

The pattern is written for three sizes, to fit head circumferences of 20 (21-22, 22-23) inches, which equates roughly to toddler or young child (child/small adult, average/large adult.)

Yarn: 190-220 yds of worsted or light aran weight wool (though admittedly, those estimates are generous - both a tester and I knit the largest size from a single 190 yd skein of Merely Worsted - there wasn't much leftover, but it was quite do-able). My own hat is knit from Merely Worsted in Beary Surprise; my son's from Merely Worsted in Blueberry Skies, and my daughter's from Merino Whisper in Alpenglow Xtreme.
 
Skill level: intermediate or adventurous beginner. The bobbles around the border are not onerous, as they are constructed after the fashion of i-cord and therefore do not require the work to be flipped back and forth.

The Griflet pattern PDF is available for purchase and download via Ravelry, though you do not have to be a Ravelry member to purchase.

Enjoy!

River Play

Very close to our home, there's a secluded little bend in a side channel of the river. The path isn't obvious, and I hope it stays that way, because it's a splendid way to pass a hot afternoon with kids and dog.

Making mud pies:

Leaping and splashing:

And sticks. Few things are more satisfying than a really big stick.

It's a good life.

  
   

Stormy Rainbow

This is a colourway I've been mulling over since last summer, when a wild thunderstorm blew through my parents' valley during our annual visit.

I wondered if a kettle dyed rainbow might not look more subtle, more sophisticated, layered onto a stormy grey sky.

 

Turns out it does. I'm forecasting more Stormy Rainbow sock yarn in the coming weeks.