WolfWeave

Happy Halloween!

As first reported by TechCrunch early this morning, reddit, the company owned and run by my son Aaron and his 3 friends/partners has been acquired by Condé Nast and its Wired (magazine) Digital division. It’s all very exciting for them, though it does mean a cross-country move from Boston to San Francisco (NEXT WEEK!!). Aaron has cataloged today’s news stories on his weblog page, for those of you who want to read more about it.
And Aaron finally turns 20 next week. What a kid!

I quote from Maggie Grey’s website: “We are so very sad to tell you of the death of Val Campbell-Harding on 5th October. She was the best and most inspirational teacher and writer we will ever know. She was, for me, the source of all knowledge and one of the best friends I could wish for. We will all miss her so much. Val’s funeral will be at 12 noon on Friday 13th at Market Lavington (Wiltshire) Church, near Urchfont, and afterwards at Urchfont Manor, where she taught for so many years. Cut flowers from family and close friends. Otherwise, donations please to the Embroiderers’ Guild stating ‘in memory of Val’.”

Valerie Campbell-Harding was the author of such classic works as “Machine Embroidery Stitched Patterns,” “Textile Artistry,” “Bead Embroidery” (co-authored with Pamela Watts), “Fabric Painting for Embroidery,” “Edges and Finishes in Embroidery,” “Machine Embroidery Stitch Techniques” (co-authored with Pamela Watts), “Layers of Stitch” (co-authored with Maggie Grey), and many more. Some of them are available on Amazon; others are only available through Batsford in the UK. She and Maggie Grey had just finished a new book titled “Stitch, Dissolve, Distort” which is available on Maggie’s website. Her death is a tremendous loss to the creative fiber community; she developed many techniques which are in widespread use by fiber artists around the world.

(and just so no one from the grammar police writes me a comment…I do know very well that you don’t put the title of a book in quotes but I have no idea of how to underline in html)

I just love the backgrounds people bring to their art. I’m always in a struggle to integrate EVERYTHING I’ve learned into one giant, culminating piece of artwork (but, of course, I’m not there yet—I have yet to find a way to cram childhood memories, English literature, history, the pre-Raphaelites, Art Nouveau, abstract art, nature, collage, beadwork, embroidery, drawing, freeform crochet, knitting, weaving, photography, wirework, felting, painting, etc. into 1 work of art…though I WANT to!). I look around my studio at the inspirations—everything from children’s books and toys to art sculptures (not mine) to photos of jewelry and interesting patterns to wire Christmas ornaments to artdolls to anything with color—and all the materials I have at my disposal—beads, gems, yarns, paints, wool & silk rovings, mica flakes, pigments, charms, hand-carved stamps, ribbons, threads, fabrics, wire, pencils, inks, etc.—and I wait for the moment when I’ll pull absolutely everything together with enough meaning for it to become a work of art!

In the meantime, I putter along, like we all do, half with patterns and half without, making whatever I can. I end up with some wonderful art pieces resulting from flashes of near-brilliance, and with others just ordinary but good enough for the moment. Sometimes I get a lovely sweater to wear or an art-postcard to send and that is enough, even if it is not brilliant or the culminating point of my life. But still there is that desire to integrate, to incorporate everything I’ve learned, everything I have, everything I am, into one work of art…and this is what keeps me going, I guess. I read recently that Sheila Hicks, of all people, would unravel her old weavings to make new ones. I guess the point being that we are never satisfied and that, when inspiration hits, there are always new worlds to conquer.

I finally opened my box from Knitpicks yesterday and now I am feeling totally organized. My one Options binder was feeling too cramped with both the needles and cables stuffed into it, so I ordered a second one:

Now I have all my needles nicely organized in one binder, each size needle in its own page of pockets, with its corresponding identifying tags. In the other binder, I have my View Sizer (handy needle sizer with magnifying swatch gauger and ruler attached) in one pocket. Then I have a pocket full of all the plastic end caps that you can use to hold your work on the cables when you need to take off the needles. And then I have all my cables, each size in its own pocket. I have extra pockets for who knows what other gadgets I’ll decide to put in here. Also, supposedly there are some Filofax-like pages that fit this binder and I’d like to find some so that I could keep notes. They’d be handy for a knitting journal. Here are the two binders open:

I also ordered 1 ball each of some newer Knitpicks yarns that I wanted to try out:

From left to right we have:

(on top) SHAMROCK 100% Peruvian Wool: a heavy worsted weight in “Callahan” color. It’s basically a 3-ply solid color twisted together with a 1-ply variegated color, knitting up at 4 to 4.5 stitches per inch on #7 to #9 needles.

(below) SURI DREAM 74% Suri Alpaca, 22% Wool, 4% Nylon: like a brushed mohair, it’s a super bulky weight knitting up at 1.5 to 2.5 stitches per inch on #11 needles in a variegated hand-dyed colorway called “Wildflowers” (though the color is much deeper, less subtle, than the photo on the website, with maroon predominating).

(in the skein) DECADENCE 100% Superfine Alpaca: in a bulky weight of 3 to 3.5 stitches per inch on #9 to #11 needle, it is a beautiful deep blue color called “Twilight.” It is a loosely twisted 2 ply and very soft and slightly fuzzy.

(in the skein) TWIRL 69% Superfine Alpaca, 28% Wool, 3% Nylon: a bulky weight yarn that is bumpier and twistier than a boucle (but could be used in place of a mohair boucle), it knits up at 3 to 3.5 stitches per inch on #9 to #11 needles. This is the “Plum” color and the yarn is very soft and squeezable.

(on top) PANACHE 40% Baby Alpaca, 20% Cashmere, 20% Silk, 20% Extrafine Merino: an extremely soft (I keep hugging it) bulky weight with a beautiful sheen from the silk, it knits up at 3 to 3.5 stitches per inch on #9 to #11 needles. This is the “Moss” color. I love it.

(below) AMBROSIA 80% Baby Alpaca, 20% Cashmere: like a thinner version of Panache without the silken sheen but even softer (if that’s possible). It is a sport weight yarn that knits up at 6 stitches per inch on #3 to #5 needles. This is the color called “Night Sky.”

I guess if I had a wish, it would be that Knitpicks made either Panache or Ambrosia in a worsted weight yarn and made all the weights in variegated or hand-dyed colorways. (I guess that’s 2 wishes!)

Still worried about the yardage for the i-cord edgings (info missing from pattern), I sent off an email last night to Cherry Tree Hill Yarn and what should I find gracing my inbox this morning but an email from no other than the illustrious Cheryl Potter (!) herself, who had taken the time to inform me that that they had used a 4 oz hank of their Superwash Merino DK “and it was enough for all of the sizes–this would be about 280 yards” to knit both pocket linings and all the i-cord edging. Ergo, since 1 skein of the Noro Cash Iroha has 91 yards, and I am planning on using the purple skein for the pocket lining and the taupe skein for the i-cord edging on the size small sweater…I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Today I sat basking in the sun streaming in through the windows and managed to finish the left front half of the sweater, knit both pocket linings (out of purple Cash Iroha)

and attach them to the two front halves of the sweater with no problem. Here’s what the pocket lining looks like attached from the outside or the right side (the front stitches of the sweater pocket stay on a holder until you knit the edgings at the end):

And here’s what it looks like from the inside of the sweater (of course it isn’t pressed out yet and isn’t stitched down around the sides either):

And I discovered something else to love about the Knitpicks Options flexible knitting needle set. I was using one of my two sets of size 7 needles with a 24″ cable on the right half of the sweater front but also needed it to knit the left half. The left half was already on a stitch holder:

My second set of size 7 needles was on a 40″ cable still holding the back of the sweater (waiting for me to figure out my short row dilemma). I didn’t want to have to thread the whole 94 stitches of the back onto a stitch holder and, with Knitpicks, I didn’t have to! I just unscrewed the needles from the 40″ cable and screwed on those clever purple cable end caps:

Then I screwed the needles onto my second 24″ cable and was ready to use them for the other half of my sweater front. (Well, actually, I first screwed on the size 9 needles to cast on with…another reason I love this set: Cast on with size 9, switch to size 7 and you’re ready to knit; so much easier than with regular circular needles.) And, of course, I adore the sharp points and the “flexible enough to use right out of the package” cables. Thank you Knitpicks!

Peacock sweater jacket progress: Today I wound another skein of Froth into a ball and managed to knit the 6″ (48 rows) of the other side of the front up to where you insert the pocket lining; so now I have both sides of the front done to the same point (of course I’d better really measure them to make sure they’re the same). At some point today, the pocket business suddenly clicked and I know what to do; the directions suddenly made sense. The lining gets knit separately, basically out of some random DK yarn with its last few rows out of the Froth and then gets attached to the next row of the front, while the center stitches of the front get held on a stitch holder. During the finishing process, the lining is whipstitched to the inside of the front and the stitches come off the stitch holder and get an i-cord edging, like the rest of the sweater.

Even though the pattern directions mention no yarn (or yardage) for the elusive “DK” yarn used for pocket lining and i-cord edging, a visit to the Cherry Tree Hill website for this pattern shows that the yarns used are Froth and Superwash Merino (surprise!). Clicking on Superwash Merino indicates it is “A 100% superwash merino dk weight with a put up of 4 oz /280 yards. Gauge: 6 stitches and 8 rows to the inch on size 5 needles.”

This would have been helpful to have in the pattern even though I’m still going with the Noro Cash Iroha (especially since I have yet to see Cherry Tree Hill Superwash Merino in any store around here and also that I feel the edging should be a single color, not another handpainted yarn). Again, the yardage needed for the i-cord edging would be extremely helpful; I am very nervous about my single ball of tan Cash Iroha–I’m pretty sure it won’t be enough. Now I need to start searching out another skein or 2 of that color and hope the dyelots are close enough to do. What a pain. Oh, by the way, I tried out the pink skein as an edging and it was just WAY too much pink–visions of Barbie came immediately to mind. No way! I need to tone down the pink in the yarn if anything, so tan it is.

Although I have gradually been resuming my normal activities (and this was my first week of driving–yay!), I am still spending most of my time resting. This has meant a lot of reading, so the latest books & magazines have been a must:

I have been able to make some headway on my latest project, The Peacock Jacket by Shelagh Smith from Cherry Tree Hill Yarns in their mohair boucle “Froth.”

I bought the yarn and the pattern at Stitches Midwest, after trying on the completed jacket and really liking the fit and feel of it. This is not necessarily the colorway I would have chosen (I probably would have leaned more towards a blueberry or purple), as it is a bit out of my comfort zone, but it is wild and is growing on me as I knit. The fabric is a plain garter stitch, which is just as well, as keeping track of the stitches in the mohair boucle is troublesome, to say the least. So far I have completed nearly all of the back:

and here is what the knitting looks like close up:

On the back, which is 94 stitches across for the small size, the colors do seem to pool some, but it doesn’t make much difference as the mohair is so fuzzy. I have halted about 12 rows from the neck in order to figure out how to add some short rowing to compensate for the roundness of my upper back (so the jacket doesn’t hike up in the back) but have been unable so far to figure out the math. I welcome any help! Meanwhile I went ahead and started one half of the front:

(the colors are washed out in this photo) but I have only knit the 6″ as far as the pocket and have stopped, as I have no idea of how to do those (and the directions are very confusing about this; guess I should have paid more attention to the “Experienced” label on this pattern!!). I need to spend some time searching through my knitting books for explanations on knitting pockets. Maybe tomorrow. Then there will be the buttonholes to deal with. But the biggest problem of all will be the attached i-cord edging, which I have never tried before and have no idea how to do. The pocket linings and the i-cord edgings are supposed to be done in a dk weight yarn on size 5 dp needles. I just happened to have 2 coordinating colors in Noro‘s Cash Iroha–a purple and a tan, so I wound the skeins into balls. I was thinking of perhaps doing the pocket linings in purple and the edgings in the tan, which helps to sober up the wild pinks and oranges of the main fabric:

I’m not sure I have enough of the tan though (the pattern barely mentions “DK,” let alone giving the necessary yardage) and today, at my LYS (Three Bags Full in Northbrook, IL), I was suddenly moved to buy a skein of bright pink and will see how well that matches in the daylight tomorrow. They also had some lovely Debbie Bliss–or was it Jo Sharp?–silk merino DK that seemed more even than the Cash Iroha and came in lots of colors. All sorts of possibilities. I may have to take my sweater to the store to do some matching!

I’d better hurry up though, because this is supposed to be my fall jacket and we already have temperatures in the 50′s! My next project, assuming I ever finish the jacket, is from the new Noro book #20 and is the simple cardigan vest Y-767 in Silk Mountain (I chose color #2):

I had ordered the book and yarn from Royal Yarns while home recuperating and it arrived within 2 days of placing my order. Today I saw the vest on display at my LYS, tried on the small size and was able to judge where I will need to alter the pattern when I knit it (keep the shoulders small while gradually increasing for the hips). At the store, I also succumbed to the most succulent scarf knit in an unusual rib design out of Stacy Charles’ Ritratto (I chose the black mohair shot through with strands of red, purple, blue, gold and green rayon)–so I bought 2 balls of that and Lynette, the store owner, who designed it, wrote out the pattern for me (little did I know it began “Cast on 450 stitches…!!). Guess you’ll have to wait until I knit it up to see what it looks like. But I need a new winter scarf to go with my new winter coat, don’t I?