Tour de Fears 2013

I live with two spinning wheels, but I live with them in the way that I once lived with an empty-headed, perky-nippled go-go boy. He had his space, I had mine. No touching.

The difference is that I would like to spend more time with the wheels. I have spun on them and enjoyed it. I was given some merino roving and turned it, ultimately, into a decent hat. Here's what I did: I spun one bobbin of singles and chain-plied it. Chain plying allows you to turn one spun strand into a three-ply yarn. I was too lazy to spin two more bobbins to get a three-ply. I didn't know at the time that chain plying is supposed to be scary and difficult, so it wasn't.

Then came a dormant period, during which work picked up and spinning receded to the deep background. People would ask, as they do in this business, whether I was a spinner. "Yeah," I would say. "Kinda."

I became kinda a spinner the way I am kinda a go-go boy, which is to say not at all any more.

Then along came the Tour de Fleece, one of those lovely grass-roots events that has become possible in our electronically interconnected age. The idea is this: You set yourself a spinning goal, and you spin every day that the Tour de France bicycle race is racing. When the cyclists have a day off, so do you. You don't have to spin during every minute of the race, just every day. What you try to do with your tour is up to you. You could aim for endurance, production, skill building–it matters not. It's a self-guided tour.

I "did" the Tour de Fleece a couple of years ago. Kinda. What I did was decide that the partial bobbin on the wheel, which had been sitting there for eighteen months, was bugging me. So I took it off the flyer and stuck it on the bobbin rack. Then I had a glass of champagne.

Even without the half-empty bobbin the wheel continued to bug me. It sits in the dining room, and I pass it many times a day.

Then my friend greensideknits sent me note via Twitter (hi, I'm @franklinhabit) that the Ravelry fan group devoted to the BBC radio serial The Archers was forming a Tour de Fleece team. This is the team badge.



I never miss The Archers and I love that badge. The Latin motto translates to "Yeah, whatevs." Which has basically my attitude to spinning during the recent fallow period.

So I signed up.

The Tour started yesterday. I was ready. I had procured a batt of Corriedale from one of my favorite dyers, Lunabudknits. It's from her "Smoothie" line.



Unfurled it looked even better. Almost too pretty to tamper with.



But I tampered.

I began spinning it the only way I know how: with a worsted short draw. I made a sample, as Judith MacKenzie McCuin (in The Intentional Spinner) advises. I was not pleased with the results. Wiry, hard. Nasty to touch. Off the bobbin they came.



There is no point in spending a month spinning yarn you don't like.

So after Day One of the tour, I have changed course. I have decided that rather than the ho-hum goal of taking something pretty that is not yarn and making it into pretty yarn, I will instead pursue what is, to me, the frightening goal of using very, very good fiber to learn a new technique: woolen long draw.

In one day, this has unearthed a small mountain of deep-seated issues related to feelings of guilt, anxiety, unworthiness, inhibition, and perfectionism. If that sounds highly unpleasant, it is. But I'm staying on the wheel, because I think I may end up getting far more out of Tour de Fleece 2013 than I bargained for. Even if I don't end up with any yarn.

More about that tomorrow. Gotta spin.

Wait...One More Thing

Brief bathing drawers update. I found the perfect yarn and it's on the way. More on that when it arrives.

Wait...One Other Thing

Spinning celeb Jacey Boggs has launched a new magazine, Ply. The first issue is just out and is apparently selling like mad. It's an awfully good magazine. I have a regular cartoon feature in it.

We call this "irony."

Getting Deeper Into My Drawers

My life, it sure is hot stuff.

In case you missed the previous installment, I'm setting out to knit myself a pair of late nineteenth-century gentlemen's bathing drawers whether you like it or not.



It's a bit of advance fun for this: a Nautical Knitting Caribbean cruise with Melissa Leapman. Melissa has caught the fever and is pelting me with illustrations and photographs of vintage knitted suits, though none quite so old as my intended.

We're having such a good time that we've decided to make this a challenge for all the cruisers. (If you're not yet on the passenger list, the link above will tell you how to become one.)

If you're one of the happy souls who will be sailing with us in December, knit or crochet yourself a piece of cruise wear. It can be any sort of cruise wear–not necessarily a bathing suit.

We're easy–it can be a cover-up for over your bathing suit, something to lounge in on deck, something to wear that's got a nautical theme to it. And we're going to award prizes.

Here in the workroom, I have been puzzling over what level of historical accuracy is called for with this piece. Chief among my concerns is the choice of fiber, which at the time would have been wool. Period. Until the arrival of springy, waterproof artificial fibers, most bathing costumes were made of wool–knitted or not.

It was the best choice–but that doesn't mean it worked perfectly.

Since I announced this project, I've been deluged with tragic tales of wool bathing suits. They sag. They itch. They fill up with sand. They refuse to dry out. They were replaced by synthetic suits quickly, completely, and for good reason.

In 2013, wool's not my only option. I could, for example, choose a yarn like Cascade Fixation that blends cotton and elastic. With elastic, I might create a suit that won't sag to my knees and expose my goodies the minute it hits the pool.

But it won't be a Victorian suit. It won't even be close.

The point of this, and there is one, is that I want to experience an original suit as nearly as possible, and that means wool. Furthermore: unlined wool. If I find the knitting of this suit is enjoyable, and decide to knit another, I'll see about trying something more modern next time.

With that question settled, I had to determine what weight of yarn to use. Nobody carries the "Baldwin and Walker's super fingering" the pattern specifies. Ain't it always the way? You pick out the pattern and find the yarn is discontinued.

I thought I'd write here about how I've determined what yarn to use, but with a caveat: mine is not a nice, tidy, organized brain. I seldom go from Point A to Point Z in a line of reasoning without detours and switchbacks. I thought about trying to make it seem otherwise, for pedagogical purposes, but I realized very quickly that worrying too much lately about making these entries polished and pretty is the number one reason you haven't heard from me.

So if you want more, and you seem too, I'm afraid you'll have to put up with the eccentric paths my projects always take.

I didn't know much about the yarn, but I did have a needle size: seven. Remember, of course, that we're talking about a British publication from before the turn of the twentieth century–so their seven is unlikely to be anything like a modern US seven.

However, I own three English needle gauges contemporary with the pattern. I checked out what a seven meant at the time–roughly, a modern 5 or 6. Roughly, because when an old size corresponds exactly to a modern size you may count yourself fortunate.

With a five or six, what sort of yarn would I need to produce a fabric that looks akin to what's shown in the engraving?

Also, with a five or six, what yarn would give me a garment of approximately the correct size?

We can only guess at the size the Weldon's suit came out, because the editors only tell us this:

For a medium, cast on 96 stitches.

That cast on is at the waist. How far around do those 96 stitches have to go? Halfway. I know this because I sat down and worked the pattern in my head, start to finish, scribbling an annotated schematic as I went. Here it is.



Not exactly complicated shaping, which I appreciate.

So for a men's medium, we need 192 stitches to wrap around the medium waist. We don't know how big the waist is, as there's no measurement given for that designation. Anywhere. Ever. Nor do they give us a desired gauge–they never do. The earliest mention of specific gauge I've ever run across was from the 1930s.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that a medium waist was considered 32 inches. You have to start somewhere. That's a medium waist in modern men's clothing construction, though more often than not it'll be vanity sized as a 30 or even a 29 waist. (Men: If you haven't actually measured your waist lately and think the number on your Levi's tag is your true measure, you're in for a nasty shock.)

And yes, yes, yes, "people were smaller in those days." Smaller, yes. What they were not, in general, is miniature. The amount of growth from then to now is often greatly exaggerated. Judging from extant examples of men's fitted garments and tailor's drafts, a waist of 32 inches would not have been either very large or very small. It would have been sorta average. You know, medium.

192 stitches divided by 32 inches equals...six stitches per inch.

Six stitches per inch is a little large for a yarn designated as "fingering," but this yarn was called "fingering" more than a century ago. Definitions change. And as you know if you've been knitting longer than a week, even now they frequently mean nothing.

A quick check of my trusty 1882 Dictionary of Needlework reveals an entry about "fingering" that confirms this was a stocking-weight yarn. Okay, fine. We recall that our particular defunct yarn was actually called "super fingering." Super, at the time, was often a designation meaning "more" or "larger." It's not out of the question, in fact it seems likely, that Baldwin and Walker were producing a yarn that was kinda like fingering, but fatter. I would have called it Baldwin and Walker's Fat Fingering, but they didn't consult me.

Here's where things get confusing. I have been able to establish with reasonable certainty the size of the needle–at smallest, a size five. A modern heavy fingering knit with a size five, even in the hands of knitter so uptight that he bends steel needles like marzipan, is going to produce loose fabric.

Loose fabric is not what is shown in the engraving, loose fabric is not theoretically desirable unless one is a late-Victorian flasher (and one is not), loose fabric is certainly not advisable in a garment that we know is going to stretch like mad anyhow.

This is where I decided to stop thinking and start knitting. With a size six needle, what would I get if started knitting with, say, a light worsted-weight wool? As luck would have it, I had some in stash.

I got a loose fabric of five stitches to the inch. Too big for the medium-sized suit, and positively transparent with even a little stretching.

So I went down a needle size, to our other possibility, a size five. I got a noticeably firmer fabric, and a gauge of five-and-a-half stitches to the inch.

I am a loose knitter. When looking to achieve the suggested gauge for a pattern, I usually go down a needle size. So I did.

I got six stitches to the inch and a very, very firm fabric. Still supple enough to wear comfortably (comfort being relative, of course) but not droopy.

Bingo.

If I go by needle size, the yarn I need ought to be worsted or perhaps sport weight. Any lighter, and I'll have to significantly reduce the needle size or face the possibility of indecent exposure the minute I put the drawers on. I can only assume that the super fingering was fat enough to qualify, in our time, as a sport weight. Either that, or

• the Weldon's sample knitter had the tightest tension ever recorded;
• the pattern gives an incorrect needle size;
• or all three of my needle gauges, one of which is identical to the model printed in an earlier issue of Weldon's, are incredibly wrong.

Still with me?

And Finally (For Now)

Some of you were rather insistent that these could not have been meant as drawers for swimming. They're too revealing, you said. They must have been made to wear under a swimsuit or to wear while you were being bathed (as in, given a bath) by a servant, for reasons of modesty. No Victorian would ever have worn these alone to swim, it was suggested, because they didn't cover the swimmer from neck to knee.

Well, no. These were meant for swimming. I was planning to post this link to the Brighton Swim Club by way of illustration,* and was amused to see that commenter "Backyard Notes" beat me to it. We have some peculiar, popular misconceptions about "the Victorians" these days, often quickly dispelled by a look at the historic record.

These may not have been intended for mixed sea or pool bathing (you don't see any women in the Brighton group photo), but they certainly weren't for the bathroom.

Weldon's was a magazine for the middle class, not for the upper crust. It may seem in our servantless era that having a live-in maid must have made you superfancy; but it didn't. It made you solidly middle class. To retain a valet or gentleman's gentleman, you'd have needed a level of income above that. Your wife and daughters might have knit, but they probably didn't look to Weldon's for practical knitting patterns.

Only an odd and anomalous nineteenth-century man who would have put on knitted drawers so his valet could wash him.

That level of attendance would, in the first place, have been unusual. A servant (most likely not the valet, but a scullery maid or housemaid with access to the boiling water) might have filled the bath, if the house were not equipped with running water or fitted bathtubs. He might have attended the bath, in the sense of being ready, nearby, with a towel and dressing gown.

The valet might well have shaved the gentleman. Not uncommon.

But, if everything I've read is true, the valet would not have flung around the soap and cloth unless his employer were very young, very elderly, or very infirm.

Moreover, by definition a personal servant saw you at your worst and at your most naked/vulnerable. They laid out your clothes. They got you into and out of them. They packed and unpacked your cases, handled your jewels and watches, and in some instances assisted in your extra-marital (or pre-marital) philandering. You would not knit and wear special underwear to keep your valet from seeing your winkie unless you were a decidedly odd fellow indeed.

And listen, I know from odd. I'm knitting a damned pair of bathing drawers.

*Note to self: Must buy top hat.

I Will If I Wanna

And we're back.

And you won't believe what I want to make. Let me show you the engraving.

Yes, engraving. Because you know how I am.



Gentleman's Bathing Drawers, as offered by Weldon's Practical Knitter in the 1880s/1890s.

You may well ask what I'm going to need these for. For bathing, silly. Specifically for bathing on the "Nautical Knitting" cruise with Melissa Leapman aboard the Royal Caribbean Liberty of the Seas in December. We leave from Ft. Lauderdale, and stop in Belize and Cozumel. There will be lots of water in between.

(Booking is going on now–more details are here.)

You can't very well go to the Caribbean in December on a boat with ten swimming pools and not have a pair of bathing drawers.

I've had little fond silent dreams of knitting my own swimming costume since the first time I saw one. I think it was in Rutt's A History of Hand Knitting. Or maybe not.

I haven't said much about that particular fond silent dream because people don't take it too well when you say you plan to knit something and then wear it into the water. They don't give you the ol' thumbs up and shout, "Godspeed, you crazy bastard!"

They act, instead, as though you've just announced that you intend to row across the Atlantic Ocean in a teaspoon, or shoot an apple off the cat's head with a BB gun, or watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians un-ironically.

It will itch! they cry.

It will sag! they cry.

You will look stupid! they cry.

You will waste time! they especially cry.

Allow me to address these questions one at a time.

1. I know.

2. I know.

3. Have you seen me?

4. I'm a man who knits lace shawls. Tell me more about this "wasting time."

I'm going to knit them because I wanna see what they're like. If they're terrible to wear, I want to know that for myself. I want to put myself into not the shoes, but the drawers, of a man of the 1890s who didn't have the luxury of going to Mister Fred's Sassy Swimwear and Video Salon on Halsted Street and picking up lycra shorts in a retro palm print. I expect to learn something–both about history and about garment construction–and if that's wasting time, well, that's how I most love to waste my time.

Will I regret it? Possibly. Especially since Melissa is insisting that she be allowed to photograph me modeling them for the knitters on the cruise.

So yeah, I may regret that; but you may regret it more.

We'll see.

Meanwhile, Mittens

The new Knitty is up (First Fall 2012) and for the first time, my "Stitches in Time" column features a new pattern instead of a translated antique or vintage pattern. It's for mittens, but the mittens do have one historical tie–the use of nineteenth century French embroidery charts to create the floral motifs on the hand and thumb gussets.



Because I am so very, very tired of winter gear with snowflakes on it. Florals in spring are a cliché. Florals in February, less so.

The yarn is Zitron Lifestyle from Skacel. I seem to have become slightly obsessed with it. I used it for these, for all the demonstration pieces in my "Heirloom Lace Edgings" Craftsy class, for this new design...



The Pleasant Morning Baby Bonnet

...and for one more design that's coming out in an e-book about which I shall yell and scream when the appropriate time comes.

Encounter With a Handkerchief

You run into antique knitting in the darnedest places. At least, I do.

This morning I had a bit of an adventure. One of my friends here in Chicago teaches theatrical costume design, and was in need of a male fitting model for a class on pattern making. Would I be interested in the position, in exchange for the chance to audit the class?

This friend knows I have Sewing Envy, you see, and that pattern making is a skill I covet but don't possess. After a check of my travel schedule, I sent back an eager YES, PLEASE. So this morning, with notebook and pencils, I headed to the first meeting.

The costume shop was exactly what I expected it would be. Crowded. The arts never get enough space. Nor was it pretty in the conventional sense. Workrooms, except workrooms staged for display in craft magazines, seldom are.

Most of the floor was crammed with the requisite tables: high for cutting and pressing, lower for sitting and sewing. At the far end, costume sketches for the next production covered most of the wall. The other walls were stacked with supply bins: BRAID, BONE TAPE, HORSEHAIR, SNAPS. Two female forms, decked in day dresses in the style of the late Edwardian era, stood right and left like sentinels.

Again, not a conventionally pretty room. But if, like me, you love the possibility inherent in thread and snaps; and if, like me, you love to see the how behind beautiful things; it would be difficult to come up with a more fascinating space. I was so fascinated, in fact, that I forgot professional irons in a setting like this are usually a) always on and b) very hot. So I set my notebook on fire. But only a little bit. I don't think anybody noticed.

My friend is a top-notch teacher. The students had already been at work on their first pattern drafts (a female bodice, a skirt, a pair of women's trousers) and for the first hour of the class I watched him talk through each draft, making helpful suggestions and gentle, but firm, corrections.

It was difficult not to turn green with envy. They're all so young, these students. They have it all in front of them. They have so much opportunity, and so little responsibility. I had to battle a phalanx of If only... and Why didn't I? thoughts to keep my mind on the lesson.

Still, better late than never. Halfway through the second skirt draft I had my lightbulb moment. I've tried to teach myself pattern drafting many times without success. Suddenly–ZAP!–the measurements connected to the drafting instructions connected to the lines on the paper. I was so happy I wanted to dance. But you can't dance in a room crowded with cutting tables unless you get up on one of the cutting tables, and as this was my first visit I was trying to play it cool.

Not long after, I noticed (over the teacher's shoulder, at the far end of the room) a piece of fabric framed under glass. And even at thirty feet I recognized it as a handkerchief edged with knitted lace.

When we took a break, I made a beeline for it. Here are a few quick photographs made with my phone.



The framing job is, to be diplomatic, unfortunate. The handkerchief has been folded in four places to make it fit the frame, which is too small. There are neither spacers nor matte to give the textile room to breathe. The backing paper is probably not acid free, and neither is the label smashed between the glass and the edging. The acid in paper can, will, and does discolor fabric it touches. Also, I very much doubt the glass is treated to block out UV rays, which do nasty, nasty things to fiber–especially delicate fiber.

In other words, if you have such a treasure in your possession and you wish to frame it, this is an object lesson in what not to do. In other words, if you have such a treasure in your possession and you frame it like this, I will kick you in the nuts.

But enough griping. It was there, and it was gorgeous, and here's some more about it.

The work is super-fine. The fiber looks like cotton and is the weight of very fine sewing thread–closer to embroidery floss than, say, buttonhole twist. And the gauge is minute. I would venture to guess that the needles used would have been in the 000000 (that's six aughts) family.

The edge of the woven center was prepared with a rolled edge (in itself a feat of fine sewing) and the edging was then attached with tiny whip stitches in the same thread used for knitting. I can't help wondering whether the knitter made the center first and knit the edging to fit; or knit and blocked the edging and then sewed a center to fit. My guess is the latter, unless she was a masochist.

I also need to look at this again, closely and with more time, to try to find the start/end point. I tried for about three minutes, and couldn't. It might be buried under one of the folds. For a moment I wondered whether it might have been knit from the center outwards, but it's clear from the grain of the fabric (mostly easiy visible in the plain garter stitch passages) that it was knit sideways, across the short width of the fabric.

One of the fascinating design choices is the corner treatments. Corners, as I always say in my Lace Edgings classes, can be tricky and deserve special attention. Usually, the trick is in making the continuous pattern swing attractively around the angle. Here, the knitter altered the pattern to suit the corners.



And while I don't love the sight of an acidic label snuggling a precious piece of knitting, I do love that there is, in fact, a label. Here's what it tells us, verbatim.

 HANDKERCHIEF WAS MADE BY MRS. CONRAD PERRY, RIVERSIDE, TEXAS, AT THE AGE OF 76 YEARS, IN 1834. NUMBER 300 THREAD KNITTED ON SMALL STEEL NEEDLES, AND GIVEN TO THE WOODLAWN HISTORICAL SOCIETY ON AUGUST 20, 1941 BY MRS. LETTIE MC CLARY, FORMERLY OF 6328 KENWOOD AVENUE, NOW A GUEST IN THE EASTERN STAR HOME, ROCKFORD, ILL.

I raise my eyebrows at that date. But Mrs. Perry, I salute you. Your work humbles me. And Mrs. McClary, I thank you for preserving this for us to see. I pray your days at the Eastern Star Home were pleasant, and ended peacefully.

Speaking of Lace Edgings...

My first online class for Craftsy, "Heirloom Lace Edgings," will launch early next week. It's an action-packed course: we play with lace edgings that are sewn on, lace edgings that are knitted on, and lace edgings that are knit at the same time as the center they decorate. So many possibilities...

Watch this space (or my Twitter and/or Facebook feeds) for the announcement. I had an absolutely ball working with the Craftsy crew and staff to make it happen, and I hope you'll enjoy taking it as much as I enjoyed making it. Here's an Official Photo of me on the set, looking all kinds of serious...with my beloved grandmother watching over my shoulder. She hated knitting, but I hope she'd be proud.

And One for the Road Home

I swear this isn't going to become an All-Edgings-All-the-Time knitting blog. I'm just having trouble setting the damned things aside. They're so cute. So varied. They grow quickly, which is exciting. And since they're theoretically endless, you can stop whenever you want, if you want to stop.

I played with one more on the way home from the Craftsy shoot; I had tucked a few patterns into my luggage to fill in idle moments. As it turned out, there were no idle moments until I was on a plane hurtling back towards Chicago. Shooting went very well–in fact, we wrapped early–but when I wasn't in looking deep into the hypnotic blackness of this



I was usually sleeping. Shooting a class is fun, but it taxes a fellow's stamina.

Thanks, by the way, to all of you who asked here (and on Twitter and Facebook) what my class is, and when it will appear. As of this writing, I'm not allowed to reveal the topic. The launch will be in about four weeks. You can expect me to make a great deal of noise the minute Craftsy gives me the go-ahead.

Now, back to the edging.

This one is by Jane Gaugain, and it's first thing I've worked directly from the book I found in Cambridge. The yarn is that same Zitron Lifestyle I can't seem to put down.



You'll find it in the Appendix under the decidedly un-fanciful title, "Knit Edging, for Collarets, Cuffs, Petticoats, &c." I had to force myself to stop working it and bind off so I could photograph it for you. I think I'll be making some of this (in thread, of course) as an edging for a miniature dress I'm working on. (Not for me. I'm small, but not miniature.)

Notes.

Sl 1. Slip st as if to purl with yarn in front.
Yo2. Yarn twice around right needle.

Pattern.

CO 7 sts.

Row 1. Sl 1, k2, yo, k2tog, yo2, k2tog.
Row 2. Yo, k2, p1 (into 1st loop of yo2), k2, yo, k2tog, k1.
Row 3. Sl 1, k2, yo, k2tog, k4.
Row 4. K6, yo, k2tog, k1.
Row 5. Sl 1, k2, yo, k2tog, yo2, k2tog, yo2, k2tog.
Row 6. K2, p1 (into 1st loop of yo2), k2, p1 (into 1st loop of yo2), k2, yo, k2tog, k1.
Row 7. Sl 1, k2, yo, k2tog, yo2, k2tog, yo2, k2tog, yo2, k2tog.
Row 8. K2, p1 (into 1st loop of yo2), k2, p1 (into 1st loop of yo2), k2, p1 (into 1st loop of yo2), k2, yo, k2tog, k1.
Row 9. Sl 1, k2, yo, k2tog, k9.
Row 10. BO until 6 sts remain; k3, yo, k2tog, k1.

Repeat from Row 1 as needed.

Another Test...

More futuristic telephonic bloggery. Checking to see how seamlessly I can shoot a photo, retouch it, and post it using only the telephone.

This is the little Bavarian porcelain dish my grandmother used for her bedside rosary. Now it sits by my knitting chair.

One For the Road

I'm off to Denver tomorrow for a pretty exciting new adventure. I'm shooting a class for Craftsy.  Friends of mine (Gwen Bortner, Amy Detjen, Edie Eckman, Fiona Ellis, et al.) have already done it and have nothing but raves about the experience. I look forward to trying it for myself, and have been enjoying not only working up new samples (topic to be announced, so I can't show them to you yet) but picking my outfits.

Bow ties. Absolutely bow ties. I've always loved them. It's nice to be able to come by good ones easily again.



Before I leave, here's one more nineteenth century edging from Weldon's Practical Knitter that you might like to play with. It's called "Willow Leaf," and it makes me long to sweep everything off my to-do list and work this all the way around a throw for the armchair I knit in.



CO 12 sts.
Knit 1 row.
Row 1. Yo, k1, yo, k2, k2tog, k2tog, k2, yo, k2tog, k1.
Row 2 and all even rows. Sl 1, k1, p10.
Row 3. Yo, k3, yo, k1, k2tog, k2tog, k1, yo, k2otg, k1.
Row 5. Yo, k5, yo, k2tog, k2tog, yo, k2tog, k1.
Row 7. Yo, k3, k2tog, k2, yo, k2tog, yo, k2tog, k1.
Row 8. As row 2.

Repeat rows 1-8.

You'd want to use this in a closed loop situation, of course–a pillowcase, a handkerchief, a cuff–because as you can see, an open stretch of it is going to give you odd shapes at the beginning and end. I suppose you could sit down and figure out something to take care of that, but you'll have to do it because I have to go to bed.

The Fiber Factor

You've probably already heard about The Fiber Factor, Skacel's forthcoming Web series that will put a group of aspiring handknits designers through their paces. I'm excited–I get to be a guest judge. I'm already pondering which sunglasses to wear; and practicing saying, "This confuses me," while tilting my head like a dimwitted puppy.

Applications for spots on the series are still open, but not for long. If you're going to toss your knitted hat into the ring, you only have until March 24. Opportunity, as that nice Mr Sondheim wrote in Into the Woods, is not a lengthy visitor.

Here Is Some Pretty For You

Last weekend I taught a day of lace (History, Methods and Styles of Lace followed by Lace Edgings: Before, During, and After) to a gung-ho group of students. One of them brought a surprise: a box of nineteenth-century knitted lace stockings.

I thought you might like to see them, and though I'm still learning to love the camera that lives in my new telephone I was able to take some tolerable photographs during our intermezzo.



They are family pieces. The knitter (who prefers to remain anonymous) says they were made by her great-grandmother (who was married in 1819) for her grandmother–a sweet and all-too-rare example of a knitter's handiwork being lovingly preserved and properly documented.

All are white cotton. There are knee-highs and thigh-highs. The knee-highs have ribbed tops.



The thigh-highs were obviously extra-special: turned-over picot hems, lacy tops, and then a row of eyelets just below for threading a ribbon tie.





The leg patterns were beautifully varied and the workmanship was impeccable.





And how to do you make a gorgeous gift like this even more special? You knit the recipient's initials and the date into it.



Notice that the initials are upside-down, just under the fancy leaf-lace top. I wonder if this was intentional (so that the wearer would see them when she pulled them on) or whether the knitter was halfway through when she realized what she'd done; and then decided she was absolutely not going to start over again. Hey, it happens.

Nineteenth-century knitters...knitters just like you and me.

Less Impressive Socks

The new Knitty is out, and as ever my column is in it. This time, by coincidence I wrote about a Victorian sock. A kid's sock. A flat kid's sock. A flat kid's sock knit from an 1870 pattern I just absolutely hated.

Blow Me, Thou Winter Wind

And the crabbiness continues over at the Lion Brand Yarn blog, where I wrote about spring, or the lack thereof; and drew a spring chicken.

Is this any way for a grown man to make a living?

Testing. Testing.

I have stepped (reports of dragging, kicking, and screaming are almost entirely false) into the present century with the purchase of a new phone.

The old phone, which ran on paraffin and started with a crank, had begun to draw stares and laughter from cruel little children. I am not a technology hound, but one has one's small vanities.

Adjustment creeps apace. This is day two. On day one, I mostly stared at it warily while venturing an occasional timid tap at the screen. Imagine the elderly Queen Victoria attempting to enter her Facebook password; it was like that.

With inexpressible relief I got back to knitting, which is also touch sensitive but doesn't suddenly beep or disappear or take your picture if you put a finger wrong.

If you are reading this it means I successfully brought both together. This is my first blog post via phone...and if it goes well, this little gewgaw may allow me to post more often-even when I'm on the road. Here's hoping...

I'm even going to try to put in a picture.  Can you see it? Hello? Is this thing on?

For the Sheer Hell of It

When I mentioned the ship Lurline after writing about the edging "Lurline" I did not expect to get multiple, thrilling comments from readers who had sailed on the ship; or had seen the ship in its prime, or who had relations who'd sailed on the ship; or who actually knew a Lurline who was directly descended from the Lurline who had given her name to the ship. And, fine, yes, I will be learning to play the goopy sweet song about finding love on the Lurline on my ukulele.  I eat that sort of thing up with a spoon, you know I do.

Here, just for kicks, is another nineteenth century edging from Weldon's Practical Knitter (Fourteenth Series). It's called "Cyprus."



Not so unusual as "Lurline," but handsome and easily memorized. Like "Lurline," this edge is worked in garter stitch so it doesn't curl. It's heading for not one, but two upcoming projects I am otherwise not supposed to talk about right now.

Notes:
yo2. Double yarn over–yarn wraps twice around right needle.
sl 1. Slip stitch as if to purl, with yarn in front.

Pattern:
CO 12 stitches. K 1 row.

Row 1. Sl 1, k5, k2tog, yo, k1, k2tog, k1.
Row 2. K4, yo, k2tog, k2, yo, k2tog, k1.
Row 3. Sl 1, k3, k2tog, yo, k1, k2tog, k2.
Row 4. K7, yo, k2tog, k1.
Row 5. Sl 1, k4, yo, k2tog, k1, yo2, k2.
Row 6. K3, p1 (2nd wrap of yo2), k2, yo, k3, yo, k2tog, k1.
Row 7. Sl 1, k6, yo, k2tog, k4.
Row 8. BO 2, k2, yo, k5, yo, k2tog, k1.

Repeat from Row 1 as needed.

The yarn, by the way, is Zitron Lifestyle from Skacel. I have fallen deeply in love with it. It's wool, it's superwash, it's lightweight, and it has so much spring that if I'd been in charge of branding at the Zitron mill I would have called it BOING. An absolute joy to handle.

Today is a bit overscheduled, so I must dash, but if you want more of me I just did an interview for the gorgeous people at Squam Art Workshops. Oh my yes, I will teaching at Squam again this year. I guess they took me seriously when I said if they didn't invite me back I was going to sneak in anyway, sleep in a tree, and eat moss.

The Joy of Edging

It's no secret that I love edging. I could edge for hours. Hell, I teach classes about edging. If you want to edge, I'm your guy.

Here's one I've enjoyed particularly. In fact, it made me giggle. Sturdy little thing, suitable for blankets and bedspreads. It's from the Fourth Series of Weldon's Practical Knitter (1880s) and it's called "Lurline."*





Notes:
yo2. Double yarn over–yarn wraps twice around right needle.
sl 1. Slip stitch as if to purl, with yarn in front.

Pattern:
CO 14 sts. K 1 row.
Row 1. Sl 1, k1, k2tog, yo2, k2tog, k1, yo, k2tog, yo, k2tog, co 4, k2tog, k1.
Row 2. K13, p1 (first wrap of yo2), k3.
Row 3. Sl 1, k1, k2tog, yo2, k2tog, k5, k1 and p1 into each of next 4 sts, k2.
Row 4. K17, p1 (first wrap of yo2), k3.
Row 5. Sl 1,k1, k2tog, yo2, k2tog, k1, (yo, k2tog) 6x, yo, k2.
Row 6. K18, p1 (first wrap of yo2), k3.
Row 7. Sl 1, k1, k2tog, yo2, k2tog, k16.
Row 8. BO 8, k9, p1 (first wrap of yo2), k3.

Repeat as needed from Row 1.

You may have noticed that it's pinned out on the top of a cardboard paper box. I do that all the time. Then the piece is easily shuffled around–this is a small workroom–and I don't have to worry about stepping on pieces while they dry.

Rough Neck Sweater Progress

I'm well into the collar on the Rough Neck sweater. I do believe the structure is making sense and will work–although the instructions present one of those obstacles that you find fairly often in old patterns. It's not an error, exactly–just a lack of perfect clarity. Suffice it to say that if I hadn't already gathered that the entire collar is double-thick, and then confirmed my hunch thanks to a phrase referring to the finishing of the front bands, I'd be in for a helluva lot of ripping.

I would show you photographs if the sweater didn't defy clear shooting at this point. No matter what I do, all it looks like is a mass of stockinette shooting out incomprehensibly in three directions. Once I've finished the collar, I'll see what I can do by way of an update.

*I'll forever associate that name with Matson Navigation, whose ships I helped to load and unload in Honolulu during a summer job as a stevedoring clerk. The Lurline (named after a lady of the Matson family) was one of the line's signature vessels–a pretty little ship that had once carried passengers from California to Hawaii and back, but after the advent of jet travel had been gutted and turned into a cargo ship. Pity.

The Child Is the Father of the Man

I've been ruthlessly clearing out boxes and bins for the past several months. I don't wonder why.

In August, after my grandmother died, we discovered that for years she had been treating her tiny house as a four-roomed, three-dimensional game of Tetris. Every inch of every closet, drawer, and cupboard was packed, neatly, top to bottom and back to front.

We–four adults–began our cleaning out by emptying closets. There were three. At the end of two days, we still hadn't got to the back of all of them.

The things we found. Oh, the things. My grandmother, proud daughter of the Great Depression, had learned early to never throw anything out because one day you might need it.

A bag of margarine tub lids (just the lids).

Eighty-three representations of the Virgin Mary in materials ranging from plaster to crochet

All the receipts for repairs to a car (I think it was a DeSoto) that probably made its last trip to the grocery store in 1962.

All of her pay stubs, from the 1940s to the day she retired.

A tea kettle with a burnt bottom. A roasting pan with a burnt bottom. A lid for a pot that disappeared, but which might fit another pot.

Thousands of zippers and buttons collected during eight decades of work as a seamstress and tailor.

Her prayer books. Her late son's prayer books. Her late mother's prayer books. Her late brother's prayer books. My grandmother was a religious woman, devoutly Catholic, and so when people died and left behind devotional paraphernalia, people said, "We should give this to Pauline." And my grandmother was certainly not going to chuck a crucifix, a Missal, or a guidebook to apparitions of the Blessed Mother in the trash.

It makes you think, seeing all that left behind. Some of it, I'm happy she saved. The trunk my great-grandfather (her father) brought with him as an immigrant in 1903 is here with me now, holding a heap of my knitted samples. It's a nice thing to have.

Other stuff, we groaned over. Why did you save this? Why? And off it went to the dump or St. Vincent de Paul or the scrapyard.

Back at home, I looked around and felt like opening the front door to the general public and screaming COME AND GET IT! I started asking myself, Why did you save this? Why?

One of the surprises I unearthed was a beat-up five-subject spiral notebook. Two hundred sheets, green cover. An old sketchbook, though with more than sketches inside. I date it to the year I would have been about ten, maybe eleven.

I found a Christmas list inside (I wanted Trivial Pursuit?), the recipe for my Italian grandmother's cookies, the start of a dreadful mystery novel (stolen diamonds), and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of drawings.

I have to laugh. In this neighborhood, at this time, any kid who shows the slightest inclination to draw or paint is immediately presented with a plein-air easel, a set of oil paints, a tray of watercolors, a personal tutor kidnapped from a picturesque street corner in Montmartre, an agent, and a gallery show.

I drew on lined notebook paper with...whatever. Appears to be mostly Number Two pencils,* which seems about right. Art supplies cost money, and I didn't have any. And my art lessons consisted entirely of checking out art books from the base library and making freehand copies of stuff I liked.

What I drew made me laugh even harder. Looking at these pages, I wonder if I've changed fundamentally at all in the intervening thirty years.

Vaguely nineteenth-century still lifes, mainly domestic, mainly culinary. Our kitchen never looked like this. I just wanted it to. I'd still like it to. (It still doesn't.)



An obsession with Toulouse-Lautrec–again, the nineteenth century, writ large.







I already saw New York City as the Great Elsewhere–more chic, witty, urbane, and exciting than wherever we happened to be stuck.



I didn't understand half of what I read, but I forced myself to plow through everything in The New Yorker from "Talk of the Town" to the back page with the hope that one day it would all make sense. (It did.)

And costumes. Oh, costumes. Pages and pages and pages and pages of bustles, crinolines, lace collars, drapery, trains, capes, tiaras, gloves. I looked at Tintoretto's take on St. George and the Dragon and ignored both the saint and the dragon. What caught me was the fancy chick in the foreground.



I just looked at the original painting again and what gets me now is the muscular nude male in the middle ground. I'm sure I must have noticed him at the time, but I had separate notebook (now long gone) for those sorts of drawings.

I'm not keeping the sketchbook. In fact, by the time you read this, it'll be gone. But it was fun to look it over one last time and see how far I have, and haven't, come.

*Young readers, Google it if you need to. Number two pencils are what we used to use for making erasble marks on paper. There was erasable ink, for a little while, but it never caught on.

One Plain, One Fancy

Last month I wrote a piece for Lion Brand Yarns that mentioned an almost century-old pattern that I've had my eye on. This is it:



Look at that collar. Gorgeous, and perfectly practical for a pencil-neck like me who is prone to agonies of stiffness if I get even a whisper of draught down my back. I saw it, I want it, I'm going to make it.

Mind you, I'm going to change it. It's too long, for starters. As written,* it would hang to halfway down my thigh. Not pretty. I'm adding shaping in the torso, too–a taper from chest to waist.

It'll be gentle taper, because a sweater like this is meant to be a smidge loose. You put it on at home, in your study, when you've finally taken off your jacket and loosened your tie.  It's not for the office. It's for quiet solitude. However, should somebody drop in on my solitude, I'd rather not have it hang on me like I'm wearing daddy's old bathrobe.

So, the Product Knitter within wanted to knit the sweater in order to wear the sweater. The Process Knitter within–which is dominant–wanted to try out the pockets.

Here's a shot of one pocket.



As you can see, not much else happening for acres and acres of stockinette but that pocket. Marvelously smooth opening, no?

You make it by knitting to the point at which you want your pocket opening to lie. Then–without breaking the working yarn–you work only on the stitches that will form the interior of the pocket, knitting and purling back and forth on them until you have a strip that's twice the intended depth of the pocket.

Then you line up the live stitches of this strip with the live stitches you left sitting on your needle and–again, without breaking the working yarn–resume knitting across all your stitches. The strip, now folded in half, forms the interior of the pocket. It's very neat, and just requires seams up the sides when the piece is finished.

Here it is in hasty scribble form.



And here's what the actual pocket (finished except for side seams) looks like from the wrong side.



I like it. The opening is, of course, seamless. The method is straightforward. You must plan for your pockets in advance, of course–so the devil-may-care atttiude I enjoy when putting in afterthought pockets is replaced by the smug satisfaction of knowing that part of the work is done, and I can just motor on toward the front-and-back shaping.

The yarn is proving to be a perfect choice–LB Collection Organic Wool. It's soft (without being so namby-pamby that it'll start to pill before the sweater is complete), it's springy, it's cuddly as a puppy wrapped in polar fleece, and the rustic texture is a welcome accent for a piece that's otherwise so plain.

Really, really curious about the collar, since to be blunt I haven't the faintest idea of how it's going to work after reading the pattern fifty times. Sometimes you just have to buckle on the parachute and jump.

How I Got This Way

Speaking of Lion Brand, the most recent essay I wrote for them–"Inheritance"–talks about creativity running in families–though often your creative family tree will include folks who aren't necessarily blood relations. I enjoyed writing (and drawing) this one...and my mother left a comment. That was a good day.

Turning Weaving Into Knitting

Quick update on the bag that card weaver John Mullarkey and I are collaborating on, using HiKoo CoBaSi. John sent along four band designs to choose from. He'll use the band as the basis for the strap.



I settled on the second from the top. What he wove, I'm going to try to interpret (not necessarily copy) in knitting for the body of the bag. Joy of joys, it's swatch time! I'm thinking mosaic might be the way to go, for the highly scientific reason that I've never tried it and it looks interesting. But first, we chart.

More to come.

*If you want it, the pattern is in the facsimile edition of the 1916 Lion Yarn Book that is available here. Facsimile means it's an unaltered copy of the original–so you'd be working from the period pattern, just as I am.

I Say, Have You Done Something Jolly With Your Yarn?

Having a frustrating time of it, kids.

I have been knitting and writing and drawing myself into a froth, but most of it is for clients–which means no show and tell until the clients do the showing, at which point I can do the telling.

I can show you yarn, though. I've started a Tumblr feed called Yarn Shaming. I love yarn, you love yarn, but yarn does not always love us back, does it? The feed is a place where the occasionally ugly truth can be aired.

Speaking of ugly truths, I reached a point in my workroom where the options were either to clean the place out or to brick up the doorway and pretend it was never there. City real estate prices being what they are, I settled upon the former.

After two months of digging, tossing, and organizing I can see the top of the desk and the bottom of the Orphaned Yarns bin. I also slotted upwards of 100 million loose knitting patterns into binders.

For somebody who uses patterns as little as I do, I've acquired more than my fair share of them–mostly old, and mostly (thanks to a very, very generous reader in England) British.

The English Bequest (which how I like to think of it, even though the donor is only sweet and not deceased) now has its own set of binders.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know I'm a museum-quality Anglomaniac and even the scent of these leaflets–a bewitching combination of damp, printer's ink, and coal smoke–was enough to make my heart beat out the bass line of "Jerusalem."

They're all mid-1960s or earlier (I don't collect anything newer than that).

Some of them I love for their very mid-century English take on boudoir allure, like this glamourpuss in handknit lingerie made from Lavenda, a fine wool produced by Lister & Co. of Bradford.



Lister's promise at the time was "Distinctive and Charming Results." If you ask me, they nailed it.

On the masculine side, you have rugged numbers like this:



Butchy McPipesmoker's cardigan was made from Femina Botany by Bairns-Wear Yarns of Nottingham. The company placed a marvelously reassuring message on the back of the pattern:



There's something about the blue ink and the upright typeface that says, "We're sure to beat Hitler, madam, so certainly we can help you to figure out your sleeve cap."

But my favorite pattern covers are those that display quintessentially English people doing terribly, terribly English things, like sitting on the hearthrug toasting crumpets in the fireplace.



Patons and Baldwins, Ltd. produced my favorite works in this genre. I am unable to so much as glance at them without beginning to spin elaborate Blightycentric fantasies.

These small leaflets ought properly to be viewed while Vera Lynn sings "There'll Always Be an England," so chuck this on the Victrola before you scroll down.

Mrs. Armstrong and her daughter, Judy, put together a jigsaw puzzle because this is not America, Judy darling, and we won't be able to afford a television until the mid-sixties. Judy will be arrested for setting fire to a crocheted effigy of Margaret Thatcher during a Poll Tax riot in 1990.




After an exhausting day at St. Winifred's Comprehensive School in Thwack, Enid Ormerod and brother Christopher Robin play at skittles on the green. (See "no television," above.)




Meanwhile, at No. 16 Canterbury Close, Surbiton, young Susan White-Hamilton and her Aunt Gwladys catch a glimpse of their neighbor, Colonel Anstruther, through that gap in the hedge. The Colonel's rather eccentric routine of morning exercises–a practice he acquired while stationed in Cyprus–are a subject of much neighborhood interest.


 

Lifelong friends Gertrude Antrobus and Edith Moffatt, of Windy Cottage, Muckleford, Hants., rejoice at the successful performance of their champion Setter bitch, Vita's Furry Delight, at the county dog show.


 

Modern technology unites, rather than divides, the generations.  Jane Pilkington of Royal Tunbridge Wells uses her portable wireless to revel in the song stylings of Mr Jagger and his Rolling Stones; while mother Constance listens in to "Mrs Dale's Diary" and learns that Mrs Dale has been worried about Jim lately.



 

And down at the Fox and Grapes, Alf and Reg exchange the latest village news along with subtle, but meaningful, brushes of arm and thigh.



Oh, Britannia. You rule.

Entanglements, Various

I was in the workroom, trying to fit this year's books into last year's bookshelves, when Harry rolled in and asked whether he could have a yarn cave.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I want a yarn cave," he said. "I was just watching that house hunting show with Dolores and the man didn't like the first seventeen houses because there was no space for a man cave where he could watch television without his wife. I want a yarn cave so I can watch television without Dolores."

"Dolores," I shouted, "stop hogging the television! I am not going to have this argument again."

"I couldn't agree with you more," she shouted back.

"It's not fair," said Harry. "I want to watch the new Learning Channel documentary about Yarn Pixies and she keeps putting on Emanuelle Goes to Maryland Sheep and Wool and telling me I have to leave the room."

"You two are really going to have to work this out yourselves."

"I want a yarn cave!" said Harry.

"We don't have space for a yarn cave. This is a big city. It's crowded. We live in an apartment. And it's a pretty nice apartment, as apartments go. Lots of yarn would be happy to have as much room to roll around as you have."

"Yarn cave! Yarn cave!"

"You know who has lots of room?" I said. "Mrs. Teitelbaum. Maybe you would like to go next door and see if she would let you move in with her and Tinkles."

"Maybe I will," said Harry, stomping off. "Then when I am gone, boy will you be sorry."

Hah. He'll be back. Won't he?

I can't blame Harry for feeling overcrowded. Even though I have a work room, the whole apartment has been a carnival of frenzied fiber activity for the past couple of months. It's good to be busy, but busy + yarn = tangles. By Christmas, after four months of near-constant travel, this place looked like the inside of an old sewing basket that had been shaken by a gorilla.  I conceded that it was time to address the mess when I tripped over a stray strand of merino in the kitchen and it knocked over a lamp in the bedroom.

Happily, a lot of works-in-progress are finished and can be tidied away. There's this, for example.



My first sweater design (in Cascade 220 Sport) for publication–the Men's Color Band Pullover from Vogue Knitting Winter 2012/13, which goes on sale the day after this writing.

I had a ball with it. We (the three guy designers in the story) were challenged to come up with a sweater we'd wear ourselves on a casual day at the office.

I only wish I looked like the model, but the sweater truly is something I'd wear.

It has very little ease, because I (and most men) look terrible in baggy sweaters. It tapers from the chest to the waist, because unshaped sweaters make me (and most men) look like they're wearing feed sacks. And though it has a basis in the traditional male palette of brown/earth/gray, I added purple and lavender houndstooth because life is too damned short wear nothing but brown/earth/gray.

There's this, a hat in so-called Bavarian Twisted Stitch. (Twisted, yes. Bavarian, not necessarily.)



It's a model for one of my new classes, débuting at Vogue Knitting Live! New York in just a little while. (That class is sold out, but a few of my other sessions have seats. Do come and play.)

There's also this.



Why, that's not knitting! That's not knitting at all! 

Nope, it's card weaving. Because I needed one more thing to do with string.

I've felt the urge to weave spring up once or twice, but always ran into roadblocks. A lack of space, for one. Also, the insistence of all my weaving friends and acquaintances that I would have to start with a plain dish towel.

I don't want to weave a plain dish towel. I want to make fabric with patterns. My weaving friends insisted that you cannot start out by weaving patterns, you have to start with a plain dish towel. Apparently this commandment is chiseled onto a stone tablet on a mountain near Taos.

I asked about all those unfortunate children who are forced into weaving patterned carpets. The horrors of their situation aside, if a five-year-old can weave patterns, why can't I?

Because you have to start with a plain dish towel, they said. It is written. Or chiseled, or something.

Then I met this guy when we were both teaching at the same event. He was working with tiny looms. So small they would easily fit on a coffee table. His beginning students were weaving bands covered in patterns.

So I said can you teach me, and John said yeah; and now I have a tiny loom and am making my own patterned bootlaces, which I think is hot.

We've become good buddies (he'll also be at Squam, teaching card weaving) and for the ducks of it we've decided to collaborate on a piece of design: a bag, with a knitted body and a woven strap.

Here's the yarn we're using: Cobasi by Hikoo.



Cobasi is a blend of COtton, BAmboo, and SIlk–get it?) distributed by Skacel. It is, in a word, groovy. The impetus was a desire to offer a really good wool-free sock yarn, and what they've come up with works equally well for knitting and card weaving.

Our challenge is to turn out a project that combines weaving and knitting in a beautiful, practical fashion. We're going to chronicle the development of the bag–for better or worse– right here in this space. More to come.