Cold Oatmeal and Other Delights

I swear in a previous life I must have been a homing pigeon. It would help to explain why, although I flap frantically toward the far horizon, I so often end up nesting in the same dang tree.

Take my relationship with color. For years, my personal rainbow began with oatmeal and ended with taupe. In a wild moment, I might dally with forest green. I even whined, at length, in this very blog that there was too much fun sock yarn on store shelves and not enough navy blue.

Then came the lime green sock moment, and the one-two punch of Brandon Mably and Kaffe Fassett in a single day. I could almost feel the shackles falling from my wrists, or the scales dropping from my eyes, or the weight lifting off my shoulders, or the cows jumping out of my rucksack.

I was free, I thought. Free at last. Why, I even made a scarf out of Noro!

Then I went to Knitting Camp, where I sat for a week surrounded by museum-quality colorwork and piles of peerless yarn. And when I decided to choose a little Shetland jumper weight to make myself a hat, this is what I picked: heathery oatmeal and heathery blue.



I'm finding that as I knit them together, I can barely see the difference. Zing.



Mind you, I'm in love with the pattern: Meg Swansen's Dubbelmössa Hat from Handknitting with Meg Swansen. And this is my first encounter with real Shetland yarn, and I wish I had a room full of it. I'm just not certain whether, in the finished piece, this combination is going to be charmingly subtle or dull as Wal-Mart's new line of naughty lingerie designed by Lynne Cheney.

I've decided to finish it and find out.

Meanwhile, I've been crawling up the center of the Wedding Ring Shawl. And I do mean crawling.



The needle's the problem. I started with an Addi size 0, and found the tips weren't sharp enough to handle decreases in cobweb weight. So I ordered a Knitpicks size 0, and find that while the tips are ideal, every single stitch snags on the join between cable and needle.* So I'm open to suggestions from those who work with cobweb weight. What the heck do you use?

Noted with Pleasure

Several times I've nearly thrown the shawl across the room in frustration, although lace doesn't weigh enough to hit the wall with a satisfying smack. But my nerves have been soothed to a degree by a review copy of Richard Rutt's A History of Hand Knitting that was sent to me by Knitting Out Loud, a publisher of knitting-related audio books.



I suspect that the publisher expected me to question the selection of a woman, Melissa Hughes, to read the only book in her catalogue written by a man. In the letter that accompanied my copy, she explained at length her reasons for the choice.

The fact is, Melissa Hughes needs no excuses. She's a marvel. Rutt's text is a bear to read aloud, but Hughes never falters. The multiple languages (including German, French, Italian, Arabic, Turkish, Norwegian, Swedish, et al.) roll trippingly off her tongue. She capably brings to life at least four historical/regional inflections of English. And she never goes flat, not even in the middle of long technical passages. It's a bravura performance; and for a history geek like me, this audio version of an old favorite is a welcome companion.

That said, I do hope Knitting Out Loud will consider adding a male reader or two to the stable as future projects are developed. What's written by the goose may still be read with excellent effect by the gander, eh?

Finally, in case you've been asleep this week, I'd like to draw your attention to the launch of www.twistcollective.com, an online knitting magazine that launched with flags flying on August 1. I won't pretend to be unbiased about it because I'm not–they hired me to do an illustration for Ann and Kay's advice column.

Twist Collective departs from the all-for-free model of online knitting magazines to which we've become accustomed. The articles are free, but the patterns are available for purchase. Most of the money from pattern sales goes directly to the designers, who thereby stand to make a decent profit from their work.

There's been a lot of cheering for the gorgeous designs and the concept; and also some complaining about customers being bled dry while the designers grow fat and rich at $7 per pattern. That the cheers outnumber the complaints is, I think, a happy sign that most knitters recognize the right of artists to fair compensation–something the industry has often not recognized in the past.

Makes me proud to be knitter, yes it does, even if my colorwork looks like cold mush and my lace has developed a limp.

*In order to avoid starting one of those stupid Internet rumors, I want to clarify that the needles themselves are (so far as I can tell) free of defects and they'd be great with a thicker yarn–even, I think, a standard laceweight. They just don't suit cobweb weight, which is so wispy it'll snag on the patterns in busy Linoleum. I sure appreciate the advice, though - sounds like lace Addis will be the way to go.

Moment of Ooooooh

When last we met, I had just placed mixed Wedding Ring Shawl v.1.0. Then I placed an online order for a cone of cobweb-weight silk yarn in silver from Heirloom Knitting in the United Kingdom. That was on May 22, a Thursday. The next day I got friendly confirmation of shipment from Mike. And guess what showed up in Chicago today, May 29, also a Thursday?



Now that, my friends, is customer freaking service.

Let me tell you, Gussie, I feel like I'm hosting an angel in the parlor. It's so light, and the color is so delicate it's almost not there. I just want to sit on a floor cushion and contemplate it* from a respectful distance.

There's no time, though because tomorrow I leave for the next 1,000 Knitters shoot at The Knitting Nest in Austin, Texas. I haven't been to Austin for years, which is far too long to stay away. Often when I travel I worry about being too weird for wherever I'm going. Austin's one of the few places where I worry about not being weird enough.

Of course, seeing as I'm traveling with Dolores, who has decided this would be a great opportunity to stir up Fibertarian loyalties in the president's home state, maybe my fears are unfounded.

*By the way, in case you're wondering, the cone is perched on an antique, traditional Norwegian yarn adoration pedestal, or garnaädøratpedystöl. Usually they're terribly expensive and impossible to find outside museum collections, but I picked mine up for a song at a flea market in Little Oslo from a woman named Oonehoode Olsen who says during the Golden Age no knitter in Norway would have been caught dead without one. No, seriously! That's what she said!

Knit It Like Nietzsche

I began the Wedding Ring Shawl.

I noticed an error in the Wedding Ring Shawl.

I frogged the Wedding Ring Shawl.

I re-knit the Wedding Ring Shawl right up to the row I missed.

And then I realized something.

The yarn's not working.

Truly, it's not. I've let the piece sit for a few days so as not to make any hasty decisions. I've played with it, stretched it, patted it, and even wet blocked a portion of it. I did everything but put it on the altar and pray for a miracle. And it's not working.

It's too thick. It's too heavy. Sharon Miller wrote this pattern for a cobweb yarn, and that's what the design needs. In this yarn, what should look ethereal looks instead like it should be hanging off Stevie Nicks in the mid-1970s. That's fine if that's what you want to knit, but that's not what I want to knit.

On the sample card Sharon sent with the shawl pattern is a gossamer silk. Much thinner, as you can see, than the red Skacel merino.



I knit and blocked a little (about 1 1/2 inch) swatch with the silk on a US 0 (2 mm) needle.



Yes. Much better. I've ordered a cone from Heirloom Knitting. I'm going to do this right, or I'm not going to do it at all. The red merino will become another, heavier lace piece.

If that which does not kill us makes us stronger, this shawl is making me a very strong knitter. Either that, or I'm going end up wandering the streets of Chicago talking to a six-foot-tall silkworm nobody else can see. Time will tell.

In Which I Am Temporarily Deflated

You know that part of Oedipus Rex where Oedipus is all like, "Tra la la, I'm king and I'm married to a sexy chick and I got the world on string, dancing on a rainbow," and then gods are all like, "Ha ha dude, you murdered your father and that hot chick you married is your mom," and Oedipus is all like "Ohhhhhhh nooooooooooooo" and claws his own eyes out?

Well, I feel somewhat akin to Oedipus right now. Not because I'm guilty of patricide and incest (shut up! gross!) but because the knitting gods have chosen this moment to knock back a few beers and have a giggle at my expense.

I was fewer than ten rows from the end of the first repeat of the Wedding Ring Shawl center when I noticed something. See the little green arrow?



It's pointing to the row I skipped. Yup. Just skipped right over it. Didn't knit it at all. Left it out. Golly! Whoops!

That row mostly serves to put a space between the two beads inside the lozenge, so I didn't notice anything was goofy until I'd worked half the second row of lozenges in the repeat.

Then I said something emphatic and unsuitable for general audiences that rhymes with "Truck! Pluck! You smother clucking Tina Yotherbucker! What the ducking plucking truck! Zit! Zit!"

I could keep knitting, and chances are nobody would ever notice. But I would notice. I'd spread out the finished piece and the absence of that row would be the only thing I'd notice.

So, bloody but unbowed, I rip. This is an epic project; I'll do it well or not at all. It is the mature way. The noble way.

And if you tell me I should have used lifelines so help me beeotch I will gouge your piggy eyes out with my own two thumbs.

Lace Quickie

Do not tell Interweave I posted today. I'm supposed to be finishing the essays for the little book. But I had to show you how the center of the Wedding Ring Shawl is turning out, even if it means getting locked into the cupboard under the stairs again with nothing but my laptop and a pile of Clif Bars. (Mmmmm. Clif Bars.)



Reader Emma rightly pointed out in the comments that I miscounted the depth of the shawl's border–132 rows, not 63. Given that, I'm afraid finishing by next Tuesday is out of the question. It's going to take until Thursday, at least.

Reader Laura Sue said she's fascinated with lace but having trouble getting the hang of it. I hear you, darling. My first attempt at lace was Knitty's pretty Branching Out scarf by Susan Pierce Lawrence, which many folks say was their gateway project. Me, I tried it three times and wound up bleeding from both ears.

Ultimately I realized I needed to start with something even easier than Branching Out - a pattern with smaller repeats and a little less going on in each row. My advice? Try a lace sampler. That's what I did.

After two introductory classes at Stitches Midwest, I sat down with some fingering-weight yarn, figured out how many stitches I'd need to repeat a simple motif* a few times with a garter stitch border on either side, and started knitting. When I felt I'd mastered the motif, or got bored with it, I started a new one.

Sometimes that means adding or removing stitches to make the count work properly. No problem–just do a little easy math, and put your increases or decreases evenly into a few rows of plain knitting between each section. (By the way, building a facility for that sort of calculation was good for me–it's made me a much stronger knitter on all sorts of projects.)

After about six patterns I felt confident enough to tackle a "real" project. I was terribly proud of having figured out such an effective training tool, until I learned that of course lace knitters had already been doing the same thing for centuries. I don't know if it's true that there's nothing new under the sun, but there sure ain't anything new on the needles. (Except Cat Bordhi's needles. Cat Bordhi is the exception to everything.)

After you cast off the sampler, block it–an important skill to practice. You'll have either a mat, a doily, a scarf, or a table runner, depending on how fast you knit and how carried away you got.

If you can't sit down with an experienced lace knitter for a lesson, the most comprehensive source of free instruction I can think of is Eunny Jang's excellent series of blog articles, which begins here. Marilyn (aka the Knitting Curmudgeon) also has a concise and informative tip sheet in the "Free Shit" section of her sidebar.

Okay, I have to go write now. But this has been fun. Let's do it again. And remember, not a word to my editor or I will be so mad and you will not be invited to my slumber party.

*My favorite source of motifs of all kinds is the classic series of books by Barbara Walker. If you hunt around, you can also find an avalanche of free patterns online.

STOP! WAIT! BREAKING LACE NEWS! The lace book I've been waiting for more than any other is open for pre-orders. Nancy Bush on Estonian Lace. I have goosebumps. Or maybe they're nupps.