It was only after I reached Portland yesterday that I realized I had passed through four time zones in a little more than twenty-four hours; a new personal record. I was standing, but my body felt as though it had been neatly and expertly de-boned like a turkey galantine.
My brain, which is congenitally befogged on the best of days, was on the verge of shutting down. I woke twice in the night, confused, in a cold sweat. Happily my custom of leaving bedside notes for myself prevented a full-blown panic attack and unmanly screams that might have summoned the police.
The third time I woke, it was to (as Sister Mary Cynthia used delicately to put it) visit the gentlemen's private accommodation. I was perhaps twenty percent awake, the room was dark, and I felt in my head (as I always do on the first night ashore) the delicate rocking that suggested I slept yet in the luxurious bosom of Mother Cunard.
So I padded over to where the bathroom was in my cabin on the Queen Mary 2; and it was only when by happy chance a sleeve brushed my face that I came to full awareness and narrowly avoided having a hearty pee into the shoes on the floor of my closet at the Red Lion Inn.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
The Advantages of Knitting in the Middle of the Sea
...and other, random notes from aboard the Queen Mary 2, transcribed at LaGuardia Airport in New York while I wait for my flight to Sock Summit.
- Leaving England and KnitNation because you have a passage to New York on a Cunard liner takes some of the sting out of leaving England and KnitNation. But not all of it.
- Ill-mannered children with overly-indulgent parents are an international phenomenon. The self-centered little darling kicking your shins on the gangway, yelling in the restaurant or spilling expensive drinks in the ship's bar s/he really should not be visiting in the first place is as likely to have come from England, France, Spain, Japan or Germany as from America. This is simultaneously comforting, alarming and depressing.
- European families seem to like to go to the spa together. On the one hand, I think that's rather sweet. On the other hand, though I love my mother, I do not wish to sit in a Turkish bath with her.
- Speaking of the spa, had my first view in years of bare breasts when I walked into the aromatherapy sauna and surprised a French lady who had forgot to put on her maillot. She hitched up her towel and cheerfully wished me bonjour, but not before I'd taken in the panoramic view of her aureolas and instantly found myself thinking, Yup–still gay.
- The sound of the Queen Mary 2's horns as the ship leaves Southampton is one of the strongest aphrodisiacs I know.
- You cannot have too much chocolate lava cake at one sitting. You can try, and suspect that you are coming close; but then the waiter will explain that it's time to set up the dining room for the next day's breakfast and graciously shoo you back to your cabin. Happily, you will then find that room service is only too delighted to send up a frozen chocolate bombe as a pre-bedtime digestif. They will even send two, so you can save one for morning.
- Regarding point 6, it's a good thing the ship has a gym and that I remembered my running shoes.
- If you go to Needlework Circle (every afternoon at 2 pm in the Champagne Bar), you will meet knitters, crocheters, embroiderers and quilters from eleven states and six countries. One of the knitters will turn out to be a colleague of your sister's, from the same tiny school district in rural Maine, and exclaim that "You're the uncle who made the christening shawl!"
- I could be a self-made multi-billionaire who only condescended to travel this week with Cunard because my own, larger bespoke liner is still being assembled in France. I could, in addition, be an internationally famous cover model with my own clothing and home accessories lines, a budding film career and a reputation as a humanitarian and philanthropist. I could, in addition, be in possession of so many advanced degrees that Oxford, Harvard and the Sorbonne were trying to come up with new fields of learning just to keep me occupied. And there would still be a couple of bitchy New York queens on the ship who would cut me dead because I live in Chicago instead of Manhattan.
- Watching a full-length Royal Opera House production of Carmen in high-definition 3D while you float across the ocean is cool, even if the soprano who sang Micaela was about as convincing as a 17-year-old blonde Navarraise virgin as I would be.
- Do not excitedly run to your balcony to photograph the whales without stopping to put on some clothes first, especially when your balcony is directly above the very crowded promenade deck.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Whew.
Hi. I'm sitting at Logan Airport, in Boston, waiting for my flight to London for KnitNation. I saw on Facebook that Clara Parkes is getting ready to leave Dulles for the same, and I know other teachers are on the move as well. Most of us will hit Crumpetsville tomorrow.
I like the idea of mass migrations of knitters. More colorful than migrating wildebeest. Less liable to poop on your head than migrating birds. Far more pleasant than the roving swarms of locusts or beetles or whatever it is that has been eating the damn leaves in my flower bed. (Oy. Don't even ask, seriously.)
My schedule for the next three weeks may be summarized thus:
This will be a family event. Tom joins me for numbers 3 through 5; Dolores and Harry will be in attendance for the whole shebang.
(Shebang is, don't you think, an almost too-apt description of an undertaking in which Dolores becomes involved?)
Getting ready for all this has turned me into a terrible blogger, and I beg your indulgence. Will you think more kindly of me if I show you some actual knitting? No kidding, actual knitting. A whole shawl, in fact. I was going to wait until after this trip to post about it, but I can't stand it any more. It's been finished for yonks.
Tell you what, I'll show you some of the test photos; the pattern will be for sale via download come August. If you want to see it in person, I have it with me.
It's another in the series named for women in my family. This one's for my mother, so it'll be called Anna. Anna is Giovannina's daughter, Pauline's daughter-in-law and Sahar's mother.
The yarn is Cascade Heritage Silk, about which I do not believe there is yet enough happy screaming. I fell in love with it halfway through Swatch #1; and having completed one project in it I'm already in the mood for another.
This piece taught me something interesting, which is that you cannot sum up your mother in a couple of stitch motifs. Or at least I can't sum up my mother in a couple of stitch motifs. So there's less overt symbolism here than in, say, Pauline; and fewer outside references than in Giovannina.
While I was designing the lace patterns, I tried knitting Things That Spoke of Mother; and every time the results fell short. How could they not? A woman goes through very scary labor in order to bring you into the world, then spends decades dealing with your quirky child self and your weird teenage self and your annoying adult self. She never once complains, she never stops loving you. And then you turn around and say, "Hey, I put everything you are and have done into in this bunch of yarnovers that kind of looks like a flock of doves if you squint." Right.
In the end I set the whole idea of symbolism aside. I just played with the yarn until what was on the needles seemed to bear some kinship to my mother's spirit.
So almost every time I look at this shawl, I see different things. Once it was honeybees–very suitable for a mother who has uncomplainingly spent her life in near-constant motion, making things for other people. Another time, during the knitting, I realized that the little pair of yarn overs that pop up periodically reminded me of her eyes. Especially since they were all over the place. If there is anything that makes me think of my mother, it's all-seeing eyes. She was and is a modern Argus, only she's a hep chick from Detroit and she can dance better.
Mom, I hope you like it. In the end, I admit that I can't sum you up in one shawl. But what the heck. You know the truth. They're all dedicated to you, even when they don't have your name on them.
I like the idea of mass migrations of knitters. More colorful than migrating wildebeest. Less liable to poop on your head than migrating birds. Far more pleasant than the roving swarms of locusts or beetles or whatever it is that has been eating the damn leaves in my flower bed. (Oy. Don't even ask, seriously.)
My schedule for the next three weeks may be summarized thus:
- Fly to London.
- Teach in London.
- Play in London.
- Leave London for Southampton.
- Leave Southampton for New York.
- Leave New York for Portland.
- Teach in Portland.
- Leave Portland for Chicago.
This will be a family event. Tom joins me for numbers 3 through 5; Dolores and Harry will be in attendance for the whole shebang.
(Shebang is, don't you think, an almost too-apt description of an undertaking in which Dolores becomes involved?)
Getting ready for all this has turned me into a terrible blogger, and I beg your indulgence. Will you think more kindly of me if I show you some actual knitting? No kidding, actual knitting. A whole shawl, in fact. I was going to wait until after this trip to post about it, but I can't stand it any more. It's been finished for yonks.
Tell you what, I'll show you some of the test photos; the pattern will be for sale via download come August. If you want to see it in person, I have it with me.
It's another in the series named for women in my family. This one's for my mother, so it'll be called Anna. Anna is Giovannina's daughter, Pauline's daughter-in-law and Sahar's mother.
The yarn is Cascade Heritage Silk, about which I do not believe there is yet enough happy screaming. I fell in love with it halfway through Swatch #1; and having completed one project in it I'm already in the mood for another.
This piece taught me something interesting, which is that you cannot sum up your mother in a couple of stitch motifs. Or at least I can't sum up my mother in a couple of stitch motifs. So there's less overt symbolism here than in, say, Pauline; and fewer outside references than in Giovannina.
While I was designing the lace patterns, I tried knitting Things That Spoke of Mother; and every time the results fell short. How could they not? A woman goes through very scary labor in order to bring you into the world, then spends decades dealing with your quirky child self and your weird teenage self and your annoying adult self. She never once complains, she never stops loving you. And then you turn around and say, "Hey, I put everything you are and have done into in this bunch of yarnovers that kind of looks like a flock of doves if you squint." Right.
In the end I set the whole idea of symbolism aside. I just played with the yarn until what was on the needles seemed to bear some kinship to my mother's spirit.
So almost every time I look at this shawl, I see different things. Once it was honeybees–very suitable for a mother who has uncomplainingly spent her life in near-constant motion, making things for other people. Another time, during the knitting, I realized that the little pair of yarn overs that pop up periodically reminded me of her eyes. Especially since they were all over the place. If there is anything that makes me think of my mother, it's all-seeing eyes. She was and is a modern Argus, only she's a hep chick from Detroit and she can dance better.
Mom, I hope you like it. In the end, I admit that I can't sum you up in one shawl. But what the heck. You know the truth. They're all dedicated to you, even when they don't have your name on them.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Giovannina
The series of lace designs I've been naming after beloved women in my family (it began with Sahar and continued with Pauline) has a new addition: Giovannina.That was my maternal grandmother's given name, as recorded (to our collective surprise) on her birth and baptismal certificates. She never used it, and neither (so far as any of us recall) did her mother. She was called Jennie, and called herself Jennie, and signed my birthday checks (thank you, Grandma) Jennie.
She was born in the early 1930s in Detroit, Michigan, to parents who had immigrated from adjacent Sicilian towns but married (in a match arranged by their families) in the United States. On the day of their wedding my great-grandmother was a few days shy of 16.
Giovannina was the third of four children and the first of two daughters. She fell in love with a nice Sicilian boy from New York City and went on to have five children of her own - four daughters and a son.
The priceless image below was taken before my arrival in the 1970s, but it's a fair representation of how I remember her.
The Christmas tree was in the front room of the house in St. Clair Shores, a suburb of Detroit. In the local patois this space was invariably referred to as the "frontroom"–one word. It was reserved for state occasions: Christmas morning, wedding photos, visits from clergy, official visits from my mother's gentlemen callers–including, eventually, my father.
When I think of my grandmother, I think of this room. She decorated it herself, and it was filled with her favorite things. When she wanted new furniture for it, she did the unspeakable for a good Italian wife in that time and place–she went out and got a job to pay for it.
The front room was a textbook example of what I affectionately call Dago Baroque. Imagine the crossing of St. Peter's in Rome, but with top-of-the-line seven-layer curtains from J.C. Penney and pale yellow deep-pile shag that never, ever has vacuum marks in it.
The gigantic furniture, including the console record player, was French Provincial upholstered in white damask under clear plastic. The wallpaper was gold foil with green flocking. You could see yourself in it. It remained absolutely pristine for decades until the never-to-be-forgotten morning when one of my cousins accidentally smacked it with a wet lollipop. Years later, Grandma still could not refer to this incident without turning red.
Bric-à-brac of the most elevated variety covered every horizontal surface. The customary painted miniature pony cart, of course; and a cabinet stuffed with a prized collection of porcelain angels and bells.
I now own two of the other major pieces: an 18-inch high Infant of Prague with a metal crown and a full seasonal wardrobe; and a hefty cut-glass candy dish on a marble base guarded by a pair of gilt cherubs. There was one other candy dish - a white marble urn with birds perched on the rim. The former held ribbon candy, the latter green and pink pillow mints. The stuff was so vile that sneaking it when the grown-ups weren't looking wasn't even worth the risk. When my grandmother died in the late 1990s, the candy in the dishes is believed to have been the same that was already installed when my mother was a bride in the late 1960s.
There were also, on pedestals, a pair of plaster statuettes of Italian peasants lugging huge baskets of velveteen grapes. My father was parked in an adjacent armchair chair near these on his formal visit, while my mother stirred pasta in the kitchen and presumably begged her parents to go easy on this one. After a while the eligible bachelor got bored and started shooting spitwads into one of the baskets. My mother caught him and happily was able to clear away the evidence before my grandmother could get wise and throw him into the street.
I loved my grandmother, and as a child I loved this room because it was so beautiful and brilliant and untouchable. I used to stand by the door and just stare across the threshold. On occasion, because I was such an odious little goody-goody, I was allowed to sit quietly on the sofa and just look at things. Just look, not touch. If I so much as extended a tentative finger toward the incredible cover of the Bible on the coffee table (with an inset reproduction of Leonardo's Madonna and Child with Saint Anne) she would shout from the laundry room in the basement, "I told you, don't touch!"*
I had an epiphany in that room. Not a pleasant one, either. My mother and I drove in for a visit. I was in my mid-twenties, and we were there specially to see my grandfather, who was ill with the condition that would eventually kill him. He had been moved from the bedroom to a hospital bed in the family room (a later addition, off the kitchen). My grandmother, unable to face her wedding bed without her groom...had taken to sleeping on the Sacred White Couch in the front room. While we were there, she ceded that space to me. The plastic furniture covers were gone. There were clothes thrown in a corner near the glass cabinet, and bottles of pills scattered on the coffee table by the candy dish.
I was shocked. It was the first time that I realized that certain people and things you thought would always be there, unchanging–Grandpa, Grandma, Grandma's sitting room–are not as eternal as you would wish. It was the moment I first understood, viscerally, that nothing is forever.
I can't claim that I consciously intended it, but when I started working with the lovely Filigran (100% merino superwash) that Skacel sent to me with a request for a lace design, these memories of my grandmother manifested in the square motif that became the main element in the stole. It's ornate, but orderly.
I hope she would have liked it, though she was not one for wearing shawls. (She did like drapey flowy gowns, though, and bought one or two each year for my grandfather's annual convention in Las Vegas.)
The construction's a bit unusual, by the way. I took inspiration from the eminently sensible technique of the Orenberg lace knitters–who work their shawls in one piece, center and edging simultaneously. The method for turning the corners is different, but the end is the same: when the shawl is finished, it's finished. You have a center completely surrounded by a lacy edge, with nothing else to do but wear it.
Skacel wholesales their pattern collection to yarn retailers everywhere, so if you'd like a copy, contact your LYS. If you run (or know of) a shop that's got Giovannina in stock, please feel to speak up in the comments. If you'd like to ask your shop to place an order, the pattern number is 21100405.
*My mother has inherited this supernatural ability to see through solid surfaces, as well as the skill to effortlessly stun small children with it.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Let's Pretend Flowers are Almost the Same as Knitting
This Part Doesn't Really Have Much In It About Knitting
So I went out to Guthrie, Oklahoma for the annual Sealed with a Kiss Knit Out. It was the first time I'd done anything in Oklahoma other than spend a night in a hotel during a drive to Santa Fe, and it's not fair to make a decision about any place based on the quality of your stay at a Hilton Garden Inn.
I had a blast. In writing about Oklahoma, Mr. Hammerstein got it surprisingly right for a New Yorker–there was indeed a bright golden haze on the meadow every morning; and I saw a hawk making lazy circles in the sky. I awoke to the cry of a lonesome train whistle, and that would have been extremely Johnny Cash except I was sleeping in a canopy bed covered with blue roses.
The knitters were good-hearted in the extreme (a future post will be devoted to a piece of stunning generosity–I haven't yet been able to photograph the gift properly). The event itself is so awash in charm, I didn't wonder that students had come from far afield (and my fellow teachers, the redoubtable Fiona Ellis and Jane Thornley, had come all the way from flippin' Canada).
Guthrie, which you should visit, is about the size of the frozen foods section of our Costco. It consists in the main of gloriously untouched High Victorian buildings standing cheek-by-jowl, with occasional outcroppings of Art Deco. There's a historic theater (the kind with live actors and footlights), a truly splendid yarn shop (see Sealed with a Kiss, above), art galleries, good restaurants and so many, many, many antique shops.
We have antique shops in Chicago, but I usually can't afford to look in the windows. For example, once I noticed in passing by a store in Ravenswood that they had a bag of old wooden clothespins for sale. They were the kind with no spring that I remember my grandmother keeping in a big old chip basket, handy to the washing machine. They were nicely weathered, and I thought they'd be useful for photographs, so I went inside and asked the price.
It was $35.00 per dozen. That's $2.1966666 per pin. The saleswoman explained that they were eco-friendly and upcycled, and that hanging out your wash is the new In Thing for the local yuppified supermoms–apparently it offsets the carbon they generate while driving their kids three blocks to school in a Range Rover. Rustic "vintage" clothespins are sine qua non for the fashionable wash line.
Guthrie is far more reasonably priced, not to mention blessedly free of yuppified supermoms; and on one afternoon plus two lunch breaks plus a quick dash in early evening I...um...well, I bought some stuff.
Including thimbles. It seems I have kind of a problem with buying thimbles. Well, no. I have no problem with buying thimbles, I have a problem with not buying thimbles, at least when they're as cheap as they are in Guthrie.
I'm not gaga for all thimbles, mind you. I don't care a fig for the twee pewter souvenir variety that could never be used to sew because they were designed to sit on a rack and remind you of your crazy party weekend in Yucca Flats.
The thimbles I like could be used for sewing, if you (okay, me) could fit your stubby manfingers (okay, my stubby manfingers) into them. They're old, and slightly battered, and often offer charming suggestions like "Make It Yourself with Wool."
And yes, fine, along with that one and the bridal thimble from Royal Worcester, and the advertising thimbles from Newsom's Flowers of Marion, Kansas and Glass Portrait Studio, there is a souvenir thimble from Mesa Verde. I'm hoping it will give visitors the impression that I once had a crazy party weekend in Mesa Verde, because my reputation could use a dash of daring.
The only thing difficult about shopping in Guthrie was that I was making the rounds on the eve of the Rapture, and the little old ladies at the cash desks kept wishing me "a blessed day." I'd stand there holding my two dollars and wondering, "Are you saved? Because if you are, I'm just going to come back the day after tomorrow and pick this out of the rubble."
This Part Has Even Less in It About Knitting
I wish I could show you what I'm knitting right now, but everything is either for a client and therefore top secret, or it's my niece's not-a-pink-poncho and still bunched up on a circular needle and therefore unphotographable. However, I fully expect the pink thing to be unfurled in a week or so–we're nearing the end of the third version of the cape. There's also a new design for Skacel, of which I am immensely proud. Pictures forthcoming.
In the meantime, I have flowers. If you don't care for flowers, you can go back to planning your Disney vacation or reading Justin Bieber slash fiction or whatever.
I took a head count a week ago and realized that in the two main flower beds I have to play with, which together measure a whopping sixteen square feet, I have 14 herbaceous perennial species represented in a total of something like 34 specimens. This is the antithesis of the American suburban gardens of my childhood, which considered three gaudy Burpee marigolds in a line near the front door to be overdoing it.
Among the plants currently doing their thing, and doing it well, we have Dicentra spectabilis "Alba," a white clone of one of my favorite plants, commonly known as Bleeding Heart.
And there's also an Aquilegia, or Columbine–new for this year–which is obliging me with a second round of blooms. It's my first Columbine, and what the gardening books don't warn you about is that once you have one, you'll find yourself wanting more. They're like thimbles that way. I will for the present confine myself to hoping it sets seed .
And not yet in bloom, but getting there, is another new acquisition: Alchemilla mollis, or Lady's Mantle. The leaves are shaped like inverted umbrellas (which I, as a Chicagoan, know all too well) and are covered in tiny hairs. The hairs catch the dew in the morning and the entire plant sparkles like a dress covered in crystal beads.*
The first spikes, which will be covered in chartreuse flowers, are just emerging.
Yes, I know it's not knitting. But aren't they pretty?
* Hence the name, or so I've read. Alchemists believed the water collected by the leaves was purified, and therefore suitable for alchemical experiments.
So I went out to Guthrie, Oklahoma for the annual Sealed with a Kiss Knit Out. It was the first time I'd done anything in Oklahoma other than spend a night in a hotel during a drive to Santa Fe, and it's not fair to make a decision about any place based on the quality of your stay at a Hilton Garden Inn.
I had a blast. In writing about Oklahoma, Mr. Hammerstein got it surprisingly right for a New Yorker–there was indeed a bright golden haze on the meadow every morning; and I saw a hawk making lazy circles in the sky. I awoke to the cry of a lonesome train whistle, and that would have been extremely Johnny Cash except I was sleeping in a canopy bed covered with blue roses.
The knitters were good-hearted in the extreme (a future post will be devoted to a piece of stunning generosity–I haven't yet been able to photograph the gift properly). The event itself is so awash in charm, I didn't wonder that students had come from far afield (and my fellow teachers, the redoubtable Fiona Ellis and Jane Thornley, had come all the way from flippin' Canada).
Guthrie, which you should visit, is about the size of the frozen foods section of our Costco. It consists in the main of gloriously untouched High Victorian buildings standing cheek-by-jowl, with occasional outcroppings of Art Deco. There's a historic theater (the kind with live actors and footlights), a truly splendid yarn shop (see Sealed with a Kiss, above), art galleries, good restaurants and so many, many, many antique shops.
We have antique shops in Chicago, but I usually can't afford to look in the windows. For example, once I noticed in passing by a store in Ravenswood that they had a bag of old wooden clothespins for sale. They were the kind with no spring that I remember my grandmother keeping in a big old chip basket, handy to the washing machine. They were nicely weathered, and I thought they'd be useful for photographs, so I went inside and asked the price.
It was $35.00 per dozen. That's $2.1966666 per pin. The saleswoman explained that they were eco-friendly and upcycled, and that hanging out your wash is the new In Thing for the local yuppified supermoms–apparently it offsets the carbon they generate while driving their kids three blocks to school in a Range Rover. Rustic "vintage" clothespins are sine qua non for the fashionable wash line.
Guthrie is far more reasonably priced, not to mention blessedly free of yuppified supermoms; and on one afternoon plus two lunch breaks plus a quick dash in early evening I...um...well, I bought some stuff.
Including thimbles. It seems I have kind of a problem with buying thimbles. Well, no. I have no problem with buying thimbles, I have a problem with not buying thimbles, at least when they're as cheap as they are in Guthrie.
I'm not gaga for all thimbles, mind you. I don't care a fig for the twee pewter souvenir variety that could never be used to sew because they were designed to sit on a rack and remind you of your crazy party weekend in Yucca Flats.
The thimbles I like could be used for sewing, if you (okay, me) could fit your stubby manfingers (okay, my stubby manfingers) into them. They're old, and slightly battered, and often offer charming suggestions like "Make It Yourself with Wool."
And yes, fine, along with that one and the bridal thimble from Royal Worcester, and the advertising thimbles from Newsom's Flowers of Marion, Kansas and Glass Portrait Studio, there is a souvenir thimble from Mesa Verde. I'm hoping it will give visitors the impression that I once had a crazy party weekend in Mesa Verde, because my reputation could use a dash of daring.
The only thing difficult about shopping in Guthrie was that I was making the rounds on the eve of the Rapture, and the little old ladies at the cash desks kept wishing me "a blessed day." I'd stand there holding my two dollars and wondering, "Are you saved? Because if you are, I'm just going to come back the day after tomorrow and pick this out of the rubble."
This Part Has Even Less in It About Knitting
I wish I could show you what I'm knitting right now, but everything is either for a client and therefore top secret, or it's my niece's not-a-pink-poncho and still bunched up on a circular needle and therefore unphotographable. However, I fully expect the pink thing to be unfurled in a week or so–we're nearing the end of the third version of the cape. There's also a new design for Skacel, of which I am immensely proud. Pictures forthcoming.
In the meantime, I have flowers. If you don't care for flowers, you can go back to planning your Disney vacation or reading Justin Bieber slash fiction or whatever.
I took a head count a week ago and realized that in the two main flower beds I have to play with, which together measure a whopping sixteen square feet, I have 14 herbaceous perennial species represented in a total of something like 34 specimens. This is the antithesis of the American suburban gardens of my childhood, which considered three gaudy Burpee marigolds in a line near the front door to be overdoing it.
Among the plants currently doing their thing, and doing it well, we have Dicentra spectabilis "Alba," a white clone of one of my favorite plants, commonly known as Bleeding Heart.
And there's also an Aquilegia, or Columbine–new for this year–which is obliging me with a second round of blooms. It's my first Columbine, and what the gardening books don't warn you about is that once you have one, you'll find yourself wanting more. They're like thimbles that way. I will for the present confine myself to hoping it sets seed .
And not yet in bloom, but getting there, is another new acquisition: Alchemilla mollis, or Lady's Mantle. The leaves are shaped like inverted umbrellas (which I, as a Chicagoan, know all too well) and are covered in tiny hairs. The hairs catch the dew in the morning and the entire plant sparkles like a dress covered in crystal beads.*
The first spikes, which will be covered in chartreuse flowers, are just emerging.
Yes, I know it's not knitting. But aren't they pretty?
* Hence the name, or so I've read. Alchemists believed the water collected by the leaves was purified, and therefore suitable for alchemical experiments.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Proof That Knitting Makes You Smarter, Even If You're Me
Hi, kids. I'm sitting at O'Hare airport, waiting for a flight to Oklahoma. I'll be teaching this weekend at the Sealed With a Kiss Knit Out 2011 in Guthrie, in the exalted company of Fiona Ellis and Jane Thornley.
I only just got home from my last trip–a joyful co-production of Boston's Common Cod Fiber Guild and Mind's Eye Yarn in Cambridge. The first event was a talk at M.I.T., in a terribly swish lecture hall designed with verve aplenty by Frank Gehry. We arrived to find the place crawling with equations. It looked like Einstein had inhaled too much chalkdust and sneezed violently across all twelve blackboards.
I had a few minutes of downtime before curtain, so I put on my thinking cap and got to work finishing what the class had started. Piece o' cake. Add a couple yos, balance with a few k2togs, start and end with asterisks to indicate the repeat and now you have a theory of velocity (or electricity, or gravity, or energy, or something) that also makes a really cute lace capelet.
Hearty thanks to Patience for sharing her photograph with me. I hope the nastypants meanie meanie teacher who made me cry over long division in fourth grade in front of the entire class runs across this post and has a stroke.
I only just got home from my last trip–a joyful co-production of Boston's Common Cod Fiber Guild and Mind's Eye Yarn in Cambridge. The first event was a talk at M.I.T., in a terribly swish lecture hall designed with verve aplenty by Frank Gehry. We arrived to find the place crawling with equations. It looked like Einstein had inhaled too much chalkdust and sneezed violently across all twelve blackboards.
I had a few minutes of downtime before curtain, so I put on my thinking cap and got to work finishing what the class had started. Piece o' cake. Add a couple yos, balance with a few k2togs, start and end with asterisks to indicate the repeat and now you have a theory of velocity (or electricity, or gravity, or energy, or something) that also makes a really cute lace capelet.
Hearty thanks to Patience for sharing her photograph with me. I hope the nastypants meanie meanie teacher who made me cry over long division in fourth grade in front of the entire class runs across this post and has a stroke.
Sunday, May 08, 2011
Incident at Westminster
“So,” I said. “How was the wedding?”
Dolores lifted herself off the sofa just enough to fling a wine glass at my head, but jet lag had sapped the oomph from her pitching arm. The remains of that morning’s indifferent breakfast Cabernet fell short by half and landed on the rug.
“Meh,” she said, and passed out again.
“She’s cranky,” said Harry.
He was sitting on the table, scissors and glue at the ready, preparing to paste souvenirs and photographs into his scrapbook. His copy of the Official Programme, which he’s been carrying with him everywhere, was propped against the toaster.
“Looks like you had a lot of fun,” I said, picking up a napkin on which someone had scribbled a snippet of music with a lyric. “Is this from Elton John?”
“Yup,” said Harry. “He’s so nice. We were near each other at the Abbey and when I started to cry because everything was so pretty he hugged me and I said I’m a good bloke, and he cried, too. Then at the party we were talking and he said I made him think of a whole new song and he wrote down the first part for me.”
“Is seems to me,” I read, “you lived your life like a sock yarn in the wind.”
“He must know what Chicago weather is like,” said Harry, “because I sure do.”
“And where are the leaves from?”
“The big one came off a tree in Kew Gardens. You aren’t allowed to pick stuff but it was on the ground already so I figured it was cool. The little one fell off one of the trees in the Abbey when Dolores–well, you know.”
Oh, yeah. I knew. You’ve probably heard already, or seen the leaked video clips on TMZ, but in case you’ve been otherwise engaged here are the details.
It was evident from the wording of Harry’s invitation that Dolores remained persona non grata with the palace crowd, thanks to her impromptu audience with the Queen’s dogs at Windsor Castle. She did not take the snub gracefully. After a hatchet-faced goon from the CIA turned up at our door to ask about unsettling e-mails that had been sent to Kate Middleton from our computer, I revoked her Internet privileges for a month.
To her credit, Dolores spent the duration of her punishment making amends. She watched news bulletins about the wedding preparations without throwing cocktail nuts at the screen. She took Harry down to one of the fancy tailors in the Loop to have his royal ball band fitted. She helped him bake and pack eleven dozen snickerdoodles for the royal cookie table. She confirmed and re-confirmed his reservations at the International Yarn Hostel in Wapping. And as I was up to my Gandalfian eyebrows in deadlines, she offered to escort him to the airport.
Right. I know what you’re thinking. You might have spoken up at the time. But you didn’t, did you? No, you did not.
Dolores was terribly worried about Harry’s navigating O’Hare Airport all by himself, so she secured a pass from the ticket agent that allowed her to usher him through security and into his seat without incident. She then attempted to leave the aircraft, whereupon she tripped, fell and became wedged beneath a vacant seat in First Class. Alas, she was unable to extricate herself until the flight was somewhere over Iceland.
The crew did not eject her immediately (that would have been unfair to Iceland), but the captain made it clear that she would be sent back to Chicago on the next flight from London. A few hours later, as the captain was visiting the loo, Dolores busted in on him to plead for clemency. She emerged with a highly personal narrative the captain does not wish to have shared with the media, plus enough Frequent Flyer miles for a round-trip ticket to Rio.
In the days leading up to the wedding, Harry made friends with some lovely Australian and German yarns from the hostel. They visited Kew Gardens,
took in a couple of shows, got lost on the Underground–the things one does when one is young and free and superwash in London.
Dolores, meanwhile, did a good deal of shopping because she hadn’t planned on traveling and therefore had only a week’s worth of clothing, her passport and her make-up kit.
Harry said that on Friday morning you could feel the crackle of excitement in the London air. Or it might have been radiation from all the surveillance equipment. Anyhow, he was up at dawn and rolled out the door on his way to the Abbey. He had expected Dolores to tag along and try her hoof at getting past royal security (practice makes perfect), but she hadn’t come home the night before.
“I never saw anything like the crowds on the way to the church,” Harry told me. “They had little flags and champagne and funny hats and it was sort of like Gay Pride Day except way bigger and Englisher and most of the guys had shirts on.”
Harry presented his credentials at the door and was warmly welcomed, though he says getting to his seat was exhausting and perilous. “It’s a long building. And that creepy lady who married the famous soccer player tried to step on me when I got in her way. But I got a space near the front so I could see pretty well.”
Everything went off without a hitch. Almost. I’ll let Harry give you his version of what happened next.
“Seriously It really was like a fairy tale,” said Harry. “There was the prince and Cinderella and I even thought they had paid two ladies to be the wicked stepsisters but then I found out they were princesses, too. Weird, right? So the choir started to sing and it was amazing like angels and I sang too, because they put all the words in the booklet, and then the tree I was sitting near shook a little and some leaves fell down. And I thought oh it’s the wind, but then I remembered we were inside and there’s no wind unless somebody left the window open, but when I looked around I didn’t see any open windows, and then I looked up in the tree and I saw Dolores’s butt.”
Yes. You remember the trees? The beautiful estate trees that decorated the aisle?
How did she get up there, you might well ask. Probably best to let Dolores handle this part of the narrative herself.
"It was almost too freaking easy,” she said. “I happened to be doing some sightseeing in the neighborhood the day before, and along comes this truck with the Hundred Acre Wood on top. So I ask somebody who looks official, what’s with the greenery? He says, all confidential-like, ‘I’m sure I can’t say, miss, but perhaps it might 'ave something to do with the big do tomorrow, eh?’ And he winks at me. Big winkers, the English.”
“Did you say...winkers?”
“Yeah, winkers.”
“Oh, good.”
“What did you think I said?”
“Never mind. Continue.”
“Right. So at that moment the whole gorgeous plan just popped fully-formed into my head. I knew what I had to do. I went over to where they were unloading the trees and I said, in my best la-dee-dah Lady Bracknell voice, ‘To whom, please, do I speak about my role in the décor?’
It took some bleating but I finally got some guy with clout to listen, and I told him I was sent by that Campaign for Wool that Prince Charles is so hot about, and he wanted me to be part of the modest green recyclable country-type outfittings as a surprise to the happy couple.”
“And he bought that?”
“Not at first. He looks me up and down and says, ‘Are you sure you’re British?’ in that hoity-toity way they do. And I said, ‘Yes, quite.’ And he said, ‘Well, what breed are you then?’ and I said Blue-Faced Leicester. And he said, ‘Then ’ow come you ’aven’t got a blue face?’ and I said, ‘Because it’s very warm in here.’
“Then I showed him the hat I picked up that day at Philip Treacy, and I said what would I, an ’umble English sheep, be doing with a hat like that if I wasn’t gonna be at the royal wedding? So finally he let me in, and I kicked back in one of the little chapels until they were finished unloading and nobody was looking. Then I shinnied up the nearest tree and got comfy.”
“And that’s where you were when Harry saw you?”
“Well, yeah. See, I was still pretty jet-lagged and fell asleep up there and when they struck up the band it scared the living shit out of me and I lost my balance. I slipped a little off the branch, but kept hanging on for dear life until the show was on the road. I didn’t want to cause a scene or anything.”
“Of course you didn’t.”
“Naw, I have too much class for that. But once they were all up front and everybody’s eyes were glued to the bride’s face and her sister’s ass I figured I could let myself down the trunk really slowly, and then just blend in with the crowd.”
“Uh huh.”
“But my hat got knocked sideways, so I grabbed for it and that’s when I fell out of the tree.”
“And landed on the Archbishop of Wales.”
“And landed on the Archbishop of Wales, yeah. That pointy hat hurt like a mofo.”
It speaks to the efficiency and steel resolve of the security staff, as well as the ready availability of chloroform in the UK, that Dolores was removed from the Archbishop’s hat, and then from the Abbey, with such speed and tact that the event barely registered with the other guests and the ceremony proceeded without a hitch.
While Dolores slept off the rest of the day under guard, Harry headed off to Buckingham Palace for the wedding breakfast and the parties that followed. “I was afraid it would take me forever to get there,” he said. “But when the Queen was going by I waved and said, ‘Hi, Queen!’ and she smiled and picked me right up and carried me down the aisle and outside!”
“And then she said she had to stop and powder her nose before they left so she gave me to one of the princesses and she took me the rest of the way.”
I was watching, groggily, from home. But I woke up the neighbors when the wedding party emerged to wave from the balcony.
Harry boogied until dawn at Buckingham Palace with the young royals, carefully avoiding any further engagement with the resident Corgis. He was, in fact, the last guest to leave.
“I think I had too much chocolate milk,” he said, “because I came over all fuzzy and then I guess I fell asleep on a chair and they didn’t find me until they were cleaning up. And when they saw the Queen’s initials on my ball band they handed me over to somebody who handed me over to somebody who handed me over to somebody else and then before I knew it I was sitting there with the Queen and she was having breakfast and looking at the newspapers and she asked if I was busy and I said no and she asked me to come have a look at her horses. She likes horses.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“And while we were giving the horses some carrots and sugar I apologized for Dolores falling out out of the tree and landing on the Archbishop and I told her I would make sure Dolores behaves herself when we go to London for Knit Nation.”
“And what did she say to that?”
“She said for such a little ball of yarn I have very big dreams.”
“Her Majesty is very perceptive.”
“Righty-ho,” said Harry.
Dolores lifted herself off the sofa just enough to fling a wine glass at my head, but jet lag had sapped the oomph from her pitching arm. The remains of that morning’s indifferent breakfast Cabernet fell short by half and landed on the rug.
“Meh,” she said, and passed out again.
“She’s cranky,” said Harry.
He was sitting on the table, scissors and glue at the ready, preparing to paste souvenirs and photographs into his scrapbook. His copy of the Official Programme, which he’s been carrying with him everywhere, was propped against the toaster.
“Looks like you had a lot of fun,” I said, picking up a napkin on which someone had scribbled a snippet of music with a lyric. “Is this from Elton John?”
“Yup,” said Harry. “He’s so nice. We were near each other at the Abbey and when I started to cry because everything was so pretty he hugged me and I said I’m a good bloke, and he cried, too. Then at the party we were talking and he said I made him think of a whole new song and he wrote down the first part for me.”
“Is seems to me,” I read, “you lived your life like a sock yarn in the wind.”
“He must know what Chicago weather is like,” said Harry, “because I sure do.”
“And where are the leaves from?”
“The big one came off a tree in Kew Gardens. You aren’t allowed to pick stuff but it was on the ground already so I figured it was cool. The little one fell off one of the trees in the Abbey when Dolores–well, you know.”
Oh, yeah. I knew. You’ve probably heard already, or seen the leaked video clips on TMZ, but in case you’ve been otherwise engaged here are the details.
It was evident from the wording of Harry’s invitation that Dolores remained persona non grata with the palace crowd, thanks to her impromptu audience with the Queen’s dogs at Windsor Castle. She did not take the snub gracefully. After a hatchet-faced goon from the CIA turned up at our door to ask about unsettling e-mails that had been sent to Kate Middleton from our computer, I revoked her Internet privileges for a month.
To her credit, Dolores spent the duration of her punishment making amends. She watched news bulletins about the wedding preparations without throwing cocktail nuts at the screen. She took Harry down to one of the fancy tailors in the Loop to have his royal ball band fitted. She helped him bake and pack eleven dozen snickerdoodles for the royal cookie table. She confirmed and re-confirmed his reservations at the International Yarn Hostel in Wapping. And as I was up to my Gandalfian eyebrows in deadlines, she offered to escort him to the airport.
Right. I know what you’re thinking. You might have spoken up at the time. But you didn’t, did you? No, you did not.
Dolores was terribly worried about Harry’s navigating O’Hare Airport all by himself, so she secured a pass from the ticket agent that allowed her to usher him through security and into his seat without incident. She then attempted to leave the aircraft, whereupon she tripped, fell and became wedged beneath a vacant seat in First Class. Alas, she was unable to extricate herself until the flight was somewhere over Iceland.
The crew did not eject her immediately (that would have been unfair to Iceland), but the captain made it clear that she would be sent back to Chicago on the next flight from London. A few hours later, as the captain was visiting the loo, Dolores busted in on him to plead for clemency. She emerged with a highly personal narrative the captain does not wish to have shared with the media, plus enough Frequent Flyer miles for a round-trip ticket to Rio.
In the days leading up to the wedding, Harry made friends with some lovely Australian and German yarns from the hostel. They visited Kew Gardens,
took in a couple of shows, got lost on the Underground–the things one does when one is young and free and superwash in London.
Dolores, meanwhile, did a good deal of shopping because she hadn’t planned on traveling and therefore had only a week’s worth of clothing, her passport and her make-up kit.
Harry said that on Friday morning you could feel the crackle of excitement in the London air. Or it might have been radiation from all the surveillance equipment. Anyhow, he was up at dawn and rolled out the door on his way to the Abbey. He had expected Dolores to tag along and try her hoof at getting past royal security (practice makes perfect), but she hadn’t come home the night before.
“I never saw anything like the crowds on the way to the church,” Harry told me. “They had little flags and champagne and funny hats and it was sort of like Gay Pride Day except way bigger and Englisher and most of the guys had shirts on.”
Harry presented his credentials at the door and was warmly welcomed, though he says getting to his seat was exhausting and perilous. “It’s a long building. And that creepy lady who married the famous soccer player tried to step on me when I got in her way. But I got a space near the front so I could see pretty well.”
Everything went off without a hitch. Almost. I’ll let Harry give you his version of what happened next.
“Seriously It really was like a fairy tale,” said Harry. “There was the prince and Cinderella and I even thought they had paid two ladies to be the wicked stepsisters but then I found out they were princesses, too. Weird, right? So the choir started to sing and it was amazing like angels and I sang too, because they put all the words in the booklet, and then the tree I was sitting near shook a little and some leaves fell down. And I thought oh it’s the wind, but then I remembered we were inside and there’s no wind unless somebody left the window open, but when I looked around I didn’t see any open windows, and then I looked up in the tree and I saw Dolores’s butt.”
Yes. You remember the trees? The beautiful estate trees that decorated the aisle?
How did she get up there, you might well ask. Probably best to let Dolores handle this part of the narrative herself.
"It was almost too freaking easy,” she said. “I happened to be doing some sightseeing in the neighborhood the day before, and along comes this truck with the Hundred Acre Wood on top. So I ask somebody who looks official, what’s with the greenery? He says, all confidential-like, ‘I’m sure I can’t say, miss, but perhaps it might 'ave something to do with the big do tomorrow, eh?’ And he winks at me. Big winkers, the English.”
“Did you say...winkers?”
“Yeah, winkers.”
“Oh, good.”
“What did you think I said?”
“Never mind. Continue.”
“Right. So at that moment the whole gorgeous plan just popped fully-formed into my head. I knew what I had to do. I went over to where they were unloading the trees and I said, in my best la-dee-dah Lady Bracknell voice, ‘To whom, please, do I speak about my role in the décor?’
It took some bleating but I finally got some guy with clout to listen, and I told him I was sent by that Campaign for Wool that Prince Charles is so hot about, and he wanted me to be part of the modest green recyclable country-type outfittings as a surprise to the happy couple.”
“And he bought that?”
“Not at first. He looks me up and down and says, ‘Are you sure you’re British?’ in that hoity-toity way they do. And I said, ‘Yes, quite.’ And he said, ‘Well, what breed are you then?’ and I said Blue-Faced Leicester. And he said, ‘Then ’ow come you ’aven’t got a blue face?’ and I said, ‘Because it’s very warm in here.’
“Then I showed him the hat I picked up that day at Philip Treacy, and I said what would I, an ’umble English sheep, be doing with a hat like that if I wasn’t gonna be at the royal wedding? So finally he let me in, and I kicked back in one of the little chapels until they were finished unloading and nobody was looking. Then I shinnied up the nearest tree and got comfy.”
“And that’s where you were when Harry saw you?”
“Well, yeah. See, I was still pretty jet-lagged and fell asleep up there and when they struck up the band it scared the living shit out of me and I lost my balance. I slipped a little off the branch, but kept hanging on for dear life until the show was on the road. I didn’t want to cause a scene or anything.”
“Of course you didn’t.”
“Naw, I have too much class for that. But once they were all up front and everybody’s eyes were glued to the bride’s face and her sister’s ass I figured I could let myself down the trunk really slowly, and then just blend in with the crowd.”
“Uh huh.”
“But my hat got knocked sideways, so I grabbed for it and that’s when I fell out of the tree.”
“And landed on the Archbishop of Wales.”
“And landed on the Archbishop of Wales, yeah. That pointy hat hurt like a mofo.”
It speaks to the efficiency and steel resolve of the security staff, as well as the ready availability of chloroform in the UK, that Dolores was removed from the Archbishop’s hat, and then from the Abbey, with such speed and tact that the event barely registered with the other guests and the ceremony proceeded without a hitch.
While Dolores slept off the rest of the day under guard, Harry headed off to Buckingham Palace for the wedding breakfast and the parties that followed. “I was afraid it would take me forever to get there,” he said. “But when the Queen was going by I waved and said, ‘Hi, Queen!’ and she smiled and picked me right up and carried me down the aisle and outside!”
“And then she said she had to stop and powder her nose before they left so she gave me to one of the princesses and she took me the rest of the way.”
I was watching, groggily, from home. But I woke up the neighbors when the wedding party emerged to wave from the balcony.
Harry boogied until dawn at Buckingham Palace with the young royals, carefully avoiding any further engagement with the resident Corgis. He was, in fact, the last guest to leave.
“I think I had too much chocolate milk,” he said, “because I came over all fuzzy and then I guess I fell asleep on a chair and they didn’t find me until they were cleaning up. And when they saw the Queen’s initials on my ball band they handed me over to somebody who handed me over to somebody who handed me over to somebody else and then before I knew it I was sitting there with the Queen and she was having breakfast and looking at the newspapers and she asked if I was busy and I said no and she asked me to come have a look at her horses. She likes horses.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“And while we were giving the horses some carrots and sugar I apologized for Dolores falling out out of the tree and landing on the Archbishop and I told her I would make sure Dolores behaves herself when we go to London for Knit Nation.”
“And what did she say to that?”
“She said for such a little ball of yarn I have very big dreams.”
“Her Majesty is very perceptive.”
“Righty-ho,” said Harry.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
A Stole Full of Peas
If Chicago's rainy streak doesn't break soon, I'm afraid I'll break out in moss. Everyone passing the café window is bent forward, shoulders hunched under the weight of the persistently beastly weather.
This has been a dreary spring even for a city in which dreary weather is a specialty. The only thing grayer than the sky is the grass. Optimistic trees that put out buds during a freak warm spell weeks ago are now shivering with regret. We got a few daffodils and tulips, here and there. Most died quick and humiliating deaths, beheaded or stabbed in the back by the north wind.
To garden near the lake in Chicago is to be a masochist. Nature intended this land to be swamp, wind-swept and mostly populated by grass and skunk cabbage.* You are reminded of this every time you watch a perennial trumpeted as "bulletproof" pop its clogs due to the sort of bizarre weather you thought went out of fashion after they put the finishing touches on the Book of Exodus.
Mind you, the city's official motto is Urbs in horto–city in a garden. Hah. A fib in Latin is still a fib.
But this is the first place I've actually got dirt to play with, after a frustrated lifetime of poring over gardening books and poking dejectedly at window boxes. It's not my dirt, but it's dirt. Though I don't own it–it's a series of neglected beds attached to a condominium in my neighborhood–as long as I've got it, I'm going to make it bloom, dammit.
Unlike many of my strong impulses, which will not be itemized here as my mother is probably reading this, I know where this urge to garden comes from.
One of my very earliest memories, clear as a bell, is of sitting on the turf by my grandmother's vegetable garden, watching her dig and plant. I can't have been older than a year-and-a-half. I may have only just learned to sit up. But I recall the scent, and the feeling of the clammy earth, and the print of her cotton shirt and the soft sound of the spade. It was a moment of pure joy, and before I die I plan to recapture it as nearly and as often as possible.
The garden is long gone, but I know for certain that my fascination with planting and growing–which for years has been stifled–comes from that moment.
A New Pattern
When Véronik Avery asked me to do something with Boréale, the fingering weight yarn from her St-Denis Yarns line, the color and texture sparked the memory of my grandmother's garden. I'm sure it was because of the richness of the brown–deep, not dull–very much like well-worked soil.
I turned into a stole, Pauline, named after this lady, to whom I owe more than I can ever hope to repay. It's in Issue 3 of the St-Denis Magazine, now winging its way to local shops and online shops pretty much everywhere.
The pattern is designed to be extremely adaptable. Without any complicated math whatsoever you can change the width and length to suit your purposes. It'll scale down to a scarf or up to a bedspread with ease.
And the framework will accommodate your own choice of small lace motifs if you so fancy. I've put in things I remember my grandmother growing: peas-in-the-pod, strawberry blossoms, and (because even a vegetable garden should be pretty) hydrangeas.
The overall look is rustic. I wanted to see if I could make lace look pretty, but tough...just like my Grandma.
Royal Wedding Report
In case you haven't been following the unfolding events via Twitter at @yarnpoetharry and @doloresvanh, Harry made it to London. So did Dolores. She wasn't supposed to go, of course, but was (this is what I've been told) a victim of her own selflessness.
So worried was she about Harry's ability to negotiate the perils of O'Hare Airport on his own that she jumped through hoops to secure a "gate pass" from the airline and accompanied him to the aircraft. After helping him settle his snickerdoodles in the overhead compartment, she tried to exit, but tripped and got stuck under an empty seat in First Class.
Fancy that. It's a good thing she had a toothbrush, a copy of Liberated Ewe Quarterly and a week's worth of clothing with her.
I asked why the airlines didn't send her right back upon arrival at Heathrow. All I got was somewhat incoherent babble about one of the pilots busting in on her in the loo, and now having something in his private life he'd rather not have her tell the tabloids. If you want to know more, you can ask her. I'm keeping out of it.
Harry's Twitter feed suggests that he is having a marvelous time, making friends with Australian yarns who are also staying at the International Yarn Hostel in Wapping, visiting Kew Gardens, and going to see friends at I Knit London. Dolores can barely type at all, so I infer that she is also having a marvelous time in her own way.
I have been promised a full report after the solemn occasion, so look for it here this weekend or keep an eye on Harry's tweets. I hope he remembers to iron his formal morning ball band before setting off for the Abbey.
*Shikaakwa or chee-ca-gou in the tongue of the native peoples, from which comes our name.
This has been a dreary spring even for a city in which dreary weather is a specialty. The only thing grayer than the sky is the grass. Optimistic trees that put out buds during a freak warm spell weeks ago are now shivering with regret. We got a few daffodils and tulips, here and there. Most died quick and humiliating deaths, beheaded or stabbed in the back by the north wind.
To garden near the lake in Chicago is to be a masochist. Nature intended this land to be swamp, wind-swept and mostly populated by grass and skunk cabbage.* You are reminded of this every time you watch a perennial trumpeted as "bulletproof" pop its clogs due to the sort of bizarre weather you thought went out of fashion after they put the finishing touches on the Book of Exodus.
Mind you, the city's official motto is Urbs in horto–city in a garden. Hah. A fib in Latin is still a fib.
But this is the first place I've actually got dirt to play with, after a frustrated lifetime of poring over gardening books and poking dejectedly at window boxes. It's not my dirt, but it's dirt. Though I don't own it–it's a series of neglected beds attached to a condominium in my neighborhood–as long as I've got it, I'm going to make it bloom, dammit.
Unlike many of my strong impulses, which will not be itemized here as my mother is probably reading this, I know where this urge to garden comes from.
One of my very earliest memories, clear as a bell, is of sitting on the turf by my grandmother's vegetable garden, watching her dig and plant. I can't have been older than a year-and-a-half. I may have only just learned to sit up. But I recall the scent, and the feeling of the clammy earth, and the print of her cotton shirt and the soft sound of the spade. It was a moment of pure joy, and before I die I plan to recapture it as nearly and as often as possible.
The garden is long gone, but I know for certain that my fascination with planting and growing–which for years has been stifled–comes from that moment.
A New Pattern
When Véronik Avery asked me to do something with Boréale, the fingering weight yarn from her St-Denis Yarns line, the color and texture sparked the memory of my grandmother's garden. I'm sure it was because of the richness of the brown–deep, not dull–very much like well-worked soil.
I turned into a stole, Pauline, named after this lady, to whom I owe more than I can ever hope to repay. It's in Issue 3 of the St-Denis Magazine, now winging its way to local shops and online shops pretty much everywhere.
The pattern is designed to be extremely adaptable. Without any complicated math whatsoever you can change the width and length to suit your purposes. It'll scale down to a scarf or up to a bedspread with ease.
And the framework will accommodate your own choice of small lace motifs if you so fancy. I've put in things I remember my grandmother growing: peas-in-the-pod, strawberry blossoms, and (because even a vegetable garden should be pretty) hydrangeas.
The overall look is rustic. I wanted to see if I could make lace look pretty, but tough...just like my Grandma.
Royal Wedding Report
In case you haven't been following the unfolding events via Twitter at @yarnpoetharry and @doloresvanh, Harry made it to London. So did Dolores. She wasn't supposed to go, of course, but was (this is what I've been told) a victim of her own selflessness.
So worried was she about Harry's ability to negotiate the perils of O'Hare Airport on his own that she jumped through hoops to secure a "gate pass" from the airline and accompanied him to the aircraft. After helping him settle his snickerdoodles in the overhead compartment, she tried to exit, but tripped and got stuck under an empty seat in First Class.
Fancy that. It's a good thing she had a toothbrush, a copy of Liberated Ewe Quarterly and a week's worth of clothing with her.
I asked why the airlines didn't send her right back upon arrival at Heathrow. All I got was somewhat incoherent babble about one of the pilots busting in on her in the loo, and now having something in his private life he'd rather not have her tell the tabloids. If you want to know more, you can ask her. I'm keeping out of it.
Harry's Twitter feed suggests that he is having a marvelous time, making friends with Australian yarns who are also staying at the International Yarn Hostel in Wapping, visiting Kew Gardens, and going to see friends at I Knit London. Dolores can barely type at all, so I infer that she is also having a marvelous time in her own way.
I have been promised a full report after the solemn occasion, so look for it here this weekend or keep an eye on Harry's tweets. I hope he remembers to iron his formal morning ball band before setting off for the Abbey.
*Shikaakwa or chee-ca-gou in the tongue of the native peoples, from which comes our name.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Dream Girl
I've been sorely in need of a dress form. Not a mannequin–which is meant to display finished clothing–but a dress form, which is used to check and adjust the fit of clothing in progress. It's a design tool that's hard to do without if you're trying to create professional work. A dress form, unlike most mannequins and most models, doesn't mind if you stick pins into it.
I could have put a crowbar in my wallet and bought a new one. They're readily available, and may be had in two varieties:
I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted a vintage dress form, made with care in the pre-plastic era. I did not something that had been made indifferently in China with toxic waste and strip-mined panda carcasses. My dream girl was a statuesque, attractively worn dame made from the time-tested combination of linen over jersey over papier-maché over wire, with a brass-plated skirt frame and a rolling, cast iron base.
I have friends who work with clothes for a living, so I made inquiries. "Where does one go," I asked, "to purchase a reasonably-priced vintage dress form?"
An hour and a half later, when the laughter died down, the replies were discouraging.
All of my friends outside New York City suggested a regimen of Craigslist, eBay, patience and prayer. The most knowledgeable of the bunch told me that old forms are the first thing snapped up any time a shop or workroom goes under (which is happening all the time–see "made in China," above) and when you do find them, they cost serious gelt. This fellow should know, since he has a small stable of them in his own workroom.
I asked if I could buy one of his. I offered cash, lifelong friendship, a kidney, and high-quality free sex. More laughter.
Then there were the friends in New York City. They gave the sort of reply friends in New York City always give to this kind of question:
Last week, the search yielded an estate sale ad. There, in a color photograph, was a beautiful vintage dress form. The sale–which for once was actually in Chicago, and not in a suburb seven hours away pretending to be in Chicago–was by appointment only and had ended two days earlier. I called anyway and left a message. I had as much hope of the form still being unsold as I do of the Republicans and the Democrats doing the Virginia Reel down Pennsylvania Avenue.
The lady who had placed the ad called me back the next day. "Yes," she said, "the dress form is available. Would you like to come and see it? How about this afternoon?"
I figured it was 50/50 that voice on the phone was bait in a Very Special Episode of Punk'd featuring on gay male knitters. I could live with those odds.
That evening, thanks to Tom Terrific and His Magic Volvo Station Wagon, I came home with Mildred.
She's a classic Wolf Adjustable, Model 1959, made (as far as I can tell from checking her patent numbers) some time in the 1940s.* And still being made, which tells you something about the quality.
The lady who sold her to me (for a very fair price) is an artist who just liked the look of her. She had spent the recent past as a decoration, but her little steel casters told an older story. When I bought her she was completely hobbled, and no wonder. Look at this.
Those are threads picked up over the years from the floor of a workroom–apparently a very busy workroom. This is the thread I pulled out of one side of one 1" diameter wheel.
Mildred is battle-scarred. I don't mind–it's honorable.
After a damp cloth, sandpapering to take the rust off her base and wheels, and a lick of brass polish, she has a patina you can't fabricate. For practical purposes, she's good as new.
The artist told me she'd had other several calls about the form, but something in my voice suggested I'd give her the best home–so I got her.
I'm grateful for the chance to put the old gal back to work. And it's been awfully difficult, until now, trying to do fittings on Dolores.
*Correction! Made in 1959, per her model number - a tip o' the hat to commenter Marcia in Austin!
I could have put a crowbar in my wallet and bought a new one. They're readily available, and may be had in two varieties:
- fairly expensive and staggeringly ugly;
- staggeringly expensive and fairly ugly.
I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted a vintage dress form, made with care in the pre-plastic era. I did not something that had been made indifferently in China with toxic waste and strip-mined panda carcasses. My dream girl was a statuesque, attractively worn dame made from the time-tested combination of linen over jersey over papier-maché over wire, with a brass-plated skirt frame and a rolling, cast iron base.
I have friends who work with clothes for a living, so I made inquiries. "Where does one go," I asked, "to purchase a reasonably-priced vintage dress form?"
An hour and a half later, when the laughter died down, the replies were discouraging.
All of my friends outside New York City suggested a regimen of Craigslist, eBay, patience and prayer. The most knowledgeable of the bunch told me that old forms are the first thing snapped up any time a shop or workroom goes under (which is happening all the time–see "made in China," above) and when you do find them, they cost serious gelt. This fellow should know, since he has a small stable of them in his own workroom.
I asked if I could buy one of his. I offered cash, lifelong friendship, a kidney, and high-quality free sex. More laughter.
Then there were the friends in New York City. They gave the sort of reply friends in New York City always give to this kind of question:
Yeah, I know a place. You have to go out to Queens, and they're only open on the third Tuesday of every month from 10:47 am–noon. Unless it's November, then it's the second Tuesday and the hours are shorter. They don't have a phone, a Web site or email and they don't ship. Anyway, you just go out there and it's this warehouse and there's no street number and the entrance is unmarked, so you look for the boarded-up door with the PREZ BUSH SUK MY DIK graffitti on it and knock; and when they yell at you to get lost, ask for Sol. Unless it's November, then ask for Miguel. They have ten thousand of them and they're all $1.92, but if you try to take them across state lines they spontaneously combust.I took to half-heartedly searching for "dress form" on Craigslist now and again. This mostly turned up mannequins, which are not dress forms; and form-fitting prom dresses, which are not dress forms; and rants about forms of address, which are not dress forms.
Last week, the search yielded an estate sale ad. There, in a color photograph, was a beautiful vintage dress form. The sale–which for once was actually in Chicago, and not in a suburb seven hours away pretending to be in Chicago–was by appointment only and had ended two days earlier. I called anyway and left a message. I had as much hope of the form still being unsold as I do of the Republicans and the Democrats doing the Virginia Reel down Pennsylvania Avenue.
The lady who had placed the ad called me back the next day. "Yes," she said, "the dress form is available. Would you like to come and see it? How about this afternoon?"
I figured it was 50/50 that voice on the phone was bait in a Very Special Episode of Punk'd featuring on gay male knitters. I could live with those odds.
That evening, thanks to Tom Terrific and His Magic Volvo Station Wagon, I came home with Mildred.
She's a classic Wolf Adjustable, Model 1959, made (as far as I can tell from checking her patent numbers) some time in the 1940s.* And still being made, which tells you something about the quality.
The lady who sold her to me (for a very fair price) is an artist who just liked the look of her. She had spent the recent past as a decoration, but her little steel casters told an older story. When I bought her she was completely hobbled, and no wonder. Look at this.
Those are threads picked up over the years from the floor of a workroom–apparently a very busy workroom. This is the thread I pulled out of one side of one 1" diameter wheel.
Mildred is battle-scarred. I don't mind–it's honorable.
After a damp cloth, sandpapering to take the rust off her base and wheels, and a lick of brass polish, she has a patina you can't fabricate. For practical purposes, she's good as new.
The artist told me she'd had other several calls about the form, but something in my voice suggested I'd give her the best home–so I got her.
I'm grateful for the chance to put the old gal back to work. And it's been awfully difficult, until now, trying to do fittings on Dolores.
*Correction! Made in 1959, per her model number - a tip o' the hat to commenter Marcia in Austin!
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Jug
When I was out at Madrona I saw an uncommonly large amount of jaw-dropping knitting, including a glittering heap of works by Betsy Hershberg. If perchance you haven't heard of Betsy yet, you will. She's got a book coming out from XRX, with the working title Betsy Beads: Creative Approaches for Knitters.
Betsy's thing is beading. She does things to yarn and beads that make me gasp like a codfish on a treadmill. After my talk on antique patterns, she took a shine (you should pardon the expression) to one of the sample pieces–the 1840s Pence Jug I translated for the Winter 2008 issue of Knitty. Would I mind, she asked, if she took a whack at beading it?
Would I mind? Of course I wouldn't mind. I just asked her to please drop me a line and let me know how it went.
She did, and she did. I'll let her tell you:
In other words, the second of those photos is a little more than twice as high as the actual object. Did you just break a sweat? Because I did.
How hard does a fellow have to beg to get you to do the orange, Betsy? Come on. You know you wanna.
More Summer Fun
I'm teaching at Sock Summit 2011, July 28-31 in Portland, Oregon. No, I can't quite believe it, either. I mean, I'm right there on the list of teachers, but I still can't quite believe it.
Betsy's thing is beading. She does things to yarn and beads that make me gasp like a codfish on a treadmill. After my talk on antique patterns, she took a shine (you should pardon the expression) to one of the sample pieces–the 1840s Pence Jug I translated for the Winter 2008 issue of Knitty. Would I mind, she asked, if she took a whack at beading it?
Would I mind? Of course I wouldn't mind. I just asked her to please drop me a line and let me know how it went.
She did, and she did. I'll let her tell you:
As a lover of all things knitted with fine yarns, very (very!) small needles AND teeny, tiny beads, I told you that creating a bead knitted version of this little ditty had instantaneously taken over my knitter's brain.
Additionally, I've recently been focused on creating three dimensional knitted components for my own work designing bead knitted jewelry. So I was off to the races.
Here's a side-by-side of the original (knit with fingering-weight yarns in the colors called for in the original pattern) with Betsy's...version? No. Adaptation? No.
With Betsy's transfiguration of the Pence Jug.
And a solo shot, larger, so you can really see what's going on.
Betsy continues:
With Betsy's transfiguration of the Pence Jug.
And a solo shot, larger, so you can really see what's going on.
Betsy continues:
If you're interested in the technical aspects of this project, it is worked on 0000 double pointed needles with half strands (3 threads) of two colors of DMC metallic embroidery floss and approximately 600 Size 11º Miyuki glass Delica beads. The finished jug is all of 2" high and 1 1/2" wide. In other words, I expect the men in the white coats to come take me away at any moment.
It is important to understand that when knitting 3-D objects, using needles that would otherwise be considered too small for a given fiber is the way to go. It is the very dense gauge created with this needle/fiber combination that creates the stiffness that helps these objects hold their shape.
For the sake of full disclosure, working at this gauge and scale can be tough on the eyes and on the fingers, especially when working the K2tog's on top of a bead in the row below. It's also probably not a great a idea to use black fiber (as I did) for your first attempt at this kind of work. But it was soooo much fun! I just might have to tackle that knitted orange some day...
In other words, the second of those photos is a little more than twice as high as the actual object. Did you just break a sweat? Because I did.
How hard does a fellow have to beg to get you to do the orange, Betsy? Come on. You know you wanna.
More Summer Fun
I'm teaching at Sock Summit 2011, July 28-31 in Portland, Oregon. No, I can't quite believe it, either. I mean, I'm right there on the list of teachers, but I still can't quite believe it.
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
If I Were a Drag Queen I'd Want My Name to Be Carte Blanche
One of the things I very much enjoy about writing a column for Knitty is that the lady in charge over there usually lets me muck about unsupervised. I admit that I've had an issue with authority figures at least since my first report card came home with the notation, "An intelligent child, but often needs reminding that he is not the person in charge."
In my own defense, I well remember the person in charge of that kindergarten; and she needed reminding of a few things, such as the indignity of engaging in semantics with a five-year-old. We had quite the little debate about my decision to stick a black-and-white photograph of a banana on the collage of Things That Are Yellow. I maintained that bananas are yellow, even if this picture of them hadn't been printed in color. She ripped the bananas off the poster and put me in the corner.
I lost that battle, but carried the day when it came time to name the towering, green papier-mache brontosaurus we'd all built as a group art project. My suggestion, "Raquel Welch," won by a landslide in spite of her attempts to bully and intimidate the electorate. She preferred "Greenie," the (if you ask me) pedestrian and predictible brainstorm of Jennifer K., one of the four Jennifers in our class of 25. Jennifer K. was a perfect little angel who never, ever asked the tough questions like, "If you're tired, why do we have to take a nap?"
Of course, to her credit, she tallied the votes fairly. Maybe she knew if there were so much as a whisper of fraud I'd have gone to the principal and demanded a recount.
Wait. What the hell was I writing about?
Knitty. Right.
The Spring + Summer issue is up, and I'm in it. And I forgot, when the last issue hit, to publicly thank Amy Singer for not even batting an eyelash when I referred to a famous, fictitious knitter as a "stone-cold pain in the ass." There are not a whole lot of fiber arts publications that will let you call somebody a pain in the ass, even though–this is strictly between us–the world of fiber arts is replete with persons (self included) who are a pain in the ass.
This issue's pattern first appeared in 1843, but I'll be a monkey's muffatee if the thing doesn't look like it was designed last Tuesday.
It's a neckerchief knit on the bias (the drape is to die) that can easily–and I mean easily–be worked as a full-size shawl in whatever weight yarn you fancy. In fact, the original author's directions for a shawl variation are right there, down at the bottom, in case you just aren't a neckerchief sort of person.
Upcoming Events
I'm going to be back in Boston at the Common Cod Fiber Guild on May 13, 2011. I was the speaker at the Guild's first meeting, and take some pride in the fact that there was ever a second meeting.
Then I'm jumping over to Oklahoma for the Sealed with a Kiss Knit Out 2011, part of a merry trio that also includes Fiona Ellis and Jane Thornley.
June 24-26, I'll once again be at the Midwest Fiber & Folk Art Festival in Grayslake, Illinois. I don't know the full teaching line-up (it'll be posted soon, I hear), but I know they're bringing in some big names again this year.
And in July, I'll be over in London at Knit Nation, the schedule for which is now up. It bodes well that I've just received my Tier 5 Creative Worker Sponsorship Certificate, which makes it legal for me to teach in the UK. Her Majesty's Goverment was most obliging.
That's not the whole summer calendar, but that's what I can tell you about as of now. Stay tuned.
In my own defense, I well remember the person in charge of that kindergarten; and she needed reminding of a few things, such as the indignity of engaging in semantics with a five-year-old. We had quite the little debate about my decision to stick a black-and-white photograph of a banana on the collage of Things That Are Yellow. I maintained that bananas are yellow, even if this picture of them hadn't been printed in color. She ripped the bananas off the poster and put me in the corner.
I lost that battle, but carried the day when it came time to name the towering, green papier-mache brontosaurus we'd all built as a group art project. My suggestion, "Raquel Welch," won by a landslide in spite of her attempts to bully and intimidate the electorate. She preferred "Greenie," the (if you ask me) pedestrian and predictible brainstorm of Jennifer K., one of the four Jennifers in our class of 25. Jennifer K. was a perfect little angel who never, ever asked the tough questions like, "If you're tired, why do we have to take a nap?"
Of course, to her credit, she tallied the votes fairly. Maybe she knew if there were so much as a whisper of fraud I'd have gone to the principal and demanded a recount.
Wait. What the hell was I writing about?
Knitty. Right.
The Spring + Summer issue is up, and I'm in it. And I forgot, when the last issue hit, to publicly thank Amy Singer for not even batting an eyelash when I referred to a famous, fictitious knitter as a "stone-cold pain in the ass." There are not a whole lot of fiber arts publications that will let you call somebody a pain in the ass, even though–this is strictly between us–the world of fiber arts is replete with persons (self included) who are a pain in the ass.
This issue's pattern first appeared in 1843, but I'll be a monkey's muffatee if the thing doesn't look like it was designed last Tuesday.
It's a neckerchief knit on the bias (the drape is to die) that can easily–and I mean easily–be worked as a full-size shawl in whatever weight yarn you fancy. In fact, the original author's directions for a shawl variation are right there, down at the bottom, in case you just aren't a neckerchief sort of person.
Upcoming Events
I'm going to be back in Boston at the Common Cod Fiber Guild on May 13, 2011. I was the speaker at the Guild's first meeting, and take some pride in the fact that there was ever a second meeting.
Then I'm jumping over to Oklahoma for the Sealed with a Kiss Knit Out 2011, part of a merry trio that also includes Fiona Ellis and Jane Thornley.
June 24-26, I'll once again be at the Midwest Fiber & Folk Art Festival in Grayslake, Illinois. I don't know the full teaching line-up (it'll be posted soon, I hear), but I know they're bringing in some big names again this year.
And in July, I'll be over in London at Knit Nation, the schedule for which is now up. It bodes well that I've just received my Tier 5 Creative Worker Sponsorship Certificate, which makes it legal for me to teach in the UK. Her Majesty's Goverment was most obliging.
That's not the whole summer calendar, but that's what I can tell you about as of now. Stay tuned.
Friday, April 01, 2011
Two Paths Diverged, I Chose the One with Tire Tracks
There comes a time in every man's life when he must stop and take stock.
I have done so. With regret I find that knitting just doesn't turn my crank the way it used to. Yarn is fine and dandy, don't get me wrong; but it can only take you so many places before you start to feel that you've seen all the sights and sent all the postcards.
The Panopticon will persist. However, I'll be shifting the focus from fiber arts to the new and consuming passion that rules my days: NASCAR.
Screw Rhinebeck. See you at Talladega!
I have done so. With regret I find that knitting just doesn't turn my crank the way it used to. Yarn is fine and dandy, don't get me wrong; but it can only take you so many places before you start to feel that you've seen all the sights and sent all the postcards.
The Panopticon will persist. However, I'll be shifting the focus from fiber arts to the new and consuming passion that rules my days: NASCAR.
Screw Rhinebeck. See you at Talladega!
Friday, March 25, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Spinning Terms
...that sound like positions left out of the Kama Sutra, if you are in the proper frame of mind.
- The Andean Bracelet
- The Bottom Whorl
- The Balkan Spindle
- The Swan's Neck Hook
- The Freestanding Distaff
- The Spiralling Cop
- Retting and Scutching
- Thigh Rolling
- Collapsible Maidens
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Well, How About That?
This arrived for Harry while he was away at a three-week Winter Yarn Camp in Texas. Apparently the incident at Windsor is remembered fondly on both sides.
Dolores has been locked in the bathroom for six hours and is refusing to come out.
Dolores has been locked in the bathroom for six hours and is refusing to come out.
Friday, March 04, 2011
Fast Sock, Slow Sock
The first of the pair of self-striping Goth Socks is complete. I have deadlines circling like sharks, but I allowed myself to work on it as treat every time I crossed a quarter mile off the to-do list.
The skein-in-chief came with an assistant mini-skein of pure black, therefore the plain heel and toe. I appreciate the black heel and toe because I never enjoy what happens to self-striping when you hit the heel and the colors start to hiccup.
My only issue with the finished product is that it's so terribly cool, I fear I am insufficiently cool to wear it. It suggests a level of gritty urban élan I will only ever possess if I can develop a personal style that goes beyond slipping into whatever mud-colored sweater from Kohl's is lowest on the shelf in the morning.
I'll toss you the link to Goth Socks (catch!) but Steph is still replenishing her stock after rabid fans sucked her dry in forty minutes at Madrona. Please be advised that as of this writing, the cupboard is bare.
Also on the needles under the category "Socks, Assorted" is the blue Bavarian twisted stitch number I started a couple of weeks ago just for the sheer hell of it. Twisted stitch is not as easily picked up and laid aside as stockinette, so the growth is less spectacular, but I'm bewitched (yet again) by the technique.
The Pink Thing, in case you're wondering, has grown by leaps and bounds but I'm not going to bother putting up a photograph. At this awkward stage, it's all smooshed up on a circular needle and doesn't look like anything except a whole bunch of smooshed-up pink. If you'd like to get some idea of the effect, find a whole bunch of something pink and smoosh it. Smoosh it real good.
On the Air
In the last, frantic minutes of the marketplace at Vogue Knitting Live!, a pair of exquisite Canadian Podcasting sisters, The Savvy Girls, asked me for an interview. I was delighted, and they were delightful. The episode is here. It will be of particular interest to anyone who wants to know what I sound like when my body and brain are running on adrenaline, yarn fumes and cheap chocolate from the 24-hour deli on 53rd Street.
On the Road
Coming right up, I'll be in Madison, Wisconsin for a pair of appearances at The Sow's Ear prior to and following the dizzy whirl of the annual Madison Knitters' Guild Knit-In. I'll be hanging
out and signing stuff at the famous Sow's Ear Late Night Knitting on Friday, March 18 from 6:30 pm–8:30 pm; and teaching two classes ("Photographing Your Fiber" and "Working with Antique Patterns") on Sunday, March 20. Check out the shop's Web site for details.
Looking ahead, it appears that Iceland won't be the only international destination on the calendar this year.
I've just been added to the roster for Knit Nation London 2011, the second coming of Cookie A's and Socktopus's brilliant idea in London from July 15-17. The schedule isn't up yet, but you can get yourself on the mailing list to be notified once it is. You know how I feel about London, and England, and knitters, so you'll also understand that now I have to go lie down for a while, because I feel one of my spells coming on.
The skein-in-chief came with an assistant mini-skein of pure black, therefore the plain heel and toe. I appreciate the black heel and toe because I never enjoy what happens to self-striping when you hit the heel and the colors start to hiccup.
My only issue with the finished product is that it's so terribly cool, I fear I am insufficiently cool to wear it. It suggests a level of gritty urban élan I will only ever possess if I can develop a personal style that goes beyond slipping into whatever mud-colored sweater from Kohl's is lowest on the shelf in the morning.
I'll toss you the link to Goth Socks (catch!) but Steph is still replenishing her stock after rabid fans sucked her dry in forty minutes at Madrona. Please be advised that as of this writing, the cupboard is bare.
Also on the needles under the category "Socks, Assorted" is the blue Bavarian twisted stitch number I started a couple of weeks ago just for the sheer hell of it. Twisted stitch is not as easily picked up and laid aside as stockinette, so the growth is less spectacular, but I'm bewitched (yet again) by the technique.
The Pink Thing, in case you're wondering, has grown by leaps and bounds but I'm not going to bother putting up a photograph. At this awkward stage, it's all smooshed up on a circular needle and doesn't look like anything except a whole bunch of smooshed-up pink. If you'd like to get some idea of the effect, find a whole bunch of something pink and smoosh it. Smoosh it real good.
On the Air
In the last, frantic minutes of the marketplace at Vogue Knitting Live!, a pair of exquisite Canadian Podcasting sisters, The Savvy Girls, asked me for an interview. I was delighted, and they were delightful. The episode is here. It will be of particular interest to anyone who wants to know what I sound like when my body and brain are running on adrenaline, yarn fumes and cheap chocolate from the 24-hour deli on 53rd Street.
On the Road
Coming right up, I'll be in Madison, Wisconsin for a pair of appearances at The Sow's Ear prior to and following the dizzy whirl of the annual Madison Knitters' Guild Knit-In. I'll be hanging
out and signing stuff at the famous Sow's Ear Late Night Knitting on Friday, March 18 from 6:30 pm–8:30 pm; and teaching two classes ("Photographing Your Fiber" and "Working with Antique Patterns") on Sunday, March 20. Check out the shop's Web site for details.Looking ahead, it appears that Iceland won't be the only international destination on the calendar this year.
I've just been added to the roster for Knit Nation London 2011, the second coming of Cookie A's and Socktopus's brilliant idea in London from July 15-17. The schedule isn't up yet, but you can get yourself on the mailing list to be notified once it is. You know how I feel about London, and England, and knitters, so you'll also understand that now I have to go lie down for a while, because I feel one of my spells coming on.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Moments at Madrona
It has taken me fully a week to recover from the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.
It may be premature to speak of "full" recovery. I may never recover fully. I know I have been changed by the experience. I'm not sure I want to change back.
The retreat hurtled past with such velocity that I find myself unable to offer a fluid narrative. All I have are a sprinkling of moments, and a handful of dreadful photographs. (I know my limits. I can be a participant or I can be a decent photographer, but not both. I chose to be a participant. Carpe diem.)
Herewith, a small selection of the memories (sweet) and the photographs (otherwise).
Funny Moment: Meet Faye
I was prepping the classroom for round two of "Photographing Your Fiber" when I heard a student come through the door. I turned to welcome her, and was startled to meet a lady in dark glasses being led by a Seeing Eye dog.
Now, I've had students who've forgotten more about lace than I will ever know show up for my "Introduction to Lace" class, and I've managed to show them a good time; but I confess to a moment of panic at wondering how one teaches a blind lady to capture true color.
The lady in question was Michelle, and Michelle's guide was Faye.
Happily, Michelle can see well enough to knit and to make photographs; in fact, photographing objects makes them easier for her to encompass visually.
Faye, on the other hand, hadn't brought a camera. She settled herself under the table at Michelle's feet, with her furry derrière sticking out from under the cloth. Occasionally, while I was speaking, her tail would thump delicately against the floor. Or during a pause, I would hear a gentle complaint from her squeaky pony.
I'm thinking of re-writing my classroom requirements henceforth to include a desk, a flip chart, four thick markers of different colors, and a puppy dog.
Personal Note to the Universe Moment: Pocket Wheels
I rode on one of these and I @#$*!! WANT ONE. Just putting it out there, Universe.
Guess Again Moment: Mystery Knitting
A lady in my "Antique Patterns" class held up her half-finished mystery project and asked me, "Is it a vagina?"
No, it is not a vagina.
She's Pretty and Talented Moment: Sivia
I stopped by the Abstract Fiber booth and Jasmine showed me a glove design from Sivia Harding, so new it was still bleeding.
It's simple, yet intriguing. It's energetic, yet elegant. It's perfect. It's typically Sivia. If I didn't like Sivia so much, I would want to smack her.
Excuse Me for Drooling on Your Booth Moment: Retail Therapy
Churchmouse Yarns and Teas.
Socks That Rock.
No further explanation necessary. Moving on.
Sometimes It Pays to Have Puppy Dog Eyes Moment: Goth Socks
The night before everything started I got to peek around the marketplace and saw an entire booth of hanks by a dyer whose work makes my eyeballs knock together, Rainy Days and Wooly Dogs. This is she.
Steph dyes the increasingly famous Goth Socks–including the only self-striping I've seen in years that I truly want to knit with, if for "want" you read "lust with the fiery passion of a thousand guys fresh off a six-month deployment on a submarine."
By the time I got to the market the following morning, during the first break between classes, this is what all the shelves in the booth looked like.
Gone. Gone. That's not a rush, that's a feeding frenzy.
I grew despondent, until a gentleman to whom I'd just been introduced–the friend of a dear friend–took pity on me and insisted on sending me home with his own hank of Goth Socks "Dark and Twisty." And he's straight! He didn't demand sexual favors or anything!
The kindness of some human beings is not to be believed.
Sock one is nearly complete, and it is to die. Pictures coming soon.
Getting to Know You Moment: Karen and Jacey
At the teachers' dinner I sat between Karen Alfke and Jacey Boggs, and amidst the lofty talk and low (but delicious) gossip going on around us, we shared our personal experiences of public nudity, both first- and second-hand.
That's all I'm saying. And no, there are no pictures.
Lord, Let Thy Servant Depart in Peace Moment: Evelyn
During the Teachers' Gallery event at which we displayed the patterns we'd written, Evelyn Clark came to my table, picked up Sahar and said, "This is absolutely lovely."
Fanboy Moment: Vivian
I got seated at the banquet next to Vivian Høxbro. It turns out she has to eat food, just like a normal person. I always figured her to be the type who lives on pure mountain air and ambrosia.
I asked if she would mind having a picture with me. She did not mind.
Jeepers Moment: View from the Lectern
Anybody who goes to Madrona will tell you that among all fiber retreats, it is Different. The reasons for the difference are legion, not least the organizers' insistence on treating the faculty with enormous respect and courtesy. (At some events, the employer/teacher relationship is closer to that of, say, Pharaoh and the Israelites.)
When the teachers are happy, everybody's happy. We all came together–students, teachers, organizers, vendors–for a merry banquet on Saturday night; and I had the honor of addressing the company.
This (if you will tip either your head or your monitor to one side) is what I saw when I looked down from my perch.
It's enough to make a guy choke on his angora.
The warm energy in that room was enough to sustain me through about 365 days of swatching, ripping, re-charting, re-writing, re-ripping, re-knitting and answering e-mails with the subject line "I Think There's a Mistake in Your Pattern."
But I still don't know how I'm going to wait until it's time for Madrona again.
It may be premature to speak of "full" recovery. I may never recover fully. I know I have been changed by the experience. I'm not sure I want to change back.
The retreat hurtled past with such velocity that I find myself unable to offer a fluid narrative. All I have are a sprinkling of moments, and a handful of dreadful photographs. (I know my limits. I can be a participant or I can be a decent photographer, but not both. I chose to be a participant. Carpe diem.)
Herewith, a small selection of the memories (sweet) and the photographs (otherwise).
Funny Moment: Meet Faye
I was prepping the classroom for round two of "Photographing Your Fiber" when I heard a student come through the door. I turned to welcome her, and was startled to meet a lady in dark glasses being led by a Seeing Eye dog.
Now, I've had students who've forgotten more about lace than I will ever know show up for my "Introduction to Lace" class, and I've managed to show them a good time; but I confess to a moment of panic at wondering how one teaches a blind lady to capture true color.
The lady in question was Michelle, and Michelle's guide was Faye.
Happily, Michelle can see well enough to knit and to make photographs; in fact, photographing objects makes them easier for her to encompass visually.
Faye, on the other hand, hadn't brought a camera. She settled herself under the table at Michelle's feet, with her furry derrière sticking out from under the cloth. Occasionally, while I was speaking, her tail would thump delicately against the floor. Or during a pause, I would hear a gentle complaint from her squeaky pony.
I'm thinking of re-writing my classroom requirements henceforth to include a desk, a flip chart, four thick markers of different colors, and a puppy dog.
Personal Note to the Universe Moment: Pocket Wheels
I rode on one of these and I @#$*!! WANT ONE. Just putting it out there, Universe.
Guess Again Moment: Mystery Knitting
A lady in my "Antique Patterns" class held up her half-finished mystery project and asked me, "Is it a vagina?"
No, it is not a vagina.
She's Pretty and Talented Moment: Sivia
I stopped by the Abstract Fiber booth and Jasmine showed me a glove design from Sivia Harding, so new it was still bleeding.
It's simple, yet intriguing. It's energetic, yet elegant. It's perfect. It's typically Sivia. If I didn't like Sivia so much, I would want to smack her.
Excuse Me for Drooling on Your Booth Moment: Retail Therapy
Churchmouse Yarns and Teas.
Socks That Rock.
No further explanation necessary. Moving on.
Sometimes It Pays to Have Puppy Dog Eyes Moment: Goth Socks
The night before everything started I got to peek around the marketplace and saw an entire booth of hanks by a dyer whose work makes my eyeballs knock together, Rainy Days and Wooly Dogs. This is she.
Steph dyes the increasingly famous Goth Socks–including the only self-striping I've seen in years that I truly want to knit with, if for "want" you read "lust with the fiery passion of a thousand guys fresh off a six-month deployment on a submarine."
By the time I got to the market the following morning, during the first break between classes, this is what all the shelves in the booth looked like.
Gone. Gone. That's not a rush, that's a feeding frenzy.
I grew despondent, until a gentleman to whom I'd just been introduced–the friend of a dear friend–took pity on me and insisted on sending me home with his own hank of Goth Socks "Dark and Twisty." And he's straight! He didn't demand sexual favors or anything!
The kindness of some human beings is not to be believed.
Sock one is nearly complete, and it is to die. Pictures coming soon.
Getting to Know You Moment: Karen and Jacey
At the teachers' dinner I sat between Karen Alfke and Jacey Boggs, and amidst the lofty talk and low (but delicious) gossip going on around us, we shared our personal experiences of public nudity, both first- and second-hand.
That's all I'm saying. And no, there are no pictures.
Lord, Let Thy Servant Depart in Peace Moment: Evelyn
During the Teachers' Gallery event at which we displayed the patterns we'd written, Evelyn Clark came to my table, picked up Sahar and said, "This is absolutely lovely."
Fanboy Moment: Vivian
I got seated at the banquet next to Vivian Høxbro. It turns out she has to eat food, just like a normal person. I always figured her to be the type who lives on pure mountain air and ambrosia.
I asked if she would mind having a picture with me. She did not mind.
Jeepers Moment: View from the Lectern
Anybody who goes to Madrona will tell you that among all fiber retreats, it is Different. The reasons for the difference are legion, not least the organizers' insistence on treating the faculty with enormous respect and courtesy. (At some events, the employer/teacher relationship is closer to that of, say, Pharaoh and the Israelites.)
When the teachers are happy, everybody's happy. We all came together–students, teachers, organizers, vendors–for a merry banquet on Saturday night; and I had the honor of addressing the company.
This (if you will tip either your head or your monitor to one side) is what I saw when I looked down from my perch.
It's enough to make a guy choke on his angora.
The warm energy in that room was enough to sustain me through about 365 days of swatching, ripping, re-charting, re-writing, re-ripping, re-knitting and answering e-mails with the subject line "I Think There's a Mistake in Your Pattern."
But I still don't know how I'm going to wait until it's time for Madrona again.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
And So We Begin
I flew to Tacoma, Washington yesterday morning* to teach at the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat, which kicks off in just an hour. I'm so excited I could pee, and have.
It's a honor to be here, and heaven knows I love to travel; but when you do it a great deal–as I lately have–confusion sets in.
This is the sort of note I now customarily leave for myself on the bedside table before I go to sleep. It helps immensely when I wake up in a cold sweat and can't remember where I am, or why I'm there.
Speaking of travel, wanna go to Iceland with me?
*Dolores flew in later because there were no seats left in First Class on the early flight. Yup, First Class. She also has a rider in her contract requiring a chocolate fountain in her hotel room. I got a granola bar.
It's a honor to be here, and heaven knows I love to travel; but when you do it a great deal–as I lately have–confusion sets in.
This is the sort of note I now customarily leave for myself on the bedside table before I go to sleep. It helps immensely when I wake up in a cold sweat and can't remember where I am, or why I'm there.
Speaking of travel, wanna go to Iceland with me?
*Dolores flew in later because there were no seats left in First Class on the early flight. Yup, First Class. She also has a rider in her contract requiring a chocolate fountain in her hotel room. I got a granola bar.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
