The Ysolda Show

It's Halloween night, and although it means missing a chance to rendezvous with the Great Pumpkin I'm staying in. No costume, unless you count the Japanese kimono I wear as a bathrobe. From the neck down, I suppose, you could call me Yum-Yum; but of course, from the neck down you can call me that on any night of the year.

But this afternoon I had a happy chance to play dress-up. Ysolda Teague came to Chicago for Vogue Knitting Live! and was one of the dozen or so faculty members who got stranded here due to that beastly storm that smashed the Northeast.

We were both more than a little glum about what's happened to New York, New Jersey, and environs; and decided to cheer ourselves with a rummage through the marvelous collection of hats (and a suit) that my grandmother left behind.

My grandmother was a true daughter of the Great Depression. She grew up knowing deprivation, and it taught her the twin virtues of thrift and carefulness. Things bought for "Best" were studiously tended and mended, and never thrown out unless they'd been worn, literally, to rags.

She also saved the lids from plastic margarine tubs, and left us an entire bag stuffed with them, but that's another entry.

After she died, up on the highest shelf of the bedroom closet, we found her hats. They ranged from the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s, and they were all–even the most delicate–in perfect condition, packed in tissue and labeled with her name. Most were made locally. One was even in its original box from Jen's, a Uniontown millinery back in the days when Uniontown was a handsome little place with a certain amount of dignity.

All those years–even after they were long out of fashion–once a year she'd take them down and tend them, re-pack them and put them back. The boxes weren't even dusty.

And at the back of the closet were three skirt suits (all wool with silk linings, two with fur collars). All looking as though they were made yesterday. One came home with me, and the other two are being sent along.

We were lacking much of what usually supports a proper photo shoot: no hairspray, no hairpins aside from the ones Ysolda was already wearing, no rollers or curling iron (such hair as I retain is naturally curly) and not much makeup. I hadn't pulled out the lights or reflectors, and needless to say we hadn't any wardrobe aside from the suit.

But we took advantage of the gentle north light in the dining room, and of the fact that it is damned near impossible to take a bad photograph of Ysolda. For a few shots, I draped her in the black velvet I keep handy for use as a backdrop.

Here's a selection from the afternoon. Any number of blogs can offer you a nightmare on Halloween. Me, I am honored to offer you a dream.

Baby Got Back

I don't know if you'll have missed me, but I sure missed you.

It's been some couple of months, kids. Between work (happily, lots of it) and family tragedy (sadly, lots of it) something had to give; and ultimately the something was the blog.

Dwelling on the past isn't much fun. Dwelling on knitting is. Let us commence to dwell.

During the hiatus I turned out some fun stuff. There was this early twentieth century Uhlan Cap for the Deep Fall 2012 issue of Knitty.com,



In the same issue, I consulted with Mercedes Tarasovich-Clark on the design of this sweater, Shoreside,



which was based on the Edwardian Child's Middy Jumper from the previous issue. (My friend Abigail agreed to serve as an appropriately aristocratic and languid model for the photographs.)

I started writing a monthly column with cartoon for the Lion Brand Yarns newsletter, which has been giddy fun as they let me run amok on the page. You can see the first four installments in the archives here, here, here, and here.

And there was a whole lot of teaching, which meant time with knitters. Even at my lowest, time with knitters was wonderful. Knitters, they are good people. Knitters know how to comfort and knitters know how to laugh.

There wasn't much time for personal knitting. Just one small piece. A friend of mine–she lives just across the alley–has had a baby. Her first. She is three things–a friend, a good person, and a knitter–which meant she was eligible for a knitted gift. The only question was what to make.

Hat? No. Too simple. This is the woman who showed up, after my grandmother died, with a home-baked pie and a gallon of coordinating artisanal ice cream. She baked me a pie when she was eight months pregnant. She gets more than a hat.

Blanket? No. Not enough time; and even a baby blanket takes up a lot of room while you're working on it. I've spent most of the time since that entry in July away from home, traveling. I needed something portable.

Sweater? Bingo. Interesting, substantial, portable. But designing something was out of the question, so I needed to pick somebody else's pattern.

That's when the postman arrived with a large, heavy packet covered in British stamps and smelling excitingly, even through the wrapper, of old paper. A kind reader in England had decided to send over his collection of vintage British patterns, 1920-1960.

There are times, that being one of them, when the only thing to do is collapse on the settee and marvel at the kindness of relative strangers. The packet's arrival coincided exactly with my grandmother's final trip to the hospital, which was followed by an agony of watching and waiting as she slowly, slowly slipped away. I put the stack of patterns next to the bed and read them at night when I couldn't fall asleep. When I left home, I took a few with me to read on planes and in hotel rooms.

In booklet from Lister & Co. Knitting Wools, Ltd. of Bradford–which had lost its cover but looks to be from the late 40s or early 50s–I found the cardigan I wanted to make. I already had the wool to hand–dear, old St-Denis Nordique–and the classic style was a perfect match for mother's taste.

Here's the finished specimen.



I loved working it. It's flat, in pieces, sewn up–a method I am beginning to appreciate more and more. I'd never entirely give up working in the round, mind you, but there are occasions when seams are the better option. More about that in another entry.

The design had several nice grace notes–indicating a level of attention to detail that's often sadly lacking in modern baby patterns. For example, working the ribbing at the hem and cuffs with a smaller needle. Such a small thing, yet the result is a garment with a better shape and a more elegant finish.



Then there's the main stitch pattern. You think it's cables, right? Looks like little cables.



Well, it's not. It's an increase, plus a slipped stitch passed over–listen, if you want, I'll jot down the exact pattern in the next entry–and on the right side it ends up looking cabled. But on the wrong side, just check this out.



It looks like ribbing. Nice and neat. No weirdness. This stitch pattern is new to me, and I like it very much, and I think it has enormous potential.

On the other hand, there was also the usual rigmarole about button holes on one side for a girl and on the other side for a boy. That drives me batty. I am not a fan of shoving tiny kids into gender-specific clothing in the first place, and why infantine genitalia should have anything to do with buttonhole placement is beyond me.

Ultimately, after giving the pattern's honestly rather dismal two-row buttonholes a fair shake, I ripped back and decided on loops of I-cord.



I am painfully enamored with the buttons. Had an interesting time picking them out, though. I went to Vogue Fabrics in Evanston–a wonderful place, and I'm lucky to have it–because of their immense button selection. I was hunting around, finished sweater in hand, when I was accosted by the world's pushiest button salesman. The fellow absolutely would not leave me alone.

"What sort of button do you want?" he asked.

"I'll know it when I see it," I said.

"To go on that sweater?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Oh," he said. "Baby buttons are over here."

He indicated a wall of blue duckies, pink kitties, day-glo plastic daisies. You know, the usual. Fine in the right place, but not on this piece.

"No, thank you," I said. "I don't want baby buttons."

"But it's a baby sweater," he said.

"I know," I said, "but I don't want baby buttons on it."

"But they're real cute," he said.

"But I don't want them," I said.

"What kind of baby sweater has adult buttons on it?"

"This baby sweater will."

"You're not a father, are you?"

"No," I said. "I'm a mother."

Whereupon he disappeared, swiftly, into Ribbons and Trim.

Before I sign off, I have to show you a couple of photographs from the pattern book. I got all kinds of flack once for including a picture of a scowling baby in one of my Knitty columns–as though babies are born with fixed smiles on their faces, and to suggest otherwise is tantamount to child abuse. Seriously, people sent me hate mail for it.

It's true that modern baby models are usually sanitized to the point of inhumanity, but I don't care for the practice and refuse to cater to the Anne Geddes set.

I prefer the bébé vérité approach of the art department at Lister and Co. Knitting Wools, Ltd.  They showcased old-fashioned English infants who look, as they should have, like little Winston Churchills. The one who modeled the pattern that I knit was obviously having a fit of pique, unimpressed by the fuzzy toy the photographer's assistant was shaking at her.



However, there are limits. Had I been the editor, I would have drawn a blue pencil through this page, which includes what I dearly hope was an accidental juxtaposition of photograph and spot illustration (click to embiggen).



I giggled madly, I admit. But I would not have wanted to deal with the letters that followed.

Yarnworthy?

Young knitters often stop me on the street* and ask, "Franklin, how do you determine whether or not a person ought to get a knitted gift or a store-bought gift?"

My personal rule for deciding this couldn't be simpler. I ask myself these two questions regarding the potential recipient:

1. Are you a close blood relation with whom I am on speaking terms?
2. Are you providing me with high-quality free sex on a regular basis?

If the the answer to either question** is "yes," then I will consider knitting a gift.

So often, though, the confused young knitter confesses that he or she finds these criteria insufficient, and asks for further clarification. To that end, I have prepared the following chart. Unlike me, it is available for consultation twenty-four hours a day, every day; and you will never stop it to ask it questions when it is horribly late for an important meeting or, frankly, just needs to get home and pee.



*Not really.
**I hasten to reassure the gentle reader that the answer to both questions is never "yes."

United Stash of America

It's Independence Day in the United States of America, which means it's a day for reading and remembering the beautiful, immortal words of Thomas Jefferson.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The full text of the Declaration of Independence is here.

(Note that there is at present no list of exceptions regarding who exactly is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Let's try to keep it that way.)

Never Say Never Again

My extreme dislove of baseball–both the sport and the act of going to see it played–is something I wrote about at length the last time I was persuaded to trot along with other knitters to see the White Sox to do their thang.

I won't sing that song again. I will take a moment to reiterate that while the American public insists it is my duty as a male citizen to love baseball, I insist it is my right as an adult citizen to not give a flying fig about it. I'm fully on board with the flag, motherhood, and apple pie; but even Ken Burns couldn't get me to regard our soi-disant national pastime with anything other than a jaundiced eye.

And yet.

And yet when I got a call from the owner of our own, dear Loopy Yarns to please put together a promotional table on the day of Chicago's Stitch 'n' Pitch event, how could I say no? Baseball has not been good to me, but knitting has. There would be 150 knitters at the park–but also a few thousand people who might be among the lapsed or the latent. How often do you get a platform like that upon which to evangelize?

Would I do it? Sure I would. For knitting, I would do it.

Happily I had an accomplice and companion for the day–my friend Abigail. I first met her when she lured me up to LaCrosse, Wisconsin, to address the town's annual fiber gathering. You don't spend a wild weekend with somebody in LaCrosse and not form a bond.

Abigail is the sort of person who will drive you to the South Side, roll your dress form across five acres of parking and up a ramp while people cat-call, and never complain even though all she gets out of the deal is free nachos and beer. She will even push the dress form down the ramp and back across the parking lot, drive you home, and continue speaking to you.

Abigail is, to borrow a slangy bit of praise from P.G. Wodehouse, a complete brick.

So we set up a table and talked to people. I brought samples of my stuff and posted a directory of Chicagoland yarn shops and guilds, as well as information about the upcoming Big Deal Yarn Events (Stitches Midwest, Midwest Fiber and Folk Art Fair, Yarn Con, Vogue Knitting Live! Chicago) of which we have an abundance.



The knitters and crocheters were all lovely, and so were most of the shop owners. (Note to the sole exception: I was advertising your shop. Free. Happily. With great spirit. On my first and only day off in weeks. And I spent my own money doing it. If you want top billing, design input, and no nasty hairy dark ethnic men mucking up your lily white women's event, you go ahead and run the table next year. Really. It's all yours, honey.)

Mostly, because they were the majority, Abigail and I talked to people who were not knitters, or crocheters, or needleworkers of any stripe. About thirty minutes into the game we realized we kept hearing the same things over and over. So to beguile the time and stave off madness, I drew up a bingo card. (If you click it, it'll get bigger.)



By the top of the fifth inning, the drunks were starting to lurch perilously close to the lace and we decided to break camp. We had achieved bingo forty-seven times.

But I think we got a few more people into the tent.

It was worth it.

I Like to Swatch

From Fleisher's Knitting and Crocheting Manual, 1906:

Nowadays, every woman who gives thoughtful preparation to her wardrobe includes a variety of knitted or crocheted garments, because of their artistic beauty and their comforting warmth. Wherever women meet, the art of knitting and crocheting is discussed–the newest garments, the best stitches, the prettiest colors. Many have recently been converted to the charm of this work, realizing that machine made garments do not equal in softness, beauty, and distinctive elegance, those made by hand, and that, therefore, the time spent in knitting and crocheting is both pleasant and profitable.

Pleasant and profitable. That goes right to the heart of why I fell in love with knitting.

Pleasant, in the sense that needlework steadies me sufficiently to keep me out of the Police Blotter. Profitable, in the sense that after the pleasure fades I am left with something tangible and (amigurumi and novelty fruit handbags aside) useful in exchange for my time.

The longer I'm at it, though, the less I find I care about the tangible outcome. I had been knitting for years before I learned about gauges and swatching; once I learned about them, it was another few years before I learned to care. I didn't want to swatch for the thing, I wanted to make the thing. A rogues gallery of the elephantine and miniscule hats that followed would be shown here as evidence, if said evidence had not been destroyed.

After the fifth gift hat a friend refuses to wear because she could easily fit her own head and those of both her children inside, you start to get the message: Swatch. Swatch, and learn something.

Nowadays I love practicing, experimenting, playing with process.

When I get the "What's that you're making?" question, about half the time the true answer is "Nothing in particular." But that draws puzzled looks and prolongs the conversation, so usually I just say it's a scarf. Non-knitters are satisfied, since they can't tell the difference and don't really care. Knitters glaze over at the word "scarf" and will happily change the subject, which allows me to go back to swatching.

A new-to-me technique is my favorite thing to swatch. Recently I sat down with a book that's been on my worktable in the "PLAY WITH THIS" pile for ages, Alasdair Post-Quinn's Extreme Double-Knitting: New Adventures in Reversible Colorwork. Full disclosure: I saw the book before it came out, and liked it. I liked it so much that there's a quote from me on the back cover, saying so.

But this was the first time I really sat down and threw myself into working from it. I'd played with two-color double-knitting before; but it was of the slip-this-side-then-slip-that-side variety and I found the process tedious and the results unsatisfactory.

I like Alasdair's method, though. You get a firm, handsome, dense fabric with it. And when I say dense, I mean dense enough to wear as a winter hat in Chicago when you are a bald male of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern descent and therefore are genetically designed to crumple at the first blast of January wind from Canada.

Alasdair takes "Extreme"–a sadly overused word these days, often denoting either a modest level of skill or an immodest level of bad taste–seriously. His basic method in two colors is a bit of challenge to begin with; but he blows past two-color reversible patterns into working it in the round, shaping it, adding extra colors, working different patterns on opposite sides of the same fabric, double-knitting cables and other textures, and building three-dimensional double-knitted objects. He would probably have zoomed onward into metaphysical double-knitting that alters the time-space continuum if the editor had not at last told him to Put a Lid on It.

I waded into the shallow end with a wrist warmer. The design in the book is cute–a pair of opposing spirals–but as usual I had to get funky and Make It My Own so I adapted a pair of charts from a book I bought at the university bookshop in Reykavik. One is either a flower or a snowflake. The other is a dragon, a griffin, and a Boston Terrier all at the same time.



The result–worked in DK leftovers from my stash–was fun to knit. It's a real charge to flip your work inside-out and see the same pattern with the colors reversed.

This was fun enough that I know I'll take another crack at it, albeit with smaller needles. Alasdair urges you to work at a tightish gauge, and he's right. This specimen, worked with a size 4, would benefit from sliding down to size 2.

My wristlet looks more than a little frowsy and is much too big for my wrist, yet I keep getting compliments on it at the coffee shop.



Yeah. Cup sleeve. I know I said it was going to be a scarf, but I really meant to say cup sleeve.

On the Unusualness of Squam

When I travel to teach, my hotel doesn't usually look like this.



My hotel room doesn't usually look like this.



The path to my classroom doesn't usually look like this.



My classroom doesn't usually look like this.



I don't usually have one of these,



upon which to do this with Jess, Ysolda, and Gudrun.



There are not usually bedtime stories by the fireplace with Casey and Eloise.



There are not usually random acts of owl-bombing by a mysterious knitter.



I do not usually look like this,



and cry a little when it's time to leave it all behind.



Thanks, Squam.

Love,
Franklin
xoxo

Zip Files

Do you know what this is?



Time's up.

Who said pizza peel? Wrong. Cutting board? Nope. African lip plate? Biodegradable Frisbee? Avant garde sunhat? Uh uh.

It's the flywheel for one of these–a Pocket Wheel. It's propped up against four more of the same, still bubble-wrapped.

I didn't get any other bits of wheel, just five flywheels.

In a normal household, this would suggest a serious slip-up in the shipping department. At my house, however, "normal" is but an elusive butterfly. We accepted the delivery of five flywheels with great joy.

I've wanted a Pocket Wheel since my first test-drive at Madrona. As it happens, lots of people want Pocket Wheels, which is why the Pocket Wheel Waiting List is at present 67 people long (not including the folks already in various stages of production) and has its own Ravelry fan group.

The most prominent piece of the teeny-tiny apparatus is the flywheel. So round, so smooth, so perfectly blank.

It simply screams to be drawn upon, don't you think?

I thought so, so I asked Mr. Pocket Wheel*–Jon McCoy, the man who makes them–if I could do that. He said yes, and sent me five of them.

• One is for practice.
• One is for a Pocket Wheel for me.
• Three are for other Pocket Wheels, to be owned by spinners as yet undetermined. That will be up to Mr. Pocket Wheel.

Heaven knows I do a great deal of drawing, but this is a novel challenge. The surface will be sometimes kinetic, sometimes static. I'm burning through pages in my sketchbook playing with ideas that will take that into account.

Just in Time for Summer

On the day it hit 92 degrees Farenheit in my neighborhood, I finished my Icelandic sweater.

We're friends, so let's not play games. The thing had been lying around, mostly complete, for months. I knit it, I cut the steek for the front opening, I bought the zipper, and then I turned into a big bowl of cowardy custard. I, who make such symphonic noises about what a cakewalk eleven-stitch Estonian nupps are If Only You Believe, was afraid of sewing in a stupid zipper.

Sweaters can sense fear. This one took to sneaking around the apartment. I'd turn around and there it would be–balled up in the corner, grinning, ready to spring. I'd back slowly away, brandishing the yardstick.

At length, I grew disgusted with myself and decided it was time to end the game of cat-and-mouse. After luring the sweater into the workroom with the new issue of Evil Fibers Quarterly, I surrounded it with dressmaker's pins, armed myself with Deborah Newton's Finishing School: A Master Class for Knitters–and just #@$%* did it, already.

Nobody died. I also discovered, to my surprise, that a) putting a zipper in is not especially difficult and b) I liked doing it so much, and felt so omnipotent in the aftermath, that I'm going to work zippering into one of the new classes I'm planning.

Harry took a couple of snapshots. I've left out the third frame, in which I collapsed from the ninety-degree heat and wet myself, but you can probably find Dolores's video on YouTube.



The pattern, as I've noted before, is "Vetur" from Lopi No. 28.



All I changed was the yarn, the gauge, the direction (I worked top down), the colors, the collar, the cuff chart, the yoke chart, the shape (I tapered it from underarm to waist), the finished length, and the bind off (I used the incredible sewn method from Jean Wong's DVD). Other than that, it's exactly as written.

I've now made two whole sweaters for myself. Two! Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. Not just now, but eventually.

* Yes, Mr. Pocket Wheel has a lovely Mrs. Pocket Wheel. In fiber circles she elicits the sort of envy that would usually be reserved for, say, Mrs. James Bond or Mrs. Doctor Who. So fantasize, as you will, about life with a man who builds incredible spinning wheels–but it must ever remain only a fantasy.

I Sew Like a Girl

Longtime readers of this blog may remember the joy with which I discovered Jane Eayre Fryer's The Mary Frances Knitting and Crochet Book, an early 20th century kiddie lit masterpiece in which the title character has trippy (but educational) encounters with an animated pile of craft supplies, a fairy, and a petulant baby doll named Mary Marie.

Well, Mary Frances is back in da house. This week I didn't have to pull extra shifts at the forge and that left me free to concentrate on sewing doll clothes. There is, I maintain, no better companion to that than The Mary Frances Sewing Book, or Adventures Among the Thimble People.



Everything that makes the knitting volume such a hoot was already present in this earlier volume, in which Mary Frances learns to cut and sew with guidance from such merry, indelible characters as Mr. Silver Thimble; Scissors Shears; Tommy the Tomato Pin Cushion; and Ma Chine, the matronly Sewing Machine. (Ma Chine–see what she did there? See?)

When the tale opens, Mary Frances is cooling her heels during summer vacation at the home of her grandmother. Her father has business in San Francisco (unspecified business, but I like to imagine it has something to do with white slavery as depicted in Thoroughly Modern Millie), and has taken dear, compliant mother along with him.

Brother Billy is away on a long camping trip with the Boy Scouts, leaving our heroine with only Grandma and bitter Aunt Maria for company.

It should be mentioned that there is another child in the house, an implausibly cheerful Irish maid-of-all-work named Katie.

Katie is barely older than Mary Frances; but while Mary Frances has nothing better to do with her time than lie on the verandah like a boneless chicken in a pinafore, Katie has to rise at dawn, scrub the floors, answer the door, cook, clean, carry parcels, and pretend to be delighted by the steady stream of expensive guilt presents that Mother and Father keep sending to their widdle princess from San Francisco.

I earnestly hope that after the Great War, Katie either married well enough to hire her own maid; or joined the American Communist Party and set fire to the ballroom with a Molotov cocktail on the night Mary Frances made her début.

The Sewing Book provides us with an Origin Story for Mary Marie, the prissy porcelain doll whose insatiable demands for warm clothing and accessories fuel so much of The Knitting and Crochet Book. She arrives from California nailed up in a crate–which Katie, of course, has to haul into the kitchen. Katie pries the crate open with her strong arms, toned from long years of work in a spinning mill, and out pops the doll. She's naked except for a frowsy little slip and a painted-on smile.

Where are her clothes? Does she have a wardrobe in the trunk that came with her? No, she does not. She has, instead, a pile of fabrics that mother's explanatory note reveals are for Mary Frances to use in learning to sew. Except there's a wrinkle.

Per Mother's note:

"I've asked Grandma to let you do exactly as you want to with these things, and I ask you not to go to her with your sewing problems: for the doctor said that Grandma must not strain her eyes with any such work. I know you understand."

Understand? What's to understand? You send your daughter a nearly-nude doll and a bunch of dry goods and–then what? Expect her to pull the proper methods for cutting, tailoring and dressmaking out of her twelve-year-old butt? Don't ask Grandma. Who the hell else is she supposed to ask? Katie? Not Katie. Katie pried the nails out of the damned crate and then had to go back to hauling ash buckets and picking weevils out of the grape arbor. And Aunt Maria is only good on days when the pharmacy won't send her any more laudanum or medicinal whiskey until she pays the bill.

This, of course, is where the fairies and the magic needles and the talking pincushion come into play. But is it truly good parenting to rely on that sort of thing happening to further your child's education?

I'll add that this sort of spotty affection has already taken a toll on Mary Frances's budding maternal instincts. It's never openly stated, but is strongly suggested, that she is as capable as her mother of shutting off affection like a water tap. Case in point: When the book opens she's already got a "daughter"–a doll named Angie. After Mary Marie rears her curly blonde head, Angie gets one more brief mention and then entirely disappears from the book. If that doesn't give you a chill, you have no heart. Where did Angie go? Was she put out on the street to fend for herself? Was she buried behind the vegetable patch in Mary Marie's crate? Did Mary Marie eat her?

Don't bother hunting through the rest of the canonical Mary Frances literature for any sort of latter day Velveteen Rabbit-style Angie redemption. That doll is just gone, baby. Gone.

Mind you, all this (and a miasma of C-list Art Nouveau illustration) tends to obscure that The Mary Frances Sewing Book is truly a thorough and well-done introduction to sewing. Though the projects are graded by difficulty, there is no dumbing down. Mary Frances begins with a sampler of common hand stitches; by the end, she's experienced at just about everything an adult dressmaker needs to know. The intended audience for this book may have been juvenile, but it was still expected to learn to do things the right way, not the easy way.*

Example. In my own project–I'm getting to it, don't scroll down yet–I considered using buttonholes,  so I spent some time working them using the step-by-step instructions dispensed to Mary Frances by Aunt Maria. I cross-referenced those with Claire B. Shaeffer in the classic, not-for-dummies Couture Sewing Techniques. The methods are identical.

Bad puns and questionable parenting aside, I ponder this book and then look at the modern equivalents–in which kids "learn" to slap ugly crap together with glue and tape because it's Kwik! and Eezee!–and I think Jane Eayre Fryer was really onto something. In addition to possibly being On Something.

Ethel, Now Half-Dressed

My own doll sewing took the lace I was knitting here and here and put it into a petticoat for poor Ethel, who until now has been nakeder than Mary Marie on the day she killed her sister.

I don't often say this about stuff I make, but this came out better than I expected. I have only the barest prior experience with sewing, but I was able to adapt the two petticoat (!) patterns in Mary Frances to fit Ethel's smaller, more womanly shape. Everything was sewn by hand using methods from the book.



I learned a lot about working with handkerchief linen, including that it starts to fray like the dickens if somebody sneezes in the next room. I realized pretty quickly that none of the seams would last if they had raw edges, so every edge (inside and out) is finished. You know what? I'm proud of that. Even if my gathers aren't distributed as evenly as I would have liked. And even if I chickened out on putting in pin tucks.



Attaching the laces was a treat. (If you're curious about doing that sort of thing, I teach a class about it called Lace Edgings: Before, During and After.)



Now she needs an underwaist and a dress. This time, I'm putting in buttonholes. If Mary Frances can do it, I can do it.

*Though it's amazing how often in sewing the right way, once fully learned, becomes the easy way.

Playing with Strings of Two Varieties

So, what have you been up to? I've been on the road. Kansas City and environs.

I thought this was my first visit to Kansas, but my father has since corrected me. Turns out that in 1974 we drove through on our way to a new assignment at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. We stopped at a rest area and had barely unfurled our picnic blanket when a sharp gust of wind carried it away. I weighed about as much as the blanket and was convinced I'd be next. I didn't stop screaming until we were back in the car heading for Oklahoma.

Now, Rodgers and Hammerstein said Oklahoma is where the wind comes sweeping down the plain, but they were native New Yorkers and knew bugger all about the Midwest.  On this visit, Kansas gave Oklahoma a run for the money–there was one superfestive night when both states broke out in tornadoes–and if I hadn't been so busy I might have worried once again about blowing away.

However, I was too preoccupied with yarn-related joy inside the hotel to bother with what was happening outside. The Sunflower Knitters Guild (an amazingly good group of people, even by knitting standards) puts on their festival–Knitting in the Heartlands–biennially. This was a growth year for the event, and I was honored to be the featured teacher at the moment when they expanded  to include a keynote address, more classes, and a marketplace that spilled out of one ballroom and into a second.

I love snooping around the vendors at regional events because you so often run into good stuff you haven't seen before. Here's some of what followed me home.



From top to bottom:

• Tencel/Merino blend freshly hand-spun by Yarn Geek Fibers,
• Oh Snap! sock yarn (Blue Faced Leicester/Nylon) in "Tenth Doctor" colorway from Nerd Girl Yarns,
• Two skeins of corn (yes, corn) yarn from Corny Goodness, and
• Alpaca/silk/cashmere lace weight by Treasure Goddess.

Before you ask–no, I did not punch up the blues in "Tenth Doctor." That's what it looks like in person. No way was I leaving it there for somebody else.

Not shown, but much coveted: Paco-Vicuñas yarns from Hickory Ridge Farms.  Not for the budget-conscious, perhaps, but dammit that vicuña fiber makes cashmere feel like asphalt.

While I was in Kansas City I did very little knitting. I don't mean I didn't knit much, I mean my knitting was very small. I finished the "Double Rose Leaf" lace insertion for Ethel's petticoat.



That's all the lace I need for now, but I find myself feeling at a loss without something new on the US 00000 (1mm) needles. I may have to knit edges for a christening outfit just for the ducks of it, even though there's not an unchurched baby anywhere in the vicinity. Or maybe Ethel would like a fichu?

Meanwhile, the handkerchief linen is awaits cutting.



I'll also mention–in case you missed my jubilant screams on Twitter and Facebook–that while in Kansas City, I launched the pattern for the Anna Shawl.



And that meant I was able to send Iceland Sky to the tech editor. He's making quick work of it, so if all goes well it will launch before I leave for my next trip–the Downtown Knit Collective Knitter's Frolic in Toronto, Canada.

A Floundering Minstrel I

One more thing. I spend so much time using the visual part of my brain–what with the knitting and the drawing and the photography and so forth–that a wise person of my acquaintance suggested I give my brain a rest and a stretch by taking up a creative endeavor that puts a different clutch of cells to work.

Which is why I now own a ukulele, upon which at present I can play three shaky chords.



Life is full of interesting things to do. If you're bored, it's your own fault.

Stars in My Eyes

I went to Iceland to teach knitting on a tour for knitters–and forgot to bring something to knit.

I left with knitting in my bag, sure. I didn't have a hat or neck warmer to wear on the trip, so I whipped them out en route. But that left me with nothing to knit once I landed.

Of course, in Iceland you are never more than two feet from a yarn display and I picked up two balls of Lopi Einband. Einband is Lopi's laceweight. Fuzzy, warm, decidedly on the crunchy side. Takes dye like a mofo, blocks like a dream.

Total cost: six United States dollars.

I started playing with the yarn during the tour, and now it looks like this. I'm calling it Iceland Sky–fathoms of blue studded with stars and draped in the aurora borealis.










Pattern forthcoming. This week, as soon as the Anna Shawl comes back from the splendid new tech editor, Iceland Sky heads out for him to review.

Wow!

Look out the window, there's a parade! They have a marching band and cheerleaders and Nancy Bush is riding an elephant in a shiny bikini and working nupps!

Ha ha ha April Fool! Made you look!

Love,
Harry

PS Did I fool you? Ha ha!

Fancy!

I was teaching in Madison, Wisconsin a few weeks ago when a thoroughly charming gentleman walked into my classroom and presented me with this,



once again confirming that in many ways I am a lucky sonofabitch.

Now, I do have new piece finished. It looks something like this,



but as it's still drying the official photographs will have to wait.

Instead, do you fancy a riffle through the delicious pages of The Ladies' Manual of Fancy-Work, published in 1883 by A. L.  Burt of New York, and edited by Miss Jenny June?

Jenny June sounds suspiciously like a pseudonym, doesn't it? Possibly a pseudonym for a thick-necked and paunchy cigar-smoking drapery salesman whose real name was Irv Magee?

One's suspicion only grows upon learning that Mr. Stephen Foster–who dreamt, famously, of Jeannie and her light-brown hair–also wrote a popular minstrel ballad with the refrain:

Did you see dear Jenny June
When the meadows were in tune
With the birds among the bowers
In the sweet summer time.

We're on to you, Irv Magee. We see you there, behind the pen, with your cigar.

Irv's taste in fancy-work, not unusually for the time, inclined steeply to the florid.



Among the curiosities are instructions for artificial macramé (which Irv calls macreme).



It's crochet.

Also, there are pages of line-drawings of whimsical Regency moppets suitable for transferring to embroidery fabric, drawn by a D-list Kate Greenaway impersonator who remains anonymous (and no wonder).



One of the vignettes has dialogue (click for a larger version), like a primordial New Yorker cartoon.


 

The Ladies' Manual of Fancy-Work was published in 1884. James Thurber was born in 1894. Just want to point that out.

There are advertisements, too, including several for yarn.



Nobody boasts anymore that their silk yarn has "dead lustre." Why not?

And since this manual of fancy-work is for ladies, there are also ads for ladies' things, like corsets.



My favorite, please don't miss it, is the "nursing" corset with the flip-top tit.

(Say that out loud a few times.

Flip-top tit.
Flip-top tit.
Flip-top tit.

You said it, didn't you? Out loud?

Are you at work?

I hope nobody heard you.)

Finally, the articles. Good stuff. Chinese embroidery, the history of the cashmere shawl, etcetera.

Here's one of them, in full.

Boys who Learned Needle-work

When the late Admiral –– was a young midshipman, he was sent on a voyage round the world in one of King George the Third’s ships. He was three years away, and, as he grew very fast, he found himself sailing in the Pacific Ocean with hardly a stitch of clothes to his back. His mother, sister of Admiral Lord ––, had taught her little boy to sew, so he got some canvas out of the ship’s stores, and cut out and made himself a new suit of clothes. His mother was very proud of these, and, when her son was an admiral, she used to show them to her grandchildren, and tell them the story.

Rather more than thirty years ago, a lady went to call on another one rainy afternoon; the house was built on a an island in a lake in Ireland. In the drawing-room were two little boys sitting on footstools, one on each side of the fireplace. Probably, the visitor looked astonished, for the mother of the little boys said in a low tone, “Please don’t laugh at them; what should I do with them on this island on a rainy day if they were too proud to sew?” One of these boys was a lieutenant in the Crimean War; he fought none the worse because he knew how to use the needle as well as the sword, when he with his men was for eighteen hours in the Redan on the memorable 18th of June.

The chaplain of an Irish institution had seen when he was young the straits to which the French artistocratic refugees were reduced, from having to learn how to do things for themselves; and he got a tailor to come to his house and teach his boys how to cut out and make and mend their own clothes. One of the boys is now an old general, but he sews on his own buttons to this very day; and when he was on service in one of the small British stations in Asia, he not only mended and patched his own clothes, but those of his brother officers; all the men of his regiment knitted their own socks.

Thanks for sticking up for the boys, Irv! Have another cigar!