Knit Sisters

My fourth and last class over the weekend at the Fiber Retreat was a three-hour class on Sunday morning with the lovely and talented Melissa Leapman,

 

entitled Full-Fashioned and Fabulous.  Although purportedly a class about fully-fashioned decreases and how to use them in your knitting, this workshop was really all about design and how to make your knitting fit and flatter.  As such, I found it very inspiring.

We got to see several of Melissa’s beautiful sweaters up close and personal, like this one from Hot Knits,

 

one of my favorite knitting pattern books.  I have actually made two sweaters out of this book, largely as written, which is of course rare for me.  One of those sweaters is the one pictured above, although I didn’t make it in the prescribed yarn, because (let’s face it) I never do.

We learned all about using matching decreases to shape sweaters, and how to place them in from the edge of the pieces to create flattering lines.  Several of the sweaters she showed us had self-finishing necklines that utilized fully-fashioned decreases, and we knit several small swatches to practice this technique on different knit fabrics:  cables, lace, and texture.

Melissa also showed us two sweaters that she had designed (including the red one above) that utilize fully-fashioned decreases and increases as a design element–moving cables or ribs around on the fabric to create flattering design lines.

Very inspiring and thought-provoking for a nascent designer like myself.

In all, I got some really great stuff out of this class, as well as the three spinning classes I took at the retreat.

Plus, I got to chat a bit with my friend Shelda.

                              Seen here wearing her beautiful cotton shoulder shawl (or is that a shawlette, Shelda?) with beaded fringe.

Anybody up for next year?

Although Alex has been complaining bitterly for the past two mornings about “having to get up in the middle of the night,” I am delighted by the recent spring forward. It’s light until almost 7 p.m., folks, and that just gives a girl’s spirits a boost.

Plus, I’m a morning person and a semi-closeted Calvinist and if we’re getting up at what used to be 5:30 a.m., well, I’m certain it will make us healthy, wealthy, and wise!

It is only fair to note here that in spite of my general loathing of Ben Franklin, who I consider to be one of history’s greatest hypocrites, I nonetheless never miss an opportunity to goad Alex with one of Franklin’s many moralistic, Puritanical dictums. Alex says (and he is right) that the problem with Franklin was that he felt free to opine about how others should live their lives, meanwhile putting his, ahem, dictum wherever he pleased.

Poor Richard, my *ss.

But back to the topic of more light. It fills me with a sense of well-being to be able to take Shelley on a walk in the daylight after an early dinner.

Afterwards, I am known to enjoy a heavy gnawing session.

And these feelings of well-being, however fleeting, are a very good thing indeed because while my sister, who couldn’t have deserved it more, was having a lovely time at the fiber retreat this weekend, I was knitting Minnie,

writing my dissertation, a fighting a losing battle with my guts.

By Sunday evening, having been bested by my own intestines, I decided to give up food for Lent.

You’d be amazed how much time it frees up when you basically stop eating. I’ve never been so productive in my life.

Feast yer eyes on them beads…

But all kidding aside, dear readers, I realize that this is hardly a sustainable solution to the problem of temperamental guts. And since I know some of you will express concern, I hasten to add that I am actually eating, just limited amounts of very plain things. And the less I eat, the better I feel.

In the meantime, however, I realized—thanks largely to my friend Emily, who begged me to “do the right thing”—that my resistance to being violated by Dr. F. and her little camera wasn’t futile, but it was stupid.

So I scheduled the colonoscopy, recalling that Dr. F. said it was, “no big deal.”

It’s gonna be a big deal. But there are deals and there are deals, if you know what I’m sayin’.

Gratuitous close-up of my green beads.

Here’s the thing: Dr. F., who I admire and trust implicitly, thinks that she won’t find anything alarming when she roots around in there with her little camera. She’s probably right, and her professional opinion certainly makes me feel better about all of this.

You know what they say in medicine: if you hear hoofbeats in the hall, don’t go lookin’ for zebras.

In my case, what we’re probably dealing with is horses, but you can’t know that it isn’t zebras unless you submit to the camera. Ain’t life grand?

What I haven’t yet said is that my friend Mara died of colon cancer at the age of thirty-three. It was completely untoward, so statistically improbable that it bordered on impossible, but nonetheless, there it was. Because no one, including her doctors, expected zebras, they didn’t diagnose her cancer until it had metastasized and it was too late to save her.

So am I scared? Is the Pope Catholic? Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? You bet your boots.

But I think I’m going to be all right. And I know if Mara were here, she’d give me a swift, good-natured kick for ever hesitating.

I had a lovely time at the Missouri Fiber Retreat this weekend, and came home having learned lots of new things, energized to start spinning like a fiend and inspired to work on my own knitting designs.

I took four classes over the weekend, three of them spinning classes, and one a design class with the keynote speaker, Melissa Leapman.

My first class on Friday afternoon was a class in spinning “designer” yarn (or as spinners refer to it, lumpy bumpy yarn) out of Lincoln wool.  Our teacher gave us a bag of naturally-colored Lincoln locks,

which we teased apart by hand, spun into a highly textured single, and then plied back onto itself.

                                        My neighbor and new-found friend Andrea’s lumpy yarn.

                                                      My own lumpy Lincoln yarn, not quite as highly textural as Andrea’s, but still pretty, I think.

Next stop:  Saturday morning and a class in spinning with angora bunny wool. 

I ended up not taking too many photos during this class, just because I was so busy trying to spin at least a little bit of each of the sample fibers our instructor passed out.  She gave us German, French, and English angora to spin, which we spun straight and unblended with anything else, and I also experimented a little bit with blending some German angora with Columbia wool on my handheld combs.

                                                      My mini-skein of German angora.

Saturday afternoon:  spinning three designer yarns with the lovely and talented Chris Hunsburger,

                                                               who happens to live up toward my neck of the woods, I’m proud to say.

Our first yarn was a lumpy bumpy mohair in much the same vein as the lumpy bumpy Lincoln of the day before.

Then we used the dyed mohair locks to make a corespun yarn, a technique in which you use a core yarn or thread and let the teased locks grab onto and wrap around the core.  There are endless possibilities with this technique, including using a commercial yarn as the core and letting some of the base yarn show through the wrapping fiber.

 

Our third yarn of the afternoon was a mohair boucle, a very, very cool technique which I had never experimented with before.   

Very cool, but also very labor-intensive.  First you have to spin the mohair singles.  Then you ply that single with a commercial thread (or yarn), letting the mohair spiral around the thread–putting tension only on the thread as you ply.  Every time you ply a little bit, you stop and scootch the mohair down on the thread, creating those little loops.  So you ply, stop, scootch, ply, stop, scootch.  Then, you ply the whole shebang with the commercial thread again, locking those little loopies into place. 

I think you can see that I won’t be making this particular yarn every day.

Coming Wednesday:  my class with knitwear designer Melissa Leapman.

The first 120 of approximately 720 beads have been painstakingly knitted into the bodice of the sweater:

Many observers have generously commented on their delightful effect…

…but no one could be more pleased with my beading than…me.

Minnie, in her full glory:

As you can see, the beads are a subtler touch when you can see the whole sweater. And there is something about Minnie, perhaps her light color, perhaps her little slubs, perhaps her spring-green beads, that gives me hope that spring will be here.

In spite of the fact that it is seven degrees here with a minus thirteen windchill.

Once upon a time, a young man met a girl.  He was young; she was younger.  They became friends.  Some time later, they became lovers.  Two years later, they were married.

They lived happily together for five years.  They decided the time was right to have a child, and so she became pregnant.  The young woman loved being pregnant, cherishing that time as something that might not come around again.  When the baby was born, though, she foundered.  The depression of her younger years plagued her once again.

The child grew and seemed to thrive.  But when he was about three, it was clear that something was not quite right:  he was not quite as other children were.  The man and woman, now Mama and Papa, strove to know what was right to do and to do it.

The family moved, but they couldn’t leave their troubles behind.  The little boy grew, and went to school.  Life became harder and more anxious for him, and his Mama and Papa fought and struggled and at times cried bitter tears.  For a time, they separated and lived apart.

They came together again, though, and moved again, seeking support and peace.  The woman fought back her depression over and over.  The child visited doctors, psychiatrists, and therapists, seeking help.  The man worked hard to keep his little family afloat, fighting to love his life.

One day, late in the afternoon, after sixteen years together, the woman told her man that she believed that they should separate once again.  She moved away.  Now she lives in a small apartment across town.  She is slowly moving her things out of their home, and he is slowly making their home, his home.  Their son, who perhaps is not the child they ordered but is the child they love, struggles to adapt.

 

Rob and I separated almost a month ago.  I’ve not written about this on the blog because I’ve been unsure about how to write about it without seeming maudlin, or bitter, or self-pitying, or blaming–because I’m not really any of those things, and then again, at times I’m all of those things.

I do know that I’m more at peace, more myself, than I’ve been in a long while.  Harvey has suffered a setback because of our separation, and I feel a certain amount of guilt about that.  But I also feel that my access to joy, if not joy itself yet, has returned. 

These days I’m memorizing this poem, and if my road is still full of fallen branches and stones, I can sense those stars burning overhead.

It’s been a good week for the Ordnance and Weaponry Geek here Chez Mad Dog. First and foremost, the aircraft carrier USS JFK, which is about to be decommissioned, did us the honor of docking in Boston Harbor for the weekend and allowing civilians on board.

From a distance, she looked like this. If you will be so kind, please ignore the pole.

Unfortunately, we were not the only folks in Boston who thought it might be cool to go on a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier. When the above photo was taken, we were about, oh, two hours away from the boat. Not as the crow flies, of course, but in a line packed with our fellow citizens.

As we sailed through the security checkpoint, however, I noted with some satisfaction that the U.S. Navy—unlike our friends at the TSA—does not concern itself with blunt craft scissors. In fact, turns out that you can carry your knitting and all your accoutrements onto an aircraft carrier because there are soldiers with machine guns ceaselessly patrolling the dock and the ship’s decks.

If you attack these people with your blunt craft scissors and your Addi Turbos, you frankly deserve whatever you get. You are officially 2 stupid 4 words.

Ever been on the deck of one of these babies?

Skyline of Boston as backdrop.

Here’s where the planes land and are “trapped” in a miraculous maneuver that looks like threading a needle.

But with a fighter jet. And from the sky.

When they land, they go from 150 mph to 0 mph in less than 800 feet. The mind reels.

But that ain’t all. A catapult takeoff involves going from 0 to 200 mph in two seconds.

Beware of jet blast, propellers, and rotors. You betcha!

I knew a man in Berkeley who had flown fighter jets for the Navy. (That is, before he saw sense and gave it all up to become an historian of science.) He told me it involved a lot of vomiting. G-forces and so forth. For my part, I felt moderately nauseated just watching the planes take off and land on film.

There were certain restrictions about who could go on the aircraft carrier (no one under six) and what footwear was acceptable (no open-toed shoes or high heels). We were a little puzzled by all this until we got on the boat. But then…oh, ho, ho, no more mystery! In combination with all the ridges and indentations on the deck where you could easily catch said high heels and trip, here’s what you see when you step to the edge of the deck:

And you can step right to the edge of the deck, folks. Note the absence of a guard rail. And yeah, there are those absurd little nets, but if you fall over the edge…well…bon voyage, sailor!

See why three-year-olds and aircraft carriers don’t mix?

The older children seemed to enjoy the boat, however, and the many opportunities to gear up in various naval costumes:

Most fires aboard are fought by these tiny Martians.

Alex made an important phone call to his broker from the deck:

Sell!

I was windblown, but quite enjoying my brief stint in the Navy:

Time Out of Mind begged to go on the aircraft carrier and I simply didn’t have the heart to turn him down.

In other exciting news from the weaponry front, I was also accepted to give a paper at a conference in Las Vegas in a few months (yes, I know…back to Vegas!…I bet you can’t wait either! Whoo hoo!) and the pre-conference hoo-doo involves…are you ready?…a day-long tour of the Nevada Test Site.

Nuke geek heaven! Alex is incredibly jealous.

Minnie is looking good:

You can kind of see why the pattern calls this part a skirt, can’t you?

A little closer:

I’m getting fairly close to the part where I’ll start beading. Can. Not. Wait.

In other news, we’re making the slow adjustment to being a one-pet family. The shock of Zeno’s death is wearing off and we are better able to access joy than we were last week. Apropos of something else entirely, my mother reminded me of the old Roger Miller song in which he sings, You can’t drive around with a tiger in your car, but you can be happy if you put your mind to it…

We lost our tiger, but we’re trying to put our minds to being happy.

Back on Thursday. With any luck, it will involve beads…

To go to the Fiber Festival this weekend.

I plied the Suffolk and Romney,

 

thereby freeing up two bobbins.

Since I’m taking three spinning classes this weekend, I thought it would be prudent to have some free bobbins to use.

Shelda asked what classes I’m taking.  Here’s the lineup:

Friday afternoon:  Lumpy Bumpy Designer yarn with Saundra Lungsford

Saturday morning:  Spin a Bunny with Nancy Barnett

Saturday afternoon:  Spinning Mohair with Chris Hunsburger

Sunday morning:  Fully Fashioned and Fabulous with Melissa Leapman

I have some homework to do for the Melissa Leapman class–five little swatches.  Have I started on these yet?  Nope. 

I’m trying to get mentally organized for the trip.  I’ll have to leave between 8:00 and 8:30 a.m. on Friday morning in order to get to Jefferson City in time for my 1:00 p.m. class.  I’ll need my wheel, bobbins, combs, carders, angora fiber, knitting project(s), lazy kate, niddy noddy….

Wish me luck.

Minnie is becoming a little more maximal:

It won’t be long before I’ll have beads. And then! Look out!

Moving on, a number of people have asked if I will write up the pattern for “Time Out of Mind.”

I have decided, in the interests of time and out of respect for Fiona Ellis—who originally combined these cables in one of her designs, doncha know?—to go about half-way on that request and give you something that is less like a pattern and more like a recipe. Be forewarned that this will require some rejiggering on your part; I’ll suggest ways to alter the pattern to make it a different size.

The existing “Time Out of Mind” was knitted to fit a 36″ bust, so the instructions will start from that foundation. To alter it, you can add or subtract stitches in between the cables or along the sides. Or you could simply add more cables. Keep in mind that it will look best if you have an odd number of cables, such that the middle cable is one of the larger, double-circle cables.

My sweater had seven cables on the back and seven on the front. It is a simple drop-shoulder shape, so the construction is very basic. I knit the body and the sleeves in the round and did a three-needle bind-off at the shoulder, so “Time” is my amazing seamless sweater. And I really, really liked it that way.

The charts come from Fiona Ellis’s Inspired Cable Knits and are part of a pattern she calls “Ripples in Time.” Out of respect for her design work and for copyright law, I will not reproduce those here. The book is lovely. You won’t regret owning it.

I started out by falling in love with the cable combination she used, then I bought a boatload of worsted weight Malabrigo in color Scarlet, one skein in color Velvet Grapes, and Ann Budd’s The Knitter’s Handy Book of Sweater Patterns, another book you won’t regret owning.

If you want to do this from scratch, just get a yarn you like, swatch it over the pattern, get the gauge, find the sweater style you like from Ann Budd’s book, and then follow her instructions for how many stitches to cast on, etc. That’s really what I did, although it took a little extra math because my gauge on a 32″ U.S. size 7 Addi Natura circular needle was 5.7 stitches to the inch, not a neat 5 or 6.

Here’s what I did, more or less:

Cast on 228 stitches in CC (Velvet Grapes) on a U.S. size 7 32″ circular needle. Join, being careful not to twist. Place markers at the beginning of the row and after the 114th stitch to mark the front and back of the sweater.

Change to MC (Scarlet) and knit 2 rows in seed stitch.

P 1 at the beginning and end of every pattern row on both the back and the front (leaving 112 stitches over which to distribute the cables; each of the 7 cable panels is 16 stitches).

Following the charts, knit cable panels until work measures 13.5 inches. Divide the front and back for the armholes. Knit the back straight until armhole measures 9 inches. On right side, knit 19 stitches in cable pattern and place these stitches on waste yarn. Bind off 14 stitches. Knit the middle 48 stitches in cable pattern and place these on waste yarn. Bind off 14 stitches. Knit the final 19 stitches in pattern and place them on waste yarn.

Now knit the front straight in pattern until it measures 7 inches. Now I must admit that what I did for the neck shaping is somewhat sketchy, but it was more or less this: knit 33 stitches in patttern on right side of work; place the remaining stiches on waste yarn.

At neck edge, bind off 2 stitches on even rows 4 through 12, bind off 1 stitch on even rows 14 through 20. Knit even with back. Place remaining stitches (19) on waste yarn.

Knit and then place middle 48 stitches on waste yarn for front neck. Work left neck shaping to mirror right.

Using a three-needle bind off, “seam” the shoulders.

Starting at the center of the underarm, pick up 96 stitches evenly around the armhole for each sleeve on a 16″ U.S. size 7 circular needle. Place markers for center 16 stitches; these are for the one large center cable that runs down each sleeve. The other stitches are purled (reverse stockinette). Place another marker to mark the beginning of your row; this marker should be in the center of the underarm.

Working cable according to chart and the rest of the sleeve in reverse stockinette, decrease 2 stitches on either side of the marker every 6 rows, 6 times (to row 36), then decrease 2 stitches every 4 rows starting with row 40 and ending with row 112. (Change to two circulars or to double pointed needles when you have decresed to a point that this becomes necessary.) Continue in cable pattern and reverse stockinette through row 118. Knit two rows in seed stitch and bind off in CC.

Now back to the neck. Pick up 22 stitches along the bound off edge on the right side, pick up and knit the 48 front neck stitches from the waste yarn keeping the cable patttern continuous, pick up 22 stitches on the bound off edge on the left side, pick up and knit the 48 stitches at the back neck keeping the cable pattern continuous.

I worked the neck on a 24″ U.S. size 7 circ. needle. The picked up stitches were worked in a K1, P1 ribbing. Work 11 rows, continuing the cable panels and continuing the ribbing on the sides. On rows 7, 9, and 11, decrease 4 stitches total by purling 2 tog in the reverse stockinette between the cables (2 decreases in front; 2 decreases in back). At the end of row 11, you will have decreased 12 stitches total from the neck. I found that it worked best to decrease right at the edge of the cable, where it was less obvious. I also varied where I did the decreases, again so it was less obvious.

Knit 1 row in seed stitch. Bind off in CC.

Pop sweater on over your head and live your life! No seams, no blocking, no nothing! You are ready to go!

As I said, this is more a recipe than it is an exact set of instructions, but I think it can be easily varied to create a range of sizes, especially since the sweater is relatively loose-fitting and the cables tend to make it hug your body.

Good luck! May Time look good on you.

While thinking about today’s post, I ate the last of the lemon curd, slathered on a toasted bagel. 

 

Now I remember why I don’t make lemon curd all that often–not because it’s at all hard to make, but because I just hog it all down.  I have a similar weakness for homemade caramel sauce, which I have been known to eat straight out of the frig with a spoon.  Someday I’ll share that recipe (really more of a technique) with you all.

My spinning wheel has been packed up in its handy-dandy carrying case for a few weeks, patiently awaiting my attention.  My problem?  I have so many cool spinning projects going on, I’m finding it hard to choose which one to work on.

There’s the white Suffolk lambswool.

And the undercoat of the double-coated fleece, which I’m spinning about as fine as I can.

And the naturally-colored Romney, which has been in the works for some time.

                            Seen here reposing against the Handsome Triangle shawl.

And, last but not least, mohair and a wool-mohair blend, which are destined to be plied together in the same fashion as this skein, which was gifted to Ellen at Christmas.

                                      Also reposing against the Handsome Triangle.

I think what I’d like to work on is the Suffolk–finishing up that partial bobbin and plying the two bobbins together.  Hindering my progress at this point?  Every bobbin I own has something on it, therefore making it hard to ply anything off onto another bobbin.  And I have a lazy streak about a mile wide which prevents me from actually taking anything off a bobbin and making a ball out of it.

Oy.