robknits

Tennis and rain

 I've been watching great tennis on tv, which does wonders for my knitting.  See?  First I ended up with a nice snug heel and a deep instep, and then -- just a day or so later -- most of a sock.  All while Kim Clijsters and Rafael Nadal played amazing tennis. 

It has also been raining in San Antonio, after two years of almost no rain.  At first it started very gently, so we began to get some much needed rain but no flooding.  But since the beginning of September we have gotten more than 2.5 inches whoops now it's 3.4 inches of rain, and so the blocked-off streets and low-level flooding has begun.  The good news is that the worst of the heat has broken, and that I now find temperatures in the high 80s to be early fall weather (which is really very funny).  Today when I was out it was in the 70s -- bliss.  The yards have already greened up, at least those parts that are not actually really dead.  And with the cool weather and rain today, I actually wore sneakers... and socks.  Some of my favorite handknits socks -- these.  They fit perfectly and the cotton and wool mix yarn is very comfortable to wear.  They actually encourage me to finish the Sockotta sock-in-progress, though I doubt they will be as soft as this Meilenweit yarn -- the yarn just doesn't feel very soft.

Unfortunately I can barely make myself knit a row or two on Sausalito.  No problems with it, I am just bored.  But talking to Kim, who is the friend who gave me the lovely blue yarn I am using on the current sock project, was wonderful, because she thought it made perfect sense for me to start a lace-weight cardigan.  I want to try the Featherweight Cardigan, as I have mentioned before, and have been fretting that perhaps I do not have enough of any one lace yarn stashed. I think I will need at least 1400 yards.  But I am beginning to think that the stash might contain a possibility, even if I want to make the cardigan longer.  Because while I only have 1320 yards of the two Knitpicks Shimmer yarns in the stash -- Lost Lake (a lovely heathered green) and a heathered blue) -- and only 1250 yards of Helen's Lace, I do have  1460 yards of Prism Lace wool in the color Periwinkles,  which I bought in Seattle. That's it on the right.  And 1400 yards of Mystical Creations Yarn Spun Silk, image on the left.  But I would love to have more -- I hate to start a project worrying about running short, and I am not happy with the cropped jackets and sweaters I have.  But even the much larger size of the Featherweight calls for 1400 yards, so I should be OK.   But stashing means I should use now a color that appealed to me then, whereas if I didn't have stashed yarn, I would go ahead and buy plenty of lace yarn in a color that appeals to me today.   More fuel for rethinking having a sizable stash.

Except, of course, now that I have posted their pictures, I do like them both.  My concern about using the Mystical Creations silk is handling such a slippery yarn.  I am worried about winding it.  Should I wind it into a cake using the swift?  Pull from the center or from the outside?  If I pull from the outside I can't use a yarn bra to keep the yarn under control.  Maybe I should leave it on the swift, and knit from there.  Or wind it into a big ol' ball by hand.  Let me know what you all think.

When stash and creativity meet

I always feel that I have to struggle to avoid standardized answers to problems.  That is, I worry that I have to remind myself, for example, that the answer to a household design issue is not necessarily found in the standard stores.  My living room windows have sheer curtains in a sort of burnt orange or dark copper color.  I like them a lot, but they are sheer, and after my house was broken into again a couple of weeks ago, I decided I needed something that created more privacy.  Not that anything that could be seen from those windows was stolen, but still...

I want to keep those curtains on those windows, but add something on the lower half of the windows, leaving trees and sky visible through the top half of the windows.  Interior shutters would prevent cats from sitting on those window sills.  Can't have that.  In addition to pushing the cats off the sills, wood carvings or metal work or shoji screens would make it difficult to open those windows, which I like to do when the temperature drops all the way down to the 80s and like to think I could do if that were my only exit from the house in an emergency.  I thought of bamboo curtains but could only find bamboo shades, difficult to hang halfway down the window. 

Then I thought of weaving something, but figured I wanted a solution that would take fewer than 3 or 4 years to develop.  I played around with an idea from the book Time to Weave, modifying the runner on the cover (the project on the upper left on the cover).  There is a variation on that inside the book that uses stalks of plants instead of sticks that got me thinking. 

   Then I found the Loop Door Curtain crochet pattern here.  Hmmm.  Wandered into the yarn closet.  And I came out with the generic recycled silk yarn that has been hanging around the house for years.  Knitting with the stuff is a nightmare.  I did weave with it as weft, and that was OK, though I never took the piece I wove and made it into the bag I had planned.  So I began playing.  I tried the crochet instructions.  Ok.  Then I began to play with other  ways of producing the strands.  Long rows of just knit-on cast on stitches.     Long rows of knit-on cast on with the next row done as a bind off row.  I began thinking perhaps I could also intersperse just strands of the recycled silk, not knit or crochets. It has actually been kind of entertaining.  But then I decided it actually looked kind of scraggly.  What to do, what to do....

It required another trip to the yarn closet, staring at its residents.  Then I found this stuff (pic on the right).   I bought it at Knitters Connections, which I attended with Terry a few years ago.  I was going to make the Evening in Eden shawl with it, but that never happened.   And I half to admit that while I like what shawls look like, I think that when I wear one I look like an old photograph of an Eastern European immigrant from the turn of the 20th century, sitting on my suitcase at Ellis Island.  I have been thinking of seeing if I have enough for a cropped lacy jacket (it's rayon, good for this climate) but now I think it might dress the windows, not me.  A very satisfying idea, feels very creative, and is produced with materials already in the house. 

Meanwhile, I have finally gotten back to the weaving studio, and have reached the design part of my little wall hanging. I will take a picture tonight.  I am loving weaving with Lamb's Pride.  It doesn't allow for the sort of weft color blending that other yarns allow for in tapestry.  That's when you blend multiple strands of a yarn and use it as a single weft, to create lovely gradations of color.  On the other hand, the fact that I cannot blend colors is leading me toward other types of design.

More weaving, and lots of Magpie

 First, the picture of the Magpie.  This is Rowan Magpie that I appear to have accumulated in pieces over the years.  Some of it was acquired when in a moment of insanity I decided I was going to knit a Rowan jacket whose name I have forgotten -- it looks like a Kilim, and required combined stranded and intarsia knitting with something like 14 different yarns.  I now acknowledge I am not going to knit this jacket, as much as I would love to own it.  Other skeins of Magpie I acquired at my LYS.  Anyway, I am destashing all but the Oatmeal colored Magpie (I still plan on using some of it for a vest, with some Noro Shinano, swatched ages ago).  It is on my Sell or Trade stash page on Ravelry, or you can email me if you are interested.   The Antique Gold colored skeins are not Magpie, by the way -- they are Rowan's Designer DDK.  Also for sale.

The online community of fiber artists came to the rescue via the Yahoo!Group Tapestry2005, where a member suggested turning my tapestry-in-progress upside down (the benefits of working on a small loom) and beating the bottom edge straight.  I did that, retied the string of knots supposed to hold it level to the sides of the frame, and wove in a metal ruler below the knots, to help form a base.  I am continuing to weave the image.  You know how in knitting you have to modify an image to make up for the shape of the stitch?  Otherwise the image comes out oddly elongated.  I am running into a bit of that in my tapestry weaving and need to pay more attention to the shapes that result, so that I can weave greater width into my images.  That first tapestry, the Northern City Lights, suffers from that, with the image elongated and not wide enough.  I am now thinking about a more satisfying image (to me) to represent that Northern City Lights idea.

I also succumbed to my latest weaving obsession and bought, as I suggested in the last entry, a rigid heddle loom.  I chose the Glimakra Emilia after my usual obsessive search for information.  I deliberately chose a rather narrow loom (15" weaving width, I think) and one that was reviewed as having a good (i.e., relatively large) shed and a good tension device.  My goal is to "weave close to the thread" as Betty Linn Davenport said on Syne Mitchell's podcast about rigid heddle weaving.  An early birthday present for myself.  Now I want to create a record of my weaving stash, since I have accumulated some weaving yarn/thread, so I am looking forward to the start of Weavolution, which is going to be a Ravelry-like online resource for weavers.  Just as I do on Ravelry for knitting, I will be able to inventory stash, projects, get ideas, communicate with weavers, etc.  I am looking forward to it!  The Beta testing is going to happen in June.

Knitting is continuing on the Sausalito jacket.  I am kinda ready to be done, but I still have both sleeves and the left front to knit, so I can't run out of steam now.  I am knitting the first sleeve -- it is pretty mindless knitting at this point if I pay attention to which row I am on, so I am getting it done in front of the tv.

We are enduring a historically extreme drought here in San Antonio but it has been drizzling on and off and really looks like rain.  Who knew rain could be so exciting!

Stash growth and weaving

This past week the Contemporary Handweavers of Texas had their biennial conference here in San Antonio.  I didn't take any of the classes but did visit the vendor rooms with a friend from my tapestry weaving classes.  There was, of course, stash enhancement.  On the right (with very accurate color) are five skeins of Anny Blatt Silk'Anny, a worsted weight 100% silk single.  Someone was selling old stash.  There are only 65 yards per skein, for a total of 325 yards, so my intent is a very cool scarf-like thing.  I haven't decided what yet.  In the middle is a glimpse of a long cotton scarf I bought from a vendor of fair trade Guatemalan crafts.  It has lots of teal in it, but also some lovely green that did not show up in the photos.  And on the left are 3 skeins of Elsbeth Lavold's Silky Wool  (half price!)in an intense turquoise color not well represented in this photo.  I am adding it to the stash I started to create a multicolored jacket or vest.  I got some great ideas for it when I took some classes on color in slip stitches at the Knitters Connection (a few years ago, but I will get it to it.  Really.)

     The conference also had lovely fleece (especially some gorgeous, extremely pet-able mohair curls) and top from Texas breeders which I managed not to buy.  Great weaving and spinning tools and accessories.  Lots of books and magazines, of course. 

     It was inspiring to be surrounded by spinners and weavers, of course, and I came home and got to work on the next tapestry.  I had started it at the very last class in the tapestry workshop, but had not done more on it here at home.  Instead I was working on the finishing of the first tapestry, Northern City Lights.  So the new tapestry still looked like it does on the right.  (And yes, actually, this time the color in the photo is accurate -- that actually IS the color of the chair in the studio!)  So when I got home from the weaving conference, I got to work on some basic preparatory work on this tapestry. 

     I needed to get the "cartoon" in place.  They call any design used for guiding a tapestry a "cartoon," even those created by Degas and Picasso.  Anyway, first question: how to mount the cartoon behind the working warp threads?

     I ended up using bulldog clips to attach the print to some long stick shuttles I acquired somewhere (I think when I bought the floor loom a couple of years ago).  I did this on both sides, top and bottom.  The picture itself is on its side -- once again, I will be weaving this image sideways.  That's done to make it easier to create certain types of lines in the image. 

    Then I had to figure out how to get the mounted cartoon between the front and back warp threads on the portable loom, and how to tie this thing onto the loom itself.

 

     That created some frustration, of course.  I was kneeling on the floor, my joints suggesting that perhaps that was no longer a comfortable thing for me to do at my age, catching the slits in the stick shuttles and the edges of the bulldog clips on warp threads, and trying to figure out a secure way of tying it to the frame.  I have an unfortunate mental block when it comes to knots.  Yeah, a weaver and knitter who has trouble with knots.  Finally though, I achieved this:

   The cartoon is in place between the warp threads.  I ended up threading string through the bulldog clips and tying that string to each side of the frame.  I think that'll work.  Now I need to wind some butterflies of yarn, tighten the warp a bit, and I can actually weave.  I am hoping to get into the habit of doing a little bit of weaving on this on a regular basis.  A tapestry weaver named Tommye Scanlon has a project like that -- immersed in a move and teaching but not wanted to stop her weaving, she has an improvisational piece that requires a bit of weaving every day.  You can see it in the left column on her blog.  To my delight, it has become a citiscape. 

     I am also still knitting Sausalito, and looking for interesting ideas to show off the Anny Blatt silk in a creative, decorative scarf.  Most of the ideas I have come up with so far include lots of i-cord, and I am not sure I want to subject myself to that.  But I do want something creative, arty, maybe even necklace-like.  Ideas and suggestions welcome!

Getting back to my needles

     The knitting meet-ups here have helped get me back into knitting mode and out of my stuck-without-a-project rut.  I did need something relatively simple, something to knit on autopilot but as I have said I got stuck when I thought of socks, immersed as I was in my new sandal-friendly environment.  But there was a sudden breakthrough.

     First, I fell in love with the Chevrolace sock pattern from Knitty's Winter 07 issue.  Not sure how I missed it the first time around.  Knew immediately that I want to use the Dream in Color Smooshy yarn that I have in the Wisterious colorway.  (The second from the left in this line-up of last summer's sock yarn splurge.) I couldn't start right away though since the Smooshy is not wound.  So winding that is on the do-next list.  (The other yarns in the picture, from left to right, are Cherry Tree Hill Sockittome in Moody Blues, Lisa Souza Sock! in Mother of Pearl, and Schaefer Anne in Mint Caramel Frappe.  All awaiting the perfect project.  I don't like the self-designed pattern I started with the Anne.)

     Sock-yarn blankets were also on my mind, as a way of providing a continuing mindless project.  The problem was I couldn't help trying to plan the colorwork on a mitered project, which was kind of beside the point.  Finally, I picked up one of the afghan or Tunisian crochet hooks I have, one too small to make a nice fabric out of heavier yarn, and started experimenting with bit of leftover sock yarn.

      I can't stop. 

     I love the woven look you get with afghan/Tunisian crochet.  And I love the motion involved.  But the relationship among needle size, yarn size, and fabric is quite different in Tunisian crochet than in knitting.  I am using a size G Susan Bates hook.  That's a 4 or 4.5 mm size hook, the equivalent of a size 6 or 7 needle, that I am using with fingering weight yarn.  In knitting that would get me a lacy fabric.  In Tunisian crochet, that gets me an OK blanket-weight fabric, but I really could have used an even larger hook to get a drapier fabric!  That's why I ordered such huge hooks to experiment with fabrics for jacket patterns.  As you can see, I am working in broad color groups with a few contrasting colors thrown in.  The result? I need to knit more socks to get more leftovers!  That helped reignite my interest in knitting socks too.  Isn't that funny?

I don't think I like the brown/copper bit I used in the blue-ish strip.  And I think putting together lots of strips will look as uninspiring (to me, but then, it's my blog) a grannie-square afghan.  So, I think I am going to make strips of varying lengths and then somehow put them together with navy blue sections, in a quilt-like kinda way.  Til then, though, I am just going to make strips of left-over sock yarn.

     So in addition to knitting Chevrolace out of the Smooshy Wisterious, I am also going to start a pair of all-stockinette socks with the  Apple Laine Apple Pie sock yarn in the Best Friends color Kim gave me as a going-away present.  I was also able to look back through the blog to discover what stitch pattern I had used on the Moving socks, done in Paton Kroy Eclipse.  So I can work on sock #2 there.  So with a sock yarn leftover project in motion, and 3 sock projects about to take off, I appear to be back in my basic knitting status.  But I still have to find the following:

• More sock yarn is hiding somewhere.  Missing is my stash of red sock yarns, including the gorgeous Mysterious yarn I bought from the Knitting Zone.  There is an APB out for red sock yarn on Inspiration Drive.
• The Campanula WIP.  I know I saw it somewhere.
• My knitting notions in a clear cosmetic bag.  Now THAT is critical.

Sock!

      In the singular.  My moving-therapy sock #1 was completed just a few minutes ago.  Using Patons Kroy in Winter Eclipse, purchased for very little during, I think, a Herrschnerrs sale. Notice the other all important items sharing the top of the cart:

• Painter's tape.  Good for labeling items going into the freezer and anything else that needs a label.
• Two cat brushes, because of course Maggie will only allow herself to be brushed by the pink one and Frannie only tolerates the blue one. 
• A catnip mousie
• Pencils for marking pattern repeats.
• A knitting magazine.

Anyway, this sock is also a bit long.  That's the second pair in a row that ended up too long.  I am going to cast on right away for Winter Eclipse #2, and will try making that one shorter.  I am also casting on for sock #2 immediately to counteraffect the news that apparently the electricity in the house I want to buy in San Antonio was installed by monkeys.  I tried some alcohol but I think it's gonna take some sock knitting before I calm down.

      We interrupt this knitting blog for some cat cuteness.  First, as all folks who share their home with cats know, if you make a pile of something it requires a cat.  Moving, of course, produces lots of piles.  As I was trying to wash every piece of clothing I own, this resulted.   Maggie appears to understand that her role in the house is to produce moments of outrageously sweet cuteness I disavow in all other parts of my life.  Oh, and then she did this:

Yup.  Discovered ice cubes.  And nope, she sure wasn't supposed to be on the counter.

   Frannie is sharpening her skills of invisibility, except at feeding time and when she has to be brushed.

     Ok, back to fiber fun.  I figured out how to pack a spinning wheel today.  It included a big box, lots of towels, and whatever yarn was still lying around in that room.  And I may have gotten a bit carried away when I prepared for a couple of months of knitting while packing, moving, and unpacking:

Ya think? The yarn for 9 or 10 pairs of socks, a shawl, and 3 sweaters in progress.  I think that's about 2 years worth of knitting for me.  I think I should make it til I am unpack.  Face it, Rob, this is a security blanket in its raw state.  That would have been a cute moving project -- random skeins of things knit into a security blanket. 

Knitting night/ Sock night

     A fun night was had by all at the Centre Hall Public Library yesterday.  Their knitting group -- the Penns Valley Area Knitting Group --  meets the second and fourth Thursday of every month, while the State College group meets the first Thursday.  The half-hour drive to Centre Hall is well worth it and I am going to try to remember to go to my more local State College group next week.  I appear to have created Lacy Mock Cable desire in the group. Several went home to Google the pattern and I have promised to bring it in to the group in two weeks.  Here's a picture of my latest lacy Mock Cable, in some handpainted Opal.  It does remind me that I do not like the way the colors arrange themselves -- flashing, I guess this is -- and in fact I like the way the lacy mock cable kind of mixes the color up.  As usual, this is working up quickly but I do have to remember to wind other hanks of sock yarn into two separate balls so I can do both socks at the same time. 
     Great socks last night at the group.  Nancy was working on a great sock pattern from One Skein Wonders that really showed off a handpaint sock yarn with a slip stitch design.   Barb had her sock project too -- a gorgeous rendition of Knitty.com's Monkey sock by Cookie A.  I had gone right past that pattern since I really dislike the yarn in the picture.  Barb had one done in a gorgeous red colorway of Tess's Designer Yarns sock yarn that she bought at Maryland Sheep and Wool.  I immediately decided that I would use the Monkey pattern for one of the new sock extravagances that arrived over the weekend. 
     Yes, the loot arrived.  My mind is shying away from the total cost of a luxury sock yarn spree, but after years of buying Kroy, Blauband, etc on sale I just could not resist.  So here is the line up of beauties, or, as I named the picture, my sock loot :
     From left to right, Cherry Tree Hill Sockittome, in Moody Blues.  Dream in Color Smooshy, in Wisterious.  Lisa Souza Sock! in Mother of Pearl, and Schaefer Anne in Mint Caramel Frappe.  I can't wait.  The sock I am working on now has taken over all my knitting time, since work has been intensive and I have been coming home looking for relatively mindless knitting.  So while the Lacy Mock Cable does work up quickly, it is also working up quickly because I have not been working on the Japanese Feather stole, the Campanula cardigan, or, of course, the wool and mohair Bamboozled.  As Stephanie pointed out, her cardigan is moving slowly because she is not working on it!  This weekend I am hoping to finish the back of the Campanula.  And wind this sock yarn, each skein into two balls.  One of them will be Monkey, I think, reworked for a toe up sock.  One maybe.... Wendy's new  River Run sock or something like it. 
     Speaking of socks, I just couldn't resist and fantasized that it was mild enough to wear my running shoes with an actual pair of socks (I really live in sandals but...).  So I put on the finished pink socks.  Loved 'em, but since I couldn't find the second running shoe and then admitted it was going to be in the 80s and humid (central PA at the end of July, after all), I took it off and put it back in the drawer.  After admiring it, of course.

Zen calm (and FO addendum)

     Well, hardly. 

But progress is being made on Campanula, and on Bamboozled.

I have wanted to start something else.  Both of these projects are sweater sized, which means they will take me a while.  Of course I do have two pairs of almost finished socks on needles.  It suddenly occurred to me that -- ta da!  -- I do NOT have to knit them until I run out of yarn.

A mindbending realization! Since I make my socks toe up, I can do that, but I don't have to do that.  So since I am bored with the wool-cotton socks I start almost a year ago (gee, wonder why I am finding them boring) I completed a K1P1 rib at the top of one, am about to do that to the other, and will bind them off today.  Again, TA DA!  I will have an FO to show off tomorrow.  I will do the same for the other pair of socks as well -- the ones done in the Regia Line Step beige. 

     What I really want to do is another rectangular shawl.  I love wearing the Scotch Thistle, and so want more.  The next one though will be a bit longer than the Thistle.  So I am trying to NOT look at patterns, and instead look at the stash and work from there.  Of course too many possibilities are occurring so I haven't yet cast on for anything.  But after finishing the two pairs of socks, that is going to go on the needles next.
     I still feel funny about posting about my latest crash.  I am not interested in writing a blog about attention issues.  But since this is a blog about progress in creative projects, and I do them (mostly) in bouts of huge energy interspersed with moments of being overwhelmed, those crashes and recoveries will reoccur here.  I am aiming now for smooth and steady.

Addendum: FO  I did in fact finish the pink socks, using Zimmermann's sewn bind off.  Here they are.  Started in June 2006, finished July 11, 2007 (oops.).  Yarn: Meilenweit Color Fun, a cotton, wool, nylon blend.  Pattern: my own toe up basic sock, using a garter rib pattern for the leg.

    And just for fun, more in the continuing saga of Maggie's issues with weaving.

New project

    For a minute there, I thought Robbyn had posted a picture of my swatch!  Both of us wrestling with the "what next,"  now similar swatches in similar stitches in similar colors... add the similar names and you've got an entry for the "Separated at Birth" column.  Here's my version of the swatch.  This is in the blue-ish teal Kid Classic I rediscovered in the stash in what the Bamboozled pattern calls dot stitch.  The RS rows are a staggered K3 P1, and the WS rows are purled.  I had to go down to a size 7 needle to get a fabric I liked so I ended up with a gauge of 4.75.  I cast on and started knitting the Bamboozled tunic.  I really like this yarn.  They don't have a huge range of colors available right now, which is OK since I have to work my way through that huge stash of aran-weight yarn that I already have.  But a very very nice yarn.  Here's the beginning of the Bamboozled lace-panel tunic.  The yarn is not as blue as this appears on my screen.  I have to keep track of which row I am on for the center lace panel as well as for the dot stitch, so I think I am going to keep the row counter you see for the lace panel and add one for the dot stitch.  Since I am doing fine on the lace and ... ahem.. have to correct the last row of dot stitch.  Forgot to purl across.
     Speaking of stash, this has been next to my computer and I fall in love with the colors in this yarn every time I look at it.   This is Elann's Peruvian Collection brand Highland Wool in Forest Glade.  I didn't think I would be able to get the colors right and it's not perfect -- the green is more of a forest green -- honest, there's no teal in this yarn!  That bronze heather in with the green is just gorgeous.  The label calls for 5 stitches to the inch.  Of course the pattern I would love to use with this calls for more of the yarn than I have, and so far I haven't found any more.  So this is still waiting for its pattern.
     I also recovered some yarn from an ancient UFO.  I found the unused skeins of the yarn below, called Elysee by a company called W. West Designs.  I still have the receipt from the Black Sheep in Madison WI.  I bought this yarn 16 years ago (but that still does not make it the oldest yarn in the stash!).  I had a pullover knit in the round in a double twisted stockinette done up to the separation for the armholes.  So a few days ago I frogged the sweater, wrapped the yarn around my niddynoddy to make a skein, and soaked it in tepid water.  Hung it up with some plastic hangers hanging on the bottom of the skein for a slight bit of weight.  it looks great.  Then I weighed it to figure out how much I have and I am suprised -- I have enough for all kinds of sweaters.  The label calls for 4 st to the inch, so I am looking at patterns in that weight.  One possibility -- the Garden Gate cardigan that I could not finish with the other recovered-Madison yarn, since I did not have enough of that one.  So I may try it again.
     And finally, I kept going on the little bias lace scarf and am enjoying it.  So brave!!! I am doing it without markers for each of the five repeats.  Beginning to strut my stuff as a lace knitter on this very simple pattern.

Verde que te quiero verde

 

Green how I want you green.
Big hoarfrost stars
come with the fish of shadow
that opens the road of dawn.
The fig tree rubs its wind
with the sandpaper of its branches,
and the forest, cunning cat,
bristles its brittle fibers.
But who will come? And from where?
She is still on her balcony
green flesh, her hair green,
dreaming in the bitter sea.

    The second verse, translated, of one of my favorite poems, by Federico Garcia Lorca.  You can find the entire poem in English and in its original Spanish at poets.org. I actually don't respond much to poetry, but love Lorca.  Many of his poems have titles that refer to musical forms, particularly to various forms of flamenco, such as saetas or cante jondo.  This one is called Romance sonambulo.  The title, translated, more or less and not very poetically,  is "A Sleepwalking Ballad" -- "Sonambular Ballad"?  -- but the tonality of it in Spanish is very compelling.  Anyway, Lorca was a musician and artist as well as a poet, and I hear the music in his poems.  I prefer poetry in languages other than English, because then the sound is what strikes me first.
     Since we are buried here in the evidence of a winter storm -- snow and ice -- I suppose it is not surprising that I find myself thinking wistfully of green.  Everything is closed here, including -- grudgingly -- the university, so I am home.  And I found a remarkable list of greens here: aqua, green, Caribbean sea, cross country green, forest glade, moss, sage, typhoon, teal, pine tree, celadon... plus a few with no names.  Unlike Lorca's green, none are associated with death. Much more mundane -- all of them can be found in my stash.  And all but the pine tree, sage and celadon are aran weight yarns.  So now I am spending my unexpected time off trying to match ideas, designs and patterns with yarns, their weight and the yardage I have.  Always a frustrating experience.  I am in the mood for something with lots of texture, something gansey-like, but most of the patterns I have result in sweaters that will be either 1 or 2 inches too tight or 6-8 inches too big.  So I creating charts instead -- what I have in my stash, including yardage, and the aran-weight sweater designs I have been admiring and that will produce a sweater in a size I could wear.  I am hoping a few find their mates.  This involves a lot of online searching, since some of the patterns don't give a standard weight for the yarn used and give the gauge over the pattern (thanks, IK), or others don't give the yardage per skein of the yarn called for.
     I did email Interweave Knits, pointing out that it was impossible to figure out what gauge Reynolds Soft Linen yarn calls for.  It is used in Veronique Avery's Dollar and a Half sweater in the new issue.  They give the gauge over a lace pattern, and is so new there is no information about it online, not even on the Reynolds Yarn site.  Turns out it is 5/in.  The forest glade mentioned above can be knit to that weight, so perhaps it will be a version (definitely edited) of the Dollar and a Half sweater. 
     The patterns using aran weight yarn speaking to me most at the moment include Crystal Palace's  Bamboozle Lace Pattern tunic ,  the Norah Gaughan fitted aran cardigan from Interweave Knits Winter 01/02, a shortened version of Gaughan's Hex coat from her book Knitting Nature, and a pullover from Knitters Winter 03 called It's On the Tab.  That one is marked a "man's sweater."  It is a cabled pullover with a nice tab front and collar, and since there are no penises on it at all, I suppose there is nothing inherently masculine about it.
     If you know of an aran-weight pattern that you find particularly interesting, let me know what it is.  I have at least 5 batches of some sort of green aran-weight yarn waiting to be knitted.