robknits

Another one off the needles

     There is a difference between an FO -- finished object -- and an OF -- off the needles project.  The difference is blocking.  The project that went off the needles yesterday or the day before, the Pacific Grove pullover shown in my last entry, is not an FO because I have to redo the sleeves.  But Ostrich Plumes is off the needles, waiting to be blocked, as is a narrow alpaca lace scarf I finished in the spring.  Also now off the needles and ready to be blocked: the neverending vest for my mother.

     This was knit from a novelty yarn I bought at Stitches West one year, from Newton's.  Those of you who have attended Stitches and other knitting conventions know the Newtons booth -- long tables full of hanks of their own yarns.  I took one look at it and knew my mother would love the colors.  It is made of everything.  I lost the label but there were at least 5 or 6 fibers -- the ones I remember are mohair, cotton, and rayon.  So I designed a cardigan vest to her very specific specifications (not a redundancy when you are dealing with my mom) using Sweater Wizard.  It is all in stockinette, with a seed stitch border at the bottom.  I finished the front edges and armhole edges with two rows of single crochet.  Making things for other people, especially when they have such strong likes and dislikes, makes me very anxious.  Now I am worried that it will stretch, and I don't know how to block this yarn.  But I have some swatches, and some yarn left over, and I am just going to have to experiment.  I am tempted to just take it to the dry cleaners. I do like how the crocheted edges look.  I always thought of crocheted edges as fussy, but this single crochet edge actually looks rather tailored.

     So, I tackled two longterm UFOs.  One still needs work but I am interested in it again, though sleeves do seem to go on forever.  I also pulled out two other WIPs, that I put away when it got hot.  One is the Bamboozled lace panel tunic, which I am making with Rowan's Kid Classic.  Remember this?  The weather finally broke here in Pennsylvania, wearing socks is once more a delight, and I can once again work in aran-weight wool and mohair.  So I am going to go back to work on this.  You can see the very nice lace panel in the pic on the right.

     The other WIP was the Garden Gate cardigan.  It is an Ann Norling pattern that I am making using a mystery yarn that I had had in my stash for about 20 years.  I was disappointed that there isn't enough yarn for the sleeve, I think.  The body of the vest is done, and I am going to finish the neck and button band trim and see what's left.  On the left is an early picture that shows off the yarn.  I don't know that I love the results but I keep reminding myself to make no judgements until it is blocked.

Amazing, huh, that I am pulling out WIPs instead of starting a new sweater.  I did swatch for one but this finishing stuff feels good.  Who knew?

     And despite all my doubts about Ravelry, I spent hours on the site adding stash yarns.  My earlier attempts at keeping an inventory have all died miserable deaths -- lost files, random notebooks lost for months under piles of other paper...  So while I am not going to enter every single skein of sock yarn, the entire painter's palette of Lamb's Pride, all the random skeins of worsted weight wool, I am entering the stuff I still find interesting, stuff for which I am always searching for ideas.   And the pretty new stuff.  I have also joined 5 groups -- the Chatters group, Stranded Knitting, Lace, and the Norah Gaughan group.  Hmm, that leaves one out.  Can't think now what it is. I was absolutely gobsmacked by some of the groups that have formed.  Knitters of blue yarn who watch particular TV shows while eating certain brands of microwave popcorn.  Knitters who use one brand of yarn.     Knitting accountants.  Knitters who like kittens. Knitters who like the same book (singular).  Knitters who share the same astrological sign.  Oh yeah, my 5th knitting group is the I Make Mittens, because the pictures are amazing.  The benefits of the Norah Gaughan group is that she participates, and answers questions about her patterns.   Great idea.

Crash and burn, with updates

To recap:
     Since late April, I have been attending knitting events, taking classes, put in a garden, buying books, putting a warp on the floor loom, collecting images, buying yarn, working on designs, learning design techniques, renting a table loom, buying patterns, visited my mother, starting a sketchbook, traveling, putting a warp on the table loom, buying more books, visiting museums, buying DVDs...  oh, and I was working full time.

     And no one called ADD-911.

     A week after coming back from Washington, where I walked and stood through museum after museum, bookstore after bookstore, I was dressing the table loom for my long-awaited MAFA workshop.  I was running up against a deadline.  I was running back and forth between my home and the not-so local LYS to get more heddles.  I was trying to get the warp ready in time to leave for Scranton at about 4 pm. 
     As I was measuring yarn and sleying the reed, I realized I had not really processed what I had learned at Knitters Connection about designing with strips, about color design.  I had not read the books and magazines I had acquired.  I had not yet found my sketchbook -- in fact, I had not finished unpacking from the Washington trip.  Hmmm, I said.  Maybe I am overdoing it.  (Ya think?)  I also noticed the huge thunderstorm-bearing front racing into this area.
     At that point my vision flickered, and the mother of all migraines hit.  I stopped puking (sorry, too much information?) midday Friday.  The pain was completely gone by Saturday morning, and all I had to do was deal with the migraine hangover, the shakes, and the knowledge that I had:

• missed my MAFA workshop
• completely ignored all signs of two months of overstimulation
• burnt out so badly I couldn't even look at my stash
• responded to about 3 or 4 possible migraine triggers, all at once.

   

Sigh.

The sad thing?  I assumed I could calm myself down by reading through weaving and knitting magazines.  My body knew better.

OK.  Now it is Monday.  The post-migraine shakes are gone.  I am knitting again on existing projects.  That means Campanula and the Bamboozled tunic.   By switching off between the two I am avoiding the tendonitis that knitting with the cotton/linen/ramie mix triggers (I am using Rowan Kid Classic for the Bamboozled tunic).  No design questions left to answer, all decisions made, stitches that require enough attention to keep me occupied.  Knitting as occupational therapy.

I am continuing to thread the heddles on the table loom.  Weaving occupational therapy.  The draft the workshop teacher sent me was for a crackle weave with 10 different yarns and still looks like fun.  The only problem is that she was going to provide the treadlings in class, so I have written to her asking for at least one, so I can weave off this warp.

The focus now is on basics.  Slooow and calm work on existing projects.  And my house as a project.  I took the trash to the curb yesterday, took a box and 4 bags worth of books to the AAUW book sale drop off, cleaned cat boxes, filled and emptied the dishwasher.  I am trying to establish Flylady routines in my life. Trying to establish routines and reduce the insane level of clutter in 15 minute increments. Trying to focus on the here and now, and not the next.  Today, hiding from the heat, I am knitting on Campanula and Bamboozled (making progress on Campanula but need to switch to Bamboozled, according to the tension in my right forearm) and working my way through the laundry.   Not very interesting blog fodder, huh?  I should be able to show you the finished back of Campanula by the end of the week.

Art and Fear

     I have been on a spree since Maryland Sheep and Wool.  It works that way every year.  The long hours of light in May and June really get the juices flowing, MDSW inspires ideas and excitement and purchases, my birthday -- and my LYS's annual sale -- at the end of May inspires extravagance, and I love June so much I just keep going.    But the spree this year has been very focused.  Two events: MDSW and Knitter's Connection in Columbus.  The purchases have been focused.  I did really go to town with books though this past month.  A gift in the birthday card from my sister-in-law and brother turned into 3 books on fiber arts from Amazon.  I bought my own copy of Francoise Tellier-Loumagne's The Art of Knitting: Inspirational Stitches, Textures and Surfaces  , her Art of Embroidery: Inspirational Stitches, Textures and Surfaces and Creating Sketchbooks for Embroideries and Textile Artists by Kay Greenlees.  All extravagances but that's what surprise money can be for, right?  I love studying both Tellier-Loumagne books, in which she classifies stitches and then shows them, in gorgeous photographs, near images form nature or other dramatic compositions that inspired or relate to them.  A very inspirational and motivational process, reading those books.  My interest in Greenlees's book on sketchbooks came out of my long long years of attempting to create a functional system of gathering my ideas, swatches, clips from magazines, photographs, etc and working from them.  Judy Ditmore had us bring colored pencils and graph paper to her class on strip-knitted garments, and we also used strips of cut paper.  She said she finds she can knit anything she can make with strips of paper.  I found myself using the pencils at odd moments to develop the ideas of color progressions Ruth Lantz had talked about. 

     Greenlees's book, besides being very pretty to look at, helped me realize that I do not need really to choose among my earlier attempts at recording my ideas, swatches, etc.  Instead, each one -- and that includes the blog, a shoebox in which I throw index cards I have scribbled on, the 3-ring binders, the notebook of graph paper -- can be used.  Each one has a function.  And I went downstairs and found 15 Prismacolor markers that I bought in a moment of extravagance years ago (when did I do that?  What was I thinking of using them for? Why did I buy only 1 blue?!) and found a small sketchbook I bought at some earlier moment.  She mentions some folks have trouble starting a sketchbook, thinking that first page needs to be some kind of dramatic introduction to their work (I imagine that future scholars will pore over and analyze in academic papers!!) so I used the first page of mine to scribble examine the colors of each of the Prismacolor markers.  Then I used the markers to "take notes" on a couple of images from the latest Fiber Arts.  It is really hard to draw a woven item, by the way.  Makes me realize how much each thread counts in a woven piece.

     Another motivation for getting a sketch/notetaking system together is that I am heading, reluctantly, to a very long work-related conference.  The good part is that it is being held in Washington DC, and that I have Friday all to myself.  I am going to spend it at the Textile Museum and wanted to make sure to have some way of taking notes, both visual and textual.  So as usual I have had a wild wave of images, information, interests and inspiration crashing down around my head. 

To add to it, two new additions, no, three new additions.  Until last night I had not even picked up my knitting since the end of the Knitter's Connection show in Columbus.  Instead, in a enthusiastic rush I built another raised bed above the clay that lies under my back yard and put in a garden of herbs (in the beds and on the deck) and a variety of tomatoes and sweet peppers.  I put in multicolored Swiss chard, my first cucumber plant, some leaf lettuce, and even some tomatillos.  Then, last night, the yarns and threading draft arrived for my weaving class at the MAFA conference in Scranton after July 4th.  I think the teacher did a great job of pinpointing my skill level, but now I have to find the time to measure the warp and thread the loom before and after the conference in DC! 

     And finally, I was at Barnes and Noble yesterday and found a book called Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking .  A very thoughtful book, a quick read that I will probably keep rereading.  A number of its most useful points were made later in The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, but Art & Fear does it without the intense therapeutic and spiritual rhetoric Cameron uses.   (They  present the amazing statistic that 98% of those who do an undergraduate art degree stop making art fairly soon after graduating, and ascribe that to a lack of any continuing support structure.)  The book is organized into sections on fears about yourself (i.e., I am not really creative, I am not perfect, my stuff in not new or good or interesting), fears about others (approval, understanding, acceptance), "finding your work," and more, and provides very useful ways of thinking yourself out of those dark, gloomy and unproductive traps. A very very good book.  If you hated The Artist's Way, try this one.  If you liked The Artist's Way, try this one.

    Last night, finally, I got back to my knitting.  I did another partial repeat of the lace pattern on Campanula, then, worried about my hands, put it down and picked up the Bamboozled tunic being made from Rowan's Kid Classic.  Very possibly my favorite aran weight yarn.  And the cats did not take any revenge for my having left them for 4 days.  Frannie has even gotten brave enough to sit on the back of the couch, or the arm on the other side of the couch, when I am sitting there reading and knitting.