Some better Laurel pix

I was so impatient to share my finished object that I posted a picture that didn’t really show its true beauty. Here are a couple of better ones.

As you can see here, the cables have pretty good definition. When I first blocked the hat, I blocked it too tightly and it flattened out the cables. I had to scrunch it back together a  bit before it got completely dry so that the cables would pop.

I made the hat a bit larger than the original, because I like my tams to drape a bit in the back. Because my gauge was a little off, I ended up having to thread some elastic through the ribbing to make the band fit snugly.

Next, I’m going to knit a pair of mittens to go with these. The plan is to use another of Jared Flood’s patterns, the Green Autumn mittens from last fall’s Vogue Knitting. Stay tuned!

Laurel, designed by Jared Flood, knit by Tracy

This is a photo of the hat while blocking on a dinner plate. (The real color is a richer blue-green.) I was just too impatient to wait until daylight to take a picture of it!

The pattern was a pleasure to knit. However, I found a number of small errors in the pattern–nothing big enough to stop me from knitting, but substantial enough to trouble someone with less experience knitting cables:

* The symbol m1-l is not explained, so I just used my best judgment and made one stitch my usual way.

* The 5-stitch cable first used on row 8 has no explanation in the key. What you need to do is move the first 3 stitches to a cable needle, k2 from the left needle, move the p stitch from the cable needle back to the left needle and p1, then k2 from the cable needle. This keeps the purl stitch in the center of this cable.

* As for moving the marker for the beginning of the row, the instructions are wrong. I studied the chart and figured it out from there.

* The text gives instructions for a row 54, but the chart shows only 53 rows. (And the way it is knit, row 53 on the chart matches the wording of row 54 in the written text.)

* The pattern calls for 2 balls of Classic Elite Princess, for a total of 300 yards. When I substituted Cascade 220 Superwash, I used substantially less yarn–less than a single 220-yard ball.

Nevertheless, I like the pattern, and I’m pleased with the way the hat has turned out.

Shepherdess marries in dress from her own sheeps’ wool

What a lovely story–and a unique and beautiful dress! As one of the commenters wrote, however, it’s a good thing it didn’t rain!

Finally, an actual finished object!

I just over a month, I managed to complete an actual finished object–despite all the gardening, despite all the family activities, despite summer itself (or what passes for summer here in upstate New York this year). For a long time, I have been wanting to knit Shedir, the beautiful hat designed for women undergoing chemo, but beautiful enough for anyone to wear. At the end of June, I popped down to Knitting Etc. in Ithaca and bought a couple of skeins of Rowan Calmer, in the loveliest shade of spring green. This would be a dream to knit, and a dream to wear.

Well, the knitting for me was a bit of a challenge, but that was by no means the fault of the designer. I used to be able to tackle an Alice Starmore pattern with ease–okay, not exactly with ease, but at least with confidence and focus. These days,  however, I’m lucky if I can concentrate enough to do a moss stitch, so doing the crisp cables of Shedir threw me for a loop, at least in the beginning.

And I found it addictive. The more I knit, the more I wanted to see the pattern emerging, and the more I knit again. Just gorgeous! And tonight I finished it. I wove in all the loose ends and dashed to the mirror to put it on. I would be a vision of loveliness.

Well, that was the theory. Somehow, in my eagerness to knit this beautiful fabric, I forgot that I actually look hideous in snug-fitting caps. In a cap like this, I’m all cheeks and no forehead. Even worse, I forgot to measure my head to figure out if I would need to adjust the pattern. Since I wanted this hat for its beauty alone, and not for its hairline-covering ability (so important to women undergoing chemo), I should have taken out two repeats of the pattern. I didn’t do that, and now the hat is simply too deep for my head.

Oh well. It was a pleasure to knit, and I will tuck it away somewhere safe–with the sad knowledge that someday, I will know someone who will need this.

Revealing the secrets of the gods?

The never-ending sweater. This is the sweater I began so many months ago, believing (or at least hoping) that I could actually finish it by the time my knitting class ended in late December. Now, six weeks past the end of my class, I’m still knitting…and knitting…

I’m shaping the yoke right now, which just seems to be going on forever. I feel like the end is in sight, and yet it keeps slipping further and further away.

It’s a bit like being the character Tantalus from Greek mythology. He was punished for revealing the secrets of the gods to mortals, his punishment being to stand in a pool of water beneath the branches of a heavily-laden fruit tree. Whenever he bends to drink water, it recedes away. Whenever he reaches for a piece of fruit, the branches lift the fruit just beyond his grasp.

Now, did I reveal the secrets of the gods to anyone? I don’t remember doing so, but I can’t otherwise explain why this cardigan isn’t getting finished.

Here’s another great video from a year ago: a knitting machine made from Legos. It’s slow, but it works!

Extreme knitting

I just discovered this wonderful video on YouTube featuring an art project from 2006. A knitter from the UK, Rachel John, performs the amazing feat of knitting with 1,000 strands of yarn simultaneously. The entire process is a visual feast, as we watch Rachel and Carmen John set up all the cones of yarn, pull out the strands, and hoist them to a second-floor balcony, where the strands are grouped together and the knitting takes place. I never knew knitting could be such an athletic feat!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVRfVEONxJQ

One thing that is really beautiful about this project, apart from the actual project itself, is how much support the artist received for this project. In the credits, you see that she was not only supported by the Arts Council (UK), but also by quite a number of yarn companies. Britain is well known for supporting its artists. Does anything like this happen here? Does the NEA support this kind of work, too? I should find out.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone!!

Cable-palooza

I’ve been knitting. A lot. Making v-e-r-y slow progress. But here is my latest project:

It’s a cabled cardigan, worked in the round out of deep red Cascade 220. I’m following Elizabeth Zimmerman’s method (saddle-shouldered Aran cardigan), but she allows for so much customization that it really feels like a collaboration between the two of us.

The photo above shows the front, with the steek in front. I’ve never worked a steek before, and so far I’m fine with it. I may feel a bit different when it comes time to actually cut my own knitting. Deliberately.

This photo shows the back, with the spectacular center back cable. I found the pattern for that cable out of a Japanese knitting book. I don’t read Japanese, so I had to spend a fair amount of time just playing with the pattern until I had that “aha!” moment when I realized what all the symbols meant.

Lest you think I have really bad taste, the crazy blue-and-yellow yarn at the bottom isn’t a cheesy border pattern. It’s the waste yarn I used for a provisional cast on. I still haven’t decided what to do with the hem of this baby, so I’ll just wait and think about it later.

A detail from the center back cable.

A detail from the braid either side of the front opening

Making this sweater has been a great challenge–from choosing the cables to designing the layout to figuring out Japanese cable patterns to learning how to frog and frog and frog without despairing. I can only knit two or three rows of this an evening (it takes all my powers of concentration!), so I’m making very slow progress. But I think this one will be worth waiting for.

I have never been so proud of my country

I have never been so proud of my country as I was last night.

This is an enormous thing for me to say, because I haven’t always been proud of my country. For decades, I’ve been embarrassed by many of our leaders and our policies. I’ve been saddened by the betrayal of our ideals that seemed to be an entrenched part of presidential politics. During the times I’ve lived in, I’ve seen the promise of our founding ideals fading, not growing stronger.

When I was the age of my youngest son, assassins’ bullets took the lives of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

When I was the age of my older son, the schools in my southern neighborhood were all-white, and African American children were not welcome there.

When I was the age of my stepdaughter, the presidency was tainted by Nixon’s lies and cover-ups, and he left that office in disgrace.

And when I was the age of my stepson, the conservative revolution swept into power, and people changed. I began to lose faith in my fellow Americans, as I watched those who proclaimed themselves to be good Christians support politicians who punished the poor and rewarded the rich.

I watched our nation split into two. The haves and the have-nots. The Right and the Left. Them and Us.

What happened to “We the People”? What happened to our core American ideals? Were those nothing more than relics of a bygone age, something to be studied in history books?

Last night proved to me that those ideals are alive and well and beating in the hearts of Americans in every walk of life in this nation. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw the massive voter turnout, where once there was apathy. I saw the light in people’s faces as they began to realize that dreams really can come true. I watched the world applaud as America finally came to its senses and elected a real statesman as our leader. I was part of that historic moment, when America voted for change in so many different ways. To be part of all of this has been a transformational experience for me.

Now I believe.

Yes we can.