I think I am stuck on orange right now. I go outside all bundled up and peer through the cold
for my spring bulbs. They are not very evident. Yesterday I cleaned the garden of some winter debris
only to give up when I saw the bird bath had ice floating in it. In the full sun. At 12 noon.
This is no longer a joke, hence the need for strong warm colors.
I got started on this scarf a week ago. This is going to be a long term project as I am double knitting it. It is really neat to see
the colors emerging in amirror image on each side of the scarf.
As I also decided I needed to include a Fibonacci
sequence, I have to pay attention as it slowly grows. That's okay. We all need something that we slowly marvel at as
it unfolds. If Mother nature won't let me do it with flowers, at least this scarf lets me recreate it indoors.
4/15/08
Crazy People
What do you do when you have a visiting teacher? It depends. Luckily for all concerned, Lucy Neatby
is a delightful person, with a good sense of humor. How else can you explain her smile when, after teaching
all day,
we fed the woman all the pizzas at Pizza Luce that we have all been curious about, but too chicken to try on our own.
Luckily we ordered a standby 'Athena Pizza' (artichoke, feta, kalamata olives) so that we were not totally dependant on
garlic mashed potato pizza or barbeque with ham pizza.
The woman is a saint. Imagine the noise level of most of the staff of Borealis (all with our knitting) having dinner
and then add in interesting food. And then I had the nerve to ask her to come back again on her next Minnesota tour.
4/4/08
Finally Done
Well, I have been on a finishing tear lately. This is a vest that I started because I was inspired
by Lucy Neatby's last visit. I went on a tear, and got 2/3
of it finished very quickly, and then it sat. And sat. I managed to finish another project,
also a modular knitting item, which reminded me of the unfinished vest. It took
very little time to uncover the project and finish it. I'm glad, it was fun.
3/25/08
We are all longing for Spring. The late snow has been very pretty, and when I think about
the past few winters with no snow I am very grateful for the needed moisture, but....
I woke up this week with a morning off, and went in search of green.
As the outside wasn't collaborating with the desire for growing things, I took myself, a friend, a spouse,
and some knitting off to the Conservatory. We had breakfast at Keyes, and then went into the newly redone
greenhouses at Como Park. It was lovely. We sat for a bit in the new Fern room, which is quite different
from the old one, so well described in Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, but things change.
Some things don't. If you click the picture you can see yet another started project: Swag Socks
in Supersock from Cherry Tree Hill.
3/19/08
Terribly cute
Okay, I admit, I can be sucked into 'cute' things just as readily as the next knitter.
I am working on too many projects that I am trying to finish and yet
when this new egyptian cotton that stripes came in I had to do somethig with it. Luckily, common sense reared
its head before I started a full size project and I only made a baby sweater. I figured it's almost spring,
I won't need those wool socks til fall (Forget it, I am not going to admit how many
socks, that sweater I've been working on for my spose can be for yet another Christmas..
It is amazing the sensible justifications we can come up with. Mostly because okay, soon it will be too warm
for wool socks and wool sweaters, but is working on a cotton sweater for a bear any more useful?
Perhaps not, but it was satisfying.
1/31/08
Christmas is now officially over. The last present is off the needles. And I even beat the end of the Winter carnival!
I stayed up late Tuesday night, and finally finished the Kasai Vest from
Cheryl Oberle's Folk Vests.
Of course, I had to add more colors. The vest as in the book is a restrained and
elegant 2 color object. It is beautiful, and muted. I looked at that and thought I can fix that...
and so the riotous colors. I used 7 different colors for the triangles on a background of Simply Shetland's DK
Natural black. Pretty spiffy huh?
12/13/07
Once again with feeling...
Here's a last look at one of the Poinsettas I made for the
Nettie and Friend's show at the Egg & I on University Ave and 280 in St Paul/Minneapolis. The
show proceeds go to support the Maxfield Learning Center where Nettie works. They use the money for
trips, snacks, uniforms, the daily stuff
of life for school kids that our taxes used to pay for in a kinder, gentler, more equitable time.
The show opened earlier this month and the stuff is amazing. Nettie herself is so
creative, I should not have been surprised to see how much beautiful and
unique items her friends could produce to support the school at which she works. I saw handmade tiles, bags, mittens,
and more items than you could shake a poinsetta at.
I had to include 'Allie' on the site as she is one of our three current cats and was
not pleased at being excluded from other pictures.
Check out Nettie's show if you are by 280 and University and get a little Christmas Shopping
done while you have some breakfast.
11/14/07
I have been struggling lately with all the stuff left undone in my life; papers unfiled,
leaves unraked, books not read, projects unfinished. A friend and I were talking and she mentioned that
as we are required more and more to multi-task all the time, in all the corners of our life, 'ADT' or attention
defiect traits, are showing up more and more. And here I thought I was just experiencing months
of 'senior moments' squished into a shorter and shorter time.
So what I did was to stay up a little later and finish more of a project
that was feeling like a deadline
too many pieces, too little time...
These are the pieces from poinsettas from a pattern from Pick Up Sticks
that I am knitting for Nettie's Show at the Egg and I on December 1. When I called Pick Up Sticks and
asked permission to knit these for sale at the show, they were so nice and immediately gave permission
as the show proceeds go to support the Maxfield Learning Center.
(yes, Virginia, a copywrited pattern means you can't make it and sell the item without permission)
All this brings me to the point. Okay, I've got lots of unfinished stuff in my life.
Does it get done any faster if I feel bad about it? Will it kill me if I put a project, a task on the shelf for a while?
Probably not. I am going to try and ignore more of the "I Shoulds" and work on more on the "Oh Pretty's"
too many "I Shoulds", too little naps...
Coincedentially, I was over at the Wisdom Ways Center at the Sisters of St Joseph of Carondelet
yesterday and gave a small presentation of yarns, ideas, etc for knitting for others. They are starting a small group
for knitting called "Made by Hand: Yarn and You
~ Prayer Shawls for Knitters. An interesting group of women. A nifty place. I may make time and see
what a little wisdom in my life does me. It has to be better than worrying about multi-tasking and adt
10/29/07
Boy, the last couple of weeks have been crazy. I still haven't gotten back to
my sweater, instead concentrating on class work, poinsettas, and a few other
small distractions. Mainly the 'Comfy Hat' as a new project. Why?
I fell off the yarn wagon. We got in the yarns for the "Twisted Float shrug" and they were
too pretty to leave alone. What could I do? Obviously make a few hats. This is the Beta
version, the first was not quite what I was looking for, which is sort of
a deep pillbox.
10/13/07
Distractions
Yes this is a new project.
But as I was teaching a class on Christmas stockings, I had to drop my birthday sweater and work on the class
project. I also threw in a sock I am working on for the sock of the month club.
Maybe it's not how little I finish, instead how easy I can be to distract. Now that I have not had
time to work on the birthday sweater all week, the urgency and wonder I felt while knitting it starts to diminish.
This is how I can occasionally pull out a sweater started 3 years ago and finish it in a very short time.
People think I am a fast knitter, but instead maybe I am just storing up half completed projects to
whip out later and make a sweater in an amazing amount of time. I'll have to think about that.
Particuliarly as Annie Modesitt is coming to teach
a class and I immediately thought of doing her
Cocoon wrap shrup from Vogue knitting. Nope. Got to get back to the Ineke sweater.
10/2/07
As usual I have been obsessing over how little I get accomplished during the day.
I whine (mostly to myself , thank the heavens,) about how I never seem to finish
anything and that yarn keeps multiplying like rabbits in the corners of my house.
It actually does, I swear. Other wise HOW could a ball of yarn have materialized
in a bowl on the kitchen counter, that was put there to make pies for Thanksgiving? No, I don't make pies,
and yes they were for last year, but never got made... Either one of 2 things occured: My husband couldn't
get to the bowl because the aforementioned yarn took up residence, OR, perhaps, it is the small things
that don't get done when you are juggling a career, your own interests, and a spouse
who is a small business person.
Which brings me back to these mittens. I actually have made quite a few,
but no finished pairs as I am saving the Thumbs for a class. So not quite
a finished object, maybe more of a promise like the thought of
pumpkin pies for this year if I can convince the wayward yarn to move
out of our pie bowl.
Here's what I've got so far, one back panel, half of one front panel. A friend said it looked Persian.
Hopefully not like a rug, but maybe the colors look jewel tone. Anyway, it has been fun. I keep switching
the colors rather than exactly following the pattern sequence as I like to see how the colors spark off each other.
If you make the picture larger, you'll find why it's a little shaky. I had to
hurry and take the picture before the circling sharks moved in for a kill.
9/28/07
Katie's blog
has been right, I, like many, need to finish objects. But it was my birthday, and resolutions are
always weaker on those days. Pain pills from the dentist are also amazing resolution waverers.
So Iam starting another sweater. It gives me a chance to play with more colors than ever.
The sweater is "Ineke" from Louet, and what a treat. I choose 7 colors from among all
my favorites: Silky Sock, Lucy Neatby's Celestial Merino, Shibui, CTH's Handpaint gems fingering.
It's going to be beautiful. As part of trying to finish other objects, I'm going to make it a
point to try and finish some objects and post them here. Thus does other's resolutions (Katie's finishing 10 objects)
make cowards of us all....
9/27/07
I love Birthdays. After a not so hot month, (I actually took 3 days in a row off
to go up north, during which time a tooth absessed, got back swollen as a chipmunk, had an oral surgeon tell me
"Whooa! That bad boy's got to come out right now!" I stumbled into the store yesterday, and had a small party.
There was cake AND a Sockbuddy!
Deni makes them out of goodwill sweaters and cool vintage buttons. They are perfect for carrying
your current sock project around, and they are gorgeous and unique. Eat your heart out.
Yes, that's
dream in color sock yarn peeking out, only the best for my buddy.
9/5/7
Okay, after a year plus hiatus, I'm back. So many things
slip our mind when we are busy. One of those things is taking pictures. I always sniffed at
how few baby pictures there are of me growing up. True, I was number 5 out of 6 kids, but
still they could have taken a few more! You can look at old pictures and see exactly when my
parents got around to the realization that 'hey, we have albums and albums of the older kids...'
What kind of makes it fun is counting the candles on my cake. My 4th birthday was big, as was my
8th.
Which brings me to these socks. I always mean to take pictures of what I've finished, sort
of a record that I do occasionally finish things, but life often intervenes. Anyway,
I was working on something else and stumbled accross this picture of socks that I knit for a sister,
(with 5 siblings a certain amount of my knitting disappears from Minnesota) and realized that I had
forgotten I knit them, forgotten how cool they were, and that maybe I should revisit the pattern
(Fiber trends "Peak Experience Socks") to make myself a pair. So I guess I'll add it to the list
rather than find my camera and take a picture of the scarf I finished yesterday.
5/16/2006
,b>5/16/2006 I've been thinking about stash reduction. As a
knitter for several decades, you don't want to talk about exactly how much you can put
away of gorgeous yarns that you mean to get to eventually. Opening a yarn store only
confirmed, not exacerbated the problem. So lately I've been furiously working on
sock yarn, felted animals, clogs, etc out of my stash. It didn't even make a dent.
I got to work more seriously, and even created
a free pattern for
May just to use up one of the 3 lonely skeins of
Noro's Silk Garden I had in my stash. I also wanted to show that Silk Garden will
felt, sort of, but only after heroic measures. So I made a cool potholder, as I had
also been working on techniques to felt a flat piece of knitting without getting
a ruffled and distorted edge. The project worked beautifully. It's soft and
supple so you can safely pick up pans without them slipping, and it looks so
handsome that it seems a shame to leave it in the kitchen.
This leads us to the problem of stash reduction. Mind you, I created
the above potholder to get rid of 1 of 3 skeins of Silk Garden. However, as I worked on it, all I could
think about is how well the technique would work if I took it a step further. Just think, all of that
color and softness of silk garden spreading out across your lap on a cold dreary winter's day
Each strip is one skein. Do the math. I started with 3, used 1 for a potholder, and looking at the
picture...
I guess that's what our stashes are for, to inspire us when we least expect it. Or else to drive us
crazy with the unrealized potential.
