Pegotty

Instant Patchwork

2009-11-13T21:00:00.007-06:00

Instant patchwork!

You start with three or four different fabrics. Seam them together. Cut them apart, preferably in an asymmetric fashion (meaning not into nice, neat, matching pieces, but - for example - into one third of one end and two-thirds of the rest).

Seam those together. Easy, peasy machine sewing, straight stitch, in a thread color that will blend into the background. (I used a vanilla white with fabrics of blues and greens and creams and pinks and yellows. Worked fine.) Press open the seams with a hot iron. Cut them apart again. Seam those pieces together. At this point, you should have some fun stuff going on as well as some areas where you wonder how you managed to put that strong floral pattern in so many places that, no matter what, it seems to lay up against another flowered piece in the "partner" piece you are bumping it up against.

Continue until you have the look that you want. If you stop sooner, you'll have nice, long stretches of a pattern with the occasional little block of something else popping up, a quirky surprise. If you continue along for a while - perhaps four sets of sewing and cutting - you'll have a more random look, somewhat crazy quilt and somewhat, dare I say, Gee's Bend-ish. (Ann and Kay, please leave a comment if you read this, pro or con!)

Here's what my patchwork looked like on the wrong side after three go-arounds. And below (I need to write this on my forehead, or at least somewhere on the computer: Blogger loads your photos in the opposite order of whatever literary development you'd planned for the written entry), the fabric after two repeats of cutting and seaming. Still at the rectangular strip, larger block stage of the process.

The inspiration? Kaffe Fassett's Quilts in the Sun. Especially the Log Cabin below and the Earthy Frames in the picture beneath.

My instant patchwork has turned into patches on some ticking-slip covered chairs in the living room. It feels very Bloomsbury. I'm contemplating a whole quilt-top made in this manner, in something bright and happy for a Chicago winter.

Have His Carcase

2009-11-12T16:29:00.005-06:00

The first lines of this Dorothy Sayers mystery:

The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people seem to think, repose on a manly bosom. Much more efficacious are honest work, physical activity, and the sudden acquisition of wealth.

I could go on (okay, the next sentence starts: After having been acquitted of murdering her lover...) This is the right sort of book for reading as winter sets in. Or listening in the car to the audio version read by Ian Carmichael, who gets every voice (including the Honorable Sir Freddy and the crusty female dons in Gaudy Night and Sir Peter alternately foppish and war-wounded and very intelligent and Harriet Vane bright and independent and finally, in love).

Chanting. A Lot....

2009-11-09T08:10:00.006-06:00

When you get to see someone who is really, really good at what she does, it is an amazing thing.

I spent this weekend at a workshop on chanting, given by a master teacher who has been studying chant for the last 35 years or so. She managed to get a motley bunch of voices all working together, with attention to fine details like - you have two consonants back to back and you need to sound both the first and the second - and attention to the bigger picture - you're not going to get it right the first or the second or the twentieth time - this stuff takes practice!

It may sound odd to those of you who don't practice yoga or chanting to imagine twenty-some adults, voluntarily spending the weekend in a classroom, learning to chant in Sanskrit. And the weather? My gosh, sunny, seventy degrees, blue skies, and still, everyone came back from the breaks.

We chanted Friday nght for two hours. We chanted and did a practice with movement and chanting on Saturday. On Sunday, we reviewed what we had learned so far and then dived into an extremely beautiful chant called Laghunyasah, or more familiarly known as Agnirme (the first words of the chant, pronounced ugg-nearrr-may.) That is a lot of chanting. Not only are you thinking hard (what word is next? is the note high, low or middle? is this a long vowel or a short? what does that little dot under the r mean?). You are also paying an unusual amount of attention to the way that you move your mouth and tongue (lips push forward for the 'o' in OM, bring the tongue back to the roof of the mouth for a retroflex n, roll all r's, bring the tongue to the back of the front teeth for a dental consonant...). And many, many other details - pausing after this word, pushing these two words together, and oh, am I off the note yet again?

I said to my teacher, during a private lesson on Friday, that my brain can only hold two pieces of information at one time. I can try to notice the proper pronunciation and the vowels, but then I lose the notes. Or the notes and the vowels, but then I lose the consonants. She looked at me, and this is one of the reasons that she is such a great teacher. "Janet," she said, "most people are doing well if they can hold ONE piece of information in their mind." Hmm. Always the overachiever. Chanting is another one of those darned yoga mirrors - letting you see all of your mental quirks and habits laid out in front of you.

Also, I need to pace myself when I chant. I know, from past experience, that I am a lightweight: a little bit of chanting goes a long way for me. (I've tried to talk a few colleagues into doing a study on the relationship between tolerance for chant compared to tolerance for booze, but so far, no takers.) I chanted aloud about 65% of the time, did quieter chanting about another 15-20%, and then just sat and listened the rest of the time. Chanting not only takes a lot of brain power: it literally creates vibrations in the chest and head, as you make sound, and if you're not accustomed to this, you want to adjust the amount and type and level of loudness to what is right for you. Otherwise, you may find yourself staring at the ceiling at 2 am, feeling like you just drank three double espressos, but knowing, no, I didn't drink any coffee today. Hmm.

The best parts of the weekend were the more casual moments with my teacher. I ferried her about a bit from hotel to classroom. We had lunch and then took a walk at a garden foundation near the venue for the workshop on Friday and again on Sunday (nuts - the place was so packed that cars were being turned away due to lack of parking and there were more kids running about than at the zoo on a summer day, tunneling into leaf piles or tossing leaves on top of their mom's head - and then there were two tiny babies, sitting in a pile of leaves as if they were ruling from their thrones). A group of us went out for dinner on Saturday evening and had one of those magical Chicago nights - it reminded me of the evening that Obama accepted the presidency at Grant Park - unseasonably warm weather, a gorgeous sky, and we ate outside in the garden of the restaurant on Saturday night.

Today, not much yoga, except for a class with my mentor on the phone. Hopefully, plenty of sitting still and reading or knitting the sleeves (two at once!) of my Handy cardigan or the Noro scarf (a better choice, as it requires less brain cells, and I'm down to a tiny amount after this weekend.)

Home Again

2009-11-05T11:44:00.002-06:00

Home again after a few days in Pittsburgh.

I took along this scarf to work on. A skein or two of discontinued Noro color 47: manly shades of blacks, browns and greys. Mixed in with a new skein and an old one of blues and greens. I'm using a size 6 needle and the fabric feels a little floppy, but I think that it will be just drapey enough and right for a man's scarf. (I also took along yarn for a Turn a Square hat and Blue Sky Alpaca for a Shibori Felted Scarf. I used to have Shoe Anxiety when I packed to go away. Now I have Knitting Anxiety.)

Over the last three days, I spent most of my waking hours talking, eating, driving to the next place to eat, driving home from eating, and then a tiny bit of walking home from this restaurant or that. Yum. Very fun, and I spent some time with two old friends and taught yoga to a group of my sister's friends who were eager and fun and funny.

Little knitting got done. And somehow, on the way home, in a closed car, I managed to lose my knitting needle for five minutes. Finally found it under the passenger seat, and then managed to make a mistake in this idiot-proof pattern of two rows of one color, two rows of the other. Time to eat lunch and then take a nap!

Three Rivers

2009-11-03T10:09:00.006-06:00

I'm in the real city of three rivers this week. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I don't have my camera but I'm hoping to find some good, on-line stuff to borrow for illustrations.

Some things that do not change:

the amazing view of the rivers and sunlight and bridges as you come out of a tunnel, only to have the city and water and buildings gleaming, laid out in front of you
the number of smokestacks and long, low, factories. Even when you are a dying steel town on its third (?) renaissance, there are still many reminders of what drove this city from the beginning
the name of Heinz. It used to be all about the ketchup and the factory (which I toured as a kid and still proudly own my Heinz green plastic pickle pin as well as a Heinz 57 ketchup bottle pin from a later trip). Now it's Teresa Heinz: wife of John Kerry, who hosted, as I heard it, the Obamas when they were in town for the G20. (Some Obama lore: the President says thank you each time a waiter brings something to the table, and after the meal, goes back into the kitchen to personally thank the staff. I love this!)
Pamela's. Before I stepped foot off the airplane, three different people had invited me there for breakfast or lunch. No wonder, and more Obama lore: the sisters from Pamela's served their best-in-the-world secret-batter pancakes to the Obamas during a visit, then were invited to the White House to serve same pancakes. (Apparently they had the secret batter but not the secret griddle, so the edges weren't as crispy and the pancakes weren't as neo-crepe-like-but with the hominess of a pancake in DC.)
As usual, a visit with and to my family is firmly anchored by food. We love food. We eat it, talk about it, cook it, eat it while talking about it, and then discuss it while waiting to eat some more. On the other hand, most of us are a reasonable weight or better. This supports my theory that the best way to change a habit is through small satisfactions in that direction (I'll have some cake, but only a small piece of cake) instead of denial (NO CAKE! MUST EAT CAKE! WILL EAT MANY CHIPS BECAUSE THERE CAN BE NO CAKE!) And that, at least in my immediate family of husband and kids, much of our talk about food comes while we are taking a walk or a hike. (Not sure of the scientific validity, but there might be a dissertation in here somewhere for a student of psychology?)
and some knitting is getting done: a Noro striped scarf worked on the airplane. (I got up to use the front restroom and realized, after navigating through half the plane, that there was a loop of yarn around my right ankle. So much for being incognito, if that had been my plan.) And my sister has a great swing-style cardigan from Knit and Tonic to try.
and we've already hit one vintage clothing store and have plans to do another one tomorrow. As always, my sister has the ability to look at a case full of old jewelry and then pull out of the melee the one piece that is distinctive and stylish and fun. This time it was a necklace with strands of carnelian beads and then strands of a burnished brass bead - very tribal and colorful but classy. She talked me into a pair of striped summer pants that will be super comfy with a t-shirt and a pair of sandals, and almost into a Marc Jacobs shrunken blazer.

Waiting

2009-10-31T11:35:00.003-05:00

Parker, sitting in the same place for hours yesterday, looking at more raining coming down.
I eventually tried to entice him down to the yard by walking down the stairs and tossing a tennis ball for a game of fetch. He dashed off, grabbed the ball up, and ran right back up the steps to the porch. Ah well, I tried. (Later on I did take him for a longish walk in the rain.)

A skein of Misti Alpaca handpainted sock yarn. I like that you can see the little, fuzzy alpaca hairs sticking out of the skein. In real life, the yarn is more blue-green and less pumpkin-yellow.

I learned a lesson with this one: read the care instructions before purchase. I can't see myself handwashing socks, so this will either be a scarf or be an exchange for some Noro for the Brooklyn Tweed striped Noro scarf.

And my current bugaboo: a very simple cardigan, based on the Set-in Sleeve Cardigan from Ann Budd's Handy Book of Knitted Sweater Patterns. Still like the yarn: Cascade 220. Still like the color: a cordovan brown with touches of maroon and olive green. Still like the edging: black Cascade.

But somehow, even with this direct and clear a pattern, I've made mistakes. Yesterday, after realizing that the sleeve was too long and too wide, and when I should have put it away until I had a clearer mind, I accidentally ripped back the right front, thinking that it was the sleeve.

That was actually dilemma #1: how in heck can the sleeve be bigger than the front of the sweater? (This is the sleeve, by the way. You could fit two small children inside.)

I managed to find my way back to where I stopped and worked my way back up the right front while watching The Office. Then I compared the fronts to the pattern, and I think that I neglected to do about three more inches and some neckline decreases after finishing the armholes.

How can it be so hard for me to knit one, darn, simple sweater? Arggghhhh. I put it away for the night (okay, after googling how to knit two sleeves at the same time...and peeking at Ravelry, because if you're not knitting, you might as well be thinking or reading about knitting) and will look at pattern and sweater again today.

Telling the Truth

2009-10-27T11:30:00.005-05:00

A photo of some canine friends on a beach in Chennai. Communication seems to be going smoothly, which leads me into today's post about all the complications of humans trying to communicate...

I'm always intrigued by the order of information in the Yoga Sutra-s. So I find if interesting that Patanjali, in the Yoga Sutra-s, places how we behave toward our fellow human beings ahead of one's personal behaviors in discussing ways to decrease suffering and improve our understanding - basically, how to be a better person.

It reminds me that this text keeps reminding us that the ultimate purpose of yoga is to improve our ability to navigate the world. Not so much perfecting what happens in class, or on the mat, but in our day-to-day interactions with family, friends, bosses, strangers on the street or in the cars next to us on the expressway.

These ways of interacting with one's community are called Yama - what Mr. Desikachar, in his edition of the Sutra-s, calls "our attitudes towards our environment."

Today, I've been thinking about truth, or satya. Satya is the practice of clear, honest communication. This includes what we say to one another as well as the things we write, our actions, and even our gestures. (What parent hasn't seen that eye roll from a teenager that means - yep, I'm saying that I'm listening - but I'm really off in another, happier place in my mind where I am the one who is RIGHT!)

Being honest can be tough. But what is even trickier is communicating in a way that does not hurt the other person.

Back to that ordering principle: the first Yama is ahimsa: non-violence, as in being considerate to others, not hurting, as in the physician's mandate to "first do no harm." So, as we are working to practice truthfulness in our conversations or in an email or in a brief interaction with a stranger who pushes in front of us in line, we also want to take the time to frame the communication appropriately, with some svadhyaya - self-reflection. Will what I am about to say hurt this person? Am I speaking out because I have an axe to grind - or because I really believe that this needs to be said? What words should I use? And is this the right time for the conversation - or will the other person be embarrassed because there are too many other people around observing and listening?

In my tradition, we call satya "the truth that does not hurt." And I like this distinction, because too many self-help books are encouraging the act of speaking up - what some call "speaking my truth" - as though the action of throwing those words and feelings out into the maelstrom of human relations is the first priority.

But words can be like little bombs striking an emotional ground. Even when it's the truth, it's good to stop and consider how to say your message, when to say it, whether it will cause pain to the other person, and if that discomfort is warranted by the situation. We need not be Stepford wives, spreading bland acceptance wherever we go. Neither should we be warriors for our own perceptions.

Lately, I've been thinking about a wonderful quote from Thich Nhat Hahn from a Speaking of Faith podcast my daughter referred me to. When asked how he brings his message of compassion to so many different groups of people - Hollywood celebs, 9/11 responders, people reeling from earthquake or other tragedies - he said something like this: I try to understand the particular suffering of each person. Only by understanding another's suffering can we begin to feel compassion for them.

I've been thinking about this - I try to understand the particular suffering of each person - when someone is driving me crazy. If I can think about how he or she is struggling, I'm a little more likely to practice compassion, and then, the right kind of communication - satya.

Hiking in Minneapolis

2009-10-23T11:41:00.004-05:00

One of the amazing things about Minneapolis is that you can be out in the woods and by the water in no-time flat. On Monday morning we went for a hike along the Mississippi. Tuesday morning, another walk, this time by one of the many lakes scattered throughout the city. The sun was shining, the air was brisk but still sweater-weather, and you could see the blue sky.

Much of the walk reminded me of Rivers and Tides, the documentary about the work of sculptor Andy Goldsworthy and the influences of time and nature on his work. I was inspired, as we hiked, to collect hundreds of leaves, arrange them by shades of orange and yellow and green, pin them together with thorns with an uneven circle of open space at the center, and set them to flow with the Mississippi. I didn't, but I thought about it.

Here's a beach along the Mississippi. A beach. In Minnesota?

And the river with the sun shining. Makes me think about Huck and Jim.

And three of the group hiking.

These pictures and the wet fall leaves, lying on the ground, as I walked from the car into the house today, make me want to dye some yarn in these colors. Maybe I'll try to collect some photos for inspiration for another day, as Sundara, a master dyer, seems to do.

Basics

2009-10-21T11:37:00.003-05:00

I'm working on a cardigan from Ann Budd's The Knitter's Book of Handy Sweater Patterns. (Or is it the Handy Book of Knitted Sweaters?)

The yarn is Cascade 220 in a heathered brown with a slight overlay of maroons and olive green that gives the yarn some depth. (It's Cordovan, #9408.) And I'm trying to stick with a fusion of the very basic, set-in sleeve cardigan with a few touches from the Cropped Cardigan, such as using black Cascade for a very minimalist edging.

My goal is for this sweater to be a tutorial that helps me learn how the Cascade behaves, how the specs of this sweater work for me - so that I can improve my ability to get a decent fit - and to do something stockinette so that I can achieve a finished sweater in a reasonable amount of time. We drove to and from Minneapolis this weekend and I worked through the back and part of the left front: knitting with no distractions and a good Elizabeth Peters book-on-tape really let you get some serious knitting done.

Weaving a Felted Yoga Bag

2009-10-11T13:20:00.004-05:00

I'm testing how to weave a felted yoga mat bag. I warped the loom with Harrisville Designs worsted-weight yarn in a lilac shade at 8 ends per inch. The pattern is set up for Balanced Twill from Davison, but I'm weaving the fabric in plain weave because I found the samples that I did in twill to be too busy. The warp is the same lilac, a deep violet, and a sea-glass green and is woven at about 4 picks per inch.

The result is a very open fabric, more like a large-scale burlap than a woven cloth. But I found through sampling that felting is counter-intuitive: the more open and floppy the fabric, the more dense and thick is the final felted product. And I did decide to just jump into the project after forcing myself to do two different sample warps. Either it will work, or I'll have a piece of felted tweed cloth to find a destination for.

Trying to think ahead to what I would need if I was knitting the bag instead of weaving it, I put in a floating selvage of a mercerized cotton thread, doubled, at either edge. This makes it much easier to keep the margins straight - and will allow me to have a focus for where to pick up stitches or seam when the cloth is felted. (Note: I decided to seam the tube before felting. But the floating selvages still helped keep my edges straight and showed me where to put the needle as I was seaming.) I did something similar at the top and bottom edges, but as I also decided to knit a bottom by picking up stitches from the lower edge, I'm not sure that I needed this step. Next time, I'd use a contrast color in the warp yarn so that when I pick the stitches up for the bottom, I'd have a hem in a different color inside the bag.

This is all in the speculative stage. I'm trying to focus and finish the finishing (still need to pick up and knit on a strap) so that I can toss it all into the washing machine and see what happens.

And a new toy: my husband gave me a swift and a winder for my birthday.

Dirgha Kala

2009-10-09T14:37:00.016-05:00

Dirgha kala, in Sanskrit, means over a long time. The phrase comes up in the 14th sutra in Book I of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra-s.
This sutra sets out some suggestions for ways to develop a practice. As always, you can understand these writings from the perspective of yoga: how do we build a consistent yoga practice? But you can also think about them as applying to life in a wider context: how do we maintain and develop any kind of endeavor, whether it is work, play, or a combination thereof?

In this sutra, Patanjali suggests that we try a few things. First, stick with it for a period of time. This is the dirgha kala part: kala means time and dirgha suggests an extended period of time. Not a few minutes and then we move on. Not a few days and then we abandon. Nope - staying the course for a chunk of time.

Next nairantarya: without interruption. This one is my favorite, both for the sound of the word in Sanskirt -- nigh-run-tarrr-yee-ah -- and for the meaning. It reminds me that if I want to learn something thoroughly, that I need to resist the urge to multi-task and jump from interest to interest. If I want to become more proficient as a knitter, I need to knit for a while. Not knit today, weave tomorrow, start a quilt the next day. Or, more specifically, if I want to truly understand how a yarn behaves, what projects it will work for, how it will change with different gauges and stitches, then I need to knit with that one type of yarn for a while. I was reminded of this by a master knitter at my LYS, who pointed out that because there is so much choice available in yarns now, that we rarely come to know a yarn well enough to trust it. Or to become creative with it. As I've been knitting my current pair of mittens in Alice Starmore's Hebrides 3-ply, I've been considering staying with that yarn for several pairs, trying out different colorways, and keeping the cost of this amazing yarn within some sense of reason by using it for a small project like mittens.

But back to the sutra: satkara adara asevito are the next suggestions for developing a practice. Satkara means to have a sense of commitment, a belief in what you are doing, to do something sincerely. Adara is to have a positive attitude: we look forward to the venture. And asevito means to do something with a sense of service or respect. This last one is a bit tricky to explain to Westerners, because the idea of service has a negative connotation for many of us. I think of asevito not in the sense of being a servant, but in terms of being part of a tradition, being a student who carries forward the learning from my predecessors.

The last word of the sutra is drdhabumih, which means a strong foundation. As is typical of sutras, the most important word, the point of the sentence, is in the last position. You can start here and work your way forward to get the elaboration. In this case, Patanjali is explaining that, in order to build a strong, solid foundation for a venture - whether it's yoga, or learning to bake bread, or perfecting your tango - you will want to stay with it for a long time, without interruption, with respect and a positive attitude and eagerness.

Patanjali is not telling the reader not to try different things, not taking an authoritarian stance that there is only one right practice. One thing that I love about the sutras is that they are not proscriptive. One of the most often utilised words in the first book is the word va, which means or. As in, if that didn't work, try this. Or this. Or this. But he is noting that the thinner you spread yourself, the less depth in your understanding of each activity. If you're happy experimenting with a new yarn for every project, no problem. But if your goal is to know a yarn so well that you almost don't have to swatch, so that you can readily adapt a pattern to that favorite yarn, so that you take pleasure in knitting because you have reached samadhi - the stage at which the effort falls away and there is a strong link between the mind and the object - then you are going to want some dirgha kala, nairantarya, and so on.

Note: this is the first mitten of a pair of Aethelwyne from Robin Melanson's Knitting New Mittens and Gloves. The yarn is Alice Starmore's Hebrides 3-ply in Kelpie (the blue) and a green whose color I can't recall. Hard to photograph but amazing colorways and a fun, elfin pair of mittens. I feel like I'm ready to be in Lord of the Rings.

A Mitten for every Pocket

2009-10-05T14:46:00.004-05:00

I am trying to knit enough mittens so that I can stash a pair in the pocket of every winter coat.

And during or after that, knit a shawl like the one that I saw today at Stockholm Objects. (Sadly, not on the website and only one left at the store.) A square of grey wool lace, probably DK weight, edged with a hot pink, mondo-crocheted edging. Perhaps I'll base it on Priscilla Gibson-Robert's Christening Chrysalis in the Knitter's Magazine best of shawls and scarves collection.

Working from Home

2009-10-03T15:02:00.007-05:00

The rhythm of working from home is hard to accustom myself to. Some days are empty of appointments and full of time for me to structure on my own. Other days are busy, jumbled, full of classes with students and voicemails and driving to appointments to places that I've not been to meet with people who are new to me, and broken up into many, many tiny elements. I look up and it's dinnertime.

I've mentally assigned an appliance to each kind of day. The slow, quiet, solitary day is my refrigerator. Every day I intend to clean it. It really needs to be done: it's in that state where vegetables have died off and the drips of milk from the gallon jug and the indecipherable stream of something unknown beneath the vegetable drawers is noticeable. And almost every day, as I make my lunch, I'll say to myself, today is the day to clean the refrigerator. And then, it does not get done. I am productive, but in a desultory fashion: I study, I prepare the lecture for my class on Yoga and Weight Loss, I work on outreach for the yoga therapy work, I answer emails from prospective clients, and I try to get some exercise/walk the dog so that we both get some fresh air. Dinner time rolls around. I start to cook, pour myself a glass of wine, and consider that I have managed to make it through another day without cleaning the fridge.

The other kind of day is my cell phone. Never before have I been so linked to a cell phone. Last month we had a HUGE bill, and when I mentioned this to two friends who have teenagers, they were like, well, it was time way back to go for the unlimited minutes and texting. Who knew: I've never used my phone for much beside the possible emergency use or the do-we-need-milk-on-my-way-home call. Now, the busy days seemed centered around answering the thing, checking the voicemail, trying to return the calls I've gotten, and always a few stray calls that I realize, just when I think that I'm done, that I want to try to get under my belt. The thing follows me around, physically or mentally, and I think, this is one of the things that I did not relish about academic life: the difficulty in separating work from home life.

At the same time, it's exciting to be talking with people who are themselves excited about what I do.

Other good things: I am a winner! I won a prize from Twist's first anniversary contest. It's a square knitting needle (I know, I haven't tried it yet, but the packaging insists several times that they are ergonomically engineered to reduce stress on the hands), a free pattern (not yet chosen), and a lovely postcard. And I am trying to get out from under the few last projects not finished. Below, a detail from Moriah's Wildflower cardigan in Cascade Eco. I had the brilliant idea of trying to steek a cardigan for the first time without directions. Now almost done with working on the fronts, I've bailed - among the problems was that I didn't know that the button band gets picked up after the steeking, as well as plenty o' mistakes in the seed stitch band, the buttonholes, and that the sweater seems wide enough (no waist shaping in this pattern...) that I may be able to jury rig a different finishing. My plan is to just sew up the front sides, cut away the seed stitch and pick up a new edging.

Socks

2009-09-29T19:47:00.007-05:00

Baby Cable socks of Louet Gems, fingering weight. Enough, just, for a pair using one skein.

I enjoy the process of knitting socks (this is itself is cause for fireworks, because I've never before noticed that I am becoming a process versus product knitter), but have not yet found a yarn or pattern that measures up to SmartWool socks, which are the ne plus ultra, the Platonic Ideal, of sockdom.

Also working on playing with dyeing of yarn. Yesterday I tested over-dyeing some Cascade 220 by kettle-dyeing and low-water immersion dyeing, based on the best dyeing book I've seen - Teach Yourself VISUALLY Hand-dyeing. Everything is in this book - when to add or not add acid to the pre-soak, how much dye to mix to get various strengths of solution, how to do everything from meticulously-recorded dye processes to free-form dyeing - you, the yarn, and a spray bottle of dye. Lots of really clear photos (I'm new to this series) accompanied by straightforward prose and directions. I highly recommend the book, which I'm disciplining myself to read from cover to cover instead of wildly flipping through for the technique that I think I want.

Fiddlehead Mittens

2009-09-24T13:50:00.007-05:00

I enjoyed this project from start to finish. And the results? My most favorite thing that I've ever knitted. I am seriously considering braiding a tie to keep them together and threading it through my sleeves like a four-year-old going out to play in the snow.

Pattern: Fiddlehead Mittens

Designer: Adrian Bizilia

Yarn: shell, Blue Sky Alpaca Sportweight, 1 skein chartreuse, 1/2 skein each of purple, blue, and grey; liner, Baby Ull, 1 skein of chartreuse

Needles: size 1 Knit Picks 40" circular with Harmony wood tip

Size: Women's Small/Child's Large (see below for modifications to the original pattern)

Gauge after finishing: shell, soaked, towel dried, then blocked to maximum size, 26 st and 26 rows in stranded colorwork; liner, soaked and towel dried, 28 st and 38 rows in stockinette

I know it will be a good knit when I have looked at a pattern over and over on Ravelry. As the weather cooled off this summer, I remembered Kelley Petkun's podcast about quick knits of mittens and hats, and I allowed myself to click on the Add to Cart icon and bought the pattern. A cold Chicago winter would come. Also helpful was the class on Latvian mittens that I took at my LYS last spring. We made a mini-mitten, and I loved the playing with color, the practicality, and the eventual beauty and warmth of a mitten with stupendous colorwork on the public side and warm lining on the private side.

Below, a shot of the mitten and liner. Very easy to do. You pick up a stitch for every stitch on the I-cord border, then decrease so that the liner fits snugly. After the concentration required to follow the colorwork charts, the liner is a treat and sails along pretty quickly. Once you've finished the liner, you push it inside the mitten. This leaves the smooth stockinette side against your hand and provides a double-thick layer of wooly mitten.I made several modifications to the original pattern in order to size it down to my hand, which measures 6 1/2" from wrist to tip of middle finger. Here's a list:

start hand decreases on Row 55 of main chart
mitten shell totals 65 rows instead of 72
not a size modification - but I liked the look of working the thumb in CC3 (contrast color 3) and the main color, and ending with a little bit of contrast in another color
I repeated the last row of the gusset pattern before moving the stitches to a piece of waste yarn (apparently my thumbs are long in proportion to my hands - I'm observing them now, and they almost reach the first knuckle of the index finger...is that typical?)
start decreases for thumb on row 7 of Chart C
decrease next 3 rows
work 1 row even with MC and finish off
for the lining: I worked 26 rows to the start of the thumb gusset; then 3 rows after completing the gusset before moving stitches to waste yarn; then 33 rows straight on the main part before beginning the decreases for the top of the liner

The result is a really beautiful piece of knitting. At a semi-affordable yarn investment. (Well, I've been looking at catalogs that are calling for 12 and 13 skeins of yarn at $10 and more a skein.) And very reassuring to knit: clear directions, a Ravelry support group available with good threads of discussion, logical, great charts. And the color? I went with one color for the details and four other colors for background, but you can flip it around and do five colors for the details and one color for the background, or use up scraps around the house, or dye your own. If I was stuck for The Long Winter, I'd want this pattern and some yarn.

Napkins. Finally.

2009-09-21T21:52:00.006-05:00

The napkins that I promised to weave for my daughter are done. Finally.

Pattern: Plain Weave

Warp and Weft: 10/2 pearl cotton in peacock blue and light blue

EPI (ends per inch): 24

PPI (picks per inch) : 20-22

Width in reed: 22"

Number of warp ends: 180

Warp length: 175"

Number of napkins: 4 plus a littler one, plus the Summer-and-Winter cloth from the beginning of the warp/project

Shrinkage: 15% in width and length after machine washing, cool, gentle cycle; tumble dry low

Before finishing, the pearl cotton - which has been mercerized for strength and sheen - feels slippery and very unabsorbent. After finishing, which is even more important in weaving than in knitting, the shine dulled and the fabric took on a slightly rough texture, just right for the purpose. And this weight - 24 EPI and weft beaten fairly firmly after each shot - feels just right for a large cloth napkin, which is what we use instead of paper.

Honey and Apples

2009-09-18T19:21:00.002-05:00

Tonight is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It is traditional to eat apples dipped in honey for a sweet new year.

And a blessing for parents to say for their children: Be strong for the truth, charitable in your words, just and loving in your deeds.

Summer-and-Winter Cloth

2009-09-17T08:04:00.005-05:00

Pattern: Johann D, Variation III

Source: Davison, Handweaver's Pattern Book

Warp: 10/2 pearl cotton in peacock blue and light blue

Weft: 10/2 pearl cotton in both colors, 8/2 unmercerized cotton in natural

EPI: 24

Shrinkage: 15% in width and length after machine washing, gentle cycle, cool temp; tumble dry low

The first part of the warp used to make napkins. I'm glad that I only wove up a small section of the warp in this pattern. The cloth is lovely to look at - with the characteristic reversals of color and the even geometry of Summer-and-Winter patterning. But it is a bit heavy for a napkin - closer to the weight of a table runner. (This seems to be a trend lately for me.)

Next up is Trial #2 in devising a way to weave felted cloth for a yoga bag like this one from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts. And trying to devise a way to keep supply costs low and, at the same time, figure out the trick to dyeing yarn so that it has the beautifully gentle shifts of color of Malabrigo. If you know any tricks for kettle-dyeing or for weaving cloth that has the spongy feeling and thickness of knitted felt, please pass them along by leaving a comment or emailing me on Ravelry (my username is jbwb)!

Woven Swatches for Felting

2009-09-14T16:51:00.003-05:00

Swatches, woven on a four-shaft loom with a twill threading and mainly plain weave treadling. The warp is Harrisville Designs New England Shetland (1800 yds/lb. ) The wefts - I tested a few choices - are the Harrisville used single in the same green as the warp, doubled in a lilac color, Cascade Eco in plain weave and vertical herringbone, and Malabrigo.

Tomorrow I'll toss them in the sewing machine and see what happens. I'm guessing that I over-estimated how close to beat the weft picks; except for the Cascade Eco and the single strand of Harrisville, the swatches already feel close to upholstery weight.

Felted Potholders

2009-09-12T12:36:00.005-05:00

Pattern: Felted Potholders, based on a summer posting on Mason-Dixon Knitting about making a log cabin blanket (I'll try to track down the post and link to it - it was a blanket being worked on during a trip - lots of grey squares with green, I believe?)

Yarn: Malabrigo worsted weight, left-overs

Needle: size 10.5 bamboo 24" circular

Gauge before felting: 14 st and 26 rows in garter stitch

Size before felting: 12" x 12"

Size after felting: 10" x 10"

Shrinkage: 15% in width and length

These were quick and easy, though a bit fussy with all of the picking up of stitches.
The weight is good for potholders: flexible enough to wrap around hand and pot handle, thick enough to guard against the heat of pots and pans.

Felting took about 10-15 minutes in the machine. Be aware that felting increases exponentially with each passing minute. In other words, very slow at the beginning, but just when you think that you can let it go another minute or so instead of marching back down to the basement to check progress, it will felt about twenty times faster than you'd anticipated. With this project, I checked progress every five minutes for the first ten minutes, and then every minute or so after that.
If I had it to do over again: I'd make them smaller. These are a bit large for a potholder, more the size of a trivet or table mat.

Border Songs

2009-09-10T16:01:00.003-05:00

Border Songs by Jim Lynch: centered on a strange and glorious central character who is an artist of the natural world and, at the same time, a newly-trained Border Patrol guard who is saddened as he repeatedly, accidentally, miraculously discovers and then must arrest illegal immigrants being smuggled under a feed truck, inside vans, in hidden compartments in cars, as they come across the Canadian-US border.

His art is inspired by Andy Goldsworthy; scenes of the character, six-foot-eight-inches tall Brandon Vanderkool building capes of leaves stitched together with thorns or swinging a club over water to create rainbows (look here for an amazing photo of Goldsworthy making rainbows) are luminescent. And he has the tenor of some of the great American characters - Tom Sawyer, a little, Atticus Finch, a bit, Steinbeck, a dose.

Brandon is accompanied in this novel by a group of equally eccentric, equally realistic characters, including his father, Norm, who is struggling to keep the dairy farm going while he builds a sea-going sailboat in the back barn (neighbors gathered to watch, only to see if the boat wouldn't fit into the barn); Wayne Rousseau, the ex-professor across the ditch that marks the border between Canada and the U.S., retired, declining from MS, who is recreating the experiments of Edison and Ben Franklin (a great scene when Wayne takes his kite out during a thunderstorm to discover electricity) and the painting of Van Gogh; and Sophie Winslow, the mysterious massage therapist who is filming and interviewing everyone and who everyone wants to speak with, their rare chance for a confession because everyone is doing something just this shade of the black-and-white of the law.

Much remains mysterious enough throughout the book, making this novel and mystery and rumination about art and immigration and borders and a lot about marijuana - how it's grown, marketed, smoked. Overall, the novel has a sense of wonder. Brandon is very attuned to the life of nature around him and especially to birds. As he goes throughout his workday on the Border Patrol, he keeps a mental list of the birds he observes: "The agency's largest boots were a half size too small and gave him the floating sensation of being detached from earth. He heard the rat-a-tat of a downy woodpecker, twenty-nine, and the nervous chip of a dark-eyed junco, thirty" (6)

What I liked best about Border Songs, beyond the characters, was the ending. And individual sentences that are just right, like this one: "The looks you get or don't get let you know exactly where you're at, where you're headed and where you can never go again" (226).

Parinama

2009-09-07T14:31:00.010-05:00

Parinama, in Sanskrit, can be defined as change. A fundamental quality of our existence. Parinama is our constant experience. Yet when it arrives, it seems too frequently an unwelcome and unexpected visitor. What? I have to go through this again?

A little bit of background: in yogic philosophy of the school that I follow, there is purusa and prakrti. Purusa (pronounced pah-roo-sha) is that elemental piece of us that does not change. Some might think of it as the soul, others as an internal light. I explain it to my students in non-sectarian terms as that feeling that you have when you are comfortable in your own skin, at ease, happy, sensing that there is completeness and peacefulness to your experience at that moment. Prakrti (prah-kri-tee) is everything else: our bodies, our minds, our houses, our cars, our relationships, our knitting, our work, our ideas, our emotions. Everything but purusua, that perfect something that is unchanging.
I've been thinking about change quite a lot the last few days. The light is changing from summer sun to that low-lying, cooler, dark-by-dinnertime light of fall. You can feel the change, literally, in the air. Despite a cool, rainy summer, there is something different and specifically autumnal about the crispness and lack of humidity in the air itself. School has started up, people are getting back to routines of work and study, and the future looms huge for many who are struggling to keep a job or find a new one.

Beyond that, I've been thinking this summer about how to take the training that I've done in yoga therapy and develop my therapeutic practice, working one-on-one with students, which I love. This conscious consideration is a big change for me. I tend to be the one in the family who rides on the "it will all work out" mode of behavior. More importantly, it is a big, big change from my response to the end of graduate school in English, when the downturn in the academic market led me away from teaching to other pursuits.

This time I am determined to put my studies to practical use. So I am inventing a website, writing and designing a brochure, learning how to talk about what yoga therapy is and what it has to offer, visiting and sending out cover letters and cold-calling and networking. Lots of changes. Lots of movement. Little stasis. Rare moments of learning curve.

Another change is my decision to discontinue teaching at a second studio in the area. I decided, as I was driving home yesterday, that I am not the right teacher for this group of students. My ego is a bit sore, but, overall, I can realize that it's all right not to be the right teacher for each and every student. I tried, I stuck with it for several months, and now it seems time to try something else. Some of my colleagues would say that I am making space for new opportunities. Perhaps. In any case, I was pleased that I looked at some options, decided that if I cut back on lessons in chanting and studying the Yoga Sutra-s, skip Stitches Midwest, and knit only from the yarn that I own (a relatively small stash of about a laundry basket full of yarn), that I could resign from this class. These are four of my favorite things, but I feel sure that I made the right decision.

And the illustrations for this ramble about change? Felting, of course. You knit something large and unwieldy but beautiful. You throw it into a vat of hot water and lots of movement. You wait. You check for progress. You wait some more. You check again. Even when you think that the felting process is done, you can't be sure, and there's no guarantee that this sodden, floppy piece of wool will ever back into something beautiful. And then, you try to accept the result. Whatever it is, is beautiful. Some would say that whatever it is, is what it was meant to be. Perhaps. What I do know is that two or three years ago, I wouldn't have trusted the messy ends on the back to disappear in the process of felting.

A Face to Love

2009-09-06T19:22:00.003-05:00

A llama made of alpaca from, I believe, Mexico. He belongs to my younger daughter.

Seeing him reminded me how much joy there can be in being a parent. How can you not be proud of a child, well, really now an adult, who still takes pleasure in the goofy, happy expression of a llama made of alpaca?

My Hero

2009-09-05T18:18:00.001-05:00

I love this.

Tim Gunn, will you be my mentor?

Time

2009-09-02T09:13:00.004-05:00

If anyone knows of a good use of 6 to 8 minutes in between activities, please let me know.

Being someone who prefers loooong stretches of time spent doing one thing (generally quiet, involving reading, knitting, or watching Project Runway), I am feeling a bit nutty with all of these tiny amounts of time in between teaching, returning phone calls, driving to introduce myself to other complementary medical practitioners in the western suburbs, driving to an appointment early enough to not run late but not so dang early that I have more than 20 minutes to kill.

The poster child for my state of mind is my loom. (I know, back then it was the loom that signified focus and the knitting that reminded me of how agitated I could be feeling. Parinama...change...I have no other defense.) Constant motion of throwing the shuttle back and forth, pressing down on peddles to raise and lower harnesses and threads, frequently advancing the warp and then tightening it up again and then advancing it and then tightening it. And every time that I sit down for a nice, long bout of weaving, I am close to running out of filled bobbins of weft thread and weave along, anticipating at any moment that I'll have to put the whole venture on hold while I use my hand-winder to fill some more bobbins.

Constant motion with no conclusion in sight. Thank goodness for chamomile tea and the occasional gorgeous fall weather, like yesterday, when I just sat out in the backyard and read A Letter of Mary for three hours. There is nothing like a smart, female narrator in a strongly-written mystery, with Sherlock Holmes as sidekick-husband to the main character, Mary Russell.