I finished my Shawl!

OK, I have a bit of time now. I finally finished the lace stole/shawl/scarf thingy, and I LOVE IT. It had a life of its own, as all art projects do - it doesn't look like the picture in the book, and I had to change some things as I went, but that's the fun of it, after all. Where's the adventure if it all goes according to plan?

The big thing that made me laugh at myself while working on it was this: all along, I knew the pattern said "work lace chart 31 times." Anyone see the problem here? I imagine at least some of my readers will. As I got closer and closer to the 31st pattern repeat, the more that number, Thirty-One, grated on my nerves. It's prime. It's all pointy and angular and weird. It's not Thirty, which is a nice round number, nor yet Thirty-Two, which is an elegant power of two, and twice the square of the first square. But Thirty-One was what was writ. What's more, I ran out of my second ball of yarn at almost precisely the halfway point, and I only had four, so I worried about lengthening it. But I knew in my heart that that prime number would bug me every time I put it on.

Teresa agreed to model for me.
Isn't she pretty?

So after careful row counting, I decided to bump it up to Thirty-Two. There I was, practically *finished*, but I had to add the extra pattern repeat, for the good of my soul. And the good news is, I had plenty of yarn left. I'm using it to make tiny crocheted snow flakes, because it is sparkly.

The other thing of it, now, is that I have nothing I can wear with it. So this blog is going to have to move away from the Knitting Department and into the Garment Design and Construction Zone. I want to make something navy blue, maybe. It's tricky - a dark color will show up the lace best, but as I discovered over and over (but I guess never really *learned*, since I kept doing it) while knitting, black and mohair aren't a smart combination. I looked like I have a very affectionate long-haired cat.

I began this stole just before Ash Wednesday, which was March 9. I finished it yesterday, so it took me 72 days. In between the start and the end, I also made two hats and a baby sweater. (here's a photo or two of the second hat. It's baby-sized.)

I'm alive again!

PS - if you want to see the pictures in more detail, you can click on them to view them in a full-size slide show.

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I'm in a hurry, so here's a picture:

Hey Bob, am I a good Blogger or a bad Blogger?

...or is the proper term "Blogress?"

So I haven't written anything in ages. Thing is, I'm a choir director and organist and homeschooling Mom. that means May is Hell. Well, no, because it's also awesome, but I feel like I need to just get through it. First Communion Masses, weddings, graduations, Confirmation Mass, plus all the usual stuff. At least with Easter being super late this year, I have until June to plan for the last four Big Feasts before the choir takes a break for the summer.

I have two happy updates:

One, I am on pattern repeat number 29 of 31 on my lace. It is nearly done! It is also a lot warmer than I expected it to be. It already stretches from one elbow to the other, and it is as soft as a cloud.

Two, I attended my last session of therapy, at least for a while. My therapist says he'll miss me, but it is a long drive, and I just go there to talk about how well things are going and how much happier I've been. So, until things take a turn for the worse, I'm all done with that.

So, yes. Not much of an entry, but I feel like it was a milestone I should mention.

Bullet Points

Whoops, been a while since I last posted anything here. It's Easter Week, which traditionally in my family consists of completely clearing the schedule, then packing it full again with stuff we never have time to do. The reason we do this is because I direct the choir at my church, and, being Catholic, this means a LOT of work in the week leading up to Easter, followed by the obligation to keep the feasting up for eight whole days. So, fragmentary brain produces fragmentary thoughts. Here you go, compliments of my shattered mind:

Craft Update: I am on pattern repeat 21 of 31. I'll be done soon. I fiddled a bit with Fair Isle knitting, I think I may try a project soon. I bought some new yarn today to make a baby-sized Entrelac Hat for... a friend... who just had a baby... who might be reading this blog.

Insight of the week: My "job" outside the house - directing the choir - is how I fill my tank, so to speak. Immersing myself in music refreshes my soul, and when things get really crazy, especially at Christmas and Easter, it's more singing and less learning, which is MORE energizing to me than the weekly grind of going over parts. At the end of 9 days in which I led 5 hours of rehearsal and 12 hours of liturgy, including the year's most dramatic moments, I was exhilarated and overflowing. And really, really tired, but in a good way. If it were any other way, I would currently be deceased.

Complaint of the week: my local yarn shop is having their annual "Ewe-niversity" day of classes on the same day as the monthly local Handspinners and Weavers Guild meeting, which I promised to take my kids to. You'd think they would have planned around that. I can't even catch a class in the afternoon, because we have a Mother/Daughter Tea. It's all about priorities here, but it's annoying when priorities so high on the list get crossed. It's like when your two favorite teams match up in the first round of the playoffs instead of the end.

Funny Story With No Plot And No Punch Line: I went to therapy this week, and when I left my house, I was stewing, boiling mad at my husband for reasons that I won't go into. All the way there, I rehearsed my list of things that were bugging me. When I sat in the chair, my therapist asked "How are you?" which prompted me, instead, to talk for an hour and a quarter about all the reasons I am happy. It was the best therapy session ever.

Well, that looks like it for today.

On Getting Bored

There are two virtues I associate with creativity: Cooperation with inspiration, and Perseverance. Correspondingly, there are two blocks to creativity: failure to respond, and Getting Bored. These two features of being a creative person are often at war with each other, in my case, in this particular way:

Lace Stole as of April 11

Me: Oh, I bet this hat would look cool if it was made out of such and such a yarn...

Bob: Don't you already have a project going? You can't start a new project until you finish your old project, otherwise you'll never finish. You never finish anything you start. (This is one of Bob's favorite proverbs.)

Me: Oh, OK, well I'll just sit down and finish my old project so I can get to my new idea... yeah... old project...

New Project: Hey, over here! I'm flashy and interesting, and I won't take long...

Old Project: Look at me, I'm familiar, and comfortable! You can follow my pattern without thinking now, it's like second nature!

Bob: This new project is irresponsible. This old project is boring. Knitting is dumb. Go wash the dishes.

Me: (washing dishes) Maybe if I had two different colours of self-striping yarn... 

Anyway, there's a lot going on in my head. My lace stole looks much the same as it did, only somewhat longer. It's true that I can now follow the pattern without thinking, and I barely need to check the chart now, but it's also true that it's getting long enough to be unwieldy when I go out, and the hairiness of the yarn makes it a bad outdoor project.

And then I saw the Entrelac Hat. Oh wow, it was cool. Furthermore, I could sort of make it an old project: see, I have this yarn. I bought it to make my eldest daughter a Christmas present, but I bought it without inspiration, only liking the colour combination. I had a vague idea for a project, but after multiple attempts, I just surrendered, showed her the yarn, and promised her an item made from it when I thought of a good one. And when I saw the Entrelac Hat, I knew what I was going to do.

My uninspired Bag of Yarn

Entrelac is a knitting technique where you make a bunch of small squares, working back and forth in very short rows, and connecting them as you go. The end result looks like knitted bands woven together. While you're working, it looks very odd indeed. I wasn't so sure I'd picked a good pattern at the start, but after a couple of tiers of blocks, I knew I was on to something. There's no picture with this pattern, so here's the one I made:

I did it slightly differently, of course - I got really bored with the ribbing right off the bat, so I didn't bother with the turning ridge, I just did twelve rows of ribbing and went from there. (Oh, and I had to learn a new, stretchy cast on method in order to make this, too! Yay, new skillz!) Then, I alternated between turquoise and purple yarn for the A colour changes.

My plan was to have a small project for my car-knitting bag (the hat) and a home project for watching TV and drinking tea (the stole). But instead, I started the hat on Tuesday and finished it on Thursday. And got only one pattern repeat done on my lace this week. Again. But that's OK! I have no deadline on my lace. I knit for fun and relaxation. As long as it is fun and relaxing, I can continue to strive for balance between Inspiration and Perseverance. I can't let Bob take it away from me.

Notes on the pattern: I used a worsted weight yarn, and had to use size 9 needles to get the suggested gauge. While I'm happy with the result, if you examine it closely, or you have a friend like Bob who will examine it closely for you, you will see that the gaps in the ribbing are pretty large, and where the squares join together, the edges look pretty ragged, and it wasn't because I knit loosely. I think that this problem could be solved by using a chunkier yarn, or by using smaller needles and increasing the number of blocks in each tier to get the right size. The adjustment would be pretty easy - you cast on 5 sts for each block. Next time I make it, I'm going to use a finer yarn and tiny needles, and see if it comes out baby or toddler size.

Knitting Bulletin

We interrupt this project to bring you breaking news… literally. Turns out those polished wood needles I love so much are really easy for a 4 year old to snap, especially in the lace-knitting sizes. So I had to put my lace shawl on hold temporarily. The good news is that a dear lady is having her first baby, and her baby shower was a week after the day my needles broke, so I had another fun thing to focus on: a Rainbow Baby Sweater!

Everyone needs a little more rainbow in
their life, right?

This project partly owes its existence to the incisive mind of my friend Dom, one of the most artistic people I know, who rightly perceived the heart of my quandary: I had a vision, and realizing it required extra fiddly work that might not turn out. In typical me fashion, I was paralyzed by my options and wasted a lot of time asking people who were not me what I would do if I were them. Turns out that information is not relevant to anything. Ever. But Dom saw right through my question. It was not really “what should I do?” but rather “what do I want to do?” Why spend more money and waaaaaay more time making something when I could just buy something adorable? Because I wanted to make something unique, something I was inspired to make. There would be no point if I didn’t make the thing I wanted to make.

It didn't line up perfectly - turns out that
an increase in width of a single stitch can
make a difference in the end.

The thing I wanted to make is a newborn-sized cardigan made from a beautiful self-striping merino sock yarn I’ve had for a while. I say self-striping, but the “stripe” is actually a gradual color-wash gradient fading through the whole rainbow. This is a problem because the back, being twice as wide as either side of the front, would go through the color changes twice as fast, and throw off the balance of the thing. And while I wasn’t going to worry about matching the front to the back, I wanted a consistent texture. Also, the front needed symmetry for sure, so it seemed like the best thing was to work each side from a different ball (same dye lot, of course), matching the spot in the color change on each so that it was the same on both sides. As for the back, I decided to work the back in two halves the same way, and seam it down the middle.

It doesn't look like a half-finished
sweater, it looks like a huge mess.

Look at all those stringy-things!

Look at those gaping holes! (That's
what God made loose ends for.)

Somewhere my moss-stitch border got
mixed up - so I just cut my losses and
 cast off early

This sweater had so many lessons to teach me. I couldn’t decide what to title this post, because I had so many good thoughts to put down. It was about fudging and faking (adapting the pattern, knitting on after miscounting rows, etc), but also about doing things the Right Way (christening my sweater blocking kit – that was fun!). It was about the process of making something, in particular the way that mistakes have a way of blending in, and the way loose ends have of tying together more issues than just themselves when you finish them off. And it was about color and fun.

I’m posting a catalogue of the mistakes I made on this sweater, because sometimes it’s important to acknowledge the imperfections of a thing before you can put those imperfections in perspective. And after you’ve looked at all the errors, check out the final picture: They Don’t Show At All.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Lace Stole (I bought new needles).

Tool Talk: Knitting

Knitting is what's on my mind, so we're going to stick with it for a bit. Quilting, garment construction, and costume design are all in the queue, though, so you non-knitters take heart.

I'm going to tell you another thing about myself: I love tools. As legos are to an eight year old boy, all manner of crafting and sewing tools are to me: toys, yes, but also my creative limbs. I'm a sucker for quilting notions, specialized pencils, stencil sheets (of which I have about ten times as many as I've ever used), miniature things - Oh Dear Me, the miniature things! - and so on. Incidentally, it's also the reason I was able to learn to love camping with my kiddos - specialized camping gear is The Best.

Now, being a lover of Real Things, as well as a lover of tools, naturally I believe in the importance of getting the finest options available. Usually when I learn a new skill, I go a bit overboard, buying things I think I might need, but refining my needs as I go, and learn my preferences. So I have a box full of various types of stitch markers, cable needles, stitch holders, different sizes of tapestry and yarn needles, and, of course, every size and variety of knitting needle imaginable: aluminum, plastic, wood, double-pointed, circular, long straight, short straight... you get the idea. Some day I want a set of bone dpns, but I'm in no hurry. I'm not sure I'd ever even use them, but I do collect things.

My favorite needles are Knitter's Pride Dreamz needles. They are made from polished wood, so they're light-weight and comfortable. They don't get too cold or too warm, and they come  in beautiful stained colors which make me happy (except the first time I used them, because the size 7's are black and boring). The wood grabs the yarn just enough that my stitches stay secure, but not so much that it's hard to slide the work along the needle. For my birthday, I bought myself this set of interchangeable-point cable needles - I've had children slide an aluminum needle right out of my work before, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and I could imagine the same happening with a straight wooden needle. With cable needles, you can center your work on the cable and wind the points up and tuck them away - no danger!

Also, now that I learned to use the magic loop method, I don't even need double-point needles to knit tubes. However, using dpns is fun and satisfying, so I still have some of those in my box to play with. Maybe one of these days I'll try my hand at creating a video tutorial. Magic Loop will be my first offering, because it changed my knitting so much.

After needles, the most useful tool I've got is my row counter. On my first pair of socks, I depended on counting the rows to make sure they were the same size, but I must be really bad at counting rows, because they came out different sizes. Not too much, and they're socks anyway, so they're supposed to stretch to fit, but still. They were a gift, and they were crooked and dumb (thanks for that assessment, Bob), so to prevent further errors, I bought a lockable click-counter. It's also very helpful for knitting lace, or anything where you have to follow a chart. In that vein, highlighters are also helpful, as you can color the rows different colors, so you don't get confused.

I have a billion stitch markers, but I'm always losing them (read: my kids steal them). When I want them, I like the locking kind that look like mini safety pins better than the ring kind, but waste yarn works just fine, and besides which, I'm usually aware of when I'm coming to the marked spot anyway. Maybe I just haven't yet taken on the right challenge, and those stitch markers will have their day.

Next up, I need a yarn swift! How about you? What knitting tools do you use? What would you like to have?

About Knitting

Knitting is the newest tool in my beauty box. I tried when I was a kid, but my work kept getting wider and wider as I went. It wasn't until I was teaching my own child how to knit with rainbow variegated yarn that I saw where I had been picking up stitches - there, right in the middle of my yellow stitches, was a loop from the purple row below! Now I had the Key!

It was still a while before I realized the versatility of my newfound skill. It could be functional:

(but really, really boring to make - 
those last hundred hours couldn't have gotten any slower. 
I still can't believe I finished the whole thing!)

It could be whimsical:

(that's a pig.)

It could be cosy and comfortable, yet decorative and full of flair:

(I haven't yet made the match to this, so you only get to see one.)

Depending on what you choose to make, it can be meditative, engaging, challenging or consuming. It's handily portable. Hand knit items make great gifts. Beautiful yarn feels wonderful in your hands. You can work a bit at a time. And you're spared the crocheter's constant agony of people asking "What are you knitting?"

I use Knitter's Pride "Dreamz" polished wood needles (hey, I didn't name them), because they feel really nice, and stay put in my work, unlike aluminum needles. Also unlike aluminum, they don't have an irritating clicky noise - I think of aluminum as the Plastic of Metals. Ew. Using circular needles keeps me secure in the knowledge that it will be really, really hard for curious little fingers to pull the needles out of my work and ruin everything.

These days, besides a small piglet-in-process that I carry in my purse all the time, I am busily exploring a new dimension of knitting - airy soft and whispery delicate:

This is a lace stole from this book, which I've had for years and years and always wanted to try. The yarn is a mohair/silk blend - it's very hairy - with a bit of silvery sparkle just for fun.

So far, I've made about seven major errors. I recount at the end of every other row, and I've gone back and unpicked a few times (the yarn is too hairy to rip back, so lifelines are useless), but mostly I just mark the spot and correct on the next row. And you know what? It Doesn't Show At All.