knittingjuju
Julie knits and writes and knits.86-year-old WWII vet on gay marriage: “what do you think I fought for in Omaha Beach?” – Boing Boing
This should just settle it, shouldn’t it? Really?
Posted via web from JuJu
Watching a GB Heron fish, a female Wood Duck swim circles around him, and steeking a cardigan without the use of vodka.
Posted via email from JuJu
Guest room occupied…
Blocking. Sorry for the lousy iPhone pics, but my camera has grown feet and wandered…
Posted via email from JuJu
A great many pins…
Holy picot. It took a good chunk of the afternoon just to pin Girasole out after finally finding enough floor for the job!
Posted via email from JuJu
iPhone Mitts: The Worsted
The iPhone Mitts are proving to be such simple, useful hand warmth delivery systems, that I succumbed to pressure to do the math and provide here proof of a worsted-weight version that knits up in a quarter of the time of the fingering-weight wonders…. and here they are:
So instructions: Download the iPhone Mitts pattern, and change the math thusly:
Use Worsted Weight Yarn (in this case my leftover Noro Cash Iroha, and precisely two skeins and 182 meters, US Size 6 dpns
Cast On 40 stitches.
Knit 34 rows before starting thumb gussets.
Work until thumb gussets are just 9 stitches
Cast on just 2 stitches when you resume knitting after putting the gusset stitches on hold.
The whole length of the tube is 90 rows from cast on to cast off row.
Pick up 5 st for a total of 14 thumb stitches.
Work 12 thumb rows after pickup.
These are stretchy monkeys. I knit them to fit my hands, but they easily fit my son-in-law (my man model here) and my husband’s much larger hands.
Having worn them for a couple of days, I’ll observe that the worsted versions are much warmer, of course, but also much bulkier. When the weather warrants it, I’ll gladly upgrade warmth for bulky discomfort, but for 80 percent of winter, I still want the fingering-weight versions. They just let me move my hands more easily, afford my hands more mobility.
By the way, my sister-in-law, Betsy, a new knitter who easily took on the iPhone Mitts for her daughter, would have me note that the convenience of tucking the thumbs into the palm fold and scrunching these babies up onto your wrists while shopping is a really critical feature of the design. “Forget iPhone Mitts,” she says, “These are Shopping Mitts!!” Not much of a shopper myself, I defer to her.
They have been taken up by folks doing fine work outdoors. These range from dog trainers and fishermen to photographers and bicyclists. Skiers note that when you fold the cuff inside, you have three layers of wool protecting your fingertips, which they love, being able to quickly squinch these back to fumble for change or lip balm makes their whole day. Runners note they can use the superwash wool, and not feel bad about using them to wipe noses and face sweat mid-run, just wash them along with their other running gear…
Everyone notes that they are very dull knitting. Mindless. But who doesn’t need mindless knitting? Once in awhile?
Christine’s Forest Canopy
My friend, Christine, is a knitter and a writer and a painter. And a lot of other things, too, but for the purposes of this story, let’s just stop the list right there. I guess I’ve known Christine for a million years. We met giving a reading of our work selected by a local literary magazine. We bumped into one another at local writing events. Two entirely separate strands of wool in the wash, follicles catching here and there. Then I started working with her dear husband. Then she helped me along when I started knitting. And now we’re more or less felted.
When Christine decided to get serious about painting again, not so very long ago, I wasn’t surprised to see an explosion of spectacular, moving, accomplished work in a very short time. Delighted, but not surprised, because this is how Christine would paint if Christine painted. Of course. Of course.
I asked her to consider making a portrait of my Mom. Some day. Maybe. If she wanted to, but no pressure. At all. Because, you know, maybe she wouldn’t want to, and that would be cool. I sent her a photo of my mom as a young woman. Expecting her to think and let me know.
Within, like, a week or so, Christine told me we had to meet at our LYS. I figured on some sort of hat emergency. Mittens gone wrong. Something. But no, she had this for me:
That’s my mom, Vivian. Absolutely. Amazing. Just… wow. Amazing. I was stunned. Thoroughly. Still am.
And immediately willing to hock the family jewels to pay for it, provided I could find the family jewels. Or a family with jewels. What could I possibly offer in return for this? Christine started talking trade. Knitting for art.
“Um… dood, you sure?”
She was sure.
She had a lace shawl firmly in mind, already. And all we had to do was find the right yarn…
The exact right wool was already in my stash. Cash Iroha, Noro’s cashmere, silk, wool blend, light and soft and shimmery, in a color…. This color is what red would be if it were made of chocolate. That’s about the best I can come up with. It’s a color I appear to love a lot, judging by the number of yarns in various weights resident in my stash in this exact hue. The Cash Iroha chocolate red is sort of a worsted weight, slubby yarn, dear and yummy.
Christine liked the Cherry Leaf shawl I had made in a fingering-weight yarn awhile ago, but that same pattern wouldn’t have translated to this yarn. Good old Ravelry made short work of finding a great, leafy shawl pattern in worsted for my little stash: Forest Canopy Shawl by Susan Pierce Lawrence.
Within a few minutes, I bought the pattern from her site, loaded the charts onto my iPhone, and cast on the few stitches at the top center from which all the rest of the shawl just blooms. Well, eventually it blooms, the rows getting longer and longer as you go, until you finish, casting off all those scallops.
A completely pleasant knit from first stitch to last. I made minor modifications, adding a few repeats of the main pattern to lengthen the piece, and a couple of extra rows in the edging pattern to balance the new length. This is four skeins of Noro.
The finished piece is light as air and really warm. Vivian would have loved it. The color and texture are pure Christine. A very good trade.
The Shoddy Little Sweater
Some projects just find their own time. I began this sweater on June 30, 2007. Flickr keeps track of these things for me. So 18 months in the making, and another month or so for the photo shoot.
It began with the yarn. I saw hanks of Colinette Parisienne in Soft Sienna at Lizzie Ann’s Wool Company in Holland, Michigan, one of my favorite LYSs. I had to have the yarn. I knew it was for my daughter.
The yarn reminded me of dryer lint. But in a good way. You know that soft non-color of dryer lint? It’s kind of blue, kind of grey, kind of pink? It’s fuzzy, light, soft?
I brought the yarn home and started swatching with it.
I already had the idea of making something tiny for my daughter, something t-shirty or camisolish, and had been swatching with silks and merinos and rare Habu Textiles stuff, but not falling in love.
But this yarn.
I knew I wanted to live with it for awhile. I found the needle size (US 5) to make the fabric that made me happiest.
Then came a class with Lily Chin, learning to design knitwear for my own body, or anyone else’s. I’d been steeping myself in Zimmerman, and so Chin’s class layered courage on Zimmerman courage along with some techniques for drawing patterns and constructing garments.
Just watching my girl and how she dresses made the form clear: A t-shirt. But not too, too sweet of a t-shirt. A long t-shirt that pokes fun at t-shirts.
I wanted to mess with the stockinette.
And then the women in my family were having fun with this word, “shoddy.” My hilarious niece, one of the funniest people I know, started us all using the word in a way that injected it with affection and comfort and kindness. A dryer-lint sort of feeling.
I decided to call the project Shoddy. At that point the rest of the form sort of fell into place. I knew it would have random yarn-over holes. (It turns out I’m not capable of completely random behavior, because I formed rules about the holes as I knit. I couldn’t help it.)
And then the process was pretty straightforward. I grabbed one of my daughter’s favorite t-shirts, and used it to make a pattern and a fabric model for the piece, which traveled in the project bag and served as a reference as I knitted.
I knew I wanted to make a seamless sweater, and did my math to know how many stitches to cast on. I cast on provisionally, thinking I might want to knit t-shirt-style hems, but not wanting to decide right away. (I did do this in the end, but after changing my mind 42 times.)
Then I just knit to match the fabric model, marking the sides, and decreasing two stitches at each side for a few rows to form waistline curve, and increasing to climb back up to the armpits. The yarn overs are either single or double YOs, decreasing with the next stitch so that I was never increasing or decreasing stitch numbers except at the sides for shaping. I decided to swim the holes up fro the sides in the front to the center, and just run a line of them down the center in the back. Not sure why. It just felt right.
The arms were a little challenge. I wanted the exact angle of the sleeves from the original t-shirt, and if I were Elizabeth or Meg, I probably could have figured out how to increase at the armpit to make them without seams, but I chose to start the sleeves flat –again casting on provisionally — for about an inch to match the flat pattern before joining them to the body. as you would for any seamless sweater. So it’s not an entirely seamless sweater. There is a one-inch seam under each sleeve. I’ll loiter in seamless sweater purgatory for a few millenia for that, I’m sure.
I had recently made a complete Elizabeth Zimmerman EPS Saddle-shoulder, and was still madly in love with the fit and the fun of knitting it, and so chose that style for this piece. I planned on a kind of funnel-neck, and knit it that way at first, but when the girl tried it on, it just… blech. No. I knew I had to rip back to make a bateau, but… A.) ripping mohair is just not fun. B.) I had no idea how to knit a bateau neckline.
And so the piece lingered and reproached me for… a while.
I next went off to a weekend camp at Schoolhouse Press with Meg Swansen and Amy Detjen and Joyce Williams. Show and tell is part of that, and I decided to show the Shoddy, though it was incomplete. Anybody who visited with this sweater had the same impulse, to throw it up in the air and watch it float. It’s that light and fluffly. Meg did that with Shoddy. And her eyes sparkled. It was a happy moment for me, let me tell you. Well, they eliminated all of my agony in about four seconds, Meg and Joyce, who pointed me to this neckline on this sweater:
Which you’ll find in her book Latvian Dreams, which of course I had. I felt a little like Dorothy. I’d had the answer with me the whole time. And now I had more courage from the Source, the Well, from Mecca.
So you would have thought I would have ripped right into that baby. No, I kind of sat on it for awhile. Not sure why, though I have likened it to finishing a good book. I really slowed this project down.
I ripped back the neck, and found the bateau an easy and elegant thing to knit. No problem. Basically you’re knitting two little V-neck decrease points at each shoulder, then a purl turning ridge, and then increasing at the same point so that when you fold the hem back inside, it matches up, and all you have to do is stitch the live stitches down. Very easy and elegant.
And that dictated the hem treatments for the arms and bottom hem too. Simple…. so why wasn’t I finishing it?
It just sat without its hems for ever so long. I pulled it out and pet it, folded it up and put it away… for MONTHS.
Post Project Depression. That’s the only thing I can offer for why it has taken me so long. I loved this baby, and had a hard time letting it go.
But then winter returned, and my daughter was kind of wondering.. and my knitting friends were wondering, and everyone has been wondering…
I finished it. Blocked it. Gave it. And today, finally, have photographed it. It worked. It’s pretty.
Thank you, thank you to all who helped inspire and teach and offer courage.
And on to the next unfinished thing…
The whole gestation is documented here.
Girasole for the soul
Oh my goodness. Working on brooklyntweed’s lovely Girasole, a wedding gift, already overdue. Finally decided on cascade ecological wool after hemming and hawing for weeks. The yarn seemed underwhelming for so long… Until you knit with it. Knit stitches transform this yarn completely. I am in love.
The pattern is made for knitting addicts, each row lulling you to the next, each chart charms you into trying the next one…
Almost done with the sunflower… It’s good to get a little sun in January…
It’s fun.
iPhone Mitts
iPhone and iTouch Michigan-user-tested mitten. It works.
Time to catch up on the secret holiday knitting, but first this: A new pattern!
Super uber-simple mitts for using sock yarn that’s too pretty to put on your feet.
These are designed to answer the problems we cold-climate-dwellers have with using our electronic gizmos (in my case an iPhone) in the winter. iPhones work through naked fingertips, and not at all if you are bemittened or begloved. (Yes, Apple is getting ready to release a glove with electro-conductive fingertips, but who wants to wear technogloves when we could be wearing some Koigu or Lorna’s Laces or Socks-that-Rock, or your own hand-painted, hand-spun, hand-dyed wonderfulness on your hands?
Well, not US, anyway.)
So here are mitts that will cover your fingertips when the weather is the way the weather is now in Michigan. And uncover for most of the time while still keeping you hugged and snugged and warm.
I’ve been test-driving these guys all winter, and they’re great in 2×2 ribbing — the most elastic rib of all. Boring, yes, but don’t you sometimes need a boring project? Sometimes? Kind of?
Haven’t tried these in a bigger yarn yet, but that’s coming. Or, you go first, and tell me about it?
The nice thing about this simple tube is that when you walk into a store and need your hands, you can pull in your thumbs, and just scrunch these right up onto your wrists. No more losing your mittens in the bottom of your purse at the grocery store!
Many of you won’t need a pattern for these. But for those of you who like having them, or want the schematic so you can riff. Download your iphone-mitts-pattern here.
March, 2009 Note: Pattern tweaks for a worsted-weight version available here.
Pattern Links for the Holidays
Hi folks. A buddy told me she didn’t know I had my patterns available on the blog. And I realize that I haven’t made that obvious… So maybe I’ve fixed it.
I Just added an easy set of links (see right) for finding my “patterns” quickly. (Those sad quotes refer to the entirely unprofessional nature of my project notes — I swear I’ll take a pattern writing class one of these days– but there are charts too! They can be helpful!).
On Ravelry, where it’s fun to track such things, Pinkie Blankie is beating out the long-standing favorite, Jollyfish Hat for knitters taking the projects on, with Stitch Keepers rising.
Pinkie Blankie:
Jollyfish Hat: 
DPN Stitch Keepers:
Peace Cuffs:
Latvian Mitts:
(This one surprises me — favorited a lot and in queues, but no mitts yet… hmmm… chart problems?)
Mr. Tweed
I’ve known him as b r o o k l y n t w e e d for so much longer than I’ve known him as Jared Flood, that I kind of just want to call him Mr. Tweed.
I had classes with Mr. Tweed at City Knitting today. Supposed to be my second day of study, but my brain wouldn’t comply yesterday.
(Say, if you’re a migraineur too, you really ought to grab a copy of The Migraine Brain. Just when you thought you knew everything about them — along comes a whole new line of thinking. Helpful.)
And though I THOUGHT I was ready for class, it seems I grabbed everything but my camera, and so all of my photos from the class are icky, sickly phone pics. So sorry about that.
Learned very good things that ought to come in handy finishing some projects and especially starting new ones. Gad, I’m so ready to get another big sweater project going, you have no idea.
Mr Tweed is exactly as smart and helpful and generous and funny as he is cracked up to be. Maybe more. If you get the chance to study under him, just take it!
Hey, between classtimes, I finished Shoddy! There I was, all by myself as I stitched down the last hem stitch, grinning like an idiot, and a little weepy. Like finishing a great novel. I hate to be done with it. Now I have to work up the guts to block it, and then hand it over to my daughter. A photo session when I do, and you’ll see it. It worked!
Cat Bordhi is MAKING me start another project
I’m thrilled about Obama, and also about McCain’s speech last night. It is time for healing.
Cat Bordhi shared this through the City Knitting (one of my LYS’s) newsletter, and now I’m sharing it with you, and you can see, can’t you, how I had to cast on another project? HAD TO:
Heal the Election Wounds and Embrace Humanity with a Moebius
By Cat Bordhi
I awoke this morning realizing that publicly knitting a beautiful Moebius scarf as I begin to float (I live on an island), drive, and fly toward Stitches East on Tuesday would be a beautiful and profound public expression of my hopes and dreams for the world, as well as a symbol of the healing that our country will need after the election.
If you want to follow along, I recently made a Youtube video which will clearly teach you how to knit a Moebius whether you have my books or not.
Here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVnTda7F2V4
So – here is why the Moebius is a perfect expression of the best of humanity, and the healing of the fractured country and world that I trust is coming:
1. The Moebius *appears* to have two surfaces and two edges – ie, polarities such as black and white, right and wrong, good and bad, Republican and Democrat – but when you follow the surface around you will run right into your starting point without ever having changed to the other “side.” For there isn’t one. Everything flows into itself.
Polarities are an illusion. What lies beneath the apparent polarities is oneness, beauty, and grace. In a Moebius you can see it, hold it, be awed by it. Once the frenzy dies down, hopefully those with
opposing views will slowly rediscover their common humanity.
2. Like the surface that flows into itself, so too does the Moebius’s single continuous edge – thus everything is recycled. In fact, I would not be the least bit surprised if the ultimate alternative energy involves a Moebius form or dynamic. By the way, the recycling symbols (2 are in common usage, one with a single twist, the other with 3) you see everywhere are actually Moebii (too hard to say Moebiuses – try it!). I think we are all hoping for significant and effective new discoveries in alternative energy – and the Moebius would be a great
symbol for this global effort.
3. Once you complete the first ring (it takes 2 rings to make a round – watch the video) of your Moebius, you are in for smooth and happy sailing. All you have to do is to knit the stitch in front of you, then the next stitch in front of you, with not a care in the world for what came before or what has shifted into the “future”. You’ll look at the mysterious shape on your needles and wonder how “those stitches”
can ever come to you . . . well, they will, without your needing to understand how. And they will all come in perfect sequence, resulting in a beautiful and graceful Moebius. The Moebius rewards your faith in
its mystery with the easiest knitting you will ever do. And the result is always graceful – for this is the very nature of the Moebius. You can knit along while you watch the election results, while walking,
while standing in line at the store, wherever you may find yourself during these days to come. You will be knitting the graceful healing and ease that I believe is flowing toward us, requiring only of us
that we stay true to the powerful sense of loving kindness that resides in the center of every person. No one could ever possibly understand enough to make the healing happen, but if we all just knit
the stitch before us, as they come, marveling at the innocence and sweetness of it all, with our oh so familiar continuous strand of yarn, the healing will happen. We need not understand either one fully – the Moebius or the world. They both operate with inherent grace.
4. I looked through my stash and chose a luminous yarn in deep watery colors from Blue Moon Fiber Arts – LSS (Luscious Single Silk), and did not realize until I looked at the label that the colorway is
absolutely apropos: Lunasea. Tina no doubt named the colorway after the moon and the sea – and after lunacy. So let the lunacy of the election months give way to Lunasea – the grace of the moon, the sea,
the Moebius, and the beautiful heart of humanity, of all people, the “us” and “them” who merge into one. I shall be winding the skein on the ferry tomorrow, then knitting all the way to Baltimore. I hope to
see many, many of you there.
With love from Cat Bordhi
Note: If you alternate sets of knit and purl rounds, you will have purl ridges all around. Then your Moebius will not curl along the edges when you are done.
Three socks.
Two months since my last post? Really?
Ach.
Actually, I’m noting today a vast number of dropped balls, and regretting every one. A good time to bury my head in some knitting….
There HAS been some knitting… I’ve taken some snaps, so I will catch up, I will. It seems to be this photography thing that stops me. BUT I’m planning to attend a workshop with the amazing Jared of BrooklynTweed in a week or so, at the amazing City Knitting in Grand Rapids, and so I’m sure I’ll come away feeling inspired to more photography, more blogging. I’m sure. (What happened to the last two months? This past year? A complete blur.)
Koigu Linen Stitch Sock
Well, I have frogged and worked this sock so many times the yarn is a bit worn out. The sock itself is… fine. It’s just fine. Not spectacular, not at all the masterwork I was hoping for it to be, but a decent first attempt at playing with the new Cat Bordhi Sockitecture recipe (Do catch her class if you have a sock thang. Just do.) I quibble only with her proportion of heel flap increases. I’m a pretty high-arched human, and think really you need fewer increases there. (On this sock I made fewer.) But never mind that. The recipe is incredibly empowering for people who like to just cast on new socks, and decide later what sort of socks they are knitting. That would be me. To test the recipe, I grabbed some scrap yarn and knit some footsies. These in the leftover Quebequois from my recent hat diversion:
All the arch increases happen with those cute eyelets. Then I challenged Cat’s math with this superbulky leftover Takhi from the Pinkie Blankie adventure:
Tahki Baby Footsies
The recipe holds up fine, of course. Arch increases here are along the center front of the foot. Nice and neat. And am almost done with these Koigu babies
Koigu sock made to fit
even as I eye my sock yarn stash and the feet that surround me to look for my next project. The arch increases here are all made on one side of the stockinette stripe that then wraps the foot, climbs the ankle, and joins the 4×2 rib at the top.
Toe-up Whirlpool Toe
Sexy little toe-up toe, yeah? Fun stuff, Bordhi’s recipes. I recommend. Very good for custom-sizing for difficult-to-fit-feet.
So not working
Took a great sockitechture class with Cat Bordhi, a wonderful experience I recommend to anyone. And while she offers up a wildly generous formula for making up your own socks as you go a
along, and encourages you to just go, take risks, still it seems that not all ideas are good ones..
The slip stitch rib in the center? Ooooooogly.
Ribbit, ribbit…..
Peacefleece Tunic Update
So close…
Barb modeling
Here is Barb modeling the Peacefleece Tunic. It’s come a long way from its beginning... which was just a bunch of yarn in my stash and a sketch:
Peacefleece sketch
Of course it’s a Zimmerman yoke sweater with lots of modifications. I am not happy with the neckline, which I’ll rip back, bring in more closely, and work up the standing collar in a color pattern, as I had envisioned it. It’ll be a bit tricky to work those patterns, but I’ll figure something out.
Once again, I’ve knit the hems, and everyone at my knitting sleepover likes the idea of the brown rolls showing rather than stitching the hems back. We’ll see.
Here my friend Barb is modeling the thing, because, my hips are not the same size as they were when I started this sweater. That’s a problem. I’ve contemplated steeking slits into the sides, etc., but it looks so great on Barb, that I’m thinking I’ll take the Zimmerman high road here… This tunic fits her the way it was supposed to fit SOMEBODY… right? So maybe it’s Barb’s.
On the other hand, I’m redoubling my intention to meet my goal of getting in the pool every morning….
Let’s see how long it takes me to make that neckline look the way it should… If you have any brilliant ideas for this project, I’d love to hear them!
Pinkie News
Hi there folks. Thought I’d better mention that Pinkie Blankie is now available for download from Ravelry, where you can cue it up and see, at this count, around 20 or so of them being worked up in lots of gauges and ways by fellow Ravelers.
The dear ones at Lime n Violet featured Pinkie on their Chum blog today. An honor! To prepare for this, I did a photo shoot of the scarf, getting much better pics, but especially one with a willing and docile model…
Pinkie Blankie on Charlie
He’s expensive, but worth it, don’t you think?
Yes, you’re right, I’ve been lagging
Not in my knitting, mind you. I’ve been knitting. Not in a finishing mode much lately. However, I’m destined for a knitting sleepover with buddies at the end of the week, and have finishing on my mind for a couple of projects there. Depends on the ratio of silliness:knitting. We’ll see.
Meantime, though, babies have been happening, and garter stitch very much in the air, thanks to garter mojo oozing from northern Wisconsin and Brooklyn. Smacking me upside my head from both directions.
So a couple of these:
BSJ in handspun for baby Michael
BSJ for the next baby
And that led me quite naturally to get started on that Meg Swansen vest that Jack claimed from the sweater room at Schoolhouse Press.
I can’t tell you how many sweater patterns and vest patterns I’ve dangled in front of that man, how many discussions about what woolen garments he will and will not wear, but nothing could quite prepare me for his falling in love with this:
Meg's Vest on Blurry Jack
Meg's Vest Back
Now, of course… he’s not a frog guy. And he does like his more sedate colors, and so here’s where we are so far….
Meg's Vest in Jack's Colors
It’s a kissing cousin to the BSJ, a friendly little knit, starting with the cast on that runs down the fronts of the vest from armpit-height around the back, mitering up the front of the vests until you complete the fronts to the side of the body, then knitting back and forth the way you would a Zimmerman saddle to knit up the back to the armpit. Then you work strictly on the back until you get to the back of the neck, work the fronts down from the back of the neck, working some cute short rows to make those nice cuppy shoulders, and join back at the front with a three-needle bind off. Icord for about four years around the entire outside. We will not include frogs.
He sees this as the perfect around-the-house deep winter warmer upper. No sleeves is the part that makes him happy. And there’s a definite Robert Bly kind of pull my old hippie has to this garment. No doubt about that.
Knitting it up in two plies of the magical Unspun Icelandic that Schoolhouse Press sells. This stuff is really wonderful to work with. I’m dying to finish it so I can tackle some single-ply projects. I can see myself getting a lot done in this wool.
The pattern? It’s scratched on notes from my class in Marshfield, and not mine to share anyway. But if you’re interested, all you really have to do is whine enough to the folks at Schoolhouse, and I’m sure a pattern will surface somehow.
Happy work
Got a happy piece of work to dig into today, working from home, where the woods are fresh after a hard rain.
