I do, don’t I? Don’t I? So then you could never guess, seeing me calmly packing, calmly deciding on projects and notions, calmly remembering my underwear and my toothbrush, that…

I AM GOING TO SCHOOLHOUSE PRESS!!!

Yes I am. Headed to Mecca. To the source. To the epicenter and the circle of knitting magic and love and to the place EZ chose, herself, to set up camp, and to meet the ethereal Meg Swansen, and hope like crazy my husband doesn’t run away with her (because I can’t stop him from becoming smitten if I can’t stop myself, right? Wouldn’t be fair.), and to try so, so hard not to ruin our chances of a healthy retirement with overspending on great yarn, and to get HELP with the little vest, and…. just to soak it all up.

Tomorrow we start the drive, stopping along the way to gather IKEA goodies and to visit my old house in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.

Well. I can’t believe it. The time has come.  Here I go.

So calmly.

Hemlock Ring Blanket Finished

Originally uploaded by jujuridl

Yay. This was just so addicitively lovely. I did not follow BrooklynTweed’s yarn and needle recommendation, but made a 36″ wide blanket using Marr Haven sport weight yarn on size 7 needles. That yarn feels a bit rough when you’re working it, but blocks out so softly, that I might just give the rest of that yarn a wash before working with it again. I used less than half a spool, and will weigh out the blanket once it’s fully dry.

The only harrowing bit of making this is becoming convinced that the strange little octopus thingy could possibly block out flat, and I have to say I have never man-handled a piece of knitting so much as this to get it to flatten. The trick, as for all lace, is to stick with the lines I found it useful to pin out the feather centerlines after the flower was complete, and then work the fan shapes last, releasing the feathers to make a nice inside curve as I worked my way around.

When making this piece for a gift, leave lots of time for the border. For some reason it took me much longer than I expected to get that done. Nice work, a lovely edge, and one I’ll want to repeat…

Found its home with a wonderfully smart woman who’s helped me a lot lately. Can’t wait to play with it when it’s dry before sending it off..

This post has socks in it, so why not put it in my knitting blog? It is last night’s dream. I had to struggle to wake myself up from it this morning…

In my dream everybody — all of my family and friends and acquaintences, all of us — live in a single large apartment complex. Awake I recognize it’s a big nursing home, or elders’ apartment complex, but it was just where we lived in the dream. In the dream I’m helping my father, in his rooms, put his laundry away after it came back from the cleaners. Skivvies in his skivvy drawer. (We were raised by the Navy, and skivvies are underwear.) Shirts and pants in his closet. And then his socks. They were all wet, and they had a kind of wrapper, plastic, saying, Thank You For Your Business, The Ku Klux Klan.

The Ku Klux Klan was laundering my dad’s socks! And badly! And charging us for it!

I got very upset. I asked my Dad, Did you know the Ku Klux Klan is washing your socks? But my dad has severe dementia, so I knew it was a stupid question. He did not know. He just wasn’t happy about his wet socks.

The rest of the dream is me encountering all these people I know and people I love, and asking, Why does the Ku Klux Klan have the contract for cleaning our socks?! We should not let them wash our socks! I don’t want them washing my socks. Why is it okay for them to profit from our business? And they’re terrible at it besides! I asked the kid at the gym counter, and the guy behind the front desk and the lady serving jello salad (lime with shaved carrots) in the cafeteria… why? How can we abide this? Asked my friends, why? How can this be? How can we let this stand? Everyone seemed kind of pestered by my questions and very shruggy. It didn’t seem very important.

And I woke up very frustrated.

Of course, it’s a political dream. I’m pretty sure. And I feel just as strongly by daylight that the Klan should not be allowed to wash our socks. Kind of scared to go back to sleep tonight…

Trying blogit. Because I can't sleep.

Hey go rate my kitteh, will you? She’s a selfish, murderous, destructive, and very soft cat. Maybe living a public life will make her consider her behavior…

It’s National Poetry Month. And the month is honored starting at midnight when poets and people who like poetry around the world paste up poems in unexpected places for people to find, quite by accident. And so, here is a poem by the amazing Bob Hicok, who sent this to us when my mother died. I’ve printed it entirely without his permission, but in the spirit of the day. So if you like it, go buy a book of his and enjoy so much more…

One of those things we say

My thoughts are with you.

They’re the left sleeve of the white shirt in your closet,
at the far end, away from the other disguises of flesh.

The twist-tie in your ponytail when all else fails.

I am here, weeks of walking away, Ohio and skin
between us, West Virginia and strip mines, I’d hate to count
the rivers, how many other women
with their dying mothers,
their long nights at the picnic table
with stars and the stars of cigarettes again
after so many years of no.

But my thoughts are there and my thoughts
are hands washing the oatmeal pot, taking out the diapers, breath
should come with a warning,

YOU WILL RAISE YOUR MOTHER INTO DEATH LIKE A CHILD

but you would, anyway, breathe.

Breathe and drop a red ball into a lake,
breathe and go to the prom,
breathe and throw a party for the house when the mortgage
has lost its teeth.

And there you are, old.
And as everyone else quits breathing, you keep on.
And then it’s your turn to stop.
And in the second you do, you know something you can’t tell us,
about after, about the story of here.
And your daughter, looking at your face, has no idea
you’re trying to comfort her.

And you have no idea I’m trying to comfort you.

I love how intimate I’ve become with failure.

That leaves, having given up green for brown, sky for earth,
say things when I walk through them.

Gibberish, I think it’s called.

Like my thoughts after six hundred miles of travel,
that shutter banging in wind, that dog
barking at nothing
because every time he’s barked at nothing,
nothing’s gone wrong and why not
keep it that way.

See how much I don’t want to prep taxes? Three posts in 24 hours. That’s how much. And then whooping cranes flew over my house. Am I supposed to file papers when that’s going on? And then the girl stopped by for a fitting:

I’m making her hold her arms like that because the sleeves aren’t sewn yet. Those Zimmermanesque saddle shoulders are perfect. The provisional cast on threads will all be hems. But first, we were looking for the right neckline. We think this is basically it. Sort of a bateau. Bateauish.

All the open holes in Shoddy will show when she wears something dark under it. We’ll have a shoot when it’s all done. but this is a step in the right direction… Now I have to figure out how to finish that neck… Pick up stitches along the new line, yes. Trim back anything extraneous, of course. Knit the hem out. But a proper turning ridge? Should I do a turning ridge? Just press and hem? Hmm… Back to the swatches for some expermenting. Any advice, anyone?

And yes, if Thuy said I should jump off a cliff, I probably would, because she knows a thing or two about cliffs too…

Here is the start of Jared’s hemlock ring blanket, at a smaller gauge, on size 7 needles with Marr Haven Farm’s sport-weight yarn.

Sigh.

That feels better…

I wonder if she would feel so permissive if she saw the state of those scarves and all the lace projects begun and abandoned meantime… hmm….

Here’s a Flickr show of Hemlock Ring Blankets, in case you need your own push…

Bad blogger, bad blogger, bad blogger. I won’t make excuses. There has been knitting. Plenty. And I’ve been *thinking* of making a record of it. But it takes having pressing deadlines at work and a looming income tax deadline to really give me the procrastinator’s push to spend my time blogging about knitting instead of meeting deadlines. Makes sense, right?

So a fast roundup of progress shots, many of them fuzzy, and then I swear I’m going to post about the adorable twins and their tomtens. Soon, soon.

I have too many projects going. Have had. For some time now. And so I’m determined to get them off the needles, or many of them, anyway, before I cast on this, which has been calling to me for ages now. Doesn’t help that my friend Lorilee cast one on and off in about a minute and a half last month. Still, it’s going to be so good. I know it. A good reward for finishing some stuff. So it’ll have to wait.

I finished these socks, which still strike me as a waste of Koigu, but I never worked up the gumption to frog them and do something more Koigu-worthy. They are comfortable, and handmade, and mine. And off the needles.

Started and finished ANOTHER zeebee one evening when I was feeling put out about my rule of not casting anything new on until I finished other things. Sorry for the fuzz photo. The yarn is a scrumptions hand-spun collected during a Hello Yarn spree awhile back. Take my word for its beauty. The sort of yarn you can fall into, get lost in.

Another project I started after vowing, profoundly, not to start another, is a new take on my ipod mittens, which I now think of as iPhone mittens (hee!), this time with a gussetted thumb and the prettiest Regia sock yarn… again a fuzzy mess of a photo, but a better photo shoot is coming…

Here’s a project I started BEFORE the boycott. It’s the Vogue anniversary scarf by Nicki Epstein, which I thought would be a challenge for me, but turns out to be so darn easy it’s deadly dull. This is meeting knitting, but not quite mindless enough to be TV knitting. And I knit in so few meetings that… it’s taking awhile…

Now here’s some juice, though, on three projects I’ve designed and feel enough love for that they’re taking too long just because I spend a fair amount of time just petting them…

Here is Shoddy, my daughter’s mohair t-shirt. Nearly done. We need to decide how to treat the neckline, whether to keep the funnel I’ve knitted or cut it down into a scoop, or go bateau, or what. Mohair will let you decide. Here’s the Shoddy Flickr set that will let you see the work in progress…

I started this little guy a good while ago to see how I felt about Fair Isle in a more traditional Shetland wool… Also to play with my new Cochenille software. I feel good about both. Quite good. We’re nearly close on this. A bit under motivated, because I’ll miss it when it’s gone, and because the little man it was intended for has outgrown it. Sigh. Flickr set here.

And the Peacefleece Tunic has been seriously languishing, but I have no idea why. Why? I suspect it’s because of the little vest. I like working color at that smaller gauge a whole lot better than with big, clunky yarn. When the color work is done, and I can proceed with a nice mindless bunch of in-the-round knitting, I’m sure it’ll go pretty fast…

Ummm… oh, there is another scarf, er.. two, that haven’t made it under a camera’s lens… Now the question… How many of these things must I finish before getting to the Hemlock? Hmm? Anyone?

Okay, now, if you don’t like feminism, or don’t like strong opinions, then please don’t read this. But if you’re open to listening to really strong arguments, here are a bunch of them, a history lesson or two, a clear voice. I’m passing it along, because it shamed me into thinking harder. So I thought it should be shared. I’m still undecided, but maybe thinking more clearly…

http://www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/020108.html

Hey Ravelers… You can download the pattern in Ravelry.com, too. Or save it in your library… Queue it. Love it up. Thanks for your interest.

Check out this work Then call in sick, ransack the stash, find your hooks, and try, try, try….

Well Pinkie Blankie (get the story behind the pattern here) is all done and blocked and ready to go to its new home. And I finished up the pattern (if clicking on this link doesn’t do anything, try right-clicking and choosing “save link as” to save the PDF document some place on your computer), including clever little details like finished measurements and stuff that the more curious of you have been asking for. And some pics. Because who doesn’t love pics? I’ll show you the scarf based on this pattern when it’s done and draped around its owner. Am about half finished with that. More to post soon. I have a very serious case of cast-on-itis, but no finish-philia rising…

Download Pinkie Blankie Pattern PDF

(Pudgy beaglish guy added for Scale)

Download Julie’s Pinkie Blankie pattern. (If clicking the link doesn’t work for you, try right-clicking and “saving link as” to put the file somewhere on your machine where you will find it again.)

Okay, the story behind Pinkie Blankie is this…

I had a security blanket when I was a little girl. Its name was pinkie blankie. It was a wool bit of a blanket, with satin edges. And I hung onto it for a very long time. A Very. Long. Time. When I was 8, and Pinkie Blankie wasn’t very pink any more, and we were preparing to move overseas, Pinkie Blankie… disappeared.

The story told in my family is that Richard Jason, the hateful and hated bully who lived next door, stole Pinkie Blankie and threw it into Glen Creek. It floated away, probably to the ocean. Anyway, it was gone forever.

Have I mentioned that my mother was a great fictionalist? A fictionalizer? A fabulist? Someone who used fictional devices to effect change in her family? She was a gifted liar. Always for good reason. For instance, there is the portrait of a Chinese mandarin, which hung in every house we ever lived in, who, mom claimed, was our great-great-great-great grandfather. She said later she lied so that we would never be prejudiced. Not bad, eh? It is unnerving, however, to know that most of our family history may be fabricated. We have no idea, actually, who we are, or what is true. But we are comfortable with mystery.

It wasn’t until I began, a few weeks ago, to think about a security blanket for a friend of mine, and stumbled over the large stash of pink Tahki I’ve been sitting on (which reminded me of this amazing gift of knitting)and put these things together, that I even remembered my Pinkie Blankie. And then began to wonder about the Richard Jason incident. How did he get into our house, upstairs to my room, steal my blankie, remove himself from the house, head a block away up the road to the creek, and throw it in, all without anyone noticing?

And it wasn’t his style. He was capable of terrible things, much worse, in fact, but he enjoyed torturing each of us in person. He wanted to read the humiliation in our eyes. This secret swiping of the blanket just didn’t add up. And that my mother delivered the news? How would she be the one to know? As somebody’s mother, she would be the last to know. The very last.

And the timing… just as we were going through a great purge in preparation for a move overseas… and my age. And… well… I think I’ve been blaming the wrong person for Pinkie Blankie’s demise for, oh, 40 years.

Mom’s gone. Pinkie Blankie’s gone. I will never know the truth. But I can raise Pinkie Blankie from the ashes. Maybe several, given how much of this yarn I have in my silly-big stash. The first will go to a friend who needs it even more than I do. The second may go straight into the creek I now live on, to float out into Lake Michigan, where my mother’s ashes rest. I’d like to let her know I’m on to her, finally.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, it’s been awfully quiet here. So much to share. But… I…. just… can’t… yet.

Not that there’s all that MUCH holiday knitting going on. In fact, much procrastination. Very much. But meantime some good fun with my Stitch Painter. With it painted this:

Which is the basis for two gift projects, whose presence will be felt here after December 25… Though neither will actually be FINISHED… ahem. If you notice a remarkable similarity to Cherry Leaf shawl from Victorian Lace Today, you’d be right. The stitch pattern is the same, but all squared up.

(You would not believe how long it took me to figure out how to cut the pattern in half at the sides. I am THAT slow.. actually.)

Anyhoo, two projects, one in super bulky, and the other in, what else? Koigu. I have this pattern stuck in my head, so I might as well enjoy it, right? Would make a great baby blanket in a nice superwash worsted weight, methinks. Full pattern and story behind the name (Pinkie Blankie) coming soon… I double pinkie swear… Meantime, if you just can’t wait to knit off the chart, a nice big downloadable version is available at Flickr right this minute, along with a copy of the repeat and a symbol decoder.

Happy everything to you and yours!

Knittingjuju

Hey, did you catch Yarn Harlot in the Times today? Her verb “to kinnear” has been recorded in the nation’s newspaper. She’s our Shakespeare.

Ah! It’s done, it’s beautiful, if I may say so, and it’s headed off to auction.

Could not have finished this without the generous support of Ravelry friends in GB and CT who sourced the last two skeins of yarn. This took four skeins of Jitterbug. It’s mostly the Cherry Leaf Shawl from Victorian Lace Today, knit up with maybe 6 more repeats of leaves, with a completely different border, which I edited down from another of her borders in the book.

So, it’s going to raise funds for a friend’s bone marrow transplant. What should I ask for an opening bid… Want to come to the super cool party? It’ll be great poetry and fiction readings and wonderful music and a good auction… This coming Sunday. Details here….

I knew I wouldn’t get much further on the little fair isle sampler vest until I got out and loaded and learned the Cochenille knitting software I’ve been sitting on for a couple of months. Tonight was my night. Amazingly easy to use, with much learning still to do, I plunged ahead to grid out the little vest so I could get back to work on it. So glad I did. It will still require some fudging about, since the vest is worked in the round, but I’ll fix the chart as I go and then upload the finals. Just having the palette and grid in front of me helped me plan out the finish of this little guy, avoiding all sorts of problems I would have had if I’d kept winging it…

Hooked on fair isleOriginally uploaded by juju&jackPardon the terrible phone photo, but wanted to share what I’ve been doing on vacation. Frogged my start at this to eliminate a pinky beige that did not play well with other colors. Using Nancy’s knit knacks Digit yarns I’ve had stashed for more latvian mitts to try out some Starmore charts just to see if I would enjoy the process. On boy I’m hooked. Will be stocking up on the J&S now. So much to learn….

Here was the idea….

And here it is all finished and keeping me warm:

And here I am pretending I don’t know my photo is being taken..

Things I learned in designing this sweater:

*My shoulders are not as wide as I imagine them to be. I’ll use my actual shoulder measurements next time, not measurements from sweaters that already fit around my hips.

* Fitted sleeves matter to me.

* Think through the wearing of the sweater, and not just the aesthetics. I will have pockets in my next jacket. And maybe in this one too, except I don’t think the Noro can handle pockets.

*Noro Kureyon is soft, and gets a lot softer and more drapey after blocking. Also it lengthens with blocking. And maybe also with wear.  It is, perhaps, not an appropriate yarn all by itself for a jacket. Or any heavy structural thing. Think light and squishy stuff for this yarn. But nevertheless, this jacket is lots of fun to wear.

*I languished in the making of this sweater in part because the palette is so strong. During certain seasons of the year, I could not imagine myself wearing it, and so lost interest in it. Of course, as soon as the leaves started to turn, I NEEDED the sweater. I’m not sure what the lesson is here… trust my instincts? Stretch a little? Or stick to safe colors for projects with a heavy investment. Or maybe I haven’t learned a thing. That is always possible.

*I ALWAYS overestimate the amount of yarn I need for a project. In this case, I have more than enough yarn left to make another of these sweaters, along with hats and scarves to match. Anybody feel like a trade?

*Sweaterwizard is okay software for getting a pattern started and estimating yarn (which I did after purchasing the yarn), but has too many limitations for me. I’m trying out the Cochenille suite one of these days, and will let you know what I think. I think I’ll love it, since it came recommended from hot knit designers…

*Learning little tricks from great knitters is a worthy lifelong pursuit. Especially finishing tricks. Thanks so much to my teachers for this sweater, Dixie, and Maureen.

And I’m back to the fair isle vest I frogged enroute to Stonington, where it is raining and grey and foggy,  just the way I like my Maine seashore…

Fun watching while I knit twin tomtens:

http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=tomten