Sky in a basket, sky in a scarf

Well, here's the view from the second floor of my house. A few things might jump out at you, like the fallen tree that (sob) used to tether my beloved clotheslines. The tree was a casualty of the blizzard oddly called Nemo (Latin:  no one).  And you might also notice the dregs of snow on either side of the Wood River. What you probably haven't thought much about, though, is the sky. In the photo it's relatively flat and seems unimportant. The color is that of skim milk--kind of white with sickly blue-grey around the edges. The sky has been this color, or much greyer, for most of February. It is a February New England sky.

I've been thinking a lot about the sky because I'm making a Sky Scarf. I suppose you could call this project conceptual knitting and maybe aleatory knitting, too, since random factors come into play. (For more information about this see the charming website called Leaf Cutter Designs.) The color of the scarf depends on the color of the sky wherever you happen to be. Every day for a year the knitter looks at the sky and knits a stripe representing the sky's color.

I began knitting on 23 February, my birthday, and will conclude on the eve of my next birthday. Let's hope I get to use some of the bluer colors in the foreseeable future!

Balmy, palmy, yarn-bomby

Whilst my immediate family was huddled around the wood-stove, in an east coast house devoid of electricity and battered by the wrath of Blizzard Nemo , I was blithely communing with nature in Los Angeles, where it was, um, relatively vernal.

In fact, marching around Elysian Park with my sister and her dogs,

L-R:  Dorrie, unidentified woman belonging to Clyde, Theo, Clyde, sister.

I discovered an exotic bloom, Yarnbombia Acrylicana, adorning a tree in a small arboretum:

Most of my knitting happened aboard Southwest Air, as I traveled between the coasts. I find solitary travel to be the best way to knit lace, for obvious reasons.

Solid-color socks knit from Swans Island lovely ultra-fine merino fingering yarn.  Printed yarn is Marathon.

Here are some additional postcards:

Double rainbow over Echo Park.

Venice

Someone's garden in Venice.

A perfect camellia.

A camellia tree in Descanso Gardens

But all good things must come to an end.  I'm sorry to report that this tree destroyed my beloved clotheslines.

Meanwhile, back in Rhode Island, quod Nemo non fecit.

Stumbling around at Slater Mill

Today ends the Slater Mill Knitting Guild Knitting Weekend and I was damned if I was going to miss it, especially since I'd signed up for Helen Bingham's simultaneous socks workshop on Saturday. Small detail:  I've had a grotesque cold for the past week....Nonetheless I turned on the Stoic Resolve, swallowed a whole lot of OTC cold-nuking drugs, and I can tell you that for me, the entire five hours I spent there, was a total blur. Possibly the drug cocktail had something to do with this? The drive home was equally loopy. I seemed to be in the thrall of Solar Slowdowns, and expected to see ETs among the space alien corn as I reached the top of every hill with its reward of instantaneous blindness from glaring rays of the setting sun.

Helen Bingham teaches simultaneous socks.

After two hours of intense concentration whilst my brain moved in slow motion and enjoyed minor hallucinations, I determined it was time to press Reset --> Delay [48 hours] --> Start; so I packed up my sad attempt at two simultaneous socks

and wandered around the yarn artisans' marketplace for a while, running into my friends from North Light Fibers,

my neighbor, Linda Perry, the dynamo behind Thistledown Knitting,

Linda's beauteous hand-dyed worsteds

and discovered the fabulous sock yarn of Play at Life Fiber Arts, located on Etsy and in Fall River, MA.

Here the yarn stands in for H, who will wear sox knitted therefrom.

Was the jaunt worth it, given my subpar health?  What kind of question is that???

The ever-perfectible Piet

A trip to Free Pattern Land acquainted me with the Berocco design called Piet and I began knitting him around 9.30 pm on the evening of November 12, 2012, when I had to visit the ER at Westerly (RI) hospital and figured (correctly) that I'd be sitting around in an examination cubicle for a while so I needed something to occupy my always frantic hands. On the way out of the house, I grabbed yarn, pattern, and needles, et sic Piet nascitur. By the time I left the ER (around midnight) Piet's feet and waist were complete.

Then a hiatus. But recently, in the interest of fulfillment, I picked Piet up again, and today, as Neuroknitter and I knitted and exchanged bons mots before the cozy wood-stove,

Neuro's hard at work on her beauteous fair-isle vest.

I finished Piet and saw that he was good.

It's my sense that Piet's name and color-blocked composition are in homage to the Dutch painter, Piet Mondrian.

***

At first I thought I was making Piet as a baby gift, but as he emerged I realized it would be hard to sacrifice him to the ravages of baby love. Moreover, as I moved through the knitting pattern I saw that certain adjustments had to be made to accommodate the wear-and-tear inflicted by children...so I determined that this Piet is a prototype, and Piet II will be birthed in the not-too-distant future.

Is it not serendipitous that Piet is two-faced, like Janus, the Roman god after whom this month is named? Respice prospice, etc. Implicitly, then, Piet is of variable mood, a character of depth.

Check out the Ravelry page featuring many different iterations of Piet. You will enjoy the creativity of his knitting progenitors.

Alfie graciously shares his bed with Piet.

Welcoming the new

Just before the entrance of 2013, Mother Nature brought us nine inches of snow. The next few days were pleasant to spend indoors, knitting by the wood-stove.

Sunrise over the Wood River, Woodville RI, 12/30/12

This is the kind of weather that, like the end result of labor, obliterates the memory of pain and suffering--all those torrid days in July, those wild hurricanes in the fall, the endless slush and mush of early spring.  Gentle knitters, it is really beautiful here in New England right now. That is all I know.

As per usual, I polled an array of friends on their New Year's knitting resolutions. The minority who replied (my friends are very busy people) seemed both sensible and creative. Here are their thoughts to share with you, and perhaps inspire.

Neuroknitter and Oogyknitter annually choose a knitting theme and spend the rest of the year working it out. This year's is entitled "Thing a Month," and as Oogy explains, "We have selected 12 items, techniques, or project categories, and have designed one for each month of the year.  For example - our January project is collaborative and will be based upon the BFF Scarf from knitty.com, but with a few alterations.  Our February project is New Sock Technique, when I will attempt Magic Loop, and Neuro will attempt Toe-Up.  And so forth.  We'll both blog these and all subsequent months, favorable and not.  It should be a fairly eventful yarn year from that perspective!" You can bet that I'll be tracking their fascinating progress, and you can, too, as the links are both on my blogroll and above.

Irene DeVerna, of Eneri Knits, says "my resolution is to sort through and organize my stash, sell or donate what I no longer want, and prioritize all my UFOs!"  (Isn't that every knitter's dream? More power to you, Irene!)

Sven and Laura Risom of North Light Fibers have set themselves great goals to achieve--see my post prior to this--and Deborah Newton, the Knitting Goddess, says her plan is "less Internet, more productivity!" (By the way, you can catch her at VK Live in NYC, January 18-20!)

As for me, I really need a vest and I want to use up stash yarn and I crave a break from dpns...so I'm going to start the Anastasiya vest in the very near future. It's on straight 2s and 3s, but on the plus side, it's only two pieces to knit (if I don't go chart-blind). Let's hope I get it done before summer....

Shameless plugs

As you know, gentle knitters, occasionally I mention opportunities that seem worthwhile. Recently the following events caught my eye, and I'll pass the info on for your consideration.

The first to occur, on January 17th of 2013, is the Second Annual Knit-In, sponsored by Main Street Art, an arts community center in Newfields, New Hampshire.  It runs from 8 to 8, and is to benefit New Horizons of New Hampshire, a social services program that includes a food pantry, homeless shelter, and soup kitchen in Manchester. "Knitters are welcome to join us for the day or just for an hour...Yarn and patterns provided, but everyone should bring their own needles (7-9).  We'll be knitting up as many hats as we can and would love everyone's company."  So, for further info go to www.newfieldsart.org, or contact Kelley Corson at 603-321-7305/kacorson@yahoo.com.

The second is a Debbie Stoller weekend retreat, February 15-18th, at the Rowe Camp and Conference Center in Rowe, Massachusetts (in the Berkshires, very pretty).  It's called "Raging Wool," and it promises to be amusing, though I hope not overly enraged.  Click here for more info.

Now, on to the last shameless plug. When I queried Sven and Laura Risom, the dynamic couple behind North Light Fibers on Block Island, about their New Year's knitting resolutions, I seem to have unleashed a force of nature.

As you may recall, if you read some of my earlier posts, the Risoms have embraced yarn as a way of life, and to spend any time in their company is a fiber immersion experience. Now they're asking willing knitters to collaborate with them on specific projects, all of which sound quite interesting.

I'll leave you with the Risoms' resolutions and forecasts in their own words. (In a day or two I'll be posting the New Year's resolutions of other knitters who responded to my request--and if you have some you want to share, email me asap!)

So...here's the skinny from North Light Fibers:

As many of you know, North Light Fibers is a small yarn mill and store located on Block Island, RI focused on producing quality blended yarns from exotic fibers such as qiviut, yak, camel, alpaca, bamboo, silk, etc. We clean, dehair, dye, card, and spin all of our yarns and we are starting to work with other exotics including Paco Vicuna and other beautiful fibers. We are located in the middle of an animal farm on a beautiful island and welcome everyone to visit us. In addition to planning a great retreat for the weekend of May 3rd with instructors including Deborah Newton, Melissa Leapman and more (http://northlightfibers.com/knittingretreat2013) and introducing a new line of Forever Lace yarn (80% baby alpaca, 20% bamboo in 16+ colors as pictured below), we are really wanting to work with more knitters and expand the use of our yarns – and this gets us to our resolutions for 2013:

• Work with knitters to develop new patterns and applications for our yarns. Laura is knitting a pillow with a prototype new super chunky yarn (80% Fine Alpaca/20%Fine Bamboo) in the picture below. But we need new ideas and we want to work with knitters to help develop and introduce the ideas to the knitting community.

Credit:  S. Risom

• Develop and market more patterns and kits using our yarns. If any of you design patterns or have recommendations of patterns for us to carry, we would love to hear from you. Many knitters want help in planning their project and we need your help in developing the kits and project plans.
• Create many more knit samples of patterns we market. We produce a lot of yarn but we need assistance making samples of the patterns. We would love to hang your knit sample in our booth at shows (Stitches, Vogue Live, New York Sheep and Wool Festival, New England Fiber Festival, etc). We look forward to forming partnerships with knitters to work with us.
• Expand retreats in the spring and fall that are dedicated to yarn shops, clubs, guilds or groups. We have had many "small" knitting retreats that have all been very successful (i.e. The RI Hook and Needle Guild) and we would enjoy talking with more people about a weekend retreat on Block Island.
• Identify a select set of stores to sell our yarns wholesale. We plan to start selling our yarns wholesale in 2013 starting in 2-3 stores in the Northeast. Do you have any ideas? We would love input and advice as to what stores can best carry our yarns.

As the saying goes, you put out your call to the universe, and you get what you want.  Let's hope the universe is listening in 2013!

Neighborhood alpacas inspect North Light Fibers yarn.  Credit:  S. Risom.

Neo-Victorian Mitts: a free knitting pattern

A holiday present for gentle knitters everywhere.

Neo-Victorian Mitts 

My friend Chavvy [not her real name], one of the world’s few academics who’s also a nice person, typifies the perfect fusion of Victorian and contemporary style in everything she does.  With this in mind I designed these mitts for her and used acrylic yarn (SMC Northern Worsted), as she’s allergic to wool.

Materials:  Four #7 dpns, scissors and a yarn needle, two skeins of worsted-weight yarn, a Main Color (MC) and a Contrasting Color (CC).  (Note—only a small amount of yarn is needed for the CC, and the MC is probably about 50 yards or less—in case you want to use up stash yarn.)

Directions:  With CC cast on 36 stitches and purl for an inch, or desired length of contrast ruffle (it will curl under to some extent).  Switch to MC and knit in the following ribbed pattern—K2 P1—for 4 inches or desired length.  At this point you’ll change stitch patterns and start working the thumb.  The thumb will be done in stockinette (unless you want to do it in Moss stitch), the rest in moss stitch (Row 1:  K1 P1; Row 2: P1 K1; alternate rows).

Thumb:  Rows as follows below:

1.     K2, M1R, K, M1L, pattern to end

2.     K all thumb stitches, pattern to end

3.     K2, M1R, K3, M1L, pattern to end

4.     K all thumb stitches, pattern to end

5.     K2, M1R, K5, M1L, pattern to end

6.     K all thumb stitches, pattern to end

7.     K2, M1R, K7, M1L, pattern to end

8.     K all thumb stitches, pattern to end

9.     K2, cast on 5 using backwards loop method, transfer 9 thumb stitches to a holder or waste yarn, pattern to end

10. K10, pattern to end

11. K1, sl1, psso, K2, K2tog, pattern to end

12. K1, sl1, psso, k2tog, pattern to end.

Note:  The last three rows of the thumb only can be done in the CC, or MC, as you desire.

Continue knitting the hand of the mitt until you reach the desired length, approximately 8 inches from the beginning, before starting the top edging.

Top edging:  Purl in CC for four rows, or about a half-inch.

Bows (make two):  Cast 3 stitches onto one of your dpns, and with it and another, knit a 16-inch I-cord.  Tie each cord into a small bow, and tack onto the mitt where the wrist joins the hand.

If you find errors in this pattern, please advise!

 Please note:  Mitts are excellent to wear while reading in bed in a cold room.