Autumn Postcards

This canoe appeared on our river, the Wood, several days ago.

A second crop of raspberries!

Nasturtiums!

A green pumpkin.  It will not turn orange.

The Knitting Goddess demonstrates how to begin a cable cast-on for the thumb of the mitten.

The Knitting Goddess is helping me with yet another weird pattern. This one is for mittens, and I decided to try it with the wool I dyed. My next post will detail the vagaries of the project. It's a tale all-too-familiar, perhaps, and not for the faint of heart. Du courage, mes chers amis.

Deborah Newton has done it again!

Knitters who swear by Deborah Newton's classic  Designing Knitwear, a reference so useful it's been in print since 1992, can now pre-order her latest fount of knitting wisdom, Finishing School, due out on October 4th from Sixth and Spring Books.

Lucky me, I've been devouring an advance copy, and can attest that

• whether you use the book selectively, to trouble-shoot a problem or inform yourself about a particular aspect of knitwear post-production, or-
• read it from cover to cover for both edification and enjoyment...

you will become ever-more sensitized to the nuances of fit and finish, and gain a wealth of practical advice for making the most of your knitted labors of love. This dual result springs from the book's main question:  How do you accomplish good finishing--and enjoy it?

I'm one who doesn't mind finishing projects, but I realize finishing's the bane of many knitters' existences. The other day, standing in line to pay for some LYS purchases, I noticed a display of business cards from people who specialize in FINISHING the knitted work of others. On the topic of unfinished knitting, more shall be written at a later date, but if enough knitters get their hands on Finishing School, there will be far fewer UFOs lurking about, and perhaps less to say.

Deborah's very own notions tin

I had the great good fortune to chat with Deborah recently, and asked her two questions.

SMW: The organization of the book takes the knitter from blocking--the beginning of the finishing process--through various stages, like seaming, edging, closures, etc. Within each chapter are sidebars of problem-specific tutorials and "cheat-sheets" that provide short cuts or tips about finishing. Is this the way you initially conceived the book? How did it develop in your mind?

DN: In a book like this, the organization pretty much takes care of itself.  The book completely reflects MY process--having done the finishing for as many sweaters as I have over the years...I have encountered almost every kind of situation possible. The book is TOTAL EXPERIENCE, no conjecture. I am expressing what works so well for me.

SMW: What do you want the book to do for knitters?

DN: My goal is to show knitters that there is a thought process, and a way to prepare, that make finishing less daunting, more approachable, and more rewarding in and of itself.

***

Gentle readers, one more thing: Deborah Newton will be at VK Live in LA next weekend, lecturing, workshopping, and book-signing.

Swiftly, turning

My yarn swift doing its thing.

One of the greater pleasures of knitting is its unchanging technology. Needles, yarn, an umbrella swift (admittedly new-fangled, harking back to the 18th century), hands--essentially unaltered over time.

Next week is the autumn equinox.

Roving, hand-dyed by Neuroknitter, recently appeared in the garden.

As did this strange fruit.  Correctly identify it before September 22nd, and I'll send you my personal copy of  Woolly Thoughts:  How to Unlock Your Creative Genius, by Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer.

Season of mists and melancholy

New England's at the verge of autumn, the season I love most for so many reasons, not the least of which is the pleasure of knitting wool when it isn't blazingly hot. We had a miserable summer in terms of high humidity and temperatures, followed by the destructive rain and winds of Hurricane Irene, and now Tropical Storm Lee, which seems to be providing an entire week of rain and gloom. Autumn is yet two weeks away, but already there are signs...tinged foliage, browned leaves in the driveway, migrating birds, cooler evenings, dusty blue and pink asters and burgeoning goldenrod. School is again in session and yellow school buses incessantly rumble down the road. Everything is moving on.

There is an elegiac feel in the environment, bred from the turning of the seasons, the messy weather and the pervasive bad news churned out by the media, by politics, by unemployment statistics, by the impending tenth anniversary of 9/11. The other day I visited a LYS in Westerly that's going out of business on the 15th of September. It is a decent little shop, and I wrote about it in this blog two years ago, but the downtrodden economy apparently delivered the coup de grace. Inside the shop knitters pawed through discounted yarns and notions, and the owner was putting on a brave face, yet it was impossible not to feel the sadness. I asked her what she would do next and she said, "Maybe I'll be a waitress! I love working with people....but I will also do something creative; I have to keep that alive."

Cloudy, with a chance of healing

Dr. Monchik eyeballed my x-rays today and, pointing to the break said,  "You see how cloudy it is there?  That's good.  It means the bone's filling in and it's healing well."

Three more weeks in the boot. On Saturday, when we fly to Rochester, NY, to attend the wedding of two wonderful people, I will be wheelchaired from ticket counter to boarding gate to plane. But I wouldn't miss this event for anything!

Meanwhile, I have had so much more time to knit, now that I can't walk Miss Lola or stomp around in the garden.  Gentle readers, I'm sure you recall the second mystery of July's "What IS it?" blog post, yes? Several of you hazarded guesses...but alas, you were wrong. So now for the revelation:

The off-white cup on dpns would eventually become Bunny's head. This charming pattern is from Susan B. Anderson's Itty-Bitty Toys (Artisan Press, 2009). I modified it a bit, mainly because I hadn't enough off-white yarn for the entire body, so I gave Bunny a permanent sweater with another ball of Blue Sky Alpaca's "Worsted Cotton." The book features many adorable patterns for toys, and I plan to try a few more of them. Perhaps I'm entering my second childhood--hurray!

Trio in Sock Major

Taking a break...

Since I don't have a light box handy, I placed the x-rays in the stairwell window. Study them carefully and you will discern images of my left lower leg, ankle, and foot. In extreme close-up, not possible here, you would notice the spiral fracture of the fibula, sustained when I gracelessly slid on wet grass in the garden five days ago, as I was walking too fast on an incline. Perhaps luckily, I have endured many more painful insults, as the medical world calls them:  natural childbirth, foot surgeries left and right, and several classic ailments of wymmen. This, by comparison, is a piece of stale cake.

For the next five weeks I will be clomping around in a black plastic-and-velcro boot that looks like part of a Power Rangers uniform. That is, unless I have to have surgery--a decision to be made by my nice young orthopedist, Dr. Keith Monchek, next week. Stay tuned.

In the meanwhile, I'm getting lots of knitting, writing, and reading done. My knitting goal now is to finish up several longterm UFOs. One is a particularly upsetting lace pattern that is both boring and uncooperative, the Oscilloscope Shawl. I think it's an attractive garment, and I'm doing it for a friend in pink (her color request). It is absolutely maddening to track correctly, though, and consequently there are a number of obvious mistakes in my work. No frogging for me...I want OUT of this shawl! Not to worry, however; I devised a clever way to camouflage the booboos, as shall be revealed in a future post. I wouldn't recommend this pattern to anyone, unless she is an extremely methodical (anal?) knitter.

Several readers have inquired as to the mysteries I photographed for this blog in July. The first photo of "What IS it?" is a turkey vulture that had been snacking on a dead chipmunk, deposited by Rufus the Tuxedo Cat, in my driveway. At the moment, I am not at liberty to enlighten you about the second mystery--the off-white knitted thingy--inspected by Alfie in the second photo, but like almost everything else in life (or at least in this blog), it too shall be revealed at a future date.

For those of you who read Interweave's Knitscene Magazine, check out my article on LYS in London, "Unexpected Delights," in the Fall issue just released, pages 8-10. As you may recall, I spent a happy few days there in January of this year.

Bessborough Gardens, London, in January! Notice how green it was!

Now all I'm wondering about is which of the many interesting and beautiful neighborhoods I visited has been victimized by the recent hoodlum rampages. There has been a movement among London knitters to counteract this despicable anarchic terrorism with knitted love. I've copied below a free pattern for your enjoyment and possible healing, if you are reading this in the UK, and here's the link to the website. To all of you, Londoners or not, I say: "Keep calm and carry on." That is the best thing to do in situations like this, and knitting is the way to the end.

Knit a London Lovedon Heart and set it free in the city

Norwegian knitter Kaja Marie Lereng Kvernbakken (one of our global Stitch Londoners out there in the world), recently made the OsLove knitted heart pattern to show love and support after the sad events in Norway. This week she has updated the pattern with two new hearts for London, the Lovedon Hearts Knitting Pattern.

Kaja Marie says “My hope is that you will use this pattern, tweak it as you wish, and make hearts, loads of them: To remember what happened in Oslo and on Utøya or anywhere else where a little bit of love is needed. Pin it close to your heart, give to a friend or a stranger, let it out in the wild as graffiti knitting, so that the heart can find whoever needs it. Knit it in any colour, with or without words, knit them and share them.”

Once the clean up is over and the knitting starts again we hope to see these little Lovedon hearts spreading the love.

Woolly hugs to you all. Let's hope that we can unpick the problems and start casting on new rows, where the dropped stitches and tangles in society (that means all of you looters, hackers, greedy banks and sneaky politicians included) are all put back on the needles the right way. Power to the Riot Wombles!