Finishing the (metaphorical) hat...

That song from Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George has been ear-worming me recently.

So many projects, so little time! Then, in the latest Vogue Knitting (Holiday 2013) there's an interview with Esteemed Knitting Crone Barbara G. Walker who admonishes everyone to finish, finish, finish before starting anything new:  "My most basic advice to other knitters is:  Always finish your project, even if you're dying to start that much more interesting new thing."

Ipse dixit.  Okay, okay.

So I started finishing stuff.  More because of my inner Sondheim than the other guru. Socks, mostly. I don't suffer from SSS (Second Sock Syndrome). I do finish a pair at a time. It's just that I usually have three or four pairs going at once. Maybe I suffer from Sixth Sock Syndrome....

This race to the finish line, it was like wrestling with inner demons. There are about six thousand new projects I want to, I want to, I want to...

But no.  I must finish what I've started, just as BGW says. And, as Sondheim envisions Seurat, there is an appealing romantic driven intensity to the artist in thrall to his creative vision/compulsion.

Behold:

Left to right, a week's finishing work:  for Caeden (18 months), for Bettina G., for moi, for Ellen (still being finished).

I'm not proud to say that pair #3, faux cables in a beautifully soft Swans Island lilac fingering weight merino took me almost two years.  The central portion of each sock was mostly done during two round-trips on Amtrak from Westerly, RI to Philadelphia, PA--ten hours per trip, in the Quiet Car where talking and all other noisy distractions are verboten.

Was it worth it? No, she said unequivocally. The socks are lovely, but confirmed to me loud and clear that I am not a detail-oriented knitter. Or, put another way, I become hysterical and unpleasant when I have to concentrate on a complicated pattern. So, never again to this pattern.

But at least I finished them....

And when the woman that you wanted goes,
You can say to yourself, "Well, I give what I give."
But the woman who won't wait for you knows
That however you live,
There's a part of you always standing by,
Mapping out the sky,
Finishing a hat...
Starting on a hat...
Finishing a hat...
Look I made a hat...
Where there never was a hat.

(Stephen Sondheim, "Finishing the Hat" from Sunday in the Park with George.)

Hey, what's the Big Idea?

"Books do furnish a room."

                               --Anthony Powell

So maybe you’d like some new knitting books for the holidays, or maybe you’d like to give one to a dearly beloved knitter?  Here are three that recently crossed my desk.  They’re all clever and meritorious, and  I shall rank them in order of technical difficulty.

The easiest, technically, is The Knit Parade, by Rebecca Rymsza (Collins & Brown, 2013). This book’s Big Idea is that you can individualize a generic unisex sweater (crewneck, long sleeves) with graphic intarsia images. Stars, keys, telephone receivers, hearts pierced by lightning, leopard spots—you’ve always dreamed of a sweater decorated with these kinds of motifs, right? Each motif ties in with a pop song—that aspect is way past my realm of consciousness, but perhaps you know a teen-at-heart who’s plugged into this current, and you’re looking to knit her/him something transiently cool and tragically hip. At any rate, the patterns are clean and simple, and offer an encouraging introduction to basic intarsia. Who knew intarsia could be this funky?

Then we have Classic Elite’s Shawls, Wraps & Scarves:  20 Ideas, 3 Ways (Sixth & Spring, 2012). The Big Idea here is, as the title says, multiple garments from a single stitch pattern. Maybe this doesn’t seem earthshaking, but each of the twenty prototype patterns is distinctive, and each is worked up in different yarns to different lengths and different proportions. It’s actually quite magical to see how a master pattern can yield differing results as the variables of yarn, needles, etc. change. The photography is really good, the garments beautiful. This book is my pick of the three, if you want to go with only one. It provides the most bang for the buck, if you think of its contents as really sixty patterns rather than twenty, and in terms of these patterns’ shelf life. They’re classic, elite, and will never go out of style. 

The most interesting of the three is Irish Schreier’s Reversible Knits (Lark, 2013). The Big Idea here is training a knitter to become adept at knitting garments that have no wrong side. It’s an excellent technical primer; there’s a lot of good information about stitch/fabric composition (including a small swatch lexicon that offers painless trialing of the techniques), and about fixing mistakes; and there’s an array of designs, ranked in difficulty from Beginner to Experienced, that combines beauty and technical expansion at every level. This is a book for a dedicated and curious knitter…in fact, I’m probably going to start on one of its patterns very soon!

So there you have it—three very different knitting book possibilities; together they’re fairly representative of what the annual crop of knitting books yields. Attractively designed, interesting to read, gimmicky to varying degrees, and offering solid technical advice, they’re good gifts for any knitter, including you.

Not Knitting New England...

...rather, knitted whimsy outside the only LYS in Melk, Austria (population 5,000), where I was last week.

I once attended a lecture on images of knitting in art, in which the lecturer opined that yarn bombing is a form of graffiti. Sometimes it is, I suppose, especially when the yarn bombers choose particularly noisome shades of acrylic, like neon lime green or Day-Glo pink.

Bicycles are apparently objects ripe for yarn-bombing--cf. the photo on this blog, last spring, of a yarn-bombed bike in Charleston, South Carolina. Perhaps it's the odd angles of the frame in contrast to the roundedness of the wheels that offer so much opportunity to practitioners of this so-called graffiti. Actually, I think in these bicycle examples, "graffiti" is a misnomer. Yarn-bombed bikes provide eye-catching advertising for their charming yarn stores, sort of like the shop-signs of yore that featured images of a merchant's or artisan's specialty.

Zum Wildern Mann, Passau

Anyway, I went inside Melk's LYS, "Frau Wolle," and poked around, and felt very much at home.

Earbud sleeve: a free pattern!

Some weeks ago I walked around New York City noticing how everyone was wearing earbuds, or, if their ears weren't plugged up, they had with artful insouciance slung earbuds and attachments around their necks or stuffed them into breast pockets as if they were spaghetti ascots. Instinctively I knew that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to carry this off, because I am woefully maladroit in the tech-toys department, and deliberately uncool.

Perhaps this explains why it's impossible for me to keep my earbuds from tangling, no matter how carefully I roll them before stowing in a cute book-replica box that had once held a bar of soap. I pondered this a while. It then struck me that I could perhaps knit a cord cover, so that I wouldn't have to spend twenty minutes trying to straighten the buds before using them. (Proof of uncoolness: I use earbuds only to talk to H on my cellphone. This is because he claims to be unable to hear me during cellphone chats if I'm holding the phone near my face.)

I cast six stitches onto a #2 dpn, picked up another #2 dpn and began knitting an I-cord with leftover sock yarn. After an inch I decreased, over two rows, to four stitches, then stuffed the base (the plug) of the earbud wire into the knitted tube. The only thing one needs to keep in mind while knitting an I-cord tube around a wire, is always to bring the yarn around the back of the wire each time a new row begins. Work with a small ball of yarn, too, to keep the process manageable.

I continued to knit until the entire wire was swathed in I-cord up to the fork, where the wire divides to each earbud. At this point I consulted the Knitting Goddess, who advised me to increase to eight stitches, using the K1 M1 increase, then put four stitches onto a holder.

I continued knitting first up the left wire, then, picking up stitches at the fork, up the right wire.  I stopped when I got to the microphone, although you might want to stop earlier, and I cut the yarn, leaving a four-inch tail.  I removed the dpn.  The tail was threaded onto a yarn needle, and the needle drawn through the open loops, the yarn cinched, the tail cut, the end woven into the tube.  The same closure was effected for the left wire.  Et voila!

The next step was to figure out what to call this garment. I thought Earbud Sweater would do, but my pal, Pink Mohair, saw it yesterday and said, "It's not a sweater, it's a COSY." Then Neuroknitter saw it today and spontaneously announced, "It's a SLEEVE--an Earbud Sleeve." Amen to that!

So here it is--an Earbud Sleeve that keeps your wires from tangling! In a world where so little can be controlled, how thrilling is that?!

Photo credit:  R. Grahn

The next "IT" accessory?          Photo credit:  R. Grahn

September serendipity

This beautiful yarn came into my life recently, sent by Theresa Walker of Great Bay Woolworks. It's loosely plied, undyed, with a silky sheen, and it's 100% New Hampshire-raised wool. The texture is best for outerwear, though the Knitting Goddess thought it would make a great pillow done in a log cabin pattern like last year's afghan. (If I do that, I'll have to add a fourth color, however.) I'm asking you, gentle knitters, for advice. What should I make from three 200-yard skeins of of genuine New England farm-raised wool, that most likely would knit up best on size 5 or 6 needles? Let me know by blog comment or email.

If I use your pattern suggestion, I'll send you a great knitting book from my personal collection of great knitting books!

Kid stuff

Recently completed:  a pair of Portuguese-style baby booties that are quick and adorable, and the pattern is free from the Knitting Daily website.  What's not to like?

Taken with my new camera, an Olympus OM-D-E series.  The stalwart Panasonic Lumix of yore developed problems that led me to conclude I'd outgrown its capabilities.

I used leftovers of Online Supersocke--the grandmère of this baby has a slightly larger pair from the same yarn. Said grandmère's other grandson, now eighteen months, will get a pair of toddler socks from the rest of the remnants. I like to keep things in the family!

Portuguese knitting involves a different method than most Americans employ, and there are interesting video demonstrations to watch. You don't need to use the Portuguese method for this pattern, but it has efficiency and ergonomic advantages that could be useful to anyone who wants to decrease stress on the hands.  Worth having a look, methinks.

And while we are on the topic of knitting for kids, I must share a photo sent by a friend, who saw this little person at the Sterling (Massachusetts) Fair 2013, ongoing this weekend.

Credit:  Margaret Haynes-Lamont

Yes, her beautiful coverall is hand-knitted.

The golden, golden rule

Last week my sister, cousin, and I were in the Amherst, Massachusetts area, poking around the Montague Book Mill--"Books you don't need, in a place you can't find" is its motto--having a lovely day when I came across one of those archetypal bulletin boards that flourish wherever green people congregate.

Perhaps in perusing the above photo, your eyes were seized by the same notice that captured me.

This reminded me that even though it's still August, it's not too early to think about knitting something to contribute to a cold-weather clothing drive, whether it's a hat, scarf, a pair of mittens--or even a kid's sweater, if you're feeling ambitious. I recently researched the history of charitable knitting for an article that's just out in the latest Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts 2013.  It's called "Knitting for Charity:  The Perennial Spirit of Giving" (pages 18-23) and as I worked on the piece,  I found it fascinating to learn that knitting for charity in this country dates to the Revolution (at least the records do--possibly the practice began even earlier). When you knit an item for charitable distribution, you join a great historical continuum of American knitters. That's kind of wonderful, IMHO. 

The article provides a list of databases for charitable knitting, some of which are keyed to specific regions of this country and even the world. If you'd like to donate a knitted something to a charity closer to your home than the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, or that serves a specific population (like veterans, Afghani children, preemies), you can find the perfect match for you on one of these. Anyway, this is a shameless plug: the article is a fount of information, and if you buy the magazine you get a bunch of excellent patterns and articles as well!

The Montague Book Mill is a great place to visit. There's a good café downstairs, and you can have a meal or just a drink--including alcohol--at a table overlooking the Sawmill River. And you can buy a lot of books you don't need, but will thoroughly enjoy.

Charitable knitting works two ways. One is to knit something and give it away. Another is to raise money, through selling knitting or through a related endeavor, like the sale of a pattern or a book of patterns, then donate that money to a cause. Such is the mission of a book (published by Sixth and Spring) that's been around since last year: Knit Red: Stitching for Women's Heart Health, by Laura Zander of the Jimmy Beans Wool company.

You can buy it from Jimmy Beans Wool, or on Amazon, and a portion of the proceeds will go to heart disease research. For the price of the book you get thirty lovely, classic patterns by major designers like Deborah Newton, Nora Gaughan, Ysolda Teague, Nicky Epstein, Tanis Gray, and Martin Storey (to name only a few), plus interesting insights from the designers' biographies, a bunch of heart-healthy recipes, and some practical medical advice. Perhaps if you're too busy to knit something for charity, you'd consider buying the book instead, and contribute to funding medical research?

Well, here's the moral of my disquisition.  Whatever you want to do is fine--just don't knit there, do something! Regardless of the intended recipient, it's the charitable act itself that sends lots of good energy into the world.