The golden smile that introduced me to . . .

I have a very simple rule about whining. Don’t get caught doing it.

That’s the main reason I took down yesterday’s post a half hour after I put it up. I won’t even bother you with what I was whining about.

So at the moment I'm planning to finish the Christmas stocking and I’m going into the second half of the scarf. I should have that finished in a few days.

The scarf is very mundane; when I started it in June I had only been knitting for three or four months and I didn’t realize the possibilities. Now I’m finishing it in part because I don’t own a lot of straight needles and I want these free and also because it’s starting to get chilly up here in the mountains and I’m going to be embarrassed as a knitter having a woven scarf from the store.

I’ll post a pic of the scarf when it’s done not because I’m especially proud of it but because I think it’s only right to show the good, the bad and the boring.

The stocking I'm knitting now is the one on the right.

Oh, by the way, I have a question for you. She has been his first and only real girlfriend and for a couple of years; he's 23 and she's 22. We love her and she seems to feel the same way about us. Am I being pushy knitting her a Christmas stocking? Is this too much?

SAFF Saturday

I went to my friends' house to take them the last jar of last year's honey. I still have a lot of this year's left though. I started talking to Amy, who is a rug hooker, about hooking. I told Amy I was going back to the fair. Amy told me that she had never heard of SAFF. We decided she and her toddlers would come out there with me.

Amy was really awestruck. She was fascinated. Her mom knits and quilts and crafts generally, but it was all new to Amy.

"Do you want to learn to spin? And dye?" she wanted to know as we walked back up the steps and past some spinners.

"One thing at a time. I'm just learning to knit and the more I learn the more I realize there is to learn. When I'm here I want to learn to spin, but I know I have to learn more about knitting before I go any further."

We both obviously were dazzled, though, even by the beginning spinners and the beautiful yarn they were turning out.

The kids loved the alpacas, but especially the bunnies. Lots and lots of bunnies, but not too many.

I'm sorry to say that something must have happened to the camera, or else that the alpacas were so ugly that they did something to it. Admittedly, I can't tell the pretty alpacas from the ugly ones. You look at the photo and tell me.

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How ardently we admire and love Jane Austen

I just read on Two Chix that Masterpiece Theatre will be airing a Jane Austathon beginning in January. This is, as the Chix point out, good news. One reason for this is that one can in certain cases knit and take in the show simultaneously without being put to the trouble of actually looking at the screen.

I don't know how it is at your place, but there's nobody here who doesn't know the Ehle/Firth version of Pride and Prejudice line for line. Watching the show is merely a confirmation of the pictures we are already forming in our brains when we hear the dialogue.

The reverse but equal pleasure will be the apparently new versions of several of these teleplays. I am particularly looking forward to Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility.

I believe we shall all be excessively diverted.

SAFF Friday

SAFF.

Pretty much speaks for itself, ¿No?

Probably. It's still cool. People weaving, spinning, shopping, selling. People pretending to be rabbits. Or maybe those really were rabbits.

Bloggers pretending to be people. Or maybe . . . nahhh.

So my schedule is -- look Friday, buy Saturday. We'll have to see what Sunday brings.

Here's what it looked like on Friday afternoon.

The Kind of September

It's come back to me now: not every knitting project takes three months to complete. There is the occasional sock or scarf that can be done in a few days. This Christmas stocking I started yesterday is going to be finished in a few nights; certainly a week or less, and not necessarily sucking up every spare minute. I'll get back to The Sweater in not too long and it will be about half done already.

One of the reasons the stocking is going so fast is that I'm using chunky yarn and huge (for me) needles -- US #8s.

Giving me time to look forward to, and even attend, SAFF. Can't wait. I live about 10-15 miles away; my daughter, in college, is the same distance from Rhinebeck.

"Coincidence?" I ask, in the ritual formula.

"There are no coincidences," she replies slyly.


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" . . . gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speak
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."


Henry V reminds us of the honor of having a pike driven through one's eye and out the back of the head, and other glories of war.


Happy St. Crispin's day, October 25.

You Better Watch Out

I have put The Sweater aside. It was taking over my life, and I learned to knit not only to be able to do beautiful things in wool but to enjoy myself doing so. So I'm taking a break.

For fun I switched over to the Christmas stocking I decided to knit for my son's girlfriend. She'll be here at some point on Christmas day and it will be fun for her to have this.

One of the beautiful things about this project is that it is almost entirely of my own design. Yes, I knitted a baby blanket for a friend (her first baby, now almost a month old) and it was by first journey into the land of cables, and in a sense i designed that myself but, after all, it was just knits and purls and a few cable needles.

This stocking has color patterns in red, green and white and her name knitted in. Though it's nothing in the long run, it's something for me; it's my second project in two colors and my first where the whole color scheme is mine. There are already trees and presents knitted in and there will be wreaths and other stuff too before it's done.

I'm only sorry that my mother never saw me knit. Hearing the click of her needles is one of my most comforting childhood memories. Ten years or so before she died she knitted stockings something like this (only mine are in the round) for my kids, and some time in the 50's her mother did the same for my siblings and me.

Pics of the stocking in progress soon.

Tiny Needles Make Me Warm All Over

A well-known novel describes a minor character this way: "He thinks less than he talks, and slower; yet he can see through a brick wall in time." The brick wall I’ve been looking at for the last few months is that with these small needles (I’m knitting the sweater on US #5s with US #3s for the ribbing) I’m trading warmth for speed. I knit as much as the next person, and more than many, at least many who have outside full-time employment, and yet they all seem to be finishing projects in far shorter time than I am.

I know I don’t have as much experience as most of them, but there is a point at which I have to think I’m not THAT much slower a knitter, on average, than they are.

The brick wall I’m seeing through is that there may be at least two sweaters’ worth of wool in the one I’m doing now. Worsted weight, two colors I’m carrying all the way through, and #5 needles. That’s a lot of wool, and I can feel it when I pick this up to knit it. It’s getting heavy. So I suppose that the reason this sweater is taking twice as long as I expected is all this wool.

That also means, I hope, that it will be a lot warmer when winter comes.

Progress picture on the next post. In the "on the needles" section on the right I tend to be conservative (a novel position for me) in my progress estimate.

See You There

Women Helping Women fundraising dinner tonight. Fighting breast cancer and saving lives in western North Carolina for over ten years.

While we're talking about it, check these out, if you haven't already.

And while we're still on the subject, which I'm sorry but we are, check out this site if you want. It's not working all that well as of this writing but they have cool calendars and tee shirts and stuff and no doubt it will be working better soon. It's in a good cause.

In an Old House in Paris

I'm about to go knit, but I thought I'd show the madeleines I made, before and after. Yeah, I'm proud of the fact that they almost disappeared, I guess.








You'll notice that the brie, tomatoes and grapes did not nearly so much excite the public imagination. I will concede, though, that the wine was equally popular.

The occasion was a cast-off swap and local hospice fundraiser. Last year it was for the battered women's shelter. The idea is that all the women bring accessories (there were even some shoes this year) they don't want. Some people last night brought bags and bags. The suff has to be in good condition. No rule about ugly.

The items are arranged on tables and other horizontal surfaces. About 70% is usually earrings, bracelets and necklaces. Guests are assigned a color and then colors are drawn by lot -- people of that color get 5 minutes to pick 5 items. Then the next color goes.

At then end of the night somebody from the nonprofit organization gives a little talk and some or most of the party goers write a check. All the stuff that nobody takes goes to the nonprofit's thrift store. In the end everybody's happy, mostly the people who got rid of a whole bucketful of jewelry and belts they don't think much of any more.

Walking off the Ledge

Well I can see the end of the sweater from here. On Saturday I sat down with my knitting friends, most of whom can crochet and one of whom was willing to teach me. After talking to them and looking at the pattern, I feel reasonably reassured that there is an ending in sight. The crochet steek stitches are not going to be that much of a hurdle.

The lesson I really learned, though, is that a large number of new things to learn does not translate into an impossible task. Yeah, ok, we all know that, but to get that knowledge settled in the working part of my brain is a welcome increase of my knitting education. When I started this sweater I had no idea how to bring in a second color, or how to crochet, steek, add sleeves, cast off for a crew neck, do a sleeve gusset, or close up the shoulders. A sweater that looked undoable now doesn’t.

This is good news for other knitting projects.

I am finding that as life goes on I am more and more willing to take chances, and it is very liberating and empowering. I call it "closing your eyes and walking off the ledge," and it has worked for me over and over. I mean for the big life-changing decisions, not only little things like deciding what to knit next.

I made the madeleines and they were, in my opinion, yummy. I know everybody is going to rave about food you bring in but all I can say is that they were all gone when I left, and no, I didn’t eat them all. I tried several recipes and only one was not too eggy. These are really good, almost like little pound cakes. One recipe makes about 2 dozen standard size madeleines.

I’m making some more for a party tomorrow night (the knitters were my guinea pigs), only these will have lemon zest in them instead of orange peel as the recipe calls for. I'm also adding about half a tsp of lemon extract.

It's funny about cooking and knitting -- I feel perfectly comfortable about free substitutions of ingredients and amounts in cooking and baking, but still kind of nervous about making any changes in a knitting pattern. But to give myself a break (one of my favorite activities) I've been cooking since I was little and only knitting since February.

I didn't take pics of last Saturday's batch for the knitters but I will post one of this new batch. If I can commandeer the camera.

Wasted Patience

Winnie-the-Pooh claimed to be a "bear of very little brain." I fear I must make the same claim, except for the bear thing. I cannot figure out how to get a working button onto my Blogger page.

JenLa spelled it all out SO very carefully and patiently and yet, I’m sorry to say, I cannot get it to work. I think, aside from my very little brain, it must have something to do with the protocols that Blogger has put into its editing features. I can put the picture on but not the link. I can put the picture and a non-working link up, but it won’t show the picture and the link doesn’t work. Part of the problem, but only part, is that they allow you to add a picture to your page but will not permit a link line to be added in. When I try to add an HTML/Java edit the link just won’t function.

I’d say "HELP!" but in doing so I would have to acknowledge that actually I have no readers for this page. Maybe one on a day when the tourist bus comes through. This would result in a collapse of my little system in which I imagine that people read these little writings I put up. But after all, why should they?

So all I can say is that I don’t understand how to make this work. JenLa, if you ever could hear me, I would let you know that it’s your button after all I would like to put on my site. I just love your blog and the rest of your web site.

Liberation

I’ve given up on Thanksgiving as a deadline for finishing the sweater. If it happens, fine, but I doubt it will and I’m not going to let it spoil the fun of knitting this thing.

I am, however, learning more and more about doing steeks. This pattern calls for armhole steeks and I have realized that this is going to be the central feature of this sweater, insofar as learning to knit goes.

After reviewing the available literature, I have decided to use a crocheted steek stitch for the armhole steeks. This means that I am going to have to learn to crochet, at least enough to do a steek stitch.

There is very little that I love more than learning new things. It runs in the family. When my Dad had an untimely and accidental death at 90 last year, he was still enrolled at the local university, even though he had gotten his undergraduate and graduate degrees in the 1930's. Last year he was taking courses in anthropology and medieval history.

Of course, I’m going to love having the sweater too. I get cold very easily, and I’ll be wearing it a lot, even here in North Carolina. In partial defense I'll plead that I at least live in the mountains.

I also learned that I’m going to have to have some new thought on decreases. Though this isn’t a classic fair isle pattern, whatever that may be, it’s close enough that I’m going to have to pay careful attention.

Also, I can’t wait for SAFF. The Western NC Ag center is less than a half hour from my house, so it will be easy to get to. Some other blogs are really beginning to talk it up. I have borrowed the above photo from one or the other of them.

A year ago when the SAFF was here I was just starting to get serious about deciding to learn to knit. It reminds me a little of a poster I saw when I was in college – "A year ago I culdn’t even spell ‘colledge stoont’ . . . now I are one."

Ultima Thule

When I decided finally to learn to knit this past February, I assumed that it would be years and years before I would be able to do something as complex as a sweater.

My friend Sally, who has been knitting since childhood, assured me otherwise. "One scarf, one pair of socks, one sweater," she told me.

Sally is someone I trust so much that, if I were sitting in a room in a chair, at dawn, and she went to the window and said, "hmmm, the sun is rising in the west today," I wouldn't even bother to get up to go to the window to double check her.

And so, here I am, actually with a few scarves and socks and some booties and baby blankets, but little else behind me, knitting the sweater shown in some previous posts.

I love doing this in part because there is so much to learn. I am going to know so much more about knitting at the end of this sweater than I did at the beginning (and already do) that it will be a much bigger experience than simply having a sweater that I knit myself.

That having been said, my knitting ship is rapidly coming in sight of the edge of the known world, or "Ultima Thule" as the ancients called it.

According to Wikipeida,

Ultima Thule in medieval geographies may . . . denote any distant place located beyond the "borders of the known world."

Some time between today and Tuesday (the sooner if I can tear myself away from this computer) I will be getting to parts of the pattern where I don't even understand what they're trying to tell me to do, much less have any sense of how to do it.

Fortunately, my Saturday knitting group has a much bigger Tuesday counterpart which often includes some of the Truly Knowledgeable, who come and sit and knit. I am going to use my lunch hour and take myself and my partially-finished sweater to this repository of accumulated wisdom and see if someone there can help me slowly, and perhaps over a period of weeks, transform Ultima Thule into just another well-mapped part of the knitting universe.

Neither Do they Spin

I just signed up for the Kanuga Knitting & Quilting Retreat, January 17 - 20, 2008, in Flat Rock, NC, not too far from Asheville.

The theory I think is that knitting is a path to spiritual something. Maybe it's the western equivalent to some Hindu or Buddhist path called knittayama yoga; who knows? I’m a bit of a skeptic, but true skepticism requires keeping one’s mind open in all directions wherever reasonable.

In any event, it’s part of 4 days and all of 3 nights of knitting and Episcopalia; mostly knitting I imagine. It will be fulfilling in at least one sense; anything beyond that, for me, is gravy.

Sweatember

10 days down, 49 to go.

Still I like the way it's looking. Not quite like in the photo but ok on its own. I'm going to learn a lot of new knitting stuff on this sweater, like sleeves, a neck, armhole steeks and new way to bind off.

One thing at a time. I'm working my way up. Right now I'm learning to knit a sweater.

Let everyone else enjoy Socktoberfest; for me it's still Sweatember.

No more Jetsam

Augggggghhhhhhh!!!!

Five hours. Two colors. 1740 Stitches. 7/8 of an inch. How in the world am I ever going to get this sweater finished by Thanksgiving?

On the good side, it will be heavy and warm. Lots of wool. But I am working on it maniacally almost nonstop from the time I get home from work and shove down some supper until bedtime. And most of the weekend. It’s a race against time and usually I win those by pushing everything else aside and driving single-mindedly on.

Well, everything is already aside here. It reminds me of one of my favorite Mark Twain stories. One of my favorite stories attributed to Mark Twain. (I found out once not to depend on sources for quotes. I had a list of four or five P.T. Barnum quotes, and it turns out he never said any of them, including "there’s a sucker born every minute.")

Here’s the story as Twain tells it to his audience:

There was a man once who was in failing health. At last he became so worried he went to his doctor, who gave him a thorough examination and sat the man down for a stern lecture. "You cannot possibly survive these ailments unless you instantly give up drinking, give up smoking, and give up chasing women."

The man looked distressed. "But doctor," he pleaded, "I don’t do any of those things."

At this point Twain looks mournfully at his audience, puffing on his big cigar:

"I tell you truly, ladies and gentlemen, this man was a sinking ship with nothing left to throw overboard."

I too have nothing left to throw overboard. It’s just me, several hundred yards of yarn, and the clock.