The Independent Stitch

Spring in Colorado

Two days ago, we were riding our bikes in light jackets. Yesterday afternoon, this started to happen:

We're so glad the trees hadn't started to leaf out or—harder on them—bloom: every leaf or blossom collects additional snow and increases the weight the trees need to stand up under. Evergreens have better shapes for shedding snow than deciduous trees do!

The fresh snow is beautiful. I can't see two of the three raised garden beds in the back yard because they're completely covered, without even a ripple in the white to suggest where they might be. The third, taller one just peeks one corner out of the white.

My daughter shoveled last night when we had just a few inches of accumulation. Nonetheless:

Mid-morning on Monday, I got an e-mail telling me that The Project's photo/illustration list will be needed "soon." When I asked, "When is 'soon'?" the answer was "before a meeting on Thursday morning."

So I quit working on tax prep (also due Thursday) and dedicated myself to inventing a photo/illustration list. I knew such a list would be needed and I've prepared these things before, so I wasn't completely unprepared, but I've also had a few other tasks on my to-do list (like finishing the samples that will be in the photos . . . no point taking photos if there's nothing to put in front of the camera). I crammed twenty hours of inventorying image requirements into two days and . . . produced a spreadsheet consisting of 424 lines and something like six columns. Some items will be combined in the final photos, but overall I think The Project is on track to be abundantly illustrated. I transmitted the file just before 9:30 last night. . . .

Now back to the tax prep. . . .

In odd moments of time, the Vivian sweater by Ysolda Teague is coming along rather quickly. I don't usually knit at this gauge (4.25/inch), so it's surprising how fast the stitches add up. I'm not a speed-demon knitter (more steady than quick), yet I've finished one sleeve, am close to the top on the other, and have set up the patterns for the body, which is knitted in one piece . . . I would have modified the pattern for one-piece construction if it hadn't been written that way.

The hardest part of working this design so far is that it's written for ten sizes (many strings of numbers in parentheses) and involves a lot of different cable panels, with shaping worked around those panels. Instead of picking my way through the line-by-line instructions, which I deemed crazy-making (nearly impossible to decipher on the fly), I spent part of Sunday afternoon making the body plan visual and connecting the components to each other:

Whew.

I may have an opportunity to knit a few more rows today. AFTER I complete my 2009 mileage records, order a new print run of Knitting in the Old Way, work with tech support on a bug in a piece of tax-prep-necessary software, and spin a fiber set or two for that photo list . . . because the photo shoot itself will be coming up (at a so-far-undetermined time) and I won't be able to slam-dunk the remaining samples in two days, even if I have to!

Here's what one of the simple fiber sets looks like when it's finished:

Yes, that's wool. It's Rough Fell, which I get a huge kick out of. One of the ways it's used is to stuff mattresses, because it doesn't felt. It's really fun to spin. Basketry? Rug?

Here's one of the more complex sets, not quite complete:

It's Romeldale, and Romeldale has been traditionally all-white (except for the CVM, or California Variegated Mutant, branch of the family). Romeldales are now being bred for color, but the Romeldale can't be considered finished until there's a white sample in there.

While going through the photo list, I found a few gaps like that (no white Romeldale), which we missed noticing earlier because we've been working too fast. I also discovered that while we'd written up Gotland, that piece of text hadn't gotten into the finished manuscript that was sent to the publisher. I located it in the archives and sent it last night. Never a dull moment around here.

I haven't counted how many sample sets I have left to do. That's not information it would be helpful for me to know. I'd end up stopped in my tracks, staring at a wall with a big sign on it saying this whole endeavor is impossible. Here are the useful, productive thoughts: I can only work on one thing at a time, and I need to keep moving.

Maybe it's good we're sort of snowed in.

Although with The Project's current state, I feel greater-than-usual sympathy for those trees. I'll bet they feel like their limbs could use a massage, too.

Later. The snow will melt. Spring will come back. The Project will get done, whether I'm ready or not.

I'm practicing being shaped like an evergreen, able to drop burdens easily when the time comes, and to bounce back into shape.

2 days, 700 miles, and about 14 hours of talk and video

Linda Ligon, Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, and I have known each other for a lot of years. Linda edited and published the first edition of Priscilla's Knitting in the Old Way (1985), and I edited and published the second edition (2004). I worked for Linda, the founder of Interweave Press, from 1986 to 2000—thirteen years—as book editor and as editor of Spin-Off Magazine. That adds up to a bunch of history between us. I hadn't traveled with Linda in at least 15 years. Linda hadn't seen Priscilla in ages.

About a month ago, Linda got in touch with me and said she'd like to visit Priscilla and get some video of her. I said I thought it was a terrific idea, one I'd been trying to find time and equipment to pull off for a couple of years. (I even had a videographer who was willing to work for free to get some recording done at Sock Summit, but then it turned out that even with everyone's permission there could be no video work done at that event.)

Priscilla was open to the idea, so we made a plan that Linda and I would go to Priscilla's together and we'd all have a chat, some knitting, and some recording with a video camera.

I drove. Linda filled the gas tank. Priscilla fed us exquisitely and found places for us to sleep. Jack, Priscilla's husband, loaned me his laptop so I could check e-mail even though we couldn't figure out how to get my computer connected to their wireless. We all talked. Jack went ice-fishing. Priscilla, Linda, and I knitted and talked. The video camera sometimes sat on a tripod and sometimes was in Linda's hand. Linda had not, in fact, left home without its recharging pack. I goofed around with my Canon Powershot.

(The sock on my foot is one of Priscilla's designs, worked in a different yarn and with fewer colors than the original. Writing about it is one of the blog posts that haven't gotten done because of The Project's all-consuming nature. It will happen.)

Interweave will be putting together an article featuring Priscilla for an e-zine (new idea). Linda got what she needed for this test run and video magazine project.

Lots of ideas arose while we were exploring the video medium in a casual way: we'll probably go back for another visit for more structured (but still relaxed) recording on other topics.

Here are the socks Priscilla wore on Wednesday, which may be familiar to people who've seen them (on the wrong-sized feet) on the cover of Vogue Knitting's The Ultimate Sock Book:

Because Vogue Knitting wasn't ready to feature socks that don't match, few people have seen the pair of socks Priscilla wore on Thursday:

They don't match each other or the previous day's socks. . . .

We had good supervision for our work and visiting. By best estimates, this rescue is now 17 years old, although you sure wouldn't believe it to see or pat him (or watch him in action).

During part of the human conversation, I re-wound a very large basket of Cowichan-style singles yarn that he apparently rearranged (THOROUGHLY) for a winter napping spot. I changed the tangles back into huge balls—Priscilla's bulky spinner's bobbins can hold two pounds (1 kg) of yarn!

Priscilla's knitting during our visit was on the second sock of a pair for an upcoming Interweave book (black cotton: hard to do at night, deadline imminent). She doesn't do many projects for publication any more, but she has a soft spot for a few people, and one of them asked. . . .

Linda was making a monedero (little bag) from lovely two-ply alpaca spindle-spun by women in Pitumarca, Peru.

Here's what I knitted:

When I left home, the sleeve on the top in this photo was about as far along as the sleeve on the bottom now is, and the sleeve on the bottom didn't exist at all.

I left my house at 7:30 Wednesday morning and arrived home at 11:30 Thursday evening. As I was dropping Linda off at her house, a few snowflakes drifted through the air and made tiny wet specks on my windshield. By the time I reached my house, hail-like clumps of snow covered the roof of my car as I unloaded my backpack. When I got up on Friday morning, we had about 5 inches (12 cm) of fresh snow and I decided to walk, rather than drive, to the library, even though my car would have done just fine . . . other folks' might not have.

It was a great trip. Just not long enough (in time, not miles).

That's llama/silk Priscilla is spinning and plying for a personal series of projects, using her handspindles.

My daughter's first knitting project

Having grown up around textiles, my daughter knows how to spin (even at a festival competition level), is comfortable with a loom, and has learned to knit several times over the years. I think the number she puts on those learning-knitting events is five. Sometimes she learned from me, sometimes from other experienced folks, none of whom has had any particular Must Be Done This Way attitude, so she had no arbitrary stumbling blocks set in her path. But she never got to the point of wanting to actually make something.

She's now in her late 20s, and it was only about a year and a half ago that she came up with an idea that she wanted to knit strongly enough that it carried her past how-the-stitches-work and into actual planning and implementation.

She decided she wanted to knit a sweater. With a Celtic knot on the upper body. She was smart about her concept: lots of stockinette (to get her chops together) before she began anything intricate. We went together to pick yarn, and she selected Cascade 220 in a heathered dark blue. She knitted swatches, and decided she liked the fabric worked tightly, at 6 stitches/inch (24/10cm). (Cascade 220 is normally worked at 5 stitches/inch (20/10cm).) We worked out measurements together, using Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' Knitting in the Old Way, thinking about what sort of ease and lengths she wanted.

First she made the sleeves, working in the round on a combination of double-pointed and circular needles. That let her get comfortable again with forming stitches and using different types of tools, and gave her a swath of fabric with which to re-check her gauge  before starting the body.

Then she began the body, again working in the round from the bottom up. As she proceeded upward in stockinette, she contemplated how she might create design separation between the lower and upper body portions (decision: a few rows of welting), and where she wanted that separation to lie in relation to the armholes and her motif. She divided at the armholes and worked the back upper body in reverse stockinette, back and forth. Still practicing, but now back and forth, which throws new tricks into the mix. Her gauge stayed rock solid.

Now it was time for the front upper body, with its cabled motif. She'd selected an intricate knot from Elsebeth Lavold's Viking Patterns for Knitting. 

It's the three-bight happiness sign on page 33 of the English edition of the book. This is advanced cabling, not introductory, so I suggested that first she knit a swatch of the entire pattern, partly for practice and partly to double-check the size of the knot and make sure that it would fit in the area where she wanted it, which was fairly close to the neck opening. Plus she could make sure it was going to be the type of design she wanted and that she enjoyed knitting it.

It was and she did.

So she worked the front upper body, back and forth again, just like the back . . . except with the motif added. She modified it slightly, because she's quirky and does things like that.

The neckline is a boatneck, with about an inch of facing in stockinette at the top of each upper body section. She sewed the facings in place, then joined the shoulders, testing how much shoulder area to join by trying it on. She reinforced the ends of the neck opening beautifully (lots of years as a theatrical costumer). And she attached the sleeves by crocheting through the open stitches of the tops of the sleeves and the edges of the armhole openings, using a supplementary yarn (instead of just crocheting the open stitches through each other).

If you are on Ravelry and want to see my daughter's first entry there, you can. The photos are the same ones I've got here, minus this one, which ended up with exposure problems because of the snow that's currently falling, but which I like anyway. It shows the way she shaped her sleeves, a design decision that gives quite a straightforward drop-shoulder sweater a sense of no-nonsense but graceful style—which definitely suits her personality.

And here's one last picture—this one and the first picture show the color most accurately:

I'm really proud of what she's done here, and I hope (and trust) that she's even prouder of herself.

__

Knitters who want to work with Knitting in the Old Way concepts and would like an in-house coach: check out Donna Druchunas' Ethnic Knitting Discovery (drop-shoulder sweaters, like my daughter's) and Ethnic Knitting Exploration (raglan, circular yoke, and saddle shoulder sweaters).

Knitting and mental (and physical) health

Since I got back from my work time in the mountains, just over two weeks ago, I have been unable to settle on a knitting project. I haven't been able to put yarn and needles, idea or pattern, and sustaining interest together and keep them there. Normally I have a pair of simple socks going, and that's what I worked on during odd moments in the mountains. I've finished two pairs I haven't even worn yet.

During the push for the final deadlines on The Project (in its expanded form), I still need knitting. I actually went to a meeting last weekend without knitting. This is unheard of, and not conducive to my comfortably sitting still. Fortunately, I made it through the meeting—not an occasion where I could be working on The Project (except during breaks, when, yes, I did pull out my laptop and make some progress).

The problem of No Knitting has been getting worse, to the point where I was edgy all weekend. Yet I have, scattered around the house, a number of things that I've started and been unable to keep going on. Among other ideas, I've tried starting another pair of socks (or two), an Estonian-style scarf, a lace cowl (that actually got knitted, but wasn't interesting enough and didn't last long enough). I normally plan, swatch, and start much more than I finish, but in this case energy was leaking everywhere without getting me where I needed to go: to a calm space.

By Sunday it was clear that I'd better figure out a knitting project or my sanity and health were going to be at risk. It's not like I have much time to knit (since every time I sit down at home I'm working either on the laptop or at the spinning wheel). But I do still need the comforting, orderly progress of stitches while dealing with the unruly hugeness of The Project . . . which I've been doing amazingly well with so far, in part because of ongoing knitting.

What I need in this situation is something that will be challenging enough to hold my attention (the reason those simple socks won't work right now . . . they're like finger exercises) and yet undemanding enough that it won't add any stress . . . or require much brain power. My brain is completely focused on The Project. Which currently seems endless.

(The primary text was turned in on February 1, with one significant hole—that I just spent two days filling. The supplementary text was turned in on March 11, with three small gaps, one of which has been filled. I have not prepared all the samples for the supplementary material yet. Until I needed to fill the text gap, I was spinning all day every day, and I will return to that now that I have the gap filled.)

So I got another idea that I thought might work.

When I attended Cat Bordhi's Visionary Retreat in February, my roommate, a fine knitting designer, wore a garment she had knitted as a sample for another designer. It was Ysolda Teague's "Vivian" hooded cardigan. The sweater looked comfortable, stylish, and practical. I looked it up, and found it at Twist Collective. The photography for the pattern shows a more form-fitting version than my roommate had made and was wearing—and the extra ease she incorporated made it look like a comfortable sweater I'd be likely to actually wear.

I pondered yarns. Requirements: (1) enjoyable to work with = good quality, (2) free to cheap, and (3) works up at a gauge approximately equal to that of the pattern (willing to recalculate for minor gauge differences, but not to completely redraft the pattern . . . which I normally do, but Not Now).

I remembered a stash of handspun that would work for the sweater, and even located it. However, to get near the pattern's gauge, I'd need to uptwist the two-ply and then cable it: a good, appealing move, and one that could be accomplished relatively quickly, but every spinning-wheel minute needs to be devoted to The Project.

I didn't have enough of any other yarn that felt appropriate, but I did swatch some Brown Sheep Top of the Lamb, which looked promising. I needed yarn FAST: I needed to have some knitting in the works. All but one of the yarn shops within twenty minutes are closed on Sundays, and most are closed Mondays. But a new one . . . a new one I'd never been in . . . had Monday hours and its web site said it carried Brown Sheep. I also knew that it carries very nice specialty yarns, likely to be outside my nonexistent budget (my reason for not visiting the only other quick-access yarn shop that is open on Mondays; nearly everything they stock is, while lovely, pricey).

Mid-afternoon on Monday, I stole time I couldn't spare and drove down there. No Top of the Lamb. A small, well-selected stock . . . but only two yarns with (almost) enough skeins for the cardigan. One of which would have produced fantastic results, and would have aligned very neatly with the topic of The Project, but would have required me to recalculate the entire pattern, moving it from 4.25 stitches/inch to 5 stitches/inch: a job for another mental state, my more normal mental state. That would also have cost more than twice as much as I was ready to spend (although for what it was, the yarn was very reasonable).

What I ended up with is Brown Sheep's Lanaloft, which looks to me like Top of the Lamb without the mohair. I probably have enough: I bought all they had, which was one skein less than my "safety" amount.

On Monday evening at knitting group, I cast on for a sleeve (which I'm using as a swatch; this, too, is contrary to my normal, swatch-heavy practice, but I'd already swatched the Top of the Lamb, and have I mentioned I've been desperate?). Within inches, I knew I had the right combination of yarn, needles, and design to keep me anchored in some semblance of mental and physical health while completing The Project.

Whew.

Thanks to

• my roommate at the Visionary Retreat (for planting the idea)
  
• Ysolda Teague (for the pattern)
  
• Brown Sheep (for reliable, reasonable yarns in good colors)
• Your Daily Fiber (for being open on Mondays)

I may have been pulled back from the brink of both an ulcer (or other stress-related physical malady) and wigging out.

When within reach of the materials for working on The Project, that's still what I'm putting all my attention on. However, when I'm not within reach of those materials, or can't concentrate well enough due to life's other requirements, I can knit this satisfying yarn into these satisfying relationships. It's complex enough to be interesting, simple enough to be do-able with a frayed brain, and it's finite.

The "finite" part is what I'm not sure about on The Project . . . and why I especially need a bit of just-right knitting NOW.

Back down from the mountain

Eight days ago, I came back down from the mountain, where I'd been hiding to work on the project. It was a great week. Reentry was bumpy, but I've got enough momentum to take a quick moment for a catch-up blog post.

I got lots done, although most of it was research and not spinning: both have to be completed, but I'm running hard and needing to short-circuit my usual, and ideal, process right now. I spun a little right before I left, just so I wouldn't have hauled all the equipment and fibers . . . as well as the books and magazine files . . . up the mountain for nothing.

Fortunately, by the end of my second week on the mountain my assistants had become much more proficient at their tasks, especially predrafting.

With the expanded scope of the project, I've felt a bit like this tree:

Scorched, but still growing vigorously toward the sky. I'm looking forward to feeling more like this:

Balanced, and with a variety of ideas in various stages of growth.

But the project is fascinating, and if it weren't hard it wouldn't be worth doing. I just hope I can do it well enough, given the time. I'll talk in a bit (after I've completed the current work) about exactly what it is. The current code name at home for this expanded portion is Voldemort. Its true name cannot be spoken until it's vanquished.

Back to the mountain, where it was time to pack the car. . . .

And say goodbye to a number of comforting sights. . . .

The gray sky and snowflakes encouraged efficient movement. The roads up there are challenging on a good day, and getting down ahead of any snow accumulation seemed like the best idea of the week.

Here's what the roads looked like, in the sun (not the day I left):

 
At the sides of the road are soft shoulders, quite happy to eat tires EVEN when they are not partially saturated with the "melt" part of spring's freeze/melt cycles, as they definitely were this week. This caused some adventure on the way back down.

The first step involved getting out of the driveway, which goes steeply from where you see the cabin on the left to where its end intersects this road, just at the right of the photo. There's a lip to pop up over at the top—you need to gun the car from the bottom and leap up onto the road with a burst of faith, because you can't see the road while you're doing that. You assess whether anybody's coming in another car before you take action (probably, but not certainly, the answer is "no"), and then you commit to the accelerator, hoping you make it past the ice sheet and don't slow down enough to slide back into the mud ruts where someone got stuck for more than an hour just a couple of days earlier.

At the top, I stopped for a moment and consciously thought, "One down. But you're not home until you're home." So true.

I'm an exceptionally careful driver, comfortable in the mountains, and within a half mile of that point I almost lost my car twice. In both cases, I would have come out okay, and in the first instance the car would have been fine (although I would have needed a tow truck) but in the second instance it probably would have been totaled; at the very least, the undercarriage would have been in really bad shape.

Look at that road photo again, and imagine that the dirt portion at the right side of it, where the tire tracks are, has been saturated with water and suddenly starts eating both tires on the passenger side of the car up to the axles. As the road sucked at the tires, I thought I was for sure going to need to walk somewhere and have someone call for a tow (yes, I have a cell, but the chances any cell will work in the mountains are slim to none). But I've only had to leave a car beside the road in winter and get home another way twice, and both of those times were in New England. My initial driving training also included excitement like 360-degree intentional skids. So I accelerated gently, steered firmly against that nasty quicksand feeling, and prayed.

And popped out of the mud! Only to discover I was catapulting toward a curve in the road, on ice, with a drop-off on the left hand side, which I was within inches of going over when I got the car straightened out without fishtailing and I was in what was (miraculously) an apparently solid middle of the road again, heading the direction I meant to be going, with traction on all four corners.

The drop-off was between six and eight feet down, along a gradual incline that would likely have kept the car from rolling, but I was really glad to find myself not there.

This was not a time to stop and celebrate, much less take a picture of my tracks (although that would have been interesting), so I kept up the yoga breathing I'd been doing and kept going, blessing my Subaru for being a fine, responsive, surefooted car. Not many cars (I've driven a lot of pickups) would have let me recover from those situations. The AWD and evenly placed weight on the wheels saved the day. I have always liked this car. At that moment, I realized that I really like this car. More than words can describe.

And here's what the trip down looked like, pretty much, although this was after I got onto the paved part of the road—there are mountains out there, they were just hidden:

Fortunately, you only need to be able to see the piece of road you're driving at the time.

I'm reminding myself of that as I work on this expanded project. And this morning, I need to focus just on the next bit.

But here are two visuals from late last week—I've finished this section:

 
Pretty fascinating. I have to keep remembering "one step at a time" and "KEEP MOVING!"