the lazy kate

...One Year Later...

2008-01-05T12:19:00.001-05:00

I finished it! Talk about a New Year's Resolution... I went out to Boulder to spend Christmas with my nieces (and other less cute but still lovable family members) and as I was packing, I came to the realization that a) I had no Christmas presents for anyone, and 2) at the rate I was going, the intended wearers would be in college by the time I finished it. So out came the needles again.

I didn't finish in time to give this one to my niece for Christmas-- in fact, I finished it on the plane ride back from Denver. But it'll go in a box soon (as soon as I decipher the pattern and scribble it down on paper for sharing)...

Gee's Bend

2007-01-08T22:10:00.000-05:00

Wow-- A Gee's Bend quilt is up for sale on eBay. I'm such a fan of these things, I still kick myself for missing the Gee's Bend exhibit at the Whitney Museum a couple years ago. Seeing this quilt on the market got me googling a bit; there are lots of sites with photos of these quilts. FiberArts magazine had this photo of another Gee's Bend quilt to fall in love with:

New Year's 2007!

2007-01-05T18:51:00.000-05:00

Did I say that this sweater was getting too wide? Now it might be too tall. By an inch, maybe more. Must've been all the champagne. And the beach. And the company of great friends, and great friends of friends. I have to say, I haven't really been a big fan of New Year's, as holidays go. But this year, I took my friend up on an invitation to ring in 2007 with him and a dozen or two of his friends in South Carolina. So much fun! And nobody seemed to mind too much that I was knitting compulsively the whole time-- except when I got distracted with frogging back a few stitches and yelled out an answer to a Trivial Pursuit question my team was apparently asking another team. Just call me Lazy "Wrong Way" Kate. We still won.

Color mixing

2006-12-31T03:32:00.000-05:00

Dabs of Romney wool blends (powered by Kool-Aid!) that I purchased at Rhinebeck this past fall, thinking of making a mosaic knit jacket. Excuses for not having spun it yet: a) I'm still missing that piece from the flyer of my (Ashford Traditional) spinning wheel, and b) the winter weather's been so mild, who needs a woolen sweater-jacket?? I'm thinking about borrowing a friend's wheel later today... or maybe tinkering with my knitting machine. Inspiration of the day: this sweater-jacket from Anthropologie, slightly hideous in a wonderful way.

Red Heart baby sweater progress...

2006-12-31T03:10:00.000-05:00

I know, it's really wide. More like a 3-year-old sweater. This is the full width-- two panels for the front (it'll be a little jacket, with a zipper, if I can figure out how to do that) and the back.

Christmas Quilt!

2006-12-28T15:29:00.000-05:00

So there's this new (to me) rug-hooking technique-- well, actually an old, or old-looking technique-- that involves the use of washed, over-dyed woolen cloth. Zack and I found out about this at Rhinebeck this year, when we stumbled on a stall full of dyed woolens for sale. I can't find the address of the lady who ran the stall, but she had the most miserable-sounding sinus infection. We bought a whole bunch of overdyed woolen remnants from her.Apparently, you're supposed cut these woolens into strips and sew them into rugs. I cut them into fourths and sewed them into a quilt top. It's a little scratchy, but not as bad as you might think.

(The night after Rhinebeck: Zack is doubting whether I'll ever actually finish this project)

Does it still qualify as a quilt if it only takes about six hours to assemble? The picture at the top of this post is of the quilt all laid out on the living room floor last week, with T-minus 15 minutes to go before I was supposed to meet Zack to go to a friend's holiday party. I was hoping to suprise him with the assembled quilt as a Christmas present, but I ran out of time. Instead, I surprised him with the quilt top-batting sandwich. After the party, we headed back to my house and stayed up until 3am watching late nite talk shows and old Christmas movie reruns, and knotting the quilt top to the backing with some multi-colored acrylic yarn (yeah, Red Heart!).

I wonder if it "hurts" a quilt to knot it together instead of basting it, and then later quilt it and take the knotting out? I have ZERO patience with quilting, and end up sleeping under basted quilts for years and years. Embarassing admission: I still have not bound this quilt, which I sleep under every night. Knotting is so great-- you can knot a full size quilt in about the space of 1 Jay Leno + 1 Conan O'Brien show. If you knotted instead of basting, though, would you end up with gigantic holes in the fabric when you later took the knots out?

Pictures of the finished quilt to come when I get back to New Haven and sew on the binding!

Bleeding Heart

2006-12-28T09:29:00.000-05:00

It's time you knew, folks.

I knit with Red Heart yarn. That's right, I said RED HEART. The kind that gives your knitting that special, unnatural sparkle, like fiberglass insulation. It comes in shades you haven't seen since you stopped fingerpainting. It's responsible for at least 5% of U.S. petroleum consumption.

Why do I do it?

Because it only costs about three bucks a skein. And I mean, a real skein, not a 50 gram ball. Because "real" yarn at "real" yarn stores is so expensive that you have to have a trust fund to support a knitting habit, anymore. Because I'm a poor grad student and try to avoid going into "real" yarn stores, lest I plunk down half my stipend on the above-mentioned "real" yarn, which means that I am usually in a Wal-Mart or a Michael's or, last week, a Jo-Ann Fabrics Store buying something entirely unrelated and find myself in the yarn section... and for $3, is it really so wrong if I buy one skein, or maybe two, for a little baby sweater pattern that just popped into my head? Baby sweaters knit in acrylic can be tossed in the washer, no problem. And by the way, you don't have to feel guilty for not finishing a project that only set you back $6.

Think about it. I bet you use Red Heart, too. Time to stand up and be proud about it! Is there anything you hate more than going into yarn stores, picking up a teeny skiff of cash-merino-paca-- something that you'd need about 50 skeins of to knit a sock for Barbie-- and it's so expensive that the yarn store people haven't even bothered to put a price tag on it? So that you have to ask, over and over again. "Oh, right, this one's $65, too?" Who can afford this stuff??

Well, on my way back down from the soapbox, I offer you a photo of what I've knit with my Red Heart yarn. Here's the back:

Inspired by socks on the Yarn Harlot's site, I'm knitting a hoodie (that word bugs me, for some reason) for my niece. But right now, I'm going to the auto shop to fix a leak in my tire. Take 'er easy!

Prom/Christmas dress... finished!

2006-12-19T10:35:00.001-05:00

Remember this dress?

Last spring, I got the sewing bug and tried to whip together a bunch of remnants in about three hours for the law school prom. The bodice started off looking like this in March, and then two months later I added some smocking so it looked like this.

Another six months passed, and then this guy invited me to his program's holiday party so... the Almost Prom Dress became a Christmas Dress. I had sewn the skirt on, but it was a disaster (uneven gathering, no plan at all for how to attach a zipper) so I took it off and re-attached it. The skirt was still pretty full at the top, so I decided to do some large-scale smocking at the top of the skirt. Hmm. Kinda lumpy. I was still sewing on it when Zack came to pick me up. Instead of giving me a bunch of (deserved) grief about being late, he helped measure the hem. I cut off the extra fabric on the bottom and we were out the door.

Unfortunately, it was a freezing cold night, so I wasn't in a hurry to take off my coat at the party. Which means that I don't have any pictures of me actually wearing the dress. But a friend did take a nice one of my date.

I'm still mixed about how the waist came out all lumpy. I'm thinking about doing some beading around the contours of the smocking, at least on the waist part, just to weight things down a little bit. So stay tuned for the next variation...

I heart Sarah Swett

2006-10-15T08:58:00.000-04:00

I'm a sucker for twining leaf patterns.

Yesterday, while cleaning up my room to install some new-to-me bookcases, I rediscovered my old-school scanner, which stubbornly continues to work despite years of neglect and improper storage. So I scanned a couple pages from the knitting journal I updated obsessively for, oh, about a month, sometime in 1998. The page above is all that remains of my first attempt to spin & handknit Sarah Swett's amazing sweater from the Knitting in America book-- chronicled (my attempt, that is) in more detail here (synopsis: first time spinning/dyeing, indigo didn't exactly take, yarn too thick, gauge too big, ripped it out, made a different sweater, yadda yadda).

I still couldn't get that sweater out of my head, though, and when I bought that old y knitting machine a couple eons ago, the Sarah Swett pattern was one of the first two-color swatches I knit. I punched in the pattern to the Design-A-Knit software, revved up the machine, started the carriage running across the needles (gnash! gnash! For anyone who hasn't heard a knitting machine work before, I think it's the scariest sound). Here's what happened:

See, I got through the pattern okay-- you can see the leaves, and the birds hanging out in the leaf-tops--but what are all those random little red stitches that show up, especially near the top? Was my computer (running the Design-A-Knit software) just getting overheated/running out of memory? Is it something mechanical in the knitting machine? Should I have programmed in shorter whatchamacallits (the maximum number of stitches that one yarn gets held in the back at a time)?

Yeah, I don't know either. But now you understand why I haven't exactly been in a hurry to break the machine out of its box again.

Hope springs eternal

2006-10-12T22:42:00.000-04:00

Another try at the camisole, another color!

The fall leaves are nearing peak here in southern Connecticut, so after class ended this afternoon I couldn't resist taking my truck out for a 20-minute spin north on I-91 to Cromwell, the home of Fabric Place, my favorite fabric getaway (and source of the cotton/linen blend above, which I'll use for Attempt #4 at the camisole (hope springs eternal)). Sad news: Fabric Place is CLOSING-- another sure sign that I need to finish grad school and get out of New Haven. That, and the fact that O'Rourke's Diner burned down this past August. Gah!

One stitch forward, two stitches back

2006-10-11T11:47:00.000-04:00

I went to New Orleans last weekend! Unbelievably, I brought my camera but I somehow managed to forget to carry it in my pocket as my friend John and I ate amazing fried food, walked the strangely underpopulated streets, and visited with a community group in a neighborhood that's struggling to rebuild. I didn't even snap a picture of the swing on John's front porch, where I spent several hours knitting that damn camisole on Sunday morning.

Here's the damn camisole before I left:

And here's the damn camisole after I got back:

And this is why I'm going to have to knit it one more time to get it right:

Check out the funky decrease (hint: the angled section leading off to the right of the middle triangle at the top should be the same size as the angled section leading off to the left, next to my fingers). Ouch. There are other mistakes, but it's not worth going into them. The Lazy Kate really hates "frogging" back on stuff. I mean, these stitches are hard enough to figure out knitting normally, but trying to undo several rows and piece everything back together?? I don't have enough ibuprofen in the house to even try. I'm glad to see that I'm in good company on this (and while I'm linking to my favorite blog, I should also mention that in the midst of a bad week and depressing news headlines, this post from the Yarn Harlot just made my day!)

Public service announcement: Obsessive knitting

2006-09-27T09:30:00.002-04:00

Click here to watch (YouTube).

Necessity, Invention, Mothers

2006-09-26T09:24:00.000-04:00

In lieu of a breakthrough on the camisole (see progress picture below), here's a cool trick (and gratuitous background pics ofKazakh embroidery).

Necessity. Last month, I was searching around on the B&H Photo website for a carrying case for my digital camera. I couldn't believe these things cost $45 bucks!

Invention. My brother keeps his digital camera in an Altoids box. Sturdy, cheap, and less likely to be stolen (though arguably more likely to be thrown out or misplaced or lost for months under a car seat). My camera is too big for Altoids, and a little too small for this Lemonheads box I found in a bargain bin at Target.

Mothers. My mom suggested lining the inside with bubble wrap. Which she glued to the metal interior of the box with... varnish. Had no idea varnish worked like that. Damn. Reluctant to admit that my mom sometimes comes up with some great stuff.

<-- Camisole progress

k1, k2tog, yo, k2tog, yo, k1, k2tog, yo, k2tog, yo, k1

2006-09-19T10:09:00.000-04:00

Must. Stop. Knitting.

On my third attempt to produce a pattern for the lace camisole I made a couple of years ago, I started off last Friday with three 50g balls of wheat-colored cotton Takhi yarn and my trusty 24" size US1 circulars. I cast on with the invisible cast-on from Eunny's site, which took about three tries to get right.

Hint #1: loosely knot your working and waste (purple) yarns together before casting on. Twice I got about halfway through, got all excited about spreading the stitches out to count, and in the process pulled the waste yarn through a few inches of cast-on stitches, which caused the whole thing to unravel. Not pretty.

I joined the two ends with a round of knit, and then set off to chart the pattern. I knit through a gorgeous, sunny Friday afternoon, stopping only to go play bluegrass with a friend and then watch an oxen pull and admire stalls of Corriedales and Romney sheep at the Durham Fair. Saturday, I snuck in a few rows before making an emergency run to the grocery store for the ingredients for this cake and this icing for a birthday party-- which included a group session at a local spa for pedicures and manicures. And yes, you can knit while getting a pedicure, although you have to wait at least an hour for your fingernails to dry before you can risk touching needles again. Here's the progress as of Sunday night:

I'm having so much fun with this! You can see the center cable going up the front, then the twining leaves panels, and more cables, and then two bias panels on the side. The pattern itself is pretty easy so far; I've been toying with just writing it all out long-hand but it's getting too complicated and needs a chart. So stay tuned for that.

"And we'll live offa th' fatta the lan'..."

2006-09-18T11:24:00.000-04:00

So for the past several months, I have been stuck in law school purgatory, working a fun but full-time job while finishing a bunch of loose ends for my J.D. Let me tell you, there's nothing I've been looking forward to more than finishing up all these damn papers and celebrating with sticks and string.

To give you a sense of just how psyched I am to be making time for creative pursuits once again, before I headed back up to school in Connecticut I dug out my knitting machine (a fine-gauge Studio SK-830) from the Abandoned Projects Division of my parents' basement and brought it up to school with me. This machine broke my bank and my patience about two years ago. Here's an official portrait of the beast [Exhibit A]:

EXHIBIT A: Studio SK-830 Fine Gauge Knitting Machine

Here's some of the wishful ad copy about the SK-830 that got me fishing for my credit card back in 2003:

"250 fine needles mean that you can knit all those wonderful textured industrial yarns into dream garments which drape and handle like the most expensive designer fabrics."

And here is a very wise and realistic machine knitter's observation about what a hand knitter should really expect when buying a knitting machine:

"When a hand knitter moves into the field of machine knitting, it is often a shock to the creative side of ourselves. The common thought is that machine knitting is cheating, or that it is easy. Just throw yarn at the machine, right? But the fact is that machine knitting is much more complicated and difficult than hand knitting."

[If you are at all thinking about machine knitting, you ABSOLUTELY MUST read the rest of Angelika's site]. I read that post before I bought my machine, and it still didn't deter me from making the purchase... but it does give me some rueful comfort to read it now that I've been humbled by the cantakerous Studio SK-830. I think it was two Christmases ago, I knit my final swatch of jacquard and got about 8" in before the patterning gave way to blips and errors, and my last shred of hope that I would ever figure out how the damn machine works vanished in a cloud of expletives.

Idealism and High Technology are a dangerous mix.

I sort-of learned this lesson during college, when I really needed a car, and I convinced my then-boyfriend that it would be really cool (cool = fun, economical) to buy an old junker Toyota Land Cruiser and fix it up as a daily driver. My friend was an engineering student at the time, and had access to this co-op student auto shop, and he surprised me one summer by buying a 1969 International Harvester Scout (cheaper than a Land Cruiser, parts-wise) and hauling it up to school so we could work on it. See Exhibit B.

EXHIBIT B: 1969 4wd International Harvester Scout 800A

I dubbed the car "Lenny," because when we fantasized about the day when the Scout would be ready for the road, we sounded a lot like that doomed character in Of Mice and Men, who keeps asking his buddy George to tell him about how great it was gonna be in the future. "The best-laid schemes o mice an men, often go awry." Fixing the Scout was not always fun, and it definitely was not economical. On its maiden voyage home, Lenny conked out on I-81 in Pennsylvania due to a bent rod, which was due to the engine head being seated wrong, which was due to... In the end, the number of little things that could go wrong just exceeded our patience and the time we had to spend on the thing.

Just last week, I drove back home to West Virginia for a (successful!) job interview & stopped in to visit my ex-bf, and discovered Lenny parked by the roadside, now for sale. Just $1100 will buy you this sentimentally invaluable hunk of good intentions. This got me thinking... was it time to let go of the dream, and put the knitting machine on the eBay auction block?

When I rediscovered the box of fine-gauge yarn & swatches, and put the machine in my truck for the trip back up to school, I was definitely thinking I would try to find a new home for the SK830 this year (and hopefully recover some of my painfully large investment in the thing), but then I looked at those swatches and thought about that yarn and came up with a couple new theories about why the patterning didn't work (maybe my new computer, with better memory, will be better able to handle the Design-A-Knit software?) and started thinking that maybe I'd try playing around with it a little more before I sell it. And I looked at all those cool sweaters on Anthropologie's website and I thought about Eunny's Bonnie & Clyde sweater and I started thinking, maybe if I used slightly thicker yarn, and gave up on my expectation that a sweater knitted on a knitting machine should work up faster than one produced by hand(knitting), then maybe, just maybe, I could make peace with this machine and finally develop some kind of cooperative, creative relationship with it. And then we'd live offa the fatta the lan'...

The Little Camisole That Could

2006-09-17T21:42:00.000-04:00

That's the sun setting on my two inches of progress towards a handpainted silk version of the lace camisole pattern I keep promising to debug and post, after two bright glorious days of Connecticut doing the season Connecticut does best. I got a slow start on Thursday night figuring out a gage, deciphering the old pattern, getting really excited about the lace cast-on's on Eunny's site, messing up the lace cast-on while watching the end of Hustle & Flow, crawling into bed, knitting some more, falling asleep, waking up, knitting some more...

I took a break Friday, then took the knitting along on a Saturday morning tag sale adventure. Had I brought my digital camera instead of my wannabe silk camisole, I could share some of the mind-blowing weirdness that my friend and I found on sale in rural Connecticut. Who knew so many people own unicycles? We gave in to a high-pressure sale for some old pie tins. We scored some cool antique costume jewelry from a local flea market. We ate cider donuts and homemade ice cream, and got faint sunburns while sitting for a while in an old cemetery. I knit through about half of my first ball of the super-expensive silk handpaint, and realized that there was no way I was going to be able to knit even half a tube top with the amount of this yarn I'd bought/could afford to buy.

When I got home, I dug out the original lace camisole and a new-nearly matching ball of black cotton and started fiddling around with some edging patterns, free from the internet. The pattern I settled on--the Lattice Edging--was simple enough for me to only mortally screw up one section (can you see the major yo shift that happens about 6 rows from the end?). The length is not quite where I want it, either. To solve the Britney Spears midriff problem, I need at least another half inch of length or more. I'm thinking about trying a new pattern, maybe one that continues the leaf motif, or maybe I'll just add another 4-stitch cable near the top of the edging, to, like the cables that run vertically along the sides and the center.

Meantime, I've been rethinking the front of the camisole. There's too much contrast between the plain, ribbed top part and the open lace below... Have to think of how to work that in a way that blends the lace and solid portions a little better. Lucky thing that I bought three balls of tan Takhi cotton in case I wanted to redo the entire camisole in something a little cheaper than that silk handpaint.

Back in the saddle

2006-09-14T18:49:00.000-04:00

September. Grey, rainy. 66F.
Parking ticket. Postponed meeting. Unanswered email.
Wrong side of the bed.
What to do?

Yarn store!

Even a ridiculous clot of traffic and Connecticut's worst yellow-light runners could not prevent the late afternoon clearing in my otherwise gloomy mood as I cruised over to my neighborhood fiber fix.

Usually I prefer to work my way around the shop independently, shunning help from the saleslady and insisting on feeling my way through the inventory as if I were vision-impaired. For whatever reason, this time I told the clerk (who was wearing very impressive dark eye makeup) I was looking for some cotton yarn for lacework on size 1 needles. Amazingly, they had a whole wall of options that I'd overlooked on my last visit last spring.

Not that I ended up buying any of it. Eventually, the tactile approach won out, and my fingers discovered the almost-prohibitively expensive handpainted 100% silk (above), and this cool Adrienne Vittadini acrylic (below).

I said almost prohibitively. That means, I bought less than I needed, and shoved the rest back in an obscure corner, vowing to knit really quickly so I can finish the camisole before anyone buys the rest of the dye-lot (in case I need it).

It's never too hot to show off your scarf!

2006-07-19T19:10:00.000-04:00

My sister, scarf knitter.

It's 7 o'clock and 95F out, in case you can't tell from the picture. I am telling you this so that I can re-read this post next the winter, when I can't afford to heat my apartment above the meat-locker setting on the thermostat. I will warm myself by the computer screen. Ninety. Five. Degrees. That's at least 105F on the scarf factor index.

Beer Budget, Champagne Taste

2006-07-13T00:05:00.000-04:00

I've just been surfing on Style.com some more... Pardon the naive wondering, but what happens to these things after the 30-second trip down the runway? Here's a dress by Valentino. Red. Thoroughly beaded, from shoulder to knee. Is it worth all the ten gazillion hours it takes to attach beads and lace and sequins to temperamental fabrics? Do they have machines that sew and embroider beads? Can't someone do a reality TV show behind the scenes at one of these couture outfits? I bet there's some entertaining catfighting that goes on in the Beading Department.

I'm pretty sure that if I worked in one of these places, I'd get assigned to an even more nerve-wracking job, like pressing the pleats into this blouse-- the last step in a 10,000-hr. sewing epic. I'd be the quiet, affable character in the background while the Beading Ladies dished about each other, but then 5 minutes before the end of the episode, the cameras would suddenly find me hunched over my steamy workbench. Givenchy's guy, Riccardo Tisci, would be there breathing down my neck, so he'd get a good noseful of the fumes generated by melting fabric. Whoops! Hey, Ricky baby, no worries, we can get the girls to sew a sequin patch over the hole!

I get so many ideas from surfing these slideshows... mostly for colors I would never think to combine. Like that gunmetal grey-and-peach bow (Valentino). Why do they look good together? Would they still look good together if they were yarns instead of silk and lace? Probably not. Unless you could preserve some of the depth/3-D structure in the knitted garment. My really crude sense of color theory is that maybe I like these two together because they are shades of blue and orange-- contrast colors! Is that right? Or maybe it has something to do with the silver and taupe that offset them?

And for some reason, I really like this dress, from the Chanel show. And it's not because of all the embroidery on the sleeve, I don't think. Or the puritanical neckline. It's that long line of white buttons, parallel and so widely offset. And the pocket hidden in that front panel seam. Just how much could you pare out of the rest of the garment and still have it look amazing?

And in the category of "ingenious but I'd never wear it," check out the wrap she's got around her neck. It's a horse, folks. Made from hundreds of layers of felt, stacked into a 3-D horse-stole with the help of some beads for spacers. Your kids would love you for years to come (dress up!) and the Saturday Morning Warriors at your estate sale would heave this thing up out of a box and call out, "Margaret-- check out THIS thing!" but you absolutely could never, as you live and breathe, wear this out of the house. Couturiers, last question. What were you thinking? What are you supposed to say when you're at that friend's party, and they're like, "I can't BELIEVE you made that! You are sooo CREATIVE, Ricky! Ohmigod! I HATE you!!!"

What do we think about this?

2006-07-12T12:21:00.000-04:00

Watch out! The fashion houses are knitting!

Style.com has the details on this sweater/ bustier by Véronique Branquinho (I mean, if that's your name, you have to be a fashion designer) and related torso-swallowing monstrosities.

I'm not sure I'd ever try to make anything like this, but I am curious about the increases in the V-shaped section center cables. How do they do that?

What if you took out those weird rubber-flank-steak sections on the side and replaced them with inverted V-sections just like the center cabless (but getting wider at the waist, instead of at the bust). I'm not sure what I'd do about that frilly section. Or the rest of the turtleneck. That'd probably have to go. Maybe you could finish the top off with a loose, off-the shoulder neckline...

Finally, the perfect baby present

2006-07-08T13:35:00.000-04:00

Sometimes your friend finds out she's pregnant, and you've got about eight months to knit something fantastic to show how excited you are for her and for the new little person you'll soon get to meet. You buy an ambitious pattern and expensive yarn, and start off knitting. You get through to the armholes. And then you get bored. It molders away in a corner. But time marches on: the baby is born! You make plans to for a visit! And you realize there's no way you're going to get those sleeves done in time. You're driving down the interstate, thinking what a terrible friend you are.

This is the point when you should pull off the interstate, find a Wal-Mart Supercenter and head to the knitting aisle. In about 6' of shelf space I found the perfect baby present: a knitted teddy bear. One skein of chunky brown, a skein of black embroidery floss, size 6 or 9 needles, a pack of yarn needles, stuffing, and the book = $30 ($15 for the book). When I got to my friend's house, I surreptitously brought in my Wal-Mart shopping bag, and started casting on nonchalantly while she fed the baby... a few hours later, I was sewing up the side seams and stitching on eyes, nose, and mouth. "Oh, so THAT'S what you've been making!" It was great.

When I got back home, I started knitting another bear for my niece. Of course, I got the body, head, and arms done. Then it came time for the legs, and I got bored again. Well, I've got 'til August to finish it...

"Smocking"

2006-05-18T19:17:00.000-04:00

In the next week, I will:

Write a 20-page paper
Clean my (very messy) house
Nail down my summer job
Host 35 people for brunch on Sunday
Graduate from law school on Monday
Pack up all of my belongings
Move them across town to a new apt
Draft a reading list for oral exams
Check out all the books I'll need for the summer
Drive 400 miles
Attend a gi-normous wedding in Cincinnati

This calls for a new dress.

I turn once again to the Almost Prom Dress. This was the creature of last-minute inspiration one afternoon at T-minus 3 hours to go before the law school prom. I scoured the big plastic shopping bag of indulgent fabric purchases that lurks at the back of my closet for the silk madras plaid, the shimmery grey-green-scarlet crepe, and the grey-taupe lining. A scrap of a wooly crepe polka dot (midnight blue dots on a nude background) from a shirt my mom made in the early 1980s suddenly suggested itself as an underlining to the skirt. Miraculously, there was even a somewhat acceptable-colored zipper on hand. The only thing missing was time.

After three hours of sloppy sewing I had the bodice sewn, the zipper imbedded and the skirt gathered, but assembly of top to bottom was going to require a kind of leap of thought (how had I managed to put the zipper in the back with no back-seam in the skirt?) that the "crap i haven't showered yet and i'm s'posed to have left 20 minutes ago" adrenaline rush could not surmount. I tried on the bodice one last time and my optimism faded. Okay, the plaid part was cool, but what was I thinking with this halter top? It was so loose and breezy, I definitely wouldn't need a purse-- at a minimum, lipstick, keys, wallet, cellphone would be needed to fill this thing out. Plus, god forbid I should lean over at some point. Crap. So I dug through my closet and found something else to wear, and the Almost Prom Dress [APD] moldered on my duct tape dummy.

Until last week. At some point, it occurred to me that smocking was the answer to the breezy bodice. I surfed around on the internet and found this site. I don't know who published it, but please don't hold them responsible for the incredible mess that I made of my APD. This chiffon stuff is just way too slippery, and the gathering too uneven, to make an honest attempt at smocking. What I ended up with was more like structured gathering, or something appropriately vague like that. If I can manage to replicate something similar on the other side (goddamn the symmetry of the human body!) I think I'll try "smocking" the top/waist of the skirt. After I figure out how to attach it/resolve that back zipper problem. Which is after I clean my house. Which is after I write that 20-page paper...

A man walks into a yarn shop...

2006-05-17T23:01:00.000-04:00

(No, this is not a joke.)

The gentleman pictured above wishes to announce that he made the hat that he's wearing. By his very own two hands. To the great astonishment of the lady at the yarn store who sold him the book (can't remember the title just now?) and the two skeins of brown and cream alpaca and the size (4 was it?) circular needles he made it with, he knit this thing in a record five weeks. Note the even tension, the invisible hem, the fair isle patterning. He did this all by himself. I had nothing to do with it-- except, um, mistakenly binding off with kitchener stitch inside out. Whoops. I take full responsibility. Oh yeah, and the dark brown yarn in the pattern, um, I spun that. From leftovers of a Jacob Fleece. It's true. But everything else about this hat, every last detail, was executed by this man's able hand. He is a very big deal.

John is a Baby

2006-05-17T19:47:00.000-04:00

Life, dear reader, is good.

This week I took my last law school exam, ever. I crawled back home and was preparing for a ritual burning of casebooks and outlines in the fireplace when the UPS man arrived with aneven better way to celebrate-- my new camera!

Now I completely understand the temptation to fill the internet with random, inconsequential autobiographical details. It's not the blog's fault, it's the camera technology. It's so easy! See, I took a nap, and then went for a walk with my downstairs neighbor, John, and his dog, Skip. Here they are!

While we were walking, we saw a strange bird take flight from one of the puddles leftover from this week's flooding. Look, there's a picture of it!

Okay, back to knitting content. When I should have been studying federal jurisdiction, I was probably knitting on this little baby sweater, which is a not-so surprise for my new niece. I guess it's statistically proven now that my natural inclination is to bind off before the sweater has reached an appr opriate length. I'll be adding a couple more inches in length, then on to the sleeves. The yarn is not the greatest--acrylic on those metal needles from Wal-Mart or Michael's or someplace. It squids-smhrfs over the needles like it's made of rubber. But, it's cheap, and totally machine-washable, so that its teeny tiny owner can spit up on this thing to her heart's content. John is a big fan, a very big fan (but it's too small for you, John!).

Almost there!

2006-05-16T07:43:00.000-04:00

Where have I been for the last few weeks?

Finishing law school!
(And occasionally, playing some bluegrass gigs.)
I'm looking forward to graduation next Monday, in part because it means an end to the madness of memorization (two exams this week!) and in part because my graduation gift is a new digital camera-- which means, dear readers, you will finally be seeing some fiber/fabric-related content on these pages.
The little tadpole in the ultra-sound a few posts back is Miss Lucy Eleanor, born healthy, hungry, and very sleepy a week ago Sunday. I finished the body of her sweater a couple days ago, but I think I bound off a little too early. Will probably undo and knit a few more inches in length, then on to the sleeves.
And I pulled out the unfinished Prom Dress as a study break about a week or more ago, and started playing around with smocking the bottom part of the bodice-- if you can call it smocking. More like, textured gathering. Anyway, it looks very cool, so I will have some pictures to post from that as well.
In the meantime, I've got to go take this exam...

When Your Friend Becomes A Rock Star*

2006-04-27T00:30:00.000-04:00

It felt a little like getting called up to the Rapture.

Last Monday, after three hours of afternoon driving over and under and through the purposeful, this-worldly hamster-wheels of New York City, I pulled up alongside a couple hundred of the other Lucky Few in Asbury Park, New Jersey. I followed the gathering crowd down a few, crumbling blocks of boarded-up bowling alleys and motels toward the boardwalk, past hot-dog stands and ice cream counters to the Asbury Park Convention Hall. Slowly it dawned on me-- I was about hear a college friend, who also happens to be a banjo-playing virtuouso--back up Bruce Springsteen in one of the opening concerts of the Pete Seeger Sessions Tour. Holy $@#%!!!

Imagine you're at a wedding. There's your friend up in front of God and everyone, their face radiating joy on that once-in-a-lifetime moment, and you're thinking how great it is when wonderful things happen to wonderful people. This was kind of like that, but even better. The Convention Hall is not too much bigger than a high school gymnasium, so I had a pretty good view of Greg (my friend) during the show. I thought his face would break from smiling so wide, every time Bruce would call him up for a solo or to sing in the mike with him (!!!). Needless to say, it was a great night. We hung out for a while after the concert at the Stone Pony, the bar where Bruce used to play back in the day, and where we got to watch as various Springsteen fans came by our table to ask Greg, "Hey man, are you that banjo player??"

I've been listening to "If I Should Fall Behind" (Live in New York version) nonstop since-- they did it as a waltz at the show...

*This has nothing to do with knitting or sewing or anything, but it is a good partial explanation for why I've been away from the computer for a little while!

Just got back from my cousin's wedding in Boston...

2006-04-22T19:21:00.000-04:00

My cousin Bill (aged 45 or so--quintessential Irish bachelor) surprised everyone by finding a woman who is as smart, funny, and gracious as he is. And my dad surprised me by getting all teary-eyed during the ceremony...

To the wedding I wore this green dress which my mom and I sewed two summers ago. Once upon a time (when this picture was taken), it had rhinestones glued on to the (grosgrain ribbon) empire waist, our down-home copy-cat version of this Chloe dress from Fall 2004. A certain discount dry-cleaner in Washington, D.C. did me the great favor of melting them off. How are you supposed to attach rhinestones, anyway? Should I have sewed them all on in the first place? As usual, I was frantically gluing them on just an hour before I was to give this dress it's test run at the law school prom in '05.

Odds & Ends

2006-04-12T08:29:00.000-04:00

Well, the Procrastination-B-Gone Program (see Monday's post) is working all too well. I have written eight pages per day so far! Yay!

Sadly, this means that I have not had time to post anything on ye olde blogge. Don't think this isn't for lack of inspiration-- I took an hour or two to start writing out the LACE CAMISOLE pattern. (Check out this free program that makes custom graph paper for your printer!) I filled up half a page with O's and /'s and even made up a few of my own lace stitch symbols, but it's not quite there yet. Your patience = much appreciated.

And I even knit a couple inches on the wittle baby sweater. Because this little girl ...

...is not going to wait around for me to finish my term paper.

And now... back to the word processor. Happy knitting all!

Frog & Toad Go To Law School

2006-04-10T18:04:00.000-04:00

Does anyone remember this book? Cliff Notes version from my ancient memory is that there's a story in here about will power. Toad makes a bunch of chocolate chip cookies, gorges himself, feels sick. Frog says, you need will power. Frog suggests putting the cookies in a box, as a deterrent to more eating. Toad points out that the box can easily be opened, resulting in more cookie eating. Frog suggests tying the box with string. Toad points out that the string can easily be untied. Frog suggests putting the tied-up box on top of the fridge. Toad points out that the box can easily be fetched from atop the fridge, untied, and opened. Frog suggests throwing the cookies out onto the front lawn and letting the birds come and eat them. Toad can't counter that one. This, apparently, is how you develop willpower.

But can you really develop willpower by removing all possibility of eating or doing the thing that tempts you? Seems like, aside from throwing the cookies onto the lawn, there's not much will involved in not eating cookies that don't exist anymore. Twenty-some years after I first read this story, I'm still not totally resolved on this one. Worse still, I probably have even less willpower than I did as a little kid. Like, consider the half-knitted wittle baby sweater that's sitting on the bookcase just two feet away. And then consider the term paper I HAVE to write by the end of this week. I think to myself, maybe I can just knit one row to, you know, focus myself-- active meditation, right? My inner Frog says, take the knitting downstairs and give it to your neighbor John and tell him not to let you touch it until the paper's done (sadly, birds don't eat knitting). What my inner Frog fails to realize is that I so LOATHE writing this paper that I will find ANOTHER knitting project to procrastinate with, and John's apartment will eventually fill up with needles and yarn, and I'll never graduate from law school.

So finally, after all these years of fiber procrastination, I've found the solution:

Step 1. Give a trusted friend a painfully large amount of money (in my case, $400).
Step 2. Decide on a calendar of deadlines.
Step 3. Agree with your friend that if you don't meet each deadline, s/he is authorized to make a "donation" from your painfully large sum to a cause you would absolutely loathe to support. (Mine is so horrible, I can't even tell you what it is).

So far, it's proving far more successful than boxes and string. The cute wittle baby sweater sits, neglected, on the bookshelf. Now if I could just tear myself away from this blog...

What's On My Bed

2006-04-09T14:22:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning with a sore throat-- and grateful for it, because it entitled me to a good dose of pity, a cup of hot honeyed-tea, and three extra hours of sleeping under the sandwich of quilts I keep on my bed. Then the tea and pity ran out, my throat started feeling better, I peeked out the window and realized what an amazing spring day I was missing. The light was incredible. Time to photograph the quilt sandwich.

I'll start with the bottom layer.

This geometric one I made with my mom, on winter or spring break during college. Please ignore the basting pins. Yes, I love designing and piecing the quilt, but I hate quilting the damn things. At least I got the binding on. I don't remember exactly but I think the design for this quilt was inspired by one of those pattern books in the quilting section of the fabric store. I love how the variations in color and shade (dark plaids, bright calicos) make circles emerge from the all-triangular pattern.

Here's the middle layer:

This quilt was a gift to me from Linda P., a woman in southern West Virginia, whose home I and a dozen others repaired during a summer with the Appalachia Service Project, a Habitat-for-Humanity-type program that repairs substandard housing in southern WV, eastern TN, eastern KY, and western VA. (Working on ASP's summer staff was just about the best job I've ever had, by the way). Anyway, I can't tell the whole Linda P story right now but she gave me this quilt, which is the one possession I will grab on my way out if my house ever catches on fire. (This, and my violin. Just so you know.) The quilt has appliques of coal miners, done with zig zag stitch on a machine. The miners' clothes are made from the work clothes of Linda's husband, who worked in mining and in the timber industry. The "batting" is actually an old wool blanket, and the backing is the same striped fabric as you see around the border. It looks like it might be an old bed sheet.

Last layer:

This is the fourth quilt I've made. It may be my favorite, mostly because I finally graduated to a queen-sized bed, and so my other (twin-size) quilts look small and pitiful on the bed. I cut this quilt out in my first semester of law school-- great big triangles in blues, greys, and browns. Using narrow strips of silk I bought in Ulaanbaatar and Beijing, I made the fractured-patchwork shiny parts, and then sewed it all together haphazardly. This was LOTS of fun to make, especially after all the regimented OCD-style wedding-ring quilt experience. I think the sewing up took only a day or two. Sadly, however, it took until my last semester of law school to have enough time to sew it together. Even then, I basted the thing, put it on the bed, clapped my hands in glee, and lost the will to bind the edges. They don't call me the Lazy Kate for nothin'. Binding will have to happen soon, though, because the wear on the raw edges is starting to unravel some of the nice silk pieces. Maybe this summer...

More posts about quilts: the double wedding ring, and eBay quilt tops.

xxxsave this spacexxx

2006-04-07T16:32:00.000-04:00

What I really want to do right now is sit down and cast on the front of the LACE CAMISOLE so I can start to post the pattern here. What I really need to do is a) finish writing the draft of my term paper and b) clean my house so that I can show it to prospective tenants tomorrow morning.

One of my law professors likes to go on about public shaming as a cost-effective way to determine crime & other undesirable behavior. So this save-the-space post puts you (and me) on notice: no knitting until a get a & b done. Here goes...

More Old Projects

2006-04-06T10:10:00.000-04:00

Merino/silk mix, as inspired by Deb Menz's Color in Spinning. My first try at hand-painting! I eventually knit these into a kind of intarsia vest for my mom, but somehow, it looked better in the skein than it did knitted up.

I made up for giving my mom the not-so-attractive intarsia vest by giving her these socks. Why the red toe, you ask? Ran out of grey yarn. Damn. This is getting to be a theme with me (see LACE CAMISOLE below).

Ex-Boyfriend Mitten

2006-04-05T10:27:00.000-04:00

The relationship began in the spring of 2000. With the fiber, that is.* When we met, it was just over two pounds of springy tufts of white, brownish grey, and chocolate brown wool, shorn from a Jacob (as in, coat of many colors) sheep. I bought the fleece at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival on my way home from my college graduation. Three days later, it was stuffed in the back of my car--along with my spinning wheel, some clothes, and a Mongolian dictionary--for a trip to Bloomington, Indiana, where I'd spend the next five weeks taking a crash course in Mongolian grammar, and spinning 2-ply yarns in three different shades of wool from the same fleece.

The plan was to knit a pair of Latvian mittens, based on the patterns by Lizabeth Upitis in, you guessed it, Knitting in America. I was subletting a small house from a couple, not too far from the Indiana Univ. campus. They had just gotten married the year before, and their house was filled with kitchen gadgets and wedding photos.

Isn't subletting weird? I hardly spent more than two hours with the couple in person, but over five weeks of living in their space, I learned all the accidental things you learn about someone when you're living with their stuff-- like one of them was really into Patsy Cline, and one of them, the husband, I think, was of Latvian ancestry. Strange coincidence! They had a coffee-table type book that had lots of Latvian textiles and things in it. This was the source of my inspiration for the dark brown pattern at the top of the mitten.

As for the source of the pattern on the palm of the mitten... Remember? I was in Indiana to learn the Mongolian language. I was leaving in two months to move to Mongolia, where I'd be living for at least a year. Oh yeah, and I had a boyfriend, Chris, who was working on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona that summer. He would not be coming with me to Mongolia-- he had another year of law school to finish. I am not a cynic. I didn't think, damn, long-distance trans-hemispheric relationships are hopeless. No, I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I knit these super-complicated mittens and gave them to Chris as a surprise going away gift?

And wouldn't it be cool if I knit his name into the hem? And wouldn't it be cool if I knit "I love you" into the palm, in Mongolian? My language teacher double-checked the spelling for me. Rough pronunciation is BE (=I) CHAMD (=to you) HIRE-TAI (=have love) (they use the Cyrillic alphabet).

So I knit and I knit and I knit. The way this mitten pattern works, you knit a 1" hem first, then do a picot (*k2tog, yo*) row to turn it, then you knit up the outside of the mitten; then you pick up the top of the hem and knit up the inside/lining of the mitten. First thing to get knitted in was "FOR CHRIS 2000." But even with two months' headstart, on size 00 needles it's just real hard to outpace a fizzling relationship. I got on the plane with one finished and the other (hem="LOVE KATIE") about 1/3rd of the way done. No linings yet.

Within a month of getting settled in Ulaanbaatar, home-sickness gave way to lots of excitement about Mongolian adventures, and somewhere along the way it became pretty clear to me that I didn't HIRE-TAI Chris anymore. But I did HIRE-TAI these mittens. Size 00 + lining = extremely effective against the bone-chilling Mongolian winter. I pressed on with the knitting, which won me a lot of admiration from my Mongolian colleagues. When I would whip out the needles on a trip to the countryside, they'd mumble approving things like, "will make a good wife."

Then one day, the inevitable happened. The driver of our jeep was looking over my handiwork on the "FOR CHRIS" mitten and suddenly recognized the words on the palm. "Be chamd hire-tai??" he laughed. Like, what kind of narcissistic weirdo would knit this into her mittens, so that she could be reminded that she loves herself every time she gazes into her palm? I had to explain-- no, actually, these were for my "male friend," but we'd "divorced" (yay, limited Mongolian vocabulary!). News spread, and it became my co-workers' favorite game to ask about my "love" mittens, whether I'd found a new "friend" to give them to, etc. Har har.

I did finish the mittens (except for the thumb lining-- laziness overtook me) and they kept me from getting frostbite through two Mongolian winters. One day in early spring of my second year, I was walking back from lunch and had tucked my mittens into my jacket pocket. Leaving the lunch place, I had a momentary sensation that there was something missing, which usually means that you've been pickpocketed, but in this case, it meant that one of the mittens (LOVE KATIE) had fallen out of my pocket. I retraced my steps about 10,000 times-- it was no more than a 30-second walk across the sidewalk of hard-packed ice, but my mitten was g-o-n-e, picked up, I'm sure, by a homeless person or a streetkid. It didn't really bother me as much as I thought it would. I'm sure they put my mitten to good use. But it is a little annoying that the one I was left with was FOR CHRIS. Gah. So after that, I made a vow, no more knitting for boyfriends. At least, not until my judgment about the longevity of relationships gets a little better. Or at least, not on size 00 needles.

*Is that a cheesy opening or what? Y'all deserve better.

More About Mongols

2006-04-04T12:09:00.000-04:00

This is just a warning.

Before I started graduate school, I worked in Mongolia for two years (2000-2002) with a UN-sponsored biodiversity conservation project. So far, that experience tops the list of interesting things I've done.

As I think about all of the projects and ideas I want to post about, I realize that a lot of them have some Mongolian influence, so I figured it would be good to give you, my readers (all 1 of you--that's you, Zachary) a heads-up. Figure 1 over there is a cutaway view of a ger (rhymes with "air," otherwise known as a yurt, but yurt is sooo Soviet Era, man).

If you are a semi-nomadic herder raising sheep/goats/horses/camels/cattle/and yes, yaks out in the Mongolian countryside, chances are that you live in one of these. The walls are lattice panels, covered with layers of thick felt to keep out the bone-chilling Siberian winds. It's dry enough over there that the felt does not mildew--although ger-dwellers take precautionary measures like lining the felt with plastic tarps, and brushing off new dustings of snow each morning. The roof of the ger consists of lots of wooden, rafter-like poles stuck into a wagon-wheel hub at the top, and secured with notches and leather thongs to the lattice walls at the sides.

Anyway, I'm telling you about gers because I want to tell you about the ways that people decorate the insides. A herder's family shares the single room inside, and every inch of space is accounted for-- it's sort of like living on a small boat. Not much room here for knick-knacks, candles in coordinated colors, floral arrangements. Instead, the rafters are painted with bright designs, and the interiors are hung with bright-colored wall-hangings.

In the eastern part of the country, this means, solid fabrics with simple bindings around, woven into Celtic-type decorative knots at the corners. And yes, I'm annoyed with myself that only photos I ever took of the eastern-type wallhangings are the three posted here-- they don't really give you a good sense of the things (blue with red bindings, here). But they do give you a sense of life in a ger. These are photos from a fishing trip I took one October out to the very remote eastern tip of Mongolia. There's a river there called Khalkhiin gol, where the Mongols and their Russian "brothers" beat back Japanese troops in 1939, essentially preventing the Japanese pushing into Siberia (which would have forced the Soviets to fight on two fronts in WWII). You can still find helmets, trenches, and barbed wire littered around the river banks. Like I said, remote. And you know what remote means--ridiculously good fishing. So, when we weren't out hooking taimen with homemade lures made out of teaspoons,* we were hanging out in the mayor's ger (see Myagmarsuren, right) eating dumpling soup (see his very cute grandson digging into a bowl above), and getting very, very drunk on Mongolian vodka. And singing songs. And taking long, cozy naps next to the woodstove as the wind snapped at the felt walls...

Meanwhile, out in the western part of the country, folks in the Kazakh ethnic group take a little more decorative approach to their wallhangings. And by "a little more decorative," I mean, incredible, meticulous embroidery. I brought back three Kazakh wallhangings with me to the U.S. Here is a closeup to the bottom/center of one of them. We're talking miles of chain-stitch, the product of very long and very cold winter nights. Interestingly, when you live out in the middle of nowhere, thousands and thousands of miles away from even the idea of a yarn or fabric store, where do you get the yarn to embroider these things? Well, one possible source could be from extra fabric-- just unravel the edge of that white or blue or pink cotton cloth your herder husband picked up at the general store last time he was in town!

Another thing I love about these tapestries are the bits of history that have inadvertantly made their way into the finished product. The backing of one of them is a colorful calico with the word "leto" (in Cyrillic) printed all over it-- that's Russian for summer. And there are buttons made from old Mongolian coins and Russian soldiers' uniforms decorating the top. Whoa, like, soooo Soviet era!

Here's a picture of the whole thing--hanging on my wall, for now, until I get myself a ger.

*I've got some great stories about this trip, but they'll have to wait for another time.

LACE CAMISOLE: Ladies and gentlemen... a gauge

2006-04-04T10:47:00.000-04:00

I'm so baaaad.

I should be working but I just knitted up a gauge swatch for the lace camisole. It is:

8 rows & a hair under 6 sts to 1"
size 1 needles
Knit with Cotton Flamme (Crystal Palace Yarns)
100% mercerized cotton
96 yards to approx. 50 grams

Now off to read 100+ pages of Japanese history so that I can teach a discussion section tonight!

More posts about the LACE CAMISOLE are here.

So what have YOU been doing lately?*

2006-04-01T13:06:00.000-05:00

Introducing....

the front.

And...

the back.

With all the gorgeous weather today, and incredibly stressful heap of work weighing on my mind, I had to sneak away to a yarn store to reward myself for, uh, completing about 1/3 of the writing I'd hoped to finish today!

I picked up expensive size 1 needles ($12), two skeins of inky-blue cotton for recreating the lace camisole, and a ball of silvery-butter colored tape-like yarn that I had no business buying, but couldn't resist taking home. Sort of like a magpie (or is it a mockingbird?*) I seem to be destined to line my home with curious, shiny things, just for the hell of it.

I knit exactly two rows of gauge. This exercise confirmed for me that 1) the blue cotton is gonna be just fine, 2) $12 needles are actually worth the extra cost, and 3) I can't show my face on this blog until I finish that other 2/3rds of writing. Damn.

Skulking back to my schoolwork...

*Someone saw Capote recently.

THE LACE CAMISOLE (soon to be free pattern)

2006-03-31T07:10:00.000-05:00

It is really hard to take pictures of yourself.

So you'll just have to overlook the big square shadow in the middle of this picture of THE LACE CAMISOLE. This is something I started in 1998, folks-- and it's still not done. But with your help, I'm going to finish it, and then maybe we can all benefit.

The pattern is an original. I knit it one summer from some really nice, springy cotton yarn that I got at Halcyon Yarns in Bath, Maine. We all have a place like Halcyon in our lives-- you stumble upon it by complete accident one day on the one trip you ever take to the Maine coast, and you get there about a half hour before they close, so all you can do is wander around in a joyous daze, diving your hands into all that delicious roving, fondling shelf after shelf of incredible yarns, and then suddenly you're back out on the street, wondering why everyone in Bath, Maine is not cramming the aisles of the place, because if I had a yarn store that great in my town, I know where I'd be...

But I digress. This is the back of the LACE CAMISOLE. Yes, those are strings hanging off. Yes, those are safety pins holding the I-cord straps to the back panel.

I bought this great cotton yarn, but being a poor (or is it cheap?) student, I only got two or three balls of it. Enough to make the body of the camisole, but, sadly, not enough for an edging. This was before Britney Spears & the midriff were cool. Anyway, I got a book of lace patterns from the library and some Size 1 needles, and even kept track of the pattern I was making. Or thought I did. I've pasted in some of the notes I kept, below.

One of the challenges of making this camisole was to knit something in lace that had some kind of solid section around the bust so that it could be worn without a bra. My project for the next few days is to try to decipher the pattern, maybe re-knit a new version, and post the (free!) pattern for your amusement on my website. I've never made a pattern that's adjustable in size, and I can't promise that this one will fit anyone bigger than a dress size 4-6, bust 34 A to 36 B, but I'll see what I can do. And in the meantime, if anyone out there has a suggestion for a good knitted edging to finish off the bottom hem, Britney S. & I are all ears.

P.S. Anyone have a good site for downloading graph paper or making knitting charts? Otherwise, I'll just handwrite it out.

Almost Prom Dress

2006-03-30T06:47:00.000-05:00

Besides never quite finishing things, my other bad habit is that I start projects impossibly too late to meet deadlines. Take this dress, for example. Got the urge to sew it about four hours before the event-- in this case, my law school's "prom." And yes, I did end up wearing something else. And yes, I haven't finished the skirt yet. I'll start that four hours before the next event I hope to wear this to.

About this dress: It's a celebration of my pack-rat attitude towards fabric-collecting. All of the fabrics here were stowaways in my shopping basket on some trip to Fabric Place (friendly neighborhood fabric store). There's the 2-way shimmery greyish/greenish/reddish/blueish (see why I had to buy it?) crepe, and that strange, stiff madras-patterned silk that was in the bargain bin (someone scribbed some notes in ballpoint pen on one corner of it). And the ribbon came from another project.

This dress is yet another example of why making a Duct Tape Dummy will change your life. In the old days, I was a pattern girl. I'd find some really cool fabric, get an inspiration, and then hunt through the pattern books to see if some commercial designer out there had, maybe maybe maybe, had a similar inspiration. Usually, I'd end up finding that two or three designers had had two or three different aspects of my inspiration, so I'd buy all two or three patterns in hopes of splicing together all my favorite parts into one garment. Think, Frankendress.

Oh yeah, and then there'd be the part where my mom would take all my measurements for me, which would confirm that my top end is two sizes smaller than my bottom end, and then we'd haggle over how form-fitting an 8 or a 10 really was, which usually meant that she won and the resulting garment turned out about as flattering and svelte as a nun's habit.

The duct tape dummy changed everything. I'm not advanced enough to know how to make muslin patterns and all that, but I'm sloppy and careless enough that I've enjoyed some dumb luck in sewing things from fabric I just draped and pinned over my little dummy.

Like the Almost Prom Dress. I pinned one corner of the grey fabric to the nape of the dummy's neck. Gathered the bottom around the boob and cut across--triangle one. Repeat for the other side. Cut out front and back strips of the plaid stripe. Pinned in place, figured out the right angle to miter the center of it. Sewed triangles to plaid strips. Basted & sewed in a zipper in back. And then-- was that the doorbell? Damn. Dug out an old standby black dress from the closet. Come June, a few hours before I catch a plane to go to my friend's wedding, I'll be back at it: there's this great teeny polka dot fabric I discovered in the fabric box at my parents' house. I'll underlay that beneath the grey fabric for a skirt. Also got an idea to embroider some kind of angled smocking along the lower side edges of the boob-triangles-- I'm a little underwhelming in the cup size category, and I'm afraid the triangles could use some definition around the armpits as they are now are a bit too breezy. Stay tuned on this one...

eBay quilt tops

2006-03-29T10:12:00.000-05:00

By the way, what's up with all the quilt tops that are always for sale on eBay? It's reassuring, but also mysterious. Is it possible that throughout time, there have been lots of other quilter-types like me out there who like piecing the thing together but can't seem to motivate when it comes to sewing the ol' quilt sandwich? Like this one (on the left) is listed for $20 right now, and the one on the right is $99.*

I like the oldie-moldie quilt designs, so I often go to eBay when I'm searching for quilt pattern ideas. And I often think, damn! I should buy that quilt top and sew it up myself-- it would save a lot of time, but then, I'd only get to do the tedious quilting part. Surprise,I haven't bought one... although there some really gorgeous ones out there that seem to go for next to nothing. Wonder if there's some other thing you can do with a quilt top besides quilt it?

*P.S. This is not an eBay ad, or anything-- I'm not in any way connected to the folks selling these quilts! But if those sellers are reading this and want to chip in to my digital camera fund... :)

Double wedding pickle dish (quilt)

2006-03-28T23:29:00.000-05:00

Aargh. Stopped by my neighbor's apartment to try to borrow his digital camera, with high hopes of posting more new pictures of the things I've made. As it turns out, he wasn't home. So I scoured my computer for more old pictures of things I've made. Or in this case, old pictures of things my mom and I have made, more or less together.

In the spring of 2002, I was still living in Mongolia, nearing the end of my two years there, and very reluctantly starting to plan for the inevitable trip back home to become a student again. Sometime in May or June, my mom emailed-- had I heard from my brother? No, I hadn't (I mean, I was living in Mongolia, at the time, and he & I had a hard enough time staying in touch when we were living in the same time zone). Well, my mom told me, I think he has some news to share with you. A few days later, he emailed to as for my 10,000 digit phone number. I sent it to him, but warned him not to call. Phone conversations from the U.S. cost $13/minute when I first arrived in Mongolia, so I was really looking out for him. Sure enough, the phone rang--at 3am (so much for time zones!). I tell my brother--this is really expensive for you, let me call you back! He says, no it's fine, I got a special long distance plan for Mongolia a couple months ago. I say, what?? So why didn't you call me earlier? And he says, welll, I didn't have your number...

Then he tells me that he's gotten engaged (I didn't even know he was dating someone!). Which brings us to the quilt: shortly after I got back & we all met my brother's fiancee for the first time, my mom and I headed to the fabric store, thinking we'd make a quilt for them. We thought of a double wedding ring, but chose a very similar pattern (the Pickle Dish!) instead. And we thought about telling my brother & Susan about the quilt, but then we thought it would be better as a surprise. Was this a good idea? In retrospect, probably not. It let us have fun when picking colors to our liking (mmm, sea green, teal, cool blues!), but it also meant that several weeks later, when their registry came in and everything on it was siren red, we thought, "Oh crap, this is going to end up in their closet. As it turns out, my sister-in-law liked it (here, she & my grandma check out the quilt at the rehearsal party).

A few things about this (queen-sized) quilt. My mom and I cut and laid out the quilt in two days of obsessive-compulsiveness before I headed off to grad school in a different city. We used foundation/paper piecing (absolutely the greatest invention in quilting, ever), and basically drew a grid, numbered each square unit, and then packed each square's worth of pieces & paper pattern into a separate numbered envelope. This meant that we could assemble our squares in separate cities over the next three months. I eventually mailed my mom my half of the quilt top, she joined the two, attached the batting & backing, and started the quilting.

Did I mention that I am terrible at doing the actual quilting part? I've made three quilts on my own, and none of them are much past the basting stage. One (on my bed right now) doesn't even have the binding on it. There's actually batting hanging out at the edges. I don't know, maybe I was born without that gene that makes you feel really satisfied about finishing things correctly?

Color Inspiration

2006-03-26T09:17:00.000-05:00

Deb Menz's book, Color in Spinning, was my introduction to color theory. I spent a couple weeks about four summers ago playing with Procion dyes and some Merino roving, and managed to absorb some basic concepts about warm and cool colors, depth of shade, etc. Although I usually defer to instinct over abstract theory when it comes to selecting colors for yarns and fabrics, I do find that a little bit of theoretical understanding helps me appreciate beautiful combinations that my conservative instincts might not otherwise have gone for.

To that end, I like to collect bits and swatches of photos and so on of interesting color combinations. I'm going to post some of these on my blog from time to time-- maybe some of you will find them as inspiring as I do.

An obvious favorite place to look for inspiration is the Vogue website.

Another favorite, though less often updated, is the website of the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C. Definitely worth a visit (both electronically and in person!). They have a "Textile of the Month" page with awe-inspiring creations from distant places & times.

As an example, check out this Peruvian tunic in the Huari style, which dates from A.D. 750-950. I don't think I could have dreamed up that combination of steel grey-blue, together with cream, brown, and the bold turmeric color, but I like them altogether! The description reads:

"This spectacular tunic is of the style of the Huari Empire, which wielded influence throughout much of what now constitutes Peru over 1,000 years ago. ...Huari tunics are among the most finely-woven textiles in the world. Six to nine miles of very fine yarn was required to make one tunic, woven with 150 to 200 yarns to the inch. This is as fine as industrially-produced fabrics today, but was achieved entirely by hand. This amazing virtuosity suggests a specialized workforce of spinners and weavers, perhaps under the patronage of the state or religious establishment."

Wow.

Another source of inspiration: the Quilts of Gee's Bend. I never made it to the Whitney Museum in nearby New York when they were exhibited, and I still haven't bought the book from the exhibition, but a few of the photos of these quilts are available to the tenacious web surfer. Here's one of them, one made in part from worn old blue jeans. I love that bottom row of stripes: redvermillion/DEEP forest greenbrown/slate bluebrown.

Wow, times two!

So, I'm curious-- where do you all get inspiration for colorwork and patterns in your knitting/sewing designs?

Qiviut

2006-03-26T09:05:00.000-05:00

Speaking of my amazing downstairs neighbor (John)-- back in February, he called me to say that he had bought me a birthday present. This came as a great suprise, since my birthday was not due until April. The present was so great that he couldn't wait until April to give it to me. Upstairs he came with a bag of the most beautiful, the most lusciously soft grey-brown QIVIUT ROVING. About six ounces of fiber. John has this great qiviut hat that I like to "borrow" (steal) and rave about whenever I can. He doesn't know the first thing about fibers or spinning, but he did some web research and ordered this up.

If anyone has any tips about spinning or knitting with qiviut, let me know! I'm spinning it as thin as I know how, and expect that I'll probably 2-ply it knit on teensy-tiny needles. Still undecided about whether to make a hat (which I need) or scarf or a shawl...

Calling for Comments!

2006-03-26T08:59:00.000-05:00

Wow! As a newcomer to blogging, I definitely have a lot to learn. I didn't realize, for example, that my settings limited comments to registered users. I was wondering why my little blog was so lonely. I've changed that now so that hopefully anyone stopping by can leave comments-- and I hope you'll do so! Getting advice and encouragement and new ideas from the World Out There is the real reason I wanted to have a blog in the first place.

My other difficulty is that I don't have a digital camera of my own-- have to keep borrowing one from John, my wonderful downstairs neighbor. I'm hoping to borrow his camera again today so that I can take post some more photos of things I've knit or am knitting now. Stay tuned!

Sarah Swett Sweater

2006-02-10T17:31:00.000-05:00

Okay. So in the last episode, our heroine was busy unraveling her first handspun sweater, resigned to the fact that a fairisle knit would use up way more yarn than she'd actually made. Take Two: the Sarah Swett sweater morphs into the Tree of Life sweater, also in Knitting in America. This sweater was SO MUCH FUN to knit! The mosaic knitting goes so quickly, and makes for a dense, boldly patterned jacket. Unfortunately, I can never seem to get these garter-stitch type hems to work right, and this one rolls with the worst of 'em. Other than that, and the fact that the indigo shades did not get very deep, I'm pretty pleased with this project.

The back of the jacket is the best part. As per the spinning directions, the rows alternate from more cochineal(scarlet)-weighted shades to more madder(orangey red)-weighted shades. Here's a close up of the stitch pattern:

Cobweb Shell

2006-02-10T16:51:00.000-05:00

In 1999, I think it was, my cousin got married in San Diego, prompting my family's first vacation to Cal-i-for-ni-a. We rented a Ford Taurus and drove up the coast, winding up the trip in San Francisco. I can't remember how it is that I stumbled onto ArtFibers and I don't think I had more than an hour to spend there, but it was amazing! The sales lady recommended this combination of a gunmetal grey nylon tape and a teensy kid mohair. The picture at the left shows a lighter swatch knit with the mohair alone, and then a portion off the finished shell knit with the two yarns in combination.

As for the pattern, I used a leaf pattern from Mary Walker Phillips' Knitted Counterpanes. I borrowed a copy of the book from someone while I was making this, and I guess I gave it back (silly me!) so I can't print up the pattern here. But basically, I just knit a straight panel of the leaf-patterned lace, decreased for a neckline, and knitted the shoulder seams together. The sides I just tacked together at three points-- it would be cool, in retrospect, to use ribbons for this purpose. I have a taupe colored lace textured camisole that I often wear under it. It gets a lot of compliments, and has been kidnapped by at least one roommate.

If anyone is interested in the pattern, I'll try to recreate & post it soon.

What is she up to?

2006-02-09T16:21:00.000-05:00

I come from a long line of seamstresses-- my grandma took in other folks' clothing for hems and adjustments as a way to make "pin money." My mom helped me sew my first dress (a red calico with a blue vest) when I was in the second grade. In junior high and high school, I was the girl who made her own prom dress (for better or worse). I started knitting in 1993 when a huge blizzard knocked out the electricity in our house for several days. My mom headed off my cabin fever by teaching me to knit and purl. Within a day or two, I was hiking down off the snow-choked hillside to check out a pattern book from the county library. My first almost-finished aran sweater was stolen (along with the rest of the contents of my backpack) during an illicit trip to hear jazz in Philadelphia. I sewed my first quilt the summer before I started college. Since then, I've made three or four more, from a meticulous double-wedding ring for my brother & sister-in-law, to a big, patchy, not quite finished Gee's Bend-inspired quilt I just sewed together this past spring.

In college, I knit sweaters and socks for various boyfriends until I decided not to knit for boyfriends anymore (is it rude to ask for a knitted present back after a breakup?). I took a semester off from college to pursue an adventure that ultimately fell through. Nursing an injury at home for the rest of the spring and summer, I got a spinning wheel and wool combs and started knitting & dyeing stuff.

After graduation, I went overseas for two years, spinning wheel and all, but got too busy to make much of anything. I came back to start graduate school, sewed a few bridesmaid dresses, and discovered the joys of the duct tape dressmaker's dummy. Then I started noticing everyone around me was knitting and spinning! And there's this show called Project Runway! And there are all these blogs on the internet about knitting now! I'll just surf through them for just a minute...

On a bookshelf at home, my mom has an early 1960s edition of the Vogue Sewing Book, or whatever it's called, full of Jackie O collars and leg-o-mutton sleeves. Looking through photos of when she was my age (mid-20s) she spent a lot of time sewing outfits which, with the graceful passage of time, look hideous now. I wonder if she really said it this way, but somehow I recall her reflecting on this exercise as being kind of a waste of time. What other things might she have been accomplishing while she was bent over a sewing machine? Now I'm in law school, with lots of opportunities to accomplish things, and I, too, find myself sneaking off to fabric stores on afternoons that would probably be better spent at the library. But I guess starting this blog is my admission that while there are more productive things I should be doing, I come from a long line of seamstresses, and there is a part of me that really loves making all this stuff, figuring out patterns, trying new things. Since I've enjoyed picking up inspiration & new techniques from others' blogs, I'm going to try to post some of my projects here, in hopes that others will find something new or inspiring.

More Inspiration From Knitting In America

2006-02-09T16:14:00.000-05:00

Here's another Knitting in America -inspired sweater. This one I knit for a friend, using wool from his very own prize-winning sheep. I had no hand in the carding or spinning (that's a cheap way of saying that the streaky, greasy aspects of this sweater were not my fault!) but I did handle the knitting. My friend wears this one so much, its seams have required some reinforcement-- very satisfying to think he likes it so much.

My first spinning project

2006-02-09T16:06:00.000-05:00

My first spinning project. Readers of Knitting in America will recognize it as the red-headed step-child* of Sarah Swett's beautiful kimono sweater, on page whateveritwas. Biting off more than I could chew (as usual), I used her dyeing directions to produce the shades of red (madder-cochineal in gradations) and blue (indigo) here. Unfortunately, I spun the corriedale fiber I used for this much thicker than the dental-floss gage Ms. Swett must've used, and I think I had the pH totally off on my indigo vat, hence it became pretty clear that I wouldn't have enough yarn to knit the whole sweater. So once I got the front and back finished & bound off, I snapped this picture, and then started the sacrificial unraveling...

As a side note, copying out the leaf pattern got to be downright addictive. What is it about me that I find drawing up these things so satisfying? (A page from my old knitting journal t right. I swear, the rest of the journal is all messy & chicken-scratch & dye stains. I swear!)

TESTing

2006-02-09T16:01:00.000-05:00

Test test test