Knitting

Hints, tips and thoughts about lace.

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Dealing with another UFO

In my last blog I didn’t pledge to “finish” every project I’d ever begun.  Life is full of choices, and knitting should be, too.

Making choices is about deciding what really matters—honing in on the essentials and leaving the rest. When I was an undergraduate English major, I wanted to read every book and learn about everything that remotely interested me.  I had an insatiable appetite for learning. Sometime between then and now, I came to the sobering realization that there would be books I longed to read and experiences I wanted to have that, because of the limitations surrounding any single life, I’d need to forego entirely.  It’s about choosing how to spend time.

Knitting is no different than reading or any of the other human “wants.” I will admire more yarns and patterns than I can ever knit, and I will imagine more designs than I will ever commit to paper. So, this weekend, while on a wonderful knitting weekend in Manzanita on the Oregon coast, I chose to reduce my UFOs by one.  (Note:  Never fear. There aren’t many more, so don’t worry that staying with me on this thread will be the knitting equivalent of the camp song, “100 bottles of beer in the wall, 100 bottles of beer, if one of those bottles should happen to fall, 99 bottles of beer in the wall…” Thankfully, I’ve been working on this for a while and don’t have many UFOs squirreled away. Just a couple more!

I started a lace shawl months ago, loved the Misti Alpaca lace weight yarn, admired the pattern, but never really loved this project once I’d begun it.  The pattern repeat was difficult memorize and even to see, the yarn and the pattern weren’t great together and it wasn’t even very much fun to knit. As with a book I’m not loving,  I’d given it a chance but wouldn’t be finishing it–and there was a time when every book I started had to be finished. I call this difference “progress!”

Unraveling the project and carefully winding the lovely yarn back into the ball so that it could be used another day felt good.  The Oregon coast weather, like that of the rest of the Northwest, doesn’t come with a guarantee. However, this three-day weekend was perfect:  sunny, blue skies, happy people walking on the beach with dogs, yarn shops, friends to knit and laugh with, chocolate and good food.  I had fun finding the right place to bid farewell to this UFO:The fish (it’s the back of a bench with a sense of humor) was happy to help out, posing with the rewound yarn held carefully in her mouth.She seemed to smile, reflecting my own feelings at letting this project go and setting the yarn aside for another day — to use or give away to someone to make something beautiful.  It was a good trade:  happy possibilities instead of a project that was weighing me down!

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Completion is a very splendid thing

As soon as I sent the blog yesterday, pledging to complete two nearly-finished Evelyn Clark patterns, I went into a busy beaver routine.  It didn’t take long to finish the “Wildflower Lace Scarf.”  I’d run out of yarn only inches from the end and the edging is “do-as-you-go,” rather than applied at the end.  So, it wasn’t long before I had that baby finished and blocking.   When it was dry enough (although I usually like to leave things blocked out at least overnight), I unpinned it, shook it out and took this photo of it on top of a dark blue t-shirt I had planned to wear during the “Today Show” filming week but didn’t (who knows why?).

I like the way the Transitions yarn works in this type of scarf and made it a bit larger than the pattern specified.

Because I was on a self-imposed deadline, I was rabidly (you saw it correctly; I meant “rabidly” not “rapidly”) finishing the applied lace edging to the “Manzanita Lace Shawl” as the first scarf was drying on the blocking boards.  By the time I unpinned “Wildflower,” “Manzanita” had soaked in no-rinse wool wash and was ready to pin down and block out:

Shawl being blocked on 3- 4x2 pieces of foam insulation

My blocking system is simple and cheap.  I purchased four pieces of foam insulation several years ago at Home Depot (maybe something like $3 each now?) and use three of them to block a large triangle shawl such as “Manzanita.”  I use blocking wires, t-pins and a measuring tape—the latter really gets a work-out because I want to be sure that I’m not blocking it into a strange, asymmetrical shape. Since the electronic cottage, aka our condo, isn’t the largest place in the world, we shipped my beloved round oak table with 5 leaves and many chairs (that I had grown up with) to my daughter in Pittsburgh a few years ago.  In its place we purchased an inexpensive  36″ x 36″ cherry (veneer) table that has 15″ extensions on each end, making a wonderful 66″ long x 36″ wide blocking surface, I mean dining table. It extends often to be a blocking table and infrequently when we host holiday or other meals with more guests than the two of us plus two dogs.  We purchased it at one of those wonderful places—Scan Design, or Dania or Scandia–and it works fine in its multi-purpose role.

First thing this morning, after helping my husband shepherd our elderly dogs outside before feeding them–always a good idea, I quickly removed the t-pins and blocking wires, held up the blocked shawl and breathed a sigh of satisfaction.  I love the shawl, although I’ll probably do with it what I do with 95% of what I knit—give it away to a special person. This afternoon I met friends at a bagel place that generously allows knitters to use a very large, unoccupied space behind a door you have to get very detailed directions to find.  The first time I went there, I missed it altogether.  Linda,  a knitting buddy, modeled “Manzanita” for all of you to see on a real person:I don’t get a kick-back from Evelyn Clark on this pattern (although maybe I should…), but tell my knitting students/ buddies that it’s a great place to begin knitting lace.  Once you get into the swing of the pattern, it becomes clear how most of the pattern rows are either knit or purl rows and occasionally (maybe every 11 rows?) there’s a yarn over, K2tog row–easy to remember with minimal notes.

Yes, this was a very splendid (and cleansing) thing.  And now I move onto another of few remaining UFOs:  some basic leg warmers requested by my niece Darla in Illinois. I leave tomorrow for a weekend knitting retreat with my local guild–the Fort Vancouver Knitting Guild.  The legwarmers will be perfect to work on while we visit!  I’m not promising I’ll have a picture of them posted  by Saturday night because I don’t know whether I’ll have a good internet connection or not.

I’ll face the remaining UFOs when I return.  After all, one of them has been aging for a little more than 10 years and another for something like 8 years–what’s the rush?  Maybe as I’m hiking this weekend inspiration will come to me about how to deal with those two very old UFOs! I’ll show them to you when I get back. It’ll be such a relief to finally come clean about them.

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Meltdown in the electronic cottage.

Yes, there’s been a lot of that happening here in our condo after 5+ years. Things have been going belly-up with mystifying regularity.  Remembering words from a Robert Frost poem, “the best way out is always through,” I’ve been working through this, eager to finish so I can get back to my knitting and projects that are calling loudly to be completed.

First to go was the heat pump fan installed in the ceiling.  Things are often not as simple as they first appear.  When it was all over, the final bill included a new fan and the cost of cutting away and replacing a portion of the ceiling (because the pump had initially been installed incorrectly).  Could there actually be a law in nature that prevents costly items from breaking down during warranty periods?

The next to bite the dirt was my all-in-one printer which suddenly produced grinding noises when it should have been printing.  Alas, it was 2-1/2 years old, close to ancient in the world of electronics. After replacing it with a newer, simpler, cheaper model (who needs a fax, anyway?), I experienced a feeling of sweet victory after losing a big one with the heat pump. Shortly thereafter the over-the-oven microwave weighed in with symptoms suspiciously similar to the printer.  And if you’re like me, you, too, wonder if all of the recent earthquakes aren’t somehow related?  Only a few days after the printer was replaced, the microwave began producing noise instead of heat.  The magnetron (think old tv picture tube) was shot, as well as a control panel, which triggered some serious microwave consumer research.  It’s amazing how much information I sifted through trying to make the right microwave decision. A week later, I’m again able to re-heat coffee, defrost breakfast blueberries, make popcorn, enjoy fresh asparagus. and heat up leftovers. It’s not lost on me that I could be in the same situation if I’d limited my information gathering to a few hours…

To celebrate getting back to my real life, my knitting life (or maybe as a cleansing ritual?), I am dealing with my UFOs.  Thankfully, my unfinished projects are few in number.  You may have noticed that I didn’t say I’d finish them—-just deal with them.  It’s a clean slate I’m after! Or maybe this is my version of spring cleaning. Yesterday I finished my son’s late Christmas socks. He likes 4″ ribbing and long legs . These measure 10 inches from cast-on to the beginning of the heel flap.  A lacy-topped version of this pattern (“Rhythm”) appears in the new edition of my book “Knit Socks!” which will be available from Storey Press in September.

Next to be completed are two very close-to-being-finished lace projects.  The first is “Manzanita,” a triangle shawl pattern by Evelyn Clark.  I had just started applying the lace edging when I put this down in July. This is the third time I’ve made this pattern from Fleece Artist Suri Blue yarn. The pattern is easy enough for relaxing social knitting. Note: the color is more yellow-green than the yellow that shows up here on my monitor.

The second is “Wildflower Lace Scarf,” also by Evelyn Clark and knit from Gypsy Girl Creations “Transitions,” yarn in “viola bouquet” color. The hand-dyed colors move from an intense sapphire blue at one end of the skein morphing into a brassy gold and then to a buttery natural at the other end.  It’d be fun to use both ends of a 50 gram skein to makeslip stitch patterned gloves or socks.  I was on a roll knitting this side-to-side garter stitch scarf over the course of a few days in early March when I confirmed (a few inches from the end) that I needed to order more yarn to finish it.

If I keep on track, I should be able to finish both projects tonight or tomorrow.  It’s good to be back tending to my knitting!

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It’s never too late for holiday gifts

I grew up in a last-minute family.  Because church didn’t start until 11 am, my mother rarely left the house before 10:50 am, even when she was the choir director, because “we live so close–it just takes a minute to get there.”  When friends and relatives were invited over for dinner or for a weekend visit, cleaning up the house began in earnest only when one of us stationed at a window saw THE CAR coming down the street toward

Betsy, Dick & Baby David

our house and sounded the alarm.  Before children, my mother had taught Home Ec and had an idea about what houses should look like when company came.  I participated in the last minute frenzy to stuff newspapers under the couch, put piles of things down on the basement steps, and gather up random things that didn’t belong where they were and hide them in drawers.

It was years later that I really understood all this.  My mother enjoyed entertaining and doing for others.  She loved to cook and bake favorite dishes, especially elaborate desserts. However, she didn’t participate much in mundane activities required to keep things organized.  She

Mom playing piano

preferred playing the piano, embroidering towels, crocheting edges for delicate linen handkerchiefs, trying out yet one more new souffle recipe, making candles, quilting a gift for a new baby and even mending socks and worn-out clothes.

It wouldn’t have been Christmas Eve at our house if Mother hadn’t been up until almost morning with the sewing machine humming.  Occasionally the doll clothes or special gifts didn’t get finished, and we unwrapped packages from “Mrs. Santa Claus” that contained partially completed projects and a note asking that we give the whole box back to our mother so that she could get it back to Mrs. Santa Claus.  She’d usually had some problem between Thanksgiving and Christmas that set her back a bit.

We were conditioned to receiving these sorts of messages and grew up understanding about how difficult it was for Mrs. Santa Claus to do everything.  After all, wasn’t she a woman, and isn’t a woman’s work never done?  I bet you think I’m going to seque into telling you about how I was, therefore, so conditioned from an early age to this sort of thing that not getting all the gifts made before the holidays is not really a character defect…..It was, rather, learned behavior.

Well, surprise, surprise.  I loved my parents but did not love being late, although for years I followed their same script.  Then somewhere between late childhood and now I realized that I could start making (that is, knitting) my gifts way ahead of time, like even in January.  And I learned that there was no law forbidding the gradual making of holiday gifts, spreading them out through the entire year, up to the holiday itself.  The last minute rush was not mandatory or necessarily desirable.  And so I had tried to live my life this way—especially when I got it back after leaving healthcare to knit seriously full time.

This isn’t to suggest that neither of my children ever opened a wrapped gift box to find either needles, yarn and a pattern or a partially completed item.  It did happen several times, but it wasn’t my regular practice and plan.

So, it is with some chagrin that I am now working to finish my son’s holiday stockings.  They were in the queue and cast on so that they could have been completed in time.  However, the whole plan went awry on Thanksgiving Day.  We had just enjoyed a wonderful turkey dinner and were all sitting around on comfortable living room furniture in an L-tryptophan-induced blissful state (or whatever comes from enjoying lots of turkey).  Imagine my horror to see, when my son put his feet up on an ottoman, gaping holes in the bottoms of both his socks—-and yes, they were (like most of his others) ones that had been made for him by his mother!

He looked very chagrinned when I said something subtle like, “OMIGOD, the bottoms of your socks are gone!”  After all, he’d only worn them about 7 years.  Smart son that he is, he quickly said, “these are my favorite socks, I’ve worn them every week since you made them for me and I didn’t want to part with them,” which is what I think he thought would have happened had he told me about this obvious problem sooner.  Well, was my heart warmed by his love of these socks that I had made with mee own lyttle hands?  It told him that I’d fix them and have them back to him before Christmas.  He was so moved at my offer that he went into his bedroom and presented me with another “favorite” pair that looked like they had been worn in the Chicago Marathon in lieu of running shoes.  I felt even more choked up about his also having so lovingly saved these socks and said that I’d fix them right up, too, before the holidays.

What was I thinking of???  He is over 6 feet and his feet are not small—plus he has a small mountain of socks that I’ve knit over the years which I’ve occasionally seen when visiting after a BIG LAUNDRY–the reason for which I’ve never inquired.  I dug through my leftover yarn and stash and found some matching yarn to make two new feet for one pair—-it took a while, but they looked fine.  An untrained eye (not any of yours, however) would not have been able to distinguish the new feet from the old heels and legs. Whew. On to pair #2 which was unfortunately made from discontinued yarn, and I had none leftover in the large sock leftovers basket that I stuff under a settee in my living room.  Ravelry to the rescue!!  I actually found two skeins of the yarn in the stash of a very wonderful Canadian woman who agreed to sell them to me and even to mail them right away to my brother’s house in Illinois where I headed for my mother’s memorial service.

I don’t mean this to be disrespectful and actually believe my mother would have been strongly approving of my doing this while visiting with the relatives, while pausing a few minutes from helping my brothers with various details afterwards and on the return trip home.  She was the embodiment of practicality and also so loved things handmade.

The holidays came about two weeks later, and I presented my son with a holiday check and two old pairs of socks with four new feet.  He seemed pleased.  All my other gifts were completed on time, including these

Mom's Mitts

fingerless mitts I made for my mother that I never got to give to her.  Still it bothered me that I hadn’t finished the new holiday socks I intended to make for my son.  So, after all the dust from the AARP tv segment chapter cleared away, I began knitting them and knitting them…a few days ago, here’s

Late holiday 2009 socks

what they looked like.  I worked each one on two circular needles, sequentially, the ribbing on one, the ribbing on the other, the leg on one, the leg on the other….They are bigger than they look:  10″ from cast on to beginning of heel flap.

Right now I’m working on the gusset decreases on the second sock and estimate that by tomorrow night, if I keep pushing, I’ll have the pair finished….and, therefore, be able to close the Holiday 2009 chapter.  Who says knitters aren’t a wee bit compulsive???  I could have just waited to give these to him for some other special event, but they are his holiday 2009 socks and he will have them before this weekend!