To continue our museum hopping trip viewing similar patterns, here's another cluster Again, this is a group that to my limited knowledge is NOT based upon a graph appearing in an extant 15th ro 16th century modelbook (but I haven't seen them all).

1. Embroidered Textile. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Accession 1894-30.112. 15th century, Italy. 7 x 15.25 inches (17.8 x 37.7cm)


2. Band. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession 09.50.1361. 16th-17th century, Italy. 6.25 x 11.5 inches (15.9 x 29.2 cm).

3. Embroidery. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,, Accession 06.351. 17th century, Italy. 4 3/8 inches x 19 1/8 inches (11.1 x 48.5cm).

4. Kendrick, A.F. and Holme, C. Book of Old Embroidery, London: The Studio, 1921. Plate 48 (around page 102 of the PDF). No date, Italian. About 4 inches wide. Cited as being in the Victoria & Albert Museum.

I've graphed the MMA and MFA examples (#2 and #3) for inclusion in TNCM2. I also stitched #2 in long armed cross stitch, on my big blackwork sampler:

Compare my proportions to the museum examples to see the minor distortion caused by the not-quite-even weave grounds of the historical examples, especially #1.

#1 from the PMA is cited as being worked in silk using cross and eyelet stitches (trapunto). The MFA cites #2 as being stitched in "Punto di Milano," which is a term they use for a family of pulled thread techniques that produces a mesh-like appearance, often by use of two-sided Italian cross stitch, pulled very tightly. It's more commonly found as a background in voided work, but pops up for foreground elements and accents, too. There is no consensus among museums on what this technique should be called. To complicate matters, there are several ways of producing the overstitched mesh background look, both single and double sided. Still the execution of these are very close, and both look to have been done using pulled thread technique rather than a withdrawn thread method.

But #1 and #2 are not pieces of the same artifact. I've confirmed counts between them. There are enough small differences in strip width, ground cloth thread count proportions, stitching and minor pattern details to conclude that #1 and #2 are not twins separated after birth. But they are so close that I'd opine that they were probably stitched from the same source - pattern collection sampler, printed broadside, hand-drawn pattern, or source artifact. There's even a remote possibility that one of these is the paradigm for the other. We can't say for sure, all we can do is note that they're children of the same family.

Now #3 and #4 might be more closely related. The width measurement, count, proportions, form and color placement on them are extremely close. Even those nasty little skips that give the tree branch bark its texture are spot on exact in placement between the two pieces. But I can't say for certain that they are either pieces of the same original, or photos of the same artifact. Pieces have moved between museums before, and even the most scholarly author can make a mistake in attribution. The problem is the accompanying descriptions. #3 is in Punto di Milano. But the Kendrick-Holme book specifies that #4 is "embroidered with red and green floss silks in satin and double running stitches." Again, attributions might not be correct. I wish I could find out if #4 is still in the V&A, and get a closer look at it.

So to sum up, again we've got a recognizable and stable pattern, possibly spanning centuries of active use. I think the attribution on #1 is a bit early, but I have no proof. We've also got two and possibly three different methods of execution, and evidence that variants of the same pattern were worked in both monochrome and multiple colors. We can posit that multicolor variants came later, but we cannot flatly conclude that monochrome came first, due to the broad and overlapping range of dates given for these pieces (with the 15th century date discounted as a possibly questionable outlier).

There are lots more of these in my notebooks. I find this fascinating, but I realize that not everyone is an uber-stitch-geek like me. Please let me know if you're bored to tears, or if you'd like to see more examples of patterns over time.

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No pix this week. The Resident Male took my preferred camera with him on a business trip overseas, and I'm not disposed to dump batteries down the gaping maw of the older camera in their joint absence.

I had a lot of fun at the Hrim Schola event in Quintavia (Marlborough, MA) this weekend past. I took both Elder and Younger Daughter, plus Younger Daughter's Pal. The four of us did the full day of classes and workshops, pausing briefly between activities to nosh out on the offered foods and snacks. I thoroughly enjoyed the three sessions I attended - an overview of fleeces and spinning by Lady Ermengar; a lessons-learned lecture on Italian Renaissance era Perugia towels by Master Peregrine the Illuminator; and an introductory taste of withdrawn thread work given by Kasia Wasilewska. The towels come from the same period as my favorite stitching, and the motifs are very much akin to it. Whitework is on my agenda, especially the early forms of cut and withdrawn thread stitching. And anyone who's followed here knows that knitting is my hobby-away-from-my hobby - the thing I do when I'm not stitching (and vice versa.)

The kids went to several other workshops on Viking wire weaving; basic chain mail construction (no rivets or soldering); Japanese Kumihimo braiding; combing and carding wool; hand sewing; and needle weaving. Adding in the lucets they've both acquired this year (plus the lucet technique book they picked up from Small Churl Books at the Schola), we now have infinitely more ways to play with string in all its forms.

As part of the day's activities, I gave a whirlwind tour of some of the things I've stumbled across doing research for TNCM2.

The first part of the talk was a travelogue of some of the counted styles popular in the 1500-1650 time range. I touched on the difficulty of exact dating due to the nature of the major collections in museums - that they were mostly amassed between 1860 and 1920, by collectors whose boundless enthusiasm and interest was rather more greatly developed than their ability to pin down dates and provenances. I also mentioned that while my original goal had been to develop a chronology of techniques and styles, doing so crisply based on the meager attributions and origins was impossible. Maybe as 16th and 17th century edging and domestic embroidery scraps become as well known and appreciated as samplers, and are studied by academics armed with the latest in dating technology it will become easier, but for now chronology is rather mushy.

After the style stampede I glossed over uses - the usual: clothing, domestic linen (sheets, napery, coverpanes, cushions), liturgical items. I tried to show examples not commonly represented in books or on-line image collections.

Then the real fun began. I tried to show that some standard preconceptions about these works can be challenged in the artifact record. We looked at work that wasn't just red or black (or blue or green); monochrome vs. polychrome works; mixed techniques; that historical linen was not always even weave by the modern definition; that stitching was most often done over 3x3 or 4x4 threads on finer linen than we use for modern 2z2 countwork. I showed examples of contrasting color outline voided pieces, and some works that were less concerned with adherence to precision pattern fidelity than they were with overall effect. And we looked at some pieces that while worked on the count, were probably drawn on the fabric freehand prior to stitching rather than being reproduced from a graph or previous piece of stitching.

After that it was a short move to the "treasure hunt" part of the talk. I have great fun finding and matching disparate works. I've found quite a few pieces that represent distinct pattern families. Some of these designs appear on snippets of finished works and also on specific historical samplers - not English didactic ones, on pieces I believe might have been sample sheets for professionals (my fave V&A sampler falls in this category). In other cases there are groups of finished snippets that were clearly worked from the same master pattern. Some of these have roots in German, Italian, French and English modelbooks. Others have no printed original that has descended to us, but are so close in base design that a common source must have existed. And other snippets, now widely scattered to different museums or private collections might in fact have come from the same origins, sold in small pieces to multiple collectors who visited the same European dealers.

The upshot of my talk is that there is far more variation in these pieces than modern stitchers might realize. That these variations enable a fair amount of play for those wishing to replicate a style. I'm a firm believer in studying the samples in order to internalize the deeper aesthetic and method, then using those vocabularies to produce work that is true to the time, without being a clone of a period piece. I don't claim that my stitching embodies that ideal. My stuff is modern play-testing, assembled without regard for period aesthetic. Learning pieces at best, and not historical beyond the fact that they incorporate historical designs.

I got some good questions from the group. After TNCM2 is out, I'll look into ateliers and professional vs. at-home stitching, and see what the academic literature has accumulated in the six or so years since the last time I went on a hunt for that info. I'll also look more into materials, especially fingerspun floss silks. And I'll be reworking some of the slides from the talk into blog posts, with source references, so that the small audience here can chime in, too.

I think the attendees enjoyed the talk, although in retrospect, I probably had way too much content for just one hour. I motored through at ramming speed, for sure. By the end they looked exhausted, and a bit overwhelmed. But that could have been my own exhaustion projecting itself onto them.

Needless to say, I had a great time. It was fun to find others interested in this stuff. I met quite a few people face to fact that I'd either not seen in 15 years, or who I have only known through on-line interaction (Hi guys!). I'm not a joiner, and am pretty solitary by nature. I tool along on my own, and have done so for decades. Blogging and boards bring some interaction with kindred spirits, sparks I truly appreciate. But giving the talk and interacting with the attendees was like sitting by a bonfire. If they enjoyed it half as much as I did, I'll be extremely happy.

Oh. One last thing. Thanks to the group who put this together, running the event, scheduling the classes, manning the kitchen (very tasty!), and otherwise enabling the day. And thanks to Davey whose enthusiasm and encouragement goaded me into crawling out of my basement hole, and volunteering to do a class.

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Altogether a satisfying holiday season here at String Central.

We started off festivities last Friday, with a latke-fest.

We decorated the tree and deployed the M&M Man Army on Christmas Eve day, while the dinner was cooking:

There's no such thing as too many ornaments in this house, but with so many on the tree, the special ones get overlooked. So they go on a small wrought-iron stand that sits on the coffee table:

Saturday brought Christmas Even dinner. The Resident Male outdid himself, with lobster bisque, pan-seared foie gras, a succulent and crispy-skinned roast goose with chestnut stuffing, ragout of wild mushrooms, and roasted golden beets. He even made an apple charlotte for dessert.

Sunday morning was rife with the traditional anticipation until everyone was awake:

Christmas day was another goose. (You can't beat a two-goose holiday!) This time at the now-traditional gathering hosted by an old friend. It started as an "orphans' holiday" in which those of us who had not gone to visit family for Christmas celebrated together. Over the years the gathering has become its own family, with themed dinners. This year's was Swedish, with a warm and savory fruit soup to start, mushroom tarts, gravalax, the goose, three-meat stew, cream cake and many other goodies I've omitted mentioning. And a lot of good fun.

In terms of holiday present haul, I made out like a book bandit, courtesy of The Resident Male and Elder Daughter. Chief among my booty are these two volumes from the husband:

Needlework Through the Ages by Mary Symonds Antrobus and Louisa Preece is a huge tome published in 1928. It's lavishly illustrated with photos (most black and white but a few in color). It's a general survey course of embroidery starting at earliest known bits, through the end of the 1800s. A highly opinionated survey, I might add. Many of the photos are of items that are still in private collections, rarely included in other works. I will have much fun reading this, raising eyebrows at the authors' various diatribes, and exploring the photos it contains.

My other gem is L'Histoire du Costume Femmes Francais 1037-1774 by Paul Louis de Giafferi - the first volume of a two-volume work issued around 1925. (The second volume spans the years from 1774 through 1870.) Each volume contains multiple albums of illustrations - stencil colored (as opposed to ink press printed) - with accompanying descriptions. Some of the plates from this first volume are available on line, and some are available in a 1981 paperback re-issue. But the original is magnificent. And inspirational! My French may be rusty, but reading is easier to speaking, so this is more than a "pretty pictures" book, for sure.

He also gave me a contemporary work, Viking Clothing by Thor Ewing. This looks to be an excellent reference for accurate re-creation of men's and women's dress of the period.

Elder Daughter also caught the historical spirit, but in a lighter mood. She gave me Kate Beaton's book, Hark! A Vagrant. Highly funny. And Younger Daughter crafted paper sculptures. For me, a swan basket. For The Resident Male, a desk dragon:

Low key festivities continue, with the majority of us being all or mostly off from school and work. Hope your holiday is similarly pleasant, filled with family, friends, good food, and fun.

Pre-holiday bustle continues here at String Central. Cookies have been baked, cakes marinated, menus planned, the tree obtained (it will be decorated this coming Saturday), candles and chocolate coins obtained, presents squirreled away awaiting wrapping and distribution. You know the drill, or live it vicariously through others.

Speaking of presents - here's one. I was charmed by the stitchable iPhone cases available for both the latest and last model phones. I don't have an iPhone, but that didn't stop me from grasping the fun of such a thing. So I took three of the Ensamplario Atlantio patterns and fitted them to the case dimensions and stitch count. One caution - I did these the week that the iPhone 4 was released, and all three patterns are based on the stitch count for the earlier model's case. I would suggest if you're stitching for a newer phone that you start in the middle of the design, aligning it to the center of the case, and work out from there; rather than starting at one end or the other.

If you click on the image above, you'll get a full page size JPG to print and stitch for the iPhone fiend in your life. (Google iPhone Case Cross Stitch to find one of the many retailers who carry the plastic pre-punched cases.)

Enjoy!

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Holiday over, we slowly revert to standard routine here at String Central. However, that doesn't mean we have nothing to show off.

First, Smaller Daughter - her class built models of castles, manor farms, and cathedrals as part of their Middle Ages history unit. You can't see the details she lavished on hers - the working drawbridge, the flower garden, the well (with working bucket), the stables, or the forces manning the towers, but now you know they're there:

Slytherin? Well, we are Salazars, after all... And there's the inevitable Castle Uprising Aftermath:

Too bad the teachers don't grade them on general post-project carnage.

Not less for being presented second, Elder Daughter has been taken with double sided double knitting. She has been adding double knit squares bearing mythical creatures to her Barbara Walker Learn to Knit sampler afghan. Here's a graph for her next square, an original unicorn, based loosely on a Siebmacher yale (heraldic goat):

Apple. Tree. Lack of distance between the two is noted. With considerable pride, I might add.

And finally in spite of the welcome and happy chaos of a house crammed full of family, turkey, and way too many pies - I did manage to move a bit forward on the great blackwork sampler:

The dark band with the frilly edging will be in TNCM2. The one just below it was in my first 1974 booklet. I recently rediscovered that I had graphed it from my all time favorite source. It's the pattern I used for my double sided double running stitch logic lesson back in August, 2010. You can find the lesson (and the pattern) here.

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Amidst all the far greater havoc and destruction of the Halloween snow here in New England, we had our own minor incident. We lost the tri-trunked mountain ash in our side garden:

We noticed the trunk on the ground immediately after the storm, but it took a while for us to notice the second trunk reclining on our roof. I think it slowly sank to this position after the first day and did not land there in thumping violence, as did the one on the ground. There appears to be no damage to the roof, gutter, or thin stucco walls (lucky, that!). Unfortunately the arborist says that the last trunk is undermined and unstable, and the whole thing should come out before the next storm.

I really liked this small tree - dappled shade, spring flowers, tons of berries for the birds. To be fair, it can also be a bit of a nuisance to maintain because of its habit of thrusting sprouts and suckers, coppice-style. But in spite of the burden of snippage in the miniature spider-forest that springs up each May, the tree was appreciated all year round. For example, we host a robin flash mob each fall, because migration coincides with berry production. Some years late heat ferments them on the tree, so we get a drunken bird scrum instead of a polite lunch counter. But no more.

Later this week the tree guy returns with his crew to take the tree away, removing the trunk on the roof, the remaining standing trunk, and grinding the stump. I'd like to replace it with another mid-size tree, rather than waiting for a random one inch scion of the original to grow to tree size. But what to put there? Another small to mid-size ornamental, for sure. Another ash or rowan is a possibility. I've always been fond of hawthorns (but they're pest prone), and I've read some buzz lately about American hornbeams from "plant native" advocates. But not a dogwood, and not a cherry - both are pretty but over represented in this area. Whatever it is, it will be small and will take quite a while to preside over the side garden as did its predecessor.

Back to stitching progress:

Although I'm not quite at the right edge of this strip I will finish out my current background thread and stop. I'll move over to the blank area to the right of the dragon, and fill in some narrower strips, bottom to top. Once I've got that area completed, I'll finish the remaining right hand bit of the current strip. Why? While I do have my margins, centers, and quarters marked with lines of stitching, I've deviated from them ever so slightly as I have been working. Rather than risk being a thread or two off on completion on this piece, and being too lazy to count up and re-establish my line, I'll work from the bottom of my empty space, then when my edge nears the current strip, I'll eke it out to align with the now easy to see termination line.

Ulterior motive of course is that I find this particular strip very boring. The leaf double running outlines are fun, but there's a heck of a lot of squared background. Figuring out the little strips will be a breather before I have to return to do the other half of the thing.

Finally, shout out to a couple of folks who are waiting to see their gallery pix here. Apologies. I'm on it, but I'm way behind due to work deadlines and minor complications like trees falling on the house.

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I've reached the top edge of my giant blackwork sampler:

The current panel will span the entire width of the piece:

It's adapted from a Lipperheide pattern. The original is shown with a pulled thread mesh background, rather than the squared fill I'm using. That background made the book's illustration very difficult to work from, so I had to redraft the pattern before I could begin. The squared voided fill takes a long time to stitch, so I am guessing that it will be a couple of weeks before I can address the areas to the left and right of my dragon. Not sure yet what will go there - possibly gangs of narrow borders, either horizontal or vertical. We'll see...

In other news, I am very proud of the whole String family. Smaller daughter has spent the last two weeks farming a sourdough starter "It's not fair! Other kids get kittens or puppies. Why do I get Francis The Yeast Culture for a pet?"

Yesterday we decided it was time to try it out. The Resident Male took charge of mixing up the dough, the various rises, loaf forming, and baking. Here is the result, crunchy-fresh and hot from the Dutch oven in which he baked it:

I wish this was Smell-o-'Net because the house is heavenly right now. Marian would have been proud of him, too!

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October 7th is Ada Lovelace Day!

Although every day should be a day to celebrate the achievements of women in the sciences, sadly few folk think hard or long about them. Most people can rattle off the names of a dozen famous male scientists or inventors, but come up with a short list that begins and ends with "Marie Curie" when asked to name accomplished women. Several years ago a group was formed to bring greater awareness of women's contributions to technical fields. They started Ada Lovelace Day (http://findingada.com hashtag #ALD11 ).

Past ALD posting events have called for folk to honor particular (usually unsung) historical women of accomplishment. I had great fun doing so. This year's call is different, and far closer to home. The request is to name a personal heroine - a woman in science, math, technology, or engineering - who has shaped you to become who you are today.

As a proposal specialist, I've had the privilege to work with many outstanding women in technology - pioneers all - in fields as diverse as civil engineering, robotics, oceanography, and medicine. But I will write about one of the first whom I met in my early career, and who changed my life tangent. Anne, if you read this - apologies! I tried to contact you first. Just sit still and be flattered. :)

My Ada Lovelace honoree is Anne Street.

I met Anne back in the '80s, when we both worked for an engineering firm specializing in infrastructure. She has a dazzling technical background, with multiple degrees from MIT, at a time when women MIT graduates were few and far between. Her specialty then was business development for applied engineering, and she took me under her wing as she made her rounds of the nuclear industry and associated Government and research entities.

Anne taught me a lot. There's the obvious - how to read and answer Government requests for proposals. And there's the not-so-obvious. How to engage engineering vision. How to distill the musings of the stratosphere-inhabiting set and transmit their thoughts to non-tech folk, without being didactic or condescending. How to be the only (or almost only) woman in a field dominated by men; taking neither nonsense nor prisoners, but doing so by subverting from within rather than wasting energy on pointless direct confrontation. How to lead the unwilling. How to build a team of people who might not be happy about putting in after hours and weekend work; shaping them so that in the end they were damned proud that their output was of the highest quality, because that way all the overtime was a badge of honor, and not wasted effort.

Through all of this ran a wicked sense of humor. She held a wake when a particularly large and desperately desired potential opportunity came in as a loss - complete with black balloons, a model coffin, and wilted flowers. The telephone play of her convincing the florist that she WANTED dead, droopy flowers was priceless. Her parties were legendary: Tinkertoys as icebreakers; mystery role playing gatherings; just the things to make totally unconnected creative folk from many walks of life unwind together, even though they had just met as strangers. I still have the glass lampwork beads and jewelry we made. Three houses and 20 years later - her daylilies still bloom in my yard. And I'm still writing engineering proposals.

But most of all Anne was always the epitome of encouragement. There was no field, no technical arena, no bit of knowledge too arcane to tunnel into and to share. She taught me to step aside and engage the brain when I read, to assess not only face value content, but possible sub rosa influences; and to always look for the proof or the root cause. And that in the end, everything can be researched because there is no priesthood. Women and men without tech degrees can through curiosity, enthusiasm and perseverance, always find meaningful and substantiated data.

Anne today is president of the MIT alumni association, where I am sure she's using connections and influence to further the cause.

Way to go, Anne!

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More progress!

The new band is marching across the bottom nicely, bringing a dark footing to the thing. Here you can see that I outline first, then fill in the voided long-armed cross stitch (LACS) background:

Trust me, it's MUCH easier to work LACS inside an outline. I did it "feral," (without outlines) on the large dark panel in the center of the left edge. Plain old cross stitch is easier to count than LACS with its braided surface texture. That one panel probably took twice as long to do in LACS as a result. This band is moving along much faster. Another two weeks tops, and I should have the entire bottom edge finished. An aside - there's a mistake in the current strip. Pat yourself on the back if you can spot it!

In other news, The Resident Male has a project to showcase this week. In the spring we finally replaced our Carter-era washer and dryer with ones that work. Because we had to fit them into an existing alcove, and I wanted efficient front loaders, that took a bit of shopping around. Most front loaders on display in this area are giant capacity/top of the line units or are mini capacity apartment size stackers. Big ones wouldn't fit in the space we had available, and with kids, we wanted more capacity than the smaller, stackable models. We finally tracked down some mid-size GE units, well reviewed with good repair records, and ordered them.

Now one problem with these front loaders is that the openings are knee height, and users have to stoop to put the laundry in. This is why the makers offer height-raising pedestals as options. Unfortunately, pedestals for our smaller size units are not offered in the US. So the Resident Male, freshly inspired by countless evenings of home improvement TV, tackled the project himself:

We now have two drawers for storage of once-a-year type kitchen impedimenta - like the big turkey roasting pan. And no more reaching in for that last sock on hands and knees! I declare this project a success. Now how does the new washer perform? It cleans much more thoroughly than my late 1970s/early 1980s vintage Kenmore did, even removing stains I thought were lost causes. The washer/dryer pair sip water, detergent, and energy, noticeably decreasing our consumption of each. And they're quiet. We can now sit in the kitchen (behind the photographer) and have a conversation while the machines are running. But there are also a couple of minor drawbacks. Cycles take twice as long to complete; the mid-capacity model holds less than the old top loader, so there is one more wash per week; and for some reasons, sheets twist themselves into Gordian knots in the dryer, and do not dry well, unless I take the time to re-assort them several times mid cycle. Drawbacks aside, the new set-up is far superior to the old one, and the raised platform is the icing on the cake.

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More progress on the big sampler:

I've finished out the excerpt from the big Lipperheide repeat and started another. This pattern appears on the same plate as the one I just finished. Like it, this one was originally worked voided. It turns out to have the exact north-south stitch count I need to eke out the horizontal row, getting ready for a darker, wider strip at the project's bottom edge. It's also an extremely quick one to stitch up. The bit above only took about an hour or so.

Anna asked me what kind of hoop I'm using, and whether or not I've padded it. I reply:

It's a 7-inch Hardwicke Manor hoop I bought from Hedgehog Handworks, about 10 years ago, but didn't use until recently. In part because I'd been on an extended vacation from stitching, and in part because I didn't like the way it tensioned the fabric. At 5/8" wide it grabbed nicely, but never maintained the tightness I prefer for double running stitch. So finally tiring of my ancient dime store bamboo hoop last month, I got some standard fabric store issue half-inch white twill tape and carefully wrapped the bottom of my Hardwicke frame. It's hard to see, but the tape is angled at 45-degrees, and overlaps by roughly half a width on each wrapping. The end is tucked underneath and stitched to the bottom hoop's inside (left on the image, where the lump is), to keep the outside perimeter bump-free. The hoop's screw closure is long enough to handle the extra diameter of the wrapping. About six turns of the screw's threading are visible, and I had just popped the thing off the work for the photo.

I now love this hoop. The twill tape cushions the work and minimizes crush and holds the ground cloth drum tight. However wrapping the bottom hoop does reduce the effective stitching area by decreasing the inside diameter. Even with cushioning I would not recommend using a hoop for anything other than flat surface stitching using cottons. When I stitch with silk, metallics, or use any sort of raised or heavily textured stitch I pull out a flat frame.

Where is the crowdsourced pattern of the week? I've got a very nifty motif queued ready to go, but it's only one panel. I'm hoping for at least one more before I post the next update.(Hint, hint...)

Aside: Hoping all on the East coast were spared overly much grief with Irene. Only minor damage here in the leafy close-in suburbs outside of Boston:

Half a tree down, blocking our street, and another big limb in our back yard. Thankfully both fell with surgical precision, missing every structure, vehicle, power line and comms wire. I bow to the courtesy of my neighborhood vegetable friends. Also to the amazingly diligent Arlington, MA DPW crew, that had this cut up and hauled away within 45 minutes of the tree's fall!

Finally, for folk who landed here looking for Ensamplario Atlantio. (Word is still spreading about it.) It's here.

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While we're waiting for more crowdsource project submissions here's a whole new way to waste time. This is a favorite I keep returning to again and again for stress relief.

It's Koi Koi - a traditional Japanese card game, one of many games played with Hanafuda (flower cards). The original game involves gambling, but I'm not interested in that. There are sites that allow you to play against another player, but I prefer the solitaire version. The link is to a site that offers solitaire in English, with English instructions. The hands play quickly (although back and forth to win or loss can take many, many hands), the cards are pretty, and there is just enough strategy involved to make it engaging, without immersion in a chess like experience. There are also iPhone/iPod/iPad apps that play the game.

The rules are a little bit complicated, but it's not tough to get the general drift. There are 12 suits, one for each month. Each suit contains 4 cards. Although there are exceptions, most suits have two "plain" cards and two cards that are worth a bit more. Some of these higher ranking cards feature a strip of paper (representing a poem), some a bird or animal, and some are called "bright cards" and feature a special picture (three of the brights are shown above).

Each player is dealt eight cards, and eight cards are turned up in the center. The idea is to match suits, for example capturing a cherry blossom card with another cherry blossom card. This is made slightly more random because for each turn the player plays a card AND a card is played from the reserve stack. The player gets his or her capture, plus any capture made by the draw from the reserve stack.

Where it gets complicated is the scoring. Points are awarded for "making the month" - one of the suits is designated for each hand, and the player collecting all four of that month's cards gets a bonus. An increasing number of points is awarded for collecting five or more poem cards (special bonuses for matching 3 poems of the same color); and for collecting five or more animal/bird/insect cards (again more points for more of them). And really high points are awarded for making special combos, like butterfly-deer-wild boar; or combos of the special "bright" cards. The bright combo above - cherry blossom suit/wind curtain, pine suit/crane, and long grass suit/moon - is 6 points.

Only one player emerges from each hand with a score. When players make points they have the option of cashing them in immediately and ending the hand, or letting them ride in the hope of scoring even higher. If the opponent makes point the player who sat back and continued the game forfeits his or her accumulated total. I've seen variations in which scores are doubled if the "down" player makes points after the opponent made points but opted to continue the game. I also imagine that in the gambling version these pauses would function much like a doubling cube in Backgammon, and be chances for increased wagers on the outcome.

In this particular version scoring is to 50 points. The human player starts out with 10 points, and his or her score is augmented by winnings, or decremented by the opponent's score as the game progresses. Hit zero and lose. Hit 50 and win. A game takes from around 4 to 20 minutes, depending on the number of hands. I win about half of the matches using this version, so its difficulty level is not impossible.

One more thing about the Koi Koi site linked above - if you are soundly trounced but elect to play again the game will recognize your need for help and play some open hands with you, showing all of the computer opponent's cards and the top card in the reserve stack. I found that to be very useful when I was learning the suits and combos.

For the gamers reading here, a trivia point - if you don't know about Nintendo's pre-electronics era origins, click on the Hanafuda link above.

Thanks to everyone for their kind words about Ensamplario Atlantio (EnsAtl)!

I'm delighted that folk find it useful. I was going to leave it up as the blog's front page for a while, but two stellar things came in that I had to share. Before them however, please note that I will be leaving the book available on String for a while longer yet.

The two things?

First, I've mentioned before that my main joy in designing is seeing what folk do with the patterns. I have to show this one off (click to enlarge the thumbnail):

This partlet was stitched by Kimiko Small (in the SCA, the talented Lady Joan Silvertoppe of Caid). She used the Buttery pattern in TNCM Plate 59:1. It's one of my originals, but it's based on period conventions, motifs and aesthetics. The partlet design, stitching, and most obviously the picture above are all hers. The photo is reproduced with her permission.

Kimiko, I'm thrilled! Well done! I'm quite excited to see this particular pattern picked up and worked so well. The partlet is an excellent showcase for your stitching. It's prime! You can read more about Kimiko's award-winning project and read her arts competition documentation on her blog.

Now, this ties into the Second Thing.

The Buttery is an omnibus pattern - a frame filled by a large number of different design motifs. In this case, flowers, herbs and fruits. I've augmented my original set of patterns, and stitched up even more Buttery fillings on a recent project of my own.

Now the new book is generating some buzz about my patterns. Hannah was kind enough to spread word about EnsAtl on her blog, enbrouderie. In the comments that accompany her post Rachel of VirtuoSew commented on my Dancing Pirate Octopodes pattern. Rachel wondered about working up alternates for DPO. Initial silly filings aside, that pattern has excellent potential to evolve into another omnibus design along the lines of Buttery, and I think Rachel's idea is a splendid one.

So I announce the first (to my knowledge) Crowdsource Design Blackwork Filling Project.

What's Crowdsourcing? In a nutshell, it's putting a project in front of a large number of otherwise unrelated/unassociated people, and asking them to apply their individual creativity to it, spreading the word and bringing all that creativity back together using 'net based communications. It's all the rage right now. Even the Defense Department's research arm (DARPA) has launched a crowdsourced projects to jump start the design process or solve sticky problems.

So. Reaching both behind to the past and into the future - why not one for double running stitch?

Here is a square with just the frame from Dancing Pirate Octopodes:

It's a simple JPG - shown above at full size. Right click on it and save the image. Then attack it with any graphics program, or print it out and doodle on the hard copy. Work up your own filling(s)! Be creative! Run amok! Just one request - this is not an adult-rated site. Please keep your designs family-friendly. (I reserve the right to do light editorial selection, if need be.)

When you're done, eMail the file, or transcription of the thing, or a scan or photo of your design to me by 10 July at the gmail address listed in this post . I'll assemble all submissions in one big layout, and share the results back here as quickly as I can. (If you'd like me to withhold your name rather than be credited on String, I'll be happy to do so.)

This isn't a contest - I've got no prizes to give away. But I think it will be lots of fun to see what everyone comes up with. So fire up your drawing program or sharpen your pencil. Let's see what our stitching crowd can devise!

Again, thanks to Hannah, the gang at Total Insanity, others at various Yahoo needlework discussion groups, and all other posters and email respondents for their welcome and acceptance of EnsAtl. Special thanks to Kimiko for making my day with her project. Thanks to Rachel for the idea of making more fills for DPO. And thanks in advance to everyone who will take a moment to share their own creativity for the joy of participating, and glory of their needle.

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The gauntlet was thrown. I was challenged to produce a chart for The Flying Spaghetti Monster, in all his noodly glory. At the risk of destroying any crumbs of credibility I might have as researcher, I respond.

Hah!

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Once more I go web-wandering, looking for counted thread inspiration from around 1500 through 1620 or so. This time I present some lesser known examples of counted stitching.

What I really wanted to find were examples of household linens - towels, sheets, pillows or other bedding, cushions, tablecloths, and the like. You'd think with all those innumerable domestic scenes so common in iconography there'd be some. So I looked for Annunciations, domestic scenes of the infant or young Jesus, plus other Bible and Saint's lives scenes or parables; and tableaus from mythology. Anything that might show a made-up bed, a dining table, someone drying off, or someone getting dressed.

Given the popularity of counted edging patterns and huge number of household linen artifacts in museum collections, one would think these items would be common in paintings and prints. But they're not. Perhaps the detail of these patterns was too tedious for most artists to attempt to reproduce. And it's possible that for some of the religious art, the absence of decorated linen is of meaning. Lives of humility might not be graced by otherwise ubiquitous domestic embroidery, and it's possible that the audience for these paintings noticed the omission. But I leave such interpretations to art historians. (I'm sure there's more than one dissertation out there on household contents shown in classic religious art scenes.) Here is what I found in my troll of the Web Gallery of Art.

Domestic linen:

Here's a nifty Bathsheba, she's bathing, unaware of the peeping King David. She's wrapped in either sheets or towels - some of which have elaborate embroidered red trim, with just enough detail to make out that the designs are regular enough to be counted. Although this work is undated in the collection, Jan Masseys other paintings are dated from 1550s and 1560s:
http://www.wga.hu/art/m/massys/jan/bathsheb.jpg

Masseys had a thing for David with Bathseba in disarray. Here's another with towels or linens, although the detail is a bit more ambiguous that the last. This one is from 1562:
http://www.wga.hu/art/m/massys/jan/david_ba.jpg

And the barest hint of a bit of blackwork on a napkin from a Last Supper painted by Jacopo Bassano in 1546:
http://www.wga.hu/html/b/bassano/jacopo/1/08lastsx.html

A painting by Carvaggio - Supper at Emmaus, 1601. This one looks like it may be a table carpet, upon which a plain white cloth is spread. Even so, the pattern on the carpet is interesting:
http://www.wga.hu/html/c/caravagg/06/35emmau.html

This is by the same artist and same subject the one above, but is a later work (1606). The table cover under the white cloth looks a lot more like a voided pattern stitched on linen:
http://www.wga.hu/html/c/caravagg/08/47emmau.html

Bath linen(?) in lower right corner, edged with geometric. Master of the Fountainebleau School, Diana at the Bath, around 1590:
http://www.wga.hu/html/m/master/fontaine/diana.html

An embroidered pillow with a dainty counted edging along the seams, in Ambrogio Bergognone's Madonna del Velo, from the 1500s:
http://www.wga.hu/html/b/bergogno/virgin_v.html

Personal linen:

Lots more of these in portraits, although not every painter took the time to do more than indicate the presence of intricate patterns. Certainly not with the graph-able precision of the famous Holbein Anna Meyer portrait on his Darmstadt Madonna panel. Still, detail on scale, placement, and colors can be harvested from these pix. Also I do note that while outer garment styles change and vary from region to region, and placement of the embroidery varies from piece to piece, the styles of the borders patterns and edgings used on chemises and shirts remains surprisingly stable across time and geography.

Black wide geometric stitching on chemise's high collar neck band. Also edging embroidered on cloth worn as a turban style hat. Carvaggio, The Fortune Teller (detail) 1596-1597
http://www.wga.hu/html/c/caravagg/02/11fortu2.html

Geometrics on man's wing-style collar. Portrait of Henri II, 1547:
http://www.wga.hu/html/c/clouet/francois/henri2.html

Chemise heavily embroidered in black, but probably not counted. Hans Eworth, Portrait of Lady Dacre, 1540
http://www.wga.hu/html/e/eworth/l_dacre.html

Geometric stitching in red on narrow high collar. Catarina va Hemessen, Self Portrait, 1548:
http://www.wga.hu/html/h/hemessen/caterina/selfport.html

Wide man's collar and cuffs, in geometric patterns with center panel and complimenting narrow edging bands, worked in red on white linen. Giovanni Battista Moroni, Portrait of Don Gabriel de la Cueva, later Duke of Albuquerque, 1560:
http://www.wga.hu/html/m/moroni/portduke.html

Woman's chemise with broad center panel and collar band, in black on white linen. Peter Bourbus, Portrait of Jacquemyne Buuck, 1551:
http://www.wga.hu/html/p/pourbus/pieter/portrai2.html

Narrow geometric band at top edge of woman's low chemise (also may be detail in red on hat). Vittore Carpaccio, Portrait of Young Woman (artist dates are 1472-1526)
http://www.wga.hu/html/c/carpacci/5/021woman.html

Boy's shirt - narrow collar band, voided in black on white. Jean Clouet, Dauphin Francois. (Artist dates are 1485-1541)
http://www.wga.hu/html/c/clouet/jean/dauphin.html

Man's shirt - narrow panels with black on white geometric stitching, divided by heavier narrow strips of gold or yellow silk embroidery. Lucas (the Elder) Cranach, Portrait Diptych(detail). 1509:
http://www.wga.hu/html/c/cranach/lucas_e/11/05dipty2.html

Man's shirt- narrow panels parallel to center front slit. geometric black on white. Lucas (the Elder) Cranach, Portrait of a Clean-Shaven Young Man, 1522
http://www.wga.hu/html/c/cranach/lucas_e/12/03young1.html

Man's shirt - horizonal panel of either two color stitchery, or one color on brown, appliqued over narrow cartridge pleats to keep them in place. Albrecht Durer, Self Portrait at 26, 1498:
http://www.wga.hu/html/d/durer/1/02/05self26.html

Woman's chemise, with small black edging allt he way around. Martha and Mary Magdalene, 1596 by Carvaggio:
http://www.wga.hu/html/c/caravagg/02/16martha.html

Another scoop neck chemise in the same style of the one above. St. Catherine of Alexandria, 1598 also by Carvaggio:
http://www.wga.hu/html/c/caravagg/02/15cather.html

A different style of higher neck chemise, this one decorated by wide double bands down the center, plus a band around the neck, and narrow strips of stitching, possibly
on seams. From Portrait of the Artist's Sisters Playing Chess, by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1555:
http://www.wga.hu/html/a/anguisso/sofonisb/chess.html

A man's high-neck shirt this time, with a wide band of black geometrics on white. Portrait of a Man, dated 1520-25 by Girolamo Romanino:
http://www.wga.hu/html/r/romanino/manportr.html

Edging on a veil, black on very fine, almost transparent linen. Not too many paintings that show stitched veils! Portrait of Martha Thannstetter (nee Werusin), dated 1515 by Bernhard Strigel
http://www.wga.hu/html/s/strigel/bernhard/portrai2.html

Another stitched veil - this one in multicolors, and possibly dual sided work. Andrea Previtali's Madonna Baglioni, 1515-1520:
http://www.wga.hu/html/p/prevital/baglioni.html

Multicolor bands on boy's shirts, done in a style that looks counted to me. Bernhard Strigel's Portrait of the Cuspinian Family, 1520:
http://www.wga.hu/html/s/strigel/bernhard/cuspinia.html

Voided work edging around a neckline, in black. (Reminds me of the bit at the far right of my current piece). Sanzio Raffaello's angel - a fragment of the Baronici Altarpiece, from 1500-01:
http://www.wga.hu/html/r/raphael/1early/02baron2.html

Two different narrow edging patterns, both in black, both very simple and easy to duplicate right from the portrait. Sanzio Raffaelo's Portrait of a Woman (La Muta) from 1507:
http://www.wga.hu/html/r/raphael/2firenze/2/36lamuta.html

Raffaello was very good at clearly depicting intricate stitching. I really like this St. Sebastian (1501-1502) - the tshirt elaborately embroidered in yellow (gold?) with little black cross stitches is clear enough to chart:
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/r/raphael/1early/01sebast.html

Very clearly counted work - a man's shirt with a wide, heavy two-tone neckband. It looks applied to the shirting underneath to me. Hans Maler's Portrait of Moritz Welzer von Eberstein, from 1524:
http://www.wga.hu/html/m/maler/welzer1.html

And a lady with a high multicolor stitched collar. This looks like highly embossed stitching to me, not jewelry. And regular enough to make me think that the underlying cartoon was worked on the count, with the embossed stitching done over the cartoon. I have no basis for this opinion other than observation, so feel free to disagree. Willem Key's Portrait of a Lady, undated, but the artist lived from 1515 to 1568:
http://www.wga.hu/html/k/key/willem/portlady.html

A particularly good view of upper body construction of a woman's chemise, embroidery framing center slit, following around the collar and radiating out from it. In this case, with one single pattern maintained uniformly throughout. Black on white. Bernardino Luini's Salome from 1527-1531:
http://www.wga.hu/html/l/luini/father/2/salome1.html

Another killer high neckband on a man's shirt. Again multicolor with red and yellow (gold?), worked on the count. Jan Gossaert's A Noble Man dated 1525-1528:
http://www.wga.hu/html/g/gossaert/2/baudouin.html

and finally

Ambrogio de Predis' Portrait of a Man, from 1500. The pattern on his sleeves is in the forthcoming collection of blackwork filling patterns:
http://www.wga.hu/html/p/predis/portra_m.html

I have references to at least as many again pix as are presented above. Let me know if you'd like me to share them too.

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Steady progress on the latest strip:

Now that life is beginning to get back to normal (or what passes for normal in this house) I can also report progress on the book front(s).

First, on the PDF collection of blackwork filling patterns, to be named Ensamplio Atlantaea, I apologize for the delay. This one will include all of the filling patterns published here over this winter past. And as an extra bonus for everyone's patience, I will toss in several more pages of additional patterns, not seen here before. It will be free, and will be available for download here at this site. Right now I have 27 pages of patterns (the original 150, plus a dozen more), and hope to make it an even 30. Plus cover and some sort of intro essay. It will NOT include free drawn outline patterns for use with these fillings, nor will it include detailed working methods, although I may abstract some of the double running stitch guidance previously posted here. I hope to have this one up and ready sometime in the coming month.

On the big book - my sequel, to be named A Second Carolingian Modelbook: More Counted Patterns from Historical Sources, I've got about 45 pages of patterns drafted out in whole or in part. Each pattern has annotation, noting its origin artifact or source, or if it's one of the few originals, that attribution. That's about 100 individual patterns, some of which are main strip plus accompanying border. I also have all over patterns suitable for cushions and body linen, narrow strips for cuffs and collars or seam decoration, and wide pieces that would make nifty tablecloth, sheet or towel borders. Right now about 2/3 of the patterns are for double running stitch, although there are some that are good for Italian two-sided cross stitch, long armed cross stitch, lacis, or other square-unit styles. There are also quite a few that were worked voided, some with straight or double running stitch defining the foreground from the background, and some not. Working methods/colors of the originals are also described, and full sources are provided for all graphs, so stitchers can look them up. I do not anticipate finishing this one any time soon. Feedback is that readers want essays on techniques, materials, and methods of employ. All that will take time. As will figuring out how to do the actual publication. (Right now an on demand service like Lulu or one of its competitors looks most likely). This book will not be free, but I am hoping to keep it affordable.

And in other news, it's the beginning of Birthday Season here at String. A much recuperated Smaller Daughter celebrated her 13th last Saturday, mostly by laughing with evil intent at the thought that others had decided that her becoming a teen was the cause of the end-of-the-world predictions for that date. Larger Daughter is now back from college for the summer, and celebrates mid-week. I note the passing of yet another anniversary of my 21st birthday at the end of this month. Today's home-cooked lobster feast was in recognition of all three fetes. The Resident Male, the odd man out in so many respects, does not have to share his natal day with adjoining festivities. We will recognize that occasion later in the summer.

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"Don't burst your appendix if you can avoid it."

Younger Daughter is back home, after 19 days at Children's Hospital in Boston. She's still got a way to go before she's school-ready, but she's happy to be home with quiet, limited interruptions, and familiar food. Thanks to everyone who sent get well wishes!

I'd like to especially thank the staff at Children's, not all of whose names I caught. They're a very caring bunch, and did all they could to make the kid better and more comfortable. Here's her much cherished souvenir - a little squeezy ball they gave to Morgan to exercise her fingers.

We asked the nursing staff we were assigned to, to autograph our "game ball." We managed to get most but not all of them. Special thanks to Chris Mac, Sharon, Michelle, Josh, Maria, The Original Chris, Meredith, Rachelle, Caitlin, Paola, Cleanne, Cara, Audrey, Dr. Arnold, Dr. Hamilton, all of the residents on 10NW, and all of the other folk whose names slipped me by when I was in a sleep-deprived fog. The kids still has to go back to have the tatters of her appendix excised, but that's a one day bit, not another extended stay.

As you can see, while we were there I had lots of time to stitch. I finished out the oak leaves and acorns at the right, and started another band at the left. That one is very dense, in long armed cross stitch, so it's not exactly zipping along. Also stitching when sleepy led to tons of mistakes and ripping back, so what's here is probably only about half of what I actually stitched.

Even with all of the rework, stitching was a much needed self-administered sedative while I was being a bedside mom.

The plan is to make this strip the same length as the oak leaves. Eventually I'll either find or noodle out an even denser band for the narrow area immediately to the right of the oak leaves, and a less dense but similarly black band to put between the current strip and the established horizontal bands. I might take a break from dense work for a while though, and opt to work something in double running elsewhere on the piece before attempting those two strips. There's tons more room both north and south of these.

One thing to note. So far, all of the finished strips are bi-directional. At this point there is no up or down on my sampler. Either end could be at the top. I could even opt to finish this out in landscape rather than portrait orientation. Jury is still out on what I will do, but I do have a couple of strips I'd like to include that are figural, with clearly defined ups and downs. Stay tuned to see how I work them in.

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Here but on brief hiatus. 

Younger daughter and her appendix are not on speaking terms right now.  The three of us have been resident at Children's Hospital in Boston since the 14th.  She's on the mend, but slowly. 

I've been occupying some nap hours to stitch, and progress on the blackwork sampler will be posted when I'm back at String Central, equipped with the proper cameras and software.  In the mean time, feel free to explore past posts via the Categories list at the right.

Some progress and some answers. First, the progress:

As usual, not as rapid as I'd like, but work limits the amount of time I have to stitch. Now on to the answers to questions in my inbox:

What stitch are you using for the dark areas in the current band?

I settled on Italian double sided stitch (aka Arrowhead stitch), as shown on page 32 of The Proper Stitch by Darlene O'Steen . (I found my copy years ago when it first came out, at the now long gone Yarn Shop in College Park, Maryland.) However, I'm finding that over 2x2 threads I can't pull it tightly enough to emphasize the holes and make the appearance as mesh-like as I want. There's just not enough room to compact the weave of my ground cloth sufficiently. If I do another piece using this technique, I'll work over 3x3, or find a more loosely woven ground.

This is a squirrelly looking band. Is it original?

It's a redaction of a 16th century artifact in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession Number 79.1.59 . It's one of the many patterns that will be in The Second Carolingian Modelbook.

Which end is up?

I haven't decided yet.

Why is the current band so big?

No particular reason. I saw it, charted it out and decided to play test it. Yes, it's at a larger scale than the patterns I've worked so far, but it won't be the largest pattern on the piece, nor will it be the least dense. When it's done this strip will span the entire width of my stitching area. I'll run some other patterns perpendicular to the established direction, framing the part I've already worked. On the other side of this current band will be several more wide bands of various types. They may also be worked horizon to horizon. I'm improvising as I go along.

Have you done any planning at all?

Yes, in a way, but not by orchestrating the entire piece beforehand. Instead I set ground rules. I established stitching bounds and guidelines. I marked the outline and centers of the total stitching area, and added some additional guidelines at 1/4 width and length intervals. I am leaving four threads bare between all stitched units. I'm trying to balance density as I go. I'm working with only one color (good old DMC 310 black), using either one or two strands, depending on the effect I want to achieve. Eventually there will be spots in the ground for which I cannot find or adapt strips or spot motifs of suitable width or height. For those places I intend to use additional fillings from the Blackwork Fillings Collection. And I'm trying to use all-new patterns - stuff I haven't stitched before, with the goal of experimenting with as many of my new book's patterns as possible. So you can think of this as a preview of things to come.

Why aren't you jumbling these up instead of making reproductions? There are tons of beautiful repro samplers out there you can stitch. Why go to all this trouble?

Because stitching someone else's repro isn't something I'm interested in doing. I do admire those pattern drafters and stitchers who chose to do those things, but I find the concept has no appeal for me personally.

I've written about this before. (It's the base stance that makes me a "rogue Laurel" in the SCA.) Exact replication is an extremely high form of craftsmanship to be sure, but it doesn't manifest the highest level of understanding. Just as in a martial art, being able to reproduce the kata - the formal training exercises - shows extreme skill, but it's something else entirely to be able to take the kata's movement vocabulary, and improvise if attacked. Not everyone who can demonstrate kata in the dojo can turn that knowledge into effective fighting. Being able to go beyond kata skills is what differentiates the master from the adept. It's the same for needlework. Reproductions are kata. Making an entirely new piece from the same vocabulary, such that were the new item to be transported back in time it would fit right in - that's mastering true understanding. Now my current piece is NOT something that could be transported back in time that seamlessly. I do not make that claim. It's only a training and teaching exercise. But it is one that's stretching me in new ways - directions I could never achieve by working a stitch for stitch artifact reproduction, or from someone else's chart or kit.

I intend to keep learning, and I invite you to learn with me. Needlework is a very safe subset of life in general. But make it exiting. Face uncertainty and possible failure. Think about taking inspiration from whatever you find, wherever you find it. Go for broke, combine old forms in new ways (or new forms in old ways). Start with a blank cloth and bungee jump with me. The ride can be scary at times, but it's tons of fun.

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Elder daughter contributes her musings on knitting in public and the occasional annoyant:

Also her recent progress on her dorm room collection of Barbara Walker Afghan squares:

She's got another pile of them stashed back here at home. I also hear she's branching off into making up her own. (I'm so proud!) By the time she heads back to college after summer break she should have enough to assemble into a blanket for her room. Pix when she's done, I promise.

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No, no metal sheep were shorn and knitted up here at String this week. It was however February Break Week for the public schools. Younger Daughter attended a "Staycation" program at Minuteman Technical High for the week.

It's a very nice program, even for kids not on the vocational school track. Lots of hands-on opportunities to try out various skills. She's taken some of their programming and robotics classes before, but it's been cold lately so I think that warmth was on her mind. This session she opted for a day split between welding in the morning, and baking in the afternoon. She loved them both. Good classes with excellent instructors, and ample scope for independent creativity.

Welding was a serious class, not a coddled, watered down experience. She handled arc welding equipment and plasma cutters, first gaining safety awareness and operational skills, and then moving on to her own projects. Here are her final two projects:

Dragonfly has a two foot wingspan, Spider is similarly sized. Both will adorn the garden come summer.

Baking was also fun. And very prolific, with quite credible, professional looking (and tasting) results. We're swimming in cookies, rolls, scones, bread, muffins, danish and cheesecake. We've fed friends, family, co-workers, frozen a ton of stuff, and even sent a care package off to Elder Daughter at college. To continue the creature theme, two of today's loaves were a bit creative, too:

I suspect Death Hamster will not outlive supper tonight, with Turtle guest-starring at lunch tomorrow.

Toodling along on my current sampler...

...working on another pattern shared in my blackwork fillings collection, just stitching along. Once the base repeat is established, I find I can copy off my own work, rather than referring to the printed pattern. Sure, this one is on the complex side, but it's a regular repeat and not what I'd consider particularly difficut; and without having to refer to a printed sheet, the project is totally portable. So I brought it with me to my kid's school chorus concert. There's always a long wait between the participants' early drop-off time and the public concert's start. Lots of parents stay rather than going home and returning later. I was not alone.

I'm used to knitting and stitching in public. I've gotten all sorts of comments over the years, ranging from real interest to veiled hostility. The overwhelming majority of people are interesting to talk to, and my project is always a convenient conversational icebreaker.

There are the folks who ask after the item being worked, or volunteer stories of their own about knitting or stitching. They're usually pleasant and I enjoy talking to them. There are invariably people who say things like "Oooh. I could NEVER do that." (What runs through my head is the reply, "With that attitude, I bet you're right" but I rarely voice it.) Depending on how dismissive they are I either smile sweetly and don't reply out loud, or try to explain that it's not anywhere near as difficult as it looks.

There are kids who are fascinated by what I'm doing. Knitting socks especially seems to boggle them. I have fun with them, explaining he project and chatting about the craft in general.

Unfortunately, not everyone is pleasant. Some people say that they hate wasting time. I usually point out that at this very moment (mid commute, in the doctor's office - whatever) I appear to be far more productive than they are. A couple of decades ago there were more derisive and ideological comments. Mostly from women, who were eager to point out that domestic tasks like knitting and stitching were ineherently demeaning, and should be shunned, especially in public. I would usually engage with them, responding that "freedom from" also means "freedom to," that I had a highly technical career thank you, and that I found relaxation in traditional crafts. We usually parted on less divisive philosophical grounds.

But this week, just sitting there stitching, I found a whole new public comment beast. The ones who decide that anyone doing something alien to the commenter is clearly nuts, deranged, crazy, a lunatic, or otherwise mentally abberant; and should be pointed out to everyone else. It also seems that these folk (aside from their insenstivity towards the differently abled) delight in being loud and obnoxious. Maybe it was the ambience of the high school in which the performance was taking place, but I felt like I'd fallen back among locker room bullies again.

What did I do? First of all, I didn't move my seat. I'd come early and sat underneath one of the few lights bright enough for stitching. When it became clear that glaring and not responding wasn't working, I asked the commenters to kindly be quiet, that they were disrupting the people around us - in my best Miss Manners icy-haute tone. "Bitchy, too" was the reply, and they went away. Like vultures everywhere they probably flew off to circle over someone else's carcass.

I won't stop stitching and knitting in public. Idiots are everywhere, and I refuse to let them win.

Have your own stitching/knitting in public story? Positive or negative, feel free to share.

Technorati : blackwork, counted thread, embroidery
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All in all a hectic week, even for one with a snow day smack in the middle. Work deadlines aside (constant drumbeat that they are), our domestic plant experienced a bit more chaos than usual, with major appliances deciding in concert to abandon their prime functions. But we've now beaten back the forces of entropy and now can wash clothes on the premises again.

That being said, work does progress on the book collection. I now have about 27 plates (roughly 60 individual patterns) substantially drafted or in progress, along with a good start on the documentation that accompanies them. Also a start on the bibliography. My notes are far from exhausted, and there are lots more pages to go.

I also continue to playtest some of them. Here's one I couldn't resist. It's from Plate 25 of my blackwork fillings collection. Work continues on that final PDF, too.

Even though this design is original and not sourced to a specific historical artifact, I think it would make a smashing all-over design for a coif or sweet bag. Especially if the little diamonds that surround the quatrefoil pomegranates were replaced by spangles. You can see the full effect in this larger rendition. The pattern collection's thumbnail made it hard to see the whole design's geometry.

Finally, in a new development, I've decided to give the blackwork fillings collection a name. I named my first book after the SCA group here in Boston, a group especially blessed with artists, artisans, researchers and folk who just plain enjoy hands-on exploration of the arts and sciences. The Barony of Carolingia is and ever will be my SCA "home." But I did spend some time down in the Washington D.C. region, and promised my House Oldcastle friends down there that someday I'd write "Ensamplio Atlantaea" - a pattern collection named after Atlantia. the kingdom that includes the D.C. area. So the blackwork filling collection will come out under that name (provided it passes muster with my language maven pals).

And in the interests of continuity, the new book will be entitled "A Second Carolingian Modelbook." That should make it easier to find for folk who found the first one to be useful.

Technorati : blackwork, counted thread, embroidery
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I think we've had about enough snow this winter...

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Another band on my new blackwork sampler. This one is graphed from an artifact.

This one is graphed from an artifact. I'm using the same background fill and edging as the original, and I haven't corrected the proportions. If I were to do so, the branch's straight run at the top of the flower would have been worked one unit shorter, reducing the leggy leap from flower to descending sprout like thing. This one is in the new collection, with full source annotation.

To answer Anna from the Netherlands - I can't say exactly when the book will be out. I will be self-publishing it through one of the various print-on-demand services. I wish I could work on it full time, but little things like earning a living have gotten in the way. I have about an hour each evening to research, graph, transcribe, write, and do lay-out. So I suspect that a final product won't be ready before a year is out. Sorry to disappoint. You will however get to see a few of the patterns in it as I play test them on this sampler and post my progress. I won't be able to do them all (there are lots) but you'll see a few of my faves.

In terms of change in the pix and presentation here - I've upgraded blogging software and the camera. The new one is much higher resolution than the old, and I'm still figuring out how to work with it efficiently, and how to keep that odd moire like effect from obfuscating the weave of my ground cloth.

Finally, just for fun, here's another snow shot from this week's storm:

This isn't the plow berm at the end of the driveway. It's what happens when (at least) 22 inches of snow drifts. Smaller Daughter (about 5'4" - 1.6m) shows off just one end of our excavation project. However Massachusetts doesn't reel long from these things. School is back in session and everything's narrower, but back to normal.

Technorati : blackwork, counted thread, embroidery

Excavation!

Greetings from snowy Massachusetts.

We're slowly getting back to normal here at String Central, but I am still woefully behind on posts. The holidays were a bit squished due to work pressures, but fun none the less. Apologizing for tardiness, I present some highlights.

Here you can see the resident staff getting ready to welcome the guest of honor. This includes basic decorating:

Deploying the M&M army, provided over the years by Good Friend Jean:

And finally welcoming Gaston, who came to dine with us:

Or rather, whom we came to dine upon. Here's another glamor shot:

Gaston was slow-roasted very simply, with sage, onion and apple inside for flavor. I can say he was simply delicious, served with creamed onions and celery, plus red rice with wild mushrooms. We picked him up, dressed from Savenor's in Cambridge on Thursday, then brined him in cider for a day before he went into the oven for dinner on Christmas Eve. Over the course of the week we consumed him entirely, saving hocks, extra skin, and bones for bean pots to come, and making a terrific terrine out of the liver. We will miss Gaston, but we're very happy that our paths crossed.

Speaking of happy, the usual holiday triumphs also occurred:

Every girl should have a gift pile that includes jewelry, fun clothes, books, games, and own physics discovery set. The kids are now thoroughly spoiled by family, friends, and their parents alike.

All in all a good holiday!

I'm still trying to work up my favorite mode of double running graphing. I've pretty much dismissed all of the dedicated charting programs. They don't allow the dot/stitch metaphor that I find far easier to stitch from than heavy lines superimposed on a background lighter grid.

Again, here's that jester snippet from TNCM. I find this clear enough to stitch direct from the thumbnail, even at its tiny size/poor resolution.

It's small, but it's clear. The lines are stitches, the dots represent the "holes" in the cloth being stitched. In something like Aida, Hardanger or Fiddlers Cloth, each dot is an actual hole in the weave. If one is using plain weave linen, each dot corresponds to the interstices between each two (or three, or more) threads over which the stitches are taken.

Here's the same pattern, graphed out in one of the stitching programs (click on this, to see it better than it is shown in the thumbnail):

Yes, there are some aids built into the stitching program, like decimal bars on the graphs (every 10th bar indicated), and stitch counts along the margins, but those can be added to my style of illustration.

My main beef with ALL of the stitch graphing programs is that they treat back stitch, double running or other straight stitches as an afterthought. Sometimes the back/double running notation can't be easily mirrored or manipulated (as in KG-Chart LE, which I used for the bit above). In others it always appears as an undifferentiated or symbol-represented line, with no indication of individual stitches. And in all of these programs, scale is limited. They've been invented for folk who stitch at larger gauges than I favor. My 18 stitches per inch (36 count linen) is a bit smaller than the 7, 10 or 12 stitches per inch many modern stitchers favor. Patterns plot out waaay too large for easy display or reproduction on book size pages. So far I've taken the demos of quite a few of the dedicated stitching programs for a test drive. To date I've tried and discarded PCStitch 9; WinStitch, SitchR-XP, DigiStitch, KG-Chart, Easy Cross, Easy Grapher Pro, STOIK Stitch Creator, and Cross Stitch Professional. I will say though that most of them do a fine job at turning photos or drawings into cross stitch. (I am a bit frustrated with programs that allow very limited trial periods. I work. Lots. My hobby investigations take place over months, not days. I would have liked to have gone back and re-tried some of the earlier programs I encountered later on, but was unable to do so because my 3-day trial had expired. Their loss, not mine).

Now I've turned to general purpose graphics programs. I need one that lets the user manipulate grid density and representation, that allows mirroring and rotation, and grid-constrained line drawing. Ideally I want one that allows either patterned lines, or that allows some sort of logic-based display controls (black pixel overlaid with white pixel = white pixel as displayed; black pixel overlaid with black pixel = black pixel as displayed; white pixel overlaid with black pixel = black pixel - you get the idea).

I'm not quite at the optimal yet. But I'm getting close. I did the bit below using GIMP - a general purpose open source graphics manipulation tool. Elder daughter (the one jumping up and down, waving madly over there in her dorm room) gave some vital assistance with layer manipulation and masking. Here's the result (click on this one too):

I'm not quite happy with the dots/voids. I find my original method from TNCM much easier to parse out visually than I do the new version, with dots in the center of each void. But that may be just me.

I'm going to soldier on, looking for something - anything - that can get close to my original. For the record, that was done on my long gone Mac IIcx using Aldus Superpaint. A program that has no direct cognate today.

All advice/leads on possibles are gratefully accepted. In fact, if someone manages to put me onto an effective solution to produce the look in the first snippet above using Windows software, and I end up using their method for my next book, I will reward them with a highly suitable stitching related gift.

Technorati : Spanish stitch, charting, counted cross stitch, double running stitch, embroidery, graphing, holbein stitch, punto scritto

I seem to have picked up some new readers here this week. I answer questions and comments from Kabira, Annanna, H. from Japan, and others. Recognizing that upon completion this heads to my pile of "finish me for display", is unlikely to emerge before the holidays are over (and may not be seen again before spring) I post my wrap-up now on the almost-completed piece. Apologies for the length of this post.

First, thanks for your kind words. I've had a lot of fun stitching this piece. My sampler is more of an exercise in perseverance than anything else. The wide pattern strips, though complex, are not appreciably more difficult to stitch than are the narrow ones. All follow the same basic logic, and once a stitcher is used to following that logic the only thing that can go wrong is miscounting threads. (Bright, indirect light helps with that).

My sampler is worked on 36 count even weave linen, using one or two strands of standard DMC embroidery floss, colors #310 (black) and #498 (deep crimson). Worked over 2x2 threads, it's done at 18 stitches per inch (about 7 per cm). The entire embroidered area measures out to roughly 16 x 32 inches (40.6 x 81.3 cm). I did not work it double sided, but the double sided logic does prevail.

The Clarke's Law sampler, like all embroideries on this site, is an original composition. However the individual strips are adapted from or inspired by historical sources. I comb period modelbooks (mostly pattern books printed before 1650) and photos of museum artifacts, looking for goodies. Then I graph them out and stitch them up. I've been playing with patterns this way since the early 1970s, and over the years I've amassed a collection of designs. I put out a couple of leaflets within the Society for Creative Anachronism, the first one being issued in 1977/1978, and reprinted a couple of times thereafter. I released a second, better documented leaflet in 1983.

Then in in the '90s some friends convinced me that others would find my notebooks useful (the leaflets containing only a small bit of what I'd been collecting) and introduced me to a publisher. The result was The New Carolingian Modelbook: Counted Embroidery Patterns from Before 1600 (TNCM). Sadly, the publisher turned out to be either exploitative or incompetent, or both, and to this day I've seen almost no return for the effort. But the book is out there, and continues to sell on the used book market for absurd prices. New copies continue to trickle in via eBay and a used book seller in New Mexico, so somewhere out there beyond my reach, there is still a source.

Be that as it may, I continue to collect and "play test" patterns on samplers like this one. Here's an index to the sources for the 22 patterns used on the Clarke's Law sampler:

1. TNCM Plate 32:1 "Twined Blossom and Interlace Meandering Repeat". Known affectionately as "The Brooklyn Pattern." Ultimate source - Domenico daSera. Opera Noua composta per Domenico da Sera detto il Francoisino. Venice, 1546 - one of my all time favorite modelbooks.

2. The alphabet for the main quote is from Sajou #55, posted by pattern archivist Ramzi at his Free Easy Cross, Pattern Maker, PC Stitch Charts and Free Historic Old Pattern Books blog site. Thanks, Ramzi! I played with it a bit, working the curlicues in red and weaving them over/under the letter forms.

3. TNCM Plate 69:1 "Grape Motif or Border Repeat". I graphed it up originally from a photo in Drysdale's Art of Blackwork Embroidery that showed the Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931. The picture available on line is MUCH better than Drysdale's black and white photo. Many of the other patterns on this piece come from this same source. Drysdale cites it as being Spanish, from the late 16th/early 17th Century. The V&A's attribution is Italian, 16th Century. I'd go with the museum's judgment on this one, and if given the chance to republish, would amend TNCM's listing accordingly.

4. Plume Flowers. Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931. I've charted this out on paper but other than stitching it here, I haven't published it yet.

5. Hops. Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931. I've charted this out on paper but other than stitching it here, I haven't published it yet.

6. Column and Wreathe Repeat. Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931. I've charted this out on paper but other than stitching it here, I haven't published it yet.

7. TNCM 68:2 "Seam Decoration or Border Repeat". Graphed from photo in Pascoe's Blackwork Embroidery: Design and Technique. Pascoe cites this as being from 1545. The original was worked along the shoulder seam join line of a butted sleeve man's shirt, stitched in all black.

8. Another alphabet from Ramzi's Sajou collection. This one is from #172. It's interesting to note that several of the late 1800s/early 1900s booklets he's got quote some early modelbook patterns closely enough to recognize the direct line of heritage.

9. Meander Repeat. Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931, BUT this one appears on at least one other source, also on display at the V&A. The keeper of the www.drakt.org website shows a display case with what's clearly a close kin to the T.14-1931 pattern, but worked voided style.

10. Yet Another Meander Repeat (I'm running out of descriptive names). This one is also from Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931. I've charted this out on paper but other than stitching it here, I haven't published it yet. I worked it voided, although the original is in double running only.

11 a-d (top to bottom)

a. TNCM 55:1. "Snail Border Repeat". My original, inspired by period designs.

b. TNCM 51:1 "Brier Rose Twining Border Repeat" My original, inspired by period sources. Also in my second booklet, Counted Thread Patterns from Before 1600, published informally in the SCA circa 1983.

c. My first booket, Blackwork published in 1978. Pattern #j, which I cited as being Italian counted thread work from the 1500s. No citation though, which is why it didn't make the cut for later booklets.

d. TNCM 52:2. "Flower and Bud Meandering Border Repeat". My original, inspired by period designs.

12 a-d (top to bottom)

a. My first booket, Blackwork published in 1978. Pattern #gg, which I cited as being English, very early 1500s. No exact source though, and I didn't include it in TNCM for that reason.

b. TNCM 54:3 "Pomegranate Meandering Repeat" and #53 Counted Thread Patterns from Before 1600. Another one of my own, inspired by period sources.

c. TNCM 49:2 "Acorn Meandering Border Repeat" One of the early set I graphed from the photo in Drysdale's Art of Blackwork Embroidery that showed the Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931.

d. TNCM 44:2 "Acanthus Meandering Border Repeat" also #55 from Counted Thread Patterns from Before 1600. Yet another from the Drysdale photo of Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931. (I do adore that source!)

13. Wreath and Columns Repeat. Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931. I've charted this out by hand but other than stitching it here, I haven't published it yet.

14. Columbines(?) and Twists Voided Repeat. This one also appears on the same Drakt website photo taken at the V&A as one of the sources for #9, above. I can't make out the artifact's accession number though. And yes - I graphed it direct from the on line photo, as seen on the screen.

15. TNCM 58:1 "Strawberries and Violets Meandering Border Repeat." Also #61 in Counted Thread Patterns from Before 1600. This is the pattern adapted from the very famous Jane Bostocke sampler, also resident in the V&A. But my source materials were photos in Gostelow's International Book of Embroidery and King and Levy's The Victoria and Albert Museum's Textile Collection: Embroidery in Britain from 1200 to 1750. If you're familiar with those sources you'll understand why my squinting at them came up with the odd raspberries in between the flowers, instead of what can now be plainly seen as simple twists on the V&A's own photo page. I'd amend the description to "After Bostocke.." were I to republish TNCM now.

16. Black strip pattern. From page 57 of Louisa Pesel's Historical Designs for Embroidery, but I worked it outlined and voided instead of foreground stitched.

The patterns I tested on this piece will probably make their way into a sequel to TNCM - once I find a graphing program capable of handling double running stitch with ease, and that can chart out giant repeats at a small, but useful gauge. I want to be able to present largest of these patterns on a single page, and to do it using a background dots and voided line style of presentation which I came up with for use in TNCM, and which I find much easier to follow than regular dark line on background graph paper charts:

(Snippet of Jesters pattern, TNCM 69:2)

What's next? I'm not sure. I'm certainly not stitched out. I'd like to do another big sampler to try out more patterns, but I haven't decided on its size or form yet. There's also the possibility of a set of matched but not matched napkins - six all using the same colors, but all different. There's also a pile of holiday knitting to achieve between now and the end of the year. Rest assured - I won't be idle.

Technorati : Holbein stitch, Spanish stitch, blackwork, counted thread, cross stitch, double running stitch, embroidery

O.K. Having lost most of the readers here because I strayed away from knitting into embroidery, I now digress even further for a day.

It's no secret that The Resident Male and I met in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), lo these many aeons ago. We were pretty active during our college and post college years, until other priorities, careers, homes, and eventually offspring crowded in on our lives. We still maintain a peripheral presence in the Barony of Carolingia (the Boston area group) because many of our oldest and dearest friends remain active.

This weekend past we received this artifact of the elder days as a gift:

The few folk here who are SCA veterans and who went to Pennsic Wars past may recognize it. Our good friend Marian of Edwinstowe (now of blessed memory) had it hanging on the dayboard in her Sated Tyger Inn, and later in her Battlefield Bakery. Both were well-loved Pennsic-based food selling establishments she ran with friends and family for many years. We had largely disappeared from Pennsic by the time the Tyger had made the move from private subscription/cooperative cooking group to open-to-all eatery.

But now comes the story. What's with the carrots?

Upon returning from oblivion about 10 years ago, and showing up to an event with a feast, we ran into comments like "You're THAT Fernando," and "Too many carrots for you?" The "THAT Fernando" comment we sort of understood. Duke Vissevald is a close family friend, and we were sure that his collection of stories included ones of Fernando, featuring a greater or lesser balance between entertainment value and veracity. But the carrot thing was a total mystery.

Eventually we found out about the continuing popularity of "Fernando Stew." He had in fact served it at a feast we had run. It's a simple beef in beer, Flemish style stew, and we've made it ourselves many times over the years since. But we always include lots of carrots in ours. Also sometimes parsnips...

More memory wracking was in order. Here's what we've figured out must have happened.

On the day of the feast that included the stew, I was running the front of the house, and Fernando was commanding the kitchen. Several people were helping, among them Embla Willsdottir, a good friend, who had mutual/reciprocal lampooning rights with Fernando, dating back to the dawn of time. I'm sure he commanded her to cut up the carrots for the stew, and in all probability gave annoyingly exact specifications for the task. She did it and set them aside, but when the stew came together the carrots were forgotten by all.

At serving time, Embla probably chided Fernando about forgetting the carrots. I can envision her there, behind an apron, hand on one hip, waggling a forlorn carrot in his face. And I can predict his larger-than-life response. It probably ran something like "Carrots??? I need to nose up no miserable roots. I disdain them, and will not permit them to sully this stew. Take your tuber, cease this carroty caterwauling, and be off with you!" All accompanied by a well brandished spoon, and in a voice that would carry from kitchen to hall (and all in good fun).

So the stew went out with no carrots; an easy to make and satisfying group dish gained a following; and an anti-vegetable reputation was born. Now people all over the Known World know that Fernando hates carrots. Or so they think.

In any case, Marian's Fernando Stew sign has made its way to us. We have hung it in our kitchen with pride and fond remembrance.

Technorati : SCA

Another descent into deadline hell for me so posts here have been/will be sparse again.

I did manage to squeeze in a strawberry tart. Made entirely from our own home-grown strawberries.

Three years ago I got one plant from a neighbor, and put it along with some lirope in the sunny side garden near our giant grass. I know that strawberries spread by runners, and between the two low, green, spreading plants, I hoping for a nice ground cover in between the roses, heather and blueberry bushes, sort of a green mulch.

The first year the strawberry plant established itself. The second year it conducted a savage land war with the lirope, which is now pushed to the edges of the area. There were a couple of berries, but the squirrels got them long before we did.

This year there are strawberries everywhere. My ground cover hopes have come true. The plants are thick enough to suppress all but the most insistent weeds. In addition we've got berries! LOTS of berries! So far we've picked about four pints. Not much by commercial standards, but enough for a nice fat tart and several breakfasts. And they're GOOD. My girl-next-door berries are a far cry from the centerfold-bimbo ones trucked into the local market. True, mine are no where near as huge nor as pretty, but they're intense and firm with a flavor the watery supermarket berries can't match.

Slow going too on the Clarke's Law sampler. I'm still working on the current voided strip. Again, filling in the background with long armed cross stitch takes longer than just working double running outlines. That and time compression are slowing me down:

And for Karen in California, who wanted to see the whole thing so far:

This is roughly 7 months of stitching, for between 30 and 90 minutes per day (my first post in this series was back on 7 December of last year).

Next will be a very wide strip, probably worked two tone using both the red and the black together. Slightly less dark than the narrow strip I'm working now, but denser than the motto bearing areas above it, to help anchor the bottom. I've got a couple of candidates but haven't decided exactly which one to do. After that it's probably between one and three strips to finish out the cloth, depending on width of the patterns chosen, filling in the area east of "Magic" with an author attribution in a smaller font (probably balanced with a narrow strip to take up any remaining space); and doing some end of line doodles to square out the ragged right in the other text strips. Then finishing and framing. Taa daah!

PS: Thanks to adnohr. Both the Ursa and XStitch Studio programs are on my list to review, once I return from the shadow of deadline doom.

Technorati : baking, blackwork, counted thread, double running stitch, embroidery, strawberries

The latest strip:

I've been alternating red patterned panels and lines of black lettering. I've run out of lettering, but I'm keeping the red-black-red alternation. This one is also from the V&A 14.931 sampler. I'm working the foreground double running stitch using a single thread of DMC 310 black, and the background in long armed cross stitch using two strands.

I'm having way too much fun with these patterns to stop. I've been talking about a sequel to TNCM for years, but now I'm engaged in doing it. I'll be resuming my search for a decent charting program (or general purpose graphics program) specific to the needs of legible presentation for double running stitch. And given my horrible experience with the publisher of The New Carolingian Modelbook, I'm looking into other options, in specific - the feasibility of self-publishing, but I know very little about the various web-based micropublishing alternatives, but I'm open to all concepts. I do know that for this type of book paper copies are still valued by most. I don't believe that there's a critical mass of stitchers out there yet who would make use of an ebook stitch reference when hard copy sits so quietly in one's workbasket without consuming batteries.

I'm also considering different formats. The last book was a 200+ page compendium of patterns, with lots of appendices of various sorts. I don't think that's necessary this time out. Other options exist. Shorter booklets or broadside sheets for example lend themselves more easily to web-based publishing both for the issuer and the downloader. Pricing is also problematic. The income stream this would represent is quite small, and the burden of record keeping as a small business for taxes is immense by comparison to any possible profit (discounting entirely the major effort involved in creating the work itself).

So I put these question to the few folk who visit this place and who I presume might be interested in such a thing:

1. Would you be interested in a sequel to TNCM?

2. Would you find ebook format (meaning to be read on a book reader or iPad) useful?

3. Would you be open to receiving a print-your-own PDF rather than bound paper?

4. What length book would you consider worthwhile - a leaflet of 20 pages or fewer? A booklet of 21-50 pages? A small book of 50-100 pages? 100+? (Bearing in mind that content for a 100+ page book would take a while to compile).

5. Any suggestions for publishing options aside from self-created PDF download via wiseNeedle, or commercial services like Lulu, iUniverse, or Etsy? Any cautions on the commercial service route?

6. Would you object to a higher proportion of original and adapted patterns mixed in with exact stitch recreations, so long as all patterns were documented as to origin and modifications (if any)?

7. Anything else you want to see in a book of patterns of this type?

Technorati : Embroidery, blackwork, counted thread, double running stitch, voided

The latest strip. Unusual because of the columns:

Angelique asks when this type of needlework was popular. I respond that double running stitch came into vogue in the early 1500s, and continued to be worn for the next 130 years or so, although the actual designs worked in the stitch changed over that period. The strips I'm doing now are late, mostly adapted from a photo of a sampler, and that sampler is dated to the late 1500s, early 1600s. Which would put it at Shakespeare's time and just after.

So. Does my favorite style of needlework appear in Shakespeare? Possibly. People have looked to his texts and found all manner of things that might or might not be there, but I have a feeling that double-sided counted work of this type did make an important cameo.

My case? Othello.

As those of you who know the play remember, Othello is swayed to believe in his wife's supposed infidelity by scheming Iago, who points to a particular handkerchief as proof. Othello had given the piece to Desdemona. It was filched by her lady in waiting (Iago's wife) and planted as manufactured evidence that Desdemona was having an affair with Cassio, Othello's trusted favorite whom Iago envies and despises. The play's central tragedy results.

The handkerchief is mentioned in a couple of places. It's in Act 3, Scene 3:

IAGO

Nay, but be wise: yet we see nothing done;
She may be honest yet. Tell me but this,
Have you not sometimes seen a handkerchief
Spotted with strawberries in your wife's hand?

OTHELLO

I gave her such a one; 'twas my first gift.

IAGO

I know not that; but such a handkerchief -
I am sure it was your wife's--did I to-day
See Cassio wipe his beard with.

And is described further in Act 3, Scene 4:

OTHELLO

That is a fault.
That handkerchief
Did an Egyptian to my mother give;
She was a charmer, and could almost read
The thoughts of people: she told her, while
she kept it,
'Twould make her amiable and subdue my father
Entirely to her love, but if she lost it
Or made gift of it, my father's eye
Should hold her loathed and his spirits should hunt
After new fancies: she, dying, gave it me;
And bid me, when my fate would have me wive,
To give it her. I did so: and take heed on't;
Make it a darling like your precious eye;
To lose't or give't away were such perdition
As nothing else could match.

DESDEMONA

Is't possible?

OTHELLO

'Tis true: there's magic in the web of it:
A sibyl, that had number'd in the world
The sun to course two hundred compasses,
In her prophetic fury sew'd the work;
The worms were hallow'd that did breed the silk;
And it was dyed in mummy which the skilful
Conserved of maidens' hearts.

Later in the same Act: Cassio comes upon the handkerchief and gives it to his doxy Bianca:

CASSIO

Pardon me, Bianca:
I have this while with leaden thoughts been press'd:
But I shall, in a more continuate time,
Strike off this score of absence. Sweet Bianca,

Giving her DESDEMONA's handkerchief
Take me this work out.

BIANCA

O Cassio, whence came this?
This is some token from a newer friend:
To the felt absence now I feel a cause:
Is't come to this? Well, well.

CASSIO

Go to, woman!
Throw your vile guesses in the devil's teeth,
From whence you have them. You are jealous now
That this is from some mistress, some remembrance:
No, in good troth, Bianca.

BIANCA

Why, whose is it?

CASSIO

I know not, sweet: I found it in my chamber.
I like the work well: ere it be demanded--
As like enough it will--I'd have it copied:
Take it, and do't; and leave me for this time.

So allowing me the license used by many Shakespeare pretenders, what we've got here is a handkerchief - essentially a two-sided piece work, embroidered with strawberries. There's an allusion to the embroidery being a deep crimson silk ("the dyed with mummy…conserved of maidens' hearts"), although Lord alone knows whether or not mummy was actually used as a dyestuff, and if it was, what color it might have produced or abetted. We've got a link between the work and a mysterious Egyptian/Moorish origin. It's worth noting that the name for double running stitch at the time of the plays debut was "Spanish Stitch," and it was wildly fashionable and popular. Plus it's clear that whatever type of embroidery it was, it was easily copied.

Taken together - reversible, red (along with black, one of the most fashionable colors for Spanish Stitch), stitched in silk, easily copied, link with Moorish origins - that's my style!

If the local amateur troop ever decides to stage Othello, I think I'll volunteer to stitch the handkerchief. And I plan on doing a strawberry panel on the current sampler, for good measure.

Technorati : blackwork, counted-thread, double running stitch, embroidery

In the middle of this charting program exploration I have had time to do a bit on my Clarke's Law sampler. But first to answer a question. Aileen read my last couple of posts and wondered what I would consider a complex double running stitch pattern. I answer with pix of my current piece, plus a snippet of this pattern done up using Pattern Maker Pro, from yesterday's review.

The nickel shows scale (click for better size shots of each). This strip is stitched using one strand of DMC floss, color #498 on 32 count linen (16 spi). Not particularly fine, but fine enough to show the patterns. The entire stitched area is about 15.75 inches across. From the top of the dark red twining strip to the bottom of the the D of ADVANCED is about 8.6 inches.

The top strip and the cross stitch words were all done using two floss strands. The outlining of the motif in the wide grape strip was done using two strands, and the squared background was done using one. (I've since found historical precedent for the squared background treatment).

All of the strips between the words will be relatively light in value, done in some combo of plain or voided double running stitch, but they won't be as wide as the grapes (well, maybe the last one will be just to balance). I won't do another dark band in long armed cross stitch (either foreground or voided) until after the entire quotation is done. I think it will take another three bands of text before the whole quotation is complete. Then I'll fill out the cloth with a mix of styles, perhaps doing some in two-tone. It's all fly by night here. I'll also figure out something to eke out the line ends where the lettering comes up short. I think that NOT centering each line of text works better for my purposes, especially because I'm breaking text between lines in an unorthodox manner.

Now back to writing up the results of my stitch charting program explorations. Which for my knitting and crocheting readers, will have value. Either of the programs I described yesterday can be used to graph out colorwork repeats, or linear crochet (filet and tapestry styles). Pattern Maker Professional also allows you to assign a True Type knitting font (like the one from Aire River) to the symbol palette, and then using the program in symbols-on-graph mode, to compose knitting charts. Here's a sample from PM showing a simple double 1x1 twist cable:

Where this falls apart though for knitting is if you try to display both colors and textures at the same time. The purl symbol will always be associated with one chosen color, the knit symbol with another. Although you can override the program and display more than one symbol per color, this program links symbol and color in a way that you can't have multiple colors per symbol. Numbering rows is also problematic.

As I write up the rest of the sampled programs I'll include their potential for use by knitters.

Technorati : counted-thread, crochet, embroidery, knitting

O.k. Let's start looking at the various available charting packages, two at a time. Again, I'm not doing a full-on evaluation and comparison of every available capability. In particular I'm ignoring the import/translate capability that people use to turn standard graphics and photos into cross stitch designs. I'm looking at just one aspect of these tools - charting complex double running stitch patterns.

KG Chart LE for Cross Stitch by iktsoft v 1.09.06

PROS: First off, you can't beat the price for this one. It's freeware, no registration required. It presents output in both graphed and stitch simulated formats, and includes a DMC-based thread palette. The program is optimized for cross stitch, but it does contain a back stitch option that allows drawing straight stitches. Standard ouput in in-program composition mode appears to max out at 73x73 per printed page but mesh size can be manipulated to present more units per page (reducing down as far as legibility will permit and then some. Prints to paper (and PDF if a PDF writer is installed) and exports to JPG, PNG, TIFF, TGA, PCX, JPG-2000 and as pixel only to make icons.

CONS: Backstitch doesn't present on screen in either mode as a series of countable, identifiable units. Yes, you can count the boxes over which the stitches travel, but that can be difficult, especially in low light or in dense patterns. While back stitch clusters can be selected and moved, inverting or mirroring them introduces errors - the replicated units don't look like the original (plus transformation). Multiple page works are presented without repeats/overlaps for cross page orientation. Zoom is constrained to 8 set levels.

VERDICT: An excellent value for the casual cross-stitch user who wants to create multicolor block unit patterns and who may want to use the occasional outline or straight stitch unit. Not very useful to anyone composing entirely in double running.

Pattern Maker for Cross Stitch (Professional) by HobbyWare, Version 4

PROS: Back stitch and straight stitch have symbol sets that can be manipulated to display individual stitches (see settings in screen shot below). Units can be selected as part of a rectangular block or "lassoed" as a non-standard shape (Pro version only) and the selected or pasted bit can be mirrored/flipped/rotated with no loss of relationship among constituent units. Stitches can be represented on screen in floss-strand equivalent thickness units, and different stitches can use different thicknesses of thread. The thickness backstitch and straight stitch symbol representations can exist independent of floss thickness Output can be printed to hard copy, and mesh size can be manipulated to present as many per page as are legible. A dizzying array of available colors from most major floss and thread makers is included.

CONS: To show stitches as individual units, back and straight stitches need to be drawn one at a time. You can't paint a line of them across multiple chart blocks and have each one neatly display as a separate unit. I can't figure out how to display both cross stitch and line stitch symbols on the same view (I'd like to be able to show the line stitch units from the left hand picture and the color x units from the center pix on the same final image. Freehand "lasso" selection and export to JPG, TFF and other standard graphics formats are only available on the Pro version (JPG export shown in right image). The Pro version costs $120. US. The four day trial is a pain (those of us with careers may not have four linear days in which to make an adequate assessment of both versions).

VERDICT: A possibility, but pricey. Need to test it on a really complex bit of charting.

I'd appreciate hearing from others who are using any of these (or other) dedicated charting programs or who may be bending general purpose graphics programs to this need. Love a program? Have problems with one? Have hints/clues/insight into features/limitations? I'm sure that others would love to know, too.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

I've got enough patterns now on tap that I should start thinking of how the follow on to The New Carolingian Modelbook should be composed. It's been notional for a long time, with the tentative name of Ensamplio Atlantaea in honor of the other SCA region that took me in during my self-imposed absence from Carolingia.

Aside from having no publisher for this one, the biggest impediment is that I haven't figured out how best to graph the patterns for publication. At this moment, I'm still bound to paper and pencil. The graphs in TNCM were made using my late, lamented Macintosh computers (a II and a IIcx); and Aldus Superpaint drawing/drafting software. We shifted over to the PC world long ago in response to the strain of keeping two parallel suites of hardware and software functional, and in response to the PC-centric nature of employment in this house.

To date, I've not found Windows based general graphics software that does as good a job for charting as the vintage-1990 stuff I used for my first book.

I'm still looking. I have an interim solution using MS Visio. It's cumbersome, and time-consuming compared to my Superpaint method. In Superpaint I was able to establish a bitmap based graph as a separate field, then paint on lines set up with voids to correspond (in negative) with the dots of my background. So instead of painstakingly noting each individual stitch, I could run a length of stitches in one stroke and have those stitches neatly separated by voids to mark the length of each. For example, instead of a solid line four units long, I was able to paint a line that looked like it was broken up into four exact stitch length units, and do it on vertical, horizontal and diagonal planes. But in Visio I can't do that. The best I can do is create several blocks, each with a line segment corresponding to a stitch (one side, two parallel side, two sides meeting at one corner, one diagonal, two diagonals, one diagonal and one side, etc.); then stack and rotate my blocks into my finished pattern. Although this method works well enough for block unit patterns it is excruciatingly slow for line unit designs, and compared to my old method is too tedious to use for a whole book.

So it's back to exploring the world of commercially available charting software. There are several programs created expressly for needleworkers. However they're not aimed at my needs, they're all targeted at multicolor tapestry style cross stitchers, who are interested in styles that look more like needlepainting (creating multi-color pictures with stitch units corresponding roughly to the pixels in a raster display image) than in the linear and mostly monochrome styles I prefer.

To date I've looked at several programs including:

• Cross Stitch Professional, DPSoftware
• PC Stitch 9, M&R Technologies
• PatternMaker for Cross Stitch, HobbyWare
• Easy Cross, Fulford Software Solutions
• KG Chart LE for Cross Stitch, iktsoft

Mind you - remember I'm not looking at the features that most of the world wants in these cross stitch packages, notably the ability to turn JPGs or photos into cross stitch graphs, fidelity to a dizzying array of potential thread/color choices, or final output targeted at publishing complete patterns (with thread consumption and stitch symbol charts). I want something that will graph out double running stitch in a manner that enables stitchers to clearly discern the number of units in a long run, that allows easy selection/inversion/mirroring of pattern subunits or areas, and that otherwise eases production and use of of high complexity charts for double running or other similar linear stitching styles.

In mainstream graphics programs, I've been playing with Visio (described here) and Open Office Draw. I'm thinking of exploring the world of contemporary raster based Windows graphics programs next, but there has to be a better solution.

I'll post detailed observations of these programs this week. Stay tuned. And if you have any suggestions for other Windows-based software that might suit my purpose, please let me know.

Technorati : charting, embroidery

More babbling on here today.

Faithful Reader TexAnne noted my mention yesterday of the "print to transparency" cheat for flipping charted patterns and added another that I had forgotten. Some printer drivers and photocopiers allow you to mirror-image their output. This option is most accessible in the Mac world. I remember my late, lamented Macs having a prominent command in the print dialog that allowed mirror-image printing, something that came in handy for printing out driving directions. I'd print them out in a large font in mirror image and lay them on the dashboard of my car. They were just visible as a right-side reflection on the windshield in front of me, and acted as a "heads-up" display.

Since TexAnne's note I've tinkered with the print dialogs of several PC world printers from HP and others, plus some large office photocopiers, and in most of them I've found a buried "Print Mirror Image" command. It's usually on an "Advanced Commands" tab that summarizes the state of all available printer options, but it's not often displayed as an easy to get to setting. But it's usually there somewhere. Scan to print or printing mirror image is a matter of finding and setting this hidden command. It's another useful way to use technology do do a mirror image chart flip.

Long Time Needlework Pal Kathryn reminded me of a story connected with the pattern I'm stitching now.

Back when I was working it voided on the Think sampler (lower band, shown flipped to the same orientation as the current work for comparison) I did lots of stitching (and knitting) in public. I worked in the Washington, D.C. area, and would take my projects outside at lunch and do them on park benches. I wrote to Kathryn that one day an elderly lady and her granddaughter approached me. They were of Hmong ancestry, a Southeast Asian people with a rich heritage of traditional counted cross stitch embroidery. With the granddaughter translating, the lady admired the work and asked if the pattern was traditional to my home village or family. I thanked them for their compliments and said that sadly, Brooklyn, NY did not have its own embroidery tradition, and that I'd found the pattern in a book. Kathryn says she's thought of this particular design as "the Brooklyn Pattern" ever since.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

As promised, proof that there are ten kinds (plus fudge) for 2009:

1: Linzer Cookies - recipe from the King Arthur Flour website, this year with almond meal and using cherry preserves instead of raspberry. We used the smallest snowflake shape to make the center hole. The dough is very delicate and is best rolled out between waxed paper, with the center holes being cut after the cookie has been placed on a baking parchment covered cookie sheet. These really are best the day of making because the cookies tend to absorb moisture from the filling. They're still very good, but they are softer and more cake-like if kept.

2. Light Spice Rolled Cookies -another from King Arthur (their cookie recipes are uniformly excellent). The only substitution I made was to use 1/4 tsp Chinese Five Spice Powder in place of ground cloves. (I don't like a strong clove flavor). I used the cookie roller described in the last post. Aside from the advice posted there, I strongly suggest very lightly dusting the top of the dough with flour before trying to use the embossed roller, and using the roller without the handle. Cookies are light and crisp, not too sweet. Overall, this is an excellent ginger/spice tea biscuit, worth doing again. (This dough can also be rolled thin and cut out with conventional cutters if you don't have the roller.)

3. Classic Peanut Butter Cookies - this one is from our circa 1970s copy of Joy of Cooking. We usually use crunchy peanut butter instead of smooth because it makes a better texture, but this year Younger Daughter has braces on her teeth and crunchy is banned for the duration. For decoration instead of the standard fork-tine checkerboard on top we use a cookie stamp, just because we have it. Peanut butter cookies tend to be moist and oily and keep a long time. They're usually the second cookie we make in our march towards our requisite 10 types.

4. Buffalo Bourbon Balls - This is a standard no-bake cookie recipe that starts with ground store bought vanilla wafers, cocoa, and ground pecans. Ours comes from a version published in one of the Buffalo NY newspapers some time in the early 1960s. I've posted it before, but the recipe appears to have gone the way of all things so it's repeated at the end of this post. We switched to using rum a few years ago, and prefer the results. Rum or bourbon, cookies also benefit from being made at least two weeks in advance so that the spirits mellow out. They're always the first cookie we make each year because they keep so well.

5. Sugar Cookie Cutouts - this year in snowflake and holly leaf shapes only. Another classic cookie. This one is "Rich Rolled Cookies" also from our old Joy of Cooking. Our variant is to add a couple of drops of lemon extract to the batter, and to make the icing by using just enough lemon juice to make confectioner's sugar spreadable, then dividing it into several smaller quantities, each tinted with food coloring. This icing hardens up nicely and if the cookies are left spread out after painting until they're firm to the touch, will not cake up in the tin.

6. Chocolate Chip - our version of the official Toll House cookie recipe, although I do admit we splurge and use Ghirardelli semisweet chips and lots of broken pecans for an over the top touch.

7. Chocolate Crinkles - In this house they're called Earthquakes because of all the fault lines. I alternate between the King Arthur Flour version, and a very similar cookie recipe from a clipping sent to me by long time pal Kathryn (Hi, Kathyn!). The King Arthur version is smack-you-in-the-face-with-chocolate, but the other one has a better texture and is less candy-sweet.

8. Pecan Sandies - Another recipe with Buffalo heritage, this one is an heirloom from my husband's extended family. My variant is to sort through the bag of pecans and set aside the unbroken halves, then grind the bits to add to the batter. The pretty halves get dunked in water and pressed on the cookie tops just before baking. As you can see I've gotten a little better at shaping them over the years.

9. Easy Fudge - the condensed milk version. Super easy to make and a great way to use up leftover nuts from the other cookies. This year's was bittersweet chocolate and walnuts. I repeated using the silicon oval baking forms to shape the pieces. Much neater and more uniform than the pat it into a pan and slice method.

10. Tatte Date Nut Rolls - recipe from the Boston Globe. This one was new this year. Preparation was very easy with a klutz-avoid rating of only 2 out of 10. The dough was well behaved, rich tasting dough and yummy date/walnut filling. Although it doesn't look like there's a ton of filling while the cookies are being made, the proportion of filling:cookie at the end is perfect. This is a keeper, but it's not my ideal Christmas cookie. They taste fantastic, and would be the star of any holiday buffet, but they're too delicate for plonking into cookie-share boxes, and like most fine pastry they do not keep especially long. (I'm thinking of all sorts of other fillings and will make this again for a dinner party, for sure.)

11. Oysters. My own invention. A hazelnut spritz sandwich cookie with a rich chocolate filling. It turns out that Younger Daughter is a dead-eye ace with the cookie press. She formed all of these this year. One caution - use one of the simple cookie press dies. The fancy shapes with small or narrow openings will not work. The ground hazelnuts will clog them and you'll get the haphazard odd shapes that prompted this cookie's name.

Buffalo Bourbon Balls

Adapted from the women's pages of a Buffalo newspaper from the 1960s. Best if made at least two weeks in advance and allowed to mellow in a cookie tin.

Ingredients for cookies

1 12-oz. box	Store bought vanilla wafer cookies
2 cups	Confectioner's sugar
1 cup	Finely chopped pecans
¼ cup	Cocoa
½ cup	Rum
¼ cup	Light corn syrup Powdered sugar or cocoa or a mix of the two to rolls the balls in

Special equipment

Food processor

Directions:

1. Using food processor, grind cookies to powder. Remove from processor.

2. Using food processor, grind nuts finely. Add to cookie crumbs.

3. Sift sugar and cocoa together into crumb/nut mix.

4. Stir in rum and corn syrup. (Clean-up hint - measure the half cup rum into glass measuring cup, add light corn syrup to same cup until total volume equals 3/4 cup. Mix the two together in the measuring cup, then pour mix into dry ingredients. Much easier than trying to measure sticky syrup by itself). Keep stirring wet into dry ingredients until everything is combined (this may take a while).

5. Form into ¾ inch balls. Roll in confectioners sugar or a mix of cocoa and confectioners sugar to coat.

6. Store in a tightly covered container. Makes about 40-50 cookies, depending on size.

Variants: Use rum instead of bourbon. Walnut/Bourbon is a good combo. Use almonds and Amaretto; hazelnuts and Frangelica; or almonds and Chambord, Kirsch or other cherry or berry liqueur.

Technorati : baking, cookies, recipe

Yes, it's the end of December here at String, and that means cookies (and latkes). In spite of work younger daughter and I have managed to finish baking nine of our ten planned varieties. For 11, she's stellar and can mix a batter on her own from the recipe without leaving the kitchen a disaster. She's also dead eye accurate on the cookie gun, and can turn out uniform spritz cookies on her own. As a result we've managed tag team production, with me swooping in to do stuff that she prefers not to do, or juggling the sheets in and out of the oven.

This year's production included a new item - a light gingerbread style cookie rolled out with a European style cookie roller:

The recipe I used is from King Arthur Flour's website - Light Spice Cookies. I had tried another from Fine Cooking, but was sadly disappointed. That dough has been relegated to pat-in-pie crust status.

The King Arthur cookies I had made before, using standard cut-out cookie cutters. They turn out quite nicely, sort of like gingery animal crackers, and are especially good when rolled out very thinly. For the record, I use Chinese 5 spice powder in place of ground cloves, just to be different and to tame the clove undertaste a bit (I don't particularly like cloves).

Here you see the dough roller results. I think the roller's impressions look a bit like a Mayan Codex.

To get this result, I rolled out my dough very thin, less than 1/8 of an inch. Although it was tender and easy to manipulate, the handle of the cookie roller and not the cookie dough turned out to be the weak part of the system. Applying any pressure at all snapped the removable patterned cylinder out of its mooring. So I set the handle aside and used the heel of my hand to apply slow, even pressure as I rolled out the impressions. The raised bits on the roller are high enough to cut the cookies almost completely out. A small bit of encouragement with the tip of a very sharp knife was needed to release a couple of the tricker bits, like the cat's tail, and the protruding feather of the upside down bird immediately above the cat (or is it a fox or wolf - it's hard to tell).

In any case the cookies did separate nicely and the dough preserved the textured detail even after baking:

Nice crisp (almost hard) grown-up ginger spice cookies. Not too soft, not too sweet. A perfect accompaniment to hot tea.

A full visual catalog of all ten kinds later this week. I promise.

Technorati : baking, cookies

To follow up yesterday's post and to answer the question "What do you mean by deconstructing and reassembling the knot motif?" I present this:

Click on the image above to get the pattern JPG at a useful size.

The original motif is presented in my book in negative, as it is in the 16th century originals - with the background blocks filled in and the foreground left plain, but this way works, too. They had to do this by hand-carving a wood block, the fewer flimsy little lines interrupting clear areas, the better. I have the luxury of Visio.

The strip at the top is representative of how the pattern was shown in those originals - a three unit knot with a one unit spacer. But that design is full of possibilities. The center interlaces, end units and terminal twists can be recombined into an infinite array of patterns. I present some that I just doodled up tonight.

So look at those old pattern books, historical or contemporary with a new eye. See how the pattern repeats - where it can be broken apart and recombined. You may end up with something entirely new and pleasing, perfect for your next project.

Technorati : crochet, embroidery, knitting

Invaders having been secured, I add another panel pattern. This time it's a nifty knotwork interlace, also graphed out in TNCM, on plate 31:1.

What exactly it looks like will become clearer as I move along. This block unit pattern appears in several early books. I spotted it in a Ensamplario di Lavori published by Vavassore in 1532, and also in a different modelbook entitled Convivio Delle Belle Donne, also dated between 1530 and 1540. If you look at enough of these early pattern books, you can see all sorts of reprintings, adaptations, regraphings, possible block trading, and very probable plagiarism as the various semi-itinerant publishers interacted.

If you consider that each print block was very laborious to create (these patterns not being amenable to moveable type), the habit of publishers of re-issuing some of their old pages in new collections is easy to understand. Trading is, too. I can imagine two publishers based in different areas, but who traveled around a circuit (or who had agents who did) exchanging blocks so that each would have new material at minimal additional invested effort.

The "borrowing" is also easy to conceptualize. These pattern books were very popular, and the designs in them were highly sought after. It's quicker to copy a design from a competitor's book than it is to come up with a totally new one yourself, especially in the days when pre-printed graph paper was a rarity (some of the pattern books are mostly just that - blank graph paper, with a few pages of pre-done patterns as intro.)

How to identify copying versus trading? You have to get up close and personal with the patterns. As I regraphed them for TNCM I noticed small variants among different versions of the same basic design. Peter Quentel's two-birds panel from 1527, reproduced on this page from blog Feeling Stitchy is well represented, and exists in many very close variants. There are very slight differences among them in the layout of the flowers, the position of the birds' feet. This same pattern persisted in middle European folk embroidery, gaining and losing detail over time as it was copied and recopied, in sort of a multi-generational needlework game of telephone.

This particular knotwork pattern has always been a favorite of mine because of its versatility. You see a three-loop knot at the center of the piece I'm stitching now. The knot itself is easy to deconstruct and reassemble. I'll be using the three-loop center, with a one-loop iteration on either side. Then depending on spacing and relative room, I'll either do another two or three-loop knot followed by a one or more little terminal center loops to finish.

And finally to answer the person who wrote to say that they liked my stitching but found it woefully modern, and thought TNCM was "contaminated" by my including my own designs - I have to respectfully disagree. I took extreme pains to carefully document every design in the book. The ones that were "inspired by" rather than transcribed bear that notation. Original work is always marked and is less than 10% of the book. Most of it is there to fill out pages so that no space would be wasted.

[controversial thought warning for the following]

I do not believe that producing a slavish copy of a period original is the highest form of expression or understanding. Yes, it does demonstrate extreme mastery, perseverance, and skill that deserve praise. But to create a totally new piece that were it compared side by side with its historical siblings, and see that piece as an absolute exemplar of the type - to the point that were it transported back to the point of origin, it would be unquestioningly accepted - that's mastery of the inner form. It's parallel to martial arts practice. Knowing the katas and training forms perfectly is a matter of high skill, but that skill might not equate to being able to abstract the lessons in those forms and apply them in an un-choreographed street fight.

I do not pretend that my doodle samplers and contemporary stitching approach the new-artifact level (with the possible exception of my forever coif). But I do think that the few original designs presented in TNCM do come close, and the reaction some readers that they feel "cheated" proves my point. If those designs were somehow substandard and not tempting, people would not be expressing frustration. Do those looking for meticulous documentation to substantiate and produce a pedigreed work for an SCA Arts and Sciences competition want use my original designs? Some might, from an aesthetic standpoint, but they wouldn't do so because those patterns can't be sourced back to a specific stitch-for-stitch or published historical original. But that's why they're marked as mine.

Technorati : Embroidery

I don't know if this link will remain live for long, but it's to an "Ask Amy" column appearing in the Washington Post on-line edition (free sign in may be required). The advice columnist printed a letter from a California knitter who was asking about the propriety of knitting at an informal gathering of friends.

The gist of the letter is that the writer's friends gather for a lazy afternoon of chitchat, drinks and snacks on the porch of a friend's cabin. At the last of these recurring afternoons overlooking the river, the knitter (gasp) brought her knitting. She brought something simple, was an active eye-contact participant in conversations (as opposed to sitting in a corner squirreled away with her yarn); and was a general all-around helpful house guest, assisting the host with whatever prep and clean-up was at hand. However, the knitter's husband when asked about what he thought of the knitter's activity voiced a negative opinion, saying it was rude of her to have taken out her needlework.

The Ask Amy columnist was very supportive of the knitter, saying that the activity within the bounds cited wasn't rude, and "the world would be a more congenial place if more people laid aside their handheld devices and picked up some needles and yarn." She suggested asking the husband why he found needlework in an informal gathering to be an inappropriate activity.

I for one don't feel that the knitter was in the least rude, and I encourage her to raise the banner for public knitting.

Knitting at chitchat gatherings has a long history, and in the past genteel needlework was considered almost a required accessory for informal visits. I often bring needlework with me to social gatherings, judging when I get there as to whether or not the circumstance is comfortable for me to pull it out. But apparently some aren't convinced about this type of behavior. (I also think the husband might have been annoyed because less attention was being paid in specific to him, but that's another story.)

So - as an item for discussion - Would you feel comfortable knitting at a lazy afternoon gathering of convivial friends? Would your spouse or significant other object? Why?

Technorati : knitting

Back from dropping Mr. Bunn (and Eldest Daughter) off at college.

She brought all the essentials - computer and statistical calculator, desk lamp, clothes, electric kettle and tea, backrest pillow and bedding, her parents' money - and her knitting. I anticipate a string of texts, notes, and letters reporting Mr. Bunn's travails as a freshbun. Will relay any that are particularly amusing and/or full of knitting content.

Technorati : knitting

Some time back, I posted about having the perfect place for a tapestry, and contemplated the effort involved in stitching up a massive needlepoint kit. Examining my life, I finally came to the conclusion that eternity would in fact be involved. So I found a reasonably priced jacquard woven reproduction. This weekend past we installed it over the living room fireplace.

It's a big fireplace - that tapestry is 52 inches across and could have been bigger. Even so, it works in the space, and we're pleased.

To assuage my needlework hunger, I did score an interesting find. I dropped off Elder Daughter at her college orientation. While we were in New Paltz, NY we wandered through an antique shop in the town's center. My find is a piece of stamped linen intended for embroidery. I found it jumbled in a pile of vintage kitchen linens. The design is clearly Stuart-era inspired, and is intended for working in crewel wool. The linen is thick, and of excellent quality. Although the fold lines are prominent, the linen itself is not damaged. Gentle steam (no pressing) will relax the creases.

Doing a bit of research, I suspect that my find may in fact BE a find. The tag says "An Embroidery Masterpiece by Needlecraft House." On the flip side it reads "Stuart Series Design II, Design M751... Needlecraft House - West Townsend, Mass." The style is strongly reminiscent of Elsa Williams work and her needlework school was located in West Townsend, but she is not credited.

There are no directions, and the label reads "These pieces are prepared for the embroidery who appreciates fine materials and perfection in design. There are no instructions or color diagrams provided for these pieces. You plan you own color scheme to suit your personal taste. All designs are adaptable to your own favorite stitches and may be worked in solid areas or in simplified detail...." Looking over the Web I do find that there is an Elsa Williams "Stuart I" kit with the number 750. Unstitched it's offered for sale at over $80. Mine cost $4.00. The picture below links to the site where #1 is offered for sale. This is their photo, shown here to illustrate the general style of the work:

Elsa Williams was the author of Heritage Embroidery. She and Erica Wilson were two of the chief disseminators and proponents of the 1960s era Crewel embroidery revival. If in fact my printed linen is hers, I suspect that it was issued prior to the release of Williams' book in 1967. After that point she was widely famous in needlework circles, and her kits and other publications all bore her name. She sold her business to JCA when she retired in the late '70s/early '80s.

So I now have a dilemma. Do I stitch up my kit, or do I flip it for a profit to the cognoscenti? Somehow I suspect the former... Eventually.

Technorati : embroidery

Back from our annual sand-fest on Cape Cod, and sad that there's another 51 weeks to go before we return. It was supremely relaxing. A room right on the bay-side beach up near Beach Point in North Truro, lots of books to read and things to knit. No phones and no computers. The day consisted of consulting the tide chart for a relative fix on the time, cooking or going out when we were hungry, walking the beach and taking the occasional hike and paddling the kayak from the strand right in front of our room.

The big highlight of our week was a hike across the stone breakwater at Woods End at the lower end of Provincetown, to explore the isolated beach beyond. Not my pix here (obvious because it's a good shot). Here's another one. The rock hopping stroll was about 1.5 miles each way. Being a klutz I rolled a 2 on agility and fell at the far end, but although I was banged up a bit, no major damage was registered, and we all returned back the way we came.

On the beach dining included our now traditional over-the-coals paella (identical to this one from years past).

plus (on other days) chicken rubbed with lemon and olive oil then roasted on the grill, beef kabobs, steamed lobsters, and the usual kid-friendly hot dogs and hamburgers for lunch.

Dining out included Terra Luna in North Truro (always excellent); The Mews (our no-kids Date Night - exquisite food, very highly recommended), and Nappi's in Provincetown (a good place to take kids to make up for Date Night); Mac's Shack in Wellfleet (best fried seafood on the Cape). And an indulgent brunch snack at Provincetown's Portuguese Bakery (kale soup, malassadas, and sweet potato turnovers to die for).

I read several books: the sheep detective story Three Bags Full, River of Darkness - a suspense/mystery set in post WWI Britain, and my annual bit of beach self-indulgence, See Dephi and Die, yet another Lindsay Davis Falco novel. Of these three River of Darkness was by far the strongest, with a well plotted mystery, intriguing characters, and a strong sense of place/time. Three Bags Full was quite breezy and entertaining for a murder mystery. Seeing the sheep confront human behavior was very amusing. The Davis book however was one of the author's weakest. The main character suffers extreme lack of opposition and foils in this one, amusing just because by now the setting and cast are so familiar.

And yes - I did knit. Lots. I brought three projects, the Kyoto, my Truro blanket and my green tablecloth. I am almost finished with the Kyoto's sleeves. Blocking and assembly (and pix) will soon ensue. My tablecloth grew by about five rows. I didn't do anything on the blanket, chiefly because I have mislaid the exact needles I was using. They're an in-between size, an older set somewhat between 2.5 and 2.75mm I didn't like the variant gauge I was getting with standard 2.75s and I didn't have any 2.5s with me in my bag.

So there you have it. One well rested/well fed but slightly bruised knitter. With vacation laundry and that 51 week infinitude stretching out ahead...

Technorati : knitting provincetown

There's been precious little knitting shown here of late, an egregious oversight for a knitting blog. As usual, I plead too much work and too little time, with the added complication of kid graduations/celebrations - Elder Daughter from high school, and younger daughter from elementary school.

Fun events to be sure, complete with family/friends, but time consuming none the less.

What little time I've had to knit I've used to work on my olive tablecloth, which at this point is better named "The Blob"

Right now unstretched it's about 24 inches from needles to center, with something upwards of a thousand stitches on the needles and I'm not done yet. You can see how densely the stitches are packed onto my too small needle:

That's a 2mm, by the way. At this point I don't dare let it free from the stitch keeper unless I'm actually working on it. The thought of dropping those thread-fine stitches makes me hyperventilate.

The good news is that I'm only 40 or so rows from completion. At the rate of 1.5-2 rows per week, I'll be working on this for quite a while yet.

I do have an interim knitting decision to make. This is NOT a good piece to take with me on our midsummer vacation. It's best worked on in one spot (you can see I didn't move it far from my favorite knitting chair for the photo, above). But what to bring?

Perhaps I'll bring along the Kyoto I still haven't finished for Elder Daughter. I'm mid sleeve, in boring stockinette, with just the last 8 inches of sleeve to go plus finishing. And I'm also considering bringing my Truro Counterpane. At this point it's a traditional summer knit for me, and with only nine mega-motifs done I still have miles to go before I can deploy it as a blanket. Or I may decide to do something else entirely. I've got a few sweater-sized lots of cotton stashed, any one of which would be an excellent quick-knit summer top for me. Decisions, decisions...

Technorati : knitting

I'm being eaten alive by work deadlines as usual, limiting my time for knitting and blogging, but I did take off this afternoon to work on the Resident Male's Fathers Day present. Elder and Younger Daughter helped, of course.

Back story: Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai movie is one of this household's all time favorites. On more than one occasion we've pointed out that the Resident Male is vastly outumbered here, surrounded as he is by a sea of females. And on more than one occasion I've threatened to make him a "odd man out" banner inspired by the one raised to rally faltering spirits in our favorite move:

Today we did it. We made a beach flag inspired by the movie. The movie banner says "Farm," but in our case "Sand" is more appropriate, because we intend on flying this on our annual Cape Cod vacation. Calligraphy for "sand" is courtesy of Ted Goodman and family, local Aikido instructor and all around good guy. (Thanks again, Ted!)

Younger Daughter helped with the sewing, learning to use a sewing machine in the process. Elder daughter helped create and ink the circles and triangles.

Resident Male was quite tickled by the gift, which we gave early - there being no effective place to hide a four foot tall banner in this house.

Technorati : knitting

An uneventful birthday weekend, squandered on laundry, work, housecleaning, and more work. Sigh. Still I am of the opinion that if one doesn't celebrate, then the event didn't happen and the incremental addition to one's age need not be acknowledged.

I also have to report a misfortune occurring in our wider circle. Long time readers here will remember that my kids adore Roads End Farm - a paradise on earth for horse-mad girls, run by the Woodman family for more than 35 years.

Elder Daughter spent about nine summers there, Younger Daughter has been there for three. Apparently over Memorial Day weekend there was a fire at the farm. No horses, humans or other critters were harmed, but the camp lost its dorm block and a storage barn just two weeks before the start of the early summer session. Roads End does not go down easy though. They are planning on rebuilding and as far as I know will be opening for the season, albeit with some improvisation on living arrangements. If you're a REF alumna who has landed here, please consider writing a note of support and appreciation to Tom, Alicia and the whole REF family (address at link, above). They've worked hard to keep the magic in the place, and now could use a wave of our collective wands to ensure that it stays.

In knitting news, I continue on the green tablecloth. It's big and getting bigger. Unfortunately, it's not photogenic. Yet another blurry picture of a huge olive green snood is not going to be an edifying experience. So I soldier on, visually undocumented.

One thing we are looking forward to here at String is Elder Daughter's high school graduation this weekend. Soon she'll be off to the wide, wide world of college. Another knitter released to the wild.

A bittersweet week to be sure.

Technorati : knitting

As promised courtesy of Friend Merlyn (she of far better photo sense than I ever will have) is our day at the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival. All the photos here are hers, reproduced here by permission.

To start, no sheep festival is complete without its eponymous totem. Here are a couple of girls, still in their fluffy finery, checking us out for illicit snacks.

By contrast, this guy is far more aloof. "Snacks? I disdain the possibility of snacks. Ooh, do I see hot sheep chix in the next stall?"

Which leads us to sheepy strippers.

That's a lot of fuzz. Spinners and dyers were in a special heaven at this show because of all the raw and semi-processed fleece, dyed fleece and roving; spinning gear, and dyeing classes and supplies.

Here's one tough spinner:

"Yo. You wanna talk grist? I'll see your grist and raise you 5."

Actually, there were quite a few men at the show sitting and spinning (or like this guy, wandering around with a drop spindle).

Which takes us on to my main target of opportunity. Yarn. A day of selective yarn acquisition. Selective because there's a mismatch between my imagination - what I can see myself doing with the yarn - and available time/yarn budget dollars.

Here are the three of us, daughters large and small, and (in my first appearance on this website) a small shot of magenta-clad me, poking through the Bartlett booth, then buying some laceweight at a totally different venue, from a vendor whose name I neglected to note:

I've got an eye bending, giant lump of black Jaggerspun 20/2, elder daughter's buying the same thing in screaming russet. (She's thinking of doing a Paisley, but that thought is still quite larval.) Even younger daughter got into the spin of the day, making a felted snake at the American Textile History Museum's booth:

But back to the vendor displays. As I wrote earlier, I was especially taken with the creativity of the Tsock Tsarina patterns, on display at the Holiday Yarn booth. I'm not quite sure how I'd wear or care for these art object socks, but the exuberance and detail of these designs are fantastic. And I enjoyed the opera theme of the entire line:

The colors and abundance of the yarn on display for sale was spectacular. Who wouldn't be inspired by all of this?

And the day had its non-yarn amusements as well. I've decided that alpacas are animals designed by anime artists: those long, snaky necks and staring oversize eyes; the fluffy hairdos, and overly earnest expressions; the stylish baggy-leg look. The only thing missing is gigantic, oversized feet and "!!!"s floating over their heads:

Since plenty of shoots and leaves were on the menu for the day, we got a kick of of this class announcement, too.

Special thanks again to photo documenter Merlyn for providing today's run of eye candy. You can check out the rest of her sheepy shots here.

Technorati : knitting

The offspring, Friend Merlyn and I went to the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool festival this Sunday past. We had a good time, with lots of sheepy things to look at, from fleece on the hoof to finished product. I do however note that Saturday rather than Sunday is probably a better day to go. It looked like some vendors and displays had already packed up and left, and some of the remaining sellers were displaying much depleted stock. There were still sheepdog trials going on when we got there, but the advertised horse show was among the events scratched for the day. Younger Daughter especially got a kick out of what looked to be a children's llama agility course, in which youngsters led their equally young beasts around a set of gentle obstacles. It was hard to pick out who was cuter, the clearly concentrating little kids at one end of the lead ropes, or the gangly legged, long necked fuzzballs at the other.

I did manage to pick up some excellent buys. From left to right, 665 yard/8.3 oz hank of gray sport weight alpaca, from the Times Remembered booth - super soft and probably a bit more yardage than advertised on the label (labels were pre-printed with sport weight target yardage but hanks varied in weight, I picked a more weighty one); two skeins of sock yarn from Dorchester Farms; and an oversize lace weight yarn, one in black of 13.3 oz, probably around 4200 yards from a bargain bin in a booth whose name I neglected to note. At the same spot Elder daughter got some orange/russet lace weight of about 6.5 oz, probably around 2000 yards. Both pods of lace yarn were at a bargain basement prices. I also got some white cotton, close to 30 weight suitable for filet crochet at another stall that was offering mill ends. The two of us together spent less than $75 total on yarn, and garnered enough for winter's worth of scarf, hat, sock and shawl knitting and crocheting for us both (lace is especially cost effective in terms of dollars spent on materials vs. hours of knitting enjoyment). Finally, in the center is the felted snake Younger Daughter made at the Textile Museum's booth.

I almost bought a sock kit from Harmony Yarns/Tsock Tsarina - the sock kits there were the most original thing I saw on display, and I got a big kick out of the opera themes of the design. The Tsarina herself was working on a pair on a theme to match "Daughter of the Regiment." I was tempted by the Firebird and Kitri socks, and admired the sculptural cleverness of the Vintage. The only drawback is that these are socks as art objects. They'd be difficult to add to the daily wear and wash rotation. Still, I took the card (they were out of kits in my mega-flipper size), with the intent to do up one or more of them in the near future. I meant to pick up some more Mostly Merino fingering weight, but although I pegged their display as being on the "zip back after full reconnoiter for purchase" I didn't manage to loop around to them. Which was a shame because they had some beautiful yarn there in the highly saturated colors I prefer.

There were many other vendors of note although my yarn budget would not let me stretch to buy everything I liked. I especially enjoyed seeing all the micro producers in addition to the larger (yet still not big business) concerns like Bartlett Mills and Green Mountain Spinnery. Hand dyed/variegated yarns predominated, with natural off-the-animal colors a close second. Lots of bunny and mohair - sadly both fibers I avoid because they make my hands itch when I try to work with them. Most vendors on Sunday had short quantities of most products, although some of the larger booths did have full sweater lots left. I missed seeing one vendor I thought might be there: Nicks Meadow Farm, a New Hampshire sheep farm/yarn seller I've seen at local Gore Place Sheepshearing festivals. I like their scoured Maine style rustic wool and have used their heavy worsted/Aran weight to good effect in the past.

I did not take any wandering-around or day-out pix (as you can see from my feeble attempts at photography here, cameras are not my forte). However, Friend Merlyn did. I'm hoping to link to some of her shots when they're posted.

Technorati : knitting

I don't know if anyone reading here is within striking range but if you are, the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival is this weekend. I'll be headed up there tomorrow. Not sure if I'll be dressed in something recognizable, but it's a good bet that the offspring (both small and large) and a friend of ours will be wandering the grounds and exhibit tents there for the better part of the day. I'll try to take pix.

Technorati : knitting

Life took a silly twist here at String this week. Younger daughter and her fifth grade class participated in an Egg Drop. That's the now classic assignment of designing and building some sort of a container that will protect a raw egg when container and egg are tossed from the roof of the school. The kids worked on their designs over the school break week last week. Yesterday was launch day. Acclaim was given for mission accomplishment (the passenger egg remained unbroken after a three-story fall), and originality of design.

Younger daughter's idea was to wrap her egg in a bit of bubble wrap for stability, then to embed the wrapped egg in a mass of balloons. When we went to the party store we found a bag of purple balloons on sale, a post-season discount along with other traditional Mardi Gras colors. She decided to make her balloon mass into a bunch of grapes. A very BIG bunch of grapes.

She made the streamers from tissue paper, three sheets each cut in a spiral for maximum length without the extra weight of additional tape.

Getting the thing to school on a windy morning was a challenge. It filled the back of the van. But as I hear the effort was worth it. "The Grape Escape" had a successful launch, and fell from the third floor rooftop with majestic slowness, bouncing a couple of times on landing but remaining intact. The egg passenger was unharmed. If the school posts a video of the trial I'll share the link. Younger daughter is quite pleased both with her project's success and with its amusement value.

In knitting news, I continue on the entrelac sock and am now about halfway up the ankle. Minor disappointment in the Berroco Sock yarn I used, though. I've found six knots so far in the skein of color 1487 (browns/tans) that I'm using - one or two are a statistical aberration I can live with, but that many knots is a clear indication of quality control problems. By contrast the skein of #1425 (mixed turquoise black, red, orange, purple) was clean.

Technorati : knitting sock

We had an entertaining weekend here at String, spending most of it cleaning up the debris of a New England winter and waking up the garden for spring. Now I'm not a very good gardener. In fact I stick to plants that in more hospitable geographic areas are rated as borderline invasive, because they are about the only plants I can't kill. I trust in my own lack of skill and the odd deep freeze winter to keep them in check.

This weekend's chores included moving a trillium and a peony to make more room for an aggressive hosta's growing hegemony; shuffling some day lilies out of the way; rescuing some tulips and daffs so courteously relocated mid-lawn by squirrels; planting three ultra hardy five petal rugosa roses in some newly freed up spots; and pulling dead leaves out of the giant grass stubble (aka elephant grass, or maiden grass).

How giant is our giant grass? It gets tall enough for its early September plumes to overtop the roof of our front porch. We cut it down before the seed sets and ripens in order to keep it from colonizing the entire neighborhood. But what to do with canes ranging from 8 to 13 feet? The first year we bagged them with the rest of the yard trimmings, for the town to haul off for composting. This fall though I had an idea.

I also attempt to grow what started out as an antique variety of big scarlet speckled runner beans. While I don't harvest enough of a crop to eat, the kids get a big kick out of our sequential years of Mendelian genetics. We plant our Magic Beans for three springs now - some are still true to their parent's form, some now look more like French flagolets/ Then we watch to see what color flowers appear (originally all red, now a mix of 25% white/75% red), and what color/form of beans result. They grow very fast, and require strings or a trellis to climb. Last year all we could find at the garden shop were puny 4 foot tall bamboo stakes. Not near long enough. So I decided to dry my giant grass stalks and store them through the winter to furnish the scaffolding for this year's bean trellis.

It's not warm enough for bean planting yet (final frost date is the second week of May here), but we did build the trellis and set it up against the sunny southern face of the garage:

On the whole, given the random length, lack of flexibility and fragility of the stalks, I'm amazed we were able to come up with anything at all. Yes, those are cable ties fastening the thing together. We're nerds and proud! The structure is sort of pitiful, as if it were built by drunken orcs in World of Warcraft. I'm pretty sure that if they produced something this sad their players would be dunned a dozen experience points for failing so miserably in the attempt. But I like it. Covered in green with little flowers it will look grand. Provided it survives. Which is why we built it early. Better for it to collapse before beans attack it rather than having to disentangle them after the fact.

On the knitting front, I'm just about done with the entrelac socks. They turned out better than I expected.

Still a bit motley, but the four colors of leftover self stripers ended up complementing each other, mostly because all of them had green and brown in their mix. In person what looks like bright tomato red in the on-needle sock is more muted. Also, I divided the lot of leftovers into two groups - one that was mostly speckled with few or no solid stripes, and one that had firm solid stripes and spotty bits. The finished sock clearly shows the solids in the entrelac bits worked from left to right, and the speckled yarn in the entrelac bits worked right to left. All in all quite a satisfying project for something starting with such an unpromising quantity of leftovers.

Technorati : gardening, knitting, socks

I stumbled across this on Boing-Boing Gadgets and was fascinated. It's a piece of circular knitting fashioned from thin, clear plastic capillary tubing. The flow of colored water through the thing is mesmerizing. Although it looks a bit like nalbinding, it's a twisted loop variant of frame knitting (the frame is upside down on the bottom, forming a pedestal for the sculpture).

Fluid Sculpture from Charlie Bucket on Vimeo.

Fascinating. Hats off to Mr. Bucket and the folk at Casual Profanity for the joy of this piece!

Technorati : knitting

More nostalgia. I was digging through an old trunk the other day and I came upon a stack of my old embroideries, mostly unfinished. The majority of my finished work got given away as gifts. The completed pieces I still have I've posted here on String already, so this stash is in fact my "Chest of Embroidery Horrors™," a precursor to my "Chest of Knitting Horrors™." The first item in my stack was this odd little object, about 4 inches wide by 7 inches tall.

I doodled it up one weekend while I was in 7th grade (age 12 or so), obviously to hang in my middle school locker, picots and all. There was quite a fad for locker interior decorating among the other girls at Teaneck, NJ's Benjamin Franklin JHS at the time. They did up elaborate confections of varying degrees of utility using contact paper, ruffles, shelf liner, sweet little color-coordinated pouches and shelves, magnetic mirrors, beads, decorative buttons and the like, trying to out-cheery or out-trendy each other. Many did whole themes in the school's colors, or paeans to favorite bands or actors. Others copied design tips from hot teen magazines. I suppose it's not shock to see that this same generation grew up to worship at the shrine of Martha Stewart.

I stitched my sad little sampler partly for fun, and partly to poke fun at the overly elaborate, overly girly, just plain over done lockers of my peers. I don't remember if the other girls thought much of my embroidered commentary, but I do remember a couple of teachers coming by and asking to see the thing, then convulsing with laughter. And seeing it each day jump-started my mornings with much-needed sarcasm. Subversive stitching in 1968 from a sardonic pre-teen.

As to the various animals and plants on the sampler, there's no deeper symbolism behind them, except for the cats and the budgie at the bottom. When I was a kid we had a couple of cats. The white one with the black tail was named Pixie. The Manx was Cola, from his rain-soaked tabby color and the Spanish for "tail" - an attribute he lacked. The other tabby and the bird belonged to friends. It happens that my severe allergies disappeared when I went off to college, away from home and the cats. I still miss their antics, but I'll never live with a cat again. Breathing is much more fun.

I'll post pix of some of the other pieces. At least one of them also qualifies for the subversive label.

Technorati : Embroidery

In counterpoint to the last post - here's Smaller Daughter, armed with round shield, spear, sword and helm of her own manufacture.

In fact, yesterday her class, armed with similar tin-foil weapons, pillaged the fourth grade and selected offices in her elementary school. She got extra credit for trying to capture the principal.

To explain - her fifth grade class is finishing up a world history unit on the viking era of exploration and conquest. They've done famous leaders, history, migrations and settlement, culture, literature, technology and crafts. They played with spinning, sprang, kennings, navigation, sagas, and allthings; and finished up by staging their own raid on the rest of the school. They didn't really burn or steal anything, instead they mostly ran around shaking their weapons and shouting, held some stuffed animals hostage, seized some pre-arranged "treasure", tossed some papers around and had general kid-amok fun. No actual fourth-graders were harmed.

I was impressed that the unit mentioned sprang, but it turns out that Smaller Daughter's teacher is a knitter. I should have known.

Technorati : knitting

Google Images now contains Life Magazine's vast photo archive. If you're old enough to remember the heyday of home delivered magazines, you will most certainly remember that glossy, oversized, highly visual catalog of each week's events. It was spectacular.

Buried in that archive are a nice set of knitting-related images, mostly from the 1930s and 1940s. Most of them are from three issues, a 1939 one on knitting for the British army, a 1941 how-to-knit issue, and a 1952 home/baby knitting article. The accompanying articles aren't in this archive, but the how-to and finished object pictures that formed the core are. There is also a smattering of celebrities at rest/with family pictures, some travelogue/news shots of women knitting abroad, and a couple of college girls knitting from the late '40s/ early '50s - the last time there was an on-campus knitting fad.

The 1941 how-to series pix are interesting because they show the pencil grip throwing style (even though some of the series pix are missing_. There are also at least one 1952 vintage how-to, showing Continental method:

• Long tail cast on
• K2tog decrease
• Binding off technique #1
• Binding off technique #2
• Binding off technique #3
• Purling #1
• Purling #4
• K2,P2 Ribbing
• Picking up along an edge #1
• Picking up along an edge #2
• Knit stitch (Continental , from 1952 article)

And some finished objects

• Knitted faceless Balaclava or hood
• Hat/scarf combo (open end of tube scarf forms hat)
• Another shot of the hat/scarf
• Soaker

Here are some of the other shots:

• Celebrity knitter Eleanor Roosevelt knitting on a plane? train?, 1937
• British showgirls knitting, 1937
• Cover picture from the 1941 how to knit issue
• British store clerk knitting (1939)
• Celebrity knitter Prisca Bunau-Varilla (French Ambassador's daughter) 1960
• Cute woman gas station attendant knitting
• British waiter doing troop knitting (note method of holding yarn)
• Celebrity knitter Eve Arden, 1959
• Hotel page boys knitting, 1939
• Height of the campus argyle knitting craze, 1948
• Wounded Finnish soldier and nurse knitting, (note that he's using Continental method, she's throwing. I bet he learned as a kid at home.) 1940
• Lose weight while knitting? 1940
• Celebrity knitter Jane Froman, 1936
• Chinese girls knitting on long bamboo(?) DPNs, 1946
• Gangsters' wives knit, too. 1949
• Celebrity knitter JoAnne Woodward. Perhaps Paul is getting socks, 1958
• British toddler playing with knitting 1939
• Celebrity knitter Barbara Bel Geddes 1959
• Striking women auto workers knitting (France), 1937
• British ambulance driver knitting, 1937
• Knitting in public, 1944
• Troop knitting 1939
• Celebrity knitting Byron Nelson and wife (wife knitting), 1945

But to me, the most interesting picture is that of this little bootie, from 1952. Although I prefer not to repost the pix of others, I think fair use here applies so you can see these side by side:

The "Janes Booties" (at right) I often knit are one of those much loved, scribbled-on-an-envelope patterns passed hand to hand. The version I use was posted to the KnitList by Ann Kreckel in 1995. I did a step by step how-to for Ann's pattern in 2005. Extremely similar patterns have appeared in a letter to Threads Magazine, and in the 1999 Knitters Socks Socks Socks competition book. The Threads letter was printed in the 1991s, and was penned by an elderly lady who said she'd been knitting them since her girlhood. My guess is that the ur-source for this pattern might have been a magazine article or leaflet appearing sometime between 1900 and 1920.

I'm always on the lookout for earlier manifestations of Janes Booties so this shot grabbed my attention. The Life magazine bootie looks a bit squashed and shallow compared to my green bootie, but I can see that it shares basic construction with the pattern I use. First, the bottom looks to be a rectangle of garter stitch. The sides of the bootie look like more garter stitch picked up around the edge of the sole plate strip, then knit in the round. The top of the toe looks like it was worked flat, back and forth, culminating with the tube-knit ankle part, worked in the round on the ankle stitches plus those from the top of the foot. Eyelets form the holes for the tie string.

While the Life bootie is much less plump, with a shallow toe area and overall less boxy appearance (no garter stitch welts to form the sides), and ended off in a plain garter anklet rather than a rolled stockinette top, it was made the same way. I'd consider it a first cousin to Ann Kreckel's pattern. If anyone spots earlier incarnations of similarly constructed booties in historical sources, please let me know!

Technorati : knitting

Sometimes the materials speak:

On the knitting front, I've been totally consumed again at work. I've managed to do a couple more rows of the spiderweb section on my olive green tablecloth, and a little bit more on the OpArt blanket - but not much of either.

I've also received a special request for an unusual baby hat, the amazing flood of co-worker fecundity continuing unabated. I am contemplating either the now classic Chicken Viking Hat or the Baby Squid Hat, although I am open to suggestions of other similarly absurd headgear.

Technorati : knitting

The OpArt baby blanket continues to grow. Being all garter stitch with very obvious markers to wake the fingers up when the four increase points are reached, it's an autopilot project, ideal for knitting while watching subtitled movies:

Right now it's approximately 22 inches across, and I'm not finished with the second 6-ridge (12 row) set of stripes. The pattern continues on for four more stripes, one each of 7, 8, 9, and 10 ridges, alternating colors (a larger size goes on for two more stripes of 11 and 12 ridges respectively). I'll keep going until I either run out of yarn, or I feel the thing is big enough to be a lap/basket/car seat blanket - at least another two stripes. The jury is still out on whether or not I'll end off with one last stripe of orange. The Record 210 yarn is holding out fine. I'm on my third skein of each color, and have at least two more of each as yet untouched. I did hit a couple of poorly plied spots in one skein of the yellow. They were bad enough to excise rather than work in, although that made even more ends.

For the record, given the vast number of ends, I've been finishing them off as I go rather than waiting until the knitting is complete. I strongly recommend doing it that way, unless you've got a "finishing party" to go to.

What subtitled movie was I watching? Sansho the Bailiff. It's from famous Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi, made in 1954. It's bout the development of compassion in a brutal time. In the movie the family of a noble minded official is torn apart, and the children grow up in the most wretched of circumstances, yet maintain their absent father's ideals. An excellent film, but very affecting. Bring a box of tissues.

Technorati : knitting

Progress on all fronts, but slow progress here. My green tablecloth continues to grow, at the glacial pace of of four rounds per week due to the massive number of stitches per round. I've got two projects in the noodling stage, things that give me ample daydreaming fodder for my commute. One is a rescue of glorious fall foliage color hand-painted yarn from a project long consigned to my Chest of Knitting Horrors™. The other is the long patterned stockings inspired by the fashion clip I posted two weeks ago.

I don't know how other people design things, but my own processes are more like back burner simmering than line cook production. But this can happen in one of two ways.

The first is more project-centric. An idea occurs, I chew on it a while, running through mental CADD rotations to visualize it in three dimensions. Sometimes an idea dies during this process. Some factor (or more usually, reality) makes me realize that the thing can't be knit or would not have a high probability of success. Other times all things fall into place. I see the finished product, the materials and techniques required, and have worked out all but the final math and gauge long before I pick up the needles. I do this think-work mostly during my commute back and forth to work, and its one of those insidious things that I have to fight off during long, boring meetings. I'd say about half of my projects start this way, and tend to finish almost all of them.

The second is more yarn-centric. If I have a particular yarn in hand the process works a bit differently. It moves out of the think stage very quickly, and often with only the vaguest of notions on how to proceed. In this case I get the yarn on the needles and begin to play. That's how the Kureopatora's Snake happened. I stumbled across a couple of left over skeins of the stuff and my magpie color sense was rekindled. I needed a scarf to give as a gift and the yarn's colors held me in thrall, so I sat down and played. It took me half a movie's worth of fiddling to get started, but the thing shaped up quickly after that. I ended up ripping out my beginning and starting a second time so I could write down what I had been doing before I forgot.

Something similar happened when I did my old See Saw Socks pattern. Regia Ringel was new then, and not widely distributed. I ran across a couple of skeins in a discount bin at the old Women's Industrial Union crafts shop downtown in Boston (now long gone). The shop person lamented that the colors were nice, but no one was buying this splotchy stuff. Now stripers are understood and appreciated but back then, there being no knit samples or on-line pix of the finished product, the piebald skeins were a hard sell. I started the toe-ups and was delighted by the striping, but didn't want to make a boring-to-knit all stockinette ankle. So having determined the depth of each stripe (more or less) I began to play with various directionally skewed designs that worked into my stitch count and that row count. And serendipity hit:

Please don't ask me for the pattern. I sold the original pattern and all reprint rights for See Saw to KnitNet. They've subsequently featured it twice in their newsletter. If you want it, you'll have to go through them.

While the remaining half of my projects do begin with the yarn instead of the extended think session, it's worth noting that my most spectacular failures and most happy successes all came from this method. The sobering note is that failures that began with the yarn instead of the planning do outnumber the successes, and most of my Chest of Knitting Horrors™ residents were yarn-inspired.

Technorati : knitting

Elder daughter's Walker Learn to Knit book afghan continues to grow. She's working in Cascade 220, in assorted greens gleaned from the orphan skein shelf at Wild & Woolly in Lexington (our local yarn shop).

Her goal is to have enough finished by next fall to furnish herself with an off-to-college blanket. Younger daughter has decided that crochet is easier for her to handle than knitting, and armed with books from my library and yarn from my stash, is making a stab at a zig-zag blanket for her favorite stuffed animal. So the transmission of obsession is prospering here at String.

On my own knitting - I am making good albeit slow progress on the olive green tablecloth. The section I'm working now is rather spider-webby. It's an eternity of rows alternating between [S2-k1-PSSO, (YO)2] and [K (K1,P1)] to make an infinitude of center double decrease columns with large eyelets between them. Given that the piece has something close to 1,200 stitches per round at this point, each row takes forever. Especially the double decrease row. The last thing I want to do is miss a loop. So progress is slow to accumulate, especially because I want this spider web area to be at least six to eight inches deep (yes I do have the play in the linking brides to accommodate the fixed stitch count of this patten and corresponding total diameter increase of the round cloth over the added depth).

In other news, I heard that a local yarn source is closing. Not my favorite shop (thank goodness), but a two-outlet big-box store that focused mostly on fabric and decorating, that greatly expanded and then shrank its yarn department in response to the scarf knitting fad of a couple of years ago. I was always ambivalent about it. Although I did buy fabric there on occasion, didn't buy their yarn because I wasn't fond of that store's effect on other area yarn shops. At one point they absorbed several of the better mid-range suppliers' products, then using their volume purchase to engineer discounts from the makers, sold those yarns at prices significantly lower than smaller stores could manage. Doing this they cornered the market on (for example) Plymouth Lopi. Small knitshops could no longer afford to stock it and lost significant foot traffic as a result. Now the big box store is closing. No more yarn, no more fabric.

Now the reversal of yarn sales wasn't the cause. I suspect rising rents (the mall in which it is located has expanded considerably in the past two years), the general decrease in discretionary spending (much of their revenue was from their home decoration department), and a decrease in interest in quilting and home sewing in general. Most of the times I hit the fabric department, I was the youngest person shopping, and being a Boomer, I'm no longer a sweet, young thing. Changes in the economy, changing customer demographics, crashes in the popularity of multiple hobbies, rising infrastructure costs all add up to the loss.

Now there's a new problem. Where to buy fabric? What's left in the inner/outer suburb belt here is woefully inadequate - shops that have scaled back their sewing departments in favor of scrapbooking and other low-investment/low skill hobbies. There are a couple of small stores scattered around, useful but with very limited stocks. I haven't been downtown to what used to be the garment district in Boston in years. It used to be the home of several stores where bolts went to die - remnant shops and mill end type places. But that was long ago, and that neighborhood has gone upscale.

In the mean time, I note the store's passing, plus the closing of a couple of the smaller yarn shops that opened up at the crest of the scarf knitting fad, and hope that retrenchment will leave us with local yarn stores. I for one need to see and feel yarn for inspiration - the texture, the drape, the weight, the loft, and most of all - the color. I can't buy blind off the web, based on photos, descriptions, and reviews - even those on wiseNeedle. I value the expertise and help available at local shops, and am willing to pay a small surcharge per skein to support that help (rather than spending it on shipping). And most of all, I like the experience of seeing and evaluating alternatives in person, being able to take leaps of inspiration based on the stock of yarns and patterns at hand.

Perhaps the rise in Internet yarn shopping is part of the stampede towards sameness I see across many knitters' projects reported on line. Someone knits something, and it turns out quite well. Other well-connected knitters see the success and want to duplicate it. So they too buy the same pattern and same yarn. Both being known entities, purchase sight-unseen is a viable option. Now there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing any of that, knitting up something that's a proven winner, or using the exact yarns (or even colors) specified in a pattern or that someone else has used. It's safe. It's proven, and the chances of success are magnified. But it's not the way I knit. And I'm guessing that there are other "bungie jumping" knitters out there that find the proliferation of the latest got-to-knit item stifling, and yearn for a wander through a warren of tactile and visual inspiration. If you're out there, please speak up. And visit your local yarn shop before it's gone, too.

Technorati : knitting

It's official. There may be a week and a half to go before school in this area starts up again, but summer is now officially over. This weekend past we retrieved the offspring from Roads End Farm:

Now it's the double-time quick slide back to lunch boxes, homework, and maternal nagging.

On the olive green tablecloth - progress continues. I decided to add width by continuing to knit center out rather than adding an edging knit around the circumference. I did some planned increases in a solid strip to bring the stitch count up to a multiple suitable for working an extended pattern I found on another cloth in the same Duchrow volume. It's a wide panel of [K3tog, (yo)2x] ground, with all of the triples aligning to make prominent radial ridges. Sort of close-in spiderwebby. I'll work them though as center double decreases to increase the effect. When the panel is about 5 inches wider (about 10 inches total in diameter for the entire cloth), I'll branch out into the plume-like/peacock final pattern from the Duchrow instructions. My only concern is that I may have to rip back a bit and start again. I think that the new area is a bit rippled. I probably should have continued for a couple more rows of plain stockinette before launching my chosen ridge and terminal frond pattern. I'll know for sure after the next row. If anyone is keeping track, my circumference is now something like 960 stitches around.

And from the wide-wide world - I was surprised to see this illustration in the fashion column in this weekend past's Boston Globe magazine section:

Knitted lace high stockings. I can do that! Perhaps I will. Elder Daughter would probably have a fit of delight to receive a pair.

For the record, some look like they have stirrup bottoms rather than full feet, and some are listed as tights, meaning they have a pantyhose style integrated top rather than just a stocking and garter tie like the leftmost offering in the pix above.

Technorati : knitting

Here I am. Remember me?

I've managed to survive a perfect storm of deadlines at work - about 3 months of +80 hour weeks, odd improvised snacks instead of meals, and barely seeing the Resident Male and the kids. Then I collapsed into our week long escape to Cape Cod family vacation. Seven blissful days with no TV, no computers, no cell phones. Just watching the tide reclaim and surrender the strand, reading, playing golf, knitting, playing Killer Bunnies, cooking on the beach, and paddling Feckless II - our replacement kayak. (Feckless I was swept away during a storm last summer).

I'm now back, facing a double whammy here at String. Not only am I months behind on wiseNeedle and String-related mail and maintenance, plus my personal eMail inbox, I also find that I was hit by the dread Comcast Port 25 block outgoing mail problem, which appears to have started out as an intermittent nuisance before hardening into impenetrability. If you've been looking for a note from me starting around early May, deepest apologies. I think we've got the thing licked now, switching to a different outgoing port, and mail both in and out should be flowing again.

Now, what did I knit on the beach? Nothing exciting. I didn't take my green lace piece. I've tried to knit lace yarn in windy dampness before and haven't been happy. I didn't take my North Truro counterpane. I had intended on doing so, but I came home late on Friday and we had to be in the car and on the road before breakfast on Saturday. I didn't have time to dig it out, and make sure that all was ready to go. Instead I opted for something new, quick and near-mindless. I took a bag of yarn I got at my LYS' annual sale with the intention of figuring out a baby blanket to do with it.

The yarn is a bit unusual. It's Lana Grossa Bambino, machine washable acrylic/polyester blend worsted weight novelty yarn. It's a short plush/fuzzy, with splotches of contrasting color. It knits up into an extremely soft, terry-like fabric. However the heavy plush obscures almost all stitch texture, and the spots of color compound the problem. About all you can do with this stuff is stockinette, garter or very wide ribs (think k5, p5 at the least). Anything else is totally lost.

So what to do?

First I considered something very flat and very plain. But the thought of knitting all that garter or stockinette was too boring for words. Plus the spots would have that loving-hands-at home look. Not fun. So I played a bit and came up with something simple that puts more movement into the color splotches.

I cast on for the width of the piece and knit four rows, to make two garter ridges, then I began working out in garter stitch Entrelac, on squares of 16 stitches (yes, I cast on a multiple of 16). It's still all knit, and not the most exciting thing in the world to produce, but it's more interesting that working the piece plain and flat. And the movement of stitch direction stirs the color splotches a jaunty jig. Compare the very first couple of rows at the bottom to the body and you'll see what I mean. For once it's my subject that's fuzzy and not my photography.

[If pix above aren't showing, we're experiencing technical difficulties. Apologies! Will work on resolving them tonight.]

Not an exciting project, but a simple and satisfying one. Plus it's only two courses of squares away from being done.

Technorati : knitting

I took the kids today out on one of our now traditional Spring jaunts - the Gore Place Sheep Shearing Festival in Waltham, Massachusetts. We've been there most years since we moved here in 1996, missing only a couple of the rainiest days.

This year I am of mixed feelings about the day. To be fair, there are far more activities and displays now than there ever were. The festival has grown quite a bit over the years. They've added a magic show, expanded the food offerings, added more animal exhibits (oxen, chickens, sheep, goats, vicunas); they've added an equestrian demonstration, and now feature a Revolutionary War era re-enactment bivouac. The day is full of things to see and do. Attendance is way up, especially among those with kids under the age of 10. But sadly what fiber arts focus there was in the past appears to be on the way out.

Sheep are still being shorn, both with mechanical clippers and hand-operated snips. The family that does the sheepdog demonstrations still does its fascinating display. The lacemakers are still there, working their exacting way through spectacular pillow lace patterns. There are some beautiful vicunas on display, and one fiber-related exhibit tent remains. Four out of six slots were filled in the fiber tent. One was local shop stalwart Minds Eye Yarns. It was an excellent booth, filled with lots of yarn, but most of it was commercial product that I can buy in the shop itself, or in my local yarn store. Minds Eye did have a display of their own hand-dyed - mostly sock and worsted weight. Bartlett Yarns also had stock of their rustic Maine style worsteds and heavy worsteds. There were two other yarn vendors there, too. One selling rovings and combed/dyed fleeces, and one selling spun hand-dyed worsted.

There were a couple of other yarn sellers scattered through the crafts fair and historical display areas. One was a vendor offering reclaimed cashmere yarn - she buys discarded sweaters, unravels them, washes the yardage, and plies it into sock and DK weight. Interesting but short yardage, and I would have preferred non-pastels, and something that was lace weight. The other two were hand spinners offering a variety of their own products. One was nice enough but in short quantity and plied to worsted weight. The other had mostly yarns whose unevenness, color combos, and overtwist plying were appealing to some, but left me cold.

I miss the booths of some of the other smaller producers - Moorehouse Merinos, Nicks Meadow Farm, and several other concerns that have offered beautiful hand-spun or dyed sport weight and finer yarns. I also missed the fiber/textile facts tent sponsored in previous years by the Boston Area Spinners and Dyers Guild. That one had hands-on activities for the kids, and was something they looked forward to, too.

Maybe the early date of the event posed problems for the Guild and the other fiber tent regulars. It's usually around mid-May. Maybe for the small suppliers the cost of attending wasn't covered by income earned at previous events, or travel expense is prohibitive given current gas prices. Who knows... But I can say that this is the first year I tried hard to find something interesting, preferably unique but well made, in a color that sang to me, and came up with nothing.

Yes, it's true. I came home from fiber festival without a single bit of yarn.

Technorati : knitting

Like most parents, I spend a lot of time rolling my eyes at what passes for homework and school assignments. There are way too many feel-good tasks - making posters and collages, even well into high school. Where are the analytical reading pieces? Where is learning how to write a convincing essay? But every once and a while something engaging and creative is requested.

This month Smaller Daughter (now 9) had to construct a Rube Goldberg device, with a goal of popping a balloon. I sat on my hands and watched her experiment for the better part of a week. She scribbled out her designs and went down several possible paths before settling on her device components. She constructed (and re-constructed) each station scrounged from toys and oddments at hand, testing out each one individually, then assembled them into her final chain reaction. Eventually, after much tinkering she got it just right, and the whole thing worked as intended.

I wish I had a video camera, but you'll have to use your imagination. Especially the part where the balloon makes a satisfying pop, and she leaps up in triumph.

Click on any thumbnail on this website to see detailed pix.

Someday I will loose this proto-engineer on the world. I hope the world will be ready.

In knitting news - not much. I've been working like a demon. All I've had time to do over the past two weeks is one mindless sock. For me to take two weeks to knit one sock says a lot. This one is a standard 72 stitch sock with a figure-8 toe and short rowed heel, worked using five DPNs. That calculates out to 18 stitches per needle. My insertion strip is 18 stitches wide as graphed below, so I do the pattern in its entirety once on each of the four working needles. I've stuffed a piece of white paper inside the sock so you can see the diamond patterning. and provided a chart for the simple design .

I used Meilenweit Mega Boot Stretch, knit at about 9spi. The shaded reds with the touch of orange is color #709. I'm not wild about this yarn. It feels nice and cushy knit up, but I don't enjoy tensioning it. The stretch is throwing my gauge off a bit, especially on my heel's purl rows. It also is rather lofty unstretched, and prone to catch and split on needle tips. I'll post a review of the stuff when the pair is finished.

Technorati : knitting, rube goldberg

I'm not sure what the next challenge should be. I really should finish the Galaga hat. I'm still working on the Kyoto (finished with the body pieces, now about a quarter of the way through the two sleeves). But having partially finished things has never stopped be from beginning something new before.

One possibility is to do something lacy taking advantage of the color properties of Noro's Kureyon sock yarn. I couldn't leave Wild & Woolly (in Lexington, MA - my favorite yarn shop) without it because these colors latched on to my magpie self and refused to let go.

I've been told that some folk think this yarn is too twisted and just a little bit harsh for socks. While not Regia smooth, it's not particularly harsh to me. I suspect that like most Noro yarns, while they never achieve Merino softness, washing will make a tremendous difference. And for my purposes, rewinding to reduce twist and in the process increasing loft, isn't optimal. I like my lace yarns to be tightly twisted.

But there remains the question of what to do with it. Something directional might work well with the repeat lengths, but so many other people have done Entrelac in these yarns. The same method I used for the Kureopatora's Snake might be an idea - upping the number of stitches across to yield the same finished dimensions in the smaller gauge - but I want to do something else that's more airy. Mating lacy stitches with the riot of hues is always a big challenge because textures tend to fight with the patterns produced by the yarn's transition among colors. I'll have to do more thinking on this one.

My other looming temptation is one of two tightly twisted little knots of Malabrigio Merino laceweight. I bought two - one in Emerald Blue (blues and teals) and one in Amoroso (a stunning garnet/cherry blend). I wound the blue into a ball last night.

The super-soft single-ply yarn relaxed and got considerably more lofty in the process - a bit of a disappointment for me, but not fatal. It just means I will have to use a much larger needle than I originally anticipated. Also some teasing apart was necessary because the thin strands were in the process of mating with each other, and some were slightly fulled into their neighbors. Thankfully I did not have to break the yarn to tame it. This slightly variegated yarn presents a smaller color challenge than the Noro, but a larger one due to skein length. 470 yards should be more than enough for a small scarf. To be sure that I will not run out mid-project, I will need to work it differently than the pieces I've been doing. I would revert to the method I used for Kombu - first knitting a narrow width of edging (the bottom), picking up stitches along the top and then knitting both the body and the left and right edgings at the same time. That way I could see how much I had left at all times, and maximize the scarf's length by continuing until I had just enough yarn left to do the small strip of edging at the top. Or perhaps I'd chart out something with two decorative ends and included borders...

In the mean time, going back to a single color world - I can report that Elder Daughter is making excellent progress on her Walker Learn to Knit Afghan Book project. She's using Cascade 220, all various greens and creams, bought one skein at at time from the orphan end of dyelot bin. She is going more or less in order, with skips ahead dictated by how much of what color she has on hand at any one time. I suspect that she'll soon start improvising because she's beginning to accumulate a stash of little leftover balls too small to use even for the book's two-tone squares. Here's the collection to date:

and a few close-ups (unblocked):

1 2 3
4 56

So far she's covered basic knit and purl (4 above), twisted stitches (1), simple directional decreases (2), yarn-overs (2), simple increases, cables (5), mosaic knitting (3,6). All in easy to digest aliquots and explained well enough that she's been able to noodle it out all on her own. To be fair, I did show her a couple of tricks for 1x1 twisted stitch cables, but that was just a hands-on for the same methods described in her book. If you're an experiential learner and you're looking for a nice survey course in basic knitting, you might benefit from this classic bit of instruction. My only criticism of it is that it was written before Walker moved to charting - a vital skill these days as more and more resources rely heavily on that technique.

Needless to say, I'm quite proud of Elder Daughter and her ongoing project.

Technorati : knitting

You may or may not have noticed, but we've made a small improvement here at String-or-Nothing. We've moved the blog out from underneath the wiseNeedle URL's umbrella. While formerly we were at

http://www.wiseneedle.com/string-or-nothing

you can now find us at

http://www.string-or-nothing.com

All of the individual page names (the part of each address after "nothing/" remains the same. All links to patterns and pages are being automatically redirected from the old address to the new one, so if you've got old links they should still work.

We did this to simplify referring tags, to manage bandwidth consumption, and to improve the reliability of the comments feature. Please let us know if you experience any problems accessing String or its archives.

O.k. I've finished and posted the half-completed blog entry I was working on last month when life so rudely interrupted me. Since then (if anyone is interested) work deadlines have come and gone; our normal holiday-related seasonal bustle has forced its way in and retreated, complete with the annual flood of cookies and New Years cassoulet; and we even managed to grab a couple of days to run away with the kids to visit Washington D.C. The last was the most fun, being a time to revisit the Smithsonian museums and a dear family friend in Maryland - about the only things I miss from the time we lived down in that area.

In terms of knitting, progress has been made as well, both by me and by Elder Daughter. I'm especially proud of her's. She designed and knit herself a pair of fingerless mitten style handwarmers from Cascade Fixation/Elan Esprit. They are K2, P2 ribbed throughout, with a twist-stitch cable running down the back of each hand.

Following up her mitts, she has now embarked upon Her First Sweater ™. She's using Sirdar Denim Ultra, a loosely twisted lofty and soft acrylic/cotton/wool blend. She's getting the recommended gauge of 9 st/ 12 rows = 10 cm, and is working up a simple top-down stockinette stitch pullover from a pattern I calculated for her using Sweater Wizard (About size 40, needle size US #11,13, approximately 720 yards of yarn knitting to Ultra's gauge)

She's up to the first sleeve, and is basking in the delight of mastering the arcane arts of following a written pattern and the SSK decrease, so that the tapering under the arm on her sleeve is symmetrical. Pix of her sweater once it matures from the large blue speckled mass phase and sports a bit more recognizable shaping. Due to the huge gauge it's galloping along, so that should be quite soon.

My own holiday-related knitting was light this year - three pairs of socks and two scarves. In addition, I knit myself another pair of Fingerless Whatevers, quick replacements for the last pair, one of which has now gone AWOL. I'm also now about halfway done with Elder Daughter's Kyoto, and made good progress on my latest lace doodle scarf. Pix of these in the next post.

Resolutions? None. Except for this.

Technorati : knitting

This little fellow is fluttering in distress on my back porch. He doesn't appear to be injured, but his behavior is that of a bird that's been hurt - tolerating people walking close by, and flat out panting in fear.

He's small - smaller than a house sparrow, and distinctly greenish above. The eye stripe and the crown are sharply defined gray with a faint black line around it. The eye is brown, and the bill is something like a sparrow or tiny vireo. And the feet are sort of blueish.

We've got no place to bring him, nor do we wish to cause further harm, so we're leaving him alone for now. But I've not seen a bird like this around here before. For the record, we're in the Metro Boston area, a close-in suburb to the northwest; inside Route 128.

Leafing through bird books and on-line references, but I don't see anything that has the gray hat and mask, brown eye, olive upper part and cream breast. But this might be an immature bird not yet displaying its final colors. Any birders have an idea on what our little refugee might be?

UPDATE

Special thanks to Sally, who identified our little flutterer as a Philadelphia Vireo. We kept watch against cats (from a distance), but otherwise didn't bother him or go near him. About an hour and a half after he was first spotted on the ground he shook out his wings and zipped up into the trees. Given the range reported on the bird ID link page Sally provided, he's just passing through on his way down to the tropics somewhere. I hope he makes it.

Technorati : birds

On the baby blanket, I decided to rip back the entire edging (about half-finished at the point of decision). I decided I wanted to re-do corner #1, plus I didn't like the way that the joins along the first edge looked. I'd been reducing along the body, working roughly every six rows of edging onto four live body stitches. While the points were lying flat, the yarn I'm using is heavy enough to make the necessary decreases along the body look clunky. (You can get away with this in a fine lace, but not in the almost DK weight I'm using). Instead I've opted for a bit fuller edge with (perhaps) a bit of ruffle. I'd post pix, but they pretty much show the same blanket body as the last post, but with an arrow that says "edging used to be here." More on this later this week.

In other news, I finally got to the post office to pick up the mail I had on hold over vacation week. There, perched on top of the pile was my July No Sheep secret pal package. The formerly mysterious (but now known) Melanie was kind enough to send this:

That's two skeins of Schachenmayr Denim in a sunshiny yellow/orange, plus two tins of killer tea. I dance a dance of thanks! I'm looking forward to trying it all. On the downstream end, I finally made contact with my secret pal recipient, and am busy picking out the goodies for her.

And finally - progress on the bathroom front. Which is a good thing because washing one's hair in the sink can get old after five weeks. The tile is now (mostly) up and grouted. Vanity, storage cabinet, fixtures and finish work are left:

From the top - the view from the hall door. You can see the cleaned, repaired and repainted radiator, the pipes for the bathtub, and the new window frame into which the original stained glass will be fitted. Next is the shower, followed by the view from the window. No I didn't crawl out on the roof to take this - there's a sleeping porch on the other side of the window. And finally, a close-up of the tilework's green pencil line and chair rail - just for Kathryn, who has confessed to extreme bath envy.

If you've written to me in the past two weeks and haven't had a response - apologies. I'm still munching my way through my inbox.

Technorati : bathroom renovation, knitting

Back from our annual no-computer vacation on Cape Cod. Seven days of blissful nothing in North Truro.

This year's round of nothing included lots of knitting and reading time, a whale watch, some golf, watching the opening night of a thoroughly enjoyable Much Ado About Nothing, a couple of excellent dinners out, plus several equally excellent ones we prepared ourselves. Including paella on the beach - cooked on the grill against a Provincetown sunset:

The only less than ideal moment of the week was the last voyage of the Feckless, seen here in happier days:

Our Gannet II model two-person open cockpit kayak was swept away from the beach behind the Top Mast Hotel in North Truro by a pre-dawn storm on 5 July. We searched Beach Point, and the Provincetown area surf and mud flats for two days, but never found it. The loss has been reported to the Harbor Masters at Truro and Provincetown, and to the police in North Truro. In the remote chance that there's anyone on the bay side of the Outer Cape reading this, there's a finder's reward out for the Feckless, please keep an eye out for it.

In knitting news, I spent the week working on a small baby blanket. I'm using Lana Grossa Merino 2000 (aka Cool Wool) - an extremely soft multi-strand machine washable Merino, in a weight somewhat between sport and DK. It's well twisted although like any yarn made up of huge number of tiny plies, it can split. Stitch definition is superior thanks to its spring and almost tubular construction. I've adapted yet another pattern from the Duchrow series. This garter stitch based double zig-zag pattern has particularly nice eyelet roses in the center of each diamond. It was meant as a strip insertion. I've used it three times across my blanket, separated and framed by plain stockinette. For the edging, I added a garter stitch adaptation of a large eyelet border, shamelessly plucked from Heirloom Knitting, but altered a bit to better match the garter stitch all SSK eyelet texture of the main body. Also, I'm attempting to miter my corners on the fly. So far I like the second one I did, but not the first (I may rip back the edging to that point and re-do #1 now that I understand how to do it better. Second corner is shown in detail below:

I probably won't be posting this pattern here because there hasn't been very much interest in my recent pattern posts, and also because I've been working without making notes. The corners in particular would be difficult to explain.

So there you have it. Where I've been and what I've been doing. Standard post vacation let-down here, contemplating the 51 weeks before I get to do it again.

Technorati : knitting

It looks like I've been tagged as a "Thinking Blogger" by several people, including Jenna at Girl from Auntie, and Swapna. I'm flattered, also delighted to be food for thought for someone out there.

Although I don't do memes, I'll bend the rule and tag some other websites that make me think. But they're not necessarily knitting blogs. Believe it or not, I don't think about knitting all the time. Besides almost all of the knitting-related sites I would have tagged have been touched over the last month. That's a basic problem with referential memes in special interest communities - they loop back on themselves quickly, like big ripples in a small pool.

1. Things Magazine - Wandering compendium of fascinating links to explore. Most have a tie to architecture or art (but not all do). Some are departure points for contemplation, some are just plain neat. Others are immediately useful. Today's for example has a link to an international dress size converter.
2. Chocolate and Zucchini - What's it like to be 20-something, food-smart with a participatory bent, an analytical mind, and living in Paris? Go through the archives here and melt with envy. The author has issued a cookbook, which is the first and only blog-related book I've ever bought.
3. Bibliodyssey - This author combs through on-line libraries looking for masterpieces of illustration. What's presented is a jumble of everything from Medieval manuscript illumination and incunabula, to early 20th century childrens' books, with detours through academic illustration, Japanese and Chinese scrolls, natural history compendiums, Islamic calligraphy, and early mechanical drawings.
   
   And two knitting blogs that (to my knowledge) haven't been tagged yet:
   
4. Twosheep - June "DNA Scarf" Oshiro is playing in her garden right now, but when she turns to spinning and knitting, all sorts of explorations happen. If I ever pick up spinning, it will be her fault. As it is, I'm looking at worms differently this morning.
5. TECHknitting - How-tos, presented by a far better illustrator, tech writer, and indexer than I'll ever be.

Technorati : knitting

My self-awarded belated birthday present has arrived! I ordered three specialty books on lace knitting, only one of which is in English. They're not out of print, but I don't have a separate blog category for current works, so they've ended up under that classification:

My first present to me is The Knitted Lace Patterns of Christine Duchrow, Vol. III, edited by Jules and Kaethe Kliot. It's 144 pages in German, with an English foreword and symbol glossary. The patterns are presented in the same graphed format as the Volume I book I am knitting from now. This collection is a bit larger, and is mostly home-decorative items (doilies, tablecloths, tea cloths, and a smattering of counterpanes), although a few caps, stoles, collars, jabots, and a blouse are presented, too. These 100+ patterns are also quite a bit more complex than the ones in Vol. I. I'm especially interested in the large oval shaped doilies, and in a a curious appendix of hand-drawn charts, in another somewhat related notation set, but unaccompanied by as-knit photos. Plus there's one unusual geometric insertion strip (p 86) and a photo of a lace edging (p.2 but no graph or English pattern provided), both of which may end up on my current very geometric stole. I'm very pleased with this one. The hand-drawn appendix is an appreciated lagniappe, but it is haunting me. I'm too much of a Pandora not to want to discover how those charts knit up.

Old World Treasures is 35-page leaflet in English, presenting patterns entirely in prose notation in a relatively large 12-point font (fellow bifocal victims, take heed!). The 21 patterns mostly for small motifs knit in the round (in the 40-75 row range), useful for doilies, insertions, cap backs, and the like. Three of the patterns are much larger, with one going up to just over 200 rows, and another appearing to be composed of eight smaller doilies stitched onto a larger separately made complementary center. There are motifs with 4, 6, and 8 sided symmetry. Stitch counts at the end of significant rows are given, which is a help. I'm not a big fan of prose directions, so my first step in working from this book would be to graph up anything I knit from this leaflet. Still, I am sorely tempted to attempt a "flower garden" sampler throw based on the centers of the various motifs presented. To do that I'd select either the 6-side or 8-side symmetry patterns and work them all up to the same row, then stitch them together with some plain (or simple leaf-bearing) motifs to complement their mixed complexity. There's ample food for thought here.

The last book is Knitted Lace (Kunst-Stricken), also edited by Jules and Kaethe Kliot - a 71-page collection of patterns by Marie Niedner. This is another collection of lacy knitting patterns of German origin, and using another early charting system unique to this particular original author. The designs presented are considerably less complex than the Duchrow ones, and includes a fair number of less-lacy textures. The charts are relatively small, and are not always near the text and illustrations they accompany. The collection includes edgings and insertions (many of which are closely related to patterns in the Walker treasuries), plus a strip sampler collection, several long-armed lace fingerless mittens, a couple of counterpanes, the expected flock of doilies and table spreads, plus bonnets, a couple of lace stoles and lace/beaded drawstring purses, and a couple of blouses/jackets - one of which may be intended for a baby or toddler. One quick idea gleaned from this book is an interesting way to finish out scallop shell motif counterpanes using half-motifs to eke out the left and right edges. While there are some interesting pieces here, this book is of as immediate inspiration as are the other two. Had I been able to browse the contents prior to purchase, I might have opted for the second Duchrow volume, or two more of the Penning-edited leaflets in its place. Still, I am not disappointed, and will be working something from this book. Someday.

On an entirely different front - I've mailed off my No Sheep Swap package. I included a ball of one of my favorite non-wool blends, a couple of beaded stitch markers of personal significance, and a vintage pattern magazine from my collection. I hope the package gets where it is going because my downstream swap partner never wrote back to confirm her address or preferences.

Technorati : knitting

I've gotten a couple of questions about the bathroom project - in specific, what we're aiming for. While we're not doing a historical restoration type true-to-period room, we are taking inspiration from the downstairs bathroom. It's been less meddled with than the upstairs horror:

The downstairs bath has one-inch white hex tile on the floor, white railroad tile (with high rail detail) on the walls, a very similar stained glass window to the one upstairs, and pedestal fixtures. I especially like the little sitzbath - it's great for kids' bird baths or foot washing when you don't want to fill a bigger tub. Along the way this bathroom has lost its original sink faucets and high tank toilet, but in addition to the mini-tub it still has an extra long full size tub (not in the photo); and a simple built-in wooden storage cabinet. We'll be replacing the toilet again as part of the current work due to some unfixable slow leaks on the one that's there. Someday we'll also do the sink hardware, but that's small peanuts compared to the awful upstairs. The rest of the downstairs bath works well enough, and is perfect for the house.

The upstairs bath will pick up the white hex floor and railroad tile with high rail look, with the addition of a green pencil line tile just under the rail. That should accent the green in the window. The upper walls will be painted white. We didn't want to go the restored tub route (weight, mostly plus some cautionary experiences from my earlier days working for an architectural antiquarian), and couldn't find a new pedestal tub in our price range, so we opted for the plainest white with-feet new tub we could find.

The other big departure from historical accuracy is a vanity stand that's natural oak color rather than one that's painted white. It's a free-standing furniture type piece rather than cabinetry, and will be topped with green stone and an underset white porcelain sink. Since the storage cabinet downstairs is original to the house and has never been painted, maybe the "only white painted woodwork in a bathroom restoration" rule isn't hard and fast.. Plain brushed nickel finish fixtures with white porcelain butterfly handles round it all out. And we've opted to keep the separate shower stall rather than combining the shower with the tub. The new shower will be the same depth but a bit wider than the old one (taking up some of the room previously wasted on the double sink vanity), with a very plain frosted glass door instead of a billowy curtain. We'll also keep the mini-radiator, but clean it and paint it white.

That's it. No over the top fancy fixtures, no bowl-mount waterfall sinks or spring rain experiences, no criminally expensive imported tile or lighting, no sybaritic soaking tubs or sauna showers. Just classic stuff, relatively unfussy and congruent with the style of the (mostly) untouched 1912 house. And with luck it will all work well together nicely, be easy to keep clean, and enjoyable to live with.

Technorati : bathroom renovation

A hectic past couple of days here at String. First, the website itself was attacked by spammer 'bots. Between Sunday afternoon and Monday night, they posted over 2,300 individual pingbacks to a collection of specious websites. I've been trolling through all past pages here, deleting the references. I think I've got them all now, but if you see one, please don't click on it - let me know instead and I'll deal with the blasted thing.

The other major event has been the kickoff of our long-awaited upstairs bathroom renovation. We've been in this house now about 2.5 years. All that time our upstairs family bath was only partly functional, with poorly functioning plumbing, 1960s-vintage yellow, clammy plastic paneling (impossible to get or keep clean), patched vinyl flooring, hideous pizza parlor hills-of-Tuscany wallpaper, crumbling laminate over particle board cabinetry, and awful mustard fixtures with gold tone faucets. The only nice thing about it was a stained glass window (partly visible in the first shot):

We've been plotting and planning to replace the whole lot with something functional, clean, and historical in mood. Yesterday the project began in earnest, with the contractor carefully removing the antique window and door, then gutting the rest. I promise not to make this a home-improvement blog, but if anything interesting happens, I might report it here.

And finally, just before the aforementioned chaos hit I had a happy not-so-surprise. I signed up for the No Sheep Swap. I generally don't participate in swaps or knit-alongs, but this one sounded like fun. My gracious and generous upstream swap partner (and all-around fascinating person) sent me this package of goodies:

It's a skein of South West Trading Company's Pure, a 100% soy silk yarn in happy berry colors, plus an embroidered purse big enough to be used for knitting accessory wrangling. Thank you, Melanie! I'll post back here after I've tried it out.

On the downstream end, I have been waiting to hear back from my assigned recipient, but my notes and card have gone unanswered. I can't wait any longer because to abide within the rules of the swap, I have to have her package in the mail shortly. I'll have to pick something out without guidance on color or yarn weight preference, and hope 1) she's there; and 2) she likes it.

[Aside: Apologies to Dena, who inadvertently was awarded an extra E when I was spelling her name. It stands for "excellent" and being obvious, intruded itself smack in the middle of my orthography. Thanks again for the fantastic lace-weight. I'm pretty sure I have enough, but if I do run out, I will resort to all sorts of begging, pleading, groveling, offering, trading, negotiating and bribery to secure some more.]

Technorati : bathroom renovation, knitting

Not sure if this will work o.k., but I'll give it a try.

I'm away from home base this week - attending a professional proposal managers' conference in Savannah, Georgia.  (There is no activity too obscure not to have its own professional association.)  Posting will be severely hampered by lack of time and camera until I return.

In the mean time I can say I brought a couple of things to work on. One is a pair of standard socks.  The other is the beginnigs of a more or less original lace shawl (more because I'm working it out on the fly, less because the patterns in it will be adapted from existing sources.)  I've started with an unusual large repeat lacy pattern from a Rachel Schnelling pattern compendium, published in German.  I'm using a magnificent tobacco color cashmere light laceweight given to me by long time knitpal Friend Deena.  (Hi, Deena!)  Pix upon my return.  I promise.

Life continues to intrude on my knitting time. Besides the regular flock of work-related obligations last week, I was surprised by Smaller Daughter. Thursday morning, rummaging in her backpack looking for her lunchbox, I found a notice for her elementary school's Colonial Day. It's an interactive festival sort of day, but one that requires all of the kids to dress in some attempt at a historical costume. (To be fair, I had heard about it long ago but forgotten.) So with a costume needed within 7 days, but my being away on a business trip starting Monday, my Memorial day weekend activities now included a close huddle with my ancient Elna sewing machine.

I wanted to make something relatively early - closer to first encounter than the Revolutionary War so that target child had a chance of wearing her outfit again. I pelted over to the fabric store during lunch hour on Friday and picked up a couple of remnants - 2.75 yards of a soft green twill whatever (plus matching thread), and one yard of a linen-look in white, all for about $10.00. The price was right.

Then I came home and thought about what to make. I had already made her a puffy white pirate shirt that could double as a chemise, and I have a small white cap and coif set. A skirt, a bodice of some sort, plus an apron would be enough. Drawstring skirts are easy enough, but the bodice part was tougher. Front lacing (instead of buttons) would do. Thankfully the topography of an 8-year old is easier to accommodate than that of a post-pubescent. I took measurements and drafted out a simple tab-bottom bodice with short sleeves. To make it substantial enough, I cut two of everything, so that the whole thing is self-lined. Here are the resulting pattern pieces, snipped from Red Sox coverage in the Boston Globe, plus all of the pieces sewn and assembled into the final bodice/jacket.

Things went pretty smoothly. I started by sewing the shoulder seams of the outer and inner shells, then uniting them along the neckline by sewing them together up the center front closure and around the neck. Then I sewed the side seams of the inner and outer shell, inverted the inner lining and pressed everything flat. The sleeves went together quickly, too. I sewed the inner and outer sleeve along the bottom edge, then did the underarm seam for the united unit all at once. I inverted the inner linings and pressed my sleeves. Once the sleeves were together, I set them in the bodice. Then I sewed together the inner and outer side of the tabs (that odd shaped piece below the sleeve) - making one for each quadrant of the garment. I turned them inside out and seamed them to the bottom edge of the outer shell. Last, I folded the inner shell's lower edge down to cover the raw edges of the tabs, and hemstitched it down by hand (too may layers for my sewing machine to cope with).

Since I didn't have much time, I didn't go with a zillion buttons or hand-made lacing holes. There's little if any tension on a little girl's bodice, so I didn't bother with reinforcing the lacing edge. I opted for the not very historical but really quick stage option - small rings sewn along the lacing edge to hold the fastening ribbon. Sacrificing a dozen split rings, formerly in use as place markers for lace knitting, I stitched them down by hand.

The apron was also easy. I cut two strips off the top of my yardage and lapping them end to end, pressed the seam lines for the apron's band and strings. Then I sewed the edges of the remaining piece (again doing it double-sided for additional body), gathered the raw edge and encapsulated it in the center of the apron. Time from taking the first measurements to final hemming - approximately 16 hours of work.

Here's the end result: one semi-historical kid-suit, inspiration from the 1620s. And yes, Target Child did help, learning how to use the sewing machine and working it for long, straight seams, tracing the pattern pieces with chalk, and doing a bit of the hand-work.

Knitting? I finished my vintage lace scarf. Blocking was postponed on account of Colonial Day.

Technorati : costumes, knitting, sewing

Mailing off the kids' summer camp registration forms means summer is edging ever closer.

For the past 6 summers, Older Daughter has gone to sleep-away camp in New Hampshire. Last year Smaller Daughter joined her for a couple of weeks. They adore the place.

Roads End Farm is a small, horsemanship camp in Chesterfield, not far from Keene. It's approximately 50 girls at a time, 15 staffers from around the world, and a herd of around 75 horses - mostly farm-bred Morgans, with a sprinkling of rescues and donated horses. Roads End has been around for 35 years, always run by the the Woodman family. It's a rustic place, sort of summer-on-grandpa's farm for kids who have no relatives in the country.

The girls do a lot of riding (of course) - all non-competitive English flat, with small group ring instruction and/or trail rides 6 days a week. Here's Elder Daughter on Ides, and Smaller Daughter on Goldie, both showing off their new-learned abilities on pick-up day. Note that two weeks before this picture was taken, Smaller Daughter knew horses only from picture books and TV.

Riders of all ability levels are welcome, from kids who arrive with their own mounts right down to kids who have never seen a horse up close and personal before. The girls are matched in teams of two with a horse of suitable level. Beginners for example are teamed with geriatric animals of sweet disposition (Goldie, last summer was well into her equine senior citizen years). There's no jumping, and techniques are more geared to riding for pleasure. Safety is a prime concern, both for the campers and the horses. The fact that so many of the horses are still in good condition and working with campers at advanced horse-ages is testament to the high level of animal care at the farm.

The girls provide all the care for their shared mounts - feeding, grooming, AND shoveling. Each girl gets to ride for half the morning, the other half being devoted to farm type chores in the barns, paddocks, vegetable gardens, kitchen or dorms. The afternoons include swimming instruction or free swim in a nearby lake, arts and crafts, and other typical camp-type activities. Hair dryers, TVs and electronics are banned (except for small MP3 players used during quiet times), but my own video gaming/Anime rats don't long for a single pixel while they are there.

All in all, it's a small, and very companionable place that's so much fun the participants don't realize they are learning big lessons about responsibility and teamwork. I hear that Roads End still has spots open for this summer. If you are looking for a good place for pony-crazy girls ages 8-high school - I strongly recommend the experience.

Oh. Knitting content. My kids bring their knitting to camp with them. That's where Alex works on her B. Walker Learn to Knit afghan project. She's accumulated small knitting circles around her each summer.

Technorati : knitting, summer camps

Deadlines. Evil deadlines have eaten my life.

Some knitting is happening in the small bits of time in between the deadlines. Not much though. The Squeaky Sweater is inching toward completion, although what should have taken just a couple of days has stretched into two weeks; the gray leaf sweater sits in a pile, waiting for final finishing; and the blue Klein bottle hat languishes, waiting for time to do the final grafting.

I long for May, when this spate of chaos abates somewhat. In the mean time, web presence and blogging in general will be sporadic at best, although I'll try to keep up with answering private mail.

Technorati : knitting

We here at String or Nothing are getting hammered by spam trackback requests. We are turning off the trackback feature in its entirety until this wave of annoyance has passed. Since we get almost no legitimate trackbacks, this shouldn't be much of an inconvenience to the few readers here. Apologies if it is.

Technorati : knitting

The Kureopatora scarf I noodled up last winter appears to have taken on a life of its own. It gathered a small bit of interest here in the US around the time I posted the pattern, but no big splash. Then over the summer and fall knitters in Japan found the thing and made it a real knit-fad. A rainbow of finished snakes began crawling through blogs over there. The range of different Noro-type long repeat dyed yarns there is spectacular, and I've been delighted to see the color and texture ranges people have used to make their own snake scarves. Now the pattern appears to have been discovered in Germany and the Netherlands. Blogs and discussion boards there are beginning to post pix of finished pieces, and I'm getting lots of referral hits from them.

If you've discovered this blog by looking for the Kureopatora's Snake scarf pattern, welcome! I'm having lots of fun via this vicarious visiting. For the record, the top non-US, non-spider sources of wiseNeedle visitors Canada, China, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, the Ukraine, Spain, Australia, the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden. Many of those visitors are hopping over to the International Glossary of Knitting Terms. Others come mostly for the yarn reviews and patterns both here on the blog and on wiseNeedle proper. Predictably, non-US visitors to the String or Nothing blog site are predominantly from English as a first language countries, although Japan, France, and Germany are also well represented. For the record, my own blog reading travels often find me on French, German and Japanese pages. I can eke out meaning from written French, but to read other two I have to rely on machine translation, which can be almost as incomprehensible to me as the original.

Ribbed Leaf Pullover

I'm up to the collar of my pullover. I feel rather foolish because last night I missed an excellent opportunity for a photo-illustrated blog piece - neatly picking up stitches around a neck edge. In this case, I followed the stitch count suggestions of the pattern exactly, even though the total count looked a bit low. But I ended up being quite pleased with the result. The neck area on this sweater is a bit large, and needs to be pulled in by the deep ribbing around the collar. While I might rip back, reducing the three rows of purl welting to only two, I like the way the collar is shaping up. This shot is also the best I've taken so far of the all-over texture.

My guess is that if deadlines and after-hours assignments allow, I'll finish up the collar tonight. I'd like to do a tubular cast-off to match my tubular cast-on edges, but I haven't found one yet that I really like. That should lead to lots of fiddling around and possibly even some interesting blog fodder for a change.

Technorati : knitting

Having successfully beaten back yet another deadline storm, and having survived the annual school year February break, some semblance of normalcy returns to the String household. I spent a dreary but strangely relaxing weekend catching up on house maintenance - one that finally allowed me time to knit.

And what did I knit?

I continued my two dueling projects - the dropped leaf sweater, the two side-by-side knit sleeves of which are now approaching the 60% completed mark. There's no point in showing a blurry picture of yet another pair of indistinct gray objects, larger but still not much differentiated from the last. I am also only four stripes short of finishing the Rainbow Scarf that matches the hat shown off last week. That at least has color and drama, even if the knitting is very mundane:

You can see the long tails at the right hand edge. These will be crocheted into tendrils. Similar strands will be added to the left hand edge after the knitting is done, also to be crocheted into tendrils. I am happy to report that one skein each of seven colors of Frog Tree Alpaca is enough to complete the scarf and hat project. Also that I like the Frog Tree. I've met with some minor knots and a couple of unevenly spun spots, but nothing drastic. I haven't washed the stuff yet so I can't report on whether or not those Crayola-intense colors hold up. I am already looking on to my next mindless project. I've gotten a request for another Klein Bottle Hat. I am thinking of getting more Frog Tree in navy blue to do it.

In other news, I can report a miracle of modern commerce and customer satisfaction.

I have had a small Coach bag for years. I splurged on it when I was gravid with Elder Daughter - so that's something like 16 years ago. So long ago that Coach no longer includes it in their inventory. It's a good size, just big enough to hold a wallet,keys, and a phone, and not so large that stuffing it into a backpack or briefcase is inconvenient. Although I have a larger bag and a dressier bag for occasions that demand them, my little Coach has been the default handbag of choice for over a decade and a half. Needless to say that much daily wear took its toll. The binding around the edges was worn through at several spots, and the clasp had given up all hope of fulfilling its function. My bag was well loved, and looked it.

Now Coach has tried to go a bit more trendy in styling and moved more upscale, expanding beyond the "do you want that in black, brown, or camel" mindset of my bag's day. You'd be hard pressed to find anything similar on their shelves now. But Coach bags are guaranteed for life. So I took my friend to a nearby stand-alone Coach store just after the holidays. My bag was so old that no one in the store recognized the style - not even the manager. I asked if they still repaired bags, and only the manager had an inkling of what I was talking about. But they verified the pedigree of my little guy via the serial number stamped into the inside pocket, and taking a shipping and handling fee (plus issuing a lot of "I don't know if it's fixable" type comments), sent it off for repair.

Lo and behold, my little bag returned to me on Friday. Cleaned and somewhat refinished, with a new clasp, new edge bindings all the way around, and a new shoulder strap. All for the handling fee. My friend is back, and I'm very happy.

Moral of the story: That $80 that was so exorbitant 16 years ago was very well spent, and my expensive bag ended up being a better value than any number of cheaper ones I might have bought and worn to death since. You're always better off buying fewer things of classic style from vendors known for quality and service.

Technorati : knitting

A quiet weekend here at String. Work made some inroads into it, but I had enough time to catch up on some much-needed household maintenance, and even to shovel out a little bit of family-spoiling. To that end, I baked homemade bread, and made flour/salt dough for Younger Daughter to play with. Older Daughter wasn't interested, but appreciated that Younger Daughter was otherwise occupied for most of the weekend. And both ate the bread.

The immediate inspiration for the bread adventure was Rose Levy Birnbaum's Real Baking blog. In particular - her recipe for Baby Hot Pot Bread. I've made bread before, but I've always been very disappointed in the result. To date my breads have been cakey and crumbly, with none of the crunchy crust or stretchy, chewy goodness/hole-filled interior that I like. I got the closest with various Challah recipes. Although good they weren't what I was looking for.

Rosie's bread looked too good and too easy not to try. I admit I mercilessly slaughtered her recipe. I did all sorts of things that should have totally sabotaged it. I doubled the recipe because my in-house bread vultures would scarf down one tiny loaf in one meal. Not a good thing to do because in baking ingredient proportions don't always scale. I substituted a half a cup of whole wheat flour for some of the flour in the recipe because I had it in the house and wanted to use it up. Again not an ideal practice as different flours have different properties. And for that matter, I didn't use the flour specified. I used King Arthur all purpose, which again is what I had in the house. I didn't have a Silpat baker's mat, but I did have a flexible plastic cutting board that served the same purpose, and I only had one cast-iron Dutch oven, so I used a Le Creuset 5.5 quart lidded pot for the second loaf.

But none of these were my biggest challenge. That was the ambient temperature of my house. It's far too cool here for optimal rising. The usual solution for this is to put the rising dough in the oven with just the oven light turned on. My oven light doesn't heat the oven enough. I investigated all sorts of alternatives - even writing to Rose for advice. Since I didn't have the time or resources to build a proofing box, I ended up doing a combo of things, depending on the time of day and what heat resources were available. I turned the oven on very low and put the bowl on top of the stove, covered with a towel. Later I moved it next one of our hot water radiators, again tented with towels. My last resort would have been putting it (well wrapped against dust) on top of our furnace in the basement. To make up for the borderline temperatures, I ended up letting the thing sit for longer than suggested. My first rise lasted more like 24 hours than 18. The second rise was also temperature-challenged. It went very slowly. I don't think my loaves ever achieved their potential full volume.

My warmth seeking machinations, the wrong combo of flours, messing with the rise times and other aberrations did not leave me with a high level of confidence when I dumped my two misshapen mini-loaves into their respective pots for final baking. But the recipe is a robust one, able to survive even me. My loaves were perhaps a bit more dense than optimal, but lovely. A very firm, crisp crust; a stretchy, strongly flavored interior, full of holes; no scorching (I was afraid of this given the heat of the pots). And no baking stone full of corn meal, flour, or other burnt crumbs to clean up.

I present the less photogenic of my two efforts. We ate the prettier loaf last night. The sliver of the heel off the narrowest part of my poorly formed bread is just enough to barely make out the airy holes.

The play dough we made was of the uncooked flour and salt variety: About 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt, .25 cup of cooking oil, and about 1 cup of water (we started with 3/4 of a cup but found we needed more). We didn't bother to color it, knowing that the final product would be baked along with the bread and painted when cool. Here are some of the results. Smaller Daughter saw this entry in the Craft magazine blog, and went on to make her much larger Ninja Valentine statue:

Knitting? I did some of that, too. My Sarah James Ribbed Leaf Sweater back is long complete, and the front is finished to about three inches above the bottom of the armholes.

Rather than give you yet another poorly photographed misshapen object to contemplate, I mark my progress using a visual of the sweater pattern's own illustration, with a convenient line of demarcation.

Now it's back to work. The forecast this week is "heavy deadlines, with the possibility of a mid-week blizzard." February is such a joy.

Technorati : baking, knitting

Count me in with the Curmudgeon and Lisa at Rosieblogs on their stance on disparaging knitting books "dumbed down" for today's chix. I detest the majority of knitting books published over the last three years. I don't like the attitude, the contents, the presentation, or the base assumptions behind them. Lisa's rant is spot-on. Knitting isn't difficult. It is exacting, and does require a fair bit of patience and perseverance to master. But there's no mystery, and it's been accomplished very successfully for hundreds of years by people with no formal math education whatsoever.

You could probably argue that the most recent crop of books was not written with my demographic in mind - the grumpy intermediate to experienced knitter looking to learn more. But even if I were nineteen and holding yarn for the first time, I'd be offended. The only thing that differentiates the vast majority of these hip, trendy little no-attention-span patterns from the stuff aimed at teaching Kindergarteners to knit is the absence of wiggly doll eyes on the projects. Cell phone cozies? Let's forget for a moment that a team of engineers labored for months on achieving the rate of heat dissipation required for a small-footprint electronic device to function properly, and that someone now wants to put a sweater on the damned thing. If I were a novice knitter given a book whose diet of beginners projects ran the gamut of items you could make from a square folded in half, I'd toss the thing aside and dismiss the whole craft as being brain dead.

Now there are intelligent, well-written books out there for beginners. You can usually find them by avoiding key words in the titles. Lisa nominates "Easy." I nominate "hip", and "simple." Stanfield and Griffith's Encyclopedia of Knitting is a good one. It's full of inspirational photos, describes lots of techniques in an accessible manner. As a "Knitting 101" type overview it's broad but not particularly deep - a good gate to further exploration that doesn't overwhelm a beginner with every knitting fact known to the universe. The only thing its lacking is a bunch of intro projects.

This glut of useless books follows in the footsteps of any hobby fad. It happened to needlepoint, cross stitch, and quilting in the '70s, '80s and '90s respectively. Publishers see people stampeding to a new interest and retool their offerings accordingly. More substantive books are put on hold, general references of interest to all levels go out the window, and minimalist splashy intros soak up every available publishing dollar. In knitting's case as Lisa and the Curmudgeon point out, this fad-following focus is compounded by a whole flock of wildly patronizing and denigrating attitudes. So count me in with them. I'm not interested in simple, hip, trendy, urban-gritty, easy, shortcuts, weekend, boxy, cropped, giant-gauge, flash, dummies, or quick. I don't even want books of expensively photographed patterns for clothing that will look dated in a year. I want challenges, complexity, techniques, resources, tailoring, fine gauges, and if I'm going to spend months creating the object - long term wearability.

Perhaps I'll get more of it. Knitting's recent expansion is poised for a crash as the majority of the fad knitters move on to the next big, non-challenging thing. I'm delighted to note that a minority (although a healthy minority) of recent learners has the interest and perseverance to move beyond these dumbed-down books. Perhaps in the flotsam of the post-fad knitting environment between them and those of us who knit before it was trendy there will be enough demand to spur the publication of more substantive and useful resources. But more likely the publishers will lemming on after the next self-affirming fad. Scrapbooking anyone? I hear most people had some exposure to scissors, paper and glue in grade school.

Enough ranting. The few folk who come here aren't scouring the web for editorials. Back to knitting content.

Klein Bottle Hat - Finished

Here's the finished Klein Bottle Hat, once more ably modeled by Smaller Daughter (the only one still home in the before-school hour I steal for blogging).

I can say that I followed the schematic in the pattern far more than I followed the pattern itself. I found the original to be too big - not big around the head, too long in length. I shortened up the run of plain full-width knitting before the slit is made, and conflated the narrowing and the slit itself (winging it on the rate of decrease) working both the decrease and the slit at the same time. I'm not entirely pleased with the graft. If I were to do this again, I'd knit some small K2P2 swatches and practice grafting them before I tackled the hat itself. But it will do for a quick gift.

My only problem is that I've run out of small project before I've run out of deadlines. Mittens next? Perhaps.

Technorati : knitting

A couple items from my inbox.

Question on Justin's Counterpane

Cindy wrote to say she was having problems conceptualizing how the pieces to make my Justin's Counterpane pieced blanket fit together. This particular blanket is a large scale intro to white cotton/lacy knitting. Only twelve main units are needed to complete it - six keyhole shaped motifs, and six whole octagons. Ten triangles are used to eke out the sides and make them straight. An optional edging finishes the thing. They're put together like this:

I did not use additional triangles at the corners to make a true rectangle because it's easier to go around a more gentle angle without mitering than it is to go around a 90-degree turn. And I didn't want to go through the bother of mitering my corners.

Because of the relatively few units used and the simplicity of the classic pinwheel motif, I think that people wanting to make a first item in this style might find the pattern useful. Being a blanket, it doesn't have to fit anybody so gauge is a guideline, not a mandate. It can be worked in any cotton or cotton blend yarn you like. The yarn I chose was a very inexpensive DK weight, but by using the appropriate size needles, a piece of usable dimensions could be made in anything from sport to worsted. Much heavier than that though and you'll get into weight issues, cotton being quite a bit massive than its equivalent thickness in acrylic or wool. (You could even work this in standard wool or acrylic, but I think the design will be crisper in cotton.)

In any case, some basic guidelines for knitting and seaming together pieced counterpanes include binding the motifs off especially loosely; blocking the units before assembly, by wetting them down and pinning them out while stretching them to their maximum extent; and using whip stitch or when possible, mattress stitch done in half of the edge most stitch to sew them together. Back stitch or mattress stitch done further into the motifs will make the seams too dense and rigid, and may introduce cupping.

Bargain Hunters' Blocking Boards

Rachel and I had an eMail chat recently. I think it was over on one of the knitting-related boards at Live Journal. She was looking for advice on blocking. In specific, she was looking for low-cost alternatives for blocking. We went through the standards - pinning out on carpet covered with towels or on a padded table or bed, but she wanted a rigid surface that was easy to stow in addition to being inexpensive.

I recommended getting a half-sheet of drywall from the hardware store, taped around the edges to reduce crumble, and topped with a flat sheet through which the pinning happens. I also suggested scouring yard sales or opportunity shops for the squishy/spongy foam pattern/alphabet block floor tiles or play mats favored by the parents of toddlers. They're indestructible and often outlast the toddler years, landing at second-hand venues. Top those with a sheet and pin away, happy that you've found a modular, easy to store solution that as a creative recycle, nibbles away at the waste stream.

Rachel decided to go with the play mat idea. She sent me a note of thanks, and included this shot of her shawl blocking:

(Photo is hers, used with permission). She also notes that she got her mat at WalMart, and it was less than $20. Love the shawl, Rachel, and as ever - I'm delighted to have been useful.

Another descent into deadline hell looms on my imminent event horizon. Now in the past faced with something like this I've dropped all knitting, hung up the blog, ignored wiseNeedle, and pared my life back to the basics: work, do what family maintenance I can, eat, sleep. In that order of precedence. This time I'll try not to disappear completely. At the very least I'll farm wiseNeedle, even if I don't have time to blog. Also I intend to keep a small project going as a stress valve. (Better that than loll in caffeine and chocolate).

I need something that's pretty mindless, but not so totally dull as to be totally boring. Something new so that there's a modicum of interest. Huge needles (huge for me at least) so progress is tangible. Socks are right out. Perhaps a hat. An unusual hat...

In fact I think I know the very thing. I make no secret that I fall on the geeky side of normal. I'm an aging grrlnerd with lots of friends who would wear Star Trek Underoos if they came in adult sizes; guys and gals who find joy in mathematical humor, and who view visual puns as an ultimate art form. (I say this with affection and respect, because as a group they exhibit amazing creativity, and wit, and are just plain fun to be around.) So if one of them - a self-described and documented ubergeek - deserves a special gift, what better than a Klein bottle hat?

Some of you reading this are saying "Hey! Cool! I want one, too." Others are wondering what the heck a Klein bottle is. And I'm sure a couple of you are curious as to why one would need a hat. One might even ask "Where would a Klein bottle wear a hat?" The answer of course being "On the outside."

(Bottle image shamelessly borrowed from Acme Klein Bottles, a source for all your topological oddity needs.)

There are far more erudite and far more scholarly explanations of what exactly a Klein bottle is than I could ever offer. It belongs to the same family of topological oddities as does the Möbius strip, another one-surface entity. In effect unlike spheres, cubes or pyramids that form an unbroken skin around an interior space, it's a solid object that instead of having an outside and an inside, has only one side - the outside. Or the inside. (Which one is present in a Klein bottle is open to debate, but whatever the answer is, there's only one of them.) The artifacts you see are actually representations of the Klein bottle concept because as a multidimensional trick played on the universe, one can exist as thought but can't be truly built in the paltry three spatial dimensions we inhabit.

I am far from being the first person to knit up something like this. Acme has a nice selection of ready made Klein Bottle hats. There are several patterns on the web if you want to knit your own. Knitty did one; a good pattern but it's not my favorite. I think it looks more like a teapot lacking a spout than anything else. There's one by Sarah-Marie Belcastro, whose joy in her own mathematical geekitude is contagious. (She's got lucky students). It's very cool looking, but I think the intended recipient would find it a bit too massive. And there's another all-prose pattern that I remember being offered as a holiday gift exchange pattern was back in the ancient days of the KnitList, circa '94. Woolworks has it on archive.

The one I am taking for inspiration is none of the above. It's by Nathanael Berglund, the sketchiest pattern of all but with a pleasing and recognizable shape. I think it's conceptualized just enough to provide me with fodder for (minimal) thought. The simple shaping will be just complex enough to keep my interest, yet not so daunting as to require me to slavishly knit to the pattern. And at a DK or worsted gauge will go quite quickly.

So I as I trot along the sorry slope to yet another personal hell, I'll be trotting along with an air of distraction. Not exactly overjoyed, but glad to know that my ultra-nerdy destressing mechanism is prepared in my backpack, sharing room with my computers and waiting for the least bit of "hurry up and wait" time to be appreciated.

Technorati : knitting

Not much knitting here beyond finishing up the gift socks mentioned yesterday, which later today will be given to the target recipient. I also posted a yarn review for the Schoeller/Stahl sock yarn I used.

(Please consider leaving reviews of your current yarn yourself, as a holiday present to fellow knitters worldwide).

I can in the spirit of ecumenicism born of our happy, culturally jumbled household recommend two non-knitting related holiday hacks.

First for Hanukkah (and Kwanzaa): Every kid is fascinated by the candles used in menorahs and other holiday candle holders. They burn quickly, and often being close together, act on each other to make strange melting patterns and drips - especially when "encouraged" by the viewer. And every kid who grew up with a menorah in the house will either admit to performing said encouragements, or by virtue of being watched constantly, not having the chance to do what he or she really wanted to do. But not every parent can hover over the candles for the entire time they are lit for eight nights straight.

Now devices are no substitute for parental supervision, but accidents happen in even the most careful household. Place your menorah on a shallow lipped pan (like an inexpensive jellyroll pan or in my case - the liner pan that came with a now defunct toaster oven) and fill the pan with about a quarter inch of water. Drips will fall into the water, and won't weld the menorah to the table or counter top. Should your offspring be too helpful and a candle come loose from its moorings - it will fall harmlessly into your mini-reflecting pool and be extinguished.

Second for Christmas trees: Fighting one's way underneath the lower branches to water the thing is a major pain. I cheat. I float some packing peanuts or crumpled aluminum foil on top of the water so I can see the level while still standing. I also take a tube or pipe (in this house, the unobtrusive brown extension tubes from our upright vacuum cleaner) and wedge them into the tree holder's bucket area. I use some twist-ties to anchor the tube against a branch. The tube remains there as long as the tree is in the house. Then when watering time comes, I take a watering can and pour into the tube until I see my floating markers rise. No bending, no needles in my hair, no overflows.

Technorati : Hanukkah, holidays, knitting

We celebrated Hanukkah this weekend past in our own style. Fried foods are traditional. We did crab cakes. Not traditional by a long shot, but tasty none the less.

The Resident Male, finding himself at the fish shop buying the crab was tempted by some beautiful Bluepoint oysters. So he brought home four as a special grownups-only treat.

So there we were, happily slurping down our excellent oysters, when I thought I found a bit of shell. Not uncommon in oysters opened by amateurs*. But it wasn't shell.

It was a pearl.

A natural pearl. Far from gem grade, but round and pearly enough to qualify, even though you can see a bit of the gravel that inspired it sticking out from one end.

I've put my tiny pearl next to a strand of cultured pearls for size comparison. I've joked about finding a pearl, and have known it was remotely possible. But I'd never heard of anyone actually finding one. So what to do with my inferior but extremely lucky pearl? Wear it for luck, of course. I'm thinking of getting a tiny silver charm in the shape of a cage to keep it in.

And I'll probably make the traditional latkes tonight.

As far as knitting goes, I'm trying to zip through the remainder of a pair of socks, plus get a start on the foraging cap (in the style of a Liberty or voyageur's cap) for my re-enactor friend. I've got a nice hand-spun wool fingering weight single, in a color sort of between forest and teal, with a touch of black. I would have preferred a barn red, but the red I had was heathered with too much white and from a distance read "pink." Shown here are my larval beginnings (I'm working on the area that when finished will be the facing in the earband, plus the too-pink yarn. Gauge here is between 5.75 and 6 stitches per inch. I've got 130 on the needles, and am getting a band big enough to fit a 23" circumference head. There's some allowance for stretch and the hat will be double thick at the earband, but I don't want to make it so tight that the wearer will get a headache. You can see just a bit of provisional cast-on peeking out at the bottom of that dark green wiggle:

Other than that, I am finishing up yet another pair of gift socks. This one from Schoeller+Stahl Fortissma Colori/Socka Color, color #5.

* We follow the safer Julia Child oyster method (learned while watching her on TV). It involves identifying the hinge and using the pointy end of a bottle opener to dislocate it. Then using a thin, sharp knife - winkling it into the opening made by the unhinging and running it around the oyster inside to scrape it top and bottom from its shell.

Technorati : knitting

If you've been reading along here for a while, you might remember I've mentioned this family's holiday cookie fixation before. Ten kinds. Every year. (I do give most away to co-workers and friends rather than let us eat them all ourselves). This year's list is a mix of first time experiments and family favorites. It includes:

• Chocolate chip cookies - the classic, but made with mini chips and pecans instead of walnuts, slightly smaller than their non-holiday brothers. Mostly from the official Toll House recipe printed each year on the bag of chips (although I do cheat and use non-official chocolate).
• Peanut butter cookies - my kids would shudder in horror if I left these off the list. Done with crunchy peanut butter, just for fun. Otherwise it's the standard from Joy of Cooking
• Buffalo rum balls - a version of the classic crushed cookie bourbon ball, but done with rum and cocoa, rolled in cocoa. Our variation comes from a recipe published in the Buffalo, NY evening newspaper some time in the 1960s
• Sugar cut-outs - the iconic holiday cookie. This year we get to use the Hannukah cookie cutters. Also I put lemon zest in the batter, and mix the icing with lemon juice instead of milk or water
• Oysters - a family invention. A hazelnut spritz sandwich cookie, filled with dark chocolate ganache
• Linzer cookies - New this year, from the King Arthur website recipe collection. Mine have little leaf shaped holes, that being the smallest cookie cutter I had on hand to do the center hole.
• Chocolate crinkles - Also from the King Arthur website. Killer chocolate flavor, fantastic texture. We use extra cocoa instead of espresso powder. My kids call these "Earthquakes" because the white sugar outside flaws and cracks in baking to reveal chocolate fault lines. I made these the first time two years ago from a very similar recipe sent by a friend and they've become favorites. (Hi, Kathryn!)
• Almond/cherry biscotti - Another new one. I'm cribbing this recipe together from several sources, including a basic biscotti recipe in the always wonderful Baking with Julia book. This is instead of the Panforte which although excellent deserves a break after a two years running appearance
• Lime cookies - Again a new experiment. This one depends on my finding sour salt (citric acid) locally. My grandmother used it to make her stuffed cabbage and to restore the shine to aluminum pots and pans (boiling them in a bath of water and sour salt). Another King Arthur website find.
• Pecan sandies - A family recipe, basically a nut-rich shortbread, rolled in granulated sugar and topped with a pecan half. These tend to alternate appearances with Mexican Wedding Cakes in our roster, as both are pecan shortbread type cookies.

I made a lot of progress this weekend past. I've got two cookies left to bake - the biscotti and the lime cookies. Plus I have to fill the oysters and Linzer cookies, and the kids get to ice the cut outs.

In other news, knitting did get done. Here you see the second of my two emergency baby shower gifts blocking on a balloon. The Regia 6-ply Crazy Colors has a relatively long repeat, so it makes wide stripes on both booties and hat. The white sections and broad yellow welting (including the tips of the I-cord bootie laces and hat bow) however are done in another well-aged leftover.

I also managed to get another couple of inches done on my ribbed leaf pullover, and complete about half a sock of other holiday gift knitting. But more on those tomorrow.

Technorati : cooking, knitting

First off, I want to warn and/or reassure everyone that there is no actual content anywhere on this site that relates to today's subject line.

That line is however one of the many Google search topics that have landed people at this site. I've got several visitor statistics compilation tools attached to wiseNeedle. Some come as part of the hosting service package provided by the website ISP, some came with the dasBlog software The Resident Male used to build this new home for String. Between them they provide an interesting profile of visitors here, including some of the stranger ways they arrived. Now I can't see from where exactly any one query originates, so please don't worry that I know the topic above emanated from your individual computer or account. But I can see that someone on one particular day went to Google, typed in that phrase and wound up here.

Why? Because that person did a search that turned up pages that listed one or more of the words in that phrase. Knit I've got. Angora, too. It's even possible that on the day in question, I mentioned work on the ribbed cuffs of an ongoing project. That's three out of four hits on the admittedly unusual search phrase, so the seeker saw a listing for this site near the top of the probability of relevance sorted results page. (There are lots of ways to avoid this problem by targeting your searches with more precision. Google's own tutorials are a good place to start).

Still, the search and visitor logs can be fascinating. I've seen a recent surge in traffic from Japan. Apparently the Kureopatora's Snake Scarf has hit mini-fad status over there. I can even trace some referrals back to sites that show pictures of newly accomplished snakes nestled in pages full of text I haven't a hope of reading. (Translation software helps some, but not much).

Most searches however are understandable. In the past 24 hours, I've seen them for

• free knit gift patterns
• spool knitter cow
• how do i make a swatch
• strickfingerhut Australia
• Montse Stanley
• Forest Path Stole
• Visio Stencils
• Solve for values of X
• Upscale beanie weenies

and some for yet another topic that appears nowhere on this site: "knit pattern g string pasties."

My conclusion from all this - Knitters are looking for lots of information. And some of them lead far more exotic lives than mine.

On my own knitting - I'm not quite surfaced from deadline hell. I've had just enough spare time to tend to processing in yarn reviews and answering advice board questions. I have an inbox full of personal notes to answer, plus a couple of questions to answer that appeared here as String comments. Apologies to everyone who has waited so patiently, wondering if I'd fallen off the edge of the world. I'm still clinging on, and hope to climb back fully by the weekend.

Technorati : knit

I am still mid-frazzle with work deadlines, and will be so for the bulk of the coming weekend. I have to say I came home last night too tired to knit, or even think about knitting. I have a pile of stuff that needs doing, but no get up and go to get up and get done.

For example, I have to finish off my Wave scarf. I'm up to the point where the ends of the edging need to be grafted together, and the hole that developed just after the start pf the edging where my yarn broke needs to be mended. I've got the Spanish Hat to plot out. Another table is in need of a protective runner. There are holiday socks to be started. I do have a head start on some gift knitting this year, with several scarves and sock pairs knit in idle moments lagered away against need.

There are also some long-standing residents of my Chest of Knitting Horrors(tm). Halloween arrives each and I feel them haunting me. I generally try to finish off at least one in November/December. In particular this year is the Rogue pullover in the dragon skin texture stitch pattern I started for Elder Daughter. That has had its front partially unraveled in a knitting accident (comic but annoying in retrospect). I need to figure out what the heck I was doing, rip back to a stable point and move forward.

And then there are the various other stitching projects I've been thinking of lately, curtains and the like for the house. Plus the figuring out what enlightening or entertaining knit-related articles I should be posting here, and working on the wiki (which is languishing as well for want of time.)

But I'm too harried right now to do much more than think of this pile of what is supposed to be fun work with anything else besides a lingering and wistful guilt. So apologies here. No enlightenment, no entertainment. Just a whiny blogger's typical post full of self-indulgent sighing.

Technorati : knitting

Today I document a Good Deed.

A co-worker, all puppy eyes and pleading, brought his favorite sweater to me yesterday. He bought it in Ireland, and practically lives in it all winter. He'd caught the elbow on something sharp, and cut a strand. And then the snag started to run. He asked me if I could fix it.

The sweater is of good quality, rustic finish wool. It looks like it was knit from two strands of sport or guernsey weight. The seams are machine-sewn, and there's a nice "commando collar" - double thick ribbing, inset in a V, with a low turtleneck finish and center zipper. I'm not a machine knitter, so I'm not really up on what can and cannot be done using one, but the cables are not deeply embossed. They're all formed by traveling stitches rather than multiple-stitch cable crossings.

Still, it's a particularly nice and obviously beloved item. So I brought it home to fix.

Fixing hand knits with runs in them should be second nature to most knitters. First, you want to identify the break. Then if a run or ladder has developed, you want to spot the bottom-most good stitch that sits below the run. That's the one that needs to be secured, and the one that you'll use later in the repair. In this case, I secured it temporarily with a safety pin so it wouldn't ladder down any farther.

If the yarn has broken, the ends need to be secured. Since this is a nice, sticky, traditional finish wool, the stitches left and right of the broken one hadn't raveled side to side. (A plus for working with real wool). I reinforced them gently on the wrong side with some darning yarn of the same color, taking care not to let my repair show through to the front. Then I smoothed out the lumpy ladder, separating the rungs. Obviously there was one rung missing - the one that would have been formed by the broken strand. I laid some long stitches across that spot with my matching darning yarn until I had approximately the thickness of the original yarn built up.

Then I took a crochet hook and starting with that stitch at the base of the run, I re-formed the knitting stitches. I did this by pulling each rung through the stitch below it. Luckily this particular repair occurred in a plain stockinette area. I didn't have to deal with crossed stitches or purls.

Once I had re-built all of the stitches, I had one top stitch that needed to be secured. Again I was lucky. This particular column of stitches "dead ended" at a traveling stitch cable. I used my darning yarn to take a tiny stitch, securing the loose loop to the side of the cable at the point where it would have been eaten by the decrease that formed the cable's movement.

Here's the result (not that my lousy photography skills and a charcoal gray subject make it any easier to see):

The formerly broken bit is in the top center of the sleeve that lies across the body, roughly below the zipper slider. You can't see it, but take my word for it - the repair is totally invisible.

So, today's morals are:

1. Don't toss damaged hand-knits in a corner in despair. You can use your knitting-developed skills to rescue some of them. and

2. Ease of repair down the road is yet another reason to use the best quality materials you can afford.

Technorati : knitting

While I'm still under deadline pressure here and have not gotten to the Spanish Hat, I do have some knitting-related musings to report today.

The first is sock yarn wear. I have knit pretty much the same sock in terms of fit since shortly after I began knitting socks. This is especially true for socks knit with sock yarn or fingering weight yarn. I've also stuck to a group of sock yarns that are a mix of washable wool and nylon - the standards, Fortissima, Socka, Regia, and Melienweit - all major labels and not house brands or knockoffs. And I've not changed the way I care for them. I still do the soak, spin, air dry thing rather than subjecting them to more stressful full machine washing. AND I am always knitting more, increasing the numbers of pairs I own, so that individual pairs are worn less frequently.

So why then are my socks wearing out faster?

This is a big mystery to me. I have several pairs of Fortissima and Socka socks that are pushing their 10th birthday, and were among the first I knit. They're fine. A bit floppy, but not significantly abraded or worn through. I have other socks knit in the past year that are already showing holes at the ball of the foot.

There doesn't seem to be any correlation between yarn maker and sock failure. Nor does the failure seem to be related to gauge, since all the victims were knit on the same size needles.

So. Is anyone else experiencing this? Or is it just me...

The second is a product of the need to do mindless knitting. I started another Snake Scarf, knit from an extravagance - Schaefer Yarn's Helene. This yarn is next-to-skin soft, with all the luster of silk. It is however an Aran weight/light bulky weight single, and like all singles spun from soft yarns, has a tendency to split. I suspect that it will also catch a bit. But it's lovely stuff, and giving the scarf away will be difficult to do. I can't identify the exact Schaefer color combo my Helene is (I bought it over a year ago and lost the tag), but it's mostly navy and raspberry, with hints of brown. The color repeat is however quite short, and does not produce the eye popping striped effect of longer color run yarns. (I'll be posting a yarn review of the stuff soon).

Still, the subtle mottled effect doesn't fight too badly with the scarf's basic wiggly shape or stitch direction, so I'm pleased. On another note, I see that my original write-up of the snake scarf's beginning is flawed. I'll be correcting it later this week from my new working notes. Apologies to everyone who has been challenged by it. On the bright side, I only got one note from a confused knitter. The thing is so dead-simple that most people appear to have taken the error in stride and weren't tripped up by it.

Technorati : knitting

One of the problems of writing a knitting oriented blog crops up when I have little or no time to knit. I've got a pile of ideas and things that are in process. Both sit, unattended. I've been burning the candle at both ends this week, consumed by work-related deadlines and kiddie holidays. My knitting languishes.

Now I have to say that I'm not so addicted to knitting that I break out in withdrawal symptoms when denied access. I can say that I miss my hour's relaxation in the evening, tinkering away with string. But with luck, this too shall pass - although probably not for several weeks. Processing in yarn reviews and answering questions on the wiseNeedle advice board take precedence over idle rambling here. So please bear with me. String isn't dying, it's just overtaken by life.

On the pattern redaction, Karen suggests that the 1892 pattern is the traditional Print o' the Wave Shetland lace knitting motif documented in several places. The best example of it is in Sharon Miller's Heirloom Knitting. The Eunny Jang wave stole pattern I just completed has a variant of it, too.

I reply that this pattern, although clearly of the same lineage, is different. It employs no double decreases, and minimizes the side to side movement of the wave element. I'm on hold noodling it out, between work-related deadlines and holiday preparations with the kids, I had no time to myself yesterday.

On the serendipitous end, the kids are finally old enough and use-specific tools have gotten safer enough to let them loose to carve their own pumpkins. Except for he icky scooping out the innards part (and rescuing the pumpkin seeds for toasting) they did them entirely by themselves this year.

So on hold right now are my Spanish hat; the repair, finish and block of the Wave stole; finishing the decipher of this pattern; plus beginning my holiday gift knitting. I have promised six pairs of socks plus several other small pieces as yet to be determined.

Technorati : knitting

Smaller Daughter and I had fun last night building her robot pumpkin. She's named it "Seven of Patch". Today it heads off to assimilate the third grade pumpkin parade.

It was also a sewing night. The same daughter has her heart set on being a pirate this year. Most of that costume can be scrounged up from things around the house. But she needed a puffy white pirate shirt, and it had to be done before Friday (more on that below). So I hauled out my ancient 1962-vintage Elna SU (bought used) and clanked away. Even so a small bit of knitting did get done after I was finished wrestling the jamming bobbin case into submission. I managed to do another five inches or so of edging on the Wave scarf. I've got about a foot more to go and then I have the joy of fixing that nasty skip and run waaay back at the beginning.

Not tonight however. My kid-friendly workplace has invited employees children in after school tomorrow for in-office trick-or-treat. Employees are encouraged to dress up. I have tonight to figure out something that's either easy to put on quickly or is not so distracting as to negate any possibility of actual work getting done before the kids arrive.

Technorati : knitting, pumpkins

First, welcome to the new influx of visitors here from Japan. Apparently the Kureopatora Snake Scarf has attracted attention way over there. It's fun to see it blogged about so far from home, and in a language I can only barely read with Google tools.

Where do visitors to wiseNeedle and String come from? It's no surprise that they are overwhelmingly from the US and Canada. Japan, Australia, China, the Ukraine, Brazil, and the UK. Germany, France, and Sweden usually are in or not far from my the 10. There's usually a good sprinkling of people wandering through from non English speaking countries aside from those on the top 10. (I think that most come to use the knitting terms glossary.) I have often been amused to see reports of visitors from some of the less frequently seen countries on my list. Sometimes there's a small spike from an unlikely place. For example, in addition to the large number of visits from Japan last week (not uncommon at all), I had a small jump up each from Senegal and Mauritius. Whether that represents one person visiting multiple times, or one person sending links to friends, I haven't a clue. But I do wonder what they're knitting.

Second, some irrational musings...

There's a lot of edging to knit when you make something like the Wave scarf. That affords ample time for a mix of boredom and the anticipation of finally finishing to set in. I don't know about you, but when I knit something interminable I develop irrational likes and dislikes along the way. There are rows I look forward to, and rows I detest. While on some patterns the single row with a particularly awkward stitch combo (like a P2tog-back) can inspire discomfort, even dread of a tricky row, in other patterns the development of my preference makes no sense at all. For example, in this edging some rows have a bit more stockinette, but no row in particular stands out as being harder than the others, and all patterned rows have a semi-awkward K3tog. But I have a clear favorite - row 5, and a clear least favorite - row 9. I will go so far as to either get ready to do my favorite row or "get over the hump" and complete my least favorite row before setting the work down.

I have irrational preferences about other bits of knitting, too. I detest sleeves. I don't care how large or small they are, whether they're done first or last, or if I'm working them side by side, or one at a time. I flat out hate 'em. Also buttonhole bands - especially the kind that are cast on with the regular width of the front, then placed on holders to be knit separately using a smaller needle, then sewn to the cardigan body. I know why some designers choose to do this, and I acknowledge that doing it can make neater, less "loving hands at home" looking garments - but I resent doing it.

On the other hand, I don't mind winding skeins into balls. Some of my knitpals hate that part. While I wouldn't make wool-winding my only hobby, I don't mind doing it in the least, and except for the largest skeins of lace weight, usually do it by hand (sometimes assisted by a swift). I rarely haul out the ball winder.

Then there's the foot part of every sock. The ankle bears a pattern or something of interest. But I don't like wearing patterned knitting inside my shoes, and invariably knit my foot parts totally unadorned. I hate that part enough that it has shaped the entire way I knit socks. I do toe ups not because I want to avoid grafting, or that I think they fit the best (the fit well enough on me), but because doing so puts the chore before the fun. If I didn't do those boring feet first, I'd never finish a sock.

And I vastly prefer lacy knitting to lace knitting. It seems I need to decompress with a plain or low-featured row in between more intensively patterned ones. I get annoyed or quickly frustrated by patterns that include massive amounts of increases and decreases on every row.

Collars? Did I mention collars? For me they've always been a challenge. I melt with envy when I see something like the bottom right hand picture here. In this case, the dislike is more understandable. We all dread showing our weaknesses.

So. How irrational are you? Do you share my odd likes and dislikes, or are you bound by an entirely different set of your own?

Technorati : knitting

This post originally appeared on 26 June 2004.

WORKING REPORT - CRAZY RAGLAN

You know what I like about knitting? Among others, two things in particular:

1. 99.9% of all mistakes can be dealt with without losing anything except time
2. You never stop learning

Knitting is a very forgiving pursuit. Woodworkers can't un-cut a mis-measured plank. Cooks can't get the extra egg back into the shell. Sewers and tailors can't return their fabric to the bolt once it's been snipped. But knitters can grab and end, yank and reduce the most recalcitrant problem back to its larval state, ready to be knitted again. That suits me, as many of my projects proceed one step forward, two steps back.

I'm a slash-and-burn knitter (swidden knitter). By that I mean that I try to expand my mental knitting territory on almost every project. I'm always hungering for new challenges, new techniques, or trying to figure out easier/less error-prone ways of doing things. So far I haven't run out of challenges, as even the simplest thing can end up being a roadblock. I've got knitting pals that always say nice things about the projects I finish, but probably don't realize that like an untrained rat in a maze, I spent considerable time scurrying up and back dead ends. But learning flows from making mistakes, having the patience to figure out what went wrong in the first place, and the fortitude to correct them.

I have a hard time understanding all the people who post that they tried something and gave up, some even tossing the project out in disgust. True, I'll lager the most egregious away for a while or even rip back particularly spectacular failures and re-use the yarn for something else, but I can't imagine getting so disgusted that I would throw away the whole mess.

Case in point - my sorry excuse for what was supposed to be a mindless busy-work project, filling in extra post-exhaustion hours and (perhaps) lasting long enough to take me through a blissfully non-thinking week of vacation. I could make all sorts of excuses for what's happened so far, but why bother. Here are the facts:

1. I mis-measured my gauge - not once, but twice
2. I mis-measured my kid's circumference, and settled on making the wrong size
3. I entered the above bogus data into Sweater Wizard, then mis-read the resulting print-out, and cast on too few stitches.
4. I didn't bother to confirm measurements until I was at least 7 inches into the thing. Twice.

The result? Another opportunity to reclaim and re-use yarn. I should be on target now. I've confirmed my gauge, recalculated The Smallest One's size, and re-drafted the pattern (thank goodness for Sweater Wizard). Given that I was going to have to rip back anyway, I took the opportunity to do what I mentioned yesterday - using two balls of yarn to knit the front and back, doing it with an intarsia-style join at the center front. This makes the stripes even wider, as the span of stitches traveled by each strand is even smaller than before. I'm getting nice, wide sock-type stripes now, with a "seam" up the center front (apologies for the lousy pix, my camera is out of batteries so I had to improvise with another):

At the very least, this continues yesterday's visual lesson on using variegated yarns. The narrower the span of stitches covered, the wider the stripes will end up being. How to know if your yarn will stripe or make that stippled effect? Look at the length of each color section. The longer it is, the more likely it will be to stripe. How to estimate on the fly? In general, a row consumes roughly 3 to 4 times its length in yarn. That's a very rough estimate. If the color sections are at least three times the width of your piece to be knit you'll end up with a one-row stripe. That stripe might not begin at the commencement of each row, and may end up being a wider puddled "bounce-back" section on a side, but it will take at least that much length of any one color to have any hope of visual striping.

More length? Easy. Wider stripes, and the possibility of knitting up larger garments that sport them. (Custom dyers take note - LONG repeats made by looping up double length skeins before applying color may be cumbersome to produce, but I bet they'd sell quite well compared to skeins with shorter color runs.)

Less length? A mottled, speckled or streaked appearance, with the predominant color overwhelming the others when seen from far away. Some yarns with shorter color runs can be a challenge to use. I'm not particularly fond of yarns with color sections that are an inch wide or less. In a fingering weight yarn that's a run of about four to six stitches (depending on needle size). In a worsted, about two stitches. In a bulky/superbulky - that's only one stitch (or fewer!).

One of the things that drove me to play with entrelac for the Tee I'm also working on right now was the short length of the color runs. Colors lasted for about three to five inches before changing. I didn't like the blotchy, streaky effect that gave. Working in entrelac though on tiny 5-stitch squares allows the colors to bounce back and forth forming mini-stripes on each block. It's tedious, but gives a more painterly effect.

I think if I ever wrote a book on knitting the name might be The Lazy Knitter: How to Avoid Mistakes In The First Place. Either that or Chest of Knitting Horrors^TM: How To Get Out and Stay Out. So it's back to the fertile field of making mistakes, both for my own edification and to provide vicarious amusement for those who read this blog.

Another post from the missing month. This originally appeared on 25 June 2004

Back to knitting.

Having successfully restarted my younger daughter's raglan in Regia 6-ply Crazy Color, I can now report a modicum of progress:

It's interesting to compare this pattern of striping with the one I was getting back when I was working in the round:

Same yarn, different width. If I had the strength I might even begin again, using the same strategy I employed for my Typeset Tee. That would make even wider stripes, but I'm too lazy to begin this no-think fill-in project for a third time.

The Play's the Thing

How did I manage to knit off six inches each of the back and front in one night? I was at an audition.

I've mentioned before that The Resident Male was in a production of King Lear back in March (he played Kent). He has just tried out for a small role in a staging of Macbeth. But I didn't go with him. My older daughter is caught up by the whole thing. At 13, she went to try out for one of the boy's roles - Fleance (2 lines) or even MacDuff's son (about a dozen lines) . She dutifully prepared her audition piece - Quince's prologue to the miniplay in Midsummer Night's Dream in Act 5, and read for the part. I told her that she'd be the youngest person there by a dozen years or more, but she was undaunted. She even made her way through the infamous tongue twister

Whereat with blade,
with bloody, blameful blade,
he bravely broached his boiling bloody breast.

Something I can't see myself managing. I was tickled that she did so well. I have no idea if she got the part. Callbacks are on July 1st, but whether or not she'll be cast she did us all proud.

The Latest Buzz

House nonsense goes apace. Yesterday's big setback was the discovery of a huge colony of bees nesting in the floor below the sleeping porch. They get in through an old drainage pipe that sticks out through the stucco. The electricians working on wiring that part of the house were less than delighted to find the things. I was even less amused.

Under Massachusetts law the only available option besides letting them bee is to hire a licensed beekeeper to relocate the colony (not that I'd want to poison the little buggers). The hive must be removed after the bees are moved, as its contents would decay over time and cause even more problems. We're trying to get a fix on how long the bees have been there. The longer they've been hoarding honey, the larger the removal cost, extent of the demolition required to get at the hive, and subsequent repair costs will be.

The only consolation is that the beekeepers will test the honey for edibility. If it's uncontaminated (highly likely), we get to keep it. If there's any quantity, I intend to have mead brewed from it so we may at the least, drink to both our and the bees' new homes. Needless to say, things like this are not covered by insurance.

This post originally appeared on 24 June 2004

DREAM ON

Just paging through the morning's news, and I stumbled upon this report from a knitting-themed sailing cruise. It sounds like tons of fun. I could spend a week alternately knitting and re-reading O'Brien's Aubrey and Maturin series...

But then reality sets in.

Maybe someday when the kids are older, schedules less hectic, and disposable income more capacious. Still, it's fun to dream, isn't it?

I am always the last to find out about these things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6ZjMWLqJvM&eurl

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5299855665083820396&q=knitting&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8068663008782254608&q=knitting&hl=en

Oh. And if you search on any of the video clip services you'll find a ton of how-to videos, too.

Technorati : knit

My list of future (someday) projects keeps getting longer.

Contemplating our living room, The Resident Male and I have decided that the perfect thing for over the fireplace would be a tapestry. So we went looking at various tapestry reproductions sold on-line. The ones in our price range are pretty uniformly horrible - bad cartoons (the drawing on which the weaving is based), cheap looking materials/bad drape, and garish color choices predominate. I won't even mention the awful chenille surface type and printed things that look more like stuff that along with 8-foot tall inflatable teddy bears are normally sold out of the back of vans parked at busy intersections in the summer.

As we were looking we also saw some of the painted canvases intended for needlepoint. Big ones that encompass scenes or details of historical woven tapestries. The better ones imported from France seem to offer more faithful reproductions of their inspiring works than do all of the modern woven reinterpretations.

Now I've done needlepoint before. It's not my favorite, but technical implementation of the style is not a barrier. Plus I know exactly how long (read forever) it takes to do one of these. My mother did a a needlepoint tapestry reproduction in the early 1970s, working a rendition of this classic bit of canvas:

She did it in DMC embroidery floss, stitching the details including the hunter's face, gloves and tassels, plus the hound, songbird, and hawk all in petite point. It's heavy from all that cotton, but substantial enough (and mounted well enough) to resist distortion or curl. That she did most of it in basketweave rather than tent stitch has helped it keep its shape. The thing is a bit less than a yard wide and a bit more than 4 feet tall. It took her the better part of a year. Maybe a bit more. It's roughly the same size as the one that caught our eye - a reproduction of a French woven tapestry from the mid 1500s (the clothing style is early 1500s, but the weavers may have been deliberately trying to imitate earlier works):

In canvas, even with the full thread kit, this one would be within my price range. Not counting a year or more to stitch it, of course. Will I end up doing this? Will the curtains I described yesterday come first? Will I stay true to knitting, and deaf to the enticements of other needle arts? Only time will tell...

Technorati : needlepoint

Knitsy asked two questions - what was my first lace project, and why lace at all since I've said I am not really the lace-wearing type. I'll try to answer.

First Lace Project

In the best tradition of flinging one's self off the end of a pier in order to learn how to swim, my first lace project was the Rose of England cloth from Kinzel's Second Book of Modern Lace Knitting. It was back in the days BI (before Internet), when aside from my mother, I didn't know anyone else who knit. While I had no one to ask questions or provide help, I also had no one to tell me that I might be just a bit overambitious for someone who had just picked up needles a year or two before.

It turns out that I wasn't overambitious at all. The pattern was clear and logical, with no errors. All I had were simple increases and decreases to worry about. Yes, the project was big, but even so it wasn't a bad choice for a first timer.

I have to admit however (sheepishly) that the thing isn't finished. I have one more round of petals to do and I have to end it and block it. Why has it sat in the closet all this time? Several reasons. First, it was a first project. While there are no structural errors in the thing my stitches are less than even. Second, lace yarn wasn't readily available. I used cotton crochet thread, and didn't have a clue as to how much I needed. Even that was hard to find. As a result there are supposedly similar weight white cottons from three makers in the piece, bought at three different times. And I still need more! The spots at which I transition from one lot of thread to another are very evident both in texture and even color (not all white is white). Third, until recently I had neither dining room nor place to block something so large. I can't use this excuse any more because now I have both (although the table is rectangular rather than circular).

My long time pal Kathryn has twitted me many times about letting this one languish. But I'm not entirely sure it deserves to be finished. Sure, I'll have finished off the piece, but I won't be happy with it. I know every time I look at it I'll think of what might have been or how it could have been done better. Is it worth it to invest the extra time if the result will be only disappointment? What would you do?

In a conservation of things lost moment, my copy of Heirloom Knitting being found, the bag with my unfinished Rose has now disappeared. Otherwise I'd show a picture of that sad resident of my Chest of Knitting Horrors^TM. Instead I'll give you happier eye candy. Here's a link to the incomparable Judy Gibson's finished Rose. I melt in shame for my own shortcomings. I still love that pattern, but perhaps it's time to toss in the towel on attempt number one and re-knit the thing for real.

Why Lace?

Why not? Actually, there's more reason than that. I find the way patterns build in lace fascinating - how the charts or prose directions translate into the visual impact of the actual work. The more involved or complex the design, the better. Even more so if there are almost no row for row repeats in the piece. Plus I have to admit that making things with no garment shaping or final fit to worry about is wonderfully relaxing. So what if my flat lace pieces end up being a bit bigger or smaller than target? They're splendid just as they are.

Technorati : knitting, lace knitting

It was cookie time here again at String Central. School Bake Sale season is upon us. I know there are some readers here from outside the US and Canada who may not have run into this custom before, so in the interest of sharing the joy, I share the joy. (I do hear that the UK shares this particular custom, too although it's more centered around church groups doing good works than it is civic groups and schools.)

On election day most polling places in the US are in public buildings - very often county, town, or city-run schools. School parent committees see all that foot traffic as opportunity, so on most election days they mobilize as many parents as possible to make edible goodies to sell as fund raisers - always with some lofty goal or another. Send the band to the regional competition; refurbish worn-out playground equipment; send supplies to a sister school in a disadvantaged area; buy books for the library, a van to transport special needs children, robes for the choir, violins for the orchestra, or uniforms for the sports teams- the list is endless and every cause is deserving.

Most often it's hapless non-baker moms who are dragooned, and interminable plates of cake mix brownies and slice-to-bake chocolate chip cookies are prepared by those with generous hearts and more volunteer spirit than time or baking knowledge to spare. Zucchini (vegetable marrow) season is especially feared because of the flood of zucchini breads and muffins that overflow the sale tables. I don't think there's a parent of a school age child in the US who has not heard "Oh, and we need to bring something to school today for the bake sale" ten minutes before the bell rings. You can find those parents buying cupcakes at supermarket bakeries on most bake sale mornings.

Needless to say, it's local/state election day tomorrow and the clarion call for cookies has been made. This time around I made icebox cookies: half and halfs - chocolate and cinnamon. Seven dozen. On a work night. Thankfully I had advance warning and mixed the dough and refrigerated it on Saturday. Which explains in part why time was at a premium this weekend past. Even so, I'm cookied out.

Knitting? Yes I did some of that, too. As you can see, my Wave scarf grows:

Working with this linen of forgotten provenance is interesting. It's relatively soft - no sharp bits of cuticle like some linens I've used. There are some fluffy slub like areas, and some places where the stuff is sewing thread fine. I am not having any problems working the lace pattern in it, and the result is surprisingly soft for something as slash-your-fingers-before-breaking durable as the the yarn actually is. I've got a ton of it. My foot or so of lace has made no discernible dent in the ball.

Technorati : cooking, knitting

I sheepishly admit I whined in public and was so pitiful that someone took pity on me.

I've mentioned here many times that I am probably the last person on earth who enjoys using DPNs, and adores the extra-long DPNs more commonly found overseas than here in the US. The whining was that extra-long DPNs are hard to find here. Judith from the UK had a stash of them, collected over many years of happy knitting. She recently moved over to circs, and her collection of long DPNs languished. So she packed them up and sent them to me!

Here you see her collection, ranging from 4 to 6.5mm (US#6 to #10.5), displayed on the converted-from-jeans denim skirt I'm sewing with and for my daughter. Since no good deed should go unpunished, a suitably splendid gift in return is being boxed up for shipment back to Judith. Ten thousand thanks to her again. I'll have lots of fun with my new needle library!

On the skirt, who knew they'd come back into style? I wore them in the mid-1970s, and made dozens for my friends. I even have a bit of blurry, faded photographic proof from that era (let's just say my lack of camera skills runs in my family):

Now I find my skills are in demand again as converted skirts seem to be the rage with my daughter and her set. Even though it's not knitting, if anyone is interested, I'll diagram out how to go about doing it. With the top, and jean jacket I described before, the ensemble reaches counterculture nostalgia critical mass, just in time for cold weather.

Technorati : 70s style, knitting, sewing

Quick aside: I don't know about you, but a small window onto a whole new universe of costume options just opened up for me and mine today. Too funny!

Technorati : knitting

Finally.

I've caught up on the by-hand port of last month's entries from the Blog City incarnation of String or Nothing. I've copied over comments, too. It was much easier to do this for the months prior to June. In June BC changed their blog back-up methods, and stopped offering XML exports. Earlier stuff we were able to (mostly) automate, although there will probably be some links here and there that need to be replaced. My premium Blog City account will expire at the end of November. At that time all of the photos there will disappear. Shortly after that BC will probably pull the plug on the account proper, as I will no longer be posting anything new over there. If you have links that point to entries there, please take a moment and use the search page here to hunt up the comparable entry in this location. Otherwise your links will go dead. I'm afraid I can't contact each of you individually (Google says there are thousands of links to String pages out there), so apologies on this blast notification.

I've also caught up on entering the backlog of yarn reviews and advice board questions on wiseNeedle proper, although there are lots and lots of advice board answers that remain to be written. Feel free to pitch in and answer fellow knitters in distress. Even though in some cases the questions themselves are no longer "shelf fresh" future knitters with similar queries will benefit from our assembled knowledge on file.

Aside from getting back to a semi-regular schedule of semi-regular postings here and updating the yarns database with as many new season products as I can find in catalogs and on-line listings, the biggest rock remaining to roll is our KnitWiki. I'll be dividing my time between blogging and structuring that resource. Lots of reference material that I have posted on String will end up over there Plus there are books and books worth of other articles to create. But first I have to do the basic tree structure type index that ties the whole thing together. Everyone needs a hobby...

Doily progress? Here it is (click on pix below to enlarge):

As you can see I'm pretty close to finishing my edging. I estimate that by mid-week I'll have completed it and grafted the seam.

Other than that, a hearty welcome to the ten people who have followed me here from Blog City. With luck and time (plus getting the word about our relocation out), the rest of String's regular audience will find this spot, too.

Technorati : knitting

[Repost of material appearing on 15 August 2006]

I think I've hit on one of the reasons so many people despise DPNs: insufficiency of length.

I love DPNs. I use them happily with no problems whatsoever. I have employed up to 15 or so at a time on larger projects for which I had no equivalent circ. And that's what I thought was going to happen with my red doily. I have about three sets of the unusual 2.5mm size. Give or take for previous losses. 2.5mm sits somewhere between a standard US #1 and US#2. Addi Turbo's standard equivalent of a US # is 2.5mm (that's what these are), while most other makers label 2.25mm as a 1. Needle size comparisons across makers here.

My problem is that my 2.5mm needles are stubby, little six-inchers. They're the only needles I have of that diminutive length, probably bought for glove projects long ago. I normally consider eight-inchers to be the absolutely minimum usable size. I routinely seek out longer ones when I can find them.

My problem with the teeny needles on this project is that I have large hands for a fem. That coupled with too many stitches has meant that I knock the stitches off the butt ends as I work. Yes, I know I could use needle end protectors, or introduce more needles, but I don't have time to fiddle with point protectors on both ends of 12 needles (I'm up to 12 now). This a new empathy-building experience for me, as I never have this problem. Last night I spent as much time recovering dropped stitches as I did creating new ones. If only I were using needles of my favored length, I wouldn't be having this ultra-frustrating problem!

Now on to the second half of my dilemma. I don't have a 2.5mm circ of any length. Nor the time or inclination to track one down. But I do know that I knit more loosely on DPNs than I don on a circ, and i do have an overly long 2.75mm circ. So tonight I knit all my stitches off those little DPNs and onto something safer.

A quick answer to the question about that silver stitch marker in yesterday's photo. It's marking the beginning of the round. With 6 or more needles in the work and tiny stitches, plus a pattern that migrates left a stitch or two as it progresses, I find it convenient to idiot-proof my beginning point. Aside from assorting stitches so that the round begins mid-needle it's impossible to use a standard marker on the end of a DPN round. So I use something slightly different.

When I was on a business trip a while back I happened on the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show. I went into a booth selling silver fittings, pieces, and beads imported from India. There I got a bunch of tiny dangles all set with semiprecious stones, plus a half-dozen tiny little silver earrings. The kind that people wear by the half dozen, marching up along the edge of their ears, or through an eyebrow piercing. The whole lot was amazingly inexpensive, even considering that neither the silver nor the gems used are the highest grade. The result:



Stitch markers that can be clipped anywhere I need them. The one shown yesterday is the leftmost of this lot, and one of only three I have left. The others have all gone out into the world as gifts. If I ever get to the gem show again I'm heading back to that tent and stocking up. With luck I'll help subsidize a village of people who spend their days working on these tiny bits of filigree, and not just the middlemen who haul it across oceans to sell in the desert in January.

Technorati : knitting

[ported repost of material appearing on 12 June 2006]

My version of Joan McGowan-Michael's White Lies Shapely Tee - a semi fitted tee shape with a shaped waste and bust darts, used with the optional set-in sleeves (excellent pattern, and most graciously on Joan's part - available free). Completed April 24th, 2004 and blogged about extensively here. Berroco Suede ribbon yarn, featuring two rounds of B. Walker's Indian Cross Stitch around the gently contoured bottom hem, one turn of it around the scoop neck collar, and one at the bottom edge of the short sleeves:



Compare this from the latest issue of Knitters. Tee shape, ribbon yarn, two rounds of B. Walker's Indian Stitch around the hem, one around the crew neck, and one around the sleeve hems. Plus a texture stitch in the body that's almost invisible in the photos.

Mine fits better.

[Repost of materail appearing on 16 July 2006]

No, not a knitting-related math question (for a change), but an idle query. Check out this - a UK art student has knit hersef a car. I hope she gets a good grade on the project!

Technorati : knitting

With great joy I announce the end of my most recent death-march deadline at work.  The one that has eaten up nearly every day since Halloween (including weekends).  I spent this past weekend catching up on a belated birthday celebration, exhuming some parts of my house from clutter, and returning at last to knitting.

One half of the birthday was a memorable dinner with The Resident Male at Blue Ginger restaurant in Wellsley, MA.  Not being as eloquent on the subject as Chocolate and Zucchini (one of my favorite reads) I won't bore you with a dissection of the meal beyond saying it was a leisurely evening of fine food and wine.  The company wasn't bad, either.

The other half of my celebration was a day of personal indulgence, including a visit to the local yarn shop to take advantage of their semi-annual clearance sale.  I bought some Encore and a pattern (see below), a couple skeins of sock yarn, a kit to make Dovetail Design's Rainbow Hat and Scarf (with a full spectrum of Frog Tree alpaca) and two full bags of Jaeger Matchmaker DK in an intense charcoal gray heather.  The Matchmaker is destined to become the Sarah James Ribbed Leaf pullover.



On the knitting front, I've started winding the tie-dyed cotton.  I made the mistake of washing and drying it in the machine.  While in concept doing so wasn't particularly wrong, I could have used more ties to secure the yarn.  I ended up with quite a tangle which I am slowly deconstructing back into a ball.  It's not difficult or knotted, but it is tedious.  I'm very pleased however with the result.  Knitting it however will have to wait for another time, as I am wildly behind on other projects and need to finish them first.

On that Encore - I've got a pal at work who has two little girls, with a third on the way.  Everyone always knits for the new baby, so I decided to do something different.  I'm making two "Big Sister" sweaters in the girls' two favorite colors for the older two.   Since there will be ample laundry in that household, I've chosen an easy-care acrylic wool blend.  The two sweaters will be identical except for color.  One is kid's size 6 in screaming pink, the other is a size 4 in eggplant purple. 

As I mentioned before, I'm woefully behind in knitting so I am using the short-cut of a purchased pattern. A quick to knit, ultra-simple purchased pattern.   I'm working Cabin Fever's 1,2,3, Top Down (#609).  It's a unisex simple knitting pullover, worked top down.  The pattern covers kids' sizes 4-8, and is worked in standard worsted.  As you can see, having started on Saturday, I've gotten about a quarter of the way through the larger size.  I'm past the point where the sleeves split off, and am now well into the body tube.   The pattern itself is quite simple and easy to follow.  I'd recommend this as being a design that a newer knitter would enjoy.  So far the skills needed to accomplish it have been casting on, knitting in the round, and yarn overs.  A small bit of purling is introduced in the ribbing and (optional) welt at the base of the collar. 

A weighty topic for String.

I've been contacted recently by several publishers and manufacturers.  Each has offered advance copies of books or free product samples, with the hope of seeing a review of those items posted here or on wiseNeedle. This to me smacks of buzz marketing.  I have turned them all down.

Buzz marketing is yet another "latest thing."  In buzz marketing a vendor engineers a campaign that seeds mention of their product such that the word seems to come spontaneously from unaffiliated individuals - all talking (or writing) about the product in their own words.  One of the ways to start a buzz campaign is to seed the product out to influential (or prolific) people who know lots of other people interested in new items or ideas.  Prolific bloggers or podcasters are excellent pipelines for getting the word out.  Giving them goodies for free is one low cost way to spread buzz to other leading-edge consumers.  At this point I suppose I should be flattered to be considered either prolific or influential.

So.  What's the catch?  Why not accept freebies, try them out and then post the results, good or bad? 

Mostly because I am uncomfortable with the ethics of the base idea.  When does accepting free samples begin to color one's thoughts?  At what point are one's opinions compromised?  At what point does one become a mouth organ for others rather than oneself?  Yes, I know there are magazines that accept freebies and test samples - even paid ads, then turn around and totally blast bad or defective products, regardless of prior considerations.  Computer Gaming World is known for having dissed the deserving on the page opposite an ad for the product being criticized.  But there are far more specialty coverage venues that avoid any semblance of criticism of advertisers  or sample providers. 

Plus, once this practice becomes widely known the whole issue of trust surfaces.  Paid endorsements are something else again - everyone knows Tiger Woods gets megabucks from Nike.  His integrity isn't an issue because the link between them is so public.  Formal public endorsements aside - can you trust the opinions of someone who even with the best of intentions may be an unpaid shill?  Isn't entering into this sort of arrangement both a bit exploitative on the part of the marketer, and duplicitous on the part of the shiller?   I see a slippery slope here.  Accepting freebies to me is the first baby step on a continuum of ethical compromise - the same continuum that in its most egregious manifestations pops up in bribery, kickback, and blackmail scandals.

Where does that leave our little world of knitting and knit blogging?  Good question. 

Is accepting freebies for the purpose of (perhaps) writing something about them an ethical challenge for other people?  Is it any different than wearing a branded item - an Izod shirt, or carrying a Louis Vuitton handbag?  Your thoughts?

More questions from the inbox.

Sport weight = 5 ply gansey weight?

Not really.  As the "5 ply" weight designator implies, Gansey/Guernsey is in between sport weight (6 ply)  and fingering (4 ply).  There are yarns labeled as sport that are on the thin side that work up nicely at the 6.5 spi Gansey target as well as yarns labeled fingering that are thick and also cover that gauge. But not every sport or fingering can be used as a sub for it.  Plus Gansey weight usually imples a classic smooth finish, dense yarn that supports superior stitch definition.  Wendy/Peter Pan still makes traditional Guernsey 5-Ply, now a superwash.  It is labeled at 7spi, but is denser than fingering/sock yarn at that gauge. 

Washing yarn in a front loader washing machine with a wool cycle?

Front loaders are known for gentle action compared to aggressive water-hogging top loaders, so I suspect that you'll be able to wash the spinning oil from loosely wound hanks using one.  I know people who complain about the flip side of this problem, that it's impossible to get their front loader to full yarn for felted projects.  BUT there are caveats.  The machine has to have settings that control water temperature in both the wash and rinse cycles, so that you can set the same temperature for both.  It has to have the ability to retain water for soaking (some use very little water and getting a a pool for the yarn to sit in may be problematic). 

One other challenge:  it also has to have controls that let you either eliminate agitation, or that let you advance the cycle past the agitation stage of the wash to plain old drain then spin.  If the machine relies on side-mounted flanges on the inside of the drum to churn the contents as the drum spins, it will be impossible to eliminate agitation-like movement of the stuff being washed.  I don't have a front loader, so I can't speak to whether or not the agitation inherent in that type of action would allow washing yarn with no risk of fulling.

As for pre-programmed wool cycles on all machines,  I'm very skeptical about them.  My own top-loader has an alleged wool cycle that's pretty much useless.  All it does is put the wash through a shorter (though not less vicious) agitation cycle.  It does nothing to govern water temperature, and the rough treatment although shorter is still enough to induce fulling.  I wouldn't risk using my machine's wool cycle for finished items, and especially not for more vulnerable un-knit hanked yarn.   I know some of the more expensive European washers handle wool extremely well.  Experimentation here is warranted.  Since seeking reliability of results in knitting always leads to a pile of swatches somewhere, here's a chance to put them to constructive use.  If you want to determine the usefulness of your washer's wool cycle, gather up a bunch of swatches then put them through a cycle and observe the result.

It's been a week of yarny goodness here at String.  Not only did I go on a shopping expedition on my own, but The Resident Male went on a trip to Arizona and brought me back a present.  Now this is a Big Thing because althogh he's been supportive of my needlework obsessions over the years, he's never before been a direct enabler of them. 

So I am picturing him at the knit shop he found out in Scottsdale, Arizona.  He says he went in and asked the committee sitting around the back project table for help selecting something unusual.  He was shown a pile of various foofy/fuzzy/overadorned novelty yarns, and being observant knowing that I rarely use them, insisted on something less "demonstrative" but still unique. 

The committee came through.  He ended up buying this:



It's a hank of mercerized 100% cotton, hand-painted in blues, teals, and greens, with a touch of a mauved brown.  The effect when wound is a ball reads "camoflage."  It's got a house label on it (no brand name), stating that it knits to Aran gauge (4.5spi on a US #8), and that it's got 997 yards total.

Looking at the stuff though it reminded me of Rainbow Mills Crayons Lite, the yarn included in their "Grandma's Little Darling" toddler sweater kits (shown here on Younger Daughter when she was three):



Sure enough, a side by side comparison of my leftovers from the sweater above and my new yarn shows that they're near identical.  Amazingly enough not only are they structurally the same, the wind-off hank diameter is the same, and the hues of the teal, brown and khaki in the two are spot on identical (the toddler leftovers includes magenta and orange in addition to all the colors in the new stuff).  I wrote to the yarn shop, and they confirmed that the base stock for this yarn is the same as the Rainbow Mills product.   I haven't seen Crayons Lite sold outside the toddler kits, and having a known weakness for variegated yarns, I've always wanted to use it again. 

For the record, to make the yarn flash in the toddler pullover, I needed to get 5spi on US #7s, and predicated the circumference on a factor of about 12.5 inches, then steek the armholes.  This sweater is done on 125 stitches (about 25 inches around).  I think that I'll try to use my hank to make a short tee on 250 stitches, and see if I can get the same kind of flash.  I'll use a provisional cast-on so that I can go back and add ribbing or edging later so I can maximize use of the yarn I've got on the body itself.   I even have enough of my coordinating (but brighter mix) leftovers to do the rib or edging, should I so desire.  If that doesn't work and I come up short, I'll see if I can do something on the same narrow strip principle as my Typeset Tee.

The upshot of all this is that Resident Male came back with just about the perfect choice:  a yarn that isn't available locally, in colors that I enjoy, and in quantity that's just right. 

Keepers, both!

I've gotten some questions via eMail about yesterday's yarn crawl.

How do you know what to buy?  Do you go with a list?

Some people do.  My pal Kathryn did.  She had a prepared list of patterns and requirements, and went looking for yarns specific to those needs.  I don't.  When I go to an "exotic" yarn shop I look for things that aren't available at my local yarn store.  Most of the stuff in the front retail store area at Webs is available in my own neighborhood.  (I am lucky enough to live in one of the most yarn-shop-dense areas in in the US.)  I went looking for back room bargains, off labels, mill ends, and other oddiments that I am leery of purchasing sight-unseen over the 'net.

In terms of what I was looking for, I do admit that experience with yarns is a plus.  I know a bit about different types of yarns and their properties.  Not as much as a spinner - but enough to know what yarns are likely to improve with washing, and which ones will remain prickly for their entire life.  I've got a rough grasp of what both yards per pound figures and the number system of yarn descriptors used for woolen and cotton yarns translate to in standard hand-knitters terms and gauge.  I've played with wraps per inch (though I admit I didn't use that measure this trip).  I've got a calculator and know how to convert pounds to grams, so I can figure out a rough equivalent cost per mythical 50-gram skein.  Plus I have a good idea of what colors appeal to me, look well on me (or my target),  have classic appeal, and would be fun to knit. 

So what I did was wander the back aisles in the walk in warehouse, looking for goodies on special.  The goodies had to be of excellent quality, in an appealing color that will transcend trends, of versatile type or construction (not a novelty yarn that will look dated in a fortnight), and represent a significant cost savings.  If any "spoke to me" (inspired a particular creative idea upon first sight) all the better.  But I was not buying for immediate consumption and went with no particular  projects in mind.

Have you ever bought "the wrong yarn"?

Yes and no.  I've got all sorts of things that have sat in my stash for extended periods of time, but I've never bought anything I wished I could return.  For example, right now I've got two bags of well-aged Classic Elite Artisan in a deep green somewhere between khaki and hunter.   At the time I bought it (circa '99) I had an idea that I'd use it for a cabled sweater.  But since then I've reconsidered.  It's a bulky weight (3.5spi) and has alpaca in it.  A cabled thing in it would end up being both weighty and ultra-warm.  Too warm to wear as an indoor/outdoor sweater.  Plus I've found I prefer knitting in smaller gauges.  So it sits, awaiting inspiration, but I wouldn't say it was a bad purchase or it was "the wrong yarn."  Eventually I'll figure out what to do with it, or I'll swap it for something else. 

How much did Webs pay you to post yesterday's ad?

Nobody pays me nothin'.  I go where I want, and I write what I want on String - bad or good.  Please send my greetings to the other conspiracy theorists whose company you must enjoy.

So what are those number system/yards per pound bits you mentioned?

(This wasn't actually asked, but I'm sure it will be if I don't address it here).  There are several very cogent explanations of the number system and how it's calculated elsewhere on the Web, but here's a quick cheat sheet of equivalents for wool.  Remember that although this chart makes it look like there are absolute definitions of size, these are approximate average numbers.  There is considerable overlap with the values shown above and below each category, dependent on all sorts of things including fiber blends, texture, or how tightly the stuff is twisted (how dense the yarn is).

Weight (ply weight descriptor equivalent)	Most Common Gauge	Approx. Average Yards/Pound (Wool)	Approx. Average Wraps/ Inch	Some Count Numbers* For This Weight (100% Wool)
Fingering (4-ply)	7 spi	1,920 wool	16	4/30, 2/15, 4/24
Sport (6-ply)	6 spi	1,500 wool	14	6/24, 2/16, 3/9, 3/11
DK (8-ply)	5.5 spi	1,400 wool	12-13	3/8,
Worsted (10 ply)	5 spi	1,280 wool	11-12	2/10, 10/24, 4/8
Aran (12 ply)	4.5 spi	850 wool	10-11	12/24, 2/4,
Bulky (14 ply)	3-4 spi	680 wool	9-10
Super Bulky (16 ply+)	3 spi or fewer	500 or fewer	8 or fewer	2/2

*In wool the first number refers to the number of plies (physical construction, not "ply weight equivalence"), in cotton, the second number refers to the number of physical plies

Please feel free to send me corrections and additions.  I'll be adding to this chart as time goes on, and possibly supplementing it with one for cotton when I get a chance.

I'm catching up on lots of things this week - appointments, activities, deliveries - plus I'm regaining equilibrium.  As part of my stress dissipation strategy I went to Webs.  Actually I went with my houseguest -  long-time needlework buddy Kathryn (she of "too many centries, too little time."). 

Of course no trip to Webs would be complete without an acquisition report.



The garnet yarn on the right is the 2/4 Highland Tweed 100% wool currently on special.  The website lists it as an Aran weight at 4.5spi, but to me it seems a bit light for that.  I have  this cone plus a partial - in total a sqidge more than 2.5 pounds total at 992 yards per pound, roughly 2,511 yards.  Thats way more than enough for a sweater for me at any gauge down to Gansey.  The twist is a bit soft.  It's a nice deep color (not as tomato as the picture), accented with flecks of emerald, sapphire, turquoise, and topaz.  On the cone it's a soft wool, but not Merino-gentle and is imbuded with a touch of spinning oil.  It's possible that the spinning oil has flattened the stuff out and is making it look more like a DK, so  I need to either wind off some and wash it then knit up a swatch, or knit a swatch and then wash it so I can determine final gauge.  Based on the texture though, I am expecting this yarn to soften up considerably once it has been washed.  2.54 pounds is about 1,152 grams or roughly 23 50 gram balls.  My purchase works out to the equivalent of about $1.33 per equivalent 50 gram ball. This stuff is listed on the Webs site.  Mine is the cardinal color pictured there..

The yarn at the left is another back room bargain bin find.  It's a 80% silk, 20% wool blend, in a fingering weight with a slight boucle texture, about 2,400 yards per pound.  It's a nice denim blue.  I bought two cones, again just under 2.5 pounds total.   That's a mind-boggling 5,928 yards.  Again using the 50-gram skein as a standard,  my purchase works out to 1120 grams,  about 22.4 skeins.  Rounding down, my 50-gram skein equivalent cost was about  $1.12 per skein.  My color isn't shown on line although there was lots of it on the shelf.

Now.  What am I going to do with all of this?

The red should be pretty simple to use regardless of gauge.  It's light enough in color and weight and not so busy that it can't handle a bit of texture pattern knititng.  I've got enough that if I wanted to go hog wild with cables, I could.  I'll be stashing it until a perfect idea emerges, although that Gansey idea is beginning to have a bit of appeal.

The blue however may be closer in terms of actual use.  Remember past musings on the compatibility between crochet and knitting?  About how crochet  needs to be worked in finer yarns to produce a fabric comparable to knitting?  Here's a chance for me to experiment with that.  I'm thinking of doing a summer top that combines both.  I'd use this stuff single-strand for a classic crocheted yoke, adapted from an antique chemise or nightgown pattern, then using the same thread doubled, knit the body of the garment.  The weight of the products of the  two should match much better than trying to use both techniques with the same thickness yarn.  My only handicap here is that I prefer not to wear sleeveless things, so some additional adaptation may be in order if I wish to wear the final result myself.  Anything leftwover would make a nifty lace shawl.

I also got a bag of Rowan Rowanspun 4-Ply in Holly - an intense blued deep green.  I've been collecting colors of this stuff for a while, all in the jewel family. (notice a theme here?)  I finally have enough to do something spectaular.  What exactly, I haven't a clue. 

So there you have it.  Skid marks on the old Visa, and depending on the sizes/gauges used - most or major parts of 3-5 adult size garments, all for about $80.  I'm stoked, I'm de-stressed.  Now on to the knitting!

Corrections made

J Scholes is absolutely correct!  The book I mentioned two days ago is Odham's Encyclopaedia, not  Oldham's Encyclopaedia.  I plead an absent title page, a rubbed spine, and bifocals.  Of course I have no excuse about missing the obvious on the various Internet sites I looked at to document the probable date of origin.  I've fixed Sunday's entry accordingly.

An evening with Christine Duchrow

In other news, in an idle l moment I took up a book I bought a couple of years ago and  tried to decipher the knitting instructions.  It's The Knitted Lace Patterns of Christine Duchrow, Volume I, edited by Jules and Kaethe Kliot (Lacis, 1993).



 Duchrow wrote in Germany in the early 1900s.  She's one of the early proponents of charted instructions for lace knitting.  The editors do say that some of the book's patterns contain errors or are incomplete or damaged.  To top it off the text is very sketchy and in German, and the symbol set used is a difficult one.  For example, purls are represented by a lower case L and YOs are represented by the number 1.  The printers didn't always get the distinction correct, and even when they did - the blackletter font style l and the 1 are perilously close in appearance in the photo-reproductions presented in the book. 

But not to be daunted, I try any way.

I started out with a relatively straightforward scarf/jabot pattern named "Muschelschal" (Mussel Shell).  The photo isn't very good, but the pattern looked simple.  After wrestling with it for a couple of hours, I retrenched and went back to the basic edgings shown at the beginning of the book.  I am ashamed to admit that I didn't make much headway with them, either.  

I've got the easy stuff down pat - that the patterns only show right side rows (wrong side rows are plain knit); that there is potential confusion between 1 and l (compounded because it looks like many patterns frame YOs with purls), and that I do need to rely as much on the picture as I do on the directions to figure out what's going on.  But I can't make the stitch count numbers work.  The cast-on value is clearly stated for each design, with each pattern starting off with a row of plain knitting. However, when I count up the stitches consumed by the first patterned row, I never come out with the number currently on the needle.  Sometimes I'm one short, sometimes I'm one over.  If I were always one short, I'd make the assumption that the slipped edge stitch isn't calculated into the cast on number - but I'm not.  Clearly more experimentation is needed as I am missing something here that's very fundamental.

In the mean time, more on reading Duchrow's patterns can be found on Judy Gibson's site (thank you Judy!).  Additional advice is always appreciated.  If you've ever worked from this book successfully, please feel free to chime in with tips.

Turtlegirl asks what patterns I use for fingering weight socks.  I shamelessly answer - my own.  New readers here (and there appear to be many of them) may not know that I also am the keeper of wiseNeedle.  wiseNeedle is the original yarn review site, active on the web as an all volunteer consumer to consumer, unsponsored service since 1995.  In addition to the yarn review collection and a searchable glossary of knitting terms in 14 languages, I keep some patterns there, too.  Among them is a slew of toe-up, short row heel socks in several yarn weights.  There are three patterns there for fingering weight, and any of them can be used as-is, or by elimination (or substitution) of patterning on the ankle parts, made as simple or as complex as the knitter desires.

And in response to other requests, here's a close-up of the short row sock heel, showing the mitering you can achieve with a little advance planning and a modicum of luck:



Why do they not match exactly?  Because I didn't take the time to make my socks identical twins.  I started each sock off its own ball of yarn at the exact start of the ball.  The repeats were slightly skew.  I don't have a problem with making these self stripers into fraternal rather than identical pairs.

Now, how to finagle this effect using a self striper?  Lots depends on the width of the striped section.  The narrower the stripe, the easier this is to do.  You can better see what I did in the top sock, above.  I knit the foot (on the left, heading up towards the top of the photo), ending it in synch with the completion of a red stripe.  Then I began the back and forth short rowed section with the following section of black.  I ended the decrease section of my short rows roughly half way through the black bit that followed the red, finishing up the black on the part of the short row section that re-awakens dormant stitches.  Then I finished out my heel.  This synch of the pattern to the printed repeat required that I fudge a bit on foot length.  In a sock of this type, a row or two extra in the foot, combined with a heel a row shorter than normal isn't going to make a major difference in fit.  Since the repeat pattern is so narrow, I can get pretty close to perfect miters.  On wider patterns it's harder.  In a wider pattern I do still try to end the foot at the completion of a stripe (or if it's a VERY wide stripe, half way through a repeat).  I let the short rowed section fall out as it may, hoping more for serendipity rather than planned perfection.  Most of the time things work out well enough.

Yes, I'm still alive, but I'm swamped at work and haven't had a moment to spare for updates here, or even for blog-wandering of my own.  I have been knitting though.  Nice non-challenging things like stockinette stitch socks, mostly in eye popping stash-remnant color combos.  What is it about January that makes me hunger for color, and every year - leads me to make things that would normally cause me to twitch from the jarring contrasts and strange combos used?

In any case, something knitworthy, yet interestingly nerdy crossed my desk this morning.  I present for your delectation a knitting machine made from Legos.  Actually it's more like a chainette maker, or a super-sized automated knitting Nancy (spool knitter), but it is a bona fide member of the knitting machine family.  And it likes Red Heart. 

On vacation.  Actually consumed by pre-holiday preparations and work responsibilities, THEN on vacation.  January as well bodes to be a bit hectic, so postings here may be sporadic in the new year.  We can report these accomplishments:

• 11 kinds of cookies baked, and distributed or consumed by the family
• 2 panforte, complete with dried cherries, toasted hazelnuts and almonds prepared, one brought to a group party
• Sumptuous small Christmas eve dinner prepared for the family, featuring squab in juniper berry sauce
• 2 bouche de Noel cakes prepared, one filled with hazelnut pastry cream, one with raspberry jam, brought to a group party

• Latkes, latkes and more latkes
• Blintzes, too - home made of course (my recipe's in Elizabeth's The Knitting Bloggers Cookbook)
  
• New Years cassoulet, including the duck confit we put up back in the spring
• Holiday shopping for friends and family
• Tree decorating (and un-decorating)
• Wrapping (and un-wrapping) presents.  Mine included a small silk pouch for knitting accessories, a nifty new driver (too bad I can't golf until spring), a thermos jug teapot, Yiddish with Dick and Jane, and a hand-made calendar. 
  

• Hannukah candles, songs and games duly performed
• Attending the midwinter Revels performance in Cambridge, MA
• Kicking off three huge life-consuming projects at work
• Four additional pairs of socks knit, mostly from very much appreciated gifts of sock yarn I received over the past year (thanks again guys!)
• Family time spent messing around with the kids, playing PS2games, watching InuYasha DVDs, going to a movie, cooking, doing holiday preparations, and playing games together
• FINALLY shelving the books that have sat in boxes since we moved in last year, this event triggered by the delivery of our much anticipated library bookcases, and receipt of our Vance Integral Edition
• Major behind-the-scenes work on a facelift, feature expansion, and functionality upgrade of wiseNeedle

So even if I was away, the whole String family and I weren't exactly idle.

As far as this year's gift knitting, I can report an excellent reception all the way around.  Both shawls I knit this year went as gifts, and both very VERY appreciated.  The screaming school bus yellow scarf was loved by it's recipient - the cheerful and watchful school crossing guard who is in the middle of her 23rd year on our corner.  My annual flock of socks was greeted well.  The luxuriously soft and lush curly mohair scarf and Juliet cap were loved by the person I gave it to - someone for whom texture is paramount.  And my kids' teachers enjoyed the various scarves I knit for them.

On the sock front, I can report that I don't really like toe-up socks in self-stripers when they're done with heel flap variants.  I much prefer the look of a neatly mitered short-row heel with those yarns.  I've reverted back to my old stand-by heel for socks for me, especially if I'm using Regia or one of the other auto-patterned sock yarns.  The only exception will be if I make socks for someone who requires the looser fit of the heel flap heel.  In that case should I want to use a self-striper, I'll pick a complementary solid color for the heels and toes, and reserve the printed yarn for the parts that remain stable in width.

Some questions recently posed:

What happened to the list of recent referrers that used to be on the right?

It's gone.  I had been using a free service to report the places that people had been coming from.  That service is no longer available.  What's there now is the native referral reporting feature offered by Blog City.  Not very informative.

Of minor interest and on sort of a tangent to the where folk come from data point, the single largest thing people visit String to see is the pattern/report/working method for my Waterspun poncho.  That page is the most viewed on the whole site, by an overwhelmingly huge margin.   After that comes Stupid Stitch Marker Tricks.  Lots of other posts from the general reference and pattern headers follow.  All are understandable, as they contain how-tos or other info that  I thought people would find useful.  The only anomaly is the post I did about the name frequency web toy.  For some reason, that post was picked up far and wide, and is in the top ten visited list.

Am I going to change the referrer reporting tool?  Probably not.  We're plotting big things here for both String and wiseNeedle, so there are not a lot of spare moments to spend on redecorating what's in each spot right now.  I will continue to post here though - sporadic as it has become.

So?  How were the fingerless mitts received? 

Tickled!  The recipient was absolutely tickled.  It's always fun to give a gift that's appreciated. 

What's the next gift?

I'm now working on one of those standard issue fancy yarn garter stitch scarves.  While I'm not fond of making them, this new deserving recipient saw one worn by another person and went googly over it.  I was lurking nearby and took notice. 

I'm using US #13s and plain old Eros and ColorLash - an oft-mixed pair to be sure.  While the result is striking looking and no doubt tempting for beginners to knit, I despair at the number of people who have probalby given up knitting because of this stuff.  Others have noted how unruly both yarns are, how they slither off the needle and off the ball; how easy it is to drop or inadvertently increase a stitch; and how annoying it can be when a needle tip snags in the interstices of the railroad ribbon.  I know in my hanging out at the LYS days, I must have rescued a half-dozen of these scarves for distraught beginners, reseating the stitches on the needles after their inevitable escape.  Which brings me to a discussion thread that doesn't have an externally posed question to cue it.  So I supply one just for fun:

What's makes a good beginners' project?

I'm of two minds on this one.  First, the best thing for a beginner to knit is something that a beginner wants to knit. Telling someone that something is beyond them is a "one size fits all" defeatist strategy.  Some people learn better when faced with a challenge.  Others get discouraged if they're told something is hard before they even try it. 

At the same time, not every knitter can leap in and make a complex bit of lace, a fitted Fair Isle or an elaborate Aran sweater as their first-ever piece.  There's a balance here to strike among well-behaved materials in comfortable sizes, project scale that provides the best mix of achievablity and challenge, and skill requirements that stretch the knitter without frustration.  If I have to recommend something as a first project, I tend to look for these factors:

• Smooth, classic finish yarn rather than texture
• Worsted or Aran weight (20 or 19 stitches = 10 cm or 4 inches)
• Size US #6 to #8 needles (depending on yarn weight used)
• Light color to make stitch identification easier
  

What size project and whether it's knit flat or in the round depends on the knitter.  I've started people out on everything from small swatch sized mug rug squares, to scarves, hats, even socks.  Full sweaters (unless they are ultra simple dropped sleeve ones in little kid sizes) I tend to recommend for a second or subsequent project.  But again, desire to knit is the strongest motivator of all.  If someone REALLY wants to use an unruly yarn for a first project, or begin with an adult size cardigan,  hot desire can trump cooler considerations. 

My own first project was a Dr. Who length scarf that started out in garter stitch and quickly took off on a tangent as I tried out all the stitch texture patterns in my book on it.  My second was a Penny Straker trinity stitch baseball jacket. 

Are you someone who started out on the classic track, or are you someone who did the knitting equivalent of jumping off the end of a pier to learn how to swim?  Would you encourage a beginner to embark on what you know will be a challenge, hoping that perseverence will see the newbie through the difficulties ahead?  Or would you try to gently redirect that person to something that's easier, more in line with the classic progression from first swatch through scarf, flat knit drop shoulder pullover, and so on?  Inquiring knitters want to know...

My convertible mittens are done.  I have to admit, the joy of ending off ten fingers wasn't a pleasure of the ages - but they're finished.



The rustic wool I used for these isn't as soft and non-itchy as I would have preferred, but in this case the intended use trumps that problem.  It's my understanding that the recipient would be wearing ultrathin silk gloves inside these.  Liners do away with itch.

If I were to make another pair of these mittens, I'd probably use a shaped thumb gusset instead of the afterthought thumb.  While these do fit nicely, I find a shaped thumb area to be more comfortable.  Award to recipient is this afternoon.  I'm sure he'll be pleased.

Next up in the gift parade is problematic.  I had a Very Strong Hint shared with me yesterday.  I don't have the special materials on hand, so compliance will entail a lunch-time raid on my LYS.  Now not everyone around me can get goodies just by idle hint.  Hints must be 1) shared innocently, with little expectation that they will lead to the desired object; and 2) must be given by the deserving, and I get to decide who's deserving.  If I didn't impose limits, I'd be chest deep in special requests.

Other items on parade include another pair of socks (probably not going to happen), and some ear warmers and hats.  Plus some additional crocheted snowflakes for the tree.  We'll see what further stash excavation expeditions unearth.

Cookie report: 
Rum balls this year turned into Scotch balls, as a last minute dearth of rum foiled my original plans.  I've used bourbon before, but found the result too strong, so we'll see how this year's crop mellows.  Peanut butter cookies are also finished.  I'm happy to say that the spice cookies turned out exceptionally well.  Thin, light, and gently spiced.  A delicate cookie compared to many heavier riffs on the spice cookie theme. 

Between work, holiday preparations and other commitments, my updates to String have gotten very spotty.  For that I apologize.

Right now I'm consumed by deadlines of various flavors.  Not the least of which is our annual cookie fest.  I've mentioned before that holidays are not allowed to happen here until we've got at least ten kinds of cookies baked and ready.  Ten batches of cookies makes far too many for a family of four to consume, so I always share the bounty, giving cookies to neighbors, friends and co-workers.  (If family lived closer, they'd get some, too.)

This year's list includes both things I can't NOT make, some repeats of special favorites, plus a couple of experiments:

• Chocolate chip cookies - the classic, but made with mini chips and pecans instead of walnuts,  slightly smaller than their non-holiday brothers
  
• Mexican wedding cakes - a very rich, pecan-dense shortbread cookie, rolled in powdered sugar
• Peanut butter cookies - my kids would shudder in horror if I left these off the list.  Done with crunchy peanut butter
• Buffalo Rum Balls - a version of the classic crushed cookie bourbon ball, done with rum and cocoa, rolled in cocoa. Our variation comes from a recipe published in the Buffalo NY evening newspaper some time in the 1960s
  
• Sugar cut-outs - the iconic holiday cookie.  This year we get to use the Hannukah cookie cutters.  Also I put lemon zest in the batter, and mix the icing with lemon juice instead of milk or water
• Oysters - a family invention.  A hazelnut spritz sandwich cookie, filled with dark chocolate ganache
• Earthquakes - another classic, renamed by the kids.  This one's a chocolate crinkle cookie, rolled in powdered sugar before baking.  We use additional bitter cocoa in the place of the coffee in the recipe.  The expansion of the cookie creates chocolate rupture fault lines in the white exterior
• Cinnamon maple rings - a rolled, layered refrigerator cookie.  Very thin and delicate.
• Elephant Tongues - Like last year's ears, this one is a quickie that uses store-bought puff pastry for more effect than effort.  I'll be posting the how-to here.
• Cocoa amaretti - Barely cocoa, very almondy and very biscotti-crunchy.  New this year from a cookbook
  
• Spice cookies - Also new this year, but from a recipe on the King Arthur website.
• Panforte - Chocolate/nut/fruit heaven on earth new last year.  A must-repeat from last year.  This is so good we may NOT share it. 
  

In the midst of all of the holiday knitting continues.  Again apologies if you visit looking for more yarn goodies.  Other goodies right now are taking precedence.

I'm doing fine, but my base station computer is lying on the dining room table, completely gutted. A new motherboard, new power supply, and a new video card are arrayed nearby. But you didn't come here to read about my digital woes.

I'm working up a follow-on to the charting articles - a set of thumbnail reviews of the knitting pattern books on my shelves. I've got most of the standards, plus a couple of the harder to find items. But that's much easier to do when I'm working in the same room the books are.

In the mean time, I've been working on various small projects - mostly holiday related. I've finished off several more pairs of booties (there must be something in the water, as there appears to be spike up in the local numbers of the gravid). Socks march on, with the latest pair being toe-ups in a very conservative gray, possibly with an inverted flap heel and the placement of a spot motif on the ankle. Those bits may yield something of interest to write about. Plus a quick stitched piece that is destined to be given to an unsung hero at work. More on that tomorrow.

In the mean time, I present with a bit of sadness, the knit fake chain mail coif and hauberk I made for Older Daughter when she was five:



Apologies for the even lousier than normal picture quality. I don't have access to the photo editing tools I normally use.

This is the knight costume that was featured in the note I wrote that ended up in the first volume of KnitLit. I made it for Elder Daughter in 1996, when she was in Kindergarten. The sadness creeps in because Younger Daughter just wore it for Halloween, and it was clear that this is the last year that she will be able to do so. The coif will still figure in fantasy play for or a while, but the mail shirt is ready for The Box of Knitting That No Longer Fits.

In the mean time, if you want to knit up some play armor for your own miniature warrior, the method description is on wiseNeedle.

Computer failure at this end. Please bear with me. I'll return to offering up tangled knitting thoughts ASAP.

A person left a comment on one of the counterpane pages here, asking for help identifying the technique or stitches used in blanket she owns. She neglected to leave an eMail address. I'd be interested in seeing a photo and possibly posting it here for discussion, but without contact info not much can be done.

Yes, in the midst of all the charting stuff I was knitting. I finished up the Harvey Kombu, and I did a pair of plain toe-up socks from Lana Gross Meilenweit. I'm not sure which color variety it is, as I lost the label in an airport. It's not Fantasy, the repeat is too short. It' s not Multieffect, or any of the MultiRingel colors, either. It's possible it was part of last winter's Jacquard color crop.



You'll notice ends dangling off both pieces. I really can't say why I do this (perhaps it's a personal superstition, perhaps it's a reminder not to use the item myself), but when I make gifts in advance, I don't darn in the final ends until I have decided whom the recipient will be. I'm not quite sure who will be receiving these, so the ends are still there. Go figure.

The socks were done on US #0s (2mm) needles - 72 stitches around. That makes them rather large in gauge for me. I used the standard figure-8 toe and short-row heel I use in all the sock patterns on the wiseNeedle pattern page. Nothing fancy here, just miles and miles of plain old stockinette, finished off with a K2P2 ribbing at the top. The pattern for the Kombu scarf is also there. In this case, I used a US #6 (4mm), and used just under two full balls of my ancient stash-aged Lang Harvey yarn.

Finally, one other person asked about how I construct my charts. As I've described at length before, I use Microsoft Visio. I'm sharing my Visio stencils. If you've tried graphing knitting or stitching patterns using them and have feedback or questions, please let me know.

To recover from the charting series, I present tiny mental vacation in the past. 1972 to be exact. That was the year I embroidered this jacket.



It was well before The Warner Brothers Store and WB characters being available on licensed merchandise. I drew my Roadrunner freehand from cartoons on TV. As you can see by the variant color (the official Roadrunner is blue), my Looney Tunes years were spent in front of a black and white TV.

I had a lot of embroidered clothing back then - a pair of jeans with large phoenix that wound up one leg, starting in flames at the cuff and finishing with a peacock-frilled head on the hip pocket; a blue workshirt covered with wildflowers copied from herbals; and a denim vest done in Shisha mirrorwork. Except for the denim jacket all are long gone, sold while I was in college to pay for books. You might have seen the other pieces if you wandered past the window of the Red Dog second hand clothing boutique in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, sometime between '75 and '78 (back when the Square was more edgy and gritty than it is in its current Urban Redevelopment/Mall of America glory). I've always wondered who bought my pieces.



My Roadrunner is done in plain old 6-strand cotton floss, mostly in chain stitch. The two-tone tail happened when the store that sold Coats & Clarks embroidery thread dropped it in favor of the DMC line. I ran out of my original stock and had to do the closest color match I could. You can barely make out the blue sig block below the front foot. When I stitched this, the denim ground was the same color blue as that block.

Elder Daughter wears this now (fraying and all), and would kill for the other pieces. They may be long gone, probably discarded from the homes of others, but I still have some of the Medieval history textbooks they funded.

Some random questions popped into my inbox this week. I try to answer:

You said you knit a lot of socks, and the colorful bits on the booties are leftovers. Leftovers from what? What are your favorite sock yarns?

I like the Euro-style classic finish hard twist wool/nylon blend sock yarns best (I don't care for either wearing or knitting cotton socks). My short list includes Socka/Fortissima, Regia, Meilenweit, and the like. I'm slightly less fond of Reynold's sock yarns, finding them a bit coarser than I like. I knit with Opal once, the yarn's texture was nice and the colors were interesting, but not so much that I'd pay a premium to find more. I've also tried Kroy 4 ply (aka Kroy Sock), Special Blauband, and Brown Sheep Wildfoote. I'm not as fond of those. Brown Sheep is too thin, splitty and flabby. Special Blauband is also thin compared to my usual (their Blauband Ringel yarns though are more comparable to the Socka type). Kroy is a bit less densely spun than the Euro yarns, but it's economical and is stocked in solid colors. Once it was difficult to find multicolor sock yarn, now it's tough to find solids. I use solids for contrast, so I was very happy to find Kroy.

I've also tried some of the higher priced yarns, like Koigu and Lorna's Laces. In truth, though the Koigu colors were fantastic, I was less pleased with its performance in a sock than most. I found it too thick to make socks I can wear in most of my shoes, plus even under careful hand-wash, I found it fuzzed and lost that surface sheen that makes the colors pop. The socks are wearing well, but they've lost that special something that the yarn had in the skein. I'd use Koigu again in a heartbeat - but not for socks. The Lorna's Laces yarn was a bit loftier than my usual hard twist stuff, but worked up nicely. It's wearing quite well.

I've also tried a salad of other sock yarns - Alpine, Marathon, Happy Strumpf, Trekking - whatever wandered into my local yarn store that looked interesting. While all made suitable socks, none stood out as things I'd want to seek out for repeat use. Alpine was a Euro style yarn - good texture, boring colors; the others were heavier than I prefer.

I haven't tried the less expensive sock yarns from KnitPicks or Elann. I tend not to buy yarn via the Web if I can get the equivalent locally, and I live in a very sock yarn rich region. (Actually touching yarn before I buy it is a requirement.)

The links above just go to one representative of larger, similarly named sock lines. If you need more info on sock yarns, try wiseNeedle. Go to the search page and look up a sock yarn by name, or select "sock" from the drop down list of yarn types. About 135 are currently listed - 85% with at least one review. You can also find a chart showing some repeat lengths of common sock yarn self stripers here.

Still working on the scarf?



I like it better when you write about little stuff. The big projects are boring. What little stuff are you planning?

Unfortunately, I don't plan my knitting to fuel this blog. I knit wherever I want to wander, and the blog gets pulled along behind. That being said, I have to finish this latest crop of booties plus the Harvey Kombu, then rescue Elder Daughter's Rogue before returning to my large blanket. Plus the holidays are coming. I've promised a ton of socks, plus there are some other special gifts that I really should make. You'll see quite a few quickies over the coming two months, I guarantee.

Late breaking addition:? Ooooh. Mittens!? Haven't done full patterend mittens yet. Thank you , Wendy!

I'm still sweeping out mental cobwebs, occupying my fingers with interim quickie projects. Saturday's was another pair of booties, in the bootie pattern I've blogged about before:



This pair is in lime green Dale Baby Ull, and the leftover of some tweed sock yarn long since separated from its label of origin. It just takes a couple of yards to do one of the purl welts. I've worked them in contrast (as shown here), even working each welt in a different color yarn. Sometimes I do the ties in the same color as the contrast, sometimes not. It all depends on how much I've got. This is why I never throw away sock yarn leftovers. The smallest bit is enough to accent a pair of these booties.

I'm still repacking my stash after our near escape from a basement flood. In doing so I'm running across all sorts of goodies I had forgotten about. In the same box as my Kureopatora leftovers, I found about seven or eight balls of Harvey. Lang Harvey was a wool blend salad with a boucl? finish - 40% wool, 32% acrylic, 15% polyamide nylon, 10% alpaca, and 3% viscose. I'm pretty sure I scavenged it from a bargain bin at a (long gone) yarn shop I used to frequent in College Park, Maryland. And I'm also pretty sure that I bought it circa 1990 or so. Possibly earlier, so the chance of anyone finding more outside their own stash is slim to none. The original intent was to make a vest, but although I liked the yarn I didn't like the way it worked with my chosen pattern, so I stashed it.

What's boucl? you ask? It's a style of yarn that has fallen out of favor. You don't see that many of them around any more, the textured yarn niche having been consumed entirely by the fluttery fur monster.

Boucl?s have an airy hand. If you think of classic finish multi-strand yarns (like Cascade 220) as dense cream cheese, boucl?s would be the whipped variety. Unlike chenille where the fluffiness is made by little strands that are bound by some kind of "keeper thread," boucl?s have no fuzz to come unbound. The yarn's structure is of one or more two-ply strands. One ply is relatively taught, usually a very fine nylon thread. The other ply is looser spun, almost slubby, and is under far less tension. The looser strand is sort of gathered and lumped around the nylon base thread, resulting in something that has more loft and that has higher yardage per unit weight.

Here's Harvey:



Harvey has two two-ply strands. You can see how nubbly and slubby it looks. While it reminds me in color and visual appearance of the iron-upholstered sofa in my grandmother's apartment (the one that would sand your thighs off if you sat on it while wearing a skirt in the summer), it is in fact an exceptionally luxurious feeling, soft and easy to wear yarn.

Some boucl?s are even more fluffy or bumpy than this. Some have a loopy construction (I'm not sure at what exact point something stops being a boucl? and becomes - for example - a mohair loop, but I'm sure one of the spinning folk who read here will enlighten us.)?? My Harvey is marked at worsted gauge (20 st x 34 rows = 4 inches or 10cm) . It's about 126 meters or about 138 yards. A classic worsted like Cascade 220 is about 110 yards for 50 grams. Even taking the fiber salad composition of Harvey into consideration, 28 yards in 50 grams is a major difference in yardage.

Now. How does Harvey knit up??

The first time I tried it out I was disappointed, but I had picked a pattern for which it wasn't suited at all. I tried it out using a knit/purl texture pattern that was totally eaten by the yarn's texture and dark color. While it isn't optimal for showing detail on something like my Kombu, I thought it might be fun to try out in that pattern:



Again, the ribbed detail is partially obscured, although it shows up better in person than it does in a photo. But the softness and drape can't be topped. I'll be finishing out my Harvey Kombu and stowing it for the upcoming gift season. I'll probably have enough to do a matching hat, too.

Oh, and for an exceptional Kombu that really shows off the pattern's texture better than my own attempts at both knitting and photography (and not to mention her superior execution of the idea) check out Kerstin's Strickforum. Beautiful!

Thank you to all who saw something redeemable in yesterday's blanket. I think the most telling thing of all is that the entire time I was working on it, my parents smiled sweetly and offered up yarn leftovers and encouragement. At no time did they grimace, giggle, or point. That sort of unconditional support must be something one learns in Secret Parent School, because I find myself smiling sweetly at earnest yet flawed first attempts made by my own kids.

On the knitting front, I'm still blowing the cobwebs out of my brain. This weekend past we narrowly averted a minor flood, and in doing so learned yet another advantage of keeping a large yarn stash stored in plastic boxes. What we see here is several tubs of yarn, dumped out on the projects table in the basement, and an "after" shot of the flood site, with the now empty and drying tubs perched on top of the sump they helped drain.


Had I not had a bunch of tubs lying around the house I would not have been able to stem my mini-tide.

In the course of the whole thing, I ran across two and a half balls of Noro's Kureopatora Plus. This is a multicolor wool/cotton blend yarn that's about six years old. The label calls it out at 23 st = 4 inches, but it knits up more like a heavy DK or even a worsted. It's long since discontinued which is unfortunate.

Although it won't full like the Noro multis popular right now, Kureopatra's cotton content makes it softer than they are. The colors are distributed not through dying but through spinning. It's double ply in construction. It looks like the spinner did a thick/thin thing on each ply, starting with one color and introducing fiber of the second in the thinner sections. Change is gradual (with occasional slubs) from color to color. Then two strands were plied, with the thin strand of one matching up with the thicker section of the other, so that the contrast color of the thinner strand is very evident against the puffy part of the other strand.

I started my latest bit of gratification by working up another of my Kombu scarves. Hey - it worked with a multicolor before, right? But I didn't like the look. The rainbow of this yarn is too strident for the textured Kombu:


So I ripped it out (hard going with this loosely plied fuzzy stuff); and began again. This time with my own off the top of my head variant on the single repeat entrelac rooted multidirectional idea. Mine is done in ribbing on 30 stitches. Provided I have enough yarn, I intend on finishing it with some sort of edging knit on after the main body is done:



I like this much better. Thank goodness my color sense has matured since 14.

News flash via NPR!

Love to knit?? Is stranding a way of life for you?? Want to retreat from the hubbub of the big city?? Fair Isle - yes, THE Fair Isle, is looking to increase its population. Not much there in the way of employment opportunities outside knitting and the building trades, but oceans of beautiful vistas, friendly people, and the depth of character that living on the edge in a non-cushy environment can bring. Listen to Anne Sinclair, knitter extrodinaire on this All Things Considered audio clip, broadcast last evening.

Although I was out of town tending to family matters last weekend, knitting was accomplished - mostly on the flights and in the airports as I waited between planes. In addition to yesterday's swatches, I did some work on my counterpane.



As you can see there's a pie slice that's missing from the leftmost motif. My guess is that my missing triangle is now loose in the Orlando airport - a stopover on my way to my final destination. I doubt my feral triangle will cause more than a moment's pause as it is swept up and tossed away. So it goes.

As this piece grows larger, I can say I've definitely overbought my white cotton coned yarn. I have four enormous cones. I've gone through about a third of just one of them. I think I'll end up using just two of them to make the whole thing. Here's consumption so far. The untouched cone on the left weighs 1250g. It's the smallest of the four, with the others ranging up to about 1300g. The nibbled into cone on the right weighs 825g, and started out at around 1300g. Which all makes sense because my blanket so far weighs about 475g. (It's always pleasing when the math actually works out).



Since I've got about 20% of my estimated total surface area done, but have used only about 8.3% of my yarn (a third of one of four cones - roughly a 1/12 of my total available yarn), I'll have LOTS leftover. Still, I don't mind. It's nice yarn and there will be enough for another project (perhaps another counterpane). As an added bonus, the stuff was a very inexpensive back room find at Webs. I paid about $10 per cone for it. Since this project will last for about eight months at the current rate of production and I anticipate using only two cones, that works out to $2.50 per month of knitting enjoyment. It doesn't get any more economical than that.

How to knit on the cheap?? Don't buy what's trendy. Big fat yarns and glitzy yarns command a premium, but plain finish yarns, even first quality good wools and cottons can be had at very reasonable prices (even without resorting to reclaiming yarn).

Think smaller gauges. This stuff isn't particularly small being very close to DK weight (5.5spi), but even DK is lighter than many of the more favored yarns today. And think of? projects that get their zing from the knitting rather than from the yarn. Yes, they take a bit more time and attention than some plainer pieces, but isn't the entire idea to have fun knitting? No, if you are on a limited budget you won't be able to knit that fancy fulled cardigan from imported Japanese hand-dyed, but I bet with a little effort you could find a 100% wool sport weight yarn that would make a smashing texture stitch or stranded colorwork jacket and not break the bank - especially if you consider how many weeks of knitting time you'd get by investing in such a project.

I think I've mentioned that I've done some minor design work for Classic Elite. I know that some people are curious about how the pro design thing works. Bearing in mind that my experience isn't typical, this is how it's been for me.

I'm not a first-stringer. In general, I don't pursue the company by submitting design proposals. I'd say I'm more of a third-stringer. They call me with specific assignments based on ideas or inspirations generated by others - usually at last minute. My guess is that I get called when more famous and prolific names are overbooked; when embroidery is involved; or when deadline crises are afoot. That's o.k. by me, as I don't have the time/energy to devote to knit design as a full career path. I've also done some contract knitting, crocheting and embroidering for them, producing finished items based on other people's designs, and in the process proofing (or fleshing out) the pattern's early drafts.

What have I done lately? Nothing big, that's for certain. The current collections include two of mine.



This is a hat and mittens set (I'm not responsible for the sweater jacket). This assignment was mildly challenging - take one skein of the bulky (almost superbulky) luxury yarn Tigress and work up an adult hat and mittens set that's easy to knit. Since 200g of Tigress is only 181 yards this was a squeeze. I managed it though, with a very simple rolled brim hat with some garter ridge details, plus a matching rolled cuff basic mitten. I have to say I am not a fan of big-needle knitting and won't be making another set, but my 14 year old loved the hat and mitts and was loathe to send them off when I was done.

This one was both easier and more difficult:


This assignment was to create a striped hat/wristlets/scarf set using yarns of two different weights, but of the same fiber composition and dyed in the same colors. The yarns didn't have names attached when I was using them, but I think they've been dubbed "Princess" and "Duchess" since. My homework was to take as inspiration a series of photos showing striped knitting adorned by looped embroidery stitches. In truth, I don't remember which pieces use which weight yarns (the submission deadline was back in the Spring), but I do remember trying to plan the pieces to make the most efficient use of the yarn. Again, simplicity and beginner-friendliness were the marching orders. These use plain old seed stitch. The hat and wristlets were knit in the round. The looped embroidery stitches aren't difficult to do, and are (of course) optional. You have to **love** seed stitch though as there are miles of it in the scarf. Of the two yarns, I did like working with Princess (the worsted weight version). I didn't retain any (see below) and I don't have the finished item, so I can't comment on durability or washablity. Duchess was also nice, but I'm not fond of heavier weight yarns in general.

Past projects I've done include a long striped scarf in Bazic, ornamented with pattern darning and fringed down one long side. The photo of that one in the pattern leaflet didn't show the embroidery, so I have no idea if anyone was ever inspired enough to try it. I also did a series of nesting baskets crocheted in a very heavy cotton yarn a couple of summers back. I've worked on other projects as well.

I'm sure people have lots of questions about the design process. I'll try to head some off here:

For real?? They say what to make, and you just make it?

For me that's how it's been. Real designers with lengthy portfolios and industry-wide reputations must have more latitude.

How do I get involved? How can I get my stuff published?

Yarn makers and magazines have design guidelines (by issue for the magazines). Look them up and submit written proposals outlining your idea. Make sure your idea includes a sample swatch, and enough info to make it intelligible to someone else. This may mean lots of sketches and schematics. It does NOT include sending a whole finished garment. Be prepared for hundreds of rejections before an acceptance. Also be prepared to feel like you've tossed your ideas into A Great Black Hole. Also, your proposals will not be returned unless you include return envelopes and postage (another reason not to send full garments at this stage). You WILL be taken more seriously if you've got a "knitting resume" behind you. That might mean a track record of publication elsewhere (a chicken or egg problem). I do note that some of the on-line venues are a bit more welcoming of submissions than are the yarn houses or paper mags. They might be a good place to start. (Oh, and if like me you've ever been a burr under the saddle of any publisher or maker at any time in the past, you can pretty much forget about placing anything in their venue.)

In general after you submit your proposal it's mulled over for a while. If it's selected, you get your marching orders to proceed, plus a contract outlining what you owe (written design or written design and finished sample), the number and range of sizes the item needs to be written for, specifications for the exact yarn and possibly even the color desired by the publisher, and the deadline for submission. Be warned:? that deadline may be as little as two weeks away, and may involve a yarn that requires you to recalculate your entire design, so advance knitting is not always entirely productive. The deadline cycle is the main reason why I don't try to do this on a professional basis. I just can't commit to doing anything major to hard, short deadline.

How much does it pay?

Not much. Even though it is taxable income (reported under "Miscellaneous" or as a home business), if you work out the hours invested in proposing, designing, drafting, swatching, test-knitting, pattern writing, and proofing you'll quickly figure out that you'll be working at less than minimum wage. Way less.

Do you get free yarn or get to keep the finished item?

Yes and no. If you work for a yarn company directly like I did, they do send more than enough yarn to make the project. But under contract, I'm obligated to return any leftovers and swatches, so I don't get to keep any. i also don't get to keep the finished item - that's the photo shoot/trunk show/demonstration model and gets returned to the pattern publisher as part of the agreed-upon deliverables. The sample belongs to the publisher, not the knitter, even though the knitter worked on it.

It's worth noting that not every designer knits up his or her own samples, some subcontract out. Others just do the design and the publisher arranges for the sample to be knit as a separate contract. Also, if you're knitting for some other entity than a yarn maker, you might have to buy the yarn yourself and factor that into your total contract price.

You sell-out. Isn't this a big commercial for CE stuff?

I don't think so. They're not paying me to push these patterns, and I don't get extra for increased sales. Plus I rather doubt that anyone is going to buy anything based on this rather non-gushy blog entry. I have also recused myself from posting any reviews of Classic Elite products on wiseNeedle since my very first professional interaction with them. I'm mulling this policy over though, as not all of my experiences with their products have been uniformly joyous. Still, I thought the general experience might be of interest to some.

Why are you talking about this now?

Because I've just gotten another assignment from Classic Elite. All I can say about it is that fulling and embroidery are both involved. It's going to kill me not to be able to blog about this particular design process real-time because there will be all sorts of lessons learned on the way. So please be patient with me. There won't be much counterpane progress until this has passed, and I'll be scampering around looking for other things to write about. Suggestions there are welcome.

Four motifs done. My guesstimate is that four represents about 15% of the total finished area. That means I'm looking at something like 26 or so in total, with some of them being halfies.



It looks like the trillium background shapes will form rings around the star motifs. I'm really looking forward to seeing that develop. My next step though may be to work out the half-width motif set. That would include a half-hex, three normal triangles, one normal square and two half-width squares.

UPDATE - Looking for past posts here

I do try to post stuff here that I hope is useful. I also realize that much of it might not strike a reader as being useful today, but might stick in memory somewhere and pop up when the specific need is encountered. I've gotten a couple of questions (including a comment early today) about how to find past posts. I've tried to provide tools to do that.

First, for the knitting projects and some broad subject areas, I've set up category tags. You can see them in the right hand sidebar (you might have to scroll right a bit because of an over-large graphic I posted last week). Projects all are named something like "Project - Lacy Scarf" and index all the posts that mention each project. The broad subject categories also work that way. Clicking on the "Reference Shelf" tag will bring up all the posts that I thought people might find especially helpful, likewise "Embroidery" should find all the posts that discuss that subject.

Some particularly popular posts have merited direct access under the major category "References," also in the right hand sidebar. Yarn Labels 101 and 102 for example are two posts that get lots of traffic from people just becoming familiar with yarn labels and how to read them.

Finally for all those search needs that keyword indexing didn't anticipate, there's a search box in that same sidebar. You can type a word in there and bring up all posts that mention it, or you can click on the "advanced search" tag right below that box to do more complex multi-word or time-limited searches. Typing "booties" in the search box should find the posts I did on A. Krekel's pattern for booties that really do stay on.

I was out webwalking again and came upon this:



It's a report of a bit of performance art/industrial control/knitting that boggles the mind. The artist is directing the production of a knit US flag, using aluminum street light poles as needles and giant strips of felt for yarn. The actual knitting was performed by two John Deere excavators, handled with amazing delicacy and precision. The image is from a story on iBerkshires.com, reporting about the event which took place at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

The artist in question is David Cole. This isn't the first exploration of knitting (giant or human scale) he's done. He's also done a previous bit of oversize knitting with construction machinery, working up fiberglass insulation into a giant slouchy teddy bear. His other works can be seen at his website.

I can't say that the gauge of the flag was in fact 1 st=3 feet, but one has to admit that it's pretty huge. I'm especially boggled at the thought of someone deconstructing the movements to produce a knitting stitch, then reproducing that series behavior using the controls of the excavators. I'd love to applaud not only Mr. Cole (for his imagination in thinking up this concept), but also the equipment operators. "Knit a flag" is an incredible thing to put on one's equipment resume, and is quite a testament to their skill.

Where are all you people coming from? Not literally, of course, but I have been wondering of late.

Blog City has introduced new statistics tools. Among the other things it does is maintain a list of the top read blog pages since the feature came on line. The list is pretty much what I expected. The poncho write-up is my most popular, fueled in part by the fact that the link has been widely collected by people maintaining pattern indexing sites. My Stupid Stitch Marker Tricks piece and the one on double-edged I-cord strips has also been in mailing list and other blogs' discussions of late - no surprise there. Make your own stitch holders also has had lots of traffic, as had the column on the history of the Kitchener Stitch name.

In fact, all the bits I've marked as "Reference" both on the right hand margin, and in the categories index are things I expect to see visited often. Reference pieces are bits I think might be more broadly useful than the rest of the drivel I usually post. But there are also some surprises on the list.

The piece I did on the baby booties has had a huge readership, with most of the hits coming from Japanese websites. My guess is that the step by step photos have helped Japanese knitters who were struggling with the English instructions. Another page that has had a phenomenal number of hits (almost all of them occurring in the last 10 days) has been the More Knitting Fun piece. That one I just don't understand. I can't find any referrers to it, and the write-up itself is rather plain. It's just an all-prose report on stumbling across a remarkable knitted object - a knit-covered bicycle. Yet in the past week or so it has had over 2,000 visitors. That's more than double the number who looked at the poncho page in the same period.

Go figure...

Of course, the Referring Web Pages tool that shows up on each page of the site should be giving me a clue. I do know from that roughly where people are hopping in from, at least for some of the pages. Thanks go to QueerJoe, the first blogger to send traffic my way; Curmudgeon Marilyn, who's prickly writings I enjoyed for a long time, and whom I've not yet managed to annoy; to Wendy, crossroads of the blogworld; and to all the other leaping off spots that launch people in this general direction.

I'm sure others have blogged about this already - needles with built-in sensors that log the stitch count for you. There's a base station that displays the count, and appears to have holders to park the needles when they're not in use.

I can't find any confirmation that this has moved beyond prototyping into the realm of a real product, but regardless of development stage I would have some questions for the maker:

1. Are the sensors adaptable to any size needle, or is the knitter locked into using only one size?
2. What is that size, and how long are the needles?
   
3. Does it equally sense the movements of both throwers and pickers (British/American and Continental styles)?
4. How does it handle complex stitches?? For example, would it log a SSK as one stitch or three - counting the three movements it takes to produce it as separate stitches?
5. Can you dial up or down to readjust stitch count and compensate for multiple movement stitches?
6. Is there a memory function?? For example, if I sit down and knit today will it remember where I left off yesterday?
7. Is it possible to get interim counts, kind of like the way you can use trip set on a car odometer to record smaller intervals?? This might come in handy if one wanted to track a repeat in addition to tracking total stitch count.
8. Does it handle row count?? (For most knitters, row count is a far more annoying tracking problem than is stitch count).
   
9. Is there an upper limit? For example, if I work a flat piece in a tiny yarn, I could easily have a couple hundred stitches across, even on a 14-inch straight.
   
10. Does the count span rows, or is it set up to track on a single row basis?
11. How sensitive is it to spurious movements?? For example, if I bobble the needles as I reach for something or flip the work over, will that increment the count?
    

I'm not about to run out and buy something like this, even if my questions were all answered, but it's very interesting to see some creativity and technology applied to the problem.

For me, low tech is still the way to go:? my stitch marker abacus for tracking rows, and for those projects where I need to know count across at all times (very few and far between), a series of stitch markers placed every 10 or 25 stitches (or between repeats), as counted out from the center.

There's nothing like a flurry of activity at work to make one feel appreciated. I feel very appreciated right now. My priorities being in the right place, there's been precious little knitting here since my return from vacation. I anticipate things returning to the chaos that passes for normalcy here by next week.

Even though I have no knitting or stitching goodies to share today, I can't let you wander off unrewarded. Here's another beach picture to contemplate. This one was taken last Tuesday by The Resident Male, of a beach shack perched in the dunes of the National Seashore near Provincetown, Massachusetts.

The only problem with starting out the summer with one's vacation is that while there's lots for the kids to look forward to in July and August, to me it feels like summer is already over.

While we had great fun on our week away, the weather wasn't ideal. I didn't mind the wet and cold because I was at my favorite place on earth - the beach in North Truro on Cape Cod. This is sunset over Provincetown, as seen from the deck of our room on one of the nicer days.



We had a couple of good beach days at the start of the week, then the weather turned cold and nasty. Luckily we were there with friends, and between good companionship and copiously applied wine, were able to keep both warm and entertained.

I did get in some knitting, but progress was slow. I was re-creating my North Truro counterpane pattern - invented in the very same spot - from my sketchy notes. I got off to a couple of false starts, regraphed some probelm areas, made some of the lines of the piece crisper, and played with various methods of joniing that avoid some need for seaming. Here's the result:



As you can see, I'm mid-motif. The initial unit is the hex in the center. I knit that starting on some 3mm DPNs, moving to a circ as it got larger. Instead of binding off, I purled my final row, and left the thing on the circ. Then I attached my yarn at what looked to be a good corner point, and holding the thing with the reverse side front, knit one side's worth of stitches. That produced the appearance of two rounds of purl on the front at the base of my soon-to-be-knit side square. I then worked the side square out using two DPNs. I worked my side squares attached like this, one at a time. After I got a couple done, I knit a side triangle separately (it's worked base to tip) and sewed it into place.

I also experimented with skewing the attachment of the square unit. Since it really doesn't matter where on the center hex the sides begin and end, I knit one square on katywumpus - aligning its center to the point of the star instead of to the center of the leaf motif in between the star arms. You can see it above. It's the lone square that I've pointed out with the arrow. I've decided I like the original orientation better and left it intact just long enough to photograph.

Well and good. Things look like they're working out. I've avoided working all those squares separately and the seams joining them to the hex in the center. My bargain basement Webs-find yarn is working out well, with a very soft slubby cotton hand. I like it a lot. Compare it to my first iteration of this idea:



I don't know if you can see it, but the older yarn is MUCH heavier. It's a very dense cotton worsted - almost a twine. The newer yarn is a 90% cotton, 10% acrylic blend, and is somewhere between DK and sport in thickness, plus it's much less densely structured than the older stuff. The lighter yarn drapes better, plus it shows off the motifs better. All in all, things look quite promising!

I'm working (albeit in the background) on a project to get "Kitchener Stitch" and "to Kitchener" into the Oxford English Dictionary. I've already corresponded with an OED committee member and he is fascinated by the historical connection. Should we find sufficient documentation he would be glad to nominate the term for inclusion.

I've gone on? about this before - mostly noting that until knitters on both sides of the Atlantic began talking to another via the 'Net, no one really noticed that that this term for grafting (especially in sock toes) was far more common in the U.S. and Canada than it was in the U.K.

This is in spite of the fact that Earl Horatio Herbert Kitchener was a prominent British military figure in WWI, and a pre-1900 hero of the Sudan Wars. He's also the guy after whom the Sirdar yarn company was named (a pal of his owned it and named it after Kitchener's title during his tenure in the Sudan). You've all seen Kitchener's picture, he's the guy in the major league mustache who figured so prominently in British WWI recruitment posters.



So far research has turned up some tantalizing facts:

Just before and in the early part of WWI, Lord Kitchener was in charge of updating the British military kit, and oversaw the development of standards for all items of battle dress and equipment, including socks. Whether or not he (or his staff) issued military specifications for socks that included seamless toes is still a tidbit we have not pinned down.

Grafting as a technique to close up sock toes appears to not have been widespread before the 1920s, and with very, very few exceptions is not documented before 1920. We are still looking for exact, research-grade citations for the earliest specific mention of grafting (with a technique description) to close up sock toes. We've got some anecdotal references, but nothing we can take to the committee.

The term "Kitchener Stitch" or "Kitchener Grafting" is still not pegged down, although other sources lead me to believe that it was first used in a socks-for-the-troops pamphlet issued by the Canadian Red Cross circa 1916 - possibly from Kitchener, Ontario. This theorized pamphlet has not yet been found. One pebble in the gears of this theory is that Kitchener, Ontario was only named in 1916. (It changed its name from "Berlin" at that time as part of the general anti-German sentiment common during the War.). ?? Again, any leads on this (with research grade citations) are most welcome. We've got one from around 1923 or so as our earliest.

Jean Miles in Edinburgh is investigating another theory - that Lord Kitchener (or someone acting in his name) either endorsed or submitted a sock pattern? to those knitting for British Expeditionary Forces at the outset of WWI. Again she's got no true citations, and is looking for leads.

As far as the technique of grafting in general - it appears to be rare before 1920, if in fact it was done at all. Socks of that era usually had round toes of some kind, and were terminated with a simple draw the yarn end through the last several stitches type closure. Some used variants of the three-needle bind off, but grafting (under any name) is absent in museum samples before 1920 or so. Deborah Pulliam wrote to me to say that in the course of her research she has examined hundreds of pre-1900 and post-1900 socks and stockings, plus hundreds of early knitting manuals and instruction sheets, and she has not yet found a grafted toe prior to 1920. She also states that flat toes were extremely rare prior to 1910, and are totally unrepresented in socks and stockings prior to 1850.

There is another style of sock, I believe it is a full sole re-footable one that was called a Kitchener Sock sometime around the late teens, early 1920s, but it does not resemble the socks common today, nor has the use of any grafting to make that sock been noted. Once more, a good citation is lacking.

By research grade citations, I mean full annotation - name of author, name of publication, date and place of publication, page number of the citation, and a quotation of the paragraph in which the term appears.

So if you've got access to a local research library or Red Cross archive and have nothing better to do, please poke around and let me know the result. You might be the person responsible for correcting this grievous oversight and getting Kitchener into the OED.

... that I'm not sylph-thin, and that I do finish wearables:

This rather blurry picture was taken by the 6-year old, which explains the low center of reference and focus quality. (Bloggers have no shame, and willingly press even small children into service.) I'm tallish and some say intimidating, but not THAT tall or intimidating.

The item being worn is my Raiisa tee. So far I haven't gotten a good photo of the thing, either on or off a wearer. I've provided the pattern but the charts for it are massive, and not for the faint of heart. I'm very pleased with the end product. Sausage arms and barrel body aside, it's one of the more flattering summer knits in my closet.

As to the short lines, odd line breaks and general strange formatting here on String - I'm not quite sure what's going on. Blog-City had a major upgrade earlier this week, and all sorts of minor things have gone awry. Please bear with me.

UPDATE: Several people have written to say that this photo doesn't prove that I exist, as it could have been taken of any random headless person. I concur, and would be happy to continue to be just a figment of everyone's imagination, except for this. (I suppose I should update that page, as the gnome is now finishing up first grade.)

What makes a good knitting bag?? That depends on the knitter. Some like the granny-style standers - those bags on a frame. Some like backpacks. Others live and die for the absolute latest Vera Bradley?design. While I'm probably closest to the backpack set, I have my own ideas. For me it's about minimalism and function, not style - so a parade of freebies has mostly been what I've used.

I'm thinking about this today because The Resident Male just returned from a conference at which he received an excellent bag. I snarfed it up immediately. He didn't stand a chance.

What I want to find:

• Ample, roomy interior deep enough to hold a large project
• Pierce-proof sides
• Sturdy bottom square enough to sit up on its own
• Wide enough to accommodate long single points
• Light weight
• At least one large width zippered pocket for safe pattern stowage
• Comfy handles long enough to sling over my shoulder
• A zippered top, so that when the thing is tossed in the back seat of the car, nothing tumbles out
• Additional inside pockets to hold notions
• Not looking like a knitting bag (no prissy, cutesy or country-kitchen themed patterning)
• Low cost.

Here's my (very boring) new bag:



It hits all the high points - lacking only interior pockets, plus it's mostly waterproof/water resistant. It may be boring but it's 99.5% perfect as a knitting bag. I'm delighted.

Here are several others from my collection.



The red velvet one covered with embroidery and bits of wedding saris is beautiful and capacious. It was also a highly appreciated gift. It's extremely fragile, as the sequins and jewels have a habit of shedding. Plus it's very floppy. Too beautiful and too delicate to schlep around, this one lives in the living room, lounging around on display and holding my upstairs project of the moment. (Yes, I have different projects in different rooms, and often work on what's closest rather than my primary project.)? Gorgeous, but a B- mostly?for limited utility.

The little green canvas tool bag was one I went out and bought. It's rugged, with lots of pockets around the outside. I loved the style, but didn't think hard about how useful it would actually be. Unfortunately it's too shallow for a big project, the splayed outer pockets spill their contents, and the handles are too short to make carrying it around comfortable. As a knitting bag it rates a C-.

The small blue embroidered bag was a find at the Gore Place Sheep and Wool Show. For the past several years there has been a Hmong family from Viet Nam displaying and selling hand made items? - bags, pillow covers, hangings and other pieces decorated with traditional cross stitch and quilting. This little bag is just big enough for one pair of socks in progress. It's quilted, so it (mostly) resists needle point penetration. It's got a small zipper pocket on the outside that holds notions. The straps are long enough that I can sling it over a shoulder and knit directly from it while standing. I've got a couple of these, each holding socks in progress. One lives at home and one lives at work. They're ideal take-alongs for doctors appointments, the infrequent lunch break, waiting on post office lines, and knitting during other bits of found time. A solid A-. A specialty bag, excellent for socks or other small projects;?downgraded a bit because I tend to use ridiculously small (and sharp) steel DPNs that can stab through both it and me.

And the last bag - the woefully dirty el cheapo cotton trade show special is the type of bag I use most often: souvenir nerdbags from technical conferences. ? No pockets, no sturdy bottom, no zippered top, no point-proof sides, but ultra abundant. This particular one might be considered a Geek Collectible. It's from the very first release of Oracle for the Macintosh. It was already old when I began using it to pack extra clothes to accompany The Older Daughter to day care, and she's now 14. This type of bag merits a solid B+. Not the best by far, but serviceable, and best of all - free.

Just a quick post today. I'm running around shepherding my kid to an awards ceremony (her poster was singled out in a competition run by the regional water authority); and getting ready for The Other Daughter's birthday party this weekend. May is birthday dense in this house, with both girls and I all inhabiting the last couple of weeks of the month. It's hectic to say the least.

I'm surprised that there hasn't been more written about Alcazar on the Web. I suspect it's because its photo doesn't display as well in small format. For example, the outer edging on the sample piece is done in a darker color yarn. It's difficult to see. As a result it hasn't attracted as much attention as its showier sisters. While I'm sure that lots of other people have knit it, I suspect that I might be among the first to blog about it. So far it's quick. I'm another iteration of the base pattern into the thing. I suspect that mine will be considerably smaller than the five-foot diameter piece one gets by using the recommended yarn and needle size. But no matter...

No progress today on Rogue. I'm still waiting for those golden moments needed to decipher where the heck I am. Sigh.

O.K. I've gotten quite a few notes disagreeing with the opinion I posted on Friday. That's fine.

Don't mistake me though. I'm not against passion or enthusiasm. Both are part of falling in love with a hobby, craft, or other pursuit. Passion is great. It's the fire in the furnace that feeds us all. To torture the metaphor, mindless gushing is the annoying component of the fire's smoke that hurts one's eyes. Sure, tell the world how much fun you're having. But if you want people to 1) read your comments; and 2) take you seriously, try to limit the LOLs, the "me-too-ism" and group-think, the over-use of "!!!," all caps, the run-on sentences, and mindless statements like, "I love it SOOOOO much, I'm dying." A blush of enthusiasm is like spice; too much is overpowering and swamps any content you may wish to convey.

Kid Report - Learn to Knit Afghan

The Larger Daughter has just started a new knitting project. She's already done several foofy scarves, a felted bag, and a pair of fingering weight wristlets. She wants to learn a bit about things beyond basic knits and purls. To do this, she's going to march through Barbara Walker's Lean to Knit Afghan Book.



Walker presents a series of patterns for squares that can be assembled into a blanket. Each square is for a different texture or colorwork pattern. They're (more or less) arranged in a sequence, with each new square introducing a new skill or technique. If you work your way through the entire set you'll have experienced a wealth of styles and stitches, and will have gained valuable experience in following knitting directions.

Yes, one could compose a project like this on one's own - taking stitch dictionaries and selecting interesting patterns from them. In fact all of the stitches in the Walker book are in either her own stitch treasuries, or in her other books. The advantages of having them in this one volume are portability of the directions (no lugging around a suitcase of books to choose the next square); having the repeats and cast-on numbers pre-calculated to produce a set of (mostly) same size squares; and having the lessons presented in a logical order, with new skills building on previously learned skills. There are other people who have or are writing about this project on the Web. /p[eu]rls of wisdom?/ has been blogging the project, and has a particularly nice set of finished squares up for the enjoyment of all.

The Larger Daughter is going to make her blanket from many shades of green, accented by cream and possibly another framing color to be chosen later. She's using Cascade 220, 100% wool, and is knitting on US #6 needles. She's on Square #1 right now - plain striped garter stitch, and is breezing through it. My role in this is to stay on the shelf as a benign source of last-resort help, not interfering unless she's got a specific question. That and buying the yarn, of course.

More from the inbox.

Stitch marker in the middle of decreases

Stinkyknitter is also working on the Paisley Shawl. She noted that some of the repeats in the second chart begin or end with a decrease, and asks how I manage stitch markers that end up in the middle of two stitches that are supposed to be worked together.

I move 'em.

Being a Continental style knitter, I'm loathe to remove my hands from my needles while I'm working. I usually use my "third hand," grabbing the offending stitch marker in my teeth and holding it for the one or two stitches required. One of the reasons I started using broken earring fobs and making fancy stitch markers a gazillion years ago was that the hanging ornaments made them easy to grab this way.

On my Paisley, the only markers that need to be moved are the plain split rings. They're pretty small - small enough in fact to be slid through stitches if need be, but they're also wide enough to stay put unless otherwise "encouraged." When I get to a SSK that's bisected by a stitch marker I use my needle tip to pop it through the leading stitch, then transfer it to the right hand needle, and work the SSK on the appropriate (far) side of the marker. On K2togs, it's the third hand method.

Yes it can be a pain to stop and shuffle them around. When I graph up repeats for my own use, I often finagle the beginning and end points so that my markers don't end up splitting the difference in the decreases.

Re-knitting tension

A couple of people wrote to ask about gauge tension in the re-knitted repairs. They asked if the new replacement work looked different from the rest of the piece, or if the stitches at the edges of the new work where it bordered the old were distorted in any way.

To be truthful, a bit of care is needed when you're re-knitting the ladders after ripping down. There is great temptation to start out each row working rather loosely, then wrestle to eke out the remaining stitches from the remaining length of the ladder strand.  I make a conscious effort to avoid this, and try to form all my stitches with the same tension as the original knitting. 

A couple of times I've had to re-knit a cable, and that cable was centered in the section being re-knit.  I tried working the crossing several times, but always ended up not having enough of the ladder strand available to finish the couple stitches that came after it.  So I worked that particular row from both ends, picking up the stitches to the left and right of the cable and then sliding them onto the needles that held the "good" knitting on either side of the section undergoing repair.  After they were rescued, the only stitches that remained on my fix-it DPN were those of the cable crossing itself.  I did those last, absorbing the tightness into the natural tightness of the crossing.

As far as appearance, after my usual post-knitting wash and dry prior to assembly, any unevenness is smoothed out.  I've never needed to do anything else to a re-knit repair, nor have any of them been recognizable as such after garment completion.  (If I had time instead of rushing out the door to work right now, I'd dig up some pieces that were fixed mid-stream and take some pix to prove it.)

Pattern source

A couple of people missed my first post on the Paisley Shawl earlier this week, and wanted to know where they could find the pattern. It's in the Spring 2005 edition of Interweave Knits - page 96. Not the Summer edition that (most) subscribers received last week, but the one before that.



Writing

Thank you to everyone who sent in kind words about the tech articles at String. To be truthful, this blog is a busman's holiday for me. In Real Life I'm a proposal writer, mostly working in/with engineering or high-tech firms. Compared to communicating concepts in nuclear engineering or high-end routing, writing about knitting is easier and lots more fun.  Plus winging my way through this has reinforced my appreciation for editors.  I'm embarrassed to admit the number of spelling, grammar, or punctuation mistakes I fly past without noticing while I'm writing, but find later.  To quote a former boss, "Only fools proof their own work."

Here I am!

The life that intruded last week was a spring break visit to Florida, featuring an official Dual Grandparent Visitation.  We left last Friday morning, spent several days in the Aventura area with my family, then zipped up to West Palm Beach to visit my in-laws; then returned south for a splendiferous Passover seder.  We flew home this morning.

Aside from making the standard "arms tired" jokes, I can say it was an enjoyable whirlwind of a week.  The kids are suitably viewed, the grandparents accordingly pleased and proud, the weather was wonderful, and we had lots of fun doing tourist-type things.  More on them later this week.

On the knitting end, I can report zero progress on Rogue.  I didn't take it.  It was too big, with too many adjunct parts (magnet board, multi-page pattern, extra yarn, pouch of vital knitting doodads).  Instead I took the Birds Eye Shawl to finish.  But it is Birds Eye no longer.  I like the gauge and needle size for the pattern.  I adore the pattern itself.  I love the yarn I used.  But not all together.  The more I got into the piece, the more I realized that the hand-dyed multicolor was fighting for attention with the graceful eyelet pattern.  So I ripped back the entire thing - roughly two feet measured from the triangle's tip.  Instead I'm working the Paisley Lace Shawl from the Spring issue of Interweave Knits.  Scroll down almost to the bottom of this page for IK's photo of the thing.

I had worked on the Birds Eye shawl on the flight down, but grew increasingly unhappy with it as I knit.  By the time I got to our destination, I was looking for an excuse to do something else.  In a classic example of good deeds coming home to roost, I'd given my mother a gift subscription to IK this past holiday season.  She pulled it out to show me a project she was contemplating, and I riffled past the Paisley.  It would work.  The pattern is mostly solid garter stitch on large (for lace) needles.  The garter stitch is worked in a square from the center out, and is pierced by little flower-like quads of eyelets.  The solid area shows off the colors of the hand-dyed quite nicely, and the eyelets provide just a hint of interest instead of major league competition.  The flower eyelet center is ringed by a band of motifs that give the piece its name.  The effect is sort of reminiscent of the pattern placement in a bandanna, but done in lace.

So far 'm almost to the end of Paisley's center section.  I've got one more repeat of the flower eyelet chart to do.  Then it's on to the namesake pattern around the edge of the piece.  I may have enough yarn in my Lorna's Laces Helen's Lace to work an additional bit of trim around the outside of the paisley section.  Lord knows, I can't just do a pattern as written - dire things might happen.

Pictures as soon as I find the digital camera.  I packed it and took it with us. 

More progress to report on Rogue. I'm well into the fronts now, about 26 rows or so into Chart B. As you can see, the hood yoke pattern is working out nicely:



My next worry will be whether or not the shoulder areas meet up properly, but I'm assuming that if not, I can wing it. I'm also assuming that I'll be able to tinker with the hood depth a bit if I need to compensate for my different gauge. I've already started the hood motif a bit later than called for in the pattern to balance out my smaller row gauge.

What's happening to String or Nothing?

My guess is that you'll be popping back a couple of times over the next week or so to see what I'm up to. But you'll find this page still current. Life is going to intrude in my life big time over the next two weeks. I will try to provide updates, but I can't guarantee them. In the mean time, feel free to browse the archives. To be immodest, here are some of the more interesting bits here:

Reference shelf - articles that contain knitting advice that I hope is useful. Of particular note under this category:

• Yarn Labels 101 - a basic round-up of what's on yarn label and how to read them.
• Yarn Labels 102 - a continuation of yarn label info deciphering
• Skeins 101- What are the common ways yarn is sold. How to prepare them for actual knitting.
• Skeins 102 - a continuation of the previous, with more on how to get started
• Gauge 101 - Basic hints on making and measuring gauge
• Why Toe-Ups? - The case for toe-up socks
• One Circ/Two Circ Sock Knitting - Using the one giant circ (aka Magic Loop) and two-circ methods for knitting in the round
• Self striping sock yarn repeats - Lengths of pattern cycle repeats for some common self-stripers
• Twisted stitches - What is stitch mounting and why does it make a difference?
• Attaching I-Cord - A couple of ways to knit the stuff onto the edge of your piece

Gadgets - tools used by knitters. Most useful posts include:

• World's cheapest magnetic board
• Making your own stitch holders
  
• Strickfingerhuts - Those twisted wire and plastic molded yarn holding gizmos used by Continental style knitters for stranding.
• Stupid Stitch Marker Tricks - They're useful for lots more besides skittering behind the sofa.
• Strickmuhles - I-cord mills - waste of money or nifty gizmos?
• Needle gauges
• WPI tool
  

Knitting Patterns - Mostly quick and easy stuff I haven't gotten around to adding to wiseNeedle yet:

• Simple fingering weight wrist warmers/fingerless mittens
• Fingerless Whatevers - fingering weight wristlet/fingerless mitten with shaped thumb gusset
  
• Lacy scarf in Berroco Zen or other medium-weight ribbony yarn
• Center-out poncho
• Teeny sock for Red Sox fans
• Paw Warmers - Ultra-easy kids' bulky yarn wristlets/fingerless mittens
• Lemonade hooded shawl with pockets schematic

Stitch or color pattern graphs:

• Interlace repeat
• Bunny from TNCM
  
• Dragonflies from TNCM
• Texture patterns - 16 stitch wide mock cable, lace panel
  
• Texture pattern - Serpentine Rib
• Texture pattern - Broken Rib Check
• Texture pattern - ultrasimple six row feather and fan variant
• Texture pattern - points
• Texture patterns - Dragon Skin and variant
• Fleur de Lys

Embroidery - My other life. This stuff is mostly show and tell.

• Forever coif - blackwork coif in progress. Still.
• Underskirt - what the coif is supposed to go with
• Blackwork sampler - doodling with the patterns from TNCM
• Counted thread dress yoke
• Heretical modern multicolor sampler, plus reverse of the yoke, above
• How to drive your roomates nuts with stitching

Food - Man and woman do not live by needlework alone:

• Cassoulet
• Latkes
• Buffalo Rum Ball Cookies
• Oysters - a chocolate hazelnut cookie
• Cinnamon nut elephant ears for the cookie-challenged
• Nadia's Yassa Chicken

There are more categories over on the side.  Happy browsing!

As predicted, in those half-sentient moments between putting down the book, taking off the glasses, turning off the light and finally falling asleep all became crystal clear. I am not really sure what my problem was with the first few rows of the hood surround, but it's fixed now. I'm busily bumbling along, about two inches into the chart. Perhaps was brain dearth brought about by lingering flu. Perhaps it was too much stress-itis. Or perhaps it was a touch of seasonal stupidity. Whatever it was, all is humming now, although I might rip back one last time because I'm not too happy with the look of some of the earliest increases. But that's another story of another disorder.

While I await enough Rogue progress to make an interesting photograph, I present an odd little chance acquisition. I've written about Balich's before. It's an artifact from another time - an old fashioned general merchandise store several blocks from my house. They stock piles of inexpensive things you didn't know you could live without, all tumbled together with minimal regard for organization. They happen to have a stock of Boye knitting needles and crochet hooks, plus Red Heart yarn, some crochet thread and vintage 1960s pattern leaflets. (Want a truly authentic '60s era crocheted poncho? This is the place to find the original instructions.)

I went in to get some keys made, and while I was there I leafed through the pile of dusty patterns. There in the middle of the stack I found one and only one of these:



What is this?

It's a 78-page yarn yardage/gauge comparison chart in purse-size format, put out by Northern Needlecraft, copyright 1980. It's divided by yarn weight, and presents info for about 1,000+ or so yarns current in (and discontinued by) 1980. While some of the more widely distributed products by still extant or recently deceased/merged/otherwise gone yarn makers are also present in Valuable Yarn Guide, many of the yarns and makers in this little booklet aren't.  Even more interesting, for some yarns it offers up multiple gauges.  Already it has come in handy, helping me decipher a vintage pattern calling for Columbia Minerva Calibar.  Which turns out to be a 100% wool bulky, knitting at 16 st = 4 inches on US #10s, 2 oz., 75 yards. 

A fantastic find!  Especially for the princely sum of $1.25.

As I mentioned yesterday, today I was part of a Grand Road Trip to Webs, the yarn mega-store in Northampton, Massachusetts. It's pretty much at the other end of the state from where I live, but this being one of the small Eastern states (as opposed to large rectangular Western states) that translates to only a two-hour car trip each way.

I will say that the entire group had fun and spent some money, but not as much as we feared we might.  Webs is quite large, with both a front room laid out in yarn shop fashion, and a warren of warehouse aisles and side rooms full of industrial shelving and shipping boxes full of extra stock. It's easy to browse for hours, and especially if you're looking for deep discount bargains in the warehouse, it's easy to become overwhelmed by the volume of choices.

There are some hints I'd suggest to anyone planning a trip of this type either to Webs or another discount yarn venue. They all fall along the line of "be prepared."

1. Bring the tools you may need to make your purchases. Depending on the individual, these can include a calculator, pencil and paper, a PDA, and a yardage consumption card or chart. In Webs case, a small flashlight is also a good idea because in places the warehouse area is very dark.  If you're a card-carrying knitting guild member, bring your card or other proof of affiliation.  Some stores (including Webs) offer special discounts to guilds, but don't be obnoxious about it if the shop doesn't have a standing policy about extending such discounts.
   
2. Look through your patterns and decide if there's something special you wish to shop for. If so, bring either the pattern or some notation of gauge, fiber and yardage required.
   
3. Look through your stashed yarns. You may want to buy something to coordinate with, eke out, complement or knit along with a yarn you have on hand at home. If so - bring a snippet for color matching, plus notation on the quantity you have stashed away.
   
4. Familiarize yourself with the various numbering systems used to describe yarn weights. Webs (and other stores of its type) cater to both knitters and weavers. Many yarns can be used for both crafts, and cones are not always marked with yardage or suggested gauge. For example, if you're looking at a wool or mostly wool blend, something marked 2/10 is likely to be DK to worsted in weight, knitting at 5.5 to 5 stitches per inch.
   
5. Educate yourself about fibers.  You'll see yarns marked as "Shetland," "Merino," or other fiber types.  If you've done your reading you'll realize that Merino wool is softer in general than many other wools, but in certain spins and finishes can pill more than other types of wool. 
   
6. Be flexible. You will probably not be able to find the **exact** yarn your pattern calls for (although there is considerable stock of current labels) - but you can probably find a workable substitute. Look for matches in fiber type, yarn finish, and of course - gauge. If you can't find a marked gauge but the fiber composition is close to that specified in your pattern, do the math to check the yards per pound (or ounce, or gram). If that's close you'll probably be o.k., especially if you buy 10-15% extra yardage as "insurance."
   
7. Many yarns in places like Webs are significantly thinner than most hand knitters usually use. But remember, they can be doubled or tripled to bring them up to fingering, sport or heavier weights. Two strands of lace weight (2 ply in the UK ply system of yarn weight descriptors) = one strand of fingering weight (4 ply). Two strands of fingering weight (4 ply, usually 7 spi) = DK (8 ply) 5.5 spi. Two strands of gansey weight (5 ply, hard to find in the US, around 6.5-6.25 spi) = 10 ply or worsted weight (5 spi). Two strands of sport weight (6 ply, usually 6 spi) = 12-ply or Aran weight (4.5 spi). Two strands of DK (8 ply, 5.5 spi) = 16 ply or Bulky weight (3.75 spi).
8. You will have questions.  The staff is used to dealing with them, but try to make the staff's life easier.  Cluster your questions to make most efficient use of their time.  Try to remember where you found something, and make every effort to find tags or other descriptors and gather as much info as possible before grabbing a shop clerk.  You'll find a question like "This yarn is labeled at 1500 yards per pound, could please you tell me how much it weighs?" followed by some quick calculations on your part, and the follow up question "Would 1900 yards be enough for a long-sleeve cardigan in size 36," will give you a more useful answer than handing the clerk a cone of something with the question "Can I make a sweater out of this?"
9. Be considerate of other shoppers, many of whom have trekked as far as you to get to the target destination.  Don't push; put things back where you found them if you decide not to make the purchase; avoid rooting through displays and leaving them sadly pawed; have patience at the check out (especially if you're behind a large purchase of unmarked coned yarn); try not to block access to the shelves or aisles; and in general - shrieks of discovery are not a good idea.
10. Leave ample time to make decisions.  Arriving before lunch, making some choices, parking the selections and heading out to eat, then returning for a final cull and/or addition is a good plan.  (If you do go to Webs, I recommend Sylvester's for lunch.  It's a short stroll from the shop, the fresh air does wonders for the brain cells after the dusty, dark yarn warehouse room, the food was quite good and very reasonably priced.)
    

What did I buy?  Just a couple of things.  First, I finally got myself a McMorran Yarn Balance.  That will come in handy to calculate yardage for the various yarns I have on hand.  I bought a queen-size bed's quantity sport weight cotton flake, destined for my re-do of my North Truro Counterpane.  It was amazingly inexpensive, especially for the vast amount I need.  And on a whim, I bought a cone of shrieking cranberry color lace-weight silk-look rayon which will (eventually) become a Hazel Carter Alcazar shawl, or maybe something else equally as dramatic.

My older daughter is new to knitting. She just began at the Boston Knit Out this past fall. So far she's done several foofy garter scarves for herself and her friends (first lesson in casting on and the knit stitch); a 42-stitch hat (using DPNs to knit in the round, decreases); and a felted bag (more reinforcement of knitting in the round, plus making a larger project, and I-cord, and picking up along an edge).

You'll notice that all of her finished items were all-knit/big yarn projects. She wanted to "graduate" from all-knit and learn purling. She also wanted to use smaller needles. So we talked it over, and she suggested doing a pair of ribbed fingerless mitts. In fingering weight yarn. On US #0s. Without a pattern.

Now, did I tell her that many adults break out in prickly heat at the thought of using DPNs, let alone size #0s? Or that a 56-stitch around wristlet can contain as many stitches as an entire big-needle sweater? Or that I've seen grown women cry when someone suggests they knit (gasp) without a pattern?

Naah. What she didn't know couldn't daunt her.

So she cast on and began knitting. And knitting. And knitting. She plugged away at her mitts every evening after homework, while we (as a family) played video games. At first, being new to purling, her stitches were loose and wobbly, with ladders in the corners between the DPNs. But practice soon took care of that:



For everyone who has ever said to me, "I tried DPNs but I couldn't manage them," or "It takes too long to learn something new," I present her learning progression. She worked the bottom one first, then the top one, both using the same yaran, stitch count and needles. You can see how her gauge, stitch accuracy and general neatness improved steadily throughout the project.




Sure, one's bigger than the other, but both are wearable, and she does wear them proudly.

Knitting takes time to learn - there's no getting out of that fact. Some people DO learn faster than others, but everyone who wants to learn IS capable of doing so. The key is practice. Unfortunately practice is a dirty word in today's instant-dissolve, short attention span world.

Not satisfied with how something is turning out? Keep at it. Do something small and inconsequential that uses the same skills. Work out the kinks and bugs on the practice piece rather than the luxe yarn you chose for your "real" project. But keep going. You CAN do it. As the Target Child says "No stinking piece of string was going to defeat me!"

Here's her pattern. (She?thinks her fingerless mitts look like the disc-shooting zapper gauntlets worn by a character in one of her favorite PS2 games).

Zapper Gauntlets

About 150 yards or so of a smooth non-itchy fingering weight sock yarn. This pair was knit in some remnants of On Line Linie 6 Supersocke 100 Cotton, but any sock yarn will do.

5 DPNs, Size US #0 (2mm)

Gauge: Approximately 9 stitches = 1 inch (2.5cm), measured over K2, P2 ribbing.

Cast on 56 stitches (14 stitches per needle). Join to continue working in the round. Knit six rows. Change to K2, P2 rib and work until piece measures approximately 4 inches long (10cm).

At the beginning of the next round, bind off 10 stitches. Continue working around wristlet. You should have one needle with 4 stitches on it, then three needles each with 14 stitches. When you get to the hole created by the bind-off, flip the work over and head back in the other direction. Work five more rows of K2, P2 rib this way - flat, ending at the right side of the growing thumb hole.

On the next row we return to knitting in the round. Start Needle #1 by casting on 10 stitches (all needles should have 14 stitches again). Continue in established K2, P2 ribbing pattern, working in the round until piece measures approximately 1 inch (2.5cm) measured from cast-on row above thumb opening. Bind off loosely in pattern, and darn in all ends.

That's it!

(More in the cast-on series next week, I promise. Looking up all those links is more work than I have time for right now mid-deadline.)

I'm split among several different knitting foci right now. First, there's the upcoming class. I've finished the hand-outs I'll be distributing covering both two circ and one giant circ production;? the practice pair of socks; and the sample mini-sock we'll be making during the workshop. I'm as ready as I'll ever be. I've also gotten word of a potential design commission. If and when that occurs and I'm permitted to bruit about the details, I'll report them here. In the mean time, here are my practice socks, dutifully completed one with the one giant circular technique, and the other using the two-circ method:



Nothing special. Just plain old Regia 6-ply Crazy Color stockinette socks, with Dutch heels, and standard toes grafted to finish. On the pair with the turquoise toe I took care to finish out the color repeat such that the line of grafting ended up being a contrasting color, so the class can see where it is.

Having put the class socks to be, I've picked up Rogue again. A couple of people have asked if I'm doing mirror image Make Ones on either side of the verticals that run up the design. The answer is "Yes."? I don't usually stoop to this level of ultra-refinement, but for this project because the two Make Ones are separated by only one stitch, using them does make a visual difference. Here's how I do them:



To get a make one with a top leg that crosses lower right to upper left (S-style), I lift the running bar between two stitches, mounting it such that the leading leg of the bar is in the front of the needle (standard stitch orientation). Then I knit into the
back of that bar.

To produce a make one with a top leg that crosses lower left to upper right (Z-style), I lift the running bar between two stitches, mounting it such that the leading leg of the bar is in the back of the needle (opposite of standard stitch orientation). Then I knit into the FRONT of that bar.

As to which to deploy in what situation - most of the time I doesn't matter. My standard issue default Make One is S-style. If a pattern just calls for one, that's the one I do. In cases where mirrored ones are needed, I'll experiment. Sometimes the final result looks better if the S-style Make One is deployed on the left of a visual unit, with its sister Z-style deployed on the right. Sometimes it's the other way around. On my Little Dragon Skin I'm working the Z-style on the left of the center spine, and the S-unit on the right.

Rogue photos later this week. I promise.

An adorable link, found courtesy of someone who posted it in a LiveJournal knitting community. The thing is in Japanese, but you can enjoy the pictures and objects without reading along.

From what I can gather using the Google language tools, while most of these items are crocheted, the strawberry shortcake (minus the berries) is machine knit. The fruit trifle tart is a box that opens up. The pear purse is trimmed with metallic beads. The chocolates are fridge magnets, and the artist suggests using the cherry topped ice cream bon-bons, the cup of cocoa and the hamburger as pincushions. The moon pie looking thing (two cookies with white filling) hides a tape measure, and the component pieces of the hamburger can be used as coasters - except for the sunny side up egg, which the author notes is too bumpy in the center for stability.

Very clever.

No Rogue progress. My knitting time is consumed with class-related experimentation. Here's the surviving result:



No surprise. It's a sock knit from leftovers of the same DK-weight Regia 6-Ply Crazy Color yarn I used for The Small One's Crazy Raglan. It's on a single US #3 size 40-inch circ. I'm working these socks at this (for me) giant gauge so I can get in as much experimentation as possible before the actual class.

I've been experimenting with various heels, trying to decide which will be the easiest "classic heel" to use in the workshop for our knit-together project. I'm doing this because I've been told that the majority of people who have signed up have never made socks before. Some have never even knit in the round. I want the class to get through the danger spots of sock construction - cast on, a heel and a toe.

What you see above is a simple Dutch heel. It's not as form-fitting as a round or other more finely shaped heel, but of all the turned heels (as opposed to short-row heels), I think it will be the simplest to both describe and work.

I'm still waffling between showing the heel worked entirely on one side of the sock, with the cable needle looping out done at the left and right of the piece, or re-assorting the stitches after completion of picking up along the sides of the gusset, then working the rest of the sock with the looping out at the center top and bottom of the foot. And as you can see, I've not yet experimented with toes. That's next. Toes may be the kicker on stitch reapportionment. If I'm getting too much laddering with the split on the sides as established, I might re-engineer my thought and move the stitches around either immediately after completion of the final gusset row, just before the toe itself, or back before the gusset decreases are started. And that means that the poor sock you see above will cease to exist in the current form, and be sacrificed to the minor gods of ripping back.

Two items side by side on two circs

An anonymous person asked if I could show or explain how to do two things side by side on two circs.

I have to admit, I cheat somewhat because casting two items on side by side can make for confusion and twisted cast-on rows. I begin each item individually and work the first row before mounting my two items side by side. After I've got a scrap of knitting, i divide the stitches in half. I thread the first half of Item A onto a circ, followed by the first half of item B. Then I take a second circ and thread the other half of item B onto it, followed by the second half of Item A's stitches.



I now have a piece that should look (more or less) like the drawing above. I work across the front side of item A, knitting from it's own ball of yarn. Then I drop that strand, pick up the other and work across the front side of item B. When I finish the last stitch of this side of B, I flip the whole thing over, and using the same B yarn, work back along the reverse of B. Then I drop that strand, pick up the A yarn and work the back side of Item A. At the conclusion of this cycle, I will have completed a full round on both A and B, and have both strands of yarn back in the positions shown in the illustration.

Answer to a quick question:

Can the Fleur de Lys motif shown yesterday be used for knitting?

Sure. Like anything graphed, the fleur can be knit, but with a caveat. In cross stitch, the individual units that build a motif are square. They have a 1:1 aspect ratio, as wide as they are tall. Likewise, needlepoint units are (mostly) square. They're worked on a square grid, but if they're in tent stitch the stitches themselves are a diagonal spanning that square. Therefore the edges of color areas don't always appear as neat and trim as in cross stitch. This graph is composed of square units, and is intended mostly (but not exclusively) for stitchers.

Knitting presents a different challenge. It's rare for a knitting stitch to have a 1:1 aspect ratio. Knitting stitches are usually wider than they are tall. It's not uncommon to have a stitch gauge of 22 stitches = 4 inches, but a row gauge of 30 rows = 4 inches (that's the standard for a classic DK weight yarn). That works out to an aspect ratio of 22:30 or 5.5/7.5 if you simplify the representation. That's NOT square. If you knit up a graph that's been drawn out on a square ratio grid in this aspect ratio, you'll end up with a motif that's somewhat squished looking north/south direction.

There are several ways around this. First is to choose designs that have a bit of north/south spread in them to begin with. They'll look different when compressed, but if they're elongated enough to begin with, they'll end up with a reasonable set of visual proportions. My lion graph, shared eons ago for people who wanted to do lion sweaters as described in the Harry Potter books is this kind of design. It's got enough "natural" height so that it looks o.k. if worked verbatim in a somewhat squashed aspect ratio.

The second is to graph out your design on a grid that has an aspect ratio that matches your knitted gauge. If you want to do this, the English language Japanese website ABCs of Knitting features a very nice graph paper generator. It's listed among the tools on the page's lower right.

A third way to get around this problem is to blow up the design. Very simple motifs can sometimes be made quite dramatic by reading a unit of two knit stitches by three rows for every square on the grid. Not practical for larger gauge knits, as even a small motif could outgrow the area intended for display, but occasionally useful none the less.

A fourth fix is more of a fudge. Depending on the complexity of the motif you want to knit, you can take a plain old square unit graph and by repeating every third or fourth row (depending on your gauge), you can stretch it out to compensate for aspect ratio squish. Obviously, this works best for simple motifs rather than complex ones, and at finer gauges. I've done it in sport weight yarn or finer, and it has worked well enough, with the duplication fading into the overall look and not being evident. This method can be problematic though for things like graphed letters adopted from cross stitch samplers, and for ultra-small geometrics whose motifs are built on single square units. For the latter, I might be tempted to use the third method, above.

Of course one can always ignore the problem all together, placing the borrowed motif so that the stretched dimension becomes a design feature and not a bug. This is what I did with last year's crocheted dragon curtain. I worked across the narrow dimension of the curtain rather than starting along the bottom edge, in part because the non-square nature of my filet crochet blocks would distort the motif too much if worked in the latter direction. You can see the original proportions of the graph, and the finished piece.





If you look the knight, you'll see that in my crochet he's taller and a bit squashed east/west compared to the original. But if I hadn't called out the difference, I'd bet you'd not have noticed.

Rogue

Rogue progresses. I'm another two inches or so into the body. Not much more to show beyond yet another blurry photo of a slightly larger blue object, so I'll hold off until I can post pix with more content. I can say that in spite of competing demands on my time reducing the total amount I can spend on the thing, now that I'm past the pockets and my multiple mistakes, it is fairly flying along. I am looking ahead to the next set of complications - alterations to the armhole area and beginning of the hood's frame that might be necessary due to my gauge re-computation.

Sock Class

I'm beginning my prep for my upcoming sock knitting class, reading up on and trying out the Magic Loop technique. It may be heresy to admit, especially for someone who is going to be teaching a workshop on this method, but I find it to be fiddly and (for me) much slower than using DPNs. But I realize that there is a legion of DPN-haters out there who view this method as being their ticket to finally making socks. So I'll persevere for their sake.

The plan is for a three-hour workshop, during which I'll hand out an original pattern for a very abbreviated small cuff-down sock - roughly baby size, but with sadly truncated ankle and foot parts to save time. The idea is to walk the class through that ENTIRE sock in the given time, from the cast on, through the heel, and finally down to the toe. A normal size sock would be too time-consuming to get far enough for a meaningful experience, especially around the heel, so I'll cut back on the plain old stockinette areas, leaving in just enough to get familiar with the manipulations of the needle(s). I'll also hand out an original pattern for a normal size sock that the class can take home and use for practice.

One further complication - I prefer to teach on socks knit at DK or worsted gauge - again, fewer yet larger and easier to see stitches. But the extra-long circs for the Magic Loop method are in short supply, and are quite expensive. Likewise for the two circs needed for that method. I don't think it's fair to ask the class to come equipped with needles in a size that they (probably) won't be using for their regular sock knitting, so I'm going to do the thing using standard issue sock weight yarn.

I've taught knitting classes before, mostly on toe-up socks, basic crochet, and on beginning knitting. I've been told I pack too much detail into the time alloted. In this case I will have to agree. Ideally I'd do either single oversized circ or two circ socks, not both. I do intend the choice to be either-or, as the methods are largely compatible. Learners will get their choice of working one or the other, and except for needle manipulation the basic sock-making steps should be the same for both. Obviously more thought on this is in order. If any blinding insights of clarity and nuance suggest themselves to me, I'll post them here. Otherwise, it's just more socks.

No. You can stop asking now.

I'm not the 50 pairs of socks per year customer mentioned yesterday's article on sock knitting from the Boston Globe.

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/home/articles/2005/02/24/the_joy_of_socks/

(Link probably good until Saturday 2/26, at which time the Globe will most likely archive it and charge for access.)

Most of the webtoys I see out there in blogland are games, variants on quzzes, or other time wasters of that type. I've never seen one anything like the Name Voyager applet.

Name Voyager is a graphical representation of name popularity through time. Here's sample output for "Kim"



Type in a name, see how its popularity rose and fell from 1900 to the present. It's a trivial but brilliant example of dynamic data representation. Play with the thing, typing in a few letters. Mouse over graph segments to see popularity ranking by decade. Ultimo cool.

On my own name, I now see why almost everyone believes me to be a "Kimberly."? I'm not, but I'm wildly outnumbered by those that are. Plus I do note that I'm in the Kim vanguard. Most of those I meet are at least a decade younger than I am. Again, now I see why.

Have fun wasting time with this one. I certainly did.

Japanese Patterns On-Line

Veronik from Canada was kind enough to send us a link to a site offering Japanese patterns on-line. She points out that the most recent collections are for sale, but the earlier patterns are free. She says that these aren't the most fashionable of the ones out there, but they're interesting and should be useful for illustrating what graphical patterns look like.

Go to this page. (Don't worry if the characters display as gibberish in English.)

Select the pattern you want to view by clicking on one of the thumbnail photos.

A page will appear that contains an enlarged photo. The writing next to the picture of the yarn balls will give yarn and yardage info (clicking on the link will usually take you to a page to buy the yarn). Ditto for the picture of the needle (needle size in mm, plus a link to a purchase page); and the button (notions for this piece, if any). The picture of the little page at the bottom of the stack is the one you want. Take a deep breath, and click on the linked text next to it. You'll be asked to download the Acrobat file containing the pattern page (some but not all of these PDFs produce download errors on my machine).

Ahh. I can sense everyone looking at the result and hyperventilating...

It's not that hard to interpret. Really.

The garment is presented in one size (a weakness of Japanese patterns) as a series of annotated schematics. Cast on numbers are given, along with lengths to work in pattern. Decreases and increases are described as a series of numbers (like 3-1-2, meaning every third row, decrease (or increase) one stitch. Do this twice). Texture and colorwork patterns are shown graphed. Other info is presented on the charts, like stitch counts both before and after major shaping has occurred; circumferences and depths, both in rows and centimeters, and the spots in which the graphed patterns or other special features are to commence.

Now there are limitations here to be sure. Not offering a range of sizes isn't acceptable in the US. The format does assume far more knowledge of knitting than do text-based instructions. Most US knitters would find working exclusively from graphical patterns to be difficult. But the idea of using the schematics to present additional shaping or production notes is a good one, and one I'd like to see used more often to supplement written instructions.

Worth of Certifications

Lots of people wrote both on and off-list to say that I'm very wrong about certifications; that they really got a lot out of [insert name of program]. But lots of others wrote to say that they weren't interested in accumulating merit badges, and didn't see the value of a formal course of study. Still others wrote to say that they'd only take knitting classes from certified instructors; or conversely that they didn't care what piece of paper the person did or did not have - so long as they imparted accurate info in a cogent, helpful, and useful manner.

I'm of the "We don't need no stinking badges" mentality myself, but hey. Opinions, learning styles, and teaching styles differ. I respect yours if you do me the favor of respecting mine. (Notes that start out with a variant of "Jane, you ignorant slut" will be cheerfully deleted at no extra charge.)

Project Progress

Socks continue. One looks much like the other, so photos at this point would be redundant.

I've also finally been able to overcome Paypal's obstinacy and pay for a copy of Rogue. I'm reading through it right now and am very impressed with the thing's completeness (it's 19 pages long!). I planning on how to compensate for the gauge difference, incorporate the cardigan modifications (available onthe Rogue home page cited above, via the "mods" link at the bottom of that page), and possibly even re-work the Dragon Skin texture pattern for use with it.

At the same time I'm thinking of taking another graphed pattern from my book, and adapting it for use as a double-sided double-knit scarf. All in my copious spare time, of course....

Thanks to everyone who sent kind thoughts to String on its blogiversary. I'll keep going as long as time and fun-factor allow.

Trendy Yarns

I seem to have hit some major chords with my rant about self stripers replacing solid color sock yarns, and by extension - other trendy yarns pushing more classic stuff off the shelves. People both left comments here and wrote to me about it. I understand that yarn shops are businesses, and must respond to market forces in order to maintain their (usually precarious) cash flow. They stock what people are buying, and can't afford to keep other things sitting around if they don't earn their keep, too. Right now people are grabbing up the frou-frou yarns, and ignoring the other stuff.

Still, I'll be very happy when the current wacky yarn fad dies down a bit. I am thrilled at the variety in the stores, but 95% of that variety is stuff that leaves me cold. Aside from a present or two around the holidays, or as a splash here and there for contrast, I have very little interest in fuzzy, furry, sparkly, or otherwise wildly festooned novelty yarns.

I do like texture, but not at the expense of knitability. I like boucles, astrakhans, some slubby yarns, and terry-type and velvet-type textures (especially washable ones for kids). If most loopy yarns weren't made from mohair, I'd like them, too (mohair and I don't get along). I also like the texture imparted by the various styles of plying - everything from densely cabled yarns made up of tons of tiny plies, to supersoft singles. Obviously, I also like classic yarns, too - smooth multi-plies in all weights. It's all of these I want to see more of. In every fiber and blend. In colors rich enough for Byzantium, and juicy enough to eat. But not another skein of technicolor road kill, please.

Standards

As you can probably tell, I'm not a big fan of the standards efforts promulgated by the consortium of mass-market yarn makers and publishers that compose The Craft Yarn Council. While I applaud their efforts to promulgate knitting and crochet, especially their sponsorship of learning events, I find other things they do to be less effective. To be fair, I suspect that like all committee efforts, it was more important to satisfy as many needs of the membership and achieve a bullied consensus, rather than to meet the needs of the service constituency.

I've ranted about the yarn weight standards before. From last week's post, you can also see I'm not keen on skill level ratings. In the same standards document they also outline standard abbreviations for knitting and crochet (no argument there, but the set is very basic); garment sizes (on the small side, but useful).; and needle sizes (which I note is not necessarily the size set used by all needle makers, nor the equivalents marked on all European labels, and which ignores knitting needles below US #1). All useful things, if limited. But the most pressing needs were ignored.

What I really wanted to see was a standardized set of knitting symbols; a standardized knitting font; and recommendations for standardizing schematic pattern representations similar to the methods used in Japan. Now all of these are probably quite controversial. Each publisher does the symbol/font thing in a slightly different way. Switching among the vast variety of symbol sets is tiring (to say the least); and lack of uniformity is one factor that has limited wider acceptance of charted instructions. I've tried to encourage the chart-shy as much as possible, but have found that many of them are turned off by having to learn a whole new symbol set for each book or magazine they try to use. The knitting community needs a standard symbol set. If the CYC was truly forward thinking, they'd seek out similar industry councils worldwide, and come up with an international symbol set.

On the graphical pattern layout suggestion, I'm not advocating a wholesale shuffle from text-based or text and charted patterns to Japanese style layout (doing so would probably blow mental gaskets off more than half of the knitters in the US); but many of the elements of that style would be assets if included in pattern format here. The time to suggest a standard is BEFORE a practice seeps in willy-nilly, so that early adopters all follow formats and methods as similar to each other as possible.

I'm trying to find Japanese pattern on line so I can show you what I'm writing about, but so far I haven't found one. Yarn makers and dealers there don't seem to provide the freebies that US and European yarn sources do. Still, here are some aids that can help you get the general idea:

• ABCs of Knitting - a Japanese knitting website (in English) that includes a basics of Japanese patterns for us text-slave Westerners.
• Reading Japanese knitting patterns for machine knitting (lots useful here for hand-knitters, too).

I note that the CYC also sponsors a teacher certification process. I've got mixed feelings about certifications in general, especially in disciplines that do not involve health/life-threatening, major investment, or life-bending content. Kindergarten teachers, EMTs, and accountants all have jobs that should include minimum competency and content standards. But knitting instructors?

Yes, I know that any know-nothing yutz can hang out a shingle and purport to be a knitting teacher right now, no questions asked. Many do, and have classes that quickly overtake them in competency. But at the same time, I don't want to see instruction limited to people who have sat through a couple hours of classes and/or forked over for a paper credential from this or any accrediting body. Neither classes nor a piece of paper guarantees competency as a teacher of a hands-on discipline. All requiring such certifications does is limit the pool of teachers to those who have had the time and money to pursue the credential. But that's the Child of the '70s talking again...

Well, not me. To String. Sort of.

I've heard tell it's customary on the first anniversary of blogging to link back to one's first post and prattle on about the experience. My first post was February 12 of last year, but I dithered a bit before really getting the thing off the ground a month later.

First, thanks go out to those who have encouraged me to do this - the gang at my local yarn store - both staff and core regulars (if I began naming them all this would be like the Academy awards), BlogDogBlog's Lisa, QueerJoe, Wendy, Linn, esteemed needlework pals of long standing (thanks Kathryn!); folks who are frequent readers/posters here, and the KFlamers (you know who you are).

I wasn't sure why I wanted a blog. After all, I already had a website - itself celebrating it's tenth anniversary this year. But it's cumbersome to update, sometimes requiring the intervention of in-house programming gods, and too structured to allow free play. I certainly rattled on enough in the various knitting-related email lists. But almost every post brought snarking from people who felt I was too long winded and was wasting their time. Plus the lists themselves are less interesting to me these days, as many of the most insightful and thought-provoking posters have moved on to their own blogs. So I decided to cut back on the eMail notes, limiting on-list participation to answering questions, and post the rest here.

String has sort of evolved into a running column on knitting and needlework in general (admittedly, with side trips), rather than a pure diary or personal log. I try to keep it up daily on weekdays, plus whenever I can on weekends. Sometimes life intervenes. I find that even though it's daily, I'm rarely at a loss for subject matter. There's plenty among my own projects past and present, old books, how-tos that seem to be a good idea at the time, things I stumble across on the Web, and discussions piqued by questions sent to me by others. Some weeks I have three or four general notes written up to post in advance, fitting my project progress bits in between them. Other days I write as the fit takes me, being neither disciplined enough in my habits to set aside one particular time to do so, or even trying to get something written by a particular time each day.

I guess the best part about it all is that I am no longer imposing on anyone with these diatribes. I can be more critical of things because the mass tyranny of political correctness and public niceness isn't in force for a personal log. (It's wonderfully liberating to lose the straight-jacket.) I no longer feel any guilt for imposing on anyone because people have to seek me out and visit. If they don't like what they read, they don't visit again. And that's fine by me.

Things I hope to do with String this year:

• More how-tos.
  
• Continuing the series of yarn maker website reviews. Possibly starting a directory of manufacturer/distributor sites (not retailers - just makers).
• More patterns. Some of these will end up maturing onto wiseNeedle.
• Whatever other whims take me.

Things you won't see here:

• Pictures of me.

Trust me on this. The most photogenic thing about me is my children.

Someone posted a question on one of the knitting eMail lists yesterday, asking why some people think that cables are difficult. Then I popped into the LYS and into a discussion on what criteria were used to assign difficulty levels to knitting patterns in magazines and books. Both things happening on the same day tossed me down another rat hole of thought.

I'm of two minds on labeling patterns with difficulty levels. The first and stronger opinion is probably a product of being a Child of the '70s. I bare my teeth, hiss and spit if anyone so much as suggests that I might like to abide within a set of limitations defined by others. I see skill level labeling as an arbitrary fence that does more to keep people in than to let them out. I've seen far more people decide NOT to knit something because of an "intermediate" or "advanced" label than I've seen people who warmed to the challenge.

Who decides what's advanced, anyway? I've looked at the Craft Yarn Council standards document. They define the levels this way:

• Beginner - Projects for first time knitters using basic knit and purl. Minimal shaping.
• Easy - Projects using basic stitches, repetitive stitch patterns, simple color changes, simple shaping and finishing.
• Intermediate - Projects with a variety of stitches such as basic cables and lace, simple intarsia, DPNs, knitting in the round, mid-level shaping and finishing.
• Experienced - Projects using advanced techniques and stitches: short rows, Fair Isle, more intricate intarsia, cables, lace patterns, and numerous color changes.

By this standard, most everything that's not written specifically for a beginner is either Intermediate or Experienced. The categories are broad enough to have very little meaning, yet are widely used, appearing in books and magazines. Simple things like the 42-stitch hat are Intermediate just because they use DPNs and decreases. (I've taught little kids to knit and used this as their second project, after the ubiquitous beginner's Garter Stitch Scarf).

I think a rating system like this encourages the perception that certain things are difficult. Knitting on DPNs, for example. I see people contort themselves in all sorts of ways to avoid using them. Cables and lacy patterns, too. It frustrates me to no end to see someone who's an effective, insightful, intelligent person bleat out "But that's way too hard," when confronted by anything new. Yes, I know that in knitting as in everything else, there's a bell curve of ability, and not everyone can (or would want to) explore extreme knitting challenges like complex lace; but I think that people are capable of far more than they think they are, and only lack of confidence (bolstered by ratings so generously provided by "experts") keeps them bound inside a limited are that will eventually grow stale and boring.

But then my second set of thoughts squeaks weakly in protest. In a fit of overconfidence I may place myself more towards the leading pointy end of the bell curve; but there are lots of people in the belly and trailing end who are legitimately challenged, who labor on to the best of their ability but may never have the patience, skill, or perseverance to tackle something new. They deserve to be spared frustration, and so welcome skill level labeling so they can choose suitable projects. We then cycle back to my first reaction to such labels. It's damn patronizing for any one entity to decide what's beyond any one individual.

Case in point, I've got a knitting friend who is blind. She routinely does spectacular colorwork, and is currently working on the Pacific Northwest lace shawl (you can see Wendy's magnificent version of it here). Difficult for sighted knitters? You bet. Extra difficult for her, working off a recording of the directions read out loud? You bet. But her determination to do it and to do it well trumps all difficulties, and that determination is only exceeded by the absolute joy she experiences from overcoming the challenge.

What would I like to see done instead? It takes more real estate on the page, but I'd like to see a more granular list of skills presented, especially for leaflet or broadside sheet patterns. Something like

Skills required: Increases, decreases, twisted stitches, cables, knitting in the round, reading a chart

That's a lot more specific than "Intermediate." I can visualize someone reading that list ticking off the skills "Yup, can do, o.k., done that, fine; hmm - maybe this will help me get more comfortable with charts," rather than saying "I've just started, Intermediate must be too hard for me."

Yesterday's Rant - Self Stripers

A couple of people wrote to say that they loved the stripers and didn't want to see them go away. Neither do I.

I have lots of fun playing with them, too. But they've taken over nearly all the available retail shelf space around here, and there's lots of shelf space, so that's really saying something. I'd like to see self stripers stay available, and see new and playful reinterpretations of the theme. But I also would like to see more of the solids be available, too, to use by themselves, or in combo with the stripers (or other solids).