Oh, dear. It’s been a while again, hasn’t it? It has been an…interesting month over here at Casa de Cusser, and to be honest, I haven’t felt like I had much to say (or at least, not much that was suitable for this blog. Or children. Or those with sensitive ears. Despite the nickname, I try not to swear on this blog, and there was a lot of swearing going on.) However, it looks like the worst is over (touch every piece of wood in the house), and things don’t seem so bad, and I do have something to write about: the healing properties of stash-diving in times of trouble.
knitting
The start of an(other) obsession
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about sock yarn. More precisely, I’ve been thinking about spinning sock yarn: how best to spin it, what fibres to use, how to put it all together into The Perfect Sock Yarn. Continue reading
A letter to Future Me
It’s December — well into December, as I realized with horror yesterday — and my idiotic resolution to knit ALL the presents has become a resigned determination to knit some of the presents and hope against hope that the mail moves at supersonic speed. In case I should get this idea again, I shall set a reminder for next October to look at this post, in which I now write the following message:
Lulu, oh Lulu
I’ve fallen in love with deep cowls: cowls that you can pull up over your ears if the need arises; even better if they’ll cover your head. These are what I envision when I think ‘cowl’: the things that monks wore; the things that non-knitters think of as a cowl. Continue reading
You can’t love ’em all
Once again, it’s been too long between posts. Most of October was taken up with putting together submissions for magazines, which cannot be posted about on pain of…well, rejection. I’m also working on a couple of new designs, which are too early in the process to be written about; it’s almost as though exposing them too young will cause failure to thrive. Then November hit, and with it the annual urge to knit ALL the presents. I succumbed this year, against my better judgement, and of course I can’t go posting those projects all over the internets, lest my family see them before their appointed time of unveiling. There is something I’ve been wanting to write about, though, and it contains both spinning and knitting content, so today seems like a good day for it.
An elephant in a day?
A couple of weeks ago, I set myself a challenge. You see, I really wanted to make Ysolda Teague‘s Elijah to send up to Canuckia with The Nephew’s birthday sweater. The sweater took too long, alas, and other commitments prevailed, but that day I realized that a) the sweater wouldn’t get to the post office until the next day, and b) it was Sunday, which I have declared watch-eleventy-mysteries-and-knit-what-you-want day. (Midsomer Murders is my current series of choice, and it looks like that well may never run dry.) So, the question was, could I make an elephant in a day? I had to find out. For SCIENCE!
Step 1: A strong cup of tea. Well, actually, a pot.
Step 2: Convince Chicken-Leg Al the Wonder Cat to relinquish the yarn.
It being Sunday, I was hardly up with the birds, and this idea didn’t occur to me until I was two cups into the day. Thus, at the civilized hour of 10:37am, my needles and I got to work. I knit like the wind. Like the wind, I say. Took a break for lunch at 1:15, and was back to work by 1:40, with a second pot of tea. Green this time; my black tea is like rocket fuel, and two pots of that would leave me a gibbering idiot. Or more of a gibbering idiot.
The head was not quite done, which sounds discouraging, but it took me about half an hour to correctly execute the cast on (an ingenious one for centre-out projects that I had not previously encountered). I figured I still had a chance. By about 2:15 I had me an elephant head, and by 5:15, the body was finished.
At around 8:30, I bound off the second leg. Great day in the morning, I might actually pull this off.
An hour for dinner, then I started the arms. Halfway through the first arm, my dad called. I briefly considered answering with, “Can’t talk; making an elephant,” and hanging up, which is when I realized that I may have lost perspective on this thing. I talked to my dad, then went and had a nice, hot shower to work the kinks out. Then back to work, with only 1.5 arms and an ear to go.
Now here’s the thing: you look at those arms (see below) and think, “That’ll take no time! Look at them. They’re tiny. It’ll be a doddle.” However, each part of this elephant is worked by picking up stitches rather than making it in pieces and sewing it together, and you stuff each piece as you go. This is smart, because it means that the toy has no weak points that will give way to tiny but incredibly strong hands. The tradeoff is that with each piece, you add to the weight and awkwardness that will be hanging off your needles when you work the next piece. So those arms? Not as much of a doddle as you’d think. (I should point out that this pattern is not designed for high-speed competition knitting, and under normal knitting circumstances devoid of ridiculous self-imposed time restrictions, this awkwardness would not really be a problem.) At any rate, I bound off the second arm at 3 am.
Exhausted and achey, I realized that poor Mr. Olliphaunt would have to remain earless for the night. Or, as it turned out, for several nights. After about 16 hours of almost constant labour over this thing, it was a couple of days before I could pick Ollie up again. He did get finished in the end, though, and was last seen being dragged about by one of those ears, clutched in the hands of a loving toddler who would shout “OLLIPHAUNT!” at the slightest provocation.
Thus we learn that should the occasion arise when the swift production of a small, stuffed pachyderm is all that stands between humanity and imminent destruction, I may not be your gal, but I’ll give it a good, solid try. Also that self-imposed olympic-style knitting challenges are a bit silly.
Tutorial: Stick a leaf on it
So my car knitting shawl/scarf thingy is coming along nicely,
and I was thinking about how useful the embossed leaf motif is. It’s easy: a series of increases at the bottom, some straight rows if you wish, and a series of decreases at the top. It’s adaptable: you can change the appearance, shape, and size by changing the type and placement of your increases and decreases. It’s self-contained: an embossed leaf grows and shrinks independently of the rest of the piece, so that you can keep doing whatever you were doing for the rest of the stitches, and at the end of each leaf you’re back to the same stitch count you had at the beginning. If you prefer your leaf to be flat, rather than raised, you can use corresponding decreases and increases outside the edge of leaf, keeping the overall stitch count constant. Continue reading
Maybe a Dahlia
There’s this cardigan. Her name is Dahlia. I loved her as soon as I saw her, but I let practicality stand between us and I filed her away on a wish list entitled Things I Shall Make When I Have Time. My friend Susan and I joked about how, beautiful as she was, we would probably never get around to making her. Susan even started a Never Get It Done-Along for Dahlia, a sort of ongoing online party where we could talk about her loveliness, waffle about yarn choices, and dream of what our versions would look like, without any pressure to actually make her. In my stash was a yarn that I was sure would be perfect: some merino/bamboo/silk heavyish fingering weight by The Plucky Knitter in the delightfully-named colourway Mildred Pierce. I even made a gauge swatch. It was perfect the first time. The yarn was a dream to knit with. I was sunk.
As of Saturday night, I could resist no longer. Whistling past the designs-in-progress pile, shielding my eyes from the spectre of a thousand unfinished objects, I cast on for Dahlia. I worked on her as we watched Last Life in the Universe, and well into the night. Sunday at around dawn, when Chicken-Leg Al, Prince Among Cats summoned me to door duty*, I brought Dahlia outside to knit while drinking my morning gallon of tea. As the chilly early morning gave way to a warm, sunny afternoon and then cooled into evening, the central lace motif expanded and unfolded in my hands until it became this:
Somewhere in here I wanted to wax poetic about how Last Life in the Universe was the perfect film to go with Dahlia; how the story reveals itself to you slowly, quietly, occurring mostly between the lines, as the petals of the lace pattern unfurl until much to your surprise, you have created a beautiful, delicate thing. Everything I came up with sounded much too purple, though — too clumsy and obvious and sledgehammery for such a subtle satisfaction — so I won’t. Except that I just did. Ah, well. But really, this is one of those patterns that you look at think, “Oh! How pretty!” Then you work on it and realize just how clever it is: how carefully all the increases and decreases — the type, the placement — were put together to make this intricate design. The way the rest of the garment grows out from the lace panel is equally interesting, and I look forward to that part almost as much. Dahlia is even more clever than she looks, and I’ll be watching for more designs from Heather Zoppetti.
Now it’s Monday, time to get back to more worklike knitting. Come evening, though, I may pull Dahlia out of the basket and work on her some more. Just a couple of rows. Just to finish the next piece.
*Chicken-Leg Al has a new trick to ensure that I do not neglect my duty as dawn doorperson. It’s called ‘Mum’s Lower Abdomen is My Parade Ground.’ It’s marginally less irritating than its predecessor, ‘Metal Blinds are Satan’s Xylophone’, and at least as effective.
Gimble
The writing and testing and tech editing and foofaraw are done, and the pattern for Gimble has been released. w00t!
I designed Gimble with longish, close-fitting cuffs and a Scandinavian thumb. The cuffs go a few inches up under your coat sleeves because oh, mama, do I hate cold wind and snow on my wrists. I went with a Scandinavian thumb because I find that the thumb gusset — that ‘V’ shape at the base of the thumb that comes out from the mitten — tends to fit better, providing extra room for the ball of your thumb. This shape can be a bit trickier to design for, but it’s worth it.
These mittens are designed to go with Gyre, though in fingering weight rather than DK. I used Quince & Co.’s Tern for this pattern, and wow, do I love this yarn. Definitely wooly, with a nice sproinginess to it, softened by the 25% silk. Plus, the colours have a quiet loveliness to them that really appeals to me. I’ve been doing some swatching, and the corresponding colours of Chickadee would work for Gyre, if you wanted to make a matching set. A thousand thank yous to my doughty testers, Heike and Jerrica.
Fall knitting and colourwork. Huzzah, I say.
E. Elliott Knits 