Stash flash #1

Hi.  My name is Caitlin, and I have a knitting problem.

Well, not so much a knitting problem, because if the knitting were the problem, the stash wouldn't be.  Let's say I have a yarn problem.

It looks a little bit like this:

Pardon me for *ahem* flashing my stash.  But even this is actually quite an improvement over the state of the thing at the beginning of January, before I buckled down and got organized.  Now each yarn is in a plastic bag, and if I know what I plan to make with it (and I do for about 70% of the yarn in that pile), the pattern has been printed and put into the bag.  And a half hour after this picture was taken, all the loose yarn you see was similarly corralled into ziplock baggies and placed into the storage bins you see in the background.

But no matter how beautifully organized it now is, it's still an overwhelmingly large stash.  Especially because more than of it than I would like is squeaky acrylic or dry and halo-y cotton, which won't cut it for the vintage patterns I now love to make.

I tried going Cold Sheep (ravelry link) last year, which went quite well until it...didn't anymore (yarn is a perfectly acceptable way of rewarding oneself for being a successful grown up, what are you talking about?).  My goal was to make it from the end of May to the end of December.  I made it from May through the end of September.  In penance for falling off the wagon - and boy, did I ever? -  I have signed back on for another three-ish months (til the NC Fiber Fest, in April) of being totally cold sheep, and, as I've already noted, I've pledged to spend 2013 knitting from my stash.

And in attempt to stay accountable to myself, I am also making myself accountable to you.  I will periodically flash my stash, to show that it is decreasing rather than increasing, and will have to publicly shame myself by announcing it here if I do add any new yarn.  Hopefully, you will help to keep me honest and on the wagon for the duration of 2013.

Surprise!

Look what was in my mailbox today!

Not too terribly long ago, I donated to Three Irish Girls to help get them out of the studio of horribleness. In exchange for monetary support of a certain amount, Sharon and co promised a skein of a special colorway.

And lo and behold, this lovely appeared in my mailbox today:

The colorway is Moondance (as in "a marvelous night for...") and is on the Adorn sock base.  It is beautiful and I can't wait to see how it works up.  Sometimes 3IG's yarns can be a bit...exuberant, but this looks promisingly sockworthy.

Hazel Knits

I am a sucker for hand-dyed yarns.  The colors, the vibrancy, the blends!  The frequently unexpected way it works up (although that is not always pleasant, as Jean noted today)!  The joy of watching each new color appear as you stitch.  It is, not to be too much of an aesthete, a transcendent form of knitting.

I have plenty of favorite dyers:  Three Irish Girls (I think I've put one of Sharon's children through college),  Nerd Girl Yarns, Sweet Georgia, the Verdant Gryphon (her yarns are so squishy!), Dragonfly Fibers.  They all do fascinating things with color blends and produce yarn that is fantastic to work with.

But today...today I found some of the most beautiful semi-sold yarns I have ever beheld.

Hazel Knits.

Image (c) hazel knits.  Artisan Sock in Nickel.

Image (c) hazel knits.  Filigree lace in Jay Blue.

I am sadly Cold Sheep (more on that soon), and cannot buy any of these lovelies until April.  But you should.  You absolutely should, and then come back and tell me about how pretty it is so that I can live vicariously through your yarn acquisition.  Because this is seriously the most gorgeous yarn I've seen in ages.

Perspective

I have reached the point one reaches with all toe-up socks, in which it becomes clear that there is no possible way any human being can possibly have a foot that long and skinny.

One despairs, wondering if those hours of knitting have been in vain. 

And then, one remembers negative ease and is merry again.

Obsession

I have a philosophical question for the interwebz.  What is it about knitting (or fiber arts in general) that prompts people to become so obsessed with it?

If we define a casual knitter as someone who knows how to knit, but only owns one or two sets of needles, only buys yarn when they have a specific project in mind, and only makes a scarf or blanket every once in a while, when the mood strikes them, then I can count the number of casual knitters I know on one finger.

Every other knitter I know (which is a lot, if you define 'know' in the loosest, most online-inclusive sense of the word) is genuinely obsessed with the subject, process, history, and practice of knitting.  We laugh at knitters who call the two skeins of yarn they bought this weekend their "stash."  We spend hours agonizing over whether we ought to spend the extra money for the Addi click set, or if the Knitter's Pride set will serve our purpose.  We compulsively refresh the Manos del Uruguay page on Webs to see if any new stock has been added.  We blog, we podcast, we stitch and bitch, we chat in Ravelry's forums, all to share our great love of and obsession with two pointy sticks and some string which may or may not have come from an animal.

Why?

I think it can be assumed, even without scientific study, that knitting must stimulate dopamine output in our brains, giving our reward pathways a feedback loop of awesome.  But what is it about knitting that causes us to have that reaction?  The tactile nature of the fiber?  The math involved in patterning and shaping (I wouldn't think that would be particularly pleasing to my brain, at least)?  The sounds of clicking needles?  The colors?  The repetition?  Or is it all of the above?

What causes people who can be perfectly rational about all facets of their life to, within a few weeks of picking up knitting, crocheting, spinning, or any other fiber art, suddenly be dreaming in fiber and planning their career as a designer/yarn-dyer/shepherd/yarn store owner/etc?

I don't know.

But I sure am glad I'm not alone.

1955 Petal Sweater

Picture (c) Bex.
From Coats & Clark's Sweaters are Fashion News.  Originally knit in Red Heart Super Fingering.

The minute I saw this pattern, I knew I HAD to make it for my grandmother, who has always been a classic, late '50s/early '60s style person.  Plus, she looks fabulous in red.  And I was able to find the booklet easily, at Vintage Knits.  So it had to happen.

Just one problem.  My grandmother lives in Texas, and is very hot natured, so a 100% wool yarn was not going to cut it for this project.  Enter Knitpicks Comfy fingering, which is 75% Cotton/25% Acrylic.  No ability to grab or hold its shape (this will be important later), but fabulously cool and comfy.  I love this yarn.  Does Knitpicks make a bad yarn?  The color is much richer and bluer than the called-for Red Heart, but I was able to get gauge on the first try (that NEVER happens to me), so it seemed like a great substitute (and would have been if I had been more thoughtful from the beginning).

The construction is different than anything I’ve knitted before.  You knit the yoke from the top down, and then knit each subsequent piece flat, and then the side and underarm seams are worked in one go.  It’s actually fairly brilliant, as it reduces the likelihood of that funky bunched seam at the base of the armscye.

However, it is clear that the author wrote and worked up only one or two of the sizes listed, and just did the math out for the rest of the sizes without considering the implications of some of the instructions at the largest size.  For example, if the yoke increases for the largest size were followed as written, the separation for the arms would wind up somewhere around a normal human's mid-waist.  So I doubled up on them, and wound up with something close enough to correct to be serviceable.  Similarly for the arms, if you kept knitting until you reached the appropriate number of decreases, the arms would hit your knees.

As an aside, one thing this sweater has taught me is to appreciate my tininess.  While not overall a petite person, I have a petite top half, which comes in handy for not having to knit for ages just to make a sweater.  Since this sweater is intended for my not-so-petite Grandmother, I made the largest size.  Epic amounts of stockinette, ya’ll.  Epic.

And now for the bad news.  After knitting the whole thing, I came to the realization that a) I had twelve buttonholes, and b) cotton/acrylic does not create the sturdiest of fabrics.  Once washed and blocked, my button placket resembled a particularly viscious roller-coaster ride, full of ripples and wobbles.  No amount of wiggling, tugging, or pinning was going to get that placket study enough to support twelve buttons.

I've already folded the placket under in this shot,
but you can see the wobbles towards the bottom of the sweater.

The only solution I could come up with was to tack down the placket on the inside of the sweater (it unfortunately can't be removed because it's knit as a part of the body), and then pick up and knit a new, denser placket on smaller needles.  Rather than going down just one size for the cuff ribbing and the button bands, I went down two.  After some trial and error, I picked up 138 sts along the inner edge of the original button band and knit 8 rows garter stitch with the yarn held double.  This gave me a much more attractive and sturdy band.  I also reduced the buttonholes to 7, so as to weigh the front down significantly less.  

I also found that the cuffs of the sleeves were too droopy, so I pulled them back out, decreased down to  61 stitches, and then knit them back on the smaller needles as well.

I still need to go back and sew down the original button-bands more neatly, and attach the seven buttons, and then this sucker will finally be finished.  As beautiful as it will be when it's done, I can't wait to have it out of my house.

Plans for 2013

I don't do resolutions.  Partly because I don't keep them and partly because my "new year" starts in July, with the academic calendar.

I do, however, do goals.  Not in a life-coach, reach for the stars kind of way, but in a "here's what I want to accomplish" kind of way.  This year, there are four.

1) Learn to sew.
Luckily, I have a wonderful mother who is talented in this area, and can teach me.  We're planning on one lesson a month, with the end result of making Vintage Vogue 2902.  Either that or a body for poor Hetty...

2) Exercise more.
This is perilously close to a resolution, but it has nothing to do with weight loss or body image.  It has everything to do with how much better you feel about yourself when you get off your backside and do something.  So I'm going to.  This is obviously the goal I'm the least excited about meeting, but the one I think will do me the most immediate good.

3)  Knit only from my queue.
I started by saying I would knit half my queue in 2013.  But then I actually looked at my queue and realized there are 65 items on it, and that even at my best pace I probably can't knit 32 items in a year (notice how I say probably, like I'm not completely convinced - my best total is 30, but that was in the halcyon days when I only made washcloths and socks).  So I've dialed it back.  I joined the Ravelry group - Knit the Queue - and have matched 70% of my stash to projects (There were spreadsheets involved, as well as gratuitous use of Ravelry's advanced pattern search function).  I'm going to get through what I get through, which will help with my stashdown.  My ultimate goal is to get to the point where instead of buying/being given yarn, matching it to pattern through sheer necessity/force of will, and then ending up with a closet full of random accessories and oddly colored squeaky acrylic sweaters, I will buy yarn for the patterns I already know I want to make.  This should help with Cold Sheep, as well, now that I'm back on the sheep after a spectacular three month yarn-buying binge.

4) Move in with the Boy and get married.
Not necessarily in that order.  And sooner, rather than later.  This long-distance relationship stuff is for the birds.

Notes on a Scandal: My take on the USOC event

 I know this is late, but I have to say it.  After the brouhaha that occurred earlier this summer, I wasn't sure I really wanted to participate in Ravel-Greek-Suffix-Which-Happens-to-Also-Be-the-Suffix-in-an-Important-Sporting-Event-s this year.  I admire the athletes, and I appreciate any excuse to wave my Anglophile flag as high as it can go, but the whole thing left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.  While I appreciate what Stephanie said as being fairly logical, I also feel like she missed the point about why at least I, personally, was so outraged.  It wasn't that we had to change the name (although it seems incredibly stupid to me that anyone can "own" a five-letter suffix).  It wasn't even that they said we were denigrating the work of the athletes.  Though that was very, very offensive, I understand that is their standard C&D, and based on their behavior in all other arenas, I wasn't surprised to be denigrated myself by a company who represents the worst of corporate America.  What bothered me the most was how the media commenting on the fiasco spent most of their efforts poking fun at us for being knitters, rather than commenting on the ridiculousness and the injustice of the USOC's claims.  During the whole event, there was only one major article written that did justice to the knitters' side of the argument, and that was on NPR, and even that only really got the point after a knitter commented to correct the initial version of the article.

It bothers me that something that is, for many of us, such an integral part of who we are is still considered by society at large something that makes us odd, bizarre, or objects for derision.  They called us "little old ladies" or "liberal hippie leftists" (conflicted, much?).  They made terrible puns at our expense.  They generally treated our legitimate outrage as a hysterical temper-tantrum by a quaint and clearly unhinged, pre-feminist-movement granny.  Even once the USOC apologized, the tone taken by the media was, "Wow, who knew all those weird old ladies knew how to use social media!"

I am not a little old lady.  I am not a liberal hippie leftist.  I am not denigrating Olympic (can I say that word without permission?) athletes.  And I am not okay with being mocked for what is and was a legitimate complaint against the USOC.

You mock me because I am a knitter, but knitters make, with our own two hands, things that are useful, things that comfort people and keep them warm, things that fit their recipients in a perfect way no high street garment ever will, things that are beautiful.  We make complicated, three-dimensional, intensely mathematical art.  And we do it all with two pointy sticks and some string.

I am a knitter.  I knit in public, in movie theatres and in waiting rooms, at my desk (when I can) and in meetings.  I am not strange or hysterical.  I am not setting the feminist movement back in any way.  I am participating in a proud tradition of hand-crafters that stretches back at least to the 16th century, and in which I am joined by (at the very least) two million people worldwide.

I am a knitter.  What are you?

Blogging: Take Two

Perhaps it's the fact that, as an academic, my new year comes in July.  Perhaps it's the make-over my craft room received this past weekend.  But whatever has prompted this, I want to turn over a new blog-leaf.  I make no promises about the frequency with which I will update, but I certainly hope to make it at least a bi-weekly event.  As I have some ideas for some regular feature posts, I'm sanguine, but we'll have to wait and see.

To start things off, here are some pictures of my newly renovated, but not quite finished craft room.

I have an unfortunate problem with lack of natural light everywhere in my apartment.

Projects in progress include a Vogue repro 1950s dress and new curtains for this room.

Book Review: Inferno (2008) by Niven and Pournelle

Title: Inferno (1976, reissued 2008)

Author: Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Start date: 6/18/11
Finish date: 6/18/11

Thoughts:

This is the second book I’ve read in the last year that uses Dante as a frame-work on which to hang a new story, and while Matthew Pearl’s The Dante Club was a fine effort, Inferno is by far the better of the two. Niven and Pournelle, in their authors’ notes, explain this work as an effort to blend Dante’s geography with C.S. Lewis’ theology. It’s the most fitting description I can think of, as this new version does take away some of the naïve, accepting Catholicism of the original and replace it with a reasoned, logical Christianity (inasmuch as Christianity can ever be logical). And in doing so, they have made the work that much more profound. Though the circles of hell remain the same, those populating them have been updated to include advertisers, science fiction writers, and fascist dictators, and the escape therefrom has become a struggle towards understanding and grace, rather than the divinely gifted get-out-of-hell-free card of Dante’s vision. It is a much richer, more satisfying theology, and the adventure, far from being a mocking litany of all the ways good Catholics can go wrong, is a cautionary tale on how humans misperceive their actions here on earth and fall into sin. In this hell, punishment is not the product of “infinite power and infinite sadism” – as is suggested by the protagonist throughout the novel – but of people’s persistent unwillingness to admit their sins and reform not just their behavior, but their whole mental outlook. In following the characters through each circle, I was frightened and elated by turns, desperate for them to succeed in their escape despite never really being certain that I genuinely liked anyone involved (except possibly the priest-in-armor). And therein, I suppose, lies the genius of Niven and Pournelle, and the whole point of the book - "You must learn to hate the sin, yet love the sinner."