Too Much Wool

The Great Wool Drought

It's starting.

Spring is just around the corner and the local shops are starting to replace their stock of wool yarns with cottons and other non-wooly fibers. I won't say every shop here does it, but a lot do. Lack of space is a facet of NY life that has far-reaching implications.

Sometimes, this changing of the guard/wool works to my advantage. Last Thursday I picked up some Rowan Yorkshire Tweed 4 ply at Purl, from their 40% off basket. In five colours. I found it kind of funny, because I had bought and then returned two balls of it a few months ago, not being sure what I was going to do with it. However, faced with forty percent off, I got five balls, enough to play with.

I started a pair of lace wristlets, you can see the first one finished here (click for larger picture). I used four of the five colors I bought (from light to dark) barley, shrew, highlander and feral. The colour that didn't get used was the lightest off-white, called ... dessicated.  Seriously. I have no idea where Rowan comes up with these names, but I find it interesting that the ball bands only have numbers on them. I had to look online to find the names.

I love this yarn. The colour flecks are gorgeous . The yarn is rustic but still very soft.  Most exciting to me about this project was that I basically made it up. I had a picture from Nordic Knitting by Susan Pagoldh (OOP and its a crying shame) of a pair of pulsevant/wrist warmers that were the starting point for mine. But I wanted to make something that covered the palm of my hand, and with a thumb added as well.

I'm really happy with the fit. The wristlet is basically a tube with a 'peasant' thumb (another tube), but fits well because the lace pattern is quite stretchy. If anyone is interested, I can try to write up the pattern for the wristlets and post it here. I finished one between Friday night and Sunday morning (there were a lot of ends to weave in), and then started another Sunday night. Only two colour bands into the second wristlet, I'll save the pictures of the finished pair for another day.

winter

To "see" is to go direct to the core; to know the facts about an object of beauty is to go around the periphery.

-Sōetsu Yanagi

sock deconstruction

Yesterday I started writing a post about my former life as a sock knitter. The knitterly obsession that fled at some convergence of joining a sock knitalong and getting myself to a bloggery.

And then Claudia posted a link to this article in the Boston Globe. I had already written half of my post about sock knitting when I read the Globe article. That article bothered me all day.

Claudia mentioned the article's anti-douple pointed needle bias. All day long the article wound its way through my mind, and I finally realized what about it bothered me so much.

I really dislike self-striping sock yarns. Yes, I've knit at least 6 pairs of socks from them. Yes, I have Lucy Neatby's excellent book. I'll be honest, I don't even like hand-dyed variegated sock yarns. The self-striping yarns held their allure through about 1.5 socks, every time. At some point I always started to feel like an idiot for enjoying the mindless reemergence of the pattern. And then having socks that looked exactly like the next person's using Regia color #Z or what have you.

I like to knit texture. I dislike stockinette stitch - everyone knows that by now. There's no point in knitting textured or cabled patterns in wildly variegated yarns. I'll be brutally honest - every time I see someone doing it, all I can think of is.... why? Go ahead, contradict me. I fully realize that I've probably just annoyed a whole bunch of people.

Kim recently posted about the lack of solid colored sock yarns out there, so I'm sure this planted a bit of a seed that was just aggravated by the Boston Globe's article that seemed to extol self patterning yarns.

I'm already wondering if people are going to think that I'm just too conservative to wear wild colored socks. Well... maybe. I'm willing to walk around in bright candy apple red socks and multi-colored striped tights while dressed all in black, so I don't see being conservative as the issue. I've said before that I'm hypersensitive to color, and that may be part of it.

I picked up a half finished pair of socks again yesterday. I cast on the second sock and worked on it while waiting in a doctor's office with my grandmother. Being the only knitting I did on Thursday, its the only thing I have to show you. And of course its dark tomato red. Which of course doesn't photograph so you get a crappy photo because I take all my pictures at 11pm with just my Ott-lite to guide me.

And just as an aside, the other thing about that article that was irksome was the statement that sock knitters were process oriented and scarf knitters were product oriented. I know just as many knitters with collections of scarves (and shawls, ahem) because they like the process of knitting them as I do knitters with their houses full of hand made socks for the same reason. People! Generalize at your own risk.

a very good day with chocolate

Anyone and everyone will have to forgive me for not replying to all the birthday wishes personally yesterday. I decided to leave the blog for the day and go out and have a great day. It was beautiful, it was sunny, and I went to the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art) for a couple of hours. I saw the Gates from their roof (its actually better to walk through the park, IMO), saw the street photography exhibit that I didn't want to miss, and a truly bizarre costume exhibit that included Björk's swan dress and seriously politically incorrect costumes including animal skins, feathers, and even some taxidermied parakeets on a hat. (yuck)

The best part of the day was my special birthday dinner at a friend's house. Homemade pasta (they made me pasta, it's been 20 years since anyone has made me pasta with their own hands), and all the other things that make a birthday special. Chocolate, wine, chocolate, cute baby who loves me, chocolate, and really good tea. Did I mention chocolate covered almonds straight off the plane from Europe?

To maintain my status as some sort of knitting blog (just leave the whole issue of why I think this is important at rest please, Adelaide), I include a Danish Nattroje progress shot. I'm not the sort of knitting person who just gets everything after a few rounds and doesn't need the pattern anymore. I still need the pattern (it's a HUGE repeat and I'm not even through the first one), but it is relaxing knitting as the pattern repeats 4 or 5 times around the body in fairly logical ways. Representing two or three nights of serious knitting, absolutely none of which occurred on my birthday, I present the nattrøje:

reflection

Another year. Happy Birthday to me.

I spoke too soon

Well, I blew it. I just dove right into the second Backyard Leaves scarf without working out all the details, flush with the victory of a finished object and greedy for a scarf to call my own.

You may remember that yesterday I said in a very logical and seemingly sensible way that though the yarn was thinner and I was going down a needle size and would get a smaller scarf, I was fine with that. And then some self-indulgent crap about how I was working from stash and it was all good, or some other nonsense.

My math proficient daughter (I recommend that everyone get one, they're very useful) helped me figure out that given the difference in yardage between the two scarves, I would get 9 pattern repeats per side (18 total, as the scarf is knit in halves) rather than the 11/22 I got the first time. I didn't really figure in the difference in gauge and just how much smaller the new scarf was going to be.

After finishing one out of three skeins of Kersti, the scarf was only 15" long. Unblocked, but it's not a pattern that needs or wants super-stretched blocking, so the size wouldn't change all that much. That figures to be a 45" scarf and that my friends, is just too short. Even for a little person like me.

Also, about the yarn... I know I said something, being such a wool purist/elitist and all, about how the squishy yarn wasn't "my kind of yarn". You know what? It feels incredible and was great to knit with. Superwash (gasp!) notwithstanding. I suspect DB cashmerino would work very well as a substitute. But I don't have any of that. I have very little heavy worsted weight yarn that isn't in huge hunking bags waiting to be knit into thick sweaters. (Optimist. We refer to this stash of sweater yarns as optimism, remember?)

I tried another wool I had in stash, an orange wool/mohair blend that I bought at Rhinebeck. I have enough, but after an inch or so into the swatch/third scarf, I realize that its too stiff and scratchy.

You can see my orange "swatch" on the left, the Koigu Kersti in the middle, and the moss green Aurora 8. Very very different weights, and types of yarn. Its very likely that I'll be going out and getting more Aurora in the next couple of days. I have my birthday as an excuse for a little treat.

The Kersti scarf isn't gone yet, but it is in line for imminent ripping. In the absence of a mindless repeat scarf knitting project I was forced able to get back to work on the nattroje. Mind bogglingly small gauge, but a satisfying project. Nevermind that 4 rows represents a huge chunk of my Monday.

Me and my big mouth. Never badmouth soft wool. It will most surely come back to haunt you.

Backyard leaves

After a very long dry spell, we have a finished object. On Friday night (yeah, a couple of days late for the kid's birthday) I got the last pattern repeat done, and on Saturday I got the last bit of knitting done, wove in ends, blocked the sucker, and sewed it up. Specs:

Pattern: Backyard Leaves by Annie Modesitt from Scarf Style.
Yarn: Karabella Aurora 8 in color #11 (identical to yarn used in the book)
Started: (this is embarassing) November 2004. Finished: February 19, 2005
Needles: 7US, 4.5mm Lantern Moon Ebony
Finished size: 5" wide, app 72" long

Impressions: I loved this pattern. So much, that I've already started another one, in Koigu Kersti, for myself. The Aurora yarn was super soft and squishy; not "my" type of yarn but unbelievably gentle to the skin. It would be a great choice for someone who needed a very soft wool. The yarn has a luscious feel that makes a very elegant scarf that drapes beautifully.

The instructions called for steam blocking, but being too cheap to buy a new iron, that wasn't an option. Instead I sprayed it with water and pinned it out to a towel, on top of a hot radiator (a NY specialty, most people don't have cast iron radiators). I suspect the effect was close to steam blocking. I pinned the points down, and generally smoothed the pattern out without totally flattening it. Both my daughter and I liked the slight relief of the leaves popping up against the garter stitch background.

I tried to take a picture of the newest Backyard Leaves scarf, in Koigu Kersti. Due to a combination of the color (deep orange-red) and lighting, the best picture I came up with is of Alice with the scarf in the background. I've gone through most of one skein of Kersti and knitted six full pattern repeats. This second version, due to my yarn limitations and the slightly smaller gauge (I'm knitting it on size 6US, 4mm needles), will make a smaller scarf. Since I'm knitting the second one from stash yarn, I'm resigned to the smaller size. After trying for a while, I did manage a more-scarf, less-Alice picture which you can see by clicking HERE.

 

commonplace

I wish that everyone would realize that until recently beauty in things was commonplace and that it is our responsibility to demand that of the future.

-Sōetsu Yanagi

íslenskur, íslensk, íslenskt

Due to birthday stuff Wednesday, writing time was limited. We tried to take pictures. None came out. I look like some kind of demonspawn in photographs. I don't know how or why. I would swear to you that I am not scary in person, but freeze-frame me and I can scare innocent children. The birthday girl has glow-in-the-dark red eye in all of the pictures.

My sister, who shall remain blogless, informed me last night that my "thing" about Iceland was a little out of control. Indulge my fantasies of Iceland for now, please. I have really odd ideas about how I need to expatriate and right now, Iceland is my choice of where to go.

You can find out many interesting facts about the country on Wikipedia's page on Iceland.

You can get absolutely addicted to sound clips of spoken Icelandic phrases on the University of Iceland's Icelandic Online site. This is a great, free intro to the language. More historical background information on the language is found here on a travel/info site.

Iceland's Alþingi (in English, Althing) is the oldest national assembly or parliament in the world. Their website is HERE. You can see the Thingvalla or �ingvellir where the original sessions took place (breathtakingly beautiful) HERE.

Iceland Review is an English language web magazine on Iceland.

The Reykjavík Grapevine is also fun; a local city website that makes me want to visit. Info on galleries, performances, and news from the capital. All the latest on Bobby Fischer and his quest for Icelandic citizenship.

You can order a free DVD and brochure from the Icelandic Tourist Board on their site.

You can go read Nik's blog for almost daily updates on life in Iceland. Or you can go to Sonja's blog and ask her (nicely) to post in English once in a while. Sonja very kindly directly us (see comments) to a great Icelandic blog with beautiful pictures.

Álafoss's factoid page on Icelandic wool, with a brief synopsis of why this wool is so wonderful. Click around the site a bit for more information.

More from the wool manufacturer Ístex, on their site.

And to set the mood for all this browsing, you can listen to Björk, who also has a great website.

P.S. Since I made up a word in a language I barely speak for yesterday's blog title, and no one said anything, can I request that in the future, people let me know when I embarass myself in other languages? I worry about these things.

Les févrieriennes

Since some people are complaining about February and midwinter doldrums, I'll chime in as a February avenger (I'll take a button for that if anyone wants to make one, kinda like a grammar avenger but for February). Update! Abby has made me/us a February Avenger button. You can find it here. And I rearranged my sidebar just to show it off. Thanks so much.

February is my birth month. Just for the 'awww' factor, here's my all-time favorite picture of me and my mom shortly after my birth. The freakish thing is, I look exactly like my mother. Everyone who sees that pic thinks that she is me and that the baby is my daughter.

Today is my daughter's birthday. If for no other reason, I can honestly and wholeheartedly celebrate February because I have a 17 year old who refuses to ask for anything for her birthday. Let me repeat that. There is no birthday present list. There was no Christmas list. I gave birth to a child who quite obviously has only half my genes.

Did I mention that she's really cool? And that she's baking an apple pie for her own birthday dinner? And that she's an artist? And that she keeps her room cleaner than I keep the rest of the house? If you can't stand the suspense, you can see a picture of her here, posted with her permission.

Other wonderful February things include þorrablót - what we need here is a midwinter festival, including drunken revelry and interesting food products. I read Nik's blog regularly, for interesting tidbits about life in Iceland. I'm inordinately fond of Iceland. The wool, the language, the country ... everything. Just for fun, go here and see a barometer of the political consciousness of the country. I have the original NYTimes advert page stuck to my refrigerator.

I don't see the need for dismissing a month of gray, and slush, and in-between weather and moods. I see the need for a celebration of it. It's a time for reflection and taking inventory. A time to deal with your winters past and look forward to your spring. Consider it 'down time'. Consider it whatever you want. But don't diss February just because you're anxious for something new. This is February. Deal with it. Enjoy it.