adventures with a sock blank

Adventures in sock blank knitting... 

The pattern = cuff-down vanilla, with heel flap.


The yarn is from Color Wheel Yarns, and it's beautiful. Lauren dyes yarn and blanks. I chose the laughing sun because it was so cheerful, and because the background color is periwinkle (which happens to be Lauren's favorite, too).

I started to knit this straight from the blank, and got as far as the middle of the foot before I realized that my insanely loose knitting gauge made for very wonky fabric with kinky yarn. (Kinky, as in, kinked-up…) 

I frogged, skeined, soaked, hung with weight, and voila - beautiful yarn I can knit with! Closeup of second attempt. Much better!

The pair. Delightful.

Knitlandia

Knitlandia: A Knitter Sees the World by Clara Parkes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Clara Parkes, whose first subject as a professional writer was travel, takes us on a tour of knitting and fiber festivals. Some of her adventures as a yarn evangelist are set in venues that thousands of knitters have shared -- Rhinebeck, Taos, Scotland, Portland, Maryland. Some tell background stories of festivals and events we dream of attending - Squam, TNNA, Vogue Knitting Live, Madrona. We are there at Sock Summit for the first knitting flash mob, we are in Denver to film "Knitting Daily" (as she is encased in makeup that makes her feel "like Ronald MacDonald in drag," and we go along on a tour of sheep-intensive Iceland. Always, there is pho, her comfort food, and yarn, in all of its incarnations and manifestations.

My favorite moments are in Paris, where she breaks a promise (no yarn! just family!) and visits a petting zoo of a shop" that offers yarn and tea. Years before, she tells us, she fell in love with fountain pens in Paris. How can anyone not be delighted with this book?

Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy in exchange for a fair review.


View all my reviews

Knitting Pearls

Knitting Pearls: Writers Writing About Knitting by Ann Hood
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Knitters, in my experience, are readers as well. We don't just read about knitting, although many famous knitters are also writers who write about knitting. Perhaps I generalize, but I believe that a collection of essays about knitting is designed to appeal mainly to knitters, since the editor will expect us to identify and empathize with them.

With a few exceptions, this collection will satisfy. Those exceptions are essays in which knitting is so tangential to the essay that one wonders why they were included, or in which the author calls knitters and knitting "...a chew-gum-and-walk-at-the-same-time crowd and an occupation ideal for a zombie. What does he know?

Some examples of excellence:
-- Anne Bartlett, whose growth as a knitter and novelist includes designing an intarsia version of a Scott Joplin rag while editing a book about former cannibals. (Former!)
-- Jared Flood, whose father gives him an old, iconic sweater knitted by his mother, "a veritable Swiss Army knife" of crafting.
-- Clara Parkes, who sees her UFOs* and calls them "beautiful limerence of our first few rows rows together... my personal museum of optimism." (*for the muggles, UFOs are unfinished objects.)
-- Diana Gabaldon, who says "everything you experience forms you as a writer. Why should knitting be an exception?"

Those who do not knit have insights, too - Jane Hamilton, for example, who lives on a sheep form, but chooses not to knit the beautiful, soft yarn milled from her flock. She lived for one summer with the last authentic creator of Harris Tweed, Miss Campbell. There, in the Outer Hebrides, she scraped lichen for dyes while the old woman spun and wove, selling fabric from her kitchen. Hamilton even knitted a scarf, but only because she was cut off from her family except for aerogrammes, deprived of radio and television, and forbidden by Miss Campbell to read. The scarf turned out so "...alarming that probably in this day and age TSA would shut the place down" when she discarded the thing at the airport. A novel is a miracle, she writes, and she has chosen "the miracle of language, the texture and song of speech... so absent on the heath" for her own life's work, her own material.

The book disappoints in two important ways. The first: it is arranged alphabetically by author, not by theme, and thus seems haphazard. The second: what were they thinking? Including six knitting patterns without even line drawings to tempt the reader to try them?

Recommended, in small doses, for knitters and for fans of the included authors.

I received this book from Goodreads, and this is a fair review.


View all my reviews

hats

Behold my hat, spindle, and sippy-cup of wine. 

Where were we? We were at Belmont Raceway for the inaugural gala event, Purls and Ponies - a get-together of knitters and spinners from our local Panera group, organized by Betty, with the only stipulation being : you must wear a hat. 

I must confess: wearing a hat was almost a dealbreaker for me - not because I don't like hats, not because I don't look good in hats, but because I have a small head. Proportionately small, since I am a small person. However, small enough to make it difficult to find hats that fit. 

I wanted a cloche. Impossible. Every.Single.Cloche came down to my chin.  I love hats with big, flowy brims. Forget it. I'm 4'10", and a big, flowy brim makes me look like one of the mushrooms from Fantasia, or like I should live in a house that looks like this.

Which I don't.

Anyway, we had a wonderful time, despite getting terrible, if expected, news two days before - that Lisa, who had been one of the Panera women from the start, had died.  (In memory: Lisa Grossman, The Tsock Tsarina.) We got together anyway, because that's what a a family of friends does, and it was right.

You can see how right it was from the photo, yes? 









Betty worked at Belmont for many years, so she edumacated us about reading the program and selecting horses. We ignored the edumacation, and bet on horses for all the right reasons - because the jockey's silks were purple, because the horse was named Loretta Lynn, because ooh, look at the pretty grey horsie... We had lunch, we laughed, we remembered, and we reminded each other again and again that love does go on.

(and because I know you'll all ask - I'm the one in turquoise.)

Increase, Decrease

Today's title is a treat for knitters. You'll have to wait until May - but the wait will be worth it!

Increase, Decrease: 99 Step-by-Step Methods; Find the Perfect Technique for Shaping Every Knitting Project by Judith Durant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Every knitter will want this book. Clear photographs for dozens of increases and decreases, showing which are best paired, how they look stacked or separated, and such good instructions that I finally, finally understand how to do p2togtbl!  Excellent, excellent.

Thank you, Net Galley! I can not wait to purchase this book when it's published in May!


View all my reviews

quodlibet **

**Quodlibet: Latin for "what pleases." Musical quodlibets can be pretty chaotic. I've decided that my posts can be, too.

First up, knitter friends, please click here and buy a copy of  K*tog: Oklahoma Tornado Relief.  You can read all about the project on Holly Barcello and Lars Rains' blog, Suburban Knits. Holly and Lars have collected projects - from socks and hats to cowls and toys  - that you can knit while making a real difference in peoples' lives. Good karma all around!

This ebook features 20 knitting patterns from 19 designers who graciously donated their work in order to support the efforts of Other Options, Inc., an Oklahoma City charity that provides food and other services to the people of Oklahoma who lost so much in the recent disasters that affected the area.100% of all profits from the sale of this ebook will go to this charity. Cost: $20.00 US

 I've been spinning on my wheel, top-whorl spindles, Turkish spindles, nearly anything I can get my hands on. Here's a picture of one of my toys - a teeny tiny Turkish spindle from Threads Thru Time. The arms are made from holly, one of my favorite woods -- sprigs of holly in the home are said to provide a place for fairies to play. (You have to act fast to catch a teeny TTT, but if you're new to Turkish spindles, start with a medium and work down.)

I've aspinnerated (taught spindle-spinning) or assisted in aspinneration for a few people lately. It's a good thing. 

  

Reading: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. I'll review it on Goodreads one of these days. I read it on my Nook, which means I was deprived of one of the books' delights: a glow-in-the-dark cover design. Delightful, funny, witty, and wise.

Knitting: socks. More socks. Including these socks, in a Moose Manor colorway called, for obvious reasons, "Watermelon Radish." 

I'll save the other stuff - politics, the psychology of retirement, letters, and The Great Tea Scare - for another time.

For now - please, knitters - let's help knit peoples' lives together. Thanks!

welcoming the new

Good afternoon. It's a sparkling-clean new year, yes? Good riddance to much of the old one. In fact, good riddance to most of the old one.

Or... maybe not. 2012 was tough. I had issues. Mother Nature had issues. I had issues with Mother Nature. (Who can forget Hurricane Sandy? Not this bird, after 13 days without electricity. Not many of my friends, who lost unimaginable amounts of things, both tangible and not-so-tangible.)

But - here it is, 2013, a new number to remember to write on checks, a new calendar, a new opportunity to focus on things that matter. Like, some of the things that I gained in 2012.

* Deep and deeper friendships, for example, including up-close friends who I was able to help through some bad times, and who were able to get me through my own stuff, and faraway friends who proved, yet again, that true friendship disregards both time and geography.
* A slow and astounding realization that I can do some things better than I ever thought I would. Spin.  Survive black-hole-gobsmackingly-horrible emotional whacks. Overcome a terror or two.
* A whole new bunch of music to love - Amanda Palmer comes to mind, and the awesome collaboration of Hilary Hahn and Hauschka for the CD "Silfra," a dual meditation by a master of the prepared piano and a violin virtuoso on the spirit of Iceland.
* A new musical instrument to learn and love - my ukulele.

Thirteen things I'd like to do, and/or do more:
* write here: it's fun and I forget that it's fun when I don't do it
* write my novels, poetry, journal, letters, for the pure joy of using pretty ink
* pluck a few chords and sing a few notes in the company of others
* explore new music and share it
* knit with my pretty, handspun yarn
* pick some things from The Knitter's Life List to try - stranded colorwork, for example.
* read more, and more widely, in unlikely areas
* learn to cook a few things that involve more than boiling water
* mentor more new knitters and spinners
* see my friends
* use the tools I have (spindles, looms, knitting needles), and release those I don't, or can't use
* start knitting or spinning projects if I feel like it, and abandon them if I feel like it
* be grateful and mindful

Why thirteen? Because my friend, Amy, of  Impossible is a typo, listed 13 things she wants to do for shits and giggle (not resolutions - not judgmental "shoulds") - and it looked like fun.

Let me share my last finished object of 2012: the black hole of Wingspan, a shawlette that took much more time than it would have, had I chosen yarn I could actually, you know, SEE? Unfolded, it looks like every other Wingspan. Here it is, origami form. You can decide what shape I folded.

as I said, I'm getting a tattoo when I'm sixty

.... and I did. This one. I just brought her home, and I want to let her get a little acclimated before I start to play with her or subject her to a photo shoot. 
(Luna is an amazing company. Read all about it.)


Commence free-association:


I never even thought about playing ukulele until one of my Panera friends suddenly posted on FB - that she was thinking about learning how to play, and would any of us talk her out of it? Um, no, dear, we won't. We'll jump on the idea like baby bunnies into a field of carrots. 


Then we'll start scouring YouTube and coming up with amazing stuff - like a ukulele master who plays a totally acoustic uke version of "Bohemian Rhapsody," another who plays "Girl With the Flaxen Hair" (which sold me, utterly), and, of course, Zooey Deschanel singing "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve" (wearing a tiara - which, we have decided, will be a mandatory accessory for our Girl Group. I always wanted to be a Shangri-La, like my last-namesake, snapping my fingers and singing "Remember ** walking in the sand...")


I have a very spotty history when it comes to performing. I hate it. I hate being looked at, photographed, noticed. My childhood was stuffed so full of performing (ballet, viola, piano, guitar, etc.) that by the time I got to college, the only way I got through presentations was to take my glasses off and allow my myopia to erase the audience. Once I could, I avoided "performing" in venues larger than a conference room, and only if I knew all of the people at the table. For years.


However. This might be a little different. If nothing else, it's a totally new way for me to have fun, and that has to be a good thing, yes? We're all jazzed about the idea of playing at the Holidome in Rhinebeck. 


Yes, I've been knitting. I'm almost done with a pair of Pumpkin Pie Socks (shown here in their infancy), a Wingspan shawl in a black/navy/white/baby blue Crazy Zauberball, and a couple of other projects.

My husband and I have seen Loudon Wainwright III at least 4 times. A few weeks ago, he had his ukulele onstage, but didn't play it. Next time, maybe I'll bring mine along and have him sign it. In the meantime, enjoy!

geekery, and close, but not quite there

My latest fit of geekery, first. I bought a new e-reader, the Barnes & Noble simple touch Nook. I love it. The e-ink is amazingly clear, especially when I change the font (oh, love!) to get rid of pesky serifs. All of the books on my old Sony transferred over perfectly. And, I get to read anything I like for an hour at the BN cafe, free! (I  started the new biography of Catherine the Great. I may have to acquire it. BN knows what it's doing with free samples - stirring up book lust in yet another format.)


What do I love about e-readers? Everything. What do I do with them that others might think was rather geekish? I transcend time. Totally. Like this -- reading "A Midsummer Night's Dream" on the e-reader while listening to the play, which I've downloaded to my iPod Nano, while taking notes on the play... with a fountain pen, in a Moleskine notebook. 

As for "not quite there," let me show you a little bit of knitting. The yarn is not quite that colorway: it's called Bordeaux, and it's an alpaca mix from Moose Manor Hand Paints. The pattern is a lacy cowl. It does not quite make it - the stitch pattern obscures the colorway, which obscures the stitch pattern. As I was about to bind it off last night, I realized... nope.  It's been frogged, and re-born as a cowl with some eyelets, but more solid areas than not. Much better. I'll show you when it's done.  


Coming soon: my total obsession with A Discovery of Witches, which was the first book I bought for the Nook. In the meantime, you can read what Penny wrote about it. 

very pink indeed

I present a sock, Vanilla strawberry, #1 of a pair in Petunia Pig Pink. It's part of a series of socks I have been knitting, which I'm calling Vanilla whatever on Ravelry. Suddenly, I want to do nothing but knit socks. 

I knitted these in less than 5 weeks, a personal record. They are called, of course, Vanilla blueberry.


What's the pattern, you ask? Oh, just something I whipped up, called 56 stitches (or fewer, if the yarn is thicker) on size zero needles with a ribbed cuff and eye-of-partridge heel. In other words, vanilla socks.

Before I settled on vanilla, though, I knit these, which by no stretch can be called vanilla anything.  Blame Penny. She gave me a truly garish colorful skein of yarn a couple of years ago. It didn't suit monochromatic Penny and she couldn't figure out why she'd bought it. I thought I'd make a cowl, but then I realized that it would give me nightmares to have something so ... colorful ... so close to my face, and besides, I'm pretty monochromatic myself. Ergo, socks. These. Yikes.



Anyway. I went to Rhinebeck last month and had a truly excellent time. One whole day was spent in a spindle class with Abby Franquemont. After years of correspondence, on-line and on-paper, Anna and I finally met by taking the class together. She brought along a Navajo spindle that had been confounding her. Within 1/2 hour, Anna was making amazing, fine singles when I wasn't interrupting her with hugs.


Sunday, I shopped (oy) and met up with the Tsarina, whose Glomerata sock on Knitty is but a taste of the re-launch of the Tsock empire. Betty of Moose Manor Hand Paints was there with her gorgeous, saturated Delphinium, as well as her other amazing colorways. Marcy was selling and demonstrating her support spindles. So many people, so much talent, so many colors... Rhinebeck was like being inside a whirling kaleidoscope that smelled like sheep. Fortunately, I like the smell of sheep.


And Sandi Wiseheart was in my dream... and I can prove it. Click over, scroll down, and you'll see a picture of me with Rachel and Jennifer.  Yes, a picture. Truly a rarity...


To be continued...

Frogging, tinking, and who knows what else

I just turned sixty. A child of the sixties turning sixty isn't a big story, unless - it's your own story. How was my birthday, you ask? Well, let's see. I managed to screw up one knitting project, then I managed to screw up another knitting project, then I went to Spinning Guild and spun some lovely soft green stuff on my new Sworl by Jesh. 




That part was a Win. But I had to leave Guild early because it was hot and stuffy in the barn, and because the scent of soaps or something was causing my lungs to implode. I got home and discovered that our house had been invaded by ants....

Today is lovely, however. I have decided that the half-baked attempts at fixing one of the knitting disasters Would Not Do. So I've taken over the kitchen table and frogged ten rows (over 300 stitches each).  (Frogging = rip it, rip it.) Now I'm tinking one row. (Tinking  = one stitch at a time.) The stitch count will be right, and I'll do what I should have done, what I really ought to know I should do by now: I'm going to own my knitting.

Owning my knitting = knowing what works for me, and what utterly doesn't. In this case, a certain way of making two stitches into one just is not in my hands. So this time, when I start the edging, I will use another way. It won't be a Centered Double Decrease, but it'll work, and it will be pretty.


Tinking can be tedious, especially when it's 300 stitches. But - look at that yarn! It's a KnitPicks colourway called Gingerbread House. Can you see the gumdrops scattered amongst the gingerbread? Cherry, grape, lemon, orange, lime... each colour pure and sweet and satisfying. Tinking gives me the opportunity to appreciate the colors, the texture, and the fact that I'm no longer fearful about making mistakes when I knit.

Here's another picture of the gumdrops. The pattern I'm using is called Ruffle My Feathers - a tailored shawlette with just a bit of fancy at the edge. I'm going to love this when it starts to get cooler and I'm wrapped in wool and alpaca, with just a hint of fancy.


At sixty, it's time that I owned my life. That means frogging and tinking, making decisions based on my actual self, reading and expressing and creating and loving and using my energies in the life I have now toward the goals I set now. Regrets... yes, I have regrets. I regret having given up the viola when I was 16. But - I live 5 miles from a store that sells and rents fine stringed instruments. I can pick up a viola and see if my hands still want to play it, if I choose. I have one promising novel in the works (in a drawer). I can take it out of the drawer and devote an hour each day to it, if I choose. 


Last time I wrote, I was in the throes of the Tour de Fleece. This is what I spun on the pansies Lollipop spindle. It's just enough for a bookmark or two.





This is the Thai spice, 200 yards of DK gorgeousness. It may become cabled wristwarmers, or a hat. We'll see. I'm very happy with it.







One more thing. The Tsarina of Tsocks has designed a monster created the most astonishing pair of tsocks ever. Hint: five people knit it at a time, and it gets steeked. A lot. (Steek = taking a scissor to your knitting on purpose.) Go look at Fronkenshteek and prepare to laugh...

everything emptying into white

Did you knit in public today? I did, while sitting in the friendly
cafe at Barnes & Noble, listening to Glazunov through headphones
attached to my lime-green Nano. I completed nearly two repeats of
Falling Water between the beginning of spring and the Baccanalian end
of autumn-- appropriate for the grape-harvest purples-and-green
colourway. This pattern + this colorway = knitting intoxication.

**longer boats are coming**

I shall be sorry to give up this scarf, but I have to, since I'm
knitting it as a sample for Moose Manor Handpaints. The pattern has
given me the confidence to tackle a more intricate lace. It includes
yarn-overs before, after, and between purls and knits, left- and
right-facing decreases, and other little maneuvers that always had
intimidated me.

Actually, that's one of the reasons I chose it: to stretch a little as
a knitter. My retirement has been all about elasticity. Some of the
new maneuvers are tiny, like learning to spin on a tiny Kuchulu
Jenkins spindle. Other stretches are long, like getting myself out of
the house to meet with friends old and new.

**everything emptying into white**

The latest stretch is huge: my husband and I have purchased a slice of
land high on a hillside, so high you barely can see the main road
below. The land is thick with trees, much of them protected. They may
not be cut down. Not that we want to - we will only clear enough for
the house that my husband and the architect designed, and a small area
for ourselves. If all goes well, the house will be ready next spring.

Yes, this is a big stretch, more so for me than for my husband,
because I never, ever imagined leaving our tiny house, never mind
building another. He is the visionary, and I have been - I'm not sure
what I've been, but I shall lace up my sneakers and keep up. It's a
good thing.

Another good thing: the book What Should I Do With My Life by Po
Bronson. My friend Rachel lent me her copy and said it would change
how I think. She was right. Unlike self-help books, this is a peek
into the lives of people who have made changes that succeeded or
failed, or failed to make changes, and therefore stalled. These are
real people, and I see myself in them all. (Like everyone, I contain
multitudes. I also live one-half mile from Walt Whitman's birthplace.
Handy, that.). Thank you, Rachel.

**on the road to find out**

Today's soundtrack has been "Tea for the Tillerman" by Cat Stevens. It
may not be a roadmap, but one could do worse than dreaming of a house
built from barley rice with a protective red-legged chicken.

done, and done

No, not the blog, although one might think so, since my posts have been so infrequent . My career. Buh-bye. New York State offered an incentive I couldn't refuse, and I didn't. I'll be over and done, 10-4 good buddy, on 10 September, at least in this incarnation of a career.

I was dithering until last Tuesday, when my therapist provided me with clarity, and a mantra. Should I leave now, should I wait until November, blah blah blah... and she said, "Teabird, you're done."  She's right. (She doesn't really call me Teabird.) I'm done.

I.Am.Done. I.Am.Done. I.Am.Done. I.Am.Done. 

Done is good. A job well and truly done is good. Time now to breathe, and move on.

What have I been doing? Reading, some. I've read the first two Sookie Stackhouse novels on my eReader, and I'm listening to Saturday by Ewan McEwan. I bought the e-book of Lives Like Loaded Guns by Lyndall Gordon, the new biography of Emily Dickinson, and started to read it today.

Writing, some. Mostly letters, some rather tardy. My friend Stoneview inspired me to join Postcrossing, which I did today, and my friend Madame Purl inspired me to take up crewel embroidery, which I shall as soon as I get the design I've been drooling after considering on eBay for a month. 

Spinning, some. I've spun another big hank of the Teddy Bear roving and more of the AbbyBatt, and almost finished the shawl I was knitting when last I mentioned knitting.

Spending, some. I've just ordered a tiny inkle loom from here, and I'm looking forward to some loomtime with Penny (not to mention scritch 'n' snuggle time with Shadow Ninja).

Fretting, some. That's my nature.

And - beginning to see possibilities for adventure, learning, growth, facetime with friends, and maybe even productive uses of precious time. Just beginning. I don't want to jinx anything.

Over to you.  Are you retired? Are you going to retire soon? What does "retire" mean to you? I really want to know.

Oh, by the way: this spindle was designed for me by Yorkieslave, whose purse puppies have become an obsession (and a growing collection). This one depicts a fossil, in amber, one of my favourite things. Amber is wonderful for a spindle, for jewelry, and for an object of contemplation. It's also good for a reminder of what not to be...

p.s. - this post is for Carrie, who prodded me to write it... go over and wish her a belated happy birthday!

It almost makes me wish I wasn't a puppet **

I'm here. I am - overwhelmed - so today I'll just say that I've been knitting and spinning.

I finished the Lacy Baktus shawlette in time to wear it to the wake for my father-in-law.

I started a Gaenor shawlette in a beautiful deep plum variegated fingering, just a few days ago.

I began to spin delicious Louet Northern Lights in the Teddy Bear colourway on Gidget, and we are doing very, very well. (This stuff spins itself. It's amazing.)

I've started to photograph some of my spindles - you can browse them here, if you like. Many more are coming. Many. I've been a complete hog about spindles. 

My favourites are the smaller ones - 1 oz. or less - but I know the heavier will come in handy when I begin to ply up some of the spindled singles.

I've decided to participate in the 2010 Tour de Fleece as a member of Team Russian Underpants. (Um, Russian Underpants? Let the Tsarina explain.) My goal: spin every day.

And isn't my Ravatar fetching in her TDF lampshade? Thank you, Lisa!


** As for the title of this post - That's just one of the delicious lines from Wickett's Remedy by Myla Goldberg. There's no way to put it into context without giving away part of the wicked funny part of the plot, so you'll just have to trust me. I'll get around to reviewing it, as well as her Bee Season, and anything else I've read. Really, I will.

excavating

Resolved :

I am only allowed to start a new knitting project if I am also working on an unfinished object.

This weekend, I dug this up from the bottom of a very pretty, and very neglected knitting bag. I started it in 2007. I brought it to knitting group yesterday, so my resolution is out there. It took awhile for me to figure out what configuration of feather-and-fan I had done, but then I just sailed away on it.

Years ago, the KnitPicks colourway was called "fly fishing." Now, the closest colourway they have is called is called "lily pad multi," but the greens have morphed into olive, and the brownish bits are gone.

I like the brownish bits, and I don't think of the colourway as "fly fishing." Now I think of it as "John Muir," thanks to my dear and lovely friend Caitlin, from Crescent Knits, who introduced me to the glory of his writings. The colourway takes me into a thick pine forest, with fragrant pine needles underfoot that muffle my footsteps, and invoke an ancient silence. When I look up, I can see the sky, blue and clear.

It makes me happy to knit this scarf.

I will finish it in 2010.

In fact, I do still knit

See?

I've been knitting hats for a Care to Knit project with my Ravelry peeps. This is hat #3. In the background is a stained glass that my father-in-law designed and made.


I've also been knitting a red scarf for The Red Scarf Project. It's just about time to send it in.

The other news in my textile life: I want a spinning wheel. I want this spinning wheel. The reason I want this spinning wheel is that I was permitted to muddle around with try one at Panera a couple of weeks ago. I'm doing a little better with spindling (which is a good thing, since I've collected at least 10 of them already), and I love spindling, but - a wheel -

The woman who showed me how to spin on her wheel was using fibre that looks exactly like my hair - so I ended up spinning a reasonable facsimile of my own hair. Who else can say that?

In fact, if I decide to get a wheel, I'll have to do some research, try some other wheels, decide if I want single or double treadle, and all that -- but I love Victoria already.
What sayest thou? Would she make a good present when I retire?

(And would that help me decide to retire sooner?)

(You betcha.)

finished object and - I'm a winner!

First, thank you - I won these books!

• Jean Plaidy - The Heart of the Lion from Historical Tapestry, a collection of book bloggers whose reviews and recommendations always are exemplary! (Kailana is reading the Maisie Dobbs novels right now, and so am I - do go and read her reviews!)
• Jeffrey Eugenides - The Virgin Suicides from the Biblio Brat at Biblio Blogazine.
• Heather Gudenkauf - The Weight of Silence from Mira Books .(Kristi's review at Books and Needlepoint sent me scurrying for it!)

The green background is my finished object: a blanket for baby Houston in Idaho, a certified cutie. Trust me.

I also won The Heartfelt Award from Rebecca, Lost in Books.

• Do you reach for a cup of cocoa or tea when you're relaxing, seeking comfort, sharing a plate of cookies with family and freinds? You know the feeling you get when you drink a yummy cup of cocoa, tea, or a hot toddy? That is what the Hearthfelt Award is all about, feeling warm inside. Rules: Put the logo on your blog/post. Nominate up to to 9 blogs which make you feel comfy or warm inside. Be sure to link your nominees within your post. Let them know that they have been nominated by commenting on their blog. Remember to link to the person from whom you received your award.

I'd like to nominate all of the blogs I've mentioned today, plus one more - A Pass Through the Moonlight Garden, created by friends whose site soothes and delights this teabird. I do, after all, worship the moon.

• Let's take a walk together and share our season's glowing gifts of night, we will spend a moment imagining what will come after the twilight's air.
  

Tea Ching

This small person learned a big lesson this Sunday past. We Panera ladies had been talking about women and textiles, how collectively we felt connected to women who had gone before as knitters, seamstresses, weavers, and how fortunate we are to be able to do these things for enjoyment and meditation instead of necessity. We always invite people to join the Panera group.


This week, a newbie came (YAY!)for knitting guidance. Since she sat next to me,I grabbed her first I started by taking a look at her needles, which already had stitches cast on and some stitches knitted, courtesy of her mother. I purled a row to loosen them up, and asked her to show me how she held the needles, or which hand held the yarn. She seemed to take them up using her left hand for the yarn, so I started to guide her through the basics of a Continental knit stitch.

(I knit Continental. I have to - not only is that the way my mother taught me, the way the old ladies from Eastern Europe taught her, but I'm also hopelessly directionally-challenged. Tell me to wrap yarn clockwise or widdershins and my brain cuts out. Tell me to "scoop" and I'm fine.)

She soon was frustrated. I might be a terrible teacher, but I also can sense when something is just not happening. I would guide her hands, or hold the yarn, or talk her through, stitch-by-stitch, but - it just was not happening, despite her fervent desire to learn. Her hands were not cooperating.

Then quirky artist Amy realized what was awry. Amy can knit Continental, she can knit English, she can knit spiderweb yarn that she has spun into her sister's wedding shawl, and she can teach knitting really, really well. Amy realized that our new friend's hands wanted something else. As soon as Amy switched her from Continental to English, presto! Happy hands! She started knitting smoothly and evenly, and she started smiling. We all applauded - truly, it was a wonderful moment.

(Something similar happened when the Tsarina taught me to use a drop spindle - my hands knew that they needed to reverse the directions my guru was teaching.) (You can read the story here.)

I love moments like this, moments when a barrier is eliminated by honoring how many paths can lead to the same place. It's something I know, philosophically, but I'm not good at watching for it in daily life. Pay attention to the path and the destination will take care of itself, yes? Trust the process.

a little bit of knitting

(since this is a knitting blog, too)

First, socks. Plain 3 x 3 rib. Plain foot, dull (dutch?) heel, maybe a star toe. I';; see. The yarn bowl was a gift from Barbara Bretton - it's a perfect size for a ball of yarn! (Thank you!) I'm enjoying Foreign Correspondence (a Ravelry readalong) and wondering what my childhood pen-friends are doing these days --




















Next, the Yarn Harlot's one-row scarf in Zen Yarn Garden/Art Walk yarn, "Flaming June" colourway. I didn't like the sock I knitted with this yarn, but it's working perfectly for this scarf pattern. In fact, I have yet to meet a yarn that didn't like this pattern.



















Finally, two ribbed, slotted scarves. I think I'm addicted to this pattern.

reading, knitting, and me

I've been so distracted with one thing or another lately that I have neglected several blog topics: reading, knitting, and me. So, no political screeds or Jeremiads today, just a little reading, a little knitting, and little me.

Reading
Carlyle's House and Other Sketches by Virginia Woolf. These are early "passionate apprentice"-stage pieces that never were published, or even transcribed from her early notebooks until a few years ago. They are rough sketches, very rough if compared to The Common Reader, or the mature perfection of A Room of One's Own. And yet, Woolf's sensibility is evident, as in an imagined moment between Thomas and Jane Carlyle: "Did one always feel a coldness between them? The only connection the flash of the intellect. I imagine so." Or, a character study of Miss Reeves, lover of H.G.Wells: "She seemed determined to be human also; to like people, even though they were stupid."

Any Modern Reader (however common) must recoil from the short essay, "Jews," a brief portrait of one Mrs. Loeb. "It seemed as though she wished to ingratiate herself with her guests and expected to be kicked by them...Her food, of course, swam in oil and was nasty." Her ostentatious kindness to poor relations is designed to acquire for them "the society of men and marriage. It seemed very elementary, very little disguised, and very unpleasant." Anti-semintism amongst the genteel of her time was common, indeed, but this Jewess wonders why a sketch of one woman was presented - albeit only in the notebook - as a description of "Jews."

Doris Lessing, in her introduction, writes, "We all wish our idols and exemplars were perfect; a pity she was such a wasp, such a snob - and all of the rest of it, but love has to be warts and all." Amen to that.

Knitting
I haven't been very productive lately. I've only finished a couple of face cloths and one little crossover scarf. After a blissful reread (via audiobook) of To the Lighthouse (do you sense a trend?), I developed a passionate desire for a green shawl. I spent two of the three weeks of my convalescence swatching the forest-green worsted from my stash, and came up with nothing pleasing. Now I'm thinking of a simple basketweave stitch with a moss border. Yes, that may do.
(Note: when I say "shawl," I mean rectangular wrap - better coverage to keep my poor, battered lungs protected, and now down-arrow in the back calling attention to my - lower back.

Right now I'm knitting a simple, long, slim scarf from fingering yarn that gave me such trouble when I knitted one sock out of it, and when I swatched for a lacy scarf, that I actually threw it away. I thought better of it, rescued it, and substituted texture (the Harlot's one-row stitch) for delicacy. Voila! Perfect.

Reading and knitting
I have joined (as co-moderator) the new Ravelry group for lovers of Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury. (Do you sense a trend?) This group has promise. Next month, I shall moderate a readalong in the Pen Fetish group, which has voted to read Foreign Correspondence by Geraldine Brooks. We pen folk will take to this account of the Brooks as she tracks down and meets childhood pen friends, I'm certain, just as we have taken to deep and detailed discussions of nibs and Noodler's ink.

Me
All of the above, plus an XF nib. Or several.