Now where is that degree in engineering...?

I think I'll need it; because I have to make this on the right, look something like this - below - with or without the sweater. Well actually I started to assemble my woolly board a.k.a sweater blocker a few weeks ago and found that I was missing 3 wooden knobs - now even an engineer would have difficulty with that.

How does the old adage go..? "For want of a knob the sweater was lost.." hmmm doesn't sound quite right. I know the original is - "for want of a nail the horse was lost" - the glory always seems to go to the bigger more important (maybe male) things. Rarely are the labours of women immortalised, even when we seem to be able to make something from nothing - stretching dollars, time, food, housing, sweaters - you name it - let's hear it for stretch marks!!!

OOPs - back to the knobs. I e-mailed Lacis and they quickly responded, sending me the missing pieces in about a week or so. I then spent several hours on the floor puzzling out the frame - not sure it's exactly right yet - but here it is! - even if it looks a little like something from the Spanish Inquisition!

and here is Gifford - martyred upon woolly board.

Actually I really enjoyed knitting Gifford - I hope he isn't in pain. He is knit in Fiddlesticks Knitting's organic cotton, using a stitch pattern from one of Barbara Walker's books. I had mentioned earlier that I wanted something that looked like the beams of an old pub and I think that this comes pretty close to that. It is a gainsey with extended panels and I did take a very liberal interpretation of extended - so we have extended ribbing at the waist and the arms are all ribbing. Of course my husband doesn't wear it because the ribbing is not conservative enough - but it looks great on a female figure - add a belt and away you go!

I have also cast on for my next sweater from "Knitting in the Old Way" - a gainsey with all over knit & purl stitches. Well I did add a little twist here and there because I had ripped out the beginnings of this sweater many, many times. Either the pattern was fighting me or I was fighting the pattern. Nothing was ever "right"!

Finally though something acceptable emerged from the piles of unravelled yarn. But I did have to add some twisted stitches to the all over knit and purl idea. I promise pictures soon.

I will also have pictures, I hope, of the 3 lace scarves and 2 lace stoles that I have finished in between the 5-6 sweaters that I have knit since Jan\07. Well, it is better than drugs - maybe not cheaper and it's probably not as destructive as other addictions (I'm rationalizing). Plus I am knitting a stash rather than collecting one - however, as a non-knitter once asked me, "What are you going to do with all those sweaters?" - She had to ask didn't she.

Enjoy Carol

Nuit Blanche Deux

Last night was Toronto's second Nuit Blanche - an all night "Art Happening" that started at 7:00pm and ended at 7:00am. There was some discussion throughtout last year as to whether Toronto would stage another Nuit Blanche after the first which attracted almost half a million people - double what had been predicted - did I mention that it also poured rain last year - WOW - for the love of Art or midnight madness - take your pick!!!

Well we have a very short sighted mayor - taller than our previous mayor but with limitations of a more conservative kind - unless you are talking about renos to his office and then 6 million is OK.

Anyway, knit-picking aside, if .5 million turned out in the rain last year - 2-3 million had to have turned out last night on a balmy Indian summer evening - let me tell you, there was ART, MUSIC and DANCING in the street!!! I take my Art where I can get it and it was free and on the street - sometimes you actually stumbled over it - such as, the projections on the sidewalk of man-hole covers from around the world - Art for people of the street. We, my husband & I, as Elizabeth would say, spent a good deal of time looking at the art installations within OCAD - the Ontario College of Art & Design - where our eldest was accepted, in the Spring, as a mature student.

After, we followed crowds of people carrying white ballons and visited museums, galleries, parks with projection screens for anyone who wanted to do their artistic "thing" and basically, as I had said in my post last year, became the children that Art makes of us - we were again des tableaux blancs. We could re-write the script, re-draw the image - seldom are we given that oppotunity - thank you Toronto for the chance!

Unfortunately, I was not able to get to Zone C where the knitting was! Well I knit so much that to make everyone go to a knitting event on family time was too much. But I have to say the The Knit Cafe had the "Great Pom-Pom Event." You could create a pom-pom and then palm it off to someone else for theirs - no pom - err pun intended. Janet Morton - resident knitting artist (she knit the original house cozy - as in tea cozy and actually covered a house with it ) re-did a building in pink - no knitting here - I think that she has moved onto foam - please do not tell me that this a direction for knitting.

There was also another knitting event - not sure; but rumour has it that it may have been the result of 10-12 women knitting and riding the Queen street car from one terminus to the next and back again - a very long knitting journey or maybe it was something else - sounds like a lot of knitters lost in thought - you wonder how anything ever gets done - or does it?

Anyway, I always spend a good deal of time thinking about how to dress for Art and this year I wore a lace scarf that I had knit. Maybe 2 of the 3 million that came out for Nuit Blanche wore scarves. I am estimating that 1 million were men - a few of them wore scarves but I would say that ALL but 10% of the women who came out for the event wore a decorative scarf - this was a warm evening - the scarf lives - as an Art form, even.

Knit on...and thank you Esther...this one's for you.

Carol

Hi! I'm back

I know it's been 3 months since my last post, but I've been bitten by this terrible lace knitting bug and literally have not stopped knitting lace since mid June. Well I did stop to fill orders for Infiknit and of course, June and July were very busy months. Then I was on holidays in August for two weeks - more New York city and our annual trip to Hilton Head SC. All strung together with lace insertions. Yes I am still knitting Gifford - nearly done - just one sleeve to go - unless someone can find me a one-armed bandit and then I would be finished!!

It all started with that awful book - Victorian Lace. I might not have given lace knitting a second thought, if I hadn't seen Cambridge again through "lace coloured" glasses and I had to go there - in my mind! Also there were these odd sized balls of lace weight yarn which I couldn't really use for orders and didn't want to discard so I thought - "What harm would a little swatching do"....... lots. Now I do nothing but SNIT - knit with such concentration that I am no longer pleasant company in the evening because I am always counting stitches or rows!

I suppose there are worse things - perhaps I'll give it a rest - just after this next scarf...I'll think about it.

Anyway - here are some pictures.

Top right is a scarf and shawl both started at the outside edges and joined with a three needle bind off in the centre. On the left is a scarf with a centre provisional cast-on and worked down to the end. I am well over half done here and may do the shawl version and at left is Gifford which was really fun to knit because I just made a few mistakes which were easily corrected.

I'll be assembling my woolly board soon to block Gifford- it looks like you need an engineering degree for that, though, so I have been putting it off.

I promise to post more often - just need a little more focus & discipline and a little less lace. Carol

Our Lady of the Peonies...

....Or maybe it's Aberlady of the Peonies. I have finished Aberlady my 4th sweater from Knitting in the old way and I must admit I really enjoyed knitting it. I even managed to find an attractive model to wear it for the picture. She complained a little - it was about 28 degress celsius at the time. Alas cooler weather will be here before we know it.

I think if I were to redo the sweater I would make these changes:

1. Use a flower motif that was not an eyelet pattern. I like the texture in the leaf pattern and think that it should be carried out in the flower pattern as well. I might have done this, if I hadn't been so obessed with wanting to use the Garland stitch pattern from Barbara Walker's second treasury - somewhere, anywhere -why not here!!

2. If I decided to keep the eyelet pattern I would add a few more rows above & below the flower to set it further apart from the garter stitch.

I did angst over the leaf pattern at the neck. I find that little pieces of a pattern that appear at the neck edge often look as though they are lost because the rest of the pattern has been taken out by the neck opening. Some pieces I kept and some I didn't.

What I do really like about the sweater is the way the sleeve pattern matches the pattern at the bottom of the sweater. Getting there.

I have even cast on and knit a bit on my fifth sweater - a gansey with extended panels. Well I extended the ribbing and began the pattern just above the waist, so it will be quite extended by the time it reaches the shoulders. I'm not sure that I have interpreted "extended" correctly - but well, let's see what happens.

I am using Fiddlesticks Knitting Ecoknit in coffee. This is an organic cotton DK weight yarn - a good choice, I think, for warm weather and I am calling it "Gifford".

Gifford is another delightful town in East Lothian with a pub that has an even more delightful name. It 's called Goblin Ha' (hall) and yes, it is said to be haunted.

Over the years, Goblin Ha' has lost some of its old pub look in favour of a more refined interior; but I'm sure that at one time it had beamed ceilings and lots of wood detailing - hence the design in the sweater. I know that the garden eating area has been turned into a restaurant with a vaulted ceiling, skylights and a first class menu. The food was generally good in the old garden lathe, at little more rustic but very charming - actually old and new has been merged very nicely at Goblin Ha'- now where is that ghost?

I'll be in touch - just a few more ganseys before I can start a fair isle. Carol

The road to Aberlady

About 20 minutes further up the estuary from Dunbar on the Firth of Forth is the lovely seaside village of Aberlady. It is more sand, beach and golf course than the gritty working harbour of Dunbar and so it calls for a gentler design in a sea going sweater.



This is also a village from my husband's childhood. When the family didn't go to Dunbar, they went to Aberlady for holidays. In fact my sister-in-law once bought the main floor of a house in Aberlady when she thought that she had grown tired of Edinburgh. Fortunately, we had a chance to visit the house before she sold it - she really could not live outside of Edinburgh - liken to San Francisco as "everybody's favourite city."



Well, I LOVED the house!!! It had a garden that went down to the sea!!! The garden had been neglected for many years and yes, it would take many years to tame it - but when you walked to the bottom of your garden you had the sea. The house, as I remember, was covered in Clamatis and the sourrounding houses were also covered in flowering vines, shrubs, and blossoms of every description. Aberlady might well be consider the garden of the Forth.



I really should have chosen Fiddlesticks Knitting DK in Lady Slipper for the gansey with horizontal panels - however, we had more of the Teal yarn in stock and so we use what there is more of - lest we run out and cannot fill orders because we have indulged ourselves - we are never really free!!



I tried to capture the flowers and the vines in the horizontal motifs, I know that no fisherman worth his codspiece would be caught dead (literally) in this gansey - but what of the fisherwives? - surely they deserve a moment of respite from cables and herringbones.



Anyway, so far I have only had to rip back the front, because I had made the neckline too wide. I have since then finished the neck and picked up to knit the sleeves down to the cuff. I do see a problem ahead. I have to create the eyelet flower upside down. Hmmmmm - let me think about this. More photos later

Dunbar....Done!

Finally, I have finished the 3rd in a series of sweaters from "Knitting in the Old Way" by Pricilla Gibson-Roberts. I have discussed my various detours in other posts and will summarize my knitting journey by saying that this sweater may be constructed in a number of different ways.

1. The way I set out originally with a ribbed beginning. A K10. P 1 interval and the traditional patterned motif at the top.

2. Or begin with a K1. P1 rib; insert a panel of the top pattern after the rib, as I had to do, to make the sweater longer and finish as described in #1. Pictured here.

3. OR begin with a rib; insert a panel & do a K8. P3. interval and finish with the full pattern on top.

4. Omit the rib. Begin with a panel of the top pattern. Do a K8, P3 interval and finish with the full pattern on top

Nothing is ever very simple and once you start you realize there there are many choices that can be made. I am not sure which one I would pick for another go at the sweater but I think I am leaning toward #4 - but then my husband would never wear it - alas the stumbling blocks to great art!

Along the way though, I found a story of why the ganseys were constructed in their classic fashion. A true gansey is completely reversible - back to front that is and not inside out - hence the slit for the neck. When a gansey began to wear at the "front" or on an elbow - let's say, one simply turned it around to wear out the back - which would now be the front and the elbow would be on the other arm - still with me?

More knitted genius - the very plain knitted panel between ribbing and chest design - was there because it could be easily ripped out & re-knit, when the sweater began to wear. ...And the upper patterned areas were strategically placed to add warmth to protect the chest.

Oh did I mention that they were knit on 2.5mm double pointed steel needles in a yarn with a firm twist to repel water. - Go for it.!!!! Actually I used Fiddlesticks Knitting DK - silk & wool - so much more refined!!

But if you really want to experience history go here:

http://www.manorhouse.clara.net/knitwear/history.htm

A closer look at the manorhouse gansey says I could have just made the ribbing in Dunbar longer - eeek another choice. Also the bonnie wee Scot that I got to model Dunbar is a year or two older that the model manorhouse managed to snag. Don't tell me that art is all in the mounting and display, rather than the piece itself!

Ahhh - all he needs is a tall ship and a star to steer her by!

Enjoy

Carol

The detours on the road to Dunbar....

- sounds catchy maybe there's a song with that title.

1. When I had decided to knit Dunbar for my husband I remembered that he liked very traditional sweaters that were not too long with ribbed bands at the waist and neck. This should not be too difficult; should it?....I measured the "model" did a swatch and cast on.

2. With some twists and turns I finished the sweater to the shoulders and tried it on said model - alas - too short. Some how over the 20 something years of our marriage he has managed to stretch out of shape every sweater he has ever owned and as a result he has decided that the "long stretched look" is what he really likes.

3. OK I can cut off the ribbed band at the bottom and knit down an inch or two. Well this would have been much easier, if I had not decided that I had to break the boredom of the plain knitting with a purl stitch every 11 stitches. So now I had to insert a panel of the pattern to lengthen the sweater. Fine, but it was not really what I had set out to do.

4. Finally the sleeves. I have only myself to blame here. I did not realize how long 5 repeats of the pattern would work at the top of the sleeve. It really is too long compared to the body of the sweater. Plus the sleeves should have the pattern band at the cuff to match the main pattern band.

So we back up - rip out the sleeves to eliminate the last two pattern repeats and add a repeat before the cuff. It does give me a chance to improve the sleeve decreases which became a little untidy where the ribbing for the cuff starts.

In the meantime, I have begun my 4th gansey - one with horizontal panels - Pictures soon.

I am also hoping for fewer detours on the road to Aberlady

Enjoy Carol