Stockings with clocks

I left the big Starmore sweater in New Haven and worked like a madwoman on these, during what might be my last visit to Philadelphia for a while:

Stockings with Clocks by Nancy Bush, from Folk Socks, my new favorite book.

I have no idea what this yarn is called. The label is somewhere in a box; have I mentioned we are moving at the end of the week? I think this was the first yarn I bought when I re-started knitting the last time, with plans to make those insane cabled stockings from Socks, socks, socks. I realized pretty quickly that not only does this yarn not match the project (multiple plies, which is great, but splits like crazy), but I also hate, hate, hate twisted stitches and tight knitting. In a second attempt, I bought two more skeins of this yarn in electric purple, which I thought would make a killer color scheme for Eunny Jang's entrelac knee socks. Fiddly technique, crappy-looking result. I am never doing entrelac again.

Anyway, the yarn seems to work allright in this pattern. I'm making these somewhat shorter than knee socks, more like some long socks, and I'll probably add some elastic at the top to keep them up. The socks are flying off my needles and I'll probably finish the second one tonight. I am glad I didn't bring the big cabled sweater: it's been very hot and humid here and I can barely stand even this this yarn sometimes.

The best way to deal with a stressful situation and painful waiting is to start a new, engrossing project. I give you the beginning of a sleeve for Inishmore:

I have a bunch of Cestari wool that I bought at last year's Maryland Sheep & Wool and I've been looking for a good project. Something cabled, earthy, traditional and with a gauge I could achieve in this yarn. Bonus points of the garment is designed by Alice Starmore. The cables are working out well, it's very easy to read them and see what to do next, and I've done more than half a sleeve in less than two days. The yarn is rough and rustic and I absolutely love it.

Incidentally, the stressful event ended up being so much less difficult than I was expecting. The dentist was able to save my tooth, I had to pay much less than I was expecting (a saving of $1,500 or so) and I now feel like a grown-up for taking proper care of my health. I blew part of the savings on the latest Rowan magazine - no yarn, so I feel like a very virtuous grown-up.

A few days with a Norwegian on my lap

It could be fun if the Norwegian was tall and handsome. Instead, I was spending some hot and steamy hours with a very hairy one.

Don't try this at home on a hot July afternoon: a Norwegian sweater in your lap makes for a very hot time. I consider myself a fairly experienced knitter, and yet this was the scariest knitting I've ever done: cutting the Norwegian sweater.

A question I asked on Ravelry produced a few useful answers and links; Eunny in particular sewed her Norwegian sweater by hand, and since I don't have a sewing machine I followed her tutorial, still available here. Let me go off on a tangent: I loved Eunny's blog. I loved it so much I am reading it again these days (and it inspired me to finally finish this %$$#@! sweater). She was such an inspirational knitter and created gorgeous sweaters. I am quite mad at Interweave for taking this great blogger and knitter and making her editor at IK, thus killing both the blog and the magazine with one strike. I loved Eunny's style as her own knitter, but I find the magazine under her direction very dowdy and uninspiring. I even canceled my subscription. And no, Fall 2007 doesn't count, since that issue was still put together by Pam Allen (who by the way is producing beautiful publications in her new position).

Moving on from the politics and style issues of contemporary knitting: the first sleeve worked perfectly! I realize people have been making these sweaters for a while, and thus most of the kinks have been worked out by now, but it still absolutely amazing and delightful to see such an improbable process (measure! sew! cut! sew! what? how?) come together and produce a beautiful sleeve.

Now if I only I could match the process on the other sleeve... and if only the sweater would fit...

Here's what this stuff looked like. Please ignore my chipping nail polish (Sephora's Mermaid in the Shade, lovely color) - I've been totally checked out these past few days and too lazy to take it off.

- sewing by hand around the future cutting lines. Followed Eunny's tutorial here, but sewed two lines on each side: one half a stitch away from the cutting line and another one stitch away. I'm paranoid like that. To make things even more exciting, the sewing thread is buried completely in the knitted fabric, so there was a moment at the beginning when I was wondering whether I was cutting on the right line...

- cutting in progress. I cut some of the floats on the wrong side, just to make sure I wouldn't snip the sewing thread.

- after cutting the first one:


- sewing in the first sleeve: I pinned it on the wrong side but then used mattress stitch to attach it from the right side.
- still working on the mattress stitch. You can see here the orange facing of the sleeve (EZ said "use a lighter yarn" and I did, using some leftovers from the Kaffe non-vest). My man is man enough that he can wear bright orange and pale pink on the inside of his sweater and not mind.

- the magic moment: the underarm of the sweater looks clean and professional and somehow the sleeve matched the cut opening perfectly (I know, I know, I measured it to be so, but still - amazing!)


- this morning, even before drinking my coffee, I did this: the reinforcements for the second sleeve:


- and this is what the "steek" looks like from the inside, before the sleeve facing was attached to the body. It's a puny "steek" but seemed to hold together rather well. The humidity and ridiculously high temperature probably helped felt this as well.


- an unexpected side benefit of mattress stitch: it provides yet another reinforcement of the "steek." If this sucker comes apart, I will cry for a long time.


Breaking news: the sweater fits!! I'll just pretend I designed it to be "slim-fitting" on purpose. Regardless of how tight it is, the recipient will wear it because he loves me beyond reason :) I'm still working on the collar, but I'll have finished pictures soon.

Flower brooch

Verbena was missing only one thing:



A "silk" fabric flower brooch ala J Crew. I used some of leftovers from the lining of the skirt I made a while back. It is not silk, and this item will be a mess should it ever be washed, but it looks allright and au courant:



I cannot understand how retailers can sell clothes made out of fabric with unfinished edges. The vast majority of people doesn't craft, I realize, so they don't know that such edges will unravel and look bad after one or two washings, or even as the garment is being worn. Still, for the prices these retailers charge (I'm looking at you, J Crew), you'd think they could at least finish the edges; or are we only supposed to wear the $90 flimsy top once?

Untitled (work of art)

The Lazy Blogger Award goes to me this month, for making stuff and crafting up a storm and not posting anything about it until today.

I finished Verbena from Rowan 45 weeks ago, then neglected it for a while under the excuse that I needed ribbon. Of course I needed ribbon, but I don't live in a ribbon-deprived region: craft stores abound here, only a short drive away (sadly, I haven't been able to find any in walking distance in New Haven). I was also terrified at the thought that the cardigan had turned out too small. After wearing it a few times and realizing that it's not the case, ribbon magically appeared and voila: finished cotton cardigan. I am very much in love.



I don't know whether to add the embroidery or not. I kind of like the cardigan as it is, and I'm doing plenty of sewing otherwise. The trip to the craft store awakened something:



Fat quarter pillow cover for my absolute most favorite tiny pillow in the world. This pillow is one of the few items I brought with me to the States many years ago (together with a fancy teaspoon, a coffee mug now sadly chipped and a huge plush toy moose), so I am very attached to it. I also cannot sleep without it. The pillow cover is as simple as these things get: sew on three sides (the back is a plain beige cotton fabric), stuff pillow form, fold cover over and secure with a few stitches. These stitches will be easy to remove when I need to wash the cover, and it's so much faster than making buttonholes!



The big project of the week has been a set of natural-colored linen napkins and kitchen towels. Inspired by the book Linen, Cotton, Wool as well as a recent article in Piecework about embroidered Norwegian wedding cloths I bought some linen and I am embroidering it with some images from the Norwegian cloths. This is the pattern from the article, but I'll probably do something a little smaller and a little less fancy for the other napkins: if they are all this beautiful, I won't let anyone use them!



I am having a blast with this. I am also imagining these beautiful napkins and towels in my new kitchen: I've just signed the lease on a new apartment with a very nice, light-filled kitchen and... hold on to your seats... a BALCONY!!! I can have a garden again! I can dry my clothes outside again! I will be one block away from an antique Italian pastry shop! Mmmm...

I love Nancy Bush

Don't we all? Her patterns are not flashy or gimmicky or super-trendy like some of the socks you see in recent publications (socks that frankly are kind of annoying and sometimes turn out completely unwearable). Her socks are elegant, timeless, never boring and always work:



Conwy from Knitting on the Road, made from Araucania Ranco on size 1 needles. Pure love.

What we did this weekend

I had a lovely, lovely weekend, and here's a little part of it:



Hiking in my favorite state park with my favorite fuzzy dog. This park is little-known, which I like because it means the dog and I usually have the park to ourselves. It is lovely, though - all the land used to belong to one local family, and the woman who inherited the family businesses and the land was very big about never selling land. She eventually donated it all to the state, and it makes for an interesting park. It is still difficult for me to realize that all the forests around here are not virgin forest; there are walls here and there in the park, perhaps boundaries of old fields. You might also find yourself coming out of the forest into a very sunny clearing, which used to be an old field, I'm sure, and we also came across the ruins of a house. I find places like this fascinating. They remind me of the Coa Valley in Portugal, where people lived for thousands of years and carved numerous boulders, only to abandon the valley in the 1960s, or Wissahickon Park in Philadelphia, which used to be a bustling mill and industrial district a hundred years ago and is now "wilderness".

I also find it somewhat amusing that the dog and I, both raised mostly in the city, have become such outdoor bums.