Enchanting Juno

A Winter's Tale.

I am not all talk (though a little doubt could be forgiven, really). The strange nature of knit blogging is that if a finished object is not photographed and blogged, somehow it doesn't fully exist.  Even if one is wearing it.  Frequently. Similar to the sound of one hand clapping or Shroedinger's cat, the witness gives form and structure to the reality.

I'm doling them out though, as a) I have 8 days worth of stuff to happen in the next three - would anyone like to come and do the laundry? and b) it would rather dilute the impact of the reality.

Sunset Adagio - looking rather Gothic here.  This is winter's natural light - it looked perfectly gorgeous in the wind.  The edge ruffled and rippled as it moved and I am just simple enough that I could have stood there with cold feet forever and watched.

(click for big, please.  I like this one.)

Hard to believe that this is the actual color:

Nice, huh?  Adagio shawl pattern from Candace Eisner Strick, silk fingering weight from Ball and Skein, 4 mm Holtz & Stein Needles.  Begun in June, stalled since September when I ran out of yarn (despite the fact that Judy found another half skein for me in October.  I am slow). 

About three repeats short of specified size, as the yarn shortage was becoming apparent, but my silk gauge is so loose, I think it worked out well.  Just the right sort of pick me up for the dull colors of December. 

Apparently my intellect is antique.

Not really a surprise.  My favorite professor in college told me once that I had a very 19th century turn of phrase.   I had a better vocabulary in those days, I think.

The unexpected, part 1.

On the right you can see a line of yarn overs - that would be the center of the shawl.
On the left are the remaining stitches to be bound off.
In the middle, my remaining yarn.

You see the problem.

Fortunately, before I began my preparations for ritual suicide (well, really, I just started swatching some Wool Bam Boo, rather than disemboweling myself with ebony straights.  Knitting has, if nothing else, taught me fatalism) I thought to email Judy at Smatterings, the artist who authored this yarn.  She believes she has a half skein or so about the place.  If true, I can even rip back and add the last two rows of the border.  Which would be bitchin'.. ..

...because this is much too pretty to leave on the needles indefinitely.

Unexpected thing the second was much pleasanter but even more of a surprise - I had, after all, rather begun to suspect that I wasn't going to make it all the way through the cast off some time before I actually ran out of yarn.

Last night I arrived home to unusually congested parking and a park ranger (we have those?) who gave me permission to park illegally.   Quite oddly, a person or persons unknown had erected a stage at the end of the street, upon which there were three guys playing some pretty decent summer music.  Kind of a Santana/blues/Ventures kind of thing.

Gotta click for big so you can appreciate one of Our Nation's Fathers supervising the proceedings.

There isn't much that's more enjoyable than outdoor music on a summer night.  I don't know who they were or why they were there, but the ranger told me they were playing in different neighborhoods each night, working their way through the city.  Which is one of those things that is just a gift to the universe - like buying a thousand copies of the best CD you ever heard and giving it to 1000 strangers.   Or the time I was leaving the grocery store and passed a guy coming in - a stranger - and I was done and he needed a cart and we just handed it off like we could read each other's minds and grinned at each other.

Miss Kitty was fascinated by it - once I was home cooking to the blues coming through the open window, every time I looked she was at the door or the window with her ears oriented to the music.

She's an odd little creature.

My gauge is ass.

I started writing a follow up to my follow up about all the amazing comments and emails I got last week and found myself wandering into some deeper waters about my mom and why I feel so strongly about some of this stuff.  And that is clearly a post that will take more energy than I have time for now.  Something to look forward too, uh huh.

But I want to thank you all.  Some of you think I'm pretty clever and some of you think I'm an idiot (both of which are true sometimes) but all the stories you told gave me something I didn't expect, which is confirmation that talking does sometimes make a difference.   It turns out I have changed a life with all my thinking and talking and fretting - my own.  Maybe someone else's too, someday.  But my own every day. 

So some knitting -

I'm having wicked gauge trouble with this silk.  I was fine for the first few inches (which you can see above) but now every row seems to get looser.  Not seems.  Is.

You have to look closely - flash pictures are bad for this kind of detail - but there is much more air in the later garter stitch rows. And when I hold it up the whole thing stretches out big time.  Clearly, somewhere in here I ought to have switched to a 3mm needle.

I find it particularly odd, as frequently the stitches feel quite tight on the needle, but when I run into them on the next row, they are so loose that the townspeople will shortly begin to cast aspersions on their virtue. And then we'll have to talk about double standards. Nobody wants that.

It is only going to get worse when I block it as silk + water = vastness.

Ah well, the silk is so pretty, it will look nice anyway.  I think I might have to pare off a repeat or two to have enough to finish.

Because this is all I've got left.  And I am about to do eyelet row 16 of a proposed 19, and still have 10 rows of ruffle left.  I think maybe I ought to start that ruffle right away.  Where is that shawl percentage calculator?

This is why I rarely knit with plant fibers.  We don't get along.  I need wool's elasticity to keep me on the straight and narrow.

Update:  Arianne in the comments gently points out to me that I have been imprecise here.  She has my thanks. I do NOT in fact think that silk is a plant fiber - but for knitting me, silk has qualities in common with plant fibers.  I made a leap from silk to other fibers I tend to have gauge trouble with because they occupy the same bin in my head, the one marked "trouble." (See? Idiot)

Juno's Rule for Life #4: Plant fibers are for sewing.  Wool is for knitting.

(The other's are:

Rule #1: Lime Makes Everything Better
Rule #2: Nobody finishes before I do
Rule #3: The bigger the bust the finer the yarn

What? I never said they were all knitting rules)

green traffic light.

I kept meaning to garden this past weekend.  I went as far as driving partway to Lowe's before I remembered that I wanted to buy my flowers from a small, local nursery and also, it was too hot to live.  So I stopped.

I refuse to turn on the air for two reasons. 
One:  Still May
Two: The Electric Bill 
Three (Because apparently there are more than 2):  Once the a/c is on, then the house becomes a no-outdoor zone, no sound of the creek, no air movement, just a wall of pre-packaging between me and the rest of the world. 
This is what is wrong with residential America anyway - we should be sweating on the front steps and talking to our neighbors instead of sitting in splendid, frozen isolation in front of the computer or TV.
Talk to someone.  Read a book.  Experience the actual temperature of the earth.  While we can. 
You know.

Live.

So I came home last night still ungardened, but with some new yarn I wanted to photograph.  Ahem.  So I stepped out into the back and took a picture of the shawl as things presently stand (about a third done).

Which caused me to notice that the Miraculous Rosebush of My Maternal Lineage was blooming.

This is a shrub that has always been a tall stick of no particular beauty in its habit of growth.   But it makes a flower - one at a time, maybe two if we were lucky - that smells divine and was my mother's favorite rose.   So much so that it was one of the things she took with her when she moved over a 10 year period.  So much so that when she moved to the southwest she invited me to take it.

I think we all know that when I say invite I mean insisted in a tone that reminded me forcefully of discussions of what was wrong with my ensemble, age 13.

So I did.

I plunked it in the ground, this tall stick with a bit of greenery at the top and there I pretty much ignored it.  I watered the first season because I really think if I let it die I might be out of the will, but other than that it has enjoyed 6 years of the most gloriously benign neglect possible.  And last year something odd happened.

It grew branches from stems that had always been thorn alone.  It flourished.  It thrived.  It stuck out new and shining bits of greenery.  I thought about pruning it, but I forgot.   It seems to be fine with that because it is covered with buds and three glorious blooms.  Two of which are now in my kitchen stinking up the place in a marvelous way.  Because while I was out there last night I sort of accidentally weeded the place into a ruthless respectability.   I find that gardening has to happen in an of-the-moment kind of way.  Planning for it just makes me want to have a little lie down on the chaise with a cold compress and maybe some smelling salts.

Oh, and I did  take a picture of the new yarn.  Eventually.  After I picked the thorn out of my foot.  Because accidental gardening does not have the forethought to put her shoes on before stepping in the rose prunings.

Sport weight merino/hemp from Dzined in teal and black.   This is great yarn.  Every time I see her booth I am compelled to stop, to touch the hemp blends, to buy something.  Which, now that I think about it, is pretty unusual.  We all know I can shop, but there aren't that many vendors I can never pass buy.   But I love this blend, these fibers together - it has this fantastic textural quality that I can't keep my hands off of.

I know I forgot something...

Check the iron?  No.

Turn off the stove?  No.

Oh, I forgot to turn on the answering machine.

So sorry.

But I had to go to Boston to kiss a boy. 

So I did. 

Then I furthered my love affaire with Julia's house, and Julia's garden and Julia, then I gave Laurie a huge hug and admired her wonderfully-beautiful-even spinning and hugged her again and stole a Diet Coke and then I got in my car and drove home again and I am half dead with fatigue, because the days are long past when I find 700 miles in 2 days to be enlivening. 

Particularly since 'tis the season to resurface the roads and I feel like I was stuck in a single lane, drugged with the scent of asphalt, or behind a very wide load, or otherwise hindered, for a significant number of hours.

It was totally worth it.

Amuse yourself with this - and while yes, I am this obsessed with the shawl, I have also had a request for a scale/action shots.  I felt like a Compleat Jackass posing, so this may be the only one. Ever.

I'll be back when I have had enough sleep to remember how to sequence words.

Ciao.

Perspective.

I've become a recluse when it comes to anything other than fiber.  I had a call from a friend Friday which started "I used to have this friend..." and I just about died from the guilt.  This is a lovely person, and I'd just been thinking how long it had been since I'd seen her and that I should call her...but she beat me to it.  And mostly, that's what happens.   A lot of recent conversations have started "God, I haven't seen you in so long...."

I just want to be home with the wool.  Or out looking at wool.  Or hanging out with wool friendly people.

I've always been a little odd, we know this, but I think my oddness used to be more easily hidden inside of conventional social interactions.  I was willing to play along because I had no compelling reason not to and I have all these friends that date from then - real friends, people I love - but the re-discovery of knitting and the paths it has led me down have released my weirdness into its proper sphere, given it shape and direction, given me passion and purpose.    Overall I am pleased, but I need to work on handling the intersection of old and new a little more gracefully.

I did go visit that friend on Friday.  She's a good one, and listened with more patience than one might expect to the Rapture of the Wheel, as described by me.  When I noticed the polite glaze in her eye, we moved on to more mutually congenial topics.  It was fun.

Note to self:  Giving all my resources to this passion isn't, I think, any healthier than not having a passion at all.  I must make sure I do not neglect the good from the old way in favor of the good of the new.

On the other hand, what could be bad about activities that result in this?

I have the hardest time photographing the color of this - this is too dark, the others are all too light.  Please make note of the wood grain foam tiles: two thumbs way up on the new blocking surface, adaptable to any shape and size.

Yarn: Something in the vicinity of 1100 yards of Blackberry Ridge silk/wool fingering weight in Paprika. (One 4.7 oz skein, one 4.3, plus a bit of a third - ball band indicates 450 yards to the official 4 ounce skein.  But their skeins are generous.)
Pattern: Fiddlesticks Knitting Lotus Blossom
Modifications:  three additional pattern repeats - two in the blossoms, one in the stem
Needles: 5.5 mm ebony circs from Holz and Stein (The King of Needles)
Final measurements: approximately 109" across and 50" deep at the point, this is officially the perfect size shawl if you top six feet.  Just in case anyone was wondering.
Began Aug 18, 2005.  Finished October 28, 2005.

More pictures, because I just cannot admire this enough.

I think the silk reflects light, making these daylight photos appear more pinky/orange than spicy brown.  I wish I could have gotten a picture of the shadow cast by the lace against the whitewashed brick of my house when I wore it out today.  That moment alone makes lace knitting worthwhile.

Oh, and I hope everybody enjoyed Fitzmas on Friday.  I can't wait to see what comes next.  My glee is unseemly, I know.  It is, in fact a sad day for the United States that such things are happening, that the arrogance, greed, stupidity, corruption and narrowness of vision of our, I hesitate to call it, leadership has made it necessary....but it would be an even sadder day if the rot were left to creep and spread unchecked.
What I really hope for is a future I can feel more hopeful about.

Ohm.

Bind off complete.

29 bobbles.

430 stitches accross.

3 extra repeats.

3 hours and 30 minutes.

Blocking.

update:  my birthday?  where?  what?   Wait, I still have another 6 months.....

Ah, hubris.

  You know when you start getting to think you might be pretty snappy?  Boy, does the universe take care of that.

I am ready to begin the cast off, the legendary cast off, and I have been challenged, so I am actually preparing for speed to be a factor.  Because this is such a good place to abandon care in favor of bragging rights.

Right.

Instead of marking the bobble points as instructed I just start.  The first bobble looks a bit wonky, but the second one pulls right together and I start to think I am pret-ty clever.  Except the when I try to make the final step of the bobble, it is in the wrong place.  I count cast off stitches, I count YOs... I do it again.  And again. And I realized that somewhere in that 211 of what turned out to be 215 rows, I goofed.  A lot.

It should have been YO K YO K3Tog, repeat, etc.  but somewhere I have switched the order.  Because I suck, and I was tired and in a hurry.  Each YO should be separated by either a single knit, or a k3tog, alternating.  The K3togs stack up and create a decorative line, at the tip of which there should occationally appear a bobble.

Do you see a decorative line?  Me neither.  The line through the k3tog on the bottom should run right through a similar k3tog above it.  But it doesn't, does it?  No, it runs through a YO.  Idiot.

And please explain to me how I placed the first few correctly, the next 10 or 15 wrong, and then somehow finished the other 3/4 of the row correctly.  I like to think if I'd done the whole row wrong, I'd have ripped, but I'm feeling pretty hostile about ripping right now, so I can't be sure.

Instead I am dropping down.  The last time I mentioned dropping down, I got several emails about the impossibility of visualizing/doing something like this.  To which I say rubbish. 

If I can do this, and many days not even keep my shoes tied properly, you can do this.   I will show you what I did and the world can be a better place for other people not doing the same stupid shit.  Everybody ready?

Each of the safety pins is through the two stitches in the K3tog and the left hand knit stitch that they SHOULD have been K3tog with.  I went across the whole shawl and marked every correct bobble at it's top stitch, and each incorrect sequence as illustrated above, until I ran out of pins.  Unfortunately I haven't run out of mistakes, so each one I fix releases a pin that goes to the end of the line. 

Then I got another circular needle of appropriate size and length and began slipping the shawl stitch by stitch on the new one.  Each time I find a boo-boo I do the following:

Slip the stitch above the YO to the right of the K3tog you need to change.

Drop the stitch above the K3tog, and ease it down the the point of error.  The arrow is pointing at the right hand most stitch in the decrease, which will become a single knit stitch between two YOs.

The arrow here is pointing at the loop (click for big) still in the two left hand stitches: ease it out and use a crochet hook to pick it up through the right hand stitch, all the way up.  Like this:

Now SLIP the next stitch. 

This will preserve the YO.

Drop the next stitch down - I didn't get a picture of this, but if you look up a picture or two, you will see you still have a safety pin holding three stitches together, so you can't go too far.

Put all three stitches into your crochet hook and remove  the pin.  Pick up the loop that just came out of the left most stitch and pull it through all three. 

Pick up to the top.

Repeat until your pattern is fixed.  I find a nice firm throw cushion is an invaluable work surface.  The really bright might want to use a table.

Now go forth and be smarter than I. 

Can you tell I have PMS?

Move along, move along.

Nothing to see here.  Unfortunately.

Excuse me, I'm about to begin row 212 of 213 (plus cast off) of my adapted pattern and I have to go break into the third skein.  How annoying is that?

I find it moderately cheering to look back to  August 18th.

It has come along.  The pattern no longer looks quite that crisp, though.

Loaves and fishes.

All weekend I knit and knit and knit and knit, trying to at least finish the body of Lotus Blossom for this morning.  But I was hampered in my plan by a total inability to stay awake. 

This girl is not the girl she once was, it is clear, and I am forced to admit that the previous month - involving Atlantic City, Vermont and culminating in the excitement of Rhinebeck - kicked my ass.  I passed up knitting with some really fabulous NYC people this weekend because my need for rest demanded attention - so yes, it turns out there are limits on what I'll do for fiber.

When I was 25 I could go and go and go and go without too much damage, but when I was 25 I was also an idiot, so I guess the exchange to more easily exhausted but wiser is one I can live with.

So I knit and knit and knit and knit - hundreds of stitches, thousands of stitches.  And yet I still have five rows left.    Which are mostly st st with the occasional YO, so I may be able to finish them at knitting tonight.  And then all I have is the bind off.  Which has taken better knitters than I nearly three hours.

But I am not intimidated.  I don't care.  It is the process.  I am getting what I want, which is a Very Big Shawl.  Last night I held the center back  of the shawl to the center back of my neck and draped the thing down my arm. 

After spending most of the past few weeks knitting with no apparent growth in the size of the shawl, suddenly it is nearly 10 inches longer than my arm at that point.   That's hanging loosely, with only a slight stretch applied along the edge.  Oops. 

Couldn't be helped - 4 repeats of the blossom edge looked stupid.

In the end I will have added three repeats, or 50 + rows - 18 in the stems, where the black line is drawn into the picture, and two full repeats of the blossoms along the bottom edge.  I would be more specific, but the pattern is balanced on the arm of the couch at home and I, tragically, am at my desk.  Working hard, as you can see.  It comes out something like 420 stitches across. 

(As I sit here freezing my fingers in this icebox of a building, I am concious of a faint regret I didn't take a few hours to make a pair of simple fingerless gloves. )

It's nice - it seems to have gone on forever, but once I stopped fighting - agitating in my heart for it to be done, a period during which every row took a hour and I picked it up and put it down with little progress a million times - it was surprisingly quick and pleasant.  It mixes well with repeats of L&O:Criminal Intent.  I did have a bit of trouble  working on it whilst watching the new Rupert Everett Sherlock Holmes last night (flawed but absorbing).  Mistakes Were Made while my attention was on the fate of the drooping Victorian debutantes.  It does bother me when they make the corpses too pretty  - it makes a fetish of the desirability of passive - passive unto death - womanhood. 

In lieu of the hoped for finished - or largely finished - shawl, I will show you something else.

When Ms. Too Much Wool was here post Rhinebeck, she mentioned that her socks had stretched out too big.  I'm about a foot or more taller than she is, so I didn't really expect a match, you know?  But I am revving up to begin my first pair soon, and I am interested in the question of fit.  So I asked if I could try them on.   I did.  They could have been made for me.  See?

So she let me keep them.  I think she could see I was going to cry if I had to take them off. 

Isn't she sweet?