alisonknits

Taking Matters Into My Own Hands

For the first time in a very long time, I have more than enough time.  It's wierd, right?  Who in America has enough time?  I just don't have enough money.

I have joined the ranks of the underemployed.  Much as I love my jobs (especially at Arlington Street Church), the fact is, I'm making only about two-thirds what I was making in New York.  You would think moving out of the city would allow me to save a lot of money, but that doesn't seem to be the case.  My housing costs are actually slightly more than they were in NYC, and the thought of how much it will cost to heat my house this winter is, well, chilling.  (Of course, my mortgage payment is roughly the same as my rent was in New York, and I'm living in a ginormous house rather than a smallish apartment.  Did I ever tell you that my swimming pool is slightly bigger than my old apartment?)  In New York, my total transportation costs each month were a $70 Metro card.  Now I have a car which runs on expensive gas and needs to be insured, and I also pay $22 a week in commuter rail rides and a bit more for T tokens.  The only real savings is in the amount of cash I'm spending.  In New York, I'd take out $100 on a Friday and by lunchtime on Monday, I had nothing left and I couldn't usually figure out where it had gone.  Now $100 cash lasts me over a week.  I think I'm just using my debit card more.

I'm not teaching much at the moment, which hopefully is about the change.  But it took me a couple years to build up a regular class schedule in New York, and it will probably take a while to get that going here as well.

I've submitted some designs to magazines recently, but I'm tired of waiting, and tired of rejection.  And the submission process doesn't really reflect how I design, anyway.  Submitting to the magazines, you work up a sketch and a swatch to send.  I think most designers end up sketching and swatching and sketching and swatching and on and on for each design.  I don't really like to work this way.  When I design pieces for myself, I usually just start making the thing as I've conceptualized it in my head, and it changes and evolves as I'm knitting it.

I realized that I have at least a half dozen designs that I've created for myself and never sold, and have developed ideas for several more, so I've decided to start selling my patterns myself.  I'll be creating a website (actually, Scott will do that for me), and I hope to have it up with several designs by Thanksgiving.  In addition to selling the patterns on the website I may try to sell them wholesale to some yarn shops.

It feels good to have something concrete to do about my money situation, specific tasks to cross off the list.  I purchased a dress form on eBay so that I don't have to find people to model for me (you have to spend money to make money, right?)  This weekend I'll be working on writing the patterns (good thing I took decent notes) and finishing the cutaway jacket, which I'm really liking.  I'm going to try to line up my sister as my photographer, since my own photography skills are pretty lame.

But what to call my line of patterns?  At the moment I'm defaulting to alisonknits, since maybe there will be a bit of brand recognition from the blog, but it feels like a very boring name, even for blogging.  If anyone has any brilliant (or even mediocre) ideas, please email me!

There's Knitting, Too

Though you probably wouldn't know it from reading this blog, I have been doing plenty of knitting lately.  Here's what I'm working on:

The Great American Aran Afghan

Remember this project from Knitter's a fews years back?  If you don't, it was an afghan project where readers submitted 12" Aran (or Aran-inspired) squares and they published 24 of of them over at least 6 issues of the magazine.  Then they put them all together, 20 squares for the afghan and 4 for pillows, with a lovely twisted border around the afghan.

The squares are wonderfully varied, some in very traditional Aran styles, some using cables to make pictorial motifs like a spider & web, a tree, a church.  Some are knit bottom-to-top, some are in the round from the edge to the center, at least one is knit side to side. 

I started this project back when it was introduced, which was around the time I first got seriously into knitting, but stopped after a few squares.  I decided to start over recently using a different yarn.

The yarn I'm using is KnitPicks Wool of the Andes in natural.  I've used this for teaching - it's very inexpensive and a perfectly servicable worsted wool.  I had some around left over from classes, and I've decided not to worry about dye lots.  It goes pretty far - I get three squares out of of two balls, with some leftovers.

Aside: In fact, I've been quite pleased with a number of different KnitPicks yarns that I've tried recently.  I bought several colors of Palette, and a color card, and thought I haven't knit much at all with it yet, it seems good and I'm planning on making some Latvian mittens with it.  I also just bought Decadence, a bulky alpaca, which is wonderful.  I am designing a long cutaway jacket, and I really wanted to use Debbie Bliss silk/alpaca, but can't afford it.  I think this is a decent substitute and I'm enjoying working with it.  I also tried Panache, which is incredibly soft.  I'm going to make a scarf out of it.  For such luxerious fiber, this price is hard to beat.

But back to the afghan - I've done three squares so far, and here they are:

Cool, no?  These make great train knitting.  Who will be the recipient of this large project?  I don't know yet.  I may keep it for myself, or I may give it to my sister as a wedding present.  (Hopefully she's not reading this blog.  I sort of doubt she does.  If so, well, surprises are over-rated.)

Boudicca's Braid

What was I thinking making a multi-colored cable sweater on size 2's?  Really, this is a bit ridiculous even for me, a knitter of great patience.  It's so slow going, I haven't even finished the back yet, though I started it in August.  Here's what it looks like so far:

It will be wonderful to wear it when I finally finish it, sometime around the time my yet-to-be-conceived children are going to college.

Other knitting:

And speaking of endless projects on tiny needles, I'm still making Scott's socks, in Trekking.  I finished one, and the other is more than halfway there. 

But it is SO BORING.

And there is the aforementioned cutaway jacket sweater.  This is something I've wanted to do for a long time.  When I got married, I really wanted Scott and the other men to wear a cutaway, also known as a morning coat.  But for one thing, we weren't getting married in the morning, so it wasn't technically correct.  Who cares, right?  But also, his two best men both already owned tuxes, the regular kind, and it seemed wrong to make them rent when they already owned perfectly appropriate wedding attire.  So they all wore regular tuxes.  Sigh. 

I love this shape, though, and think it would make a good sweater.  I figured out how to make a cool pleat in the back (I probably saw it somewhere), and after a bunch of swatching with the aforementioned Decadence, started a sleeve while I'm waiting for the rest of my yarn to arrive.  But bulky yarn goes so quickly and I'm almost done with the ball I have.  Am I Goldilocks or what?  This yarn goes too quickly.  That yarn takes too long.  Give me a worsted or DK any day... it's just right.

And that's just about all the knitting.  Oh except for that wonderful hat that I'm designing at the store as sample in Frog Tree Merino.

Wow, my posts are getting long.  Maybe I should try to post more than once a week, eh?

Mindful Balance

I just had a really wonderful weekend, and the best thing was how many different kinds of activities I got to do.  It was the perfect balance of solitude and social activity; friends, family and strangers; work, play and spiritual practice.

Saturday I woke up early and did yoga.  I've re-discovered yoga in the last month or so, after my friend Laura Beth led a wonderful yoga class daily on Star Island the last week in August.  Since then, I've gone to a few classes at Seaons of Yoga in downtown Haverhill, which were fine but not exactly what I'm looking for.  One thing about moving here from New York is that in certain areas o my life I didn't know how good I had it.  The first yoga classes I ever took were at the Integral Yoga studio in the West Village.  I went there because it was not far from my job at NYU, not because it's one of the best yoga studios, like, anywhere.  But it turns out, it is.  It is not as westernized as most American yoga studios.  When I first took a class there, I was a little intimidated and wierded out by the chanting that opens and closes the class, but I came to really love that part.  Now, going to classes here, I miss that spiritual core of the class. 

So I've been practicing yoga at home while I research other places that might have what I'm looking for.  And the nice thing about that is that I can make up my own practice, take as long or short as I want (or have time for), and don't have to feel self-conscious when I have trouble with some of the asanas.  In fact, I find the balance poses easier at home, probably because I'm not worrying so much about what I look like.

I also worked at the yarn store on Saturday, and it was the perfect kind of day in my book: not many customers, but the ones that came in mostly bought a lot.  In my spare time there I started dreaming up shop samples and started a hat in the super-soft Frog Tree Merino.  I hope they'll let me make a scarf and mittens to match.

Sunday was church work.  One of the nice things about my job is that I do get to go to the worship services, and I like the services at Arlington Street very much.  My job title is Membership and Leadership Coordinator, and one of the things that the minister, Kim, and I have been working on is trying to change the culture of the church to be more welcoming.  Her sermon this Sunday was called "A Conspiracy of Welcome," and she talked about how challenging it can be for us New Englanders to be warm and friendly.  How just saying hello to a stranger has become a radical act.  Full text of her sermon is here.  I means a lot to me to have these messages coming from the pulpit, so that I don't have to try to convince everyone by myself that hospitality is a spiritual practice.

Monday I did a full hour of yoga and then met up with a fellow blogger, The FemiKnit Mafia, who is very cool.  We seem to have a lot in common and I look forward to hanging with her again.  Thank god(dess) for other women who will own the term feminist!  I've been missing having friends and, oh, a social life since I moved away from my NYC life, so this was a very good thing.

And later that day I got to take my sister wedding dress shopping, with her best friend.  Yet again I'm reminded how lucky I am that I actually like my family.

There were lots of other good things about my weekend (getting things done around the house, knitting, sleeping, discovering My Name is Earl which is the funniest show I've seen in a very, very long time), but enough is enough...