alisonknits

This is me...

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Weekend progress

I've had a remarkable amount of free time the last few weekends. It's a really nice change! However, I didn't get quite as much knitting done as I'd hope this past weekend. I also didn't clean my apartment, which I've been sorely neglecting. I did sleep a lot, though. And I did karaoke! (It was my friend Dan's birthday - we had a fabulous time. I sang "One Way or Another" by Blondie.)

I do have some good progress to report. The body of Hank8 is done! I had hoped to cut some steeks and get started on the neck, but I didn't. I like Wendy's tactic of doing the neck before the sleeves, so that when she finishes the sleeves the sweater is done. So I'm going to do that.

Also, I finished my cashmere gloves, just in time for it to get warm again. I need to wash them to make them all soft. I hope they still fit after I wash them. They should, since I measured the gauge of the washed swatch and went from there, but they seem to fit fine now, pre-washing. Oh well - I have plenty of yarn left and could make several more pairs if I wanted to.

And my sister's sweater is finished except for the sewing. I'm not sure whether I like it or not - but I was making it to her specifications, so hopefully she'll like it fine.

I'll try and post pictures of all these things shortly.

Last night was my last beginning knitting class of the term. Only 2 of the original 10 students showed up! I knew that a few people wouldn't make it, but it was wierd. Well, the weather was horrible, maybe that kept some away. Oh well. My next section starts immediately, next Monday. No rest for the weary... Okay, I'm not that weary.......

Treading water...

This is from my horoscope this week, from Rob Brezny's Free Will Astrology:

I've been staring at my astrological charts for hours trying to determine where your head is at. The best I can figure out is that you're off the map . . . between the worlds . . . beyond the boundaries.

That pretty much describes how I've been feeling lately. It's very wierd. I feel disconnected, undecisive, and moody.

And I haven't been getting much knitting done. I'm still waffling on Augie's Fair Isle, but if I'm going to do it, I should order the yarn very soon. I should be done with the body of Hank8 by now, but I still have several rows of neck shaping to go. Even the first of my pair of cashmere gloves isn't finished yet (although I'll finish that at the Upper West Side knitting circle tonight and start its mate). For commuter knitting, I've been working on the round Feather and Fan shawl, which is just interminable. I have around 1050 stitches per round now. It's a little discouraging to work on something so slow-going. My sister's sweater is almost done - just have to do the button band and neck, but I've been too lazy to figure out how many stitches I need to figure out.

It's time to get some focus!

Glove progress

Knitting gloves is fun! I've done 2 fingers - see:

It fits like a, um, glove.

Happy weekend

Time seems to really be flying lately. Not only did the weekend come quickly (no doubt because of Monday's holiday), but October is zooming on by. I wrote down the date on Thursday and suddenly realized it was my dad's birthday, which I hadn't seen coming. So I neglected to send him a card - let alone a present. *sigh* I'm a horrible daughter.

Hopefully his Christmas present will make up for it. I'm making good progress on Hank8 again, and have now started the neck shaping, complete with steeks. Here's a photo of the beginning of that:

Since this is going fairly quickly again, I'm toying with the idea of making a Fair Isle (not as complex as this) for my sister's boyfriend. I had chosen a Ron Sweitzer pattern from an old(ish) IK, but then discarded the idea since fall is going by so fast. But if I finish my dad's sweater by early November, I just might go for it. The pattern looks geometric and small enough that I can probably memorize it pretty quickly, and it's not so very many colors, so I could possibly commute with it, at least while I'm still on the body. It just might work. I may be crazy, but hey - I also decided to make myself a lace shawl 6 weeks before my wedding to wear at the reception when I had never tried lace before. And then I finished it with almost a month to spare.

Also I picked colors from J&S that I think will work for the sweater instead of the Shetland 2000 that the pattern is written for. If I did it in the original yarn, it would cost me around $200. Why is Shetland 2000 so friggin' expensive?!?!?! I'll order the J&S direct from them, and do for around $45. Even if I did it in Jamieson, it would only cost me $90. When I order from J&S, I think I'll get a bunch of other colors too for playing with. I've been meaning to do that for some time now.

Besides working a lot this week on Hank8, I also started my cashmere gloves. The cuff is done, and I've just started the thumb gusset.

Oh, and while the Red Sox were breaking my heart in Game 7, I finished a sleeve of my sister's sweater. Hey, I got a lot of knitting done this week!

Nothin' to watch.

I have a confession to make. I am a bona fide TV addict. Actually, I partially blame knitting; my favorite form of vegging is to knit in front of the television. I even knit complicated patterns while watching the Tube.

Usually, there's something I want to watch in prime time every single weeknight. But this season, the Tuesday night lineups on all the channels SUCK big time. Why is that? (In Entertainment Weekly last week, in the "What To Watch" section, they wrote something to the effect of "The What to Watch Challenge: Watch an entire episode of Whoopi without taking your own life. Write to us and tell us how you did it.")

Maybe I'll start a new book. I just finished the Al Franken book. Unfortunately, I can't knit and read at the same time. At least, not very well at any rate.

I should have rented a movie.

This is so me...

Too bad I don't look anything like her.

Hank8 update

I've actually made a decent amount of progress on Hank this weekend. So I thought it was definitely time to post a photo. Here 'tis:

It's getting there. I'm about 10 rows away from the neck shaping, and after that there won't be too much farther to go before I finish the body.

A few minutes ago I started swatching yet more cashmere - this one is from School Products (of course), made up of 4 or 5 plies, each ply a different color. It's pretty, and my plan is to make some gloves with it. I've never made gloves before, and I think it's about time! I'll post a photo of my swatch tomorrow or Wednesday.

I had a good class tonight. My beginning knitting class this fall is going so well, they're really ahead of the curve. Last time I taught this, they weren't able to finish the sleeveless baby sweater I gave them, so I opted to just do a hat this time. I figured a hat could still teach a lot of techniques, including sewing a seam since we're not doing it in the round, and they would actually finish it. And several of them finished it tonight, with 2 classes to spare (it's a 7-week class). So we have time to do more technique, but they get to feel the satisfaction of finishing something. Many of them have already visited yarn shops and started new projects. Fabulous!

Oh, and this morning we did a photo shoot for my Knitty submission. It was not much fun for me, as I'm a very reluctant model, but we got some good shots. It's almost all done. Wish me luck!

Columbus Day

Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:

"They... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned.... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

Excerpted from A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn

If you would like to read on, click here or buy the book.

I also like this article about the Columbus Day Parade in Denver: Goodbye Columbus!

Just a few thoughts. We now continue with our regularly scheduled Columbus Day holiday already in progress.

An Inspiring Day (plus a story)

What a day I've had! Often my Sundays remind me a bit of that army recruiting slogan: "We do more before 9am than most people do all day." Only with me, it would be, "I do more before noon on Sundays than most people do all day on Sundays." Okay, not as catchy or impressive as the army's, but still.

I started my day with the Sunday school class I'm teaching. My co-teacher, Peter, is pretty awesome. Not only is he a dynamic teacher, but he also has a lot of amazing things to teach the kids, and me, within the context of the anti-racism curriculum we're teaching. We had a great class, for which I can take no credit; but I certainly learned a lot, and was inspired to delve into the issues around racism more deeply, both for myself and so that I can more effectively co-teach this class. I'm a white girl from the suburbs, so it's not exactly something I can profess to be an expert on. I certainly can educate myself a lot more than I have.

Then I went to the service (one of the great things about teaching in the first hour is that I get to attend the second service, and there's no danger of me sleeping in and skipping it). Galen's sermon was about mindfulness - about making every hour of our lives meaningful. It was just great. If you'd like to read it, it will be posted on the All Souls website in a couple of days.

After coffee hour, I continued the anti-racist theme and went to a dialogue about how we can make our congregation more inclusive and ethnically diverse. Very interesting, and I'm happy to see the Board of Trustees at this white, Upper East Side church making an effort in some way to branch out.

After that, I went downtown to Soho for a Church of Craft meeting. I haven't made it to one of these for a year, and it was so wonderful. I mainly talked to the other knitters there, but it was very inspiring for me to be around all the crafts. In fact, it reminded me about my dream to open a store that would feature all kinds of crafts (sort of like an A.C. Moore or a Michael's, but more homey, less corporate), with space for classes and a gallery and/or some kind of consignment shop. This idea came to me last year when I was in a particularly creative and open phase, either in a dream or maybe just in the middle of the night. I've always been into all kinds of crafts (mostly fiber and paper, but I'm open), although I've focused more and more on knitting. Well, it's a pie-in-the-sky dream, but who knows? Anything can happen.

Oh, and I also finished the alpaca scarf at the Church of Craft meeting. That was cool. And people seemed to like it (and the hat, which I brought just to show off), and many encouraged my plan to submit them to Knitty. Yay! It's also very gratifying to me to be able to finish a scarf in a little over 24 hours, since it gives me hope that one day when I devote myself full-time to knitting and designing, I'll actually be able to finish things in a timely manner.

So that's my fabulous day. And it's not even 9pm - still plenty of knitting/TV vegging time left! Woo hoo!

I'll leave you with this (perhaps overly long) story about how I learned to knit, which has been a discussion on the Upper West Side Knitters e-mail list the last couple of days. I'll understand if you don't read the whole thing. (But hey, you made it this far...)

Recently I remembered that I actually learned to crochet several years before I learned to knit - maybe I was around 10 - and kept crocheting circles (doilies? potholders? I don't think they ever served any practical purpose, except to amuse me) for about a year or so. But then I apparently lost interest.

I learned to knit my senior year in high school for a student-directed one-act play based on an Edith Wharton story, Roman Fever, in which I was playing an older woman who knit throughout the play. I think the director said it was okay if I faked the knitting (although in retrospect, and having watched many non-knitters try to knit onstage, I think that would have been blatently obvious), but I was happy to learn. My best friend knew how to knit (as well as other fiber arts) from her crafty aunt, and she taught me to cast on, knit, and bind off. She never taught me the purl stitch. But I immediately became obsessed, and knit garter stitch scarfs in scratchy (but beautiful) wool for about a year. Katie doesn't knit anymore, butI've made several things for her babies to thank her.

My mom thought that I should learn how to knit something other than scarves, so she bought me knitting lessons from a woman we knew who had donated them to our church auction. She taught me, in the space of a few hours, to knit in the continental style, purl, and read a pattern. We went to a yarn shop and I chose a simple pullover pattern in a sport-weight wool. I worked on it on and off for many months (maybe a year?) and by the time it was finished, I was not knitting in the same gauge I'd started in. (My first lesson in checking gauge as I went along!) The sleeves and cowl were way too large. A couple years ago I frogged that sweater, but haven't recycled the yarn yet - I should, it's nice yarn.

My second sweater was also inauspicious - a green cardigan with bobbles. I don't wear green - what was I thinking?! But sometime during college I discovered Fair Isle via Zilbourg's Fine & Fanciful hats book, and cables via Starmore's Aran knitting.

A couple months after I met my husband in 2000 I got on a real knitting kick - in fact, knitting him a sweater from Aran Knitting (before we were engaged, refuting the dreaded curse, although does it count if I didn't finish it until after we were engaged?) and I haven't had a dry spell since. I can't remember going longer than 24 hours without knitting since somewhere around October 2000. And now it's hard for me to imagine that I ever will.

But who knows - never say never...

That's my story (and I'm sticking to it!)