Links with the past

I little while ago, my Mom shared some Diary entries made by my Great great grandmother Annie Johanna Davis (née Vilhemlsen).  She was born in Frederickstad, Norway  and during her lifetime emigrated to the US and settled in St Johns, AZ.   She also loved knitting, and her diary excerpts really make me wish I’d had a chance to meet this amazing woman:

Annie Johanna Davis and William Davis

As a young lady-
“My father was a good ship’s carpenter and he turned out to be a number one farmer, also. He grew all kinds of the finest vegetables in the rich soil which was as black as coal.”
“My only brother and I worked right along on the farm. Father made mother a loom and spinning wheel. Because our sheep began to increase we had quite a lot of wool, and as I got older I had to work at spinning it. I surely had to spin a lot all through my girlhood days. I have spun hundreds of pounds of yarn.”

I wondered which type of wool she spun on her spinning wheel. I’ve been spinning some Norwegian long-wool recently, which was very different from the shorter-staple wools I started spinning with. The first bit I spun too tightly & ended up with some twine. The trick with longer wools is to spin it more loosely to keep it soft. Not sure if it’s the same wool Annie spun, but I’m pleased that I’ve learned a skill she mastered when the was young.

The Norwegian Longwool I've been spinning

As a mother-
“When the World War (WW 1)broke out all of my sons were married, so they were exempted from being called, but I tried to do my part. When the order came to the Red Cross to start knitting socks I got busy, as I loved to knit. I knit forty-eight pairs and had the yarn ready to knit two more pairs, because I wanted to knit the fifty pairs, but the order came to the Red Cross to stop knitting because they were swamped back there with socks. So it was stopped, but I did not stop, but started to knit scarves for all my sons wives and my two daughter and myself.”
“I knitted two jackets and fixed up a box of children’s clothes for the poor Belgian children. I did what I could for the cause. All those mothers that gave their sons, they gave all. It was a terrible thing.”
“After the war was over I had a chance to get some nice yarn that came from the mill ends from the Brussels Carpet Factory. There was some very short ends, the longest was five yards, but very little of that length. Some were only a few inches long but I sewed every piece together with needle and thread. Then I wound it in skeins and washed it. Then I started to knit me a large cloak which has brought me two premiums (county and state fairs) and is the admiration of all. I have knitted myself a jacket and scarf.”

I love that she knit so many pairs of socks that the red Cross asked her to stop. I think she could have been a member of sock knitters anonymous.

I’ve been curious what kind of yarn join you would use a needle and thread with. When I started knitting, I never joined my yarn, just added a new ball at the beginning of a row. I ended up with some long ends for weaving in that way and probably wasted a lot of yarn. Then I learned about spit-splicing, which was great except for when I was using superwash wool. Spit-splicing only works if you’re using a felt-able yarn.

The only join I know of that you use a needle for is a Russian Join.  Which is now my favorite way to join two ends of yarn.   I’m currently knitting a capelet using 50g balls of DK-weight yarn. About 70% of these balls of yarn have a knot somewhere in the middle of them, so I’ve been doing a lot of russian joins while I’ve been knitting. Nowhere near as many joins as Annie Johana did when knitting her cloak, but more than I’ve had to use in any other project so far. It’s pretty easy with practice:

You'll need two ends of yarn and one tapestry needle.

Thread the needle with one end. Loop it back on itself, around the other end.

Weave the needle through the plies of the yarn. Then, draw through the end.

Thread the tapestry needle with the other end, and loop it back on itself, weaving through the plies once more.

The join is complete, and can be knit as normal.

The dangly ends can be cut off after it's been knit.

The join is hard to identify from the right side of the knitted fabric.

Maybe someday I’ll learn how to join yarn ends using a needle and thread like my great great grandmother did, but for now, the Russian join will do.

Little boys and fiber arts

I have to admit, my two boys are pretty awesome people to begin with.  They have amazing senses of humor, enormous hearts, and love doing crafty things.

A few months ago, I knit up some sock blanks with some undyed sock yarn I had.   I knit them up with the yarn held doubled, into great white squares of wool.  Then, I mixed some food coloring and critic acid with some warm water and put them into little squeeze bottles, and let my kids at it.   These are what they came up with:

One son likes Blue.

The other likes Green

They had a great time dying the sock blanks with the food coloring , and some koolaid (the bright green is koolaid).   And then, I started making them some socks.

The beauty of knitting from sock blanks is that you don’t have to worry about winding it into a ball;  you can unravel it as you knit the socks:

See the stripes? 😀 My son was clever and left some whitespace for the striping.

Here are some close-ups of the stripes:

Blue and Green make Aquamarine!

Green and Green make.... green?

And here they are all finished up:

Lovely socks, aren't they?

My son told me “All socks should feel like this!” when he put them on.  I’ve got a little handknit-sock convert on my hands.   Of course, I’m willing to teach him how to knit socks.   I think he might be willing to learn how.  He started learning it in school, because he wanted to do something that his Mom did.   He started making a scarf for his Step-Mom, which is a pretty big step for a first project.

There’s still a pretty big stereotype out there that only old ladies knit,  or that it’s girly.  I don’t think it is, really.  There are men who knit.  I’ve met some of them.  Some even crochet.  My son’s best friend crochets.  That’s at least two 11-year-old boys who don’t see anything wrong with being able to make something with sticks (or hooks) and string.

Also, my other son, while we were at Grandma’s house, saw her stacks of fabric and told me he wanted to sew something because “sewing is my thing”.  He made himself a nice little tote bag with racecars all over it while we were there.  I wish I’d taken a picture of it.  He did a fantastic job of it.  🙂

Swappiness

So, here’s what happens when you sign up for 4 different swaps that are going on all at the same time:

General Mayhem and Major Panic launch an all out offensive on your free time and peace of mind.

What is a swap, you ask?  I’m not sure if it’s something that’s kind of particular to Ravelry or not, but basically, you sign up, you’re assigned a partner (either secret or not), you fill out a questionnaire, read their questionnaire and then put together a package for the other person to receive in the mail. It’s a way of getting to know a bit about someone else from somewhere else in the world, to make something, buy things just for that person, and then get a package yourself that was put together with you in mind.

Before I’d decided I was moving, I signed up for 4 swaps: a book and yarn swap, a color-based swap, a friend event swap, and a Lost-based swap.

The book and yarn swap was just supposed to be a used paperback and some yarn, so not too much of a stretch. There was some poring over my bookshelf though, trying to pick the right book to send on. My literary tastes are not everyone’s. Also, the yarn my assigned swap partner most knits with is thick, chunky yarn. I mostly have thinner, lacier yarns in my stash. I ordered some yarn for her online, but it took so long to get here that I ended up going through my stash and picking out some aran-weight yarn that I’d forgotten I had. The package was still sent a few days late.

Then, it didn’t get there for three more weeks! I was truly panicking. When I was a teenager, we’d have secret swap things at summer camp. I could never afford anything nice (or really anything at all) to give my secret swap partner, and was always too embarrassed to tell the organizers I couldn’t get them anything. The person who I was assigned to would end up empty-handed, and I hated how awful I’d make them feel. I was so worried that this would happen again that I sent out another book with some yarn for my book and yarn partner. I just couldn’t let someone else down again. Fortunately, the first packaged arrived just after I’d sent the 2nd. So she gets two books and even more yarn! 🙂

She asked if there was anything I’d like sent over from Germany, and I remembered how tasty the Aachener Printen was when I visited Aachen to see the Aachenal Dome a few years ago. She sent me three baggies full, and they arrived today!

Now, I just have to put the other three swap packages together. The Friend Event deadline isn’t until 21st June, but I want to get it sent before I move. The Color Swap deadline is the 1st June. the Lost swap package needs to be sent before the finale this weekend.

Only three of the swaps were to include a handmade item;  and I finished the lace scarf I knit for the Friend Event swap a couple of weeks ago.  Over the weekend I completed the lace shawl I knit for the Color Swap, and I’m furiously trying to finish up the last couple Dharma Initiative Logo dishcloths I’m making for the Lost swap. I’ve got the extras I ordered online (thankyou, cafepress!). I just need to finish the dishcloths, add some goodies and get this out the door to my swap partner.

The term, swappiness, is one used in Linux particularly.  It’s a parameter you can change on your operating system to move processes from the physical memory (RAM) to the virtual memory (SWAP partition).   More swappiness = processes get moved to the disk earlier.  Less swappiness = processes stay in memory longer. It’s better to keep processes in physical memory longer because reading and writing to disks is much slower than reading and writing to physical memory.  But you have to have balance.  If there are too many processes for the memory to handle it can slow down the whole thing, so moving some process to disk gives it the space to be able to complete it all, eventually.

I’ve got too much swappiness I think.  I’ve got too many processes going right now, and I have to juggle too much I’m doing right now, with all my apples up in the air.  Or all my processes grinding down my hard disk.

Well, there you go.  I’ll bet you never expected a technical analogy on a knitting blog.  I’m going to get back to my hopelessly overcommitted swap-making now.

Vintage Knitting pattern booklets – The 50’s (part 1)

Quite a while ago, my Mom received several knitting pattern booklets from the 50’s – 80’s .  She asked if I’d like them, and of course I said yes.  So they got stuffed into a package with the largest t-shirt I’ve ever seen and some teensy DPNs and shipped across the Atlantic to me.

Erm… before going across the Atlantic though, they got shipped to some departure point in the US and then had to wait there for a while since Iceland decided to have itself a volcano eruption.  When the effluvium cleared, my package made its merry way across the sea..

Where the Parcelforce delivery guy made one half-hearted attempt at delivery before turning it over to our local Post Office.  Where it was able to soak up the atmosphere of an English market town post office for about a week before I was able to walk there on a Saturday and pick it up.

There were several patterns in each of the booklets which struck me as surprisingly modern-looking, but I think the best part of them is the photography and stylings.  Especially the booklets from the 50’s.

I’m going to post some of the pictures (not the patterns – those are probably still under copyright).  The majority of them are screaming to be captioned.  There are also far too many to post all at once.  I’ll post one today, and another tomorrow.

The first up, and this one was one of my favorites.  It’s Columbia-Minerva’s Fashion for Men and Boys.  I’ve often bemoaned the lack of innovative or sometimes even fashionable knitting designs for men.  Well, they had them in the 50’s.  And they were posed in a mad variety of situations and scenarios, too.

Aside from the erm… lovely mustardiness of the sweater on the right, it reminds me of Mr Roger’s sweater.  You know the one I’m talking about:  the one he swapped his suit coat for when he came in the door singing about being neighbors. The one that he’d zip up all the way and then back down again in time with the song.  I also can’t help thinking that the guy in the black and red might see the readings on the light meter a bit better if he put on those glasses he’s holding:

"I say old chap: oughtn't you to use a larger aperture" ... "Quite..."

There seem to be a few themes in this booklet: photography, winter sports, and just hanging out with dad in the library.  I sometimes wish current pattern photos would try to tell a story with cheesy smiles and “acting”, the way they did so readily in these.

This guy looks way too pleased with the filmstrip he’s holding.  And once again, maybe he’ll be able to get a better look if he used the other guy’s magnifying glass:

I haven't ever seen someone stare so lovingly at a piece of film in my life.

Continuing on with the film/photography theme.  Look at how excited these two men are to be watching a set of slides.  I’m old enough to have actually watched slides before and by my memory, they were never this exciting.  Ever.  By their reaction though, you’d think this set of slides was the half-century equivalent to YouTube:

"And this slide is one we took right after we pantsed that guy on the bus! Hee! Hee!"

More photography-based photos here.  Do you think maybe the guy behind the camera was trying to glamorize his job just a little?

"Work it, give me 'fierce'!"

Ok, one more from the photography/film theme.  I’m really not sure what’s going on in this one, but I know it’d be darn hard for me to concentrate on my script if I had two guy leaning on my shoulders.

"I don't care what the script says; I'm not saying 'Broxton's Hemorrhoid cream makes me a Happy Chap!'!"

Tomorrow, I’ll upload the photos from the Winter Sports/ leisure activities theme.  🙂

Oh, and if anyone has a funnier caption for any of these photos, I’ll give a free skein of handpainted yarn to the  person who brings me the closest to peeing my pants while laughing. Put your entry into the comments. 🙂

I ripped it out

I’d worked on the front panels of the arsenic and old lace cardigan for a while, and was nearly 1/2way finished and about to start on the bust shaping when it hit me: I hated the way it looked.

Here’s what I was ripping:

this was shortly after unraveled

The lacy bits on the front of the panels were only ever going to draw attention to a bulgy tummy, not minimise it like I’d envisioned and hopefully sketched. I decided that the front needs to be plain ribbing until the bust shaping, with stockinette up to the shoulders. I have the lace/eyelet pattern on the back, and will incorporate it into the sleeves but sometimes, less is more. Having it all over the entire garment would be too… gimmicky. I really want the design and shape to show through.
Here are the sketches:

this was what I originally intended. note the lace along the front panels

this is how the front panel will look instead: ribbing all along the bottom.

I’ve started again, and am now at the point I was before I frogged (rip it rip it) the panels I’d worked on before. I’ve spent all weekend doing them because I had to at least get to the same place I’d frogged and maybe a little bit past that so I could say I made progress.

Progress!

My progress never seems to move fast enough for me. I’ve always been a “but I want it now!” Kind of girl. I need more patience with myself. It’s just so utterly frustrating when things have gone on too long. Like living in the UK. I was only supposed to be here for a year, so we could save. We’re still here, and not saving up fast enough (yes yes, yarn diet here I come). I miss home. I miss family. I haven’t seen my Mom in person in 5 years.

And now this blog post is full of Whine. Sorry for that folks. Maybe some cheese to go with the whine?

Hoppy Easter, the hat pattern in finished

First, Happy Easter. It doesn’t much feel like easter with cold and wet weather, but we got a peek at Spring last week and hopefully we’ll get some sunshine this week.

I have finally finished my first pattern: the blueberry beret hat.

Blueberry Beret PDF

I’m still working on the cardigan, it’ll take me a bit longer as I’m still knitting it. I’ve added a page where I will be listing my patterns. They will be avilable for download as PDFs.

Hope everyone has a fantastic easter Sunday! 🙂

Confessions of a Yarnaholic

They say the firsts step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.  Hello, My name is Beki, and I’m a yarnaholic.

I blame my Mom, really.  Maybe my Grandma as well.  I remember when I was little, finding the yarn stashed in my Mom’s closet.  It was squishy.   It was soft.  I could imagine all the things I could make with it.  If only I knew how to knit…

My Grandma would wind all her yarn, whether it came in loose skeins, or just the big factory-balled skeins.  Each one would be wound or re-wound by hand.  When we’d be at her house, I would ask if I oculd help her wind it.  I’m sure I messed up quite a few balls by winding too tightly.  She showed me how to hold the ball and wrap the yarn around my fingers as well, to leave the yarn room to spring back.   It was fun, winding and feling the ball grow in my hand.

I still hand-wind most of my yarn into granny balls the way my Grandma showed me.

goodness gracious, great balls of yarn.

I’ve also become something of a yarn snob. I like the way real merino wool feels; it’s soft and sproingy and nothing like scratchy. A good wool/silk blend has an amazingly calming effect when you pet it, and alpaca just makes my fingers happy. I don’t see anything wrong with paying £15 for a 100g skein of handpainted loveliness. I’ve even spent £28 for a skein of seasilk. I’m starting to run out of room in the closet for all my yarn. I’m trying to knit it as fast as I can, but sometimes, the yarns just want to follow me home.

I suppose like most addictions, I like to tell myself that it could be worse; I could need an entire extra house just for my yarn: No, this isn’t a yarn store, it’s a temple to all that is squishy and yarny.

Or, I could be like the Wollmeiseaholics. I just recently learned that some people are willing to pay $150 or more for a single skein of Wollmeise yarn.

There was one last week that went for $198.

I think I'm going to get this as a tattoo.

See, this is actually more than a little nuts to me. I mean, it’s not like the stuff is made out of Unicorn Farts and spun by fairies in the light of a full moon. The stuff’s not even made out of Vicuna ($300/28g) or even Qiviut ($80/2oz). It’s just wool. Maybe a little silk, too.

Thing is, you can get this wool directly from the shop during one of her weekly updates. If you’re fast enough. There will be people sitting at their computers waiting for the updates, hitting F5 repeatedly on their browsers because if you snooze, you loose. People in the US will stay up ’till 2 or 3am just waiting for a chance to buy this wool. And it is lovely wool. I just don’t know if it’s worth losing sleep over.

Yeah, so I could be a lot worse. In fact, I think maybe I’m a bit of a lightweight.  I actually feel much better about my “problem”.  I think I’ll congratulate myself on my sensibility by buying more yarn. 😉

Olympia, Humility, and Chicken Pasta

On Friday, I took a half-day holiday to attend the Stitch and Craft show at Olympia. I went with my co-worker. We’re the only two women who work for our company, and we’re also both knitters. It was a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

There was a lot more than just knitting and yarn at the show. There was some amazing tapestry work, some insanely complex cross stitch , and bolts and bolts of fabrics. I got my Black Sheep bags(s). (Chunky weight Rowan Scottish tweed in Burgundy and a light olive-green dk weight cotton) It was absolute insanity at their stall: people were just about diving into the gigantic pile of bagged yarns and tossing bags they didn’t want out of the way. I usually stay away from scrimmage-type shopping experiences (hey – I apologize when people bump into me) but this was a good deal on wool, and the stuff I found was on the outer extremities of the pile, behind a pillar.

I thought I was being very good, and not spending a lot on wool. But I had only given myself a limit on how much I was going to spend on wool. I didn’t set any sorts of limits on ribbons or buttons. I’m glad I didn’t because I found the perfect buttons for the Arsenic and Old Lace cardigan. And some ribbons I’m going to make choker (necklaces) with.

I was supremely impressed by the amount of craftwork that was on display. There was a woman (and I’ll have to edit this when I get home to insert a link to her website) who made gorgeous landscape pictures using scraps of fabric and thread and felt.

I had someone very patiently explain what she was doing on a knitting machine at the Machine Knitters Guild stall, and had to go over my wool budget when I saw the squishies at Debonnaire’s stall.

Something my co-worker had mentioned while we were on our way to the shop was just how down-to-earth most of the people in her knitting group were, and how none of the crafty people she’s ever met were “up their own arses”. I think it’s absolutely true though. The thing is, no matter how accomplished you are in it, no one who has spent days making something only to have to completely frog it, reknit it, and then frog it again could ever be “up their own arse”. We learn to live with the humility of not ever being anywhere close to perfect.

My husband made a close to perfect dinner last night though. (yes ladies, he not only cooks: he cleans as well. No hatemail, please).

I was so impressed, I’m going to post the recipe:

Ron’s Chicken Pasta Salad:

Ingredients (serves 2):

2 cups (cooked) conchiglie (seashell) pasta

2 skinless chicken breasts, cubed

1 clove minced garlic

1/2 bag of Spinach/Watercress/Rocket(arugula) salad

1 cup Kraft light French dressing (yes, I know how Sandra Dee this is, but it actually is what makes this dish)

pinch of oregano

fresh parmesan

First, put the pasta on to cook.  While this is cooking, cube the chicken and mince the garlic.  Warm a  large frying pan or wok (wok works best) pon med-low heat.

Using a small amount of olive oil, cook the garlic for about 1 minute, then add the chicken.  Let the chicken cook for a couple of minutes, turning to cook on all sides frequently.

Add 1/2 cup of the salad dressing and if desired, 1/4 cup of water to dilute it.  Let this simmer (it will continue cooking the chicken) for about 5 minutes.  The sauce will reduce during this time.  Turn the heat to low if the sauce has reduced but the pasta is not done.

Chop the spinach/watercress/rocket roughly and remove what stems you can during this time.

Once the pasta is done, add the other 1/2 cup dressing to the pan, add the pasta,  and the pinch of oregano, and stir to coat pasta and warm the dressing.

To serve, place the chicken and pasta on a plate, sprinkle the salad over the top, then grate the fresh parmesan over the whole thing.

🙂 Enjoy!

No drooling in the back.

All Shapes and Sizes

I’ve been thinking about the sizing of the Arsenic and Old Lace cardigan and how to write it up so that it will actually fit most people.  Because most sizing for garment manufacture is done by relative proportions and generalizations, you’ll often find clothing that mostly fits average people.

I think it's in cm?

When I look around me though, the average woman I know doesn’t fit into any cookie-cutter shape. Some are tall, others are short. Some have amazing long legs, and others (like me) have powerful, muscular legs. Some of us have a little extra padding, and our padding isn’t all kept in the same places. Some of us have Junk in the Trunk, and others have a spare tire. Some of us have Thunder Thighs. There are so many variations in shape and size.

Usually, I’ll buy an article of clothing that’s the closest fit, not one that fits completely.  Because I have a larger chest than my shoulders would have you believe, clothing cut for my chest will be too loose and baggy around my shoulders.

I know people who have similar, but opposite problems:  clothing that fits everywhere else gaps or hangs over the chest area.

Then, there are the top and bottom issues:  not everyone is evenly proportioned between top and bottom: therefore someone who wears a size 16 around the hips, but a size 12 around the top… or someone who wears a size 10 around the hips and shoulders but a size 18 around the chest, will never find something in conventional shops to fit

One UK company, Bravissimo, sells clothing based on a dress size that is measured without worrying about the chest size, then you add your bra size to that and you clothing ends up fitting everywhere.

I’d like to do that with the sizing in this cardigan: you’d knit the first bit according to waist and hip size, and then increase more or less around the chest depending on your bra size. I’ll need to figure out the math for that and work up a chart, but I believe it can be done.

Knitwear is something that you can customize and I know a lot of knitters who modify the items they knit in order to fit them. I just think people can appreciate having the modifications done for them.

In a very related note, I’ve measured myself for Ysolda, who is getting a feel for armhole measurements and trying to make it better and easier for her patterns to fit.

I’ve just dyed and gone to heaven.

So, much of yesterday was spent out at the Fyberspates studio, learning to hand-paint yarn.

The day started off fairly well, with my super-hero husband getting out of bed at 7am on a Saturday to drive for 2 and a half hours one way just to drop me off. He got some cookies for that. We were a bit late due to some sat-nav related issues.

Once there, I put the Snickerdoodles I brought on a table with the tea things and got a rundown of what’s needed to dye wool: acid, pigment, and heat. We were using ammonia as our acid ( you can also use vinegar or citric acid). I mixed up a little pot of magenta and another of turquoise and started painting a skein of sock wool.

Here’s me with my first hand-dyed skein of wool. Note the maniacal smile. I was really really really happy that it looked good after it was done processing and dried:

Look what I can do!

We kept working through the day. Jeni’s mom brought us sandwiches, sausage rolls, mini-quiches, fruit and a really yummy chocolate cake for lunchtime. Brian kept working through it all, steam-setting the dyes, and rinsing them, and then hanging them up to dry as we dyed more skeins.

I had a few that were still a little damp after we left, and hung them up to dry when I got home. This morning they were perfect, so I waited for some clouds to move and took a picture with some sunlight on them:

oh the pretty colors

From left: turquoise and Magenta (and purple where I overlapped the dyes) merino sock yarn, Green Sparkle Sock yarn, Navy and turquoise Scrumptious Aran, Light blue scrumptious 4-ply, very very very light blue merino laceweight, and crimson cashmere sock yarn.

We were supposed to have dyed a DK weight scrumptious, but the Aran-weight was substituted instead.  Someone asked, ” what can we make with this?” and Jeni replied, “Hats.”

So, I sketched out a hat design using the navy and turquoise scrumptious aran.  I call it “Blues and Twos”.  It’ll be a slouchy type hat with cables , and at the widest part of the hat the cables will separate into two flames/leaves.  Here’s my sketch:

It'll be scrumptious of course