UFOs

The beginning and the end are the best parts of knitting. Looking through the pattern libraries on knitting sites, imagining my next project, is my favorite way to placidly unwind after a mentally exhausting day. Three fabulous and semi-local yarn stores breathe life into my daydreams as I see and touch all of the beautiful colours. There is no such thing as yellow yarn to a knitter; instead, there is candlewick, daffodil, hayloft, gold, gilded, autumn gold, cornfield, wild mustard, birch heather, shades 28, 91, and 121.

I also love the end, especially the joy that comes with making a poorly written pattern work, successfully using a new technique, or just finishing a project which required a monstrous amount of time and energy. There is very little as satisfying as throwing a finished piece in the tub for a good soak, blocking it on my wooly board or dressform, and tromping through the fields on the farm to get the perfect snap!

In the middle, however, the plain, old work of knitting round after round of stockinette stitch can stop me dead in my tracks. Even worse, I get unintentionally derailed by the delight of a new yarn or a new pattern. My lack of self-discipline often means that my plan to just purchase and stash a new yarn gives way to winding. If only I stopped there, but usually winding means swatching, followed by casting on. By then, I've found the progress that is so easy to spot in a new project far more tantalizing than the progress I can no longer see round after round. So I keep going, and BOOM! my WIP has morphed into a UFO. 

This weekend, the November weather turned, and it feels like snow is on its way. Mother Nature's stark reminder that 2014 is winding down has me also thinking about my personal goals for this year: 12 completed sweaters and no UFOs in my project library. I currently have three unfinished objects...

 Kate Davies's Stevenson Sweater

Merecedes Tarasovich-Clarks's Driftwood Tee and Cecilia Fiore's a_simmetrie  

With 45 days to go, I think I'll be a wee bit short of my sweater goal for the year, but I'm not giving up on my UFOs! 

Christmas (Sweater) Time is Here!

This week we turned the clocks back, plugged in the electric blanket, sipped egg nog laced with rum, and I finally started Bill's 2014 Christmas sweater! This will be his 7th Christmas sweater, and my most ambitious project yet.

I can't remember why I thought knitting my exceptionally tall boyfriend, whom I only met a month earlier, seemed like a good idea in 2007. In hindsight, it was a brazen act which sent a counter-challenge to the infamous boyfriend sweater curse and misleading vibes of commitment and domesticity to my future husband given that I moved every couple of years and survived on take away.

That sweater was my first, big knitting break-through! I remember feeling a tremendous sense of accomplishment finishing it at two o'clock Christmas morning while Bill was in the kitchen finishing the Christmas pies. It was the first time that I successfully substituted yarn, knit in the round, and tried raglan shaping. It is plain, warm (knit with two strands of sport weight), and comfy; perfect for the very cold barn in which we live. I never loved the colour but Bill does; of his sweaters, this is, by far, the one he wears the most!

The opportunity to consciously try a new technique is the thing I love most about "the Christmas Sweater": new finishing technique (Berkshire Pullover), v-neck and cables (Delius), hand-dyed yarns (Clark), and short rows (Shawl Collar Sweater).

My second big-knitting breakthrough occurred when I read an article which claimed most knitters underestimate their skill-set. I tested that theory last Christmas with Marie Wallin's Cartmeal Mens. Turns out that my totally unscientific study corroborated the theory. On paper, this sweater was absolutely intimidating. I purchased the yarn and the pattern at least two years before finally casting on because the cables are so beautifully intricate and scary. On needles, however, it was fabulously fun, quick, and easy to follow. Truly, the most beautiful sweater I've knit (to date)!

So here I am on the fifth of November...five days, 12 cm, two border patterns, and one complete skien of the main colour into this year's sweater! It is a stranded knitting pattern, technically more nordic than fair isle, but absolutely inspired by my trip to Shetland.

I'm using jumper weight yarn from two of my favorite Shetland producers: Uradale Farms and Jamieson & Smith. As for the colours, I followed the ridiculously talented Mary Jane Mucklestone's sagacious advice when choosing my palette: look to the land.

Do you see the influence? Clearly, I'm still dreaming of and longing for Shetland!

Dreaming of Shetland

Hiya! With the start up of the new school year, September was a busy month and my knitting was woefully neglected. I'm optimistic that I'll do better in October, because I need to start those Christmas projects!

My Shetland experience heavily influenced the few projects I managed to complete in September. It was such an amazing and transformative trip for me,  and it's evident in my knitting because I'm more confident with lace and colour work. 

Quite a few of my new friends wore their Aestlight Shawls on our trip, and I immediately fell in love with drape as well as the way the birds eye lace showed off the colour of variegated yarn such as the MadeleineTosh I used on my first Aestlight! I tried to follow expert lace knitter and Shetlander Elizabeth Johnston's advice about really opening up the lace during the blocking process. Elizabeth was one of my favorite people on the trip, and her class definitely made lace less intimidating, especially her encouragement to stick with techniques I know instead of deferring to the fancy techniques knitwear designers sometimes suggest. 

I am most excited about my finished Bressay Dress. Originally, my friend Nicole suggested a Bressay knit-a-long in anticipation of our Shetland adventure. Although I missed the pre-trip KAL, casting-on just four days before leaving, it was nice working on the fair isle dress while motoring by Bressay! I actually finished this in August but then accidentally, and tragically, cut a hole in it. In my delirium from the miserable Pennsylvania heat, I mistook a pulled stitch for the pocket being sewn to the back, taking the snips to it without careful investigation. It was an easy repair once I stopped crying. Snaps were also held up as I waited for the colours of fall! I love this picture, not just because it shows off one of my favorite FOs of all time but also because the sun is hitting the midges, making them visible! I wore the dress to work on the first crisp, fall morning we had; unfortunately, the weather warmed by 10am, and I spent the rest of the day a tad too warm. It will be fabulous in the middle of winter when the heat at school doesn't work! 

All three of my September projects are from knitwear designer and trip leader extraordinaire, Gudrun Johnston! I had started a summer tee but tossed it aside when Gudrun did an early release for this hat pattern from her new book, Shetland Trader- Book 2. Gudrun gave us a preview of her new designs on our trip, and the Hermaness Hat was one of the patterns I was especially taken with. The book has since been fully released, and I've already ordered the yarn for my next project, the Belmont (a cropped cardi). 

I have tried a number of times to blog about my Shetland Adventure but it's hard. For now, I'll just reveal that the trip was an impulse purchase that I hoped would help me feel closer to my grandmother, who passed away in January, by exploring the craft for which she nurtured my passion. We enjoyed knitting together right up through our final visit, less than a week before she died. 

Although her Alzheimer's and arthritis prevented her from knitting herself, we still talked about my projects, she complimented or corrected my stitches, and we tried to figure out troublesome patterns together. There was a cardi I always hoped to make her but never did; the yarn is impossible to purchase in the U.S. and I doubted my ability to complete a fair isle project. On my last day in Shetland, my companion Alice and I popped into the Jamieson's store to purchase the yarn. It will be the first project I cast on once I'm finished my Christmas knitting and am able to fully focus! 



Right now, I'm working another project I brought home from Shetland: the Stevenson Sweater. This project is particularly exciting because the main colour is yarn I purchased from Ronnie and Sue at Uradale Farm . They opened their house to our "smallish" group to talk Shetland sheep and crofting. For this project, I'm using their organic, natural jumper yarn mixed with two contrasting colours from Jamieson and Smiths. 

I'm marking time with this sweater while I wait for more of Uradale's yarn to arrive so that I can begin Bill's Christmas sweater. He picked a project that is certainly going to put my new fair isle knitting skills to the test so stay tuned for updates on this year's Christmas sweater and that blog devoted entirely to my Shetland adventure! 

Summer Vacation? I think not.

For many, Memorial Day weekend is the high water mark of the knitting calendar; only the most dedicated, or as my husband says obsessive, knitters religiously work on projects over the summer. For most, the bag with the half finished, 100% wool sweater disappears until the cooler temperatures of the fall descend. I usually take a break until Labor Day Weekend, when I know that I absolutely must start my husband's Christmas sweater if I have any hope of finishing it on time.

But does our favorite pastime have to go on hiatus, bookended by holidays which mark the unofficial start and end of summer? This year, I think not. I've queued some fabulous projects, light enough to keep my fingers nimble through the summer despite Pennsylvania's oppressive weather. I'm already well into Kayleen Pullover, featured in the summer issue of Interweave Knits. Worked in Juniper Moon Farm's Sabine, a blend of wool, llama, and cotton, this is a lightweight project with fun details such as a reverse stockinette front and cable motif around the neck.

Now, I confess momentum was lost in the middle of June, but I can't blame the heat alone. My trip to Austin for a conference, the looming deadline for a cowl swap, and my fear of seaming contributed to my brief lull, but a week on Chebeague with the refreshing breeze of Casco Bay gave me the jumpstart I needed to pick it up again!

So as we celebrate the 4th of July, the cowl is making its way to Wisconsin, Kayleen has one sleeve sewn on, Boxy and Buttony has been frogged, the first set of short rows for a_simmetrie are almost complete, and I just purchased Shinui Heichi in Brick to knit up another pattern from the summer issue of Interweave Knits, Go to Market Cardigan, that will look fabulous in the fall!

My needles are clicking away: k to M, SM, RLI, k to M, LLI, SM, k to previously wrapped st and process it, k2, w&t

Teach Resiliency; Teach a Teen to KNIT!

This week psychologist, Dr. Madeleine Levine was in Princeton speaking to the various adult constituency groups that influence today's teens, and as a middle school teacher at an all-girls school, I'm one of her targets. She argued that teens are stressed out, depressed, and anxious because they have neither experienced or witnessed much failure. Basically, they possess the belief that the road to success is straight and smooth.

After quiet reflection, I have the solution: teach every child to knit! This winter quite a few articles popped up on my social media feeds touting the benefits of knitting. Here are a few of my favorite reasons because they directly ease feelings of anxiety, depression, and stress:

• the repetitive nature of knitting stimulates our relaxation response
• our social circle widens and our connections with others deepen 
• finishing what one starts feels good; even better if the item is given as a gift 

However, there is an important benefit missing from the published sources: knitting teaches resiliency. When I knit, I make lots of mistakes. I misread patterns. I drop stitches. I increase or decrease on one side of a stitch marker but not the other. I mismeasure. I dislike the color or texture of the yarn. I could go on and on. I tend to start every project three times before I really understand the pattern and find my rhythm. I have grown to accept and expect this arrangement. It is not failure but process, and I carry this attitude from beginning to end of every project. 

Over my Spring Break, I worked feverishly on Ankestrick's Antler. This beautiful sweater is knit in the round from the top down, and I had so much fun choosing colors in my new favorite yarn, Tosh Merino Light. Originally, I saw this sweater as a way to use a skein of esoteric that I had purchased on a whim, but when the main color, tern, arrived I liked but didn't love the match. I fell in love with the idea of switching to yellow, and the deal was sealed with a trip to my local yarn store and the discovery of candlewick. Without casting on a single stitch, I had already taken my first left turn.

Not only did I continue to make left and right turns after I cast on my stitches, all 134 of them, but I went back to the starting line as well. I lost track of my increases and short rows about half way through the collar, because I couldn't keep track of my front and back. Pulling 24 rounds off my needles was the only way to right myself. Frogging that much work when one is using 3.5mm circulars is painful, and I very much wanted to avoid driving down the same road on my second attempt. My mistake and my desire not to repeat it pushed me to think of different strategies I could employ, and eventually I came up with a system that involved writing each step on its own notecard and flipping through the set each time I was ready for the next round. 

I'm still working on the sweater, and I'm still making mistakes. I haven't given up because the mistakes I've made over 25 years of knitting have made me resilient to this kind of epic failure. I think it's time to give this generation of young women the same gift my grandmother's generation gave us. If we want our adolescent girls to have the freedom to succeed then we need to give them the freedom to fail. Teach a teen resiliency; teach a teen to knit! 

A Peacock in a Snow Storm!

It FINALLY snowed! I was getting worried that vacation would end before there was another storm. Although I usually like my winter weather to come between the hours of 4am and 6am on a school day, I was getting desperate for a light, fluffy snow before heading back to class so I could snap some pictures of my latest knitting projects: neck warmers on fence posts and heavy aran sweaters on husbands leaning against old dodge trucks. I needed the snow cover to mask the depressing brown that pervades a Pennsylvanian winter, and I'm thankful Mother Nature provided just enough. 

I must make two confessions: I'm absolutely obsessed with photographing my knitting projects, and I can't stop admiring the pics once they're posted on Ravelry, Facebook, and now this blog.

Last night, my husband, who was a wicked good sport when I dressed him up and dragged him around for a photo-shoot, told me I was incredibly vain. He just caught me looking at the pictures during the Eagles game for the up-tenth time. Although my gut reaction was to defend my honor, I decided he might be right and then...I embraced the accusation! The fence posts are far more flattering than the alternative: a selfie.  

 

But I wonder...am I, or any knitter who has just finished a project, really peacocking? We knitters turn nothing into something after months, weeks, days, or maybe just hours. The sweater my husband is wearing above started out as 14 balls of brown yarn, two years ago when we wandered into Colorful Stitches, one of my favorite, local knit shops in Lenox, MA, not far from where I grew up. An hour later, we walked out with these 14 balls of British Sheep Breeds chunky yarn and a pattern book: Rowan's Purelife Winter Collection. For a year and a half, the yarn sat untouched, in its bag, while I worked on other projects, but this July, July 29th to be exact, I pulled it out and cast on while we were vacationing on Chebeague Island. A project such as Cartmel Mens is time consuming, and, when we came back from our summer holiday, I stole time in the car waiting for my husband to get a haircut, at school before the students arrived, Sunday mornings before the dog nudged me to go out for a walk and any other time I could manage. I got up early and stayed up late. I worked 20 rows, found a mistake and tore out 10 because I couldn't live with an imperfection no one else would notice. 

This sweater is a thing of beauty: the color, the texture, the weight. I can't stop staring at it because I can't believe I created it. It came from sitting down for endless hours, reading a pattern in a "foreign" language, and rubbing two metal sticks on a wire together while making a whole bunch of knots in a strand of yarn. It came from nothing. It came from designer Marie Wallin. It came from me.  

It's okay to be a peacock in a snow storm when you've created an object of form fitting beauty!