Accessorize, Accessorize, Accessorize

Blogging is tough with the really BIG projects- the progress, slow and steady, is not just underwhleming to write about but also underwhelming to photograph. Luckily, I've worked on some smaller, accessories during socktober and woolvember. 

The Cursed Cable Socks have certainly lived up to their name:

This is the 2015 attempt at these socks, all in Sweet Georgia Tough Love Sock Autumn Flame and each with its own problem: pair #1 the stripes on the foot were spaced differently from the stripes on the calf, pair #2 needed a gusset to go around the ankle but I didn't know about gussets yet, pair #3 (the 2015 pair) got its gusset but after one wearing the cuff lost its elasticity. While I'm not giving up on wearing them or the possibility of making another pair of socks, I am giving up on this pattern. I am also reading up on the perfect sock fit. To the last point, Kate Atherly's Custom Socks book has a prominent place on my nightstand. 

Here in Pennsylvania, old man winter is trying to decide what kind of house guest he will be for the next 4 months. So far, I've found him to be incredibly indecisive; we've had a slew of warm days this November. I am, however, anticipating a biting chill in December, and it is in that spirit that I finished another accessory for my feet: Kate Davies Buachaille Baffies. 

Everything about these house slippers is wonderful! They were a super quick and fun knit; I was able to knit one complete baffie during an Eagles football game! As an extra bonus, there is a clean, earthy smell to the buachaille wool…lovely! I think buachaille is now for sale on Kate Davies website. 

To round out my month of accessories, I worked on the baa-ble hat sans pompom (thank you, Pat for passing alone this Shetland Wool Week project) While it's done and already worn, I am considering adding a fleece lining. I really prefer a snug fit, and, after wearing it twice, I've decided I was a bit over-aggressive with the blocking. Stay tuned for an update...

So what's next? As usual, my December knitting consists of finishing up Bill's Christmas sweater. I'm still slogging away on last year's sweater (St. Olav and his men), but I am determined to get the 2015 sweater finished before our surgeries, December 16th, so that Bill will have it for Christmas and his 8 week recovery. Without revealing too much, because Bill occasionally reads the blog, I will say that the 2015 Christmas sweater is light weight enough to wear while we recover at our friends' house (his wife lets him set the thermostat higher than 60), has a splash of color, and is made from woolen spun yarn with a social conscious. 

I have lined up my R&R projects while I recover from the transplant surgery. Although my incisions, as the kidney donor, will be smaller and should heal in time for me to return to work after the Winter Break, I've been told working on a large knitting project will be uncomfortable... 'Tis the Season of the Shawl! Here are a few of the yarns waiting to be turned into squishy, warm, neck goodness: 

Starting clockwise at 11 o'clock: Prado de Lana's Lincoln Longwool (white ball), Ginger's Handdyed Wensleydale (two greens), Baa Ram Ewe's Dovestone (slate blue), Tosh Merino Light (daffadil), Queensland Llama Lace (two browns), and Green Mountain Spinnery Mewesic (brick red)

Stopover

My enthusiasm for Mary Jane Mucklestone's new pattern, Stopover, is fanatical! MJ wore this sweater during our 2014 Shetland trip and teased us with the promise of writing it up. Fast forward a year...to our mini-Shetland reunion and another promise that the pattern's release was in fact forthcoming. And then, it happened...Stopover showed up in my pattern highlights, and I was off to by yarn!

Why so much elation and, quite frankly, twitchy voraciousness about this pattern?

1. Color...the possibilities are endless. Here's just a few of the dozen swatches I knit up...

    

So many different looks can be achieved with a small number of colors. I knew right away that I wanted to use Rust Heather, and I played around with five or six other colors in various combinations before deciding on my palette: 

black sheep (52), rust heather (9427), stone blue (9418), and light beige heather (86). 

2. Versatility...on our Shetland trip, MJ wore this sweater everywhere, even sheep shearing! 

I've made some beautiful handknit sweaters but none that can go with me from teaching in the classroom to coaching on the field hockey field to paddling around the lake. 

3. MaryJane...I've taken quite a few technique classes with a variety of designers; MJ is the best! Passionate, knowledgable, nurturing, MJ works the classroom with humor and fluidity! 

Who wouldn't want to wrap themselves up in an MJ Mucklestone original! 

4. Quick and easy... "A modern Icelandic style lopapeysa worked at loose gauge for a deliciously lightweight garment. Stopover is knit entirely in the round with subtle waist shaping." Once I stopped swatching and started knitting, Stopover was finished in a week. The pattern is easy to follow and the Lopi Lite is much softer than I imagined, with the most amazing bloom. I wore it to my field hockey game the morning I finished. It was a cold and rainy fall day; I was definitely the only one warm, dry, and stylish on the sidelines! 

I'm so happy with my Stopover that I told Clarie, from NH Knits, I'd like to offer a pattern giveaway! I think she'll be putting out details in her next podcast, so stop over and have a listen! 

Inspiration is All Around!

I often look toward nature and the man-made environment around me for inspiriation with my knitting and journey through life. Knitting and nature have become key to slowing down, looking more closely at the landscape that envelops me, and sitting in silence while my mind and body sink beneath the surface of things. Knitting with nature is how I take control over the nasty emotional stuff that can bogg me down and stifles my free spirit.

I just finished Gudrun Johnston's Hansel Hap as part of the Knit British Hap-a-long. I experienced some pretty major struggles, all entirely my own making, while knitting this hap, but they're all part of the story I'm trying to tell in today's blog post.

My first struggle was the very nature of a KAL (knit along). I do not do well with schedules or deadlines. They seem too artifical to me, and it's that artificallness that takes away from the purity of purpose and absolute joy of the project. I want to work at my own pace, picking up and putting down projects when my inner voice speaks to me. So of cource, once started all I wanted to do was break free from the opressiveness of the deadline. The irony, of course, is that I would never have made a hap if it was not for the KAL. Traditionally, the hap was an everyday shawl worn by Shetland women, often as they performed a task essential to their survivial such as gathering dried peat blocks for fuel. Today, the hap is frequently gifted to an expectant mother to bundle her newborn.

My second struggle was my color choices. For inspiration, I looked to one of my favorite old Bucks County buildings: Stover-Myers Mill.

One might say this building is brown, red, and white. When you sit in still silence, however, one's eyes start to pick up on the oxford and heron greys. When the sun, whether rising or setting, is just the right height, the hints of brown in the red become more pronounced and one starts to see madder. All the while the flukkra white around each window stands broad like a sentinel. While I was absolutely sure of the colors I wanted to use, the order in which to arrange them was a quagmire.

Oxford (the darker grey) was always going to be my main color. At first, however, I choose color sequence B. There were two effects under this arrangement that I tried but simply could not live with, no matter how still and silent in nature I sat.

Although the greys (oxford and heron) appeared to be suffienciently different on my color card, they blended into a single color when knit sequent. I tried sitting with it outside in the garden so that hap was bathed in natural light. I tried sitting with it in our great room at various hours of the day to see how the value changed with the sun's natural rhythm. I tried sitting with it in purely artifical light. No matter where or how long I sat, I could not make peace with the relationship between the greys. My immediate solution, purchase another grey, was both short sighted and violated my personal creed of conscious consumerism: "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without". Faced with a moral crisis, I balled the hap up and threw it in a chair...its future unclear. Adding fuel to the fire, was the flukkra in the position of CC2 and sunrise as CC4. Four rows of snow white was overpowering and only two rows of the chesnuty red was not enough to turn down the brightness of the madder. So the hap sat abandoned while I went off to Maine.

Time, space, and a good friend got me moving forward again! Talking my hapliemma through over a gin and tonic one evening with the loons on Lake Androscoggin in the background, Alice made the simple suggestion of switching color sequenece. With color sequence A and an inversion of my arrangement, I found hap(piness) again!

Following the old shale pattern was another tricky spot. Although a simple combination of stitch repeats, the stitch sequence requires one to be fully present in the moment and in the task. Being present, clearing my mental mechanism of the clutter that stifles my sparkle is what I love about and sometimes need in a pattern. While I always have a mindless project on my needles, one that requires nothing more from me than switching on to autopilot, there are moments when I need a task that is so absorbing I can let go of the impuslive and hurtful email a parent sent criticizing a decsion I made in class, the helplessness of just waiting for a call from the transplant center with news of a kidney for my husband, the sadness and lonlieness I still feel more than a year after loosing my grandmother, or the crushing physcial pain of wanting children and the heartbreak of having to accept that we'll live a life without their laughter. When I could let go of the feeings of failure and loss unfairly dealt by nature, I made my way through the shell lace section of the border with the ease one always experiences when living in the moment. When I couldn't let go, when I played the story over and over again in my head...when I sat, quitely sobbing with my knitting on my lap...disaster with every YO, K2tog, or SSK. All told, I probably knit the hap shell lace border two, maybe three complete times before finishing and moving on to edging.

Yes, inspiration is all around, and knitting, nature, and now my finished hap are an important part of my meaning quest through life.