Finding Ursula and Spring in the Blizzard 2016

Although Blizzard 2016 didn't break the record set in 1996; with 33" of snow, it was a spectacular event!

Forced to hunker down Saturday and listen to the winds batter the side of the barn, I made the most of it by casting on the Ursula Cardigan from The Colours of Shetland collection. Of the five major patterns in this collection, I've already knit the Stevenson Sweater, using a combination of Shetland wool from Uradale Farm and J&S, and I have the yarn for the Puffin Sweater and the Scatness Tunic. So when Clare, from NH Knits, suggested an Ursula KAL, I jumped!

I absolutely love working with Shetland yarn. It has an earthy smell with "just off the sheep" under tones. While the yarn looks ethereal in the ball, a few rows on the needles reveals its robustness. This is strong yarn meant to protect strong folks from the strong North Sea weather.

Kate Davies's Ursula Cardigan is named after naturalist and author, Ursula Venables. She and her husband became crofters at Loch Spiggie and wrote, what I can only assume is, the definitive book on the birds and mammals of Shetland. As I knit my cardi, I'm reading her 1956 book, Life in Shetland: a world apart

"Up here in the north isles, we live like hibernating animals. We work at fill stretch through the brief months of summer and then retire for a while on our winnings. Shetland is little more than a battered ship riding out in the Atlantic....In October or thereabouts, when the year somersaults into winter, life disappears below into the entrails and cabins, and for days on end you would think the ship deserted. Salt scours the decks, draining off the warm, full-blooded colors of summer till only their neutral ghosts remain." (Venables 133) 

I find inspiration for my Ursula in Venables's description of Shetland. Today, in the midst of this nor'easter, my corner of Pennsylvania feels a great deal like the north isles Venables describes. When I take Mazzy out for a walk, she is swallowed by the snow already on the ground. While she decides how to proceed, I am struck by the stillness- the complete absences of normal animal and human sounds. Instead of the psithurism that usually accompanies Mazzy and I on our daily walks, all I can hear is the pugnacious howl of the wind rising and falling in the our backyard and all I can see is the plump snow flakes falling from the thick clouds blocking out the sun.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Palm_Warbler.jpg

While I haven't chosen "full-blooded colors of summer", my colors suggest spring is just around the corner. I knew right away that I wanted my MC to be J&S 121mix. This yellow looks like the spring adult palm warbler. Easy to spot in the New England woods where I grew up, the chestnut crown of these birds streaks and blends into the yellow throat and belly giving it a marled appearance.

It was also easy to choose CC1 and CC2. While J&S doesn't typically name their colors, there is at least one yarn supplier out there who does. When I saw "rhubarb pie heather", I knew it would be one of my contrasting colors; the name immediately evoked memories of my grandmother's strawberry rhubarb pie- in my family, a sure sign that Spring has sprung! Predictably, a purple, reminiscent of my Japanese irises, is CC2.

Choosing the third color, however, was difficult. I swatched with Jamieson's sunrise. While this is another of my favorite colors, the brown undertones reminded me more of the mud synonymous with approach of spring rather than the stirring of life. Consequently, I pulled out my J&S color card and picked four blues that I hoped would work. Susan, from Raza Wool, shipped them immediately and a couple of days later I was agonizing over which to use. While I spent 45 minutes arranging the colors in value sequence, twisting each blue with the yellow, and taking photographs with the black and white filter to assess contrast; Bill sat down at the table and took approximately 5 seconds to select the blue he thought would work: shade 29mix. According to the little color theory I know, Bill's blue should not have worked, and of course, I promptly informed my husband, who earns his living choosing just the right color for very picky clients, of his mistake. To my inexperienced eye, shade 29mix did not appear to be sufficiently different from 121mix; in fact, when twisted, they blended together leading me to believe that they would not work as pattern and background. I realized my mistake a few rows in with the blue I stubbornly chose. With the third color, shade 29mix, finally chosen, I learned a lesson that I often teach in my psychology class- theory, any theory, is just an idea that should work most of the time but doesn't work all of the time.

ETA: I originally typed this post on my iPad using the blogger app; unfortunately, the app crashed and my work was lost. I have tried to reconstruct the original essence of my post; helped along the air of authenticity Monday's terrible storm provided. The only benefit to my technological kerfunkle is that I am almost finished with my second repeat, and, therefore, able to post a photograph of Ursula further along her journey. I also appreciate getting to show how 29mix behaves. In the photo of the four blues, 29mix is second from the top. It functions well with the yellow, pink, and purple, affirming the arrival of spring!

Goodbye; Hello, Hello

My community radio station starts every morning with the Beatles, and this morning, as Hello, Goodbye played, I was reminded that I haven't stopped to think about where I am with my knitting as 2015 gives way to 2016. So here it is...Overall, I was more productive in 2015 than ever before, completing 17 projects: 9 sweaters, 3 shawls, 2 blankets, 2 socks, and 1 hat.

Two sweaters that I completed in this summer top my list of favorite projects. Isabel Kramer's Daylen is my go to sweater. It's a warm, comfy, slightly oversized sweater knit up in Swan's Island All American Collection, worsted. The colorway is Newport, reminiscent of the dark-blue-black waters of some of my favorite New England beaches. Unfortunately, the key design element, the garter stitch back which flows to the front on congruent angles, doesn't pop with the dark color. I wear this sweater so much, Bill has declared it part of my "uniform". The other sweater topping my list of favorite projects is Mirry-Dancers. This pattern, by Cheryl Burke, can be found in Mary Jane Mucklestone's Fair Isle Style book. It's a yoked pullover, knit up in Jamieson's DK. I stuck to the original colors because it's the gradient against the wine MC that I fell in love with. The sweater fits perfectly, no modifications.

Glad tidings about my progress are, however, undermined by the reality that I also brought home A LOT of new yarn. My stash has grown so much that this year there was more than one trip to Target to buy storage bins and Peace Valley Lavender Farm to buy Moth Away Sachets. I would love to store my yarn in more breathable, better looking bins where texture and color can be enjoyed with all our senses, but I'm so worried about all the little critters attracted to our barn that I'd much rather have moth free yarn than a work of art.

There are as many reasons to stash yarn as there are knitters in the world- I was (notice past tense) stashing yarn primarily for two reasons: to get over a bad day and to prepare for the inevitably lean times that come with big medical bills. I had been embarrassed by my growing stash; however, now that we are one month post transplant and those lean times have arrived, I'm thankful that I have loads and loads of yarn to squish, smell, and shape into beautiful knitwear!

As a result of equal parts choice and circumstance, 2016 will be the year of the STASH! When I first contemplated setting this goal for the new year, I believed it was just another resolution whose life would be cut short almost immediately. Nevertheless, I got it into my head and decided to throw it out into the universe to see if it is possible.

Turns out it just might be! I'm back from Slater Mill's Knitting Weekend having purchased only one skien from Dirty Water Dyeworks: Bertha Sport in the Vermont colorway. Enabled by my new friend, Lynn, who recommended the hat pattern Clamber, I got up from lunch and wandered through the market place looking for the perfect yarn to make this Irish hiking hat. With over 300 yds, there is enough to make matching hats for Bill and I. They will be great for our hiking trip this summer. Perhaps we'll even choose some part of VT's Long Trail...

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.

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!