I am going to take a couple days off.

Everything is fine, but I just realized how long it is since I have had a break.  I am going to put my feet up, water my plants and knit or spin and read and not a whole lot else.  I will be back next week.  F1 should be starting by then and I am so excited.

To Recapture Silence

I have never been one of those people who could lay on a beach or patch of lawn and just sit in the sun.  I may have done it a little when I was a teen, but it is not a natural behaviour for me.  Even while laying about reading, I generally looked for shade.  Maybe it was just training me for now.  I do not do well in heat at all.  I do best, dressed warm, in winter.  The last couple days have been hot and that has pretty much sucked the life out of me.  

I did bake on Monday and did laundry and a few other generic household things that no one counts as work, but should, but yesterday?  Yesterday's extreme warmth and it was just too warm to knit much.  I turned everything off, radio, tv, audio book. I even turned off me. It was the silence of fans and that was enough.  

When we lived at the house, we were surrounded by forest.  The summer world was set to the tune of birds.  You heard the grouse beating their wings in their mating dance.  You heard the cranes call as they rode the air currents.  You heard the robin song in early morning and the whole host of forest creatures moving their way through the day.  You heard the wind softly whisper to the birch at the top of the hill. Farther out on the road you could hear traffic come and go and the trains rumbled, their sound filtered by the canopy of trees and the half mile distance we were from the track.  It was a quiet refuge, and I never wondered that all I ever wanted from life was to be able to just be home.  

With all the changes in my life over the last seven years, that has been the one thing I could never adapt to: being able to sit in silence.  Silence became a sort of enemy because in silence, my mind would wander.  It wouldn't stop and rest.  My brain would go round and round thinking about things that have no resolution or answers, so having background noise had become pretty important.  Lately that need is changing somewhat.  Maybe now, in the time of pandemic, a stressor of unexpected and unknown dimensions, silence will be where I will find calm and peace.  

I am going silent again today to see how it feels.  Time to see if I can reclaim the silence.  

Not Quite Chicken Man

I opted to knit on my pretty shawl yesterday instead of doing anything on that sweater.  I 'should'  be working on the sweater, but I am just not ready to look at the colour problem.  Yup.  I am chicken. 🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓

But knitting on the shawl is pretty darn nice.  I have spoken before about my love of sticky yarns but sticky lace yarns may just be the bees knees of yarn.  I love working with this yarn.

It's moving along nicely.  This will be my knitting today, though I have a few other things I want to accomplish today as well.  

And maybe, just maybe I will sort out how to approach that sweater.  Bawwk bawwwwwwk.  Back.   That is me.  Not quite Chicken Man  but still.  

Before Coffee

Knitting is some weird.  

It has rules that sound arbirtrary but are broken all the time, but shouldn't be like never knit your boyfriend a sweater or never knit when you are drinking.  I may have discovered a new one.  Or one that should be a new one.  It is possible that it only needs to be a new one in my house, but gosh darn it, it should  be a rule.  Never knit before coffee.

I picked up my sock and the first thing that happened was that one of the needles came out of the stitches.  No biggie right?  It isn't all that hard to pick up stitches when they always sit so mannerly and nice.  Everything went back on and things were fine.

Till I got back to the start point, where I found this strand of yarn lying there.  See it just over the stitches on the front?  See the actual working strand cross ways over the sock?  Yeah.  The yarn was tucked over a needle and I didn't catch it after I put the stiches back on.  I started knitting having skipped a side. It could be worse.  The only thing I could do was to rip back the three needles I had knit and go back to the start of that fourth needle and reknit.  

I could have tinked back but I ripped out the needle and picked up the three sides,  perhaps just to torture myself.  It was a decision from before coffee and really, there should not be any decisions before coffee.  Not for me.

I have been avoiding that pretty lavender knitting like the plague to the benefit of other knitting, like these socks and my Shetland style shawl of Ultra.  I realized yesterday afternoon that the rows are starting to feel fast on the shawl, which means I am making good time.  And will probably keep making good time on it.  Who doesn't like to knit things that feel fast?  

I have also been doing a lot of thinking about what makes a sweater a favourite sweater for me.  I pulled out my newest Leisl 

When I was chilly one morning and I realized that this sweater, that I meant to wear as a 'better' sweater saved for when I was out and about or visiting, is something I wear every single day.  And I have no problem wearing it every single day except if you want to have something to wear when you go out it needs to be clean and fresh.  Daily wear is the antithesis of clean and fresh.  I need a different sweater to become my favourite.  

So, it is now time for my second cup of coffee, time to water the plants outside, and maybe some knitting.  Probably more thinking too.   

  

Some days

I am just a bit frustrated.  I didn't really notice it on my last post, but after yesterday's photo taking, I could not go forward.

I couldn't hardly knit yesterday, I was so mad at how very dark it was all of a sudden.  I was so incensed that I found it hard to write about anything.  Part of being incensed is that I should have noticed the day before, but I think I was closing my eyes to it.  

It is inherent to the way hand dyed skeins are that some are darker and some are lighter.  It is part of the reason I love working with them.  I love the gentle changes.  But this isn't a gentle change.  This is sharp.  And when you consider that I am working from two skeins all the way on this sweater, right from the cast on, it is even more frustrating.

I sat down near the end of the day to knit on a sock.

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I finished the heel and is now ready for a bit of a cuff.  I am going to work on this a bit more today.  I would like to get the second toe complete so that it can be knitting I don't have to think to.

And then I have to look  at each skein of the rest of my Tosh DK, to see just what I have to do to make this work.  I have seven skeins, and I shouldn't need them all for this sweater.  I am expecting that it will finish up at about five and a half skeins used.  I should be okay, so long as all the other skeins are lighter.  I didn't really look at the bag with those in yesterday.  I don't remember ever thinking they were so far apart in their intesity before.

There are ways to deal with this.  If I find only light balls, then it is easy.  Hold off the darkest to use in combination on the sleeves and button bands.  If there are two really dark balls, I can hope and pray that I only need five and a half, but I can also use the darkest and knit single rows here and there on the body and go darker more gently as I go down.  If there are three dark balls, I guess I will have to alternate from three or four balls of yarn.  If I have to do four balls, then two will start on either side of the fronts, so that each row is only ever a single row from a single ball.  It could be a bit nightmarish to do this, but it is doable.  If all the rest are very dark, then I will sit down and  have a good cry. 

And I will sit and knit on socks today before I start all over tomorrow and blend the two lightest skeins in where I can and as I go.

A Cheery Sort of Knitting

Several days of mostly knitting on this lovely lovely sweater and it is once again at the point where it is really starting to look like a sweater.  

I am really loving knitting this.  The lace of Carol Feller's Tabouli to keep my attention and Joji's good bones from her sweater design.  

I am also really enjoying knitting this much smaller size.  If this was a sweater for me, I would just be getting to the part where the increases really needed to take off so that the garment hung properly around my hips.  On garments for me, it is the part where I sigh and start dreaming of the next thing because I know how very much knitting there is going to be till the garment is complete.  This sweater for my daughter in law, is so small that if I knit carefully on it for two more days, that it will be where I start measuring to see if it is long enough before I start the lower back hem.  No matter what, this is a speedy knit.

The next sweater is going to be even faster.  It is thick yarn and giant needles again, in a fairly small size.  It might go even faster.  The knitting coming up is just so exciting!

At the same time, there are lots of other things in the wind, things for fall knitting that I can prepare for now, so that when it comes time to knit them, I am ready and waiting.When I was winding yarn the other day, I pulled  for Olga's sweater, I pulled out this yarn.  

I love this yarn.  I have always loved this yarn.  Hacho from Mirasol.  It is one of those multi colour things where each colour section will be only 2 or three stitches long.  It is the kind of thing that requires a simple pattern with good clear lines to show off the magnificence of the yarn.  Or maybe not.  I paused writing for a moment and had a good look at this colourway on Ravelry and I think my favourite is a project in garter stitch.  Very interesting.  

  

Is this going to be the yarn to knit the very intriguing Build a Bigger V from Deb Gemmell?   It might be.  I really am interested in this pattern.  After all who wouldn't be.  It starts with casting on five stitches.  No gauge swatch.  It reminds me very much of the kind of thing EZ did.  Deb Gemmell seems to be putting the knitter in the drive seat and showing us how to be really in charge of our work, just like Elizabeth.  I love that.  

I anticipate a lot of knitting today.  I am going to put a roast on for supper and I am going to knit the afternoon away listening to the most fascinating book.  

I am reading Trevor Noah's Born a Crime, the audiobook version, of course.  It means knitting and reading at the same time, the two things in the world that I love most.  That I am reading it now has nothing to do with yesterday's post.  This book has been on my list since it came out, always there in my wish list.  In truth, I had kind of decided it would be a library listen.  I wasn't sure I would listen to a kind of memoir a second or thrd time, so why purchase it.  There came a point where I just felt no urgency to purchase another mystery and I had the credit waiting so... I am so glad I did.  I will listen again and again, just like I did to Einstein and Leonardo and Nash's biorgaphies.  It is not a book to escape into which is what I usually read.  It is not a book of sorrow or comedy.  He  isn't trying to be funny.  He is just telling stories that are compelling.  Sad, joyful, funny, illuminating compelling stories of a rather unusual life in an unusual time.  I highly recommend it.  

This Is My Soapbox and I Am Going To Stand On It.

I had a terrible day yesterday.  I took issue with an online post and the day ended with me having been called a racist against white people three times, simply because I pointed out that if the post someone shared assumes a group referred to as 'just Americans' to quote the post, are white, that is fundamental a problem.

I am a white almost senior woman.  I know the lady who shared that post, and I know she is not overtly racist, but more unthinking as so many of us are.  And that is a problem.

I know these last few weeks have been challenging.  Very few people could watch the video of Mr. Floyd dying and not know that this is fundamentally wrong.  In all the discussions and reading I have done since then, I came to understand just how much learning I need to do.  Perhaps I was wrong to try to point out what I felt was wrong with that post, but at the same time, I know that saying nothing would have been just as wrong.  By the end of the day, I kind of felt that if people wanted to call me a racist because I took issue with that post, that I waas willing to live with it.

It angered me, I admit that.  It angered me but I couldn't put together better words. 

I felt much better when I found better words.

.  

This is from writer/poet Scott Woods and is a quote from a blog post in 2014.  That post comes from this post on a controversy about an artist's event and this one.  It's a great blog, with much to say and even more to think about and to learn from.  

In everything that went on yesterday, everything I was trying to say, any conversation that we white, past middle aged women were having, has to start from a way different place and that place is, at minimum, that we all have to see and acknowldge what racism actually is.

This was after being blocked on social media a couple weeks ago, by someone I grew up with, for saying that a meme about a cancelled prom and a protest over a murder were two very very different things.  Young people are going to be just fine, having a fancy dress party at a later time in their lives over other successes they have.  Nothing will ever make it fine again for George Floyd and if I had to choose which one to protest about in a time of health quarantine, I am going to protest about the second and I am still going to call the first fluff.  I would have when we were young.  I still will now.  

The problem is that I thought you were someone different.  My bad.  I should not have assumed and in a way I regret wasting time admiring you so much back then.

It has been a rough couple weeks personally, but I am learning a lot about my past and a lot about why I never felt like I fit.  Still admiring you back then is part of what made me who I am.  Funny that it takes till this age to understand it all though.

Anyway, this white, past middle aged woman is going to take some time to learn how to keep the boat of her life scooped out so I don't drown, so I can help teach my grandchildren not to drown.  She is going to knit while doing it and I can say that because this is after all a knitting sort of blog, and she is going to live her ordinary life too, but she...me...I am going to keep my ears and eyes and heart open to learning.

What I can't believe, what I  am so unutterably sad and dissappointed about, is how alone this learning is.

Picking up my soapbox...walking away.

Done with Pondering and Looking great!

All the pondering in the world wasn't going to make it happen. I tried arranging a try on and visit date but weather and circumstance made it not possible.  My other family household needs to take greater than average care with Covid 19 and they have opted for staying quarantined till they see if the numbers stay down.  Besides being a higher risk of problems household, they also work in the city and commute everyday.  I could do an outside visit like I did before and I will once the weather  settles down.  It's been rainy and cool for the last few days.  Pondering and wishing were not going to make the sweater happen. I had to decide.  

I'm really happy with everything here, but it was wide at the underarns.  It has to be wide but there is the comfortable fit wide and then there is too much. Of all the projects on Ravelry, that is the one thing that takes away from this sweater, where the knitter knit too large a size.     

I took into consideration that the pattern has 8 inches of ease built into it and then looked at what I had and thought about Amy's physical self and made the desicion to take out 4 more stitches at each side.  It makes the bit down the arm a little longer but I think the body will fit just that little bit better.   That pretty lace is almost gone and I started over from the underarms.

And got it back to this.

I am about an inch and a half below the little sleeve /arm tab and am once again, well on my way.  I feel pretty comfortable with the size now.  It just looks right and comes closer to where I thought she fit on the patterns size scale.  With a pattern with such generous ease, it is a real dance to get a nice fit.  I can just knit to the pattern now, with the little addition of the Tabouli lace without worry.  It is all straight till you get to that lovely shaped hemline.

I did lots of other stuff this weekend too.  I wound all the yarn for Olga's sweater.  Till now, I had only done what I needed to for swatching.  The whole thing is ready now and I am ready to roll. I knit another inch on my green sweater but my hands need a break from its heavy dense knitting for a bit.

I did a pleasing amount of work on my Shetland Hap

After much deliberating (pondering) and calculating and even a tiny bit of geometry, I decided it was time to start the downside of the centre square of the shawl.  I had just begun the third ball of cream, and measured what I had and started thinking about the whole shawl and the dimensions I did want.  

When I knit Olga's grandmother's shawl, I remember that the lace border and edging were pretty wide. If I recall right, the combination I knit was about 10 inches wide after blocking.  I have tons of yarn for the  feather and fan border, five colours in all plus a touch of cream if it needs that tiny bit of lightness.  I can vary the colour order I use or repat the dark to light to dark pattern several times if I feel the need.  Without blocking at all, my centre will be 43 inches.  If each border and edging combination is even 8 inches wide, the shawl will be almost 60 inches across the corners and I am sure that is going to be plenty.

Starting the downside of this center leaves me with 3 skeins of laceweight to knit the lace edging and that may or may not be enough to get around the whole thing.   If I do the edging I used for Olga's grandmother's shawl, 3 may not quite be enough.  But never fear.  I am pretty sure I have one skein from a class with Nancy Bush deep in the closet somewhere. A possible fourth skein in house!  If not, well, I guess we will order.  

The day waits.  There is baking and soup making and yarn work and all sorts of other goodness to hand.  There may still be time for a nap.  I think all in, the day is looking great.  

Ponder on.

I am sitting here this morning, pondering.  I am pondering the way time moves along ever forward into tomorrow.  I am ponding how my grandkids are growing so much bigger and how they are fast beciming young ladies and gents, no longer little.  I am pondering spinning.

I did some spinning yesterday, playing around with the fibre I washed from raw, carded and cleaned by myself, to see just how fine I could go.  The answer is really, really thin.  It was intriguing and it made me start to ask myself what I wanted from this.

This fibre is kind of important to me.  I want to use it to knit some mittens and a hat from it.  I want it sturdy enough to be able to stand up to the rigors of mitts.  I want it soft enough to feel good around the back of your neck.  So that kind of means spinning with some intent. It was fun playing, but I do have a purpose.  This mornings job is to pull out some books, to do some reading and to see if I can glean some information about how to proceed, with intent.

And this afternoon, I have got to tend to my S 51 to get the footman replaced.  I have had the parts for a while and just never quite got round to repairing it.  It was working with my leather repair of it, but not quite as well as I know it can.  The S51 has been more of a plying wheel for me and man oh man do I have stuff to ply.  There are some lovely yarns to be had in the pile of storage bobbins waiting for plying.  

Time to get moving.  The day started slowly and late, and with all the pondering, lunch time approaches.  I had better get a move on it before I end up pondering the day away.**

**Not that pondering a day away is bad.  I love to do that.  But just not today.

***Gee, pondering gets expensive.  I ordered a new drum carder.  It is going to be much more useable than my current one.  Which I will keep for a bit just in case.

Unexpected.

After another good day knitting on the green coat, my hand neeeds a break.  Big needles and densely packed yarns remain a bit hard on my hands.  So today, I am opting for something else.

Exciting news.  I am having some comapny today.  With the slight relaxing of restrictions here, Cassie and Marcus are coming for a visit.  We will be part of each others larger family cohort of up to 15 people.  Technically, that starts tomorrow, but their mom has an opportunity for some firefighter work today at the new training facility in Chipman.  I am not sure how that will work with my other family, but we are working on that.  Sloppy kisses are still missed so very much by this grandma from that place in my heart.  

Today does mean a few complications.  I have had to organize a place for Cassie to work because she does have school and this afternoon, a pretty important bit of school and she needs to work with her classmates on it.  I will have to stay fairly close too, to make sure she isn't goofing off on her tablet and that she is participating.  

So today might be good to give some spinning a try.  It is generally pretty quiet to do, and can easily be done in the kitchen.  

But it promises to be a good full day of work and visiting and general enjoyment of my company.

Stuff and Nonsense

Today has been odd so far.  I had a terrible sleep and just couldn't settle down to any one thing.  The upside of that and there is always an upside, is that while I couldn't settle to spinning, I did fix my little problem the wheel was having.

I did a little spinning the other day, from the very large bag of fleece that I washed and carded right from the raw fleece.  I would love to get that whole bag spun up to be part of my stash dash totals.  I did a bit and found that something kept hitting together making a wobble on the wheel.  At first I thought it was the susal wobble, and just needed something tightened.  Sometimes the flyer isn't set quite right, sometimes the bolts holding things together.  On checking, everything was good.  Nothing was out of alignment, nothing was out of place.  Weird.  I set it aside to just knit.

The other day, when I moved the wheel so I could sweep that corner, it was all sitting just so and the serendipity fairy took over my world.  The brake has a tiny peg that holds the brake band in place and that tiny peg was sticking out much higher than it ought to, and, when the brake was turned to the place where the pullup was perfect, that little peg was hitting the arm of the flyer as it spun around.   

The peg is now set in properly and voila, no more noise and no more wobble on the wheel.  Whoddathunkit.  I will remember to check this every once in a while.

See that little peg?  Seated perfectly.

I also picked up my coat this morning.  After yesterday's happy try on, and great day knitting on it,

I am so encouraged to knit more on this.  Knitting sweaters that are a comfortable fit for me is not a small proposition.  Knitting a coat to fit the way a proper coat should fit and knitting it long enough is much more intimidating. It has to have enough room in it to fit over your regular garments.  It is a lot of knitting on big dense wool.  For a very long time, it felt like I wasn't getting anywhere. It was hard to enjoy knitting it.  

A couple rows here and there over a long while and yesterdays good long knitting session has taken it almost to the waist.  I should be able to get it done before this winter.  Just think!  Only two winters late! 😵    

My head is still very sluggish, and even coffee isn't working very well, so this afternoon I am going to have a good nap, but until then, the coat is getting my full attention.  I have two and a half balls more of green for the body and I intend to burn through that like nobody's business. and then it is only the grey to go.  

Green Coat of Love

I understand that not everyone is a sweater knitter.  I do hope though, that non sweater knitters keep trying to knit a sweater that fits.  Why?  Because there is nothing like that moment when you pop the sweater over your head and it fits all the places it should and has marvelous ease where it should have ease.

I dug out my green coat, my attempt to knit an outerwear garment for winter that fits better than any expensive purchased coat can and that that is a bit tidier looking than the many layers if wool I have worn the last few years.  I tried it on and O.  My.  Gosh.

It is going to work as I hoped.  Whether it looks like what I hope is still at issue and I won't really know till it is complete, but for now it looks great, it fits great and I am energized.  Very energized.

Just a Little Twitchy

I feel a little twitchy this morning.  While some might say it is the coffee, I know better.  It's just that I now have to wait for a few days on something that could otherwise be one of. those sweaters that I burn through.  Amy's sweater is far enough that it is time for her to do a try on.  Arrangements for it are being made today. I think it will be good as is but I want to be sure before I move ahead.  Goodness it is fun to knit that little Tabouli lace. I could knit that all day.

So, what shall I knit on today?  I have a light fluffy Phildar Light sweater on the go that might be due for some work.  It is probably time for photos too.  It is much farther along that the last photos show.

Or maybe not though I think it got a healthy day of work after this picture was taken.  The other thing I am thinking of working on is my wristwarmers.  I don't have a decent picture of them.  

I may also keep working on my hap shawl.  I just would like to know if I am going to have to order more yarn.  Or not.  I said I made up my mind, but a few days have gone by since I thought about it and I really don't know.  I guess deciding will happen when I am faced with a decision.  And if!

Reading this all over, and I sound twitchy.  Exactly like I feel.  I am a little at loose ends today.  I feel a wee bit restless and kind of twitchy, like I know there is a race coming but I am stadning at the starting line a day too early.  It will sort itself out.  I just have to begin.

 

Almost a Sweater

There is an almost sweater happening here.

I am very pleased about that.  Even better, it looks as if I have the sizing correct this time.  

To be sure I am planning to take this to her for a try on before the end of the week.  It is time for a visit with my little boys and my big guy too and maybe even their dad!  But my eye is telling me that it could be close.

The interesting thig about a garment like Lipstick is that it doesn't need to be perfect.  It is desingned with 8 inches of positive ease so there is a fair bit of leeway.  At the same time, you can still make it too big so that it hangs kind of sloppy looking.  I don't think that will be the case here.  I have a feeling and boy, do I hope the feeling is right.  

Still, if fit can be improved, it will be.  It will give me a chance to do a bit of tweaking on design features.  Now that I am working on the body, I have lots of time to think. That thinking time, made me realize, I missed a little something that I really would have liked to do.

The original Lipstick design has a little twisted rib, 2 stitches wide running all down the center front at the edge of the reverse stickinette section.  I have done that twisted stitch on the fronts but I didn't even think of it on the back.  The fronts were natural because it is part of the pattern but Lipstick doesn't have a reverse stockinette section on the back.  Tablouli's lace detail had reverse stockinette at the sides of the lace section to help the lace stand out from the main fabric, and it would have been a nice little additional detail, if I had done the twisted stitches to mark the edges along the back too.  It would make my blend of Lipstick and Tabouli perfect. It's a little far now to dorp all the stitches and redo it, but if I had to reknit to make it fit better, I would change it in a heartbeat.

Once again, I am really enjoying knitting this Joji Locatelli design.  It is just so much pleasure making this neat fitting yoke.  Yes it is drop shouldered but fitted drop shoulders.  Yes it has generous ease, but fitted generous ease.  It is just such a pleasure watching the magic happen.

And it makes me want to knit another of my own.  I have another inch and maybe two to knit on the body before it will be ready for a try on.  It is all joined up under the sleeves, but a little longer will make it easier to really judge the fit.  I might be able to see it already, but I don't think she will just yet.  

So my day is all set for knitting, or it will be as soon as I get my buns in the mixer.  Fresh buns for lunch.  Yum, and good knitting.  Even yummier and with fewer calories!

Feeling Good About the Knitting

You know that part of yesterdays post where i said it left me with more energy?  Ha.  I napped.  I had a short nap in the morning, then one late in the afternoon and napped again after supper, when I went to bed where I fell  asleep so fast that I don't even remember the book beyond what was read before I sat down on my bed.  (audiobook)  The trick of it was that after my seriously fun day, I only slept about three hours that night so yesterday was catchup sleep.  We all know that catch up sleep is not at all as good as our regular routine sleep.  I guess I played catch up sleep all day long.

I did get some knitting done though and I am very pleased to report 

that I am just about to begin the front shoulders.  The really interesting thing about knitting Lipstick is that you don't have to knit very long to get to the correct arm length.  You measure it along the edge of your work and for even the largest size, you only knit so it is long enough for your upper arm.  In the case of this sweater, five and a half inches.  Your underarm will have plenty of space as you go along on the body and not only will it fit, it will fit well.  It is such a good construction for so many kinds of bodies.

I do hope to get both fronts completed today.  I would love to see some substantial knitting done by the time the weekend is over.  There really isn't any reason for this, other than how much I am enjoying this yarn and this pattern.  What a great feeling it is to feel good about where pattern and yarn are, and with gauge.  It is just fun and a relief.

I wore my chunky Leisl yesterday and oh my.  

I had forgotten how snuggly and cozy it is.  It makes me all the more eager to knit what I have planned for Olga. (It's up next!) I am going to knit it in the same yarn in a rich deep olive.   It just feels so cozy to wear!

Anyway, that is it for today.  Lots of good things on my mind.  Keeps the sorrows not at bay, so much as in proprtion.  There are bad people, there are people who do bad things, there are good people and people who do good things.  Work to correct the bad, focus on where the good needs to be.

The problem of the shawl

Well, this is interesting.  After many years, there are some very different things on the blog platform.  That is ok, because I hope that means it remains a valid supported thing.  I couldn't do without the blog.  Onwards.

This morning, I picked up the shawl to work on.  I took a photo but quickly realized that this kind of shawl has a display problem.  I can only show you from its earliest inception

To its latest.  It looks the same.  It only looks larger than it was in the last picture because I have shown all the photos of it together.  

I know it is growing.  I am midway through ball number two and I know that it is growing against the length of my needle so I am good with that.  But it doesn't do a whole lot for photography.  It remains plain, through a great deal of knitting.  It only get exciting for a moment at the midpoint and then again, when the edging and borders start.  I am looking forward to that.  

I have also comitted myself to making a shawl of a good size, even if that means I have to order more of the cream yarn, even if it means a lot more cream yarn.  A too small square shawl just isn't good and I really really do want this to be square.

I am going to knit on Amy's sweater today.  I didn't get to it at all yesterday.  The entire day did not go the way I thought it would, but that is okay.  What I did do was fun and interesting and it leaves me to move forward today with a lot of energy.

I am going digging in the sweater chest today.  It is chilly and promises to be wet and not a lot warmer as the day goes on.  A good warm sweater is needed.  I am pulling on the warm socks too.  It is just one of those days.  

Difficult Things

The last days have been difficult in so many ways.  My knitting seemed to reflect everything else.

After the weekend plus Monday of good work on Amy's sweater, and after measuring and calculating and closing my eyes to the facts, I knew that this pretty piece of knitting, was not going to work to get what I wanted.

If you look hard at one shoulder, you can just see the needle cable, sitting there after I had picked up stitches for first front.  As much as it was difficult to bear, I had to accept that the neckline was too wide and the shoulder saddles were not nearly long enough for the dropped shoulder I wanted, nor were they short enough for a fitted shoulder.  They were smack dab in the middle of "looks too big".  Looks too big is a critical flaw no matter what else you do, and I knew that I had to rip it all back.

My concerns for how to make sure the dropped shoulder was at the right place made me decide to leave the saddle shoulder plan behind and to use the Joji Locatelli's Lipstick pattern to get that critical width right.

My yarn and needle and the gauge I liked are just slightly smaller than Lipstick is written for but that is not a deal breaker.  I sat down and did the math, and I cast on and knit all morning, and then

just as I finished the lovely twisted rib part of the shoulder, I realized that I had a smaller yarn and smaller needles and I had picked a smaller size to knit to get the right fit.  This is completely opposite from what needed to happen for this sweater.  I needed to knit a larger size to get the right size.  Dummkopf  

After a good lunch, I ripped that all out and started yet again.  I redid the math, picked the correct size and I knit my heart out.  I knit and by tea time the back shoulder was complete.  I stopped for a good long while to decide if I still wanted the lace panel in the back or if I wanted the sweater to be a full on Lipstick.  

I took out my copy of Twisted Stitch Knitting by Maria Erlbacher.  I debated changing the lace panel to a twisted panel, more in line with the shoulders twisted rib.  I do love knitting twisted stitches.  I couldn't find what I was looking for there (not that I knew what I was looking for) so I pulled out Omas Strickgeheimnisse, by Betta Krön Erika Eichenseer, Erika Grill.  This is a lovely book of particularly striking stitches, few of which are in any of the other stitch dictionaries I have.  I do consider this book as required for a good knitter's library.  It comes with a booklet of translations for the symbols used even if all the text is German.  You will be fine but I digress.  I did find a few things that did exactly what I wanted, twisted stitches, a little bit of lace, pretty but not heavy, but they would have required too many stitches for the panel width I hoped for.  

This morning finds me here, with the Tabouli lace panel well established and moving along just fine.  I feel completely confident that this sweater is now going to be exactly what I wanted for Amy.  I have just a few more rows to knit before I put the back section on hold while knitting the fronts, but I feel pretty good about where it is all headed.     

Now about these last few days:   When I was in my teen years, the American Vietnam war was raging.  Protests and marches were everywhere and all the time.  I saw how, even in Canada, which did  not officially participate in the war, we were all affected by the things that were going on in our neighbours to the south.  You cannot live next to a giant nation, so heavily populated without feeling something or without being affected by it in a thousand different ways.  

The last few days have been hard to bear, hard to watch, and it just breaks my heart.  This is so much worse than that useless war and tears the very fabirc of who and what they are as a nation.  I worry.  I don't worry for me, but I have these grandchildren whom I love with everything I am and I do not want them to have to live next to a giant at war with itself.  I want that giant to begin to learn how to be better at people and to care less about things.  I need that giant to do this.  I need my own nation to do that.

There is so much...but this place, this blog, is my place to say things.  This blog is not about to become full on political, but it will be a place where I will take a stand when I need to take a stand.  I want everyone to know that I stand on the side of laws where authority cannot murder and rules and regulations apply equally to every person in the country, no matter their office or creed or race.  I stand on the side of civil disobedience, where the law is meant only to oppress.  I stand on the side of doing what needs to be done systemically to stop that oppression.  

The focus is small here at Needles and Things, worlds have fallen apart before and the blog begun so long ago as a placeholder, shouting out that I am and I exist in this world, remains as always, a tool to help me make my way.    

blackouttuesday

This is kind of how I feel today.  Add to this bewildered, sad, sorrowful and fed up that things are this way again and that my neighbor to the south has failed yet again.  

I do not give my own nation a passing mark. We have troubles to resolve but every so often there are signs that it is working, that some things are changing for the better and that we are taking two steps forward and one back most of the time.  I hope.

Today and every day, I stand with those who are not treated equally under the law. I stand with people knowing that things might break but that there is not one THING that I would not trade for the life of a person.    

Where are you?

I'm just popping in quickly to say that I did get a good start on Amy's sweater.  It's very different than winging it when knitting for me.  I can just try it on but this?  This is kind of hard to tell where I am and I can only hope that it all works out.  I can only jusdege against my Knitter's Handy Book and against my best guess as to where she fits.  But I may try to do a visit once I get the shoulders finished.

My big goal for today is to get the livingroom tidied up and to fix the footman on my S51.  I have planned this a few times now, but it has never actually happened.  I'd like to put to that clearing of the bobbins too so that I can tend to my spinning goals for stash dash.

So that is where I am at today.  Where are you?