In Memorium: Kathryn Amelia Wilson

After an amazingly full life of 94 years 356 days, my darling grandmother passed away earlier this month. Since this August 15th was to have been her 95th birthday (a milestone any way you look at it), we planned a celebration for her in Freeport, Illinois - her hometown for all of those years. In addition to the little partay the family planned, I designed a shawl for her - a pi (circular) shawl to be named Perseid Shower in her honor, since her birthday always comes at the end of the annual meteor shower of the same name. It has a variety of leafy and starry motifs that take you out from under the shelter of a tree to a starry, meteor-filled sky.

So, this shawl. I cast on at the beginning of July (once we were up in Maine) and immediately had problems. My second chart was wrong, but I didn't realize this until I completed the second repeat. I got frustrated, put the shawl in timeout, knowing I had lots of time until mid-August, and cast on a sweater (more on that later). Fast-forward a couple of weeks, and I know I need to get this show on the road. The charts are revised, and I'm ready to go. Things go pretty well until just after the last increase, when I discover that I'm off by a stitch at the end of the round. Ack! This is when I have 576 stitches on the needle. Five hundred seventy-six. And the yarn is the super-thin and super-duper sproingy Jade Sapphire Lacy Lamb. And the stitches to be tinked alternate between sl1-k2tog-psso and sl2-k1-p2sso. Impossible. Just maddeningly, frighteningly impossible. If you manage to discern the slipped stitch(es), it might work. But the yarn is so fine and sproingy that you're more likely to have stitches slip off the needles and bounce out of the row below. Suddenly you have runners into some pretty complicated lace.

Did I use lifelines? Of course not, because I'm an idiot. But after tinking back what seemed like hours, leaving a raft of coil-less safety pins in dropped stitches in my wake (and only a small fraction of the stitches tinked), I knew something had to be done. So, I bought a gigantic cone of crochet cotton, laid the poor shawl out, stretching it onto two needles, and wove the thread through the last two increase rounds (the inner round was for "insurance" in case something went horribly wrong again). It didn't take as long as I thought it might, and I started to feel better immediately. I also realized that my plan for which lace pattern to use after the last increase needed to change - this whole thing had been Fate/God/Karma/What-You-Will's way of saying I'd made the wrong decision when waffling over the plan at the 576 stage. OK, OK, I'm listening!

That was Wednesday, August 4th, and I spent that Knit Night ripping back to the lifeline and putting the stitches back on the needle. And I have to say I'm pretty proud of my lifeline weaving - I managed to weave all the stitches in the correct row (it helps that it was the increase row: yo, k1 all the way around). I started the new lace plan on those stitches and persevered, knowing I had a car ride from Maine to NYC to put a big dent in the last section before the border and then a few more days for border knitting before blocking needed to happen; I knew such fine yarn would block in a matter of hours.


Unfortunately, that Friday was a flurry of phone calls and messages about my grandmother. She was short of breath and taken to the emergency room. She was admitted to the hospital with fluid in her lungs. They had eased that situation and she was resting, then sleeping, then restless. And, suddenly, she was gone.

Honestly, we were all surprised. She had pulled through many things before; she was a tiny lady by the end of her days (under five feet, though she was half a foot taller in the prime of life - eat your yogurt and take your calcium, ladies), suffering through fractured vertebrae due to osteoporosis, but she was so strong, such a force to be reckoned with that I think we thought she would always conquer whatever health problems arose.

She was gone, and we had to get back from Maine to New York and then out to Northwest Illinois to say goodbye. I worked some more on the shawl on the drive back to New York, thinking I would give it to my aunt or just hold onto it. But the wind had gone out of my sails. It sat in my bag on the plane, and in the car, and on our annual family trip to Wisconsin. It's sitting in there, still. I'll take it out at some point, but it's going to be a while, I think.

There's more going on knitting-wise, and I promise to blog about that "real soon now". In the meantime, if you still have your grandparents in your life, give them a call or stop by if you're lucky enough to live close.

Three out of four generations of Wilson women (Christmas 2009)

FO: Matryoshkas (Pink/Blue and Red/Purple)

My former roomies have two cuties, one of whom arrived this winter. Since you can't give the baby a present without something for the big sister (in the interest of continuing family harmony), it took me a little while to decide what to do (why, when it was obvious what I could knit for two little girls?) and get it done with my own two running around.

I really liked knitting these with colors that are close in saturation - it gave them an almost damask feel. As you can see I changed things up here and there. My laz y daisies were too lazy to contemplate, so the babies are in unadorned clothes. I also knit these on US4s and achieved a denser fabric, which is better for stuffies.

I tried to weigh them as I went along to determine how much of each yarn I used, but I wasn't as diligent as I hoped. However, each main color used less than half a skein per set of dolls and mere scraps of the hair/eye/lips/cheek yarns.

BTW, what do we think of my new camera phone? Far better than my old camera phone, though still not replacing my DSLR. It's a Palm Pre, and I really like it. There was no way we would get iPhones with AT&T's abysmal coverage in NYC. And the Pre can also serve as a mobile hotspot, which is perfect for our time up in Maine, since we don't want to subscribe to a service when we are here so sporadically. Plus going back and forth between the Pre's interface and my iPod Touch keeps me mentally on my toes.

ARAN KNITTING!!!!!!

Did you hear me? Aran Knitting!!! Alice Starmore's beautiful book of cables is being republished by the wonderful people at Dover. Due out 16 September 2010, just a few days after my birthday - what a perfect present to myself :) I've been pondering "keeping" the copy from my parents' public library for years, but now I can be a good girl.

Pre-order yours NOW!

A morning in Brooklyn

There are pictures to upload from today, but we're in the process of packing up to head to Maine tomorrow. However, I just wanted to say that I had a super-inspiring morning visiting American High Style at the Brooklyn Museum (Worth, Schiaparelli, Mme. Gres, Charles James - swoon to Mr. James! - amazing architectural, engineered gowns). They've recently gifted their massive clothing collection to the Met and have some sort of reciprocal arrangement. Anyway, I had to get over there before leaving town, since the show ends 1 August 2010, and I'm so glad I did. Hopefully I'll be able to hit the "sister" show at the Met before we head to Wisconsin in August, since that one doesn't close until 15 August. If you have a chance and are in New York, don't miss! [link]
P.S. Thanks, sweetie, for watching the girls!

Interweave to publish eMags

Interweave is getting into "eMag" publishing. First, they're coming out with a quilting publication. But for the knitters the more interesting news is that they are going to publish a sock magazine online, Sockupied. [link]

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day, Dad (and Nick, of course)!

Doesn't he look great in his Dennis tie? It's not too late to buy a copy of the pattern, though it is too late to knit one for him today. It's quick, but it's not that quick a pattern.

I hope you're having a great Father's Day.

2wksweater Challenge: Wench

So, I decided to follow Kate Gilbert on her two-week sweater challenge (she had to knit up a sample sweater in two weeks for a Twist Collective photo shoot deadline). And between that and work and the kids' school years coming to an end, I haven't had time to blog.

I've had three hanks of Louet Euroflax in my stash since ... 2007? 2006? Quite some time, anyway, and those skeins had fully matured. Originally I had planned to knit the Lacy Skirt with Bows by Kat Coyle out of that yarn, but when I'd swatched on US4s, I actually broke one of my Bryspun needles (they are plastic, so it happens, especially when working with such an inflexible yarn).

But I'd come around to the idea of a sweater (and Kat's skirt is still in my queue awaiting the appropriate yarn - love the combination of lace and ribbon) with this linen yarn, at a larger gauge. With US8 aluminum HiyaHiya needles, I cast on my idea for a drawstring-neck sweater (the sleeve to be precise), and away we went.

Because the linen produces such a drapey fabric, I decided not to include any shaping in this one, so it's really just three straight tubes (in two different circumferences) with eyelets thrown in here and there for drawstrings and raglan lines.

I fell for the picot point cast-off recently while swatching for another project and decided they would add the perfect feminine touch to the edges of this sweater, as well as add a little extra weight to the hem. Right now I have i-cords for the drawstrings but may need to find some pretty ribbon instead.

Here's a quick shot on me. I had just finished the i-cords, so this is pre-blocking, and I hadn't woven in the ends yet. Though the body and one sleeve are washed, the other sleeve, body hem, and yoke were unwashed and still very ... crinkly.

What interested me most was the change in the fabric after washing and drying in the machine (love the low-maintenance sweater!), which you can see in the pictures: one sleeve and the yoke are straight off the skein and the body and other sleeve have been through the machine once. I got a little nervous at one point and decided to wash what I'd knit to make sure my calculations were correct. Now, it wasn't so much that the gauge changed (it did, but only slightly), it's that the fabric completely changed, plumped up, in fact, and smoothed out.

Next time I work with this yarn, I think I'll wash the skeins before I begin to make it more pleasant to work with (lots of dust and dirt that aggravated my allergies). And check out how much lint just half of the sweater generated:

The other interesting thing I learned about linen yarn in my obsessive Ravelry research, knitting, and shopping (J.Crew has a pretty, "dip-dyed" linen sweater) is that this yarn in a stockinette fabric biases a lot. That J.Crew sweater? It was knit up in pieces and seamed; when I tried it on, one of the seams ended up swinging itself across half my torso. Not flattering to this mummy tummy. So, beware the bias, or just embrace it. The little picots at the bottom of the sweater give a little weight to the hem, helping the drape of the fabric.

Pattern and final pictures to come...