The Knitter’s Life List: a quick book review

Steege.Gwen. The Knitter’s Life List. North Adams, MA: Storey Publishers, 2011.

Recently I borrowed The Knitter’s Life List by Gwen Steege from my local library.  For knitters who don’t immerse themselves in knitting TV shows or Interweave products, this is a great overview of the who’s who and what’s what of knitting.  I was very proud of how much I was already familiar with.  When I gave it a closer look, I realized that it was a great book for inspiration and information.

But let me tell you about my first glance.  No one makes life lists for me.  I am so independent that I usually don’t like books that tell me where to travel or what to do.  I have always had plenty of my own ideas.  Often I look at must-do lists only to see how much I have already done.

To give Steege full credit, each section has a place for the owner of the book to add to his or her own list.  The author really only meant it as a starting place.  There are a few things in the book that I will never try, just as there are some foods that I will never try and some daredevil things I will never do.  After spending more time with the book, I know that I will go to the book again when I am in a what-shall-I-do-now mood.  I may take it off  shelf and glance through it and leave it there, or I may take it out again to get a several fresh ideas for my knitting.

Everyone should have a life list for his or her hobby.  I already had one going.  On the expensive end, I would like to scout knitting delights in Ireland and Peru and Iceland, and then run tours for others.  No, not all in the same trip.  One country at a time.  On the less expensive end, I want to master sock knitting and knit myself a clapotis.  I have had the joy of teaching one knitting class, but I would like to teach more people to knit.

For this week’s new thing, I have cut strips of newspaper so that I can spin some paper yarn.  Then have to be dampened before they are spun.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

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Busy Hands

Grandma Derbenwick’s lap blanket on the needles

close up

Here are some bits and bobs that haven’t made the blog yet.   On Saturday  March 2 I taught my first knitting class at Culture Stock, a used bookstore in downtown Aurora.  I had a wonderful time testing my methods and my two students left doing the knit stitch.  It turns out that they had purchased a few things from me at the Aurora’s Farmer’s Market.  Cool.  They put the muffatees they bought on the baby as leg warmers.  Fun.

Twice I have had the pleasure of joining the women at Esther’s Place in Big Rock for their Guild Meeting.  It begins with a delicious potluck meal.  Then we worked on our projects.  Natasha, who runs Esther’s Place along with her mother Donna are both delightful women.  In addition to the store they raise animals for fiber and Donna has a CSA.  Thea is a spinner and a teacher at a local Waldorf School.  Elise is into infinity scarves.  Thea, Elise, and I live on the west side of Aurora.  I was pleased to meet all these  amazing women who also adore the fiber arts, and I look forward to meeting others who attend the Guild mtgs.

This lap blanket gets its own paragraph and two photos of it when it was still on the needles.  I was honored to be asked to knit a lap blanket for sister-in-friend Laura’s 101 year old grandmother in eastern PA.  I hope it keeps her cozy and the light colors–suggested by Laura–are more like spring than winter.  It has already arrived in PA.  It was 128 stitches across.  Every other row was all knit stitches making it fast to knit.  For the patterned row I used stitch markers to mark the changes so there was very little thinking involved indeed.  I have heard that Laura’s father who commissioned the lap blanket and Grandma Derbenwick  both love the blanket.  I’m so glad.

I have an order for filet crochet valances.  The next step there will be getting measurements and experimenting with swatches.  My friend Wanda and I have set things up to make it as simple as possible, and not use the finest thread.  Even with that, it will take quite some time.  These valances will go to New Jersey to a very Dutch home.  Not only do I have plans to make the valances, I plan to visit them sometime after they have been hung.  She was in Holland from the 12th to the 22nd of Feb.  Apparently machine lace curtains with windmills on them have gone out of style there.

My regular gauge is 16 stitches to 4 inches on size 5 needles.  This fall there was a large donation of knit and crochet magazines from the widower of a woman who lead a knitting group at the library.  At 10 cents a magazine, I wiped out her collection of Interweave Knits.  They are housed on the closed off back porch in cardboard magazine holders.  Several weekends ago I brought the magazines into the from the unheated porch to the warm living room and marked every pattern that I liked that called for a gauge of 16 sts to 4 in.  In the meantime, I saw a pattern for small knit bears.  I’ve knit three and finished one.  Seems like another good way to use up leftover yarn.  They are a smidgen cute, but most of the rest of the world likes cute.

Not fiber related, my DH, DS and I went to a wonderful concert at the City Winery (Chicago).  The guys have been to the CW before and knew I would like it.  We heard Greg Brown and Bo Ramsay.  I was the third chair from the stage.  The sound was just right, and the musicians were at their best.  I started going to see Greg Brown when I was still in college in Iowa City.  I have been a fan of his since the early 80’s.  I have shared a journey with him through his music.

Wee bears

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Charity Yarn Bomb

Marie sporting my scarf

Last Tuesday was 19 degrees with a wind chill of ZERO.  Horrible wind.  I did something I have wanted to do for months.  I made a scarf and put in on the statue of Marie Wilkinson in front of the main branch of the Aurora Public Library downtown.  I nearly froze my fingers taking a few pictures.

Yarn bombing is covering something public–tree, bench, statue with something knit or crocheted.  I have always wanted to do some.  I am thinking about covering the frame of the old Schwinn in our side yard.  The bike has been gold, then red.  It’s time for another change.

I made this unusual scarf from the pattern Leethal Orthogonal scarf.  Here is a link to the pattern:  http://www.leethalknits.com/patterns/FREEorthogonal.html

It is a modular pattern.  The direction changes every section and connects without seaming.  Or rather you connect it as you knit.  It was fun to do.  When I read that the pattern, it specified it should only be sold for charity.  As a result I decided to knit one and put it on the statue of  Marie.  I always feel so sorry for her sitting out all winter.  I hope one of the homeless people inside the library found it and took it.  It did have a note on it that said “take this if you need it.”  Although I used up some very odd colored scraps of yarn, my DH assured me that someone would like it.

No, I didn’t drive by again to see if it was gone.  I had faith that someone would find it–even though it was too windy and cold for any smokers to be outside.  I specifically chose a day that was cold but not wet.  I will probably make some more scarves for Marie over the years.  Here is a little about Marie Wilkinson written when she was 91.  She lived to be 101.  http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/May2002/Feature1.asp

my orthogonal scarf

close up of crazy scarf

March is almost here.  Plenty of time for more yarn bombing!

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A Boob hat!

Original hat

My version of the boob hat

These funny little hats for nursing babies are all the rage.  I have a friend who is a doula.  She knows lots of nursing babies and their mothers.  I made this for her to give as a present.

There are many patterns out there.  The very first one I saw was crocheted.  After some days of research, I took the best bits of several patterns to come up with this knit version.  I am quite happy with it especially since there are no lines of decreases on the main color.   I think the patterns in crochet and garter stitch are too lumpy to represent skin.  The best features of my hat:  stockinette stitch and three colors.

Please consider me your source for all your Breast/Boob hat needs.  I can make them in your choice of colors in sizes from newborn to adult.

My spinning wheel is fully operational as of tonight.  A big thank you to my shy friend Mr. Fix-It.  I will have more to report about spinning soon.

My DS and his friends played music at Culture Stock downtown on Saturday evening.  A talented young lady was giving henna tattoos.  I have a henna tattoo on the top of my right hand that is a cross between a snowflake and a sunburst.  Just the thing for February.  Our friends Bill and Deb came out and we had a great time with them.  We even had our own sitting area with a couch.

I will be teaching a beginning knitting class on March 2 at 2 pm and another on March 5 at 5:30 pm at Culture Stock.  If you are local, and don’t know how to knit, I invite you to join us.  If you don’t want to learn to knit, you can come and check out their selection of used books and say hello to me.

DS is keeping us very busy.  This morning he was honored, along with all students who had a 4.0 GPA last semester, at a breakfast at school.  He has some school concerts coming up.  And this weekend he will be a waiter at the Lombardo Bistro at church.  I get the feeling that things are going to speed up from the next concert until his graduation on May 19.

Stay warm.  Battle cabin fever.  Enjoy the days growing longer.

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Great scarf pattern for using up odd balls (of yarn, not people)

I have finished knitting a favorite stash-busting scarf.  It is a narrow knit version of a ripple afghan.  Because it has many stripes, it is possible to incorporate some wild colors into the same scarf, even thought this isn’t a strong example of that.  One this one, I started with black, worked halfway, did another black stripe and then mirrored the stripes back to the end.  It’s a great way to eat away at those single skeins that I have been given or just seem to be hanging around.  People who are not homeless like this pattern, and I hope the homeless person who chooses this scarf will really like it.  It hope it is comforting as a mini-afghan.  Tomorrow I plan to weave all the tails in–two per stripe.

Here is the link to the zig(zagged) scarf, if you would like to make one:http://bitsandbobbins.com/blog/2007/03/18/zigzagged

Here are two pictures my DS took of himself in his Christmas hat.  2.000 words and then some.

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2013: Make it happen

photo: http://www.designsponge.com

 

2013 Make it Happen.  I saw that out there in Cyberia and really like the idea.  I was lying in bed not falling asleep and so I turned my thoughts first to knitting and then to Make it Happen.  There are many things that must happen this year.  Instead I found it more fun to turn my mind to deciding if there is a place near or far that I would like to see again, or if this is a year to go to one of those places I have always wanted to visit.  I can think of places not very far from here in both categories.  What will you make happen?

The twelve days of Christmas are over.  Epiphany is past.  The tree comes down today.  I will miss those lights.

I have been studying sock making.  I have several books and a DVD from the library plus info from the internet and YouTube.  Since I often have to adjust the numbers on patterns for my loose gauge, I have now learned the formula for doing short rows on the heel turn no matter what the number of stitches is.  That is what I really needed to know.  I will report further on how it works.  Many things in knitting are amazing and mysterious until one learns how to do it.  All summer long people told me, “I don’t have the patience to knit.”  Maybe not.  I don’t believe it.   But since I want to sell what I knit, I say, “Let me knit for you.”  I had a male colleague who learned to knit because he enjoyed watching me knit, and because it would bother his father-in-law.  In one conversation we had about knitting I said, “It’s a matter of reading and following directions.”  Experience does give a knitter confidence to tangle new things, but mostly it’s reading and following directions.

I received a hand thrown pottery knitting bowl as a Christmas gift.  It was a gift from one of my dearest friends, and she bought it right under my nose.  She also knew the potter.  That must have been fun for her to be so sly.  I was very surprised and delighted.  Here are two pictures.  Pottery and yarn– a wonderful combination.  Thanks, MLC.

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The Merry Christmas

It’s Christmas Eve.

The first news is that my DH has been ill with the DuPage County Plague.  He doesn’t get ill with things regular people do, so this has been traumatic for him.  He doesn’t know how to be sick.  He has a 24 hr. cough, and at night it percolates.  ‘Nuff said.  I has caused us to postpone our travel plans, but we don’t want any of our Loved Ones to get this horrid plague.  I can tell he’s a bit better today.

I am whipping up a last minute hat for my DS that in a yarn that is Hunter Orange minus 15 watts.  The fun thing is that I worked on it last night while we were watching a movie together.  I knit so much, he doesn’t even bother to pay attention.  I will enjoy surprising him.  He has a very short haircut right now so he needs more than his one winter hat.

This year I am celebrating  the Twelve Days of Christmas–without all those gifts.  There’s no room in our house for Leaping Lords or much of anything else.  Everything up until Christmas Eve is advent and holiday rush.  From now until January 5, I will celebrate the Christmas season at various gatherings with friends and family.  For whatever reason, I have not played any Christmas songs on the piano yet this year, but I will have time in the next 12 days.  It’s a more relaxed state of mind, and it has given me a fresh perspective on how I celebrate Christmas.  I know a song about Christmas every day.  For this year I will take 12 days, and that will be sustaining.

Wishing you all a happy and blessed Twelve Days of Christmas.

 

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Icelandic pie and thoughts for the season

December starts on Saturday, and yet I feel like the month of December is already almost over.  Crazy that.  Since we are only a week out from Thanksgiving, I must report on my Icelandic pie.  Last Wed. night in Indiana I was the baker of the pies.  I baked them at my brother’s new place.  I had two pies and enough filling to bake the leftover pumpkin without a crust.  No one had tried the oven the new kitchen.  It was wildly off.  The pies that normally bake for 1 hr. were still raw 20 minutes later.  Finally I turned the oven up to 425 and let it go.  I saw steam/smoke coming up from the back burner vent.  YIKES!  I had been warned not to burn anything because there was no exhaust hood.  I ran to the oven, pulled out the pie with just filling that had begun to boil, and left the other two in.  Of course THEY were not baked yet.  And so the filling that boiled became the Icelandic pie.  It had interesting pock marks where it boiled.  Iceland is a place where water and lava boil freely from geothermal heat.  (Eventually the two pies were baked, and I did get to bed).

This is my lesson from the Icelandic pie.  Things don’t have to be perfect to be eaten up completely.  My mother’s art medium is food, and she has set a high standard with perfectly even layer cakes.  Food is not my medium.  Yarn is.  The more I knit, the more I learn how to fix little imperfections.  And so it must be with my mother’s cakes.

Imperfections.  The true point of this tale.  The Christmas season is upon us with beautiful magazine and catalog photographs that took two weeks to set up in rooms where no one was doing any daily living.  Thanks to these beautiful images we all get this nostalgia for some illusory perfect Christmas.  In reality there are books and papers, a load of socks to be matched, and the dishwasher to be rebooted.  Nerves get frayed.  It’s never perfect.  We must find ways to make the Christmas season delicious and loving without perfection.  We live in homes, we do not live in Christmas card images.  We would all do well to accept the pock marks in the pie and enjoy how good it tastes.

It is the dark time of the year.  I turned on the lights at 4:10 yesterday afternoon.  I do appreciate the Christmas lights.  They light up streets that would otherwise be dark.  Tasteful and tacky alike, I concentrate on the lights of Christmas rather than the darkness of the sky.  December 21 and the earth’s axis will tilt again.  The days will grow longer again by minutes.  Oh, and don’t worry about the Mayan thing.  Do what you need to do and accept the little bits that aren’t perfectly perfect.  Allow yourself to  crow on the inside about the the perfectly perfect things you do accomplish this holiday season.

Now I am off to turn the heel on my first sock.  But first I have to conquer the math to adjust for my gauge.

Share the joy of the season with those you love

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Stash out of control!

Yarn, yarn everywhere.  Today I must get a hold of my stash.  There is yarn in four rooms.  That would be OK if it didn’t look junky, and I could always find what I need.  But I can’t.  I will have to bring it all to the living room, sort it into appropriate lots, take it all down to the basement, and begin again.  I received a new bag of donated yarn this weekend that will have to be sorted in the mix.  I’ll be happier for getting this done.  I’m also happy that the quantity of my stash is not out of hand.  Tidy it up and get knitting again.

On Sunday I donated 18 scarves to the homeless people our church serves through PADS (Public Action to Deliver Shelter).  There is a lot of abandoned acrylic yarn that finds its way to me.  I knit it into sturdy easy care scarves for people who really need them.  Charity knitting is at the heart of my knitting endeavor that I call Warm Heart Hand Knits.  Knitting for the homeless keeps my heart warm while keeping the necks of the homeless warm.

11:15 pm update:  Stash successfully realigned by fiber, color group and weight: grouped by possible future creations.  Love those 2 ft x 2.7 ft. zip-lock bags!  Lugged it all back to the basement.  Ibuprofen taken.  Let the happier begin.

Donated scarves 2012

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All Saints’ Day: Nesting and Knitting

Today I will think about the good people in my life who died in the past year and other dear ones who died longer ago.  It’s more special to me than the candy holiday.

I’ve been preparing for the upcoming darkness and cold.  Monday I took the plants I had moved to my back porch and gave them pots for the winter.  I have three large pots of Scarlet Begonias–thank you Grateful Dead–and one long rectangular pot of pelargoniums.  That’s geraniums to you who don’t spend as much time as I do reading books by British authors.  The pelargoniums and asparagus fern are correctly situated for the light they require.  I’m going to have to keep an eye on the begonias.  I foresee that they will need to be pinched back seriously.  All my annuals this year were purchased with the idea of overwintering them for next spring and enjoying more green indoors during the winter.

My guys have been tackling the leaves.  I have the bird bath and a fancy coal scuttle to take into the garage yet.

Along with the winterizing, comes more tea drinking.  I’ve been listening to Celtic music–even a Celtic Christmas CD.

I have been going through boxes of files I have in the garage and pitching paper like mad.  I am ready to make my fourth trip to the paper recycling dumpster nearby.  I still have more boxes to go through , but I’m not saving much.

Warm Heart Hand Knits, my knitting business, will have a table at Wesley United Methodist Church’s Trees and Treasures craft sale on Saturday.  WUMC is located on Galena Blvd. at May St. in Aurora.  The sale is from 10 am to 3:00 p.m.  After four months of selling outside, it is going to be a treat to be indoors.  My favorite thing is to knit custom orders.  I hope this sale brings me more knitting orders.  A separate room of this sale will be gently used Christmas decorations.  Reuse.  What an excellent idea.

I have been finishing things and whipping up a few small things.  Mostly I am ready to go.  I have been wrestling with a tricky project.  After ripping waaay back on the first one, I have almost finished the second.

On a lighter note, there were some tall CD spindles hanging around this weekend, and I grabbed one to hold my skein of yarn.  Way to unwind!

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