theknittyvritti

glad that's over

 

I really love Hightest's garden. A lot more than I love NaKniSweMoDo number seven. Which is finally almost finished. Just have to re-do the buttons since they are placed not quite exactly right. If I seem a little surly about this one, it's because I am surly. It took a long time to knit, with many false starts, and it's not gonna be a favorite. In fact, it took so long to knit that I thought it was the eighth sweater in the series, not the seventh, until I checked back.

 

Here's another shot, and a little more of the garden.

This pattern (Rav link) is very ingenious, and a pleasure to knit. The shaping, lots of well-placed short rowing, is just novel enough to offset the monotony of the stockinette, The relative unpleasantness of knitting with Euroflax, a twiny and irritating yarn, was offset by the fact that it that actually does wash into a soft and sensuous fabric. Which is what everyone said. And best of all, I have two skirts that are perfect for this sweater, so I know it will be worn.

All in all, tho', I'm very happy to be on to my next sweater. And very happy that we just had two days without rain.

back home

It was a bad week for conference knitting. The projects that I brought each developed intractable problems that could not be corrected without intense concentration, a commodity that was used up in listening to talks and thinking about where to get a good cup of coffee (twenty minute walk in high heat, and then I accidentally poured salt into the coffee). Once home, I did manage to get things back on track, and I may have NaKniSweMoDo number seven done next weekend. That is, if my jet lag does not destroy my capacity for analytic thought. Or my ability to move both hands at the same time.

In lieu of some really sad photos of impaired projects, I offer a few parting shots of Israel.

 

Men at Yad Vashem, June 23, 2009.

 

Market, Jerusalem, June 23, 2009.

crisis averted

 

This nice man happened to be selling a tape measure in the market in Jerusalem. And I just happened to forget to pack one, which was about to create create problems. Our meeting was beshert ("meant to be"). 

jerusalem

 

Western Wall, June 22, 2009.

all good projects go to the promised land

I am going to Israel for a conference next week. I really don't understand the topography of Israel, so I had no idea where things are in relation to each other until I asked a friend, "How hard is it to get from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?". Her answer? "About as hard as getting from New York to New Jersey, only better". 

Sounds good. I'm packing now, and while I might take the still ugly (but growing) pin-tuck tee to New Jersey, it is not going to Israel. Conference knitting should not be aggravating, since it's hard enough to sit for hours listening to talks.

Which means that I am packing pleasurable projects. Three, since any one of them has the potential to become an unpleasurable project.  

Here's a preview:

 

This will be NaKniSweMoDo eight if it doesn't sneak past pin-tuck. Then again, if I come to grips with the fact that I really don't like to knit striped sweaters, and these colors don't really do it for me, this yarn will end up sitting in a suitcase for a week.   I'm knitting this kind of free-form, loosely following a pattern for a sweater that looks kinda like the sweater I'm envisioning. This sort of thing is always risky. While I can't resist the utter softness of this yarn that's been holed up in my stash for a while now, I fear that all I will ever really want to do with this yarn is to pet it.

 

I've had five skeins of pale blue-gray Malabrigo lace in my stash for quite a while. I just got what is either a truly wonderful or truly terrible idea for how to use it, and this will either be a great conference knitting endeavor or a total bust. Fortunately, it's tiny and if it spends the week in a corner of my bag, no harm done. And anything this tactilely tempting deserves better than New Jersey. My final project is the sure thing:

I am sneaking in the lace projects when I can. This is the beginnings of Muir, in soft and supple Sundara silk lace. Conference knitting and lace go together like, well, felafel and tahini. After la Principessa, I'm not sure I have time to finish twelve sweaters this year and another shawl, but hey, if those other two projects give me trouble, I may just have to take a lace detour.

I guesss it looks pretty obvious that I'm setting myself up to do just that.....the sweater thing is getting to me.

nose to the grindstone

 

I thought I'd better start this off with something unequivocally pretty. My garden beds develop slowly because I want to design them aesthetically without understanding much about garden design. I do get these patches of things that are exactly what I want, at least for a few weeks. This purple on purple patch is one of those things. Garden design seems even more challenging than knit project design, since it is a moving target. At least with a sweater you don't have to worry about what it will be doing in three weeks. Presumable, the same thing it's doing now. Ahem....there are times when we wish this was not the case....more below....

 

When your sister gives you permission to post a photo like this, you put it up before she changes her mind. I was going to let the veg garden lie fallow this year, but Hightest convinced me to co-op grow it with her. And she promised her labor, and so it was on. Both Hightest and Operations Man are very good workers. They can attack a physical task with a kind of focus that I both envy and exploit. On a good day, I can be brought along and really put out as well, but just as often, I find myself drifting off and being pulled back when they realize I have been pulling the same weed for ten minutes. They know me well enough to know that I have probably been fantasizing about my alternate life as an Irish potato farmer (it's not always princesses with me). I don't think this is something that is easily changed......I have tried.

 

And so to the knitting. I've taken up the Pintuck Tee again. And I've been thinking about recent laments from Princesspea and SweetP as I try to soldier on in the face of what seems to be a hopeless situation. Somehow, I don't believe that this project (blobject?) will ever be wearable. It's not the pattern, which is both ingenious and fun, but this damn Louet Euroflax yarn. Why did I buy three projects worth? It's stiff and lumpy and while the colors are beautiful, I'm having trouble believeing that multiple rides in my dryer are going to relax this stuff into a beautful piece of textile as suggested. We shall see. In the meantime, I am trying to take inspiration from Hightest and Op's Man, and power through this thing without running off to get lost in my pattern books and fantasies of the next project.

close, but no flower......

Sometimes you see a pattern, and even though the picture is way wrong for you, there's something there. So it was with this pattern, the Colonial Cardi from Sublime's "luxuriously exotic soya cotton handknit book". Now I knew that I would never be caught dead in a get-up like the one above. I wasn't crazy about  the baby blue color shown, or the kind-of-puerile-in-my-opinion flowers stitched onto the sweater, but still...there was something I liked.

So I bought some of the Sublime soya cotton, in a shade I could relate to. About a year and a half ago, meaning to get around to it sometime soon. The sweater challenge has presented the perfect opportunity. This is a very easy knit, such that even after the inevitable re-knits, it took maybe two weeks start to finish. And the yarn itself it also very nice, soft and really pleasant to wear.

 

Here's my finished product. A little soft of focus, but there's only so much I can ask of Operations Man, my archivist. He doesn't like these little two finished objects in two weeks things. Obviously, famous fashion photographer was never his fantasy life (actually, I think he might have preferred to be Amelia Earhart, even with the unpleasant ending).

And here is what I liked about this sweater. A very fresh looking neck-line, made more attractive by the omission of those flowers.

 

So, number six is complete. I've been working on the NaKniSweMoDo sweaters in sequence thus far, but for the next two, I'm mixing it up. I'll be re-attempting the ill-fated Pin-tuck tee with the ill-fated Louet Euroflax (probably a mistake), and I've got a secret project as well, one that isn't even on Rav......yet. Stay tuned, but it will be a while until there's a sweater on these pages. Fortunately, after spending the last two weekends throwing manure around my yard, I may have some really great vegetable shots soon. Yawn.

la principessa

 

OK, I admit that I have always wanted to be a princess. I went through that phase that lots of kids go through, where they imagine that they were adopted from another family, but my secret long-lost family was royal. And I was always interested in dressing like a princess. One of my earliest memories is of walking to school, maybe first grade, tugging my skirt down to make it as long as it could be, so that it would be more like a princess's skirt.

 

Well, I have arrived. This is the Mandala shawl, by Rene Leverington.  While in Italy, I began to think of it as "la principessa", and now that it is finished, it certainly is regal. My life is much too plebian to do it justice, but I shall just have to start getting myself invited to balls.......

In the "you can't make this stuff up" department, when I went out to do the photos, I realized that there were frogs swimming in the pool, and thus I did my first frog rescue of the season.

 

What do you think will happen if I kiss him?

Technical notes: I used sundara silk lace, color Ruby Port. Although I had some ambivalence about the yarn, and didn't like the lack of saturation of color, I've forgotten just about everything I didn't like in the face of the finished project.

The pattern is a delight. Rene offers four different patterns for each of the four sections of the shawl, so you can individualize your shawl, both in pattern and number of rounds. I did patterns A-B-C-D- and C again. This was my first circular shawl. Getting it started was a tolerable challenge, and I would make another one....if I thought I might have a glut of state occasions to attend.

la dolce vita

 

Some projects have all the luck.

 

Most of my projects live out the creative portion of their lives stuck in a hefty ziploc bag carried to and from the office. These guys got lucky. They got to go to Italy. As did I, which explains my rather longer than usual absence from these pages. Soon I will have two finished objects to share, but for now, a few trip pictures. There were lots of my favorite things on this trip.

 

Here, the awe-inspiring ruins of Pompeii.

 

And in Naples, a beautiful collection of artifacts from Pompeii and Herculaneum.

 

I've always felt it was lucky to see a bride on vacation, and like a charm, she showed up on the first day.

 

Apparently, they take their bridal garb very seriously in Naples. I found a whole street of stores like this one.

 

There were beaches, set on the sides of cliffs.

 

And happy bathers.

 

On Ischia, thermal baths everywhere, including one park that had over thirty different baths, of varying styles and temperatures. This one was a favorite.

 

Another lucky accident, unexpected fireworks for the feast of San Gennaro.

 

And of course, the things that just show up unexpected.

 

When you've got the time to see them.

why i had to leave

Ever since I was old enough to think about it, I had a yearning to leave Cleveland, my hometown. My trip to the local yarn store there this weekend explains a lot.

 

It was a little scary.

 

No, maybe a lot scary.

 

It spread through several rooms on two floors.....

They've been collecting this stuff for years.

 

Maybe since this place came into being?

 

I heart New York.