theknittyvritti

the shawl of invincibility

 
Here they are, the two things that got me through the recent health dramas.....the Paisley Long shawl, designed by Dorothy Siemens, and the dog.

I've been hoarding this incredible Sundara lace for a year now, obsessively trying to decide on the perfect pattern for it, and fending off Hightest's requests for me to give it to her on the grounds that it really is one of her colors. Well, she can have the 700 or so yards left on the second skein, but for now, this is my color.

 
This shawl is perfect front and back, a real heirloom project. And a potentially quick knit, if you are interested and just happen to be in the rare circumstances in which regular life comes to a grinding halt without a lot of demands being placed on you. Cranked it out in three weeks. I've never done that before, and I hope I never do again.

 
Here's a close up, it shows the color really well.

 
And finally, I was very motivated to have this turn out both wide and long, so I added a few motifs to the pattern. I got about 80 inches in length and 28 inches in width, for a generously sized shawl that wraps me in it's silky embrace and makes me feel like everything will be all right, always. Here's what I did:

 

cool cat

 

The Yarn Eater hasn't made it to fifteen and a half by stressing. He's a pretty chill guy. So our recent crisis didn't phase him at all, and he was turned out to be right. We dodged a bullet, and in the process we traded one troublesome organ for a beautiful shawl. Hospital waiting rooms and convalescence turn out to be wonderful lace knitting venues. 

Said shawl looks better on me than under the cat. More pictures to follow pending necessary weather and time to take the photos. Life goes on.

i know, i know

It's been too long. Really too long.

Not without reasons...most of which have little to do with my knitting, and everything to do with those parts of life which don't fit so well with the blog.

I was amused and  caught up a bit short once when a reader commented.."love the blog, love the dog, love the lifestyle". I knew then that I had succeeded at leaving out just about everything in my life that was more challenging. In genereal, I made a decision early on to keep my daily challenges to myself. It's the shrink in me, I guess, who tries to only talk about personal things that are not too taxing for the listener. Except for challenging knitting, that is.

I am going to leave out some  challenging knitting with nothing to show for it; the three failed projects that have been my month of March. You missed nothing, I assure you. I, on the other hand, had to be there for every wasted stitch.

So....challenging knitting with a payoff!

 

The mediterranean lace shawl is finished.

 
It is unutterably beautiful.

 

I can't quite believe I made it. One cone and a smidge of another of exquisite cashmere/merino/silk cobweb yarn from Colourmart.

 

Every single stitch worth it.  I cannot describe what it feels like to wear it...a real cloak of invincibility in the face of life's challenges.

smaller than small

 

In case you've been  wondering where I am, this is it. Knitting the border of Yetta, otherwise known as the Mediterranean Lace Shawl. I've given myself a deadline for this one, but each of the fifty rows of the border takes an hour and a half.

That's a total of seventy-five hours of knitting, just to get this ready to hand off the Hightest, who has agreed (well, almost) to do the crochet border around it. I can't even guess how much time that will take, but I've promised to knit her a small sweater in return, and I think that I may be getting the better deal.

Sorry that I don't have anything more interesting to report, but an hour and a half a day of knitting a border with size 00 needles is really not interesting. Even to me.

Although I did get a laugh when someone asked me if I would sell this when it is finished.....laughable, really, since I'm making far less than ten cents an hour on the deal.

 
There she is, reclining on my couch, no plastic slip covers and...a dog sleeps here. She is appalled.

i'll just sit in the dark

 
Really. You can just close up that black plastic bag she stuffed me into and then close the drawer. I'll be fine. It could be worse, the bag could be ripped, and then I'd spill out into the drawer and ruin her new projects. Who knows where she'd put me then. Or when she'd decide to finish me.

Me, and I was such going to be such a beautiful thing. No, really, it's OK, she has her reasons...sniff......I'm sure.....don't they all.....ingrates, these knitters.....who fall in love with you and then, just, move on, captivated by some fancy-schmancy new idea.

 
Thing is, I was going to be a great beauty. She really loved me, at least I thought so. How could she do this? Leave me here unfinished, almost finished, when I've done so much for her. Hours and hours of time I spent with her, changed her diapers, fed her.....no, OK, OK, maybe not, but still, I have been a good project, I didn't do anything to deserve this.

So tell me, Dr. Knittyritti, with all your degrees, and education, and la-di-da....what is wrong with her? And more importantly, when is she going to come back?

my muir

I found Muir very soon after I began knitting again, and put the pattern away until the right yarn appeared. And appear it did, in the form of Sundara Silky lace Green Olive Tapenade, an indescribably complex and beautiful color that looks at times green, at times gold, at times brown. No matter which color I think it is, it always delivers a huge visual rush.

I worried a bit (because there has to be a worry, doesn't there?) about having enough yarn to make a large enough shawl, but it turned out all right in the end. Although the silk did get quite a stretch....another worry as it is pulled past a point where I think the fibers will hold....scary but also exhilarating as I could tell that they would, in fact, survive my cruel ministrations. As they did, becoming in the process a beautiful browny-greeny-golden wrap that I can hardly wait to wear. It feels almost alive, like wearing a plant or maybe the skin of a lizard or something else organic, elastic, enchanted.

 

lifelines

We've had an idyllic week here, marred only by intense heat and the absence of rain. Operations Man is very lawn-proud, and he has spent quite a bit of time in this chair surveying his dying lawn, getting up only to move the sprinkler around or toss a ball to the dog. The lawn has suffered quite a bit, but even more significant,our friends who farm here have been frantically doing whatever they could to keep crops alive in a blistering and completely dry heat wave. It has not been easy. Today, thankfully, is one of those rainy July days and we have moved inside and are watching the lifeline for the crops fall from the sky.

 

Muir has gotten a lifeline as well. I'm on the last half of the last repeat, and while I'm pretty sure that I have enough yarn to finish it and the borders. I've given myself a lifeline just in case. I rarely use them, foolihly enough, but this time, I am so ready to move on to something else that I would do damage to myself if I had to tink this shawl for sixteen rows. It's a perfectly good pattern, but I have things I'm eager to begin, or finish.

Lifelines. What a funny term for a knitting technique. It sounds so dramatic, as though shawl-death were a real possibility. When I think of lifelines, I think of real life and death matters. And the way that we are all lifelines for each other. This is true in an everyday way, and also when we are in crisis. We're built to feel each others' joys and pains, and to be moved to help when we see someone hurting. Empathy is one of nature's own lifelines, just like rain.

too darned hot

The temperature is on the rise this morning......85 degrees by 8 o'clock, and the predicted 92 degrees is likely to be an underestimate. There's something to be said for lace knitting on a day like this. But I am thinking ahead to when I start this sweater. It's from Michelle Rose Orne's Inspired to Knit....and it's aptly named Winter Wonderland. Yeah, wonder what this will feel like on my lap this August, since I have a mind to make it my Rhinebeck sweater for next year. I've got some amazing Decadent Fibers Creme Brulee in a stormy blue that will be perfect. Just thinking about it all sends a welcome shiver down my spine.

 

lace is not life

 

I've been slowly knitting away at the Mediterranean Lace shawl (rav link) from "A Gathering of Lace" over the last few months. It's my first cobweb weight shawl, and it's a big one, so it will be on the needles for a while, what may eventually come to feel like a lifetime. This one's not easy.

I've been ambitious with my lace projects. I started with a project that was designed for experienced lace knitters, and I have an indelible memory of the process of figuring it out. We were on vacation in South Africa, a place I'm unlikely to ever return to given the difficult travel it requires. Operations Man became so sick that he was confined to his bed for two full days. We were in a peculiar French provincial style hotel in the wine region, with an automatic shift car that I couldn't drive, and there was not much to do on my own. So I spent those days knitting and reknitting the shawl until I had learned the pattern and could execute it perfectly. The shawl is pretty much flawless. And the knitters among you will understand that I had quite a good time in that over-decorated, dimly lit hotel room.

This shawl has a few really complicated rows, and I haven't been able to master them. Earlier this week, I did them quickly, aware that I was making some mistakes, and decided to just blunder on ahead. And yesterday I faced the music. They needed to be re-done, so I spent about four hours ripping cobweb lace and carefully re-knitting the first row of the difficult section again. No one will know but me that I didn't get it right the first time around.

Lace is not life. I made another big mistake this week, one that I've done everything I can to rectify, but when you act like a moron, there's no way to erase what you've done. Ugh, I hate that. I so overreacted to something that I acted like an overgrown hyperarticulate child, and while I've analyzed my reaction (shrink style) and apologized for my behavior, the fact is, that there's no way to undo the fact that my mistake happened and left evidence of it's occurence in the memories of others. I suppose this is the time to confess that my ultimate fantasy in life is to be a Grace Kelley type blonde....cool, calm, always gracious, never dramatic or the least bit aggressive. And that alas, I am prone to fits of unmetabolized excitement over rather small events.

This has something to do with why I love lace, maybe especially this lace, which as it happens, is the color that is sometimes called Grace Kelly blue. Complex like life, takes damn-near a lifetime to do, but unlike life, all mistakes are fixable, as long as you take the time to go back and re-do them. The illusions of perfection and immortality....a human's dream. Easy to see why. In life, we don't  undo our mistakes. We recover as best we can from them. We, or sometimes others, carry them around for as long as they have to or choose to, and we have no choice but to keep moving forward. Hopefully to some less bone-headed moves, but inevitably to new mistakes as well, for as long as we're around to make them.

puppy love...a tale of free association

(No dogs in this story). Let's start with something pretty, adetail of my finished shawl. All of the elements were there. A beautiful pattern, the Peacock Feather Shawl by Dorothy Siemens. And a beautiful yarn, my Squoosh Fiberarts Cedar lace, delicately variegated in the colors of a peacock's tail. It should have been a match made in heaven.

So why did I wake up this morning thinking about Keith H?

As a psychoanalyst, I trained myself to follow chains of association in thinking or speaking. While we are listening to our patients, we ask ourselves, "why is s/he thinking/talking about this now?" Try this, it's actually fun. Seemingly unconnected thoughts are often linked to networks of other thoughts that carry the same emotional quality. So it occurred to me that there might be a direct connection between Keith H. and my plan to blog the finished shawl this morning.

A few moments of reflection revealed the connection. Keith H. is the boy that I loved from afar (well, from across the aisle in Mr. Fox's homeroom, and then whenever we had a class together for the next three years) throughout junior high school. Uh huh, I pined for Keith, who barely glanced at me, for the longest time. His indifference did not matter, pining being a compelling enough activity that it required no encouragement.

I pined for this shawl as well, and almost as long. I saw it a few years ago, and waited for what I thought was the perfect yarn to make it. When I received this lace,  I thought a match had been made in heaven.

I knit it anticipating the usual wonderful surprise I've experienced when lace is blocked. The thing about knitting lace is that you don't really know what you have until it's complete, so you learn not to evaluate the project too much as you are working on it. As I knit, things looked great. The motifs are fantastic, and the yarn seemed to be working. All the elements were there, I thought. Like me and Keith. Both smart, both tall, both kind of reserved and a little edgy.

Still, I had some inkling that things may not be as great as they might be. And I've been here before.

Keith and I did not hang with the same crowd, but one day he came to my friend's house after school and after a long wait, my dream came true. We kissed on the couch for a few hours (this was one of my group's after school activities in those years). I was cautiously happy. It didn't feel like romance per se, but maybe....

The next morning, Keith didn't speak to me in honor's English. I kind of knew the day before might not have been the start of something big, but it smarted just the same. To add insult to injury, when Keith and I made on contact on Facebook, he didn't even remember our tryst, although he did reveal himself to be such a colossal jerk that any residual pining (I confess, he had found a permanent spot in my dreaming life as the avatar of unfulfillment) came to a crashing halt. That at least, was a plus.

I esitate to compare this shawl and Keith H., since I don't have any complaint with the pattern. But things have just not worked out. My shawl is too small, the variegation of the yarn not really quite right.  I doubt we will be spending too much time on the couch together. I don't think I will spend much time pining in this case. While there were very few boys taller than me in sixth grade, making Keith more alluring than he might otherwise have been,there are an awful lot of great shawls to distract me from longing. 

 I almost forgot to mention the wonderful Dorothy Siemens, who was very helpful when my dog ate my pattern. Sorry, I did say no dogs in this story.....A few tips for making this most worthwhile shawl. First, use a slightly heavier yarn than I did, or larger needles. I used number two needles, and my shawl is about six inches smaller than recommended, even with frighteningly aggressive blocking. You absolutely want to be wrapped in feathers for this one, so make it huge. And second, I think it might work better in a non-variegated yarn, or one with very even color tones. This yarn though beautiful and perfect in patches, just doesn't work overall.

And as for teen crushes and their aftermaths? Well, for every Facebook story of rekindled romance, I just bet there are ten like mine....stories that end in you saying....now I get it....phew......