Feral Knitter

Surf & Sand

Several months ago my friend Mary B. gave me an advertisement she had ripped out of a magazine. The challenge was to create a Fair Isle design from a source of inspiration that I hadn't chosen! This week I sat down with my yarns and the photograph, and I couldn't be happier with the results:

 

 

 

Oh, this is fun! Thanks, Mary. The swatch above is not symmetrical--I've varied some elements to test different colors and relationships--and the focus color was inserted with duplicate stitching (you can see the original green on the left).

Learning

The best thing for being sad, replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, is to learn something. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then--to learn.
                    ~ T.H. White

I've been learning to weave tapestries this month! It is always energizing to learn something new, to be forced into beginner's mind again. Let me show you my progress over 6 lessons:

 

 

 

Tapestry weaving is a rather slow process, even for adepts. I'm pretty proud of my efforts but under no illusion that I've done a spectacular job. The ONLY thing that matters is to learn!

Signing Sweaters Part 2

Well, back to business! How to sign a sweater that is not knit in some complex colorwork technique. (It might surprise longtime readers to know that I actually have knit a number of solid-colored sweaters, by the way, so no need to apologize!)

I can think of four ways to sign such a garment:

1. Make a hem and use stranded knitting or duplicate stitch to sign the hem. For example, the hem of a sweater I knit for my mother reads: "Happy birthday Mom 2002." I learned about this from the writings of Elizabeth Zimmermann (page 25 Knitting Without Tears and many other places).

2. Use a similar but not exactly the same color or fiber yarn to knit your initials into the sweater (duplicate stitch could work). For example, I can envision a lovely off white wool sweater with initials knit in out of off white silk. This would result in a sweetly private little tattoo.

3. Use purl or seed stitches to sign your garment. This is the classic gansey method--knitters would put initials into the stocking stitch area of the garment just above the welt. Knitting Ganseys by Beth Brown-Reinsel has a page of texture alphabets (page 32). The tricky thing is that single purl stitches in vertical columns will disappear into the fabric, so you need at least 2 purl stitches to make a readable letter.

Tamar pointed out that Aran sweaters often have a (relatively) unpatterned underarm area where one could sneak in initials without disturbing the overall design. Yes! Some people like to make the initials stand out and others like to be discreet. For the extroverts in the crowd, you could put the initials inside large cables.

By the way, the gansey image link leads to the blog "Knitting Letters: A to Z" by Union Purl. This is a fabulous look at different ways to express the letters of the alphabet.

4. Embroidery. This is shown to wonderful effect in the Margaret Sweater from Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines, where Mary Neal Meador has written out three different quotations--so initials would be a cinch!

Other ideas????

Teaching

My color class at Madrona Fiber Arts has a long waiting list, but two spaces are still available for the class at Village Yarn and Tea in Seattle on February 21st!

Redbud

Thank you all for the compliments on Redbud! Your kind words were much appreciated.

More on Redbud

Just a quick note to let you know that Simply Shetland will be publishing this design later this year!

Rachael tried it on yesterday--doesn't she look darling?

I Interrupt Your Regular Programming....

to announce that the Redbud Vest is done!

No details for now, just a visual tease because I am so pleased with myself.

Reneging on My Promise

New Class

I had promised to post about how to sign single-color sweaters--sorry! Gathering the examples I wanted is taking longer than expected. However, I wanted to let you know about an upcoming class I'll be teaching:

Many people were disappointed that my Choosing Colors for Fair Isle Designs class at Madrona Fiber Arts closed so quickly, so I'm happy to tell you that I will be teaching the same class at Village Yarn and Tea in Shoreline, Washington (just north of the Seattle border) on Saturday, February 21st. This will be a small class, so sign up early!

Reunion at Madrona Fiber Arts

I would like to invite anyone who has taken one of my classes in the past (or is planning to take one) to join me for a reunion at Madrona Fiber Arts on Sunday, February 15th at lunch. A big table will be set up on the mezzanine above the Pavilion. Bring your finished garments or your UFOs or your swatches or perhaps just your ideas for us to exclaim over or critique, as you desire.

Signing Your Work

When you look back on a lifetime and think of what has been given to the world by your presence, your fugitive presence, inevitably you think of your art, whatever it may be, as the gift you have made to the world in acknowledgment of the gift you have been given, which is the life itself.... That work is not an expression of the desire for praise or recognition, or prizes, but the deepest manifestation of your gratitutde for the gift of life.

~Stanley Kunitz

Many years ago Meg Swansen suggested that we knitters sign our garments. I was enchanted by pictures I saw of her initials inserted into the "seam line" of her Russian Prime Sweater and I vowed to sign all my work from then on.

Inserting initials and dates can become a game in itself--not unlike trying to find the name Nina in Al Hirschfeld's caricatures (Hirschfeld used to hide the name of his daughter in his drawings--usually there would be a small numeral beside his name to let you know how many times he played this trick).

A friend of mine who grew up in a very large family with little money or attention cried when she saw John's name knitted into the sweater I made for him---having a garment that is so very much one's own touched her deeply.

In Homespun Handknit, Janet Russell wrote: "I usually knit the name of the recipient into the hem of the cap, since this small extra effort is guaranteed to turn him or her into a jelly of gratitude."

And aren't those very old Swedish sweaters with the date and the owners' initials prominently set front and center just absolutely adorable? You can see a modern version here. Or the many wonderful mittens with a name or a date knit in. Somehow they are the memorable ones, so clearly can I visualize the knitter and the recipient. 

Here's a gallery of some of my signatures:

 

The cuff

 

On the sleeve--the birds do occur anywhere else in this sweater

 

Front hip

 

Right under the armpit because I nearly forgot

 

At the nape of the neck

Go ahead. Deviate from the instructions--add your own stamp to your knitting. Stand proud, honor your life, your "fugitive presence," and know that for decades to come people will appreciate this small act of independence.

A Dream Delayed but Not Forgotten

For more than 30 years I have dreamed of becoming a tapestry weaver. I don't know what held me back: I can remember writing off for information about a week-long tapestry workshop in the south of France when I was 28, but setting the packet aside. Money was an issue, in a way, but that wasn't the real story. I was just stuck in dreaming and wishing--I didn't have the confidence to move beyond that. Although the dreams were set aside, they would not keep quiet. So I decided that my resolution for 2009 was that I would finally learn how to weave tapestries.

And yesterday I started! The American Tapestry Alliance maintains a list of members who teach, and fortune offered up a well-qualified artist--Tricia Goldberg--who offers classes in her studio only 1 mile from my house in Berkeley--how perfect! Tricia and I determined a workable schedule, John gave me the lessons as a Christmas present, and I had my first lesson yesterday. Tricia is a friendly, knowledgable, and sensitive teacher. We discussed tapestry and she walked me through warping the loom. On Thursday I will begin a sampler to learn the techniques.

 

Tricia checking my warp

 

Tricia's studio

Another way to play with color and fiber! I'm in heaven.

Knitter's Retirement Plans Thwarted

I had been counting on the continually escalating prices being paid for Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting to fund a comfortable retirement. In fact, that and winning the lottery were the most likely source of income I could count on given the dismal performance of my retirement accounts invested in stocks and bonds.

And now this: Dover is reprinting this book! In paperback. In August. At a very reasonable $27.95!!!!

Am I to be doomed to knitting from stash for the rest of my life???? Oh well, there's always my copy of Pacific Coast Highway....

Seriously, this is good news for Fair Isle knitters. Starmore's book is a classic that covers the history of this knitting style, the evolution of motifs, charts, various techniques (which are well illustrated), and a valuable chapter on creating your own designs. Of course, there are wonderful Starmore patterns, most of them knit from Jamieson & Smith yarns that might not be available today. In my opinion, the book is weakest in the area of color. Starmore's three main pieces of advice--collect lots of colors, practice swatching constantly, and have fun--are exactly right, but they might not be detailed enough to help newcomers or those who were traumatized in art class in second grade!

I think that Ann Feitelson's The Art of Fair Isle Knitting includes a far superior and detailed introduction to color use in Fair Isle garments. Feitelson's book also covers several other methods of holding the yarn and preparing steeks as well as many lovely garments. The hardback version of this book is currently not available, but--good news again--Interweave is reprinting this in paperback, due out in April at the reasonable price of $24.95.

At these prices, you can afford to have both in your library! (I want to remind everyone that, although I link to Amazon for convenience, it's a good idea to support your local shops when you decide where to spend your money!)

Thinking of money, I would like to recommend The Simple Dollar, an excellent personal finance blog that covers spending, investing, setting personal goals, work choices--just about everything, actually--as well as offering several in-depth book reviews each week. (Most fittingly, the entry today is entitled Navigating the Hazards of Impulse Purchasing--me, yarn, and the internet are a bad combination.) This link takes you directly to a Best of 2008 summary that will gives a feel for the topics Trent Hamm covers.