Well, God, glad that’s over.
In the interest of talking about the most normal, friendly, innocuous things, here’s a picture of my friend Maggie wearing the sweater I knit her for Christmas to work:
It’s a Kristen Johnstone pattern; I knit it in the mountains this past fall.
More of the wonderfully banal:
Well, God, glad that’s over.
In the interest of talking about the most normal, friendly, innocuous things, here’s a picture of my friend Maggie wearing the sweater I knit her for Christmas to work:
It’s a Kristen Johnstone pattern; I knit it in the mountains this past fall.
More of the wonderfully banal:
So, cripes, about a month ago I went on a wonderful camping trip with some friends of mine to a place that’s very dear to me– I mean, it’s where I go for nearly every fall break.
Anyway, because one of the ladies I went with is 1) a terrific photographer who 2) planned on shooting a few rolls over the weekend, I made sure to oh so casually wear pretty much exclusively knitwear. I ruined the all-the-wool-all-the-time effect by layering a windbreaker over the whole ensemble, but, hey, it was cold: we walked up along the ridges all weekend, got hella windburn, and woke up with our tent encrusted in ice.
Nic took lots of photos, but I selfishly picked out the ones featuring my knitting, since that’s what this blog is all about. Also, to pre-explain: the Highlands are home to a bunch of sweet lil’ pon’s.
So, um, there’s my hat, doing a great job as a hat.
Guest starring Cormo Rusticus,
and an extra pair of gloves that came in handy,
and my pretty-much-all-time-favorite-knitted-thing, the Peerie Flooers vest.
Comments Off on Knitted: Red Beret, Also, Knitting in Action!
Tagged backpacking, clothes, fair-isle, Friends, gloves, hat, jacket, Knitting, photography, pullover, selbuvotter, travel
I admit, for the past two weeks, I’ve been spending most of my free time reading Hurricane Sandy coverage. Absolutely everything the Times and the Atlantic have to say, and lots of pieces about the pervasive inequality laid bare by the hurricane, what people are doing to help one another, plus a good bit of let’s-process-how-we’re-feeling (which, well, maybe a little indulgent of me).
There’ve been plenty of opportunities to donate money (hey, thanks, Wells Fargo, for making it so easy! You asked me right at the ATM, point-blank, and how could I say no?), but I was so glad to read, this past weekend, that there’s a way to contribute knitted goods, too.
Brett Bara and Natalie Soud have come together to create:
I’m going to just lift some text real quick:
HOW TO HELP
MAKE IT. Simply knit, crochet or sew a warm garment or blanket–items most needed are hats, socks, gloves/mittens, scarves, sweaters, and blankets. Use one of the quick and easy free patterns we found below, or any pattern you like. If you’d like to include other small items to help the relief effort, feel free to donate another warm garment (new or gently used, please). We are hearing reports that general clothing is no longer needed, so please restrict your donations to warm winter items only.SEND IT. Send your finished item toNatalie Soud, 310 West Broadway, New York, NY 10013 as soon as possible. We want to start distributing warm goods within a week or less, so stitch something quick and send it off! Our volunteers will deliver the items to various points in and around New York City. (Although we’ll start delivering immediately, we’ll be accepting donations for the near future, so free free to send projects whenever they’re complete.)CRAFTALONG. Share what you’ve made and help spread the word! Please, please, please blog, Tweet, Facebook, Instagram, and Pin that you’re participating in the Sandy Craftalong as soon as you can (like today!) so that we can get as many hands stitching as possible. Then, when you finish your project, share what you’ve made by posting it on your own blog and on our Facebook page at facebook.com/sandycraftalong. Also remember to use the tags #makeitbetter and #sandycraftalong
Here is the thing: I have not and do not ever enter the tricky world of knitting-for-charity, because, well, Pamela Wynne really has said it best in this encapsulation: Charity is always political, and it’s always about power. And, as a rule, I’m going to steer way way clear of that particular ball of wax. However, she goes on to say that charitable knitting & crafting do get some things right:
For one thing, charitable knitting has the potential to make the personal political, to create spaces not only for sharing, compassion, and cross-class solidarity, but also for critical consciousness and social support in a world where women’s lives are too often marked by violence, victimization, and isolation…We knit when we encounter the violence, poverty, and loss that are endemic to modern, white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, capitalist societies.
And, as Laurie Penny points out in the New Statesman and Sarah Jaffe notes in Jacobin, it’s entirely appropriate to link the “violence, poverty, and loss” out in the Rockaways to that which we’re accustomed to seeing only in the third world (and, since the “juddering crisis of capitalism” in 2008, we’re increasingly used to seeing at home):
Crisis is what people in the United States have been living with for at least four years. Active emergency, turning people out of their homes and into the cold, destroying lives. It’s not crass to compare a climate disaster to a juddering crisis of capitalism, because the two are connected, not least because those most responsible are also those most likely to be cosily tucked away in gated compounds shrugging their shoulders when the storm hits. Like the crash, Hurricane Sandy hit the poorest hardest, smashing through Staten Island and the Rockaways while the lights stayed on on the Upper East Side.
I’m really, really worried about how poor people in New York are doing in the cold (shoot, for that matter, I’m also worried about how Syrian refugees will do this winter), so, for Sandy, I’m going to cross that line–risk the intimate tangle of charitable knitting, gendered morality, and class privilege–in order to work some utterly practical and apotropaic magic. As Brett says in her post announcing the Craftalong:
If there’s anything knitters, crocheters and sewers are good at, it’s making warm things.
Amen to that!
I have an enormous pine chest full of knitwear, a good lot of it intended as Christmas gifts, and therefore never worn. I’m sending it all: gloves, scarves, hats, a sweater (or two), and socks. It’s a considerable-sized box, and I am so grateful for the chance to be able to send it–to know that they’ll be able to make the life of a faraway stranger a little bit warmer, a little bit more comfortable. You should consider doing the same.
Comments Off on Make it Better: Keeping Warm After Sandy
Tagged clothes, craft, Knitting, On My Mind
Because I was (and still am) pretty excited about ombré effects in knitting, I was particularly drawn to the unique way that Bohus knitting uses texture to help blend and incorporate color (in short: sometimes there are purls). But I didn’t want the colorplay to dominate the entire garment, so, for Cora I left it as a yoke detail.
This croqi reminds you of Selma Blair’s character in Legally Blonde, right? Severe black bob, an even severer expression– somewhere between petulant and pugnacious.
Anyway I opened up my copy of Poems of Color, which was a Christmas gift from my parents, and swatched around.
This is what I came up with.
Anyway, this is me. I’m wearing my most beautiful wool pants and a nice wool fedora (despite my fears) from Rag & Bone’s Fall 2011 collection (this is the one thing I bought when we went to San Francisco back in January– it was even more expensive than my emergency-room visit! (turns out, I had an ulcer!))
I’ll be the first to say that this design doesn’t even come close to approaching the level of intricacy and precise blur for which the original Bohus Stickning garments are so rightly famous. This is an approximation– a taste, I guess, of what’s possible.
One of the first decisions we made, when putting together the Herriot book, was that it was going to start easy and finish hard– we wanted to start our knitters off with stripes and simple shapes, and take them on a neutral-toned tour through all the colorwork techniques we could think of. I wanted to add a little something– but not too much!– to my stripes, so I designed Bessie in a ticking stripe, then added set-in sleeves, waist shaping, and turned hems for extra neatness.
A few changes were made along the way: the set-in sleeves became faux set-in sleeves with saddle shoulders, the crew neck became a boatneck, and I became the model (so, well, there were a few more inches of ease).
I’m really pleased with the result:
If I could wear this outfit every day of the fall, I’d consider it a fine season. I’m in the market for pants & boots.
My favorite part about the ticking stripe sequence I chose is that you can’t tell whether it’s a light stripe on a dark background, or a dark stripe on a light background. While knitting it (I had to pinch-knit for this one– it’s not usual that I’d knit my own sample), I kept going back and forth on what it looked more like.
This technique of creating faux set-in sleeves + saddle shoulders is probably not my own invention, given all the neato work that’s currently being done in the world of armscyes (I am being completely sincere.), but I’m pretty fond of it and will most likely use it in my future knitting.
Queue it up, y’all.
It’s done, and I love it!
The cables are gorgeous, the fit is perfect– cozily one-size-too-big– and the Sabine really is shown off to its best advantage. My only complaint is that I’ve already promised this sweater to my sister for her birthday in October (and I should probably send it to her early, so that I’m not tempted to wear it any more than I already have).
Charlotte asked for long sleeves instead of 3/4 length ones, and a simple crew neck– both modifications that I’d definitely have made for myself.
The pattern’s repeated on the back, and the sleeves are left unadorned, which I like.
Of course, I’m wearing it with running shorts.
I guess if I were going to knit another that I’d work it in the round, and knit the sleeves seamlessly instead of setting them in. But, really, that’s it. I’ve also been thinking that, if you were to take out the waist shaping, this would work just as well as a man’s pattern. One more thing to add to the list, I guess.
Pattern: Beatnik, by Norah Gaughan from Knitty Deep Fall 2010
Yarn: Juniper Moon Farm Sabine in Foliage, 4 skeins
Needles: US 5 for the ribbing, and US 7 for the rest
Time: July 31 – August 7
Last week, I finally cracked and bought this pattern. I’ve been a blog-reader and serious admirer of Jenny’s since, gosh, 2008. She’s a talented designer (both sewing and knitting) and photographer, and also a lovely writer. It also doesn’t hurt that she’s a quarter Swedish, and that the name of her blog and online shop, Wiksten, is the surname of her Swedish grandmother.
After seeing so many beautiful versions of this top, it seemed like a perfect way to play around with different fabrics, a yard and a half at a time.
It also seems like a pattern I can make again and again, and (hopefully) become better at sewing in the meantime.
Comments Off on I’d Love to Sew: Wiksten Tank
Tagged clothes, I'd Love To, Sewing
This is a good-looking skirt that I’m thinking of trying to make pretty soon, but it’d require a trip to Richmond to buy the fabric (which, well, not at all a downside).
Geneva’s blog is absolutely addictive and 100% inspiring.
Maybe it’s just the deadly-hot weather of dried-up August, but I’ve been dreaming of a northern summer.
I’ve had my eye on the Swedish Summer dress since the Family Affairs Spring/Summer 2012 collection debuted back in March. For me, though, the really alluring part isn’t so much the dress as it is the description:
…you have been making blueberry jam all day in your summer cottage in the middle of the Swedish woods, it’s a full moon tonight and you are going for a skinny dip later…
I mean, of course you are.
What’s more, the wonderfully talented photographer Hilda Grahnat just posted photos of her post-blueberry picking dip from a few weeks ago. It really is what a Swedish summer is made of!
On the non-summer side of things, I’ve fallen pretty hard for the Pia Wallén Crux Blanket, which is unfortunately a) very expensive and b) now only available in cotton flannel (instead of WOOL, like God intended). At least I know I’m in very good company– and I feel like someone I know (I guess it’s Susan?) often says that the cross on the Swiss flag is the greatest piece of design that exists.
Anyway, I have it in mind to make a quilt version– I guess out of the different greys of old men’s suits, like the quilt that hangs in my parents’ downstairs hallway. It looks like Celine has already made a beautiful Crux Quilt– plus, hers features a grey ombré background– so I know it definitely can be done!
I don’t know if the next step is to go spend $50 on a pile of old suit jackets and start cutting squares, or if it’s to find a similar quilt pattern and modify it. If anyone knows anything about quilting, I’d appreciate hearing it.
It’s old news, I know, but this article from the New York Times about Minneapolis’ Bachelor Farmer also has me wishing I lived somewhere colder (or, at the very least, near a restaurant inspired by the New Nordic Cuisine). Just, listen to Noma’s Claus Meyer:
We have got Mosc ox, reindeer, juice turnip from the arctic area, king crab, slow growing Limefiord oysters, Greenlandic ice water flounder, grouse – the one bird in the world than in the most intimate way communicates the flavours of its territory, ancient local cow, pork and lamb varieties, more than 50 species of wild berries from the forests; broke berries, cloudberries, artic bramble, cowberries… Berries that have only been sampled and tasted by few people outside the Nordic region.
The unambitious home market demand was mainly the result of a 300 year long evil partnership formed by ascetic doctors and puritan priest. In together they have led an antihedonistic crusade against the pleasure giving qualities of food and against sensuality as such. The idea of organizing beautiful meals with great food has been considered a sin. The philosophy they so successfully communicated was that if you just ate something of inferior taste and did it in a hurry instead of enjoying too much you would get a long healthy life and end up in heaven.
Comments Off on On My Mind: Scandinavia
Tagged clothes, fashion, food, On My Mind, photography, quilting, wool