A couple of weekends ago, a bunch of us wandered out for the woods for a very relaxed camping trip smack dab between the Equinox and April Fool’s Day.  Normally, I would carry back photographic evidence.  This time, I bring only this. 

It was really cold, and throwing an event is a fair amount of work.  But this bug sure is green!  I hope you can settle for it.

While we were freezing, I finished the butterfly moebius.  It ended up being a really great thing to wear while camping.  No dangling ends to be  a danger while tending a fire; soft enough to wear while sleeping; versatile enough to wear as a scarf, doubled up around my neck for extra warmth, wrapped around my neck and head–it’s a great  garment.   I definitely want to use Seasilk again, and to repeat this knit.

I also finished the first of the horseshoe socks, and I really like it.  I need to give serious thought to my sock gauge, though.  I knew I was progressively knitting my socks tighter and tighter, but these served as a great touchstone when compared to  . . .

the kilthose I finally finished.

The hosen are knit on 2.25 mm needles, and they felt like tree trunks compared to the needles I’m using for the horseshoe socks.  I certainly want to continue to make socks that last a long time, but I think I’m risking injury and wasting yarn by knitting at this crazy gauge.  Must.  Stop.  Knitting.  So.  Tightly.  I had to use a contrasting heel and toe and still used 45 grams of the teal yarn for the body of the lace sock.   That’s madness. 

Though, I will say that I felt like I flew through the last 3/4 of that second in the kilt hose pair, working on bigger needles in such a plain pattern. 

In case you haven’t caught onto the repetitive color scheme working here, look at the skirt I’m almost done with. 

It’s a very simple four-gore skirt in a lovely rayon batik.  I forget how much I hate to work with rayon until I, you know, work with rayon again.  And then I lament it, and whine, and cuss, and throw tantrums.  I’m toying with the idea of paying someone to hem this thing, because of the rayon,  the fact that I still haven’t gotten myself a dress form, and my desire to wear this to a dance weekend in a few days.   I did set in the zipper with no complaints, so that was nice. 

Now–evidence that I occasionally work with colors that are not blue. Look–it’s something mostly green and neutral . . .

The outside of the felt tote is entirely pieced now, so I just have to plot pockets, pick a fabric for the lining, sew that, and add the straps.  I’m loving that the two faces of the bag are relatively plain and the sides and bottom are brighter.

My friend Scott Hull has been waiting for a liver transplant for what seems like forever.  As is often the case, one thing after another got in the way over the months, and he made it to the top of Maryland’s liver transplant list as his health got worse, and infection set in, and his first transplant failed, and on and on.  Things got even crazier when his transplant surgeon was mysteriously put on administrative leave a week or so ago, and Scott and his wonderful wife Martha were sent to Memphis, Tennessee to try to get a transplant there.

Martha got the wonderful, frightening, much-needed news this morning.   There is a liver available for Scott, and if all goes as planned his transplant will take place very soon.  If you’re the type to pray or hope or wish for good things, please send some positive thoughts to Scott and Martha Hull, and to the supremely generous donor and his or her family.   Someone I can never meet is about to save my friend’s life, and for that I am very grateful. 

If you’re not a registered organ donor, please consider becoming one.  My knitting friend Trish died unexpectedly a couple of weeks ago, and the only thing that lessened the blow was knowing that in death she helped many, many people who needed donated tissue and organs.  If you’d like to learn more about organ donation, go here. 

F is for felt.

I’ve been making felt for several years now, using a couple of different methods.  I was first attracted to it for historical reasons, of course–felt was probably the first fabric we humans made, and that warms my Luddite soul to the core.  But as I’ve worked with it, I’ve fallen in love with the way felting affects the color of the wool, and with the strength and water-resistance of good felt.  One of my favorite knitting bags is my Constant Companion, which is both pretty and bullet-proof–a rare combination.

Felting is also one of those forms of frugality that appeals to my recycling, reusing, and reducing heart.  This bag I’m working on is made up of felted scraps from ruined sweaters.  I chopped up a few cigarette-singed beauties I found in thrift stores, but the rest of the felt for this project came from some sweaters Scott and I loved a bit too much.  I started collecting supplies for this a couple of years ago, felting commercial sweaters  that wore through at the elbows.  My stash of felt was too drab, so I just wasn’t excited to start piecing.  Then a couple of weeks ago I went through my mending basket and realized there was no good way to fix a few of my favorites, which are in colors I love of course.    The purple one in the lower corner was theoretically superwash, so I put it in gentle cycle, and it came out unwearable.  Sigh.  The other three–including the spring green Cashmere at the top left–had irreparable holes.  All four felted like mad once I tossed them in a hot wash–see the kitchen shears for a sense of scale.

I chopped the sweaters into 3″ and 2″x3″ blocks, and started piecing them to a thin twill foundation, also made up of scrap fabric.  Each face of the bag has a green nine-patch in the center, and the sides and a bottom are more randomly pieced.

More than half of the felt tiles are affixed.  I’m trying to pick the right lining fabric and plot inside pockets and possible closures.  The greens and blues are much brighter than they seem here, so there is some great contrast playing on the bag.

If that’s a confusing image, from left to right, it’s a side, front above the bottom, side, and then back you’re seeing there, with a big seam allowance for the top hem.

I’ll have plenty left to make at least one more bag this size once this is done.  And then maybe crazy-patched felt when only the small scraps remain.  Ahhh, felt.

I ended up scrambling to affix beads to the points of the Heather Ale sweater on the metro yesterday morning.  I was desperate to wear this thing, and a night’s rest gave every single beadless point the chance to curl right up.  I’m not entirely sure about these purple beads–I have clear ones in the same size and shape I could swap these for.  Waffle waffle . . . What say you?

I’ve also had to come to terms with the fact that the steel circulars are making me a crazy tight knitter.  I like my socks very very sturdy, but this is madness. 

I’ve used slightly more than 50 grams of yarn–that’s more than half of a huge ball of sock yarn–to get about halfway up my foot.  And I only wear a size eight.  I need to frog and either start again on wooden needles or on a much larger size steel needle.  Grumble grumble. 

To soothe my temper, I started these.  Purlewe  gave me this amazing mystery sock yarn at the KR retreat last fall.  I kind of want to eat it.  Or possibly marry it.  In the meantime, I’m making some horseshoe lace socks out of it.  On wooden needles. 

Gas Company  STOP

Understand your work is vital  STOP

Be a bit more ginger while digging STOP

Some friends violently removed and likely killed STOP

Warning to home’s owners about location of digging would be appreciated STOP

Wish to remain in our current homes STOP

Signed Buddleia, Holly, and Daffodils  STOP

I’m pretty sure the knitting is finished on the Heather Ale Cardigan, but I can’t be sure yet.  Like most  knitted lace, it looked pretty sloppy and unappealing unblocked.   Unlike most knitted lace, this sweater really needs to fit nicely to be worth having.  I think I stopped at the right places.  I blocked it using the lace blocking wires my wonderful Aunt got me this Christmas.

I love the light in the second shot–very fake-old-photo-montage, no?

Now I just get to wait for it to dry, hope it fits the way I planned, and think about what sort of beads to use on the points and which sweater to knit next.

I finished that string pieced potholder, and made another ten sock bags, but then the evil cough caught up with me.

I’m trying to think about spindle, dance shoe, and felted bag designs, but I’m not thinking as clearly as I’d like.

Embroidery was my first craft, as I explained a few years ago in a book about fiber arts. I feel I give it short shrift these days, using it now and again to adorn something else I’m flirting with, but rarely working steadily on a project for more than a day or two, and even more rarely finishing anything other than a little flourish on another project.

My lack of drawing skills holds me back. Once I have a design, I can embroider it or carve it into leather. But I can’t get what’s in my head down on to paper–there’s a gaping hole in my process, and I have to rely on friends to bridge that gap. I can’t explain the disconnect, but it’s there and it’s one of the only things that I really regret about being who I am. If there were only a pill I could take . . .

I also run into a stylistic problem with a lot of embroidery. Some of the stuff I’m best at stitching isn’t actually to my taste. I own very little of my own work for that reason. The Jacobean crewel piece above is a prime example. For the first time ever, I bought a kit to see if I could still work my needles as I had as a kid. I can. And once I finish, what will I do with it? Like so much of what I make, I’ll give it to someone and hope they appreciate the work that went into. And I’ll worry that they don’t.

Another stalled project? Perhaps one of the most ludicrous things I’ve started. I will finish it eventually, I guess, but it will take a long time. It’s a crazy quilt with an entire queen sized flat sheet for the foundation. All of the fabrics are scraps left over from clothing I’ve made for friends. And the bigger designs were all drawn for me by friends. I’ve been working on it on and off for about 15 years. It’s a riot of colors. It’s too much. It’s too big to work on comfortably. It forces me to abandon so many of my natural sensibilities about art and craft.

A lot of the other embroidery I’ve done is utilitarian, in a sense. Pieces on garments, stitched heavily–lending an almost tapestry-like effect–so that they last through hard work and washing. This piece was on a dress for years. Eventually I’ll attach it to something new. I’ve actually made it twice. The first time, I needed something to work on while I was studying in the UK one summer in college. I finished it on the flight back, and learned upon landing that a good friend of the family had given birth to twin girls–one a brunette and one a red head. I stitched that first version into a pillow and presented it off to their mother.

I’ve gone searching for more inspiration for embroidery recently, and I think I’ve found some good stuff. We’ll see if my will can overcome my whims.

I’ve been plotting a great trip out to Chicago for a dance weekend and visits with some wonderful friends, and I am giddy with excitement.  Giddy, I say!

And in that spirit, I figured I should hop online to post some clogging cue sheets.  Kate’s Mare is one of the coolest clogging steps I know, and it’s notated here, along with some other good ones.  Don’t worry if they make no sense to you–if you’re learning to clog with the peeps, I’ll explain it all next time we get together.  If you want to understand immediately but it’s making your head explode, email me. 

Download cue_sheets.pdf

And now I’m heading back to the sweat shop.  My lace cardigan has two full sleeves and six inches of body below them, and there are another 10 or 12 sock bags in progress on my sewing table.  And all of that counts as prep for replacing all of the floors, right?  Sure it does!  Using stash=cleaning.  Soon, I’ll even be able to dance in my fiber-arts studio.  Though clogging while sewing sounds mighty dangerous. 

Brush heel slap heel shuffle step leap
Brush chug slide stomp brush chug slide stomp
Brush heel slap heel shuffle step leap
Brush chug slide stomp brush chug slide stomp
And a basic

In footwork news: I taught a very informal clogging class for some friends Sunday, and it was an absolute hoot.  It felt great to be encouraging other folks to stomp about.  I think percussive dance is particularly appealing to folks with some strong tendencies towards rambunctiousness, and most of my friends could be described that way.  In fact, we had so much fun that we decided it’s going to turn into a biweekly thing, complete with live music and potluck.

Now for the handwork.  Two giant potholders,  each about 10″ square.  They’re both made up entirely of scraps from other projects, which always makes me very happy.  The Crazy patched one is actually greener than it looks–winter morning light is very blue near us, for some reason.  Both are entirely machine-stitched, which is still making me sort of twitchy.  But they’re a quick use of leftovers, and making these will force me to get much better at quilt binding, my least favorite activity these days.  I’m not sure what I’ll do with this pair once the second one is finished, but I may go make a few million if they continue to be so fun.

In all its rumpled loveliness–my lace cardigan.

I finished that first sleeve last night, and am a couple of inches into the second one.  This is going to be one warm sweater.  I’m so glad it’s lace.  I think it would be nigh unwearable otherwise.

And some felt patchwork experimentation is underway.  I’ve been playing with feltable wool scraps for a while now, looking for a good way to use recycled sweaters without stockpiling dozens of thrifted bits and bobs.  I think I have a plan now.

I cut a few felted pieces into squares, and then joined them by stitching them to little scraps of twill.  The twill should give the finished item a fair amount of stability.

Bulbs are breaking through all over the place, and I’m cranking out green things.  The Heather Ale Cardigan has shoulders and half of a sleeve.  I love it so much I plan to ask it to prom.

My hedgerow mitts are done, just in time to get a decent amount of wear before we truly enter Spring.

I love them beyond reason.

And some new socks are on the needles.  This is a skein of Fortissima Colori that makes me very, very happy.

When I’m not knitting, I’m piecing simple little things, like potholders.  And making giant pots of Green Chile.

It may all be part of a trend.  An extended, rather repetitive thing with me, the green.