Part I: Decorative motifs from The needles excellency (1631)

I finished a dreadful paper earlier this week about Renaissance needlework, and through the course of my research, I found a very popular needlework tract called The needles excellency*. Published by John Taylor in 1631, The needles excellency (download here) is a pattern book, designed--so Susan Frye, Jones & Stallybrass, etc. say--for women of the lower gentry who wanted to emulate the needlework of their social betters, who could afford to hire professional embroiderers to draw them any design they wanted. By the seventeenth century, you could, apparently, get the designs drawn (printed?) on the cloth for you at the printer's**. The book begins with a moderately hilarious poem about how great needlework is ("Hey, it's pretty useful, and it keeps the ladies from talking too much") and five sonnets about famous (dead) needleworkers: Catharine of Aragon, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth, Mary Sidney, and someone named Elizabeth Dormer, who I've never heard of***.

More to the point, though, the motifs themselves are pretty nifty, and I think some of them could be easily adapted to colorwork projects for knitting. In this post, I've linked to some of the decorative designs that I liked best; in subsequent posts, I'll link to some less abstract motifs. The top image has my two favorites: the designs are bold and crisp and would lend themselves to multiple-color fair isle really well. (Click on the images for a much, much larger view.)



*This being the seventeenth century, a time of verbose and specific book titles, the full title is The needles excellency a new booke wherin are diuers admirable workes wrought with the needle. Newly inuented and cut in copper for the pleasure and profit of the industrious.
**I think I'm citing Frye here.
***It's a bit of a motley crew--the women are clearly invoked for their celebrity, but why these particular women, I don't know. The sonnets make much of the former three as a line of queens. Elizabeth was sort of widely known to have abandoned her needlework when she assumed the throne. The most famous needleworker, at least in the late sixteenth century, was probably Mary Stuart, that notorious Catholic thorn in Elizabeth's side.

I'd make my horcruxes out of stash yarn.

Hilariously, Opal is apparently releasing a line of sock yarn to coincide with the release of Half-Blood Prince in the fall. I'm not surprised that the marketing of this movie extends to yarn--I'm more surprised that they haven't thought of it before, frankly--but I will admit to being puzzled by 1) the absence of Hermione-branded yarn (Ginny, Hedwig, and the Weasley twins--or one of them anyway--have a skein*) and 2) the choice to focus on character-inspired yarn instead of doing something more obvious, like house colors. I suppose they thought the appeal would be broader this way. I'm sort of unclear on what the colors have to do with the characters at all--except for Hedwig and Draco, and maybe the Weasley twins if you're generous--but this is one of the most enjoyable consumer fantasy products I've seen in a long time.

*Then again, the choices here are pretty weird too--like, why pick the scene where Ginny's in a bathrobe? (Not sold that that's what's going on there, as the label's pretty fuzzy.) Why choose only one Weasley twin? (Unless the other just isn't visible, but again, not clear.) I'd also think that Snape would be an obvious choice for a colorway (greens and smoky grays and blacks). It seems to me that whoever put this line together got a folder full of promo pics and probably attached them to some yarn that was already in development. Alternate scenario: the pictures were fed into a program that extracted the colors and the yarn was developed randomly that way. The point, in any case, is that it does not appear that a great deal of thought went into this.

20,000 leagues under the sea.

Oh, Reader, I keep starting projects in a bid to avoid my poor sweater. I just keep looking at the thing--I've got about 5-6" done (I think) on the right front--and thinking about how long it's going to take me. I think I'll just have to wait until the mood strikes me to work on it again. I don't want another failed sweater--which reminds me; I need to take apart the Lucy cardigan and the Wicked sweater and repurpose the yarn. I'm surrounded by yarn at my desk. I have the idea that I'll be able to get more organized when I get the giant filing cabinet of my dreams (why, hello there, tax refund), but really I suspect that this will encourage me to get more stuff.

Current projects on tap (take my word for it; no pictures yet):

• I'm working on the Embossed Leaves socks from Favorite Socks out of KP Risata. I'm not finding the Risata splitty, as some have said. It's certainly sturdy.
  
• I finished a hat of my own "design" out of Cascade Pastazza, a llama/wool blend. It needs blocking. It's just a simple zig zag cable from one of the Harmony Guides. The real story of this hat is in the color of the yarn: it's a deep blue/purple that rivals the best of Noro. It's the kind of blue I like to imagine is made out of ground up lapis lazuli--like an illuminated manuscript or a Renaissance painting.
  
• I started another hat--I think the pattern is called "Claudia"--but I'm bored by it. No fault of the pattern.
  
• I'm supposed to be getting a toy cat pattern via the mailz--it's a pretty sweet pattern, but I'm sort of nervous about the skill level I imagine it's going to require. Toys seem to need a lot of "finishing" work to make them look good, and I have little experience with finishing.
  

Well: not much to photograph in all of that, but I'll get you some pictures soon, Reader.

Rip Van Winkle

Never let it be said that we here at Swinging Squares would disappoint you, Reader: ask and ye shall receive. I've actually had precious little knitting time lately. I do have a few in-progress things to offer up to you, however.

First, I have begun working on my third sweater project. Yes, it's true that I have yet to actually complete a sweater. But I think this one's gonna work out. It might not work out for roughly a hundred years, but eventually, I will have this sweater. Or a picture of myself in my head wearing this sweater...while petting a unicorn.

What I have to show you is my sad little swatch, which I didn't even block. I know; I know. It's terrible. I should've blocked it. But I have convinced myself that it's okay if it's a "little off" in size. This is the kind of thing all knitters do at some point and then warn others about. A swatch, for those non-knitting folk out there, is simply a test square of your pattern so you can see what your gauge is (how much space each stitch takes up, more or less). For my swatch, I did the pattern stitch in size 5 needles (the bottom) and size 4 needles (the top), and ultimately got closer to the pattern's specified gauge with the size 4 needles.

The sweater is the Katharine Hepburn Cardigan from Lace Style, and I'm doing it in Louet Gems Opal, color Caribou. The yarn is normally rather expensive, but after weeks of agonizing about a suitable replacement, I found a great sale on it at Purl Soho. Anyway, I'm pretty pumped about this cardigan, but the cables and lace pattern makes it a bit fiddly--it's not hard by any means, but it's time consuming. This sweater is also knit in pieces and then seamed, so we'll see how that goes. I'm working on the right front piece now; no heart yet for the back. Miles to go.

I am making better progress on my plain stockinette travel socks--I've got one of a pair done in Knit Picks Felici, color Pebble. Jenny's Felici socks have worn really well (she is generally less hard on her clothes though, I think...) and have a less wooly hand than some of my hardwearing socks (is "hand" appropriate here? I have no idea). Anyway, I am not so excited about the brownness of this sock. Now, don't get me wrong; Bolty loves brown. I am generally a conservative dresser ("semi-professional," as described by Jenny) and brown is about as wild as I get for a sweater or pants or shoes. But I like my accessories to have more color. I will, however, happily wear these socks when they're done--I've been able to wear handknit socks most days this winter.

The Iceman Cometh

Bedecked in my lovely hat, striped scarf, un-blogged flip-top mittens, and beige tweed wool socks, I braved the winter today and lived to tell the tale.

Colin Cloutes Come Home Againe

I changed up the blog design a bit to add Ravelry progress bars (inaccurate for now due to a Top Sekrit Knitting Project) and the Flickr badges (L. is giving up the shop for awhile), and Reader, I am pretty damn irritated. I know just enough about coding to be dangerous, which is to say enough to know that fixing the width of the progress bars and badges to fill the righthand column in a more visually pleasing manner is possible, but not enough to do it myself. Flickr claims that the badges have to be that size, which is probably a lie, but certainly means that no amount of half-assed fiddling on my part will fix that. The Ravelry progress bars, on the other hand, are very customizable*, but despite fairly clear instructions in the Ravelry fora, I am at a loss. I'll figure it out eventually. I'll never be hungry again, etc., etc.

More successful, however, was my latest FO: the Noro Striped Scarf, concept/pattern from Brooklyn Tweed. Apologies for the lameness of the photos, especially considering Brooklyn Tweed's utterly amazing ones. I had plans to take this outside and photograph it pretentiously on a withered tree stump out front, but I wanted to mess about with the settings on my camera to see if I could have any success taking shots indoors and--well, this is very boring, but suffice it to say that I got a few good shots of the cat and merely serviceable ones of the scarf.

The scarf itself, though: love it. It's about seven feet long and 7.5" wide (I cast on 49 instead of 39 to make it a bit wider than Brooklyn Tweed's). The yarn: Noro Silk Garden, colors 8 and 270. There has been, on Ravelry, a pretty ridiculous series of debates about Noro yarns: blah blah blah they tend to be scratchy, thick-and-thin, and full of vegetable matter blah blah blah but it is art blah blah blah blah. I really enjoyed Silk Garden (composition: silk, mohair, wool) for the same reasons everyone does: the saturation of the colors is remarkable, especially the dark blue. I cannot envision myself ever using Silk Garden or Kureyon (pure wool) for a garment for the same reason--the colors--I think it works perfectly on a scarf.

*L. and I have discussed our desire to make macaroni and glitter pictures for Casey.

desperate times

The plummeting temperature of our apartment has us wondering if we shouldn't abandon our current projects and instead put all our efforts into knitting some gd INSULATION.

Not to dramatize the situation here, but I've literally had to take breaks from typing between these tiny paragraphs to warm up my hands. I guess if I can't actually knit insulation for the apartment, I could do the next best thing and knit some insulation for my mittens.

Or I could abandon absolutely everything and follow the example of one Raveler who posted today about knitting herself a coffin. I bet it would be warm in a knitted coffin.

Tricot Treat!

That's right, I'm treating you to the very most obvious pun on French knitting vocabulary! Because you know me -- I only deal in superlatives, and lately only the guiltiest superlatives: the longest lunch, the earliest bedtime, the bare minimum and, of course, the last minute.
But there is always time to spare for a bit of knitting, especially if it's the easiest possible knitting, like the tube scarf I'm working on in some yarn I bought at La Droguerie, an amazing yarn store I visited in Paris. That's right, the scarf is literally just a tube. See?
I cast on 70 stitches, joined without twisting, and just took off knitting. I'm a little over halfway finished, having just started on my second of 2 skeins. I'm thrilled with the results and a lot less concerned than I expected to be about the simplicity of the "design." I tried various ribbings but was disgusted by my tension problems. I CANNOT get the first purl stitch of the column to look nice! Luckily it turns out that the yarn requires very little from me in order to look beautiful. It's actually two yarns held together (one a 100% bamboo and one a laceweight mohair), an idea I ripped off from a sample scarf hanging on the wall at the store. The friendly clerk helped me coordinate the colors and wound the two strands together in skeins for me, and I was so pleased by my success in conducting this transaction in French that I hardly noticed the price (27 euros, yikes! If only it were dollars!).

Like I said, the store itself is wonderful. It's in the neighborhood of Les Halles and the Saint Eustache cathedral, and it's pretty big for a French store of its kind, or at least seemed so to me. One side is devoted to yarn and patterns, with all the available colors in each yarn hanging unwound from hooks on the wall. Deeper in is a display counter of buttons, most simple and sophisticated but some very silly. On the other side of the store, they sell beads stored in jars like penny candy and embroidery supplies. When I was there, it was crowded and just past twilight, so I did not take any photos. However, a few days later, I was shopping at Printemps and paid a visit to the Phildar boutique on the top floor of the store, and I can show you that, if from a bit of a distance. I wish American department stores gave as much space to craft supplies.

Finally, I made one other yarn purchase back in Dayton that was just as exciting to me as the ones I made in France: my first skein of handspun yarn, made my the mother of one of my oldest friends. Her website is here. She showed me her spinning wheel, her fiber stash in the attic, and her imposing yarn storage room, barricaded with impenetrable walls of rubbermaid containers. From one such container, I chose a lovely blue and orange wool, which Joe says smells nice and wooly. After a bit of experimenting, I chose the Opera scarf pattern, which blessedly consists of just a single row to memorize. I'm in a race against spring with all this scarf knitting. Wish me luck!

Catch Up, Catch All

You know how once you fall out of touch with someone, part of what keeps you from making contact again is the guilt you feel over the initial neglect? Along with the pressure of reporting on months' worth of living in a single and inevitably newsy letter? I guess these are my lame but honest excuses for having abandoned blogging this fall and holiday season...But today, fooling around with Picasa, I found a solution that has once again hoisted me back in the blogging saddle. So I offer you, first, a compilation work-in-progress photo of all the gift knitting I did for this year's birthday and holiday season:

Then, of course, there are the corresponding FOtos (hey, it's my neologism and I'm sticking to it):
Needless to say, each of these gifts has a story and a reason for being just what it is, but I think this time the stories will just have to remain unwritten. Nonetheless, I think we can all agree that the most "special" of all my knitting projects turned out to be Uncle Louie's Orange Hat, which as expected inspired much good cheer and not a few jokes of questionable taste at this year's Christmas party. That photo deserves a blowing up:
If I have half as much fun in 2008 as Uncle Louie is having in this picture, it will be a good year.

Knit One, Kill Two

Our favorite Lois Lane gifted us some lovely sock yarn for Christmas: one skein of Trekking Pro Natura in colorway 1601 and two balls of Zitron Lifestyle in colorway 1876. She also passed along some of the knitting mysteries by Maggie Sefton, which I love without ever having read a page for the spectacular puns in the titles. Needled to Death, people? A Deadly Yarn? Does it get any better than this? No, it does not, Reader. You of all people should know.

I'm sure, however, that your mind has never left the yarn, and I can't say I'm surprised. I was faced with a terrible choice, Reader: which yarn should I choose for the simple sock project that would take my mind off the sweater debacle? If I were a stronger person, I'd have waited until Lilyriver came back from France and let her decide what she wanted, but I, I am sorry to say, am not so good, nor so patient, and I've been eyeing the Zitron Lifestyle for awhile. It did not disappoint. It's a 100% superwash merino sock yarn, and I'm guessing the base yarn is Louet Gems, because it feels just like Koigu. It's just flat-out a pleasure to knit with such a well-spun, elastic yarn. I cast on 64 on 2.5mm dpns, did 5.5" of cuff in 3x1 ribbing and a 2.75" gusset. As you can see, I've finished one sock since Tuesday, and I'm about halfway through the foot on sock #2--I've never knit socks this fast before. Admittedly, this is partly because I've been glued to my Heroes season 1 boxed set, but a lovely, non-splitty yarn really helps. (I broke out the DPNs for the first time in awhile, and I think that for me, DPNs are faster than 2 circs. 2 circs have many other advantages, but I don't think DPNs can be beat in terms of speed.)

The drawbacks: the yardage for the Lifestyle is scant. Not quite Colinette Jitterbug scant, but two balls (100g) total only about 340 yards instead of the more standard 400ish. I had to rip back my first sock and start the toe decreases earlier so I'd be able to make them long enough to accommodate size 10 feet. I finished with maybe 2-3 yards left. Most people would find the yardage just fine, probably, but I like to make the leg part of my socks pretty long. The yarn is thicker than, say, Trekking (100g of Trekking Pro Natura has about 460 yards), and the ball band says you could get away with needles sized 2-4 (US) instead of the usual 0-2 (US), which helps make up for the comparatively little yardage. But that brings me to drawback deux, which is the durability factor. I've mentioned here, I think, that one of my Koigu socks got a hole on the bottom after less than a half dozen wearings and washings. I also knit those on 2.5mm (that's a 1.5 US for non-knitters). (I patched up the hole with some regular wool in the hopes that it would felt, and so far it seems to be working fine.) I tend to be hard on socks, so I'll be watching these to see if the Koigu/Louet Gems hole was a fluke or if I just need to stick with sock yarn that has some nylon in it.

If you want some of this, I'd recommend Astrid's Dutch Obsessions; while she's shipping, naturally, from the Netherlands, she charges $6 a ball instead of $10, and she has all the solid colors of this yarn, which are numerous and not widely distributed in the States.

Sweater autopsy

My First Sweater (TM) has turned out to be my Waterloo (a joke that never gets old, right? Right? Hello? Is this thing on?), Reader. I chose the Wicked sweater from Zephyr Style, a top down raglan (I think?) with a boat neck and some cabled details, and I used heathered burgundy Cascade 220. I will admit that I had my doubts about the Cascade 220: it didn't seem all that special to me, but it's cheap and known to be durable. As I used it, I came to appreciate its softness and springiness--I don't think you can go wrong with it. I do still think the donegal tweed version looks stupid. Sorry, Cascade.

This pattern is known to run large, so when my gauge was 20 stitches/4 inches rather than 18 on size 7s, I decided to just go with it. Reader, I can picture you muttering to yourself: Aha! Foreshadowing! This turned out, however, to not be the problem. Neither was it a problem when I realized about halfway through the collar that I'd forgotten to do the twist stitch and decided I didn't care. The problem is that the sweater is terribly unflattering. I've had this confirmed by Lilyriver, who tactfully noted that she thought it was too big. That might be one issue, despite the theoretical 2" of negative ease I thought I'd built in. Issue #2: worried that the sweater would be too small, I didn't do the waist shaping. I have a men's sweater that doesn't have shaping, so I didn't think the waist shaping would make much of a difference here. It may have, but it wouldn't have helped issue #3, which is that worsted-weight yarn and size 7 needles makes for a somewhat bulky knitted fabric. As acknowledging that it's possible that I might only be able to wear fine-gauge sweaters would cause me no small distress, I've decided that the real problem is issue #4: what was supposed to be a boat neck came out like a crew neck. I thought this might happen from some pictures I saw on Ravelry. Since patterns are resized according to a formula and not by reknitting the garment in each projected size, I think the neck doesn't doesn't quite work on the larger sizes. I think a v-neck would have helped the sweater look less bulky and would have given it a little more style.

For now, I'm not going to reknit it. (I actually still have a sleeve and a half left to go.) I'm tired of the yarn and I'm not sure I could fix it enough to make it wearable outside the house. I may eventually go back and experiment with waist shaping.

Happy new year, Reader!

Waiting for Godot.

Silence for so long, and then a pictureless post? I know; it's terrible. I promise not to make you any promises, Reader, since we know how good I am at fulfilling them. But you have a right to know of avery important development since I last wrote to you: I have decided--and this is not a decision I entered into lightly--I have decided--perhaps you'd better sit down--to sell all of my yarn and take up the noble art of Moon Sand instead.

In lieu of an actual post, I offer you a comic. Drawn by someone else.

nataliedee.com
Courtesy of a loyal reader.

A real post will follow in the next few days, darling Readers, perhaps with a preview of my selfish, selfish winter break knitting plans, but Bolty has some papers that aren't going to grade themselves. The thing is that I think the ideal TA for this course probably is a robot, but Mechanical Man Corp. hasn't gotten back to me yet on the Bolterbot2000.

We'll bend it to our awe, or break it all to pieces.

I have been holding out on you, Reader: I've got two pairs of mittens and two pairs of Fetchings I haven't blogged about yet. The Fetchings are a bit of a disappointment. One pair, out of Lion Wool, is just okay: the yarn isn't very exciting for a gift and I'm blah on the color. I did the other in Manos, and while I like the Manos (I don't love the Manos, may the dear lord baby Jesus strike me dead), I'm afraid they're too big. The problem is that Fetching is kind of a dainty pattern as opposed to a sturdy one, and I am a sturdy knitter. Manos is a sturdy yarn, Lion Wool is a sturdy yarn, and everything I knit comes out sturdy; so why I thought these things would add up to a dainty pair of Fetchings is rather beyond me. I have a friend who might like the Manos ones, and the Lion Wool ones will probably languish until in a fit of pique I claim them for my own. Maybe I'll try dyeing them I color I like better.

As for the mittens: I won't mince words, Reader. I looooove them.

I recently finished two pairs: one for Lilyriver for her birthday (only a week and a half late!) and one for an unnamed recipient.
At left is the right mitten of L.'s pair--it's a wretched picture, and I apologize, but that's how we roll in my woods. I do not know why I just said that, but it's staying. I'll attribute it to mitten ecstasy. That is how we roll in my woods. Anyway! The yarn is Frog Tree Merino Melange, which is, hands down, the softest yarn I've ever touched. Unfortunately, I had to frog it approximately 403840983029843 times, and it got rather pilly in the process. A bit of alchemy happened in the blocking: it got sturdier, rather than softer, when wet. The finished product reminds me of a very decadent cupcake*.

What's the pattern for this delicious mitten, you ask? Why, it's a one-of-a-kind Bolty original. Two-of-a-kind. There are two, I swear. And, okay, it's not really a Bolty original, per se, as I basically just applied a cable** from the Vogue Stitchionary Vol. 2 to my favorite easy mitten pattern at freevintageknitting.com. Put away the hot poker, Reader. You and I have no secrets.

The second pair of mittens isn't even badly photographed--indeed, it's not photographed at all. They're flip top mittens based on an amalgam of patterns and they are damned fantastic. I used a spring green tweed, the Queensland Kathmandu I've blogged about before. Flip tops are absolute genius. I realize that I call every new knitting thing I learn "absolute genius," but it's true. It is also true--and if you're an Expos teacher, you'll spot the "secondary emerging thesis" of this post--that when I learn a new technique, I have to frog like a maniac. But I don't mind frogging overmuch***.

At the moment, I'm--or rather, was--working on a cabled hat from Cables Untangled--it's a ribbed hat with braided cables in a gorgeous red tweed (also Queensland Kathmandu), or, at least, that's what it's supposed to be, but I'm beginning to wonder if I'm not fated to get past the ribbing. I started it in size 8s (the pattern recommends size 7s, but all I had with me whilst visiting E. this past week were 8s and 6s) and the hat was freaking huge, so I frogged about 5 inches of ribbing and switched to the 6s. Three different pairs of 6s, Reader. I only had 4 of my 5 size 6 dpns with me, and there were way too many stitches to fit comfortably on those needles, so I made E. take me to Jo Ann's on the way to the airport, where the only size 6 circ I could find was 29" long. I bought it thinking I'd just Magic Loop, but the cable was very stiff, so when I got home I borrowed the 16" cable and size 6 tips from my Celtic Cabled Scarf and was happily knitting away when I realized that I'd misread the pattern for the increase row and had to frog back to the ribbing. Then I thought I misread the cable pattern and frogged again, only to realize that I hadn't misread it at all. Demoralized, I have put the hat back in its plastic bag for now in favor of starting another pair of flip top mittens out of some lovely Beaverslide McTaggart Tweed. Which I have also had to frog twice. I told you, Reader; I've no secrets from you.

*A cupcake that looks like a hand. Wow, this suddenly got creepy.
**It's called the Seven Sisters. The ribbing is ktbl1, p1; the cable is a basic 12-stitch cable following the ktbl1, p1 rib.
***This is a lie.

Measure for measure.

From: E.
Date: Sunday, November 18, 2007 12:08 PM
Re: the most important thing for us: hair products.
To: the bolter

Actually I've been blackballed from all of the yarn shops in Denver for "casting off" on too many patrons and sending them to the hospital.

----- Original Message -----
From: the bolter

Date: Sunday, November 18, 2007 8:49 am
Subject: Re: the most important thing for us: hair products.
To: E.

also, i have been hunting down yarn shops for us to visit!!! are you excited???

Later:

the bolter: You have no idea what casting off means, do you?
E.: It means punching people in the face with brass knuckles.
the bolter: It's hard to disagree with that, actually.

The Last of the Time Lords.

There have been some complaints, Reader, about the late scarcity of posts that feature actual knitting, as opposed to chatter about yarn shopping*. Well**--I do take the point. Thus, as your happiness is of paramount importance to me, I offer you one completed pair of Nikki Sixx-inspired Knucks.

Specs: 1 skein of Jo Sharp Silk Road DK Tweed, in some browny color I'm too lazy to look up. This yarn is the same as the Queensland Kathmandu I have already noted that I love (really, it's the same; I don't know what the deal is, but the Queensland Kathmandu comes from the same manufacturer and is generally a dollar or two cheaper--or more, if you find it on closeout at Webs...). I'm giving some thought to using this yarn in the far distant future*** for the Katharine Hepburn Cardigan. Anyway, the Knucks pattern is genius; it's knit fingers-down, which seemed to me to be a cockamamie scheme if I've heard one, but it worked out well enough. I somehow managed to do the gusset in a different way on each glove. It's not terribly noticeable and doesn't affect the fit, so I've decided it doesn't matter. They are a gift for a non-knitter who will, I hope, forgive me. I hope she's feeling kind about my elementary embroidery skills, too. Maybe I should redo the "8" before I send them.

I do hope Lilyriver will soon post about the very excellent hat she knitted me for my birthday; I may otherwise have to take matters in my own hands.

*I realized today--yesterday--well, see below; time is relative--that I have been buying yarn in various shades of green, to the extent that I am in serious danger of becoming mightily sick of green before I've even knitted up a skein of it. Okay, that's totally a lie; really, what I'm feeling is the strong desire to buy some more yarn--maybe this time in a rich blue.
**Hey, Daylight Savings Time just happened! I've been watching Doctor Who on and off all day and am feeling especially inclined to believe I have just gone back in time.
***Spring Forward?

The roots of debate and the hope of dialogue.

Can we talk about how my new favorite yarn in the whole world is on closeout at Webs and my first instinct is to buy a truckload of it or maybe the whole warehouse and then I think, hey, maybe I should pay my bills instead? But how I really just want to buy yarn? Yeah. Let's talk about that.

What's black, white, read, etc., etc.

No, not my Milton paper (wish me luck or something)--this.

It's a bit weird to me that the artist insists that turning your newspapers into yarn is good for making "tangible" memories--you can't read the paper, she says, but sometimes you can see snatches of dates or words. Playing devil's advocate for a moment, why is it necessary to "justify" art by insisting that a piece has tangible value? It's not a huge leap from "tangible" value to capital, either; making memories tangible also makes them buy-able, so sign me up for an October 24, 1983, newspaper yarn rug, you know? Is it an accident, I wonder, that the article reads a whole lot like somebody's trying to sell me something? And that her text (which seems to have been translated from the Dutch) reads like a catalogue? And I, a trained (indoctrinated?) consumer and moreover used to the insistence that 1) "indie" yarn is hand-dyed art and therefore I should feel better (more organic? more artistic?) about using it because it's not commercially made, and 2) that you can put a price--often a high(er) price--on "indie" hand-dyed/hand-spun yarn, immediately went looking for her web site so I could see how much the stuff cost. It doesn't--it's part of her portfolio and she just graduated from a design academy; she's selling herself (1).

(1) I happily sweep intentionality off the table, but I do wonder what her statement is; it's not a terrible way to think about memory--bits and pieces woven into a larger tapestry (or sturdy doormat)--or about (god help me) "culture." The idea that something else (/"different") can be made out of newspaper.

I wonder if the stuff is as flammable as newspaper usually is. On a more technical note, I wonder what she's plying it with--there's some kind of thread, it looks like, wrapped around the newspaper tubes. Is she using a spinning wheel? Or is she doing it by hand? I was also surprised at how colorful the tubes were; I forget that newspaper isn't--well--black and white anymore.

Caught up in Webs

So we may not have made the pilgrimage, but we did get some relics from the fiber arts mecca that is Northhampton, MA. This tote bag is so sturdy. It will be perfect for yarn I mean books then next time I have a lot to carry home from the yarn shop I mean library. And it's cat approved, too. Check out that skein sticking out from the top -- that's my first even skein of Noro Silk Garden, and it is so special I'm almost afraid to use it. Should I follow Sarah G's lead and tackle a beanie or should I plan on a Fake Isle hat? Or do I dare attempt these lovely mittens, as difficult as they look? Luckily, I do not have time to make any of these things, so I can just enjoy this moment of anticipation.

And speaking of pilgrimages, tomorrow is the Yarn Harlot! There is a lot that has to happen before we get there, but it is nice to have something to look forward to.

Dear Abby,

Is it possible to accidentally buy yarn?

I realize that this entails, say, the googling of "yarn shop," and a few errant keystrokes in the sale section of Knitch, but--you know, given enough monkeys and enough typewriters, you get Hamlet, right? It's harder to explain one's wallet accidentally unzipping and one's credit card number accidentally appearing on screen, but weirder things have happened. Look at Michael Jackson.

Send me your thoughts as soon as possible, c/o debtor's prison.

Signed,
Not That This Has Happened To Me Or Anything