Finished

Well, at least I think I am. The sleeves are seamed (and the stripes all line up), the ends tucked in. It's had it's bath. That pre-bath neckline looks awfully huge, though, doesn't it?

Still, a check on Ravelry, while it did show some ribbed necklines, showed way more made according to the pattern. And while it took 3 tries with different and increasingly smaller crochet hooks (I may be a tight knitter, but I am a loose crocheter) to get a comparatively non-distorted edging (and thanks and a hat tip to YouTube for videos on how to crochet backwards - multiple decades of crocheting and I had never come across that technique), that's not why I'm leaving it as it is. One of the Ravelers noted that, once she made the ribbed neckline, her child had trouble getting her head through. I'm not going to risk it.

Thank you, thank you and an even bigger hat tip to you all for your comments on the previous post. While not all of you overtly advocated ripping, we were all agreed that the strip of solid along the bottom was Not The Way To Go. There was actually comparatively little ripping to do - I really did stop the knitting until you had a chance to respond. Gad, sometimes I'm smart.

It's blocking as we speak (heavy humidity here has extended the process). All that puffiness where the front and back meet the sides has smoothed away. Not only that, it looks like it might fit an actual child.

Details:

Pattern: Orphans for Orphans sweater by Jean Dykstra in Knitting for Peace. With some math because the yarn I used wasn't anywhere near gauge.

Yarns: Cherry Tree Hill Twisted in "Earth" (the variegated) and Cascade 220 The Heathers in 2453/Pumpkin Spice.

Needles: Addi turbos, size US 9/5.5 mm for the front and back panels, US 8/5 mm for the rest.

I knit the stripes down the sleeves to coincide with the decrease rows, so they're 4 rows wide each. The cuffs and the hem are K2P2 rib, changing colors every row - a feat I accomplished by that handy dandy old slide-the-stitches-back-and-forth-along-the-circular-needle trick that I mastered with the "My Way" shawl.

I'm sweatered out. Who knows a good pattern for a Faroese shawl ( I have Folk Shawls)?

Design Decision

Dearly as I love you all, you have to admit you're not the most chatty group. I'm going out on a limb here anyway, though, and doing a comment-beg. It's about the Orphans for Orphans sweater.

I'm having second thoughts about one of my design decisions. Second thoughts to the point that I've started daydreaming over new projects, checking stash, considering swatching. You know, the whole avoidance thing. This is getting serious. I may be rationalizing that I'm only researching so I'll have a project ready to go as soon as I finish this, but we all know about those sorts of fantasies and where they lead.

Back to the business at hand. I'm looking at the bottom of the sweater. I thought adding a few rows of the solid to the bottom would sort of unify the sweater before I got into the K2P2 rib/switch yarn every row border. Now I'm wondering if it makes the center panel look too out of place, too much like a bib?

So, really, truly, do me a favor? Please let me know what you think, before I commit any further or abandon my commitment entirely (that Alice Starmore sweater in the foreground is looking mighty tempting).

Maybe if I say, "Pretty please?"

Stitches, Part 2 - Striving for Lucidity

While I knocked over the hurdle and didn't finish any Olympic Knitting this year, Stitches provided me with any number of events.

Friday. Relay - Driving down to Urbana and back with Marco to pick up Clare. Handing off the boys to the sitter, driving to the Loop to leave the car with Marc, getting on the Blue Line to the Far North, connecting with my sister and mother at the train station, waiting for my niece who was two trains after us and finally arriving at the Renaissance Schaumburg (that's a link to the hotel's photo page). Then staying up until 1 doing the homework for the class I wasn't even registered for that was meeting the next morning. On second thought, maybe Friday was the Marathon.

Saturday - Crack of dawn to get up so I could be human by 7:15 (the time the mirror in the bathroom said the Registration Desk opened) to try to get into Melissa Leapman's Pattern Drafting class, which was meeting that morning from 8:30 to 11:30. The Registration Desk didn't, in point of fact, open until 7:30 -a crucial 15 minutes when you haven't had coffee. I got into the class, though, so it was worth it. And you better believe I ingested some caffeine before I walked into The Perfection Parlor for the class. I think that may have been Gymnastics.

Which reminds me. The most hilarious thing -- after the computer screen in the bathroom mirror running the days events on a continuous loop -- was the naming system for the meeting rooms. You could go to Nirvana or Utopia. You could achieve Euphoria or Perfection. You could let your Imagination run wild. Strive for Knowledge, Innovation, Serenity and Prosperity. Make a Connection. Have an Epiphany. Forget the "Boardroom A" experience.

Next, Diving. Melissa Leapman walks in and informs us that this is her most boring class. It's all lecture. No knitting. She had a an over-sized pad on an easel and colored markers and everything. We spent three hours listening to her, asking questions and not taking notes because everything was in the handout. We even did Algebra. She had samples of the fabulous sweaters she's designed to illustrate her points, including the one featured on the cover of the new book. The time flew. Trust me. I don't think Melissa Leapman could find boring if she looked with both hands and a map for a month. She's fun and knowledgeable and, while I may not have knit a thing, I feel like I've come away with a whole new skill-set.

It was after that that I went to The Market, which, as I'm sure you could tell from yesterday's post, was an Olympian Event in a class by itself.

My Annual Gobsmacking

I love Stitches.

This is the first time I've stayed at The Event. I am so going to do this again next year, except for more than Friday and Saturday night. The immediate company was great. Five of us in 2 rooms on the 15th floor of the Renaissance Schaumburg. Clare came. So did my sister and one of her daughters. So did my mother (the woman who got half way through her second mitten about 50 years ago and hasn't picked up a knitting needle since). Then, on Saturday night, my sister's other two daughters joined us at The Market and stuck around for dinner (I suppose it might have been "joined us for dinner and endured The Market until we were ready to go," but I'm a knitter and prefer the other interpretation).

So, what would you like to hear about first? Pattern Drafting with Melissa Leapman (yes, that Melissa Leapman, Cables Untangled Melissa Leapman, soon to be Continuous Cables Melissa Leapman.)

Perhaps you are curious about the fabulous yarn I scored at the Interlacements booth for the winners of The Blog Anniversary non-Contest?

Then again, maybe you'd like me to describe the incredible afghan at the Philosopher's Wool booth? (It's made out of squares. You know I'm a complete sucker for afghan squares.) I'll admit to a moment of serious cognitive dissonance when I realised the book was published by Leisure Arts. Leisure Arts and Philosophers Wool seem like very strange bedfellows to me. Then again, it's politics that makes strange bedfellows and this is an election year here in the States, isn't it?

I honestly don't know where to begin. There were the people from Esther's Place in Big Rock, IL. My sister talked to them for longer than I did, apparently there's an effort to reintroduce sheep farming into some of the less urban areas of Cook County.

The list goes on and on (and on). Yarn Barn of Kansas, who I always think I'm not going to buy anything from, and from whom I always do. Hand Painted Knitting Yarns (last years extravagant purchase) was (were?) there with these fabulous Shawl kits (I know what I hope my sister is giving me for Christmas this year, but you'll just have to wait until December). Brooks Farm. The Fold. Jennie the Potter.

Well. I'll try to be more coherent tomorrow. Perhaps by then the yarn fumes will have cleared a bit.

And the Winners Are

I had a brilliant idea last night. It's gone now, though. So, rather than subject my poor brain to further frustrated feats of lost memory, let's call it done with the two comments that were left on the anniversary post. Diane and Cathy, come on down!

Diane and Cathy are both connected to one of the latest knitting projects here -- the a4A Rectangular Shawl Project and the Campaign for Youth. Diane got me started knitting for afghans for Afghans. Cathy's Blogger profile has the a4A Knitalong as the blog she posts to. She even posted a link there to the "I Did It My Way" shawl. So I'm thinking, if you two don't already have one, how about a copy of Knitting for Peace and yarn to make the Orphans for Orphans sweater?

It's fun. There's hardly any assembly. It knits up quickly, even if you forget to make all the adjustments for not getting gauge and have to rip out occasionally.

This plan has so many added advantages. I get to send people presents. I get to promote the Campaign for Youth, and -- not least by any means -- I get to shop Stitches Midwest with a clear conscience. I have an idea of Diane's yarn preferences (Not Orange!), but Cathy, I need hear from you. It probably wouldn't hurt to include things like "I despise multi-colored yarns," or "Green gives me hives." If you'd rather email, it's over there in the side-bar.

Yarn buying doesn't count if it's not for me, right?

Dry

Completely. Absolutely. Out of Ideas. Or rather, idea-less ("out of ideas" seems to imply there were some, but now they're gone). I sat down this morning, rather pleased with the project in hand (Marco's sweater) which, despite some minor cable repair necessitated by errors made in the throes of the excitement of Women's Gymnastics, I quite like, and all set to apologize for yesterday's moan-y post. Then I looked at the date. The blog is two years old today. I have no Anniversary Post prepared. No contest. No excuse to send presents out to anyone. And no ideas.

I have prizes. I'm sure I do. Not as many as before The Purge, but there's all that blue Cascade 220. Or, be still my beating heart, I could go shopping at Stitches Midwest next week. Maybe I could invent something cable-centered. I have, however, no way to determine who to send something to.

Oh dang, and there's no knitting pictures. Okay, how about one of what I was planning to write about?

I don't suppose you have any? You know, ideas?

Whingeing

Or, You Can't Get There from Here.

My knitting is being mean to me. I'm on about chart number eleventy-hundred for the Different Blessingway Blanket. The latest set-back is the realization that I'm going to have to either do a double increase on one edge of every right side row or an increase on every row. Otherwise the base of the triangle will never fit in the allotted space. For some reason, this has me unreasonably unnerved and I've hidden all my graph paper from myself. Again.

Then there's my a4A sweater. I quite love the front and back panels. I got downright excited at the way it was working up exactly the way I had hoped it would. Then came the pick up stitches for the side part. Picking up stitches doesn't exactly set my hair on fire. At least, it doesn't when I'm picking a different number of stitches than the rows or stitches I have available. It's that "evenly across" part that leaves me cursing and throwing my knitting across the room. Still, I'm nothing if not stupidly persistent. I finally got it right and started merrily knitting the sides. Then I looked at it. I need to vent a heavy sigh here, perhaps with a little, underlying, whimper.

I've picked this up and put it down without adding a single stitch at least 5 times today.Like the green yarn for the rectangular shawl, these two don't play well together. Let me correct that. I don't think they should be allowed to play together at all. Let's pause for a rousing cheer here, or at least a sigh of relief (as opposed to heavy one exhaled above), that I'm not a Ravelympian.

The artist behind Cherry Hill can no longer convince me that these two share the same patrimony. Clare's theory is that someone spilled the brown dye-pot and didn't tell. "Earth," indeed.

I think I have to admit defeat and set the brown stuff aside for String Theory's sidewalk sale next year. If I rip out a bit on the two panels, I should have enough of the more colorful skein to make the next size down. Well, that, or chance the 14 yards I'm short (the yarn is a 586 yard skein, the largest size calls for 600 yards).

It's not all frustration and despair here, though. While I've been dithering over the frogging decision, I've also been flailing about, looking for something else to keep my hands busy. You know all that blue Cascade 220? I do believe there's some Marco Blue there after all.

This one I think I'll start with a 2 by 2 ribbing. A few inches of that and I'll be ready to face ripping out the brown.

Next time someone asks me who I'm going to believe, them or my own eyes, I'm going to get the answer right.

Whine over.

Not Quite an Olympian

Now that I've said it, I sort of feel I ought to do something about it. I am thinking about that newest a4A campaign, the campaign for youth. That's the one that calls for sweaters and such for children (as opposed to babies, toddlers and/or adults). The one for which I'm too late for the Ravelympics Team. I'm not yet ready to give up the not-quite-Marco-blue sweater, but I kind of need something to keep my hands busy while I ponder shades of blue again.

Besides, despite String Theory's efforts on my behalf, I still have all this yarn.

This specifically: discontinued Cherry Tree Hill Twister. Both skeins purport to be of the "Earth" colorway. Right. I can't get more, so I have no hope of ever matching either of them. I have never been able to figure out a non-scarf project for these, which is why they almost made it to the String Theory pile. In fact, I'm not sure why I held them back. Then, earlier today, I paged through the Campaign for Youth thread in Fans for Afghans on Ravelry. One of the knitters mentioned the Orphans for Orphans sweater in Knitting For Peace. I own Knitting For Peace. My sister gave it to me for Christmas a couple of years ago, and I have yet to realize my ambition to knit something from it.

Do you notice things coming together here? Factor in my compulsion to not cheap out for charity. I think this is the perfect project for these two oddly related skeins of yarn.

The sweater is made with a front and back panel. Once these are complete you pick up stitches and knit the sides and sleeves. My thought is, I can use one skein (probably the more colorful one) for the panels and the other (the more earthly colored one) for the sides. I might even be able to make another one with the colors reversed.

Late off the dime? Yeah, kinda. A day late and a dollar short, at least for the Ravelympic group? Definitely. Maybe I'll try to finish before the Olympics, anyway.

Marco Blue

When he was little, Marco had this sweater, a cabled Nautica-brand cardigan from the TJ MAXX clearance rack. I can't remember what Family Celebration I decided he needed it for, but the first time he wore it one of my older brothers looked down at him and said, "Whoa. Is that your color or what?"

Back when I first decided to knit sweaters for my kids, I wanted to make Marco's in that particular blue and I didn't care how many on-line and local yarn stores I went through to find it. I now own one huge stash of blue Cascade 220. There was the one that was close, but had that electric purple/pink heather. One was too dark, the next one too gray, a third was too pale, a fourth was too pretty. It's very elusiveness made me dig in my heels. For his sweater, I would have that blue or none. It didn't help that I was relying on photographs -- many of which featured him in blue, but none of which featured him in that particular sweater -- and memory.

I finally shanghaied Clare and dragged her along to Nana's Knitting Shop. Tricia at Nana's has the best collection of Cascade 220 in the city and she stocks sweater quantities. Together, I was sure Clare and I would recognize "that blue."

Clare pulled a beautiful, bright, deep royal blue from one of the bins. "This is Marco blue."

"But I really want a heathered blue. Heathers are so much more fun to knit. What about this one?"

She gave me this look over her glasses and shook the skein at me. "This is Marco blue."

"Well. I suppose but what about...?"

She raised her eyebrow (I hate that she can do that and I can't) and practically hit me on the nose with the yarn. "This is Marco blue."

"Huh. So it is." (I've never been proof against The Eyebrow.)

In between the various closet projects, I've been knitting happily away for days now, secure in the knowledge that I was not relying on my faulty memory or those photos that should have been there but weren't.

Well. I was knitting happily once I ripped back and started over because I had twisted my cast-on and didn't notice for way more inches than you need to know (just in case you thought my knitting might have finally succumbed and acknowledged me as master of the universe).

Speaking of the closet projects, guess what I unearthed this morning?

Guess what else. That yarn? It's not Marco blue.

I hear afghans for Afghans wants sweaters.

Bemused

I don't know if I'm thrilled or horribly embarrassed.

You may remember that, off and on, I've been sorting through my life, thinly disguised as the closets and pantry and storage bin projects. I can now add, and my stash. It's my stash that's got me conflicted.

Before I learned that purling was knitting, I had a fiber art. I crocheted, but sporadically. I only ever bought yarn when I had a pattern, a project and a deadline. I'm sure this was in part because of the way crochet eats yarn. It takes an average of three times as much yarn to make a comparable crochet project than it takes for the knitted version. A crochet afghan represents Big Bucks. So I have really only embraced my inner acquisitiveness over the past two years. No. I lie. Let me rephrase that. I've always been acquisitive, otherwise my closets and pantry and storage bin would never have reached the state they were in and clearing them out wouldn't require an Environmental Impact Statement. Yarn just wasn't one of those things I thought about acquiring. I was, therefore, particularly disconcerted when those boxes from Jo Ann weren't big enough, or much less, enough enough. So disconcerted I was compelled to hide my head in the sand about the whole project.

I de-ostriched myself for brief intervals. There was the trip to the Container Store to acquire the stuff to organize the de-aquisition of my life. That purchase of the XXXXXXL Ziploc bags to hold the rejects from the stash. Some desultory sorting when I thought about it.

Then I got that email from String Theory. The one that said they would sell my stash for me. They would track what was sold and I would get a store credit for the amount. Not only that, what didn't sell, they would donate to charity. Are you hearing this? Anything I brought out to them, I would never need to see again. It would be as if it had never been. And I would have a yarn fund. At String Theory. Home of Dream in Color Classy and Shibui sock yarn.

Well, while all the life that has kept from the blog has been happening, I got another email from String Theory. I sold the most yarn of anyone. I now have a huge, gigantic, humongous, really really Big store credit waiting for me. So big I'm embarrassed and will not divulge the amount. It will never expire and I can spend it any way I want.

This all sounds wonderful, yes? Why, then, am I bemused? Well. Think about it. Do you really think I sold the most because all the mistakes I made over the past two years were so good, so desirable to other knitters?

Or do you think it's because I managed, in only two years, to accumulate so much yarn that I simply had more inventory to sell than anyone else in Northern Illinois?

Change of Heart

I haven't said much about the Afghan for Afghans shawl lately. It is deserving of more. When even my brain feels cross-eyed with cables and graph paper, it's a refuge of sanity and simplicity. Not only that, and even better, it has ceased to be the Red Shoes Project. I admit I was still a bit queasy over the color scheme, even after adding the red stripe. Once the wide (ish) green swath was in place, I was much happier with it.

So happy that I'm willing to share the recipe.

Directions for the "I Did It My Way (and I'm not a Frank Sinatra Fan)" Shawl.

Choose your yarn and circular needles. I'm using Unique Sheep Super Wool in Evergreen for the base and an assortment of Dale of Norway Tiur (the pink) and Baby Ull (the rest of the colors) for the stripes.

Swatch (sorry, but it's necessary).

Do the math (sorry, sorry). Stitches per inch from the swatch times the length or width of your shawl (depending on how you want the stripes to run).

Choose the kind of border you want and cast on. I used the crochet cast-on -- because I like the way it makes the cast on edge match the bind-off -- and an odd number of stitches -- because I wanted a seed stitch border (or is it moss stitch over an odd number and seed over an even?) that began and ended with a knit stitch -- and cast on 301 stitches for the length of the shawl so my stripes would run horizontally.

Knit your border - garter, rib or moss/seed stitch. I did 5 rows of moss stitch.

Knit in stockinette, maintaining a 5 stitch border at each side until you can't stand using the same yarn anymore. Add a stripe. I made it for about 3 inches. Here's the part where you see why you needed to use circular needles. It wasn't just for the huge stitch count. Slide back to the base color. Knit a row. Add another stripe. Slide to the other end. Knit a row. Continue for as many stripes as you want. Make the stripes farther apart by knitting more rows of the base color and carrying the contrast yarn up the side. Make wider stripes by knitting more than one row of the contrast.

Make up the pattern as you go along, repeat in it reverse once you've reached the half-way point.

One word of warning. If you go for the single row of contrast color, when you slide your yarn over, if you keep doing K1, P1, K1, P1, K1 for your border, it's going to get out of whack. Sometimes you're going to have to do P1, K1, P1, K1, P1, so look at your stitches. Remember that, for mos stitch to work, you need to knit into the purl stitches and purl into the knit stitches. I don't want to discuss how many stripes I went through and how many times I dropped down to fix the border before I figured that out.

It's knit. The ends are woven in. It's blocking. I'll send it off to San Francisco as soon as it's dry.

Wonder what I'll find next to help me avoid The Cable Project.

Friday's Inspired Silliness on Saturday

Mason Dixon-have a lot to answer for. Kay introduced Matt (it's the July 9 post). I've spent way too much time watching him dance across the world. Then I spent way too much time playing on Youtube. We haven't had overt, pointless goofiness here for a while. I found this classic.



Why? Because!

S(p)inning

Oooh! Presents.



If one is participating in a bi-monthly yarn club that has 7 mailings, one of the mailings is going to arrive earlier than every two months. The s(p)in that arrived early? Sloth. This amuses me.

It's a rather - interesting- collection this month. I like each yarn. The one on top is a little bit of black angora for lining (one of the patterns has ear-flaps). The other two are Footprints yarn in Siesta Fiesta (the multicolor) and Studmuffin (the brown) by Unique Sheep.

I quite like the slouchy, sloppy, slothful hat pattern (not the one on the front so much, there's one inside called "Path to Purgatory" for those of us disinclined to do the "work of atonement" the featured hat requires). I'm just not sure I like them all together.

The little extra treats are always fun. The tin that will someday house part of my stitch marker collection has "Slothful" tea (green tea, chamomile, peppermint, and catnip). The logo pin is for my knitting bag, but will probably come to live on my kitchen bulletin board. My favorite is the little post-it pad. When I lined up the shot above, I hadn't given the package as thorough an investigation as I should have (evidence of more sloth?). While I was playing with it all over coffee this morning I found this.

A rainbow sloth.

Take all these goodies and factor in the current Chicago July weather -- 90's and very, very (did I mention very?) humid -- and I just may have found a deadly sin I can take to heart.

Wild Fiber

Come inside Galena's Main Street Yarn store, Fiber Wild. Right next door to the Quilt Shop (Phat Quarters) and across the street from the Needlework shop (The Timeless Needle, Ltd.). I turned the camera over to Marco. He was very thorough.

Fiber Wild has original patterns and knitted gifts.

Fiber Wild has spinning supplies and their own brand of yarn.

Fiber Wild had kits made up. These came with a skein of Claudia Hand Paints.

I created my own kit. Their pattern (yes, that's a cable) plus their yarn (Wild Sox Handpaint) and a handmade, felted, embroidered, wool pincushion. Perfect.

I know. I only went a little wild. It was fun, though.

Running Away from Home

We've been in Galena. Himself had a conference. It was wonderful and not like being in Illinois at all. For one thing, Galena goes up. The Illinois I know, Eastern Illinois, doesn't.

I've never been in a Midwestern city where the streets were connected by stairs.

We did all the geeky tourist things: Grant's home, lunch in town, the Old Firehouse stairs, the local bookstore. Galena has trolleys, although we never managed to get to the trolley stop at the right time.

The Galena History Museum was my personal favorite. Did you know 9 Union Civil War generals were from Galena? That Galena made it's money from lead and zinc mining? That the original of Thomas Nast's (of Santa Claus fame) painting of Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox is on the second floor of the museum? Well. good for you. I sure didn't. All of that and you can humiliate persuade your kids and take a Civil War picture.

We peered down an actual lead mine shaft that predates the building - when the museum/mansion was built as a private residence, they threw the construction debris down the shaft. One of the docents said it took an act of Congress to get the shaft re-opened.

I can hear you in my mind's ear, jittering with impatience. "This is all well and good, but what about the important stuff? What about yarn?"

Tomorrow. You'll just have to wait until tomorrow.

Breaking Through

Maybe. Sort of. I bet you've all been wondering if any real knitting on the Blessingway Blanket was ever going to happen. The problem, at least the latest one, is this bit. That loop that extends into the tip of the triangle.

That's actually, from a knitting point of view, the conjunction of a closed ring cable with a travelling cable. Once I'd spent way too much time trying to chart a flat oval cable (cable patterns tend to be tall or round), I spent way too much more time trying to convince myself that I could cross the cable and do the increases for the closed ring at the same time. I finally realised I couldn't. Maybe someday, years and years down the road, but not now. Besides, I'm getting kind of tired of it - the swatching and the not knitting.

Which brings us to the sort of, maybe, breakthrough. Novel thought. Why not get the travelling cable in place and then do the increases? So obvious, isn't it? Eh. Sometimes I have to use a big brick.

I can't help noticing that the swatch doesn't pull in and flare out like the blue bit does. I'm wondering, at my level of skill (Minimal. Ambitious, but minimal.), instead of attempting the clever combination of increases and decreases that Hannah Cuviello used to maintain the same stitch count over the whole motif, if I tried the method used by Elsebeth Lavold and Alice Starmore and only did one set of increases at the start and one set of decreases at the end, could the triangle be persuaded to stay more of a triangle?

Here I have to stop a moment and enshrine my new knitting deity, Elsebeth Lavold. She figured out how to do cable increases over 4 stitches. Of course, moving the travelling cable and charting the flat oval loop on a 4 stitch base means my charting is no good anymore. I'm wondering, too, if I can't find a way to tuck the closed ring cable under the travelling cable right there at the start. I see one more chart and one more swatch in my future.

Oh, and one more thing.

I've changed the color.

Incentives

Another diversionary post. Bear with me. I have a number of interconnected ideas that I want to write about. Sort of a Six Degrees of Separation thing, or possibly the result of the intertwined thinking produced by extended contemplation of cable patterns.

First, there's the "Why hasn't anyone charted a triangle?" issue. On which enough has been said, yes? Once I've got an insurmountable opportunity like that not only renting space in my head, but settling n for a prolonged stay, I realize I need something to look forward to.

Furthermore, when one is convinced that one's knitting is from hunger, one's best friends may turn out to be one's knitting books. Unless, of course, there's a dearth of cable books in your knitting library.

Which leads to the way knitters have of recognizing real desperation and coming out of the woodwork to encourage, suggest, reassure, and point you to a new resource or two.

There are the resources themselves. This time, Alice Starmore and Elsebeth Lavold (thank you, Jess). No, they didn't chart triangle cables ( a piece of knitting I'm realising doesn't exist for a reason), but they, along with Barbara Walker, give you the tools (At least, I think they do. Until I achieve triangle cabledom, the jury is still out.).

If you've been reading for a while, you know that Clare spent the last nine months, with the exception of a little over a week at Christmas, at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

Note that Norwich is in Norfolk, which is on the coast of the North Sea, from which fishermen get fish. The same fishermen who wear Arans and ganseys.

Now, go back to Alice Starmore and Fishermen's Sweaters.

You know I'm going to have to find someone to knit this for.

Progress Report

I keep thinking I'm going to have exciting cable news to give you and I keep being wrong. Perhaps not so much wrong as there keeps being more. One thing leading to another. Confusions and convolutions sprouting and intertwining like kudzu. In fact, it's rather like my pantry last week. I keep getting close. It's just that, every time I think I've solved one problem (the elongated cable I need for inside the tip of the triangle, for example),

some new twist smacks me upside the head

(as in, now I have to cross this thing?).

So, instead let me reassure you that the expanding universe (alpineflower's theory and my favorite) known has The Pantry has contracted, but left a gift. Behold, the advantage of having to spread out newspapers to drain the myriad artifacts once the dust of ages has been removed. Have you seen this?

Clever English-style knitter supplies rock bands with custom made guitars. (Not really. I looked it up. It's about a New England senior citizens chorus that covers rock hits. I like my story better. )

Applied Science

The law of the conservation of matter states that, in a closed system, matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Lomonsov and Lavoisier have never visited my pantry. I'm cleaning it out. I have been cleaning it for days (weeks, months, years). I begin to believe I will continue to clean it until the sun falls into the ocean.

I should explain, once upon a time, when this planet was young (that is, before we bought the unit), it was a pantry. Since I've had control over it, it has been storage. We call it the pantry out of courtesy -- rather like one refers to a former admiral as "Admiral" -- but it hasn't held comestibles (unless you count cat food) for, well, a long, long time.

Further, let me state, it has so been cleaned since my children have been born. I know this because among the items on the upper shelves is the pink and white building block planter which screams baby gift (as does the blue with white polka-dots baby-diaper-shaped one that says "BOY" and the blue ceramic vase with white clouds). They would never have made it above my reach if I hadn't cleaned at the point where I couldn't bear to throw them away, but couldn't imagine what else to do with them.

It cannot be denied, however, that this project has taken on aspects of an archaeological dig. How to explain to your 13 year old that what looks like a fishbowl complete with marbles in the bottom was, in its day, that de rigeur accessory, the over-sized flower bowl as featured at the time in Apartment Life (now Metropolitan Home)? When your 21 year old cocks an eyebrow at you, aren't you compelled to explain that no one, no one, throws away Tupperware? That once upon a time, you used those barbecue tools and that that explains the three started bottles of charcoal lighter fluid?

If the law of conservation really works, how did I, the mother of 3 children, come to own 7 sand buckets but only 2 shovels? Five bubble tumblers but only 4 bubble wands? Two squirt guns (did I allow two siblings to gang up on the third)? The pantry can't be more than 4 by 6 feet. Even if you allow for the 10 foot ceilings, I can't see how, emptied, it can fill two rooms.

There was a plan (isn't there always?). The original plan was to haul out anything that hadn't seen the light of day for over a year and send it off to Salvation Army, thus freeing up space for the stuff that, having spilled off the radiator covers, now occupies various corners of the floors.

Then that dangerous word, "just," started being bandied about. In scary sentences like, "Well, let's just empty the top shelves and strip the old shelf paper." "You know, if we just moved this rolling shelf, we could wash that wall." "If we just empty the big, free-standing shelf, we could patch those cracks." "I'm thinking, we could stop at the Ace and just pick up a bucket of paint."

If navigating the unit wasn't unlike attempting to thread a maze, I might think this an elaborate ruse to duck my knitting, all of which I despise at the moment. To protect my credibility as a knitting blogger, here's the obligatory picture.

This is where it sits at the moment. It will continue to sit here for a while.

The pantry is emptied, spackled, sanded, primed and, as God is my witness, the final coat of paint goes on this morning. Just in time for me to try to organize tomorrow's parade. Then maybe I'll be able to knit again.

Of course, there's always the possibility that my pantry isn't a closed system at all. That it is, in fact, a portal to another system. Obviously, one that manufactures plastic children's toys.

Just Walk Away

Do you know the fairy tale, The Red Shoes? It's the one where the little girl buys red shoes that compel her to dance, will she, nil she. No matter what, once the red shoes are on her feet, it seems her feet have a mind of their own. Rather grim, really.

It's been like that with the green shawl. It's not working. I know it's not working, Yet I keep adding to it. The rose turned it into the Baby Bop shawl? I'll add a set of blue stripes. The green fought with the blue, bruised it, and brought out purple overtones (don't anyone dare say "Barney," here)? I'll add a set of yellow stripes. No matter how many times a seeming inspiration strikes and then falls over gasping pathetically, I keep knitting.

It's undeniable. The green yarn doesn't play well with others. It's a prima donna. A soloist, not an ensemble member. An isolationist, not an ally.

Then again, maybe if I add some red.

Why do I feel that, like a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, this isn't going to end well?

The Object is to Go Home"

"And be safe."



I hope you're safe at home, too. Thank you Mr. Carlin.