A long-expected project

Most of the knitters I know have works in progress (abbreviated as WIPs) that for some reason or another, have been put on the back burner. I have a box for these, and when I just want something that's already in progress, I dive in there and grab a project. There's a sweater that needs its fronts finished, and a couple half-knit socks, a shawl or two, and a hat that still needs a brim. My practice of having multiple items on the go has spawned these things that aren't quite done yet, and that will be finished at some point. All of them are things I want to complete, and just because they've been in the works for a while does not mean they'll never be finished. See below:

Glass Slippers Socks

These socks were started close to 2 years ago (yes, I'm ashamed of admitting it, but it's true) on a trip down to Portland to visit my family. I was knitting them on the train and gritting my teeth at the charting and the tiny twisted stitches. I loved the pattern, loved the way it looked, but those twisted stitches were killing me. I managed to finish the first sock eventually, picking it up at intervals and working through a repeat or two before I wanted to pull my hair out. 

I pulled them out back in October, and realized that the second sock was not far from completion. The chart on the foot needed to be worked to the point, and then there was the toe. I figured I could get them done in time for the end of the month. The bonus to that was there's this group on Ravelry I'm part of. It's an extremely geeky sort of thing, but I'm an extremely geeky sort of person. It's know as the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup. You sign up, get sorted into a house each term (there's 3 terms per year, each lasting 3 months, with a break month in between each term), and then turn in assignments for classes that fit prompts, most of which are general enough that with a little imagination, it's not hard to make them work with the world of Harry Potter. For month-long projects, you have to start and finish them in a month, but they do have this great class: Detention. For that you get a base number of points, no bonuses, for completing a project that was unfinished before the start of the month. Great incentive to finish that sweater that only needs seaming, or that sock that just needs a toe.

So my pretty blue socks were my October Detention project. I got points, and I finished one of my long-term WIPs.

Close-up of the Glass Slipper sock foot

Oddly, while I was finishing off the chart, it occurred to me that it was much easier than I remembered. I think those almost two years between start and finish have improved my knitting. Sadly, my gauge has not remained the same. I've tightened up ever so slightly from the looser gauge that characterized my knitting a couple years ago. I had to make the toe of the second sock slightly longer so they'd fit properly. It's not really noticeable in the above picture, but it is when I'm wearing them, because the points of the cables don't hit at the same place on either foot. Whoops! That'll teach me to finish things more quickly.

the language of craft

I'm only running on about 4 hours of sleep here, but I have some thoughts. The first one is that I want a loom. This is not a new desire, but it has been fueled by my stint at Knit City last Sunday, when I wandered over to a demo booth when their loom was free, and they sat me down and got me started weaving. It was pretty much amazing and I had to forcibly separate myself from the loom and go back to the guild table (since I was gone for a rather long time, given that I'd left for a bathroom break and then run into the loom on my way back).

I was reading some of the archived articles on WeaveZine last night while I couldn't sleep. I'd gotten up and spun for a while, set up the wheel for plying today, and then wandered over to the computer. Reading articles on weaving when you barely qualify as a novice weaver is a little like trying to read in a language that is not your mother-tongue. I speak fiber pretty well, so many of the terms are familiar, but like any craft, weaving has a specific vocabulary. Reading about it reminds me of reading in Italian or Spanish when I only know Latin and French: I can figure a lot out, but there are places where I am entirely lost. There are sentences where I, the linguist, can tell you only what function every word in the sentence has, but the overall meaning escapes me.

Weaving has words I am familiar with, such as warp and weft. Ancient words that are heavy with significance. Draft, which has multiple meanings for the spinner, the writer, and the latent weaver. Tabby, or plain, weave. Twill. Heddle. Shuttle.

And the craft has many words I don't know (in the sense of connaitre), and many that I am only grasping at. Shaft. Shed. Beam. Pick. Dent. Reed. Sett. Some seem to be interchangeable, but not quite.

It's really that I just don't know the technical aspects well enough to be entirely conversant. I've done this before, though. Learnt a new craft. The language comes with the action. I learn what to call what I'm doing, and I fumble through my first few projects, and then it all becomes second nature. This happened with knitting, with spinning, with crochet (to an extent), with sewing. As I look around me, I see my wheel over by the sofa, ready to go when we get home from the farmer's market this afternoon. There's a niddy-noddy with a skein of already-plied yarn on it nearby. Tossed over the end of the couch is a length of material and a skirt I'm trying to reverse-engineer because I like the style. There's a pile of knit dishcloths on the table, a housewarming gift for my brother. Two are worked in a mosaic knitting, a technique that reminds me of a cross between stranded knitting and weaving. Another sits next to me. This one's a crocheted cloth, worked in a dense, loopy stitch that would make an excellent rug.

Each craft brings its own language, its own little world, with it. Fluency in that language requires immersion and dedicated practice. A simple answer, really, though not always an easy one to live. It's been a challenge with languages such as Chinese, where lack of practice has drastically dwindled my already minimal vocabulary and linguistic skills. But when I can carry my knitting or my spinning with me, when I can speak fluidly through creation, rather than stammering through a sentence, struggling to make myself understood, I speak a language that connects me to people throughout the world and throughout history.

new design and a soup recipe

The week is at an end. Tomorrow is Sunday, the fresh start of the new week, wherein I will strive, yet again, to finish things. There are 3 matters on my list for the next week, 3 items that I would like to see checked off. And then, well, we shall see what else happens.

I finished a new pattern this week. Third Beach. It's up on Ravelry, but you can also get it here, on the page for Epenthetical Designs. After hearing my sister-in-law explain that Third Beach in Stanley Park is the absolute best beach in the park (and they live walking distance from the park, so they should know), I decided to do a shawl designed around it. It was an interesting process, as designing always is. I had one picture in my head, one on paper, and then the resulting shawl on my needles. The shawl in my head and in my design notebook underwent several changes before becoming the bluey-green shawl with hints of yellow that is currently sitting on my dining room table.

I have a few other ideas for designs coming out of the Vancouver area. Something for Granville Island, something for Gastown, something for New Westminster. I have to tinker with the ideas, see what happens. It may eventually become a pattern booklet.

The weather's beginning to change. I'm wearing long sleeves, more scarves, and I've waterproofed my boots in preparation for the coming rains of autumn. I love the crispness in the air in the mornings, and fog that swirls around until the sun burns it off. It's the kind of weather for experimenting with soup, which is what I did yesterday for dinner. I made something inspired by borscht, but which was still rather different. It was very pink, and paired well with the crabapple sauce that I made yesterday. I got out the sourdough starter and made buns to go with the soup. They were so tasty that they're already gone, but there's still a serving of soup left. Here's a rough approximation of my recipe.

September Beef and Beet Soup
2 beets, diced
1 steak, chopped into small chunks
1 onion, chopped
3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
3 large pine mushrooms, sliced (button mushrooms would probably be an okay substitute)
2 cups chopped kale
1.5 litres vegetable broth (or beef broth)
1/4 cup red wine (I used a Malbec)
2 bay leaves
1-2 teaspoons basil
pepper and salt to taste
butter

In a frying pan, melt butter and saute the sliced mushrooms until lightly cooked. Remove from pan and set aside. Reheat pan and tossed in chopped steak. Brown and then pour red wine over, and stir. Turn down heat and let simmer.
In a pot on stove, melt butter and then add garlic and onions. Stir until onions are mostly cooked through. Toss in diced beets, and then stir together with onions and garlic. Add vegetable broth, meat with red wine, basil, bay leaves, pepper, and a pinch or two of kosher salt. Stir. Bring to a simmer and then add mushrooms. Let simmer without a lid until soup has condensed a bit and the beets are becoming tender. Add chopped kale, and then simmer for 10-15 minutes more. Serve hot with rolls for dipping in the soup. My version made 6-8 servings.

Yarn Harvest countdown...last day

The world has narrowed down this week: it's all about Yarn Harvest. I feel like I'm doing theatre again. The event's tomorrow, and I'm really glad that it's almost over, so I can stop stressing about it. There's the part of me that worries it'll all go pear-shaped, and the part of me that hopes it'll be spectacular.

At this point, all I can do is let go and live with it. What happens, happens, and what doesn't, doesn't. C'est la vie; que sera, sera.

Let's just hope that thought'll stop me grinding my teeth tonight.

boredom

I get bored easily. I really do. It makes me feel shallow, that boredom often overtakes me, but at least my methods for dealing with it are more constructive than sitting around whining, "I'm boooooored," like a nine-year-old.

This shawl that I recently finished is testament to my boredom. Nothing's wrong with the pattern. It's easy. Simple. Quick. And yet.

I started this at the end of December. I finished it two days ago. It's August. Eight months to knit a garter-stitch-based shawl in aran weight yarn on 6 mm needles. Yup. That's because I got bored.

The pattern is really simple: it's a 4-row repeat. But though I loved its simplicity and its garter base, I got bored, and moved on to other knitting projects, picking this one up once in a while to work on it. And it did get done, eventually, just not in the two weeks or so it would have taken had I not been so scatter-brained.

when we go to the thrift store...

Everyone has contradictions in their personality. I am no exception. One of my contradictions is, that while I will happily pay $20-30 for a book or a hand-thrown mug or another piece of art, I won't spend that much on a pair of jeans, and am reluctant to spend $40 on a pair of shoes. Consequently, most of my clothing comes from the thrift store. My husband's the same, except he adds board games into the mix. But this does not exclude us from finding art in thrift stores.

Last week, we wandered up to the Salvation Army, and we found a few things. He needed shoes, which he got. But when we walked in, we were confronted with this:

 Naturally, it came home with us, and is now living on our wall. It's got the whole steampunk thing going on. We love it.

Then I found this, for something like 99 cents. A hand-thrown spoon rest with pretty wood-fired glaze. It's situated on the counter with my tea things.

The thrift store can be a dangerous place, especially when paired with my love of functional art (okay, so the picture/wall thing isn't functional, but the spoon rest is).

thinking about a year-long project...

In a discussion with my friend Emily recently, I mentioned my growing desire to spin, weave, and hand-sew an entire outfit. She said that it would be a good year-long blog project. Now it's in my head.

Of course, I don't have a loom. The project would have to wait until I did. But I can muse over it until then.

First, I considered the prospect of using flax. Then I thought about how to get that much flax, how I'd have to order it online, since the closest thing I seem able to get around here is hemp fibre, and how much that would then cost. Should I go with combed top or line fiber or strick? I have no idea. It's not completely off the list, but it's much easier to get a fleece. I know a sheep-shearer with a garage full of fleeces, and I have acquaintances who own sheep. Wool is easy to prepare, and easy to spin. I know what I'm doing when it comes to wool.

Second, there's the question of what to use for spinning. Do I go old-school and use a drop spindle, or do I pick the easier option of the spinning wheel? If I pick the drop spindle option, which of my spindles do I use? Since I want to weave this, I'll have to pick something that I can spin finer weight yarn on, which means my favourite spindle, the Turkish one, is out. Or I could just go with the spinning wheel. That'd be easier, but less "authentic," since what I'm going for is the experience of what it was like back in the days when people had to prepare the fibre, and then spin and weave and sew it by hand. I'd have to spin it fine enough to get away with hand-spun thread for sewing it, as well as for weaving, too.

Third: The colour question. Do I dye the fibre before I spin it, after it's spun up, or after I weave it? Would I go with the natural dyes option, or just pick iDye or Jacquard? Would I do more than one colour (thereby affecting what I would weave), or just do a single shade? In this case, I'd probably do the natural dyes, since that would be more in keeping with what I want here, but I have no idea about single versus multiple colours at this point.

Fourth: The loom. I don't have one. I have friends who weave and have looms, but borrowing one for a year isn't a terribly great idea, because we don't have a lot of space. A friend has a line on a (potentially) inexpensive beginners' loom that I might be able to get cheap, but it's not a guarantee. The limitations of that are that it would be a narrow loom--maybe 20 inches, which would then affect the sewing. I'd have to do a lot of panels. But this would be a table loom, so I would have room for it. At this point, I'd have to do basic weaving, since I haven't actually woven anything before. Although...if I did multiple colours, I could weave plaid. And that would just be awesome.

Fifth: The sewing. Easy enough. I've hand-sewn an entire quilt before. I can do that. I'd have to pick a pattern or draft my own, and decide on the style. Given what I'm thinking about, it'd end up being medieval in style, and then I could wear it to the Renaissance Faire.

That's just the short list. This would involve a lot of sampling and swatching, too, before I could get going properly. But it's certainly something to think about doing once I do have a loom.

One fleece, one wheel (or one spindle), one loom, one year. One outfit. Thoughts?