I'm having a very busy day trying to finish my piece for that Loop exhibition next week, so I'm just going to link a VERY interesting blog post about knitting/crochet and the idea of "difficulty". Take it away, Orata.
(I'll post my response later in the week. I constantly encounter this question about "difficulty" in my work and have a few things to say about it)
At a recent knitting group, a friend worried that I would become a Sewer rather than a Knitter. Fear not. I may have spent a small fortune in a fabric shop yesterday but my first love remains knitting. And I have actually been knitting away on a couple of projects. To wit:
Addendum: Knitting as Therapy. A very good blog post about body image, self-acceptance, and knitting. Warmly recommend. I'm not the emotional sort but even I had a lump in my throat after reading this.
Quite apart from celebrating my ten-year blogging anniversary, I have also been celebrating my thirty-mumble-th birthday this week. Among the many excellent presents, I received The Perfect Fit: A Practical Guide to Adjusting Sewing Patterns and The Sewing Book - both of which sent my heart a-flutter. I was also lucky enough to be given a sweater amount of ruby Kidsilk Haze and a shawl amount of burgundy Faroese wool. My sewing machine also arrived this week which called for a bit of fabric shopping. I feel very consumerist right now.
However, my consumerism is linked to a feeling of wanting to become less of a consumerist. My fabric purchases have been very deliberate and are linked to my desire to have an almost self-stitched capsule wardrobe. I've been reading Sewingplum's blog intently and while I'm not yet at a level where I can consider making 6 (let alone 24!) staple wardrobe pieces, I can at least become a much more thoughtful dresser - and crafter.
The photo shows two of the fabrics in my stash. The one on the left is the Liberty cotton lawn which D gave me for Christmas. Right now I feel slightly daunted by this fabric. The fabric on the right is a Joel Dewberry cotton which is earmarked for my first 'proper' sewing project: the Simplicity 2501 blouse. It's a very versatile pattern (check out this very vintage-looking version!) and one I can imagine myself making several times. You might think I am batting above my weight with this pattern. We shall see. After all, I used to be a decent dressmaker back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I'm yet to find an equally versatile pattern for the lower pattern of my body. I'm also trying to decide whether I would ever feel confident enough to wear the Ceylon dress - I'm already pretty sure the Crepe dress will be a go-to pattern: it would look equally nice in neutrals and bold prints (versatility is the key to my heart, it seems).
As I have previously mentioned, I'm going to have a real go at making clothes appropriate for warm(ish) weather which makes knitting and crochet slightly trickier. Fancy is still on my list, but it will probably be the only big knitting project I'll undertake. I'll be looking into making a couple of small shrugs - Veronique ticks my boxes but it's also knitted in KSH and two projects in KSH might be a bit much even for me. Right now, though, I am contrating on a knitted art piece I shall be exhibiting at the Glasgow Tramway art gallery next month (link NSFW due to artistic nudity). I'm behind schedule and need to press on.
Finally: thank you for all your comments recently. I'll try to get back to each and every one of you!
Today I wore my February Lady Sweater for the first time in months and I was reminded of a recent conversation with knitting friends. Last I went to my regular knitting group, most of us were working on cardigans or sweaters/jumpers knitted flat. This gave us pause for thought because the past few years we have all been very busy knitting top-down cardigans and jumpers/sweaters these past few years. So why have many of us suddenly gone back to the dreaded seamed cardigans where you cannot try on the garment as you are knitting and there is so much post-knitting finishing to do?
My February Lady Sweater has not aged well. I knitted it out of New Lanark Aran which is a sturdy no-frills yarn with good memory, but even the yarn's good memory has not preventing the cardigan from sagging under its own weight. The garterstitch yoke has stretched which means baggy underarms and a cardigan that is too long in the body. Yes, my FLS has been washed and dried (several times) but the yoke does not spring back into shape.
Out of curiosity I then tried on my other top-down garments. My red cardigan also suffers from the 'saggy yoke leads to sad cardigan' syndrome as does my beloved handspun garterstitch yoke cardigan although I have not worn it as often as either my grey or red cardigan and so it still maintains some shape. I've worn Liesl maybe five times so it still looks brand new, but Milbrook looks a bit tired even if the yarn itself is very light-weight. My only top-down garment which still looks fit for fight? Forecast. Maybe the cables keep it in shape?
Question: how has your seamless, top-down cardigan or jumper/sweater weathered being used over, say, one or two years? Has your project kept its general shape or has it turned into a sad, saggy unflattering lump like my once much-loved FLS? I'm particularly curious about the cardigans that were all the rage maybe one or two years ago - the 'three buttons at the top' cardigans. You know, FLS, Moch cardigan, Amelia, Tea Leaves, Tappan Zee etc.
Maybe I have been unlucky and maybe my knitting friends have been unlucky - or maybe top-down seamless knitting needs to be thought about more carefully?What's your take on seams vs no-seams?
In other crafty news, I have finally made a decision on which sewing machine to purchase. I have gone for JL300C which is a re-branded Janome. Essentially it is the Janome DC3050 without the 20 decorative stitches I didn't want or need - and it's £30 less too. I'm getting it next week and I am ridiculously excited. I should probably send D. into town to pick it up or I may be tempted into buying some of the new Joel Dewberry cottons: some of his prints are quite Art Noveau, others rather Art Deco, and I'm weak in the presence of references to early 20th C visual design.
I'm currently knitting: nothing! It's true! I need to cast on for an art piece I'm exhibiting next month. I just need to shake off this lethargy of mine. I'm currently reading: Zadie Smith - On Beauty. Again with the lethargy, though, as I'm only twenty pages into a book I ought to be flying through..
Pssst.. title.
I had planned to enjoy an evening of Sit & Knit A Bit at The Life Craft when Life Stuff happened and I had to pull out. So instead of a knitterly night with some of Glasgow's loveliest crafters, I'm sitting at home under a blanket with a cup of tea. Things could be worse, I suppose.
NOT knitting in public means I get to knit something complicated. I decided the other week that I'm going to knit Fancy from the latest Rowan magazine and before I pull the ball bands off my chartreuse Kidsilk Haze, I wanted to swatch the lace pattern. I knitted a quick swatch using some leftover Haze, quickly realised I would want to rip back and also be able to see the stitches, and then started over using some old Freedom Spirit. I may need to practise this stitch pattern quite a bit before I switch to Kidsilk Haze.
You see, it's not your typical 'yarn over/decrease' lace pattern; it is a sort of 'drop stitches, knit & purl 5 stitches through the back and add yarn overs at odd moments' sort of lace with hardly any rest rows. I thought the pattern looked Estonian and a quick google actually brought me to a blog devoted to Estonian lace which had posted a video showcasing a similar technique. The stitch pattern is not identical but the technique shown will be useful for anyone planning to make Fancy - I certainly wish I had seen the video before I had started swatching. It would have saved me some grim moments of knitter's doubt.
The same knitter who posted the video linked above has an entire YouTube channel devoted to unusual knitting techniques - most of Eastern European origin from what I can tell. I have bookmarked her tutorials on Estonian lace techniques and will be watching them with great interest as soon as I get some spare time(!). They look useful in a 'ouch, my brain hurts' way. I love that sort of stuff.
In case you are interested, Mhairi of Flavaknits and I have joined up for an informal Fancy KAL. I don't expect it to be a quick knit but it will be a challenging, fun knit. I'll be posting about my progress and sharing tips - hopefully more people will join us?
Thanks to train journeys, my purple Colourscape cardigan is almost done. I still have to attach the sleeves, knit the button-loops, find buttons and weaving in ends, of course, but they are all relatively minor things. It has been a very quick knit and one I have enjoyed a lot. The pattern was very straightforward and came together without a hitch.
Okay, so I tell a lie: there was a hitch but it was of my own doing.
See how the fronts have mitered corners? It's a super-easy technique which looks great .. but if you use a long-tail cast-on (it is my go-to cast-on method), it will not work right off the bat. The left front worked great, but the right front left me bewildered. It just did not want to mirror the left front despite me following the pattern intently. Then it dawned on me: you automatically knit the first row when you use the long-tail cast-on which essentially meant I needed to decrease whilst casting-on because the pattern wanted me to do a sharp sl 2, k1, p2sso decrease on the very first row. It all seems so obvious now, but it took me a bit of head-scratching to get to that point. If you do a knitted cast-on, you won't have the same problem, by the way.
Montse Stanley is a bit hesitant about my next trick: the crocheted seam -->
In her excellent The Handknitter's Handbook, Stanley remarks that a crocheted seam is fine if you anticipate wanting to recycle an item and need a seam that can be unravelled relatively quickly. I like a crocheted seam when I worry about being able to provide stability and structure. The two pieces - the buttonband and the front - stretch in opposite directions and I wanted to make sure that the seam did not pull and provide stability. The seam is bulkier than a mattress stitch seam would have been, but this does not show on the outside. In its own way, a crocheted seam is also rather pretty.
I have been looking through my button boxes trying to find two buttons that work with this garment. I'm thinking some rather chunky and earthy buttons would suit the style of this cardigan. However, while I do have several chunky and earthy buttons in my button stash, I cannot find any that really, really work.
The Celtic knotwork buttons (four of them are tied together, one is facing) would be fine if they had been bronze- or copper-coloured. I don't think the silver colour works. The lilac plastic buttons are foul and were only in contention because parts of the cardigan are lilac. The bronze-coloured buttons were birthday presents from my mother, but they seem too shiny for this project. They'd be lovely against some dark green tweed, though.
I've looked the usual places but to no avail. Well, I have sleeves to ease in first..