Dust From A Distant Sun

What a lovely day. The postman brought me the April issue of UK knitting magazine Let's Knit in which I appear. Elaine from the editorial team contacted me back in January and after my busy few months I had actually forgotten I was going to be featured. A nice surprise. I spent an hour in bed looking through the magazine. I particularly liked the editorial on how to tie knitting into the key fashion trends of the season. Sometimes I think knitting likes to live in its own little fashion-bubble so it was nice to see how knitters can relate to, ahem, the normal world.

The postman also brought me some clearance-priced yarn from Kemps (that place is responsible for about half my yarn stash, I swear). I stocked up on RYC Cotton Jeans for some forth-coming baby-knitting projects as well as some RYC Natural Silk Aran which is earmarked for a stashbusting project. Lovely textures and colours at a good price. I was chuffed.

I continue to be chuffed about my Fancy jumper too. The combination of an Estonian lace stitch and Kidsilk Haze = heady stuff.

The stitch pattern is now so intuitive that I can knit it on my commute, at knitting group and in front of the TV. Madness. I'm really enjoying working on it.

I am still worried about the sizing though. I have gone down a clothes size but it still looks very wide. As a result I'm changing the garment a tiny bit: the jumper is supposed to hit you around the lower hip-area, but I'm going to make it shorter so it has an almost cropped appearance and I'm going to shorten the sleeves too. Hopefully it'll sort out the dimensions. I still wonder if it weren't meant to be knitted on 3.5mm needles instead of the recommended 4.5mm?

I want to share a project made by a friend from my knitting group. I was lucky enough to see this crochet blanket in person earlier this week and I was blown away.

It really makes me want to sit down and make my own crochet blanket .. but that way madness and stash-enhancement lies.

Plus I'd go slightly nuts after the first twenty motifs.

My main knitting group is actually so big that it has several divisions: I met the blanket maker when I happened upon the South Side division at the Tramway. I was only there to take down my knitted sculpture but was very, very pleased to see so many familiar and lovely faces. My partner was on hand to help me and was so amused by what he called "a tribal encounter" that he had to take a photo..

.. I have no idea what he means!

Finally, get yourself ready for Knitting & Crochet Blog Week 2011! I participated last year and found some new favourite blog reads. I'm in two minds whether I will participate this year (time constraints plus I feel like I have already written about some of these topics) but I know I'll be reading a tonne of fabulous new blog posts as a result of K&CBW.

Knitting Fancy: Stitch Primer

Fancy was the very first pattern to grab my attention of all the spring/summer previews. It is a deceptively intricate jumper knitted in Kidsilk Haze - I say 'deceptively' because once you twig how the stitch pattern works, the pattern is very straightforward. First of all, if you have knitted Laminaria, Echo Flowers or even Aurantium Blossom, then you will be more than comfortable knitting Fancy. Yes, boys and girls, this is an Estonian-style stitch pattern. Equally, if you are a relatively experienced crocheter as well as knitter, Fancy's stitch pattern will remind you quite a bit of making shells.

However, if you are neither a crocheter nor familiar with Estonian stitches, do not fret. It is just a matter of being able to read your knitting, feeling confident about dropping stitches and twigging when to do all those wrap-around the pattern asks you to do.

1) Get into a rhythm of counting 1-2-3-4-5. The stitch pattern is nothing more than a 6+1 pattern repeat and within that 6 stitch repeat you just need to count your cluster stitches. 1-2-3-4-5.

1a) On the second row of the pattern you will have a set of two purls right after one another. The first of these purls marks the end of your 6 stitch repeat and the second marks the beginning of your next repeat. Confused? I have a handy little graphic ready for you:

(ETA: this graphic shows you how it looks from the right side. You'll be knitting this as a purl side, so either flip the graphic around in your head or read your knitting from the right side)

Basically you just need to remember your 1-2-3-4-5 rhythm. If you lose your way (which is easy on this row), you just need to look for your two purls side by side and you'll be as right as rain.

2) Once you have conquered that second row, you are laughing because what you have done so far will guide your way for the rest of the knit. On the third row you do your best Estonian needle dance - back and forth, back and forth - whilst count 1-2-3-4-5. I find it easiest if I match the placement of the wrap-arounds to the placement of the wrap-arounds on the second row. Cue another schmancy graphic!

I just find it easier to keep my place this way. Also, it'll help mirror your stitches neatly. At least that's what I tell myself.

3) And miraculously you are halfway through the stitch pattern around this stage. And this is where it gets really straightforward if you can read your knitting. Why? Here's why. The stitches line up!

As you can see, the next time you're doing your clusters, they'll line up on top of the previous rows in a manner that'll let you count 1-2-3-4-5. The third of your cluster stitches will be on top of that nice little stocking stitch line running below. Again, it's useful if you lose your way as you no longer have just the two purls side-by-side (as explained above) to keep you right: now you can also keep an eye on symmetry and make sure that you haven't inadvertently done six-stitch clusters etc.

And that is pretty much you sorted!

I would advise you to swatch the stitch pattern nigh obsessively in a non-sticky sportweight or DK yarn until you figure out how to do the stitches. Use correspondingly bigger needles as the cluster can be tight to work otherwise.

Final note on Fancy so far: I find that sizing does run large. I have gone down a size but you might find that going down a needle size works better for you.

Hope it helps prospective Fancy knitters. I'll post a proper photo of my progress so far later this week (no, the photo above is not my actual project).

Addendum: this is the nerdiest post I have ever written!

Homebound: Who We Are

Homebound: Who We Are is my knitted artwork currently on show at Glasgow's Tramway Arts Centre. Using site-specific materials I have created a piece asking how we understand ourselves, how we become who we are, and how big a part gender & geography play.

I was inspired to make this piece by my own journey as a knitter, as a woman, and as an immigrant. I am myself but I am also previous generations of ordinary women crafters. My mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother and my great-great-grandmother are all represented by this piece.

It was important to me that I only used yarn I already owned and which was tied to specific geographical areas. I used yarn from a farm just a few miles from where my great-great-grandmother lived. I used yarn from the Faroe Islands because my paternal grandmother is Faroese. I used yarn spun locally to Glasgow because I live here now.

I used undyed Aberdeenshire yarn for the hand. I have family living in Aberdeenshire now and I wanted to include them in the piece.

The hand is very significant to me - and my partner helped me construct the hand, so he is included in this piece too - as it is the giver and holder of identity. Not only does it hold all the strands together but the strands also spring from the hand. As a crafter I make things with my hands; my hands turn ideas in my head into reality. People much cleverer than I would be able to tell you about the notion of creation. The hand holds that concept for me.

As you can see, photos are included. I have found photos of all five generations.

As I was looking through the photo albums I was struck by how gender-segregated my family seemed. The women were all pictured holding babies or wearing nice dresses or cooking. The men were all pictured sitting at tables drinking beers or playing football or standing next to cars. I rarely found pictures of women and men together - except wedding photos or pictures of couples dancing.

I found several photos of both women and men wearing knitwear. I could only find two photos of anyone knitting. One of them was of me.

Finally, the title. I chose Homebound because while it means two mutually exclusive things (travelling//constriction) my project suggests there is an additional meaning lurking within the word, a meaning linked to the notion of creating. Home-bound – to bind or to tie or to make within the home.

I am really excited about this piece and I want to thank the people behind Loop: Garterstitch100 for giving me the opportunity to be a part of their amazing event. It has been an incredible journey for everyone concerned - me included.

The Day Before the Day

I'm so excited about tomorrow! The Tramway was heaving with activity today: stitching, story-telling, music , and beautiful people creating beautiful things.

Knitting Difficulty (Teal Deer Territory)

Recently Ms Orata wrote a really fascinating post about knitting and how knitters/crocheters perceive "difficulty". The post is fantastic and I recommend you read it because she deals with the concept of "difficulty" in astonishing details. Read the comments too. Good stuff. (Note: I have no real agenda for this post - except I deal with a high number of knitters and crocheters of all abilities on a daily basis. In the following post I refer a lot to "knitters" but I mean "knitters + crocheters" really.)

I see people struggle with garterstitch scarves, I see people executing complicated lace with ease. I see people measuring their skill level by how many years they have knitted; I see people measuring their skill level by how many different types of projects they have knitted. Each knitter have their own concept of  what "difficult" means. Interestingly each knitter also has their own concept of what "a good knitter" is and it rarely matches their own ability: most often people underestimate their own ability although I have met some (very, very) rare cases of astounding arrogance. Underestimating your ability may well be a gender thing.

(As an aside: most of the knitters I meet are not on Ravelry and most do not care to be. In my experience Ravelry users tend to be more advanced knitters simply because they are so interested in knitting that they will join a social media site dedicated to knitting. To reiterate:  in my experience Ravelry users are the anomaly, not the norm, when it comes to skill sets. To use Ravelry numbers as the basis of analysing the concept of 'difficulty' within knitting is to automatically distort numbers. Finding more accurate figures is a different problem altogether.)

It has been said many times that you only need to learn how to do a knit stitch and a purl stitch and you can knit anything. Not true. You need to know how to cast on and -off too. You need to learn the trick of reading a ballband to determine needle size. You need to wise up to pattern terminology. This is very, very basic knitting and arguably you will soon need to learn increases and decreases. UK yarn company Sirdar even had short row shaping in one of their 'easy knits' patterns recently.

In recent years I have come to regard myself as an above-average knitter. I can follow patterns (even bad ones) and have written some basic ones myself. I can fudge things and devise short-cuts if I please. I can do pretty complicated stitch patterns (and teach you these) without breaking sweat. I have shortcomings, of course, as I'm not great at intarsia and I'm lazy enough to stick to a few cast-ons and cast-offs rather than teach myself more. But I'm actually pretty good. I cannot use my own knitting ability as a yardstick, in other words.

What is "difficult"? I'll use two recent examples.

Example 1) I recently had to figure out how to construct a cowl which has you knitting strips which you then twist into knotlike structures before beginning a simple cable pattern. The knitting itself wasn't complicated but the sculptural construction was unlike anything I had ever seen.

Example 2) My next project uses an Estonian stitch pattern which I have had to use a few hours of swatching to 'crack'. Once you understand your eight-row repeat, the actual garment construction is very simple. I'll have more on this project later this week - including my swatches and a look at how to understand the stitch pattern.

My two examples are both difficult but they are different types of difficulty.

I would say that even an advanced beginner could make my first example but it would need to be an advanced beginner with specific non-knitting skill sets in following a technical manual (anyone with IKEA assembly experience, essentially).

The second example I would not recommend to knitters below a certain level of expertise. The stitch pattern is straightforward - but only if you have a certain amount of patience, guts and experience. You need to be comfortable with lace (out of the eight-row repeat you have two rest rows and they are not even purl rows), you need to be happy with dropping stitches seemingly randomly, you need to be able to read your knitting (the pattern lines up logically but you cannot tell from the instructions), you need to be willing to go beyond your regular knit/purl/yarnover/decrease lace knitting, and you need to accept that tinkering back will be a beast (as you are using Kidsilk Haze). Phew.

Interestingly both these examples have been labelled "intermediate" by the yarn company. I'm glad it is not my job to suss out these labels; I can see why the patterns share the same label but it is a laborious path to get to that stage.

If you have made it this far, I'd love to know how you would rate your own skill level, how you select patterns, and what you consider "difficult"?

PS. teal deer.

BSJ

I found the cutest little ode to the magic of knitting at Signest's blog. It brightened my morning no end. (Make sure your speakers are on.)