The Saurel Jean Memorial Frogging

Saurel, our beloved friend and protector, died in his sleep Wednesday morning. No he was not a German Shepherd. He was our co-op's doorman, and part of this very odd family we have here in this building. Helpless and needing to take some action, I finally frogged that stupid never-ending Pi shawl.

I love you, Saurel. I hope you are somewhere where all the cars are clean and all the people are polite.

Happy Dance

I'm ecstatic.

Beginning July 10, I will be teaching knitting at the     Hyde Park Art Center, in the beautiful new facility. The new site has huge spaces with great light for galleries and studios. It was designed with a great deal of input from participating artists. I toured it yesterday after meeting with the Studio Manager. The studios are so inviting! I cannot wait to take a painting class, since my home studio was turned back into a living room after DH moved in.

Summer term at the Art Center is a ten week course. With two and a half hours per session, 25 hours instead of the usual four or six offered per class at retail shops, I hope to be able to inspire my students to find their individual voices in the language of knitting. The emphasis will be less on completing garments and accesories, and more on learning to use the tools and materials to create unique works of fiber art. Of course some students will want to complete useful items, and that is fine, but the emphasis is shifted, and I look forward to the experience with great joy.

Thank you and bless you, EZ and AZ.

Knit in Public

You will find me knitting in public at DucKon, probably near the Art Show.

Midwest Masters

My weekend in Wisconsin was wonderful. I took three classes from Anna Zilboorg: Lace edgings, exotic multicolor stitches, and twisted travelling stitches. I was brain dead by Sunday afternoon and went home, stopping at the Borders in Gurnee to pick up a copy of Big Girl Knits.

The lace edgings are just that -- and not hard to do. They would add a special touch to almost any project.

The "exotic" multicolor stitches are all variations on slip-stitch patterns, in which only one color is worked at a time, over two rows. In the round, colors could be changed every row for interesting variations.

The twisted travelling stitches are in the Bavarian tradition. These take a bit more patience to work, because you are twisting stitches on every row. Anna filled in a bit of history that I'd never heard before. It seems Irish cable stitch patterns are an elongated version of these Bavarian stitches. It happened when Irish and Bavarian knitters met in the US and brought samples home and tried to reproduce them.

I'm working on translating some of the Aran cables back to their denser forms, just for fun, while I wait for Stitches, where I will probably purchase the Bavarian pattern books.

Anna herself is a gentle and very smart person. Before teaching knitting, she taught at MIT.

Inspired!

Carol

This was a tagline on an old post to the Knitty lists:

"Remind them that they are the creatures who knit the wool, not the
creatures who grow it on their backs!"
-Barbara Walker to Elizabeth Zimmerman, 1971

Cheerleading

The Devil did not make me post this pic. But I had to, just the same. Let's just call it free will with a vengance.

Goldie's Sweater

Finished lace edging and chest strap and delivered on Valentine's Day. Goldie likes it. I'll need to make one more strap to withstand the Chicago wind -- but here are the pictures so far.

Apologies to Cody, who is still waiting.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Last night Steve and I watched a lenghty biography of Eleanor Roosevelt on PBS. All the amazing and fascinating facts about this awesome woman's life aside, I noticed that in image after image, she was knitting. In one segment, I think it was a sock. There were at least three pointy DPs visible.

When the vote was finally taken to accept the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec. 10, 1948, she is sitting in the US Delegate's seat, knitting.

Eleanor Roosevelt has long been a personal hero of mine, and of countless other women. Now I have one more reason to love her.

Knitting for Victory

Even if they win, they lose

A sewing store in NYC has started a fight with thousands of knitters they have never met over a few words we've been enjoying for years. Many of us are "mad as Hell, and we're not gonna take it any more." Read the story here.

What follows is the e-mail I sent to the offending company. I copied it to knitty.com, Vogue Knitting, Knit n Style, and TKGA -- whoever had an e-dress I could find.

Dear Sewing Store,

I was stunned and angry to learn of your claim to the use of the words "Stitch 'n Bitch" as used by informal knitting groups across the country (possibly all over the knitting world).

Your shop has nothing to do with knitting. It appears that you added knitting to your descriptions after the term became popular. You don't sell yarn and you don't have any knitting classes listed on your Website. None of your team members are knitters. Your motives are suspect and your actions reprehensible.

There are more of us than there are of you, and we spell it differently, and we don't use the word "cafe," either with or without the accented "é."

Have you any idea how much bad press you are getting from this dispute? Even if you win, you have lost.

Just after I hit "send," I scared myself, because I bravely and/or stupidly signed my real name. Ah, well.

The Incomparable EZ

Franklin Habit and Tricky Tricot have started a Knitters Almanac knit-along.

I probably will not knit all those things. But thank you, guys, for bringing me back to Elizabeth's delightful pages. Now I know that the person who perpetuated the falsehood about fisherman's pattterns as IDs for the dead was she. And the bit about the #8 needle -- ah, such wisdom.

Gone to the dogs

The holiday frenzy is over and the January frenzy has not yet begun, so I am knitting sweaters for Cody and Goldie , the welcoming committee at my favorite LYS. My Sister's Knits is a new shop owned and operated by Carol Oprondek. Her Golden Retrievers were adopted from a _rescue shelter. Goldie is especially devoted to her, never letting her out of her sight, probably because her previous owner of many years passed away. Cody is anybody's baby. A few weeks ago, Carol's friend Diane and I decided that dogs who live in a yarn store should have sweaters, and Carol was too busy to ever do that. You know the expression: the shoemaker's children go barefoot. So I undertook the task of designing for these children.

Cody has a 38-inch chest. That's pretty large for a Golden. After researching many many dog sweater patterns, most notably _Knitting for Dogs_ by Kristi Porter, I settled on adapting some patterns for these special pups.

For Goldie, I will use the machine and an original fairisle pattern I call "Herring Bones Hounds Tooth." The yarn is Jaggerspun Maine Line 2/8 wool in colors celadon and buttercream. I've worked out the math for 8 sts and 10 rows per inch and am planning to cast on today.

Cody's sweater has to be in a much larger scale, and more butch. I needed to get out of the studio yesterday and went to MSK to visit and knit, and cast on in the shop. His sweater will be mostly Cascade 220 in solid green and Quatro greens (4 plies of 4 different shades), with lemon yellow cables down each side. I'm using intarsia. Glutton for punishment, I guess. So far no disasters. I rigged a few yarn ball holders out of cottage cheese tubs and have managed to keep the tangling under control. I'll post a few photos as things progress. Now I'd better gert back to work.

Carol

Nothing here yet. Go back to youknitwhat.