Trekking on. . .

Dear Mom,
While you and Dad have been finishing and moving and organizing and entertaining, I've been wrapping up the monthlong party that has been this year's family graduation party season. You guys missed a good party. I missed a bit of the party because of forgetting the time change. Whoops! At least I was not alone - some of our other relatives made the same mistake.

Back home, I've been startling the yard bunnies.
Isn't it cute? There's a nest of them (or would it be a warren?) living somewhere nearby. I see them in herds, ranging across the yard or parking area, fearless and a little scrawny-looking.

I've also been making stuff, mostly inspired by these two bloggers' book:

Actually, I've been making balls of stuff to then use to make stuff. On the right, a Rag Ball. Surprisingly dense and heavy, it would be excellent for throwing. On the left, nylon-potholder- loop yarn. I had a bag leftover from the compulsive potholder making days of yore (yore was orchestra tour, spring 2004). I whipped out one final cotton one, then used the nylon loops that came with the loom to make this very satisfying chain. I'm not sure how far it will go for knitting, but it is very pleasing to look at and set in different places about the apartment as is. Sort of knotty, bright installation art. Would also be fun to chuck at someone.

And I finished the second sock. This was the best picture I could take by myself, and I just realized it I dorked it all up by folding the cuffs down.
The yarn is Trekking XXL, the pattern is pretty much the sock recipe from this book, with a few idiosyncratic twists like continuing the ribbing through the toe, instead of switching to plain stockinette. In retrospect, this makes for an unusual looking toe. But since it doesn't really feel weird, and there are no gaping holes, I'm leaving them as is.

So, what are you going to make first in your new sewing room?

Love, Gwen

Thank you for your patient waiting for the room update. Your Dad has been working on the components virtually nonstop. He had a little rest waiting for the polyurethane to cure. Didn't he do a splendid job?
I am slowly sorting through 25 years of sewing and craft supplies in a attempt to reduce the accumulation. How many buttons does one person really need? And the Operating question at the moment is if I will use it in the next 6 months. I know that this is usually stated as "Did I use it in the last 6 months." Though that question does not seem relevant to someone who thinks quilts made out of vintage fabrics are fabulous. I must admit I have held onto a piece
of fabric bought in the 1970's. Through the years this fabric was to be a backpack, a pillow top, a seat cover, a notebook cover, a pillow top again, and most recently a purse. I think I will hold on to it a while longer and see what it wants to be next.


In this picture you can see empty cubes above the work surface. These spaces are reserved for the fabric with potential. The scraps are an easy save because they become quilts. But the larger yardage exists as a promise to the future.
Ruthlessness will be called for. I think I will wait until tomorrow....

Socked in

Dear Mom,

I'm back after seeing you yesterday at the first of the graduation parties! I've spent Memorial Day remembering (and washing) the laundry that I'd forgotten about in the back of my closet, and reading on the porch. I finished reading this book this morning - I know I read an excerpt from it somewhere before, maybe in one of your magazines? I would recommend it, but I know you and Dad are reacquainting yourselves with the old books now that they are unpacked.

Mimi the visiting cat's window-watching habit payed off on Saturday:

The squirrel stuck and frantic, made Mimi's week! The squirrel was much less amused by the encounter.

Here's a porch picture in exchange for yours:

Still-life with sock and marigolds. I started this sock after the semester's end, so all the vibes knit into it were relaxed and non-twitchy, admirable qualities in a sock, I believe. I think they'll be lovely to wear when it's not 94 degrees.

Sweatily,
Gwen

A Look To the Future

I have enjoyed hearing about your porch garden. This is our deck garden. We have had such cool weather that the plants are somewhat dormant. I am getting new blooms but no growth. Do you see the rhododendron? I feel very southern being able to choose this plant now that I am in a new temperature zone. I may even investigate azaleas . A house up the street has spectacularly vibrant colors of azaleas. Last year we moved to this house after the blooming season of most plants. I have now enjoyed seeing white(and pink) dogwoods, rhododendrons, the magenta of the eastern redbud lining the highways, magnolias taller than roof lines, and the lush drooping flowers of the black locust trees. I am constantly reminded that this ecosystem is very different than the prairies of the Midwest.
I have to give you a sewing/reading/projects/cats sleeping in sunshine room update. We emptied the room out on Saturday. By Sunday night we had painted the walls and laid the parquet floor. I am thrilled to not have to hunt straight pins in a carpet. After Dad was done installing the floor I noticed that it resembled a lovely faded rail fence quilt. Very appropriate don't you think? I now want to go in search of warm creamy yellow and tan fabrics.


The cutting table will be made out of the solid maple door we recycled from the old house. It will be fastened to an open storage frame on casters for easy manueverability. The other furniture is designed as a series of cubes and cubbies for storage and support of work surfaces.
I love your portrait of the Kenmore machine. That machine is such a workhorse. It has successfully sewn doll cloths, yards of curtains, underwear, street clothing, ripped jeans, upholstery material for a couch and chair, quilts, an heirloom bridal dress, church bazaar projects, and 4-H fair entries. And I love how it hums along when it is running. May its projects and years be many and long. Yours too, my dear.
love,
Mom

On my honor

Hi Mom,

I've done something very girl-scouty - it involved square pieces of fabric, knots, and reusing materials I had on hand. I picked up the new Blueprint magazine, which is from Martha Stewart's company but aimed at a just-starting-out crowd. The magazine ("design your life!") was a fun read - lots of nice pictures, good recipes, some good ideas, although I'm bemused at the breeziness of its internal contradictions. For every cheery, inexpensive idea or project there's a $400 dress or $1000 rug; let's just say that I (or any other of my just-starting-out friends) won't be needing the bonus sofa buying guide anytime soon. Part of me likes the magazine a lot for the simple, easy-to-use ideas - the other part thinks it's really inculcating aspirational consumerism under the guise of personal style and design.

But, anyway. I used one of their ideas to make these:

This was the first one - the blue fabric is the sheet I liberated from the dumpster behind the campus theater a few summers ago, and I found the handkerchief in a thrift store here for a time. Rip, tie, and wham! A super easy bag. I applied the handkerchief after tying the handles in to make sure it was in an attractive place.

This is the second one I made. My friend Grace and I made cookies Sunday night together, and broke out my fabric boxes and started "improving" the idea. This one uses bangle bracelets for handles, and I lined the vintage garage-sale coneflower fabric with the same blue fabric I used for the other bag. This one's cute and little - good for my wallet and phone and grocery list. Grace made a larger one in purple and white.

I was thinking about my time as an undergrad on Mother's Day, too, especially when Grace and I were doing the minimal sewing that these bags required. You wrote about the trips back and forth - I was thinking about the semester that I wasn't doing well. I was unhappy, and you knew it, and you and Dad were worried about me. You sent me back from a break with this:

Your sewing machine. I'm tearing up now thinking about all the love that this sewing machine represents.

I love you,
Gwen

I think it is appropriate that my post to you should be on Mother's Day. I agree that some of my favorite time is spent in the sewing room surrounded by projects in various stages of completion. The only problem is ...I have torn up my sewing room for remodeling. So can we image a room in the future that will be an organized room of creativity? I am sure this will be a good idea in the long run. But as of now it looks like a disaster. Every needle, every skein of yarn, every yard of fabric is living in the dining room for a while.
As a result I have been motivated to look at other projects. So I decided to frame a drawing I did a few years ago. When you were in college your Dad and I would make the 4 hour run back home after dark. On one winter night's trip I was very tired and Dad did all of the driving. We had the radio on a world music broadcast. I sat quietly listening to the music and looking out the window. As we drove along I realized that I was only able to see quick glimpses of barnyards lit by yardlights. They flashed by, revealing dim soft-edged images of these rural lives. Each barnyard was unique. In the darkness each would register on my mind like an old flickering black and white movie. This is my favorite memory of the car trips to see you.

Sartor Restartus

Hi Mom!

I'm so excited you've agreed to co-blog (or cob-log) with me. After talking to you on the phone last night, I started thinking about how this will be a new beginning for the blog. I am suddenly brimming over with ideas to write about and share with you; one of the great things about writing back and forth is the easy sense of an audience (although I know you and Dad were reading before!).

For the blog, it is a new start, or at least, a new set of clothes. I started thinking about Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus. The title means 'the tailor retailored,' and refers in part, to this very philosophical, very odd book's "Clothes Philosophy": the appearance of things (clothing) is different from their reality (the body underneath). I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this, but I'd like to hope that our "clothes philosophy" can be two-fold. I know we both like to make our daily surroundings more pleasant by thinking about the appearance of things, and that we both find great joy in unleashing an inner creative reality. I hope that writing about what we're doing and thinking about on this blog will encourage us both into new creative outfits. It will be a virtual version of the old sewing room!

So, here's to you Mom! I checked the blog settings, and I think we're good to go except for one thing - which of our time zones should we choose?

Love,
Gwen

This is your Mother

Thank you for inviting me to participate as your cob-logger. I have enjoyed reading your entries. I know those little feet in your cute baby sock post! I think that I need to learn how to make socks next in my knitting repetoire.

Baby Socks

Two pairs of baby socks made for two young friends. Pair #1 were sent off in January, pair #2, which are red, cream, and green striped, were made on location this weekend. Both pairs are Dalegarn Baby Ull, and the baby sock pattern is from 50 Baby Bootees (50 patterns in the book, and I've made the same one twice - but they're so cute!).

Switch, swatch

Today I swatch, yesterday I swatched, tomorrow I will (probably) swatch again.



The light blue is thrifted yarn from my latest find. I unraveled one sleeve and knit a swatch to test it before investing the energy frogging the whole thing. It knit well, I got gauge (well, I got very close to gauge). This one's a go.

The dark blue (so dark it's almost black) is my new project, for which I now have all the yarn. I think I need to reswatch this one, but we'll see what the wet-blocking accomplishes. I think it has grown a little already. I knit back and forth, so I think I'll try doing a circular swatch before changing needles sizes.

Pouring

A quick post before bed - three things, unrelated (except the obvious) :

• found a sweater yesterday at the thrift store that I think I can frog and use to knit the Lace Leaf Pullover. It's a wool/acrylic blend, but I'll try not to hold that against it. This particular thrift store I tend to not frequent, as it makes me sad. There usually aren't many good things there, anyways, because everything gets so picked over (one of the things that makes me sad - so many people shop there because they clearly need to). I also have a tendency to make up stories about the people who owned the clothes and things before, and why they ended up in the thrift store. This time around I linked the crooked half-complete granny square blanket with the seventies acrylic yarn, three of the crinkly old lady raincoats, and massive orangey-brown cookie jar shaped like a giant russian teapot.
• have been talking to the LYS ladies about a particular sweater and the particular yarn for that sweater - it came in today! but only some of it - the main color wasn't included in the shipment for some reason, so will have to wait a little longer.
• started mini-project today (which will also remain nameless), while reading what I discovered tonight was the novel for a class next month, not this week. I'm eight hours ahead in reading, and eight hours behind.

Bag-ette

I'll stage a more interesting action shot once it has dried, but here's part of what I did this weekend. Mom and Dad gave me Knit One, Felt Too and the yarn to make this pattern from it for Christmas! I really like it. I finished the knitting in the early days of January, but waited until now to do the felting.

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I started the job by hand in the sink, which worked well up to a point, then I switched to boiling on the stove with occasional cold water rinses, then kneaded and worked it by hand for a while. All of this was pretty successful (although tiring), but it seemed like the wool just reached a point where I couldn't get it to seize up anymore. I tested it out for size, and it was still 2 inches larger than the pattern called for, and although I happened to like the size a lot, I was afraid it would stretch too much with use since the felted fabric wasn't very dense. So I let it sit overnight, and then went to the laundromat the next day. I was a little concerned it wouldn't felt much in the machine because there was no selecting the load size. But the suds and mechanical agitation did the trick, and it felted down (felted up?) the two more inches.

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loose and floppy before- - - - - - trim and shipshape after!

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I decided to leave the rolled brim unrolled - I enjoy being able to see more of the lime color. I'll have to keep my eyes open for some neat beads for the points of the green triangles (or not - I do like it the way it is), and also pick up a little magnetic closure or something, to keep things inside.

New! Now with 5 fewer fingers per serving!

Wrists are important, and I've always got half an eye on mine. I whipped these up at a birthday party (after the real party part, when we were just watching a dvd - Herzog's documentary on Timothy Treadwell the bear enthusiast, in which Herzog comes out sounding almost equally eccentric, although ultimately, in what proves to be a crucial difference, not eaten by a bear) and an hour or two later that week. I don't know if keeping one's wrists warm really helps the odd twinge, but I think I've noticed a difference.

They're really cozy and yet make me feel sort of tough - like I'm about to get all sweaty dancing around a punching bag. Ha! So far they've spent more time curled around a mug of tea then doing anything truly fierce. They've been called "cool" by the coffeeshop crowd, who collectively have a pretty strong grasp on what is and isn't cool.

The pattern is the 'fingerless mitts' from Weekend Knitting, and the yarn I used is one skein of Nashua Handknits Wooly Stripes (88yds) plus a moeity of leftover Lopi when I ran out. It's not visible in the picture, but this colorway also includes blue, fuschia, and purple - in a felictious turn, the end of the skein where I ran out was purple, the same exact color as the Lopi. It's impossible to tell I switched yarns.

Pterodactyls would like this, I think

I have the last of the three scarfs to show you today, but first, a few words:




It picked up a few words that were, well, boring, so I made free and replaced them with words that fit alphabetically. This means that in the interest of true and accurate representation, I feel compelled to use the words "beauty," "bootees," and "pterodactyl." Bootees will pose no problem - I've been making some recently and will post some pictures soon. Mellor's "50 Baby Bootees" is a real beauty of a book. Conceivably one could even convince a pterodactyl to wear some of these bootees of beauty. (I decided to let "objectionable" stand, even though I think it's a blogger word - so maybe I should use that too. I see nothing objectionable in the gratuitous use of words I like. There.)

(Also? I'm really tickled that "atwitter" is first, and "momma" and "shizzle" made it. Also trying to imagine what in the world a lord marker might look like, let alone a large lord marker.)

A(nother) scarf, this one quite long, quite warm, and wooly. Pattern, if you will, here. The yarns, Manos and Peace Fleece, came from my mom's LYS, which we visited together at Thanksgiving. It's nice and long, long enough that I had to block it on the back of the sofa, and quite cushy. The Manos color is "prairie," I believe - the darkest brown looks loamy, like it should smell moist and dark.

scarf bit

Another Scarf

Here is another scarf. This was the first warm wooly knit of the fall. It is the Brioche Scarf, again from Weekend Knitting, and the yarn is Cascade Pastaza. I used one skein of each color, which made for a rather abbreviated scarf - but the brioche fabric is so thick and cushy that more than one wrap around a neck would be immobilizing. I think that this is a muffler if ever there was one.

My favorite part of this scarf is the stripy I-Cord edge, the corners, and the way the other color peeks through from the other side. It was my first attempt at brioche. It was a pleasant surprise how quick it was, for a stitch pattern that more or less requires knitting each row twice. I started and restarted several times, until I figured out how to decode and fix mistakes in pattern.

Scarving for Attention

I like scarves - I wear one everyday in winter to fill in the neckline of my winter coat, and will often keep it wrapped around my neck in class, or around the house. I've knit four scarves this winter; one I gave a friend, and the other three I've kept.

Here is the most recent, the Lopi Lace Scarf from Weekend Knitting. I used the Lite-Lopi yarn that the pattern called for and a little bit of contrasting dark pink Lamb's Pride for the ends. The simple lace pattern suits the Lite Lopi beautifully - the relative stiffness of the yarn holds the lace holes open just enough, and the flexibility of the lace makes for a very fluid scarf. The color looks pretty much like this in real life - sort of a vibrant blueberry. Yum!

Back! With a vengeance! (sort of)

Hmm, easing back into the blogwaters with a Christmas FO - Museum Sweater from Little Badger Knitwear, smallest size, Elann Denim yarn. Nice stuff - I was blue when it was finished (and so were my needles).

Mugshots

Things that I like:

Tea. Flowers. This teacup, which is special to me. The saucer is, too - Mom and I found a whole box of old diner china at a garage sale last summer, when I was preparing to set up house. Once I moved in, we used them for our first breakfasts here, and then I used them for getting acquainted teaparties with my new friends.

The Space Program and spaceshuttles. My name. Family vacations. Coffee. The word "shuttle."
This teapot, which was my Great-grandmother's. Double Bergamot Earl Grey. Fiber.

Whistling in the dark

Green!

Two little projects that have happily arrived at their new home - a fuzzy Ipod cozy for Carl, and a baby hat for the wee one-to-be. I started the hat on the train in Maryland, and had it finished and bound off by the time I got off in Chicago.