Knitted: Red Beret, Also, Knitting in Action!
November 19, 2012 § 2 Comments
So, cripes, about a month ago I went on a wonderful camping trip with some friends of mine to a place that’s very dear to me– I mean, it’s where I go for nearly every fall break.
Anyway, because one of the ladies I went with is 1) a terrific photographer who 2) planned on shooting a few rolls over the weekend, I made sure to oh so casually wear pretty much exclusively knitwear. I ruined the all-the-wool-all-the-time effect by layering a windbreaker over the whole ensemble, but, hey, it was cold: we walked up along the ridges all weekend, got hella windburn, and woke up with our tent encrusted in ice.
Nic took lots of photos, but I selfishly picked out the ones featuring my knitting, since that’s what this blog is all about. Also, to pre-explain: the Highlands are home to a bunch of sweet lil’ pon’s.
So, um, there’s my hat, doing a great job as a hat.
Guest starring Cormo Rusticus,
and an extra pair of gloves that came in handy,
and my pretty-much-all-time-favorite-knitted-thing, the Peerie Flooers vest.
All photos © Nic Anthony
Knitted: Brown Gansey
August 17, 2012 § 1 Comment
This is a really old one, but, regretfully, I haven’t got anything new to show you today. This is my favorite sweater.
It’s simple, it’s tough, it never looks dirty, and it fits really well. It’s not particularly flattering, but I can live with that.
The pattern’s a rough adaptation of one in Gladys Thompson’s Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys, and Arans, which was written on the basis of a promise made by the author to Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, at an exhibition in London.
Here’s what the rough adaptation consisted of:
This is the plan I worked from when I knit this sweater two years ago. My favorite part of the whole piece– which I’ll show off to anyone who asks, and anyone who doesn’t– is the small, diamond-shaped underarm gusset, which allows for a wider range of motion and slightly-less-dropped shoulders. You can see that I nixed the mock neck, and that I was pretty excited about the idea of waist shaping.
These pictures are from our vacation out to San Francisco back in January. After driving up the coast, we spent the night somewhere in Mendocino, and woke up early to go down to the beach and look for seals. I don’t think we saw any.
This sweater’s getting a little pilly, both because a) I’ve worn this sweater every day through two winter seasons and b) it’s knit out of Wool of the Andes, which is widely acknowledged to be not-the-nicest. It’s okay. I mean, it’s still my favorite sweater.
Pattern: Staithes Gansery, from Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys, and Arans: Fishermen’s Sweaters from the British Isles by Gladys Thompson
Yarn: Knit Picks Wool of the Andes in Amber Heather, 10 balls
Needles: US 4 Takumi circulars and DPNs.
Time: July 22, 2010 – August 14, 2010
Ravel’d: here
Back To Blogging.
July 12, 2012 § 1 Comment
Zac and I went on vacation a few weeks ago, and I brought a camera down to the beach with us. I wanted to have a photograph of myself in my new bathing suit.
This picture of Zac untangling a crab from his net is the only one I took, but I’m happy with it.
Souvenir
January 25, 2012 § 2 Comments
What could be in this fine little brown paper bag?
I insisted that we walk down to the north edge of Oakland to visit A Verb for Keeping Warm. Right next to a place called the Actual Cafe (which promises “Hot Coffee, Good Food, Nice Folks”), on a street corner which must be one of the most literal places in all the world, I walked in and found the Nicest Yarns There Are, in person.
A wall of J+S jumperweight. All the Madeleinetosh and Malabrigo you could stand. FYBERSPATES. Lots of breed-specific wool from local farms. Mushroom-dyed yarns. Physical copies of self-published bestsellers. A full rack of gorgeous samples. It was heaven. I wanted it all. Also, they were hiring.
I didn’t know what to do, so Zac went next door to the Actual Cafe, and I went up to the counter and said, “I’m on vacation from Virginia, and I’d like to buy a souvenir. What’s your favorite thing here?”
Immediately, as is my self-effacing habit, I apologized for asking such a strange/personal/hard question, but she said, “Actually, that’s an easy question.” She walked me over to the yarn they dyed in-house (I asked about their processes, but she told me they were secret), and showed me something beautiful.
This is Shimmering, and the gerunds-as-naming-convention reminds me of nothing else but Stella McCartney lingerie.
Tangent.
I wanted to make friends and keep chatting, so I asked them if they could please skein all 1093 yards?
Happy to!
They hadn’t heard of the farm (You’re a fiber CSA? You give them yarn, in with the vegetables?), but, well, humbled.
Since visiting, I’ve been reading Kristine’s blog, where she writes daily about dyeing, teaching, traveling, and the daily realities of managing a crafty business– taking inventory, coming up with new products, having to knit instead of getting to knit, dealing with negative feedback– and that’s just this month! It’s so nice to hear a familiar story (Although– the kind of smarts, bravery, responsibility, and hustle that running, owning, and founding a successful business require? Dear Lord. I haven’t worked nearly as hard!).
I’ve definitely got plans for little Shimmering, and they’re called Pi Shawl, and, as such, will have to wait until July (my birthday?).
Until then, secreted away in the yarn cabinet. There’s nothing I like more than an actually useful souvenir (Brown leather bag? Best dress of all time? Berlin, 2008.), and I think this fits the bill.
San Francisco: B-sides
January 16, 2012 § 1 Comment
Our trip out to the Bay was fantastic– you can see some of the highlights here, on the Juniper Moon Farm blog.
What’s staying with me, of course, are the smallest, simplest things: how nice it is to sit up at night talking with friends, or to be waited on in a restaurant, or to wake up, pad around an unfamiliar house, and have no plan beyond making the coffee.
They’d ask, every evening, What was your favorite part of today? What was the best thing you saw? And I’d invariably say, The sidewalks– having the chance to walk around, all day. Being able to leave the house and instantly be somewhere. The fact that, theoretically, with enough time and inclination, you could walk anywhere.
Of course, I’m afraid that the images that are staying with me are also a little pedestrian– blogosphere bromides. Lots of seafoam. Some trees. Decorative railings on a hotel. But I treasure them.
They are also, of course, imminently translatable into knitted swatches of all sorts.
Lace, color.
Cables, texture, color.
These swoops of foam have already been made into knit items, here and here. I’d love to make either. Preferably both.
Border pattern.
Color, texture
There’s a bit of you-can’t-get-there-from-here (where could you ever find a color to match that green!?), but I’m looking forward to trying. I’m also– another middlebrow epiphany coming up– really impressed with the camera’s ability to record things that I wouldn’t otherwise remember. Despite trying my damndest to carpe diem, these memories– the ones with pictures– will be my strongest. But I don’t know if that’s necessarily a bad thing.
Do you all find that memories– travel-memories in particular– act that way? Is it bad to rely on the camera to capture it all? I’m curious to hear what you all think about this!
On Thursday
January 5, 2012 § Leave a Comment
I really had planned to write yesterday, but I got a bit hung up.
Fell into a giant vat of Cormo, actually:
Nearly drowned.
We have also recently been visited by giant MURMURATIONS of starlings (of which this pictured is not the largest by a long shot).
Zac and I are also about to leave the house to go to:
We are going to spend a week, and visit our schoolfriends. This is the first Real Vacation I’ve been on since… maybe going hiking with these same friends in Summer 2009? Since a good part of our work at the farm is hosting farmstays– ie, hosting people who are on vacation– it doesn’t really feel like it’s been that long.
It is 30 minutes until we walk out the door, and I don’t yet know what knitting I am going to bring.
But I am so excited!
Upside Down
March 25, 2011 § 4 Comments
So, apart from today, things have been a little quiet around the blog lately. And that can mean maybe a couple of things.
A: my readings & rereadings of Catullan Provocations, my meticulous parsing of Pindaric Odes (always, for some reason, heart-fluttering over ἄωτον, finest fleece), and their attendant warrens of academic literature have finally caught up with me, and I’ve had to let the blog and the knitting fall by the desk-side.
B!: I’ve got such an enormously lifechanging amount of fantastic news, I don’t even know where to begin, or what to say. Or maybe I’m just afraid that this is all too perfect, that it somehow won’t work out, or that it never happened at all.
The correct answer is: B!
Where to begin: how about with Thank You.
Preliminary Questions: No, I’m not pregnant. No, I haven’t just recently fallen in love with anybody. No, the ghosts of Hannah Arendt & David Grene don’t teach classes at the University of Chicago.
Finally Getting to the Point: I get to be Juniper Moon Farm‘s new Farm Manager! (Click on that link, but don’t tab over there quite yet– because once you do, it’ll be four hours of irresistible sheep-enchantment later, and you will be enthralled and in love and powerfully jealous of my new life, plus, you’ll’ve entirely forgotten about the rest of my story)
Let’s Back Up: Through the pure lucky timing of spring break & free time, I started perusing the job postings on Ravelry mere days before I ran across this:
and so that led me to this, which made me look around suspiciously.
Goodness gracious, do they know who I am? Someone has created a job advertisement perfectly geared toward specifically-me in order to… capture me for some reason? Make me make good on all of the jokes (“Haha, well, if grad school doesn’t work out, guess I’ll just run away and that’s plan B, become a shepherd!”) that I have been making since I was in high school!?
And then it made me leap around and tell all my friends and act like, maybe, a cat with a strand of Christmas popcorn tied to its tail– a lot of crazy, noisy scampering. A lot of blog-reading (that link! it’s so wonderful & dangerous! click it anyway!), a lot of friend-torturing (“Do you think I’ll get the job?” and “What if she doesn’t call!?” and “I just sent you this email to tell you I am in an ABSOLUTE MOIL!”), and a lot of imaginary conversations with my professors (ranging from the tactful– well, reading the Eclogues has always been my favorite because, see, I’ve got this thing for sheep– to the blunt(er)– I’m going to go be a shepherdess, so, um, bye!).
This came in handy, because, as rarely ever happens in anyone’s life, I actually got to deploy those crazy sentences I’d been concocting.
How crazy is it to walk into class and answer your professor’s “So, how’s your future looking? Hear from any schools over break?” with, “Um well actually I am going to go be a shepherdess instead!” ?
“Well, that’s a surprise! …and I did just have you all read the Eclogues over break”
One honorable explication from academia (droppin’ outta school– who would have ever thought!?), a few station-wagons full of books sent home (ave atque vale, small personal classics library), and many serious conversations with my parents (and sisters. and Zac’s parents. and friends. I have told this same story so many times that I am tempted to put together a little F.A.Q., running the gamut from “are you sure you won’t pass out, once those sheep placentas start flying? ever docked a tail? castrated…anything?” and “aren’t you wasting your education!? your brilliant mind!?” to “can I come visit you every day oh my god look at the lambs! those lambs! puppies!”) later, and I’m all set to drive up to Palmyra on Monday.
I just. Wow. This is happening. I think I just turned a real hard corner. Wow. Thank you.
No One Is Having A Baby.
March 25, 2011 § Leave a Comment
However, I do have some really exciting news to share with you all (maybe babies & exciting new plans fit together, in a dream-interpretation kind of way?), but I’m going to wait on the official announcement before I share the exact details of said excitement.
But, hints: My life is going to change. I am going to move to Virginia. And things around the blog are going to be a heck of a lot more interesting than this recent Knitting Vintage Socks parade.
Now for the regular old info: Infant’s Fancy Silk Sock from Nancy Bush’s Knitting Vintage Socks, using one skein of White Palette, on sz. 0 needles (because, really, I didn’t want to go buy sz. 00′s for this one project), begun on last year’s Christmas Day and finished on Jan. 14, 2011.
Intended Recipient: None– the next baby who shows up in the world. I felt a little callous, knitting for a baby I didn’t even know about yet, but Maggie assured me that her mother does the same thing, for practicality’s sake. “There are always going to be babies,” she said, “that’s for sure.” So, into the knitting box with these until needed.
And stay tuned for exciting news!
Grayson Highlands
January 19, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Speaking of meticulous stitch patterns:
The Gentleman’s Shooting Stockings (right. socks designed to be worn primarily when shooting animals. that makes sense.) from Nancy Bush’s Knitting Vintage Socks, sans alterations.
The funny thing is, I’ve made this pattern once before, two Christmases ago, but for a far less worthy individual who I guess I shouldn’t call out by name, but he got a pair of these in black, but never potted me a teapot in return for them (We’d set it up as a trade. I was very excited). I guess he got them in the first place because one day he complimented something I was knitting and talked about, I don’t know, the joy of craftsmanship, and my vanity about being kallia erga iduia is very very easily flattered.
Anyway, A+ in grudge-holding, Caroline.
What else is there to say?
I worried that the color wouldn’t be masculine enough, but it looks good to me and was well-accepted in any case. These were the first and perhaps only socks I’ve worked using the two-at-a-time magic-loop technique– unnecessarily show-offy and fidgity and double-pointed needles are so much more elegant and appealing, anyway.
But I had to work them that way, because these were worked on this past summer’s camping trip to Grayson Highlands:
I am not embarrassed to tell you that this is one of my favorite pictures ever.
Brought to you by Montreal
August 2, 2010 § Leave a Comment
In Bixi-land I’ll take my stand, to live and die in Bixi.
