new inspiration

What with the upheaval around the house, the summer heat and a knitters wrist giving me grief, things have really slowed down on the knitting front around here… I’ve found myself getting a bit anxious about that, partly because I have some samples I really want to get made for classes but also just because the knitting of a few rows is normally so much a part of my day! But all things ebb and flow, I guess. I am also aware of how the need to get things done for classes can get stuck in the back of my head and take a bit of the joy out of the process if I am not careful. So I am reminding myself why I both knit and teach… for the joy of it- it is hardly work! And that whatever I get done for the classes will be enough.

Then, happily, I was delivered some inspiration this week! The ton of wool project has begun yielding its fruit and I received my 1.5kg of yarn… and man, is it beautiful! So soft and light, with a beautiful, soft lustre and the kind of elastic spring you normally only see in handspun yarns. Kylie opted to make mostly worsted-spun 10-ply this time around (although I do believe there is some 4-ply floating around) and I was really interested to see what it would be like spun as a smooth worsted yarn, rather than the lofty, woollen-spun elsawool Cormo yarns that I’d seen before… I remember my spinning teaching saying that a fleece will tell you how it should be spun and my instinctive response to Cormo is woollen! In fact, the choice was made for Kylie by the current absence of mills able to produce woollen-spun yarns here in Australia (something in the process of changing with the development of the Yass Valley Woollen Mill) but now, having started to swatch with the yarn, I am eating humble pie! Yes, I still think that the airy fluffiness of Cormo would be best displayed in a woollen-spun yarn but this yarn has the great stitch definition and lustre of a good worsted-spun yarn. If it can be processed for different uses, even more reason for a greater appreciation and use of our own Australian Cormo! Kylie, I take my hat off to you for getting this going!

So I am swatching…

Cormo stitches

I was thinking I’d make an old-school aran cardigan with it… and then, the second source of inspiration arrived- the new collection from the ever-classy Brooklyn Tweed. So many lovely designs that strike a great balance between an interesting knit and an immensely wearable garment. And this one jumped out… I really love the shape and the collar and other details but not the cable. So playing around with whether I substitute a similar intricate, ropey cable that sequences well with the deep 2×2 rib or whether I can use a series of the simple linear cables and honeycomb pattern that I love so much. Thoughts? And what are you planning to do with your Cormo?!

therapeutic flying

Today Scotto and I took part in a workshop in therapeutic flying!

It was ace! I’m sure I’ll be stiff and sore tomorrow but I loved it- I really want to build on my strength and fitness and this is relatively strong exercise but it is also so peaceful and fun and incorporates amazing stretches and therapeutic massage as well. A world away from bodypump class, that’s for sure. Let’s see how we go practicing together at home…

guilty pleasure?

Long time between posts, yes?! I’ve been pretty much completely engrossed with the renovations (plasterboard and new weatherboards are up, now waiting for building permit- and now, let’s leave it there!) and preparing classes, so more or less sleep-deprived and incoherent as a result. Despite that, I was shocked into tapping out a (short!) post when I read this post and then others about that lovely repository of all inspiration, Pinterest…

I’ve been loving it, not so much for browsing but as a centralized way of storing links to all those ideas, images, colours, patterns and generally cool stuff that I find on the web and want to be able to find again later. Now it seems that I’ve not only been potentially breaking copyright by gaily pinning images/ products/ ideas without the owners consent but also enabling the company behind Pinterest to claim those images/ products/ ideas as their property. Aggh, why do the sweetest things have to be muddied?! Maybe I was naive to think that there were no such issues associated with the site, especially given that the lack of visible advertising means that there must be income or incentive for those behind the site coming from somewhere. I remember feeling weird the first time I came across pins of my own work but I guess the feeling wore off and I was more excited about seeing someone enjoying my stuff. I wouldn’t be excited if I knew someone else was profiting from it. I know there is always the risk of that once you put it out there but this situation seems extreme.

This issue is right out there at the moment so I encourage you to read others who know more and can write much more succinctly about it than I can. Bottom line, I don’t know enough but at this point, I’m not sure I feel comfortable pinning without first having permission from the owner of the image and not sure how I feel about about facilitating Pinterest having rights to that image just so that I have the privilege of a centralized place to store my images…

What do you think?!

new undertakings

We went from this:

Wonky old kitchen

with a good dose of this:

Faux bois- I kind of got used to it in the end

to this:

Ah, we still had our shower!

and now this:

Open kitchen

The inevitable change of plan happened on the very first day of renovations… instead of just replacing the kitchen and bathroom, we decided to pull out the dividing wall and add a small bathroom onto the back. Help! I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed with the change, now that we need to go through planning approval and a wee bit more work… but I am sure it will be so, so worth it when I look into that big open space. We’re having fun hosing each other down in the garden, now that the shower is gone. Luckily it has been hot. I’ll keep you posted on how things go : )

Bemused by it all

Also new is the schedule of classes that has just gone up on the Morris and Sons website… All the teachers have put together new ones this semester, so the program has expanded to include all kinds of treats, including amigurumi, toe-up and top-down socks, garment and shawl design and embellishment. I’ve given myself the challenge of seven new classes, so I have loads to learn and to polish up on and plenty of samples to knit! But I’m glad for the opportunity to push myself more and to be part of some exciting learning. On the cards for me are cast-ons and cast-offs, steeking, cables, knitting tips and tricks, seamless garment construction and fitting and an introduction to Shetland lace construction and techniques. Come along if you can- they should be fun!

And lastly, I’ve been working on a pattern for my Laura and the Wolf! Very exciting, this pattern-writing business. And slow. A couple of friends have kindly agreed to test the pattern and I am knitting up a second version, incorporating a few changes I’ve made, but it should be ready soon if anyone is keen to have a go!

Lots in store for the year ahead. Hope there is for you too.

laura and the wolf

An idea for a hat has been tugging on my sleeve for months. I finally charted out and knitted it over the scorchingly hot post-Christmas break and the cool, wintery colours sang to me as I worked, relieving my hot and sweating fingers…

Snowflake wheel

Laura and the Wolf

Drawn from a favourite childhood book, it tells of Laura and Carrie’s night ramble, bundled up against the cold, across the frozen waters of Silver Lake on a winter’s night:

“It was so beautiful that they hardly breathed. The great round moon hung in the sky and its radiance poured over a silvery world. Far, far away in every direction stretched motionless flatness, softly shining as if it were made of soft light. In the midst lay the smooth, dark lake, and a glittering moonpath stretched across it… Laura’s heart swelled. She felt herself a part of the wide land, of the far deep sky and the brilliant moonlight. She wanted to fly…

‘On the moonpath, Carrie! Let’s follow the moonpath,’ Laura cried.

And so they ran and slid, and ran and slid again, on the glittering moonpath into the light from the silver moon. Farther and farther from shore they went, straight towards the high bank on the other side… Close to the farther shore, almost in the shadow of the high bank, they stopped. Something made Laura look up to the top of the bank.

And there, dark against the moonlight, stood a great wolf! He was looking towards her. The wind stirred his fur and the moonlight seemed to run in and out of it.

‘Let’s go back,’ Laura said quickly, as she turned, taking Carrie with her. ‘I can go faster than you.’

She ran and slid and ran again as fast as she could, but Carrie kept up.

‘I saw it too,’ Carrie panted. ‘Was it a wolf?’

‘Don’t talk!’ Laura answered. ‘Hurry!’

Laura was glad to be safe in the warm room with the desolate prairie shut out. If anything had happened to Carrie, it would have been her fault for taking her so far across the lake.

But nothing had happened. She could almost see again the great wolf with the wind ruffling the moonlight on his fur.

‘Pa!’ she said in a low voice.

‘Yes, Laura?’ Pa answered.

‘I hope you don’t find the wolf, Pa,’ Laura said.

‘Why ever not?’ Ma wondered.

‘Because he didn’t chase us,’ Laura said. ‘He didn’t chase us, Pa, and he could have caught us.’

A long, wild, wolf howl rose and faded away on the stillness. Another answered it. Then silence again.”

Snowflake wheel

I love how this chapter speaks of Laura’s joy in the wild beauty of that desolate landscape and of the delicate coexistence of man and animal before the flood of settlers poured into the west. At a time when many across the world considered wilderness as full of danger and evil, it must have been only a few that could live in such a place and still celebrate its wildness. The Laura Ingalls Wilder books are often (at least here in Australia) considered a bit twee- maybe due to that TV series?!- but passages like these make me contemplate the places and ways humans have lived, the changes we’ve undergone and a time when children were allowed out into the night to run under the moon across a frozen lake. I don’t have children of my own so I can’t honestly say how I’d feel about it… but I do think that experience of such wildness is good for the soul, adult or child.

When I first had the idea of knitting this story into a tam, I wondered how to portray all the elements- the moonpath, the frozen lake, the wolf and the joy and panic of the girls. I found this wintery combination of yarns (Rowan Scottish and Yorkshire Tweeds, plus scraps of Shetland salvaged from an op-shop vest) in my stash and decided that the key was not to try to recreate the story literally (night-time, moon etc) but to pick out the elements that meant most- the light and snow, the lake, the wolf, the flight home and the love. I traded wolf colour for fox colour (sweet!) and hunted through various colourwork books, as well as improvising my own patterns, to make three border patterns that were 10 stitches across by 9 high, breaking them up with simple stripes.

Wolf in the frozen landscape

Running home across the lake

Heart

Border patterns

I used a twisted rib band to begin (I love the look but not the feel of corrugated rib) and followed the shaping from Mary Rowe’s Knitted Tams, adding a bit of length to accommodate my big head and using one of her lovely patterns for the wheel decreases. I have so much to learn about colour- for example, the hearts are so strong and the contrast between the white and grey so subtle that the snowflake kind of disappears, but I am excited to learn and I love it and am also very happy to have finished my first proper, not-just-a-scarf, all-my-own-ideas design : )

Ravelled here.

quiet time

The days between Christmas and New Year are my favourite time in Melbourne- it is a lovely time for long walks in the quiet streets and some solid, post-celebratory snoozing. A fitting accompaniment is the new(ish) Gillian Welch album, which I am enjoying getting to know… this one is a slow unfurling- in some ways very much like her earliest albums but more personal and less obviously “old-time”.

So far, I like these two best.

Am also listening to new Martha Tilston- with the exception of a few swirling festival tracks filled with way too much flute and djembe for me, I like it- though not as much as Of Milkmaids and Architects. She has a beautiful, bare voice and some lovely lyrics.

Wishing you an equally chilled-out break…

fo’s

I’ve been thinking that, for a knitters blog, I very rarely post photos of my finished objects… I guess it is mostly because I figure that the majority of people who read this are also knitters and will most probably see my projects as I pop them on Rav and so I get lazy with it. I also struggle with posting often about stuff I make. Not sure why- I like people liking my stuff as much as the next person but it somehow feels weird to put stuff up all the time. And I love commenting on blogs about the amazing things that people do and make but am not so comfortable receiving the same here. Weird. False modesty? Fear of criticism? Right now, I’m also heavier than I’ve ever been so I am not loving how I look in photos… I really need to get over that. But does anyone else struggle with this whole thing?!

So… some finished objects. All in one go so I get it done.

My favourite fo is something I saw in a beautiful book when I first started knitting… I dreamed of the day I’d be good enough to knit it and then put the photocopied pattern in my folder and forgot about it. Then, recently, I found out that my wonderful manager Judith also had a longstanding hankering to make it so we decided to do it together- needless to say, she is too busy to do any of her own knitting so it ended up just me.

Faroese lace shawl

Fringe and garter lace

It really wasn’t a complicated knit, although the instructions were very limited, but that just gave me the opportunity to test myself to see how much I’d really learned over the last seven years. And I did fine. It is a “true”, big-ass shawl that would keep a Faroese (and Melbourne) woman warm in the cold winter winds. The yarn is Rowanspun DK that was a cardigan in a previous life but that never really felt like it was in its true element. But this shawl is the perfect union of pattern and yarn and I love it.

Razor Shell

Above is a shawl/ stole made from yarn dyed in my first experiments in dyeing with plants that I made for the guild’s group exhibition (on here at the moment!). I was inspired to make something rhythmic like this but with a more simple feeling so I used a 12-stitch Razor Shell pattern to make an open chevron. I like the way the colours work together- in retrospect, I should have flipped the warmer shades the other way around to make them stand out more clearly but that’s learning.

Plant colours

A simple crochet cowl made to showcase the beautiful 12-ply alpaca bought from Tailored Strands during Knitcamp… super warm.

Alpaca cowl

Last is my Home Comforts cardigan- very unlike what I normally knit but I wanted to use a very simple pattern with large panels to highlight some very beautiful handspun yarn (probably Merino or Polwarth) that I bought at the guild last year. This is really homey, soft and organic and not very cool and I love that about it… so it is my stay-in-my-pyjamas-all-day-type garment that doesn’t really show itself in public!

Big and cuddly

And my final fo- and probably the one I am most proud of- is the tunic I am wearing in the above photos. I say most proud because I think of myself as a bad and slack sewer but I have worn this pretty much every day since craft camp two weeks ago- so it has made the grade in terms of being cool enough to wear and I love it. It was also my first experience of overlocking- instant love for linen edges!- and so has a special place in my heart. Guess what I’ve asked for for a joint birthday/Christmas present?!