Tag Archives: process

the boundary of the sea

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some yarns work for some projects.

some yarns don’t.

i used to think that this was just an excuse of to buy more yarn.

(in some cases i think it still is)

but, it’s also true.

i have been playing around with plymouth yarn company‘s kudo for a few weeks now.

the texture of the silk and cotton mixture is soft.

the blending of the colors is pretty.

at the same time, it could be distracting.

the challenge to find stitches and a shape that the yarn complimented

has kept me knitting and frogging right along at quite a clip.

and now here it is, ‘the boundary of the sea’.

see how the colors ripple and recede like the spot where the waves meet the sand?

i’m very happy with it.

here’s happy birthday to you, mum.

i am so very thankful to have you as mine.

may you always know how much you are loved by me

whenever you wear it.

‘the boundary of the sea’ taken from jeremiah 5:22.

the exiting

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on july 26th, i caught ‘fiddler on the roof’ on pbs.  the scene near the end where they are all leaving because they are being forced to leave really struck me.  we see anatevka from the back in this scene with a gray shawl wrapped around her head and shoulders.  i have been wanting to make that shawl ever since.

i searched about and found nothing that i thought was even close to it.  and it’s a very simple wrap really so i thought that was odd.  then i asked around and no-one knew of anything very close to it either.  so the thinking began.

i’ve roughed out and tossed quite a few ways to go about it since then.  a few of them would have worked, but the intensity of the pattern details and the concentration you’d have to maintain to knit them made me toss them out as rough drats that were not ‘it’ yet.

i found queensland rustic wool dk on sale and bought it in rich variations of purple.  the original wrap seems to be knit of heavier wool with larger needles, so i got enough to double the yarn.

and i think i have just this weekend  swatched the right needle size and almost the right combination of stitches to make ‘sojourners’ actually come to life.

i have liked working on this so far.  i expect actually knitting it will make me thoughtful.  the feeling of being forced to leave a place (or more frequently a relationship) long before i felt ready to is something i am certainly familiar with.

it’s happened more than twice. 

i think that i tend to look ahead to what’s coming next

yet somehow i never see these leavings coming.

then i am dismal and very let down,

                                                 longing to be more content,

                                           praying to be more content,

and, God willing, i will be.

 ‘sojourners’ is taken from 11:13 of hebrews.

morning without

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always strikes me as strange that some mornings i’m so glad to wake up to the sound of steady rain and on others even a grey sky feels gloomy.  more about what’s inside me than what’s outside i think.

been reknitting ‘shining around’ in city tweed hw from knit picks this week.  it’s a much lighter weight yarn so i’ve doubled it all the way through and gone down a needle size.  the pillow will be smaller in the end than the original burly spun version, but pillows of all sizes are always welcome on my couch.

reknitting brings to mind what i was doing, what ground i was gaining and where i was grasping to maintain my position when i was knitting the first version.  i guess i am a ‘process knitter’ after all.

now, you’ll never know when the pillow’s done but, having carefully checked before i joined to knit in the round that there were no twists, i got 7 rounds in toward the pillow’s center and realised i was knitting a mobius which would never become a pillow no matter how much i wanted it to.  sigh.

one minute of catering to a distraction is all it takes for me to begin to spin, or in this case knit, off-kilter.  nevertheless … i love that word ‘nevertheless’.  always have.  there’s something about the idea that it doesn’t matter a lick what came before or how i feel or what urge is stirring in my gut.  that what comes next has nothing to do with what’s been said, or what hasn’t.  it’s a choice. oh how i love that  … i choose to go on, rightly.  which in this case meant frogging back all 7 rounds to restart at the knitting in the round bit of the pattern. 

nevertheless …

 ‘morning without clouds’ taken from 23:4 of 2nd samuel

compromise

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 knit pick‘s comfy bulky honestly is comfy (and cozy, and cuddly… i could keep going but i’ll spare you).  really nice and machine wash’n’dry.  this yarn makes the mama in me smile.

i just reknit ‘loved’ in this yarn.  different colors and different yarn give it a different feel.  good different, yet different none the less.  change is not my easiest thing by far, but good change is worth letting the earth tremor just a tad under my feet for.

the sink princess ...

...

... strikes again.

my youngest, who is currently loving washing her hands every chance she gets, agreed to be photographed.  although i could only get her to stay still enough to be unfuzzy with her elbow deep in soap and water in the bathroom sink.  good enough.

‘loved’ is taken from 4:1 of philippians

proximity

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the subject came up, how do you keep your yarn safe where moths can’t destroy it?

lots of ideas were tosed around in the taunton s’n’b:  plastic bins, wishful thinking, cedar, special plastic bags from walmart.  all well and good, but my grandma keeps my yarn safe

from moths.

sort of.

see grandma had these big metal canisters in her carport.  when she no longer needed them, the canisters came to me.  they sit on the floor and stand about halfway up my thigh with lids on top the size of large pizza pans.  they arrived full of her things which have now found their niches about the house leaving them free for my yarn to lay claim to.

now my friend h has a beautifully elaborate system of sorting and storing her yarn in it’s own special closet.  my yarn is divided a bit more willy-nilly.  there are two large bins stacked on top of each another: one of wool and one of cotton.  nearby are the smaller bins i have picked up at thrift stores and yard sales.  these are mostly divided by weight: one for fingering, one for worsted, and one packed with a virtual rainbow of allhemp6.  there’s also a red one full of what i think i’ll use next and often on top of the lids are the leftover skeins that i’ve yet to take the time to put back inside.

i tell you all this to explain how the burly spun and the aquarella, an unlikely pair, have both wound up in the same pillow.  the 1st  is as orange as orange can be, very bright, and very very thick while the 2nd is all sorts of muted shades (red to orange to brown) and the weight varies inch by inch as it is thickly and thinly spun throughout.  i’m fairly sure i would never have thought to put them together, but as i pried the lid of the ‘wool’ bin open a few days back, i saw that they had rolled together and were sitting there at the edge a little tangled into each other.  and they looked good together.  it struck me right then that the smoothness of one complimented the unevenness of the other both in color and in weight.  who knew?

we’re told, ‘bad friends will destroy you’, so perhaps it is also true that good friends (even unexpected good friends) will build you up.  or at least make things a bit more comfy as you go along.  i am expecting this pillow to be very comfy.

nevertheless

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they’re still in my head.  both the hat that i didn’t knit just days ago and the morning that i did have just hours ago.  i will attempt both again.

the hat will need another yarn. maybe kudo.

and tomorrow morning will need more calm

and faithfully choosing to be still

in the midst of the swirling

of this storm. 

splash

 

 

 

 

deep in the twist

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the moment i saw the ecco silk i knew what it would become.  the picture in my head went like this:  flat topped, simple repeated cables around the crown  a sort of hem to make the brim more fitted (less stretchy) and a retractable ear flap for the slight chill that lingers as winter thaws into spring.  it seems, however, that the yarn had its own ideas.

this stuff is so soft and, well, silky.  plymouth yarn has spun this so beautifully that you’d never guess there’s a stubborn streak deep in the twist.  but there is.  i changed needle sizes and stitch patterns, cabled and uncabled, and came no closer to ‘the hat’ than i was before i’d even started.

discouraged, i took my ‘best’ swatch into the bathroom (where the light is good) to see if the slightly laciness of it was going to work up against the color of my skin.  it’s december so it’s cold and the three layers on my arms didn’t want to budge enough for me to unearth enough skin to test there.  instead i brushed my hair off of my neck, held the swatch up against that skin, and there it was – exactly what this skein would actually become.

kissed 7kissed 8kissed 10

i cornered my eldest’s best friend this afternoon as she stood between me and the kitchen island covered by legos in all states of being built into things.  she let me play with her hair and turned her head and lifted her chin at my request as she snapped together a fantasy colored dog house and laughed at the jokes flying around the room.  she was a great model.

it’s funny to me that all that shows now besides ‘kissed‘ is her ivory skin and her long sweet hair, not all the other stuff that took up so much more space in the room and takes up so much more space in my memory than the photos themselves.

‘kissed’ is taken from 33:4 of genesis.