Dr. Horrible

is now available online and on iTunes for those whose Whedon addiction has them anxiously refreshing web pages and over investing time in their rss feeds.  I know this doesn’t *sound* like a knitting post, but…

wait for it…

Felicia Day wears some really cute wristers in the below scene (a nice shot, with frozen yogurt, and NPH lurking in the background)!  They are nicely offset by Captain Hammer’s rubber hero gloves:

Is it just me, or do they look handknit?  Oh I think so.  Also, Crochet Me is campaigning for an interview with Whedon who apparently has lamented that Crocheting Monthly has failed to show any interest.  I can hardly believe it, as undoubtedly the number of crafters who have crocheted River’s vest is legion. One fine example can be see on their internet plea to Whedon’s people, whoever they may be.

Here’s hoping.  In the meantime, I’ll be knitting these wristers.

The Depths of my Knitting malaise cannot be fathomed.

They are almost as endless as this post (a cheery post to match the blogs light summer colors).  If you don’t want a rant, you can simply scan below for pretty pictures of my new gloves.

Summer knitting malaise.  I sorted through my yarn for over an hour last night, desperately trying to find a project that struck me.  I’ve been doing this for what seems like weeks.  Two days ago my uncle said that he was going to throw away 50 lbs of freshly-sheered wool and I could barely muster the energy to demand he just send it to me.  That is a sign, if anything ever was.  As far as I can tell, it is caused by a series of things, two of which I will now relate to you.

First, it is hot.  It is very hot, and as a knitter I find heat particularly oppressive.   I know there are hoards of darling summer patterns, each its own impetus to break out the double zeros, but at the end of the day most summer knits still feel…knit.  If I had my way we’d all wear stiff woven plant fibers that have their own structural integrity so as never even to approach the skin in the summer sun.

Second, after several weeks of intermittent binge knitting, I finished the hexagons for my gypsy blanket.  I spread them all out to see how I wanted to arrange the colors and discovered that I actually hate the colors together.  Suzanne encourages us to take risks with color, but at the end of the day I’m forced to confront the truth: my tastes are conservative. I tried forcing myself to sew the blanket together, but late the other night I broke and divided the swatches into what will now be two blankets.  I’m so hesitant to mix colors that I’m willing to knit another 40 hexagons.  This is so sad.

Also, a guy in my class called Tennyson emo!  Harumph!

So, alas, the only new completed items I have to post is pair of out-of-season gloves, knit without fingertips to accommodate all of the knitting I can barely bring myself to do:

Above:  laying on my floor just after completion.  The finger lengths aren’t actually as off kilter as they appear.  I do think Lydia’s right–picking up as many stitches as possible around the fingers and then rapidly decreasing is the only way to knit fingers without holes between them.  These turned out well.

Above: my left hand, in action!  They’re warmer than they look, and I can’t wait to wear them all winter.

More soon–I’m continuing to create unseasonal items in early anticipation of this year’s winter market.  I believe Mme. Defarge’s will be back? Lydia?

Summer Weaving and Summer Weddings

I am so sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted–I offer only my lengthy absence from Bloomington and the brief breakdown of my camera as excuses.  No worries, the camera is back in working order (Lydia, this is no excuse for you not to buy one, I could break mine again at any time), and the advent of SWSEEL means I am not going anywhere.  For a long, long time.  Expect Russian themed knits and total psychological breakdown.

Envying Lydia’s beautiful weaving I enrolled with her in a course at Yarns this spring. I did not expect to love it as much as I did, and now I’m trolling skeevishly for a loom.  My first woven scarf:

It’s a blend of bamboo and rayon.  The selvedge is awful but the colors are pretty and I’m extremely happy to be weaving.  Here is a grainy photo of the finished project (taken with my computer during may camera’s down time):

I was so excited about weaving, in fact, that I promptly wove a table runner for my uncle Tim’s wedding.  Here it is in its earliest stages:

It’s heavily textured organic cotton.  It’s my first pattern and my second item, so you (with Tim and Janet) will have to be forgiving.  They are pictured below, walking to the chapel.

More soon!

Quilt Rescue

I was in Nashville (IN) this weekend and at an antique store I found a pile of quilt squares that the owner was selling for a dollar a piece as scraps. He’d been selling them one at a time. I was horrified. I bought the stack. So, expect a quilt sometime in the future. I didn’t piece it, but I’m planning on assembling and quilting it myself once the squares are cleaned and mended.

Habu fibers

The second installment of my Habu order is here and the fibers are beautiful:

Both are super-fine; I hesitate to even call them lace weight. The stainless steel thread is silver, but is plied with two strands of bronze silk. The final color is rich and metallic with a dull shine. The pineapple is undyed and beautifully textured. I also purchased a sweater pattern (to be knit with the pineapple) which I’m currently learning how to read. It’s a Japanese pattern, written in English with the Japanese notation for increases and decreases, so it will take a little time. To keep me occupied and to give me some distraction from the blanket (halfway done) I’m knitting a sweater with the stainless steel skeins.

The shaping turned out really well (it will be easier to see blocked), but I was about halfway through the back panel when I noticed I’d undersized the garment. I’m not at all convinced this will fit me, but I’m hoping I can adjust some with roomy front panels and sleeves. If it doesn’t work we’ll consider this sweater a community-wide public service announcement about the dangers of improving patterns with really really expensive yarns. I’m knitting one thread of steel/silk and one thread of lace weight Misti Alpaca, making it the most delicate and decadent item I’ve ever knit. The color is a beautiful damp mossy bark and the steel wrinkles beautifully. I’m almost hesitant to keep knitting as I’m so afraid the end product will be a bust.

I’m glad I decided to try knitting with these new fibers. I was hesitant to spend so much on new yarn when I have a huge stash lying in wait, but I’ll be a little braver in the future when it comes to interpreting items as knittable. I think I’m much more likely now to eye household items or local plants as potential fiber sources, so I think the expense will be worth it.

Small news

I haven’t written in ages, and plan to remedy that next week with a post about my weaving class (!!).  In the meantime, I’m on ravelry now!  I’m still adjusting to the interface, to the fact that I appear to be able to enter my whole stash into a database (are they mad?  I don’t even know where half these boxes of yarn came from.), and to the fact that despite almost 25 years of knitting, I have very few photos I want to enter.  Also, I now have 3 online places to note my knitting:  flickr, wordpress, and ravelry.  I will never work again.

One reason my postings have been so rare is my diligent work on the blanket I first proposed here.

I have a ton of swatches now and think I’m halfway to a blanket!  I’m naming it the gypsy blanket in honor of Ben E. King’s “Gypsy” and Taj Mahal’s “Gypsy Singin’ Lover Man”, Both of which I’ve been listening to repeatedly while I knit.  It suits the bright colors and the summer sun.

That’s all for now.

Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting

…has come to Indianapolis!  No more envying the East coast–now we’ve got edgy textile exhibits and high stakes primaries to put Indiana on the map.  In lieu of this week’s knitting group, Lydia, Bethany and I went to Indianapolis to volunteer in Gschwandtner’s “Wartime Knitting Circle.”

The space set aside for volunteers faces the exhibit’s entrance and is surrounded by industrially knit replicas of archival photographs from earlier textile war efforts.  Printed on the tablecloth are four patterns–an afghan square, a helmet liner, slippers, and mittens knit with the day’s date and body count–each for a different item volunteers can pick up and work on while they’re present.

We brought copies of the patterns home to so that we can start projects here and bring them in during our next visit.  I’m especially excited to do a pair of mittens, even though they’re out of season.

The experience of volunteering was interesting.  We talked about the value of knitting as war effort during a desert war, saw the work of several lace artists who were conducting demonstrations, and had time to consider what it means to practice a craft in a space that that traditionally exhibits finished products, divorced from their creators.   Textile arts seem uniquely transportable; environmental constraints usually prevent the community from merging studio and exhibition space.  Convenience and portability are the traits that allowed women to dominate the medium historically, and it seems that accessibility might sometimes keep textiles from attaining the prestige of other art forms. This is changing, and I hope the new attention we’re giving to fiber arts continues.

The exhibit itself was very interesting.  I was familiar with some of the pieces from the New York Times review, such as Freddie Robins’ “Craft Kills,”  a wearable knitted body suit impaled with needles:

It’s a fun piece, and a nice juxtaposition of comfort and threat, but overall I’m not convinced this exhibit reflects the limits of textiles as a subversive medium. The only edge to Robins’ piece are the needles themselves, not the garment, which allows wearers breathable mouth, nose, and eye holes, and which ultimately felt more like jammies than a body bag.  The exhibit does a great job of questioning what textile is exactly, and how far beyond plant or animal fibers the artist can push their piece.  It’s a nice compliment to the metal/fiber blend we’ve seen in Habu skeins, and to the online trends of knitting with plastics, metals, and found materials. But overall I’d like to see this exhibit go through another iteration, in which it explores more thoroughly craft at its most subversive.  I’m surprised (and a little proud) to say that some of the most radical and interesting explorations of the medium I’ve seen have not been by traditional artists, but by artisans and amateur crafters exhibiting on their blogs or on flickr. I’ve don’t often think of exhibition artists as a community that could be called “traditional,” but this exhibit changed my mind.  The pieces exhibited seemed restrained by what we expect to see in gallery space; although they were fun and interesting, they felt in some ways perfunctory.  I’m hoping in the next year to visit more events like the Maker Faire that occupied the San Mateo fairgrounds last weekend and see if a different community offers up something a little more surprising.

In the meantime, we’ll be volunteering many more times until the exhibit moves on to another venue.  If you interested in visiting or in carpooling to volunteer, just let me know.  The exhibit will remain at the Indiana State Museum until late August.

Spend your economic stimulus package on something handmade

At Lydia’s brilliant suggestion we’re collaborating with other crafters and following the lead so nicely set at buyhandmade.org. As you know, this spring taxpayers in the Unites States will receive an economic stimulus package ranging from 300-600 dollars per individual. As a commitment to our community of independent artisans and crafters, we’re committing at least 10% of our package to be spent in that community. In doing so, we hope to provide much needed support to those artists who recognize the value of hand-crafted clothing, furniture, and art. We also hope to raise awareness for clothing markets that are environmentally sustainable, that promote proper compensation for artisans, and that are created with a sense of community.

If you would like to support this project, please put a small version of the icon above on your website, blog, or etsy store. Simply copy and paste the html:

<a href=”http://8spokes.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/pledge/“><img src=”http://mypage.iu.edu/%7Ekrereed/pledge.png” alt=”Invest in a Community” border=”0″ width=”166″ /></a>

This pledge is for 10% of your stimulus package, but we encourage you to spend as much of it as possible on sustainable and community driven products! Thank you for participating and feel free to leave us a message below!

Reverse engineering patterns

…maybe I’ll knit the ship from Galaxy Quest!

This spring’s issue of Interweave Knits published an advertisement for a beautiful coverlet pattern, available from Berroco. The blanket is constructed of many hexagonal swatches, each with an internal pinwheel:

It’s so pretty isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be lovely, sitched together with 20 or so of its siblings, each a different color? Isn’t it the perfect project to prompt renting The Office and binge watching tv instead of preparing for my conference next week? Yes! Yes to all those questions! It’s a crochet pattern. I can’t crochet. I have no excuse. Lydia crochets beautifully and would be happy to teach me (as would Bethany for that matter, most of the girls at knitting group, or any of the ladies at Yarns Unlimited). For whatever reason, not crocheting has become an inexplicable habit. So, I was left to come up with my own pattern that would create a similar hexagon, easily pieced together with others to make a blanket. Here’s what I came up with:

Cast on 6 stitches, k 1 row (I used scrap wool and size 8 needles). Transfer to 3 needles (2 stitches per needle), begin in the round.

(k1 yo) 6 times. **This means ending each needle with a yarn over, which can be a little awkward. Make sure they don’t slip off as you’re making your rounds.

(k2 yo) 6 times. 6 stitches per needle.

(k2tog m1 k 1 yo) 6 times.

(k2tog k1 m1 k1 yo) 6 times

(k2tog k2 m1 k1 yo) 6 times, etc. On three needles your piece will look like this:

When you feel comfortable doing so, rearrange your knitting so that it sets on 6 needles, each needle beginning with a k2tog and ending with a yo. After several full rounds on 6 needles, the piece will look like this:

I continued until I had 22 stitches on each needle, then I bound off loosely. Because it’s essentially a lace pattern the hexagon will come off the needles bunched and will require a blocking and ironing. Once the piece was completed it looked like this:

It’s smaller than Berroco’s pattern, and because it’s knit instead of crocheted it pulls slightly towards the center and doesn’t lay as nicely. If you wanted something to lie on an end table as a single piece you would be better off using their pattern, but I’m hoping pieced together as a blanket these will look alright. It’s a nice travel sized project and i’m collecting wool of a variety of colors, so hopefully I’ll have a completed throw to post here soon. As for a completed conference paper, I do not have high hopes. Not at all.

That’s all for now (it’s been a big weekend for blogging here, especially after two weeks of silence). Expect even bigger things in a couple of weeks when I post pictures of the pineapple leaf yarn I ordered from Takako after her lecture and trunk show this week. She was amazing, and swore to me with a straight face that I can start spinning fiber with fine strands of stainless steel to create garments that can be smoothed or creased by hand according to your mood. As soon as I can get to a Lowes I will give this a try.

last minute lecture annoucement

Unique fiber lecture by Takako Ueki: Friday April 18 at 6pm
Fine Arts 230 (Textiles Studio)

Takako Ueki will present a show-and-tell of unique and difficult to find materials for weavers, knitters, and textile artists including bamboo, stainless steel, ramie, and naturally gold, green or brown silks as well as textiles made from these materials.

Habu is a studio and showroom /gallery for simple natural fabrics. Most fabrics are hand-woven, hand-dyed or hand-tied. Yarns are most often hand-dyed with natural dyes such as indigo, madder, logwood, and fustic. Most of Habu’s textiles are one-of-a-kind. They are not mass-produced but
rather designed for unique garments, home accessories, upholstery, drapery, or are created to be appreciated aesthetically “for what they are” -examples of superb craftsmanship.