Obsession

I don't usually think of myself as an obsessive person. I think I'm both too easily bored and too lazy to really cultivate obsessions. But I have to admit that my liking for garter stitch knitting does border on obsession. My knitting over the last few weeks has taken garter stitch geometry to a new level of preoccupation (a nice euphemism for obsession).

There's the log cabin squares I've already written about. You knit one square and then knitters know what happens next. One square leads to another - 'this time I'll just adjust the size of the commencing square; this time I'll make the borders of different depths; this time I'll do some stripes' - and in a relatively short time I'd finished four squares.



That was when I finally had to face up to the fact that I didn't have nearly enough yarn to finish a blanket or throw of any useful size and that the yarn had been discontinued. So I tried all the usual suppliers for this yarn - in Australia, in the USA, in the UK, in Canada, and while most of them had some balls of the Mission Falls 1824 cotton at wonderfully discounted prices, most of them didn't have the colours I needed. Then Ravelry came to the rescue. I posted that I was looking for this yarn and various helpful people sent me the results of systematic searches they had made through Ravelry stashes. As an outcome, after a number of suitably apologetic and beseeching emails to Ravellers, I assembled my yarn. This blanket or throw when finished will have more airmiles and postage attached to it than anyone would think possible. Bits of yarn came from Canada; some from the USA; some from interstate; and some after a car trip to Berry on the south coast. Perhaps this has been a bit obsessive after all.

But even the squares have had to make way for another garter stitch binge. Along with some friends and members of the Inner City branch of the NSW Knitters Guild we're making a string of bunting*. This is a kind of double obsession for me - not only garter stitch but also bunting. It follows on from the cloth bunting I made for a Christmas swap and the Bye Baby Bunting cardi I knitted for a colleague's new baby.



So, I'm sharing with knitting friends an obsession for knitting triangular garter stitch flags (bunts) from sock wool scraps. They're breaking out over twitter and facebook in plains and stripes and even quarters. Great fun. There's even an emerging vocabulary. The flags themselves are bunts. People knitting them are bunters. The obsession is bunterism. I think we're going to have a very long, very varied string of bunting.

So my current knitting switches between log cabin squares and bunts. Very geometric. Very neat. Lots and lots of garter stitch. I imagine I'll tire of all this repetitive garter stitch sometime, but just for the moment it's very satisfying.


* In case you're interested in sharing the bunting craze, we're using an adaptation of Karen Wessel's pattern - casting on 55 stitches rather than the 35 of the original pattern as we want the bunting to draw attention to itself.

Sock rest

It's taken me ages to finish these socks. There were several stops and restarts - the final one just a few rows short of the toe on the second sock. My enthusiasm for sock knitting seems to have dwindled; I hope only temporarily.




There are pluses and minuses to these socks. I really like the colour combination - camel and grey. A very classic combination. I like the plainness of the old-fashioned Patonyl sock yarn in stocking stitch and the slightly irregular fine stripes on the toes. However, I think the patterned band at the top of the socks doesn't really work well. The fleur de lys and heart pattern is lovely before you put on the sock, but once the pattern is stretched around my admittedly generously sized legs the pretty pattern is distorted. Maybe a fair isle pattern would work better around the ankle where the fabric is not stretched to the same extent.



The fair isle motifs and stripey toes are taken from Kristen Kapur's Sockstravaganza pattern that features in Julie Turjoman's book "Brave New Knits'. But I omitted the cabling and travelling stitches on the body of the socks to limit their extravagance.

For the first time in several years I have no socks on the needles. I think I might leave it that way for a little while and have a sock rest, even though there are a couple of Nancy Bush patterns I'm finding very attractive (what a surprise!)

12 in 12 books: January

I forgot to post about my progress with my personal challenge to buy only 12 books in 2012. So far, so good.



I bought only one book - Alice Waters' cookbook 'The Art of Simple Food' which, though published only in 2007, is already well on the way to becoming a classic. I'm hoping it will inspire me to cook simple meals with fresh ingredients, frequently. Once upon a time I think I was regarded as quite a competent cook; but living by myself has made me lazy. I'm fully aware that buying cookbooks has a kind of magical quality to it - you trick yourself into believing that somehow the act of buying the book will of itself improve the quality of your cooking. I know what I really need to do is overcome my laziness about putting effort into cooking for myself: but I am hoping that the new book will provide sufficient inspiration to overcome my laziness.

By the way, I've added an exception to my no-book-buying resolution. I'm allowed to buy gift books for others. This is a necessary variation as I just couldn't manage without buying books for my grandchildren.

Even though I've not bought books I have been reading. Mainly I'm still reading books I was given at Christmas time and books I bought last year. I also read some of my daughter's books when I was staying at her place. So far I haven't lacked for very pleasurable things to read. But this challenge has made me realise that I'm in the habit of just popping into bookshops if I have a few minutes to spare. The Bookshop of Doom in the Devonshire Street tunnel is a particular temptation on my way home from work, and a visit to the city seems incomplete without a few minutes in Kinokuniya.

Fickle? Me?

The only knitting resolution I made for 2012 was that I would knit whatever whim and fancy suggested. But I'm beginning to wonder just how fine the line is between whim and fancy and fickleness. Being led by whim and fancy has a carefree, of the moment, feel to it. To be fickle is to be changeable or inconstant - altogether less flattering characteristics.

Inspired by my whim and fancy attitude I started a new project last weekend - Juneberry, Brooklyntweed's lace knitted small shawl for thicker yarns. (I'm using Madelinetosh 80/10/10 Sport yarn).



As usual for Brooklyntweed, this is a well-presented, easy to follow pattern resulting in a modern yet classic outcome. It's even a bit more technically challenging than my usual projects so I've been feeling quite virtuous about stretching myself and my capabilities. After discovering that the knitting was much easier with a generous application of stitch markers I've been steaming along, snatching time for some rows whenever I could. I thought I was totally absorbed in this project.

Then, surprisingly, yesterday, I was distracted by log cabin knitted squares - specifically, Mason-Dixon Knitting's Buncha Squares. I've had some Mission Falls 1824 cotton for several years. This yarn has a rather old-fashioned boucle texture that I've always thought would be perfect for a blanket. In fact, I've had several attempts at knitting it up in various ways but have never been happy with the outcome. Buncha Squares might be it. I've almost finished one square and love the outcome. It has the attraction of variation within an overall regular pattern that I always fall for. Now I only need to knit (how many?) more.



This yarn has been discontinued and though I know there are several part-finished projects with it in various places around the house I doubt I would have enough yarn for a useful blanket. But I'll see.

Whim and fancy, or fickleness, might take me in an entirely different direction at any time.

Bye baby bunting

A colleague at work is just commencing parental leave for her first baby. Yesterday we had afternoon tea with her and gave her a number of presents for the baby. I love the opportunity to knit baby clothes and had fun choosing pattern and yarn for a little jacket. She'd commented many times that almost everything she's been given so far for the baby is pink (she's expecting a girl) and lamented the current pinkness of everything for girl babies. So it was easy to decide to knit in soft green yarn. I also wanted a pattern that wasn't aggressively girly as it was clear my colleague prefers plainer, less sex-specific designs.

Knitting designer Laura Chau (Cosmicpluto) has produced a very cute baby cardigan she named Sweet Bunting; a simple, bottom-up seamless design with a natty pattern of bunting at the base of the yoke. It would be equally suitable for a boy or girl.




I'm not a very experienced or very expert fair isle knitter and would like to have done a better job of controlling the tension of the simple fair isle patterning in the yoke. It's a little bit loose; though that's better than being too tight. Fair isle in a highly processed superwash yarn (such as the Morris Empire Superwash Merino 8 ply which I used for practicality with this jacket) does not sit as neatly as fair isle with catchy yarns. Still, I did learn to weave in the floats of yarn as I carried them across the longer stretches of the pattern, and I think I'm developing a desire to improve my colourwork knitting.

I decided to use up the remainder of a ball of green yarn by knitting a hat. Whit's Knits from Purl Bee often has simple but very effective free patterns. I used the size and shape of the hat from the Little Fair Isle Hat pattern, omitting the attractive fair isle design and substituting two row stripes of the contrasting colours. I'm very happy with the outcome.




I seem to be on a bit of a bunting kick lately, having made bunting for a Christmas gift swap and now knitting the bunting pattern on this jacket. I like simple, geometric, repetitive patterns, and bunting fits these characteristics.

I also liked the gentle pun in the name of this pattern. Bunting originally was the word for a rough fabric made with a glazed surface, ideal for flags and ribbons. Over time the term has transferred from the fabric to the flags themselves. But it has another association. There's the rhyme I remember from my childhood as a chant for rocking or jiggling babies

Bye baby bunting
Daddy's gone a-hunting
Gone to get a rabbit skin
To wrap the baby bunting in.

The internet informs me it's also a lullaby, though this is not part of my association for it.

So this is a playful pattern rich in associations. My colleague was surprised and delighted by the gift and I've had a great deal of pleasure making it.

Another world

A few days ago I was half-listening to Radio National which was replaying an interview with Jeff Fatt, one of the Wiggles. He commented that one of the things he liked about his job was that it gave him access to the world that's inhabited by young children and their parents. His words reflected my experience of the couple of weeks I spent looking after my grand-daughter at the end of December and beginning of January. For those couple of weeks I inhabited a world I knew very well when my own children were small, but that I've not really lived in since then. To describe the world of small children and parents and carers as a parallel universe is going a bit too far; but it's certainly a space where your view of the world is transformed.

I found myself going places and doing things I've not done in a long time. I went to the beach and jumped over waves and swam in the sea and built sand castles




I went to the movies and saw two animated films (you have to know just how avidly I avoid animation in any medium to know what a departure this is from my usual practice)

I visited the local park and playground and hung out at the charmingly unpretentious Ithaca swimming pool.

I visited an animal park and exclaimed over the cuteness of the wombats.

I spent quite a bit of time in the children's section of both the City and State Libraries in Brisbane. Both wonderful.



[The children's section of the City Library, by the way, has views through its modern angular windows of the Brisbane Casino - a very elegant late nineteenth century building that used to be the State Treasury. Somehow that seems very appropriate and very Brisbane]

I went to a Dinosaur Picnic arranged by the State Museum where we made dinosaur masks and tails and listened to a performance of factually accurate songs about dinosaurs by Jurassic Joe. These songs are readily transferable as earworms and simply by typing this I have 'The Sleepy Stegosaurus Stomp' echoing through my head.

And of course we visited - twice - the very child-friendly Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), my favourite gallery. It currently has a large exhibition of works by senior Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama that extends in a most enveloping fashion through several of the Gallery's rooms. Of special delight to children - and to most of the accompanying adults - is the Obliteration Room where the aim is to cover all the white spaces of the walls, floor, ceiling and furnishings with dots (Kusama has a passion for dots). Everyone is issued with a sheet or two of dot stickers as they enter the room which they can use as they wish. It's fun to see children sitting on the parents' shoulders to reach the ceiling or crawling beneath the table to paste dots on the underside.




As you exit from the Obliteration Room (such a great title) you're inspected to make sure you're not transferring dots outside the room on your clothes or the soles of your shoes. Nevertheless, the dots have escaped to lots of other areas of the Gallery and the surrounding areas. It became quite a game to 'spot the spots' around the cultural centre precinct, and even at the bus stop.

GoMA also has an installation called 'we miss you magic land'. Ostensibly it's designed for children, though as the title implies, it's just as captivating for grown-ups temporarily inhabiting the child's world. To quote the exhibition blurb, Perth artists Pip and Pop draw on 'children’s stories, creation myths, Buddhist cosmologies, video games and folktales, (to) create large-scale fantasy worlds coloured with a bright, often fluorescent palette, using cake-decorating tools, intricate layers of sugar, glitter, modelling clay and mirrors'. (I wonder if any of the participants in the astonishing cake-decorating sections of the Royal Easter Show ever dreamed of putting their talents to such use). The magic worlds are arranged in clusters at various levels and can be viewed through small windows and by looking up at the ceiling.




You can even create your own magic world at home, which we did, several times.

Being an adult in the world of children means a change of perspective. Time stretches and contracts. Some things take much longer to accomplish than you could ever imagine possible; others you thought might be absorbing are passed over with barely a glance. You have to expect the unexpected. Things you find deeply boring can entertain a child for hours. Plans you make can be overturned in an instant. At the risk of sounding pollyanna-ish, I rediscovered that many of the most enjoyable things are free (other than the 'cost' of your time). Time at the beach - admittedly made possible by visiting a generous friend, imaginative games, playing with other children in the park or at the library, all cost nothing.

I'm back in my adult world with my adult perspectives - until the next time I visit my children and grandchildren.

Afterword...on my day off from doting I went back (yet again) to GoMA to see the exhibition Matisse: Drawing Life. There are rooms of Matisse drawings and you see the development from his already skilled early works to the late collages. Matisse drew and drew and drew - dozens of drawings each day - to refine his portrayal of the world. You see an artist continually honing his skill and vision. Definitely worth viewing.

And I popped in, as I always do, to see the wall of Ian Fairweather paintings in the Queensland Art Gallery. I love his paintings as design, but I also find them sad and nostalgic and somewhat tortured. Definitely worth revisiting.


[Ian Fairweather 'Kite-flying' 1958]

A big shawl

For some time now I've been wanting a big shawl - one that's long enough to drape securely around myself and that's deep at the back to keep me warm. Finally I've achieved it.




It feels as if it has taken me ages to finish this shawl, but in fact I only started it at the end of October and finished the knitting just before Christmas. However, it was a lot of knitting. I didn't have time (or energy) to organise the blocking before I went away in late December, but inspired by this morning's Knitting Guild meeting and the chance to show it off to friends I conquered the blocking yesterday. That's what it felt like: a war, as I pushed and prodded and measured and pinned the shawl into submission across almost all the spare space on my living room floor.

The pattern is Stephen West's Transatlantic Shawl, and I just kept knitting and knitting till I felt it was big enough. Initially I'd bought four 50g skeins of the Rowan 4 ply wool for the solid dark graphite colour, but I needed to go back twice to Calico and Ivy to buy additional skeins to make it large enough. The variegated black and cream yarn is Schoppelwolle Crazy Zauberball where the skeins seem to go on forever. The pattern includes increases on every row at the edges, so the resulting shawl is very wide - and long at the front if I don't wind it around myself.



One of the great things about this pattern is its use of texture. I particularly like the contrast between the horizontal garter stitch ridges of most of the shawl and the strong vertical lines of the central slipped stitch pattern.




I'm very happy with my shawl, though as it began to grow I was surprised by its proportions...surprised and initially a bit dismayed by its width. But now it's finished I'm really happy to have such long shawl 'tails' to anchor the shawl as I wear it. A very good outcome.

Finally, I'm pleased to have a shawl in shades of grey. Clearly, it will match most of my clothes.

And really finally, thanks to DrK for the pics of me wearing the shawl