And We’re Off!
I leave this evening for my summer in England, including a jaunt to Knit Nation in July and UK Knit Camp in August. Stay tuned for updates from the road…
Knitters Write, Knitters Act…
Susan Gordon Lydon!
Those of you who read Knitting at Signature Theatre may have noticed a very exciting comment there – from Jessica Molaskey, one of the stars of Sycamore Trees (and one of the actresses who has knit on stage at Signature in the past year). Jessica gave us, not only a glimpse into her acting process, but information about the real knitter on whom her character was based. It seems Ricky Ian Gordon’s sister was…Susan Gordon Lydon, author of The Knitting Sutra and Knitting Heaven and Earth. Lydon, a well-known feminist, knitter, and writer, passed away at age 61 after a long battle with cancer.
I am gobsmacked that I didn’t make the connection between Gordon and his sister — and pleasantly surprised by the connection. Knitting Heaven and Earth has been an important book for me in the past few years: in it, Lydon writes about the power of craft, particularly knitting, to heal both the one who crafts and the recipients of items made for them. I gave it to my knitting mother-in-law shortly after her husband died; I read it myself, several times, after the death of my mother.
More than that, I’m ever so pleased that the feminist character from the musical was indeed a knitter, and a writer of knitting books. And I’m impressed that Molaskey’s daughter knits so well at age 12! You all should have seen this scarf — it was lovely. Check out Molaskey’s website to hear her gorgeous voice (and buy her lovely albums), read her comment after my last post…and could some reader who lives in New York City check out Knitty City! Judging by their website, it could be my new home-away-from-home.
Knitting at Signature Theatre
…no, I did not knit at Signature Theatre. But someone does! One imagines it must be someone in props. I’ve had season tickets to Signature for several years, and though I’ve admired several knitted garments I haven’t noticed a trend until now.
It started with Sweeney Todd (a dark but lovely Sondheim musical, redundant though that may be). Mrs. Lovett’s duet with Tobias has always included her knitting him a scarf. Sherri Edelen, the actress who played Lovett at Signature, actually knit and cast off a simple ribbed scarf during the song, wrapping the finished scarf around Tobias’ neck as she sings. Knitting geek that I am, I thought about the prop master, Eileen Garcia – or perhaps even Edelen herself – unraveling the cast-off row after each show, preparing for the next performance.
So far, a nice knitting moment, but nothing to write home about. I admired Edelen for actually knitting during the song, wondered whether she learned to knit for the part, but decided it would be silly to post about something that’s presumably in every production of a well-known musical.
But! Two musicals that include knitting…that’s a nice pattern. Ricky Ian Gordon’s Sycamore Trees had its world premiere at Signature this spring, and the main character’s doomed heroin addict sister dreams of “writing a book on knitting” while trying to get sober. After her death, she sits in a chair on a catwalk above the main action and knits (as Gay Guy of GG/SG said to me afterwards, “Knitting is Heaven!” I told him I already knew).
Later, the character makes her father a sweater to wear when he joins her in the great beyond. Again, the actress (Jessica Molaskey) is really knitting onstage. Again, the main knitting prop is a scarf. This one has a knit/purl pattern that’s more complicated than Sweeney’s rib. Is our prop knitter getting better, or did she know how to knit all along, and decide Sweeney’s grim set called for a less ornamental scarf? I suspect the latter, but that’s just a gut feeling.
In both productions knitting indicates love between characters, a kind of nurturing that presumably has been going on for quite some time. In Gordon’s more modern performance, it also has to do with staying sober, with comforting oneself as well as those around one, with staying out of the darkness into which his characters stray from time to time. Of course it does – those of us who knit all know someone who learned to knit during a difficult time, or who found knitting to be a comfort at one time or another. I found myself a little bothered by the suggestion that “writing a book on knitting” might represent a kind of settling for Molaskey’s ultra-feminist character, especially since a book on knitting is exactly what I’m writing these days. I am conveniently overlooking the possible slam on knitting, reminding myself that I am both a feminist and a knitter, and I know many others who are, too.
You can watch Gordon talk about the inspiration for Sycamore Trees below. He doesn’t talk about knitting…but we know he’s thinking about it, right?
Tea Leaves Can Be Bitter
Looks great up here!
So I have finally recovered enough from the Tea Leaves Cardigan debacle to write about it.
Not to rip out the bottom and fix it…just to write about it.
I bought the yarn for this beauty at fibre space, where I was helped by the lovely staff, and reminded that I should alternate rows with two different skeins in order to avoid obvious color problems due to differences between skeins. [Hand-dyed yarn varies from skein to skein. I know this. I have known this for quite some time. Check out Kay’s nifty post on hand-dyes yarns for more info.] As I told you all last time…I said, blithely, “Oh, I know. I probably won’t do it, though.”
Hubris, people. Hubris is what brought down ancient heroes like Achilles and Odysseus — foolish mortals who thought themselves so great that they could risk the gods’ displeasure. [Am I suggesting that I am a knitting heroine? No, but I am certainly a knitting fool, a knitting mortal.] Hubris has brought down much better knitters than I. I am well aware of the dangers of taunting the gods. And yet — such is the power of hubris at times — I not only defied known knitting wisdom; I announced my intentions. Just as Odysseus blinded Poseidon’s son, then told the guy his name so he’d know who defeated him, thus bringing Poseidon’s rage onto himself and dooming his men…but I digress.
...not so good down here.
Result?
Bottom six inches are much paler than the rest.
I have a few excuses: I was knitting in low light (true at times); I was knitting with the iPad in front of me (also true at times); I was knitting to finish instead of knitting to knit (perhaps true); I was told that knitting with the lighter skein would save the life of a small, golden-haired child…
Several folks in one of my beginner classes were so comforting. They told me I could consider it a design feature! They told me it almost looked intentional! They told me that just finishing a sweater was an accomplishment (awww). How I love my knitting students. How I love knitters in general! Lesley even joined in my rationalization that the only thing that would save it was buying more yarn.
Sadly, after all the rationalizing and looking-with-squinted-eyes, the fact remains: It’s obvious. Obvious to me, obvious to others. It’s ridiculous. I can do better. So it will be fixed. I have decreed it; I have committed to you all that I will fix it. Next up will be photos of the frogged body of this sweater. I’m not happy about it…but I will do it.
The solution, in case any of you have been wondering, is for me to rip out the bottom of the sweater, up to at least the base of the sleeves, and re-knit it, alternating rows between the lighter and darker skeins. If that makes that one sleeve look too dark, I may have to do the same with it. If that doesn’t work, I may have to re-knit the whole thing. But we are not thinking about that right now.
Hmph.
It All Started Out So Well.
About ten days ago, I was inspired by Lynn’s photo of homemade strawberry ice cream — and its similarity to the colorway I’ve been using for my Tea Leaves Cardigan.
I asked Lynn how she gets the gorgeous food shots she has on her blog. “I just do extreme close-ups,” she said, as if a zoom lens is all one needs for greatness. So – I tried that (with more and less success), then continued happily with the sweater.
I am not going to post photos of what happened. No; it is too fresh in my mind, too much of Greek Tragedy as yet. Perhaps later, when we have all had time to heal, when spring has brought forth new yarn, when other projects have reminded us we are not complete failures as knitters – then we can look back on this project and see it merely as a bump in the road to next year’s wooly garments. For now, it must lie fallow, or – to put it another way – in the bottom of my knitting bag, banished with just half a sleeve and the button band left to go.
In a word, I took a shortcut. When one is knitting with hand-dyed yarn, one should knit with two skeins, in alternating rows. This is so that any color differences in the skeins are evened out. I know this. I have known this for a long time. I have been burned by color difference before. The yarnista at fibre space reminded me of this. “Yes, I know,” I said blithely, fondling my new yarn.
I had no reason to ignore personal precedent and expert advice. Nevertheless, I did just that.
I am now paying the price: most of the sweater looks like this photo, pale pink with some darker bits. One freaking skein had fewer darker bits than the rest, so from about my natural waist to the hem the sweater is a bit paler. My darling Tuesday night beginners’ class told me they couldn’t see it; my glorious knitting friend said she couldn’t see it; but I can see it…and so could Veronica. [I’m not sure I have the heart to show Danielle.]
So…we’ll let this one stew for a while. Maybe my eyes will get worse in the meantime and I won’t notice the difference.
Begin Again
I wrote the first part of this piece about my mother on Sunday, Nov. 30, 2008 (the day after the first anniversary of her death). I wasn’t ready to post it then, but in honor of Mother’s Day 2010 I thought I’d share it.
Jane E. Lawton
It’s November 30, 2008. A year and a day after my mother’s death, I find myself without much to do.
That isn’t really true. I have lots to do: Andy’s mother is coming to stay in two weeks, and the house must be made fit for grown-ups. I have books to read, projects to knit, people to call, writing to finish.
But the big thing I’ve been “supposed to do” in the last year — grieve my mother – is by some measurements gone. Yesterday was the first anniversary of her sudden and (to my mind) premature death.
Many of you have heard this before, but…Mom was 63, a vibrant woman who leapt into anything that caught her interest. She was in the Maryland State Legislature, held a full-time job in government besides that, climbed mountains, held countless parties, made friends at the drop of a hat, wrote poetry, and taught me to embroider and crochet when I was little.
Before you ask — she didn’t really knit. No one’s perfect. [Read about her knitting efforts after the jump!]
Knitting on the iPad
As the title suggests, I’m posting this from my new iPad. I’m enjoying a lot of the features, especially iBooks, Netflix, and the ABC tv viewer. NPR’s interface is pretty, too, though I haven’t yet listened to a story. Kindle, too, has an iPad app, and right now their library is more extensive than that of iBooks. We’ll see how that goes, long-term.
The iPad was my birthday gift from Mr. Trask, justified in part because I will again spend the summer in England and it will be a lot easier to carry the iPad overseas than all the books I am reading for my class this summer — not to mention books I might want to read on the plane, or for reference, or, well, all the Jane Austen and P.G. Wodehouse I like to have around…come to think of it, this entire gift may be a reaction to my purchase of yet another copy of Persuasion while we were in Bath last summer. Hmm.
Better folks than I have reviewed the iPad already, so you don’t need to hear from me on it. I do think it offers some nifty possibilities for knitters — Knitty looks nice on it, and so do other knitting websites. I am eager to see what can be done with individual patterns — already, I can pull up a PDF pattern I bought on ravelry and prop the iPad up to knit with the pattern in front of me (my case has a wedge-style prop option with which one can stand the iPad up a lot or a little — the former is good for reading or watching video, while the latter is great for typing). I have even been able to read books on the iPad on iBooks or Kindle while knitting, which I am not able to do with a paper book. Images are particularly good-looking on it, of course, and that suggests digital publication of knitting patterns and instruction books could be more realistic soon.
The WordPress app for the iPad is nice-looking, but the limitations of photos on iPad are making it difficult for me to attach a photo to this post — and a photo of a pattern being displayed on the iPad, which would be the perfect illustration, will have to be added later via my laptop. One can add links by beginning to type in the HTML code for a link (<a href =”http…) — the app will take over and offer to help create a link.
There’s a long way to go on the iPad, but I can tell it will be helpful for me in reading, writing, blogging, and even knitting, and I hope knitting designers and publishers will hop on the bandwagon sooner rather than later.
So how’s that for a rationalization of my new toy?
Knitting in the Shotgun Seat…
Now, you people know I have a lot of experience in a few things:
1. Reading Books by P.G. Wodehouse;
2. Watching Movies Set Before 1960;
3. Sitting in Mr. Trask’s car while he drives us somewhere, knitting up a storm.
It’s that third one that has me thinking, and it’s all because of my favorite mechanics, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, Tom and Ray Magliozzi — in a word, The Car Talk Guys. I love these guys, and it’s not about the content. It’s about the presentation. I love it when someone calls up and says, “Yeah, my car’s making this noise like ‘GUH guh duh, GUH guh duh,’ but only when I’m reversing, and my wife doesn’t believe it’s happening, so we haven’t been to the mechanic” and Tom and Ray say, “Oh, sure, that’s the foggratecearates arates,” or whatever it is, and they all live happily ever after.
I love it, too, when they solve their callers’ other problems. Anyone remember the one where the caller had a crush on her mechanic? Classic! That one’s got my vote for Stump the Chumps.
[I dream of a Knit Talk Gals show on NPR, in which Kay and Ann take calls from desperate knitters…but then Twist Collective has gotten us pretty close.]
I have been tempted to call Tom and Ray for years myself. I feel sure they can solve a problem that has been plaguing Mr. Trask and me since our first winter together. It involves a snow drift, a DC driver who borrowed her new boyfriend’s car, and a license plate holder. If you’re really nice to me I might tell you about it later.
At any rate, over the weekend Tom and Ray discussed one nervous knitter’s conundrum: is it safe to knit in the car if your car has airbags?
I will be honest here. I am not sure whether it’s safe or not. But I do know that it’s not safe for my husband to put me in the car and drive me, say, up to Boston without my knitting. I mean, think it through, guys. Suppose you were asked to ride in a car for hours on end without saying even one thing about batteries or carburetors or…uh…whatever? Also, I can’t imagine knitting needles injuring me in a crash, unless I were really bent over my work at a weird angle, or using super-sharp needles, or something. But perhaps I am in denial. The truth is, I’m not going to be able to stop knitting in the car. It’s kind of my thing. [That, and knitting anywhere else…]
Rant over; if you listen to the segment (about 10 minutes in if you’re podcasting) you’ll learn that Tom and Ray are honest (and unsure), as well. Anyone have thoughts?
The Road to Paradise
…or Massachusetts, at least.
This weekend, I’m teaching a class at The Creative Stitch in Hingham, Mass. (Fun! Taking the show on the road! Etc.)
Therefore, Mr. Trask and I are driving north today and tomorrow. Mr. Trask likes to drive and listen to books on tape; I like to sit still and knit. What’s not to love?!?
On the iPod: the first Brother Cadfael mystery, A Morbid Taste for Bones (by Ellis Peters).
On the Needles: Fibre Company Terra, turning into a baby cardigan for a friend.
Below: Obligatory Knitting on the Road photo, plus two ways of looking at the world via t-shirts in a Maryland rest stop…
Kay’s Shawl
I knit this shawl for my mother-in-law for Christmas. I have some photos of her wearing it on my camera, but haven’t gotten them off yet.
The yarn is Miss Babs Yowza (rav lnk) – two glorious big skeins of purpley goodness. The pattern is just simple garter stitch, because Kay isn’t the lace shawl type. I tried to make it a bit of a prayer shawl, putting good thoughts into it as I knit.
What I did not do was use good thoughts as I wound the skeins – as Danielle & Co. will attest – winding way too fast and ignoring a few early signs of disaster. I lost almost half my third skein to an unbelievable snarl. I am going to have to learn to make a stuffed animal of some kind and stuff it with the mass of tangled yarn.
Lesson: Serenity is key in ALL phases of the knitting process.
Knit Like You Mean It. 