Sweater no more

I'm finally doing as every other knitter has already done: I am making a Clapotis. I swear. Everybody else has already knitted one of these. I am the last one, trailing in, the last one in the race. Just as it was in high school gym class when I was a grungy, bespectacled nerdy girl.

This is because I was despairing about how not good the Patagonia Nature Cotton was looking as I knit it into a tiny sweater for a baby belonging to a friend of mine. I just didn't like it. The thick-n-thin yarn made my knitting look sloppy, not trendily hippieish, as I was hoping it would. So after trying it at several different gauges, I pulled it out.

So then I was looking for a pattern that would work with the thick-n-thin nature of the yarn, and I looked for like the 10th time at the pattern for Clapotis. And I decided that it might look interesting.

So here is the beginnings.

I didn't understand the appeal of Clapotis until I started knitting it. It is a brilliant pattern. The thrilling allure of dropping the stitches keeps me wanting to keep knitting. I've only gotten to drop one ladder so far but it was pretty fun.

Plus, the pattern is written in such a clear way, all the instructions are spelled out so patiently that a total dummy could probably figure it out, and yet it feels intuitively simple... pretty soon I think I'll be able to put the pattern away, and just enjoy the knitting with occasional breaks to drop those stitches, and watch them magically make ladders in my knitting, for the first time ever on purpose.

Incidentally, for those of you who like podcasts, there is a lovely interview with Kate Gilbert, the woman who designed Clapotis, on an early episode of Knitcast. Look here.

And while you're at it, take a look at this amazing and funny post about Clapotis, from Dogs Steal Yarn. I loved the poem before I started knitting the Clapotis. Now I REEEALLY love it.

And for those of you who are wondering, I will still present this yarn (knit into a Clapotis) to my friend with the baby. I was thinking that she might prefer the Clapotis to another piece of baby clothing. She can sure wear it a lot longer than the baby can use the sweater!

Eric is back to visit!

Eric is my guy friend who occasionally knits. Perhaps he will pull his knitting out when he's here visiting. I'll try to take some sneak pictures when he's not looking.

And Eric even helped me to wind yarn. What a saint.

The job was not easy. The yarn was tangled and knotted. Its Patagonia Nature Cotton, which I bought over the summer at a lovely yarn shop/spinnery in Maine,

Halcyon Yarn. I am knitting it up into a little sweater for a friend's baby. Though I'm not sure I like how its coming out, because the yarn is thick-n-thin, and even knitted on size 8 needles the fabric seems a bit loose in places. And the lace pattern I chose for the edges isn't doesn't look too great. I think I will wash and block this piece and then see whether I want to keep going with the project.

This is a terrible picture of the back of the sweater.


I took the pics on this blog with a sad little computer camera. But I figure a post with bad pictures is better than a post with no pictures at all.

Current projects

Aren't they cute together? Like a daddy sock taking his baby sock out for a walk.



No, this isn't the result of some horrible gauge accident. I'm just working on both pairs at the same time. Both second socks are now in progress. The baby socks will be finished and gifted long before the large socks will be completed.

I've been working on the large socks for my husband since November. You see, they are a Christmas present. As in, Christmas 2005, when I wrapped up what was then a half-knitted sock and then promptly took back as soon as he opened it.

Oh well. I keep plugging along. The problem is that I keep getting pulled away by those sweet little baby socks. They're just so adorable! And they are finished so fast, knitted on size 5 needles, they are so much more fun than those stinky socks I am knitting on size 1s. But these are the things we do for love, I suppose. And I do love Bill.

knitting updates (no pictures, sorry)

Tonight I was doing my best to ignore the enormous pile of laundry that needs to be processed. Instead I continued working on another tiny sock (similar to the ones pictured below, same yarn, only slightly different colors and in a stripy pattern) while listening to this podcast of a radio program, which includes one of my favorite theologians, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite (I always loved saying her name, which I would usually say aloud when I was reading her books and articles by myself). The discussion on the program doesn't really cover any new ideas, but it was still good to hear a theologian I love, saying good, common-sense things about gay and lesbian issues in the church.

I do love podcasts. I am sure you have all already discovered Cast-On and KnitCast by now, but if you havn't, do take a listen. Fun stuff to knit by.

My cat really loves the sound of podcasts. Has anybody else had that experience? She spends a lot of time rubbing my computer and then rubbing me whenever I have sound of voices playing from the computer speakers. Its as if she finds podcasts...attractive. The same way she finds my speaker-phone conference call attractive (with my job, everybody on the entire hospice team checks in with one another every morning via conference call). She loves the sound of the speaker-phone, no matter who is talking--she always trys to bump the phone off the table with her nose, as if she's trying to find the person speaking, who is undoubtedly hiding underneath the telephone.

In other knitting news, in the last six weeks my church knitting group has produced seven shawls to be distributed to various shut-in members of the congregation. Its been a challenge for our little group, but the results have been very positive--the recipients are enjoying their shawls, and that's enough gratification for us knitters to make us want to keep on knitting. Wish I had pictures of them all--they are beautiful--but I don't have any. You will all just have to imagine.

Breaking the silence with a vengeance

If there is anybody still out there checking my blog (though I have a suspicion that I am once again talking to myself only, and that's okay,) I just wanted to say that this is so great. PLEASE click on the link. I love that people like this wonderful Melissa, who has never been to Interim House, feels so strongly about the place and its people and its mission that she goes to all kinds of lengths to collect supplies for the knitting ladies there. Melissa, they love you at Interim House. And it goes beyond the stuff you sent. Its the idea that you care about them. So thank you. If you ever want to come by Philadelphia and visit IH, you're more than welcome to stay with me.

Starting small.

Very small.

After having hit a wall with this blog, I decided that I better set myself some easily attainable goals. I thought, I can't seem to find the oomph to get back into blogging. But if I start small, maybe I'll be able to start over. Hence the tiny socks. Each was knit in about a day.

They really are tiny, adorable, knit for a friend who is currently quite pregnant. I followed a pattern I found here, though I added the little mock cables to keep me interested. I used some yarn I've had in my stash for a long time, this veeeeeeeeerrrrrry stretchy cotton yarn which has like 3% elastic, called Fixation from Cascade. Its lovely. The thing I was worried about when I started the socks was that I wouldn't be able to keep the tension even because of the great stretchiness of the yarn. And there are some parts of the socks which seem a bit looser than others. But the material the yarn makes is so wonderful, soft and stretchy and just perfect for socks. And heck, socks get washed lots and will be stretched out of shape, so what does it matter, really?

Here's another picture, with some common office supplies in the picture for perspective, so you can see just how tiny these socks are: