The warp and weft of our lives

My tangle of yarns has been living in bags and boxes in france for the last 8 years, a riotous rummage of mixed colours, weights and textures. The project on the needles - both a cause and a consequence of my magpie tendencies - was a "something" based on the carpet pattern by Kaffe Fasset in his 1985 explosion onto the design scene Glorious Knitting.

The mid 80's. I think I was knitting a lot of traditional fairisle /intarsia at that time ... But life was too short and too busy in 1985 with 2 very young children and a thesis to finish writing up to seriously think that I would ever complete the 'Crosspatch' sleeveless pullover in 4 ply Shetland wool. I did about 6 inches ... And then it languished in the bottom of a drawer, as a testament to misplaced enthusiasm untempered by practicality.

I think it was finally culled and sent to recycling sometime around one of my moves.

The fact that it was being knitted for my husband - who at the time of the moving cull had become my ex-husband -probably hastened it on its way.

I don't remember my intentions for this 'something'. It was definitely a post divorce project. I guess it was a symbol of journeying into some sort of unknown.

Whereas in the past I would have played safe by sticking to what the pattern said - even a designer like Fassett gave exact yarns to buy and charts to follow - here I had started branching out by incorporating different weights and textures and following the inspiration rather than trying to complete a garment that would look exactly like the one in the book.

I had been inspired to be more creative with textured yarns by a one-day free embroidery workshop I'd attended in Windsor. That embroidery project called on the same jumble of texture and colour in different weights of wool and ribbons: a far cry from the counted cross stitch and other meticulous embroideries and Honiton lace created by my paternal step-grandmother Dorothy.

Yet both this 'something' and the free style embroidery had been hiding untouched for almost a decade - probably since my impetuously impractical pursuit of the provencal dream. There's not much time to knit and stitch when you have a 200 year old crumbling wreck to restore, while still trying to run a business in the UK and continue helping the fledgings fly the nest. You don't need freestyle embroidery where your whole life is freestyling around you.

But knittery and stitchery are forgiving friends. When the time is right they call to you gently and once more the process of working in their colours and textures is a comforting reminder of how weaving in the threads of our experiences, dreams and memories of others is what creates the rich tapestry of our lives - Our work in progress.

Now I know that the "something" will become a cushion; and it won't take another 10 years to complete. That's a promise to myself that will be a joy to keep.

Blinged up knitted shawl

This piece started out as an idle bit of experimentation while in France, as I was starting to get back into knitting. It so nearly became a designer floor cloth. Odd pattern, straight needles that weren't long to take the necessary number of stitches to make the ruffled edge, textured yarn instead of variegated yarn, and only a half-hearted attempt at a tension square. And as I was in the middle of la France profonde I couldn't exactly hot-foot it to Liberty's or John Lewis.

And yet, amazingly, the addition of a bright red knitted flower, a button and a ribbon and voila, an original creation.

It appears that I have a tendency to bring the same attitude now to my knitting of scarves, shawls and bits and bobs as I often do to cooking. I read the recipes as a start point - and for guidelines on techniques, cooking times etc, and then adapt and substitute as I go along. I'm not so sure about the chefy techniques of artistic plating up (usually because I don't plan the presentation in advance). Dinner's served - now - is the usual cry, and can you lay the table as well. My food presentation wouldn't make it much beyond the first couple of rounds of Masterchef.

And I must here confess that I passed over the task of adding the finishing bling to E (though I had knitted the little red flower corsage myself). And a very nice job she made of it too.

Stolen Moments

When you live a busy life (who doesn't these days) slumping in front of the tv of an evening is sometimes all you want to do. But a diet of sitcoms or reruns of CSI and NCIS, House - or even the Mentalist or Numbers - can leave you feeling just as jaded and life-lagged at midnight as you had been four hours earlier.

Watching soaps can be even worse for the soul - kitchen sink doom and gloom. (Mind you, I must say that I am looking forward to Dallas returning to our screens. I hope the script writers have their tongue firmly in cheek).

At least with a knitting project on the go, you do have a sense of fulfillment at the end of the aforesaid evening of indolence.

However, if your project is for someone else, and has a deadline attached (in this case, the stole in question was the finishing touch for a wedding outfit where E was to be bridesmaid), then it is a question of stealing moments whereever you can, in order to reach the deadline.

This stole was knitted in 2 balls of Rowan Kidsilk Haze, a whispy beige colour, on size 5mm needles (I think) from a pattern from the book Boutique Knits by Laura Irwin (available on Amazon here).



The finishing touches (Sarah's idea) was the addition of a few beads at the points of the stole - a bit of bling to weight down the corners, and to finish it off.

The wedding in question was this weekend .... perhaps there will be some pictures of its first outing to follow.

Moebius - a metaphysical approach to knittery and stitchery

Yeh, well, I'm in charge, of this blog, so I can go off on a tangent, or deeply into the fundamentals if I want to: it depends on your own spin on life if you want to read on, or pass swiftly over to the next blog with pictures and pattern details.

The moebius loop is the loop of infinity: what is on the outside affects the inside, and the inside affects the outside.

And yes, the moebius cowl has become a la mode: you knit it in the round and deliberately introduce a twist; or you knit it straight and incorporate the twist in the fabric as you sew it together. Whichever technique you use - you end up with the same result: the inside is the outside and the outside is in the outside (except that knitted in the round means that it is literally seamless).

Even if what we feel or have experienced is 'buried' in our internal unconscious ... it still affects our external self - our actions, our feelings, our motivations, out energies. Likewise, what we choose to do on the outside affects our internal selves.

Complicated, hey!

Yet so simple.

I know that my return to knittery and stitchery is a spontaneous reintegration of who I have been, with who I am currently - and who I will become. Metamorphosis through remembrance and re-integration.

But worry not, dear reader, this blog might be blogging about all things: the journey, the explorations, the metaphysical meanderings; but above all it's about me expressing myself, outside in and inside out ... seamlessly I hope through the crafts of knitting and sewing. Life in the round. Through time. And the time to knit and stitch.

Where's the button box?

While I really appreciate at-your-fingers yarns to drool over (the internet listings don't really do it for me, unless I've fingered it in the flesh ...) in today's yarn stores, I have a real throw-back problem. Buttons.

What's with buttons - tiny, plastic, not very nice - at a minimum of .20p a go? I'm sorry. Where's the button box of yesteryear?

The button box was not just to be raided for knitting or sewing projects. It was the staple for Christmas (and other occasions - if we were lucky) gambling card games. No button box - and no real gaming. Pasta shapes do not work. Nor do plastic poker chips. Nor penny coins, whatever the currency. Yes, there was a frisson on Christmas day itself when there might be some sweets around to play for the instead of aforesaid share-out of the button box. But all gamers know that it's the winning of the game, not the buttons or the sweets, that's the real prize! And anyway, in my family, the easy pickings players knew better than to gamble away their sweets. They'd rather do the washing up!

Yet there was such a ritual to choosing your favourite 3 pieces for Chase the Ace; or your 20 pieces for Newmarket (and you card players of mixed gaming heritage - don't invite me along to facilitate the agreement of house rules for Newmarket or the like. Now, I know better. You'll find me nursing a large gin, or doing the washing up!). And winning, for me, in Pontoon, was all about getting the best buttons.

Not cribbage, of course, we didn't need the buttons here. This was another of the domains of Sam, my maternal grandfather. The cribbage board had as its markers spent matches. And I'm now pretty sure that when I won, it was because Sam was as adept at throwing the game that mattered as he was at winning it. That's a true grandfather gamer!

It was the button box, everytime. My mother's button box was a 1950's (I think) baby milk tin. I'd know it if I saw it. Blue writing on white. Probably given free on the health service.

The charity shop bin bag has its downsides. What's the ethics of chopping the buttons off the garment that's due for the charity bag just for the button box? Of course you can't - because then the garment would just be junk.

But oh, the sadness now of knowing that before the age of vintage revival, most of what you gave to the charity shop ended up in landfill - what about the buttons?

Of course, whenever you needed a full set to finish a project - sod's law said that the button box would only give you 3 of 5, or 4 of 6 ... never enough. And you couldn't change the pattern to suit the button box? Could you? No, of course not.

But these days - thank goodness - buttons are more often bling, finishing touches, part of the creativity not the functionality. But at what price for plastic?

I don't know about you - but I so regret the buttons that went to landfill and the button box that could now be a treasure trove of remembrances of times past ...

So, my friends, and my metaphysical soul sister The Kisser of Frogs, think button box before you commit your torn and shredded garments to the landfill. And if you have buttons that are in want of a good home - let me know, send them to me, and they might well feature in a future project. Or pass them over to a fellow knitter and stitcher.

The whimsey scarf

A previous blog talked about dropping stitches while dropping rules of shoulds and oughts.

I am a 'go with the flow' kind of gal. My friend A is not. Just last week we'd had a cyber conversation about starting new knitting projects while there is an incomplete project on the needles. She confessed that she couldn't start a new one while she had a project on the needles and on the go.

As work in progress I already had 2 projects on the needles; one started and set up and two-thirds complete; the second, finally after many false starts (look to a future post relating to false starts) en route; and the third pattern decided and yarns bought and so ready to go. (And we won't count here other false starts and projects in progress from my experimental years).

And I'd promised Sarah her pink baby girl catch Cardigan. That was to be my weekend project.

So what happened when I went to John Lewis to find the yarn for the agreed baby knit?

I examined yarns for substitutes to the suggested American yarn for the cardigan and seriously discussed options. My decision was for a suitably pink organic wool and cotton yarn which I bought. But in passing I came across a couple of balls of half price Gelfrida fiorista yarn - and bought them too. The variegation of the colours was great. The feel and the flow of the yarn 88% cotton / 12% polyester was so soft and tactile. This was a yarn awaiting a project - it would become the Whimsey scarf.

For the catch cardigan I was looking for the yarn to fit the pattern. For the whimsy scarf I bought on spec. So more googling to find a pattern that would work for the yarn, and the intended recipient.

So what did I end up doing for my chillout and knit weekend? First I cast on and set up a completely different new project that was waiting but wasn't actually on the list to do now. The black angora bolero I had offered to knit for E where the yarn was ready and waiting.


Then I set about the baby Cardigan knitting. And then I went off piste to experiment with what I might do with the "whimsey". I had a couple of false starts where although the pattern was lovely, and the yarn would work - I'd have needed more than just the 2 balls that I had.

By the end of the weekend, the pink catch cardigan was complete. The angora bolera was started. And after a couple of false starts, the drop-stitch whimsey was well on its way.

I was a happy knitter. S loved both the baby cardigan - and her own scarf. Two finished. Three still on the needles. And A had just sent me more scarf patterns to drool over. Result, I'd say.

Pink and fluffy

How much is nature versus nurture? I am still surprised that I have raised a highly individual, talented and stylish daughter who is accessorised at all times. Her eye for style now lets itself loose on vintage design (thankfully more often the 30s - 50s era than my own 60s and 70s experiences).

Yet when I recall my teenager times in the late 60s in Lancashire, some of my favourite outfits were midi dresses and coats that I had "rummaged" from my grandmother and made my own. So there is a family tradition at play here.

For my current knitting Renaissance @hotchpotchuk (my aforesaid daughter) is a happy recipient of handknitted goodies. Here's a very tactile angora and silk chiffon ribbon shrug knitted in time for her graduation at Warwick university. Serious Dr E in hat, gown, 4 inch heels, and pink and fluffy shrug under the gown.













Although I bought a reel of pink chiffon ribbon, I ended up using black ribbon that I had liberated from a Christmas present wrapping. I'm enjoying incorporating some creativity into the finishing touches.

Knitted on 3.25 mm needles, 3 x 25gm balls of Rowan Kidsilk Haze. Rowan Studio issue 17. Www.knitrowan.com

Completed January 2011 for E B.