The ongoing conversation

I am a passionate, obsessive knitter and have been on Ravelry since 2007 and Instagram and YouTube as of late.  In these communities/platforms,  I have been following the conversations on inclusion and diversity with great interest.  Many commenting say that they don’t chime in because they have nothing new to offer or that they feel inadequate.  I was among them until I remembered my other passion, Education for Ministry (EfM).

For the last 13 years, I have mentored or facilitated the discussions in our local EfM group.  Each of the four years study has a particular theme and this year’s theme is “Living Faithfully in a Multi-Cultural World”.  Throughout the year, we explore what it means to live and hear the myriad of perspectives that this small world of ours has.It is  complex and it is ever-evolving.  In December, we all read and discussed the book “Living into God’s Dream: Dismantling Racism in America”  edited by Catherine Meeks.  I commend it to anyone who is remotely interested in this topic and it seems by all the conversations swirling around the internet that there are many.

Education for Ministry (EfM) is an ongoing course in theological education created and administered by the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.    While it was created at a school founded by the Episcopal Church, it is meant to be not only non-denominational but welcoming to people of all faiths or no faith.  For 4 years, members of local EfM seminars read the Old Testament, New Testament, church history, and theology.  They engage in a process called theological reflection in which they consider things that matter to them viewed through the lenses of faith, culture, experience, and personal position.  Great themes such as wholeness, brokenness, recognition, reorientation, and reconciliation are part of the guided conversation.   The goal is to form lay people who can articulate their faith in the world.

So I add my little bit to the conversation in the form of further reading.  I’ll be knitting and listening and talking every Monday night in EfM.  If you are interested in the Education for Ministry program, visit their website for information about EfM seminars in your area.

 

 

 

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Fair Isle Cardigan – Left sleeve

The left sleeve is complete.

There are lots of ends, previously woven in, to snip off.

The private side  of the stranded colorwork is just as interesting as the public side.

A February Friday morning

It’s winter, the time when all good knitters get to work and churn out the knitwear.  I’ve been watching a newly-discovered podcast, “Fruity Knitting”  on YouTube, while working my stitches.  The wintry weather outside makes creating inside an awfully satisfying occupation.

But wait, late last week, our northeast Ohio temperatures hit 75.  Many people had the same idea I had.  Get out there and enjoy the fair weather while you can.  One of my Facebook friends posted a video of her early morning walk around her neighborhood.  That prompted me to post photos from my walk around town that same morning.

Yup, its 7 am.  The sun is just rising and folks are driving to work.  This is the downtown area of my small, northeast Ohio community.  It is centered on a village green where in olden times, sheep and cows grazed.  Below are some of the buildings on the green.

Now,  there were once many churches right on the green but now, only one, Christ Church Episcopal, remains in its original location serving its original purpose.

The others have been repurposed to be the Spiritual Life Center and the town hall.

One of my all-time favorite shops on the main street

Lopi Love

Spring is here in northeast Ohio.  This morning was possibly the last morning cold enough to persuade Greg to don his Lopi sweater for a photo shoot.  His is the third and last Lopi of the season to come off my needles after a winter-long jag of Icelandic yoked sweaters.

No, this is not Greg!  This is Garri from Lopi 34

This is Greg in his Garri.  He likes it!

It all began when my son and daughter-in-law visited Iceland for their honeymoon last October.

They both bought Icelandic yoked sweaters while there.  When they came for Christmas, I drooled over their sweaters.  That pleased them no end because they had brought home Lopi yarn and the pattern book for a Christmas gift for me. Of course, I wanted to make more than the original gift of wool would allow.   The Nordic Store was really quite happy to sell me more yarn to make more than one project.

I got right to work and made Hela for myself.  I think the light green is the only color from the original gift of wool.

Serious close-up of Janet in Hela

I also bought a kit from Helene Magnusson for a baby yoked sweater.

Gillipeysa – so cute!

I can’t resist this closeup of the buttons.

I’ve been saving buttons for years and it was  satisfying to find coordinating ones in my stash.

 

Finally, Greg liked my Hela so much that he asked for a yoked sweater for himself and Garri is the happy result.

I think I’ll give the Icelandic wool a rest for the next few months while the weather is warm.

 

 

Janet’s Customfit Foyle

 

 

Foyle’s Pullover from Customfit by Amy Herzog delivers on the promise of a sweater that will take me to the grocery store, on a hike, to work, to the library.  But wait, I work in a library and I frequently walk to work!  This sweater has been my go-to sweater this January on the coldest of days.  (I could walk to the grocery as well, but usually have more to carry home than I am willing to tote).

I was sold on the Clara Yarn Shetland 1.0 when it came out last year.  A dk weight, it knits up easily.  100% Shetland wool, it proves to be remarkably soft, but I do wear a cotton knit shirt underneath, not only because of the lace “Arches” pattern, but also because there is scratchiness.  I think that is more than made up for by the toasty warmth of the fiber.

This was my first pattern written by Customfit from the measurements I supplied.  The pattern was true to my specifications and the instructions were clear and concise.  I followed the option to knit it flat and after seaming the shoulders and the side seams, I worked the set-in sleeves top-down with short rows.  For this part, I followed the instructions from Kristenlynnea‘s Knitionary blog post “The Perfect Fit:Sleeves”.  One other item about the fit had me curious.  Amy puts waist darts in the back of this pattern, but not in the front.  I’ve noticed a bit of excess fabric in the fack of many of my sweaters and perhaps this would solve that problem.   Unfortunately, I made the sweater with a slightly loose fit, so the back is still not fitted the way I guess Amy intended.  In fact, if I were to make another, I would shorten it and go for a close fit.

All in all, the Customfit process seems a great way to order a pattern that is designed for you.  Give one a try, being sure that you submit true measurements and that you have carefully considered what kind of fit you want.

 

 

 

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Like many knitters, I have quite a stockpile of yarn.  Some yarn I have purchased in quantities sufficient for a sweater.  Other skeins I have purchased one of, just to see how I like working with the yarn and because the color compels me.  One rationale is that, like an artist, I need to have a palette of colors (and fibers) from which to work.  This year, I promised myself I would knit only from my stash.  I would resist temptation and slowly whittle down my stash.

Stash Buster Number One – Chevron Mini-Dress

Chevron Mini-Dress Spring/Summer 2015 Vogue Knitting

The Chevron Mini-Dress in the Spring/Summer 2015 issue of Vogue Knitting seemed to hit all my hot buttons.  It was fashion-forward in a retro way.  The model was knit in pinks,oranges, and reds which never fail to catch my eye.  The yarn called for is Cascade Yarns Ultra Pima, a DK weight cotton for which I had a good substitute, Tahki Cotton Classic.  The only stumbling block was that I had 4 colors – an ivory, 2 shades of green, and indigo. The pattern called for 6 analogous (or adjacent to eachother on the color wheel) colors.  I used the weighted random stripe generator to create a stripe pattern that might not look too amateurish.

The pattern works from the hem up and I  wanted to work from the top down.  If I ran out of yarn, I wanted to decide whether or not to make this tunic longer by buying more yarn.  In the end, I did buy one more skein of ivory which pretty much matched my original ivory  and being separated from the older ivory by other stripes, seemed to blend well.

My Chevron Mini-Dress

I worked on this all summer.The finished product looks quite different from the model nad yet, it still seems like a throwback to the 1960’s.   The most remarkable thing about it is that the Cotton Classic from my stash was probably 15 years old!

Stash Buster Number Two – Quadri

von Hinterm Stein’s Quadri

Von Hinterm Stein published Quadri in September 2014.  What I love about this is that it is a contemporary rendering of the shawl, light as feather, double sided, and employing simple squares for pattern.  I learned a new technique, Navaho knitting, to make the triple-stranded squares with the one strand of the working yarn tripled while knitting.  There are many demonstrations of this technique on YouTube.

On an impulse I had purchased a 1500-yard skein of Filatura Di Crossa Centolavaggi from a Ravelry designer. That is an amazing length and look at the cake it made!

This travelled around with me all summer and into the fall. The whole 1500 yards fit nicely into my knitting travel pouch. The finished Quadri made a perfect retirement/birthday/Christmas gift for Diane.

One Step Back

Alas, I am but one persuasive article away from purchasing new yarn.  I read so much knitting literature – books, magazines, and blogs – that I put myself at risk of scuttling my stash resolution almost daily.  And who could be more persuasive on the subject of yarn than Clara Parkes?  She offered a one-time Shetland 1.0 yarn in undyed colors through her website.  I couldn’t resist the uniqueness of the offering and purchased 5 300-yard skeins.  The yarn is now on the needles as Foyle;s Pullover from Customfit by Amy Herzog.  Temptation wins…for now.

Knitsonik Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook

Knitsonik Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook

Thomas Edison once said that “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration”.  If you don’t believe it, take a look at this lovely book by Felicity Ford.  In the introduction to this little masterpiece, she states that her “work is about finding and celebrating a sense of place through the gorgeous, bodily mediums of knitting (that we wear) and sound (that we live in)…a knitted  record of paying attention to and being present in to my immediate surroundings.”   She goes to great lengths to describe both the inspiration and the perspiration process that results in her briliant stranded knits.  You will see that her knitted art is created using that very proportion (give or take a few percentage points) and she has named the whole thing “the Knitsonik system”.

Her inspiration is found in everyday objects such as biscuit (cookie, to us Americans) tins, buildings, factories, roadways, brewpub signs, books, electronic devices, and just about anything that catches her eye.  She photographs what she sees around her and studies those photos as the source of both  platettes and patterns.  In Felicity’s eye, anything is can transformed into stranded knitwork.

Once she has examined something, she selects a palette of yarn colors, sketches out patterns and charts them, considers shading of background colors and shading of pattern colors, and how the two interact.  She knits a long swatch as she plays with her patterns and her colors, reviewing and revising as she goes.  This goes on until she is satisfied with her patterns and colors.  The finished swatch is then blocked to use as a sampler that can be applied to an actual knitted garment.  Although this is the “perspiration” phase, Felicity seems to delight in the sweating of the details!

The patterns she creates are included for use by the reader as well as adaptations of them to knitted garments such as fingerless mitts and leg warmers.  So, if the reader does not feel lead to create his/her own designs, there are instructions for reproducing Felicity’s.    But, if you want to try your hand at designing stranded colorwork, you have some great instructions laid out for you.

Other notable features of this book are beautiful photographs, “Top Tips”, and “Further Reading” suggestions.  There is also a recipe for Felix’s Fabulous Fruitcake because Felicity used the fruitcake as inspiration for one of her designs!  Finally, if you go to Felicity’s website at knitsonik.com, you can hear recordings of sound that inspires her knitting.

I loved this book for the inspiration and for the affirmation that I receive from it in my creative processes.  If this is 99% perspiration, then it looks pretty good to me.   “Knitsonik Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook” should be on every knitter and designer’s bookshelf.

Some of the swatches and their sources of inspiration