There & Back Again

Mornings are less rough when you wake up to this view. The north-east coast of Scotland is gorgeous: expansive light, dramatic cliffs, and teeming with wildlife. During my days in Aberdeenshire, I spotted seals, puffins, deer, and more buzzards than I have ever seen before. I wish I could have stayed longer.

As always I paid Aberdeen Art Gallery a visit. It is relatively small, but has an exquisite collection mixing works by well-known artists such as J.W. Waterhouse, and Francis Bacon with less famous (but really interesting) artists like Phoebe Anna Traquair and applied arts & crafts, textiles, and metalwork within Scotland. As always I was drawn to Joan Eardley's work  as well as Francis Cadell's, but I also enjoyed the new exhibit on wartime watercolours.

For the first time I visited the Maritime Museum - just a short walk away from the Art Gallery.

As Aberdeen is an oil industry city, the museum had plenty of information about the black gold and the 1970s oil boom. I was slightly saddened by how this recent event had pushed a lot of Aberdeenshire's fishing heritage into the periphery. The small exhibition on herring fishing made me think fondly of Kate Davies' Caller Herrin hat. I seem able to find a knitterly angle to most things these days..

Finding a knitterly angle to my last port-of-call is not difficult, though. Wool 4 Ewe is a lovely independent yarn shop and I visit them as often as I can.

This time around I was there by special invitation from the friendly Wool 4 Ewe team in order to run a workshop on triangular lace shawls.

Teaching lace shawl knitting is always rewarding because there are so many different aspects to cover: construction, yarn & needle choice, chart-reading, and post-knitting care. I find it quite a technical topic to teach and I try hard to balance all the technical information with fun hands-on experiments.

I'm happy to say that all my students left all excited and enthused about knitting lace shawls. The Wool 4 Ewe team asked me which shawls I would recommend to beginners. I gave them this list of free patterns which I hope you will also find useful. All links (and roads?) lead to Ravelry.

• Kiri by Polly Outhwaite
• Adamas by Miriam L. Felton
• Holden by Mindy Wilkes
• Bitterroot by Rosemary Hill
• Lavalette by Kirsten Kapur (no charts!)

I left the shop empty-handed although the new-to-me Manos Del Uruguay yarn called Serena called out to me with its subtle colours and beautiful blend of alpaca and pima cotton. It is really pretty. I am just so snowed under with projects and commissions that I have no idea when I would have time for an indulgent little project. I am not complaining: such is life..

.. I did manage to finish China Mieville's Embassytown whilst travelling. More on that book soon.

Ode to Joy (& Knitting Lace)

Just as you are, perfect Just as you are I'll give you the time you deserve

I was listening to an old album the other day while I was knitting up these two swatches. Quite apart from reminding me about another time and place in my life, it also made me think about the place knitting has in my life.

On a very personal level, knitting is about mindfulness. It makes me slow down, it clears my head and it makes me focus on the moment. I have always been very good at thinking thirty steps ahead of myself, of overbooking my diary, and of trying to be too many things to too many people. Knitting has changed me in many ways, but I think this is the most important one.

Some people swear by knitting plain stockinette in the round, others by turning heels and planning toe decreases. I love knitting lace. My head is at its quietest when I follow lace charts - at their best, the charts are simple and elegant ways of conveying complex information - and I love learning intricate repeats of  yarnovers and decreases. And I love the amazing transformation known as blocking.

Blocking is simple: you soak your shawl in water, you pin it out to dry and somewhere along the line your knitting goes from being an ugly duckling to a beautiful swan. Look at the photo. I knitted two identical swatches and blocked one of them. Isn't it amazing? Imagine if life could be controlled in the same manner: "ooh, life's a bit lumpy and crumpled up today, so I'll just soak it in lukewarm water for 15 minutes and apply a few pins.."

Today has been a day of making charts in Excel (there are plenty of great tutorials available online, so I'm not going to bother writing one up, sorry!) and of writing about knitting lace. It has made me reflect on the joy that I feel when I knit lace - and how I approach lace knitting.

I do not arm myself with blocking wires, lifelines, or special lace chart reading tools. I just use a pen to mark my position in a chart, I use one safety pin (to mark the centre stitch) and I use cheap stainless steel pins. Words are so interesting: to arm oneself .. as though I was about to wage war on my knitting or seeking to conquer a chart. No. Lace knitting is my personal time. It is self-indulgence (for, lo!, I rarely wear my shawls), it is downtime, and it is peace of mind.

Three quick non-lace links (and congratulations to non-knitters making it this far): + Pop Culture paper-cuts. How many do you recognise? And did you know that Silhouettes are named after Étienne de Silhouette, a French finance minister imposing harsh taxes after The Seven-Year War? I wonder what will be Gideon Osborne's legacy? Nothing as enduring nor as artful, I'm sure. + How to Knit A Giant Lego Brick Doorstop + Top Tips for Budding Lyricists - why you shouldn't write what you know and why it is sometimes okay to make up your own language.

Charged

West Yorkshire is beautiful: all rolling hills, verdant forests and picturesque old cottages. Unless, of course, you visit Huddersfield which feels like one big roundabout. This is my second year of visiting West Yorkshire in late spring and despite an abundance of roundabouts, I am still intrigued and finding it all terribly exotic. How could it fail to thrill when you drive through a place marketing itself as "the home of Onward Christian Soldiers"?! Delightfully, the hymn's author is Sabine Baring-Gould who I know better as the author of the lycanthropy classic  The Book of Werewolves! Sometimes fragments of my life collide in the most splendid ways..

However, West Yorkshire was about work and work was exciting. Thankfully. I also had the privilege of spending three days together with some of most creative, inspiring people I know. It has recharged me in ways I did not even know I needed (although my recent blog posts probably do tell you how run-down I have felt this month, this very long month from hell) and my head is buzzing with ideas. It feels good.

One of the very good things I realised came courtesy of my good colleague and friend, Miss K, who had knitted up a green version of my Red Cardigan of Doom. Miss K wears an abundance of feminine 1950s inspired tea-dresses over which the cardigan looks effortlessly classy. She has a petite frame so she could definitely wear the cardigan as intended, but instead she has chosen to let it hang unbuttoned and it looks so nice. So my plan is to rip back the sleeves beyond the unfortunate chicken cutlets and reknit them straight. Then I'll sew on my pretty buttons, finish the buttonband, weave in the ends and wear my cardigan almost-proudly.

Whilst on the train I began (and finished! That's what eleven hours of travelling can do) a crochet scarf. I'm writing up the pattern but it'll be tied to the teaching stuff I do, so I won't release it globally just yet. I learned a few lessons with a previous scarf pattern.. I am also seeing the end of my Fancy jumper-turned-shrug. It is so nice to be finishing things which I have been working on for so long. Maybe this is a good time to whip up a few sewing projects because autumn is going to be hectic workwise.

Brief Encounter

• I have a nice pile of unfinished projects I had really hoped to have finished by now. Thank you, Upstairs Neighbour for flooding our bathroom and completely derailing an already busy week.
• I have been running so many knitting and crochet tutorials this month. It has been completely overwhelming but in a good way. My brain is slightly fried and I feel like I've used up all my good craft-related jokes.
• I'm nearing the end of one design process and will begin another one next week. I have been asked about my design process. Right now my process is all about meeting needs I discover in my many, many tutorials. I'll get back to this in a later post.
• First, though, I'm packing my bags and heading off to Yorkshire for work. I'm off to spend quality time with some good people.
• My first quilt is currently displayed in the window of The Life Craft. How blooming exciting and slightly humbling. They are now offering ceramics classes - I'm tempted but I really do not need another craft. I have no time for another craft.
• I have been reading a lot of crap this week. Balogh's One Night For Love may very well be the worst book I've read in several years. This plot outline should give you an idea why. However, my brain is too fried for anything vaguely decent. I even had trouble following The Brontës Went to "Woolworths", for heaven's sake.
• I really need a long holiday. Looks like that's not exactly in the cards just yet..
• Maybe getting a proper night's sleep would be a good place to start. And then it's time for Yorkshire.

In the Middle of Something

I'm due a short break shortly and oh how I need it. Casa Bookish has seen a series of minor calamities recently - not least upstairs neighbour managing to flood their bathroom so thoroughly that water came pouring through our ceiling on a late Sunday evening. So far it looks as though our wallpaper may be the only major casualty but I shall know more after we have had an inspection on Friday. So faced with minor calamities I do what I do best: I knit and I read. I am soldiering on with some deadline-knitting and I have read two books. They have not been great books by any stretch of the imagination - oh the anachronisms and plot holes - but I needed a distraction. I am now reading China Miéville's new novel, Embassytown, which is a giant step up in quality (and I say this only one chapter in).

I'm going to leave you with my favourite act from Eurovision 2011. They may not have won, but I adored Moldova's entry. I may have voted for this track - and done so very unironically. Hanging out on Twitter during Eurovision shows can also be highly recommended..

..In Mysterious Ways

Yesterday I had a meeting with a well-known knitting designer and I was asked to tell her about myself. I reverted to my age-old answer: "Oh, I am a failed academic.." and then realised to my great astonishment that my age-old answer no longer applies.

(Maybe it never did apply because the only academic failure I ever had was that my PhD funding fell through. As many people have pointed out, that hardly counts as failure.)

Regardless, I need to figure out how to contextualise myself. Who am I nowadays and how do I communicate this Self to other people? In order to figure this out, I did what I always do when I need to think: I sat down to knit.

And I want to write at great length about this knitting project, so I hope you are sitting comfortably.

I am using a pure wool yarn which was purchased in my mother's supermarket(!) in Denmark. It is a quite lofty yarn with a beautiful handle and I'm terribly pleased with it (the price was great too). My only problem is that I bought it on the basis of it knitting up 14sts/4" but it actually knits up 17sts/4" (which makes it aran-weight). Those three stitches really make a difference - particularly as I am using the yarn for The Most Popular Sweater In The (Ravelry) World - and this particular pattern does not work with an aran-weight yarn.

Before I go any further, here is a photo of my knitting/zen spot today. Pretty, non? The sound of the river running was also really calming. Handy when you are suddenly not knitting what you thought you were knitting.

And .. exhale.

On the other hand, I like knitting bottom-up sweaters and so I just went auto-pilot on the project whilst soaking up much-needed Vitamin D and thinking about self-presentation, self-image and all that. Then I went home and did a very clever thing. I started my DVD player.

My lovely colleague LH has lent me her Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Workshop DVDs. I have taken my time getting through them all: mosty of her techniques are familiar to me but there is still a lot to take in when you watch. Today I was watching her masterclass series whilst idly working on the sweater's body.

For anyone not familiar with Elizabeth Zimmermann, she is the doyen of contemporary knitters around the world. She passed away some time ago but her legacy is maintained by her family through Schoolhouse Press. Her influence can be traced in many contemporary designers from indie designers like Jared Flood and Ysolda Teague to established designers like Sarah Hatton.

I recently had a twitter conversation with Mooncalfmakes about EZ. We agreed that  while neither of us find EZ's aesthetics all that pleasing, we found her approach to knitting much more interesting. EZ made a virtue of liberating the knitter from patterns. You are the master of your own knitting and with a few basic rules tucked away inside your skull, you can knit anything you like.

So while my mind was being blown by EZ's top-down garterstitch multi-dimensional pockets - you have to see it to believe it: it's a very cool knitting trick - I was knitting away on my Failed Most Famous Sweater In The (Ravelry) World. I was adding short rows to the lower back like Kelley Petkun once recommended as my lower back is always, always cold .. and then I realised that I can take this FMFSIT(R)W project anywhere I want to take it. Of course I can.

So for the time being it is a a bottom-up seamless sweater and who knows what I'll do when I get to the yoke. Maybe I will add that parliament after all. Maybe I'll use up oddments of aran yarns I have kicking about. Maybe some colourwork. Maybe not. Who knows? What a pleasure this making-it-up-as-I-go-along type of knitting

I still haven't sussed out how to introduce myself to people, but hopefully I can make it up as I go along too. Sometimes I actually think that's how life works.