In Her Soft Wind I Will Whisper

Lady on the left? My great-grandmother. She would have been ninety-five today. The photo was taken in the early 1950s outside her cottage and she is with two of her sons, K and T.

I have several photos of her; my other favourite is from the 1930s when she was approached by a travelling salesman who wanted her to become a hair model. I presume she shot him one of her withering glances. The photo shows her with long, gorgeous hair. I was told it was chestnut-coloured. The photo is black/white.

I was lucky enough to grow up around her. She minded me when I was pre-kindergarten and I spent most of my school holidays in her cottage. Her cottage did not have running water until I was maybe seven or eight and never got central heating. I can still envision her sitting in her chair in front of the kerosene-fuelled stove. She'd knit long garter stitch strips from yarn scraps and sew them into blankets. I think she was the one who taught me to knit. She was certainly the one who taught me how to skip rope.

Happy birthday, momse. We may not always have seen eye to eye, but we loved and understood each other. And I still miss you.

Title comes from this beautiful farewell song (youtube link). Post reposted from 2009 and 2010 with Momse's age amended. I continue to miss her.

Decisions Of Various Kinds

After some research and a lot of deliberation, I went to two sewing machine demonstrations this past week. I tried four different machines:

• Elna 2800. I tried this one at The Life Craft. I quickly felt comfortable using it and it was easy to use. It is just a smidgen too basic for my needs.
• Elna 3210. I tried this one and the following two at John Lewis. Weirdly enough, I knew immediately this was not the machine for me. I did not like the placement of the reverse key, and I found choosing a stitch more hassle than it ought to have been.
• Janome Excel II 5024. I like this machine a lot. It is sturdy, intuitive to use, and it comes with a good selection of feet.
• Janome Dec0r 3050. The only computerised machine I tried. It was easy to use, is very versatile, and comes with a good selection of feet.

I kept the two samplers I made just so I could compare stitch quality between the 5024 and the 3050.

If I knew I were to become a control freak quilter who needed absolute even stitching, I would go for the 3050 in a heartbeat. The 5024 has even stitching, don't get me wrong, but the 3050 has that computerised evenness down pat. I'm just not cut out (boom!) to be a control freak quilter.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I'm willing to pay £100 more to get super-even stitching, three buttonhole options, and a whole lot of decorative stitches that I will probably never use. The 5024 is the best mechanical machine I've tried, it does the basics plus a bit more, and it does its thing very well. It is a real workhorse of a machine, and I enjoyed working with it.

I just really like that keyhole buttonhole that the 3050 has to offer, dammit. And the machine is just, well, prettier than the 5024.

Decisions, decisions.

Meanwhile I have been really inspired by all your comments about a Spring-Summer wardrobe. I have also kept a close eye on the Colette Patterns Spring Palette challenge in which people have defined their sewing goals for Spring 2011. I haven't made it that far yet - for obvious reasons outlined above - but I have actually begun to think about cohesive wardrobes and deliberate colour palettes for the first time in my entire life (bar my university years: black with a dash of black for that intellectual look).

I created a palette at ColourLovers which helped me identify five colours that will form the basis of my Spring-Summer crafting this year: Citrus colours balanced and anchored by two neutrals (I particularly like the cool brown). Crazy as it may sound, I already have yarn and fabric that reflect this palette but it wasn't until I sat down to play with colours that I realised this. I think having this palette in mind will also help my buying habits.

Colourlovers is a great site, actually. Not only does it let you create a palette of your own choice (or find suitable colours created by someone else), but it lets you create a pattern based upon your chosen colours , and then you can transport that pattern to Spoonflower where they'll print your very own fabric. If I were rich, I'd totally design my own freaking wardrobe down to every last detail.

I may not be a control freak quilter, but I can still get a tad obsessive at times.

Swatching & a KAL

I had planned to enjoy an evening of Sit & Knit A Bit at The Life Craft when Life Stuff happened and I had to pull out. So instead of a knitterly night with some of Glasgow's loveliest crafters, I'm sitting at home under a blanket with a cup of tea. Things could be worse, I suppose. NOT knitting in public means I get to knit something complicated. I decided the other week that I'm going to knit Fancy from the latest Rowan magazine and before I pull the ball bands off my chartreuse Kidsilk Haze, I wanted to swatch the lace pattern. I knitted a quick swatch using some leftover Haze, quickly realised I would want to rip back and also be able to see the stitches, and then started over using some old Freedom Spirit. I may need to practise this stitch pattern quite a bit before I switch to Kidsilk Haze.

You see, it's not your typical 'yarn over/decrease' lace pattern; it is a sort of 'drop stitches, knit & purl 5 stitches through the back and add yarn overs at odd moments' sort of lace with hardly any rest rows. I thought the pattern looked Estonian and a quick google actually brought me to a blog devoted to Estonian lace which had posted a video showcasing a similar technique. The stitch pattern is not identical but the technique shown will be useful for anyone planning to make Fancy - I certainly wish I had seen the video before I had started swatching. It would have saved me some grim moments of knitter's doubt.

The same knitter who posted the video linked above has an entire YouTube channel devoted to unusual knitting techniques - most of Eastern European origin from what I can tell. I have bookmarked her tutorials on Estonian lace techniques and will be watching them with great interest as soon as I get some spare time(!). They look useful in a 'ouch, my brain hurts' way. I love that sort of stuff.

In case you are interested, Mhairi of Flavaknits and I have joined up for an informal Fancy KAL. I don't expect it to be a quick knit but it will be a challenging, fun knit. I'll be posting about my progress and sharing tips - hopefully more people will join us?

For the Love of Libraries

I love the public library service for what it did for me as a child and as a student and as an adult. I love it because its presence in a town or a city reminds us that there are things above profit, things that profit knows nothing about, things that have the power to baffle the greedy ghost of market fundamentalism, things that stand for civic decency and public respect for imagination and knowledge and the value of simple delight. Philip Pullman reacting to UK library closures

Fashion Query For Fashionistas

"For an island look choose a pareo or sarong which can be easily wrapped around your waist.. Find the perfect swimsuit to get ready for the beach or pool parties. Purchase a versatile cover-up that can take you to the pool and lunch." But how does normal, sane women dress for summer?

A long-term goal of mine is to refashion my wardrobe through sewing a lot of it myself. Figuring out The Summer Wardrobe is one of my first hurdles. Every summer I end up looking through my wardrobe and struggling to find anything to wear. My natural inclination is to hide as much skin as I can which leaves me feeling and looking positively Victorian every year. I'm slightly fortunate that I live in Scotland, so I do not have to cope with constant sunshine and high temperatures, but even Scotland has the occasional summery day during which I cannot wear jeans and a long-sleeved tee.

But what do I wear then? If I were to define my personal style it would be along the lines of "minimalist librarian chic with a retro feel" (even if that makes me feel all pretentious and such). How do I get away from tweed skirts, leather boots, and woolly cardigans into something I can wear at the height of summer - and not feel completely exposed or like I'm playing dress-up?

WIP Update: Purple Rain

Thanks to train journeys, my purple Colourscape cardigan is almost done. I still have to attach the sleeves, knit the button-loops, find buttons and weaving in ends, of course, but they are all relatively minor things. It has been a very quick knit and one I have enjoyed a lot. The pattern was very straightforward and came together without a hitch. Okay, so I tell a lie: there was a hitch but it was of my own doing.

See how the fronts have mitered corners? It's a super-easy technique which looks great .. but if you use a long-tail cast-on (it is my go-to cast-on method), it will not work right off the bat. The left front worked great, but the right front left me bewildered. It just did not want to mirror the left front despite me following the pattern intently. Then it dawned on me: you automatically knit the first row when you use the long-tail cast-on which essentially meant I needed to decrease whilst casting-on because the pattern wanted me to do a sharp sl 2, k1, p2sso decrease on the very first row. It all seems so obvious now, but it took me a bit of head-scratching to get to that point. If you do a knitted cast-on, you won't have the same problem, by the way.

Montse Stanley is a bit hesitant about my next trick: the crocheted seam -->

In her excellent The Handknitter's Handbook, Stanley remarks that  a crocheted seam is fine if you anticipate wanting to recycle an item and need a seam that can be unravelled relatively quickly. I like a crocheted seam when I worry about being able to provide stability and structure. The two pieces - the buttonband and the front - stretch in opposite directions and I wanted to make sure that the seam did not pull and provide stability. The seam is bulkier than a mattress stitch seam would have been, but this does not show on the outside. In its own way, a crocheted seam is also rather pretty.

I have been looking through my button boxes trying to find two buttons that work with this garment. I'm thinking some rather chunky and earthy buttons would suit the style of this cardigan. However, while I do have several chunky and earthy buttons in my button stash, I cannot find any that really, really work.

The Celtic knotwork buttons (four of them are tied together, one is facing) would be fine if they had been bronze- or copper-coloured. I don't think the silver colour works. The lilac plastic buttons are foul and were only in contention because parts of the cardigan are lilac. The bronze-coloured buttons were birthday presents from my mother, but they seem too shiny for this project. They'd be lovely against some dark green tweed, though.

I've looked the usual places but to no avail. Well, I have sleeves to ease in first..