Knitterguy

What to Do?

(Note: In reading other blogs, I’ve seen notices to alert readers using RSS feeds that a post contains pictures. I don’t use an RSS reader, so I’m guessing they don’t show images? Since I know at least 1 reader uses an RSS feed, he can consider himself alerted. BTW, the adventurous amongst you might want to go over to Tycho’s blog and look at the sweater KAL he’s started. You're looking for a nice challenge, right?)

A couple of years ago, I was shopping at the LGS and wandered into the floral dept. It was January, snow on the ground, and I wanted some colour or something interesting. They had Anthuriums in pots, and they were in full bloom, and looked exotic indeed. I bought one (it was hugely expensive) and it’s been doing rather well in the apartment.

It looks a bit flat right now, because it needs some fertilizer. But let me tell you, when there are 7 of those shiny red blossoms on the plant, it looks quite…opulent.

//Have you seen Larry's Amaryllis? Go look at Larry’s amaryllis. It’s okay; I’ll wait til you come back.//

Anyway, maybe somebody can help me with this. The anthurium is getting a bit leggy. As you can maybe tell from this picture, the leaves grow off the stem with long stalks, and as they die off, you end up with …well…a lengthening bare stem.

I’m kinda wondering if I could lop the top off the plant to force it to send out leaves from further down the stem? Or would I be guillotining the plant? Or do I need to sink it further into the pot, perhaps with some root pruning to reduce the amount of plant under the soil?

Anybody?

Oh, and I finished plying the yarn.

After 48 different shots, I gave up trying to get a decent picture, but you can see it’s kind of a blue-green colour. It's in the queue to be knitted.

I think that’s it for this week. I mean, I suppose I could tell you that there’s only 18 more days til I head out for the men’s knitting retreat. (Not that I’m marking them off on the calendar or anything.)

Plying

In Other News

In one month, the Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat will be over. I volunteered to lead a basic lace knitting class, so consulted lots of people -- individually, through a post to Techknit, and on Ravelry -- about what might be presented. I’ve thought about it, and have been busy writing notes and drawing charts and so on. There’s probably 3 times more material to cover than the time will allow, but we’ll see. Since participation in any of the workshops is voluntary, maybe only Joe and Franklin will attend (and they could both lead the class, anyway). An interesting thought, that, because it would be a wonderful sharing of information and ideas.

However, all that keyboarding and mousing means I am again having significant pain in my right wrist and hand. So I’ve reduced my knitting and computer time (hence, a lot of people are owed thank-you notes for their input on the lace knitting course) and it’s better. Moderation will be the key, I think. (Or perhaps a wrist brace and a new computer system.)

Have a good week.

Various Bits on a Sunday

Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat

I’m s-o-o-o looking forward to this weekend. As I’ve said before, Joe has done a great job getting it organized. (I’ll have to take him a couple of jars of peanut butter as a thank-you.)

I’m really happy and honoured that some businesses have chosen to donate fiber-related items as “door-prizes”.  I’m so pleased by this support. Items are trickling in slowly; there are a few we’re waiting for (gentle hint). Once we get them all, Joe and I will take stock and decide how these should be distributed. Something for the best name tag? Furthest distance travelled? 

On the men-who-knit forum on Ravelry, David Reidy posted about holding a men’s event in Australia, and Famous Steve has proposed one in North Carolina. Soon they’ll be popping up all over the world. Whooda thought it?

Lace on the Podcast

Hizknits and WonderMike (aka Stephen and Mike the Socktopus) of YKnit,  did a program on men and lace, during which they interviewed Gene Beugler. I met Gene at Meg’s Knitting Camp back in 1998. (Along with Bob Powell and Dale Long: all 3 of them have designs in XRX’s “Gathering of Lace”. The 4 of us were included in the display of men’s knitting hosted at The Dining Room at 209 Main in Monticello, Wisconsin, USA in 2001-2002. Wow, looking at that again: what august company I was in.) He sounds just as feisty now as he did then.

Gene’s designs are not to everyone’s liking, but they have a nice simplicity about them; the motifs are used in a very organic way; and they’re very knitable. I think the ones at Fibertrends are small to moderately-sized pieces with no tricks, and they look like straight-ahead knitting. Not good for total lace newbies, I think, but certainly within the range of knitters who can cast-on and off; knit, purl, YO, and all the basic decreases; count to 20, and; follow a chart.

In fact, if there’s a vendor reading this with a copy of Fibertrends AC-86 “Estonian Medallions” available, would you please drop me an email?  knitterguy at yahoo dot ca

Spin

One bobbin down, one more to go. Then plying. Then an overdye job. Either this yarn will be (as my niece would say) “like, totally awesome”, or it will bark.

Knit

The Feather and Fan Triangle Shawl from Cheryl Oberle’s “Folk Shawls” is coming along. It feels ginormous, because it is. Well, okay. It’s not ginormous, but it is BIG. The colours of brown I selected aren’t throwing up as much contrast as I’d hoped, but it’ll be okay. This will, I think, go to Mom and Dad. Which takes me to…

Thank You

I really appreciate all your comments about me and Mom and Dad’s decline.  Even though one knows, intellectually, that you’re not the only person going through it, and you’re not the first and you won’t be the last, it’s amazing the loneliness around it.

Thank you, also, for suggestions about the trip to Lansing. As it’s turning out, it looks like I’ll also be in Saugatuck with my friend Doug. Let me tell you, finding accommodations under $180/night in August in Saugatuck is proving to be a challenge. There was nothing within budget available for the weekend, so plans have shifted and I’ll be there at the beginning of the first week of August.

I’m still planning on visiting Threadbear Fiberarts in Lansing, and Beth’s shop in Howell. Just not sure on the schedule yet.

Gotta do grocery shopping. It’s a stunningly beautiful Spring day here, and the apartment windows are full open. How’s it where you are?

Post #139

Turn on your computer's speakers. (People with dial-up connections are gonna kill me for this post.)

YouTube isn’t the first place I think of when I want to look for music, but it is interesting what you can find there.

Carol alerted me to this nifty video which will tell you (in 10 minutes) just about everything you need to know about opera. (It’s pretty good, actually.) And then…well, you know how it is on the web. You click around and click around and click some more, and end up far from where you started.

Remember the Pachelbel Canon? Back in the 80’s when we were all getting into using music for relaxation and stress release, a particular version of the Canon kept popping up. For many people, this is the way it’s supposed to be played.

Let’s have a little music lesson, shall we?

Johann Pachelbel was a predecessor of JS Bach in the German music tradition. His nephew, Charles Theodore Pachelbel was a contemporary of JS Bach. (CT worked in the USA and is best known for a setting of the Magnificat for double chorus. It’s really quite nice.)  Johann Pachelbel worked as a church musician, had lots of pupils, wrote some choral music (like this nice setting of the Magnificat), loads of organ music and some instrumental music. The Canon is the best known of his output, I think, due to its use on all those relaxation tapes. (It’s paired with a bouncy little jig, but you usually don’t hear that on recordings. Maybe because nobody thinks it’s particularly relaxing.)

Since you can read about the canon in this very good wiki article which shows how the canon structure works and how the piece is built on a ground bass, we’ll end the music lesson here.

The piece was originally written for 3 violins and basso continuo**. You can find arrangements of it for a variety of instruments. Some folks used it as the basis for other pieces, usually disrupting the strict canonic structure. There’s nothing wrong with that – Baroque composers, for example, were always borrowing from themselves and each other, and modifying pieces to suit their needs – but it does mean that some of these are really the “Canon by Pachelbel” in name only.

Okay, back to the YouTube offerings. In addition to that version up there typical of the relaxation tape performances, there’s this performance by an early music group. Typical for the early music groups, they play the piece at a brisker tempo, and have a good and colourful continuo section. (My ear identifies a harpsichord and an archlute of some kind.) The performance ends very sweetly and simply. Most attractive.

What about the pieces based on the Canon? Well, here’s George Winston’s version for piano.

How about this one, played on 2 Chapman Sticks?

Or solo guitar? (I don't think it would make it onto a relaxation CD.)

The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet worked with it.

This one’s amazing. Hold on to your hat.  Look! Want to see of the instrument? Or more of the  breakdancer?

Hope you are all well. I’m having some problems with my right wrist and my left shoulder, so computer, knitting and spinning time is somewhat limited. (Breakdancing is out, too.)

**Well, another music lesson.

Basso continuo. Simply explained with plenty of generalizations that music scholars will want to quibble with, the basso continuo was a fundamental part of Baroque music. It consists of 2 things. There are low-sounding instruments, like a cello or a bassoon that play the actual bass part of the composition, and then the instruments that can play chords – like a harpsichord, a harp, a lute or guitar, and organ or various combinations of these – that play the harmonic progression, following a series of shorthand notations in the score. The continuo is the “glue” that holds a piece together. It fills in the harmony so the harmonic progressions make sense to a listener. It serves to accompany a soloist (the sonata for solo instrument and continuo was very common). The chordal instruments can be very effective for marking the beat, so the performers have strong cues that help them to play together.

End of music lesson.

Post #138

A beautiful sunny day today. Cold, but bright. Spring is here, I think. Mom and Dad and I went to my brother’s place in the country for brunch and to plan an Easter meal for next weekend. (I need a recipe for Boston steamed bread to go with baked beans. Anyone?) I’m not sure my father knows who I am and he’s having significant problems following conversations. ::sigh:: They don’t give you a manual for how to deal with yourself when you’re watching the decline of aging parents.

On the Wheel

Yup: more teal-coloured wool. (Someone dye me something in a different colour?) This is for a 2-stage dyeing experiment that I’ll write about more in future posts.

On the Needles

Weary of the Pink Puzzle Shawl in Kidsilk Haze – which I’m not enjoying knitting with – I decided to work the Feather and Fan Triangle Shawl from Cheryl Oberle’s “Folk Shawls”. I changed the colours from black and 2 greys to 3 browns, 2 of which are quite close. I think there’ll be more distinction when the thing is knitted up.

This uses the nice unspun Icelandic laceweight (plötulopi) from Schoolhouse Press. The darkest brown has a very crisp hand and feels compressed. Are they sizing these yarns at the mill to reduce their tendency to drift apart so they’re easier to work with? (Some of you might know that this yarn is really a length of unspun fiber and with no twist to stabilize it, prone to drifting apart when you’re working with it.)

For a while I toyed with frantically knitting a new sweater to wear to the Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat, but none of my ideas really inspired me. And I recall that last year at that time - and for the last couple of years, in fact - we were sitting with temperatures in the mid 80sF. No sweaters needed.

Vacation Thoughts

Vacation this year will, for financial reasons, need to be modest. Assuming the price of gas doesn’t sky-rocket (as is predicted), I’ve been thinking about taking a road trip with the destination being Threadbear Fiber Arts in Lansing Michigan. The store has a great reputation. Matt and Rob used to post to Techknit about their experiences with teaching classes. (This was when they were essentially running the business out of the basement of their home while holding down day jobs.)

Lansing is about 8 hours drive from here (the border crossing is another matter) so it will be a day each way. I should be able to make a side trip to Beth’s shop in Howell.

Can anyone suggest other things to do along the way (must-sees in Lansing), and maybe some inexpensive lodging in Lansing?

Opera?

If anyone is interested, Natalie Dessay, the French coloratura soprano for whom I gave some links to Youtube clips in this post, is singing the lead role in “Lucia di Lammermoor”. This link will give you a plot synopsis, which explains the opera much better than I possibly could. Dessay handles the role with ease and elegance.

You can listen to this on CBC Radio 2, in a live broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera in NYC, on Saturday, March 8th at 1pm EST.  Every Saturday, Radio 2 runs an opera from somewhere in the world on its program called – logically – “Saturday Afternoon at the Opera”. Typically it begins at 1pm EST with some interesting introductory material presented by broadcaster Bill Richardson, and the opera itself usually starts at 1:30pm. The Met presentation includes information about the opera and the plot (useful, if not essential, for those of us who’d otherwise have no clue what’s going on). There are frequently interviews with selected cast members, an intermission quiz (when you realize that there are people who know opera and then there are People Who Know Opera), as well as interesting profiles about the Met and its staff.

If you want to listen to the opera over the internet, point your browser to this page, click on the link on the left that says "listen live", settle into your knitting chair with a pot of tea and a good knitting project, suspend your disbelief, and spend a nice afternoon with some really lovely good music. Apparently we’re going to be slammed with a snowstorm on Saturday (tomorrow) – the last 3 have pretty much missed us up here in The Backlands of the North – so it could be a pleasant way for some of you further south to spend the afternoon.

Beats shoveling snow.

In my next life

I want to be a coloratura soprano.

But only if I sing as well as Natalie Dessay does. (This Youtube clip is worth every second of its 8 minute length.)

And if I can do loopy stuff like this. And sing a duet with Cecilia Bartoli.

(This Handel quartet is totally over-the-top. Run the clip and just listen to the texture of the voices. It's amazing.)

Fuzzy Stuff

I was rummaging around in my fridge freezer on Friday night for a package of chorizo. Stew was on the menu for Sunday with delicious leftovers this week. Recipe would be off the top of my head.**

Something fell and hit my foot. Gently. “What’s That?” I wondered.

Regular and long-ish-time readers of the blog know that my fridge freezer houses some high-fibre non-edibles. “That” turned out to be 3 balls of Rowan Kidsilk Haze in a nice sagey-celery green colour. (#581, aka “Meadow”, 'though in some online photos it looks a lot more like #640 “Glacier”)

I stared at it for a bit, wondering why I’d bought it. At least I assumed I’d bought it, because people aren’t in the habit of giving me gifts of 3 balls of yarn, each with a sticker that reads “$22”.

Additionally, Kidsilk Haze isn’t something I keep on hand. It’s not something I keep around because I never know when I might want to whip up something for somebody on a weekend. You know how that goes: you’re all sitting in the staff lunchroom, and between mouthfuls of “Sex in a Pan” one of your co-workers mentions that she was out walking her dog on the weekend in the park just down the street from her house and when she got back home, she’d lost her favourite scarf. You go home and crank out a replacement scarf that evening. You all do that kind of thing, right? You all keep a couple of balls of something nice on hand for situations like that, right?

It took a bit of wondering, but I remembered that I’d bought the yarn to make Sharon Miller’s “Pink Puzzle Wrap”. I didn’t want to work the design in pink, and as I recall, this was the only colour that the tiny yarn store had 3 balls of, anyway. I think I got it about 4-5 years ago.

Now the reason I wanted to work this design is that Sharon seems to have come up with a pretty good solution for a technical problem that lace designers sometimes hit against. (More about that in a later post, perhaps.) I was sufficiently curious about this to invest in the pattern, and having read it over, I decided to someday work the instructions to test it out. After all, it might be a useful approach to have on hand for my own future designing. I cast on first thing Saturday.

This is my first time working with Kidsilk Haze. I’ve worked a couple of repeats of the 18 row pattern now, and along the way, I’ve learned a couple of things. The first is that while Sharon says to keep the edge stitches loose, you really do have to keep them l-o-o-s-e (almost sloppy), else they’ll bind when the piece is dressed, and that will make the stole look nasty.

The second piece of learning came from having to rip the work, because I didn’t knit the edge stitches loosely enough.  Kidsilk Haze is not fun to rip, so doing in the first place what you should do to avoid having to rip is a good idea. It will spare you some grief.

(I took the picture on a bright sunny day and yes, there is a provisional cast-on there.)

**For anyone interested, here it is as I remember it. Brown some chopped onions; brown some chicken thighs and the cut-up chorizo; toss into pot with a large can of tomatoes (mushed up) and a part bottle of Côtes du Rhône; add a sweet potato –because I was tired of looking at it and thinking I should do something with it – cut into chunks. Cook til done; thicken with a slurry of flour and cold water, if needed.

In Other News

Blogless Anne-Marie from Philly and I were chatting the other day and she wondered about the snow. We’ve had more snow in February, I think, than in December and January combined. But it’s hard to tell, because in January the temperatures zoomed to well above freezing and it poured rain for 2 days, which melted just about all of the accumulated snow that was anywhere to be seen. Even the snow mountains created by clearing parking lots were gone. February has been at about normal temperatures for the month. On the radio today, the program host moaned dramatically when the meteorologist said that winter will drag on in to mid-March, as if that was something unusual. (It’s been my experience that winter usually does drag on into March, so I don’t understand her reaction. I mean, she lives in Toronto, and yes, it's a different world down there weatherwise, and yes, they've had more snow than usual this year, but still..)

That’s it for now.

And the Winner is…

Thanks to the folks who took the time to read the article on the oboe da caccia and think about the contest challenge, and send an email.

The thing I was looking for, of course, is that Jonathan Bosworth makes oboe da caccia. Rather, he used to. I was so surprised to see that reference that I emailed Sheila B. to ask. I shouldn’t have been surprised, because I know that Sheila is an accomplished musician – a specialist on renaissance and early baroque woodwind instruments. (Specifically the recorder, I think.) I learned that at Rhinebeck 2006: when I introduced Lars to Sheila, they realised they knew each other from a conference of the Viola da Gamba Society of America. Apparently it was fairly memorable because Lars somehow fell out of a tree. (I don't know; I didn’t ask for details.)

Sheila told me that Jonathan stopped making instruments in the 90’s and, of course, he’s now making spinning tools. So that was the link back to the fibre world from the oboe da caccia.

My friend Jerry pulled a number out of his hat, and I counted the correct answers in order of receipt. Congratulations to Sue who will have a bundle of hand-dyed merino top sent her way.

Of The Answers I Wasn’t Looking For, Lori noted that perhaps skeins of yarn are tuned to E flat major, the key that Bach used for the cantata “Wachet Auf” (BWV 140), one including the oboe da caccia in its scoring.  Not bad, Lori! (You should head over to Lori’s website, and look at her hand-dyed yarns, which are really, really beautiful. And she’s going to start dyeing spinning fibre.)

By the way, I had a short phone call with Lars a coupla weeks back. He is swamped with work, what with completing his university courses and his teaching duties, and is very happy with his decision to make his career change.

Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat

Update. Unbelievably (to me), we have 30 guys registered and 8 (at last count) on the waiting list. Joe is doing a splendid job (I think) of organizing the event. He's been lining up volunteers to teach short classes, looking for some fun group activities. We are looking for a few fiber-related items to have as "prizes" for the activities, so if there is a company that would like to make a modest donation and be a Friend of the event, please email me: knitterguy at yahoo dot ca .

That's it from me for now. See you later.

“Curved Shawl with Diamond Edging” – Finished

When I got my copy of “Victorian Lace Today”, I took a flip-through. The picture of this shawl on page 71 caught my eye, and I thought “Hey wait a minute. I’ve seen that before somewhere.” Given the number of images on the web, that wouldn’t have been a surprise. But it wasn’t until I read author Jane Sowerby’s intro to the pattern that I knew where I’d seen it. In doing her research on the design, Sowerby had also seen it.

We had both had seen it in Sarah Don’s “Art of Shetland Lace”. Well, not that exact shawl, of course, but Don has instructions for a “Semicircular Scarf in Spider Pattern”. (And I’m sure I’ve seen a photo of it somewhere online, but can’t find it. Anyone?) I bought this book in 1982** and I think I worked the scarf in 1983 as gift for a now long-lost friend. As I recall, the yarn I chose was a fine mohair/silk, not unlike “Kidsilk Haze”.

Sowerby’s shawl is larger than Don’s scarf, with a different edging and construction approach. I wanted to make it to see how the different approach worked out. Don’s scarf starts the cast-on along the long edge (B), with regular decreases to shape the work into a semi-circle, cast off along the short edge. (A) Edging is worked separately and sewn on.

Sowerby’s shawl starts at the narrow edge of the curve (A) and increases to full width, casting off on the long edge. (B) You use a basic cast-on method and each row begins with a YO, all creating loops to which you attach the edging as you work it. Very nice approach.

**I know, because I found the invoice from Elizabeth Zimmerman while hunting —unsuccessfully— through my files for her poundcake recipe.

The Pattern

Instructions were clear (for book instructions). Great charts, which I had to enlarge on the copier so I could see them. That’s not a complaint about the book, it’s a statement about my eyes. There is one typo on the chart, which I didn’t notice until I was finished. It's been accounted for in the errata page available from the publisher.

The Yarn

I’d not worked with this yarn, Knitpicks’ “Shadow”, before and I wanted to see what it's like. (It’s less than $3/skein, after all.) My 2 skeins were even in colour, had no knots, and the spinning and plying were consistent. It’s a soft yarn, though, and I noticed abrasion wear'n'tear while attaching the lace edging. This shawl won’t see a lot of use (I don’t think; I don’t see this as a shawl you’d wrap around yourself to ward off a -40 wind chill) so that may not be a really big problem.

I’m wondering if Knitpicks is phasing out “Shadow”, as it’s down to 5 colours on the website.

Knitting Notes

Pretty straight ahead. The pattern repeat for the Spiders is 6 stitches x 4 rows. Not difficult to learn. The edging is a bit more complicated, but after several repeats I knew what to look for to know what to do next, so I didn’t have to follow the chart.

I started and looked at the cast-on edge, and wondered how I’d find the loops to attach the edging to. I cast on again, holding a strand of thick cotton together with the needle. Much better: the loops along the cast-on edge were very easy to find.

The other thing I did was to put a safety pin marker into every 4th loop, because it takes 4 loops for 1 edging repeat. Since I don’t always pay attention when I knit, I could easily use too many or too few loops for a repeat, and end up with a problem near the end of the work.

Oh, and I dispensed with the picots on the cast-off edge. And I tinkered with the edging. A bit.

The shawl was started in August 2007 just before I went away on vacation. I’d pick it up and work on it, put it away for a bit. In mid-January I put on a push to finish it – which ended with working 32 repeats of the edging this last Friday night and Saturday. (This will tell you how exciting my life is, as a whole.) Fortunately I had some decent radio listening and a couple of good CDs to listen to. And no wrist problems!

(The recording of the Bach motets is very, very good, by the way. The singing is fabulously fluid and expressive. They double each vocal part with a single instrument, and the way the recording has been miked (mic'ed?), you can sometimes hear the oboe da caccia burbling along with the tenors in 'Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied' (BWV 225). Very nice.)

Would I work this design again? Nope. It’s a large-ish piece, and the basic lace motif (the Spider) isn’t that interesting to work. (And I’d probably omit 3-5 repeats of the edging so it would open more in blocking. But that’s me: your edging-knitting could vary.) Still, it's a nice piece, very light, modest yarn requirements and would make a great accessory in someone's wardrobe. It's within the range of a lace knitter who's ready to move beyond basic scarves and is willing to put the patience into a large piece.

To Recap

Pattern: “A Curved Shawl with Diamond Edging” by Jane Sowerby in “Victorian Lace Today” page 72
Yarn: “Shadow” by Knitpicks in “Jewel” colourway. (merino wool, 440 yards/ 50 grams). Used under 2 skeins. (The scale says the shawl weighs 82 grams and that I have 20 grams remaining.)

Let's Have a Contest

After all it's February, the longest month of the year. Since I'm not going to be holding my Shirley Valentine Party this year (you know: sit around watching the video, eating grilled lamb, salad, moussaka and baklava, all washed down with white wine, while dreaming of a warm, bright, sunny, relaxed climate and what you might be doing with your life), there'll be a contest instead.

I've unearthed 2 Fabulous Prizes from my stash; the contest winner will select 1 of the 2.

Prize A is two 50gram-balls of Regia sock yarn in Kaffe Fassett colourway 4258. Enough for a pair of socks.

Prize B is 4 ounces of merino top, handpainted by Royale Hare in the "Pacific Emerald" colourway. I'll toss in a wrist distaff I made from hand-dyed, handspun Sea Island cotton.

So the challenge is to go back to the link on "oboe da caccia", and read the linked page and identify The Thing that relates back to the fiber world.

Rules and Entry Process (adapted from Wendy's)

Send an email to me at knitterguy at yahoo.ca with the subject line "blogcontest" . Cutoff is 6pmEST on Saturday, February 16.

Rules:

1. One email per person, please.

2. Only entries emailed to the above e-addy with "blogcontest" in the subject line will qualify. Entries in the comments will be ignored.

3. Anyone on Planet Earth with a snailmail address where I can send a package can enter.

4. At cutoff time, I'll count the number of correct entries, and ask someone who doesn't give a damn to pick a number from that total, and that will be the winner. Winner will be contacted by email and asked to supply their snailmail address. The winner will be identified in the next blog post.

5. Your email needs 2 pieces of information. The first, obviously, is the identification of The Thing on the webpage that relates to the fiber world. The second, also obviously, is for you to identify which of the Fabulous Prizes you'd like.

Tomorrow is Friday, then the Weekend, and Monday is a holiday for me. What about you?