Handwork and The Craft

Familial Faces

When I was a small child, I never thought that my grandfather or my young mother looked anything alike. And for most of my life I have thought that way -- until now, when I discovered a photograph of him as a young man -- suddenly the resemblance was so clear -- they are both roughly the same age here.

The Root and Trunk of Cables

I love knitting cables -- so structurally complex and varied, and I have wondered how in the world did that ancestor knitter decide one day to create such intricate patterns? Hiking in the Colorado Flat Irons revealed a possible answer...Nature has ever been the first teacher in the art of twinning and knotting.

"I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in." -- "The Unpublished Journals of John Muir," (1938)

Treasures Found Sorting Through Years of Handwork

"Stitched samurai poised

On my husband's blue work shirt

Swords prepared to act."

I was digging deep in the boxes of stored stuff  looking for something else and I found this pair of jaunty samurai instead. I embroidered them in my in my early twenties for my (then boyfriend now) husband on the front of a work shirt from Penny's department store. I had to cut them free from the shirt after he wore out almost every other part of shirt. They are actually small -- barely four inches tall. Definitely a call to get out my needle again...

Skulls, Snowflakes, and Lessons

I was pretty sure I liked this pattern the moment I saw it advertised as a kit. It seemed a great way to increase my experience with stranded colorwork with what seemed a simple, basic idea (and the bonus chance to work on the pompom too!) The colors seemed a bit bluer in the description but I really should have figured that yarns named "Oatmeal" and "Hawthorne" weren't really going to be blue at all. I started off eager enough and accept for still trying to figure out how to do strand work without twisting the yarn, the hat started to take on the design: 

But there came this astonishing moment as I was finishing knitting -- when I held it up and saw the skull glaring back at me. Seriously, those two white eyes with brown pupils, that line of teeth at the bottom. It was something of a shock. I tried to tell myself that once soaked and blocked, the snow flake would appear -- but it didn't. Once I was confronted by the skull, it just didn't want to leave me.

I tried it on and while it fit quite well (and all those strands on the inside make it so cozy) it didn't match well with my olive skin color. So, I did the only thing I could , unraveled the whole project and re-wound the balls of yarn back to the beginning.

I'm not really unhappy about it -- all experiences teach lesson worth knowing. I gravitate toward richer colors found in nature -- which is why I love the brown "Hawthorn" and want to pair it instead with an equally beautiful Big Wood green (both from Barrettwool.co.com). I think the snowflake pattern was a little too ambitious -- spread out into too many discreet bits. I like my stranded work to feel more solid, the shapes more defined--at least right now as a beginner. 

Hats of 2017

This has been a year for discovering the absolute joy of knitting hats. It's a little hard getting excited about wonderful wooly hats when I live in Tucson -- where even in the winter it is sunny and 80 degrees. But once started I really couldn't stop. They are perfect sort of project -- small enough to make in a reasonable amount of time, (and expense! ) and varied enough to learn and practice all manner of new stitches in cables, slip stitches, or just learning how to manage tension. I have three more hats to make over the next month or so -- one with a honeycomb pattern, one with a ridiculous pompom, and one colorwork (a first for me. )