A Bluestocking Knits

In Which We Spend Ten Days in Western Wisconsin and Northern Minnesota

We are just back from a trip to Wisconsin and Minnesota, to visit family in the former and old stomping-grounds in the latter.  It was a good time, not too hot and muggy, though it was close a couple of times, and on one memorable afternoon, we raced a tornado warning home -- it seems that river levels all over the Midwest are alarmingly high, with at least one historical home we visited now having the Mississippi much closer to it than on the day we visited.  It's strange to be back in this dry, brown Southern-California summer! 

I took two project with me to fill in some extra hours if there were any, and as it happened I got much further along with both than I have on other trips -- the benefits of visiting family, as one can knit or stitch while talking!  The embroidery is a charming little kit from Hoffelt & Hooper on Etsy -- it clearly goes pretty quickly, as I hadn't even opened it before we left.  I might have got further than this, but I was merrily French-knotting along on that purple stem at the top when I thought that I should alternate the direction of the knots, to make it more "natural," but it proved to be too drastic a contrast with the quarter-inch or so that I'd already done, both in tidiness and pouf, strangely, so I had to pick them out, which was very time-consuming.  I think I'm going to have to take out all of the lavender ones and do them again all at once, as my second attempt was also not very satisfactory.  The first branch of white blossoms turned out well, though --

I also turned the heel of the first Petty Harbor sock -- which, yes, got scrunched somehow in our checked bag, and one of the needles has come out.  Oh, well -- I was thinking that I'd got off somehow when returning to the pattern stitch on the instep (the danger of talking and knitting at the same time!), and was already resigning myself to ripping it back to the picked-up stitches along the heel flap.  The yarn is a bit splitty at times, but very soft and quite pretty, though always a bit darker in real life than it is through the camera.

I guess I didn't take many "touristy" photos while we were away, as the selection below doesn't really illustrate the places as such! and so I will just quietly link to the ones in these photos.  In Wisconsin, we went to a number of local sights that David had chosen -- although some weeks earlier when he called out from his computer, "Does anyone want to see Frank Lloyd Wright's house while we're in Wisconsin?" there were immediate and loud yesses from both Laura and me -- but mostly we were happy to just go along.

The Japanese Garden at The House in the Rock, near Spring Green, Wisconsin.  This is not a particularly representative photo, as it is an extremely peculiar and eccentric place, but worth a visit just for the oddity of it!

Frank Lloyd Wright's home, Taliesin, is also near Spring Green.  It was a remarkably lovely day while we were there.  This is the Romeo and Juliet Windmill not far from the house, so called because it is actually two structures, a lozenge- or diamond-shaped section "embraced" by an octagonal portion, "Romeo" and "Juliet" respectively.  Taliesin itself has been damaged and rebuilt more than once -- apparently Wright's extensive collection of Asian art was almost completely destroyed in the terrible 1914 fire, and he incorporated surviving fragments, like this little horse and rider, literally into the fabric of the new living-room --

Laura took this photo -- a chipmunk taking a rest on a fallen log at Effigy Mounds National Monument.  It was a warm hike, but very quiet and serene the morning that we were there, quite fitting for the place.

Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis, before the Minnehaha Creek meets up with the Mississippi River.

From a bridge over the St. Louis River in Jay Cooke State Park, in Carlton County, Minnesota.

Yes, But Today's Tuesday

This band of the "Virtue" sampler is getting worked in stages, a few threads of each color at a time: first the light-green "arcade" and adjoining leaves as I come to them, then the very-dark green ditto, adding the stems and tendrils, then the purplish grapes, and lastly filling in every other grape (why every other? I don't know, I've been tempted now and then to fill all of them ...), with queen stitches.  Darlene O'Steen is the queen of queen stitches -- strewth, there are queen stitches all over this piece!  Grapes, flowers in the central field, dividing bands worked horizontally, that border -- thirty-nine flowers, each made of forty-five queen stitches!  I don't even want to do the math.  I like the way the finished queen stitch looks, but it's a bit of a pain to work, as for me it takes two hands to get it to lie flat.  Oh well -- this is one of my favorite charts ever.  (Not that I'm resistant to a bit of tweaking.  I came to that dividing band between the two parts of the small alphabet and thought, "wait, just crosses? Darlene O'Steen did a dividing band in plain old cross stitch?!" and I worked it in Montenegrin, because there isn't any in this chart at all!)

These are O'Steen's original colors, all DMC, though I must say they look noticeably darker in real life than in the photograph on the cover of the chart!  I like the fabric a lot -- there was no suggestion for it, and so I chose this 32-count “Milk Chocolate” from xJudesign, a lovely soft brown with a bit of depth from that hint of mottling.

I have not given up knitting, though it may seem so at times from the lack of it here -- it occurred to me not long ago that I am actually running short on knitted socks (!), and so I dug out some KnitPicks Stroll in "Mountain Pass" that was a years-ago gift (thanks, mom!), and cast on for "Petty Harbour".  The pattern is fairly simple, though I admit that the dark-green of the yarn makes it hard to see which row I'm on, and I'm having to check off each row as I go.

She Still Knits!

(I am regularly amazed and delighted at the generosity of miniaturists, in sharing both their knowledge and their stuff.  The lady who gave me the big Golden Lion Inn a few years back phoned me last month and said she is retiring -- from making miniatures, not admiring or owning them, as I'm pretty sure you don't retire from that! -- and would I like to have her stuff?  Of course I said yes.  Among the little treasures were these three House of Miniatures kits and this figure -- even though I don't "do" dolls generally, I got a big kick out of this one, since she looks a lot like me! even the slightly tired smile.)

But yes, despite the volume of not-knitting stuff on this soi-disant knitting blog, which may be excused lately because of the summer heat, I do have a bit of knitting on the go at last, though I confess that it is not only a pair of very plain socks but is in some wool I've had in a drawer for at least a decade, and was orphaned even then, from a stash that came from a yarn shop that was closing and made the rounds of multiple knitters at David's work but nobody wanted this so he brought it home to me.  (Like Maria's homely dress at the beginning of "The Sound of Music" -- "The poor didn't want this one.")

It has been a very long time since I worked a full-sized piece of cross-stitch, but for my birthday I got two sampler charts --

one of the band sampler designs from Long Dog Samplers, whose catalog is filled with wonderful, and wonderfully quirky, things, and a Quaker-style sampler from ByGone Stitches --

also with sentiments very meaningful to me.  I am starting with the "Froth and Bubble" but I was only able to decide between the two by remembering that I have been mooning over that since the spring, I think, and only recently saw the Quaker one.

These are gigantic compared to my usual petitpoint, and since they will have to be worked on a table frame will not only take quite some time but will not be portable -- unlike knitting on a pair of socks!  A bit of handwork for every situation, as they say.  (Don't they?!)

A Bit of War-time Knitting in "Mrs. Tim Carries On" and "Spring Magic"

The D.E. Stevenson group is reading the "Mrs. Tim" series, interspersed with related DES titles, and we have just finished Mrs. Tim Carries On (1941) and started Spring Magic (1942).  Being wartime, of course there is knitting for one's menfolk and others in the armed forces sprinkled throughout, especially in Mrs. Tim Carries On, but since there are so very many patterns available for "soldiers' comforts" and really, how many variations can there be on plain, dark socks, I chose for my virtual "Knitting with D.E. Stevenson" project the girl's socks in this late-1930s/early-1940s Bairnswear leaflet available in reproduction from The Vintage Knitting Lady. The photo reminds me not a little of Hester's young daughter Betty who likes dolls and girlish things, to be sure, but doesn't stick at climbing trees as well.  As a knitter, I like how these particular socks have different kinds of heels, too -- I know it's comfortable to knit something that one is familiar with, but it's also pleasing to have different options.

Thanks to the wonderful folks at Dean Street Press -- especially Scott of Furrowed Middlebrow, whose Furrowed Middlebrow colophon debuted there a few years ago and specializes in "works by lesser-known British women novelists and memoirists" -- three of the four Mrs. Tim books are now available in e-book format (the first was reprinted some years ago by the Bloomsbury Group), as well as Spring Magic and 1935's Smouldering Fire, of which more in another post.  I have been very much looking forward to the group read of Spring Magic, as it is one of my favorites.  We've only just started, and already have had interesting discussions about books a sheltered child might have read (a child such as Frances, though she is now at 25 not sheltered so much as trapped), the idiom "doing the messages" (which may or may not involve actual messages, depending on whether one is north or south of Hadrian's Wall ...), horsehair mattresses (and sofas), the Pioneer Corps, and potential inspirations for the setting's Scottish fishing village -- not to mention sidetracks like April Fool pranks and plagiarism.

But knitting, that's what I was talking about.  In one scene in the book, during a rather terrifying air raid -- this isn't London, mind you, it's a fishing village on the west coast of Scotland -- the ladies of the inn where Frances is staying are knitting -- who could sleep? -- and Annie offers to share a knitting pattern.  "It's quite an easy pattern," she says, "you slip one and knit one and pass the slipped stitch over.  I'll give you the pattern tomorrow if you would like it --"  In searching the internet hopefully for "lacy knitting pattern 1940s", I came across this one --

which is available free from the V&A (here's the Ravelry link) as part of a page about 1940s knitting patterns (huzzah!).  The lace stitch is a simple two-row one with a familiar "sl1, K1, psso" maneuver that combined with K2tog and judicious yarn-overs produces the pretty scallop effect, here in patriotic red, white, and blue -- so it seems particularly appropriate for my Spring Magic choice!  I've used the Ravelry link instead of going straight to the pattern itself so that you can see some examples of how changing the colors or simply changing the number of rows of red, white, or blue can vary the effect of the jumper.

Thoughts on the "Gladys" Socks

When I was staying at my mom's this past summer, I spent some of the down-time in poking around the internet, as one does, for sock patterns, and -- in addition to the Hermione's Everyday Sock pattern which I chose to suit the yarn I had -- I came across Gladys by General Hogbuffer [sic] (who blogs here, though as you can see I am reluctant to put that into the past tense), which pattern went into the other pile, of those for which I don't (didn't) have yarn yet. 

(Love this gusset!)

It isn't a new idea, I'm sure, to use gansey patterns on a sock, but this one is attractive in its combination of simplicity and complexity, and I had in fact just seen a display of Manos del Uruguay's Alegria sock yarn at a local yarn shop and thought it would work beautifully with the pattern, so I went back the next day and bought a skein -- this color is "Silver".

Mary Berry would certainly say this yarn is "scrummy"!  It is a pleasure to knit with, beautifully soft, and has great stitch definition.  (It comes in a ton of colors too, both solids and multi, so I'm looking forward to using it again, certainly on a scarf!)

The only modifications I made were to make it considerably longer than the original -- I like a long sock -- and to use a regular slip-stitch heel instead of continuing the pattern down to the heel turn.  I did take the General's suggestion to cast on a larger number of stitches and decrease down after the ribbing -- since mine would be higher on the calf than the original, I put a third of the decreases after the ribbing, another third after the first rig-and-furrow section, and the rest after the second rig-and-furrow.

I'm delighted with the pattern and the resulting socks, so am putting some other House of Hogbuffer patterns on my to-do list -- certainly Onopordum and Maudie!

I'm very admiring of all of the lovely winter photos that are appearing on other blogs, so here is my contribution.  It isn't much -- sigh! especially here on our former lawn -- but it has been wonderful this past week having rain.  Lots of it! about three inches -- over 7 cm. -- and a nice, steady rain that didn't just fling itself into the storm drains and race away to the ocean, but stuck around and soaked in.  Lovely!

At the beginning of the holiday season, I had one decrepit Schlumbergera that had collapsed under its own weight and cracked just above the soil level, thereby slowly starving itself, but I managed to save some cuttings and re-pot them -- white with pink throats.  It didn't seem quite like Christmas without a Christmas cactus in bloom, and so rather impulsively I bought a new little one at the garden center -- red! -- and as it turned out, my mother-in-law potted up some cuttings from one of hers, and she gave that to me -- magenta!.  So here they all are, outside on the walk to our front door, having a refreshing rainwater shower!

Happy New Year!

I am actually knitting, though you wouldn't much know it from recent posts, to be sure.  The Gladys socks are done and waiting to be photographed, as many things have interrupted, including -- hurray! -- a spate of rainy weather, much welcome in the parched Southland, though just not very good for photographing indoors.  I've also started a "hug-me-tight" of sorts, from a 1917 Priscilla book, hoping to race through its simplicity in time to take advantage of it in this sudden chill.  (Quick! garter stitch!!)

(This first ball of Matchmaker had FOUR splices and a knot!!)

Well, it is the time of year, of course, for looking back and then ahead.  I didn't accomplish many of my sewing ambitions at all, I'm afraid, finishing only two of the nine projects I named.  Sigh.  Sometimes I look back, say twenty-five or thirty years, and wonder how on earth I managed to read so much, and write so many letters -- long ones, too, fifteen or twenty sheets of airmail paper sometimes! -- but then I remember that of course that was both pre-children and pre-internet (which came in that order for me), and both can be massive time-devourers.  I still do want to sew all of those projects I chose, and have fabric ready for the apron for sure, so that may be on the schedule fairly soon.  Laura has in fact made some tentative I-want-to-learn-to-sew noises lately, which might help get my sewing inspiration warmed up again.

(And wouldn't you know it, as I write, Julia comes creeping in -- it is 5:45 in the morning on the first day of school after the holidays -- and says, "Um, it's raining and I have to take my clarinet to school, could you drive me, please?"  I have added the "please" myself, but as it happens even without it this was very polite for Julia.  Well, I can't really be annoyed at the interruption, as I am frequently saying, "Careful! don't let your clarinet get wet!" as she now has a very nice wooden one for concerts and fine days!)

Talking of fine days, we stayed at David's parents' house in Pasadena on New Year's Eve, to get Julia up for her three a.m. call before the Rose Parade.  It was alarmingly windy in the night, but dawned, as it so often does for the Parade, cold and sunny.  We didn't get grandstand seats this year, but watched the first half or so on television, then walked over to the park at the end of the route, where the floats and equestrian units broke off in one direction, and the bands went in another to have something to eat -- it was past ten by that time, a long stretch for teenagers to go without food, let alone after a 5 1/2-mile march! -- and then to get back on the buses which would take them back to the starting point.  So we had to stand to see the end of the parade, and not quite optimally, but this photo shows how close we were to the bands!  They sounded great, too -- at the Parade and a few days earlier at Disneyland -- we were very proud parents!

I still have a few letters to go on the ABChallenge, and it's getting a bit harder now as the last letters are not so ubiquitous -- oh, there's another "u" word!  I found this rock on the trail (urban, another "u" word) where I walk, and took it home because it is so pleasingly different.  No idea what it is -- the lighter parts look granitey, but then there are those curious strata, quite different from our common salt-and-pepper native granite.  Folded granite or migmatite, maybe?  (Whew, that Wikipedia article is like the Peanuts "wa-wah-wah wah wah wa-wah" to me!  I still really like my rock, though.)

That challenge reminds me that I actually still have a couple of project left to do on my "Knitting the Knitter's Almanac" project, since I, er, paused after the Nether Garments Event.  I didn't mean to give up, and so still consider that I haven't, although twelve years is a fairly long time for just a pause!  I still have October's Open-Collared Pullover, November's famous Moccasin Socks, and December's Hurry-Up Last-Minute Sweater to go.

And a pair of plain socks on the needles for something portable -- plainish.  This is Loops & Threads Perfect Pair sock yarn in the puzzlingly-named color "Drive All Night," which is actually very charming and springlike.

Growth Rings

I am still knitting! but slowly.  This is the second of a pair of Gladys socks, started -- to my astonishment and dismay -- when I was staying with my mom in July.  I really like the pattern, and the yarn, and the pattern and the yarn together, but somehow I haven't managed to find the time to do much with them -- and so, noticing that my slow increments are not at all unlike the growth rings of a tree, I started putting in safety pins at the beginning of each section of knitting.

-- First, just above the rig-and-furrow, during Julia's audition for the Rose Parade Honor Band (she made it!).

-- Then during her clarinet lesson a few days later.

-- Then some weeks later in the waiting room while Laura had her wisdom teeth out.  Only 45 minutes!  Great for her, not so much for knitting!  Hard to believe that I managed to work more rounds during a clarinet lesson than during a wisdom-teeth extraction.

-- Then on the next day, two hours or so of watching "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" last night with David.  I hadn't seen it before!

But now I'm ready to start the heel at last ...

Thoughts on Hermione's Everyday Socks

These are the popular "Hermione's Everyday Socks" by Erica Lueder.  I worked mine toe-up, as I had no idea how far the yarn would go, though as it turned out this was not an issue at all.

I used Judy's Magic Cast-On, which is brilliant though a bit of a pain at first, and I broke one of my lovely rosewood sock needles in attempt 2 or 3 at the really-fiddly bit at the beginning -- sniff.  (I recommend metal dpns if you're going the dpn route, at least until the toe gets going.)

For the heel, I used Wendy Johnson's toe-up heel instructions, modified to include the Hermione's eye-of-partridge heel with the garter stitch edge, and finally Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off (the Interweave instructions).

I enjoyed knitting these -- the pattern is easily memorizable and the yarn suits it beautifully -- and I even enjoyed the toe-up process, although I confess that since it has been so hot here, I finished them almost a month ago, set them down, and forgot all about them until just now when I was tidying up.  But I'm sure they will quickly become a favorite come autumn and winter!

Some Fibery Goodness from the County Fair

Here is an eclectic selection of things from the Fiber Arts division at the County Fair this year -- things that caught my eye, mostly, out of quite a lot of interesting items, from all classes and of every type of fiber.  The above was, obviously, a bit of a show-stopper!

The first-place winner in the socks class.  Nice design, and beautifully worked -- I might hesitate to suggest to the fair staff, though, that the charming little elephant belongs on the outside of one's ankle.

I had thought that these would appeal to the judges and I was not far wrong, though in view of the competition, I can see why they chose the ones they did for first place!

I thought this was really stunning -- not only beautiful woodworking, but with a wild and gorgeous needlepoint back! and here is a closer view of that --

This is really charming!  I'm not sure what it's for -- billets-doux, perhaps! -- but charming.  I really like the silver-grey on cream color choice.

Of course this caught my eye very quickly!

I have always loved the William Morris acanthus designs, with their subtle shading.

And this I have mentioned before, but here it is again full-sized, so that you can see some of the detail.  Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the whole thing -- it is probably twice this size.  It is a sampler in cross-stitch of past OC Fair logos, and quite incredible to behold! --

The Fair runs through August 12th, so if you're in town, stop by!

Summer Fun

A month ago today, my mom had total hip replacement surgery. I've been staying with her since then, being physical-therapy coach, pill-dispenser, chauffer, chief cook and bottle washer, and of course general dogsbody -- actually, she is a fairly ideal patient, uncomplaining and undemanding, and for the most part in good spirits if often just tired.  There was an unexpected falter at the very beginning, when, having been told that "probably" she would be going home the same day as the procedure, the hospital stay ended up being five days, which of course was exhausting and stressful, and meant that her physical recovery was set back that much more.  But then there was a dramatic upswing, she got to come home, and things have been progressing in an upwards direction almost continually since then.

I knew of course that the recovery period would be extended -- four to six weeks with the walker and the infamous TED hose, then a transition to the quad cane -- so I came well-prepared with numerous fiber projects and books for various situations.

I know, a scarf in July!  But I was indoors quite a lot during mom's hospital stay, and although I had a couple of books with me, she was surprisingly chatty considering, and I knitted on this until the grey wool ran out.  I had been looking for something in my "knitting" e-mail folder and found this free pattern in a Jimmy Beans newsletter from 2007 (!) and I thought, "hey, I have that Cashsoft in those very colors!" so I dug out a ball of each and tossed them in my bag.  It is the Storm Scarf by Iris G, and very simple with just a touch of busy-ness there in the middle.  The original pattern has you alternate the direction of the cables each time, but that didn't quite work for me so I have made them all the same.  Unfortunately, my two balls of Cashsoft are of considerably different sizes, so the "Thunder" ran out long before the cream did.  I have some more of each at home, so finishing is on hold but probably not far away.

Another petit-point carpet, this one the "Gendje Runner" from one of Meik and Ian McNaughton's books. 

No less than three Inspector Gamache mysteries, which I found at the library used-book shop for two dollars apiece.

(I read the first of the series not long after it came out, and enjoyed it.  I liked the Inspector, gentle and thoughtful, and the small-town Canadian setting with its quirky artists, but somehow I hadn’t managed to read any more in the meantime.  Knowing now, of course, that I’d be more-or-less house-bound for some time, I snapped them up, even though it was likely that there were gaps in the sequence, and yesterday I picked up Bury Your Dead.  And then it began.  Sentence fragments.  Piling up inexorably.  Like December snow against the door.  More and more.  I grew restless.  January.  Deeper and deeper.  Blast upon blast.  I remembered every grammar lesson I ever had – “no sentence fragments!”  Even the ones that were kinder than that.  “If you must, at least use them sparingly!”  But still they kept coming.  The snow is up to the eaves now.  And I am only in chapter two.  I feel trapped.  Battered by the icy shards.  Smothered –)

This is the skein of Pagewood Farms' Denali in "New Horizon" that I've had in my stash since 2009.  2009! unbelievable.  I had already tried any number of patterns and was dissatisfied for any number of reasons, and tried more than one this month, including the Simple Skyp Socks which didn't quite appeal in this wool for some reason -- though I will definitely put them on my future-knits list, mind you -- but eventually decided on some toe-up Hermione's Everyday socks.  The cast-on I chose gave me much grief for an evening, but I eventually a) got it figured out and b) adapted the sizing to better suit my very-wide toes.  It's a beautiful cast-on, too, very clever, and makes a smooth and elegant toe.

(Okay, how many people can't help calling them Simple Skype Socks?!  I don't even Skype!)

Mom has a couple of knitted dishcloths in her kitchen drawer, but mostly uses a brush for washing.  Surprisingly to me, since of course I grew up washing dishes with a brush, I far prefer cloths now, and so since from the start of this adventure I've been the one doing the dishes, I thought, "okay, I get to do the dishes, I get to choose the equipment!" and even though I'm pretty sure mom does not care for these colors, they are just dishcloths and I had a whole cone of the cotton.  I have already made at least five cloths with it, and after cranking out a few more -- a whole dishcloth in an evening, sometimes! that's one of the great things about crochet, I must say -- I began calling it "The Cone of a Thousand Dishcloths"!

The one at the right is the only one that took more than a day -- it went incredibly slowly, but I had a hard time figuring out the stitch, and because I like my dishcloths worked at a very tight gauge, working it just made my hand ache.  It's the "Crunchy Stitch Cloth" from Petals to Picots, and although I will say that although it was a bit of trouble, the result turned out very well.  The others are, clockwise from there, the Spiral Double Crochet cloth, a horizontal rib cloth, the Herringbone Crochet cloth with a SC edge, Seeing Squares, and the Simplicity Dishcloth (DC edge).  I confess that I still often can't tell what I'm doing with crochet, and had the dickens of a time telling apart the herringbone and the half-double Simplicity one, but maybe that's partly because the herringbone doesn't look particularly herringboney to me ...

So it has been a strange four weeks, kind of outside of time and space while everything is discombobulated -- my surroundings are different, the routine is different, the company is different.  We had some spectacularly hot weather --

-- this was after it had cooled off! -- and even an unexpected downpour --

but also some really beautiful clouds in the evenings --

and a brief interlude when Laura came to stay with Grandma while I went home and to the County Fair to see Julia show her market lamb --

Yes, she tied her hair back for the show ring!  It was a fun weekend, and I will share more pictures of the crafts competitions in another post.  The picture at very top here, by the way, is past Fair logos in cross-stitch!  Quite impressive -- this was only part of the very large piece, and needless to say, it won some very big ribbons!

And now I'm back at mom's, more dishes and laundry, more sunsets, more follow-up visits to doctors and physical therapists, a quick stop at the yarn shop ...