Off to Italy
My girls are looking forward to ten days of canned ravioli suppers, movies, and fun with Dad, while I am off in Italy, attending the Mosaic Art School. They’ll have a good time. So will I.
My serious packing time has been devoted to deciding what projects to carry on the plane. The red paper poncho will go. See the white shett of paper in the photo? Those are my shawl instructions. I hope I can remember what these notes mean.
Just in case my circular needle doesn’t pass through security, I’m bringing natural dyed wool, which was a gift from my friend Helen Neale. If I can’t knit, I’ll do a little chopstick spinning.
For back up entertainment, Charles gave me part of my birthday present: a stack of Perry Mason novels. “Take several to read on the plane!” he said. I took three. “Take more! You’ll have a lot of time at the airport,” he said. If I have them, I will read them, so I said, “Charles, I don’t want to spend all my time reading.” He probably never thought he would hear those words tumble from my lips.
So off to the land of mosaics, fabulous Italian yarns, and cutting edge knitting design. If I can’t post from my hotel, I’ll see you all at the end of the month. Ciao for now!
Knitting to Enchanted Rock
This is Enchanted Rock. It is an enormous dome of pink granite rising out of the central Texas landscape. We were expecting cold, clear weather today, so we took the girls there for a climb. Believe me, it’s better to do it in the cold rather than the heat! We knew our ten-year-old, Eva, could climb to the top, but we weren’t sure about Ella, who is three. Ella wanted to be with Eva, climb rocks with Eva, hide in rocky tunnels with Eva, sit by the little pools with Eva. In short, she made it to the top—a six-tenths mile walk and a rise of 425 feet!
Here are some views, including lichen on a boulder, cactus, girls at one of the pools, and other plants that have taken over one of the water-gathering depressions, looking out into the distance. The wind was blowing hard at the summit. Down near the parking lot, where we had our picnic lunch, the weather was perfect.
So what does this have to do with knitting? I knitted on my Team Italy project most of the way there and back. It’s looking good!
We visited an antique store in the town of Llano on the way back. This little footstool peeked out from under a table. The top is knitted with crochet around the edge, attached to a padded piece of plywood, and trimmed with pom-pom fringe. The legs are attached to the wood with screws. Twenty-eight dollars.
I covered a stool with knitting, when we lived in England. We used to find nice pieces of furniture in skips, which are low dumpsters. Low, meaning that you can easily see into them, and pick out good stuff. Here it is:
At the same shop, we saw these shelves, with edges trimmed in buttons. Very cute!
Dallas Hand Knitters and Fiber Circle
As of Tuesday evening, the Dallas Handknitting Guild is 136 members strong, and growing. At least forty of those members were at the monthly meeting. I talked to the group about designing sweaters. “I’m not going to tell you how to calculate stitch counts,” I said, “because there are plenty of good books that tell you how to do that.”
Instead we discussed the process of design, which all designers (knitters, fashion designers, software designers, and architects, to name a few) go through, whether they do it consciously, or not. We talked about the design trio, time-budget-scope of work. Knitting Olympians, for example, have to plan their scope of work to fit within a strictly limited time frame.
Smiles, chuckles, and heads nodding in agreement made this great audience even more fun to talk to.
We talked about resources (guilds and other knitting groups being mentioned as invaluable resources), planning, and testing. Luckily for us, with a world of visual and intellectual stimulation around us, we can find much to fill our minds with inspiration: not once or twice, but regularly throughout our designing lives. Experience, accidental and purposeful, is a designer’s treasure.
“The only way to get twenty years of experience,” I concluded, “is to do a thing for twenty years.” So knitters, if you haven’t already begun, start designing now, and next year at this time, you’ll have a year’s experience as a knitting designer!
Earlier that day, my husband and I were in McKinney, Texas, to look at some equipment for his business. We were so close to the new INKnitters headquarters, we had to go see! Diane Piwko, the owner of Fiber Circle Publishing, showed us around the enormous old building that had once been the Odd Fellows Lodge of Farmersville.
Charles and I are fairly experienced old-house-renovators, so we could appreciate the work Diane and her husband have already done. We could see the incredible potential of the site.
Diane has named March 2, 2006, as the opening day for her new yarn store, which will feature cozy nooks for knitters on the balconies overhanging the ground-floor shop. Coffee, tea, and snacks will be on offer. Knitters are welcome to come and knit all day long. If they need to stretch their legs, they can stroll along the brick boulevard in downtown Farmersville, and shop at the antique stores.
The editorial offices of INKnitters and Crochet Fantasy are on the second floor. The third floor will be living quarters.
It was a great day! I look forward to being back in the area for the DFW Fiber Fest.
KnitAlongs and Screen Art
It’s so much fun to Knit Along! I’m joining the enormous Olympic knitting team, organized by Coach Yarn Harlot. I will be knitting for Team Italy. Why? I will in Italy, physically, actually, in person, really, really, during the Olympics. No, not to watch the Olympics, but to attend a mosaic workshop in Ravenna. It seemed cosmically correct to knit for the Italians.
Here are my training swatches. I’m finally using that red linen paper from Habu. I have 77 grams in all. My garter swatch is 0.92 g, and the lace edging motif is 0.43 g. (Thank goodness for my scientific husband, who has a very accurate balance.) I had to do some calculations to see how big of a wrap I could knit.
I’m making a poncho-shawl combination: a mitered corner in the back, straight across the front; garter stitch with the lace trim. The fiber is crispy! This will definitely be a stretch for me to finish, but I’m figuring on many hours to knit in airports and on planes.
It’s fun to watch little kids with sidewalk-chalk. The little ones aren’t so interested in drawing pictures as they are in coloring things. But sometimes they really draw! After three-year-old Ella colored as much of our curlicue-iron porch support, she turned to the screen door. Here’s her screen door art. I think it is in the best abstract, preschool tradition.
Cloths for Katrina Finally Done
…and it’s about time, too! Thank goodness there are still some places accepting donations for people who were badly affected by Hurricane Katrina. My two knitted washcloths went off in the mail today.
If you want to see some consistent, plentiful charity knitting, visit Woolwindings and Tikkupeitto. I am amazed at the work these ladies do.
Happy Birthday Mom!
My mother, Anna Thompson, turned 70 years old today. She taught me to knit and crochet, passing down the skills to another generation of our family. Her grandmother (my Groβoma) could knit socks with her hands under the table, while her eyes were occupied with reading. Her mother (my Oma) taught needlework in a German village school, where my mother’s father was the teacher.
Now my mom is the coolest possible, jeans-wearing Oma, who has long straight hair that is still dark, with a few highlights of silver. She encourages my daughters in their fibery and arty pursuits, and she is my biggest fan (just take a look at her comment on my last post).
Happy Birthday, Mom, and Thank You!
Coffee Shop Knitting Pioneer
Another fifth grade mom and I were doing some PTO work together a couple of weeks ago. She told me about being in a coffee shop in Fort Worth or some other city. “There were college-age girls there, knitting!” she told me. “A lot of them!”
No surprise there for us, hmmm? I told her she ought to have a look on the web, and marvel at how many knitting blogs and web sites there are. Then I said, “I’m a coffee shop knitting pioneer, you know.”
She didn’t know, so I told her about how in the late 1980s, Austin had a place on Guadalupe Street, called Captain Quackenbush’s Intergalactic Café and Coffee Bar, or something very similar. It was an espresso bar, long before Starbucks’ global dominance. Half a dozen or so of us met, every Tuesday evening at Quackenbush’s for coffee and knitting: Carol Wyche, Suzanne Correira, Jane L., Jane E., Nancy M., Gay Fay K., and others from time to time. Those were good days. We didn’t know we were pioneers. We just loved to get together and knit.
When Quackenbush’s changed for the worse, we moved to the brand new Schlotzsky’s flagship store on South Lamar. You can still get delicious sandwiches, fabulous desserts, and yummy coffee there.
At different times, Carol and I hosted stitching sessions that predated Stitch ‘n’ Bitch by a couple of decades. We dreamed of a time like the present, where so many people would catch knitting fever and understand our obsession. Besides, more people knitting means a lot more variety of yarn to buy!
Some of us have been here for a long, long, LONG time, waiting for you guys to show up.
While I’m on the topic of coffee shops, let me tell you how civilization as encroached upon our rural idyll. Until just a couple of weeks ago, the last frontier outpost of Starbuck’s was in Granbury, Texas. As I write, the finishing touches are being put upon a new Starbuck’s in Stephenville, Texas, a giant step of 22 miles into the wilderness.
I like Starbucks, but I’ll be sticking with the locally-owned coffee shop in Stephenville, The Coffee Studio. I will bring Ella and my knitting, and knit alone while she plays with the toys, until someone else in Stephenville cares to join us.
Good News, Old News, and More Buttons
Back in July, I sadly reported that my lamb tail jacket had been lost in the mail. Three or four months later, INKnitters sent me the proofing copy of the pattern. Was that the theme music to The Twilight Zone I heard? During the months I thought the sweater was missing, the magazine moved buildings and got new editors. The new staff didn’t know it was lost, so they didn’t have any reason to let me know they had it.
The pattern appeared in the Fall 2005 issue of INKnitters. Here is my daughter, modeling the jacket. Her little sister couldn’t stand being left out. They’re sitting on our propane tank, with an old dairy barn and some pecan trees in the background.
I showed some of my handmade polymer clay buttons in my last post. Here’s a link to instructions for buttons [the link no longer takes you to the buttons, unfortunately] I designed for Crafts Beautiful magazine. It’s truly a beautiful magazine, published in England. Now, if you go to the site, take note of the design in the masthead. I publish it here, in case you miss it. It’s a clock I designed and made from polymer clay. It’s a fairly easy mosaic technique. [This is so old, they’ve changed the masthead—thank goodness we have it here!
DFW Fiber Fest, April 2006
You can learn to make these polymer clay buttons in my workshop at the first-time-ever DFW Fiber Fest in Addison, Texas, April 28-30, 2006. Three days of classes and a market will make this an event you won’t want to miss. Classes will appeal to crocheters, knitters, spinners, and others with an interest in fibery, yarny, sweatery things. You can sign up for up to six classes.
I’ll be teaching three workshops: Crochet Flowers and Leaves (Friday morning), Polymer Clay Button Boutique (Saturday afternoon), and Intarsia from Beginning to End (Sunday morning). Read about current button workshops here.
There are lots of other good workshops and teachers, including Beth Brown-Reinsel and Darla Fanton. Click here for the class schedule. I’m looking forward to it!
Updated in 2016 to remove links that don’t work, and in 2022 to add button workshop link.
Back to Workshop Samples
It’s time again to make workshop samples. I enjoy working on samples and swatches to illustrate the concepts I introduce in my workshops. They’re mostly small and quicker to finish than most other projects.
Some readers may remember the underwater scene I made for a design class at Camp Iwannaknit 2005. It was knitted on my Bond knitting frame. Someday I hope to show you the underwater scenes that the workshop participants made. They were all different, because each person used a different photo for inspiration.
Anyway, I’m developing a new underwater scene class for hand knitters and crocheters, which uses freeform techniques. For homework, I’m asking participants to choose a photo of a reef or other marine scene for inspiration.
The next step is to raid the yarn collection for colors and textures to match the background of the photograph. Here’s my photo, with the matching yarn.
Did you notice that I said ‘yarn collection’ rather than ‘yarn stash?’ Imagine my nose very high in the air, as I explain that I prefer to think of myself as a proud collector of yarn. Forget stashes. Think collections, instead. The word ‘collection’ appropriately invokes the care, thought, and money invested by a yarn collector in her hoard.
Next time, a finished freeform background.