Textiles and Bicycles

It got done — in time even.

Last weekend I went to what I knew would be a stylish and lovely wedding in Tribeca, at the Tribeca Rooftop. I bought an interesting dress that I was relatively excited to wear given the fact that I had literally not bought a formal-ish dress since 1999 and had not worn one since 2004. In between then and now there have been a few saris and one bridesmaid dress. This was an occasion.

After I bought the dress I immediately realized I would need some sort of a cover-up since it was at night and was supposed to be outside (though it rained and it was moved inside). Given the color of the dress and some lovely silver shoes, I wanted something armor-like, quick to make since I only had about 10 days, and very lightweight since it is July afterall.

I found the Shetland Shorty from this summer’s new Knitty. With some modifications, I think it all turned out pretty top-notch.

I used Habu Textiles bamboo XS-45 in charcoal and silk stainless steel in gray for the body and the bamboo and wool stainless steel in wine for the neckline and part of the right front..
I ran out of the silk stainless with about 10 rows to go, so there’s an awkward/artistic stripe at the right shoulder…but I think it was fine. I actually wish I had had the foresight to know that would look nice so I could’ve done it on the other side for some symmetry.

Given the threadlike weight of the yarn I used, the net-like shetland lace pattern wasn’t really going to work, so I went with classic stockinette, which produced the chainmaille effect I was going for (especially with the incorporation of the stainless steel).

The fabric the yarn produced was absolutely perfect for what I wanted and was really just beautiful. The bamboo was shiny and the silvery steel gave it more dimension and an airiness. The garter stitch border using the steel was also three-dimensional in a way that “came alive” when the whole piece was done. I say that because it kind of looked ugly when I first started.

My only complaint with the whole project was picking up stitches with this yarn, weight and needle size used. It was messy. I will definitely be making other things with this yarn combination again — but I will be knitting neckbands separately and sewing them on. Thank you Phildar for letting me know that’s perfectly acceptable.

For the record, I decided as alternative fibers (steel and bamboo) they still met my “green” criteria for the year — (the wool was used sparingly and I don’t have much of an issue with silk at this point). This is despite my issues with the production of alternative fibers. I think there are better green choices, but the Habu yarns are not a bad once-in-a-while choice. Habu also has quite a few choices using vegetable and other natural dyes. Though I have not seen anything organic from them, which is more important to me.

It is an exciting day.  While frantically searching for the yarn I need to make an emergency bolero/shrug/whatever for a wedding I’m going to in a couple of weeks (Habu’s laceweight bamboo in wine in case anyone has some and they want to sell it to me, please please), I came across something amazing on one of my favorite sites, natursongyarn.com:  Fleece Artist Organic Wool.  Fleece Artist and Handmaiden make some of the most beautiful handpainted yarns I’ve ever seen.  The colors are rich and interesting, but until now they didn’t meet my criteria for 2008: organic, local, socially responsible, or (in a pinch) naturally dyed.  Until now.  Naturesong says this about it:

It really is creamy soft, it is not superwashed, so you can use it for felting if you feel so inspired, it comes from sheep raised organically, and was processed in a certified organic mill. Its DK weight is ideal for just about everything and, now that it is robed in Fleece Artist’s flowing colorways, well, life doesn’t get much better than this. 

Too bad the other thing (besides buying “green” materials) is buying less materials.  It looks like everyone’s coming out with their green yarn lines, which is fantastic but also tempting to the point of possibly negating all the positive effects of buying green by buying too much.  I just recently bought some unneeded Malabrigo Limited Edition Organic Cotton, which is lovely and comes in lovely colors.  My excuse is the limited edition really put that fear into me–God forbid I miss out…or have a strong will.

So one of you will have to let me know more about this stuff….at least for now. 

The idea of progress has been heavily on my mind lately. I just went to my 5 year college reunion, which is surprising in itself since college was not the positive experience I think it is for most people (high school strangely was the more positive time). Reunions I think generally leave us questioning how far we’ve come as individuals and though I pretty much left without any substantial revelations (except that there were quite a few cool, like-minded people that I wish I had known better while I was actually stuck in small city Virginia), I did come away with the reaffirmation that I have indeed grown into a far better and cooler person than the self-conscious, de-energized version of me running around college those years ago.

This reunion also got me thinking about progress of humans in general. I have the benefit of living with a vegan who is a vegan simply because he believes that by this point, with all of our physical and mental development, we humans should have progressed past the need to subjugate animals and use them primarily as commodities. Yet after a few conversations with friends at this reunion (all of whom I have nothing but the greatest respect for), I realized that maybe most people still do believe that humans are just better than animals and not only can but should exert that dominance. In fact, animals don’t have the same depth of emotion or level of consciousness to know the difference. I personally do not believe even an ounce of this, but it’s an argument that constantly comes up in the discussion of animal rights: the word animal itself denotes a something less than. It’s a living thing, yes. But it doesn’t emote like a human and our inability to understand animals as deeply conscious and cerebral creatures prevents us from believing they are worth protecting or even respecting in many instances. The question I got in drunken jest was would I kill a puppy or kill a baby. I think the real question is can we think of real situation where we would really have to do one to save the other? What I came out of this whole thought exercise was that it’s a slow progress…and we haven’t even progressed beyond the subjugation and torture of fellow human beings, whose humanity and capacity for deep emotion we should in theory be able to understand pretty well.

Even if we as a human race are only making slow progress on this front, I as an individual am making lighting fast progress on what in this context is a more frivolous topic, my current knitting project:

My meshy Phildar sweater.

The pattern is nervousing because you set up a row at the beginning, then knit your dozens of centimeters and then drop stitches….so if you screw up…it’s all over.

It all worked out for the front piece and looks pretty fantastic so far.  And the pattern has delivered in teaching me new techniques: the twisted stitch to border dropped stitches.  It really tightens the stitch and makes for some really clean edges.

The end product will not be so fast coming I fear.  But soon.

I hope my dear knitting friends aren’t too annoyed that I made you go through my rant on the progress of humanity before getting to the knitting.  Maybe you were smart and just scrolled down to the pictures.

Thanks to a lot of time at the hospital while my man was recovering from possibly the weirdest (and scariest) case of appendicitis ever (his appendix burst a couple of days before he even felt enough pain to go to the hospital, which then resulted in a 3+ hour surgery, some removal, cleaning and replacement of vital organs, and a week of recovery in the hospital) and hours in airports and airplanes to Los Angeles and back for memorial day weekend, I finished my new favorite Cabled Capecho.

As a result of the well-documented, long-standing capecho-fit saga with knitters all over the world, I was able to make mine with the advantage of some pretty effective mods. For those unfamiliar, the capecho is shown on the cover of Vogue Knitting Winter 2007 to fit pretty closely and tightly on the model. But when knitters actually took to the pattern it would turn out quite large and bunchy.

To remedy this and achieve the close-fitting look of the cover, I copied most of this blogger’s mods, which mainly consisted of using DK weight yarn and 6s (instead of 8s), and changing the 8 stitch cables into 6 stitch cables, thus reducing the perimeter of each pentagon by 10 stitches. I didn’t follow the sleeve mods though (which theoretically are important since the pentagon pattern is modified) and just went with the pattern, which seemed to have no effect. The benefit of doing this is you get a smoother transition from the cable pattern to 2×2 rib (this means not doing the final decrease in the pattern). Using these mods, the fit is pretty damn good I think. I was worried before I blocked it because it seemed a little small actually, but it now looks the way I had wanted.

I used 4.5 skeins of Lorna’s Laces Green Line DK in Hope, which is 100% organic merino wool. It’s beautiful and soft, with a lovely slight sheen. I highly recommend it and it’s a pretty decent price for the yardage.

This pattern was actually insanely fun for me. I never got bored with it and was actually kind of sad when it was over. I realized that as long as cables are involved I’m happy. One could say I am in fact *obsessed* with cables.

And so I was a little excited when I happened upon these in a little shop in Silverlake:

I’m getting into the idea of using cable patterns in non-traditional ways, like these ceramics with knit patterns. I’m curious as to how they were done — knit fabrics pressed onto wet ceramics? Wouldn’t that ruin the fabric? How sad! I guess I like fabric more than ceramics…but I did appreciate the incorporation of one medium into another in such an interesting way. It really draws attention to the textural patterns in textiles, which I think often lose out to visual patterns.

Speaking of visual patterns, Norah Gaughan has been putting up speak previews on Ravelry of her new Volume 3, in which she has some interesting interpretations of the cable, where she’s kind of doing the opposite: taking a textural pattern and turning it into a strictly visual one. I’m speaking mostly of the pattern I found the most interesting, which is her Portrait of a Cable, a fairisle pattern of a cable. I love that she does things like this and it got me thinking about my own interpretations of cables–some of which will hopefully be forthcoming. In the meantime I’ll just dream of knitting more cables.

That’s what I am.

I ordered my first French Phildar magazine, because the selections that have been translated into English are not as abundant.  And I love the new summer issue.

The thing is I speak zero French…well, I know j’mappelle Monica.  Parle vous Frances? And then I start speaking Spanish or Portuguese (badly).

But.  Thanks to this fantastic site, this article, and my own shocking genius, I translated my first French pattern for this beauty, which will be done with a lot of leftover blue-grey Rowan Purelife:

In celebration of my linguistic feat, I’ve already plotted my next project:

The catalogue is mix of 80s inspired dresses (which are cute) and huge cardigans (lots o ugliness in my opinion) and then the summery meshy stuff above.  My new-ish requirement is there have to be interesting new techniques that I haven’t done before (or know how to do) in order for me to knit it at this point.  The reason being I have enough clothes and not enough money to justify making everything I think is lovely.  I’ve also been doing a great job with my “green” yarn only challenge.  I just ordered me some Blue Sky Dyed Cotton and the new Limited Edition Malabrigo cotton, which has to last me through the next few months.

All in all, translating the pattern was much easier than I thought.  The thing is speaking knitspeak is far more important to understanding these patterns than speaking French.  In fact I’m not sure a French speaker who doesn’t speak knitting would be able to understand the pattern (like when I saw my first knitting pattern in English).  It’s just a matter of translating the abbreviations — half way through I was flying through the translation.  I only got stumped a few times, which was more a reflection of the weirdness of the pattern.  It has no shaping except for some minor decreases embedded into the stitch pattern, not even armhole shaping.  The diagram even shows 2 simple squares for the front and back.

Maybe my next challenge will be translating all the amazing Japanese patterns I know are out there.  A slightly harder task I feel…

The knitted bicycle.

Or this crocheted bicycle that I found on flickr from user jackrabbit.etsy.com:

It’s seems to be the true intersection of textiles and bicycles I’ve been searching for.

I’m relieved that I finished it in time.

This is the Medallion Shawl by Norah Gaughan from this past winter’s Vogue Knitting. It’s made on 9s with the now discontinued Rowan Linen Drape, acquired through Ebay and my first Ravelry trade, which is my new favorite thing. It’s a fantastic way to keep the possessions from piling up while still getting new things to keep me excited. The pattern calls for alpaca (I think) and smaller needles (6s I think), but I went with what I had and I wanted bigger, lacier, more summery hexagons. I’m actually really happy with it and am happy to give it to my stepmom for Mother’s Day. I did make a couple of modifications/short-cuts in that I left out the last 2 hexagons because I thought they would be too droopy tacked onto the ends and I didn’t do the crocheted edging. I thought it would actually look kind of messy since the hexagons are so loosely knitted in my version.

So, this will now be my offering to my great stepmom.

I consider myself to be pretty selfish and so I have endless admiration and wonder for those women that have assumed the most selfless position in life.

This day always makes me think back to my mother who died when I was young. Mothers are the ultimate role models and mine was and always will be a real life goddess to me: incredibly smart, skilled, talented and just lovely. She had a fabulously effective strictness and thoughtfulness in raising me and hopefully some of her strength and integrity has trickled down to me. One of my most distinct memories as a child was spending afternoons at the library with my mom cobbling together a huge pile of books to bring home. I consider myself to be endlessly blessed for that.

Happy Mother’s Day!

with Mona and Tim.

Mona got to knit. She only has 4 hexagons left before she is released from the prison of gift knitting.

Tim had to work. His prison of brief-writing is far worse, I feel.

So this was the instead-of-going-to-the-festival activity, and I have to say I was pretty pleased. I also have decided that the shared open space of the city is way underrated. I’ve been pining over houses in the area with private outdoor space and even went to look at some apartments in the neighborhood so we can move yet again (in the last 2 years I’ve moved 4 times — no joke…I was in school for most of that, but still…it’s no doubt some sort of disorder). In the meantime, I’ve been ignoring the fantastic resource that is Lincoln Park only 1 short block away. It’s got playgrounds, a makeshift dog run, beautiful mature trees to sit under and an open center square where people can sit (on these strange contraptions called benches, that in fact don’t always come with a pee-fresh scent) or fly kites. Today was the perfect day to fly kites and the perfect day for a wool festival, which together reminded me of the most memorable kite-flying experience I’ve ever had.

Uttarayan: the kite festival in Gujurat, India.

This a flickr group for photos of the festival.

Several years ago, after I graduated from college and worked like a dog to earn money, I traveled through India for 6 months with a couple of friends. It was one of those honest, completely for real life-changing experiences. As someone that had previously very uncomfortably resided somewhere between being Indian and American (and maybe still does), it kind of taught me I’d probably always be neither…or both — depending on who you talked to. Anyone with any interest in that subject of the Indian-American experience would be well-advised to read any of the works by Jhumpa Lahiri, the most famous of which is probably the Namesake. She has a new book out called Unaccustomed Earth (as in the new land on which the immigrant and his/her children steps is unaccustomed earth), which I have yet to read but hope to when it comes out in paperback.

One of the stops during the 6 months was to the home of one of my aunts in Baroda (now Vadodara), which is about 6 hours by train from Mumbai. We had already visited her before earlier in the trip, but one of my travel mates and I made a special trip out just for the kite festival. This was a last minute decision. As a result, we didn’t have train tickets. If I remember correctly, a Mumbai-Vadodara train was conveniently waiting on one of the tracks and the “line” (by which I mean clusterfuck of people) to get tickets was outrageous. So we got on in the hopes that we could just buy tickets on the train.

How do you say “shit for brains” in Hindi?

At first it was fine…it seemed too easy. We got seats in the chair car, where there are reserved seats, unlike the 2nd or 3rd class cars where people pack in so tight it defies laws of physics. The conductor even came around and kind of laughed off our little crime of trying to ride for free by actually letting us ride for free. We were just thinking about how much we loved India, when we stop at a station. And a flood of people get on the train. Including a psychotic man yelling at the top of his lungs, “GET OUT OF OUR SEATS!!!” over and over and over again. In retrospect I can understand the frustration of having tickets for a reserved coach and having some freeloading, entitled American kids take your seats. But he was frighteningly angry from the get go. We got up, only to realize that there were no seats anywhere on the train to be had and the entire train ride would be spent standing…standing packed tight in a hot train with hundreds of other people. So tight if you fainted no one would notice. Because there wouldn’t be space for you to fall or even lean differently. So tight I could have gone the entire ride suspended in the air just by the force of other bodies packed against me. The worst part was we didn’t even know the train’s schedule. Was this a “superfast” train that would get us there in 6 hours? Or a simply “fast” train that would take significantly longer.

Needless to say it was an interesting mix of being a nightmare and unbelievably hillarious. We got there in 6 hours by the grace of God (and for free I might add).

And quickly turned our attention to the kite festival, which I think is kind of a misnomer. It’s a kite war fought from the rooftops of the city. The kites are not elaborate designs, they are utilitarian weapons. The goal of each kite-wielding warrior is to “cut down” another kite, meaning you fly your kite in such a way that your kite will bring down another kite by either cutting the string of the kite or capturing the kite. My family must have bought hundreds upon hundreds of simple rhomboid kites in preparation. We had neighbors over to eat and drink and fly kites on the roof. It was amazing to see the sky full of kites and the rooftops across the city full of people in celebratory moods. Until the bandages and hand wraps came out and the blood started flowing. My cousin’s hands were bleeding!! Why? Because they coat the strings with powdered glass. Better to cut your kite with (my dear).

Amazing.

It was possible to get string that was not coated in glass, and that was what I flew my one kite with.

I am no kite-warrior.

I later told my aunt about our train experience and she was appalled. She laughed about it later, but I think her suspicions that raising kids in America turns them crazy were confirmed. All in all my friend and I both got into the competitive game of trying to capture people’s kites. I never quite got the technique down, but the event itself was such a beautiful display of citywide social interaction.

and no Mona in sight.

According to a few blogs I read, I’m missing the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. Given that it’s about an hour drive away, I feel like I’m missing an opportunity to be really irresponsible with my money.

I thought maybe today I would make it up there, but I couldn’t really get my act together.  I decided to tell myself that I couldn’t handle it. I think I probably share this attribute with a lot of people–I love to buy things, but I hate to shop. That is, I hate shopping after about an hour tops. In the past this feeling actually hasn’t extended to fabric shopping, which I could do for a VERY long time and be happy buying just a small bit of fabric.  Fabric shops are like museums to me, in fact my most favorite space in New York City is the Costume Institute at the Met and I also just found out that there’s a textile museum in DC.  But I’m not sure I have the same eye for yarn that I (think I) do with fabric. I’m still not sure how things will look knitted up, while I can have a pretty good sense of how a fabric will drape or look sewn up in a certain style. Experience has also taught me that the gravitational pull of a knitting design is way stronger than that of a particular yarn. So yarns I buy for the hell of it live forever untouched in my box o yarn unless by some stroke of luck they actually seem like they can work with a pattern I want to try out. That never happens with fabric–it’s always the opposite.

I also found that there was something that kind of irked me about the festival.  There are a few events or tents or something dedicated to lamb and sheep meat.  Duh, right? It’s a SHEEP and Wool festival.  The thing is I always forget about that element of things.  Like when I was researching wildlife management areas in Maryland and the main page I found (run by the state) was mostly focused on encouraging people to get them a hunting permit and hunt them some Maryland bear.  I was kind of incredibly shocked and appalled.  It’s possible I let the urban, liberal bubble close up around me every once in while, but hunting and the like also aren’t really a part of Indian culture…so it surprises me every once in while.

I think everyone has a line somewhere when it comes to animal cruelty/rights/welfare/whatever. For some the meat industry and hunting falls within their moral limits and for others using wool doesn’t even do that. I’m in between. I don’t really have a problem with using wool, though I completely understand the argument that animals should have agency — especially when the animal itself is presented solely as a product. I can imagine a sheep on the auction block where its value is in the flavor of its flesh and the softness of its fleece. And that makes me sad, because I think it becomes a spotlight for how we view everything, including ourselves.  I often fall into that trap of assessing my worth based on how valuable I think I am to others or how “marketable” I am (ewwww!).   But unfortunately I think every living thing on this earth is viewed to some degree by what they can offer the world — a product, an expertise, an attractive appearance, whatever. There’s just something unsettling when what you’re offering to the world has to be your life.  So that’s where I draw the line. For myself.

In any case,  I have a strong feeling that veggie/vegan knitters still enjoy the festival despite the meat offerings.  And the thing is there were a bunch of events not involving meat and not involving buying yarn that I really would have found fascinating — like the sheep shearing demonstration, or “Hands-on Basic Shepherding”, or the parade of sheep breeds!!  All in all I wish I had been able to pull it together and go see what festivals like this are really all about.  Next year maybe.  I’ll be excited to see the blog posts and pictures from those that went.

You know when I really think about it, it’s my use of wool yarn that makes me interested in sheep at all….I’m not sure I ever thought about sheep much before.

I bought more yarn.  Can’t even take my own stupid advice.

This is for the Cabled Capecho I mentioned last week. It’s Lorna’s Laces Green Line DK in Hope (or off-white).  I ordered it from Jimmy Beans Wool.  I wouldn’t normally plug an online retailer, but I’m pretty pleased with them.  I got the yarn yesterday…and the package was soaking wet.  The yarn was soaked and stained in some places, as was the pattern I had ordered too–ripped and soaked through.  So I called them today, told them that I got the package damaged, and they were kind of amazing.  I’m getting a new package in the mail with my order again and I don’t have to send the old stuff back.  I can try and use it or donate it or something, she said.  Amazing.  So I washed it and am hoping the stains come out…if not I think I could have some fabulous Etsy dyer dye it for me.  It’s kind of a sweet deal actually.  The most educational part is that in order to prevent the problem in the future I can ask them to wrap my orders in plastic in the special instructions.  I’m not so excited about asking for more plastic…but I couldn’t find the yarn anywhere else.

So the yarn.  It’s 100% organic merino and comes in DK and worsted weights.  It’s beautiful and so so soft. We’ll see how the capecho turns out but I foresee a lot of future projects using this lovely lovely yarn.  I high recommend it just by the feel and look.  And it’s 100% organic!

I also did recently frog the puff sleeve jacket I was sort of working on and made Teva Durham’s Steek Vest from Loop-d-Loop:

I knit this up in a few hours on Saturday morning with some of my Savannah Bulky on 15s.  It came out a little shorter than I wanted…but I was (and am) too lazy to do anything about that.  I love the design, but it’s not quite what I thought it would be.  The yarn is a little too “earthy” for me…no sheen to it, which I don’t like so much.  It’s super soft though so I think others would love it.

These days I’m working on another Norah project (slightly obsessed), the Medallion Shawl from this past winter’s Vogue Knitting.  It’ll be a Mother’s Day gift for my stepmom, so I’m currently on a 1 hexagon per day minimum rule.  I currently have 4 done.  11 more to go.  I’ll just make it just in time at this rate.