who is this adorable superhero on the lookout for jewish trouble wherever it may strike? and, more importantly - how does he carry his homemade lunch?
i knit ben a lunchbag out of plastic shopping bags. what to say, what to say. we all know i've done similar things, both bigger and smaller. i knew i wanted to do it; i like how the end result looks, and do look forward to doing "maintenance" on it, as i have a new fascination with what happens to knitting when it starts to destruct or erode. but even with the at-home pit crew, it's not a particularly practical bag. what if something spills in it? a little pasta sauce, or a little kimchee? this thing is all crevasses. so he's actually still wrapping up his lunch in a plastic bag (the type of which this bag is constructed) and then putting it in here.
i won't lie to you; i don't really see the point. also, it was unpleasant to knit with the plastic bags. surprise! it was unpleasant. again. it also won't be the last time i do it, i bet, because i DO like the effect. and so did ben!
the proportions of this bag are based on a nice one he had been carrying lunches in for a while, and because i noticed he liked it so much, naturally, i took it away from him to use as a model. and, naturally, he never really went looking for it. he was very surprised by this gift, and it has, apparently, been deemed the Best. Gift. Ever. by his co-workers.
that's a mouthful of a title, for a convergence of ideas that conspired to become this little korean-style bag - a jumeoni, a little pocket-sized, personal-items sac worn underneath a hanbok. this is from the pattern entitled "folds of function" in vicki square's folk bags and it's the second time i've used it; the first was for a tarot card bag for my handmade trinity doughtnuts tarot deck.
this project is really a "study" if you will for a larger project using the same yarn (koigu) and the same inspiration - korean video artist nam june paik, and specifically his video arbor which is here in philadelphia. the combination of television screens and rampanly overgrown wisteria are being expressed in both projects.
this is a small token of thanks to chunghie lee, for all the time she spent on the telephone and in e-mail with me while i was writing a feature about her for korean quarterly. the bigger nam june paik video arbor-inspired project will remain here, for home use, but it's a long way from photographable.
i have been wanting to try that two-end knitting dealie and this was my practice swatch. once i realized you had to do two-end knitting in the round -- or go insane -- i was actually kind of pleased, because then my swatch could immediately become something of use to me. i have a wedding to attend in october and needed a little envelope bag to carry (even i know that an army navy shoulder bag, or a bag knitted out of contractor trash bags, isn't appropriate for a wedding.)
do click on the image to enlarge it; you can see some nice detail and get a feel for how two-end knitting does look different from just making a pattern stitch with knit and purl stitches.
also exciting: check posts in the coming week or so and do notice what ought to be improved images. ben has been five years with his company and last night was given an anniversary gift of a VERY slick, very tiny digital camera that has 14 times the resolution of the one we have now -- plus an HP printer/flatbed fax/ scanner/copier. thank you ben's company!!
the new camera will easily fit into my new little "dress up" bag to take to the wedding. yay!
and as for two-end knitting, i'm very interested. the next step is doing it with two colors. stay tuned.
saving the best for last, i have finished the fourth knitted tarot bag, to hold the fourth and final deck i own -- the trinity doughtnuts tarot deck, which i made. it was a collage project, and very low-end on the talent side. i am not a designer. i am not an artist. and this took me five years: to figure out what certain cards "meant" to me, and to collect and arrange images, and to make the physical cards, and to write the texts for each card, and to knit the bag.
the cards themselves are sort of funnily-shaped and thick. the bag is from the "folk bags" book by v. square -- it's the little korean-style one. other than skipping the overstitched design, it's pretty much by the book, and it holds the deck really well. it's hard to see much "detail" here, but it's a plain black bag, with a little red on the loopy drawstring cord.
the two other tarot decks for which i am responsible -- the 80s tarot and knitting tarot -- do not have knitted bags yet, since neither of them exist physically. but we're getting there.
the trinity doughnuts tarot is now only eight card texts short of being "complete" online, and i do invite everyone to have a look. i believe i will probably finish it this week. i also urge everyone to, at some point in their lives, take five years to complete a project -- a project that they can't really sell or mass-produce, because it is so personalized. take five years, and make something for yourself, that helps you better understand the world. it is an unmatched feeling.
here's a lovely little thunderstorm of a bag. it's made from two selections of handspun (not my own, some i got in a trade) and something from noro, called... i don't know what they call this yarn, much less what they call this color. i would call this color "gang-banged at the all-ages show", but that's why no one will hire me to name yarn colors. the powers that struggle to be would probably call it "crème cassis" or something. let's compromise and call it "crème cassius clay."
point being, i have finished a bag that can hold my stevee postman's cosmic tribe tarot deck, by far my most used deck. i had the delight of corresponding with stevee about five years ago when i was writing about his deck for the newsletter of the tarot special interest group of mensa international. out of any commercial tarot deck i have ever owned, this one is by far the most special -- and it gets results!
here's a version of vicki square's "small origami bag" from folk bags. mine doesn't have a strap and is in stockinette rather than seed stitch. it's made with some hemp and natural silk i plied last summer, then tried to make a moebius with, then ripped out and salvaged. the yarn now has a nice distressed look, and i wanted to use that in a bag that would get a lot of use, as the carry-around for my "everyday" tarot deck.
the deck fits in the bag, but it just doesn't wear it well. love the bag, love the deck, but they're not going to have anything to do with each other.
what to do? just wait for the right thing to happen.
update: it's a perfect sunglasses case!
again, jacob and jasmine of ex libris anonymous have gone far beyond the call of duty and sent me, just out of niceness, this handsome velcro boy george wallet. (pictured here with sweet potatoes.)
in an enclosed note, either jacob or jasmine (who seem to be an indivisible entity -- i cannot really tell who it is who sends me notes and e mails, whether it is both of them or one of them) writes: "do you ever think about what folks in malasia, who manufacture this stuff, must think of americans?"
i don't know what they think of americans, but i think i might know a teeny, tiny fraction of how they feel...
...perhaps it is how i feel when i am whipping out these little grocery-bag wallets. you've seen 'em before: but they do make an excellent spur-of-the-moment handmade gift. as you see, adding a few extras is always a good idea as well. particularly in this case. i think it's good for the family with the printing press to be friendly with the family with the bindary -- it's so frontierish.
we mailed off hanukkah gifts this week, including a felted bowl each for ben's parents, and for his sister kim.
i gave kim the one i had been saving since earlier this year: in my mind, she's "green". and ben's parents are "pinky purple". and because no one corrects me, they may continue to get gifts in these hues for some time to come.
kim's bowl contains treats for her dog daniel, as well as funky magnets and a gift card to the new steven starr restaurant EL VEZ. the parents' bowl has a candle and a jar of sea glass pieces -- ben's mother does mosaic work. each bowl contains bags of ben's infamous homemade caramels.
it seems odd that we mailed both packages and received phone calls more or less... instantaneously. apparently, sometimes, it only takes THREE HOURS for a holiday package to go from the post office to its recipient. we are still trying to figure that out.
i'm starting to want to make some bowls like this for our place, too! wouldn't a whole shelf of them look wonderful?
when one part of my brain said, "it's time to make another tarot bag," another part of my brain said, "go nuts." 
i was teaching myself mitered squares as i went, and then also had a nice big square button to put to good use. then a little crochet around the edges. used up lots of odds and ends and it's a good home for my "el teddy tarot" -- a deck i don't use much but really like nonetheless.
here is a curiosity-born precursor to the "big" project i have in mind for that copper-patina handspun of mine. this is a felted bowl, made with my somewhat labile (and unfelted) singles. i threw it right in the washing machine and even let it go through the spin cycle. the white that rose up out of the felting process was not so apparent to me when i swatched and felted previously. but i'm okay with it.
i had been wanting to make bowls and open vessels for some time, and had been asking around, but no one had heard of any specific "patterns" for such. then i stumbled across a post on another knitting blog that addressed felted bowls as discussed in a recent issue of "spin-off". i didn't buy the magazine, but i loved the bowls i saw in this particular post, and took away from it an idea that i surely could have used during the disappointing days of making shuler and zooey's felted cat "basket": a square bottom is better than a round bottom when you want something to have sides that stand up.
utilizing this knowledge, i knit a square, random in size. then i picked up stitches around its four sides, without even bothering to count, and worked in the round. near the top edge i decreased on K rows: once every five stitches (then purled a row), then once every ten stitches (then purled a row), then did a double decrease the whole way around and bound it off.
there is no question, that straight upon pulling it out of the washer, i did have something that would have easily doubled as a hat. and this knowledge, too, i believe i will utilize. this just isn't my color.
as it stood, i turned down the edge to give it a tighter lip and sewed on some "button pie" buttons that look like triangles of sea glass. i used colored embroidery floss to sew these on. i think it looks lovely, and i think it will be a gift come holiday time -- i have a few individuals in mind, it's just a matter of choosing. it is a shallow bowl, but perfect for holding: bananas, lemons, pinecones, soaps, mail, stamps, postcards, candy, dog biscuits, buttons, cat toys, etc....
i got a lot of learning out of this one little off the cuff project!
i use perhaps four different tarot decks for readings. i am tired of years and years of carrying them around with a hair elastic around them! so i have begun knitting bags. here we have, again, the combination of "secret stash" handspun and "button pie" button. it's a combo that is working for me. inside of this bag is the highly endorsed-by-me tarot de paris.
one more picture of the bag. partially because kathy (who still has the distinction of being the only person i know told to never-ever-ever visit a certain blog again, because she wasn't welcome there) said i needed a "better" picture of it. well here. now it's next to some flowers. better?
and partially because i made one little further adaptation, probably hard to see here. i took the change purse, and attached it to the inside of the bag itself with an "umbilical cord" (says ben) of i-cord made of the same type of plastic.
this bag had its maiden voyage on sunday and i tell you, it is popular. people are offering to buy it right off of my shoulder. i disagree with what people tend to think will be its strong points:
"it will last forever!" no, the plastic tears, and in fact, it tears more easily under slow, gentle pressure than it does when you actually attempt to rip it. but this doesn't bother me. so far, it is still intact and strong, but if it ever does need a spot repair, i think it will be fun to weave in more -- and possibly different -- bags to strengthen it. it gives it an organic feel.
"it is going to be so easy to keep clean!" no, it is full of nooks and crannies that will probably never, ever get dry if they ever, ever get wet. it could be a potential cheese factory, this bag.
but, for now, it's cheese-free and tear-free, and i love it.
i have decided that my new method of carrying around my notebook, knitting, et cetera, will be six -- maybe seven -- large black contractor trash bags.
i am tempted to call this my "summer" bag. but i don't have new accessories for the seasons -- i don't even really have summer versus winter socks, much less bags. anyway, yes, i knitted it out of six to seven large black contractor trash bags. you cut the bottom seam off and just cut in a spiral to get one continuous piece of "yarn" out of the bag.
i told a few people i was doing this, and was greeted each time with a withering, why? well, let's see. it wasn't because i didn't want a bag made out of black plastic. it wasn't because i hated the way it was turning out. it was because i wanted what i saw in my head and i made it.
was it fun? not really.
i am reminded of being in a knitting store recently where some shoppers were passing around a new novelty yarn which had a funny, funky texture. as each person passed it to the next, the reaction to touching it grew more and more extreme. it was finally as though they were playing hot potato. if any of those people had tried to knit a bag out of trash bags (and i understand, they wouldn't), blood would probably pour out of their eyes. i like what i like too, and there are things i turn my nose up at, but the princess-and-the-pea attitude about what you can and can't bear to knit with would only shoot me in the foot.
like the pearl buttons? a pair of clip earrings that always hurt.
i made a little matching changepurse, too. and
ben
gave me a strap off of an old camera case, which we attached with hardware from home depot. i reinforced the stitches around the snapping metal bits on the sides, and put some black plastic mesh in the bottom, so the bag keeps its shape a little better.
if i do keep knitting these, i probably won't keep posting them. but this has been my CNN-watching knitting since the war started. this one is made entirely out of bags from target, and is smaller than the other one (the other one was almost but not quite big enough to hold a CD - this one is much more change-purse sized.)
clearly, today was not going to be an average day.
i didn't have any writing in me. it rained here, so i didn't want to go anywhere at all. i had the tv on all day, on CNN, watching us bomb baghdad. and from nine or so in the morning until about four, i made: moroccan preserved lemons, a big pan of chili, and this.
this is a little change purse knitted out of four and a half plastic grocery bags from whole foods. if you cut off the bottom seam and the handles, you can cut, spirally, a single unbroken strand from an entire bag.
no big mystery to this. i cast on 18 stitches and knitted in garter stitch until the thing was, maybe 8 or 9 inches -- more or less a square. to decrease for the envelope flap, i used the following formula over four rows: row one: ssk, knit to end. row two: knit. row three: knit to last two stitches, k2tog. row four: knit. repeat until you have 10 stitches, then, on the row in which 10 are knit even, bind off the center two. on the following row (in which you will be decreasing again), cast on the two bound-off stitches. that's your buttonhole. keep decreasing until you're down to one, then slip your tail through.
i sewed the button on with the plastic as well; the button is one that just fell off of a jacket. (i truly feel a plastic button, particularly an unloved one, keeps with the mood). sew up the sides vertically, again, with the same plastic "yarn".
"year of selfish knitting" or no, i may give this one away at the office.