here's
ben
in his "christmas" sweater, which i finished today. this was the christmas where gifts showed up late, but now we're all up to speed.
this is the third sweater i've made for ben, and we've never done it from a pattern, because he's very funny about sweaters. there are things he won't tolerate that you'd think nobody would mind (bands around the hem, any kind of ribbing at the hem or cuffs) and then there are things - like a brother cadfael-style funnel neck - that seem to just make him happy. we go in with a yarn and a gauge and, like those kids' books where you pretend you are driving the story, we point our finger and say "like this and not that" and somebody writes some stuff down and i knit it. we don't always know where we are headed with that. this sweater was initially based on an old asics workout shirt that
ben
owns, which is in such bad shape that it could be mistaken for a used swiffer cloth. however, it had these interesting seams up the front and back, portrayed here with a slipped stitch.
what we would do for the neckline remained a mystery until the very last, and it's an unexpected turn. when
ben
debuted his sweater tonight out at dinner (we were celebrating his Very Big Promotion) i kept a worried eye on that collar. was it going to flip and flop? it didn't. will it in the long run? fingers crossed, it's going to settle down more or less where it is. did i mention that the entire sweater is linen? 100%. rather hard on the hands these last few months. but worth it. you can even see the luster of it in these photos. it's wonderful. i want a linen sweater now too! the weight of it, and the fabric it makes are so much more appealing to me than any other fiber.
i'm still going to keep an eye on that neck. it's very fashion-forward and original, to me, but if
ben
walked around in the costumes from the lion in winter i'd be really happy too, and i try to keep at least half an eye on the outside world, but it's all guesswork for me, where the lines are drawn out there.
ben
is confident, and loves his sweater, and states that he now "feels empowered to be dashing". (it was a VERY Big Promotion.)
our sweaters got soaking wet in lowell, massachusets. and we wore them for the rest of the afternoon, because we had no choice. we warmed up and dried out eventually, and so did our sweaters, but they were changed.
i'm glad to have been writing this log for long enough now that items i've knitted have undergone significant erosion and change. ute lemper's sleeves, due to lowell, were downright uncomfortable; ben reported some sagginess in his sweater, too (which, although mentioned on this blog, actually pre-dates it.)
i knew that where ute was concerned, i had nothing to lose, since i considered the sweater unwearable post-lowell. so i put it through the delicate cycle, and a little time in the dryer. of course it was going to felt; it's made of that rowan big (knit, wool, yarn, i can never remember the name, i can NEVER REMEMBER, stop trying to remind me, i don't care enough to try) and it was only ever a matter of time, really. the result is not bad; it's not the same sweater, but it's not bad. however, it had been my plan to make another of these sweaters in orange, and in the big (knit/wool/yarn) by rowan - it's a good orange. and now i'm more sure i'll do that, because as much as this is fine now, it's not the sweater i used to have, and i did love that sweater. it'll be nice to re-create it in it's original shape and feel. (in fact, i have to look at the color again, but am considering stranding it with some of the very goldfish-orange alchemy thin fuzzy stuff - yes, i stink at remembering what stuff is called. some of you know what i mean, because you've seen me point at it.)
the special button on this one lost one little stone in the washer/dryer process. i expected as much. expected worse, actually.
i figured ben's sweater would undergo less transformation due to the yarn with which it was made, and due to the fact that i would be a little less cavalier about messing with his. truly, all his did is snap back. his rolled stockinette sleeve cuffs are not as rolled as they were, but we have been dampening them and playing with them this morning.
i do like it when things take on their own life, and when knitting goes its own way and out of my control. it seems i have even invited this - in creating pieces that will, by their nature, continue to evolve through wear and environmental conditions. the t-shirt sweater is a good example. current works-in-progress include a linen sweater, partially because i love how linen changes (and mostly because
ben
wanted one.)
looking at previously created garments now is part of a bigger understanding that is taking hold of me in relation to my own fiber and needlework, upon which i will be reporting, at great length, soon.
knitwear isn't perdu just because it's not brand-new - i don't suppose i knit just to record it here and then throw it on the heap. i like to take a look at things a little further down the road in their lives! and here we see a very handsome man wearing a handknit sweater and a handknit hat. what is he looking for on the river? eventually, we saw it all. then i was in a david hasselhoff video!
over two years and yes, thirty(ish) t-shirts in the making (once you cut off that bottom hem, you can only cut a continuous spiral of fabric up to the armpits, so one may well refer to
it as the thirty halves-of-t-shirts sweater, but regardless, it took a long time - and a lot of t-shirts to finish).
let us dispense with the boring parts:
- i didn't do it because i wanted to "recycle" anything or because i cared about my consumerism or the environment. i bought the t-shirts brand new at a.c. moore at anywhere between $1.77 and $2.22 apiece. and i didn't even recycle the leftover armpit-to-collar bits - i threw them on top of ripley and when she was done with them i threw them away. i didn't do it to "create awareness". i did it because i wanted to see what it would feel like to make and wear a sweater knitted entirely out of t-shirts.
- i didn't do it because it was in any way groundbreaking. it's not even original. people have been knitting with torn up t-shirts for some time. i did it because i wanted to see what it would feel like to make and wear a sweater knitted entirely out of t-shirts.
- right now it's a bit stiff and kind of short, but gravity is making it longer and more supple. it's not as uncomfortable as i would have guessed. it's not really uncomfortable at all. in fact, it's... well, it's comfortable.
- it was very hard on the wrists, and i had to do much of it outside because the t-shirt strips created quite a lot of teeny little black bits which were always on my lap and anywhere i worked. and i did a lot of this this summer - at least half of it. pretty uncomfortable summer knitting! not a smart choice. but i really wanted to wear it.
the pattern i used for this was one i had used before, and is really a favorite - it's the girl from auntie poncho sweater. the one i made three-ish years ago still gets compliments and is just so comfy.
for the t-shirt sweater, i made some adjustments to the collar. it doesn't have the button closure or diagonal flap of the original, but a short-rowed collar that's low in the back and comes up high in the front - it can be turned down like a turtleneck, but it's also at perfect burrowing height, as you can sort of see here - it was hard to get a good photo, and, as usual, this sweater is black. what i found making this in particular was a reinforcement of how freeing black is to me creatively. i was so much more interested in the shape of this, and the texture, and what the fabric itself would be like - not having to think about the color just made everything else so much sharper.
i tapered the sleeves differently than the original, as well. there was no way i wanted to wear this thickness of fabric in a cuffed sleeve.
again, in this shot, all you can really see is shape, and the shape is definitely changing with every wear. in that way, this sweater seems like a continual work-in-progress, almost a thing with a life of its own, because i expect that interesting challenges will arise when pieces of the material become fatigued and tear. i have not decided how i'm going to deal with that when the time comes, but i think it won't be delicately. (i've considered just running weak portions, when they occur, through an electric serger again and again, even if it creates a flat and lumpy bit - i think that will add interesting topography.)
this last photo by the way is today's photo in my set for flickr's 365 day pool, which mac and i joined on the same day. i enjoy watching how differently our sets are turning out! it's fun to have someone to do it alongside of.
last winter, i made the girls sweaters. while ripley merely grew into hers over the course of 2005, flan showed up at our house this week with hers hanging off of her like superman's cape. it had stretched; it had been a little on the loose side to begin with.
so last night i did some nifty tucking and re-edging, and moving of buttons, and we came up with this solution.
yeah. she does get into the mood of things. flan has always been a big appreciator of sweaters. and she's older now and has kinda bony parts to her, and with all the fold-unders now accomplished in this alteration, her sweater is almost padded. it is padded, which she seems to like.
flan has, from eleven weeks of age, been a moocher of coffee and a deep, appreciative inhaler of other people's cigarette smoke. this is the kind of old lady she has turned into -- your little school chum's spooky, overly-assertive, hacking grandma, smoking virginia slims and putting nine packets of sweet n low in her coffee. and right there with her is ripley -- who, i think in flan's mind, is always playing madge the bridesmaid to flan's dame edna.
anyhoo, she's far happier with the sweater than she even was last year. she likes a snug fit. she's still got a figure worth showing off.
our family friend ted is a grandpa now. that seems a little off-kilter to me but i'm dealing with it.
my dad and i conspired to make a sweater for the new baby. i showed him the pattern and said "you have to do something."
"okay," my dad said.
"buy the stuff for this," i said, "and i'll make it."
"okay," my dad said.
we went to the yarn store and my dad chose the yarn. it took a couple of tries for him to find what he wanted. he rebuffed a few suggestions. but here we are.
as i packed up the sweater to take to ted this morning, ben sent it off with the thoughtful and heartfelt: "tell him to give it back eventually."
i didn't tell ted to do that.
the little letterpressed tag says "sweater" -- or at least is the hebrew transliteration of the english word "sweater".
i think ted's son, the father of this baby (i don't believe i've been face to face with this individual since maybe 1982 or something, at which point he was still in single digits), is a bit of a hippie, so this seemed like the right kind of garment to make. the baby's name is beren, and once he fits into this next year, maybe we'll get pictures!
tim's christmas present -- the "big" present -- is a vest. (here it is, blocking.)
this was my first steeking and it was rather eventful. may i just say, that where but rosie's yarn cellar are you going to be able to take the sweater you have made a steek on, have the owner of the store lying on the floor machine stitching it for you because you are afraid to do it yourself, while you basically loll next to her eating bonbons saying "you done yet? you done yet?" and THEN, when they let you have the fun of cutting the steek open yourself, you cut through to the back of the piece as well, where but rosie's yarn cellar will you find someone -- someone wonderful who is also an excellent short story editor -- who will mend it for you on the spot?
and tim was ignorant enough to thank me for this vest. he has always liked vests, and he's very multi-culti, and i had really hoped this one worked for him -- and, as he has just headed off to all his holiday festivities wearing it, i think we are in good shape. (the single and important button was added this morning.)
when i was a kid the only gift we ever got to open on christmas eve was one from our parents -- and it would always be new, handsewn, matching pajamas for megan and me. apparently this was the tradition in my mother's family, with her siblings, as well.
so.
ripley's sweater got finished first, since she was around to have the bottom strap fitted to her. flannery had gone back to her father's earlier in the day, quite worn out from her first 24 hours nonstop with her new baby sister.
notice the "go" buttons -- which make sense, of course, if you only put your sweater on when you have to go.
as tim commented on ripley in this sweater: "she looks like an elf shoe."
shortly after these pictures were taken, flannery and her daddy came around the corner on their own dinner time walk. flannery, being the most anthropomorphic dog ON the face of the earth, gave such an expression of "dear god, it's that little thing again, i thought i was THROUGH with this for the day," that i almost died. ripley edith, of course, was very HAPPY to see flannery.
on christmas eve morning, flan's sweater was ready as well, and we had a two-girl photo session. note the body language in flannery. who, as you might gather, is still a little standoffish about the MANIAC that has moved into her territory.
i got a puppy the week before christmas and managed to make both her and our existing dog matching sweaters. as arlo guthrie said: i'm not proud... or tired. without paxil, both dogs would have handknit lace wedding trousseaux by now.
merry christmas to you all!
on wednesday we went to
rosie's yarn cellar
so that flan could be measured -- by lisa.
the great thing about knitting for animals for xmas is that you can do it right in front of them and it really doesn't ruin the surprise.
flannery lives in a constant state of what i guess you could call "surprise", anyway.
aka the behemoth, aka the money pit. i don't think anything's ever taken me longer to knit, but i do love it. it's a big, heavy garment, and making it in mulitple panels and seaming with a three-needle bindoff helps distribute the weight. did i mention that grace and lisa at
rosie's yarn cellar
basically invented this pattern as i went along? they could probably build a house blindfolded.
hard to get good photos of it. it expressed itself more as a lack in the photos of our halloween costumes, and you can't much see the sequins in the daytime, but daytime is the best time to get a picture of it.
when is the best time to wear it, other than halloween? i've already had a wonderful opportunity and taken it to its fullest. with what we thought was great kindness and sacrifice, last friday night we took my dad and loretta to see michael feinstein and jane monheit at the kimmel. (early christmas gift). i am a complete convert now to michael feinstein, after years of only hearing him blaring out of my father's home as we drove up in our car.
it was a fabulous, amazing show and MORE people should have been wearing long, swingy, handknitted, sequined, mandarin jackets -- but believe me, those of us who were felt they were on stage with feinstein himself (and felt better dressed than ms. monheit, who looked a little awkward and off-the-rack. then again it is my tendency to hold all chanteuses up against diana krall, who is a goddess, and who by comparison makes jane monheit look like miss piggy.)
so, here is my sweater -- not against the backdrop of macerated brazilian rainforest that is our lovely kimmel center, but against the field across the street from our house, where flannery was running this morning. (there's no better feeling than when someone in the park approaches your ten and a half year-old dog and asks, "is she a puppy?")
i'm knitting.
when i'm not printing on the handpress, spinning, inflicting emotional torture on praying mantids, selling tickets to the holiday freaking pops, eating soft serve while spying on randall "tex" cobb, packaging up knitting tarot t-shirts, and writing --
i'm knitting.
what's this? it's a mystery wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a vest. it's a gaugeless wonder made entirely of scraps and i haven't spent a penny on it! keep watching for more info!
oh yeah. you thought. you thought i was some fly-by-night who was going to give up her knitting juuuuuuuuust because a printing press was in the living room.
ha ha.
but, because of all the ink i've been handling, not to mention the perverse number of black jellybeans and pieces of "lucky country" licorice i have been consuming, i've decided to work on some knitting for me -- which, of course, means something that is black.
see here a swatch for a barbara walker design, a "wrought-iron" look in berroco softtwist bulky. well, try to see. this yarn is shiny and it's probably not super-best for definition in charted designs, although not prohibitively bad. it is harder to take a picture of than wool is, though...
and see here, berroco softtwist stranded with, yes, vittadini "fiora". those lovely little sequin-constellations are like caviar, no? and not a single one falls off, ever, it seems.
it's really strange how the softtwist, in both cases, takes a poor picture. it also tends to split a little, and needs to be watched, but other than that, it's a very sensuous project. this sweater is going to be downright spongy, it's so soft and thick. pass the licorice nibs!
today i turned 34. four years ago, when i turned 30, i had just finished knitting myself a cuff-to-cuff batwing sweater. which i loved then, and love now. but the fact was, the sleeves were a tiny bit short. always were. and it always bugged me.
in part, i think it's the whole batwing construction that makes you need a little more sleeve than you think. because none of it clings to your arm. it rides up. and so, i had this sweater that i loved, and that i wore often, but always had to wear something underneath of (like i did last year), so i didn't feel like i had crazy, overgrown, lycanthropic arms.
last week, i decided to finally take the situation in hand.
the original sweater was made in a mission falls superwash, but i had fantastic success substituting "bazic" wool by, i think, cascade. virtually unnoticable. and, as you may now see (there weren't many picture taking opportunities today), i have brand new cuffs on my beloved old sweater!
what a nice birthday, by the way. i didn't do anything out of the ordinary, but i had a very nice time not doing anything out of the ordinary, and i realize, that's because i like my life. a lot. even on mondays. i also ended up with a lot of gift certificate cash for rosie's yarn cellar . and a gift cert to amazon.com from my sister. actually, ben is the only person who dared to choose a gift for me. (he got me a selection of handmade, acid-free, japanese printing papers, to use with the press.)
tonight we went out for oysters, and, ben is in the kitchen right now, making my birthday "cake". i have requested the lemon filling out of a lemon meringue pie. not the meringue, and not the crust, just the yellow part, hot, and in a bowl.
i think it's things like that that make my family prefer to get me gift certificates. when anybody asks "what would you like?" it's always an answer like the lemon filling one. i sound like yoko ono. nobody wants to bother with me.
anyway, like the sweater, a little older, a lot more comfortable.
flannery in manos del uruguay's special frito-scented yarn. or maybe that is something flannery brought to the sweater all on her own.
as you can imagine, it's easy to create a custom fit for a dog who has no legs.
i have never been one for "naming" sweaters. probably because i don't design them. maybe the naming of sweaters is supposed to be the luxury of those who do design them.
someone else designed this sweater -- someone clever. someone who has a lot of interesting things to say about intellectual property law, which i find fascinating. this is the girl from auntie poncho sweater, but i call my sweater (and only mine), "ute lemper".
during the ten days or so it took to whip this up, i saw ute lemper sing kurt weill's seven deadly sins with the philadelphia orchestra. it is one of the perks of my job, to scoot over half a block to the kimmel center and see this kind of thing for free, sometimes on a friday afternoon at two, such as i did on this day. when ute began to sing, and jerk around sexily, i not only thought when women like this exist, how the hell do troglodytes like britney spears stand a chance?
i also thought about the sweater i was making. the girl from auntie poncho sweater. deceptively simple in design, i knew already that i would be making more than one, as the sweater could be re-interpreted and made new again and again, much as ute could make a career out of re-nuancing all those seedy berlin cabaret numbers.
i love this sweater. i made it in rowan's "big wool", so it weighs roughly an ounce. i changed the neck ribbing slightly, and i did three-needle bindoffs on the seams. other than that, i stuck to the pattern, which features good solid craftsmanship in behind-the-scenes steps that make for a longer-lasting garment: shoulder and neck seams reinforced with grosgrain ribbon, and the fancy shank button you see on the collar is actually attached to a flat button on the inside. both of these features take stress of of the actual knit fabric.
i like the big fancy button i've put up on the high left side, right where queen elizabeth tends to wear her brooches. when i went into the notions store where there was a wall full of buttons on display, i chose this one and was informed that not only was it the second-most expensive button in the whole store -- it was the only one left. that was rather sally bowles of me, wasn't it?
and now, a little more about the ute lemper performance. friday's two o'clock matinees are for the retired set, for the most part. you see a lot of fur coats and walkers. i sat next to an old woman in a full-length fur and proper hat. actually, i got there first, and she still managed to make it feel like it was me who was sitting next to her.
at first she seemed either offended by my presence or just anticipatory of what i might do for her now that i was there. but shortly into the piece, i got the distinct feeling that she found me acceptable.
when ute began to sing about "avarice", the woman next to me started to tap her hand against her program in time to the music. large knobby jewelry clanked on her knuckles. she leaned into me, pointing to "AVARICE" in the program notes, then looked at me and beamed. this was apparently our song.
when i told ben this story later, he said he pictured little old women all over the hall, holding little pennants like you see at football games, with various of the seven deadly sins on them. GO SLOTH!
fancy schmancy. this sweater makes me want to wear lipstick.
finished juuuuust under the wire, juuuuuuust close enough to keep things interesting...
i started this in april, and the custom-plied silk from habu textiles was very pleasant to knit. the shawl collar, according to vogue knitting, should have been accomplished with one simple, long rectangle; but i think, in part due to the unyielding nature of the silk, we had to go with some short rows when we were nearly finished.
ben says it's very comfortable. we're figuring the waist and cuffs will "ride down with wear", as mr. humphries would say. (but in the case of a silk sweater, it should be true.)
a birthday surprise long in the making. from habu textiles , i ordered one cone each of four combinations of three-ply silk that i had custom plied according to color specification. as you see, the colors are all pretty much "ben" specific: blue-grey, grey-blue, bluey-grey-blue... i got one browney-green in there too. takako at habu was so helpful, and just as excited about the project as i am! and, i got back some of my $20 that i had spent on the sample book when i ordered the yarn! ben was very happy with his gift, which he received during his birthday dinner. when we got home, i found him at the kitchen table looking at his swatches, having a hard time choosing. i thought i had it pegged weeks ago, but it turns out i was wrong -- you see here the winning swatch, and the girls at the yarn store agreed, it's going to be lovely on the dark and handsome recipient. we took some measurements and i have e-mailed habu with my requirements (there are going to be some VERY tired silkworms in japan soon), and away we go....
... when there is a totally accidental pile of stuff on a kitchen stool, and you realize that you've knit every stitch of it.
on my 33rd birthday, wearing the cuff-to-cuff knit batwing sweater i made for myself when i turned 30. standing in the goat barn at silver maple farm.
this is the first sweater i made for ben. when he was in paris, i airmailed him the swatch for it (it crossed in the mail no doubt with the jacques brel and murray head cd's he was sending me.) i worked hard on it last summer and autumn, because i wanted him to have it for thanksgiving. success! and here he is in it again, this weekend at the shore. i am continually pleased at how well it looks on him.
this was made with leftover manos del uruguay yarn, and semi-felted in the dryer. felting is good for dog sweaters -- it's harder for them to get their nails caught in a stitch and make a snag. flan was trying this on in the hottest weeks of this summer! soooooooooo good is flanny!