Girls and Flexibility

Awaiting stitching and a ribbed neck

Almost done with Marly's navy blue continuous cable sweater, and as I was finishing the sleeve saddles, I found myself wondering why anything for kids is made from the bottom up instead of top down.
I've put a lot of work--knitting, unravelling, reknitting, counting, sewing--into this sweater, yet it will just take one growth spurt to make it obsolete (maybe two, since I've made it big).
Is that the origin of 3/4-length sleeves and crop tops? Not fashion, but just a little leeway to keep wearing favorite items. And why do I find capri pants totally okay for my girl, but wince when my boy won't give up his favorite pants which now hit him above the ankle?
Since I started buying clothes for my kids, I have marveled at the difference between clothes for boys and girls. Remember the mom who posted about Target's shorts selection?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephanie-giese/targets-response-to-my-calling-out-their-girls-clothing-problem_b_5923274.html
True as ever!

Version 1 finished, now for Nightbird 2.0

As I whizzed through the last section of the beautiful lace shawl/scarf last week, I kept asking myself how much size it could possibly gain through blocking.

   The answer: quite a bit, and it looks lovely and feels incredibly soft
. . . but it's pretty tiny for a wrap. On further reflection I realize that what I have made is a shawlette.

Totally covers your shoulders

But don't try to fasten it in front

It was fun to knit, though, and I'm still so touched by Teresa's enthusiasm at being a contributor to the Silent Auction, so rather than rack my brain for another design, I'm going to knit Wings for Nightbird (link) again, this time in this lovely dark blue cotton yarn that I bought for Marly's continuous cable sweater (almost done, really).

The front's nearly done, too.

I've been working on this sweater since Spring, and though every time I have to make five stitches with the not-nearly-as-stretchy-as-animal-fiber cotton yarn, it's a nasty struggle, I have come to love the pattern overall,

and since I wasn't really (at all) knitting to the suggested gauge, it should fit her for a few years to come. I've made Ian a sweater from Continuous Cables, too, and I love the wayMelissa Leapman designs and combines cables. The necks, not so much, but I think now that I've had two necks go awry I'm thinking it might have something to do with the sweater design. Yes, beginnings and endings are always the trickiest part.
A little more detail: I knitted both sleeves at once, and stopped around where I thought the saddle would start. Then I knitted the back, and then I knitted the front way with a 20-row frogging session when I misremembered the armhole shaping point. Then, I went back to the sleeves, bound off, and started the piecing together, at which point I found that the back was about 10 rows too short. Knowing that, I unbound the binding off for the back and am adding those rows, then I'll do both sleeve saddles, sewing one down as I go so that I get the correct length, and then I'll fix the front.
Oh yeah, totally almost done.

Shawl continues apace, blissfully

The Wings for Nightbird shawl is starting to take shape, and my six-year-old ball of lace yarn so far seems indefatigable. Of course, it won't look like a beautiful lace shawl* until it's blocked, and that's pretty far in the future, but I've only got about 4 rows until I could make the first big decrease (from 293 to 149). But, since Teresa explicitly advises "If you want a longer and bigger wing you can repeat more rows of chart A," I'm going to keep going for more like 10 rows, or four subway rides.

A few times as the elevated train rumbles through the Bronx and the sunlight streams through the window, it has changed the color of the yarn completely, so that the dull purple mixed with gold turns to bright indigo, almost royal blue. I'm not sure my iPhone can capture it, but I'll try tomorrow.
Besides the warm sun on my shoulder and the relative comfort of knowing I'll be sitting for almost the whole trip home (since I get on so near to the end of the line), I've really been enjoying two audiobooks. They're both so good, yet so different, that I'm torn between them.
The first (in order of Overdrive download), is Charles Duhigg's Smarter, Better, Faster. I was so delighted by the first book of his I read, The Power of Habit, that I copied out some of his tips.
Namely, to have a chance of breaking a bothersome habit, one must carefully note these five factors:

• Location: Where are you? 
• Time: What time is it? 
• Emotional State: What’s your emotional state? 
• Other People: Who else is around?
• Immediately Preceding Action: What action preceded the urge?

Since then I've read about a dozen more books on psychology and motivation, and going back to Duhigg's words makes me realize the special and superior quality of his writing.
The other equally compelling work transports me from one of the world's largest cities to a tiny village in rural Quebec inhabited by eccentric runaways from big-city Montreal. In May, a book club friend introduced me to Louise Penny's wonderful Inspector Gamache series with the most recent installment, A Great Reckoning (#12), and I have been filling in the blanks ever since. I disagree with a snippet I saw on Goodreads about needing to go in order--I've been having a grand time filling in gaps, and I'm now in the thick of Book 9, How the Light Gets In, and I'm enjoying having no idea how Gamache and his (former and present) colleagues can turn their dire situation around, yet knowing that they will.
*Best description of the transformative power of blocking I've ever read is in this book, by the one and only Yarn Harlot.

Casting On the Right Way

I was so excited to begin the Nightbird shawl that I ended up spending approximately two hours (majority of my round-trip commute) casting on. I wanted a nice, loose edge, so I started with the backward loop. Without any stitch markers, I painstakingly counted to 293, then counted one more time. Unfortunately, when I started trying to knit into those backward loops, in fingering yarn, on a size four interchangeable needle, things got ugly. About 100 stitches in, I decided to scrap the whole thing and go with a crocheted cast on (some people only use this for provisional cast-ons, but I like how it looks. Out of the many tutorials, I like the pictures, colors, and instructions in this one.
Again, though, with no markers, I had to intensely concentrate on counting by 1s all the way to 293.I lost count around 180 and winged it till I thought I was about 10 over, then counted by 3s and decided I had the right number. With my newer, secure stitches, I knit one row, still counting every stitch, and discovered I was just one off. I easily knit two together at the first end of the lace pattern, and I was off and running . . . (YO, K4, K3tog, K4, YO, K1 and on and on and on)

Of course, one project isn't nearly enough, so I decided to cast on an adorable sock yarn baby hat, using a circular needle instead of double points, and casting on 96 (with no markers--so self-defeating). The 4 border rows seemed fine, but once I started the eyelets, I was shocked to find out I had only cast on 86--off by 10!

The proper/smart/non-stubborn way to cast on:
If you like counting by 2s and have lots of markers
K20, PM (knit around 20, count to make sure, and when place the marker at exactly 20)
OR
if you really enjoy counting by 3s (I sing to myself) and can find slightly fewer markers
K30, PM (knit around 30, count to make sure, and when place the marker at exactly 30)

If you operate this way, losing count is super-low stakes, and you get the satisfaction of knowing you won't get any nasty surprises later.
I'm about to start knitting on this again, but in the interim I whipped out this intensely satisfying wool baby hat on size 7 DPNs in good old Wool of the Andes Worsted.
Here's the blocking--should be ready to go by tomorrow.


*Both the baby hats (blue and orange) are from One-Skein Wonders for Babies which I was able to download straight to my tablet or view in a browser through the Brooklyn Public Library's boss knitting eBook collection.

Knitting together a community

For the past several years, I've had the honor and super-fun task of producing a hand-knit item for our school's silent auction. I started with a modified pi shawl straight fromElizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac, then got really ambitious and made a Knit, Swirl jacket. Bearing in mind that I was making something from an established, published pattern, I reached out to Sandra McIver, and was rewarded not only with permission, but with an autographed bookplate and several promotional postcards.

In 2013, I spent the long high school search process (especially the auditions) working on a rectangular shawl of my own design that incorporated a lozenge pattern from the Joy of Sox, then in 2014 did two disparate items (teal cowl and small magenta silk, heart-shaped shawl). Last year, my first fall with three kids in three different schools, I kept it simple with handwarmers, a scarf, and a cowl that all incorporated a similar cabled design and were all in the same beautiful blue-green yarn (they weren't meant to be sold together, but what the heck)
.
This year, with the commute to Lehman offering a lot more knitting time, I wanted to make a beautiful lace shawl, and I was browsing for patterns just as the Deep Fall Knitty issue went live. Wings for Nightbird jumped out at me, as much for all the variations featured as for the charming story.
Since I know knitting designers work hard and it's discouraging to have their patterns copied willy-nilly, I shot off an e-mail to Teresa, the pattern's creator, telling her my plans.
I received her sweet reply greenlighting my project this morning,
Excerpt:
That is so wonderful, totally OK with it! 

Actually not just OK, it's so honorable ^^ 

Thank you for sharing your significant plan with me Maria!!! 

I can't wait for auction day! :)
so I can now get ready to cast on.
I've got two lovely lace-weight yarns, both in my stash for years, and though I originally hoped to do the entire shawl in the variegated, I think the top bit could be a creamy white and still look classy. If it seems strange, I also have a lovely brown cashmere laceweight, but part of the appeal of going with someone else's design was to not have to tweak it, much. The bottom chart will be in the variegated, and we'll see where we go from there.
Now, to cast on 293 stitches.

Finishing the Hat (not nearly as momentous as it sounds, but a good start)

So the first week of my internship combined with the first (half) week of school, plus first time back at karate for the kids, and a book club meeting had me almost comatose by Friday evening, but this Saturday morning everything seems fresh and new. (I'm the only one up yet, and I'm thinking about trying a brand new breakfast recipe

or I may just fall back on our tried-and-true French toast.

Just thinking about that whirlwind makes me smile. The internship takes time (amazing time wherein I'm relearning how to work in a workplace with colleagues and about library science in action), but it also gives the gift of time, in the form of a 1.25 hour commute each way,mostly on the 4 train, and often sitting down. On Friday morning I even got to have a knitting conversation with a fellow passenger ("I used to knit . . . a doctor recommended it for relaxation . . . I hated finishing; I made a scarf and I could never finish it" but she seemed interested in picking it back up.) Hopefully she can go to a knitting circle at a local library. There are so many to choose from at NYPL.)
As we chatted, I was able to complete my variation on the Helix Hat (started last week) described in Circular Knitting Workshop (p.130 in my edition),

with only a few bumps along the way. I'm so used to knitting in intarsia, that I was convinced I needed to pick up from the bottom or wrap around when I changed colors, but it only took about 10 rows for me to notice that wasn't quite working:

Once I stopped doing anything, the material became miraculously smooth, but from the outside it's really a minor blip.

Maybe next time I'll read the directions a little more closely instead of figuring I already know what to do. Coincidentally, or not, exactly why I rushed to the wrong book club location Thursday night. Just a little closer reading could have saved me a teen-minute speedwalk in 90-degree heat. On the other hand, Brooklyn Heights is lovely and sweating gives your body a chance to work out impurities.

What's changed?

Although more than a year has passed since I've even looked at this blog, I'm still exploring this time-management game called life. Although the kids are spending a lot more time on their own (wait till next week, when they're actually in elementary, middle, and high school every weekday), I've added school for me, and an additional life goal--being a librarian!
I came up to New York in the first place because I knew that in order for my life to have meaning, I needed to be involved with books and publishing. Back when I was 22, I thought that meant being an editor in a traditional publishing house, and although it didn't take me long to figure out that I didn't actually want the pressure of being the one to pick the winners and losers, I had a pretty good run of proofreading and copyediting.
I tried to walk away from that (freelance) job in 2006 (went so far as to give away my red pencils), but I couldn't yet see what I was meant to do instead, so I fell back into the comfortable(?) rhythm of receive job, complete job, wait on pins and needles for next job.
In 2014, I managed to walk away for good, mostly, and only then could I see my way to the next chapter. In Summer of 2015, I started the Syracuse iSchool MLIS program, and I'm now almost halfway through, on my way towards a life of reading, recommending, shelving, and helping my community not only with books but with a whole world of information needs and aspirations. Being a librarian encompasses so much more than I imagined.
Along with part-time online graduate classes and getting to visit more and cooler libraries than I'd ever imagined, I still love my hobbies: Christmas sweaters, nightgowns, dance costumes, skirts, and Craftsy cooking classes on everything from sauce and piecrust techniques to empanadas and Indian food. Here's a snapshot of some of my awesome kitchen gadgets

(tortilla press for dumplings, pasta machine for pasta).
One aspect of being an information specialist (and grad school, and life) that I've got to embrace is sharing my opinions in written form, so my fall resolution (more useful than New Year's, I hope), is to post about my hobbies here, and about more professional stuff over at our family Web site--link TK).
Shooting for once a week, and my next topic will be the Textile Arts Center, which is every bit as wonderful as I envisioned, and then some.

Good-bye, old friend

My mom loved T-shirts (and sweatshirts). As a tween (just kidding, when I was 11 there was no such thing as a tween), I wore T-shirt dresses, and once my mom found out about T-shirt quilts, she was determined to make one.

Not one to sit on her hands, even though she was mostly housebound, she took a trip to the local Craft chain (Michael's) and bought herself a sewing machine.

After sewing one pillow, she realized that sewing jersey material on a midline sewing machine with no walking foot, is a recipe for headaches. She boxed her new machine right back up and asked me if I would like it. For some reason, although I was a simple knitter and crocheter and was extremely intimidated by the idea of a machine that plugged into the wall and went faster than the human hand, I said yes. 

When I was expecting my second child (eleven years ago!), my mom wanted to get me something special for my 30th birthday. I asked her for something completely random and totally outside my comfort zone, which I would never get for myself--a one-night sewing class at the Make Workshop in Manhattan. The people were wonderful, they explained the machines well, and I made a tiny, unlined tote bag out of fabric scraps. My sewing career then went dormant for another seven years, through the birth of child number three and our move to a new apartment (we took that machine along though, still in its original packaging).

Finally, shortly before my youngest started school, I made a (second) New Year's resolution to get the machine out of the box and start using it. Though my mom passed away in 2009, using what she had given me made me feel as if I were finally fulfilling a promise. Some projects have been more successful than others, but my Euro-Pro Shark has carried me through Easter dresses, nightgowns, peasant skirts, dance costumes, and cushion covers. I've even had the joy of watching my fourteen-year-old unleash her own crafty side to make over a dozen scrunchies for holiday gifts for high school friends.

It sounds pretty rosy, but as I progress on my sewing journey, I have learned that I need a little more durability than my machine can give. 

Reasons for upgrade

1. The button hole foot has never worked properly, and that space at the back where you're supposed to put in the button for perfect sizing just taunts me. That's possibly my own fault, since the first time I tried to make a buttonhole I mistook the needle-threader for the button-hole lever and held it down in a way that was somewhat damaging, but I think it's more an expression of the machine's temperamental nature.

2. It's obsolete. That is to say, that the Europro company (located in Canada), no longer makes a Shark sewing machine, and, although perfectly nice on the phone and willing to rectify their mistakes, they sent me the wrong walking foot twice before they got me the correct one.

3. Again, possibly my fault for sewing with cheap thread, but sometimes the tension disk seems to grab that thread and not let go, resulting in all kinds of mayhem.

4. If I sew fast or for an extended period of time, the screw on the flywheel loosens, and has even been known to fly out of the machine.

5. I swear the blind-hem foot is backwards.

6. Those new sewing machines have such cool features, including an automatic needle-down stop, extra wide stitch widths, letters, and customer support.

Although it may sound far away, I have found a sewing machine dealer in Morningside Heights (a straight shot on the 2/3 line), who will take my old sewing machine (as a courtesy), sell me a Janome DC5100, and service aforementioned brand-name machine.

It's time to part ways, but thank you, inanimate object that has brought me thus far.

Rediscovering the Joy of Reading

Life is a balancing act, for sure, and for a while I inadvertently tilted a little too far towards handicrafts. When my son asked me to read some of the 400-page fantasy fiction books he loves so that we could discuss them more fully, I realized that apart from proofreading jobs and book club selections (books I had to finish), I really wasn't reading much. So I have started to put down the knitting from time to time, and really read some interesting books.
Wednesday was an especially rich reading day, because I finished two books, different as could be:

Mindset is a nonfiction, not-quite-business book, about why some people tend to sabotage themselves and how they can get over it by changing from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. It speaks to the challenges we face as individuals, friends, romantic partners, teachers, coaches, and businesspeople, and I had picked it up based on its recommendation in a similar book, Adam Grant's fantastic Give and Take.

The Ionia Sanction by Gary Corby is the second installment of the Athenian Mysteries, a series set in Ancient Athens in the time of Pericles. I am reading the books in reverse order, since I picked number 4, The Marathon Conspiracy, off the New Fiction shelf at the Brooklyn Central Library a few months ago.
I studied Ancient Greek (history and language) in college, and traveled through the Pelopennese just prior, so I had a sense of how character and place names might sound, but I wondered if there was an audiobook, and to my good fortune, I was able to listen to both mystery number 3, Sacred Games, and The Ionia Sanction through the library's Overdrive system.
Gary Corby does an amazing job conveying the attitudes and preferences of the Ancient World, and I have shared selected parts with my kids, but unfortunately I can't recommend these books to anyone under 14 or so because certain scenes (both "romantic" and violent) are just too graphic. However, if you are of age and interested in Classical Times, the narrator, Nicolaos son of Sophroniscus, has met a parade of ancient luminaries, starting with Pericles, but including Queen Gorgo and King Pleistarchus of Sparta, the poet Pindar, and Themistocles, when he was in exile in Persia.
I have thanked my son numerous times for reminding me of the joy of reading and starting me back on the right track, and I can't wait to finish The House of Hades so that he and I can talk that over.

Happy Anniversary from a WIP

For those unfamiliar with knitting lingo, a WIP is a work in progress, and while my wonderful husband presented me with a wrapped gift this morning, the contents of which I am now wearing on my wrist . . .

. . . he's going to patiently wait for his anniversary presents:

That's the other sock in the background (they're being worked at the same time), but both have about six stripes to go.

As for the sweater,

I guess I should be grateful for his building's overactive air conditioning system, because although I only have a dozen or so rows left on the body, I still have to knit two sleeves, so the weather may have turned quite warm before he gets to wear it.

When we got married, fifteen years ago, I was not a knitter; counted cross stitch was my hobby. Being able to finish a project and end up with something that can be used right away, as opposed to framed or put on a cushion, is one of the countless blessings I have discovered with Ian's encouragement. It would be hard to overstate the positive influence of having a partner by my side who believes I am capable of just about anything, and who gives me the courage to try new things. I am thankful every day that I have ended up with the living embodiment of the term "better half."

Living the dream

Ever since I noticed those little sample squares in yarn shops and realized that someone had knit them, I have wanted to be a test knitter. Most LYSs have their go-to people, but thanks to Ravelry, I have found a client. Admittedly, the compensation is not high, but in the end I will have had a chance to talk a lot about knitting, and I will have a graceful new apple green cardigan.

Though you can't see from the gauge swatch, I'm actually about to start on the third ball of this four-ball project, and I'm down to the hip increases. I was thrilled to find yet another way to join a new ball while conserving the most yarn possible (scroll down to the final method).

In other news, Marly's sweater is nearing the end. Sleeves are completed and I have picked up the neck/button band stitches, and I still have two skeins of yarn left.

I'm thinking she'll have a matching hat and scarf, though an adorably enthusiastic boy from her dance class asked me to knit him a sweater exactly like Marly's.

Iron-ic

1974

My mom was not the most typical domestic figure when I was growing up. She was an early adapter of the microwave, box cake mixes, and anything else that saved time. She had her own toolbox, which my dad was supposed to leave alone (also, her own bank account). There were, however, a few of the old ways that she clung to steadfastly that I just didn't understand. Chief among them: ironing.

When my oldest child was born, in 2001, I put our rarely used iron away mostly because I feared horrible accidents, but also because I didn't think wrinkles were a big deal. Ian's shirts were either wrinkle-free or pressed at the cleaners, and I could have stayed in my pajamas all day, considering how far I was from the working world and the fact that in the early days of all three kids everything I wore was either vomited on or wiped on by tiny, adorable little hands and faces.

What changed was that I took up sewing and got a better iron that really shoots steam. Pressing is essential when you're making garments. It causes the stitches to sink into the fabric, coaxes out puckers, can sometimes eliminate the need for pinning, etc. I realized I had really gone over to the other side, though, when I started asking my kids to hand over the clothes they'd already put on so that I could iron them before they went out the door. I thought my mom was crazy when she did that to me in high school, and now I have my very own teenage daughter to roll her eyes at me when I ask. Check out these before-and after photos, though, and perhaps you'll see what an improvement forced flattening can be.

Which leg do you prefer?

Could be better.

Nicer.

Look at the button band and pocket!

Flat!

Thoughtful gift

As my youngest child continues to grow, it's been a pleasure to pass along her adorable clothes (most of them passed down to us by other generous folk). One of the main recipients has been a cute little girl about two years younger than Marly, whose middle name is the same as Marly's first. I had to laugh when her mom said that, thanks to us and some cousins, her daughter had more clothes than her two sons and her husband combined. It was easy to believe, because last spring I counted and discovered that Marly had enough dresses to wear a different one every day for a month. None were bought by me.
Anyway, yesterday, instead of passing on a bag of clothes, I received a bag with a wonderful surprise--beautiful, bold yarn from Argentina.

Within hours, I had a skein wound and had started a top-down raglan cardigan for Marly. I did not stop to swatch, and have gone up from size 9 to size 10 needles, but I'm having a ball, and trying out different techniques to pop the blue and pink nubbins to the front as I go.

Yes, this has jumped in front of Ian's socks and sweater and Conway's gloves, but with size 10 needles I should be finished in a matter of days, right?

Cakey Oatmeal

Well, almost everything.

The Minimalist is one of the people who has helped me go farthest in my cooking journey. His no-nonsense, approachable instructions gave me the courage to learn such family favorites as pizza dough, potato pancakes, golden cupcakes, chicken pot pie, and even sweet potato samosas. When I received How to Cook Everything a few Christmases ago, my yougest actually asked, "Mommy, do you wish you were married to Mark Bittman instead of Daddy?" 

Unfortunately, the cookie section of his book is not as reliable as the others. Though there's a nice eggless gingersnap recipe, and some passable refrigerator cookies, after trying the oatmeal cookie recipe once again, I have to swear it off for good. 

Possible sources of the problem: 2 cups, not 3 of oatmeal; not enough cinnamon (but I think that's true for almost every cookie recipe); baking powder instead of baking soda; milk (why?); and finally procedure--Bittman advises adding dry ingredients alternately with the milk, which is great for a cake, but if I want chewy, somewhat flat cookies that are overwhelmingly made of oats, I've got to go back to my old standby. Bonus: I get to add a stick of butter, too. 

Ball Four

Borrowing my title from the amazing book by Jim Bouton, I am happy to report that Ian's sweater is sailing along. Although the cables seem complicated, they're pretty intuitive, and I find working on it both engrossing and relaxing.
We could all do with some relaxation and calming today as we wait for high school acceptance letters. Coco's plan is to ride the train to the Dance Studio, call me, and open it while we're on the phone together. Thanks so much for making it a Monday in March, DOE.