In observing my crafting tendencies, Myria tells me that she thinks I am trying to follow the thread of the universe to see how it works and how it shapes everything and that my pursuit of that, whether through beading, crocheting or knitting, is deeply mathematical.

Initially this came as quite a surprise.  I didn’t think of myself as a math kind of person and, in fact, had done abysmally in highschool geometry and algebra.  But, over the weekend, I fell over something that helped me to understand what she was getting at.  And it was the consideration of these types of patterns, dishcloths which incorporate a clever use of knit and purl to create a picture, that sort of illuminated things for me.

First of all, I doubt that I could have come up with anything as nice as some of the patterns I’ve seen - from things as simple as an apple to as complex as an Army Eagle.  But I realized as I was looking over the patterns that they are really very simple.  It’s simply a matter of knowing whether a stitch is a knit or a purl (which, of course, the patterns tells you).  There’s no math to it - just counting.

On the other hand if you take a look at some lace stitch patterns, you’re dealing with math all over the place - increases countered by decreases, symmetry, balance, shifting stitches, half-drops and so forth - it all has to be worked out properly - pattern on pattern from row to row - in order for the final fabric to look pleasing to the eye.  And hopefully, not just pleasing, but drop-dead gorgeous :)

It’s the pattern of the working that does it for me - the actual rhythm of the needles doing this and that in a regular, sequenced fashion.  I am in no way minimizing the validity of the dishcloth patterns, the picture knit/purls - I certainly couldn’t have designed them and many of them are quite lovely.  But I would have a difficult time working them (or picture lace, for that matter) because there’s no pattern to the working; I wouldn’t be able to focus on it and would never be able to keep my place without a dozen markers and a clout over the head :)

But give me something complex, cables or lace where there’s a real rhythm to the working and it’s like dancing - and I’m happy as a clam :)

Just how happy is a clam, anyway?

I have decided to go forth on a rather large project that I’m not going to discuss much for now - except for pieces now and again.  I promise that if I actually manage to pull it off, you’ll be the first to know :)  It’s a lot of work, but it’s also fun - in a breath-taking, wet-your-pants kind of way.  These are what I’m setting up now:

This is picture lace and I’m nervous about using it because of what I was talking about above.  Still, it is exactly what I want so I’ll just have to cultivate the focus and concentration I need to do it properly.

This, however:

...should be sheer joy to work :)

Goldie begs to differ :)

One down…

One to go :)

I’m hoping to have them done by the weekend.

I also started a small experiment in entrelac lace.  It has not been notably successful as yet, but I think the problems can be solved with a different yarn.

I was attempting to work a version of Cat’s Paw lace into the first tier of blocks here - and also working out placement of the stitch pattern within the blocks.

In this attempt, I think there’s too much space between the patterns.  It doesn’t look right and lacks balance.

Here, the spacing is better but I’ve got at least one more idea to try before I make a decision.  That will involve off-setting the patterns to the right and left instead of placing them one directly above the other.

The yarn is Schaefer Anne and I’ve had it in the stash for quite a while.  It sat so long partly because I bought it to use as sock yarn (Doh!  That’s what it was made for!) but it’s weight, which is finer that ordinary sock yarn, made me nervous.  So I stashed it thinking it would make good lace yarn - you know - when the time came where I wanted to knit lace.  I had never seen lace weight yarn at that time, so my logic seemed reasonable to me then :)

Of course I have some familiarity with lace weight now and the Anne doesn’t come anywhere near it.  Lace weight yarn will take care of most of my issues here.  A color change would help too.  I love the rich, saturated blues and violets of the Anne, but it’s not suitable (at least to my eye) for this piece.  Or at least, for what I envision this piece becoming.

The blue baby blanket is still in progress and the green shawl still isn’t blocked.  In the kind of humidity we’ve been getting, I don’t want a baby blanket in my lap and I really want a dry day for blocking the shawl.  Yes, I’m still working on the pattern :) 

See, our weather this summer has been very nearly tropical - not so much temperature-wise, though we’ve had our share of hot days - but in terms of humidity and precipitation.  It has rained nearly every day for a month.  Not all day, mind you.  Things will start to cloud over in the late afternoon/early evening and the wind will come up - somethimes quite violently.  Then it gets dark and the lightening and thunder start.  And then the skies open and it pours like water out of a bucket.  Yesterday and today, it’s been doing this off and on all day instead of only once in the afternoon.  Poor Goldie, who is not at all happy about thunder, has been spending a great deal of time under the bed.  Jade?

Doesn’t seem to trouble her in the slightest :) 

Up in the wee smalls again tomorrow to bring dad into Boston.  While he is doing better, his hands and shoulders are still bothering him some - enough so that he doesn’t want to risk driving any distance.  Around the corner to the market is one thing but driving into (and in!) the city is something else entirely. 

See the “Knitting Chatter” button on the side bar for more information.

Chatters is on for Saturday night.  Drop by if you have the time - you know you’re always welcome!

Dad and I went to a local Italian restaurant last Saturday.  Despite the fact that dad won’t eat onions, tomatoes or garlic (or anything made with those ingredients) - which disqualifies almost every type of Italian food for him, he is able to find enough there to make him happy.  For example, since it’s in New England it has clam chowder.  It seems to be a rule that any restaurant opening anywhere in New England is required to offer clam chowder - regardless of said eatery’s own specialization.  So you see things like: Minestrone, Pasta e fagioli, Clam Chowder or Egg Drop Soup, Hot and Sour Soup and Clam Chowder.

The restaurant is very good, the food is of excellent quality and is quite plentiful.  But the thing that really sets them apart is their bread.  This bread tastes like it just came out of your grandma’s oven - homemade doesn’t begin to describe it!

And they sell it by the loaf for the princely sum of $1.85 - about half what I would pay in the supermarket bakery for something of equivalent quality and taste :)

One of Dad’s problems has been an advancing case of rheumatoid arthritis which has made moving around very difficult and painful for him.  He has been wearing the socks I’ve made for him because, being hand made and of DK/worsted weight yarn - they have much more substantial body than the little nylon cheapies he’s been buying for the last 40 years.

I had thought he was just wearing them around the house, but a week or so ago, I saw him cramming them into his sneakers because it would have been too difficult and uncomfortable to exchange them for something lighter.

I asked him if he would like me to make him some more socks but he said not to bother.  What he had was fine.

Yeah, right :)

So I started another pair of socks for him - in sport weight yarn this time.  They will still have (I hope!) the body that makes them easy for him to put them on.  And, they will be lighter weight and less bulky than the ones he already has.

I had started a pair of Primavera socks with this yarn.  About halfway down the cuff, I knew I was never going to wear them because I didn’t like the colors - too dark and too masculine.  However, it seemed like the ideal thing for a pair of dad socks so I cast on Saturday morning and went to work.

And when I told dad that I had done so - he was so obviously pleased I had to laugh :)

I made an odd but interesting discovery while working on the sock.  This is sport weight yarn (Woolease, sadly discontinued) and I’m working the socks on size 3 US (3.0 - 3.125 mm) needles.  I had started them on an old aluminum set.  I like metal needles for socks and that’s what I almost always use.  However, these were a dark green color and the combination of them and the dark, variegated yarn made the stitches almost impossible to see - even with two lights on!  There were blue needles too, but they were also dark and there were only three of them anyway.

Aha!  I have bamboo needles in the right size!  Light colored needles would solve the problem nicely, so I switched the greenies for the bamboo and knitted on.

You knew there was a “but” coming, right?  I do like bamboo needles for some yarns - but this yarn clung to them (in my mother’s immortal phrase) like sh*t to a blanket.  I could move the stitches but only with some difficulty.  The combination of these needles and this yarn were not making for especially fluid knitting.

And then last night, rummaging around in my needle vase (doesn’t everyone have a jar/bottle/vase full of needles on their coffee table?) I found a set of nickel-plated brass double-points - size 3!  I had acquired them some time ago, had no immediate use for them, put them away and forgotten all about them.  So, I switched the sock over to them and…  Well, it was like ice skating on new, sharp blades over clean, smooth ice - just enough friction to keep things manageable and otherwise - swift and easy :)  You can see them in the picture of the sock above.

So now I’ve meandered to the point.

I don’t use size 3 needles very often.  Hardly at all.  In the smaller needle sizes, I’m far more likely to reach for 2s than 3s.  So how in the world did I wind up with four sets of them?

Knitters are certainly many good things, but I can tell you from first-person experience - some knitters are nuts :)

Chatters is on tomorrow night for those of you who aren’t on vacation and wish to indulge :)

See the “Knitting Chatter” button on the side bar for more information.

It’s always such a good time - drop in for a few (or a lot!) if you can!

On Saturday morning, Myria invited me to come over and look at something on her desk.

There’s no doubt these are Jade’s footprints; they’re way too small to have been made by Goldie’s hooves :)  She doesn’t get up on the desk very often but, apparently, some time Friday night she got curious about something, jumped up, traipsed through the dust behind the monitor and then exited via the mouse pad.  Of course this may say more about my (lack of) housekeeping skills than I would prefer but the footprints were so cute that I had to share.

I have been obsessing again - of course!

About entrelac :)  Anybody surprised?  Heheh…

I have been trying to find out about the origin and history of the technique.  I discovered two one-sentence references to entrelac being a Finnish technique (and saw it referred to once as Finnish Basketweave) and that’s about it.  I managed to find the Finnish word: konttineule, but using it as a search term only brought me to Finnish knit-blogs - of which there are many.  Though they presented much beautiful work, there was no history of entrelac, no story of origin.

Also, evidently, Finnish nouns are required to be at least a half-mile long.  While it’s entirely possible that I may learn enough terminology to, say, follow a Finnish pattern (have you seen the Finnish on-line knitting magazine - Ulla?), I don’t expect to be speaking it any time soon :)

I still have a few things I want to check out, but if anyone who happens to read this blog can point me in the right direction, would you please?  I can live with almost anything but an un-satisfied curiosity :)

Now, back to the footprint thing…

Since I seemed to have cat feet on the brain (and when Goldie climbs up to roost on the back of my chair that becomes a literal rather than a figurative!), I went looking for paw print lace patterns.  I found two with possibilities.

This pattern is adapted from one that was done in garter stitch - I think the stockinette version looks nicer.  It’s the newer of the two versions and is more the kind of thing I had in mind.  The other…

...is based on an old Shetland pattern.  The knitting of it (after a bit of fiddling around, of course) didn’t give me what I was looking for but did produce a rather nice pattern.  I was trying for a…well…a cat-leaving-dusty-footprints kind of effect and had staggered the repeats within the 11 stitch wide area I was experimenting with.  What I got was a sort of zig-zagging garland effect - not what I’d hoped for, but worth remembering for later use :)

Lastly, there’s this which I found here in Jennifer Fleury’s Cat’s Face Lace Socks...

I’d had the thought that the face and the first paw print above might combine well in an entrelac presentation.  Initially I was thinking about a lace scarf but the designs seem a bit whimsical for that.  Perhaps a child’s blanket?  Definitely something I want to play with :)

I have had an ultra-busy week so there hasn’t been much time to post.  Which, you know, is just as well because I haven’t had a lot of time to knit either :)  A few more blocks on the baby blanket and the heel turned on the slipper-sock.

Things should slow down to a dull roar for a while now, so I hope to be able to do more of both!

I did want to let you know, however, that Chatters is on for tomorrow evening.

See the “Knitting Chatter” button on the side bar for more information.

Same bat-time, same bat-channel :)

I hope you all have had a great week and that you have an even better weekend!

Dad is making progress - slowly - but we’ll take what we can get.  He is venturing out more and trying to do more all the time.  Mostly he is succeeding which improves his confidence and helps motivate him.  He still tires very easily and he is still eating poorly.  For that matter, my energy levels aren’t what they once were so, as you can probably imagine, we make an interesting pair as we stumble through the market on impulse power, creaking all the way :)

I am spending a lot of time with dad these days so not a great deal of knitting is getting done.  However, the blanket is about half finished -

I believe I am going to do a border for this, but I don’t quite know what it will be :)  I like the thought of a knitted border but the thought of picking up all those stitches around the perimeter makes me a bit dizzy!  A crocheted border would be nice and sturdy too.  And what color?  A darker blue?  White?  Pea green?  Heh…  All in good time, I guess.  I’ll know when I get there.

I have also been playing with the idea of combining entrelac with mosaic knitting.

I’m not quite sure how, or even if this would work but I’m hoping I can figure it out because it would be seriously cool!

I also have a notion for a sock/slipper that I think I will start working on fairly soon - maybe over the weekend.  I sure do like the image in my head - now to see if I can squeeze it down through my arms and fingers out onto the needles and into the yarn!

I finally got some more pins yesterday and am hoping to be able to dress the shawl over the weekend.  I confess I’m having some problems in writing the pattern for this but I promise it will be available eventually.  I still haven’t come up with a name though.

The Horse you Rode in on

The Galloping horse

Lucky Horseshoes

Eh….

I met a friend for breakfast on Tuesday and we had such a lovely time, chatting, knitting (me) or crocheting (her) and just peacefully and happily sharing the day.  I had a crepe that was stuffed with fresh strawberries and bananas - wonderful!

I know this is vacation time for many folks but Chatters will be available at the regular time on Saturday evening.

See the “Knitting Chatter” button on the side bar for more information.

Drop in if you have the time and the inclination!

Have a wonderful Independence Day, those in the states.  And for those in the rest of the big, wide, beautiful world - have a great weekend!