July 2010 – Knit one, read two

My kind of homework

July 30, 2010 Susan1 Comment

If my actuarial homework looked like this, maybe more of it would get done:

I’m attending Knit Nation this Saturday and this is my homework for the Advanced Lace Knitting class I’m taking in the afternoon. I’m really looking forward to the class, although I’m hoping that the summer cold I’ve developed over the past day or two doesn’t get any worse or I’m not sure I’ll be capable of processing any information.

The tutor is Anne Hanson of Knitspot whose designs I love, even though I haven’t actually knitted any of them yet. Her Honeybee Stole was a definite contender for my wedding shawl and only narrowly lost out to the Myrtle Leaf Shawl from Victorian Lace Today.

It was a bit of a last minute decision to go to Knit Nation meaning that I’ve ended up in my usual position of nearly running out of time to get my homework finished even though all it consisted of was a simple swatch! It didn’t help that I didn’t actually have any yarn of the appropriate weight for either the homework or for the class itself. Thanks to the usual excellent service from Get Knitted, I managed to order a skein of the now-discontinued Darling sock yarn from Natural Dye Studio in colourway Isabella. It arrived in perfect time to be wound and swatched and yet somehow it’s Friday evening and I still haven’t finished!

Although I love the colours in this yarn, I’m not sure how I feel about it in general. There is more alpaca in it than I tend to like, which seems to be giving it a quite “hairy” appearance. I’ll report back next week on both the yarn and the class!

Quilts at the V&A

July 23, 2010July 23, 2010 SusanLeave a comment

Despite living in London and being surrounded by posters advertising exhibitions and events that I want to attend, I’m very bad at actually getting around to going places. I did however manage to go and see Quilts: 1700 – 2010 at the V&A before it closed at the beginning of July.

As a beginner quilter with just a single patchwork block under my belt, I was inspired, over-awed and somewhat reassured by the exhibition. If it took 17 years for an eighteenth century master tailor to complete a quilt in just his evenings and weekends, there is hope for me yet. (We won’t talk about my reaction to the beautifully embroidered map of the English counties that had been completed by a nineteenth century 10 year old.)

I preferred the older quilts in the exhibition, those that were produced as quilts rather than as “Art”. I love modern art but apparently not when I go to see a textile exhibition. I think my favourite though was one of the modern ones, “Punctuation” by Sarah Impey. There’s a picture of it in this article or you can view more of Sarah’s work on Quilt Art. Given my blog name, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that my favourite combined both words and stitches!

At the time of my visit, I resisted the urge to buy anything from the shop but, as you may have guessed from the pictures, that didn’t last. As a treat for myself for passing another actuarial exam (11 down, 4 to go!) I bought a pack of quilting fabric. The fabrics are limited edition prints created for the V&A by Liberty based on details taken from some of the exhibited quilts.

The pack I bought has 36 pieces in 18 patterns and while I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with them yet, they’re certainly brightening up my dining table!

Book review – the Harmony Guides: “Lace and eyelet stitches” & “Cable and aran stitches”

July 19, 2010 Susan2 Comments

I bought these books a little while ago but having been putting off reviewing them and this week I realised why — I just don’t like them. I’ve been waiting for them to magically improve so that I can say nice things about them and it is now time to accept that this isn’t going to happen.

My first and biggest complaint is that there doesn’t appear to have been any sort of logic applied to the arrangement of stitch patterns within the books. Some sort of logical arrangement might have helped the editor spot the patterns that are repeated under different names. Not just similar patterns with a slight offset or a slightly different description of the stitches — the exact same pattern with exactly the same wording (and photograph!) just different names.

Similarly, there’s no way to find patterns by number of stitches or number of rows. This might not be such an issue with the cable and aran stitches but it makes the lace book very difficult to use other than to flick through for general inspiration.

The photographs are another issue or rather the swatches are. I know how hard it can be to take a good photograph of a swatch but some of the yarn choices and particularly colours of the swatches make it impossible to appreciate the patterns. I’ve knitted a swatch for at least one pattern so far just to try and see what it looked like which defeats the purpose of them including photographs in the first place.

The lace book also has no charts, despite one of the ‘useful’ hints scattered throughout being “Take the time to learn how to read knitting charts; it’ll make your knitting that much easier”.

To end on a somewhat positive note, I will admit that there are stitch patterns in the books that aren’t in any of the other books I own, I have used some of the stitch patterns and I’ve yet to find any errors in the patterns themselves. Not exactly a glowing recommendation but I’m afraid it’s the best I can do.

Return of the cursed sweater

July 10, 2010July 14, 2010 SusanLeave a comment

Remember this?

which turned into this:

Well, it’s back and now it looks like this:

Not without a lot more ripping back and re-doing along the way but the front and back are now finished and will match brilliantly after a little blocking. Even better than that, the argyle worked out perfectly and the top of the top brown diamond is exactly where it’s supposed to be (and not three rows earlier, for instance).

Next step is to sew one of the shoulder seams so that I can start knitting the neckband. Given that the temperature in London is currently far too high to have an entire jumper sitting on your lap, that might not be for some time. Fortunately, if it’s too hot to sew it, it is also too hot for Steven to want to wear it!

Wishing I was in San Francisco

July 7, 2010 Susan1 Comment

Mainly so that I could visit the Exploratorium at the Palace of Fine Art and see the Geometric Threads — Artisanal Takes on Pattern, Dimension, and Topology exhibit. From the website:

Explore tessellation through patterns found in quilts, Hawai’ian kapa cloth design, and Moroccan mosaic tiles. Untangle the intricacies of topology looped inside maritime knots and Korean maedeup. Move between dimensions with basket weavers, clothing designers, and upholsterers, and learn how origami artists transform flat shapes into fully realized 3D forms. Discover how similar shapes can give rise to a diversity of artistic expression, from Japanese temari to European lace and crochet.

Through master presentations, skilled artisans illuminate the mathematics inherent in mosaics, origami, and textile arts practiced across the globe.

A combination of mathematics and crafts … sounds like just my kind of thing.

New toys, sorry, tools

July 3, 2010July 3, 2010 SusanLeave a comment

I bought two new craft ~~toys~~ tools last week; can you work out what they are from the picture? (Hint: it’s not the towels or the metre stick.)

I’ll admit it’s not the best of pictures so how about something a little clearer:

I’ve been knitting (and wearing) so many shawls that I thought it was about time I bought some blocking wires in an attempt to make blocking easier. I should say that I love the effect that blocking has, the seemingly magical difference that it makes to knitted lace changing it from scrumpled blob to beautiful shawl; I just hate the crawling about my knees while working with dozens of pins. (I also hate the waiting for things to dry but I knew even blocking wires couldn’t speed that bit up!)

So, I ordered a blocking kit from I Knit, finished (yet another) shawl and set to blocking. Initially, it seemed that the wires weren’t going to make things much quicker; feeding them into the edges of the shawl seemed to take quite a while. What was much quicker was adjusting the shawl to the size and shape that I wanted. In the past, I would pin most of the shawl out and then adjusting anything would mean moving lots of pins. Being able to just tug the wires out slightly and replace two or three pins was so much easier. It also took far less time to get the edges suitably straight, something I always struggled with before.

In short, I think I like them. I’m sure that the inserting of the wires will get easier with experience and the easier adjustment should mean that I get better results as I’m less likely to settle for “straight enough”.

The second new toy was a bit harder to work out from the picture above since it was taking the picture rather than appearing in it! Have a bad web-cam picture instead:

My trusty digital point and shoot camera died some time ago and, while we have a great digital SLR, I always felt like using it was too much effort for simple things like blog pictures and updating Ravelry. Having the SLR also meant that I didn’t feel like I should buy a new point and shoot because, well, we already had a camera. As well as that, I’m very fussy about my cameras which roughly translates to “it’s nearly impossible to find one that meets my arbitrary and sometimes contradictory criteria”. I do love Canon cameras though so when I spotted this one being sold “ex-display” in the John Lewis sale, it only took a couple of hours of pondering to actually decide to buy it. I’m glad I did though because I love it. It’s small and neat and easy to carry around with me but is also surprisingly powerful and has the functionality that I was looking for.

Expect to see the output of both the camera and the blocking wires in future!