as usual, as i do with everything, in early may i serendipitously opened a door into machine embroidery that has changed the course of my life -- or at least cost me an ungodly amount of money. i prefer to focus on the curative and spiritual rather than strictly pecuniary aspects. ok it's less painful -- even carthatic -- that way.
so here's how it went down:
me: no sleep. disconsolate on parkway at 6 a.m. dropping child no. 1 off at airport for overseas adventures i don't get to participate in, except vicariously. traffic looks horrendous across the median/my return route. to avoid traffic, and to console myself for sad feelings accompanying said child's departure, i spend a few hours in airport coffee shop commiserating with mom of child's friend, also embarking selfishly on overseas adventures we can't share.
jo-ann fabrics/robinson: beckoning upon my return.
what can it hurt? i stroll in, figuring to while away some time cruising the yarn aisle and allow traffic to disperse. so what if i drop a ten- or twenty spot on some vanna's choice?
in every jo-ann's, the yarn is in the back left aisles of the store. believe me, i have conducted extensive market research and this is true throughout this great land of ours.
accessing yarn mecca requires me to pass by the sewing machines.
brief footnote required: i have ... well ... a thing for sewing machines. as i do many machines. there is not room enough here, or anywhere on god's grand earth, to analyze the genesis of my thing for machines. i dig machines. they separate humans from beasts. the women from the girls. they embody raw power, masculinity at its most virile, femininity at its most creative. they're louder than hell; and like a baby or a spouse, if not yours, more annoying than you can tolerate. they surpass our ability to create, to craft, to mold by hand. they marry mind and physical resource. they are inscrutable, testosterone-driven, estrogen-inspired, marvels.
and sewing machines, perhaps the finest, the most-approaching perfection invention of modern times. weeks and months of arduous, if heartfelt, labor reduced to minutes and hours; redactive, reductive; abstract, constructive. true love.
a machine that, when brought in for share time at the preschool co-op in Oakland, Calif., turns brash, destructive little boys into compliant, polite automotons eager to please for a chance at the wheel of the machine. four rules i invented when sewing capes, GI Joe sleeping bags, Transformer knapsacks with the pint-size monsters: keep your grubby little fingers out of the way of the needle. don't go until I say go. stop when i say stop. keep your grubby little fingers out of the way of the needle.
and so it is not surprising, not unwarranted, not out of character that i stop to browse the machines enroute to the yarns.
truthfully, i could use a new machine. i haven't realized this until just this moment; but my current sewing machine is in cobwebs in the basement, victim to a broken spindle, the misplacement of the ridiculous discs required for specialty stitches, the waning interest precipitated by my fairly newfound knitting addiction.
truthfully, i could use a new machine.
so i accost the sewing machine lady. she is, it turns out, jan. smart. patient. fair-minded.
i am not really in the market, i say right out at the outset. perhaps i might be interested in your least-expensive machine, but really i could go to wal-mart. i bought my last machine at wal-mart. tell me why this machine is better than wal-mart.
as i said, jan is patient. this least-expensive singer machine, which yes they have at wal-mart, is perfectly fine. for a cheap machine. if that is what you want. a cheap machine.
it will do what it says it will do. it is a fine, fine cheap singer machine.
i am sold. for a hundred and nineteen dollars, why wouldn't i go home with a machine without cobwebs, with a fine intact spindle. even if, until this moment, i hadn't considered the $119 expenditure. it all makes sense. it is a fine, fine cheap singer.
but, as i always do, wielding the comparative shopper move that drives my youngest crazy, i ask the next question: so what's the difference between this machine and the next one up? why would i pay an extra thirty dollars for this next machine?
jan is patient. through the next machine, and the next. and the next. she explains, at each stage, the relative strengths and weaknesses of each choice, the decorative stitches, the automatic sensors, the fix buttons, the programmable features, what it is that separates the deluxe from the basic, the peak from the valley, the paragon from the primal. at each progressive stage, sold as i am, i know that i am playing with jan, and she is teasing me. we both know i will leave here empty-handed. maybe, we think, i will leave and head to wal-mart. more likely, i will go home and sleep it off, this sudden inane insatiable sewing-machine lust.
Next installment: the pick, the roll, the Husqvarna Viking with embroidery attachment.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Sick and tired and knitting nonetheless
I can count on two needles the number of days I haven't knit a stitch in the two-something years I've been a knitter. For me, it's a rough-and-tumble contact sport that tackles me, outwits me and leaves me crying softly in a heap on the floor for my dearly beloved to walk pityingly past at the ungodly morning hour when he is waking up and taking off and I haven't yet dragged myself and the remains of my dignity to bed.
I knit for better or for worse, in sickness and in health; and if heaven is as it should be, I will knit into eternity, the endless magic loop. Natch, an argument could be made, given my frequent, outrageous and generally unforgivable knitting sins, that I'll end up heading south instead of north; but it wouldn't be much of a stretch to imagine that any personalized hell would likely doom me to knit forever with a bitch of a yarn that I despise, like chenille, or pair me with an infernally tangled yarn that I love, like handpainted suri alpaca or Malabrigo or Noro Kureyon, or leave me stranded in the afterlife with a pattern written in cyrillic or some language I can't decipher. Knit one, curse two.
And so, even though I am sick and tired, and my daughter has pneumonia and my chest is wheezy, and it is late and I worked all week till the wee
hours, still I must pick up the mosaic baby hat for Bret's newborn, that I know already will fit a doll better than the baby, and I must make some stitch-by-stitch progress. Because that is how I measure my days, that is my value added, my herculean Susan Boyle effort.
Monday, March 23, 2009
improvisations in malabrigo
So I owe my middle kid a shawl/afghan/big project because I have been promising for a long time and it is way past her turn (if you ask her). And I have attempted a few times but something has always gone wrong -- last time, I tried a ruana like my old knitting bud Elise made her mom (from Cheryl Oberle's "Folk Shawls") with about 40 different yarns but I wandered away from the original color concept and went from elegant and subdued to "interesting" to outrageous to, really, unwearable, even by my standards, which are fairly, um, loose.
Now I have decided to make a rebozo, also from the Folk Shawls book. But of course I wasn't even mildly following the pattern. I instead was melding the idea (big wide rectangle with big wide stripes) with a Stephanie Pearl-McPhee stitch pattern for a scarf -- kinda garter ribs with a twist (K2, Kbl, P). And knitting as always mostly asleep at 4 a.m., I fell victim to bad math/early onset dementia. And so I ended up figuring that 5 times a 5-inch scarf would be wide enough; and I duly cast on the requisite 130 stitches and knitted away for about 10 inches before realizing the shawl seemed a little ... narrow. So I check back with the book (oh right, I forgot I was doing a real pattern!) and the width is closer to, ahem, 90 inches, not 25. You see, my stripes mistakenly go up and do
wn instead of sideways; and that would really look like an overgrown scarf (like I made my mother-in-law) instead of the drapey flow of the traditional horizontal rebozo.
Seriously, though, isn't 90 inches obscenely wide for a shawl?
Fortunately, my knitting is nearly as imprecise as my math (I do live in a skewed parallel universe where up is sideways); and the 25-inch width is closer to 36. So here's how I plan to fix this particular travesty: I will make a 72-inch wide rebozo (give or take 10 or 20 inches), by casting on another 130 stitches and replicating what I've done so far. Then I'll seam the two and knit on happily at 260 stitches.
Problem solved!
Except for being about 900 yards short of Malabrigo. But within 5 minutes I was able to find what I think is the right batch (worsted Azalea 127 in this gorgeous purple/red/blue variegated) online in Tulsa (god, I love the Internet) so I ordered another 600 yards and I'll make do.
Off to the gym!
Now I have decided to make a rebozo, also from the Folk Shawls book. But of course I wasn't even mildly following the pattern. I instead was melding the idea (big wide rectangle with big wide stripes) with a Stephanie Pearl-McPhee stitch pattern for a scarf -- kinda garter ribs with a twist (K2, Kbl, P). And knitting as always mostly asleep at 4 a.m., I fell victim to bad math/early onset dementia. And so I ended up figuring that 5 times a 5-inch scarf would be wide enough; and I duly cast on the requisite 130 stitches and knitted away for about 10 inches before realizing the shawl seemed a little ... narrow. So I check back with the book (oh right, I forgot I was doing a real pattern!) and the width is closer to, ahem, 90 inches, not 25. You see, my stripes mistakenly go up and do
wn instead of sideways; and that would really look like an overgrown scarf (like I made my mother-in-law) instead of the drapey flow of the traditional horizontal rebozo.Seriously, though, isn't 90 inches obscenely wide for a shawl?
Fortunately, my knitting is nearly as imprecise as my math (I do live in a skewed parallel universe where up is sideways); and the 25-inch width is closer to 36. So here's how I plan to fix this particular travesty: I will make a 72-inch wide rebozo (give or take 10 or 20 inches), by casting on another 130 stitches and replicating what I've done so far. Then I'll seam the two and knit on happily at 260 stitches.
Problem solved!
Except for being about 900 yards short of Malabrigo. But within 5 minutes I was able to find what I think is the right batch (worsted Azalea 127 in this gorgeous purple/red/blue variegated) online in Tulsa (god, I love the Internet) so I ordered another 600 yards and I'll make do.
Off to the gym!
Friday, March 20, 2009
hector it is
I'm sure there are reasons to love my knitting machine, so I will try to list some:
1) It has the word "knitting" in its name
2) It looks kinda like E.T. just without any lovable humanoid side
3) It's old and funky and when we hang out together I get all greasy and feel like an auto mechanic. Then I remember my 20-hour stint as an auto mechanic was an unmitigated disaster, except for the "I get to get all greasy" part.
4) It has never betrayed a confidence
5) It's a machine. Machines are cool. If I were 17, I'd say it was bad-ass. Of course if I were really 17, I'd think it was lame.
6) I think if I learn to love it, it will love me back, albeit passively. Like my grandmas did.
7) When it was young, p
eople probably used to say things like, "Pipe down, 'Ed Sullivan' is on!" and "I haven't seen the likes of that garment since Hector was a small pup."OK, it is decided. I will call my knitting machine Hector. That alone may inspire a twinge of love. It reminds me of my mom.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Balancing life/knitting/exercise
I admit it -- I've gained 25 pounds in the 2-1/2 years I've been knitting, and all this sedentary inactivity is getting to me. (What, you mean knit one-purl two isn't aerobic?)
I used to be a bit of a gym rat; or at least I've had spells when I was at the gym, or doing something active, once or twice a day. I did a triathlon in '05, and even though I think I had the slowest time in the history of the event, I won my heat in swimming (against two other slow people, but they weren't old and fat!) and I did finish. The toughest part was the run, 3-plus miles of hilly, rocky torture that might have been scenic from, say, a stretcher or the back of a pack mule. I hadn't been able to train for the run much because of persistent leg cramps, and race-day was no exception. So I basically half-trotted, half-limped through that final stretch. The triathlon happened to be a qualifying event for the Senior Olympics, and the oldest participant, an 83-year-old woman, passed me on the trail. I swear to God she would've gone down if I'd known she was sneaking up behind me, but lucky for her I never saw her coming.
Anyway, since the advent of my needle addiction, life has changed. Instead of running, swimming or biking, I've been concentrating on lace and hats and shawls and scarves.
Rolling a skein of yarn into a ball gets me out of breath, and the closest I've come to weight-training is lugging around an obscene number of bags overflowing with yarn to suit any exigency. Like, for instance, if I happened upon an entire class of preschoolers stranded in the snow without mittens. Or if one of my kids called and said, "Mom, I need you to knit matching hats and hand mitts for everybody in Chicago." Really, you have to be prepared for these things.
You'd think that sheer dedication alone would be enough to scare the nasty beastie pounds off. But no. They say that loved ones grow to look like each other. And so perhaps that is why I've grown rounder, and softer, and fluffier, comfortably smooshy like my knitting chair.
Still, enough is enough. I am intent on reversing the trend, to resembling the strand of yarn more than the fat round yarn ball.
I'm not going to do silly tricks like vowing not to knit any given day until I've worked out. Games don't work for me. I've rejoined Weight Watchers and lost 5 pounds so far. And I am going to make sure I get myself to the gym, or out for an hour with Bandit, five days a week. I'll keep track of my progress here, and maybe that'll help keep me honest. So here goes...
Activity today: Gym
Knitting today: Sock-blank socks. I'm way behind everybody else, most of whom finished their socks months and months ago. Hope I can figure out how to do the heel etc. doing two socks at once on one circ!
I used to be a bit of a gym rat; or at least I've had spells when I was at the gym, or doing something active, once or twice a day. I did a triathlon in '05, and even though I think I had the slowest time in the history of the event, I won my heat in swimming (against two other slow people, but they weren't old and fat!) and I did finish. The toughest part was the run, 3-plus miles of hilly, rocky torture that might have been scenic from, say, a stretcher or the back of a pack mule. I hadn't been able to train for the run much because of persistent leg cramps, and race-day was no exception. So I basically half-trotted, half-limped through that final stretch. The triathlon happened to be a qualifying event for the Senior Olympics, and the oldest participant, an 83-year-old woman, passed me on the trail. I swear to God she would've gone down if I'd known she was sneaking up behind me, but lucky for her I never saw her coming.
Anyway, since the advent of my needle addiction, life has changed. Instead of running, swimming or biking, I've been concentrating on lace and hats and shawls and scarves.
Rolling a skein of yarn into a ball gets me out of breath, and the closest I've come to weight-training is lugging around an obscene number of bags overflowing with yarn to suit any exigency. Like, for instance, if I happened upon an entire class of preschoolers stranded in the snow without mittens. Or if one of my kids called and said, "Mom, I need you to knit matching hats and hand mitts for everybody in Chicago." Really, you have to be prepared for these things.
You'd think that sheer dedication alone would be enough to scare the nasty beastie pounds off. But no. They say that loved ones grow to look like each other. And so perhaps that is why I've grown rounder, and softer, and fluffier, comfortably smooshy like my knitting chair.
Still, enough is enough. I am intent on reversing the trend, to resembling the strand of yarn more than the fat round yarn ball.
I'm not going to do silly tricks like vowing not to knit any given day until I've worked out. Games don't work for me. I've rejoined Weight Watchers and lost 5 pounds so far. And I am going to make sure I get myself to the gym, or out for an hour with Bandit, five days a week. I'll keep track of my progress here, and maybe that'll help keep me honest. So here goes...
Activity today: Gym
Knitting today: Sock-blank socks. I'm way behind everybody else, most of whom finished their socks months and months ago. Hope I can figure out how to do the heel etc. doing two socks at once on one circ!
Monday, March 2, 2009
ohmigosh a year and a day/bipolar knitting
Ahem, so I guess I really can't say I blog if I only blog once a year (or less).
But maybe, feeling a little more confident in my knitting these days, I can start making more of a habit of the knitblog thing.
I do seem to go through some real knitting highs and lows, more so than in the rest of my life. OK, honestly, I don't really have a rest of my life, so maybe those manic and depressive moments pack more of a punch. But still.
Today's mood swings were caused by:
1) my elation at finding a really cool knitting machine for fifty bucks on craigslist
2) going to check it out and being thrilled that the carriage do-hickey rolled back and forth easily (the only thing I knew to look for)
3) buying the wonderful-seeming creation and proudly hauling it to my knitting group, followed quickly by
4) depression at discovering it needs an auto-tension thingy and accompanying worry that I didn't have one in the box in the car
5) euphoria at finding said-thingy attached to the lid
6) gloom upon being told that I still needed a yarn rod to attach the thingy to the machine
7) glimmer of hope that maybe the seller, Carol (daughter of beloved knitter, who died at 89 two years ago), still had the missing piece somewhere
8) sadness that a phone call didn't spark the desired "Oh sure, I have that right here on the table"
9) rising confidence in the power of the internet/ebay/google to ferret out bizarre gizmos like the yarn rod
10) a round of frantic emails to knitting machine suppliers
11) a round of johnny walker red to stave off severe depression
12) alcohol-fueled optimism: Of course I'll find it!
The insanity of all this is that yesterday, I was perfectly tickled with hand knitting and all the joy and satisfaction it's brought to my life these last 2-1/2 years, and had no inclination toward machine knitting of any ilk. But of course when I stumbled across the listing on craigslist, I became enamored (to the point of obsession -- what, me, obsessive when it's anything to do with knitting) with the Silver Reed Model 810 circa 1972 manual machine knitter.
So, now that I have to wait and hunt down parts, back to the afghan for Angie's new baby Josh. I love the colors -- Vanna's acrylic, but great, bold, hippy dippy orange, green, blue, purple and yellow. I think I'll finish it tonight, even though it's 1:30 and I still have a couple hours of knitting ahead of me.
Quick easy pattern from "Lisa" (the other knitterly Lisa I know):
Cast on 4 stitches with a long-tail cast on
1: Kfb of each stitch, join (standard disclaimer here: Don't you dare twist those stitches, bitch) (8 stitches -- divide evenly onto 4 DPNs)
2) *yo, k* (16 stitches)
3) k
4) *k3, yo, k, yo* (24 stitches)
5) k
6) *k5, yo, k, yo* (32 stitches)
7) k
(Yes, that's Josh's blanket on my head)
Continue pattern as established, alternating increase rounds with knit rounds. The number of knit stitches in each of the four sections increases by 2 each time before the yo k yo (row 8 - k7 yo k yo around; row 10 - k9 yo k yo around, etc.) If you knit on 4 DPNs, just put a yo before and after the last stitch on each needle. I used circs and just followed the pattern as established, it was simple.
Change yarn colors randomly at the beginning of any knit round (my bands of color varied from 2 rounds to about 10-12 rounds)
Knit until the blanket measures 22-25" from the center out to the cast-on edge (22 yields about a 32-inch square; 25 yields about a 36-inch square, according to my calculations).
*Addendum
OK, now I've finished.
I did a loose bind-off as follows:
*K2tog, slip back onto left needle*
Of course, being stockinette the edges roll, but I don't mind this look -- anybody can buy a baby bankie in the store where the edges don't roll! To avoid this (and OK, maybe next time), just do garter stitch for final the4-5 rounds (on circs, I guess that would mean alternating K and P rounds). I was pretty sure it would roll, but couldn't face the endless purls... lazy me. Josh, being a baby, won't care.
But maybe, feeling a little more confident in my knitting these days, I can start making more of a habit of the knitblog thing.
I do seem to go through some real knitting highs and lows, more so than in the rest of my life. OK, honestly, I don't really have a rest of my life, so maybe those manic and depressive moments pack more of a punch. But still.
Today's mood swings were caused by:
1) my elation at finding a really cool knitting machine for fifty bucks on craigslist
2) going to check it out and being thrilled that the carriage do-hickey rolled back and forth easily (the only thing I knew to look for)
3) buying the wonderful-seeming creation and proudly hauling it to my knitting group, followed quickly by
4) depression at discovering it needs an auto-tension thingy and accompanying worry that I didn't have one in the box in the car
5) euphoria at finding said-thingy attached to the lid
6) gloom upon being told that I still needed a yarn rod to attach the thingy to the machine
7) glimmer of hope that maybe the seller, Carol (daughter of beloved knitter, who died at 89 two years ago), still had the missing piece somewhere
8) sadness that a phone call didn't spark the desired "Oh sure, I have that right here on the table"
9) rising confidence in the power of the internet/ebay/google to ferret out bizarre gizmos like the yarn rod
10) a round of frantic emails to knitting machine suppliers
11) a round of johnny walker red to stave off severe depression
12) alcohol-fueled optimism: Of course I'll find it!
The insanity of all this is that yesterday, I was perfectly tickled with hand knitting and all the joy and satisfaction it's brought to my life these last 2-1/2 years, and had no inclination toward machine knitting of any ilk. But of course when I stumbled across the listing on craigslist, I became enamored (to the point of obsession -- what, me, obsessive when it's anything to do with knitting) with the Silver Reed Model 810 circa 1972 manual machine knitter.
So, now that I have to wait and hunt down parts, back to the afghan for Angie's new baby Josh. I love the colors -- Vanna's acrylic, but great, bold, hippy dippy orange, green, blue, purple and yellow. I think I'll finish it tonight, even though it's 1:30 and I still have a couple hours of knitting ahead of me.
Quick easy pattern from "Lisa" (the other knitterly Lisa I know):
Cast on 4 stitches with a long-tail cast on
1: Kfb of each stitch, join (standard disclaimer here: Don't you dare twist those stitches, bitch) (8 stitches -- divide evenly onto 4 DPNs)
2) *yo, k* (16 stitches)
3) k
4) *k3, yo, k, yo* (24 stitches)
5) k
6) *k5, yo, k, yo* (32 stitches)
7) k
(Yes, that's Josh's blanket on my head)
Continue pattern as established, alternating increase rounds with knit rounds. The number of knit stitches in each of the four sections increases by 2 each time before the yo k yo (row 8 - k7 yo k yo around; row 10 - k9 yo k yo around, etc.) If you knit on 4 DPNs, just put a yo before and after the last stitch on each needle. I used circs and just followed the pattern as established, it was simple.
Change yarn colors randomly at the beginning of any knit round (my bands of color varied from 2 rounds to about 10-12 rounds)
Knit until the blanket measures 22-25" from the center out to the cast-on edge (22 yields about a 32-inch square; 25 yields about a 36-inch square, according to my calculations).
*Addendum
OK, now I've finished.
I did a loose bind-off as follows:
*K2tog, slip back onto left needle*
Of course, being stockinette the edges roll, but I don't mind this look -- anybody can buy a baby bankie in the store where the edges don't roll! To avoid this (and OK, maybe next time), just do garter stitch for final the4-5 rounds (on circs, I guess that would mean alternating K and P rounds). I was pretty sure it would roll, but couldn't face the endless purls... lazy me. Josh, being a baby, won't care.
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