Laugh if you must.
This is Wonder on Lee Ann's body.
Any questions?
Talk to me in five kilos. Maybe then, I won't feel like I'm a mutant. Because kids, right now, I'm a size 2 (despite all appearances to the contrary...). And yet, to fit into a medium-width (that's the third size up) One Skein Wonder, I have to be a size 0, max. And before we go any further, please note that I did get gauge. Again. But this pattern just refuses to fit anything but a stick or a seven year old.
In the OSW world, 2s are too big for prime time.
In my world, I needed two skeins, thanks.
It's also very inconvenient
to have tits and shoulders.
And it hurts to move my arms.
But the leaves are nice, eh?
Now, my husband, who is the thinnest man in the world, thinks I'm on the heavier side of normal. I'm not exactly pleased with the jiggly bits that have suddenly cropped up everywhere either, although I don't think that people who can eat ice cream and Choco-Leibniz biscuits before bedtime and be none the worse for jiggling have any right to mention my jiggly bits, unless it's to praise them. Metabolism is not a moral issue, buddy. You didn't eat the last biscuit, did you, darling?
It does, however, cause mutants like me to go out and buy things like exercise balls and a little thingy that is supposed to hold me in the proper position to develop abs of something a bit firmer than ice cream and Choco-Leibniz. I don't have the time to go to a gym, I don't have the money for a trainer, so Pilates, here I come. Again. Nice to see you, Madame Winsor, been a long time, you haven't aged a day. Bitch.
Anyway, let's set my mutant woes aside. I don't want to be labeled the whiner who can't fit into someone's pattern because of a deep love of Häagen-Dazs. However, my kid must be a size -40 or something, because the smallest size of the OSW looks terrific on her. She loves it so much that when I went to pick her up at at school on Friday afternoon, she was still wearing it. For a child who usually is in some state of undress by the end of the day, thanks to itchiness or hotness or sheer whinyness, this is nothing short of a miracle, still wearing something Maman made, at 17h. I'm almost glad it was too small for me. Almost. But we won't talk about how jealousy of one's seven-year-old child's skinniness is just plain shameful. You did not read that here. I'm happy it fits her. Really.
Here's the obligatory "Rachel" pose.
We like to call this one the "Reverse Rachel."
While we're talking about things that are a little hard to take off, if you haven't seen Franklin's astonishing circular near-disaster cum homage-to-icons-of-dance yet, go here and die laughing. That man is simply brilliant. Eat your heart out, Jules Feiffer.
And speaking of "just a little shrug...," my Rowan shrug, "Tara," is coming along, although I had to rip about two inches (ouuuuuuuch) after missing a yarnover somewhere about...well...two inches down.... Note to self: wine + lace knitting = whine + lace frogging. No photo, because, well, it's black and fuzzy and you saw it last time. Picture last time, only longer. It won't get interesting until I have to start the ribbed edge, and then it will look black and fuzzy and edged in rib. You have to admit, there's only so much "ooh" and "aah" the sleeve equivalent of a pushmi-pullyu can engender.
If it sounds like I'm in a bit of a funk, I am. A post-kid-birthday (she turned 7, we had a party at a ceramics café with seven other little girls, we lived through it without losing or killing any of them), rainy Monday, haven't spun a thing in weeks funk. I have nothing on the needles that completely thrills me (Tara's losing her shine, fast. Think endless sleeve. Makes you want to run out and make one, eh?). Everything recently off the needles makes me feel like I've eaten a bowl of lead balloons. Maybe I should go get me one of these, just to inject a little oomph into my body image (thanks go to Annie Modesitt for linking to this...it made my day). At the very least, it would serve as a distraction from those love handles, non?
Cheerier post next time is virtually guaranteed because I'm going to Vermont on Saturday, where I get to hang out with Norma and Juno and anyone else who plans to enable the hell out of me, fiberwise. I'm extremely excited. Believe it or not, I've never been to a fiber festival. My knitting group is also going, and making a weekend out of it, but I'm not that portable, thanks to early morning dance lessons for a certain little person....
Time to quit whining and go exercise. After all, I now have a proper set of balls—I may as well put them to good use, non?
Edited to Add: I've offended somebody with the word "mutant" and I would like to assure everyone that I do not consider people of larger sizes to be "mutated" in any way. I meant the exact opposite, in fact. I was making fun of myself in this ridiculously small thing I made, and making fun of the way patterns are sized for the minuscule among us. My point was that there was no way in hell anyone with an adult human body was going to get into the garment I made. I'm sorry to have offended the first commenter, but unfortunately I can't reach her to apologise and tell her what I really meant. So I'll apologise here and hope she understands.
September 26, 2005 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (36) | Print
I saw it in the window and I jes' hadta have it.
—Carol Burnett as Scarlett O'Hara
in "Went With The Wind."
Unlike Carol's fabulous Bob Mackie dress made from Tara's curtains,
complete with the curtain rod still stuck in the shoulders,
I will not be embedding my circ in this version of Tara.
My shoulders have been tortured enough, thanks.
I'm fucking up simplicity. Please send tiny needles and a lace chart.
Returning from programming hell, in my blind rush to knit something I wanted that would actually be finished in this century, I had a little mishap. Involving what is supposed to be one of the hottest, easiest, fastest patterns on the face of the planet. Except that the designer's idea of where shoulders are and my idea of where shoulders are resulted in me creating a nice little One Skein Wonder for a six year old. Trouble is, it was intended for me.
Shut up. I'm well aware that I'm thirty-eight years old and have no business making one of these little slippy thingies for me. I'm past caring. Especially after trying this thing on and being so pissed off about the size issue that I threw it across the room and immediately cast on for another one.
The One Skein I Wonder What Happened was, and still is, beautifully done, if I do say so myself. I combined some of Teva Durham's leaf ideas into this pattern because I could not stomach the idea of pure stockinette. I mirrored increases, decreases, and yarnovers. I did math, people. I got gauge, even. I measured my shoulders, at the back, shoulder seam to shoulder seam, and got the small size. This is normal. I'm small. Not uncommon for me to make the smallest size in something, even with the rack factor. And this is a One Skein Wonder for shoulders, not the rack, am I right? No breasts were harmed, nay, glared at, even, in the making of this knitted item.
So, why didn't it work? Because "shoulder to shoulder" is a relative concept. She meant outside of shoulder to outside of shoulder. I did not.
Either that, or I'm a shoulder mutant. A tiny person with freakishly huge knobby things you couldn't fit into a raglan shape to save your life. This sort of raglan therapy could, however, be used in the unlikely event that my shoulder blades decide they want to get to know one another, intimately. Should I choose to undergo this kind of musculatory torture, the girls will be positioned such that I will also need a t-shirt that says, "Please speak to my face. My breasts can't hear you."
So. I'm doing this again with a view to knitting a bit longer. This will be the Two Skein Montréalaise Mutant. To match the daughter's lovely new knitted thingy. Oh, shit, I didn't even think of that...Aieeee, we're going to match.... Please believe me when I say this was SO not planned.
When I retrieve the first one from the corner into which I threw it, I'll take a picture of Twinkletoes in her fab new shrug. Some kids have all the luck. Who knew that having an idiot for a mother could result in such a lovely little unexpected gift? (Why, yes, I have, in fact, developed a twitch below my eye....)
In the meantime, I have received a gorgeous little gift from my pal in the "Better Pal Swap" (as in "Better the Pal You Know..."). She gifted me with some Frog Tree Alpaca, in black. Yum. This is what I'm using to make Tara (pattern in Rowan 38. Yes, it's a shrug. Shut up.) This is what the finished Tara is supposed to look like:
Funny, that's the look I gave my husband
when he asked how the programming was going,
and were there any clean pants to be had in the house.
I decided to use another stitch that would show up marginally better. It's St. John's Wort, from Mon Tricot, and it's very pretty. A wee bit of open work, and a four-row, six-stitch repeat (which didn't harm things too much mathwise). It's not exactly diamonds, but I'm not exactly a diamond girl.
Okay, alright, I'll admit it. Have you ever tried to purl 3 together every 4 stitches for an entire project using a very splitty, slippery yarn on tiny needles and not lose your mind? I'm not doing it. Besides, openwork looks nice.
Here's a slightly closer view of the progress I've made (Black. Fuzzy. Hard to photograph. I know I'm not very trustworthy right now, but really, this is pretty. I promise.):
I love how this is turning out.
So heavenly on the skin. So fun to knit.
So accurately measured. A brilliant rescue
from dimwit status. Phiou.
I'm using size 2 Addis. Toothpicks on a wire. The result is wonderful. And the alpaca feels like a dream. So this thing might actually get done faster than the Montréalaise Mutant in the thick yarn. I also plan on posing in Tara exactly the way the model does in Rowan. All the time. Except I'll probably wear a bra. I can pout, though. All I have to do is look at that skimpy little thing in the corner that was supposed to be for me, and my lower lip goes into pouting overdrive. I don't even need lipstick for this one.
You may have been wondering about the wheel, by the way. It's here, it's beautiful, and I will post pictures when I have entered the mindset that will allow me to feel less like overspun merino (soft as a grape and too damned loopy) and more able to learn. The end of my class, the beginning of first grade for Twinkletoes, the final medical assessments before next summer's surgery, full-time work, and oh, yes, my fucked-up knitting, have worn me a little thin. It won't be long, though, I promise. The little hitchhiker hand with the gorgeous beaded talisman on it is peeking out at me from the bag...
...but right now, to get a ride with me, you have to be patient. Perfect shoulders and curtain rod optional.
September 17, 2005 8:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (21) | Print
Who says cabled handspun isn't sexy?
I may be up to my eyeballs in programming that would take my husband fifteen minutes, tops, yet takes me two freaking weeks of tearing my hair out, but that doesn't mean I haven't been working off the stress with a little superlative procrastination effort therapeutic creativity....
I can't show you the first effort, because it is for my Secret Pal. It's also (gasp) crocheted. Using a steel crochet hook. Yes, I admit it—in a former life, I made lace doilies using thread and a wicked tiny steel hook. This is perhaps why I won't make a circular shawl, ever. No offense to people who love circular shawls, because some people look fabulously elegant in them, and their beauty is certainly not to be argued. I don't look fabulously elegant in them. In fact, I look like my great-aunt's lowboy bureau, minus the dust.
I'll show the Secret Pal gift later when the big reveal is made (in October, I think...and by that time I'll have a lot to show because I've promised myself that something handmade will go into each Secret Pal package).
Meanwhile, I promised to show you the white bunny, made from handspun 2-ply, once I got the time to spin up the yarn for the ears. Thanks to my finely-honed procrastination talents need for a little study relief, here are the knitted-up efforts of yarn created from Stephanie's wool, a great little tigerwood spindle, and my fabulous fuck-you-bracelet plying technique (also known as the Uptight Woman's Andean Bracelet). Note: Please, spinners, if you try Andean plying, don't go tight. It hurts, you end up flipping the bird to perfectly nice people without realising you're doing it, and then you spend the next half hour wondering why in hell anyone thought this was a good idea as you struggle to save your soon-to-require-amputation middle finger):
I give you Lana the Aran Bunny.
Clearly, Andean plying, when it works,
gives a beautiful, knittable result.
Lana is a bit of a glamour girl. She is made from 2-ply merino, and yes, even her ears are cabled. Her sleep-mask (because if you're going to spend your nights in luxury hotel rooms, you need a sleep mask) hides the fact that her face sports a cable, too, sloping down to her lightly rouged, handspun merino nose.
Lana is ready for her model shot. Let me tell you,
blocking a sleep mask for a bunny is not easy.
And the fitting session for the underwear...Ouch.
The SyndiCate is going to kill me for this, but Lana is wearing "Better Llama Underwear." It matches her sleep mask. Of course. And they are both trimmed in handspun red merino...the sleep mask in singles, the underwear in 2-ply. Cate, when you said you knew I'd make something absolutely fabulous from the llama, little did you know.... Don't worry, darling, I only used a little of it. Bunny underwear doesn't take much yarn, you know. Ooookay, maybe you don't know. But look, the bunny needed "Better Underwear" and you have to admit, llama is just about as better as it gets...In any case, I have plenty of llama fiber left to make myself something a bit less bizarre. Honest. I promise to behave myself when the wheel arrives. Higher production is not going to mean more bunnies. Or even more underwear. Really.
Man, I hope she buys that....
Seriously, I have the need for speed if I'm ever going to spin enough of anything to make myself something larger than the palm of my hand. I deeply want a scarf out of this black llama, because whatever I make out of it has to go near the skin. It's just incredible. If you were here, you'd want to go roll around in the llama, trust me.
Regarding smaller llama garments, it just occurred to me that some of you may be wondering what I did about the tail problem. The bunny's tail problem, not mine. My tail problem requires less wine and an exercise program, and I don't want to discuss the failure of said plan. Suffice it to say that compiling a rectangle and jumping up and down in sneakers drinking bottled water and hoping the hell that no one can see you making such an ass of yourself in the name of beauty are not compatible. But I'll be happy to tell you how I dealt with the bunny tail problem. Hell, I'll just show you:
It feels truly odd, taking a shot of the back end
of a bunny thong. Bind-off, cast-on, by the way.
Ask me how I know a bunny tail won't fit through a yarnover.
Lest you think that I am the most ridiculous human being on the face of the earth, destined to never knit a serious item of clothing ever again, let me tell you what I learned from this particular bunny-knitting experience. First, I learned how to do a cable-needleless cable. For this, my knitting group will be thankful. I can't tell you how many times I've embarrassed myself and everyone around me by publicly searching my cleavage for a lost cable needle. I won't promise to never use a cable needle again, but I'm seriously considering this needleless technique as a keeper. And if you think an underwire gone haywire hurts, just you try losing a cable needle in there....
Second, I learned how to Andean-ply. It's magic, if you can manage to not hurt yourself or test your ability to offend everyone around you. I'll definitely do it again, but I'll have a glass of wine first. Shut up. I told you my tail problem was hopeless.
Third, I learned that handspun singles bias like crazy. This necessitated heavy blocking of the llama mask and underwear. A painful process, to say the least. This also made me think that if I'm going to make myself something out of the llama, I'd better consider plying those singles, because plying balances everything out beautifully. I'm so pleased with the way the white merino knitted up, I'm practically delirious. Duh. I knitted a bunny thong. Clearly, I've gone beyond delirious.
I've learned a lot about how handspun behaves, and I've also learned that I am so ready for that wheel. Otherwise, I'll be doomed to a life of bunny-knitting, because I'm just not fast enough with a spindle. Mind you, the lowering of the speed factor does do wonders for my stress level. I'm telling you, there is nothing so soothing as watching the spindle plus the twist of the singles practically ply themselves, and knowing that the result is going to knit up into something gorgeous.
And pardon me for saying so, but I think Lana is rather gorgeous. And I'm hoping her recipient does, too. At the very least, said recipient can now say that she has better underwear.
I think I need a vacation.
Just look at what the stress has done to me....
September 5, 2005 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (39) | Print
It Ain't Over 'Til The Short Lady Pings.
I'm still swamped with work, as there are assignments to be handed in after my final exam, so my semester is not over yet, and my needles and spindle have gone into hiding. I have to compile a freaking rectangle first....
In the meantime, the people devastated by Hurricane Katrina are on my mind. And I'd like to send a message as far and wide as I can:
Compile This Rectangle, Please.
I can honestly say that the average person is doing far, far better to try to help those in need down South than my former government. The Keystone Cops have nothing on U.S. Homeland Security, but there's no humour whatsoever to be seen in the appalling results of this unpreparedness. My old college roommate's family, who lives in the New Orleans area, had the means to get out and/or be safe, watered, and fed: money, transportation, even generators to keep fridges going on higher ground. But there are so many people who had absolutely no way—no money, no strength—to get out (hell, they closed the bus stations before anyone could even try) and some of them are dying, waiting for help. I'm horrified, and I feel helpless to do anything. But there is one small thing I can do. It's called "Give A Little," it was set up by the dynamic duo of knitting blogeuses, Margene and Susan, and here's how you can participate:
Go here and donate (here's that fab rectangle again, in case you missed it the first time):
And then e-mail givealittle AT gmail DOT com to tell Margene and Susan that you've donated.
And there's even more you can do: you can donate prizes to be given in a drawing to knitters who have let the ladies know they donated cash.
At the moment, instead of blasting the men in suits (though I'd like to...), I'd like to applaud these two wonderful women for giving knitters an incentive and a way to help. Please check out the already incredible results of their efforts at the Give A Little web page, and give whatever you can. As of this morning, the total has almost reached $10,000. I'm not kidding. We are a force to be reckoned with.
So, donate your cash, donate your stash, donate a little something you whipped up. Somebody's gotta do it, and the knitting community has rallied to the aid of so many people before. If ever there was a time to pull together and see what we can scare up amongst ourselves, it's now. Let's do it again, and do it up big!
September 2, 2005 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | Print