The Yarn Diva

Doing the Continental

Definitely showing my age here. One of my favorite old, old movies is "The Gay Divorcee" (1934, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers). It's famous for a 17-minute dance sequence called The Continental. Oh, well....that was back in the old days when it was scandalous to be divorced and "gay" meant something quite different. What a hoot!

I've been trying to learn to knit continental style. Last week I spent a couple of stressful hours with a KnittingHelp.com video demonstrating how to "pick" your knitting. (I'm a long-time "thrower.") Then I tried to sit quietly and reproduce what I had just seen. The knitting part was easy--no problem. Well, it didn't look that great, but at least I got the concept. As for the purling...no dice. I'd knit a row, turn my knitting, and -- what the heck! -- my stitches were twisted. Again and again.

So this week, at the monthly meeting of our knitting guild, I confessed that I couldn't get it. One of the things I love about the Atlanta Knitting Guild is that we have some extremely accomplished, experienced knitters who are always willing to share what they know. Jean, who has a teaching background that makes her uniquely qualified to explain things to addled people like myself, showed me how to purl, continental style.  (Thank you, Jean!) So yesterday I purled and purled and purled. And it's better...not perfect, but better.

My gauge, however, is very wonky. I have been fantasizing about doing the TKGA master knitting program and wondering whether my knitting is up to the task. One of the big issues, obviously, is gauge. I can usually get gauge, one way or the other, with my "throwing" style. My "picking" knitting, at this point, is all over the scale. I think, though, it's a matter of practice. (I hope!)

I was taught to knit by my grandmother at the age of about eight or nine. I knit my first sweater (which was also my first project--what was I thinking?) in the fifth grade, from a Red Heart pattern and gray Red Heart yarn. It was a pullover, crewneck style, and well suited to the winters of the DC area. My mother was a pretty good knitter (the same grandmother, her mother-in-law, had taught her, too.), but she was very impatient with me and my inability to do the intarsia and argyles that were easy for her. To this day, I am uneasy with intarsia--still not able to meet my mother's standards.

By the way, one of my memories of that gray sweater is that I didn't have enough money to buy all the yarn at one time. I would babysit a couple of hours (at 50 cents an hour!), go to Woolworth's and buy one skein, go home and knit it, then take more babysitting money back to the store a few days later, and repeat the process. I had never heard of dye lots in those days. I just kept buying gray, and I guess it was okay. I don't remember any blotches or streaks.

But back to the grandmother. She was born in 1871 in a small city in upstate New York, across Lake Champlain from Vermont. Her mother was sickly and her father died young, from injuries he suffered in the Civil War years earlier. She learned to knit, the way girls did in those days, using wool spun from the merino sheep that were one of the economic mainstays of the Shoreham and Orwell, VT area, where her grandparents lived. She knit socks for her brothers and continued to knit for the Red Cross in WW I, in Springfield, MA. But she was left-handed, and pretty elderly by the time I came along, and teaching a young, impatient, right-handed granddaughter to knit was difficult. And she was a thrower. (My cousin, whom she also taught to knit, never got interested, but her daughter is a knitter. Interesting how that works.)

So the bottom line is, I'm a thrower, too. And it works just fine--not perfectly, and probably not as quickly as picking would be, but it works. So why am I torturing myself? Because I can.

ADHD or Renaissance Woman?

No, I don't have a formal diagnosis of ADHD, but I'm self-diagnosing here. Maybe that would explain my seeming inability to finish a task, or to see a project through after that initial flush of excitement. You know that excitement, don't you? That one when you start something new, and you can't put it down. Until one day, it's over and you never want to see it again. (Hmmm...maybe this explains my relationship track record, come to think about it.)

On the other hand, maybe there's no good medical reason for the vast list of incomplete things in my life, like

• umpty hundred unfinished knitting projects, most of which I never want to see again (ever!)
• including a severe case of SSS
• a couple of novels begun and never finished (and one that never got past the outline stage)
• a Access database of my collection of (mostly) West Virginia glass and Belleek porcelain
• diets abandoned after the first day...or hour
• exercise programs (see above)
• a completely incomplete genealogy of my family (or seven or eight branches of it)
• an indexing course that just petered out
• etc, etc., etc., in the words of King Mongkut

Which brings me to this blog. How embarrassing to realize the first entry (of a total of two) is over a year old. What kept me from coming back to the blog? Is it that I have nothing to say--I think most people would say I have WAY too much to say, and can't seem to stop saying it. That's obviously not it.

Well, for one thing, it's not perfectly organized and beautiful (yet) like the others I read compulsively. Hmmmm again--could it be (1) they've all been set up for awhile and maybe they evolved over time from imperfect to beautiful? Or (2) could the explanation be that the blogger took the time to learn the software and figure it out? Or (3) maybe I spend so much time reading other people's blogs I don't have time to write my own? I'm definitely seeing a pattern emerge here.

Or (and this is where the Renaissance Woman thing comes in), maybe I'm just trying to do too many things. Knitting and writing and indexing and working and trying to be a good parent and grandparent and dealing with my house and roomies (a semi-spouse and four pugs) and serving on the board of our local knitting guild. And buying and storing more yarn than any human could ever use.  And those are just the biggies.

Why can't I be one of those people whose lives are pared down to a few, tremendously important things? I read their blogs all the time--they knit (one project at a time, please), go to work, and maybe have a pet, and feel overwhelmed. And they're right--it's overwhelming. But I have this compulsion to fill (and overfill) every single minute of my life. It's like I'm terrified I won't get it all done during my lifetime.

Well, enough self-therapy for today. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Two Steps Forward, One Back

My progress on the Crayon Box Jacket (www.chrisbylsmadesigns.com) continues about as usual. Since I started this project on March 5, I've taken two steps forward, one back. Knit two squares, tink one. Knit four, tink two. It's not that I don't like the look of the yarn choices I've made--it's more that I'm still feeling my way with how yarns knit up.

The jacket is comprised of mitered squares. Okay, got that concept. I've taken three or four classes in mitered squares, and for some reason, this is the first one that I got. Really got. I always lose count and can't figure out where I am in a square and what the next decrease is. This time I got it--fine. I can make the squares.

It's the yarn combinations (and resulting gauge) that I'm struggling with. Well, obviously, it's all up to the knitter to pick the yarns. No pattern that tells you to use a specific combination of yarns, all tested together in a sterile laboratory.

But I'm starting to feel good about the combinations. My jacket is mainly purple, with green and gold accents. Chris Bylsma encourages us to name our jackets--mine is The Jacket Formerly Known as Prince.  Enough said. There's a photo of the sleeves in the photo album--yes, I know I still have to darn in the ends. Yes, I'll get to it. Right now, I'm having too much fun adding on squares.

Pugs and Yarn Don't Mix

Or, more to the point, they do. Everything I knit has a little pug hair built right in--no extra charge! I used to try to pull out the little hairs (black from Lightning and Bluto, fawn-colored from Lucy and Lulu). That was a losing cause and I've given it up. Of all the things currently on the needles (I'll have to do an inventory one of these days!), the two active projects are (1) a Chris Bylsma Crayon Box Jacket (www.chrisbylsmadesigns.com) and (2) a stroller blanket for the newest expected grandchild. My daughter picked out some really beautiful wool that looks like a Monet garden (can't find the ballband but I will). It's gorgeous and totally impractical, but she's looking at it as a keepsake and didn't want a typical, throw-it-in-the-washer blanket. I suspect she'll be sorry, or else will have to put it away after the first attempt to get the baby yak out of it, but we'll see. And, of course, what made me think of this is: this gorgeous mixture of blues, greens, yellows, and, yes, a touch of fuschia, has little fawn hairs sticking out of it. And it's not an eyelash yarn! It's supposed to have texture, but it's probably more texturally interesting than the manufacturer intended. Will my daughter notice? Yes, she will. She's not a dog person. Well, she likes them, she just can't deal with owning one. She and her kids gave me one of the dogs in question (Lucy) on Mother's Day two years ago. But I suspect the little hairs aren't Lucy's--they're more stiff and Lucy's are the softest dog hairs I've ever felt. So I have to hope that either they come out in the pre-gifting wash or the new baby isn't allergic or that someone has a sense of humor.