a net

is not as slimming as one would hope for a sweater fabric. But I'm still happy.

I like a rumply cardigan I looked too buttoned down when I had it buttoned up.

pattern: Annette from Knitty Summer 2009
yarn: the lamentably discontinued Jo Sharp Silkroad DK Tweed
(that there is a link to a place that seems to have it in stock. Pounce!)
needles: size 6 us
notes: I started this in the sunshiney days believing I was knitting a sweater a month in 09. In late July I thought it'd be a wonderful cap sleeved little cardi to wear over a black tank top. It became an autumn knit and long sleeves were obviously the way to go. First I knit a long sleeve using the diameter of the short cap sleeve in the pattern. It was wide & blocky. Starting over wanting a fitted sleeve, I cast on 41 stitches and knit it up from the cuff, increasing gradually until I'd reached the cap sleeve diameter in the pattern.

Funny yet embarrassing story: I was seaming the sleeves at SnB, and my friend the Archiknist, who designs fabulous sweaters & has an analytical eye, wondered why the sleeves weren't designed to be knit in the round. I agreed with her, and then said I wish I'd thought of that, and we even had an extended conversation on how lazy designers could be, not wanting to write out a 4 row lace stitch pattern in the round vs back & forth as in the cardi body, tsk tsk tsk. I was looking at the seams and the way the increases on the sleeve row edges were forming solid little stockinette islands along the inner arm seam, I was thinking that the designer could've maybe been more clever with that, too.

Then it struck me. She didn't design any long sleeves at all. It was my idea to knit them flat and to increase on the seam. Forehead smack. Thwack!

And, Ok, Lulu was right about the buttons.I guess she saw the writing on the wall. Very smart.

If you are coming to Make Mine Local in Boston Friday night, the indie fashion show put on by the Common Cod Fiber Guild, you might just catch me wearing this. See you there?

Sweater photos posed by my new favorite coffee shop. Vegan BLT's? what is not to love?

bit of red

I can hardly comment on the collections I found at my aunt's home on Friday. She had a thirty year headstart on me. I'm no slouch. The next generation will have plenty to work with here.

Speaking of red & the work of another generation (smooth segue, no?)...

photo courtesy of Rita Zucker

My mom sent me this shot of scarves she & her friend Claire knit for the Red Scarf Project of the OFA. Deadline's December 15th to donate a handknit scarf for a former foster kid now in college. If you start one soon, surely you can finish it in time for this very worthy cause. It means more than you think. And, go check out the contest Norma's running for contributors.

My mom's been a supporter of the Red Scarf project ever since we learned about it, in 2006. She's helped out when I've done photo shoots for them in the DC area. The first year she had a college student run up & hug her to thank her and say how much it meant, and she saw "red scarf kids" volunteering as packers get all excited picking out scarfs. She's been knitting, spreading the word & recruiting knitters ever since. Like her senior center gym buddy Claire. Claire's scarf is on the left (pattern unknown). In the center, is my mom's Luna Lace Scarf from Shear Spirit, (yeah, nepotistic choice, nothing wrong with that, right?). She modified for DKish weight yarn, knitting it over 35 stitches. On the right, she knit a checkerboard textured pattern (generic pattern here). I saw that one in person, it looks...dare I say? very smart.

Funny, yet awful, story: Claire had knit a fourth red scarf, she'd blocked it, folded it carefully and put it in a box on a shelf by her front door to bring to the gym to hand off to my mom. Her husband, being a helpful sorta guy, thought it was a trash box and took it out. Not to a garbage can. He threw it down an incinerator chute in their building.

Can you feel her pain? Claire didn't talk to him for almost 2 days.

on second thought

My new hat. When I put it on my head I thought this is IT, this is what I want in a new hat.
Pattern: Felicity
Yarn: Sport weight- 1 skein of Six Paca Farm alpaca (description here) , and 1 skein of Frog Tree alpaca in gold. I am crazy about these colors together. I'm tempted to add a small amount of bright red stitching embellishment. For some reason this color combo speaks to me this week.
Needles: sizes 3 & 5 US
Notes: Ok, this is such a cool hat if you look at it on Ravelry , mostly knit in worsted weight. Or here's a good example.There are, like, hundreds to admire.This is a lighter weight yarn so I modified the pattern , by casting on 96 stitches to start and increasing starting with K6 M 1, until I worked up to K12 M1 .
Since the yarn is thinner, I worried the hat wouldn't be long enough. A baggy beanie? No thanks. I added 8 rows before starting the decreases. And I knit 3 rounds between each decrease row.

When I first put it on my head I thought I was all that. I had the slouchy hat I wanted.

Now, I'm thinking maybe too much volume. At some point slouch just becomes...pouf. So this may get a restructuring. Or I may just be lazy and wear it.

brought to you by the letter b

My Annette is blocked & dry.

Thanks to yesterday's long roundtrip in my new car mobile blocking unit. Funny view back there- some photo equipment, my yoga mat and knitting. Throw in a cup of coffee, maybe a little dark chocolate, and there you have me. Thing wise, I mean.

I found these bug buttons marinating in my button tin. My sister Lulu brought them back from England for me a long time ago- maybe a decade or more. I've been saving them for just the right sweater.

As luck would have it, she popped by as I was contemplating giving them this permanent home. My other option, also under consideration at the moment, was mismatched vintage (and here vintage means not sure where they came from) green buttons. She told me I could do that if I wanted to "perpetuate my patchwork potholder look" . Or I could use the bug buttons if I wanted "a smarter style". Being mature and all, I didn't say anything in a sarcastic Goofy voice like "well, garsh, who wouldn't want to look smart" . But you know, I think I'll go for it.

a mere shadow of a post

I had a half-decent post planned for today. But I just got home, 10 pm, after a day spent on Lawn Guyland going through an aunt's home before she sells it, then visiting her in the hospital--and much contemplating on the nature of STUFF, mortality, time passing and gawdawful traffic. Really- 3 1/2 hours to travel 93 miles??!!

So, a shadow is what I have for you.
Till tomorrow.

do handknit socks reduce stress?

You wanna talk stressed? Bridgeport CT is stressed. I still like to look at it though.

Last week a reporter from cnn.com called me, writing about professions identified as being high stress compared to the level of pay. I figured she was looking to talk about the stress of working as a commercial photographer in this cruddy economy. It turns out the stress factors identified are deadlines, crazy, weird or precarious working conditions, unpredictable budgets while keeping clients happy and the pressure of needing to always produce fabulous work.

Really? These are things I like about the job. A little chaos is good, that's my motto.
So here I am as the commercial photographer poster child. When's the last time you saw handknit socks on CNN ?

what i learned today

#1 If I am out of caffeinated coffee , I must not make a pot of decaf and try to fool myself . It will result in headache and crankiness in the extreme by 2 pm.

# 2 Having the photo editor of a lifestyle magazine I admire asking me to make & send a quickie glimpse inside my home is humbling. Very.

1st tuesday in november

Is it weird that this is what I consider an all-american image? I heart diners.

My day as an Election Official got off to a whomping headstart. As bad as the 5 am call time at the polls was, the as-yet-unexplained way that I read the clock wrong and was ready at 4 am, fully dressed and out the door was even worse.

No matter. There's something about being hands-on so close to the nuts & bolts of democracy, and the nuts & dolts of my community, that I have to love it.

commitments, with issues

Oh, the pressure. November. A month when the darkness comes too early each day. A month to cast your ballots* in the US. A month to commit.
NaKniSweMo 2009 ? Vestvember ? NaBloPoMo ? Yeah, sure, why not.

If you ask me, all uncooked tomatoes have issues. The gooky stuff with seeds.

Well, umm, in the past I've had a mixed record with these sorts of efforts. Daily blogging? Sorta kinda made it through the month. Scrolling back from that link, I see I fell apart around the 21st. A sweater in a month ? OK, that I've done a few times but the year long effort ? Pfffffft. Gone with the summer breezes, I'm just putting the final touches on # 7.
A vest in November? When I joined Vestuary, I finished it in April.
So I'm not making any promises. We'll see how it turns out. Sometimes different is good.

* don't forget to go vote tomorrow (Tuesday) if you're in the US. I'm working it again, I got a promotion to tabulator tender. woohoo! Take pity on your poor Election Officials. We're there from 5 am on to welcome you. Not expecting it to be as exciting as last year, I may get some serious knitting in on that November sweater.

not necessarily in order of importance

My souvenir from last weekend: One skein of Lisa Souza yarn, in the colorway St Valentine's. It's a big honkin' 560 yards of Sock!merino. Perhaps an Ishbel? I've heard wearing red gives extra energy. Works for me.

I bet you thought I was going to say something about a Red Scarf for the Red Scarf Project right? No, but I'm working on that. You should too. Have you seen the prizes Norma has for those knitting and donating?

Last Sunday , sister Lulu needed to do some reconnaissance in a charming CT town, prepping for a meeting. I went along figuring, whynot? Great weather, a Bloody Mary at the historic tavern mid morning, a hike around the colonial harbour...what could be bad.

She had in mind walking in and out of every. single. charming. little shop...and the tavern didn't open till too late in the day.

I think I've already made it clear how I feel about recreational shopping. Without the camera to give my morning purpose I'd have hung myself up on one of these lamp posts.

I can't complain too much. Twee overload was offset by the sun.

PS. my friend Birdsong is having a contest over on her blog, she wants to know about life changing events in yours, as she just had a biggie. Go. Enter.

me & younification*

(* I didn't make that word up, more here on the subject).
Oy this social media. It used to be easier to keep work & personal life separate.
This was personal life:

2 sons & their best friend ,random day at the summer cabin in the 90's

and this was work life

.
page from my website

The two rarely mixed. I thought it was important not to let on how I spent my non-professional time. Or that I even had a personal life. I did a lot of magazine and NY Times assignments that were odd or quirky or even dangerous. I worried if my clients knew I had a family they might not give me the same work. In retrospect, I bet they wouldn't care. But, you know what they say about hindsight, right? Then a few years ago I started this blog, and then started shooting Shear Spirit.
About then's when the veil dropped.

People I met through the blog became my friends and they became clients,

Behind the scenes shooting Mason-Dixon Knitting: Outside the Lines

then came Facebook, and Twitter and Linked In and OH FUGGEDABOUT IT! I can't keep straight who is work and what is personal. I just try to look presentable in public.

Which brings us to Friday, I traveled to NY for a meeting at my favorite publisher's (read that as: the one who is giving me the next book contract) to talk about art direction for another project with Joan Tapper. Yayaya! details soon, new adventures on the horizon. From there, downtown to a photographers' trade show at the Javitz Center, got teased about my knitting blog as usual by macho male colleagues, (yeah, I'm looking at you Jake) , listened to a pep rally for social media & Twitter (yeah I'm looking at you @photojack) BTW? Knitbloggers are light years ahead of even most gearhead photographers in this realm. I went home, woke up the next morning and off to StitchesEast, the knitters trade show in Hartford, to sign books and browse.

If you're keeping score, that's 2 tradeshows in 2 days in 2 cities, each was part work/part social. Does it matter anymore? is it better in this increasingly tech driven world to have transparency between your personal life & your business world and just be a human? Will we all soon speak in 140 characters or less no matter who we talk to, be it spouse, boss or that guy who hangs out at the bar in the center of town?

And more importantly, do you want to know if I managed to buy a skein of yarn this weekend? I did! Next post.

last minute news saturday

I'm up in Hartford CT at StitchesEast from 12:30 on signing Shear Spirit at the Seacolors booth, # 727. Bring your copy, or you can purchase one there. Whatevah..just stop by & say hi. It's a rainy day, what better to do than browse the wool?


Nanney Kennedy, the shepherd, dye artist, sweater designer and force of nature is Mz Chapter One in Shear Spirit on her Meadowcroft Farm in Maine. You will be glad you met her. I know I am. An afternoon with Nanney is never, ever dull.






Holiday season is coming and a coffee table book makes a happy gift. Just saying.

the long post-rhinebeck post

Mine was a daytrip. I took the Robert Frost route to get there.

".........I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by......"

I was enjoying the scenery right down to every punny barn sign but worrying about the poor poor vendors, I wasn't seeing any other traffic. Had the economy finally thinned out the fiber fest crowd??? Till I realized I was just a little, cough ,off target.

Happily the New York Sheep & Wool Festival at Rhinebeck is as popular as ever.
The vendors with ready to wear woolens were happy, too. It seemed like all the vendors were doing OK , although I didn't succeed in adding to their totals. So much to admire! Too much to take in! I am a sucky shopper!

This yurt between 2 barns was full of fantastic wet felted pieces & rugs. I liked the scarves, I can't explain exactly how they did it, they are part woven fabric and part felt.

Retail slacker's remorse: wish I'd bought one.

Here's why I really went to Rhinebeck. My plans to hang with Team Mason Dixon Knitting:

Progressive Knitters in Support of Progressive Lenses

id's by Rav link: Kay, Bonne Marie Burns (of ChicKnits, she designed for the MD book), Ann, MaryNeal (another MDKnitting designer- Rav link to that Margaret sweater with the words) and yours truly. The combined brains & talent of these 4 is a forcefield. Plus they're a lot of fun to have a photo shoot with. Or a beer.

Here's some foodstands area play by play action:

While BonneMarie is interviewed and taped for LetsKnit2gether knitcast,we ran into Guido, of Its a Purl,Man .

So Kay sits down, takes my knitting and starts going a few rounds (I am thrilled. It's a sportweight alpaca hat begun Thursday and I want it done NOW). Guido plops down next to her, take a sidelong glance and pulls out his drop spindle.

Only at a fiber festival is this so extremely normal as to not even get a second glance. Well , yeah, Guido's sweater may have gotten a second glance but its got a sweet story behind it, go ask him.

I know its silly since I live so close by them but I was thrilled to run into New Haven & Shoreline SnB friends all day long.

Fr'example Rebecca, Anne w/ 2 kidlets and no blog, and Alina. Between fairground and the Ravelry party later that night, our little corner of the knitting world represented.

What else is there to report?
Tons of inspiring handknits , reallive sheep & alpaca, delicious food and excellent company. What more could you want for a chilly fall day?

Maybe a little bunny to go.

practicing

I am trying to train for Rhinebeck. Last year , I came home with a bottle of cranberry wine. Period. Full stop. In a year that had me at 5 fabulous fiber festivals - I know! weep for me! professional duties!- I purchased all of 2 skeins of yarn and a handful of mohair locks. Total.

So when my friend Shelly asked me to meet her at an alpaca farm shop near her house yesterday, I thought it'd be good for me. I was missing my friends at Victory Ranch, and my visit there last October.

Bozrah CT is no match for the mountains of New Mexico. But still, not so bad on a fall day.

The alpaca were predictably adorable. Six Paca Farm has a coffee shop in its farmhouse shop too. In training for my pledge to be decisive and acquire some yarn this weekend at the NY Sheep & Wool hooha, I forced myself to practice.

Look , a skein of tealish, overdyed brown alpaca. Sportweight. 160 yards. Lovely! But what will I do with it? One skein. Why?

I am not meant to be a stasher. Instead of working later today, I just know I am going to dig around and see if any of my alpaca leftovers might be similar enough in weight to knit a stripey Felicity hat. Or I'm going to do what I began at 6 am: go through every freakin' sport weight alpaca project on Ravelry, in search of the right one.

Note to self: make shopping list before Saturday with quantities/projects . Or else, stick to the wine.

utterly twitzcapated

Oddness this week.

It started when I swept this book off the new non-fiction display at the library. I was all "Heh, go ahead and show me that Twitter is worthwhile and not just a whole lot of TMI". Or something like that.

Predictably, there I was the next afternoon customizing my Twitter home page. And then finding folks to follow, and checking out Tweet readers, and downloading Twit apps on my phone. There you have it. I'm tweeting now. You can follow me and so far I haven't been trumpeting stuff like a bad hair day and how I wish I had some more Imperial Cookies in the freezer stash but hey, give me time. (and by the way? both true today).

In tribute, but not necessarily adhering , to my newfound 140 character addiction devotion, a bulleted version of what's up 'round here:

• a 36 hour trip to DC for a family funeral gave me some unexpected knitting time: train to NY, BoltBus to DC & return. Annette (scroll down a bit to see it from that link ) is progressing, maybe a Rhinebeck debut

• nevertheless, I am no longer in the sweater-a-month club. That I never really joined, anyway.

• This blogpost from Yahaira, which led me here, got me jonesing for shot cotton. I rode it out all week, thinking it'd go away. Nope. Looks like I'm dusting off the old Singer.

• Conveniently I was in NYC yesterday with my childhood BFF's. Our shared passions for handcrafting, fueled by our shared passions for vodka drinks and the shared blog links from above kicked in. Our first stop, a fabric store near Chinatown.

iphone view looking up

• That ceiling glimpse alone should tell you what we faced. The teetering fabric bolts everywhere were too much to handle, plus no one working there thought they had anything resembling shot cotton. We headed over to Soho, passing the yarneristas crawling in Purl and found every color of the fabric we wanted at Purl Patchwork.

• And I fully planned to set up the ol' machine and get right down to it today but the weather demanded some hiking in the woods.

iphone view, looking down

See you at Rhinebeck next Saturday? Maybe I'll be the contrarian in my new sewn, not knitted, scarf.

And, maybe I'd better get knitting faster.

traveling knits , or not

an uncharacteristically restrained composition from me, yes?

Last month I was supposed to be at a professional retreat up in Maine. Just before it, I recalled the most important items I brought the last time I attended this event: my wool socks and my fingerless mitts. But, oh, my poor old mitts. I blogged about the sad state of them here.

The obvious move, knit a new pair quick. Maine Morning Mittens, I know, startlingly unimaginative choice. Believe me if ony knitting something with a geographic name took you there, I'd be working on a Hawaii Hat, and a Brisbane Bonnet, too.

Yarn from the (no longer so) big bag o' Noro scraps. The funny thing is they are mostly from the same half-skein of Kureyon, with some purple for both thumbs that had been pulled out of another skein long ago.
And a couple of rounds from some greyish Iro to end the purpley/lime green one when the half-skein ran out.

Quick, great fitting, functional. Completely unpaired looking but I'm going to wear them with the attitude that they are intentionally mismatched. Which, I guess, is the truth.

ps I had to cancel the trip at the very last minute. Glad to have'em anyway.