Way up there

When you live in Illinois, hills are relative. It's flat around here, until you ride your bicycle, when you discover maybe not quite flat flat. But tomorrow I'm headed up into actual mountains, the Blue Ridge Mountains, to be exact. I'm teaching at the Baskets of Yarn Winter Retreat in Boone, NC. I'm told it's cold up there. But then, given Chicago's endless winter this year, cold, too, is relative.

Before I go, I wanted to post something I've been meaning to put up since coming back from NC last time. See all those lovely teenagers learning to knit about two posts ago? Well, as I was darting around the class from knitting crisis to knitting success, I overheard MB telling the following story to this or that beginning knitter:

"If you've been hired as an assassin, it is critical that you be COMPLETELY successful. Thus, if you are 'shanking' your victim, it is best if you make the thrust underhanded. For if you strike from top to bottom, you run the risk of the knife being deflected by bones like the skull or sternum. Yes, you'll hurt the victim; however, without that you can't say you've completed the job.

"How does this relate to knitting? STEP ONE in knitting is to thrust the needle into your stitch as if it were your victim. Additionally, assassins, usually, have a signature 'thing.' As a knitting assassin, your signature is to split your victim's head in half. Nothing fancy, just chop it in half. That's STEP TWO in making the knit stitch.

"Now, STEP THREE, slide your needle through the stitch. What to do now? Proof of the assassination is to send the victim's head to your client. To end the stitch, STEP FOUR, pop the stitch off the end of the left needle.

"You get a rhythm that goes like this:
Stab it (or shank it)
Slice it (their heads in half)
Scoop it
Pop the little head off (the needle)"

I was so entertained that I insisted she write this down for me. She did, signing it, "Enjoy. The Knitting Assassin." Ever the artist, she also drew pictures, which I'm afraid you'll just have to imagine until I figure out how to copy them into the blog.

In the meantime, have a nice weekend, whether you're way up there or out in the flat. I'll post mountain photos next week, along with a photo of Rachel in her new Sahara/Bonsai sweater (it's finished, ta da!). Weather and U.S. Airways permitting, as always. Can you tell I'm not a big believer in heavier-than-air flight?

Fixits

Some interesting questions have been coming in to me at knitmaven@sbcglobal.net. One in particular intrigues me because it happens to all of us:

Please help! I have a recurring problem of knitting into the stitch in the row below and slipping off both stitches together. This occurs when doing stockinette stitch more times than I'd care to admit. I usually don't discover the mistake until many more rows have been knit. I've tried dropping the stitch back to the mistake, but can't hook it up properly. The first "bar" doesn't line up. So I drop down the stitch next to it which helps if I drop the one on the correct side! I've looked and looked for an answer to this in books from Mary Thomas to the current ones and have yet to see it addressed. Certainly it must happen to other folks, but they probably catch it on the next row or round. Sure hope you can help. Thanks, Marylyn in VA

Well, I thought, what does an accidental stitch knit along with its downstairs neighbor (a la brioche) look like? All by its lonesome?
This:
See that big fat stitch right in the middle, two rows down from the needle, the stitch that's elbowing the stitches to its right and left out of vertical allignment? Yes, that one. That's the one I knit along with its next-row-below neighbor. (I love making mistakes on purpose. Go figure.)

What to do about it? Time for a vertical fix. Get out your crochet hook, nimble fingers, whatever you use to grab a stitch when it's off the needle. Knit to the stitch before the big fat one (B.F.O.). Drop down to B.F.O. It looks like this:
If you look closely at the stitch, it's doubled. That's because it grabbed its neighbor during knitting -- and its neighbor's ladder. That's why you only see one ladder in this photo.
If you pull apart B.F.O., it looks like it ought to:
B.F.O. is now just an ordinary stitch, one that's leaving its neighbors in peace. Now there are ladders that can easily be hooked up back to the needle:


This is what peaceful coexistence looks like:
Nobody trying to elbow out the neighbors. Nobody pushing things out of whack. Feel free to send this photo to your favorite world leader. Just a thought.

60 new knitters

Yup, you read that correctly. Last week MB and I taught 60 high school art students to knit. And they did beautifully. Most of them got the knit stitch right off on Tuesday. Wednesday they were lined up with really good knitting questions, having made all the mistakes that everyone has made. All knitters, without exception. The mistakes I call the official hazing for knitters -- increasing by accident by holding the yarn over the needle and in back for the first stitch, and then accidental YOs further in the row -- were quite popular by day 2. But check this out: photos from Wednesday, their 2nd day as knitters:

and



and


Other teachers told us our students were knitting in their classes. We put out the word that knitting increases concentration and attention span. All knitters know that, but not all teachers are knitters. Hmm. Maybe they should be...

This is MB with class notes for Wednesday:

Students at work:

Notice that he's knitting two yarns together ALREADY, and that one of them is that slippery railroad yarn. Love fearless knitters.

He's planning to make a sweater next. And maybe a Pidge or two.

Another fearless knitter -- that's hand-dyed heavy-gauge chenille he's working with, and he was the first to finish his scarf. Did I mention that they're taking the scarves to a women's shelter tomorrow, for Valentine's Day? Too wonderful.

More chenille, in the hands of a true artist: it's a hat/scarf. Cool.

And finally, the first period class pulled it all together for me to photograph:

This was so much fun. We want to do it next year. Maybe squares for Afghans for Afghans? Premie caps? Consider the possibilities. Thanks so much, you all. It was a blast.

It's 70 degrees somewhere

Just not here, west suburban Chicago. We had what was evidently an unexpected blizzard Thursday, since the snowplows where sleeping wherever plows sleep. Yesterday and today: more snow, though mere frosting. However, on Monday I'm headed to where it's going to be 70: Charlotte, NC.

In Charlotte, best friend (years before My Space homogenized the phrase) MB teaches art to high school students. She's got a grant to teach them knitting, the idea being that knitting creates community. Her students will be donating the scarves the knit in class to a local women's shelter. And I'm off to help teach them. MB has it all organized; I just have to show up. Of course, it's supposed to rain and snow at O'Hare Monday, so showing up may be something of a trick. Oh, and 140 American Airlines pilots retired yesterday. Expect delays. I'm taking three knitting projects, one book and iPod loaded with two complete audio books. Did you know you could actually fill up a Nano?

One of the knitting projects is a spring-weight entrelac shrug made of Noro Sakura:


Sakura is out of print, so to speak. But when I called Three Bags Full Knitting Studio and asked if they happened to have some, since they carry just about everything Noro, they did. Lynette, owner of Three Bags Full (or 3BF, as it appears in my calendar), is one of those wonderfully encouraging people who said "Sure" when I suggested fixing mistakes classes at her shop so I could test out what I was writing in Knit Fix. 3BF is located in what used to be somebody's house. Now it has a basement full of yarn back-stock. When I called about Sakura, I was hoping there might be some down there, and sure enough they had plenty for the shrug I had in mind.

The Sakura will be a slight variation on this one, finished last week:

This, by the way, is as glamorous as the Knit Maven gets. I asked Michael, owner of Camp Cosmetics (across the street from String Theory), to photograph me. Sure, but first he dusted and brushed and smoothed and generally did his cosmetic thing. How good is he? Well, when Project Runway was in Chicago, they sent a limousine for him. Twice.

Quadrupeds

In my house, there are three cats who definitely help the knitting process. In fact, I don't think Knit Fix would have come about without the help of cats playing with a ball of yarn, dashing upstairs with it and ripping the knitting off my needles as they dashed. I'm laughing while figuring out how to fix the mess. It happened again last night when Oz was having way too much fun with a ball of Bonsai while I was working on a gift sweater. It's back on the needles now:

What's this, you're asking. Dog sweater? No, that comes later. Wait for it...
Stitch Diva Studio's Sahara sweater -- that's the pattern in the photo -- starts with a provisional cast-on, knits up to the shoulders (coilless orange pins) then down the front. After I try this on Rachel next week (wait for it...) for fit, then the two fronts combine and eventually the whole shebang is knit in the round. This is Berroco's Bonsai, which I'm in love with. It's rather like knitting with silk brocade. The photo here doesn't do it justice. I'm hoping that there will be enough yarn left over from Sahara to make a little something for moi. Maybe combined with another Bonsai color.

Now, as to why today's post is titled "Quadrupeds." My sister-in-law sent me two photos of the cats who operate her house. One actually has to do with knitting:

The caption: "Hey, there's a mistake in row 132."
Everyone's a critic.
But here's the photo that cracked me up:

"I'll have whiskey, straight up. Give the kid some milk."

All right, more knitting later. I have hopes to get my hands on some Berroco Seduce today to play with, if the nice UPS man comes through at String Theory.

Multitasking

Right now I should be working on character arcs for the novel. Instead I'm writing about knitting. Actually, I'm doing both at the same time. My husband tells me this is a peculiarly female ability, doing one thing that actually requires thought while mulling over something else in another part of the brain. I do tend to knit in front of the computer. Occasionally I even finish things.

This is honorary daughter (long story, another time, OK?) Emily wearing her holiday sweater. She picked out the pattern, yarn, button, I did the fairly mindless knitting.
It's made of Gedifra Lordana boucle, pattern from 1020 from their Highlights 072 book. Funny that 1950s styles are back in lately. In the past few weeks, I wandered through the local Nordstrom's and past windows of maybe ten other women's retailers on the way to the Apple Store too many times (another story, OK?) and saw a dozen sweaters for spring in exactly this flared shape. And I'll be knitting a sleeveless one called Flow for String Theory out of Nora Gaughan's new Berroco book in a new yarn called Seduce. If I'd titled this post Seduce, it would probably have landed on spam lists, no?

My last Nora Gaughan outing was this:

It's the Elodie shrug from Gaughan's first Berroco book, knit in Shibui sock yarn. Way comfortable. But if you want to knit it, check out the pattern corrections at the Berroco web site. There's a major oops in the lace set-up row. Kristen and I sent in a fix, which they posted immediately. Without the fix, when you do the final stitch drops for the lace pattern, every other one of them will unravel right through the ribbing, leaving it in tatters. Funny, on the page it looks like such a little tiny proofreading error, a misplaced YO in that one row. But there you are.

Finished the entrelac shrug out of Kureyon sock yarn, even wore it to the Apple Store yesterday (I was considering taking a mortgage out on one of their black stools at the tutoring table, but I think I'm done there for awhile). Also comfortable. The shrug, that is. Liked it so much that I've got another one in the works for spring made of non-wool Noro. It helps that I've taken to keeping a knitting journal where I note what I'm experimenting with, yarn, needles, and pattern directions if I'm making it up as I go along. Which I'm doing more and more these days, for no good reason that I can ascertain. I can actually tell you how I made the Kureyon sock shrug. Sometimes I just amaze myself. Anyone who has actually seen my office/studio is probably saying about now, "Who is this woman and what has she done with Lisa?"

“Often self-proclaimed” -- This part of the definition of maven is a hoot. I can buy into the specialized knowledge bit, and the “understanding” part I love. But what knitter knows everything?

I’m Lisa Kartus. I wrote Knit Fix: Problem-Solving for Knitters (Interweave, 2006). Knitters need to know how to navigate around potholes so they can travel into unexplored territory. Of course, planning ahead helps. Says the woman who started the above sweater as a stole and then just, well, kept knitting. I loved the way the colors were working together.

Or maybe I mostly love experimenting. Like this blog. For me it’s new technology. For all you experienced bloggers out there, no laughing, OK? I’m getting there. Someday I may even figure out how to give this page an entrelac background.

Besides this blog (and a novel I’m restructuring, but that’s another story entirely, pun intended) what I’m writing lately is a follow-up of sorts to Knit Fix. And I now have a partner in crime, Kristen Quain, who is to knitting approximately what Einstein was to physics. Hyperbole? Uh, no. I’m telling you, the lady is amazing. She thinks in numbers and geometry and stitches, all at once.

This is Kristen in her new haircut and her own sweater design. Oh, and she spun the yarn herself.



Now, what do you think of this?



It’s that new Kureyon sock yarn knit on #7 needles -- sort of fingering-weight open-weave entrelac. It’s about half the body of a shrug. Haven’t decided on the sleeve stitch yet.

All right, going to see what it’s like to publish a blog now. Well, just one more thing: today’s quote:

Hand knitting “Being a medium that is self-absorbing without being self-obsessed...”
from Knit Couture, by Gail Downey and Henry Conway, p. 9