Fibres West

Thank you so much to the sweeties who left comments on my last post. I really appreciated knowing that there are people who still want to read my blog, even though I never write in it. ;)



If you're in the area, come hang out with Leanne and I at Fibres West tomorrow (Saturday March 21)! We'll be knitting tags and promoting our book. It looks like a cool show, with lots of interesting exhibitors!

Spring Is On Its Way...

I just wrote the following to a friend who's coming out of a funk, and it seemed like a good note on which to start blogging again. I may have blogged about this superstition/tradition before.


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I must share a homemade superstition that Zak and I have been observing since before we were dating, when we were just friends. On the vernal and autumnal equinoxes (like tomorrow!), we have a party, or if a party isn't practical, we go out for a nice meal, and think about the coming seasons. It's important to do something a little special, a little indulgent; tomorrow we're picking up our roommate from school and taking her out to lunch at a good burger place with MILKSHAKES. The idea is that it will ensure good luck in love and life for the coming two seasons. (Clearly the marital strife that Zak and I had recently, and the deep and horrible funk we were both in, is a result of not celebrating the autumnal equinox.)

I find that when we take the time to remember and mark the passing and upcoming seasons like this, it really does help us sort our heads out about what we want in our lives in the coming months, and to head forward with optimism. Celebrate tomorrow, if you can. Hopefully our homemade magic will serve you well. :)
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I hope you all have a wonderful spring!

Starstruck

One of the things I love best about working for Knitty is 'meeting' all the designers whose work I edit. Some of them have become friends, which has definitely been an unexpected perk of the job!

Lately, we've had some patterns from well-known designers whose work I've long admired, whose names I saw in the books and magazines I devoured when I learned to knit in 2000. I've had email in my inbox from people like Nicky Epstein, Mags Kandis, Nancy Marchant, and - gulp - Norah Gaughan.

I have fervently admired Norah Gaughan's work since I bought my first knitting magazine (VK Fall 2000). Her work inspires and excites me more than almost any other designer's. To be editing patterns from her now... it's a bit intimidating.

In The Bag

Clearly I lied in my last post, when I said I would write again soon. In the meantime, my intrepid (and patient) co-author Leanne and I have written a book!!

It is now with the publisher for editing, designing, etc. I am still recovering, and I imagine she is too.

The last night, I was at her house until late, as we tied up loose ends and made sure everything was in place before sending off the manuscript. When I got home, Zak greeted me with a glass of wine.



Writing the book was amazing, it was incredibly stressful and exciting and I learned a LOT. I'm so grateful that I had the chance to do this one, and that I had such an excellent person to do it with. I would have been lost without her.

I want to write another one...

Still Here...

Oh my goodness, it's been a long time. Dear blog readers, if there are any of you left, I will write soon. I have been living over on Flickr lately, where the 365 Days project is taking the place of a journal for me.

But there's a lot to write about. I'll be back soon. Thank you for stopping by.

My Moth

I posted a photo of my moth tattoo on Flickr the other day, but didn't post the story behind it. It's rather a long story, and I feel self-consciously sentimental telling it in person, and I don't think I've committed it to writing before... I suppose it's time.

I've hated bugs since I was a kid, so much so that through my adolescence I avoided going outside much in the warm months. I think I've ridden a bike only once since I was about 15, because the prospect of riding through a swarm of gnats freaked me out to the point that all the pleasure of bike riding was lost. It was getting worse as I became an adult.

I started dating Zak when I was 21, and the month I turned 22, Zak and I moved out of pur parents' homes, into a shitty little basement-level apartment. This apartment was, unfortunately, not hermetically sealed against insect life. I used to get really freaked out when we found bugs in our place. I was having some really limiting health problems at the time, which were causing me a lot of stress; finding a spider or wasp would kind of send me over the edge into a fit of despair.

Zak was the kid who would turn over rocks and be delighted with what he found underneath. He had sets of nature encyclopedias bought from library sale tables, with which he was intimately familiar. He thought my phobia was unreasonable (true), and he was very distressed about my unhappiness. He refused to kill anything we found. Instead, he would put the creature in a jar and make me look at it. He would point out its various tiny features and tell me all about how interesting and wonderful it was.

Zak may be the kindest person I have ever met. He is certainly the most charming, at least in my eyes. Hearing about these insects from his point of view affected me deeply, and soon I did lose my fear of them (at least, most of the time). I remember reading in a park near our shitty apartment that first summer, and watching a fly clean its legs on the page of my book. It was a huge change for me.

One night we were at a friend's apartment nearby, and came home late. We were standing outside the door of our building, and moths were fluttering around the light. I really hated moths; I thought they were creepy, ghostly, horrible things. Zak looked so crestfallen when I said so. I wish I could remember exactly what he said, but when he explained them as he saw them, how beautiful and harmless and delicate they are, I melted into a little puddle on the step. Now I can't even summon the ghost of how I felt about moths before he changed my understanding of them; my shift in perception was so complete.

He's affected many aspects of my life in this way. I relate differently to other people and to myself, and to the world I live in. I am a kinder, happier, more generous and optimistic person since I met him. Aside from being born into the family I have, meeting him is the best thing that's ever happened to me. We've been together over 11 years now and I am still amazed and grateful to have him in my life, both as a friend and as my love.

The moth on my arm is the tangible symbol of the amazing new world I have lived in since I met Zak. It's a gentler and more beautiful place than I had guessed it could be.

Colour-Block Sweater

Believe it or not, I've got knitting to blog about. Quite a lot of it, actually; this is just the first sweater. I'll be blogging other finished projects in the next few days.



I actually finished this sweater last fall, and have worn the hell out of it (I'm sure you can see pilling in the photos). I'm not sure why it took me so long to photograph it. It's knit from Jo Sharp Classic DK Wool, one of my very favourite yarns; this is the third sweater I've knit from it so far.



I could not have made this sweater with a straight face; it was a stash-busting project, something to knit for fun and wear around the house. It languished for a long time, at one point I put it aside with only one sleeve to go. I wasn’t sure if I would ever finish it. I thought it was laughably (if pleasingly) ugly.



Then I showed it to my friend Tara, who looked at it with a straight face and thought it was gorgeous. After getting her fresh perspective on it I picked it up again and finished it, and now I love it and wear it frequently.



I planned the shape of the sweater, but made up the colour pattern as I went along. The finishing was incredibly intense. After a false start or two, I came up with a labour-intensive seaming technique to give me the coloured seams I wanted. I tried several different collar solutions before deciding on the I-Cord-trimmed version I used. For weaving in ends, I split each strand into two plies and wove them in in separate directions using a sharp needle. There’s one point in the sweater where I had tried knitting the ends in as I went, but it wasn’t a very satisfactory result; it seems I’ve become very uptight about finishing details!



Considering that I usually knit sweaters in the round using one colour of yarn, this was quite a departure. It was a lot of fun though, and I want to do it again. I'm thinking of writing a pattern to sell that's made in a similar way: worked in pieces with an intarsia pattern and coloured seams. It won't be random blocks like this because holy crap, what a nightmare that would be to chart and size. I'm still rolling ideas for it around in my head.