THE BEST OF ORC MANUFACTURE
We had an entertaining weekend here at String, spending most of it cleaning up the debris of a New England winter and waking up the garden for spring. Now I’m not a very good gardener. In fact I stick to plants that in more hospitable geographic areas are rated as borderline invasive, because they are about the only plants I can’t kill. I trust in my own lack of skill and the odd deep freeze winter to keep them in check.
This weekend’s chores included moving a trillium and a peony to make more room for an aggressive hosta‘s growing hegemony; shuffling some day lilies out of the way; rescuing some tulips and daffs so courteously relocated mid-lawn by squirrels; planting three ultra hardy five petal rugosa roses in some newly freed up spots; and pulling dead leaves out of the giant grass stubble (aka elephant grass, or maiden grass).
How giant is our giant grass? It gets tall enough for its early September plumes to overtop the roof of our front porch. We cut it down before the seed sets and ripens in order to keep it from colonizing the entire neighborhood. But what to do with canes ranging from 8 to 13 feet? The first year we bagged them with the rest of the yard trimmings, for the town to haul off for composting. This fall though I had an idea.
I also attempt to grow what started out as an antique variety of big scarlet speckled runner beans. While I don’t harvest enough of a crop to eat, the kids get a big kick out of our sequential years of Mendelian genetics. We plant our Magic Beans for three springs now – some are still true to their parent’s form, some now look more like French flagolets/ Then we watch to see what color flowers appear (originally all red, now a mix of 25% white/75% red), and what color/form of beans result. They grow very fast, and require strings or a trellis to climb. Last year all we could find at the garden shop were puny 4 foot tall bamboo stakes. Not near long enough. So I decided to dry my giant grass stalks and store them through the winter to furnish the scaffolding for this year’s bean trellis.
It’s not warm enough for bean planting yet (final frost date is the second week of May here), but we did build the trellis and set it up against the sunny southern face of the garage:
On the whole, given the random length, lack of flexibility and fragility of the stalks, I’m amazed we were able to come up with anything at all. Yes, those are cable ties fastening the thing together. We’re nerds and proud! The structure is sort of pitiful, as if it were built by drunken orcs in World of Warcraft. I’m pretty sure that if they produced something this sad their players would be dunned a dozen experience points for failing so miserably in the attempt. But I like it. Covered in green with little flowers it will look grand. Provided it survives. Which is why we built it early. Better for it to collapse before beans attack it rather than having to disentangle them after the fact.
On the knitting front, I’m just about done with the entrelac socks. They turned out better than I expected.
Still a bit motley, but the four colors of leftover self stripers ended up complementing each other, mostly because all of them had green and brown in their mix. In person what looks like bright tomato red in the on-needle sock is more muted. Also, I divided the lot of leftovers into two groups – one that was mostly speckled with few or no solid stripes, and one that had firm solid stripes and spotty bits. The finished sock clearly shows the solids in the entrelac bits worked from left to right, and the speckled yarn in the entrelac bits worked right to left. All in all quite a satisfying project for something starting with such an unpromising quantity of leftovers.
SHAWL BLOCKING
I stole a bit of time today to get my brown/gray shawl pinned out and blocking. Lace is INCREDIBLY stretchy – or at least if knit from a good wool, alpaca, or other animal fiber – it should be. Here it is in an optically challenging presentation thanks to the rally check sheets I use as an alignment aid:
The checks make it very hard to see, but you can make out a bit more of the pattern now in the detail shot. I promise more pix tomorrow, and I’ll take those on a plain white background.
Now how stretchy is lace? My unblocked piece was approximately 39 inches across. See those checks? They’re 2 inch squares. My shawl is pinned out to be a square of approximately 60 inches on a side. My guess is that it will spring back somewhat after it’s dry. I’ll probably end up with something closer to 54 inches on a side (about 4.5 feet across).
We also made significant progress on the final stage of our bathroom renovation this weekend. Here you see The Resident Male exercising his inner artist. Before you write to me with safety tips, please note that we’ve got about 2 inches of closed cell camping mattress pad topped with another layer of bath towel underneath the no-slip tarp in the tub. The ladder is stable, and won’t mar the surface beneath its feet. Plus the ceiling is so low that no one has to climb above the second step to reach it.
As to the color – I don’t know if you can make out the difference given the variability among monitors, but the ceiling is bright white, and the walls are barely green. Not mint, not pistachio. Think three gallons of milk with one drop of food coloring. It’s my hope that they will contrast nicely with the white tile underparts and fixtures, echo (just barely) the green tile accent stripe, green stone sink top, greenish tint of the glass shower door, and make the green (rather than the yellow) in the stained glass window pop out more.
Even though it’s shrouded in protective plastic, you can see that the refinishing of the window and its replacement in the wall have both accomplished. A special merit badge for chemical management (with scrapers rampant) to he who did that work. Goodbye ugly mustard yellow enamel paint! And good riddance.
Comments Problems
We’re having intermittent problems with the comments feature that screens out automatic postings. Sometimes if you go to enter your comments the little “type what you see here” box isn’t displaying. If you want to leave a comment please scroll down and make sure that you can see that box before you begin typing. If it’s not there, try reloading the screen. We’re not quite sure what’s happening, although we’re working on it. When he’s not elbow deep in brushes and rollers, The Resident Male (website plumber par excellence) is busy applying his biggest software wrenches to wiseNeedle’s pipes. Apologies for any/all inconvenience.
SECRET PAL, AND CONSTANT PROGRESS
On the baby blanket, I decided to rip back the entire edging (about half-finished at the point of decision). I decided I wanted to re-do corner #1, plus I didn’t like the way that the joins along the first edge looked. I’d been reducing along the body, working roughly every six rows of edging onto four live body stitches. While the points were lying flat, the yarn I’m using is heavy enough to make the necessary decreases along the body look clunky. (You can get away with this in a fine lace, but not in the almost DK weight I’m using). Instead I’ve opted for a bit fuller edge with (perhaps) a bit of ruffle. I’d post pix, but they pretty much show the same blanket body as the last post, but with an arrow that says “edging used to be here.” More on this later this week.
In other news, I finally got to the post office to pick up the mail I had on hold over vacation week. There, perched on top of the pile was my July No Sheep secret pal package. The formerly mysterious (but now known) Melanie was kind enough to send this:
That’s two skeins of Schachenmayr Denim in a sunshiny yellow/orange, plus two tins of killer tea. I dance a dance of thanks! I’m looking forward to trying it all. On the downstream end, I finally made contact with my secret pal recipient, and am busy picking out the goodies for her.
And finally – progress on the bathroom front. Which is a good thing because washing one’s hair in the sink can get old after five weeks. The tile is now (mostly) up and grouted. Vanity, storage cabinet, fixtures and finish work are left:
From the top – the view from the hall door. You can see the cleaned, repaired and repainted radiator, the pipes for the bathtub, and the new window frame into which the original stained glass will be fitted. Next is the shower, followed by the view from the window. No I didn’t crawl out on the roof to take this – there’s a sleeping porch on the other side of the window. And finally, a close-up of the tilework’s green pencil line and chair rail – just for Kathryn, who has confessed to extreme bath envy.
If you’ve written to me in the past two weeks and haven’t had a response – apologies. I’m still munching my way through my inbox.
CORRECTION AND BATHROOM STATUS
I posted a correction to the companion border for my shawl, previously posted a couple of days ago. To minimize confusion, I’ve updated the files on the original page, rather than re-post them here. I’m up to Row 15, and in working it – spotted an error mid-row. All fixed now.
On the home front, we’ve got walls and the beginnings of a tile floor now in our new bathroom. Everything is working along swimmingly. I’m happy just seeing the fresh hex tile on the floor in place of patchwork scuffed, curling, mustard yellow vinyl.
Next step is grouting and sealing the tile floor, then it’s on to the tiled wainscoting and built-in storage cabinet (on the partial wall, dead ahead in the left hand image, above).
CENTERED. SORT OF.
No, I haven’t forgotten about the ongoing projects here. I’ve been a bit buried in the usual tumult of work-related deadlines, but progress is being made.
First, on the lace shawl, I finished the center square. When that was done, I picked up stitches all the way around the edges – taking care to pick up the same number of stitches on every side, and indicating the corner points with stitch markers. Then, taking a riff from the Spider Queen, I worked two knit rows, then a purl row, a row of wide eyelets [(K2tog, YO, YO)repeat], followed by another purl row (with P1,K1 in the double eyelets) and two more rows of knit. I interrupted that patterning with a standard odd row – YO, K2, YO/even row – all knit corner centered on each corner marker. I did this not only because I like the framing look of the big eyelet bands, but also because that row is good for disguising any oddness necessary that might arise in forcing equal stitch count pick-ups along all sides.
I’ve now got four equal sides, each 153 stitches long, with clearly defined corner points. Since it’s now on one big circ, it looks vaguely snood-like:
I’ve also got another conundrum. what to do next…
As I knit the center part, I was thinking of what borders might complement it. Because the basket weave was so geometric I wanted something that had similar lines, but that added a different movement. I found this in the new Duchrow book:
At first glance I thought it was knit from edge to edge, rather than longitudinally. I based this on the mirrored center. I thought that with a little play, I could map it to my project. But closer examination of the chart shows that it’s knit strip style – the long way. That’s one problem. Even though I wanted to work this bit center out, I was willing to bend the paradigm and work this pattern along the edge.
But there’s a second problem The graph offers up the repeat, plus a piece that makes the turn backs seen at the strip centerpoints (green indicator on photo above), but offers it for only one orientation – knit beginning at the center turn back and working back towards the corner. I can’t just take the graph and invert it to make that mirrored center. The spots where increases and decreases are formed are not direct cognates. For example, you can’t use a double increase in place of the K3togs that form the top points of the angles if you’re headed in the other direction. It just doesn’t look the same.
It may be that in the accompanying German there are directions on either how to get that flip, or instructions to knit eight half-strips, then sew them together at the centers and along the mitered corners (orange indicator on photo above).
So I’m back to thinking on what I can use on this next project stage, riffling through my stitch pattern and lace books. I think though I’ll end up rolling my own. I’ve played with lace and texture pattern design before. My design elements are pretty simple (four-stitch moving bars, interlaces, diamonds filling the interstices). Maybe I’ll be able to pull some of the elements from the Duchrow longitudinal piece and apply it to mine, but knit it side to side.
On the bathroom project, it’s one step forward, two steps back and recover. The crew had framed in the shower, but did it to the wrong dimensions (there would not have been enough room for the bathroom door to open next to the sink). Luckily we trust but verify, and pointed out the error in time for it to be fixed.
Moral of the story: I don’t care if they’re professionals. Confirm all measurements yourself as the project progresses. Ask for explanations if you note discrepancies. If the crew’s mumbles seem specious, escalate the issue to the foreman. And if answers are still mushy – to the business owner.
Next big interruption – another spate of work-related deadlines, plus a baby shower gift I didn’t realize would be needed so soon. Perhaps another Oat Couture Curlicue blanket… Stay tuned.
INCHING ALONG
Incremental progress on two fronts here at String. First, demolition is now complete. Evil Upstairs Bathroom having been stripped to the studs now finds itself at the very beginnings of build-out. The new larger shower stall has been roughed in, and the electrical work has commenced.
You can see the back side of the lath and plaster hallway walls on the outside of the old wall studs. 1912 was deep in the pre-drywall and wallboard era.
And on the lace shawl, I’m over the half-way mark in constructing the center square. I’ve got only one or two repeats left before my proportions are correct.
I’ve also tinkered a bit with the base pattern, translating it to modern notation and changing the directionality of some of the decreases to sharpen the lines. Since I have changed it somewhat and recharted it, I present the result. Click on the thumbnail below to load a full-size image
The original lacy knitting pattern from The Knitted Lace Patterns of Christine Duchrow, Vol. 1 was presented as part of two complex garment designs – a blouse and a baby bonnet. There are a couple of complementary simple band patterns for cuffs and trim on those projects. Except for the introduction (which provides a helpful translation key for the symbols and some historical German knitting terms), the entire book is in the original German. From what little knitting German I’ve picked up I can tell that even the written parts aren’t quite modern German knitting prose. Like English knitting instruction writing, the conventions in German have changed over time. While I can work from the chart to make my own whatever, it would be an extreme challenge to knit up the blouse as described.
As the editors of this book report, Duchrow was among the first to try to present knitting instructions in graphical rather than prose format. Her graphs are idiosyncratic by modern standards and use letters and symbols rather than visual representations to represent the various stitches, but with a bit of practice her graphs are not difficult to knit from. Even though I can’t read a word of the accompanying text in Vol. I, I’ve ordered a couple more books in the same Duchrow reprint series. If you’re a lace and lacy knitting fiend, you’ll probably have as much fun with Duchrow patterns as I am.
I feel confident I can share the design because I have redacted it into modern symbols, included corrections, and made changes in the pattern as presented. While my graph is recognizable as a variant of the historical one, there are subtle differences. For example, the original graph for this pattern treats all double decreases identically, rather than using directional variants to reinforce the framing diagonals. It also didn’t continue the pattern into the edge areas as uniformly. It also didn’t show the even numbered row. But for all of that, the pattern works up quite nicely even in the original presentation. I share my redaction/correction as tribute to the original author and the editors of this work, to help other knitters bridge from modern instructions to historical ones, and to encourage others to seek out these patterns and knit them without fear.
Interesting conjecture – from the style of the blouse, it would not be a stretch to say that it was current around the time my house was built. For all I know, the original owner may have sat in the library 95 years ago, knitting the same lace patterns I am working from today.
BATHROOM INSPIRATION
I’ve gotten a couple of questions about the bathroom project – in specific, what we’re aiming for. While we’re not doing a historical restoration type true-to-period room, we are taking inspiration from the downstairs bathroom. It’s been less meddled with than the upstairs horror:
The downstairs bath has one-inch white hex tile on the floor, white railroad tile (with high rail detail) on the walls, a very similar stained glass window to the one upstairs, and pedestal fixtures. I especially like the little sitzbath – it’s great for kids’ bird baths or foot washing when you don’t want to fill a bigger tub. Along the way this bathroom has lost its original sink faucets and high tank toilet, but in addition to the mini-tub it still has an extra long full size tub (not in the photo); and a simple built-in wooden storage cabinet. We’ll be replacing the toilet again as part of the current work due to some unfixable slow leaks on the one that’s there. Someday we’ll also do the sink hardware, but that’s small peanuts compared to the awful upstairs. The rest of the downstairs bath works well enough, and is perfect for the house.
The upstairs bath will pick up the white hex floor and railroad tile with high rail look, with the addition of a green pencil line tile just under the rail. That should accent the green in the window. The upper walls will be painted white. We didn’t want to go the restored tub route (weight, mostly plus some cautionary experiences from my earlier days working for an architectural antiquarian), and couldn’t find a new pedestal tub in our price range, so we opted for the plainest white with-feet new tub we could find.
The other big departure from historical accuracy is a vanity stand that’s natural oak color rather than one that’s painted white. It’s a free-standing furniture type piece rather than cabinetry, and will be topped with green stone and an underset white porcelain sink. Since the storage cabinet downstairs is original to the house and has never been painted, maybe the “only white painted woodwork in a bathroom restoration” rule isn’t hard and fast.. Plain brushed nickel finish fixtures with white porcelain butterfly handles round it all out. And we’ve opted to keep the separate shower stall rather than combining the shower with the tub. The new shower will be the same depth but a bit wider than the old one (taking up some of the room previously wasted on the double sink vanity), with a very plain frosted glass door instead of a billowy curtain. We’ll also keep the mini-radiator, but clean it and paint it white.
That’s it. No over the top fancy fixtures, no bowl-mount waterfall sinks or spring rain experiences, no criminally expensive imported tile or lighting, no sybaritic soaking tubs or sauna showers. Just classic stuff, relatively unfussy and congruent with the style of the (mostly) untouched 1912 house. And with luck it will all work well together nicely, be easy to keep clean, and enjoyable to live with.
INUNDATION, DEMOLITION AND TRADING
A hectic past couple of days here at String. First, the website itself was attacked by spammer ‘bots. Between Sunday afternoon and Monday night, they posted over 2,300 individual pingbacks to a collection of specious websites. I’ve been trolling through all past pages here, deleting the references. I think I’ve got them all now, but if you see one, please don’t click on it – let me know instead and I’ll deal with the blasted thing.
The other major event has been the kickoff of our long-awaited upstairs bathroom renovation. We’ve been in this house now about 2.5 years. All that time our upstairs family bath was only partly functional, with poorly functioning plumbing, 1960s-vintage yellow, clammy plastic paneling (impossible to get or keep clean), patched vinyl flooring, hideous pizza parlor hills-of-Tuscany wallpaper, crumbling laminate over particle board cabinetry, and awful mustard fixtures with gold tone faucets. The only nice thing about it was a stained glass window (partly visible in the first shot):
We’ve been plotting and planning to replace the whole lot with something functional, clean, and historical in mood. Yesterday the project began in earnest, with the contractor carefully removing the antique window and door, then gutting the rest. I promise not to make this a home-improvement blog, but if anything interesting happens, I might report it here.
And finally, just before the aforementioned chaos hit I had a happy not-so-surprise. I signed up for the No Sheep Swap. I generally don’t participate in swaps or knit-alongs, but this one sounded like fun. My gracious and generous upstream swap partner (and all-around fascinating person) sent me this package of goodies:
It’s a skein of South West Trading Company’s Pure, a 100% soy silk yarn in happy berry colors, plus an embroidered purse big enough to be used for knitting accessory wrangling. Thank you, Melanie! I’ll post back here after I’ve tried it out.
On the downstream end, I have been waiting to hear back from my assigned recipient, but my notes and card have gone unanswered. I can’t wait any longer because to abide within the rules of the swap, I have to have her package in the mail shortly. I’ll have to pick something out without guidance on color or yarn weight preference, and hope 1) she’s there; and 2) she likes it.
[Aside: Apologies to Dena, who inadvertently was awarded an extra E when I was spelling her name. It stands for “excellent” and being obvious, intruded itself smack in the middle of my orthography. Thanks again for the fantastic lace-weight. I’m pretty sure I have enough, but if I do run out, I will resort to all sorts of begging, pleading, groveling, offering, trading, negotiating and bribery to secure some more.]
WORKING REPORT- CRAZY RAGLAN
Another post from the missing month. This originally appeared on 25 June 2004
Back to knitting.
Having successfully restarted my younger daughter’s raglan in Regia 6-ply Crazy Color, I can now report a modicum of progress:
It’s interesting to compare this pattern of striping with the one I was getting back when I was working in the round:
Same yarn, different width. If I had the strength I might even begin again, using the same strategy I employed for my Typeset Tee. That would make even wider stripes, but I’m too lazy to begin this no-think fill-in project for a third time.
The Play’s the Thing
How did I manage to knit off six inches each of the back and front in one night? I was at an audition.
I’ve mentioned before that The Resident Male was in a production of King Lear back in March (he played Kent). He has just tried out for a small role in a staging of Macbeth. But I didn’t go with him. My older daughter is caught up by the whole thing. At 13, she went to try out for one of the boy’s roles – Fleance (2 lines) or even MacDuff’s son (about a dozen lines) . She dutifully prepared her audition piece – Quince’s prologue to the miniplay in Midsummer Night’s Dream in Act 5, and read for the part. I told her that she’d be the youngest person there by a dozen years or more, but she was undaunted. She even made her way through the infamous tongue twister
Whereat with blade,
with bloody, blameful blade,
he bravely broached his boiling bloody breast.
Something I can’t see myself managing. I was tickled that she did so well. I have no idea if she got the part. Callbacks are on July 1st, but whether or not she’ll be cast she did us all proud.
The Latest Buzz
House nonsense goes apace. Yesterday’s big setback was the discovery of a huge colony of bees nesting in the floor below the sleeping porch. They get in through an old drainage pipe that sticks out through the stucco. The electricians working on wiring that part of the house were less than delighted to find the things. I was even less amused.
Under Massachusetts law the only available option besides letting them bee is to hire a licensed beekeeper to relocate the colony (not that I’d want to poison the little buggers). The hive must be removed after the bees are moved, as its contents would decay over time and cause even more problems. We’re trying to get a fix on how long the bees have been there. The longer they’ve been hoarding honey, the larger the removal cost, extent of the demolition required to get at the hive, and subsequent repair costs will be.
The only consolation is that the beekeepers will test the honey for edibility. If it’s uncontaminated (highly likely), we get to keep it. If there’s any quantity, I intend to have mead brewed from it so we may at the least, drink to both our and the bees’ new homes. Needless to say, things like this are not covered by insurance.
WORKING REPORT – CRAZY COLORS PULLOVER
Another lost entry that didn’t transfer correctly from the old site. This one originally appeared on 21 June 2004.
WORKING REPORT – CRAZY COLORS PULLOVER
Well, my mindless knitting has suffered the intrusion of some thinking. Looking at my 9-inch deep yoke I’ve decided to pull it all out and start again:
(That’s my toe holding down the edge, clad in a Regia 6-Ply Crazy Color sock.) Why rip back? Two reasons. First, I don’t like the one-row color stripe widths that the larger circumference piece sports. While I realize that stripes won’t be as deep as the ones on my socks, I like the upper part of the yoke better, where the shorter rows and bounce reflections off the neck hole made the stripes wider. Second, I don’t like the way the mini-cable on the raglan “seam” is coming out. I had started this piece on one circ, then moved to two. For some reason, when I moved to two the width of the framing purl stitches decreased considerably. While this tighter look is better, it does leave the upper part looking sloppy by comparison. So having knit up around 2.25 skeins, it’s back to ripping for me.
I think I’ll begin again, also doing a raglan, but I won’t get caught up in the idea of matching stripes across the raglan seam (near impossible with this yarn unless you knit in the round). It will be boring as heck, and seamed to boot, but I think the stripes will work out better on shorter width pieces of knitting.
Sigh. At least house stuff is going well. Here’s another couple details – the window from the living room, looking out on the porch, and the fireplace from the wall facing it. The same window is also on the dining room wall.
I’m pretty sure that the inside fireboxes of both fireplaces have been rebuilt. To my untrained eye, the plain brickwork surrounds are a bit incongruous, especially with the red tile hearth, but they appear to be original. Also through the window you can see another of my nuisances. The pressboard hutch so generously left by the former owners. The house contains a few pieces of abandoned furniture for which I now have to arrange charitable donation. Grrr.
String-Or-Nothing 