Avant le dluge
I’ve been to keep the trivia of life from occluding my flow of knit-related entries, or from letting daily happenings stomp all over my posts. That’s about to get somewhat more difficult.
Please don’t be surprised if I miss the odd day (or week) between now and August. For example, in the next six weeks we close on a new house,I ammarshalling an army of contractors to rewire, repair the plumbing, and do the floors and (possibly) roof. I personally have toremove all of the old fiberglass insulation improperly installed in the attic, rip down several massive ivy vines invading the stucco and pack all our stuff, supervise the move to the new place, clean the old place,and unpack. During this period the kids end school, the little one begins day camp, the big one gets hauled to horse camp. Also during this period we take our annual week out in North Truro on Cape Cod.
Why a vacation in the midst of the chaos? It’s paid for (we have to reserve it in January); and it’s at a place that gives ‘dibs’ on next year’s rooms to this year’s occupants. I first stayed there when I was a teen, and have been going back ever since we relocated to this area. It’s ona quiet, (mostly) unchanged part of the Outer Cape just south of Provincetown, right on a bay side beach. About all that’s different in this particular place since the ’70s is that the curtainsof the efficiencywere replaced sometime between ’74 and ’95.No phones, no computers. Just books, sandy children, knitting, and paella cooked on the grill.We may come back early, or I may ziphome a couple of times if my presence is needed, but we AREgoing.
Which place is it? I won’t tell you. I want it to remain undiscovered, but if you know that area if I say we’re about a quarter mile from Day’s Cottages in a hotel that straddles Rt. 6A, you’ll have a very good idea of where I’ll be.
(We are NOT staying in Day’s Cottages.)
KNITTING PROGRESS – LACY SCARF, PILLOW, ENTRE DEUX LACS TEE, CRAZY RAGLAN
Good news on the Lacy Scarf! Aftera minor failure of the on-line ordering system (graciously rectified by the ownerafter aphone call)I finally got the skein of the Greenwood Hill Farm 2-ply laceweight I need to finish the scarf. I spent last night ripping back about a quarter of the finished edging and the last diamond panel of the center. My plan is to extend the center section by about six inches, reknit the diamond panel, then finish the edging all the way around. This should take a couple nights of work. I am not sure whether or not the thing will require blocking. We’ll see.
The fulled pillow is stalled. I just haven’t had a moment either to make a pillow insert to the exact dimension needed, or to run to the crafts store to see if I can improvise a solution with off-the-shelf stuff. It sits here on my desk, buttons in a baggie, just waiting.
Entre Deux Lacs Tee is moving along. I’ve finished two of the ten strips needed, and am about a third of the way through the next one. The bowling ball sized lump of yarn seems barely diminished, which is a good thing.
I haven’t mentioned the Crazy Raglan yet. I did end up going back to the clearance sale at Wild & Woolly in Lexington after the weekend. I came home with a bag of Regia 6-ply Crazy Color. It’s a DK-weight machine washable wool, in a somewhat self-striping combo of red, blue, yellow, white and turquoise. I’ll use it to make a top-down raglan style pullover for the small one, probably worked at sport gauge because I like this yarn better knit slightly tighter. The pattern is something I whipped up using Sweater Wizard, customized a bit after the original output. I’ll be casting on for this one prior to heading off on vacation. A plain stockinette small piece in washable yarn sounds like relaxing vacation knitting to me,as I’m not at all sure I’d like to get my entrelac project’s boucle hand-dyed wool full of sunblock and sand.
A NAME GENERATOR MORE TO MY LIKING
I see tons ofpeople posting name games, quizzes and other web toys on their blogs. Some are cute. This one isn’t. (I miss Brunching Shuttlecocks.)
PROJECT – MANOS COAT
I was doing some more pre-move packing, and I came upon my Manos del Uruguay coat:
I made it in ’96, as a reward for landing a goodjob after moving from Maryland to Boston. But the project started ten years earlier when I bought some rosewood buttons at a crafts fair in Virginia. It took a long time before I found the right yarn/project to sit behind them.
I started with a pattern in the Manos Book #10, but made quite a few changes along the way:
Aside from the trivial change of color (brick/topaz/black/cherryto canyon/topaz/olive/black), I did some redrafting. As you can see from this thumbnail, the original was a cropped jacket, reaching to the bottom of the beltline. Being tall andcurved rather than linear, I wanted something longer.
To add length though posed two problems. The first was that the body of the piece isn’t done in plain old stockinette. It’s worked in a very large non-repeating design of freeform swirls and elongated paisley spots, done in knit/purl texture. The second was that the proportions of the sleeves and edgings would look out of place on a larger piece.
My solution was to draw up an extension of the pattern’s swirly texture. I did that on graph paper, replicating the last ten or so rows of the chart in the leaflet, then going on to add another 75 or so rows. I also redrafted the sleeves and armholes, adding a bit more depth. Finally I extended the slip-stitch motif bands at the button band, lower hem and cuff by adding a few more plain rows of garter stitch between the Greek key design panels, also to help keep the piece in proportion.
I learned a few lessons along the way, the least of which is that wool in quantity is heavy. The original cropped jacket isn’t anywhere near as massive as my coat. In spite of my broad shoulders, I needed to add shoulder pads to make my coat hang properly. The second was about sleeve shape, and it didn’t become evident until a few years had passed. The deep sleeves were more current at the time the piece was knit, and as time goes on are making the fit of the thing look more and more dated. Had I done narrower sleeves I might have avoided this.
I also learned about hand-dyed yarns and skein-to-skein variation. Manos is beautiful stuff. Each skein is one of a kind. This is especially true of the multicolors, like the canyon color I used for the bulk of this piece. The canyon available at that point ranged from paprika through cocoa, with side trips to ecru and run-in-the-rain raccoon. Some skeins were heavy on the lighter colors, some on the darker ones. Before I began knitting, I laid out all my skeins and placed them where I thought the colors would balance. That means I paid the most attention to the right and left cardigan fronts, choosing skeins for eachthat had roughly equivalent amounts of each color. Then I picked complementing sleeve skeins. The remainder became the back.
Knitting purists will note that the swirly pattern I mentioned above isn’t visible in the photo because the yarn I chose for those areas is so variegated. I argue that while it isn’t immediately discernable, it is visible, as the patterning of the purl and knit stitches presents an interesting way to maximize the variations in the yarn. Yes, it’s not immediately evident that what I have there are swirls, but up close and personal, you can see that the piece is textured and the texture accentuates the colors.
While I’m pleased in general with this piece, I’m not 100% satisfied with it.Manos was not the best choice for a long coat. In addition to the weight/warmth issue, it does pill.I planned this cardigan as something to wear indoors at work, but I neglected to think about the abrasion a heavy jacket takes from the rough upholstery of most office chairs. The back of my coat is a mass of pills. (You can even see pills on the front and sleeves on the photo). Very disappointing, but entirely my fault.
I’ve still got someManos left over from my jacket. I’m thinking of using to to make a fulled bag. But that project will have to wait until we’re settled in the new house and I’ve reclaimed my stash.
YOUR FRIENDLY KNITTED-UP SPIDERMAN
Somewhere out in the dark of nightlurks Mark Newport; a fiber artist with time, imagination, and a fullattic of vintage comic books.
Mr. Newportknits head-to-toe superhero suits. You canpurchase his one-of-a-kindSpiderman; Mid ’60s Batman; Daredevil (with nifty ribbed hood) or Mr. Fantasticoutfits. If he selected a nice, springy wool,he’s probably figured out what I never could as a kid – howReed Richards wasable to stretch his arm to ten feet long butneverburst out of his suit. (Later when I got older I thought of the implications of being his wife Sue Storm, but that’s another speculation left over from a more innocent time.) My embroiderer and comic-collector selves also really appreciate the oddity ofMr. Newport’s embroidery on papercomic book samplers, too.
Mr. Newport’s work is being gathered into an upcoming exhibit at the Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle, Washington. Be warned however – he overembroiders or embellishes many types of printed matter in addition to comic pages, including what in a more genteel era would have been called "French Postcards." The gallery’s site does explore those materials as well.
Yarn Reviews at wiseNeedle
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Since yesterday 24 new reviews have been logged in. That’sthe most reviews received in one day since early ’95, when the collection was just starting out! Knitters everywhere will be extremely grateful as they find your comments on all those yarns. I’m particularly impressed with the blog community, and the way that it’s rallied behind this project. I feel like I’m back in ’94,part ofa happy band of knitting zealotsspreading their shared banner throughthe electronic ether. Thanks also to the folk from the KnitList who slogged on over to the site to add their experiences to the pile. I also really appreciate all the people who took time to say they’d miss the yarn review collection if it disappeared.
I’ve still not decided what to do to make the collection self-supporting, but I did get a couple of good ideas to chase down, both left as comments on yesterday’s page and mailed to me directly. I notice that other people don’t have the ethical/editorial independence problem I see with accepting ads from yarn makers or retailers. One person wrote to suggest that I offer a "buy me" sidebar, with a list of vendors appearing whenever a review is pulled up. The logistics on that might not be feasible, especially considering that many individual yarns have the half-life of a mayfly, and the indexing would have to be done by manufacturer’s line rather than individual offering. Plus, I’m afraid that if I become dependent on money from industry sources, the collection will become less impartial as people become hesitant to criticize the same stuff they see advertised. Also I might be swayed (even unconsciously) to favor advertisers over non-advertisers. Perhaps I’m too much a stickler here. More thought is needed.
Another intriguingidea was to see if sellers of knitting inventory software might be interested in licensing the database. Another was to sell bags or tee-shirts with knitting-related stuff on them. If anyone has had experience with Cafe Press or similar collateral services, could I beg a little guidance? (You can send me an eMail off-blog at using the "contact" link at the right.)I also got a suggestionto add a line of for-pay patterns to the free ones already there. I’m not convinced though that anyone would pay for these as the more complex ones are working descriptions rather than stitch-exact direction sets; and the less complex ones are so intuitive that I can’t believe people would plunk down a fee for them. Then again, there are people selling other simple patterns on the web and on eBay at surprisingly large prices…
Buttons?
Some people asked for a closer view of the ceramicbuttons I’ll be using on the fulled pillow. Here they are, both with and without the little yellowplastic onesI’ll be using to hold them on.
WORKING REPORT – FULLED PILLOW II
After two weeks of intensive laundry treatment, it appears that the fulled pillow has reached its maximum shrinkage potential. It’s not as small or as tight as I’d hoped (you can still see the ridges), but it’s much softer and about as small as it’s going to get:
The pillow is unstuffed here. I haven’t sewn on the buttons yet – they’re just placed where I intend them to go. Each button unit is made up of a flat ceramic piece with a large center hole, plus a pale yellow plastic button to hold the ceramic in place. The Boston Globe page underneath the pillow is cut about the same size as the pre-washed size of the pillow (actually the pillow was about an inch longer, but I was too lazy to tape a one-inch strip on the end of the newspaper).
One interesting thing to note – the different colors of this yarn did not full evenly. As you can see, the yellow shrank more in both length and width than did the green or blue. I’ve test-stuffed the pillow with an old lumpy form I had in the closet, and the unevenness of the width isn’t as evident as it is when it’s laid out flat and unstuffed as pictured.
WORKING REPORT – ENTRE DEUX LACS TEE
A retrograde forwards-and-back type progress continues to be made on my tee. I’ve decided that I want to use a series of vertical strips, joined with something other than entrelac (more experimentation needed). I’ll bury increases and decreases in the join areas to give the garment a bit more shape. Here’s how I envision placement of the strips. Don’t worry. I’ll fill in the missing parts, like the bulk of the arms and add some kind of neck and bottom edge treatment. Possibly I-cord, possibly ribbing, depending on how I feel.
And here’s the first completed strip:
To answer the people who have written to ask why I’m not doing a knit-along or other shared project, I’d have to say I’ve always been a lone wolf knitter. Sometimes I do things inspired by others, but very rarely do I jump in when everyone else is doing them. There was a good five year lag time between the time I read the first Dale Lillehammer feeding frenzy on line, and the time I decided to knit one. I can’t say why this is. Perhaps there are always more things I want to try than I have time to try them so new ideas need to get in queue before they’re addressed.
Today is my birthday. Or rather it’s the day on which I celebrate the anniversary of my 21st birthday. I have no plans in particular, other than taking advantage of the day off to get as much as possible done in preparation for our upcoming move. We’re also suffering birthday cake exhaustion in the house, as both of my kids had birthdays last week. But if you’re itching to pony up good wishes, I would ask you to share that good will with the rest of the on-lineknitting world instead of with me.Consider adding a yarn reviewto the yarn review collection at wiseNeedle. The easiest way to do this is to look up your yarn by name on the search page, then click on the "review this yarn" link.
And for the few of you who may not have heard about this yet (and in honor of the US holiday of Memorial Day), I point out that the Red Cross is currently selling commemorative WWII knitting kits. This offering is paired with an on-line museum exhibit, and a historical article. Their assistance toservice people. and for civilians caught in both man-made and natural disasters deservesrecognition and support.
WORKING REPORT – ENTRE DEUX LACS
Yes, I know I’m stuck in a rut reporting on this, but between schooling my unruly fingers into a new way of knitting and tackling a design (on the fly) in a technique that’s new to me, I’ve got a high fascination quotient here. I lead off with some advice I’ve received.
Mary-Helen wrote to share some experiences she’s had designing and knitting entrelac projects, and gave me permission to share her hints here. She advises that being produced on the bias,entrelac piecesdo hang quite differently from items knit in vertical orientation. For starters, entrelac can be loose-fitting and blousy. (I found this out the hard way when I over-calculated my starting width). She suggests that since I said I wanted a closer but not tight fit, that I plan on not being overly generous in adding garment ease. She says that she’s achieved a pleasing fit in some entrelac pieces by working the back of the garment in stockinette. Doing both would help avoid the maternity-smock/boxy-baggy effect. She says that with careful planning, I might not need to do any waist shaping, as the piece will fit well enough on its own.
Mary-Helen alsonoted that I’ve not mentioned any ribbing. She suggests addingeither ribbing or a garter stitch bandlater to help tame the bottom edge. (She observed that many entrelac piecesdo blouse out over the ribbing, in the puffy-body look popular in the 1980s.)
She went on to discuss square-formation. She said that adding cable details to eachsquare helps hers draw in a bit, avoiding the puffy mushroom-field look that some entrelacs have. Finally, she mentioned that the February archives of Witty Knitter contain some detailed musings on entrelac design.
Thank you, M-H! I hope I haven’t misinterpreted your notes too badly.
As you can see, I’m just about to begin the second course of teeny rectangles. You also get to see some of my collection of fancy stitch markers:
It looks like it will take about an hour to do one course of the rectangles, as I completed this one while watching Enterprise last night. I’ll keep going plain for a couple more courses. Then if necessary, I’ll think about nipping in a bit at the waist by doing a few rectangles per row on five stitches instead of six. I’ll probably work those decreases on rectangles at the edge and at the points at which the waist nips happen in princess-style seaming.
Right now I’ve got little or no ease. If I don’t like the effect in about six more inches, I think I’ll retool and begin again – taking all this good advice close to heart. Perhaps I’ll begin again on a different stitch count.Perhaps I’ll investigaterunning vertical panels of entrelac, withsmall columns of stockinette in between (I could bury the shaping in the stockinette columns.)
Good thing I don’t mind ripping back on a think-piece.
WORKING REPORT – ENTRE DEUX LACS TEE
Thank you to everyone who wrote with hints on how to tame the entrelac beast!
I mentioned wanting to introduce shaping into my garment, and Jaya (of extensive modular knitting experience) suggested I plan on changing the size of the entrelac blocks in those areas. She says she uses either extra decreases or increases to alter the size of individual modules as required and then restores them to their original shape after the need for the width alteration has passed. (You can see some of Jaya’s killer work in her picture album). She also suggested I look at Annabelle Dawson’s entrelac sock pattern because that uses entrelac diamonds of different sizes to change the diameter of the total piece.
Debbi sent in some thoughts about yardage consumption. She said that the entrelac front of Oat Couture’s Tuxedo Vest used less yardage than she would have expected, so I shouldn’t worry about not having enough yarn. Just in case, I’ll do the front of my project first. I can always do plain stockinette for the back.
As to what that thing will be, I’m not sure yet, but I didn’t let that stop me from casting on. I did the math on my gauge swatch, and cast on 138 stitches. I’m working the short-row method for the foundation row of triangles, as per Carol Wyche’s Untangling Entrelac article(great resource!).
I’ll do a couple of courses then begin to think about trimming out a small bit of bulk to make a nip-in at the waist. Not much, but enough to avoid an overly boxy sillhouette. I haven’t decided on much for the upper body. I’m thinking square neckline. I’ve got an Elizabethan shape, so they work well on me, plus it should be easier to do a square neckline than a Vee in entrelac. We’ll see how much yarn I end up having left over for sleeves. I’m open to anything from "just barely" to three-quarters. Which brings me to my big learning experience of the day:
Backwards We Will Be Knitting
The most commonly repeated hint I ran across was that given the back-and-forth nature of entrelac, lifewould beless cumbersome if one learned to knit backwards – from left to right. That way the little entrelac gobbets could be done without the need to flip the work over. Given the fact that I’ll be doing LOTS of 6-stitch wide gobbets, I thought I’d play with it.
Since the whole idea of knitting backwards is to minimize all interruptions in the flow of stitch formation, I decided I didn’t want to switch the hands in which I was holding my yarn. That means I’d be going forward in my usual Continental style, but heading back doing some left-handed variant on English/throwing style.
Now, I’m a Continental knitter to the bone. I’ve done contrasting colors in using throwing, mostly back before I learned to hold both colors in the same handwhile stranding. I’ve also taught others to do it, and in a pinch can demonstrate most techniques in it for people who have problems seeing what I do and translating it to their way. But it’s not my method of choice, and certainly far from a habit that’s become hard-wired for me (I knit Continental exclusively when I dream about knitting. What? you don’t dream about knitting? Hmmm….) At this point, I have to think hard to knit properly using throwing.
I killed most of yesterday playing with different ways of wrapping the yarn and forming the stitches. First forwards, then backwards – sometimes both at once on two different sets of needles so I could see where I was going wrong. I will say that if you want to experiment with this, there are two knitting basics of which youmust be aware. First, make sure you’refamiliar with the difference between stitches mounted on the needle with their leading legs in front, and stitches mounted with their leading legs behind:
The leg in front orientation is the most common. It’s the expected orientationagainst which 99.999% of knitting patterns are written. There are exceptions of course. People who knit Eastern Uncrossed like my mom alternate orientations between knit and purl rows, but they knit into the back of their stitches when working stockinette so that they avoid making twisted stitches. The second thing to recognize is whether or not the way you are forming a stitch will produce a normal U-shaped stitch, or a twisted one. (The twisted ones look like toddlers-in-trainingpostponing the inevitable.)
Recognize these knitting basics and experiment with different ways of wrapping the yarn and making stitches so you know what combo of stitch entry and yarn looping produces each effect. That will make it easier to figure out what’s happening when you try toknit backwards. It took quite a few passes before I was able to produce normal untwisted/leading-leg-forward stitches.
What I ended up doing was keeping my yarn in the left hand, exactly as I usually hold it. I took my left hand needle tip and put it into the stitch to be knit, from front to back, as if I were knitting through the back of the stitch (pretty much what my Mom does when she makes a knit stitch, but from left to right instead of right to left). Then I used my yarn-holding index finger to wrap my yarn down over the left-hand needle tip. I then used the right-hand needle to lift the old stitch over the newly made loop, dropping it off the end of the needle. Voila! One backwards-knit knit stitch.I apologize for not having pix, but I’m alone right now and without growing several new appendages, I can’t photograph and knit at the same time.
Needless to say I’m kitten-clumsy on this, and have nothing like the speed with which I can knit in the normal orientation. But after working across my entire short-rowed set of edge triangles, it doesn’t feel as abjectly alien as it did last night.
WORKING REPORT – ENTRE DEUX LACS
I’ve been playing around with the multicolor yarn I mentioned yesterday. It’s Mountain Colors Wool Crepein a symphony of vivid blues, accented with greens and a smidgen of purple. The yarn review page shows a manufacturer’s gauge of 2 stitches per inch. Apparently that was for multiple strands used at the same time. The review posted shows 4 stitches = 1 inch for double strands, but I intend to use it single stranded.
The yarn is a very stretchy wool crepe – almost a boucle in texture. That means it can be worked over a wide range of gauges. Right now I’mswatching atabout 6 stitches/8 rows= 1 inch on 4mm (US #6). The fabric is very light and bouncy, and the bumpy texture of the yarn makes it more opaque than I originally thought I’d see working on this needle size.
Although the texture of the yarn is interesting, it’s the color that captured me. Color sections are medium sized- about 6 to 10 inches, and the colors are especially intense. Using this over long rows would mull the colors together because each would last for an inch or so over one row and then change. While the result would be pleasing, it’s not what I want to do. I also don’t want to do a big flash piece because the color sections aren’tlong enough to do that easily. I want puddles of these blues, and to achieve a moreMonet’spond lookthana Jackson Pollok effect.
With a repeat so short, I’d need to make little tiny sections to let the colors accumulate into puddles (reference bad grammar French pun for this project’s code name). Entrelac appears to be good for this. I’ve never been a big fan of it – mostly because I find the large diamonds or squares on most entrelac pieces to be clunky looking, but I did have fun with the Forest Path Stole. That was subtle, with the entrelac technique skewing the scraps of lace and introducing lots of movement into the design. So I started playing around with plain stockinette entrelac. After several swatch attempts at various patch sizes, I think I’ve found the effect I was looking for – a six-stitch block, each block being about 1 inch wide:
The entrelac tilework effect is rather muted, but the colors are puddling nicely. I’ll continue with this swatch for another couple of courses, then see how it blocks out. One thing I’m thinking of doing is to dispense with the M1 increases in favor of plain old YOs. That might add a touch more of an openwork feel without compromising the color-puddle effect.
Once I’ve gotten a look and feel I like, I’ll think about garment shapes. I’ve got only 1450 yards. I suspect that entrelac takes more yardage than plain stockinette just because EVERYTHING fun takes more yardage than plain stockinette. As a result, I’m looking at a short-sleeved three-season top. I’ve decided I like the fit of shaped tops better than flat knit rectangles, but that presents a problem with the entrelac technique, which is better suited for producing unshaped yardage. I’ll continue noodling over that problem…
WORKING REPORT – “SPRING LIGHTNING” LACY SCARF
I’m feeling better and better about the fits-and-starts process by which I usually arrive at a finished project. As I read more blogs I realize that I’m not the only one who’s journey from start to completion is a single linear process. Especially on original pieces, most people have a three steps forward/one step back path of progress. Thank you Joe, Wendy, and everyone else who has documented forward but retrograde motion!
My own retrograde progress is that the lacy scarf is stalled. The good news is that the hand-spun Merino wool I am using for the lacy scarf is still available. The bad news is that I ran out of yarn, and have ordered another skein.
Now I have two choices – finish out the remaining foot of edging and use the piece as is; or rip back to add length. After (already) ripping the first end and re-doing it, I am liking the feel and drape of the piece more. The only thing that is still bugging me is total proportion. It’s wide for its length. Another three or four inches of the center motif would go a long way to making the piece more pleasing.
I’m leaning heavily towards adding length. With an entire extra skein, I’ll have plenty of yarn with which to do so. Plus I won’t have to remove all the edging that’s been completed. The Knitting Gods were with me when I startedthat partbecause all unknowing, I began on the "downhill" side.I worked from the center down to the cast-on row end, then back up the other long side. That means I only need to rip back enough to free the final diamond end.
As you can see, I’ve tentatively decided on a name for this mangled creation. Playing on the zig-zags, plus the petal shaped holes and fluttery edge reminiscent of our cherry tree in bloom, I’ll call it "Spring Lightning." I’m still debating on whether or not I should write the thing up for wiseNeedle.I shoudn’t have a problem doing so, but I don’t think there are many peopleinterested in a scarf of this type. Most of the scarves I see being knitare low-effort/high-tactile-visual-appeal type stuff from novelty yarns. I see people doing complex lace shawls, but not small scarves. (There’s a poll at theright if you’d like to leave your opinion.)
What to start next? Hmm… Ideas have been bubbling around for that blue fingering weight hand-dyedboucle I wound a couple of weeks ago:
I had fun with the entrelac stole. Perhaps I’ll do some swatching for an entrelac or modular knitTee. But I’d like to work in some sort of shaping as most stuff I see in modular knitting is too boxy a fit for me. I’d also like to make the modules very small to capitalize on the intense color patches in this yarn.
Since I’m now stalled on Lightning andon the perpetual wash cycle mode on the felted pillow, it’s back to swatching for me.
JUSTICE (AND KNITTING) FOR ALL (ALSO WORKING REPORT-LACY SCARF)
Yesterday’s visit to the halls of jurisprudence was at the same time, quite dull and quite interesting. Although I was not among the impaneled and got to leave early, watching the process up-close-and-personal was enlightening. I metthree other knitters among those waiting in the jury pool, and got lots of edging done in the hours I sat there:
Two of the people I chatted with were quite nice. Both were women who had knit years ago and who were thinking of getting back into it after reading that the hobby has grown in popularity. Both mentioned "fancy scarf yarn," so I’m guessing that the scarf craze hasn’t exhausted the pool of late adopters yet.
The third was a pain, a pest, an annoyance, and I spent part of the morning trying to dodge her. The problem was that she insisted that what I was doing couldn’t be knitting. It was crochet because it was white, lacy looking, had holes, and wasn’t being worked on long needles with buttons at the ends (I was using two DPNs). After all, everyone knows there’s no such thing as knitted lace.
She wandered over and gushed a bit. I kept working, giving short but (mostly) patient answers. "Gorgeous crochet!"
"Thank you. It’s knitting, not crochet."
"It can’t be. It’s crochet. I can tell."
"Sorry. As you can see, I’m knitting."
"Thats not knitting. I know knitting and you aren’t doing that.
You’re making holes. You NEVER make holes in knitting.
It’s wrong. This is crochet. Don’t tell me what I know."
This went on and on, all in a voice that the entire room could hear. I excused myself, picked up and resettled in another waiting room. After a little while my tormenter followed, commencing whereshe left off. I moved again. She followed. I was ever so grateful when they announced the lunch break. I watched to make sure she left the building, then popped down to the cafeteria for a stale tuna sandwich and a half-hour of relative quiet.
On the edging, I’m about 85% sure that I won’t run out of yarn. I’m also not entirely pleased with the two corners. I did try to miter them, but wasn’t able to manage it in the face of constant interruption. They are more or less symmetrical in stitch count and pattern iteration, but they look clunky to me. I’m also not entirely sure that this project will be successful enough to make it to the write-me-up-for-wiseNeedle stage, or to deserve a name other than its current generic descriptor. So it goes.
If any lace mavens out there can offer up advice (or sympathy for ripping back), I’ll listen with eyes wide.
String-Or-Nothing 
