Fasting and finished objects (or the Shul of knitting)

Yesterday was Yom Kippur. Although I did fast, I decided this year to skip Shul in favor of knitting. Brenda Dayne often talks about the church of knitting (for nice Jewish girl, Brooklyn Knit Chick, it is the Shul of Knitting). I decided it be nice to spend the entire day working on a something for someone else. Late last night (long after both sundown and fasting had passed) I cast off and blocked the scarf for my brother in law Colin. Here it is posing in my garden. It wasn’t an easy fast this year, and I got pretty woozy by late afternoon, so a simple scarf pattern was all I could manage.

I decided a good way to make a contribution to the world (in my own little crafty way) was to get more involved with charity knitting. If anyone has their favorite pet project, I’d love to hear about it.

I cast on today for the Red Scarf Project. I’m pretty pleased with how it’s looking so far. I’m going with a machine washable wool/acrylic blend. I figured machine washable would be important if it fell into the hands of a sloppy college age boy!

All this knitting for others has made my Spring Fling sweater slow down to a crawl. Here’s all the progress I managed to make in that:

Today I was sitting up on the roof deck, enjoying the freaky 78 degree day, listening to old Cast On episodes. We all know about charity knitting, but did you know about protest knitting? Neither did I. There’s a web site called Steal This Sweater (that name will not be lost on Abbie Hoffman fans). On the site are all sorts of machine knit sweaters with various political statements on them. There are also the Body Count mittens.

Here’s the text from the web site:

The Body Count Mittens

These mittens memorialize the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq at the time the mittens are made. Since the numbers escalate daily, each mitten has a different number and date. Seen together, the pair of mittens show a span of time and the increase in killed soldiers over that time. I began these mittens on March 23, 2005, when 1524 American soldiers had been killed in Iraq. After finishing the first mitten, I began work on the second mitten one week later, on March 31, 2005. The number of American troops killed in Iraq had risen to 1533 by then. This was a great project to knit in public, and I look forward to wearing them somewhere cold soon.

Nuff said

Thanks to all the free designers . . .

I got an e-mail from the very talented Marnie MacLean to find out what the problem was in the Evening Tank (that I had wrote about in “Summer Knitting had me a blast”). I must say I felt overcome with guilt for complaining about something offered out of the kindness and generosity that is so, wonderfully, present in the knitting community. I e-mailed her the math problems I found, but also the following:

. . . and, my apologies for not searching the internet for your e-mail address. I realize now that was a somewhat ungrateful and rude thing. I posted an apology on my blog comments as well. When I thought about the selflessness of people who post patterns for free (that I use all the time) I was somewhat ashamed when I re-read my post and saw how ungrateful it sounded. thank you for your work, and for sharing it with others.

So here’s a big shout out to all those kind and talented folks who offer up their designs and ask for nothing in return. If you find a mistake, instead of bitching about it in your blog (as I did), seek out the designer’s e-mail and respectfully submit your corrections.

I did poke around Marnie’s blog and found some great spinning tips! More about that later.

In the world of knitting . . . I finished my niece’s scarf. We’ll see how long she holds onto this one:

The last one I made for her, out of various bits of scrap yarn, she promptly lost. Ah well.

Here’s my brother-in-law’s scarf. It’s coming along nicely. The greens are flecked with all sorts of pretty reds, yellows, purples, and oranges. None of which he’ll see. He’s color blind. That pretty much sucks.

Castonitis

I’m suffering from Castonitis (cast-on-eye-tis). Although it’s not fatal, there is no pain, no itch, you might risk running out of needles. I’ve had a few happy cast offs this week, and then proceeded to go a little nuts with the casting on. I was SOOOOO thrilled to finally cast OFF the dreaded braided scarf (happy now Zeena?)

I also whipped up a little hat out of the hand spun, hand dyed wool I made

and last but not least. . . I finished the Sarah Tank. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. The pattern was only written for M-L, so I just messed around with the gauge a bit until I was happy with the smaller sizing. I made it from the really dreamy Debbie Bliss cotton angora.

That’s when the casting on madness began. Fist of all, I had wanted to get rid of the rest of the Filatura Lanarota Summer Soft I bought during the Smiley’s summer sale. I bought a bag of ten and only used two for the ballet t-shirt. I decided to cast on, what was probably going to be my last summer weight garment for a while, the Spring Fling.

Then the madness started. I found out I’m going to go out with the Jersey Boys national tour. We start rehearsal in late October, and I’ll be hitting the road on November 20th. This means, once again, no Thanksgiving with my family. I had promised my brother in law and my niece that I would bring them scarves for Thanksgiving. Now I have to finish the scarves before I see them in mid October. So I cast on a tweedy green garter slip stitch scarf for Colin

and a crazy novelty yarn (Fiona Feza) scarf for my niece Rachel.

Dilettante

So here I sit feeling pretty good about my crafting ability. I’m making a hat out of the wool I spun and dyed myself.

Granted, it is the most simplistic hat pattern known to man . . . the wool came out uneven and chunky . . . the color isn’t what I wanted . . . what the hell? I suck!

I’m having a dilettante moment. (For my favorite musical definition of dilettante, check out my rockin’ pal Nell Balaban’s song. Just click on her name, and click on Dilettante on her site). A dilettante moment, we’ve all had them–usually after meeting someone who’s a real artist. Someone who does more than follow a pattern. Someone who, at the risk of sounding both trite and queer at the same time, follows her heart. I recently came across not one, but two such examples of our craft at its most impressive.

First was Christina O. She was the woman who taught me how to make my cardboard box Tensioned Lazy Kate (by the way, here are links to other people’s homemade lazy Kates: Stuck on Socks, and Keyboard Biologist). I met her at last week’s Sit n’ Knit NY. She (wait for it) felted her own wedding dress. WHAT? Now that may seem like some crazy heavy, smelly-when-wet, dress, but NO. It looked lighter than air. Here’s the description of the process from her blog:

The bodice is almost finished and I started on the petals for the skirt. This is really exciting. I love my electric sander. It really makes life easy. So here’s how I’m doing it. First, I cut the gauze in a petal shape. There are three sizes, as the skirt is longer in the back than the front, and I wanted to keep the number of rows the same. That means the petals in the back will be in a triangle shape with the larger ones in the middle, and then graduated sizes to the outside. After the gauze is cut, a petal is laid on the counter, wet down with soap/water spray, and the wool is laid on top. Once the areas are filled in, wet muslin is put on top of that, and I lightly sand it-a few seconds for each area. I flip the fabric over, and now the felt is stuck a little to the muslin. I peel it off like hot wax, at an angle away from the felt, so that I don’t disturb the placement of the wool. Next, I sand it some more, this time for longer to make sure the layers are attached. I flip it over and sand the backside for good measure, then rinse out the soap and full it on the washboard in the sink. Ahhhh. That’s all there is to it.

That’s right folks, “that’s all there is to it.” WHAT?!? Here’s a pic of the finished dress:

You all must go see the pics of the whole crazy process. Click on the photo album link.

Next there’s my friend Francesca’s mom. She crocheted and beaded, not only her own wedding dress, but her bridesmaid’s, matron of honor’s and flower girl’s as well. Here’s a blurb from the local paper:

(At her wedding on Saturday Miss Pauline Philomena Bagshaw wore a full-length dress and train which she had crocheted herself. The bodice and sleeves were edged with 1500 beads. She also made her bridesmaid’s and matron of honour’s crocheted dresses.)

And then there’s me: dabbler, trifler, idler, amateur, lightweight, tinkerer, dilet–wait a minute. I just finished my hat. It looks pretty good! The color in the yarn looks really neat. The uneven weight turned out cool. I rock!

Muddah, faddah kindly disregard this letter. (you’re either old enough to get that reference or you’re not. Sorry.)