Busy Busy Busy

I've been piecing a quilt top for Owen the last couple weeks:



I plan to send it out to be machine quilted because otherwise, it will end up as a permanent UFO. One woman I found online charges about $75 on an average twin size quilt, which is a pretty good deal considering the hours of my life I would spend (not to mention the frustration) if I tried to do it at home. I did notice a business here in Madison with a sign in the window advertising "Machine Quilting" so I'm going to phone them up today and see what they say.

I made this quilt top from a lot of Mr. SABLE's old plaid and striped shirts that had ripped out at elbows and pockets and such. I also picked up a few more shirts at Digger's Outlet to throw in a bit more diversity in the color scheme.

There has been knitting, too, but I have to keep that under wraps a while.

In other news
Today is the Little Emperor's seventh birthday. Hard to believe how fast the time has gone!

Our lives are stressful these days. Mr. SABLE has some employment uncertainty ahead. His company wanted him to move to way-southern NJ by Sept 30. He decided that he really wasn't willing to go to those lengths to stay with that company. He's hoping to find other employment that keeps us in the Madison area soon, but he's considering jobs quite far away, too. As it currently stands, his last scheduled day of work is Sept 30, so after that, who knows? There is a severance package for those not willing to relocate, so we should have a cushion for a few more months after that, but it's a lot of stress and anxiety for us right now. Stay tuned.

Alt Knitting Camp 08

Or The Gourmet S'mores Knitting Camp


I took three group pictures. This one was the best for everyone but me. So, I pulled a fast one. I took my head off of one of the others and photoshopped it onto myself in this picture. But everyone else was smiling nicely!

A great time was had by all. We ate, drank, went yarn shopping, yakked it up, slept a bit. Some of us even went swimming!

Now I'm off to bed. Must rise early to fetch Owen from Geek Camp in St. Paul.


The Swap
Meanwhile, here's the yarn we all brought to swap around/destash.


Somehow, I came home with more yarn than I unloaded. Hmm.

It's Here!

Soon I'll be getting some envelopes stuffed to those of you willing to help distribute to LYSs in your area.

But it's a crazy week coming up, and following on an utterly insane week just past.

So, the 'zine: well, I think it looks pretty good. There were a few glitchy things that happened right at the end, resulting in a bit of confusion (on my part) and a couple little edits and improvements that should have gone to press were left out of the final version. But it was a huge learning experience. It can only get better from here, right? This issue was a bit heavier on sewing, but the fall issue will be fatter and heavier on knitting. Stay tuned.

Butterfly Season

This Swallowtail emerged in our garden yesterday. I got this image of it while he was still drying his wings.


Here's a closer view of his face:


I tried stalking a monarch in the last couple days, but that one was too manic to stay put for even a second. Later in the season they settle down more and pose for pics.

Garden Pics

A couple garden pics to tide you over until I have more knitting to show. The top one is Bee Balm. I have been admiring Bee Balm in gardens all over Madison for many years and we finally have some growing in our own yard. When you see a big stand of it in full bloom in July, you know it's summer. We don't have a big stand, yet, but in a few years, I hope to have it all over the yard.

The second image is just a lily. We have several different kinds of lilies. I love how agreeably easy they are and they always put on a good show.

Material Culture

Regular readers know I'm a great fan of thrift shops. One particular store in my area holds a singular fascination for me: The Diggers Outlet, run by St. Vincent de Paul Society. Diggers Outlet is the last-chance store for merchandise that has run through the other thrift shops. Most goods are sold by the pound with only the most cursory sorting: clothes in giant boxes, household items of every type in another section, etc. Diggers Outlet is where you see first-hand the cast off material culture of modern American society: the clothing fads, the electronics that were cutting edge and now are obsolete, the particle board furniture that self-destructs after 5-10 years of regular use, the must-have kitchen gadgets of yesterday, and so on. A trip to Diggers Outlet jars me into thinking about how short our collective attention span really is.

I'm a textile nut. If you read this blog, you probably already know that. For most of human history, textile production has been slow and labor-intensive. Spinning was done on drop spindles and later, by hand on spinning wheels. The Industrial Revolution started the change that continues rippling today: toward higher efficiency in production, cheaper goods, viewing laborers as part of the machinery, toward ever-changing cycles of fashion and the disposable culture they foster. I'm not a rosy romantic about life in the years before the mid-18th century. I know that life was often nasty, brutish, and short, to borrow a phrase. But it was, by and large, more sustainable than the life we now live.

Textile production used to be so labor intensive that textiles had to be preserved and used up. Only the very wealthy could afford to have several sets of clothes. If you have ever made a garment, from fiber to fabric to finished object, either with knitting or weaving, you know how you feel about the resulting item: it's a treasure! If one use doesn't work out, you find a way to reuse it in another that does: unravel the sweater and reknit the yarn into something new or give it to a person it will fit, or something. Handmade fabric from handmade yarn is not something you want to discard easily.

Mass-produced fabric is so cheap that we generate tons (TONS!) of excess textiles in our society. Unbelievable excess. We shop for and replace clothes with little thought. Some items find their way into the landfills, though they are perfectly usable. Many get donated to charities for resale or distribution to the needy. While searching for images of baled clothing, I found this article.

In particular, I was struck by this quote:

The need to minimise all waste is more apparent when you consider that :

More than 80% of materials are consumed and waste generated by less than 20% of the world's population.

The growth in the world's population and the spread of wealth is rapidly exacerbating the problem.

In order to sustain human life under the present system, global environmental efficiency will have to increase by as much as 50 times.

The whole concept of product life cycle, design, fashion and the responsibility for re-use have to be reassessed. A culture built on the idea of wastage needs to be dismantled and a new way introduced.

Further search led me to another eye-opening article.

What if we all tried to stop thinking like Consumers and redefined ourselves in other terms? What if all our textiles were produced in ways that did not exploit the laborers or the planet? And what if we all recognized that the cost of a basic outfit would be higher, but our expectations about our clothes would be different? We would spend more, but spend more wisely. We would seek quality. We would reuse and re-purpose our textiles. We would choose clothes that wouldn't look dated next year at this time; clothes constructed with future alterations in mind; clothes from quality fabrics that stand up to hard use.

I wonder what our society will look like in 10 years. Or 30. Will we be buried in the excesses of the Industrial Age? Or will we learn to live as though our resources matter?

Note: image found on Buffalo Export website.

A Little 'Zine Teaser...

Just a peak at one of the Knitcircus patterns coming out soon! Tango!
Click here and scroll down for purchasing info. (New site coming soon!)

Finally, a little knitting content!

I recently finished this hat! It was loosely inspired by one in the book Hip Knit Hats, but with my own numbers and variations. I like the way it can be worn in a variety of different ways, with differing degrees of jauntiness!

The lighter yarn is some of the handspun that the wonderful Lady Bean of House of Wool Repute sent me a while ago. This only used a small amount of it, but I have enough to make something else with what's left. The darker green was an odd ball of something I took to be Manos that I got in a big grab bag from the thrift shop several years ago. The Manos is heftier than the handspun, but it doesn't really matter for this use.

For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, I'm kind of a hat fiend. I feel that fun hats are one of the places a woman of size can really go to town without worrying too much about accentuating the wrong place. I mean, really, who can go wrong accentuating her head?

As for the 'zine, Knitcircus, we press the big SEND button tomorrow and off it goes to the printer. I'll be hitting up my faithful readers for a bit of a favor. Well, a favor with a sweetener for you. To receive your free copy of Knitcircus #3, all you need to do is agree to drop off one issue at your LYS, along with a cover letter explaining a bit about us. (No sales pitch: just drop and leave.) Of course, we're hoping that yarn shops will agree to carry us, but they have to know about us first! If you're interested, send me an email (in my blogger profile) and include your mailing address. As soon as we get the issues in our sweaty little hands, you'll get a copy, plus one for your LYS. It's that simple.

Updates

Here we are, sailing headlong into July. The news Chez SABLE is both dull and exciting.

First the exciting:
Issue #3 of Knitcircus is very nearly ready to send off to the printer. We hope to get it dispatched by July 1, with issues ready about a week after that. Putting a magazine together really is like solving a puzzle. Once you get all the component parts roughed in, you still have to find a way to make them squeeze into the allotted space without looking like they're being squeezed. I'm grateful that I was able to hit the ground running with InDesign because of all the stuff about layout and design that I already learned in Word or Pages. I'm grateful, too, that ultimately it's not my project, so I do what I can and hand it off to Jaala. It's nice not being the one who needs to keep track of every detail.

I'm a bit at odds with knitting lately. I have some projects in the pipeline that need some thinking time, like the Kauni cardigan. And some ideas waiting to be turned into projects, too, but they need even more thinking time. I definitely need to get my kids into some more structured activities for some of the remaining summer. Then maybe I could focus on what to knit!

Now the dull:
The summer's been whacky because of weather and mosquitos. We were supposed to spend 4 nights camping at Devils Lake, but our reservation was canceled because the park closed due to flooding. We spent two nights at Mirror Lake, instead, which is just not as nice a park in several ways. It would have been ok, except that the mosquitos were just about as bad as I've ever had on a camping trip. In fairness to the park, this is a bad situation all over the area. It's been too awful to even stand out on the sidewalk and chat with a neighbor in broad daylight for the last 10 days or so. I do think Mirror Lake would be nice for a visit in the fall, except for the drone of the Interstate, which is a more fundamental problem. Because Devils Lake had been closed, one of our great favorite boredom-busters has been unavailable. The park is about 35 miles from our house, so a bit of a distance with gas prices as they are, still, we could go a couple times a week without breaking the bank. The park just reopened on Thursday, so I think we'll have to plan a visit soon. The lakes right in Madison tend toward algae and often close several times a summer due to high bacteria counts. Lately, they've been closed because of potentially dangerous stuff running into them as a result of flooding.

Yesterday I took the boys to see Wall-E, a new Pixar Studios movie. The Little Emperor has been waiting for months for this release. It was a fun movie for the whole family. There aren't a lot of G rated movies that I genuinely say that about. I wish there were more, but it seems like there tends to be a gulf between the really dippy pablum they release for very young kids (i.e. Barney) and the violent stuff that slides by for PG audiences because people don't hold animation to the same standards as live-action movies. So, I'd give Wall-E two thumbs up for the four and up set. And the teen liked it, too!

That's the news for now. Stay tuned!

The Summer Madness Starts

(Suppressing a long rant here about my kids. Just wondering, those of you who talk about how great your kids are at amusing themselves, at what age did you have to get really harsh to make that happen? Because I obviously failed in this aspect of parenting and I would love to get back on track now.)

Anyway, in the last month I've had a crash course, mostly self-taught in the ways of InDesign. This has been a lot of fun and part of the reason my kids are so put out. They expect that they should be the center of my world all day, every day. I kind of think that by ages 13 and very-nearly-7, they should be able to something, anything, without my constant presence. Bah. But, Issue #3 of Knitcircus is well under way and should be available within the next couple of weeks.

What is Knitcircus? It's a new 'zine about knitting and other crafts, produced in Madison, but certainly not Madison-specific in content. We have knitting and sewing patterns, book and yarn reviews, articles on craft-related stuff, recipes. Three rings of knitting and crafting fun! Issue #3 will be the first one professionally printed and bound. It's a smaller issue, but we hope the fall one will have a larger page size and more pages, too. Knitcircus is the brainchild of Jaala Spiro, a fellow Madisonian. She needed a bit of help to continue producing it and a few of us answered the call. Stay tuned...

So, all that activity leaves me without much knitting content to show you right now. When the issue is in print, I'll have new knitting to show you.

Meanwhile, here are some recent garden pictures:

June 9, 2008

After all this wild and dramatic and sometimes destructive weather has cleared out, it's not a bad day here.


Fancy Ferns


Fluff Storm

More of the Merino/Tencel

Or The Boasting Goes On!

But first, a peony bud:

Ours are taking forever to open this year. The anticipation is driving me nuts.

Now on to the yarnography:

A little 11 gram/88 yard mini-skein. I intend to use this for a swatch. Right now, I'm leaning toward Muir from Knitty Fall 07. If I like the swatch, I'll make it more like a scarf than a stole by taking out one repeat of the pattern.

The next few get a bit bigger when you click them.






We're having very dramatic weather here today and I missed a window of sunshine. When I use the flash on this yarn, the tencel puts on a highly reflective sheen, which I find a bit distracting and not an accurate representation of how the yarn really looks.

In Other News
We are rapidly crashing into the end of the school year. This tends to lead to a dramatic decrease in anything that requires sustained thought from me. I have a lot of writing to do for KnitCircus as well, so please understand if posts become somewhat infrequent for a while. Of course, there's always lots of quick, easy post fillers in the summer with garden photos, right?

I also wanted to mention that I edited the Knitting Camp post to answer Helen's question. Helen, I don't have your email for a direct response, but I hope you'll be able to come! It would be great to meet you. JP, you too!

Unreasonably Boastful Post Ahead

Alternate post title: The Longest Four Ounces of My Life
To say I am quite pleased with myself wouldn't go nearly far enough. I've finished up with most of the 4.1 ounces of 70% merino/30% tencel roving, dyed by Sandy of Sandy's Palette, that I got at the Alpaca Festival. I haven't measured yet, but I think this qualifies as lace weight.
edited to add: measured approx 720 yards in about 100 grams. Skinny!


On the Niddy Noddy


The Money Shot

This was a very slow spinning project. The fiber needs constant vigilance because the moment I let down my guard, the strands would slip on through my fingers. It was definitely a learning project.



The plying alone took hours last night. I took these photos before-bath. I'll do more on a brighter day, once the skein is washed and ready to pose.

Meanwhile, here's an iris:

Bridal Wreath

Knitting soon. And spinning. Meanwhile, the bridal wreath is in bloom, so enjoy it!

Planning Ahead to Summer

Last year I organized an alternative knitting camp at a state park in Wisconsin. Six of us converged to knit, eat, chat, swap stash, eat, knit, burn stuff, etc. for a couple days. This year, we're doing it again!

The Other Knitting Camp in Wisconsin
July 22-24
Devil's Lake State Park, Baraboo (about 35 miles NNW of Madison)

We have room for a total of 12 people. Four spaces are spoken for.

The cost runs about $25 per person for the share of campsite expenses and food.

Let me know if you want to come. It's a ton of fun. Devil's Lake is a beautiful park. I'll bring my canoe and the water there is very clean and clear.

This knitting camp features NO classes! NO workshops! NO famous Knitting Personalities! But you can't beat the price!

Edited to add the following details:
Official check-in/out time at Wisconsin State Parks is 3 p.m. I hope to be up there pretty close to that on the 22cnd. I'm not sure how long I'll stay on the 24th. It's pretty flexible.

Also, for those who aren't able to commit to camping for two nights, you can certainly come for a day visit and hang out. Show up with snacks in hand and you'll be welcome with open arms. ;)

Anyone who wants details should email me (address in my profile).

Finished Objects and a Meme

My friend Sarah aka Teleknitter is expecting her first baby in July. Now that she's received the gift, I can show you what I made for the baby.

and the detail:

and a matching hat:


I made the main part of the blanket on a knitting machine, which was very fast, then crocheted a shell stitch border around until it seemed like it would lay flat.

The yarn is Plymouth Encore I turned up in my stash one day while looking for something else. My original plan for this yarn had been long abandoned and I realized it would be a perfect quick gift for the baby.

As for the meme...
I was tagged by Cristiana/Knitaly.

Rules:

* Answer at least three of the questions. Yes, I know a few look time-consuming and there are several of them. That's why I only ask for three. See? I'm nice!
* Post them and the rules on your blog, and please link back to me here. Pretty please?
* Comment here telling me and the rest of our little party where you're at and link to yourself.
That's all!
* Oh yeah, don't forget to tag others!

What's the last book you read that you thought was really super, inspiring, you'd recommend it to most anyone?

Maybe not the last one that fits the definition, but one book I think every educated person should read: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

What food totally grosses you out, you'd never be able to touch it? Ew. Gag. *hurl*

Tongue. Brain.

Did you ever watch a scary movie that frightened you so much you were afraid of the dark afterward? I mean like you're lying in bed trying to sleep, but you have to pee, but you're scared to get up. It doesn't have to be recently; could be when you were a kid. So what movie was it?

I saw Hitchcock's Psycho for the first time when I was about 12. It was hard to shower for a long time after that. Jaws pretty much ruined swimming for me throughout the late '70s, even in a small fresh water lake in NH.

Is there a song that makes you dance every time you hear it? Would you tap you feet and sing along to it in public?

Can't think of any particular one right now.

Tattoos: yes or no? Do you have any? Tell us! Do you think they're gross? TELL US!

I don't have any. I'm not interested in ever getting one. I can't imagine any image or message that I'm sure I'd feel that strongly about my whole life. If others want them, it's fine with me.

When's the last time you laughed so hard your ribs ached and/or you nearly peed yourself? What made you do it?

My mom and I laugh that hard when we're together.

Draw or doodle a picture of your pet(s) and post it if possible. Nothing fancy, don't be shy!

This one sounds like too much hassle. You can find photos of the cats a little bit back in the blog.

Go through a stack or box of your old music. Stuff that you may not have heard in years. Pick one and tell us about it. Is it as good (or as bad) as you remember?

How old does it have to be? I still love all the Grateful Dead music I loved in college. And Talking Heads. And a bunch of others.

Do you still sleep with a stuffed animal? We won't laugh!

I don't unless my younger son leaves one of his "friends" in my bed. Our female cat Hailey often crawls under the covers and snuggles up against my belly on cold winter nights. And I have a Heater Hubby.

I often skip memes because they seem like they require more thought than I want to give them, but I liked this one when I saw it on Cristiana's blog because the questions are fairly precise and limited in scope. Highlighting and bolding the titles of 100 books? No thanks. Even Seven Weird Things About Me gets me in a tizzy, defining what's weird and what's not.

Anyway, I'm not big on tagging people for memes. I would enjoy reading how Bezzie, Sarah, and MollyBee answer these questions, but I'll leave it up to them to decide if that rises to the level of a tag. ;)

Updates

Mr. SABLE has gotten into making creatures out of beads. He made two hummingbirds and a couple of fish in the last several weeks. This is the first hummingbird.

(My guys all like it when I blog about their accomplishments. Every time they make or do something new,they ask me if I'm going to put it on the blog. I think their feelings get hurt if I don't get to it fast enough.)

As for me, well, here's what I was just puttering away on, out on the porch, in the sunshine:


I'll tell you that it's made out of Hempathy. And that there will be a pattern from it later this summer.

And that I attended a meeting this morning of talented women who are working on making a go of a new print knitting 'zine. More will be revealed!

My Amazing Son

Owen's had an urge to try his hand at making sushi for a while now. We finally bought the necessary stuff and set him to it.





And the results?


Yum!

I'm impressed!

Frustrations of Modern Life

You don't realize how much you live by the internet until it isn't working as it ought to! My carrier has been having major problems the last day or two and it's getting on my nerves. Nevertheless, I will try to carry on with this blog post and hope it all goes ok. (Turns out there was a big cut in internet cables near Chicago, causing widespread disruptions around the country. So it's bigger than just Wisconsin.)

The Kauni Update

I bet you all are getting pretty darn sick of this sweater, eh? I'm back in my stride again with it, fully recovered from the frogging episode. Just a few more inches on this main body part, then on to the sleeves.

My focus is all over the place these days. Last night I got myself situated on the couch to work on the Kauni and I promptly got displaced by Owen wanting that one perfect knitting spot in our living room so he could play Wii. It also happens to be the one most optimal TV watching and playing spot.

So, I went down to my lair, where it's kind of cold, and poked around trying to decide what to work on. I started a hat from the same blue and purple handspun I used for the garter stitch scarf a few posts back. Right now it's just a few rounds of ribbing for the band, so not much to show. After a while, I heard the sounds of Owen and Mr SABLE heading upstairs toward bed, so I thought about reclaiming the couch, but by then, I was yawning.

Today is just about the most glorious spring weather a person could ask for. I saw one little white puffy cloud in an otherwise empty blue sky. It's the color of blue you think you only see in postcards and tourism calendars. When I went out to take the picture of the cardigan progress, I felt like some cave-dwelling creature emerging and blinking in the sunlight.

I have a few stealth projects coming along, so pictures may be scarce. Or at least, project photos may be scarce. I'll try to make up for it with other pictures. I hope the stealth mode won't last too long! Stay tuned.

Updates and Acquisitions

The Kauni Comeback

I haven't given this a lot of attention lately, so little to show you.

As you've probably noticed, I've been working on getting my patterns reformatted and available through the blog. Sorry to dump so much on at once, but the end is in sight. I have a couple more old patterns to get up here and then I'll be focusing on new stuff.

The Next Spinning Project

This merino/tencel fiber was very densely compacted. I was a little dismayed when I took the band off the bundle and started tugging at it a bit. It took real muscle to get it to budge. I worked my way down the entire rope of roving predrafting, breaking it a few times because I needed so much force to get it to loosen that it was hard to control when it began to slide apart. Under the pink stuff on the bobbin is a lot of the blue. I think I'll make a nice fine two ply out of it.

Playing with ideas

Here's little idea for what to do with the Mossy Merino. I have enough of this to make a rather substantial shawl kind of thing. Trouble is, I'm just not the shawl type. I can't see myself putting in all that effort just for the art of it, when I know it'll never see any action in my life. Hmmm.

Acquisitions

I went on a mini thrift shop crawl today. I have a plan for something crafty, not knitting, that I'll have to wait to reveal, and it needed Cheap-A$$ supplies as can be best had from thrift shops. One of our local St. Vincent's shops has a pattern file cabinet with three large drawers full of patterns. They are completely unsorted by size, type of garment, or anything. I went through all of them and found these six which I thought maybe I can use. Total cost for the six: 60 cents!

I'm working on a big new plan, which is pretty exciting for me. I'll let you know more about that next week.