MG: here and there

i spent a few lovely days in Seattle two weekends ago (friend's wedding). i had hoped to visit Weaving Works for their spinning goodies and wall of Koigu or The Fiber Gallery for their earth-friendly yarns, but i didn't manage. i did drop into the yarn shop of the neighborhood where i stayed. the people at So Much Yarn were very friendly, and i was happy to carry away some sock yarns to knit into Seattle memories.

i found some Regia in a crisp, cheery, spring-time green; apple green; or granny smith apples and cream--apple sherbet. socks already begun above; socks already named. sound transit (we enjoyed the Seattle public transit system). i also took home a skein of Claudia Hand Painted in blue and blue and blue. blues for the rain. blues for the sound, the lakes. hubby claimed this yarn. wonder if i can squeeze a pair of short house socks out of this one skein for his bigger-than-mine feet?


sock-knitting kept me company on the plane and in the airport. lots of friendly, happy questions about what i was making. i even explained to a girl--10 years old or so?--next to me how magic loop works! her "ohhh!" at the moment of comprehension was extremely satisfying.

my Rowanspun 4-ply looks more like a sweater now, well... like a vest. provisional cast-on for the sleeves. yoke complete. must rip back though. the neck opening is asymmetrical b/c selvedge stitch tensions were different on each side. also, i'd like to make the neck deeper.


and... some slow-as-a-snail spinning. i've been working on this for more than a month... almost 4 ounces on that bobbin. it's a combination of a thin yarn with a girl who is slow at everything she does. still, i love it so.

(click for 800x600 version)

hi Molly! your request for a Fawkes Footlet pattern made me feel warm and fuzzy, but my version is so close to the Interweave Footlets that i wouldn't feel right about disseminating my own pattern. how about i chart out the lace i used (just a simple eyelet pattern) and promise to share notes about my future footies? thanks for appreciating Fawkes. :)

hope you are all well.

MG: lendrum-happy again

a crisp hank of the moorit shetland (scroll down) i spun before my summer trip and long separation from my wheel. spun from the fold, longdraw; navajo-plied, therefore 3-ply; 270 yards--large margin of error on this measure; around 17 wpi or fingering weight.

i do not yet own the art of navajo-plying. i made a gnarly mess of overplied and underplied yarn, despaired over ruining my beautiful singles, then unplied a bit in order re-ply. it was tedious but worth the tedium and improved much. the yarn is probably overplied and too dense, but still, i love it with beaming parental pride.

continued stocking stitch, 5"/13cm:

MG: simple answers

didn't realize Cookie was a logophile until she announced this contest. should have had an inkling; the name Pomatomus betrays logoleptic tendencies. i submit my entry in word-love solidarity, and as perquisite, am free to indulge in Romantic wordsmithing and to flirt with loquacious prattle of the knitting sort.

i also needed a little push--ok, a shove--to end this abeyance of knitting and knitblogging. it's been languorous travel and opaque stresses, but also more. my knitting had assumed a barren pallor since late spring, growing nearly despondent in the last few weeks. my frenetic searches for the spark, the project to resume fecund ardor to the needles have been feckless.

don't know if it's the meager stash of a impecunious grad student. don't know if it's the appeal of warm ovine fluff over that of summery cellulose. don't know if the lacuna fosters lethargy and doubt in one's ability to knit with consequence; if the stretching emptiness edges one to look farther into the horizon--dreams of a colorful, erudite, extraordinary knit of triumph as an answer. but i could not find foothold until a few days ago.


in the end it was simple: a boggy (brown mud in some lights; green mud in others) tweed from my stash, miles of stocking stitch made sweet by the reading of Murdoch's An Unofficial Rose while my fingers worked its tactile work. repetitions of a single seemingly arbitrary motion that somehow accumulates complex shapes to drape my form. pleasure of "knitting around"--to usurp the phrase of the knitter i most like whispering in my ear. i had forgotten to dream the dream at hand.