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Pattern? We don’t need no stinking patterns!

Somehow, someway, I’ve developed an allergy to knitting patterns.

Not to knitting itself, mind you. Knitting is still a fun and relaxing way to pass the time (and get a new pair of warm socks). However, I’m now on a sort of anti-pattern kick. Having memorized the basic patterns for things like socks, gloves, and scarves, I pretty much just cast on and improvise things instead of following any pattern. With scarves, this is no big deal. Size isn’t a real concern. Just pick a stitch pattern, and a yarn, and you’re ready to go.

But now things are getting a bit out of hand. Take the Jaywalkers, for example. You’d be hard pressed to find a clearer, more straightforwardly-written pattern than Grumperina’s. It looks like this. My working copy of the pattern, however, looks a little different:

Um….yeah. Kinda minimalist. At best. More to the point, though, is this “we don’t need no stinking patterns” attitude that has since resulted in this little bit of madness:

This here piece of enigmatic knitting is my first experiment with entrelac. Fun, but at the same time I now totally understand why some folks learn to knit backwards rather than keep turning and turning and turning and turning and turning the work around. A more *normal* knitter might have gone with a simple but small project to learn this stuff, and just followed the pattern. Me? Nah. I just figured, “I know what I’ll do–entrelac mitts!” Small project that doesn’t require a lot of time or effort to find out if I like Entrelac. So then I carefully researched the Entrelac stitch, then checked out existing patterns for fingerless gloves, made a gauge swatch and measured it a couple times, tested things out with both the Clover needles and the Addis, and…hah. No.

Just messing with you. I found an Entrelac tutorial, and just cast that puppy on.

Vaguely sorting through the mental hopper for my memorized fingerless mitt pattern, I realized I would have to knit the fronts and the backs of the gloves separately. Since I’m used to doing anything remotely tubelike on two circular needles, this is an easy enough adjustment. I started with a two inch cuff in my usual K2P2 ribbing, let one needle pause, while starting in on the entrelac adventures with the other. Later the two sides will will get joined up, but even now I haven’t decided whether to just leave slits for the thumbs, or do the “knit in some waste yarn and cast on a thumb trick. I’m taking a total voyage of discovery with this project.

Along the way I discovered the whole “entrelac is really poofy” phenomonon, and so the mitts are rapidly turning into a present for Joy, whose hands are much bigger than mine. There’s also the “learn to knit backwards” thing, which I haven’t done yet but suspect I will be strongly motivated to do by the time I get to the second glove.

These developments are kind of scary, actually, because in the knitting queue is a sweater. I already have one sweater in the queue–Rosebud, to be precise–that I started earlier in the year, and then lost track off for a while. Meantime, I want to start another one. Here in Rewalsar, there isn’t a lot of variation in sweater patterns. Everybody seems to use the same basic patterns for vests, cardigans, and pullovers. It’s very common to see women wandering around town knitting merrily away on a sweater sleeve, or back, or front, with nary a written pattern in sight, or even a small note for size calculations. I’ve been here long that now I want a “desi sweater” for my very own.

Thing is, except for one–count it, one!–baby sweater, I’ve never successfully knit a sweater before. Yes, I’ve found a pattern. Will I actually pay any attention to it? Stay tuned….

November 11th, 2007 Posted by admin | Fiber Arts | one comment

Now Hear This

So word of our little Emergency Medical Fund has gotten around. A couple nights ago, Joy, slightly agog, called me over to her desk. A new wave of donations to the fund had come through, some from folks we knew well, and others from people we’d never heard of. Turned out that, among other things, wunnerful, wunnerful folks like Claudia and Stephanie had linked to Joy’s blog and helped spread word of the fund and the work Lena’s doing.

So I added up the new fund total, and got more than a little agog myself. Seriously, go look at it. No. Go right now and look. I’ll wait.

Yeah. The little fund that Joy originally set up to bankroll a $200 wheelchair has somehow grown like topsy, and now it’s doing all sorts of neat things–funding surgeries, supplying people with dental care and eyeglasses, providing medicines and treatments for folks who can’t afford them. And ya know, the lion’s share of that fund came from small donations. $5 here, and $10 there, and maybe $15 or $20 from somebody who decided to buy that skein of Koigu or STR later, so they could send us money now.

So here’s the thing. While adding up the fund totals, I also get a chance to read the comments people have sent along with their donation. A certain percentage of the comments are thank yous for making the medical stuff happen. There’s also a certain percentage of comments that are apologetic: “Sorry I couldn’t send more.” “It’s a small amount, but…” If you are one of these folks who feels guilty because you thought your donation wasn’t big enough, you can stop right now. Instead, pat yourself on the back for being somebody who actually got off their butt and made something happen. India’s economics are such that even a couple dollars makes and enormous difference in someone’s quality of life. Some examples:

US$5 allowed an old cave nun to purchase the proper steroid-based inhalers to control her asthma for an entire month. She’d previously been buying the cheapest inhalers from the chemist when she could afford to buy them at all. Lena first encountered this nun out on Tso Pema’s kora path, incredibly hypoxic from lack of oxygen and badly in need of a nebulizer treatment, still gamely trying to do her daily meditative walk around the lake.

Another US$5 allowed an old woman to see properly for the first time in years, by providing her with a pair of glasses.

US$10 will provide a man with type II diabetes to purchase the greens and other vegetables he needs for a proper diet, for an entire month. As folks living at the poverty level do world wide, he’s been filling in with starchy staples like rice and potatoes.

I could go on and on here, but you get the idea. Even two dollars can accomplish a lot, by purchasing ibuprofen, or vitamin supplements. Whoever you are, wherever you are, consider yourself hugged and blessed today for your contribution.

So no more guilt, mmmkay?

March 5th, 2007 Posted by admin | Fiber Arts, India | one comment

High Fiber Content for Low Attention Spans

What to do with two balls of Lorna’s Laces sock yarn when you’ve messed up the socks you were going to knit them into:

I frogged the offending socks and turned them into a perfectly serviceable Feather and Fan scarf. Nice long one, too, perfect for completely encasing the head in superwash-woolly goodness on those frickin’ cold days. Pattern? We don’t need no stinking patterns! This was one of those “pick a stitch, knit until out of yarn” projects.

Oh, all right. For you folks who must have written directions, here’s how to whomp up a similar scarf on your own:

Materials:
2 skeins Lorna’s Laces sock yarn (”Flame” colorway pictured here)
#6 needles - straight, circular, DPN, whatever

Cast on 58 stitches. (4 stitches for selvedges, plus a multiple of 18 for Feather and Fan)

Knit the first 4 rows for a garter stitch edge.

Then knit in Feather and Fan stitch:

1. K2, * (K2tog) 3 times, (yo, K1) 6 times, (K2tog) 3 times. * repeat * - * 2 more times. K2.
2. Knit.
3. Knit.
4. Purl.

Repeat these four rows until almost outta yarn.

Knit the last 4 rows for a garter stitch edge.

Weave in ends, and block. (Nah, I didn’t do that before taking the picture. Work with me here.)

February 10th, 2007 Posted by admin | Fiber Arts | one comment

Dang, it’s coooooooooooooooooooooold.

How’s the Weather?

One disadvantage of living in a small Indian town in the Himalayan foothills is this weather-related thingy called “winter”. We’re talking seriously low temperatures. Since buildings here are not constructed with any kind of central heating, the temperature differential between indoors and outdoors isn’t that large. This morning, for example, I got up and checked the temperature, which turned out to be 8° Celsius. Indoors. For you indjis on the other continent, that translates to 46° Fahrenheit. I can see my own breath as I write this. With a heater, we’ll eventually raise the indoor temp to a practically balmy 11° C, or 51° F.

Jumping jeeberin’ Jeezus, it’s cold here.

During the day, anyone who can do it stays in the sunshine as long as they can, where it’s warm. The average Rewalsar housewife will truck housework, knitting, kids that need looking after and all to her rooftop, where she can perform a woman’s usual multitasked duties and keep her core body temperature above freezing, all at the same time. Other folks spend their day in the street in front of the chai wallah’s, drinking glass after glass of hot chai while gossiping and enjoying the sun.

This is all by way of saying that both Joy and I have discovered the cold to be a marvelously efficient motivator for beginning and quickly completing knitting projects. The prospect of UFOs* is much less likely when that second sock or glove is what will allow you to retain all feeling in your fingers or toes. Joy, for example, made the happy discovery that a pair of size 12 socks made with wonderful wooly singles from Nepal can be made in four days:

Meantime, I learned that just above freezing temperatures will provide wonderful inspiration for completing a Fair Isle mitten in two days:

The Dreaded Fiber Arts

Making hats for people with dreads is something of a whole artform in itself. It’s not just a matter of “making a larger hat”. Whatever headgear solution is being concocted by the fiber artist has to accomplish some things. The brim has to fit the head of someone whose headsize is effectively 1/3 larger than normal while looking somewhat in proportion to the rest of the wearer’s body, and corral the dreadlocks causing the increased headsize problem so they don’t wander around and interfere with the hat while it’s doing its job.

I’ve been thedreadnyondo for about 8 years now. I’m not a real big fan of the Rasta bag-style hat, which is what most folks make, and had pretty much given up on the whole hat-wearing concept. Then winter hit Rewalsar, and I changed my mind in a hurry. There’s something about doing kora around a lake at about 7:00 in the morning in 30 degree weather that really provides a lot of instant motivation for the hat-wearing thing.

My good friend Ellen last birthday provided me with a stylish dreaded hat in bright yellow felt. As a bonus, its cheerful dreads were about the length of my own. However, it was a bit formal for those first few uncaffeinated laps around the lake, and I looked around for a solution I could wrangle onto my head while still half-asleep. So I turned to the needles and created this monstrosity…

The dreaded….tube!

And the tube in action:

If the color and cabled band style look a little familiar, they should. This is basically Knitty’s Coronet hat pattern, adapted for dreads. This bad boy accomplishes all the things a dreadlock-wearer’s head might require. It fits, keeps the hair somewhat constrained, and even can be pulled down aound the ears. It’s constructed out of cheap-o acrylic yarn (Caron’s Simply Soft, for you inquiring minds), machine-washable stuff that can be sent off to the dhobi-wallah with impunity. And it’s purple, colored like no other article of clothing I own. How cool is that?

Next up: things not to do with your Starbucks commuter mug

We went to the trouble of packing Starbucks commuter mugs and plunger pots to India, so that we could not only make fresh coffee, but keep it warm long enough to be enjoyed during the cold. While setting up our little room heater, Lena discovered that exactly how much heat-related abuse a Starbucks mug can withstand, and still remain usable.

Kids: don’t try this at home. The name of this site is “Blog-o-licious!”, not “JackAss.”.

*UFO: Unfinished Fiber Object. This is a pejorative fiber arts term referring to projects that have been started, and then set aside for easier projects/prettier projects/weddings/funerals/school graduations/dentist appointments. The most notorious generator of UFOs is SSS, or Second Sock Syndrome. Having completed one sock, the knitter fails to cast on and begin knitting its mate directly afterwards. If you’re wondering why most knitters consider this a problem, see this blog entry.

January 4th, 2007 Posted by admin | Fiber Arts | no comments

Wasn’t me, didn’t do it, can’t prove anything.

Those of you who know me also know that I’m not much of one for the hard-core femme, girly-girl thing. Yes, I’ve had my moments with wigs and lipsticks and corsets and heels and what-not. And yes, one of my favorite colors at the moment is pink. However, it’s not any kind of gentle, feminine rose pink; it’s more of an in-yo-face, whachoo-gonna-do-about-it pink. And cute? Unh-uh. You’re reading the words of a woman who for eight years had a button on the dashboard of her car reading “Cuteness should never go unpunished.” And lacy stuff? Fugeddaboutit. Ribbons, frills, fripperies and lace are all things that happen to other women…women who don’t ride a bus alone for three days with a bunch of drunken, dancing Nepali men, for example.

As you might imagine I suffered a bit of a shock when just the other day I realized that my attempts at the fiber arts were undergoing a kind of sea change.

Exhibit A: Tatting.

I can hear y’all now: tatting–WTF? I know what it looks like; but the thing is, I’m not really responsible for that bit of traditional fiber arts there. See, what happened was, eight months ago, there I was in Berkeley, SOCKMOB*, when This Dude** just runs up on me, grabs my purse, and stuffs some tatting shuttles, two tatting books, and four balls of DMC #10 cotton into it, and runs off. That’s what I get for going anywhere near LACIS. My friend Sylvia was there and she not only saw the whole thing, she enabled it later by showing me how to tat while we recovered over a cuppa coffee at her parents house. So the tatting thing? Totally not my fault. Blame the Beadlizard.

Exhibit B: Lace knitting.

Yes, I did buy a whole skein of Baruffa merino laceweight to commit this heinous crime. And yes, that was me printing out the pattern for the Snowdrop Shawl. And yes, those are my circulars supporting that incriminating bit of lacework you see there.

Okay. I can explain, y’all, I really can.

See, what happened was, I was just surfing the Internet (this was before getting to India), when I made the mistake of turning to the Yarn Harlot’s blog for some mental amusement and relaxation. And she’s got this shawl pattern, which just happened to load up on my monitor screen, where I couldn’t help reading the damn thing. And it’s written in such a straightforward, you-can-do-it style that I just couldn’t help myself. The next few moments I can remember about the whole thing are kinda blurry. Somewhere in there was a trip to Stash, in Albany…my friend Tien standing by and helping me to fondle skeins…a swipe of the debit card…hogging the store’s ballwinder for a while? Something? I dunno. And recently I was digging through the travel stash (yes, Joy and I packed yarn stashes to go to India, so yes, you can laugh) and the merino laceweight came into my hands and exerted this um…hypnotic force style of thing. So, you see, the Snowdrop Shawl isn’t my fault either. Blame the Yarn Harlot.

* SOCKMOB: - Standing On the Corner, Knitting, Minding my Own Business. A fiberly variation on the SOCMOB stories most Emergency Room medics deal with. These tall tales usually start with “See, what happened was…”
** This Dude: Of the legendary Dude brothers. You know, “This dude, he just up and hit me.” and “Some dude started talking trash, so I hadda…” and the ever-popular, “Those two dudes over there started it all, Officer.”

January 2nd, 2007 Posted by admin | Fiber Arts | no comments

There’s tension…and then there’s tension.

Time again to post something for the fiber artists in the audience.

Here in Rewalsar, just about every woman who can knit starts seriously wielding her sticks around September or so. That gives her enough time to churn out some sweaters for relatives, or a bunch of socks for sale in Delhi. Joy and I actually brought along our fiber tools and a stash of yarn each (yes, they do have yarn in India, so yes, you can laugh). Since we’ve been here long enough to be considered locals, the sight of Joy or me knitting away in the sunshine fails to surprise other Rewalsar residents. For the most part, since socks are a small project that’s easily portable, they’ve been the main knitting projects we’ve been working on.

Now, I’ve been knitting a number of years on socks. I’m at the point where I have a basic sock pattern memorized, and then simply adjust for the yarn gauge and any pattern stitches. Simple, yes? Among the various knitting tools and paraphernalia was a pair of socks I had started a lot earlier in the year, when I was in the States. My weapons of choice at the time were Lorna’s Laces sock yarn and a “tangy” pattern from Knitty.com called Crusoe. Before traveling to India, I’d managed to get one sock done:

Of course, any knitter worth his or her NaCL immediately begins the second sock, so as to avoid the dreaded Single Sock Syndrome. I usually do this, but as I might have mentioned in my last post, normalcy and a consistent environment in which to accomplish this have been in short supply for the last couple of years. Crusoe #1 languished in my knitting kit for several months, while my digestive system, my laptop gear and I all had various adventures getting accustomed to the chaotic living standard that is India’s. Recently I dug up the project and began Crusoe #2, blissfully unaware that something was seriously amiss:

The problem’s not really evident in the two pictures, is it? After I discovered what went wrong I took a third photo to illustrate the situation in all its mismatched glory:

Yes, I used the same needles. Yes, I used the same yarn. I even carefully counted rows to make sure the patterns turned out even. However, there’s this little thing called “tension” most knitters are familiar with. The tension with which you hold your yarn and needles directly affects your knitting gauge. And your gauge is what makes the difference between a sock suitable for a Nyondo and a sock appropriate for, well, this guy. Apparently, while I was in the States, I was under a lot of stress, spent a lot of time being very tense, and as a result knitted everything all tensed up. Once arriving in India, where there were a lot fewer stressors, I relaxed a bit. A month or so into my stay here, I developed a pinched nerve in my right arm, which makes it nearly impossible to grip anything with any considerable tension. By now I’m a much more “relaxed” knitter, with obvious results.

November 23rd, 2006 Posted by admin | Fiber Arts, India | 3 comments

A fiber moment, far, far, away

Just passing along this bizarre story, because I can…

Every (and I mean every) woman in Tso Pema who can manipulate yarn and a set of needles is doing so right now. Seriously, porches and storefronts and anywhere else a woman can park with her knitting, there’s a woman parked with her knitting, working on a sweater or a hat or whatever. Partly it’s a funciton of the season–most farming harvests are about done, but the really cold weather hasn’t started yet–and partly it’s driven by capitalism, because there’s apparently a large market in Delhi for handknit stuff from Himachal. I find myself looking at everyone’s sweaters these days–most of the ones you see here are definitely handmade, probably with yarn from the Fancy Wool Store. Many menfolk are wandering around in vests obviously handmande by an ama, or mata, or chachi, or whoever…Since some colors have a different meaning or no meaning at all compared to their significance in the States, and there’s a cultural convention where siblings or friends of the same sex can show public displays of affection, some fashion choices tend to startle Westerners. I think this is one of the few places on Earth where you can see two men going down the street, holding hands, one in a pink sweater, and one in a police uniform, with no comment whatsoever.

Anyway, knitting. Since I’d dragged along a few needles and skeins of sock yarn, I figured I would start another pair ‘o socks and join the ranks of fiber-oriented femininity stationed in the thorougfares of Tso Pema.

So I start a new pair with cotton-and-spandex Fixation yarn. I use circular needles for knitting socks; I’ve just dropped double-pointed needles one time too often. Many passersby were fascinated by my circular needles. It kept reminding me of a story Lena once told me about performing a piece of magic, and manifesting a bunch of food, neatly packed in Ziplock bags. This happened in India, years back, and so everyone got really excited about Lena’s feat, because manifesting beans is pretty usual, but manifesting something as rare and useful as ziplocks is pretty darned good. I had a number of people stop to inspect my knitting and check out how the needles worked. So one of the folks who did this was the chai-wallah next to the handweaver, just outside the Lotus hotel. No lie, this man actually came out from behind his pots of chai and dudh to sit next to me, and inspect my work and the needles and everything. He was amazed by the fact that I was knitting circular style with “no join”. After I told him the needles and yarn came from America, and I was using a different style to knit, I explained I was making socks.

“Too loose for socks,” he siad knowledgeably, and showed me how large the cuff was stretching open. When I got home I recalculated my stitches and darned if he wasn’t right. So I frogged and restarted…

Knitting tips from the local chai wallah? What next?

October 28th, 2006 Posted by admin | Fiber Arts, Travel, India | no comments

Chinee Grandmaw Sweatah

I work in downtown Oakland, which means I spend quite a bit of time in the city’s version of the Pacific Rim. On the backside of places like the Convention Center and the Marriott is a village of Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese businesses. Some have signs in English; some do not. One thing I have noticed is the grandmothers, bent, slow-moving dowagers usually dressed in an oversized sweater that defies description.

But I’m gonna try to describe them, anyway. The sweater tends to be a riot of color and pattern so outrageous it totally bypasses the category of “ugly” to this totally different sartorial space. Enormous flowers in peridot, pink and purple; mind-boggling geometric patterns normally seen only in psych tests; convoluted textures that would baffle the author of the Book of Kells. All of the sweaters moving along at a speed guaranteed to give you the maximum amount of time for them to permanently sear themselves into the retinas. The little old ladies, in their 60s, 70s and 80s, all sporting this air of “I’m old enough to wear this sweater.”

I want one. Even though I’m not old enough, yet, to really wear a Chinese Grandma Sweater, I want one. Oh well. Maybe I’ll just wear a Pink Hat instead.

April 24th, 2005 Posted by admin | Fiber Arts | no comments