Feral Knitter

Sarah Swett Workshop

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to be really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
        ~Charles Kingsley

Sarah Swett (you might recognize her sweater from Spin-Off magazine)

In 1998, when Gingko asked me to teach her how to knit, I checked Melanie Falick's Kids Knitting out of the library so Gingko and I could both learn. At the same time I checked out Melanie's Knitting in America (reissued as America Knits--a pox on whoever decided to give it a different title). [Unrelated note: would somebody PLEASE write another fine book like this one??? Please?]

Well, it is  not an exaggeration to say that this action changed the direction of my life! Melanie's profile of Meg Swansen resonated deeply and moved me to delve into knitting.

But another profile was equally powerful: Sarah Swett, wearing an incredibly beautiful sweater (Kestrel's Alight) and spinning on a spindle (she's in the upper right on the cover), epitomized another way to live a life surrounded by fiber. She appealed to the back-to-the-land me, the girl who washed her first fleece in the dorm bathroom and subscribed to Organic Gardening while living in small city apartments--the girl who had been lost in the decades since.

But Sarah's art and life are a combination of totally modern and pioneer sensibility. She moves between spinning, natural dyeing, knitting, tapestry weaving, embroidery, writing, painting, and needlepoint in a dizzying way--if you follow her work you know that you can never be sure what she will do next!

Well, last weekend I enjoyed a 2.5-day workshop on value with Sarah. Beth Smith, a talented spinning instructor, of The Spinning Loft organized this event, which was held in Brighton, Michigan. When my friends Greg and Marilyn told me last fall that Beth was hosting Sarah sometime in May, I told them to sign me up the minute registration opened: I didn't care what the subject was. I find Sarah to be so inspirational as an artist and fiberist that anything she chose to present would work for me.

Luckily, the theme of the workshop was value. And it just so happens that value movement is the secret behind Fair Isle design! We spent our time playing with just a few natural shades of CVM fleece plus a tad of indigo-dyed fleece, blending to get just the right value to make, well, what we want to make.

[Value? What's that, you say? Value is the relative darkness or lightness of a thing. The manipulation of value is central to any artist's work--see this image of a tapestry Sarah wove in one color that works because of different values. All stranded knitting relies on value contrast, and Fair Isle also manipulates value gradients.)

Day one was spent preparing yarn for Fair Isle knitting. Day two focused on embroidery, and day three involved needlepoint.

Sarah's tapestry sample to show value

Sarah's needlepoint samples (plus some knitting) to demonstrate value

Sarah's needlepoint bag--soft yet sturdy, spun with long-staple wools--it can be hard to see value when presented with such vivid colors!

My self-portrait

Sarah's embroidery sample, showing value movement

Sarah at the informal pizza party

Greg and Marilyn--the friends who make these things possible!

I flew into Kansas City and drove up to Iowa City with Marilyn to pick up Greg; one more long day of driving and we were in Michigan. The midwest was looking lovely in the spring--so very green, with big skies and clouds like the cover of It's a Beautiful Day. Luckily we did not meet up with any of the severe weather that afflicted parts of the midwest. I did, however, meet many talented fiberists at the workshop--some already known to me by reputation (hello, Sasha, Julia, and Jillian!) and others new to me, but equally talented.

I came away as energized as a newly spun singles, ready to take on new challenges. Writing about this reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from Thank You and OK by David Chadwick--I've shared this before, but it just fits here, too:

The bus to Beppu [Japan] stopped and an old lady got on. There was only one empty space left and that was the one next to me. Bravely she lowered herself onto the seat, placing a paper shopping bag with handles between us. [I asked her how she was.]

“Genki desu,” she answered, saying she’s fine, and then added, “Okage sama de.”

Yes, I thought, okage sama de, thanks to all that has made it possible. And I profusely thanked all who had helped me and all that had brought me to that place at that moment. Thanks to parents and ancestors, wives and lovers, children and friends, teachers and fellow travelers. Heartfelt gratitude to all beings and nonbeings on earth and in heaven, in the ten directions, from the past, present and future who have made it possible for me to have been where I’ve been, done what I’ve done, known what I’ve known and to be sitting in this bus seat now, so very happy to be rolling on toward Beppu and beyond, to more adventure and discovery.

Oddments

Alice Starmore's Tudor Roses is being reprinted! Publication date is November 2013--the prepublication information states that the designs have been reknitted and rephotographed--and some new ones added to this edition! There are some fabulous stranded colorwork designs in this book, and we are lucky that Alice Starmore has undertaken the large job of updating this volume.

Upcoming Events: Registration for the Taos Wool Festival workshops has opened! I'm teaching two classes there: 2-day Color in Fair Isle and the 1-day Fair Isle Tam. Just being in Taos is a treat--when you add classes and the wool festival, life doesn't get much better.

New blog: Hazel Tindall, an expert knitter from Shetland, has started to blog. Check it out for glimpses of life in the islands: 

Ravelry: Jamieson's of Shetland has started a group on Ravelry. I'm enjoying the chance to learn more about the people who create the Spindrift yarn I knit with and sell to other knitters. 

Last weekend I taught my 3-day Design Your Own Fair Isle to 8 wonderful knitters gathered at Suzanne Pedersen's home in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. I had a great time--and probably, in retrospect, tried to throw too much at them. It's hard to stop once I get started! When it was over we drove to Snoqualmie Falls--it was a perfect day, the Falls were full and the sun warmed the air. Another wonderful thing: I was reintroduced to feminist author Carolyn Heilbrun (perhaps more well known as Amanda Cross, the author of many delightful mysteries) and am happily reading her newer works.

And the remodel? No movement, really, and there won't be for another two weeks. Sigh. 

Merino Love

In a world that seems to spin faster and faster out of control, shouldn’t we be looking for products that take time to unfold? Or products whose usefulness we savor? Shouldn’t we demand products that have stories to tell? Like good wine, a good design needs time to be a part of our lives, time to reach its full maturity. 
        
         ~Natalie Chanin, EcoSalon

Oh, I'm a sucker for the story! Many excellent yarns are available to us knitters today--how do we begin to make a decision about what to knit with?

When I'm not knitting with my beloved Jamieson's Spindrift Shetland yarn, I love to buy yarn that fits into a larger vision of the world I'd like to inhabit. Two new yarns have come into my home in the last week that fit the bill:

First, Pioneer, introduced by A Verb for Keeping Warm yesterday. A light worsted yarn spun out of fleece from the Merino flock that Sally Fox is nurturing alongside her revolutionary colored cotton on her California farm. Pioneer is the result of years of effort that Kristine Vejar and Adrienne Rodriguez have put into building a truly local product that would support small flock keepers, support local mills, and build local economies. The yarn itself has that wonderful cottony feel that fine Merino offers; the colors show the depth that natural dyes can give.

I arrived at the inaugural party at A Verb for Keeping Warm within half an hour of its opening. I scooped up 9 skeins--with no apologies for the indulgence! I've got a cowl in mind based on a very old Navajo blanket I saw in Santa Fe, and a go-to vest for next winter. And I will love each piece for much more than its surface appeal--I will love it for Sally's unending hard work with the sheep, for Kristine's vision and investment. Judging from the crowd, I'm not the only one inspired by the California Wool Project--I'm hoping for its continued success. To read more about the project, check out Verb's blog.

Second, Lot #1 from The Great White Bale project. When Clara Parkes announced her plans for a 698# bale of fine Saxony Merino, offering spots in a months-long adventure from bale to yarn, I jumped! Members have been treated to bi-monthly posts documenting the travels of a bale of wool through every step of the process to finished yarn in the knitter's hands--a real education.

A few days ago, I also received the first hanks of yarn from the GWB project: the romantically named Lot #1, a heavy worsted/aran weight woolen spun yarn. I am so enjoying knitting with this! (You might be surprised to know that I do have a few size 10 needles in my closet--and I've got to tell you that things go a LOT faster on these than on the #2s I usually use!) Again, the yarn feels cottony soft, and I can't wait to finish my first project (a cowl) to see how it blooms after it is washed. Unlike Pioneer, this yarn is a one-of-a-kind yarn. Each has their purpose and place.

Each of these yarns has a story--finding the fleece, ferreting out the remaining facilities in the US that can handle the picking, washing, carding, and spinning, making decisions about the appropriate hand of the yarn, determining the best colors and how to develop those with an increasingly burdened environment in mind, figuring out how to move the product from place to place efficiently and cost effectively, without taking advantage of anyone. Transparent. Produced with integrity.

These stories are so much more interesting than the romantic gloss of an advertisement. It brings us to the thrill of the material world we inhabit, and reminds us that "66 people brought us this yarn."*

* This harks back to a Buddhist saying, "66 people brought me this food," a reminder that a large web of human effort is involved with the simplest object: from the obvious farmer, to picker, to trucker, to storekeeper, to the less obvious: the person who saved the seed generations ago, to the person who designed the roads that carried the food to the market, to the person who made the cooking pots, to the person who checks the gas lines that carry fuel to the stove.... We can only be grateful.

A rose from our backyard...

Alabama Chanin Workhop at the Edible Schoolyard

On Saturday I had the great good fortune to take a sewing workshop with Natalie Chanin of Alabama Chanin. I've written about her several times in the past: Alabama Chanin is a multi-pronged clothing business the uses an innovative business model to support local workers, US organic cotton growers, and US mills. In addition to their line of couture, hand-sewn clothing, Alabama Chanin also sells DIY kits as well as supplies so we can make our own personalized garments. I have all three books that Natalie has written about the process: Alabama Stitch Book, Alabama Studio Style, and Alabama Studio Sewing + Design. (If you were going to get just one, I'd suggest the last, and most recent, one.) 

Kristine Vejar of A Verb for Keeping Warm

I enjoyed listening to Natalie talk about subjects ranging from her experimental cotton field to loving your thread to embroidery stitches to US labor laws. Natalie has some classes on CreativeBug as well as a new Craftsy class, so if you aren't lucky enough to have her come to your neighborhood you can still learn this calming approach to making and embellishing clothing. 

The workshop was held at the Edible Schoolyard Kitchen. The Edible Schoolyard concept originated in Berkeley—Alice Waters of Chez Panisse started the first one in 1996 (the Wikipedia article covers the history of the garden); her Edible Schoolyard Project organization has brought this idea to schools across the country. Although I've walked through the Edible Schoolyard many times (it is only 3 blocks from my house), I've never been in the kitchen before. When I entered the space I fell in love immediately!

This was not entirely good news: you know how conflicted I've been about the competing visions for my new kitchen. Suddenly I was presented with an ENTIRELY different look that I wanted! Lordy, I'll be glad when my kitchen is done and I'm happily cooking in it--until then I can see that I will be prey to every pretty image I see.

Kyle cooked lunch for us in the kitchen--including this darling handmade ice cream sandwich, which I ate outside in the dappled sunshine, visiting with several interesting, accomplished women of widely varying ages and backgrounds. It doesn't get much better than that!

PS In kitchen remodel news: The back door is now up, with the new sidelight and transom! And the patio has cured enough that we can put the washer and dryer back up. 

Madrona Spring Workshop

Just a drive-by post to announce that a couple of spaces are still available for the 3-day Design Your Own Fair Isle workshop May 3-5 near Seattle. Suzanne Pedersen, the powerhouse behind the Madrona Fiber Arts extravaganza every February, also hosts more intimate workshops at her home in the Cascade Mountain foothills, about 20 minutes east of Seattle. This is always a fun weekend--I take you from zero to 100 in 3 days--and it is the last time this year I'll be teaching in the Pacific NW! 

Write to Suzanne (suzanne AT madronafiberarts DOT com) for more details about cost and time; write to me (janine AT feralknitter DOT com) if you want more details about the content of the workshop!

The Paralysis of Too Many Choices

The shear walls are up and the doorway is being framed...

It would seem, at first glance, that having a new kitchen would be fun. Just the way you want it, right? Well, yes--I'm well aware of my good fortune. But.

The last two weeks of my kitchen remodel saga have been marked by a certain level of anxiety and paralysis. I've never felt uncertain when it comes to making a comfortable home. I'm generally confident about trying different colors--the natural shingles of our house are accented by teal and orange and light sage green, for example, and I really never thought twice about the bold choice. The cantalope walls of the last kitchen worked really well with the wild rust-colored linoleum. 

Part of it is that there are SO MANY decisions to make. Part of it is that I've never before been in a position to have a lot of new things at once, so I'm having to examine my assumptions of who I am. Conflicted is the word I'm looking for. I've always just had whatever was in the place when I moved in, and when those broke we bought the cheapest thing we could find. Our washer and dryer don't match because they were purchased 10 years apart--this is how I've lived all my life: feeling lucky that I have a washer and dryer and not too concerned about whether they matched. There's something FREEING about rolling with circumstances.

What tripped me up badly last week was this simple question: What colors do I want the cabinets to be?

When I teach Fair Isle design, I tell students there are only three hard and fast rules:

1. You get to do what you want.
2. There is no one right way to do it.
3. You have to swatch.

Number 3 is the one people push against, but Number 2 is actually the hardest one to internalize.

And it's the rule that I'm struggling with right now. I have to decide--and decide by tomorrow morning--what colors I want the cabinets to be. I have so many competing visions of my ideal kitchen. All white? White cabinets with black counters? Scandinavian white with warm wood? Multiple colors? Bright? Subdued? I'm pretty clear about what I don't think would work in this old house, so that's a strong place to start, but otherwise----

I like them all! 

And of course there is financial reality. I can't have a lot of what I want. And by that I mean: quirky, worn wood top for the center island. I want the cool story ("Yes, this top is milled from the elm tree that fell down in the storm of ought-five"). I want the polished grain of the deep colored wood AND I want the scrubbed pine table with traces of old paint. I want to be the person who collected great stuff found at flea markets along old Highway 66....

Therein lies the rub: this design begins to take on an importance to my IDENTITY. 

I got caught in the Martha Stewart trap, about to drown in the sea of consumerism that we are surrounded by. The danger with magazine photos is that each one is so well staged--we see only a certain time of day, an intriguing angle, a season. It begins to seem like this is how we must live. That there is something wrong with us if we don't attain this. More importantly, we begin to believe that there is some level of safety and security in this type of perfection.

And that ups the stakes. A lot. And it's a trap, an oasis MIRAGE [this is why I should not post late at night!] that distracts from the truth: a kitchen won't save me. It will be so much nicer than any kitchen I've ever had the joy of cooking in--I'm grateful as hell!--, but the cooking is the important thing, not how it looks. 

So, it came to this: paint chips cover the dining room table. Inspiration photos spill onto the floor. I made an emergency call to the architect ("I'm decision-paralyzed!", and he sounded like he'd heard this before from each client he's worked with.). He took a look at my pictures and the colors I'd gathered and the two countertop chips I liked best. He listened to my incoherent visions. He quickly picked out two color chips and said, "one of these". And I chose one.

The rules I teach for Fair Isle design proved to be true again: setting limits make choices easier.

Tomorrow the final cabinet order goes to the shop and I don't get to change my mind. I'm looking forward to that! (And I'm not going to tell you what color I chose, either!)

Tearing up the old patio--turns out there were THREE layers of patio there! No wonder we were having trouble....

 

 

Anticipation

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the Visionary Retreat last February was getting to know designers who work with different types of knitting than I do. At the retreat we shared our plans and progress--and, naturally, I cannot share most of these projects at this time. 

But three projects are now nearing completion, and I'm quite excited to be able tell you about them.

First, Hunter Hammersen's Knitter's Curiosity Cabinet: Volume II is now available for pre-order. The designs for hats, scarves, cuffs, cowls, and socks in this collection--18 in all--were inspired by vintage butterfly drawings. Hunter is a talented designer of accessory knits; she manipulates lace, twisted, and texture stitches to complement the form of the garment flawlessly. You can see all 18 designs on the book's Ravelry page. Hunter is offering an enticing pre-order discount, and if you order the book from her you also get an e-version.

Another designer I've admired for a long time is Sivia Harding. Sivia is well known for her exquisite lace knitting, and I was very happy to be able to get to know her. Sivia has recently introduced a new e-book: The Book of Cowls, subtitled "A Collection of Seven Cowls for All Seasons with Matching Cuffs." This collection opens with the Sublimity Cowl and Cuffs--Sivia will be adding six more patterns over the next four seasons. Here's how she describes her vision:

This volume came about because of my increasing obsession with cowls… shaped cowls, slim cowls, fat cowls, and of course (my favorite), Moebius cowls. My first cowl was Harmonia’s Rings, which debuted in 2008. Sometime after, I saw with pleasure that a nicely fitted cowl made with lofty, warm yarn could easily substitute for a jacket where I live in the Pacific Northwest. The only thing missing was something to keep my wrists warm.

Thus, the matching cuffs to go with each cowl.

And something else to look forward to: Dreaming of Shetland (the link sends you to Deb Robson's blog entry), an e-collection of patterns gathered to raise money for Deb Robson's exploration into Shetland yarn. Deb, the author of the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook and innumerable articles in Spin-Off magazine, is an tireless and meticulous researcher, and I'm so excited to see what comes of her travels. This fundraising project, hatched by Donna Druchunas and Anne Berk, has grown like kudzu--by the time of publication (late May), this might have evolved into a Harry Potter-type tome. At any rate, I'll keep you informed! I contributed a pattern for a Faroese-style shawl with Celtic knot lace panels called the Safe Harbor Shawl.

Exciting times, indeed!

Antidote to Chaos

Despite--or perhaps because of--the chaos in my surroundings, I've been very concentrated on my knitting projects.

Sometimes, we become newly conscious of an item that has become part of the visual background when we move things around. Such is the case with this shallow bowl, painted with dicentra ("bleeding hearts") by my talented mother-in-law. 

In real life it glows with jewel-like colors. 

So I've been playing with swatches.

 

Speed swatch for color.

Opposing value sequences.

Literal.

Clearly I've got a ways to go, but I'm loving these! (This process is what I teach in my 3-day Design Your Own Fair Isle Class, by the way. When I talk about a step-by-step method for designing, I'm not talking theory!)

Another way that the remodel is opening some creative doors--here's the before and after of my desk area.

Let's be real: Although I adore minimalism, I'm a pattern-on-pattern gal, and when the house gets back to normal I doubt I'll keep this up, but for the time being it is fun to pare stuff down to the basics.

What's hanging on the wall? My weekly planner and sketches of the new sweaters I'm working on for the book. 

The book?

Why, yes! Thank you for asking! I'm committed to writing a book about designing complex stranded garments, based on the workshops I teach. I am totally excited about this--and I'm counting on your support (and nagging) to keep me on track. 

Another way I would like your support: I will be including photographs of student work. If you have designed a garment (sweater, hat, mitts....) based on the color and design workshops and would like to be included in the book, please let me know! The book I envision will take a long time to bring to completion, so if you are not quite done with your garment you've got a few months..... Now it's my turn to nag you!

More later, alligator....

Kitchen Remodel Continues

Previously I showed you a schematic of how our old kitchen, mudroom, and office were laid out. The BEFORE. Now here's the GOAL:

This schematic is wildly out of scale--me and Illustrator are like a 3-year-old with an Etch a Sketch. You get the drift, though. The red lines indicate the walls that have been taken down.

You can see that the kitchen remodel actually affects a number of rooms--at one point last week, we were pushed into half the house!

An exercise is flexibility.

So, by the end of week three the office and new bathroom showed the greatest progress. the false attic stairwell was taken down and the new teeny little powder room (or, as I call it, the Family Sanity Room) has been framed in and the sheetwall attached. It is a joy to see the size of our new office/middle bedroom! 

The yellow wall is the newly revealed wall from the attic staircase. The framing (above) and the enclosed bit (below) are the new bathroom, which takes a tiny bite out of the room. The painted and scuffed wood floor is what the floors throughout the house looked like when we bought it. We will have to totally abandon this room later when the attic access is moved, the ceiling replaced, and the floor refinished, but for now we are sort of camping out in this spacious room. 

Here's the bathroom from the kitchen, with Gingko's temporary door to the left.

Lots of stabilization work was done, but that hardly makes a great photo....

Bad news report: the cabinets are 8 weeks out, which adds a month to the completion estimate. I haz a sad. But our builder (David Collins and his crew) make it a priority to intrude as little as possible on our lives, and we will manage.

 

 

Kitchen Adventure Week 2

Well, lots of banging away this week, but a lot less dust!

The emphasis this week was on three things:

1. The new beam in the attic to carry the load of the walls we knocked down. This is a lovely piece of wood!

2. Fixing the rotted floor joists and the foundation sill.

3. Adding more earthquake retrofitting. As part of any significant remodel in Berkeley, you are required to add a certain amount of reinforcement--our remodel costs much more than it would in, say, Iowa for this reason. There are significantly beefed up corner posts; more huge bolts have been drilled 12" or more into the foundation (man was this noisy) to secure the frame to the foundation; and shear panels will be added. This house will be SOLID! The builder said it should stand for 500 years (at which point, if the oceans rise as expected, it will be beachfront property). 

4. The new opening to the backyard was framed in. We are keeping the old door (well, not that old: we had replaced the old patio doors with the 1" gap at the top with state-of-the-art doors 2+ years ago) and adding a side light and transom to let more light into our new room, which is rather dark. The ceilings are 9' high, so we have space above the doors.

The requisite bad news: It turns out that the patio was poured incorrectly. Our neighbors say it was added about 15-20 years ago by the previous owner. It was put in flush with the door opening and all the water runs directly against the house. In this photo, the rotted sill (it's not the sill, it's the foundation something or other, I can't remember, but it's important!) has been removed and you can see how the patio (in the bottom left of the photo) is the same height as the concrete the sill rested on. This is bad.

We will need to have it removed and dropped down about 6". I'm really hoping this is the last of the bad news! On the bright side, the current patio is pretty well cracked (to be honest, it's sort of slipping down the slope) and we would have replaced it eventually.

Weird news: The kitchen floor 3.5" higher at one corner than at the opposite corner. This wasn't readily apparent when the interior walls were in, but it creates a big problem with the cabinets. The architect, the contractor, and I spent an hour pacing the room and talking about counter heights and toe kicks and stove heights.... It will all work out, but is another reason why we are having semi-custom cabinets rather than off-the-shelf versions. 

I drove out to visit the cabinet makers last week--Precision Cabinets & Trim. It was instructive to see how they operate and to look at real examples of colors and styles. I'm still unsure about paint and countertops--I expect I'll be asking general opinions about this soon! You know from my sweater designing that I tend to leap in and decide as things go along--clearly I am approaching this the same way!

I will admit that I had a dream of a sort of industrial-rustic worn wood kitchen. Sort of wabi-sabi. That isn't going to happen: such a kitchen is beyond our budget. We went to a salvaged wood furniture shop today to price having the kitchen island top be some funky, textural piece--not going to happen. And frankly: we see this remodel as both something to enhance our family life and as a capital improvement to our property. So perhaps it is well that we are forced to be a little more mainstream in our choices!

Every step of the way we've been trying to be environmentally responsible. The old stove and some of the cabinets went to a friend; the cut-away wood is being chipped for mulch (it is too old to be reused, according to the builder--it would just split); the cabinet maker is certified as an Environmental Steward; other appliances, if not re-used, will be taken apart for scrap. Berkeley has some pretty tough regulations about demolitions. Some decisions, though, were less kind to the environment: I decided against pressed paper countertops, for example. No matter how we do it, though, we are still using stuff in this remodel.