Knitting Away

I don’t blog much about the fact that I now spend a good deal of time, mostly in the early morning, with a cat on my lap under a pair of knitting needles. I took a break from knitting for about 20 years but am back with a vengeance, which means all kinds of other things don’t get done.

This time, though, I knit socially too. This means I know that I’m not alone in my obsession. My social knitting revolves around a weekly group that meets, improbably, in a video store owned by a Salvadorean couple, he a master baker who used to work at the Austrian pastry shop in town, Konditorei. (This is bad for the waistline along with all this time I’m sitting on my rear so I usually restrict myself to Mayan hot chocolate.) My online social knitting group is much more vast, knowledgeable, and distracting than this. Knitting problems are shared and answered instantly by people with varying levels of authority.

There are reportedly millions of knitters in the United States. Many of them are under 30, rewriting stereotypes and sharing their design skills for free with the knitting community.

And then there’s Knitty . When this goes live every three months, servers tremble. The new one came out earlier this week; there are at least three things I’d like to make on there, two of them with my own handspun. Which is now piling up….

Spinning Away

I’ve been renting a wheel from Meridian Jacobs and also spinning on my spindle, which is getting easier. The key is consistency. The last yarn I plied was acceptable weight for socks, but I think it wasn’t spun or plied tightly enough for sock yarn.

Numenius has also tried his hand at spindle spinning.

Researching wheels to buy. I’m narrowing down the criteria. Currently they include ease of use, price, beauty, silence, treadle action and how smooth it is. There will be compromises to be made here: you can’t have all of this in one package, it seems. It’s like buying binoculars.

In other news, and very good news, mum got an all-clear from the doctor this morning and has opted to go for the recommended 4-month chemo treatment. The doc provided some great stats on why this was a good idea. We all agreed, though would have supported her no matter what. Celebration, tonight!

Spinning

I spent the day at Meridian Jacobs farm near Dixon today, learning how to spin on a wheel. I had a blast and spun lots of yarn and even plied some. Hoping to do a lot more tomorrow. The instructor lent me a wheel to bring home but I haven’t done much tonight, I’m tired.

Charlie’s tired too.

We carded, learned to draw out the fibers from the roving or batt, learned how to spin them tightly and let the spin travel up the drawing-out. I tried two different wheels and hope to try a third tomorrow. The hardest part is to spin a consistent width, and especially to keep that small. I am doing better with this next round and will try and post a photo of the finished product tomorrow. At right is the first attempt. I know it looks like a giant squid. Hoping for better…

Arcane Knitting Gear

Saturday was Knit in Public Day, and knit in public I did, in Lafayette. There I met the extraordinary Agres who has taken it upon himself to learn as much as possible about pre-machine knitting in the British Isles (and pretty much anywhere else). The best way he can think of to learn how they did things is to try and replicate the tools and try them himself. He grinds his own steel-sprung needles, makes sheaths (the clothespin-like artefacts in the photo; they attach to a belt or apron string and a thin double-pointed needle is anchored in the tip). It was an amazing day; we were joined by Barbara and Elyse and a grand time was had. I have learned that Agres considers me to have learned “excellent pit knitting skills” growing up in Spain and for this I pause for a moment and say thank you, Francisca.

The leather pouch (knitting belt) I bought from Schoolhouse Press, imported from Scotland, used in Shetland for Fair Isle knitting, which I’ve been learning how to do as well. The vest, at right, is nearly finished (I ran out of the gray-purple yarn and don’t like the white sleeve facing I came up with as an alternative, so I am waiting for a final ball of yarn to polish it off with). This vest is for a very dear friend who lives in Sweden, and I imagine her wandering around the forest and mist in it, which is a nice thought. Because: It’s 96° here and I’m thinking and talking about knitting??

Trip on Transit

I went to Pleasanton yesterday — about 90 miles away — on my bike, bike on train, bike on BART. I haven’t put my bike on a train before and it was surprisingly easy. My bike trip at either end was only about three miles.

Jarrett Walker of Creature of the Shade has started a new blog, Human Transit. I feel lucky to be in a place where this kind of trip was not only possible but very easy. Of course we had to wait for the bridge to go down outside Martinez — they were letting a ship through — but I’d have had to have done that in the car anyway.

On the way to the station yesterday, I ran into a) a criterium, which made me alter my route through b) the antique Volvos show, on the way to get c) asparagus, which I threw into a tub of pre-prepared lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, and a little tarragon to throw on the grill at the Lazy, Stupid and Godless knitting/dyeing/spinning party. I learned to spin. I hung out with some awesome people. And then I turned around and did the whole thing backwards, running into the fixed gear event in Pleasanton — at first I thought it was part of the city code, that you couldn’t ride bikes with gears. But no. Just some tired guys at the end of the day, looking at the overpass with fear and loathing. I turned right to the subway station.

Oh, and on the way down on the train I conducted a birdathon in support of Yolo Audubon. 48 species, including Western gull, Clark’s grebe, and chestnut-backed chickadee, all of which are hard to find in Yolo County. You can’t do this kind of thing from a car…

Gansey Physics

One of my fellow Ravelers has spent a tremendous amount of time and effort investigating the history of knitting, in particular the knits used by fishermen in the past. In the days before microfiber, wearing something that would prevent hypothermia while at sea was literally a matter of life and death. A store-bought gansey that was not in the least bit wind-resistant launched Aaron Lewis into the quest for how they REALLY did it.

Aaron has a large number of excellent posts but the current one is a great place to start. I am wearied in advance by his stitch-count-per-inch but recognize its wisdom. Added, then, to the blogroll, and at some point in my life I will learn exactly how to use a knitting sheath. (I get the concept, but not the mechanics quite yet, though the sight of those beautifully turned wooden objects that actually have a function has me reeling…)

Knitting Assistant

Charlie makes the best of finding an interloper in his chair and proceeds to supervise the knitting.

The Land of Knitting

Numenius has been reading to me from the Yarn Harlot’s latest book, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off: The Yarn Harlot’s Guide to the Land of Knitting, while I knit my sweater. The Yarn Harlot is a brilliant writer and you don’t have to be remotely interested in knitting to enjoy her prose, as Numenius will tell you between guffaws. She’s written quite a few other books, one of which is Things I Learned From Knitting (Whether I Wanted to Or Not).

I haven’t read it yet, but here are some things I’m learning about knitting as I go:

a) Don’t knit anything beyond garter stitch when drinking. Even just one glass. And maybe not even garter stitch if you have to do increases, decreases, or any kind of counting. This is really important.
b) If it’s a boring stitch or a monochrome yarn, have it be a small project if you’d like to finish it. If it’s a combination of the two, “small project” amounts to a sock for a Barbie doll. (Then watch Barbie not wear it; but why should she? You have fallen prey to Second Sock Syndrome, and there is no second sock in sight.)
c) Large projects should only be undertaken if they are staggeringly appealing to you, are knit on large yarn and/or large needles, and contain enough of interest to keep you going but are simple enough not to have you get bogged down in complexity.
d) The quality of the needles you use makes a huge difference in the ease of knitting. I’m going to guess the quality of yarn (and its price) make a big difference too. These factors are likely to determine whether or not you buy a condo in the Land of Knitting. They will also determine whether your bank account is going to get depleted in a hurry.
e) Attempting to knit lace is like embarking on reading Ulysses. It’s not about where you’re going, it’s about the journey. (In my case, a journey in the dark while riding a malevolent arab mare, spiteful rolling eyes and gorgeous. Landing in the ditch is the most likely outcome.)

A Different Kind of Detection

Oxbridge attracts a particular kind of American — the academically-inclined if not outright academic, often more than ordinarily anglophilic, and, if male, spreading a bit (okay, a lot) above the beltline and sporting a bow tie. (If you’ve read any David Lodge, Maurice Zapp, though not in fact at Oxbridge though certainly wishing he were, rather than at my alma mater Rummidge/Birmingham, is the perfect portrait.) My many years away from Cambridge — 20, at this point — and my now more than 10 years away from Harvard — where this kind of person occurs in some profusion — have dulled my sensitivity to the type. To be fair, there aren’t many of them in Davis. (Thank God. Davis is, as I have said elsewhere, a cross between Berkeley and North Dakota, and such types are ridiculed in Berkeley and nonexistent in North Dakota. But I digress.)

I ran into one the other night, though, at, of all places, the Davis Knitting Group. A late-middle-aged gent expertly unwinding a skein (hank, if you’re American) of undyed Shetland yarn (horrified there was so much — gasp — color on the knitting needles around the table, not like in Yurp), expostulating on what a backwater Davis was; how when he lived in London he could go to a different play every night; how he hadn’t unpacked all his stuff yet (he owns a ball winder and swifter); how he had taught at Oxford. (Ears prick up; you don’t “teach” at Oxford.) Apparently a doctor, though interested in the intersection of music, philosophy, and the brain. (I thought oh, maybe an Oliver Sacks wannabe?)

My bullshit detector, already on amber alert, started screaming loudly the minute he pronounced Nuffield “Noofield” and I’m afraid I rather rudely concentrated on my yarnovers and knit-two-togethers rather than engage him in a lengthy discourse about London, Oxford, Cambridge, and why Europe is more interesting than Davis. (If it’s theatre you want, buddy, you should have moved to New York.) He turned his attentions to a fascinated and more easily-impressable nurse and they gabbed for three hours about the lamentable state of American medicine.

I was startled at the vehemence of my reaction to this fairly harmless, probably lonely, and certainly rudderless old bumbler. I think it’s partly because I finally, really, feel very protective of Davis. It’s my home now. I have had it with snobs, particularly American ones of the Oxbridgephilic kind. (I’ll make an exception, I think, for Yarn Snobs, but that’s another blog post.)

The Longest Capitol Corridor Train Ever...

… was what we rode on yesterday, some friends and I.

It was full of knitters.

A train with 486 knitters, one knitter’s husband, fifteen staff. Knitters got on in Sacramento (described as lemmings over the cliff by Yvette who got carried along in that current), Davis, Martinez, Richmond, Emeryville, Oakland, and got swept down the east bay to Santa Clara. They had to put two trains together to fit us all in.

I have now, gentle reader, fondled qiviut hair, which costs $90 for a small ball. (And bison, which costs $50.) I bought some luscious Blue Moon yarn (hand-dyed silk/merino worsted). I gave myself a budget and stayed within it (this was nothing short of miraculous, let me tell you; I could have spent ten times my budget within the space of say 10 minutes, and that’s including the queues for paying). (I have, as I believe I mentioned, fondled qiviut.) It was like Macworld on steroids, this place. I overheard the gal at the Calistoga-based button shop say she was really glad she wasn’t into yarn. Ha.

Mostly the fun was the trip down and back, with Mary knitting up her hay bale twine to the amusement of the news crew and Maria working on the mobius scarf Mary had started just because she needed a knitting fix and Yvette learning how to knit on two different-sized needles and Elizabeth bringing her wit and smarts to the whole proceedings. I spent many a slackjawed moment yesterday. I ran into two people I didn’t even know were knitters.

I’m still a bit overwhelmed. But I will dream of qiviut.