Cherry of My Eye

Baby loves me
Yes, yes she does
Ah, the girl's outta sight, yeah
Says she loves me
Yes, yes she does
Gonna show me tonight, yeah
She got the way to move me, Cherry
She got the way to groove me
She got the way to move me
She got the way to groove me
-Neil Diamond

Cherry's taking a bubble bath to relax. Then she'll make herself beautiful for her date with y'all.








Pippin liked her better dry...

Cherrie Pickin'

Ten rows to go. The end is in sight. Pictures tomorrow or Sunday.

Back to the orchard...

You Heard It Here First...

Sorry to have been AWOL for so long. Have not been to Michigan yet, but have big news.

Have been so stircken by the design bug and so encouraged by the good response to Cherry that I am starting up my own cottage industry:

Sunflower Designs (what else?)

Have developed eight designs awaiting samples:

You've already seen The canyon vest (renamed Sedona) and the Curried Pumpkin pullover. Additional designs include a short swing jacket with bracelet sleeves, a crew neck cardigan with roses twining down the front, a kimono with Japanese woodblock patterns, a chunky boatneck pullover in a lace pattern gone large, and the piece de resistance, a fabulous knit skirt with cables running down the gored inserts freeform like roots.

Thanks to all who have encouraged me in this new direction. Stay tuned...

Mini-Ha-Ha

A highway patrolman pulled alongside a speeding car on the freeway.

Glancing at the car, he was astounded to see that the woman behind the wheel was knitting! Realizing that she was oblivious to his flashing lights and siren,

The trooper cranked down his window, turned on his bullhorn and yelled,"PULL OVER!"
"NO!" the woman yelled back, "IT'S A SCARF!"

Pumpkin Curry

So...
What to do with all that orange Legend yarn from Briar Rose? The one that was too bright for the canyon vest?


The skein has been languishing on my swift for a week now. Gazing longingly in my direction as I finish Cherry. Begging me to please wind her up and determine her purpose in life. Entreating me with her pumpkin-y goodness, her very "fall'ness to knit something up for the harvest.

(Hey! It's hard to stay faithful to one project. Ask the Yarn Harlot.)

After a morning of swatching and listening to the yarn:

• "No, not that one. Look how loose my upper yarnovers look. Ugh!"
• "Ow! That's too tight! Whaddayou think I am -- laceweight?"
• "Oh my God! Just look at those lumps, would ya. I really need to get back in shape."
• "Lace? Do I look like THAT kind of yarn to you? Get real!"

(Mouthy little sucker, isn't she?)

I cooked up this spicy fall dish:




Indian Pillar Stitch. Perfect. Makes me think of curry and eastern bazaars.






This is the pattern offset (forgive the slight blurryness of the photo. Too many martinis for breakfast...Kidding!)







And here it is lined up neat and tidy.

(Don't know what happened with the color on this one, but you can see the stitch definition.)




But its true promise is revealed when you stretch it out a bit...


The offset portion is denser, more suited for a bodice, while the lower portion has more elasticity, pulls in just a bit, and will show off its vertical lines, while hugging the torso.





So this one clearly wants to be a short sleeved pullover, formfitting, hip length, low scoop neck, meant to be worn over a cami or long sleeved tee.

Now that she knows what she is going to be when she grows knits up, she will just have to get in line and wait, like the rest of them.

At least, she isn't whining at me anymore.

Much...

Some people knit with yarn. Some people have conversations with it.

Nag...

Public Enemy #1

WANTED

Pippin Pandorf

Description: Siamese, 1 foot, 1 inch tall, blue eyes, Brown ear and tail markings. Known to operate while wearing dark mask to conceal his true nature.

Known aliases: Slinky, Pipperinski, Lover Boy, Sweetie, Pretty Boy

Wanted for:

Wanton disregard of personal property

Theft of valuable resources

Illegal disbursement of properly packaged goods

Destruction of assets

Vandalism

If found, call authorities immediately. Suspect is armed (claws) and dangerous (will steal your heart if you let him.) Do not try to apprehend on your own.

*******************

Good thing Cherry (and her yarn cake) are too big to bat.







That would be a deal breaker...

Best Laid Plans

For those of you lamenting the recent lack of knitting photos, there will be some tomorrow. I promise. The shawl is coming along nicely, but still looks much the same and has demanded politely requested most of my knitting attention in the past week. I will also have a little kitty art to show you.

But today? Today is for unsolicited advice. (I can hear the sound of clicking mouses all over the blogosphere as you move on to the next bookmark...)

Baby Boy came downstairs about an hour ago and asked me, "What are your plans for today?" I answered with one word, "Work." A scintillating answer, no?

And I wonder why he seems so disinterested in what I am doing.

I briefly considered a more flippant answer, "I thought I'd start with bringing order out of chaos and then, with the rest of the afternoon, tackle world peace." Funny, no?

Actually, no.

It's not.

How do you save the world?

One person at a time.

And that much is clearly doable as I plan my day.

Everyday we get up and, before our feet even hit the floor, we are faced with two choices: We can make the world a better place for our being there, or we can make it worse. And what we choose makes all the difference.

When I worked for the Indianapolis Arts Chorale, one of my tasks was to pick up the mail at the post office. There was usually a man outside the door, selling brooms. I walked by that man at least four times a week. I was not in the market for a new broom, so I paid him little attention.

Then one day, I paused, smiled, and said, "Hello." I still didn't need a broom, but my subconscious evidently decided that the individual was more important to me than his usefulness or lack thereof.

My friend and co-author Greg informed me later that, "Today, you saw Christ." Say what?

"All I did was say hello. It's not like he was a tax collector or a prostitute or something."

That missed the point. It wasn't his station in life that was important. Quakers believe that there is that of God held within every person. Not just the pretty ones. Not just the powerful ones. Not just the rich ones. Not just the kind ones.

Everyone. Even the person you like least.

I think what Greg meant by his statement was that I saw that piece of God in a disabled and rather dirty veteran and made a small connection.

The next time I went to the post office, he said, "Hello." And smiled at me.

And just like that, I changed the world, making it a little more peaceful, bringing two strangers closer together.

If we began our sweaters by reading the entire pattern over and over until we had committed it to memory, starting any project would seem a massive and daunting task. But we don't begin with the whole; we begin with the singular: one stitch, then another, and another after that.

And slowly, patiently, the piece takes shape.

How do we knit?

One stitch at a time.

How do we change the world?

One person at a time, my friends. One person at a time...

So, what are your plans for today?

Eye Candy Friday

"Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose."
-Cyril Connolly

Got Cat?

This is your cat.










This is your cat on yarn.




























Any questions?

Holes & Wholes

As I sat knitting this morning and watching MSNBC, I couldn't miss the fact that this is September 11th, six years later but no closer to peace.

I watched the family members solemnly file in. I looked on as the color guard marched onto the platform. I listened to children singing our national anthem. I saw the mayor of New York City speak. I heard the commentators discussing the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, debating whether we are any safer today than six years ago on the day the towers fell and the earth shook with its repercussions.

But what riveted my attention, was the flag behind the podium. It was the original flag flown over "Ground Zero" as the site has become known. The flag was as worn and ragged as the rescue workers on that day, as shredded as the hearts of those who lost loved ones, as tattered as our feelings of security, as battered as our ability to hope.

The flag was riddled with rips and tears, and the sun shone brightly as it did on that other infamous Tuesday. As the ceremony continued, those holes became pinpoints of light, transformed from negative space into luminous stars.

I looked down at the complex pattern I was knitting, made up of yarnovers (or holes) and began to ponder.

Holes in knitting are, generally speaking, a bad idea. We spend hours perfecting our craft, learning to keep a consistent tension, trying to avoid dropping a stitch or otherwise mangling the fabric we are creating. We store our hand made treasures with cedar blocks to ward off moths. (Much better smelling than the mothballs our mothers used.)

If we do not "fix" the holes, binding them off in some fashion, they get bigger, creating ladder runs or ever widening gaps in the fabric. We want our knitting to be whole, not holey.

Yet here I was, making holes on purpose. Furthermore, in this season of lace, I had been knitting holes for the entire summer. Why?

Because the holes make the fabric interesting, intricate, textured. Because the lace is shaped by what is no longer there.

Even so are we shaped by what is no longer there. Whether we know anyone in NYC or not, whether we are a military family or not, we have all been touched by the losses sustained that day, and in the six years that followed.

If we let holes ( in the flag, in lower Manhattan, in our souls) remain negative space, we let them rend us, tear us, make us less whole. Most of us know the Hebrew word, "Shalom." It is usually translated to mean "peace." Some of us use it as a greeting, a blessing, an invocation. Fewer of us know the meaning: wholeness at all times, in all things.

Do you know a better definition for peace?

We need to fill the holes in our national psyche. We need to let the light shine through. We need to allow ourselves to be made whole.

My wish for today is to remember not what we have lost, but what we have gained, to let the wounds of 9/11 bring us closer, rather than tear us apart.

That is my hope. That is my prayer.

Shalom.

Starry Night

"Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer's day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul."
- Don McLean

Weekends are shaping up to be design days. Which I suppose is only natural, given that we are pre-programmed from childhood to view those days as "play" days. Monday through Friday we focus on production. For me that means time spent with Cherry.

But weekends? Ah! That's another thing altogether. Weekends are for dreaming, for dallying, for delving into the endless permutations of the creative mind.

On Saturday, my husband tossed me a package of Van Gogh goodness: the latest installment from Zen Yarn Garden's Art Walk Sock Club. When they decided to base this month's yarn on Van Gogh's Starry Night painting, I was expecting something cobalt and yellow, but the yarn is much more sophisticated than that.

It is a wonderful watercolor-ish blend of blues and greens, with a little pale ice and dusky charcoal thrown in for contrast. Right then and there, my creative mind gave up on any real progress on Cherry that day. The juices were pumping, the heart was racing, the brain was turning into a maze of possibilities...

Back to trial and error territory.

I wanted something that reflected the painting. That meant it had to be undulant. Something spirally, something sinuous, something that flowed like the sky in the painting. Straight lines wouldn't cut it - not for this sock.

My first attempt with an eyelet variation looked good in the swatch, so good that I ran to the computer and developed it into an actual sock pattern. The motif had a 20 stitch repeat, which is a little tricky on something as small as a sock. Clearly I was going to have to use very small needles to get enough repeats in.

Either that or put on a lot of weight to bulk up my ankles big time.

I tried the pattern on size one double points with 80 stitches. Too big. I tried it on size zeros. Too dense to show the pattern properly. I reduced the stitch count to 60 and went up to one and a halfs to compensate for the lower stitch count.

The pattern was an offset one, but of course,I wanted the pattern to be centered on the instep stitches. This required much tinkering on the computer with chart making software.

Got two pattern repeats up on the foot and decided it wasn't just right. The pattern got lost on the foot. Back to the drawing board.

Slept on it overnight, then tackled the problem puzzle again with fresh vigor this morning. Don't know if this will work on the sock. Time will tell. But the swatch looks good.

The foot of the sock and up to the ankle will be this stitch

The waving nature of the stitch mirrors Vincent's flaming Cypress tree on the right side of the painting.




At the ankle the pattern will segue into this eyelet variation.

See the stars?







And here they are together for the very first time. Take a bow kids.

Will the two patterns harmonize? Will the actual approach the conceptual? I don't know yet. But I sure am having fun playing with it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I 'm going to take my needles. leave the playground, and go home. Have to get back to work, after all...

"Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions."
-Mark Twain

Redux

Okay. It appears by the lack of comments on my real post yesterday that many of you missed the fact that I posted twice. At least I hope that's the case. Either that or my ego just laid a big fat egg.

The Colts banner was an afterthought, meant to needle Patriots fan Amy. (Hey! Who ruled last night? Huh?) The real post (the one with meat on its bones) is titled Beginnings and was posted earlier in the day, placing it lower in the page.

Sorry for the confusion. Please read and enjoy it at your leisure. And, as always, let me know what you think.

Don't make me come down and get you....

***********************

Speaking of Amy. I keep forgetting to post about what that sweetie sent me in the mail.













She sent me a little Rhode Island to greet my return from the lake. That's real RI shells from the Atlantic ocean and real RI soap from...where does soap come from anyway? Now that's what I call eye heart candy!













What's that ball of yarn doing down there in the bottom basket?












Oops! Did I do that?

New Addition to the Family

This one's for Amy.

We have an add on to the front of the house this year.









Let's take a closer look, shall we?









I think it really adds something to the curb appeal, don't you?

GO COLTS! WOOT! WOOT! WOOT!

Beginnings

Let's start at the very beginning.
A very good place to start

- Sound of Music

Remember the opening scenes of the movie "You've Got Mail?" Meg Ryan is shown practically waltzing down the streets of the upper west side of Manhattan. Upon arriving at her bookstore, she sharpens a whole box of no. 2 pencils and then, with a flourish, she presents them in a vase upon her front counter, like a floral arrangement. It is a perfect embodiment of both the season and her character's passion for it.

I took a film class my senior year in college and one thing the professor said has always stuck with me: in a good movie, everything has a reason for being there. The first glimpses"You've Got Mail" gives us into Meg Ryan's life, mirror the thematic material extended throughout, as the heroine faces both endings and beginnings.

Just as each school year, upon its timely demise in June, gives way to the fresh start of the new semester in September (or August these days), so is she challenged by the endings and beginnings she faces in life. She is forced to close the children's bookstore that her mother founded, coping with the death of a dream, yet she is challenged by the end of the movie, with both a new love and a new career as a children's author.

Every year at this time, we climb back aboard the train of our lives, headed away from the sylvan shores of summer, with its lazy, hazy days, and towards the hustle and bustle of our busy lives. As our children head back to school, we feel our pulses quicken. We look ahead to challenges and rewards. We wonder what God has in store for us.

At the same time, we yearn to turn back the clock, to hang on for dear life to the lingering sun, to grab just one more day at the shore, in the forest, on the mountain. Never is life so immediate, never are we so fully present, as when we disconnect our phones and fax machines, and gather with our families and friends to celebrate summer. It is a season of process, not progress.

But as with all things, life moves on. The shorter days and cooler evenings presage the change we know is coming. Soon it will be time for leaf peeping, and pumpkin carving, and wool knitting. Soon, the gifts fashioned by our loving hands will move on to new owners, warming their hearts as well as their bodies.

Soon we will watch our children running through the leaf piles, heedless of any extra work they might be engendering, delighted with the crunch, and the color, and the slightly musty smell of autumn. They do not consider the falling leaves a sign of decay. They know the leaves will sprout again, come April. They can embrace the ending, because they know the beginning.

As I have moved around the blogosphere this week, I am reminded of endings: a beloved mother lost to a dear friend, an eldest son moving out and onward to college, an otherworldly shawl blocked out to a delicacy found in spider webs, seemingly fragile, yet strong with both the integrity of its raw materials and the soul of its creator.

I also see evidence of beginnings: one friend learning to spin, another opening an internet store, a third contemplating stepping up to the challenge of knitting an intricate lace coat, unsure of her abilities yet cognizant of her heart's yearning for beauty.

I don't like endings. Most people don't. They are, as Shakespeare wrote, "sweet sorrow." but here's the thing: without endings, there can be no beginnings.

The skeins of yearn yarn(now there is a revelation by typo if I ever saw one!) that I am working with these days from Briar Rose are huge by anyone's standards - anywhere from 600 to 1500 yds. each. The sheer volume of the balls produced by them overwhelms my small ball winder and I consider whether I need a larger one. Eventually I may succumb (I'm weak.) but for now, I simply choose a suitable point at which to break off the yarn, and start another ball. And the eternal cycle of ending and beginning continues.

Knitters don't like endings. When faced with the end of one length of yarn and the start of another, we must splice the yarn, tie the loose ends together, or overlap the ending of one strand with the beginning of another. (And don't get me started on knots within a purchased skein. Oy!) Loose ends are messy, they are time consuming, and they eventually must be woven into the fabric if we want the piece to become "whole."

Even so, the loose ends of our lives. Death, disease, divorce, bankruptcy, moving (I can personally attest to that one!) All involve the end of an endeavor, a relationship, a home, a way of life. All are messy. All are time and emotion consuming. And all must eventually be woven into the fabric of our lives if we wish to become whole.

Me? I'm better at beginnings. My "Ideas" folder will always be stuffed chock full and overflowing, my FO folder less so. I cannot knit (or write) fast enough to fully explore all of the options that occur to me. There are just not enough hours in the day. I know this about myself and try to adjust accordingly.

I begin holiday knitting in June.

I work on many projects at a time, so that when ennui sets in I have somewhere else to go.

I tell my husband that the sweater I began for him two years ago is a Christmas gift.

I don't tell him which year.

As I move into this season of fresh callings from God, I rejoice in the opportunities presented before me. I face a veritable smörgåsbord: new books publishing, new patterns selling, new relationships deepening. I miss my quieter days of gestation, now that so many things are coming to fruition. But it is harvest time, and the fruits of the spirit must be tendered to those who need them, not left to rot in the field.

It's over. It's over. Thank God it's over.

Now we must begin again.

Labor

"If a man loves the labor of his trade apart from any question of success or fame, the Gods have called him." - Robert Louis Stevenson

How did you spend the Labor Day weekend?

I spent it ...

laboring (Imagine that!)

While my husband sanded and painted the garage (Way to go, honey!) I spent the weekend knitting.

I think this falls under the category of "nice work if you can get it."

I have been swatching and pondering, doodling and figuring, coloring and canoodling, trying to get the design for my next project down on paper and in yarn, the way I envision it in my head. It's a lot more work than you might think. Trial and error...

Mostly error.

I began with this gorgeous skein of wool from Briar Rose that jumped into my bag at the show in Charlevoix back in July. (Don't you just hate it when that happens?)











Pictures don't do it justice. Trust me. For some reason all the pictures I have taken seem to be brighter and not as rich as the actual yarn.

Anyway, I kept seeing "desert southwest something" whenever I looked at it. I wanted to get that feeling you get when the sun hits the red rocks of Sedona.









I tried a woven stitch because I wanted to get the lateral element found in rock formations, but the piece still seemed flat. Then I combined it with a 3 to 1 rib pattern and...









BINGO! Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!

I thought of a vest, long and lean, to capitalize on the vertical line of the rib. Something with flair. Something that swung. I went to the computer.

(Again with the math. JEESH!)

A few hours later I had my design roughed out. Just one problem. Not enough yarn

Bugger!

I tried alternating rows with brown. Too muddy

I tried rusty red. Too lackluster

I tried blue. Too subtle

I tried orange. Definitely not too subtle. Quite the opposite. Clown barf on steroids.

Then I got too big for my britches. I thought, "I know what I'll do. I'll combine all of the colors in a free form painting type of thing, making it up as I go along."

I was so sure this was the right approach that I cast on the full complement of stitches and dug in.

You can see where this is heading, can't you?

Three days later, I had this:


















Doesn't look much like a canyon, does it?


Frustrated and worn out from thinking, I cast on for a mindless project:











Kaffe Fassett's Earth Stripe Wrap from the cover of this fall's Rowan Magazine

I needed time to recoup.

Today I emailed Chris about dying some more of the yarn in copper/rose/eggplant color, swatched again to determine the drape and color gradations with some scraps I had and am now ready to move forward again with it.

I don't want to give away the bank here (because I want all of you to buy the pattern. Do I look like I'm stupid?) but the vest swings away from a more structured bodice area into a looser fabric as it progresses towards the hem. Vest will be a-line, tunic length, open down the front with a high three button closure at the bust. Very slimming.

So my labors have born fruit (finally!) and I can't wait to get started on the model.

Of course there is the small matter of a half finished Cherry to deal with. First things first.

I love my work!