The Mere

"Alive without breath; as cold as death; never thirsting, ever drinking clad in mail, never clinking. Drowns on dry land, thinks an island is a mountain; thinks a fountain is a puff of air. So sleek, so fair! What a joy to meet! We only wish to catch a fish, so juicy-sweet!"

-Gollum’s song

When I was designing this piece, DH opined that, " NO ONE is going to buy a pattern named 'Dead Marsh'!"

This is when sneaky designers migrate to the web domain to determine if said marsh has another name - lol...

I think the dead marshes possess a melancholy and lonely beauty. It is a vast & barren landscape, full of wispy grasses and pools of stagnant water. It glows with the light of "corpse candles" as Gollum calls them. We may be more familiar with the term, "will-o-wisp."

In working on this design, I also have had in the back of my mind the haunting and terrifying scenes as Frodo is pulled under the water by the dead warriors and that feeling of being trapped by seaweed like vines and limbs.

I wanted the beads to look like the lights and the entire piece to flow like seaweed.

How'd I do?

The design reminds me of my ill fated "Drizzle" design, the one that got away...

THE MERE
THE TWO TOWERS SERIES

An organic stole in beaded cables & lace Size: 18-24 inches wide by 64-72 inches long (smaller if left unblocked)

Materials: 1320 yds Sanguine Gryphon Gaia lace or other lace weight yarn
5000 size 8 seed beads
Size 3 (US) needles
Crochet hook for beading; tapestry needle for grafting
Gauge: not important to this piece
Intermediate level - charted & written directions

Make sure you click on the images to get a close up. This piece is subtle and, like the Mere itself, warrants closer examination.

The yarn is Sanguine Gryphon's Gaia lace; the color is Sunflower Sutra. the beads are Miyuke 8-0234

NOTE: WHILE SUNFLOWER SUTRA WAS A SEASONAL COLOR, SANGUINE GRYPHON HAS TOLD ME THEY HAVE 36 SKEINS FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO USE THE EXACT YARN.

The pattern combines cables, beading and a lace. A perfect tri-fecta!

The repeats are predictable and not too long so this one goes a little quicker than some. While the bead count is high, it is a no brainer to place them. Stole is knit in one piece with the exception of the final end border, which is grafted at the end.


The bottom border is kinda funky: a bit of leaf, a bit of shibori-like 3D point.

I was going to leave mine unblocked to enhance the organic feel to it & highlight the cables...



But the blocking really shows off the subtle glow of the beading, the sheen of the yarn & the sinuous nature of the lace pattern.


I really love this one & hope you do too!

Crocus Pocus Errata

Chart D

Make Row 3, Stitch 24 a k2tog and Row 5, Stitch 24 a sk2p. Cannot correct charts because used old software not on current computer.

Strong Craft

History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.
- Joseph Conrad

I'm quite sure that all true professional artists, of every description, in all walks of life, whether their craft is painting, music, sculpture, medicine or anything, have one primary concern - mankind.
- Chico Hamilton

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
- Mother Teresa

You may have seen this editorial in the Huffington Post. It has caused quite an uproar in the internet community.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peg-aloi/tough-gals-do-they-still-_b_924507.html

My response:

“I am proud to be a knitter. My grandmothe­r won prizes; my mother ran a needlework store. My ancestors smile at me from heaven as I honor a time when women provided for their loved ones in the only ways open to them - by feeding, clothing, & comforting them. I design knitting patterns for strong women who choose to spend their leisure time working with their hands & hearts. This is both meaningful and worthwhile­. Knitting paid for my children's college tuition & puts food on our table. That is an outcome of which any suffragett­e would be proud. Many are drawn in this age of hands off technology and virtual entertainm­ent to the simpler, more tactile, & personal ways of satisfying our creative urges. Would you so malign a man who was involved with woodworkin­g? Is he "perpetuat­ing male stereotype­s"? Clearly the writer has not spent any time investigat­ing the many alternativ­e patterns for skull caps, corsets, and the like. You can be a knitter and be as "strong" or "girly" as you like. The desire to work with our hands can be satisfied in a multitude of ways: some with skulls & crossbones­, & some with ethereal lace. People who knit do so not out of some misguided desire to return to "women's" work or more repressive times. They knit because they are part of a community that values love, craftsmans­hip, beauty, art, and sustainabi­lity. They knit because they can. They knit because they care."

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the...

The really happy person is the one who can enjoy the scenery, even when they have to take a detour.

- Sir James Jeans (1877-1946, British scientist, astronomer royal)

Someone once told me, the quality of a piece of writing may be determined by gauging the quality of what the writer edited out & left by the wayside. In other words, if you aren't tossing out good stuff, you probably haven't:

1. gone far enough in your exploration of the subject, or
2. gotten down to the bare bones of the matter.

I find this advice pertinent to the design process as well. It is all too easy to go into the design process with a set idea of how a piece is going to be constructed and what it will look like upon finishing. There is nothing wrong with following your muse, but I think we must remain open as long as possible to the option of a detour.

Our first drafts should be free and wide ranging - they should be messy, overbloated things, full of many wanderings, insights, & creative possibilities. Only then can we stand back and see what works.

Sometimes a pattern takes a totally new direction, in this process, one which you might have missed had you hewn to the straight & narrow path.

Creativity does not fly as the crows, from point A to point B. It meanders like a stream, picking up small stones of ideas along the way.

Then we sift, as the miners did, looking for the nugget of gold within the stream.

My goodness, I'm verbose this afternoon!

All of this is by way of saying, Helm's Deep took a BIG detour.

My original design concept was a grey wooly shoulder wrap, made to look like stone. But I just couldn't make it work to my satisfaction. I tried different yarns, different patterns, different construction techniques...

But none of them were working.

So I pitched the whole thing out & started over with 3 colors of yarn: Madelinetosh sock in:

• Stovepipe (blue grey) for the stone walls of the keep
• Golden Hickory (amber rust) for the armor of the elves, who make their stand with men
• Floursack (off white) for Shadowfax & the white wizard Gandalf who turn the tide of battle with their arrival

I decided on a geometric slip stitch pattern that looked a bit like stone blocks in a wall. Then I added a cogwheel lace border - nothing too dainty. I decreased within the pattern to curve the scarf into a crescent shape.

Once I was done with that, I still wasn't happy. It just wasn't all there, you know?


So I added short rows in the Hickory to make a wide crescent shawl. I also added a little white & grey edging at the neck for symmetry's sake.

What I wound up with was my first "steampunk" pattern!


Not quite where I thought I was going, but a beautiful detour, nonetheless!



I finished the shawl while still at the lake house & needed a small project to work on while our grandson was visiting - nothing too fussy (beads are not a good mix with a 2 year old).

So I cast on the Balrog cowl.

Next thing you know, I had polished off another sample, before even getting Helm's Deep out into testing.


The cowl has a nifty flared ribbed bottom that sits nicely on the shoulders, then a long stretch of mosaic knit with a center cable running up the front.



I made it long enough to pull up over your head, and added a lovely picot edging to frame the face.

I love the way this mosaic design looks like the smiling (snarling?) fiery face of the demon.

I need test knitters for both these patterns.

Vacation plans & other projects seem to have diverted most of my usual suspects. If you are interested, please drop me an email at susanpandorf@gmail.com & I will send you all the details, such as yardage, skill sets needed, & time frame.

Will get modeled shots soon - promise.

Until then...back to the Mere...