DesigKnit

I may have mentioned that I haven’t been knitting all that much lately. I technically have a project on the needles, and I’m excited about finishing it, and it is very close. I even have it in my bag so I can knit on the train. The stars are aligned, and all the pieces are in place.

And yet, somehow, it just hasn’t been happening. I have skeins of yarn scattered all over my office that have been swatched and rejected, or that are waiting to be swatched for some project or another, but nothing has jumped forward.

And then, I spun that skein of corespun yarn a few weeks ago. I was feeling lazy, so I didn’t put it away. Something about it was tickling at the back of my mind.

It sat there quietly for a week, and then it whispered that it might go well with some yarn I spun two years ago for a sweater to wear to my sister’s wedding. The project didn’t swatch up the way I wanted, and so the yarn had been tucked away to wait for the perfect moment.

(Sorry for the terrible light…the first picture is much truer to color…that coverlet is actually beige.)

But there wasn’t much of that corespun; only about 20 yards. Not much at all, really. But what if I threw in a couple of the batts that I carded up last spring?

There isn’t much fiber there; the batts look huge because they’re so puffy, but I don’t think they’re more than 4 oz total. Still, they match the other yarn, and together they look like the colors of the ocean. The yarns are completely different weights, and the corespun is very uneven (not my usual knitting yarn), but I think it will give a nice extra bit of texture if used carefully as an accent.

And all of a sudden, I have a swatch.

That’s about all I have, really. This is like the spiral stripes sweater in that it isn’t really a design; more of an idea and a prayer, and a rather fuzzy idea at that. But what I can see of it is an idea that I like a lot. And sometimes, that’s all you need.

Have you noticed the sun coming back in the mornings? I’ve been feeling it for a month or so now – the gradual lengthening of days as winter quietly transitions into spring. Slowly, slowly, the sun becomes warmer and the air becomes lighter. The robins come back, and all the birds start to sing. It is now at least mostly light out both when I leave the house and when I get home, which is a sure sign of ever-increasing hours of daylight.

It’s usually about this time that I wake up one morning and realize that it has absolutely become spring again. Forget the snow on the ground, forget the frost coming tonight. Yes, it’s cold and wet and rainy, and it sure feels like winter. We might even get a blizzard still. But winter’s hold is loosening, and soon we’ll be sliding effortlessly into spring.

And it is here, right now, under the snow, quietly pushing its way up through the half-frozen earth, gearing up to burst forth in a blaze of glory as soon as the moment is right.

Today, it is official.

It is clearly spring when the crocuses begin to break ground. I wasn’t expecting them for several weeks yet, but when we went out to the car this morning, there they were. (They weren’t there yesterday.)

Crocuses are my favorite of the spring flowers. They’re usually first, and they are unstoppable. I cherish that tough, resilient optimism that cracks open the frosty ground, forcing its way skyward. I’m especially excited this year, because we planted something like 300 bulbs last fall. (I felt a little like a demented squirrel out there digging all those tiny holes in the ground, but I think it will pay off.) I’ve wanted to plant spring bulbs in several of the houses we’ve lived in over the years, but we never moved in at the right time to do it. So this year, I jumped at the opportunity. Our front yard should be spectacular if they all make it through the winter. There are crocuses and snowdrops and some little bell-shaped flowers in this patch, and then there are 75 daffodils by the front fence, a bunch of irises and some special tulips, and then a few other small things tucked in here and there. And probably something else I forgot (that’s the squirrel part). I can’t wait to see what emerges as the snow recedes!

A week or so ago, word came through the local knitting grapevine that Windsor Button is closing its doors. After 75 of business, their landlord has decided to renovate, and I guess it’s just time to move on. At first glance, it seems like this should just be another notice of a store closing and things changing in downtown Boston. And yet, somehow this is much more than that.

I had never been to the store itself, but I know it from my grandmother and my mother and a hundred other crafty people in my life who used to frequent the once-chain of stores. This was the place to go for sewing notions, for all of the buttons and other oddments that go into making of clothes. The New England crafting community talks of this place in that longing, reverential tone that knitters use to describe a visit to WEBs, or maybe to Rhinebeck. It has clearly always been a center and a mainstay for the creatively-minded, and it has been on my list of places to visit ever since we came back to the city. It’s always felt like one of those major landmarks that you can count on to be there when you need it, always ready with the perfect notion or little detail, always stocked with just the thing you need. In fact, I remember saying to Branden that being near Windsor Button would be one of the big crafting perqs of living back in Boston – always knowing that the perfect finish was just a few T stops away. I hadn’t made it over there yet, but it’s one of those places you keep in your back pocket, looking for just the right occasion to visit.

There used to be several stores planted around the area, but over the decades they have dwindled to just the flagship store, nestled in the heart of Boston. And now, that one store is about to blink out of existence.

On Saturday, we went to visit before it disappears.

It’s not much to look at from the outside; just a simple name on a pretty plain building. But there’s a large yarn store, a huge notions section, and a button wall tucked inside. And yes, I do mean a button wall.

There are buttons of all shapes and sizes, and plenty of each kind (no running short of one button for a sweater like in most stores I’ve been to). Each button is copied on the front of the bin with a price, so you can browse from the sales counter, and ask a clerk to get down the boxes you want to look at. (I wish you could browse directly, but I can only imagine the practical hurdles of managing a setup like that.) The selection truly is mythic.

I spent an hour or so there, browsing my way up and down the counter, looking for the unusual and unique that I wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else. All things considered, I think I came out with a pretty reasonable collection (click to embiggen):

I was shocked to find myself drawn to those big, bold buttons (the blue one in the top left is about 2″ across!), but they’d be just the thing for a casual wrap that wants a touch of stylishness, or to dress up a bag or jacket someday. I was thrilled to find the silver clasp closures for the front of a sweater or shawl. I have wanted something like this a few times before, and these are much, much better quality than I could get at JoAnn’s. Overall, I was drawn to asymmetry, found a few flashy things, but mostly ended up with a collection of nice, solid buttons that you’d put on a favorite sweater. I also picked up some hardware for making bags:

And a random assortment of simple buttons from the $5 a bag bin.

All in all, I am quite happy with the haul. It wasn’t inexpensive to make a button collection in sweater quantities (from scratch) in a day, but I do love the ones that came home with me, and I’m sure they’ll find their way into something someday.

I am very sad to see this store go, not only because of the quality of their selection, but also because of the place that they have held in the hearts of crafters for generations. Everyone who knows the store has a memory of shopping trips with their grandmother, or some other fond recollection. Thank you, Windsor Button. You will be sorely missed.

This week I’ve found myself between projects, with no particular idea of what’s coming next. I’ve tried casting on three things, with three different yarns, but none of them has quite worked out. I have quite a lot of yarn, but nothing is really jumping out at me right now.

Fortunately, it’s not true that I’m completely between projects yet. The Briar Rose sweater is still awaiting its second sleeve, and I very much wanted to work on it on the train this week. It wasn’t at a transportable stage yet, though, so I had to go without. I finally sat down and pushed through the (very tiny) hump that needed to be knit first, and it’s now ready to go for this week. So, that will keep me busy for at least a few days more.

The Mike sweater is finished, blocked, and returned:

…and now fits much better than before. (It’s even a titch on the long side, which I understand is a good thing.)

Last weekend, in lieu of another project to knit, I played around a bit with my spinning wheel. I took some of the wool I blended on Elaine’s drum carder last spring, and a cone of cotton from the weaving shelf.

And I spun up a little corespun.

I learned to spin corespun a couple of years ago at the Madison spinners’ guild, and was surprised at how much I liked it. I’m not usually much into art yarn, but this is one technique that stood out to me as possibly very useful. For something.

I’m not sure what it will be useful for yet, but I put it on the back burner to think about another time, and lately it’s been jumping up and down, begging for attention. It’s a great way to get a very light, lofty single without using a lot of fiber, and it spins up very quickly. It’s a very strong single, because the “core” is there to give it strength. I have no idea what I’ll do with this tiny skein (I got about 40 yards), but it was a fun experiment to play with for an hour or two. It’s a completely different way of spinning, and it took quite a while to get my hands to cooperate with what my brain was telling them, but I got the hang of it in the end.

This weekend, I’ve been spinning up another bobbin for Branden’s next handspun sweater.

I am thinking that this will be the default next project, if nothing else comes along and grabs my fancy in the next week or so. I was hoping for something quick in between, but if nothing pops up I might head straight into this one.  I have about 6 bobbins worth of spinning left to do for it, though, so I’ll need to hurry up if I’m hoping to be ready in a week or two. I guess I’d better get back to spinning!

I can now officially stop whining that Boston never gets any snow. We’ve had about 4 snowfalls this year that left more than 1/4 inch, and after each one it warmed up and all of the snow was gone in a day or two. I think this will take a little longer to melt, though.

That’s the view out our front door. That fence is almost as high as my hip, and you can see our car over on the right if you squint.

The impending storm meant that school was cancelled yesterday, and so I spent the day cozily working away in my office at home.  My grading is half done, at least.

We have some shoveling to do, and then we’ll spend the rest of the day tucked in here. Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t go out. They’ve shut down all of the roads, and it’s a $500 fine if you’re out and about during the storm.

The snow is still falling, and blowing around in drifts. We’re lucky that we’re pretty far from the coast; some of the towns along the waterfront are without power and/or are expecting flooding with the next high tide.

I do love the snow, though. I’ve missed waking up once a week to new snowfall like I did in Madison. It doesn’t feel like winter without it, and the world is so much prettier with a fresh dusting of white.

I have gotten some knitting done since my last post. In fact, I have been meaning to post since Sunday; this has been one of those weeks where you look up and suddenly it’s Friday and you wonder how it happened. We’re just entering the busy part of the semester, so time is suddenly slipping by faster than I expect.

Despite multiple froggings, I did manage to finish the new alpaca scarf.

I’ve even worn it twice, and can attest to its warmth. Sometimes I find alpaca a bit on the itchy side, but this is a very nice prep with almost no guard hairs, and it’s lovely. I think I knit that last foot about three times overall, but it is finished, and saved from another 5 years in the stash.

I’ve also been working away on the edits to the Mike sweater.

Both the sleeves and the body were a few inches too short, but I am out of the lighter yarn. I did have some of the dark yarn left, though, so I decided to widen the dark body band. Instead of pulling out the whole lower part of the sweater, I used one of my favorite tricks and snipped a stitch.

One tiny stitch, and then unpicking a row all the way around.

Then I picked up the live stitches and knit on, adding about 4″ to the dark body stripe, with a couple of accent rows along the way.

Last night, I finished grafting the body back on and unpicked a sleeve. With nowhere to go, I might even finish this project today.

I’m kind of liking these fast-finish projects lately. A little work here or there, and suddenly I have a newly-FO. I’m not sure how much editing of knitwear I want to do, but I do have to say that it’s helping me feel like I’m getting somewhere, even when I don’t have much time to knit. And there are some other sweaters in my closet that I’ve been meaning to rework for quite some time…