One of the things that I love most about knitting is its ability to shift and change, to rise and fall with the flow of life. One minute a challenge, the next a much-needed reassurance, an oasis of rest. This last is what I need most right now; surety and steadiness. One thing that I can do without thinking, that comes naturally into place.

My creative energies are needed elsewhere right now,  making big changes and forging new paths. Everything is fine, and in fact better than it has been in a long time, but there’s a lot that needs my attention, that requires my focus. It’s comforting to know that my knitting will be here when I’m ready, as complex or as simple as I need in that time, for that moment.

For now, I have let go the complex, vaulting designs that require thought and planning in favor of the meditative simplicity of a single stitch, worked over and over (and over and over). First Drishdi, then a simple cowl to keep cold air out of too-sensitive lungs.

Nothing fancy; just a long tube of 2×2 rib in Cascade Eco wool from the stash.

Now, a hat to match the cowl, and then simple stockinette socks in a beautiful yarn.

That’s Socks that Rock Light in Mochaberry. It is every bit as squishable as it looks.

Simple things. Warm things.

Rest and comfort on the needles.

Knitting a top-down raglan is great because you can try it on as you go.

…or so I’m told. I’ve finally gotten back around to working on the Kauni sweater. After almost a month of neglect (it has sat untouched since the plane ride back to the US until about a week ago), it’s finally started moving again. Still slowly, but it’s moving. I had expected to be pretty much home free after starting the body in the round. With only a little bit of side shaping, I figured it would be easy sailing to the hem.

And then I tried it on.

And now I’m not so sure.

I’m beginning to think that the worst thing about a top-down raglan is that you can try it on, and then obsess over whether it’s really right or not all the way from the armholes to the hem.

See, the tape measure says it’s right. Comparing it to sweaters that fit me well says that it’s right. The shape is fine, and actually looks really good. But when I put it on, it looks too big.

I have a tendency to worry about things being too big, because most of the sweaters I’ve knit for myself have ended up bigger than I’ve intended. But this time the tape measure agrees with my calculations and my swatches, and tells me that this is the right size, even if it looks big and floppy on the needles. And, of course, just having needles in it makes the edge stretch and do wonky things, so it could be perfectly fine. Without the rest of the fabric there to weigh it down, it’s hard to tell what it will look like when it’s finished.

But now I’m worried.

As I see it, there are four options:

1) Frog back to the armholes, “fix” a problem I’m not sure is there, and pray that it doesn’t end up too small. (Which would be a really, really annoying way to be reminded to just trust the darn swatch already.)

2) Aggressive side shaping that may or may not look good, but that will reassure me that I’m not making a tent.

3) Knit it as is, have faith in the swatch and the measurements, and just steek the silly thing if I have to. The way it’s knit, I can easily take out about 1.5 inches under each arm just by steeking and making side seams. I’ll know how the body fits before I attach the sleeves, so this should be pretty easy.

4) Embrace the bagginess of raglans, knit it as is, and glory in a too-big but comfy sweater if that’s how it happens to turn out. (I have been known to do this…my favorite sweater is easily 2 or 3 sizes too big. Still, I was hoping that I’d want to wear this one out of the house…)

I’m leaning toward #3. One and two seem like there’s a lot of room for regretting my lack of faith later (though, of course, there’s the equally high probability of kicking myself for not listening to my better judgment, too). This is a tight fabric with all its slip stitches, so it’s not likely to stretch much at all, unlike the other sweaters that have grown to half again the size predicted by the swatch once washed and worn. Alpaca Oblivion, I’m looking at you…

Number four is tempting, but again, I’d like this to be something that I wear out in the world, not just when I want to be comfortable at home.

And three. Well, I hadn’t planned to steek it, but I am really sure that this yarn can take it. When I picked the sweater up the other day, I realized that there were 5 stitches at the armhole join that I had somehow never put on the stitch holder, and they were still sitting exactly where they’d started, after being stuffed into and pulled out of a bag, stretched around the needles hundreds (literally) of times while I knit almost  6 inches of fabric beyond them. If those stitches didn’t go anywhere, there’s no chance that a sewn steek will be a problem.

I sound like I’ve made up my mind, but I really haven’t. I’m wondering with every stitch if I should go back now (because I don’t want to pull back later). I think it’s ok. In fact, it’s probably perfect. But now I’m worried.

All because I got to try the darned thing on.

Just before I left Germany, I went to the Heidelberg knitting group. One of the members gave me a gift, wrapped in a Christmas napkin, and said that it was a Christmas present.

I am not usually one to be tormented by unopened gifts, but this one made me curious. It was small, and flat, and everything in it was soft. And it was from a knitter. It was hard, but I was good, and waited until Christmas to open it.

And look what I found inside!

Aren’t they adorable?? They are tiny, tiny little mittens knit out of sock yarn with what must really be infinite patience. They have thumb gussets. There’s a right and a left. I just love them.

We didn’t get a tree this year, partly because we don’t have much to put on a tree. This is our first Christmas spent at home rather than with family, so our ornament collection is really very small. I’m tucking these away for next year, though, and I can’t wait to put them on our first tree. For now, I’ve just been smiling and doing a little happy dance whenever I see them. Their tininess just delights me. Thanks, Andrea!

After just a week of bus knitting, Drishdi is done! This project fell into my hands more than it was designed. I went looking for yarn of a different color, but found this one and fell in love. I looked at stitch patterns in the Walker books, and then ended up seeing someone knitting something in a different pattern at the knitting guild meeting. I’d seen the stitch before, but I’d passed it over until I saw it on someone else’s needles. Her project used a completely different yarn (bulky, dark, and variegated) and she was knitting a different kind of garment (don’t remember what), but I knew at once that this was the right stitch pattern for this scarf. Her sister scarf (the red one) was a struggle to design, but this one just fell into place, and then flew off my needles in no time flat.

We took advantage of some afternoon sunshine to take some pictures. I just love how the yarn drapes, and the strong vertical ribs made by the stitch pattern.

I really can’t say enough about this yarn. It’s Cascade Venezia, and the silk in the blend gives it a beautiful shine. The colorway is called Ginger, but flowing copper is all I can think when I look at it. It glows like pure metal in the sun.

There were a few defects in the first ball of yarn, but they don’t show up in the final piece and there were none in the second skein, so I think that was a fluke. The good parts more than made up for the bad spots.

For a pattern that looked like a solid rib during the knitting, it opens up nicely into an almost-lace (see the shadows in the lower part of this picture?).

Thick and warm, but open and lacy. Bright and metallic, but soft and flowing. Love, love, love it. Every stitch of the way.

And, since the universe saw fit to give me its pattern, I thought I’d pass it along to you, too. I don’t know the name of the knitter that gave me the stitch pattern, and I don’t think I could pick her out of a crowd if I tried. She was just there at the right moment, ready to share just what I needed, though neither of us knew that I needed it. So simple. It’s just three stitches, over and over again on both sides. K1, yo, k2tog. Repeat, and end the row on a knit. Turn it over and do it again. I worked 8 repeats per row, and used a skein and a half of the Venezia, knit on size 5 needles. Gauge doesn’t matter much, because you can choose its size when you block it; there’s a lot of give in this fabric. After blocking, I have a scarf that’s 5.5 x 76 inches. Block it wide, because it will stretch long again when you wear it.

I am sorely tempted to knit this again for myself. I may someday, but for now I’m glad that this first one is a gift. This pattern was meant to be given.

Happy 2010! I hope the new year finds you happy and well rested. I’m enjoying the second long weekend; looking forward to some quality knitting time.

Everyone is looking back over the past year, and posting resolutions and goals for the coming one. I don’t generally make New Years resolutions; I do better with general guidelines than “to do’s” on my list (which tend to stress me out, and thus get ignored). The word itself has been appealing to me lately; I’ve found myself rolling it around and around on my tongue, thinking about all the meanings it holds.

A resolution can be something you decide to do, or it can be an answer to a conflict or problem. I use it most to discuss precision and accuracy – speaking about an instruments’ resolution, or the resolution of a picture.

That last meaning in particular brings me back to the new year, and embodies some of the things that I’m hoping for in 2010. 2009 was all a bit of a blur to me; there was teaching, and writing, and thesis, and Germany, and now postdoc. I’ve lived in three cities and two countries, worked two jobs and been unemployed. There have been lots of transitions, and things just seemed to speed by faster than I could follow.

For 2010, I’m hoping for more resolution; a more fine-grained, detailed look at life. I want to slow down and enjoy the moments that sum up into days and years. Some long-standing, chronic health issues are finally beginning to resolve themselves, and I’m really looking forward to a year where I feel so much better. I think this will be a year of intentional living, of reassessment, of planning. One that begins a little blurry around the edges, but will end with clarity and focus.

And, in the next post, I resolve to talk at least a little bit about knitting. Happy New Year!

A new job, a new city, a new apartment. New knitting groups, new friends, new projects. All good things. All exciting. Things have been the same for a long time, put on hold in pursuit of an education. But now they are stretching and growing, moving out of stasis and into motion. Slipping, sliding, rumbling, tectonic motion. A million things are calling for attention, tired of waiting their turn.

It’s so easy to grasp, to clutch, to hold on to the familiar.

My yoga teacher used to call this riding your edge, and it’s exactly the place you want to be, this place where things happen. It’s the place between comfort and panic – you’re still in control, but only just.

It’s easy to stand in a safe position, rooted to the floor, grounded and stable. Mountain pose is a place of rest, and it is where you begin. Being at your center is comfortable, but in order to grow you must move out of that place of comfort. You ride your edge out into the unfamiliar, into the unbalanced. You have to move out of your center before you can learn to come back to it.

When you move to your edge, you falter. You know you have found it when you begin to lose your balance, when feel that you are just about to tip over. Arms flail, legs refuse to stand firm. Things are wobbly and uncertain. Muscles tighten, grasping and reaching, trying desperately to hold on.

As your body tips and trembles, your eyes settle on something small, something insignificant. An island of quiet in the midst of the storm. A moment of curiosity or laughter grants you a second’s pause. A deep breath. Your eyes settle, and they stay. Things become still. You have found your drishdi.

In that moment, you let go of finding balance – and allow it to find you.

I’m not doing any official Christmas knitting this year, but look what I finished this morning:

It might not be official holiday knitting, but it’s officially done! All ready to fly to Germany in a couple of weeks.

Happy holidays!

I’ve hardly knit at home in the past week. A little over the weekend, and a few rows at night, but mostly I’ve been getting home really late, eating dinner, and heading to bed.

It’s times like this that make me really glad that I have a 20 minute period every morning and afternoon where I am guaranteed to be held captive, with nothing that I can really be doing. Add to that a few days where the commute was 2.5 hours because of snow (each way), and you have a recipe for an almost-finished scarf. Which refuses to photograph nicely, by the way.

I’m into the third skein, and probably only have a few inches left to go. I like this version so much better.  Now I just have to hope that it blocks as well as the sample did.

On Monday night, the being out late thing was actually all about knitting. I hitched a ride from work and went and joined the Madison Knitter’s Guild, which was fun. The group was pretty big, especially since Franklin Habit was there to talk about historical knitting and why one might just be tempted to work through vintage patterns. He really had me at “new stitch patterns.”

This could be trouble.

I picked up a few books from the library, which I’ll probably talk more about later, when I’ve finished flipping through them the first million or so times.

I also met my knitting guide to Madison, in the form of a guild member named Becky who has offered to go on a shop hop together. She’s also introducing me to the Sow’s Ear tomorrow night for their late night knitting. Yay for knitting guides!

When we put our things in storage this summer, we thought about the fact that we might be moving them out of storage in the snow. We were pushing our luck trying for a December 1st move in the upper midwest.

We got lucky: there wasn’t any snow, and it wasn’t even very cold. Perfect conditions for a move, actually.

Last weekend we got a dusting of snow, which then built up to about 4 inches over a couple of days. Everything was pretty and white, and it seemed like a good way to ease into the winter.

And then last night, the rest of it came.

Say hello to winter!

It took three of us 2 and a half hours to clear the driveway this morning, even with a snowblower. I haven’t heard official numbers, but there is a lot of snow out there.

Our neighbors’ trees aren’t so happy, either.

I was expecting to go to work this morning, but they just canceled bus service for the rest of the day because the roads are bad, and the university has been closed since last night. So, it looks like I have an unexpected snow day! I have some reading and a presentation to put together for work, but then I’m going to do the only thing that one should do under the circumstances: knit warm things.

The unpacking is mostly finished, and I’m beginning the process of figuring out where everything is, and where it now belongs. In that spirit, how about a project update?

Though it hasn’t gotten much blog time, the Kauni sweater is moving along nicely. Here’s where it was just before we left Germany:

The armholes are joined, and I’m working my way down the body. This was my only plane knitting, so it’s a bit further along now than it was in this photo. I haven’t touched it since we landed, but I’m looking forward to getting back to it soon. It’s so nice that it’s back to only 400 stitches a round! (It was at almost 700 before the split, and those rounds were taking a really long time…)

In the week before we left, I re-knit the red scarf with a garter edge, and I turned the pattern sideways. I had hoped that this would help it to lay flat, as all of the curling had been at the long edges in the first version. Unfortunately, the sideways scarf did the same thing:

I also tried using a bigger needle, as Ellen suggested in the comments. The first scarf was knit on a 5; I moved up as far as a 9 and was still getting curling. In this case, I don’t think it was the stitch pattern; it was the weight of the yarn pulling it into its cinnamon-stick shape.

I pulled the whole thing out and gave away the yarn instead of packing it. It will make a beautiful bag or something, knit up in a design that doesn’t want a lot of stretch and that can bear a little weight. It just wasn’t the right yarn for my purposes.

I had a little bit of SouthWest Trading Company bamboo in red waiting for me in my US stash, so I put the scarf aside until we came back here. Unfortunately, I didn’t have as much as I remembered, and the yarn is old enough that it doesn’t quite match the current colorway. Given the microfiber experience, I was also a little worried that the weight of a 100% bamboo yarn would cause the same problems with curl. Instead, I found some beautiful Frog Tree fingering weight alpaca (color 23) at my new LYS. This yarn is light and airy, much warmer than the microfiber, and has a beautiful halo. I wasn’t sure how I’d like the pattern in a fuzzy yarn, since the clear stitch definition was my favorite thing about the microfiber version. And then I started knitting.

I cast on Thursday night, after realizing that I hadn’t knit in almost a week. I haven’t had much time for it since then, but it’s flying off the needles, especially considering that I frogged back a good 12 inches when I discovered that I’d made errors setting up the stitch pattern.

I can’t believe how much better it is. It doesn’t have the same crisp stitch definition, but the alpaca yarn has a beautiful softness, and I love the way it catches the light. I tried for about an hour to get a good photo earlier, but I couldn’t really get the new camera to capture it. I forsee some trial and error photoshoots in my future, as I learn the buttons and settings for this new camera.

We also visited another of Madison’s yarn shops, looking for yarn for a second scarf. We didn’t find the perfect color, but I love the one that we did find:

That’s a silk-merino blend by Cascade called Venezia (color 160 – Ginger). I don’t think I’ve ever seen Venezia before, but it’s a beautiful yarn. The shine and the feel are perfect, even though there wasn’t much available in the exact burnt-orange color that I was hoping for. I’m a little worried that I won’t have enough yarn (it’s only 160 yards), but I have a tendency to over-buy for projects, so I’m hoping that I’m overestimating what I’ll need. There was plenty in the store, so I can go back for more if necessary.

My only complaint with the yarn is that there were three or four damaged areas in the skein that I didn’t find until winding it into a ball. Cascade is usually better quality than that, so I’m hoping that it’s just a fluke, because I think I’m very likely to knit with this again.

I’m not really sure yet what stitch pattern to use for this scarf. It should be a little bit more muted to match this other friends’ personality, fairly open (to help with yardage, mostly), and something that really shows off the shine and drape of the yarn. Nothing has popped out of the Walker books yet, but we have another date this evening.

The waving lace pattern is also coming along well. I have one more chart section that needs to be test knit (for the last time, I hope!), a few stitch counts to calculate/verify, and then it’s all layout, proofing, and editing.

And, last but not least, the geometric lace project is also coming along well. I couldn’t get a good picture of the swatch tonight, so I’ll have to show it to you later. One transition is completely mapped out, and it’s waiting until I have some quiet time to focus on the other.

So there’s the knitting status. I was thinking of writing a “State of the Stash” post, but that will have to wait for another day, when I’m up to a project of that magnitude. For now, I’m just glad to be able to find time to knit.