Celebrating the Holidays

There is very little more beautiful than the 8th night of Hanukkah with all the candles burning brightly against the dark.

Of course, there are other holidays with nice traditions this time of year, too.



After indulging in a bit of egg nog (fortified with a bourbon that seemed appropriate for this raven), we headed south to visit my parents at their hometown.



My parents celebrate Christmas. I always love seeing their simple tree...



...decorated with pinecones, straw, small brushed-gold balls, and my Great Aunt June's beautiful crocheted ornaments.



And there was knitting, too--the Christmas stocking I grew up with, knitted by my Granny...



...and the rest of the family's stockings, knit by my mother many many years ago. I have not seen these in several years.



When I was a girl, we always celebrated Christmas at Granny's house--and we still do, even though she has been dead for more than a decade. Her house has no chimney, so the stockings are hung on an ancient dresser in her front hallway.

I loved watching my family open their gifts:



...an Irish Hiking Scarf for my father, still recovering from surgery and cancer treatment and preparing for probable further surgery in January



...a linen feather-and-fan stole for my mother, knit on Granny's slippery old needles



...the felted Satchel that David knit for my brother



...and the Adamas shawl for Rebecca, by far the most photogenic model of the group. (The thing she is wearing that looks like a nametag is actually a PhD button that Son drew for her!)


Son received a wonderful present from his grandparents--and he hasn't stopped playing for a second since he opened the box:





On the day after Christmas, the temperature plummeted. We went to visit Granny's grave, intending to take some shells to lay on her marker in our effort to combine our Jewish memorial practices with her coastal identity.



When we arrived, we found that my uncle has brought her a wreath--exactly the kind of wreath I remember her hanging on her front door when I was small.

I miss her every day and do not knit a single stitch without thinking of her.

I hope that all of you, regardless of your traditions, found meaning this holiday season.

Midwinter Night's Dream

"Who will not change a raven for a dove?"
--Shakespeare



May we all have a season of peace.

Swallowtail is finished!

After all my ridiculous problems with this shawl, I started worrying about how it would look. I mean, honestly, the thing looked like a total rag.

I was knitting with 100% silk from Woven Gems, bought at the Virginia Fall Fiber Festival. How would the yarn block out? Would the silk hold the block? If this thing wasn't really beautiful, I was going to be annoyed after all we went through together...







I shouldn't have worried.

One more down

There is no kinder gift than offering to do a dramatically-behind knitter's holiday knitting for her. And that is exactly what David gave me. He knit my brother's holiday present: the Satchel from Knitty.

Here is is felted:



What a great pattern! It flies with doubled worsted-weight yarn on size 13 needles. Beginning to knit in the round after picking up the base stitches was awkward enough at the beginning that David wondered if this was really a good project--but after a few rows, everything worked beautifully. The I-cord bind-off was a new skill for us both. (Isn't it lovely? It makes such a finished edge.)

I'm sure my brother will love it. Perhaps he'll carry his dissertation-in-progress around in it...

Let's Have a Party...

David and I spent a long stretch of Sunday afternoon knitting while our 7yo took a nap. By the end of the evening, both of us were very close to finished objects, although neither looks like very much yet:

I bound off Swallowtail!



And David finished up the body of Satchel. I loved watching him do the I-cord bindoff.



Blocking for Swallowtail and felting for Satchel are on the agenda. It'll be a party!

* * *

Speaking of parties:

When our son woke up from his Sunday afternoon nap, we headed over to Martha's for a lovely party of knitters and their families. In addition to getting some knitting done, we enjoyed trying out her very cool Knitter's Loom , drinking the wine her husband picked out, and receiving a couple of excellent presents.

Martha, the founder of Silver Spring Knits (SSK), gave us all appropriate bumper magnets:



And Amy gave us all adorable miniature sock blocker key chains:



Of course, the best part of the evening was the company. What a great group of people I have found!

* * *

I took my new toy to the party.




What is it, you ask? A little recorder for podcasting? A cell phone, maybe, to call knitwear designers with desperate questions?

An assistive listening device, the Pocketalker.

I am completely deaf in one ear and cannot wear a hearing aid on that side due to the lack of an acoustic nerve. Although I hear fine in quiet one-on-one situations, I have quite a difficult time hearing in loud places where there is a lot of background noise. I can read lips fairly well and David and I both can use ASL as well, so for years I've gotten along with one working ear and one ear just for show. But so much of the time, if I am meeting new people or simply not in my own house, I have trouble following exactly what is going on and feel like I am faking it all too often. Add to the hearing issues my profoundly introverted personality--and you get a recluse wannabe.

So, after years of having my mother suggest I try something out, having my partner's mother's first cousin's hard-of-hearing spouse suggest I try out this particular device, and having a colossal argument with someone I love about the fact that I don't even think about ways I might address my hearing issues, I ordered one.

With a 30-day return period.

And I'm testing it not just to see if it works but if I feel too weird wearing it. I thought it might feel strange to have to explain to the folks I am talking to what it is, but that is not the biggest issue. The earphone looks enough like a Bluetooth that I wonder if people think I am not really focusing on them. And someone else wondered if I was recording our conversation!

But gosh...!

We went out to eat at an especially loud restaurant that we have frequented way too often in the last few years. When we walked in, the person at the front desk asked us how many were in out party. Would you believe that she ACTUALLY IS SPEAKING ALOUD?! All this time, I thought she might just be mouthing the words.

One of the coolest things is that I can now eavesdrop without staring at the droppee in order to read his or her lips...

It is not perfect. Hearing sounds over the microphone is a little disorienting. Without the device, although I cannot locate sounds due to my monaural hearing, I have developed some ability to guess location a bit based on what is quieter, etc. But with the device, if the mic is on my right, sounds feel like they are loud and therefore must be on my left. Sound feels like it is coming from everywhere and nowhere. I suspect I can get used to the difference. Hm.

While wearing the device, I feel a lot less internal. David pointed out that I even go up to complete strangers now and say things to them. (I asked a woman if she knitted her sweater. Her mother had.) So much for my recluse personality. Hey--let's PARTY!

Come light the menorah!

For the first night of Hanukkah, we went to our friends' house for candle lighting and Shabbat dinner. Although we had a lovely time, it never quite feels like Hanukkah until one has saturated the air in one's own kitchen with the smell of latkes cooking:

Saturday, oh Saturday...

After months of spending all my weekends locked in the study staring at a computer screen, it was a joy to go to Eastern Market with David and our son early this Saturday morning.

Bright and early, we got in the long line at Market Lunch...



...for the most scrumptious blueberry-buckwheat pancakes with pecans and maple syrup on top:



After breakfast, we shopped for bluefish from the fish guy, Brussels sprouts at the produce stand, and phenomenal cheese from the cheese place. We ooh and ahhed over the gorgeous ravioli in all sorts of exotic flavors and restrained ourselves at the bakery.

After we left the market building, we walked leisurely through the flea market, enjoying the sunny warmth of the day. Then we headed down the street to Stitch DC where David picked up some Kidsilk Haze to make a lacy ribbed scarf, possibly to donate to the silent auction of one of his favorite charities.

We then headed to the liquor store where we bought various wines and liquors to restock our bar--as well as champagne so we can formally celebrate the finishing of the book. (Abe dipped a beeswax candle at a friend's house last week and we will be lighting that at our celebration, too.)

We spent the rest of the day knitting and chatting--reveling in our new ability to celebrate weekends together.

Dreaming

I am officially doing holiday knitting.

And (oops) a small project that I need to put away until after the holidays...

And a small UFO that I now have yarn to complete...

But I'm not here to talk about what I should do today.

I'm thinking about tomorrow.

After way too many sleepless nights filled with panic about the now-finished book, I spent an hour last night between 3am and 4am dreaming about new projects. Perhaps because I no longer have the weight of an unfinished book on my lap, I have room for a serious-commitment kind of project. Actually, I'm thinking about a couple of big projects for the coming year.

Cast your votes--one per category:


A. FAIR ISLE SWEATER:

All of the choices in this category are designed by Alice Starmore.

1. Glen Albyn:



2. Rosalie, which is supposed to be good for a relatively new strander:



3. Henry VIII:




B. ARAN SWEATER:

1. Beth Brown-Reinsel's Celtic Dreams:



2. Alice Starmore's St. Brigid:





3. Alice Starmore's Inishmore:



4. Alice Starmore's Cromarty

Check out this picture of the adorable Rachael in her version!


C. LACE SHAWL:

1. Diamond Fantasy by Sivia Harding:





2. Mountain Peaks by Miriam Felton:




3. Paisley shawl from Fiddlesticks:




So? What do you think? Cast your votes!

Book is Finished. *GASP*

No more words.

Just knitting.

Moving Right Along

My co-writer and I finished preparing our manuscript for the copy-editor--extracting footnotes from the main text (what a nightmare), removing the double space that I type between sentences, changing the smart quotes to not-so-smart quotes, and making sure that all the interviewees who wished to be anonymous are in fact anonymous and properly coded. The chapters are already even printed out. All we have left is to figure out where we would like the press to place the illustrations and then do one more editing of our acknowledgments page. All will be mailed off Friday morning! We'll still get copy-edits back, then page proofs from which we will have to make an index. The book should be out in early fall 2007.

Meanwhile, Swallowtail is progressing slowly but surely. I have four more rows in the second Lily of the Valley pattern and then the peaked edging. Due partly to my frustration with the recent history of this shawl and partly to the very limited amount of time I have spent knitting in the last week, I'm only knitting a couple of rows a day. Keeps me sane.

I've been dreaming about new knitting-related projects for the upcoming post-book year: a scarf from Arctic Lace knit from luscious local alpaca, an Alice Starmore sweater (or even two--one fair isle and one cabled?), a lovely shawl with gorgeous yarn....

But right now, now I don't want to knit. I want to nap.

College Sweater

Today was frigid. I pulled out an old sweater to wear--the first one I ever knit. I made it in the summer of 1990 between my freshman and sophomore year in college.

Wearing it has filled me with memories of my grandmother, the Knitter who passed her genes down to me. I lived with her and took care of her that summer while she was ill. That was the year she taught me how to go from seed stitch scarves to drop-stitch horizontally-striped sweaters.

Son snapped this picture while I was making peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches for lunch.



I spent forEVER trying to depill the old sweater. Anybody have any advice? Do you just sit there and pull the things off? Use a razor? And how do you use a sweater stone effectively?

* * *

I knit two rows of Swallowtail without tinking anything! Oh Happy Day!

* * *
Finally, I would like to introduce my Amazon bookstore:

The Raven Reads!

I've listed some of my favorite knitting books with brief reviews.

Aaahhk Two

OK--for those of you keeping score at home:

I started Swallowtail on a plane headed from DC to AZ. In the course of the less-than-a-week trip, I finished the bud pattern. Easy peasy. On the flight home I started the lily-of-the-valley chart and struggled to get the hang of the nupps. After a couple of rows I did, and then I realized that I had knitted along as if the second half of the row was a repeat of the first half rather than its mirror image. Oops. Tinking seemed too much, so I tried to run a lifeline through stitches a few rows back. (Hint: this is not an effective way to work your lifelines....) I frogged to the thread and tried to pick up the stitches. It was such a mess that in frustration I frogged the whole thing.

Then my troubles began.

I have done every stupid thing imaginable in my efforts to get back to where I was. It has really shaken my knitting confidence, too. ("I can knit lace! I can knit lace!" is my new mantra.)

So yesterday I knit that previously-missing fourteenth repeat of the budding lace, put in the lifeline, and started the lily chart. Of course, I somehow skipped the k2tog at the beginning and wound up with a miscount at the halfway mark. At that point, I almost threw the shawl out the window. (Luckily, our storm windows are down and it is a real pain to throw things out the window.)

So I tinked back, tried it again, and had success! Timeout for dinner.

I came back to start the first purl 5 together row.

And the KnitPicks needle had that weird gentle catch it had once before with a different cord....



Luckily, I was not in the middle of a row. Because of the rough end, I could not slide the stitches off the dead end of the cord. Instead, Son held the end while I transferred the stitches to another needle.

This time the dysfunctional cord is the shorter one rather than the 32-inch cord. I'll be calling KnitPicks again this afternoon. After the joy I was experiencing with their needles until it came apart, I was planning to order the whole set. But now I'm hesitating....

Anyway...

I PROMISE that the next post will not be about my fight with the shawl. My plan is that now that I am to the point where I frogged the thing last time, all is new and fresh and will go smashingly from now on. (Right?)

And if things don't go well, I'm not going to tell you. At least not next post--assuming the shawl leaves me in a state still able to make a next post.

And today? SOCKS!

A Grim Tale...

Um...

There is a problem...



I swim past the first two rows of Lily of the Valley. I start the next row and the nupps are going quickly and rhythmically.

I'm almost back to where I was when I frogged! I look down at my yarn, my gorgeous champagne-colored silk yarn, and notice there is still a lot of frogged yarn wrapped around the outside of the ball. Maybe I was further along than I remembered?

I get to the center stitch and my count is way off. What did I do wrong? I thought something must be off since I remembered the nupps and decreases falling at logical spots after the budding lace. So I tink back, trying to catch the mistake. I don't. I count and recount and recount again.

Did I not knit the last rows correctly? I recheck, pouring over the stitches. Everything looks right.

Maybe I should just look up the count given in the pattern and count all those stitches.

hm...where is it...here:

"Work Rows 1-6 of Budding Lace 2 chart 14 times total--195 stitches."

Um...14 times? 14 TIMES?!

How was I so sure it was 13? Why didn't I bother to read the pattern again?

So tink, tink, tink.

"Why not use the lifeline you so beautifully inserted?" you ask. After trying to pick up those slippery little stitches off the thread after my stupid mistake yesterday, I'd rather tink.

Still tinking...

Lifelines

At last night's knitting group at Adega, a local wine cafe, Son decided to model everybody's green knits-in-progress:



* * *

I took Swallowtail with only a couple of rows to knit of the thirteenth repeat of the budding lace pattern. After they were finished, I was ready to go on to the lily of the valley chart--but, remembering the disaster that was my last attempt at "purl-5-together while knitting a mirror-image lace border" and the subsequent total frogging, I decided to put in a lifeline.

I pulled out a needle and some red sewing thread, and while having excellent conversations about everything from the glory that is Alice Starmore to the glory that is Barack Obama, I calmly slipped stitches from the knitting needle to my sewing needle and suspended the stitches on the thread.

* * *

What?! WHY am I taking the stitches off the needle?! I've never done a lifeline before but I know this is absolutely ridiculous. I painstakingly pick up the quarter row of stitches I had slipped off. Aargh!

* * *

Things start getting hot and fuzzy and shaky. I feel like I'm going to faint. I ask David to get me some cold water, no--walk me to the bathroom--no, just let me lie down on the floor for a minute....

* * *

It was not really this new shawl crisis that led to my faintness. I'm pretty sure it was an occasional thing that hasn't happened in a while related to a long-standing medical issue. But gosh, to the knitting group it must not have looked that way! I am fine now--a little tired and a little headachey but just fine.

* * *

Martha, my knitting pal that drove us to Rhinebeck and who is also struggling with Swallowtail, sent me a link this morning about a terrific way to put in a lifeline. The idea of using my KnitPicks needles on this lace after the cord pulled out last time left me a little nervous--but after tugging at the new cord to check its fastness, I decided to risk it. I did a slight variation of Fleegle's instructions.

After tying my thread to the little hole in the end of the KnitPicks needle, I just knit the next row, the stockinette row that begins the Lily of the Valley section:



What joy these needles are compared to the ones I was knitting with before. Why didn't I switch earlier?! When I reached the end, the sewing thread was nicely arranged through all the new stitches.

Magic!

David's Finished Objects

My partner finished the silk feather and fan scarf for his mother, binding off and blocking it gently. He rolled it up in tissue paper and sent it off. (After you click on the link, scroll past the shawl.)

He also finished his Harlot scarf:



What a beautiful pattern! David knit it in Patons Classic Merino on about a size 9 needle.



More FOs from David coming soon!

Not very nice

David, who has just completed two beautiful knits and is on the verge of completing two more (pictures coming soon), was looking for a new project. I thought of a couple of things for which I had yarn--and he chose the Knitty Satchel. Now note that he chose this project knowing that it was on my holiday knitting list for my brother. In other words, he offered to HELP ME WITH HOLIDAY KNITTING. David is taking the lead on this project but the plan is that I'll knit a bit of it and so will our 7yo son.

After knitting the bottom and picking up the stitches around it that form the body of the bag, David knit a row back and then joined in the round to knit in a circle. By knitting a row back, it made the reverse stockinette side of the base rectangle on the outside--inside out--while the walls were in regular stockinette.

After knitting a few inches, David showed it to me and I pointed out the mistake. A decision was made (and we disagree about who really made it) that we could live with it. He kept going.

Then 7yo Son knit a few rows. He's been doing "Art Knitting" lately--meaning he just knits and makes yarn-overs and K2togs wherever he feels will make the most artistic impact. Very cool. But the habit that he has gotten into made it easy to create some big honking yarn-overs in this project without really thinking about it.

Then David knit a few more inches.

The holes were so big I thought they would show even after heavy felting. So I dropped down to correct them.

Ever tried to drop yarn-overs out of your knitting while you are using size 13 needles? Unbelievable ladders....

So we could have lived with the holes and told my brother they were where his nephew knit. He would have laughed with pride.

And he certainly would not have dreamed that the reverse-stitch base was not intentional.

But I couldn't live with it.

After I saw what a mess-greater-than-mess I had created out of the repairs of the yarn-overs, I knew I had to rip it and knit it back.

And while I was ripping, my perfectionist streak got the better of me and I realized how close I was to the pickup. I could just rip back to there and make things right...

This was not very nice. This was not necessary for anybody but my own garlic-breathed internal critic. And it makes other people either angry or hurt. Or both.

I apologize. I'll fight the nasty liar harder next time.