The Multitasking Knitter

Dear Anna,

You've been writing all of these wonderful posts, while I've been stuck in an academic hole preparing for my comprehensive exam for my comparative literature PhD program, which is happening in May. This basically involves reading 75 books divided into three fields, and writing three 25-30 page papers on those books. Nevertheless, I'm still getting a fair amount of knitting done, such as this set of stripes from a project that I will write about in a future post:

But my goal for this entry is to answer this burning question: how does Meredith get knitting done when she has to do all that reading and writing?

The answer is this: I have multiple tools and gadgets that allow me to free up my hands while doing various things. Basically, I organize my life such that I'm able to have my hands free as much of the time as possible, so that they are available to either knit or rest from knitting.

One of the most useful and cheap is the FlipKlip:

It holds open books without the use of hands. Unlike fancier gadgets for these things, the FlipKlip is really compact, so you can just carry it with you wherever. I usually just prop my book on something (usually other books!) and I'm good to go.

The second really useful tool, though alas significantly more expensive, is Dragon Dictate:

I use it to write not by typing but with my voice. As you know, I am a pretty fast typist, so it's a bit slower for me to do it this way, but it's worth it considering that I can rest my hands and have more knitting time, both during periods when I'm not writing, and also when I want to knit and write at the same time.

Of course, I also have an Audible membership and listen to audio books on a regular basis. But if I'm doing that for my academic work, it's important for me to be able to annotate and find my place easily in a book. To do that I use the Echo Smartpen:



This allows you to record and take notes at the same time, and matches your notes with the recordings. So what I do is I record the audio book on my pen and mark the passages I want to go back to later.

I guess the take-home message here is that you can be a crazy, book-devouring, endless-writing academic, and be a crazy, obsessive knitter at the same time!

Yours in knitting craziness,
Meredith

Goodbye Cosy Opposable Floyd

Dear Meredith,

This morning I handed Floyd over to live at his new house, the one I made him for. Floyd was a result of the question ' can I do anything to un-shrink a sweater?'. The first answer of course had to be 'no', but then I added 'you can do all sorts of things with it, like make slippers, a hat, quilts, jewellery, a tea cosy, mittens, puppets, toys, decorations, egg cosies, bags, garlands, cardis for small children...'. As the list became overwhelming, 'tea cosy' was latched on to. And so our barter was arranged. In exchange for trying to sort out years of waitressing, a bike crash or two and perhaps some inherited tensions, I set about transforming the 2 diminished jumpers, washed on the cotton hand-wash setting (who's ever heard of that?).

When you don't know someone much beyond meeting them in a white coat, it can be hard to work out what their aesthetic is. This was both fun and a little hard to deduce - do you like Peanuts over Family Guy, Bagpuss or Bart Simpson, Button Moon or Ernie and Bert, or Magic Roundabout, Bill and Ben or Wallace and Gromit, Clangers or Morph, or do you lean to South Park or Ren and Stimpy? I stalled for a while overwhelmed by possibilities, waiting for the right thing.

What I did know is, that, given the home he was going to, the arms needed to be opposable.

Why do I always forget, characters come out as you make them?

I made his hat using tips for jogless knitting from TECHknitter I was itching to try.

Why Floyd? Well, his sweater was so plain, it needed a badge and we happened to have a Pink Floyd one stuck to a magnet on the fridge. Things all fell in to place, being that he could then be named after a distant uncle, Floyd Pepper.

I will miss him a little. I'm looking forward to getting some progress reports and images from Floyd in his new home.

xoxAnna

Colourwork leads...

Dear Meredith,

I've been having a good think about adding colourwork to the belle ascot and am going to experiment with a few things. To this end, I pulled out a book from my collection - Two Color Reversible Knitting by Jane Neighbors, Scribner, 1982. It's been on my shelf for a long time and I now finally had a reason to take it down and have it make a lot of sense. I thought I'd order you a copy and was shocked to find that it goes for upwards of $50. I think I got mine for a princely £1 a couple of years back at one of my favourite charity shops. And to think, I almost didn't get it, because it is a slightly odd looking book. Now I'm thrilled I have it, but won't be buying you a copy till I've confirmed it's worth the price. In the meantime, you'll have to come over to have a look. Baring that, I'll write you about it soon.

Today, when popping out to see if I could find strawberry plants (nope, still at least 2 months off apparently), I stopped in to our local Oxfam bookshop and came out with these.

They look to have been very well used by their previous owner. How I wish they'd stapled on a photo of them wearing their completed project! There are some very inspiring patterns and some I'd like to knit as is. Shame on me for not realising Patricia Roberts still has a shop in London. I'll be checking it out in the next couple of weeks.

The book below ties in with your reading of Richard Rutt's A History of Hand Knitting. The Knitting Vicar even mentions Tessa Lorant. There aren't any with increases like you did on the damson, but a range of other interesting solutions, shapes and history.

And this one was just irresistible. Just the sort of thing The Royal Art Lodge would have (had).

With colourwork in mind, thank you so so much for sending me a copy of Chromophobia, after I raved to you about it. It's going to take a while to get used to the idea that I have it again and it isn't one of the titles lost to a fling some years back. I'm so looking forward to reading it again, especially having just been to hear David Batchelor speak. I'm hoping to get Adam to read it to me while I knit. Did you get yourself a copy?

xoxAnna

Notes About Adding Colorwork to the Belle Ascot

Dear Anna,

I'm trying to see whether it might be possible to incorporate colorwork into a pattern that has both garter stitch and yarn overs. I'm sure other people have tackled this problem but I want to understand it for myself

In order to figure things out I have decided to use the Belle Ascot pattern from Quince and Co. as a way of experimenting. It's a pretty pattern that requires a relatively small number of stitches. I thought it would be perfect for my experiment.

The first challenge that I found was the process of trying to simultaneously make a yarn over while at the same time catching a long float I'm a little bit concerned about how this will look when it's actually time to knit the yarn over on the wrong side row.

It was also hard trying to work the stitches on the wrong side. Even trying to get my fingers set up the right way proved rather difficult but I eventually got the hang of it.

So this was the point when I figured out that creating garter stitches unfortunately creates these long floats on the "right" side of the knitting. Somehow I didn't envision that until I actually got here:

There pretty much goes my experiment for now. Although I have to say I'm pretty tempted to just weave the ends in and be able to incorporate a very limited but still pretty amount of colorwork into an otherwise combination knit and purl pattern. Or I guess I can use bobbins so I don't have to even weave many ends. Or better yet, it might be possible to do something decorative with those floats. I'll let you know what happens!

Love,

Meredith

Tampon Nancy

Dear Meredith,

Last Spring, after I visited you, I stayed with great friends in SF who had decided to not buy new stuff and just use what they had for a while. I think they set themselves a year, inspired by someone or other. Food was allowed, as were some baby supplies and I'd imagine, the odd toiletry. Hoping to make use of my knitting knowledge, but unable to purchase double pointed needles, my friend wanted to learn to knit in the round. Not a problem - they had satay/kebab sticks in the kitchen drawer. We cut each stick in half, snipped off the skewering ends, sanded the tips into suitable points and gave them a good all over sand. Hey presto - bamboo DPNs!

Their exercise in frugality keeps popping back in to my head. While I don't think I want to set my self such hard and fast rules, I do spend my days being resourceful through intention and necessity. Plus, coming as I do, from a long line of hoarders, there's always tons of possible things to make use of, without buying something else - the copper piping from my last missive to you for example. I got to thinking, what could I make a Knitting Nancy with, if I didn't live in a house well stocked with art, craft and DIY materials and I couldn't go out to buy anything?

Step 1.

Step 2.

Step 3.

Step 4.

Step 5.

xoxAnna

French, Idiot, Cork, Fingers and Nancy

Dear Meredith,

The shawl turned out beautifully. Would you mind taking a close up shot of the edging for me when you get a chance? I can't quite see how you did it. Having never been to the Philippines I always imagined it to be too hot for anything wooly. Maybe that's because I have a hard time imagining sheep there. I'm sure your grandma will be thrilled.

Right, if the Idiot Cord, aka i-cord, is what is keeping you from finishing that bonnet, maybe you need something to make it funner. Make yourself a Knitting Nancy (spool knitter, cork knitter or however you'd like to refer to it). In Dutch it's a punnikpopje. In general here, it's known as French Knitting. I've been making quite a few recently as I've been teaching a lot of finger knitting (as part of the school project I am working on) and want to demonstrate that it is the same principle, just a different iteration.

Somewhat to my surprise, I've gotten totally back in to it, like when I was 6. Of course, my mum had my old ones and a few others at hand. Here's the collection so far...

The faceless one in the middle was made for me by my English Grandmother. Neither English, nor my Grandmother, her hand knitted socks are my most trusted and invincible garments.

Below are the pretty spool knitters I've been making, as is tradition, out of old wooden sewing cotton reels. All you need to do is to knock 4 suitable nails in with a hammer. There are plenty of these vintage/old spools to be tracked down on etsy, if you've not inherited any in a sewing box. They also have the new ones, just for crafting, in, you guessed it, craft stores.

But actually, the one I've made that functions best so far, is made with a piece of copper piping we had leftover from some plumbing job, sellotape and 4 large nails. I bet you could do it with some garden hose, that little roll that dental floss is wound on in the bumper packs, and maybe even a ballpoint pen casing.

Here are the steps...

1. Gather materials -
-tube (big and long enough to hold comfortably and allow the cord to pass through)
-4 nails (fairly smooth, with big enough heads to stop the yarn popping off when not desired)
-adhesive tape (which ever you have at hand - magic, electrical, masking, micropore, duct, etc)

2. Wrap tape around tube, using it to hold down the first nail, with about 15mm protruding.

3. After one complete wrap round of tape, use it to attach the second nail, directly opposite the first, sticking out the same amount. Ideally all 4 nails should be equally spaced around the tube, at 12,3,6 and 9 o'clock.

4. Wrap tape further round and attach third nail, half way between the first and second.

5. Wrap tape to attach the fourth and final nail, in the middle of the last remaining gap.

6. Make sure to continue wrapping the tape to beyond the bottom of the nails, to hold them firmly in place and cover the sharp points.

7. You're ready to use it!

Trawling the interwebs for know-how and inspiration on my return to French Knitting, Crazyhabedasher seems to be the Knitting Nancy Maven with her blog Spool Knitter. She has a ton of pictures and knowledge of the gadgetry through the ages. She's collecting recollections as well as the implements themselves and is gearing up to open a museum in Australia.

Once you're ready to French Knit, here are a couple of very useful tutorials from Noreen Crone-Findlay.
Here's how to start.
And finish.

Curious to see what you'll make with the Quince yarn and whether the reds are for me - wink wink. I wonder what I'll make - maybe a lacy little chickadee number.

xoxAnna

The shawl is done!

Dear Anna,

As the title of this post says, the shawl is done! I finished it in a mad rush in the course of about three days. You're right that it's kind of a funny shape, and so it was a little bit hard to photograph. I would love to show it off in Central Park or something, but it still a little bit too cold in New York unfortunately. Maybe in a couple of weeks.

I'm thinking of giving it to my grandmother when I go back to the Philippines in June. I was thinking that is going to have to learn more crochet because it's nicer to do in hot weather, but I think that it would be perfectly fine for me tonight caught in shawls all summer. That said, I'm hoping that I'll be in enough air conditioned environments to be able to develop patterns for the fall.

Those vintage patterns you showed me in your last post are indeed inspiring. It's funny that you showed them to me just as I was reading Richard Rutt's A History of Hand Knitting (and by reading I mean listening to the audio book). So many things I didn't know before! For instance, did you know that Virginia Woolf was an avid knitter? Apparently, Edith Sitwell said that she didn't care much for Woolf's writing but she she greatly admired her knitting.

Oh, and guess what came in the mail yesterday. Yarn!

This is the chickadee yarn from Quince and company. I really like the feel of the yarn though I didn't realize they picked so many grays and browns. The primary greens didn't look that great on the screen but now that I got the color book I do really like them so I'm probably going to order some. Since this yarn is not available in the UK right now, I'm definitely going to send you a skein or two. Can you guess which colors are for you?

Love,

Meredith

clear-up cheer-up

Dear Meredith,

As you might remember from our days living together, when I'm having a bad day, or otherwise procrastinating, I clear up and clean. When things get really bad, out come the knitting patterns. Not online, not even the ones in books and certainly nothing post 1990. I'm talking smokin' Lavenda men smoking pipes, invisible Emu babies, cat eyed mon Tricot hour glass waists, Paton's orange and brown demon children, strapping Stitchcraft lasses, chiseled Wendy mohaired men, Sirdar bowl-cut loop-knit hoodied hotties and anything with floating soap bubbles. They turn my frown upside down, challenge me, inspire me and make me laugh out loud. So last week, when I got in a particularly bad funk, as a productive cheer-up clear-up, I finally sorted and filed my collection of knitting patterns.


Mid-sort, there's a knock on the door and in comes my mother and another super knitting friend of ours. They have a giggle at me sitting crossed legged surrounded by unkempt stacks of knitting history and potential. Me explaining that I'm engaged in a treatment less complicated than Prozac or a hysterectomy, only increases their amusement. I then predict that when Adam walks through the door he will say "It's that bad is it?", as he knows the score. And that is exactly what he said, closely followed by "cocktail?".


Thankfully, Aunt Flo rode her cloth pony in to town for a visit, Spring has sprung and, after many years, I finally have a wonderfully organised knitting pattern collection. There's certainly room for fine tuning my archive, but it's a very useful start. And so, it was very easy to look through my patterns and pull out ones for shawls to add to your options.


The Ysolde Teague pattern you wrote about is very pretty and the model even has an air of you about her from behind. The pattern is rather unusuaI in that it isn't a triangle or a square, so doesn't have a long point that hangs down your back (rarely practical, I agree). It's a bit of a mash-up between a shawl and a poncho. I did find one other like that. The increases seem to work in a similar way. The lacy hearts are rather sweet, unlike the frazzled hair. I'm not so in to the tassels though.

I look forward to seeing how your 'Damson' turns out. All this got me thinking that I've never made a shawl. Not one expressly for an adult anyway. I've made a good number of ones as baby gifts. I try to keep those less lacy. As pretty as that would be, those wormy, clammy little fingers get in there and I can't help thinking the lace will make posset stencils.

Since I am taking my blocking much more seriously these days, it might be time to try a lacy shawl too. I'll wait and hear what feedback you have from knitting yours.

xoxAnna

PS. So jealous of your stint in the sun!