A Bluestocking Knits

  • Show and Tell, um, Saturday

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    I was going to start doing the Show and Tell Friday project, which this week is about addictions, but this,

    Earl_grey

    Home_books

    was as far as I got, then an hour later I found myself sitting on the floor with an empty teacup and dreaming about the photographs in Andrew Bush’s Bonnettstown: A House in Ireland….

    I thought I’d borrow an idea from Suse of Pea Soup and do a little interactive blogging (i.e., please post a comment with your answer to today’s question).  What is the last piece of knitting you worked on before putting it down to read knitting blogs? 

    I’ll start —

    Friday_progress

    the glacially-progressing but always-satisfying Ostrich Plume blanket.

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    Booking Through Thursday: Books Into Movies

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    The Booking Through Thursday question for this week are about books that have been made into movies.

    1. When you think of books that have been made into movies, what one comes to mind first?  Most obviously, for me, since it is relatively recent, is "The Lord of the Rings" Btt_rivendell6 cycle.
    2. Did the movie really capture the feeling of the book?  These three movies were pretty far from my mental images of the books, which were based, after umpteen years of rereadings, more on Tolkien’s own illustrations, and to be honest were a lot cleaner!  I mean as in dirt, physical grubbiness.  I had a few quibbles with the movie — for example, as impressed as I was with Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, my mental image of the character was actually much more like Sean Bean — and I feel wistful about my own "version" of the story being replaced by Peter Jackson’s, but on the whole I enjoy the movies very much.  (I think my main disappointment is the loss of all but one of Tolkien’s songs.)
    3. What about other movies from books? Which movies do you feel really captured (or if you prefer, didn’t capture) the feeling of the books they were based on? I thought that the Kevin Sullivan production of "Anne of Green Gables" Btt_anne3_2  — one of my favorite books ever — was just about perfect.  I remember being astonished at the scene where Marilla first takes Anne upstairs to her new bedroom, and it was exactly the way I had pictured the room to myself.  I still can’t watch Disney’s "Mary Poppins" in comfort, even though I usually love Julie Andrews — the Disneyfied version is so utterly wrong, so twee and saccharine, and so different from the "real" Mary Poppins (how I wish that Jean Marsh could have been cast, with a more faithful screenplay…).Btt_poppins I had never read any of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels until after I saw "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" Btt_master_commander_2  — after reading over half of the twenty-volume series, I am still very pleased and impressed with the movie, which despite compressing (and even inventing) a lot still captures the feeling and tone of the books very well.  So there are three different ones: the "Anne" movie got the book right and was faithful, "Mary Poppins" just didn’t work (for me, obviously a bit of a minority), and "Master and Commander" while not sticking much to the book, still got it right.

  • Joyous Knitting Meme

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    (The ever-delightful Joy tagged me for this meme.  Play if you want, dear Reader, with no pressure!)

    What is your all-time favorite yarn to knit with?  I don’t know if I really have a favorite yet.  One of the reasons for my starting a knitting blog was to try new things, new yarns and patterns and techniques and inspirations.  That said, I really did enjoy my projects with Jaeger Extrafine Merino and Rowan Calmer, and suspect that Rowan Wool Cotton is not too far away in my future.

    Your favorite needles?  Wooden or bamboo, so far.  Haven’t tried Addis yet.  I like the sound the wooden ones make, a nostalgic little tick-tick.  I had a wonderful pair of rosewood circulars a few years back, a beautiful reddish-golden-brown wood, so smooth and warm to the touch.  Laura, who was about one then, was fascinating by my knitting and used to tug at it as the needles moved, and as she grabbed hold of the plastic center, one of the needles snapped in my hand.  I tried gluing and sanding it, but of course it wouldn’t hold.  I recently splurged on a replacement, but they’re just not as good this time, I don’t know why.  Sorry, a little "Citizen Kane" moment there — "Rose-wood!"

    The worst thing you’ve ever knit?  I don’t even remember!  I’ve had my share of howlers, to be sure — too-long sleeves, weird shaping, poor color or fiber choice.  I usually just rip ’em out, or if I can’t bear to look at something, it goes into the donation box.

    Your favorite knit pattern?  I rarely knit the same thing twice, except for dishcloths, and I refuse to nominate a dishcloth as my favorite knitting pattern.  I have especially fond memories of a few recent knits — Kate Gilbert’s Clapotis, and Nancy Bush’s Truly Tasha’s Shawl and Ene’s Scarf from Scarf Style.

    Most valuable knitting technique?  Possibly the humble Kitchener stitch, a.k.a. grafting.

    Best knit book or magazine?  I subscribed to Vogue Knitting for a long time, until I came to the conclusion that there were a lot more things I didn’t want to knit in it than things I did, so I switched to Interweave Knits, in the early part of the Melanie Falick years, and I like it a lot.  A large percentage of my knitting books library is from the days when I had pots of money to spend on myself, so that I have a good collection of older Rowan/Kaffe Fassett books, Kim Hargreaves, etc. etc. and not many new ones.  I still like almost all of the patterns in Marion Foale’s Classic Knitwear.  Probably the one that I use the most is a reference book, Montse Stanley’s Knitter’s Handbook.

    Your favorite knitalong?  I don’t think I’ve done enough of these to justify an answer, as I’ve been happy with all of them.  The Scarfstyle and Gathering of Lace-along ones are especially interesting due to the number of projects available and the unlimited time!

    Your favorite knitblogs?  I’ve just revised my posted list a bit to add a few, though I usually read a number of others via links from my links, as well.  It’s so easy to get distracted, but I kind of like that, sort of like walking around at a party and chatting with old friends and meeting some new ones.  I am so impressed that there is such a variety of knitbloggers out there — my own list includes people from all over the US (some natives, some not), from the UK, Canada, Scandinavia, Australia, and Hong Kong, female and male, some "classic" pattern-lovers, some adventurous, some very fast knitters with new projects every week, some plugging away until they have one wonderful thing to show.

    Your favorite knitwear designer?  This is a tough question.  Like with clothes, knitwear designers often have a wide variety of designs, some that I would wear and some that I would not.  I tend to like the simpler things, almost always the more "timeless" designs, and am hardly ever trendy.  I think that Elizabeth Zimmermann fits this description (and often her daughter Meg Swansen, too), and the less-fussy Kim Hargreaves and Debbie Bliss designs too.  I’ve also really enjoyed the two Nancy Bush things I’ve done.  Kaffe Fassett is my wild card — judging by most of my projects, you wouldn’t think I’d be interested, but he blows my mind.

    The knit item you wear the most?  For old favorites and sheer durability, probably these,

    Stripes_scarf

    a riff on the simplest Kaffe Fassett "Stripes" pattern in a double-knitted scarf, and

    Old_shale_shawl

    a variation on Martha Waterman’s Cat’s Paw Square Shawl from Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls, with only the Old Shale border.

  • Sunday Morning

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    David left for Hong Kong again this morning, so I find this photo especially bittersweet. 

    Daddy_julia

    Two weeks at least, probably three.  It doesn’t get any easier with practice, I must say.

    I had a bit of a sniffle by myself while the girls were distracted with their Halloween party candy, then Laura asked me, "Why are you dressing all up in your Handsome Sweetie-Pie Vest?"  I had to laugh.  Should I call Meg Swansen and let her know the Ribwarmer has been renamed?

    I find that the collar looks pretty good standing up, but even better folded down as a shawl collar.

    Ribwarmer_1

    And here in the always-risky over-the-shoulder-into-the-bathroom-mirror shot,

    Ribwarmer_2

    Note to self, more yoga, I can’t take a picture of my own back yet!

  • Autumn Color

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    Autumn_liquidambar

    We don’t get much visual evidence of autumn around here, which makes me appreciate these gorgeous liquidambar trees even more — this one is across the street from Laura’s school.

  • Thoughts on the “Ribwarmer”

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    Finished the Ribwarmer this afternoon — a pleasant, fairly uncomplicated knit.  The first side (front and back sides knitted in one piece) took me two days of unhurried knitting, so it would have been a lot quicker if this week hadn’t been busy with other things.  I did graft the shoulder seams,

    Grafting_ribwarmer

    having already started knitting side two straight off of the provisional cast-on of side one, so essentially I worked it all in one piece.  I think I’ll spot-block (is that a word?) the front edges, as they are rather poochy at the short rows!  This is a one-size-fits-all pattern, designed I suspect for warmth rather than beauty, although the short row corners and overall design are clever and appealing.  I love the way that the center back pieces meet at little curved corners at the bottom.  I might wish that the shoulder was a bit shorter, so that it ended higher up on my own shoulder, but my choice of yarn was rather heavier than the original, so that might be part of the reason.

    The Puppy wool is very nice, although it felts pretty quickly even as it’s being knitted.  The colors are beautiful, the wool itself is pleasantly soft, and it comes in center-pull balls (so thoughtful).

    Ribwarmer

    A no-nonsense photograph, as we’re off to the Harvest Festival at school —

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    Booking Through Thursday: ‘Fess Up

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    Booking Through Thursday‘s questions for today call for a little confession —

    1. What books have you read that you hate to admit reading? (You can either limit this to recent reads or go way back in time. Your choice.)  I can think of two, one that I’m amused to confess that I read, and one that I now wish I hadn’t read. 
    2. Why? One was a certain novel — can’t remember the author or title at the moment — that was a time-travel story in which the heroine goes back to Elizabethan England, combining two favorite elements of mine.  It was good-humored but pretty sleazy.  I kept worrying about the poor heroine’s back, the rug burns she must have been getting from all of the sex on the floor.  I don’t think that was the point of the story.  I also read some years ago a (probably self-published) nonfiction book about the Lindbergh baby, whose author was determined to prove that Col. Lindbergh himself was responsible for the baby’s death.  The hypothesis made sense, but the author was so vindictive (and such a poor writer) that even years later it is unpleasant to think about.

  • Small Article of the Hand Knitting

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    I had a craving to knit something from the stuff I bought at GB Woollen in Kowloon Bay last July, the "Maurice" wool from a Japanese company called Puppy — I’m assuming that this link is the same company, but well, I just don’t know for sure.  This wool is in rich jewel-tones, thick and soft with the color shadings coming at fairly random moments, so that unlike, say, Silk Garden‘s blocks or stripes of color, these make subtle dashes.  Very pretty.  Like Silk Garden, too, it occasionally surprises with a burst of something new — I got through I think three balls before the turquoise joined in!

    I’ve just spent a lot of time, I confess, reading Babelfish Japanese-to-English translations from the Puppy page, things like, "The disappointment hue which it sees from the computer screen follows in the monitor and with actual hue it is accurate and there is a water service which will not agree."  (I can follow some of this, but the "water service" part has me stumped.)

    Ribwarmer_side1

    I am in fact making Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Ribwarmer from Knitting Workshop.  The weather is cooler, and my thoughts turn to sweaters and scarves.  This piece looks reassuringly just like the diagram in the book — here one side front is on the left, one side back on the right, with the open rectangle being the armhole (I decided to graft the shoulder seams instead of sewing them, so cast on provisionally).  I haven’t done many of EZ’s patterns.  She seems to be the country mouse to Rowan’s city mouse, but then I’ve always been torn between the two.

    Here is a close-up — you can see in some places how the colors blend sometimes two at a time, teal with rose, olive with teal, as they shift.

    Maurice_detail

    ("Ribwarmer"!  It’s, what, all of 60F/15C outside.  I’m such a lightweight.)

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    Saturday Stuff

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    Some miscellaneous thoughts this evening —

    I’ve never actually knitted with the jewelry kind of stitch markers before this — always admired the variety and beauty of ones I’ve seen on other people’s blogs — but find myself a little bit vexed by the maneuvers I have to go through to work with these.  A marker between two RS knit stitches isn’t a problem — it’s when the marker is hanging on the other side of the work, and you must move the yarn to the front, slip the marker, and put the yarn back, or between a knit/purl or purl/knit sequence and you must move the marker either before or after you move the yarn for the different stitch, and it makes a difference, depending on which is first in the combination.  Otherwise, Belle ends up with the yarn strapped around her waist, thus —

    Oversized_stitchmarker

    But it’s a niggly annoyance, and not yet enough to make me take out the markers altogether!

    Well, tomorrow is my choir’s concert, so I can at last get Honegger‘s "King David" out of my head.  A strange, clashing, cacophanous piece, and hard to sing.  If I liked it, the difficulty in singing it wouldn’t be a problem, but unfortunately the parts I do like are few and far between the parts I don’t.  I am certainly looking forward to starting on Vivaldi’s "Gloria" on Monday for the Christmas concert!  (I adore Vivaldi.  Some people complain about his repetitiveness — I can’t remember at the moment who quipped that Vivaldi "wrote the same concerto 500 times" — but it doesn’t bother me.  I find his music, even the often-melancholy cello concertos, to be wonderfully soul-refreshing, and it is rare that my spirits are not lifted by a lute concerto.  The "repetitiveness" I see as a friendly familiarity, a recognizability, like so much of Mozart, or even Dickens or Jane Austen.)

    The girls and I watched our new "Cinderella" DVD last night, while I knitted.  They were frightened by the stepmother — that gloomy hallway, with her wicked eyes glowing in the shadows of the bedcurtains — and they laughed out loud at the clever mice outwitting that mean old cat.  Laura’s face as she watched Cinderella’s transformation from servant girl to princess was as beautiful and moving as the moment.

    Cinder5

    By the way; there is an interesting article at Mouse Planet (where this image is from) about the story, its various versions and what Walt Disney took from each, and lessons to be learned from the story.

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    Booking Through Thursday: Book Clubs

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    Today’s Booking Through Thursday is about reading groups —

    This refers to the reading type of book club, where members all read the same book, then gather to discuss it.

    1. Do you, or have you, ever belonged to a book club? No, I never have.  I’ve thought about it, and am still tempted now and then to join one of the two knitting/reading online groups I know of, Knit One, Read Too and Knit the Classics.
    2. Why, or why not? I like the idea of reading and talking about a book with other people — like-minded or not, as it may be.  My senior project class was on Mark Twain, and we read a great number of his books and discussed them excitedly, passionately, late into the night, and still managed to leave a lot to be said.  Great fun.  Why I haven’t joined a book group is mostly due to time, that reading on a fairly strict timetable is still difficult for me, both because I don’t like being rushed and because I have a lot of distractions.  (I also have a nagging reluctance to read books that I have little or no interest in.  Yes, there are many wonderful books out there that I would not have ordinarily given a second look.  But there are many that I am interested in and I haven’t read yet.  I might find that vowing to overcome my bias against "the uninteresting choice of the month" is finally what does get me to join a reading club!
    3. If you are in a book club, or were once, what did you like about it?
    4. What did you dislike about the book club?

    (Funny, what I have reservations about with knitalongs — making the same thing as everybody else — is actually what I would like about reading clubs — reading the same thing, and talking about it, finding out what other people see in a work, perhaps different from my reading and perhaps not, deepening and enriching the reading experience for everyone.  That said, it is often very interesting to see the different ways that people can make a Clapotis….)

Knitting, reading, other stuff.

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