A Bluestocking Knits

  • “Mu Qin Jie You Lai”

    Published by

    Bluestocking

    on

    ("The Mothers’ Day" in Mandarin, according to Laura’s lesson plan for last week!)

    We had a thunderstorm in the morning, but it was just a bit of rain by the time we went out.  We went to California Pizza Kitchen in Times Square for lunch and then — admire my cunning plan! — walked around the corner to look for this —

    New_style_yarn_1

    New Style Yarn Co., at their current location in 1/F 87 Percival Street in Causeway Bay.  We had a little trouble finding it, as not only do many of the shops neglect to put their numbers on the door or window (this is universal — why??), but I wasn’t expecting from the phone book address, which didn’t have the "1/F", that the shop might be upstairs.  I should know this by now, after two months in Hong Kong, shouldn’t I!  Well, David spotted the staircase (just behind the bicycle in the photo) with "New Style Yarn Co." painted in large, friendly letters on every other step, and there it was.

    There were half-a-dozen or so women knitting and chatting away around a big table in the middle of the little shop, and David sat on the girls while I browsed for a while, then told the smiling shoplady that I’d come back another day without the children, and we went out again.

    (I am on something of a quest to find the Hong Kong yarn shops listed here at WoolWorks.  It’s a ten-year-old list, but so far a number of them are still around.  I’ll email WoolWorks an update at the end of the summer.)

    Meandering up the streets afterwards we came upon, by happy coincidence,

    Paris_cotton_singlets

    Paris Cotton Singlets Co. Ltd., at 13 Pak Sha Road, also in Causeway Bay.  A strange combination of knitting wools and men’s sport shirts, the shirts available for browsing and the wools — a little bit of a lot of things, Rowan, Jaeger, Japanese and Italian brands — packed safely away in plastic bags behind the counter.  I did buy two balls of merino/acrylic, tentatively for socks.  It was a bit awkward, with the three salesmen all looking at me expectantly, as though perhaps I should already know what I want and simply point to it immediately.  I may go back and browse the Rowan and Jaeger books, though — it really would be a lot easier if I already had a pattern in mind….

    So this — not counting the spaghetti-sauce chins, the wet umbrellas, the thunder fears, and the fight over the pink plate at breakfast — was what I got for Mother’s Day, along with some very sweet smiles and kisses.

    Moms_day_haul

  • My Most-Used Knitted Object

    Published by

    Bluestocking

    on

    Becky of Knitting Interrupted wants to know what is your most-used knitting project?

    Well, I’d love to say that it’s something stylish like my Clapotis,

    Clapotis_small 

    which is certainly one of my favorite projects, both in the making and the wearing, but here in Hong Kong it’s just too warm now, except if I crank up the air conditioner, and back home in Southern California there will be only perhaps four months of the year when I’ll be able to wear it, not counting the odd autumn evening outdoors when I want to toss it around my shoulders.

    Another candidate is a shawl I started just before my oldest daughter was born, out of some Jaeger silk/wool blend that my mom gave me.  I basically made up the pattern as I went along, knitting a stockinette stitch square from the center out until I ran out of the main color, a sort of golden-brown putty, then worked the border in Old Shale in red and white with the last ball of the brown.  This color is not really one that I would have chosen myself, but the finished shawl is big, soft, and very cozy, just the thing when curling up with a book on a rainy afternoon.

    But, to be perfectly honest, the knitted things I use the most are these —

    Dishcloths

    Plain old garter stitch squares, in Sugar ‘N Cream kitchen cotton worked from corner to corner.  I’m afraid that’s a curry stain on one of them.  We use them every day, these humble little workhorses.  I’ve made dozens.  About four bucks for two balls at Michaels gets you five dishcloths — can’t beat that.

  • “Better the Knitting Bluestocking You Know….”

    Published by

    Bluestocking

    on

    Some of my favorite Bluestocking-related sayings form Proverb Generator —

    After a storm comes the Knitting Bluestocking.

    A Knitting Bluestocking a day keeps the doctor away.

    One good Knitting Bluestocking deserves another.

    Every Knitting Bluestocking tells a story.

    Don’t put all your eggs in one Knitting Bluestocking.

    A woman’s place is in the Knitting Bluestocking.

    Every Knitting Bluestocking has a silver lining.

  • ,

    Knitting My Genealogy

    Published by

    Bluestocking

    on

    Heidi‘s not-so-secret-anymore mention of genealogy got me thinking about how similar genealogy and knitting can be to the passionate.

    I’m not sure that you can really blog about genealogy, as the day-to-day business of it might be a little, well, dull to read about — the results can be fascinating even to the unrelated reader, but the progress is more solitary, more intellectual than knitting.  The genealogist can certainly post results on the internet though, and have lots of people from all over the country read it.  (Mine are here at RootsWeb.)

    Having said that the day-to-day business of genealogy might be dull to others, it can certainly help to break down a "brick wall" by having others look at your problem, in the same way that posting a photo of your knitting project can get you feedback and advice. 

    You can knit while you wait for your turn at the microfiche reader, and you can look up census returns online at Ancestry.com while you wait for your freshly-blocked cardigan to dry.

    Very little equipment is really necessary to knit or to do genealogy, but it sure manages to accumulate pretty fast.  ("Honey, do you really need another pattern book/Swedish genealogy manual/magnifying glass/set of rosewood circulars?")  Supplies are another matter — you always need more yarn, you always need more paper or computer memory, and storage space for all of these!

    A research trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City is for the genealogist the equivalent of the knitter’s pilgrimage to Rowan in Holmfirth or Meg Swansen in Wisconsin.

    Coming across a photograph of your great-great-grandmother in a knitted shawl would make you delirious with joy.

    The feel and smell of a century-old letter can thrill you just as much as the softness of a fine alpaca fingering-weight against your cheek.

    Finding a way to organize and index your collection of vital records can be just as tedious and satisfying as organizing your knitting patterns.  You can also write your own software for either.

    A knitter will sit with a Norwegian dictionary and translate word-by-word a pattern for a lusekøfte as willingly as a genealogist will translate 19th-century christening records from Lillehammer.

    You can bond with a family member by knitting together or by researching the same family line.

    Ripping out weeks of work on a lace pattern is as frustrating as losing a folder of notes from that library visit.

    Waiting for the UPS man to bring your backordered Koigu keeps you on tenterhooks exactly the same way as does waiting for the mailman to bring those death certificates from the Pennsylvania Department of Records.

    People who just aren’t interested in knitting or genealogy have no clue why you get such a kick out of the littlest things.

  • Hubris

    Published by

    Bluestocking

    on

    I got a little over-confident the other day, and stopped counting, assuming that I knew perfectly well what I was doing.  Hah!  Found that on one of the little "fans" I had some eighteen stitches instead of thirteen.  I tried to drop the stitches down at that point —

    Sigh

    but was completely stumped by the multiple decrease at the left of the fan.  Adding or taking out yarn-overs I could have managed, but the decrease — which involves a complicated procedure of sl knitwises, K3tog tbls, and pass-overs — no.  I figured that I would have far too much yarn at these points anyway, even if I did get it back together in the proper order, and it would be too loose — so out it came.

    After laboriously taking two rows out, one stitch at a time, I pulled the whole thing off the needle and smoothed it out on the floor, ripped back down to the mistake and rewound the ball, then poked the needle back into the stitches.  No photo for posterity, because at this point, Julia decided that the ball of yarn made a wonderful boat with a stray bit of yellow construction paper stuck into it for a sail.

    But 48 hours or so later, I am well past the point at which I had to stop, and I am now counting every fan pattern as I make it.  Lesson learned!

  • Gardens of Home

    Published by

    Bluestocking

    on

    Garden_april_fromsouth_2

    From some home a jade flute sends dark notes drifting,
    Scattering on the spring wind that fills Lo-yang.
    Tonight, if we should hear the willow-breaking song,
    Who could help but long for the gardens of home?

    "Spring Night" by Li Po (701-762)

  • ,

    Next!

    Published by

    Bluestocking

    on

    Now, on to the "Ostrich Plume Lace Throw" from "Vogue Knitting Baby Blankets".  This pattern is really charming.  I want to make something for the end of our bed, or for the armchair that I hope to get (soon!) for our bedroom at home.

    I have a great many balls of Rowan "Calmer", a lovely springy cotton/microfiber blend, in #462 Chiffon, a soft mauve.  I don’t know how far this will go in the ostrich plume pattern, so I have to work a kind of sacrificial swatch — knit to the end of a ball and calculate the area of the swatch, so that I know how big I can make the throw.  (I brought this yarn from home.)

    Swatching_ostrich_plume_1

    What do you know, that high school math does come in handy sometimes!

  • , ,

    Thoughts on “Ene’s Scarf”

    Published by

    Bluestocking

    on

    Enes_scarf_1

    Finished "Ene’s Scarf" yesterday morning.  All things considered, it is a fairly easy knit, for lace.  The main pattern is easy to memorize, thus I found myself daydreaming and adding a yo where I wasn’t supposed to, but the mistakes are easy to catch (the pattern will be obviously out of sync at the exact point of the mistake) and easy to fix.

    It’s a little difficult to visualize how the scarf will come together at first, but when you understand that the garter stitch "edging" is actually the top edge of the shawl (the hypotenuse, if you will), it becomes clear.

    Ene_blocking_1 

    The Merinogold is very pleasant to work with, very soft and springy.  It splits occasionally, but not enough to be annoying — it doesn’t splice very well, but I was just working with Silk Garden, which makes a really sturdy, practically invisible join (the clingy mohair or the silk?), so the merino had a hard act to follow.  It does have a strange mothbally smell when wet, but that shouldn’t be a problem once it is dry.

    I like the cast-on, the knitted method (as opposed to the usual cable cast-on) used with yarn doubled.  This cast-on usually looks a bit limp, but with the doubled yarn it has an interesting almost braided twist look.  I wasn’t terribly impressed with the sl 1 knitwise, K2 tog, psso combination — my psso stitches always look a bit straggly — and would recommend trying sl next 3 knitwise, K3 tog tbl as a possible alternative.  I would also recommend swatching on the lace pattern instead of st st, as I tend to knit a lot looser in lace (why did I forget this?), and my scarf came out a bit bigger than the original.

    Ene_stitchdetail_1

    One of the most fun things about this pattern is that even though it starts off with a rather appalling 375 sts, the decreases come thick and fast, so by the time of the second repeat of Chart 3, it felt like I was really sailing along.  It was amazing, how much quicker the chart repeats became!

  • ,

    “Ene” Half Way

    Published by

    Bluestocking

    on

    Went to Cheer Wool this afternoon, to get more of the merino for "Ene’s Scarf" — don’t know what happened with my math, as 125m x 6 = 750m, which should have been plenty for the 320m x 2 = 640m of the lace weight silk blend in the original, but it was not, by far.  Anyway, there were four balls left on the shelf, so I hope that it’s enough.  The girls were absolute terrors — I keep hoping despite all evidence that they will be calm and well-behaved enough to let me browse in a yarn shop for ten or fifteen minutes.  Luckily there were at least three salesladies there, and they whisked me through buying and bagging in about a minute.  I don’t know if they were sympathetic or just worried about their shop, but the end result was much the same!

    Hard to believe that these little sweethearts were the same screaming monsters of less than an hour before!

    [This photo has been removed.  Sorry.]

    So this is where "Ene" is, nearing the end of the second repeat of Chart 3.  It is a bit of a slog at the beginning, with so many stitches to get through just to finish one row, but it’s much faster now, not only with the lacier pattern in the main section, but also with the advancing decreases.

    Ene_halfway

  • Blog Stuff

    Published by

    Bluestocking

    on

    Finally got the banner picture added last night, David doing the work and me directing over his shoulder.  We couldn’t figure out why the picture didn’t want to load.  Maybe it had something to do with the fact that this is our second blog, and TypePad was a bit confused?  Who knows.  It works now, and I’m pretty happy with the results — although the perfectionist in me wishes that the margins in the text box could be improved a bit….

    The painting is "Virginia Woolf Knitting" by her sister Vanessa Bell, circa 1912.  I can’t seem to make two "About" pages, so I won’t be able to credit the picture properly until we come home from Hong Kong, and aren’t using the page for our family blog any more.  (The copyright of this image is held by the National Portrait Gallery (London), and its reproduction here is in no way intended to profit from said copyright.)

    This from Julia, age three, home sick from school with a cold this morning: "Mommy, are you doing enealogy [genealogy]?"  "No, I’m blogging.  That’s a funny word, isn’t it."  "It is a funny word."

Knitting, reading, other stuff.

Let’s connect

Recent posts