off to the beach

I'm going to be spending the next couple of weeks in the Dominican Republic, staying in my sister-in-law's house on the northeast coast. She and her husband have built their dream home on a hill up from a quiet beach there and hope to retire in a few more years and spend their time tending their gardens and enjoying the peace and quiet.

When I met my husband's family almost 30 years ago, my then future sister-in-law impressed me as one of the hardest working women I'd ever met. She and her husband have their own business that they've built up over the last 20 or so years and their house is the result of many seven day work weeks and a lot of sacrifice.

If anyone deserves a dream house, it's my sister-in-law.

The knitting is packed and I'm off. See you in a couple of weeks. :)

happy fourth

lazy days of summer sometimes mean that an old photo gets called in to make a repeat appearance...

here's to a safe and peaceful Independence Day for all.

year's end

The school year is coming to an end and my students have completed the knitting for our Keep the Fleece scarf. The scarf is 420 rows long and that means my students raised $420 for Heifer International. I'm very proud of them.

a moment of truth

One of my fourth graders asked me if I finished the Crossroads Vest. When I said yes, she asked me to bring it in to show the class. I did and was asked to try it on. I put it on and waited for the reaction.

Big silence. I knew what was coming. Julianne said, "Don't you think it's a little bit big on you?"

They all knew how I had adapted the pattern to make it smaller, but apparently the modifications weren't enough and it has so much ease that it fits me like I'm wearing a cardboard box. I purposely knit it at a very tight gauge because I made it for use as a layering garment under my denim jacket. So forget about any draping or clinging. It's like wearing a bullet-proof vest.

I see my summer project very clearly. I'll be ripping out the side seams, cutting away a total of six inches or so of knitted fabric and seaming the whole thing back up. If I don't do this, I know perfectly well I will never, ever put this vest on no matter how cold it is under my jacket.

eleven months lace?

I finished the Japanese Feather Stole and when I went to my Ravelry projects page to enter the completion date, I saw that it had been exactly eleven months from cast on to bind off. That's a bit long for a project to be on needles, I thought.

But when I took the next project, the Honeybee Stole, out of the basket I realized that I had begun that one last August. I don't want to start a trend of taking just shy of a year to complete my lace projects so I'm getting busy. Honeybee is bigger and more involved than the Japanese Feather, but I'm familiar with the pattern having knit the triangular shawl version over a year ago.

I sat down with it last night and am now almost finished with the first section. I'm enjoying this project more because the yarn's colors are subtler and the yarn itself, being wool, is less slippery than the silk I used for the Japanese Feather.

As summer approaches, with the promise of hours upon hours of time for knitting and reading, the cool, mossy green is a treat for the eyes.

(this post has been edited to add a photo of the completed Japanese Feather Stole; the lace was blocked very severely to open up the yarnovers, emphasizing the 'seaweedy' look of the pattern)

antidote

Sticking to my monogamous knitting plan, I'm working diligently on the color riot that is the Japanese Feather stole, but I did take a needed break this afternoon to sew buttons on the Crossroads Vest that I finished knitting back in April.

The buttons are plain pewter and they, along with the lovely warm grey of the Finn wool, provided a nice rest for my eyes.

Four more repeats of the 28-row lace pattern to go and the Japanese Feather will be finished and looking for a good home.

remember this?

Many months ago I bought a very lovely skein of Handmaiden Silk laceweight that reminded me of pansies. I sort of fell out of love with the yarn as I wound it into a center-pull ball and the colors began to emerge as they appear in the knitted up fabric. My favorite color in the skein, a purplish blue, faded away to almost undetectable in the knitting, and my least favorite, the mulberry, moved front and center.

Still, I cast on for the Japanese Feather stole and took this photo after completing one 28-row pattern repeat. I put it aside for months and just recently took it back out again. Six repeats later, it looks very much the same, there's just more of it.

I've written before about my relationship with variegated yarns. Often awestruck by a beautiful combination of colors, I am almost always less enamoured by the appearance of the same colors once knit up.

I recently bought the book Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn not for the sock patterns but for the detailed discussion of the nature of variegated yarns. After reading the author's analysis of these yarns, I will never approach the purchase of a variegated yarn in the same way I have in the past. Her insights have helped me to recognize that the dyer did his or her job and it's up to me as the knitter to pair that work with mine, choosing a design that will enhance the nature of the dye job. I will apply this new knowledge to the variegateds I already own, but I don't see many myself adding many more to my stash.

I'm working on the stole now and am about halfway through the total length. I have been very disciplined lately to finish up the projects on needles and not cast on for anything new until this stole and another lace project that's been hanging around far too long are completed. I usually get this clear-the-knitting-decks urge as New Year's approaches, but summer is always high knitting season for me and I'm looking forward to two months of fresh knitting.

It's probably also a good thing to keep a single-minded focus on this particular project that I'm not loving. It has driven home that I can admire something aesthetically without necessarily wanting to own that thing or live with it. I am recognizing that I am happier working with texture and structure and that strongly variegated handpainted yarns distract me from that pleasure.

As I work on this stole I have a stack of books I've been looking at for inspiration. At the top of the pile are Marianne Isager's Japanese Inspired Knits and Classic Knits. The more I look at Isager's designs, the more I find in them that fascinates me.

defining achievement

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time you're probably aware that I teach elementary school, fourth grade this year, and that I've taught my students to weave and to knit.

When I told my students about the Keep the Fleece Project, they wanted to participate and form our own team. As part of our unit of study for persuasive writing, they drafted a fundraising letter that they then took home and shared with family and friends. In less than 2 weeks, my 17 students have raised over $300.

The Project involves knitting one row for every dollar donated on a scarf that will be joined with scarves from other teams all over the country. The name my students chose for our team, by the way, is Knitters for Good to show, they said, that they're knitting for a good cause and because they intend to be knitters for life. Gotta love 'em.

The knitting has begun and here is our top fundraiser with wool and needles in hand, knitting her bit.

My school's prinicipal is big on recognizing academic achievement, especially those high scores on standardized tests, and I do think that's important. I also think it's important to recognize things that aren't quite so easily measured, such as altruism and empathy. So I created a special certificate to give to each of my students at today's awards assembly along with the 'perfect attendance', 'most improved in English Language Arts', and the other usual awards.

Here it is, the 2009 "Empathy Award" for Outstanding Achievement in Charitable Fundraising ~