The Confluence of Ideas

Confluence is a sweet little shawlette, a play on my favorite theme of a center panel with neck shaping inserted into a top down triangle shawl. It is mostly garter stitch, which is so pleasing, except for the lace panel which is stockinette lace with a few well chosen beads. Simple and charming.



I promised a release a couple of days ago. Obviously, Confluence is not out yet, and for a good reason.

For a good while now, I have been receiving occasional letters from sight impaired knitters who thank me for taking the time to write out line by line instructions in my patterns.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense that sight impaired or blind knitters would need written instructions in order to knit lace, or to knit anything for that matter. As I understand it, there are readers available on many computers for this purpose, and if not, some knitters will engage sighted people to read the pattern to them as they knit, or record the pattern instructions for later playback, an ingenious idea! I am reminded of Lucy Neatby's recent writing about how hard it is to keep your attention where it belongs, on your knitting, while at the same time trying to focus your eyes on multiple things (chart, pattern, knitting) and all the while, manage to knit a complicated pattern. Lucy recommends recording yourself reading the lines of the pattern instruction at the speed you like to knit so you can keep your eyes and your attention on your knitting. Brilliant.

Anyway, when I get a letter of this sort from a knitter I generally respond with apologies that not EVERY pattern can be written out line by line. And this is true.. Shetland Garden, for instance, would be a book-length pattern if it had written instructions. But these communications give me a good kind of reboot as I consider what the world would be like without all different sorts of knitters with all the different life experiences we bring to the craft.

It still blows me away that there are blind and sight impaired lace knitters out there. If you are one of those brave and fearless knitters, I bow my deepest, most humble bow to you.

As much as I love knitting from charts, and as many times as I have cajoled and begged and even ordered my students to knit from charts, all of that pales in the face of knitterly courage that will not accept limitations.

So, come time to release a new pattern, I must assess whether to bite the proverbial bullet and write everything out "longhand" as well as provide charts. Sometimes, like for Shetland Garden, I feel it would confuse and not enlighten, so it is left out. Sometimes it is the right thing to write it out.. and then there is always the worry that with more words on the pages, there are more possibilities for published errors, every designer's nightmare.

All this is by way of explanation of the lateness of Confluence's publication. I promised it would be out two days ago, but here I am. I hope the new written instructions will be worth the wait for those who need them in order to knit.

New Year, New Lace

Harbour Lights has some new fans over at the IcelandicLaceShawl group on Yahoo. They voted to start a KAL featuring my pattern on January 1, 2009. I have become a member of their group and they are a very enthusiastic bunch over there!

You too can join them if you have been hankering to knit this shawl...

What a great way to start the year...

An Unexpected Pleasure

I just spent most of the weekend in the company of one of the knitting world's most treasured teachers, Susanna Hanssen. And what a pleasure it was.

The West Coast Knitters' Guild sponsored the weekend, and it was superbly organized by their president, the lovely Holli Yeoh and her staff, and well housed in a setting with plenty of natural light and great food.

But the main attraction was, of course, Susanna. She is a great teacher. Now I know what my friends who go to Madrona are going on about when they rave about her. Friday evening was an overview of Norwegian knitting, which has always intrigued and fascinated me. I am considerably more informed now than I was before Susanna's talk, and came away with a wonderful flavor of the past and present traditions. Susanna is a very entertaining speaker, and we were treated to many anecdotes and stories along the way.



Yesterday was the true prize though... a whole day's workshop on the Bohus Stickning company and the legacy it left, crowned by the opportunity to actually view and touch (with white cotton gloves, natch) about ten of the original vintage Bohus garments and accessories. We even got to knit a little wristlet in yarn and colors that are certified to match the *real* Blue Shimmer. Be still, my heart.


Susanna, in her wisdom, allowed us to get right into the knitting first, knowing that as knitters we would be figety unless we could be doing something with our hands. We over ambitiously, as she put it, dove into the tiny skeins and wound them into tiny balls. I looked over and Mel, my workshop mate, had wound hers into the most perfect little balls I had ever seen, so I had to take a picture:



As pleasurable as the knitting was (and it was VERY pleasurable), it was ecstasy to fondle the Bohus garments. Susanna encouraged us to mentally take the sweaters apart and figure out how they were constructed, which wasn't always easy. Those Bohus knitters did things in ways that were designed to be haute couture, not knitterly. But mostly, it was so much fun to imagine the hands that knit the sweaters and other items, and the people who had purchased and worn them. Some of them had been altered by their owners, or replaced parts of them when they were worn out. It was evident that they had been very loved.

















I know... sigh. It was heaven.

What's left to do but knit one? I will saving up for a while to do this myself, but you can go here to order your own beautiful Bohus sweater kits containing the same gorgeous merino/angora yarn that we had for our little wristlets, handdyed to exacting specifications in Sweden by Solveig Gustaffson. We also found out that Susanna volunteers her time to translate the English patterns from their original Swedish. If you would like to "pay it forward" in honor of her dedication and selflessness, you are asked to give a donation to Knitters without Borders.

We also learned that there will be a magnificent museum exhibition about the Bohus tradition next year (2009) in Minneapolis. Do go if you can.

The parting feeling for me was awe in this wonderful company, which schooled knitters in their techniques and left us with an enduring legacy of beautiful, artfully designed and executed garments. A tradition which I can only hope to continue in my own way...

Oh and by the way? I finished the first opera length Due Amori glove...

And now for something dark and silky...

It's out! It's out!

What, you may ask?

Why of course, Alt Fiber: 25 Projects for Knitting Green with Bamboo, Soy, Hemp, and More, Shannon Okey's newest knitting opus, which includes a stole design by yours truly!


And what is the stole like, do you say?

Well, as a matter of fact, it is a not-completely-rectangular type of stole, which in this case means that it includes the lovely little back panel treatment that I have been exploring lately in all my designs. Here is the schematic that I submitted to the book folks in the beginning (in case you are at all interested):

I have found that adding a little shaping to the back of a shawl or stole helps tremendously in the ability of the garment to feel comfortable and stay on the shoulders.

This particular design felt like a real departure from "the norm" and I walked on eggshells until I saw that it was indeed going to work out, quite well indeed as a matter of fact. Wearing this stole (which is really more of a wrap) is a lovely experience, and the long side panels look and feel like wings. Really nice to wrap and wrap and wrap around yourself.

The yarn is sea silk in the Midnight colorway. A sensuous experience in itself.

Here are a couple of (rather bad) pictures of the final product:



I really can't wait for the official book pictures to come out so I can salvage some self esteem and look good again, in print anyways...

From the Book Summary:

Twenty-five projects to knit and crochet using environmentally friendly plant fibers from a popular craft author, teacher, blogger, and shop owner.

Although DIYers have been using salvaged materials for years, the fastest growing trend in knitting and crochet takes reduce-reuse-recycle to a whole new level. In ALT FIBER, craft author and teacher Shannon Okey presents 25 patterns for sweaters, wraps, socks, hats, pillows, bags, and more using non-allergenic plant fibers. From the seaweed-derived Seacell yarn, which transmits vitamins and nutrients to the skin when worn, to soy-based yarns made from tofu manufacturing waste, alternative fibers are readily available, easy to care for, and good for the environment. And because these fibers work up, drape, and wear like no other yarns, Okey teaches crafters of all skill levels about each fiber's properties, how to incorporate them into existing patterns, and how to hand-dye them. Knitting green has never been so easy.

I haven't actually seen the book myself yet, but I have high hopes that the book truly delivers what it promises to. Please drop me a line and let me know what you think!

Fibre Ecstasy

A few hardy bloggers have already documented the weekend...

So here is my take on things to add to the pile.

Marilyn G. started things off with a bang on Friday night with the fashion show at Med Grill, a posh establishment on Fort Street in the Mosaic Bldg. No photos unfortunately, but I did get to wear the Harbour Lights shawl in public for the first time, and I got to see what the other fibre folk in Victoria have been up to. I saw some lovely, lovely pieces and met some wonderful knitters.

Saturday, again no pics, in the afternoon I gave a class on the beaded necklace design that I did a couple of years ago that I still regard as my play therapy project. You simply cannot remain in a bad mood and do this piece. It was a rather jolly class, thanks to all the glorious, sparkly beads that people brought to swap with their classmates. Beads do bring out the little kid in all of us, don't they??? To take advantage of the nice sunshine that was very kindly with us, we took our stuff outside and had our class right there by the marina. I wish I had kept an audio of the ships horns that seemed to echo from one side of the water to the other. It was really atmospheric.

In the evening, I gave a little talk to some lovely knitters, about life, knitting, and my incredibly fortunate career. I say that because I have only been a knitter for a few years and I still need to pinch myself to see if it's real that I am lucky enough to be working in the field I have come to love above all else. My audience was very kind, especially since it was my first time speaking about myself rather than just teaching folks about knitting, which I feel quite relaxed about and do quite often.

Here are some of the sweet faces I saw looking back at me, most holding their knitting:



The talk was given in the old part of town, near this bridge:


And near this square of interesting little shops, Bastien Square, where we found a great restaurant, ReBar. Here is the square and a couple pics of the interesting mosaics inside the place:




Sunday I checked out of the hotel, sorry to say goodbye to my little balcony overlooking a running fountain, which I particularly appreciated. We headed over to Saxe Point Park by the sea, a lovely spot for a fibre festival. Others have posted nicer pictures, but here are some high points that somehow made it into my camera:


My friend Annette, who was a guardian angel for the first leg of the trip...


My friend Mel, who found the elusive yarn she had been looking for to do a lovely Lyra...


My table at the Community Knitters.com booth...






...and spinners and knitters and yarn galore, along with beautiful views of the sea.

I had a wonderful time talking about lace, knitting, and fibre among the spinners, knitters and yes, miniature llamas. They were wonderful, happy creatures with long, long eyelashes.




And here is Mary Kozicki's highly original version of River Rock, which I love. It uses very fine yarn and tiny beads, looking more like a waterfall than a bubbling stream full of rocks. I appreciated her vision - so refined and beautiful. Please click on the picture and look at it bigger to get the full effect.


I am glad the day was wonderful because the trip carrying loads of stuff home without a vehicle (thank you forever and forever, J!) was, well, less than fun. But I am safe home now and recovering from the highs and lows of the weekend, waxing a little nostalgic about it all.

The best of all is that Harbour Lights is now officially available to all. Go here or here for more information about purchasing the pattern. And bless all of you for your letters impatiently looking forward to its release date!

A Great Start

My Yahoo group just got started on Norwegian Woods yesterday, and since I have confused some poor knitters with my description of the beginning rows of this shawl, I would like to present a little picture tutorial of the process.

The upshot: we make a tiny garter stitch rectangle and pick up stitches on two sides to make a vaguely horseshoe-shaped piece of knitting, which forms the center back of the shawl.

Here we go...

1. Cast on 7 stitches using your favorite cast on method. I used long tail cast on.

2. Knit 5 rows, creating a little garter stitch rectangle.

3. Keeping the same side facing you, i.e., without turning the piece onto its back, turn it 90 degrees clockwise, so the needle points upward.

4. The picture doesn't actually show me doing this, but next you pick up and knit three stitches from the narrow side of the rectangle (the one closest to the point of your needle). You are welcome to fudge these three stitches in any place you can. Now you can see 7 + 3 = 10 stitches on the needle.

5. Now turn the piece onto its back and get ready to knit across the 10 stitches.

6. I have now knit across the 10 stitches.

7. Keeping the same side facing you, i.e., without turning the piece on its back, turn the needle 90 degrees clockwise. Sound familiar?

8. You guessed it... we are now going to pick up 3 stitches from the other narrow side of the rectangle. 10 + 3 = 13 stitches.

9. I have turned the work over (actually the right side of the shawl) and I have worked across the 13 stitches, placing markers as the pattern asks. The markers show the beginning 3-stitch border, the first panel, the center seam stitch, the second panel, and the last 3-stitch border.

That wasn't so hard, was it? Now, go forth and knit...

10. The little start will form the center back of the shawl.

Happy shawl knitting, everyone!

Periwinkle Forest

I finished and blocked the Norwegian Woods scarf last night. Even though she is still damp and pinned, I had to show her to you in all of her beauty.



Periwinkle sea silk... mmm, yeah. The scarf took about 470 yards, which makes it perfect for one skein of malabrigo lace, but unfortunately just slightly over one 100 yd skein of sea silk. For beads, I used size 8/0 silver lined crystal triangles from Earth Faire. The pattern is mine... to be released sometime in the very near future.