In every knitters life, things don’t always turn out exactly as planned. Gauge can cause us to wonder why we are knitting for an adult whose head is 10″ in circumference or whose sweater back measures 55″. The first measurement conjures up thoughts of alien life forms

while the second would be loose on most sumo wrestlers in their prime.

Stitches can be dropped and cause us no end of wonder. Patterns or colors can suddenly change course as if the project were taken over by the *nasty knitting fairies to become discordant, as they say in the music world.

So, what’s a knitter to do. Throw the knitting in a corner only to be retrieved years later when small rodents have taken up residence in the warm, woolen home. Return to the yarn shop demanding, a refund for yarn purchased on sale months earlier and wound into lovely balls, all because you can’t get gauge. (This really has happened!) Or calmly venture on and employ the humor of knitters… **”Frog” it or ***”Tink” it.

Over the course of my knitting life, I have picked up many dropped stitches, frogged more projects than I care to admit, and I tink on such a regular basis it’s any wonder that heads or hands ever get covered when the temperatures drop. Every day I am asked for advice about knitting and some days I worry that the truth of knitting will cause everyone to give up for good.
Knitting is a human activity and perfection can suck the joy out of most projects. This is not to say that mistakes should never be corrected, projects started once again or glaring errors redone. We must, from time to time, ask ourselves to what degree of perfection are you willing to go in pursuit of the perfect (insert project here) for that lucky recipient.

The truth is this knitting thing takes time and effort and will bring about joy, even if you don’t believe it today. I know this to be especially true today. I am finishing a 30 day challenge at my yoga studio, Perfect Balance. When I began, I never would have believed I could sit crossed legged for more than a few minutes and yesterday, day 29, I sat that way for almost 3 minutes, without fidgeting too much. Today, I reach day 30 and before you ask me the question, “So what do you get if you reach 30 days in this challenge?” just watch me balance on one foot for a few seconds before falling head first into the pile of unfinished sweaters, socks and hats waiting for my return.

*Nasty knitting fairies - those otherwise adorable creatures who appear during the darkest hours of the night and knit where purls must go. They are also known to change direction on complicated patterns. At the current time, there is no known cure for these otherwise adorable creatures although much discussion concerning trapping is taking place in Canada.
**Frog - Where the knitter must, “rip it, rip it.”
***Tink - to knit backwards.

 

Today, the last day of January 2010, is another snowy day. Quite beautiful really when the snow falls lightly and softens all the hard edges of the landscape. I love days like today. It is especially bright outside surrounded by white. This Christmas I received this wonderful book by Vivian Swift.

The inside jacket states, “A charming, illustrated celebration of puttering, doodling, daydreaming, and settling down after years on the road,” and this is indeed what it is. This book celebrates the simplicity of all that surrounds us from suit cases to the night sky. I love Swift’s recognition of beauty in the day-to-day.

Our recent visitor, Mary Scott Huff

shared her design notebook with us, a moleskin journal where all her designs, thoughts and bits of inspiration are stored. I happened to run to the book store for a gift this week and spotted an entire section of Moleskin journals near the check out counter. Too tempting to pass up, I grabbed two… one is a traditional unlined journal and the other has graph paper, which is perfect for designing stranded knitting patterns.
Inspiration began during lunch Friday, with journal opened, pencil at the ready and a book of Turkish patterns to knit that I’ve had for years. The fun began when I opened the book and realized that it was (oops) upside down. The “Hook” pattern suddenly turned into the wave and the “Kilim” when turned sideways became a mountain. Suddenly, my husband’s hat design took on a new life.

Inspiration takes form when small bits of preparation are in place. Find your inspiration wherever you will and enjoy the process.

 

Miss Mary Scott Huff arrived mid-day Friday during a ferocious blizzard.

The shop and class attendees appreciated the blizzard-like activities Mary brought our way with her energy and wit. She had an uncanny ability to make everyone a bit wacky all weekend.

She also made us hug and stretch and ENJOY our knitting!

And now we stretch. Oh, that feels so good!

And we hug some more…

A more dedicated group of Mad Hatters and Selbuvotters would be hard to find, even in the outer Selbu region of Norway.
We designed and knit.

We laughed and knit and worked really hard.

There was always time for a smile, especially from new friends.

We stomped our feet (some to keep from freezing during the storm) but none of that phased our new best friend from Portland, Miss Mary Scott Huff. In fact, she was game to put on my hundred year old boots so as not to get lost in the drifts. And the best part, she liked the snow and all the Wild Purls knitters and WE LOVED HER!

If you missed the festivities, don’t worry, we can’t live without her and we will invite her back soon. And now that we can design, we may never look at a snowflake quite the same. They really are beautiful, even when we have to go shovel our way to the mailbox.

 

We are all looking forward to the arrival of Mary Scott Huff this Friday and Saturday, January 22nd and 23rd. Anyone who juggles yarn,

eats yarn

or writes beautiful books,

piques the interest of every knitter.

I don’t know about you but I have always had a secret thought that if we could only eat yarn, we wouldn’t have to stop knitting to fix dinner. I am so excited to meet Mary!

 

A colonnade is a characteristic in the buildings of Classical architecture, and consists of a row of vertical columns joined horizontally by an entablature, or a series of bands and moldings that sat above it, resting upon the column capitals. These bands can be highly decorated with relief sculpture.

Often, a classical building consisted of several colonnades, several rows deep. In Classical architecture, the front row or rows is known as the portico, and the surrounding colonnades (around the sides and back) are known as the peristyle.

I always wonder the purpose or thought behind titles. After discovering the true meaning of “colonnade”, it’s obvious why the designer, Stephen West of Westknits, chose this word to title his popular fall shawl/scarf on knitty.com. The series of columns create a colonnade but there is a horizontal joining each of the columns. These horizontals helped me “see” the pattern more easily, allowing mistakes to be seen and fixed more easily.

This is an easy pattern, but tricky at the same time. The knitter must keep careful track of the yo2 for they come at different places on each row, including before and after the k2tog. I suppose this is just everyday stuff for the average lace knitter, but since I am just a regular knitter, these tricky instructions are new to me.

I decided to offer this class at Wild Purls (in March), 1) because the pattern intrigued me in the different manners it could be worn,(not a granny shawl) 2) I liked that it only used 3 skeins of my favorite yarn, Manos del Uraguay (I could buy my fave without blowing my Christmas gift cards) and 3) that it introduced lace knitting in a way that could be easily knit by an adventurous knitter. And since that’s kind of how I feel about my knitting most of the time, I thought there might be others (like in Lost) like me out there, waiting to discover another world on the same knitting island. Wow, I really digressed.