it’s the one

after lots of

false starts and stops,

i have ended up with just the yarn

to make exactly the hat that i was looking for.

yes, finally. ahh.

the test knitting has begun. final photos

might be able to happen tomorrow depending upon

weather and availability.

tech editing and layout are next…

then the new pattern can be released.

until then,

let me introduce ‘sinew’:

slouchy when worn straight up,

fitted when worn with the brim folded precisely.

warm, without being bulky or restrictively tight.

it is just what i wanted.sinew 4sqfor the record: straight up simple is not the easiest to do.

there’s nowhere to hide decreases or shaping.

every stitch has to ‘play nice’

with all the others.

every stitch.

whew.

‘hide’ taken from 119:19 of the psalms.

mondays with mrs. crosby: four

it is cold outside,

and very, very white.

the way that winter can lack color,

is hard for my head to work with at times.

so this week, i jumped into writing a new pattern

 with mrs. crosby’s ‘new leaf’ colorway (scroll down to see, it’s the top lefthand colorway).

just holding it makes me feel warm,

ju 1like spring is closer than the calendar suggests.

i’m so happy to be near things

that make me feel like that at this time of year.

‘leaf’ taken from 8:11 in genesis.

‘mondays with mrs. crosby’ is an ongoing series of posts

(to be posted on mondays, of course),

detailing a current collaboration between mrs. crosby yarns

and me. stay tuned.

a word for 2016

have you seen people on social media

talking about choosing their ‘word for the year’?

the idea is to pick a theme word:

to remind you of your goals, when you get distracted,

to clarify things when it all feels overwhelming.

typically, i am not

a fan of new year’s resolutions.

they seem too much like hype vs. realistic

and not enough follow through in general to interest me.

but the idea of a word, a cairn of sorts, to aid in the journey i hope to take in 2016?

the more i thought about specifically that,

the more i liked the idea.

i’m late in choosing,

but a couple of days ago out playing in the snow

i found my word (and 2016 has 49.5 wks left, so there’s plenty of time really).

i’m most often the most moved by visual things,

so here’s the photo that made me decide on the word.FullSizeRender

the word itself is ‘burrow’.

as in: to make a hole or tunnel, especially to use as a dwelling.

to me it also means a warm, safe place that you hole up in

like a bear’s winter den or even the shady tree

that a lion lives under.

for me in 2016, it means to burrow down past all the

stuff and layers (of both the physical and the emotional kinds)

that keep me from

getting at the real heart of what i want to spend my time on.

included will be weeding out distractions,

to free up both room space

and space in my head…

may the end of 2016 find me closer to being in the ‘right place’

inside and out, because i have burrowed down into the sweet spot

that has then become my burrow.

oh yeah.

‘den’ taken from 6:17 of daniel.

mondays with mrs. crosby: three

note: i posted this on monday.

ok, i was sure that i had posted this on monday,

until i stopped by the blog today to post something new and found it waiting for me here.

sorry. i’m readying for another stroll now if anyone wants to come along…

*

how fabulous to start the day off with

a sense of satisfaction!

‘jaunt’ is done

and oh so ready to go for a nice leisurely stroll.

who’s coming with me?

'jaunt' in pocket

‘with me’ taken from 21:6 of genesis.

‘mondays with mrs. crosby’ is an ongoing series of posts

(to be posted on mondays, of course),

detailing a current collaboration between mrs. crosby yarns

and me. stay tuned.

in search of ‘the hat’

i have long been

in search of ‘the hat’.

it has streamlined ribbing,

fast decreases that allow the top to lie nearly flat

while at the same time puckering, intentionally, just a bit.

the stitches are small,

the yarn fine, but even more importantly it is airy and light.

the closest i’ve ever come

is a machine made, store bought one

and that is so not what i had in mind.

a while back i got two skeins of berroco folio

with the intention

of making a hat like billy gibbons’.

this dk weight yarn is soft and weighs next to nothing.

i thought this would give just the right drape to the faux dreads.

in reality, the viscose in the mix makes it almost slippery

which makes manipulating the ‘dread’ stitch pattern a chore

and no matter how cool something looks, i don’t want it to be a chore to make.

so, this week i revisited (been doing a lot of that lately)

the untouched beginnings

of my billy gibbons hat and rolled the lovely

folio back up into a new ball of ‘ready to become’.IMG_2299

decided somewhere in the midst of the rolling, that perhaps this was ‘the yarn’

to make ‘the hat’ with.

a few hours of pleasant knitting later

 and i am 2/3rds of the way to the firm possibility of ‘the hat’.

feeling so excited about it,

that last night when it got too dark to continue the actual knitting,

i wrote out the decreases

this, my friends is just not the way that i usually do things.

my definitions of hat ‘decreases’ are the things that you put lifelines in for

because you wing them as you go

so as to avoid having to write

the actual math out first

(i’m a bad designer, i know, but not this time).

so, if all goes smoothly after the kiddos go to bed,

i should know by midnight if this is ‘the hat’ or if i’ve not quite found ‘it’ yet.

itching to knit a bit more to find out…

‘wing’ taken from 19:4 of exodus.

the wow

leslie wind

creates shawl pins and other useful things

(my very favorite thing is her cable needle rings: so clever, so practical)

with wire, tiny hammers, wire cutters and sweat.

truly, i never saw her sweat,

but when i signed up to be taught by leslie at a lys,

using her tools and wire to create a thing of my own, i sweat (liberally).

‘you can make anything you want’ is the way she started.

so i grabbed a pen and drew out a swirling thing that i’d had in my mind lately.

‘do you want me to get you started?’ she asked,

and i nodded my head in response

hoping that it wasn’t completely obvious that i had absolutely no idea what i was doing.

she put my scribble

down on the table in front of her,

estimated how much wire she’d need and cleanly snipped it off the roll

(cue the sweating)

then she gracefully bent the wire into curves & arcs.

starting at one end of my sketch

and ending at the other,

turns out that she’d cut the precise amount of wire needed.

the precise amount.

she did glance at my scrawl once or twice

as she went along, but she never measured what she was doing

against my drawing even once,

except with her mind’s eye,

i suppose.

her finished piece

is exact.

so that you’ve no reason to doubt me, i took a photo of the piece

laid atop the sketch.IMG_2707s+

the amount of skill it takes to do that is beyond me,

it is nearly beyond my understanding altogether

and all the while,

as she bent and twisted,

she was making interesting conversation with me

a veritable stranger (cue more sweat on my part).

i did ‘help’. i hammered the wire flat.

all those little indents are

my hands’ work.IMG_2706s

next time i had the opportunity,

i signed up for another bit of time with leslie.

i was so thrilled with both pieces that i promptly set them aside for over a year.

it’s ironic, but true. i wanted them ‘perfect’

and i could not figure out how to attach leather cords

so that these asymmetrical shapes would hang

evenly at my neck, or manageably at my wrist.IMG_2710s

today, while trying to solve a completely different puzzle

the solution to this one came to me.

it seems so obvious now, that the cords would have to be attached

in asymmetrical places to make it balance,

but until today it felt truly impossible.

now i am thrilled all over again.

these are exactly what

i had first pictured inside my head

when i drew the original sketch for leslie in response toIMG_2711s

her saying, ‘you can make anything you want’.

i love that actually i helped to

make them real,

and even more i love that i got to watch her skills at work.

if you ever get the chance to be somewhere that leslie is,

you should go there and please do tell her

that ‘tal’ says ‘hello’

 and ‘peace’.

she will not remember me

from one busy afternoon nearly two years ago now,

but i will always remember her. life is funny like that.

 ‘hammered’ taken from 39:3 of exodus.

mondays with mrs. crosby: two

there is something

about the very beginning, no?

it’s not the best bit for me. the great memories

haven’t been made yet, the things to be learnt haven’t been learned,

and the feeling of satisfaction of being able to look at what i’ve finished isn’t there yet,

but, the beginning practically vibrates

with possibility

and

the very best kind of unknowns.

so, here’s to ‘the beginning’

(known in knitting as casting on, and often followed by ribbing of some kind):IMG_2271sqi’ll check back in on this project next monday

to let you know how much closer i am

to the satisfaction then.

‘satisfaction’ taken from 3:13 of ecclesiastes.

‘mondays with mrs. crosby’ is an ongoing series of posts

(to be posted on mondays, of course),

detailing a current collaboration between mrs. crosby yarns

and me. stay tuned.

overload to pom pom

right from the start,

i could not calm my head.

plans for the day changed when

my youngest woke up with pink eye

(highly contagious and dreaded by mamas everywhere).

gears changed quickly

from packing things to play with neighborhood friends,

to listing things that would hold our interest inside as we washed our hands

and remembered almost every time not to touch our eyes.

through it all my mind raced,

bounding from disinfectant to diversions,

from legos to new ways to knit new things (yes, my head truly works like this).

despite the clutter of new ideas,

i could nail nothing down

and the constant swirling begged the beginnings of a headache.IMG_2550sqa walk outside was needed, so i took one.

my head began to ease up on the chaos

and settled back into the wonderment of the way that

the world was built to work.IMG_2650sq

 for me today, the reality of this little lichen

(about the size of a quarter from side to side),

rang true.

it’s small and often in harm’s way

(it is, after all, attached to a much traveled piece of pavement),

but when i focus on the small space it inhabits

i can see its beauty

in all the tiny details of what it is. and what it’s not feels really unimportant.

the blur around it (which i captured by accident with no filter or editing)

doesn’t lessen the rightness of right where it is,

just being itself.

period.

once i was able to come back inside with some perspective,

my 10 yr old and i made this pom pom through teamworkIMG_2661sq(ok, and a knitpicks tutorial on the use of the clover pom pom maker).

a bit later, i enjoyed my rough attempts

at everything from ‘amazing grace’, to ‘the boxer’

on my new Christmas present.IMG_2658snow, my cleared head in tow,

i will take to my bed with a snack and a book

to recharge and refuel

for whatever tomorrow may bring.

go ahead and bring on the last day of 2016.

i’m as ready as i’m going to be.

‘space’ taken from 25:37 of exodus.

mondays with mrs. crosby: one

a swatch,

or a feeling that the swatch tries to capture,

or a place or color or memory that the swatch brings to mind…mwmc1these are all ways that something new can begin.

if you take a pinch of all of these

right now,

and mix it with

the rich colors and exotic travels

of mrs. crosby, you’ll begin to get a taste of

my newest project, ‘the voyages of vivian’.

so with this swatch, on this monday,

let’s begin some

once a week fun, from now until the process is done.

i’m ready. are you?

‘ready’ taken from 32:19 of job.

‘mondays with mrs. crosby’

is an ongoing series of posts

(to be posted on mondays, of course),

detailing a current collaboration between mrs. crosby yarns

and me. stay tuned.

before it’s covered

for those

of you who follow me

on facebook, twitter or instagram,

you already know that lately i’ve had my face behind the camera lens

instead of in front of it.

the textures that abound in late fall

have caught and held my attention for a couple of weeks now.

soon enough, it will snow and a whole new season takes over,

instantly burying what fascinated me.

but for now,

i give you late fall:

deep fall four

‘behind’ taken from 2:7 of ruth.