Author Archives: Talitha

new-ified

Posted on by

petite purls.

the go-to site for free child sized knitting patterns

is no more. sigh.

that’s the bad news, but that’s not all.

 the good news is that

you should begin to see

the patterns you loved from petite purls

show up as pdf downloads on ravelry.petite purls collagei’ve just gotten my four up and running.

stature, asa, asa up-sized, and how precious at your service.

now, who’s going to do the hard work

of getting another kid focused

on-line magazine going?

tag, you’re it.

‘running’ taken from 5:15 of proverbs.

top right and bottom left photos by nicole ratliff.

top left and bottom right photos by brandy fortune.

tactile

Posted on by

a week ago

tomorrow, i was at the

museum of modern art (moma) in new york city.

there was so much to see,

and an above average crowd due to the monday holiday.

still, some things stood out and

are still stuck in

my mind.

upon entering one of the large rooms,

what stood out was a stationary guard

perched near a large heap of a canvas on the floor.

i don’t mean laid flat like a rug, i mean

an actual heap

folded and bent upon itself at odd angles

as if it had been dropped their by a passing giant.

the plaque on the wall read (in part):

oscar murillo

“…in addition to the paiintings

stretched and hung on the wall,

eight more paintings are unstretched and stacked on the floor.”IMG_8571crop2“viewers are invited to unfold and examine these paintings,

which are indistinguishable from the ones on the wall

in terms of quality

and were produced at the same time.”

this is called a ‘participatory installation’

and that’s what a knitting pattern is, too.

a pattern, a good one at least,

invites you

to stretch it and

to restack all its different elements

in a very ‘participatory’ way.IMG_8570cropthat’s what makes knitting alive to me.

we know that we all do it differently, and

then we welcome

each other

to get right up close and touch it,

to feel what it is that we actually love about it.

‘unfold’ 106:13 of the psalms.

multi-handed

Posted on by

my friend kat and i

were roomies for vklive in ny.

walking from penn station to central park the next day,

i was struggling to nutshell my feelings about new york city:

the architecture, the experiences and my first time there memories.

as i stumbled over my own thoughts

saying awkwardly

that i felt like i was in the middle of

the histories of so many different cultures and people,

kat opened her mouth and

explained perfectly what i was failing to say well.

‘you are trying to say that new york city’, she said,

‘is like the yarn tasting table swatches at the end of vklive weekend’.

nyc collageever the oblivious one, i said, ‘what?’ and she explained.

at the beginning of the weekend, the yarn tasting tables

each have a full bowl of different yarns

and empty needles.

as the weekend goes along,

hundreds of people stop to ‘taste’.  the first there will cast on.

those who follow will knit or purl or yarnover,

whatever is the most natural to them or

moves them in

the moment.

so, at the end of the weekend,

you wind up with great swatches packed to the brim with

different stitches, different gauges, different personalities

all laid end to end, coexisting in the one knit piece.

those pieces are interesting, a bit quirky, and beautiful in their own way.

yes kat, that’s exactly what i was trying to say

about nyc and my weekend

at vklive ny.

thanks.

‘walking’ taken from 17:39 of first samuel.

cey & i: book giveaway

Posted on by

this is a cool giveaway

courtesy of classic elite yarns.

head on over to their blog, leave a comment,

and you could win a copy of artistic differences

(both the book and pdf’s of all the patterns)

as well as the yarn to make

the book project of your choice.

it will be friday by the time you read this.

i’ll be on my way to times square, new york for vklive.

if you’re going there, too

please stop by

and say ‘hey’, won’t you?

i’ll be mostly between knitty city and malabrigo.

for those not going, i’ll be taking lots of pictures

and bringing home stories to tell.

now though,

it’s time for my last sleep

before i head off to new adventures.

sweet dreams and good night.

‘choice’ taken from 8:10-11 of proverbs.

cey & i: blog tour, day ten

Posted on by

i often have ideas

in the recesses of my head,

that i don’t have the means to make real.

either i don’t have the skills (yet), or the perfect yarn for the job doesn’t seem to exist (yet),

or (as was the case with the ‘tensity’ bags)

i need a little outside help.

my original sketches looked like this.

just at a glance you can see how much changed:

i replaced both the yarn and the colors,

and somewhere along the line i decided that the sling

was more rocker while the shoulder bag was more boho afterall.

IMG_2809urbafter searching all the nooks and crannies of the internet,

only to discover that the straps i had in mind

were available nowhere,

i got in touch with laura of jul designs.

i had worked with her closures before and so admired her pieces.

we decided that i would knit both bags and then

send them to her so she could design the handle kits

to fit perfectly.

the result

of our collaboration

is ‘tensity’, both as a sling sack

and as a more typically shaped shoulder bag.

one last little secret.  the two bags are knit identically

(except for the yarn colors).  they’re exactly the same.

this means if you invest in both sets of hardware,

you could be carrying it as a sling

or as a shoulder bag

to suit your

own mood at the time.

this would totally work for me,

as somedays i’m more ‘in your face’ rocker

and others i’m more ‘go with the flow’ bohemian.

check out the deal of the day and enter to win a free copy of the tensity pattern

over on the picnic knits blog today.

corrina also lets us in on

whether she’s more

rocker or

boho.

why don’t you check out her designs

and see if you can guess her style before you read it in her own words?

last blog tour stop tomorrow  stay tuned.

‘invest’ taken from 11: 1-5 of ecclesiastes.

cey & i: blog tour, day nine

Posted on by

osci rockerboho collagefresco is a yarn

that has oh so much going for it.

wool makes it warm, alpaca makes it so soft,

and there’s just enough

mohair

in the mix

to give a warm glow sort of halo

to the projects knit up in it.

i, like lee meredith,

like options.

this particular hat has load of them.

i actually went ahead and knit myself a version with no pleats,

just extra room and comfortable slouch to spare.

that’s a go-to kind of hat for me.

today on the blog tour, lee’s blog ‘do stuff’ is up.

be sure to comment for a chance to win a free copy of ‘osci’

and while you’re there, check out her ingenuity and creative-vibe.

as far as things knitting related, but not knitting exactly,

i love the old album yarn bowls.

so much.

‘glows’ taken from 24:11 of ezekiel.

cey & i: blog tour, day eight

Posted on by

check out the moth heaven blog

for today’s tour stop.

funny,

i hadn’t told julia

the inspiration behind

the front detail of forte, she figured it out on her own

and she was spot on.

fact is, that all the patterns in ‘artistic differences’

are named after musical terms or

sound related words.

‘forte’ is the only full word that i used, the others are all shortened.

this way the reference is in there, but the origin doesn’t hit you over the head.AD-6754_medium2

i like things that you have to think about a little.

can you tell just by looking,

what the other patterns

names are shortened forms of:

terva, trume, chroma, silve (this one is a bit of a stretch, i admit),

setto, imp, cade, osci (having to do with sound waves)

and last, but not least, tensity?

have fun guessing

and have a good day. we’ll talk tomorrow.

‘stretch’ taken from 9:8 of job.

photo courtesy of classic elite yarns.

cey & i: blog tour, day seven

Posted on by

oh, how i have longed for

a quiet space to be alone with the music in my head.

especially on a show night, there is no room to think.

i never did have the advantage of a fire escape to retreat to,

but i would have loved it out there.

the sounds of the city, the night’s lights, a slight breeze,7160intand ‘cade’ at my neck to pull up as a snood if the breeze turned stiff.

today for the blog tour, ruth (of rock + purl)

is featuring this cowl and taking comments for a giveaway.

…back to the fire escape of my dreams.

this particular fire escape

didn’t have quite the romance of the daydream.

to get this shot, we walked up to the sidewalk

(club passim is one level underground)

around the block to door # 26,

up three flights of stairs to the offices,

out the french doors of the conference room onto the fire escape itself,

and then two and a half flights down the actual fire escape

on the outside of the building.

i say ‘we’ because lindsay and i were up there together.

i’m just outside the camera’s lens to the left.

this is one of my favorite shots of the day.

it’s easy for me to look at her in my boots and my skirt,

playing my guitar in a cowl i knit

and feel like i was

really there.

but then again, i was.

‘think’ from 18:12 of matthew.

photo courtesy of classic elite yarns.

cey & i: blog tour, day six

Posted on by

i love clogs.

i have for awhile now.

the weight of the shoe itself makes me feel substantial,

a force to be reckoned with.

another, more crazy, truth is that i am only recently

discovering the joy of wearing hand knit socks.

not sure what took me so longIMG_8333bt

(perhaps a lasting bout

of second sock syndrome)

but now i’m all in.

with hand knit socks in the drawers,

i wanted to pair them with clogs and slides.

alas, heels are functional

and not often the pretty part of the sock.

since what i wanted didn’t match up with what i found,

IMG_8326bti set out to fill the gap.

garter stitch runs

from the cuff

through the heel flap

with a back center column

of paired knit stitches.

these are

the rocker version of imp.

for contrast,

the remainder of the sock

is straight up stockinette.

its opposite is the boho version:

mainly reverse stockinette stitch with a column of garter stitch

dividing two wide vertical stripes of stockinette stitch up the back.

imp boho side and heeled heelmy friend lindsay pointed out

how all that reverse stockinette stitch gives these socks

a sort of ‘princess sole’.

all i know is that they feel good this way,

and that’s what i wanted.

the imp socks are featured today

on the blog of my favorite local yarn shop, ‘in the loop’.

if i could give you anything knit related, i’d give you a lys as supportive as they are.

‘princess’ taken from 45:13 in the psalms.