every friday should end with yarn and a disco ball, no?
Category Archives: Notions
waft
my 8 yr old son
(who wants to be a mathematical scientist or a famous inventor)
a gift today:
his
first attempt
at weaving.
i have
this feeling
that someday,
when he’s
learned the technical
terms to explain,
he’ll give me
the fuller details
behind the reason for each color placement and each pattern change…
for now, i love it.
so will the pages of whatever book i choose to ‘mark’ with it.
if you knew this kid, you’d know what i mean,
but this one is out to change the world
one multi-colored strand at a time
or something like that.
don’t say i didn’t
warn you.
‘first’ taken from 4:27-29 of mark.
nearly wordless wednesday: gamer
unexpected vistor
this wee little moth
(it’s only as wide as my thumbnail)
stopped by to set for a time on the back porch railing yesterday.i looked it up and they officially named it the ‘mournful thyris’.
perhaps the black edges of its intentionally tattered wings
reminded someone of the old mourning tradition
of rending one’s clothes to show the depth of grief?
and though i’m usually all for factual accounts,
in this case i want a little more fantasy to the story, please.
it’s so obvious to me that this little moth is hip.
he is wearing black from head to toe with fashionably worn edges.
also easy to see he’s an artist
by the liberally splattered white paint droplets.
probably he’s in the middle of creating a piece that explores negative space.
i can almost see the large, dark canvas in his moss lined studio
where he’s using that white paint to define the blanks
in his interpretation of figure-ground reversal.
the only move he made as i took these pictures
was a slight fluttering of his wings.
it looked like he was resting,
that the energy he’d used on the still wet painted canvas
had drained him and he’d flown off looking for renewed inspiration.
i felt a twinge of sadness that his ‘stroll’
had deposited him on my bland and uninspiring
stark white porch railing … and then i saw it.
there was no need for him to travel even one wingspan farther,
because he was standing still on that very same
uninspiring stark white porch rail
and soaking in the most
gorgeous rays
of the early evening grey sky light.
the kind of light that has inspired painters for decades.while i, so caught up in the mundane daily repetition of things,
would have missed that light altogether
but for being reminded to look by
the ordained visit of this
tiny little moth.
so they can call him ‘mournful thyris’
or technically ‘pseudothyris sepulchralis’
but i will always recall him as a reminder that the created world
has a glorious story to tell, if only i will listen.
‘moth’ taken from 4:19-20 of job.
home, sweet.
a whole cluster
of nice things happened today.
my ‘brick house’ boheme sari ribbon yarn arrived from camaj fiber arts
(to knit a silk ‘water under the sky‘ for my very own),
my 4 yr old helped me pick out
a few new blooms for the backdoor garden
which has begun to emerge from under about 5 yrs of overgrowth,
i used the antique shoe brush that my dad gave me for the first time
(i am totally old-school when it comes to shoes,
it’s leather and polish all the way),
and a box arrived from
this month is
a ‘test-run’
for me.
will i really
make the time
to create, if
all the ‘ingredients’
come nicely
wrapped
up all in a box?
we’ll see. so far, it’s just the first month, so more on that soon.
baby boy and i got the plants in before the rains came down,
the brush is perfect in all its antique quality,
and the box…i’ll crack that open
later tonight and see
how it goes.
not too shabby for a monday as i’m left
feeling very grateful and at peace with just about everything.
‘later’ taken from 20:25 of proverbs.
in the quiet
new 3-ply wool in ‘sandstone’ brought to you by mountain colors yarns.
‘quiet’ taken from 6:24 of job.
grey skies
wool and solitude go together well for me.
in the dusky quiet hours
just after my kids
fall asleep.
i like to knit in bright
noisy rooms as well,
but there is something
about knitting alone
that i find extremely peaceful.
so when
this morning’s sun turned to afternoon rain
and my youngest
decided to play contentedly
with his trains,
i sat myself down
near a window
and had a little knit.
solitude wool is new to me,
i fell almost instantly in love with their artisan yarns.
this is the kind of yarn that as i pick it up i am moved by how
suddenly connected i feel to the sheep
a new project
started in such sweet fiber
on a bright grey
afternoon
couldn’t help but make
me smile.
see that
was just what
today was missing.
‘quiet’ taken from 19:40 of luke.
cey & i: new colors in the mix
i just finished working with
a beautiful tweedy yarn and i thought,
“i love the vibe of this. why didn’t i think to include some things that were
softer and tweedier in the upcoming collection?”
so, as is my prerogative as both a woman and an artist,
i proceeded to change my mind…
and staying true to their easy to work with nature,
classic elite yarns quickly sent the new colors
right to my back door.
majestic tweed and inca alpaca are going to make for
fun new swatching tonight.
thanks, cey.
a little to the left
placement is key.
in trying to make these
mountain colors hand-painted mitts
simple enough that i could work them without a pattern
(after i’d gotten through two or three pair to learn the way),
i find that just where all the bits go matters so very much.
that left a big,
awkward swath of
reverse stockinette
at the base of the thumb.
no good.
without reworking the rest,
i tried a second cable
at the base of the thumb,
but then it seemed
to rise up out of nothing and
i didn’t like it a bit.
stitches
to work with here
so i figure
every time i knit them wrong,
i’m getting closer
to the few options left
of where they
really do belong.
slow but steady wins
the race.
experimenting
has always equaled
‘tricky’ to me.
i didn’t understand
just how sts work
well enough
to stop
purl bumps of the
previous color
from breaking up the
smoothness of
the striping color changes, until now.
everything
just
clicked
into place.
it was a real
ah moment.
now,
as i’m trying
ribbing and stripes,
it’s working just the
way i always wanted it to.
success. hope the techknitting posts can teach you something you’d never
considered before, too.
‘previous’ taken from 3:2 of judges.
.