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Goings on

My first Downtown Knit Collective meeting last night was a blast. Knitters are just awesome, welcoming people. Granted the fact that I ran into more than a few people I already know probably helped. Then there was the whole the-speaker-was-Stephanie-Pearl-McPhee thing too. Not only is she hilarious, but I actually learned things about neurology. Knitting is great for your brain! Ironically it is also very addictive. Who knew?

I also learned that the things that make a video game successful (and addictive) are all present in knitting: visible progress, short and long-term goals and rewards, etc (note to self, find whole article). Am telling the fiancé this next time he says I knit too much. UPDATE: possible (or at least similar) article here.

WWKIP is growing legs. We’ll be having a Scarf Relay which, from its description, sounds like it will be an epic riot. We’ve also been mentioned on the Knitty blog and Wise Daughters as well.

And look who has retweeted about it!

I believe my response was to squeal in excitement.

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Yet MORE exciting yarny things going on in Toronto:

1) Wise Daughters will be hosting their own WWKIP event, also on June 9. From 9:30 – 11:30am there will be a free breakfast and other lovely surprises. Afterwards a group of participants will be heading to Nathan Phillips for the Toronto WWKIP. I so wish I could do both. Alas I have to help set up at Nathan Phillips 😦

2) The More Than Just a Yardage Sale in support of the Textile Museum of Canada. Friday May 25, 11am – 6pm and Saturday May 26, 10am – 1pm

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To end with, I leave you with something I learned about myself today…

Behold my list of check-outs from work (the library):

Notice that only one item is not related to knitting. Also notice that there are more that don’t even appear on the screen (see the scroll bar on the right?). It’s official, I’m obsessed.

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Knit-tag

One of the bloggers and designers I follow regularly, the lovely Knitting My Day Away, tagged me. It’s so nice to be thought of! The premise is simple – answer the questions below. Here goes:

1. Are you always happy with your FO’s?
2. Are you sometimes so disappointed that you frog everything and start a new project? Why? Color? Yarn? Making? Too small? Too large?
3. Do you wear your knits or do they end up at the bottom of a cupboard? If so, why? How do they age after being washed and worn?
4. Do you always make a swatch? (maybe it should have been the first question, lol ?!)
5. Finally, would you rather work with some yarns you know well rather than others to avoid bad surprises?
 
1. Definitely not, I’m sad to admit. Most of the time I’m happy, but I’ve only been knitting “seriously” for about 2 years, so there is still a lot to learn. However my success rate is steadily improving, I’m happy to report.
2. Despite my answer to #1, I rarely frog everything. I’ll rip back a little if I notice a problem or mistake, but I stick with pretty much every project. In cases where something has turned out to be too big when it’s finished, I’d rather alter it with steeks or something than frog.
3. Yup, I wear them 🙂 I’m proud to wear what I knit, and I knit things I know I’ll like. Granted I have not forayed into sweaters yet, and I always have trouble finding tops to flatter my body type when shopping, so maybe that’s why I have avoided them. I’m afraid to knit something and then never wear it! And since sweaters and tops are what have the most pill factor, most of my stuff has aged really well. With the exception of an early scarf that got a little stretched out of shape…
4. Nope! I know this may be abhorent to some, but I rarely swatch. I will take a measurement once I get going to see if I’m on track. In the rare cases where I’m not, I’ll recalculate the pattern’s instructions to (hopefully) fit the guage. Though I feel like I may swatch more seriously if I ever tackle a sweater…
5. I love surprises!
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Now, who would I like to see answer these questions? It looks like 5 is what we’re supposed to pick. Hmmm. Lynn, Ilana, Canadianchia, Kathleen, and Lee please!
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More things I am excited about

Well, to be honest, I’m still excited about my purchases from the Frolic. So is Desmond, it would seem. I managed to get this photo but couldn’t get one of the best part, when he was actually full on burying his head in the bags of yarn. Man I love this cat.

Nevertheless, on to this week’s even larger levels of excitement!

1) Appropriately called Bigger on the inside, I cannot wait to start Kate Atherley’s TARDIS shawl from the latest issue of Knitty. Anyone who knows me knows of my love affair with Dr Who.

So excited I went right out and got yarn for it.

2) I’m on the planning committee for WWKIP Toronto Edition, and am happy to report that things are really getting going. Look at the shiny new blog masthead!

We also have a Ravelry group, a  Facebook event page, and I’m even attempting to get the Twitter hashtag #WWKIPTO going. Wish me luck.

3) I have just discovered the West End Scarf. Drooool. Yet another one to add to my ridiculously long queue.

4) Look who’s coming to the Downtown Knit Collective next week!

5) My fiancé has recently said things to me like “come sit in the TV room with me. I miss it when you aren’t sitting in your chair knitting” and “you see that sweater that guy is wearing? Do you think you could knit me something like that?” I am beyond estatic. This from the guy who cringed when I offered to make him a hat two winters ago. Nevermind that the sweater he pointed out was machine knit in what had to be fingering weight…

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Things I am excited about

1) The arrival (on my radar anyway) of a decent (I’ve seen some that leave something to be desired, let me tell you) knitting web comic – Worsted for Wear. It just started last fall, so it doesn’t take long to catch up reading it. Thanks to canadianchia for pointing it out to me.

2) The Toronto Edition of World Wide Knit in Public Day is now official and will be happening on Jun 9th.

3) The TTC Knitalong date for 2012 recently got announced. July 14th! Eagerly awaiting when registration starts 😀

4) The Knitter’s Frolic was this past weekend. Look what I scored!

The pattern, Shetland Trader/Homin Shawl by Gudrun Johnston is meant for the lovely lilac-hued, lace weight, made-in-Ontario Alpaca you see on the left.

At the top is some Malabrigo sock, but a close up is necessary in order to appreciate its range of purples. I unfortunately lost the label, but I think it is 854 Rayon Vert. There are touches of green in it, albeit hidden in this ball.

Next there is this recycled sari silk yarn:

If you’ve never heard of recycled sari yarn, a quick Google search will tell you more, though basically it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s different, and colourful and silk is apparently very insulating. I only got the one skein to try, so wrist warmers here I come!

And a close up of the alpaca is required, of course.

Soooo soft. I have no words. I cannot wait to cast on that shawl.

Also in the above photo are two buttons handmade in South Africa. I liked the antique look to them.

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I know I’ve been rebloging lately, but I’ve bee loving reading this vivid photographic journey through Peru focusing on it’s rich textile culture, so I had to share. The author’s company, LN|, sells items that are hand-knitted & hand-crocheted, in Belgium as well as in Peru. In her own words, “whereas in Belgium my beloved co-workers are grannies, in Peru they are young mothers who find themselves in difficult familial situations and rough living circumstances. There is a lot of unemployment in Ayacucho, making it difficult to create a good economy. That’s why good-cause organization Solid International, founded in 2000, tries to create employment and better living conditions by combining knowhow and experience from a team of experts. It has no use to just give money to the poor, which is in no means sustainable. Solid tries to find small employees to create employment, and so me, LN|, is one of them.”

Awesome, no?

LN|Knits's avatarLN|Knits

Finally, back to writing. We have been extremely busy these past few days. The busier, the better, so we like!

Let’s start off with day 16. Last Wednesday was the first day that me and Griet had to work apart from each other. Griet is namely not only here in order to take stunning pictures for LN|Andes and LN|Beanies, but also for Solid International. So in the morning she went to the ‘campo’, and I finally had some time to sit down and work. And so I did, in the sun, on the terrace, it’s not bad working here I must say!

In the afternoon I was hunting delicious pies since I wanted to do and bring something for my beloved young girls and elegant ladies. Armed with which I recon 4kg of Peruvian pie I headed towards DIA to participate in a second workshop and, of course, to…

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I need for an iPad edition of this to come out.

bissellbomber's avatarispy at the ischool

Once again a Bissell Bomber has been struck by the common cold and was 
out of commission for a few days. Sorry for the lack of posting, but all the syrups,
pills and tonics I was on made my keyboard a bit tricky to navigate.

I was also worried that I had started hallucinating when I saw that there was a yarn video game?!
Leave it to the fine people at Nintendo to make something that is already adorable
(a pink, squishy ball from Dream Land) and add an awesome yarn element!!

In this Wii Game, our hero eats some random tomatoe that he finds and is banished by the evil
sorcerer Yin-Yarn to Patch Land, a place made completely out of fabric.
In this new world Kirby’s ability to fly and swallow/copy enemies are useless
so instead he uses a whip to capture things and turn them into balls of yarn.

Kirby’s…

View original post 88 more words

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Awesomeness that was March

It’s April now, and this was my April Fool’s ravatar:

As anyone on Ravelry knows, often the site developers will have fun on the holidays. Often it’s with little icons on the homepage, but for April Fool’s everyone’s avator got headgear. The placement of mine could not have been more perfect.

March was an interesting month, full of ups and downs. I spent St. Patty’s Day weekend at the hospital after taking my fiancé in for a marathon ER wait, followed by an ultrasound confirming that it was indeed his appendix, and then ultimately surgery and recovery. That same Sunday I found out that I was on strike. I spent almost two weeks bored-to-tears and foot-weary on the picket line while having to take over all chores at home with my partner in crime out of commission. Still doing most of the heavier-duty housework, but infinitely glad the strike is over.

That being said, it was also a great month in many ways. The strike was taxing, but I got to see some colleagues I had not seen in months because they work at other branches, and there was something invigorating in coming together with other passionate colleagues and members of the public to defend what we value. This was of course intensified at the Knit-In, which was a highlight and a wonderful time that could not have happened otherwise. Knitting really builds communities and connections!

And then the cherry on top for yours truly – meeting Wise Hilda and the Yarn Harlot 🙂 Additionally, the week before the appendix and the strike I got to meet another one of my favourite authors, George R.R. Martin (or GRRM, or his royal GRRMness, as a friend and fellow fan refers to him) at the Bay/Bloor Indigo store. I waited in line for 3 or 4 hours with a couple of other die-hard fan friends, which was fun on its own, and then we were each permitted to approach the dias (seriously, the stage combined with desk did have a dias-like quality, I’m not just being a fantasy nerd here).

I got my book signed, and he even talked to me! Swoon! Not that I was the only one, but it was nice, considering the size of the line and how fast staff were ushering us through, not to mention the size of the hand cramp he’d have later (I maintain that only those of us who have been reading his books since before the Game of Thrones HBO series count as fans, but I suppose they can’t turn people away based on this). Essentially our conversation went like this:

Me: Hi (I worry that this may have been more of squeak-like noise and not fully discernible)
GRRM: Hi, how are you?
Me: (completely flummoxed) Good, you? (then stupidly realizing he is spending his day signing a thousand-odd books) Erm, well, I guess you’re day is like this (I gesture towards my book as he signs it)
GRMM: He smiled at that, and said something like “well, yeah y’know.”

To conclude this foray into my nerd quirks outside of knitting, I leave you with this quote from and interview I found on Tumblr, because it is great and sums up part of the reason why I enjoy his books so much:

George Stroumboulopoulos: There’s one thing that’s interesting about your books. I noticed that you write women really well and really different. Where does that come from?
GRRM: You know, I’ve always considered women to be people.
 

March was also the month of awesome finds and purchases. I finally found a reasonably priced used copy of both Elizabeth Zimmerman’s The Opinionated Knitter and Barbara G. Walker’s Knitting From the Top. So stoked.

Don’t judge these books by their covers (especially the horrible duds on the 80’s edition of Walker’s book). This, my friends, is the good stuff. Basic garment construction in detail – no frills or fooling around here. Not that I dislike frills, but they come after mastering the basics, I think. And since I want to get into designing my own patterns, these two classic tomes are going to be invaluable.

Knitting From the Top comes from the genius of the same woman behind the classic and ever-so-popular Pattern Treasury books, à la:

What KFTP lacks in glossy photos it makes up for in sheer information value. You can essentially design and knit any type of garment using the tips and directions in this book, from every type of sweater imaginable to even a wide array of pants and skirts. (Though skirts I will definitely do, and have done, I think knitted pants is a dated concept. Granted, fashion always cycles back).

The Opinionated Knitter is essentially a collection of EZ’s Newsletters. She began to produce these after she starting her own yarn business from home, disillusioned with the world of mainstream pattern publishing and their insistence on altering, slicing, and dicing the patterns she submitted for publication. Each newsletter is reproduced in the book along with commentary and further expansion from EZ’s daughter Meg Swanson, as well as some from EZ herself. Topics vary – sometimes the focus will be on a specific technique, other times there will be directions (not patterns, an important distinction) for a specific type of garment. Below is an example of one of the newsletters and an accompanying diagram: this one outlines EZ’s key number percentage system for determining the number of stitches, increases, and decreases you will need for a sweater based on the wearer’s measurements. Amazing!

          

The back cover shows some of the photos from inside of garments made using EZ’s newsletters.

Part of what makes the book extra special for me is its coffee-table quality. In addition to the newsletters there are lots of anecdotes about Elizabeth’s life, including this amazing photo featuring both Elizabeth AND Barbara G. Walker (plus another lady I admittedly don’t know of) at a 1980 knitting summit! I know, I know, I’m a dork.

 

 

 

Speaking of Walker, did you know that she also wrote quite a lot of books on women’s spirituality and the Goddess movement? I didn’t.

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly, March saw a fair bit of progress on the Lanesplitter, though not as much as I’d like.

Since this is the largest project I’ve tackled yet, my sock-size project bags were starting to just not cut it anymore. Being on a (partially strike induced, partially cause I should be buying less yarn) budget I figured I must have something around the house I can use. Enter this thin cotton grocery tote bag! Now that it’s altered, it is working perfectly. And as a bonus I’m feeling pretty pleased with my resourceful craftiness, thank you very much.

I wish I’d taken a before picture, but essentially I used a seam ripper to detach the handles (you can see where I did this to the left if you look carefully; it resembles an X), made a small cut in the hem around the bag opening and then hemmed around the cut so it wouldn’t fray. Threading the string through was probably the hardest part. Overall, an easy half hour job 🙂

 Happy Easter!

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Knit-In Recap

The Knit-In at Nathan Phillips Square in support of Toronto Public Library workers was a HUGE success. Thank you so much to everyone who came out. Some estimates pegged the number of participants as high as 200! That’s a pretty sizable group for a weekday event held on only 2 days notice.

A special thanks to Wise Hilda, Kate Atherley, and the Yarn Harlot, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, both of whom not only retweeted about the event but even came out to lend their support!

I knew Kate was coming, and it was still awesome meeting her, but Stephanie was a surprise. I read her blog and have read all her books. I was star struck and ridiculously excited. I snapped this picture while I was still working up the nerve to talk to her. Then I moseyed on over to say hi and thank her for coming. Turns out she is really approachable and easy to talk to, which resulted in me running my mouth off and mentioning that I wish I’d brought a book for her to sign. Immediately after I left, the media descended on her. I’m hoping it’s not my fault because they overheard me indicate she’s famous… Sorry Stephanie!

Margaret Atwood gave us a shout out on her Twitter as well. Matter of fact, it was the same day this article came out.

Speaking of articles, we had a lot of media interest. Here is what’s been published:

First there was the Sun’s article featuring an image of yours truly. Glad they published that one and left this one to Twitter. It as windy out! I have a lot of hair!

Then came the National Post’s coverage. And the Globe and Mail including this great pic in their Day in Photos section. We’re photo #7.

And of course I count Kate’s including a mention of the event on the Knitty blog to be media too 😉

Some highlights:

“… participants laid out blankets on the asphalt and brought tupperware containers filled with apples and other snacks as they knit together skirts and scarves” – this National Post statement, combined with The Sun‘s Twitter photo caption makes me think I should have chosen another knitting project, one less easily associated with librarian stereotypes perhaps. It’s not your Grandma’s skirt, I promise! And what’s with the focus on blankets and snacks? Another reporter also said on Twitter that “striking library workers are being adorable again.” Thanks for the sentiment, but I counteract with this quote by yours truly in the plug the Bissell Bombers did for us: knitting is “…part and parcel of the stereotype of librarians as dowdy, grandmotherly figures. A Knit-In in support of a library both pokes light, tongue-in-cheek fun at this stereotype while simultaneously challenging it. Today’s knitters are full of passion and vitality. They choose to craft for the enjoyment of it and bring immense creativity to what they do. Such energy is a perfect fit for activist persuits, hence the rise of knit-ins and yarnbombings.” So there.

“Author and blogger Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, known on the web as the Yarn Harlot, was at the protest, knitting what she hoped would be a scarf” – The Sun. That’s knitting for ya, you just have to close your eyes, knit, and will your desired object into existence. You can never know for sure what you’ll get.

And then, that very night it was annouced that a tentative agreement had been reached. I like to think that the knitters helped turn the tide, thank you very much.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, a photo gallery.

In case you’re wondering, the partially obscured one says “Don’t pull the wool over your eyes.”

Childrens’ Librarians can’t help but bring their puppets to the picket line. This one got his own scarf out of the day!

Katie with some of her gorgeous cable knitting and lino-cut cards she makes and sells around town as well as on her website. These ones are yarn themed! The woman just oozes creativity.

This wedding party asked if they could have their picture taken with us! I can’t believe this happened in the 15 minutes I took for a coffee break.

The woman in pink is a new knitter and one of my coworkers. She was introduced to the knitter habit of ‘yarn groping’ after I impulsively squeezed her skein. The colour! It’s just so beautiful! (Turns out it’s Malabrigo worsted in 228 Snow Bird, by the way. You’re welcome)

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Well pierce me with a hook

So, searching tattoo designs on the ‘net tonight, since I am thinking of getting another one (I’ve been ‘thinking’ for months if not years, so we’re not talking imminent folks), when I stumble across this rather unique piercing:

What is your first thought when you look at this?

Mine? Crochet hook. I honestly thought “is that a crochet hook?” Does this mean I have a problem? Is yarn taking over my subconscious?

If you say no to that, let me tell you that my second thought (while still thinking it is indeed a crochet hook) was “awesome!” before my rational brain stepped in and pointed out that such a thing would be a) impractical, b) perhaps a little too odd for my tastes.

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Life on the line

Don’t worry folks, it’s a pun! We’re on strike at my place of work.

(I just love this picture I snapped of a colleague. She made this flag herself! In case the symbolism is lost on you, we’re both librarians).

I’m not the type of person to deal with this well. Four hours a day on the picket line is surprisingly exhausting, but I find my Type A personality makes me a little stir crazy after a couple of hours once I’m back at home. You’d think I’d be knitting, but I actually tend to knit to relax and unwind at the end of a work day. No work day = wired Erin = must partake of active pastimes. So far I’ve cleaned the entire apartment, caught up on all of the laundry, concocted a recipe (see previous blog entry) and baked not once but twice. I blame the baking on my developing Pinterest obsession. First came a rather complex (for me, anyway – two different glazes!) lemon cake, and then muffins. And it’s only Thursday.

Cleaning the apartment lead to a sobering discovery. This is how much yarn I own:

Oh no, that’s not all. See the edge of the chair with the grey and cream afghan over it in the top right of the above photo? Well, this is what’s behind it:

The fiancé doesn’t know about this secret hiding spot.

Well, now I definitely won’t feel tempted to buy more yarn during the strike…