Category Archives: Knitting

Funny-looking objects

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World, I gotta tell you, there’s a new baby boom headed your way and it’s originating in this middle-sized city at the bottom of the world, namely, Melbourne, Australia.

When the boom arrives on your shores you’ll know the babies by their outfits. If I have anything to do with it, they’ll be wearing one of the knitting world’s most covetable patterns, a knitting pattern so famous it has its own acronym.

The BSJ, or Baby Surprise Jacket to the uninitiated, was created in 1968 by the very droll Elizabeth Zimmerman. There are thousands of sites on the internet dedicated to the knitting of this garment. Holding the pattern in one’s hand is akin to handling a recently unearthed ikon, coming as it does via only one route: snail mail from deep somewhere in the American prairie.

And it’s unlike any other pattern I’ve read. Here’s Elizabeth at about row 10:

Work will start to look very odd indeed, but trust me and press on.

Here she is a little later:

Hope you are still with me.

And when you get to the end, there’s this:

Funny-looking object, isn’t it?

By which she means an object looking a bit like my first 20 rows above, only bigger and curlier and even less baby-jacket-like. Still, after 44 years of cult status, I’m prepared to believe the object does somehow turn into a baby-jacket. By which time, she says,

The baby will probably be unmoved by this offering, but the parents may well be charmed and your friends will be amazed.

***

Yarn is Sirdar’s Sublime, Baby Cashmere Merino Silk in Shade 0124 which is a lot more aqua than it appears in the photo.

Possum magic

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I’ve got a case of second sock syndrome at the moment. I’m stuck on knitting first socks only.

While first socks are wild and unpredictable, second socks are the duty socks of the sock world. Already known in advance, these poor creatures limp off the needles. And they’re not even limping at the moment.

Continue reading →

These obscure and unobscure objects of desire

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Dearest iPhone, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

No, no, maybe not.  Too much like another hymn to Apple and its tiresome CEO.  Too much fetishization of the gadget, not enough genuine delight.

So, forthwith, genuine delight.

The iPhone is the handiest thing I own.  It knows what I want to do before I do, it never makes me read the f – - king manual and it takes photos like these, turning a simple weeknight dinner at a friend’s house into an artistic event.

Of course, it helps if said friend has lovely, obscure objects to share.  For example, what do you think this is?

And how about this?

Or this?

And what about this?

Here’s a hint or two.  The top three concern knitting, the bottom one, playing.  All are made from bakelite.  Answers in an update tomorrow.

*****

Writing vs Blogging

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It’s just struck me.  Two years of blogging now, and this morning I finally got why it is that blogging still mystifies and wrongfoots me.

Because I still think of it as writing.

Sure, I make a few concessions to the medium – short paragraphs, fewer qualifications, a single line here and there – but, essentially, it’s still writing.  Writing transferred to a screen, and squished and trimmed to fit between virtual covers.

Not writing, blogging

What I’ve missed is that blogging is not writing.  Blogging is marketing.  Even when the blogger is not selling something.

Blogging is marketing on a few grounds.  One of them is the unmediated relationship between blogger and potential readers.  The “unmediated” is crucial because it means the authority and trust which precedes and underwrites the relationship between, say, book and reader, has to be negotiated neverendingly and “on the fly”, as it were.

It’s also why it’s always potential readers.

In fact, it’s far more accurate to say that blogs don’t have readers so much as consumers.  Yet here’s me still thinking unconsciously I’m dealing with readers.  No wonder I’ve resisted the word blogosphere.

I still think of writing and readers because that’s how I think of myself.  I consider myself a reader first, and a writer, second.  And I consider myself a writer even I’m not writing, or haven’t written anything for months, much like the character in a novel by Vita Sackville-West, unpromisingly titled All Passion Spent, who considers herself an artist even though she’s never painted anything in her life.

Can you imagine a blogger calling himself a blogger if he didn’t blog?

“The rules”

I do so many things that ignore all the blogging “rules” I should call this a non-blog, and I would if iconoclast were not the second most popular persona in the blogosphere (the most popular being guru, of course).

I regularly express doubt, use big words and — fatal sin — indulge my love of satire and irony.

So I don’t stand a chance in the market.  Luckily, however, I get enough from this writing to satisfy me.  And I’d much rather contend with the “anxiety of influence” good old Harold Bloom attributed to aspiring writers, than the “anxiety of consumers” true bloggers bear.

To have written

Below are some of the posts I’ve most enjoyed writing in the last year, with some commentary on each.

But first a word about this matter of enjoyment in writing, or better still, plain fun.  What makes it fun to write?  What makes it fun to have written?  The answer is something Andreas Kluth was debating, as productively as ever, on his blog the other day.

What makes it fun to have written is that the words written were those one intended to write, and only those one intended to write.

W G Sebald, a writer’s writer, puts the matter beautifully:

That weavers in particular, together with scholars and writers with whom they had much in common, tended to suffer from melancholy and all the evils associated with it, is understandable given the nature of their work, which forced them to sit bent over, day after day, straining to keep their eye on the complex patterns they created.  It is difficult to imagine the depths of despair into which those can be driven who, even after the end of the working day, are engrossed in their intricate designs and who are pursued, into their dreams, by the feeling that they have got hold of the wrong thread. (1)

The five posts below were among those I most enjoyed writing because I didn’t get hold of the wrong thread.

The post on blogging (yep, can’t leave subject alone)

In December, stupefied after a few too many wines at Christmas and 10 minutes too long on Copyblogger, I said my piece in a post titled 9 ways to become a popular blogger (Or, how to suck your readers’ brains out).

It’s tickled me ever since that Copyblogger displays a prominent link to my satirical post under the post in question; like a fly in the ointment, a worm in the dream.

I tossed this off in a couple of minutes, and it was fun.  If I were going to write it today, I’d add:

10. Advise readers not to take any advice (be sure to include this in every “how-to” post you write).

11. Only write about the topic “how to become a popular blogger.”

Click here to read 9 ways to become a popular blogger (or, How to suck your readers’ brains out).

The post on a “story that has everything”

The aforementioned Andreas Kluth commenting on this post got it in one.

The story of Etheldreda, a Saxon princess, who established a monastery on the Isle of Ely in England in 672, has everything that makes a good story:

- Danes, Angles, Saxons etc
- sex (including the lack of it)
- Plague
- tawdriness
- legacy

It’s also a story that’s been close to my heart for years, and I was pleased to be able to do it some justice.

Click here to read Last redoubt of a Saxon princess.

The post about transformation, no less

In September I wrote about the difference between change and transformation.  It’s been one of my most popular posts, and I assume it’s not just because the title has one of these simplified oppositions that work well in the blogosphere.

I felt inspired and moved writing this post, and I am still moved reading it today.

Click here to read Change vs Transformation.

The post that broke my heart

For years I’d cherished the excerpts from the notebooks Gustave Flaubert wrote while sailing down the Nile in 1849.  Then, earlier this year, I read that Florence Nightingale had been on the same boat for part of the trip.

I was amazed, and thought it time to share some of my cherished excerpts.  Unfortunately, the post sank without trace (though it was saluted at by Thomas as it slid under). This broke my heart, and had me pondering afresh my taste for earthiness and vulgarity.

It also had me pondering if that photo really did suggest arseholes.

Click here to read Adventures on the Nile with Gustave and Florence.

The post about knitting (of course!)

If you’re still reading, no fear.  This last one is a list.  What is it about us and lists? And what is it about me and knitting socks?  This post explains it. A little. And I managed to squeeze in Hercule Poirot, a personal hero.

Click here to read On not fondling one’s moustaches.

*****

So, that’s it for this year’s roundup.

Here’s to more fun writing, and remember, dear readers, may your socks always be handknitted!

Notes

1. W G Sebald, The Rings of Saturn

Images: W G Sebald (top); Ely Cathedral (middle); Flaubert in fez (bottom)


Knitting for waiting and grieving

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I’ve never really doubted the value of knitting.  But if I had, going through Dad’s death would have dispelled the doubt forever.

When I flew up to Sydney to the hospital I took a half-finished sock and one ball of Opal sock wool.  And during the long days by his bed, in waiting rooms and the all-too-familiar cafe my mother and me knitted.

I kept on with my sock, and she, coming back to knitting after many years away doing other crafts, started on the matching sock.  I used the yarn from the outside of the ball; she used the yarn from the inside of the ball.  And this one ball of pink and orange sock wool kept us going for days.  Through awful stress and worry, right up to the morning of his death when we sat in the intensive care waiting room at 5am as the machines were turned off.

The hospital too had no doubts about the value of knitting because the waiting room had its own basket of wool and needles with an invitation to others stuck in that horrid limbo to start a “square”.

Neither did the old woman we encountered in a walk round the hospital parking area one day, sitting on her zimmer frame contraption knitting away like queen of all she surveyed.

I’m 80, how old are you, dear?

she asked peering at my mother, as if anyone not yet 80, and most especially anyone not knitting, was not to be taken seriously.  “I never go anywhere without my knitting,” she confided, before leaping off her toadstool to uncover her stash under the seat and telling us the pattern of the squares she was knitting for Africa.

What is it about knitting, especially in hospitals?

Readers may have their own ideas, and if you do I’d love to hear them.  For mine, it’s about the simple, rhythmic movement; the repetition; the tiny sense of accomplishment at the end of a row; and the lulling, affirming effect of this on the spirit.

As my mother said,

I don’t know how I would have got through it without the knitting.

*****

Thank you to all for your messages on my father’s death.  I appreciated them very much.

A short cultural history in yarn

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Some people attribute the earliest examples of knitting to Christian Coptics in Egypt in the 3rd or 4th centuries; others consider the earliest knitters to be Muslims working for royal families in Christian Spain in the 13th century. (note 1)

Partly, it depends on whether you consider items like those below to be knitted.  They are  socks from the 3rd or 4th century, designed to be worn with sandals.  They were excavated in Egypt and are now part of the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London.

They were made by the process called nålebinding.  Technically, nålebinding is regarded as a forerunner of knitting because it uses only one needle, and involves knotting the yarn rather than looping it.  Still, compare the heel section of this ancient sock to the heel section of the sock I’m knitting at the moment and tell me what’s different.

Whenever knitting started, it was roaring along by the doublet-wearing age of Elizabethan England.  With all those bare legs shooting out of short trunks, knitting must have been widespread and essential. Elizabeth I was a fan of knitted stockings, but only if they were made of silk, not wool.  The ones below — dating from the 1640s, and also held by the V&A — are beautiful enough to have belonged to the glorious monarch herself.  For it’s rumoured that:

Stockings [belonging] to her still exist, demonstrating the high quality of the items specifically knitted for her. (2)

Of course, this was long before the Industrial Revolution, and all knitting was done by hand, and mostly by men.  In the 1400s in Europe knitting guilds were established which were “exclusively male and with structured apprenticeship systems.” (3) Even a shepherd could knit while watching his flock.

Outside the guilds, “knitting schools were established as a way of providing an income to the poor.” (4)  And if the income of the poor depended on their output, then speed and efficiency were of the essence.

According to the wonderful Judith, the woman who runs the Craft Clinic at Morris and Sons, this meant the style of knitting they used would have been quite different to the one I use, for example.  The hands would have been held low and unobstrusive, with a ruthless economy of movement. This economy of movement would have applied regardless of whether the knitter was using the “English style” or the “Continental style.”

Throwing vs Picking

English style, also called “throwing,” is where the yarn is held in the right hand and it moves back and forth when wrapping the yarn around the needle.  Beginners tend to use English style with their right hand on top of the needle; more experienced knitters use English style with their hand underneath the needle. Continental style, also called “picking,” is where the yarn is held in the left hand, and the right hand, on top of the needle, does very little. Compared to English style, Continental style is deadly. Utterly pragmatic, silent, swift.

Judith’s version of English style is a remnant of this earlier imperative to economy and, no doubt, the Continental style in which she first learnt knitting in her native South Africa.  Sitting side by side with Judith, my style in comparison could be called the English Gothic.  It’s the style that evolved, Judith says, around the end of the 19th century in England with the reign of Queen Victoria and the rise of parlour pastimes for women.

In this version of English style, the yarn is held in the right hand as with all English styles, but unlike Judith’s English style, the whole hand — minus the little finger, which is fetchingly cocked so as to be “more ladylike” — moves forward and back.  It’s a very showy style, and as profligate of movement as befitted Victorian ladies wanting to demonstrate their leisure.

Despite the name, and the fact that prior to Victorian times there were more economical versions of the English style, the Continental style must also have been used to some extent in England.  Because, according to Wikipedia, Continental style fell out of favour in English-speaking countries with the advent of the world wars as it was associated with Germany.

It’s only recently that Continental style has been re-introduced to the US, for example.  With Judith’s help, I’m giving it a go too.

*****

Notes

1. Wikipedia

2. Wikipedia

3. Knit a Square

4. Wikipedia

Not working, knitting

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It’s 1:00pm on Monday afternoon and instead of working I’m knitting. Because the closing ceremony of the Vancouver Olympics is only hours away and the border of my putative bathmat needs to be twice as wide before the flame is out.

Trying not to brood on the hours I lost last night having to rip back several rows when I got mesmerised and merrily kept K1-ing when I should have been P1-ing.  Back soon. I hope.

Going for (solid) gold

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My favourite famous knitter and Canadian citizen, the Yarn Harlot (aka Stephanie Pearl-McPhee), has convened the second Knitting Olympics and I’m competing. 

The challenge?

You must cast on a project during the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics, Friday, February 12, 2010 and finish before the Olympic flame goes out Sunday, February 28. That’s 17 days.

I’ve taken the pledge …

I, a knitter of able hands and quick wits, to hereby swear that over the course of these Olympics I will uphold the highest standard of knitterly excellence.

I will be deft of hand and sure of pattern, I will overcome troubles of yarn overs and misplaced decreases. I will use the gifts of intelligence and persistence (as well as caffeine and chocolate) and I will execute my art to the highest form, carrying with me the hope for excellence known to every knitter.

I strive to win. To do my best, and to approach the needles with my own best effort in mind, without comparing myself to my fellow knitters, for they have challenges unique to them.

While I engage in this pursuit of excellence and my own personal, individual best, I also swear that I will continue to engage with my family in conversation, care for my pets, speak kindly with those who would ask me to do something other than knit …

I’ve chosen my triple lutz, the Simple Cotton Bath Mat by Purl Bee in Rowan’s Handknit Cotton (first lutz shown above). 

And along with 2,000 (!) other knitters, I’m competing for the honour of displaying this medal on my blog:


***** 

Needles on a plane

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On Christmas Eve, Australian knitters got the Christmas present they’d been waiting for.  The Australian Government finally removed knitting needles from the list of items prohibited on a plane.

It’s been a sore point for many years that famous knitters in North America like Stephanie Pearl McPhee could swan on to a plane with an armoury of steel and bamboo implements.  While we in the Antipodes were having a little cry at check-in for all the wasted hours ahead when obliged to relinquish our project to the hold.  How was the heel going to get turned down there?

Knitters would scheme endlessly at ways to outwit the authorities.  Which just goes to show they’d got us knitters exactly right: we were not to be trusted. 

One woman on a blog speculated about using a bamboo circular to hold her hair in a bun while getting past the x-ray machine.  Which was clever, yes, and probably could have worked, only I did wonder a tad how she was going to explain the woolly mess on her tray table on the “final rubbish pick-up.”

And then — would you believe it? — we Australian knitters had been celebrating for a mere 24 hours when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to blow up a US plane with chemicals in his underpants.  We’ve all been vwerry vwerry quiet ever since lest the Australian Government again put 2 and 2 together and get 5: knitters + Australian planes = terrorists in the US.

*****

Of all the needles worth getting caught for smuggling on to a plane it’d be my Clover 4mms made in Japan from the finest bamboo, or the acknowledged Rolls Royce of knitting needles, my 5mm Addi Turbo circular, made in Germany from nickel-plated brass.

The Clovers are as pleasing to look at as they are to use.  They’re long and light and strong with – really there’s no other way to say it — the most sweetly shaped knobs at the end.  The Addi Turbos claim to be the fastest in the business and they are.  Hollow little torpedoes, they move the yarn smoothly and silkily from one point to the other with a lovely airy click.

Both of them are shown in the picture, along with my unloved Casein needles and my current project.  The Caseins are the white ones and that’s because they’re made of milk.  Yes, milk.  Don’t ask me how a milk protein – Casein – ends up as a stick but it does.  They’re probably designed to imitate the antique needles made of ivory, yet given ivory was the ultimate covetable material I can only think it’s a rather poor imitation.  Because the Casein feels plasticky, and too cool and inert to my hand.

My current project is, wonders, not a sock.  It’s a short cardi-bolero-thingy from a Jo Sharp pattern.  This one’s definitely a “product” knit, not a “process” one.  Can’t say why but it’s boring to knit.  Only way I’ll be smuggling it on a plane is by wearing it.

*****

Images: Jo Sharp (top); by me (bottom)