Mandy Moore's Blog, page 41

Coloring in the Snow

The grey days of winter

I know some of you are staring at feet of snow right now, I hope the sun is shining for you and you can stay home and knit.

Winter where I am is gross and grey, sometimes we’re buried under a lot of snow, but it’s always grey, grey, grey. I tell people the winter in Michigan is like living in a Tupperware bowl with the lid on.

This winter I’ve fallen hard for those grown up coloring books. They are fun and they are a great excuse to buy more colored pencils and pens.

Imagine my delight when I found out Kay & Ann of Mason-Dixon Knitting had published a coloring book – for knitters.

 

 

A Mason-Dixon coloring book!

 

Just look at the cover, it makes me so happy!  You know that Kay and Ann are blogging again, right? That makes me happy too. Kay and Ann teamed up with illustrator Juliana Horner to come up with 30 sexy pages of knitting pictures to color.  There’s a lopi, there are mittens, a blanket and that’s all I’m saying. I don’t want you to miss out on the oohing and ahhing when you first flip through.

I find that coloring does help me relax and it’s something I can do with my teenage daughter. She does, however, understand  that the knitting coloring book is just for me.

When Kay sent me a copy of this book, I promptly grabbed a Michael’s coupon and bought myself a new big set of Prismacolor pencils. It was the perfect excuse.

I like playing with different combinations when I color. It helps me visualize color theory when I read about it and it helps me pick colors of fiber and yarn with more confidence.

Are you coloring yet? Do you have the the knitter’s coloring book?

Tell me your favorite coloring book and your favorite pencils or pens to color with!

 

 

WWW: Knitter making herself a better hat?; “A seemingly endless series of very small gestures”; Estonian mitten patterns

The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa is hosting what they call a “knitting challenge”. 

The museum tells us that

during the First and Second World Wars, hundreds of thousands of Canadians supported the troops by knitting massive quantities of socks, stockings, balaclavas, caps, sweaters and other badly needed comfort items. The Canadian Red Cross estimates that 750,000 volunteers knit 50 million articles during the Second World War.

(That’s an average of 67 items per knitter, FYI.)

Inspired by that, and in honor of the museum’s special exhibition ‘World War Women’, they’ve called on knitters to help fill a First World War supply wagon with handmade woollies. They’re accepting donations of hats, scarves and mittens until the end of January, and then those items will be donated to those in need.

Beautiful. A knitter tells the story of learning to knit with the objective of keeping her hands busy while trying to quit smoking, and learning a very important lesson about kindness and love along the way.

Every stitch, every kiss, every kindness – they all count, they all add up? Maybe love is just a seemingly endless series of very small gestures repeated until you die.

Enormously pleasing.

A timely look at this archive of old Estonian mitten patterns. https://t.co/RuLByC1eYP pic.twitter.com/92B8LGEAHD

— Present & Correct (@presentcorrect) January 13, 2016

I really enjoyed this profile of Canadian designer Jane Richmond, on Huffington Post.

I wish I knew more about this fabulous photograph:

Knitting, Paris, 1933 – Paris in 1930s by Fred Stein (24 photos) https://t.co/lhSpmPkfwT pic.twitter.com/Gw6mWAIKzd

— Old Pics Archive (@oldpicsarchive) January 13, 2016

(My husband helpfully commented that he hoped she was knitting a hat, ‘because the one she’s wearing seems a bit odd’. I think it’s fantastic, personally, but it probably isn’t very warm…)

A Glass Spinning Wheel

That is glass spinning wheel, a kinetic sculpture by Andy Paiko, It’s in the permanent collection of the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.

There are magnificent still photos of the wheel on Andy Paiko’s website. This time of year it looks like ice to me and that a Snow Queen should be spinning on it.

Thanks to Deb Robsen and the Webs Twitter account for pointing this out!

 

 

On a Knitty design: Kastanienfeuer

Fantastically warm!

In the northeast of North America, after a very warm fall and year-end, winter has finally hit with a vengeance. It’s messed me up terribly. We didn’t experience that slow slide into colder weather that we typically do in November and December: early this month we had about a week of transition and then boom it’s well below freezing and there’s snow on the ground.

This mean that there wasn’t the usual slow wardrobe transition, when you progressively dig through the strata of winter gear in the closest. Just two weeks ago, I was wearing a light coat and a single layer of mittens and no hat! Now it’s the full-length down coat, hats, big cowls and double-layer mittens.

I don’t know whether you do the same thing, but I enjoy the usual slow transition into a winter as a time to assess my winter accessories. I get them out from their moth-proof plastic bags, and see how they look. Still fresh, or a little tired? Any spots of wear and tear I didn’t notice in my rush to put them away last spring? Do I still like them? The slow transition gives me time to mend, rework, or outright replace ones I’m tired of.

Back when I was editing patterns for our winter issue, it was definitely not mitten weather. Being of cold hands and currently obsessed with brioche knitting, I absolutely adored the Kastanienfeuer mittens. The brioche fabric is ideal for mittens: lush and full and insulting and soft and warm. I remember thinking to myself that they’d be an excellent candidate for this year’s mittens. And then it just never went cold, so they slipped my mind.

Then last week, it got cold. Needless to say, I’m tossing my stash for yarn for these mittens.

The designer has provided some additional guidance on working the mittens, with expanded charts, on her blog.

And checking some of the WIPs on Ravelry has made me even more excited about the project.

KnitShifty’s version

Stebo79’s version

Obsession Thursday: It hurts.

In the late ’90s, I was an obsessed quilter and new computer user. Hand quilting + mousing gave me Carpal Tunnel Syndrome back then, and I’ve been fighting it ever since. For the record, that’s at least 16 years.

A Somerset Star that fills a 12″ diameter embroidery hoop. Made with fabric, glue stick, hot iron, and just a few perfectly placed stitches.

I’ve worn some sort of splint (aka brace) at night all that time. I’ve done acupuncture, osteopathy and the only thing that sort of worked: Active Release Technique (ART) therapy. The condition got so bad, there was a period where it woke me up at night with screaming, searing pain. The cortisone shot made no difference. ART has kept me from being in agony, but it couldn’t solve a too-small opening for a too-large nerve in my wrists.

During that time, I stopped quilting (mostly because I became 100% re-consumed with knitting and then started Knitty. Both hands, though, continued to get worse.

Earlier this year, my Pilates teacher yelled at me (She’s an RN): “When are you going to get those things fixed?!” And it finally seemed like avoiding surgery was no longer a wise thing to do. Beyond the fact that knitting more than a few rows at a time is all I can do, CTS means that almost everything I do is affected in some way. Surgery* is scheduled for mid-March, and according to the doc, I’ll be back at the keyboard within just a few days, fully healed in 6-8 weeks. I am actually EXCITED about this. *Nothing bloody at that link. Just info on the type of surgery I’m getting, in case you’re curious.

The Somerset Star now lives above my bed, along with a collection of hoops (scavenged at the annual Textile Museum’s sale over the past few years) filled with some of my favorite fabrics.

In the meantime, quilting is providing a creative outlet that I desperately need. If you follow me on Instagram, you will have seen some of the stuff I’ve been doing. I took a class to learn how to make a Somerset Star at The Workroom, and went a little bonkers with it (see above).

I find it amusing that the craft (though not the same hand movements) that started the injury is what I’m doing until I can get it all fixed.

I still don’t hand quilt. Maybe I’ll be able to after healing from the surgery, but mostly, I just want to be able to knit, wash dishes (!), drive my Vespa, and play my ukulele again without hurting.

WWW: 3 Socks a Week; Embroidering Stranded Colourwork; David Bowie tribute patterns

Ziggy. Excellent mitts for playing guitar?

Not just crochet: in homage to the Thin White Duke, a round-up of David Bowie-inspired patterns on the Top Crochet Patterns blog.

Speaking of David Bowie, designer Anna Elliot is using her Ziggy hat and mitts pattern to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support in the UK.

WHOA: Rachel knitted 60 pairs of socks last year. Oh yeah, and for 11 weeks of the year she wasn’t able to knit. That’s 60 pairs of socks in 41 weeks. That’s 1.5 pairs of socks a week. Yes, that’s right, 3 socks a week. We bow down to you!

#111, Positively Fasset-esque.

Fab! A ranking of all 118 sweaters worn on the TV series Twin Peak.

Designer Karie Westermann tweeted a photo of the Great Tapestry of Scotland, showing a section of the design hand-stitched to look like knitting. At first glance, it’s lovely, but then you look closer and realize that they’ve also shown the WS of the work, and hand-stitch the floats…

Enjoying this very much: the UK Hand Knitting Association asked on Twitter for stories about how people learned to knit. They are retweeting the responses. Lovely.

Not knitting, but really realy great. A simple animated GIF answers a question I’ve had for years: how a lock-stitch sewing machine works. H/t to friend-of-the-show MmeZabet.

Also found on Twitter, a rather fab knitting tattoo. Seems fairly appropriate for a tech editor, don’t you think?

Tempted to get a knit or crochet tattoo? Check out our 20 faves: https://t.co/d25WJhr9P1 pic.twitter.com/DaoQ4A2pID

— Let’s Get Crafting (@LetsGetCrafting) January 12, 2016

Jillian’s Spinning: New Year’s Wheel Love

My little flock of wheels

Sometime during the month of January every year, I gather up all of my wheels and show then a little love. I dust and oil them, at the very least and spend some time spinning on every one of them. If I am feeling particularly enthusiastic I treat them all to a wheel spa like Lee Juvan suggest in this Spinner’s Glossary column, adding the tightening of nuts and bolts, treating the wood, taking my WooLee winder apart and cleaning it. These wheels do a lot of work for me and I like to show some appreciation every once in awhile.

My favorite part of tending to my little herd, is spinning on all of them, one right after the other. I get into a real rut with wheels, lately I’ve just been spinning on my Lendrum. When I spun on my other wheels, I remembered how fine and light a woolen yarn I can spin on my Matchless, how much yarn I can spin, fast, on my Hansen, what range my Sidekick has and how I can wedge it between my people while sitting on the couch. My Suzie Pro, she solved a yarn issue I’d been having. I’ve been unhappy trying to spin a super fat yarn on my Lendrum, it just wasn’t happening for me, but five minutes on my Suzie and it was done.

I forget how differently wheels spin, different from each other and different for each spinner. Which is why when the question comes up about buying a new wheel, there is a chorus of spinners saying, “Try before you buy!”

I’m so grateful that I have a range of wheels to use for work and it only seems right to keep them spinning happily so I can happily spin.

How do you show your wheel love?

Bimtral: On designing for specific properties of a yarn and clever grafting

The Winter issue features a new design from one our favourite hat designers,  Woolly Wormhead.

Bimtral is classic Woolly: flattering and easy to wear, and all sorts of fun to knit.

It’s worked sideways – not just for fun, but to address the properties of the yarn that Woolly chose. The yarn is a wonderful blend of camel and silk, which is soft but not wildly stretchy. So Woolly turned the hat 90 degrees, substituting sideways garter for the usual lower-edge ribbing. But because it’s worked sideways, it requires a graft to finish. But this graft is not your usual – it’s grafted in a very particular manner to create a purl ridge.

Since grafting can be a bit tricky at the best of times, Woolly has written a tutorial on her blog, here.  It turns out that the specific technique required for this hat is actually the easiest of all of the “speciality” grafts – even easier than the standard version, in fact!

WWW: Unravellers, Untanglers, Knitting for Munich follow-up

Beautiful, unexpected and moving: a personal essay from the Paris Review: The Unravellers. On knitting as “a metaphor for everything I’ve ever failed at“. Note: the language and subject matter are both adult in nature.

Image from The Wall Street Journal.

And then there are Untanglers: those who enjoy dealing with horrible tangled messes of yarn. (You can tell how I feel about them just by the way I wrote that last sentence!)

Even if you know about the group, the piece is worth a read, just to feel your visceral reaction to some of the tangled messes that knitters have got themselves into. You might recoil, as I did, or you might enjoy contemplating the puzzle!

(I adore that this piece in the mainstream media is about a group on Ravelry.)

Image courtesy the artist.

A fascinating interview with artist Nicola Gibson, who knits sculptures. She crafts often life-size realistic sculptures of things both living and manufactured – chickens and shoes are two highlights – from mixed textile media and techniques. She uses machine knitting, machine embroidery, felting and sewing. She began her career after art school as a sculpter, using more conventional sculpting tools and media, but has transitioned to using textile materials and techniques for her work. You can learn more about her work on her website.

Relevant to my interests: actual instructions provided by the BBC for knitting The Doctor’s scarf. The document is apparently genuine, and was sent sometime in the 1980s to a viewer’s mother who enquired about instructions for making a replica scarf for her child. There’s a nice bit of background on the actual scarf prop, too.

You might recall us writing about the ‘Knitting for Munich’ initiative in Laura Nelkin’s Ravelry group. One the knitters involved was on CBS over the Christmas period, talking about the program.

One of the organizers posted a photograph in the Ravelry of a little boy picking a hat, and knitter Anna recognized it as her work. Anna proudly sent her Mom an e-mail with the photo, her mom shared it on Facebook (like Moms do) and her aunt (who works for CBS) saw it and things snowballed from there!

So many times when you contribute to a charity drive like this, you don’t see where the items end up. I love that Anna was able to see her donation going to a grateful recipient.

Jillian’s Spinning: Sheep, Dyeing and My One Fiber Goal for 2016

I read a lot about spinning and fiber on the internet while traveling over the holidays, smartphones and free wifi sure make waiting for planes a great time to catch up!

To kick off a year where I’d like to be more in touch with the bigger fiber community, here a re a few articles that caught my eye.

Becka Rahn’s food color dyed samples, beautiful, no?

Fiber Artist Becka Rahn has a fantastic blog post and chart about dyeing with food color.

From Outside magazine an article, The Resurrection of the American Wool Industry, speaks to the US outdoor apparel industry moving to American grown and processed wool for their clothes.

Have you added your name and location the the WhoSpins website? Right now it’s a map of North American spinners only, but they are working on adding the rest of the world.

I’m sure you’ve seen it, but don’t miss this beautiful obituary of spinning giant Alden Amos

Need some pretty pictures this first full week of 2016? Christopher Payne has a gorgeous portfolio of textile mills.

 

Do you have any fiber goals for the new year? I have one, make bigger things with my handspun. I’ve been locked in to making swatches for teaching, videos and my book and becasue I love it that I don’t have many things to wear that are handspun. This year there will be handspun things. What do you have on your list?