yarn. earl grey. soft.

I've been knitting Anne Hanson's patterns for a few years now. I started with her sock patterns, since many of them can be adapted for toe-up knitting, which is my preferred method for sock knitting.

Then I got interested in lace knitting.

To say Anne Hanson has lace patterns is like saying the Queen has some houses. It doesn't convey the impressiveness of them. They (Anne's patterns, not the Queen's digs) are imaginative, professionally written and detailed, and always have fabulous photos. The first lace pattern of hers I knit was the Fernfrost scarf.

Despite having only knit two other lace patterns ever, I tackled this pattern and won. And wanted to knit more lace. This design has a 32-row pattern repeat, and there is pattern work on both sides, meaning no purl rest row (purling across all the stitches). I'm not sure why I wasn't fazed by any of that. Maybe it was that the pattern width was 69 stitches, so undoing a row to fix a mistake wasn't all that painful.

Since then, I've knit the Fallberry scarf,

the Poinsettia cowl,

and the Fall Lines scarf from her pattern line.

Her patterns are always interesting, both to look at and to knit, and I've yet to find a mistake in the instructions or the charts (a rare thing in the knitting world).

My latest effort is the Peu de Pluie scarf, and in her new yarn line, no less.

The line is called Bare Naked Wool. It's naturally colored and locally sourced. And it is soft! You can knit with it and wear it next to your skin and not itch at all.

This colorway is Earl Grey. (The name makes me giggle because I don't like Earl Grey tea. The bergamot in it tastes yucky to me. I'll take this yarn over that tea any day.) That animals can grow wool in such a lovely rich color is amazing.

Her yarn line is proving quite popular - new additions often sell out in a day. I'm awaiting my order of worsted weight Chevre, which I will use for a shawl. The grays, I cannot resist them.

glorious

'Tis finished.

I've been working on this shawl for months. As a refresher, it's Wendy Johnson's Two-Thirds Shawl from her Wendy Knits Lace book. It's really two shawls joined at one seam (ie, two triangles joined together).

Wendy writes great patterns. Her instructions are clear and easy to follow, and I had no trouble with the charts. There was some moving around of stitch markers for double decreases on certain rows, so I marked those right on the pattern, which came in handy since you have to do repeats of charts. The next time through them, I knew well ahead of time when I'd have to move markers.

Despite all the knitting required for this, I never got tired of the yarn (Fearless Fibers Tight Twist in Glorious Green). It has great stitch definition so the lace pattern really pops, and it felt really good in the hand.

This was knit top down, meaning the knitting started in the top middle and worked outward from there, so every other row added stitches. By the time I was done, I had 605 stitches. In knit-speak, that's a lot of stitches.

The pattern recommends a Russian bind-off, which I'd never done before. I looked up videos for how to do it, and it seemed awfully fiddley and tedious. I wasn't sure I wanted that much fuss over that many stitches. Then I flipped to the intro section of Wendy's book, and found a section on bind-offs. Her version of a Russian bind off is a lot less work than what I saw in the online videos. So I went with Wendy's version. A few hours of effort, and those 605 stitches were off the needles, although I did end up with a cramp in my right hand.

Blocking took awhile. I used all of my blocking wires and all of my T-pins. I was worried that it was going to turn out overly small, given what it looked like bunched up on the needles. I'm ruthless when it comes to lace blocking though, so it didn't know what it was in for.

All that work was worth it. It turned out really well and sits better on the shoulders than a regular triangle shawl, given how it's constructed as more of a wrap.

And I had enough yarn left over to make a cowl:

This is the Yarn Harlot's Pretty Thing.

It only requires about 160 yards of yarn, and it can be knit in lace weight or fingering weight yarn. The original pattern is lace weight yarn. I did mine in fingering weight yarn. The pattern has a nice big chart that is easy to follow and easy to modify. My only modification was to convert a couple of the purl rows in the middle to knit rows. It only took me a few knitting sessions to crank this out so it was done in days.

Glorious and pretty indeed.

what would The Doctor knit?

This year is the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who. I mentioned in a previous blog post  that I am an old-school Doctor Who fan. I started watching the show on PBS as a kid back in the 80s, when Tom Baker was the Doctor. I do like the re-launched series, but I identify more with the older series. (If you have Netflix, you can watch the back catalog of old episodes - keep in mind they had a limited budget for the series at the time, nothing like what the re-launched series has now, so the original series has a charming, amusing, sometimes cringe-worthy make-do-and-mend air about it.)

I made The Scarf-themed socks early last year out of Knit Picks Felici yarn in the Time Traveler colorway:

These socks have worn well. No thinning, no holes, no color fading, no pilling. It's great yarn that is hard-wearing, soft, and has lovely stitch definition and fun color combinations. I'm about to start another pair using this yarn in the Minty colorway.

In solidarity with the 50th anniversary, I think it would be a kick to knit a few more theme-related things.

No, I'm not knitting The Scarf. I did that already. In somewhat related colors. In thicker yarn. It's a lot of garter stitch. I'm not joking. Twelve feet is not joking. And that's the shorter version. Some people make it double that length. I may have gone temporarily mad while knitting it. Never again.

I salute those who attempt it, though. I hope yours turns out better than mine did.

I think I will make the Bigger on the Inside Shawl. Sci fi and lace knitting is fun combination, don't you think?

I have this dark blue fingering weight yarn that I got at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival last year that would be great for it:

There may be enough yarn left over to make the Tilting Tardis Cowl. I've had this in my ravelry queue for awhile now. I think it's time to make it, although I might turn the pattern vertically and add more repeats so I can knit it entirely in the round and not bother with the buttons. Then again, Seal of Rassilon-looking buttons could be fun.

I realize I don't have to make these projects in blue, but I have the right amount of yarn in the proper weight, and it happens to be blue.

A search on Ravelry for "Doctor Who" will give you 247 patterns. Dolls, red bow ties, Dalek plushie toys/baby dresses/egg cozies/dog sweaters, doilies of Rassilon, TARDIS tissue box covers, fez toilet roll covers, Ood crocheted ski masks, knitted and crocheted sonic screw drivers. I'm sure if you typed in a character name or an alien type, there would be even more patterns.

When I was a kid, no one I knew watched PBS. Now, everyone does, which is good. It seems to be one of the last refuges of won't-turn-your-brain-to-mush TV, and finally, people get my PBS comedy/sci fi/mystery/period drama references. About bloody time.

dusting off the blog

Flinging the curtains open. Blink. Blink.

Wow. I've not posted anything since August. Boy, is it dusty in here.

I can't say I've had much to post about. I've been battling recurring neck and lower back pain sustained from a car accident at the end of December 2011. That's halted a lot of projects in their tracks, especially writing, which is frustrating. I've been experimenting with a standing desk at home, since I seem to have less pain when standing. I've had acupuncture and zero balancing treatments to help with pain management, so I only resort to pain meds when I really have to. You wouldn't think a tiny 10 mg Flexeril tablet could pack such a wallop, but it can. Whenever I take one, I feel as though I'm walking through thick heavy glue for about 12 hours. Supposedly, the muscle relaxant effect of it only lasts for six hours.

Consequently, everything is more of an effort than it used to be. I used to brush off a stiff neck after hours of sitting at a desk or a sore shoulder after a long cello practice session and just push through it to keep going with things. Now, I can't do that. I have to be more mindful of the first stirrings of pain because they can quickly get worse and become debilitating.

I have been celloing and writing and knitting though, just in smaller bursts. I'll take that to not doing anything at all.

I'm well into thumb position and sixth position on the cello, and I'm starting to hear more notes that sound right. My vibrato technique has improved as well - first finger isn't so troublesome these days. Progress!

I've knit a lot of lace and a lot of socks this year, and I even started a cardigan. I would love to get the cardigan done in time to wear it this winter.

My next book will be released any day now. I'm just waiting for the various sites to review and approve the files to make sure I've formatted everything correctly. I'm working on the next novel for release this year, and I hope to expand to more venues where I can release it.

I was looking at the list of revolutions I'd planned for myself for 2012:

I thought I'd be well into the Breval Sonata by now. Instead, Ben put me through most of the Popper prep book, which I really enjoyed. I'm now working on some Lee etudes. I'm not as fond of them as Popper, but they're still interesting. I've also developed a taste for fiddle pieces. There are several in the study books I'm using. It's my Celtic blood, I tell you...

I had planned to go to Scotland in May, but my job situation took a turn for the worse early in the year, so that trip got nixed, as I wasn't sure I'd be able to finance it.

I did catalog my yarn stash and knit from it - eight pairs of socks, four shawls, four scarves, and one baby blanket. Ravelry has a nifty feature where you can set up a database of your stash, which makes pattern searching on the site a lot easier. I also re-organized the stash closet. It's lovely and tidy and easy to find stuff in it now. The only yarn I bought last year was at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I also acquired a few skeins from a couple of yarn swaps.

I've done a lot of revision on novels-in-progress, plus I've started outlining new novels. I've resigned myself to the fact that my novel writing is a lot like my novel reading - I apparently can't work on just one at a time. This is good in that it's evidence that I have a lot of story ideas, but bad in that it's hard to let just one take center stage to actually get finished.

My job situation was dismal all year long, so another degree got put on hold until I get things sorted. I've worked steadily, but not happily or productively. I seem to have had a knack last year for finding precisely the wrong jobs. I hope to fix that this year.

Other things I hope to do this year:

 - Take a knitting class. I've never done this. I'm mostly self-taught, which is fine and works, thanks to great books and youtube videos and whatnot. However, the camaraderie of a group of knitters is a beautiful thing, and I would love to take a lace blocking class or a sweater design class or something.

- Publish another novel. Also, investigate making physical copies available, as well as physical copies of the previous ones.

- Continue to lessen the severity of the back and neck pain. If it weren't for acupuncture and zero balancing, I'd be a crying, stiff, and inflamed mess all the time and might not be able to work or even be semi-functional. I've gotten back into yoga recently as well, and all the stretching is really helping. I'm determined not to become dependent on pain meds.

 - Take another trip to Europe. Rome, I think, this year. I've missed Europe.

-  Re-mulch the front garden. The derecho in July and the hurricane at Halloween really did a number on my garden and blew all the mulch away.

- Get a certification or start another degree. This depends on my job path this year. I've been looking into the Certified CME Professional program, the Project Management Professional program, and a biomedical writing program. All would be useful, but I'm just going to focus on one this year.

- Get back to blogging regularly. What should I blog about? Keep going with the cello and knitting posts? More about the books I'm reading? My continued fling with paleo-style eating? What are you blogging about or wish people would blog about?


- Read. Reading is one thing that helped me keep my sanity last year, and I'm so grateful for that. Mainly, I gorged on books by and about the Lost Generation - they are my people. Sylvia Beach and Janet Flanner are my new heroines.

This year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. I'm going to re-read both of those.

Also, thanks to a gift certificate from my mom, there are six books that will be published this year that I've pre-ordered - Neil Gaiman's new novel and a new edition of F Scott Fitzgerald's novels are among them. It will be a nice treat to get a new book in the mail every few months.

I've been downloading e-books like crazy in the past six months, and will continue to do so (I'm in the middle of a biography of Gertrude Stein; I'm at the part where she and Alice B Toklas meet for the first time). I've got the e-book version of the new Bronte biography as well, and Flora Segunda, and a couple by Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde...

I've also been fueling my book habit with a couple of podcasts - CraftLit and ChopBard. It's great fun to re-visit books and plays I've read or dive into ones I've never gotten around to and get a little guidance along the way.

And of course, reading something really good always makes me want to write. Must fuel the writing regularly.

While I wouldn't wish bad anything on anyone, it's comforting to know I wasn't alone in having a crap year last year. I don't see 13 as bad luck, so let's have a better, happier, and more productive year, shall we?