Noodling Wid Needles

Best Quote I Heard All Day
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.--Pablo Picasso

I don't see myself as an artist. However, I do see myself as childlike. I still love cartoons, still love "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass", rock 'n' roll, and doofy, whimsical anything. (Yes, I'm hot to see Tim Burton's version of "Alice" on March 5.) 


I've been charting, knitting, fiddling with color and texture, and letting the childish shit that circulates in my bipolar brain go into my design notebook. I'm actually very orderly about taking notes and writing/editing directions as I go along. My experience as a tech writer and editor is enormously helpful when writing knitting directions.


Freebie for You Lovely Fools
I decided to test-drive one of my patterns by offering it for free here, by next week most likely. This is not an original design but plain vanilla heavy socks that I've made for family and friends using Jarbo Garn Raggi sock yarn.

 

I took advantage of our loathsome snow as a backdrop for the photo. I froze my ass off.

The pattern is sized for women and men. I may at some point do some kiddy sizing if the demand is there. In any case, you'll get something for nothing and get a look at Fiberality Design directions formatting. The reason I don't submit to magazines is this: I can add Designer Notes, do larger size charts, and add my sense of humor to an otherwise straitlaced pattern. Not to mention accuracy.

Stash Trash

Talk about being pissed off, though. In my stash, I had enough Jawoll to make the Nudge Nudge socks, the black and pink lace, which I've renamed Jezebel socks (yeah, I watched the movie last week and decided that Bette Davis would have worn the socks to the ball). I finished the prototype sock, wrote the directions, and then went to check the yardage online. SHIT. The shocking pink has been discontinued. FUCK.

So off I went to find some plain sock yarn. Guess what, kids. It's not easy to find. I finally went to KnitPicks and lo! They have plenty of colors, including shocking pink, in their Palette fingering weight yarn. The Stroll sock yarn didn't offer me enough selection, although I generally prefer a 70% wool/30% nylon blend for socks. Fuck it. I may submit these to the KnitPicks Independent Designer Partnership Program, although I'm more inclined to submit it to Patternfish.com.  Here's a not-so-wonderful picture of the unblocked sock.

  

Obviously, the photo for the published pattern will be much clearer and will be modeled. It's rather hard to see the diagonal lace pattern and the lace cuff doesn't show too well. Here's a lousy closeup.

 

It's sitting on its blocking bowl. Anyhoo, once I redo the design, you'll see better pictures.

 

Blogger Sucks

Well, they sent me an e-mail last week, informing me that they will no longer support FTP bloggers. What this means, to the uninformed, is that the 5% of us who use Blogger to publish to our own domain will have to migrate all our files over to Blogger.  No more www.knittingcurmudgeon.com by March 26th. So I'm waiting for them to send me migration directions.

In some respects, working directly on Blogger will make it easier for me. I won't need to do as much coding, I'll be able to use widgets, and I suppose there are more features available. I'll keep you posted. If nothing else, knittingcurmudgeon.com will have a redirection page for a long time.

New (and Old) Books Be Bountiful

I increased my library again by buying Selbuvotter, Biography of a Knitting Tradition, by Terri Shea. 

 

 

An unbelievable book! Not only is it extremely well written and interesting but the traditional designs are striking and challenging. Plus, Terri self-published this book and did a damned fine job, too. This is the kind of book that's worth adding to your library if you are a serious knitter. If you're not, there are plenty of dopey books out there. This is quality.

Besides the republication of She-Whose-Name-Cannot-Be-Mentioned's Book of Fair Isle Knitting, another must-have if you are into colorwork, I was so please to see Susanna Lewis's Knitting Lace republished too.

 

This is the original cover, as opposed to Book of Fair Isle Knitting, which has a new cover.

Back in the 80s, I worked with Susanna when I was the knitting editor of MacKnit, a glossy, over-the-top mag for machine knitters. Susanna was then working on the book, which is based on a Victorian lace sampler owned by the Brooklyn Museum. Susanna was and is an amazing technician, although she has been involved with Sasha dolls for a number of years, selling them and knitting for them, and no longer designs for knitting magazines. This is the only book she ever wrote about handknitting, but her handknitting designs were published early on in Knitter's.

Susanna and I did a machine knitting workshop together back in 1985, and she stayed with me for several days. She's a wonderful person, has a decent sense of humor, and inspired me to further my knitting education, although I no longer machine knit. I'm rather sorry we lost touch--I spoke to her about four years ago and she had moved from Brooklyn to a town in upstate New York, not terribly far up but in the country. I've been so fortunate to have met so many great knitting people. My greatest regret is not having met EZ or Meg. In any case, add this one to your library too. 

Maybe I'll make a point of calling her. I'd love to see her again.

Back on Ravelry

Now that I'm unemployed, I've had the time to revisit Ravelry. Working means sacrificing certain activities, and that was one of them. I had not visited the site since August 2008 and it's so improved. It will be good to check out the groups to which I belong and be able to connect with readers who are on my friend list. So glad that some of you have connected with me on FaceBook too.

Did You Know?

The German word for cellphone is Handy. Is that rare or what? Ich habe mein Handy immer dabei.