purlsandmurmers

Fall Knitting Magazines: St-Denis

Some time ago, having hit the wall in terms of storage space, I started scanning my assorted loose knitting patterns and storing them as PDF files.  I always intended to make a database of the files as I went along, but life kept getting in the way, I switched from an IBM-type computer to a MAC and my old Microsoft Access was no longer supported.  I toyed with delving into Filemaker or looking up other alternatives, but never got around to it.

Then I saw Patty's pattern database on her Ipod and I knew the time had come.    It did not take me long to put my existing PDF patterns into the database. And I also started a database of sewing patterns as well since I save all the pictures and line drawings from the pattern websites when I buy the patterns.  This will save me many notebooks worth of space on my already burdened shelves.

Now I just create PDF versions of the patterns I want to keep, put the photo in the database, and ditch or sell the pattern magazine.  I am a little behind right now because a stack of fall things have come in during the last couple of weeks and I haven't quite kept up.

Today I scanned in the patterns from Véronik Avery's new St-Denis magazine.  I used to put up pictures of things I liked in the knitting books partly so I could find my favorite patterns after the fact, but I don't need to do that anymore.

I thought I would share a few pictures with you though, just because I am so enamored of a few of the patterns.   This child's sweater by Franklin Habit is adorable, and I wish grandson Owen lived further north so that I could knit it for him.  I am inclined to ask if he might use it, although I am perfectly aware that no one is going to hand-wash his sweaters.  The doll is adorable too.

The cardigan called Hunter Jacket is classic; just the kind of thing I would pull on again and again.  I am sure I have yarn in my stash for this and probably even a need for a basic short cardigan in this style.  In fact one of my favorite short cardigans is in line to be ripped and it may well be reknit into this style. 

But the sweater I am really mad for, the one that prompted me to buy the book in the first place, is Gothic Snowfall.  In fact, if I didn't have a couple of other color-work sweaters either on the needles or waiting on the sides, sweaters I am also mad to finish, I would be jumping right into this project.  

In the past I have seen a project, fallen in love, put it aside and it has been lost in the piles and blog posts, temporarily forgotten.

This pattern will not be forgotten (although I am aware I have said that before).  At the moment it is my "goal sweater" the one I will knit when I finish a few Rowan and Anny Blatt projects that are in line ahead of it. There is also a new Dale of Norway sweater I want to knit.  It would be foolish to think I will get to it this fall, but if I am determined, I should be able to have it for next fall.  

There are a lot of other lovely patterns in this book.  A vest, a couple more cardigans, some lovely gloves, an extremely handsome sweater for a man.   The patterns are designed by good people whose patterns I love.  I highly recommend it. 

I'll end with a question.  Since I no longer need to post pictures of what I like here to help myself remember I am not sure if I should continue.  Do you like these posts of favorite things from the different books and magazines.  Should there be more? Fewer?  Only books that seem special? Or should I skip them altogether?

Shopping: Yes, No, Maybe (not)

A package arrived in from J Crew today.    Three items were ordered; one item will be sent back.  One item is perfect.  The fate of the third item has not yet been decided; it is not quite what I hoped for but appears to be more versatile than I expected.

First the failure, a failure I did in fact anticipate.  Since I don't have a J Crew locally however, sometimes there is no alternative other than to click and risk having to return.

This little silk number looks like somthing I shouldn't be able to wear.  And it was surprisingly more attractive than I anticipated.  I wanted to wear it with a particular skirt, but it looked horrible with a skirt, made me look like a big purple blob with a skinny neck and skinny legs sticking out the other end.  With slacks however it was enchanting and even slimming.  But it is so badly made: the zipper poking out at an unattractive angle,  the seams wonky and puckered.  It isn't worth buying.

The neckline and the top two ruffles look great with a wide black belt however, making me think that I should make a blouse with the top ruffles and the scoop neckline and soft billowy sleeves.  I would wear it with the wide belt and slim tailored pants.  And if I hadn't tried this shirt I never would have thought of it.

Second:  A simple belt is the perfect item.  Narrow.  Pretty. What more can be said.

Third: A grey scoop neck tee with three quarter sleeves.  

Now I have been looking for the perfect scoop neck tee in the perfect shade of grey since I finished this sweater in August.   I would have thought it would be easy to find a scoop-neck grey top, and it was, but not the right scoop-neck grey top.  It's not that I haven't been wearing the sweater, I have, but I always wanted to wear the sweater with a particular pair of pale grey pants but I've never found the right top. I've been to the stores and come home empty-handed.  I've shopped online and sent everything back.

I would have happily made a gray top, but  I don't have the right shade of grey jersey in my stash.  In fact I have very little neutral solid-color jersey in my stash, always figuring I could just buy a tee if I wanted one.  So much for that idea.

Nor could I find the right shade of grey jersey online.  Emma One Sock had one, but it was sold out before I started looking.   Pale, cool grey does not seem to be the color of the moment in the fabric world. 

I converted two turtlenecks into this top, but it was too casual.

So when I saw this grey top on the J Crew website, I ordered it, always hopeful but not really expecting it would work.  And  was pleasantly surprised.  It is not quite as low cut on me (there is that long upper torso showing up again) and it is fairly flattering although not perfect.   

The neckline is not quite what I wanted however:  I wanted a simple modern band, preferably with a little width to it.  I wasn't looking for gathers although this neckline isn't bad.  The combination of gathers peeking below the beaded edge of Mine gives it a bit of a Tudor feel; it is not perhaps the look I was aiming for.

On the other hand, I just looked and Emma One Sock does have the perfect shade of grey jersey now so I could just order it.  The pants are already getting a little loose.  Light grey pant fabric is well represented in my stash so I could just set the two pieces aside, ready and waiting.  Mine, after all will be with me a long time.  Why compromise now?

Blue

It has been a gray and rainy day in which I have been at the beck and call of contractors, repairmen, and service contractors.

It seemed like the perfect day for a little camera play so I thought I'd participate in Mater's meme.

1. Simple it may be, and inexpensive too, but this bit of blue brightens my spirits almost every day.

2.  A small carafe with matching cups from Israel.  A wedding gift from G's cousin.

3.  A Venetian vase.

4.  A large bowl made of many pieces of glass fused together.  I love the play of this against the soft ornate bowl with the butterfly on the same table.  Hard and soft.

5.  No discussion of blue can be complete without mentioning the blue behemoth outside the windows.  In his winter blue coat he rises and billows with winds, showing a completely different face than the summers calm cool waters.  Not lovely, but always present.

Weight, Sewing, Leonardo, Robin, and Me

I've been thinking a lot about sewing of late.  Thinking. but. not. yet. sewing.

You can tell that.  It doesn't mean I am not going to sew again.

I realized that for a long time I didn't sew because I just didn't like the way I looked.  I was heavier than I felt comfortable being.  And I didn't want to sew anything for me.  That is changing now.  I still need to lose more weight. You could ask my doctor or look at any estimates of how much one should weigh, and if i told you my weight, you would understand, but I am not going to go that far on a public blog.  Besides, although I am pretty much happier with how I look and feel now, I still feel a little pudgy and sluggish, so I will lose the weight.  But I am ready to start investing my time in sewing a few things for this somewhat pudgy body.

There are however a few details I have been having trouble with however, namely what should I be wearing and what should I be sewing.  For a while I was posting photos over at SG on a what did you wear today thread, but I've been remiss about that lately.  It helped me a lot however, and I've been rethinking a few long-held prejudices about what I could and could not wear.

Then Robin over at A Little Sewing on the Side posted about her struggle with finding the right things to sew and mapping out her own proportions a  flame was lighted.   So yes, I stole part of my title for this post from her.  

The idea was nothing new.  I've read about body proportions before and I had some ideas about what my own proportions were, some of which were wrong and some of which were right.  I've also read Imogen Lamport's blog for a while, since I first discovered it, although I am not always good about commenting, having been a hit and run blog-reader of late.   So when Imogen wrote about Leonardo DaVinci and body proportions, I knew I had to do this one of these days.  But I kept putting it off.

I tried to cheat and figure it out from a photo.  But that didn't work well because it has been a dark rainy year and I have a dark house.  The two brightest rooms are not great for photography,  In the bedroom I have to have the camera down low, angled up to get my whole person in a photo, which makes my legs look long, but is not accurate.  And in the sewing room, the camera is a little high, not terribly high, but as if a 6'2" person was taking the photo, and when I tried to map out the body proportions from those photos it always looked like I had a huge head and short body, which was also unrealistic.

So yesterday I taped a big piece of pattern paper to the wall and had G help me take some measurements.  It was a lot of fun, and G proved to be an exacting assistant which is not surprising.  Try asking an orthopedic surgeon to mark "mid knee" and you will get all kinds of answers: "what do you mean?  The middle of the joint?" (that is below what I would call mid knee) "The middle of the knee cap, the bottom of the knee cap, the middle of the part that bends -- that is not an anatomic description"..... You get the picture.  And the answers to those questions are not as simple because I learned that different books and "experts" mark these points at different anatomic points.  Go figure.

Being a person with an advanced engineering degree and an orthopedic surgeon, G was meticulous, having me help him balance multiple levels and rulers and Triangles while he calibrated exact points of my anatomy against the flat wall.   Leonard would hopefully have been proud.

This is what I came up with, and the experience has been very helpful.

My drawings are not as detailed as Robin's, but they work for me.  And the exercise explains a lot.  Drawing it out helped even more.  I can see better why some things work and why other things don't.  And it also caused some deep inner searching, revising of my views of myself, and cleared up a few issues that apparently had been causing a good bit of cognitive dissonance.

I didn't mark the actual measurements on the picture I showed you.  I'll just say I am 5' 8.5 inches, and it worked out perfectly on the wall.  And my drawing skills are not that good, and I got he knees drawn badly, and not necessarily in the right place, but I know what they mean.

I am longest in the top and bottom quadrants: top of head to center of bust and knee to floor.   The middle sections are the shortest.  After reading Imogen I had suspected this as this is where I put on weight, in the middle:  waist and upper hips then thighs.  But I didn't realize that I was that long in the upper part.   I knew I was longish, and I knew my neck was longish, but I didn't realize that the rest was so long.  Yes some ready to wear is short through the armscye area, but I don't always add length in that area on patterns.  Maybe I've just gotten used to higher armscye's and the patterns are cut low.  I do know that I rarely need to lower the bust point, and certainly not an amount proportional to the extra 12% shown in this mapping.  I still have to work out the details here.

It is in the middle two quadrants that I was surprised the most.  I've always been told that I am long waisted, and according to that diagram I am because my waist is the red line below the "ideal" waistline.  But I am long waisted because I am long through the upper torso.  My waist is perfectly proportioned to my bust point.  Not that it matters much.  My waist is not my smallest place at this point, but that is not uncommon either.  You should try listening to G try to explain to someone that the smallest part of her body is not her waist, that the waist has a specific anatomic location, and that medically speaking, that is the place that counts, not what is "smallest".

But anyway.  What came as a shock, although it shouldn't have, was how short I am from bust to break of hip, and if you factor in my actual waist, how really short I am from waist to break of hip.  That explains why so many jeans, even jeans that are not meant to look like "mom jeans" come up dangerously past my waist and onto my ribcage.  And it also blows my long held belief that I am long through the torso, Yes, I am somewhat longer than average because I am taller than average; the halfway point comes very close to where it should be according to the idealized figure.  In fact, according to my calculations, I am actually 3% shorter in the upper body than I am in the legs.  3% is not significant.  Still, this was just a shock.    So relatively speaking the halves of my body are pretty equal and well proportioned.  Somehow when I figured that out, the first thing that came to mind was a certain well-known fitting expert saying "look at those short stubby legs" at a fitting class at a sewing expo many years ago.  Not so.

This explains a lot.  And slowly I am getting ideas for what I need to do. I need to play up the top and the lower legs.   It explains why sweaters like this cropped alpaca number I knitted last summer look so good, and why I am suddenly enamored of little cropped cardigans.  It means I can play with dramatic jewelry and fabulous shoes, both of which are weaknesses of mine.  

Speaking of which, when I told G that Imogen had said I needed to play up the neckline  and my feet and lower legs, which I took to mean I had to wear fabulous dramatic necklaces and gorgeous shoes he just started cackling uncontrollably.  

I wonder why? (smile)

Sunday Afternoon

It has been a busy week filled with the mundane and the every day.   But the trees have been glorious, reminding me to pause and enjoy the moment.  A few days ago the entire area was ablaze in color, amazing color, color that I had, quite frankly worried about as the season started early and seemed to drag along, until all the remaining trees erupted in flaming colors this week.  

Today many many of the leaves are gone.

This afternoon I did get to sit out on the deck with a cup of tea and watch the fabulous barge being pushed down the river.

Introducing Avril

One cold day back in September I was at knitting group and I just did not feel like working on Sheelagh.  I was cold and I wanted to knit wool.

Luckily Yarn Central had just gotten in a new supply of yarn and there was a lovely selection of Venezia by Cascade.  The colors were calling out to me and I realized what I really wanted was a fast easy warm cardigan.  So I started one.

I am using this old pattern from Berroco.  It is from one of the older "basics" brochures and the style is shown and written for 3 different weights of yarn.  The one shown, Aline is written at 4 stitches per inch whereas my Venezia is knitting at 3 1/2 stitches per inch.  But this photo is the one most like my finished sweater.  The Second version, called Adrienne, is knit at 3 1/2 stitches per inch, so I don't have to do any math, but that was a bubbly novelty yarn so the illustration doesn't help at all.

I started the sweater, finished the 6 inches of ribbing at the bottom of the back and set it aside until I finished Sheelagh. 

I finished knitting the back yesterday and I will cast on for the left front today.  And yes, I will figure out my decreases before beginning the right so that I don't fall into that "reverse shaping" trap again.

Here is a partial photo of the back of the sweater, which I am calling Avril (for the third version of the pattern).  I would have liked to show you a photo of the entire back, especially how the bottom ribbing seems to curl up when flat because of the short rows I did to take extra length out of the center back, but unfortunately it was late before I managed time to take a photo and I could only get the entire back in at a very odd angle  which really distorted the proportions.  You can see a couple of wraps from the short rows just above the ribbing, but I am pretty sure those will block out.

Rhinebeck 2009

This is the first year that I regretted not taking a camera to Rhinebeck for the Sheep and Wool festival.  Usually I don't miss it.  Even when I carry it I don't tend to use it.  I don't take pictures of other people, I don't take pictures of myself.  Usually I take pictures of things that inspire me and this is the first year that I really missed having my camera.  Note for next year.

So all you get, as usual are pictures of the haul.  

I went in saying I wasn't going to buy anything, which I knew was a lie, that I would buy something.  I think I did well.  I bought more than I intended to buy but I am okay with it.  I only came out with one bag of yarn and many years I have done far far worse.

The first purchase came within a few minutes of arrival.  We stopped at Tochay's Rainbow Yarns, where I have purchased yarn in the past.  I was happy to see them as they were not there last year, at least not there on Saturday, and I missed them then.  Unfortunately I did not expect to see them this year and I don't remember what I wanted last year or what project I had in mind.  Nonetheless I bought something.

Although they have mohairs and yarns in a variety of gauges, it is the big thick yarns I love from this vendor.  I love the color, I love the way the yarn knits soft and drapey; did I say I love the colors?  I fell in love with the muted plums in this yarn but there is not much of it, only about 250 yards, even at 1 1/2 stitches per inch  it will probably end up being only a scarf.  I might be able to get a shrug out of it, doubtful, but I might find a way, perhaps using another yarn for the edges.  I went for it anyway.

They had another yarn that wasn't out yet.  I didn't plan on two yarns, but the second one was so lovely.  G like both and couldn't decide and frankly neither could I, so both came home with us.  There is a tad over 400 yards of this one so I know I can knit a shrug or short cardi.  I just have to figure out what I want to do.

It is nice to have a spouse who likes to go to sheep festivals and look at yarn and I am not complaining that he came with me.  Sometimes he backs me up when I am feeling doubtful about something, and he has a way of reading my mind:  "not this, yes that".  There were probably some things I didn't look at because he was around but at the same time he kind of egged me into buying a few things I had sworn to ignore, such as this small batch of roving.

I have several boxes of roving at home which I have neither spun nor felted.  I sometimes wonder about spinning.  I would like to learn, but I doubt it will ever be a major interest, I mostly want to spin just to use my grandmother's spinning wheel.  Felting is more interesting but wet felting is a lot of work and also requires a good bit of time, something that has been in short supply lately.

But G really liked the colors in this roving, and as I looked at I was struck with the perfect inspiration.  I did not need much, a small handful, and I believe the final result will be lovely and even something I am likely to get to in the near future, by which I mean before next year's Sheep and Wool festival.

I met my knitting group at the Fairgrounds and we spent most of the day Saturday wandering around.  Several of us admired a felted scarf at one vendor and bought a skein and a couple of us bought a hank of merino/tencel to give it a try.  

We stopped in Briar Rose Fibers because one of my group had purchased some gorgeous yarn there last year.  I ended up with yarn despite myself.    I just love the shades of green in this yarn.  The yarn is called Legend, it is between sport and dk weight; I already know exactly what I am going to knit.  Stay tuned.

I really messed that up

Oh I had grand plans this week.  I was almost finished with Sheelagh.  We are having a bit of Indian Summer and the warm weather is a welcome relief from the bitter cold of last weekend.  

I finished the right front of Sheelagh, dropped it in the sink to soak and went to pin it on the blocking board.  Only then did I realize what a major mistake I had made.

As I mentioned, the right front is worn doubled and is knit as one piece and folded at the hem.  I knitted the first half, the underlayer, perfectly and I realized as I knit it that the second half would be simple, as I had charged all my rows and shapings and it would be very easy to count backwards from the fold at the hem, changing the decreases to increases to finish the piece.    

But of course I did not follow my instinct.  I read the instructions, which are not at fault here, the blame rests soley on me.  

The instructions said "work to correspond to left front, reversing all shaping".  

Easy enough, right?

But that is exactly the kind of instruction that I always bollux.  It has to do with my inability to tell left from right, which relates to my inability to look at a piece separate from a garment and tell what side I am working on without actually holding it up to my body and looking at as if I was wearing it.

I had already charted the rows for my increases on the left front, so I figured if I just reversed the columns I could do it that way, and I drew cryptic little arrows to tell myself to switch left and right.

But did I do that?  No.  I should have made a new list.  It is too late now.  The piece is twisted and wrong.  It is also still wet.  Once it dries I will have to rip it out and reknit it.  I don't know if I can just reknit from the fold, or if the yarn is too crimped from being washed to knit smoothly without rewashing it after I rip.

I'll learn the answer quickly enough.  In the meantime I had already started a fall sweater so I will continue working on it for a while.  The opportunity to wear Sheelagh this fall has probably passed and a little break will do us both good. 

New Vogue Patterns have arrived

My head has been filling with ideas that I cannot seem to manage to get written down, blogged, or organized.  It is not that life has been busier than usual or more stressful just that it has been full and scattered and there seems to be little time to finish anything much less start new projects although the ideas for new projects are like a torrent right now, a torrent I can't even keep up with.

In time I hope.

In the meantime my new Vogue patterns arrived last week, and I am just now managing to get them off my desk and filed away.

Vogue 1143

Vogue 1151

Vogue 8614

Vogue 8620

Vogue 8623

Vogue 8626

Food Memory

There is an article in the new issue of Food & Wine by Perri Klass called How to Invent a Family Recipe.   In the article Dr. Klass talks about her family heritage of adoptive dishes and how a dish she, her husband, and young son found on a trip to Thailand became the foundation for their own family tradition.  

The article was timely because it hit on the kernel of something I had been obsessing about since my recent trip to Texas.  At one point, somewhere or another, we were talking about food, which is not at all uncommon in my family, and my mom had been looking for sherry and missing the Gallo sherry and Hearty Burgundy that were staples in the kitchen of my childhood.  My brother remarked that there was no rice wine that could recreate the flavor of Chinese food as prepared by my parents using Gallo Sherry.  

A simple enough thing.

But what struck me is that I have no memory of how Chinese food as prepared by my parents tasted.  None.    I remember my early attempts at Chinese food, when I also used Sherry although a different kind.  I remember trying different varieties and styles of rice wine, I remember different the different tastes as I worked my way to finding one that pleased me.  But I have no memory of the Chinese food my parents prepared.

Now, I do believe that my brothers are better cooks than I, and they have more refiined palette's as well.  One has pursued some formal training.  One is a scientist and approaches food methodically, but with that refined palette as well, and probably a natural gift that I don't quite feel I share.  

Or perhaps it is just that I never manage to pursue any interest completely single-mindedly.  I will throw myself into it for a while, obsessing over and mastering some technique or flavor and then I will go off on some other tangent: sewing, gardening, knitting, whatever, until I come back to cooking again.

But the whole episode make me think about food traditions and food memory.  I remember things I loved but I am not sure I remember how they tasted, or how they differed from the versions I currently create.   I wondered if I could conjure up a specific memory of a food and recreate the taste in my mind to the point that I could isolate how it was different from something I was eating now.  I was afraid I could not and I envied my brothers that.

After reading the article I realized that this is not quite true.  I have eaten the Indian dish called Keema countless places and have tried recreating it in my own kitchen.  Many of these versions have been quite good.  None of them manage to capture the version of Keema my mother made when I was a child, a version of Keema we called "Missionary Curry" apparently because it was the only way she could get us to eat it.  I don't have the ability to recognize the missing link between the missionary curry of my childhood and the keema I pursue now, but I do know I still search for it.  What I don't know is if I am searching for a flavor or a memory of a feeling.

I can be quite sybaritic when I am eating and drinking, savoring and treasuring fabulous tastes and the feelings they evoke.  And I suspect, now that I think about it, that I dismiss those things that don't live up to the sybaritic highs.    When I was eating a lemon bar I could tell you exactly how it failed to live up to my favorite a lemon bars, and when I am eating my favorites, I isolate the memory in my mind as if to be certain they live up to the memory.  Perhaps I don't remember childhood foods because I have replaced them with foods I prefer now.  I remember the experience of childhood, but not necessarily the tastes.  

I am not by nature a sentimental person. Perhaps I am not sentimental about food either.  I might remember my grandmother's devil's food cake only until I encounter a better devil's food cake.  I remember my grandmother, and having the cake with her, just not the cake itself.

The closest I have come to actually connecting with a flavor of my childhood was on our last trip to Paris, back in 2001.  We were staying in the 16th arrondissement, and one day, while wandering the streets in our neighborhood I encountered an aroma that pulled me down memory lane and had me dragging my spouse down narrow streets in search of the source.  We found it, a tiny little Russian bakery and cafe.  They had just pulled a tray of Piroshki out of the oven.  We purchased some and I was transported to my childhood, to sitting down to borscht and piroshki at home, to school lunch hours where I would have a bag filled with wonderful piroshki, sitting on the wall outside the school in the sunshine.

But wait.  I followed the scent of the piroshki.  I find scent is very powerful and can highly affect my mood and my memories of a place or an event.  But did I remember the taste of the piroshki?  I seem to recall I did.  The aroma was evocative, but at the first bite I knew I had come home in some sense, home to some flavor I had forgotten.

I don't feel so bad now.