Thursday, August 30, 2012

Hand-Me-Downs or Inheritance?


It was short-lived.

Like Summer, my nice clean, relaxing Three Season Room was gone too soon after it came.

I cannot complain, though, either about Summer coming to a close or the room getting filled up.  First of all, I'm a big Fall person.  Fairs, and apples, and pumpkins, and mums, and changing leaves, and sweater weather, and crisp air, and that Most Delicious of all Sam Adams brews: Octoberfest.  We New Englanders sure know how to do Fall.

And the room, well, it's full, yes.  But so's my heart.

I told you that I inherited my Grandma's rigid heddle weaving loom. 

[This loom, she needs a name.  Hmm.  I'll have to think on that. Yes, it's a she.]  

I've been fortunate enough to come into a lot of inheritance lately - not monetarily, but things.  And ... purpose.

There are people who would consider most of my newly acquired things "Hand-Me-Downs".  I'm not sure I like that.  There's a negative connotation with "Hand-Me-Downs".  I used to wear my sisters' "Hand-Me-Downs" which usually meant clothes that were slightly out of date and too short (I'm tall in my family).  So that term is sort of uncomfortable and itchy to me.  I like the word "Inheritance" because there's an air of formality and responsibility about it; something of value being passed down for a new generation to steward.

And dear readers, in the past few weeks I've gained a growing sense that it's time for me to pick up where those that came before me left off.

I won't go into the heavy emotion of the situation, but this past weekend I helped my aunts and uncles and parents and cousins sort through my Grandparents' house.

I'm going to pause for a moment and tell you a little about my Grandparents' house.


Photos of photos aren't wonderful, I know.

But there it is, Grampa and Gramma's house.  It was built rather recently - my Grampa (and father, and uncles) built it to look old and colonial.  It's not their only home - not even the family home where my Dad grew up - but it's the only place I remember Grampa and Gramma living.  To me, that house is them.  
...
I used to play in the yard with my sisters and cousins - Cops and Robbers - and pump water out of that old-fashioned pump out front.  
...
There used to be a huge tree in the backyard, with a positively ginormous wooden swing hanging from a big limb, and I can just barely remember Grampa pushing us - more than one at a time? was the swing THAT big?  
...
And further back, in the woods, there are maybe three or four wild blueberry bushes.  When we'd come up to visit in July, Gramma would send us down to pick blueberries, wearing a small metal bucket on a long string like a necklace.  Wild blueberries are the  teeny-tiniest blueberries you'll ever see, but they're so very sweet and flavorful.
...
And Grampa would cook up these wonderful thin crepes for breakfast, and stew the blueberries up into a sauce in a pan to the side, and he served them on special metal plates that he'd heated up so the crepes stayed warm while you were eating them.  Not that they really lasted long enough to get cold anyway - they were delicious.
...
Sigh.

And here's a photo of my Grampa, when he was young:



Wasn't he dashing?

But ... I digress.


This desk, now my desk, was made for my Grandma by my Grandpa ... I don't know how long ago, but my dad told me that he remembers helping Grandpa with it, and I assume he meant he was young.

When I was asked what, if anything, I'd like from Gramma and Grampa's house, even before I thought of the loom, it was Gramma's desk that came to mind.  It's not something they purchased because they liked it.  It's not an impersonal antique.  It's one-of-a-kind.  It's a symbol of their love and commitment.

I didn't know my Gramma well - that side of the family isn't exactly a talkative bunch - but I'm learning that I am a lot like her.  Not only in our knitting, but our tastes, habits ... 

I helped my Aunt Nancy sort through Gramma's stash of yarn, needles, books, and supplies this weekend, and I had the overwhelming sense that it was exactly what my own would look like in 50 years.  The WIPs, sitting on the needles for who-knows-how-long.  The baskets and bins with this-and-that tucked away ... swatches, bobbins of leftover yarn, patterns copied by hand on the backs of scratch paper ... 

Then there was the task of cleaning out the desk: photos mixed in with kid-drawings and little prayer/devotional books and greeting cards and newspaper clippings and the top-left corners torn from envelopes to get the addresses (I do that, too) ...

Having such an intimate look into Gramma's life, sorting through the things shut up in drawers or behind a cupboard door, made me realize that all those years I felt different from her, like a black sheep because our family moved away from the rest, because we were Yankee fans among Red Sox Nation, because we saw each other every few months instead of daily or weekly like my cousins saw her ... none of that mattered.  We were kindred spirits.  We could have been very good friends, Gramma and I.

But without further ado, I give you: My Inheritance:


Yarn.  Oh, there was yarn.  This isn't the half of it - my Grandma had a stash to rival all stashes.  Unfortunately, most of the yarn couldn't be saved.  It had sat for too long locked up in a crawl-space and was just too musty.  I took mental notes to put more effort into preserving and properly storing my stash.



What could be in this odd little container?  (see the hole at the top?  Yep, it's a yarn holder.  Ancient.  Who knew this style of keeping yarn was as old as time?)

However, there's no yarn inside:


Knitting needles!  A cache of knitting needles!  All sizes!  Long, short, DPN's, circulars, and not just needles but crochet hooks, Tunisian crochet hooks, tatting hooks ... I won't need to buy another set of needles or a single hook the rest of my life!  

(Don't tell Mr. Pi I said that)

Can you guess what's in this fun box?  I mean, besides the darning egg on top, and MOAR YARNs.



A bag of granny squares (a little cliche, yes, but Gramma was nothing if not authentic):



I'm not going to lie - the thought of completing this afghan for my family gives me a little thrill.

And the discovery of the day, the hidden treasure:


Heddles, in three different sizes, for the loom!

Let's see ... we've also got ... pattern books: 



This is a very, very small pile, compared to Gramma's collection.  She had three-decades'-worth of issues of The Workbasket, but I just couldn't justify taking them home.  It was heart-wrenching.  I couldn't spend all day sorting and deciding, either.  I had to pick the books or patterns that spoke to me at-a-glance and move on.  

Sigh.

But what could be in that little ancient pouch, all tied up?  



MORE needles and hooks!


I also got some pillow forms (sort of afraid I won't be able to salvage them - they've got that musty smell).  

And then there was a big tupperware bin:


Looks unassuming, but ... lo and behold ... 


YARN.  I'm guessing this was the weaving stash, judging by the fact that the yarn is on spools ... and there are the shuttles ... oh, and this:


A weaving book, which I am SO uber-excited about!

So these are my treasures.  I'm a lucky girl, I'm a very lucky girl.  For one, I am one of two knitters in the family, so I got nearly all of Gramma's knitting supplies uncontested, save a few sizes of needles that Aunt Nancy needed.

But more than that ... much, much more than that ... I discovered this incredibly special connection that Gramma and I share.  When I visit her, she may not recognize me, and she may not be able to tell me stories about the past, but what matters is that she lived it, and in a small way ... I feel like I'm bringing it forward into the future.

Mrs. Pi

Sunday, August 5, 2012

A Knit-Along (In Pictures)


"You're the way my fox was. He was just a fox like a hundred thousand others. But I've made him my own and now he is unique in the world."
~ Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-ExupĂ©ry

It's really pretty awesome to finally have yarnie* friends.

Our little group of Twitter Knitterati has been working on a knit-along - Wendy Johnson's Summer Solstice Mystery Shawl KAL 2012 - and on July 31, 2012 I completed the project.  This was a particular milestone for me, as it was my first knitalong and also my first shawl.  I'm really happy with the results.

Allow me to walk you through my adventure, in pictures.

1.  The Swatch


This project was nothing short of serendipity for me.  

Since Wendy's blog is one of my favorites, I'd known she was having a KAL, but I never considered it, because her shawls always looked so intricate and intimidating.  

A few days before the first clue came out, one of the members of the Twitter Knitterati group suggested we all do the knit-along.  So I took a leap of faith and bought the pattern.

The pattern was $2, and I didn't want to use a card for a $2 online purchase, so I opened up my Paypal account to deposit some cash.  Lo and behold, my account balance was $10 ... leftover from God-only-knows when.  I think the last time I used Paypal was ... 2005?  It felt rather like finding a $10 bill in a winter jacket pocket.  And a little bit more, because it was there just when I needed it.

So I bought the pattern and read the introduction, intending to make a shopping list for supplies.  Turns out, not only did I already have the yarn in the right weight (KnitPicks Imagination Hand Painted Sock Yarn in Ruby Slippers), but also the needles and necessary notions.

My friends, this KAL turned out to be (essentially) free.  Serendipity!  

I knit the swatch that first night.

2.  The Hang-Ups

Things didn't go so smoothly after that initial Serendipity!

My first attempt at casting on that many stitches (277) was unsuccessful because I estimated the length of my long-tail all wrong.  Rip, rip:


So I surrendered my favorite cast-on method (long-tail) and settled on the simple cable cast-on method:


And kept track of the count the old-fashioned way.

It wasn't smooth sailing from there.


Very early on, I realized I had somehow managed to twist my knitting (see the twist there, under the stitch marker?).  Lesson learned: stop and take a look at the project every once in awhile, especially if it involves lots of stitches.

The other big challenge for me were the Nupps.  I had never heard of a Nupp.  I tried the 5-Stitch Nupp, and it just ended up looking like a kNot.  But I still wanted to keep an extra bit of detail in the pattern, so I settled on the 3-Stitch Nupp.


I'm still not 100% thrilled with the outcome.  They weren't uniform: some stuck out while others laid flat.  But this piece will not be inspected closely and judged, so I will say that they are "good enough".  I had to seriously stifle my perfectionist side to be able to say that.

3. Perseverance

After the Nupps rows, it was all about pushing on.  "Just keep knitting, just keep knitting ..."  I could hear Dory from Finding Nemo in my head, always.  A mantra, of sorts.





I won't say it became monotonous; the good thing about a KAL is that it's broken up into pieces.  You only look at one small part at a time, so you never get overwhelmed by the whole, because you're not sure exactly how big the whole really will be.

I'm just not a "big project" kind of girl.  You've seen what happens when I start anything bigger than a sock or mitten (two baby blankets, still waiting patiently while their original intended recipients enter kindergarten).

Another helpful part was just the shape of the shawl itself.  It tapers as it grows, so the rows get shorter, so it goes faster the further into it you get.

My only cause for anxiety near the end was this:


That's how much yarn was left when I bound off the shawl.  

I could see my skein getting smaller and smaller, but without a scale, there wasn't much I could do but hope and pray.  At one point I had 7 rows and the bind-off left, so I was praying for a Hanukkah miracle.  Extend the yarn, Jehovah, as you did the oil all those years ago.

Ok, as a Christian talking about yarn, that might be a bit blasphemous, but trust me when I tell you that the prayer was heartfelt.

4.  The Big Finale

Two weeks after the last KAL clue came out, I finished my shawl.  I put it in a bucket of warm water to soak and went to search out my pins.

The pins I was just sure I had.

The pins that even today are in hiding, eluding me.

Happily, I found a stash of safety pins, which worked just fine to lightly block the shawl on the spare bed:


In hindsight, I would've adjusted the points to be a bit more pronounced in the center.

I'm hoping to add a clasp or button/loophole at the top to keep the shawl around my shoulders (hence the length of yarn left un-woven there).

But there it is, my first KAL and my first shawl.  I would be lying if I said I didn't do a little dance around the house with glee when it was finally laid out to dry.

My yarnie friends have already changed the way I knit.  I don't mean my method (still continental on the knits and difficult to describe on the purls).  The change is in my motivation.  

I felt more driven to complete this project than any other I've worked on before.  I picked it up as soon as I got home from work.  I did a lot of lunchtime knitting (as you can tell from all those shots on my desk at work).  I just felt that I had a group of people to be accountable to.  And it was exciting when I'd post a picture of progress and they'd respond with a chorus of attaboys and ohprettys.

Sort of a metaphor for me.  Life is just easier with friends.  People to bounce ideas off of, get advice from, encourage you through the doldrums and share in the successes.

So thank you, friends who are reading this.  You make my life better just by being you and being there.

xoxo

Mrs. Pi

*I have to specify "yarnie" because they aren't all knitters.  In fact, I myself am not just a knitter.  Crochet is about to take the main stage, so hold on tight!