What I was supposed to be doing yesterday?

All together now:

That’s right.

What I was doing yesterday?

All together now:

Well, what did you expect? I said I was in love with the coral.

Besides, there was an horrid North wind for the third day in a row, and it made my sinuses go all crackerdog and my head go all achy and… making excuses, me? Yup.

A closer look?

Sure.

These are only very preliminary as-written swatches - I have some pretty grand ideas in the works (some of which may or may not be based on some of these), which I’ll be developing gradually as time permits, because, ahem, we know what I’m supposed to be working on. (In hindsight this was particularly naughty of me because I now learn that tomorrow is Friday, which means all-knitting-some-swimming-some-drinking-no-writing. What, you thought tomorrow was Tuesday? On your calendar, maybe. But after two consecutive weeks with no Sh*ks*s meeting, I’m taking my Friday when I can get it - and that, as it turns out, is tomorrow.) It’ll probably be many months before I can cast on the real thing, but that’s OK, because it will probably take that long to incubate. I’ll show you developments, though, as they… develop.

Feel free to guess where this is going, though I don’t pretend I’ve given you much to go on. (Those who already know, need I say you’re disqualified?) Hey, there might be a skein of You-Know-What in it for you if you get it right….

And now -

News and Notes from All Over

• In case you haven’t already seen it, Astrid has posted her account of our meeting, and it’s well worth reading, especially if you wanna see what I look like Foolishly Mugging With Knitting. I note that she was indeed kinder to me than I had any right to expect (though I think we need to get her a camera that doesn’t add chins to people). BTW Ponto and I had us a little party in the comments. And speaking of Ponto…
• There is something pretty extraordinary - something terrifying and adorable and elegant, all at the same time - to be seen over on Panabasis today. Let no one ever presume to doubt again that the words “giant squid” and “smoking cap” can indeed appropriately appear in the same blog post - and be more than appropriately illustrated, I might add. I’m fit to bust with pride.

And stay tuned for these exciting episodes coming very soon to a blog near you:

• Swan Lake II Felting and Embroidery Report
• Kitri Shawl Test-Blocking Adventure
• When Smart People Do Stupid Things
• The Clams I Forgot to Photograph (Again!)
• A Little Animal Song
• … who knows what-all else….

I got a lot of good - and highly bloggable - stuff done today… and I know I’d hinted to a couple of people that I was planning a sort of refreshingly-sane-ish post for tonight as a result. But guess what. I’m not much of a Saturday-nighter, as a rule, but nevertheless tonight was Saturday night, and, well, it turns out that we were the party - and if all goes according to plan we will be the party tomorrow night too, in the sense that we’ll be working hard most of the day to make ourselves be the party in the evening - so the upshot is that [A] I’m not posting all that good stuff tonight or indeed tomorrow and [B] I’m not apologizing, because I’m not sorry, because it was (and will be) fun, and I know perfectly well I’ve earned it.

So no promises, but Monday is sounding like a pretty good time for reporting (starting to, anyway) on the events of the it’s-a-weekend-after-all weekend.

Among the highlights will be tonight’s pictures of Lauren modeling the realization of her fantasies, i.e. the Laceball Cap, which looks (every bit as much as I hoped and predicted) as if it had grown right out of her scalp, only maybe a little prettier. (OK, that sounds a little odd. Let us just say that what does grow from her scalp is plenty pretty, and it and the cap complement each other and are enhanced by the gleeful expression on her face, not to mention on mine. She Totally Gets It - yeah, as if I’d have made it for her if I’d thought for a second that she wouldn’t.) With luck there will also be more such pictures tomorrow, because [A] I don’t think she’s taking off that cap any time soon, and [B] I’m actually (somebody alert the media) setting an alarm so I can get up early to help her with some end-of-school-year paperwork, in the hope that that will free her up to join in the evening’s feasting on the clams Barbara and I dug this afternoon.

Of which I guess I forgot to take pictures, in all the flurry, but there will be more tomorrow. More clams, I mean - tide willing - and also more photo-ops.

Plus lace updates, and felting updates, and bits of mild tongue-in-cheek philosophizing on same, all fodder for… Monday.

But not for tonight, because tonight we were the party, and blogging-wise I’m taking the rest of the weekend off.

(My camera, however, will remain on duty….)

Today is yet another birthday. (And thick and fast they came at last, and more, and more, and more.)

The birthday boy is that mysterious shadowy figure whom I refer to as my son, even though his identity remains so vague - he may be Tibor Szégy-Légy, or he may be Gus Norbeck, or in an ectoplasmic sort of way he may even be Allan Janus hisself; it’s all very confusing, and what’s a mother to do? At any rate, whoever he may be, he hangs out over at Panabasis, along with our old friend Archie and the other denizens of the Janus Museum; and whoever he may be, his birthday gift is The Green Blob - along with his Mum’s blessings.

If you follow Panabasis at all, then you probably already know that Tibor and Gus and Allan, whatever they may say about each other, all share one special trait: a fondness for interesting headgear. Some time ago Panabasis featured a fearfully wistful and moving item about smoking caps. Well, thinks I… I bet I could do something like that. And for a while I seriously considered paraphrasing the very handsome cap shown there, as worn by Bob Hoskins in Cousine Bette, or the excellent one available from James Lock Hatters. But seeing as Gus had already acquired a Kufi and Tibor had threatened to do the same, I decided to try for a little diversity; I cast about for a different model.

I settled at last on this as a guideline for dimensions. I knew the drape and feel would be quite different, since I was working in felt and the original was velvet - but I liked the idea of a fez-like size and shape, with the scope that it would offer for, um, whimsical decoration.

I think it was a good choice. Here’s my version:

Gentleman’s Smoking Cap

Originally I was going to make my cap out of the same dark red stuff I’d used for Archie, but for this purpose I wasn’t quite satisfied with the way it swatched and felted. So I took a stash dive, and unexpectedly turned up a good-sized ball of ancient dark green handspun, the last remnant from a sweater I’d made in another life for my ex-husband. (Which sweater is another story; if I ever find pictures from that bygone era, I’ll tell it.) And knew This Was It. And then, as if further proof were needed, came the miracle of the matching lining fabric. (See under: Horse, Gift; Mouth, Not Looking In.) Decision made.

As you may have noted the other day, I started with my favorite medallion top, adding a spoke to make a star/flower shape; then turned the corner and worked two lace patterns down the sides. Regular readers of Panabasis will not need to think twice about my reasons for choosing “Janus” and “Cat’s Paw.”

The felted-lace thing may require some explanation, though. Invented or unvented, I’m not sure which, but I stumbled across this technique by chance when I made the original Swan Lake boots - because I’d hand-felted most of my swatches I hadn’t realized at first how thoroughly the real fulling process was going to close the eyelets, more or less defeating the purpose of the lace altogether. So I regrouped and decided to use the vestigial holes as embroidery guides, which had two consequences - it gave me a reliable base for even embroidery, and it allowed me to “sink” the stitches into the fabric, which made for a nice embossed effect. Oh, sorry, three consequences - it also looked wicked cool; at least I thought so. So I’ve taken it a step further, in a couple of different directions. I now thread nylon cord through the holes before fulling to make sure they won’t get lost entirely; and I’m a little selective as to which holes I actually use, and which ones I connect to which. Here is the victim, trussed for its ordeal:

Of course I forgot (don’t I always?) to take Before pictures of the lace as knitted. “Cat’s Paw” is pretty standard - I used one of the six-hole versions (not my preference as a rule, but it works well as a base for embroidery). As for “Janus” - here (with more acknowledgments than ever to Barbara G. Walker II) is what it looks like knitted:

and here’s my chart for working it:

… and here it is after fulling, selectively embroidered with simple double lines of chain stitch, worked in gold silk:

Other details:

Crown

Crown, Center Detail

Edge and Lining

Hand-knotted Tassel

And here The Boy^TM demonstrates that, hey, what do you know, the cap fits him too (he also bats his eyelashes to remind me that he too, ahem, has just had a birthday).

He wants one. So does Lauren.

Guess I’d better start shopping for more of that gold silk cobwebweight….

Late-Breaking Smoking Cap Coverage!

This just in! Reportage of the Smoking Cap in situ:

I guess this answers the question of just whose birthday it is. (Or whose photo-op, anyway.) Tibor, with a trace of the green-eyed monster in his delivery, relays this from Gus (can you see why I have difficulty keeping track, here?):

Here ’tis - as you see, it fits fine. I’m experimenting with different ways of wearing it - cocking it well back zouave-style, centered in the classic Orthodox priest fashion, or off to the side with a dashing 30 mission crush, as shown here. Oh, it’s the jolliest cap!

I think I can tell which style is which… sort of. And I must say, no matter what Tibor may think - that there Gus, he is a fine, dashing fellow, after all. (And so is Leroy, with that elegant tail. Can’t wait to see how he looks modeling the Smoking Cap.)

Anyway, happy birthday, Sonnele, whoever you are!

(…. and my apologies to Mrs. Calabash….)

OK, I’m only human. I can’t keep a lid on this lid forever. I’m taking a chance.

So - remember Lauren? Sure you do. Lauren who, whether she likes it or not, is going to be taught to purl as soon as the school year is well and truly over.

But not before then, because Lauren teaches high school English - ALL grades of high school English - and she’s also faculty advisor to a seriously kick-ass student literary publication which is just coming out now, and though classes ended a couple of days ago she is now up to her ears in final exams and regents and grading and all kinds of other academic mysteries about which I am mostly and blissfully ignorant, and she is way too crazed and busy to think about knitting. (Yes, I know, I know. That’s just so wrong. But give her time. She’ll learn.)

She is in fact so crazed and busy that, even though yesterday was what she thinks of as thefirstdayofthesecondsixmonthsofherbirthday (or what normal people might refer to simply as her birthday), and I called and serenaded her to that effect (Happy firstdayofthesecondsixmonthsofyourbirthday toooo yooooo, etc.), she didn’t have time to take delivery of her present. Hmph.

I am therefore gambling that she doesn’t have time to look at my blog either, so I’m going ahead and blogging said present, because I just can’t stand it any more.

This came about because I happened to see Lauren a day or so before presenting Barbara with the original Beige Blob, and I showed it to Lauren and her jaw dropped in an entirely satisfactory sort of way, and she tried it on and it looked great on her, and I hinted that she too had a celebration in the offing, and I also hinted that I might be blobbing again some time soon, maybe bigger, maybe in black…. And she managed to get it across to me, without being in the least ungracious (because that’s the kind of friends we are), that although she loved and admired it greatly she would virtually never have occasion to wear such a thing, and that therefore my making a blob of that kind for her would be a poor use of my limited and valuable time and would make her feel terribly guilty. Then she joked, “Of course, if you were to make me a baseball cap like that….”

Ha ha ha, I laughed - but immediately saw the rightness of it, Lauren being manifestly a frequent and enthusiastic wearer of such caps.

So of course I started thinking about it very seriously. As witness:

The Laceball Cap.

It’s made out of the same DMC Baroque #10 Super-mercerized cotton, and though I have yet to weigh and log the remnant and calculate yardage (I haven’t even done that for the other Blob yet) I am quite sure that there is plenty left to make a second - maybe even a third.

The bill base is plastic mesh needlepoint canvas, and everything else is done with remnants from the previous Blob. I cut out the bill piece; bound its edges with some of the grosgrain ribbon I’d used for the previous hatband, to cushion the potentially scratchy bits; covered it with the same fabric I’d used for the bag lining; sewed it to an internal band made of two layers of the same grosgrain ribbon; knitted that whole assembly into the shell of the hat; trimmed the bill with a scrap of the drawstring cord. Oh - sorry, I lied. The elastic in the back of the band, and the button at the top (covered in another scrap of the same fabric), were not from the Other Blob - both came from my notions stash.

I started this Blob the same way as the previous one -

- I do love that spiraling pinwheely medallion look - then used the Fountain Lace pattern (thank you yet again, Barbara G. Walker II…) for the sides and the bill.

The “Hey, wait a sec” moment, to which I referred the other day, occurred when I was knitting the bill cover and had been trying to do something fancy wth shaping and making the lace panels point outward. Kinda like this:

I’d done about an inch that way, and it was just getting way too convoluted to be worth it - and not looking so great. Nice idea in theory, but this lace doesn’t lend itself to it that easily. Sometimes you have to listen to your lace. This pattern, for instance, worked really neatly for the sides of the crown and the size of the bill cover - stitch counts and repeat counts just fell magically into place, adjusting sweetly to the curves - so when the adaptation refused to follow suit I only stayed stubborn about it for a little over one repeat, and then conceded defeat, frogged back to the turn of the bill, and started fresh, this time working it straight. Whereupon the lace patted me on the head and signified its approval by practically knitting itself into the shape I wanted. I hardly had to stretch and pull it at all; it met me half-way and totally cooperated. It’s a different look, but not at all a worse one, I fancy.

Yeah, I could have forced the issue, but why make the lace unhappy? This way, everybody wins.

Some details:

Edge of Bill

Channel and Hem

Cord Trim

Now, all I need’s a little mojo, please. Lauren is not a regular blog reader at the best of times (see above re crazed and busy and insane workload), so here’s hoping Murphy’s Law doesn’t kick in now and thrust this post in her face before I get a chance to thrust the Laceball Cap on her head.

I will report in due course.

Tomorrow’s Sh*ks*s meeting is pre-empted by considerations similar to those operating on Lauren - different school district, different age group, same swamping end-of-year insanity - so I will have plenty of time to blog the Green Blob, which I trust will have landed by then. Aahhhhhhhhh… all my little chickies coming home to roost.

I will also be tossing Swan Lake II to its soggy fate - yes, today I did at last finish updating my notes, and the victims are appropriately trussed for felting. The connection is less than obvious, or less obvious than it may seem, as the case may be. But all will be explained soon.

Inverted

Thanks to Connie for pointing me to Knitspot’s cool golf socks. Connie is quite right; it is exactly the same stitch pattern - which just goes to show what happens when two different designers with two different frames of reference have the same habit: reading stitch collections upside-down. The original pattern is called Eiffel Tower (thanks yet again, BGWII!), and if you stand on your head you will readily see why. In the golf sock it appears in its native half-drop and 3-stitch spacing, whereas in the Iceman sock it’s spaced differently, and the spacing is tapered to fit the shaping of toe/heel - but it’s definitely the same motif. That one of us saw a golf tee where the other saw an ice-cream cone presumably says something profoundly Rorschach-ian about both of us. Hmmmm. Shut UP! I don’t want to know.

So, like I already said over on the club KAL… Summer is icumen in, lhud sing cuckoo.

Solstice schmolstice. I don’t care what the calendar says. Far as I’m concerned, when I start hearing the ice cream truck in the street… can summer be far behind? Nope. School’s gonna be out any second. Summer is here NOW.

There’s a little piece of me that will always be a New York City kid. Oh, your Good Humor truck and your Mister Softee are all very well (even the weird little truck in my neighborhood that plays “Turkey in the Straw” instead of the Mister Softee song has its place, I guess) - but when I think summer treats the first thing that comes to mind is Italian ices, with their bright colors and their intense flavors and their sticky staining juice melting down your chin.

That’s why our club sock for June is “The Iceman Cometh.”

Three scoops on a waffle cone (yeah, the little paper cup would be more authentic, but I draw the line at making the foot of a sock in white… and besides, I like waffle cones), with a choice of flavors.

Clockwise from bottom: Black Cherry, Blue Raspberry, Strawberry, Lime, and Pina Colada.

(Nope, no lemon. I know, I know… but lemon ice is white. See above re white.)

The prototype, as in the sketch, stacks up like this:

BTW, this was not the sock we originally planned for June. You may recall some talk of bamboo blends and a bamboo theme, a while back - I’ve been wanting to do a “Turandot” sock for many months now, and it seemed just the thing for summer knitting. Well, there was a teeny misunderstanding with the mill about availability and timing on the bamboo, so “Turandot” will still be just the thing for summer knitting - but in August. Meanwhile, the Iceman is plenty summery; even though it’s being made in our usual wool blend it is VERY thoroughly air-conditioned.

It has tiny eyelet ice cream cones on the toe

and on the heel.

There are eyelets in the waffle cone

and in the ribbing at the top of the cone.

And each scoop features more eyeletty ice cream cones:

The fit is relaxed, almost slouchy - like melting ice, don’t you know. (It’s a bit of a departure for me - no ribbing at all, not even hidden. The sock does stay up just fine, but it doesn’t even think about binding. Doesn’t so much hug the ankle as lightly kiss it.)

In real life my favorite ice is probably lemon, but it is hard for me to convey how passionately I love the strawberry in this bunch of colors (almost as hard as it is to convey the color itself accurately). If I didn’t have an obligation to demonstrate the overall concept here, I’d seriously consider using it for all three scoops. Then again, I love them all - in fact, I’ve cast on Sock #2 starting with Black Cherry.

(Yes, it’s top-down. Don’t ask me about the heel yet, OK? I’ve just invented it, and I want to rework it one more time before I write it up.)

Blob Status Report

• Red: unchanged.
• Green: shot; shipped.
• Beige: finished.

 
Tomorrow: back to work on Swan Lake II.