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….)
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.
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.)
Tomorrow: back to work on Swan Lake II.
They’re late this year. Usually I spot them around the end of May.
There were seven or eight last year; this year I could only make out two (see ‘em? the fuzzy little grey blobs to the left of the cob and pen). Hard to tell for sure, though, from the opposite shore. There may be others hidden behind the bulkheading.
At any rate, here they are, which immediately gives rise to the question -
- did you think I’d forgotten?
If so, you were right - I had. That is, I forget, then I remember, then I forget again, then I remember again. Every time I think I’m about to go back and finish Mark II, some deadline or other comes up and wipes it right out of my pea brain all over again. But now the cygnets are here, so they will remind me every day, especially once they take to the water. And I only have four deadlines this week, so once those are out of the way, Swan Lake it is!
Speaking of said deadlines -
(And yes, Angeluna and Connie, that’s “have cast on,” all right. I don’t know what language would permit such a usage as “casted on,” but it sure ain’t English. I would no more say “I casted on” than “I readed the directions.” And BTW, as long as I’m in this paren, I should like to mention how tickled I am to have flushed out so many fellow linguistic loonies with that previous post. Guess I’m not a continent of one after all. Though… anybody ever tell you guys you have funny accents?)
Man, all this stealth is killing me. But what a fine mess o’ blog fodder I’ll have me when it’s all done!
Soonsoonsoonsoonsoon….
ETA - This is for Rouxfus:
When there’s baby swans (and kidlets) around, you must ALWAYS take pictures! I just found last year’s:
Sure enough, there were eight. I’d be trumpeting too.
There’s one in every crowd.
…doesn’t want me to blog. Or blob. Or block. Or blot?
See, I was all set to post about Something Completely Different on Tuesday, when, um, Something Happened to Jinx It. I am weirdly and selectively superstitious, and I’ve had this one story mentally cued up for weeks waiting for its own little D-Day. Which came on Tuesday and didn’t go quite the way it was supposed to, and is now in limbo because it didn’t and I’m still holding out hope that it will, and I figure if I’ve waited this long to tell about it I can wait a little longer, however long that may be, because if I post about it that will jinx it. Which is pretty funny when you consider that it has jinxed itself already (see above re “didn’t go the way it was supposed to”), so what am I worried about? The best answer I can think of to that - and really it isn’t a bad one, in fact in its irrational way it’s almost logical - is that maybe posting about it will jinx it worse. You know, like the old joke (oh yeah, didn’t I once, like in my maiden post, say something about my life being made up largely of the punch lines of old jokes?): I was feeling pretty lousy, when somebody said to me, cheer up; things could be worse. So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse.
Mind you, this isn’t at all like that - I mean, there’s no life crisis; it isn’t even anything about which I’m feeling lousy and requiring cheering up. It’s just something that didn’t go according to plan. Hey - kind of like everything else in my life, come to think of it. It just messed up my momentum, is all, which in turn derailed all the other stuff I was planning to write about. There’s plenty of it marinating in the pea-brain - only the other day’s (non-)events created sort of a mental bottleneck. Like when you know dinner is going to be roast beef, and you’re already salivating for roast beef, and then you look at your plate and you wonder how that solitary lump of pease-pudding got there. I happen to be rather fond of pease-pudding, but as an unexpected substitute for roast beef it just doesn’t quite cut it, if you know what I mean.
Well, that’s me being cryptic again. Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show (or perchance you wander away in disgust at a coyly content-free post, and who could blame you?); but wonder on, till truth make all things plain. As long as I’m in this cryptic vein, I may as well sum up the knitting non-news: stealth, stealth, and more stealth. Sorry, but it’s open season on birthdays right about now - and birthdays necessarily beget stealth. Last night I began another Beige Blob, which at the moment looks remarkably similar to the previous one but is fated soon to take a startling turn in a different direction. I’m also swatching for a Maroon Blob, which won’t look like either of the other Blobs, not even in its early stages, but which nevertheless has certain features in common with them. Then I’m involved in discussions about a custom design, to be knitted by someone else, a design that will spend a good part of its life as yet another Beige Blob. I’m also in the throes of a sock design that I can’t show you yet. Oh, and in-between it all I’ve done a few more rows of The Red Blob - not enough to warrant updating the progress graphic, though. So truly this post overall is a…
CONTENT-FREE ZONE! CONTENT-FREE ZONE!
Oh well, today is Friday Sh*ks*s, so at least I can hope to accomplish some mileage, even if not in any new directions. Will report, as and when.
Meanwhile, thank you for all the nice things you said about the Completed Beige Blob - and Barbara thanks you for the birthday wishes! (Oh yes, I can see that I will have to write this one up - we are even discussing the possibility of someday offering it as a kit, as well as in standalone pattern form.)
And now, off I go to drum up some content, or some mileage, or some momentum, whichever comes first.
You are currently browsing the archives for theLaceball Cap category.