Trish Knits.com

Author: Trish

  • Home is Where the Heart is

    Hands making heart shape
    Hands making heart shape
    Ok, so I know that it’s rare to find me here, blogging. Why am I in a blogging slump, and why have I been staying away? I think I’ve been extra stressed lately, and I haven’t just wanted to use the blog as a dumping ground for all that’s bugging me. This is, after all, a knitting blog, and that means it’s supposed to be light-hearted and fun, right? Well forgive me if I haven’t been feeling so light-of-heart lately and I’d really just rather go hide under a rock and mope.

    I’ve had some strife in my extended family lately that has been getting me down, which has forced me to examine just what and who is “family,” and whether or not just because someone has the label of family it means that they hold some special power over me that defines my place in the world. I’m slowly coming around to the realization that what makes a family is not always just the people to whom you’re connected by blood or marriage or some other circumstance that causes your life experiences to be intertwined. A family can happen anywhere, in any way, as long as there are people somewhere who love you. I have a family of my own, and in it are people who love me. And there are others who are not family, who I know love me just as much. I have been blessed in this life with good friends to whom I am bonded as a sister to brother, or sister to sister, and for those people I am most grateful.

    So my cup runneth over. And yet, when just a few have made me sad, or made me feel less a member of their clan than I had hoped I was, somehow, it still managed to rock my world. I’ve been struggling over these past few weeks to not discount all that I do have, surrounding and supporting me, and not letting those who would discount me, intentionally or unintentionally, define who I am. It’s funny how those who should be the most insignificant wind up having the biggest impact, like the proverbial sore thumb. But I will get past it. I am getting better, even if it is just a little bit every day.

    Trish and Karen sneak a few stitches at lunch
    Trish and Karen sneak a few stitches at lunch
    In the meantime, I am knitting. It’s just a scarf for now, but it is all that I can manage. I’m nearing the end of my knitting on my friend Jennifer’s scarf. In just a day or two I am going to add really long fringe on it and call it done. For the life of me I don’t know why I am attracted to so many scarves–as projects they are positively endless and I never can keep myself from tiring of them long before they are finished. But, I am stealing every possible moment to knit this before I see my friend Jennifer next week. Here I am, knitting on my lunch hour with my friend Karen from work. Karen, who I met in the bathroom on the fifth floor of my office, of all places, because we both commented on the lovely cables in another woman’s hat. They were the sort of comments that only a knitter would make, so we became instantly bonded as we washed our hands in the automatic sinks. We try to get together every couple of weeks or so, to marvel at each other’s projects and share knitting gossip. but mostly it’s so we can throw down a couple of rows during lunch before having to face a stressful afternoon in the cube farm. It helps, it really does. And I’m so lucky to have made a new friend.


    Book Review: Knitting for Baby

    I recently purchased the book, Knitting for Baby: 30 Heirloom Projects with Complete How-to-Knit Instructions by Kristin Nicholas and Melanie Falick. I was a little nervous about buying a book with learn-to-knit instructions already in it, because, well, I already know how to knit. And, in general, I hate those knitting books that have overly-simplified instructions followed by a bunch of impossible projects, as if someone who’s just learning to knit is going to turn out designer sweaters at the get-go. But for once, this book makes absolute sense, and I applaud the authors’ decision to make it a learn-to-knit book. Lots of people learn to knit for the first time with the impending arrival of a baby, so isn’t it great to have a book for beginners that is also filled with adorable little things to knit?

    Kristin Nicholas and Melanie Fallick are just about two of my most favorite designers, and this book did not disappoint me. I love just about every project in this book. I love how it starts out with the basics, and gives you a few projects to work on, then adds a skill, and a few more projects featuring that skill, and so on. Even the most basic designs at the beginning of the book are as cute as can be, though… so even if you’re a more seasoned knitter this book is still worth a look. You’ll find everything from practical booties and hats, to beautiful sweaters, and whimsical little toys. There’s always a new baby coming in my family, as many cousins and nieces as there are, so I am quite sure that this book will get lots of use around here!

  • Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival 2010: A Year to Remember

    Last weekend was the first weekend in May. If you’re a fiber fanatic, and anywhere within driving distance of the state of Maryland, you know what that means. It was the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. Which, for fiber lovers like me, is almost as good as Christmas.

    (If I said it was better than Christmas, my family would be even more convinced that I am crazy, so let’s just keep that our little secret, ok?)

    So, last Saturday I left the house at about 10 a.m. with my good friend Steve. This trip has become something of an annual event for us. Steve is my best friend from college; we were next-door neighbors at the campus apartment complex and met during a fire drill some 24 years ago. It was a good day. The weather was unseasonably hot, but we considered that a good thing, since the year before I had shorted the electronics of my wheelchair during the previous year’s trip. So, while the heat was a big topic among festival goers, the whole time I kept telling myself that rain would have been much, much worse.

    The fairgrounds are about 40 minutes or so from my house, but this year, at about three miles out, we were stopped dead in our tracks. The traffic was truly horrible. But, I was with a good friend and we had Glee going on the iPod, so again, it could have been much worse. Still, it was two and a half hours before we found ourselves walking into the festival gate.

    I had been e-mailing my friend Jen all the way, as I knew she had been planning to arrive at the festival much earlier than I was. She reported that she was making a trip to her car just as we were getting onto the grounds, and so we happened to bump into her near the gate.

    Trish and Jen at the gate
    Trish and Jen at the gate

    At the same spot I ran into my friend Karen from work. all before we ever made it inside the grounds! Since we’d been so long in the car, Steve and I arrived at the festival feeling ready for lunch, so we set off looking for food right away.

    We found a lamb vendor and someone selling lime fizzes right next to each other. The lines were long, so Steve got in one and I got in the other. The lamb vendor was one I don’t remember seeing before.

    Waiting in line for the lamb
    Waiting in line for the lamb

    I ended up with a beautiful kabob for lunch, and washed it down with a lime fizz, both of which I consider to be a true festival tradition.

    Lamb Kabob
    Lamb Kabob
    Lime fizz
    Lime fizz

    Lots of people tell me that they can’t bring themselves to eat lamb at the sheep and wool festival, with all the adorable lambs so close by. I don’t mind eating meat, so long as I don’t have to talk to it first, and the lamb is something that just makes the whole experience unique. I love the aroma of lamb as it is cooking. My kabob was like a whole meal on a stick, including lamb sausage, peppers, onion, tomatoes, mushrooms, and a baby potato. And the lime fizz was the perfect cooler for such a hot day.

    One of the things I like best about the festival is the live music that is played in various locations throughout the grounds. When entering the Main Building, where a large number of vendors are located, I heard this:

    Very soon I found lots of things to get excited about. One of the things that caught my eye fairly early on was an electronic spinning wheel device that looked so easy, that maybe even I could learn to operate it. I don’t spin, because I can’t treadle with my feet, and drop spindles and I don’t seem to get along, no matter how hard I try. (Emphasis on the “dropping” part of drop spindles, if you know what I mean.)

    Turns out that this device has a foot pedal like that which you’d find on a sewing machine, but you can set it to tap once for on, and tap again for off. So, the kind people at the booth set up one of the machines so that it could be within my reach, and off I went!

    Trish spinning with the Hansen e-Spinner
    Trish spinning with the Hansen e-Spinner

    This is the HansenCrafts miniSpinner, equipped with a Woolee Winder. I fear that I am going to have to get one of these things. I can do it! My first few tries yielded a couple inches of slubby, twisty yarn, but hey, since I’ve never really spun before I still need to get a feel for drafting and holding the yarn. Oh, no! I’m starting to use spinners’ words! I definitely don’t need another thing to be obsessed about, but I feel the bug biting. I figure if stuff a 20 in my sock drawer once a week, it won’t be that long til I’ve saved up, right?

    Of course, there are animals everywhere.

    Baby alpaca
    Baby alpaca
    Sheepie gets the full beauty treatment
    Sheepie gets the full beauty treatment
    Sheepie gets the final touches on the hairdo
    Sheepie gets the final touches on the hairdo

    And there are lovely examples of what one can make with their wools.

    Collection of beautiful alpaca sweaters
    Collection of beautiful alpaca sweaters

    Of course, I did some shopping while at the festival. More about what I bought will be coming in a future post. But what matters to me most, I think, about this festival is the atmosphere. I know there are other fiber festivals around the country. I’ve never been to any of them, but I feel like I’ve got the best there is, right in my own backyard. It’s great for people who want to shop, a wonderful place to see and learn about fiber-producing animals, and a wonderful tradition that I look forward to every year. It’s a great gathering place for fiber friends, and I look forward to seeing people that I know there, year after year. I’m already looking forward to next year. There’s so much to do there, I keep telling myself, that I don’t really need to buy yarn.

    Yeah, right. Stay tuned for that part of the story.

  • Blog Week Day 7: Yarn Love

    Wow… today is the last day of Blog Week! I am sad to see it end, but, at the same time, I confess that I am a bit relieved as well. I never have been a daily blogger, and I have no intention of maintaining this week’s hectic pace. In fact, most of the time I don’t have nearly enough to say, so it has been very helpful to have pre-defined topics. If Blog week ever happens again, so long as it’s not next week? I’m definitely in.

    I think today’s topic, “A Good Yarn,” which is kinda sorta supposed to be about a favorite yarn, is one of the hardest so far to write. How do I choose a favorite? Isn’t that like trying to choose a favorite child, or a favorite flavor of ice cream?

    The truth is, I never met a yarn I didn’t like. I love them all, for different reasons. I have knit with everything from the cheapest dishcloth cotton to the yummiest of cashmere. I admit that I have not tried quiviut yarn yet, because at roughly $90 an ounce, I can’t afford to fall in love with it! I even must confess that–don’t tell anyone, please–I don’t hate acrylic yarn. In fact, before I became a knitter, I don’t think it occurred to me that I would ever want to knit with anything other than acrylic, mostly because of the ease of care.

    But, I have changed my ways. I have so many types of yarn in my stash now, that acrylic is probably the least among them. So, when I looked around to determine a favorite yarn, if I could possibly have such a thing, it was a good, basic wool.

    Lots of Cascade 220 in various shades
    Lots of Cascade 220 in various shades
    One such example is Cascade 220. I call it my Workhorse Yarn, because there’s almost nothing that can’t be made with it. I love it for hats, because the wool is so warm. And I love it that it comes in so many wonderful colors. It’s like having the whole Crayola Big Box. Didn’t you feel special when you knew that you had all the colors? That’s kinda how I feel about Cascade. I have collected the colors over time and I love having so many to choose from, no matter what whim hits me when I want to knit something. I especially love hitting the once-a-year Webs sale, when this yarn becomes especially affordable. (Pssst… in case you didn’t know, that sale is on… NOW!)

    There are other yarns that also are good, sturdy wools I love. Most notably, Knit Picks Wool of the Andes, which is a fabulous wool at a fabulous price, and Brown Sheep Lambs Pride, which contains a little bit of mohair. This is my favorite yarn for making my felted hats, as the mohair gives a slight fuzzy halo to the hats. I think the mohair adds to the elegance of the felted items.

    This weekend was the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, which is my favorite event of the year. The weather was about as hot as I ever remember for this early in May, but I was really thankful that it wasn’t raining. I saw lots of friends, enjoyed great food, heard some fabulous traditional music, and oh, yes, some yarn followed me home. I’m still working on my photos from the event but I hope you’ll be hearing more about that in the next day or so. Until then, I bid you goodnight.

  • Blog Week Day 6: From the Knitting Vault

    I can’t believe that Blog Week Day 6 is here, and so it’s almost over! Today’s topic: revisit a past FO. (For the uninitiated, “FO” means “finished object.”) Since I have precious few of those, choosing a special one was relatively easy.

    One of my earliest projects is, to this day, my most favorite. It is my first-ever felted hat.

    Hat project before felting
    Hat project before felting
    I made it in the early spring of 2004, but I actually bought the pattern, the Fiber Trends AC-1, in 1999, knowing that I wanted to make it one day. It was the first knitting project I ever got really excited about, and felt jazzed enough to stay up til 3 in the morning to finish the knitting. It is made with Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride in one strand of purple and one strand of gray held together. Luckily, even though I was not yet blogging at the time, I did take a picture of the hat before felting (I was feeling the call of posterity).


    Hat after felting
    Hat after felting
    And this is what it looked like immediately after felting. I was amused that it looked so much like the silver mixing bowl that I used as a hat mold. I had to run it through a hot wash one or two more times after this photo was taken because it was so huge.

    For Christmas that year in 2004, my co-worker gave me a large purple pin because, she said, it reminded her of my hat. She took the hat off my desk where I had it perched and put the pin on, on the spot. Because of this, each time I make these hats, and I have made several, I always adorn them with something. Usually it’s jewelry, but sometimes it’s a cabled hat band or something fun and funky. I’d love to make one with big, floppy flowers.

    To this day, everywhere I go, I constantly get stopped on the street (literally!) so people can ask me where I got my hat. I beam with pride when I can say, “I made it myself!” This is the only knitted thing I’ve ever made that has gotten this reaction.

    The hat, today
    The hat, today
    The hat has mellowed with age. The shape is no longer crisp like that of a newly finished project. I’ve been tempted at times to re-run it through the wash again and see if it will “freshen,” but then, I kind of like the mellowed, aged look that this hat now has. I have plenty of yarn to make other hats, and have several more colors planned for myself. But this hat is my darling, and I think I’ve been avoiding making a new one because this one is so special to me.

    So there you have it, my favorite FO. I’m off to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival this weekend, which is my favorite event of the year. Funny that tomorrow’s topic is about a favorite yarn. I’ll probably have lots of new stash to talk about!

  • Blog Week Day 5: Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop*

    (*with apologies to Landon Pigg)

    Like most knitters I know, my knitting goes with me everywhere. Long waits in doctor’s offices or traffic jams (I’m not the driver!) are never a problem for me. I knit in the cafeteria at work, in my den in front of the TV, at PTA meetings, family gatherings, you name it. But I do have a favorite place. Except there’s precious little evidence that I’m ever there, because I’m always the one with the camera.
    ”
    My favorite place? My local bookstore coffee shop. Twice a month, I get together with my knit-buds, and we laugh, have coffee and dessert, and knit. Well, some of get some knitting done. Others…well, did I mention the laughing? It’s easy to not knit at knit group, too. But whether you’re a knitter, or a not-knitter, it’s always fun!

    (Click to embiggen.)

    There is another knit group that meets there, on Wednesday nights, in this very spot. But I can’t make it to that group. With school-age kids I am the homework cop and the shower supervisor and the don’t-forget-to-brush-your-teeth drone. Wednesday nights are a no-go for me. So, I thought, why not make a knit group that I can attend. And so I posted on Ravelry, and people came! It worked! At first, it was just once a month. Recently we expanded to twice a month. For two years now, we’ve been getting together. We have knitters of all skill levels, from beginner to–WOW. And it doesn’t matter how new you are or how long you’ve been knitting, everyone is welcome. We’ve even had people cross our path in the coffee shop, run across the road to buy needles and yarn, and come back and sit down and knit, on the spot.

    The best part is that many lasting friendships have been formed. I love the knitters in our little group. The smell of the coffee, especially on a snowy knitting afternoon, is a really nice touch, but it’s the friendships and the mutual love of our craft, that makes me so happy to be there.

    Knitting might be a fairly solitary activity, but knitting among friends… that’s the best.

  • Blog Week Day 4: All the Things I Wish I Knew

    I love my knitting! But there's so much I want to know.
    I love my knitting! But there’s so much I want to know.
    Welcome to Day 4 of Blog Week. What is today’s topic, you might ask? Ahem. What new skill would I like to learn? Wow. That sure sounds like a simple question. I guess it is! And the answer is simple, too. What do I still want to learn about knitting? The answer? A lot. Got a comfortable chair? This could take a while; I have an ever-growing list.

    • Gauge. So important, and such a basic step in knitting. Counting stitches to know what your gauge is. And yet, this is one thing that I’m still really bad at doing. I think it’s because I have eye tracking problems that counting is hard for me. I’ve tried various magnifiers and whatnot, but I’m still not that great at counting. Sounds like a simple thing to do, right? But yet, get it wrong, and it is the root of all that is evil with my knitting.
    • Measuring, in general. I really do want to learn how to take good measurements so that once I get the gauge thing figured out, I can really know how to knit actual garments that fit.
    • Colorwork. Whether it’s Selbuvotter mittens or a Fassett-inspired color explosion, I’d like to be able to work with more than one yarn at a time and not make a mess of things. Most people say that holding one yarn in each hand is the answer, but not for me. So, I just need to keep at it until I can figure out what feels comfortable someday.
    • Steeks. The very thought of knitting and knitting and knitting something for months on end and then taking a pair of scissors to it makes me dizzy. I think I need to learn how to do a crocheted steek since I don’t sew and I don’t own a sewing machine.
    • And since I mentioned it, Seaming. My seams are messy and awful. I’ve had one person sit with me once while I sewed two swatches together, and once, Lea-Ann McGregor even sat with me patiently on the phone, explaining the whole thing to me and talking me through it.
    • Fixing Brioche Stitch.Brioche stitch is one of my all-time favorite stitches in knitting. And yet, when I drop a stitch, which I always do, it is me after all, doing the knitting, I find it impossible to pick up the stitches correctly and keep going. I guess I need to practice more. Brioche stitch has so many possibilities for exciting shapes and color combinations, and I want to master the technique so I can take my knitting in all kinds of crazy directions.

    Phew! Every time I learn something new in knitting it always leads to something else I want to know. I’d love to be like my Italian aunt, who is smaller than I am in every way. She was wearing a handknit sweater that I really loved, that I had raved about, and I asked her if she could make me one, too. She said, “Sure!” and asked me what was my favorite color. (Purple, of course!) Six weeks later, I had my sweater. And it fits so comfortably… I love it. She did it by “feel,” that is to say she never asked me my size and never took a measurement. Just went to work and knit the sweater on instinct. And it’s my favorite to this day. I wish I could do that.

    I think I need lessons, Real, actual knitting lessons from someone who knows all of these smarty-farty knitting things. I’d love to shadow a Master Knitter, and really learn how it’s done. Is there ever such a thing as knowing it all in knitting? That’s what I really want. Why is that so much to ask?

    See you tomorrow…