I finished 6 pairs of socks, 2 cross stitches, 3 stitching projects and some machine embroidery projects. I also read some books, and abandon one project (the Scout Shawl).
I don’t have strict plans for this year.
My main goal is not to buy anything (unless I need it to finish a project). However, I am giving myself leave to buy craft souvenirs when on holiday.
Embroidery – I am going to stitch monogamously and the order will be
Home Sweet Home
Jane Austen
Bayeux Tapestry
12 days of Christmas
Blackwork crow
There’s more but that’s probably enough to be getting on with.
I do like a book about knitting, emotional stuff, not instructions (although I like those as well). I think I came across this while looking at what else people bought when they bought Knitting Pearls (by Ann Hood) on Amazon.
Here’s the blurb …
In this lively, funny memoir, Peggy Orenstein sets out to make a sweater from scratch–shearing, spinning, dyeing wool–and in the process discovers how we find our deepest selves through craft. Orenstein spins a yarn that will appeal to everyone.
The Covid pandemic propelled many people to change their lives in ways large and small. Some adopted puppies. Others stress-baked. Peggy Orenstein, a lifelong knitter, went just a little further. To keep herself engaged and cope with a series of seismic shifts in family life, she set out to make a garment from the ground up: learning to shear sheep, spin and dye yarn, then knitting herself a sweater.
Orenstein hoped the project would help her process not just wool but her grief over the recent death of her mother and the decline of her dad, the impending departure of her college-bound daughter, and other thorny issues of aging as a woman in a culture that by turns ignores and disdains them. What she didn’t expect was a journey into some of the major issues of our time: climate anxiety, racial justice, women’s rights, the impact of technology, sustainability, and, ultimately, the meaning of home.
With her wry voice, sharp intelligence, and exuberant honesty, Orenstein shares her year-long journey as daughter, wife, mother, writer, and maker–and teaches us all something about creativity and connection.
I really enjoyed reading this – some chapters more than others (I was not so keen on the shearing chapter). I have put in a multiple of post-it flags and now I want to reread Women’s Work: The First 20 000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber.
Learning to shear sheep during the pandemic seemed like a bit of a lark – a way to tap into the romance and resilience of an earlier age; to connect with something enduring when life had become so precarious […]
We are not a culture, to say the least, that venerates older women.
Lessons on food or thread weave us together across the warp of time, the weft of space.
I didn’t imagine how these ancient skills would deepen my awareness of women’s work or challenge my sense of place or home.
It makes sense to me that the designers of life would be female rather than male, as in the Judea-Christian tradition, and it seems especially appropriate that those goddesses would spin. Making something from nothing is the quintessential magic of women.
Craft can mean so many things depending on the context. It can be exploitative or liberatory, subsistence or luxury, rote or creative, an act of conformity or rebellion, of belonging or individuality.
After all, that proverbial ‘little old lady’ could well be an unrepentant cackler, a fearsome crone. Her innocuousness could be her superpower, allowing her to slip the bonds of feminine constraint.
This book is a memoir, a history and a feminist treatise. Even if you’re not a knitter, or into fibre arts, these is plenty to enjoy.
One thing though, I would have liked to have seen the jumper.
The yarn on the left is from the Yarn Trader – it’s Christmas sock yarn. On the right is from Cable Tie Knits – I am going to knit Miss A a hat (her rowing club colours are orange and black). I made her this hat back in 2016 and I might do the same one again.
I went on holiday so I wanted something easier to knit than my Scout Shawl. When we were in Dunsborough last year, I purchased yarn from Text and Co, which has been dyed to represent the blues of the ocean and there is a mini skein to represent the sand (it was dyed by Circus Tonic Handmade.
My project bag is my Lady and The Unicorn Zipper Bag from Red Bubble – the large size is great for socks.
I am using a chart from one of my Bee in a Bonnet patterns – I think it is The Second Chance Romance Socks, but I am just doing the twisted stitch bit.
I cast on 64 stitches (no swatch this time), and did a K2P2 rib for 20 rounds, and then onto the pattern.
I have re-started my Scout Shawl. I am finding it much easier to knit with straight needles. I have gone down to 3.25mm needles – I was using 4mm before, and I much prefer the fabric.
My yarn for the Choose Your Own Knitventure has arrived. The pattern is written by Lauren Rad and Beth Kirkpatrick (I think it comes out this weeK). The yarn is from Frosted Stitch (Floribunda and Moonflower – I believe the yarn is dyed especially for this project).
I needed an easy project, while I was waiting for Officeworks to print my Scout Shawl pattern (it’s all gone horribly wrong and I am restarting. I am taking this opportunity to use smaller needles because I didn’t like the fabric I was creating.
I used the Family Time Dishcloth pattern (it’s free!) and cotton from Spotlight – it’s Abbey Road Kung Fu Cotton. Whenever I am at Spotlight I have a quick look in the cotton yarn aisle to see if they have any nice colours of cotton.