February sock (I know it’s March) and progress on the Language of Love embroidery
I have been working on my February sock. My left twist has improved, but it is still a slow process. The yarn is lovely (it’s from here). We are now watching The Wheel of Time season two.
I have also made some stitching progress. I have run out of the light green silk that I am using for the Ivy ‘veins’, so I have started on the Ivy leaves, which are just straight stitches using all seven strands of the silk (and trying to make them fluffy).
My silk has arrived for my two poems (January and February)
February Poem
So I need to get back onto them, so I have four stitching projects with deadlines (not terribly hard deadlines)
January Poem
February Poem
Name tag for stitching class (this is an in-person class here)
Language of Love
I am still waiting for my March supplies to arrive, and I haven’t yet decided on a poem.
I have been working on my Habitation throw and a sock for February
While watching various TV shows (Invisible Boys was particularly good), I have been knitting.
The Habitation Throw is by Helen Stewart and I am using the yarn from the Kate Davies Design Advent Calendar. It’s an easy pattern – perfect for TV knitting – there is just one row with K2tog and YO where you need to be paying a little bit of attention, otherwise it’s all knit.
I have started socks for February. Using my yarn from Tasmania. I am doing a twisted rib cast on (K1(tbl)P1) and then I am going to do a simple twisted stitch pattern for the leg, from the Twisted Stitch Sourcebook – I am struggling a bit with the LT (left twist), I knit a swatch and I did improve, so hopefully the actual sock will be fine.
I finished my Christmas Eve socks. I even wore them on holiday because I didn’t pack enough socks!
The yarn is Gingerbread from Circus Tonic Yarns. And the pattern is from Helen Stewart (and I think it is the Ambient sock pattern). I used my own sock recipe and used her pattern in the leg and foot.
I went on a holiday to Tasmania. And I always like to buy craft materials as souvenirs.
On my very first morning, I went for a run and came across the Salamanca Wool Shop, and I requested Tasmanian sock yarn – I bought the skein to the left from Wattlebird Yarn.
Next up I went to A Stitch in Time, where I bought the Sampler (exclusive to them) and the scissors. I have been wanting sharper scissors to make my pin stitches work better.
And then in Launceston, I went to Knit, Needles and Wool. This place was full of yarn and there was a group meeting at the back – it all was very welcoming. Once again, I looked for sock yarn from Tasmania, and found White Gum Wool – the one I have is 80% merino and 20% silk. I am very keen to start knitting with this one.
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.