sweetgeorgia

Simple Things

Sometimes, my brain makes up obstacles for itself and I self-impose these barriers on myself. Such is the way with this simple lace shawl, the Swallowtail. The Swallowtail Shawl pattern was sitting in my Ravelry queue for over two years and now that I’ve finished it, I don’t know why it took me so long. Maybe I was waiting for the perfect yarn, or maybe I was thinking it would be difficult… I don’t know. But I’ve done it and it was fun AND easy to knit. I even knit the nupps on the Greyhound bus to and from Whistler.

The Simple Things shawlette here was knit by my mother, intrepid new-ish knitter. She’s always excited to show me her new projects and, seriously, she knits so fast. She’ll leave the studio with yarn one afternoon and three days later, she’ll show up with a new scarf. But she can also be a little timid about new things… like this whole top-down triangular shawl technique. But MH’s Simple Things pattern really makes things quite easy and I think my mom’s got the hang of it now. She’s knit another one in Merino Silk DK in Violet Hill… but I think she took that to London with her.

What I found quite eye-opening was that variegated ‘lace’ wasn’t as horrid as I thought it might be. In fact, I quite like it here in this case where the pattern features mostly stockinette rather than complex lace. I’m also really pleased with how the golden yellow bits are spread out quite evenly and not pooly or blotchy.

Simple things like writing these blog posts or my email newsletter take me forever (okay, like 4 hours). I don’t know why they take me so long, honestly. If someone can answer me that, I’d love to know. It’s not even that I don’t have things to share. It’s just that I think I make everything so massive and unmanageable in my mind that it becomes a mountain. Oh, wait, there’s a saying for that… making a mountain out of a molehill. Ohh, I see… that means Wiki says I have cognitive distortion. In any case, I need to stop saying things like “can’t” or “that’s too hard” and just believe that everything is easy, manageable and doable.

Knitting in Nanaimo

It’s been about ten years since I’ve been to visit Nanaimo just over on Vancouver Island. But this past weekend, I had the great opportunity to go for a short visit and also drop by their local yarn store, Mad About Ewe. It’s a sweet little shop located in the Old City Quarter of Nanaimo amongst a complex of restored heritage buildings from the 1800′s and early 1900′s. I dropped off an order with them of the new Silk Crush Sock and some other yarns and then took some time to walk around the waterfront and enjoy the sun. It’s not often that I get a completely free weekend to just wander around in the sun, watching elderly couples walk down the seawall holding hands.

By Sunday afternoon, it had started raining and I headed out for lunch, bringing my current project… the Geodesic Cardigan. I have been feeling pretty lucky that I managed to get a copy of the Knitscene magazine that this pattern is in. It seems to be sold out everywhere, but on one visit to a yarn shop, the staff didn’t have it but helped me call around to other yarn stores to locate it for me. It was like a scene out of Miracle on 34th Street. And yes, they found a copy of the magazine for me at another yarn shop who promised to hold it for me. So, now, even though I really want to make this cardi, I feel a little obligated to enjoy this gift.

Well, I’ve had a lot of time to knit on this… We attempted to leave Nanaimo on Sunday afternoon around 3:30 pm but missed the 5 pm ferry and ended up on the 7 pm ferry. Then the 7 pm ferry was delayed by 30 minutes in departing. Mid-way through the trip, the captain says they were directed to go retrieve a boat that had flipped over, so we had to turn the ferry around (is that even possible?) and go back to get that boat. Turns out the “boat” was a little walmart tub that looked like a baby’s washing basin. That delayed us by another 45 minutes. It was pretty much 10 pm by the time we set foot in Horseshoe Bay. Six and a half hours spent waiting and sitting. We could have flown to Toronto in less time… I honestly don’t know how people commute back and forth from the Island for work. It’s such an unreliable form of transporation. But I guess if you have the luxury of time like we did, then no matter.

Giving Voice to your Interest

It’s funny that when I get really stressed or start feeling the burden of the quantity of work that I have to complete, I seek escape… and not escape as in watching Glee or playing WoW. It’s not potent enough. I don’t even consider knitting or spinning much of an escape, either, since I end up thinking too much about what I’m doing. Even now, I’m trying to pick a cardigan pattern to knit up and it’s downright anxiety-generating. But I mean escape into something that doesn’t have anything to do with anything. Doing something just for the sake of doing something. Not in any way ever expecting to somehow be “productive” about it. Just doing something because it’s fun…

So, about two months ago, I rented a guitar, sort of out of the blue (ok, it was after I saw Sam Roberts play live recently), and started to learn to play. The guitar I happened to rent was a Taylor 114ce which is an acoustic guitar in Taylor’s Grand Auditorium shape (it has a slimmer waist) with a cutaway (“c”) and electronics (“e”). I played it for about a month and decided to buy one — but the 312ce model, which is their Grand Concert shape (slimmer waist and smaller “bout”) to fit my small arms a bit better. It’s still got the cutaway and the electronics (in case it ever needs to be amplified), and it’s all built out of solid wood. But my guitar is on backorder right now as Taylor is still making it. In the meantime, I’m borrowing a friend’s big dreadnought-shaped guitar and still playing away happily. It’s the perfect feeling to be able to play in the evenings after work and let my brain sort of melt.

It’s so interesting to me to observe in myself what I’m like at the beginning of a love affair with a new hobby. How rabid I can be in searching for information. How obsessed I can become with understanding the difference between different kinds of strings, tone woods, and even picks. How I can easily lose an hour playing the same four bars over and over again. I even feel motivated to somehow blog or record my thoughts about it.

Funny, how I can’t find time to collect my thoughts for this blog, but I can easily spend that time playing the guitar. I think that’s all because I get so caught up in “presenting” on this blog rather than simply documenting and expressing. Relaying and remembering. It’s all very ironic, since I’ve been asked to participate on a discussion panel at Northern Voice this coming Saturday, May 8th, specifically about how blogging and this whole social media/Ravelry world have changed how I craft. I think a lot of us knit-type bloggers have gone through a phase where we feel like we are only knitting so that we have things to show on our blogs. Where, we feel insecure or inadequate if we don’t constantly have finished objects to show. And then when you create these obstacles for yourself, you mute your own voice. You stop being able to share your thoughts about this thing that you love.

Come have a listen this weekend. Northern Voice is a local conference about personal blogging and social media and I’m intrigued by some of the other sessions like “Overcoming Social Anxiety” and “How to screw up your own personal blog” (hmm, this may be insight into my own psychosis). In our session, Fibre Arts Online it’ll be Kim Werker (of the all new MightyUgly.com — very very cool concept), Mandy Moore (of Yarnbombing and Knitty fame), and me… talking about how blogging about what we love changed our lives… for better or for worse.

New Colourways for Spring

I don’t know when time started to speed up, but the past couple months, I’ve just been finding it slipping through my fingers. During March, I spent a huge portion of my studio time working on dyeing for FibresWest. While being acutely aware of how time-sensitive the dyeing needed to be (I really don’t like deadlines), I managed to find space in my head to create a few new colourways that I absolutely adore. They are colours that I am just entranced by and, simply, I just like looking at them. They make the studio feel brighter and happier.

These are the four new variegated and “gently” variegated colourways: Maple, Summer Dusk, Violet Hill, and Peashoot. As well, a couple very delicate and almost neutral semi-solids: Tumbled Stone and Summer Skin.

And, also debuting at Fibres West last month, the DK (4-ply) weight of our Merino Silk series. Merino Silk DK is 4-ply whereas the Merino Silk Lace is 2-ply and Merino Silk Aran is 8-ply. It’s been great for really quick or beginner lace knitting. I’m getting a gauge of 24 sts per 4″ for 3.75 mm needles, but I’m sure everyone knits at different tensions and everyone prefers a different hand. I’ve dyed a whole bunch of it to either knit the new Manu cardigan by Kate Davies or Coraline by Ysolda. I can’t decide. And I also have a little stash of it in a special blue shade to knit the Apres Surf Hoodie by Connie Chang Chinchio

Fibres West was a really wonderful experience and I’m so grateful for all the customers and friends, both new and old, who stopped by the booth to say hello. Since we were positioned next to the Ravelry booth, we were audience and participant in a few little reunions.

It’s the very first time I’ve ever participated in a show situation and I was so nervous about getting enough stuff ready to display, getting the booth together, driving a truck… but luckily my old high school friends, James and Teresa, do this kind of thing for a living. They are both industrial and interior designers with their own design company, Light Couture International, and they helped me design and build the booth. They came over to the studio throughout March to paint all my shelving and helped set it all up on Thursday evening before the show. Amazing and professional, they took a huge weight off my shoulders so that I could just focus on dyeing great colours and making lots of yarn.

I am completely in awe of shop owners who are able to get their whole kit together and go from show to show to show. It’s a ton of work, but so worth it to see people in person, excited about the yarn and fibre. Thank you to everyone who came to help and visit!

I’ll leave you with one of our photos from Fibres West… the rest are on Flickr.