on the importance of felting a swatch

fez or propeller beanie?

This week I learned a painful but important knitting lesson: felt a swatch!

If you're going to felt a new yarn, or a yarn other than the pattern calls for, save yourself the agony and knit up a little swatch & felt it first. How long does it really take to knit a gauge swatch and then felt it? How many years of felting have I managed to get through so recklessly?

It's true, it will delay your project by a couple of hours. But oh! the humanity. You should see the mess I've made. $30 worth of scrumptious alpaca-cashmere-merino yarn and a week and a half of my precious, precious knitting time are down the drain. That horrible fez-like thing at the top of the page is the result of my hastiness. It was meant to be a jaunty, vintage-style cloche for my sister's birthday, which by the way is tomorrow. Did I mention the agony???

This actually happened the other night, but paralysis set in, and just this morning I got back on my feet, ordered some replacement yarn (an old standby, Merino Style - forget this experimental luxury baloney) and bought my sister a stand-in trinket until her specially-ordered cloche is ready. It feels good to move on, it really does.

So the moral of the story is: don't be lazy like me. Knit, measure and felt a gauge swatch before you start that felting project, unless you're using Cascade 220 for the hundredth time and know what you're getting yourself into. I used to be one of those reckless felters, but I've learned my lesson, oh have I ever.

creative turmoil

In 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Believe it or not, there were many then who asked why he won, when he hadn't accomplished his goal yet. The National Voting Rights Act had not yet been passed, and racial segregation and intimidation was still rampant in the United States, especially in the South.

King raised this point himself in his acceptance speech:

"I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs, and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.

"Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle, and to a movement which has not yet won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize. After contemplation, I conclude that this award, which I receive on behalf of that movement, is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression."

Looking back, it seems to me that the Nobel Prize committee was not only affirming the rightness of Dr. King's nonviolent approach, but lifting up a beacon of hope for oppressed peoples around the world. I think they also saw an opportunity to provide Dr. King and his movement with a huge dose of encouragement and validation before their nation, and before the world, that could help bring about the change for which they were marching.

In this speech, Dr. King speaks of living in a dark and uncertain time, and of his fervent belief that the struggle is one full of hope: "When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born."

There is so much darkness and uncertainty in our world, and so many nay-sayers who criticize and find fault with those who speak of hope and put their stock in the future rather than grabbing what they can get in the present. I love this speech because of the way Dr. King uses the international forum to brush the critics aside, and to confer the honor of the moment not to his own movement, but to the "humble children of God" who are "willing to suffer for righteousness' sake."

I hope that you are celebrating this national day of service today. Take a moment to read Dr. King's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and hopefully to find a new spirit of hope in these dark and uncertain days.

oriole family nest

For Christmas I made the Little Pea a toy orioles' nest with a family of orioles inside.

She likes to touch and squeeze them, especially the bright orange Papa Oriole. I think as she gets older she'll enjoy taking them out of the nest and putting them back in, over and over.

The inspiration for this toy was the Charley Harper silk screen of an oriole clinging to his nest in the wind. My first thought was how much the nest resembles a felted purse. His bold, 2-dimensional birds made me decide to use craft felt for the birds themselves, and sew a relatively 2-dimensional toy bird that was still soft and fun to clutch.



At first I had planned to make a bird house with lots of different kinds of birds inside, but as I started the planning I realized that I didn't want the Little Pea to think that an owl and a sparrow might live together harmoniously in the same house, so I opted for a bit more realism instead.

The nest and birds are all life-sized (more or less), and I tried to make the nest resemble what orioles really make, which is a shaggy pouch that incorporates whatever materials they can find nearby, and usually has some soft fluffy stuff near the bottom to insulate and cushion the eggs (and then the babies when they hatch).

It was a lot of fun to make, and I've decided that this was the prototype for more bird families to come. Next time I'm going to use felted sweater bits and needle-felting for the birds. As much as I like the poppy, paperlike quality of the craft felt, it's not a great material to work with, and I'm more comfortable working with wool. Besides, I'm not sure what kind of dye is used on craft felt, and my kid is sticking this thing in her mouth quite a bit.



Stay tuned for more hatchlings as spring approaches!

slowing down

The past year has been a wonderful one for me, but at the same time, the last three months since I went back to work have been incredibly stressful. I have spent most of the days exhausted, constantly apologizing to the people I love the most for being so grouchy, so irrational, so irritable all the time.

I know that this is all normal. This is life for a working mother. I know that it's supposed to get better with time. But throughout the fall as I got deeper and deeper into it, my heart began screaming at me that this is not the life I want. We didn't have a child so that we could turn her over to someone else to raise for us. I missed her so desperately, and I especially missed something I am just beginning to understand: mothering. So in 2010 that won't be my life anymore. I am going to slow down - way down.

The experiment starts next week. I am going to be a part-time worker. And I'll have four wonderful days a week at home with the Little Pea. We have found an amazing nanny for the other days, and my mom is also going to take on some child care.

I don't kid myself that starting next week, I'll get back all the time I miss so much for knitting yoga, meditation, reading, writing, designing and having lots of grown-up time alone with HWWLLB. But maybe I'll get just a little of that back, and boy will I be grateful for whatever moments I do get.

Mostly what I'll get is to be with our little girl more than I'm at work. She'll get to be with me more than with child care providers. Maybe I'll be the one who hears her say "mama" for the first time.

The challenge is going to be staying slowed down. Resisting the urge to cram twice as many chores, projects and commitments into my life since I'm technically working less.

I know that a lot of you have been through all this, and made lots of different decisions for yourself and your families, and I respect all of you and your choices very much. I am so curious about how other moms and dads have been able to resist the busy-ness in order to just be with your children and be their mom (or dad). Do you take them along and integrate them into your work or projects? Do you carve out sacred time with them when nothing else is allowed to interrupt? Do you just wing it and hope for the best?

In the end, I guess what I need to slow down for the most is to find out who I am now. I know that I'm not the same person I was a year ago at this time. I can see that there are lots of things I have taken on - but what I really wonder about is what do I have to just let go of, and leave behind?

tape recorder

End of the year, end of the decade. As a fast-forward-moving, future-oriented sort of person, I'm caught off-guard by all the backwards-looking at the end of the year. It's always a wonderful surprise for me to find that other people have actually been reflecting on this for a while, and have ideas to share (Top 100 songs of the year?! Wow, who knew?!?).

And this year, not only do we get to hear everyone's top 100 ___ of the year, but of the whole crazy decade. So many sappy-memory moments to enjoy.

I would like to start a tape recorder right now to catch it all, like in middle school when I had a boom box that had a radio and a tape player in it, and you could record your favorite DJ on the radio all evening while you waited for him to play the song you requested, and maybe, just maybe he would even play your whiny middle-school voice trying to sound cool and older while asking him to play it.

Or maybe I'll write down all the lists of Top 100 books and movies and everything else, and glue them into my journal and decorate the page with little colored-pencil doodles (That just sounds middle school - in actuality I do that sort of thing with some frequency as an adult).

So what are the "Top __" lists you're loving right now? These are my favorites:

The 2009 Pulitzer prizes for fiction (my reading list for the next month or two)
The WXPN Year in Review - Top 100 Songs and Top 10 Albums from my favorite radio station
Your Worst Shot 2009 Flickr group (so many of these are better than my best shots - *sigh*).
Grist's Top Green Stories of the '00s

Now I'm off to scarf down some more of my Dad's amazing Christmas cookies while I try to resurrect one of my Top Abandoned Knitting Projects of the Decade, a lovely half-finished Minimalist Cardigan. I hope you're having a great end-of-the-decade, too!

early morning

It's early. Sunrise is still a little ways off, and I am sipping a cup of tea at the kitchen table, enjoying some quiet.

I have lost a lot of free time: time for yoga, time for knitting, time for reading long beautiful novels. But this is one kind of time that I have gained: very quiet time, alone, with a warm cup of tea and a cat beside me. There is a little warm spot on my neck where a baby was recently curled, and I am looking forward to sunrise, when she really wakes up, and I will pick her up and bring her to look again at the Christmas tree, and she will be delighted, all over again.

It is very peaceful.

If I had worries, they would fill this space.

Instead, I look at my list of to-do's, and notice that one of them says, "relax." I decide to do that one.

I sip my tea, poke about in my knitting basket a bit, and hear a little voice waking up down the hallway. Another morning, just beginning.

holiday fantasies

This is me every year at the holidays: longing for more.

(Acutally, right after this photo was taken, I gorged myself on pie... but let's don't disrupt the theme I've got going here).

Every year I bemoan the too-few hours in the day, as I wish I had more time to decorate the house, bake treats, make gifts, send greetings... and every year I get to do some of it, and at least savor the fantasy of all the other fun things I meant to do.

This year, I'm starting to realize that my holiday crafting and nesting will consist of little more than the savored fantasy. My first Christmas as a full-time working mama with a little baby at home...

Don't get me wrong, I am very excited about the first Christmas with the Little Pea. I can't wait to sing carols with her and snuggle together by the fire on Christmas morning, give her her very first Christmas present, and watch her be spoiled to death by our family. In fact, as I write this I'm getting even more excited about it!

But this will be the first Christmas in a long time - maybe since I was the Little Pea's age - that my family members won't be getting gifts made by me. I am trying like heck to finish a pair of socks that I started last April, and I have every intention of making a gift for the Little Pea, but I think that's going to be the sum of it. *sigh* So sad!

But all the same, I want you to know that even though I probably won't send you a hand-made card this year, I am thinking of you. Imagine that we got together and baked cookies on a cold, blustery December afternoon and drank spiced cider and danced around to goofy Christmas music. I am savoring the memories of many blustery December afternoons making little gifts with friends, and the evenings squirreled away in a coffee shop somewhere on December 23rd trying like heck to finish a way-too-ambitious gift in time.

I hope you get to make some of those memories this year! I'll try not to drool (better go eat some of that pie).