Not So Fancy Nancy

Embarrassment of Riches

Busy day, but I feel downright motherly. Spent the morning at my 2nd grader’s school in Art Docent training. PTA funds a program that brings fine art into each class 10x a year. We work with watercolors, clay, etc and send a portfolio home with each child at the end of the year. I really wanted to do it this year after not being able to last year, so here I am. We (parent funding again of course) just bought a kiln so the kids can work with clay, so we had a demo by the artist/dad who’s in charge of that. I’m intimidated but excited too. I’ll have to put some time into this, but with almost 10 years ahead of me volunteering at this school I figured I might as well choose something and make it my own. And now I’m morally free of fundraising committees – YEAH.

Oh, and we made brownies, which are cooling downstairs and waiting for me to finish this (incentive if I ever heard of one). Uber mom.

Shelia requested the numbers for the Artful Yarns Cinema I’m using in my pullover, so here they are in the order of the repeat: 188, 186, 193, 197, 204, 191, 194. Total aside: Shelia must have good taste as she also listens to Radio Paradise. It is aptly named. If you like a variety of modern music excluding rap, teeny-bopper pop and plain ol’ crap, it’s the radio station you’ve always wanted but could never find on the dial. And she liked my sweater, so there you go, good taste.

The pullover is a simple st st knitted side-to-side with two colors held together, changing one color every four rows. It’s fun to watch the colors come over your needles and the repeat gives you a goal to keep you going . The link above takes you to a commercial web site for WEBS that I think is well organized for looking at this yarn and its patterns. One site error though – #204 (orange) is Nurse Rachet, not Nurse Rachel. Much more meaningful.

I bought this kit at my mom’s LYS where they kitted it for a class. HandKnitters in Louisville KY doesn’t do internet sales, but I know they’ll take phone orders (a very nice mother/daughter team run the shop), so if you can’t find it at your LYS give them a call.

I started my colors at a different point in the repeat because I’m shortening the arms. It’s knitting up pretty quickly with the only time consuming part being starting and stopping colors – should be even faster on the body. I weave in as I go or I might never sew this baby up. It’s a lot softer and stretchier than it looks, but I am worried about how susceptible it will be to snagging. This is a lot of money to get trashed within days. This may have to be a sweater I wear out by myself (yet another reason to escape alone – honey, I need to take my sweater out and you know how sensitive he his about children and pets).

After my school meeting I rewarded myself (does volunteering deserve reward? aren’t brownies enough?) with a trip to one of my LYS. Yes, in an embarrassment of riches, I have two well-stocked fiber stores in my little town. Sneaked a peak at the new Interweave Knits Scarf Style while waiting for my copy to arrive and tried to pick my first project for the knit-a-long. If you haven’t seen it yet find a copy, or take a flier as I did and order it sight-unseen. Lots of truly knittable projects with a nice diversity of styles. It’s a keeper.

I bought this Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool for the balloon cable project. Everything I buy is colorful and a lot of it some shade of red or orange, but I realize I need to watch becoming a Symphony of Reds (I’ll explain that some day). This is a really good oatmeal shade and the silk content makes it light enough to wear around here. I read this review of the yarn on Knitter’s Review and had it in my mind to consider. Then, just the other night, for no reason in particular, I was looking at her Viking Knits book, so there you go – it’s yarn destiny. It’s no use questioning yarn destiny. I gave up on that long ago.

Total aside, why the link above to a non-knitting book? Well, history is another passion and as I was driving home from the yarn store that title popped into my head and I couldn’t figure out from where for a few seconds. It’s a great book – the main source book for Girl with a Pearl Earring, (which or course if you haven’t read, you should, and no, the movie doesn’t count, not a bit). Simon Schama is one of my favorite history writers – he tells a good story – this is not your high school history teacher who drove you to counting ceiling tiles to stay awake. He also narrates a great video series on the history of Britain.

OK, just a little fiddling...

My last opportunity to cuddle this baby of mine. Goes in the mail today for my mom's birthday. It turned out a perfect length for wrapping up against the cold. And the yarn's oh-so-soft and cozy. Boy it's hard to let this one go, but what can I say, I love my mother.

This scarf has a story too. It will always remind me of our second trip to Russia. Cast on in Vladivostok on Dec 5, 2003 and knit throughout the long, long Aeroflot hours in the skies between Vlad, Moscow and LAX. All I had was the yarn, one set of #6 bamboo circular needles and the fan stitch pattern scribbled on a scrap of paper. I had the worst time getting the pattern established because, I've since found, I have a HUGE mental block with fan stitch. I'm embarrassed to say the number of times picked up this or my other project using fan (a throw), glanced at the pattern and ended up getting into a yo 5, k2tog 3 rhythm only to discover I'm making a real fan pattern. Just how many times do I have to abuse myself this way? How many? And I hate frogging lacework! You'd think that would beat me into submission. Anyway, I worked on this while standing in the hallway of the Vladivostok courthouse anxiously waiting for our adoption hearing to begin. Might have been why I couldn't get the pattern straight. The best part of the story is how much the Russians loved - adored - that I knit. Turns out it's a symbol of motherhood, like apple pie is for us. The woman we met admitted they knit about as much as women here bake homemade apple pies, but the idea of it sure resonated deeply. When our translator saw the stuffed bunny I'd knitted she almost cried and said all good mothers make a gift like that for their children. My Touch Me scarf (Sally Melville's The Knit Stitch) was fondled by more admiring fingers there than it ever will be here. So, it’s with intense memories of becoming a mother embedded in the stitches that I send this off to warm the neck of my mother.

I finally got this off the needles

I finally got this off the needles and onto the child. Knitted to the last foot of yarn and it just reaches her wrists (whew). Will look cute with several of her dresses, but we have to break this heat first... I love the moss stitch - to the insane point that I bought two lots of Rowan All Seasons on Ebay to make something for myself. Need, no, MUST learn continental before cast on to speed the knitting!

Off and running

After weeks of reading other's blogs and nursing a festering case of blog envy, here I am. (Rather nasty imagery I realize, but festering just works for me.) Guess I should start with a Manifesto, a Mission Statement, a Declaration of Intent, some explanation of why I would carve time out of my precious few creative hours to spend yet more time in front of the PC.

First, exactly which crafts are we talking about here? Well, I’m a knitter, rubber stamper, quilter and scrapbooker. There no order to that list. I do them all. Sometimes all in a day, but more often in wild creative bursts. I do whichever interests me whenever. Knitting soothes me, stamping connects me to friends, quilting inspires me, scrapbooking connects me to family. And you can mix all those subjects and verbs up too – they all do all of those things. And they interconnect so beautifully. They all share of deep love of supplies – oh the stuff of them!

Blogs, Yahoo groups, personal web sites, commercial site chat boards - I've perused them all. Sure, I have a life - I do things in person. I go to stores, to the occasional class, have a few like-minded friends, but let's face it, it's hard to drag all your stuff into the store to show off and you don't want to be that customer they hide from... "oh gawd, here she comes again..." The festivals and conventions are great, but they're annual and sometime require travel. I want to post and share stuff now. Gimmie what I want NOW says the frazzled mother of a two year old.

It's about sharing. In this big, bad world those of us who enjoy artistic endeavors, but who fine ourselves outside of the traditional definitions of fine art, have found solace in on-line connections. Looking for others who do what we do. Who play as we play. Who understand the desire to create with our own hands, to wallow in color and texture, to feel the pure pleasure of getting into a creative "zone". The glory of crafting is that you can start without special training, without being an "artist" and end up really pleasing yourself, regardless of how "good" you get. The final product may only be for yourself, your family or your friends, but it's a piece of art that was made outside of your roles of wife/girlfriend, friend, mother/daughter. Maybe the recipient is a friend, maybe the subject is family, but the making of the art was done inside your mind, in that place we all share, but cannot ever fully know in one another. Sharing the experience of art - of making art - is about as close as we get to connecting with other people sometimes (let's leave sex out of this one). For some it's music, for some dance, for me, it's making things with my hands.

I named this site The Crafty Wench. Just plain Crafty Wench was taken (though she's only posted once - name abuser) . I was surprised to get it actually. I've referred to myself with that title (jokingly) for years now, so I'm pleased. In college we said Art F**ked, not very pretty, but accurate for a certain type. Artsy Fartsy is popular, but we used F**ked for a reason. Those to whom we applied it were deeply in love with their image as an ar-teest; production and product ran a distant second. Style was everything. Exclusion for uncoolness was standard. I did live in this world for a while, but I always chaffed against the exclusionary policies (not written, but as solid as any contract). When I discovered crafting (beginning with art stamping) I found a world of people - usually women - who are interested in the production of art and generally accept all comers. Here are people who unabashedly want to love what they do and want others to love it too. This doesn't mean it always has to be pretty, or wrapped up in bows or always easy to explain. That said, on the whole, they aren’t afraid to have something be pretty. Yeah, I said it, let me shout it: PRETTY. There, done. I've admitted the cardinal sin of the arty set: I like pretty things. I like gut wrenching, soul-searching, hard-to-look-at art as much as the next humanities major, but hey, what can I say, I like pretty things too. Gorgeous rich color and texture makes my day. Makes me happy.

So what am I going to do with this blog? I’m going to post my knitting projects, join knit-a-longs, share my scrapbook pages with friends and family, upload my latest stamped art and generally get this stuff from my desk to the world at large. If no one ever comes, I’ll still have had a place to organize my thoughts for my creative day and visit the stuff I’ve sent out into the world.