Falling into Yarn

Every Fall, we order too much yarn. We have been open 5 years, and this pattern has not changed--ever. It is mostly my fault, I admit; I always find yarn that we need. But I'll blame Kim for maybe 25 percent of it. She says that hey, when we're ordering and I get yarn I want, she should be able to get yarn she wants.

Our rationales, as compelling as they are, do not solve the underlying problem of where we are going to put the yarn when it arrives.

Last week, we got our first fall delivery. We got 6 very huge boxes. I was out when they arrived, and Kim reacted by telling me that she had put all the boxes under the table, and I could deal with them by myself when I got back. She always says that. I wasn't a bit scared.

I got back. We started by pulling out all the yarn and piling it on the back table, since the boxes had random mixtures of different types of yarn:

We had piles like this in a lot of places. To give you a sense for just how bad it was, my mother came into the shop when we were in the thick of these piles, said hi, looked around, and then, before we could put her to work, ran out of there as fast as an Olympic gold medalist.

The whole shop had to be moved around. It's fall: The bulky yarn that had been in the back needed to move out front. The cottons had to go from the front to the back. This kind of moving is like switching around whole rooms of stuff in a house. As this completely unposed photo demonstrates, I was tearing my hair out:


And as we kept working, I got very, very tired:

(Don't you think I look like an angel when I'm asleep?)

Fortunately, I didn't do it all alone. Kim put on her serious work shoes to help get the job done:

(Seriously, I can never resist teasing Kim about her shoes, but I have never in my life seen anyone else who can plow through so much work while wearing flip-flops.)

We kept moving yarn around, and around, and by the end of the week, the front area looked like this:


And when Kirsten worked on Saturday, she and I were able to finish things up, get all the yarn off the floor--and even leave some shelf space:

Which we need. Because we know that over the next few months, more yarn is on its way. Enough to fill at least 8 times this much space.

But I'm not a bit scared.

You're getting sleeeeepy.... you're getting sleeeeeeepy.... you neeeeeeed to buy yaaaaaaarn.....

Congratulations to my Brother

Whenever I go on a long trip, I take my knitting. In fact, I tend to take more knitting than clothing most of the time. This is how I packed for my most recent trip:

Who knows what project you're going to need?

I have just returned from that trip, a long but satisfying drive, for my brother Alex's graduation. He got his Ph.D. from Auburn.

Among the three of us children, he is the one who got the most "what are you going to do with that" undergrad degree--history--without even the education option fall-back plan. And among all us, he is the one who has been the most steadily employed, at the same place, for the longest period of time. He works here.

In case you're wondering, my other brother, Todd, works here. He is the coolest of the three of us:

(That is little Mickey the dog in his backpack.)

*****

Kevin and I didn't have a lot of extra time for this trip, so we drove down and back to Auburn in the space of 5 days.

The night before graduation, my dad treated us all to a wonderful dinner at a restaurant called the Warehouse Bistro. There, I was able to give my brother his presents.

It was a quiet, dignified restaurant, so I decided that this was the best place to give him a loud, dancing, stuffed chicken. As you can see from the low-quality video I took, it's very hard for Ph.D.s, with their "theoretical knowledge," to understand how to work a stuffed chicken. (That is my mother's hand reaching in to show him how to turn on the chicken.)

Since he reads this blog, I have not been able to show you this quilt that I made for him until now. I admit that I didn't plan for it to be his up front. I did it to make a sample for our braids workshop--but when I had finished it, I realized that it was perfect for my brother. He likes fancy stuff.

So my ecstatic parents got him all graduated....

He finally learned how to work the chicken....

And Kevin and I drove home. And drove. And drove some more.

It's hard for me to quilt in the car, even hand stitching (I can't do anything that I really have to look at, or I get carsick), but whenever we go away, and it's not my turn to drive, I get a lot of knitting done. I have trained myself to knit while looking up.

Although I took 6 projects along, I decided to work mainly on a 1950s-style sweater called "Breakfast at Tiffany's" out of Cherry Tree Hill's Oceania. It was one of those projects that had been sitting around for over a year.

My mother wouldn't let me knit during graduation on account of wanting to keep our family's dignified demeanor during such an occasion. (Yes, I am 49 years old, and my mother still will "not let me" do stuff.) With all the knitting I did in the car, I finished the back of the sweater. The fabric so far looks like this:

*****

If you think about it, graduation is all about completing something that you'd been working on for a long time in little bits and pieces. You get rewards along the way: Classwork finished--check. Comps--check. Dissertation--all done.

Working on a sweater is easier than getting a Ph.D. But in my mind, they're different only in scale. The idea of "gradual" underlies the tasks in much of life. There are always roadblocks, and the secret is to persist on through them until you graduate. Some of the roadblocks are tougher than others. In this case, the roadblock was a simple one: starting the sweater. I'm not done with it yet, but now it's coming along. I'll keep working on it, and when it's finished, I'll graduate to the next project. In the meantime, getting a little subgoal done sure feels good.

What project are you making little bits of progress on?

Changing of the Seasons, Month by Month

I don't normally compliment her too much in case her head swells, but now that I have taken over the blog, she'll never see it. It'll be our little secret: I think that Kim is a total genius.

The reason I think this is that every month, she comes up with beautiful blocks for our Block of the Month quilt.

Now, you should know that most quilt shops buy commercial patterns to do their block clubs. But Kim loves to design, so our blocks of the month are unique to our shop. And they are so wonderful!

When you join our block of the month, you have to take a bit of a risk. Kim sketches the quilt out, but then she always changes the design as she goes. Hey, that is the nature of being an Artist. And it always makes the quilt better.

But it doesn't stop with the design. Ideas are nothing without action. Each month, we have to do the down-and-gritty work. I will show you what happens behind the scenes, so that you can fully appreciate those magic packets you get every month.

The first thing Kim does is figure out a block she likes, keeping in mind the general colors she is planning to use. And then she has to write the instructions. See this picture--a picture that is on each instruction?


See all those little lines and letters? Yup. Drawn in one by one, by hand. Well, by computer. But you get the idea.

This year, she is also finding an excerpt from a poem that applies to each month. I have the instructions right in front of me, so I'll give you a sneak preview for August:

Whilst August yet wears her golden crown,
Ripening fields lush-bright with promise;
Summer waxes long, then wanes, quietly passing
Her fading green glory on to riotous Autumn.
--Michelle L. Thieme, August's Crown

Here is some insider information for you. I know a lot about Kim, and one of the things I know is that the word "riotous" is one of her favorite words--so I bet that's why she chose that excerpt. But please don't tell her I told you that. She might think I'm teasing her a little, which of course I would never do. And she really, seriously likes that word. If she were reading this, she would turn to me and say, "What's your problem with riotous??" Then I would scramble and tell her that I like that word too--that it is very descriptive.

Where was I? Ah, yes. Color. After she drafts the instructions, she has to choose the fabrics. This month, for August, she wanted the colors of deep summer. Here's what she chose:


Aren't they gorgeous?

Keep in mind that she isn't choosing the colors in isolation. This year's quilt has a block for each month's color, from the icy colors of winter, through the pale colors of spring--and now we're getting toward the deeper shades. In August, don't you see the little hints here and there that fall is coming?

Most people have trouble picking out 4 or 5 different fabrics to make a quilt. Can you imagine picking out 12 combinations, a different combination each month--but combinations that still all work together?

Don't tell Kim I said this on account of her head--her precious head--but look at how stunning her colors are when they flow next to each other. From January through July, read from right to left:

This is what you would call "strong visual coherence." (One of my favorite words is coherence. I totally love that word. It's a solid word. A practical word.)

The August block, the 8th block in this series, will look like this (Please. don't tell her that I showed it to you. She likes to keep it a surprise until she shows it at Block of the Month):


I can sneak it to you because I have inside information: I test-sewed it yesterday.

Which brings me to the next stage of the process: test sewing. It's important to test blocks. Sometimes there is a typo, and when there is, we get 70 people telling us about it. Have you ever made a little mistake in your job--like accidentally making the number 8 into the number 6--that causes SEVENTY people to tell you you did something wrong? It is never fun. So if you catch a mistake sometime, be sure to be super-gentle and extra-nice when you tell us!

I did catch one little typo yesterday. Do not panic, gentle quilters! It has been fixed! I'm not even going to tell you what it was.

Today, my job will be to cut all the fabric and put it into packets. Please pray for me that I do the math right when I cut for all those packets. There was one time when 70 people told us that I didn't give them enough fabric.

Kim was nice and kept it a secret from me.

Now that you know what we have to do, be sure to thank Kim for her good work, and hug those packets with appreciation when you get them. Aren't we lucky?

What Can Happen with Knitter's Denial

Do you know about knitter's denial? It's well documented. You knit and knit, and you think that something looks... well... a bit "off"--but you assure yourself that all is well, and you continue on.

I have been working on a cute little vest--the Back-to-School Vest out of Fitted Knits. I loved it when I first saw it, and then my friend Alice made it, and I wanted it even more. (Humans are herding animals.) I was making it out of one of my favorite yarns in our shop, Harrisville Highland.

I've been knitting the vest mainly at the movies. (It's summer movie season!)

The pattern for the vest begins with 13 inches of knit-2, purl-2 ribbing. I long-ago trained myself to knit in the dark. But counting in the dark is another matter. Every single time, without exception, when I am knitting in the dark in the movie theater on this vest, I lose count.

And yet, I have taken this vest to the movies over and over.

I have always been kind of a slow learner.

*****

After seeing the new Indiana Jones movie this past weekend, I had just finished another two hours of laddering back. (I know. In that 2 hours I could have torn back and reknit what I had knit in the movie and then some--but fixing it seemed psychologically more encouraging.)

And then I showed it to Kevin.

He took one look at it and said, "It's too small."

This kind of statement, in the store, is my job. (I hate to break this sort of news to anyone. I try to catch any problems early on.) But sadly, I do not always have the same editing capabilities for my own things.

So after Kevin said that, and I had knit 9 inches out of 13, I held it up. That's a test I almost always do--when you hold a piece of knitting up to you, does it go the whole way from side to side comfortably?

Not so much. It looked as if he was perhaps correct about this one.

I decided that maybe a tape measure was in order. Side to side, the sweater measured 12":

If it's reasonably stretched, 13" or 14"--still too big for Scarlett O'Hara, but not quite big enough for me. Normally I would want it to be 19" to give me a total of 38".

In my mind, there were four options:

(1) The Wii Fit has been hard to find, so I knocked that option out right away.
(2) Frog (rip it, rip it) and reknit.
(3) Continue knitting, but then steek (cut the knitting vertically) and put in some side panels.
(4) Steek and make this part of the vest either just the front or just the back, and then knit another front or back.

I decided to wait overnight to decide. I have found that it's best sometimes to mull over a problem for a day. I was leaning toward option 2.

The next morning I woke up, and after an hour or so, I had a flash of a memory. When Alice had knit the vest, it had looked freakishly small when it was off of her. Maybe it was okay after all.

So I tried it on, and look what happened:


It was fine.

I admit I still can't quite fathom the physics of this ribbing. It seemed impossible that it should have fit. But there are some things in life that we just don't question.

Knitter's denial, for the first in my knitting life, had faked me out.

"Work" Shop

Hi everyone! It's Cynthia here again! Before I begin today's story, I would like to announce that Kim says I may take over the blog. I am excited about this because I love writing blog entries. (Hi Mom and Dad! This is what my degree in writing is useful for!)

Besides, Kim has her own blog anyway (www.fiberhaven.blogspot.com), where you can read thoughtful, insightful ideas on quilting (and of course my very favorite--a really neat entry on the spectacular coverlet my mother is knitting right now).

I will not promise so much thought or insight....

Today's post is all about our Friends' School quilting workshop. We do a lot of classes at our shop, but these workshops have always been among our favorites.

First of all, we like it because the school has a funhouse mirror near the bathroom. (Are you already sensing that so far there may be little or no insight from my posts?) I started my day by entertaining myself with that for a few minutes:



Time to go out and buy some new low-cut shirts!

*****

Where was I? Oh yes! The workshop!

We try to have at least one new workshop every newsletter. It's like a big party, with a lot of people having fun together; it allows us to cook some great food for them; and it allows everyone to make good progress on a project with an entire day of sewing.

You can knit in small chunks--but for sewing, it sure is nice to carve out a day.

We did two projects this time--one was either a braided wallhanging or tablerunner, and the other was a kaleidoscope wallhanging.

I didn't get photos of everything, but I do have a lot of gorgeous work to show you from the day:








People are generally camera-shy, but I loved how Keri-Lynn's shirt matched her project, so I took her photo with her kaleidoscope. I promised her that I would not put her photo up on the blog unless it turned out well. I think you'll agree that she looks great here:

As does her kaleidoscope!

But I did not promise a certain other person any such thing:


Want to join in on the fun? We'll have another Friends' Workshop this fall. Details will be in the newsletter, which should arrive in your mailbox around the end of August.

Animal Planet, Continued

After I got done making the penguin, I decided that I had better continue on with my animal production.

You see, we have a lot of brown fur yarn in our store.

Since you have just read about the penguin, you probably have it figured out: At market, I had also insisted that we buy a lot of brown fur. There was also a new squirrel pattern, and we needed yarn for squirrel tails. "Come on, Kim!" I said. "We live in Pennsylvania. Everyone here loves squirrels! We'll sell a million of these as kits! They are soooooo cute!"

A year later, the squirrel had made just as much progress as the penguin.

Now that the penguin was done, however, I felt motivated. Home I went, to knit a squirrel. It started out much like the penguin:


There was the cute little tummy!



I thought it was starting to look kind of quizzical as I knit around on its little head:


But as I kept going, it took on a rather disturbing, lifeless look:

(Please forgive product placement. I swear I am getting no royalties from Sony.)

And by the time it had a tail, it looked .... well .... like this:


Dinner anyone? I'm knitting stew tonight.

*****

Postscript: I did feel a little uncomfortable shooting pictures of a dead, knitted-animal squirrel as cars drove by. Especially since I kept picking up the squirrel and moving it from one side of the street to the other, to get the lighting and the angles the way I wanted them. The bottom line is, I'm not in the habit of picking up roadkill with my bare hands.

So whenever cars drove by as I moved the squirrel, I decided to distract them by waving hello! Hi, everyone!


It is a friendly neighborhood and a small town. They all waved back.

And I wondered if, after they had driven on, their brains started realizing what they had just seen.

*****

Finale: The squirrel looked way more perky after it was felted, dried, and stuffed.

Don't cross, cute little squirrel!

Penguin Love

Cynthia writes:
Anyone who knows me knows that I like animals. I like 'em a lot; I love their spirits. That is probably why I am always wildly attracted to little stuffed, knitted animal patterns.

But it's odd: I usually don't want to knit the animals that much. Yes, when it comes to stuffed, knitted animals, I admit that I am a so-called "product knitter."

Which is why I had yarn for a penguin that had been ready to knit ever since yarn market, June 2007.

*****

You should have seen me at market: I was embarrassing.

You see, we had just discovered the new Fiber Trends penguin pattern, and I was completely crazy over it. I had to make one. I made Kim run around with me all over the conference center, looking for the perfect yarns to make the penguin. I assured her that everyone else would also want to make one, and we could create kits.

Now, I am kind of picky about my stuffed animals. The beak color had to be just the right orange. The white had to be white enough--yet feltable--and the fur had to be fluffy--but of course not too fluffy. Kim was remarkably patient. (Although come to think of it, she did mention something about wanting to kill me; I ignored her idle threats.) We got everything I wanted. I was so, so excited.

And then the yarn and pattern sat in my office area at home.

*****

Fast forward to July 2008.

Ever had those moments where you just get annoyed at something unfinished? And you just get it out and work on it and finish it, even though it wasn't in the game plan?

Me neither.

But this weekend, that's exactly what happened to me.

Oh, I had had big quilting plans for the weekend. Brother graduating in a few weeks, quilt not done, blah, blah, blah.

And then for the millionth time, I looked at that bag of yarn, and a strong feeling came over me: That feeling, my friends, was nothing less than a fierce determination to knit the penguin.

[Hey! I just read your mind. No, no, I was not procrastinating about making the binding on my brother's quilt. Stop thinking that. You are distracting me from the real story.]

Suddenly, and without any prior warning, I opened the bag and started knitting. I couldn't stop. Why, it was as if the penguin was knitting itself, and I was its mere instrument.

I knitted:



And knitted:



And within 2 easy days, I had a penguin:


(Note to curious techies: Despite the implications of the above photo, I use Windows Vista, not Linux.)

I put it in the wash to felt, and then I put it out on a baking rack so its back would dry evenly:



Which gave Kevin an idea:



(Settle down, settle down. He did not turn the oven on.)

I still have to stuff it and sew it closed, and perhaps add a couple of eyes--but from my point of view, this bird is done, baby. Put a fork in it.