Ha, I’ve been reading past posts of Franklin Habit’s blog, The Panopticon, which you should read too. He offers this piece of advice to new knitters, when first confronted with the idea that, not having bought an extra ball in the first place, there might not be anymore of the yarn you need and the shipment might not come in for a bit:
“Yelling at the yarn store lady and storming out in a huff is not the answer. Yarn store employees have long memories. And sometimes blogs.”
Forgive my long absence–I had a little vacation from work at the shop for the first two weeks of July, but that was not a vacation from my own work. I did manage to take one day off to go to the beach, which was a very good idea, despite the fact that my legs are STILL peeling. Summer would be so much more tolerable if I had a beach house.
Anyway, I’m back at work at the shop (and still working on my own, obviously). All the London shawls are finished! Look for them shortly…and then look for the ebook!
Olympic season is upon us! In my house, no one EVER watches any kind of sport (my dad pretends to like football, but he’s not fooling me) except for the Olympics, which my mom (and thereby all other members of the household) watches every minute of with rapt enthusiasm.
And speaking of Olympics, how can we not discuss the new “Ravellenic Games?” For those of you not in the know, these are the games formerly known as the Ravelympics. Basically, the idea is that you pick a project (or projects) that you know will be a challenge to complete in two weeks or 17 days or however long the Olympics go on for. You cast on during the opening ceremonies and try to get it done by the closing ceremonies. It gets way more involved than that, though–there are different teams (Team Lace, Team Crochet, Team Hopelessly Overcommitted, etc) and events (Toy Toss, Lace Longjump, Afghan Marathon, etc). This year, however, the International Olympic Committee got wind of all this and put the kabash on it. Said some shit about it being offensive to the athletes…to which one raveler replied in some thread somewhere, “Because it’s so much easier to knit a sweater than it is to run 40 meters.” Honestly, I’m getting a huge kick out of the whole situation. The IOC made giant idiots of themselves and the entire, worldwide internet community of knitters got really wittily pissed off. You should read this article about it.
In other news, I got reading glasses. In fact, I’m wearing them right now, and they are super cute if I do say so myself. After telling one eye doctor (if you’re in the area, I’ll tell you who he is and why not to go to him) I thought I might need reading glasses, he told me I was too young for reading glasses and to suck it up. Then, for several reasons, I went to a different eye doctor who actually CHECKED my eyes and agreed that yes, I did need reading glasses. I blame all the crazy ladies who bring me dark gray socks on size 0 needles to pick up dropped stitches on.
So that’s what I’ve been up to these past few weeks. How’s this disgustingly hot season treating all of you?
The next one in the series:
This one’s kind of a cold-weather shawl..it’s a worsted weight, so it’s pretty warm, and I wanted to photograph it with a coat. Unfortunately, the day I wanted to do the photoshoot was over 100 degrees and there was no way in hell I was putting on a coat outside. So my photographer, my stylist and I all brainstormed a while to come up with indoor places that would be cold: having decided against a restaurant, a movie theater and a meat locker (although that one did have potential), we decided on the ice rink.
So now when people ask me what I did the weekend of the 4th of July: I went ice skating.
Well ducklings, I think it’s time I told you the story of how I learned to knit. It’s a long one.
It’s hard to know exactly where the story starts, but we’ll begin when I was in kindergarten. I used to sit in front of the television watching Sesame Street and peeling the paper wrappers off crayons. I could do this for HOURS. It didn’t matter if the TV was on or not, as long as I had my crayons to peel. I perpetually had brightly colored wax under my fingernails…I went though boxes and boxes of the Crayola 64 Crayon set. Don’t get me wrong–I did plenty of drawing and coloring too–but crayon peeling was my meditation activity and luckily, my parents recognized this and facilitated it.
This habit I grew out of, but I was always the type of kid who needed to be doing something with my hands at all times. I was really into fuse beads (remember those, from the early 90’s?) once my fine motor skills got a little better…finger knitting…oh dear god the finger knitting. I had miles of that shit. MILES. And there were plenty of other crafty hobbies along the way.
Meanwhile, both my mom and her mom, my grandmother, were knitters. My grandma–Mama, I called her–knit me dozens of intarsia sweaters when I was little. I had one with a sheep, one with a dinosaur, one with crayons (the crayon-peeling was a family legend, I guess)…
Anyway, both Mama and my mom tried many times to teach me how to knit throughout my childhood and into my adolescence to no avail. It looked impossibly difficult to me and I just did not have the patience to sit with them and figure it out.
Fast forward to 2009. I had just graduated from college, having studied mostly writing and having had internships and summer jobs in the publishing world. I couldn’t find a job and I was stressed out. Even though I was applying for publishing jobs, I was kind of nervous about getting trapped in that field, having had more work experience there than in any other field (excepting waiting tables). Still, I kept applying for jobs, not getting them, and finally, sometime in June or July, I took a job at a local cafe.
I actually really enjoyed working at this cafe. I was good at it, despite my hatred of coffee, and there were customers who wouldn’t order a latte unless I was behind the counter (seriously). I made friends with Scott the Baker, who supplied the cafe with baked goods, and, at the time, I was really into cake decorating and he had mentioned needing an assistant or something (it never quite worked out).
On Saturdays at the cafe, there was a knitting group that met in the mornings. I mentioned this to my mom, since she was a knitter, and she started going (she mentioned to the knitters that I was her daughter and my tips got way better). Anyway, the knitters, including the owner of the cafe, who was also a knitter, really wanted to teach me to knit. I was resistant for a while, but I started looking at the kinds of things they made, and I was intrigued. A pair of cabled fingerless gloves was particularly attractive to me, and I decided I’d let them teach me. I remember my mom saying to me, “You know, you won’t be able to knit those gloves right away…it’ll take a few years.” And I remember thinking, “….Why?”
So, as kind of a group effort, they taught me how to knit: “Under the fence, grab the sheep, back under the fence, away he leaps.” I clenched my toes the whole time and was not convinced I was doing it correctly, but something about it felt so…right. I LOVED it. When the cafe closed for the day I took my little rectangle home with me and worked on it all the rest of the day. The next day the owner of the cafe taught me how to purl. And then how to use double pointed needles. I found a book of my mom’s, went shopping for some yarn in our attic, found some red Blue Sky Alpacas Worsted Hand Dyes, and picked out a pattern for a mitered-triangle scarf. Went on youtube and figured out how to knit front and back and ssk. The rest is history.
At the same time I was discovering all this, my grandma, Mama, had gotten really sick. She needed a small valve repair in her heart, which they had planned to do laproscopicly, but during the procedure they found that she actually needed triple bypass surgery, which they did without consent. She was 87. She survived the surgery, but never fully recovered…we visited her often and my mom was so proud to show her that I was knitting. Mama asked for some yarn and needles, which we got for her, but she didn’t live to use them.
A certain, sentimental part of me likes to think that in a way, a bit of her spirit lives on, in my knitting. I like to think she’d be proud of me now.
Here it is:
That’s a bunny that showed up during the photo shoot.
And guess what?! It’s in the TOP 5 patterns on Ravelry!!!
Ever wondered what it’s like behind the scenes at a Toby Roxane Designs photo shoot?
As you may already know, my dad is my photographer. He can be difficult to work with (and I’m sure he’d say the same about me). My main problem is smiling. He doesn’t smile while he works, and it’s sort of hard to beam at someone who’s frowning at you from behind a very intimidating-looking piece of equipment, so I like to have someone else on “smile duty,” dancing around behind him or something. Usually this is my mom. Unfortunately, I don’t always have that luxury (she does have a day job, you know).
I did, however, recently discover something which I promptly explained to my dad: the word “booger” always makes me smile. ALWAYS. So now he frowns at me and intermittently says “booger.” I’m not totally sure I see an improvement in the pictures that I can attribute to that, but I have my own secret smile words. I wonder if supermodels do this. I mean, if you have a deal with Covergirl (those girls are never frowning) and they need you to smile at 1000 watts and everyone is standing around looking at your thighs and wondering what in the hell you had the nerve to eat for lunch, how do you make yourself look happy? I’ll tell you, it’s freaking hard.
Back by popular demand: cat pictures!! I’m thinking I may make this a regular Saturday thing. Like, one Saturday a month (let’s not get too ambitious, now).
This is Jack, asleep on the ironing board.
And this is Esme, mugging for the camera.
It’s 10.30 on a Saturday night and I’m posting pictures of my cats on the internet. Ha!
The long awaited…
Piccadilly features subtle stripes, delicate lace, and a unique shape that can be worn a few different ways. It stays nicely on your shoulders when worn the “traditional” way, or you can wear it (like I do) with one point in front and one in back.
I’m sorry for neglecting you! I promise it’s nothing to do with you, it’s just…well, I’ve been treating my computer a little bit gingerly. If you use a Mac you’re familiar with that spinning color wheel (and the mental health issues it can cause). I have a bunch of pictures on my camera that I’d love to show you, but I’m a little afraid to try to upload them.
Still, be patient, friends, and I’ll try to build up my nerve sometime this weekend.
Hey guess what? (Oh no, now I’ve made an inside joke with myself. And you!)
Sweet William is an asymmetrical bolero with a ruffle along one side. It also features seamless set-in sleeves, which means all the advantages of set-in sleeves without actually having to set them in! (This is sort of a new technique. I thought for a while I’d actually invented it, but it turns out someone else teaches it at conventions like Stitches and Vogue Live but doesn’t actually design sweaters with it, I don’t think.)