luckyfibers-blog

[luckyfibers-blog]

This sign made me smile today. #dying #knitlife #knitlove #fiberart (at Buck's Rock Performing and Creative Arts Camp)

[luckyfibers-blog]

Five Things That Have Fueled My Creativity This Week

#1 My Family

My gratitude for my nearest and dearest is immeasurable. I don’t mean my parents (they’re dead) or my sister (we’re estranged). I mean the loved ones in my home, in my circle, in my community, in my orbit. Old Goat and the hounds. My “nephew” and his mom. My kiddos from Rugby or West or CHS. My favorite knitty committee in my little mountain city. Distant relatives and one-time neighbors on Facebook. The network of baristas and cashiers that keep me fed, fueled, clothed, and comfortable.

Whether you know it or not, you inspire me--sometimes directly with an idea or a question, often incidentally through engaging conversation. Thank you.

#2 Mentors

No matter how much knowledge or experience I gain, there is always room for input from masters. If not for people more in the know, further along in their journeys, and overall deeper in the proverbial shit, I wouldn’t know where to turn when the path splits and then forks before fracturing and splintering and turning to an expanse of dirt.

Mentors believe in us. They challenge us. They show us what we cannot see on our own both in front of and within us with their examples and words.

#3 The Ability to Adapt

If not for the seemingly endless adaptability of the human mind and body, I would not have been able to knit since my finger injury two weeks ago. As it turns out, my new knitting technique--developed with the purpose of protecting my left middle finger--now enables me to flip everyone the bird as I knit.

#4 Choices

I’ve been backed into corners before--crummy jobs, lousy relationships, etc.--so I know that the first thing I have to do when I feel trapped is consider my options. An escape plan. A way out.

Time and time again, I’ve had to learn that when it feels like there are no options at all, that’s when the options are actually most abundant. In truly desperate times, every possible measure is on the table.

#5 Humility

When I make a mistake, when things don’t work out, when life goes awry, when a promise gets broken, when I let people down, what’s more disarming than a true, genuine apology? To humbly accept responsibility and blame for a blunder is to free oneself from its burden. The past cannot be changed. The future is still uncertain. All I can offer in the present is my sincerest "I’m sorry.”

I am sincerely sorry, fiber friends. The Stitch Happens blog will be on hiatus henceforth.

Feel free to sift through the archives, and look for new developments on my Facebook page. As always, you can leave your comments here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

[luckyfibers-blog]

The Saga Continues

Last week, I recounted the ways that my world has been falling apart, and while I had a brief reprieve over the holiday weekend...

...the crumbling recommenced even before we got in the car to come home...

...and continues as I type: hurrying up and waiting to schedule each day around appointments at hospitals and doctor’s offices, making hard choices in the wake of a collaborative collapse, watching helplessly as people I love suffer.

My nephew’s mom is still not completely clear of a big-C diagnosis. One of my former students called in shambles this morning. Old Goat is wrestling with his own challenges, and we’re both tired.

A pile of crisis has slowly grown at my feet, and my only choice is to keep climbing.

The Upside

On the upside, Carmine’s most recent blood work returned completely normal, so we’re all resting a bit more easily...

...especially him.

I’ve regained use of almost all of my fingers as the swelling and bruising from last week’s hound-melee has slowly waned, but I’m still not able to use the indigo-tinged finger to keep tension on my yarn. As a continental knitter, this is devastating...

...but not insurmountable. With a six-hour ride in the car ahead of me on Friday, I had a choice: languish in knitless misery or finagle a way to make stitch happen English style.

Even with all of the fiddling and fumbling, I still wish the rest of my dilemmas were that easy.

Who’s got some tips for me as I work on my throwing technique? Leave suggestions here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

[luckyfibers-blog]

Knit Not, Want Not

Today I’m glad that type-written words are still readable when you only have use of seven fingers.

Let me back up

This has been my life this past week or so:

Last Monday, my “nephew” returned from Washington, DC to graduate from college. Yay!

On Tuesday, I took his mother to get her PET scan results from the pulmonologist. Boo.

I did also hear from the veterinarian on Tuesday, who informed me that the liver panel we did to follow up on Carmine’s vomiting issue from the previous week showed some improvement…

…but that he was not in the normal range…

…so he would have to go back on the supplements that made him grouchy enough to attack his brother, Webster, twice at dinnertime that week. Yay.

Wednesday, as I managed the many fires that crop up when your profession can accurately be described as self-employed freelance gig-ster, I was asked by a local producer to host his upcoming storytelling show…

…on Sunday.

Oy.

Typically, I like to have my shtick all worked out with at least four days or so to practice, so having only four days to go from start to finish seemed impossible. Yet, I was determined to come through for the producer, the performers, and the audience. I would not let myself let anyone down by not trying my best.

Thursday, I had to troubleshoot some logistical work nightmares while trying to prepare for Sunday’s show and honoring a tattoo appointment I’d put on the books months ago when I had no clue that I’d have to take time out from such a stressful, important day to get stabbed in the back a few thousand times.

Ugh. What are the benefits of being your own boss again?

I was in tatters by the time Friday rolled around and a project collaborator called me in a froth that threatened to put the kibosh on the whole thing. All I wanted to do was get things sorted out and spend the rest of the day writing my parts for Sunday’s show so that I might have just a teensy weensy moment for some knitting, but that’s not exactly how it happened.

At last, on Saturday morning, I was able to begin writing in earnest for Sunday’s show. I had just about all of the information and some of the energy I needed. By the time I finished, and Old Goat and I went to bed, it was after one in the morning.

Sunday is a blur of nervous preparations, exciting performances…

…and waves of relief.

The bulk of Monday—as in, two days ago—was spent in the radiology department of the hospital waiting through the biopsy of that PET scan result.

We were all tired by the end of that day. I just wanted to have dinner and go to bed. I had to report for jury duty Tuesday morning, so I wanted to get some rest.

But then came doggy dinnertime, and…

…Carmine attacked Webster again. Once the wild seconds had passed and the surges of adrenaline and commotion subsided, I realized that I had a black lump on my left middle finger. I stuck an ice pack on it, brought it next door to my nephew’s mom—the same one who spent the day in radiology, the same one who worked in orthopedics for decades—to examine and wrap it up for me. 

It was late. I was tired. I was weary. I was not in the bleeping mood for this bleep, and yes, I cried a little when I realized…

…I would have to perform my civic duties without my knitting.

I reported to the courthouse in the rain yesterday, had a time too weird to describe here, and finally came home to relax.

My finger was ugly, and everyone wanted me to get it checked out, so I did. It’s purple and tender, but not broken.

It’s splinted and taped to a couple of other fingers and that, folks, is why today I’m glad that type-written words are still readable when you only have use of seven fingers.

On the Other Side

I didn’t want to get up today.

I didn’t want to risk having to hear more bad news, handle more emergencies, deal with any nonsense…

…or not knit.

After bumpy beginnings, I was ready to…I wanted to…I couldn’t even…and then in the middle of having to whether I was ready, wanting to, or able, a text came in:

“Just got call. No cancer cells found in biopsy.”

As if that weren’t enough, a bit later, I got this text from my “Mama” up North, who was diagnosed with cancer this winter:

“Hi Baby Girl: medical update-had a PET scan. The tumor is shrinking. The doctor was pleased with the resuls. No surgery this summer.”

I guess I’ll shut up now.

Since I can’t knit with this injured paw, post pics of your WIPs here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

[luckyfibers-blog]

Here We Go Again

Don’t worry, we’re fine. Well, I’m fine. And Old Goat is fine. Webster, too. And even though Carmine had a rough week or two because of an upset tummy, he is also fine, as you can see.

Someone in our innermost circle, though, is not fine, and that means that in a variety of ways that have not all sunk in yet, none of us are fine. But we will be.

In the meantime, fill the Lucky Fiber Designs Page with pictures of your WIPs, pups, kittens, and other cuteness overload (and click Like while you’re there!), tag us on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), send us pretty pictures on Instagram (follow, follow, follow!) and Pinterest, add us as friends on Ravelry or drop us a line by email…or, of course, the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

Hospital Time

When you think of being at a hospital, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?

What’s your first physical response?

What smells start to creep up your mental nostrils?

How many beeping machines do you hear in the back of your mind, and how many shades of white and beige and gray appear behind your eyes?

In one word, how would you characterize the time you’ve spent in or beside a hospital bed?

Once upon a time…

Since a car accident laid me up for months as a child, a litany of illnesses and injuries within my inner circle has kept me checked in at hospitals regularly. In fact, as recently as this morning, I was looking over my knitting to smile at RNs and PAs and CNAs and OTs, PTs, and RTs as they checked my friend from end to end before sending her home to mend from yesterday’s surgery.

By the age of ten, I was intimately aware of things like traction and body casts, but I was also familiar with the looks of a Legionnaire’s disease fever and the aftermath of surgical complications related to meningioma. I spent incalculable hours at the side of my sister’s bed through surgeries and recoveries that spanned nearly all of our formative years. I made so many trips to Mount Sinai to visit her and our mother during my early twenties that my friends started calling me Moses.

By twenty-one, I had slept in an emergency room crib next to the bed of an overdosed friend, and in a small, secluded room in the NICU, I held my stillborn nephew while a nurse took photographs.

By thirty, I had taken dozens of trains and buses and taxicabs to bring dozens of midnight pork buns from Chinatown to my pregnant, bedridden sister. I had worked out a dozen-song medley of Beatles tunes and had sung it to her a dozen times a night until she dozed.

I eventually got to change the tiny diapers of my newborn preemie nieces, but I also had to watch my precious friend waste away from AIDS and hepatitis.

I snuggled my mom during her chemo treatments, and I slept beside her for the last six nights of her life. I watched cancer erode my father’s body and brain mets devour his intellect, and then I watched him get buried next to my mother.

When called upon, I sit vigil for dying strangers, and as if this all weren’t enough to make me sick, my clumsy friends have given me plenty of opportunities to sharpen my gallows humor.

In a Word

We’re so afraid of the myriad things that can go wrong in the hospital–so worried about unknowns, so furious about the cost, so focused on the outcomes we are counting on–that the healing and care fail to factor into our IV-dripping, catheterizing, Kleenex-clutching impressions of hospitals. We take for granted the expertise, the technology, the research, the progress, and the virtual human army working behind every scene. Few of these triumphs filter through the fear, frustration, self-absorption, and boredom.

We look at our loved ones gathered around the beds and feel each other’s presence, but we tend to overlook the sublime honesty of the moments of hospital time spent together, the unmentioned vulnerability, the solemnity and weight of our bonds beneath the surface of our physical togetherness.

With all of the practice I have had, I can bypass the reflexive fear response that most people have to hospitals. The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of the hospital is love, the first thing I feel is empathy. After that, I start smelling the antiseptics and crummy food.

But if I had to pick just one word to describe it all–the good, the bad, the scary, the awkward, the noisy, the tone-deaf Beatles medleys, the silence–the only word that fits the tragic miracle that is modern medicine is human.

Have you had a particularly eye-opening experience in a hospital? Share your experiences and send get well wishes to my latest clumsy friend here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

[luckyfibers-blog]

Zen and the Art of Fiber Community Maintenance

Folks, I don’t have a whole lot to say today. Over the past week, I have witnessed and experienced some of the most inane, unnecessary drama in the online fiber groups since the Pussyhat situation: people reporting people for no reason, people posting angry comments for no reason, people posting comments that are unrelated to the post and then angrily defending...you get it, and I know: it’s exhausting.

In a Sknit

I’ve written about this stuff before, so I feel like this time, I need to just keep my mouth shut...

...to avoid repeating and frustrating myself. Instead of letting these sknits take time away from my knitting and other life-work, I just keep reminding myself: it’s never about the other person.

Explaining what I mean by that would defeat the purpose of the statement itself...

...so I’ll suggest thinking on it as you stitch, reading this link from Leo Babauta when you take a break, and considering how the guidelines and concepts contained on that page can apply to--and improve--the quality of our online (and analog) fiber worlds.

Since part of the problem is that a lot of folks don’t actually click on links relevant to a conversation, here you go: 

When you notice yourself getting offended, frustrated, angry, irritated, disappointed … pause. Take a breath.

Don’t act. Acting in anger is harmful.

Examine the idea you have about how they should act. You are holding onto this idea, and it is in conflict with reality. As long as you hold onto fantasies that aren’t in line with reality, you will be frustrated. Try changing all of reality to match your expectations — let me know when you finally succeed.

Toss your expectation into the ocean.

Smile. Accept the person in front of you, and yourself, as a flawed human.

Act with compassion. When you stop blaming the person for not acting perfectly, you can then respond appropriately, and with compassion. Accepting reality doesn’t mean you don’t take action — it just means you let go of the frustration. Instead, you can act appropriately, and be more centered in your actions.

I’m workin’ on it, too, y’all. I’m a flawed human, and I accept that you are too. The fiber community is bigger than just me or just you, and I want to be a part of what makes our community shine. Do you?

What does the phrase, “It’s never about the other person” mean to you? Share your interpretations here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry, or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

[luckyfibers-blog]

Waxing Blogosophical

It’s a pretty well-blogged-about fact that knitting and other crafts are beneficial to our physical, mental, and emotional well-being, so instead of repeating or repurposing all of that stuff here again, I’d like to wax blogosophical for a moment and share just a few of the hidden benefits I have reaped this past week while working through the first thirty-five percent of Old Goat’s hoodie.

Loving a creative person challenges my own creativity. This project has reminded me that one of the things I love most about Old Goat is his unique mind.

As I commented the other day in a knitting group, the person I love most not only supports my creative endeavors, but also gives me opportunities to marvel at his creativity as well. He has said things to me like, “I love watching you make something from nothing,” and as heartwarming as it is to hear that, I’m just as thrilled to say the same or similar to him when he builds things, grows things, and fixes things that I would never even think to build, grow, or fix.

On the flipside of all this admiration and healthy, loving relationship stuff, though, there is a dark side: asking such a divergent thinker to design his own sweater means leaping over the usual knitting design and construction hurdles while simultaneously juggling, gargling, playing harmonica with your nose, and looking for the hidden picture in a Magic Eye book…

…proverbially speaking, of course.

What I mean is that the garment designed especially for the clever, innovative one you love should contain some level of cleverness or innovation to match the qualities that make this person knit-worthy in the first place, no? And when you give someone with such an original way of thinking any agency over the look, feel, and shape of said garment, you must expect some additional challenges.

So, when Old Goat told me that he wanted a sweater of the bulkiest yarn possible, I bought a boat-load of Purl Soho Feltro, and when he chose a stockinette body and herringbone sleeves, hood, and pouch, of course I said, “Yes, dear,” and in theory, it sounded like fun.

Even well-considered theories can fail when put into practice, and that’s okay. I measured Old Goat. Twice. I sketched and labeled the schematic, added positive ease, swatched for both stockinette and herringbone stitches, and calculated my cast-on, row counts, and et cetera, and in spite of all this planning, I still had to adjust the this-and-that of the pattern many times as I made my way through the back piece and front so far.

The thing is that in addition to creating very different looks, stockinette and herringbone stitches create fabrics of very different density due to the prevalence of purl-two-together stitches and other multi-stitchy acrobatics; therefore, even though I was able to achieve compatible gauge for the two stitches using different needle sizes, the tension of the herringbone stitch, as knitted for the pouch, would have failed to create a functional sleeve, as in one that would allow Old Goat to bend his arms. Similarly, a hood made from such a tight, thick fabric would stand on Old Goat’s back enjoying a life of its own instead of hanging against his body when not in use.

Making the pouch for the hoodie front has required a lot knit-tink-knit-tink-style knitting, and while this is kryptonite to the instant gratification expected from knitting semi-rope on US size 13 needles, it’s been a worthy learning journey. I haven’t failed, I’ve just found a dozen or so ways that won’t work.

Problem-solving is rewarding enough to justify the frustration of having a problem to begin with. This morning, I was finally able to get the right density for the pouch by going up to US size 17 needles, but after reaching my desired length, I realized that the three-needle join would benefit from going down to a US size 11 for just the last row of the pouch.

Then, after no fewer than four attempts to join the two pouch and body layers together, I discovered that adapting the construction to include the herringbone pattern wasn’t that bad…

…and once all of the elements aligned, in under ten minutes, I joined the top of the pouch to the body and…

…put my knitting down to write this.

While I go back to work on that, tell me: what hidden benefits do you reap from knitting or crafting in general? Share here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry, or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

[luckyfibers-blog]

Upon Completion

When you spend a lot of time on a project—be it a crochet afghan, a knit sweater, a hand-carved banjo, a manuscript, an album, a longitudinal study, a Star Wars marathon, or any protracted endeavor—how do you feel when your magnum opus is, at last, complete?

Those tempted to boil down the sense of completion to a single emotion—happy, relieved, even a superlative like thrilled or ecstatic—are either missing out on or just grossly oversimplifying the complex matrix of feelings and sensations that I experience when I reach the end of a long process.

Whether a long-term project comes to a fruitful, satisfying end or disastrous, abysmal conclusion, there are always multiple facets and dimensions to the way I feel about closing the book on it and moving on. The emotional stew often contains ingredients of joy, wonder, and pride as well as anxiety, doubt, and grief to name a few, and the only effect that the finished product has on this recipe is in the amount of each ingredient.

What I mean is that even when I create or accomplish something that is an undeniable success—a gorgeous garment that fits perfectly, a story that touches someone, a class that fulfills and inspires each of my students—I experience a loss of constancy and routine when a project is no longer on my plate. I might feel anxiety about what I will do next, about what I will do with the results, about how Future Me will feel about the finished product. I might doubt myself or my output for a moment or five.

Conversely, when I find myself confronted with the ruins of a long-awaited disaster, I can't ignore the sense of joy that the problem is solved, the sense of wonder at what went wrong, and the sense of pride in the effort I made.

After spending a month writing, editing, and practicing for my first curated storytelling show, even the fact that I didn't fall off of the stage or forget everything I'd practiced can't help me avoid the void. The overwhelmingly positive feedback we received during and after the show cannot fill the gaping hole in my mind where the stories and stress lived for all of those weeks. It will take a little while for me to fill up the space left by the words I spilled into the microphone, but I have an idea of what might be moving into the vacancy left behind.

What mix of emotions do you feel when you complete a project? Spill your guts here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry, or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

[luckyfibers-blog]

What clichés do you live and knit by?

Share here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry, or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

Clichés to Live By When You’re New at Designing Knitwear

As a writing instructor, I can certainly appreciate how easily clichés can elicit eye-rolls and trigger gag-reflexes in us all. 

But trite as they may be, clichés are created and defined by their overuse, and to me, their tiresome nature speaks to their inherent universality and truth.

As a knitter and knitwear designer, I am always looking for new ideas and techniques, culling resources for unique patterns and stitches, and striving for creative elements to incorporate into my finished products, but I often find myself relying on timeworn pieces of wisdom to get me over the hurdles of design and execution so I don’t spend all of my time reinventing the wheel.

The Tasks at Hand

Apart from the time it takes and the money it costs to create made-to-measure garments one painstaking stitch at a time, knitters face numerous challenges in trying to make them fit human bodies.

Even when using well-written patterns, we have to account for so many lengths, widths, circumferences, proportions, gauges, and more.

I believe this litany of obstacles accounts for the foremost reasons that so many knitters stick to making scarfs, dish cloths, and other simple, square, back-and-forth projects.

An article published by TECHknitting in 2010 consummately outlines the timeless, often tedious tasks of a knitwear designer: 

“that a fabric be created (out of string!!)

which is attractive in itself (textures? colors?)

which is successfully garment-shaped (all the requisite parts: arms, front, back, all fitting together smoothly)

which fits in the desired manner (shoulder style suits the body, neck line reveals or covers what is wanted and no more, arms of correct length and diameter, length correct to reveal or cover desired assets, front style as desired: cardigan, placket, pullover)

that the fabric created suit the garment being made, and

the whole must be infused with a certain style (cool? warm? high fashion? traditional peasant wear? form-fitting?…

When we add that the garment should be hand-knit, we up the already-complex equation by another order of magnitude.”

With so many things knitting our brows as we try to unwind with our stitching, it’s no wonder more brave souls aren’t hopping out of the box to create knitwear designs of their own, but I’m here to encourage you to channel the magic of tried-and-true clichés to see you through your early forays into knitwear design.

1. If at first you don’t succeed, try try again.

Experimentation is not just for scientists and rebellious teenagers, and I can’t say it enough, stitchfolks: whether you’re adapting a pattern to suit your needs or starting from scratch, don’t be afraid to rip back and try again if your piece is not working out. This is especially true when it comes to designing your first garments.

On the flipside, don’t worry about what you saw in your mind before you started if you like what you see in front of you. Keep track of how you got there and then keep going.

Taking an experimental attitude can help release the pressure and angst some knitters feel about getting every stitch just right and meeting a standard of mechanized perfection on the first try.

Seriously, when do we ever get things right on the first try?

I find that loosening up (my attitude, not my stitches) and embracing the process of visualizing, planning, executing, adjusting, and finishing a garment leads to more satisfying and enlightening products while enhancing the overall creative experience.

Sure, it’s nice to sit down with a clear set of directions and notes to make an exact replica of a pictured item, but even then there are no guarantees.

Freeing myself from expectations to achieve perfection from the get-go, whether working from a pattern or toward one, means that I can knit, tink, and re-knit without the frustration that comes with having only one possible outcome.

With endless chances to try and try again, I never fail.

That being said, accidents and mistakes can easily become design elements, so don’t frog your work with too much haste. Even large, unexpected, repeated stitch-tastrophes can lead to stitch-tastic results, so fudge what needs to be fudged and move on when you can.

It’s nice to aim for perfection, but I often remind myself that the pursuit should have its limits. I can’t bring myself to ignore a mistake or rush to finish a piece if it means a sacrifice in quality, but I do realize that unless I’m entering a juried show or subjecting my work to some other form of intentional scrutiny, nobody will ever notice that an m1L on round 51 should have been an m1R.

Oh yeah…I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t take this opportunity to also remind you: It’s only yarn.

2. Better safe than sorry.

Planning isn’t everything, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. Even this art school dropout can’t deny that it’s helpful to have a rough sketch of what you’re aiming for before you begin.

You don’t need to draw a photo-realistic image of your intended finished result before casting on, and you don’t even have to stick to whatever you draw as you move through your process, although I find it helpful to amend or redraw my sketches as I go along.

No matter how you implement it, sketching helps to access and engage various cognitive functions that contribute to well-laid plans…and well-made designs.

Below is a segment of my initial sketches for my most recent design, a sleeveless top made from suri alpaca with lacework on the back and part of the front.

As you can see, there is nothing especially scientific or glorious about this scraggly diagram, but it accounts for the genesis and development of what is (almost) a completed garment designed entirely from scratch.

If you discover a mathematical or other error as you’re going along, take notes every step of the way…even if you’re the only one who will ever understand them.

In addition to sketching, mathing, and scribbling our way to knitwear-design glory, proficient knitters live by the old carpentry and quilting adage, “Measure twice, cut once.” In our case, it’s more like, “Measure a zillion times, knit as few times as possible,” but the principle remains the same: a made-to-measure garment needs to be measured well.

As I prepare to put the finishing touches on my suri top, which I’m calling “55k” because of how many attempts it has taken to get it just right, I can look back on my measurements, drawings, and plans from a few weeks ago with nostalgia, but I can’t say that the end results match these plans to a T.

And that’s okay.

3. Take care of yourself first.

Between you, me, and the lamppost, the best way to learn to design knitwear is by knitting a variety of garments to fit your own body. It may feel selfish and limiting, but it’s actually practical advice.

For starters, you’ll always be there for measuring purposes and to try things on mid-knitting (when construction allows).

Additionally, learning to make clothing in your own size first not only fills your wardrobe with the delightful fruits of your labor and love, but also acquaints you with the details of anatomical proportions, techniques for tailoring, and templates for writing patterns with smaller and larger sizing increments that make sense.

I do think it’s a great idea to design garments that can be sized for various body types and shapes, but lots of designers write patterns for one size and let the rest of us figure out our own adaptations.

After all, you can’t please everybody.

Another reason to design for yourself first is that nobody else–not even your mother, spouse, or BFF–will be as excited by or proud of your first designs as you are, and therefore, they will not fully appreciate and understand what it took to bring that garment into existence.

Besides, need I remind you how few and far between the people are who truly understand that hand wash and gentle cycle are not synonymous?

4. You need to have the proper tools to do a proper job.

Each time I set out to begin a project, I hear my father recite one of his favorite axiomatic mantras from beyond the grave: you need to have the proper tools to do a proper job.

Sometimes, the success of a project lies in small, but significant details, and as Mark Twain famously points out, small distinctions can make big differences.

This observation can indicate the importance of clarity and precision in many aspects of life, but when applied to our knitting purposes, it speaks volumes about how many factors contribute to the successful design and execution of a knitted garment.

You needn’t be a designer to know the importance of using the right yarn to get the right results, and I know I always say, “It’s only yarn,” but just like that statement is never meant to undermine or understate my love of and lust for yarn, it is hardly meant to imply that all yarns are created equal either. Not a single one of my favorite fibers spun and dyed by my favorite yarnmakers would be suitable for every project I endeavor to make.

You can read and write a pattern perfectly, create each stitch with the utmost precision, and execute a beautiful garment with expert technique from cast-on to bind-off, but if you choose the wrong yarn, you can end up with a disastrous result.

For instance, if you want your oversized boyfriend sweater to be bulky, to keep its shape, and to help you stay warm all winter, you can’t use some leftover sport-weight cotton you happen to have lying around, right? You’d need to get some chunky wool or another cozy fiber that will perform as you need it to just like you’d want to select drapy yarn (i.e. bamboo, rayon, silk, etc.) for slinky patterns, to get fluffy yarns (alpaca, mohair, angora, cashmere, etc.) that bloom for softer, close-to-the-skin designs, and so on.

Experience and research can certainly help you to arrive at the proper yarn for your proper garment, and I hope you’ll believe me when I say it’s worth every bit of time and effort invested in such propriety.

Much to many knitters’ chagrins, the same can be said of the importance of making a gauge swatch, but you’re welcome to disregard this and all other tidbits of wisdom if you don’t mind squeezing into knitted sausage casing or floating around in your handmade tent.

The proper tools are not limited to just yarn, though.

You also need to have a variety of needles on hand, not just the size that the yarn label calls for.

You should also have stitch markers, stitch holders, waste yarn, and tapestry needles at your disposal just in case.

Of course, a trusty measuring tape will be a great friend throughout your designing process, so find one that you like, make sure it’s accurate, and use it often.

Wait, did I just say to make sure your measuring tape is accurate? Why, yes I did.

A few months back, a customer at F&F shared a tale of knitting woe from her own experience that I would like to share with you. This lady had ordered a tape measure online without considering that it was manufactured in a country that uses the metric system, and just like anyone else who purchases tape measures and other simple tools, she hadn’t thought to check the calibration of the imperial measurements before relying on it. As a result, no matter how many times she measured, all of her knitwear came out wrong time and time again until it dawned on her to try another tape.

So yeah. Make sure your measuring tape is accurate.

5. Distance makes the heart grow fonder or else you can’t see the forest for the trees.

After all of that talk about looking deeply into the soul of your fibers and tools to make sure you are choosing the right ones for the job, I must remind you to take your time, step away, and otherwise maintain a healthy, safe distance and perspective on your design.

Sometimes when I get frustrated with a design, I lose sight of the reasons and inspirations for starting the forsaken thing in the first place: pleasure, satisfaction, relaxation.

Forcing myself deeper into the pit of knit-despair does not help me to achieve any pleasurable, satisfying, or relaxing results, but distance and perspective help to restore my vision of the proverbial trees that constitute the metaphorical forest of my endeavor.  So if I feel myself losing steam, I step back and away until I’m ready to tackle it anew.

6. Ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

One needn’t be Calvin Klein or one of those frantic hipsters from Project Runway to design great clothes.

The math isn’t even as scary as it seems.

I say go for it…and share your results with me on  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and/or Ravelry.

[luckyfibers-blog]

Reruns

For the past few weeks, I’ve been rerunning old blog posts for a couple of reasons:

Thanks to the magic of analytics, I can tell that there are a lot of new readers visiting this blog, so I thought it might be nice to catch you all up.

I’ve been focusing on writing a manuscript for an upcoming storytelling show, so much of my knitting time--and thus, my writing about knitting time--has been appropriated by that project.

This week, I chose to rerun a post from November 2016 that ties together two of my ancient passions, knitting and storytelling, and for those of you whose hands and eyes are occupied by yarn, but still enjoy a good story, I invite you to listen to three of my stage performances while you knit, crochet, spin, dye, hook, tat, embroider, needlepoint, cross-stitch...

Click here to listen to my very first performance ever, a story about how and why I do 11th Hour hospice visits. The theme was “Jobs,” and my story won the Synergy Story Slam that night.

If you’re interested in hearing my debut at The Moth, click here. The theme that night was “Busted,” and my wild story about a night out in the Meat Packing District won the slam that night, too.

Finally, if you want to hear me tell a story about “Risk,” click here and grab a tissue.

What’s your story? Share here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry, or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

Oh! And if you’re interested in hearing and sharing stories onstage, and you’re anywhere near Asheville tonight, come out to The Odditorium @ 8:00 tonight for stories about “Walls” at Synergy Story Slam!

Spinning Good Yarns

It’s no secret: yarn is my life. I knit, crochet, hoard, and stash yarn, I write about it and field an abundance of questions on the subject regularly, I bear the brunt of much fun made of it, and I even make the occasional dollar or two from it.

While I own a drop spindle and about a zillion pounds of fluff to spin into knittable yarn, I have yet to fully explore this portion of the fiber world, but that doesn’t mean I’m not spending a large portion of my time spinning yarns of a different sort.

You see, what you might not know is that a big chunk of my life is spent practicing, sharing, contemplating, and experiencing the art and craft of storytelling, another ancient tradition I love that dates back even further than any stitching I know of.

Everybody loves stories. When we’re kids, we let our imaginations run wild on the pages of our favorite books. When we’re young adults, we immerse ourselves in the stories of our idols and heroes. When we’re grown, we seek the greatest truths from our memories and from each other.

It wasn’t until I was in graduate school that I started thinking about, let alone studying, the nature, allure, and controversies of storytelling. Little did I know that using a sociolinguistics assignment as an excuse to read comic books would result in my publishing an article on a topic that now, nearly ten years later, is a focal point of my life.

As I wrote in that article, “Since the beginning of human history, language has functioned as the principle conduit for processing, communicating, and fashioning the vast narrative of human existence, thereby performing the essential task of transmitting the human legacy across time and space.” The fancy technologies that we take for granted now–computers, typewriters, pencils, printing presses–came long after the sounds and gestures we used to communicate in preliterate society, and it was in these earliest moments of human existence that the oral tradition was born.

Sure, some of our earliest ancestors were processing and fashioning pelts and other materials into clothing using methods that have inspired knitters, crocheters, sewists, and others ever since, but long before we were making even the simplest tools for fiber and other crafts, early humans were stitching together the fabric of our essence as a specie.

The First Threads

From our first screaming, flailing moments in this world, we are contributing to the story of humankind. 

Sure, our families and communities have already begun to indoctrinate us into the human saga as they’ve anticipated our arrivals, but it is with our first breaths that we confirm our participation in the story–the legacy–that is humanity. We literally cannot help but issue our vowel-laden oratory; it is about all that we can do at that point. The first threads we add to the narrative are appropriately crude and simple, as the scope of our lives at that point is limited to getting our most essential needs met.

As newborns, we might not be articulate enough to shape a compelling story arc with subplots and subtext and richly developed characters, but we are eloquent enough from the first seconds of our lives to express our experiences and have an impact on our audience. To me, that’s a good start to spinning a good yarn.

Ties That Bind

In that article I wrote in grad school, Young Me explained that

despite our cultural and individual differences, every person on earth has been united by their participation in the collective human experience of telling stories.  From birth, we are told stories about family, religious traditions, regional, national and global history; if we are fortunate, our parents read to us from story books, often complete with illuminating illustrations, whereas if we are alternately fortunate, they recite folklore from memory with gestural and facial animation and personal embellishment.

Dang, I had that sounding-smart thing down pat back then, didn’t I?

As both a knitter and raconteuse, I feel the many ties that bind me to centuries of tradition. In these volatile times, when it feels like our society is spinning out of control, it feels more important than ever to stitch the fabric of our society together and spin as many good yarns in as many ways as possible.

What’s your relationship to storytelling? Share your stories here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry, or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

P.S. If you’re in the Ashevile, North Carolina area on the second Wednesday of any month, come out to the Synergy Story Slam to hear and share stories on different themes. In honor of the completion of this year’s election cycle the day before, we’re calling November’s event, “Sh!t Show,” and we hope you’ll join us for an explosive purge of stories about chaos, controversy, fiasco, and glorious, unanticipated failure. Come to hear or share an eruption of tales about absurd, sloppy, disorganized moments, displays of utter ineptitude and incompetence, and the messy situations that just plain stink.

If you prefer The Moth, join us every third Thursday of the month, and keep an eye out for my recent slam-winning story…I’ll be posting it here soon.

[luckyfibers-blog]

No Lie

This morning, a conversation arose in an online group of local knitters that reminded me of this post from last July, especially the last lie about cheap yarn being just as good as expensive yarn.

There’s a lot to unpack there, but the difference I notice between the discussion today and others like it that I’ve witnessed in larger, more anonymous groups is that this conversation remained completely civil and good-natured even when crossing into debate about controversial topics like local sourcing, ethical treatment of fiber animals and representation of fiber farmers, and nuances between making personal judgments and taking objective statements personally.

The reasons for this are many, I’m sure, but at the heart of this difference is that we are not only members of a historic tribe stitched together across generations by our passions and traditions as one person noted, but also members of a real-life community. The group meets regularly at local bars and restaurants for sip-and-knits, at farms for shearing festivals and other events, and even at Claying Around this past Sunday to paint our own yarn bowls. Here’s mine! (Thanks for the pic, Erin!)

I’m not lying when I say that it’s possible for online groups--knitting-related or otherwise--to remain as pleasant as an afternoon spent painting pottery. It’s up to us to remind ourselves that the disembodied profile picture and black-and-white text we’re about to snark at is actually attached to a body with a heart and a mind and perhaps some misinformation or a chip on their shoulder, but still.

Be the change you want to see in the knitting world, my friends, both online and IRL.

Share your favorite stories about your knitting groups here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry, or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715. 

Knitters Lie

About an hour into shopping for Old Goat’s birthday present last night, I reached for an item on a rack above my head and let out a yowl that took me by surprise as much as it did everyone else in the store. I looked at my left arm to make sure I hadn’t impaled my bicep on a display rack while my head was turned, and satisfied that everything looked copacetic, I proceeded to reach again…with the same result.

W the actual F?

My arm was all like…

…but I was all like…

…and I figured that since I couldn’t identify a cause for the mysterious, stabby sensation that I could ignore it until it went away. 

I reached for thiiiiiiiiiisssss, and I selected one of tho-whoa-ose…

…and still, I decided that it was nothing, that it would pass, that I would wake up today, publish a thousand words or so, do a few loads of laundry, and finish both heels of UFO #2, my Wendel socks…

…with enough time to spare to grocery shop and whip up a healthy, gourmet dinner for Old Goat.

As you may have guessed, I was sorely mistaken.

Today, I can only use my left hand if I keep my elbow tucked at my side, which helps me to gain a better understanding of the plight of Basset hounds…

…but turns typing into a bit of a stretch. Plus, losing use of my humerus will certainly hinder my ability to prep and cook a nice spread of veggies by the dinner hour today.

But bolstered by my true knitting addiction knitter’s spirit, I have not yet given up on the prospect of completing those heel flaps before day’s end. After all, knitting on US size 1 (2.5mm) needles means I don’t have to move my arms practically at all while I stitch, so I can manage…right?

Five Knitting Lies

Reflecting on last night’s denial and its spillover into today makes me wonder: what other lies do knitters tell in defense of our knitting addiction habits? How many of the following fibs have you told lately?

“Just one more row…” This is the paragon of knitting lies, the knitter’s equivalent to, “I can stop any time I want,” the one that leads to millions of delayed mealtimes and bedtimes around the globe each day. Variations exist for working in the round (“Just one more round…”), entrelac (“Just one more block…”), lacework and cabling (“Just one more pattern repeat…), and so on. Don’t be fooled: a row/round/block/pattern repeat could just as easily be a thousand stitches as it could be ten, and if you make the mistake of looking away, “Just one more row…” can easily turn into two, three, or fifty.

“I don’t need to do a gauge swatch.” Bull caca! The only time we don’t need to swatch is when–no, wait: we should always do a gauge swatch!

Don’t hate me for saying that. Sucking your teeth and denying it doesn’t make it less true. Successfully completing a project without swatching doesn’t make it less true either, it simply means we’ve gambled and won.

I know that diving right in can bring a sense of instant gratification, but it is extremely risky. We may feel quite noble when we weave in a subordinate lie like, “If I don’t like it, I can always frog it out,” or “I’m just knitting for enjoyment, anyway,” but we know that going into a project with a plan to rip it back out is the opposite of instant gratification…it’s more like delayed frustrate-ification.

All experienced knitters know this to be true, whether we choose to embrace or ignore it: swatching is important and useful for all projects, not just garments with a specific fit.

Swatches are little, magical squares of fabric that can unlock the secrets of how our fibers, our colors, our needles, and our stitches interact in the context of our current projects. Swatches allow us to make adjustments to the drape and density of our work, they let us sneak a peek at how our colors and textures will work together, they can help us test our patterns before getting in too deep, and if we’re really doing it right, swatches can show us how well our fiber will stand up to washing, drying, blocking (see below), and other forms of mild abuse. These are all good things to know before spending a hundred hours (give or take) and a hundred dollars (give or take) creating something that comes out wrong.

Think of it this way: if knitting were a map, the swatch would be the key that puts everything to scale and tells you what everything means. Put another way, if knitting were a brand new sports car, the swatch would be the, um, key.

“Blocking isn’t really necessary.” I told myself this lie until I realized that the only knitters who believe it are the ones who don’t block their work.

No, blocking is not necessary in the same way that binding off your stitches or seaming the sides of a top together are, but unless we want our projects to look homemade instead of handmade, blocking is pretty clutch. Sure, you can slip that pullover on and wear it fresh off the needles, and you can give that afghan to your niece for her wedding immediately after weaving in the very last end, but even the most proficiently knitted wares can benefit from some gentle reshaping and setting. Jessica Fenlon Thomas spells out the multitude of benefits and techniques of blocking here so that I don’t have to here.

“I won’t start another project until this one is finished.” From my observations, we knitters divide into two camps: the disciplined stitchers who faithfully work on one project at a time to each’s completion, and the cast-on junkies who thrive on the thrill of starting something new with little consideration for the projects already in queue.

Perhaps you are one of the rare knitters out there with enough temperance and willpower to utter this phrase and actually mean it, but I am not one of them.

When I started telling myself this particular lie, I actually believed it. I thought that once I had a variety of projects underway–a small one, a large one, a simple one, a complicated one, a portable one, an epic one–I would be satisfied enough with my diverse options to stop casting on until something got bound off, but working in a yarn shop provided too much temptation. Hoarding habits took hold, and now, here I am, surrounded by UFOs.

It’s taken me years to abandon all hope of defecting to the other camp of knitters and to accept my place in the junkie camp. I admit that it helps to know that most of you are right here with me.

“Cheap yarn is just as good as expensive yarn.” Sorry, but not sorry: this is not just a little lie, this is a delusion. Cheap ____ is rarely ever just as good as expensive ____.

Don’t get me wrong: I recognize that quality, whether low or high, cannot be determined by price alone. There are plenty of affordable yarns out there that are universally regarded as high-quality, and I would never assert that spending a lot of money on yarn guarantees a high standard. Besides, with places like Tuesday Morning carrying lots of luxury yarn brands at closeout prices, the line between quality and price gets grayer and blurrier.

But I see people posting snippy, defensive, micro-aggressive comments in Facebook knitting groups claiming that projects made from luxury yarns and fine animal fibers can turn out just as nicely with cheap, synthetic commercial yarns, and having worked extensively with all kinds of yarns at every price point, I can say with confidence that this is rarely, if ever, true.

Yes, you can use an acrylic yarn to produce a lovely scarf, but it will be a different product than the one made from cashmere, silk, or even wool. Heck, a cheaply made acrylic won’t even compare to a well-made acrylic. Different fibers produced at different qualities will produce undeniably different results. 

I also see folks saying things like, “expensive yarns are a waste of money,” and all that says to me is that they haven’t tried a high-quality yarn or that they did once and had a bad experience. As far as I’m concerned, the only way that can be categorically true is if someone spends a lot of money on yarn and then immediately sets it on fire.

Pretending that what we can afford is just as good as what we cannot afford is absurd. Would anyone have the guts to assert that a fast-food burger is “just as good as” a steakhouse filet mignon simply because they can’t afford the filet mignon? Would you say that a Nissan Versa is “just as good as” a Volvo XC90 just because it’s the car you can buy?

Perhaps it’s a defense mechanism we use to save face or cover for our feelings of jealousy, shame, or whatever caused by not being able to afford the yarns we really want, but let’s face it: poor quality is never “just as good as” high quality.

Just like pretending that swatching doesn’t matter doesn’t make it true, and just like the knitters who believe that blocking isn’t important are the ones who don’t do it, when people say that money spent on high-quality yarn is wasted, or that low-quality yarn is “just as good as” anything except other low-quality yarn, they are telling themselves knitty little lies.

Let’s be honest, folks…

We need to stop lying to ourselves…

…at least with respect to our knitting.

It’s okay to admit we can’t just put it down. We are free to flout best practices, but that doesn’t change their status as best practices. Our excitement to start and finish things should not preclude us from doing a good job. Price is price, quality is quality, and sometimes the twain shall indeed meet.

And, of course, knitting with one regular arm and one Basset paw is awkward, but I can still do it…right? 

What little knitty lies do you tell yourself? Share on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Ravelry (and don’t forget to follow and friend!) or by email…or snail mail (Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715).

[luckyfibers-blog]

Stories Old, Stitches New

Stitch is happening, folks:

I finished my Box Pleat Top...

...I started sketching, measuring, and swatching a sweater design for Old Goat...

...and yesterday, I made the firm decision to employ my stubborn pile of Malabrigo Mora in conjunction with my 100% hemp Lucci yarn left over from my one and only true knitting machine success to make the Winter Wheat cardigan.

Yes, I’ve taken on a combination of colorwork and lace as a relaxing side project while I work on a new design. Yes, it feels a bit like putting Swarovski crystal and polymer clay beads on a gown of handmade lace. So far, it’s going, um, fine.

What’s really been happening, though, is the fast approach of this...

...my first performance in a curated storytelling show.

I’ve chosen to reblog this early post about early memories to free up some time to write new old stories. I hope that you longtime readers enjoy the trip down memory lane and that you newcomers find my knitting “Origin Story” entertaining.

Who taught you (or didn’t teach you) how to knit? Share your stories  here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry, or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

P.S. Hey, longtime readers: which old post should I revisit next week?

Origin Story

Judging by the industrial-sized jar of Albolene and other accoutrements she kept on her nightstand, one might have thought my grandmother was a bisexual drag queen. Her dyed, teased, tortured bouffant hairdo hardly dispelled the myth, nor did her sharp coral fingernails that I envied most when she used them to dial the rotary phone.

Grandma wore gaudy earrings that made her lobes droop to her shoulder pads, bangles that filled her forearms, and beads that clanked and tinkled when she laughed…and knitted.

She wore clothing of bold, flowing fabric that swathed her body—portly as it was from a diet so rich with organ meat and schmaltz—with even more rhinestones and baubles. The fiercest rouge, coupled with a Day-Glo blue-and-green eye shadow combo, completed her look.

Grandma’s affinities for Barbra Streisand, Liza Minelli, and the female strippers my cousin used to date caused a collection of glamour shots to proliferate at her bedside like a shrine to compulsory femininity through the last half of the twentieth century.

Each night, she kissed Poppa goodnight, dimmed the lights in the bedroom, and parked her rump at the edge of her bed. Even after fifty years of marriage, Grandma feigned modesty to mask her vanity by facing her back to Poppa, who knew to keep his gaze fixed on Hill Street Blues or St. Elsewhere, as she removed her make-up.

Grandma’s nightly ritual had her place the bottom disc of her flexible goose-neck mirror next to the gargantuan jar of Albolene and yank at the other disc until it was positioned to magnify a scant fragment of her face to a terrifying degree. With her speckled, shriveled index finger, she gouged her nail into the waxy, goopy jelly and dragged a plump blob across her eyelid before flipping her finger over and rubbing at her makeup with little consideration for the tender membrane of her cornea beneath it.

Leaving her eye and cheekbone and brow and temple like a psychedelic wound, all shiny and black and blue and green, Grandma would reach for a tissue, fold it into quarters, and wipe away a piece of her cosmetic mask. Repeating this process in clockwise fashion, piece by piece, Grandma’s Divine-face would return from glowing cartoon to ordinary human features. She’d instantly gain twenty years and lose days of sleep; her eyebrows would vanish with her foundation, leaving the plane of her forehead pasty and white for no one to see.

Origins

Brooklyn-born to Russian-Jewish immigrants at the end of World War I, my grandmother was raised to be a caricature of assimilation. Grandma was taught to view America and the honor of being an American with the zeal and sensibilities of her eastern-European parents, so it was with the exuberant Minsk-to-Manhattan patriotism shared by so many Jewish families at that time that she became a sparkling figure of garish American plenty.

Although she heard mostly Yiddish at home growing up, Grandma spoke English with the accent and vernacular native to her Brooklyn neighborhood, which–shared as it was by the Jewish, Irish, Italian, and other non-native speakers–contained colorful flourishes and phrases from no fewer than four mother tongues. Simply put, Grandma swore like a dozen sailors.

But she was born with deep-set eyes like Marlene Dietrich, and her bawdy spunk was reminiscent of Mae West, so she fancied herself the unsung Vaudeville star of our family. She convinced herself that my sister looked like Judy Garland and I like Sophia Loren.

In spite of all that glamour and sass, as the matriarch of my mother’s side of the family, Grandma established an unbending, manipulative regime rife with impossible expectations, soul-crushing judgments, unyielding biases, and constant shows of disapproval. The easiest image for me to conjure of Grandma has her pursing her Maybelline lips, raising a sketched-on eyebrow, and cultivating a little shit-storm over meaningless particulars in the storied fashion of Joan Crawford.

And so it was that as a child, visiting Grandma and Poppa felt like spending a Sunday afternoon not in a cozy, welcoming condominium on Long Island, but in the clutches of a charismatic totalitarian despot, one as stern as she was ornate. How confusing those visits were, especially when one considers what a kind, gentle soul my Poppa was. Grandma even exhibited the bizarre tastes and puzzling personality quirks characteristic of many zany dictators, but even though she always struck me as a sequined Hitler with pickled herring breath, I found her captivating.

Grandma’s Needling Ways

Grandma might have been a true battleaxe, and perhaps her kitchen reeked of stale cholent and schav, but I relished my visits with her for one reason above all: her knitting.

Whether feeling gregarious or barbarous, Grandma was a mesmerizing knitter. From a safe, designated distance, I could gnaw on a cheap King Kullen cookie, procured from the flowered tin in Grandma’s fridge, and watch her knit all day.

I enjoyed the clinking of her speedy steel needle tips and the way it joined with the music of her jostling jewelry. I couldn’t take my eyes from her hands as they moved so quickly to create odd shapes of fabric. I was mystified that these unrecognizable parts would magically coalesce into the sweaters, hats, and other garments featured throughout my family’s photographic history.

I sincerely doubt Grandma knew that her knitting fever supplied my mother with a stunning wardrobe for gallivanting around the New York City party scene of the late 1960′s and early 1970′s, but I’m certain I would have heard plenty about it through her pursed lips if she found out that her youngest granddaughter wore the very same ensembles to countless raves and clubs a few decades later. My favorite was a turquoise number embellished with crystal beads that dangled and clanked in homage to the dame from whence they came.

Once Poppa was gone, Grandma’s demeanor grew even more terse and unyielding; the sweaters she knitted for us in those later years were stiff and tight.

She spent her last days tucked away in a rear bedroom of my mother’s sister’s house, silent and unadorned. My parents encouraged me not to fly home from college for her funeral, and I didn’t press the issue.

I foolishly left all but one of those priceless pieces of Grandma’s handiwork at my parents’ house when I moved out, expecting to have opportunities to pick them up when I had enough space of my own in which to keep them. But the dumpsters and estrangement came before I got my chance to claim the old go-go clothes, so only one relic of Grandma’s knitting remains in my possession.

A Strange Legacy

Until I got to know The Happy Ripper, I thought Grandma was the only person on earth who could crank out sweater sets, skirts, dresses, purses, afghans, scarves, and other knitted goods at lightning speed–often delicately embellished with beads and shiny filaments–with hardly a glance at a pattern.

But unlike THR, Grandma was unwilling to share her skills and knowledge. The closest I ever came to getting a knitting lesson from Grandma was when I had her cast me on ten stitches so I could try to figure it out on my own as I watched her.

This made her terribly nervous, and so she begrudgingly quickly demonstrated the basics of the knit stitch. Much to my chagrin, no matter how many times I practiced, my stitches never looked like Grandma’s.

It wasn’t until twenty crochet/bead/needlepoint-filled years later–a solid decade after Grandma died–that I realized she had taught me to knit through the back loop, which was why all of my stitches came out twisted and wrong.

How apropos that something I learned from my family could be characterized as twisted and wrong….

I will leave it to trained psychologists, armchair analysts, and anyone else who might still care to figure out why Grandma felt so threatened by the prospect of sharing her knitting tradition with her descendants because I got over it after just a few hours with my copy of Reader’s Digest The Complete Guide to Needlework. And the rest, as they say, is history.

To watch history in the making, check me out on Instagram (luckyfiberdesigns), Twitter (@LuckyFibers), Pinterest (Lucky Fiber Designs), Ravelry (LuckyFiberDesigns), and Facebook (facebook.com/luckyfiberdesigns).

[luckyfibers-blog]

Linen Love

When I was preparing to become an English teacher, I knew I would need to enter my classroom with more than steadfast dedication to education and learning, more than a passion for literature and writing, more than a wellspring of compassion and patience.

I knew that I needed to cultivate a teacher persona that was at once authentic enough to endear myself to my students and the school community and contrived enough to create and maintain boundaries between my personal and professional lives.

I thought about my two most prominent teacher heroes:

Mrs. Scherl, my fourth and fifth grade teacher who introduced me to both Edgar Allen Poe and tangrams

Ms. Guarino, the high school English teacher who taught me how to write an essay

and listed what they had in common:

steadfast dedication to education and learning

passion for literature and writing

wellspring of compassion and patience

wardrobe replete with billowing, layered, natural fabrics and sometimes large, sometimes colorful, but always eye-catching jewelry.

I was raised by my bauble-loving mother and spent part of my time in college as a metals major, so my teacher-jewelry game was already pretty tight. I just needed to start calling my handmade necklaces and chunky pendants statement pieces.

Having been a teenager in the 1990s, my wardrobe was already fully stocked with baggy clothes of all kinds, so in order to fully calibrate and actualize my teacher persona, all I had to do was swap out my patchy corduroys and wide-leg jeans for subdued, tent-like dresses, tops, skirts, and pants that look like skirts.

Thus, my classroom look—and my love of linen—was born.

Knitting with Linen

Once I became obsessed with knitting, it was only a matter of time until I sought out linen yarn to make some flowy, flaxy frocks of my own. I fiddled and futzed. I knitted, frogged, and cussed.

As a newbie knitter, I didn't know the difference between knitting with fiber A and fiber B, so I would match projects and yarn willy-nilly and rue the results. But after spending the past many years knitting through dozens of drapey DROPS, Cocoknits, Purl SoHo, and my own patterns with linens of all kinds, I have fallen in crazy love with linen knitting.

As winter wanes, you might find yourself winding down on woolies and searching for some spring and summer stitching, so here's some wisdom for you to ignore consider when wishing for a cooler kind of knit this season.

Linen is a plant fiber, so it does not behave the same way as wool and other animal fibers. Much like cotton or hemp, linen has no elasticity, but what we sacrifice in squish, we earn back in durability and drape.

Choose patterns and plan projects with linen in mind. Gauge swatching is a must with linen. Stitches like stockinette and ribbing behave differently when worked in linen, and needle sizes can produce variable tensions even among yarns of the same weight when one of them is linen. Wash and dry your swatch before measuring, and read more technical stuff about linen here.

Linen abides by the, “It wears in, but it doesn't wear out” standard. Even though it sometimes has little bits of dried, scratchy plant matter spun into the yarn, there are ways to soften and break in your linen prior to starting and after the item is completed. For starters, wind, rewind, and re-rewind your skein to soften the yarn before working it up, and wash your garment before wearing it. Unlike wools that felt, acrylics that pill, rayons that grow, and other fibers that age like cheese in sunshine, linen improves with wear and washing.

People have strong opinions about linen. Some informal polling of knitters online shows that just as many people love to work with and wear linen as those who abhor it. Some say it's light and airy and perfect for summer months, and others find it itchy, stiff, and “crunchy.”  

What say you? Share your linen opinions and project pics here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry, or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

[luckyfibers-blog]

Gauge: A Metaphor

I am one of those people who thinks I'm terrible at math. I'm so grateful that there's an app for that.

So deep is my history of math aversion that I chose my college major based on which one required the least of it.

Nevermind the fact that when my mother died, I found my old test scores that placed me in the 99%ile in math since elementary school. Nevermind that I have always enjoyed doing puzzles from jigsaw to crossword to Sudoku, a penchant that correlates with logical/mathematical intelligence. Nevermind that I spend most of my leisure time and some of my professional time engaged in manual algorithmic highly mathematical rituals also known as knitting. Math and I are still a big...

...nope.

Like many knitters, I allowed a lack of confidence in my mathematical prowess to deter me from attempting to make garments and other items with a specific fit for a long time. When salesfolk at yarn shops would start talking about gauge, my eyes would glaze over and my head would nod until I had yarn in my hand and less money in my wallet.

When knitters and crocheters talk about gauge, I think we take it for granted that the conversation ends with a number of stitches per inch or centimeter, but understanding gauge as more than a set of cryptic numbers can help us to determine quite a bit of information. It wasn't until I started thinking of gauge as a concept instead of just a number at the end of a brutal calculation that I began to understand and appreciate what it is: the key to unlocking the mysteries of fabric density, yarn substitutions, and knit design. Only then was I comfortable enough to apply the formula, embrace the process of gauge swatching, and knit with confidence no matter what project I had in mind.

Gauge-getting

If you're one of those stitchers who still struggles with gauge-getting, I encourage you to investigate the calculations involved at some point, but for now, let's stick to my—and perhaps your—comfort zone: metaphors.

Imagine the back seat of a car.

Now, picture the differences in that seat when filled with kids heading to little league after school, adults carpooling to work in the morning, a Great Dane headed to the dog park, two teenagers parked at a secluded overlook, three kittens coming from the vet, or unboxed books and clothing being moved to a new apartment. Is it just the number of bodies that changes, or do other things change about the seat, too? Things to consider: noise, gear, comfort- and energy-levels, topics of conversation, odors, safety, etc.

It's easy to see that each of the scenarios listed above will fill up that back seat rather differently, so now imagine that the back seat is actually a standard four-inch/ten-centimeter square known as a gauge swatch, each of those people and animals is a different kind of yarn, all of their stuff represents different stitches, and their behavior stands for the needle or hook size you choose to use. Different yarns, stitches, and tensions applied by the knitter will yield different results just like the different variables named above will also lead to different driving experiences.

So, just like we know that a ride to a middle school baseball game will be quite a different story from the ride to work in the morning, we know that a fingering weight silk yarn will create a very different four-inch/ten-centimeter square in stockinette stitch than would a workhorse worsted wool in a honeycomb. Not only will it take more little leaguers/silk fingering-weight stitches to fill up the seat/swatch than the colleagues/worsted wool, but we also know to expect them--the people and the fibers--to behave differently from one another.

Perhaps there are better metaphors for gauging than filling up a back seat with people, animals, and stuff, but the important thing here is to look beyond the numbers and not let the math stand in your knitty little way.

What metaphor would you use to describe gauge? Share here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry, or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

[luckyfibers-blog]

Knitty in the City

When a knitter like me visits a place like New York City and stays mere blocks away from a world-renowned, trendsetting yarn shop, it's easy to get swept up in yarn fantasies of obscene selections, concierge customer service, Narnian notions, and sorcerous sale prices.

The reality, though, is that with only a few exceptions, the yarn selections from store to store feel largely familiar, the shopkeeps are consistently cordial, the notions are rarely remarkable, and the prices remain pretty high. Essentially, a yarn shop is a yarn shop whether in Sheboygan or SoHo: a small, warm space lined with cubbyholes chock-full of fiber goodness (picture courtesy of Village Yarn Shop, Rochester NY).

And what more could I really ask for?

Journey to Purl SoHo

One shop that does step away from the pack is Purl SoHo, a chic fiber outfit in lower Manhattan known not only for its own line of luxury yarns and free knitting patterns, but also for its fabrics and sewist supplies.

The store is located in the eponymous, perennially hip neighborhood south of Houston Street, and its wholesome, minimalist aesthetic makes it feel like a Pinterest board come to life. With bursts of alpaca and linen in so much beige and gray, all that were missing were the mason jars and kale salad recipes.

Passing by the familiar favorites like Malabrigo and Madeline Tosh, I decided to keep my purchases contained to three yarns exclusive to PS:

Cloud Gray Cotton Pure for Lindsay. My long-lost “li'l sister,” whom I saw this weeked in New York, fell in love with my cowl, and wants one for this summer. Consider it done.

An undisclosed number of skeins of Light Gray (Grigio 0) Lanecardate to finally make a ____ for Old Goat. It looks like after almost nine years, I have found a yarn that looks and feels like something Old Goat might wear, which is, of course, at once impossibly soft and bulky. Sure, it cost an ugly penny all told and yeah, we have yet to find a clue of what he wants, but if he has too much trouble choosing something to suit this superfine wool/angora blend, I'll gladly whip up something for myself.

Lime Kalinka to make the Box Pleat Top. Yeah, I had just picked that pattern for a yarn in my stash, but it turns out it was written specifically for Kalinka, a yarn collaboration between Purl SoHo and an artist from Sweden, and the glowing green skeins looked so lonely and sad in the sale basket marked down by forty percent.

Tips for Future Journeyers

If you plan to visit Purl SoHo or any other high-profile, high-traffic yarn shops, you might want to keep these tips in mind:

1. Bring a patient, non-knitter friend to hold your coat/purse/other shopping bags/children. The aisles are often narrow, the temperature is often high, and the browsers are usually off in our own little worlds. The less extra bulk, the better.

2. If it's possible, do some online research ahead of time or do a non-buying recon trip before going in hog-wild. This doesn’t just cut down on the amount of time you have to spend navigating the crowded shop (see number 1), it also helps you to know how many skeins to buy of that fingering weight alpaca/chinchilla/gorilla blend without having to rely on sketchy wifi and the patience of everyone around you. Plus, it gives you time to think about what you really want to buy, how much you really have to spend, what you really do have room to store, and all of that responsible adulting jazz that might keep you from making insensible, expensive impulse purchases.

3. Pack light. You will need all of the extra room your suitcase can spare.

What tips do you have for visiting yarn and other crafty wonderlands? Share here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry, or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

[luckyfibers-blog]

Happy Returns

To most people, this…

…would just look like a picture of a coat rack. Maybe you’d notice the raincoat or the purse, or if you’re a knitter like me, your eye might go to the handmade cowl to the right. Perhaps the eye sore of the thermostat draws your attention, or maybe you noticed the bloodhound holding the basket where I keep my glasses. It’s also possible that you’re the type to skip right to judging me for having too many pairs of shoes.

But when I look at this is a picture, all I see is triumph.

Back in May, I showed you a picture of that same coat rack laden with project bags filled with works in various stages of progress and stagnation…

…and yes, a smaller collection of shoes.

But after nine months of stitching dutifully through each and all of them and then some…

…I can finally, happily, return to using my coat rack to hold coats.

Many Happy Returns

How apt that I reach this exciting moment of completion and accomplishment mere days after my birthday, that I get to start my next trip around the sun and my next knitting adventure at the same time, but what’s even more remarkable to me is that I wove the last end and sewed the last button loop onto my Rustic Jacket just days ahead of my first return to my hometown in years.

When I moved away from New York in 2003, I knew not to expect many happy returns: my mother’s prolonged illness, my acrimonious relationship with my sister, and other chronic family drama ensured that each trip north would be measured in degrees of disaster. Once both of my parents were gone and my sister and I were estranged, I had few reasons to go back.

I’ve traveled that far up the eastern seaboard only twice since my father’s funeral. Each time, I have experienced a new, beautiful version of the old frantic northward journey: first for my best friend’s wedding–the one I’ve known since second grade–and then for an epic road trip/college hunt with my “nephew.”

Enough time has elapsed for my bestie and her husband to settle into married life, buy a house, and have a baby; my “nephew” is mere months away from finishing college; and so it is that today, I’m leaving for a bittersweet return to New York City.

I will see my best friend since second grade and meet her son, my newest “nephew” for whom I made the Barf Blanket.

I will connect with old friends whom I haven’t seen since we were so very young.

I will visit a woman who was like a mother to me as she begins her relationship with cancer, and I will try to ignore the echo of visits to my own mother. I will hug her daughter like the little sister she always was to me.

I will be a tourist in my hometown, the guest who just happens to know where to go for the best bagel, falafel, and pizza, perhaps the only visitor interested in avoiding Times Square. 

I will be a knitter from the South staying less than a mile from Purl Soho.

I will be a visitor in a world at once similar to and distant from one that feels like mine.

Perhaps this will be the first of many happy returns.

What would you do with some downtime in New York City? Share here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry, or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

[luckyfibers-blog]

Birthday Reblog, Februrary 22, 2017

Old Goat spent four hours last night baking this coconut chocolate cake with saffron creme filling, orange saffron frosting, and cacao nibs from our trip to Belize...

...so that we could have cake right at midnight because today is my birthday!

Nevermind that he had just driven us home from a long weekend in Atlanta, and we had unpacked and done an afternoon’s worth of assorted chores. He went to the grocery store, baked, and even kind of sang.

I enjoy thinking about how many phases of blushing OG will go through as he reads this, but he--like other avid readers of this blog--might eventually get around to remembering that last year, I had to try to enjoy my birthday without him. Maybe then he--and you--can understand why this year, I won’t let it go without saying that I appreciate his love, his support, and all of the unique, quirky things that make him who he is whether it’s my birthday or not.

Perhaps you recall that about the only thing that got me through that sad, Goatless time was the #36pairsformy36thbirthday Sock Drive, but in case you don’t remember, take a saunter down Memory Lane with this reblog from last year.

As always, comment and like Lucky Fiber Designs here, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Ravelry, or stay in touch by email or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

Words Are Hard

I’m not going to lie: there was a time a few short weeks ago when I wasn’t sure if I was going to make my goal of stitching and gathering thirty-six pairs of handmade socks to donate to a local youth shelter on my thirty-sixth birthday…

…so I sat my butt down at the ornery ol’ knitting machine that’s perpetually parked on my dining room table, adapted the pattern for the Easiest Knitted Socks Ever, and got chugging.

Before you start leveling accusations that using a knitting machine to make handmade socks is a form of cheating, let me just say that seaming the feet, hand-knitting the cuffs, and weaving in all of the ends on these pairs took long enough to make up for much of the time saved by dragging the carriage across the needle-bed…and clicking the needle-tips from start to finish is a heck of a lot more fun than wrangling with all of those finicky parts.

Eventually, three machine/handmade pairs made it to the pile, another pair was on my needles, and a few more donations flowed in…

…and with three days to spare, the goal had not only been met…

…but also was far surpassed.

More than a dozen knitters made forty-two pairs of socks, and another half-dozen contributed other handmade garments. Almost two dozen people donated store-bought socks, clothes, and more. Ten people suggested encouraging quotes to attach to each pair of handmade socks, and countless other folks offered support in their own special ways from across six different states. 

When searching for words to express my appreciation for all of the gestures made in honor of the 36 Pairs for My 36th Birthday drive, our vast, dynamic language suddenly feels so small, so inadequate, so limited.

I mean, I started this thing because it seemed like a fun thing to do for a worthy cause once the Christmahanukkwanzaa-knitting season ended…

…and I got hooked on the project once I realized that it provided a challenge to focus on instead of letting myself wallow in the cold darkness of January…

…but the depth of this event did not begin to sink in until I talked to the people at Trinity Place and became energized by the virtuous, necessary work that they do.

I found myself charmed by the enthusiastic response from people in my digital and analog circles and was fortunate enough to be able to use this experience to actually commune with people in the strangely isolating, lonely community that is Facebook.

I enjoyed the steady rate of productivity and the constant thrills of completing sock after sock.

I embraced the moments of reverence and quietude that arose when I thought about the children who would eventually wear each pair of socks I made.

I felt fulfilled by having such a clear sense of purpose.

I loved to look at and label each pair added to the pile…

…and I have to admit that I got a rush from receiving and giving so many gifts for my birthday.

But it was an especially poignant moment when I got to deliver all of this…

…to this place.

How can all of that fit into “thank you”?

To simply lump that all together into “gratitude” seems like a gross understatement.

To say I’ve felt honored, humbled, or touched would only begin to scratch the surface since what I felt was so much closer to overwhelmed, blown away, or walloped.

What words would you use to describe this experience? Send me your thoughts on Facebook, Like and comment on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page, tweet me, find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Ravelry, email, or mail me a note: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.