Sam's Sweater

Problem: Sam has an extremely curved back.  I take him to a chiropractor twice a month, but there's only so much he can do.  He lessens Sam's pain, helps him breathe more deeply so he doesn't get pneumonia and, hopefully, keeps his back from getting worse, but he can't fix what's already happened.

Sam's sweaters rise up about 3 inches in the back because of the curve.  This means, besides the tacky fashion statement, that his waist is often cold because sweaters that fit in front don't cover him in back OR sweaters that cover his back are too bunchy in the front.

 Although his back is also curved from right to left, sweaters seem to lie pretty straight across the back.

So I decided to knit a sweater that actually fits him.  I'm using R2 Fuzzi Felt because I have soooo much of it in my stash and because it's bulky and fast and hopefully warm.  It is 58% nylon, 16% merino wool, 20% Acrylic and 6% alpaca.  That's 22% more natural fiber than the sweaters I buy him at Kohls....

I'm taking a course at Craftsy.com on knitting for curvy figures - by which they mean me - but I'm making Sam my first attempt at curvy knits.  (The course was a Christmas present from my DIL and son.)  My brilliant DIL suggested that I knit it from the top down so I can try it on as I go.  I bought Barbara Walker's book "Knitting From the Top" and started casting on for a v-neck raglan cardigan.  Here's where we are today:

 The offset color is where the raglan seam increases come in.  I'm not sure if I like this or not, I'm going to leave it and call it a design feature.  NEXT sweater...

But I think you can see that already the front is a lot closer to his waist than the back and also that the back is starting to be too small while the front looks just about right.  So I'm going to try increasing an extra two stitches every right side row in the back AND do a short row in the back every wrong side row.  I'll also stop adding stitches to the center front.  Each short row adds two rows to the back and with my gauge, I'll need 9 or 10 to make the 3".  I'm not sure how much wider I need the back to be.  

Mr. Spock

Well, I just thought he turned out pretty well.  Sending him to Ben today for his birthday.  Next up: Cher's socks.  I promise!  After I finish the couch pillows for ME!!!!

Happy New Year

Happy 2011.  This is the year that I turn 60 and I have three grandchildren.  I think that endows me with certain inalienable rights among which are the right to rebel against certain absurdities.  Why we do things is sometimes more important than what we do.

For example, there was this young priest who took over his first parish in northern Minnesota - or maybe it was Saskatchewan.  After he celebrated his first Christmas Eve Midnight Vigil, he noticed a certain growing resentment on the part of his rural parishioners.  So he went to his deacon and asked him what the trouble was.  

"Well frankly, Father, many of us are having trouble getting used to your new ways.  We aren't used to these shorter rites."  The priest asked him to explain further and the deacon explained, "Well, many of us missed the way the old priest used to bless the church at midnight during the Christmas Eve Vigil." 

Bless the church?  The young priest had never heard of this, so he went to to see the old priest in the retirement community which was now his home.  After an hour or so of discussing various parishioners, their children and cattle, the old priest asked, "And how are you settling in, young man?"  This was the opening he had been waiting for and the young priest asked for an explanation of the rite of blessing the church during the Christmas Eve Vigil.

After staring at him blankly a few moments, a smile dawned on the wrinkled old face.  "That old church is so cold and drafty!" He explained.  "Even in mid-summer I got cold.  But Christmas Vigil was the worst!  So before I began to celebrate Eucharist, I used to go over to the radiator and warm my hands!"

Or there were three generations of women who passed on family traditions faithfully.  As each one got older, her daughter would take over the task of preparing the Christmas Dinner for the extended family.  Each mother carefully taught her daughter all the family secret recipes.  As the youngest daughter was being inducted into the mysteries, she was told, among other things, that it was important to cut off the end of the Christmas Ham before putting it in the oven.  "Why?" she asked, bringing the proceedings to a screeching halt.

"Because you'll ruin it if you don't." Said her mother.  "Isn't that right, mom?"  


"I don't know," replied the grandmother, "That's just the way it's done."


"But why?" asked the rebellious daughter.  "Let's go ask Great-grandmother."  So they went out into the living room where Great-grandmother sat in state, knitting, of course, and asked her why it was so important to cut off the end of the Christmas ham.

"Because" she told them, "my old wood burning stove was so small the whole ham didn't fit in."

So back to being almost 60.  I'm old enough to start asking why and stop worrying about the "Right way."  Well, maybe I've always been a little that way, but I'm going to be a lot MORE that way from now on.  

Beginning with knitting.  Why do we pull from the center?  It's a neat little magic trick that goes wrong about as often as it goes right.  But why do we do it? I just spent 40 minutes trying to find an end that didn't come out of the center smoothly.  I'm done.  The only reasonable reason I can think of for pulling from the center is if I'm knitting with a double strand and only have one ball.  Otherwise, I'm knitting from the outside from now on.  


If I want magic, I'll buy a Fushigi.


 

Adventures in Gauge

Well, I don't particularly like knitting swatches. I'm always afraid it will use up precious yarn and I'll be a cuff short on the sweater. I also buy an extra skein of whatever I'm knitting - so I have quite a stash of single skeins. It is perhaps fortunate that I like knitting toys and that I have so many children in my life.

HOWEVER. I recently completed a sweater for my granddaughter, Zora. I used the recommended needles and, for the first time in my life, the recommended yarn. I knit a tiny token swatch and discovered my knitting was a couple of stitches bigger than the gauge. A couple of stitches! She's a toddler! Who cares? I figured, at the rate I knit, it was better to go a little large.
It is a wonderful pattern and fun to knit. So I finished in record time and have one and one half skeins left over. I think she'll be wearing this when she's all grown up and 9 months pregnant!

I'm knitting a matching tiny gansey with the left over yarn and I have completed an amigurumi and a microtine rodent since. (known to lay people as a rat) When you knit toys gauge doesn't matter and you finish quickly. With a couple of quick successes under my belt, now I'm ready to start knitting a sweater for her cousin. Tahreq is 8 and isn't growing as fast as Zora. So I thought I'd check my gauge. The pattern calls for a size 3 yarn. I'm in love with Knit Picks Shine Sport yarn which is a 2. The pattern calls for size 7 needles and a gauge of 26 stitches to 4 inches. I'm on swatch number 4 and have moved all the way down to a size 3. I think this one will do it. At size four I was doing 27 stitches. I figure if I had actually purchased a size 3 yarn and used size 7 needles, I would have made a Paul Bunyan sweater. This tedious swatch thing is kind of important.

Poem Crazy

I have this book, "poemcrazy" by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge. ("This is a wonderful book..." - Anne Lamott on the front cover. What more can I say?) Copyright 1996 - so it's been sitting in my house 12 years, I guess. I haven't read it yet because I love the title and the recommendation, but it turns out it terrifies me. Poems are supposed to be OTHER people opening themselves up to me and revealing their wonderous selves. I love to do the work of listening to others as they reveal themselves. It is sometimes hard work, but that just makes the moment of illumination brighter.

What I failed to pay attention to on the front cover is the red box (red for danger?) which says "freeing your life with words". MY life! This book has assignments. This book is about Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge teaching me to illuminate myself through my own poems! My Stars and Garters!

Yes, she opens herself up and it is delightful. She is a compelling, creative, forceful, enchanting human being. But then she wants me to... write things.

So this morning I picked it up again and started at the back - something I do when I'm scared of a book. Chapter 56: Sometimes, if things aren't going to fall apart, we have to take them apart. This may be what's heaped in a closet or it may be the way we've been living our lives. Our culture doesn't see the value of this occurrence. When crisis or collapse is happening, it's almost impossible to recognize the unraveling, much less the honor of it. It can feel like being bumped backwards out of control downhill into chaos as we level the old to break out of what binds us and create something new and free. If we had a name for this process, maybe we could see it differently and recognize the forward motion despite all appearances."

I have been in free fall since my father's murder. Maybe longer ago than that. Maybe it is time to spread my wings and learn to fly. For my birthday, I am spending two nights at "Heartland Spa" to learn to knit exercise, nutrition, meditation and self care into a new lifestyle. I need to unravel almost 100 pounds before I can fly. It is more than body fat - it is almost 100 pounds of stress and pain and things I don't want to explore.

Sometime in the next few weeks we will purchase our first home. I am deliberately rewriting the rules of my marriage once again. I think Charley and I are far too interconnected to ever divorce, but we are not happy and I have always wanted a happy marriage and do not see why we can't have one. So I'm changing it.

Maybe it is time to read this book.

The other book I'm reading (one of the other books) is Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac. I'm carrying it around with me in my knitting bag. I am not making any of the projects in it, I am actually making two other projects: One of them is a hand dyed lace shawl from Lorna's Lace and the second is Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket in a Paton's silk/bamboo blend for my granddaughter, Zora. But reading the almanac is so wonderful. She shares so much wisdom about knitting and, if you are a knitter, it flows into life so neatly. For the same reason I bought Ruth Page's Gardening Journal. But I don't think I'll start that until we pick the house and I have an actual garden!