I spent the better part of the day at the hospital with Sam (all’s well – the cast is off, she doesn’t need surgery, and she’s ready to start physio and try to get her arm back) and it’s thrown me dreadfully behind. All you get from me today is finished pictures of Fanasæter.

Yarn: SMC Baby Wool – almost exactly six balls. Needles: 2.25mm.

I think I’m pretty happy with it, although I’m not sure that it’s as neutral as I thought it would be.  I mean, I think it’s neutral, and I think the parents will be happy to put it on either a boy or a girl, but several people have implied that it’s a smidge emasculating for a little guy.  I disagree.

I like it a lot – and besides, you all know where I stand on the crisis of little boys being taken for little girls and the opposite.  I don’t think it matters a bit.

I don’t want to say anything about my little sulk for spring working or not, just in case I hex it, but I can tell you this.  On Friday afternoon I made a cup of tea, gathered my yarn and needles and started a little sweater in spring colours.

I knit and knit – faking a sweater – just letting one happen.  I cast on about 86 stitches for the neck, divided them up as seemed reasonable for a little raglan (1/3 for the back, 1/3 for the front, and 1/6th for each sleeve, plus one on each end for the selvedges)   and worked back and forth, making my increases, two at each raglan point, every other row. When I got about 8cm in, I overlapped the first and last two stitches, and joined to work in the round.  When the armholes were the very scientific "Deep enough" I put the sleeve stitches on holders and kept on trucking for the body, knitting until they measured what Luis does from armhole to hip. (I actually made it a little longer. Dude is growing so fast you can practically watch it happen in front of you.)

I went down a needle size, worked a few centimetres of ribbing, and cast off loosely, then returned my attention to the sleeves.  I put all the stitches back on the needles, picked up two stitches in the armhole, and started working in the round – cruising down the sleeves, decreasing two stitches every 10 rounds three times, continuing again, until it measured what Luis does from armpit to wrist – plus a little. A few centimetres of ribbing, and cast off.

I went back to my little neck part and picked up and knit some stitches for a little placket on the bottom – just a few rows of ribbing… then picked up and knit the same number for the top overlap, and worked that for about 3cm, with two buttonholes smacked right in. 

Voila! A little sweater, made from two balls of Liberty Wool Light (colour 6606) done in less than a weekend.  I wove in all my ends* gave it a little bath, sewed on two vintage buttons from the bin, and today Joe dropped it off for little Lou on his way to work.  Easy peasy, quick and springlike – and today it’s 10 degrees out. Perfect (almost) spring weather for wearing it. So much fun, I almost made another one.

*There were a lot of ends.  A whole lot, because while the plan for the sleeves sounds simple and sensible, I’m still me – and I can’t stand it when sleeves don’t match each other, or the body.  Since this yarn is self-striping, the width of the stripes is determined by the circumference of the knitting – and that means that the stripes would be skinny on the body, and then wider on the sleeves, and the thought of that gave me a wicked case of the heebie jeebies.  Instead, I knit on one sleeve until the stripe matched the stripe on the body, then broke the yarn and did the matching thing on the other sleeve – then discarded the rest of the yarn to get to the next colour, and repeated. I think it worked pretty well, but yeah.  The sleeves had a LOT of ends to weave in. I know there’s lots of you who wouldn’t bother – and I salute you. Rock on.

It’s raining. It’s raining on the snow that fell last night, and on the ice pellets from yesterday, and as much as I try to understand that I live in Toronto, the doggedness of this winter is starting to put me right over the freakin’ edge. We’re at a solid six months of this crap now, and I don’t know anyone around here who hasn’t spent the last 24 hours trying to figure out what they’re going to do to keep themselves from finally bursting into bitter tears and starting to scream expletives in public all the time.   (I admit that I’m already swearing several hours a day, but so far have managed to keep it mostly in my head, or at a reasonable volume.)

I’m going to knit. I’m going to hunker down with that cup of tea and that yarn right there and I’m going to knit a sweater. That’s two balls of Liberty Wool Light (unbelievably, they’re the same colourway) and it should be enough for a little pullover for a little person. It will be simple, and it will keep me from losing my mind,  and by the time it’s done, maybe spring will be here.

Last night, while I was visiting Luis, his mum Katie produced one of his sweaters and asked if I could replace a broken button.  I’m sure I can (you saw the button bin yesterday, the odds are excellent I can find another, or replace all four) and I packed it along home to do it.  It’s the cormo sweater I knit for him months ago

and he’s still wearing it, wearing it enough that Katie really would like it to have the button fixed, which is a good sign. This morning I pulled it out of my bag and had a good look.  The sweater looks very, very different now.

It’s  clean, but has stains from when Lou scooched along, hiking himself forward on his forearms over floors and carpets like a little commando going under the fence. It’s a little pilled, from many, many washes, and the bib of the front is quite felted, from the wet of teething and the months of sliding himself along on his belly.  This sweater looks very, very used, and Katie said that the button broke while he was sliding through the big yellow tube at the park, and that means he was wearing it at the park.

It’s quite the worse for wear.  Every time I see Lou he’s wearing a handknit, and the way this sweater looks means that Katie isn’t just sliding him into one when she hears me come up over her front steps, like the way you get out the tablecloth your aunt gave you when she comes to visit.

This sweater could only have gotten to look like this one way.  Hard use. This sweater has obviously been played in, slept in, eaten in – and I’m so completely thrilled.  I would rather see a handknit I made a kid that looks like this than something tucked away and never used because it’s too precious. This is the exactly the role I want handknits to play in my family.  Exactly this. A comfy, soft, ratty sweater.

I totally put a new button on.  I hope he wears it to rags, and Katie, who helped this little sweater get like this? She can count on an endless supply.

The embroidery is done. I’m so excited about the possibilities of what I might knit next that I can scarcely breathe. It could be anything! ANYTHING.

It has always struck me as sort of odd that knitting ends up lumped with "needlework".  I know we use needles, so maybe in a grand way it ends up making sense, but really,  I can’t tell you how many ways that embroidery is different than knitting – and I say that not just as a knitter struggling with the *&^%!ing chain stitch on this baby sweater, but as a semi-retired cross-stitcher.  (It’s been a long time since I did any, so I was going to type retired, but I did have some sort of spasm and buy a kit a few years ago, and it’s still sitting here, and I suppose I plan on doing it or I would have recognised it as a momentary impulse and given it away. I guess that technically, that makes me semi-retired, or maybe just weak.)

Last night I diligently applied myself to embroidering round each of those stars on my little grey to turn them into what the pattern says is a snowflake. (The pattern is wrong. They are clearly flowers. It may have been a long winter, but I still know one when I see one.)

It seems to me like these flowers are taking forever – and that’s because they are. Last night I worked on them for hours – about two and a half hours all in, and I got four done. That means that each one is taking a rather ridiculous 40 minutes each. I tested the theory this morning, and yup – even fresh as a daisy in bright light with a good attitude, it was 40 minutes for one little flower snowflake.  I know that skill with a knitting needle and yarn doesn’t translate to skill with an embroidery needle and yarn, and I know that you’re going to tell me now that they look great. Really great, and I think they do too.  I think they look like someone who knew what they were doing embroidered them.

That’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is that I suck at this lack so much experience, that I’m having to swap in time for a skill.  I know someone else could be doing a better job, I’ve actually unpicked two of them because they looked like I gave a three year old who didn’t give a crap a needle and yarn.

It was last night, when I was unpicking one of them – and perhaps pouring myself a largish glass of wine and using unlady-like language (for the record, I think both were appropriate, considering my situation) that Joe asked me what the problem was.
I told him it was too picky. Too tiny. That the stitches had to go in just the right places and the tension had to be just right and it is taking a really long time and…

"Sounds like knitting" he said.  He’s right, and it hit me that this is a good experience for me. Makes sure I don’t get cocky.  It’s good for me to be humbled. I’ve always got something to learn – and knitting and needlework are definitely not the same. Being good with yarn apparently isn’t a cross-platform sort of thing, both are picky, both take skill and dudes, I need to get some experience.

In other, sad news, Peter Workman has gone to the big bookstore in the sky, and the book business has lost a giant, and a knitter friendly one at that. I was lucky enough to have met Peter several times, since the first publisher who ever took a chance on me (Storey Publishing) was an imprint of Workman Publishing. I remember the thrill of realizing how incredibly intelligent and sensitive he was – especially around books. I liked him, and he scared the heck out of me. I wanted so much for him to think I was a good writer, and as far as I know, he did.  He trusted my instincts and was always willing to hold a sock.  I remember that several times at BEA, he would make the time to walk with me, and choose books he thought I would love.
He was always right. 
I barely knew him, but will miss him. My sympathies to his family, friends, and colleagues. He was a strange and wonderful man.

I’ve got a deadline kicking my arse, so I’ll be random. It’s easier than stringing it together. This weekend I:

1. Drove to Springfield (Ontario, not Illinois) and taught for Wildflower Wool.  It was amazing, what a great group of students.

2. Drove home, walked in the door, put down my stuff, and Sam and I hopped on our bikes to go out, rode to the bottom of the driveway and:

Broken arm, or broken elbow, to be precise. (Sam wants you to know that the reason she looks rough is because it was, and also because I did her hair.) The rest of the weekend passed in a blur of the emergency room, fracture specialists, sock knitting,  x-rays, casts and passing things to Sam. (She’s right handed, and that’s her right arm It’s a serious bummer, but she’s being a trooper – or maybe that’s just the percocet talking.)

3. Let Luis play the ukulele.  He really likes it…

or, was that licks it?

It’s all the same to him.

4. Read all the comments on the previous post and felt grateful that you’re all so totally made of awesome. It must be all the yarn that does it to you.

5. Finished the knitting part on the little grey sweater.

It’s all done but for the rest of the embroidery.  I’ve done the sleeves, but those six motifs took hours, and there’s ten on the body. I hope the fetus it’s intended for isn’t in school before I finish.  It’s ridiculously fiddly – and yeah. I get the irony of that coming from a knitter.

6. Wondered what you were doing this weekend. Did you have a good time? What are you knitting?

I’ve started typing this a hundred times.  I thought I was just having trouble finding the right words, but it turns out that there aren’t really the right words to say something that you don’t want to say.

I’m convinced that the best thing to do here is just rip off the band-aid and tell you straight.  Yesterday I signed some papers and left Knot Hysteria, the company Tina Newton and I owned together.  We had begun the process of dissolving the company, agreeing that its time was come, but in the end, this is how it wound up.

This means that there won’t be another Sock Summit.  Tina and I agreed that we made that possible together, and without that togetherness, the thing can’t exist.  I want to thank all of you a very great deal, because in the end it was the knitters who believed in Sock Summit that made the thing real, and fabulous, and work that I will always be proud of.  I wish everything that amazing could last forever – and I wish things could be different, but they aren’t, and life happens, and things change.

I’m sure you have questions, but to be completely honest I’m also pretty sure that there isn’t much more I think it’s appropriate to say. Our reasons for coming to this place are private, and it’s important to me that this is graceful. 

It might be the end of this thing, but I’m going to pour myself a cup of coffee, knit, look at my daffodils and dream of spring, and remember that a good thing about endings, is that it leaves room for beginnings. I’m looking forward.

I try not to worry about knitting instructions. I know, I know – that’s a grand and great statement, but the truth is that at this point in my knitting career,  it’s been a good long time since an instruction knocked me down and left me bleeding in an alley while it partied with its skanky friends. (I admit it hasn’t been that long since one slapped me around a little, but that’s normal.)  Part of this is experience, and part of it is that I have lots of resources, but most of it that I am frankly so stubborn that I make the mules the other mules hate for being obdurate look weak-willed. 

This means that if I want to knit something, I don’t usually worry about it being too hard.  I’ll figure that out later.  If there’s something I don’t know how to do? I’ll look it up. If there’s something tricky – I’ll get the hang.  Most of the time, I look at a piece of knitting, compare it mentally with what I imagine the study of statistical thermodynamics is like, and then sort of think "How hard can it be?"

Obviously, the answer to that varies. (See reference above to getting slapped around a little by yarn and it’s friends.)  Knitting, I feel like I can handle.  Knitting and me, we’re square.  It’s with this in mind that I tell you the following. The little sweater is not done. This is because the last instruction on this knitting pattern is a hard one.

It says "Embroider."  The first time I saw it it took a couple of minutes to hit me that it wasn’t knitting at all.  It’s totally embroidery, which (while I admit to a brief but intense period of cross-stitch) is not exactly something I know a ton about – so we’ll see how it goes.  If you need me, I’ll be the one cursing in the corner with McCall’s Needlework Treasury open to "chain stich."

I know they’re famous last words, but really…how hard can it be?

(PS. I knew I was saving a needlework book from 1964 for a reason. I am now officially vindicated in my decision to also save " Creative Hands" from 1966, which contains this lesson:

Some day being able to tell the difference between those two could be critical.  I’m glad to have pictures.)

Without a word of a lie, I can swear to you that all week long I have known that this weekend is Easter, and I have known all week long,  that Easter is proceeded by Good Friday. I mean, I have a calendar.   Somehow though, this knowledge didn’t really translate into the understanding that this week really only has four days in it to accomplish anything – rather than five, and it was Sam who brought it home for me this morning.  Joe’s away, and so I have the car, and Sam’s been bucking for a drive to school.  She usually takes the subway, but a drive lets her sleep in – and so she’s always keen to hook a ride. School is on the way to work for Joe, and so he usually dumps her on the way a few times in a week.  Monday she started working on me, and me, I have a busy week, so I put her off with a promise that I would drive her one day this week.  One day for sure.  The days have passed in a blur, me stuck at my desk, on the phone… working on something that needs to be done this week.  This morning – Sam was particularly slow moving, and when I suggested that she put a little hustle on it, she reminded me that I’d said I would drive her.

"One day this week!" I exclaimed, sort of distractedly, as I rifled papers on my desk, figuring out what I would do today, and what tomorrow. "Not today Sam."
Sam looked at me like there was something totally wrong with me, and then, as delicately as possible, pointed out that this was the last day of school this week. That tomorrow is a Statutory holiday. Nothing is open, not school… nothing.  Canada is, she reminded me, closed.
First my head exploded, then I got my car keys, because a promise is a promise, and then, then I drove her there while working through the trauma of a lost day, making a desperate list in my head.  

Saturday (where am I going to buy baskets?) was the day I was planning on having (oh, man. I need to do the Easter grocery shop) this little sweater (Wait! This means I have to go to the Post Office today) done.  I’ve got the body done, (body – dammit, I need to get the body of that essay written) and now it’s on to (hold on, I can’t go to the bank tomorrow now) wee arms. Saturday (how much of this can I do Saturday?)  is starting to look like a silly goal, with all I have to do today (crap, I forgot to buy eggs)  I suppose I shouldn’t give up yet (where the hell is that statement)  a baby sweater arm is really less work than the leg of a sock (hot cross buns. I need hot cross buns)  and after all, tomorrow (I need to buy that birthday present before tomorrow too) everything is closed. 

Maybe I can knit.
(Oh no.  I forgot about buttons.)