First, just a bit of non-yarn-related info: #1 Son has managed to purchase the ticket for his out-of-the-country trip in January. Of course, he has absolutely no money left and will have to live on water and the good graces of others, but he has 30 days left to figure out how to earn a little spending money. I am, actually, quite proud of him.

In more yarn-related news, I really, really want to show you pictures of the Pacific Northwest Shawl, but the weather refuses to cooperate. As I type this, it is snowing gently and the light is completely flat. According to the weatherpeople, we are expecting a humongous storm later this weekend. But one site reports the chance of scattered sun this afternoon. Should that happen, I will run quickly out and snap as many pics as I can in the hope that I will get one or two worth sharing. But even inside, there’s just no light.

Ann in Richmond mentioned that I had the presence of mind to record the whole repairing-the-GGG process. In reality, after standing across the room, swearing in abject horror, the first thought that really came to mind was I so need to blog this. I grabbed my camera before even edging in for a closer look. How sadly geeky does that make me?

But all of this is not what I really want to talk to you about today.

All knitterly creation stems from one simple element: yarn. It is the baker’s flour, the jeweler’s gold, the gardener’s soil. Yarn is creation, consolation, and chaos all spun together into one perfect ball. It’s a simple concept, twisting fibers together into a continuous thread of yarn. But the variety of fibers, blends, and spins is truley infinite. So is our relationship with yarn. We love it, we covet it, we are knocked senseless by it. Yet sometimes we are baffled, thwarted, and betrayed by it.

Clara Parkes (of Knitter’s Review fame) begins her wonderful new book, The Knitter’s Book of Yarn: The Ultimate Guide to Choosing, Using, and Enjoying Yarn, with that lovely, evocative paragraph.

I immediately wanted to know more. And more. And more.

Want to know how wool and silk are the same (or different)? Where cashmere comes from? What the term worsted really means? Why silk sometimes stinks and how to de-stink it? How viscose is made? What’s good about acrylic? It’s all here. Section 1 contains a ton of information about all of the different fibers, from angora to yak, the special properties of each and how to evaluate them.

Not a spinner? (note: I am not) Never been up close and personal with a llama? Section 2 explores how yarn, from indie to mass-marketed, is prepared, spun and dyed and where you can get organic and minimally processed yarns and fibers in all stages of preparedness.

There is a whole chapter on pills. Not the kind you swallow here, gentle reader, but the kind that form on sweaters (and hats and blankets and scarves and…). Parkes not only explains what to do to remove pills, but also why they form in the first place and how to evaluate a yarn to determine its pill potential. I now have a much better idea of why my Noro Silk Garden jacket always pills like there’s no tomorrow, but my Noro Kochoran sweater, although it is much fluffier and fuzzier, does not.

from Cabled Tea Cozy

Section 3 begins with an exploration of plies, and why we as knitters care. Starting with single-ply yarn and continuing through various numbers of mutiple-plies, Parkes explains how the twists cause the yarn to behave and how knitters can work with that behavior. Following the guidelines here, knitters can match yarns and patterns that will work together. Did you know that simply rewinding a skein of single-ply yarn will stop its tendency to bias in stockinette stitch? I didn’t either, but Parkes explains how and why. Following the chapters on plies are chapters on cabled yarns, textured yarns, and neat things like boucle and chenille. Section 3 ends with a chapter on why yarns felt, why sometimes they won’t, and how to get the best felting results.

Every chapter in Section 3 includes patterns, and every pattern includes a note from the designer about how the yarn was chosen to work with that pattern. And what designers! This is a who’s-who list, gentle reader. Knitters from adventurous beginner to experienced knit-guru will all find patterns here to pique their interest. There are one-skein quickies and lace, blankets and sweaters, bags and socks. You will want to knit them all. Or at least I do.

The book ends with a reference section. How to take care of your yarn, with special notes on different fibers. Determining WPI and yardage requirements. The standard yarn-weight numbering system vs. the older non-standard systems (i.e. #1 = sock / fingering / baby), along with typical gauges and recommended needles for each. A list of abbreviations, including how-to instructions. A recommended reading list; designer bios and a glossary.

I love yarn. I love all the yarns. I love to gaze and fondle and squeeze and pet and smell. Even yarns I would never in a millions years knit with, I love. The Knitter’s Book of Yarn is devoted to such sheer fibery knowledge, with tons of gorgeous yarn-pr0ny pictures, that my inner yarn-geek is fed in the best possible way and I want to just grab my nearest needles and start knitting up a storm.

This book instantly earned a prominent place on my reference shelf.

We can’t all be yarn whisperers, but with The Knitter’s Book of Yarn in hand, we can at least understand our yarn and learn to work with an appreciate it even more than we already do (if that is possible).

The book ends perfectly: Let the journey begin.

starting the repairs

Thank you, everyone, for your kind thoughts and encouragement on the hole-ish disaster during the Great Green Glob blocking.

Today I picked up the GGG from Tangle. I will have to stop calling it the Great Green Glob. While still green, and hopefully great, it is no long globish in any sense of the word. But for this post, I’ll call it the GGG just for old time’s sake.

So, I picked the GGG up and brought it home to assess the damage.

By suturing with sock yarn (I’m not sure, but I think that is STR Rooster Rock), I had stopped the general hemorrhage of dropped stitches. But the repair had left a scar. The GGG still required a bit of plastic surgery to minimize the appearance of the wound.

My surgical implements included a bit of left-over yarn, my cool crochet hook/dental pick tool, tapestry needles and pins. The plan was to duplicate stitch (and in some cases actually create knit stitches) with the yarn to hold the whole thing together and make it look at least similar to the non-damaged part of the shawl.

half done

The cool thing about blocking lace, apart from the general magicalness of the whole process, is that the yarn stays in the configuration it’s given during blocking. That meant that I could take the sock yarn out and even tease the stitches apart with the dental pick, and not risk more dropped stitches. The rest of the yarn just stayed exactly as it was blocked.

Taking a harder look, I think what happened was that I had dropped a stitch when attaching the border. Twice. Oops. 😳 I had two holes that needed to be fixed. I wove the piece of left-over yarn through the stitches to hold everything the way it was supposed to be. There were no stitches missing, just one or two that needed a little help staying where they were.

This picture shows one of the fixes completed. The pin is there to hold the tail of the fixer yarn so it doesn’t get misplaced. This stuff is fairly fine, after all.

Then I turned my attention to the second hole. This one had stitches actually missing — i.e. a mistake in my knitting — as well as stitches dropped. Some of the fix was made by pulling the stitches into shape and holding them there. Some of the fix was made by creating new stitches with the fixer yarn.

a little blocking

Once all of the fixes where done, I trimmed the tails of the fixer yarn and spit-spliced them to the main shawl. This merino felts if you so much as breath on it, so this was not as drastic as it sounds.

Mission nearly accomplished, I pinned out just the fixed area and applied a bit of water and steam with my iron and then left it to dry and block.

It’s not perfect. Nothing really could be perfect, gentle reader, except not making the mistake in the first place. But it’s not bad. As it dries, the patch is becoming less and less noticeable. I think that once I take the pins out it’s going to look reasonably OK.

Whew.

I will show you the results as soon as I’m home when there’s light and I can get some decent pictures of the finished product. It’s purdy. And will henceforth be known as The Pacific Northwest Shawl or The PNW Shawl if I’m in a hurry. 😉

half blocked

Anyone who wonders why I love knitting lace has only to look at this picture.

The Great Green Glob was too big to bock — even at Tangle — all in one go-round. Only half would fit on the blocking board, and there just wasn’t room for the whole thing. Saturday I showed up at Tangle and pleaded my case (no blocking wires, not enough room, etc.) to the lovely Alice, who said that of course I could block in their class room and use her wires and blocking board. I blocked out 1/2 of The Great Green Glob, knit for awhile with the local knitters — Alice has tons of new yarn to fondle, too!

Sunday, I unpinned The Great Green Glob and removed the wires.

To me, blocking lace is a miracle that never gets tired. On the left, lovely blocked Pacific Northwest Shawl. On the right, unblocked Great Green Glob. Every time I do this, I can’t believe that it will actually stay the way I pinned it out. I love blocking! So after everyone oooed and ahhhed over the blocked part, I started in industriously blocking part the second back in the classroom.

OMG! WTF!!! ACK!!!

I tugged gently on the diagonal to stretch it out.

Ting! OMG! A stitch dropped. I jumped back and then stood in abject horror. I’m usually a pretty relaxed knitter, even in the face of adversity. But I actually felt sick to my stomach.

I apologize to any Tangle patron who might have heard some rather colorful language from the direction of the classroom. Really, I’m usually more refined. I hope you will understand that I was feeling extreme angst.

I stood and pondered and tried to figure out what to do. Note, that this whole time I’m standing all the way across the room from that hole, because I didn’t want to even breath on it for fear the whole GGG would collapse into a great green pile of tangled yarn.

I took a deep breath and eased closer. OK. It looked like a dropped stitch. I know how to fix dropped stitches, even in lace. I can handle this.

emergency surgery

I started searching in my knitting bag. OK. I had some sock yarn that had been left over from some pair of socks. I had this really cool little tool that’s a crochet hook on one end and a dental pick on the other. I had pins.

The main thing now was to do enough emergency surgery that the patient could survive blocking. Then, once I could get it home, I still have plenty of that green merino laceweight. I could repair it better at home and with it already blocked. That, at least, was my working hypothesis.

I carefully examined the hole. It really does look like a dropped stitch. To actually repair it, I’d have to unravel all of the I-cord and most of the border. Not going to happen. But, I reasoned, I could fix the holes and then, when I get it home, duplicate stitch with the same yarn. It should, I hope, be fairly unnoticeable when I’m finished.

I hope.

So here the emergency surgery is in process. I have some stitches being held by pins, some already tied together with sock yarn, and I’m in the process of closing up the last part of the hole.

blocking

Once everything was tied together, I finished stretching and pinning. I had to hurry now in order to get it pinned before the classroom was needed for the Sunday afternoon kid’s knitting class. Although they might have actually enjoyed watching me block, I wasn’t sure I was up for that right then.

Once it was all stretched out and pinned, I set the blocking board in the hall, where it would be out of the way. Note the orange sock yarn sutures tying up the wound. The already blocked half is carefully pinned up at the corner to keep it off the ground.

I could have blocked it larger than I did, had the blocking board been bigger or more room been available. I didn’t block it as severely as I sometimes do. But I do like the way the blocked part looks.

Of course, the real mystery is: how did I drop a stitch and not notice it all the way through finishing the last few rows of the shawl, all of the edging, and all of the I-cord. How did that stitch hold together all the way through that without forming a hole?

Stay tuned for updates on how the surgery turns out.

I don’t think I will ever again feel quite so cavalier about blocking lace.

Long ago I pondered on these little mysteries, but none of them have ever been explained. If you have any insight, gentle reader, please don’t hesitate to share it.

Why does the top of Moo Cow’s head (just the top) smell like ketchup? Except when it smells like flowers? It has since she was a kitten. She’s an indoor cat with access to neither ketchup (really) nor flowers (usually). But there it is. Both of the other cats smell like… cat.

Why do spoons disappear, but not knives or forks?

Why do the cups multiply in the cupboards, but I can never find a clean glass? No, they’re not in the dishwasher either. Is there a wormhole in the time-space continuum that sucks up glasses? Or are they out cavorting with the spoons (seems an unlikely pairing)?

Why is it that a medium pizza isn’t enough for two (when one is a teenager) but a large is way too much? Can’t the pizza places sell a medium-large? We have never been a cold-pizza-eating family.

Where did my Cat Stevens CD go? I’ve been looking for it for more than three years. Believe me, it’s not #1 Son’s type of music.

When their fibers and colors are so gorgeous, why can’t Noro sell a skein of yarn that doesn’t have a knot in the middle (starting over with a random color), and that isn’t full of sticks and twigs and random ickiness?

Some things in life, it appears, are just not explainable.

Ravens, lace beads

So you didn’t really expect that I was winding all that lace-weight silk with no plans in mind, did you, gentle reader? Nah… I thought you knew me better than that.

Thraven was slated for The Wings Of A Dream, and that is what it is becoming. I swatched yesterday, decided I liked the swatch, and went for it. I’m using my Options Harmony needles, and I just love them for knitting with this silk. They have just enough grab to hold on without being a drag, if ya know what I mean. I’m sort of obsessively knitting on this project right now. But I can see already that it’s not something I would dare use as take-along knitting. It needs too much attention.

The highlighting tape, by the way was a prezzy from my Sockapalooza pal, Marie.

Today I am not joining the throng out in search of a good deal on Black Friday. This actually starts my do not shop in malls season. For many years I have pretty much refused to go into a mall any time between Thanksgiving and New Years. While I love to shop, I hate crowds and crazed, stressed fellow shoppers.

But today there is another reason.

Today is Buy Nothing Day in the US – a day that aims to help people think about how they can live more simply all year, and not just today. Black Friday, of course, has more significance here in the US than in other countries. World-wide Buy Nothing Day is celebrated on Saturday, 11/23.

When #1 Son first told me about Buy Nothing Day, I said, I’ve done that for years! It might have been the first time he thought that his poor old mom actually had a glimmer of intelligence (hard as it is to believe).

If you were out braving the crowds today, I hope you had a great time and found many bargains. But do consider bringing the philosophy of Buy Nothing Day into your life on other days.

Tomorrow, is Buy Local Day here in Portland. This is a day organized by The Sustainable Business Network of Portland, a group that sponsors Think Local Portland.

In the spirit of Buy Local Day, may I suggest patronizing your local yarn shops?

Today is Thanksgiving in the USA. This is a day when families and friends traditionally gather to celebrate together, eat turkey with all the trimmings (my family’s recipe for Candied Sweet Potatoes is over on the Freebies page), watch a game or two on TV, and be thankful.

Of course there are other traditions that are uniquely American — for readers outside the US, there’s probably a U-Tube video somewhere of how to make a hand print turkey…

And, if you are wondering what to do with all those leftovers, you are welcome to my recipe for Post-Thanksgiving Turkey Shepard’s Pie.

I try to start every day by calling to mind something that I am thankful for. I will admit that some days it’s not easy. But it’s good for me to remember that even when things look blackest there is usually something that makes me glad.

Today, I am thankful for many things:

#1 Son, you give me so much blog fodder! But I am so, so thankful that you are part of my life.

My family — wonderful, quirky individuals all. We are spread from coast to coast and do not see each other often enough. But I am so thankful to know that you are out there.

All of my friends. How could I ever get by without you? How blessed I am to have such good friends in my life.

My knit-buds and fellow knitsters and sisters/brothers of the fiber. Those at Tangle, who put up with a lot from yours truly. The PDX Knit Bloggers. (I can’t believe that the PDXKB has been a going concern for less than 6 months. I could swear I have known you all forever!) The wonderful knitters I have met at retreats this year. All of my friends (and I do count you as friends) who live far away but touch me through your blogs and through comments and emails. Knitting has brought such richness to my life.

And I am thankful also for the more mundane things: I have a good job that I almost always like, a nice roof over my head, food in the pantry, a warm bed to sleep in surrounded by my fur kids.

I’m thankful for the cat companions: for Phoebe who keeps me warm at night, for Kidd who is my special buddy (and a little wacko), for Moo Cow The Queen Of The House…

I am not thankful when Moo eats my yarn, or the leaves off my silk plants. I do have to draw the line somewhere.

I hope that your Thanksgiving Day — even if you are not celebrating it — is wonderful and warm and filled with many things to be thankful for.