Yarn Bombing

There are certain activities associated with youth, like questioning authority, and then there are other activities associated with our golden years, like knitting. The lines between the two are now blurred, so hang up your shawl and grab your needles because baby, knitting ain't just for grandma anymore. Knitting has taken on cult status, and young and old alike are going guerrilla.

Behold these innocent balls of wool, unaware of their power to change the world, one knitting needle at at time

I started innocently, learning to knit when I was a mere child, all of eight years old. Well, technically I corked before I knit, using a knitting spool. This is a craft that has been around for a hundred years, which is odd given its limitations. Take a large wooden spool, hammer four nails in a square shape around the hole, then "knit" around in circles to create a tubular chain through the middle. That's corking in a nutshell.

This is about as practical and esthetically pleasing as tongue depressor sculpture. You always end up coiling it into a potholder, or in my case, many potholders. My grandmother - a master knitter who could watch TV, chat and knit a sweater at breakneck speed without looking down at her hands - was exasperated at the energy wasted on something that resembled knitted tapeworms. She taught me to knit properly and with purpose.  I never matched her skill, but I produced a decent scarf or two. I eventually abandoned this gentle pastime in exchange for more adventurous and age appropriate pursuits like disco hopping. Knitting didn't fit my image in the 80s, but maybe it would when I got to my 80s.
 

My 20-something artist daughter convinced me to pick up my needles again. She attends university on the east coast and she taught herself to knit. Forget grandma, Google is the new mentor. Cast on, knit, purl, "tink" (knit spelled and performed backwards in order to fix a mistake) - the basics and more are all on YouTube now. She quickly mastered the art and completed complicated hats, scarves, fingerless gloves, even socks for everyone on her Christmas list. I did not advance as quickly and made panicky Skype calls with my work-in-progress - usually a scarf (okay, always a scarf) - held up to the camera. 

Requests for more raw material meant I had to make regular pilgrimages to the yarn shop. One look around told me these are not the days of my Nana's knitting. Forget garish acrylics and scratchy wools. There is now a plethora of soft, vibrant fibres - bamboo, silk, organic cotton, soy and hand-spun and hand-dyed from a variety of sheep and goats whose pedigrees are lovingly listed on the label alongside their portraits and pet names. (I kid you not, no pun intended.) The colours are enough to knock your hand-knit socks off - luscious jewel tones, earthy shades from nature and screaming electrics from Japan.

And if you have any remaining doubts about knitting being a gentlewoman's craft, let me introduce you to the concept of Yarn Bombing.

The Before, Pre Yarn Bombing

Near where I live, and a place I pass by often when I walk The Budster. And just look at their innocent little statue faces, oblivious to the yarn carnage about to take place.

 

To the uninitiated, yarn bombing is where genteel meets renegade; its the art of knit graffiti or "textile street art." An international guerrilla movement, it inspires people to take up the knitting needles and along with stealth, a disguise and a dose of chutzpa, work for total cosmic yarn domination. Fighting for political change, when expressed with yarn, becomes a message delivered with a cuddle. All over the world, girls and boys yarn bomb; even grannies are leaving their wooly calling cards in random places. It grabs the notion of knitting as a gentle craft and knocks that theory on its fuzzy behind.

It's easy. You just target a post, bike stand, bench, anything that needs yarn beautification, and covertly cover it with a hand-knit item. It can be as simple as a tiny square on a chain link fence, or a garment covering a tree, statue, or even an entire bus. Unlike graffiti, it's not permanent and it makes people smile. It might be up for only a few minutes, or it may last for years. Sometimes tags accompany the item - like the Swedish yarn bombing group called Masquerade whose motto is Nemo Attexet Sobrius! (Nobody Knits Sober!) And sometimes the pieces remain anonymous.

So bearing all this in mind, Buddy and I stumbled upon this one morning. Someone came with stealth in the night and yarn bombed the crap out of these two. 

I prefer it this way, but clearly the art gallery owners did not, as the yarn was removed after only a few days. The piece is now back to its nudie-pants state. You can tell from the way Buddy is gazing longingly into the depths of their crocheted souls that he fancies the fuzzy.

The After, post Yarn Bombing

I wait patiently, and wonder where I can stake a claim as I nurture my inner yarnarchist.

For Knit-wits like Me

My husband watched as one of his patients knit at Indy 500 speed while reading a novel at the same time. I can't even carry on a conversation when I'm knitting as I need full concentration to know whether I just did a knit or a purl or more likely in my case, a miss and a hurl because I dropped another damn stitch.

So, if you're like me and you can't do this:



There are these videos, which help knit-wits like me.



Do you know what word knitters use to explain what they go back and undo their work in order to correct a mistake? Besides the obvious one, I mean.

It's tink. Knitting backwards to find and solve the problem is called tinking.

Tink is knit spelled backwards. Clever little Needle Hands...

Mastering the art of the tink is part of learning to knit properly. It is my Waterloo.




(Nice to see the grain of the table is in full focus. The yarn, not so much. Still, it got me on track again but really, how hard is it to shoot a video of yarn with the yarn in focus?)

And just when I think I've got it, along comes a newer, better, faster way to knit. Does anyone knit the continental way? It's all I can do to knit the way I do now without taking on something new. However, it might be like a golf swing. If you start off learning the wrong way, it is harder to undo bad habits later.

Is this continental knitting better or just different?





And even more videos HERE

Further knit-wittery

Oh, baby, it's a sickness. And there's no cure.

I completed another scarf, Twilight Slubby Blue Leicester, chunky and soft. It is a bit stretchy so I might have to redo it, but for now, I like it. It went from this:

To this:

It was my birthday this week. (Never mind how old. Not important. I still have my own teeth and I can get around without a walker, okay?)

And Youngest is also back home on her Spring break.

What better way to celebrate both than by a visit to the local yarn shop.

Looky looky. These are silk blends, soft and lustrous, the colours so vibrant I can't help but fondle them even though the sign said no touching. I figured it was like the stop signs here in Quebec. Merely a suggestion for the majority of drivers. (I'm probably the only one in this province who actually stops at a stop sign. I've almost been rear-ended by drivers who assume I'm not actually going to stop.)

But before I dig in, I have to finish another couple of scarves I started. This one is in Easter colours (below) because Easter can be very cold here in the Great White North. Or it can be hot enough for shorts and sandals. We never know what we're going to get, so it's best to be prepared. I could always knit a bikini with the leftover yarn. (And use it for a dishcloth...)


And I've also got this one on the go (below) which is also baby alpaca, but two colours blended together because the darker green one was kind of meh on its own. If I'm being honest, I bought it because I liked the feel of the chunky baby alpaca.

(I have since learned not to buy yarn based solely on how it feels. One cannot be ambivalent about colour. That's like Yarn 101. But seriously, if you felt this stuff, you'd want to take it home and cuddle it all night too.)

I'm trying to decide if I like the two mixed together or not. They're both the colour of grass in the spring, but together they kind of remind me of grass clippings flying out of the side of our lawn mower. Thoughts?

Too bad you can't tell from this photo how unbelievably soft this is. Baby alpaca is so soft, it's like warm buttah. Seriously, you just want to rub your face in it. Or chunks of lobster. Mmm, lobster...(Eldest's beau surprised us with a box of live lobsters one year, which he'd had couriered to our house in Montreal all the way from Nova Scotia. I wanted to adopt him. Maybe I should just knit him a scarf.)

But my favourite of all time is this stuff. It's a fine-spun mixture of wool and silk, so soft and deliciously shiny, the colours so vibrant it practically radiates energy all on its own. It almost has a chain-link quality to it, and I'm looking forward to wearing it. But first I have to finish it. Actually, I have to unravel about half of it because there's a teensy hole and I fixed it incorrectly, so it's bugging me enough that I need to go back and redo it. Perfectionists should not be knitting. (I thought it was supposed to be soothing?) This colour in the photo is actually toned down, since reds are very hard to photograph properly. But it's actually a very bright orange, red and deep purple.

Then I bought this (below) so I can make a hat. I thought I should get out of my comfort zone and try something other than scarves. I'll let you know if I abandon it and go back. Youngest said she'll help me before she goes home. She doesn't want any more panicked emails or Skype-begging for knitting help.

Don't you love the mix of colours? I don't know how they dye them this way. Maybe I'll try that next. I've dyed fabric for quilts, but never yarn. Hmm. I hardly ever use my dining room. I could set up some buckets and dye in there. How hard could it be?

And these, below? These puppies are a silk, baby alpaca and cashmere mix. Oh, my. They are the softest of the bunch, like, newborn baby bum soft. I have no idea what to do with them. If all else fails, I can pin them to the sides of my head. Hey, it worked for Princess Leia.

Help me. I can't stop...

Keeping the devil at bay...

...by keeping the hands...not idle. Or something like that.

New knitting strategy. (I typed in "stragedy" at first, and realized that's a good word for "when one's knitting game plan goes horribly wrong." It's a stragedy.)

Or a knit-mare.

Or a castastrophe.

Or a calamknitty.

In order to stop wanton yarn wastage of my good stuff like the chunky baby alpaca (which is only shorn from the baby alpaca once, hence the rather steep price. After that, it's shorn from the tired mangy old mama alpaca who isn't as soft and bouncy as she was in her early years, which is hardly her fault owing to the copious amount of child-rearing she had to do. But I digress...) I am experimenting with teensy cotton squares that I can then put to practical purpose.

I decided to try a simple cotton dishcloth. This would allow me to practice and work on technique. And I like having something to do when watching TV. So I popped in to this funky little yarn shop called ARIADNE after my dental appointment yesterday and bought a bright little Granny Apple Green ball of cotton yarn, just to try it.


One relaxed evening of garter stitches later and mission accomplished. Never has one been so proud of a simple knit square.

Squarish... But now I think it's so pretty, I don't want to use it to wipe up goop from the kitchen counter, thus defeating its purpose. Gah.

You have my permission to hang me with my own scarf should I progress to acrylic Kleenex box covers.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear

A new project.


I'm a sucker for chunky baby alpaca. It's a grassy green with a hint of sunny yellow. No, I don't long for spring? Who me?

After several rocky starts which involved pulling it out and starting over (and over and over) I decided not to do knit 2, purl 2, and do knit 4 purl 4 instead. For some reason, that's easier for my brain to handle. But now it's starting to ripple and look at bit too sweatery for a scarf. I think the ribs are too fat. (If I had a dollar for every time I heard that....)

Maybe I should go back to knit 2 purl 2. Arg. Maybe Youngest, the resident expert, will chime in here. Thoughts? Is this going to work for a scarf?


In other news, I'm headed for a colonoscopy consult tomorrow. I plan on making a case for why he does not need to go spelunking in my colon. Fie, I say. Who cares what the studies say?

I don't want him to go to there.

Wish me luck. Specialists aren't known for their willingness to barter or negotiate terms.

We're also expecting torrential rain. Gee, maybe I could throw in a root canal while I'm at it.

At least I have this Laughology lecture to look forward to. It guarantees "you'll laugh your ass off, literally."

If that's true, then my colonoscopy will definitely be moot.

Well, looky looky what I did last night

Well, you can look but don't look too close. Yes, the Great Canadian Scarf is moving along at breakneck speed. I like the way the colours are snaking along like big fat stripes. It's hard to see from this photo which doesn't do justice to the rich rust and plum and rosie reds snuggling up to the soft indigo and heather. I'll try to photograph it in natural light. It's very, very soft and heavy, despite the (intentional, I assure you, more or less) holes.

I knit last night while watching TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. So many great moments in that movie, no? Of course the court scene is a standout with Atticus's Atticuses' Atticus' ATTICA ATTICA ATTICA!! Scout's Dad's closing arguments, or Scout walking through the woods dressed as a ham, or the scene early on where the lynch mob is turned away by a little girl's innocence. But the scene with Boo Radley hiding behind the door, and little Scout saying "Hey Boo" and the way he looks as her, with such love and tenderness. Then she holds his hand and walks him over to see her brother and says "You can pet him if you like."

And in other news, I made corn bread for the first time today.

It were good, it were. And easy peasy to make.

Why did I wait so long to try this? You don't need "my" recipe. It was on the Quaker Corn Meal box.

I fought the yarn and the...yarn won.

KNOT!

I will not admit defeat, certainly not at the hands of...well, my own hands.

New tactic. Switch to bigger knitting needles. Size 12mm actually, about the size of fence posts. My rationale for doing so is simple. Genius, actually.

One, it will knit up much quicker.

Two, I don't need my reading glasses to see it.

Three, it looks lacy and kind of rustic, which works due to the nature of this particular wool. I mean, it's near impossible to get uniform rows because this Leicester wool is spun to a thin bit of string here and a fat slub there (here a slub, there a slub, everywhere a slub slub) so why not go for a deliberately uneven look. It's like the new hairstyles we're seeing out of Hollywood - they're not messy, they're "tousled". My scarf is the new tousled.

Well, several rows have knit up quicker than the extra pounds on my hips after Christmas, so I'm pretty happy about that.

Never give up, never surrender!

What do you think? I'm kind of digging it.

Knitting is NOT the boss of me

Haven't given up yet. No ball of wool is going to order me around, no sir. You guys are so supportive and kind and have offered some really helpful suggestions so I don't want to let you down. So if I can find the knitting needles out of the snowbank in the back yard, I will keep knitting, I promise!

I was unable to sleep last night for some reason, and I never have problems sleeping, but I was wide awake until 2:30 a.m. I thought hey, a bit of knitting is probably the best soporific around (having no chamomile tea or drugs or the latest copy of Dentists 'R Us magazine to lull me into unconsciousness.)

While Fred the Beta Fish looked on, I tried yet again.

The more rows I lashed onto my needles (with my clever new knit one row purl one row technique) the more it started curling up onto my hands like a Keswick gal's bangs on prom night. I thought it was because I was pulling the wool too tight. One of the reasons knitting never worked out for me in the past was my tension. I'd have those stitches pulled so tight there was no way for a needle to pass under them. My fingers cramped up and I'd hunch over and sweat and I'm sure it looked like I was torturing some poor animal to death in my hands. Maybe it was the tension that was the problem!

I told Youngest about the difficulty I was having with my new knit one row purl one row method, and this is what she wrote back:

One row purl/ one row knit it a stocking stitch!! It will curl up if it's a scarf! No no no mummy!!! You need me. I will guide you through when I come home in February. Don't let that beautiful yarn go to waste!!!

She was right of course. This is what it looked like after just half a dozen rows.

Perfect if I want a gnarly wool sheath to decorate my curling iron, but definitely not scarf material. I pulled the latest rows out AGAIN.

Always look on the bright side. I can now say with assurance that I am an expert in casting on.

New hobby? Or exercise in frustration?

I learned how to knit when I was eight. My grandmother taught me. This was a woman who could knit so fast her needles were a blur, and she could watch TV or carry on a conversation without even looking down at whatever project she was working on. She churned out mitts and hats and sweaters like no one's biznit. Remember those funny little hats with pointy ears that we tied under our chins? They were a 50s staple.

Sure, we were warm but the price to pay was being beaten to a pulp on the way to school by kids who didn't have nice grandmothers who knit.

My mother also knit beautifully, and I was always a crafty kid (in more ways than one) so it seemed a natural progression that I too would knit. After all, it was in my DNA. I made a few projects - a crooked, gnarly scarf that looked more like a pennant owing to my tendency to drop a stitch per row, a potholder if the pot in question was the size of a shot glass, but I gave it up in favour of other cooler crafts like macrame, and dating boys. Years later I took up quilting and other hobbies but never went back to knitting.

Now Youngest, away at university last fall and inexplicably with excess time on her hands, somehow taught herself to knit using YouTube. She made the most awesome gifts this past Christmas. For her brother, she found a "chubby baby alpaca" (the wool, not the alpaca, although it may have been obese for all I know) to make a scarf so heavy and soft it was like holding a newborn. Everyone who picked it up ended up fondling it. Check out the gorgeous wool hat she made for me (it's actually more of a burgundy colour than shows up here.)

It fits me perfectly and is soft and warm and heavy and fits perfectly on my giant head (I'd like to think it's because of my giant brain, but we seem to be blessed with giant heads in our family and having met some of my relatives, I can say with some confidence it is not always our giant brains which accounts for our giant heads....)

So now Youngest has taught me how to knit again and this is the wool I'm going to try to wrestle into a simple scarf. It's hand-dyed "Slubby Blue" from Leicester sheep. Oh yeah, only the best for this wool wrangler.

Good idea in theory. In practice, not so much. Last night, as we stood waiting for the train to take Youngest back to school, she showed me how to "cast on" which was accomplished, then we did the old "knit two purl two" in order to get rows of ribbing. Okaaaaay. After hunching myself into a dither and stiffening my shoulders to the point I couldn't move my left arm, all the while with Youngest directing me to go left no no, right, no around no no back yesss there you've got it (she is a great teacher and has more patience and understanding than I could ever hope for) I got about three rows in and declared myself taught. Ta da. I'd just go home and keep doing exactly what she taught me. How hard could it be? (Whenever I say those words, and I say them often, I always regret it....)

I tried to keep it going this morning. I somehow picked up an extra stitch. Then I lost TWO stitches in the next row. Having no idea how to correct it, I just undid the whole thing and started over. Except I forgot how to cast on. Over to YouTube, which showed me an entirely different way of doing it. No matter. The trick was to just DO it.

I ended up doing and undoing the first few rows THREE times.

Now I'm looking for a book on crochet.

Wish me luck. I think when I said knitting was in my DNA, what that really meant was Do Not Attempt.

Gah.

I wonder if Youngest could instruct me on Skype?