Intarsia Happens

SO fed up with Blogger. There are typos in my previous post that I tried and TRIED to correct and only got very annoying error messages. I see that other people had the same problem and are close to giving up on Blogger also. I would love to move the whole shooting match over to Typepad but lethargy and techno-terror are holding me back. If anyone has any wisdom to contribute on this subject, I'm all ears.

I am sailing along on the Rosedale United sweater. The sleeves were completed first, which allowed me to postpone the agony of figuring out the intarsia part, which although it is very simple as intarsia goes, was totally new ground for me.

It was near midnight when I approached the intarsia instructions for the first time. I followed them exactly even though they made no sense to me. Then I couldn't figure out how to proceed. The pattern says "work in pattern as established" but I couldn't figure out just how the pattern had been established or how to get the strands of yarn in the right places when I needed them.

I consulted the Vogue book. It says quite plainly that intarsia can't be knit in the round. Apparently there was some part of NOT KNIT IN THE ROUND that I didn't get. Only when I read to the end of the pattern and saw seaming instructions for the sweater front did it sink in.

You stop knitting in the round when you start the intarsia. You knit back and forth instead. You will have a partial seam to sew on the front of the sweater when it's completed.

Now I get it. Hurray!

This is going to be another berzerko week. Tomorrow I'm heading to a fancy resort in the Wisconsin Dells for a state library conference and will be there till Friday. So this week will be a work-imposed blogging break. My knitting will go along on the trip and I'm hoping to make some good progress both on the Rosedale and on the current socks. I may even throw caution to the winds and take along the raw materials for a new project or two.

Bye till the weekend.

Retail Therapy

Field Trip!

Last January while we were at the Green Lake Retreat, a bunch of us made the trek to Neenah, Wisconsin to check out Yarns by Design. It's a terrific shop with good high-end yarns, all the accoutrements, and a very helpful and empowering staff. I'm new enough to knitting that I'm still fearful of asking The Dumb Question, and I so appreciate that empowering part of good customer service. That's when I bought the Jamieson Shetland Spindrift that I used for the Kimono Shawl.

In about June, a postcard arrived one day telling me that because I was such a good customer, here was a $15 gift certificate. Now how much sense does this make--this shop is 120 miles from my home, gas is hovering around $2.25 a gallon, but I HAVE to get back to that shop to use that confounded gift certificate!

Whether it made sense or not, today partner-in-crime Renee and I hauled ourselves all 120 miles up to Neenah to shop. And we had success! Did anyone doubt we would?

I came home with two kinds of Blackberry Ridge Laceweight--a 50/50 wool/silk in a lovely pale aqua, and a tan 75/25 wool/silk. The handpaint is Celestial Merino Dream in a color called Sugar Maple (couldn't resist THAT), and finally a couple balls of Dalegard Hauk in a zoomy burnt orange. And there's more! I also ordered more of the Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift in a heathery pinky-lavender. Renee said she had no shopping agenda but fell victim to the siren song of a detail-laden Dale pattern and the yarn to go with it. In her hands, it will be a gorgeous project. Sometimes having no stated agenda can be very dangerous.

After the yarn shop, Renee and I headed over to the wonderful Primitive Gatherings in Menasha, Wisconsin, only a couple miles up the road. Primitive Gatherings was featured in this year's Quilt Sampler magazine. It's a pretty cool place, full of inspiration and ideas for traditional and primitive quilts and woolwork, and I'm not surprised it made the cut for national recognition. I'm not making as many traditional quilts as I used to, but those antique-y patterns and homey fabrics just suck me in every time. I bought some oranges and blacks--that proverbial Halloween quilt WILL get made some year.

And amazingly enough, they had Noro Kureyon yarn at Primitive Gatherings. I got the nerve-jangliest colorway I could find for my daughter, who has a special project in mind but hasn't been able to find Kuryeon in the DC area.

The Noro is sitting on a piece of red hand-dyed wool that I couldn't resist. I have a tomato pincushion pattern. Hmmm. Wonder in which lifetime I'll get around to making that?

Our Seams group got together this past week. We had some celebrating to do--our Mary A. won no less than three blue ribbons at a recent quilt show in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, for pieces like this and this. Mary's work is exquisite and jewel-like, and she STILL is known to hand quilt.

As always the show and tell was outstanding. Diane brought along an unusual antique Pineapple quilt made from all sorts of shimmery silks and other offbeat fabrics. It had never been backed or bound and Diane wanted our input on how much finishing this piece ought to get. Finish it or leave it be? Good question. The jury is still out.

Wonderful arrangement of funky colors.



Individual block



The blocks were foundation-pieced on shirting scraps.

We've been following the progress of Diane's Winding Ways quilt. This month, an appliqued border is in the works and look at the flowers--tiny Winding Ways.

Casey is working on turning a small pieced quilt into an embellished girly-girl quilt for her mom for Christmas.

Beautiful...

As for me, I showed off my finished Kimono Shawl--so many in this group listened to me whine and gripe while the shawl was underway. They needed to see that YES, I actually do get things finished eventually.

Tonight I'm hard at work on my Rosedale United. After some knitting and unknitting, puzzling and brow furrowing, the long overdue lightbulb went on in my head about how to actually work the intarsia part of this project. Knitting patterns use such economy of words--would just a little bit of detail be too much to ask??

Pictures coming...

Kaleidoscope Issues

It's funny. When the word "copyright" is mentioned around quilters, everyone sure starts buzzing. I only mentioned copyright issues with the Bullseye Quilt as an aside, and it started some interesting conversation.

This is a good opportunity to talk about something that made me sit up and take notice when I read about it in the September/October issue of Fiberarts magazine. You'll see why it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. It has implications for all of us.

New York quilt teacher and author Paula Nadelstern began hearing from acquaintances that some patterned carpeting in a new Houston hotel had designs that looked a lot like the meticulously pieced kaleidoscope motifs that have made been her specialty, and which figured in her book Kaleidoscopes & Quilts.

Paula Nadelstern's kaleidoscope on the left, Couristan carpet on the right.

During the Houston Quilt Market, Paula had the opportunity to check out the carpeting herself and found that several of the carpet motifs had very obviously been copied from her quilts. She filed legal action in January of this year against Couristan, the manufacturer of the carpet, the Houston Convention Center Hotel Corporation, the owner of the hotel, and Hilton Hotels Corporation, the operator of the hotel.

And here's the interesting part: The defendants responded that because Paula had used third-party fabric purchased from fabric stores, and the fabrics were protected by copyright by their manufacturers, her "derivative works" were not eligible for copyright in her book. Further, the defendants claimed that Nadelstern herself committed fraud by applying for a copyright for the book by "intentionally failing to disclose" to the U. S. Copyright Office that the quilts contained third-party fabrics.

The article goes on to say that the defendants have amended their response to the lawsuit and want to transfer any liability on their part to the interior design firm that commissioned the carpet. That firm allegedly supplied Couristan with images of kaleidoscopes.

It will be very interesting to see how far the defendants get with that allegation about using third-party fabrics. Following that reasoning, exactly what is a sewer or quilter supposed to do with commercially printed fabric? Keep it in a box and look at it? Many quilters, especially art quilters, use the copyright symbol to protect the use of images of their work. Are we ALL committing fraud?

What about artists who purchase paints to use in artworks? Are they barred from copyrighting a work of art because the paint formulas are copyrighted by their manufacturers?

I'm no legal expert but this allegation on the part of the defendants sounds a bit like grabbing at straws. But I would think that in the end, the interior design firm may have some 'splainin' to do. The trial is scheduled for June 11, 2007.

I've owned Paula Nadelstern's wonderful kaleidoscope book for years, and have spent plenty of time poring over it, simply awestruck at the precise and gorgeous detail, and have broken out in cold sweats thinking about the maddeningly intricate sewing that would be involved in making kaleidoscope from fabric. My understanding is that she works out of a tiny space in a New York apartment.

I wish her the best in this case.

Chairs and Bullseyes

It's probably a mistake to allow oneself to be attached to things, but I have to confess that I am. I was an only child, as was my husband, so our house ended up as the repository for a lot of family stuff. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Heirlooms mean a lot to me and I would find it hard to give anything up.

My mother used to say that this chair was once part of a set of living room furniture--a settee, a rocker, and this piece--and that her mother bought the set used. I have a 1912 photo of my mother and her sibs gathered around this chair. So this chair has a bit of age on her. The needlepoint cover is wearing badly but I just love the very mellow faded shades of the yarn. It used to be black but is now soft and tonal. There's no way a newly stitched seat could look the same.

And I've been using that as the rationale to avoid making a new seat cover for, oh about fifteen years now.

I was surprised to get inquiries about the quilt shown on my couch in the photo in my last post. It's strictly utility but did live the life of the glamorous show-off early on.

Two of my good friends, who happen to be sisters, used to operate a quilt shop that was a great hangout. I made a Bullseye Quilt for them as a shop sample, back in the very early times of the Bullseye. As shop samples go, it was pretty humble, but it was hung on the wall and got to be part of the decor for awhile.

Now, where did the Bullseye idea come from originally? I was thinking it had come from a Country Threads book back in the mid 90s...

OK. I did a little research. The Bullseye Quilt made from this technique first appeared in a 1999 Country Threads book called Quilts from Aunt Amy. (For a cautionary tale involving the Bullseye, Country Threads, copyright, and terse letters from attorneys, look here.)

The little Bullseye Quilt I made for my friends' shop was 100% scrap, and I always intended to make another, better one but it hasn't happened yet. But hope springs eternal, and yada, yada. (One friend made a Christmas Bullseye that was pretty cool and I thought that was such a good idea...)

The dilemma was in how to quilt it. I usually like to quilt pretty heavily, but I didn't want to get in the way of the bullseye blocks' fraying. After all, the fraying is the star of the show in the quilt.

What I came up with is this: I started by ditch-stitching the block seams. Then I quilted over the stitching on the Bullseye rounds. In the area where the block seams come together, I freehanded spirally concentric circles. These concentric lines were about 1/4 inch apart. So on the back of the quilt you see heavily quilted circles and lightly quilted circles.

I finished up quilting wavy sort-of-parallel lines across the width of the borders. I used YLI nylon thread as my top thread and Mettler silk-finish cotton in the bobbin throughout.

Normally I like to see even distribution of stitching across the surface of the quilt. This quilt wasn't a good example of that. But apparently it was enough quilting; it turned out pretty well.
It was never intended to see real active duty. But when its days of showtime at the shop ended, it got tossed over the family room couch, where it remains to this day. It's held up beautifully.

In knitting news, both sleeves of the Rosedale United are completed and I cast on the body of the sweater last night.

I'm anxious to journey (it may be more like trudging) into the wonderland of intarsia. I promise not to get carried away. I vow to make no garments in the future with intarsia Santas, jack o'lanterns, or flags. And you can hold me to that one.

Comfy Spaces

Tagged! Tazzie tagged me in a game of "show your comfy sewing spot". Here is my favorite corner of the couch all ready for me to park my delicate little behind and do whatever's on the agenda--knitting or hand sewing. Everything is at hand--the TV clicker, a basket of sewing and knitting tools, and a bigger basket holding two knitting projects. There's even a book review magazine to peruse when my fingers start to cramp and need a break. I have an Ott floor lamp on the other side of the couch and I press it into service when the need arises.

Working full-time, I have sorrowfully let go of some home obsessions, mainly the whole concept having a tidy house. Things tend to get piled up, waaaaay rattier than I'd like. Then comes the day I can't stand it any more and have to launch into a cleaning blitz. Most of the mess is mine; Mr. Kathie lives a very orderly life down to the arranged-by-color shirts in his closet. And the meticulous arrangement of his tools in the garage is a wonder to behold.

This is the first weekend in awhile that there have been no pressing obligations and, much as I wanted to sew, I decided what was most needed was housecleaning. And isn't that a very grownup decision? So I have been vacuuming, dusting, and polishing since very early this morning. A thankless job, since it will only get all dusty and dirty again. When is someone going to invent a way to keep THAT from happening?

I've done all the domestic duties I intend to do today and I'm planning to dive onto the above couch in just a while and pick up the Rosedale United sweater. It's right there in the basket, right next to the couch, all ready for me. That's where I intend to be all evening.

Who's next? Jan?

Trip and Return Notes

Hello all! I've been back from Washington since Monday night, but have been buried under piles of catch-up minutiae. The upcoming weekend is looking very good to me.

It was a great trip. The weather was crisp and clear. All the better for doing lots of walking in a beautiful city. My daughter and I covered a lot of ground sightseeing,

shopping, and eating. Good therapy for both of us. We checked out some of the traditional sights as well as some like this:

We always have a running challenge to see someone famous on a trip and I earned my famous-person bonus points before I ever left Milwaukee because Bob Woodward was on my flight to DC. Pretty cool.

I took off on foot one morning and found Stitch DC, (the Chevy Chase location) just a few blocks from my daughter's apartment. It's teeny but full of gorgeous things. I'm wishing I had bought a Rowan book or two as those seem to be hard to find in my own area.

But by far, the high point of the trip was tagging along in some of my daughter's Law School classes.

Getting chummy with Thurgood Marshall

It was great to meet her professors and classmates and the lectures and discussions were fascinating and have given me much to think about all week.

But back to my real world. Last night was the finale of my Internet class series, taught in an elementary school computer lab. It was less than successful. My job was to guide total newbies through the application process for Yahoo email. This is a long, drawn out process for those who have few typing skills and even less experience with such things as filling out forms online. But we finally got everyone signed up, examined the Yahoo Mail page, and the Inbox, but then discovered that we were unable to do practice email because it was locked up by the school's system administrator. ARRRGGGH! Pretty frustrating for all of us.

So glad these classes are all behind me, at least for a few months. Much gnashing of teeth. I really don't think I was put on earth to teach.

But I have been knitting. The Lorna's Laces socks came along with me to Washington. If I were some people I would have travel photos of the socks at the Washington Monument or some other Big Location. But all I can offer is a sock and not-quite-a-half on my dining room table.

For me, this is phenomenal progress.

But wait, there's more. I'm also chugging along on the second sleeve of the Rosedale United sweater.

How closely will these sleeves match each other? I'm not going to obsess over that one at all. This is art, after all. Consistancy is the hobgoblin of something or other and I'm not going to fall into that trap.

I Should Be Working Hard, But...

Crazy busy around here. And I don't mean the fun kind of busy, involving fabric or yarn. I don't think I've ever fully caught up from my week in Boulder Junction and things are just snowballing. I'm in the midst of teaching Internet classes for the community, and that's involved a good deal more prep than I had anticipated. Heaven help me, I don't think I was put on the earth to teach--it's plenty stressful for me. But I've been doing the best I can.

We've also had meetings on top of meetings at work. Most of these are held at locations at least half an hour from my library. I get some NPR time in, but that's an hour of job productivity lost. We're training for a couple of major software changes. I go and learn all this stuff as fast as I can, and then come back and train everyone else. Then I have to do my actual work. Plus publicity for the library, plus the website. Plus the library blog. And today, on my way to TWO meetings, I managed to dump an entire 32 ounce cup of soda on the floor of my car. Arrgh.

No sewing has been happening, and only fitful knitting on the Rosedale United.

So. All this complaining about feeling frazzled and stressed and what am I going to do? Plan to spend the weekend cleaning and organizing to get back on top of things? Of course not. I'm going on a trip, that's what. I'm leaving tomorrow to spend a long weekend with my daughter in Washington, D. C. She's a little stressed out too and some together-time may be just what the doctor ordered for both of us. Plus, the weather should be better out there than the thirty degrees with gale winds and snow we're having here.

I cringe to say it but I had to scrape frost from my windshield this morning. If that isn't a depressing way to start October 12, I don't know what is.

Which reminds me. Threadlines is one year old. Happy, happy! And if you've made it this far, please stop over at Crazy for Fiber and wish Gerrie a big happy birthday too.

Weekend Shuffle

Life took an unexpected lurch this week when we got a middle-of-the-night phone call from my stepson who was passing through the area on his way to a new job. Tim is a bit of a free spirit, a Peter Pan type. He arrived Thursday and moved on Sunday toward the next phase of his life. I hope it's a good move for him--he's been buffeted around quite a bit by life and I'd love nothing more than to see him settled and happy. I've known Tim since he was a little boy and have always found him so appealing--the kind of kid you want to squeeze. May good fortune be riding with him...

Anyway, we juggled schedules around to make room for family time this weekend. Will came out for most of the weekend--he hadn't seen Tim in a couple years. And Tim drove into Milwaukee Saturday to hear Will's band at a Bay View club.

Saturday was theTall Grass Fiber Jubilee, which is a small-scale wool fest held twice a year on a farm near Delavan, Wisconsin. Tim and I drove down in the afternoon but were dismayed to find vendors packing up an hour and a half before closing time. We did get to see a bit of the demonstration shearing, which is always fun. Here's an account from another happy camper who was there with a big interest in and great photos of the beautiful animals on the farm.

Master shearer David Kiel

The lovely SJ demos spinning for Tim

But events were definitely winding down by the time we got there, which put a damper on the experience.

I've done nothing more this weekend than a few rounds on the Rosedale United sweater. Sleeve #1 is finished. This was the weekend I had hoped to get Caro's couch quilt quilted so that I could take it to her when I visit her next weekend. Big sigh.

There is other domestic news brewing. We're puppy shopping. We've been dog-less since our beloved little Roscoe died about three years ago. We've decided that we're finally ready to welcome a new member to the family.

EEEyikes--am I crazy??

We checked out one litter of Westie pups this past week, which made for a very fun evening, but decided against any of those particular dogs. Stay tuned for more news on this topic.

Out on a Limb

I bit the bullet last night and placed my first order with Amazon.jp. You cannot imagine how nerveracking it was, especially when one of the ISBNs I was searching for yielded this page.

I ordered a quilt book as well as two very cool looking home dec books, one of which can be seen here.

Yvonne at yvestown has a helpful tutorial. And here's a shout out to the management over at Bemused for moral support and cyber hand-holding. I'm here to tell you that it's doable. The main page has a tab that will give you enough English to navigate by. And it's not overwhelmingly expensive. So if I receive a Japanese book on engine repair instead of the quilt book I ordered, it won't be the total end of life for me. Now to wait a few weeks and see what actually arrives in the mail...

Last night I did my nightly decompression knitting during the last hour of the first episode of Eyes on the Prize on PBS. Very hard-hitting documentary of the history of the Civil Rights movement in the United States. Highly recommended by me. Having a kid who's a student here has brought a new richness and awareness of this monumental struggle to our family.

Tonight I'm teaching my first Internet class in the new series. Of course something has gone awry with our printer network at the library at this particular time, making the printing of handouts tricky but I have a work-around and I think everything will be fine. If everything is set up correctly at the school where the classes are to be held, that is. Wish me luck!

Rosedale Begins

Rosedale United is underway! For keeps this time, I hope. I had a whole sleeve done while I was at Wildcat but had misgivings about size and ripped it out to begin again. If I followed the instructions, there would have been no problem. But for some unknown reason I'm not real crazy about ribbing, and I like a garter or reverse stockinette edge at bottom and sleeve edge.

Having changed the look of the sleeve, the problem became where to begin the increases as I knit up. This time I got it right--I think. It looks better to my eyes. I'm using Noro Kureyon in color 126. I got about 2/3 done with sleeve number one tonight while I sat empathetically with Mr. Kathie, watching Monday Night Football, featuring the train wreck that is the Green Bay Packers. Much moaning and groaning. I don't know why he tortures himself so. Just masochism, I guess.

This week is looking to be busy, in a stomach-churning sort of way. Wednesday night I'm teaching the first of a series of three Intro to the Internet classes. I have a full-house--twenty students: mostly senior citizens, some of whom have no mouse or even keyboard experience. Does this sound like a recipe for a pounding headache? Yes, it does, but someone has to be the sacrificial lamb served up to teach this kind of thing. Ah well, the people are all nice folks and I can come home afterward and have a nice stiff drink to help decompress.

Thursday is a county-wide library meeting where I have to play somewhat of a role, and right after the meeting I have to attend a luncheon where our library will be presented with an award. Our director will get to do any talking required and I can recede into the background.

Unfortunately, I don't think I dare take knitting along.

The Sort-of Felted Wool Jacket

Riding on a tide of euphoria from actually cleaning up my studio, I was true to my word in my last post and polished off a two year old UFO this afternoon.

Voila the Appliqued Sort-of Felted Wool Jacket:

A few years back, an Internet friend sent me some fabric she wasn't ever going to use. And what fabric! Almost six yards of a heavy wool herringbone tweed in one of my favorite colors--eggplant. This was enough wool to play with a bit! So I ran it through several hot washer and dryer cycles just to see what would happen. What happened was that it didn't really felt up, but the fabric became more dense and the herringbone tweed gained more of a brushed and muted texture. Yummy.

What to do with it?

My daughter had brought me a woven wool jacket from Ecuador, the type of thing that costs about $7 on the street in Quito. It was a simple, unlined cardigan jacket and I loved it to pieces. It was just the thing to throw on over a sweater for running around on a winter day. A nice warm extra layer. That jacket was beginning to get just a bit frowsy looking and I decided to try to duplicate it using the herringbone wool.

This is a very simple pattern, boxy and oversized to layer easily over a sweater. It's unlined and bound along the front and sleeve edges. I had some felted wool scraps and thought it would be fun to add an applique motif. I fused down the shapes and scribble-stitched on top of them.

The part of the jacket that caused it to be a UFO for two years was the buttonholes. I have a great electronic sewing machine that has programmable buttonholes in about eight different styles. They ought to be a breeze, but sometimes buttonholes can be problematic no matter what kind of machine you're working with.

I just knew I was going to screw up those buttonholes.

Today I worked up my courage and plunged in, and while they aren't perfect, they will do fine. Victory!

The problem with making buttonholes on a garment like this is that the bias binding on the front edge is thicker than the jacket fabric. You can just predict that the buttonhole foot is going to get hung up. At best you lose the stitch programming, at worst the buttonhole foot might not even clamp the fabric tightly enough to sew straight. Fortunately you can override the stitch programming if you see that things aren't going well.

I was prepared for trouble and was able to override and correct what needed to be corrected. It was a white-knuckle journey but things turned out OK in the end.

One fewer UFO.