I’ve been knitting quite a bit lately, along with a bit of weaving. But mostly knitting … and listening to audiobooks … and trying to keep my anxiety levels under control. And knitting helps with that.
But when I’m knitting, I’m not writing … although lately I’ve been trying to make the two work together: *knit a couple of rows, then read and comment on a blog post; repeat from * until my butt is sore from sitting and/or it’s time to feed my furry beasts.
I also wanted to be prepared this year to donate a few of my knitted goods to Knit the Rainbow (KtR), a NYC-based charity for homeless LGBTQ+ youth. During winter, KtR accepts knitted donations and gives them to the young people they serve. Last year I sent off a couple of hats just under the deadline. This year I wanted to be early.
The following photos will show you what I sent. Mind you, some of these items were knitted YEARS ago and have been languishing in my cedar chest since I left salaried employment. All of the items have been washed, of course, and look and feel as good as new.
I apologize in advance for the poor photography. Fashion photography is too much of a challenge for me. I prefer bees and thistles as models.
Flower Power scarf knitted in Noro Silk Garden, designed by Michele Bernstein.Scalloped-Edge Hat knitted in Magical Scream by Ryan Yarn, designed by Sarah B. Keller.I crocheted this scarf with yarn that a former boss bought for me when she was in Alaska. The yarn is a mohair and wool blend. Unfortunately I no longer have a record of the yarn company or the designer.Sadly, I no longer have a record of the yarn or the design of this fun green scarf.Another scarf by an unknown designer knitted in an unknown yarn. Rib Knit Watch Cap knitted in Gist Yarn’s Ode (100% alpaca) designed by Gracy Casey-Gouin.
Here’s a close-up of the cowl from the above photo.
Sliplicious Stripes cowl knitted in Urth 100% SW Extrafine Merino yarn, designed by Yiğitcan.And, of course, a Red Resistance or Melt-the-Ice hat knitted in Germantown DK 100% American Wool, designed by Paul Neary.
And then … the box.
Yeah, there’s another cowl on the top that I did not take a photo of. I threw it in at the last minute.
I plan to knit some more for KtR, hopefully before their donation “season” ends (I think it’s in February).
Now that the midterm elections are (mostly) over, I feel my anxiety leveling off. Perhaps I’ll knit less.
Hah! I currently have three knitting projects in progress so … not knitting is not going to happen.
Raji doesn’t care if I’m knitting as long as I have one hand free.
Some of you might already be aware that I gifted a handknit wrap to my friend and fellow blogger Luanne Castle. You can see her post by clicking HERE.
The design is the Floating Waves Wrap by Amy Christoffers. I love this designer’s work! I can’t best the photo of Luanne modeling the wrap, but here’s a couple of more photos that I had intended to publish.
The full wrap
I should have added something to the above photo to give it scale … like me lying alongside it. The wrap is longer than my height.
Here you can see all the colors involved with some detail.
I enjoy taking close-ups of my knitting. Even while I was knitting, I often stopped to admire the seemingly intricate mosaic design. I say seemingly because, gosh, it was a simple design to knit.
My one and only attempt at a “professional” photo.
The yarn–Rowan Kidsilk Haze–is a mohair and silk blend, incredibly soft and light.
Why Gift?
I love to knit but I can’t/won’t keep everything I knit. I knit for my mental health, my desire to create, my desire to learn. What might attract me to a particular design is not always my desire to wear the design; sometimes I just want a challenge. I want to learn a new technique or try a new yarn. Then what?
It wasn’t a problem when I was employed. I often wore sweaters, shawls and/or scarves to work … sometimes even indoors given how cold our offices often were. But I’m no longer employed. In fact, I’ve been whittling down my wardrobe because my “need” for variety has severely decreased since retiring.
So gifting seems like a good way for me to enjoy knitting without worrying about the item eventually languishing in a chest. This is not a new thing. I’ve been gifting since I was a teenager. Sometimes the recipient knows they are getting a gift; most often they don’t.
How Do I Decide to Gift?
I don’t have a good answer for this. Sometimes I’ll see a design and immediately think of who I’d like to give the completed garment to. That has happened several times, mainly with my sister Shirley for whom I managed to knit four shawls before she died.
Once I knitted a very colorful bolero-style sweater with three-quarter length sleeves. It was supposed to be for me. I had every intention of keeping the sweater for me. But when I finished it and tried it on, I immediately thought of a friend who works as an artist in a cold, damp warehouse. The sweater with its three-quarter length sleeves would serve her well.
With the Floating Waves Wrap, I thought of Luanne after I had started knitting. Something just clicked in my head, and I saw see her wearing the wrap at one of those writing conferences where the rooms are always ice-cold. It wasn’t anything she said or did. Well, as she notes in her post, we have been friends for a long time, on and off the blogosphere, so there’s that.
The decision to send the wrap to her was spontaneous. The knitting took a lot longer … lol.
Do I “Gift” On Demand?
It wouldn’t be a gift then. Let me tell you a story: Once I had a boss who didn’t know how not to be bossy. It was her nature. So when she got pregnant, she decided that I would knit a bear hat for her newborn. Yeah, she didn’t ask if I would do it. Just came in and said what she wanted. She had already found a pattern (thank goodness). I made her buy the yarn because she wanted it to be orange (her favorite color). My “gift” was my labor.
This boss was smart but immature, a loud talker and prone to outbursts. At the same time, she couldn’t handle confrontations. Eventually, I learned if I stood my ground, she’d back down. But I didn’t know that then; otherwise, I might have found the courage to say, “no, I don’t knit on demand.”
The story has a happy ending. I knitted the hat and, yeah, it was cute and she was pleased (but, really, she had to be since it was her idea) and that was the end of that. Eventually she went on maternity leave (yay!) and then quit (yay! yay!).
Will I Gift Again?
Of course! What, when and to whom are to be determined. I have lots of knitting projects waiting to be started. I’ve toyed with the thought of doing giveaways, maybe hats, scarves, and other small items. We’ll see. In the meantime …
Thank you for reading!
Wendy
Here’s Wendy waiting for the automatic feeder to dispense her lunch. Two minutes to go and she’s not taking any chances of missing her meal. She’s also hoping that Raji sleeps through lunch so she can double-dip. And, yup, that’s my spinning wheel in the corner.
Friends, I thought long and hard about this. This morning, I decided that it’s something I simply have to do. I’ve signed up to knit for 12 hours on April 5, 2025, to raise funds for Feeding America, World Central Kitchen, No Kid Hungry, and Meals on Wheels.
Many of you know that knitting is my “happy place.” I can do other things like weave or write, but my deepest intrinsic satisfaction always comes with knitting. And that’s one reason why I haven’t been blogging very much. I’ve been knitting. Recently I completed the Elvan shawl that I wrote about here.
The first photo of the Elvan Shawl is from the designer, Florence Spurling. The others are my own photos showing more detail of the intarsia patterns. Generally, it was fun to knit, and the yarn was wonderful to work with.
After these photos were taken, I sent the shawl to a friend. This particular friend was someone I knew from high school, someone I had lost touch with until a few years ago when I heard that her mother had died from Covid. And then a couple of years later, she was diagnosed with cancer. Thankfully, she’s gone through her treatments and (so far, so good) has been doing well. I thought of her often while I was knitting the shawl, thinking of how sweet the soft wool yarn would feel against her skin.
She wrote to me when she received the shawl. She wrote all the words that makes a knitter’s heart sing.
And so I keep knitting.
For the Knit-a-Thon, I’m planning to knit socks. I have quite a stash of sock yarn, and socks can be done quickly. Plus, who doesn’t need socks?!
As some of you may know, I am taking an online poetry writing course through the University of Iowa (FREE!). Just finished Week 3. Being that the course is FREE, students have the option to do as little or as much as they want. But if you want a certificate of participation, you have a lot to do: post a minimum of 1 writing assignment per week; post feedback to 5 of your peers’ writing assignments; and post comments to 5 forum discussions. So that’s 11 posts a week that I have to write, and the feedback/discussion posts have to have more content than just, “Hey, I really liked your poem” or “Hey, I’m really enjoying this discussion.” And the certificate is NOT free. It’s 50 bucks. I’m not complaining about the cost. Just wish I didn’t care/wasn’t trying to be qualified to pay it. The long slog is me trying to keep up with this class while working a day job and having the heavy weight of other projects looming over me.
I have books to read and book reviews to write. If you’re someone who is expecting a review from me, I’m doing the best I can. If you’re not, then good. That gives me more room to breathe.
It doesn’t help that I was “conscripted” to contribute my crocheting “talents” to making something for someone I work for. It’s doesn’t help that the deadline for that project is really looming (casting a shadow over what was to be a sunny weekend). I only hope that by the time this post publishes, I’ll have met that deadline, which will give me more room to breathe.
So what am I getting out of this course that makes me willing to push aside all my other commitments for a few weeks? Besides that the fact that it’s a good excuse for writing?
I can count the number of poems I’ve written in my lifetime on two hands. But I feel pulled toward poetry for some reason, and so I slog on.
Here’s one of my assignments from Week 2: making a poem out of a word cloud, as discussed by Carol Light.
Not my fault the assault caught the mender, the contender with his relentless bleating. The junket monkey moves in grooves and fissures of moods, meeting then deleting the broken forsaken human ampersand from Neverland.
One of my peers suggested I edit the poem to read like this:
Ignore the relentless beating
It’s not my fault The junket monkey moves in grooves and fissures of moods, meeting then deleting the broken forsaken human ampersand from Neverland.
I like this:
Not my fault.
The junket monkey moves in grooves and fissures of moods, meeting then deleting the broken forsaken human ampersand
from Neverland.
Another peer suggested I look up calligram and maybe write the poem as an ampersand … wouldn’t that be a hoot?
As many of you know, I am a knitter. I’ve knitting for roughly the same number of years as I’ve been writing, and my writing marathons often alternate with knitting marathons. My first memory of knitting was when I was 9 when I was given a kit for a pink knitted minidress. The kit came with acrylic pink yarn, huge wooden needles (comparable to a US size 17) and instructions. What I managed to knit was not a minidress, but some kind of tangled mess.
And yet, I was hooked (so to speak) from that day forward.
Over the next ten years, I knitted with whatever I could find (we were a family of few means), even some spools of synthetic yarn that a high school friend discovered in her basement. If people gave me yarn, I would knit them something. While that sounds awfully generous of me, keep in mind that I was still learning to knit (I am self-taught) and so I’m not sure that my “gifts” were always appreciated or desired.
I’ve have several peaks and valleys with my knitting (just like with my writing) over the past 40-odd years. One Christmas, when I was still a teenager, I went crazy and knitted, crocheted, or needlepointed a Christmas gift for every one in my immediate family. Ahhh, the good old days when I was a mere college student and had time enough to knit, read, and write.
During a brief sojourn at a private college, I took a spinning and weaving class. So then I had to add spinning and weaving to my hobbies. The best education I got out of that particular college was learning to spin and weave. Rather than return for another quarter, I left college and bought a 36-inch floor loom with what would have been my tuition money. But these were mere detours along my knitting path. I enjoyed weaving immensely but in spite of even bringing the loom with me all the way from upstate NY to Oakland, CA, I could never embrace it as I did my knitting. With knitting, all you really need is yarn and a needle (I say a needle because I work almost exclusively with circular needles). Weaving requires much more preparation before you even start weaving. By contrast, spinning is also “simpler” if you buy your wool already carded and you’re happy to sit and spin with a small spindle. Eventually the loom and the spinning wheel were sold to a friend, while I continued to buy every possible length and size of knitting needle.
Fast forward to where I live now. Still knitting by choice, but my knitting has changed quite a bit. I don’t like sewing up the pieces of a sweater: easing the top of the sleeve into the armhole; trying to sew the sides together; and then finding holes in the seams. I’ve knitted cardigans, the bane of my existence because not only do they require piecing together but they also have (shudder) buttonholes to contend with. It’s not that I can’t knit well enough; I just find finishing to be annoying. When I’m done knitting, I want my knitting to be done and immediately wearable. So now I knit socks, shawls, scarves. Occasionally I’ll see a pattern that looks intriguing enough that I’ll give piecing another go. As with this shrug:
The pattern (Kimono Shrug) was quite easy, but the yarn (Noro Silk Garden) was actually a bit difficult to work with. It’s a blend of wool and silk and silk isn’t elastic like wool; that is, it doesn’t yield as nicely to being pulled and looped. Sometimes I felt like I was trying to knit with rope. But the effect of the yarn, the colors and the pattern, are worth the effort.
I’m sending this shrug to a friend who lives in California. She’s an artist (mixed-media). I’ve knitted for her before. In the distant past, we even bartered a few times, my knitting in exchange for her illustrating some patterns that I wrote and tried to sell. In all honesty, I didn’t set out to make this shrug for her, but, once it was completed, I just kept thinking of how much Jennifer might like it. How it might keep her warm when she’s working in her warehouse studio. How it might flatter her (and me) if she wore it to one of her openings. So I wore it twice to confirm that, yes, it does drape nicely and is warm without being too warm. But it’s off to Jennifer, and I hope she likes it.
So what hobbies do you have? What else do you look forward to doing, besides reading and writing? Do you like to restore antique cars? Brew your own beer? Cross-stitch? Sew? Let me know in the comment section ;)
