Always believed in futures

Well, I think this might be a weird double first for me. I knit a pattern that apparently no one has entered in Ravelry yet. And I knit it in the yarn for which it was written.

I think this has got to be one of the more modern patterns from Bendigo. The body is even knit in one piece. However, I did make a few changes:

I tweaked the way the ribbing pattern interacts with the lace, by adding one extra repeat of the lace motif extending into the ribbing section, adjusting the ribbing count so that it would fit with the lace better and would allow me to continue a column of purls on either side of the lace.


I also left out all the garter stitch, instead doing hems on the sleeves and ribbing for the neckband. I originally also tried ribbed button bands, with about 12 buttons instead of just four up the top as in the pattern. Even though I would only wear a couple of buttons done up, I liked the look of lots of buttons.

I had knit one of those ribbed bands about four times and completed the other side too, including sewing on all the buttons, before I decided that I hated this frumpy, ill-fitting cardigan!  Even earlier as I was knitting the separate pieces (oh yeah, seaming took a couple of tries too, as I haven't had much practice sewing in sleeves) I though that the armholes looked really big. I've noticed this with more 'classic' style patterns before.


I don't know if the photo really captures the bagginess, but it does show how adding the bands also meant that the neckline came up higher around my neck than I prefer.
 
I realised that if I removed the button bands, the fronts could be pulled together a bit more and the fit would be better. So I did a narrow crochet edging instead of bands, then added loops for the buttons. This improved the fit and the look, though there is still a bit of room in the shoulder and sleeves. Not a perfect fit, but good for layering in cold weather!

Now I was getting somewhere, but the crochet edges were curling under a bit and the buttons (even those that were done up) didn't sit flat either. I was delighted to find that putting a stabilising button on the reverse side of each of the buttons solved both problems. And now, though it's not perfect, I am pretty happy with my cardigan.

Snow. It's better than rain, when you're trying to ski!

On Monday it rained heavily all morning. When it eased up a bit, I went out to ski for the afternoon. There had been so much rain, and the snow cover was already so poor (it has not been a good season this winter, at all) that things were looking grim. But it did start to snow a bit in the afternoon, especially higher up the mountain.

And we woke on Tuesday to find it had been snowing all night and there was a good it of snow in the village! Which meant lots of great snow up on the mountain.

I didn't build this snowman, just stopped to say hello.

Thredbo trees, late afternoon.

Visit to MONA!

I had been wanting to go ever since I first heard of it. Then a great opportunity came along and I made sure I had a full day to visit David Walsh's Museum of Old and New Art, outside Hobart, in Tasmania.

 

I knew beforehand that it was an art gallery that had been developed and created by one eccentric collector, using megabucks made from being very talented at gambling (and being able to borrow stakes from a very rich friend).



I also knew the museum had been designed to be as shocking and provocative as possible, with its main themes being sex and death, and big ticket items including some of the most outrageous modern artworks. For example, Chris Ofili's 'The Holy Virgin Mary,' which lead to a lawsuit brought against the Brooklyn Museum by New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Even though I was keen to go and expected it to be entertaining, I was surprised by how big, beautiful, and even classy the whole thing is. I loved every minute I spent there, and have to go back to see the rest.



Outside there were a lot of chooks and other birds.



The main building is not that big from the outside. But to enter the first gallery, you have to go down three stories, cut right into the rock. It's dark down there and it draws you in to another world. Although some of the art belongs to MONA and some is only there for the current exhibition (The Red Queen), in general it's not organised in obvious themes. There are lots of interesting juxtapositions. Antiquities, such as Egyptian mummies and scarabs, are mixed in with everything else. Many of these were part of Walsh's first collections, before he ventured into modern art. There are no placards on the walls with even the name of the work or artist - every visitor is given an 'O' device (an Ipod touch) to carry, which locates nearby works and provides access to information about them.

And there is a lot of information, including unconventional and often quite personal essays by Walsh and the other curators, recordings of interviews with the artists, and sometimes music that ties in (a couple of bands have done songs inspired by Henry Darger, for example). And as someone who almost always reads all the info in museums, I had to stop myself from doing too much reading, at the expense of spending time looking at the art. A record of everything you looked at is saved anyway, and all this material is available for guests to look at later on the MONA website. Brilliant.

Tennis court with a view. (Walsh and his family live on the site). There is also a brewery and hotel and conference facilities. Oh and Mona Roma, the special ferry that brings visitors over from the city centre. The next day I returned to MONA for a work function, and this time we took the ferry, which was very nice as they served good coffee on board. When we arrived at the dock there was a small seal hanging around there, just near the waterline. I gather he is a regular there. 

Gull, on a Monday

At MONA, Hobart in the background.

Day late, dollar short

I made a hat for K for his birthday in November last year. As I was knitting it, I was fairly sure it was a bit too small, but I pressed on. It went pretty quickly, and I thought I might only need to rip back part of it and change where the decreases started.

In the end we decided it really was too small (the fabric was very dense - worsted weight on 4mm needles). But then Christmas happened, and a couple of other projects took priority. There has been one big project I've been working on all of this year, and I recently thought I had finished it, only to find that I had totally misjudged the border. What I naively hoped blocking would fix, was way too far off. Why do I always think knit stitches are longer than they are wide, when it is generally the other way around?


But that is not what we are talking about tonight. More on that failure later, once I have turned it into a success! (Don't worry, I took some 'failure' photos. It will be fun, eventually.)

I finally, *finally* redid the hat and it took almost no time at all. It is based on Stephen West's 'Westward' pattern, though I've dropped perhaps the most distinctive element of that pattern,  the band in Latvian braid. I actually like the pattern mixing vibe of this hat but it wasn't what I was looking for this time. I do want to try the Latvian braid though, and I'm toying with using the band form Westward as the starting point for a more slouchy hat for me.

The cable is worked over 120 stitches. After some trial and error, I found 96 stitches was about right for the ribbed band, after which I did a round with sufficient increases to start the cable pattern.

K hasn't tried it on yet. But I can report that when I try it on, it doesn't look as conehead shaped as it does here.

I'll find someone with a smaller head to wear the first one. Possibly a nephew.

Oh, and I really am a dollar short this week - I found out I have been underpaid for the past few weeks - they've made me more part-time than I actually am. I am sure it is just a minor clerical error which will be sorted out soon. I'd be just as happy to have the extra days at home though! Not feasible right now.

Tracing lazy circles in the sky

This is a pinwheel baby blanket for a new little friend. I had leftover Lincraft Bamboozle from this top, which had the perfect colours for this project. (I didn't measure it, but I did throw in a stunt hat for scale.)



There wasn't enough of it left though, and I thought about including stripes of a different colour - it comes in a plain red that would look good with this pink-orange combo - but I as I knit it, I decided it would be better kept simple.



The original yarn was bought years ago, and even though Lincraft still makes this colourway, it was almost certain that the dyelot of the new stuff i bought would be different, and would look different. It seemed really obvious to me that in the new yarn (the outer circles from about halfway) the pink/reddish colours were much darker and brighter, though the orange was the same. I don't think you can tell in these photos, and the knitting friends I showed it to didn't find it noticeable in real life either. I actually thought it looked fine anyway. I think you can get away with a lot in a circular blanket. It's not nearly as bad as your jumper changing colour halfway down!

Clown bottoms, confidence, and books

To return to one of my (very few) topics of recent months, Demelza has now posted a whole set of great photos of 'An ode to the pleasures of minor encounters' - now you can see the piece from all angles. Love it.

And now, the story of the little prototypes that didn't. Before the pumpkins, I had an idea of making felted soup mugs for the exhibition - something like this in shape (scroll down to the big photo). These purple ones are unfinished - I was planning to attached the handle with a button, like this jug from years ago. But after several iterations to tweak the shape, I decided the fabric was too floppy. I moved on to different wool (not in this photo), but didn't like the colour combination as much, and at that point I ran out of steam... the pumpkins seemed like a better bet. I'd like to have carried this off, but let's just say it needed more development time than I had available.


No. To be honest I also lost confidence in my idea - particularly its appropriateness for the event in question, but also whether what I was trying to do would make any sense to others. The exhibition was very much conceived to be about functional vessels, and mainly for pottery. I do like the idea of trying to mimic pottery with felt (without dismissing textiles entirely, hence the button), but I'm not sure this was the right outlet.

And to return to one of last night's subjects, Shaun's comment, as well as being a good suggestion, which I also don't plan to do (ha!) reminded me that I used to keep a sort of lazy book journal. It was just a word document where, as I finished each book, I would put down a few brief thoughts. I would also add any quotes that I was sufficiently enamoured with to write down.

Reading is a constant pleasure in my life and I wasn't willing to turn it into a chore (or associate a chore with it) so I never made myself write much about each book. And even so, it did become a chore and I always seemed to have a backlog of books waiting to be added to the list. I stopped bothering a few years ago, not long after I got into the habit of using Librarything just to to list each book as I read it. That was because I wanted the widget that you see on the right hand side there. I don't know if anyone tends to look at it, but if you ever find yourself reading something around the same time as me, I'd love to talk books! Since late last year, I've mainly been cycling between two excellent series, Stephen King's Dark Tower, which I have been meaning to dive into for ages, and Gwyneth Jones' Bold as Love series.

So anyway, my old book journal tells me that I first read American Gods in 2003. Ten years ago! Maybe I can let myself off the hook for my poor memory of it.

Pumpkins!

Have you seen enough pears? If not don't worry, I have plenty more pears planned, including an interesting challenge from my best customer and dear friend. More on that soon, I hope.



Meanwhile, I made some pumpkins for the CraftACT shop's "For the love of soup" event this Saturday. I'm sure, if I kept making pumpkins like I have with the pears (don't know, yet) that I would have fun stretching what could be considered "good pumpkin colours." It's a distinctive shape, so it probably doesn't strictly have to be orange (or grey).


Here they are with some thread snippers for some idea of scale. A prize-winning size of pumpkin would take a long time to knit, given the shrinkage involved in felting.

Also:

I've given it a little time, but I still don't like the new Flickr format. I don't like all the photos squashed together and clamouring for attention. It makes me feel a bit panicky, for some reason. I guess I'll get used to it.

I'm re-reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods at the moment. It's great. And I know I liked it when I first read it, but I couldn't remember what it was about, beyond the barest concepts. It's irrational but I'm a bit afraid it's going to disappear from my brain again as soon as I finish, or even start dropping out while I'm still reading it, if I don't read fast enough. There is a bit in it where Shadow asks Mr Wednesday who they are going to meet in Las Vegas, and Mr Wednesday tells him, and then a few minutes later Shadow realises that although he asked, he can't remember the answer and asks again. And he still ends up having no idea who it is. Is that what is happening with that book in my head?

Actually, now that I think about it, I often don't have the best memory for books (movies and tv shows too, though that could be because my mind is at least half on my knitting). Not that long ago I decided to quickly read David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas prior to seeing the movie. I  knew I had read another of his books and wanted to read this one...except as soon as I started, I realised that I had read it before. It has a very distinctive structure. Still, I read through the whole thing again and only remembered how each bit went as I got to it. I guess this is the opposite problem to the one with American Gods - in that case I knew I had read it and couldn't remember the content, with Cloud Atlas I couldn't remember reading it, but at least recognised the content.

Something I once thought I would never do

Well, aside from letting the dogs sleep on my bed - I lost that battle years ago, and now I wouldn't have it any other way. I really didn't see myself knitting clothing for my long-haired dogs! But they are getting older and this girl has been feeling the cold - her hair doesn't grow as thick in winter as her brother's. Unlike the raincoats they both despise, she doesn't seem to mind wearing this at all. And it was the simplest thing to knit. At some point I'll do one for Elvis too.