My Earth & Sky Shawl

It was not enough to simply finish my Westknits Earth & Sky Shawl. In our Westknits fan group on Ravelry, we are now challenging each other to photograph our shawls and/or selves in interesting locations when we travel. Granted, I did not have to travel too far to have these pictures taken in Swan Point Cemetery, in Providence, RI. I think it's not even an hour's drive from my home, as the hubby flies  drives.

Of particular note here is the gravestone, which  unfortunately cannot be read too easily, since the sun was a little too bright. I think it was about 10 years ago when my sister and I finally stumbled upon this modest little stone, after years of searching for it. Now I'll never forget where it is, though I might take a wrong turn or two or three on the way there.

This, my friends, is H.P. Lovecraft's grave. H.P. Lovecraft was sort of the godfather of gothic horror, and spent his short life in Providence, so his stories are replete with locations and landmarks I know well. "The Shunned House" was across the street from a house in which my sister once had an apartment. From this same apartment, the church described in "Haunter of the Dark" was visible. There really wasn't anything evil about that church; it was just spooky-looking, with a black roof on the steeple and black shutters enclosing the belfry. Sadly, this landmark was demolished a few years back, since it was a poor parish and the building had fallen into disrepair. The R.C. diocese deemed it too expensive to repair, and now there is a little park on the site where the church used to stand.

The epitaph reads, "I am Providence." A bit of a pompous statement, that, but Providence was indeed his hometown, and he obviously loved the place. He will be a part of it forever.

This picture was taken in the vicinity of the Lovecraft gravesite. The hat I am wearing is also a Westknits pattern, "Bandwidth." Easy, fast, and fun to do, and a good use for all the yarn I had left over from the shawl.

A bit later, I explored my favorite spooky mausoleum while hubby took a nap in the car. The place looks like the front of a very large, imposing brick house, and is set right in the side of a big hill. Every now and then, the paper covering the "front door" sidelights falls away, and if you stand there for awhile and let your eyes adjust to the darkness, you can see inside. There's a big chandelier with candles in it, and some free-standing stone thingies that seem the right size and shape to contain coffins. But the only marking on the building to indicate who rests there is the name "Perry," carved above the door. It's reminiscent of the Collins family mausoleum in "Dark Shadows," and has always fascinated me. I tried to take pictures, but didn't have a lot of luck getting any document of the inside, but I did get this cool shot of my own reflection, with the trees and the Providence River in the background. The bar in the center of the picture is part of the iron grillework covering the sidelight.

Not too far from the Perry place is my favorite cemetery monument of all time. The statue was done by Isidore Konti, and is a modification of a famous piece of his called "The Genius of Immortality." The original statue is small and has no angel wings.

I have found myself drawn to this statue for years now, since I first discovered it at age 18 or so. I had never seen anything like it before, and indeed, I have yet to see anything else like it. I often wonder, looking at it, who the model was, and what his life was like. And I also wonder about Edgar John Lownes. Who was he, and how did it come to pass that he should be honored with such a large and unusual monument?

Hurricane Treats!

Miraculously, we have not lost power yet. Perhaps we won't end up losing it after all. I am hopeful, but it's hard to tell whether we'll be that lucky or not. I have no idea how much longer this storm is supposed to go on. What I do know, is the weather is supposed to be glorious tomorrow, and in fact, all week.

We are on the east side of the eye, which means we are having more wind than rain.

Around noon-ish, I decided to tempt fate and make a batch of cookies: oatmeal with cranberries and walnuts. Tried and true and wonderful, so I'll share the recipe here.

1 cup butter ( or margarine), softened

1 cup sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar (light or dark -- doesn't matter -- whatever you have on hand)

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 cups old fashioned oats

3/4 cup flour (preferably unbleached)

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

(or if you don't have whole wheat flour on hand, use 1-1/2 cups regular flour)

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugars, then beat in eggs and vanilla.

In another bowl, mix oats, flour, baking soda, and salt, and gradually add to the creamed mixture.

Stir in walnuts and cranberries.

Drop by teaspoons 2 inches apart onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten the rounded balls of dough slightly.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes, or until golden brown.

Remove to wire racks to cool.

Makes about 4 dozen.

Done!

I finished my Westknits Earth & Sky Shawl yesterday afternoon. The first two pics show it hot off the needles, neither washed nor blocked.

I thought I might wait until today to do the washing and blocking, but found I was too eager to see how it would look in the very final step. Here it is, pinned out on my dining room table to dry. If I had more foam interlocking tiles, I could have stretched this out even further. I might have to order a few more of these, since what I have isn't enough to accommodate a really big shawl.
This was a really enjoyable knit. Would I do it again? Answer below...
And if Stephen does another knit-along in the future, you can bet I'll be signing on!

Next step for the first shawl? Overdyeing the dress I want to wear with it. Original dress color is a terra cotta very similar to the terra cotta shade in the shawl. It looked like a different color in the catalogue picture, and the color of the dress that actually arrived on my doorstep was totally WRONG for me. Still, it was a Lands End turtleneck dress, and I believed that surely someday I would find exactly the right thing to wear with it. That day never arrived, but in the intervening years I learned how easy it is to overdye cotton fabric, so I will be doing that, and hopefully the dress will be a lovely dark brown when all is said and done. It won't match the brown in the shawl exactly, but the green border will provide enough distraction to keep most people from noticing.

Oh, dear...

It has been awhile since I blogged last. Sometimes, it seems, I just don't have an awful lot to say. Having family here for a visit for a week or so at the end of July/beginning of August left me feeling strangely drained of thought and energy.

One positive thing I did was to treat myself to a Mystery Knit Along -- a new shawl pattern from Stephen West at WestKnits. My very first WestKnits pattern was the Windschief Hat, which I knitted for Grant Hart last winter. It was a lucky find while I was browsing Ravelry's cache of hat patterns for something that might suit Mr. Hart, whom I did not know very well yet at the time of knitting.

I enjoyed that hat pattern so much, I have knitted others for myself, and a second one for Grant, and a number of Stephen's other hats as well, plus two shawls.

After my company left, I was despondently cruising around Ravelry and happened to see the announcement for Mr. West's Knit Along. I was only a couple of days late joining the party and figured I could catch up quickly enough, so I paid for the download. It's still in progress, but nearly done now. I just have to put the edging on and bind it off, then wash and block, and it will be good to go. Here's a picture of it, partway through the third "clue."

I have a turtleneck dress I bought a few years ago, which is just about the same shade of terra cotta as I used in the shawl. It's nice in the shawl, but on me a whole dress in that color is...well...gagsome. Luckily it's 100% cotton, so I am overdyeing it dark brown. It won't be the exact same shade of brown as the yarn I used in the shawl, unless of course I am very, very lucky, but it should be close enough to be attractive. And besides, there will be very few places in the edging where the brown is actually next to the fabric of the dress for comparison. The biggest part of the edging will be spruce green.

The shawl was also a great way to test some really beautiful yarn I'll soon be selling. It's a 2-ply sport weight yarn from New Zealand that will be fantastic for outwear. It's not terribly soft, but is sturdy and durable and really has some body to it. Definitely not Merino. It feels more like Shetland. I can see it making excellent hats, boot socks, or mittens, and of course I know now that it's great for a cold winter day shawl.

Anyway, I've been busy skeining it up and washing it in preparation for selling.

I pretty much wash everything I sell, so it's ready to work with the minute it lands in a customer's hands. Washing really brings a yarn that's been compressed tightly on a cone back to life.

In addition to all that knitting and skein winding, I've started playing with dye again, and added some nice new items to my shop. Below is a sampling of spinning fibers, but I added some new yarns, too.

Well, back to my regularly scheduled knitting now, while you enjoy an old favorite of mine, which I rediscovered this week.

Hello, Old Friend

I made this sweater in 1999. That's 12 very long years ago. It's my own design and is called "Fleagle," and intended to pay tribute to a musician I will never forget: medieval balladeer John Fleagle. There is a lot of love and grief worked into every stitch. He was only 47 years old. Far too young to leave this world bereft of himself, and his musical magick.

The oak leaves and acorns represent a thing sacred to Druid Bards of Old: the live oak. (I do not know if John was a Druid, but musically? Well, he WAS a modern bard. Very much so.)

The XO cables pretty obviously represent love: he was much loved by anyone who ever heard him.

The Heart with Pendant Teardrop represents more love, and grief.

The central motif consists of intertwined cabled hearts: yet more love.

I had some equally weighty reason for choosing a basketweave stitch for the background, but hanged if I can remember that reason now.

A dear friend who passed away, also far too young, just a few months after I finished the sweater, remarked, after seeing this picture, that she didn't see how I could stand to wear it after all that work. What if something happened to it? Oughtn't I to put it in a shadowbox and preserve it forever?

She was only half joking. (And I still miss you, Pam. Yes, 11 years on, I still remember, and wish I could still write an e-mail and have you answer. And yes, I still sometimes play "Elf Bowling" in your memory..."Is that all the balls you've got, Santa?" And I still choke up thinking about the first time you ever sent me "Flaming Bag of Poo" for Halloween...)

Pam would be horrified at the current condition of that sweater. It has long been a favorite, you see. I've worn it more than any other sweater I have ever made. It went to Ireland and Scotland with me, and in order to make room in my suitcase for all the yarn I was bringing back from Scotland, I...GASP!!!!...packaged it up and mailed it home from Shetland. It took 6 weeks to land on my doorstep. Pam would have fainted at the mere thought.

But this sweater has been loved. It has served as a pillow, as a throw blanket, and as a winter coat. You see, it is SO oversized, I can, and HAVE, fit many layers beneath it.

At the beginning of last winter, I noticed some holes near the sleeve cuffs, and broken stitches in the I-cord trim at the neckline, so I washed and dried it, and stowed it in a plastic sweater bag until I could get around to repairing it.

Today, with outdoor temps in the upper 90s, I happened to find the partial ball of yarn I had left from the original project, down in the basement. Finally, repairs would be made, and thank God for air conditioning!

I picked out the frayed I-cord trim, caught up the stitches, and re-knitted. After 12 years of hard wear, the sweater is a little faded -- understatement of the year -- so the new trim doesn't match at all, colorwise. The yarn has mellowed to a smokey blue/gray color from the original vivid blue. So, now the trim is bright and colorful, in contrast to the mellow shade of the rest of the garment. Oh, well. At least the mending in the fabric near the sleeve cuffs doesn't show up quite so starkly, as I was able to do a simple weave repair from the inside.

I tried it on and thought it wasn't too bad a job, except...I was a lot larger when I knitted this thing. It's more oversized on me now than I like any garment to be. What to do?

Pam would call the men in the white coats to come and get me if she knew what I was doing with that sweater right now.

It's in the dryer. On medium heat, not air fluff or low. I WANT this thing to shrink! But being as it's good old Bartlett yarn from Maine, it probably won't shrink much at all. In fact, I have tried this tactic in the past, with minimal success, but those times I was afraid to take too much of a risk, and set the dryer on low heat. There will still be plenty of room for me to move in it, when all's said and done.

I'm happy I finally made those repairs. Too big or not, it will be nice to be able to wear this one again, come winter.

And winter WILL come again. On a day like today, I need to be reminded of that.

OK, I Know...

This is juvenile of me. REALLY juvenile. But in a chat with a friend this afternoon, I forget how the subject came up, but I asked if he had ever heard "Ooh, Girl -- An Honest R & B Song." He had not!

It's a funny listen, but it's even funnier with the video.

Juvenile, juvenile, juvenile...but so well done, I can't help but laugh my arse off every time I see it.

Families...oy veh...

Thank God for the non-biological family members we choose for ourselves over the years! I honestly don't know what I would do without such people. Maybe it isn't so for other people -- and lucky you if it's not -- but it seems like all I get from biological family members is pain, and a heavy-duty sense of guilt and obligation.

I'm not talking about my husband and/or kids, though sometimes relations with all of them can be a bit of a mine-field. No.

Once again, I am schmerzing about a sibling relationship that will just never be what it once was, no matter how much I believe that things could change for the better. It's over. It's done with. And if I don't let it be over and done with, and persist in holding on to this ridiculous hope of mine, I'm just going to keep getting hurt. Over and over and over again.

Stupid of me to let my guard down. Stupid of me to trust. I walked right into it face-first. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

But it did look like things were changing for the better, and I wanted so badly to believe it was true.

STUPID!!!!!!

Time to rebuild the Wall, and hope to God it stays up this time.