Competition

18 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by Stephanie in creativity, fabric, planning, Uncategorized

There are different types of competition: competition with oneself, competition with others, competition between competing fabrics and colours…

Hint hint.

I am getting serious about boxer short making in a significant way:

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I had run out of elastic so I went to buy the elastic stash of Gianni’s dreams for him today at lunch.

But something happened along the way…

In spite of my best intentions, elephant-coloured linen gained an immediate and fearsome competitor:

Oh no…

Here it is being moody:

The DSLR makes such a difference, but it is rarely convenient to pull it out. Isn’t this a glorious colour – streaked with something dark and moody, but still rich and bright?

I really feel badly about this. I was determined to not buy any more fabric. I’ve been good this year. I bought one extra piece of the brown linen to finish the shirt dress, but otherwise I have been using up fabric I already had rather than buying new. The same is true for yarn, except for that small slip when I was in Michigan (socks! repatriation of Lichens and Lace hand-dyed!).

I make the rationalizations that I can make.

I’m a better girlfriend than I was even a few days ago, which is a small consolation. 🙂 More on this later in the week.

Green and blue are also competing for my attention. I am leaning towards a simplified version of the sweater I had intended to make this summer. I have a lot of that blue on the right, although I wish I had more shades of green. I need to wear more green. There was a post on a knitting blog I enjoy reading about shades of blue the other day. I love blue, clearly, and wear a lot of it, but I was triggered to think of something by something a commentator to the post wrote: “Blue is the colour of love in France.”

I don’t know if that is true, but it seems possible. I realized that for me the colour of love is the deep green of the forests that I love so well; the green of leaves after the rain, set against a dark grey sky; the green of Gianni’s eyes. (My dad’s eyes were green, too.)

Burda vintage skirt I made two years ago. The jacket was even cut out but I never sewed it. The shame! The shame! The skirt is going to Italy as it won the war with the new brown linen skirt, which is a bit on the heavy side. This one is light and airy, even though underlined with organza. I love it.

I will have a few days in which to think about these things as I don’t think I’ll take any knitting or sewing to Italy, although I will take my embroidery things. I am working on an idea that I need to see to fruition. I have been drawing nearly every day and that is such an invigorating thing. I am taking my writing notebook, too.

Elephants, colours of love; the competition of joyful, creative play; and the liminal stage of flight (of a giant metal bird, not me).

See you on the other side of the Atlantic. 🙂

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I saw a Vespa in a parking lot today…and then a few moments later a guy bicycled by with a canoe paddle attached to his bicycle:

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Stuck; hot dogs

07 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by Stephanie in creativity, Debugging Creativity, dresses, Uncategorized

≈ 14 Comments

I must have at least eighteen posts in the archive with an analogous title. I’m not even going to check! I think that “stuck” should become my middle name, rather than the rather mellifluous one I actually bear.

Do you feel that way too? I know a few of you have indicated that you also have problems getting started.

I find that I have too much choice. That’s a sad, first-world problem to have. Someone approached me this week about a new job. It’s a very interesting job, and that’s the problem. This happens to me about once every month or two. I don’t say that to suggest that I am hot stuff of any kind, but when you have been around a while and people know that you are reliable and rigorous you come up on people’s lists when they are looking to fill a position. The problem is that I have enough imagination that I can almost always find something exciting about every opportunity, so I stew about it for a long while. I am not really looking to change position at the moment, since an aura of relative calm has finally descended on mine after a difficult year, so that should likely be the answer. But for the meanwhile I am stuck in imagining the life I would have if I were in that other place.

(Aside: This morning I was reading Monty Don’s A French Garden Journey that my mom passed to me at the cottage last week and started thinking I should look for a job in France. Ahem. Too much curiosity; too much desire.)

I find it much more difficult to release myself from stewing and ruminating about what to make next. One thing I really dislike about myself is the way that stacks of things pile up in my sewing or knitting space. I pull things out of their rightful storage places because I am interested in making them, or working with them, and then another idea comes up and I stack that one on top of it, not yet putting the other one away because it’s as though I am not yet ready to “release” that idea to the wilderness. (Elizabeth Gilbert has the idea (in her book Big Magic, which I really enjoyed) that ideas are floating around in the universe waiting to alight on someone who will take them and run with them. She tells a weird but compelling story about a book she started to write and then lost the thread of when life intervened, only to discover that another famous author had written a book in the meanwhile with a similar, obscure premise.) I don’t really care much if someone takes up an idea of mine or one that I was going to work with, although for a while there was someone who used to regularly pick up ideas from my blog and it annoyed me, although I don’t read that blog anymore so have no idea if that is still the case. I’ve come to a much calmer place on that one because in the end it is flattering if someone thinks your ideas are worth elaborating on, and we all have a different perspective/take anyhow, so why not share? To believe the contrary is to believe that there is not enough space for all of us with our own unique takes on the same subject, which is clearly flawed.

I get so annoyed with myself over a cluttered work table because I really love the feeling of a “clean start” that a clean work table gives me. On the other hand, I have never had a fully clean desk and I find I don’t always trust people with hyper clean work spaces as much as I do people with slightly more cluttered work spaces (there’s a limit to this though, as even I am disgusted by a dirty work space and so I make a point of cleaning up my desk every Friday night before I leave work). I think this association is wrong and must bear some bias associated with a few of the cleverest people I know, who all seem to have piles of paper stacked up in their offices. I think I have grown to believe that insight is linked to mess, which is likely not true at all. I need to broaden my sample.

I also need to clean off my work table, immediately, so I can get started on something this weekend, rather than staring at five potential things and being paralyzed about what to actually do.

This past week we had a heat wave, with very hot and humid weather (36 C). I am strange in that I don’t believe in air conditioning (and not only because something I have worked on at various points is climate change issues). I much prefer to have windows open and to hear cicadas and wind rustling tree leaves. I feel claustrophobic I suppose when the windows are shut. It doesn’t feel like how we are supposed to live. On the other hand, it was so hot and breezeless Thursday evening before a cool front finally blew in that I was actually in misery. Thus, no making and very little thinking got done, other than “I’m so hot I can’t breathe. Where’s that darn cold front they have been talking about?”

I mention the heat because it was so hot that I paraded out of my closet this week the various dresses I have made in the last few years. Sometimes I look in my closet and think that the things I’ve made are perfectly useless, as I “never” wear them, but then that very hot week of the summer arrives and they are completely necessary and I thank myself for taking the time to make them. The first one was the green linen dress, which I still really love:

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Lesley gave me significant help with fitting the bodice and it still fits perfectly. I consider that bodice-making session a breakthrough in terms of learning how to fit my upper body.

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The second dress was the Valentino one I made for SWAP a couple of years ago:

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I made it because I love the pockets with included belt loops (I am attracted to clever features that don’t take away from the overall design), but I find this one significantly more boring, perhaps because of the colour. I still feel very put together when I wear it, actually, on the other hand.

Probably the most comfortable of the dresses I have made in the last few years (other than this spring’s brown linen one) is this one:

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This is not a flattering picture, in the garden of the Palazzo Corsini for last year’s Artisan’s fair, so you’ll have to trust me that the dress is pretty flattering. Of all of the things I’ve made, I probably get the most compliments when I wear this dress. It’s interesting. It’s silk and smooth and very comfortable – and the fabric is more robust than I had expected, without any pulls so far – and the pattern interesting. You may recall me making it last year and fussing with how I was chopping up the “picture frames” in the fabric pattern.

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I think in a way this highlights the contrast between what I usually gravitate towards wearing – subdued, single-colour things – to the more vibrant and chaotic things that may match certain aspects of my personality more fully.

Incidentally, I have worn the brown linen dress only once so far this year, but I would declare it a success. I’m not sure it’s crisp enough for a work dress, so I will reserve it for casual wear. I’ll be in Florence in mid-month, so for sure I will wear it there, perhaps for Gianni’s birthday dinner evening. I will definitely get a photo to share at that time, in case you are interested in the pattern. If I were to make it again in a stretch cotton satin, for example, I think I would size down the next time, although for the linen version I made the size works perfectly (38 Burda, with a few adjustments in the bust, waist and length).

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A success, though only suitable for some venues.

I feel as though the fact that I like wearing dresses should guide my sewing choices a bit more often. Perhaps I should be investing in making more dresses, especially dresses for seasons other than our fleeting summer.

Thoughts are always welcome. How do you get unstuck? (Other than what I do, which is reverting to the default of knitting, which is easiest for me. Right now I’m choosing between a trout hat and the Emily Carr sweater, but both will get done this summer for sure).

What’s happening in your world?

For the meanwhile I have abandoned the sewing in of ends on the hat, although there is only a small section left to do. I am confident that I will have this done to wear in fall. 🙂

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I think it’s really cute and will look cuter when blocked, so that’s a start.

Another cute thing: One of my neighbours left a bowl of water out at the street for passing dogs. Shops do this in my neighbourhood, but I though it very cute that someone thought of the poor, hot dogs.

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Spontaneity

04 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by Stephanie in Canada, creative process, creativity, knitting, summer, toques, Uncategorized

≈ 15 Comments

Crooked horizon! I was trying to kayak at the time. 🙂

Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I’m frightened by the devil
And I’m drawn to those ones that ain’t afraid
I remember that time that you told me, you said
“Love is touching souls”
Surely you touched mine ’cause
Part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time

~ Joni Mitchell, A Case of You (one of my all-time favourites)

You might have guessed, but aside from the wild blueberry pie (note that the “wild” is the important part – tiny and flavourful and only found in exactly this season), I had a great weekend. Although it was very hot, the key to the great weekend was in part that I created something as I would have as a child. I did not think about it very much.

One thing I have struggled with in the last few years is following through on ideas that I have. This has been obvious from my track record of making. To some extent changing one’s mind is perfectly reasonable – ideas often shower themselves on one, and only a few have staying power – but I have been particularly unwilling to make the first cut or commit something to paper. Part of the problem has been my complete denial of how busy my life is relative to my natural energy levels, and therefore how much energy I truly have to devote to making, but another part has been a second-guessing; a doubt; a waiting for the perfect approach to appear. Perhaps I was just looking for a reason to be wrong. This past weekend I just picked up the needles and went for it.

Why did this happen? I suspect it was the “sweet doing nothing” that I undertook last week. I’ve always known in running that it’s much more effective to run hard and then treat the rest phase as equally important. Ellie reminded me of this again last week – thank you, Ellie! I’m now quite convinced that that is also true of everything else. I only wonder why I was so slow to figure this out.

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Early morning knitting in bed. Why not?

Cottage breakfast – coffee and wonky knitting!

I started working on a knitted hat because it was small and portable, which is important with travel. On Friday, before leaving for the cottage, I suddenly had the thought that I would like to knit pine trees using three shades of green. The problem is that I wanted to knit them side by side, which is not something that really works with the way that one knits! This is why people use colours in stripes, which is easy from a technical point of view as you just knit with the same colour from one side to the other and then switch to another colour at the beginning of another row. Alternately, knitters knit in fair isle or stranded methods, which are particularly clever. Good fairisle mixes colours in subsequent rows in a way that produces designs that look beautiful without being complicated to knit, as typically only two colours are worked in one row and the yarn is carried over only a few stitches. One can use the intarsia technique to “solve” my problem, which I did, but it would have been better in this case to knit the hat flat. Basically, I did everything in a silly way. And the funny thing is that I started knitting the trees and with the first row of the greens I realized how stupid the method was that I was using. I could have at that point switched to a different method – knitting sideways, or knitting flat and seaming later – but something told me to just keep going with it in the inefficient way. I wanted to feel the process with my hands and also to do something that I would not normally do, which is finish something spontaneously. I realized subsequently that a nice way to do the trees would be to use two shades of green in a given row, e.g., in fair isle knitting, giving the trees added texture at the same time. Maybe the next time! But in short: it’s fine to make things messy and go for messy with intention. While I was doing it I was thinking about all of the clever knitters who came up with nice work arounds to common problems, realizing that someone had to do what I was doing at some point in order to motivate the finding of a better way…

Likewise, I didn’t think much about the design elements. Dagmar pointed out to me that the perspective with the trees and the horizon could be better, and the trees could have different shapes, to render them more realistic, which are both facts. At the time, however, I was making it up as I went along, which meant that I wasn’t really thinking of the whole thing as a picture to fit together. As I mentioned to her, I was particularly pleased with the unexpected effect that the birds seem to make when the hat is actually on a three-dimensional head – they seem to swirl and fly the way they would in real life. I know this will make me happy. I could treat this hat as a study and make a series of different ones, improving the perspective and trees and sunset, the way that a painter would do a series of studies of the same subject, working out the perspective, but I won’t, at least for now. (And not only because I am already trying to put together that “trout” hat I have been talking about forever! I simply must.)

I am inspired to knit trout, and not only because I spent some time staring at this charming map of the lake, including the fish species to be found, the aquatic vegetation, the timber and the density thereof!

The main reason that I won’t redo anything is that I really like the way this project made me feel – as though I was engaging spontaneously with the feeling that I had that I wanted to record, exactly as it was, the lovely weekend and joyful celebration of family summer vacation, which happened to fall on a national holiday. My mom and her husband are healthy and in good shape, but I am aware that they are in their seventies and I am approaching my fifties, and things won’t always be the same. My step-father, the sailor, can still teach me about all things boats and my mom is still the vibrant antiques hunter, textile creator and gardener-creative cook. I think I have truly learned by this point in life – as hopefully we all do – how to occasionally actually walk the walk and live in this moment, because this moment is often pretty great.

Not that I’m trying to be too sincere or sappy….I have been accused of that at times, but if it relieves the sap I will tell you that as I took a photo of my family over their Canada Day dinner I yelled, “Smile! You are only half as old as Canada!” My mom was not pleased (although a fully true statement!) with the effect of semi-spitting out her drink, but the photo is a classic! Not sappy at all. (My mother’s favourite photo of me is on the cottage wall, in which it is snowing and I am wearing a parka with a giant fur hood framing my face. We’re just odd. What can I say?)

So the pain of knitting this hat is what is happening in the finishing stages, but even the finishing stages are giving me more joy than they should. Here it is, half-finished on the inside. After I bathe it it should look a bit smoother. I am definitely not recommending that you ever make something using this particular child-pasting-macaroni-to-paper-in-tree-shape technique, but then again if it floats your boat, do!

One thing I did like as I was making this was the harmony of the colours, including the café au lait stripe that is the ground on which the trees sit. I was momentarily worried that I was turning this into a desert environment, without including the lake, but again, maybe next time. Hopefully the Canada geese render the place a bit more recognizable.

This is the inside of the part that I have sewn the ends in on…As Ceci offered, kindly, it should be warm!

This is the part I have yet to weave…Oy! But less than half. I’m a glass is half full type.

And yes, I still have a solar Santa on my windowsill.

In the limit, this has provided me with a bit of a road map (of what not to do) as I undertake my sweater paintings to come. I have realized of late that I really don’t need any more basic sweaters, so the only thing I really want to knit is sweater paintings in my own experimental style for a while. I think this is a healthy, creative phase.

I also need to do some sewing, as I need a new dress.

Do you also enjoy this freestyle, creating like a child? Or do you have to go back and correct it or redo? I think there is a real argument for sticking with the same thing and redoing, toiling repeatedly, etc., etc. I remember a friend (you may know who you are!) commenting on someone else’s blog about how one of the mistakes that many seamstresses make is probably of not sticking with something long enough until they get it right – or better – because it’s through the not giving up and trying things again that we learn how to get things right. I wholeheartedly agreed (the perfectionist in me would!).

The Ides of March

18 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by Stephanie in creativity, March, spring, Uncategorized, winter

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

ides of March, linen, progress

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I was just thinking the other day that we were in the Ides of March (the 15th, technically). The Romans believed it was the time to settle debts, which is interesting given that our national financial fiscal year ends at the end of March (certainly a vestige of being a British colony and the whole ecclesiastical calendar thing, when New Year used to fall on March 25). Caesar had a little bit of trouble in March. March “comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.” I’ve never thought much about March before – waiting through it and hoping it will just go away – but intuitively I see it as a bumpy month. I suppose I should try to think my way into liking March by appreciating the vernal equinox, which is to come on Tuesday. It won’t feel like spring here for another month, but at least it’s trying.

And so am I!

Your bum looks better on a bike. Not sure about that.

I walked through a working class neighbourhood yesterday, with early twentieth century houses that have mostly seen better days. But the sky was blue and the sun high in the sky.

After a long winter, it feels almost unreal to think of the spindly branches of trees coming alive with green and the sounds of birds trying to feed (and mate), but it won’t be too long now.

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I remind myself that I hate it when birds mate and poop all over my verandah.

Thanks to the Paris Review, here are some other March proverbs, less well known:

So many mists in March you see / So many frosts in May will be.

A Peck of March-Dust, and a Shower in May / Makes the Corn green, and the Fields gay.

March many-Weathers rain’d and blow’d / But March grass never did good.

I’m not sure I have much to add to the lore of March, but I do look forward to being safely arrived in April and beyond.

In the beyond, I foresee linen:

I cut out the brown linen skirt yesterday, with an underlining of bemberg in a similar tone that I had in stash (the fabric resource centre). It’s kind of a test case as I plan to make my shirt dress in the same fabric, and I want to decide whether to underline it or not. The linen is almost opaque, but not quite. I have underlined linen in bemberg before and it has the advantage of feeling soft and smooth over the skin, even in summertime. The alternative for the shirt dress is to underline in a lightweight cotton, in a similar colour. I will consider that option. Dagmar had an intriguing suggestion which was to not underline at all but rather create a light white cotton slip dress to wear underneath. I think that would be lovely, but I am not sure whether I am too lazy to do that. I will think about it. The skirt should help me to decide.

My knitting design is also coming along, but I am going to hold those cards closer to my chest for now. 🙂 It’s an adventure.

I saw this ad for a camera the other day and it made me smile in recognition of myself. On the other hand, sometimes compromise is necessary. I’m still at war with myself over when that might be.

Updated: This seems like more of a safely-in-April topic, but I watched a program about Anna Maria Garthwaite the other evening, in which they talked about her becoming a famous designer for the Spitalfields silk industry in the mid-eighteenth century. I snapped this photo:

She made detailed watercolours that were then converted to instructions for the weavers. The textiles were worn on both sides of the Atlantic and very popular. This was quite an achievement for a woman of the period and yet despite her fame and financial success she herself remains more or less an enigma. I particularly enjoyed this article that I read about her designs afterwards. I am not a huge fan of wearing botanical prints, but I have always loved them for my walls. Something I found very interesting in the article was the bit about aloes and how a woman might use the design on her dress to interject her knowledge of exotic plants into conversation. Interesting! I would love it if someone were to start a conversation about beaver with me, but it hasn’t yet occurred…

Updated again because I forgot to add that I watched the film Call Me by Your Name yesterday, which I quite liked. I’m sure you have heard of it, given the Oscar buzz. I loved the Italian setting and loved the parents of the main character. The mother wore great 1980s outfits, generally featuring oversized shirts and shorts with large leather belts.

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Not a great photo, but she is wearing oversized shorts and an oversized silk shirt, both in a classic tan, and I think she has on a braided leather belt that is wide and crosses over in front. I think we are due for an ’80s revival.

The Power of Lost Things

09 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by Stephanie in colour, creativity, planning, Uncategorized

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

colour, fabric, imagination, plum, sewing

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The December Reflections photo prompt yesterday was green.

You might have figured out by now that I almost never plan my posts. When I have in the past, they came out dry and indigestible. I am simply not a planner of a writer; I am a spontaneous writer. This stands in stark contrast to my endless list making! Unfortunately, I will never be a journalistic blogger, able to inform.

I began thinking about certain lost features of my youth on Thursday afternoon, but before I tell you about that, I want to tell you about yesterday afternoon. It was late in the afternoon and I was ready to enjoy the weekend – that delicious feeling of darkening the door of home in the knowledge that one has a whole evening and two days in which to sew, knit, frolic, write, dream (Unravelling 2018, anyone?) – when I noticed a message flashing on my phone. I checked the message and the rather unusual request was trying to retrieve something that I’d had for many years but rarely used – entrusted to me – that someone was hoping to pass on to someone important. As this thing itself is rather important – cough cough – and I was pretty sure that it was at home (but where? but where?), I felt an immediate sinking feeling in my stomach. I presumed that I would spend the entire weekend tearing up my new apartment, trying to find this thing…

The punch line is that I got home and it took me all of two minutes – maybe even thirty seconds – to find the object, because I always seem to use a certain logic when I store things (there are perks to being mildly obsessive compulsive – he he). Of course, being the person I am, I had stored said object in a Tic Tac box, in one of my older jewellery boxes, which in retrospect is not an entirely sensible place to hide an important object. In fact, I have no idea how I even came into possession of a Tic Tac box, but I’m pretty sure it must have been Gianni’s, because on the day that he returns to Italy my dresser is usually littered with gum and other novel-to-him products that he finds while here, which he samples and then leaves behind him! This is also how I have come into possession of two pairs of rubber overshoes with spikes on them, which you can put over your shoes for walking on ice. OK, so those can be more useful than Tic Tacs, but really it is almost never THAT icy that one can wear them for more than a few meters. But I digress.

I suppose the point of this is that lost objects can have enormous sway – enough to potentially ruin a weekend – even though before they were missed they had no impact whatsoever.

I had a similar experience on Thursday. I came by a new acquaintance via an unexpected channel. I had understood that this young person wanted to chat with me about sewing, which piqued my interest, and in any case if someone match-makes me with someone I am always going to honour the invitation in any case. It turns out that it was a young woman who had only recently taken up sewing, but I was impressed by her enthusiasm and engagement. She had already taken a basic pattern drafting course and is already planning much more ambitious undertakings, involving clients! What confidence! What vigour! She said she had made eight things in the last month, including Christmas gifts. I had to tell her that she already has significantly more ambition and motivation than I have!

(And all of this happened after I wrote the post about everyone being a crafting genius except for me. :()

What really struck me though was that she reminded me very much of me at the same age (honestly, she even looks a little bit like I did at that age). At that age I went crazy for sewing, buying pretty much the whole Vogue catalogue and destroying fine fabric and my mother’s den with my “sewing.” I was not intimidated by anything. I often think I have that general attitude, but in practice it can no longer be true because I stall and second-guess myself so often. It’s clear that something has been lost – something that that young woman has – and I immediately wanted it back again. It’s as though the strange coincidence that introduced me to someone new was a helpful reminder that we can recognize other, more confident versions of ourselves in the blink of an eye. Don’t they say that hanging around young people is good for you as you get older?

But on a more disturbing note, I seem to have lost all of my thread in colours appropriate to my planned sewing for this weekend and this SWAP. I spent some time last evening going through my thread bin and I can’t find anything remotely plum-like. Maybe I only imagined that I had bought plum thread, and I’m searching in vain. It’s entirely possible. Maybe I called on the plum thread fairy in my dreams and she did my bidding but then forgot to do the task during waking hours. I discovered that I have a lot of grey and blue thread, which looks to me today like winter grime and dull, sunless skies that contain sun for such a short number of hours. It’s time to move into a new family of colours. Recently I decided that I needed some new running clothing for winter and for cross-country skiing, because the last time I purchased something to wear for winter running It was about 2004. (I tend to wear my gear for a very long time.) I know that one can make running clothing, but honestly that bug hasn’t yet hit me (like the bra-making bug). I popped into my favourite running supply store and immediately purchased this jacket (made by a Norwegian snowboard clothing company), which was on a clearance rack:

I bought it because of the orange zipper, to be honest (I have a secret desire to wear orange), and the pink in person is more of a raspberry colour than a hot pink colour. Nevertheless I swear that I run faster in this jacket than in any other jacket, and smile at everyone I pass by…wave at cars…I’m like a politician on campaign! And on a grey day it even makes me feel more motivated to leave the house and run. Colour, oh how I love you! Why have I neglected you?

Moreover, I have always been incredibly averse to pink. It’s true. Something about pink has always rubbed me the wrong way. I once went shopping with a girlfriend who had studied fashion. I remember her saying to me, “You know, you look great in rose.” “Rose?” I replied, with an aggrieved look on my face, and then never bought anything even remotely rose-coloured over the last decade. I am now self-improving, on my own shambolic timeline.

Here is the jacket next to the fabric I am planning to sew into a skirt this weekend:

I think my wardrobe is about to be filled with plums and browns and greys and greens. It’s absolutely lovely to abandon blue for a while.

Doesn’t the forest fabric look amazing against the plum coating that I have been hanging on to for several years?

Laying all of the fabric out. Kindly ignore the fact that the curtains are pinned. I do not feel like hemming curtains. I think it shows enough industry that I put up a curtain rod and hung them. 🙂

These colours! I have so many ideas! I have a great and extremely extravagant idea for the Liberty floral fabric, using Dagmar’s idea of combining the fabric with other fabrics with other textures. I am excited about that blouse.

The assembly!

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Although this looks like more of my usual non-sewing fabric shifting around, in reality I spent Thursday evening preparing the skirt pattern, so I am ready to go (once I am furnished with thread). I was going to sew last evening but a friend invited himself over for dinner and that is OK. I wanted to give him his Christmas book, which I bought yesterday (a very interesting book by Jenny Erpenbeck on the subject of refugees in Germany). Unfortunately, I can’t ever go into a bookstore to buy a book for someone else without buying something for myself, so I now have this. I was going to save it for the plane ride to Italy but unfortunately she is just too good of a writer for me to wait. At least it matches my fabrics! You should always match your books to your outfits.

Wow, that was more rambling than usual and the writing is littered with exclamation points! Oh well!

Off to the sewing supply store to furnish myself with the appropriate notions and catch snowflakes with my tongue. Happy crafting weekend, you fiber geniuses; you champions of self-compassion and creativity!

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PS I chased this man down the street this week because I loved that he was wearing a brown coat in a rich material, rather than the standard uniform of black everywhere around me. Gianni would have said, That colour is like the colour of baby poo! I wholly disagree!

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I also loved this yellow bicycle. You may have observed that our snow has melted for the time being, although large flakes are falling outside the window as I write.

I really have absolutely no idea what this poster is advertising. Someone suggested the skating rink on Parliament Hill. I need to bring my skates to work next week.

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“What though the sea with waves continuall
Doe eate the earth, it is no more at all;
Ne is the earth the lesse, or loseth ought:
For whatsoever from one place doth fall
Is with the tyde unto another brought:
For there is nothing lost, that may be found if sought.”
― Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

The Art of Being Satisfied I

04 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by Stephanie in creativity, reflection, Uncategorized

≈ 19 Comments

I’m not exactly sure why I am so keen on writing about this topic. It’s not as though I am a self-help guru or anything like that. In fact, even I, with my tendencies, tend to think that a lot of self-help expressed out loud sounds kind of ridiculous (even though so many basic principles that people go on about are sound – being present, not comparing yourself with others, etc.).

I often think of my grandmother and how she used to say, “One door closes; another door opens.” Whenever I have to go through a change of some kind I hear her saying that in my ear. And then I hear her mother saying that in her ear. My great-grandmother had a window at which she washed dishes. She was a great reader and would write out things she had read and liked and would pin them to the curtains by the window so she could ponder as she washed. Pondering. Gee, the great grand apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

So I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be satisfied lately. I’ve always found it funny in this crafting blog-o-sphere that we are always running towards the next thing. When do we stop and just enjoy what we have? When do we enjoy the fruits of our labour and say, “OK, I have enough now”? Or is it happy evidence that we are not depressed when we are always running towards the next new thing?? (I’ve actually wondered if when my creative malaise set in a bit earlier this year I wasn’t low-grade depressed.)

During my recent apartment search I have reflected on this further. I went to see a number of places in August and looked at countless listings. Each time I thought, “This is very nice, but it doesn’t feel right.” Eventually I asked myself the question, “What is essential in a place for me? What is enough?” My list was pretty simple in the end, and made me realize that I don’t need all of that space and any of the fancy stuff that someone of my age and income is supposed to want. What I do need:

Ideally I could continue to walk to work (skate to work during the winter). I think because I grew up in a big city where everyone commutes…I don’t like commuting other than by my own locomotion. I know not everyone has that choice, but to the extent that I can make it, that’s my lifestyle. I’m really happy when I set out in the morning and when I am meandering home at night.
One space in which I can sit and look out at trees or a garden, which rules out high-rises for me and also one of the reasons why I haven’t purchased a condo in the city like most of my other single colleagues. When I’m at home I’m usually sitting in a room with the window open and a view of trees, unless I’m sleeping or in a place where I have to put, say, my sewing machine. The sound of wind in the trees is really, really important to me.
Enough space in my bedroom so that I don’t feel cramped. I need some place that is airy. I hate bumping into my bed or a dresser.
A distinct place for my art/craft/sewing.
Nice neighbours, obviously, in a pleasant neighbourhood. I have the loveliest neighbours now, whom I will miss.

And that is it. I don’t need a significant laundry space or a huge kitchen, or a walk-in shower or room for an entertainment centre. I don’t even need a tv, actually. I really don’t care that much about my appliances other than that they aren’t energy guzzlers. In short, I guess I’m not a decorator. I never use half of the space that I currently have. When I retire I plan to have a tiny apartment in Florence with a view over the red rooftops and a little house in the country with a big plot of land, so I can have an apple orchard (or, if in Italy, olive trees and a few alpaca). In short, it seems that the outside is more important to me than the inside. And that’s OK. That may not be “normal,” but it’s me. It’s good to recognize that about oneself, as it certainly makes things easier. (I think the real dream might be to live in a tree house.)

But then here I am, whipping up hats galore and planning a small clothing collection for myself for the fall. I have my dress cut out, but it will have to get sewn when I get back from Florence. Right now, I am working on boxer shorts for Gianni. I feel like an incredible slug for not having sewn a bunch of them up for him after I worked out the pattern earlier this year. They don’t take much time and he has asked me a bunch of times. He really appreciates everything I make for him and he always does so many nice things for me that I really ought to make something nice for him every month. Yesterday, I got home and picked up the phone to check my messages and there was a typical message from Gianni: no words, only music. Someone was playing something lovely on the street so he called so that I could hear the music, too. From buying my favourite oatmeal and herbal tea so that that is waiting for me when I get to Florence, to simply making me laugh out loud most days, he deserves as many boxers as his heart desires, don’t you think?

This is the ugliest fabric, but the softest, silkiest cotton. Yes, the sewing machine actually came out late last night. Look at those flat-felled seams! Of course I couldn’t remember how I’d sewed the first pair, so I wasted some time thinking about that.

In sum, I don’t know if I will ever be satisfied. I am a striver. I always feel that I should be doing something more, somewhere. Right now, I’m working towards creating the “quartet” of hats (I’m making “winter”). New ideas keep on coming to me and I want to make more after this one. It seems pathological. I’ve sketched out mini cardinal birds that I want to knit into the fairisle motif on this one.

“Winter” hat. The idea is that it will be in soft greys and winter grey-pinks, with deep red accents standing in for berries and cardinal birds. We’ll see… I love making these hats so I am thinking I might make a few for a Christmas charity this year.

When I get back, after the dress, I think Lesley has nudged me into making shirts. She has made a bunch of lovely ones and now I want to copy some of the features she has put on hers. I think I must be more suggestible with respect to fashion trends than I had thought, because lately instead of my usual pin stripes I’ve been reaching for my old but never retired Liberty shirts:

I hung onto them even though I went off florals for a while (now they are back with a vengeance, but I think the florals are more “Renaissance” and larger), because the fabric is of such high quality that they don’t wrinkle much at all. That’s a great feature in a shirt, if you ask me. I actually wore the bright pink/purple one yesterday.

I hope Lesley won’t mind if I blatantly copy her in this. Sometime I want to write about imitation. I would never call myself a trendsetter (in fact the thought is laughable! Beaver sweaters for all!), but occasionally I find that there is someone who copies my ideas or draws from my ideas regularly and I find it kind of irritating. I try to look the other way, as really imitation is the sincerest form of flattery as they say, but somehow it feels invasive. I think I need to work on my zen in regard to this. There was a woman I worked with once who copied me quite literally and it drove me crazy. If I cut my hair she would get the same haircut. She would always ask me where I had bought my clothes. One day she showed up at work with the exact same, distinctive shirt. It’s OK, I guess, but kind of creepy, too. I’ve always felt that the objective of everything – whatever hobby it is, or work – should be to tease out who you are, rather than trying to capture something unique that someone else has. I think there’s some room for thought in there, as usual.

Well, that was of course longer than I had intended. Be well.

Ah.. the loveliest thing happened on the way to work. Two ladies stopped me to ask me what type of tree a tree was that they were admiring. (It was a chestnut.) They were so admiring of the tree that we stood and gazed at it together.

Date your inner artist

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by Stephanie in artistic inspiration, creativity, Debugging Creativity, inspiration, Uncategorized

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

artist dates, inspiration, Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way, turtles

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I’m on a roll, I know. Ignore, at will.

I was taking a walk this afternoon (it’s a lovely day, although maybe a bit too hot for me), when I had a thought that brought a broad smile across my face.

Yesterday, I wrote about “something small.” I quoted Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way, which is a book I have referred to frequently over the years. Two of the key pieces of advice that she offers to people who want to unblock their creative selves are 1) to write “morning pages,” which are three pages of stream of consciousness writing, preferably done when you first wake up (basically a brain dump); and 2) to take yourself on “artist dates.”

Morning pages I have done quite a bit over the years. They are supposed to produce magic, but usually I find that I am just writing all kinds of the same crap over and over again. I already know the contents of my own mind all too well (I do author this blog, after all). That said, she acknowledges that much will be crap, but she suggests that by the third page and as you do them consistently over time, you may start asking yourself the really key questions (the ones you’ve overlooked over the years). I started thinking about this point again when reading the book I mentioned over the weekend, Paris Letters, because probably the best part of that book is not the Paris part, at least if you’re not a Francophile. It’s the part that takes place when she’s in Los Angeles in the beginning, and she uses this journal writing exercise to find the key question she was looking for: How much money does it take to quit your job? The way that she goes about answering this question at the heart of her desires is quite pragmatic. The fact that she goes about finding a realistic solution to her problem and then goes about creating an ordinary life and a new career is much more doable than Elizabeth Gilbert’s large book advance in order to write Eat Pray Love. Her trajectory is perhaps not quite as interesting as Elizabeth Gilbert’s, at least for me, but I am sure I liked the story as much as I did because I am intrigued by not the man-finding part but the part about becoming a person who writes and paints for a living.

I don’t want to write about morning pages in this entry, although I just did! I’m going to stick with them for a while to see if I surprise myself. What I did want to write about is the second part of Cameron’s magic formula for finding your clarity and creating momentum. The idea is that you must take yourself on an “artist date,” by yourself, and preferably weekly. This is something you do to feed your inner artist, and in theory you need to do both the morning pages and the artist dates to get the full impact of either. (Cameron refers to this combination of steps as a “radio receiver and a transmitter.” “Doing your morning pages, you are sending – notifying yourself and the universe of your dreams, dissatisfactions, hopes. Doing your artist date, you are receiving – opening yourself to insight, inspiration, guidance.” (Julia Cameron)

The artist date could be going to the art gallery, or simply taking a walk and looking at the flowers that you see on the way. It only needs to be about two hours of time, per week….time “especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness.” The magic is in the intentional and presence aspects of it. This is also effectively what the author of Paris Letters ostensibly did, as she takes the time to write little tidbits about places in Paris while painting small accompanying watercolours.

So my epiphany? I was walking home, thinking about going off on my upcoming canoe trip (not entirely alone, actually, but I will have time alone while away), and I realized that I am taking myself on an artist date. Artist dates are more challenging for most people to stick with as a practice than are morning pages. Most people can find time to scribble a few pages in a journal, but much like going to the gym, I suspect that the artist date is something easy to put off. I was talking to a colleague this morning about how I love Montreal, it’s only two hours away from where I live, and yet I never ever go there other than when I have a professional meeting with someone there. Gianni and I passed through there for dinner last summer, but it was a quickie. I said to my colleague without thinking that I need to book a hotel room for a Saturday sometime and just go. Artist date alert! Artist date! I’d walk through St. Henri and dip in and out of the antique shops there. In the evening I’d walk up the rue St. Denis and plunk myself down in one of the fondue restaurants there (and then gorge myself on fondue). The quartier Mont Royal is always buzzing with activity and through the evening and night there are always interesting people to see. I’d end the evening in a club, listening to live music, or enjoying one of the many festivals Montreal is known for. On Sunday morning I’d run up the mountain, circling the nineteenth century carriage road at the very top bit, that leads to the cross that looks down over Montreal (the part that ascends above the chalet that most tourists go to). Later on I’d go to the amazing library they built in about 2005. Can you think of anything better than taking yourself on an artist date to stuff yourself with fondue and then pretend that you are a nineteenth century carriage horse (who can read!)? No, neither can I. I think I need a new outfit for this. Or Audrey Hepburn sunglasses and a head scarf.

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Maybe a hat?

That is all for today. Consider the treat of giving yourself artist dates, if you can spare the time. When I was younger and did not travel as much, I had artist dates all the time. I was happy as a clam walking to the local coffee shop on a Sunday morning with my morning paper, reading the paper through and then walking to the National Gallery to examine the permanent collection in detail. I did that for ages and it did me good (and it was free to me for the price of a coffee at that time). I have such fond memories of those times and the great enthusiasm that they engendered in me that I am quite sure that this is a technique to stimulate new ideas that will work for me. I’m going to steal away on an artist date or two when I’m in Florence for Gianni’s birthday. He’s only turning an odd number this year, so I think I can be selfish for a day. 😉

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This really gets me excited. Not the turtle. The dates! The dates! When I saw this turtle a couple of weekends ago, I realized that I have spent too much time in the city. My first thought was, “It’s a sculpture. Someone has placed a turtle sculpture in the park. How cool.” Then a man walked up to me and said, “There are a lot of them around this year, because the water’s so high.” “Oh yes,” I mumbled. Eek.

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How do you get yourself unstuck?

The truth about an oeuvre

18 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by Stephanie in art, artistic inspiration, artists, Canada, creative process, creativity, independent women, knitting, painting, Uncategorized, women, writing about art

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

artist oeuvre, artists, Canada, criticism, Emily Carr, independence, Lawren Harris, painting

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The colours aren’t showing accurately in the photo, but I like it anyway.

This is a very short piece that I wrote after I discovered some facts about a famous Canadian artist, as they are pertinent to struggles over the creative process.

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Emily Carr, Odds and Ends, 1939. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain photo. Painting is in the collection of the Art Gallery Greater Victoria. I’m not planning to make this exact painting into a sweater. She painted lots of wonderful forest scenes, with swirling trees and skies, in addition to great works documenting indigenous life on the west coast. I’m really not sure I can figure out how to turn her work into a sweater, but it’s fun to think about it.

Yesterday, I was thinking about Emily Carr, as I struggled again to think about how I’m going to use the greens and blues in my yarn stash to make a sweater inspired by her work, or in the minimum the greens of the forests and blues of the skies. I came across this quote (emphasis mine):

Outstanding events! work and more work! I sat self contained with dogs, monkey* and work- writing into the long dark evenings after painting – loving everything terrifically. In later years my work had some praise and some successes but the outstanding event to me was the doing which I am still at. Don’t pickle me away as done.

~ Emily Carr

*Yes, she was slightly eccentric in her choice of menagerie.

Lawren Harris (also a famous Canadian artist and close friend of Emily), as the artistic executor of her estate, burned some of Emily Carr’s work after her death (as in, relegated some of her work to a bonfire). The linked article argues that perhaps he was justified, as The fact is that, just like the girl with a little curl, Emily Carr could be very, very good or very, very bad as an artist.

As the artistic executor of Carr’s estate it fell upon him to dispose of the several hundred paintings that remained in her studio. Harris divided the work into three categories. One hundred and seventy works, dating from the last fourteen years of Carr’s life, were designated for the “Emily Carr Trust Collection.” Paintings, largely from Carr’s French period, were to be sold through Max Stern’s Dominion Gallery in Montreal to help the Vancouver Art Gallery maintain the Trust Collection. And a third group of paintings and drawings was consigned to a bonfire.

(Source: linked article by Maria Tippett)

Should we get together and have a joint bonfire? Roast marshmallows and make s’mores over the flames? I have a few pairs of trousers, skirts and shirts made over the past few years that can fan the flames.

For clarity, Lawren Harris’s decision did not stem from a lack of respect for her work. In fact, it was likely quite the contrary:

The work of Emily Carr and the circumstances in which it was achieved are unique in Canada. She was a passionate, powerful and creatively determined individual who turned fully to her beloved woods and skies and Native Villages. From the earliest work of her girlhood and on into the work of her last years, in hundreds of paintings and sketches, there unfolds the inner story of a vital adventure, full of intense struggle to achieve and the reward of the living embodiment in paint of her love.

~ Lawren Harris (Source: Emily Carr house website)

My new target is to pursue an “…inner story of a vital adventure, full of intense struggle to achieve and the reward of the living embodiment in paint (fabric/yarn/insert material here) of her love.”

How to shape that one…it’s a tad amibitious. But never say never. I think dreaming big is important. If you fall short, you’ll probably still land further out than you would have had you had more modest ambitions. I’ve often tried to do that in my life, and although I’ve had my big flops, some of the experiences were marvellous (and I have the scars to show).

There’s a severe thunderstorm and tornado warning here, so I’m going to be alternately sewing and listening to the radio to find out if I need to run down to the basement. 🙂 Enjoy your hopefully more peaceful Sunday! I’m terrified of storms, but my more sanguine and also more relaxed mom in the face of inclement weather has reminded me that tornadoes, if they happen, tend to run through a small swath. And I have a basement…

You’ve probably seen this photo in the news already. The most interesting comment I have seen about it is that it is a metaphor for how Canadians are in the world at the moment (in a bubble while there is a tornado brewing everywhere). I have to admit I feel that many of us are living that way in regard to climate change, but let’s not get political!

PS If I don’t write in the next few days, send the local emergency workers to dig me out of my basement. 🙂

Kindness is an act of rebellion

25 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by Stephanie in creativity, Debugging Creativity, Uncategorized

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

creativity, individuality, knitting, presence, sewing, truth

I like to observe random things, which you might have noticed if you read this blog from time to time. There was a lady getting off the train with me when I was in the throes of the beginning of my flu a few weeks ago, who was wearing this button:

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It’s upside down, but take my word for it! Kindness is an act of rebellion.

Yesterday morning I was walking to work and it dawned on me that allowing oneself to take the time to make things is a great act of self-love and kindness. It really is.

I often wonder why I make things, as you know. Lately I’ve been quite ho-hum about what I wear. I don’t crave new clothing and it has been many moons since I craved any special notice or attention for my style. Work is covered, and I feel good about how I present myself, and what I do. I make things for the “other” part of my life.

I was at the theater on Thursday evening, to see a contemporary dance performance. It was incredibly unfortunate as I had forgotten that I had purchased the ticket with friends, hadn’t slept well the night before, and by the third act – some turgid performance with dancers in long robes gesticulating with plastic flowers – I was honestly wishing desperately for this just to be over now so that I could go home and plan my sewing. At the intermission I wrote notes to myself about the strange interaction my friend and I had had with a woman in the audience. As we had entered the theater, we saw a woman with one of those long plastic stickers indicating the size of the pants, still stuck to the length of the back thigh of her pants. We approached her and whispered to her that she had this sticker, but instead of reacting with a “Gee, thanks. Wow. Will slip that off discretely,” she seemed entirely unperturbed and detached from the idea – almost as though she had done it on purpose.

I like to see how people operate in the world. I feel sometimes as though I am floating above and between and around, listening to the murmur of the world and imagining what will happen next before it happens. When you do that you realize how of little of what we worry about matters, and how entertaining the big soup of it all can be. And that includes what we wear. I also noticed that many ladies as old or older than I am had come to the theater in nice dresses and boots. I, on the other hand, was in wool trousers with a shirt and a pullover, of course (!) and I wondered why I can’t even bring myself to dress up for the theater anymore..Am I destined for sparkly, (comfortable) track suits in old age?

My new project, awaiting buttonholes. It turned out so nicely and I love it. It’s wrinkly because it’s linen – glorious linen. I bought the fabric because it reminded me of mattress ticking! As you do!

Yes, even I’m not sure what the point of the last two paragraphs is, other than that I recognize what a gift it is to give yourself the possibility of a creative life – a life of imagination and play and speculation. After my brief white pants interlude, I immediately started on another project, which is a pleasant surprise and which is almost done! It is such a delight to return to the land of dreaming and the slow march of theneedle across the fabric. Why not, I say? I feel excited about the new project. It’s not because the item is a huge standout or going to garner me lots of positive attention anywhere. It’s a completely understated thing, but I love the way I’ve finished the seams, cut the pieces so that the stripes move in a way that I like, and while I was making it I came up with an idea for the pair of pants I will make next. I imagine myself striding through the streets of Florence in this outfit, cool and comfortable and at one with myself and with the flower-scented spring air – as I climb the hill to San Miniato al Monte, through the rose garden, under the wall, up the stairs and up to the panorama.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the function of my clothes-making, in a general way, in that I recognize that I have fallen into a groove of embracing the quirky. Few people are going to see me on the street and think, “Wow, I love the trout vest that lady is wearing! How cool! I want one.” Why do I spend hours trying to figure out how to knit a cardinal into a sweater? (I’m still thinking about my icebergs and yesterday I was standing in the bathroom at work, looking into the mirror and imagining an Emily Carr painting knitted onto my chest. I was literally standing at the mirror, looking at myself, and I could see “Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky” knitted onto my chest.) You just never know when that idea will bloom (or alight on you). You just never know.

scorned Scorned as timber, beloved of the sky. Emily Carr. 1935.

But what is the function of this energy and desire? It’s not to be “cool” in any way. Obviously, I don’t think about that. What I like about these things is that they are a way to wear myself out there in the open on my sleeve – to express my vulnerability, my history and my sense of place and of being. Fashion can’t do that for you as effectively, I think. That’s probably also why the blog is so attractive to me. Because if we can be vulnerable without guise or ruse, even if others may think we are ridiculous, but we feel truthful and expressive of ourselves, I think that’s a beautiful space to be in. What do you think?

Consider this (my) your weekend pep talk. You’re amazing! Even when you make ugly white pants that you can see through – even if you make five pairs of ugly pants in a row and still haven’t figured out how to do something you like better – you’re a creative being and good for you. Gianni’s sister always asks me, “What have you done/seen that is beautiful today?” (Che cosa hai fatto di bello oggi?) It’s just a standard, colloquial Italian way of asking a question about what you’ve done in the day, and I’ve never really reflected on it before this moment, but I think it’s delightful: What have you done/seen that is beautiful today?

Yes, I know, I’m really deep. Back with some substance quite soon. What am I saying? This is substance.

In the Swim

22 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by Stephanie in creativity, design, knitting, SWAP 2017, Uncategorized

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

colourwork, design, intarsia, knitting, stories, stranded, SWAP 2017

Beneath the dreams there is a sensate sea.

~ Joy Kagawa, Obasan*

*This book is about the internment of Japanese Canadians during WWII, so not at all cheerful and not the subject of this post. I read the book in grade school and the language at the beginning stayed with me.

It’s Sunday morning and I’m writing again. You might get the impression that as soon as I grab my morning coffee I feel the urge to write, and that might be true.

When I was about ten I used to complete my work too quickly and so my teacher would always tell me to fill the spare time by writing stories. I don’t remember being particularly interested in those stories, but I would fill pages and pages of paper with endless stories. I wish my teacher had instructed me in the balance between writing and editing, although I will try to keep this brief (unsuccessfully, undeniably!).

I had fully intended to sew yesterday – I even skipped yoga, in spite of my friends’ texts trying to change my mind yesterday morning** – but I started to focus on my knitting and thought it was reasonable to tackle the “fish” vest. I figured that if I had a handle on the fish vest, I could complete it in small increments after work. I can’t get much done on weeknights as I am often home late.

So without further ado…

** I like my yoga class and my yoga teacher, but honestly, I am not an ideal yoga person. There are windows in my classroom and when not downward dogging or planking I am looking out at a park in which people walk their dogs, analyzing people and their dogs and thinking that the class ought to be over soon. Really, a lot of people DO look like their dogs. There is one lady in particular who wears a golden shearling coat and has puffy, bleached blonde hair and a fluffy golden dog with fur booties…

Intarsia versus stranded/fairisle knitting

I was asked in the comments yesterday about the difference between intarsia and stranded knitting, so if it’s helpful to someone I thought I’d write a brief description, starting with stranded knitting, which I am using for my current SWAP 2017 fish vest project. I am not an expert at all in stranded knitting – really just a novice – so I am not someone to turn to for advice. Fair isle is basically stranded knitting but the term is used to refer to knitting in the style of the area of Scotland (Fair Isle, in the Shetland Islands) that it comes from. I rediscovered intarsia a couple of years ago, on the other hand, and enjoy that, so I feel more confident in that domain. Intarsia involves knitting colour blocks or motifs on a sweater rather than smaller more repetitive motifs, and so does not use stranding. Both techniques are referred to as “colour work” or “colour knitting.” There are other colour work techniques but I know nothing about them!

I do not have ancestors from the Shetland Islands, that I know of, but I do have ancestors who came to Canada from Islay (Inner Hebrides). Kate Davies of Kate Davies Designs (popular blog) is in the process of presenting a collection, including colour knitting, that is inspired by Islay. To be perfectly honest, I am not an unreserved fan of KDD, although I know that some people who read this blog are. I don’t want to be unkind or to make conjectures, so I prefer not to share why I hold this opinion, but it is based on a number of observations I have made over the years.

In regard to Fair Isle, Wikipedia says:

Fair Isle is a traditional knitting technique used to create patterns with multiple colours. It is named after Fair Isle, a tiny island in the north of Scotland, that forms part of the Shetland islands. Fair Isle knitting gained a considerable popularity when the Prince of Wales (later to become Edward VIII) wore Fair Isle tank tops in public in 1921. Traditional Fair Isle patterns have a limited palette of five or so colours, use only two colours per row, are worked in the round and limit the length of a run of any particular colour.

Some people use the term “Fair Isle” to refer to any colourwork knitting where stitches are knit alternately in various colours, with the unused colours stranded across the back of the work. Others use the term “stranded colourwork” for the generic technique and reserve the term “Fair Isle” for the characteristic patterns of the Shetland Islands.

I have been knitting for a long time, but that does not mean that I am an expert in knitting. There is always something new to learn. What a boring thing it would be to have hobbies that we had wrapped up into a little bundle and tied a ribbon on. I wouldn’t be very excited by that. I also don’t like thinking of myself as a “master” of any domain. Something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is humility. Someone who is a mentor to me referred to their humility as their best quality as a manager and leader (even though this person is a smart and knowledgeable person). As I come up against various new challenges in my career I find that it can be difficult not to let ego get in the way, but it is essential in so many ways to cultivate humility. I always knew this, but grow in admiration of those who quietly and confidently achieve this. (I will make no political comments at this juncture, although if you’d like to read something on the subject Frank Bruni has a piece in the NYT. :))

So here’s my novice stranded knitting, with fish:

I explained the reasoning behind my choice to knit this flat, etc. etc. in yesterday’s post. The base design is Fyne by Marie Wallin, who is an accomplished Fair Isle knitter. The pattern is free and available on the Rowan website. I am customizing it with my own fish designs.

I’m pretty happy with the fish motifs, although I added too many dots to the fish on the right and obscured the face. Knitting this flat means that I am knitting the back first, however, and therefore can improve the motifs when I knit them on the front!

Obviously this is unblocked, and I worked really hard to keep my stranding even and not too tight, but I am still not perfectly happy with the fish area. I stranded the yarn across the back, twisting the unused background yarn every little while to carry that yarn across the work, which results in a bit of bubbling. If you have tips for improving this I am open to suggestions. I think it’s likely mostly an issue of practise makes perfect.

I also skipped the orange stripe in the middle of the fish, as I was uncertain about it, although I might give this a go for the front. In any case, it has been fun trying something new to me. Overall, I think I’m going to like it. I may end up having to make a second one based on what I learn on the first round.

You can maybe see the non-fish parts a bit more readily in this photo. The yarn is tweedy, so the clarity of the colours is affected by that. The colour in the photo looks a bit off, although you get the idea:

Back to intarsia versus stranded. As I mentioned, stranded knitting involves carrying the yarn in back:

This happens naturally in the pattern other than in the fish block because the pattern changes colour every few stitches. As a result, the areas outside of the fish area are fairly smooth and neat. It’s in the fish area, where I needed to carry the yarn over long stretches of background yarn, that it is not working very well. I wasn’t sure if intarsia would look funny here, however, as the work would be thinner over large stretches (without the stranded yarn doubling up the fabric).

So that brings me to intarsia. Two SWAPs ago, I made the Art Deco sweater, by adapting a Minerva pattern from the 1930s:

Still holding strong after two years of wear. Not bad.

The inside looks like this:

This is the inside of my Art Deco sweater, showing the intarsia technique, i.e. no stranding of yarn across the work.

This is intarsia, which is done by adding in yarn at the point at which you knit colour blocks. The ends are then woven in later on. You do this because it would be messy to carry unused yarns over large single-colour blocks (ahem, see example above). It has the advantage of not producing bubbling over the coloured areas, but it has to be worked carefully at the join points to avoid producing holes. I enjoy working in intarsia, but you have to carry around balls of yarn behind the work (or at least spindles or something with some yarn on it to work mulitple rows), which can get picky and tedious as if you have multiple colour changes during a row the balls can get tangled. I had to develop a system to colour block this sweater effectively.

What do you think? Should I do the fish on the front of the sweater in intarsia, or would that be discordant? If there are any experts reading please do weigh in. Actually, in looking at this again, I think I have answered my own question: intarsia for the fish on the front!

I could easily continue writing but this is already long, so I don’t want to belabour it. I also DO want to sew today. Before I go though I want to mention something I thought about deeply as I wrapped up my knitting last evening. All of my life I have had ideas burbling in my head and often haven’t made it to the execution stage. The problem with executing the ideas that you have in your head (at least for me) is that the ideas never look as great as you imagined them. Or maybe it’s simply that when they are realized they can never have the magic of an untested idea. But a bit like cultivating humility, I know intuitively that to cultivate one’s creativity one needs to experiment with ideas, and work them out. Falling back on the same tricks all of the time is not a path to either growth or satisfaction.

OK, bon dimanche

Oops totally forgot to link this sweater, which is something I would LOVE to copy to some extent in the future. Cool, eh?

My Vintage Inspiration

~ A blog about creativity (knitting, sewing); art, literature and travel; other vintage detours; and fundamentally about the personal behind the specific

Category Archives: creativity

Competition

Stuck; hot dogs

Spontaneity

The Ides of March

The Power of Lost Things

The Art of Being Satisfied I

Date your inner artist

The truth about an oeuvre

Kindness is an act of rebellion

In the Swim