Representing for the fellas...

Not that I've ever claimed to be representative of my sex, or that my new crop of facial hair has resolved all of my gender stuff, but...

Ariadne found a somewhat spooky youtube featuring knitting fellas. Hey dude, what're you making? A hammock. With sharpened pool cues. Yipes.

Not to diss the pool-cue guy (I mean c'mon, it's kind of awesome), but it brings to mind the Dave Cole stuff from the Radical Lace show - hey! look at me! I'm a man! and I'm knitting! with back-hoes! (or whatever you call those things). So that makes it art!

I mostly knit on the subway, and I don't have a knitting circle. I've met plenty of knitters on public transit, but only a couple of knitting men. Knitting breaks the NYC subway rule - strangers talk to you. Here are a couple of random boy-boy knitting encounters I have to share...

(one) More than a couple times, I've had people ask me if I went to Waldorf school. Subway conversations always start in the middle of things - "Waldorf school, huh?" "Um... no? Why do you say that?" "Oh, all the Waldorf school kids learn to knit, even the boys..."

(two) Last year I met a teacher on the subway. I was knitting penelope, and she was wearing a sweater she'd made herself. She told me her dad started knitting during world war II - he was on a submarine. There's lots and lots of down-time on a submarine, and in between it's pretty hectic, so knitting sounds like a perfect stress-relief and time killer. Her dad got everybody knitting by the end of their tour. Better than scrimshaw, that's for sure.

(three) The last time I went to a punk show, (Mastodon & Against Me! this spring) the bouncer checked my bag. I was carrying the cotton and sticks that became the anemone blanket. He said, oh, man, I'm learning how to do that! Who knew?

I know the knitting fellas out there in the ether have more to add... to be continued...

Doilies and Dresser Cloths!

I named this blog Tatting my Doilies 'cause it's about all my little arts and crafts projects. It's also about the self-deprecating way I usually talk about my little arts and crafts projects. What are you up to lately? "Oh, you know, riding my bike, tatting my doilies... " The first stranger that found me through the interthing was Lady Shuttlemaker - a real life, bona fide tatter and maker of fine ceramic tatting shuttles besides.

Then last month when Grandpa died I inherited two real life lace doilies, made I think by my great grandma (his mom). I asked Lady S if she knew how it was made, and she asked her lace people, and then pointed me to this website. Apparently it's needle lace. I did some more poking around and found this honkin' bibliography, too. Wow. So thread and a needle, and a little scrap of cloth in the middle is all it's made of. I find needlework totally bewildering. It's so tiny! Lots and lots of little tiny knots. I can't really think about how she made it without feeling the urge to squint my eyes up. Anybody else out there in the ether made needle lace? Does it take absolutely forever?



I also inherited three lace-crocheted dresser cloths - basically big rectangular doilies just the right size for the tops of the dressers in grandpa's bedroom. I haven't figured out what to do with these yet, but tracking down the pattern (and learning to crochet) is somewhere on my list...

Penelope Pattern

The divine (tee hee) Ariadne officially put the bee in my bonnet to set this one down in writing. So after a couple weeks of doing other stuff and spending some time re-creating the border to figure out how I made it in the first place, here goes... I'm super-new to writing patterns down, so please if any of this doesn't make sense, let me know!

Finished Measurements: 6" (10" including edging) by 9 feet

Materials: Karabella Zodiac in orange, lots and lots of it (I think I used 8 balls)

Size 5 needles.

Gauge: 21 sts and 28 rows per 4" in st st as worked on size 5s

Concept: A really, really long scarf of fishnetty lace. Diamonds grow and shrink in the center. The diamond pattern makes it like to fold in half vertically, which works out great when wrapping this multiple times around your neck. I finished the piece, blocked it, and found that it still very much liked to curl... the sawtooth lace edging is applied at the end and counteracts the tendency towards curliness somewhat.

Body:

This is a 32-row repeat

Cast on 30 stitches using open cast-on (I didn't do this, but in hindsight, I should have).
Row 1: k1, *yo, k2tog*, end k1
Row 2 and all WS rows: purl
Row 3: k1, *yo, k2tog,* 6 times, yo, k2, k2tog, *yo, k2tog* 6 times, end k1
Row 5: k1, *yo, k2tog* 6 times, k4, *yo, k2tog* 6 times, end k1
Row 7: k1, *yo, k2tog* 5 times, yo, k6, k2tog, *yo, k2tog* 5 times, end k1
Row 9: k1, *yo, k2tog* 5 times, k8, *yo, k2tog* 5 times, end k1
Row 11: k1, *yo, k2tog* 4 times, yo, k10, k2tog, *yo, k2tog* 4 times, end k1
Row 13: k1, *yo, k2tog* 4 times, k12, *yo, k2tog* 4 times, end k1
Row 15: k1, *yo, k2tog* 3 times, yo, k14, k2tog, *yo, k2tog* 3 times, end k1
Row 17: k1, *yo, k2tog* 3 times, k16, *yo, k2tog* 3 times, end k1
Row 19: repeat row 15
Row 21: repeat row 13
Row 23: repeat row 11
Row 25: repeat row 9
Row 27: repeat row 7
Row 29: repeat row 5
Row 31: repeat row 3

Repeat until you've reached the desired length. 17 times, in my case.

Edging: Use a double-point and a single-point

PU: Pick up st from body of the scarf either using left end of LH double-pointed needle or end right left end of RH needle as appropriate.

S&W: Slip first st purlwise. Wrap the yarn around it counterclockwise 1 1/2 times, ending with yarn in front.

BO: Use wrapped bind off: K first st. Wrap the yarn twice around the stitch just K, ending with yarn in back. K next st and pass first st over second. Wrap the stitch just K before knitting the next.

Row 1: PU 1 st, CO 4 more
Row 2: S&W, *yo, k2tog* twice, PU1
Row 3 and all WS rows: K
Row 4: S&W, *yo, k2tog* twice, yo, PU1, k2tog
Row 6: S&W, *yo, k2tog* 3 times, PU1
Row 8: S&W, *yo, k2tog* 3 times, yo, PU1, k2tog
Row 10: S&W, *yo, k2tog* 4 times, PU 1
Row 12: S&W, *yo, k2tog* 4 times, yo, PU1, k2tog
Row 14: S&W, *yo, k2tog* 5 times, PU1
Row 16: S&W, *yo, k2tog* 5 times, yo, PU1, k2tog
Row 18: BO 8, *yo, k2tog* twice, PU1

repeat rows 3 through 18 the whole way around the scarf. It will take you an eternity, but it may keep those pesky suitors at bay.

From the vaults: diamond lace scarf

Here's some pics of my really, really long orange scarf.

I made this during a particularly heinous couple months of my life, and it took forever, and even when I was done with it I decided it needed a border which took forever all over again, so I think of it as Penelope's shroud. Not that Odysseus came back to town and killed my suitors and maids and then went off wandering until he found somebody who called his oar a winnowing fan or anything, and I doubt Penelope had access to such fabulous, high-tech orange cotton, but still.


If you get plain old yarn-over k2tog lace, that's what this is, only with a diamond that builds up and diminishes in the middle, with a sawtooth lace border applied after the body is finished.

I'm working on writing up the how-to of it for pattern-writing practice, but right now the counting is making me dizzy. So here's the snaps. Somebody bug me for the pattern and I'll reconstruct it for everybody.

Ruffled Sunburst Sea-Anemone Baby Blanket

My sister Abbie had a daughter yesterday - Hannah Joy Burzynski, f/k/a sprout - hooray! Hooray for palindromically first-named nieces! Hooray for symmetry and frills!

Here's the baby blanket I made her. I was in the home stretch of finishing up the fringe when I got the call yesterday that I was an uncle again, so last night I plunked myself down in front of an endless supply of ABC reruns on the computer and finished it off. Hooray again!

It's a variation on the classic pinwheel blanket and also a couple steps removed from the blanket I made for her first, Ethan, which was pieced together using pinwheel/lace octagons and squares. I'll try to post snaps of that one soon - it's from my pre-digital era.

Abbie's husband Ben is really math-y, so I've been thinking of all the math stuff you could teach a kid (or a grown-up for that matter!) with this pattern. Triangles, spirals, arcs, squares, octagons, 16-a-gons, for starters. Also multiplication and exponents, since it goes 4/8/16. Although it's not a true sunflower pattern, Fermat's Spiral
and all manner of fun with Spirographs. Then later on, more higher math series stuff like Factorials and Triangular Numbers and Fibonacci numbers... The body of the blanket is also kind of like a circular family tree, now that I think of it. How a propos.

I also ruffled and frilled and fringed the bujeezus out of this one... I knew the ruffley-ness would happen because I added more and more stitches as the piece got wider - adding 4 stitches per round would make it flat - adding 8 per round made it ruffle, and adding 16 per round made the ruffles ruffle. I found the fringe pattern in the first Nicky Epstein over-the-edge book, which I also explored when I made Lowly the scarf (snaps soon!) and it added so much bulk to the blanket, it took on a weight and a life of its own!

Teddy Bear Sunflower? Sea Anemone? Gramma Tilda's shag carpet? Solar Corona? I've been looking a lot at Helle Jorgensen and My Art Grows Around Me lately, and I flatter myself to think that it shows...

I made this using plain old Lion brand yellow cotton on size 4 needles, and the fringey bits are incorporated into the bind-off instead of being sewn on - baby stuff is meant to get barfed on, and this should last for years (generations?) and hold up just fine in the wash. It's one heck of a wubbie. Please love it, Hannah!

For something so complicated, it's surprisingly simple and intuitive to make. If you'd like to take a crack at it, you can find the pattern here.

Knitted Uterus!

here are some snaps of the model uterus I knitted for Shana last X-mas. She's a doula to the stars and a midwife-in-training, so when I stumbled on the pattern on Knitty.com I thought immediately of her... the big snap is the uterus at large in the front yard - the little one is en scene inside the vinyl pelvis atop her dresser...

related, kinda: Kiki Smith