Eat First, then Block

I really, really mentally drafted this piece back in January, after I became inspired to block my Seven Swans shoulder wrap made from Anne yarn following the January AKG meeting and the excellent blocking instructions from Heartstrings' Jackie Ericksson-Sweitzer. Her website is Heartstrings Fiber Arts and you can certainly see the gossamer-y, lightweight, oh-so-tempting pieces she creates out of her very own creative brain. Yummm. She writes all these lovely lacey shawl and sock and wristlet patterns that I carried with great joy and that fascinated many an adventurous knitter into seeing what could be done with all that gorgeous lace yarn.

But then many things happened after that blocking experience, such as a visit from an old friend whom I had not seen since 1982 in London who was on this side of the pond from her home in small-town France; the annual AKG knitting retreat at The Mountain where I started both a cabled sweater for ME from Blackwater Abbey yarns (it's the Brambleberry Pullover made from the color Chestnut that you can see here at the BWA site: Blackwater Abbey Yarns) as well as the long-anticipated Orrenburg Lace Shawl that I bought at TKGA in April 2004 with dear G at my side. I figured that I was a good enough knitter by now to tackle that project, and I am, though just barely. More on those projects as they progress.

Oh, and after the retreat came the temporary position with one of my temp services that lasted for about 10 days. It was great to be in the working world again, feeling like I was earning money from my own labors but someone else's pocket. Plus I had forgotten how much fun it is to listen to sales weasels make their deals!

And then more work on my website, then a 6 week assignment that started at the end of March and went all the way through April. It was so very, very odd to be waking up and knowing that I would be working in someone else's space for the time being, doing the job that they assigned me to do in the way they wanted me to do it. I've been out of the real workday loop for a decade now, literally, and it was strange to leave the rhythm that my life has had for so long in order to enter another rhythm. That said, I have forgotten how much I enjoyed temp work - you work at a different location for a period of time, long enough to feel comfortable but not so long that you're caught up in office politics. And I have learned sooooo many different softwares and seen them in all of their applications, all thanks to temp work over the years.

And then there was the Mythic Journeys movie on Saturday, May 2 at the historic Plaza Theater in downtown Atlanta that turned out to be a smashing success (you can view the trailer here at the Mythic Journeys website) but that also ate into evenings and weekends until the weekend of the showing itself.

That said, it's been a busy spring for this little knitter, and I wouldn't trade very much of it for a refund!

But down to blocking. The Saturday in January following Jackie's talk (I'm so enjoying saying "I did 'this' on Saturday!"), I decided that I would follow her instructions for blocking lace. Which entailed getting down on the clean floor with a good, big towel and some blocking pins. I wanted to make sure that the piece had all the rest of Saturday day, Saturday evening, and all of Sunday to dry properly. And it was later in the afternoon and I had spent some quality time stitching and listening to a book on tape, and I had had a late breakfast so why not block at 1:30 on a Saturday? I could always have lunch after I was done. Why give up all that drying time just for a little lunch, I ask you? After all, how long could this blocking project take??

OK, well, it took about 2 1/2 hours. Never mind that it was a rectangle, never mind that my gauge was the same throughout, never mind that there was no shaping. Nope, it all had to do with the stretching of the piece as wide and as long as it needed to go without realizing that it had a mind of its own.

This is the center of the piece. The name of the pattern is "Seven Swans" and it is from the book Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls by Martha Waterman and published by Interweave Press. It is a piece that I started at The Mountain 2 years ago with help from a Master Knitter (and a couple of glasses of wine!). You start in the center of the piece with a provisional cast-on, so that as you wear the shawl over your shoulders, the swans' wings are all descending. And part of the blocking challenge was to get the center line straight and the swans' wings lined up both side-to-side and with one another. And while you may not be able to see it, I added an extra garter stitch row when I picked up the stitches from the provisional cast-on so that I would not be picking up AND knitting in the lace pattern. What a nightmare that could turn into!

And here we have those pesky corners and that dratted edge that just won't stay straight. At least the swans' wings have finally decided to line up alongside one another! I think this was about 3:00 or so, and I was just so determined to get this piece done that I was going to ignore that rumbling noise in my tummy. Grrrr! Of course, with this piece as with all the myriad others I have blocked over the years, the corners just decide to have a mind of their own. The wings may stay straight up and down, but somehow, somewhere, is some extra give that the fabric finds and holds onto until you get onto the corners. It never fails. You have to pull the corners down as far as they will go without messing up the symmetry of the pattern, then pull the width between the corners again without messing up the symmetry of the pattern, then when you have pulled as much as you can from the edges, you then pull the corners UP so that the edges will give. Up. It's weird to type this technique out loud since it's one I discovered while blocking needlepoint and have never vocalized, but you have to account for the give in the corners by pulling the edges back up so that they are perpendicular to the lines of the design. You can especially see the need for pulling the corner up on the left-hand side of this picture - see how the colorway of the fabric on the edge looks like it bends to the left? It does, and you have to ease that portion back up so that it is at a 90 degree angle. The pattern has pulled all of the give out of its range, but you won't know that until you've spent a good half hour trying to urge the pattern down to the range of the corner. When the pattern stops giving, it's time to pull the corners and the edges back up.

And here we have the other side with the wonky bottom edge (remembering that there are two bottom edges to this piece):


But at least the center line is straight! I think by this time I had given up on the lack of sustenance and decided to eat. About 4:00 in the afternoon. The swans' wings were as opened as they could be, leaving edges that looked more like Crests of the Wave instead of edges. And of course, easing the edges back into alignment means that you run the risk of skewing the symmetry of the design elements. I thought perhaps that there was a rule that the portions of the lace pattern with more knitting on the edge would have the greatest give, but looking closely at this photo it seems that some portions pooch out more with knitting next to them, and others with an open lace stitch. There just seems to be no telling.

Finally, reinforced with sandwich and glass o' milk, I climbed up on the couch to get the overview shot of the almost-completely blocked to perfection shawl:


The centerline at the top of the shot is still off, and I adjusted the edges to a greater or lesser extent, but this was the first time I had taken a look to see what the overall effect was. Truly a stunning piece. It's nice and light and, while you can't see it from these photos, the yarn has a deep plum tone that stands out from the darker purple-black shades. It is light but warm, and I wore it with my friend Jane when we saw "Benjamin Button" in early February. A good weight for a movie sweater.

Here are some pre-blocked pictures (I think I used them before in this blog) that show the lovely color of the yarn:








So I'll say here again, blocking is a process. A very long, involved, down-on-your-knees process, especially with the fine-ness of lace process. And so (wearing my wisdom dispensing hat as I have for lo these many years), it is best to eat first, then block.

Oh, such cute kitties

It seems in Blogosphere we all share pictures of our feline and canine friends, and these were just too cute to keep on my loyal iMac. I took these pictures the other day during a sunny day this winter (it's been raining - note that I'm not complaining about the rain!) and I had a box of baby booties and baby bibs &c. that I wanted to add to my website. The cats just had to come out and enjoy the sunlight and most of you have heard me talk about them so I decided to take these great pictures of them and post them here. The feline kids of Webmaster Bill and me:

This is our foundling kitty, Cerridwen. Those of you who know and share my interest in Celtic mythology will know that Cerridwen (many spellings, some with extra "y's" in them due to her Welsh origins) was a keeper of her Cauldron that could bring the dead back to life. So we helped a rescued little black cat find a good and loving home, and what else would be a logical name for her, I ask you?? Yes, she was about 3-4 weeks old when the construction boss brought her in a box with her siblings to a work site in the hot May sunshine and said (put your best redneck accent on here): "I got me a box of kittens, and if any of you [folks] want 'em, you kin take 'em home at the end of the day. They done been underfoot and I need to git rid of 'em." So the kind-hearted English construction worker moved the box out of the direct sunlight all day and took the box home where he and his girlfriend nursed the kittens for a week or so. She was more or less weaned when I called the girlfriend and we decided that ours would be a great home for her, but she drank Similac for a few weeks afterwards, "just in case." She's a sweet little girl who loves to make a warm spot on the bed and will meow at me in case I wake up in the middle of the night and need to pet a cat to go back to sleep. She also sings in the hallway when she is looking for us - we call her "The Singing Kitty" and meow back at her. Somehow that reassures her that we're right there (even though she can smell us 2 rooms away) and she comes trotting right over to be petted.

This is the other cat, that our friend Sue-who-knows-everybody told us about that same week we were adopting Cerridwen, and she is now our large round grey cat:

What can I say? She's large, she's round, and she's grey. She's also taken to crossing her white feet, one on top of the other, just because she can and because she's a cat. She is also the one who sleeps under the blanket on our bed during the day, and often on my head on cold (Atlanta) winter nights while she purrs me to sleep. Granted, she takes up half the pillow, but she rests her chin on whatever portion of my face she can find and purrs me and herself to sleep. One night my ear was against her body and I could hear her heart beating after she stopped purring - it was very special. We named her "Boudicca" (also many different Welsh spellings) who was a Welsh queen who was the only commander in Britannia able to win some battles with the Roman invaders/conquerors/troops. She really did - she united many of the famous Celtic fighters in the western part of the island (modern-day Wales and western England) and beat the Romans. Until the final battle when she was captured and killed. This kitty's mother was named Athena, so I figured this was a good and strong name for our large cat. I think she's not as large as she used to be, though watching her run (proceed at a fast trot, really) is rather amusing as her gait more resembles a waddle than a run. But she has a good, strong, steady walk and I can always tell when she enters a room where I am. She also sits politely below my chair and waits to be encouraged to jump onto my lap where she just stares at me until she falls asleep. She does have one discouraging habit of biting my eyelids (dangerous) or the tip of my nose (ouch!) while she's falling asleep. She doesn't realize how sharp her teeth are, and after 12 years of discouraging this habit she's more or less figured it out. She was about 12 weeks or so when we adopted her, and her human mother said that after I came out to the house to meet the feline family, mother Athena began nursing her again, so it may be a vestige of that nursing behavior.

So those are our kitties - both 12, both furry, both purr, both eat the same food, and while they don't always get along, they are wonderful warm feline friends, for as long as we have them.

Needlepoint UFO

Of course, if I have pictures of a project, I just HAVE to have a story with it, no? Well, this one will make all of you stitching (and knitting) procrastinators feel oh so much better.

In October of 1997 (yes, that's the last century), Webmaster Bill and I decided to chuck it all and go to France on vacation. His mother had died earlier that year and he was feeling kind of glum, and I had received a call from my old alma mater that my French professor was leading a group through Paris, same as she had done during my studies there in 1985. We had some extra cash and made arrangements to travel. Meeting up with Annie and Lynn and her students in Paris was just a blast (was I really that young, too?!), and we were treated to a tour of Montmartre and its streets and its vinyards. At last, I paid a lot of attention to what Annie was saying, Bill really enjoyed the knowledge, too, and we had a nice dinner in a nice restaurant, courtesy of the France Program.

Webmaster Bill and I toured the Louvre, just ourselves, which was a blast since my only knowledge of its facade was just after its fire and during the construction of the pyramid, so I only knew a long, high wooden wall while I walked past the courtyard on my way to Art classes inside. The pyramid for all its controversy about its newness and its construction was quite magnificent. We took a tour of the Roman and Greek statuary so that we wouldn't get too exhausted and cranky with each other, and we also toured the Musee de Cluny and another mideval museum mentioned in a Paris tour guide that featured the mideval store signs. No words, just the picture. I was a bit lost trying to figure everything out, since all of the pictures were like nothing I could envision as 14th century commerce.

But I digress. Once we reached the city of Quimper with the lovely Gothic cathedral (even I couldn't get lost in this town!) and its Celtic heritage, Webmaster Bill came down with a bad headache. We won't say the "m" word here, but it was probably something close. So off to an Apothecary to explain headache symptoms in French (why don't they teach this stuff in school??), back to the hotel room, then off to do some shopping on my own. While traversing the city center just before dejeuner, I came upon a needlepoint shoppe and there were more canvases than I could certainly pick from. And I had forgotten that it was time for lunch when everyone shuts their doors for a couple of hours, so I found a nice still-life canvas and went on my way. The open air market was just then closing, too, so I didn't have my pick of chickens for my lunch that day, either. And we're not talking a greasy sandwich or chicken tenders, or even a nice, plump carcass - we're talking the brown-feathered cooking hen standing and clucking, waiting for the cook to come and test its quality. This is one of the things I love about France - all the food is so fresh and the farmers are (were?) very much a part of the process. Not sure how things are going since the E.U. regulations came on the scene - I hear there are protests from the farmers wanting to hold on to their farms and livelihoods.

So, time passed. My canvas sat on top of my record albums, I selected the colors from the DMC wool options that came with the canvas, and we all just waited for time to pass . . .

. . . till last summer when I was working late on Thursday nights, a stitching piece for a customer was coming to a close, and I needed something to work on while the evening progressed. And look what I found! My old, still life canvas, just waiting to be stitched. Popped it onto a Rolaframe, made sure I had all the colors I needed, and hey presto, I was ready. I wish I had stuck with a truer shade of white, as that particular dye lot was a little too cream except in direct light, but there you have it. Here are the pictures:


As is so often the case with these screen-printed canvases, it is sometimes hard to distinguish the circles and the lines for shading or coloring. Once it's stitched, though, the roundness of the apples and grapes looks much truer to form - the eye kind of supplies the missing shapes. And these rust shades are just so much my very favorites, and the purples of the grapes, rather than clashing with the rust, just really stand out as the foreground. I had forgotten, too, how very quick needlepoint is - my first stitching "session" included finishing all the purple grapes and stitching the entire purple portion of the jar.


Ah yes, the copper pot. It's still unstitched by this time (late September) so you can see how the painting of the pot has some overflow from one shading color to another. And the red will present another stitching challenge - is it one vertical row all the way up, or does it become 2 vertical rows at the very bottom, narrowing to 1 vertical row at the very top? These are the predicaments that made me an advocate for hand-painted needlepoint in my shop. I always felt that it takes much more skill and artristry as a stitcher to stitch screen-printed needlepoint, and it was not until now that I could sense the inner chutzpah to say, "Oh, to heck with the light copper - that red needs to show off its red-dishness now, so I will venture into the realm of the light copper." Or the dark lines of the stones - they're cock-eyed if you look at them stitch by stitch, but taken as a whole they look like rustic mortar in between the stones.


Here is the top portion, with the fallen leaves (notice the lovely rust shading on them!), with the grey outlining yarn still in my needle. Just before I began stitching this piece, I pulled some yarn that had been missing from the DMC listings. I used Anchor to supplement the DMC wool, and you know what? I really prefer the twist of the DMC. The Appleton was a little rougher to the hand and as I stitched with it it began to untwist. It's simple enough to fix, really, but I was quite disappointed. With all of the needlepoint book publishers who laud its colors and use it for their oh-so-gorgeous patterns, I found myself quite disappointed with its simple quality when I began to use it. I was happy that you can't tell the difference in the finished piece between Anchor and DMC. But the difference in quality did give me pause.


Finally, here's the stone background. It is possible to tell the difference both in this picture and in the direct sunlight between the white part of the stones and the cream, but the difference is much more pronounced on the canvas and I wish I had gone with my instinct and used a brighter white. Still, the white on the fruits would have been too stark, and the cream is fairly white so the stones won't mind too much.

I really, really like how you can't tell, once it's stitched, where a color or a line was on the printed canvas. I guess it takes some growing up, where the need to emphasize a color does not mean the taking away of another color's "territory." Funny how our minds work when we are younger!

All in all, I'm quite happy with this piece. I was able to find a deep copper of a shade that I had used up while stitching through another shop, and that makes me oh, so happy. I have the top left hand corner to finish before this piece is ALL FINISHED (pictures will follow!), and then I have 2 needlepoint canvases that I bought, literally, 30 years ago. Have I taken them out of their boxes? Yes. Have I put them onto frames to begin stitching? No. But the threads are all ready, the canvases are anxiously waiting, and once I finish some commission stitching, then this piece, I'll be able to start some needlepoint canvases I bought when I was 14 and visiting London with my high school's band trip.

Happy stitching to all!

Susan

Blogosphere Movie Review

OK, it's now time for me to officially blog about something non-needlework related:  movies.  I'm a huge movie fan and occasionally become obsessed about movies, needing to see a movie more than a gazillion times:  The Bad News Bears (1976 version), Jaws (just so I could get over the fear - I saw it when I was 10 years old, for cryin' out loud!), The Empire Strikes Back (the last good Star Wars movie), Man in the Iron Mask (hey, it wasn't Titanic - and it was a very, very good movie with a good message), and of course the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  In our efforts to cut back expenses and for time commitment, and because I have not been able to watch a lot of movies over the years, I signed up for NetFlix a year and a half ago.  On the whole, it's been good and I love updating my list during the Oscars and Golden Globes.

I won't go into here the problems with too-often-viewed DVD's.  The skipping, the scratches, the having to pause during the airship scene of Stardust and effectively missing the entire Robert DeNiro cameo.  No, we won't discuss those problems here.  And I will say - we bought a DVD cleaner kit and a machine cleaner DVD and that seems to have cleared up most of the rental DVD problems.  That, and letting NetFlix know that a disk is damaged.  It's still not the same as sinking into a movie and letting it take you somewhere, but I'm learning to keep a half-seen movie in my brain somewhere and switch it back on when the replacement DVD arrives.

No, what I'm wanting to review here in more than 2000 words (the number allowed on my Netflix review) is the last movie I saw through Netflix:  Copying Beethoven.  I love Beethoven and was brought up on the famous story of how he conducted the 9th Symphony (with help from the Concertmaster), how he hung his head in sadness because he could not hear the applause, and how the Concertmaster turned him around to see the great response from the audience.  I play Beethoven, not like I once did before The Shop, but I still have the 1st Piano Sonata open and I work on it every few weeks.  I played the Pathetique in college and tinkered a bit with the Moonlight Sonata.  So I love his music and once had a complete tape collection of all 9 symphonies.  

And as far as movie adaptations of famous composers' lives go, I know that there will be a bit of artistic license.  Of course we know that W.A. Mozart was probably not as out of control as he was shown in Amadeus, he had many students, he had several children, and his wife saw to their musical education after his death.  But how do you portray a late 18th Century court with all of its intrigues and intricacies to an audience who is not part of that world any more?  When the Chamberlain saw to the ruler's chamber(pot) as well as to the ruler's schedule?  When putting the left shoe on the monarch signified a lowering of your standing at court from the courtier who put the right shoe on the monarch?  (Real stuff here - I'm not making this up!)  Well, you give Tim Hulce free rein with his laugh, you dramatize the antagonism between Mozart and Salieri, and you show a court where an outsider does not fit in.  Fine and good.  The costumes were beyond reproach, the acting was impeccable, and you get the sense of the genius of Mozart when you see Salieri fall to his knees while he is reading "the first and only copies of this music; it was like he was taking dictation from God."  

And a knitting note here:  you do not ever, ever knit on the cable-knit sweater at the point of the sleeve decreases when you finally watch the Director's Cut of Amadeus.  In fact, you do not knit on the cable sweater when you watch this movie.  Ever.  No matter that it was a movie obsession (see above) and you've seen the original more times than any sane, normal person would.  You will have to work twice as hard to repair the damage you made when you realize that you should have started the sleeve decreases 12 rows ago.  On a cable pattern.  Cable sweaters and lace shawls should never be knit during Amadeus or a Bette Davis murder mystery.  'Nuff said.

As far as Beethoven's life on film, I saw Immortal Beloved when it was on the big screen and I was still taking piano lessons.  My teacher informed me that Beethoven's brother was not the only person he had a falling out with (he had fallings out with everybody in his life), and his nephew could never have been his son.  Still, it is a brilliant movie despite its historical shortcomings, and the big-screen performance of the 9th moved me to tears.  And the tragic love story was heart-rending.  It really really was, and I was willing to grant the writers and directors with a great deal of artistic license that made the story more emotional.

But on to Copying Beethoven - there really is a movie review here!  While I thought the costumes and sets were quite accurate, I was appalled by the movie.  The plot is basically that a young woman is sent to Beethoven's home to be his copyist for the music before the premier of the 9th Symphony, and they form a close relationship.  I watched it to the performance of the 9th, but stopped the movie at that point and sent it back unwatched, and here's why:

• We know historically that Beethoven used an earphone to hear better, especially earlier in his deafness.  But during the last years of his life, he communicated with others using a slate and a book.  Those still exist, somewhere.  Nowhere in the movie does Beethoven write on his slate or in his book when he is communicating.
• He is shown with a (probably historically accurate) metal contraption strapped around his head that he used to hear the piano-forte better.  The only time we see him using the ear phone is once while he's in his local tavern.  Not talking with others in his home or on the street, just once in the tavern.
• Beethoven did not read lips.  As far as I know, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, lip-reading did not become a normal and wide-spread way for the deaf to communicate with the hearing community until after Alexander Graham Bell began to work with the deaf, and it is doubtful that the older, impatient, agitated, ill-tempered Beethoven would have worked out an early 19th century form of lip-reading.
• And we, the movie audience, are to believe that 4 days before the premier of the magnificent 9th Symphony, Beethoven had 1 copyist to prepare all of the music for all of the instruments, voices, and soloists?
• And that the orchestra, chorus, and soloists got the premier performance perfect with only 3 days of rehearsals?  One of the most demanding pieces of music then written and one that no one could imagine could even happen, with a full chorus singing with the orchestra?  And the soloists get their parts spot on?  And the timpani, and the horns, and the strings?  They know when to come in exactly for the effect Beethoven wanted?  With 3 days of rehearsals? 
• The young copyist leads Beethoven in his conducting from the well of the orchestra because she is so familiar with the music.  Huh?  Any professional conductors want to take this one on?  As an appreciator of live classical music, it takes much, much more than familiarity with the music to be able to conduct:  it takes years of training and practice, not just a familiarity with a piece of music.  Were that the case, I'd be the perfect person to conduct "Pictures at an Exhibition."
• It is doubtful that Beethoven would have been familiar with the phrase comparing a woman giving a speech with a dancing bear.  While Samuel Johnson said it, it was much more a Victorian era saying and was more popular later in the 19th century.
• It is also doubtful that Beethoven would have bathed in front of his female copyist or that he would have mooned her.  Just sayin'.

So, that said, if you want to watch Copying Beethoven because you love Ed Harris' movies (and he does an excellent job of portraying B's ill temper and anger), or you want to see the struggle of women wanting to devote their lives to music (still as important then as it is now), then by all means rent it.  And you may not be as persnickity as I am about these things.  But if you are a music fan or request some level of historical accuracy, then please know that the little things causing you to cringe from time to time during this movie are probably covered above.  Have a back-up movie just in case, and make sure that if you want to throw something at the TV screen that it's just popcorn.

Thanks again for reading the rant, and I think things will slow down enough in the new year for a few more blog posts than you've seen lately!

Some Knitting at last

So these past few weeks (OK, months) have been so empty on my blog, for which I apologize. Shortly after I wrote about my pillowcases, I announced to the local knitting guild that I would be closing down my shop, and to say that I was emotionally drained for a month is about accurate. It was wonderful to hear from everyone how much my shop (and my life's work) had meant to them, and I really felt like I had contributed something to the world at large. Which is what I wanted to do at least once in this life. We closed up shop on Saturday, Aug. 23, and employees stayed till I bought them dinner packing and organizing (all those plastic baggies full of Persian yarn!) so that Sunday's move would go smoothly.

And it did. It was wet due to the hurricane, but we moved everything big out of the shop, especially the custom-built shelves, and into the storage unit, where so much merchandise lives happily waiting for its inclusion onto the website. And as of this writing, I have had 2 real, live, bona fide, not-from-the shop orders for stuff that was just waiting for the right person to come along. Yay! My evil plot is working.

So onto the knitting. This shawl/scarf was my first exposure to Anne yarn (see Annetrelac entries at the beginning of the blog!), and I adapted a pattern for a lace shawl called "The Children of Lir" from the Lacy Knitting of Mary Schiffman published by Interweave Press. They do such an extraordinary job of bringing the history of all the needle arts to the world at large, and while I don't intend at this point in time to create my very own pattern for a shawl, I was intrigued by the relative simplicity of this pattern and its story. You can order this book from your local yarn shop; if you want to see what other great lace knitting titles Interweave has, visit their site here: www.interweave.com/knit/books.

For those not familiar with Irish myths, the children of Lir/Lyr were 4 sons (if you link the sons with the 4 provinces of Ireland) or 7 sons (if you go for the mystical numbers) who had a younger sister. When their father re-married it was to an evil stepmother who grew jealous of the attention her husband gave to her stepsons and laid a curse on them: she turned them into swans. There is a brilliant re-telling of this story called Daughter of the Forest by Juliette Marillier that tells the tale from the sister's point of view. And names and gives personalities to all 7 brothers. Oh, and the sister? She must break the curse by harvesting nettles, spinning them into thread, then weaving each of her brothers a shirt from the nettles all without speaking until her task is done. And there are some tellings that say that she could not finish one arm of one shirt so that one brother always had a swan's wing. Ms. Marillier gives an excellent rendition of this twist in the story.

ANYWAY.

When I went to the PHG weekend in Athens in 2006, Plying the Arts, I took the course in the Elizabeth Zimmerman (I am not worthy) percentage sweater taught by an amazing teacher who pulled together all of the bits of knowledge I had learned from my dear G and consolidated it into an all-day class, complete with a notebook where I could put my notes for each percentage sweater I made. Which came in handy, but that's another story. Of course, there was shopping to be done, and I bought a skein of Anne yarn. Now Anne is a sock yarn (or lace yarn), and each skein is unique. You can specify that you have 2 skeins dyed for you, but I'm not that picky. Instead, I chose a darkish color with shots of plum, and when the lace books came into the shop the following winter I perused them with B's help. I settled on the Children of Lir shawl, knitted 3 different swatches as my percentage sweater teacher had suggested, keeping each swatch on the needle so that I could compare one to the other, and chose size 3's so that the knitted portion of the pattern would show against the lacey portion of the pattern. It's not blocked, but here are the pictures of it pre-blocking:

The lacey parts represent the wings of the swans in flight. And those plum shades! They hit at just the right point in the pattern. They're almost part of the pattern.

Oh, and another thing about this shawl? It was my first provisional cast on, learned at The Mountain, including the tip that it's best to use cotton thread, not wool yarn, for casting your stitches onto so that the wool yarn you're using won't grab onto the fibers of the scrap yarn when you pull it out. So I started in the center, in pattern (I recommend knitting a row first to make the picking up for the second half much easier), and just knitted repeat after repeat after repeat. I think I knitted 10 repeats in all and kept the stitches live on the first half to make sure I had enough yarn to do the second half. Like I said, each skein of Anne is unique in all the world. And in addition to the pattern, the ends of each half are bordered in a seed stitch like the sides are. So I knitted 10 repeats, put the live stitches on scrap yarn, picked up veeerrryyy carefully from the provisional cast-on, and went down the other side.

Here is a detail of the knitted pattern:

I'm not too concerned about the bumpy parts that you can see REALLY WELL on this close-up. They'll go away with the blocking. And for a knitted lace pattern, it was easy knitting. There was a k2tog and a ssk in each row, sometimes twice, and a good explanation for a double decrease (occurring 2x in the 14 row repeat). But really, it was possible for me to knit and watch TV after I had gotten through about 7 pattern repeats. The first few repeats, of course, I did in complete concentration and with furrowed brow at The Mountain, but I never got cocky with thinking I had memorized the pattern. Oh, no preciousss. That just wouldn't do.

Here's a picture of the edge of the shawl, and you can see where the center of the shawl is at the far right-hand side of this picture:You can see on the far right that the swan's wings begin to flow to the right rather than to the left. There seems to be a small hole there, nothing major like a dropped stitch (I checked!), but it's where the provisional cast-on was necessary to the flow of the pattern. You have swans' wings going down each arm as you wear the shawl so that it is matched on each side.

And I'm really glad I selected a yarn that didn't have a lot of color variation to it. Lace can be tricky, since you want to show off your skill as a lace knitter (also known as OCD or obsessed attention to detail, and for good reason) but you are also tempted to use a pretty variegated yarn because it's there. For this pattern, I like how the yarn's variegation accents the lace's pattern.

And one of these days, I'll start on my Anne sock, the one that got this whole thing started!