wiseheart knits

Way  back in 2007, when I worked for Interweave Knits, I designed a shawl for the Staff Projects section of the magazine. The challenge behind that particular Staff Project was to created something based on a particular lace pattern, Little Arrowhead Lace.

I went overboard, as usual.

I had been fascinated by Faroese Shawls, the ones created by working women of the Northern Isles east of the British Isles. These shawls had shoulder shaping worked into them, and were knit with long fronts that could be tied in place. These two features allowed the shawls to stay in place on one’s shoulders as one moved through the many chores of daily life.

Remember that this was nearly ten years ago. Ravelry was still rather brand new. The knitting world was poised on tiptoe, ready to explode into the vibrant, world-wide community that we enjoy today. And what’s more: Not everyone had heard of Faroese Shawls. In fact, at the time, the one source I could find with authentic, researched information and patterns was Myrna Stahman’s Shawls and Scarves: Lace Faroese-Shaped Shawls from the Neck Down & Seamen’s Scarves.

Stahman’s Shawls & Scarves, by Myrna Stahman

This is a fabulous, well-researched book. It is also a rather confusing book, unless you are someone with lots of experience reading lace charts for fun. (Ahem.) But it contains so many wonderful photos and instructions that I bought two copies. (I have no idea why. There are just two copies in my house.)

Once I read through it for the first time, I was on FIRE. I wanted to knit a Faroese-style shawl of my own design.

Yup. Doomed.

There was no lace-charting software at the time, not unless you wanted to get extremely friendly with Excel. So I did what so many other lace designers of the time did: I taped together endless pages of graph paper, laid them out on a big table, and drew out charts in pencil, pencil decorated with many smeary erased bits. It took me freakin’ forever.

Somehow, I managed to finish charting, writing instructions,  and knitting the actual shawl before the issue in question went to press. I called that first shawl the Summer Shawlette; it became a free downloadable pattern on Knitting Daily.

That same year, my neighbour across the street was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer. I wanted to make something for her, and I decided to make a slightly larger versoin of the Summer Shawlette for her, only longer, and no lace across the back.

That shawl became the Comfort Shawl.

Both shawls have been available on Knitting Daily for quite a long time as free patterns. I am making them available here in a combination PDF, one PDF for both shawls.

I updated this version with all the errata, re-did the charts, re-wrote the confusing bits, and in general, this is almost a new pattern. (You are welcome.)

I had a discussion over cost with my wife. She watched me put hours into this new PDF, and she thinks I ought to honour my work by selling the dual pattern PDF. I feel that the original versions of both shawls were free for a long time, so this ought to be free for a while, at least.

Here’s what I came up with:

The pattern is free for those who cannot afford it, at least until midnight December 31, 2016. If you have a bit of money now, and wish to help support my work on further patterns, as well as on this website, please use the Tip Jar (in menu at a top) to drop in whatever you feel the pattern is worth to you, or to express your appreciation, or what ever other reasons you may have. I hope that seems fair.

I will also have the pattern up on Ravelry as soon as I can work that out.

I hope the patterns bring you happiness, and comfort to those who need it. And don’t hesitate to let me know of any errors!

Sandi

(Click on caption link or photo itself below to download.)

Summer & Comfort Shawls 062116

P.S. These photos, as well as the ones in the PDF, were taken last year, BEFORE I had made extensive corrections and update to the patterns. The new shawls have differently shaped panels, due to the new, improved shoulder shaping. New photos coming soon to a PDF near you.

Here is my current progress on the Serenity Shawl:

Yup. I frogged it.

Sometimes yarn can be very vocal as to what it wants to be and what it does not want to be. The yarn will express its thoughts through common signals, such as tangling, splitting, or having the ball fling itself off your lap and fly right on into the recently used fireplace, for example. When odd and slightly passive-aggressive events begin to happen in the vicinity of your work-in-progress, you know that your precious yarn is clamouring for emancipation.

In the case of my not-so-serene shawl, I discovered I was ripping back all the time. I have been knitting since my age was a single digit. I have been teaching knitting, and lace, and shawls, and sweaters, and fixing mistakes, for about a decade now. And yet here I was, with an admittedly easy shawl pattern, and for the life of me, I couldn’t seem to do anything right. I made little mistakes, counting mistakes, big mistakes, dropped yarnover mistakes, using the wrong slanted decrease mistakes, all of it. I valiantly kept trying, because I was enchanted by the idea of a shawl named Serenity being knit in a yarn hand-dyed by a sick friend. Also, I kept telling myself that this rip-out session would be the last time I ripped out, because all would, of course, go smoothly the next time.

Because, after all: This was me we were talking about. Sandi the Knitter. Able-to-knit-a-sock-in-a-dark-movie-theatre Sandi. Designer-of-a-rather-fancy-arse-circular-shawl-pattern Sandi. Sandi- who-has-never-met-a-lace-stitch-she-didn’t-like Sandi.

No WAY that Sandi would make that many mistakes in an 8-stitch lace repeat pattern. (Oh. Wait. It’s only a 6-stitch pattern. Even more embarrassing.) And so The Great Knitter Me would rip back, carefully put all 200 or so stitches back on the needle, and begin again. I knew what I had done wrong, so no more problems, right?

No such luck. I just kept flailing, not only in the lace parts, but in the stockinette parts as well. (I can’t bear to tell you that I messed up the garter sections. I purled. Yes, really. Oh, the shame…)

At some point, I held up the in-progress shawl, and realized with chagrin (and perhaps an extra-spicy word or three) that my shawl-in-progress had earrings.

See the charming wee shawl earring? Silver ring, with a shiny blue bead, just left of center at about ten o’clock. Lovely.

Such lovely shawl jewelry!

Except, of course, they weren’t earrings, they were two of my favourite stitch markers, knitted right into the work, securely strung onto the yarn. I love my little sparkly markers, so no way I was cutting those suckers apart to get them out. That’s when I admitted that I could hear the yarn screaming, and decided to put all that lovely yarn back into the ball. The yarn clearly wanted OUT, so I released it back into the wilds of my stash.

A handy reference photo, which ought to help me avoid permanently adorning future lacework.

Ripping it out was quite a relief, actually. I found that I would rather work on projects that do not annoy me. Go figure.

This, of course, begs the question: What would I rather be knitting? Turns out that, even when I have all of my stash to play with, even though the internet is my oyster as far as shawl patterns go, and even though I have spent an unconscionable amount of time on Ravelry staring at pretty stitches, I am stumped. None of the patterns are reaching out their greedy little grabby hands from within my screen. All the patterns look more or less the same to me at this point. I find myself looking more at the photography background, the lighting, and the model’s hair than I do at the actual Knitted Thing.

That was last night. Today, I would love to say “All Better now, look what I have knitted overnight!” but I am still stuck. My usual solution for stuckédness is to Just Do It. So I picked the #1 sock pattern on Ravelry, Hermione’s Every Day Socks, grabbed Random Purple Yarn, and cast on.

These are by Dreamsinfiber on Ravelry.

*Tolerable. However, my hands positively ITCH to be working on a shawl.*

What do you knit when you want to knit everything? Have any pattern suggestions for me?

Random Cute Internet Animal

It would appear I am not the only one who loves being in their jammies and duckie slippers…

Hello, Spring!

Spring is gently sneaking up upon us here.

It snuck up so gently, in fact, that I have not had a chance to whack back the rose branches overhanging the walkway. (The post person is not amused.)

This is our first spring in this house, and it seems as though every day or so, we get a new Garden Surprise: flowers, or buds, or simply leaves which I know will become flowers.

I had no idea that these would be blooming under the vent:

As for surprises, I got another surprise this week, in form of a quite-full grocery bag.

One of my fellow choir members at church (let’s call her Mary) came to Sunday warm-ups with a good-sized grocery bag, stuffed to the gills. Mary asked me if I “did weaving”, and I replied with a puzzled “Yes…?” She looked down at the bright yellow bag in her hands, and told me that a friend of hers (“Agnes”) had been given a bag full of “weaving materials” by some generous soul. Agnes doesn’t weave, however, and in fact knows nothing about weaving. Nevertheless, someone had given Agnes the bag of weaving materials, as Mary said: “Because Agnes was so crafty” and because Agnes “would surely know what to do with it”.

Curious what sort of “weaving materials” the bag might contain, I opened it and found this:

That is about 2 lbs of beautifully carded (if slightly matted from being in the plastic bag for a while), hand-dyed wool and silk, with bits of silk noil and wool tweed mixed in. If I had to guess, I would say that the fibre is either BFL (Bluefaced Leicester, for those who don’t know) or something close. The blend is about 80% BFL, and 20% silk, somewhere around there.

Bluefaced Leicester lambs

In other words, this is two pounds of truly gorgeous fluff. (And m&th-free, fortunately.) I just sort of stood there with my mouth open, fondling the roving. Mary asked, “So, is this something you can use? Like in your weaving?”

I struggled not to laugh too much. “Oh, yes. I can definitely put this to good use. But it’s not weaving stuff, it’s wool for making yarn, using my spinning wheel.” (Spindles seemed just too far outside her fence, I could tell.) “This will make lovely sweater yarn, and there’s plenty here to make enough for a sweater. Would your friend like me to spin the yarn and then give the yarn back to her so she can knit with it?”

Mary: “Oh, Agnes doesn’t knit, or do anything like that. She wouldn’t have a use for the yarn. She’ll just be happy to get rid of it, to give it to someone who will enjoy it.”

I began to thank Mary for the bag of lovely fluff, and she put a hand on my arm, smiling at me.

Rosie, age 7, thinks her year-old sibling Naboo makes a perfect pillow. Both are BFLs.

“Well, yes, I am pleased you want this bag, but this isn’t the bag I was talking about. Sorry, I must have been unclear.”

“What do you mean?”

“This isn’t the bag Agnes wants me to give to you. It’s just a sample so I could show you without having to drag in the rest of it.”

(A bit of worry creeps into my brain.) “The rest of it?”

“Why, yes, that’s what I was trying to tell you. There are another two bags, bigger bags, of this same stuff. Agnes says you can have the whole lot if you can use it.”

(carefully:) “How big are the other bags?”

“Oh, Agnes figures if she packs it firmly, she can get those two bags stuffed into a bag the size of one of those 32-gallon trash bags, just so it is easier to carry.”

(Easier to carry a 32-gal stuffed-with-fluff bag? Easier than what, exactly?)

Patiently, Mary asks, “So…do you want the rest of it? It is quite a large bag, perhaps even one of those giant leaf/yard bags.”

A bit shellshocked, I answer with the only sensible reply possible: “Of course I want the rest!”

I think the big garden bag full o’ fluff weighs about 10 lbs.

Give or take.

Next Question

What the heck am I going to do with about 12 pounds of lovely BFL/silk roving?

I don’t know yet, but methinks it will be great fun to figure that out.

Suggestions, of course, are more than welcome.  🙂

Until Next Time

I know, no chispas, boooo. (“Chispa”, for those new to the blog, means “spark” in Spanish. Over the years I have regularly posted a few links to articles or images which I hope will be “little sparks of inspiration” for you.

Coming up: New Patterns in my Rav store! I am pretty excited about this. I just put the finishing touches on my new template, and will be formatting PDFs and posting them soon. I will also post them here, of course, so you get the first look!

Tessa says:
Don’t let all those sweet breezes, bright flowers, and sunny blue skies get you down, you hear?  😉

This ought to look familiar if you’ve been following along lately:

Yes, that is the Serenity Shawl. And yes, it is STILL the Serenity shawl, despite its first appearance way back when.

Author’s Note: It is 5:28 PM Monday night, and I am just about to publish this post. I went back in search of the first post about this shawl, which I figured ought to have been out around November 2015…only to find that, although I had written the post, I had never finished it and pushed Go. Thus, there is no previous, information-rich post to link to with things like the pattern name and What In Heck Is That Gorgeous Yarn.

I am really, really tired. I shall amend this egregious error in the next post. Promise.

Right after I fire my editor.  😉

From the looks of things, it does’t appear that I have made very much progress in the intervening weeks. This is not for lack of trying, mind you. This is one of two projects I carry with me everywhere, and work on in odd moments. It’s easy, and the pattern is pretty enough to make other folks think I am quite clever to be knitting it.

Uh, no. No cleverness here. I am not sure there has even been much Working on the Correct Side of the Piece, as lately, I have found odd holes and bits that look suspiciously like short rows in places where no short rows ought to be. And certainly, there has not been much Careful Reading and Following of the Pattern, because I sometimes wonder if I have gotten my knitting projects mixed up and am knitting the chart for my socks onto the shawl, while my socks are turning into very pretty lace floral accessories.

Unfortunately, I have been rather mindlessly repeating my lack of clever over the past bit of time: pick up the project after a few days; study it for a few minutes to see where I think I might be in the pattern; figure out where I think I might go next; knit, yarn over, decrease, and purl for a while; stuff the thing back into the bag when Life or dinner intervenes; and rinse repeat. Eventually, after working a lot of promising-looking rows, I lay the shawl out on my knee to admire the pattern, only to find little or no relationship between the Real True Chart and whatever my stitches are up to.

I knew I had hit a crisis point when I finally, FINALLY thought I had my groove down, only to be brought back to earth with a most ungroovy thud. Attempting to thwart my overblown Knitting Ego  (“oh, THAT? That’s only seven rows and eleven stitches wide, I can remember that, no problem.”), I made a wee copy of just the chart and pinned it to the inside of my project bag, thereby, I hoped, putting said Knitting Ego in her place.

To my credit, I actually did manage to set aside Le Ego long enough to check the wee chart copy now and then. However.

I found, after one particularly curse-filled inspection session, that I had been looking at the wee chart copy Upside Down.

It might not have mattered. I badly wanted it not to matter, in fact. Except that, of course, in this case, it did matter.

K2tog upside down? Is an ssk.

Rippity rip rip rip.

I have not yet found my serenity. There is still hope, however. I redid the little chart for my project bag, this time writing TOP in red ink across the appropriate side of the paper.

I will finish this shawl. Whatever, and I do mean whatever, it takes.

Sigh.

Author’s Note The Second: I already told you about knitting from the upside down chart, didn’t I? Well, well. Um. Sorry. I hope that I at least told the story better the second time ’round.

Here, let me distract you with photos of adorable fibre animals…

Alpacas Disguised as Chispas

It was a gorgeous sunny, if bitingly cold, day last Saturday, and Melody and I could not bear to be inside another minute. We bundled up in our adorable matching down coats (they had purple, black and brown, what colour would YOU pick?) and drove down the road to the 15th Annual Alpaca Ontario Show, which bills itself as the largest Alpaca show in Canada. Given the sheer numbers of alpacas in attendance (over 200), whose owners brought them from places as far away as Vancouver and Alberta, it would seem the billing may have been a tad modest, perhaps.

This little one looks just like my Ravelry ravatar!

What I did not get were photos of the alpacas being shown in the arena. I’d never watched alpaca judging before, so I sat for a while and quickly became fascinated, pulled in by the personalities of the people as well as the animals. I rooted (quietly) for my favorites, and was glad when one of them won first prize in one of the categories.

While trying to take a photo of this young lady…

…it appeared someone else wanted their photo taken, too.

Here’s your own solo portrait, my friend. Smile for the camera!

One of the folks showing an alpaca was a small lad of about five. His alpaca, a small juvenile, towered over him, despite Young Lad’s swanky, too-large cowboy hat and authentically dusty boots. I do wish I had gotten a picture at the end, when the top judge asked everyone to give the little fellow a special round of applause for his showmanship and accomplishment at this, his very first show!

The Spice flows strongly through this one…

I am so glad my iPhone cannot talk. If it could, it would be mocking me: “Enough alpacas already! You’ve filled up the entire cloud with pictures of the beasties, and they all look the same! C’mon, admit it: You’ve taken at least two photos of every single alpaca in the barn.”

I can neither confirm nor deny this remark.

There is one in EVERY crowd.

When we last left our intrepid heroine minion to cats…

This had happened.

The adorable, utterly snuggle-worthy, marvelous Ben, aged about 5 months, came to join our family.

However, this upset the balance of power in our little cat universe.

Uh-oh.

Always Acquire in Pairs

That, apparently, is the consensus from thousands of kitten-slaves throughout the world. By bringing home Ben all by his little self, I had broken that sacred law of wisdom, and poor dignified Zoe and Dusty were Not Amused. What to do, what to do…

Me being the law-abiding, dutiful sort, about ten days later, this happened.

and this.

and of course, in the end, this:

Yep. Even Dusty is Completely Dooooomed.

Because you have MORE questions

Melody has a friend whose mother, semi-retired, does her part to keep the world a happy place by fostering kittens. Occasionally, when visiting, we happen to meet these tiny beings who determinedly stagger around on quivering legs.

It would be rude not to play with the wee kitties when we see them, now, wouldn’t it? Yes it would. They need socialization. They need to get used to being (gently) handled. They need to get used to different people, different smells, different voices. They need to learn Good Kitten Manners when being picked up and petted.

They need to be kissed on their wee little fuzzy heads.

During one particular socialization session, I heard a supersonic “MEW”, and felt something small and warm fling herself against my stomach. Thanks to the thick sweater I was wearing, it was easy for her to climb up the human in order to MEW loudly and repeatedly right in the human’s face. Eventually, the MEWs became mews, and Sweater-Climber began patting my neck, first one paw, then the other. It was at this point that I realized that the Mistress of Mewing had slightly unusual paws.

Seven toes on each front paw. Six toes on each back paw. Polydigimagical Cat!

Within minutes, Little BigFoot had those ginormous soft paws on either side of my face, her arms arranged as though hugging me. She kept making intense eye-contact with me, bopping my nose with hers, and generally engaging in many forms of kitten seduction.

Love at first sight, both ways.

First, I Had to Find Her

Trouble was: Little BigFoot was a SPCA cat, meaning that I had to wait until she was available for adoption and not just take her home on the spot. Spoilsports. I spent two weeks searching the SPCA websites for her photo. I almost missed it, as it wasn’t the clearest photo in the world, but on the same page was a photo of her uniquely coloured littermate. I called right away, and about an hour later, poof, we were reunited. (goofy music ensues)

I was not allowed to put a hold on her prior to this, I had to just take my chances in the SPCA process. Her sibs were adopted within an hour of me taking Mistress of Mews home, so I am very, very lucky to have found her again.

Both our vet and I noticed that Tessa is (and continues to be) small for her alleged age (nine weeks when the second photo from the top above was taken), and discovered that she and her litter sibs had been rescued from a rather horrid hoarding situation, along with dozens of other animals, birds, etc. She was covered in The Yucky, she was hungry, dehydrated, and, by virtue of her signature supersonic singing voice, she was also letting everyone within six miles know that Someone Was Mean to a Kitten And That Kitten was MAD.

Once the SPCA cleaned her up (thank you, SPCA!), she began stealing hearts.

Such as mine.

Names, names

This little one was hard to name, partly because she had already had a couple of temporary names, and seemed uninterested in another one. Her foster home name was “Sassy”, (she is, indeed, quite the sassyface); the shelter changed it to “Rambler”. (um..??? She’s a kitten, not an SUV.)

I let her be nameless for a few days, until the name Tessa just dropped out of my mouth as I talked to her. The only connection I could come up with was that my current audiobook contains a supernatural being called “Tessa” by the humans around her. The character is mythical, enigmatic, ferocious in her love for, and protection of, small things, lost things, and helpless things.

Seemed just fine to me. Tessa likes it too.

So.

Now The Tribe is Five.

(I counted so you wouldn’t have to. See how I am? Kindness itself, that’s me.)

Project Update

The Serenity Shawl continues to mock me.

At one point, I had printed off a copy of just the chart, no other distractions. Clever me, yes? No. Not clever. I proceeded to knit two and a half repeats   u p s i d e d o w n.

I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter. I kept right on saying that as I ripped back and once again put a couple hundred wee stitches back on my needle. After all, it is really important to have convictions, to not expect perfection, and to stick to your principles as you tink back those 298 sts at 1:30 AM on Monday morning.

Well. Yes. Of course I used a lifeline. A perfectly good lifeline, wwaaay back at the end of the second repeat, aalllllll the waayyyy down near the beginning.

I started a sock as consolation.

Yarn is from Play at Life Fiber Arts, in their Jest high twist base, and the colour is “Re-Pewter”. The pattern is Kalajoki, named after a river in Finland. I liked the way the designer mimicked the twists and curves of the river the sock is named after. (Photo below copyright Tiina, who is the designer of the sock.)

CHISPAS

• There has been so much struggle and suffering and pain in the world lately, and all I can offer is this poem by Ursula K. LeGuin:
  

  Only in silence the word,
  Only in dark the light,
  Only in dying, life.
  Bight the hawks, flight
  In the empty sky.

• Feeling as though family issues are getting on your last nerve? Frustrated because your family seems so weird and twisted that it is a wonder you came out with any sanity intact? This might make you feel better.
• For all that is holey, do NOT click on this link if you (a) love colour, and (b) love gradients. (I tried to warn you.)
• If you are looking for a kitten or a puppy, or an older dog or cat (they have had time to develop a very finely tuned attitude, let me tell you!), please adopt a rescue. My local SPCA was a wonderful, caring place, where the best interests of the animals came first. As it should be.
• If this video doesn’t put a smile on your face, you need more chocolate. Also, go borrow a kitten. That oughtta do ya some good.

Till next time! There will be more Yarn in the next post. I know this, because I have already written most of it. 🙂