March 2008 Archives

by Emily

First off, I'd like to direct lavish thanks toward Ysolda for hosting a lovely interview with yours truly about the Family Trunk Project! I really enjoyed doing it, and I'll be back to answer more questions in a day or so.

As I mentioned over there, I've started working on the next Family Trunk garment, which will be a jacket inspired by my paternal grandfather, Warren Johnson. I'm taking my cue from this photograph of Warnie as a little boy - or, more accurately perhaps, as a little working-man:

What a serious little kid! Can you believe it? Most pictures of my grandfather are very serious, unless his face is cracked in a wide, contagious grin. I always loved it when he laughed, although his frequent grumblings were also a source of rueful amusement among the family. He was a generous, cantankerous jerry-rigger all his life, which makes the beginning stages of planning for this jacket especially funny. Let's just say, it has done a fair amount of cranky grumbling itself, and I had to rig up an improvised combination of knitting techniques in order to come up with this:

This is the general idea: a lightly felted, tri-color plaid, made up into a mid-length drop-shoulder jacket. Red, camel and charcoal should make a classic, masculine combination. I have an ongoing relationship with plaid, which is only partially explained by how amusing I find the actual word, and was excited to get back to plaiddish pursuits. "That's interesting," I remember thinking, "I haven't seen many imitation-plaid garments in the knitting world. I wonder why that might be." Lucky me! I didn't have to wait too long before I found out.

Originally I had planned to do this project with slipped-stitch pattern that would mean only knitting with one strand of yarn at a time. If I'd been angling for a bi-color plaid, I might have even stuck with this plan, despite being less-than-thrilled with how the swatches were turning out. But trying to put together a tri-color plaid with slipped stitches just wasn't happening, and everything I did in an attempt to mitigate the difficulties just made the pattern look more like a Mondrian dress from the 60's. A cool look, I grant you, but not what I was going for here. The problem is that true plaids are woven fabrics, with warp and weft colors apparent, and it's a challenge to get those vertical lines happening in a knitted fabric. The more forward-thinking among you have probably already arrived at the solution, and I got there eventually as well:

Oh, horrors! If you guys needed any more proof that I'm not in this for the money, here it is. I am starting a double-thick, felted wool jacket in April, and it involves about a million bobbins. Will ANYone have ANY interest in buying this pattern and following me down the plaid-colored road? Well, never mind. My grandfather would have mumbled grumpily at naysayers, and I'll do the same.

The thing about it is, that while there are vertical stripes of color which necessitate the bobbins, there are also horizontal stripes of color which necessitate a continuous strand of yarn to alternate with the strands of each bobbin in turn. My solution? Strandtarsia: a cobbled-together fairisle/intarsia blend whereby I knit or purl two-handed in the fair-isle style (except back-and-forth rather than in the round), throwing each old bobbin strand over the new bobbin strand when I get to a transition between two vertical lines. Cantankerous and jerry-rigged enough for you?

Really, it's not so bad now that I've grown accustomed to it (and I'm sure I'll find out via a comment that this is actually a time-honored technique of which I wasn't aware). It's pretty darn cool to see the plaid pattern emerging and the vertical columns sitting so neatly next to one another. But this project had another ace up its sleeve which is still causing me to break out some of my grandfather's juicier swear words.

You may have noticed in comparing the photos of the swatch and the bobbins, that the camel color in the swatch looks closer to a muddy pink. That's right: this yarn was not colorfast AT ALL. So, in an effort to maintain my classic working-man color scheme, I am making every ball of red and charcoal into a hank, washing and rinsing it repeatedly, and hanging the hanks over every doorknob in our home, with hand towels underneath to catch the drips. David has been an awesome sport about this, especially as I keep forgetting the hand towels and leaving him to discover the puddles of yarn water with his stocking feet.

So, I've been alternating my delight and consternation. And really, I think it's quite remarkable that this jacket has managed to remind me so forcibly of my grandfather, before I'd even started knitting it.

by Emily

We've posted a new pattern over at the Family Trunk Project! After the hectic pre-Knitty scramble, and the involved sizing and chart-checking related to the Kenneth McNeil sweater and Jessie Lambdin shawl, I wanted a more manageable design project. An elegant, simple sock pattern seemed just about right.

Paul Atwell was a unique challenge as inspiration for a design, because he is the only member of my family tree about whom very little is known (by us, anyway). The biological father of my grandmother Marjorie, he separated from my great-grandmother when "Margie" was only two. The only things I know about him are that he was a sailor (and later recruiter) in the U.S. Navy, he moved from Kentucky to Vallejo, California in his late teens or early twenties, and his mother was rumored to be part Cherokee. I'm still working on researching this last detail, but so far I've come up short.

In developing the pattern, I decided to focus on Paul's connections with both the land (he came from several generations of farm families) and the sea. Modifying the traditional gull-and-garter stitch motif, I juxtaposed the "gulls" with seed stitch instead. There were purely aesthetic reasons for this; I thought the seed stitch brought out the golden hues of the sock yarn beautifully. But I also thought that the combination of seeds and sea birds was a representative one for a man who left his farming roots to pursue an oceanic career.

The pattern is quite basic, with my modified motif giving a little character to a standard, cuff-down sock with a slip-stitch heel. There are a couple of nice details, though: I like how the motif flows into and around the heel, and how the cuff ribbing is planned to transition smoothly into the gulls and seeds.

This is a good pattern to use with a semi-solid or lightly variegated yarn like the Sundara "Bronzed Sienna" pictured here. (If anyone doesn't already know about Sundara's beautiful dyeing work, by the way, I highly recommend her.) The vertical stripes and slipped-stitch gull pattern show up over the changes of color, and the columns of seed stitch make the yarn's lighter hues shine. I think the overall effect is unified and reasonably subtle, suitable for a lady or a fella.

The pattern is written for two sizes, Medium Women's and Medium Men's, and is for sale over here for $3.50 or 2 pages of your own story. I hope you like it!

by Emily

When plotting the execution of a grand scheme, a true lady must take a step back. She must know when to stop a moment in contemplation.

Pausing for a bit of perspective, she must take stock, surveying her domain. She will find moments of quiet clarity lurking in the midst of the bubbling, churning cacophony that she calls home.

Rousing herself, she musters her arsenal. The reticence and the provocation. The sidelong glance and the diplomatic loss - or was it a victory? - at pinochle. The unclasped buckle of a high-heeled shoe and an afternoon fête with precisely the right number of cucumber-watercress sandwiches.

And then, when the players are primed, alliances drawn and the relevant maps secreted away in her garter strap, she turns to and commences action.

Pattern: Eunny Jang's Ladylike Gloves, from Interweave Knits
Yarn: Rowan Kidsilk Haze, in Seafoam and Navy ("Seafoam and Navy" would be a good band name, I think.)
Notes: This was the quickest knit I've ever made. Pattern well-written and easy to follow, as always with Eunny's work. Also as usual, I learned a new trick: the attached i-cord was an easy, clean-looking way to finish these off. I love the wrist slits, as well. All in all, a charming project for a weekend at the beach, whipped out in a bit of downtime before the next big undertaking.

by David

I think it's just super that Albert Einstein was born on "Pi Day," and I think it's just super that Fred Rogers was born on the first day of Spring.

Today would have been Mister Rogers' 80th birthday. Mister Rogers was - and is - a very special part of my growing up, and of my spiritual life. Actually, I've found that he is becoming more so, and more profoundly, all the time. So, naturally, I wanted to do something special for him on this special anniversary.

I thought maybe I should try to write something really meaningful and beautiful about my experiences with his show, or about how - to this day! - his attention and humanity affect the way I interact with other people and how I see my place & potential in the world.

And I found that it's pretty tricky to encapsulate one's youth, process of discovery, and evolving spirituality into one tidy piece by way of one day's work.

So, I started watching some video clips of Mister Rogers that I found on the internet. I thought it might spark my memory to do so; I thought that it might bring me back to the feelings that I felt when I used to visit with my Television Neighbor as a little boy, and it did. But I also found myself watching him and listening to him right now. And I found that I was hearing him say what he was saying... to me, right now, as an adult: an adult, who - like many adults - still has fears and complicated feelings that I sometimes find difficult to deal with in healthy ways.

I liked visiting with Mister Rogers in this way again very much, and I'd like to share some of those clips with you so that you can spend a few minutes visiting with him, too.

Let's start with this one! Does this feel familiar to you? It sure does to me!

It also feels very special to have someone just focus on spending time with me, even if it was all the way from Pittsburgh.

This is one that's not from Mister Rogers' show; it's a clip of Fred Rogers testifying before the US Senate in 1969. He looks very young, and I bet it took a lot of courage for him to go to this unfamiliar place and talk about something he cherished in front of people who might not want to hear what he had to say.

I really like how his relationship with Mr. John Pastore changes over the course of the hearing. (It's interesting to me, too, that Mr. Pastore was born on March 17th, only three days [and 21 years] different from Fred Rogers.)

Music was one of the tools Mister Rogers used most when dealing with difficult feelings. Here's one of the many wonderful songs he wrote and sang for us.

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was also much the beautier, much the happier, and much the snappier for his great music.

And this was how Mister Rogers said his goodbye. It's not the daily goodbye at the end of every episode, but a very special goodbye I hadn't seen before.

And that reminds me! When Mister Rogers had a speaking engagement, he would ask everyone present to take a minute - a full minute - and think about all the people who had "loved them into being."
Let's all do that now. You don't have to worry about how long you're taking, just click on this picture of Mister Rogers and play the 60 seconds of quiet, and I'll tell you when the time is up:

Yes. If I had to pick a single person not personally known to me - someone beyond my own friends and family - if I had to choose someone from the ranks of great men and women who, by living and working as they did, have have contributed something beautiful or profound, something of meaning, goodness, courage, hope, and love for all of us to build our own goodness and humanity upon, and say of that person, "This is my Hero," Mister Rogers would be the one. So, naturally, I wanted to make some celebration on the anniversary of his birth, some celebration fitting and worthy of my hero.

But, come on, me! Though I can be pretty sure Mister Rogers would be very happy and proud that I feel this way about him, I can be even surer that he would be happier and prouder still if I took this day to reaffirm my commitment to being a caring, thoughtful person with those people who are personally known to me; to being alive in each moment I spend with those people who are my own friends and family; and to being proud of each of you, and proud of me.

So I think that's what I'll do. I'll start right now. I'm going to wrap myself in love, Mister Rogers style, with a special sweater that a very special person made just for me; and then I'll wrap the people I spend time with in love, in the best way I can. Because there's nobody just like you, Neighbor, and there's nobody just like me, and I want to know you better, Neighbor, so we can be a better We.

by Emily

Whew! Well, Knitty mania has settled down a bit over here, and we're beginning to climb out of our chart-checking, sizing-figuring and website-making burrows. One thing this means: more consciousness to devote to blogging! I'm still adjusting to having two blogs (this one and the Family Trunk Project Blog), and I've been trying to work out what goes where. My tentative decision is that knitting- and design-related entries will be double-posted, and most other entries - rhapsodizing over books, ranting about politics, and relating personal adventures - will go up here. So if you want to read the whole shebang, stick around. If you want a pure, unadulterated knitting/design fest, albeit with fewer entries, sign up over there. Also, know that the Trunk Project blog is still morphing, design-wise, and will only get better from here.

I do think I'll continue posting knitting I do from other peoples' patterns in both places, because hey, knitting is knitting, right? And I always learn new things from making other peoples' patterns, that can then be applied to my own stuff. Believe it or not, there are a few little things I managed to crank out in the interim periods between Family Trunk patterns. For example:

Portlanders will remember that we had an extended cold snap back in January. It started to dawn on me at about Day 4 of the extremely chilly weather that I didn't own a hat. Not a single one! I have made hats for other people, and at some point I owned a store-bought hat, but even that had slipped away into the mists of time. It's not very often that Portland gets cold enough for me to want a hat and mittens, but that time came this winter. So, like so many modern knitters before me, I whipped up a version of Jenna Wilson's Shedir pattern. I used about a skein of the Felted Tweed left over from the Kenneth McNeil, which helped to alleviate my jealousy that David, and not I, would be getting that finished sweater.

It was a quick, well-designed pattern, as many have observed before me, and it made a charming change from having to figure out the math for each step on my own. It took me about three days, and convinced me that a small project sandwiched between each big one and the next would be Family Trunk policy from here on. Zoning out for a few days really helped me get back in the math-and-charts groove. Mark Twain called this phenomenon "refilling the tank," although in his case the zoning out occurred in the middle of certain projects and often lasted years. As far as I'm concerned, though, if it's good enough for Mr. Clemens, it's good enough for me.

by Emily

This is about to be the most meta blog entry I've ever made, but only because nobody has ever spontaneously written articles about me before. So put on your postmodern hats, because...

The Family Trunk Project is getting written up in "The Press"! Our town paper, the Oregonian, ran my favorite Knitty picture and some explanation of the project on their knitting blog. They also correctly identified the location of our photo shoot: the beautiful Peninsula Park rose gardens. It's a favorite haunt of ours from days of yore, when David lived in Northeast Portland. For anyone who doesn't know and love it already, we second the suggestion to go June. It also, though, has a certain Gothic charm in the winter, when the bare, clipped rose bushes and manicured, slightly dilapidated brickwork look like something out of Brideshead Revisited. As you can see:

Podcasters Lime and Violet also posted and extremely nice and enthusiastic review of the Trunk Project on their blog. It features my favorite photo of the Jessie Lambdin shawl, and is headed up by a pretty screenshot of the embroidered tree.

Better yet, it's succinct, well-written and wildly complimentary. My favorite kind of review! Thank you, ladies!

And finally (for now), the first person to take me up on my offer to trade stories for patterns has posted about the experience over on her own blog. Her stories were vivid and intriguing, and I hope to run into more people up for a story-for-pattern trade.

Needless to say, I am also very excited to start seeing different version of the shawl and sweaters out in the world. If you're one of the folks who has bought a Family Trunk pattern over the last few days, or who is knitting Marjorie off Knitty, I would love to see shots of finished projects when they come off the needles!

by Emily

Well. Long time, no see.

I'm sure that many of you have been wondering where David and I have disappeared to over these last few months. We've been neglecting our correspondence, haven't been answering our phones, and as for seeing all of you in person...it's been too long. But there is a reason for our extended disappearance from the scene: we've been working on a big project together, and now it's ready to start sharing.

One piece of news is that one of my original knitting patterns got accepted for publication at the big online knitting magazine Knitty.com. You can see the published version here. This is the first pattern I've had published, so it's exciting for that reason, but ALSO because the link from Knitty is directing traffic to our own website:

http://www.familytrunkproject.com.

We've been putting in MANY hours on this, and we're both very excited about how it's shaping up. For those of you who haven't heard me talking about this new project, it's essentially a family history told through knitting patterns. I'm telling the stories of my ancestors (up to my great-grandparents' generation, and maybe beyond) in essays, and designing a garment inspired by each person in my family tree. So far, there are three Family Trunk patterns: the Kenneth MacNeil cardigan, inspired by a Scots-Canadian great-grandfather on my dad's side; and the Jessie Lambdin shawl, inspired by the mother of my mom's dad. These patterns are available for download as PDF's, and the essays that go with them can be found on each individual's page.

David has been working amazingly hard on the website, and I think it's beautiful. I especially love the tree page, a kind of visual index where you can see the relationships among all of the people involved, and mouse over their portraits to see a photo and description of the finished project. As I complete more projects, they will appear here and the tree will become fleshed out. I like the graphic itself; David drew a tree design and I hand-embroidered it on a piece of antique paper. I'll also be blogging about the projects as they progress over at the Family Trunk Blog.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy exploring the site, and forgive us for our absenteeism. Although the project is obviously far from complete, this work-intensive phase is winding down and we should be much more available for socializing, corresponding, and all of those worthwhile things!