Recently in Emily Category

I can hardly believe it, folks. The Warren Johnson pattern is finally up and ready for purchasing: a cool $6.50 or three pages of family story will get it for you.

This has been, by FAR, the most complex and cussed pattern I have written. But you know? I think it may also be my best. I've had lots of pairs of eyes on it over the months, and the very uniqueness of some of the techniques forced me to slow down and really consider how most clearly to explain them. There's the video to clarify things as well, in addition to schematics with measurements, photos galore, a truly staggering number of charts, and what may well be the most thorough finishing section you have ever read. I don't think it's overkill, and I genuinely hope it's clear and accurate, after all this time. And what's even better: although the technique is odd, I don't think it's particularly difficult after you get the hang of things.

Of course, a new pattern always means a new essay, and I'm pretty pleased with this one. Writing it wasn't as unexpectedly emotional as eulogizing Betty Jean, more of a long, reflective process, a time to collect and digest all the scraps of knowledge I had about my reserved, sometimes irascible grandfather. The result is long, and awkward at times, but I hope you'll take a look. I've certainly been enjoying some of the essays you folks have been sending my way recently; thank you for participating in the project!

So, yay for progress. I have all my fingers and toes crossed that other versions of this jacket start popping up online. For one thing, there are so many color combos in which I'd love to see it: baby blue with light brown and cream; dark brown with green and tan; navy with green and yellow. I think the plaid colorwork technique may also lend itself to other projects, and I'd be excited to see what creative knitters could whip up in the way of hats, scarves or other accessories. But mostly, I love the finished product, and I hope others would, too. Happy knitting!

Today is my mom's birthday! She's a great lady, a wonderful presence in my life, and the person who taught me to sew; it's very fitting, then, that I'm sharing a (sort of) finished sewing project on her anniversary of personhood.

Forgive the provisional photos; we've been having crazy torrential downpours here in Portland (as opposed to our normal steady gray drizzle), and I had to seize a few freakish moments of sunlight the other day to snap these. Of course, now that I've ripped out my sweater front and have no further progress to show, today is lovely, with a clear blue sky.

This is my new absolute FAVORITE skirt. I wore it to work on Monday, and every day since then it's been a struggle not to just wear it again. I went out last night and figured that wearing something I'd already worn to work that week, to a social function, was totally different and did not count as over-the-top heavy rotation. I will probably wear it out to dinner this weekend, too, and of course one time (maybe more!) next week to work. Love, love, love!

My love affair with this piece of clothing is mostly down to the fabric. It's an exquisitely soft and classic wool I picked up at Britex Fabrics a few trips to San Francisco ago; David and our good friend Leah were very patient while I ooh'ed and ahh'ed over the walls of amazing plaid and houndstooth woolens. I got two yards of this, and while it was definitely a splurge, I would say it was one hundred percent worth it based on how much I love the finished product. The skirt isn't lined, but it doesn't even need to be: despite the 100% wool content, this fabric is buttery soft next to my skin, and the finished skirt is cozy and warm for fall and winter days.

It's from this lovely, late-40's Simplicity pattern. I'm in the process of making up the short-sleeved blouse in a beige sateen, with neck and sleevebands in the skirt fabric. (I've tried to come up with a prettier word than "beige" for the color of this blouse, as it really is fetching in person, but no luck. It's lighter than toast or tan, darker than cream or eggshell, and ecru is somehow not quite right. Beige it is.) I think the whole look will be super-cute; I'm already excited about how the lines created by the blouse darts are extended down into the seams of the skirt.

I made a couple of alterations to the pattern; most notably, I just put in a zipper instead of dealing with a bunch of slide fasteners at the side. It just seemed cleaner and simpler. And I left the skirt at the length of the pattern pieces, rather than hemming it up as high as the pattern recommended. It makes for an unusual mid-calf length that I don't normally love, but it makes the skirt SO cozy to wear. It's the perfect garment for this time of year: a dash of style, a dash of cozy, and a dollop of lovely Italian wool!

Modeled shots soon, when I finish the blouse. And I have about three-quarters of a yard of this luscious fabric left over; any suggestions about what to do with it?

Apparently I'm way into internet-based, book-related games of late, because I just discovered Booking Through Thursday and it seems fun to play along. The question this week is, essentially, what makes you want to buy a book? If you normally buy rather than borrowing from the library, why pay for something you can get for free? And if you normally borrow, what classifies that special book that you add to your permanent collection?

It so happens that this is a subject close to my heart: despite all my efforts at ecology, reuse, minimizing consumption et cetera, when it comes to books, I BUY. Even when David and I were living together in 300 square feet, and books were spilling over every surface and packing every nook and cranny, I still persisted in buying more. According to LibraryThing, we live with just under five hundred volumes, and that's my bare minimum; there have been many books over the years that I sacrificed to space considerations, and which I bitterly regret losing. Just the other night, I was trying to remember that Byron quote that cleverly rhymes "adultery" with "climate's sultry," and discovered when I went to the bookshelves that I apparently got rid of my copy of Don Juan in a fit of rash abandon. Why would I do such a thing? The mind boggles.

Yeah, I know I can look up things like this online. In fact, I did just that, and found that the lines I was thinking of go

"What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,
Is much more common where the climate's sultry."

But that's not the point. For one thing, Googling does not have NEARLY the tactile appeal of taking a volume down from the shelf and paging through it for a remembered line. And what if the lines I was looking for were less famous, or not in the public domain? What if I was trying to remember the exact imagery Ian McEwan uses in that scene with the wet footprint from Atonement, or wanting to relive that crazy warren-of-thieves dénoument from Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans? The internet would be much less useful.

In the case of Don Juan, the lines I was looking for would have been even easier to find because I specifically remember that I marked that couplet for easy future reference. Which is another, more minor reason I buy books: I write in them, which is frowned on by most libraries. But more important than pristine versus besmirched volumes, is the function the marking serves for me: I can take the book off the shelf and easily locate a passage I haven't read for years. If it's eleven at night, and I'm engaged in a passionate conversation with a friend which reminds me of lines from Mary Oliver, I can look up the exact wording. If I'm working on an art project in the middle of the night and I want to incorporate the fantastic closing of Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable, there it is within easy reach. If I'm mired in a political argument and can't recall the facets of Andrea Tone's points in her chapter about 19th century mail-order contraceptives, I can take it down, page through it to my marks, and read out the passage for which I was looking. Even if I were willing to wait a day or two to check the same book out of the library, it wouldn't have my reference points inscribed on it. My own books are customized reference tools, specially suited to me. Not only that, but we - the books and I - exist in a synergistic feedback loop: I am more likely to remember a passage because I've marked it, and more likely to want to find it again because I remember it.

When I explain this to people, I get a lot of skeptical looks. "But how often do you actually want to refer to something?" they will ask, eyebrows raised. I think some of them go so far as actually to disbelieve me when I answer, "ALL THE TIME." Like, multiple times a week, week after week after week. I'm constantly looking up remembered lines and passages, whether to support a point I'm making, revisit a favorite literary haunt, or find inspiration for a project of my own. Not only that, but just sitting and gazing at my bookshelves, letting my mind free-associate among the titles and plots, often sparks interesting ideas. I sit on the couch facing the wall of books, and think about designing knitwear based on fictional characters, or about compiling my ten favorite love scenes of all time. I conceptualize the shelves as a giant dinner party, with each author a guest, seated next to the person next to them on the shelf: Bulgakov and Bukowski are in their cups, Colette is fast seducing Wilkie Collins, and the conversation between Loren Eisely and Norbert Elias must be fascinating. I'm sure the people sitting around the Foucault/Freud pairing want to stab themselves with their salad forks, but as a hostess, there's only so much I can do.

So, as long as I continue to so enjoy them, my bookshelves will keep getting fuller. The first order of business? Retrieving another copy of Don Juan from Powell's.

The talk has been flying a little fast and loose around the blog lately: suggestions that the knitting projects may be progressing "without a fiasco in sight," my own unbelievable statement that I am "making things easy for myself" and do not plan to shed hysterical tears while working on this sweater project.

I think we can all see where I'm going with this.

As of an hour ago, that nice, nearly-finished sweater front I showed you before, looks about like this. It's the fourth or fifth time I've ripped it back. The first three or four times were more or less expected; I've been tinkering with the cable pattern, trying to get it honed to my satisfaction, and trying to decide how I want it to interact with the neckline. And then, this last time, on my ninth draft of the cable, I really thought I had it all sussed out. It looked just like I wanted it to, and I'd even seamed the front and back together. And then, a little issue that had been poking at the back of my brain from very early in the process, leapt forward and demanded my attention.

It was a fitting issue. I won't go into the gory details, but suffice to say, I made a series of decisions early on that resulted in the lower front pooching out a bit, as if the wearer had a little beer belly. And as much as I sometimes find bellies, beer or otherwise, to be charming, that's not the look I was going for here. It was subtle, but it would have bothered me. Rip, rip, rip!

It's funny: logically, I would expect to feel kind of miserable after ripping back, but that's not how it goes for me at all. The misery comes BEFORE the ripping, as I'm trying to make the decision about whether it needs to happen or not. I almost always decide that it does need to happen, and in fact have never regretted ripping out and redoing, so I'm not sure why I persist in fighting it. Nevertheless, it sometimes takes hours of contemplating a piece, getting more and more unhappy in my indecision, before my brain finally snaps into place and I decide to rip. Once I make the decision I always do it rightawaythissecond, since for me the second-most horrible knitting-related feeling is having decided to rip something out but not having done it yet. (The Most Horrible Knitting Feeling I have personally experienced is working for months on something, only to have it be a poor fit. I imagine an even more horrible feeling would be working that hard on a gift for an unappreciative recipient, but thankfully I have never had to deal with that one.) Anyway, once the ripping is done, and the yarn is drying in the laundry room, I tend to feel energized and excited to implement the changes I have in mind, and that's where I'm at right now. I think this next version of the sweater front will be The One...but then again, I could be wrong. I'm confident that it will, at least, be better than the last one.

The odd thing about redoing the front so many times, is that I have a lot of time to work on the other pieces while the yarn is drying out, so my finishing sequence is all off. The front (version 1) was the first piece I finished, and will probably (as version 9) also be the last. The back and one sleeve are done, and the other sleeve is in progress. I know plenty of knitters who intentionally work pieces out of written order - do sleeves first, and get up to all kinds of wacky hijinks - but I am generally so eager to see how the finished product is coming, that I stick to strict seaming order - back, front, (seam), sleeve (seam), sleeve (seam), finishing. It's going to drive me a little nuts that I'll have a back and two sleeves, and not be able to seam them together without the front. BUT. We must persevere. I can seam the underarms to take the edge off.

Election time is past! I am thrilled about the Big Result, sad about some smaller results, but mostly just relieved that all the anxiety and vitriol, all the dueling statistics and smear campaigns, all the guilt for wanting to talk about anything besides the campaigns, are finally, finally over. (For a few minutes, anyway.) And how did I celebrate? Why, with patterns, of course!

I found these three dress patterns at very reasonable prices over at Out of the Ashes, and snapped them up. I'm in the midst of sewing up my first genuine, not-a-reissue 1940's pattern, and I'm loving every second of it, so the logical thing is to stock up. I love the necklines of all three of these dresses, and particularly the way the sleeves on the short-sleeved version of this first dress echo the neck.

This one's just perfect for a summer picnic: not something that's going to happen right away, but still a pleasant dream to while away a drizzly November afternoon. To really pull off the look, I may need to approximate that sun-hat.

This one strikes me as more of a practical, everyday dress, but I love the combination of the tuxedo-esque tucks on the front and the sharp little collar. I also like that the bodice buttons up, shirtwaist-style, but the skirt is one piece. The shirtwaist look is so appealing, and I'm a sucker for buttons, but something about having them all the way up the front strikes me as ever-so-slightly bothersome; a little part of my mind is always wondering whether they're gapping. Now, though, problem solved!

Actual sewing and knitting photos will follow shortly; for the next day or two, I'm turning off my brain and luxuriating in the less manic energy around here.

Long, long ago, when the Family Trunk Project was just getting started and I was trying to work out how to use two different blogs, I decided that I would keep that blog fiber-related, and over here I would post both fiber stuff and all that other blogging that I would be doing. Yeah...ALL that other blogging. Oh, there has been so much of it.

Like, remember the Biography Project idea? Believe it or not, I have more or less stuck to this reading schedule (minus Gertrude Stein and plus a fantastic biography on Emily Post), but have I written about it? I have not. I have to admit that this whole pattern-writing malarkey has been significantly more time-intensive than I had anticipated. BUT. I'm hoping to change all that, starting soon.

Despite how often I fall down on the job blogging about them, I really enjoy having a year-long reading project. The year before last it was poetry-memorization; this year it's been biography. I've gotten a lot out of steeping myself in both of these art forms, but what I really feel like reading now, after almost a year of biography biography biography, are NOVELS. Lots of novels. But that's not a "project," reading novels. That's more of a default setting, as far as I'm concerned. In fact, I pretty much believe that the Church of Novel-Reading is my spiritual organization of choice. So, how to give novel-reading a bit more structure, so that it's not only the soul-sustaining backbone of my literary practice, but also a fun game? The other day I stumbled upon the answer: amazing 11-year-old book blogger Annie is hosting What's in a Name 2?, the second incarnation of a versatile little readalong centering on books' titles. The qualifications are that participants should read, at some point in 2009:

• (A) book(s) with a PROFESSION in the title:
• (A) book(s) with a TIME OF DAY in the title:
• (A) book(s) with a RELATIVE in the title:
• (A) book(s) with a BUILDING in the title:
• (A) book(s) with a BODY PART in the title: and
• (A) book(s) with a MEDICAL CONDITION in the title.

Fun! Lots of books I've been meaning to read fall into these categories, so I'm thinking I'll actually try to spend a month or two in each slot. The only one I'm coming up a bit short on is the "time of day" category, so if anyone has a great brainstorm about it, let me know. My short lists so far:

Profession:
Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather
The Robber Bride, by Margaret Atwood
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, by John Le Carré
The Judge and His Hangman, by Friedrich Durrenmatt
The Monk, by Matthew Lewis
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexander Dumas ("Count" is a profession, yes?)

Time of Day
Death in the Afternoon, by Ernest Hemingway
The Thousand and One Nights (or some selection thereof)
Blood Meridian; or the Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy

Relative
Autumn of the Patriarch, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Dead Father, by Donald Barthelme
Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser

Body Part
The Ground Beneath Her Feet, by Salman Rushdie
A Severed Head, by Iris Murdoch
The Nose, by Nicolai Gogol

Building
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, by Elizabeth Smart
House of Leaves, by Mark Danielewski
Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons
A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster
The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Brontë

Medical Condition
Cancer Ward, by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis
At the Mountains of Madness, by H.P. Lovecraft
Blindness, by José Saramago

Sounds like a lovely year of reading to me! Now, to knock out the last few of these biographies over the next couple months, so that my to-be-read shelf will have some extra room on it.

In addition to silly, silly dog garments, I've been working furiously on the next Family Trunk Project pattern. ("At last!" I hear you exclaim. "I thought she had forgotten the purpose of this blog!") Inspired by Betty Jean's mother, this is the nascent Ethel Mildred Ferguson sweater.

Kind of a terrible name, huh? Ethel Mildred didn't like it much, either. The story goes that when she was little she would often ask "Ma, what's my middle name?" "Oh, Ethel," her mother would impatiently reply, "you know your middle name is Mildred." Upon which young Ethel Mildred would break down into hysterical tears.

But hysterical tears are one thing I hope NOT to experience during the design of this sweater. I'm intentionally making things easy on myself: all of the design elements are well to the front of the area where the increases and decreases for waist shaping and set-in sleeves will occur, so there's no need to fret about disrupting the pattern. And good grief, sweater knitting certainly goes much faster in a worsted weight yarn and size seven needles, than in a fingering-weight yarn on size ones!

The yarn is very special, and, I think, fitting for Ethel's memorial: it's rustic, deliciously sheepy-smelling cormo wool, my share in the newly-minted Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm CSA. For those not familiar with the CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) model, it's commonly applied to produce farms: shareholders invest their dollars up front at the beginning of the growing season, and are then entitled to a share of the harvest. If there's more food than anticipated, each shareholder's portion is larger; if something happens to decrease the harvest, the shareholders get less. Generally, shareholders are also welcome to visit the farm at any time, lend a hand with the chores or just bring a picnic. It's a fantastic way to support your local farmers and show confidence in your community economy, and I've often thought about joining one of the many food CSA's in the Portland area. But, truth be told, I'm just not that excited about food, and it seems exhausting to have to come up with imaginative ways to use whatever veggies arrive on my doorstep. When I heard that the concept was being applied to FIBER, though? I rushed over to join, despite Martha's Vineyard being about as far from "local" as you can get without leaving the country. The first crop of shareholders just received our buttery, soft yarn, and it was ideally suited to the Ethel sweater that's been percolating in my brain.

The vine cable motif has been by far the greatest challenge to get hammered out, and this isn't the completely final version; I'll be ripping back to about the armhole bindoff and re-working the upper portion slightly. But I'm pleased with how it's coming, nonetheless.

And that hounds-tooth skirt is a bit of a teaser. It's a little sewing project I'll share with you in a few days.

Well, it's happened. I've become one of "those people."

I always swore I would never put clothes on a pet. It seemed so humiliating for the poor animals, who, my fantasy went, had evolved to be functional, self-regulating beings equipped by their native-grown pelts to withstand inclement weather. The problem with this theory is obvious to anyone with half a brain: humans. Humans have bred dogs to be weird yet lovable little monsters, and while some of them shed so much that you can spin up the fiber they leave on your couch and have enough for a sweater in no time, others run around practically naked and shiver pathetically even when the thermostat is turned up to 72 degrees. I'll leave you to guess which type of dog we have.

Ever since we adopted Mr. Bingley, all my friends and family have been predicting "an entire wardrobe" of knitted garments for him springing from my needles. In actuality though, dog knitting, like baby knitting, holds little appeal to me. Much of what inspires me about designing garments is fit - and elements like drape and tailored details? Not so relevant to someone whose body is basically a tube or a beach ball. So I procrastinated all summer on dog knitting, and then when it started getting cold, and Mr. Bingley was shivering more pathetically all the time, I was caught amongst a million different projects and decided we should just go to the store and buy a fleece for him so that I wouldn't have to worry about it. Which is when reality set in. Do you realize how much pet stores charge for those dog fleeces? It's ridiculous! You can pay upwards of EIGHTY DOLLARS! I may not be excited about knitting for dogs, but I have a ton of leftover wool and a strange attachment to paying my mortgage this month. Good grief. I would think twice about spending eighty dollars on a jacket for MYSELF.

So I ended up knitting for my dog after all. And you know? I have to admit that I think this turned out adorably. I reverse-engineered it from a pretty useless little cotton sweatshirt that the shelter threw in when we adopted him. It didn't do all that much to keep him warm, especially in Portland's rainy climate, but it proved very useful in making him something more substantial. I decided not to keep track of the pattern as I made it up, which was glorious while I was knitting but which I may regret as soon as next month, when this sweater is all grody and pill-infested.

You can see the general construction a bit in the photos above and below: the body and button band segments are all knit in one piece, with a bound-off buttonhole type opening toward the top of the back piece to let his tags come through. Short-rows form the semi-circular back, and the tiny raglan sleeves are knitted separately and seamed in. Then the giant neckband is picked up and knitted from the tops of the sleeves and body, and narrowed with centered double-decreases about two-thirds of the way up in order to fit around his neck. Oh, and p.s.: I find this photo hilarious.

We picked the buttons up last, and figured that this was our big opportunity to get cutesy and silly. Surprisingly, I think they kind of bring the whole "look" together. And I'm sure Mr. Bingley is hugely relieved to have a coordinated, accessorized outfit going into winter. Even more important, he seems to have stopped shivering.

It's been a whirl of activity over here at Family Trunk Headquarters, but as October, and hence Socktoberfest, is HOLY CRAP almost over, I thought I'd show off these little beauties while they're still germane.

Along with what seems like every other American out there, I am deep in a phase of infatuation with Midcentury design at the moment, so David and I decided to have a little period fun with the photoshoot. The French cuffs on my shirt are a tad distracting, as are the bokeh-infused videocassette tapes visible in some of the shots, but other than that I think these turned out quite well. To establish the proper mood, Time Out was on the record player throughout, and our iPods and laptops were hidden in the other room.

The stitch pattern and general idea of these socks was suggested by Kate Gagnon's Ode to Eames pattern, but the final products are some of the more heavily modified objects I've made. I more or less stole Kate's stitch pattern and added:

• A different toe-up cast-on (Magic Toe-Up rather than provisional);
• a different number of cast-on stitches (72 instead of 64, as I like a firm gauge);
• the stitch pattern continuing all the way around the foot, rather than becoming stripes on the sole;
• a different heel, to accommodate the unbroken all-over stitch pattern on the foot and leg (I used Eunny Jang's short-row heel from her Entrelac Socks pattern, which reliably fits great whenever I insert it into a new context);

• an increase in needle size about three-quarters of the way up the legs, to give me some wiggle room in the calf department;
• a slightly different ribbing: p2, k2tbl, which I thought played well into the 1950's milieu.

One aspect of the original pattern I did keep, and which was new to me, was the round toe construction. In the final toe-related analysis, I'm a bit in two minds about it. It's very roomy, and I do like a round shape at the end of shoes and socks. On the other hand, the increases don't look as neat and tidy as a typical, flatter toe, which is a minus in my book. In any case, it's always fun to try a little something new.

The yarn, unsurprisingly given my other sock projects, is Sundara Sock Yarn, in the Arabian Nights and Spruce over Sage colorways. I had a ton of yarn left over, and if I weren't in the slow process of converting my sock leftovers to blanket squares (on which more later), I might have pressed on and found a way to make these into knee highs. As it is, they're very soft and warm trouser socks quite suitable for late autumn and early winter, and I'm quite pleased with them.

Stay tuned for lots of updates as soon as possible: finished sewing projects, something for Mr. Bingley, the start of a new Family Trunk Project pattern, and (hopefully!), the finish of another.

I promise that the Warren Johnson pattern and essay will be done very soon. In the meantime, I hope you'll take a gander at this little video we put together, detailing the hybrid colorwork technique I used to get the plaid effect on the jacket. I'm hopeful that the video will be a useful tool for people making the jacket itself, and I'm also curious about other uses y'all creative knitters might find for the technique!

David really deserves props on this one: he did all the filming, and ALL the editing, which, let me just say, was a lot. The end result is so much prettier and more polished (and, I think, clearer) than I would have been able to achieve on my own. He even dealt graciously with my bouts of crankiness during filming ("Will I have to do voice-over? I don't understand how this will work. Should I even be talking right now if we're just going to record over it?" etc.). David does such awesome work on the Family Trunk Project, and I feel like his contributions are often overshadowed by my glitzier ones. So everyone: three cheers for David! Hip hip huzzah!

Strandtarsia (Warren Johnson Jacket) from emilystarr on Vimeo.

(A higher-quality video is coming in due course, once we iron out a few wrinkles). Enjoy! And be sure to keep watching after the copyright notice for a little taste of Mr. Bingley's attitude toward the fiber arts.