Off the Needles

In among all the World Series watching and other daily activities, I have managed to knit up a couple of things.



This is a hat, one of two identical ones, that I am knitting for the director and assistant of the zen center that I go to in Brooklyn. The design on it is the Mountain and Rivers Order symbol. I had been attending a class at the center and every week I would look at Shugen Sensei's bald head and think "winter's coming." And I am happy to do something for two people who so much for others. I am hoping to finish the other one tonight so I can bring them to the zazenkai (all-day sit) tomorrow. But we'll see how the day goes...



This is shawl knit with the handspun yarn made from the fleece that came with my Suzie Pro spinning wheel. I knit it for my mother-in-law for Christmas. She likes to read and she likes to keep the thermostat in their house very low, so a shawl seemed in order. Also, she isn't a lacy kind of a person, so this simple pattern seemed more appropriate than a more complicated one. This is especially fortunate for me since I have a severe mental block against all things lacy when it comes to knitting. I hope someday to work through it, but for now, I must accept my limitations.

And yesterday...



this arrived at our door. It is a detail of a handmade dress, made by the artist Mariana Frochtengarten. Mariana is from Brazil but is living in Halifax, NS, working on her MFA in textiles at NSCAD. Her thesis project is called "The Nomadic Dress Project" and it consists of five dresses that she designed and stitched. Each dress has a theme and she invites five artists from all over the world to work on them. I elected to work on the dress titled "The Gift" since that is such a theme in my own work. I have a couple of ideas but I want to let them sit in my mind for a while before committing to one of them. I have a month to spend with the dress and then it gets sent back to Halifax.

And people with very long memories may remember this:



Yes, "knitting sprawl" the very reason I started this blog. I never phtotographed the state it reached last spring but suffice to say that it sat unattended in my studio all summer. I had very hard feelings towards this particular bit of knitting. I speak in the past tense because, last time I was at my studio staring at the damn thing, I decided that I would frog it. There was no way I was going to keep going on it since in about 6" I had grown to despise it, so six feet was out of the question. And then the final indignity! Frogging fair isle intarsia is as about as much fun as knitting it. Finally, I just threw the whole thing in the waste basket. I never felt better in my life!

The project continues, but the first attempt to realize it, is history.