a bold undertaking

So I thought about a skirt with my stash of Elsebeth Lavold's black Silky Wool. I was warned that the Silky Wool yarn wants to grow, so I had second thoughts. I noticed that the swatch lacked elasticity to some extent, which means that it might stretch, but not necessarily grow. I figured to take care of that with negative ease at the waist. The skirt will not be fitted elsewhere. It is meant to be full and knee length. Here is a sketch - not a good scan, but it gives the idea.

The body of the skirt will be stockinette, but since that curls, the bottom is banded with about 2 inches of moss sitch. The top will be shaped by inverted pleats with stockinette on the outside and reverse stockinette on the inside. Does any of this sound familiar? Yes, it's Darcy revisited . For the rest, there will be a front placket, maybe in moss, with buttons that will probably be snaps in reality and a 1x1 (twisted?) ribbed waistband of about 2". The band will be higher than the actual waistline and will probably have a tie at its lower edge.

If this project is a success, I doubt that I will post the pattern. Here is an idea of why not:

I am almost embarresed to say it, but would any other knitter on earth cast on and moss stitch 528 stitches? Now it is bottom up and will decrease as I go, but still. The original idea for this skirt was actually for a thick yarn and not as full. If I reknit it that way and it makes a worthwhile design, I would post it.

The book I'm listening to now is George Pelecanos' Drama City about the DC underworld of drugs and dog fighting. Isn't Drama City a great name for a skirt?

the listless blogger tries to design

I am so not bloggy today. First of all there is our endless winter. Today it's 45 degrees F and raining a cold, drippy rain. It's always winter and never Christmas! Aslan save us. Here is a picture of this day in spring:

There is a tiny bit of green showing and that leads to my next blog blocker: I need to think about some renovations for my 20 year old garden. I am planning to spend our tax refund on landscaping. That won't cover all that needs to be done, but I need to make an overall plan so as to figure out how best to use the money this year. That has been nagging at me.

Third, I have an assignment from my volunteer job at the zoo to revise the fact sheet on on the African Straw Colored Fruit Bat.

Not a big job but messy in that I have to consolidate a bunch of information from different sources. Fruit bats are huge, live for 15 years in the wild, and roost in colonies of 100,000 to 1,000,000.

But don't worry, I do have some knitting talk. I finished with mittens for the moment and have been kntting a bit on my Kimono Shawl and trying to find inspiration for a new project. To that end, I had some correspondence over a week ago with Ruth of Ruthless Knitting and have been mulling it over since then.

Ruth is an amazing designer and, it seems to me, extremely productive. She mostly works on projects of her own design rather than published patterns. Now I have a lot of design ideas. I have even started a design sketchbook. But it always seems easier to knit a design that someone else has worked out. I don't think it's laziness. I think that I want to produce rather than fiddle around with trial and error. But I still have the urge to design for myself.

What gives me pause is this: Ruth says that she likes to work with yarn that she has on hand, trying to find an idea for it rather than trying to find yarn for a pattern or design idea. My thinking is the exact opposite. I get the idea for a finished garmet and try to work out how to make it and then try to find the right yarn for it. Oddly enough, as a knitter, I don't seem to be that inspired by yarn.

But I have been thinking about Ruth's design method and about the yarn I have on hand. Maybe I'll focus on the yarn a little more and about how best to use it. So yesterday I swatched Silky Wool:

It's really hard to photograph black yarn. I used 2 different needle sizes (5 and 6 US), a basic rib, and started a cable but got tired of it. I blocked the swatch and was surprised at how much better it looked. Usually I don't see as much difference after blocking. So I'll sit down with my sketchbook for the rest of the day and try to think of the best use for this yarn. (Actually I have an idea for a skirt that I had in the back of my mind while swatching, so the purity of the design process has already been compromised.)

yarn memories

I took another trip to the past yesterday. A local yarn store, the Knitting Worksphop, is having a moving sale, and I went. A note for Chicagoans: they are moving from their present location on Lincoln just north of Webster to Damen just north of Webster. But I can remember when the Knitting Workshop was the Weaving Workshop, owned and operated by Marilyn Murphy, the first editor of Interweave Knits and its current publisher. How's that for history?


At that time the Weaving Workshop was on Sheffield between Fullerton and Diversey. That was where I bought the Harrisville yarn for the Fair Isle vest I blogged earlier this week. Judith Swartz, the designer and knitting book author, now based in Wisconsin, sold it to me. I remember it very well. The yarn was wound off from cones, and that was the first time I had seen a coned yarn. Of course, it was coned for weaving. I only need an ounce or two of each color, so Judith wound it off into skeins. She told me to wash the skeins before winding them into balls to get the bloom up and also, I suspect, to wash off the oil.


In those days department stores like Marshall Fields sold yarn (as well as yard goods), and there were not many local yarn stores. The Weaving Workshop was the best ever, selling high quality and affordable yarns that you couldn't get elsewhere at the time. It's still a good store with a large and varied selection. Here are the bargains that I couldn't resist yesterday:

This is Silky Wool in black at half price. It isn't that expensive a yarn in the first place so, as I tell Roger, half price was practically free. I have 11 skeins. What to make? Maybe a Rowan sweater or a skirt I have an idea for.

The other yarn I bought was Katia Arc en ciel (Rainbow?), a variegated, worsted weight acrylic/cotton blend that was sort of expensive though put up in large quantity. I have had the idea of making a neutral colored Clapotis in cotton yarn, so I bought enough for that - four balls. I would like to have such a scarf, but I will save the knitting for a time when I will need a soothing project.

I bet you think I'm a color bore, but hey, I'm not wearing bright purple or hot pink.

Speaking of boring colors, and since this is a trip down memory lane, here is an ancient yarn that I bought in the little import shop on Ashalnd next to Weibolts. Do any old time north siders remember this shop? This yarn is the darkest of navies. I can't imagine what I was going to do with this or what I am going to do with it. I have about 850 yards. It is a light worsted weight with a twist, which would be good for stitch definition, except the color is so dark the stitches wouldn't show. I welcome your ideas.