MaggieBKnits

I would like to show you a few pictures over the next couple of days. Bear in mind that often I was so kersmackled by what people showed at Camp, that I failed to leap to my feet and take a decent photo. So I don't even come close to having everything. If I blow it and mis-label something, fellow campers, please let me know? This is Greg, who is modeling a hat that used a technique he found intriguing. Clearly not all ideas tried result in things one wants to try again... Lest anyone be confused, Greg is a wonderful knitter and spinner, and funny as all get-out. Sheryl and her incredible sweater from Knitting out of Africa , by Marianne Isager. I will be visiting Denmark for a few days in August, and hope to see some of Marianne Isager's creations in person. More to come!

Camp is over (OK, it's a Retreat, technically) but my mind is jam-packed with ideas, concepts and project plans. Needless to say, a few items came home with me, which I'll tell about but first-- When I got home I found something waiting for me: A bag full of small reels of all of the Jamieson Spindrift colors. Some friends bought all the colors, and divided them up for a bunch of us to share, and this morning I finally sat down to look through them. Ostensibly, I was verifying they were all there. Really I was playing with them, and delighting in the colors colors colors! I put them all on a piece of parachute cord, in order, but that will not last long. Aren't they glorious? My roommate this year was a wonderfully talented Fair Isle designer, teacher and (of course) knitter. She stands in front of a collection of colors and sees things: pulls out this and that and suddenly has the beginnings of something tremendous. I find her inspirational, naturally, as my gifts s...

Every year before Knitting Camp I start pulling out all the knitting I've done in the past year, to decide what to bring for Show and Tell. This having been the year of the Great Knitting Slump, pickings are a bit slim. There are WIPs a-plenty but not much in the way of completed projects. Below are the most likely, two shawls completed before the GKS. One thing I love about Camp is being among other knitting enthusiasts (those of you who read this, you know who you are!!) and listening to the flow of their ideas and what they have been doing in their knitting/designing... the flip side of this is being listened to by people who understand my personal knitting obsessions (largely involving lace). What I don't like about this year, is how few of my simmering lace ideas I have actually followed through to some sort of activation. Some I had even forgotten about, until I happened on my notes. Above are a few things in varying states of work, which I might bring to work on whil...

Yesterday I missed out on my usual Sunday knitting spell (during a soccer game) and instead worked on my Shetland shawl when we got home. My husband commented that my shawl was looking really good. Naturally I had to hold it up, stretch it out some, for him to more accurately admire it. Pride truly goeth before destruction... because the circular needle holding my stitches dropped the last 8 inches of knitting off both ends. No biggie, I can pick it up. True, and I did, and some of it was easy to fix. Most had not run madly in all directions. Except for one really bad section which overwhelmed me so much I threw the shawl in the corner to work on today. The fact the row just completed had a fair number of yarnovers and decreases, and it was true lace (every row has action: preceding rows also yarnovers and decreases) and for some crazy reason quite a bit of it just melted away thru several rows worth of work. This was one of the worst of the messed-up-motifs This is what it is supposed...

I am afraid I have no photos to share today, only an anecdote. Yesterday my husband had one son on one side of the state; I had the younger (son # 3 who recently got his brown sweater) on the other side of the state, both for soccer games. Oldest son was in the middle of the state, running in a track meet. There being only 2 parents in our household, Son #1 was alone. :( (If you are wondering if this is our usual Sunday, let me reassure you that it is often and usually worse) I am sitting in the hot sun, happily knitting away on my Shetland shawl and cheering for my son's team (let me reiterate: this shawl is great fun!) The mother of one of the other boys on the soccer team comes to examine my knitting. Long and short is, she has seen me knitting all sorts of things over the course of the last 10 months, but this one she really really loves. Wants to buy it. Now, the thing is, my knitting has my life and my childrens' lives knitted into it. It accompanies me to games (ex...

Yesterday I had a 3 hour sojourn at a track meet. As it was run in a rather plodding manner (not the runners, the organizers), and my running child only in a few events, there was a whole lotta knitting time. And fun knitting time it was, too. I worked exclusively on this: It's my Shetland shawl, whose design I worked out last summer (truly. Last summer) and which languished unattended until now. No need to rehash my slump nor my constrained time the last several months. What was joyful was to pick it up and re-discover how much I love to work on it. Last evening I found myself occasionally stretching it out to be sure I like it as much as I think. This is something I do a lot with lace. It is so totally transformed by blocking, it feels like a completely different sort of thing altogether while one is knitting it. So here it is: This is the center (or part of it anyway, it would fall off the needle if I stretched the whole thing out). After the center square is finished, ...

Yes, I have been not only a sorry excuse for a knitter, but a really sorry excuse for a blogger! I try to avoid discussing personal issues on this blog, though I must say I made an exception last fall for the Septic Installation Insanity from Hades . However, I think I cannot begin to explain the last 3 months so I won't try. I am not even sure, now, that I am totally "back," but am hoping so. Perhaps you remember this project: ...which was gumming up the Knitting Works. Well, not really, I was the one gumming things up, but whatever-- finishing this project became an act of teeth gritting. Crazy, really, because the Malabrigo has such a glorious hand, and I was making it for a precious son-- who was longing for it. You would think it a delightful knit, right? But between the dull color (which I gotta tell you looks fabulous on my son) and the annoying way the yarn behaved on the little bit of front cabling, I was perennially irked with it. The yarn is a single, only v...