600

I made this batch of string last Thursday.  It's 8 ounces of Dicentra Designs roving in a color I can't name, that I bought at Black Sheep Gathering last year.  I'm making a sleeveless dress to wear to a wedding later this month, and I happened to notice that this bit of fluff was exactly the right color to go with it.  So I spun it up, fast and dirty, into a bumpy squishy and lovely bit of 2-ply.

I threw it into the suitcase, unfinished, knowing that my pal KT could be talked into finishing it for me.  I'm on the road teaching this week, and her house was one of my vagrant resting places.  I was right, and KT worked her magic, finishing it with her patented "WHUMP Really Hard On The Edge Of The Bathtub Technique".  Lady's gifts are epic.

I'm calling it Mad Fandango, and it's going to be a ruffled shawl to wear to the wedding.  I've never knitted a ruffle before.  What could possibly go wrong?  

Well, among other things, the 600 stitches I cast on for the ruffle edge were way too long for the cable I had chosen.  Not that I realized this until I was at my sister's house, in the Capitol of Nowhere Township.  Lucky for me, I had longer cable with me. Unluckily, it was deeply imbedded in another project.  Same thing we do every day...

I got the cable problem sorted.  That's when I noticed that 600 stitches makes for a long damn row of knitting.  One would think that this sort of observation would be self-evident.  Particularly after having cast on said 600 stitches myself.  Evidently my powers of observation require repetition to deploy.  

My great grandaddy Clarence Wolff was an interior designer in Louisville, KY in the 1930s and 40s.  In addition to an outstanding and unorthodox sense of color, he was well-known for his love of ruffles as a design element.  I've been thinking of Granddaddy, whom I never was privileged to know, today as I struggle with this ruffle. While Clarence did love his ruffles, he never actually had to fabricate (or for that matter, iron) any.  He had people for that.  An entire workroom, in fact, with many seamstresses, whom he kept fed (and hopping, too, no doubt) all through the depression and the war.  He kept the windows at Burgorf's Department store, and the fashionable parlours in and around Louisville, dressed for tea in miles and miles of his signature ruffles.  

People in my family sometimes compare me with him, in the way I love to dress things up.  I think it's a great compliment, and I really do wish I had managed to be born in time to have met him.  So even though this might be both my first and my last ruffle, I'm using it to spend time with Clarence Wolff.  

Here's lookin' at you Grandaddy.

Happy Ending

You know what it's like when you get really involved in a great book?  You start to view necessary activities (eating, sleeping) as intrusions.  Anything that takes you away from the compelling nature of you, and the pages, and what will happen next is an extreme inconvenience.

That's what knitting Caroa Dubh has been like.  Will I have enough yarn?  Why can I not make a shawl collar in fewer than eight tries?  Will this even fit me?  Will I have enough yarn?  I just kept turning the pages, fully embroiled in the story.

And it did fit..

And I did have enough yarn.

And even though I still don't fully understand the collar I made, I really like it.

Even the buttons are exactly what I would have hoped for. (Get some for yourself here )

Remember when I said I had only just begun to think about what it would be like to actually wear this yarn?  I didn't know the half of it.  It's hefty.  It's comforting.  And this is a big surprise:  It's silky.  For all its fuzzy hand-spun-itude, this yarn, when knit, is silky and drapey in the way that fur would be, if a person were to wear it.  It's luxurious and indulgent, and downright sexy.

There was just enough chill in the air this morning for me to wear it to the bus stop with the kids.  The breeze was knocking the first of the yellow leaves out of the trees.  The sun was coming up pink over the mountain.  I waved to the Smallies as their bus pulled away from the curb. Then I threw my arms around myself and hugged tight, breathing in the cool morning air and thinking how lucky I am that my job is to make beautiful things, and then share them with my friends.

And, just like when I finish a book I've been deeply engaged in, I am more than a little melancholy to have finished Caora Dubh.  I have that sense of emptiness you get at the end of a really great project.

Of course, there is still the pattern for me to write, should anybody be interested.  Drop me a line if you are.  Ever wonder what the characters in the story do after you close the cover on the last chapter?  I think the rest might be yours to write.
 

Good as a Feast

Today I've been dwelling on the nature of Plenty, and the nature of Enough.  Turns out that in certain circumstances, the two are the same.  But let me back up...

There I was, with one sleeve knitted, and one to go.  I had no idea how sleeve #1 was going to fit into the already-completed armscye, and wouldn't until I had blocked the sleeve and sewn it in.  But I couldn't block/sew sleeve #1 until I knew whether or not there was enough yarn left to complete sleeve #2.  In which wretched case, I would be frogging sleeve #1 to change its design to one requiring less yarn.  And then I would be frogging sleeve #2 to match the new sleeve #1, and still hoping that there would be enough yarn.  And perhaps throwing my feeble self under the next bus.

And that's when it happened.  The Knitting Genius, who is my dear friend, KT said this:  "Weigh the first sleeve, and then weigh all the yarn you have left."  And then she actually waited while I did it.  Sleeve #1 weighed in at exactly 6 oz.  Sleeve 2, plus the remaining yarn, came in at 6 7/8.  Genius KT judged it to be close enough, and advised me to knit on with confidence. 

Scales are so fabulous.  Almost as fabulous as knitters who know how to use them:
 

That wee ball in between the sleeves is the remaining 1 5/8 oz of yarn.  Which means that in spite of Phillip throwing away the second half of my fleece (yes, he still sleeps in the garage), in spite of my lack of restraint in adding a boatload of cables to the design, and in spite of my inability to guess how much yarn is required for a sweater to fit me, I caught a break.  Oh, and did I mention that my collar-knitting odyssey resulted in a collar that swallowed over 300 yards of yarn?  All I can think is that the science of yarn measurement/estimation is flawed, at best.  I know darn good and well that 1600-odd yards of sport-weight should not have been able to afford this garment.  I also know that the same 1600-odd yards that I measured by length also weighed over 2 1/2 pounds. which should have been enough for all the sweater I could want, and a toilet paper cozy to match.  So which estimate was right?  Where did my lukewarm relationship with math fail me?

After all this pondering, and the resulting nosebleed, I decided that it really doesn't matter.  What counts is that I have a whole sweater (or I will, once the seams are sewn), and even a wee bit of yarn leftover with which to sew the seams.  And in the words of Caroline Quiner Ingalls (Laura's Ma), and probably her Ma before her, "enough's as good as a feast".  It doesn't matter if your leftovers fill a teaspoon or a snow shovel, as long as the amount you really NEED is there.

So I'm going to make it a point at this, the time of harvest, to be thankful for both Plenty, and for Enough.  God knows there are many in this world who have never known either.  Take a moment with me, won't you, and express a bit of gratitude for whatever it is you've got?  Sometimes we don't need our cups to overflow.  Sometimes having something in the cup at all is a triumph.

And in case you are wondering, the super-wide sleeve cap is on purpose.  Stay tuned to see if it fits.