Waltzing Knitilda

Hockey smiles

My oldest, the one who double-checked to be sure she wasn't like Carmen, now has a hockey player smile.

Not quite like Bobby Hull but still.

She careened off a scooter. Landed face first. Make that teeth first. Luckily it was in a wood-floored gym.

She was very brave at the ER. I pretended. OK she was probably pretending too.

The good news was that no teeth were lost and no bones were broken. The bad is that she now has 3-4 chipped front teeth.  And they're not where they used to be.

She has gone from crying when she looked at herself in the mirror to trying out grimacing and growling like one of Maurice Sendak's monsters.  She hasn't scared her little sister yet though.

I'm still recovering.  The cones of sale cashmere from Colourmart UK are a vital part of my recovery.

It's a very good thing for humanity that I never became a doctor.  I nearly fainted twice while they were fixing up her teeth.  Luckily the chair was nearby, as the last thing the doc needed to deal with as he was working on a weepy scared little girl was her mother fainting stone cold out.

Ah. A lifetime of dental work. But her smile will be gorgeous. Better than cashmere.

Unity Canvas prep

I'm beat. I just went through all 300 artworks with Pat, one of the other artists, to sort out what's going in the show.  There's only enough space for half of them max, and probably less.

The big relief was that everything was in really good shape.  When we took the show down in 2002 we stored everything flat, with wax or parchment paper between the pieces, in boxes.  Then closed up the boxes, but not sealing them shut.  It worked.

What was the most exhausting I think was seeing all the images again and handling them.  They have so much energy in them, and a lot of it is dark and grief-stricken.  I had to keep washing my hands and drinking water.  But it was a thrill.  And a real thrill to see how strong the works are visually even now, away from the vortex of the immediate reaction to 9/11.  You just can't tell how some things will survive the test of time, even 5 years later.  And these are really good.  Really. Good.

I'm trying to keep the integrity of the original panels, and preserve the visual "passages" of the original installation. That means carving away at sections, and leaving out some pieces that don't build a visual narrative as strongly as other pieces.  Some works came out because they were too similar to others in there, some works came out because the Port Authority said nothing violent and no nudity.  I'm keeping in mind the audience, which is not necessarily art lovers, and will most definitely include family survivors and first responders.  So works that were less slick but had a lot of heart won out over ones that were the opposite.  Works that were blurry and dark or too small to see from a distance were at a disadvantage.  Balance is important -- some works are angry and vengeful, some call for peace and understanding.  And I tried to preserve the original geographic diversity of the group. 

But there were definitely pieces that I wanted to put in and just couldn't.

Whew. I'm beat.  I think this will work but I'll know better next week when it's all up.  I know there'll be some last-minute surprises.

Got out the press releases. Got out the postcards. But still catching bits that didn't get out. Oh and the original website is back up -- www.unitycanvas.com.  Now to write up a statement explaining this in large enough type that people can read it from a distance.

Sheep as billboards

In today's New York Times.

You can't make this stuff up.

Reading Reading Reading

Anyone going to be in NYC this Thursday night?  And need an excuse to go to a yarn store?  Why of course.

Come one, come all to Knitty City, at 79th and Broadway from 6-8 pm.  Thursday, April 27.  And you'll be treated to a Knit Lit event.  A whole bunch of the NYC area authors/contributors will be there reading their great stories and essays. 

Linda Roghaar, she of the famed co-founder and -editor of the Knit Lit series will be there.  Christine Lavin, singer-songwriter extraordinaire, will be there.  And will even PERFORM. (But you have to get there early to catch her as she's got to head out for another gig.) If you click on the link, you must must must listen to "What Was I Thinking?"  Kay Gardiner, the Mason-Dixon one, will be there impersonating Ann Shayne describing how she first met Kay.  (I love their new book, but that's for later.) And then we've got Rena Trefman Cobrinik, Claudia Conner, Cathy Cooper, Naomi Dagen Bloom, and Jenny Feldon.  All great stories. Love each and every one of them. 

Oh yeah. And me too. 

Should be a blast.  These things always are.

Chal empezado... Shawl started

So I decided to go with the Fruitcake Knits fir cone triangular shawl pattern.  The new shawl that is out of the yummy yarn that Elisabet brought me from Barcelona (from Argentina to Barcelona)

Decidi' a usar el patron de Fruitcake Knits para el nuevo chal.  El nuevo chal de la lana que me dio' Elisabet cuando ella vino a NYC.

   Ya empeze'.  Un encanto esta lana.  Y el patron es bastante facil, aun no parece que es.  Buenisima para una novata de encaje/calados.  Estoy haciendolo frente del televisor.

I've started already.  I love this yarn. Really soft, interesting nubbies, great green color.  The pattern is pretty easy too.  It would be good for a lace novice.  This is my TV knitting these days.

Here's how the yarn looks close-up in natural light. It's a little hard to tell but there are these very subtle darker blue-green stripes that are appearing.  Very subtle.  I think I'll only be able to see them in bright sunlight.

Back to working on the Unity Canvas mailings and press. And dreaming of a wool pine forest.

Wish someone would invent smellovision for yarn like this. Can you imagine how cool it would be to feel like you were in the midst of a woolly pine forest? 

Really I'm going back to these mailings now.

Easter wool dyeing

This happened to me a few years ago too.

We dyed the eggs.  They looked great.

But there was all this dye left over.

Pour it down the drain?

Oh. No.

It really wanted to be poured onto, hmmmm, some wool.

Yes that's it.

Some wool that needed to be spun up. Some wool that would appreciate a makeover to show how glamourous it could really be. 

Here is the before shot.

From Misty Mountain Farm in Virginia. A Finn Lincoln fleece, bought at Rhinebeck a few years ago.  Long staple, soft. Washed.

Still full of lanolin. This became apparent later.

I actually really like the undyed color, so I only took part of it out of the bag to dye.  I'm going to spin it up creatively, mixing up the colors with the undyed wool. Not sure if I'll do it in the plying, or just grab random hanks of color.  We'll see.

So here are the two batches, ready to go.

And here is how I decided to group the colors, 3 to a casserole dish. 

OK, so I didn't have any more casserole dishes.

At least not big enough ones.

I didn't presoak because I thought I wanted the vinegar-laden colors to soak in, strike and stay put.  This is because I was using a pair of complementary colors in each threesome, so knew it would just be brown if they'd mix.  And brown over brown? Well, duh not good.

This is where the lanolin became a factor.

You may recall that lanolin repels water.

Indeed it does. Note how there appear to be dots of color on the top, and a pool of colors on the bottom.

I nuked it anyway. Too afraid to move anything, and certain that it was too late to add water.  "Oh the bottom at least will look interesting, and maybe the middle. And I was going to ply it anyway..." Sure. Play fast and loose with the dye rules. And see what happens.

I did presoak the next batch. It had a little too much water perhaps for all the dye I poured into the casserole, but I did manage to drain a bit of water off before pouring in colors 2 and 3.  Color 1 was the yellow which I didn't think would do much anyway.  I was surprised that the soaking allowed the color to soak in faster and actually seemed to stay put. 

After nuking, I also pushed the wool down in the first batch with the end of the dish scrubber.  That helped soak the color in.  It didn't look like it had migrated surprisingly enough. And then I zapped it all again. 

You can see that the colors stayed pretty distinct.  I think the saturation level though will be wildly different depending on whether the wool was on top or on the bottom.

One thing I really look forward to seeing is how this being a fleece as opposed to a roving will affect the dyeing.  The wool's in there in chunks, rather than having its fibers all lined up from being carded.  I have a dog comb and a brush, and after it dries I might play around with blending some of this up with the undyed fleece to see what happens before spinning it up.

Did I ever mention that my favorite class in high school was physics?  I love experiments.

FAQs: 

Q: What dye did you use?

A:  Paas. The regular stuff.

Q:  Did you do anything special to the dye?

A:  Nope.  Followed the package instructions for creating bright colors, which means adding 3 T of vinegar to the mix instead of just water.  I did this a few years ago over some grey roving and didn't add vinegar to the mix.  The dye seemed to take longer to exhaust then, but in truth the stuff is still sitting on my stovetop cooling so I can't really tell yet.

Q: How did you pour it?

A: In thirds, like pie sections. However this was rather inexact.  I don't know what it'll look like on the bottom part, or if the colors mixed or by how much. 

Q:  How long did you nuke it in the microwave?

A:  Two minutes a pop, rest a few minutes.  Repeat till dye exhausted or close to it.

Q:  Did you cover it?

A:  Yes, with clear plastic food wrap, and left the food wrap on while it was cooling down to enhance the steam effect.

Q: Don't the colors come out too bright?

A: That's why I dyed wool that wasn't white.  The brown in this one and the grey in the first one I ever tried toned down the colors and they turned out quite lovely.

Q:  Are you going to eat out of those casseroles again?

A: Yeah, after about 30 cycles in the dishwasher.  It's food grade dye but the fleece is a little scary with all that lanolin and stuff.  Never did like to make casseroles anyway.

Here they are cooling off on the stove top.

They look dark but will lighten up when they dry.  The dye hasn't yet completely exhausted, and I'm not sure if it's a function of the amount of wool being too small for the amount of dye, or some property of the dye that I don't know about. But it's almost clear. I may zap it one more time and let it cool down again.  Maybe even leave it overnight in the dishes.

Here's a detail shot of one of the dishes. You can see the colors better in this one.  It looks weird because I still haven't taken off the plastic wrap so it's through water droplets.

I'll rinse them out later and let them dry and see what's happened.

Back to checking on how it's exhausting.

Addendum:  They're drying.  The red end of the spectrum exhausted first.  On the other hand, the green dye just wouldn't exhaust.  After a few hours (like 3) I got tired of waiting so poured out the diluted dyewater after all. The bottom of the unsoaked one definitely got more color than the top, though the top did dye too. They look cool.  More later.

Carmen

Yesterday I took my oldest daughter (the one who's 9) to see Carmen at the NY City Opera at Lincoln Center.

It was her first opera.  It was the first opera I saw too, but when I was about 13. The tickets were well-priced so I figured hey why not.  As long as we are living in NYC I'm determined to get my kids to see things they won't see very easily in other places. And then I get to go.

Even though I listen to opera regularly, and they pretend to sing opera, and they've even made up operas (when they make a big deal over little tragedies like a fallen cookie I've told them to make up an opera about it) it wasn't that easy to get her to go.  (By the way those little cookie and spilt milk operas really are hilarious.)

"Wanna go see an opera?"

"No. Why would I want to do that?"

"Well it's got gypsies and takes place in Spain and has bullfighters and stuff."

"Yeah so?"

"How about if I sing one of the songs from it?"

"OK."

[Me singing La Habanera somewhat breathily with a few squeaks. Not at all majestically or silkily as I'm getting over a cold.  Yeah that's it.]

"Oh I LOVE THAT SONG.  YES YES YES PLEASE????"

So we went.

During the first act, I was afraid to look at her.  I didn't want to see if she was bored or didn't like it.  But I looked anyway.  She caught my eye, my raised eyebrows.  And met them with bright eyes wide as saucers, nodding rapidly and beaming. 

Whew.

After the first act, I asked her what she thought.  She raved.  Said her best friend was wrong, that opera isn't boring at all.  We both recalled our favorite Bugs Bunny operatic scenes. And then.

"I'm not at all like her."  Meaning Carmen.

Pause.

"Am I Mom?"

How do you answer a serious  question from your 9 year old daughter comparing herself to a gypsy cigarette-roller and free spirited vixen in 19th century Sevilla without bursting out laughing?

"Ah no, you are not."

But you know, I thought this marked opera success.  When the lead character can get a kid growing up 125 years later to see herself somehow and question whether she's at all like her, now that's a great opera, and a great lead too.  (Actually all the actors/singers were great. The production was just a delight. I really do like City Opera in some ways better than the Met.)

My mission was complete.  Another opera lover made.

Today she told her best friend that he was wrong, and gave him her version of it.  Now he might even go again.

Heh.

Cuadrados otra vez... Squares again

People sometimes say life is a big circle.

I beg to differ.

It's a square.  This is what I've come to realize.  You go around, but it's not a smooth trip.  You reach corners. You turn. Long-lost friends pop up, but not in the same way. New art projects echo old themes, but don't copy them.

So these days my life is going around in squares.

One way is that I'm pulling together an art exhibit for the month of May.  Back in 2002, for the first anniversary of 9/11, I organized a collective artists' response called the Unity Canvas.  My studio used to be in Tribeca, and we used to live in Battery Park City. For those of you not familiar with NYC geography, this means that I worked about 3 blocks north of the WTC, and lived about 3 blocks south and west of it.  Walked through it every day.  Luckily we had moved up to Harlem a few months before, but didn't move the studio north for another couple of years.  That was my old 'hood.

It started little, and then grew.  And grew.  Almost 300 artists participated in the end.  And they came from about every corner of the world.  Word spread by word of mouth and over the internet. 

The idea was to have artists do 12" squares of canvas, in the medium of their choice, about any aspect of 9/11 they felt compelled to express in their artwork.  Canvas is the traditional medium of artists, and widely available.  12" is not too big but big enough.

What started pouring in were images.  Some of peace, some of revenge, some of sorrow, some of horror.  Some abstract, some narrative, some representational. Some with photos, some painted, some sewn, some glued.  You name it, it came in.

They were all from the heart.  Many of the artists told me they had been blocked in those awful months, and that doing the piece freed them up to start working again.  I was in tears opening up some of them.  They all went in the show.

It's still one of the things in my life that I'm most proud of doing.  Proud's not really the right word.  It was humbling.  I felt like the guardian and caretaker of some very powerful mojo.  When I put it all together it was an act of reverence.  It was shown for the first anniversary at the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center in Brooklyn, which has more artists per capita than anywhere in the US.  It was arranged as an installation, and in groupings evoking the stained glass groupings you see in cathedral windows.  Each panel had a name like "Requiem" and "O Fortuna" and "Dona Nobis Pacem."  A combination of sacred music titles and not, like from Carmina Burana. 

These photos are of the show at the WAH Center, and only show a fraction of the works.  The top panel was titled "Dona Nobis Pacem," as it had a lot of peace-themed works in it.  This panel to the right shows the incredible diversity of media and viewpoints.

You can see more about it here and here and here.

And it's going to be in the NY-NJ Port Authority for the month of May.  The Port Authority lost about 75 employees on that day, and owned the WTC, so it's good for all of us.  It'll be at the Port Authority's main bus terminal to be exact, so zillions of commuters can see it every day.  Not quite as big as the original, because the space is smaller.  But still big.

So if you're in NYC in the month of May, stop by the Port Authority to find it.  42nd Street between 8th and 9th Avenue, towards the 9th Avenue entrance. Open 24 hours, and it's free. 

(If you would like to help out with the costs of the project, it's a New York Foundation for the Arts fiscally-sponsored project so it's tax deductible.  You can donate online here and designate the gift for Unity Canvas. But I really hate asking for money so forgive me if this sounds weird. But just in case you want to help out that's how.)

Today I'm getting out a mailing.  The first of several. This week brought news that first-responders are getting sick and dying now from their heroic work in the first days and weeks and months, from breathing in all those poisons. Bringing this project to public view again feels timely, and not laden with the fog of war. 

This is a good thing to work on during Holy Week come to think of it.  Sacrifice, death and life all together.

Happy Easter, and Happy Passover.

Visito, visitas, visita, visitamos, visitando... I visit, you visit, she visits, we visit, visiting

La semana pasada fue' tan divertido por unos dias. Elisabet de Sincontrol y la fundadora de BarcelonaKnits vino a NY.  Como verdadera campeona de lana, ella fue' a las mas famosas tiendas de lana en NYC.  Impresionante.  Yo tuve el placer de acompan~arla a unas y al fin de conocerla en vivo, en vez de solamente por el internet.

Tan encantadora.  Pero, desgraciadamente, no tengo ni una foto de ella. Ni de su lana.

Pero, ella me dio un regalito.  Esto.

Lindisima, no?  De lana y seda, de Yanabey de Argentina.  De lo que yo sepa, no lo venden aqui'.  Estoy buscando patrones para hacer un chal.

Algo como Flower Basket, pero con motivos de hojas. Ya hice el Flower Basket. Dos veces me gusto' tanto.

Creo que voy a usar esta, de Fruitcake Knits, pero todavi'a no he decidido por cierto. Estoy pensando en poner otro motivo como un punto de hojas pero no se'. Tengo uno en un libro viejo de motivos de Espan~a, asi' que la romantica que soy pienso que eso sera' justo. 

Pero ahora que lo estoy mirando otra vez estoy pensando que este motivo de pino tal vez sera' perfecto.

I had such a blast last week.  Elisabet, of Sin Control blog, the founder of Barcelona Knits, the knitting circle over there, was in town for a yarn crawl.  Talk about a woman with a mission.  I was impressed.  I had the delight to meet her in person and go with her to a few spots. 

I love the internet.  I just do.  We've been corresponding via blogland, and what a blast to finally meet her in person and talk yarn.  IN SPANISH.  And history, and patterns, and fave yarn suppliers, and fave yarns. Like a dork, did I take a picture of her? Ah. No. But above is a picture of the beautiful yarn she gave me.  From Yanabey of Argentina, sold in Spain.  As far as I know it's not sold here.  Wool, with little blue silk slubs.  So incredibly soft.

It is telling me it wants to be a shawl.  I'm thinking something like Flower Basket, but not. (I've already made two.)  With a sort of leaf like motif to show off the luscious greeniness of this yarn. 

So in the lead right now is this really cute pattern from Fruitcake Knits.  Fir cone motif.  But I'm also thinking about swapping out that motif for a leaf lace pattern in one of my old Spanish pattern books.  Hmm.  That of course appeals to the romantic in me, and there's something about the symmetry and poetry of using a Spanish stitch pattern for this precious gift from my fellow Spanish language knitblogger that just feels right.  Then again, I just kinda wanna get knitting it up. We'll see. 

I like these sorts of decisions.

Cuadrados... Squares

No se' por que', pero este mes ha sido lleno de cuadrados.  Para cubrecamas para amigas o sus parientes. Aqui' en los EEUU, hay una tradicion de amigas haciendo en un grupo una cubrecama.  A veces son de tela -- "quilts".  Los que yo participo son, naturalmente, de punto o de ganchillo.  Aqui' estan' mis cuadrados.

I don't know why, but this month has been full of squares.  For afghans for friends or their relatives.  You know the drill -- a group comes together to make an afghan and everyone makes a square. So here they are.

Esto es para una amiga que va a tener un bebe'.  Es una sorpresa.  Es hecho de lana que yo hile'.  Actualmente, es hecho de casi la primera lana que yo hile'.  Pues, lanas, porque tiene dos tipos de lana.

Para mi' significa la tierra y todos los colores, quiero decir todo lo bueno para el bebe y la mama'.

This is for a friend who's going to have a baby. It's a surprise.  It's made of my own handspun, actually my almost-first handspun wool.  I used a natural fleece and a rainbow dyed roving, and kept the color changes by navajo-plying the colored roving. 

For me it symbolizes the earth and all the colors of the rainbow. In other words, the best things in life sorts of wishes for the new baby and mom.

Aqui' tenemos un cuadrado para una amiga que esta' haciendo una cubrecama para su suegra.  Ella y otras parientes.  El patron viene del Great American Aran Afghan, creo que asi' es como lo llama.  No esta' "blocked" todavia.

Here's a square for my girlfriend's relative's afghan.  The pattern is from the Great American Aran Afghan (I think that's it; I always call it the GAAA).  It's obviously not blocked yet.  She's getting a blocking lesson with this.  Yarn is a superwash wool; Knitaly.  I wasn't crazy about working with it because it's a little splitty, but I do think the stitch definition turned out well and it is really really soft.  So the afghan ought to be really really soft.  Blankie soft.

Last and not least is a square for another friend.  Her life has been pretty hellish lately so a bunch of us made a bunch of squares out of Koigu.  Because she deserves it.  This is mine.  I'm putting it together this week (single crochet, not mattress stitch) and the other squares that have come in have been just spectacular.  I am convinced that you can not fail with combining Koigu pretty much any which way.  You'll see a picture of the final product, but not till the worthy recipient sees it first.

Al fin, aqui tenemos un cuadrado de Koigu. Este es para una otra amiga a quien ha pasado unas cosas recientemente que son, pues, tristes y horribles. Asi' que nosotras hemos decidido a hacerla una cubrecama de Koigu, porque ella merece algo asi'.  Lujoso, suave, de colores vivos, y que se puede lavar. A mi' me encanta Koigu. Colores tan preciosos todos. No se puede combinarlos malos. Yo voy a coser-- pues, a enganchillar --los cuadrados de este proyecto.  Voy a poner la foto cuando lo termino pero despues de que ella lo vea.

Ademas he hecho otros cuadrados como muestras para patrones. Pero no puede ponerlos aqui todavia.

I also made a bunch of squares in the form of swatches. For some new patterns. But I can't show them yet...