30 September 2016

Cables


I am so enjoying working Jameson's thick satisfying cables. As the weather cools here in Toronto, it is the perfect kind of knitting to be doing.

26 September 2016

Homeless Heart


Homeless Heart


When I think of finishing the work, when I think of the finished work, a great sadness overtakes me, a sadness paradoxically like joy. The circumstances of doing put away, the being of it takes possession, like a tenant in a rented house. Where are you now, homeless heart? Caught in a hinge, or secreted behind drywall, like your nameless predecessors now that they have been given names? Best not to dwell on our situation, but to dwell in it is deeply refreshing. Like a sideboard covered with decanters and fruit. As a box kite is to a kite. The inside of stumbling. The way to breath. The caricature on the blackboard.


John Ashbery, Quick Question
ecco Harper Collins, 2012

18 September 2016

Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!


Ha ha! I cannot stay true. How can one possibly do so when the internet dangles such delights? Surfing blogs while bored I found that Thea Coleman, aka, Baby Cocktails is having her Fall KAL. So not only is this pattern called Jameson, my favourite whiskey, but it's also on sale for the KAL. I just happen to have a bag of aran weight Fiddlesticks in my stash that's just itching to make luscious, intriging, cables. So I had to buy the pattern and cast on right away! I just had to. I always was a flighty thing. 

Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow! 
Faithless am I save to love's self alone. 
Were you not lovely I would leave you now: 
After the feet of beauty fly my own. 
Were you not still my hunger's rarest food, 
And water ever to my wildest thirst, 
I would desert you — think not but I would! — 
And seek another as I sought you first. 
But you are mobile as the veering air, 
And all your charms more changeful than the tide, 
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care: 
I have but to continue at your side. 
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you, 
I am most faithless when I most am true. 

Edna St. Vincent Millay

13 September 2016

Modifying the Heck Out of This


I have long admired this peasant blouse pullover from a late eighties Scheepjeswol booklet. I particularly admire the yoke with the drawstring closure. 

Surely this can be updated, I'd always thought. Made more sophsticated?

The recent discovery in my stash of some silk yarn in the exact gauge as the original merino/silk of the pattern solidified my resolve.
So on with the mods!

Slim the whole thing; arms and body. Eliminate the unflattering bulk of folded over ribbing at the waist and replace with a mirror image of the yarnover row in the yoke then go straight into the garter stitch. Do the same for the sleeves and make them three quarter length. Make the yoke more shallow to get rid of all that extra fabric under the arms. Leave the bottom side seam open for a few inches and make the back a few inches longer than the front. Use a simple suede or leather cord for the drawstring.

Good plan? 

08 September 2016

About A House

Words from: Gwendolyn McEwen's House, Breakfast for Barbarians
& Theaster Gates program notes How To Build A House Museum


I live in a room. A high room in the sky. Home but not a house. I am recently obsessed with the ground & why I am not on it - physically or metaphorically.