Some days just need a tiger hug, and this one’s for Lene, my friend over at theseatedview.blogspot.com. Not as cool as the real four-month-old tiger cub she once got to hold, but it’s what I’ve got.

One of my earliest memories is of watching in huge excitement as my dad opened up his suitcase in the middle of the living room rug. He’d just gotten home from a trip to Europe; I’d missed him fiercely, and he told me he had something in there for me and something for my little sister. He’d toured a stuffed animal factory in Germany. First, he pulled out my tiger. (There is no Steiff ear tag; at some point in my childhood it must have mortally offended me, so out it went.) Then a koala for my little sister.

There were many stuffed animals along the way over the years growing up, but none with the power to comfort like my tiger. Mom used to hold him up to the light at bedtime so there would be glowing cat eyes in the dark, always watching over me and keeping me safe. Now, as in any parent/child relationship, he’s in his old age and I’m the one keeping him in good care.

As I do my friends, to the best I can. Hey Lene. Consider yourself tiger hugged.

Today, UPS rang the doorbell: my new computer, with a monitor I can actually see on. I loved that Newsweek had an Annie Liebowitz shot of Bill Gates using a monitor like the one I was using–and even more when I noticed the caption said that picture was shot in ’94. Yeah, there was a reason mine was getting hard to read.

So, while my husband was getting the new setup in place, the doorbell rang again. The yellow DHL truck, bringing me my manuscript from Martingale for my review. I’ve been going through it, and there, on one page, was what to me was a hysterically funny note: “Alison. It says on this scarf that it’s 55″ wide. It’s really stretchy, but we could only get it to 8″.”

Five POINT five. I guess if I didn’t quite see the period I didn’t notice because I was so used to not quite seeing them? I can just see the looks on the editors’ faces! Too funny!

(Oops. Got that bottom twirly part backwards there.)

When I joined the Knitlist in ’98 or so, it was to ask a specific question: did anyone know of a lace design with a musical motif? A treble or bass clef, perhaps? Quarter notes?

I got no responses other than quite a few from fellow musician/knitters saying that if I found one, please tell them where? So I drove an hour up to Berkeley, to Lacis, where Kaethe Kliot had the biggest collection probably anywhere of lace knitting books–and she knew quite well what was in every one of them. When I ran my question past her, she thought hard a moment, then shook her head emphatically no. Then, in growing excitement, she told me, “But you could design one!” (Having no idea what a newbie I was.) She carefully explained to me exactly how one goes about committing a design in one’s head onto a lace chart, not quite believing I didn’t already know how to do that. Everybody knows how to do that.

I don’t do charts. I only barely did lace at all at that point. I was in way over my head and I knew it, so I nodded my head with what I hoped was enthusiasm as she went on. Her assistant chimed in with a few helpful tips. I went home with a lace book in hand–in English, not the German book that she assured me I could follow just as easily, once I figured out the unfamiliar notations; I threw in the towel after she mentioned there were errors in the German one, but that it wouldn’t be hard to recognize them. Get me out of here!

This past February, Rosemary Hill of Designs by Romi had some beautiful shawl pins on display at Stitches West, but I didn’t quite see–what, I wasn’t sure. Recently, she added some hammered metal ones on her website, and it was, alright, now we’re getting somewhere! I sent her a note: Rosemary. Is it possible you could do one of those in a treble clef motif? I thought, if I can’t knit one, maybe I could wear one anyway.

She thought that was a cool idea, and the result is that I, the daughter of an art dealer, am now the proud owner of the first piece of artwork (other than Lisa Souza’s gorgeous yarn) I ever commissioned myself. The first sterling treble clef shawl pin.

I still need to work out that lace design. I still don’t do charts. But nowadays, if I wanted to enough, I could knit that idea to match that pin. Meantime, though, I can now wear my announcement of my love of music along with my knitting. (Um, pardon me while I turn that twirly thing back around the way it belongs…)

Postscript–Kaethe Kliot, of the WWII generation, has since passed away, but Lacis lives on.

Technical info: the yarn is Kidsilk Haze, aka Cracksilk Haze among quite a few knitters (nice stuff), knitted on size 5mm needles. I was once given ten skeins of it in a light dusty purple, and for this particular shawl, I overdyed two skeins’ worth with Jacquard Acid Dye in Crimson.

Now, let me tell you about that persimmon/coral scarf there, and why I made it the color I did. I hopped out of bed one day last week and set up the dyepot on the stove before I did anything else, having figured out just what I wanted it to be. I couldn’t wait to see it become what I was picturing!

I didn’t already tell the story because first I emailed my brother and sister-in-law to make sure I’d gotten the story right. Which came back very funny: no, SHE did this, I did THAT. But the core of the story was right on. And it is this:

My parents had long since given up on my younger brother ever getting married. And he didn’t want to be bugged about it. So it was a complete surprise to them when he phoned them to tell them what the girl he was going out with (Mom: he’s dating?!) had done.

They were supposed to have a date one particular evening. But, it turns out, Bryan’s apartment building just happened to be on fire. Larisa showed up at his place, looking for him, couldn’t find him in the crowd milling around, so when the firemen weren’t looking, she dashed past them to run into his place to save him. She saw no sign of him and came back out, and finally, very gratefully, I’m sure, found him–he was busy trying to find out what had happened to HER, meantime.

And Mom was saying, he has to marry her! Nobody else could possibly live up to that story!

And, actually, yes, they did get married. But just before their wedding, it was his birthday, and I, living near the redwood forests, found the perfect birthday card. It was a picture of a small boy looking up in complete awe at a giant sequoia. Open the card, and there were the words, “It’s your birthday. Time to count the rings.”

So you know who that diamond pattern scarf had to be for (although I still gave her her choice; she did pick that one.) I dyed it the color of the soft flames crackling in a fireplace on a romantic evening in their dream home they recently finished building. I’m a month or so late with it, but hey, you guys: happy anniversary.

The yellow is what I started out with for all of these. And now you see why, when we bought a new car several years ago, it frustrated part of me that, not really loving any of the colors it was available in, I couldn’t just dunk it in a pot with some simmering water and fix that. I prefer being in control of the colors that represent what I like.

Sorry for the delay on pictures there; Picasa, the picture arm of Blogger, just wasn’t behaving for me and was waiting for the resident expert to come play with it. Hey, Richard, Picasa es su casa.

*WIP=Work in Progress. You know, one of those highly technical knitting terms.

Going through the closet looking for something else, a very-long-utterly-forgotten ziploc bag tumbled down in front of me, a close-out from a yarn store going out of business over a dozen years ago. It’s purple. Angora. I instantly recognized the tag in it: why on earth do the French use a sketch of the rear end rather than the face of the bunny? (No, wait. Please. Do not answer that.) You got it–my very own Boule de Neige. Ten skeins’ worth! Too funny.

I had knitted everything I was going to knit from that mothy box of yellow angora. I thought. I only had a few rolled-up balls left that had anything more than just a yard or two, and why bother with the stuff anymore, when knitting it had been so demanding: it was like a two-year-old. I couldn’t take my eyes off it for a second, or a broken ply would sail through my fingers. I should just toss the leftovers, quick, before anything hatches from it and infests my stash, I was thinking.

But today was a day where I came home from the doctor, eyed that yarn, and needed to create something positive out of–everything. The yarn, the day, everything. The doctor had been warm and kind, for which I am very grateful. Time to go make something warm for the sake of kindness myself.

It wasn’t much, it wasn’t big, it wasn’t the right color–but it’s the right color now. Boiled. Bugfree. Exquisitely soft. And tomorrow it will be ready to go make somebody happy. I look forward to finding out who.

Technical info: I knitted this scarf and then added Jacquard Acid Dye in Pink. It’s a vivid dye, so it didn’t tone down the brightness of the original yellow as much as the other colors did. As usual, I threw in a small ball of extra yarn so I’d have some for any future hole repairs in a matching dye lot. (This is a hint to my sisters: hold onto that ball when you get your scarf! The way to mothproof your woolens is to have angora nearby; the moths will go after the angora first every time.)

I took the pile of scarves to my knitting group tonight. I can show off all the pictures I want here, but there’s nothing quite like having a room full of knitters swooning over the feel of the things.

Didn’t turn out too camo-green in the end, I’d say.

Emma and a friend of hers stopped by for a visit today; the friend brought me red dinnerplate dahlias from her garden, absolutely gorgeous, just because. She likes to give flowers like I like to give knitting, which is why she owns a silk scarf from me done in Barbara Walker’s Dayflowers pattern; it was such a perfect match.

I was all ready. Emma’s granddaughter had brought her that soft Suri Dream baby alpaca scarf, so, now I had the second one all finished for Emma to give one back to the kid. They could be twins. Emma thought it was a total hoot. Grandmas are cool.

I had a quick errand to run at the post office today. I didn’t think to bring my camera, this blog being such a new thing. I wish I had: the road runs quietly alongside the marshes at the edge of the San Francisco Bay, and there was a small flock of pelicans, a number of egrets, and a few mallards keeping them company. Paddling in the water, diving for a fish, circling around each other a bit. Absolutely beautiful. God’s knitting: in, around, out and up, repeat.

First, the technical info: this is the Four Sisters-patterned angora scarf before dyeing or blocking. I soaked the scarf in hot water in the sink after taking this photo, added water to the pot, brought it to a simmer, and added my dye.

Purple. I thought it would make a somewhat earthy purple. Um… The way to tell God a joke is to tell him your plans, right? Especially when overdyeing fiber, although, serendipity is part of the fun. But when the camouflage green started coming up, I was pretty horrified. If it had been wool, I could have lifted it out into another dyepot, added more of another color, or simply moved it to clear water to simmer some of that reversible dye back out. But this was angora, and very old and fragile angora at that. What I did was to take some Jacquard Fire Engine Red, add it to a paper cup full of hot water so as to get it in solution, hold the scarf to the side of the pot with my wooden spoon, and pour it in at the other side and then stir gently. I’ll show you the results tomorrow when it’s done drying and blocking, but it’s definitely not wearing Army boots anymore.

You know, that yellow is the color of my teenage rebellion. I vividly remember my mother buying a dress for me when I was in junior high school. It had been at the very edge of her budget; she had splurged to buy me something nice. It was to be my best dress, for church and the like. The color was very much in style–these were in the days of shag carpets and refrigerators in harvest gold and avocado green–so Mom thought she was being hip in picking that one out for me. I could go fit in with the crowd like all kids aspire to.

Except, there’s not a young teenager on the planet who likes what their mommies choose for them to wear. Not at that particular age. It was doubleknit and synthetic (maybe that’s when my natural-fibers fanaticism started.) Right in style (as were polyester suits for men; the horror, the horror.) Guilt over the price I knew she must have paid only added to the fire–I was NOT going to wear that! No way!

I did, once, actually, and vividly recall my shame walking through Cabin John Junior High’s library, sure that everybody was looking up from their books to stare at The Dress. All by myself, I managed to be utterly humiliated. I never wore it again.

I thought of that when, not long ago, a friend rolled his eyes over his 13-year-old niece’s being dramatic. I laughed: “ALL 13-year-old girls are dramatic!”

I should know. And hey: you see that scarf up there? It’s actually brighter and a little more orange than in that photo. And, like the four previous ones, it ended up the color it wanted to be when it grew up.

Because I never, ever wore that shade of yellow again. (Sorry, Mom.)

 
The yellow scarf ended up in the pot with Sapphire dye, no teal added this time. It’s still a bit on the teal side of blue, indicative of how saturated that yellow dye was. Yellow, by the way, is the easiest of all colors to overdye and obliterate, red is the hardest.

Meantime, yesterday I picked up the angora to start the next scarf, and–it just wasn’t coming to me. Fifteen stitches, I’m not sure why they all have to be exactly 15 stitches; but then, my dad tells me that, as the fourth of six kids, I was the one always getting on the parents’ case, demanding that things be fair. (Pardon me while I apologize to them.) I can only laugh now, thinking of all the times I’ve looked my own kids dead in the eye and declared, Life ain’t fair. It all evens out over time, just not right this moment, and that’s just the way it is. Deal. And now here I am, knitting for my siblings, trying to make everything come out, well, not all the same–there’s no way I’d knit a slew of identical projects in a row; using the same yarn over and over is enough–but at least all to the same length, with the same number of stitches. I guess I’m still a kid at heart.

So. Having failed yesterday, today I picked up my trusty Barbara Walkers, looking for inspiration. And there it was jumping off the page and onto my needles, ooh, ooh, me, me, pick me!: an old Shetland pattern, not the simplest, but definitely one that fits here. Fifteen stitches. The name? The Four Sisters. Well YEAH I have to make that pattern next! 

 
Everybody needs one of these. You don’t even have to be a knitter: yesterday a hornet flew in the door, it and I played tennis for a moment, and the score was quickly 15-love. Sorry, bee, I hope it didn’t sting.

Don’t know what you call these. Don’t know the brand name. Made in China, looks cheap. The hubby found it at the hardware store for two bucks, and anyone who’s ever chased a moth within range of their stash needs to be able to zap where you can’t reach to slap, to be able to swing your arm wildly when you can’t even see the silly thing anymore–and then suddenly, you know you got it. Snap sizzle. No having to touch it; you just tap the side over the trash, the great outdoors, whatever. Gone.

And note that shade of yellow. Here, buggy buggy! Flowers! Yum.

I give you an update on the angora. Knitting and dyeing the stuff continues; I’ve got enough yarn for two more scarves, hoping for a minimum of holes in the rest of the balls. Let’s see, sisters, Mom, sisters-in-law… One other reason for dyeing it is that you know those bug eggs are definitely dead when you’re done. A shout-out to my sisters-in-law: if you want that yellow color, tell me quick. I’ll still throw it in the dyepot and simmer it a moment, I just won’t add any dye. That particular one shown, though, is about to turn blue.

Technical stuff: each one is 15 stitches, knitted with my 48-year-old Boule de Neige, on size 6.5mm needles. The dark green, yellow, and red are all variants on the theme of taking a right-slanting decrease, a left-slanting one, topped by a pointed-arrow-style double decrease. The only change from pattern to pattern is where I put the matching yarnovers. See what a difference such a simple change makes! As for colors, the light green is with a small amount of teal dye added, the darker one teal+sapphire, the red one vermillion dye. Jacquard Acid dyes, simmered a half hour in a stainless-steel for-dyeing-only pot, with very minimal stirring with a for-dyeing-only wooden spoon.
  

Angora scarf #2 was in the dyepot turning a gorgeous shade of red, and I was winding up the next yellow ball, checking for moth damage, wondering what color scarf #3 should become. Uh, oh–this one had a lot of moth holes. It was the worst one I’d seen yet.

And then it hit me. Thumper’s Admonition: if you can’t dye anything nice, don’t dye anything at all.

On to the next one!

Our front door was painted yellow. The former owner thought it would be cheerful.

Over a dozen years ago, there was a whitefly explosion in northern California, an invasive species from I forget where with no natural local predators. Gnats, you’d think something would eat a gnat, but white gnats seemed to be off the birds’ gourmet foods list–cauliflower au soleil!–and they multiplied quickly into great swirling clouds, like white dust devils twirling in a column in the sunshine. Our ash trees were emphatically not happy with them.

Which is how I came to find out that yellow is a color that is naturally attractive to insects: they’re programmed to see it as meaning “Flower. Yum.” Which meant that, until California started releasing large batches of counter-attack tiny nonstinging wasps that only ate whitefly larvae, every time we walked through our front door, we had to run a gauntlet of the little icky things en masse. One time, I got out there with a wet rag and mowed them down in strokes running down the door, just to see if I could have a clear door for even a moment. But there was no end to them. I gave up. Those wasps eventually did the job, though, and you almost never see a whitefly now.

I did get that first angora scarf overdyed green today; I’ll post a picture when it’s dry, and tomorrow the second scarf goes in the dyepot. While I was knitting it a little earlier tonight, a black gnat flew into it and got caught in the fuzz, making it an easy target to squash. Awhile earlier, I had seen another crawling up to a broken-off piece of yarn that I’d separated from the ball due to moth damage; I thought, boy, those hatched fast after I took that out of the freezer!

When that angora had shown up in the mail, the first thing I had done was to put the box in a heavy sweater-size ziploc bag and put it in the freezer to immediately kill any possible moths, before I even knew there had been any. Just as a precaution. It’s a pesticide-free way to kill them, alternating between warmth and freezing: kill the adults and larvae, then warm it up so the eggs think it’s spring, throw it back in the freezer again. I never have been quite sure how long the interludes between should be, though.

Two gnats in the angora in one evening, and I was sitting there wondering, since when do gnats eat yarn? Do I have to worry about everything biting it now? Is angora that much of a dessert in the bug world?

And then it hit me. Yellow. The yarn was bright yellow. Flowers. Yum. And I felt a whole lot better.

Pictures tomorrow when the first scarf is dry and there’s more to show off. Oh, and–our front door is white these days. But the ash trees, I’m afraid, are gone.