Smitty is Knitting

Category: tips and tricks

  • WIP Wednesday: Aquamarline

    WIP Wednesday: Aquamarline

    Well, my quest to reduce my stash continues as I’ve begun AquaMarline by Park Williams. I recently finished two cardigans (I’ll cover those in a FO Friday post) and I was itching to start something new, mainly because I will be traveling soon and I wanted to have a project in-progress for the planes, trains, and automobiles.

    Four balls of yarn. From clockwise bottom left: A deep blue and purple yarn, a silver yarn with pink speckles, a light green yarn speckled with yellow and dark blue gray, and a multicolor yarn with brigh yellow, hot pink, and blank.
    Four of the many colors that will comprise the sweater. Clockwise from bottom left: Hamilton, David Hess, and Block Party in Rustic Fingering from Neighborhood Fiber Co, and a Skinny Single from Hedgehog Fibres (lost the label so I’m not sure of the color name!)

    Is a bulky sweater knit primarily from four strands of single-ply fingering the most practical choice for a travel project? No, but I’ve been on a large project kick for a while, so I stuffed the project and all four yarn balls into my backpack and moved a pair of shoes into my partner’s luggage.

    I didn’t notice until I went to cast on that AquaMarline is a raglan knit from the bottom up. And it wasn’t until I was nearly done with the torso that I thought that might interrupt the marling gradient; I didn’t want the sleeves, knit separately and then attached to the body, to have a completely different color scheme and then have a noticeable border when they joined. So instead of starting the sleeves from the cuff, I started them from the other end. I did a crochet cast-on for the number of stitches needed for the widest part of the sleeve, and knit a couple of rounds in the same colors used in the torso. Then I attached the sleeves, and when I finish the body, I’ll return and knit the sleeves down to the cuffs. A crochet cast-on, like a provisional cast-on, will let me pick up live stitches when I’m ready.

    The torso of my Aquamarline with the beginnings of the sleeves attached.

    I think this pattern would offer much smoother color distribution if it was designed to be top-down rather than bottom-up, but as the design description says, this pattern is all about playing with color and experimenting. Maybe I’m just a little too much of a control freak to allow for some heavily randomized color schemes.

    Where I’m traveling

    I brought my Aquamarline with me on the Amtrak to Philadelphia, where I saw one of my very favorite bands at Citizen’s Bank Arena. Yes, after 20 years of trying to see them live, I finally saw My Chemical Romance in concert. Truly, truly a dream come true for me. In the days since I’ve been relishing the feeling of being 13 years old again listening to Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. It’s such a deep nostalgia for not just a time in my life, but for the imagination my preteen self had and how this particular band helped me indulge it.

    This MCR tour is all about The Black Parade, which is the album that broke them into the mainstream. The first act of their performance, or pageant, really was the entirety of the album. The band dressed in their marching-band outfits and acted as the entertainment for a dictator of a fictional nation called Draag. During the set there was a firing squad, an appearance by the Philly Phanatic, Variety Puzzles, a launch of a nuclear warhead, a murder by a clown, a burlesque performance by the clown, and a suicide bombing by the clown. If MCR is good at anything, they are experts at theatrics.

    Their second set was very stripped back. After Gerard Way, the lead singer, had his throat slashed and the rest of the members were taken off the stage with bags on their heads by Draag’s secret police, they reappeared on a second stage in the middle of the crowd and played a selection from their other albums. I don’t think there was a single person in the audience who didn’t know the words to every song, in either set. Here’s my selection of bad photos – I wish I had more but my phone battery was at 20% by the time they took the stage.

    On the left side, the band plays on the stage; on the right, GerardWay appears on the jumbotron behind a podium.
    a closeup of the stage with all the band members, an actor, and the Philly Phanatic (a mascot who is tall, green, and fuzzy)
    Gerard Way is sitting cross-legged in a chair on stage with an open issue of Variety Puzzles. He has a pen in his mouth as though he is thinking.
    A wide shot of the stage. There is fire at the edge of the stage, in the back, and the banners on either side of the band are catching fire. Everything is orange, black, and red.

    The Variety Puzzle bit was very exciting for me. I love Variety Puzzles.

    The next day my partner and I spent the day wandering Philadelphia. After checking out of the hotel, we found a very high-quality cafe, Thank You Thank You, offering lots of different roasts that my partner has been wanting to try – he’s a huge coffee enthusiast – and had a couple of pourovers. Then i foudn the nearest yarn store, which was Yarnphoria just south of Center City. This is a lovely spot with cool, contemporary samples, displays of crocheted amigurumi, and the cutest little shop dog there ever was: Gertie.

    A small, long-haired black dog with gray on her chin lounges on a brown couch cushion.
    Gertie ❤

    When we walked in there were already some customers there who looked very much like they had also been to the concert the night before, so I felt very at home. The owner (or who I assume was the owner) was extremely welcoming and helpful, pointing out all the local brands they had available. I left with two skeins of Scout from Kelbourne Woolens, which is also a local Philadelphia business. At one point, Gertie got up from her couch, barked, and individually sniffed every person in the store. Definitely worth a visit if you’re ever in town. I would have loved to visit Wild Hand as well, but unfortunately we didn’t have time that day to travel to the Mt. Airy neighborhood from downtown.

    And in just under a week, I’ll be leaving town again for Venice! My partner, who works in the film industry as an AC (assistant camera), worked on the documentary Cover Up about the career of Seymour Hersh. The documentary is from Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus (Citizenfour), and it was accepted to premier at the Venice Film Festival. This documentary is probably my partner’s favorite of the work he’s done, as he’s an ardent follower of politics and history, so it was beyond exciting for him that he was invited to attend the premiere. And I’m even luckier that I get to join him!

  • De-influencing you (and me)

    De-influencing you (and me)

    A close up of circular knitting needles with live stitches on the cable. An aluminum can tab is being used as a stitch marker to mark the beginning of the round. The yarn in the foreground is beige and in the background is purple.

    One of the things that made me most uncomfortable about my yarn job was being a salesperson. Sometimes I would be in the middle of talking to a customer – maybe while I was recommending a yarn, or telling a stale joke – I would see myself from the outside and think: “God look how fake I’m being. They can totally tell I’m full of shit.”

    It got very uncomfortable when the items people were interested in buying were out of their price range, because a lot of times I’d agree that something was a little ridiculous to spend money on. Not necessarily the yarn, but notions. Of course, I could never say “yeah, I get it, $17 is a lot to spend on scissors and the pair in my junk drawer at home work just fine for cutting yarn.” Because both of us knew it’s my job to sell things, and that the customer was there to buy things, and at the end of the day I needed the business to make money in order to keep my job.

    I never got sleazy. I never lied about a product being able to do something it couldn’t, or promised that the experience of having it would make someone a better crafter. Once a pair of young sisters, somewhere between 14-18 year olds, came in because they wanted to make one of those mega jumbo blankets that are knit on, like, US 50 needles.

    A blanket knit from extremely thick white yarn spills out of a basket in a sunny room with a wooden floor. Beige-core at its finest.
    You know ’em from being every other pin on Pinterest for years.

    They were asking about using roving to make one of their own. I was completely honest. Roving would have fallen apart immediately, and would have been prohibitively expensive. It was one of the only times I said to someone that Michaels carried a yarn specifically manufactured for this trend and they’d be better off going there. And it’s not like I would have made a sale on roving anyway, because who’s going to shell out upwards of $500 on the amount of roving they’d need.

    I also think of my own experiences as a customer. It was hard for me to be an engaging salesperson because I HATE attracting the attention of a salesperson while I’m shopping. The affect of selling repels me, and I assume it’s just as uncomfortable for the salesperson to pretend to be my friend as it is for me. Which is why as much as I like Lush and its products, I dread shopping there.

    A storefront of Lush, which sells skin and hair care products as well as perfumes and bath bombs. The signage is black with white text, the interior is made entirely from wood, and the displays are filled with colorfully wrapped soaps and boxes.
    Inside this store is a 20-something waiting to sell you soap with a CIA-level intensity

    I’m currently job-hunting, and I’m really hoping to not find myself in retail again, even though that’s where my professional skill-set is. With that in mind, I want to use this post to do the opposite of selling you something. Let’s deinfluence.

    Deinfluencing is a reaction to overconsumption. It’s a reaction against “hauls”, unboxing videos, sponsored content, and ads in general. It’s why I always link to the designers whose patterns I use, but never the yarn. I want to give people credit, but I’m not trying to sell you anything. And I’m extremely aware of how expensive yarn can be, because I have spent too much of my own money on it over the years.

    One of the hardest things to explain to non-knitters or crocheters is the amount of brand loyalty people have for certain yarn brands. One of the oldest jokes I would have to pretend to laugh at is that “buying yarn and using it are two separate hobbies.” People buy yarn not just just because they’re excited to use it, but just to have. I’m one of those people, and I’m trying not to be. But then there’s people who buy yarn from a company just because it’s rom that company. They collect yarn from premium brands like each skein is a Berkin. Yarn, in this subculture, has become a status symbol.

    It brings to mind a time I visited a yarn shop in my city, which has been closed for a long time. The location was on the edge of a trendy neighborhood with lots of walking traffic, boutiques and bistros. Across the street from the shop was a housing project. I got talking to the owner about her selection, and she let me know that despite many potential customers from that project wishing they could shop there, they simply couldn’t afford the brands she carried. Instead of listening to them, the owner told me she just couldn’t imagine stocking acrylic. Again, this store is no longer in business, probably because the owner was catering to imaginary big spenders instead of her very real neighbors and their needs.

    The glamorization of name brands, aspiration to buy, the flooding of new products into the market are not unique to the fiber world, but it is as pervasive here as it is anywhere. So here are my alternative, low- or no-cost alternatives that I have personally used.

    Indie dyers and LYSs

    Supporting small independent businesses is wonderful, I’m not arguing that. But again, not everyone can afford the selection at these places. For an alternative, sustainable option, I suggest the growing number of consignment craft stores. SCRAP USA is a nonprofit with multiple locations, for instance, but there are plenty of smaller 501(c)(3)s with the same model. Jess Crafts compiled an extremely thorough list of over 60 locations on her site.

    Notions

    Here are some of the re-used alternatives to new tools that I’ve personally used. They might not be as fancy, or have all the bells and whistles, but they work just as well. You might already have them in your house.

    Project Bags

    • My regular purse
    • Reusable shopping totes
    • Zip-lock plastic bags – if you ever shop online for clothes, chances are you’ve gotten a ton of these.
    • Bedding packaging – new bedsets often come in clear, plastic bags, and they often come with handles!

    Stitch Markers and progress markers

    • Paperclips (classic option)
    • Safety pins (progress marker)
    • Can tabs – I drink a lot of seltzer and boy have these come in handy when I’ve inevitably lost all my stitch markers to my couch cushions.
    • Yarn scraps – just tie off a tiny loop in a contrasting color.

    Stitch Holders

    • Any scrap yarn, string, or thread you have hanging around.

    Pattern Stands

    • A clipboard and a post-it note so you can keep track of what row you’re on.
    • Your computer – I don’t own a printer and very rarely use physical copies of patterns. I usually just scroll so my row is right at the top of the screen. Obviously a computer is expensive, but since I have one for other purposes anyway, it’s what works for me.

    Blocking Boards

    • Interlocking playmats for kids – they may not be printed with a grid of lines 1″ part, but they do the job and are usually the same size (and a lot cheaper than the ones sold by knitting brands).
    A play mat consisting of 20 foam tiles lies on a white background. The tiles are red, blue, yellow, pink, and green.

    Stitch Stoppers

    • Save your wine corks and stick ’em on!
    • Poster putty

    There’s nothing wrong with buying notions or yarn that you know you’re going to use. As my own stash shows, I’m not one to judge. I love my needle gauge earrings, I have a strong preference for steel needles, and my swift/ball winder combo is pretty sweet. But the fanciness or aesthetics of yarn or notions will not make anyone a better crafter than they are, and that’s the most important thing to remember. And as I look at my own spending habits (especially in my time of voluntary unemployment), I think twice before pressing “checkout”.

    While I’m here, maybe I can influence you about something else.

    This past week Donald Trump made an unconstitutional decision to bomb Iran, threatening millions of innocent people with death and war. If you’ve read this far, I beg you to contact your representatives and ask them to oppose all further military action toward Iran and to stop arms sales to Israel, who instigated this conflict by attacking Iran. We also need to pressure our reps to impeach Trump. Again.

    Our government has been hanging the vague threat of Iran’s development of nuclear weapons for decades, and there’s never been evidence of it. Even if Iran did have nuclear warheads, so does the US, and we’re the only country who has every used one in war. Does that mean it’s justified to invade our country?

    It’s the same excuse we used to invade Iraq in 2002. After hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties and over 4,000 American servicepeople killed, we cannot fall for this lie again. I was 9 years old when 9/11 happened. Over the last 24 years, the consolidation of power under the executive office has been allowed to grow and grow, eroding our checks and balances system. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden are all guilty of using this power to bomb 8 countries between 2001-2025. I don’t care about governments, but I care about people, and peace should be nonpartisan.

    Find your representatives in the House and Senate here. While you’re there, you may also be interested in asking them to oppose putting 250 million acres of public lands up for sale to private corporations.