Smitty is Knitting

Tag: music

  • WIP Wednesday: The Artus Shawl

    WIP Wednesday: The Artus Shawl

    Freed from the queue!

    This WIP Wednesday I’m happy to share a project I’ve been hoping to start for a loooooong time: the Artus Shawl by Natasja Hornby. What was stopping me? Well, despite the unforgiveable size of my stash, I could not pull together 5 different colors of sport-weight yarn.

    I love the challenge of a wider color palette, which I consider to be 5 colors or more. I’ve been using Pinterest a lot lately and started a board just for aesthetic photos that contain intriguing color combos, and an interesting trend emerged: I’m really into purple and green right now. Not to be all Joker-y about it though.

    Heath Ledge in "The Dark Knight" in full makeup and costume as the Joker. He has greasy green-tinged blondish hair, white clown face paint, black grease paint around his eyes, and red grease paint on his lips and up his cheeks to make a smile. He's wearing a purple hexagon-print shirt and a green waistcoat.

    Golds and oranges have also been popping out to me, and I like the contrast of earthy ochres in rock formations and tree bark and more mystical, mermaidy shades that appear in luna moths (and Cape May Fiber had a Luna Moth colorway!), seashells, and tilework. So when I attended the Frederick Fiber Festival and Maryland Sheep and Wool, I went with a mission to find some of these particular shades. I got nearly everything from these trips, and then rounded our my palette with a purchase from Brooklyn Tweed. BT has recently stopped producing their own yarn (but will still be publishing patterns), and they were running a clearance sale. Their beautiful inky blue-violet color “Tapestry”. was a perfect fit, and I ended up getting enough skeins for this shawl and a future sweater.

    The Artus palette: Tapestry (deep purple) in Imbue Sport by Brooklyn Tweed, Luna Moth (light green) in Merino Cashmere Silk Sport, Ochre (gold) and Aubergine in Making Tracks Lite by Junction Fiber Mill, and a mystery stash yarn in a deep blue-green.

    Now that I’ve cast on I’m locked the fuck in on this shawl. I’m extremely engaged. There are three small sections of stranded colorwork at the top of the pattern that I was kind of dreading (I’m not great at stranded, and even worse at it on the wrong side)n and Hornsby made these sections mercifully short – my finger joints thank her. I’m now in the mosaic sections, at the trim of the shawl, where I’m only handling one color of yarn at once. Because mosaic stitches tend to be more tense than stitches worked with no slips, there’s a risk that the long side of the shawl will bend downward instead of maintaining a triangle with straight, defined lines. To avoid this, I’m stretching the slipped stitches in the mosaic charts to the absolute maximum to.keep a similar gauge to the stitches in the waffle stitch section. And I think it’s working! I won’t be able to tell until it’s completely off the needles and blocked, but I’m feeling optimistic.

    Now that all five colors have been worked into the project, I’m excited to share a photo that really shows how the palette works.

    My in-progress Artus shawl. The main color is a light, luna moth green, and there is a striping diamond motif in dark green, dark purple, gold, the light green, and a light purple along the edge
    A close up of the striping diamond motif in dark green, dark purple, gold, the light green, and a light purple.

    You know, now that I look at this diamond motif, it vaguely reminds me of someone…

    A still of Harley Quinn from Batman: The Animated Series. She's in her original character design, wearing a red and black jester unitard and cap with diamond print on the legs and arms. She is shrugging.
    Lol whoops

    What I’m Listening to

    I got to see one of my favorite bands last week, Amyl and the Sniffers. They’re an Australian punk/pub rock band whose latest album has a little bit of glam, although they haven’t lost a speck of their edge; their single “Jerkin’” is about as catchy and contemptuous as can be imagined. But among their harder, nastier songs like “GFY”, they have plenty of tracks that are deeply heartfelt and earnest, like “Knifey”, which is dedicated to victims of femicide, and “Big Dreams”, which offer words of encouragement to anyone struggling to figure out their life’s trajectory. That sincerity feels like a binding element of the band, judging by the ease of their on-stage banter with each other (which includes some great, groan-worthy dad jokes). Amyl and the Sniffers offers a truly electric live performance, and I can’t wait for their return to the US.

    The cover of Amyl and the Sniffers' newest album, Cartoon Darkness. Each of the four band members is mid-run or jump and looking up toward the camera. The photo was taken on a very bright sunny day. There is a dumpster and a chain-link fence in the background. Amy Taylor is in front; she is sticking out her tongue and lifting up her shirt; her bare chest is blurred out.
    The cover of Amyl and the Sniffers’ newest album, Cartoon Darkness

    Till next WIP Wednesday my dudes!

    A gif of a person with a mustache and shoulder-length hair, wearing swimming goggles and a Spiderman costume. In the first frame the caption reads "It is Wednesday, my dudes." In the second frame the person stands in a doorway and screams, the caption reading "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
  • FO Friday: Granny squares at the sludge metal show

    FO Friday: Granny squares at the sludge metal show

    I love granny squares. Despite their fixed shape, I think they’re pretty versatile. You can stop at any point and make them whatever size you want, and they have a delicious kind of pixelated appeal. And of course they don’t have to be squares, which just opens their potential even more. They can be arranged and built upon, like legos or tessellation blocks, into endless configurations.

    It probably won’t surpise you to learn that these were my fuckin jam as a kid

    And the granny stitch is really having a moment, particularly among the young folks. The younger-than-me folks, they in their teens and 20s. There’s an interesting phenomenon about the way Gen Z finds and consumes knitting and crochet patterns versus those of us in older generations, who have been using Ravelry, books, and magazines. They create and consume on video – Youtube tutorials and shorter-form Tiktok clips. These designs are more custom, fitted to a single body, often experimental and artistic. They’re tied to one of many microtrends and “vibes”. A lot of them are sexy! And when they do go viral, it’s often because the technique is so simple it hardly requires the effort of a written pattern – it’s better to show than tell, get views instead of individual pattern sales, or just make the item to sell.

    Jack Black and Jason Momoa wear granny-stitch hexagon cardigans while promoting the Minecraft movie. The sweaters were made by Tosha Marie @treatyoselfcrochet, and there are many tutorials on Youtube on how to make your own. I’m thinking of making a couple for my niece and nephew for Christmas this year.

    Granny stitch – so hot right now. Last year I couldn’t resist jumping aboard, so I pulled together some odd partials of sock yarn from Neighborhood Fiber Co. to create my own granny square cardigan.

    My granny square cardigan unmodeled showing all the ends I never wove in

    This project was improvised and only made with my own body in mind, but I did take much inspiration from Amy Christoffer’s Ariana Cardigan. I just kept making squares and attaching them as I went until I felt I had enough to reasonably cover my back and shoulders. It was a great travel project – I remember I was working on this quite a bit during the 2023 holidays and driving to see family, and it’s nice not to need a pattern pulled up on my phone or printed out.

    Once all the squares were assembled, I draped the two front panels over my shoulders and marked enough room for arm holes, then seamed up the sides. Then I just did simple granny stitch sleeves in the round, decreasing every ten rounds or so until they got to 3/4 length. While I had just enough of my contrast colors, I did not luck out with the main color, and had to get two more skeins to complete the project. No regrets, I love this color (Petworth).

    I wore my granny square cardigan out this week when I went to see Faetooth during their first east coast tour. Faetooth is a three-piece from LA who describes their ethereal, shoegazey metal as “fairy doom”, and when I saw they were coming to my city I jumped on a ticket (good thing too, the show was sold out). They were touring with Sunrot, who I hadn’t heard of before, but were an absolute pleasure. Sunrot especially has incredible stage presence and messaging; they had free fentanyl testing strips, narcan, and condoms available for the crowd, and brought an expert on harm reduction on stage to talk about community care. When it looked like a fight might break out in the crowd, Sunrot’s singer stopped the set to make sure everything was cool and that no one was about to get hurt. And both they and Faetooth delivered messages of love for trans and non-binary people and solidarity for Palestine. There’s been many metal musicians who’ve gained notoriety for acts of violence and depravity to shock the “normies”; but there are as many metal musicians who point out that violence and depravity are in fact very mainstream, especially when perpetrated by our governments. The message of this show was that taking care of one another is the radical act.

    I knew I wanted to wear something handmade to this show because DIY is a big part of metal and punk music, and well, this is how I DIY. In addition to enjoying the music, I enjoyed the crowd and the hand-stitched patches on their battle jackets, their hand-painted and dyed clothes, their repurposed and mended fabrics. There is an interesting event horizon here, where sustainability for aesthetics and sustainability for economic necessity meet and it’s unclear which came first. Either way, it’s craft, and craft/art/music says “If it does not exist, make it.”

    My granny square cardigan, modeled and still showing some of the ends I never wove in

    Yarn

    Neighborhood Fiber Co. Studio Sock, colors (Center of the granny squares outward) Oliver, Federal Hill, Cedarcroft, Upton, Petworth)

  • FO Friday: My Bookkeeper Cardigan/ My anarchy playlist

    Stripes are probably the most efficient way to use up as many odd skeins in my stash as possible. And I had been itching for a cardigan because so many of my sweater projects recently have been pullovers. Enter Taylor Owen’s Bookkeeper.

    Raglan, top-down, and stockinette, the Bookkeeper Cardigan makes use of thin stripes and a corrugated hem/button-band to funkify a chill layering piece. It has a pretty low armpit, creating a wider fit that is gently snatched with some subtle waist shaping. This cardigan is very relaxed, and the waist decreases could always be skipped if you prefer a more rectangular torso.

    However, because this was a stashbusting project, I skipped the corrugated ribbing because I was afraid I would only have enough of one of my contrast colors for the body. I ended up not even having even that much, and needing to order an additional skein anyway, so joke’s on me. Shoulda just gone for it (sigh).

    I will say I don’t mind having most of an extra skein of Junction Fiber Mill’s Making Tracks around though. I love this yarn, and Peg and Amanda are gems. I’ve been enjoying their drops of pop-inspired colors. I first used Making Tracks in my Junco sweater; I’ll probably share that in another FO Friday post soon since I’ve been meaning to take modeled photos of it.

    Mods

    • No corrugated ribbing, just straight 1×1 on the button bands and hems
    • Different frequency of decreases on the sleeves for desperate yarn conservation (🧶🐓)
    • Sleeves are shorter because i have t-rex arms.

    Yarn

    • Kelbourne Woolens Scout, “Navy Heather” (MC)
    • Junction Fiber Mill Making Tracks, “Constellation” (CC1)
    • Mystery sport weight, terra cotta orange (CC2)

    What I’m listening to

    The other day my good friend asked if I had an “anarchy playlist”, because they’re building one of their own and were looking for inspiration. I just happened to have something for them, which I’ll link below. I’m excited to hear theirs when they’re finished with it.

    I also took a deep dive looking for new metal to listen to, but metal is a genre unfortunately plagued by fascist and nazi sympathizers. Luckily, the Anti-fascist Black Metal Network is here to help boost bands and labels that have progressive politics.

    I’m not telling anyone to listen to metal with me, I’m aware that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s not just these fringe subcultures that have a nazi problem. Obviously it’s the entire American government, which is disappearing people, both documented and undocumented, and sending them to concentration camps. This is not hyperbole. That prison in El Salvador is a concentration camp, and the government wants to send whoever they want there.

    With that, I’ll leave you with my playlist, and this: trans women are women, immigrants are your neighbors, release Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Merwil Gutiérrez and anyone imprisoned in CECOT, and no one is illegal on stolen land.