In my last post I described my plans for a sweater inspired by Harlequin costumes and Venice, and how I finally found the perfect pattern in a 37-year-old issue of Vogue Knitting.
The pattern is #2 Harlequin Pullover by Anne Mieke Louwerens. I got started by pulling out literally every partial and single skein of DK yarn I had, determined to absolutely decimate my stash. I also frogged a sweater that didn’t end up fitting how I wanted, and used the yarn from that – Stipple DK from Yarn Hero in the colorway Dagger – as my main color.
This yarn is so pretty–and discontinued, which I only noticed last night when I had a sudden feeling that I would need more to finish. Whoops. I might be playing yarn chicken with this project, especially since I added two repeats of the diamond motif to make the sweater bigger. Published in an era before knitters were grading size-inclusive designs, this sweater is “one-size-fits-all”* (*read: would definitely not fit me). I’ll manage though. I should definitely have enough for the front and the two sleeves, and I can live with a contrasting back if needed.
So far I’m most of the way through my front, which I’m also making a little longer with one additional row of diamonds, and finished one sleeve.
But it wouldn’t be honest of me if I didn’t reveal the shitshow underneath:
Yep. I’ve knit intarsia before, but this is by far the most complicated intarsia project I’ve done, with the most colors in play at once. The yarn management is unwieldy–if I want to get up from working on this, I either need to finish a row so that all the yarn is on one side of my body, or I have to slide out from under it to avoid mixing all the yarn balls together. It’s like a really bad seatbelt.
This project lives in the corner of the couch. A couch that belongs to my housemates, who I rent from, and their dog. If I work on this project every day, I can kind of justifying leaving it out, because putting it away means destroying the loose yarn ball organization system and having to spend a lot of time untangling when I want to bring it back out from the project bag.
Obviously this project can’t travel, and suddenly I’m commuting again. I recently started teaching for a local university’s college readiness program, and now I’m teaching writing and composition to high school seniors at two different schools. So I’m back on that city bus, traveling from one to the other, and I physically can’t ride public transport without a knitting or crochet project.
I’ve also been working on an improvised bandana for that cooler weather that’s supposed to be showing up soon. I’m using a lovely wool/cashmere blend, which I got from a yarn company that I will not name since they’ve since been exposed for toxic management. I had two balls of this, and used one to make a Wedding Necktie for my partner. Now I can match with my own neckwear.
So beautifully mindless that it’s impossible for to lose my place when going over a pothole. I decided to use an i-cord edge, but now I’m worried that it’s too tight and causing it to curl in too much. I’ll see how it looks after blocking–if that can’t fix the tension, I’ll redo it.
And that’s everything on the needles this WIP Wednesday. See you next time.
I’m really on a cardigan kick! The ones that I’ve made in the past have become too small for me, with the exception of my Felix Cardigan, which is an excellent staple piece that pretty much goes with anything. But lately I’ve been wanting showstoppers and statement-makers, especially when they can eat up as much of my stash as possible. A two-color brioche design like the Oliveros is ideal for this.
Brioche is an intimidating technique to learn, and fairly time-intensive (you basically work every row/round twice), but it creates one of the most relaxed fabrics in knitting. Cleo Malone, the designer, embraces that with a construction mostly unfettered by anything that constricts the stitches too much. No picking-up of stitches, no seaming. While well-designed, there’s very little structure. The whole sweater grows like organic matter from a central point at the back of the neck and over the shoulders, stretching with the body to let those flashes of contrast color shine through.
Of course, the relaxed nature of this pattern means it will grow significantly during blocking, which is what happened to me. The sleeves are actually quite a few inches past my wrist (and my fingertips). That’s okay with me, though, I’ll just cuff the sleeves. But if you want something more to your measurements, block with caution.
There’s a distinct cloak-iness to this pattern, so I decided to go full fantasy with the color choices. Blue and gold has always reminded me of magic and wizards, so from my stash I chose a deep navy/teal mystery yarn that I had left over from a sweater I made for my dad, “Willow” from Yarn Nouveau (an antique gold shade), and “Tectonic” from Feederbrook Farm, a prismatic marl with gold, blue, orange, and periwinkle. I have a whole Pinterest board of wizardy visuals, and I’m a sucker for the celestial aesthetic.
What I’m listening to
The wizardly inspiration isn’t surprising when I’ve been hosing down episodes of “The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One” from Worlds Beyond Number, a D&D actual play podcast with some giants of the TTRPG world: Aabria Iyengar, Lou Wilson, Erika Ishii, and Brennan Lee Mulligan. Iyengar plays the Wizard Sky (Suvi to her friends – the naming conventions of wizards is a whole thing in this universe), a magical prodigy balancing her duty to the institution that raised her with the outsider perspectives of her close companions: Ame, a rural-dwelling witch whose power comes from communion with nature and spirits (Ishii); and Eursulon, a spirit who has become stranded in the mortal plane where he is at risk of persecution (Wilson).
Iyengar and Mulligan, the dungeon master who runs this campaign, have created a very different vision of wizards than I’m used to. In table-top games, wizards can cast powerful spells and learn many different kinds of magic, but are known for being “squishy”, or easy to physically harm. The image of an old bearded sage in a tall brimmed hat persists.
Not here. Suvi is a young Black woman with a hot boyfriend and a caffeine addiction. Her adoptive mother figure is a sword-wielding valkyrie of a mage. The Citadel where they live is both an academic and military headquarters. There are spells that become people – a personified mage hand cantrip works as a baker and makes Suvi’s favorite sandwich. Wizards can donate their unused spell slots to other wizards who might need them more. They can imbue physical objects, including weapons, with spells. In “WWWO”, what is possible when magic can reshape reality is truly and thoroughly explored. Why couldn’t a wizard be anything, really?
It’s actually a little terrifying. I’m not very far into the campaign, but I’m waiting for the shoe – the shoe being that the Imperium and the Citadel are unsustainably powerful and, for all their wonder, must be dismantled before it embroils the world in unending war – drops. Highly recommend.
It’s WIP Wednesday and this week’s theme for #showmeyourknits is cardigans! Fortunately my wip this week is the Pivoine Cardigan by Audrey Borrego, a drop-shoulder cardi with lovely lace detailing at the bottom of the torso.
Borrego recently stepped away from the knitwear design game a few months ago, and very generously made all her patterns free on Ravelry. When I checked Ravelry that day and saw that she was all over the first three pages of the Hot Right Now feed, I had the same thought as some other folks: “Holy shit, did something happen to her?” Nope! Just a voluntary change in life direction. Hero portfolio of 100+ patterns is an amazing gift from a very prolific designer, and I hope she’s having a wonderful time in the next chapter of her life.
I’m using Knit Picks Stroll Tweed, which I picked up a few years ago during a Halloween sale (they discounted all their black, orange, green, and purple yarn). The pattern calls for sport-weight, but considering the suggested needle size for the body is US 3, a fingering like this is working nicely as a substitute. I’m knitting size 7, and the depth of the armholes is perfect – I really like wearing big t-shirts, and there’s plenty of room for my tee sleeves to fit without weird bunching at the shoulders.
I also plan to add significant length to the body so it covers my butt, and now that I’ve passed my natural waist I’m adding increases to accommodate my hips circumference. I’m adding increases at the same rate as the pattern calls for decreases in the sleeve, and I’ll just have to make sure I stop when my stitch count reaches the correct multiple for the lace pattern.
There’s a possibility I’ll run out of the yarn before I get to the sleeves, but honestly, I’m hoping that will be the case. I have plenty of other fingering-weight skeins in my stash that need to be used, and I think contrast sleeves would be very striking for this project. The stash bust continues!
And now, a lightly cuss-seasoned rant about generative AI
While on Ravelry this week I came across a “design” whose picture was clearly generative AI and reported it. As far as I can tell, it’s been taken down. I figured Ravelry wouldn’t be AI-friendly (I was not the only person to report the page) but it would be great if the mods could make a policy statement about AI use, if only to encourage its users to take a broader critical stance against generative AI.
Obviously AI in knitting patterns is a problem. If the “designer” can’t even produce a finished object from their own written pattern, they’re clearly a scammer and unable to write a pattern to begin with. There’s no reason to trust that the pattern will be any more real than the generated image they’re using to advertise. But generative AI is a much larger problem that has infiltrated pretty much everything we interact with on a daily basis. I believe it poses extremely bleak outcomes for creativity and critical thinking.
Before I go off I want to point out that I’m not immune to the draw of AI and how it can be used. When I was studying creative writing, I wrote an experimental poem using the predictive text AI on my phone. I presented it to my workshop, completely transparent that I had used predictive text, because I was intrigued that the data my phone had stored about my typing history created a digital mirror of my personality. I called it “Runecasting with Predictive Text”. This was back in 2017, when generative AI was still producing eye-burning fractal nonsense images that could never be confused with a photograph or human-made artwork. Now I look back at that little experiment and shudder. I want to share my shame with you.
Generative AI is way more refined now. It’s replacing human labor, especially creative jobs like writing, art, and design. It’s widely used in political campaigns to smear opponents and create propaganda. It’s even being used to write public policy that we’re all supposed to live under. NYC Mayoral Candidate and sexual predator Andrew Cuomo faced criticism for using ChatGPt to write parts of his campaign’s housing policy. And yet our social media networks, job hunting sites, even this blogging platform I use proudly advertise how they’re “harnessing the exciting potential of AI” or some such bullshit to appear cutting edge to its users. The little sparkly AI icon is menacingly ubiquitous.
Left: WordPress invites me to generate an image with AI instead of using this screenshot. Right: The aforementioned sparkle icon.
AI provides no new information to us. It plagiarizes artists and writers. It only reflects, and all it reflects is existing human thought, including our worst prejudices and bigotries; it just delivers them back to us faster. And if it’s used by elected officials that are too fucking smooth-brained and lazy to come up with new ideas or to think critically, then I don’t want to live here anymore. And we probably won’t live here for long anyway, because generative AI is pumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and sucking up our water supply.
Last, I want to address the argument that generative AI helps people be creative. Nothing could be less true. Artists love the process. They love practice. That’s why great masters’ sketches are valued by art collectors and museums, not just their finished works. That’s why there are so many musical compositions called “etudes” (studies). It’s why dancers and athletes and musicians and anyone who uses their body to do anything has to spend so much time conditioning their muscles and joints for performance. If you have an idea for an image and want it to exist, and you use AI to make it exist immediately, then that isn’t artistry – it’s spectatorship.
There’s nothing wrong with being a spectator. But the ethical thing to do is hire an artist. Support artists and writers who are using their brains and bodies, who are making truly creative and critical decisions about art. Or do it yourself! Actually do it yourself. Accept that your first try at a creative endeavor might be messy, poorly executed, or embarrassing. No one needs to be perfect. We just need each other to try.
If you’re newer to the concept of generative AI or just want some help spotting it, here are things I look out for.
In images
Look at any letters, fingers, or (in the case of knitting and crochet patterns) stitches. AI has a harder time generating fine details like these; words will often be illegible, hands will have too many/too few fingers, and stitches will not make any physical sense.
The depth of focus is really shallow. Gen AI will often blur backgrounds and even the edges of a subject to reduce the amount of detail it has to create.
Everything is oddly smooth. If the image looks like it’s lacking texture and human figures look like they have silicone for skin, it might be AI.
In videos – many of the above red flags apply
Multiple people seem to have the same face or look extremely similar.
People moving toward the “camera” do not appear to be getting any closer.
A person’s face is moving but their body is not, or the head and body are moving out of sync with each other.
A celebrity starts talking like they’re an SEO-optimized ad – they start talking using words like “viral”, “Hollywood”, “diet” in relation to a specific product. It’s likely a deepfake using actual footage of the celebrity with a generated voiceover. Obviously anybody could actually be saying these words, but if it’s in relation to a weight loss plan or beauty product, exercise caution.
In writing
The author’s portrait appears AI-generated. Unfortunately publications are faking writers along with plagiarized writing.
The same ideas are repeated in re-worded phrases or sentences.
The sentence structure is repetitive.
There are a lot of words over-used by AI; this Reddit thread has a good compilation of examples.
The website or publisher has recently laid off large portions of its staff; it’s likely they’ll rely more on AI now that they’ve cut their human workforce.
I think that’s all for this week. Until the next WIP Wednesday, my dudes, and watch out for that AI slop!
Smitty is Knitting 