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.
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 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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
You know, now that I look at this diamond motif, it vaguely reminds me of someone…
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
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!
Happy WIP Wednesday! I always have multiple projects in progress, but today I’m talking about the Thonnan Top by Katt Weaver, published in Yarn – The Journal of Scottish Yarns #3.
My Thonnan Top – I’m currently halfway down the torso and haven’t started the sleevesA close-up of the yoke, knit with a fluffy alpaca yarn in green, pink, yellow, and black
Let me tell you I near broke the mousepad on my laptop clicking on this pattern when I first saw it. Then I looked at Katt Weaver’s other patterns and saw that she’s a fellow D&D player (several of her designs names are references to the game or even accessories for dice). So obviously I was locked in.
This top-down garment has a feather-and-fan motif yoke that stripes down into the main color, mimicking breaking waves. If you like texture, that marine vibe can be amplified with a frothy alpaca laceweight, which I’ve opted to use. I can’t wait to finish this project and be orbited by something something so decadent and lofty.
From the Thonnan Top Ravelry page, one of the model shots of the sample in an incredible charteuse.
I found this pattern because I’m desperately trying to use up stash yarns, so I had set a number of filters on the Ravelry search to find designs that use 3 or fewer skeins of DK weight yarn. Using a mohair or alpaca laceweight wasn’t even on my mind while I was scouring the Ravelry for a pattern, but I happened to have two skeins of the Tatreez colorway from Fruitful Fusion, a fundraising colorway to support victims of the genocide in Gaza, and this felt like a perfect pattern to showcase it this yarn front and center.
Tatreez is the style and motifs of Palestinian embroiderers. Practiced and passed down from expert to student, usually between female family members, throughout the diaspora. Probably the most recognizable example is the embroidered thobe, which I’ve often seen as a black garment embroidered with red, green, and purple thread. Tatreez is an intangible cultural marker of Palestinian identity and history.
Michigan Representative and Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib (top center) wears a thobe on the day she is sworn into Congress in 2019. In front of Tlaib is Deb Haaland, who was newly elected to represent New Mexico; Haaland is a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe and also wore traditional garb and jewelry that day.
Because I am American, it’s crucial for me to talk about the US-backed destruction of Gaza and the murder of Palestinian people. Colonial violence has been implemented in Palestine for over a century with the British Mandate starting in 1922, and the Nakba of 1948.
I think, I hope, that anyone who loves any handicraft understands the power of how familial teaching preserves art like tatreez, and what the world loses when its artists are imperiled and killed. To learn more about the history and preservation of tatreez, please check out Tatreez and Tea. This project was started by Wafa Ghnaim to preserve examples of tatreez, research its history, and teach it to new practitioners.
What I’m reading
I got Shotgun Seamstress: The Complete Zine Collection from my library this week. Osa Atoe is a musician and artist who created Shotgun Seamstress to document “the experience of being the only Black kid at the punk show”, connect and amplify other Black punk and DIY artists and musicians. Within Shotgun Seamstress‘s seven issues is Atoe’s and her collaborators’ deep knowledge of music and cultural history, a profound respect for the people who made and make the music and art that they loved. And yet, there is also the philosophy that as an artist, you can simply do whatever you want. You don’t have to wait for anyone to teach you, you don’t have to wait until you “do it right”, you don’t need the best equipment, and you don’t have to sound or, in the case of the punk scenes in majority-white cities like Portland, look like anyone else to make something.
The cover of Shotgun Seamstress
What I’m watching
The newest season of Gamechanger just began on Dropout TV, which is my favorite streaming service. If you haven’t heard of it, I suggest checking them out on Youtube and then subscribing post-haste. It’s all original comedy programming with extremely talented people, and if Whose Line Is It Anyway left a hole in your heart when it went off air, then you’ll love Make Some Noise.
Gamechanger is a game show where the game changes every time. The season 7 premiere stars Jacob Wysocki, Vic Michaelis, and Lou Wilson, and I don’t think I’ve laughed so loud in months.
Jacob Wysocki, Vic Michaelis, and Lou Wilson stand behind their podiums on the Gamechanger set.
To fully appreciate this episode though, it would behoove you to watch an episode from the previous season, “Sam Says 3”, which features the same contestants.
Smitty is Knitting 