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Restingmotion

Anchoring the Rambling Mind

Bard Music Festival began this past weekend and I was up there every day, most of every day, from 10 AM to after 11 PM on Saturday, listening to panel discussions and lectures and attending 5 very interesting, musically intense, long concerts. I really don’t know how people do this. I love it, but I was completely wiped out. By Sunday morning I was exhausted, Sunday night was another story altogether. My brain was fried, I had too many pieces of music and ideas floating around in my head, swirling and whirring like my brain had turned in to some giant blender. I did not have time or energy to write my reflections on all this stimulation so it all got muddled together.

I knitted; not enough granted, but I did knit in lectures and concerts, at least some of the time, I definitely knit at lunch and dinner breaks under a shady tree (it was VERY hot this weekend). I should have knitted more, the concerts I knitted through are more clear in my head than the ones I tried to just sit and listen. My poor brain can only absorb so much. Each piece is so intense, one listens, one tries to remember and absorb the music. One piece ends, another begins. The concert is 3 hours long, the mind is becoming confused. One hour to eat, drink, relax and clear the brain before the next concert and onslaught of music. OH MY.

I don’t know how people keep it straight. Of course, some don’t. I knitted and took notes at the Sunday morning talk. Four pages of notes. Finished the Phildar armbands.

They look a little scrunched up and worse for wear. What can I say? They spent the weekend in the bottom of my knitting bag under books, and programs and water bottles galore. They will recover.

AT the above lecture, the woman next to me started off knitting, which made me feel better since we were in the fourth row dead center in front of the speakers. But then she started doing crossword puzzles. I am convinced she didn’t hear a word after the crosswords began, but perhaps she is just better able to multitask than I. I always feel guilty knitting in concerts and lectures, as if I would be a better person if I didn’t knit and could just sit there and absorb everything like a sponge. Instead I have to turn the wandering part of my brain off and I do that by letting my fingers do some methodical work like knitting. I remember much more. Why do I feel guilty about it?

I had not gotten around to a guage swatch for a new project and did not want to start guages in the concerts so I brought a simple mindless project, a scarf from a novelty yarn. The beauty of this project was that I just had to start knitting and knit until I ran out of yarn. It will be a very quick project on size 15 needles.

August 16, 2005
Yes I can sew a simple project

Well, it is reassuring to know that I actually can whip out a quick simple sewing project when I want. I will continue to work on a little sewing every day, although none got done yesterday, I was just too tired after the total mental exhaustion that follows Bard Music. I love this festival, but I am sure I need a vacation after it.

The red cotton skirt turned out really well and I wore it Saturday. Here I am toward the end of the day, about 6 PM when this photo was taken, and I have just run home for a brief swim and to change for dinner and the evening concerts:

There are a couple of important things to note here, at least to my way of thinking. The skirt is not particularly crumpled or baggy despite the fact that it is cotton and I did not underline it — that is just dumb luck as I did not expect this much from the fabric. I suppose I have a natural predilection to discount the quality of anything I get from JoAnn.

I am sure the lack of crumpling or lines around the crotch is also due to the idea that I am finally getting somewhere with my attempts to get a straight or pencil skirt to fit me well and be wearable when I sit, without creeping up to hooker-like height on my thighs. I seem to have finally managed a near perfect pencil skirt that looks good and is comfortable.

This skirt is pretty snug through the waist and upper hip, where not much ease or movement is needed, at least for me, and tapers down at the knees. In between, around the hip joint and upper thighs it is much roomier without looking too baggy. Since I have been constantly refining the same pattern, Vogue 7333, an OOP Sandra Betzina Pattern, I think I am finally getting it right.

In the end I believe it doesn’t really matter which skirt pattern is used, as long as one gets one just right, so that it always works with a little tweaking. If you have read my past posts on skirts you know that I have recently been frustrated with wearing a-line and long floaty skirts and wanted a straight skirt that really fit without wearing out at the stress points along the upper thigh and that didn’t creep up to my crotch when I sat.

Since I have scoliosis and my back was fused, I don’t have the normal lower lordotic curve that most people have which allows for a more gentle curving of the body when sitting. I sit like a board, or a right-angle square, more like a capital "L". My constant bug-a-boo has been getting a skirt to fit so it looks good and still has room. This skirt is a fairly stiff fabric and it looks good. Imagine the possibilities.

Otherwise, since this was really a quick project there are no particularly interesting technique details to report. I never have cut the seam allowances off this pattern and I did not mark the stitching lines on the fabric as I usually do (quick remember). I used dressmaker’s carbon to mark any relevant marks, including the darts, which may have been a mistake.

I usually construct my skirt first, sewing in the zipper and all the seams before sewing the actual darts. This allows me to pull the skirt on and pin fit the darts so that they fit me in the actual fabric being used. Although I have the darts marked on the pattern, there tend to be minor differences in each version of the skirt depending on the body and hand of each fabric. Usually I mark the beginning of the darts with tailor’s tacks, just to have a reference point, and work from there.

As I said, I am getting better at this skirt so most of the darts were spot-on, except for the right front quadrant, where the final location had little to do with the tentative placement of the marking lines on the wrong side of the fabric:
As you can see, one is pretty close and the other is not. This difference may have played a big roll in why this skirt fit so much better, and bagged less than past versions of the skirt.

I also did the curved dart in the back differently. That dart remains a learning process, and I always have to thank Heather Claus at See It Sew It for teaching me to pin the darts to fit and giving me the confidence to realize that, if I needed a curved dart (kind of like a big C) then I should just go for it.

Otherwise no other special techniques. Serged seam edges. I did interface the zipper and put stay tape around the waist seam, but I did not interface the hem, although I usually would. The fabric came seamed together at the side selvages as it was really two pieces of fabric cut out and quilted together. I planned to use the joined seam edge as my hem but in the end did not like it.

The original stitching was crooked and bright orange:

When I looked at the skirt in the mirror you really couldn’t tell from more than 3 feet away that it was not OK, but still it bugged me and I knew if I looked down at my lap whenever I was wearing this skirt it would annoy me no end. Luckily the handy micro-surgical scalpel is a very efficient seam ripper:

and the old stitching was rapidly removed to be replaced with something that matched a little better:

A simple petersham waistband, stitched at the waistline, turned under, and anchored by stitching-in-the-ditch at the side seams and darts completed the skirt.

August 16, 2005
Tubular Cast-Off

I had hoped to finish the Phildar shell before the weekend, so I could start a new project for Bard Music. This is not likely to happen.

It took me a long time to knit the neckband. Actually, that is not exactly true. I picked up and knit the neck band one evening and then it took me several hours out of the next evening to cast it off. Chain bind-off, in all three variations that I know, left the ribbing floppy around the neck edge and was definitely NOT attractive. Rip, Rip. Two-Row bind-off was better but still not flexible enough and not attractive. It just did not lie properly around the collarbone. Finally, balancing both The Principles of Knitting and Knitters Handbook by Montse Stanley on my lap with my knitting, I determine to learn something new. I decided that since I started with a tubular cast-on, I might as well go whole-hog as it were, and end with a tubular cast-off for double rib.

Man, did that take time, but I absolutely love it. Who knows there may even be more ribbing in my future.

Both authors claimed that invisible cast-off for double-rib was only for those who had mastered basic invisible cast-off (not me in other words) but that did not deter me. It’s only knitting after all and had I not already casted off this edge 3 times? Good thing I have extra yarn as the cotton tends to unply with the unknitting.

In the first book, June Hiatt, wrote that the technique for double-rib was awfully complicated on the needles and she recommended doing this cast-off off the needles on a table using a darning needle. I was game, so I dutifully went to the table and pulled the needle out of my edge. I felt very daring, actually only partly daring as I only pulled the needle part way out. Even with the instructions and the diagrams, I found this technique impossibly complicated and the results were not enchanting. After about 5 inches the process was not getting any easier, when I pulled the yarn through I would drop the next stitches and lose my place and if I waited too long to pull the yarn, horrible tangles and mess would ensue.

Hiatt was shoved aside, the edge was unbound and all the stitches were put back on the needle. I thought there was no hope. However Montse Stanley, also discussed the Tubular bind-off for double-rib (called invisible) and gave directions for doing it on the needle (hurray!). Why was this technique too difficult for Hiatt but not for Stanley? Stanley had clear written directions and, to me at least, less clear pictures, so Hyatt was right it would not have worked easily from pictures alone.

Following Stanley’s technique I was able to finish the neckline edge, after a few repetitions I got the hang of the technique and I really like it. I can’t do it without looking at the directions yet, and it may be a very long time before I ever reach that stage, but that’s OK. The neckline lies flat, it is actually kind of stretchy, the way a nice ribbed neckline should be (think of the possibilities) although it does kind of slant to the left. Well a left-ward slanting view of the world is probably not so bad either.

August 11, 2005
Getting My Sewing Together

Why can I get bits of knitting done most days, but not get to any sewing? I should be able to manage at least 15 minutes and probably more. I must have some kind of mental block where, if I only have a few minutes, I will knit a row, but not go start up a sewing machine. I really need to work on this because I really do want to finish more sewing and feel grumpy when I don’t get to it.

This is a piece of fabric I got at JoAnn’s. It was probably expensive for JoAnn, at least my local store, although I really don’t remember the price, still less than $10 a yard, but I am not going to do the work sewing these two fabrics together. My goal is to whip up a simple straight skirt before the weekend. It doesn’t sound like much does it?

Bard Music is gearing up: I haven’t a hope of sewing this weekend, although this, the first Bard Music weekend is light this year in terms of what I at least have to do:

Here’s the general plan, from roughly 6 PM Friday until roughly 9 on Sunday:
5 concerts
2 parties (I am not cooking)
2 gourmet picnics in which I do provide the food for 6.

Friday will be cooking day as I will be out of the house by 9 both Saturday and Sunday.

As you see, not much sewing time there. Can I squeeze in a simple skirt today and tomorrow. I need to get myself sewing more regularly. I am up for the challenge.

August 11, 2005
Circles and Squares

The sock is making SLOW progress. I am working on the instep, having been working on the instep for what seems like forever, although I know it is not. This is a very long and boring period of sock knitting. I DID make great progress yesterday in the car as we went up to Sheffield for a concert. I am now close to finishing the instep decreases and soon will be able to pick up toward the toes – I am looking forward to the change, roughly 5 or 6 more tedious rows.

Although the sock opening is more or less circular it look more like a rectangle or square here. Actually it looks like the open jaws of some horrible knitted sucking beast that are going to clamp down on any errant hands or fingers that happen its way. Perhaps my mental comparison of the sock to some great-jawed beast is what is slowing its progress.

On the trip back from Sheffield, since I cannot work on tiny wool stitches on size 0 needles in a dark car on a bumpy road, I worked on this:

It’s a square for the John Glick Memorial Afghan project organized by Annie. The tweedy yarn does not show pattern really well, but it also looks kind of boring in plain knit, and I wanted to do something a little more special. This is a pattern called Brick Rib from the Harmony Guide, Volume 2, page 47. It is not all that stretchy and I think it will be fine when blocked. I think the block has an interesting textural quality combining the tweed and the odd rib stitch.

It is kind of strange making squares for a blanket for a person I never met, but no stranger actually than many other charitable endeavors that we all undertake. I have started reading Kerstin’s and Annie’s blogs although I don’t correspond with them and don’t believe I have ever even commented on their blogs either. Still by reading their blogs I am acting as something of a participant, if not a voyeur, into part of their lives and submitted a square or two seems like the least I can do.

I may make another, I have one planned. I also need to finish the Phildar shell as I do not want to be working on it at Bard Music next weekend. I will have a lot of sitting time tomorrow as I wait around for George who is having some routine tests done at the hospital. If I get frustrated with Phildar I can work on block #2. I plan on sending one or both blocks off by the middle of the week.

Meanwhile much of today seems like it will be taken up with filling the trench I dug across the iris bed with gravel and a French Drain. I would like to get as much done as possible.

August 7, 2005
“A Child of Our Time” at Berkshire Choral

Another week at Berkshire Choral Festival. The last concert remains my favorite, but last night’s concert was also very nice. The concert opened with one of Henry Purcell’s odes written for the birthday of Queen Mary, the one I know best, although it may or may not be the most commonly performed, “Come, Ye Sons of Art, Away”, which was cheerful, beautiful and generally well performed.

It was really an excellent opening piece.

The main work of the evening was Tippett’s “A Child of Our Time”. An interesting aspect of the performance was that yesterday was the 60th Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and the concert was sung, at least partly, in tribute to those who died that day.

We were informed in the program notes and the lecture that Tippet wrote this piece of his own volition, there was no commission, no call for a choral work. He wrote the work out of his own desire to write a work with a political theme and his desire to deal with and address the events going on the world which were also causing him great inner turmoil.

This is to some extent visible in the music as it is deeply personal, at times it seems like a pastiche, blending specific vignettes of the events which prompted the work with more personal and diverse accounts of human suffering and touches of philosophy or Jungian analysis attempting to universalize and humanize the events and the feelings involved. It is an ambitious goal and Tippet is not always successful. Tippet is a masterful composer and one can get caught up in the emotional tenor of the music, which successfully balances spare modernity with warm traditional music and themes. At the same time, if one listens to the text and follows along, there passages and themes that make no sense, that become almost unintelligible, not that any individual section is nonsense, just that the plan of the work seems to follow the fragmentary lines of mental turmoil rather than a progressively reasoned course.

The narrative is vivid and very focused, no names or given or specific references to actual events, although the reference and the actions are clear. Far more time is devoted to the “why” that drives the action than the terrible acts themselves. The murder is underplayed. The Nazi Pogrom is a very short, strict and filled with menace. It is filled with the group frenzy of mass hysteria and strong Biblical overtones recalling religious hysteria. The combination is quite unsettling.

After the shocking clash of human suffering, emotion, and horror in the first two movements, the third comes as something of a shock. Here philosophy seems to play a stronger role and the answers are somewhat surprising. Despite the strong references to the Judaeo-Christian tradition and the use of spirituals, this is most definitely not a religious work although it is strongly pacifist. The boy, the “child of our time” is not uplifted. “What of the boy, then?” He presumed to judge as if he were God, he presumed to take a life “his manhood broken in the clash of powers. God overpowered him”.

Tippet’s answer is that the solution and salvation, if one can call it that, lies within ourselves. “I would know my shadow and my light, so shall I at last be whole”. This is a humanist solution, a pacifist solution, but not necessarily a religious one. There is no hand of God holding up the cause of the righteous here, but the quiet spring of self-realization. Remember, in 1940 this was not the popular path. If one wishes to be roused up and justified, this is not the work one should seek out.

I was particularly interested in the roles the 5 spirituals played in the work. I am not usually a fan of gussied up spirituals but I believe that Tippet does a masterful job with them here. They are definitely enhanced and rearranged, but they do not lose their essential character, perhaps their power is enhanced because the ornateness of the music surrounding the spirituals contrasts strongly with the spare necessity of much of the music in the other sections of the oratorio. The rich music and the warmth of the Spirituals themselves provide a very warm, human contrast and response to the darker aspects of human nature and this work.

The spirituals are very well timed. Each one serves to bring the listener in to the music, to become a participant as one recognizes the sound and wants to sing along, even only mentally. They break up the work, drawing the listener in, embracing the emotions evoked by each spiritual and tying together the various threads of the oratorio. This work to me seems to be one of the more successful juxtapositions of popular and sophisticated taste.

August 7, 2005
Friday brought an unexpected stretch of knitting time when George suggested that we take a spur-of-the-moment trip into NYC to the Cooper Hewitt (National Design Museum) to see the extreme textiles exhibit. I was more than willing, even though I had hoped to finish sewing a pair of pants that day, and we took off.

I managed to knit the entire trip, coming and going, four hours of knitting and daydreaming as I watched the Hudson River go by. It was pure heaven. I finished the last shoulder just 5 minutes before we pulled into the Poughkeepsie Station.

Unfortunately my sparse knitting time over the remainder of the weekend
consisted of frogging and reknitting – not what I knit on the train
but earlier problems. This project is not that complicated, it is
rather simple really, but still it has been plagued by simple errors.
The good news is that I have now gotten quite comfortable dropping a
stitch or even a section of stitches down multiple rows and reknitting
just one section, even if decreases and patterns are involved in the
section in question. I always knew it could be done but I approached
dropping a stitch INTENTIONALLY with trepidation. I would rather just
unknit the whole part of the sweater back to the mistake and start
over. I really can’t say why this bothered me so much. I have no
problem cutting knitting and putting in a steek, or cutting a sleeve
and lengthening it above a cuff lets say and grafting the pieces
together. Why this fear of dropping stitches? Am I afraid that once
the dropped the stitch will run on and on and I will never catch up?
Rather neanderthal of me don’t you think. No more!

The sweater did not automatically take the shape shown above. When I finished the front I proudly brought it into the house and looked at it next to the back and I COULDN’T FIGURE OUT HOW THEY WENT TOGETHER! The pattern clearly said to sew the front to the back at the shoulders but I certainly couldn’t match them up. It was late and I was tired so I opted for one of my favorite problem-solving techniques: going to bed.

When I looked at the back the next morning it was clear I had made a mistake when finishing the shoulders of the back. You can easily see the mistake in this photo:

As you can see, I cast off for the shoulders from the armscye edge not the neck edge. Hmmm.. Now I was probably tired when I read the instructions because they really weren’t that obtuse. In fact the English translation of the French pattern is pretty good. The problem is the pictures and diagrams aren’t included in the translation and I wasn’t looking a the actual pattern book, just the translation. And I was tired too remember.

So I reknit the back neck opening and shoulders. No problem really. I ended up with what you see here:

Now technically I should not need to block a ribbed sweater, and in fact most of the sweater does not need blocking, but that neck edge was rolling all over the place, and those narrow shoulders, well they were rolling up like jelly rolls and twisting like mad. I could see myself doing something stupid. So I blocked them, and sewed the shoulders together with the pieces on the blocking board.

Normally I enjoy sewing shoulder seams. You would think a two stitch shoulder would be easy – yeah! It’s short! But that is precisely the problem. Your first stitch is your penultimate stitch and it is hard to keep that little seam looking neat and finished. Remember, that when seaming, you usually lose the outer two half stitches in the edge, but here that is half the seam. It took me a little bit of effort to make it look pretty. Of course it may have been a waste of time because once I pick up stitches for the neck and the armband there will be precious little to see – just a little point at the center of the shoulder. Well, at least it will lay flat and smooth while I pick up those stitches.

August 2, 2005
Cool Linen for Hot Summers

Cool and almost crisp in new linen pants.

August 2, 2005
Finally! New Linen Pants

Don’t you think it is about time they are done? I certainly do.

It seems like I have spent FOREVER on these pants, although they have actually just been sitting in my sewing room all that time, waiting for me to squeeze in bits of time here and there.

I planned to finish them Friday, and in fact had just attached the waistband (partially) when we decided to take a spur of the minute trip into NYC. I knitted on the train, had a fabulous lunch at The Alamo which is a terrible name for a Mexican restaurant but the food is really excellent. We each had a different kind of ceviche to start, then George had the fabulous Chicken with Huitlacoche sauce and I had Grilled Scallops — ooooh so good!

We went to the National Design Museum (Cooper Hewitt forever in my mind) and saw the Extreme Textiles exhibit which was wonderful because it appealed to both my fiber loving and my techie nerdy tendencies. They also have swatches posted that you get to touch and feel. How cool is that! I love the whole idea of using modern materials and traditional techniques to make something really strong and useful and wonderful. Amazing stuff!

I finished the machine sewing Sunday morning because Saturday somehow got out of hand. The hem took another couple of hours so the pants weren’t actually done until last night. Not much interesting to see here: they’re only pants after all, relatively boring sewing.

In the end I left off the drawstring and did a modified elastic waist. There is still a back zipper and darts, but elastic as well, kind of a hybrid pair of pants.

The hand hem kind of takes them out of the really fast and simple category I guess, but I really like the way they turned out and I am happy.

August 2, 2005
Sewing Kitty

"Ohhh! This sewing just wears me out."

The yellow pants are (mostly) done. I just have to hem them. The hem is all pinned up and waiting. We are going to see March of the Penguins tonight though, so they might not be finished until tomorrow.

July 31, 2005