Saltwater Purls

Bring on the violins...

....It has been pointed out that there has been cruelty to husbands occurring  in the Saltwater Purls Household . Namely that a certain husband only ever gets brown or grey sweaters. I take no responsibility for brown sweaters purchased before we met...or brown (coloured fleece) homespun sweaters I made for myself that certain husbands have taken over. Anyway prior to Jefferson (homespun Chester wool...Chester was a grey sheep not one of those red or blue sheep) I made Hubby two sweaters. The first is made from a yummy natural brown Alpaca yarn now discontinued (Classic Elite Maya) made with a Debbie Bliss guernsey pattern (book number two I think). The yarn is soft and scrumptious....

The Hubby abuse continues with this offering. When I made this one we were dating, and had gone out to Victoria (BC) to meet his Dad. I let him chose the pattern and the colours, although I stipulated it would be a lopi sweater, as I had never knitted with Lopi before and the gauge was big enough that I would not incur the boyfriend sweater curse. This sweater is generally too warm for hubby to wear frequently. So who will be the first to call the humane society...

Blast from the Past or Intasia

Laurie wrote about her attempts at intarsia without instructions...so seeing as I have little new knitting to show I'm going to show the difference between intarsia and fairisle in a past knit. I have nothing remotely intarsia right now so I won't demonstrate it...but the instructions in Stitch and Bitch are okay I think (great book for beginners).

The knit is call Arizona, in Jaegar Trinity. First off their own knits that they photographed are not the same as the pattern. No really they mirror imaged the flower and the pattern is not symetrical...see...

Now the petals on the flower are perfect for intasia, the inner petals...errr....I did those fairisle. The difference between the two in terms of the final knit appearance is that the fairisle pulls the stitches together so width of the knit is less, while intarsia doesn't affect the knit so.

Here is the back you can see where I did intarsia the green stops at the edge of the purple, but where I did fairisle it runs along the back. When you do intarsia you simply lay colour A over colour B at the transition, then continue knitting with colour B. If you want to return to colour A on the same row you need to start another ball of that colour. Then you simply lay colour B over colour A and continue knitting with colour B. Because you need to start another ball and that is messy, intarsia only works well if you have large blocks of colour.

Out of the closet

Today my mother arrives for a visit. I haven't seen her in a year and needless to say I'm pretty excited. I've been feeling sad again recently and I'm hoping she'll lift my spirits. I know what makes me sad...scenes like yesterday....but in this public domain I can do no more than hint. My husband says that everything would much better if I simply got rid of those boobs. My summer undergrad help doesn't like this piece of advice as yesterdays problem has 'bigger boobs' than her. Ahh my wonderful estrogen filled lab, you lift my heart.

Anyhoo back to my mother...except lots of FO soon...she'll be diving into my dog basket with much glee I know. So todays post picture is of my sweaters in my closet....yep bar 1 or 2 I made them all. I have another shelf of sweaters in my office at school for when my office is too cold.

Kaffe Fasset

Yesterday I mentioned that Kaffe was the last designer since Teva who got my creative juices flowing, so event hough my mother is in teh country and can actually read the wonderful things I say about her...today I'll talk about me.

I was given my first knitting book in 1993 by the members of the lab I worked in on my exchange to the UCSB...a lab I would return to undertake my PhD. It was Glorious Knitting by Kaffe Fasset. Although the shapes of the sweater are often outdated and the hair definitely is. The colour patterns Kaffe have stood the test of time as only truely exceptional designs can. With the help of Rowans beautiful colour range Kaffe blew away the cobwebs surrounding knitting. The knitting community gasped as he showed them how to use knitted yarn to paint glorious, intricate or sometimes simple geometric patterns. It's very simple. You take your scraps/leftovers (same weight yarn of course) and divide them into colours, blues, reds, yellows, greens etc, treating each as one colour no matter what their variation. Then you play with complimentary colours. Then you knit short pieces of each yarn and paint in that colour. Kaffe has an amazing eye for colour.

So in 1994 I completed several projects including this vest. The vest was oversized as were most things I owned at the end of the 80s (hide that body I will never have again). I don't wear it much anymore, but I still love the colours. I look at the patterns and now see stoles and throws...

I'm proud of me mum...

My mother has tried her hands at many things. Right now she teaches inclusive education at a University in New Zealand, but for a while she was a fiber artist. A fiber artist makes art with anything made of fiber, and her art certainly used every form of craft that uses fiber. Today in History Friday I will show case one of her pieces of wearable art....

This vest contains the following created by my mother:
1. Weaving
2. Felting (not the knitted kind)
3. Piecework
4. Hand dyeing
5. Embroidery
6. Spinning.
Can you spot all these things?

This vest was selected for the exhibition section of the National woolcraft festival when it was in Wellington (sometime in the late 80s). Everything on the exhibition is supposed to be for sale, so mum put a ridiculous price (NZ$600) on it so it wouldn't sell and she could give it to me.

Meow by Catia

50% Persian 50 % wool* (*relative quantity may vary)

You haven't heard of this yarn...hmm purrhaps beclaws people are allergic to it, purrhaps beclaws it took many months of grooming to produce enough fiber for this yarn, purrhaps beclaws persian farms may appear offensive, purrhaps beclaws persian really doesn't make a luxury yarn....whatever the reason, this is the only persian shawl I'm aware of. I take that back ... you too can have a keepsake made from your favourite pets fur....

The persian in question was Napolean. the story of Napolean begins at the supermarket, where I chanced to see an add 'free to a good home' for a seal point birman with a photo of a blue point attached. We already had one adorable seal point birman and my parents hankered for a blue point, which this obviously was. So we called the number and trooped around but 'Dusty' was an outside cat and was no where to be found. Never mind the lady said I'll catch him when he comes to eat and call you over. So she did but I was working at the time so couldn't go. According to my mother it was a very brief meeting in which she saw 'Dusty' streak under the house closely followed by the 3yr old and a hose. 'Dusty' was not a birman as he did not have white feet, he was a himalayan. My mother was not interested anymore particularly as 'Dusty' did not appear to be tame, but I wanted to see him so the lady caught him again and this time he was confined to a bedroom. He was obviously terrified and my Dad and I couldn't leave him so we adopted him.

He went straight to the vets to be fixed and defleaed and was thence forth known asn Napolean as it was a far more fitting name for a cat of his build. He spent the first two weeks hiding in the bottom of the linen closet. But by the 3rd week he was sleeping on the ironing board and had taught us to communicate with him by head butts. Being persian he required constant grooming. I'd brush him every day and cut off dags. Every few months we'd bathe him as his fur would get very dirty (we never bathed any of our other cats). His purrsonality blossomed over time and he learned not to fear people. I joked one day to my mother as she was plucking one of the rabbits that we should pluck Napolean and she joked that if I saved his wool she'd spin it. So for several months I collected his daily grooming and she spun and knitted me this small shawl.

Napolean was very special to me as I had watched his purrsonality change and his love of me grow. He was ever grateful for his new home, although he never forgot his stolen jewels. His story has a tragic ending which I won't tell you, but he did set us on the path of rescuing animals and taught me not to fear cats with baggage...scaredy cats like Jester and Teddy before him. It is comforting to have some of Napoleon with me today.

Baby I got your bunny...

I said..uh uhunh...baby I got your bunny....

I present a vest I have never worn. Hmmm I never even brought buttons for it. Maybe I should, but I guess I'm not really a vest sort of girl. Anyway the reason it is so special is that it is made of both Chilli and Peace. Peace was a caramel coloured French Angora bunny and Chilli was a Chinchilla/Angora X who was grey. Chilli is pictured here next to Vashti (torti point siamese beauty queen who had to be in every photo taken). Vashti was a medium sized cat...actually she carried her weight well so people were always surprised when they picked her up...ooof.

My Mum kept angora for many years. Our first were two little English Angora (little tufts on the end of their ears) in caramel and black called Batu and Thistle. Then came Peace, a larger French Angora (no tufts), then Chilli, then Hadji, Hadji was a rescue and didn't have great quality fur. Angora bunnies need to be plucked every 3 months or so or else they become one giant mat, and that hurts their delicate skin. mum still has Hadjis 'shell' that she cut off after we adopted him from the humane society (they contacted us as 'angora experts'). Mum swears he spent the afternoon dancing around his cage in glee at his new found freedom. Their fur naturally 'falls out' every few months and they actually enjoy someone plucking it from their coat. They'd stretch out on Mums lap on a sunny afternoon and relax as she removed their coat.

Mum then spun the bunny with a blend of wool. Her first attempt she made my sister and I, two short sleeved cardigans, but she put too much bunny in the blend and the cardigans were unbearably warm. I still have the cardigan and I use it for winter sports....it is so good a trapping heat it actually feels like it has a little heater inside it. Obviously by the time she spun me this wool she had it down.

Chester-in-a-field

Last night I frogged preppys sleeve as she was too big. Ribs can be deceiving, they can look so tight on the needle and expand so much with the weight of a garment off the needle or after blocking. So I recast on with fewer stitches and am hoping for the best. As frogging isn't much fun to write a blog about, so I thought I might delve into my past and showcase old sweaters. Call it History Friday.

Case in point, my Chester sweater. This was a pattern from one of my all time favourite Vogue Knitting Magazines (Fall '97 I believe)...you had to have been a knitter in the dark days of the 90's to have this one. I honestly did gauge this sweater but didn't take into account that ribs can change shape off the needle and with the weight of the sweater. My mother wondered why I kept asking her to spin me more. It is the ultimate 'Boyfriend Sweater'. What or rather why does Chester have something to do with it? Meet Chester....

Chester the ram (fixed), a Romney- Southdown orphan, born in September of 1993 on a sheep farm raised by my family, otherwise known as 'the Devil Reincarnate'. Doesn't he look cute and fluffy? Well he's not. He's several hundred pounds of stubborness on 4 muscular legs. He'll butt you with his armour plated head if you get to close and drag around the property if you have him on a leash. How do I know? I have the scars as does my mother, brother and sister. The only person he respects is my dad.

Does it look like my dad wants to ride him? Well actually dad is trying to hold him in place so we can record his shearing. Chester isn't so happy about recording his bad haircut. You can see that although he looks brown, actually his wool is grey underneath (hence the light grey sweater). My parents own 2.5 acres in New Zealand and run ~5 sheep...well mostly they are used as lawn mowers and leashed to runs that are just out of reach of the roses and veges. They are all friendly (except Chester who is just mean). The other sheep are a Finnish breed bred for their low fat meat and wool (Chester was bred as a meat lamb, but escaped that fate by being black and orphaned). My parents don't eat our sheep however, they live out their lives on lush pasture, kiwifruit and fejoas.