How's it supposed to drape?

Having been a sewer for so many years, it's intuitive to me about how fabric drapes. (It's also quite obvious - the fabric itself is falling off the bolt.) I know what cotton will do versus linen. I also know (that in few cases) all cottons are not created equal. I know how silk differs from rayon or polyester (and how polyesters differ amongst themselves). I know how wool suiting is supposed to behave, and I know that most upholstery fabrics do not make a cute skirt, despite how appealing the fabric print is.

What continues to puzzle me is how yarn drapes. About a month ago, I was told that I do not want to knit a sweater from bamboo yarn, because the fabric will not hold up to the shaping of the sweater. Bamboo is therefore more appropriate for things like shawls. While I'm appreciative of the tip, it also frustrates me. I don't know enough about [plant and protein] fiber to understand what it's going to do before I even do anything with it. I feel that I'm at the point in my knitting career that I'm trying to become smarter about my yarn choices prior to casting on (oh, I should mention that I'm a big substituter - in almost all cases). I'll also swatch long enough to get gauge (which in my case generally means that I've cast on and am swatching as I go. If I'm not at gauge, I'll sooner make adjustments to the pattern than rip out - a terrible habit, I know.), but I won't swatch big enough to actually figure out how the thing will drape. It seems there are too many variables to handknit fabric - if I knit on a 4 versus a 6, gauge will obviously change, and along with it, drape. But certainly there must be basic principles - am I overlooking them as I jump from project to project? Will I ever learn this?

Emotionally Ready

Sunday, on my way to the gym, I caught part of an interview on NPR with a woman who has read every Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. At the end of the interview, she was asked whether she'll immediately read this year's winner (Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout). She replied that she would probably buy it soon, but only read it if she was emotionally ready for it, as fiction has the ability to connect with our souls and move us emotionally. Similarly, I believe the same can be said for craft. Craft isn't just about making things; it's about communicating to the world what I'm feeling and how I've been inspired.

But it also explains why some projects just get shelved, or why I just don't have the motivation to continue. Despite that I currently have 3 projects on the needles, I cast on another yesterday. The WIPs are unsuitable to knit for the following reasons: Laminaria -- dropped a bunch of stitches and have to retrofit a lifeline. This requires time, patience, diligence, patience, a clear head, patience. Which I have none of at this particular moment. The yarn for the drawstring raglan has been ordered and I'm eagerly awaiting it's arrival. (Final additional color choices where mushroom, ice blue and cinnabar -- color combo inspired by an artist who had decorated a robin's egg with dried flowers - white petals, beige centers - and some kind of flecks of red.)

And then there's the beach dress. That dress has been stressing me out ever since my first attempt at it almost a year ago. Life outside of knitting is currently stressful as it is (end of the semester, graduating in a month, still looking for a job, etc etc) and this was an unfortunate project to take on at this time -- it wasn't alleviating the stress in my life, sadly, only adding to it. I need something that reminds me about the joys of knitting, something that surprises me, something that stirs my emotions positively. Enter Vogue's latest Pleated Top.

Every stage of this project has been an unexpected delight and delightfully unexpected. Paid a long overdue to my LYS on Sunday, to pick up needles. (Somehow I'd found myself with all this lace weight yarn, but no appropriately sized needles with which to knit it.) Nancy greeted me and instantly told me I needed the new issue of Vogue. It's a great issue, by the way, the patterns are truly timeless and versatile. And so I stumbled upon the Pleated Top...and matched it with a skein of Misti Alpaca Hand Painted Lace in Piney Woods.


Normally I don't like variegated yarns, but there was something about this hank that spoke to me, and now that I'm knitting it, it is revealing to me it's secrets, it's undulating rivers of forest floor, flecks of lavender and budding leaves, peaking out from the edge of ponds reflecting a midnight sky, all in lace yarn that is whimsical, feathery and playful, while being, not unlike pine needles themselves, sturdy and resilient.


In other words, this is a gorgeous fabric. I have visions of the finished top dancing around in my head. I haven't knit anything in over two weeks -- arguably one of the longest periods of time I've gone without knitting -- to the point where it was actually a bit awkward to knit at first, which is slightly embarrassing. In any case, this is the project that has restored my faith in knitting, in craft, in wanting to create and communicate with the world. This is the project I needed to change me, emotionally.

Making Stuff

I knit. I sew. I paint, I needlepoint, and I take photographs. I even built a bookshelf once. I'm not listing this to boast or brag, but I do think it's very clever indeed to have the ability to make stuff.

I feel that the addition of each craft gets easier to figure out, based on knowing that each is simply made up of a few basic parts (with endless manipulations and variations). For example, I began my craft career sewing. All garments are made from some modification of 5 basic pattern pieces -- skirt front and back, bodice front and back, sleeve. Having made enough garments by the time I picked up a pair of knitting needles, I understood shaping, drape, and construction. Knitting itself is made up of 2 stitches -- knit and purl. Photography is just the effect of manipulating light -- aperture, shutter speed, film speed, color temperature. And so on and so forth.

So it's with this building-block, I-can-figure-it-out mentality that I'm going to learn to play the guitar. This is how I see it: per the Craft Yarn Council of America, there are 38 million knitters and crocheters in this country (equivalent to the entire population of Poland). According to a questionable internet source, 65% of Americans know how to play the guitar -- or about 195 million people. If that many people (not accounting for the billions more scattered around the globe) have been able to figure it out, I'm sure I can too. After all, I make stuff. :)

And the beat goes on

It's my last semester at ID. Last of 6. 6 loooooooong semesters. Semesters where it's not uncommon to work over 100 hours a week. Where I've actually clocked in at 6am and clocked out 24 hours later. My longest meeting ever stretched 14 hours; it was for Demo. The second longest, only an hour shorter, was Systems -- I never thought anything could beat a Systems meeting. The longest I've ever slept in one night? 17 hours - 8pm Saturday to 1pm Sunday. Apparently I needed it.

I've lived and breathed by my Google Calendar, and have shared it with many friends. I used to tell them to look there first before asking when I was available to hang out. These are the friends who wouldn't take no for an answer when I said I was too busy - they just kept asking. :)

I've taken thousands of pictures, but wish I'd taken more. And I still don't own a damn point and shoot.

As I'm looking through the pictures in the ID flickr group, I'm overwhelmed with a sense of nostalgia; there is something very... ID about those pictures. Maybe it's the presence of all that food. Maybe it's the miserable gray backdrop that is ID. Maybe it's the clear sense of bonding that occurs because of the misery.

Over the past 3 years, we've cried and fought - as teams and individually (I've personally lost count of my own breakdowns). But we've also laughed. A lot. And at some of the most inane and incomprehensible frivolity that can only be shared by someone who's as sleep deprived as you. We developed a unique sense of camaraderie that I don't think is found in B schools, or law schools, or med schools. We were here to help each other out (You can do that in InDesign?? Why didn't I know that yesterday...). We worked together, ate together, procrastinated together.

Now, as we graduate and are flung about the country to "spread design thinking" (if you've drank the kool-aid) or to simply find a job where we can somehow apply user-centered-ness, (or to move to Canada), I'll be sad to see my friends go. I'm glad to be out; but for all it's worth, I'll miss it.

Arriving

I did it. I finally did it. I'm now officially part of the blogosphere. And I'm a little nervous about it, but not quite sure why. Maybe I liken blogging to jumping into a pool - and I don't know the temperature of the water - but everyone else is splashing around, having a grand 'ol time. Or something. Deep breath.

In any case, I've wanted to blog for some time now, but somehow never found the impetus. Or maybe I just found too many excuses. Either way, being a fairly indecisive person, first it was, well, what to write about? Should I write only about one thing and nothing else? Can I hold myself to this commitment? What to name it? Then, earlier this evening, I arrived on "little idyll." In other words, just a place to put all the little things that make me happy.