Yarn “weight” is different from how you usually define weight.
Here’s a YouTube video that explores it: Understanding Yarn Weight.
And HERE is the downloadable spreadsheet with yarn sizing systems.
The Good News is the Bad News
It’s always that way isn’t it? There are advantages and disadvantages to almost everything in life . . . two sides to every coin.
Like winning the lottery. Hurray, you are rich, rich, I tell you! Qiviut and cashmere, here you come. But 72 people (so far) are whining at you for money including your brother’s widow who knows exactly where your Guilt button is and she’s lying on it. (You never did like her from the get-go.)
Like that mystery virus that landed you in the hospital and swallowed 12 weeks of your everyday life. The one that reminded you to appreciate every moment of your everyday life since then . . . (And FINALLY you got your Advanced Directive carefully crafted, witnessed, copied and in the hands of those who might need it some day which is something only a near-death experience could kick you into gear to do because who wants to figure that stuff out or even acknowledge that it needs to be done? But it’s a good thing. To have it done.)
The Learning Knitting coin has two sides as well, but they look the same . . .
The good news about knitting is “There is no ***RIGHT WAY***.”
The bad news is “There is no ***RIGHT WAY***.”
At least once a week someone asks me, “Cheryl, what’s the correct way to . . .
hold the yarn . . .
bind off the ribbing . . .
pick up along the neck edge . . .
cast on . . .
cable without a needle . . .
etc . . .
And my answer is always the same: “There is no ‘correct’ way that works for everyone in every situation but here’s what I would try . . . And if that doesn’t work you might try . . .”
This idea that there is no right way has come up in my own knitting in the past month. I’m learning how to do Twined Knitting. I’m enjoying sifting through the details of learning a new skill . . . but here’s the rub . . . Z-twist vs S-Twist yarns and which way you wrap them.
There are number of experts (and I have consulted all I can find who are in English) who talk about only one way to do it using the least-available yarn in this country. My question is why can’t we use the other kind of yarn and wrap it the other way? Who sez we can’t and why not?
I’m finding that I’m not the only person asking the question. My conclusion? If it works for you, and you’re happy with the process and result, then it’s right. And don’t let anyone tell you different.
I poke around on Ravelry and other forums to learn what people are having trouble with or questions about (also to check what they’re saying about me). Every once in a while I see someone telling someone else the “right” name for a pattern stitch or the “right” way to do something. And always the remark comes from someone who doesn’t have enough experience to know that the knitting world is bigger than they can imagine.
Not knowing the exact, right, step-by-step safe path, or worse, knowing that there isn’t one, can be scary. And that’s why I tell you to be brave. Because it’s just yarn, no one has ever bled out because of a dropped stitch, and I, for one, would be bored brainless after 70+ years of doing it if I didn’t get to discover something new.
Back in my teaching-high-school-English days, an occasional student would ask, “You know something?” (Or more like, “Yunno sump’n?”)
My answer was always the same: “Not a thing. I’m awed only by the enormity of what I don’t know.”
And I still am.
The Beautiful Daughter, a Year Later
Because so many of you have been kind enough to ask about her, I wanted to share my correspondence with Beautiful Daughter with you.
EMAIL FROM ME: July 21, 2015: How is your mother’s condition? Your life?
Dear Xxxxx,
I think of you often and wonder how your mother fared over the winter, if she is still alive. And how are you doing with caring for your brother and her?
Are you still in Xxxxx?
Were you able to continue with your studies or have you suspended them for a while? My studio is wonderful and I will start shooting new videos very soon. Thank you again for your generous help in getting it built. The space feels bursting with the generosity of so many people. It sings.
I think of you often, send you a blessing each time, and wonder how you are.
Warm regards,
Cheryl
EMAIL FROM BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER: August 24, 2015 Re: How is your mother’s condition? Your life?
Hey Cheryl,
Sadly my mom has passed away last month, she couldn’t handle the chemotherapy anymore, so she went downhill fast.
I am still staying in our home but the government have taken over our care and are our guardians now since we are still minors.
Happy to say that i have passed the year in university and have registered my brother in a new school.
I am glad to hear that it went so great for you and your studio, your afghan made a lot of difference during winter and summer.
Best regards.
EMAIL FROM ME: August 24, 2015 Re: How is your mother’s condition? Your life?
Dear Xxxxx,
I’m sorry to hear this news even though I expected it. You must be feeling very sad, tired and a bit lost.
I’m glad to hear that the government has taken over your guardianship and especially happy that you were able to pass the year in university. And I hope your brother thrives in his new school.
I recently finished The Beautiful Daughter Afghan pattern and sent it to everyone on my newsletter list. One woman wrote me to say she had made one for her local hospice, so your gift, and the gift of your mother, lives on, comforting more people.
XXXXX
Here’s a copy of the pattern for those of you who would like it: ttps://cherylbrunette.gumroad.com/l/FMRZg
Gutenberg, Google and Beyond
1) Gutenberg
Johannes Gutenberg was the guy who introduced printing with movable type to Europe in 1439. He is more important to who you are today than your great-to-the-25th-power grandmother who lived at the same time.
She gave you her nose, or at least a hint of it, but HE . . . he opened the door to you and your ancestors sharing information across time and social classes.
STOP. Imagine yourself without the written word (or running water but that’s a different subject).
Without him, unless you are descended from an elite royal/political/religious class, your total skill set would be the ones you learned from your family and neighbors. You would know how to survive physically for a while. That’s about it. (Knitting probably wouldn’t be one of those skills though felting, spinning, and weaving would probably be there.)
2) Google
Google exploded the literacy that Gutenberg birthed. Anyone reading this has, at her or his fingertips, access to more information than a person can absorb in thousands of lifetimes. (Probably closer to a billion lifetimes but I’m being figurative here.)
3) Coins Have Two Sides
I just Googled “YouTube knitting” and in less than half a second I had 24.5 million results. I chose YouTube because, in my latest analysis of survey results, 88.4% of you consult YouTube when you need knitting help.
THE GOOD NEWS IS . . . you can learn practically everything there is to know about knitting for free with an internet connection.
THE BAD NEWS IS . . . you have 24.5+ million options on one source . . . and there are many sources
Let’s say you were crazy-dedicated to mastering knitting on YouTube and you vowed to watch 20 videos per day . . . it would take you only 342.4 years to get through the ones that are there as of this moment. Another thousand hours of knitting programs will be uploaded by tomorrow.
Too much of even a good thing is too much.
4) BREATHE, It’s Simpler Than it Looks
English has over 1,000,000 words. How many of those words do you need to know to satisfy 90 to 95% of everyday conversational needs? About 2500. That’s 1/4 of 1% of the total words.
Knitting is the same. Ma used to say, “If you can knit and purl you can make anything.”
There are other skills, of course, like increasing and decreasing, but she had a gift for simplifying things.
With a limited number of skills and some practice, you can become the greatest knitter in your neighborhood and the most beloved grandmother/auntie/friend who makes sweet gifts. And isn’t that easier that sitting through 125,000 years of YouTube videos?
5) I’m Glad to be Old
I grew up in the 1950s in a household where two languages were spoken, English and Knitting (Cooking too but that’s not relevant here). I don’t remember my mother ever having empty needles.
Ma was the neighborhood knitting expert and she taught anyone who showed up at the door. When they got stuck there was no local yarn shop. They came to our house and Lena fixed it. Always. Every yarn challenge had a solution. It might be ripping it all out (seldom needed) but there was always a solution.
I’m trying to figure out the best way to be like Ma, but in a bigger neighborhood . . . like the world. I realize that’s kind of a silly idea but it’s my guiding light for now.
Cracks . . . in Ice and a Marriage
Winter of 1976-77. We had one of those Michigan ice storms. You know. The ones that coat tree limbs and electrical lines with 1/2 inch thick or more enclosures of ice. The kind of ice that snaps things off. From weight, from brittleness, just for the gorgeous hell of it.
And it was beautiful. An ice-encrusted tree limb is exquisite in the bitter winter sun. Until one breaks and falls across a wire, the one that delivers you life-giving electricity.
We had “a beautiful home.” Huge by the standards of the time. We could entertain 70-80 people with two dozen pot luck salads and desserts and vats of chili and people didn’t even bump in to one another. It had “good traffic flow” as they say. But when the electricity went out
1) We had no water.
2) We had no heat.
We moved to my mother’s house, some 25 miles south. For a week.
I said, “This makes no sense. A home is supposed to be shelter. And in the worst weather ever, when we need it most, this house gives us no shelter. What good is it if it can’t do that?”
When we moved back a week later, Ma came with us. I can’t remember why.
In the process of checking pipes and everything else I opened the freezer door of the refrigerator and it was full. To the brim. With bread dough that had thawed and expanded to fill the entire compartment. I gasped and laughed and Ma said, “Just punch it down and bake it up.”
I baked 5 loaves of bread that evening. Ma took 2 of them home. And I never felt secure in that house again.
Husband #1 was a very good man. He didn’t share my need to live in a small, simple place that would have heat and water even when the electricity went out. Still, I sometimes regret having left that marriage. And smile when I remember that it happened at all.
Dating Jesus
I once performed in an original Easter Oratorio as Pilate’s wife. I went out on a date with the man who played Jesus. I was very happy to tell this to my mother, a devout Catholic who was worried about my relationship to The Church.
He had the driest kisses of any I have experienced outside those of my brothers. He was a baritone. I had hoped for something lustier. He did, however, have a voice that could make a person swoon.
I don’t often scream and what’s in it for you . . .
LIFETIME SCREAMS:
1) 1967, February: Mosher-Jordan Residence Hall, University of Michigan, 5th floor. Sunday afternoon. Homework done. Sun streaming in. Dust motes drift. Having a dreamy phone talk with my dreamy boyfriend. A bat hops out from under my bed. Toward me.
2) 1977, August: Cedar Point, Sandusky Ohio. First time upside down in a roller coaster. Sitting next to my oldest brother. He laughs when I say a word he has never heard his proper English-teacher sister say before. Last time upside down on a roller coaster.
3) 1997, December: Baja California. Narrow 2-lane highway hugging craggy mountain west of Santa Rosalia. Heading downhill, mountain to the right, 1000+meter drop to the left. No guard rail (we don’t need no stinkin’ guard rails). In a Mini-Winnie motor home driven by impatient husband who wants to pass the truck in front of us. The Mexican driver of the truck waves his arm out the window to keep us back. I say “don’t do this.” Then I go to the back bed, cover my head with a pillow. And scream. Last trip to Baja with said ex-husband.
4) 2015, This morning. Software frustration. Weeks of it. I finally figured out that if I stand on my right leg, point NNE, cough twice and spit on nettles, I can get it all to work together. And the result for you?
THE BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER AFGHAN PATTERN
I swear, I’m getting soft in my old age. Screaming about software for heaven’s sake.
The Beautiful Daughter Afghan Pattern
This is an afghan with a sweet story. The pattern costs $4.50 and you can hear the story and see the afghan here . . .
Island Blackberry Cobbler
Quick! Cobbler Time! The blackberries are early this year and here’s an easy-peasy recipe that will impress even that snooty co-worker of yours. Any fruit will do and cobblers are a heck of a lot easier than pies in my book.
p.s. If you serve your warm fruit cobbler with vanilla ice cream you get extra warm-and-fuzzy-food-memory points with your children and their children, and their children . . . in perpetuity.
Your Knitting Self and Dr. Seuss
After reading (more than once) 24 pages of micro-print and playing around in Excel, I have learned some things about you and your yarn habits. The hit-me-between-the-eyes-with-a-pool-noodle (because I should have known it all along) surprise? YOUR BIGGEST KNITTING CHALLENGE DOES NOT INVOLVE YOUR HANDS TOUCHING YARN.
How do I know this? Because two weeks ago I started inviting people to join my knitting gaggle. So far . . .
• 358 of you are In the Loop
• as of yesterday, 240 of you had filled out the survey
• 88% of you are hand knitters, though half of you hand knitters also knit by machine
• 1% of you are “expert” knitters
• 8% of you are “beginners”
• 91% of you are somewhere in between
You still rely on books.
58% of you consult them when you need help.
Here was another surprise. 89% OF YOU GO TO YOUTUBE FOR HELP. YouTube just celebrated its 10th birthday. You get most of your knitting guidance from a 10-year-old. Is that prudent? Is it safe?
[This deserves an article all to itself. Later. Soon.]
What do you like to knit?
• 57% of you knit sweaters. This makes sense because I invited everyone who bought Sweater 101 from my website in the last 4 years.
• 58% of you love to make little things like scarves, mitts, socks, hats and shawls
• only 25% of you make blankets and afghans but
• 34% of you make baby things (Hi Grandmas, pregnant persons and friends of pregnant persons)
So with all these mountains and millions of stitches that you all have crafted, what is your single biggest challenge?
Time. That’s it. TIME
And what the heck is this thing called time, this thing you keep trying to find?
One of my favorite definitions is from Albert Einstein: “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once,” or, as a physicist friend once explained to me,”Time is what keeps us from running into one another when we walk through this doorway.”
From my beloved, tattered,1964 edition of THE AMERICAN COLLEGE DICTIONARY: “—n. 1. the system of those relations which any event has to any other as past, present, or future; indefinite continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.”
However you understand it, YOUR TIME (mine too) IS FINITE. And we are swimming in a sea of information and physical stuff and opportunities to watch dogs sing and babies bite their siblings’ fingers, and to share meals with family and to do Sudoku. It’s alluring. All of it.
BUT TIME IS SHORT AND YARN IS LONG. How do we choose?
I recently read an article by Ash Ambirge entitled “Turns Out, You *Can’t* Do It All—So How Do You Pick?” Her sparkling recommendation? “Pick what’ll still be fantastic five years from now. Leave what’ll only be fantastic for five weeks.” I like that. A lot.
We all have an expiration date. And until mine arrives, I’ll keep showing up and playing with the things I think will still be fantastic five years from now. That lovingly knit afghan will still be fantastic whether I’m here or not . . . and that . . . is a comforting thought.
How did it get so late so soon?
It’s night before it’s afternoon.
December is here before it’s June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?
~Dr. Seuss