Knit bloggers everywhere are dropping like flies to Log Cabin Fever these days. Of course, Ann and Kay are the original source of infection. But Cara hit upon the source of my first exposure to the madness: the Gee’s Bend Quilters. I went on a whim to see their show at the Whitney in New York. Afterwards I wrote in my diary that it was the single most inspiring collection I’d ever seen. I love museums – I’ve been fortunate enough to visit some of the greatest in the world – and I deeply admire art in many forms. But I’ve yet to come across anything that made me want to rush home and MAKE SOMETHING as badly as that exhibit did. I sat with those quilts and I scribbled, sketching out sections of the women’s work that sang with color or the glory of unexpected composition. The security woman had to warn me that the museum was closing. I bought the giant expensive book in the museum shop, something I’ve never done before or since. Those colors, that raw artistry, that incredible alchemy of ragged work clothes made beautiful – I needed to keep it close to me, to see if it could help me unlock something creative in myself. But here’s the thing: it was early 2003. And I didn’t know how to knit.

But now I do. I realized more than a year ago that this was my avenue of approach to those folk art quilts. Kay and Ann kindly passed the toolbox with their book, and now you can count me among the stricken. Warm up a hospital cot for me, because I’m in the grips of the fever:

The quilts influenced the colors I chose, although I wasn’t conscious of it when I bought the yarn. And what I’m up to is not exactly Log Cabin knitting. It’s more along the lines of Mad Architect with Lincoln Logs. I’m using whatever technique will most efficiently produce the shapes and patterns I want: sometimes it’s Log Cabin, sometimes it’s mitered squares, sometimes it’s just plain striped blocks with regular seaming, and usually it’s some combination of the lot. I’ve begun with some direct representations of Gee’s Bend motifs, just to prime the pumps. There are two or three quilt blocks that work really well in the colors I’ve chosen, and I think the uneven quality of the Manos complements the abandon of the original designs. And then I’ll be off-book, and we’ll see what my imagination can produce. I’ve already got some promising sketches. It’s not the tightly structured design project I’d intended to do this month. But it’s a wedding present for friends, and so different from most of my projects that I’m really enjoying myself.

Of course, the squares you see here were finished before the heat became really oppressive. Not even my intense fascination with this blanket is enough to draw me to work with bulky wool right now. Plus it’s too much material to try to hold out of the cold water in the tub. (The tub is the place for Prairie camisole or similar light cotton knitting, though! Try it today!) But the heat should diminish in the next few days, and then I’ll be right back at it. Two more squares cousin to the blue-and-tans will complete that motif, and I’ve also started a Courthouse Steps section. I’ve set myself an October deadline for completion, since I’m looking at a very busy August and blanket squares don’t seem like quite the right project to take via pack horse up to 12,000 feet… but more on that later.

Meanwhile, cross your fingers for a temperature adjustment so I can get some pictures of the Viennese shrug – she’s rather purty, if I say so myself!

…Was my interpretation of “hippopotamus” as a child (maybe because my mother’s side of the family passed down a freakish tendency to say “tomahto”), and now it’s what comes to mind when I’m trying to remember the name of that groovy sock pattern everyone’s knitting. The first time I saw them, I knew I had to make myself a pair. I finally finished the Conwy socks, and I was too impatient to even set up a photo shoot before I cast on Pomatomus yesterday. So here’s my beginning:

Reclining in the slug-eaten calibrachoa. Poor sock deserves better, I decided. So I went around to my mother-in-law’s side of the house to pose it among the dianthus.

Much nicer. I’m using Claudia Handpainted fingering weight in “Plumlicious” – oh, how plummy! I love the way it’s working up with nary a flash nor a pool – this happy result has persisted through the first two repetitions of Chart A since I took these pictures. And I haven’t found the pattern to be too toothy yet, although I did have to tear out half a chart repetition this morning when I got a little too glued to the Germany-Sweden match. World Cup soccer is prime for knitting, by the way. Nothing is as ideal as the Tour de France*, but soccer is a close second. Unfortunately, the Viennese Shrug requires a little too much attention to the pattern to be good TV knitting, but I’d say it’s five eighths finished. Of course, I’m not going to want to model it for you while it’s 95 degrees, which is the weather we’re having this week. We’ll have to take some pictures at dawn while it’s still cool (and this is the beauty of Portland – unlike NYC, it really does cool off most comfortably after the sun goes down). Fingers crossed, but I think I’m going to be very pleased with my modifications. I’ve also finished the Scarf-for-Money, which I’ll block tomorrow and then mail back to New York. No pictures, of course, but I’ll say that should you get the chance to knit with Rio de la Plata wool, you should absolutely snap it up.

What’s next? I need to pull up my socks and just finish Rosalind’s crochet edging. I’ve totally lost steam with that project because I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to fit me very well when it’s all done, and I’ll have to find someone to whom I can give it away. I also have some design projects in the works, and an entire blanket that’s supposed to be done by October. Sigh. Don’t you just wish you could knit faster? It’s not that I don’t take pleasure in the process. I actually mind frogging much less than most people I know, because it’s so enjoyable to keep working on the piece (present issues with Rosalind notwithstanding). But there are so many ideas in my head that I just can’t keep up! I made it a goal to work on my own designs this year, and I just need to start realizing my sketches in yarn. Luckily, between the World Cup and the fast-approaching Tour, there’s lots of good knitting time blocked out.

*Coming soon: a post about what I’ll be doing during the Tour, besides cheering on Ivan Basso!

My father’s mother is the great craftswoman of our family. Knitting, needlepoint, sewing, rugs, interior design…she’s done it all in her day. She’ll be 90 years old in February. Everything she made is distinguished by her particular imagination and sense of humor – she loves wildlife and always wanted to make a rug with wild turkey tracks across it, for example. Among her finest creations is an enormous rug she designed and stitched over several years before I was born. It’s an inventive pattern of geometric ornament, fantastic creatures, and symbols of the family. It paints a picture of our family over the past four or five generations, including references to my mother and my aunt, who had recently married my grandmother’s sons when she made the rug.

All this was in the back of my mind when I set out to design a sweater for my father. I decided I’d select motifs that remind me of him and speak to the themes of his life. In the center panels, place, the island where he’s made our family home: ripple stitch for the sea, a single variation on Christmas Trees for the forested landscape and for his own woodland knowledge and woodworker’s craft, and raindrops for the Pacific Northwest. Gull stitch cables flanking the center panel. Then a ladder motif, because I needed a horizontal element, but also representative of his carpentry. Finally, for his Scottish heritage, a Scotch faggoting cable (a beautiful little openwork cable I unearthed in my Barbara Walker treasury, and I can trust knitters not to snigger about the faggoting, eh?), a column of willow buds for his spring birthday, and seed stitch around the armholes.

I charted all this out the weekend before last, and I’m happy to report no major bugs in my work in the first 25 rows. I worked the sweater in the round up to the arm holes, and now I’ve divided for the front and back. I’m also happy to report that working a pattern like this is a lot of fun. It’s giving me confidence that I’ll be able to carry off the Aran sweater my husband says he wants…but that’s a project for next year. The yarn, Jaeger luxury tweed, is a marled merino/alpaca blend that makes a nice soft fabric. The alpaca leaves a halo and the construction of the yarn – a fawn strand and a moss strand twisted together – isn’t ideal for showing off this kind of stitch work. The overall effect is more subtle than usual for a gansey, but then my dad is a pretty subtle guy. The sweater was bound to be non-traditional from the beginning, as he wanted a medium-weight sweater. I’d originally intended to use Blackwater Abbey Aran weight wool, but that would have produced a heavy sweater Dad could only wear on the coldest days in our mild climate.

Pictures to come when I’ve worked some more rows, and I’m still deciding about the design for the upper sleeves!

What with the holiday and a lovely knitterly afternoon at Lisa’s apartment yesterday, I was able to finish up Lightning’s primary body parts and toss her in a lavender Eucalan bath this morning. Here’s the cat examining my blocking job:

I forgot how Rowan Plaid grooooowwws when it’s wet – that’s alpaca for you! So I patted it back into shape and left it moisten the couch all day. Then I started on the collar, which I hope to finish tonight. Lightning doesn’t make anything easy, so I’ve had to do considerable frogging on each piece. Just when I think I’ve got her figured out (and I can “read” the pattern in the knitting perfectly at this point), she hexes me with mysteriously incorrect stitch counts. I have to go back and add in extra-pattern increases or decreases any time there’s shaping, and count each row as I go along. So she’s been a loooong time in the knitting – you’ve seen her lurking there at the top of the list of projects on the needles for the last ten months, after all! But the end is in sight, and I plan to have her ready for Rhinebeck next weekend. (Whether or not it’ll be cold enough for bulky weight alpaca blend sweaters is another issue, of course.)

So what’s next? I spent a good few hours this afternoon working out the pattern for my father’s Christmas gansey. (And by the way, some of the Spiders told me they had no idea what I meant by a gansey: it’s traditionally a seaman’s pullover sweater that originated on the Channel islands of Jersey and Guernsey, hence the name. It has patterning – cables, raised stitch patterns, etc. – over the chest and upper arms.) I still have a couple more inches of dull-as-dirt stockinette-in-the-round before I get to begin…Garter Welts, Ripple Stitch, Christmas Trees, Raindrops, Gull Stitch, Willow Buds, Twisted Tree, and Scotch Faggoting Cable(!). Don’t it have a kind of poetry to it? It was a hoot poring over Barbara Walker’s First Treasury of Knitting Patterns to choose the different elements, and then arranging them so that the stitch counts would work together properly. I tried to select patterns that remind me of something about my dad, and it’s going to be an engaging puzzle trying to put them all on one chart.

I have further design inspirations, too. I’m not going to share them just yet, but this beautiful Rowan yarn I got from Amanda at our impromptu yarn swap is fuel for the fire: