A Towel, somewhat slanted

 I confess, when I wrote my last post, it was a little bit with a mind towards 'talking about it all may take the dynamics out of it and perhaps things will turn to the better'. Rest assured, so far it hasn't. New happenings on the parents' health front, and being in the midst of packing, sorting, clearing out... I wonder how I can cope with it all, and I do wonder, when things will get better!

In any case - to please my battered little soul I gave in to temptation. Anybody who has been reading this blog for a little while may have noticed that I have been struck with a bit of infatuation with Sarah C. Swett and her textile adventures, and am an avid reader and big fan of The Gusset on Substack. 

My Sweater Somewhat Slanted is still in the making.

 

A few weeks ago she posted about her handspun and handwoven towels and showed pictures that were so lightweight and enchanting that I felt very much of the "Oh, I would loooove to have one like that" kind of yearning. Of course, I haven't spun any linen yet, nor milkweed (but I do think hers were made from linen), nor do I have any weaving equipment left in the house. (And being in the middle of a move to a smaller place there is no possibility of acquiring anything in that direction any time soon.) I do have linen to spin, but it didn't make it to the top of my spinning projects list that is currently being worked on with the Tour de Fleece 2024.

But as I was rummaging through my yarn stash I came across a large bag of natural colored cotton which had been a sweater and was taken apart a while ago, and something gave me the immediate feeling that this is the closest I was going to get to a handmade towel anytime soon. Again using the self-delusory trick of telling myself that one slip stitch is not casting on, I started to knit a towel. Planning as I go, embracing mistakes, adjusting the separating number of stitches between the stitch patterns on the go when I have miscounted, I am slowly working on it.

Of course, it is nothing as airy as the woven ones by Sara, in fact, it looks a bit clumsy. It won't be exactly lightweight, first of all because it is cotton, and secondly because knitting does not result in as lightweight a product as weaving. Which may in fact lead to the experiment being reduced in size, although I am determined to make it more sizeable than a wash cloth. Not sure how outside factors may come into this decision making process. But in times when there is basically no free minute to sit down at the sewing machine it is fun to have something 'new' to pick up to keep my hands busy.

Getting Myself into Somewhat Slanted Trouble?

 

Almost a year ago I started the “Sweater Somewhat Slanted”after a pattern by Sarah C. Swett .  She now writes The Gusset on Substack  which I look forward to finding in my inbox every Tuesday. 

This slanted sweater had intrigued me right away when I first saw pictures of and posts about it, I just love the ‘slanted’ aspect of it. On first sight I immediately thought ‘should be possible to do it all slanted, not only the two large pieces front and back, shouldn’t it?’ and so far I have been thinking that I would like to try to do it that way. As I have mentioned before, I cheated myself a bit, breaking the good intention to start any major new knitting project (socks never count!) before I had finished at least two other wips by telling myself that a single slip knot as is very common in every day use does not count as casting on a knitting project. The sweater basically started itself.

Mine turned into a bit of a wildish something when deciding on yarn (only, but not with a derogatory meaning) under the way. Alternating some hand-dyed (not be my) yarn from South America which had been in my stash for a few years with hand-spun (by me) snippets from my experimental bags of spinning is certainly giving this piece a very idiosyncratic look.

 

As I was also finishing another very long-time work in progress 

 

this slanted project took it’s time growing, but lately I managed to finish the second piece and then realized that my ambition to slant the sleeves as well was blocking progress. 

To shape or not to shape the shoulder pieces,
even not slanted?

 For a little while I waited whether I would have the zeal and drive to tackle this self-inflicted challenge, meanwhile just going ahead with the shoulder rectangles and waiting for enlightenment.

 

But in the end, for now, I have decided that I will finish this (first) Slanted Sweater as suggested in Sarah’s instructions, and knit the sleeves straight, starting at the shoulders. 

I am telling myself that this is a way of getting myself fully acquainted with the structure of the sleeves which might than give me a fertile basis on which to continue my thoughts about slanting the sleeves, too. And perhaps I will then start another version of it, pulling that idea of complete slanting through. Or rather, a second sweater will start itself, because, after all, a single slip knot is not casting on.

California Fiber Adventures

The sightseeing I did in California, of course, also included the Golden Gate Bridge. Actually I went there twice, the first time because the person I was going to visit didn't open the door when I arrived a mere 90 minutes ahead of time (it turned out their doorbell was broken, she simply hadn't heard me). As their house is right on the edge of the Presidio (talk about a very attractive place to live!) I consulted my phone and maps app and decided there was time to walk to the Golden Gate Lookout and be back for an on-time-appearance. That way I got to experience a sunset at Golden Gate Bridge. 

The next morning I parked my car on the eastern side of the bridge and went up to it, saw the visitor center and the interesting display on how the bridge was built, and then took a long walk along the bay.

Did you know that there had been thoughts for painting the bridge black and yellow?

My travels also included quite a bit of fiber activity.

Apart from meeting Dolores Miller and Judith Content as I have already mentioned, I also went to see Ula Ludie's exhibition which she had posted about on Instagram, @ulaludie, just a little bit before I departed for my trip in a bookstore on 16th St. (For once I managed to easily find a parking space, right in front of the shop, but then almost left my phone there...)

The next day I visited Joe Cunningham in his gallery on Market St., a meeting we had talked about when I saw his exhibition at Festival of Quilts in Birmingham.

 

At Festival of Quilts, Birmingham, Joe Cunningham and I in front of
his triptych "Marisupol" in remembrance of the lives lost during
the Russian attacks on the city during the ongoing war on Ukraine.

 

And then, for the remaining four days of my stay, I got to spend time with the Pixeladies.  First stop with Kris after a stroll across campus and through the Berkeley University Library 

Thirty years ago, when I was an exchange student in High School and
all my classmates went off to college I was already disappointed
that I was not a resident of California, because I really would have liked
to attend UC at Berkeley...

and Indian Food for lunch was ... a yarnstore.

Very tempting, of course, and I did give in to temptation, a little bit.

These days with the Pixeladies, of course, were not only fiber talk, but a lot of fun activities plus fiber talk on the side. We went for a wine tasting in Napa Valley as a group

Dolores Miller, me, Deb Cashatt, Kris Sazaki, Jan Soules (from left)

 with a conclusion of the trip at the di Rosa Gallery with the Northern California Funk Art collection.

Deb taking a picture of this installation, which, unfortunately,
I did not get the details for...

Richard Shaw, Sinking Ship in Couch, 1971

I was very much intrigued by the feeling you get when entering this house made from glass bottles. Yes, not a construction method for houses all over the world (certainly not in German latitudes as insulation would be slightly difficult during winter), but...

Mildred Howard, Memory Garden, Phase I, 1990

I mean - wouldn't it be interesting to live in a surrounding like this?

I spent a full day with Deb Cashatt, first touring her studio and then interviewing her for the Guild's magazine, probably the issue after next one, and we enjoyed exchanging aspects of our fiber involvement and thoughts on making quilts. Now that the Pixeladies have 'retired' their joint venture, she is embarking on a promising solo trip in the quilt world, with a quilt in Quilt National and several others in other prestigious events as well.

A special facet of fiber adventure was my attempt at sending a printed copy of the Guild's magazine to Sarah Swett. I had thought it would be cheaper to mail her personal copy with the article on her from within the United States than from Europe, and so I ventured out to the post office. On a Saturday morning - bad idea, and we should have just got the postage on the computer. The long line quickly convinced me to try the self-postaging machine in the hallway, and after only three or four attempts Kris (who had be then come to assist me!) we did manage to get it off. Sarah has since confirmed the safe arrival of the little package, so everything went well. And it was still just a little bit cheaper than from Europe, if not by much. 

By now I have been back for 10 days already, with many wonderful memories, and I do feel inspired to get back to my sewing machine, making method(s) and fiber concerns. A lot is changing here in my daily set up as I will be starting a new job in January with a completely different arrangement of living circumstances, but right now I am taking it easy, weathering off a cold which I caught from my son and looking out at the snow.

 

'Meeting' somebody via Zoom

I don’t know how it happened that at some point Sarah C. Swett appeared in my instagram feed a few years ago . But I do know that I was delighted by her posts, enchanted by her comic drawings and always had a smile on my face when I had seen a new post of hers, or read a blog post. Making yarn out of coffee filters. A Sweater, somewhat slanted. Making yarn out of milkweed plants by meticulously securing the fibers, spinning these - and then weaving tapestries from them… Stuff like that. Things I find absolutely fascinating to read about, being able to go part of the way with them (I mean, I do spin, I quilt, sometimes I hand-sew large quilts, I have hand-quilted large quilts, I knit…), but not all the way entirely. (I don’t do hand-spindling, for one thing.) Sarah has meanwhile changed her mode of publication from her blog of many years (a field guide to needlework) to The Gusset on Substack (find it here) and is continuing to delight readers with her adventures in fibers, weaving, comics and the new-in-her-life dog.

When the topic to be covered for the German Guild’s magazine called for ‘Strafarbeit’ (work/chore as a punishment) I knew I wanted to get in touch with Sarah and write about her. The things she does are nothing like a Strafarbeit for her, I knew that before I talked to her, but I know there are many people out there who would consider these activities exactly that. (I mean – when you knit in public, how frequently do you get comments about the amount of work, the time it takes, that the person commenting would never know how to do that nor care to do that either?) Perhaps not too many people like these appear amongst the members of the Patchworkgilde, but even there you can find some who would be appalled if you tried to talk them into doing a bit of English Paper Piecing, for them EPP is very close to a Strafarbeit indeed.

I got in touch with Sarah, she was gracious enough to grant me two extended zoom interviews, supplied several pictures of her works, explained a lot of details about finding, harvesting, stripping, preparing, weaving milkweed, doing the coffee filter thing and other aspects of life that I considered myself to be a very fortunate person indeed, having to write on the topic of Strafarbeit for the guild. It was like meeting a soul mate, and it felt as if I had found a friend out there in the depths of Idaho. Talking to her came easily, and it wasn’t even necessary to prepare a series of questions to exert any information from her because it all was one easy-flowing conversation about common interest matters. I could have gone on talking to her for hours, hadn’t it been via computer screens.

Of course, I am only one of her zillions of admiring followers, and living far away that is what I will remain, an admiring follower from the distance. But it was an interesting experience to feel such a degree of connectedness merely on the zoom platform.

The issue I am talking about will be published by the middle of September, and I am not going to show any of the photos here, merely a wip-photo of my Sweater Somewhat Slanted. It hasn’t made a whole lot of progress in the past few weeks as I was busy spinning for the Tour de Fleece and with all the other things going on lately, but I am planning to get back to it soon-ish.

 

The pattern can be bought via Sarah’s shop on her website, or on Ravelry, the free website for knitters, crocheters and fiber artists .

Sarah had a wonderful article in the spinning magazine Ply a couple of years ago and she was recently featured on this podcast.

Instances like this make me happy, being a ‘writer’ for the guild magazine is certainly enriching in many aspects.