Because everyone should get a little treat on tax day, and because I wore Waltz the other day and renewed my love for it, I think you should have one too.  Therefore, for today only, Waltz is only $2.00. Enjoy!

Waltz is cozy, and lightweight, stretchy and lacy all at once. It’s flattering and fun to wear. It’s worked in fingering-weight organic O-Wool 2-ply yarn, (sock yarn would be a great substitute, and would require just 2 skeins, most likely). The pattern is sized from 32″ – 44″. I used a 3.5mm hook.

I’m so happy that designer and author Donna Druchunas has agreed to post about the inspiration for her new book Ethnic Knitting Exploration: Lithuania, Iceland, and Ireland. Her take on knitting and history is fascinating and is colored by family ties, a deep passion for knowing how things begin, and a strong sense of empowering women.  Take it away, Donna!

Hi Amy, thanks for being part of my blog tour! Today I’d like to talk a bit about why I love historical knitting techniques so much, and why I want to share them with knitters everywhere.

I’m not a traditionalist, in the sense that I don’t think old knitting techniques are better than new ones and I don’t disdain couture fashion, or even outlandish design. I love designers like Nicky Epstein and Annie Modesitt who have such a flair for the flamboyant and whose designs would be at home on New York and Paris runways. I love innovation and experimentation and I really enjoy being inspired by designers who take knitting in new directions, like Debbie New, in her book Unexpected Knitting and Norah Gaughan in Knitting Nature.

I don’t think life was better in the good old days when women had to spend every waking hour spinning yarn and thread to make clothing, bed linens, and curtains. Although life may have seemed quaint and simple in times past, it was laborious and dangerous. Without so many simple things that we take for granted, such as safety razors, antibiotics, and tetanus shots, small injuries could quickly lead to serious illness and even death. So I’m a fan of modernity, science, and technology. I’m so glad there are machines to make my sheets and curtains and blue-jeans! I’m also a sci-fi geek who loves thinking about the amazing possibilities that lie in the future.

So why do I focus on old techniques and designs? Why do my personal knitting adventures take me to the past? I’m not sure I have a logical explanation.

When I look around my house, I find that I surround myself with old things. My grandmother’s wine glasses, my grandfather’s pots and pans, pictures that were passed down to me from family members. My home is warmed with afghans made by my mother-in-law and grandmother. I have so many, I’ve yet to make one myself. I wear sweaters my mother and grandmother made more often than I wear garments that I made myself. And I adorn myself with amber beads passed down to me from a great  grandmother and rings, earrings, and pendants that belonged to family members who are now gone. Something in my makeup ties me to the past, even though I am very glad to live in the present, and I look forward to the future.

When I read about knitting, I find that I am most attracted to books and articles about the past. I wonder how someone figured out that a purl stitch is really a knit stitch made from the wrong side of the fabric. Who first thought of crossing stitches and knitting them out of order to form a cable pattern? How on earth did Victorian knitters design such elaborate lace projects without charting them? Why did women in times past knit elaborate garments, often at fine gauges that we would never consider today, to be hidden beneath layers of woven clothing and worn as underwear? Why did they spend so much time on simple accessories like socks and mittens, also knitting them at fine gauges and often with detailed colorwork or lace patterning, when they had so much other manual labor to do? I wonder what life was like for these women, who lived and died before my grandparents and great grandparents were born, when life was very rigid and social codes were strict. How could they find any joy or fulfillment living under such constrained conditions and with so much work to do? What would I have become if I had lived then?

By writing about and teaching traditional knitting techniques, I feel like I am giving immortality and meaning to the lives of so many amazing but anonymous women who have not been honored by history. Women have always held society and families together, we have been the glue that holds things together (behind every strong man is a strong woman, as they say), we have fought against slavery and for freedom and civil rights, even when we were not allowed to vote ourselves. In my small way, I feel like my work is honoring women’s work and women’s contributions to society that have so often been ignored and belittled by those in power, by those writing the history books, by those who decided what was “important.” Even today, women are still not honored or respected in many cultures around the globe, often including our own. I cant’ help thinking of George W. Bush signing an anti-abortion bill into law, surrounded by a cadre of old white men, all grinning from ear to ear, successful (for the moment) in maintaining one degree of male power over women. And this makes me want to do whatever I can to support, honor, and strengthen the position of women today, so these things do not continue to happen in the future. The women of the past may not have agreed with my progressive values, but I hope they realized that their lives and work were worthy of attention and honor and that they were — and are — important to society in many, many ways.

I suppose I look to both the past and the future for my inspiration, both in knitting and in life. In the future I see possibility. In the past I see possibility as well. The possibility to overcome oppression. The possibility to create change. The possibility to embrace diversity and opportunity. We’ve come a long way, baby! But there’s still a long way to go. Maybe knitting can help us get there.

Last fall, my friend Julie Holetz and I got an e-mail from England asking if we’d like to help launch a new Crochet Magazine (at this point it didn’t even have a name). The deal was this: we would work for 3-4 months commissioning designs for a year’s worth of magazine issues and then the publisher would put together the magazine. It was an unusual proposition, not exactly an editorial job, but with some similar responsibilities. I was intrigued. It seemed like an ideal project for me in some ways–as I’m a starter and an idea person, and I love to get new things going. I also love my freelance life and don’t want to commit to working exclusively for any one company.

Julie and I were both too busy with other projects to take on the job alone, but we thought it would be fun to do it together, and it was. Julie and I have a good working relationship. We see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, we have similar opinions about design, but not so similar that we don’t balance each other out when it comes to, say, the color or fit of something. Then there are the not-so-fun administrative tasks of doing any job–we each like some more than others, and it turned out to be a good split.

We got to set the tone for the magazine, which was wonderful. We wanted to emphasize yarns that are sustainable, ecological and produced in a socially responsible way. We also wanted the magazine to be fun for crocheters at all levels and to include some of the things that we love about good patterns–charts and schematics and clear instructions. We wanted garments lots of them–wearable sweaters that crocheters will feel compelled to make. We wanted to support and showcase great designers around the world and especially those from the UK where the magazine originates.

The best part about the job was talking to designers all over the world, collecting submissions and choosing designs for the various issues. We planned general themes for the magazine issues, and even scoped out and commissioned some of the features and articles, but a lot of the written content is being handled in-house at KAL Media central and will be a nice surprise for us when we get our issues.

The hardest part of this job is letting go. Unlike a traditional editorial position, we don’t get to have our hands in the process ’till the end. But we knew this from the outset, and it’s ok. In fact, the short nature of the project was one of the reasons we were able to take it on. But even so, I’ll miss talking to designers and helping them with the little issues that come up along the way. I won’t get to see magazine proofs or make sure there are no typos or errors; that will be someone else’s job. (The magazine does have a first class technical editor, Helen Jordan.) And I always worry about the technical accuracy of any project I’m involved in, so letting that go is hard too. But I’m excited to move on to new things, and I can’t wait to start getting my subscription to the magazine and to begin seeing all of our great designers’ work appear.

I’m grateful to Kerrie Allman and Lou Butt, publishers of the magazine, for giving us the opportunity to be a part of Inside Crochet in its infancy. And I want to thank the amazing Shannon Okey for sending them our way. A big thank you, too, to Alex McDowell, the fabulous production editor for the magazine. She keeps everything moving and is a real pleasure to work with.

Have you seen the first issue? I love how it emphasizes crocheted motifs in beautiful non-traditional ways. I’m not a motif-gal myself, so it was great fun to collect these designs which are so gorgeous and yet so different from how I design. Motif-guru Robyn Chachula has a technique column in the magazine all about making and joining motifs, which will be great to get us started.

Where can you find Inside Crochet? Crocheters around the world can subscribe to the magazine, and it will be widely available in bookstores. Here in the US, you’ll find it at Borders and Barnes and Noble. Soon, you’ll be able to receive your subscription digitally as well. You can also keep up with all the Inside Crochet happenings online:

Ravelry
Facebook
Twitter

I published another pattern on Ravelry last week that I’ve had in my wholesale catalog for a while now. It’s called Terra Firma. Here’s a picture of me wearing it when we still lived in Maryland. I love this picture of our old cat, Honey.

The sweater is the round-yoke cardigan I was working on this spring. (Blogged here, and here, and here, and even here.)  It turned out to be a sweater that I wear quite a lot. The hempwol is not too warm and the shape is great for layering. The pattern is written in a customizable template-style so you can get  a perfect fit.

Look! Blue sky! Snow-capped mountains! I’m trying distract you from my recent lack of blog posting with the view from my living-room window. Is it working? It should. It distracts me often enough. Like this morning, when there was so much SUN streaming in that I couldn’t sit in my usual spot and use my laptop. (Not that I’m complaining. We take all the sun we can get up here).

Right. So I’m not blogging because I’m still finishing the never-ending bear book. I promise now it’s just tying up loose ends crossing t’s and dotting eyes i’s. Also because the entire house came down with a vicious crud that made us just want to lie around all day and occasionally eat soup.

See? This is chick-pea and orzo soup loosely based on this soup from the PPK. We left out the greens and added green beans and used orzo instead of noodles. Oh, and we didn’t have any mirin, so I obviously left that out. We’re are mostly better now which is a good thing since Selma is off of school for spring break.

I’ve finished all of the actual crocheting for the book and to celebrate, I went on a bit of a sock knitting bender (no pictures yet, but they’ll come). It all started with a pair of baby socks and I was hooked. I’ve found that stockinette socks are something I can actually work on in front of the TV without paying too much attention, and at the end of it, someone has warm feet. A win-win.

OK, now that you’re thinking about soup and socks I’ll slip back off to working on the book.

Congratulations to Mikaiya! She’s the winner of the random drawing for a copy of Knits for Bears to Wear.

Mikayia’s blog, Handknit by Mikayia keeps us up to date on her knitting, quilting and her wedding preparations (I just wish she’d show us that dress!). I hope you enjoy the book!

I’ve been busy this week finishing up the sequel to Knits for Bears, so that’s why the blog has been so quiet. More updates soon!

OK, let’s start with the new pattern. You might have already heard that the new Twist Collective is out. It’s a great issue with some fabulous articles and a great selection of patterns. I especially liked all the socks. I have a pattern in the collection called Pidder Pat (above). It’s a baby sweater crocheted from Lorna’s Laces Green Line DK.

I know I said in my last post that I didn’t see obvious creative connections between the books on tape I listened to and my design work. It appears dinner is a different story. I was nearly done preparing our Sunday meal before I realized that an influence must have occurred.

It’s not unusual for us to make a big pot of soup on Sunday that will get us through a few nights the following week. This week, I decided to make yellow split pea soup with potatoes since we were trying to use up an over-abundance of tubers. In Dragonfly in Amber, the protagonists have just returned from France to their farm where they harvest a large crop of potatoes and make potato soup. My soup ended up a lovely amber color due to the addition of some tomato paste to add a bit of tanginess.

We don’t have a bakery here in Cordova, so when I do make soup I always bemoan the fact that we can’t have a crusty loaf to go with it. Occassionally I’ll make bread from scratch, but since I prefer the no knead recipes, that takes a little forethought. Today I decided to try making some dough in the bread maker, then baking it in my baguette pans. We’ve had the bread machine for about 13 years, and I’ve never used it just to make dough, but it was so easy and worked perfectly.

The baguettes had just the right crustiness and texture inside, and took only about 15 minutes total of hands-on time. (Really, not enough for my taste, I like to get my hands into dough when I make bread–but it was fast and yummy!)

I can see using this feature for making regular loaves and pizza dough too.

Here are my recipes:

Amber Potage

3 T olive oil
1 large onion, diced
1 lb carrots, diced
1 lb yukon potatoes, peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 T thyme
1 quart organic vegetable broth
2 quarts water
1 lb yellow split peas, sorted and rinsed
2 T apple cider vinegar
1 sm can tomato paste
salt and pepper to taste

Sauté onion until translucent. Add garlic, carrots, potatoes and sauté until vegetables start to get tender. Add thyme and cook 2 minutes more. Add broth then water and peas. Cook over medium heat until vegetables are soft and peas are cooked through. Using and immersion blender, purée the soup leaving some chunks of carrot and potato intact. Stir in tomato paste and stir until it’s completely incorporated. Add apple cider vinegar. Season with salt and pepper.

Bread Machine Baguettes
Adapted from the Black & Decker All-In-One Deluxe Automatic Breadmaker Operating Instructions & Cookbook Classic French Dough recipe

1 1/4 c water
2 t sugar
1 1/2 t salt
3 1/2 c organic unbleached flour
1 1/2 t active-dry yeast
2 T cornmeal
1 t. canola oil

Place the water, sugar, salt, flour and yeast into the bread machine pan in the order listed above. Set your machine to the “dough” setting. Grease baguette pans and sprinkle wtih cornmeal.

When the dough is finished, remove it from the machine, and on a clean surface, separate the dough in half. Stretch each piece into a long flat rectangle and then roll the rectangle into a baguette shape. Place the baguettes into the pans seam side down.

Cover the dough with a towel and allow to rise again in a warm spot (approximately 30 minutes). Preheat the oven to 400F. Slit the baguettes down the middle with a sharp knife. Bake for 25 minutes or until the internal temperature of the bread reads 190F on an instant read thermometer. Remove baguettes from pans and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Here’s something fun I saw on Twitter today, while I had a quick break from soothing Jay who had an earache.

Jess, tweeted to say “Knit and crochet patterns work on the Kindle!” She linked to a picture of her new Kindle 2:

And look–the pattern she tried out first is the Cosmopolitan Cowl. I have been actively looking for reasons not to want to buy a Kindle. I feel like I already have too many little devices, phone, ipod, camera, etc. that I carry around when I travel. But the fact that it is a new pattern publishing medium isn’t helping. The pattern looks readable, and even the photo looks nice in greyscale. Not only that, the new Kindle2 will read to you and it will also play audio books. Not helping. The biggest thing stopping me now is the price.

The idea of a portable method of reading digital patterns is very appealing. As more and more patterns are offered in digital format it is becoming convenient to be able to access them from, say, your yarn store, or your knitting group. Of course, spilling a glass of wine on your Kindle is a bit more of a problem than spilling it on your paper pattern. I’m hoping that more devices like the iphone (which doesn’t handle pdfs very conveniently yet), Palm and Blackberry will allow for pdf viewing soon too–even if its not convenient to follow the pattern on a small screen, you could check gauge and yarn requirements.  Connecting knitters and crocheters with their digital patterns when they are in stores buying yarn can only help yarn stores and shoppers.

Yesterday I was talking to my partner in crime, Julie (The number of projects we are involved in together is too large for even us to keep track of them all; we’ve decided it may be better if we always work together as a rule), and I said, “I started and finished a teddy sweater on Saturday due in no small part to the fact that I had a quiet house and Dragonfly in Amber on the i pod.”

“Maybe you should thank Diana Gabaldon in the acknowledgments of your book,” Julie quipped. She got me thinking about my creative process and how what’s going on around me affects it.

When I’m in the design stage of a project, normally, I work in my studio without any music or radio (I love to listen to NPR when I’m doing e-mail or other computer work, but I need quiet for math and thinking about the art and pattern of design.) But once a project is underway, I enjoy having something happening while I work–this could be conversation with a friend or a knitting group, it could be watching Selma at Judo practice or her piano lesson.

Most of the time, when I’m working, I’m on my own, and my backdrop is likely music or a movie or an audio book. As much as I love watching television and movies, I’m not so good at working unless what’s on TV does not have a storyline. If there’s any drama, I most likely end up unconsciously putting my needles or hook down to pay attention. I did watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel while I’ve been working on the crochet for  bears book, and while I enjoyed them immensely, I think that the next time I watch them, I’ll get more crocheting done, since I’ll already know the plot.

When I have an engrossing audio book, things seem to fly off my needles or hook. I get lost in the book and loose sense of time as well. In a series as all-consuming as Buffy or Outlander, a reader or viewer gets lost in another world, and I at least tend to think about the story even when I’m not watching or reading or listening to it. It’s my favorite kind of story, one that you can’t stop thinking about. But does someone elses’ creative genius effect my creativity? I certainly haven’t noticed anything obvious. I don’t have the urge to design Scottish things, or create vampire-esque projects. But I can’t help but think this collision of creativity, the soaking up of one creative work while making another must not happen without some effect. What I notice most, is that I feel more creative when I’m exposed to good writing, it makes me want to create more, write more and be better at it.

I’d love to know what you all listen to or watch while you’re crocheting and knitting and how you think it affects your creative process. Let’s start a conversation in the comments.

Oh, and speaking of bears, to encourage conversation, I’ll award a free copy of Knits for Bears to Wear to a randomly selected commentor on this post. I’ll close the contest one week from today.

Thank you to all of my testers–you did a great job! The pattern is now available in my Rav store, and I’m sure you’ll soon see my testers’ versions too now that they can add them to their Ravelry projects page. I’ve been wearing this cowl nearly every day, it’s the perfect thing to ward off the chill here in Cordova. It’s so soft, I often forget I have it on. Here’s my original post with more pictures, and notes about the pattern.

$5.00