Christmas, and the woes of the whiny knitter

All the gifts are wrapped, the tree is decorated, the menu is planned…  All I have to do over the next week and a half is cook, bake and enjoy my friends and family.

This past weekend TJ and I were up in Napa at our favorite Inn, The Inn on First, with our favorite Innkeepers Jamie and Jim.  It was a bit of an extended birthday celebration for me, and a great pause before the Holiday frenzy.  We have a very set routine when we go up to wine country, we always start with pizza at Ca Momi, and a leisurely stroll around the fantastic Oxbow Public Market, where this year we did a little bit of Christmas shopping.  That first evening we had dinner at Bottega, where we have dined an embarrassingly many times - Chef Chiarello is often in the restaurant, and I grinned at him this time like a star struck fan (yep I am…).  The following day we took Atti on a long winding drive around the valley, which included driving up the Silverado Trail to Calistoga, a pleasant lunch and walk through St Helena, a stop at Dean an Delucca (whee!), a visit to an open house (beware the Notos will look at property anywhere!), and a stop off at a great little estate shop and art gallery where we met Tom Scheibal and saw his wonderful and luminous paintings.

When I first laid eyes on his work I thought it was encaustic, and I could not get over how smooth it was.  I should step back, I wouldn't have been as engaged if his work hadn't struck such a chord with me.  He is originally from the Pacific Northwest, his work is lyrical, dreamlike, quiet, and melancholy but not sad.  I was drawn to his work right away, I wanted to touch the surface of the canvases, I remember walking through the Oregon forests and feeling the same sense of serenity that I found in his paintings.  His work is not encaustic, it is a resin method that is his own, and it is truly lovely.  Please enjoy his work.  http://thomaspscheibal.blogspot.com  I don't want to copy it directly without his permission, but I encourage you to visit his blog.

In knitting notes, I am stalled, I can't find the Noro colorway for the sweater I had planned to knit over the winter, and now I can't even find the magazine in my pile of knitting patterns!   Oh the woe's of the whiny knitter!

Lastly I gave myself a wee little birthday gift…  Carla Sonheim's Year of the Fairy Tale class.  I am so excited!  Creativity for a whole year!  I have already dragged out my copies of The Brother's Grimm, Has Christen Andersen, Anne Sexton's Transformations, and Angela Carter's Burning Your Boats - ok so I am hoping that the topic of fairy tale has some wiggle room!

I wish all of you a very festive season, to those of my friends who celebrated the Festival of Lights earlier this year I wish you a very happy 2014!  To those who celebrate Christmas, have a safe and merry holiday.  I wish you all a wonderful season and lots of love.  See you in 2014!

The Noro Love affair continues

I have finished the gorgeous Noro Jacket that I knit for my mom's birthday.  I think it is the most beautiful piece I have ever knit, and this is not a testament to my skill as a knitter, but the pattern and the  Noro color ways.  It was a compulsive knit, I kept finding myself knitting one more row just to see how the colors flowed.  And they did flow off the needles.  The short row shaping of the fronts and the sleeves is wonderfully clever and gives the jacket a great fit.  I love that the fronts are slightly longer than the back, from the back it looks like a nipped in Bolero, but there is great coverage in the front.  I cannot say enough about my first adventure with Noro yarns.  I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Fun with stamps!

I've been spending a lot of time in the Atelier making stamps.  I had this crazy idea that I could make "upcycled" tissue paper with my stamps, and then things started to spiral.  I've always been a little bit uncomfortable that my card designs are collages, and not totally my own work - my own collages, but...  Suddenly I looked at cases of pre-made greeting card blanks, and my hand cut stamps...

Here are some of the resulting photographs!  I'm really in love with the gingko stamp.  I call the other ones "pinwheels", the gold stamp looks a little bit like a sand dollar, the blue one is a bit like a Japanese woodcut of a chrysanthemum.

The opportunities are huge....

Atelier Noto

(Mom working on Cheryl Oberle's Arachne's Bower  in the cool evening on the 'patio' of the Atelier)

Since I converted my garden shed into a workshop I have been spending most of my time outside, playing with water colors, creating my own stamps, covered in a slight sheen of dust, paint, sweat and bug spray.  I could almost live in the "Atelier" as we are now calling my little creative space.  But I have to share it with the no-see-ums when the evening rolls in, and with our unpredictable summer fogs I sometimes wake up to 50 degree weather and if I haven't been careful, soggy artwork!

I have recently started carving my own stamps.  They resemble wood cuts, but the product I use to carve them is infinitely more forgiving than wood or vinyl.  I use Speedball Speedy Carve blocks, they come in a variety of great sizes, and I have found that the scraps from the larger shapes I cut make great small stamps.  I use the Speedball carving tools, which work well on harder blocks as well, but cut the Speedy Carve blocks like a hot knife in warm butter!  Here are some of my finished stamps:

When I first started stamping with them the 'stamp' was a bit floppy and so there were gaps in the prints.  I had a brain storm, "lets glue them to 2x4 blocks".  HA!  While in principal this works wonderfully, hand sawing bits of 2x4 is a real pain.  I know there is a solution out there, and I will find it.  Meanwhile I am stamping up a storm!

I have combined my stamping with Carla Sonheim's Water Color Transfer techniques to great effect.  Check out her classes, I plan to take all of them as time permits.  I am stamping them on used packing tissue, blank recycled card stock, and recycled brown bags to make wonderful "up cycled" wrapping paper sets.  And playing with yards of muslin to test out different fabric paints and inks with a thought to making tea towels, place mats and napkins.  It seems like the possibilities are endless.

I am having some knitting remorse.  I didn't finish the Noro cropped jacket for mom's birthday, but it will be finished when she returns in two weeks.  I did wrap the unfinished sweater - needles, pattern, yarn and all, knowing that as a knitter herself she would completely understand - she loved it, and we both got a huge chuckle out it all.  I haven't knit a stitch on my own Arachne's Bower because I have been so consumed with ink, paint, fabric and other distractions!  And then there is the real job which interferes with play time.  I'm so lucky that the real job is shooting weddings which is such a joy! Spoiled for choice might have to be my motto.

Change is Good

On October 15, 2004 I started this blog.  I had planned to write a blog dedicated to rediscovering knitting, and my triumphs and tragedies.  At that time I worked at a desk job - as a receptionist with a Master's Degree in Theatre History and Design.  You can imagine that the innnertubes, and the knitting blogs out there in the blogosphere sustained me between answering the phone in my mellifluous tone, "Unnamed Penison Company, this is Chela, how may I direct your call? Make it snappy I'm reading Yarn Harlot..."  The amazing community of knitters sustained me through that agony.  Then the "oosband" got a job in Santa Monica.  I was thrilled to move.  Shortly after arriving there I was hired by Studio Daedre as a glitter artist.  Not only was I thrilled to have a fun job, but I made several forever friends there including Daedre and Scott Berryman (owners of the Studio), and JoAnn Stevens-Flores, a remarkable painter and cheeky gal!

While in Santa Monica I worked at the Studio, took continuing classes at Santa Monica College in photography and Photoshop, started working as a professional photographer, and realized that I am an artist at heart.  And then and then and then...  I realize as I am reading this I am boring myself!!!

If I wanted to share my interests blog by blog, I'd have to maintain six or seven blogs.  Suffice to say, I work as a photographer, but I use my photography in my art, I paint with watercolors, but I use my watercolors in fabric design, I sew, I knit, and most importantly I cook.    So we are undergoing a change here at Throw Sticks.  Yes I throw, I don't knit continental, I still throw sticks for my dogs, I still want to throw my knitting across the room on occasion, but maybe the name isn't entirely relevant to the new scope of the blog, however  I promise I will "throw" as much creativity as I can dish.  I do maintain a professional photo blog at NotoPhoto.Blogspot.com, where you can see work that I do with some of my clients.  Throw Sticks is simply my happy place, I plan to post my art work, photography, knitting, cooking, design work, and perhaps even travels.  Don't expect superior photography, I use my IPhone for most of my craft snaps, it is so easy!  And more than anything else I want to share the work of wonderful artists and c
rafts people I meet.

Oh and I still knit, a lot, and I love it.

So I just got the new Vogue Knitting.  I was seriously nonplussed...  I don't know if it is the fact that our weather has just now become hot, or because I object to cropped sweaters.  Please, I am a near 50 year old woman - not in bad shape  - but I want a sweater that covers the important parts.  Call it what it is a "shrug"!  The American Heritage Dictionary defines shrug as " To raise shoulders, esp as a gesture of doubt, disdain or indifference".  That pretty much meshes with my feelings about the shrug as a garment.  Ok I admit the second definition is "A short woman's jacket or sweater open down the front".    And then in the second story there is this:

Stunning.  Lace.  Knit.  And my latest obsession; lace, change, dresses.  I have to start the Noro dress before I start this, and I might even knit it in PINK!!!!

On a final note, I just saw this on my Yahoo news feed.  Quite amazing work.
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/paintings-that-look-like-photos-slideshow/

Change, its good.

Nuts for Noro

I don't know how I have gone these many years without using Noro yarns.  I would see them in knit shops and think "how gaudy", or "too much color for me".   What was I thinking?  Colorwork always seemed so mysterious to me, I have knit one intarsia piece, and thank goodness it was felted because it was one hole after another.  I've done stripes.  But nothing so vibrant as the mosaic knit dress (see my earlier post on swatching for the Noro dress), or as completely engaging as the cropped jacket that I am knitting right now.  I find myself thinking "one more row, I just want to see how the color changes...  just one more row".


Below to the left the fronts are seamed at the shoulders and neck, and a small detail of the wonderful way two Noro colorways change.  I'm smitten!  This is Silk Garden in #252 and #272.

This is the back.  What fun.  Its just stunning.  And so much fun to put together as well.

In other news I have studio envy.  My office is in the attic of our house, the ceilings are at a pretty sharp pitch.  If I am working at my desk I am fine, but if I move too much one way or the other and stand up suddenly its headache city!  My dear friend JoAnn Stevens-Flores over at Doodle Paint Draw built her studio in a little shed in their backyard.  I should clarify, her terrific husband built her the shed, and finished it beautifully.  That got me to thinking, I have a garden shed with a potting bench...  I have been dabbling in watercolors and encaustic painting (which really needs to be done in a ventilated place), I need room where I can be messy and not get paint and goo all over my knitting or my camera equipment...  Welcome to my summer studio!

And finally, this is what knitters do at Thirty Seconds to Mars concerts.  We knit.

k2,YO, Rocketship, YO, K3

Another wonderful week in Cheryl Oberle's studio at the Spring 2013 Knitaway.  This year we learned about the Shetland knitters, about open and closed lace, about knitting lace borders on to the body of a shawl, and so much more.  I think my big take away from the Knitaway is that my fellow knitters are the best people I could ever hope to meet.  The women at this Knitwaway were executives, lawyers, social workers, artists, housewives, volunteers, artists, but more than anything people I am thrilled to say I know!!!   And friendships forged here that I hope to have for my life.

Now you may ask about the title of this post...  Our first two days at the Knitaway were about learning technique, learning to knit a triangular shawl, then picking up and adding an inner lace border, and then knitting on an outer border - a very traditional Shetland technique (and please refer to Cheryl's marvelous Folk Shawls to understand more about this incredible tradition).  Let me tell you starting a shawl in the corner and working out is no mean feat, the pattern shifts every row, and so the rhythm  that you get knitting lace in a sqaure is shot.  Anyway we all worked very hard at our small sample shawls and I think Cheryl was happy that we all tried!  But we were all eager to start on Arachne's Bower, the project shawl for the class.

The third evening my mom and I returned to her home and we sat down to knit.  I was repeating in my head,"knit, knit, YO, knit, slip two as if to knit, knit one, pass slipped stitches over, knit, Yo, knit, knit."  Kind of a mouthful and I lost my place several times - too much verbiage....  Then I heard  mom, sitting a few feet away, "dum, dum, YO, rocketship, YO, dum, dum."  She had a rhythm going, and it was marvelous.  It works.  Rocketship is a double decrease "pass two as if to knit, knit one, pass slipped stitches over".  I am now a convert to the rocketship.

The first half of this shawl has a Rocketship decrease, the second half has a different double decrease that looks like a pitchfork, and I know that I will be knitting "dum, dum, YO, pitchfork, YO, dum, dum."  Who says knitting has to sound serious, I am on a knitting rocketship!

This is my first repeat of Arachne's Bower!  I am so proud.


I asked Cheryl about the name of the shawl.  I have always been interested in Greek mythology, and the story of Arachne is one of my favorites.  I will share more about Arachne and my love of her in my next post.  Two of my favorite authors have written about her AS Byatt, and Roberto Calasso!  Can't wait to share.

Swatching can be fun...

Yes it truly can be.  

Last summer I purchased Noro's first magazine, and pretty much wanted to knit everything right away. But summer, then autumn, then the holidays, and still nothing from that book.  We went to Stitches West last Friday, and were immediately ready to dive in and knit something completely new.  So I decided to tackle this gorgeous Noro dress.

Off I went to Green Planet Yarns in Willow Glen with a mind to buying exactly the yarns recommended for the project.   This was my first visit to Green Planet's new location, the store is wonderfully bright, but I had to learn where everything now lives.  The staff is of course amazing.  I was looking perplexedly for the Noro Kuyreon yarns, and the owner told me that they don't stock it because it is too scratchy.  I had thought this when I first felt it years ago.  Instead she guided me to Noro Silk Garden, and a comparable sport weight that she thought might create the right gauge for the project.  They have all of their Noro colorways knit into large afghans showing how each color way knits up, which gives you a real sense of how the yarn looks knitted.  Its brilliant.  I found my red right away, Blue Sky Alpaca's baby alpaca Sport Weight, then the real fun was holding that red up to the Noro colorways and choosing...  Then the owner had an even more brilliant idea, find a couple colorways that I liked, and really knit a big swatch to see how it played out.  Ugh, I groaned to myself, swatching is the BANE of my knitting existence (and probably why things are hit of miss as to how they fit me!!!).  But I did....

 I have to say that the act of knitting this pattern is so much fun that I can't stop!  To the left you see the first Noro colorway that I choose, it is Silk Garden 341.  I am pretty sure that I will knit the dress in the other color way (349), but I can't stop swatching.  The yarns are knitting perfectly to gauge, which is fantastic since they aren't the recommended yarns.

After I finish the two swatches I will have a great book bag!

I'll post the other swatch as soon as I get a chunk knit.

Meet Virginia....

Years ago I had a loaner dress form, whom I nicknamed Dolores (as in "painfully not my size"), since Dolores left me I have longed for another.  Enter Virginia, my new adjustable dress form (model #150 from Singer, and on sale for their 150th!  Yay Singer).

Virginia and I will have many wonderful years together.  She will be my dress form when I sew, but most likely my muse and model when I knit.

"She wears high heels when she exercises"

Train

Sewing and patterns from the past...

The sewing bug has hit hard this past week.  I am at home recovering from a procedure on my Achilles tendon (not full surgery, but I am stuck at home, condemned to high heels - seriously when has a doctor told you that you need to wear high heels!!!), so the heap of fabrics that I bought last year called out to me.  I have a lovely cotton print that I thought would make a great summer dress.  I am always on the look out for good sun dresses, and not the shite you buy at Anthropolgie that costs $200, is short waisted, and falls apart after a season.  Sorry don't mean to slam Anthro, I am mad about their brand, but I rarely ever find anything there that fits, if I try on an 8 the waist is up in my armpits, if I try on a 12 (which hits me in the waist) I am swimming in fabric, just a long backed, long waisted, small boned, tall, Anglo/Franco/German mutt.  Anyway I decided to take matters in my own hands, I decided to make the perfect summer dress.

After searching for a few days I found Vogue pattern V8577.  A very simple shirt dress.  I figured that I could lengthen the waist and create a pretty good fit!  I did have to swallow a bit of my own vanity and make the pattern in a 14 based on my bust and waist.  The divide between home sewn clothing sizes and commercial sizes is getting much larger.  When I was a young woman I routinely wore at 10 or 12 in store bought clothing, and now I wear between a 4 and 8.  I certainly have not changed that much in size, that would require removing ribs!  So vanity aside, I crawled around on my office floor yesterday and cut out V8577, measured the waist length, and added 1" to the top bodice front and back, and today it is mostly put together.  It fits like a dream.  Now I have to practice buttonholes...






So on to this pile of fabric...  One of my favorite local craft stores, Natural Expressions of Los Gatos,  sold off all their fabrics last fall, and hence I ended up with a stock pile of fun stuff.  Most of their fabrics were for quilters, but there were some lovely voile prints and heavier cottons that cried out to be made into blouses, dresses, skirts.  Of course when I was buying up their stock I wasn't really thinking about what I would make.  My recent "hobbling" has me in my office/studio looking at the fabric and wondering what I could make.  I found and bought 5.5 yards of this fabric to the left - yummy!




It took quite a long time to find the dress for that fabric.  To be honest my skill is not so great that I can adjust a pattern on the fly- I can add to the back length, but that is about it.  My mom coached my sewing efforts in grade school and high school, but I've never taken a sewing class.  I have done a lot of costume design (and in college it meant sketching great costumes and then pulling something that looked about right...)  I have worked for two clothing designers, but as a cutter and basic stitcher, couture is well beyond my reach.  I really rely on the pattern to guide me.  Vogue, McCalls, Simplicity only go so far, Past Patterns and Folkwear don't always hit the current notes in fashion (don't get me wrong, I love them both), then I remembered that I used to buy Burda Magazine when I lived in Chile.  I bought an issue of Burda in '85 right before I went to school in Madrid that provided most of my wardrobe for that semester, and I was right in step with the Madruleñas in my asymetric lime green tunic and fly yellow drawstring pants. I still have that issue kicking around (see above)!  As I look through it, the clothing is fun, and with a little modification not so out dated!  I made a pair of wonderful genie pants from another issue several years later, and they were such a hit that I had a sewing party and the next day five of us walked onto campus proudly wearing our creations.  I don't sew very much these days because patterns are just not enticing, and unless you live in LA near the garment district, really lovely fabric is hard to find.  I feel like sewing has fallen into that sad state that knitting fell into between Acrylic and the Art Yarn Movement (when did knitting become sexy again???  I started knitting again in '04).  So I have a small stockpile of fabrics collected over the years that are now calling out to me.  Lacking inspiration from Vogue et al I googled Burda, and what do you know, they are still making some fun patterns!  I am planning to explore their site further.  I am pretty taken by the German home craft movement (is there are more graceful way of putting that), Rebeca is one of my favorite knitting mags.

Once I get the button holes sorted on the Vogue dress I'll post a picture...  (or I might use snaps, the cheater's way out of making button holes).

On to exploring Burda!  Happy sewing and knitting.

PS Any thoughts on Stitches West?  Mom and I are going for the first time in years...

Crimson Leaves, or My quarterly update

Ok it has almost been a full three months since my last post.  A lot of knitting happened during the holidays, but most of it was stealth knitting, and I didn't want to write about it in the event prying eyes read the blog (yes, mom I mean you!).  But Christmas has come and gone, and the gift has been delivered.

So here is what I was being so secretive about:

This gem is from Cheryl Oberle's Knitted Jackets, the pattern is Ivory Leaves - I call mine Crimson Leaves.  Cheryl is my knitting hero, her patterns are so much fun to knit, and most of them come together without a lot of finishing work.  The sleeves and the collar and knitted onto this shrug, so basically it is block and walk knitting!  This is stash yarn, purchased when I was newly re-aquainted with knitting and didn't keep my labels...  My mom will probably kill me for posting this photo....  This is knit in the smaller size as mom is tiny!  But the color is fantastic with her complexion and hair!  The shawl pin is from Cheryl as well.  I am knitting the same shrug for myself in a lavender baby alpaca (it hibernates right now).

The Sunday before New Year's Eve we were in Campbell, CA at the Farmer's Market (best one in the south bay if you happen to live in Northern CA...  just my opinion), and I noticed that my favorite LYS Green Planet Yarns was MOVING!!!!!   Horrors!  Of course I had to run in and get the scoop.  They are moving to Willow Glenn in San Jose - which for them isn't a big deal, but for me who lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains, its a whole 6 more miles!!!  Ok really it was just a grand excuse to drag my family into one of my favorite yarn shops.

While mother and I were wandering, testing yarns (yes they have needles and samples of lots of their yarns that you can knit a row or twenty) I came across Noro's Shiraito, in this fantastic color way, and knit as this great little shawlette.  They had two hanks of the yarn in this amazing color way - I bought them both, and ran home to download Wingspan from Ravelry.  I knit it over the next few days.  I have been trolling the web trying to find more of this incredible cashmere and angora blend, but it is scarce as hen's teeth.  This is the first Noro yarn that I have ever used.  I LOVE it, I love how the colors created such great blocks.  I did add a flourish of my own to the pattern, I didn't have enough yarn to knit eight triangles in the shawl, but I didn't want to have a tiny bit of this yarn left over, so in keeping with the tiny holes the short row shaping creates in the pattern (which I really like), I added a YO to my cast of edge, it used up my yarn to the last six inches, and makes a great spot for a button closure!  Knit this one, its a keeper!

Cuzco, from Cheryl's Knitted Jackets is making happy progress.  I can't wait to have it as a spring jacket!.

Me and Mom in our wonderful Center Panel Shawls...  Terrible picture (as mom might say, "we look like sick cows") great shawls!  Note how nicely her edges lay on her shawl, she used blocking wires.

And I think I have been knitting under a rock, I just discovered Madelintosh yarns.  Where have I been?  I am knitting a  hat for the hubby in a great DK colorway called Stephen Loves Tosh.  Kinda digging the Reggae groove...

Rediscovered needle felting, felting needles are also a great tool for fixing runs in burbur carpeting...  but that is another story altogether.