kmkat and her kneedles

Catching up, vol. 4: Kinnearing* at the Art Institute.

Let's look at knitting. Not my knitting, though. Remember how cold it was in Chicago? Do you know what that meant? Lots of knitwear on parade. Let's take a look, shall we?

There was a plethora of scarves, many of which were inexplicably blurry. I love "plethora." Thank you for letting me use it today.

 

Apparently not everyone got the memo about the fun fur.

A sweet hat, very possibly handknit:

 

Sweaters, lots of sweaters.

There was this traditional Norwegian cardigan. (These things are ubiquitous in provincial Minneapolis in January, so it was mildly surprising to see one in sophisticated downtown Chi-Town.)

 

A little lot of intarsia, thankfully not hand-knit:

 

The classic cable-knit sweater, either machine made or hand-knit:

 

I sent this dude really, really strong Put-it-on! vibes, but all for naught. He was determined just to carry his gorgeous, hand-knit gansey-ish sweater in dark slate blue worsted-weight wool. Somebody loves him very, very much. Or he is rich enough to buy his own hand-knit sweaters. Either way, he's a lucky guy.

This was my prize knitwear find that day. You can't see it because she has her black coat wrapped around her waist, but this sweater was tunic length, and had those wild sort-of-diagonal intarsia stripes all the way down. I took lots and lots of photos of her, but apparently my Kinnearing skills blow. This is the best of a bad lot.

 

This patchwork-y number had the potential to knock Ms. Diagonal Intarsia out of first place, but for some reason it just didn't speak to me like DI did. Second place for you, Missy.

 

I don't know exactly what this Anglo Saxon Mona Lisa is doing, but I am sure it is fiber-related.

Tatting? Weaving? Um... shuttlecocks?

* Kinnearing**, sort of.  I held the camera at normal position, but surreptitiously. Kind of like the way your kids try to look innocent when they have chocolate up one ear and down the other. Yeah, that kind of surreptitious.

** "Kinnear" is in www.urbandictionary.com. Is that cool or what?

* * * * *

The Art Institute allows photography but bans flash, hence all the blurry photos. I don't seem to be able to hold a camera still enough to save my soul. I don't remember a flash ban at MoMA when I was there last May. Maybe that's why those photos all seemed to turn out better.

So, how cold was it?

10:02 am, Wednesday, January 30, 2008; on the deck of Chez Kat™:



Same time, in the office of The Kat™:



The bitter truth:



The heater had already been running for over an hour.

* * * * *

(Yeah, I know that photo needs to be rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise. When it's this cold, even IPhoto doesn't seem to want to work properly.)

Catching up, vol. 3: The Art Institute of Chicago.

On Saturday Maggie and Matthew and Andrew and I took the train into Chicago to go to the Art Institute.

The Metra is an electric train, but Maggie and Matthew insisted it wasn't nearly as nice as the [new] light rail transit in Minneapolis. I didn't care. I love a man in uniform.

I don't know if it is evident in these photos, but it was exquisitely cold, about zero degrees F. That's minus 18 degrees Celsius for you Canadians. Brrrr.

 

We split up as soon as we checked our coats and agreed to meet again at 5 pm when the museum closed. Ready, set, go!

I remembered this painting from my last visit to the Institute in 2003.

It is a land/seascape by Cezanne and was my favorite painting on that last visit. But I remember the vivid and unearthily beautiful blue sea as occupying a larger portion of the canvas and being a greener blue. And I remember the painting as being larger than it was this time. Either Cezanne did more than one version of the painting, which is entirely possible, or my memory has magnified its qualities, also entirely possible.

I stood, transfixed, in front of it for several minutes last time. It is difficult to see it in my photograph, but the blue of the sea is a sort of heathery teal color (is that a knitterly description or what?). I fell in love with the color. Then I read the plaque next to the painting, which said that (paraphrasing from memory) the true subject of the painting is the color of the sea. I felt like had just gotten an A on an art history essay.

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is a famous painting by Georges Seurat that had never particularly appealed to me, but there was bench in front of it and my feet hurt, so I contemplated it for a few minutes.

I noticed a couple things. First, although the scene should be full of movement -- children playing, dogs leaping, people strolling -- it really isn't. Everything looks perfectly static and posed. Weird.

Second, for some reason known only to the artist and his muse, he painted a red and blue sort of pointillist frame around the edge of the canvas.

 

I say again. Weird.

I loved both of these...

 

...the one on the left for the way it works with its shadow and the one on the right for... I don't know why. Maybe I think he needs socks.

Does this look like a sheep's head to you? It doesn't look like a sheep's head to me; it looks more like a cow's head. Any sheep experts out there?

 

These guys looked straight out of a Monty Python sketch. Or maybe Labyrinth.

I was fascinated by the way these textures and shapes were depicted in marble.

Sometimes life imitates art. Andrew didn't know I was sitting quietly in the corner of the sculpture gallery, knitting and resting my feet.

I found that I seem to be captivated by early  paintings by Piet Mondrian, an artist whose major works never caught my fancy. Who knew?

I like the funny tracery of the bare branches against the sky. One can see the beginnings of the artist's fascination with rectilinear geometry. I remember studying the colors in some of his early paintings at the Museum of Modern Art in NY and thinking how nice those colors would look in a sweater.

Back when I was an art history major in college I took a class in ancient Chinese art because I liked Oriental art and really enjoyed that professor. It turned out that ancient Chinese art is 100% about bronze ritual vessels, ding (tripod cauldron) and gui (bowl) and fanding (rectangular cauldron). The two best collections in the world are the Pillsbury collection in the Minneapolis Institute of Art and another collection in the Cleveland Museum of Art. That means that, by necessity, the collection in the Art Institute of Chicago is second-rate.

I concur. Although my eyes lit upon these once-so-familiar shapes as though they were long-lost family members, I gradually became disenchanted with the pieces. They just weren't as perfectly made, as intricately inscribed, as balanced, as the ones we studied. Second rate.

This was the best of the bunch.

These made me cringe. Especially the fourth one. Ewwww.

   

   

I could go on for several paragraphs pointing out what is good and classical about the first one and blech about the rest, but I suspect y'all are not real fascinated by ancient Chinese ritual vessels. So I shall spare you.

Sometimes the best art wasn't the art.

 

Catching up, vol. 2: The Kat™ family eats breakfast.

We drove to Manteno, Illinois, about 50 miles south of Chicago, to visit BIL and SIL while #1 son is home. #2 son took a couple days off work so he could go, too, and his new girlfriend came along as well. Plus the two dogs. The van was, um, full. Not crowded, exactly, but full.

On Sunday morning Maggie, #2's girlfriend, decided that she and Matthew would make banana chocolate chip pancakes for everyone. Is she a keeper or what?

 

I didn't realize until I started picking out photos for this post was that I hadn't gotten any good pictures of her that morning. Or maybe she was shy. Or maybe I am just a lousy photographer/blogger.

There was a lot of help in the [smallish] kitchen.

While Maggie and Matthew made the pancakes, I was in charge of the bacon.

Smokey, looking like a total wild man, decided that he would make waffles with some of the batter.

The first ones stuck to the grates, like they always do, but take my word for it -- those funny-looking waffles? split flatwise on the plate? tasted exactly like the ones that looked prettier. And there were zero leftovers.

Andrew didn't help in the cooking phase, but he participated whole-heartedly in the eating phase. And he cleaned up the kitchen afterward with only minimal prompting. He's a good boy man.

You know how I said there were no leftovers? Besides the ravenous appetites of the Kat™ family, there was this little helper. That is my hand you see, wickedly encouraging the begging behavior.

 

It was a warm and friendly family-type morning. With coffee.

 

Don't try to read what it says on the cup. Besides being a bit blurry, the words are in Xhosa; the cup was a gift to my coffee-loving SIL from our trip to South Africa. I was totally delighted to find it in the cupboard with the rest of the use-them-every-day cups.
 

Catching up, vol. 1: preemie caps.

Hi, remember me? I used to blog hereabouts. Been busy the past coupla weeks. Gonna attempt to catch up.

I knit up a whack of preemie caps for Jeanne. Now I just have to get my act together to send them to her. If my brain had been working properly I would have brought them to Amy's party on Sunday (details in another post), where I could have given them to Deb to deliver. That was in fact my plan, however, usual brain malfunction occurred and I remembered the caps when I was already 20 miles on my way. Must find box and tape and make expedition to post office.

I started out about seven weeks ago with three skeins of Lion Brand Cotton-Ease.

Clockwise from upper left: Lime, Berry, and Lake. Perfect for soft, non-scratchy, washable, unisex hats...

...which Hannibal was absolutely delighted thrilled coerced to model for me.

   

These were all made from the preemie cap pattern on Jeanne's site, a pattern that yielded the perfect hat; unlike the first pattern I tried, which yielded an object more suited to life as a kippah.

[digression] Yes, Matthew has dyed his hair black. Whatever. At least it isn't a tattoo. [/digression]

We went to Chicago to visit Smokey's brother and wife last week because they wanted to see Andrew while he is home (another post). Chez Kat™ to BIL/SIL's house: 7-8 hours. What to knit in the car? More preemie caps, of course.

Although I knit a lot in the car -- I think I only drove about 20 miles out of the entire trip -- I didn't knit all these on the road. I  also knit on the train into the city (another post), while resting my feet at the Art Institute (ditto), while chatting with the relatives, while waiting for the waitress when we went out to eat, while watching TV, etc. I got a lot of knitting done.

Here is the entire whack of Cotton-Ease caps, some of which were cat-modeled above. The kippah really stands out, doesn't it?

They were all knit on US#5 needles, 56 stitches around, except that one honker. I messed about with a picot edge on the pink one in front just for fun.

I finished up the Cotton-Ease, including the mangled tangled skein that En Esch had had his way with. Smokey spent the better part of two hours at his brother's house untangling it for me (just another reason why he is the Best Husband On The Planet), a time during which I knit most of another cap. Those things go really fast.

Next, I started on a skein of Socks That Rock heavyweight, color G-Rocks, that had been marinating in my stash for at least a year. Perfect for hats.

Knitting with this stuff was heaven. It knit up quickly at an appropriate gauge and size on US#3 needles over 64 stitches, and the yarn was pure bliss -- soft, sproingy (is SO a word!), colorful, altogether delightful. This close-up of the leftover yarn gives you an idea of the luscious texture and colors.

I got six little caps out of a 350-yard skein. 

And a chorus of Awwww!s every time I held up a finished one.

Okay, the Cotton-Ease and STR were gone; time to move on to Knit Picks Shine worsted. This is a cotton-modal worsted weight blend that Matthew picked out for his socks. (I finished those on the trip, too. Another post.) It is lovely soft, and I had bought a bunch of the on-sale colors. However, I had only brought along one extra skein of the terra cotta, plus the ivory left over from the socks. Given another week or three, I would have knit all the Shine into  preemie caps, as it was that well-suited to the task. It is a loosely spun yarn, and hence splitty, but I got used to that and (*fingers crossed*) fixed any splits on the next round.

Like the Cotton-Ease caps, these and the three below were knit on US#5s, 56 stitches.

Somewhere along the line in my preemie cap enterprise I tried Wool-Ease, but it wasn't as soft as the other yarns I had. Hence, there are only three caps in my Wool-Ease line.

For those of you counting along at home, that is twenty-five (25!) warm little preemie heads, twenty-five (25!) little preemies who will have some help while their internal thermostats adjust to living in the cold world outside their mommies' warm floaty uteri.

Brad Pitt loves me. He told me so.

Well, he thanked me personally.

Actually, I saw his thank-you video on the web. And I got a thank-you e-mail that had his name at the bottom.

Close enough for me.

It's all about The House That Yarn Built at Mr. Pitt's Make It Right foundation (he said I have to call him Mr. Pitt; Honey Lambiekins and Lover Tomato make him blush). I read about it over at Norma's blog. Remember Norma, that non-Pollyanna who inspires us all to give 'til it hurts? To knit red scarves for orphans and warm woolies for Mongolian kids and who knows what all? Yeah, that Norma.

The Make It Right foundation is raising money to help rebuild houses in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, where homeowners lost everything. (Read all about it at the linked sites in the previous paragraph; they explain it far more eloquently than I can.) In short, Christy of Misplaced Southern Belle is asking knitters to donate the cost of a skein of sock yarn -- or more, or less, whatever fits your personal budget -- to The House That Yarn Built at the Make It Right foundation. Since she knows that knitters are among the most generous, loving, nurturing humans on the planet, she thinks that we can and will help.

So, let's do it, 'kay? Who needs that skein-of-sock-yarn money more, your feet or the devastated folks in NOLA?

* * * * *

Bye now, gotta go get ready for the Party Of The Century, the first-ever gathering of Twin Cities area knitbloggers, at Amy's house. W00t!

10 blogs that make my day.

Sophanne over at Becky Knits Two named me as one of the bloggers who makes her day, so I am here to pass on the favor.

Ten of the bloggers who make MY day (chosen at random from the many-more-than-ten that I read daily):

1. Sheepish Annie
2. Franklin of The Panopticon
3. Norma
4. Dale-Harriet of Cats, Sticks, and Books
5. Cursing Mama (I used to know her first name but it fell out of my brain)
6. Deb of Wound Too Tight
7. Chris of Stumbling Over Chaos
8. Erika of Redshirt Knitting
9. Lisa of Knitnzu
10. Ryan of Mossy Cottage Knits

Thanks to everyone who makes me smile, weep, nod, grimace, and hoot. Y'all make my day!

Borders says, It's the unofficial anthem of sweaters.

Quoting from the above e-mail I got today from Borders Books (emphasis mine):

Ingrid Michaelson is on a roll. Following her unlikely discovery on the Internet, four of her songs have been featured on Grey's Anatomy, and her catchy tune "The Way I Am" became the unofficial anthem for sweaters thanks to the popular Old Navy commercial.

Here is the music video from YouTube:

And here is another video of the song recorded at a Borders somewhere. Click on "The Way I Am", about a third of the way down the list of songs in the center of the page.

Now, I realize I am just a knitter and you are just a knitter and all the hundreds of thousands of us out there are just knitters, but which God/dess decided that a... chain of bookstores? got to decide what became the unofficial anthem of sweaters. Nothing against Ms. Michaelson's song -- it's very nice, catchy, pretty, engaging, yada yada -- but, c'mon now, something as important as The National [Unofficial] Anthem For Sweaters should be chosen by those who know and love The Country Of Sweaters. And who knows it and loves it more than we do, the people who labor over every single k1p1 and each k2tog and all those millions of stockinette stitches in between?

Maybe we need to contact Ms. Michaelson and demand a recount.

[/tongue from cheek]

Yarn and resolution.

This package arrived a few days ago.

Whatever could it be?

Yarn. What a surprise.

Eight 116 gm skeins, probably about 2000 yards, of fire-engine red woolly goodness. Maybe superwash, maybe a wool blend, but BRIGHT and soft and yummy.

Two skeins of Brooks Farm Limited Edition I in a mottled brick red and brown, mmmmmm.

One skein of Brooks Farm Acero in a mottled blue-brown, ditto.

The red is destined for charity knitting. It is a fat worsted weight, perfect for hats and mittens and warm sweaters.

What will I make with the Brooks Farm? Um... Look, over there, a badger with a gun! Do you see him?*

In other words, I don't know yet. It would be perfect for a lacy shawl. However, I. Do. Not. Knit. Lace. (Yet.) Time will tell.

You may remember that Norma had a destash sale on New Year's Day; I didn't make my "no yarn in 2008" resolution until a few days later. Therefore I did not break my resolution, nope, not me, uh-uh, no way.

* Brownie points for anyone who knows the source of this quote.

A is for...

...airport.

This is the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, where on Sunday night I picked up another A:

Andrew, home from Chiapas for two weeks.

Here is Andrew making waffles for breakfast this morning. I had to sneak the photo 'cuz he gets really pissy about having his picture taken.

See how sneaky I am?

I'm sure you will agree that I took him completely unawares in that photo. Yup, that's his usual expression: alarmed, alert, antsy, a little apoplectic.

We were all eagerly anticipating what he would look like when he arrived. We knew he had lost at least 25 pounds, so we thought he might look anorexic; we also anticipated he would be tanned (yes) and furry (see above). What we didn't expect was how sun-streaked his hair would be. Attractive, no?

And now, a bonus B:

He's a bleeding-heart liberal.

Translation of the shirt, as best I can remember:

• autonomia = autonomy
• dignidad = dignity
• lucha = struggle
• igualdad = equality
• respeta = respect
• libertad =  liberty
• resistencia = resistance
• autogestion = [argh! I can't remember!]
• amor = love
• sueños = dreams
• rebeldia = rebellion?
• justicia = justice

Eye candy Friday: the CMUSF edition.

Hannibal does Spidey-Cat, albeit somewhat unwillingly.

I can't believe, conclusion.

I can't believe no one else has blogged about this.

Resolution revisited.

I am sensing some doubt skepticism incredulity in the comments to yesterday's post about not buying any yarn until 2008 2009.

I typed 2008 in yesterday's post, now corrected. A Freudian slip? I prefer to think it is just that I had not yet fully adjusted to the fact that the current year is 2008 instead of that long-time favorite, 2007. Yup, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Apparently none of my readers had any trouble at all in deciphering my true meaning, since no one mentioned it.

I would be incredulous as well except for the fact that as soon as I thought of this resolution I felt as though a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. You know the feeling when you have several large projects due soon and you're not sure you can accomplish them all in the time available and then your supervisor/boss says that none of the projects is still required except the one you are already half done with? Yeah, that feeling.

Perhaps part of the relief -- aside from the knowledge that I will be working down what has become a psychic weight on my soul -- stems from having the dictates of what to knit come from only one source, the yarn itself. I won't have to attempt that balancing act of reconciling my stash with the external calls for objet d'knit.

This is a lot of navel gazing over what is, after all, just a bunch of sheep fur. But navel gazing is fun and can be productive when, as in this case, it leaves one feeling lighter.

* * * * *

Just so's you know? I've already broken that sub-resolution about clicking Delete for e-mails from Knit Picks rather than opening them. After some thought I realized that all the KP e-mails have tempted me into buying yarn only once, that time when they had selected colors of Wool of the Andes on sale. So I opened their e-mail that came today. And bought no yarn, yay!

January 6th resolution.

It is January 5 and I have [finally] arrived at my official New Year's resolution.

You ready for this? It's gonna blow your mind.

Eye candy Friday.

This is variegated Swedish ivy (Plectranthus australis 'Variegata'), a common and easily grown house plant. But I felt like Mother Earth earlier this fall when I saw that flower spike. The buds eventually opened into tiny white flowers, not at all showy, but indicative of a plant that felt optimistic enough about the state of the world to attempt reproduction.

The Swedish ivy started out last spring as three 4" pots, which were then planted into a shallow 12" pot and which lived all summer in full sun on my deck. It completely took over the 48" wrought iron table on which it resided. By summer's end the longest branches were over four feet long and reached over the edges of the table, almost to the floor. I used it as a backdrop for many yarny photos.

Unforgivably, I neglected to photograph it in all its table- and deck-covering glory at the end of summer. Here it is after a massive pruning to allow it to fit comfortably into the house:

Prunings:

I was able to supply friends with enough cuttings to fill their own houses with Swedish ivy. One of the things I love about this plant is the spicy pungency of the leaves' fragrance. My hands smell soooo good after pinching off a leaf.

I shall not show you a photo of how that virile plant looks today. (Wait! Can a plant that flowers, i.e., has female characteristics, be called virile? What. Ever.) It survives but has lost some a few several hundred leaves. Why is it so difficult for me to remember to water my plants? (And to feed/water our pets. It is a wonder my children lived to adulthood.) That gorgeous fuchsia I showed you in November went to the great compost heap in the sky over a month ago. I compensate for my neglectful ways by growing only easy-to-grow plants, i.e., ones that would be weeds if I lived in a more forgiving climate. Hmmm, maybe that answers the question about the children...

These herbs seem reasonably happy, though, even while the outdoors is frigid and white.

Mmmmmm, rosemary...