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Forsythia

It was a forsythia bush, many years ago, that propelled me into an epiphany that enriched my life.

Each spring I would watch as a large forsythia near our home would gladden into bloom.  Each spring I would stand and stare and try to absorb the beauty, the magnificence, the dignity - the forsythia'ness of that bush.  I never felt I quite touched the essence and there was always the knowing that sooner than later the flowers would be gone and not reappear for another year and I would not have enjoyed them to their fullest.

Then, one time, standing and staring, overwhelmed beyond overwhelm with longing - something gave way.  Suddenly I was no longer outside myself trying to reach out to those masses of sunny flowers;  suddenly I was totally within myself,  in tune with forsythia,  knowing that the moment was everything. 

Thank you, forsythia......

Fleece 'speaks'

Fluffy fleece, uncarded ...... a  cloud yarn dialogue with the spinner.

A batt of folded fleece,  unfolded,  spun .... many dialects in this yarn.

 Curly locks of fleece lose their crimp when spun and burst out shouting  in frizzy yarn.

Worth passing along

Grand Rapids man crochets hats as hobby, anonymously gives them away as gesture of respect
by Tom Rademacher | The Grand Rapids Press
Wednesday March 04, 2009, 3:59 PM
Jon M. Brower | The Grand Rapids PressA hat crocheted by "Ernie" awaits someone to pick it up along South Division Avenue in Grand Rapids.

Some folks donate cash to a cause or charity. Then there are people like Ernie.

That's not his real name. But everything else about him seems to be the real thing. Three times a week, Ernie shows up at City Knitting in Eastown and spends several hours crocheting wool caps. Then he gives them away in some of Grand Rapids' poorest neighborhoods.

Ernie not only produces real goods for the poor and disenfranchised, he also personally disperses them among what arguably are some of Grand Rapids' most unapproachable residents.

I met Ernie on Monday morning in the Heartside neighborhood that rims the southern edge of downtown. It's where he goes virtually every week to hang homemade caps in trees and along fences.

Ernie doesn't want any publicity or extensive credit. He just wants to help keep people warm.

Crocheting is a skill Ernie taught himself largely by watching instructional videos on YouTube. He only learned how to crochet in January. And already, by his own estimate, he's tramped downtown to hang "between 30 and 35" caps for the homeless and others to discover.

Each one carries a little handwritten note.

"Take me, I'm free!"

"Free to a good head."

You deserve this."

"Enjoy!"

"Smile!"
Hollyn Johnson | The Grand Rapids Press"Ernie" hangs a hat for the taking on South Division Avenue.

Monday morning, in 8-degree weather, Ernie hung his first offering in a sapling along Cherry Street, just west of South Division Avenue. Then he walked along Division to dangle five more.

In the ensuing hour, none were snatched up. But by noon, when I returned, only two remained. Ernie his caps usually disappear more quickly in somewhat warmer weather, and in afternoon rather than morning hours, when "there seem to be more people out."

He makes no judgments about where his caps might end up. "Whoever gets it, I guess that person needs it," he said.

Ernie never sticks around to meet or even spy the recipients, mostly, he says, because "it goes toward honoring their dignity."

Ernie is guarded about his identity, except to note that he's a recently divorced father of two who graduated high school in this county, served a stint in the U.S. Coast Guard and works in the service industry.

"I've always been kind of an 'in-the-woodwork' kind of person," Ernie said. "Besides, it's not about me. It's about them."

"Them," of course, are the men and women of Heartside. They suffer from bad luck, poor decisions and an economy that isn't helping.

At City Knitting, 423 Norwood Ave. SE, where it's as much about sharing and community as it is crafting, Ernie is something of an enigma. "None of us know him very much," owner Lorilee Beltman said. "He doesn't talk a lot about himself.

"But when we learned he was looking for yarn," she said of other knitters who heard about Ernie's cause and need, "it sort of poured in for him."

If Ernie has no donated wool, he'll buy it. It costs between $6 and $8 for the materials to make a one-size-fits-all cap. He can complete a cap in about two hours. On Monday, Ernie showed me one cap created from scraps, a testament to his economical use of yarn.

When he's not crocheting at City Knitting, he spends time in his Grand Rapids-area studio apartment, listening to the likes of Sufjan Stevens or Martin Sexton while he crochets some more.

His one-man mission to warm the heads of Heartside has found a fan in Marge Palmerlee, executive director of Degage Ministries at 144 S. Division, a daytime haven for many of the area's residents.

"What a tangible way to say, 'I care,'" Palmerlee said. "It's that kind of thoughtfulness that goes a long way. Oftentimes, people don't need a million dollars. They need a warm hat.

"How creative that he's using his gifts to bless others in such an original way. And especially with the winter we've had. It's pretty amazing."

Said Ernie: "I just think everybody should be treated as a human being. And if everybody did just one little thing, it would improve the lives of so many people."

E-mail Tom Rademacher: [email protected]
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Architectural knitting ; fishing line and yarn

Inspired by this and motivated by the thought of fishing line and a soft, summery yarn (silk and cotton) with the intent of something that would form a 'structure' around the face and neck,  perch on the shoulders............

.....  this cowl resulted.

It was not easy to knit.  Fishing line has a mind of its own and had one of those needles fallen out of the work while in progress -  I think that would have been it :  there would not have been a way to pick up the dropped stitches. 

Spinning the line and yarn together came to mind but it was finicky enough to knit the two of  them together so I didn't even try.

After some experimenting I decided to go with the lighter fishing line which is 4 lb test but after twelve or so inches on 22 stitches on the number 25 mm  needles  that reel ran out .

More experimenting, mental this time, and then it felt right to continue knitting with the 25 lb line and I did so until the ball of yarn was almost finished which gave another foot or so but which can be extended, expanded.

I joined the length into a tube, starting with the heavier line piece and then stopped. 

Leaving the lighter piece unjoined gives more versatility to the cowl. 

It has the intriguing feel that wearable art can have of being both an article of  clothing with the added aspect of being art ; and this definitely brings the third dimension into it.

I'm thinking now of something very loosely knit using something with zest in it and then weaving through the gaps;  or maybe reversing that idea and using the zest fibre as the weft and seeing if weft can give substance.......hmmmmm.....

Colour comics bowl and pouch

I did use the Sunday comics to make a pouch and bowl to carry and collect the 'treasures' my grandson and I find on our walks, inspired by this previous post. 

It was a sunny, windy day so the wet slurry in its molds of strainer and colander could be put outdoors on the deck.

I used a paper punch to make two holes and threaded some handspun to make a handle for carrying the pouch.  Those are green tea leaves that must have been still in the tea strainer when I poured in the slurry.  I liked their serendipitous appearance when the pouch was de-molded.

The comics would likely have been more predominant had I cut some thin strips of the newspaper and added these to the blended slurry.

Next time......

Fibre chat

Wanting to look up some further information on Tunisian crochet and pulling these two books from my shelves, I realized that stating in a recent post I would choose Mary Thomas's books if I had to choose only two was - wrong.  Misleading, actually.  Her books are on knitting.  I would need these two books as well.  For crocheting and weaving and rug hooking and tatting ....

They turn up regularly at garage sales and thrift stores.  They are worthwhile. 

This was a treasure of a find at an estate sale.
It's old. possibly from the Forties.  It's worn thin in places and did duty, I assume, as a knitting bag  to store and/or carry works in progress.

The embroidery  is hand worked.

It is posed here on a bed cover I made several years ago.  Fibre being honoured by two women (I know who made the bag - she  had signed it) many years apart but the connection is timeless.

Bowl ; paper and wool

Wanting a shallow bowl in which to put my safety pins that I use like straight pins when making garments and which don't work well in a pin cushion, I remembered such a  bowl from the past. 

Yep, I had a cardboard carton of eggs in the frig in the shade of cement.   The remaining eggs are now balanced in the lid.  (Reminder to self: open and close frig door gently.)

I tore the egg carton into small pieces and soaked them in hot water for a bit, then put them in the blender with enough water to cover and whirled until it turned into mush.  Proper name for mush when making papery things is slurry.

(It is advised not to use a blender you use for food to do this.  Not sure why but you have been advised.  This blender is actually used only for paper making but has been doing double duty
because the food one is waiting on a part.  I may find out why the advice has been given.)

I added some dried rosemary and scented geranium leaves for fragrance and look to the slurry once it was blended and then poured it (over the sink) into this colander  and then put it into a bowl while pressing the slurry evenly into the colander.  I wanted a rustic edge but this could be cut straight once it is all dried.

Then I took some of my 'cloud' handspun and put bits and pieces on top of the slurry.  What you can't see (I forgot to photograph it) is that I took some lengths of that wool and laid it randomly on the bottom of the colander first.

You can sort of see it here.

The colander then got put on a floor hot air register until it dried but it would have been put outside in the sun and wind if the weather had been sunny and windy.  On top of a counter would do as well.

Once dried it had shrunk a bit so came out of the container quite easily.

This is it.

And here,  holding the pins so they are easily accessible.

All sorts of fibre can be used.  I just had a thought of the colour comics that I used in yesterday's post which could be tried in the mug-deep tea strainer and which would be a fun container for a certain two-year-old I know.  We've started collecting things on our walks and  such a vessel would be easier on the 'collection' than our pockets. 

Architectural knitting ; wool and rope

Having written Knitting Intuitively With Almost Anything (available here - thanks Google!)  I continue to look for  "anything" with which to knit (or crochet or weave or spin......)

The idea of architectural clothing that houses the body and the ability to knit this in garments or accessories;   the knowledge that there is now Japanese yarn with stainless steel that can be 'sculpted';  the wish to use the handspun  the wheel and I keep producing;   a stroll through my stash of fibre and finding a roll of a paper rope I got on Roncesvalles in a dollar store in Toronto - all came together and I started to knit.......

It was intriguing.  The larger needles were chosen after trial and error with smaller ones. 

The wool is lively in its playfully- spun state and the addition of a stiffish paper fibre gave the 'yarn' a definite mind of its own which boded well for the architectural or 3-D inent. 

I had cast on more stitches initially but after a few inches of knitting in garter stitch tried less and settled on two.  The plan was to knit until the ball of handspun ran out and see what had been made.  This is it just finished. 

  Here it is in a cascade as a scarf.  It is light to wear but has a 'presence' to it.  You can stretch it to elongate behind the neck and widen elsewhere and there is enough resistance in the rope so that it holds its shape.  Yippeee!

 

Here is more what I had in mind : a cowl shape holding its own around and up the neck.

I'll test it out - see how it feels,  'travels' - on errands this afternoon.

I've just started experimenting with some fine mohair and different weights of fishing line.

Oh!  It is fascinating.  Opinion verging on attitude has this combination of wool and nylon.  The lighter weight line, although harder to see, does tend to chummy up with the wool and respond to the knitting motion better. 

It looks promising.......

Start with cuffless socks.........

These are the woodsman socks with the knitting started right into the body,  no cuffs.

These are 'cuffs'  - removable,  interchangeable:  the black and amber lengths of ribbing are half a pair of wrist warmers, as are the purple and multi-coloured  narrow bands (wool crocheted around hair elastics);  the purple moebius in the upper right corner is a bracelet;  the green bracelet is braided from rope;  the white/brown bracelet is braided from tundra wool;  the ribbing that matches the socks is a cuff knit separately from the socks;  the dancey frill is loosely crocheted from some vibrant coloured yarn.

The cuff just needs to be slipped on, of course.  The crocheted piece is wrapped around twice and tied.

The bracelets are rolled on and mixed or matched or singled or multipled.  In sandals a toes ring is possible.

  The amber wrist warmer has been folded down to make a short cuff but could be worn longer.

I then got to thinking about cuffless socks as a venue for bracelets and wrapped scarves and sweater cuffs and .....

........ the possibilities are quite endless.....

It's been a long, cold, challenge of a winter

Et tu, April......?

Welcome,  April!