Knitting in paintings

Paul Cézanne

Albert Anker: Strickendes Mädchen vor Fensternische

Dutch Painting in the 19th Century - Haverman - The Knitting-Lesson

Tricoteuse paintings by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Jean-François Millet - The Knitting Lesson

I was pleased to note the number of paintings that come up with women, particularly girls, knitting, because I'm sometimes told, "well, aren't you a little too young to be knitting?"

All photos are from Wikipedia

Knitting, the Yarn Swift and the Ball Winder

With the quickly changing season, I have become completely engrossed in my knitting. I am making, for the first time, a throw blanket. All in one piece, I'm making it on an 80cm round needle to hold all 137 stitches. You can see how my hands have been quite tied up! If found the pattern on Knitty (website here, pattern here). I think it might turn out to be the biggest thing I've ever made and I'm getting a callous on my pointer finger on my right hand to show it. I'm about 2/3rds done. Of course, mine does not look anything like the picture because I'm using up a few different balls of colour and I haven't blocked it yet. Blocking is when you wet a finished knit, stretch it and pin it down till it dries to the exact shape/size you wanted. But I suspect I will run into trouble there because of my strange left-handed (despite being right-handed) knitting.

In other exciting news, my weekly knitting group has started. We had a pretty fun time last week with a swift (the thing that resembles a miniature clothes drying rack) and a ball winder (that looks like a defunct blow dryer). Both parts are used to turn a newly bought hank (twisted yarn) into a ball. I learned a great deal in the last five minutes in trying to write that last sentence. I also came across some rather nice pictures of swifts, seen below.

Of course, the reason you use the swift with the hanks (and not balls or skeins) is because the hanks untwist in a large circle that fits just right around the swift, and this spins around to feed into either a manually made ball or the ball winder. But it's not a big deal to feed a skein or a ball of yarn directly into the ball winder to make a lovely ball of yarn that is not too tight and allows one to grab yarn either from the center or from the outside (e.g. when doubling the yarn to make it a thicker gauge).

The Ball winder looks a bit like this, where yarn is fed through the little metal extension to the left onto the spindle. Then you manually crank it. It was declared by some that this would be a wondrous lifetime career while others noted the boredom that would quickly ensue...

And voilà!

Yarn Rainbow

Everyone has been so generous in donating yarn to me and my knitting group, that I've amassed quite a collection! Today, as I was trying to sort it out and figure where to put it all, I was inspired by all the skeins laid out on the ground. I quickly sorted them out into colours and more slowly figured out how to take a panorama shot and stitch it together. Here is the result.

Then I sorted the yarn into polyester (good for learning or specific designs that need to be easily washable or not sensitive to water) and non-polyester.

All my beautiful yarns made of wool, alpaca, llama, silk or cotton look beautiful with all their colours in the round crochet basket. I've placed all the doubles or triples underneath.

Knitted Cowl Scarves

Rainy Day Lupins

Some rainy days, I feel like my plants, sitting open armed for some sun on the window sill. I love how the little leaves of Lupins stretch out like little fingers, the skeleton of an umbrella. Sometimes it’s nice to take a peaceful day, when you can, to shut out even your own thoughts and watch the rain fall, living the easy life of a plant.

I’ve been knitting again, as I was very surprised and then excited when I opened a package from my sister and found a whole pile of beautiful yarn, just waiting to be made into something warm. Little did I know that what you see is only the half of it, when the next day yet another package arrived (my poor mailman who had to climb up and down my stairs).

More posts about those projects as soon as I finish them!

Wise Daughters: Craft Market

The Junction has been a really fast growing part of Toronto. It seems like while I was away at University, it transformed from a place you avoided to a place you go to and hang out. A number of vintage and faux-vintage furniture stores opened, a couple health food stores, a few cafes, some restaurants and a whole pile of alternative health offices.

Aside from probably sky-rocketing housing prices, this seems like a really good thing for the area. I've recently taken to having lunch with a friend and heading over to Crema for a coffee. Just next door, we discovered this interesting shop.


When you walk into Wise Daughters, there is a staircase going up and one going down. Looking up, you can see much of the craft merchandise from beyond the rail of this loft-like shop. They sell from tons beautiful, practical and inspiring crafts made by local artisans. Downstairs is a large room with art hanging on all the walls, in the middle is a large table and chairs. Here, they host all kinds of interesting workshops open to women from in and around the community, for fairly cheap.

Check them out: http://www.wisedaughters.com/index.html
3079B Dundas St. West
Toronto, ON
M6P 1Z9

Arts&Crafts Inspiration Websites

Caution: this post contains websites that are highly addictive... Here are my current top 5 go-to websites for craft ideas:

1. Craft: Magazine
This magazine hosts a really great blog for DIY Projects. So it's nice to know that when you see something you like, they almost always have a pattern or instructions to make it. They spend time on each post so you don't feel as visually bombarded as the next two sites, you're more likely to actually check out what someone has made. They update pretty often, so you can check back all the time. They also have another magazine called "Make" which is for more industrious crafts which are a bit too daunting for me, so I rarely check it out.
Check it out:http://blog.craftzine.com/

2. Craft Gawker
This website is more like a feed that sorts things that are posted into how often people that are part of the website "favorite" them. I like this, because once you log in (free), you "heart" things you like and they're added to your "favorites" page, so you can see all your ideas laid out. It also changes pretty frequently, so you can often check back. I also like it, because it's easy to get to the source of the post and it's a mixture of DIY projects and things for sale on etsy. This is a good source of inspiration for crafting, but is also a good source to discover other blogs.
Check it out: http://craftgawker.com/popular/favorites/7-days/

3. Pinterest
This is a more recent discovery for me, I was a little bit overwhelmed at first. Visually stunning but I have some major complaints when it comes to finding the source of the craft, things are "repinned" over and over again until they've basically lost all attachments to who made them. I think this is a little disappointing but it's hard not to get lured into pages and pages of feed that is so beautiful. I also find it a little creepy that you have to request a membership and I wonder what this process entails.
Check it out: http://pinterest.com/hledingham/pinspiring-crafts/;
                    http://pinterest.com/janew/delicious/

4. Chronicle Books Blog

This blog has a really interesting feed, similar to the Craft Magazine, but also highlights some really interesting looking books. Also has some great recipes for each of the cookbooks that are published, mm!
Check it out: http://www.chroniclebooks.com/blog/

5. Knitty
It's hard to find a good knitting pattern on the net because there are so many and some are just so terrible. So I thought it important to highlight this website since it's a great place to find patterns. The search functions could use some work, but generally, if you know exactly what you want to make and what it's called, you should be able to find it.
Check it out: http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEspring07/index.html

Tea Cozy

For me, tea from a teapot is a given:

1- who can ever only drink one cup?

2- it allows for a social sharing of the tea, many important conversations happen over tea

3- it gets more mileage out of a teabag

4- it allows the milk to be put in the cup first, providing a utensil-less stirring as the tea is poured in

5- it allows for mixing of different tea bags, developing new flavours

The problem is that even in the warmest of houses, a teapot left to steep but forgotten, cools very quickly. And so, of course, every teapot is at a loss before it has come to find a well-fitting tea cozy. Especially if said tea cozy does not need to be removed prior to pouring.

Over the years, I have knitted and crocheted several cozies for my teapots, but this one is one of my favourites. It took little yarn and fits comfortably on most average sized teapots.

On the right is a version that my friend made using the same pattern but combining two colours. The pattern takes about an average ball and a half (75g) of wool. This cozy fits most comfortably on little 3-cup teapots, but on hers you could probably fit a larger teapot by letting the drawstrings go loose.

This knitted pattern, from "Gifted: Lovely Little Things to Knit + Crochet" by Mags Kandis, is a fairly straight forward knit on the round. It is a quick project for a beginner to intermediate knitter. The language of patterns is not as scary as it looks and there are many good websites, only a google search away, that will explain what each of the code words mean. Not only that, but the book (like many knitting books), in fact, has a glossary of terms in the end. The book also has lots of little crafts that make good gifts.