Recreational History

Since I was 19, I have been active in historical re-creation. It barely existed back in 1972, so I got in on the ground floor. I've worked Renaissance Faires (the original Renaissance Faire in California), Old California fiestas, Gold Rush shindigs, Victorian events. I've even done Pirate Fairs lately, although that is not as much historical recreation as it is the evocation of a mass social hysteria - lots of fun, though, and the more authenticity you can bring to it (short of actual gore and mayhem), the better.

Almost 40 years of doing this has influenced all my needlework and crafting, of course. The deeper I got into it, the more historically accurate I wanted my handcrafts to be. So I've learned to card and spin and dye, (and discovered I am seriously spinning-impaired). I've learned naal-binding and Elizabethan 1-needle knitting, and found that they are basically crocheting without that handy specialized hooked needle. I've embroidered and I am very bad at it indeed. I've crocheted, I've netted, and now I knit.

Natural fibres and dyes are therefore always my first choice - except at Victorian events; they had aniline dyes, whoopee! But my needles are all wood and bone, and my accessories are wood and metal: never plastic, because that way my kit works no matter what century I may find myself knitting in. I don't have to worry about packing and remembering to leave out the glowing fluorescent orange needles, or the stitch markers shaped like little fuzzy dice. (I really saw those, and they were quite a temptation.) I've got a cute little lambie tape measure, but I also have a 19th Century folding tailor's rod, and a plain old knotted string for older eras.

One of the things to always remember is that needlework is basically a practical art; no matter how wild our fancies are now, everything we do began in the desperate need to clothe someone. The men and women who invented knitting needed socks and gloves and caps and blankets; they learned to make their tools out of what was to hand and what could be improvised. Most modern knitters know they can use chopsticks and pencils in a pinch; imagine beginning with smoothed twigs! Believe me, they don't have to be straight to work well, although any society that has already invented the bow and arrow can turn out good knitting needles. I've used both.

Knitting is always living history. It's time travel and fables and immortality. We are literally stitching onto the fabric of human existence.

Sure can't do that with an iPod ....

Update On Day of Doom

I couldn't stand it - I went to work on the cable sweater last night. And promptly reversed myself, so I was knitting in the wrong direction in the round. Luckily, I noticed after only 23 stitches, but I took it as an omen - set everything carefully down and backed away.

Sometimes the mojo just ain't there.

Gonna spend today inventorying my stash, counting needles and otherwise tidying things.

One of Those Days

Why do "those" days happen? Knitting is an art that makes order out of chaos (when we do it right), so are free-range agents of chaos attracted to it just to make trouble? Do my tiny efforts to make something tidy out of shapeless disorder (i.e., the interior of my knitting bag) automatically draw evil faeries of loosening and messiness to me? It sure seems like it today.

Sat down with the knitted tie project after breakfast, to do a half-hour's worth of rounds while the laundry cycled - was promptly pounced on by Harry the Evil Minion of Disaster, who grabbed my ball of yarn and ran. In a triumph of enthusiasm over common sense, he ran right off the edge of the couch with it. Yes, he's a bird and yes, he can fly - but not carrying a ball of yarn that weighs half as much as he does. (It turns out that the air speed of a laden parrot is fairly brisk, but straight down.) By the time I retrieved the two of them from under the table, he was wrapped in yarn and the yarn was full of dust bunnies, toast crumbs and tiny little feathers ... re-winding yarn is not nearly as much fun as knitting it.

I didn't enjoy the reminder that I really need to vacuum, either.

Sat down after grocery errands to do a few inches on the lace scarf. I evidently had a brain aneurysm and didn't notice, until I realized I had 1) miscounted the pattern rows and inserted the wrong lace panel and 2) had been knitting a row that was supposed to be purled. When I began to tear it out, I fumbled the piece and the slippery yarn (it's a corn yarn, very silky) literally fell off the needles (which are holly wood, also very slippery). Spent quite some time figuring out where I was, backtracking, and repairing the damage before I could even think of adding any rows at all. Oh, and fighting off Harry, who - undiscouraged - was trying to bite my beautiful sea-foam white holly wood needles!

I'm afraid to work on the cable sweater. I've been successfully reducing a complicated pattern to form the sleeve holes, but the way things are going today, God knows what I'd do to it. All that lovely bas-relief of cables, twists, moss stitch and seed stitch would probably mutate into a frieze of the little square bug-critters from Space Invaders.

The Uncertainty Principle has its beady eyes fixed on me. Chaos is lurking in the shadows. All my projects are poised on the fatal edge of entropy.

There's only one thing to do:

Start a new project right now.

That PomPom Is Squeaking

I have a parrot. His name is Harry. He's an Amazon Lilac Crown, which is a South American sort that is mostly green with coloured trim; he's generally a pretty cheerful wee guy. He's about a foot tall, with bright brass pirate eyes. He has cobalt blue and scarlet on his wings, and lovely maroon and lilac feathers on his head and neck.

Different parrots have different temperments. African Greys tend to be dignified and reserved; cockatoos are insanely affectionate and emotionally dependent. Amazons are happy little thugs; clowns and con artists. Harry sings Rule Britannia, yells all kinds of odd things at random ("Oh no!", "I don't knooooow ..." "Popcorn?") and meows incessantly. And he loves my knitting. You may think cats are a problem with knitting, but I guarantee they're nothing on a parrot. Parrots have hands. They are very, very smart, perfectly capable of lying to get close to your work, and fiendishly determined. And all the cunning toys we use in our knitting are just irresistable!

Harry is a free bird, not caged until he goes to bed at night; when I am sitting on the couch knitting, he can wander over at will to examine my work. He likes to groom finished projects: he holds them his little 4-toed dragon foot and lovingly runs his beak and tongue through the stitches. Parrots don't slobber, but sometimes he gets carried away and tries to bite through an interesting stitch: he can unravel a scarf in no time. He likes to play with strands of yarn - he'll wind one around his foot, then carefully untangle it - over and over, which is kind of awkward if you are trying to knit with it at the time. He likes to suddenly pounce on a ball of yarn, and go rolling around in my lap, kicking and biting it like a predatory dinosaur.

It's hilarious to watch, but I am in constant danger of knitting him into something. "Um - you know that hat I promised you? Well, there's kind of a big lump in it and it's singing .... just ignore it." Yeah, right.

Harry thinks the shiny stitch markers in my knitting must be candies. I use a knitter's rosary to count rows - the cord and glass beads are a constant temptation to an interested little parrot, and he will maneuver patiently for the chance to grab it in his beak and run away with it. (Luckily, it usually trips him.) But what he really, really wants are my knitting needles. I prefer to knit with wood needles - Harry likes nothing better, personally, than to chew some nice piece of wood to bits. And I seem to have all these lovely sticks that I am clearly not chewing ... he'll saunter casually across my lap two or three times, ostentatiously ignoring my needles - and then, POW! He'll grab a needle and run with it, trying to drag it clean out of the fabric and carry it off to his lair.

Much screaming, yelling and indignant meowing results from this. (I carry on a bit, too.) Then I have to buy him off with a walnut and neck-scratching before he forgives me. But before long, I'll feel his feet on my shoulder again, and his bright-eyed little face is leaning round my cheek while he asks: "Whatchya doin'? Huh? Whatchya doin'?"

And we're off again.

The Prodigal Knitter

I learned to knit when I was in the 4th grade, and loved it. Mania set in at once - that textile high of the finished piece. Just knitting back and forth wasn't enough; I had to make something. Pot holders were not only passe, they were unneeded - my grandmother made enough for an army, and they were good ones. I had no idea of gauge or weight or patterns or needle sizes; I could cast on, knit and cast off: and that was IT. I made a hilarious scarf out of scraps my grandmother gave me - it strongly presaged Tom Baker's Dr. Who scarf, except for the way it was 6 inches wide at one end and 14 at the other. I made knitted sheathes and leggings for my (one) Barbie doll and (several) stuffed animals, and even managed to cobble together a sweater for one of them by sewing several tubes together. Badly. But the feeling of accomplishment was great.

Before long, though, I came to grief over the necessity of financing my new obsession. I was making stretchy hairbands and selling them at school to my classmates. The nuns at my parochial school objected to this cottage industry - especially since I was knitting in class and on the playground whenever I had a spare moment - and ultimately put a stop to me. Sadly, the experience was so souring that after a mere year as a limited but dedicated knitter - I quit. Just put down my needles and gave up.

Over the years I experimented with embroidery, cross-stitch and crochet; I learned to sew and how to make costumes be real clothing. But nothing was ever as entertaining as that first rush of knitting had been.

About four years ago, I decided to try again. Some of my friends are truly inspired knitters, and generous with their time and advice - and in the decades between stopping and starting again, knitting had evolved amazingly ... All the new yarns! All the new textures! Entire stores dedicated to yarn - in 1963, you took your chances on whatever 4-strand Red Heart acrylic was to be found at the local Woolworth's, and that was about it. No hand spun, no hand dyed, no blends; no cotton, silk, or bamboo; no eyelash, no boucle, no chunky.

Man, it's been great! My bedroom is awash in yarn; my stash is close to achieving its own gravitational field. I've completed a sweater. I've done original scarves and hats. I've got three projects going at once, never go anywhere without my knitting, and no longer carry a purse: I carry a knitting bag, and my wallet and keys take up the smallest pocket.

I'm home!

The Knitting Zone

Sometimes I think knitting is a disease - a neuromuscular disorder, maybe, some especially organized form of whole body tic. We gotta do it, it's beyond our conscious control. On the other hand, it feels so right!. And it actually accomplishes something - there are plenty of things people do to pass the time or soothe rattled nerves, and very few of them produce tangible objects. I can read or do crosswords for hours, and never so much as a single sock will result. 

Knitting is definitely one of those zones we all want to be in. The lure of producing an honest -to-gosh result is magically compelling. You start with a mass of yarn and end up with a garment. It's like watching cellular organization coalesce out of the primordial soup, or being able to see snowflakes form in the upper air. When things are going especially well, my hands  are operating on their own, and the intangible ME of the whole operation is watching from behind my eyes. And it's the most amazing show! I marvel at the way knit and purl change places and shape; how cables form like stone carving itself across the face of the fabric; the delicate pas de deux of the needles. Tonight I traded off projects a few times to rest my hands, and miraculously ended up with 3 new inches on my sweater, another 2 on the lace scarf, and enough to hit the half-way mark on the silk tie ...

Of course, then there's the other nights. Those are the  nights where you come out of the rosy trance and discover that you've spent your time in the Twilight Zone and somehow  knit yourself to the throw on the couch ... and you really have to wonder it you don't  actually have some sort of manual Tourette's after all.

Math In Real Life

Working on my cabled sweater last night, it occurred to me how easy and satisfying it has become to follow a knitting pattern. I am pretty sure I left grade school all but innumerate - mathematics was a dark and terrifying realm, and I had no idea how to make my way through it. Had I lost a digit, I'd have had to learn Base 9 counting. And I could barely manage Base 10 with my natural equipment ...

My teachers all told me I would appreciate my math skills later in life - assuming I ever attained any. I dismissed all their advice as educational cheerleading, meant to keep my energies going long enough to graduate. But they were right. I'm not sure any of the uses to which I have put these hard-earned skills were exactly what they had in mind, but they sure were right.

First was tips. I lived in Hollywood, and you had to know how to tip in that status-conscious town. With the laser glares of countless supercilious actor/waiters fixed on me, I learned to do decimal calculations.

Next came mileage. In my 20's and 30's, I lived in Los Angeles but worked historical recreation events in Marin County; I commuted 1,000 miles a weekend for most of every summer. During the long, long runs up and down I-5 through the San Joaquin valley, I learned to calculate MPG in my head. Sometimes it mattered - when you are scraping loose change out of the front seat upholstery for an extra gallon of gas, how far it will get you becomes amazingly interesting - but often it was just for something to do as the endless miles went by. That led to calculating variations dependent on weight, wind speed, and how many people were leaping around in the back of my truck and it all got very fascinating. I began to see mathematics as an art form in its own right.

I also ran a tavern at Renaissance Faires. So I learned to calculate the weight and volume of kegs of beer, how many pints you could get out of different sized kegs, how much foam was too much, how much an empty keg weighed as opposed to a full one and what that meant in numbers of tipsy men needed to transport it, how much various strangely shaped drinking vessels would hold ... no end of problems in volume calculation.

Now it's knitting. Gauge can be brute-force calculated by a tape measure, but for accuracy you really need to be able to manipulate stitch and row counts. How many yards of fingering yarn are you gonna need to complete a 56-inch tie in a colourway you'll never find again in your life so you better buy it all RIGHT NOW? What about that sweater you foolishly decided to knit out of three different weight yarns? Is that antique pattern really calculating width in inches, or some weird variant of the length of an acorn?

I'd have gone insane long ago if not for the lessons of the 4th grade. Thank you, Miss Weitzel and Mrs. Matthews. I am sure you never thought I'd ever get any of this, but I did. You were right and I was wrong. Your patience lives on in my knitting.

Can I offer you a hat?