Talking Tuesday: Nigredo/Dark Night of the Soul

I've written a few times in this space about Rhyd Wildermuth's work; he has a unique voice and perspective that I find interesting and refreshing.  I don't agree with everything he writes, but he always gives me something to think about.

Rhyd's substack today was on what he calls nigredo, the part of the alchemy process where the elements are burned down to their most basic essence before being transformed into something else.  He writes:

"Nigredo isn’t a singular moment, however, but rather a repeating process. In alchemy, substances required multiple transformations, a repeating cycle from nigredo to rubedo and then back again. What we think we know and who we think we are likewise must be blackened repeatedly, “destroyed” (though never annihilated) and then reforged like the repeating seasons of the earth. We die, are born, and then die again so to be reborn, all the while still “living” and striving towards a time when the drives that defeat us and the drives that create us become lovers to each other." ~Rhyd Wildermuth, On Nigredo, FFrom the Forests of Arduinna Substack, 12/12/23

I love the imagery in that statement.  It's a different way of talking about theosis, even though Rhyd isn't talking about Christianity (indeed, he is a self-professed pagan).   I'm always interested in taking apart "churchy" words and phrases to get under what they really mean because sometimes words can be culturally drained of meaning by repetition.  Graham Pardun's Psalm translation project is very much after my heart in this way.

Later in the piece, he goes on to note that St. John of the Ladder describes this process at the Dark Night of the Soul.  As a fiction writer, this also resonated with me, since it is a key plot point in any good story.  The protagonist goes through a period where it seems all is lost, that everything they thought they knew is gone and they have to figure out how to go on from that.  

In stories, the Dark Night usually happens only once, but in life, Dark Nights are a feature, not a bug.  Something you thought you knew about yourself, or the world, or whatever, is blown to pieces and then you flounder like a fish on the bank of a stream, flopping about and gasping for air until you can work your way back into the water again to swim.  

Every year about this time, I start feeling a bit low.  I used to think it was because Christmas in my family is so special and I wasn't able to re-create it the same way with my own family.  I honestly felt like Christmas just got beat out of me at some point and it took me a while to find it again.  (Don't worry, I have plenty of lovely traditions with my kids and we have our own rhythm to things that is good, but it took a long time to get there).  

Lately, though I think it is really just part of the season.  I'm not much of one for podcasts because I'm a truly terrible aural learner; my brain wanders for a sec and I've lost the plot, but I've been listening to Spencer Klavan quite a bit this fall when I'm doing stuff around the house or running errands.  He's a very interesting and joyful guy who is so grounded and well-read.  I just finished his book and have very much enjoyed his Substack.  The podcast about C.S. Lewis and what he calls the Seven Loves was an amazing deep linguistic dive and The Ghosts of the Old Gods was also excellent.

Over the weekend, I listened to the podcast Spencer did with his sister about her new book, Christmas Karol, which is a creative retelling of Dickens' story.  Klavan's sister Faith is the keeper of Christmas in their family and loves the season.  She made the great observation that nostalgia and longing are baked in the cake of the holiday because it is the start of the march to the cross.  Even though it isn't explicitly in the holiday, it is in the underpainting, and I think most of us feel it on some level, even if we can't articulate what it is.  One of the gifts of the wise men is myrrh which is used to prepare a body for burial.  So it is there right at the start, pointing the way to where the journey to Bethlehem was going to end.  Of course, it ends in triumph with the resurrection on Pascha/Easter, but there is a long and lonely Dark Night of the Soul before we get there.  

I've thought a lot about longing lately.  It is the thing that propels us through life, really.  The cycle of nigredo and rubedo are the parts of our existence that make life worth living.  It is the striving, the yearning, the curiosity about the world and the people in it, the movement to the reforging of the self that gives meaning and makes us grow.  

So I think it is okay to sit in the darkness for a time, to see what it shows you.  Just don't make it a permanent dwelling place or, like Gollum, you'll forget how to live in the light.

Dark Moss

Another day, another pullover.  This one is the Dark Moss pullover by Teti Lutsak.  It is worsted weight so it initially was about a two week project.  But!  I ended up knitting the sleeves twice and the top half from the short rows up three times.  Yes, three!  Because I am nuts.

The problem is the decreases in the back, which are done while doing the short rows.  If you follow the pattern, the decreases happen too quickly and it is is too tight across the upper back.  If you omit the middle decreases and just do the raglan decreases, you end up with an extra repeat on the neckline that looks sloppy and wide.  I also sized up on the needles one of the iterations and didn't like the fabric.  I ended up knitting on the 8s (which were my gauge needles), omitting the middle decreases and just doing the raglan decreases on the short rows, and then added a couple of rows to decrease in the middle to bring the raglan line together and have the correct stitch count for the neckline.  Third time's a charm, as that seems to have fixed the fit problem across the upper back.

The sleeves were my own fault really.  I should have sized up on the needles and didn't because I was away from home and just wanted to finish it.  So I frogged both to about 10 rows from the cast-on at the underarm and reknit.  I also made many fewer decreases, I think three?  I knit 56 rows from the intial 10 down and then decreased 2 stitches, then knit 15 rows, decrease, then 15, decrease, and then about 6 more rows before starting the ribbing and that seems about right.  

The cable sections at the bottom were fairly easy and enjoyable, especially since they were knit flat and then joined.  I sort of split the difference between the cropped and longer length and am pretty happy with how it came out length-wise.  

I know this light grey is maybe not the best color on me, but I wanted something that was a lighter neutral and liked the subtle variations in the heather on this one.  And anyway, it is warm and comfortable, which was the main point!  

I had another gum graft yesterday to deal with the failed graft from 2016 and am pretty wiped today.  I have to have another graft on my top teeth in January but need to wait for my palette to heal first.  The main problem, as with the previous graft, is that eating is so incredibly painful and tricky.  They gave me a surgical stent to cover the top of my mouth, which helps a lot with that part, but the graft site is very sore and swollen.  I'm taking Tylenol and Motrin around the clock at the moment.  So I'm trying to find liquid calories since I can't afford to lose any weight right now (not a problem I EVER thought I'd have, but here we are).  The stitches come out next Thursday, so hopefully it won't be too bad of a week.

Footfall

I'm trying to post these projects in more or less the order in which I finished them, but I seem to keep falling behind as I finished this scarf a month ago (and have worn it a lot since) and even photographed it then, but am just now getting around to posting!

This is the Footfall pattern from Kate Davies and it comes from her Bold Beginners book. I tried knitting this pattern some years back (before I was really grooving with lace charts) and made a complete hash of it and gave up. This time, however, it was fairly smooth sailing. In retrospect, I wish I had done a M1L/M1R at the center instead of a yarn over, but not enough to start over again.

I used some silk/wool mix yarn I got for Christmas last year.  My original idea was to use the yarn until I ran out but I got to a certain point and realized that the scarf would be VERY large if I did that, and I didn't want something too overwhelming.  

The upside is that I have enough left to make a hat (and possibly mitts).  My hair is really thin now and my head gets cold quickly!  So I think hats are going to be a fixture this winter.  I've been wearing fingerless gloves in the house for the past couple of weeks because the circulation in my hands and feet isn't stellar, hence the mitts.  Andrea Mowry's new mitts pattern looks interesting.

I finished a sweater this week (after reknitting half of it at least twice!) and am working on some smaller projects before casting on another sweater.  What can I say?  I likes what I likes.

Kazahana

Sometimes you have to frog a sweater that isn't working.  My Weekender from last winter was such a sweater.  I did wear it some but the neckline drove me crazy and it was always too big.  And the drape never seemed right.  

I know a zillion people have made that pattern and love it, but I'm realizing that a straight neck sits really weird on me.  There were a bunch of things about the fit I didn't like, so when it was absolutely miles too big this fall, I decided to pull it out and start fresh.  

I picked the Kazahana pattern since it has my go-to features--textured yoke, easy body and sleeves, and interest on the cuffs and hem.  I did a twisted rib on the cuffs since I ended up not liking how the pattern iteration looked or felt, and I made the sleeves full length that tapered to the wrist.  I did do the pattern on the hem, but honestly, it is so subtle, I think I could have got away with twisted rib there too.  Since the yarn was worsted weight, the knitting went extremely fast--I think I made the whole thing in under two weeks.  I've worn it a ton since finishing it, so it was a good call!  

The yarn is such a pretty heathered color; it is hard to capture on film, but there are flecks of turquoise, yellow, seafoam green, and a darker teal running through it. It is definitely a solid color for my wardrobe palette.

I used a gift certificate for a local yarn store recently and bought some Brooklyn Tweed Shelter in the Button Jar colorway.  It is more to the olive side of green, but the tweedy flecks are similarly toned, so I'm eager to knit that yarn up!  I'm nearing the end of another worsted weight sweater, so I think the Shelter will be next up.  It is looking to be a colder year this year, so I'll be glad of some heavier weight pieces to keep me warm--I'm feeling the cold a lot more these days.

Sarkle

Most of my finished objects right now are going to be knitted, but it's sweater weather, so I'm not even a little sorry.  I'm not sewing at all except for outside projects for the drama program at my kids' school and have had a good time thrifting on ThredUp.  (It's fine, really.  I've got plenty to keep my hands busy).

To be perfectly honest, I feel better about thrifting anyway, as it takes something out of a landfill and puts it to use, whereas sewing has a similar footprint to buying new.  (It doesn't help that my go-to fabric store went out of business in the spring; I have other places I like, but nothing like fabric.com--RIP). 

Obviously, I do occasionally buy something new, but I find thrifting fun. And confession: I find I have different seasons with some styles or particular pieces, especially with major body changes (about which more, at a later date).  So thrifting works better for me on a lot of levels right now.

Anyway, I present my Sarkle, made in August mostly.  It was a totally straightforward KDD knit, and since I'm pretty confident about her blocks, I got gauge and just got on with it!  The twisted stitches were fun (more so than cables) and the pattern varied enough not to get boring.  

I'm working on the coordinating cowl to this pattern right now and am struggling with pattern boredom since the twisted stitch pattern isn't quite as varied as the sweater yoke.  (Which explains how I managed to make a whole other sweater from my unraveled Weekender in the past three weeks while the cowl has languished since late August).  I've also been poking away at a lace shawl and am just over half-way on it.

The color was a bit hard to photograph but it is a lovely deep teal that leans slightly toward green.  It's similar in shade to my Carbeth, but the DK weight is a lot more useful to me.  My next sweater project is another Teti Lutsak pattern.  I love how her stuff fits me and find her patterns visually interesting and fun to knit.

Nothing to say that I didn't note on my ravelry page.  I will say I still struggle with finding the right sweater length on my figure.  I'm short-waisted so I have to watch body length very carefully but my measurements are a lot straighter than they used to be, so I can get away with slightly longer sweaters now.  It feels like a Goldilocks dilemma and I wonder if this sweater could stand to be another 1/2" or so longer, but it is a bottom up sweater so there is no way I'm messing with it!  The leather skirt is a new thrift and it is *mwah*!  Put it with a recently thrifted black leather jacket and I feel extremely stompy.  

Lost Generation

I find myself missing the '90s lately. Maybe that is just my mid-40s talking, but with the recent '90s revival in fashion and other things, it seems like my teenage years are all around me. Except not really. Context is everything.

It's not that I miss that period of time historically or that I'm nostalgic for it.  I don't think it was simpler, it was just less fractured at a cultural level. (I certainly don't miss my personal fashion sense of those years...oy.  I was not a cool teenager.  I'm not a cool adult either, but let's just leave it there, hmm?)  I am enjoying my Doc Marten combat boots a great deal these days, however.  One of the perks of being an adult is being able to afford some of the things you couldn't as a teenager. 

It's more that I miss having common cultural touchstones.  GenX is the lost generation, if you ask me.  Everyone skips over us and goes straight from Boomers to Millennials.  Particularly those of us born in the late 1970s; the Oregon Trail mini-generation if you will.  I guess I get tired of that sometimes.  I want to be able to reference Pearl Jam, Third Eye Blind, the Goo-Goo Dolls, Dave Matthews Band, Hootie and the Blowfish, Collective Soul, Lilith Faire, Reality Bites, Life Goes On, Felicity, Saved by the Bell, CK One, coffee house culture, VHS and 8-track players, mix-tapes, and the pre-internet/cell phone days and not be met with blank incomprehension. Last fall, we had my husband's clerks over for a game night and played Apples to Apples.  Admittedly, our copy is about 15 years old, but I was surprised how many of the Zoomer clerks didn't get the pop culture references.  Demi Moore, people.  Michelle Pfieffer.  Sharon Stone.  And I'm not even particularly well-versed in pop culture.  I felt very old in that moment.

We are the generation who had an analog childhood and acquired a digital adulthood; we straddle the life worlds of Boomers and Millennials.  And now in our 40s and 50s, we are raising children and taking care of our aging Boomer or Great Depression parents.  Or grieving them when they are gone.  It's a busy season of life, a necessary one, a good one, but largely invisible.

I read Andrew Rannells' two books this past week; he is exactly the same age as me and grew up in the Midwest.  So much of the culture and touch points of his coming of age are familiar to me.  (Fair warning, his stories are very funny and enjoyable to me as a creative person who likes to perform, but his books are definitely not for everyone).  I felt the same kinship to Mary Harringon while reading her excellent book.  She is also exactly the same age as me and the context of her early adulthood is familiar in the same ways.  

One of the essays toward the end of Rannells' second book asks the question of how you mark time as an adult, particularly if you don't have kids.  That is to say, how do you know you are an adult if you don't have the so-called traditional markers of it?  It's an interesting question, marking time.  Our liturgical calendar and rhythms of family life are definitely the scaffolding for me, but I'm thinking more about internal markers.  

I sometimes wish I could go back and enjoy my early 20s more.  I was in such a hurry to be settled and socially awkward and insecure.  I'm still socially awkward but I'm working on it.  I felt a lot of pressure to be a responsible adult, to be financially independent and follow a quick narrow path to maturity.  It's been 20 years this year since I moved back to the States from Russia.  I don't regret the move there and sometimes wonder what might have been if I'd just taken the dead-end job I was offered after my original job ended and stayed longer.  

It is a dangerous slippery slope to play the what-if game, particularly in your 40s.  The major decisions of life are made, the path is relatively set.  Until it isn't.  If there is one thing characteristic of our current moment it is the basic instability of absolutely everything.  Liquid modernity writ large.  

Except that actually, my 40s are pretty great.  There's a certain sort of je ne sais quoi about this period of life, a kind of settledness within myself that I lacked at earlier ages (and wish I had had!)  I'm less afraid of things, more secure in myself, and find my horizons are much broader than they were previously.  The world simply is, and people simply are.  It is the way of things.  I'm tired of the us/them binary of so much public discourse, of the constant scare-mongering and catastrophizing.  We are all people just struggling through life.  Our most important job is to love one another.

For all that I am an historian and love to think about the past, I have always been someone thinking four steps ahead, often to my own detriment.  My recent reading of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age has given me some pause about that tendency.  It is a peculiarly modern thing to do--to push ahead with no regard for the present.  I suppose it is of a piece with trying to be anything other than what we actually are.  The conclusion I keep coming to is that we cannot go back.  

Taylor observes that attempts to recreate the past in the present are doomed to failure because they take something that developed organically and creatively and mechanize it, stealing the life from it (747).  We can never go back to a unified societal vision because once you introduce choice into a system, the mere presence of an option fragilizes those choices.  We are all Cartesian Protestants now.  

At the same time, however, we can anchor our place in the world by reenacting the patterns of life passed on to our by our ancestors.  These reenactments bring both the people who have gone before us and the patterns they enacted closer to us, gathering time, as it were (719).  The idea of gathered time (a pre-modern concept) is very interesting to me, as it tracks with my theory of Orthodox time and the idea of God existing in an Eternal NOW.  To this theory I would add the image of the world's time as gathered in the way that fabric is gathered.  Dips and folds bring the pieces closer together, but also fan out below to allow movement.  The gathering can be relaxed or tightened, depending on the need.  

Taylor goes on to note that our restless search for meaning and mythos is part of the human condition and that to try to subvert that restlessness will only set us back and ultimately cause more suffering.  To live in the discomfort is actually part of human flourishing (622). We must learn to hold the ambiguity of life within ourselves and understand that the tension will never be resolved, but that we can hold it lightly.  That meaning exists in the world beyond our minds and selves and is there to be found if we care to look for it.  

I suppose the back and forth of life is part of holding that tension within oneself.  I don't *really* want to go back to my early 20s, even if I could.  There is so much that has been hard won along the way.  In the meantime, I'll be listening to The Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers, Crash by Dave Matthews Band, and Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls whilst stomping around in my combat boots.  I'm sure I've still got a black ribbon choker around here somewhere...if you know, you know.

_________

Cited:

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2007.

Meditations on Life

My older three kids just returned from their Upper School retreat but they are tired, so the house is strangely quiet.  Ponchik had me and my husband all to herself for 2.5 days and that was a unique experience for everyone!  I thought she would talk our ears off (because she isn't called Talky Pants for nothing) but actually, she was pretty quiet.  And slow.  So, so, so slow.  She's pokey at the best of times, but without her siblings as a prod, everything took twice as long.

I'm hesitant to even write this, because it can be bad for me as a writer, but I'm circling something right now, creatively speaking.  I don't even know if it will become a story, or it is just some creative process I'm being asked to go through for some other reason.  But the process is harder than I thought it would be.  There are a lot of pieces that have shaken loose inside me and they are jumbling around and it is uncomfortable.  And I wasn't looking for it!  It just kind of fell into my lap unexpectedly this summer.  I was thinking maybe I only had two books in me.  And maybe I do, since I don't yet know what "this" is.  But synchronicity is something I don't like to ignore, so I'm sitting with it all and trying to make sense of what I'm circling around and why.  Which is a long roundabout way of saying nothing at all.

While this has nothing to do with the work above, I recently ran across this beautiful interview between Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper about grief, faith, and life.  It's not very long and I highly recommend it!

Geo Lace

Happy September!  The weather is delightful this week, and I'm happily wearing a sweater and tights today.  We had a week or two in August where I wore this sweater a bit too, but it seemed absurd to share it at that point!  

The kids are back in school and this fall is pretty busy with various activities and carpool schedules and such.  'Tis the season; with three kids in Upper School this year, I think this will be the rhythm of my life for the next few years.

But on to knitting.  I did way more knitting this summer than I usually do, not for any particular reason.  I wasn't sewing much at all (mostly thrifting these days) and I like to have busy hands, so it was nice to have some projects to work on.  I finished three sweaters, of which this was the last, but it is also the lightest in weight, so it is perfect for early fall.

I'm enjoying working with fingering weight. I found it so intimidating when I got back into knitting a few years ago, and stuck mostly to worsted or bulky weights, but now I find I prefer the lighter weight and also it is a versatile weight in my wardrobe in the way that the worsted or heavier weight ones aren't.

Not much to say about this one that I didn't write in my Ravelry notes, so I'll leave it there.

Reading Corner: Swamp Edition

Welp, we are in the home stretch of the summer, and I'm ready for school to start (although our fall activity schedule is a little more chaotic than I would like because Birdie was really set on being in the fall play at school and the boys are running cross country.  Oy).  Honestly, the summer has been okay.  The nasty hot/humid weather really only started last week; there were quite a few days this summer where I had windows open a lot of the day--that never happens!  Although I will say it has been a doozy since last week.  I guess the weather was saving it all until now.  

My kids and husband went to overnight church camp the first week in August and I had seven glorious days all to myself.  I read, watched a bunch of independent films, wrote a bit, and generally kept my own schedule for the first time in years.  It was a bit of a hard reentry when they returned--why do they need feeding so often?--but we'll get there again, I guess.  One possibly fruitful bit of that week was that I think I'm working my way around a writing project, although I'm not sure it will be anything yet.  Considering I thought perhaps I only had two books in me, it is nice to have the sense that there might be more to explore.  But we'll see.  It might fizzle once I figure out what it is I'm working with.  I've had enough false starts since finishing All This Without You to be cautious.

I said in my last post I've been reading a lot this year, and decided it might be time to write about some of it.  So, on to the reading stack!  

From the top down: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman; The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilcrist; Feminism Against Progress by Mary Harrington; The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer; Clanlands Almanac by Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish (not pictured: Way Points by Sam Heughan); Lost in Wonder by Esther DeWaal; The Soviet Century by Karl Schlögel; Dominion by Tom Holland; Winters in the World by Eleanor Parker; The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous by Joseph Henrich; (not pictured) Solovyov and Larionov by Eugene Vodolazkin

There was also a trio of Cold War spy histories by Ben Macintyre on my Kindle; each book read like a novel and was thoroughly enjoyable.  Agent Sonya reminded me a lot of the film Red Joan; both stories cover similar histories over a similar time period, so that shouldn't have surprised me.  I started a fourth one, In the Enemy's House by Howard Blum but haven't been as gripped by it, even through their narrative styles are similar.  I tried to read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (my second attempt!) but gave it up as a bad job about half way through.  I was bored out of my skull and the author was only at 1936!  I just couldn't see reading another 200 pages.  

Unrelated, but we got a lot of raspberries from my garden this year!

The Trueman, McGilcrist, Henrich, and Harrington books all covered similar ground from different perspectives, although I would say the Henrich book really bogged down on specialist material in a lot of places. The book could have been trimmed considerably for a general audience. McGilcrist is a paradigm shifter, and he recently published the two-volume follow up that is twice the length of the first.  My husband is reading that one now but I'm not sure I'm going to tackle it.  The first one was very meaty and good, but I'm not sure how much more I'd get out of the other two volumes.  We'll see.  There are lots of interviews with McGilcrist on his work on YouTube, so if you don't have time for an 800 page book, you can get the Cliffs Notes version there.  

I gave a lecture on Soviet communism to the seniors at my kids' school during the last week of school in June and revisited Yuri Slezkine to prepare for it, so between that and the nearly 900 page Schlögel, it's felt like a whole lotta USSR here the last few months.  I need to set that aside for a while, even if there is a great new Gary Saul Morson book that my husband loved.  It will still be there when I'm ready to tackle it. Tom Holland's Persian Fire was a birthday gift last month so I'm looking forward to reading that one.  Dominion was a great read.  I highly recommend this interview with Paul Kingsnorth if you are interested in the topic.  I read the book on the strength of that chat.

Boo wanted me to read Why We Drive aloud for his night time story this month, so it has been fun to revisit that book.  Matthew B. Crawford is such an amazing thinker and writer and a keen observer of the times we live in.  (He has a Substack now, although I don't have time to read much of it!) I've realized in the past months that I could spend all my time reading excellent Substack authors, but it doesn't feel like a good use of brain space or time.  I think differently through physical books and don't retain information as well when I read on a screen, so it is better for me to be mostly analog.  What writing I've done this month has been long hand as I find that a better way to start the process.

There were a few forgettable novels along the way as well as some fiction re-reads, but it has been a good reading season.  I've got some books on hold at the library that should keep me for the next bit.

Pentecost and the Garden

Hurtling toward the end of the school year, and while summer is never my favorite, I think it will be good to have a break.  Pentecost yesterday, and a nice day overall.  

I gave a lecture on Marxism and the Soviets to the 10-12th graders this morning and had a blast throwing apocalyptic millenarianism at them. I just re-read that original post and wished I had referenced it while writing the lecture since it was harder to organize my thoughts several years after reading the original book.  Obviously, I incorporated a lot of other material in my lecture, including several books I read this year, but still.  Hopefully I can do it again (even better) next year!

Strawberries are producing--have gotten quite a few already. The one upside to the construction behind our house is that it seems to be keeping the birds away from the garden, at least for the moment. The raspberry canes are absolutely loaded with immature berries, so we should get quite a crop in a few weeks! Blueberry bush has many green berries too, a vast improvement on last year's four. The dwarf mulberry will probably fruit next year (fingers crossed!)

I'm mostly focused on the berries this year since I don't know how the construction will ultimately affect the light situation on the patio, so I put in only one cucumber plant and a bunch of flowers.  

My hydrangea looks good this year!  It was a little peaky all last summer, but it looks lush and vibrant this year.  

The kids were hoping for another prodigious watermelon vine, but I just don't have room this year with how big the two raspberry bushes are.  

A few weeks ago, I moved the fig tree into the middle of the garden since it wasn't leafing out properly and it seems happier now.  Nothing much else to report about; still knitting away on various things, reading a LOT (I should do a separate post on that soon), trying to think about the rhythms of summer.

Fig is in the big green pot in the center of the picture.

Cypress Laneus in the Pascal Season

Christ is Risen!  Христос Воскресе!  We are nearly to mid-Pentecost (this Wednesday) and our weather is moving into more late spring temperatures.  I was still wearing sweaters all day last week, but it looks like this might be the last gasp of sweater weather, so I thought I better get my newly finished Laneus photographed!  

This was an extremely fast and enjoyable knit.  The pattern is Laneus and is by Teti Lutsak, the same person who wrote the Cinnamomum pattern.  I'm totally enjoying her stuff and love the finished fit.  These are the first yoked sweaters I've made that fit me very well through the shoulders and underarms and don't want to stretch out at the neckline.  My Not A Bláithín sweater is a good fit overall with a good neckline, but the yoke is just a smidge too long so it wants to fold up the excess all the time.  I still wear it a lot, though and highly recommend the yarn, as it wears extremely well.  

The yarn is from my previous Cypress pullover, as I frogged the thing in the fall after being totally annoyed with the fit.  I ended up being one ball short, so had to reorder to finish the hems and cuffs, but for once the different Quince dyelots didn't bite me and it looks pretty seamless.  My only complaint about Chicakdee is that it isn't the best wearing yarn; I had to shave the fuzz off even before I wore it because the original sweater had pilled.  At the price point, I wish it was sturdier, but I'm finding a few other options that seem more robust but still feel nice to wear.

As is probably obvious, I'm into textured work right now.  There was quite a bit of cabling on this yoke and the cuffs and hem, but honestly, it wasn't that bad.  Even though I really enjoy the process of color work, I'm finding I don't wear colorwork sweaters as much as my plain ones.  My next two planned sweaters are the Sarkle and Geo Lace (with a different body shape).  I have the yarn already for both but am working on some smaller accessories right now just for a change of pace.  

I'm not sewing at all right now, except to alter stuff I already have, but I'm probably going to get back to jewelry making soon.  I played around with some designs a week or two ago and it was fun again.  May is always so busy, I try not to make many plans for myself.

Cinnamomum at the end of Lent

С праздником!  It's Palm Sunday for us today, and it feels we are already in the full swing of Holy Week since Annunciation fell on Friday and we've had services every day since Wednesday (including twice on Friday and Saturday!)  We all wore our green today for the feast and it was a lovely service.  I've been sick on and off for most of Lent, including a truly nasty sinus infection that was like having glue in my face for 12 days.  I ended up having to do a course of antibiotics to kick it.  I have another mild cold right now, but I'm hoping I can muscle through the rest of this week and still have enough voice to sing the Pascha service.  Pray for us!

I have a finished object to show today--my Cinnamomum is finished!  I finished it just before the end of March, but it warmed up a bit and I thought I wouldn't get to wear it this season, but it got cold again the past few days, so I happily wore it yesterday for Lazarus Saturday.  

This sweater was a thoroughly enjoyable knit. The provisional cast-on in the middle meant that the fun and engaging part of the yoke was first, but the hem chart provided some interest after working the body down from the yoke. I made the fourth size (43") because I wanted some ease, and I'm very happy with the fit.  I'm still working out the sweet spot on fit in yoked sweaters.

I added the hem chart (with a slight mod) to the sleeves because I liked the symmetry and the stitch count worked out well. I added more stitches to the sleeve underarm cast on (18, I think) and decreased every 8 rows 13 times to 48 stitches, which gave me the right number of stitches for the hem chart on the cuff.  

I did end up knitting one of the sleeves twice, as I forgot to size up a needle and the sleeve came out too tight.  (Pro tip: when knitting small circumferences, tension tends to get tighter, so go up!)  I also had to frog the yoke once as I got a third of the way in and realized my stitches had gotten twisted somehow and I couldn't fix it without starting over.  (Blerg!)

Thankfully it was on an enjoyable part of the sweater.  I also frogged the top part of the yoke once as I forgot to twist the rib stitches and it bugged me enough to tink back and fix it.  Looks like this year is the year of "never say never," since I am finding cabling interesting and engaging now--maybe I'll do a complicated gansey or fisherman's style at some point!  I still enjoy charted lace and stranded knitting, so it is nice to have an array of techniques to move amongst.

I liked this designer's work so much, I immediately cast on another of her patterns, the Laneus pullover, using the yarn from my frogged Cypress sweater.  It too is a thoroughly enjoyable knit.  I like her Javelin pattern too (and bought it!) but I'm finding DK weight sweaters work better for me overall right now and that one is written for worsted.  Although maybe I can fudge the gauge somehow and make it DK weight anyway?  

That said, I want to make a light weight sweater for this time of year (and the corresponding shoulder season in the fall) and I have this beautiful heathered lilac colored yarn that I want to use for it.  It is the same line as my Lightweight Pullover from earlier this winter and I've gotten a ton of wear out of it.  My plan is to cast on the Geo Lace pullover, but I had to remath most of the pattern because the yoke and body stitch counts didn't match--why?!?  I buy patterns so I don't have to math them.  My plan is to do a provisional cast on and knit the yoke first like with this sweater since I like how it allowed me to adjust the yoke depth before doing the body.  The yoke as written seems a little on the shallow side to me; a provisional cast on means I don't have to tink back the whole yoke to fix it in the middle.

And for those of you whose eyes glazed over at all the technical knitting stuff, whew, I'm finished! I'm not sewing much at all right now; mostly just altering stuff I already have to fit better. 

My garden is full of spring flowers. The daffodils and crocuses and are nearly done, but the tulips and grape hyacinth are just flowering now.  The raspberries are leafing out nicely and it looks like the blueberry bush is getting some flowers.  The dwarf mulberry probably won't fruit this year, but I'll be happy if it leafs out nicely.  The strawberries and hydrangea weathered the winter pretty well.  I bought some pansies at the hardware store and put them into some of the big pots.  The building behind us (the brick wall you see in the photos) is undergoing a major renovation, including adding a third story, so I'm not sure how much that will affect our light situation here.  The new story is set back from the roof line a bit, so it may not impact us much.  There is also a new condo unit going up next to it, but it isn't supposed to be any taller than the other houses around us, so hopefully that won't impact our light either.  I'm making no firm planting plans at the moment.  Maybe some lettuces soon.

Onward into Holy Week!