Really awesome lace knitting. Howzawhat now?

 Rambly thought time! Reviews to come later, but this is something I've wanted to write for a LONG time now.

So a couple people pointed out that I said something really obscure the other day. Not the part about where fairy legends come from, but the other things I said come from Scotland--golf, great whiskey (...look. My spelling sucks, okay? Half the time I can't even keep numbers straight, and you expect me to remember that I-before-E shit?) and really awesome lace knitting.

My primary hobby, after art and writing, is lace knitting. Specifically, my undying quest to knit a wedding ring shawl. I do not talk about this much, because a fundamental part of knitting is how freaking boring it is to non-knitters. I also spin, which is even more boring to most people. And that's a crying shame, because the history of yarn is EVERYBODY'S history. If you want to truly understand a culture, don't start by studying its public face. Study how spinning tech developed. Study its yarn.

But if everybody spins, not everybody does lace. As far as I know, there are five places where lace is a part of the culture: the Faroes isles (...do not make me spell that right. Please.) the Ukraine, Estonia, Orenburg Russia and the Unst region of the Shetland isles. The latter two are the only ones with a history of making four-foot-by-four foot shawls (or bigger!) that you can pull through a wedding ring.

The history of Russian lace is incredible. You cannot read about it without also reading about the Soviet revolution. Lenin made the shawls a national treasure, but because the same men and women doing the knitting were frequently the kulaks, Stalin immediately began killing them. There is a story of a man who won awards for his work, who was killed because he "couldn't conform". The text of that story strongly implied the man was gay.

Shetland lace doesn't have the same dramatic history, but it does have many of the same patterns. This is incredibly weird to me, because Shetland is a little clump of rock sitting off the end of Scotland, and Orenburg is a city in the middle of the mountains between Russia and Afganistan. The only connection between the two locations during the era when this art-form was developing were the Vikings. And yet many of the patterns are nearly identical--the Orenburg "Strawberry" pattern and the Scottish "Cat's paw" is a good example. Another interesting thing is how the culture of the area "flavors" the knitting. Orenburg knitting has a very Arabic feel to it, whereas Shetland lace is Shetland lace.

FYI, this is shetland lace:

And this is Orenburg lace:

...it's a really shitty old picture and I gave this shawl away already

One final tidbit before I end this thread of ultra bordom: I also spin, because you can't find laceweight yarn fine enough for wedding ring shawls without epic-level google-fu and a credit card worth its weight in gold. And in order to produce yarn fast enough to get to knit this lifetime (...you learn on drop spindles. You can't produce on them) I had to buy a wheel. Wheels, however, are expensive and few of them are actually good for spinning lace weight yarn. Eventually, I settled on a charkha. Which I had to buy from India.

It is my favorite thing in the whole world. And in researching the history of this, I've come to be rather in awe of the tool that I get to own. I came across this site the other day, and if you read abosolutely nothing else today, READ THAT LINK. But just in case you decide not to, here are three quotes from somebody pretty surprising. And I'll save that surprise for the end:

“The message of the spinning wheel is much wider than its circumference. Its message is one of simplicity, service of mankind, living so as not to hurt others, creating an indissoluble bond between the rich and the poor, capital and labour, the prince and the peasant. That larger message is naturally for all.”

"Art to be art must soothe.” He said further that the yarn we spin is “capable of mending the broken warp and woof of our life.”

“A plea for the spinning wheel is a plea for recognising the dignity of labour. I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption."

Mahatma Gandhi said that. And I know I probably have the wrong context here, and it's probably wrong as fuck for a white woman to quote Gandhi, but you know what? Fuck it. IMHO the west's biggest problem is that we have too much and we don't have to work. Knitting is that thing old ladies do, spindles are what knocked out Sleeping Beauty, and a spinning wheel is a metaphor for doing nothing. The key to a healthy life without the sickness of hubris is Worship and Work--both are a reminder that we are small, frail, faliable humans and none of us, not one of us, is better or worse than any other. Yes. We do need to change. If there's one thing we privelaged white folk need to re-learn, it's humility. And the old, devalued work--spinning, weaving, sewing--might just be the teacher we need.

I'm not saying the world would necessarily be better if everybody got around a big table and played with yarn for a few hours, but it would certainly be a lot softer. And I don't know about you, but there's a lot of broken warp and woof in my life that I definitely need to fix.

Block Party!

Okay, so yesterday I mentioned that I finished my shawl, and that I needed to block it. And I have, it's done, and all I can say is OMG pins. God save us all from PINS.

And I am now going to give you the full story of CW's First Blocking Adventure.

The first thing you do when you block is decide that this is easy; you've done the hard part. You've knitted the garment. This, in book language, is like writing the first draft (aka "lace chart") editing it (knitting it) and then shipping it off to an agent according to all the submission guidelines. You think that the hard part is done. "All" that is left is the blocking.

I mean, Grandma used to do this. How hard can it be?

Serious lace knitters may want to break out the popcorn.

So first you gather your equiptment, which according to the internet are: Bedsheet, pins, sheet of plastic, pins, spray bottle, pins, wool wash or baby shampoo, pins, a place to do it, and while you're at it you might want to pick up another box of pins. You are (thank god) smart enough to know better than to do this in your little tiny trailer house because your bed is too small, you'll have to do this blocking thing on the  floor and whatever room you choose to do it in will be out of commission for the rest of the day. So when you go to Wal-mart to get items, you first stop at Maternal Unit's place of work and request the use of her king-sized bed for the day, because the king-sized bed should be more than enough room to block a shawl that is about four-and-a-half feet wide, unblocked.

If anyone reading this has ever blocked a piece of lace before, they are laughing at me.

Maternal unit gives Okay, so you go to walmart and buy one white cotton blanket, forgoing the pretty blue one only because you remember the words "color fast" in the internet instructions, one clear plastic shower curtain, one spritz bottle, one box of T-pins (40 count) and, instead of a second box of T-pins, about two hundred quilting pins. There is, of course, no way in hell you would EVER need that many pins, but hey, you might need to do this again and some of the pins might rust.

Pictured: shampoo, spritz bottle, small box of pins, large box of pins.

Not pictured: Sanity.

Like I said. Experianced lace knitters. Now laughing their ass off.

So you go home, strip bed of sheets, put down plastic sheet, put down cotton blanket, pin in place, and put lacy thing in sink for first washing.

And the learning begins.

Internet says to treat lace being washed very carefully. About five seconds after turning on the faucet I understood that "very carefully" means "treat as if any form of agitation will upset the capsule of radioactive nitro glycerine wrapped in the middle of the shawl". You might think this is an exaggeration. It is not. First, warm, wet wool + agitation=felt. Felt is not something you want to happen to your six-month project because this cannot be undone. Second, this six-month project is made out of relatively unstable handspun yarn that your mother usually refers to as "hair". And it has just absorbed about a gallon and a half of water that you cannot get back out. Because wringing? Agitation. Crumpling into ball and squeezing? Agitation. And the fiber? Gets very fragile when wet. So you now have a very fine lacy thing that is much more fragile now then when you put it in the sink, and is way, way, way heavier. 

So washing means fill sink with cold water. Submerge shawl. Spread baby shampoo over shawl and squeeze very, very gently (We're talking tomato-test squeeze) to get shampoo through everything. Drain sink, supporting shawl the entire time because you don't want fragile string getting sucked down the drain. Fill sink back up. Slosh shawl around carefully to get shampoo out. Drain sink. Realize there is still shampoo in shawl. Fill sink. Slosh. Drain. Realize there is still shampoo.  Repeat process until water is clean of suds, which is about three more fill-slosh-drain repeats than you want to preform.


Now you have to get heavy, wet, fragile shawl out of sink and to bed without breaking anything. You try pressing shawl against side of sink. You get about a cup full of water out. There is still a gallon or so in the shawl. Next best thing: lay towel out on floor, spread shawl on towel, roll it up and press on it. No wringing. We still cannot wring. Bodacious amounts of water will bleed through towel. Bring the whole thing, towel, shawl and all, to bed all rolled up like a wooly burrito. Lay on bed, unroll. breath sigh of releif because, hey, hard part's over, right?

Wet shawl about to be squished dry

Towel Burrito

Ha ha.

This shawl is a circle. And we want it to stay a circle, which means we have to pin it into a relatively round shape. Now, do any of you remember how hard it is to draw a perfectly round circle? Imagine having to draw that circle using six bazillion tiny dots. These dots being pins.

Logically, you'd think that the shawl, being a circle, would work kind of like a compass and you can use its natural diameter to trace the outline. This would be true, if washing it had not turned the shawl into elastic. You set the shawl on the bed, and because the first step is to pin the compass points, you grab one point of your pretty, pointy edging and pin it to the edge of the bed. You go to the other side, and start pulling. And keep pulling. And. Keep. Pulling. Until you find yourself holding about six inches of shawl that did not exist before you got it wet. Six inches that are much bigger than the king sized bed. Oh, well. Four more pins, and now you have the compass points pinned down, more or less where they ought to be.

Only you don't know about the "more or less" part. Yet.

Then you start pinning points in the middle. And then points in the middle of that. And then points in the middle of that, until you have touched the bottom of your forty-count T-pin pack and you are not nearly done pinning the points down. You realize that the pins, pins, pins internet list wasn't exaggerating at all, and your decision to buy a 200 pack instead of another 40 pack has probably just saved your bacon, if not your fingers.

 Not. exaggerating. At all.

And then you realize you've spent so much time pinning and are not even halfway done yet, the shawl is starting to dry out. So you spritz, and you keep pinning. You have one quarter all pinned up and you realize that the circle is looking more like well if you squint it kinda looks round. And that the line you're squinting at is made of about, oh, sixty pins (<---lowball estimate. Really low) that you now have to readjust. Spritz away, you've got another hundred and eighty pins to go.

 Mommy.

So to fast-forward through pins, pins, pins, bleeding, pins pins pins, you've decided that since you don't have to squint quite so hard to see the circle, you're done. You go sit in the living room because it will only take about an hour for the nice, light lacy thing to dry.

I mean, it's not like we've underestimated anything else, right?

Three hours later you realize that the "be careful about it drying out" and the guesstimates on drying times were made by people who live up north in the middle of the country. Not in Coastal South Texas, where the air has the same humidity and viscosity as a deep water sponge in an oceanic trench, and that all the panicked spritzing you did has probably extended drying time by a couple more hours. Which you will have to sit patiently through, because you promised you'd have it all cleaned up by the time your stepfather got home, and barring that, you'll need to stop him from throwing clothing on top of the pretty light lacy thing taking up most of his bed. And dear god in heaven, DON'T TOUCH THE PINS.

And then you go back and carefully, cautiously pull the first couple of pins out of the bed. Nothing explodes or unravels, you find no dropped stitches. You continue, growing more and more excited. When it's done you take it outside and take pictures of it, because you know what? All the work, all the sore hands and bleeding bits and the pins pins pins?

It is TOTALLY WORTH IT:

I rock. Just sayin'.

Joy!

Absolutely no one else will be impressed, but I've FINALLY completed my shawl.

This is a horrible picture, but I don't have a better option short of putting it down, and I don't want to put it down yet. It's off the needles. I made this. The only part of this I did not make is the actual wool fiber. I spun the yarn. I spun the yards and yards and yards of yarn this is made of. And then knitted it. And then made up the outer border when I decided the pattern was too small. And it's off the needles. It is no longer attached to the tiny pieces of plastic and bamboo (wooden circular needles FTW) that have sustained it through the last year or so. Off the needles. I need to mention this again. This moment is kind of how I imagine it would feel to have somebody tell you that they absolutely want to publish your book, because the damn thing is done. Well, done-ish. All the little sticky yarn bits are woven in and clipped off, and all that is left is blocking.

Ah. Blocking.

Have I mentioned lately that my house/trailer, while new and wonderful and not in the middle of a horribly big city, is really, really small?

Okay, lemme back up a bit. You know how when you wash a sweater, you need to lay it out on a towel so that when it dries, it still looks like a sweater? This is called "blocking". You set the shape and sometimes, size of a knitted piece of fabric by washing it carefully (DO. NOT. SCRUB. KNITTED. FIBER.) (EVER) (you get felt. Especially if it's a natural hair fiber like wool.) and then laying it out to dry. With a sweater the laying-out-to-dry part is not particularly difficult because the sweater washed is roughly the size you want the sweater to be dry.

Knitted lace has an added problem: it doesn't look like lace. Or rather, it looks like lace that has spent six months crumpled on the bottom of your closet. So when you block lace, you also have to stretch it. Also, you can make a large piece of lace even larger. You have to soak it in water, spread it out on a piece of absorbant pinable fabric that will stay in place, pin the knitting into place, and leave it alone to dry for several hours.

I have never blocked a piece of lace. My first shawl developed a hole in it before I had the room and bravery to risk getting it wet. This will be my first try. And according to research, my options for a large shawl are bed, floor, and floor with carpeting.

I have a small bed. And a cat who really likes the floor. Any attempts at blocking will take the room the blocking happens in out of comission until blocking is over. And I have NO IDEA Where this will happen.

But it will happen tomorrow! And I will report on it here! Because I have nowhere better to go.

(Yes. I totally finished it fifteen minutes ago. And I am tired. And my fingers hUUUUUUUUUrt. And I should be in bed. And I don't care.)

(also-also finished first draft of second novel, but that isn't all that important. nobody is ever going to read that.)

Ugh.

You know, it's been a while since I bought yarn from a store.

If I have to disembowel a center-pull skein of yarn three times to find the yarn end, you have pretty much defeated the purpose of winding yarn like this. Also, when I finally found the end, it was wrapped in such a way as to prove that the manufacturer had NO intention of anyone ever getting the damn thing out of the ball. 

That said, this is the only manufacturer of laceweight yarn I can find at the store. So when you buy it, I highly suggest picking up one of these:

No. This is not a Harry Potter Wand.

It's called a nostepinne. It's a manual ball winder that creates sane center-pull balls. I did not think of adding this to your shopping list because silly me, I thought a yarn maker would make a skein you didn't have to freaking gut to get to the start-end. Here is a youtube video on how to use one:

It can be a dowel or a stick or your fingers or a paper tube, but anything is better than having to work off of this:

Also, while we're on the subject of youtube ball-winding related videos?

Best. Winder. Ever.