Knitting for others

For once I’ve been knitting for other people and here are the results

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Knitters tend to be a generous bunch, spending much of their time making things for other people. Not me, though. I mostly knit for me. This is because I design and I need a model to design for – it just makes sense for that model to be me. Honest, it’s not just that I’m selfish. And to prove that point, recently I have been knitting for other people.

There are loads of gorgeous baby blankets I’d like to make – so can more of you start having babies please?

First, my niece. It’s her birthday this month and I wanted to give her something handmade. The Champs-Elysees wristwarmers were a pattern I found on Ravelry a while ago. At the time it was free from Knit on the Net. Unfortunately it’s not available any more. Knitted in Rowan’s Kidsilk Haze, these are pretty, feminine wristwarmers that are gorgeously fluffy and light. My niece is quite a girly girl so I think (hope!) they’ll be perfect for her.

I actually started making these quite a long time ago, but I managed to lose my print out of the lace chart. By this time the pattern was no longer on Knit on the Net, and I just couldn’t track down a copy. I emailed Knit on the Net, but didn’t get a reply. I thought I was going to have to give up, until I found the designer on Ravelry. She’s Laylock on the website and more of her designs can be seen on the site – check them out; they’re gorgeous. I sent her a message, not with much hope of getting a response. She did reply, though, and took the time to track down the chart and set it up so I could download it from her website. Now that’s customer service.

The finished Champs-Elysees wristwarmers.

I finished the wristwarmers last weekend while I was visiting my parents, so I could leave them with my mum to give to my niece on her birthday. They are quite lovely. This isn’t a pattern for beginners; the lace is really quite complicated and you really have to pay attention to what you’re doing. But the finished product is beautiful.

I’ve also been making baby things for a pregnant friend. First up was a blanket. I was looking for a crochet pattern because I wanted something was a bit ‘antique-y’ and I just think crochet looks more antique than knitting. I also don’t agree with gendering clothes, so there was to be none of this blue or pink business. Sticking with – my idea of – an antique theme, I wanted a sort of deep golden cream colour. Again, this just says antique to me; I don’t know why.

I found the ideal pattern on Ravelry and a lovely soft, machine-washable yarn from King Cole. For once I had no disasters making this and I really like the finished product. I had loads of yarn left over so also made a hat. Another free pattern from Ravelry, this was another nice and easy make.

Baby blanket and hat.

In my searching for the ideal crochet baby blanket pattern I found hundreds of gorgeous baby blankets I’d like to make. So can more of you start having babies please?

Musings: why fantasy got ‘gritty’

Inspired by reading Aeon’s Gate, some thoughts on traditional fantasy being stuck in a rut and why it had to change

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The book that started it all.

This isn’t a review. I don’t like to review books that are part of a series until I’ve read the whole set. I don’t think it’s fair to put my thoughts down before I’ve got the whole picture, as it were. So this more some initial thoughts on Sam Sykes’s book Tome of the Undergates, first in the Aeon’s Gate trilogy, and more general musings on the genre.

I’ve loved fantasy ever since first reading Raymond E Feist’s Magician when I was about 10. But it seems to me that traditionally fantasy has been rather, well, traditional. I don’t know if it’s something to do with the genre itself or if fantasy authors and readers are just resistant to change, but since Tolkien it seems that the genre has stuck with certain ways of doing things.

There tend to be three main races: humans, elves and dwarves. Of these only humans have any kind of diversity. Elves are always good, beautiful, sophisticated and forest dwelling. Dwarves live in caves, are bearded, industrious and axe wielding. Their evil counterparts are orcs (sometimes replaced by dark elves) and goblins, respectively. And these races are always evil. Only humans can be either, and even then it’s pretty uncomplicated. You’re either good through and through (think Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings) or thoroughly bad (Grima Wormtongue).

Fantasy was a boy stuck in his teenage years, where everything is black and white, girls are some terrifying ‘Other’ and any kind of diversity or ambiguity is scary

Magicians tend to be one of two types. Either old men (Gandalf) or youngsters whose bookish ways have left them weak. They would have been bullied by the bigger boys, all except one who befriended and championed him and grows up to be the hero warrior (Pug and Thomas in the aforementioned Magician, Raistlin and his brother Caramon in Dragonlance).

You’ll notice that I’ve only used the male pronoun. This is because women don’t feature much in traditional fantasy. They’re mothers, sisters or daughters. They might facilitate the hero, but they are never themselves the protagonist. In more than 1,000 pages, The Lord of the Rings has three female characters. Galadriel and Arwen pretty much do nothing. Eowyn is more interesting, but even she has to pretend to be a man in order to achieve anything.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. Fantasy was a boy stuck in his teenage years, where everything is black and white, girls are some terrifying ‘Other’ and any kind of diversity or ambiguity is scary. Things had to change – it was time fantasy grew up.

With his New Crobuzon books, the wonderful China Mieville just invented a whole new genre – a kind of steampunk urban fantasy. But there has also emerged a more realistic type of fantasy – something that turns the genre on its head. I credit George RR Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series as the initiator of this.

Shades of grey
Suddenly things weren’t quite so cut and dried. Good people did bad things or had bad things happen to them (who could forget Eddard Stark’s fate?), bad people didn’t necessarily get their comeuppance, women actually had a part to play. Characters could be morally ambiguous - they didn’t all choose a side and stick to it. And you really shouldn’t get too attached to any of the characters because you simply don’t know what’s going to happen to them.

As well as GRRM, writers of this brand of fantasy include Britain’s Joe Abercrombie and Americans Peter V Brett, Mark Lawrence and Brent Weeks.

This new, grittier fantasy turned the old tropes upside down and inside out. It’s also often really rather violent, leading to the use of the term ‘grimdark’. I think this was originally meant to be disparaging but proponents of the sub-genre have embraced it.

If I had to identify one thing I don't
like about these books it would be the
cover art. But I'm reading them
on a Kindle so that's not really important.

So back to the book that started all this musing: Sam Sykes’s Tome of the Undergates. I’m not sure if this is grimdark, but it has all the characteristics. Moral ambiguity; characters with complex reasons for behaving the way they do; violence, lots of violence in fact; it’s dark and gritty and full of things like murder, betrayal and bad things happening. It’s also great fun, has some wonderfully crude humour and some stunningly beautiful descriptions.

I downloaded the book because I follow Sam Sykes on Twitter. I think that if you follow an author and find them entertaining then the least you can do is buy one of their books. This does have its drawbacks. What if you like the author on Twitter but end up not liking the book? This happened to me with Mary Robinette Kowal. She’s lovely on Twitter but I just didn’t get on with her book, Shades of Milk and Honey. Luckily that didn’t happen here, and I really like this book. In fact since I started writing this rather long blog post I’ve finished both Tome of the Undergates and the second book and made a good start on the third and final installation, The Skybound Sea. I also bought the first book for my dad.

The problem is that I’ve started Twitter stalking Mr Sykes, sending him @replies like we’re friends, when clearly we’re not. He hasn’t blocked me or anything, so I guess it’s not that bad. But I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise, anyway. Also, if you’re on Twitter follow him, he’s @SamSykesSwears.

Work in progress: Jane, the deep V sweater

Where I’m at with my latest project and overcoming problems with decreasing, unintentional increasing and perfectionism

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My latest project is a replacement sweater for one that’s falling apart. Again. I really do wear my clothes to death. This one is a pink job with a deep V neck that I’m recreating, updating and hopefully improving.

So far the main challenge has been working out how to do the V neck. The idea is to layer a top underneath this one, either in a matching or contrasting colour depending on how I feel, so it’s important that there’s enough space to show off the top underneath, but at the same time the slope has to be nice and even. After a combination of maths and experimentation, I think I’ve got it sorted and the V is coming along very nicely.

The logical part of my brain isn’t very loud and nearly always gets drowned out by the louder, brasher perfectionist part of my brain

In fact I’m really enjoying knitting this as the frequent decreases and very deep V neck mean that the front piece is almost done. It hasn’t all been plain sailing, though. Just last week, 30 rows into the left-hand side of the deep V, I realised I had one too many stitches. I had done the right number of decreases. I definitely had the right number of stitches at the beginning. So where had that extra one come from?

The alpaca yarn I’m using, while gorgeously soft and mostly a joy to knit with, can be rather splitty, and that’s what had happened here. I’d split a stitch in two some 24 rows back. I could easily have incorporated an extra decrease to sort the mistake out, but my brain just doesn’t work like that. I had to pull it all back and start again.

I did something similar last night when I realised I’d decreased at rows 112 and 118 rather than 114 and 120. The logical part of my brain tells me that these things don’t matter, that these mistakes are easy to fix. But the logical part of my brain isn’t very loud and nearly always gets drowned out by the louder, brasher perfectionist part of my brain. That part tells me that I have to go back and make it right. So I do. And really I'm OK with that.

The front piece of the Jane deep V sweater is almost done.
Photo by Idoru Knits.

Book review: Larkswood

A mystery with intrigue – but ultimately did it satisfy?

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The synopsis of this book was really intriguing: dark secrets, families torn apart, a historical reach spanning generations. What’s not to like? The introductory chapter didn’t disappoint, either, setting up the mystery nicely.

The story begins with Louisa Hamilton and her coming out, along with her older sister. Louisa is then set for a season in London, which she really isn’t looking forward to. However, she becomes ill and is sent to Larkswood House, the family home to which her grandfather, whom she has never met, has only just recently returned.

As she recovers, Louisa begins to love Larkswood, her grandfather Edward and, more unfortunately, the hot gardener. She also discovers what appears to be a family secret and endeavours to investigate. Some 40 years ago, when Edward was a teenager living with his two beloved sisters and with absentee parents, disaster strikes the family, tearing it apart.

The two stories are told in parallel to each other; we don’t learn what the terrible secret is until near the end, but I found it easy to guess. That said, there were plenty of other twists along the way that I didn’t see coming. As a thriller this all works very well and I read the book in just a couple of days – the mystery is such that you really want to find out what happened.

I didn’t buy Edward’s acceptance – and tacit approval and encouragement – of Louisa’s relationship with the gardener

One of the things that often seems to suffer with thrillers, though, is characterisation, and this is the case here. The characters are all rather cliched and one dimensional. Edward is never more than the gruff, bluff grandpa. Louisa’s sister is the beautiful, shallow one interested only parties and securing a good marriage. Louisa herself is plain and bookish, intended no doubt to appeal to a rather bookish audience, or at least one that sees itself as such. Parallels between the two sets of sisters are clear but never examined.

I didn’t buy Edward’s acceptance – and tacit approval and encouragement – of Louisa’s relationship with the gardener. Their differences in station would have been enough for him to put his foot down and his own past would mean he would want to keep them apart. I can’t say much more without giving away the secret, but I found the ending unsatisfying. It was wrapped too easily for my liking.

When knitting and cycling collide

What happens when a knitter takes up cycling? Knitted cycling accessories, of course!

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It was bound to happen. I’ve been a knitting for some years now, and cycling is my new obsession, so it was inevitable that I’d find a way to combine the two.

A cyclist’s wardrobe consists mainly of lots and lots of lycra; knitted sweaters and the like aren’t really suitable. So it was to accessories I looked. Hats, headbands, neckwarmers, wristwarmers and so on. My first foray into knitted accessories was a neckwarmer or buff (I’m not entirely sure what to call it).

Now I just need something to keep my head and ears toasty …

The buff is a simple tube, knitted in the round, in a 2x2 rib for stretchiness in Rico Essentials DK merino in a chocolate brown colour. I crocheted a shell border onto each end for a bit of interest. Same yarn, this time in cream.

This is a very quick and easy knit, great for beginners, and the border isn’t necessary for those who don’t crochet. It’s long enough to sit on my collar bones and reach up to just under my nose. My helmet clips on over it, underneath my chin. So it creates a nice cover-up around my neck over the collar of my jacket.

The cycling buff/neckwarmer in action.
Photo by Idoru Knits.

Due to the quite amazing mildness that has characterised this winter I’ve only worn the buff a couple of times, but it really does work, keeping my neck and the lower part of my face nice and warm. Now I just need something to keep my head and ears toasty …

So I’ve started making a headband. I’ve got some 4-ply alpaca left over from my first-ever design project. I could make a hat, but I think a headband will be more useful on the bike, fitting nicely underneath my helmet. Again, it’s a 2x2 rib and I’m going to make it quite wide so that it covers my ears completely.

The problem is that the headband is dark blue and the buff is brown, and clearly brown and blue don’t go together. Luckily I’ve got some Rico Essentials DK merino in a light blue.

Knitting a cycling headband. Photo by Idoru Knits.

The Comme Ca top redux

My latest finished object: what I think and what I’d do differently

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So the Comme Ca top is finally finished, seaming dilemmas and sleeve difficulties and all. I’ve worn it a few times already and I’m actually really pleased with the result. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t change things if I did it again.

The verdict
I like it. The fit is great and it’s a good replacement for the original top. In fact I think it looks better than the original. It’s got more structure so is more fitted. The deep ribbed hem clings nicely to my waist and there’s plenty of room to wear a top underneath.

I had to teach myself several new techniques to complete this sweater: seaming three pieces of material; making the crossover; creating cap sleeves; inventing the single line of white on the sleeves and neckline. These are all skills I can apply to future designs and which will no doubt improve my knitting.

I love you, now change
To be honest there’s not an awful lot I would do differently. When I was sewing it up I did think it might have been better in a 4 ply, as the seams would be less bulky. But now that it’s done it doesn’t actually look that bulky. I still think it would work well in a 4 ply though.

I also think I should have put in more decreases on the crossovers, creating a more obtuse angle. This would have opened up the front, meaning that more of whatever top I happen to be wearing underneath would be on show. But this is a minor point, really, and overall I’m happy with the way the piece has turned out.

Comparing the original top (left) and my remake (right). I honestly do prefer mine. Photo by Idoru Knits.

Book review: Shades of Milk and Honey

This Austen/magic mash-up didn’t prove spellbinding for me

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The problem with following authors on Twitter is that when you don’t like their books you feel bad. I do, anyway, especially when said author seems to be so nice.

I really didn’t get on with Mary Robinette Kowal’s Shades of Milk and Honey. Jane Austen-esque, it was essentially Sense and Sensibility with magic, or glamour as it’s called in the book. I didn’t warm to the main character, Jane, at all. Mostly I just thought she needed to get over herself and grow a backbone. Her younger sister Melody was just plain annoying.

While the passages on glamour were often beautiful, the story itself was completely predictable. In some ways it was both too similar to Jane Austen and yet not similar enough. It was so alike that I couldn’t help but compare it, unfavourably, to the original. Had it simply followed the story of Sense and Sensibility, more like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (the story of P&P with added zombie fun), I might have been able to let the story wash over me and just enjoyed the addition of magic.

Modern-day menace
I found some of the language jarring. Depression instead of melancholia, for example. The former was in use in the 19th century, but the latter was far more common, especially among laypeople. And using gift as a verb is just plain wrong (as in a synonym for given, rather than talented).

I understand that Kowal did a lot of research to ensure the historical accuracy of the series so it’s likely that she had good reason for using the language she did; unfortunately I don’t know what those reasons might be so I can only judge as I find.

Melody was just plain annoying

It was also really very obvious what was going to happen – who would turn out to be the rotter, who the good guy behind the taciturn exterior. And it was about as subtle as a punch to the face. I got it from the very first page that Jane was plain and Melody beautiful. It didn’t need to be repeated every couple of paragraphs.

It’s a shame, because I really wanted to like this book, but I just didn’t warm to it. I won’t be reading any of the others in the series.