Hurricane Amanara

Sometimes you are sitting alone at home, and you know that if your fingers don’t start working on something, all of the news of yet-another impending hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast will make you go absolutely insane.

So, you pull out the single prettiest skein of yarn that you have. The one that is so pretty that you are terrified to make something with it, because if it doesn’t turn out absolutely spectacular, you have utterly wasted all of that yarn’s potential. In this case, here we have Malabrigo Rios, the stuff of so many knitters’ color-saturated dreams. It’s an absolutely stunning worsted weight merino wool, with a great bouncy texture that’s perfect for cables and twisted stitches, pictured here in color 872 – Purpuras (which just means ‘purples’ in Spanish, but my medical brain can’t stop thinking about bruises and ecchymosis when I see that word).

Then, you start thinking, what if this is the moment to finally kill two birds with one stone? To use this gorgeous intimidating skein to make yourself a beret? The hat shape that you are convinced will be absolutely terrible on your weird round face with your weird hairline, but that you can’t help but stare longingly at when you see beautiful people wearing them?

Yes, it was time to face my fears and just go ahead and make myself a truly slouchy beret. And, boy howdy, I picked the most beautiful pattern out there.

This cathedral rose window loveliness is courtesy of Gorro Amanara by Valeria Garcia, and it is just a master class in twisted single-stitch cables.

Some fun details: it has 13 pattern repeats (unusual! spooky!), every single knit stitch is twisted (hooray for glorious stitch definition!), and it comes in two different sizes, so if you don’t need all of this slouch, you can make a watch-style cap with the same pattern and not have to do any crazy extra math.

However, I was all about the slouch this time, so after knitting up the slouchy-style option, I blocked it in the traditional beret/tam o’shanter style by shoving a large dinner plate inside of it after wool-washing it.

It sounds really silly (and sorry for how horrendous the color is in those blocking pictures), but it really is the only way to ensure a wide circular top without stretching out the band, giving you that perfect slouchy shape.

Plus, after blocking, the Rios relaxes into this wonderful drape, while still retaining all of those twisted stitches popped out against the background.

I’m particularly enamored of how all of the spokes come together in the center shaping.

And, as it turns out, I delightfully discovered that I look pretty darn cute in a beret?

Yes, I do believe so.

Hopefully, things will calm down in the Gulf, and I won’t have to stress-knit myself another masterpiece over the weekend again. But, if I do, I won’t be shy of slouchy hats again. My face is cute no matter what.

Mending, Again

Sometimes, at the end of the day, you end up with every woolen or knitted item that you own wrapped in plastic and crammed into the bottom of your freezer.

If you are not a knitter or fiber enthusiast, you might not have registered the shock and yelps of fear that came from all around you on this revelation, because knitters know what the freezer means. It means that you’ve got yourself some moth problems.

Bum bum buuuuuuuuummmm. The last time that I had to do some mending, near the end of last year, I was all excited to learn a new technique and figure out just how darning eggs were supposed to work. I had maybe three socks to fix, and I was oh-so-naive. I figured that maybe the reason why we had holes in our socks was because we were always yanking on them in the same place to pull them up.

I was so stupid.

This time? I just had a murderous rage in my heart for those goddamn asshole moths that had somehow found themselves into my house.

When I was going through things to give to Goodwill a few weeks ago, I found a gorgeous blanket that I had made several years ago, the Hemlock Ring Blanket by Jared Flood, sitting and disintegrating in its basket in my living room, full of moth eggs and larvae and all of my destroyed hopes and dreams.

A moment of silence, please, for my Hemlock Ring Blanket, taken from us far too soon. You were so pretty, and those bastard moths should go to hell.

Anyway, when I discovered that mess, I ran around the house, trying to figure out how to throw away the moth-ridden mess without contaminating my other precious knits. Then it occurred to me…it’s summertime. When’s the last time I even looked at our stored knits? Noooooooooooo

So many sock holes. Like so many that I seriously stopped taking pictures of them when I was fixing them because it was just getting depressing.

So, Dan and I went through each knitted piece, shoved everything that was safe and non-moth-bastard-infested into the freezer, and I got to work fixing our poor socks. We really lucked out in that our socks were the only thing that the moths seemed to be interested in, because if I would have had to try to mend a lace shawl or cabled hat, I probably would have just thrown it all in the garbage and cried.

But no.

We don’t do that here.

We are strong and determined knitters.  We shove a darning egg in there and get going.

Even if we don’t have the right yarn anymore, we stride forward confidently.

Because why should repairs be invisible?

Repairs show the world that we love something enough to maintain it, to spend time and care on it rather than thinking that its usefulness is gone.

Because a hole is just an injury, not the death sentence that modern clothing would have you believe.

Mending is a chance to restore the things you love, and to make them stronger.

This pair of socks that I made for Dan a few years ago were definitely the hardest hit of the bunch.

Between the pair, there were a total of eleven holes to repair.

ELEVEN. In the toes, in the arch, on the heel, in the cables…they are nearly now more mend than knitting, but I will continue to love them just the same.

After all of the repairs were done, I think 21 in all (I KNOW.), those socks were all bundled up and sent to their sentence in the freezer. Everything is going to chill out in there (ha!) for about a week, get a good soak in some wool wash, and then find their new homes in some cedar-lined moth-proofed air-tight boxes where those stupid fucking moths can’t get them. Meanwhile, I’ll be vacuuming my home obsessively and attempting to commit mass-moth-murder whenever I can.

It’s only fitting that all of this mending should come up when my amazing friend Carla was getting ready to teach a series of workshops on wardrobe rejuvenation and visible mending techniques. (Go check her stuff out at www.carlaesthetics.com!) She hosted a practice session so that she could make sure that everything was set up perfectly for her upcoming classes, and I got to learn yet another new mending technique.

I have worn out the thighs on every single pair of jeans I have ever had, and I have never once repaired them. I feel terrible about this now, knowing how many pairs I could have saved from a landfill and how much money I could have saved. This most recent pair I have had for a few years, and they recently succumbed to the power of my thighs.

In one of Carla’s workshops, she teaches the basics of Sashiko-style mending, a Japanese mending style that focuses on visible mends in indigo-dyed fabric with thick white thread and geometric designs. For my jeans, I used some old cotton-poly blend 4-ply crochet cord that I had found in my grandmother’s sewing things. I have like 6 giant cones of it, so I was happy to finally get to try it on something. Carla recommended practicing on some scrap fabric, just to get an idea of the running stitches and the spacing.

I laid out my backing fabric, some quilting cotton I’ve had forever (which dedicated readers might recognize from the little purse I made forever ago and still occasionally use to hold my lunch for work), on the inside of the tear and then got to work.

And then I promptly misjudged the size of my diamond and where the center would hit. Oh well.

It looks really cute anyway.

So now, even though I don’t love my jeans in the same way that I feel deep love for handknit socks, I can still treat them with the same respect.

Fixing their wounds rather than treating them as disposable.

I know that it’s very silly to get so dramatic about the whole thing, but the process speaks to me in a way that simply making things does not. Socks are tools. They are meant to be used, and it is in the using that you show your love and appreciation. If they get some bumps and bruises along the way, or get attacked by malevolent demon insects, you feel better knowing that you can save them. Or at least try.