Tam tips

   Knitting a tam is a great way to test out Fair Isle color combinations and also results in something nice to keep your head warm. I've knit several tams of my own design and am always pleasantly surprised with how the crown patterns work out. The crowns have become my favorite part, especially since they go faster and faster as you decrease towards the middle.

   Basically a tam starts with a band that fits snugly around your head. I like to knit it in corrugated ribbing. This is done by using two colors: alternating two knit stitches in one color and two purl stitches of another. It's especially fun to change colors on the purled stitches to create wonderful shaded effects. Here's a close up of corrugated ribbing on a vest and on a tam.

Warning: this kind of ribbing is not stretchy so you need to get the number of stitches pretty accurately. If you don't want to bother, a one color ribbed band is fine too. After the band, one increases rapidly, knits straight for a while, and then decreases in wedge shapes to come to the center. The higher mathematics of planning a tam can be found in Knitted Tams by Mary Rowe. (This book is now out of print, but check your local library.) Or you can take any basic tam pattern and plug in your own colors or pattern. The thing I like about planning my own tam is that I don't have to match someone else's gauge. I'm lazy that way.

    The completed tam will look like an amorphous blob until you block it. Then it will magically transform into a wonderful circular mandala for your head. I blocked older tams on an 11"/28 cm diameter dinner plate. I wanted my most recent tam to be slightly larger and chose 12"/30.5 cm as my diameter. Not having a plate of that size and not wanting to get into a difficult woodworking project, I cut a circle out of 3/8" thick Foam Core. (That's about 1 cm.) This very rigid yet light board used by artists, is foam bonded between two sheets of thick paper. (You could use thicker board, but thinner board might bend as the tam is stretched over it.) I traced the circle around a frying pan and cut it out freehand with a utility knife. It doesn't have to be perfect since tams, like all knitted items, are forgiving. I slipped the circular form into a garbage bag so that it wouldn't absorb water. Next I washed my tam and blotted it dry with a towel and then stretched it over the form.  A tam knit of Shetland 2 ply jumper yarn is quite thin and dries quickly.  In the near dessert conditions of a Midwestern house in winter, mine was dry in about 5 hours. To speed drying, I placed the form and tam on a glass so air could circulate around it.

   Trying on my tam, I found it looked too large and floppy. One can get a tam to be slightly smaller by reblocking it, so I cut a smaller blocking circle. This time I traced an 11" dinner plate and made a series of marks 1/4" out to result in an 11.5"/29 cm form. Then I connected those marks and cut along that line. I rewashed my hat and reblocked it. This time it came out just the way I wanted it.

From the knitting archives: an old friend

  My very first stranded sweater is still one of my favorites.

In the early 80s (!!) I decided to knit myself a Norwegian sweater. There was a local yarn store called the Yarn Stua that specialized in Norwegian yarn. I had always loved my father's dark blue and white sweater from Norway. From what I understood, women's sweaters were traditionally mostly white or a light color and a dark navy sweater was for men, but I don't live in Norway and I loved the color so that's what I bought. I got a big bag of yarn and an informative and now out-of-print Dover book from 1974 called How to Knit Your Own Norwegian Sweaters. Even at the time, some of the photos looked dated. It was the hair. It's always the hair, isn't it? However, the sweaters have a classic look that has stood the test of time well—especially compared to many sweaters of the 80s.

   I cast on and knit diligently. I was used to worsted weight yarn and it seemed to go very slowly on those 2.5mm/#1 needles but I found the developing pattern kept me interested in a way that knitting in monochrome didn't. It was the beginning of a lot of stranded knitting.  I had never knit a sweater in the round before and this was my first sweater with a steek. A knitting friend had to come over and help keep me calm when I cut the steek. I survived to cut many another steek.

  What I love best about this sweater now is the wonderful sheen it has developed by being worn and worn. I had to replace the cuffs once but otherwise it soldiers on; the elbows don't even look dangerously thin. I don't wear it as much these days because I have so many sweaters, but it holds a special place in my heart for setting me on the road to many adventures with stranded knitting.

The Knitty-gritty: Knit in Peer Gynt by Sandnes Garn, a DK weight yarn from Norway. It has now become easier in my area to find Dalegarn Heilo, an equivalent weight yarn. 

Favorite Fair Isle tips

  Fair Isle and stranded knitting are among my favorite ways of playing with colors.  Sadly, one can spend hours and hours knitting with colors that look glorious next to each other in the ball just to end up with disappointing results in knit form. I don't like knitting ugly things or garments that don't fit, and agree that swatching is a good idea before launching into a major project. However, while some people really love swatching, I prefer getting onto the real knitting as soon as possible. There are a couple of quick tricks I use to eliminate colors that won't work  before I pick up my needles. One way of checking colors is to wrap two colors together on a ruler or card.

You can wrap in stripes that are one to three yarns wide. This lets you learn about how the colors work when seen in close proximity. Entire semester courses (or a lifetime) can be spent learning how colors look different depending on what other color they are next to. Without learning a lot of color theory, wrapping little test cards like this can save you a lot of time. Get wild with it; the time required is so small that you can discover unexpectedly wonderful color combinations in just a few minutes.
  Another thing you can check with wrapping yarn like this is value contrast. Other than using colors you love, the most important thing in picking colors for knitting is value—the colors' lightness or darkness. If you don't have sufficient value contrast, hours or even months of knitting can result is something that is so subtle that the pattern can only be seen in a very bright light and at very close range. Subtlety is fine but I prefer to knit patterns so they can be seen. If you can't clearly see the colors in your wrapping test in a rather dim room you might be aiming at a result that is too subtle. How much contrast you need depends partly on your pattern. If you are knitting a pattern with lines consisting of a single stitch, it's necessary to have more contrast than if there are bigger blocks of each color. (A benefit of having enough contrast is that knitting is a lot easier because you aren't straining your eyes to see what color the next stitch on the needle is.)
   My other way of testing color combinations if with my handy point-and-shoot camera. Like most such inexpensive cameras, it has a monochrome setting. I lay out the balls of yarn that I'm considering and take black and white photos of them. If a pair looks the same in the photo, it probably won't work. It has no contrast. For example, look at these beautiful balls of purple and green, one of my favorite color combinations.

It looks yummy, but there's a problem. These two colors are almost identical in value as you can see in this monochrome picture.

Try to see that single purple yarn draped over the green. Unless they are knit in very large areas of colors, the pattern will not be easy to see.
  To avoid an unintended stripy look in Fair Isle knitting, it's best to maintain very similar contrast between the foreground colors and the background colors through out the pattern. As your background gets darker, your foreground color can get darker. If your background color suddenly gets darker relative to its foreground color, it will read like a stripe. When I knit this example swatch, I didn't have the light yellow I wanted and resorted to a mustard. Stripe.

The mustard and blue are lovely together and would certainly work well in some design but I don't care for the stripey effect; I want the entire flower to read as a unit. The monochrome photo of the yarn shows there is a huge jump of contrast between the yellow and mustard. (By the way, it's easier to judge value by eye for shades of the same color. )

For this pattern, a combination of background colors with a lighter yellow instead of the mustard will work better.

I find using these techniques makes my swatching time much more productive. And fun.
 

Falling (back) in love with red

  Autumn is a particularly good season to appreciate red. I used to adore the color red. When I was a student, it was my signature color—I had a favorite red shirt and a terrific red felt hat that I wore a lot.

More recently, I have had a problem with red because of its increased pervasiveness in Madison. On any given day a significant percentage of Madisonians dress in Badger red, the UW's official team color. It's a very specific red (PMS 200) and there are official guidelines on how to use it. On football game days, there can be over 80,000 people in the stadium dressed in red—if the opposing team is Ohio State, which also has red as their color. That's just way too many people to be wearing the same color, especially the identical shade of one color.
   And yet...red is a lovely color that can light up the scene.

 Let's not forget that red comes in many varieties.

I can't stay mad at a color forever, so I just knit some red socks. They remind me of raspberry jam, not just because of the color but also the nubbly texture of the lace when not on the foot.

 I'm not ready to buy a bunch of Badger gear, but I do love my new red socks.

Knitty-gritty: I knit my socks with Cadmium Red Inspire yarn by Blissful Knits and Dyeworks of Portland, Oregon. The socks were knit on size 0/2mm needles in my standard toe up pattern, using a 4 row/6 stitch lace pattern sometimes called Stem Stitch. You can find instructions in

More Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch.

My feel good pillow

  The community read book this fall for the University of Wisconsin Madison was Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario. I love taking part in the UW's Go Big Read because each year features a thought provoking book. It's exciting to go to the author talk and be with hundreds or even thousands of people who have read the book.
   This book recounts the dangerous journey many Central American children make to find and reunite with mothers that are in the US. Most of these mothers left their children because of crushing need. They plan to be gone a year or two and return with money saved up to make a better life in their home country. Unfortunately, it's common that they have so much trouble making enough money that they are gone many years. The book recounts the harrowing trip that children make, facing many dangers and even death. It's a difficult book to read, but I think, a very important one in understanding the complex issue of illegal immigration.

    On Ms. Nazario's web site are links to organizations that are working to help people in Central America. I decided to make a small effort to improve someone's life by buying a pillow from Honduras Threads. This non-profit is helping Honduran women create coops that make fair trade embroidered pillows so they can make a decent living without leaving their families. My pillow came recently and it not only gives me a good feeling but it's also really beautiful.

Thinking about art

   This week we visited the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. First stop was the restroom, where I found this flower arrangement in their very stylish facility. (Mr. Rududu reports that the mens room was without flowers. I would suggest that womens rooms should be furnished with more things of interest since we seem to spend so much time waiting in line in them. I digress. There was no line at the museum.)

 Both restrooms featured Louise Lawler’s Bird Calls, a sound recording of bird sounds. Most of them seemed to be of parrots saying or attempting to say words. It was a great addition to the room. Perhaps art should be installed in all museum restrooms.
   Most of the museum's current exhibits are about minimalist art and its heirs. I generally prefer art works that you don't need to read the info tag to begin to understand, but even with this cerebral approach to art, there were many pieces that I loved looking at. For example, there is something lovely and fascinating about the soil samples from below Chicago in Alan Sonfist's Earth Monument to Chicago, 1965-77.

The museum also has a solo exhibit of work by Ron Terada, a Vancouver-based artist. I found this wall-sized piece of advice thought provoking. Interestingly, by searching the internet I learned this sign (or one like it) was installed at one time on a building in a rather lonely looking place. In that location it looked considerably more sinister, more of a warning than friendly advice.

The nitty gritty: For those who wonder, the museum bans flash photography only and guards witnessed me taking photographs. If you visit the museum, I highly recommend its Wolfgang Puck restaurant.

Feeling blue (in a good way)

I just finished a lovely little shawl with some Italian mohair. I was worried about having enough yarn so I knit faster than usual. (We all know that uses less yarn...) It only took me a little over a week to finish the shawl and I had twice as much yarn as I needed.

The pattern by Maggie Magai is a free on Ravelry. Part of the reason that the shawl knits up quickly is that the center is all stockinette with the lace confined to the edge.

I love the color blue. Fortunately it stays with us even in the late autumn.

The knitty-gritty: Two 25 g balls of Kid Silk Five knit on US #4/3.5mm needles. Changing to a larger needle and using a very stretchy bind off was a great idea.