Letters
It’s Intarsia Time (Again)
Dear Ann,
Here’s how I ended Kay’s Month of Helical Stripes: 
Yep, I made a second Perfect Summer Scarf. I started the second one because, to my annoyance, the first one didn’t use up all of my leftover Berroco Indigo bits. What kind of knitting-to-declutter is that? Very poor, that’s what. (Word to the wise: knitting is an awfully slow way of decluttering, and also not very effective at reducing clutter. In knitting, matter is neither created nor destroyed. You lose the clutter of the yarn, but you gain an FO that you need to find a place for. But at least you can wear it, or give it away.)
I’m happy now because I have two Perfect Summer Scarves (find the instructions here), one for me and one for Carrie, and only tiny nubbins of yarn left, which fit easily into a Bonne Maman jar containing other small nubbins of yarn. These scarves were fun to knit. They got the helical garter stitch out of my system for the moment (not for long, though, as I still need to make a Helical Honey Cowl), and now I’m ready to move on to intarsia, our next adventure with the marvelous Arnall-Cullifords in A Year of Techniques.
Ahem. I happen to have a bit of experience with intarsia. The name of that experience is Kaffe Fassett’s Big Flower Jacket.
Here is where I left my Big Flower Jacket (roughly). I was one front and two sleeves from glory, and I ran out of time before Rhinebeck. And then I knit a lot of other stuff, which, by the way, was all 100% intarsia-free.
Wouldn’t it be great to take this opportunity, this fabulous month of intarsia love, to finish my Big Flower Jacket? I think so. And it would be awesome as a decluttering project. Big Flower Jacket has been taking up a large, perfectly good knitting bag–one of my favorite Tesco grocery shopping bags– and sitting in the corner of my bedroom looking sad. It’s been bringing me down since October.
Time to spring clean! By which I mean, sit down and knit for many, many hours.
Love,
Kay
P.S. For Jews of the world, this week is also the week before Passover. Passover prep is in full swing. For links to the recipes I’ve collected over my two and a half decades of making the festive meal, here is last year’s Passover letter. I have one exciting addition this year: a full set of The Seder books by Liz Kaplan and Laura Stillman Carraro. They will be a beautiful accompaniment to our good old Maxwell House haggadot (books that guide us through the service before the meal, a retelling of the Exodus from Egypt with many elaborations and traditions). Everybody at the table needs one to follow along and take their turn reading. The Maxwell house version, which is given away at grocery stores in Jewish neighborhoods, is cheap (free actually) and cheerful and familiar, but it does not compare to Liz’s clear, elegant text and Laura’s beautiful torn-paper collages.
P.P.S. OK, this is funny. I went to dig up a link on the Maxwell House haggadah, since I wasn’t entirely sure I knew what I was talking about. The first link I opened was this 2013 story in the Forward, which is wonderful and fun to read. I recently met the rabbi who is quoted, Carole Balin. She’s a knitter. Sometimes I think all my Venn diagrams are right on top of each other.
Was yearning to hear what was happening with your Big Flower Jacket – thought the flurry of the Brand New Business might have driven it into oblivion – so glad it’s still proving reproachful. Pleasant to think of it loaded with Matzo crumbs !
Oops, sorry, Janis – I meant to reply to Kay’s post. The shock at learning all this knitting from stash is NOT decluttering my house really threw me for a minute.
Just keep knitting.
I think you have revealed the big flaw in my decluttering plan. Rats. I mean, thanks.
Do you know the band Walk the Moon? They have a lyric, “our venn diagrams are one circle.” Such a great way of expressing that phenomenon.
I’m still helical striping. I have fallen down a rabbit hole and am making bunches of socks out of left-over sock yarn. They are kind of crazy because I’m not making actual pairs of socks, but I am entranced, nonetheless. This process is kind of a declutter-but-not-really deal, too.
Many many kids at my son’s middle school wore mismatched last year. 1300 kids at the school, and frankly I stopped noticing. I’ll be on the lookout again.
I’m using my leftover sock yarn to make mitts but your idea to make socks kind of resonates, making me want to rip out what I have and go off socking. BTW, my socks never match except the thick wooly ones I wear to work in winter so my toes don’t freeze.
This is a terrific way to eliminate the laundry day time suck of matching socks, and more fun than my husband’s policy of buying only black socks.
So Brenda, just random stripes of all sorts of colors, and you wear any two socks whenever you feel like it? I LOVE this idea! Moving the clutter from the attic to the sock drawer — brilliant!
Brenda, I love the fact tbat they’re not actual pairs!
Kay, the summer scarves are lovely; and, I really like the big tangle that is the Big Flower. I know your personal April intasria experience will bring you closer to wearing that great garment at Rhinebeck.
Knit on!
I had a wonderful time yesterday browsing through half a dozen Kaffe Fassett & Brandon Mably pattern books looking for a pattern to ‘declutter’ a kilo or so of Wollemeise. Found myself looking at The Big Flower Jacket and hoping that it might be back on your knitting radar soon………
I’ve decided on the Big Diamond Tunic, and also succumbed to starting Brandon’s Checkerboard hat, intarsia is my favourite type of knitting.
As long as it has “Big” in the name it’s going to be excellent. I can’t wait to see this project take shape!
The story of Maxwell House advertising that coffee had been designated kosher makes me think of working at an ad agency where our client (General Mills) wanted to advertise in the Jewish press that Bac-O’s had been certified kosher. Which means, of course, that they contain absolutely no bacon.
I had always suspected that about Bac-o’s!
Love the image of completely overlapping Venn diagrams. Makes my heart lighter.
Ok, I am officially one month behind in my year. Have zaeurball and am ready for my stripes. Could you tell me how you divided the ball unevenly for maximum striping? So excited to be putting something fresh on my needles
I did a very approximate half & half split, making sure that the starting point of each mini-ball was at a color that contrasted highly with the other mini-ball.
Oh, dear. The Big Flower Slipcover has risen from its grave. Proof positive that bamboo knitting needles are not the same as wooden stakes.
I knew this would get a rise out of you, dear Anon.
Crying!
I heard of someone cleaning out a relative’s house who found, among decades of accumulated stuff, a large box labeled “pieces of string too small to be saved” – full of small pieces of string
Maxwell House was my grandmother in Florida’s Haggadah. In our house, no matter which Haggadah was in use, the visiting non-Jewish person always ended up with the passage with all of the rabbi’s names. Still happens! Crazy karma.
Chag sameach! Happy Passover! Thank you for including this in your post. Our family has tried some pretty amusing versions of the Haggadah too. This year, we are going untraditional and opting for a completely chocolate seder!
Thanks for the shout out, Kay. Sweet Passover to all.
Warm regards, Carole