The spirit of giving

ALS Support Ribbon Keyhole Scarf

Materials:
1 skein Caron Simply Soft in white (color A)
1 skein Caron Simply Soft in navy blue (color B)
Size J hook (or most comfortable hook working with WW yarn)

Note: after each row, break yarn, leaving 6-8" tail.

With A, ch 131.
Row 1: 130 sc in A.  ch 3 in B; turn.
Row 2: 130 dc in B.  ch 3 in A; turn.
Row 3: 130 dc in A.  ch 3 in B; turn.
Row 4: 130 dc in B.  ch 3 in A; turn.
Row 5: 130 dc in A.  ch 1 in B; turn.
Row 5: 130 sc in B.  ch 1 in A; turn.
Row 6: 90 sc in A.  ch 18.  22 sc.  ch 3 in B; turn.
Row 7: 130 dc in B, working into the back bumps of the chains made in the previous row.  ch 3 in A; turn.
Row 8: 130 dc in A.  ch 3 in B; turn.
Row 9: 130 dc in B.  ch 3 in A; turn.
Row 10: 130 dc in A.  ch 1 in B; turn.
Row 11: 130 sc in B.  Bind off.
Weave in ends.  Optionally, you can leave them hanging off as fringe.  If so, knot the ends together to make sure they don't unravel.

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Sometimes I struggle with creating things for charity.  Not that I'm a selfish person - I'm really more of a perfectionist, and most everything I'm doing right now is experiments and swatches.  I don't want to give away anything where I don't feel confident in the execution and design.

Except for this one.  Here, I didn't struggle at all.

In the fall of 2010, Dr. Eric McLaren, the principle of the Illinois Math and Science Academy (IMSA, my alma mater), was diagnosed with ALS.  I'd had a few encounters with him during my time at IMSA - only one of them to discuss my discipline, thankfully - and couldn't believe the news.  To that point in my life, ALS had been that disease Lou Gehrig had that I could never remember the name of.

Then, in February 2012, IMSA sent an email to its alumni saying that he was in a long-term care facility in Sycamore, IL, and that all were welcome to visit him.  I don't really know what my compulsion was, but I called up a fellow alumnus and said, "I'm going.  Want to come with me?"

So we grabbed a bunch of flowers and hit the road.  I was living in North Aurora at the time, so the drive really wasn't too bad.  As we sat in the car, quietly lumbering down I-88, my friend asked me, "Is this going to be really awkward?"  In all honesty, I didn't know, though I harbored the same fear.  Here was a man that we knew, if not closely, with a debilitating physical disease that was completely alien to us.  I still wasn't sure why I was going.  Was it to comfort him?  Was it to calm some weird part of my conscience that was feeling uneasy?

I'm not particularly familiar with or comfortable around hospitals, so it was an odd feeling to check in as a visitor.  We wandered down a few winding hallways, passing bed after bed of weak and non-responsive human beings.  Watching the absence of hope and vitality seeded a pit in my stomach, worrying me about where this visit would go.  Finally, we came to his room.

The recognition was immediate, as was the smile.  It had been 9 years since we had graduated, and it didn't matter.  There was a bit of a shock to see him in a neck brace and intubated - his muscles could no longer support breathing on his own.  But he could still communicate by use of a poster board and his legs, and his wife was there with him to help translate.

And then we just talked.

I think it was at least an hour that we just rehashed IMSA stuff and talked about where the winds had blown us since then.  My story was a bit less glamorous than my U of C-graduated Cornell-studying physics friend, but he also wanted to hear about my husband who was finishing up his PhD and looking for professorships (I didn't realize until then that they were fellow NIU grads).  We talked about the scrapes we got into as teenagers and the ways we were keeping connected.  It was one of the most delightfully normal experiences that I've ever had, which others have discovered as well.  His spirit just refused to be broken, and he continues to do what he can to live productively with this disease.

I did feel more at ease, knowing I was able to share that experience with him.

Then came August.

My mother sent my siblings and me an email titled "why it's important to keep in touch".  Now, I'm used to the slight touch of guilt-trip in many of my mother's emails - let's face it, even if she's not practicing now, she was raised Jewish - so this could've been any number of things, many of the guesses in my head seeming quite trivial.

It turned out that the woman next door had been diagnosed with ALS.

My family's actually had a very close relationship with our next-door neighbors ever since we moved to Illinois.  Ever since we were kids - and still to this day - they have brought over $100 savings bonds and a chocolate bunny every Easter for each of us.  I kid you not, this is every year, without fail.  When the husband had a heart attack several years ago, my parents started shoveling their driveway after every snow.  They even gave my husband and I an enormously generous wedding gift.  They've basically been interim grandparents for us.

I was completely distraught.  More than anything, I felt helpless.  I didn't know what to do.

As time passed, I decided to volunteer for IMSA's Intersession classes as an instructor.  Basically, it's a week of 3-hour class sessions that cover any topic that might be worth learning.  Like, say... crochet!  As I was constructing the course syllabus, I figured it would be good to have a pattern to give to the students, both as a "look, it's something you can crochet in your free time!" and a "look, you can design your own patterns, too!" project.

Boom - inspired.

I jumped online to look up the ALS support ribbon - since, let's face it, there's a ribbon for everything.  Sure enough, the ALS one is white and navy striped (maybe in honor of the Yankee?).  I'd seen tons of keyhole scarves before; surely that could be adapted to make a "ribbon" scarf.

The prototype took me two days (about 4 hours) to put together, and the reason I don't have a picture of it is because I wanted to make it an early Christmas present for my neighbor, so it left my hands before I even thought of taking one.  But it has the added bonus of being easy to wrap around the neck, so that as her motor skills decrease, she'll still be able to wear it.  (By the way, two skeins will likely make 3 scarves; I just haven't weighed it yet to find out the real yardage.)

The single crochets in the center just make the keyhole thinner and less awkward-looking than trying to chain over double crochets.  With the symmetry in the colors, it still looks right.

Also, this really could work for any support ribbon that's out there.  I found the ALS colors here; there's an enormous variety of color-coded causes on that site.

And if you find you have a little extra after you're done with your holiday shopping this year, please consider a donation to Project ALS.  They are working on research for a cure, as well as providing internships for young aspiring scientists (including students from IMSA).

Whether it's time or money, this holiday season, just remember to take a little time to give.

Stuck in my head

I wrote poetry for quite a few years in high school and college, and I became quite familiar with the notion of writer's block.  In fact, I might say I'm intimately familiar with it, considering I haven't been able to write much of anything since then. =P

But I find a much more interesting block occurs for me with arts other than writing.  It's the inability to transcribe the complete piece of art into concrete pieces.  With writing, I just kind of run out of ideas, though I can still keep typing.  With music (especially arranging), painting/drawing, and now crochet, I find the idea is complete and perfect - but almost impossible to transcribe.

Take this sweater that I'm trying to crowbar out.  It's based on Iris Schreier's "Four Rectangle Sweater" from her book Lacy Little Knits.  It would involve a lacy Tunisian stitch that would mimic the rectangular form of the fabric that she uses, with slip stitches on the sides instead of knitted ribs, on a light, floaty yarn that would play well with layering.

Or the hazy mohair scarf that would make great use of the Lana Gatto yarn that I bought in Italy, worked on a large hook to make a soft, spacy fabric that could potentially double as an elegant stole over an evening dress.

Or the woodsy shawl using the bulky brown and green Louisa Harding Fleuris - which I tried to work out over the weekend but kept coming up with seriously dense, camo-looking fabric that wasn't all that pretty.

 I think part of it is my lack of patience to sit down and swatch something that won't become a project - which I'm slowly starting to get over - and part of it is my inability to part with really nice yarn that I don't want to waste on swatching - which is trickier.  I know I need to start becoming a more savvy yarn buyer and break myself of the "ooh, it's so pretty, but I only want one skein of it!" habit.  But I think I also need to find a new standard yarn with which I can swatch shamelessly.

All in all, what this says is that I need to find more days to just sit with my yarn and meditate.  It might make for a weird picture - me sitting with my legs crossed, palms up, surrounded by a circle of mohair and merino - but I need to get in touch with my resources and let them call out what they want to be, not necessarily what I want them to me.

Stepwise Scarf

The "Stepwise Scarf" is a combination of two specialty techniques: short rows, and adding stitches to the end of the row by way of the "half-hitch".  It gives a jagged edge to the scarf that adds texture to the edges of the scarf.  The basic pattern is written with chains instead of half-hitches, which are noted below.
Materials
approx. 5 oz (150 grams) bulky or super bulky yarn
Size 19 (15 mm) hook
Special stitches used:
* Slip stitch in back loop only (Bss)

Instructions
Row 1: Ch 13.  Turn.
Row 2: Sl st into the second chain from the hook and in the next 11 chains (12 sl st in total).  Ch 1.  Turn.
Row 3: 12 Bss.  Ch 1.  Turn.
Row 4: 12 Bss.  Ch 1.  Turn.
Row 5: 10 Bss.  Ch 1.  Turn.

Row 6: 10 Bss.  Ch 3.  Turn.

Row 7: Sl st into second chain from hook.  Sl st in next chain.  10 Bss (for a total of 12 Bss across).  Ch 1.  Turn.

Row 8: 12 Bss.  Ch 1.  Turn.

Row 9: 12 Bss.  Ch 1.  Turn.

Row 10: 12 Bss.  Ch 1.  Turn.

Row 11: 10 Bss.  Ch 1.  Turn.

Row 12: 10 Bss.  Ch 3.  Turn.

The look on the right side of the fabric will be 2 "long" ribs of 12 stitches followed by a "short" rib of 10 stitches.

Continue making 4 rows of 12 Bss, followed by a short row of 10 Bss and an increase row, until scarf is desired length.  If you want to leave the scarf flat, I suggest finishing with the two "long" ribs.  Otherwise, if you want to make an infinity/Moebius scarf, end on a "short" rib and line it up against the beginning "long" rib.

I will say, though, that if you end up making it into an infinity scarf, I think it really should be called a "Stairmaster Scarf"… ;)

NOTE: Instead of the "Ch 3" at the end of the short rib, I made two "half-hitch" increases and one chain.  Essentially, the half-hitch is a simple knitted cast-on, but backwards.  Vashti Braha's web site has her explanation of the half-hitch, if you want to give it a shot.  The main difference to me was that is orients the chains to be a little bit easier to work with when you turn for the next row.

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Now, if you're interested, the story:

In the midst of a Vashti Braha-run, slip stitch-filled weekend, I was handed a paper bag with a "surprise" skein of free yarn inside.  Now, I had been staring at these bland paper bags for the last day with low expectations but high excitement - you know, that feeling you get in a $5 Secret Santa trade where you know you'll probably just get a small bottle of scented lotion but it's still wrapped and you never know what it might be!!

So with this little-kid-at-Christmas excitement, I yanked away the tissue paper to see what treasure might be hidden inside.  And underneath, I found a soft, super-bulky yarn in a quiet, dark blend of greens, browns, and blacks.  No tags, so it was hard to tell what the actual weight or fiber blend was, but it was definitely soft and squishy.  And I have to admit, I've been aching to work with bulky fibers for months now but keep getting distracted with... well, everything.  So I was very happy to suddenly have the opportunity land right in front of me.

The next morning, we started talking about short rows in slip stitch, which I've been wanting to try for some time.  So I started playing with my new bulky prize and tried out the Slip Slope scarf pattern that Vashti was discussing at the time.  I got to the point where I was about to slip stitch over my jagged corners and thought, "Huh, that's an interesting pattern."  But I wanted to keep soldiering on, for the moment, and completed the row across.  Instantly, all the pattern was swallowed up in the mess of dyes and texture.  Ripped.

But I still really liked those corners.  So I restarted, this time leaving them intact.  I also wanted to duplicate them on the other edge.  While I was playing with my short rows, Vashti had been talking about the "half-hitch," which is specifically useful for increasing on the end of a row in Tunisian crochet.  In the spirit of practice, I decided this was the way to go, and after a few rows, had the hang of that.


My original intention with this piece was to have layered rectangles of 3 ribs x 12 stitches.  It only occurred to me, say, 20-30 rows in that my staggering, as I had planned it, actually resulted in having what ended up being 3 ends of ribs on both sides, but in truth, 2 rib x 12 stitch rectangles against 1 rib x 10 stitch rectangles.  To my eyes, it started to look like the Blivet optical illusion after a bit of staring.  So in retrospect, if I really wanted full rectangles, it would be to half-hitch 2 stitches, THEN make a short row.  However, I like the inadvertent design aspect of the hiccupped "Blivet" rows, as I will now forever think of them.



A couple days later, the scarf was complete.  Well, almost complete - I still haven't decided if I like it better flat, with 2 full ribs on each end, or seamed together as an infinity scarf.  I feel like the infinity pull turns the edges too much - and if you can't see the edges, why bother with them in the first place?  But at the same time, the constant seamless stagger is a fun effect, and the overall look of the scarf is still really nice.

I will say, when I showed my "editor-in-chief" (AKA, my husband) the fruits of my labor, he was a bit nonplussed by the edges.  And I admit that I'm taking an art that's normally most happy in lacy curves and circles and transplanting it roughly into a much more gruff, angular form.

But, for a pattern that I feel is one that I've cultivated fully from start to finish... I think it's a great jumping-off point.

Welcome!

I realize that I have created and abandoned at least six or seven blogs in my lifetime, but, in the famous words of Bullwinkle, "THIS TIME FOR SURE!"

I'm slowly building up a lot of energy for designing basic crochet projects and starting to break the pattern "mold."  I feel like I need a public place to start venting out my design ideas without creating a plethora of Ravelry projects - and maybe get some feedback on where the designs are going.  With so much ease for adding pictures and all that, this feels like a good avenue for sharing swatches and finished products.  Then, as things get finished, edit them into real live Ravelry patterns.

I'm looking forward to this process and already have a few posts bubbling up in my head... so stay tuned for this batch of awesome! =)