the life-changing magic of stitch markers

In this episode, I chat about summer, our new puppy, and the life-changing magic of stitch markers, which saved me on two of my summer knitting projects (the Lunae Shawl by moonstruck knits and the moss grid towel by modern daily knitting).

Music Credit: Ketsa, "Day Trips"

Transcript

[Intro music: Ketsa “Day Trips,” an upbeat melody with bells and trills]

Holly 00:27

Hello! I hope you’re well. I am so excited to be chatting with you. It has been a minute. [laughter]. I’m well I hope you are too Welcome thank you for joining. My name is Holly and this is a knitting podcast where I talk about my 12-step recovery and for me that’s with al-anon. So I just want to encourage you to take what you like and leave the rest. 

Holly 01:00

Things have been really good. I’m out of practice and I’m rambling a bit. But the best news is that we got a puppy! [laughter] so that’s why I haven’t been podcasting. Things have been crazy but it’s also been the perfect time to do this. My kids are home for the summer and I am in summer mode. I’m just teaching a summer class so we have a lot of time. And our doggo died last year and so we were just ready to have the craziness. It’s been a really great summer so far. It’s been the best kind of summer it’s been incredibly slow and languid and also kind of frenetic and filled with change because of the puppy. We did a little bit of travel but honestly we’re too tired to do too much. Some of the plans we had got shut down because of covid. One of my kids’ summer camp was shut down because of covid. Ugh. It’s still here. Anyway…This is a knitting podcast so I’ll shift gears.

Holly 02:15

I think the theme for today will be summer knitting, which is a little weird because I’m a year-round knitter. So summer knitting is just knitting! Even in dc where it’s a 1000 degrees and 100% humidity, I’m always knitting. I like to knit a big shawl every summer and this summer it’s the Lunae shawl by moonstruck knits. It’s mosaic knitting so I’m kind of counting it in my year of colorwork. It’s really working up. I’m close to the end. I’ve been thinking of it as a three-part shawl. You start by knitting it side to side and then you pick up stitches along one of the edges and knit out from there. It grows in these two different ways. The pattern is ingenious. It’s got two different stitch patterns and there’s gauge issues. It’s not a simple knit, I’ll be honest. It was for the first part, knitting side to side. I was like “Why are people complaining about this on ravelry. I don’t understand.” [laughter] Always trust the group conscious of ravelry. By the time I picked up stitches I started to understand why people were saying this was such a challenging knit by the time I picked up stitches. It really has put me to the paces. 

Holly 03:45

The big overall lesson here is stitch markers, stitch markers, stitch markers. If you do not use stitch markers, which I didn’t for a very long time which is kind of mind-boggling to me now, oh my word, invest in some. They’re not expensive, you can get really cheap ones and of course you can get really gorgeous ones so it’s up to you. If you like the bling, there are great options out there. I really like the light-bulb shaped ones but I also have the little metal round ones. I’m rambling. But stitch markers is helping me keep count on this [laughter] giant shark of a shawl. It’s on a 50inch interchangeable cable and it’s bunching. It’s gonna be big [laughter]. It’s going to be gorgeous. The colors are amazing. My friend was de-stashing so she gave me two skeins of merino singles and I found the third color at a fiber fair in May. So it’s working up nicely. It’s slow going and that’s my evening knit with the kids. We’re watching a million movies this summer. It’s been really nice to be on the couch. Of course the first lesson I taught the puppy was “Don’t eat the yarn!” never eat the yarn. Thankfully that hasn’t been an issue yet. He’s not scared of the sound of the sewing machine, so that’s good too. Yay!

Holly 05:20

The second project, ooooh this one I didn’t think it would be so challenging. It’s the moss grid hand towel from modern daily knitting, but it’s from their book when they were still mason Dixon knitting (thank goodness they changed their name). It’s made out of this euroflax linen yarn. It’s a dish towel. It’s a super-fancy dish towel. It’s moss stitch. I can’t remember the name. So sorry! I’ll tag it somehow. There aren’t really show notes but there is a transcript so I’ll put it in the transcript. But it’s been a nightmare. So it’s from a knitting book that came out in 2003 or maybe even earlier than that. So there’s no chart! This is shocking. But whatever I can follow line-by-line instructions. But it was flummoxing me because I had to always have the pattern with me. And it’s moss stich, which can be hairy, especially knit back and forth. It’s not as intuitive as you think. At least for me. So this was really kicking my butt. 

Holly 06:55

And I remember when I first bought this book, I remember looking at this pattern. There are two patterns in the book and I actually made one of them. It was back when I was a subscriber to Rowan Knitting magazine. I’m really dating myself here [laughter]. And when you subscribed they’d send you yarn for a mini-project, which I used instead to make this dishtowel from MDK. And it’s held up beautifully since then. I mean it is linen, right? Linen does that. But I remember that the yarn they called for was Euroflax wet-spun linen, which is crazy expensive. I remember just gawking at the price. When I was in grad school and I bought this book it blew my mind that someone would spend this much money to make a dish towel! Fast forward to now, anytime I’m in Upcycle—thank goodness we have such an amazing place—there’s sometimes this line in the destash it’s available for like a dollar or 1.50. I think the inner-grad student in me still reacts like “OMG must hoard the expensive linen yarn.” Every I’m there I look for it and if it’s there I buy it. It’s one of the things I always buy. I always buy lopi yarn and linen yarn. [laughter] Linen is incredibly resource intensive to make. It’s one of those fibers that uses up so much water. To see it not being used is hard. And, of course, it’s such a lovely, lovely fabric that lasts so long. So it’s eco in that way if you make something you love and can use forever. So a dish towel is not a terrible idea for this yarn. 

Holly 09:15

I have this one skein of this very beautiful sea-green yarn. I can finally make the pattern in the yarn they call for because of a little upcycle luck! I dug out the book and it was kicking my butt. What the heck how did I do this in the past. But here’s the secret. I finally just scrapped the pattern and put in stitch markers for each of the grids in moss stitch and now it’s super intuitive and I don’t even need the pattern. And it’s been sailing off the needles now. I should finish it soon. It’s so nice. I think once it softens up with washing it will be so nice. I may give it as a present to my mom. Though she loves blue more than green. I digress. The stitch markers have really saved me!

Holly 10:15 

One final summer project that’s been kicking my butt. These are the Marie socks by yucca knits. She’s my favorite sock designer. It’s an absolutely stunning pattern. It has this brilliant where it a takes one of the stitches and criss-crosses them. It’s kind of like smocking but it’s different. It looks kind of like the stitch in the Wool and Honey sweater by Andrea Mowry. It’s brilliant the way the designer uses that stitch motif in a sock without making it overly tight for a sock. It’s a fabulous pattern but it is not mindless knitting. It’s taking me two months! The yarn is really beautiful. It’s by an indie dyer who I don’t think is dying yarn anymore. It’s by the Sanguine Gryphon and it’s this rich tonal red color. I got it at upcycle of course! It’s stunning. 

Holly 11:47

I’ve got one more project that *is* mindless (for when I’m on a zoom meeting). And it’s another sideways easy-breezy cardigan. I think I made the careless cardigan last summer or two summers ago out of a rayon yarn. So I’m just making the same thing. It’s a weird yarn. It’s very metallic. It’s kind of looking like chain mail? [laughter] So we’ll see. I’m also playing an epic game of yarn chicken which is why I’ve slowed down on that project, even though it’s just stockinette. It’s shiny and looks like chain mail. Am I ever going to wear this? Meh, not sure. A lot more of my creative energy has been going towards the shawl, the towel, and the socks. 

Holly 12:40

Other than that, it’s been great. I finished this huge work project so I’ve been enjoying having the chance to rest but also be engaged. Knitting is doing that and the puppy is too. It’s so hot here I’m really grateful for my air conditioning and my boring schedule which is letting me just putter. We’re really just resting. That back-to-school energy is just around the corner. We’re just about to have to start thinking about it. These weeks feel really delicious and empty and lazy. 

Holly 13:22

Thank you so much for listening. Everything is going pretty well. I hope that you too are having a great summer. I hope you’re finding some serenity in your summer, if it’s super busy or super chill. I hope that you also have time for knitting! I hope you have beautiful materials to work with and that you’re making great progress on your summer knitting and I hope you’re using stitch markers. And if you aren’t you should! Learn from past me!

Holly 14:06

That’s all for now! I’ll check in soon. Bye!

[Outro: Ketsa, “Day Trips” an upbeat music with bells and trills that trail off]

Kyd’s satire indicates the prevalence of staged ghosts in early modern plays. Yet critics insist that Hamlet’s is unique in its uncanny and eerie formulation.[1] As Catherine Belsey argues, Hamlet’s opening “builds suspense in a manner unprecedented on the English stage… where revenants were conventionally bloodcurdling but not eerie.”[2] It is the ghost’s eerie appearance that provokes Barnardo and Francisco’s fear and doubt, even as they seek to splice sensory perception from such affective registers.

Some practices drew on medieval tropes of stagecraft, which connected certain scents with extraterrestrial space. The York Fall of Angels[GW1] , for instance, was performed by the barkers’ guild, and the “harrowing” of hell by the saddlers, both of whom could use scents associated with leathermaking to stage hell. Other performances drew upon theatrical space itself, particularly the “hell” door, located center downstage. Characters either rose from this space or sounds emerged from beneath the stage, creating sensory coordinates for audiences perceiving these “other worldly” characters.

The sensory effects used to stage extrasensory and paranormal otherworldliness were linked to English plays represented global otherworldliness. “Strangeness” marked bodily difference, including ghostliness and foreignness. Shakespeare’s ‘extrasensory’ worlds thus included fictionalized, exoticized, and racist representations of real locations. Cleopatra’s Egypt, the Prince’s Morocco, and Glendower’s Wales are not unlike Hamlet’s purgatory, Macbeth’s heath, and Richard III’s battlefields. Non-English characters were rendered “strange” through the same sensory effects of stagecraft, and audiences perceived these characters’ bodily difference in the same ways they perceived the bodily differences of ghosts, witches, devils, and angels. They were embodied fictions.

[1] Catherine Belsey, “Shakespeare’s Sad Tale for Winter: Hamlet and the Tradition of Fireside Ghost Stories,” Shakespeare Quarterly 61, no. 1 (2010): 1–27, https://doi.org/10.1353/shq.0.0136.
[2] Belsey, 1.

 [GW1]Maybe provide some brief context for this play.