Miracle of the Gulls Baby Cardigan

Finally finished the second version of the baby cardi! Just in time for the baby shower too. The blue one is adorable but my tension was different than the yellow one so is smaller. It might be due to the different yarn, or it could be because I knit them months apart, I am not sure.

But, they are adorable, and I have finished the pattern too.  Even love the little seagulls with the giant crickets chasing them, or the seagulls chasing the crickets, whichever you prefer.

I hope my friend likes the story of The Miracle of the Gulls woven into her baby’s sweater.

If anyone remembers, I mentioned that I wanted to try and make a topsy turvey doll of a seagull and cricket. Well, I did attempt it and am not pleased with the outcome. I am still thinking of working on it to make it better, but am putting it on hold for now. Here are some pictures of my first attempt.

Lark Cuff

The cuff I designed is very easy and quick to knit. I really like how it looks. I decided to name it after the town Lark. Here is a little history about Lark that I found out:

When gold was discovered in Bingham Canyon in the Oquirrh Mountains, it brought a rush of prospectors. Two prospectors named Dalton and Lark had two claims where settlements grew up around them. These settlements were named after Dalton and Lark. Later, Dalton merged into Lark and the town of Lark was officially established in 1866.

By 1929, Lark was a company town of the United States Smelting and Refining Company. At its peak, the population was over 800 people in the 1950s. But, with the closing of many of the non-copper mines, the town began to decline. In 1972, Kennecott Copper bought the land announced that they were closing Lark to use it as a land dump from the Bingham Canyon Mine. Kennecott moved the 591 people to other locations and in 1978 Lark was officially dismantled. 

The Lark Cuff has the rough design of the five face-centered cubic crystal of copper and I used copper button clasps to close it. I put the pattern in my pattern page and decided not to charge for it since it is such a quick and easy design.

Copper

I actually bought some copper wire and began fiddling with it to see if it could be knitted up. It really can be knitted! I also began looking at copper’s structure for some inspiration for a knitting stitch and have come up with this:

The crystal structure of copper is called the "face centered cubic", or for short, "fcc" structure. 

I think I will try to make a bracelet or cuff out of this stitch and see what I come up with.

Seen from Space

Local folk lore says that there are only two man-made things that can be seen with the naked eye from space. One is the Great Wall of China, the other is the Bingham (now Kennecott) Copper Mine. Although this is totally a myth (you can see lots of man-made things from low Earth orbit) it speaks to the vastness of the mine and its impact on people living near it.

Jonas Lie, Bingham Mine, 1917, Collection of the UMFA

The Copper mine is a big open pit mine that is a few miles south of the Great Salt Lake. It has been in the news recently because of a huge landslide that has caused the mine to close for a year. It is almost incomprehensible because of the scale of the slide and the mine, like a scar dug deep into the mountain. I know that we all need copper, I am using it right now in my computer, but it is very shocking to see the damage that man can do to the landscape.

I work at an art museum and one of our docents was telling me about her hometown where she grew up. It was named Lark, but it doesn’t exist anymore. The mountain that the town was on doesn’t even exist anymore. The Copper Mine displaced the town and the people who lived there. The mine affects my view of the beautiful mountains, but at least for now it hasn’t consumed my hometown.

The copper mine and its impact has been on my mind lately. I have been thinking about what copper is used for, and how I can use it. I would like to do another structural piece of jewelry like the Halite Necklace and Salt Bracelet I made last year. They were very fun to envision and knit.

So, this recent landslide in Kennecott made me think of copper. What is the structure of copper? Can it be translated into a knitted structure? What about knitting with copper wire? I think I am going to do some experimenting.