AC Engineered Knits

Powder 8 Socks

2012-01-25T14:54:00.002-06:00

From re-designs to ripping apart to lost socks, these have been a long time coming. I finally posted the Powder 8 Socks pattern to Ravelry.

The spiel:

Whether you’re braving the winter weather or curled up with a warm drink après ski, the Powder 8 socks are the perfect knit to keep your feet nice and warm. Inspired by the tracks that two skiers make when their lines cross in pristine powder, the cables travel down the Balbriggan style heel and across the ‘slopes’ to your toes.

Our furry friends give us a lot (including some of our yarn!) and sometimes we need to give back – all proceeds from this pattern will be donated to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (http://www.aspca.org/).

If you're interested, you can buy now or check out the pattern on Ravelry.

SLOUCH

2012-01-18T22:49:00.001-06:00

A few days ago, the copilot and I brunched at Madison Sourdough, a bakery down the block from our apartment. It's a great place to people watch (who am I kidding--our entire neighborhood is a great place for people watching. It's primarily populated by crusty old hippies and young hipsters). Driven by hunger, my copilot had dragged me out of bed and allowed me to don sweatpants and a hoodie in public without comment.

As I started coming out of my morning stupor, I checked out what other people were wearing. Compared to my outfit, everyone was looking pretty stylish, but one woman in particular caught my eye. She was wearing a ribbed shirt with a fur collar, cinching the waist was a woven leather belt, and the lower half was a knee-length pleated skirt, tights, leg-warmers and hiking boots. And she was absolutely rocking it. I gaped at her as she navigated the tables, turned to the copilot and said, "She looks so cool. I could never wear that." He rolled his eyes, because this isn't an uncommon sentiment from me. There are certain styles that I love on anyone else but me--you know what I mean? This is a roundabout way of saying that I think slouchy hats, which are very in right now, are too cool for this gal. In general? So cute! But on me? Stupid.

After my trip out to Washington to interview, I thought it fitting to use the last skein of yarn I'd purchased from the now defunct Knitty Gritty yarn shop in Richland. I love Ravelry: I told it I had some yarn, and some US 7 needles, and that I wanted to make a hat, and it presented me with various options. Some I had to reject outright, because I literally only had a set of US 7 circs with me (spent last week in Minneapolis) and many patterns called for a smaller sized needle for the brim. I noticed a theme in what Rav had provided me...slouch, slouch, slouch all around. Who am I to argue when the universe demands I be fashion forward?

I picked It All Comes Together, based on the fact that it met all my criteria and it was free. I figured the lace pattern might get lost in the variegated yarn (it did), but that was fine. The pattern was acceptable, but not particularly well edited--if you look at the various project photos, you'll notice that about half of them have twice the length of ribbing that mine does due to some serious ambiguity in the directions.

No way is a plate fitting in there.

The finishing directions called for wet blocking by putting a plate with a diameter of 10.75" in the top part of the hat to stretch it out. That's the size of a regular dinner plate, I know because I measured. "Pssh. I don't think so," I said.

Yeah, I totally got a plate in there. It wasn't even hard.

New Fiesta-ware marketing campaign?

Turns out, I'm kind of rocking this slouchy hat. I know, it surprised me too.

The awkward self-portrait.

But the past couple of days, upon wearing it for a longer period of time I've been having an issue. Despite being ribbed, the brim isn't particularly clingy, and it slowly creeps down my forehead.

I really, really don't want to unravel the whole thing, or even go the centi-sock route and try to unravel it from the bottom up. What can I do? Throw it in the washer? Or, Jebus help me, the dryer?? Is there anyway to shrink-inate part of a knitted item, but not the rest? Felting? I've only felted with unprocessed wool before, and that makes a pret-ty firm fabric. I don't want to lose the softness of my precious yarn. Should I just live with it and not risk it?? WHY IS LIFE A CONSTANT STRUGGLE????

Excuse me, I need to go take my medication.

Skijor!

2012-01-15T16:25:00.000-06:00

We've been training our shepherd-husky mix Sammy to pull us on cross-country skis for a few months (sans snow), and we finally got the chance to try out the real thing this weekend after Madison finally got some of the fluffy stuff. Check out some pictures and video on my copilot's blog here!

A tiny bit of Xmas knitting after all

2012-01-13T15:00:00.000-06:00

I know I said that I wasn't doing any knitting for Christmas gifts, but I may have done just a little. I don't really even think it counts because the recipient is completely unaware of Christmas, the concept of holidays in general, and possibly has no perception of the passage of time.

I'd been promising to knit my parents' dog a sweater for over a year. I'd looked at some patterns at one point and even done some preliminary measurements...and never really got much further than that. But as the weather turned cold, the dogs at the Dane County Humane Society where I volunteer provided some inspiration:

What are we stopping for, silly human? Let's go!

Toasty warm.

Let me show you my good side.

I really liked the design of these jackets. They don't have to go over the head or be pulled over the front legs, which some of the shelter dogs would have no patience for. Two easy velcro flaps: one over the chest, one wrapped around the belly. I mimicked the design shape, and added some patches and a border for color.

My original idea was to just use velcro like the coats for the flaps, but I had concerns about the wool getting stuck in the hooks and eventually interfering with function. I had this 'great' idea that I would use magnets for the clasps. Quick, easy, and nothing to snag on.

Stupid magnets.

Unfotunately, the magnets I bought were a)relatively expensive and b)almost impossible to sew on (thank you Joann Fabrics). So for now, it attaches with some safety pins and a vague promise that I'd figure something out later.

But in my humble opinion, it looks adorable.

I know right? AWWWW. And the fit is great!

Question for those of you that are both knitters and dog lovers: is this a pattern that you would be theoretically interested in? Do you think it would be worthwhile for me to write it up in different sizes?

Adventures in ski touring: part II

2012-01-12T22:08:00.001-06:00

Sunday was a new start for ski touring at Snoqualmie Pass. We tried to get an early start.

The parking lot wasn't too crowded...strangely there were a handful of emergency vehicles there too. A fellow looky-loo claimed they'd found a body, but we checked the newspapers the next day and I think he was pulling our leg(s).

There was snow! Immediately! Already a head-start from yesterday.

Murray came with.

Nom nom Clif Bar.

We took a break and had lunch on Snow Lake. Is that a penguin back there?

Snow angel on Snow Lake--we were just excited to play in the snow since we haven't gotten any of that stuff in WI.

Sometimes I still got a little frustrated. We're not very good at route finding yet. At times, hiking was a constant stream of obscenities that ranged from internal monologue to inaudible muttering to completely discernible (but nonsensical) phrases.

Grumpy Gus after some tough skinning.

It was a good "learning experience", shall we say...and I suppose we got a couple of good turns in.

Skiing down the Dome.

Adventures in ski touring: part I

2012-01-11T17:20:00.000-06:00

You know how sometimes an event or milestone seems so far off you kind of subconsciously assume that it's never going to happen? That's how I have felt about graduating from UW with my PhD. I haven't taken classes for about three years now, so I settled into the mindset that my research is my (extremely poorly paid) job, and that getting a 'real' job was something that I'd worry about much later.

Turns out I'm going to graduate this May (insert-your-deity willing). If you follow my exploits at all, you know that I do an inordinate amount of traveling for my research: Tennesee, California, Maryland, Washington. This was a mixed blessing in that it has taken longer than I would have liked to finish my degree, but afforded opportunities to meet and network with many different people at different places of potential future employment.

First on the list was the lab in eastern Washington state. Well, I take that back--I always thought my best prospects would be the lab in eastern Tennessee, but a serendipitous job posting in WA (basically my thesis in job format) changed the game. This had the unplanned side-benefit of making the relatively remote Tri-Cities area look like prime real estate to the copilot in comparison to the dirrrty south. I went out for an interview last week, and the copilot joined me for the weekend. He did a project in Seattle for a couple of years, but this was his first trip to the eastern region. Just to provide some perspective, imagine your stereotype of Washington state--lush green trees, mountains, the overcast weather at a constant drizzle--now imagine the complete opposite. That's eastern Wash, arid and sunny, rolling hills, ideal for growing grapes. Hooray for Wine Country!

Another enticement for the copilot (and me, I suppose): drive as little as 80 miles, and you're in snow capped, ski-able mountains. We decided to go backcountry skiing, meaning find our own route and climb up the slopes instead of using lifts at a resort, near Alpental in Snoqualmie Pass. For Saturday, the copilot and I chose an alternate route from the one we had discussed earlier in the week based on the avalanche danger conditions. On the map, it looked like a short hike up to the treeline, then more hiking (with the skis on, called 'skinning') up to the summit, Granite Mountain.

We met a friend who lives in Seattle in the parking area at the foot of the mountain. Optimism was high.

Gearing up with our buddy in the parking lot

With no snow visible, we strapped our skis to our packs and hiked.

This doesn't look like enough snow to ski on...

Fording one of several streams

And hiked, and hiked, and hiked.

The false dawn.

Hey, some snow! We must be getting close...about an hour later, more hiking, and closer examination of the map indicated we were about halfway to the start of the real snow line. Carrying skis and walking in ski boots is worse than listening to Rick Santorum talk about his version of 'family values'. It was too late in the day to start another route, and by the time we got back to the car we gave up and bought a couple of lift tickets at Alptenal.

When the copilot and I got married a couple of years ago, we honeymooned in New Zealand during what was their winter. One of our many adventures was a trip to the one of the club ski fields called Craigieburn. The concept of the club fields is a good one: cheap operating costs and little overhead make for affordable skiing in a small area--but in reality it ended up being a miserable time. The unplowed one-lane gravel road turned into a sheet of ice near the top and we almost slid off into a ravine (they don't believe in guard rails in NZ), the snow was shit, and the lift was difficult to operate. Long story short, my day ended after the 40th or so unsuccessful attempt to ride the upper lift with me laying in the snow and quietly sobbing.

Post-Craigieburn, circa 2009

After that, the word 'Craigieburn' became synonymous with 'fiasco'. Granite Mountain = the next Craigieburn?

Post-Granite Mountain, circa 2012-hey, same jacket!

We managed to get some good turns in after all:

Alpental 'side-country' saves the day

Over some apres-ski drinks, our Seattle friend happened to mention that the nearby town of North Bend was home to the real-life site of the 'Double R Diner' used in the filming of the show Twin Peaks. Netflix had really been pushing Twin Peaks on me (we predict five stars for AC!), so I gave in and watched the whole series about six months ago (20 years after everyone else I was asking with anticipation, "Who killed Laura Palmer?") and became an instant fangirl. I may have clapped my hands in glee and made a little high pitched noise. The copilot took the hint and drove the 15 miles to North Bend.

ZOMG best day ever!!!

I tried reeeeally hard not to make a total ass out of myself despite the almost irresistible urge to immediately order some cherry pie and a damn fine cup of coffee. I played it cool. If you're ever in North Bend, I'd recommend Twede's Cafe (its actual name) not just for the novelty, but for an excellent selection of burgers and homemade fries.

We also planned on ski touring the next day...

How I still don't have those stupid socks finished

2012-01-05T21:06:00.001-06:00

Seriously, you guys. Still not done with these fracking man-socks. Well, technically I finished them, in the sense that they have all the components neccessary to constitute a sock: heel, gusset, toe, etc. However, when the copilot tried them on together for the first time he astutely observed that they were not the same size. So I drop kicked them into the revision pile and flipped them off, as one does.

This left me in a little bit of a conundrum on a recent trip to visit some friends in Berkeley + a work trip to WA. If I wasn't going to revise the freak man-socks, I was going to need some yarn on-the-go. Fortunately, my friend had passed by a local yarn shop a time or two and took me for a shopping trip.

I snapped a picture, since the name was so weird I figured I'd never remember it.

I wanted to address a problem. I'm not much of a runner, but I do enjoy jogging in my Vibram Five Fingers shoes (referred to exclusively as 'feetie shoes' in my household). In case you hadn't noticed, it's been getting a little nippy outside, and one cannot wear socks with feetie shoes--resulting in an exposed gap of flesh between shoes and running tights that is vulnerable to the elements.

Article Pract had a cool deal of "Employee Picks" that were discounted 20%, and I picked out some Berroco Ultra Alpaca (with a name like ULTRA how could you go wrong? And the color was Berry Pie Mix). So while I was in Washington, I made myself some....wait for it....

LEGWARMERS!

They're back in style, I swear. And they're totally functional.

And toasty warm!

The question is: can I wear them in public (in non-running situations?)

Breaking out of Winter Purgatory

2012-01-03T16:10:00.000-06:00

Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah (boy is that hard to spell), Happy Kwanza, Merry Fesitivus, and Happy New Year. Phew, glad we've gotten that out of the way.

Seasonal affective disorder, the big D, the black dog (ya'll know I love dogs, but this one I could do without). Whatever you want to call it, depression always comes to visit during the darkest days of the year.


Wah waaaaaah. Yeah, this was me the last month and a half.

Seriously, dark at 4:30 PM??? Wisconsin is bullshit. I bought a headlamp just to go to the dog park (as well as a can of mace, as my mother is convinced that I'll be mugged). I had to hook Sammy up with a rear bicycle light on his collar just so he wouldn't get lost.

As most of us do around the holidays, I've been all over the place. A trip to Washington state for work (that was the last time I posted), off to Illinois for Thanksgiving, then to Indiana for Christmas. It was almost as if since I couldn't get away from my real life, I withdrew from my online persona. But I've had a few signs that I need to get back to it.

My sister-in-law got me a gift certificate to Stitch Diva Studios, inspired by blog posts (genius!). I had relatives I was unaware that they even read my blog saying "Are you aware that you haven't written since Nov. 15? What's up with that?" I even had a bloggy friend inquire to see if I was dead in a ditch (I'm not and it was very sweet of you to email, Heidi!). So I've hit the reset button on my reader feed and am ready to catch up with my fellow knitters. Here are some dog pictures to entertain you in the meantime:

'His' recliner

Stuck after an attempt to get the last bits of cereal from the bottom.

Testing the ice at Devil's Lake

In his uncle Rocky's bed (a Yorkshire-Shih Tzu mix)

(I posted this from my phone, so I'm curious to see how well it worked...)

Sale temptations

2011-11-15T14:24:00.001-06:00

My girl crush the Stitch Diva has some awesome sales going on for some gorgeous yarn! TREAT YOURSELF.This has been your exercise in trying to resist temptation for the day. :)ETA: If it encourages you at all, I gave into my own temptation. 10 skeins of Washington Silk. We'll talk more about that later though....

Centi-sock

2011-10-31T19:32:00.000-05:00

I've had a finished object on deck that's been a long time coming (not a penguin sweater--they quickly announced they've gotten all they needed). Ravelry tells me that I started this project on January 1, 2011.

I guess it could be worse. I've been working on Mystery Wedding Project since 2010, and Mystery Wedding is long since over.

The copilot and some of our friends and I have a tradition of going to see a ski movie that 'tours' around the country for one night only showings. We made our annual pilgrimage last week, and as the lights went down and the first shot of overlapping ski tracks on pristine powder appeared, I shook the copilot breathlessly whispering, "It's just like my socks!"

Ski tracks - the namesake of the Powder 8s

Sidenote: I totally got shushed at the same ski movie last year. A little background: it's the type of movie where there's an MC, giveaways, and group participation like cheering is encouraged. Shushing someone would be like asking someone at a screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show to tone it down. So of course we were pointing out what gear we thought was cool, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at impressive jumps and tricks, etc. A grumpy looking couple was sitting in front of our group, and at one point the girl turned around and asked me, "Are you going to talk through the entire movie?" I may have imbibed a few adult beverages by this point, and I asked, "Are you having trouble following the plot? They're skiing." There was no shushing this year, but one of my friends did periodically ask each person in our group if they were going to talk through the entire movie.

I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly the sock knit up after I put my mind to it to work on it. With that in mind, I started another one. I had purchased some Socks That Rock on a visit to Seattle entirely too long ago with every intention of making some man socks. Shades of gray, natch, since all men are colorblind (right?). I didn't even pick a pattern, just cast on a reasonable amount of stitches and started up--men are also patternblind.

Here's the thing, though. I don't think there's a huge market in the way of men knitters (sorry, dudes) and men tend to have big feet. And you know what they say about men with big feet....they need big socks.

Are you seeing what's wrong with this picture?

That's right.

My biggest nightmare. 80% of the time, if I wake up in a cold sweat, this is what I was dreaming about (the other 20% is when you realize that you have to take a final exam, but have forgotten to go to any of the classes--isn't that the worst?).

So what else could I do? I unraveled the top of cuff and attached it to the toe. It's now like a snake eating it's tail.

An ouroboros of sock (or suck).

I've done this once before and it worked fine, but knitting isn't always exactly the same unraveling from the top as it is from the bottom (actually, it usually isn't). If there's only one type of stitch, fine, but even the ribbing of the cuff is too complex to come apart easily. This....may take awhile.

Can we talk Indian Summer for a moment (Native American Summer if you want to be PC about it). Just two weeks ago, this was WI.

Note the shorts, and the lack of frost on the ground.

Now most of the leaves have changed, and the handknits are out. I might be rethinking all of my bitching about summer....no, I take that back. I'd just like a longer fall!

My entire life up until now has been preparation for this

2011-10-20T16:28:00.001-05:00

One of my friends pointed out the subject of today's post. I thought I'd be updating you on the crap I've been making, or my latest kerfuffle one of the local weirdos, but we have more important things to talk about today.

Penguins. New Zealand. Knitting. BOOM! I'm ON IT.

I've heard of this before--the sweaters keep them from swallowing the oil when they try to preen their feathers. And seriously, is anything more adorable?

Me and Murray on the NZ shore....stay out of the water!

ZOMG Adorable

2011-10-12T18:54:00.000-05:00

I'm not usually one for internet acronyms but 'zomg' just seems to convey the appropriate amount of extreme excitement for my new stitch markers. I couldn't resist when Stephcuddles showed off her newest stitch marker creations, 'Afternoon Tea'.

I should have put a scale marker on the image, because these things are petite. The tiny detail is beautiful and impressive. You can check out her Etsy shop here if you're interested.

Full disclosure: I'm not entirely sure what my tea time treats there in the background are. I think maybe I requested cookies? Oh crap, cookies are called biscuits in the UK. So what are UK cookies? Thoughts?

Powder 8 socks return

2011-09-30T14:56:00.000-05:00

I wasn't entirely sure what to pick up after finishing the sweater. As you can see from my Ravelry progress bars, I could of course work on Mystery Wedding Project but...you know. It's boring. I do have a couple of projects languishing, one of them being my experimental socks that I dubbed the 'Powder 8' pattern (because it looks like it has little ski tracks running down the sides. Yeah, I like to make stuff up). I re-did one of the socks after I modified the pattern for the second one--and then had a knitting tragedy the finished second sock jumped out onto the floor of a commuter jet, unbeknown to me until I had transferred to another flight. After a brief mourning period, I ordered yarn of a 'complementary color shade' since the color I originally had was discontinued. I was glad to get anything close to the original color in the same type of yarn, because in fact the entire line of 'possum-merino' blended sock-yarns had been discontinued.

After all of this drama, I realized that I was freaking sick of the pattern, and the yarn, and socks in general and I took no joy in working on it. Back in the pile. Then I got this message about a month ago.

The only reason I hadn't made the pattern available is that I never had a full pair finished at once (although when I'm done with this one I'll have knitted a total of four socks) to take pictures with. I didn't start on it right away, but it stuck in my mind that I should get to work since one human being was interested. After the sweater, though, it was the logical choice. It was already about 1/4 done, and socks are the best knitting projects to travel with. I've made some progress...

I'm hoping to make some more progress on my flights home today. I had forgotten how small the Idaho Falls airport was. I arrived an hour early to find no one manning the Delta counter (a sign read 'Ring Bell for Service') and the security area completely deserted.

There was another sign reading "Security Area may not open until 45 minutes before your scheduled flight". I'll be damned. I haven't seen anything like this since flying to out of the Rockford, IL airport (which I would highly recommend--free parking) where the two people who checked me in also acted as the TSA and then the gate agents (but not the pilots, thankfully). Idaho Falls has a slightly bigger operation: 3 gates, instead of two.

Can we talk pitas for a second? More specifically, pita packaging. The lab I worked in the past couple of weeks didn't have a cafeteria, and in money-saving fashion (what my coworker colorfully refers to as 'dirt-balling it') instead of going out to eat every day I went to the grocery and picked up a bunch of snacky lunch type items to nosh on over the week. One of the items I grabbed was pitas.

Doesn't it seem weird to gear your food towards a particular gender? I've never considered different types of food to be manly/girly. I can see my husband picking this up at the grocery and thinking, "Hmm, this appears to be for women. Must have some chick hormone in it or something, better not get it." Isn't it bad business practice to alienate half of your potential customers? Just struck me as an odd strategy.

Well, Yellow there!

2011-09-26T19:57:00.000-05:00

I know I occasionally complain about it, but by and large I love that my job gets me out and about traveling. That being said, I was not looking forward to a trip to Idaho Falls to do some work at Idaho National Lab (INL). I had been there twice before--once as an extremely green graduate student, and once when it was on fire.

The first time, my advisor sent me an email out of the blue, "Hey, I can't attend this meeting, can you present something for me?" I honestly don't even remember the point of the meeting--maybe a nuclear fuels consortium? It doesn't matter. I said sure, and made up a poster highlighting my one and only (and in retrospect, very bad) result of my research. Believe it or not, it's common practice for scientists to print up posters showing off their research, and conferences and meetings will have a 'poster session' where you can walk around and look at everyone's posters and chat with the person presenting it. I was there for four days: I knew one person at the meeting, and exactly one person talked to me and asked about my poster (they were the same person).

The second time was actually also poster related, now that I think about it. I had won a poster contest (yep, such a thing also really exists, usually to encourage students like me) and there was a cash prize as well as an 'opportunity to visit INL to tour the labs and present the current state of your research'. As I was checking into my hotel, I got a call saying that the tour of the lab was canceled...because it was on fire. Wildfires had been threatening the area for several days before I arrived, and they had finally knocked the power out and hence shut down the lab. With a day to kill and four students on his hands, my advisor drove us around the desert in a rental Hummer. We gawked at the fire, visited the first town to ever run on nuclear power (pop. approx. 14), and somehow ended up at a dive called 'Pickle's Place'.

Rather than presenting to the materials science department of the lab, we ended up presenting in an auxiliary conference building to about 4 people since everyone had the day off after the lab shut down. Good times.

Rock bottom expectations make it easy to be impressed, but I'm having a fairly sweet time so far. No fires, the work is going well, but the gigantic cherry on top has been a weekend road trip. My office-mate (and friend, I don't want to pigeonhole you as merely a coworker) came out the week before I did and highly recommended a trip to Yellowstone National Park. I didn't really know that they were that close, but look:

It's only a two hour jaunt to the west entrance of the park! At first, it seems like your typical national park: beautiful mountains, lots of pine trees, picturesque lakes. But tucked into this are all of these crazy geothermal features that make you feel like you're on another planet. Brightly colored pools of boiling water....

My shadow is making a cameo in this shot.

Mud bubbling like a cauldron....

This mud is actively bubbling! Glop, glop.

Steam and water blasting up out of the earth....

The people living here hundreds of years ago must have been very religious, because how else would you explain this stuff without vast scientific knowledge? The most logical conclusion at the time would have been that GOD IS POWERFUL AND POSSIBLY PISSED OFF.

A build-up of minerals and heat-loving bacteria make the beautiful colors and terraces around the pools.

Many of the geothermal pools are readily accessible by terraces near the road. I decided that I wanted to do a little hiking and get away from the crowds. I pulled over at a trailhead that said 'Fairy Falls, 1.0 mi'. So two miles round trip, I could easily see the falls in 45 min. So I walked.

And walked, and walked, and walked. I kept thinking, 'OK, the falls must just be over that bend'. Since I do a lot of walking with puppy-boy, I figured I'd already gone two miles when I got to a sign, 'Fairy Falls, 1.6 mi'. Aaaah!! I turned around in defeat. I soon passed a couple of European guys who asked, 'Where are the falls??". I told them about my discovery, and they made irritated noises and started walking back with me. They passed the news on to another couple, who made some disgusted noises and turned back as well. We hiked for about a half-an-hour, these guys staring us down from the distance:

Heh heh BOOBS!

Geographical breasts being the most interesting thing I'd seen on my hike, I felt obligated to go see Old Faithful. Unfortunately, I got there just as the spout was winding down. To kill some time, I checked out the Old Faithful Inn and got some ice cream. Not a bad deal, it's an amazing old lodge (and ice cream is always welcome, natch). I hope to someday own a home someday with 100 ft ceilings and vast beams made of wood.

Ninety minutes later, here we were. Hundreds of people, all starting at a hole in the ground. I started to feel a little silly.

Is it your ass, or a hole in the ground?

It was actually worth the wait....

OK, so it's pretty cool.

Here's the only shot that contains me. One of the disadvantages of solo adventuring: no one to take pictures of you in front of picturesque spots, or pretending to pick a statue's nose, or standing on your head in front of a geyser to make it look like it's coming out of your rear end (the other disadvantage: no one to be your lookout when you need to take a leak in the woods).

Proving I was there...not that the sunburn doesn't do the trick. Ow.

My friend had advised me that it was quite cold, and that I needed a jacket. I hadn't brought much in the way of winter clothes, so I layered up before I left. About 30 seconds after stepping out of the car into the park, I stripped down to my long-sleeve t-shirt, and five minutes later I was down to a tank top. I hadn't brought sunscreen since I thought I would be wearing lots of clothes the whole day.

In eight hours I only saw a small fraction of the park, and I find myself trying to figure out some more work that needs to be done in Idaho Falls....

Bits and pieces: part deux

2011-09-23T23:00:00.000-05:00

Just one more mental dump. Bear with me, as the weather cools, I'll start to compose more frequent and possibly even coherent posts.

-------------------------------------------------
I've heard quite a few people within the past few years assert something to the effect of, "I never go to the movie theater anymore." The reason most commonly cited is cost, but I've also heard laments about sticky floors, noisy kids, obnoxious old people (apparently we just take free license to do whatever we want at both ends of the age spectrum) crappy projectors, the list goes on. Despite my propensity for crotchety-old-ladyism, I'll be the first to admit that I LOVE the moviegoing experience despite the pitfalls. There's something strangely charming about the ritual of sitting in a dark room with thirty or so strangers, feet sticking to the floor, trying desperately to hold in your urine for two hours while simultaneously chugging a giant pop--all while enjoying anything from a subtitled art film to the latest Micheal Bay 'splosion fest. Seriously, how could it get any better?

Well worth the 30 min drive.

Answer: the drive-in movie theater, my addiction of the summer. You still get a bit of the communal experience of watching a movie with fellow cinephiles, without the chance of a sitting behind a group of obnoxious kids or next to the guy who keeps texting. And always a double feature! AND I don't have to worry that I'm annoying people with the click-click of my needles. I took Mystery Wedding Project (now officially a year since the wedding, and counting) to every movie this summer and made a respectable bit of progress.

There's even a retro snack bar--with real mid-western food like cheese curds and pork tenderloins. Especially fun were movies that were a little scary, being outside in the dark added to the suspense. I was glum when Labor Day rolled around...closed for the season.

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I often feel a little guilty because we don't have a have a yard for our highly active husky-shepherd to run around in, since we live in a condo. In a way though, it ends up being a pretty sweet deal for him--he tends to get two or three long walks a day.

One morning a couple of weeks ago, we were sauntering through the park when a the sound of a fire truck stopped Sammy in his tracks. He's always fascinated with sirens--when he hears one, he'll drop whatever shoe he's chewing on and listen, tilting his head back and forth in the way that all dogs do. In this case, he plopped his butt down and refused to go any further.

The fire truck appeared in our view and made it's way slowly down the street while Sammy tracked it, totally captivated. After a few seconds, he raised his head to the sky and howled in tune with the siren. I was so surprised that I melodramatically clapped my hand over my mouth. Never has he made a sound like that, as far as I know.

In that moment I saw him as something wild--despite looking quite a bit like a wolf, he's never acted like one before in the least. I saw him running through the woods, hunting prey with his pack, and howling at the moon. Then he looked back at me with his big doggy grin and the illusion was gone. Just sweet Sammy, tongue hanging out of his mouth like the goofball he is.

How is that even comfortable?

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Finally. FINALLY. The sweater is done....and I love it! Check it:

I currently don't have anyone to take pictures of me actually inside of it, so this'll have to suffice for now. I went though about four iterations of sleeves since we last spoke and you verified my suspicions that the sleeves were too tight. The next iteration was a total overcorrection, kind of like what they tell you never to do if you're driving on the highway and you go off the road and onto the berm--I twisted the steering wheel too far the the left and ended up in the oncoming traffic of a huge-ass sleeve. After settling somewhere in the middle, I tried the cap sleeve that we agreed should look nice, but I didn't like it for two reasons.

1) The fabric is actually quite a bit heavier than I thought it would be, and I foresee wearing it in cold weather. Not having the top half of your arm covered really makes a difference in how warm a sweater makes you. (Rational reason)

2) I hate my upper arms. Always have. (Irrational reason)

So instead of seeing a therapist to work through those issues, I made it a little longer. I also continued the pattern on the sleeves wherever it had happened to intersect the armhole--so there's a bit of the pattern on the sleeve, but it's not as dense as on the body. I seem to be a little obsessed with transitions like that, so it satisfied my OCD tendencies.

When I cast-off the first sleeve, I didn't like how loose and floppy it still was. But the other sleeve was still on the circular needles, and the stitches on that sleeve kind of gathered together when I tried it on. I loved the look! Ah, serendipity. I ended up with something I like to call "poofy sleeves" (not to be confused with the Seinfeld poofy shirt).

Booties are also done, they still need to be sent to their recipients. I'm hoping the babes' feet aren't growing freakishly fast. I also got some news that I have cause to make another set, but I can say no more for now (in case this isn't obvious--it's not for me).

-------------------------------------------------
I traveled to Richland, WA to do some work at the lab there for what I thought might be the last time before I graduate. It was a little bittersweet at the time (I kept thinking, "This could be the last time I dine at Dr. Bill's Bistro", ""This could be the last time I check into my mildly dumpy motel", stuff like that) but I've since convinced myself that I need just one teensy more visit to get a little more data.

However, it was my last time visiting their LYS--or rather, I found that my previous visit had been my last. I made the trip without all the knitting supplied I needed (Sammy has successfully chewed up all of my darning needles) but was confident that I could get what I needed at the Richland Knitty Gritty.

I went down to my favorite shopping area ("Maybe for the last time!") and went up to what I thought was the yarn shop. An arcade? Hmm, must have gone to the wrong store. I walked around the entire area twice, then looked closer at the arcade--the layout of the front room appeared to be the same as the ol' LYS.

Using my amazing powers of deduction, I sensed that something was amiss. I asked around at a couple of the other stores, but no one seemed to know what happened. When I searched for their website to try to get some info, all I got was this. What a bummer. The last thing I bought there was this skein:

They even wound it for me! I'm easily impressed.

I took the photo on my iTouch the day I got it and deemed it non-blog quality, but now it seems fitting. I feel like I need to make something extra special with this one.

-------------------------------------------------
I feel a little bit lost without the sweater to work on......

Bits and pieces

2011-08-29T21:18:00.002-05:00

I've had an almost intangible block on posting recently. If I had to guess, I think I felt I needed to finish the sweater I've been working on before I could update the like, four of you who read this. I suppose I wanted something to show you, some kind of accomplishment. This is not to say that the sweater's done--I've finished the body and one sleeve--but that much broke the sweater-trance of being unable to post. We'll get to the details of that later. (SPOILER ALERT: Because I hate the sleeve and need a sanity check. Hate, hate, hate it. OK, that's a little strong. Just hate hate.) For now, a mental dump of thoughts and happenings from the last three weeks.

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I never quite understood why knitting was so strongly associated with babies and baby items before. What's the appeal? I always figured that it was because having a baby was all special and stuff, so worthy of commemoration by a hand-knit object. And they don't complain about your style and workmanship, simple shapes and colors are cosmopolitan enough (also, they can't speak English). But one pair of booties and I am totally riding the baby knits train.

These little darlings took me all of two hours to whip out. I've never felt so productive. Did I mention I was done with them in two hours? Other than sewing up the seams, as you can see from the photo. Turns out that the resident chewing machine has destroyed every single one of my darning needles.

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The co-pilot and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary earlier this month. A year ago, we decided to try out a rental cabin for the occasion about an hour and a half north of Madison at a place called Little Pond Lodge.

The cabin was sweet. Which was good, since we spent most of the weekend hiding inside it in an attempt to avoid the army of mosquitoes waiting outside to devour our supple young flesh. Layers upon layers of deep woods bug spray didn't faze them in the least. The icing on the cake was when I got a call from one of my friends, coming home from vacation. I had been watering his plants. 'So, I'll swing by your place and pick up the key to my apartment?' 'You gave me your only key???' The upshot: I drove the 3 hour round trip as the co-pilot grilled our dinner, vainly trying to preserve some of his blood for, you know, living.

For whatever reason, we decided to give it another shot in the winter (probably off-season rates--never underestimate the power of a good deal to a cheap-ass). And...

Relaxing on the porch

Playing some ball

Stomping through the woods

...it was pretty great. Cross-country skiing, a warm fireplace, and a nice dinner on Valentine's Day (which was a coincidence, I swear! We're a couple of those killjoys that love to bitch that V-day is a corporation-y holiday, possibly in part to avoid having to buy gifts), you couldn't ask for much more.

So we gave it another shot for the summer, and we only needed about two coats of deep woods bug spray this time around. Also, Sammy knew how to swim this time and spent as much time as he could in Little Pond.

Not 100% on the retrieving though, which is why we usually throw sticks.

------------------------------------

The sweater has mostly gotten down to finishing and detail work, which is where my anal retentive-osity kicks in and progress really slows down. I've been thinking for about a week now that I'm going to finish it up, then I backtrack some more, then something takes way longer than expected, repeat. I watched Blade Runner on TV in the time that it took me to pick up all the stitches for the neckline. That's with commercials. Did you know that movie came out almost 30 years ago? It's set in a 'far-off dystopian future' of something like 2015 (LA could potentially look like that five years from now, I guess). This fact astonished me because a) the special effects really look fabulous and b) that makes me feel old. In Back to the Future II, I think they also go to 2015. Where in the hell are our flying cars?

------------------------------------

OK, back to that sleeve. I made it according to the directions, correcting for the fact that the pattern wasn't written to be seamless (i.e. short rows instead of bind-offs). I'll show it to you without comment:

I asked the opinions of some (non-knitting) friends and their assessment was:

a) It looks weird that the branch pattern doesn't continue on the sleeve.

b) The sleeve fabric looks thicker than the body.

c) Fabric is bunching up under the armpit.

It was observation c) that was the crux of my distaste--I cannot stand a top that bunches around the armpit. The rest of their observations just increases my neuroses. The potential solution for the bunching is to make a cap sleeve, but what do you think about keeping the sleeve in pattern? Since I would be doing the sleeve upside-down relative to the way the body was made, the branch pattern would go backwards. Would that be dumb? Or should I try to rework the branch pattern so that it's sort of not upside-down? Or screw the pattern? Sanity check requested.

Summer rolls on

2011-08-09T18:59:00.001-05:00

Thanks for the advice in baby-making, it was very enlightening. I mean, in making stuff for babies. The other way would be weird. I got as far as yarn:

Acrylic, natch (though some people claim that acrylic is a bad choice for babies because it melts in a fire--but my feeling is that if your baby is on fire, you probably have bigger problems than that). As you might have noticed, Sammy has already 'tested' the durability of the yellow yarn. He couldn't even leave me in peace to take a picture of it.

This yarn was really freaking cheap, and momentarily made me question my dedication to yarn snobbery. I might have to mix acrylic into my repertoire. I found myself really drawn to this neon purple shade, but fortunately was talking to my mother on the phone at the time whose assessment of "For a baby??? Come on." made me realize that perhaps it wasn't an appropriate choice for a baby. I hate pastels, though, so I think this was a good compromise. Next up, actually making something.

Here's the thing--I keep putting off writing, because I want to be able to actually show you something that I've made. The new and exciting sweater that I started in, oh let's see, the beginning of JUNE is becoming a never ending chore. And I'm starting to realize I'm such a slow knitter because I keep doing crap like this...

So I realized that I had read part of the (poorly written) pattern wrong, and had run part of the branch pattern right up next to the selvage edge where it wasn't supposed to be:

The whole problem area was about three times the length of what you see in the picture. I internally debated for a while--it would probably look better the correct way, but it didn't really matter, right? My inner perfectionist won that round, but what she didn't seem to remember was that whenever you do lace type stuffs, i.e. use yarn overs and decreases that functionally create new stitches, the column of stitches truncates when you get down where it was created. Stops. Does not go down any further. Which I figured out about here:

Which was a hot mess already and only was about a third of the way down to the start of the problem. Why do I do shit like this? When I realized exactly how many stitches I'd have to drop down (around 30) to actually get everything undone, I begrudgingly started bringing it all back up. Here's about halfway:

And two episodes of Top Gear later, we were back to where we started.

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO STOP DOING THIS KIND OF CRAZY. This is why things never get done.

Your professional opinions kindly requested

2011-07-21T17:56:00.000-05:00

Ah, summer. You drift by like a hazy dream, wherein keeping the internet world up to date with my craft and occasionally non-craft related activities seems like an insurmountable task. I want to throw out an 'I'm still here', Joaquin Phoenix style (though my facial hair isn't nearly as impressive).

This is where I'd usually commence in bitching, probably in ALL CAPS, about how [insert string of expletives here] hot it was due to the freak heat wave striking the heartland of the US. Ironically, I was dreading a work trip to Knoxville, TN this week--their summers are miserably hot and humid--but at temps in the high 80s, it was practically winter coat weather compared to WI. I don't want to gloat, so I'll just say I enjoyed staying in a hotel next to the 1982 World's Fair Sunsphere:

Knoxville's local wigshop warehouse. It's in much better shape than The Simpsons led me to believe.

And I've been steadily working on my cotton sweater, though dog knows when I'll get to wear it. I'm just about done with the body; there's been no shaping, so if I stopped right now it would be a (very loose) tube top.

It's laid out on a bench at the airport: not really sure why it looks like it's a floating ghostly apparition. Maybe it's tired of being a sweater and is trying to go into the light.

But onto a pressing matter: two of my cousins have recently gotten themselves knocked up. Buns in the respective ovens. Riding the baby train. Their lives are over (JOKING...one of them already has a child so her life was over a while ago). But seriously, they are both lovely ladies expanding their families and I want to mark the occasion with some hand knitting. We're not super close due to the the long distance we live apart--so I'm not thinking a huge project, but I think that a couple of babe hats would be a nice gesture.

Here's the rub: I know absolutely nothing about human spawn. I might as well be another species. Until a few years ago, none of my extended family was of the right age range to have young children--the first time I held a baby was maybe three years ago (I did the thing where you awkwardly hold it straight-armed out in front of you, natch). So I'm all ears for advice...they're both due in the fall, so the wee ones will be 2-4 months-ish during the wintertime. What size are babies heads at that age? Are knitting patterns for babies sized by age? Any suggestions for patterns that you've liked?

Happy 4th of July!

2011-07-04T17:33:00.002-05:00

To all of my American readers, I hope you're having a fun 4th of July! Celebrate your country's independence in the traditional way: by blowing up a small piece of it.

Kickass new design and jumping on the bandwagon

2011-06-27T13:36:00.000-05:00

First off, I'd like to draw your attention to my kickass new site design, courtesy of my brilliant copilot. For an engineer, my computer coding skills are woefully inadequate (we materials engineers tend to use FORTRAN for our coding needs--if you know anything about programming, you just snorted in derisive laughter) and I had no clue how to achieve what I wanted. I came to him like a bossy client with vague and flimsy ideas of a vision, but he managed to bring the magic--such as every time you come to the site or refresh, you get a random banner. MAGIC.

I also decided to start using Bloglovin', which is an awesome little organizer for the blogs that you read, but I'm sure that this isn't news to you. I'm not an early adopter. My copilot managed to convince me to let go of my VHS tape player just last year. But if you're a fuddy like me, check it out and follow my blog with Bloglovin. Now I can actually keep up to date with my internet buddies and I don't have to shamefully comment on your posts weeks after the fact.

Double dog dare

2011-06-24T14:13:00.003-05:00

There is an excuse for the lack of accomplishment that's been plaguing the AC residence as of late. I have looked into the face of evil, and it looks like this:


Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh nooooooooooo!

Evil is pretty cute, apparently. That's why the sexy devil costume is always popular for Halloween. We've been dog-sitting for my parents while they were off gallivanting on a cross-country tour of the western US. If you don't think that caring for a tiny terrier could possibly be that difficult, well, you've got poop for brains. To be fair, there were times like this:

And even this:

But also a lot of this:

I have actually have been doing a little bit of knitting, when the yarn wasn't being chewed on and in between refereeing dogfights. I've had this kick-ass cotton yarn sitting in my pile for about a year now, languishing because no project seemed worthy.

Which is a really dumb philosophy if you think about it, and it's a trap I fall into all too often. Yarn is for creating fabric, and it's a waste to not use it. I set out with a parameters for a garment in mind (DK weight yarn, short-sleeved shirt, pattern downloadable) and used Ravelry's nifty pattern searching picture. Only one pattern matched, which made it pretty easy.

Perfect! I stand in front of the ocean with my hand on my hat and my hip cocked all the time.

#10 Tunis, rock on.

Time to knit some big girl pants

2011-06-18T20:04:00.000-05:00

You ever just have one of those mornings where you really just don't want to put on pants? I don't mean you're depressed and don't want to get out of bed, but every thing just seems like an unnecessary chore that doesn't warrant time and effort (OK, that still sounds like you might be a little depressed). You resent the fact that it's socially unacceptable just to go pants-less. Everything has seemed like that recently--work, cooking, and even knitting.

But I think it's time to pull out my big girl pants and get back to it.

It's that time of year again

2011-06-01T19:50:00.001-05:00

You know. Where I start bitching about the weather. I hate the heat. The main factor is the fact that I sweat much, much more than the average person. When most people are starting to feel a tiny swath of moisture across their brow, I've already taken off my shirt and am wringing it out.

And nothing. NOTHING. Is worse than sweaty underwear ("swunderwear", if you will).

Suffice to say, I was not pleased that work was beckoning me to the City of Sin once again. I wasn't worried about the sin part so much as the BLAZING SUMMER HEAT (when I thought about it, it was always in ALL CAPS). Weather forecasts let me know it was going to be in the 90s all week, and I grudgingly packed many pairs of shorts. I hate my legs almost as much as sweating, and I tend to hide them as much as possible--so I was Serious with a capital S.

When I arrived, bracing myself for the blast as I stepped out of the airport, I found....it wasn't that bad. Actually, it was kind of nice. My copious amounts of sweat seemed to immediately evaporate. I realized that I need to amend my complaints post haste, even though it's a cliche: it ain't the heat, it's the humidity. I'm glad we got that clarified. It's still a little disturbing when you chugging water all day and never seem to have to pee. My host tried to convince me that it was healthy to keep cycling all of that moisture right out of my pores, but I remain unconvinced.

I sampled some local fare:

Classy and white-trash - is it a meal or an oxymoron?

Sometimes after work you're too tired to walk 10 blocks to find a restaurant that fits the price range of measly government per diem. Don't hate.

Las Vegas, save (maybe) the Strip, is not a particularly pedestrian friendly place. Though your eyes tell you otherwise, the hotel that appears to be just a few minutes walk away might be several miles down the road. Occasionally the berm on an eight lane highway has to suffice as your sidewalk. So I'm always delighted by this fixture on a 6 lane highway that runs past the university:

Simply push the button

The sign lights up


And theoretically cars stop for you to cross. Unless they are assholes.

I was excited to see this plant growing in some of the landscaping for UNLV. Despite my apparent black thumb, I keep trying to raise plants. I happen to have a pot of this stuff growing out on my balcony at home.

I figure, if it's growing in the middle of the desert out of clay and sand, it's got to survive for me, right? Or else it'll be that much more depressing when it does die.

Travel does have the advantage of extra knitting time. After realizing that making a bobble with (K, P, K) on the same stitch is in fact not the same as a (K, Ktbl, K) I figured out that my wine tote prototype did indeed have many, many errors. The whole thing came apart, and I worked it up to the same point where we were two weeks ago. I didn't even have the heart to take a picture; it looks like this with no strange green yarn in the grape bunches. I also worked on the sock that I'm coming to think of as 'that stupid sock that I hate'. Maybe it's time to start a new project....

Time to redecorate?

2011-05-26T17:52:00.001-05:00

I may not be a crocheter, but this apartment is awesome.

Because when you think about it, what doesn't need a cozy?

Sammy v a Great Dane

2011-05-24T19:07:00.001-05:00

I was lamenting to my officemate that I haven't done or knitted anything of interest to blog about. Summer seems like it's a Blogging Black Hole (if only hole started with B, that would be some awesome alliteration...hmm, but a b-hole would just be a super polite way to refer to another word for bum or a person that is a jerk. That doesn't really work in the context). It's too nice out to be sitting in front of your computer!

Officemate suggested posting some video he shot of my dog playing with a Great Dane at a dog swim area in one of WI numerous state parks. It was pretty much like a dog play wrestling with a pony, i.e. awesome. Enjoy.

Sam Sam go Bam Bam from Kevin Field on Vimeo.

Sam Sam go Bam Bam v2 from Kevin Field on Vimeo.

Going to the dogs

2011-05-17T17:34:00.004-05:00

Oh, how the time flies. I see it's been over a week since I was chatting you up about my cowl. I found myself back in eastern Washington state for work last week, and was immersed in productivity (I even worked the weekend--I know!) Less on the knitting productivity front. Let's get the boring, uninspired stuff out of the way first.

Yay! Replacement sock! Moving on.

I occasionally check out my Blogger stats. It's something that one could get obsessed over--but considering I have, like, 5 readers (including my mother-hi Mom!) I don't worry about it too much. The most read posts tend to be from Knit and Crochet Blog Week (duh) but surprisingly this post is consistently always in the top 5. Written almost a year ago (also while I was in eastern WA), this was an experimental knit I was doing--making a wine tote. Internets traffic indicates that there's a demand for something like this; apparently, you knitters are total lushes. No surprises there.

The first prototype was a bit heavy in intarsia for such a texturally complicated piece. It was the wrong size for a wine bottle, and it was obnoxious having a million (approximately) little balls of yarn hanging from the back. I stuffed it in the bottom of a bag. Since I was headed back to WA, and since warm weather was on its way that I'd re-attempt this non-winter related item--scaled-down in size and difficulty.

A little bit of progress:


Prototype No. 2

I thought I took your advice on how to mix the colors for the grapes, but frankly this version doesn't look like either of the versions I was attempting a year ago. More investigation necessary. Speaking of investigation:


I'm investigating some yarn in my mouth.

Which brings me to another topic I wanted to talk to you guys about. I was taking the Sam-ster for a long lunchtime walk today, when a guy came jogging up behind us with his dog. Nothing out of the ordinary there, we pass by at least a few dogs on every walk. We stepped to the side so they could pass, and I distracted Sammy by having him do a couple of tricks for me to earn some treats. The other dog was pulling to come greet Sammy and getting pulled off of his hind legs--at first I thought that it was just because he was pulling at the leash, but then I realized his owner was actively pulling him back. Harder and harder, really jerking him until he was basically choking him. He kept jerking at him, even though the dog didn't seem to be doing anything wrong--he wasn't being aggressive at all, he just wanted to greet another dog.

Then instead of going past, he walks to the curb and forces his dog onto it's side. At this point, I'm staring at him with my mouth open and probably have an expression on my face like he's just popped a turd into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed right in front of me. He looks at me and says, "We have to do this pretty much every day." A million thoughts are running through my head. "Why don't you have him in a harness if he's so hard to control?" "You know all of that dominance stuff is total bullshit, right?" "If you have to do it every day, maybe it's not working," "Would you do that to a kid?""You're going to get your ass bitten doing that," and really, the bottom line, "You're abusing your dog." I started to ask for his name, like you do when someone gives you shitty customer service, but stopped short. What was I going to do with it? The fearless side of me said that I needed to say something, the conservative side said that he could kick my ass and wouldn't have listened to a word I said. I ended up stalking off with a scoff, having Sammy heel and giving him a treat to, I dunno, try and demonstrate good dog handling.

I feel bad. The walk ended up being a bummer, and I wish I had done things differently. What would you have done? What should I do next time?

All cowled up with nowhere to go

2011-05-07T20:36:00.003-05:00

It's finished:

The Danube cowl.

I connected the cowl with buttons instead of Kitchener stitch, as a design change (read: I was on an airplane and couldn't remember how to do a provisional cast-on). The buttons are mother-of-pearl--I love MOP. It's always cold when you touch it at first and like a magpie I love anything shiny.

I can hear my mom right now: 'Mother-of-pearl is for old ladies.' That's always her go-to descriptor for any of my tastes she thinks are dumb--'Lavender scented stuff is for old ladies.' 'Recumbent bicycles are for old ladies.' I remember when I was maybe 7 years old or so, and I wanted to be called Crystal (don't ask, I don't know). 'Crystal is an old lady name!'. It was only when I grew older that I discovered Crystal was in fact a white trash name, not an old lady name (sorry if you or your loved ones are named Crystal--no, I mean I'm sorry that it's your name, because it's totally WT).

So here I am in the state of WA on a little business trip, and what happens?

Son of a bitch! Nice weather, sunny and 70. The lovely cowl is staring at me with its big, sad, old lady mother-of-pearl eyes. I'm sorry! I promise I'll wear you as soon as I can.

Alpaca extravaganza!

2011-05-03T16:33:00.002-05:00

This weekend, Madison, WI hosted the 7th annual (news to me, just learned about it) Great Midwest Alpaca Festival. My folks were up visiting for the weekend, and what better tourist destination than the GMAF? Well, potentially a lot of things considering we had no clue what it would be like. I was fairly confident that fiber would be involved, so at least one person in our party was sure to be pleased.

The entire coliseum floor was set up for alpaca showing.

As far as actually the competition, it seemed like 4-H exclusively for adults and their alpacas (OK, being from the midwest I naturally assume that everyone knows what 4-H is. Think county/state fair, kids can show off livestock that they helped to raise and various other skills. Oh, you didn't grow up in the sticks? Well bully for you).

In the ring.

They had a silent auction to raise funds for like, orphaned alpacas or something, and I bid on a wool/alpaca felted hat:

And won due to the fact that my dad is possibly the nicest person on earth and went and upped my bid at the last minute. I talked to the guy who makes these hats and he was pretty awesome.

And the alpacas were just cute.

Cute!

Super cute!

Hungry cute!

Suri cute!

Whoa! Cute only if the service is NOT for the guy in the vest.

Really, the coolest part was hobnobbing with the local folks raising alpacas and/or working with the fiber. There were people from every farming state in the US, but a fair number of them were from Wisconsin and many of them had brought some good looking fiber with them. I tried to go easy on the yarn buying (I wanted IT ALL) and I think I got off pretty easy--Shady Haven's Fiber Designs was selling gorgeous undyed yarn:

And it was an absolute steal. I usually think of buying local and getting a bargain as mutually exclusive goals, but somehow they pulled it off. Maybe they're using child labor or something.*

So I got an invitation to a farm, signed up for a felting class, got some sweet stash, and entertained my visitors for an afternoon.. All in all, worth the $6 for parking (maybe a little more).

*The views and opinions of AC from AC Engineered Knits are for entertainment purposes only. I don't think that Shady Haven's Fiber Designs is actually using child labor.

Under the wire

2011-04-30T14:05:00.000-05:00

It was time to cowboy up and do something about the lone sock that was slowly sinking to the bottom of my knitting basket. I can't stand to see a handknit go to waste (unless it's really, really ugly). One of the nice things about the Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn is that the skeins come in amounts suited for one sock. I searched for "possum merino sock yarn" in the "Martha's Vineyard" colorway (the colors do represent MV now that I think about it. Blue like the ocean, green and purple like the grapes, and brown like my sister-in-law's upchuck that time she drank too much on vacation).

Checking through some sites like Yarn Market and Yarndex Knitting, it became clear that the Martha's Vineyard colorway had been discontinued--in 2005. Little late for that one, eh? More troubling was it seemed that the possum-merino sock yarn had been discontinued. I started to internally panic...the sock might linger forever without a mate, going through life desperately lonely.

But BargainYARNS came through for me:

A pretty decent match, if I do say so myself. My anal-retentive half wants to take apart the first sock and mix the two yarns together, but that would be the third time that I've knit this damn sock. MUST RESIST THE PSYCHOSIS.

Necessity being the mother of invention, and all that.

2011-04-27T19:33:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I found myself on a three-hour flight to SC armed with a knitting project utilizing cables, cables, and some more cables ('twists' really, but same concept) but no extra needle for cabling. 'Why,' you might be saying, 'don't you just cable without a needle?' I've been down that road. I've been referred to the tutorials and expected some big revelation about craftily switching stitches around--then learned that the big secret is 'just try to hold on to the loose stitches'. Apparently this works for some people, but they must be pretty loose knitters (you hussies). I didn't find this technique any faster seeing as how half the time I was picking up dropped stitches and inventing new combinations of obscenities. Pretty much any time live stitches are parted from the needle, my heart rate doubles.

So it was time for a little improvisation. Pen? Too thick. SkyMall magazine? Entertaining, but no (do people actually buy that stuff?). The only thing I had that was remotely stiff and pointy was a key ring. Since it seemed like such a terrible idea, naturally I tried it out. And it was actually pretty sweet--faster than a conventional cable needle and much more convenient for travel. I wanted to share in case there were other tight knitters out there looking for cable needle alternatives.

Therefore, I present to you:

Something in between cabling with a needle and cabling without a needle (working title)

Key ring inexplicably attached to my Wisconsin Public Radio water bottle. Carrying that bottle automatically ups my hipster cred approximately 5000 points.

Easily bent to allow access to one of the ends.

Slip the stitches to be cabled onto the ring.

Let the ring dangle in front or in back of the work, depending on what type of cable you're doing.

Slip the stitches back onto the needle (I tried not to knit too tightly, but if you do, at this step you can give the ring a gentle pull to get some more slack in the stitches).

The ring rests conveniently on your thumb as you go your merry way. This was the part that majorly sped everything up.

I think I'm going to call the ring my 'cable key'. I won't be traveling without it.

Breaking the rules

2011-04-25T19:03:00.004-05:00

Alexandra over at Wool & Cotton had a post a few days ago putting words to a problem that I didn't even consciously realize I had: a set of self-imposed rules. "Don't buy more yarn, you already have plenty you haven't used." "You can't make that, it's the middle of winter and that's a bikini." "No, not that yarn for that pattern. You won't use all of it, so it's not practical."

Well screw you, brain--I'm paying you to think, not to be a total buzzkill. I saw that Leah from Good Enough published her first pattern recently--it was a pretty cowl and looked soft, and I wanted to make it. I don't care that a) it's not winter any more, b) I'm using the last of my yarn from my NZ honeymoon, or c) it probably won't use the whole ball of yarn.

This is what rebellion looks like:

Soft and wavy, apparently. Viva la resistance!

Ace Fingerless Mitts

2011-04-23T23:46:00.004-05:00

The Ace Fingerless Mitts pattern is up and running on Ravelry! Thanks again for the photo selection advice. Here's the spiel:

The Ace Fingerless Mitts will help you stay warm and cozy while keeping your fingers free to grip your morning coffee or pet a friendly pup. The unique construction of these mitts allows the cables wrap all the way around from the back of your hand to the palm, while buttons add additional flair.

Our furry friends give us a lot (including much of our yarn!) and sometimes we need to give back – all proceeds from this pattern will be donated to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (http://www.aspca.org/).

Required skills include - knitting and purling through the back of the loop, picking up stitches, and crossing and cabling stitches.

The pattern is $2.00 US, and is available as a PDF download. Knit on!

Back in the saddle

2011-04-22T13:41:00.004-05:00

Can I show you something I'm proud of?

This has to be the fastest I've ever knit a pair of socks. Granted, it's probably the simplest sock type one can do, top-down stockinette, but I really like them. In fact, I'm wearing them as we speak.

These were knit on the fly: no real pattern to speak of except a little heel advice from my Folk Socks book. After 'the incident' I thought it was going to be a long while before I started another pair of socks, but I have so much sock yarn in my stash and sock projects travel so well, I couldn't resist the siren call.

The stripes meant lots of ends to weave in, which is no one's fave thing to do (undoubtedly there's someone out there who's like, 'I love sewing in the ends!'. Well hush, you're a crazy person). I enjoyed just about every other aspect of making these though, so I'm back in the sock saddle again (I don't know if that would be a saddle made out of socks, or a saddle for a sock. Either way).

Letting Go or: Why are there so many tiny balls of yarn rolling around the house?

2011-04-21T18:24:00.006-05:00

If cable TV was a proportionally accurate representation of society, you'd think America has a hoarding epidemic--everyone a perilous moment away from becoming trapped under a fallen stack of newspapers from the 1980's or dying of mold related illness from that months old sandwich we were saving 'just in case'. While this might be a bit of an exaggeration, I think it's just human nature to treasure and want to hold on to certain things. I know plenty of knitters have massive stashes of yarn, such that they might as well open up their own yarn shop. My stash is pretty small. But I do have a little (heh heh get it?) confession.

My name is AC, and I'm a tiny yarn ball hoarder.

Mmmmm. Wool/alpaca blend. Hand-painted. From Truckee, CA, I love Truckee. But it's not like I don't have two, count 'em, two items made from this yarn if I want to reminisce. I know that there's little chance that I'm going to make anything with this. And yet, I can't seem to get rid of it. I have a whole bucket of these:

And I don't see the supply getting any smaller. Maybe eventually I'll have enough for one of those ball play pits....that would be pretty sweet.

Thundersnow

2011-04-19T18:08:00.007-05:00

That would be an awesome superhero name. Alas, I knew that there was a possibility the SOSHSBP may have been premature (and nobody likes that). It's snowing.

And intermittently hailing.

And thundering while it does these things.

I like to think I'm a good sport about cold weather, but come on. I was describing the situation via the interwebs to a friend in Denver, who replied that it sounded like a real shitstorm. Now that I think about it, the only way it could get worse would be actual feces descending from the sky.

Thanks for all of the great comments so far on the mitt pictures. People have raised some really good points, and I've decided I need to get some additional pictures that show the palms. I'd go outside and take some, but you know. Nature be hatin'.

Calling for opinions!

2011-04-18T13:59:00.005-05:00

You remember these guys, right? The Ace Fingerless Mitts. I wrote up the pattern and had it tested, and had a little idea--I know that I'm not going to make a living from writing patterns, so why not sell the pattern through Ravelry for a pittance (say, one or two bucks?) and donate all of the proceeds to the ASPCA? I feel like it's a non-controversial non-profit, and that many knitters would have an appreciation for animals since we get a lot of our materials from them. So question 1: good idea or totally lame?

The pattern testing on them is wrapping up, so the copilot and I did a little fashion shoot last evening. Which brings me to question 2: which photos would entice you to make some fingerless mitts? Keep in mind they can be cropped. The copilot cleverly suggested to include the dog in the shoot to go with the ASPCA theme. Here are a few that I think are pretty OK, but I feel like I'm not very objective:

You can tell I start to crack up at one point during the faux 'coffee drinking' section.

I love the pics where he's pawing at the mitt, but his wang is kind of front and center. He's self-censoring a little in this one.

If you're bored at work, check out the whole set here. You can refer to the photos based on their ID number. Thanks for your professional assessment!

Felted Dog Toys: Awesome Knitting Application or Gastrointestinal Obstruction Waiting to Happen?

2011-04-15T14:58:00.005-05:00

Purchase: 100% NZ wool Bonzees felted dog toy.

Thoughts: "Oh, a dog toy would be fun to knit!"

Back off my bone, beeyotch.

After about 1 min.

After 5 min.

After 15 min.

Conclusions: Hand knit toys not a good idea for destructive alligator-esque dog jaws.

Knitting related news

2011-04-12T11:26:00.007-05:00

A couple items of possible interest to my fellow knitters:

Apparently Katherine Heigl is starring in an HBO adaptation of the 2007 novel The Knitting Circle. I've never read it (I think my mom may have? Sounds like something she mentioned at some point. Yes, I listen when you talk, but it doesn't all make the cut to long term memory). I'm not sure if my interest in the subject matter negates my (possibly irrational) extreme dislike of K. Heigl. To my credit, she does usually sound like an enormous douche in interviews, but let's be real here - I think I just like to give celebrities elaborate back-stories that may or may not actually be true.

This next tidbit came to me by way of the radio show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me! in their Listener Limerick Challenge:

Knitting Fates, to me, sounded like bull.
Yet, like them, I now have my hands full.
As I'm ending my years, my sheep meet the shears.
And I'm knitting a coffin of?

Photo from the Toronto Star.
Wool! Apparently a UK company is pitching the concept as environmentally friendly, I feel that it just looks comfortable. It would take a pretty long time to make your own though, and then you'd need an industrial sized washer to felt it. If you're really dedicated, I'm sure your boss or mother-and-law would would love one.

Semi-Obligatory 'Spring has sprung' Blog Post (SOSHSBP)

2011-04-11T12:49:00.005-05:00

It seems like everyone has been doing some version of the SOSHSBP for quite some time now, and considering that it had not sprung here yet only served to make me more jaded and bitter. I need some kind of vengeance--so take THIS, readers from the Yukon Territory and Finland--spring has reached Wisconsin, bitches.

I found myself recently wanting to work on something mindless and quick, so I started a making a simple sock. I didn't have enough sock yarn left from either of two skeins of PacaPeds (a delightful wool/alpaca blend) to make a full pair of socks after making this and this, so I decided to put the colors together.

Ehhhhh?
Economic factors have led me to some poor yarn color choices before (as in, 'well this is the color I really want, but the hunter's orange is on sale!') so I was fairly skeptical of how this was going to turn out. My copilot was dubious as well, but after I started them I started seeing the color combo everywhere. Neighbors' houses:

And in their flowerbeds:

When these guys appeared last week, it finally felt safe to say we were in spring. I remember feeling excitement every year the crocuses (croci?) started coming up in our flower bed, heralding the first shoots of life following the big chill.

The lake is also completely liquid, so that's nice. I do miss the having ice as our dog's personal playground.

The crocuses seem to be popping up in places where people didn't necessarily plant them, but you couldn't really ask for a nicer looking weed.

This concludes the SOSHSBP.

Knit and Crochet Blog Week Day 7: Your knitting and crochet time.

2011-04-03T16:23:00.006-05:00

I travel a lot for work (and fun!), so a lot of my knitting is done on the road. I like to work on smaller projects (hats, mitts, socks) when traveling, for ease of transport. Usually I keep two projects with me, the necessary needles, and any extra flotsam needed for that particular project. One thing I've learned--people find knitting with a set of double pointed needles to be extremely impressive. Must just be the mass of needles and all the pointy ends.

And here comes somewhat embarrassing confession time. I really like to knit while watching TV. But you know, only educational programs.

Bum bum.

I can't help it! I know it's the mental equivalent of junk food, but it's my favorite show to knit to. First of all, it's on pretty much all the time. I've probably seen them all, so I don't have to give it my rapt attention. And what can I say? I love every over the top twist and knowing that the SVU squad is ON THE CASE.

And that wraps up the week...I've had a lot of fun participating in the 2nd Knit and Crochet Blog Week, thanks for reading! I've found a lot of new blogs to read, and I hope you'll visit me again too.

Knit and Crochet Blog Week Day 6: Something to aspire to.

2011-04-02T09:26:00.006-05:00

This is an easy one: complicated colorwork. We're talking multiples colors, complicated patterns - basically traditional fair isle. Specifically, I really want to do a project from this book:

Knit Your Own Norwegian Sweaters
Old knitting books, patterns, and pamphlets are awesome. This little gem was published in 1974. The pictures are my favorite part, I think.

What's with the random Norwegian dude?

No clue what's going on with the chick in the middle wearing a crown.

Star Wars won't come out for five more years, this particular Leia iteration was well ahead of her time.

What's mainly holding me back, though, is this part:

Just reading through the first paragraph, it's clear that there is going to be a decent amount of translation involved. The needle size required is something like 10, when the gauge indicates that it really should be something more like a US 1 or 2. Those are pretty freaking tiny needles to use for a pattern I'm not 100% sure I can follow. Maybe someday if I find myself snowed in in the Alps, I'll start on a Norwegian sweater.

Knit and Crochet Blog Week Day 5: And now, for something completely different

2011-04-01T09:50:00.011-05:00

Here comes the interpretive dance! Kidding. For something a little different, I wanted to try to answer a scientific(-ish) question about knitwear.

About a year and a half ago, I bought my husband a book about back-country skiing. It included a figure that seemed to imply that wearing a hat with a tassel or a pom-pom on top was advised because the tassel/pom would wick moisture away from the head and evaporate faster than a hat without. Since then, I've wondered if that was really true. The tipping point came when someone, without naming any doggie names, chewed the tassel off of one of my hats.

Was it worth the time to sew it back on? So I present to you the experiment:

TASSELS AND POM-POMS: FRIVOLOUS ADD-ON OR ESSENTIAL HAT COMPONENT?

My first thought was to do some sort of exercise with a tasseled hat and then a tassel-less hat, and see which one was sweatier. But that a) assumed I would be exercising exactly the same, the temperature outside was exactly the same, and a lot of other variables that could change and b) I would have to exercise. So I got a stand-in to wear the hat.

In order to speed up the drying time and simulate movement (i.e. exercise), I hooked up a fan to blow over our set-up.

First, I tried spraying the hat a set number of times (30),

and measured dryness by pinching the brim with a paper towel.

If the paper towel soaked through, it was still 'wet'.

But this actually dried too fast. I decided to try a 1 sec dunk in room temperature water instead.

Then I tested the brim every 15 minutes. I waited.

And tested and waited.

And waited and waited.

after three hours of blowing (both literally and metaphorically) I decided to end the test (when the batteries on the fan died). The brim was still wet, but I would try the same thing with the tassel after the hat dried (and more batteries were obtained) and see if there were any dramatic differences, or if I would feel a qualitative difference.

I gave the hat a 1 sec dunk in the water, and attached the tassel.

Three hours later and the hat was actually, surprisingly, much drier. The paper towel test yielded just a bit of moisture. I was shocked. I truly expected a negative result. One of the most exciting things in scientific research is an unexpected positive result. Who doesn't love a surprise? Well, maybe not a surprise root canal. Or surprise punch in the face. So the results are in: tassels and pom-poms are more than just frivolous flair, but actually serve a big purpose in keeping you warm and dry!

Knit and Crochet Blog Week Day 4: Where are they now?

2011-03-31T09:06:00.000-05:00

The fate of a finished object. Ideally, they would last forever, fit perfectly, and be well-loved. I touched on this subject a little bit last year, describing a well-loved hat made by my aunt. That finished object was part of the inspiration for my first 'no pattern' project: the cozy cabled hat. I think of it has the 'workhorse'. Whenever I need something simple and warm on my head:

like when I love on the dog,

or get my ski on,

or get my drink on,

or play some fetch,

or each some lunch in the backcountry,

or pet some sheep.

So what's better? Something beautiful that is so intricate and delicate that you feel like you can never bring it out of the drawer for fear of damage, or the truly utilitarian knit? I think a case can be made for both--but considering that I'm wearing the hat in question as we speak, I think I'm putting my money on utility.

Knit and Crochet Blog Week Day 3: Tidy mind, tidy stitches.

2011-03-30T09:33:00.008-05:00

This day's topic made me laugh. Guffaw, even. "How do you keep your yarn organized?" My answer, which I'm assuming will be the consensus from most people, is not at all. Sure, there are going to be a couple of people with an intricate filing system, and we'll smile and nod and say "What a great idea!" whilst secretly rolling our eyes.

I had an idea at one point that I would organize all of my knitting stuff in an antique washstand, because antique furniture rocks and washstands are an entertaining conversation piece--you can casually bring up how chamberpots used to be stored in them. I think my husband is still slightly horrified that a piece of our furniture was possibly used for poop storage.

I do have all of my needles, measuring tape, markers and various knitting flotsam in here--as well as a sewing machine stashed in the commode--but I wanted to display my lovely yarn for the world to see. I have an odds and ends yarn bucket:

But the meat of the yarn goes into a big old pile. My mom ordered the basket online as a gift for me, and was appalled at the size when it arrived. I assured her I could fill it, and it wasn't too difficult (read: I could barely fit everything in there)--but it became clear that I couldn't leave it out when we were gone.

See! It's been out for maybe 30 seconds and he's already thinking about getting his face in it.
Our dog loves yarn. Loves it. Other than peanut butter and dead animals, I think it's his favorite thing. Loves to pick it up and do the 'kill' on it--you know the thing where dogs shake their head back and forth to kill prey? He managed to stalk and nab some prey yesterday.

It's the yarn I just wrote about, the one I carefully placed back into a bag and into the basket. If he learns to open doors, it's game over, man.

A discussion of yarn storage wouldn't be complete without a mention of my portable yarn storage unit:

My relatives got it for me for Christmas last year, and it pretty much rocks. Don't be too jealous.

Knit and Crochet Blog Week Day 2: Skill + 1UP

2011-03-28T20:14:00.008-05:00

One of the main reasons I enjoy (obsess over?) knitting--the same reason I love snow skiing--is that there is always something new to try, new territory to be charted.
Comparing my repertoire from last year to this year, it doesn't look like my style of knitting has changed very much--I haven't added any big new leaps like a first pair of socks, for example (that was last year).

What I have started doing is working on projects without a pattern. I've been on a creative and/or self-destructive cycle of getting an idea for a project, looking for the appropriate pattern, and upon not finding it, deciding "Eh, it can't be that hard. I'll just write the pattern myself!" Words you should consider carefully before uttering--"How hard can it be?" Sometimes it ends well:

I hesitate to use the word design--let's just say I make stuff (stuff could be replaced with a four-letter word that also starts with s). I realized it's just a matter of an idea + simple geometry and algebra + experimenting to see what works. But there are usually a lot of steps in between that look like this:

Yarn explosion! Sometimes the dog also causes a scene like this.
which makes my production process very slooooooow. Fortunately, the process of knitting is my favorite part, so I try to think of it as getting multiple uses from the same ball of yarn. I just finished this guy for my husband:

I had the idea that I wanted it to look like there were ski tracks coming down the sides of the hat. Finding no suitable pattern, "How hard can it be?"

I've also been incredibly entertained writing up the patterns and making charts (seriously!). I discovered the Free Pattern Testers group on Ravelry, and awesome place to test new designs and/or get your designs tested. They can try out your pattern, find any errors, and tell you if your design sucks. I've got those fingerless mitts in the last image swirling around in the test pile right now. I'm tempted to try a sweater next...that'll probably only take about approximately one-thousand years for me to bang out.

Knit and Crochet Blog Week Day 1: A tale of two yarns

2011-03-28T09:56:00.006-05:00

Knitters, crocheters, cats...who doesn't like a good yarn? On second thought, those categories probably only encompass a small percentage of the population, and yet, yarn still kicks ass. But not all yarn is created equal.

I used to have a real problem picking out yarn for projects. I'd either buy yarn I thought I liked and have nothing to do with it, or buy a pattern without a clue as to what yarn to use. I also used to be a yarn cheapskate--there's a certain amount of sticker shock when you first start knitting. As I recounted in a previous K & C Blog Week post, this resulted in some outright monstrosities.

So when I decided I wanted to make the Sahara sweater, I thought I'd take the easy way out: get exactly the yarn that the pattern recommended, regardless of price. Tilli Tomas Pure and Simple. With a name like Pure and Simple, what could go wrong? Everything, it turns out.

I called that 'stretched sadness'.
The yarn was unplied silk, which was not only unpleasant to work with, but also resulted in uneven and stretched out stitches. HATE. I plowed ahead and ended up with something resembling a sweater - then upon washing, the blue yarn leaked dye and sullied up the cream part.

I learned a couple of things.

1) Choose your yarn colors carefully--you may someday want to wash your garment.

2) Expensive yarn does not necessarily mean good/enjoyable yarn.

I somehow ended up on the Tilli Tomas e-mailing list--and several months after finishing my 'sweater', I received an email advertising a screaming deal on an experimental batch of TT yarn, a wool/silk blend. I still reeked of the stench of failure, but the bargain was too great for me--I bought enough for another sweater. And I loved it:

All that's left of 10 skeins.

My mom enjoys her wool/silk sweater (I think....I hope).
I liked the experimental yarn so much, I am now in possession of a heaping pile of it:

Tilli Tomas 'Elsie' yarn - 33% wool, 33% silk, 33% milk protein - 100% awesome.

So I also learned,

3) Keep trying, and you'll eventually find yarn that you love!

Performance anxiety

2011-03-25T22:30:00.007-05:00

I went ahead and threw the Ace Fingerless Mitts on the Free Pattern Testers group over at Ravelry. For the uninitiated, Ravelry is a website sort of like Facebook for knitters (only much more useful and less voyeuristic), and the FPT is a group that has a nice simple framework where you can get a new pattern tested, and/or to help designers out by working through their patterns.

I've been on both ends of the system and had mostly good experiences. I love to test for people--you get first crack at new designs with direct access to their creator, and it's fun to go through a bit of the design process with someone else. Of course whenever you put something out for 'everyone' to see, there's the potential for the devastating specter of non-constructive criticism (whether real or imagined) to rise up and bitch slap you in the face. I like to think that I've developed a reasonably thick skin over the years, and for the most part I think I have.

At work discussing science-y stuff, I will shoot you down and convince you to believe whatever inane bullshit happens to be spewing out of my mouth that day--I'm not really sure why it's different for designing something to knit. Maybe it's because fashion is so subjective, almost art. If someone says you're wrong, you can bust out mad logic skills, but if someone says your work is ugly--game over, man. No on wants to be told they're uninspired (or end up on Regretsy).

Winter's last hurrah

2011-03-22T11:41:00.010-05:00

Between Wisconsin politics and worrying about the status of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, I was ready to get the hell out of dodge. Conveniently, I had a last-minute work trip planned to go back to Berkeley, the mother-land of the blog (in the sense that I was on a three month work-visit there when I started it). Berkeley welcomed me with open arms:

But it didn't help that I was working with a group of nuclear engineers, ergo about half of the topics of conversation revolved around the aforementioned nuclear plant. But it was warm, there were no protests (remarkable for Berkeley), and you can't have it all.

A few weeks ago, I had decided I was totally over winter. Oh-ver it. Done...with the minor caveat that I hadn't done nearly enough snow skiing. What was up with winter turning into a nasty slushy mess of winter/spring limbo before I'd shredded¹ an adequate amount of gnar²? So, while in the Bay Area, I figured the copilot and I might as well take a little trip to Lake Tahoe while we were in the area.

We checked out a smaller resort, Sugar Bowl (get it?? The snow is the sugar, and the slopes are the side of the bowl...nevermind). We ventured into the backcountry for a quick off-piste trip and found:

a mini village of snow buried summer cottages. I want one (unburied, of course). But it had to be a quick trip out-of-bounds, because an epic storm was coming in...the National Weather Service actually used the word 'epic' as a descriptor in their in their forecast. And indeed it was:

Our pitiful 2-wheel drive rental car. Chains transformed him into a bad-ass!

Thirty inches of freshies, chains on our tires, and a 45 car, 7 semi pile-up (!!) that closed the interstate. Fortunately, we were trapped on the right side--the side with not crowded Sugar Bowl powder skiing. However, it turns out 30" of pow is a lot for two relatively tiny people to plow through on skis. At one point, I found myself on a black diamond run pointed straight downhill, going nowhere. I had to kind of hump my way down, much to the delight of people on the lift watching. Still, epic was the correct word. I don't have my fill of snow skiing (does one ever?), but it's a step in the right direction.

I also made a little headway in the war against winter with the completion of these babies:

Dunzo. I have dubbed them the "Ace Fingerless Mitts", a name inspired by the remedial wrist bandage that I was afraid they were too reminiscent of. I'm thinking of submitting the pattern to the Free Pattern Testers group. These are a Merry Xmas to my good friend E, and only three months late. A new record!

[1] Skied with vigor.

[2] Exciting and/or challenging ski terrain; derivative of 'gnarly'.

2nd annual Knit and Crochet Blog Week is coming soon

2011-03-14T15:46:00.004-05:00

Get excited, guys....Knit and Crochet Blog Week is back!

For the uninitiated, this is a week of seven daily topics, written by knit and crochet bloggers across the land. If you'd like to participate, see more details here. I really enjoyed participating last year; you can read any of my old posts by clicking on the tag 'knit and crochet blog week'.

Bouncing back with some mitts

2011-03-09T16:32:00.009-06:00

First, let me say that you guys rock (situation normal). My copilot encouraged me to blog about the lost sock, saying that I'd feel better with the support of some fellow knitters, and of course he was right (the three words every spouse loves to hear). Thanks for being awesome.

I took pretty much all of your advice and I'm not even thinking about socks. Screw socks (OK, no, they are still wonderful inventions. And I think Smartwool read my post bitching about their socks wearing out in specific areas, because I just got a new pair and they are totally reinforced in said areas. Go Smartwool!).

Through Dec. and Jan., I was periodically working on a pair of mitts for a friend that were supposed to be Christmas presents...they've gone through various stages of partial completion and varying degrees of despise by me; only to end up looking like this. Then I banished them to the yarn basket.

Last month, I happened to be in the state of WA for work during the Great Midwestern/Eastern Snowstorm of 2011 (GMES11)--you might remember it, the one with like 3 feet of snow. The people of Richland were bitching about their unseasonable 28 degree weather--I'd hate to have seen the shit-storm that most certainly would have occurred if there had actually been any snow. Despite the lack of inclement weather, I still had a day where nothing was working at the lab--this happens every time I go there, so I'm very familiar with their antique shops and LYS. I am slowly collecting a set of Betty Crocker cookbooks, as well as a nice set of buttons from one particular antique store:

So after THE INCIDENT I decided I wanted to use some of my buttons. I had yet another idea for the mitts, partially inspired by the little flap on the Battleboro hat, and it incorporated some buttonage. The majority of the mitt was worked flat, so the texture wraps around the hand in a way that I think is pretty cool:

I like it, but I'm afraid it rides the fine line between eclectic fingerless mitten and fancy ACE wrist support. I'm sure the color has quite a bit to do with that, but I'm hoping it falls on the side of ecletic mitt. On to the next one!

Majorly bummed.

2011-03-04T12:56:00.003-06:00

The socks I've been working so long on were ready to be finished up on my second flight home from a work conference yesterday--until one of them came up missing. Fell out of my bag during first flight? I don't know. Between this, job stress, WI politics, etc. my heart has hit the floor. Two and a half months of work down the drain. How do you even start to bounce back?

Heel issues: bring in the reinforcements

2011-03-01T17:12:00.002-06:00

Can we talk for a minute about socks? I love them, first of all. I'm one of those people with perpetually cold feet and hands, so I'm a huge fan of wool appendage coverings. I developed a minor obsession with Smartwool socks a couple of years ago; after making fun of those idiots who would pay $18 for socks, I figured out it there was a method to their madness. I've recently run into a slight flaw beloved woolies--they eventually wear out. Check out this heel:

Sigh. Unwanted heel ventilation.
This got me thinking about how it's fairly standard practice to reinforce the back of the heel when knitting socks. But how? The most common way that I've encountered to reinforce the heel is to work every right side row of the heel flap (Slip 1, Knit 1) repeated to the end of the row, and simply purl the wrong side rows. It looks a little something like this...

The result is a firm fabric, slightly thicker than stockinette, with every other column of stitches backed up by a strand of yarn carried along behind it. It's easy to see why this is the most popular method of reinforcement--nothing difficult, no extra needles, yarn, or sewing involved. But what if you want the simplicity of stockinette?

I found myself in this situation with the socks I'm knitting that have been dubbed the "Powder 8's". I chose a variation on what Nancy Bush calls the "Balbriggan Heel" in Folk Socks--a simple heel with no short rows (but with Kitchner stitch--probably an equal trade off) that complemented the cables I wanted to run down the heel flap.

The most straightforward way to reinforce a heel flap done in stockinette is to hold two strands of your sock yarn. Pros: no additional materials required and no 'post mortem' work required (i.e. reinforcement occurs during normal knitting). Cons: Changes gauge and may be overly thick.

A variation on this method is to add a strand of nylon thread instead of a second strand of yarn, and this eliminates the cons of changing the gauge and increasing the thickness. Unfortunately, it also negates the pro of no additional materials required.

Another way to reinforce your stockinette heel flap is to again use two strands of your sock yarn and alternate the strands of yarn for each stitch (i.e. Yarn A used for stitch 1, Yarn B used for stitch 2, Yarn A used for stitch 3, Yarn B used for stitch 4, etc.). Pros: no additional materials required, no 'post mortem' work, and theoretically no change in gauge. Cons: all of the difficulty and tedium associated with two color-knitting without the benefit of two-colors--stitch non-uniformity will be more obvious.

The last method for your consideration is to thread yarn through alternating purl bumps on the wrong side of the heel flap. This is the method I settled on for my pair of the Powder 8's. Choose where the area you want to reinforce, and using a tapestry needle, thread a strand of leftover sock yarn under a column of alternating purl bumps:

When you reach the top of the area that needs reinforcement, turn around and thread through the next column of purl bumps, threading through the rows that you skipped on the previous round:

Contrasting color used for illustration--use yarn of same color if available.

Repeat until desired area is covered. Pros: doesn't change gauge or stitch uniformity. Cons: requires 'post-mortem' work--if you hate weaving in yarn ends, this isn't the technique for you.

I think I may even start reinforcing all the main points of contact on the foot--the back of the heel, the bottom of the heel, and the ball of the foot. My Smartwools affirm wear on the ball as well:

I guess I should be impressed that they've lasted this long. Still, I'll miss them when they disintegrate off of my feet.

Democracy in action

2011-02-22T22:46:00.006-06:00

I'm hesitant to bring up politics these days (you know how fun that's been to talk about recently), but as a Wisconsinite I feel I'd be remiss not to share a bit about the protests going on in my fair city & state. If you haven't heard anything, a quick recap: 1) the WI governor proposed a bill ('Budget Repair Bill') that while helping fix the budget also needlessly stripped the state workers of the right to collective bargaining, 2) state workers got PISSED and congregated in the thousands in and around the capitol building to protest, 3) all Democratic representatives fled the state to block the vote--this is the point where it started getting national attention. We're currently in limbo--nobody is budging.

I'm not going to get into the debate here, but I will say it's been really amazing to see people come together over a something they really believe in regardless of what side they are on--as well as being polite and civil to those that disagree with them. This article exemplifies why I'm proud to live in Wisconsin. An excerpt:

"Wisconsonites are united, even in times like this, by many things, including a love of University of Wisconsin, Madison, athletics and the program's strutting mascot Bucky the Badger; a devotion to the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers NFL football team; and, of course, a love of beer, brought to the state by its German settlers and honed by brewers whose names are part of American history: Pabst, Schlitz, Miller and Blatz."

Here's a slideshow of the action compiled by Madison photographer Terry Talbot (who took wonderful photos at our wedding):

Last Sunday, 60,000 - 100,000 (depending on whose estimates you believe) gathered on the capitol square to make their voices heard. It made me feel hopeful to see people marching side-by-side sporting "Kill the Bill!" and "I support Walker" signs, sometimes spiritedly debating but not heckling each other--a rare sight in our nation's polarized political environment. My personal favorite sign was, "I disagree with Gov. Walker, but I'm pretty sure he's not Hitler". Keep it classy, Madison, I'm doing my part:

Scientists utlizing the awesomeness of the fiber arts

2011-02-18T10:21:00.005-06:00

Dude, if I give these people some wool, could they make me a sheep car?

And while we're on the subject of nerdiness + fiber, there was a great story on NPR's Science Friday a few weeks ago about building a nano-yarn:

Micrographs of nanoparticle/nanotube yarns. Image © Science/AAAS.

You can listen to the podcast at the site, but the gist is that they're using nanotubes and nanoparticles that are functional in some way (conductive or catalytic, for example) and twisting them into fibers. The fibers could then be woven into textiles that are superconductive, energy storing, energy generating, etc. Sweet! So when is energy generating yarn going to be available in my local yarn shop?

Knitting neuroses

2011-02-15T20:05:00.006-06:00

I think I've been subconsciously avoiding blog update-ification out of embarrassment. I keep coming up with excuses: "Oh, I have too much work to do." "It hasn't been that long." "Man, I really should probably tweeze my upper lip hairs instead." Here's why I've been avoiding you, my friends--the sock I showed off last post, the one that you had nothing but kind words about, has been pulled apart into its original yarn ball state. By me. On purpose.

Hear me out. Knitting neurosis #1: I get an idea in my head for what I want a piece to look like, inevitably can't find any patterns that suffice, and foolishly decide to just design my own. The socks were inspired by the kind of ski tracks that you often only see very early at a resort on a powder day, or in the backcountry: the powder 8. Two ski tracks crossing each other as perfect opposites.

In the backcountry at Whistler, BC a couple weekends ago. Love those smooth curves in the background (and on the skier, rawr).

So I've got these curves stuck in my mind. I wanted twisting lines to come down the sides of the sock leg, and then split off like skiers going in different directions at the ankle. Naturally, this is also the part I had the most trouble with. I re-worked the heel three or four times on the original iteration and still wasn't pleased with the results. It's difficult to tell from the original photo, but in trying to keep the pattern straightforward, it ended up looking plain funky. During a few boring work days after the completion of the first sock, I rewrote the leg-ankle section entirely.

And hence the conundrum. I'm ready to start on the second sock, but it's going to come out with a different look at the ankle, and actually be a different length in the leg. When I started obsessing about it, I even kind of wanted the toe section to be longer. I considered about asking you, dear reader, what you would do--but I think I was afraid it would be a resounding "Leave well enough alone you crazy asshole!" But here comes knitting neurosis #2: If something is wrong with a knitted piece, I'll obsess about it until the end of time. So I unraveled the sock in a frenzy before I could change my mind. I know. I know.

Which brings us full circle to where we left off last time: one sock completed. Here's the new, improved ankle section:

Lovingly longer leg section:

Expanded toe section:

Neurotic sigh of relief. They will match.

Belated blogging

2011-02-02T11:50:00.012-06:00

Work keeps getting in the way of blogging--I need to get my priorities straight.

I realize I never mentioned where I was going when I got all bitchy about traveling. After taking a weekend avalanche safety course in WA state (which was ironically canceled halfway through due to extreme avalanche danger), I had to head to Las Vegas for work. Now, now, before you respond, "What do you mean, had to? Hel-lo, free trip to Vegas," hear me out--I was there by myself, for work. There's something disheartening about traveling for work when virtually everyone else on the plane is in Hawaiian shirts talking about how shitfaced they're going to get/how much they're going to win gambling/how they're going to see the Thunder Down Under:

One really can't engage in any of these activities solo without feeling a little trashy; a partner in crime is required, so to speak. Someone you can say, "Wow, I'm glad I'm not as big of a drunk/gambling addict/whore as she is."

Virtually everyone coming from the airport wanted a taxi--I ended up in a 45 minute line of partially shaded cattle runs as if we were at an amusement park:

No exhilarating rollercoaster at the end of this line, but there was a dirty car driven by a dude who drove like an ass and barely spoke English. Po-tay-to, po-ta-to.

But I can't complain about the weather. From WI winter to the upper 60's? Totally worth it:

Outside the lab - What's the heck is that bright yellow thing in the sky?

Even if these things kept flying overhead every 10 minutes or so bringing more tourists to taunt me with their revelry:

Perhaps best of all, I came home with one of these finished:

A sock! Made from a droolingly soft merino-possum blend. More on the formation of the sock, and the work on its partner, next time.

Puppy therapy

2011-01-26T20:24:00.003-06:00

I know that I promised I wouldn't blather on about 'my dog is so cute blah blah blah' as if he were my child (actually, some people blathering about their children on their blogs is possibly less entertaining than a little dog talk--not you of course, if you happen to talk about your kids a lot. I'm sure yours are super interesting prodigies.) but this is too cool not to share.

He's been sans hardware and cone for a while now, but still rehabilitating; he's been going to physical therapy once a week (there are physical therapists for dogs--who knew?) It's pretty much like physical therapy for people, exercises and stretching, but recently he's been using the 'water treadmill':

Sammy's Water Treadmill from Eric Fahsl on Vimeo.

The idea is to give him extra resistance to walking, as well as making him buoyant to reduce impact. His therapist describes him as 'all business' on the treadmill. Deep in concentration!

Thanks to copilot for shooting and posting the video.

Travel Beefs

2011-01-21T02:03:00.010-06:00

This post has spent a long time percolating in the ol' noggin, pondering whether this was just my usual load of hot air or legitimate issues. Bear with me friends. I know that the internet is usually a place for intelligent discourse and kindness, but, here we are.

Air travel can be a stressful experience in general (especially flying out of Wisconsin in the winter); I try to take a Zen approach so as not to exacerbate a potentially exhausting situation. But, there are certain issues that seem to consistently grind my gears. Trivial in the grand scheme of things, but when these things happen Every. Single. Flight. the cumulative irritation starts to make me sigh so heavily that I'm afraid one day my lungs will collapse and never reinflate.

A rundown of personal vitriol:

1) Don't crowd the gate if you're in a late boarding group. People, most airlines have a nifty little system where they split the tickets into groups, say, First, Priority, 1, 2, 3 and 4. If you're in boarding group 27, relax, take a seat, and get the fuck out of the way. Actually, this could apply to a lot of situations: waiting for a tram, waiting to exit the plane, waiting for baggage, etc. Calm down. It's not going to leave without you.

2) You are not special. If the TSA wants to search you, it's not personal. If the flight has been delayed, chewing out the gate agent isn't going to make it get there any faster. The staff is not there to answer to your every whim, even if you're a frequent flyer (trust me, I've tried).

3) This is a very new beef, perhaps technically a subset of You are not special. Just go through the goddamn body scanners. You're holding everyone up by wasting the time of an agent for a personal search. You're not getting a consequential dose of radiation (0.001 mREM...you're getting about 2.5 mREM on that transcontinental flight, if you want to worry about radiation). And about the other thing. Look. No one wants to look at your naked ass, but it's their job. Seriously. I know this comes as a shock.

4) Don't talk and giggle loudly during a late night flight. We're trying to sleep, a-holes!

5) Be nice to the flight attendants. They are not your personal slaves. Their prime function is passenger safety, and they're underpaid doing it. Don't chew them out because they're out of your personal favorite flavor of Faygo.

I know none of you are the offenders, but I needed to share. Really, the whole list could boil down to 'be nice and considerate'. Words I'm trying very hard to live by.

Edited to add: This is what happens when you BWG (Blog While Grumpy). It's nice to hear I'm not the only one who gets their panties in a twist about this stuff.

Putting the yay in hiatus!

2011-01-07T12:25:00.016-06:00

I....don't really know what that means. I had a nice little break from perpetually sitting in front of a computer for work, so I decided to take a little blogging break as well. So, Merry Belated Christmas. I hope you found everything under the Christmas tree/menorah/Festivus pole that you yearned for. And had some togetherness, family, blah blah blah.

Virtually no one received knitting presents from me this year. I put it off waaaaay too long and last minute knitting is anti-fun. I think I've set a bad precedent in the last couple of years by giving people knit-wear, and now they expect it...sorry.

However, I did gift mommy dearest with this son-of-a-b:

It turned out fine, but I'm glad it's done. I probably spent more time screwing it up than actually knitting it correctly. And she totally hates the color. I can tell. Just give it to Goodwill already, geez (just kidding, Mom. You will hold onto that until the day you die and wear it when I come over even if you despise it. Because it was made with love, dammit).

A lovely friend received a hat (finished) and another lovely friend mittens (pathetically unfinished). I gave her the work in progress, which was basically a cuff, and then immediately took it back. Totally weak....sorry. I gave the former friend (boy that sounds bad, I mean that in the sense of former-latter) an unfinished knit gift last year, so I thought I should spread the love around.

_____________________________________

For many a New Years Eve, the copilot and I have been notoriously boring. Usually in the midst of a ski trip, it becomes clear how arbitrary the midnight celebration is - "Well, we live in the central time zone, but here we are in mountain time, no wait, pacific time...what time is it? Screw it, I'm going to bed."

What to do this year? It was the first time in five years we'd actually been home for NYE. Some co-workers were having a party, but ehhhhh...too much family related travel, and we just weren't feeling festive. But we both kinda wanted to see the new Tron movie...

Now let's get this strait. I have zero nostalgia for the original Tron, save a very random moment from the old Halloween 3-D episode of the Simpsons:

OOOOOOK, so I could only find the clip in Spanish. You get the idea, Homer compares the world he's stumbled into to Tron, and everyone denies they've ever seen the movie except for Chief Wiggum, who quickly backpedals when he realizes he's the only one.

But I was totally sucked in by the marketing. I mean, stuff blows up, and there's light-cycle racing, and Olivia Wilde looking all sexy...but, oh, the mediocre reviews. I was wary. I didn't want to be bored to death on this sacred holiday of the new year. So I took a big step...I let my knitting-freak-flag fly high. The new AC bag got packed with Mystery Wedding Project (which is clearly no longer a mystery but I can't quit calling it that), because who can't do garter stitch in the dark?

I knit on airplanes and trains all the time, but this was definitely the most random public knitting I've ever done. Let me tell you friends, it was awesome. I was entertained by the 'splosions and pretty colors, and when it got all talky-talky I could just knit away. I got a huge grin from a fellow movie-goer when he saw the knitting shenanigans. I highly recommend it! Err, maybe not if you're going to see Black Swan, though. Somebody might lose an eye.

_____________________________________

In other awesome news....I finished it!

The ridiculously poorly composed self-portrait. Silken Scabbard, with Touch Yarns Merino.

The sleeve issue solved: I took yarn from one sleeve, evened them out, then blocked the shit out of it. It seems to have worked. This is the first sweater I've made for myself that I LOVE. Big thanks to Vivianne for offering to try to round up some more yarn for me!

The key to this pattern was try it on, try it on, try it on some more. Armpit positioning was essential to place the neckline where I wanted it. I made the same sweater for my mom, and the neckline doesn't sit as well because she wasn't around for fittings. If you're interested in the details, check out the project page.

Happy Xmas/belated b-day to me!

2010-12-23T10:21:00.008-06:00

Dudes. Coolest gift ever from my dad's sister's family. I'm just going to present this absolute awesomeness right now:

DUDE!! My aunt commissioned this from a lady she knows who makes bags. This chick is a knitter, and gave me all kinds of awesome little pockets inside perfect for needles and little tools, and a nice big open area for yarn and whatever I'm working on. She also actually checked out my blog for font and color ideas (thank Jebus I haven't used any Comic Sans recently.

*SWOON* I'm not the only one who likes it:

I can't believe he's not trying to put it in his mouth, honestly.
My family rocks!

On the road again (and again, and some more)

2010-12-20T14:30:00.006-06:00

What could be more relaxing during the holidays than going on a ton of travel for work and (supposedly) play? If you answered "getting a root canal", "anything", or "are you a moron?" you are correct.

OK, I'm being a total drama queen. But for whatever reason, various national labs had openings in their schedules and my relative-in-law felt the need to get married all smack in the middle of my holly jolly holiday thank you very much (however, this was tempered by the fact that the wedding was close to some prime snow skiing). And of course, none of these places were even remotely close to each other. I occasionally work with radioactive samples, and I like to tell people that I get more radiation from flying to the labs than in doing my actual work (it's true!). The past couple of weeks, it's been a LOT more. I used to pity my copilot's incessant work travel, and somewhere along the way I became him...

But, I took it as a good sign my rental car in Maryland seemed specifically reserved for me:

Sweater yarn snafu notwithstanding, it did also give me a lot of uninterrupted knit time. I started a little something something for my mom for Xmas with a lovely piece of stash I picked up from my newly opened LYS. I bitched and moaned about the unexpected closing of said LYS a while back, and am pleased to report it's back in full force with new management and stock (hi, Lakeside Fibers!).

I was starting to get a little worried that I was going to run out of yarn to work with while on my journey. Two things happened to prevent that tragedy--first, I visited Three Bags Full, a cute little yarn shop in Vancouver, BC:

Mmmmm...sock yarn dyed by a Vancouver local.

Second, I totally fudged up the pattern I was working on for my mom, took the entire thing apart, and started over (I not only have used this pattern before, I wrote it. Ah, me). I'd like to think that I'm getting twice the fun out of the yarn, eh? Oh great, spend a couple of days in Canada and you start sounding like a nutcase. (I guess I'm not surprised. They use the metric system, stick random 'u's in words, and use weird-ass money. So close to normalcy, yet so far away...)

The first incarnation:

What weird lighting. I blame the hotel.
That one got to the decreases before I was able to stick it on my head and determine that it was totally the wrong size--due to the fact that I was not able to stick it on my head at all. Too small; I was cabling twice the amount I should have. Here's the real deal:

This is the true color...I loved it at first, but now I'm starting to suspect it's too "they're after me lucky charms"-ish.
Still unfinished. Honestly, this is one of those pieces where at the end you just want to burn it and pee on the ashes. Piss-soaked ashes make a pretty crummy Christmas gift, though.

But all was right with the world after some backcountry (sidecountry, really) skiing at Whistler, where the Cozy Cabled Hat kept me wonderfully warm while in 'touring' mode (I'm such a klutz that I always wear a helmet in 'downhill' mode):

I love putting the handknits into action.

P.S. To my folks: Muchas gracias for taking care of the beast...we know he's a handful. You guys rock!

%&*$

2010-12-08T21:09:00.004-06:00

Seriously, you guys.....

Aaaand that's the end of the yarn. That I purchased in New Zealand. Made by a company in New Zealand. Over a year ago. With a couple inches of sleeve to go.

This was my reaction:*

*Please do not watch if you're offended by cursing. But let's be honest, if you're offended by cursing, you probably don't read my blog. Completely safe for work, unless you like, work in a church or something (Hi, Dad!).

Thoughts? Keep in mind, to harvest yarn from the hems (or to change the hems at all) I have to undo all of the Kitchener. Thereby making me it's bitchener, instead of vice versa. My strategy was to keep knitting faster, as if that would somehow extend the length of the yarn. Didn't work.

Making Kitchener my bitchener

2010-12-07T18:04:00.007-06:00

A couple of weeks ago I lamented the fact that to continue on the ol' Silken Scabbard Deux, I was going to have to do a relative ass-load of Kitchener bind-off on the hem so that I could try it on. Here's the epic task:

This doesn't look as long as it felt to me when I started pulling the tail of yarn though. But it was long. Trust me.

I sat down with the understanding that I probably wouldn't get done in one sitting, it might go horribly wrong, and it was going to take a long-ass time. I think knowing that going in made it much smoother, and watching some football as I worked helped to ease the pain (not watching the Colts, though...ouch). And I owned the thing, albeit two days later with a few unraveled stitches:

Excuse the weird lighting. I was trying to be artsy (read: I'm bad at photography). I even finished the sleeve's cuff while I was at it:

I'm on fire! I'm hoping the streak doesn't mysteriously end before I get to the final cuff.

A well-loved FO

2010-11-30T12:53:00.009-06:00

Earlier this month, I opined that the novelty of knitting was the unlimited opportunities for customization--and while I still believe that's true, a visit home for the Thanksgiving holiday (Happy Belated T-giving, American readers) reminded me of a second and equally important reason for knitting.

I come from a line of crocheters...OK, it's a short line and it's not exactly straight, but I probably draw some inspiration from there, right? My grandma was famous for her granny squares (which seemed apropos to me) and my aunt went through a period of crotchet-wear production at some point. She made a winter hat for my mom a long time ago. This hat has been around for as long as I can remember.

For some reason, I always wear this hat when I come to visit for the holidays. It doesn't matter how many hats of my own I've brought with me, or how many new hats my mom has around (I think she has a winter-wear fetish), I always wear the hat for my outdoor exploits.

Shoveling the walk for my folks last Christmas. My middle name is Helpful (just kidding, it's actually Danger).

I think I had it with me at college for a time--I remember taking a jog through the woods wearing it, with a blinking red light attached so I wouldn't be mistaken for something edible and therefore shoot-able (although as Johnny Depp reminds us, technically we are all edible, but that is called cannibalism and is illegal in most countries). Other than that stint, I've never had a desire to take it with me.

From this past holiday weekend - writing a note to Santa Claus requesting a pony, natch.

I like knowing that it's at my parents' home, waiting for me to wear again. I like knowing that my aunt made it, and that it's the only one of its kind. Another cool benefit of the fiber arts...the idea that your one of a kind piece will last a long time and be well-loved.

A familiar WIP

2010-11-21T13:49:00.006-06:00

You may have noticed that on my little project progress bars (right side of the page, about halfway down) I have a project called the Silken Scabbard Deux. You may also have noticed that the progress on this project hasn't moved since the inception of the blog.

Last year, around this very time of year, I was finishing the original Silken Scabbard. As I mentioned during Blog Week '10, this was the first knitted item I'd ever made where I felt like I knew what the hell I was doing. And the first time I really loved the finished product:

It was a Christmas present for my momma. Isn't she adorable?
I enjoyed it so much, I decided to make one for myself. I had the perfect yarn already, purchased from Touch Yarns during my vacation in New Zealand:

Imagine this x 10!
According to its Ravelry project page, I started it on Jan. 8th, 2009. I remember working furiously on it while I was in Berkeley...until it became painfully clear that there was no way I was going to finish it before it was no longer weather appropriate. I couldn't just finish a sweater and not be able to show it off immediately; unacceptable. So I just kind of put it aside. It had basically slipped my mind that it was indeed becoming sweater weather again, until about a week ago I decided to pick it back up. Excellent timing, considering everything else I was working on spawned feelings of 'hatehatehate' every time I tried to make some progress. But I had some warm, fuzzy feelings from all of your comments of encouragement and kind words on my recent destruction (thanks, guys!). I was up to a sleeveless sweater last March:

Picking it back up was like falling into my favorite recliner, or chatting with an old friend. It has dissipated my 'hatehate' feelings on knitting for now, and I've gone from zero to almost a sleeve in just week (hey, I'm slow, OK?). But now I need to try it on to determine sleeve length, and I still haven't finished off the bottom hem because it requires the dreaded....KITCHENER'S STITCH (aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!). I think this may have been part of the reason I gave up so easily last spring....I'm not opposed to a little KS, but this was like 30 inches of it. Stay tuned...

It's Halloween! Costume? Crap.

2010-11-15T11:22:00.001-06:00

Blogger's note: This post has been brewing in the queue for two weeks while I begged around for a photo of my costume. But rest assured! It was totally....not worth the wait. Sorry.

Halloween is one of the best holidays. It signals that fall has definitely arrived and brings with it carved pumpkins (with their delicious baked seeds), apple cider (rum optional) and enjoyable scares. I'll never forget the Halloween that a neighbor came after my mom with a chainsaw. Turns out it was a prank and he'd removed the chain, but I'm pretty sure she had to change her underwear nevertheless.

It's also an excuse to wear a costume, which is simultaneously an opportunity for fun and creativity and a hideously daunting task. My perpetual goal is to spend as little money as absolutely possible without looking like the kid in gradeschool who's mom was too cheap to buy a costume but also couldn't sew. You know, he'd be wearing a garbage bag with armholes cut into it and claim to be a 'raincloud' or some shit.

As per usual, I'd made no plans for what to do and Halloween was only a couple of days away. I wandered the house trying to glean inspiration from household items. Women have an immediate costume advantage in the sense that they can take an every day occupational uniform, and simply make it slutty. It's the sexy 'blank' concept, as in sexy nurse, sexy fireman, or sexy garbageman (hey, maybe that garbage bag could work after all!). After brief consideration, I determined that a) I haven't been a college undergraduate in quite some time, and b) it's too damn cold in WI to be skanky for Halloween. I needed maximum coverage.

Where does one turn for trivial ideas and information? To the internets! I found myself on the 'Family Fun' website, which had a lot of cute ideas for kids costumes (in an attempt to avoid the 'sexy' moniker, I was reduced to looking at ideas directed at children). The option of jellyfish cried out to me the loudest for two reasons: it allowed me to wear warm clothing and I already had all of the materials.

I was especially excited to incorporate some yarn that had previously been languishing for almost a year with no prospects. Some of my relatives bought me this big-ass skein of yarn (or BASOY for short) for Christmas last year, and while I think it rocks...I'm not entirely sure what to do with it.

Figure of person added for scale.

Totally tentacles, right? The whole shebang took about 15 minutes to put together, I was warm and happy that night, and the BASOY finally started to find a home. Happy (extremely belated) Halloween!

Knitting in peace

2010-11-09T17:03:00.005-06:00

I worked over the weekend. I know. I know. I can barely bring myself to work a regular work-week as it is, what gives? I've been trying to schedule time on a particular microscope at Oak Ridge National Lab for a few months now, and they couldn't accommodate me for months unless I was willing to work over the weekend.

I like to bitch and moan, and this was prime B & M-ing material (not to be confused with BM material, which, ew), but truth be told I was pleased to get out of the apartment for a while and to be able to knit in peace. No waiting for Sammy to pass out at 10 PM so I can get a little bit of knit on without anyone trying to consume my yarn and/or knitted object.

Turns out, the instrument operator understood many things in addition to how to make kick ass samples, 1) Making samples using this particular technique is incredibly boring, 2) One should combat this boredom by multitasking, and most importantly 3) It's the freakin' weekend so multitasking can include knitting. I finished a respectable piece of Mystery Wedding Project (which technically is no longer a mystery, considering the wedding has occurred and I've also informed the couple what they can hope to receive at some point).

Usually when I knit for a long period of time with non-knitters, I get a few questions about the logistics, the materials, the point. No such luck in this case, and for the entirety of Saturday I never succeeded in even steering the conversation away from microscopes. Sunday, I managed to slip in some football and housing market chit-chat, so, baby steps I guess.

I didn't have a camera to document my awesome garter stitch, but the microscope we used to make the sample did have a camera....so, geeks read on (and non-geeks, electron microscope photos can be very pretty):

Bulk sample is cut from the surface by a beam of atoms

Bulk sample is 'glued' to a tip and lifted out

Bulk sample is 'glued' to a grid

The bulk sample is thinned with a beam of atoms to the final, ridiculously thin end product (the areas that look 'broken' are the sweetest thin area)

It's so thin that electrons can pass all the way through it...giving you and image kind of like an X-ray photo on a much much tinier area

I was also accused of being a little old lady by another instrument operator. Maybe so, dork-wad, maybe so.

Lofty Ambitions: or How I Think I'm Much Awesomer Than I Really Am

2010-11-01T17:44:00.005-05:00

I always drop the ball (of yarn...ha! Ehhhhh.) when it comes to knitted Xmas gifts. Such lofty ambitions...but ask yourself, why would a person who has never done a two-color stranded knitting project decide to write her own pattern because she didn't like any of the ones that she looked through? The result was inevitable:

How did I not see this coming? And when I'm on the mighty Xmas deadline with more bitten off than I can chew as it is. Note to self: YOU ARE NOT AS AWESOME AS YOU SEEM TO THINK YOU ARE.

People tend to call tearing apart your knitting 'frogging'. I feel that this is an unfair characterization. Frogs are really pretty cute, when you think about it:

Awww, look at that little punum.

And think of the great frogs throughout history:

Come on. I propose a new word defining the torture that is tearing apart a project, one that truly captures the pain, one that's not so fucking cutesy. Go ponder, I'm thinking of something along the lines of 'searing gas pain-ing', 'UTI-ing', or 'shards of glass-ing' Those might be a little too cumbersome, but you get the idea.

One, two, three, knock on the wall

2010-10-31T19:31:00.006-05:00

Can we talk horror movies for a moment? The first scary movie I remember seeing is the original Halloween. It was the TV version, so no explicit violence or tits, and it still scared the pants off of me. A later unedited viewing revealed that it doesn't actually have much explicit violence, which truly makes it scarier--not knowing exactly what happened means that your imagination runs wild. Plenty of boobs, though.

I caught part of the 2007 remake of Halloween a couple of days ago, again a TV edited viewing experience. It was...an hour or so of my life I can't get back. There were some fun homages to the original film, but all in all it was the same movie with less character development and suspense, more tits, and much much more gore. Le sigh. I don't want to start in on a 'these kids today' kind of rant, but the only thing that kept me engaged at all was a sweater nouveau-Laurie Strode was sporting:

No, not the Queen of Sheba outfit, the navy sweater with the big white flowers. It was appealingly kitschy and cozy looking. I pondered whether it would be worth trying to knit, but the embarrassment of the inspiration source might be too much to bear. When Michael Myers ripped it off during a by-the-numbers chase scene, I gave up and changed the channel.

Short story long, I'm disappointed that practically every 'scary' movie just ends up being kind of gross. Guts =/= suspense. So I was dubious when Netflix recommended El Orfanato (The Orphanage) as a scary movie I would like. A foreign film. "What do you take me for, Netflix??" But I gave it a shot, seeing as how watching a flick with subtitles would boost my hipster cred. And then I sat on the edge of the couch for the next two hours with my mouth hanging half open. It was an actual story, with real characters, and suspense. Perfect Halloween scares, in the sense that they were from tension and apprehension instead of from disgusting/disturbing/torture-porn-esque shit going on. Netflix--I should not doubt thee. Let's never fight again.

Hat blocking - mostly win, slightly fail

2010-10-28T14:12:00.007-05:00

All in all, the hat blocking escapade was a success. The always flattering self portrait:

I call this one...Blue Steel.

Look, it's a good picture of the hat. Please ignore the human part of the photo entirely.

Stats:

Pattern - Brattleboro Hat, Interweave Knits Fall 2010

Yarn - Malabrigo Merino Worsted, Emerald, from Blog Hub Swap

Modifications - Added an extra repeat of the body rows (+4 rows) so that it would cover my ears. Because if it doesn't cover your ears, what's the freaking point?

Assessment - Booyah

This update comes a little later than expected, because while Operation Block Hat on Pumpkin was a success, Operation Pull Hat Off Pumpkin and Tear Off the Buttons and Eat One was a success for Sammy. Operation Wait For Button to Appear in Bowel Movement was a failure in the sense that when it did appear, it was in about 4 chewed up pieces. Apparently it's gross that I was even considering reusing the button, but it was part of a matched pair! It's one of the 3 R's people, reuse. I was going to wash it.

[Sidebar: We sound like terrible dog parents, but he's recovering from a surgery + broken leg and isn't allowed to even go on walks for more than 5 min a couple times a day. Convalescing dog = bored dog = naughty dog. Two more weeks until the fixator comes off...he's not that bad, I promise. Hey, quit laughing!]

I'm planning on blocking a couple of older hats, if the pumpkin doesn't mysteriously transform into pie before I get around to it.

Ever go to work and give a research presentation, only to later discover that you have a gaping hole in your sweater?

What's that? You say you have the presence of mind to check on such things before you go out in public and you'd never be such a slovenly loser? ....Yeah, me too. Those people are losers.

A Baldwin Knits

2010-10-24T16:20:00.004-05:00

This isn't an incredibly timely Baldwin status report, given that the live 30 Rock episode aired almost two weeks ago. I caught it last night; I enjoyed the novelty of the 'live' sitcom, despite it not actually being as such for me.

Alec B.'s character was trying to quit drinking to support his newly pregnant girlfriend, and took up knitting to distract him from the painful boredom of sobriety. I may have giggled with glee and clapped my hands like a seal when he produced a poncho in the course of about 5 min:

Oh, Jackie D. I think he's pulling it off.

He also managed to go through and learn all the tricks in a magic 'how-to' book at the same time. I think this is more ammunition for my sexy-men-are-knitters campaign.

Finished object(s) of the glove kind

2010-10-20T14:27:00.009-05:00

My copilots gloves = done! They took a little extra time because someone, not mentioning any names, neglected to mention that the pinkie finger was too short until they were both done. So it had to be torn out and redone, with me trying to remember that a perfect fit is one of the many perks of knitting.

Sleeping Beauty was trying to nap (which is important, don't get me wrong here) but was cognizant enough to slip on the gloves for a photo shoot.

Penguin Murray is essential for a quality napping experience.

Assessment of the knitting quality.

Stats

Pattern - Sock-it-to-Me Gloves

Yarn - Alpaca Yarn Co.: Paca-Peds, from Lake Tahoe Yarn Co., Truckee, CA

Assessment - Me likey

Madison's getting pretty chilly, so I'm sure they'll be up for a test run soon.

ETA: My copilot would like to assure everyone that he is in fact much older than 12, and that I am not a child molester. He gets asked if he's old enough to sit in the exit row on flights for work every now and again...you have to be 15 to sit in the exit row. Pros: when he's 50, he'll look like he's 30.

Escapades in hat blocking

2010-10-17T17:27:00.008-05:00

I've never blocked a hat before. It never seems to be urgently necessary; I mean, your head kind of serves to stretch and even things out, eh? But it is a bit disheartening to take it off and see it scrunch back into it's shrunken fetus-esque 'natural' shape. Maybe that's just me.

I've been brainstorming on the best way to proceed with hat blocking. I know some people have those decapitated mannequin heads, some of which are faceless and totally creepy. Some do try and replicate human facial features, and are also totally creepy.

Always smiling, watching, judging.

I'm not getting one of those. We don't seem to have any balls in the house...wait, my husband might disagree. (He has a tube of tennis balls...what were you thinking?) No appropriately sized ball, shall we say.

Then something at the market caught my eye:

Mmmmm. Pie pumpkin/potential hat blocker.

That's about the size of my head, right?

Aww, it looks just like me!

Time will tell how this bright idea pans out.

A new sheep enters the fold

2010-10-12T22:18:00.005-05:00

One of my co-workers and I have been conspiring for about a year now to get him some knitting learnin', so he can knit his special lady friend a cozy hat for an Xmas present. Last year we started far too late, as seems to be the case with all of my intended Xmas knitting projects (one of my friends got her pair of socks last August...sorry).

A work trip to UNLV was just the 4 hours of solid airplane boredom we needed. Check out my protege's practice work:

Only one accidental yarn over! I am totally impressed; the stitches are pretty even. This is only his second practice swatch (the last one being December of last year). I think he's ready for the big leagues, i.e. it's hat time, baby.

I keep telling the men in my life that dudes with knitting knowledge are totally sexy. Listen up guys, well done handknits = panties dropping. Trust me.

Confession time

2010-10-08T13:24:00.006-05:00

Crap. Damn it, crap, crap balls crap!! Effffffff. I love it. I tried to act all dismissive about it; the fact is, after starting the body of the hat, I did kind of pee my pants just a little bit with excitement (metaphorically speaking, of course). This Malabrigo worsted wool is so....something. Droolingly soft is the only descriptor that comes to mind. I'm not even done and I can't wait to wear it:

You know what? This doesn't even begin to express my excitement level. I've gotta Michael Bay-ify it (thank you AV Club):

You know, Michael Bay? The guy who makes increasingly-less-tolerable over-the-top action movies? My enjoyment pretty much stopped after The Rock, buddy, and that was probably because Sean Connery was there to class up the joint. Most recently we've been blessed with the Transformers movies, which I understand are about close-ups of CGI-robot-shit moving and spinning incomprehensibly. Also, Megan Fox's breasts.

But the man does know how to jazz up a knitting photo.

Infinite Cabled Hat

2010-10-05T16:03:00.007-05:00

It was Mahatma Gandhi who once said, "Sometimes you just have to crap or get off the toilet." (OK, maybe that wasn't Gandhi.) I've had this hat pattern on my hands for too long, and it's time to release it into the wild and see if someone can wring some joy from it. Without further ado,

Infinite Cabled Hat - click for free PDF

"The Infinite Cabled Hat is a fabulous project for those who are familiar with cabling, and want to make something that looks complex without actually straining the brain too much! Two needle sizes are used to account for the tension change between the brim and the body (where the cables are introduced). The cables put a twist on the conventional roll-brim by ruffling the edges, nicely framing your face. A clever decreasing scheme keeps the cables going all the way to the top."

Enjoy!

Adventures in Malabrigo and new stash

2010-10-04T10:26:00.007-05:00

I can occasionally be a just a teensy bit contrary. Whoa, I just heard my mother snort in derisive laughter from 350 miles away. Whether consciously or not, I tend to be wary of anything that 'everyone' seems to enjoy. Seriously, have you ever seen any of the Twilight movies? NOTHING HAPPENS IT'S SO BORING. Or read a Nicholas Sparks book? Those things read like MadLibs for masochists. "The widow/widower/young teen girl/little brother has cancer/a boating accident/a tour in Iraq/an incident with a mudslide and tragically dies. And yet people eat this shit up. And Oprah? I'm sorry, don't even get me started. Are people still collecting Precious Moments figurines? Or really, figurines of any kind? I don't get it.

The point, and I promise there is one, is that I've been dubious of the heaps of praise thrown at Malabrigo yarns. Ergo, I've never made it a point to acquire any. As fate would have it, I received some in my parcel from the Blog Hub Swap. I started the brim for a hat a couple of nights ago:

The verdict: while I didn't urinate on myself per say, I do like it. I was extremely dubious when I found that it was un-plied (or single-ply, I've heard people use both descriptions). My last experience with un-plied yarn ended with me swearing that I'd never use it again, at least that particular ridiculously overpriced brand, which shall remain nameless (Tilli Tomas Silk - mmmm oops, did I say that aloud??). My fears were baseless in this case; it holds up well when you work with it on the needles and doesn't make the stitches appear sloppy, even though the yarn thickness does vary some. It is very soft and I'm looking forward to wearing the finished product.

On a semi-related note, I'm really enjoying designs right now that, like the aforementioned hat, make use of a brim or collar that is worked sideways (i.e. the stitches are perpendicular to the main body of work). If that doesn't make sense, the finished hat will be an example.

We were out of syrup and I had a feenin'* for some cheese curds over the weekend--where else could we solve both issues but the Madison Farmer's Market? It's fun to go just to see the spectacle every Saturday morning; vendors have booths that stretch all the way around the capitol building. I was feeling perfectly satisfied by a pumpkin crepe when I ran across a vendor that I haven't seen for almost a year. She's a sheep farmer, and spins yarn for a living. I sort of want to be her. The last time I saw her I asked if I could come by and learn how to spin, she said to stop by the farm sometime, and I have since totally chickened out. I did turn a skein of her yarn into the original Cozy Cabled Hat, however:

She was busy this time, no chit-chat, but I snagged a little bit of awesome:

These babies are going to be turned into some two color mitts for a friend.

*Is this a widely accepted term or rural Indiana vernacular? In case from context it isn't clear, feenin' = an extreme craving.

I've got mail: Day 6 & 7

2010-09-30T18:08:00.004-05:00

I've caught that cold that everyone else in the tri-state area seems to have, so I've fallen behind on my swap blogging duties. My copilot was kind enough to snap some photos for me while I languish on the couch. I present Day 6 and 7 combined:

Mmmm delicious Tar Heel coffee....

I was perplexed by these at first...then I realized they were handmade magnets. Very clever!

And some buttons. I LOVE buttons. Probably unhealthily so. It's my cross to bear.

And so concludes my coverage of the Blog Hub Swap. Another big thanks to Sara for an awesome parcel! If you'd like to check out the reaction of the gal who received my package, you can find her here. She is graciously pretending to like the crap that I sent her.

I've got mail: Day 5

2010-09-27T12:34:00.006-05:00

I'm not much of a weekend blogger, so I saved my musings on my 5th and 6th packages from the Blog Hub Swap for weekdays (I didn't wait to open them, of course). Day 5, holy smokes. I sequestered myself in the pantry for the ritual unwrapping (as one does), as the goodies were revealed I'm pretty sure unintelligible noises starting coming out of my mouth; then I came bursting out, waving a skein in each hand and demanding, "Look at this LOOK AT THIS!!!" to a baffled copilot.

Sock yarn from New Zealand, in the possum-merino blend I raved about during the Knit and Crochet Blog Week.

You know how sometimes people get so excited on the internet that they can't seem to reliably hit the shift-key? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111!!!!!!!!!!1!!!1 Yeah, it was kind of like that. I LOVE this stuff. It's so airy and lightweight, yet so warm! And better yet, it reminds me of the wonderful time I spent in NZ on my honeymoon.

(Total sidenote: Listening to Bob and Tom last week, they mentioned a news story about a New Zealand school that was getting heat for sponsoring a "possum throwing" contest. It was pretty much exactly what you would imagine from the name. Apparently PETA was not happy.)

Speaking of honeymoons and spouses and such, I've also been working over the past few days on a little project to help keep my copilot warm. (Second sidenote: I'm totally comfortable referring to him as my husband at this point--it's been over a year--but using the term copilot still amuses me.) Last winter, I bought some sock yarn for myself and the copilot from a neat little shop in Truckee, CA called Lake Tahoe Yarn Company. I had every intention of turning them into socks, then somehow my skein turned into this, and inspired by that, I guess, I decided to make his into gloves as well. He's not all about the fancy-shmancy stuff, so the pattern is straightforward and simple.

He hadn't been home to try on the work-in-progress until I was halfway through the index finger (thumb completed), but as soon as he did, it was clear that the thumb wasn't in the correct place. Indeed, it gave him some artificial webbing between his thumb and index finger. Unconvinced by my claims that it would help his swimming abilities, he requested a modified fit. As I unraveled the work there were numerous apologies for the inconvenience, and I may have amped up the drama a bit with some theatrical sighing, but this is part of the appeal of knitting for me. You have the ability to create something that uniquely fits. And it looks great:

His conclusion: "It's so weird...I've never had a pair of gloves that actually fit my fingers before." That right there is one of the big reasons that knitting is so sweet.

I've got mail: Day 4

2010-09-24T15:34:00.003-05:00

Holy flippin' huge needles, Batman!

My favorite brand of needles, Takumi Bamboo, in a whopping size 15 for the slippers project. And of course, an accompanying tube of puff paint for the treads (my swap partner is a clever girl).

I've got mail: Day 3

2010-09-23T13:24:00.004-05:00

Today's package: a squishy, soft wool yarn that fills me with warm feelings. And, it's cleverly matched with a pattern for felted slippers. I've been wanting to try felting for a while now, so I am all over this. I'm also starting to feel that the package I've put together is inadequate...but it's all ready to go, to be sent out later today (or tomorrow, depending upon the level of procrastination).

I put everything on a high shelf for safekeeping, and made a run to the local pet supplies store on the next block to restock on dog food and chew sticks. I literally ran. I didn't think that anything was in the dog zone, but I was taking no chances.

Now, you guys are going to think that I'm a complete moron at this point (when is she going to learn???), but I swear, he couldn't reach this shelf before and his front leg is broken in like twelve (OK three, but still) places. But see for yourself...

Flippin' crippled Houdini managed to find and bust into the yarn package. I'm pretty sure he can smell yarn at this point. I was mortified. The yarn is fine, but it's all disheveled and doesn't represent the true glory of htNevele. Very fortunately, I happened to treat myself to a skein of the same yarn, but in a different color. Phew!

I've got mail: Day 2

2010-09-22T14:08:00.003-05:00

I can't seem to find my camera's memory card to visually document my second item. I've been teetering on the edge of meltdown this week (and crud, it's only Wed.). I don't like to bring negativity to the interwebs (Jebus knows it has enough of that already), but well, look:

Don't you give me the stink eye. You wouldn't be in the cone of shame if you didn't consistently try to chew off your stabilizer.

Sammy had surgery last Friday (9 hours of it) to try to correct a gap in his elbow joint that developed as a result of some puppyhood injury that occurred before we adopted him. The red thing on his (shaven and kind of ridiculous looking) left leg is a skeletal fixator to try to stretch out his bone. We have to keep the pins clean and change his bandages daily-a two person job-and my copilot learned at the last minute that he had to go out to the client site for work. The client site in Seattle. So, I'm sequestered with ol' cripple and tending for him mostly solo, with some wonderful help from one of my friends with the bandage changing. If you're reading this, YOU'RE A LIFESAVER.

But the swap package could not have arrived at a better time. Every time I get too stressed out, I can go in the pantry and treat myself to a little knitting surprise. Last night it was a copy of the fall issue of Interweave Knits--I love having books with patterns, so why in the world have I never looked into knitting magazines? It's perfect! It also has a sweet hat pattern that calls for my Malabrigo yarn. I was thinking hat...

I've got mail: Day 1

2010-09-21T10:11:00.003-05:00

While I was away attending Mystery Wedding last weekend, a package arrived for me. My copilot went down to check the mail the evening we returned home, with parting words from me, "Why bother? We never get anything good anyway." Next time I'm going to try, "Why bother? Daniel Craig is never down there waiting to make out with me."

My blog swap partner is the lovely Sara of North Carolina. You can check out her exploits at Wool Durham. Lovely stuff!

I kind of wanted to open everything.

But I resisted, and obediently followed the numbering on the items. Item #1 contained sheer awesomeness:

OK, so I've heard a lot about this stuff. It seems like people wet their pants and/or will exchange their firstborns over Malabrigo yarn, so I'm pumped to see for myself what the fuss is about! It is quite soft....

Adventures in blocking

2010-09-20T09:53:00.012-05:00

Confession: I'm terrible at blocking my knitted work. Explanation for my non-knitted readers - blocking is a 'finishing' process for a knitted item. When you knit something by hand, the stresses in the fabric may not be entirely equal; this can result in curling, twisting, and any other number of unfortunate side effects that can make your lovely item look like a wrinkled old piece of garbage. Blocking usually involves wetting the item with water, pinning it in the desired finished dimensions, and letting it dry. Doesn't this seem like a stupid part of the knitting process to be bad at? Does anyone else consistently have trouble with blocking, or is it just me??

I came to a sudden realization last Wednesday: the wedding that I was knitting Mystery Wedding Project for was only three days away. Now I'd long given up on getting MWP done in time, but I did want to finish my shawl so I could show off the hand-knits a little bit. All I needed to do was block.

I collected some advice from some of the ladies in the shawl-KAL, and based on their suggestions a (half-baked) plan began to brew - instead of using a million pins, I would make a wire frame. First, I picked up some low-gauge stainless steel wire from the local hardware store:

I washed the heck out of it, since it probably had residual oil and grime from the production process. I couldn't resist playing with it a little bit:

Fun for a girl and a boy! And a dog, apparently.
The first setback was the fact that the wire did not want to keep any shape but a coil. I applied my materials engineering knowledge to something useful (for once): the wire needed to be 'work hardened' before it would be useful. Basically, work hardening is the concept that a metal becomes stronger when you do 'work' on it.

In this case, I used my hands to bend the wire back and forth, and when those got tired:

Wrenches! I used the wrenches to pull small sections of the wire straight. With the wire primed, I bent it into a rectangle measuring 60" x 20". I fed the shawl onto the frame in a 'running stitch' style - basically passing the wire over/under the selvage stitches:

Voila!

I did break down and use a few pins to hold the frame steady.

I moistened the fabric using a spray bottle filled with water. It dried within the course of a few hours.

Did it work? It did!

I couldn't really believe I had produced something so delicate (me = bull in a china shop).

Would I do it again? I would, but with the caveat that I'm really glad that I don't have to do the work hardening of the wire again--it took a while, and if I was to do it again, I would work with the wire long before I was ready to actually block the shawl, just to break up the tedium a little bit.

Yarn score

2010-09-08T16:26:00.008-05:00

I'm still working on perfecting my swap parcel. I want to give my swap-ee some tastes of Madison, at least my little area of it (read: totally hippie, or crunchy granola if you will). One of my favorite yarn gurus is a local gal who used to sell her yarn, htNEVELE through the now defunct LYS. I used a skein of her sock yarn to construct my very first pair of socks, which also happen to be my favorite pair of socks:

As my swap-ee is a sock yarn lover, I knew I just had to get her some. But how to obtain it, now that the LYS is an S&M boutique or a sausage factory or whatever it was they turned it into? I found her website on her Rav profile, and shot her an email to ask what the lead time is on getting the yarn after ordering. I still have a fair amount of time before the swap deadline, but better safe than sorry.

She kindly offered to meet me, seeing as how we are both Madison-ites and even live in the same crunchy granola area. Where and when to meet? It felt a little like a drug drop. I pictured us meeting in a dark parking lot, pulling up our cars next to each other. However, we (probably wisely) selected a nearby coffeeshop at sunny noon-time. Now, I won't show you what I got for the parcel, just in case, but I couldn't help getting a little goods for myself:

I had to make her trip worth her while, of course. Mmmm, drool worthy.

Oh, (cold) snap!

2010-09-07T12:22:00.006-05:00

As my commenters so wisely predicted, a chance to wear my (relatively) newly minted fingerless mitts would come sooner rather than later. The first chill came on Friday, and I took the mitts for a test drive at their 'intended' use: typing. I started them during a time when I was a visitor in a very chilly lab. I wanted to keep my hands warm, but I needed my fingers so I could still type for important work stuff like blogging, as well as knitting while my experiments run.

Of course I didn't complete them until after I'd returned home, but they are indeed good little typing mitts. I gave them another test drive this morning as bike commuting mitts, and again, awesome-ness. I love 'em! I'll try and find out if the designer ever published the pattern, if anyone is interested (they were a test knit).

I also started suffering under the delusion this week that I might finish Mystery Wedding Project on time. Two months ago, it became clear that the only way that I was going to complete MWP by deadline was to go through one skein a week, and that certainly hasn't been happening. The reason it seems possible, methinks, is that I only have three panels left to complete--however, these are big-ass panels compared to the previous ones. But only three! That sounds doable, right? The pile of skeins that aren't even wound yet says no. I'm reminded of this Dilbert comic:

Since I haven't achieved any of that (yet), my idea is to take a picture of what I have and put it in a card, possibly with a sample of yarn. What are your thoughts on that? Any other ideas?

Seriously??

2010-09-01T15:33:00.007-05:00

Monday, I worked from home. I've left the wild beast to roam the homestead while I've gone to work before, but I didn't have any work that couldn't be done remotely so I figured I'd stay home and keep him company (and vice versa, of course).

That evening, I started on a lil' something for my partner in the swap I'm participating in through The Blog Hub group on Ravelry. If you've never heard of such a thing, it's kind of like doing a Secret Santa drawing, but in this case just for the fun of it. I'm not sure if my swap-ee reads my blog, so I'll refrain from revealing what it is for now (don't let the intrigue fool you, it's not that cool). It's a double-blind-esque swap, so the person I'm sending stuff to is not the person sending stuff to me. Mystery! This is my first swap, and I'm really enjoying it so far. I love to get stuff in the mail, and I like to try to find stuff that I think other people will get a kick out of.

One of my buddies successfully defended his doctoral thesis that morning, so naturally we had to go celebrate. I put my knitting supplies up onto the counter top that was theoretically out of the dog zone (aka the places that the beast can reach, the DZ for short). I had three different kinds of yarn and a circular needle.

I arrived back home a few hours later after several rounds of delicious burgers and brews to find a veritable explosion of yarn. This is the epicenter:

Here it goes, trailing into oblivion:

Sorry about the lousy photo, but it's not a brightly lit room. It's not like I'm going for the Photography Pulitzer here, you get the idea. This kind of thing was trailing off in every direction. Random sections of the yarn were crusted with dried slobber.

The yarn wasn't the only casualty:

So, I went through and trimmed out all the contaminated areas and tried to put everything back into three balls. I'm thinking that my object is just going to switch colors at random times, since the yarn is cotton and ergo can't be spit spliced back together. But, it was the strangest thing, one color of yarn that I was sure I had collected went missing.

Now, I'd planned on posting this yesterday, but Tuesday's beast escapades left me too sour to find the humor involved. After the events of the previous evening, I was concerned that Sammy was feeling bored and hence getting himself into trouble. I took him swimming that morning at a nearby WI state park, thinking that a super fun car ride + extra exercise + fun stuff to sniff would keep him satisfied through the four flippin' hours I was going to be gone. I loaded up a toy with food for him to coax out, and even left a bully stick to chew on.

I will not describe the crimes that were perpetrated against the carpet and the beast's own digestive system, because they are too repulsive for polite conversation. Suffice it to say that I was none too pleased when I arrived home from work. I don't even know where he found my US8 bamboo dpns, but four of them were destroyed and the fifth missing and presumed consumed. I didn't take any pictures of the carnage, because at this point I was mostly just trying to refrain from anything that would get Animal Control and/or charges of animal cruelty involved (kidding...mostly). And I still couldn't find that damn third color of yarn from the day before.

I spent the evening harumph-ing around. It's all fun and games until the handknits and bodily functions get involved. How was I supposed to know the DZ was ever-expanding? I thought we were making progress! And where the heck is that yarn?!

I finally noticed Sammy sitting happily in the recliner, chewing on a strand of something. Hey! There's the missing yarn! He willingly dropped it out of his mouth and wagged his behind. Good pup. Yeah, we're cool.

Token FO

2010-08-23T19:10:00.003-05:00

I've been jonesing for a finished object. The shawl kind of counts, but I haven't figured out where I'm going to block it without any chance of the dog chewing on it. So, over the weekend, instead of working on Mystery Wedding Project, I knocked out this baby:

The Mason-Dixon washcloth from the Mason-Dixon Knitting book. I have some of this Pachuko brand organic cotton yarn that I bought three years ago when I was in TN for the summer with no LYS and lots of (read: way too much) time to troll e-Bay. The yarn is OK, nice and soft, but not quite plied as tightly as I'd like. But totally good enough for a dishcloth. And I'm making progress towards not being such a perfectionist (i.e. crazy person); I made a mistake and left it in (after starting to go back and fix it and thinking, 'What are you doing? It's a flipping washcloth'). Baby steps, baby steps.