I survived the wedding. Though my ailment seems to be coalescing, hence the title.

The truth was that it was a nice, if by the book, sort of event, the ceremony was brief, the party didn’t drag on, and it was a pretty small gathering.

I still hate weddings. And I developed a number of principals for better weddings:

1. If you can’t combine the ceremony with the toasts at the reception, there’s a problem. Weddings are social events, and the major function of a wedding is for a community to celebrate and “bless” a partnership. The toasts at the reception seem like the ideal place for this.
   • I suggested at first that we find a way to integrate eating into the service, but the minister on hand noted that the goyem called this “communion,” and I suddenly felt less creative, so we’re back to the first option.
2. Ministers are unnecessary, except in cases where the officiant is basically part of the wedding party, a mutual friend or one of the attendants if there were an odd number of bridesmaids or some-such. I mean, I think that it’s not too radical to suggest that if people really want to get married, they should be capable of doing it themselves, at least ceremonially.
3. Wear jeans. Duh.
4. Gotta have morris dancers.

I could blather on here about how the marriage laws are antiquated in many ways (they are), or how there needs to be a cultural re-imagining of marriage (there does), but I think I won’t. It’s a sort of tired topic, and I’m not sure what reenacting this debate would do here.

And the truth is, that on some greater level even if I think marriage--particularly the rituals associated with it--is foolish, I’m not particularly opposed to specific marriages, particularly if they’re grounded in independent and freethinking.

But weddings still suck.

This is a tea review that I should have written a long time ago, but I’ve been putting it off, for one reason or another. And then I realized that the box was almost empty. I guess I like it.

The tea is Taylors and Harrogate’s “Yorkshire Tea.” I think they make a “Yorkshire Gold” blend which may be different. I got this in bags; but you might find it in some other form. This past time was also the second time that I’ve gotten it, again, another good sign.

I’ve also, with this tea, learned a powerful lesson. Brew strong and add milk. This stuff is sturdy enough (as most English style black teas) that it requires milk no matter what, which means brew it as strong as you can, and then add milk (rather than try and find the sweet spot where you can manage it without milk, because you’re too lazy to add milk. The result is pretty invariably a good cup.

Particularly so with this. It’s strong, there’s lots of flavor, “robust” I guess they call it, but there’s no bite (so “smooth.") I don’t really have the proper linguistic tools for discussing this, with “notes” and what not, which I always found foolish anyway. There are a lot of teas that are pretty good but there’s an element of the taste that just feels a bit off, and that’s delightfully not the case here. On the upside

I think the next up is the same company’s english breakfast tea. I’m excited about this. Really I am.

Onward and Upward!

So I have finally finished with the ribbing of my sweater.

I knitted 20 rounds of ribbing, which is likely more than you’ll need, becuase I’m knitting with such fine yarn. Actually, I think 16-18 would have been enough, but 20 seemed like a good number. I think the target depth for ribbings is like 2-2.5 inches. Mine is 2.75, but I think I’ll live.

And then I increased. Remember I cast on 320, except I need the sweater to be 344 for the size/pattern. Right? Here’s the instruction that I recommend to you:

* Knit 16 Repeat from * 10 times.

The astute among you will notice that this means that the sweater will have not 344 but 340 stitches.

That’s correct. I seem to have made some sort of crucial error in the chart as it turns out the key number for this sweater is 342. In the old chart, I had an extra stitch around 42-43. And I increased up to 344 started the chart and then knit two rounds before I realized that the pattern didn’t work. Stitches are small and it turns out that an increase here and a decrease there don’t really matter that much.

I have amended the chart, and revision 2 is here: http://www.lulu.com/content/2470929 for those that have run into an error. I’m slowly going back and changing old links… This is the reason why I’ve got a head start. Once the pattern emerges, I’ll have pictures for you. (And I want to see your pictures/sweaters as well!

Onward and Upward!

So I was having a discussion with an old writing friend and we were discussing our futures which are both pretty much in the air.

She consoled by saying something like; “well some time off to get some grounding will probably help you more than sitting in rooms and talking about dead authors,” clearly misremembering that aspirations to publish science fiction aside, I’m a social scientist at heart.

An honest mistake, particularly given context.

I remembered then a similar mistake when people--particularly from a knitting context--are almost always in shock when I report that I am in fact not going to art school nor do I have a particular interest in going.

Both of these, are I think, likely to get a laugh out of people that know me well.

I think that’s what’s most difficult about this whole stage of life where I’m sort of back to square one trying to figure things out is that what I want to do in the short term, and what I want to do in the long term, and what my strongest skills are, are all wildly divergent.

And then I remember that my problem isn’t that I don’t have any options, it’s that I have too many options. Which is hardly a problem at all.

The thing is that does nothing to make it better just a little less scary, so I’ll take it.

Here is today’s entry/breadcrumb of the pattern for the latvian dreaming sweater. IF you want to make the sweater into a cardigan, here’s the scoop:

Some of you have asked for or expressed interest in doing this sweater as a cardigan. My last three sweaters have been cardigans, and I’m ready for a change, but these kinds of sweaters make a lot of sense to a lot of people, so don’t be discouraged, you can make this sweater as a cardigan.

The main difference here is that you need an extra stitch so that the patterns mirror properly. So that’s 345 stitches. There also need to be steeks. I think cardigans work better without ribbing, or if you’re going to do ribbing, why not wait till the end: this has to do with steeks and getting all of the end in the right place. So you don’t have to, but lets just assume that you do:

Cast on provisionally for 345 stitches, join in the contrasting color, and then using the long tail method cast on an odd number of stitches for a steek, I’m partial to 11 or 13. The first, last, and middle stitches should be in the background color, and the stitches on either side of the middle stitch should be in the foreground color. All other stitches should alternate fore and background colors.

You need the extra stitch because I suspect that you want both front edges to look the same. In a pullover you only want one middle/“turning” stitch, to make the pattern work. In a cardigan you want the middle stitch to be on both the left and right front. You could have the middle stitch on neither the left nor the right, but that seems silly, as typically you want the front of a sweater to be a bit wider than the back (it’s one of those anatomical things), and while 1/8th or less of an inch shouldn’t matter much, I seem to care about these things.

Then with both colors begin knitting the mirror side of the chart. Establish the pattern on the back the same as you would for a pullover, and end with one repeat of the normal side of the chart. Then continue reading from the chart, flipping back and forth as necessary.

Hope that helps!

Eek, this post is a few days old as it managed to escape posting for a while. but I hope still relevant to most of you. Just don’t be surprised in a few days when it seems like I’ve made a huge amount of progress. I’m not that quick.

I’ve been meaning to write a post about spinning for some time now, and although I wasn’t able to take spinning with me this weekend, I’ve still been spinning. This is a good thing.

I still have to spend some time with a niddy nody and my BFL, but I’ve been avoiding it. In part because winding 7 skeins doesn’t sound like fun, but also, this is undyed white fiber and I’d kind of like to have a sense of what I’m going to do with it before I skein it up. I guess the most likely thing is to run a big dye pot for an afternoon and see if I can get all of the yarn to be variations on a single color. I don’t really want hand painted yarn or anything, but kettle dyed something might be fun.

My current spinning project is this blue hand-dyed roving that I’m making 3-ply from. I’m spinning up the singles for the last ply. and I think it’s going to be pretty cool. I hope to be done with this yarn by tomorrow afternoon. I’m really close. There’s about 8 ounces of fiber here, and it’s merino, but I think there’s something “off” with the fiber quality. It’s really soft, and the dye job is pretty good, but it’s like the fiber is too dry. I think I’m going to put some baby oil or hair conditioner in the rinse bath of the yarn and see if that helps make the yarn a bit more sturdy and less dry seeming.

Since my return to spinning, I’ve tried to think very carefully about what I’m spinning and what that yarn is going to end up being. Even if it’s stuff I’m not going to keep, I think one of the things that makes spinning more effective is spinning yarn for a project rather than just spinning a pretty roving because it’s pretty. Having said that, I’m pretty clueless as to what this yarn is going to become. Socks and a hat? For Sale on Etsy or some such? I might keep it around as stash. We shall see.

My next spinning project is sitting on the other side of my office: 2 lbs. of grey shetland, that I want to spin 3ply DK weight yarn from, I think with the intention of making a pretty traditional cabled gansey. I’d probably knit it tightly, but not tightly. In any case, I’m getting ahead of myself¹ the fiber is really nice. I got it from Copper Moose and the service (and price!) were really great, and I’m looking forward to getting into this spinning. Natural grey fibers are so much fun.

I think after that, I’m going to try for some darkly colored BFL, which is a bit harder to find, but I think might be akin to nirvana.

I haven’t gotten around to making the hybrid double drive, or the extra drive bands. These things happen, of course.

Onward and Upward!

Ok I’m finally going to clear this business up about the 320/340/342/344 stitch count on the latvian dreaming sweater project

I said to cast on, 320 stitches, the charts cover 342 stitches, and I’ve been saying that you need 344 stitches. What gives?

Well, I want to avoid having the bottom edge of the sweater flare out. Casting on fewer stitches keeps this from happening. Elizabeth Zimmermann recommends casting on 90% of K (or 344), and that would give us something like 310 or 309. Meh. For starters I know that 320 is divisible by 4. Also, in laziness, it’s easy to cast on 320 stitches, because it’s divisible by 80 and therefore also easy to increase evenly across, because it’s so evenly divisible. The dirty secret of making KnittingMath easy for you and yours is choosing good numbers.

Secondly, I don’t want the lower edge of the sweater to pull in as much as I want it to not flare. Often people suggest casting on with a smaller needle and not having one at hand (and not much liking my US 0s anyway,) I’m just casting on fewer stitches. Feel free to modify this point if you like.

I should also admit that in the first draft of the pattern (the key number was 340, good thing that draft never saw the light of day: I didn’t realize that I needed 4 extra stitches for borders and turning stitches,) so I thought increasing 10 stitches on the front and the back would be really easy. But no matter, it’ll still work out.

That answer your question?

I’d like to see pictures and hear reports of your projects as they develop. Also, if you make any cool modifications I’d totally like to hear about them too. I know that I’m still ahead of the gang with the knitting on this one, so I hope that by dragging out the cast-on and the bottom rib, I’ve been able to let at least a few of you get your yarn and get caught up. It’s also let me get done with my last sweater, but next up we’re going to increase so we can begin the color pattern.

I see math in my future.

Knit in good health! I’ll be in touch. You be too.

I’ve been a bit off the fiber arts these past few days. For starters, I discovered a stain on my Latvian Mitten sweater which is all but finished. (I just have to sew down the hem.)

It’s a tea stain, which are particularly brutal to get off. My last sweater that I made with this yarn currently suffers from a few more honestly derived tea stains. There’s also something about this yarn, I’m convinced, No other seems to stain so easily. Is there something about superwash? In any case, though I think the stain has mostly come up (salt, who’d thought?) and it’s on the back of the sweater sort of under the arm, so again, not a big deal, that whole mess has put me off knitting just a bit. I’ll get back to it in time. I want to get the hem sewn down by the weekend, which shouldn’t be a problem.

There’ll be more latvian dreaming stuff soon. I promise. How are people doing on this one?

I also finished this little spinning project I’d been working on for a great while. It’s 3ply merino DKish weight yarn. Light blue marl. I’m loving it, though I don’t have a clue what I’m going to do with it. This of course means that I’ve already started spinning up my shetland roving which I’m hoping to turn into three-ply of a similar weight as well. It’s nice fiber, unlike anything else I’ve ever spun, but it’s going well. One thought is that I could use the blue merino at least in part for hems. Which seems like a foolish waist of hand spun. I’ve made a rule that handspun (once it’s spun) doesn’t count as stash, so it could sit around for a while.

I’ve decided that I’m going to try and spin 100 gram skeins of yarn, by measuring off 3 33ish gram lengths of roving and spinning one on to each bobbin and then plying. I think this will give me reasonably sized skeins, it’ll break up the spinning in an interesting way, and I’m less likely to have leftovers of any quantity (I know this isn’t a huge issue, but I’m a bit neurotic.) This decision made me really rather happy. I also decided that I’d not use the lazy kate that came with my wheel except for holding bobbins when plying. All other bobbin holding will be done by the basket that I use to hold my fiber as I’m spinning. Somehow these decisions were incredibly liberating, and I think that realization is kind of worrying. Anyway, I think I should end this before it degenerates any further.

Onward and Upward.