Hey folks,

Last night I despite not having finished my previous sweater (the hem, it pains me) I sat down and figured out the design for my next sweater.

Anyway. I’ve wanted to host a knit-a-long for a long time, and I figure there’s no time like the present right?

So assuming you’re up for it, I’ll get some files together later today/tomorrow with the charts and we can get started.

You’ll need about 1200 yards/12oz - ish each of two (contrasting) colors of jumper-weight (fingering) yarn, with full disclosure that prediction is rough.

Because while I’ve knit many sweaters like this, I’ve never made this sweater yet. So it’ll be an adventure for you. I have an inch done, so I should be a little bit ahead of you, intrepidly figuring out any of the errors in the pattern before you get there. It’s sort of like the fearless fair isle project that Wendy did several years ago, only more, well, tychoish.

Anybody game? Tell your friends and stay tuned!

Onward and Upward!

So it seems, that there might be a little interest in this knit along.

I’m going to post the first little bit of the pattern/project description in a little while. In the mean time, I have a few links to share with you.

1. I created a pattern on ravelry: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/latvian-dreaming. Add it to your queue, “cast on” for the project. Use it for reference. If you’re not on ravelry, I highly recommend joining. 2. Also on ravelry, I made a “tychoish knitting” group. Even if you don’t want to do this project, I’m sure there’ll be other things that this group will get used for. Here’s the url: http://www.ravelry.com/groups/tychoish-knitting. 3. I’ve posted a zip file with the first version of the resource files. This includes the excel file, a couple of PDFs and text and HTML versions of a rough Readme file. It’s located on Lulu and you can get to it here: http://www.lulu.com/content/2470929.

Ok, that’s all for now. I want to find something non-knitting related, to try and keep the site at least a little balanced. Maybe a loosing cause? I sense a post about tea coming in the near future.

At various points in this graduate school application season I think I was able to be mildly productive on other projects, but the last few weeks have been difficult, to say the least.

And then there weren’t so many unknown variable outside of my control. Actually this happened rather immediately. You can’t plan the unknown, really, so in a lot of ways this is a better problem to have, but it’s not without challenges.

One thing that I’ve realized is that after being mildly productive but not otherwise particularly busy for what seemed like years, but was probably only about 6 weeks, I’m dog tired.

Part of this is that I slept really poorly Sunday night and it’s taking a while to whack my sleep schedule back into shape. Part of the problem is that with the added emotional stress and the new anxiety of having to figure out what I’m going to do with my life after august, I’ve been trying to limit my caffeine intake so that the stim don’t provoke something my body/mind can’t deal with, and make things worse.¹

The other ting, is that the six weeks or so of anxiety has left me tired, which is counter intuitive, because I feel like I should be able to get up and get going in the right direction, but it’s apparently harder than that. And it’s only been two days at this point, so some adjustment is necessary. And also, I think because I’ve been so largely unproductive recently, all of the “structures of productivity,” (list making, time budgeting aren’t as immediately habitual as it used to be.) But I think realizing this will make it easier to attend to these things in the future.

Also, and this is really minor, but my knitting projects at the moment are very annoying. The hem facing from hell, and the sweater that I haven’t designed yet. Soon this will sort itself out and I’ll be back to knitting happy things. Spinning is slowing as well, but I did some more of it today, and that’s good.

On the upside I’m very on top of my email correspondence.

What’s on the schedule from here? I start the full time summer job in a few weeks, but I have big family obligations for the next couple of weekends, so I think my time is pretty well accounted for. In the mean time I need to get the productivity structures built up, so that I’m better at using time to get knitting and writing done once my time is more crunched.

The truth is, though, that I often work better when time is crunched, so that’s not a bad thing. I’m also sending out emails about doing web contract webdesign and other technical work, as I’m slowly in search of a job/career/reliable income source for post-August. I got a rather immediate callback. The pay is a bit sucky (but not bad), and if I can do it remotely (shouldn’t be an issue) it would be more than ok.

Anyway, enough blathering. Thanks for reading, and I’ll be in touch…

Onward and Upward!

I didn’t sleep well, but I used the extra little awakeness to write emails, which I’ve been avoiding, but need to be written. I’m coping, and I’m all sorts of cranky--some of which comes out in this entry--but these things pass as well. I’m doing well enough to avoid laundry, so that’s a good sign.

Anyway, so I’ve been browsing about on ravelry and live journal recently for lack of other procrastinating to do (like the past week or so) and I’ve begun to develop a new “type” of internet citizen. A type particularly prevalent on LJ and the rav':

*The Overwhelmingly Creative:*

These are, generally older (I’ve never seen an overwhelmingly creativity person under 35, I think younger people can blame most of these characteristics on too much neural plasticity, or something), folks who dabble in a lot of creative endeavors, but don’t have a lot of output. They talk about how creative and/or artistic they are in their profiles or other “about me,” spaces, but the cursory glimpse of their journals/portfolio doesn’t reveal a particularly unusual amount (or kind) of production. They often discuss their aptitude or success at a wide range of wildly dissimilar crafts/activities (eg. metalsmithing, painting, tai chi, felting, dog grooming, and collage). Again, allow me to stress the overprotection, the dabbling, and the poor/unrealistic self concept.

And generally I could care less. I think Marilyn, bless her heart (heh), would call these folks “knitdweebs,” and thats part of the issue, but I think there’s more.

So this “type” fabrication is mostly in jest, but it has brought up a number of more serious concerns:

• Craft, largely because of it’s association with women, is devalued, and crafters as a result. Also the latest commercial revival hasn’t helped: Stitch and Bitch, and the Discovery Channel daytime programing all reinscribe craft on women-ness and while this is sells product, recruits new knitters, and is empowering and feels great, I’m not sure that it’s the best thing to elevate the craft.
• More knitter’s doesn’t equal more power/respect for the craft of knitting. Arguably, a smaller proportion of the population knits today than did 40 or 80 years ago, so I don’t think making knitting “bigger” is the same as getting power/respect. Not that it’s a bad thing that new people knit and that the craft grows, but that if you want to talk about changing the craft in any meaningful way, you have to do more.
• I do a lot of things that others consider to be creative: I write, I knit and spin, I dance, etc. People sometimes, particularly in knitting contexts, ask if I’m (was, trying to be) in graduate school for art, right after they’re awed by the creativity of my sweaters, or something. Which always strikes me as weird. I mean, I love the compliment, but I think is misguided. Creativity is a situational response to constraint, not some characteralogical feature. I do all of the “creative” things I do because I enjoy the technical experience and exercise of knitting and spinning and dancing (I write because I have something that I want to say.)

Creativity happens when I (or anyone) has to figure out how to convey a series of fictional events in a coherant manner, or when you have to figure out how to fit a sweater over a shoulder without puckering or stretching and still maintaining the pattern. Hell, creativity is figuring out how to efficiently get from South St. Louis City to an inner suburb in the north/west county (Creve Coeur) allowing for the fact that the city has no really good North-South roads, and the major East-West artery closed for most of the next decade for construction. We all do this, the same as anyone else. Our choices about what we spend our time doing, is largely unrelated as far as I’m concerned.

I wonder and worry that there might be trouble in these thoughts notions. That my dismissal of creativity might be connected to the fact that I participate in largely feminized crafts (spinning, knitting), or otherwise undervalued genres (folk/morris dance, science fiction.) ‘Cold be. I hope not, but the thought has crossed my mind.

Thoughts?

Onward and Upward!

I didn’t get in to graduate school this time.

Feh.

I’m going to start putting out feelers for another try, but maybe not next year I need a break from this applying thing, and I don’t want to be beating a dead horse or anything. And looking for (another) job. I’m good income wise until the end of august, if need be, but I think it would be good to find something solid and suited that I could do while I retool.

Also, this research project that I’ve been working on this semester is something that I could continue to work on for a while, and something that I think could easily lead to me into interesting next steps.

It’s good to keep busy and this helps, but the truth is that this sucks royally. Just saying.

But there are worse things in the world than working and focusing on writing and knitting and spinning, and I look forward to sharing those moments and experiences with you here. And also sharing other things here because really those sorts of thoughts are much more interesting for both of us than the endless introspection.

Be in touch would you? I will be too.

I caved yesterday and bought roving. Hand dyed roving at that. This entry is about various developments in my slate of projects.

Given that I had, basically none of my own fiber in the house¹, and that I get a hefty discount on stuff at the yarn shop I’ve been working at, and the fact that this fiber has been sitting on the shelf staring me down for weeks, and so I got it. The color name is Blueberries and Cream, it’s Merino, I got 8 ounces. Wait, I’ve found a picture that I’m stealing from the companies website

I think the blues are a little bit brighter in real life, but that’s pretty clearly a flash effect.

Anyway this morning I spun the first third of the roving. My plan is to have a DK/Sprt weight 3 ply. The first strand I’m broke the colors up pretty well and spun them in the order that they came on the roving. The next strand I’m going to intentionally mix up the colors, and the third strand I’m going to figure something else to do, I might break up the fiber and then spin a regular sequence, but we’ll see.

My hope is that I’ll be finishing up the plying right as my shetland roving arrives. I hope the spin that the same way as this (3ply DK/Sport weight,) even though it’s all one color.

Also, I’ve finally reached the point in the Latvian mitten Sweater where I have to unzip the provisional cast-on and knit the hem facing. Ugg. This is a two-or-so inch long piece of fabric that is… 110 inches wide. It has to go up and down the cardigan opening, around the neck opening, and all the way around the bottom edge of the sweater. This is the third sweater where I’ve had to do this massively annoying procedure to this year. And while I’ve been leaning towards not doing cardigans for a while, I’m swearing them off for the next several garments.

But because the knitting is so tedious, and so large (because of course the whole damn thing has to fit in your bookbag/lap, it’s not really feasible to work on this “here and there” like you might with most knitting. Anyway, because of this, I’ve cast on for the ribbing of my next sweater.

I reason that this is acceptable because:

• I hate knitting corrugated ribbing.
• I haven’t chosen the charts/pattern for the body of the sweater, just the stitch count.
• If I cast on now, I won’t be tempted to turn the border into some sort of provisional cast-on that will require unzipping/hemming later. Judge for yourself.

I started a tag for spinning related posts that I hope to use as having a wheel of my own (again) means that I’m spinning more.

I finished the last little bit of the BFL. Well almost. I still have about 80 grams of the stuff set aside with a drop spindle, but I don’t think I need to spin it up like the other to make anything. But I might.

I was going to do this Mohair/Alpaca/Finn thing, but I’ve since decided against it. Alpaca is nice, but I’m not sure that it’s the kind of thing that I particularly like to knit with. I’m very into wool, and I know myself well enough to realize that I don’t really know how to spin alpaca, and I don’t have enough desire to want to learn how to do that at the moment.

If I move north and need gear that warm, or lace goes into style for men, maybe I’ll reconsider.

In other news, though people on ravelry have been helpful with my double drive plying issue, I think this boils down to the fact that this yarn that I’ve been working with is very lofty, particularly when plied, and double drive though very even (and good for it) doesn’t provide as much tension for plying as the breakband method does.

Though if anyone has the Alden Amos book at hand and wants to share his imparted wisdom, I’d be ok with that, if I’m missing something.

So next up, seeing that the alpaca blend thing is a no go, is going to be the Grey Shetland that I just ordered. It should be here soon enough, but I think I’ll take the opportunity of the break to finish the sweater that I’ve been working on (just a hem), some writing responsibilities, starting the next sweater (woot!). There’s also some hand painted roving at the yarn store that might come home with me. If it’s still in the shop.

In the past several years, most of my spinning has focused on making various two ply yarns, and I think what to focus on spinning conventional three-ply for the next little bit.

I’ve also decided that, while I’m uninterested in spinning bulky novelty yarns; unlike a lot of spinners, I’m not particularly interested in spinning fingering and lace weight (sorry Ted! I’m not worthy!) mostly because while I knit with a lot of fingering weight (jumper weight shetland mostly), it seems to me that this is the kind of yarn that I would never want to spin for myself, whereas things in the Sport/DK/Worsted range is stuff where my allegiance to the machine spun fiber is much less strong. A place where the economy works out a bit better for me.

And three ply seems like it will be fun.

But until I get more fiber, we’ll have to wait and see, and move on to other topics of interest.

Onward and Upward!

Perhaps no news is good news? After the bulk of a week in one kind of a haze or another, I’m just working on getting on with my life, at least for the present. I’m going to be spinning a lot in the future, no matter if I get into graduate school or not. I’m going to be knitting and writing knitting patterns. There are the 14 sweaters to knit. I’m not going to stop this blog or stop drinking tea. In a few weeks I’ll be working full time until August 31st. I have another novella or ten to write.

Life continues.

I’ve also realized that the organization of this school is somewhat… arcane and odd. For instance I submitted my application on paper (because there wasn’t a digital option), and the whole thing is administered by the department rather than a graduate school proper. It takes them a little while longer to get to things. I can cope with this. And I just have to be the faster zebra, so I’m resting comfortably in the belief (delusion?) that no news is good news.

Anyway. I got the new spinning wheel on Tuesday, as I mentioned and I’ve been spinning a lot. I plyed about 80 grams (my standard skein size) Tuesday evening, and then spun and plied two bobbins of singles on Wednesday (190 grams), and spun two more bobbins yesterday, though I didn’t get to ply it all last night.

My current spinning project has been some amazingly lofty and soft Blue faced Leicester (BFL, commonly pronounced biffel) that I got over the holidays at The Yarn Barn in Kansas City. I have probably 60 grams set aside for a drop spindle project for when my hands hurt too much to knit, and i don’t want to sit in front of a wheel (or couldn’t before I got the new wheel, and about 82 grams left for wheel spinning (I’ve been making sport-ish weight two ply). Of about two pounds that I bought.

The next spinning project is going to be three ply, two of which will be a brown mohair/alpaca (30/70?) blend, and the third ply will be white finnsheep wool. Someone can do the weighted percentages. 33% wool, 47% Alpaca, 20% mohair? Something like that…

After that I have my eye on some grey shetland from copper moose (an online spinning company) that I might buy a couple of pounds to spin a 3 ply DK weight for a sweater. A sweater like Alice Starmore’s St. Brigid? Something.

Anyway, I have blog posts about knitting developments, tea developments, and writing developments, so I’ll leave this post here, and go do some spinning before I get back to more writing thing.

Be well, and I’ll keep you posted as I learn more, for sure.