So there’s this English May Carol (from the village of Padstow in Cornwall. The song is commonly known as “The Padstow May Carol” or simply Padstow.) The refrain begins with the words “Unite and Unite.” Hell, here’s the chorus:

Unite and unite and let us all unite For summer is a-comming today And wither we are going, we will all unite In the merry morning of May

Anyway, I’m knitting this sweater, which is modeled on Meg Swansen’s Saddle Shouldered Aran Cardigan, except that it’s color-work.

And there’s a point in all of these EZ style sweaters where the instructions say “unite the body and sleeves on one needle,” but the word “unite” is always in caps or bold, or some such.

So I always sing this part of the instruction to the tune of this song.

So what if it’s a little weird.

In any case, I’m (apparently) doing better at taking pictures of my knitting as I do it. So cause for celebration.

At this point I’ve knit the first inch-or-so of about 10 inches on the shoulders. The thing about yoke sweaters, is that if you decrease in a particular way you can get all manner of clever sweater shapes.

I’m just going to do a set in sleeve, and then end with saddles. across the shoulders and into the collar. We’ll see when I get there. I’m taking pretty good notes this time, so we’ll be able to reproduce this with ease.

I have to finish writing up the document for my class, but I think I’m just going to knit tonight.

Knit in good health,

Onward and Upward!

I didn’t get to the part of the sweater where you can “unite” the sleeves and the body last night--for this I blame dancing--but I’m incredibly close. Tonight maybe. I’ve been planning out how to do the neck/shoulders, and I think I’m going to have to pull something clever. Damn.

I have to work today, so while I had grand plans to blog on a number of varied subjects, that might not happen, though it depends on when I start. I’m working on another tea review, and I’ve been writing up the hand outs to a knitting class that I’m going to be teaching starting this weekend. Eek.

Mostly though, I’m just anxious like, which gets in the way of getting things done. On the upside, I have one week left on the wait-list, give or take a day or two. This is exciting, and it’ll be good to be able to put this behind me.

I’m pretty good at alternately being excited about the possibility of getting in, and all of the possibilities that being able to take some more time off would afford (changing field, the opportunity to travel and teach knitting classes) writing, making a more than honest living doing computer stuff, and so forth.

I’m really not good at being able to hold all of those conflicting excitements in at the same time, which is I suppose, not that surprising, and why anxiety is considered something to be conquered and not enjoyed.

Soon though.

Ok, I’m off for now, if I have time, I’ll be back. Otherwise, don’t do anything I wouldn’t.

Onward and Upward!

So I think I’ve finally gotten into reading The Left Hand of Darkness, so I think this attempt at reading it will be successful. I’ve posted my feminist sf post about difference, spurred on by starting to read this book (again).

The post ponders the ways that feminist SF approaches and resolves issues surrounding “difference,” does feminist (or) SF say, “look here are people that are different,” and then look at all the ways that difference leads to disparity (as cyberpunk and other dystopias tend to,) or the way that differences (between, say men and women) pale in comparison to the differences between aliens and human, (Which strikes me as a little assimilationist). I’m not sure what the “answer” is, but if we had answers, we wouldn’t have a blog…

In other media consumption news, while I posted my thoughts on BSG and torchwood, I’m also more slowly working my way through Jeremiah, a show written by JMS, the same guy who write Babylon 5. While I like the concept, and I think it’s a fun show, I’m ten episodes in, and the pacing of the story feels “off.” The episodic story lines aren’t that gripping, and the story arch moves too slowly. As I think about it, Babylon 5 was probably the same way, but there are seemingly more space opera stories than there are, post-apocalyptic dystopian stories.

In the end this means that I’ve had a hard time mustering the proper entertainment materials to get me through the dark tunnel part of this knitting. Surely there are NCIS episodes or some such that I haven’t seen. I’ll post more about the sweater later. TV recommendations are most welcome.

Onward and Upward!

So I’ve been doing a little bit of knitting today.

Current projection indicates that by the end of the current repeat, I will be at the underarm point of the sweater. If I book it, and find something good to entertain me while I work on it.

I’m almost 60% through the yarn that I have to finish this project, and I hope that I finish before I run out of yarn, but I suspect that the yoke, “button band” and hem had better be less than 40% of the knitting that I have to do.

It’s chugging along. I’ve already started thinking of the next design, which I think will be more textural and less blocky. I’m going to be knitting it with much more fine yarn, but my goal is to knit something that’s much more fitted than I’m accustomed to, probably v-neck. After that, I’m thinking a plain, drapey/soft raglan sweater with rolled hems, and I’m not sure what kind of neck I’m going to use. Probably a lose crew neck.

I’ve put the shawl away for the time being. This is probably good for my (knitting) health.

So I/we’ve been trying for the past few months to get a new cat.

A dancing friend’s daughter’s (siamese) cat had kittens, and we were already to take one of those kittens that hadn’t found a home, but it turns out that they had. No new cat.

Then a friend of a friend found a cat, and given the previous experience we decided to be very affirmative and officially put dibs on the cat (given that the chance of cat psychosis was probably pretty low) and I even made an appointment with the vet (that has cared for the family’s animals for 25+ years).

And then the friend of a friend decided to keep the cat in spite of one of her family member’s allergy.

So we were 0 for 2, in the cat getting. And admittedly, we weren’t trying that hard.

But then over weekend a friend’s (the friend through which we were connected to cat number 2) new cat--an adopted stray--much to everyone’s surprise, had a (small) litter of kittens.

We’ve put dibs on one of the cats. With luck this one will work out.

So, I have something rather embarrassing to report, but I think the blogging medium is generally pretty well suited to this kind of thing.

So I was spinning--we had a friend over to teach spinning to--and I needed to get my spinning off of a bobbin, and well, as I was winding off, the singles broke (not entirely uncommon) and for the first time since the second month that I was spinning, I completely lost the end, and had to cut the spinning off the bobbin.

Thankfully, I only lost about 12 grams of fiber, but it is still somewhat embarrassing.

I generally consider myself to be a fairly adept spinner, I’ve been doing it for a while, and I thought that I was done with this kind of thing. Apparently not so much.

sigh

I just watched the season finale of Torchwood, and the season premiere of Battlestar Galactica, season 4.

Oh. My. G-d.

Torchwood was amazing. I felt Ianto could have been less catatonic in the last moment, but it was really nice. James Masters was perfect. The last few torchwood eps were really poorly written--in my view--but this one was good.

And Battlestar. Oh BSG. This was an episode that basically said “we’re back,” but nothing happened, which was frustrating. But the last episode in season 3 was so incredibly powerful, so it’s not particularly surprising that the emotional energy wasn’t as strong, particularly since we’ve all had so long for the tension to build.

Ok, I’m done being a fan, your more usual tychoish will return tomorrow. While generally I think spoilers are a bad thing to post without warning on the internet, I think the comments to this entry should be fair game for spoilers if anyone has them…

Onward and Upward!

I just got an email from my prospective advisor at the school I’m on the wait-list for today.

Days on the waitlist: 26-ish (One week and 2 days till, the rough end).

Anyway, apparently the department sent out rejections a few days ago, and I got sent one *except it was in error*

I havenot* been rejected.*

(Yet.)

The interesting bits of information that I was able to glean from this email are:

• he said and I quote “--At this point, we still have to wait for everyone who has received their offers to ‘make up their minds’. So - please hang in”
• he said “everyone” (which means that many or all of the people they gave offers to haven’t confirmed with them. As we’re almost a week out from the deadline, this uncertainty on their part is probably good. It’s not a done deal yet, and because of the ranking of this school, it probably means that people are jockeying for better slots, or aren’t bothering to officially decline offers.
• I know that at worst there are be 8 people in front of me (including people who got offers). I suspect that there are 4-6 slots in this program. So I’m person 5(6 or 7)-9, and given how long this is dragging on, the better my chances are..