So I’m writing a book where many of the characters are basically CIA agents. Which has meant that I have needed to spend some time thinking more seriously about intelligence and counterintelligence operations.
Then, an event in my real life inspired the following realization/observation:
If you’re gathering intelligence and you discover something you don’t like, because you’re spying, you can’t really be upset when you unearth this information.
Scouts honor, or something.
So, yesterday at the mall, we stopped in the Tevana store. Because you know, I’m a tea drinker, and it seemed like the place to go.
It’s a cool store, as these kinds of obnoxious commercially “oriental” things are. And I made a purchase, sort of on a whim, of tea things. I also made a few observations about myself and my caffeine habit.
The most important thing is that I’m not a terribly sophisticated tea drinker. I’m never going to keep a thermometer on my kettle so that I can make sure to steep the tea in water that’s 195 degrees. I am never (on this blog or elsewhere) debate the various merits of drinking tea steeped at 195 or 175 degrees (F). I’m also never going to rinse tea leaves.
I also want dark hearty tea, and I’m not particularly interested in rich or interesting flavors, or a diverse tea selection to match my mood.
But I’d like to be able to make loose leaf tea. In part because of economy, in part because it’s easier to make blends and control the strength of the tea.
So I got a little tea brewer thing from this sore, which is brilliance. In November we got an Aeropress, for the coffee drinker in the family, and it was brilliant. I sort of feel like this tea maker thing, is brilliant, only more my speed.
Anyway. End Geek. I have to work today, and we’re having a friend over to spin this evening, which is pretty cool. But it means I have a lot of not tycho things to do, and that I’ll be pretty sparse today. Other tycho news: I haven’t seen the latest BSG or Torchwood, and I almost have a copy of the former. I have a Feminist SF post ready to go monday morning, and I just realized that in a week I have to teach a what amounts to a knitting design master class at the yarn store.
So I should get on that. I hope you have enjoyably productive days.
Onward and Upward!
In a bit under a month, we--my parents and I--have to go to a wedding. Actually, my father is the best man, but thankfully we like the folks getting married, so it’s not too bad. At the same time, I’m generally of the opinion that weddings suck, and are to be avoided at all costs.
The side effect of this world view is that, I don’t really own clothes that are fancy enough to wear in these situations. This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that I’m a fairly conservative dresser and my normal wardrobe is pretty versatile, so usually I can skate by as long as I don’t need to wear a tie1. But this wedding thwarted me.
It also--and more importantly--thwarted my mother, who again doesn’t (or didn’t) really have anything dressy/formal enough, for similar sorts of reasons.
So we went shopping.
In a mall.
(Everyone gasp at once here)
Dear lord. That was tiring, and depressing, and stressful. And, being sort of thrifty to begin with2, appalling the price of clothing.
And to think, some people go to malls for fun. As recreation.
Dear lord.
In other news, I have a brief story to recount. We were driving (on the way to the mall) and my mother, on the prowl for a diet coke, made an abrupt right turn from the left lane. into a gas station parking lot.
“Jesus,” I screamed reaching for the door jam in hopes that, that might protect me somewhat for the painful death that--at the moment--I felt was imminent.
Incidentally, I also wondered why on earth that particularly deity seemed like the appropriate one to invoke in this situation.
And then I made another realization.
This was, by far, not the first time as a passenger in a car where I felt that my life was endangered by a driver in pursuit of a diet soft drink.
And suddenly I was a little nostalgic.
At least once I started breathing again.
Not that I’m wearing a tie this time, but my old sports coat that I got from a thrift shop for my high school prom for 2 dollars, is--though nice--perhaps no longer in suitable shape for this occasion. ↩︎
I for instance, get most of my jeans on ebay, where, armed with my size can usually spend 30 dollars every couple of years and always have enough pants. It’s a source of pride on my part. ↩︎
I seem to be getting really efficent when it comes to reading all of my usual “reads,” Like, I can get through my eighty feeds and my LJ friends page, and other internet checking in twenty minutes or so. I check both throughout the day, ususally, so it’s not like thats the only time I spend on the interent (ha!) but it means that I don’t have as much time to get the brain rolling in the morning as I used to.
A couple of points. While I’m sticking with Mars Edit, for this post too, I’m not quite sure that I’m ready to jump ship back from my TextMate blogging bundle and subversion bundle that I’ve been using for many months now. I really like keeping the subversion archive as it works with all of my other work/backup etc. At the same time, it’s totally overkill and it’s not like, in the last six months, I’ve ever really gone in and done anything with the backups that I’m keeping in subversion, and it would make my checkout quicker if I didn’t have so many blogging files.
But as I was thinking about this I discovered soemthing interesting that I want to share with you: since I’ve been writing my entries this way, I’ve amassed nearly two megabytes of text files containing blog entries. And I should point out that I’m closing in on four hundred thousand words blogged in the last two years.
Good g-d folks. That’s absurd.
Speaking of absurdity, I have today off, so there will be knitting and there will be writing about it. And other things too.
Onward and Upward!
So I’m still waiting on hearing back from a few people about the copyright issues that might be involved in publishing/selling this pattern, and in the mean time I was looking more carefully over the pictures of this shawl and made a startling realization.
The pattern I thought I used was very clearly not the right pattern. See, I donated the original to a good cause, and while I have really good pictures, I knit it the first time in July of 2005, so it’s not very fresh for me.
It’s a good thing I’m good at looking at knitting and forensically reconstructing what happened and how it worked.
Which leads me to the second realization: I have no notion in the world of how I arrived at this stitch pattern, because it looks like no chart I have on file or have ever seen. Ever.
I think I was attempting to do snowdrop lace, a shetland lace pattern that I’m pretty fond of--as these things go--and failed. I think it’s quite likely that I did the middle section late at night, and just miss remembered. Thankfully, it looks really cool, and I was able to come pretty damn close to recreating it.
The end result is that I’m making another giant blue tencel shawl using the same pattern. See, I had more than half of the yarn left over from the last time that I tried to make this shawl (best 20 dollars I ever spent on yarn). I think I’ll get to the last pattern and then set it aside for the summer. I think this will probably count as one of my “sweaters” for the 14 sweater project.
I’m thinking, as a joke, I might block it in the middle of the night at camp, again, as I blocked the same shawl with the same yarn at camp last year. But probably not. Just a joke.
In other news I was hoping that the picture that I posted yesterday would let you all see the difference between my colorwork-blocked, and unblocked, but you can’t really see it. This sweater was rolling a lot (because I haven’t put the hem facing on it) so I steamed it out, which made the stitches look all even, on the bottom half, and as I’ve knit more, its become really apparent where I was in the project when I did that.
People often say “wow your colorwork looks really even, mine always looks like crap.” The answer to this problem is steam. My colorwork looks all funky and weird until I block it. Which is when it starts to look normal.
Anyway…
Onward and Upward!
(ps. Days on the Wailist: 26, though I have another 2 weeks at the absolute outside. Egad. Eek. Sigh.)
Wow.
Today just sort of happened, and I’m sort of glad that I was around to realize it. I had thought that it was going to be a short and easy day, and I was almost double booked a couple of times, but all seems to have worked itself out. There would have been an afternoon post, but I didn’t have much of an afternoon to myself. These things happen.
I’m feeling better, which is kind of amazing. I might post more about this tomorrow, but perhaps not. Onto a real post though,
Knitting on the shawl proceeds productively. I’ve done a little bit more of the work on the beginnings of this shawl. While I’m not sure that I’ve nailed what I did before exactly I’m damn near close enough. I think. Also knitting on the shawl has allowed me to work on getting over the “hump” of the sweater.1
I think it has something to do with the fact that the shawl is so bright that it makes the colors of the sweater appear more interesting and subtle. Also, I think there’s something about using bigger needles/finer yarn which affects/improves my ergonomic situation.
Also as a side note, I’m posting this from Mars Edit which has gotten a make over since the last time that I used it seriously. It’s looking sharp.
Ok, you get to bed, I will too, and there’ll be more interesting stuff in the morning.
Onward and Upward!
You know, that part of a sweater a few inches on either side of “half way to the underarms” from the bottom hem, always takes the longest. ↩︎
My shawl pattern mentioned here is basically drafted. I need to finish figuring out who took that picture, and I need to make sure that you can publish pi shawl patterns (and use those lace patterns) without running amok with the people who I took borrowed from. I mean technically, there’s 10% difference between what I’m doing and what other people have published. But the truth is that I’d much rather spend little time emailing Schoolhouse Press and Cheryl Oberle to make sure that I’m not crossing some boundary.
Speaking of copyright, I’ve been spending a lot of time recently in the Ravelry “Designers Forums,” talking about copyright and copyleft, and pattern production. This has been helpful as I’ve been writing an thinking about my own patterns. There’s a lot of--very legitimate--concern for copyright in this community, but I worry that there’s too much fear going around in a way that has the potential to antagonize the audience, and even stifle the creative process.1
So if you’re on ravelry, check out the copyleft thread to see what I’ve been up to. It’s become part of my morning routine, which is part of the reason that I haven’t been blogging quite as much as I might like.
In other news, I did some really important planning work on a fiction project. Looks like I’m writing a story cycle. Who knew? I’m currently planning/developing on a short adventure story several years before the beginning of the novella I wrote last year. And even if I don’t get that done, this work will be very helpful in making that novella more sensical. Which felt good. Writing is good stuff, and the more I concentrate on the writing the less I can concentrate on things that I have minimal control over. End introspection.
I’ll be back throughout the day, be well.
Onward and Upward!
Some designers were even talking about how they avoided reading other people’s patterns when they were desiring lest they be “too” influenced by prior art. While you don’t want to copy prior art, knowing it’s there, being connected to the current trends and techniques and finding inspiration in the work of your peers isn’t dangerous, it’s simply intelligent. ↩︎
Ok, I promised, and here it is: pictures of my current work in progress. This is the first new thing that I’ve worked on months and months, so I feel like pictures are completely warented.
Note, pictures are intended as utilitarian methods of communication, and not, art. In the end, we can’t all be Jared, now can we?
Here’s the great latvian mitten sweater of 2008. Body first.
Now I think I’m pretty close to being done, despite the fact that I have to knit two more full repeats of the “hash” motif before I can attach the sleeves and begin the yoke. (I mentioned that this is going to be a saddle shouldered cardigan done in an EZ/Meg Swansen style? Right?)
In part because, I’ve already knit sleeves (which is really more exciting than I want to talk about.) See them here:
Now you probably knew that if you’ve been reading the blog, but I just wanted to reiterate this. The last 5 days have been pretty slow going on this project, but I think that I’ll probably be able to join the sleeves and the body by saturday. I hope.
I’ll clean up some of the other pictures and get them out to you over the next few days/week. I know how out of character this is for me. I ask that you neither be too surprised nor grow too accustomed to this.
Onward and Upward!