It was my intention today to work on further invoking good karma to collect upon myself to the end of summoning good news from graduate school. Oh, by the way…

Days on the Waitlist: 17

…anyway, so in this direction, I finally pulled the plug on TealArt. Which was waiting to happen, and I think it’s good that I just got it done with and I’m on to doing things that I think are going to be really productive in my life. Though its sad to let it go, tychoish is where it’s at for me, and to be cliched: taking irons off the fire is a good thing right now.

Another part of list of “things I’m changing,” is I’m going to re-title this blog to be less journalish and more blogish, and hopefully begin to start (continue?) to push my posts in that direction. If someone has a good pithy blog title, I’d love to hear it. I have to throw away a bunch of crap that I’ve collected, and I’m also still in search of some symbolic rite, but I’m working in the right direction.

In other news:

I wrote an entire knitting pattern for this shawl today:

I need to find out who took that picture, though, because I don’t have that info on my records, it was someone who went to Meg Swansen’s Knitting Camp 1 last year, someone who might be reading the blog right now. It’s sort of important that I find out, because I don’t have the shawl any more, and I want to use the picture in the pattern.

Anyway, the deal with this pattern, and it’s going to be an experiment in pattern publication. I’m going to post, probably tomorrow, the terms/description of the licensee that I’m including at the end of the pattern tomorrow for your feedback. I’m looking for the proper middle ground between “I’m going to be stingy and try and prevent people from copying this file,” (which seems to be futile anyway), and “I’m giving it all away for free.” I’m also concerned that if I cripple the distribution system somehow to make it more “secure” (by only selling print copies, or limiting downloads,) that I’ll prevent my best method for advertising.

So I’ll get that copy to you tomorrow and you can tell me what you think.

That’s about all the news I have.

Dear friends,

Today has been a good day. Things regarding the dance experience have continued to improve, such that over tea this afternoon we realized that, the way things have turned out was the best possible thing that could have happened.

So good, in fact, that these kinds of things don’t happen outside of movies. Except they have.

The truth is, that this whole mess has been nagging at us for a year, maybe a year and a half. And though I’m not sure we have “closure,” we have resolution. This is good enough, and it’s as if a great weight has been lifted from our shoulders. A weight that we didn’t know we had.

It’s hard on you when your stress release mechanism, and one of your outlets for physical activity become cooped by angst and stress, and it’s been so long.

So I’m happy.

One of the things that we did a few weeks ago, was that we held a ritual burning of some objects that were symbolic of some of the more stressful parts of the recent past.

And now there’s resolution.

So we think (and I support this) that I need to have some sort of positively focused ritual to encourage a positive outcome to this graduate school application. I’m thinking about what I can do, but I’m not sure. Seems like the place to start is with some serious cleaning and reorganization of my crap. I have clothes to donate, paper to recycle, and so forth. Cleansing seems like a good place to start.

I’m also considering ditching tealart as a project because I think I can run everything that I could possibly ever want to do off of tychoish.com, and I’d rather not further divide my time/energy. Maybe. I’m not sure. Unless I can find a good executive editor. But I have to keep it around for email purposes for a year or two anyway, so I don’t know. It’s just a thought.

If anyone has a good suggestion for a ritual some such, I’d be willing to hear it.

In other news, I replied to a lot of email messages on ravelry, I’m sorry that I took so long to do this, but it felt really good to get all these messages out to people who had written really kind notes. Also I got more than a little bit of encouragement to work on getting my patterns written and ready for sale and distribution. There’s nothing to encourage you to be creative and productive than people asking for ways to give you money. This is the problem to have. So the end result is that I have a lot of work to do and I’m very much looking forward to the opportunity to do it.

That’s what I have right now. I’ll be back tomorrow, in a less reflective sort of way. Be well everyone, that’s an order.

Onward and Upward!

So I’m back to trying to learn how to work with vim more seriously, and I think with a more seriously modified .vimrc file. Thank g-d for dotfiles. I did realize that I don’t need to remap a key to escape system wide, as long as it works in vim at the right place, and it turns out (of course) that getting this to happen is a synch).

As this is a fairly geeky post, I’m going to put the bulk of it below the fold…

It’s a long story but the short of it is: I don’t have it down yet, and I think there are a number of things that I have yet to learn how to do properly that I can do with out any fuss in TextMate. Vim can do them, it’s just a matter of teaching me how to do them. I’ve yet to get things like blog posting from within the editor (I’ve not yet braved installing the ruby script-able vim yet). There’s still a bunch of things that TM does that I haven’t figured out yet. Like the auto-paired characters (in TM, if you type a single quote (") it automatically puts the other one. This also works around selected text. There’s got to be something in vim for this, I just haven’t found it), and the hyperlink helper, would also be nice to duplicate.

Why am I doing this? Good question. Using vim feels more efficient. It’s good to stretch the brain, and at some point I’ll have it figured out. In addition to self betterment, I’m learning this because I have a new-to-me computer that I’m going to start using more consistently, and it’s not a mac, so having something that’s more cross platform appeals. Also, with the replacement of my previously dysfunctional “t” key, I’ve become more bonded to the ongoing maintenance of this computer. It’s because I’m stubborn.

Chris, who knows me way too well, said that “switching to linux will be good for you, but you’ll like it for a few months, and then hate it for a few, and after that you’ll be golden.” Depressingly, my mother, upon hearing this, concurred totally. Becoming comfortable in vim is the first step in this transition. And if I can make this jump, to my satisfaction, there’s a lot of linux hardware out there thats way more interesting and affordable than equivalent mac hardware. Tablets, 12 inch laptops, computers without CD drives.

Though, this whole thing is clearly going through fits and starts, because I’ve broken down and gone back to TextMate. But eventually. I’ll post a list of things to master at some point.

Anyway, enough for now.

Update: I wrote this entry yesterday morning, and in the last day, a few things have happened that have tempered my enthusiasm a bit. But not much. Which is glorious.

I’ve realized that, while I spend a lot of my “real life” socializing time involved in various dance activities, I don’t actually write about them in this journal. And it was something that, while I was in school, I mostly didn’t think about much. But god, I dance a lot, and it’s a huge part of “who I am” and “what I do.”

One of the things, and perhaps the only really concrete thing, that has made this past, of being back in the town that I grew up in, is that the dance community that I’ve been involved in has been, well, sick, for far too long. Maybe it has something to do with personalities (actually, probably); maybe it has something to do with the anarchistic tendency of dance groups/organization (not an ideological point, but a reference that dance and other folk groups resist structure, and so organization and management must be, just a wee bit, heavy handed and always deft.) In any case, it’s been stressful to have ones source of community and pleasure co-opted by angst. I have enough of that in my life.

I mean, really now, I have enough angst on tychoish, do I really need something else to complain about regularly? I think not.

But a couple of things are looking up. For starters, there are a couple of positive things happening to the various dramatis personae of the dance groups that I’m apart of. I use the word positive in two senses, first that I think the situation might improve as a result, but more significantly that no one has quit dancing (which has been a secret desire of mine for some time), but rather that additional people are (re)joining the community in a way that I think is wholly positive.

So I’m happy. I also have an interesting anecdote to share.

In border morris practice, we were starting to learn/write a new dance. This seems to be par for the course, as there isn’t the same sort of organized repertory in border that there is in cotswold morris. Furthermore, we are a team of unique size, and body type, so it’s useful to tinker with dances a little bit until the dances fit better. I should also point out that the border team is reasonably unique in that, the core of us has been dancing together for years.

Anyway, we were learning a new dance, and I rather quickly decided to suggest a change for a sequence so that the chorus (the distinctive figure in the dance) wasn’t so static, basically by changing the orientation of the set for a moment. It worked. But it required us to rethink procedure: “Who goes first?” “Who has priority in this new situation,”

This is in and of itself not an incredibly difficult problem: often in a morris dance, you have options, and part of the job of organizing a team’s style is making decisions about these options. For example, dances start on the left foot or the “outside foot” (the foot furthest from the center of the set, or your partner depending on the situation). Or in the case of the problem above: if you turn the set around, who starts the figure?

The interesting thing, is that there was no central decree, in this situation, we all new the answer, once we stopped to think about it. Because we had morris precedent, we just had to recall it and figure out how to apply it in this situation. Except, we just did it, no argument, no explanation necessary.

It was one of those situations that seems perfectly normal in the moment, but that you realize immediately as being completely absurd. It’s these moments, and a few others, that help us to feel as if we belong to a community, and are delightful to experience. And those are the moments that I’d miss most if I stopped dancing.

Even if the drama lingers--which it surely will as “the good guys” don’t have any balls left in play, and “the bad guys” have no interest in resolving it--I take great pleasure in having the ability to dance and have fun dancing. So there.

I got an email today from someone, who, having seen my posting on the tealArt knitting blog regarding my intentions to write patterns, and pictures of some of my designs on ravelry, encouraged me to write patters because she really liked what she saw and wanted to knit some of my stranded patterns.

This was amazing. And I feel when people are, basically, asking to give you money that you should really go with that, because its a sign.

This is something that I’ve been thinking about for some time, and I did need the encouragement. But I am at a bit of a loss, about how to orchestrate it.

The truth is that selling digital wares is a somewhat difficult proposition: you’re selling an idea, not a physicality, and digital documents are infinitely copyable, so how do you both not give everything away for free, and not turn into an obnoxious capitalist about the whole scheme.

I think a tip jar-type model is probably the easiest/most likely solution, but it is difficult to ponder correctly. And I want to have something that will last long term, and not blow away in a few months when fads change.

So my first instinct was to write Cory Doctorow, about the technological angle of the document distribution, because this sort of model seems to be right up his alley. And I think knitting patterns are enough different from fiction that the models are different enough that it might be interesting thing to explore.

I’m not sure that I have a good solution, yet, so your input is of course appreciated, but I’ll repost the relevant parts here, below the fold, because I can.

I have a question quandary that I hope you’ll be able to offer some insight on at your connivence.

I do a fair bit of design work for hand knitting, and I’ve gotten a few requests to write up and offer some patterns, but I think on a conceptual level these “things” could be short stories, or essays, or bits of software programs.

This seems like a generally enviable position, but I’m at a bit of a loss. I have a number of patterns that are/will be for free/creative commons downloads. But I have a number big/intense patterns patterns for sweaters that I’m not sure will work well in this model. So I guess the crux of my question, is do you know of any good solution/service that will allow variable pricing/donation models, for electronic document delivery that don’t suck and/or don’t make me seem like an obnoxious capitalist?

Some thoughts about knitting patterns in contrast to other electronic text solutions:

• The digital copies can sufficiently/completely replace the physical/paper copies (They’re short, so it’s feasible to print them).
• Digital copies are preferable. Many knitters photo copy patterns from traditionally issued books because it is easier to cary around a few sheets in a page protector than a whole books.
• If you can get all the patterns that you want from a book, there’s little incentive to buy the book, for many. Many knitters will only buy a book if X number of patterns seem like things they would want to knit.

Delightfully, knitters are pretty willing, on the whole to pay for things (there’s disposable income there) and have adapted pretty well to the internet, so I think that if I can give people a way to pay for the documents, many will, without needing some sort of tight fingered system. But I’m largely unaware of what kind of options are out there.

Any insight is much appreciated.

Cheers, tycho

He suggested the Lulu.com document delivery system that lets you both give away things for free and charge for them. Which seems like a good place to start, though I wrote the following clarification/response.

I’d sort of like to do something more along the lines of another sky press http://www.anothersky.org/, so that it presents folks with a “buy now for ____” box with some reasonable value in it, with an explanation that you could set it to zero, and you could get it for free… So that the downloading experience is structured around the expectation of “not-free” but is still freely available.

I fear having to home bake something, which would take too much time away from doing other things, like writing, but it might not be that hard.

Thanks, cheers…

I have finally established the knitting of the body of my new sweater, and it progresses slowly. I haven’t been knitting on something that wasn’t a sleeve or a sock, since late November, so I forget how different the pace feels for sweater bodies.

I knit about 2 inches on the sleeve yesterday, and another inch or so today (so far; I have yet to watch the Torchwood that I have in store. There will be more knitting).

By my calculations, if I knit just two inches a day, I’ll easily get to the underarm of the sweater in a bit more than a week. Which is quite exciting. The yoke section might take a week because it is a fiddly bit of knitting, and then a few days for the finishing, so this sweater seems pretty much on pace, baring something unexpected.

It’s a fun pattern to knit and I’m really enjoying the sweater, though I’m worried that my gauge has changed, but it’s really quite possible that it hasn’t, so I’m not going to worry about it.

The next sweater is going to be a raglan-shouldered pullover, knit in what I hope will be a drape-y fabric, out of a merino-possum yarn that’s been in the family stash for a long time. Why yes it is, teal. I haven’t made a determination about the construction direction.

My thought is that I’ll cast on provisionally somewhere in the middle of the sweater, do the busy part around the shoulder, and then knit the sleeves and body from the shoulder to the lower hems after I’m sure that I’m able to do the math. I’d like to have a neat v-neck, and I’m willing to steek, but I’m not sure how to get it to all add up right in the end.

I must ponder further.

My search for the right kind of surgical steel (316L) continues with limited success. The smallest rods you can get are between a US size 3 and 4, which is way too big for what I’m looking for. It turns out that you can get straight “spring wire” that’s smaller than a US 0, but nothing for the US size 2.5 (3.0mm) and US 1.5 (2.5mm) that I find useful let alone other sizes in the 2.0mm to 3.0mm range. Sigh.

But there’s real work to be done, knitting pattern development, and job applications. I’ll be in touch?

Cheers, tycho

This is going to be a knitting post. But first a quick interlude:

Days on the Waitlist: 13

I also applied for two jobs. One a help desk job that will likely pay really well, but despite its mind numbingness, might be the right mix of work that I might enjoy quite well. The second is a web designer/developer job with a company that I think would be a blast to work for. Here’s hoping. I really want to get into graduate school, and I think if I don’t hear by the middle of the week, the chance of me hearing before, say April 10th (and more likely the 15th) is pretty low. If I hear before the 15th, the news is good, if I hear on the 16th I think my chances are 50/50 and any point after that: remote.

But this is a knitting post.

I’m going to take a few moments out of my travels today and stop by a hardware store and see if I can get 316(L) steel rods in size appropriate to knitting needles. Yes. I’m going to take a knitting guage and some knitting needles into Home Depot (which my mother and I call Home Despot). I’ll report on how this goes. I’d like to get some 3mm (14 guage?) to make US 2.5 sock and gansey needles, as well as some smaller for grins.

Update: I found some steel rods, that were 3 mm, and some brass rods that were a little bigger, but so much nicer. Not surprisingly, no surgical steel. Your collective insight and wisdom is much appreciated, of course.

Also, I realized after talking to my mother that a member our logical family is a cabinet maker and would probably be able to help me figure out how to make a knitting sheath. This is also quite exciting.

I’ve also finished both sleeves of my sweater and have cast on for the body of the sweater which progresses with minimal speed, but at this point that’s more than ok.

Anyway, Onward and Upward!

Ok, I was crusing around raverly avoiding my writing and sipping my tea, and I’ve found something `amazing <http://gansey.blogspot.com/>`_

This blog, called “A Fisherman Knits” is a guy (Aaron) whose really interested in traditional fisherman’s sweaters (ganseys or guernsey) and his blog is brilliance as it reports on various attempts to knit these really stellar garments, and its all very systematic and brilliant.

He knits using long double points that he makes himself (I must learn how to do this. there’s a pair of steel 5/5.25 inch needles in my future for socks, and maybe some 12 inch needles for a sweater) and I think there’s wisdom in this method.

Also interestingly he reports that he can wear these sweaters when it’s in the mid 60s comfortably (!) I always feel like my sweaters are too warm if it’s in the high fifties, so that’s something that i have to investigate.

Anyway, go forth and read.

Periscope down!