Ok, I promised that I would blow through some of my sweater pictures on my computer, because they’re not doing anything for anyone where they are now. This time, I’m going to show my variant on Alice Starmore’s “Norway Sweater.” With this and the last one I seem to be in something of a nordic kick. I’m not sure what that’s about.

This is from the Fisherman’s Sweater Book. This is one of the few Starmore books that are still in print. It has two stranded sweaters, but most of the book is texture of some kind. Not my favorite But I made both of the color work sweaters, almost immediately. This is the second sweater that I made, despite it being the easier of the two.

Go figure.

Stats: The black is Cascade 220 and the blue is Aracunia nature wool. Both claim to be worsted weight, but the later is more in the DK/sport range. I learned that after the fact. Knitted with size five.

Alterations: I didn’t do much other than make the colors a bit more sedate than the original. I also simplified the sweater to make it less obnoxiously feminine. (The design calls for flower motifs to be tiediously embroidered on, and for a band of red flowers around the waist.) So I changed the ribbing, shortened the collar (This is the sweater where I got the 1.5 inch collar hight guideline. I love the collar on this: best crew neck I’ve done probably.)

The one down side to this sweater is that it’s amazingly long. Amazingly long. It goes half way to my knees. Seriously. So most coats don’t cover it all the way, so it’s hard to find times to wear it, frankly, and the pattern is hard to see, but I don’t mind that so much. And particularly with fashion looking a bit more like the 80s than I think anyone is comfortable with--deep down--it’s not so bad. Really though, if you were shorter than I, it would be a dress.

Enough blabbing. Here are pictures. First from the front:

And now from the Back:

Oh and you can see one of the other “features” of the nature wool in these pictures: Dye-lots are completely irrelevant every skein is different and noticeably so. Luckily it worked out alright this time, though I made one sweater with it once were I really had to play with it to get it to not look really bad

Also, sorry about the somewhat lackluster picture quality. I’d like to tell you that someone at the tychoish.com team was working on it, but alas, I think we’re lucky that there are any pictures whatsoever. It’s a shame you can’t get freelance photographers on Amazon Turk or something.

Sigh.

My current knitting is continuing pretty well. Nothing major to report. I’m almost to the beginning of the back of the neck steek on this sweater, and I’m thinking that I’ll probably work on socks and other such things rather than push to get it done--and this is admittedly a stupid reason--given that I left my cone of favorite waste yarn at home. Also, my needle has grown too short, and I don’t have a good solution to this issue yet.

Onward and Upward!

So the windows in the house here are positioned just right, so that there’s glare on my computer screen from about 9:15 to 3 in the afternoon. Joy. Getting a new computer would actually make this problem worse, I think. Given that the Macbook “con” has a glossy screen. Sigh.

I’ve always been a fan of the notion that some of the best blogging fall in the category of “here’s a funny little thing that happened just now.” A sort of macro view of “the moment.” And I tend to err on the side of the light and comical, rather than the dark and brooding, though it seems like the dark often attracts a larger community or something.

That stuff they told you about “opposites attracting,” is all lies. Particularly when it comes to “the crazies” on Internet forums.

So my grandmother (hi!) has a knee injury that has required an immobilizing splint, and likely will for a number of weeks. I would like to report the following anecdote in the column of “signs things will be ok:”

There is a walker in the house provided by a friend that seems to be used primarily as a foot rest (I had initially thought that she was using it for the unencumbered leg, alas not) also it sees use as a rack to hang things like blankets and lap-throws. And though it occasionally goes with her from point a, it doesn’t seem to make it all the way to point b, as she decides that it would be more useful in a stationary position next to a chair, or that it should spend the night on the other side of the house from the bedroom.

I had a conversation with Dave the other night about my thoughts on upgrading. I now think that the reasons to wait are: 1) the possibility that I would get a mac book pro following the release of the new ones at WWDC in June. 2) my financial outlook for the next six months might indicate that waiting several months would be useful. 3) there is no number 3. So I have to do some math, and I would like to think about these things for a little while, but I think the time is now.

I read a little more in the Tiptree book last night. I’m thinking that I’m going to avoid the television news this night and use that time for reading, and possibly some other time as well. I’m saying now, that it’s my goal to be done with this book by the time I leave on Friday.

One of my most productive list making strategies has been to make a new list in the notebook each night before I go to bed, with a new list of the things that I need to do. This way it contains a reasonable list of things that need doing, and I’m more likely to put chores and other things that take time and are important to do, but don’t typically get mentioned on todo lists. So I’m starting to do this on my computers “.tasks” files (I’d do them on paper except the pen--as previously mentioned--is out of ink, and this was good )

I upgraded to Safari 3. Finally. Can’t, frankly, tell the difference. For the moment I’m using it as my primary browser. I try to keep from “living” in the browser as much as possible, and just for reading LJ and wikipedia, Safari is faster. We’ll see if it sticks.

Ok, that’s enough for this morning. Off to get things done, and maybe change out of these plaid trousers.

Onward and Upward!

1. The annotated version of the novella that I was hoping to get some editing of done during this trip. Sigh. 2. Ink cartridges for my Fountain Pen. Particularly unfortunate is the fact that I use a pen with a non-standard cartridge. Suck. 3. A razor. feh. 4. Waste yarn for setting stitches aside on. Grr.

Update on 2: I’ve discovered that there’s actually a pen store that carries ink in town, but it’s in a mall and I so do not want to waste any time in that venture, but we’ll see.

Hey folks!

Sorry for the lack of updates these past few days. A number of things have conspired against my efforts to blog, and that may continue to be the case for a little while, but with luck, not. In any case, here I am, now.

I’m going to leave in a few hours to go westward for a couple of days. I should return here Friday afternoon. My grandmother, a loyal tychoish.com reader, has a knee injury and needs some able bodied assistance and company, and I’m the family member that can get away the easiest. It’ll also be good for me to have a little time to gel away from St. Louis. I’ll have writing time, the chance to sleep in a room with windows (to further regulate the sleep cycle,) and it’ll be good to spend some time there.

In other fronts:

• I finishesd the first novella thing in James Tiptree’s “The Starry Rift.” It was nice. I can’t decide if the fact that their technology was based almost entirely on “cassette tapes” is a product of the novel/novella cycle being written in the Early/Mid Eighties, or the fact that these stories are set a long time before the “present” day relative to Brightness Falls from the Air and the framing story and she just wanted it to seem “old”
• I have 33 more rounds/rows to knit on the turkish tile sweater. The final 9 rows are short rows, for the shoulder shaping. Four rows before that, the back neck shaping begins which will remove about 40 stitches from active play (to set the back of the neck lower than the top of the shoulder edge.)
• I started a sock with cheap wool (good thing, that) using Elizabeth’s “Sheepsfold” cable/pattern. It’s quite fun and it’s the first sock, I’ve actually knit that has any sort of pattern on it. Pretty damn nifty, if I do say so myself.
• I’m trying to figure out what my plans are/were for knitting camp this year. My roommate (waves! I’ll write back very soon) wrote me and I’m trying to figure out what I want to do. I want to go this year, I think I’ll have letters from graduate schools before I have to commit to camp, which will be good. I want to go, I will probably go, but I’d like there to be more certainty in my life before I say “yes, and I’ll go to x camp.”
• I feel like I’ve made a breakthrough with the TealArt design. One of my big projects for t his week is working on getting the site to work the way I want it and then launch it. Then I’ll be in deep battle mode to get content polished and put up. I also need to figure out how to get paypal set up so I can have an appropriate tip jar and checkout system so that I can collect money for the knitting patterns I’m planning on putting together, and as a sidebar for the fiction projects. It’s hard not to think about the business of next-wave art/creativity/content. I’m not sure that anything will come of it, but I know that it’s worthwhile to try--particularly given the nature of the redesign and the basic idea that it’s hard to get something if you’re not asking for it…

Ok, that’s enough for now. There might be more tonight, but probably not. I do have a couple more sweaters to talk about, so this week won’t be completely boring for you :)

Onward and Upward!

My drive today was pretty darn uneventful. I listened to a lot of MacBreak Weekly (so excuse the very mac centric post that follows) and I actually think I’m caught up. My little car is amazing and peppy, despite its diminutive size, and while I am quite tired as a result of this drive, these things happen. And actually, beginning to want to think about bed by 9 pm, or thereabouts, is probably a good place to be given my desire to sort of readjust my sleep schedule.

My grandmother is doing pretty well. We had a good (early) dinner that I picked up on my way in, and sat around this evening. It’ll be good to be here for a few days, and we’ll see.

Before I left today, my mother got her new iMac a bit earlier than she expected. Today. On a national holiday. I ask you, isn’t apple just amazing? I thought so. So I spent some time migrating all of her stuff from the old ibook to the new machine. But only really an hour. Aren’t Macs just amazing.

This leaves me feeling incredibly jealous, I must admit. I’m going to begin shifting all of our older computers to leopard as soon as she says the transition is complete. Well maybe all of them. I don’t know. I really want a new computer though. My resolution to wait continues, though it wears.

My current apple prediction is that there’ll be all new MacBook pros in June, and maybe new mac book consumer laptops (do we call them MacBook cons?) in August. I think the MacBook Air closes hope of a 12 inch laptop anytime in the near future. (TheBoy and many others are likely quite upset with this, news, and sort of so am I, but I frankly can’t see it happening.)

Given where I am now, I’m almost certainly looking at the macbook “con”. I can’t, frankly, think of a situation where it wouldn’t be sufficient, the screen is big enough, and the Macbook Pros aren’t that much better in comparison. The thing about apple laptops is that, depending on when you buy a laptop the difference between the pro and the “con” is pretty variable. At some points in the cycle, the only difference other than the screen between the one and the other is a graphics card, and 200 megahertz (for a thousand dollars or more), and other times in the cycle the pro computers have higher pixel density or other screen differences, considerably faster drives, and nice really beefy graphics cards. The later was the case when I got Zoe. It’s not the case now.

On the one hand there’s no good reason that I couldn’t wait until August to upgrade, and I’m--awkwardly, on all fronts--at a point in my life where a “play each day by ear” attitude seems to be the most indicated approach to living. Maybe in celebration I’ll upgrade after I get an acceptance letter to one of my top schools (along with a long awaited road trip to visit friends, I think), maybe I’ll hold out until June and see what get announced then. Maybe I’ll go until August, because why the hell not?

Sigh. I do know that I’m going to be getting a spinning wheel sometime in the next 6-8 weeks or so, I think. I’ve sold a wheel that I’ve had for a long time, and been pretty incapable of ever using. This means that I only own one spinning wheel, and I have a few leads there. It’ll be nice to have one wheel that I can use consistently for a long time. Boy oh boy. I think spinning was something that I was looking forward to doing this week before the trip became an issue, but that’s ok, there are plenty of things that need attention anyway.

Speaking of which, I’m going to go attend. Sleep well and have a good week, I will continue to be in touch.

tycho out!

Today’s entry starts with a discussion of my sleep habits, and goes from there. Hope that’s not too boring. That’s what this whole web log/online journal thing is really about, after all: gratuitous sharing of information.

The general malaise that I’ve been referencing for the past few weeks--and that I think I’m finally getting over--did a number on my sleep schedule. I think this is in part a sort of normal response sessional light differences, and the fact that I don’t have anything to do in the mornings, so I don’t absolutely have to get up in the morning. I should, in any case.

The sort of frustrating thing, was that while I had a few days with a semi-irregular sleep pattern, the past four nights have been eerily predictable. (Sleep at 12:30, awake at 9.) I even tried a couple of times to go to bed earlier, and spent an hour or more trying to fall asleep (generally if I don’t fall asleep in 20 mins, I get up and knit or read for a while until I’m tired enough to give it another go.)

So given that I had a long weekend. I thought that it might be good to shock my body back into a normal sleep schedule. So, no naps today. I also have a plan for adjusting my sleep schedule so that I can get into a 11-7, or 10:30-6:30 habit, and use the extra morning time to write and read and do things that I should do. I work really well in the morning, and I think I’m better at being tycho when I have that time. Even if I sleep the same amount, being awake at night is never as productive or happy-making for me.

So what did I do last night, while I was trying to trick my body into going into something more reasonable? I knit. A lot. And watched more Enterprise. The turkish tile is now a total of 20 inches long, which means I’m somewhere between 1.5 and 2 inches away from beginning the neck shaping. When the neck shaping start, I’ll have 35 rounds and 9 sets of short rows left on the body. The countdown begins.

I also did some drupal tinkering. I got things set up pretty much the way I want them, I think. The goal now is to get the content into the system, and then make sure that it all works out right. Then we go live.

Exciting times.

Onward and Upward!

tycho out.

ps. someone mentioned a wordpress error regarding comment posting. I tried and wasn’t able to replicate any error, so if you’re using tychoish.com and get some sort of error, copy and paste it into an email, so I can attend to it. Reach me at garen@tychoish.com about errors or anything, I’d love to hear from folks.

So I have a bunch of knitting pictures that I’ve sort of been sitting on for a while. In part because I don’t take pictures very often, in part because the pictures are of poor quality, and in part because I’m not terribly fond of the sweaters that I have left. But lots of people always seem to like this sweater, so here it goes.

I’ve always called in my “Norge sweater,” but it’s just a really really simple norwegian style sweater, with a few minor modifications. Here’s the basic shot..

Yarn is Classic Elite “Montera,” that I got on cones at Susan’s Fiber Shop. It looked like it was pretty old stuff. It’s single ply wool/llama mix, and frankly, not quite as soft knitted up as I wanted it to be. And a good deal heavier than you’d expect. The patterns came from the “Traditional Scandivaian Knitting” book, and the shape was/is my own.

Though it’s probably the simplest sweater I’ve done that has color work in it, it was like my 2nd or 3rd color work sweater. I set in the armholes a little bit, and you can see that in the final. I also got to do short rows, which is nice.

Here is a detail picture of the pattern:

Things I learned from this pattern:

• Do cuffs in 2x2 rib, 1x1 is too elastic and doesn’t cuff enough. So it’s sort of limp.
• Shape the back of the neck on a sweater. It’s it can make or break a sweater.
• Never make a sweater collar longer than 1.5 inches, particularly in crew neck sweaters.
• When in doubt use the sleeves to build on and accent the body pattern. Simplify it perhaps, but never have it be totally different.
• Get used to using yarns designed for stranded knitting, like shetland, and don’t get all fancy on the process. Really. Works out better that way.
• Corollary: Accent patterns, don’t well.

I’m sure I’ve ranted about this r/evolution debate in the past, but this post about Bruce Sterling’s new novella in F&SF fired up my feelings on the subject, so here it goes.

First off, let me establish that I’m going to use the term evolution in an explicitly non-technical sense. I’m often annoyed that any sort of gradual change or adapatation is refered to as “evolution,” when in a technical sense, this isn’t even a good analogy to what’s happening. But that’s a different rant, for now I’m going submit to the dominant lexicon.

Secondly, I haven’t read Sterling’s novella, and this isn’t a reaction as much to Sterling as it is to Cory Doctorow’s gloss of the Novella. Just to be clear.

From the blog post:

“Sterling says of this story, “I’ve been in an eight-year struggle to write ‘a kind of science fiction that could only be written in the 21st century.’ With the possible exception of my forthcoming novel, this story is my best result from that effort.” I think he’s right -- about the story, anyway; I haven’t seen the novel yet.”

This seems to be a false premise. At least to me. The 21st century is an arbitrary unit, and while I think we do live in a very different world today than we did eight or ten years ago, that is always the case. Interestingly boingboing, gets a lot of milage out of looking back at forward looking bits of “culture” from the turn of the century, and the 20s-40s. These cultural artifacts seem as antiquated to us as “the kind of science fiction that could only be written in the 21st century,” will surely look in the next dozen years.

Which isn’t to say it’s the wrong thing to write, or bad, just that if you look at it the right way, “writing SF that could only be written in today’s world,” is exactly what every SF writer is (or should) always already (be) trying to write. And if you’ve been in eight year struggle to do this, maybe there some other issue that we should talk about. But then authors of cyberpunk are all about arguing that the present marks an revolutionary advancement from whatever went before.

Doctorow goes on to say:

“This is a genuinely 21st century piece of sf. It uses the slightly stilted, comic dialog form of great sf to unravel the social and technological implications of automated search, copying, governance and communications, with an enormous amount of compassion and heart. Sterling’s way of thinking about technology has often struck me as kind of stern, but years of living in Serbia appear to have given him a bit of a melancholy Slavic outlook that creeps into the story in a hundred little ways that tell you how much affection he really has for our poor tired human race.”

I fear that this mode of writing utterly current SF is really based on some sort of ill gotten notion that if we write about the present we’ll be seen as being “more real,” than if we write about space ships and lasers. Which is all kinds of silly, and this sort of critical trend is dangerous, because it doesn’t promote a diversity of opinion and approach. This is sort of a reenactment of the downfall of cyberpunk all over again. Or maybe more correctly given that it’s being propagated--at least primarily--by Sterling and Gibson (and Doctorow, though he wasn’t publishing during the “high cyberpunk period”), part of the protracted decent of that movement.

Don’t get me wrong, I rather enjoy the concept of cyberpunk, and some of the post-cyberpunk imaginations in much the way that I enjoy space opera: as a platform for story telling that isn’t necessarily true to what’s going to happen, but enjoyable and full of possibility nonetheless. At the same time I think the argument that cyberpunk is more real, and in touch with everyone’s lived realities, because it is gritty, and dark, and current is absurd.

And I think this goes back to the r/evolutionary argument: do we understand history as a slow progression, or a series of distinct epochs?

The question is open of course, but I tend to believe that revolutions, of the intellectual/cultural/historical scope that cyberpunk seems to be responding to, don’t really happen. Other kinds of revolution? Maybe, and if/when they do, they’re never has temporally clear cut as anyone would like them to be.

Sorry guys…

tycho out.

Onward and Upward!