Topic: Posts

Ha. Here’s a list because the fact that I can still use words is kind of amazing.

• I left and drive back across HomeState today. It was an uneventful drive.

• I listend to the 3 (!) Episodes of FLOSS weekly and 2 Episodes of Cast-On while I drove. This was really good. It’s surprising and good how much both of these podcasts really inspire and stretch the brain. Listening to the programers talk about programingy-things streatches my brain. I’m a geek, I know and have come to really enjoy the geekier bounds of everyday computer useage; but, I’m not a programer, and I don’t often think in that mode. So, the opportunity to stretch the brain a little, or a lot, is really great. Really great. And Cast-On is delightful, as always.

• I have a sneaky idea regarding Breakout, regarding my post earlier today about needing to really rethink it. I wrote that yesterday morning, which seems like it was much longer, but the time has been helpful. And we’ll see what happens. I’m excited now.

• I spent much of my morning working on some knitting. I got a lot done, which is good. I however made a crucial error on the final step, and now have to go back. Which will be tedious. I think I shall knit socks for a while. Sorry if, while I’m irritated with this sweater if I don’t wax rhapsodic about my knitting. It’s better this way.

• I checked out the always helpful MacRumors Buyers Guide which shows when all of the apple products were last released and what the release history is. Apple’s been pretty consistent with the computer that I’m looking to get: revs in late fall, and late spring for the past five years. I’m not desperate enough that I can’t wait till the next rev, so I think that’s the plan. I think it’s a fair bit that the next rev of the laptops will have:

  • LED backlights
  • Multi-Touch Trackpad gestures
  • Better procs

  These are all things that I want, and I can wait a few months. This is just punditry but based on the buyers guide, there might be a late spring mac book pro, before WWDC. Might they release new laptops in February at whatever event the iPhone SDK is released at? Apple punditry is so addictive.

• I’ve been working on, with some seriousness, the 14th episode of Station Keeping. Astute readers will discover that season one only had 12 episodes. So work does continue. Ep 14 is a double length one. So posted over two days. This is probably the result of poor planing on my part. Because SK is basically a blog post, I don’t really think of it as “writing accomplishment,” which is a shame and probably something that I need to adjust. Sigh

• Oh, and I finally have a nifty idea for a podcast, that I’m going to start work on pronto. I think I need as many good copies of the tune that Peter Bellamy set “The Pilgram’s Way,” to. I think I might need to barter with our favorite local box player.

Ok, my brain dies of tiredness.

See you on the flip side,

tycho

Ok, I don’t really have knitting for sale--at the moment--but I wanted to throw a question out to the knitters out there. I also sold a sweater this month, and wanted to rehash this experience for the rest of you out there.

So lets start with the sweater that I sold. This was a sweater that I knit pretty fast, out of really great yarn (Henry’s Attic Prime Alpaca Sport weight), in my usual two color style. It never fit, and was frankly way too warm for anything that I’d wear with regularity. It was a really well done sweater but I was never going to wear it. And it was too small for other male bodied people, and many women as well.

In fact, here’s a picture of it on a dress form at the yarn store:

And it fit a friend, and she wanted it and was willing to pay me for it. And you know, given the fact that I was never going to use it… I sold it to her. For a honest sum, but still significantly less than what I think would be a fair price.

And you know it felt pretty good. Everyone always says that you can never get enough for knitted goods. And that’s true: not counting yarn, I figure most small sweaters would cost at least 500 dollars at minimum wage. Which would be hard to get in any market that I have a connection to. Having said that, if you’re producing at a comfortable speed, and knitting time also means TV time or Podcast time (as it does with me); then, getting a lower price isn’t that good.

I often tell people in the yarn store that yarn purchases should be thought of as part of the entertainment budget not clothing/garb budget: this is because the economies of hand knitting don’t work out: If you’re cold: buy polar fleece and make a cup of tea. If you want something fun to do while you’re drinking your tea, buy yarn. This might be part of the reason that I don’t often give away my knitted things, because it’s not really about the thing for me. But never mind this, I think that getting paid a couple bucks an hour to have fun isn’t the worst thing in the world.

Nevertheless, I remain very hesitant to sell knitting. I like making sweaters, and while I think you could probably break even pretty easily on hand knit socks, it’s much harder to break even on the fine gauge stuff that I make (let’s also note, that my own wardrobe needs a few more sweaters knit at fine gauge, on top of what I’m working on/have planned for the current moment.) And of course, I don’t want to make something that I’m interested in into “work.” So I’m very keen to see what you all have to say on this….

And whats more, I’m all sorts willing to sell hand spun yarn. It’s part of my desire to knit sweaters, but I really do like knitting with very machined yarns, and while spinning is great fun, I see it as an end to itself, so I never really think bout knitting for my own projects, though it might be fun to experiment with this. Also because knitters and weavers are likely to be the people buying your hand spun, it’s easier to get closer to a fair price. Maybe?

Or am I full of hot air and I should look for a real job, and just knit for fun

Cheers, tycho

So as part of my scheme to be more productive I use a system of .tasks files that contain lists of things that need doing. because the file begins with a dot, they’re “hidden,” because this is the designation for hidden files and folders in UNIX systems, of which OS X is one. The other nice thing is that I can keep my lists out of the way, but very connected to the project files that I’m working on, without much fuss.

I have one of these lists in my blogging folder, with subjects that I’d like to cover at some point on the blog. Posts that need written, posts that are written and queued for posting. Posts that are in draft status.

And I use a little program called “GeekTool” that displays the blogging todo list, among others, on my desktop, and I look at these files from time to time.

In the blogging “posts to write” section of the file there are eight or nine posts that I often think “you know I should write,” so I go and open a new text file, get everything ready to write a post. And I start writing.

And I totally write about what I just finished reading, or my grating urge to get a new computer, or something funny I just saw and forget to muse for a while on impostor syndrome, or the problem with knitting sleeves.

Sigh.

This post wasn’t on that list either.

Sigh.

tycho out.

I really need to turn my “introspection” tag into a “journal” tag. This is of course meaningless if you read tychoish on the LJ, but no matter. It’s on my mind.

Things are continuing apace in tycho land.

My grandmother continues to hobble along reasonably well considering the truly impressive brace thing on her leg.

I got a little bit of knitting done. I figure that I’m about 40 minuets of good knitting time away from finishing the part of the neck shaping that happens before the

I realized another thing I’ve forgotten is the pattern for the last little bit of the first sleeve on the Morocco sweater. Alas. I might get to the back of the neck steek today, And I think I should be done with the body by the time I head home, if all goes well.

This means, that I will I’m once again several sleeves away from a couple of new sweaters. Sigh. It’ll be nice to do sleeves in their proper season, I think. But when I get done with these sleeves, I’ll only have one sweater’s worth of yarn left, and it’s a plain sweater: my next batch of yarn is on backorder. So if I do that, I’ll be working on socks and hats and the like for the rest of my stay (which isn’t that long, so we dont’ have to worry about me being too prolific on non-sweater projects.)

My goal of getting through the yarn stash is doing pretty well then.

But this isn’t only a knitting update.

I finished my critique for the week on the online writer’s workshop that I participate in. I need to get a short story out for them, because while I’m learning a lot from the experience of being a critic, the entire experience is lacking as it is. I find that a lot of stories have really poor openings. Some are cliched, but most just start too soon, and I hate the feeling of flogging deceased equines. But it’s good practice, and the better and faster I can be at reading these stories, the happier I’ll be.

My todo list struggles seem to be really working for the moment. One of the problems I have with digital todo lists is that it’s really easy to make them too long range, and even with a great GTD app like OmniFocus, it’s still hard to separate the things you’d like to get done this year, with the things that really need to get done tomorrow. I don’t have a good answer, but I’m installing the todo.txt scripts again, and we’ll see what comes of it.

Anyway, I’m going to get to doing things, and I’m sure I’ll find something to post later…

Onward and Upward!

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.