Topic: Posts

Kiss Me, Charlene > “Yarn: Regia Blahblahblahblah (I lost the ball band). It’s part wool and part polyamory or something like that.”

(Via The Panopticon.)

Backwards Socks

So here’s this really cool sock pattern. A lot of people have been working on this sock which for the initiated uses a traditional sock heel worked backwards. This backwards sock, uses a normal heel flap owkred in the opposite direction, and really there’s no reason to think that this wouldn’t work, and I think is incredibly clever. I think I know what my next sock is going to be.

Ha!

In the first class meeting of my first class today, I was charged with the task of introducing myself (name/class/major(s)) and the answer to the following question: “If you could be any animal, what would it be and why.”

I was fretting my turn, because I wanted to say something weird, but I was feeling incredibly uninspired at 9:00 am. It came my turn and I just said “cat.”

But there was an expectation of an explanation. Oh crap.

“Because they’re cranky.” I said, followed by a short but awkward pause. Everyone laughed nervously.

“I mean they’re fuzzy and cute, but they have edge. Lots of edge, I like edge. Cute’s good too,” I amended. There was a bit of a chuckle around and by now my turn was over and I moved on.

I love having cats. Minaloush is incredibly cute, but also edgy as hell. She likes to sleep with me, but she also is very particular about how this occurs and where next to me she sleeps. It’s crucial that one sleeps under substantial blankets when sleeping with the ’loushis because if she decides that you’ve wronged her by rolling over, your leg could become forfeit.

The other thing is there’s this place in the middle of her back that if you scratch a lot, she does this “chin lift” and her eyes close and she smiles, and it’s potentially the most adorable thing in the history of the world.

That is all. More ’loushisness in the future.

So I’m sitting here in a bit of a monetary slump, due mostly to the fact that I have to leave for a meeting that I have a big part in half an hour, and that I don’t have a lot of “real” work, but a bunch of nagging things that would take more than the avilable period of time (and my web browsers being sluggish,) so all these combine to leave: blogging time. That’s right, you, gentle reader, get a perfect example of the post genre “rambling, what I did today, with a tidbit of knitting commentary, and general thoughts on the state of the world.”

Yeah I don’t know either. Here goes.

Registration is today, I went late (to avoid long lines of freshman) but they ran out of stickers. So the whole point of registration was moot, and I don’t have a sticker for this semester, and wont until wednesday, which is fine but annoying.

I got a couple books out of the library, regarding narrative and life history. So it’s not quite “my area” but it’s interesting, and I’ll be able to exhaust them pretty quickly. I’ve been working on expanding my knowledge base on this, and have been collecting sources. That’s been the biggest accomplishment of the day. I’m really excited about this project, and I hope I can make it work.

I went to the Add/Drop session and established a few meetings with profs about various projects and commitments. I enjoy so many of the faculty here (let us note that I almost referred to them as ’the professoriate"). The sad part of this, is I only have classes/etc with 2-3 different profs. I’m close to being done and that’s exciting and a bit scary. But I’m dealing with it.

I’m a bit anxious for my books to come, they’re all ordered, and this was among the cheaper semesters (it’s still a bit jarring).

I haven’t been on campus at all, really, yet. I like my set up, as odd as it might sound, but when I’m actually on campus I don’t have a huge desire to stay. At this point, I just want classes to start, because there’s a lot of uncertainty, and I think I’ll feel better when I have syllabi in hand. Minor Angst

As for knitting, I’ve finally caught up with the book that has the pattern that I need to finish/continune working on my Faroe, and that’s become my primary project (in addition to the socks.) Though there are a lot of projects hanging out on the needles around me, it’s nice to be a single minded project knitter again, and I am once again reminded what a truly splendid pattern this is.

Additionally, I wrote another section of the knitting book. Woot. It was quick. They’re getting easier to write, and I’m writing better content. I’ve laid a lot of foundation, and it’s finally paying off. There’s only one more “conceptual” pattern framework, but I haven’t yet finished the prototype, so I’m going to hold off on that until I do, though I feel ready to write the sweater anyway.

I’m out of my stash of handspun for the handspun sweater (that’s turned out to be a “knock off” in the best possible sense of a Jo Sharp design), so I need to spin more. But I’m glad that I’m at a pause in this one because it is compleatly soul sucking. It’s going to be a GREAT sweater.

That is all for now.

I hope you all are well. You know, I know you’re out there, you could bother to write/respond to posts and that would make me feel really happy. (hi grandma and mom, I’m not specifically talking to you two, but I like hearing from you too).

Cheers, Sam

Ok, so back from Geek Talk, here’s an update on my knitting.

For the last month or so of this summer, I’ve taken a somewhat uncharacteristic--for me--approach to my knitting project choices. While I sometimes have little bit projects that hardly count as projects at all (hats, a sock, a simpler sweater, etc.) most of my knitting energy is dedicated to a single somewhat complicated desgin. These days, I concentrate on making stranded color-work ganseys of one type or another, but I’ve also done lace work or even interesting mostly plain sweaters. These are my real projects, and I can finish one of these projects, in about 2 months, or less, depending on the complexity and other factors. As the summer’s drawn to a close (and it’s gotten hot), I’ve adopted a new strategy: I’ve begun planning out and getting a head start of projects.

I hate starting new projects. There’s something of a crash from the high that comes from compleating a project, when you realize that you have to choose a new pattern, and set to work casting on (a pain, generally) and memorizing a new pattern. So I’ve gotten head starts on a number of projects.

I have two sweaters, Faroe (take 2), which is at the begining of the gussets, and the Turkish coat which is 8-9 inches long at the moment I’m also about 12-13 inches into a sweater knit out of my own homespun, and I have 2 “year” projects (big, projects on small yarn and needles which I expect to come and go from, and which like small projects don’t really count as projects.) That in combinition with sock knitting (what I’ve actually been working on giving the heat, and that’s about it.

When I drive north and the weather breaks I’ll get back into a more “normal” pattern of knitting. But until then, this is about all I have for you. :)

Happy Knitting!

Sam

Here’s an entry to prove that I still do things other than knit and post-structuralism/gender stuff. So there chris!

I must say, while I know most hard core geeks cringe at the thought of google taking over the world, and indeed, that’s a concern, I have to say that gmail is really a great mail option, and the prospect of Writely.com (also a google service) and Google Spreadsheet are really quite exciting, and I’ll have to see how they hold up under more extreme testing, but I can definitely see virtually replacing Microsoft Office: why run two bloated programs when you can run one and get the same thing done. I so rarely draft in a document editor that it’s hardly worth the effort and resources of keeping Word open: most of my drafting occurs in on and offline weblog editors (posted then to private journals/categories) or I use some sort of Editing software like Voodoo Pad or Notational Velocity, or Omni Outliner Pro so for the past few months I’ve done everything I can to stay out of Word as much as possible. I always keep a browser open anyway, and adding even another glitzy java-ey page open isn’t a strain of note, and frankly I like all of the nifty RSS and sharing features.

So as a result, I’ve been reorganizing my digital lifestyle these past few days, and I think I’m in a better place. I’ve forwarded a lot of email accounts into my gmail account, including my primary non-academic email account, and I’ve set up a number of filters in that account (and sorting rules in my Pop mail client) which will effectively allow me to use the web-mail part of gmail and the offline mail client effectively without needing to sort the same email more than once.

I’ve also set up my calendar/schedule for next semester, and it would be really nifty if I could get iCal to publish to my Google Calendar, but I’ve not yet perfected that. Seems like I’d need a .mac account or something I don’t have on TealArt. If anyone has idea’s about that, that would be super nifty. The only other kink I have to work out is that writely.com wants me to respond to a confirmation email that I’ve yet to receive, despite multiple attempts to get it sent. But it’s still beta so hopefully they’ll get that sorted out.

Other interesting computer news of note: I’ve switched away from Opera (again,) to Firefox, and I think this one’s going to stick. The interesting thing, is that Firefox, an open source (right? it’s GPL and all that jazz?) won the browser war, and on an aesthetic software design level, it has the best and most polished design. I liked a lot of Opera’s features for a long time, but Firefox really just works better, and it’s gotten considerably better in the past few months I think.

So every so often I think it’s nice to go through all of the software programs you use, in part as it is archival interesting, and also because sometimes there are great programs out there that other people can recommend. Keep in mind that I’m running a G4 PowerBook and the Tiger flavor of Mac OS X.

For web browsing I use Firefox, and for Instant Messaging I use Adium. My mail client of choice is Apple’s Mail.app (I generally use native Mac apps when I can, as they work pretty well, and the integration factor is nice.) I keep VoodoPad, a Notetaking program discussed above in my doc, though I use it somewhat infrequently. I find that the wiki style organization is unwieldy for most uses, and I feel you have to fight the program to get it to effectively do what you need it to.

I use iTunes, of course, it works and I think it works well as a general content management database (because you can have video’s and PDF and other document files in the same database) Though most of my articles/pdf files are not in my iTunes library, I hope to get them added and catalogued at some point. My one complaint, is mostly that my iTunes library is about 50-60 gigs (45 or so goes on to the iPod), and that I fear that I will out grow poor Zoe’s hard drive at some point, and iTunes’ folder organization can be difficult to manage when it gets large.

My other main note taking program is Omni Outliner, which lets me successfully take notes in class, and organize my thoughts on a number of key research projects. It’s an amazingly capable program, and I can almost use it to draft but the problem is that: the formatting is finicky and uncooperative, particularly with regards to margins. I also don’t like that you can’t produce good xml files (why, I ask, why?) or even a Microsoft word outline. It’s a great program, unless you want to get data out of it in a useable format, at which point its only a pretty good program. Have yet to find one better.

NetNewsWire and Mars Edit from Ranchero Software, which are the best RSS and offline Weblog editors for Mac OS by a long shot (and I’ve tried a bunch of them). Mars Edit, has become the main way I post to this and a number of other blogs. I also do most of my drafting in private blog/categories using this program. The news reader, saves a lot of time, and allows access to a FANTASTIC amount of information, very very quickly. My only complaints are: I don’t comment on blogs nearly as much when using a news reader (this is a problem with sam, not the software), and secondly, there’s no way to keep my blog reads synchronized with some sort of web based RSS reader (that will keep my folder organization intact: there are 250 feeds, the folders are key).

I also sometimes use iCal, but it’s a hard habit to keep, and if it synched with google calendar that would be even better. But so be it.

That’s basically it. Word if I absolutely need it. The same of Excel (we’ll see how much google replaces these programs though). And that’s about it…)

I think that about does it. There’ll be more knitting content soon I promise. ;)

Cheers, sam

Nonplussed -Brilliant.

So I just had one of those knitting moments where, nearly 8 inches into a sweater, something didn’t quite seem right. It looked just fine. I liked the fabric. So I took out a spare needle and knit the back stitches onto the spare.

Yep, you guessed it. Somehow, this sweater was made for someone with a 42" chest measurement. Ha! Only 3"-4" off. Which is massive my friend.

And I’m using handspun, so this is one of those rare cases where I actually care.

The funny thing is that I did do a gauge swatch to test for this kind of thing. The best one I’ve done in years.

My thought is that the handspun is irregular enough that it mucked up the swatch. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I pulled the needle and will frog in the morning. On the upside, it’ll go quicker now, when I cast on 20 fewer stitches. (Sigh.)

I’m going to go knit socks and write in the mean time.

Cheers, Sam

Sorry for the lack of updating here the past few days, I’ve been all over hither and yon, and until today, I haven’t had much of a chance to sit down with Zoe (the computer). So no updates. Though, I did drive a good thousand miles: I left Nashville, spent the better part of a week in Beloit doing some unpacking cleaning, spinning, and crucial summer unraveling. Then I came back down to St. Louis where I’m having some Old Home Times, before I get back to Beloit and it starts all over again.

Summer it seems makes people happy, or at least increases any latent tendency to be happy: it’s sunny out, school’s out, all we have to do is sit around and wait for the plants to grow. Which of course is a complete lie: our current interpretation of the agrarian calendar is so warped, but whatever, I’m happy, and that’s good enough for me.

This is one of those TealArt posts that lingers open on my desktop for a long time and I come back to it a couple times a day, hoping to get something respectable. My computer’s a bit full at the moment, I have a lot of things open in the “needs attention” category, and in some ways that’s become somewhat daunting. Like, for instance, my inbox with 180 emails, many of which just need to be deleted, but I have a number of not particularly urgent replies that have been nagging at me for a while.

But I’ve been milling over writing projects and that’s brought be back to the keyboard. So rock on. I posted a list of “to-do” things for the knitting book project, but it’s nagging at me, and it’s mostly in my head anyway, so I think that one gets deleted, and I’m just going to plow on.

Let me see if there’s any other random tidbit that I can throw into this post: The knitting projects are all reasonably advanced but in a stage where the new-nes has worn off and the end is not yet in sight. In recent days and weeks I’ve grown quite excited about knitting socks, which I think I will be doing a lot more of in the coming days and months and the prospect of spinning all the yarn I knit with.

I really enjoy knitting sweaters, that’s for sure, but I think I’ve reached a point where, there isn’t a huge score of sweaters that I’m just dying to make. Sure there are a few. The one’s I have cast on right now, plus a “peasant” version of Starmore’s “Henry VIII” (two colors in natural gray heathered colors), one of the Dale of Norway olympic sweaters, and that’s about it. There are other sweater’s I’ll make, for sure, I’m not saying that I’m running out of knitting, but I don’t feel the same rabid experimentalism that I had a year or two ago. I also know what I have to do to get a sweater to work, and I have a foundation of 6 main design forms that can provide me with thousands of variations: enough for a life time. I also have more sweaters than I know what to do with… (and yes, I do plan to start giving my sweaters away more)

So I think I want to move on to knitting socks more, because I enjoy sock making and I haven’t made enough, by a long shot. I need to increase my stash of sport weight yarn though. I’ll be getting myself to a wheel soon to begin this, rest assured. Spinning my own yarn, allows me to knit with fibers that would other wise be completely out of my reach--and I’m talking about nice merinos and wool/silk blends here, not cashmere, or even really alpaca. I also think that, unless I commit to spinning my own yarn in a serious and consistent way, I would never get around to knitting what I spin, or spin nearly as much. I’ve begun the first sweater in this pursuit and the yarn is bulkier than I’d like, but the yarn is heavenly soft, and it’s going quick, so I can’t complain.

Ok. I’m done for real this time. Maybe I’ll post about something less esoteric later. But then I have a co-conspirtor again, hopefully, so it doesn’t just have to be to keep you happy. Ha!

Cheers, sam

I am something of a hand spinner, and have been for about a year and a half, though this is very much a secondary hobby of mine. I knit constantly, or nearly so. I spin in spurts, usually in the summers.

I’ve sold a bunch of my hand-spun in the past, and generally I think this is as good a use of the yarn as anything, because I tend to like really fine yarns, and really regular and sturdy spinning, so as a knitter handspun yarns aren’t really my thing. Which I’ve been totally content with. I’ve also said, that I didn’t want to knit something out of a yarn that I spent a lot of time making only to have the sweater not come out.

As my mother will surely attest, I’m something of a yarn compulsive: I tend to fret endlessly over yarn requirements and running out of wool, even though I have no gumption about dye lot changes mid sweater. So using hand-spun doesn’t work particularly well with these tendency, at least in my head (where it counts!).

So to recap: time is a major concern, as is the weight of the finished yarn.

In the past two days I spun up 8 oz of black “hat merino” from R. H. Lindsay wool company. I spent less than 2 hours each on each 4 oz ball, and I’m pretty pleased with the results. It’s not quite dk or sport weight, but a little heavier is just fine. By my math, I could have spun the yarn for a stranded sweater in… 16 hours. (I figure 2 lbs should do it.). If I spin for half an hour a day, this is about a month. I generally take 6 weeks or 2 months to knit a sweater of this type, so I think this is something I could easily do.

This of course means that I could conceptually spin enough yarn so that I only knit my own hand-spun. Which would be pretty nifty. I don’t think I’d actually do this, on account of, wanting to get finer yarns and more consistent yarns for some projects (socks?) but it’s a cool idea.

Before I go, I think I should give a progress report of sorts.

I’m to the ribbing at the bottom of my grey, accent cabled, endless sweater using fingering weight yarn and size 1 needles. I have sleeves and the yoke. Plus the second half of the ribbing (again the first half took two days of intermittent knitting. And I’m going to knit hem’s on this one I think. I still have a lot, but I’m almost completely done with the most tedious part of this sweater, so rock on for that. I’m making this sweater using a “middle out” construction, which is pretty cool. The pattern is going to go in the book. I might make a worsted weight version of this sweater at some point, Maybe out of hand-spun.

Speaking of the book, I haven’t worked on it much. I think the ticker is at 13,000 words, unedited. I’ve written about 3 sweaters, and I need to get another one done. I also need to make charts for the patterns, but that isn’t as pressing, and requires freeing up a little RAM. I’m pleased with this, and my next phase for this project, is to get it over another hump (another pattern or two) and then do a little work in promoting myself. This includes a little pod-casting and more blogging, which I want to do anyway, as well as writing additional patterns to publish.

I’m also working on the coat. I’m a little worried that the ribbing pulls in too much (ie. that the difference in number of stitches between the ribbing and the sweater is to great.). If it were a pullover this wouldn’t be an issue at all, but it’s a jacket/cardigan, and this might affect how the hem lays. and acts, and I want to avoid fucking up another cardigan. Having said that the math looks right from the notes. so shrug. It might be worth it to do some preliminary blocking to see how it’ll act. We’ll see.

Faroe is on hold till I figure out what’s supposed to happen on the gussets. My memory isn’t that good.

I finished the Teal Tunic sweater I have some ends to weave in. It’s nice enough. I think I’m going to give it away, because I made it very intentionally to big. That is, it came out the size I wanted it to be, I just for some reason had this notion that I was bigger than I am. By 4 inches. sigh

Oh yeah and I have to get into graduate school too.

Chris’ back. Woot! You get to hear someone other than me blather on.

Cheers, Sam