Topic: Posts

I’m breaking the rule of one subject per post a bit, but I have a few things to point out:

• On Friday, 8 July 2005, I posted three times. Now in fairness, one of these posts was before I went to bed on thursday in the wee hours of Friday Morning, nevertheless it is important to note that the world did don’t come to an end.
• I finished the sweater I was working on. The wonky dye-lot didn’t seem to affect it terribly, but I’m still going to have to have a word with the maker because it’s sort of inexcusable to buy 5 skeins of the same dye lot and find them radically different from each other half way through the body of a sweater. I’ll report more on this in a bit. I’m going to write up the pattern so there will be notes.
• I decided on the Webs option for the yarn. It seems webs is having a sale now, so most of the yarn I want was marked NFD (no further discount) and was therefore not subject to the “orders over 60 USD get an automatic 20% off). This didn’t deter me from getting several projects of yarn.
• I have started to knit socks while I wait for this yarn to come in. Wow. I like making socks, it’s just, I think I need to stick to worsted weight socks from here on out, because the fingering and sport ones are just too much for me.
• I think I’ve figured out a way to knit set-in sleeves as in the EPS seamless yoke manner. News forthcoming.
• Yes I am obsessed with knitting. No it isn’t all I think about. Yes I may in-fact post about something else one of these days.

Thats all folks.

I had the opportunity to scour the shelves of the shop today, and I’m coming to the stark realization that sport weight yarn is really not that easy to come by. It’s not hip, it doesn’t go by that fast, and I’m looking for what most would consider fairly boring yarn. Plain wool or wool like fiber. So be it. Additionally, I learned that the shop isn’t going to be stocking Dale of Norway in the future, so getting yarn for the St. Moritz sweater is out. (I’d have to buy the colors we don’t have in bags of 10, which won’t do if I need 2 balls of one color) Furthermore, the chances of a cherry tree hill order coming in while I’m still here are slim, especially if I want this to be my next project. So my current plan of attack is to: hold off on the dale pattern: I’m not ready to make it yet anyway, and it looks like I’m going to have to order that on line, anyway. As for the other sweater, I have a number of options, and mostly for my own purposes I’d like to review them:

Lets keep in mind: Cheap is good, but I’d like to avoid skimping. I’m aiming for sport weight yarn. Because I intend to knit all-over stranded color work, I want to use fine yarn so the end garment isn’t too thick, and because I want this to take a while. I need about 1000-1200 yards of each color. I’ve thought about having one variegated strand against one black strand. So that’s where it stands

Elann Alpaca Option: I’m really a huge fan of alpaca. Its such a nice fiber, and really I’d like to try and use it when possible. I’m not going to pay a lot out of my way to use it, but given the nature of this project I have been considering it heavily. This yarn is 70/30 Baby Alpaca/“Fine” Merino, and I’ve been thinking about a Juniper/Celestial Blue combination, or a Pearl Grey Tweed/Saxony Blue. The total price would come to $49.84, before shipping. Pros: price, fiber content. Cons: color.

Knit Picks Andean Treasure Alpaca Sport: This has been the alternate to the yarn that I would find in the shop. I’ve not actually experienced it, but I trust Knit Picks’ reputation. I’m leaning towards Summer Sky/Mystery color combo, with a fog/granite option running a close second. Total Cost: $75.80. Pros: Fiber, Color, Free Shipping. Cons: Price, Slightly Limited Color Options, and heat (too warm to work on in the summer).

**Top of The Lamb Sport:**I’ve been really fond of this Brown Sheep Yarn for a while. It’s sport weight, knits up real nice. It’s like their much more popular lambs pride yarn, except without the mohair, it has less guard hairs, and I think that makes it feel nicer. It would be in my best interest to buy two 1 lb cones, undecided about the color, but I like this color card more. I’m partial to some combo Charcoal Heather, Cobalt Blue, Blue Flannel, or the Teal. But I’m open to suggestions. Total Cost: ~$52. Pros: Color, Cool Looking Yarn, Possibility for leftovers (and not having to worry about running out); Cons: Just plain old wool, less portable.

**Webs Option:**The colors aren’t great, but gosh the price is. If I can go into an order with someone, webs gives 20% off orders over 60 dollars. It wouldn’t take a lot of convincing for me to get a cone of this for a shawl, I’d jump on this for this project, but there really isn’t a good color for this sweater. Anyway, I digress. The colors are limited but I’m thinking about Sage/Teal or Blue/Moss. Total Price: $3o. Pros: Price! Cons: Limited Color Selection, don’t know how it feels, maybe a very slightly bit bulkier than I want.

I think that’s all the options at the moment. The Elann Alpaca option seems to combine a number of good features, but I’m unsure about the colors, I like top of the lamb as an option, and it might be light enough to work out in this season. The TotL is a yarn that’s always going to be around, and the Webs option is the right price and it’s closeout so that might be nice. I think the Knit Picks option is loosing at the moment though.

Anyway, I expect people to comment and give me strong advice, none of this “you’ll decide the best option” stuff. Be firm, if I don’t like it, I won’t listen to the advice, but I need help here. So yeah. There you go. Cheers.

So I’ve Made a New Pact To Myself: Only Blog about one thing at a time. That is, if i have an update about my personal life, I’ll separate it into a different post from all my knitting related content, and so forth. There is no precedent at TealArt, for only posting once a day, so I don’t think it would break up our format to break things up. Frankly there isn’t a precedent for posting once a day, but that’s another issue entirely.

So having finished the endless white merino spinning project, I decided to add some color to my spinning project. Most of my spinning, like my knitting, is geared towards larger projects, I tend to look for wool in 1.5-2 pound lots, and spin enough for a sweater. None the less, the shinny fibers have attracted my attention and found their way into my spinning basket. (doesn’t that sound quaint? “my spinning basket” well itis_ a basket, just one of those ever handy collapsable laundry hampers._). So I use some of these nifty fibers as interim projects, while I take a breather from looking at the same old white merino roving, or whatever I’ve been spinning for the past month.

So my interim project this time around was a 2 or 4 oz (I forget) lot of this amazing blue and green silk/merino 50/50 blend. In my effort to be able to get a whole project out of it (a whole project that isn’t a pair of hand warmers) I spun really rather fine singles. I wanted to get lace weight, and I think I got there more or less. It’s singles, and I’m setting the twist a lot. It’s almost dry, and we’ll see how it holds up. I’m totally giving this away, because there isn’t that much of it I would want to do with it, and someone will enjoy it more than I.

Once I finished that, I had two options. I have 2 pounds of alpaca, and 24 or 28 oz of this awesome grey corriedale. I decided on the corriedale, because I wanted more practice before I dove into the alpaca. I’ve been calling this gansey yarn. Probably because Stephanie is spinning the same basic stuff (except she’s washing and carding the wool herself. Brave woman!) for a gansey.

I’m trying to spin a bulkier yarn. In part because my efforts until now have all been for slimmer yarns. Also, the corriedale is more harsh than merino (I wouldn’t say significantly, but it has gaud hairs, and I can’t see a reason for an outer garment to be so finely knitted.

Another thing I’m doing, is two ply (this is what the title references.) I’ve until now been navajo plying everything. it’s easy, it keeps color order in the singles together, and you don’t have to worry about spinning two equal amounts on two bobbins, or needing to have a ball winder (to make a center pul ball). But I figure, if I don’t get equal amounts on two bobbins, I’ll have enough chance to even it out eventually, I might not be so willing to go about it this way with smaller lots, but with this huge lot, I’m not worried. I’m really pleased with the process and the result is pretty good. I’m not good enough for this to be really even… I fear that it’d make a lousy gansey, but it’d be nice for some sort of overcoat, if I have enough, But I suppose I can get more.

Anyway, worries for another day. It’s nifty. Two ply is sweet. I’m going to move on and end this post before it gets any more disjointed.

I was about to title this entry “Yarn Tribulations” But I realized that I’ve done that already. So be it.

Having blathered on sufficiently about spinning last night, I’m going to take this opportunity to bather on about a few yarn purchase decisions. that i’ve been going over.

For starters, given my current employment at a yarn shop (and the resulting discount), I’m going to order myself a St. Moritz 2003 sweater kit. Because the shop carries Dale Yarn, and I’m not going to get any better deal on this one. I don’t expect that I’ll start knitting on this one terribly soon, but it’s worth a shot. For those of you who don’t remember for the past 8 months, or so, give or take, I’ve been quite interested in a Dale of Norway, sweater called “St. Moritz 2003” Apparently it was the official sweater of the Swedish ski team for the 2002-2003 season. Whatever, I think it just looks really cool. Probably hideously complicated, but no matter, I’m determined. The XS size for the adult sweater is, get this 44 inches. If the pattern for the kids sweater isn’t bad, and just looks like the adult one, then I’ll do that (the kids XL size is 41 inches, and while still a wee bit big, probably just right for this experience). This will probably be my winter break project, as I’m in no great rush to finish it.

Slightly higher up in the cue, is a sweater idea that I’ve been toying around with for a few weeks. Inspired by Wendy’s Ingridsweater, I’ve wanted to take a simple color work pattern, and using sport weight, make a sweater. I really like Wendy’s idea of using one variegated/hand dye strand and one solid strand. The store where I work caries, Cherry Tree Hill Sock yarn, which is a slightly more economical version of the Koigu (in my opinion). It’s superwash, which doesn’t bug me that much in this case. It’s still expensive, and I’ve run into a little stumbling block with this yarn. According to the website, and the label the hand dyes are 420yrds./4oz, and the solids are 370yrds/4oz. And the yarns are the same as near as I can tell.

Update: Apparently: the solids are dyed at the mill, which makes a yarn that’s slightly, but apparently unnoticeably more twisted. This accounts for the difference in yardage.

In competition with this are what I think are amazing yarns from Knit Picks. Now the quandary is that, I feel like for this summer when I’m working at this yarn store, I should buy yarn from them, because I have opportunities to get yarns (at prices) that I’ll never find again, and Knit Picks is going to be there later so I’m not in a rush with them. Having said that, knit picks yarn for this project, and Cherry Tree Hill yarn price wise are about equivalent. My Knit Picks choices are also alpaca yarns (in all or in part). On the other hand, there aren’t solids and hand-dies in the knit picks option.

First off I was thinking of this yarn, it’s sport weight, and baby alpaca is always amazing. The pattern could get lost in the fuzz, but I’ll have to get enough color contrast. I was thinking of Summer Sky/Mystery, Fog/Granite, or Fog/ Woods. There’s also This yarn which is an alpaca, silk, merino mix. It’s bulkier, but the yardage is only 14 yrds, less per 50 grams, than the sport weight alpaca. So I don’t know. I’ll probably make sweaters out of both of these options.

So that’s it. I have a private knitting lesson in an hour and some chores to do before then, so I’ll stay in touch.

My life has otherwise been proceeding as it has been, so I don’t have anything ground breaking to report to you all. Ho hum.

I thought I’d offer you all some noes on my knitting/fiber art progress.

I finished the green shawl. I did end up needing a bit more of the Zephyr, but I think it worked out just fine, and frankly you can’t really see it. I still have to block the shawl, but it’s really nifty.

In the mean time I’m working on a shawl using a very royal blue tencel yarn. It has the dental floss look at the moment, but I think it’ll be quite nice. I’m embarking on a very nifty lace pattern, supposedly Japanese in origin, but I’m not really aware of Japanese knitting traditions, so I think it’s just inspired and all. From Nancy Oberly’s Folk Shawls book.

I finished spinning the merino roving. this was a massive project… two pounds of yarn. I’ll probably hand dye it all and get something really cool. I foresee a sweater. It’s a little thick and thin, but I think if I knit it tightly the texture will be really interesting. and blocking can do wonderful things, and I have a lot of it.

As a shorter interim spinning project, I’ve begun work on a small amount of silk and wool roving, that I hope to spin into heavy lace lace or some sort of fingering weight yarn. Single ply, if I can set the twist enough so that it it’ll be knit-able in as singles. If not I’ll roll a center pull ball and two-ply it.

After that, I’m either going to start spinning from my stash of really pretty corriedale, or from some brown alpaca. I have some soy silk at home, but I think that will make far better winter spinning. My logic is that if spinning is a year round activity, you don’t really need to spin yarn seasonally. That is that, you don’t need to spin fine light cellulose fibers in the summer for summer knitting. In fact, if you’re trying to make yarn to knit with, you’d be better off spinning winter yarns in the summer and summer yarns in the winter. But then I suppose it doesn’t matter much.

Anyway.

There you have it. Cheers.

Ok, for all of you who I know are waiting for this one, I offer you a knitting post unencumbered by tales of my personal life, discussions of my current technological setup or weird creative tangents. All Knitting, one paragraph away.

I’m almost done with my latest shawl. I ran out of yarn, nary 3 rows away from the bind off. Which means I need to buy two more oz’s of the stuff. Thank god I have a discount. Probably in the same direction I’m going to buy another ball of the blue yarn that I have, just because the fear of running out of yarn is really too much for me.

That shawl, “the green shawl” is really amazing. It’s going to be big, and very lacy, and I hope to sell it for a fair price. (While knitting isn’t a viable way to earn all of one’s money, selling a shawl or two might me to relax a little when I’m ordering books or some such next year.

I’m currently working on finishing a sweater I’m making out of fisherman’s wool. This is lion brand yarn, that you can get at just about any craft store for about a dollar an oz. Pretty good deal. It’s ecru (“sheep”) color, but it dyes well. It’ll be a nice sweater, and I like the feel of the wool. I had plans to sell the design, but as I’m watching it unfold, I’m not sure that I like the way that it looks. On the upside, I think I’ve finally figured out how to make a crew neck, so I might just revert back to doing that. I finished the neck treatment, so now all I have to do, is make the sleeves, and block the hell out of the sucker.

You might remember me talking about my “sock project” as the never ending pair of socks that I was supposedly making. Well, I think I’m going to give up on it. I mean what I’ve done looks really good, and if I was interested, I could probably finish them in a reasonable amount of time, but I’ve lost the desire to make this pair of socks. I think it’s something to do with such fine wool. It’s such nice yarn too, I feel really bad for not being able to make the socks, but, I can’t pull it off. for anything. But then I’m in no hurry, so I don’t really need to take them off those needles, so it might linger for a while.

In other news, I have enough yarn set aside for me, to make a sweater. It’ll be a great deal of fun. I’m thinking drop shouldered crew neck. The yarn is this kettle/space dyed worsted weight wool, that’s just pretty. I might make two (another in red, I’m so predictable, really), later on in the summer. I’ll probably have a shawl project going at the same time, just to keep entertained.

Well that’s all for the moment.

I’m one of those people. You know, the people who can forgive George Lucas for lots of grievous foul ups, and still love Star Wars. The idea of it. (That will not only read all those damn books, but also give them a great deal of priority over a host of far better options.) I think at the heart of it, I attach to saga’s, and I’ve attached to this one. So deal with it. What follows is a critique of the most recent movie. I hope you enjoy. I liked the story, but then I like all the stories. It connected the two stories very nicely, and in most respects it answered the questions that I thought needed to be answered. And of course, I have a few nits to pick.

• Mace Windu, refers to Palpatine as “Emperor” as, or shortly after Palpatine, makes his ascension speech to the Senate. Windu should have refereed to him as Chancellor. It’s an editing glitch, but the fact that I noticed it, and I’m usually not that sharp for these kinds of things, says something to me.
• The scene where Anakin becomes Darth Vader, not the appearance of the black cloaked figure we all know and love, but the sort of “moment” is a complete waist. Palapatine says, “come join me in my dark dark plans for dominion” and Anakin says “Ok, I’ll do whatever you want.” And the shame of it is, the proper motivation and reasoning was there. It wasn’t like they screwed up the whole point of the book, it was just in the delivery of that scene was pretty bad.
• Minor quibble, but Padame, shouldn’t have died on the table. Leia remembers her mother, vaguely, when Luke asks of her in RotJ. Now of course, it’s possible to think that you have memories of things you didn’t actually observe, but I doubt that this psychological phenomena was what they had in mind.
• Darth Vader is always described as one of the Emperor’s greatest servants, which I see as problematic. Now of course this is more a problem with Episodes 4-6. Sith Apprentices always kill their masters, eventually. And Vader, knows this, and I suppose this goes back to the motivation in my second comment, but that person (Anakin Skywalker/Vader) is rebellious enough that I don’t think the characters jive.
• Lets remember, that there are twenty years between the end of revenge, and A New Hope (IV). Now even if you grant that the sequence at the end where they show Palpatine and Vader standing on the bridge of a Star Destroyer, working on the Death Star, as being somewhere between the bulk of the movies, it’s still problematic. First of all, the bridge looks a lot like that of the Executor which wasn’t even built until after the Battle of Yavin (so the time’s way off).
• Captian Antilles, who apeared as one of the Naboo pilots, in the first movie, and now seems to be somehow tied to Bail Organa’s Ship, (and presumably Wedge’s father), is somehow from Correllia? Right. If it’s true, it’s an impressive record.
• I would like to say that I liked the many nods to events to come, and cameo’s that were sort of thrown in there. Like there was a shot with Grand Moff Tarkin. The implication that the Artoo the second trilogy, “remembered” the events of the first. Things like that made it delightful.

So that’s where I am with that. If anyone has similar comments I’d love to hear them.

There are, in my estimation a thousand clever names for a blog like ours. Our fellow bloggers/journalists have some pretty clever names. Rather than surrender to just calling this “TealArt” or something painfully clever, I generally pick a name I like, and leave it up for a few design cycles. Before, I had “The Times Of TealArt” because, mostly I thought newspapers that took the long form “The Times of *” rather than the shorter, “*_ Times” was an interesting construction, and it as as a way of putting emphasis on the observed rather than the observer, and given the nature of our medium, I think that’s an interesting statement.

But like all good things, I thought a fresh name would be fun. So for the moment, we have the somewhat loner. “TealArt: You Can’t Take the Sky From Us.” Modified of course, from the following:

Take my love, take my land Take me where I cannot stand. I don’t care, I’m still free, You can’t take the sky from me. Take me out to the black, Tell them I ain’t comin’ back. Burn the land and boil the sea, You can’t take the sky from me. There’s no place I can be. Since I found Serenity. But you can’t take the sky from me…

Clever little ditty. Inspiring and all that. This also reflects on TealArt’s history, as a spark in the imagination of two fan boys. It’s the lyrics to the theme song for Firefly the short lived Joss Whedon TV series. Anyway, I like it so there. And I think I’m going to have to write a Morris Dance called “The Firefly”, stay tuned.

So that explains that little change, I’m going to go see the new Star Wars movie soon, finally. I don’t care if it stinks really. Expect a report on that and concerning knitting things. Cool. Cheers!

I’d like to take a moment to recognize the fact that there are 450 entries on this site. That’s a lot. Well I suppose it could/should be more, but I think its worth noting. It’s yet another fact that draw attention to the idea that, we’ve been around for a REALLY long time. shrug.

I think my new computer and I have finally bonded. I think it generally takes one trying design process to bond with a computer. Graphics, web pages, long form prose writing, etc. Its like you need to push yourself to some limit with the computer to be able to trust it, to know it’s limits and yours, and then it becomes easier to work with it in the future. So I think we’re there. Now all I need to do is send off the last thing for the rebate, and I’ll be really happy.

The other thing, and what I initially intended to post here about, is the fact that, pretty much without my realizing it, Ranchero Software released a new version of NetNewsWire, which has been my news reader of preference. The interface is more Tiger-Esque, which is just fine by me (now if we can only get Mac to drop this steel look on finder, we’ll be good). But the really cool thing is that it will cope with Atom feeds. Basically it’s yet another RSS, except not as simple (RSS stands for really simple syndication.) I think it works great frankly it doesn’t matter much to me, except Blogger supports Atom and only Atom. Whereas before, I wouldn’t dedicate the time to reading Blogger powered weblogs, because my news reader wouldn’t cope with it, now my only reasoning is pure snobbery. Blogger, like LiveJournal, Xanga, etc. tend to be too easy for people to use, so EVERYONE gets one, which inspires even more people to get them. And it’s a downward spiral. I’ve had to put a lot of time into getting tealart to work the way it does. Not to mention money/work for the domain name and the hosting account, and I’d like to think that this kind of commitment leads to a higher level of quality, and I think this is confirmed. It doesn’t matter much which program you use, but blogs that are powered by freestanding software packages tend to be better than website services. And I’ll go ahead and lump TypePad in with the freestanding packages, even though it’s not, really. But I digress.

In addition to the new and better version of NetNewsWire, I’ve also found that Ranchero has what I think is a rather good offline blog editor. I’ve seen all manner of these programs, and they tend to be rather crappy. Now this isn’t all the developers fault. It’s taken a while for the protocols that allow such offline programs to connect with site to develop into allowing communication of enough features. But I think everything is starting to line up. Which is a very good thing indeed. So yeah. I’ve found what passes for blogging nirvana, for the moment.

But, and I think I’ll save this thought for later. Have you noticed how so called “traditional/old” media have been fascinated with the the development of the “blog”? I can’t help but think that they’re missing something. Or maybe they have it all right, and it just stings, but when ever I read or see one of those pieces, I cringe.

Anyway, Stay Tuned.

Ok, Here I go again. I up and figured out how the new WordPress template system works after months of hemming and hawing. I finally have something that I think I kind of like. Whatever. Uses the awesome graphic that Indi made for us, and I think we have a winner.

Confidential to Chris: You can stop laughing and pointing at me now. Thank You.

So here we are. Enough of this introspective crap about writing. It’ll happen. And no more of these 2,000 word posts once a month either.

One thing about writing that I remembered, or at any rate have decided to begin to act on. Is it doesn’t matter much what you write, so long as your fingers are making the right motions on the keyboard. Write emails, write blog posts, whatever, just move them fingers, and eventually you’ll be forced to get something out of use. I hope at least. In this dirrection, I for one am going to start back up a more strenuous TealArt posting schedule, so get those RSS readers all fired up.

I’m also in the process of trying to revive my Speculative Fiction writer’s yahoo group, which is almost five years old and has 233 people. Wow! And I’ve joined a lace knitters yahoo group which is a lot of fun, and gives me occassiton to muse on lace knitting which I think I will also do here, a fair piece.

Now all I need to do is some how figure out how to inspire TealArt Readers (and that means you) to comment on what we/I write here. It’s been a six year battle, maybe this time will be different, because the software actually works reliably. shrug

Anyway, Cheers!