News from the malaise that I’ve been battling this week: I’ve been able to get involved and interested in my knitting, to the point where I’ve been able to spend a few very restorative hours knitting. I also have made some good progress on the TealArt redesign, and some other planning related things. But this is a knitting post.

I just have the last final motif of the first sleeve of the morocco jacket. It’s looking a little big, but then again, it’s a jacket, and I’m not really worried about it. It might work out yet.

The turkish tile sweater is about 2.5 inches into the yoke. I’ve decided that in order for this to be the right size, I’m going to have to knit like, say 6-6.5 inches of the yoke before I begin the neck shaping, so that the armhole is wide enough. I’ve been over this before, but because there are going to be effectively 2 inches of sleeve decreased between the shoulder/neck join and the edge of the body (ie, the traditional point where drop-shouldered sleeves attach to the body), I think it’s important that I make the opening large enough.

Though to be fair, I do have a persistant fear of making sleeves to narrow. I had a couple--ok, maybe more like 3--of my early sweaters that failed completely because the sleeves weren’t just right, due to errors like this. And particularly since these sweaters are meant as jackets… I think all is well.

Current knitting television: old episodes of Star Trek Enterprise. It’s trashy and the writing/acting makes me cringe, but the dog is cute and I think the time travel that wove throughout the entire series could be really cool. But I have a thought about the future of Trek:

Trek makes good weekly television SF. I’d really like to see a new Trek series set a generation or two after the beginning of the next generation. And incorporate all of the things that has made previous trek shows great:

  • Inside jokes with the fans (Enterprise, has/had the potential to do this by setting up story elements that we would see ramifications of in the “future”)
  • A war (Deep Space Nine)
  • Racial/Ethnic Conflict (DS9 the bajorian/cardasian conflict.)
  • A Rebellion (The Maquis; TNG/DS9/VOY)
  • Time travel (TOS Movies/Voyager/ENT)
  • A variable cast of characters (DS9; Worf entered DS9 late, Rom and Nog became more important, the Dax change over. the arc of Garak. Etc. Characters were also promoted, and developed, and there were more regular-cast aliens than previous series.)
  • Dynamic Captains/leaders (DS9 mostly, but also Voyager.)
  • Suspense and Exploration, a sense of wonder. That is, good “shows of the week” (TNG/Voyager).
  • Connection to “real world” (TOS).
  • Some comedic elements. (TOS movies).
  • Political Intrigue (DS9; this was the first series to have an admiral make more than a handful of appearances. And there were glimpses of ongoing battles inside of the cardasians and klingons.)

It might be an interesting exercise to see what people think makes good Trek. While I’m not a die hard fan, I think I’ve always found Trek to be pretty entertaining, particularly for knitting background, and I’ve seen a good deal of it.

Thoughts?

I have other things to do. Cheers!

Onward and Upward!