Heartfelt, and screw piping

Kim Hargreaves has a new pattern book out, called Heartfelt! It’s lovely, like pretty much all her patterns. I might even buy it one of these days, but it would cost about $44 once you figure in the shipping, so I’m not going to spring for it until I’m 100% ready to cast on.

I think pretty much all the shapes are rehashes of things she’s done before (probably not this one, though!), but that’s fine by me, since the predecessor patterns are only available as part of fearsomely expensive kits. My favorites:

• Faith, which has a lovely garter lace insert in the front. I think this might not be the most flattering garment for me, though… I suspect it loses its gamine charm when worn outside this English countryside photoshoot
• Emily, so elegant with the gently puffed bishop sleeves. I love this look, even though not everyone does… Jerry Seinfeld famously complained about the puffy shirt, and someone on some message board uncharitably described the sleeves on the Luna Dress as “pollen sacs”
• Cherish, a classic bolero done in Rowan Big Wool. I was looking for the other bolero she had that looks just like this in a smaller gauge… I’d been eyeing it for a while. It might be this one, Splendour, but I seem to remember it being done in red Summer Tweed and photographed with the model leaning against a window on the left side of the frame. (Ravelry reveals that this was published as a kit in the Evergreen collection, no longer available through Kim Hargreaves’s site)
• Darcy, a fitted seed stitch cardigan–almost a blazer, really–with pleated peplum.
• Dusk, a kimono-esque wrap cardigan that reminds me a lot of the Catherine Lowe pattern from Knitknit (which I had to return to the library before getting a chance to scan some pictures for a review)

I don’t have much else to report. The piping for the Burda Style dress is kicking my ass… the bias binding I bought was too narrow, so I had to re-fold it in half instead of thirds, I had some trouble figuring out the zipper foot on the machine, the machine kept getting stuck on the multiple layers of fabric when I was trying to baste the piping on… then, after a couple of frustrating hours, I had it all put together and sat there trying to fold it in such a way that the piping would stick out of the front instead of out of the inside seam. Yup, I spent a couple of hours sewing it on upside down. Aside from my own stupidity, and the instructions to “baste the right side of the piping strap onto the neckline,” I blame the Burda tutorial that used stealthy black piping for the photos, with just a red dotted line drawn on in MS Paint to show where the piping cord should be. I, of course, thought I had figured out which way the piping was oriented and got it completely wrong. I also sewed it way too close to the edge so that it would have been sewn into the seam allowance, but fortunately figured this out before re-basting it (hand-basted the second time, thank God, I don’t know why I thought it would be faster to do it with the machine the first time around). Thank you, Sandra Betzina! (I bought this Power Sewing book for a few bucks at a local bookstore’s closing sale and should have consulted it before trying to use the internet tutorials. It finally made the piping stuff pretty clear.)

Bottom line, I didn’t knit a single stitch this weekend. I did sew on 4 out of the 6 buttons for Jess–I have to make another trip to Jo-Ann to buy the other two buttons. These are the ones I picked–La Mode vintage reproduction buttons, model 1711, circa 1941.

I also spent some crafty energy making some Fandango masks out of paper bags and junk mail for a costume party Friday night. I made one for my boyfriend, he kept balking at wearing it, and eventually I discovered that he had no idea what the Fandango paper bag ads were and thought I’d just made him a shoddy, crazy-looking paper bag mask to wear over his head for no apparent reason.  We did some other Halloween-type stuff, like watching a series of short and extremely gory plays called “Shocktoberfest” and visiting the cider mill. Hurray for autumn!

all quiet on the knitting front

Argh, I’ve been feeling so busy, I have been wanting to take lots of pictures of stuff and knit and blog but I haven’t had a chance. A few of the things that have been occupying my time–pictureless, because I’m just taking a break from work:

Non-yarny stuff:

- Work and class (The Anthropology of Tourism. Lots of readings.). Not much to say about that, except that our last reading was about Santa Claus Village in Rovaniemi as a postmodern, hyperreal tourist destination/Baudrillard simulacra. I was simultaneously interested in the ideas and annoyed with the ivory tower uselessness of critical theory. I bet this comes from being the daughter of an engineer and a literature professor–I swing between attraction to the useless-but-fascinating and the practical-but-uncreative. Also, I’m doing an extra job this month for the business school, so I spent last Friday night from 8:30 to midnight grilling undergrad business students about the idea they were trying to sell me.

- Biking in the midst of blazing fall colors and hunting for mushrooms in the Brown County woods. The trees are all kinds of orange and yellow and red right now–much better than last year, when they had just started to turn and then a big storm blew all the half-turned leaves off the trees. It rained last week but was dry last weekend, so we thought it would be a good time to go mushroom-hunting. We were looking for chicken of the woods mushrooms and found two huge yellow shelf mushrooms–one of them weighed probably 20 pounds!–but decided we didn’t have a positive ID on either one, and threw them away. At least we got some nice bike rides and hiking in.

- Making vodka apple pie. I found information about a new pie crust recipe from Cook’s Illustrated from one of my regular blog reads (but now I can’t remember who! sorry). It uses vodka instead of water to moisten the pie crust, under the theory that gluten doesn’t form in alcohol, only in water, so you create much less gluten in the crust by moistening with vodka. The crust came out pretty well–very buttery, no taste of alcohol. However, the dough was super-soft and friable, and fell apart when I tried to weave the lattice top like I usually do. I used dark red Winesap apples and the “Apple Pie I” and “Flaky Pie Crust” recipes from The Joy of Cooking, substituting vodka for the ice water in the pie crust. Jeanne brought over some Musgrave cider she had fermented and we had an appleicious evening.

- Sewing. I’m trying to follow a sewing pattern for the first time: I fell in love with this dress called Shari from Burda Style, and armed with some cheap fabric remnants, I’ve been diligently working my way through the pattern and its puzzling assembly instructions. I also learned how to use the bobbin winder on the sewing machine Rahul’s mom gave me. Yay! Figuring out the zipper foot is going to be a whole new world of frustration, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. The main body of the dress is red cotton with white polka dots. The lining and yoke insert are a white cotton with tiny white circles printed on it. (The print reminds me a lot of quinoa.) In theory, if the piping doesn’t defeat me, it will be trimmed in turquoise–turquoise bias binding piping and some turquoise ribbon with red flowers for the edge of the skirt. I find sewing a very tedious process, even though it takes much less time than knitting. All that cutting out of pieces and ironing and sewing and threading and rethreading the machine… it may produce nice finished objects, but the process is not nearly as soothing as sitting down with needles and yarn.

- Buttons. I experimented with polymer clay picture transfers the other night (another good use for vodka) and made the most fabulous dodo buttons. I am going to find something small and round to use to cut them out, and make a whole set. I think I might use the two buttons I made for another Giftblitz Basketweave Neckwarmer.

- Tonight I’m going to canoe on Griffey Lake in the moonlight, tomorrow I’m going to a Halloween party, and on Saturday I’m going to see the Dalai Lama give a talk.

- I finally got the new Terry Pratchett book, Making Money, from the library! I was like 10th in line on the holds list. I can’t wait to quietly hole up somewhere and read this.

Yarny stuff:

- I finished my Ming cowl and I’m wearing it now, unblocked. It’s lovely!

- I got some buttons for my Jess jacket. I dragged Rahul to Jo-Ann and he helped me pick them out–silvery/pewter reproduction antique buttons molded with a posy of daisies. They only had 4, so I’m going to have to go back for a 5th one in about a week. When we were at Jo-Ann buying the buttons, we saw a saffron-robed Tibetan monk carrying a big roll of red fabric to the cutting table for replacement robes. I love Bloomington.

- I have been swatching and adjusting charts, and I think I’ve sorted out the lace charts I’ve been working on and will hopefully have produced a finished object from them soon. Why is “no stitch” such a bitch to figure out? I guess technically I could just put them anywhere I want on the chart, but I feel like that’s bad form. Still not sure I’ve placed the “no stitch” symbols optimally, but you live and you learn.

- Robynn sent me the most beautiful shawl pin as a Storytellers spot prize. Thank you so much, Robynn–it’s perfect, I love it! I need to take some pictures of it with my Lara sweater and/or my Sea Silk Swallowtail shawl. (The shawl really deserves a better photoshoot than what I’ve given it so far.)

- I signed up for a Knit Picks sampler a while back on Ravelry. The idea was that you would send in a skein of yarn to the organizer and she would make a little card with snips of each contributor’s yarn so you could see samples of all the different types without paying for all the color cards or sample skeins. Then you would get your leftovers back at the end. The cranberry Decadence on the sample card is especially lovely, but I think they discontinued it–I don’t see it on the site anymore. Anyway, I started laughing when I opened the package because it contained a note attached to a mangled Gordian knot of alpaca laceweight: “Sorry, my cat got into your yarn. Here is $5 so you can buy some more.”

A list of things

1) An interesting swatching experiment about whether crochet takes more yarn than knitting. However, some people are loose knitters/crocheters and some people are tight knitters/crocheters, so I don’t think controlling tension by using the same size crochet hook/needle is entirely scientific.

2) I think there is another error, a small one this time, in the directions for the Kingfisher Capelet: the instructions where the pattern instructs you to purl on at the end of a row seems to be a typo. Substitute “cast on using any method you like” or “turn, then knit on.” Sorry about that, but at least this one isn’t a showstopper.

3) Erqsome posted a link to this great review of The Gentle Art of Domesticity. It’s a negative review, but unlike the others I’ve discussed, it’s articulate, intelligent, and well thought out, brings up specific examples, and acknowledges and addresses the counterarguments from the pro-Jane camp. Oh, and her description of Nigella is hilarious. I’m adding needled to my list of regular blog reads right now.

Ming Cowl in progress

I am about halfway through my second Luxe Neck Warmer from Knit 2 Together. (I’m taking it slow this time.) This knit is pure sensory pleasure–the silvery variegated silk/wool gleams in subtle, semi-solid grays, like a South Seas black pearl, and the silk gives it a slight fuzzy haze that softens the stitch definition; it’s an incredibly soft and evenly spun singles yarn without a hint of over- or underspinning; and after lots of thrifty knitting with snaggy, sticky rubber band stitch markers, it feels like such a luxury using the pearl stitch markers I got from KnittyK8’s Etsy shop.

I also made a trip out to Hobby Lobby to shop for buttons for Jess and I can’t decide what kind to get–I’ll have to go out to Jo-Ann, because I had no luck at Hobby Lobby. I want one of the following:

- Smooth plastic buttons in a matching burgundy

- Plastic buttons in black or dark brown

- Fabric-covered buttons–maybe with a tapestry-like home decor fabric?  I think this might make the jacket look too dowdy.

- Crocheted button covers, like in the original pattern

It’s hard to decide what will make the jacket look chic and retro rather than old ladyish.

I’m a yarn carny who won a yarnie!

Hi, Yarnival readers! Hope you enjoyed my Tilted Duster pictures enough to come by and browse the rest of the site for a while.

I just have to say I really like carny slang. Even more than I like yarny slang. Here is some yarnified carny slang. (Sorry for the non-Ravelers, but there are a couple of Ravelry-internal links in here)

• Bally - A free performance intended to attract both tips and visitors to the nearby sideshow.
• Call - The act of yelling out slogans and interacting with passers-by to attract business.
• Spring – Open the carnival.
• Scratch - the revenue from a concession.
• Oats - stolen money from a concession.
• -’iz’ or ‘erza’- – inserted between the syllables of words to serve as a cipher or cryptolect.
• Mark - A target for swindling, especially one whose gullibility has been demonstrated. Derived from the covert use of chalk to mark the backs of especially ripe targets. The term has entered the popular lexicon, usually as “easy mark.”
• Sharpie - The opposite of a mark: an experienced player who is wise to traditional carny scams and is skilled at the games themselves.
• The Nut – The sum total (in cash) of a performance, or group of performances
• The Kitty - Budgeted amount of finance, regulated by the management of a carnival for purchasing food and supplies for its workers. (“We wanted a new tent, but there’s no more scratch in the kitty”)
• Rousty or Roustabout – A temporary or full-time laborer who helps pitch concessions and assemble rides. In the 1930s, American Rousty’s would work for a meal and perhaps a tent to share with other workers.
• Sugar Shack – a concession or food-stand that doubles as a front for drug commerce & trafficking.
• Donniker - Bathroom
• Larry - Defective
• Hammer-Squash – Used to describe an individual as dumb or stupid (used interchangeably with Larry when used to describe a person).
• New – An insult used by carnies, against carnies. Used in instances where a carnival worker should know better, with the insulter asking “What are you, new?”
• Straight - A game that is played by the rules
• Alibi - A technique used where the player has apparently won the game, but is denied a prize when the jointee invents a further, unforeseeable, condition of the game. For example, a player may be disqualified on the grounds of having leaned over a previously undisclosed “foul line.”
• Flat – A game that is rigged so that you cannot win. Illegal in most states.

Many carnies “qualify” outsiders by using the jargon.

• Gaff – To rig a game so as to make it unwinnable
• Hey Rube – An exclamation used to summon help by a carny in trouble, either from police or disgruntled players. The term was used as the title of a sports column written by Hunter Thompson for ESPN.com in his later years.
• Two-Way Joint – A game that can be quickly converted from a fixed, unwinnable game into a temporarily honest one when police officers come by.
• Ikey Heyman – A wheel of fortune that can be secretly braked by the carny
• Burn the lot – To cheat players with little or no attempt to conceal the subterfuge, in the carny’s expectation that the same town will not be visited again.
• Patch money – Money used to induce police officers to turn a blind eye. Also known as “juice” or “ice.”
• Spinning / flying Jenny or Jinny - Carnie slang for merry-go-round.
• Mooch – An individual who asks for a free game or prize. It is also used to describe someone who watches others play, but does not play themselves or asks a lot of questions with no intention of playing the game. Sometimes used as an insult between carnies to connote cheapness.
• Glass hammer – An object a carnival worker will ask a younger customer for when asked for a free game or prize. The idea is that the ‘mooch’ will go onto the next game and ask for a glass hammer, only to find out that this new carny has one, but can only give it up for some other far fetched item. Examples of such items include: A cordless extension cord, a solar-powered flash light, an underwater lighter, tack glue, a left handed screwdriver, etc. The idea is to have fun at the customer’s naivety.
• Stick Joint – Homemade wooden or metal booth.
• Blow Off - Rush of customers out of an exhibition.

It’s about time, Pleasant Company!

<non-knitting content>

Dear Pleasant Company,

Thank you so much for finally creating an Asian-American “American Girl” doll, even if she is one of the sidekicks rather than a main character. I have been waiting since my childhood in the 1980s for you to do this. It’s about time.

You saw fit to introduce the Native American Girl, the Latina Girl, the Black Girl, and many, many iterations of the White Girl–blonde, brunette, redheaded, bespectacled–before introducing a single Asian American doll that little Asian American girls could relate to. Yes, we’re only 3.6% of the population, but many of us are model minorities and have a lot of disposable income to spend. Don’t you want to tap into the market of rich, guilty Asian-American engineer/programmer/doctor parents? Also, American Indians only comprise 0.9% of the population and they got a doll first. I’m sure the exotic Asian-American would sell just as many dolls to non-Asians as the exotic American Indian would to non-Indians.

The Girls of Many Lands girl doesn’t count. That’s a cop-out. She may reflect Chinese heritage, but she isn’t American. The hapa doll and “Just Like You” dolls are pretty awesome, but they don’t allow Asian-American girls to feel like part of the American historical context in the same way as the core collection of historical dolls.

I understand there might have been some difficulties in finding an appropriate historical setting, what with the exclusion acts, internment camps, and all those lovely things threading through the history of Asians in America.

But Asian-American girls could really use a doll that makes them feel American. Finally, they have one. I haven’t read the stories yet, and it’s possible Ivy speaks a lot of Chinglish and is terribly submissive and docile and looks up to her pretty white friend with the long blonde hair, but at least she exists now. Thank you!

How about a South Asian doll next? You’ve still got a lot of different heritages to cover. (Or here’s an idea: how about the dolls not costing 87 freakin’ dollars apiece. How incredibly ironic are Addy, Kit, and Molly when you think about that? I especially like Kit’s Great Depression Hobo Camp Supplies. $24, currently sold out.)

Sincerely,

me.

</non-knitting content>

Buying green, and Blog Action Day

Did you know today is Blog Action Day? Today, October 15, you’re supposed to post on your blog about the environment, and donate the day’s earnings to an environmental charity. Sadly, I am not currently cashing in on my thousands hundreds tens of loyal sporadic readers, so the latter half of that doesn’t really apply–I guess I’ll just have to do the bloggy part of it.

I’ve been thinking about my ecological footprint over the past few years. I was damn good in college when I didn’t have a car and lived in a tiny apartment near school. Various life changes came and went, and I commuted more or less, carpooled sometimes, took the bus sometimes. Right now, I work from home and live within easy biking/walking distance of downtown, so my transportation footprint has been lower than it’s almost ever been, little car trips within town notwithstanding. I tend to eat at home more often, mostly vegetarian, and waste less food (though I am still not great about this; I pack up leftovers and then they sit forgotten in the fridge for weeks, alongside the bendy carrots and sprouted onions).

On the other hand, I haven’t been so good on other fronts. The city I live in doesn’t make it easy at all for apartment dwellers to recycle. We still do it, but half of our study is full of giant, unsightly plastic bins full of cans, paper, and bottles and it is a total ordeal going down to the recycling center to sort things out. There are about 20 different bins to sort things into–brown glass, clear glass, green glass, aluminum, steel, newspaper, white paper, mixed paper, magazines, plastics (but only certain ones!), plastic bags, egg cartons, etc.–and there are various other things about the recycling center that make it a real drag. In the summer, the bins are sticky and full of bees that fly out in your face, Candyman-style, and there is frequently this sort of creepy guy working there. He comes up to me and goes “Ma’am? Ma’am? Ma’am?” and when I say “yes, what is it?” he just keeps saying “Ma’am? Ma’am? Ma’am” and following me around. I think he’s developmentally disabled, autistic, or something, but for a while I was taking it personally and getting freaked out because I heard him talking to someone else completely normally. Upon further unpleasant encounters, I’m sticking with my original theory. It’s still not a fun experience, but it’s not creepy in the same way. Anyway–I digress–the point is that recycling in Bloomington sucks if you don’t get curbside pickup. Which we don’t, because for some reason the recycling guys come down our street, picking up recycling from all the houses on our street, but they refuse to pick up from our apartments and just drive on past.

I don’t have a yard anymore, so I don’t compost anymore. I miss my compost bin a lot. I still feel pangs of guilt whenever I throw away banana peels or carrot tops or moldy leftovers. I loved chucking that stuff into my big crawly compost bin and turning it over with the pitchfork to see the steam and the zillions of worms. I’ve been thinking about making a worm bin, but (whispering) it seems kind of gross. I’ve read all about how your worms can die if you don’t feed them the right stuff, or get their bedding too wet, or don’t feed them enough, and there is really nothing I want to deal with less than a big, drippy box full of dead worms. Or a kitchen floor full of dead worms who have tried to make the great escape from their home planet. I would keep it out on the balcony, but here, unlike in California, that’s not a viable option during the winter.

We don’t have energy-efficient lightbulbs, mostly because we have cathedral ceilings and no ladder, and it’s a pain in the ass to climb up there and change the bulbs. I actually don’t know what we’ll do when they burn out–call Maintenance, probably, as ridiculous as that sounds.

And here’s the relevant part. I have been pretty bad about buying stuff–specifically, knitting stuff–without much thought at all about its environmental impact. So here’s me, thinking about it. (I don’t know that I’ll change my ways anytime soon, because making a change in your habits is a lot harder than talking about it. But thinking about the issue is a good start.)

To start with, yarns can be made with varying degrees of eco-friendliness.

You’d think acrylics, “petro-yarns,” are obviously not eco-friendly. However, there is a material called ecospun that’s made from recycled plastic soda bottles. There was some ecospun roving in a sampler bag of fiber I bought at the LYS–it wasn’t bad, wasn’t great either. I did a search to see if I could figure out a way to get commercially spun ecospun yarn, and to my surprise, found that Wal-mart apparently sells it. Who’d'a thunk it? (Actually, as my MBA student boyfriend points out quite often, Wal-mart is moving fast in the right direction–towards zero waste, 100% renewable energy, and carrying sustainable products–because they’ve discovered that being eco-friendly will not only buy them good publicity but will also save them money.)

Cotton has a reputation for being incredibly bad for the environment. Look at the stats on this page–it uses 25% of the world’s insecticides, more than 10% of the world’s herbicides, and is the fourth most heavily fertilized crop–after, oddly, soybeans. I have to read up on this stuff; I thought the whole point of crop rotation with corn and soy was that soybeans were nitrogen fixers and didn’t need tons of fertilizer dumped on them. This is probably a naive, city mouse thing to think. It takes 1/3 of a pound of chemicals just to grow the cotton for one t-shirt! That’s lightweight jersey knit from thread–think of how much more went into making worsted weight yarn.

There are many organic cotton yarns out there, though, happily. I have some Foxfibre Pakucho in my stash. Elann.com now carries Pakucho cotton for $2.98 a skein. This is an organic cotton–i.e. grown without pesticides and herbicides–and it’s color-grown, with the browns and greens being the natural color of the cotton rather than dye. And the colors get darker and more intense as you wash the yarn!

Sari silk yarn and 2nd Time Cotton are two yarns I know of that are made from by-products of the textile industry. Soysilk is made from industrial waste. Colourmart and Discontinued Brand Name Yarns sell mill ends that might otherwise be discarded. All these are admirable for getting fibers out of the waste stream and upcycling them into consumer goods again. I could go on, but I’d be reinventing the wheel, since there are other sites out there that have done the roundup, very thoroughly–here’s a treehugger post about eco-friendly yarns, the Worsted Witch has a treasure trove of useful information about this topic, and Interweave Knits just had an article about organic wool yarns.

The most eco-friendly choice is probably to buy old sweaters at the thrift store and recycle the yarn. It’s usually a major pain in the ass, but the only extra energy expended for your hobby is the energy you personally spend snipping up the seams, unraveling, skeining, washing, and winding the yarn. Plus, as a bonus, it’s really cheap. Or you could buy fleece right off the sheep from a local farmer and spin it yourself–also a good choice.

Anyway, on to the biggest thing I wanted to talk about. One of my biggest problems, environment-wise, is stashing. I love to buy yarn. Love it! I’ve kicked the habit of shopping for the sake of it, the “must-have” mentality, in most other areas of my life–the average age of my shoes is about 5 years and they are mostly full of holes, I’ve stopped buying books and DVDs and instead get them out from the library, I am usually able to admire pretty things and then put them back on the store shelf. (Having to try and move cross-country with or get rid of all my stuff was very helpful in curing packrat tendencies.) Unfortunately, my crafting hobbies have really messed me up in this regard, and in particular, knitting.

I don’t currently get the same thrill from sewing and spinning, so I can resist fiber and fabric sales pretty easily. However, seeing yarn I like online at a good price is sometimes unbearable–I think of the pleasure of knitting it, and the beautiful objects I could be making from it, and the money I’d be saving. Resisting Knit Picks is easy because I know the yarn will always be there at approximately that price, but when I see a limited-time sale, or clearance items, it’s like a Pavlovian trigger, and I feel like I’m about to lose out, big-time. And I end up wanting, and craving, and clicking “buy,” and then winding up with a big pile of mail-order yarn and guilty feelings–and, as a side effect, causing some measure of pollution and waste for something I might not end up using within the next few years.

All the environmental costs of manufacturing the yarn aside, one of the big issues with internet yarn shopping is the energy and pollution caused by shipping the yarn everywhere. Looking for the cheapest price frequently means buying from somewhere far away, for example, buying Rowan yarns from Jannette’s Rare Yarns or Cucumberpatch. And even within the US, my favorite mail order yarns come from a long ways away–Northampton, Seattle, Point Roberts, WA, and so on.

The trail gets smoggier as you look back along the supply chain. (I’m no expert on this, so forgive me if I get the details wrong.) The yarn moves from the distributors to these retailers. The distributors get the yarn from the mills. The mills get the material to spin from yet another source–the sheep farm, cotton farm, or whatever. All this trucking of materials back and forth uses up a lot of gas and creates a lot of pollution. This calculator estimates that an SUV emits 1.57 pounds of carbon dioxide per mile! Rahul did a case study for school about this; I’ll have to ask him about the exact numbers later, but the emissions numbers for delivery trucks were similar–in other words, very large. (Whatever happened to the Pony Express? Those were the good old days! We had horses, none of these newfangled horseless automobilators and iron flying machines. And back then, it cost a nickel to send a letter, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ‘em. “Give me five bees for a quarter,” you’d say. Yes sir!)

International shipping costs have gone up a lot, and I suppose that’s good, from an environmental standpoint, because it brings out the costs of transportation into the open and hits people in their pocketbooks, discouraging a lot of frivolous international purchasing and shipping things around the world unnecessarily. Same with the crappy exchange rate.
When it comes down to it, that’s going to be the real thing that makes me change my ways, I think. I’m aware of all these issues and I try really hard to be good, in many ways, but sometimes my ideals seem to exist in a different world from the one I’m currently living in. I know in that big thinky brain of mine that I shouldn’t be eating those trans-fatty deep-fried morsels made from factory-farmed, debeaked, miserable chickens cut up into little pieces, but sometimes I smell the Proustian aroma of McNuggets and get lost in my personal Mcmemories and Mclongings and Mchunger and end up eating a crispy, juicy 10-pack. Same thing with that cashmere yarn made from goats’ down shipped from Mongolia (adding to desertification and environmental destruction along the way [edited to add that Marsha sent me this great link to a Colbert Report interview on this issue]) to Italy for spinning and then to New York for distribution and then to a retailer in California to ship to me. If it costs too damn much for that yarn, though, that is ultimately what is going to keep me from buying it.

Now I am going to say something really unpopular, but please keep in mind that I am the blackest of black pots here, and I’m not telling anyone to change, just trying to bring these issues into people’s minds. (Plus, I have to say something different than what all the other blogs are saying for Blog Action Day, right?) Ready? How’s this for a controversial statement: Yarn swaps are bad and so is destashing. I’m not talking about local swaps within your area, with a girl at work or a guy in your local Stitch ‘n’ Bitch. I mean Secret Pal swaps with folks across the country or across the world, or mailing the stuff you don’t want across the country to someone else who could have bought the same thing at the LYS around the corner. The same carbon footprint transportation issues come up. I bought a couple of skeins of Regia sock yarn from a woman across the country last year and never used them. They just sat there for a while, and then I destashed them to someone else across the country. That’s a lot of mailing yarn around, and I probably would have used the yarn eventually if it had sat there long enough. I should have just let it marinate in my stash. It’s really very frivolous, sort of gross, really, the idea that I am rolling in such an abundance of yarn that just because the sock yarn wasn’t a shade I really loved, I wouldn’t use it, and should instead send it across the country to someone else. And also sort of gross and frivolous is the idea that you would go out and specifically buy a metric crap-ton of yarn and stuff to pack into boxes and send to a random stranger. Not all at once, either, mind you, because that’s bad Secret Pal practice, but in carefully measured shipments designed to tease and amuse. Lots of little boxes flying back and forth all over the country in FedEx trucks and on airmail planes. It’s decadent!

Um. That said, I have participated in many swaps and destashing sales, really enjoy them, and have no particular intention of stopping. But it is kind of gross, when you think about it. I kind of feel like I should go give a bunch of money to charity right now to get that sticky feeling of uncontrolled consumerism off my skin.

During my month of eating local last year, people brought up other issues to take into consideration in this whole mess, and they may apply here, too. Some people said that mass surface transportation is more efficient and the chain of boats and trucks bringing an apple from New Zealand to San Francisco might end up creating less pollution than the farmer driving his little diesel jalopy up to SF from Fresno. The Mexican strawberries you buy might be organic while the local ones are grown with pesticides. Your dollars might support development in third world countries if you buy the Indian-grown basmati rice instead of the stuff grown in the Sacramento delta. And so on.

I think we should certainly think about that last part when weighing the problems of buying non-local yarns against their social and economic benefits in other countries: companies like Malabrigo, Manos del Uruguay, Frog Tree, Shokay, Be Sweet, and Mirasol all do good work in creating jobs and building up local economies outside the First World. Looking at that list, though, I realize I’ve never actually bought or knit with any of those yarns. So if I can’t kick the “I want” mindset, maybe the first thing to do is to stop lusting over that Karabella cashmere and start lusting over some Malabrigo instead.

Phew! That sure was self-righteous. I am going to go knit my mail-order yarn for a while now and watch my library DVDs. I’m done with my Jess jacket, by the way–I’m waiting for her to dry, and she just needs buttons after that, assuming she still fits after blocking.

Happy Blog Action Day!

Giftblitz ‘07, Firefly

It sank in on Thursday that three friends of mine were having a joint birthday party on Saturday evening and we had nothing to give them. Instead of running out and purchasing some novelty talking hamsters or somesuch, I had this bright idea that I was going to knit three presents in three days.

So without further ado, here’s how I spent my knitting time in the 72 hours from Thursday night to Saturday night:

Thursday night: Cast on for Giftblitz ‘07 Gift #1: Steve’s Lopi Hat. Knit stockinette in the round all through knit night, then went home and knit for a few more hours while reading in bed. Finished around midnight and went to sleep.

Pattern: the Garter-Brim variation of Kim’s Hat from Last Minute Knitted Gifts
Size: Women’s; 3.5 sts/inch/5 rows/inch, approx 23″ around, 9.5″ deep.
Yarn used: Reynolds Lopi in Earth Red, approximately 1 skein
Needles used: Size 9 Denises, 16″
Started: 10/11/07
Finished: 10/11/07, for a total of about 5-6 hrs knitting
Mods: My gauge was off, so the women’s size made a large, roomy hat. I knit garter stitch for about 2″, then knit to about 7″ before starting crown decreases. I left out two of the plain knit rounds between decrease rounds, and k2tog’d all around the last round so I had 10 sts left when I drew the top closed.
Notes: I think the Kim’s Hat pattern as written might make an excessively deep hat for most people. If/when I make it again, I’ll be careful about how long I make it before beginning crown decreases.
Verdict: Despite Steve’s man-sized cabeza, I think the hat was still a bit too big for him, but he seemed to like it. This yarn is rather itchy, but I am very fond of the colors–the way they go from deeply saturated, almost shining deep red to a pale, almost silvery pink.

Friday: At lunchtime, I cast on for a Bainbridge Scarf for Jeanne, using the partial red Knitpicks Cotlin skein Leigh gave me to try out, and white kitchen cotton for edgings. I knit for a while, then picked it up again after work while watching seasons 2 and 3 of Firefly and finished around 10 PM Friday night–total knitting time probably 5 hours.

Pattern: Bainbridge Scarf
Size: Finished dimensions ended up being about 5″ by 26″, with 7″ ties.
Yarn used: Knitpicks Cotlin in Moroccan Red, perhaps 3/4 of a skein, Lily Sugar ‘n’ Cream in white, much less than 1 skein
Needles used: Size 6 Denises, 16″
Started: 10/12/07
Finished: 10/12/07
Mods: I cast on only 130 sts to compensate for the differing gauge with the slightly larger needles, and knit about 4-5 rows of white yarn at the beginning and end of the piece to create a contrast color edging.
Notes: This is such a cute pattern! I want to make one of these for myself, perhaps using one skein of some cuddly and expensive solid-colored yarn. I would probably make the circumference a bit smaller, though the extra folded-over length seems like it would be good for tucking into the neck of a jacket. I am kind of undecided about the Cotlin. It seemed nice to knit with at first, but all this red fuzz came off the yarn and got all over my hands and my face and made me sneeze. I thought perhaps it was cat hair on the yarn, until I rubbed my hands together and giant red lintballs stuck together with sweat came off my palms.
Verdict: It looked very cute on Jeanne! I sort of wished in retrospect I’d chosen a different contrast color. Red and white has too many other meanings attached to it. I started out thinking of Dr. Seuss, then, as I was knitting, my thoughts progressed to IU’s school colors, cream and crimson, then, when I was about 3/4 of the way through, the words “Santa Claus” slowly, horrifyingly, made their way into my mind, and it was a great effort to try and see the cute and modern color combination I had envisioned originally.

Friday night: After finishing Jeanne’s scarf, I cast on for a basketweave neckwarmer for Charlie. That was it for knitting that evening, since I headed out for some drinks after that, but it was a productive day anyway.

Saturday: I finished Charlie’s neckwarmer in the afternoon, after this cool encounter at the farmer’s market. I stopped by to fondle the handspun bulky yarn at the Schacht Fleece Farm stall, and as I was talking to the woman there she said she had read my blog! They looked up their farm name the other day and of course, since I’d blogged about the open house farm visit (as did Elliphantom and chemgrrl) my site came up.

Pattern: My own. In a fit of creativity, I’m calling it the Giftblitz Basketweave Neckwarmer (click for pattern instructions).
Size: One size fits all!
Yarn used: Knitpicks Cadena in Mist Gray, approximately 1/2 skein (~55 yards)
Needles used: Size 11 Denises
Started: 10/12/07
Finished: 10/13/07, probably about 3-4 hours of knitting
Notes: A super-quick, easy, and thrifty gift. The Cadena is squishy and nice, but I think many people would find it a bit itchy against the neck. I didn’t have time to block it; I bet some Eucalan would help tame the itchies.
Verdict: I think this was the most popular gift I gave. Rahul requested one too, once they saw that it could be pulled up around the face for biking in the cold in addition to pushed down around the neck to keep it warm, and Charlie’s girlfriend Carol immediately stole it and wore it for the rest of the evening like a headband, Calorimetry-style.

Off-topic notes on Firefly, since I was watching it while knitting. I love Buffy, and started getting into Joss Whedon’s other work only after I ran out of Buffy episodes to watch. I think Angel and Firefly are definitely inferior to Buffy, but I grew to enjoy them both–Angel came first, as a natural progression. I watched the whole series over this last summer. (The puppet episode was one of my favorite of the series. Brilliant!)

I watched Serenity at some point, probably when I found the DVD at the library, and found it disjointed and hard to follow. It seemed really obvious to me that it was a continuation of a TV series rather than a movie that could stand well on its own. I think I’d really like to go back and re-watch it, though, after finishing the rest of Firefly.

I was totally underwhelmed when I watched Disc 1 of Firefly–completely bored throughout the pilot, and thinking the whole way through of how baffling Whedon fanboys/girls were, to build up a cult following around this show. I thought grimly, though, of how terrible Buffy Season 1 was compared to, say, Season 5, and soldiered on through the rest of the disc. By Disc 2, I was finding myself really liking the characters, settings, and stories, though the forced affectation of “gorram” still makes my skin crawl.

Some of my favorite scenes so far include the “Too much hair!” sequence, Kaylee’s throwaway line, “He makes everyone cry, he’s like a monster!” and the scene between Mal and Inara at the end of “Our Mrs. Reynolds.” And by the time “Out of Gas” rolled around, it was deeply heart-warming and satisfying to see everyone’s backstories.

The Chinese is abysmal. I think the only intelligible word I’ve heard so far out of anyone’s mouth is “go-se,” which I am thinking is probably “dog shit.” I can’t figure out anything else they’re saying. It’s not just that I don’t know the words they’re using; I have no idea what syllables and tones they’re trying to produce. Just a minor complaint. I appreciate the integration of Chinese into this space western. I was going to say into a sci-fi movie in general, but then I started thinking of Blade Runner (look at that insane metal suitcase box set!) and Naboo and decided that Exotic Asian is already totally an old motif in futuristic sci-fi. Let’s see some more Exotic South American or Exotic East African or something.

Mnemonics and Niebling

I totally dig this post on Gallium Arsenide, Old Lace that offers a great way to think about the direction in which you wrap your yarn around the needle. It made me very confused reading Stitch ‘n’ Bitch when Debbie Stoller kept talking about wrapping the yarn clockwise or counterclockwise and I had no idea which way she was looking at her needles.

I also really like this mnemonic I read somewhere: to remember which way k2tog and ssk lean, think of an equilateral triangle with the point facing up and one side facing down. Think of k2tog on the left side of this triangle, making the side of the triangle slant right, and ssk on the right, making the side of the triangle slant left. You can remember which one goes where by remembering that k2tog comes earlier in the alphabet than ssk, so the two terms are in alphabetical order.

I still always get M1R and M1L confused and have to look it up. I know in one of them, you lift the strand from front to back and knit through the back loop, and in the other, you lift the strand from back to front and knit through the front loop. This sampler thingie on knittinghelp.com seems good (they say knit through back loop then knit through front loop, if you’re picturing an upside-down equilateral triangle), but then this Knitting at Knoon link seems to tell you to do the opposite (knit through front then knit through back). Anyone have a good mnemonic to share with me for these two increases?

Nona’s tutorial on Kitchener stitch seems like it should be helpful for remembering how to do it, but I still get all messed up thinking of front and back and knitwise and purlwise and find it easiest just to try and picture the path the yarn would take if it were another, knitted row of stitches. I just might have to knit Teva Durham’s Lace Leaf Pullover using her bizarro construction technique–knit the top down, knit the bottom up, graft the two halves together all around the middle of the sweater–so I can get more grafting practice in.

It’s gotten cold around here suddenly! It went from 90 degrees the other day to about 60 degrees today, and it will be around 40 degrees tonight. I need more fingerless gloves, but first I’ll have to try and crank out presents for three friends who are all celebrating their birthdays this Saturday. I’m thinking hats or mini-mufflers, but I may end up having to buy them stuff instead. Hopefully next time I post, I’ll have some speed gift knitting to show off.

Edited because I just saw this amazing set of Niebling lace doily patterns you can apparently buy from this person “doilyhead,” though I’m not quite sure how, and I wanted to link to it. They are beyooooootiful.

Shocked by the BBC! Your knitting looks like WHAT?

I downloaded a couple of podcasts to listen to today:

The new Stash and Burn podcast (mp3 here), discussing Single Skein September. (The cabled Zara hat the ladies mention is a pattern of my own design knit with two skeins of Filatura di Crosa Zara, color 1503–sorry for not tagging my Flickr photo with this, but the details are all on my Ravelry page–I’ve had a couple of inquiries about it, so I should get around to figuring out how to represent cable crossings across pattern repeats so I can write up the pattern and put it up)

Here’s the hat. It looks screwy around the ribbing because instead of doing a gauge swatch, I knit the hat from the bottom up, then picked up stitches around the bottom and knit the ribbing downwards. If I write up the pattern, it will not use that ultra-ghetto technique.

And the new BBC Women’s Hour podcast where they interview Jane Brocket/yarnstorm about her new book. I was sitting here doing my work and half-listening, and heard Kate Saunders’s dry, proper British voice say, at minute 2:08:

“I’m overjoyed that I don’t live in these times. I’m thrilled that I don’t have to knit and bake, because I don’t do it very well. My knitting always looks like an old scrotum, no matter how hard I try, and I don’t find it relaxing.”

It startled me like anything! I had to go back and listen again because I was sure it must have been a mondegreen.

The rest of the interview was kind of interesting, too. Basically more of the same yarntempest in a teacup I wrote a bit about earlier. I liked the phrase “pinny porn.” I love that word. Pinny! It always makes me think of The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, where I first encountered it.

Today I also found this Finnish web magazine named Ulla. Look at all those beautiful knitting patterns. (Link from Talvi) I especially like these leafy Bombadil socks and this insanely gorgeous white cabled jacket.

And in my personal knitting news, I am about 1/3 of the way done with the first sleeve on Jess. I’ve finished the fronts, back, and collar already. Nearly there! Plus, I’m proud to say that I achieved my goal and am currently the #1 Google hit for “starfish pig.”