The Socratic Blanket

I have knit lots more rounds of the Hemlock Ring blanket since my last post. I’m now up to Round 38 of Jared’s chart (I guess this corresponds to Round 84 of the original pattern), and the behemoth 250-gram, 478-yard centerpull yarn ball is finally nearing its end and collapsing in on itself.

Additional props to the Rainey Sisters for their notes and PDF: once I made it past the error in Round 35, I got to the Feather and Fan section and went to print out Jared’s chart so I could highlight the rounds I’d completed. Because I am apparently a technological moron, every time I saved the chart from Flickr and tried to print it, it came out tiny and illegible, and I couldn’t seem to get it to any kind of normal size. The Rainey Sisters PDF came to the rescue with flying colors! It has a chart key on the same page, too, and includes the original pattern in the PDF so you don’t have to print it out separately. Ladies, thank you.

I’m still really enjoying the endless feather-and-fan–it was a good project to bring to knit night, because of how it’s mostly just stockinette in the round. Also, after I kept getting paranoid that my increases and decreases had shifted over by half a repeat, and suspiciously counting the YO eyelets and trying to spread out considerably more than 40″ of crumpled lace to lie flat on the 40″ needles, Nicole helpfully suggested that I use stitch markers to keep track of where I was. If I were at home instead of having met my knitting group, I’d probably still be sitting here counting, re-counting, and grumbling.

I had never really thought of Feather and Fan as being the kind of lace pattern that might give someone problems, since it’s super-easy and one of the simplest ones out there, but since the number of plain stitches, increases, and decreases varies on every pattern row as the Hemlock Ring expands, I had to tink back a few times after letting my mind wander and reverting back to the increase/decrease pattern from the previous lace round, getting towards the end of the round, and realizing–heeeeeey, that doesn’t match up. It also doesn’t have the really strong geometric lines that some lace patterns do, that would immediately flag a mismatch between the current round and previous ones. (In fact, even the flowery center part of the Hemlock Ring, despite the more complicated nature of the lace, has for the most part really strong and easy-to-read increase and decrease lines, so I did realize there was a problem right away with Round 35 because it was clear that the decreases were not stacking up properly when I followed the pattern as written.)

I had already drawn a vertical line down the middle of the chart to divide it in half, so half the YOs are on the left and half on the right, to mark the beginning of the round, since the round begins in the middle of a lace repeat. I made markers from pieces of scrap yarn and placed them at this location on every repeat: 8 markers total, 1 of which was my original end-of-round marker, a different color from the rest of them.

Now (as is standard practice with using stitch markers in lace), as I begin each set of increases, I count to make sure I have the right number preceding the marker; slip the marker, make sure I have the right number of increases following it, and then work the plain sts (as needed) and the decreases, and I can tell by the time I get to the next marker if I’ve messed up the pattern.

It feels like it’s going really fast, although I am told that is just a cruel illusion, since the rounds get longer and longer. Since it’s my Mindless Knitting project, though, I have high hopes that it will get done reasonably soon and with a minimum of soul-crushing tedium. I do wish I could spread the whole thing out flat to look at it. Right now it’s like a giant lace bag, or some kind of weird sea creature (Emilee compared hers to urchins and anemones, but it kind of reminds me of an jellyfish at the moment, perhaps because of the color.)

In other knitting news:

Bad news: there was a fire yesterday night at the Malabrigo mill. They posted on their site that “Even though our floor did not catch fire, it seems there is substantial damage on our mill and offices caused by the soot and smoke.” I hope nobody was hurt and that they’re up and running again soon.

Good news: I’m really excited about Norah Gaughan Volume 3. Norah has been posting sneak peeks of her designs on Ravelry, in her projects, and discussing them in the Norah Gaughan group. They’re hosted on Flickr, so you don’t have to be a member of Ravelry to see them. I think one of these design stories is totally beautiful and appealing–look at Eastlake:

And Loppem:

Those are my two favorites of the ones she’s shown so far. Calvert is pretty nice too:

Tony Hawks

I ran across this site where Tony Hawks, a British comedian, posts the mail he gets that is mistakenly addressed to Tony Hawk, the American skater, and his replies. Among them:

dear tony
I playing ur game and see dat you don’t look the sam in the games as you site. i tink you are hott. do yuo wear a mask? i think you are the best. i can olly and on my skat bord i can also do an olly bone-to-bone cornbread. i want to know if you can cum to howse and jump on my ramp and then we go for ice-creem and walk along the beech and wach the sun set.
irie love Billy Sixx
p,.s can u make a rollerblading game so is can play too games and not won.

Dear Billy,
If I came to your house, jumped on your ramp and then went for an ice cream and a walk along the beach to see the sunset, you have absolutely no idea how much trouble I’d get into.
TH

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Hey Tony….man, you are one helluva skater…I want to be just like you when I get older. Wow.

- Doris

Doris,
If you really want to be just like me when you’re older you’ll need to undergo considerable surgery.

TH

---

Tony what was your first ever trick you did and what was your favourite trick you ever did?

Liam

Liam,
I’ve stopped turning tricks since they cleaned things up around Kings Cross.

You probably wouldn’t want to know what the trick was.

TH

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can you send me a copy of tony hawk 2 please
No

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Bout ye big guy!!!!! Tone, I’m like ur bigest fan.i’m 9yrs old and bin sk8ing for like 2 yearsur amazing man, u rock dude i am your biggestt fan i gotta go luv will

Will,
We should hook up some time. You seem exactly my type of guy. It would be nice to sit down over a sherry and discuss Proust, listen to poetry and do the odd ‘ollie’ if the fancy takes us. I’ll be in touch.

Possibly

TH

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hey sup man i have this ninja trutle flat skateboard but i can’t do anything on it and people when i ride by on it call me a fag do you think you can help me not be a fag anymore?Then maybe sometime i chould come over to your house and bring some peanut butter and jelly sandwitchs and you can get the star wars movies!!!
Believe me, coming round my house with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to watch a film isn’t necessarily going to help you lose the ‘fag’ tag.

TH

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Also, a couple of things. I started a Hemlock Ring blanket as a wedding present, in addition to the YELLOW! shawl. It will be a mindless knitting project, while the other one is the original design project.

It’s going pretty well–I’m at row 40 now–but I’ve been consumed today with the urge to cast on for a new hat instead of working on the billion things I have going already.

The yarn I’m using for the Hemlock Ring is the one recommended in the pattern, Cascade Eco Wool, but mine is a creamy natural color rather than heathered gray. It’s a pain in the butt to wind the mega-skein into a mega-ball, but the yarn is soooo soft, squooshy, woolly, and delicious to work with, and not a single knot or end to weave in in 478 yards. I love it.

I’m using 40″ Addi Turbos. I love these too! I’m not crazy about metal DPNs, but Addi Turbos are so great to knit with–I love the shiny, smooth nickel finish and the flexible cord. I started the blanket with Emily Ocker’s circular cast-on and used the Magic Loop technique until the blanket got big enough to stretch all the way around the needle.

Be forewarned if you decide to make this that there are errors in Round 35 of the pattern. Because I didn’t realize this, and I also had missed a YO in the previous lace round in the first pattern repeat, I had a hell of a time getting through Round 35. A correction can be found at the Rainey Sisters blog, where they’ve also worked up a symbol key for Brooklyn Tweed’s chart. I’ll post the correction again here, this time with the corrections highlighted, so you can see what they are–deletions in red and crossed out, insertions in blue:

Round 35:
35th rnd: *O, k 1, O, * sl 1, k 2 tog, psso, O, k 4, O, sl 1, k 2 tog, psso, (O, k 1) twice; sl 1, k 2 tog, psso, k1 (k 1, O) twice. Repeat from * around.

The other thing is this: I’m going to be selling my patterns soon through some other venues, not just self/Ravelry-publishing, and since retailers will be taking a cut (which I hadn’t planned for originally when pricing everything out), I’m raising the price for the Prickle Moebius Cowl pattern, from $4 to $5, at the beginning of June. If you’ve been thinking about buying it but haven’t gotten around to it, now is the time. Just wanted to give you some fair warning in case you agree that cowl is the new scarf. I’ve been thrilled to see a couple of finished objects popping up: Christy at Neither Hip Nor Funky finished a Prickle cowl for a giant cowl swap; you can take a look at it here. There is also this lovely one on Ravelry that knittingchemist made in Lettuce Malabrigo Worsted. How great is this color:

Well, I’m off to read some Proust over a glass of sherry, knit on the Hemlock Ring, and do the odd ‘ollie’ or ‘kickflip indy’ if the urge overtakes me. Pip, pip, cheerio!

Madness

I’m back from Madison, and we have a place to live in the fall! Yay!

In my last post, I mentioned that we were trying to get this place that smelled like garbage and had a urinal in the bathroom. Well, we got it!

It’s much nicer than that post made it sound. It’s a two-bedroom plus den, one-bath flat on the second floor of a freestanding house in a quiet residential neighborhood. The kitchen has a dishwasher and garbage disposal, and there’s a breakfast bar dividing it from the living room. There are a free washer and dryer in the unit (a lot of places either didn’t have any or only had coin-op ones). There’s a private balcony and we can also use the front porch we share with the downstairs neighbors, though apparently they have two porches of their own, so it’s not likely they’ll be using the shared one. There’s some kind of yard (though all the places kind of blurred together after a while, so all I remember about it is that there are bike racks in the yard and we don’t have to take care of mowing it.) No garage or private parking space (boo!) but it will encourage us to drive less, and apparently finding parking is only an issue on game days, because we’re only a few blocks from the football stadium.

There were actually a lot of pretty nice houses, though the situation seemed pretty dire on Day 1 of house hunting. We ended up spending more than we had wanted to originally, but we liked the layout of the place and the natural light, and what swayed us in the end was the location. We’re in the Vilas neighborhood, about a mile and a half south of campus, a few blocks from a cute but somewhat high-end shopping street (I’ll have a Trader Joe’s in the neighborhood at long last! Hallelujah! I miss that place) and a few blocks from Henry Vilas Park, a gorgeous city park with a lake, ducks, and a zoo with free admission, and the Arboretum, which I’m told has some wonderful bike paths. The neighborhood seems quiet, safe, and peaceful, with beautiful old houses and tree-lined streets. The type of place where walking to run errands would be pleasurable, not a chore.

Oh, and Google Maps tells me I’ll be exactly one mile from a yarn shop.

I’d had my eye on a more bohemian part of town, Willy Street, but we didn’t like the houses we saw there as much, the top contender in that area being a strange, twisty little three-bedroom on the top floor of a Victorian building with a very small, dark kitchen and no washer and dryer–close to what we wanted, but no cigar.

We went into the leasing office first thing on Saturday to try and get it taken care of. We were well-prepared, with copies of our credit reports and bank statements for them to look over, and I think the leasing agent was so pleasantly surprised that we’d actually brought all the papers she needed that she pushed the application through for us within half an hour. The only disappointment was when Rahul discovered, to his great dismay, that the urinal in the bathroom was merely decorative. But he’ll live. The sacrifices we make!

Oh, actually, one other disappointment was that our lease in Bloomington runs out 6 days before the lease in Madison starts. So we’re going to have to figure out something to do in the interim, most likely load everything up in a U-Haul and stay in a hotel or camp for a week. Rahul suggested staying with his parents, but they live in southern Missouri and it’s a 5-hour drive down there plus another 7.5 hour drive up to Wisconsin, so I’m not really crazy about the idea of doing all that driving with all that stuff in tow. We’ll figure something out, one way or another.

The weather was sunny and gorgeous, so we spent the rest of Saturday biking around. Madison has something called the Red Bikes Project, where you can check out a bike and lock for as long as you like by putting down a deposit. When you return the bike, you get the deposit back. When the manager heard that we only wanted the bikes for a day, he let us take them without filling out paperwork or leaving a deposit. (We brought him a beer to thank him, though it would have been cheaper for us to just fill out the paperwork…)

Because of the red spray-painted wheels, my bike screeched like an ironing board being opened every time I put on the brakes, and there was no way to change gears, but it was serviceable. We went up to the farmer’s market, which was unfortunately just shutting down–I did buy a bottle cap necklace from Emily Kircher, Recycling Artist (etsy shop here, go check out her cute crocheted kitty rugs). I convinced Rahul we should ride our bikes down to Lakeside Fibers, and all was well until about halfway down John Nolen Drive, we heard an alarming POPhissss… Rahul’s tire had blown out. He decided I should go into the yarn shop while he walked his bike back to the Red Bikes Project, so I spent a happy 45 minutes or so browsing. I didn’t buy anything, but I did admire the softness of the Jade Sapphire Lacey Lamb. It’s a very large and impressive store, and if you find yourself in Madison, I recommend a visit. Anyone accompanying you who is not interested in yarn can probably be parked happily for a while in the coffee shop next to the giant wall of Cascade 220, where they have coffee, sandwiches, a prime view of Monona Bay, and a Wisconsin birdwatching book and binoculars to keep them amused. Wi-fi, too, I think.

We biked back up around the west side of the bay and went back to State Street, where we wandered for a while, then returned our bikes and had some Glass Nickel pizza for dinner. Missions accomplished: finding a house, visiting a yarn shop (my goal), biking around town, eating some local pizza (Rahul’s goal).

So that’s that. Now, Robynn tagged me for a meme, so here goes:

The rules: Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

What was I doing 10 years ago?

Late May 1998: Finishing up my freshman year of college. Right around this time, actually, I think I was probably being broken up with by my then-boyfriend the night before my computer science final. Thanks, dude, good timing. I’m pretty sure I still got an A in the class in the end, though, and we’re still on good terms, though I haven’t talked to him in ages.

Five things on my to-do list for today:

Today’s my day off! After all the craziness of the past week, all I felt like doing was lazing around (feeling a bit guilty, but I think I deserved it), so my goals were small and all but the last one have been accomplished:

1. Sleep a lot
2. Watch cryptozoology shows on TV
3. Make garlic soup (aigo bouido) for dinner
4. Blog and catch up on emails and commenting
5. Eat ice cream

Snacks I enjoy

Among other things:

Seaweed, the salted, flavored kind

Cheetos, the original kind with the bright orange cheese coating dense, buttery-tasting crunchy nubbins. None of this air-baked puffy crap.

The Japanese rice crackers coated with salt and sugar. I have no idea what they’re called, but I can pick them out at the Asian market.

The corn nuts they sell in bulk at the co-op. They’re bigger and less salty than the brand-name ones.

Creamy yogurt. Two of my favorite breakfasts used to be: berry or vanilla yogurt with boiled wheatberries stirred in, or plain yogurt drizzled with honey and walnuts freshly toasted in the toaster oven.

Chocolate with sea salt

Apple chips

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Stop working. Take care of my close friends and relatives’ financial concerns and sock away some money of my own. Travel around the world at a leisurely pace–there are lots of places I’d love to see, but I might not make it to any of the more remote ones anytime soon without making lots of money and having lots of time: Antarctica, Easter Island, tropical paradise islands whose names I don’t yet know. Buy a pretty little house where I could grow vegetables, flowers, and an edible forest, keep chickens in the backyard, let everything in the garden run wild. I would fit it with solar panels and set up a composting toilet and graywater collection system. Eat in some fancy restaurants. Donate money to charity, or perhaps I could set up a project of my own. Buy a couple of Bohus sweater kits and a new spinning wheel. (I’m happy to see I don’t really need a billion dollars to achieve most of these goals.)

Places you have lived:
Not a whole lot of places, really. Upstate New York. Various places in the San Francisco Bay Area: Mountain View, Albany, Hercules, Berkeley, and Sunnyvale. Venice, Italy. Bloomington, Indiana.

I’m not tagging anyone for this specifically because I’ve done lots of memes lately and can’t remember who I tagged already. So if you feel like participating, consider yourself tagged and let me know you’re doing the meme. I’ll be interested to read your answers.

As if this mega-post isn’t already long enough, one last thing for you, the recipe I used for aigo bouido, roughly the same as the one from John Thorne’s Serious Pig:

6 cloves garlic, peeled

3 slices whole-grain sandwich bread, torn into crouton-sized pieces

1 Tbsp paprika

1 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1 can petite dice tomatoes in juice

2 cups chicken broth (I used Better’n Bouillon’s fake chicken stock)

Olive oil

Salt

Pepper

Eggs (optional)

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Fry the whole garlic cloves in the oil till golden all over. Remove them and fry the bread, a few pieces at a time, in the oil, then place them on a cookie sheet in the oven to crisp and brown further. Top up the oil if needed, then add the paprika, fry for a minute, and add the tomatoes, broth, and dried herbs. While everything is heating up, mince the garlic and add it to the soup. Add salt and pepper to taste, then throw in the bread and stir well so the broth soaks in. Add 1 or 2 eggs to each oven-safe bowl, as desired, pour the soup over the eggs, and place the bowls on a cookie sheet in the oven. Bake for about 5 minutes, until the whites are set. I ended up preferring the soup without the eggs.

a long two days

I have just spent two of the longest days of my life looking for housing. Apartment hunting is horribly draining, and I only really officially took off one morning to do it–the rest of the time I was dashing off to appointments between highly stressful interludes hunched over my laptop in cafes or the car, trying to get my work done. I should have taken the entire two days off, but I had a ton of stuff to attend to and the project schedules couldn’t wait.

It was really sort of interesting at these showings seeing how other people live, and discovering what’s become more and less important to me in the past few years. For example, apparently many people live with dirty laundry covering almost every inch of their bedroom floor. (I pride myself on at least leaving walking trails through my dirty laundry.) Many other people enjoy flannel sheets pinned haphazardly over the windows to block out their enemy Mr. Sunlight. I felt like I was a pretty slovenly person, but going on these house tours made me feel way better about my housekeeping skills. Maybe about five years back, I was happily living in similar conditions, but somehow my tolerance for such things has gone down. It’s still not that I’m neat or clean by any stretch of the imagination, but I guess I was just surprised at how much my standards for housing have definitely gone up since my undergrad days.

We saw probably 20 properties in the past 48 hours. There were some really nice ones, some really bad ones. Some of the most interesting points of the tour included:

- the house with a billion animals. Actually, a very nice house with an affordable price tag, but I was distracted by their creatures–a black love bug of a cat who kept following us around and crying to be petted, a puppy and a large adult dog in crates, 4 turtles in a foul-smelling aquarium, and a ferret (possibly two) in another cage. That’s a lot of pets!

-  the House of Filth (Stoner Edition). The real estate agent actually warned us about the conditions before we went inside. This was around noon, I think. He knocked on the door, and a few minutes later, a scruffy-looking hippie white guy in some kind of shapeless, stained sweatsuit stumbled to the door and mumbled “sorry, dude, I just woke up.” He looked incredibly hung over, or possibly just stoned out of his mind. He collapsed in a heap on a couch by the XBox and watched us as we tiptoed around the house. The kitchen was empty except for a giant hookah. We opened one bedroom door and the floor was completely covered in beer bottle caps. Not in an artistic way, just in the way of someone who drinks a hell of a lot of beer. A mattress and box spring were stacked in one corner by way of a bed. No sheets, no blanket. “I told him to clean his room, man, it’s kinda gross in there,” mumbled the guy in the corner, apologetically, as we peered gingerly into the room, horrified.

- The house with a pantry that opened behind the stove, so the stove was set about 3 feet out from the wall and you had to walk around behind it to get into the storage space.

- The house that had a urinal in the bathroom, and smelled very strongly of garbage. (Actually, this is the one we’re trying to get. I have to assume the garbage smell is temporary and linked to the current tenants. We’re considering the urinal a feature.)

- The house with the shagtastic attic getaway. Brown and orange shag carpet with a 2-inch pile led up the stairs and carpeted the attic floor, and the walls were painted yellow. I thought the space was really cool, though I didn’t care for the colors.

- the House of Filth (Indian Engineer Edition). Bizarre. We walked in and the house was nearly empty of furniture, and the heater was going at full blast but the windows were open. Entering the kitchen, we were aghast. Everything–counters, floor, sink, stove–was caked in a thick brown sludge, as though they had been mud wrestling in the kitchen and hadn’t really cleaned up afterwards. It went above and beyond the normal grease and dust and grime from cooking–it was serious, hardcore dirt. You could have planted flowers in it. The same dirt coated the bathroom floor. It was like some creepy crime scene where they had been murdering golems or something. The 3 tenants were all Indian engineers and/or mathematicians, judging from the books in their rooms. It actually would have been a nice, spacious, sunny place once cleaned up, but the kitchen was too small and out of date for us to consider it.

The worst of it all is that I drove most of the way up, and have been subject to the tyranny of my early-to-bed-early-to-rise, please-turn-off-the-lights-i’m-trying-to-sleep significant other in the evenings, so I haven’t knit more than a little swatch in 7+ hrs of driving time; and I can’t tell you how many times we’ve passed the Knitting Tree without finding time to stop in–always too busy looking for addresses, food, or a coffee shop with wi-fi. The one thing I look forward to during long car rides or plane trips is the chance to knit a LOT and that hasn’t happened yet on this trip.

We extended our stay another day. We’re hoping to get our housing taken care of by the time we leave. So tomorrow we may go to the Farmer’s Market and the Wisconsin Brat Fest, and I’m hoping to wheedle Rahul into going to Lakeside Fibers or the Sow’s Ear with me.

Malabrigo up the wazoo!

So I just posted about the YELLOW Malabrigo lace I bought, but that’s not the end of it, not by any means.

I just got the prizes from winning Best Original Design for Malabrigo March for Prickle in the mail yesterday. They are lovely!

First of all–get an eyeful of the giant pile o’ prize yarn at the contest moderator’s blog. Wow. Aren’t those all just amazingly gorgeous?

Two of the skeins from that giant pile are now mine!

A skein of merino worsted in Hongos, a pink and brown variegated colorway:

And a skein of their brand-new superwash sock yarn, in “Test Color,” a lovely light blue with a subtle mixture of turquoise and gray shades.

Here, take a closer look.

Yum! It’s soft and pretty, but I can’t tell you much more than that yet–I haven’t skeined it up or swatched with it yet.

Now, if you’re my mom, don’t read any further! Everyone else, go ahead. There’s more Malabrigo goodness behind the jump.

A walk in the woods and a new pattern

First of all, machine washing and drying Rusted Root worked beautifully! The sleeve puff has more or less vanished, and it sprang a big hole under one arm that I had to fix with yarn unraveled from my gauge swatch, but the fabric tightened and evened up wonderfully and the sweater still fits. Judging from the half-inch of red lint stuck on my lint trap, I think it preemptively removed a lot of potential pilliness/shedding from the fabric as well. I’ll have a bit more info later; I’d like to do some post-washing measurements so I can give teh Intarwebs information about how much Cotlin shrinks in the wash.

Other stuff:

Last Monday, Rahul and our friend Charlie went gathering mushrooms in the woods. They got lost for about 6 hours, but finally came back with a pile of huge morels that we sauteed in plenty of butter and ate for dinner. (We are all still alive, so I’m pretty confident we correctly identified them.) They were really delicious, even if they look kind of scary and greasy in this photo.

Over the weekend, Rahul and I decided to go looking for morels again. It was a fruitless search as far as the mushrooms were concerned, but I did see some beautiful tulip tree blossoms lying in the leaves:

and I found a box turtle:

–both enthralling and exotic temperate-climate treasures for a native Californian! Look at that grumpy turtle face! We don’t really see such things in the wild on the West Coast, though we do have lots of salamanders and live oaks in our forests, which I’m sure would be exotic for a Hoosier born and bred. It was great, though, very spring-green and picturesque. Unfortunately, I got awful allergies and later found a tick in my bed. (Ew!)

That was Saturday. On Sunday, we went out and took some photos for my new pattern, the Windflower Scarf.

The green and brown one is Patons SWS in Natural Earth (I love how it worked out with the self-striping yarn!) and the purple one is Manos Silk Blend in Violets. The pattern is reversible, and very simple and relaxing to knit, mostly garter stitch with a few patterned rows thrown in every now and then. Isn’t the stitch pattern pretty? I might also adapt it into a cowl pattern with a bit of leftover Malabrigo so I can see how it works up in a semisolid yarn.

Next up in my knitting queue: some Malabrigo Lace in Cadmium, a very bright golden-YELLOW!, selected by my best friend as the color she’d like for a shawl to wear at her wedding this summer.

The celadon backdrop is one of Rahul’s paintings (not sure if it’s in progress still or if that’s going to be it, Mark Rothko-style). I have a strict deadline for this shawl, mid-July, so wish me luck–if my original design goes to hell, I’ll probably have to make her a last-minute Swallowtail Shawl or something.

Oh! And before I forget, another “OMG Ravelry is soooo great” story. Friday night, after work, Rahul and I went for a bike ride around town so we could enjoy the glorious spring weather. We stopped by the chemistry building to say hi to chemgrrl, but I didn’t know where exactly her office was, so we were unsuccessful. We rode up to the north side of campus, and I finally saw the beaver who lives in the hedgerow alongside the train tracks; along the way, we passed Nicole, who was out jogging. On the way back down, we passed her again and stopped to talk for a while. It seemed like a good evening to sit outside and have a drink, so we split a half bottle of Sauvignon Blanc at the Runcible Spoon, and spotted Saibh and her husband on their way out of the restaurant. It was a nice evening. I went home and found the Ravelry Friday Night Open Mic #1 thread, in which Ravelry users around the world called up and left messages (transcribed by an automatic transcription service). I was thrilled to hear exotic accents and see the mess the voice recognition system had made of some messages… “I’m addicted to Ravelry!”->”I’m addictive to robbery” was one of my favorites. So I left my own message about how cool it was that I’d randomly run into two different Ravelry friends while we were out and about on a Friday night in Bloomington, and in the same thread, saw a shout-out from hapagirl, yet another Ravelry friend from Bloomington (or Bounington, rather, as the transcription would have it.) I felt like I was in a TV commercial about how Ravelry Brings People Together–running into friends, hearing these little “hello!” messages from all over the world, it was great.

Plus, I had a lovely breakfast this morning at the Uptown Cafe with some of my knitting group (Leigh, Nicole, Kalani, blogless Norma: hi guys!) with only a little bit of knitting involved, but a lot of delicious cottage cheese pancakes. These days, since I work from home and I’m naturally a night owl, there is very little that will induce me to get up at 7 AM. A meeting for work, a plane to catch, or, apparently, pancakes with friends at the Uptown.

cotlin, cotlin, mama’s little baby loves cotlin yarn

I have two new finished objects to show you, both made from Knit Picks Cotlin yarn in Moroccan Red, an inexpensive DK weight cotton-linen blend. I blogged about it before here, when I made a Bainbridge Scarf with it for my friend Jeanne.

Now that I’ve used it a bit more, some further thoughts: the color of this yarn is lovely and bright, and the yarn is pretty soft and drapey as far as I can tell. The two things I disliked about it were the occasional long, pokey fibers I would have to pull out of the yarn, presumably bits of flax, and its tendency to shed red fuzz as I was knitting with it (mentioned in my last post). It made me feel sneezy, and if I washed my hands after knitting with it for a while, little red fuzz pills would rub off my palms. These skeins seemed less fuzzy than the one I knit before–maybe it’s the effect of aging the yarn a bit.

I was undecided before, but I’ve decided I like it after all and I would use it again, especially since they’ve added a bunch of new colors that are right up my alley. Of the old ones, only this red and the natural linen color really appealed to me. Maybe Nightfall. But I wasn’t crazy about the sherbet colors like coral and turquoise. I love all the new ones, though–Coffee, Glacier, and Kohlrabi are all beautiful.

The Cotlin yarn for these two new FOs and the Bainbridge scarf is all from the same batch. I got it from chemgrrl, who bought too much for her super-adorable Cherry sweater. I was curious about it, so she gave me the skein I made into the Bainbridge scarf, and then she swapped me the sweater quantity, plus some mohair, for some Elann Den-m-nit
I had so she could make a jacket or something for her small niece.

I had it lined up for a lobster for a friend’s baby, but I’ll have to find a different red yarn for that, because the Cotlin is now all used up!

First up, Rusted Root! (Wow, it’s been ages since I’ve done a proper FO post)

Pattern: Rusted Root, from Zephyr Style, given to me as a Random Act of Kindness by knottygnome
Size made: Small (for 32-35″ bust), although my gauge wound up being off and the sweater measured about 34″ before blocking when it should have been 32″. Not that the pattern tells you this, of course.
Yarn used: Knit Picks Cotlin, Moroccan Red, approximately 4.5 skeins
Needles used: US size 7/4.5 mm Denises for most of the sweater; US size 3/3.25 mm for the ribbing on the sleeves
Date started: May 5, 2008
Date finished: May 11, 2008
Mods: More tedious details about size and yarn usage can be found on the Ravelry page. I started with the neckline ribbing (since you pick up the same number of stitches as you cast on, in the same ratio, without short rows or any such things going on, I see no particular reason to pick up the neckline later) and worked 5 rows instead of 3, using the larger needles instead of going down a size. I did paired M1 increases around the raglan seam lines (lift from back and knit through front loop, k2, lift from front and knit through back loop).

I totally reworked the waist shaping, and then my gauge was off and I was unable to finish my reworked shaping scheme anyway–after I’d worked only 3 sets of hip increases out of my desired 5, the sweater was long enough and I decided to stop.

I also put in Elizabeth Zimmermann’s phoney seams on the sides before starting the ribbing.

I knit the neck and hip ribbing (about 9 rows) on size 7 needles, since I didn’t want them to draw in particularly, then knit the sleeve ribbing for 5 rows on size 3’s (I used k1fb to increase one on each sleeve to make the k2, p1 ribbing pattern work properly).

I used a sewn bindoff for the sleeves to make them stretchy, and a suspended bindoff in rib for the hip (since I hate sewing with that long, long tail over long distances… I really should have used the sewn bindoff at the hip, too; it could definitely be stretchier, but it’s not terrible as is, either.)

Notes:
I hope to have more photos later. It’s unblocked and hot off the needles in this photo (so it’s all uneven and lumpy, and it’s being worn over a clearly unsuitable tunic top instead of a camisole).

The thing is, I committed a Cardinal Sin of knitting with this sweater. I didn’t knit or wash my swatch the way I would wash my finished garment–I knit a flat swatch instead of one in the round (hence the aforementioned gauge issues), then hand-washed and laid it flat instead of machine-washing and drying. Then I finished the sweater and threw it in the washer and dryer. We’ll see what happens! Hopefully I can still wear the sweater afterwards. It seems silly to have to hand-wash and flat dry what is essentially a t-shirt, so if it’s not easy care, I guess I might as well find out now instead of after it’s a cherished essential piece in my wardrobe and I accidentally toss it in the hamper. Anyway, I did read up on it beforehand and people have said it tightens up a bit and takes very well to machine washing. Not sure about drying. If it’s a disaster, I surely will have notes on it in the near future–it’s in the dryer as I type this. Wish me luck!

While I think the finished top is really cute, I did find the pattern kind of weird and annoying to work with at certain points, for a few minor reasons. Believe me, I totally understand the headaches of trying to sort these things out when drafting a pattern, and I don’t think I could do any better (people who live in glass houses shouldn’t point fingers at other people’s pattern-writing abilities!) but nonetheless, should you be in the market for Zephyr Style patterns and wondering about how they’re written, let me tell you what my gripes with this were:

• No schematics in the pattern. This is the biggest annoyance. I couldn’t decide if I should make the XS or the S (since both cover a 32” bust)–seems like the S gives a 32” actual bust size, meaning negative ease if you’re on the larger end of the range. I wasn’t sure if the sleeves would actually fit over my biceps (thankfully, they did)–I had an issue with the sleeves being too tight on my Green Gable and had to redo my bind-offs on that top before I could actually wear it. There is also no information about the intended or modeled ease.
• No stitches put on hold/cast on at the underarm. Just a note, not a gripe (yet). I’ve just seen the put 8%-of-underarm-stitches-on-hold thing in numerous patterns, though I’m not sure what type of functional difference it makes in the fit. I’ll see how it fits when it’s done and washed.
• Asymmetrical waist shaping decreases. OK, actually, there’s nothing wrong with this, but I kind of like symmetrical ssk/k2tog shaping on either side of a seam instead of using just k2tog on one side of the seam.
• Very sparse with the stitch counts. I’m pretty sure I got it right, but it would have been very helpful to see a detailed breakdown of stitch counts in the puff sleeve increase/decrease sections in particular so I could easily double-check my work and see if everything was OK. I’m not personally bothered by the lack of information about the increase rounds, as I’m capable of figuring out the number of increases per increase round from looking at the directions, but a beginner might have issues.
• The lace is not charted out, and sl1-k1-psso is written as 3 separate steps (separated by commas) which confuses me since the 3 steps consume 2 stitches and result in 1 stitch. I prefer seeing it written using hyphens/dashes. In any case, I rewrote it using ssk.
• The lace also calls for you to read your knitting on every other round, knitting into the knit stitches and YOs and purling into the purls. I don’t mind this, but again, if you’re a beginner, it might be easier to have it specified as “Row 10: K7, p2, k6″ etc.
• As someone’s notes somewhere on the internet point out (I can’t find them now, of course), the poof in the sleeves tends to vanish for many people, probably because of the tiered increases–i.e. XS and S have the same number of increases for the puffed sleeves, meaning the XS sleeves will be puffier than the S in proportion to the rest of the sweater, and the same deal for M/L, XL/XXL. We’ll see how mine come out. I don’t have my heart set on it either way.
• Not a lot of information about the techniques they use. M1 is specified as Make One, but there are at least 4 different actual increases that could mean. The instructions for knitting the sleeves on two circulars are very sparse (they tell you to divide the stitches onto two circulars and knit in the round, but I can see this potentially causing issues for a beginner who wasn’t familiar with the technique). No cast-on is specified, even though they specify that you should use the backwards loop cast-on in their FAQ because apparently a lot of people were having issues with their necklines or underarm seams binding because the cast-on wasn’t stretchy enough.

It’s been ages since I made Green Gable, but I remember having some of the same issues with that top as well.

Anyway–I’m excited about wearing it, so thank you again for the pattern, knottygnome! I desperately hope it fits when it comes out of the dryer.

I had a bit of the yarn left over, about half a skein, so I cast on for a dishcloth.

Pattern: Yvonne’s Double Flower Cloth
Yarn used: Knit Picks Cotlin, Moroccan Red, approximately 1 skein
Needles used: A set of 5 US size 8/5 mm bamboo DPNs (sort of annoying–they kept falling out of the stitches. Two circs or magic loop would be easier to deal with)
Date started: May 12, 2008
Date finished: May 13, 2008

Mods: I was trying to use up the half-skein of yarn left over from my Rusted Root–I ran out of yarn at row 31 and had to rummage around to find the other half-skein of yarn left over from the Bainbridge Scarf so I could finish the cloth. I had some left over, so I knit a little garter stitch loop to use for hanging the cloth up to dry (just cast on 3 sts, knit every row for maybe 2 inches, folded it over, picked up stitches from the base of the loop and knit them together with the live stitches) and used the rest of the yarn to single-crochet around the outer border of the washcloth. Also, I used a lighter weight yarn and larger needles than recommended.
Notes: I don’t know the last time I spent so little time on a project and wound up with something so pretty and functional! Again, this photo is before washing and drying the cloth, so the knitting isn’t terribly even-looking. I think this is a great pattern, though–very easy to follow and fast to knit, with beautiful results.

Kitchen: 2. Me: 0.

So the other day I was working at the dining table while Rahul was making dinner. Suddenly there’s a sort of scream from the kitchen, I look up, and there is a giant sheet of flame roaring up from one of the pots on the stove. All the smoke alarms in the house start screeching, of course, adding to the general air of panic and confusion as we tried to find a lid to stop the flame–I grabbed one and gave it to him, it turned out to be too small and just kind of dropped neatly into the pot, where the flames shot up all around it and the plastic lid handle started to melt; I ran and got the fire extinguisher, we balked at actually using it and getting foam all over the kitchen; and eventually we found the actual lid for the pot and clamped it down on top to stop the flames.

We have cathedral ceilings, so the smoke alarms are really hard to reach and turn off, so Rahul ended up batting one of the madly beeping alarms off the ceiling with a broom handle like he was hitting a home run. Cursing madly, we carried the pot (leaking dirty gray smoke) outside to our balcony and put it down on a pallet that we’d conveniently retrieved while dumpster diving (thank God we had it, instead of having to put the pot directly on the balcony, because the heat of it permanently burned a round black circle into the wood.)

Rahul lifted the lid off the pot, thinking the fire had surely smothered itself by that time, and a giant fireball shot out of the pot, reinvigorated by the sudden burst of oxygen, and narrowly missing burning off his eyebrows.

Then this morning, I figured I would make a bagel with peanut butter for breakfast. (Our friend Jason used to run a bagel shop in Long Island, and he gave us a bunch of frozen bagels from there that have been sitting in our freezer and providing us with delicious bagelly sustenance for weeks.) I heated up the oven, put the bagels on a cookie sheet (we don’t have a toaster) and went into the other room. About ten minutes later, Rahul yelled, “I smell smoke!”

“What? Really?” I had put them into a cold oven, not a preheated one, and I usually toast them for at least 15 minutes before taking them out. 10 minutes seemed way too early for it to burn.

But I opened the oven door and a cloud of extremely stinky smoke billowed out. I grabbed the bagel sheet and pulled it out and said, “It’s not the bagel!” The bagel itself was toasted to golden-brown perfection. Instead, for some reason, there was a tea light in the bottom of the oven, leaking molten, smoky wax all over the oven floor.

We couldn’t figure out how it had gotten in there, and thought perhaps it somehow got stuck to the bottom of the cookie sheet when it was on the table. Anyway, the house is full of horrible, smelly wax smoke, it’s cold because all the windows are open to ventilate the house, and I ended up eating Kroger brand potato salad for breakfast because Rahul said the delicious-looking wax-smoked bagel might poison me.

I think we must have offended the kitchen gods somehow. I am normally a confident mistress of that domain, but things are seriously not going well between us and the kitchen at the moment. At the very least, we cooked a very delicious meal the night the pot caught fire–wild morels scavenged from the woods and sauteed in butter, fagioli all’uccelletto (sort of, anyway–pinto beans with garlic, sage, tomatoes, bay leaf, and olive oil cooked in our new hand-me-down crock pot until meltingly tender), orzo, skillet cornbread…

Anyway, with all that excitement, I’m so glad I have a new project on the needles. A very simple, soothing, what-could-possibly-go-wrong sort of project: a Scrunchable Scarf made of some two-ply, worsted-weight handspun–the roving was labeled as Cotswold-Angora-Bamboo-Angelina but may have been mislabeled, as there is definitely no sign of glitz and the roving appeared to be a pretty uniform gray fluff. I dyed it with Kool-Aid to an overall sort of raspberry color (intended to have a more varied, hand-painted, look, but it’s OK, it’s nice anyway), cast on 21 stitches, and got started with the k2-p1 ad infinitum.

No matter how much I love the look of knitting acrobatics and show-off patterns, I love the process of knitting simple ribbed or brioche scarves–so relaxing and easy. This one is coming out sproingy and cushy and very rustic-looking–I didn’t spin it very evenly, and the yarn is pretty woolly and fuzzy anyway, so it almost looks like a boucle yarn when knit up, full of little lumps and bumps.

I also made myself a little chart to see how the farrow rib pattern used in the Scrunchable Scarf differs from one of my other favorite stitch patterns, mistake rib.

Farrow rib (*k2, p1* over a multiple of 3 stitches):
ppkppk
pkkpkk

Mistake rib (*k2, p2*, ending with k2, p1, over a multiple of 4 sts + 3):

ppkkppk
pkkppkk

They both contain a column of moss stitch (alternating knit and purl) and columns of knit and purl stitches, but the farrow rib has some adjacent knit and purl columns, while in mistake rib the knit and purl columns are always separated by a column of moss stitch. This emphasizes the rises and dips of the knit and purl columns, while farrow rib comes out flatter because the knits are right next to the purls.

Also, I finished my Rusted Root and made a very pretty dishcloth with the leftovers (such a quick, pretty pattern), went to a knitting art show and MAKS with chemgrrl (she has a full report on her blog; I didn’t take photos because my camera doesn’t work well in low light with no flash) and have already made something really wonderful with my purchase from MAKS. Pictures next time! And I am tons of work and am feeling terribly behind with all the actual important stuff I should be taking care of, responding to emails and working on patterns and such, but hopefully I will have time for that in the next few days as well, assuming the kitchen doesn’t burn down in the meantime.

Since I don’t have photos of actual knitting-related things to show you, instead, here are some more pictures from the Monroe County History Museum. They had an exhibit featuring people’s personal collections. This person collects accordions and accordion-themed objects; here are some of the prizes from their collection.

I would totally vote for Sophia Travis.

Quilts

Graduation came and went; the keynote speaker was Steve Bellamy, we met various parents and had a buffet lunch, and it was all strangely anticlimactic.

We spent the weekend at parties and lakeside picnics and dumpster diving–that last a particularly depressing lesson in the American Way, as we stared into a dumpster outside a frat house full of lovely solid wood furniture, smashed into pieces and wasted just for the hell of it. Rahul got some scrap wood for arts and crafts projects, and I salvaged a large jug of laundry detergent and almost an entire case of Cup O’ Noodles, the cardboard sleeves damp from the rain or other unspecified dumpster grossness, but the noodles still sealed tight and clean in their styrofoam cups and plastic wrap.

I got a bit of sewing done–no pictures yet, but I do have a lovely new top made of a Japanese bunny print cotton, with little pearly buttons on the yoke, and 4 yards of fabric from the new quilt store in town, Shiisa Quilts. The store is small but welcoming, with a wide selection of pretty, pretty fabrics. Amy Butler, Kaffe Fassett, various other bright, super-modern prints that made Rahul cringe (he strongly prefers the subtle 1800’s-style florals and calicos).

They have a whole section of really nice clearance fabrics, all $4 a yard–I have 2 yards of a Martha Negley Rowan/Westminster print, burgundy striped with tree trunks, and 2 yards of an eggplant and white Japanese print of dragonflies. Both were intended for skirts, but I saw this tutorial for a smocked dress and just might try it. There’s this one, too, using elastic thread on the bobbin. I am not sure this will be a particularly flattering look on me, but it seems like a nice, easy way to make a comfy summer sundress.

On the same theme, here are some photos of the quilt exhibit I went to recently at the Monroe County History Museum. The theme was the juxtaposition of stained glass and quilting (stained glass quilts and cathedral window quilts, specifically).

Stained glass is apparently commonly taught in high school art classes in Southern Indiana. Some of these windows were made by high school kids.

This one is a historic window taken from a farmhouse. I like the simplicity of this piece, the fact that the curators felt that simple rectangular panes of faintly colored glass were worthy of display in a museum alongside saturated, rococo glass pictures of birds and flowers.

The first category of quilts in the display was stained glass quilts, which are basically applique based on stained glass window designs, and finished with black binding around the edges to simulate the leading in stained glass windows.

The second category was cathedral window quilts, which I wasn’t familiar with before. They’re not made like traditional quilts, with a backing, batt, quilting through the layers, and binding around the edges. Instead, they’re hand-sewn, square by square, and due to the way they’re assembled, they’re lightweight, with a naturally presentable wrong side that does not need to be covered with a backing. The background is traditionally made from multiple muslin squares that form a frame for bright little scraps of calico. Most of the quilts in the exhibit fell into this category, and I loved the way they looked.

This photo shows a cathedral window square in progress, and explains the process.

Some quilts had squared-off edges, and others left one side of the squares open to form a pointed edge.

More photos of quilts (mostly blurry) can be found in this Flickr set, in addition to buttons, pewter Vikings, and vintage cars, all of which will be blogged later.

In knitting news, I caved into the allure of summer knitting and have cast on for Rusted Root in bright red Cotlin as my new mindless knitting project. The pattern was a gift, a random act of kindness from the fabulous knottygnome, and the yarn was from a swap for some denim yarn with the fabulous chemgrrl. I’m about halfway through the raglan now, and the fabric is looking kind of floppy and uneven, but I’m hoping that a nice wash and block will sort everything out.

Last but not least, do you live in Indiana? Have you voted? The deadline is 6 PM today!

hello! Still here

Barely, anyway. Rahul is graduating tomorrow, and while not every day has been jam-packed with farewells and parties, it’s been busy and I’ve been lacking the mental energy to blog.

Some highlights of the week:

I received the two balls of roving I ordered from woolmill.com. I apparently accidentally ordered 8 oz. of the alpaca/wool/silk Cappucino blend instead of 4–I guess it was cheaper than I thought. I’ve spun a tiny bit of the Autumn Oak roving and I’m looking forward to seeing how it looks after it’s plied. However, nothing else I’ve been spinning has had the same lovely handle as the Handspun by Stefania Corriedale. Maybe the Cappucino roving will be nice.

Went to an event called “Asianfest” at the farmer’s market last weekend, where I got to eat some Korean chap chae (noodle salad? Not sure what to call it) and have had a fierce craving for Korean food ever since.

Saw a vintage car show, including a real DeLorean! Also got to see a cool quilt exhibit at the history museum, for free. I have pictures of both events, but haven’t gotten them off the camera yet.

Went to a party where we spent a good part of the time watching a show called “Disorder in the Court”–nominally about ridiculous courtroom scenes like this, but including things like the “Don’t Tase Me, Bro” video and a riot in the streets after a canceled punk show.

Finally finished my Butterick Walk-Away Dress. Lord, that’s a lot of bias binding! And curved hems! Despite hours of pinning and trimming and adjusting, it still doesn’t really fit right… It looked fine before I sewed on the bias binding, but the bound edges sort of stick out, so it gaps at the sides where it wraps, and I’m not quite sure what to do about that. It’s cute overall, though! I love the circle skirt and the color combination. And I suppose nobody will be looking at my hem so closely that they’ll notice the crappy job I did hemming it. (Also, I made a new skirt–”made” is a bit strong; I cut off about 2 feet from a giant brown plaid maxi-skirt I got for $2 from the thrift store to make a nice little preppy number that will be perfect to wear in about 5 months.)

Went to a farewell business school BBQ and played cornhole for the first time. It was harder than I’d thought.

Had a goodbye dinner at the local Ethiopian restaurant with a friend who’s moving to Turkey for the summer. I may not see her before we leave for Madison.

Went to see Barack Obama’s rally at Assembly Hall last night. We had to wait a long time for him to get onstage, and there wasn’t really anything groundbreaking in the speech, but it was still exciting. Summary here. Election Day in Indiana is next Tuesday, and polls close pretty early, at 6 PM, so I’m glad I took some time out to vote early so I won’t be scrambling to get down to the polls in time. Are you in Indiana? Have you voted yet? Go vote! For Obama! And don’t forget your picture ID issued by either Indiana or the federal government.

One of the friends we were there with said, “It’s been a long time since I’ve been to one of these.”

“What was the last one you went to?”

“A rally for Bush in 2000.”

And oh yeah, knitting. Aren’t these Knit Picks lace samplers pretty? I love the colors of Shadow.

The WEBS May Anniversary Sale yarns are up. But I urge you, from the bottom of my urging place, to also check out their regular closeout yarns while you’re there. Specifically, this is an amazing deal. Filatura di Crosa Superior for just over $13 a skein–just about the price of Kidsilk Haze, for 100 more yards a skein and a brushed cashmere/silk fiber content instead of kid mohair/silk.

I’ve been trying to work on my own patterns as much as possible, which means, of course, that suddenly all I want to do is knit other people’s patterns. It’s finally the right weather to cast on for some summery tops–Cherry with the lavender Rowan Calmer I have stashed away for it, or Rusted Root with my bright red CotLin, or maybe, to keep the chill off, the Half Circle Cardigan with my gorgeous mulberry Shibui Sock. To make matters worse, the IK 2008 Summer Preview is up, and I would love to make the Wallis Cardigan or the Apres Surf Hoodie.

Anyway, Rahul’s parents are coming tonight to attend his graduation tomorrow, and so I should really go clean the house and do my work so we’ll be ready for their visit. Hopefully, I’ll have a more interesting post next time.