Knitting Between the Lines

An FO in fabric

2009-01-29T13:47:00.003-05:00

I never really know how I get obsessed with certain ideas. Suffice it to say, recently I decided that our bedding needed a facelift. We'd been using a tan duvet cover with a really basic pattern on it, somewhat leafy and flowery without offending Coffeeboy's lack of interest in overly feminine bedroom decorations. The comforter, however, was proving too hot for a house in the south with the heater located in the attic right above the bed, so we'd switched to using a lightweight down blanket covered by a nice quilt. I missed the scrunchy comfortableness of down, though, so I found a lighter-weight down comforter on sale and bought it. According to my measurements, however, it wouldn't fit in our old comforter cover. Of course, I now see that my measurements might have been wrong, which was perhaps simply an excuse to try a new type of project...

... that of making a duvet cover with a quilted top. I decided I didn't want to hurt the nice quilt we'd been using by making it into a duvet cover; besides, it would have been too warm. So maybe if I made a patchwork quilt top and quilted it to the middle layer, leaving the space between the middle and bottom layers to stuff the duvet into, it would work. I searched the internet and found this inspiration. Coffeeboy asked it it had to be so flowery, and I said, no, "not necessarily." (It's still flowery. Maybe not as flowery as he hoped to avoid, though!)

I bought some fabric and laid it on the bed to make sure it would look all right. I bought a yard of each fabric in order to have plenty of material to play around with. I also bought a white king-sized sheet for the middle layer and a pretty blue sheet for the bottom layer and borders. The king size would give me room to fiddle with on a queen-sized bed. (Actually, my first fabric purchases didn't work; they were too dark, so I went back and got others, which you see here). Magellan, the most frequent denizen of the bed since she's there both night and day, watched on curiously.

I cut the fabric into big blocks (less sewing that way), and laid them out on the bed to see what looked nice.

Not bad, not bad! But now I had to sew. And sew, and sew.

I don't know why, but the sewing machine sort of scares me. Ok, not quite scares, but it's so much more complicated than a wheel or two knitting needles. All those settings, sharp points moving rapidly... it's never been my forte. Plus, you have to have the iron on all the time, heating up the room, and the bulb in the machine makes everything around it hot, too. I also tore around the house trying to find the manual, just to make sure I was using the right needle and so on, and I couldn't find it. The cats looked on in alarm: why was I running around and tearing into things as if I were as crazy as they are?

Eventually I plunged ahead without the manual, sewing, sewing. My goodness, was it a lot of fabric.

So much fabric that eventually the machine protested and I needed to do some basic maintenance, but I didn't have the manual. Coffeeboy, wanting me to return from the land of obsessive sewing, no doubt, found it online for me, and downloaded it, the better to get his spouse back, I expect. I had been sewing Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday... it was time to finish the thing so we could use it (and so that we could finally watch the Lost series premiere and retrospective, something the sewing hadn't permitted)!

I laid the quilt/duvet cover out on the living room floor, much to Juniper's amusement. "What is this new rug," she must have wondered! Magellan came into the room and demonstrated that it wasn't a rug: she promptly pounced on the fabric just as she often does with our bedcovers. Was it ever huge! It was as big as our living room rug! Had I really sewed that much in just a few days?!

A little more sewing proved that the effort was well worth it!

Magellan also checked out her new napping environs, and seemed well-pleased with the results.

The comforter and its cover are cozy, just the right warmth, and such pretty colors! I almost feel that I've never made such a "me" project before. I love the colors; they make me think of daffodils and spring days. The cover reminds me of my favorite childhood blankie, a patchwork quilt with colorful squares. (I swear, that wasn't intentional. I'm not sure what it means that as a grown-up, I've made a patchwork quilt for my bed. I'm sure Freud would have a word or two or three to say. I'm not going to worry about that, though; it's cute and cozy; I made it myself, and I learned a lot while doing so!)

Coffeeboy seems to like it too; he keeps calling it "folk art." I'm not sure that's a good thing, as such a designation refers to things like my amateur attempts to add snaps, and when those didn't work, buttonholes, using those extra buttons that come with clothes that I've stashed for years on end.

I'm really glad I tried out the buttonholes; this forced me to use the buttonhole foot on my sewing machine and realize that it's really not that hard, at all, to do. Maybe I can actually do this sewing thing after all! Next time, of course, I'll have to measure more carefully, get a little bit better at sewing a straight line, and well... I'm not at all known for my spatial and geometric abilities, to put it mildly, so if a lack of right angles, a slightly too-snug comforter cover, and some funky buttons make something "folk art," then so be it. I'm quite pleased with the results; they are oh-so-comfy, and I'm a little bit surprised I did it at all!

Paris stole my needles

2009-01-09T11:00:00.001-05:00

Coffeeboy and I had a great time in Austria, eating wonderful food, seeking out vegetarian and fishy alternatives to wienerschnitzel, tasting beers, and taking in the music of Hadyn and Mozart in churches filled with worshippers and fellow tourists.

But he's still in Salzburg, at a conference, and he has the camera, so I can't show you pictures yet. Instead, I have to tell you about my return journey, in which, among other things, the Paris security people took my magic loop away from me! Horrors!

The return started early on Tuesday morning, 4:30 am Vienna time, when I and my under-the-weather honey trudged to the airport bus. (He went with me, kind soul that he is, to make sure I got there OK). Turns out that in Vienna at 4:30 AM on a Tuesday, there are lots of bars still open, and enthusiastic drunk people stumbling around the streets. Other than that, it seemed pretty safe.

Once at the airport, I checked in on Austrian Airlines, en route to Paris. They checked my bag through Cincinnati, because I'd have to go through customs in Cincinnati (but I still needed to fly from there to Atlanta to Asheville to get home!). On my way through security, I could tell they were scrutinizing my knitting materials. In English with a strong flavor of Austria, they asked me, "You have scissors?" I showed them my little 1" sewing kit scissors, heroic travelers on many flights. "No, bigger," said the guard. So I pulled out my Monkey sock, sitting on a knitpicks size 1 (2.25mm) 32" needle. They examined the needles, checking out the way in which, when laid side by side, they resembled scissors, and sent me on my way, needles and sock intact. After that, everything went smoothly; I slept on the flight.

I arrived in Paris, Charles de Gaulle, at about 9:30 AM. I had a couple of hours to change flights, which was good, since I still needed to check in with Air France for my connecting flight. Or so I thought. After wandering around a terminal, trying to figure out where, on earth, to check in for flights, I finally found an Air France person to ask, and he looked up my flight. At first it seemed he couldn't find my flight, but then he realized I needed to check in with Delta, who was operating the flight, a ten-minute walk away in another terminal. So off I went, tired, needing a bathroom, badly wanting a pain au chocolat. (This was as close to Paris as I'd get this trip, so why not?)

Finally I walked into the Delta part of a terminal, where I was confronted with a seriously long line, and the unfortunate sight of very tired people sitting on the floor huddled around their baggage, with further bags under their eyes. I heard an American accent, and asked what was going on. Apparently the 3" of snow I'd seen upon landing had caused considerable delays and cancellations the day before, and the long line was full of people from yesterday trying to check in. There went my plans for both a bathroom and a lovely pastry treat. I stood in line, and stood in line, and stood in line.

Finally, after about an hour (and about 40 feet and one small cup of coffee they were handing out) I got to a small desk about 2/3 of the way up, where two women were asking passengers questions about their luggage (has it been with you always, has anyone given you packages, etc). In my sleep deprived state, I think I answered one of the questions wrong. Since my luggage had been checked in Vienna, that was suspicious. Since I was flying alone, they were even more suspicious and then somehow it came out that I'd been traveling with my husband, but he had stayed behind. So then they asked me how long I'd been married, and how well I knew my husband. This wasn't very funny to me; Coffeeboy is a wonderful upstanding man, and the thought of him using me to smuggle things into the US was just plain absurd. I couldn't say that to the woman who didn't speak English well, though, and needed to be polite, so I held my frustration and conveyed my faith in my sweetie's honesty. She might have marked something on my travel documents, though, as you'll see later...

Once passed that hurdle, I darted off to find a bathroom, locating one that actually didn't have a line, and then to find myself a much-desired pain au chocolat. Luckily there was a French bakery chain right there, Paul, so I stepped inside. I couldn't remember how to ask for anything in French, because my head was too full of German (and I actually know a bit of German, whereas I know about 5 words in French), so I simply said hopefully, "pain au chocolat"? And the cashier shook her head. Darn. I saw a basket plain croissant, though, and said, "due croissant." At least I'd get some sort of tasty treat out of this adventure!

After that came the security lines. If the previous lines were an hour long, you can imagine how long the security lines were. When I finally walked through the x-ray, I could see that the technicians were spending time on my bag, yet again, and once more, and I thought, oh no. Sure enough, when my carry-on came out, they took it to the special desk and beckoned me over. They quickly located my magic loop sock (it was near the top as I'd been knitting in line), and frowned. Then they spoke amongst themselves in French and the only word I caught was "crochet." I didn't know if these two French men were simply ignorant of the finer points of fiber paraphenalia, or if the word for "knitting" in French indeed sounded like "crochet," but it didn't matter, because they switched to English and uttered my fate:

"Is forbidden."

I replied: "But in Vienna they said it was OK."

"Is not Vienna. Is Paris," came the entirely expected answer. I thought to myself, oh yes, I probably shouldn't have stepped on those particular toes! Then they asked, "Do you have scissors," gesturing that I could cut off the offending five inches of metal. At that, I could only stare. Did I have scissors? Wasn't this a security checkpoint? Shouldn't I not have scissors, not even my little 1" sewing scissors which they seemed not to have noticed?

Because it was a security checkpoint, I said, "No, I don't," and hoped they didn't find the little scissors. Instead I asked, "Is wood OK," but they apparently didn't know the word for "wood." So I pulled out my 6" bamboo DPNs and asked, "Are these OK?"

The security guards consulted. "Is OK." Then while standing at the security table, I laboriously transferred the heel onto on DPN, and the held stitches of the top of the foot to the other. Had I been less tired and felt that comedy was appropriate, I might have dramatized it, transferring three stitches and glancing at the guards, then transferring three more. As it was, I just did them all, and then held the magic loop needle for them to take. At least I had the DPNs, but oh my... never had I had my knitting meddled with by security!

I arrived late to Cincinnati, of course, because of the delays in Paris. I went through customs just fine -- the only thing I had to declare was 6 balls of Regia sock yarn, bought on sale in a real live German knitting store (more on that later). I got my suitcase, rechecked it on US Air (onto which I'd been rebooked), and went off to get my boarding passes. I took the train to one terminal, and found that Delta didn't have them, so I hiked over to US Air and got my passes and went to security.

Whereupon they asked to see my other boarding passes. I thought, Great, they'll see I've been through security at least three times today, and let me through. No such luck. The "$$$$" on my ticket meant special screening, not "already screened way too much, with needles stolen besides." Had my confused answers to the security questions put a black mark on my ticket? I'll never know...

Now, Cincinnati had a device I'd never seen before. A box into which you step, and then it blew a loud and vigorous puff of air at me. I jumped and started to panic while I waited for the light to turn green and the doors to open. I hadn't expected that - and besides, it was 6 pm on the East Coast, midnight in Vienna, and I'd been traveling for about 20 hours at that point. Finally the doors opened, I went through the usual x-ray device, and a woman who in any other situation would have looked kindly took my bags and started poking through them. It was all I could do not to cry as she swabbed things and fiddled with my beloved iPod touch.

Finally I got out of there, got myself a bagel for dinner, and sat down to wait for my flight. I flew from Cincinnati to Charlotte, and from Charlotte to Asheville, sleeping on the flights so I didn't crash on the drive home. I got home just after midnight, or 6 AM in Austria. The cats were hungry and happy to see me. I had been awake for twenty-six and a half hours. I had traveled on four different airlines and seen five different airports, lost some needles and good bit of sanity. Day was dawning across the ocean, I fell asleep right away and slept the whole night through. The absolute worst travel of my life was over.

Hats off to the holidays

2008-12-27T23:39:00.002-05:00

My previous felted hat turned out well enough that I decided to do some quick knitting, and I finished up two more felted hats, one for my mother-in-law (blue and black), and one for my mom (in her favorite shade of green, to match a scarf I knit a couple of years ago).

I figured the moms would prefer it if a lampshade modeled the hats, rather than their faces! Both women admired their hats and forgave things like seeing the hat drying on the bowl+orange juice jug hat-drying contraption and seeing me stitch the contrasting bands onto the hats in their very presences... during which I'd reveal that this hat was not, in fact, another felted knit for myself, but something for them to take home. I didn't exactly intend it to go this way, and would have preferred the whole official opening-the-present routine, but life being what it was, I'm just glad they were finished on time!

Coffeeboy and I had a lovely week with first his mom, and then my mom and her friend. We celebrated the first night of Hannukah one night early with my MIL, and then we celebrated Christmas two days early with my mom... and ever since then, my clock has been somewhat messed up!

The big triumph of the week, on December 21st, was getting the antique wheel to spin!

I haven't had too much time to play around with Eleanor yet, but I really want to confirm that she still works! I've found out that she was most likely not an old family antique; my grandmother says that neither her mom nor her own grandmother were spinners, so the wheel, so far as she knows, doesn't come from them. She had no idea where my aunt and uncle got it from, but all I can say is that I'm grateful it came from somewhere, because it's a beautiful treasure to have.

Speaking of being confused about the time, Coffeeboy and I head off to Austria and Munich, Germany, tomorrow, for a fun New Years' trip! His dean asked him to return to the early January conference he went to last year, so this time we took advantage of the advance notice and booked a trip for the two of us the week before the conference. Tomorrow we're off to Europe! I will certainly keep my eyes out for any gems of a yarn store in my travels!

A very special WIP

2008-12-18T14:22:00.004-05:00

When I drove home from New Jersey last week, I packed a very special item into my car. I took it apart carefully, I wrapped it in towels and secured it with seatbelts, just as you would a new baby you're bringing home for the first time. (OK, not quite just as, but nearly so).

Still confused? I may have alluded to this particular WIP a couple of months back, during my September trip north. I can't seem to find a reference, though, so we'll just have to pretend that I warned you that at some time in the future, something really, really cool would be coming home with me from New Jersey!

This is an antique wheel that, for as long as I can remember, has stood in the front entryway to my aunt and uncle's farm. Ever since I started knitting, and then spinning, I've eyed it occasionally, and when I visited my relatives in September, they got to asking about how spinning worked, and whether or not the wheel in front hall had all its parts. Finally my uncle just came out and said, "what we're driving at is that this wheel is just decorative for us, and we'd love to see it put to use by someone who knows how. Would you like to talk it home with you?" To which I said, in a voice full of emotion, "I would love that."

This most recent trip, we cleaned and polished the wheel. My uncle has an interest in wood-working, and my aunt in horses (so she knows about leather), so with their help, we took parts of the wheel apart, cleaned it with a wood cleaner, and "fed" it with some Howard's Feed n' Wax. My aunt soaked the leather that holds the flyer in some leather toner that she uses for her saddles, and my uncle brought in an awl and mallet to help with some of the small pegs, as well as finding soft cloths and the cleaning and polishing items.

When I headed home, I put the wheel in one seatbelt and wrapped it with a towel, and the bench behind the other passenger seatbelt. I wrapped the wheel's posts, the mother of all, and other parts, in towels on the floor of my car, and upon arrival at home, after greeting Coffeeboy, immediately set to putting it back together again. So now my home has been graced by a truly beautiful wheel. My aunt thinks she remembers seeing it in her grandmother's home -- my great-grandmother's home -- so in her honor, I'm calling the wheel Eleanor.

The wheel has some problems: the maidens and mother of all were wobbly; the flyer and the bobbin don't quite fit right together yet; the drive bands are sometimes crooked and fall off. But with help from the internet (and especially the Antique Spinning Wheel group on Ravelry). I'm getting her put back together again. Hopefully I'll have this WIP up and working in just a little while!

Third hat's the charm

2008-12-15T21:39:00.002-05:00

Well, in my second-to-last post, I showed some funny pictures of a hat that didn't quite fit. The saga has ended, but not without some to-dos in between. The first hat ended up like a glorified cat bed. There was the second hat, a Stirling cloche (Ravelry link) made out of Berroco Ultra Alpaca that ended up looking like a bit of felted muppet. The third hat ended up - just right! Third time's the charm, they say.

Remember this hat? The cat is for size.

Well, here you see the hat on the left - after felting - with a normal-sized beret to the right. Oops!

Glorified cat bed, indeed... Obviously, that wasn't going to work, and I wanted an actual, honest-to-goodness felted hat, only this time, I thought I'd try a nice, classic cloche. So I knit up a bunch of Berroco Ultra Alpaca, foolishly held double.

Thus, the felted muppet. Again, oops.

So, I tried again, determined to get it right this time. Third time's the charm, right? This time, I broke out the Cascade 220, the size 10.5 needles, and about 100 stitches, and cast on for what I hoped would be a charming hat. Cascade 220 is supposed to felt like a charm, right? So why not give it a go, I thought.

This time, it worked out far better than I could have hoped!!

I love this hat! I love it so much I've cast on for another for a holiday gift, and am hoping to do yet another. When I really put my mind to it, I can crank out a big loopy stockinette hat in a few hours, and hopefully have them done for the holidays.

Unfortunately, the other hat - the interview - didn't land me a job. I had a good experience at the interview, though, and learned a lot about what I could do better next time. Now we just need to keep our fingers crossed for a good outcome for both Coffeeboy and myself, somewhere, but that good outcome is looking farther and farther away, much to our disappointment. We started the fall with many good possibilities, and they are all disappearing. I keep trying to keep my chin up about it all, but sometimes it's hard to look on the bright side. Maybe a happy holidays will make the time and waiting pass a little bit better.

Finding a hat that fits

2008-12-01T14:06:00.004-05:00

We've all heard the phrase "if the shoe fits" and "wearing many different hats." Well, this week my life has a little bit of both.

Luckily, it's not shoes, but socks, and these socks fit admirably and they even match!

These are the conference socks made with Regia (details at Ravelry link) that I knit in Chicago and in California, finished a couple of weeks ago and finally photographed. I love that I was able to keep the stripes aligned! This took some doing, unfortunately, in that about halfway through the second ball, there was a knot, and after the knot, the pattern started going backwards. Yes, backwards. So I had to wind down to the end of the ball and re-wind it from the outside in in order to get the colors to stick together. This happened somewhere on the middle of the foot of the second sock. As you can see, it all ended up just fine!

Slightly more scary of course are the hats I need to wear. This hat, for example, is scary just because of its sheer size - its unintended sheer size. Here is Gretel, and it's not half-done yet and it already envelops my face!

Clearly at this point I started thinking about making a felted cabled beret, not just a cabled beret! I also started wondering if this was one hat I just couldn't wear, one that was just too, too big.

There's another really big hat I'm desperately fit my head into (or around, as the case may be), and that's an on-campus interview!!! It's a rural SLAC (that's "small liberal arts college") in Pennsylvania, given that I'm not yet finished with my PhD, I'm really honored to have been asked to campus. Regardless of what happens with the job, this will be an excellent, if nerve-wracking, experience to have. So, while I've been working on a hat that's just plain too big, I've been preparing for my interview.

The toughest part to prepare is my sample class. Can you believe it, I've gotten through graduate school without having to plan my own class from the ground up? I've only been a teaching assistant, meaning that I've led entire classes on material other people (the professors) have picked out. So I have to give a sample class on a topic from the survey course they'd want me to teach. I need to create something that's engaging, that demonstrates my very-much still-evolving teaching style, that fosters discussion and also reveals how do at speaking for a longer amount of time (so, a very very short lecture), and that requires absolutely no advance preparation on the part of the students.

A big hat to put on, indeed.

The Gretel hat, certainly, came out too big. Way too big. This is not a tam, nor a beret -- as Coffeeboy said, it looks like I'm wearing an orthodox Jewish woman's headcovering. I thought perhaps I needed to grow a lot more hair and shape it into dreds or braids to fit the hat around, but either way, this is no tam.

I can only hope that the hat of aspiring scholar, teacher and professor fits a little better... but first, we need to felt this fiber and see if it's destined to be a nice felted tam, a cozy cat bed, or something else entirely!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-29T13:44:00.002-05:00

A little belatedly, I'm wishing all of you a wonderful, happy thanksgiving, full of family, friends, and good food.

Coffeeboy and I, after a summer and a semester of too much traveling, decided to stay home this year and have a cozy vegetarian Thanksgiving for two, complete with leftovers. We ate a soup in a pumpkin (a childhood favorite, always risky given the pumpkin's tendency to collapse; this we avoided by using a pie pumpkin), a cheese-nut loaf, cranberry relish, stuffing, and of course, pumpkin pie.

Mine turned brownish-gray and looked kind of gross, but it tasted fine! I'm not sure why this happened. Coffeeboy's google research reveals that this might have had something to do with either the inclusion of alcohol, too many spices, too-old cloves, or a lack of brown sugar. Whatever the cause, it was my first time using my great-aunt's recipe, which includes brandy and scalded milk, rather than no alcohol and condensed or evaporated milk. I also forgot to read my mom's notations ,which said things like "use 1/2 brown sugar," "use more spices," and "use 3 T brandy instead of 1 T." Given that her pies were never gray or brown, I bet it was my forgetting of brown sugar. Coffeeboy says this confusion necessitates a great deal of experimentation into the methods of pumpkin pie preparation. I'm inclined to agree! ;-)

Fiber Flirtations: Corriedale

2008-11-20T10:41:00.003-05:00

It's been a busy few weeks, as I've worked on fellowship applications and Coffeeboy has prepared for a campus interview. We just returned from that interview yesterday, and he feels it went well. so far as one can tell. The trip took us both across the country for a few days, to the state where I grew up, California. The weather was hot and hazy from fires, quite a change from the early winter temperatures we're having in Western NC.

Thanks for all your good wishes after the conference! Now we'll need them to make it through the next hurdles. We won't know anything else from them until a month from now, though, so it'll be a sort of crazy month of waiting. Meanwhile, he's had another on-campus cancelled for funding reasons (or something like that) and another scheduled for sometime in late January. I'm still waiting to hear from my one interview school, but am not expecting anything until next week or the week after. And of course, if I hear nothing, then that answers that question...

Meanwhile, I've been remiss in updating you on the spinning! As you might guess from the post's title, I'm going to start a "series" of "Fiber Flirtations" in which I'll post about my experiences spinning with different fibers. After all, I collected such a variety at SAFF that now I need to be able to talk about them!

My first "flirtation" isn't really a flirtation, but more of a long series of dates. I spun some Corriedale pretty early on in my spinning adventures (remember this deep red gift yarn?) Corriedale, as I understand it, is a longish wool, very good for beginners, so it made sense for me to spin with it both when I was starting out, trying to go thinner, and also once I wanted to go thick again. The giftee of the red yarn gifted me back with some gorgeous tweedy light-blue corriedale, a whole 12 oz. of it, which I spent much of the spring and early summer spinning. I ended up spinning it much thinner than I'd anticipated, going for a three-ply, hence the long time spent working on it.

I ended up with varying amounts on the bobbins, so I had 2 skeins of three-ply, one of 2-ply, and one of navajo/chain-ply. I think I spun and plied the yarn at a 10:1 ratio and ended up with something between fingering and sport weight. All told there's something like 930 yards there, plenty plenty to make something really nice. I think it'll have to marinate in the stash for a while while I figure out just what's right!

My next spinning adventure in Corriedale took me to Colonial wool, in a navy multi colorway from Paradise Fibers that Coffeeboy gifted me with last year. This time, I wanted to spin it thicker, aiming for a worsted. I got something closer to heavy worsted or bulky than true worsted, but oh well.

The yarn is 8 oz, a three-ply, about 250 yards. I don't remember the ratio I spun this with; probably either 8: or 10:1. I also spun up 8 oz. of the same fiber in a multi-red brick colorway, but I haven't taken pictures of it yet... I think I ended up with about the same amount of yarn, though.

I'm not yet sure what I'll do with all these new yarns; the colonial wool will probably become a hat or a cowl or something like that, I'm just not sure! What I do know is that I have 2 weeks to get a passable draft of the next chapter of the dissertation finished, and that I should probably turn my attention in that direction for a while!

Conference socks

2008-11-06T19:54:00.002-05:00

The conference went well; Coffeeboy's interviews went particularly well, as evidenced by the two campus interviews he's already secured! My interview went, so far as I could tell, as well as could be expected for a first-time interviewee, so we will see what happens. I don't expect to hear from the school I interviewed with for at least two weeks, so I need to hang on and be patient.

The conference itself was - get this - right across the street from Grant Park, site of Obama's recent victory speech and screaming crowds. When we left the hotel Tuesday morning -- the very same hotel Obama would later await the results -- workers were hanging red, white, and blue flags around the hotel; red, white and blue lamps created bright streaks of color on the hotel's facade, and security guards and police cars already waited across the street at the park.

Later that evening, after we'd spent most of the day on the airplane, we arrived home in time to watch the first results come in. As the conclusion came ever closer to a victory for Obama, we had a sudden feeling of regret that we hadn't stayed right there in Chicago one more day, just so we could say that we were there when the nation elected its first African-American president. But no matter, we were home, and at least among the humans, no eye was dry, and even if we weren't there ourselves, our hearts most certainly were, and are.

At the conference, while flying, and while hanging out with friends and family before the conference, I got a fair amount of knitting done, as you can see! The colors of the Regia sock really caught my attention, and I even completed one whole sock in the course of the 5-odd days we were away!

Since I've been home, I've been getting back into the spinning. I have a lot of longwools to show you, some Corriedale and some Colonial wool (which I gather is pretty similar to Corriedale?) that I've either just finished recently, or have been waiting for the right time to post.

This weekend, I'm hoping to get more sock knitting done, as Coffeeboy and I drive north to Virginia Beach for a family reunion. I have a wild dream of getting some work done while we're away, but I'm not sure it'll happen.

Off to a conference

2008-10-29T23:03:00.005-04:00

Tomorrow, Coffeeboy and I head off to our big annual gathering of scholars of religion. This year we are both interviewing; it's my first time on the market and he's on again after a year off. He has lots of interview (count 'em, five!) and I have one. I'm really really proud of my sweetie for netting so many interviews! My interview is at a school I'm interested in, plus I'm still ABD, so I'm not terribly surprised I only got one. I'm taking some knitting along, a basic sock for Coffeeboy and a plain vanilla sock for myself. No need to stress myself out with difficult knitting.

Coffeeboy's sock #1

This week, when I haven't been prepping and researching for my interview, I spent time thinking about fiber. Last year's SAFF got me all excited about spinning; this year I got very excited about bettering my spinning, and took too few classes in that regard, so I've been reading Ravelry spinning forums and perusing some of the books on my shelves. I think I got myself thoroughly confused over whether I'm a right- or left-handed spinner; I write with my left hand, but I apparently spin right-handed (with my left in front and my right hand in back). I also decided to try the fast flyer on my Lendrum, for the first time since getting it a year ago, and wow! What a difference! It's really fun to use. I love treadling slowly but getting such a fine yarn. Maybe I'll be able to spin 3-ply sock yarn after all.

In making these explorations, I did try several new things at once, never a good idea: a new flyer, different hand positions, and merino fiber, which I haven't spun all that much of yet. It seems to have gone well though. I've been playing around with some plain white fiber and have spun a first layer onto two bobbins, mostly because I felt the need to spin in order to relax the interview nerves.

After this conference, I can get into my next goals for spinning, which are to explore this new flyer more, and to try out different types of fiber. As I think I hinted before, I bought a whole lotta different fiber at SAFF, and a measly amount of sock yarn, comparatively speaking:

For the fiber, there's merino, merino-silk blends, alpaca, alpaca-wool blends, mohair and blends - not all of it is in that picture; some of it Coffeboy has, um, stashed away for all the various events of December (birthday and holidays). I tried to go for a range of multicolored and more solid-colored fiber, too, but gave myself free range to indulge the blues. That big giant bag is about 30 oz. of fiber, hopefully way more than enough to make a sweater for Coffeeboy (I decided to err on the generous side). I might have chosen badly; the color looked so perfect for him but the fiber was made up of "little bits" rather than anything more official or "nice." It felt nice, though, and like it would draft well, so I decided to go for it. We shall see.

The sock yarn includes two skeins from Miss Babs, and one in "Sea Silk" from the Sanguine Gryphon - yum!

Since I have to get up in a few hours to make it to the airport, though, I'm going to have to leave this post with that oh-so-tantalizing image of fiber fun to come. Wish me luck with the interview, Coffeeboy too, and all our friends who also have interviews!

Handspun, much fun

2008-10-26T22:30:00.003-04:00

This past weekend, we fiber-fans living in the southeastern United States -- and anyone else who cared to join - celebrated all things fibrous at the Southeastern Animal and Fiber Festival, or SAFF. Unlike last year, where two of my best friends were waylaid in various ways, this year, one of them was able to come visit, and she was on a mission: to take a spinning lesson and choose a wheel. Her mission appears to have been wildly successful! (I'd love to link to her blog, but I'm not sure she wants me to.)

My mission at SAFF (which Coffeeboy chose to accept and enable!) was to find different types of wool and other animal fibers - but I'll have to tell you more about that when I post pictures of the loot! Instead of offering you a really long post, I have some more finished objects and spinning catch up to share, plus a picture of a 4-day-old baby goat that stole the show, so to speak.

Before I took my trip to New Jersey in September, I spun up a 4 oz. braid of BFL in "Mahogany" from Liza Souza, and also 4 oz. of a merino-tencel blend from Three Waters Farm. I liked the results of these so much that they immediately turned into quick little projects! In fact, the merino-tencel finished drying on a clothes
hanger as I drove north, much to the amusement of my aunt and uncle. (Their amusement had a happy result that I'll get to share with you one day!)

I turned the BFL into a scarf for Coffeeboy, using the Yarn Harlot's one-row handspun scarf pattern to make a very nice husband scarf. I think it makes a great manly scarf, with the vertical ribs balancing the stripes of color.

Since the yarn excited me so much, I never even took a picture of the fiber or the finished skein!! However, I did take this close-up, which gives a sense of the yarn:

The yarn had fantastic give and sproingyness, and was just a joy to knit. I knit it all up into this scarf in a matter of days, and presented it to a hubby who is very happy to have a lighter-weight scarf (well, lighter than his bulky weight, wrap twice around the neck winter scarf).

The merino-tencel turned into a short "My So-Called Scarf," using only about half of the finished skein. I don't even remember how long the whole skein ended up being! I started this one in New Jersey as well, and finished it in Charleston last weekend during our quick vacation, when the weather turned unexpectedly cold. I found myself eager to wear this scarf, so I cast it off with just enough for a short scarf held closed by cool wooden shawl pin I bought at SAFF last year. This was my second time spinning with this type of fiber, and I think it came out quite nicely, not perfectly even, but certainly better than my merino attempt!

As for SAFF, I had so much fun this year in terms of looking at fiber, introducing my friend to fiber and exploring the festival with her, that I didn't actually do too much of the other online knitter meetup stuff. I brought my wheel and planned to sit and spin, but that didn't happen - oh well, there will be other opportunities! - and ran into surprisingly few of the knitters I know who live in this area. I'm sure they all had as wonderful a time as I did, visiting with a baby goat and bringing home a bunch of loot. But more on that in a day or two!

Now, if I'd brought the goat home, it would have been a really great kidnapping, wouldn't it have been!

Handspun catchup, part 1

2008-10-13T21:02:00.005-04:00

In the first of what promises to be several catch-up posts about what I've been up to, fiberwise, I give you a spontaneous cowl knit out of merino handspun. For some reason, the yarn didn't come out very even; I think I was too excited by the pretty colors to think too much about the spinning; plus, I'm still getting used to merino. I love knitting with it, but it's a bit slippery in the spinning.

I spun this out of approximately 2 oz. of variegated merino and 1.7 oz. of teal-blue fiber, and then plied them together. With the extra 0.3 ounce, I navajo-plied that and used it at the top and bottom of the cowl.

You can see the more solid colors at the top on the left; on the right, you can see how the variegations in the handspun from the multicolored fiber created a striped effect despite the tweedy barberpoling.

This weekend, my FIL was in town, and we took him up to the Blue Ridge Parkway to go hiking, where the temperatures would be cooler (high fifties to low sixties, farenheit) and the fall colors further along. We were not disappointed in our quest! I got to wear my new cowl and get it photographed for the blog, and I also had a chance to take many pictures of North Carolina's finest fall showing.

It's funny, now that I've been here a year, I've started to really notice the differences between fall foliage here in Western North Carolina, and the foliage in New England and the northeast, which will always be for me the quintessential autumn tapestry. Last year, I was still determined to like it here, and wanted to see the best in the WNC's mountain display. This year, though, as I've come to realize that this place is yet another temporary place to live, I find myself really wanting to move back north, to somewhere with real winter, with autumns of maple and oak covering the hillsides, and a real crisp chill to the air, a chill that hasn't quite hit where I live now. Certainly, the mountains do often provide this idealized setting, making it a very pleasant reality, as this photo shows:

Despite glimpses like this, other scenes remind me that I'm not quite where I want to be. Fall is my all-around favorite season, so it's not surprising that I'm picky. When the mountains reveal scenes like this --

-- scenes that are admittedly very, very gorgeous--I can't help but also see how the shrubs and the land are just somehow different from the pictures in my mind. I am probably being overly picky in my fall foliage desires, and should try harder to be happy with the fall I have, not the nostalgic fall of my memories or my imagination. At least I have a fall to enjoy! But still - but still. As I go through the academic job search this year, I find myself checking out the potential for fall in the places to which I've applied, and I haven't limited myself to places where that idealized fall could be a reality again. Whether I ever get back to that kind of a place again, such as I enjoyed in relatively-rural New Jersey, in Boston, and in Western Massachusetts, I don't know, but I do know that I'd like that very, very much.

Bringing back the blog?

2008-10-07T09:20:00.004-04:00

Hi folks, it's been a long time, hasn't it! My summer ended up being rather crazy-busy, and if dissertation summer camp didn't indicate a busy start, it only continued from there. I left my camera, too, all the way across the country at my brother's, and it's due to arrive back with me sometime this week, allowing for actual blog pictures.

Until the camera returns, I'll just give you a brief recap of what I've been up to:

three weeks traveling for research
two-and-a-half weeks traveling to visit family
one room-painting project (our bedroom is now a nice yellow "butterfly-bush" color
some hiking, but not quite enough
bunches of fresh veggies from the garden and markets canned or preserved
one week-plus visit to my academic home in New Jersey
twelve years of microfilm read
little bits of dissertation written, certainly not as much as I'd have liked to complete
rather a lot of reflecting and getting myself back on track worked on
one Foliage Shawl completed
one pair of socks completed, plus another, one of which was way too short and needs some work
one cowl out of handspun, one scarf for Coffeeboy out of handspun
a bunch of light blue corriedale handspun completed after many months of very thin spinning
several academic job applications sent off (and an appropriate number of anxious dreams to complement them)

I think that just about covers the most of it!

As for why I'm returning to the blog after a several-month absence, I have a few reasons. Chief among them is that I had started to lose track of my projects, and figured the blog would be a good way to get back on-track. I could also use Ravelry for that, but I haven't been good, lately, about updating there, either. In fact, once the camera returns, I'm not entirely sure if I'll blog or use Ravelry.

I've usually blogged about either my fiber adventures, my academic life, or about Coffeeboy's and my adventures in things like cheesemaking, gardening, hiking, or other activities that attempt to get us closer to the source of things. Sometimes I fear that the blog spent too much time on academics, and not enough on fiber. So many of you are so reflective about your pieces, about your process, about your choices or the ways you change a pattern, that my fiber-blogging always felt so matter-of-fact by comparison. "Here's an FO! Yes, it looks just like the picture. No, I didn't wildly change the pattern. I like how its [insert 'blue' or 'autumn colored' here]. I wish the sleeves weren't quite as tight as they are, but I'll try to block it and see how it goes." So you see, it doesn't exactly make for exciting blog fodder. And on a purportedly fiber-focused blog, too much ruminating over the minutiae of the dissertation or the job search just might bore many of you.

Maybe that's precisely the point - no, not to bore you - rather, maybe the blog reflects the place fiber has in my life. It adds color and texture and warmth, it adds some challenge but is primarily there for relaxation and enjoyment. Especially of late, the dissertation has been challenging enough to work on from what still feels like nearly the middle of nowhere. If I'm working harder on that (or on other stuff that's taking up mental or emotional space), I want the knitting and spinning to play a different, more relaxed role. I almost think that in order for it to be relaxing, I sometimes need it also to be private, which means I don't need the extra effort of blogging about it. I guess this is what happens when an introvert tries to blog.

Then, there are those friends who don't particularly care for all the fiber-stuff, and would rather hear about my life than about knitting and spinning - but since to my mind this is still, among other things, a blog about knitting "between the lines" of everything else going on in my life, the fiber will still play a role -- and I expect I'll also still write about schoolwork, hiking, or those other activities that Coffeeboy and I've taken to calling the activities of "amateur homesteading."

If you're here for the fiber or here for a general idea of what I've been up to in other areas, I imagine you'll still find both.

So, with that, I'll leave you with a good-faith gesture, a picture or two of "socks on a train," my handspun socks that I worked on while Coffeeboy and I chugged our way from Colorado to California this summer:

And finally, the supposedly finished socks, made of handspun BFL, too! Don't they look cute there on that train seat?

Of course, in my eagerness to finish them while still on the train, the second sock ended up being 1/2 inch too short... a month later and I have yet to undo the kitchener and actually finish it, but now that it's [Sock]tober, I might as well!

Dissertation Summer Camp

2008-06-16T22:34:00.002-04:00

I haven't been to summer camp in many, many years, but that's all I can think of to compare with what I'm doing now. I'm in Chicago, staying at the International House in a dorm room. A real dorm room, with a twin bed, a desk, a small bookcase, a small dresser, and some kind of wardrobe to hang clothes in. All in all it looks like a smaller version of my dorm room senior year of college (except this mirror was taken from a fun-house, and my mirror in college, as far as I can recall, didn't make my face look like the face in Edvard Munch's "The Scream.")

(Image taken with my computer's camera)

There are other things that make it feel like summer camp. For example, I'm here for two weeks - so often a classic campy amount of time. I just got here yesterday and I don't know anyone except a friend from school who happens to be here too. I don't know my way around either this dorm facility or the streets outside (but I'm learning as fast as my directionally challenged self can). I'm still figuring out where to eat and what the best routes are to get from here to there.

And I'm spending at least eight hours a day working intensively on something. When I was a kid, this something was French horn playing. At music camps I learned I could actually play for many, many hours in a day (and my lip got really, really good.) This time, of course, I'm hanging out in an archive all day, doing dissertation research. (I brought a hoard of knitting with me, and plan to knit while listening to audiobooks after hours, but haven't gotten to it yet). It feels so similar because there's that same sense of focus and purpose, the sense of having come to this place in order to pursue a particular goal.

In this case, that goal apparently involves having my research interrupted by the cutest of all animals, cats. The papers I'm working with are owned by a seminary, and stored in a separate building other than the library. This building houses a few students, a few offices, a bunch of manuscript archives, and best of all, two cats! I was delighted when the librarian told me not to be alarmed if a cat wandered into the room where they'd set me up to research - and indeed, a cat came trooping along and even, after I'd put away my papers for the day, plopped down next to the box I'd been perusing, and posed for my computer's camera.*

Every archive, it seems, has its pluses and minuses, and this one, so far, seems good for the entertainment value. It's sort of amusing to be in a dorm again (especially since there's a very definite time limit on my stay), and totally incongruous that I get to research with cats (not something I'd ever expect to see again). Even if it's weird and lonely to sit here in a dorm room with the unfamiliar noises of a city I hardly know, it's strangely comforting to think that just a few walls over, someone else is going through a similar set of feelings, just as if all us grad students were once again enthusiastic and scared little kids at summer camp.

----
*Normally I'd be concerned about allergens in close proximity to precious historical materials, but I'm really careful, and believe me, if that box hadn't been closed, the cat wouldn't have been on the table!

All my (book)-bags are packed

2008-06-06T22:17:00.003-04:00

Yup, that's right, all my books are packed and I'm ready to go.

Except, that is, for two books that I'm pretty sure I returned in April. I really hope the library just failed to scan them in and they're happily on the shelves!

My school, in a fit of brilliance for their retention of books, but not for anything else like my sanity, my saving of gas, or a useful way to spend my time, requires all books checked out for the year-long period be renewed in person. Yup, all however-many bags of them. Minus whichever two bags I'm returning, to lighten the return trip load, you know!

Tomorrow, I drive north all day with all the books, for Part II of my very busy June. Our quick trip to the midwest was a lot of fun, and passed quickly. I didn't get much knitting done, but I did get some dissertation work done. I met a whole bunch of Coffeeboy's extended family - second cousins neither of us knew existed, giant family pictures, and way, way too much good, tasty food. In the car we listened to The Time Traveler's Wife, which was a really great book (and a fun one to listen to, too!)

The world seems suffused in heat. Asheville currently is beating out Miami by about 15 degrees, and it's not much better up in the mid-Atlantic, either. Here's to staying cool this weekend, or enjoying the heat, whichever you prefer!

Lilac yarn and mountain laurel

2008-05-27T23:02:00.001-04:00

Last week, I finished my lilac yarn, but I haven't had a chance to let it dry / take pictures / upload them until today, when I'll share them with you!

I'm really happy with how this yarn came out. It's somewhere between a fingering and sport weight, 350 yards, a merino-tencel blend. Look at that tencel shine!

I'm very happy with how it came out, as you can imagine! There seems to be a clump of blue and a clump of pink/lilac, and then other colors, green, grey, and violet, in between. I'm looking forward to making a nice scarf out of it for next year's spring - maybe Palette or Lace Ribbon (knitty spring 2007 and 2008 respectively).

Coffeeboy and I also took another hike this past weekend, and we saw some mountain laurel blooming (no rhododendrons, yet!)

(This one is by Coffeeboy himself, lover of macro-flower-photos!)

It's been amazing to watch spring and then summer come out in the mountains. This weekend at a juncture between trails, we stopped for a few minutes and listened to the birds chirp, and to the wind rustling the trees. It reminded me of when I was a kid, living in the suburbs, hanging out at my friend's house. There I'd listen to the wind in her pine trees and think of hiking and camping in the Sierra Nevada mountains (we lived in CA when I was a kid). It was lovely just to take a moment to hear the wind in the trees.

Tomorrow, we're headed out of town, to go visit Coffeeboy's family in Chicago and Milwaukee for a family event. We're driving - still cheaper than flying, especially where we're coming from and since we're going to more than one city - so we've downloaded some books to listen to, and I'm debating whether or not knitting will make me carsick! Sometimes it does, sometimes not. I'll definitely have a range of projects to choose from, though!

When I get back, my busy month of June will already have started. I'll spend a few days renew books at my home library; much of that time will be spent traveling, also. Then, a few days after that, for the last half of June, I'm off to Chicago (again!) for two weeks to do a whole lotta research. If any of you live in or near the Windy City, let me know of some good fiber haunts to check out!

Fibers of springtime

2008-05-19T19:16:00.004-04:00

Lately, my knitting and spinning has all been geared around the weather: a mohair sweater perfect for those ever-fewer still-cool mornings, or a braid of roving aptly named "Lilac" by the lovely folks at Three Waters Farm. (I bought some of their Lavendar-Oatmeal Goat's Milk Soap at SAFF last year, and it is divine! Come to think of it, I knit a stole/shawl for my mom out of their merino in that same colorway!) Here is what it looks like, however, in roving and unplied singles of a merino-tencel blend (purchased at Yarns Etc. in Carrboro):

I've also been trying to knit the trees and sky and trails that I've been hiking on these last few weekends. It seems every time I get out into the woods, I start thinking of knitting a stole to wear when I'm inside a cold, air-conditioned library thinking about being outside in those woods. I finally screwed up my courage this weekend to learn a new cast on (a basic provisional cast on) and start the stole, ideas for which have been roaming around in my mind these last few weeks.

While I like how it's going so far, unblocked it is only 14" wide. I don't think blocking will quite get this to a respectable 18-plus inches for a stole, so off to the frog pond it'll head shortly - unless a bunch of you tell me that it's likely to grow that much. Knowing how I tend to block lace (which is usually not as vigorously as is likely possible, due to lack of blocking wires and frustration with many tiny poky pins), even if it's technically possible, I doubt it'll work for me, so I expect that before too long, it's froggie-frog we go!

Spring sweater

2008-05-15T22:00:00.003-04:00

As promised, here's my latest FO, the mohair sweater! After several amusing modifications, I can finally put it out there on the 'net! Although for some reason, I felt like making this a faceless post; not sure why. This way you can see that the neck edge is rolled (using where I picked up stitches to stop the roll), the sleeves roll, too (except there's ribbing to stop the roll), and the waist edge is crochet. A bit schizophrenic, and there are some funky pooling issues in places I'd rather them not to be, but other than that, it's not bad for a cozy, lightweight spring sweater!

First, you see, I had to redo the bind off on the collar. You should have seen me trying to pull it over my head at the knitting group meeting. You could see a little bit of blond poking out the top, but that was about it! Several women kindly suggested that I bind off more loosely (more loosely?), which worked well. Then, of course, there was the rolled hem. Now, I have several sweaters with rolled edges, all machine-made, store-bought, and their rolled edges don't seem to add bulk where it doesn't belong, so I was foolishly unworried about the plan to knit myself a rolled edge. What a mistake that was, even after blocking!! This meant that on a Tuesday evening listening to election coverage on the TV, I found myself crocheting the bottom edge of the sweater. Yes, listening to the TV because I couldn't not look at the little hook at the end of a stick.

The Stats:
Pattern: The raglan pattern in The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns
Yarn: Brooks Farm Primero, about 1.5 hanks
Time; Ravelry tells me it took about a month and a half or so
Needles: size 5 for the body

I've been doing a lot of dissertation work - most of it inside, in the study, all previous posts and photos to the contrary - and have actually been making progress. Well, at least, the progress of a quote strung together here and there with another quote plus a possibly off-topic analysis of a few photographs, all added up to make a few really long sections scattered over several MS Word documents... and it's starting to feel like a chapter draft is taking shape in my mind, even though I can easily see many more pages of typing before it gets printed out in something resembling a coherent document on a date with a red pen. (Or pencil or blue pen - it depends what's lying around). Given that May is about half over and I haven't had any drafts to show since January, like the funky pooling on the sweater, I'll take what I can get! I'd like to have an actual draft-to-show-the-advisor by early June, which is when I'll be driving all my books to my home school so they can be renewed. In person. All several shelves of them. Given that Coffeeboy and I'll be gone for a week or so in late May, this just might be a dubious goal. But one can always hope for the best, right?

Weekend surprises

2008-05-12T23:47:00.003-04:00

This past weekend, my MIL was in town. We had two surprises: one was a very small fiber festival at the Southern Highland Craft Guild off the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the other was a gorgeous hike full of spring color and amazing wildflowers.

The fiber festival was, as I said, small, but a lot of fun. We watched an expert sheep-shearing (my basis for calling it expert was how well the shearer handled the sheep, holding it between his legs, moving its legs around his in order to expose the parts to shear next, the whole fleece coming off as a unit), I watched spinners and thought of my wheel, and we observed several other interesting crafts - basketweaving, weaving, making pretty felt-covered boxes, tapestry weaving, beaded jewelry, doll-making, and much more! I didn't have my camera, though, so I couldn't get any pictures. (There also wasn't very much for sale, so my wallet was in little danger!)

I did have my camera for our hike, which turned, unexpectedly, into a wildflower hike of sorts after I saw the pink lady slippers. I remember looking for these flowers when I was a wee kid in the woods of Massachusetts; I remember my parents telling me, during our last spring in the state, that they were very rare and that one was lucky to see them, but so far as I recall, I didn't find them that year. This year I did, and I was amazed by their beauty, and by the beauty of the other flowers we saw in a scant two hours of hiking.

As you can see, I didn't know the names of several. "Mini-daisies" and "hanging bells" are far from technical names, and I'd love to know what they really are, if anyone knows! You can see bigger images over in Flickr.

I am constantly struck how beautiful it is here. My MIL kept remarking on how many different shades of green there were (she lives in Colorado), and it's true, springtime really is alive with greens, in so many more ways than one.

I've finally managed to get a picture of my latest sweater FO, so I hope to show that to you soon in the upcoming days!

This isn't so bad

2008-05-09T14:13:00.004-04:00

You know, I know I've not always been the happiest about being so far from my home institution, but right now, life in the mountains has its advantages:

Such as dissertating on one's back patio, with mountains in the distance and the springtime sounds of birds, wind, and a stream nearby. The folks I'm writing about appreciated the "restorative powers of the pastoral," and I have to say, I agree with them. This really is a great way to dissertate. Lovely smells and sounds, a cup of coffee, my computer's screen easily visible in the shade, wireless internet.

I'm not sure it'll be quite so pleasant in the summer when it's hotter, but in the shade and springtime, it's really, really great! I'm also not sure this is the best place to churn out the pages. That would probably be upstairs in my office, or 45 minutes north of here in the library at UNC-Asheville, where on Wednesday I churned out seven whole pages in the course of an afternoon's burst of productivity.

Today Coffeeboy and I purchased tickets for several concerts at our local summertime classical music festival, the Brevard Music Center. We stepped inside the shed and it reminded me of nowhere so much as Tanglewood, where I spent one of the best summers of my life. To have music in the mountains that I can go to all summer (all summer, that is, except the several weeks I'll be away at archives!) is yet some more icing on the cake.

I promised I'd show you a WIP and an FO. I haven't had a chance to get the FO photographed yet, so we're just going to go with the WIP, Tailored Scallops, my current leading-love in the fiber world. It's Malabrigo, it's blue, and it's feather-and-fan - - how better can it get than that?

My MIL is in town this weekend (she needed to come to the area on business) so we're looking forward to getting out with her into the nice springtime. I hear the rhododendrons, which grow the size of trees along the streams of mountain coves, are starting to bloom, something we've been waiting for months to see.

Green weekend

2008-05-05T10:13:00.002-04:00

"Some weekends are grey, some weekends are mean, this one had plants, and so was green."

Coffeeboy and I spent this past weekend getting the garden, in various permutations, going. When we moved here, we didn't think we'd garden much. After all, we don't own the land outside our condo, but we figured we could put in a few plants, just a few. Then the college where Coffeeboy works started a community garden and we got a 4x20 plot of land to use. Now it looks like we'll be gardening more food than ever!

First, of course, was the very exciting Asheville Herb Festival. We'd had a poster on our fridge about this for the past month, and knew we wanted to go there to stock up on our favorite flavorings. I was hoping to score some soap and maybe some interesting lavendar products, but we ended up with only an hour at the festival, barely enough time to scope out the growing (as opposed to turned-into-products) herbs we wanted.

As you can see, we had quite a loot! In addition to chives and lemon thyme which we picked up at a small local plant sale, at the herb festival we found, as you can see above, plenty more to flavor our lives with.

The festival itself was tons of fun, with dozens of herb vendors, colorful signs, and interesting varieties. After the festival, Coffeboy and I headed to Asheville where we had a beer at Jack of the Wood Pub followed by a lovely dinner at the all-vegetarian/vegan restaurant The Laughing Seed. Of course, it wouldn't be a spring night in Asheville without a drumming session going on in Pritchard Circle, so we stopped to watch young hippies and old hippies groovin' together to what's always a really amazing impromptu performance, and of course, to watch the tourists watching the action, too. I didn't have my camera then, so I couldn't take pictures (oh well!).

Saturday afternoon we planted the herbs in their containers:

In order from the back, the plants are:

Back row: chocolate mint, placeholder plant, spearmint

Middle row: chamomile, a petunia, lemon balm

Front row: thyme, sage, oregano, lemon thyme

Round container on left: lavendar

Middle round container: cilantro, parsley

Round container on right: regular basil, cinnamon/Thai basil, chives

We'd decided to plant the herbs in containers so as to have more room in the ground for vegetables - and because I liked the idea of framing our little back patio area with herbs. This, to me, seemed like just the thing to do with such a little patio: make it smell really, really, great, and be useful, too!

Yesterday, we planted our veggie garden. We put in several varieties of tomatoes, saving two for the community garden and planting five by our house, to the right of the air conditioning unit. To the left, we planted four peppers, green and purple bell, and left of that, four Japanese eggplants. As you can see, there's still a lot of room to grow where the black anti-weed cover is. We're going to put in beets, spinach, and parsnips there, and also some of those over at the college garden.

(You can see the plants better in the bigger images at Flickr!)

Finally, just because they're cute, pictures of the cats: Juniper (the Sock-Lord, apparently, who loves handknit socks as well as her daddy's smelly, just-gardened-in socks as well) and Magellan (curled up on my desk chair):

In the next post, I promise I'll have some fibery goodness - a finished object, and a new sweater-in-progress made of the to-die-for Malabrigo!

Weekend bind-off

2008-04-28T14:54:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I actually bound off the mohair sweater! I tried it on, too, and was very happy with the fit. Now all I need to do is add the neckband, sew up the armhole seams, weave in a few ends, block it, and it'll be done! Excellent!

I also acquired some new yarn to work with that I'm excited by for two different reasons.

The dishcloth yarn excites me because it's dishcloth yarn in pretty colors, and was inexpensive. The Malabrigo on the right, there, well, that's my first ever Malabrigo purchase, and I can't wait to start using it! The color is just gorgeous, "indigo." I'm hoping it'll work out gauge-wise for the Tailored Scallops sweater, but I think it might be a hair too thin. We'll see. As soon as I get that mohair sweater blocking, I'm going to turn to the Malabrigo Scallops!

Earth Day Dishcloth

2008-04-24T19:51:00.004-04:00

Well, folks, I'm behind, as usual. Behind, that is, on the dishcloth craze. Right about when dishcloths came "in" a couple of years back (remember the Mason-Dixon Ball Band dishcloths[Ravelry-only link], anyone?), I ignored them. After all, I'd recently switched to sponges, and all dishcloths did was get smelly in the sink, just like they'd done when I was a kid. (Yes, they did get washed, but the smell left a stronger mental impression!)

But a couple of days ago, Earth Day caught up with me and I thought to myself, I should really get back in the habit of using dishcloths, rather than so many paper towels! I mean, I'm not that bad; I do try to use the sponge, but sometimes I just want the convenience of a paper towel... but still, I should try, shouldn't I?

Yes, we recycle and watch the temperature of our house and buy cars that get good gas mileage - but couldn't I be better about this one little item? Maybe if I had my own handmade dishcloths I'd use them, I thought, so out came the cotton and the needles...

...with this result.

Coffeeboy swore he wouldn't use it, that he couldn't subject anything I'd knit with to such treatment as scrubbing dirty sinks and counters. Besides, he'd grown up with sponges, not "those cloths" as he used to call them back when I was using cloths, not sponges, so I expect there was some resistance to the dishcloth funk. But knit one I did, use it to wipe the counter I did, and now, boy doesn't our sink look too pretty for its own good?

There are other ideas I'm finding equally inspiring - many of them, to give honor where it's due - mentioned on Zarzuela's Earth Day post. There I was introduced to the Greencraft group on Ravelry - if you're on Ravelry, you should definitely check this group out! It's fascinating what people are doing, the little ways they are getting back in touch with the world!

Yarnovers and Passovers

2008-04-21T09:37:00.005-04:00

I bet you thought that I was preparing last week for an actual Passover seder, not passing yarn through itself? Well, in the end we had a little of both:

Also this weekend, a visiting friend was winding some yarn on my swift. I noticed she was taking a really long time to wind yarn, which, granted, takes a while when you bring several skeins, but still... I went upstairs and found scenes that looked a bit like this:

It was like a game of cat's cradle sprung into existence on the swift. Twice every turn, the yarn caught in a loop and we had to thread the growing ball of yarn through the loop, or the loops, as the case may be. Sometimes things got really, really messy. Eventually we finished, and miraculously the yarn eventually also stopped being caught in its own loops, but wow, was that not one of the more messed-up skeins I've ever encountered!

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to getting back to the wheel and to the mohair sweater, for which I'm rapidly running out of cool days to wear it!

I haven't blogged this one yet because it's all stockinette. However, now that it's starting to look like a sweater, I decided to take a picture. I'm hopeful that I can control the roll on the bottom there. Silly me. Rolled hems and mohair sweaters do seem to go together in my mind, but who was I not to do something to stop the roll? Oops! Oh well, I will just have to hope that the powers of the iron are enough!

Navajo ply!

2008-04-16T13:32:00.002-04:00

Last night I needed to clear a few singles off a bobbin. A few weeks ago, I'd spun up a little bit of this juicy merino fiber from Lorna's Laces that I got for the holidays. I thought I'd give reputedly slippery merino a test-run. As I recall, it wasn't too bad. It was, however, a while ago.

Then I was left with very little on the bobbin, but I didn't want to spin the rest of it then. So I set it aside, and last night, I navajo plied it. See?

This new type of plying was a bit tricky. Since I'm a lefty, I tried doing it with my left hand, but I kept needing to use my right to help pull the single through the loop. Eventually I was getting my left index finger to take care of the pulling through the loop, while the right did something with the twist. I saw what hadn't been clear on the on-line video, that somehow the creation of the loops gives you a three-ply. Pretty cool! I'm not an engineer, I can't explain how it works, just that it did!

What I got was something like this:

I have a few questions about navajo plying for you more experienced spinners: Do you see that purple strand on top, on the right side? Right there you can see where the two loops interlock. Why is that? Is that normal for navajo plying, to see where the loops are?

I had another question, which is how the heck do you finish it? When I was done I had an awkward floppy loop that didn't quite twist and ply up nicely.

Also, why is it called "navajo" plying?

Here is the little skein-let, only a few yards long, all twisted up.

I think it looks pretty good for a first attempt. Of course, that's probably half the dye job on the fiber - hard to go wrong with such gorgeous colors!! They remind me of summer berries. I don't remember what the official colorway name is, but these sure do speak to me of berries.

Last week I went to a conference at my home institution, a conference I've been planning for the last year or so. It went really well - great papers, interesting people, good networking. The conference involved people working on topics very similar to my dissertation, so it provided a lot of excellent food for thought and really has me actually thinking about the diss with excitement for the first time in about a month. I came home and scanned 16 pages of notes so I'd have electronic copies of what I wrote down. I've never actually scanned in notes before, but it seemed to make a certain amount of sense. Add them to the e-file for the conference, and I'll always be able to find them. The paper notes - who knows?

Of course, I can't really capitalize on that excitement because now that I'm home, I'm preparing the house for Passover & the arrival of guests this weekend! (Granted, since the Judaism represented here is Reform, the housecleaning isn't as, um, thorough, as it could be, but there's still plenty to do!) I'm going to try to put in some time on the diss this afternoon and tomorrow, but I still have to clean the house and go grocery shopping, so it's looking like the diss will have to wait till next week!

Let's start with... I'm alive?

2008-03-27T16:51:00.007-04:00

Hi everyone - everyone who hasn't dropped me off bloglines, that is! I am still alive, believe it or not! I've just been away from the blog, mentally speaking, and from blog-world too. Since I last posted, I:

made a quick run to visit a friend who lives a few hours away and has access to some really old books that I need in the dissertation. She wrote about my visit way back when. (I was tempted to link to her blog to say, "Look what I've been up to!" and that's when I lost my blogging mojo...)
a week later I found myself in New York City, surrounded by big tall buildings, for a week of research and crashing in a hotel room with a relative. I got so busy with family, research, and seeing the city that I forgot to check out yarn stores. I did see Spamalot, though, and I laughed a lot; I did get to go to bookstores, which are sadly in short supply where I live
then I had a week off from travel, except I got off a wait list for a retreat
and I went on the retreat March 14-16, which wasn't quite what I was looking for but was probably a productive time anyways
Now I have a couple weeks off from travel before I head to my home institution and a conference I've spent the last year planning...

So it's not as if I haven't been busy! I've just been focusing my free time on things that don't translate well to a fiber arts blog! I also feel like what I've been working on in the knitting world hasn't been terribly interesting, in that it doesn't merit more than a "show and tell" type post. I'm not sure, right now, how to make the blog more than a show-and-tell, without making what it's not meant to be. Maybe when I finish the prototype of a shawl I'm trying to come up with, then I'll have something more fiber-related to talk about. But for now, I don't know if I'm going to come out of this internet-hibernation, or remain in it?

Regardless, there's still fiber. I finished the long-suffering socks for my MIL, and have been spinning some pretty, baby-blue, tweedy corriedale from Greta_Jane. I have three 4 oz. balls of the stuff, and I'm spinning it fairly thin. I'm about halfway through the fiber; I have still another ball to go. One of these days I'll get to try three-ply! Or the gorgeous merino-tencel I bought while in Carrboro a few weeks ago!

Coffeeboy and I also have been hiking, looking for signs of spring and finding beautiful scenery nonetheless. In that picture on the right, what you see are the evergreens of the North Carolina mountains - pines, rhododendrons aplenty, and mountain laurel.

I hope all of you are well! I do stop by many of your blogs from time to time, but truth be told, I haven't been reading blogs all that much of late, either. (There's been a fair amount of book-reading, as in, books that are not related to the dissertation, and that cuts into the knitting time, too!) I hope wherever you are, you are having a beautiful spring!

Happy Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T12:42:00.004-05:00

May yours be as warm as, well, a handknit sock resting uneasily close to the jaws of a kitty:

Coffeeboy thought that Juniper would make an ideal background for the sock. Juniper thought the sock - and my handspun yarn nicely wound into a yarn cake - would make an ideal lunchtime plaything.

Luckily, as the camera indicates, she had plenty of supervision, and no yarn, WIP-socks, or cats were harmed in the making of said photograph.

I've been a bit of an MIA-blogger lately. Last week, I visited my academic home back in New Jersey, taking along the handspun sock yarn and turning it into what you see above. I met with friends, advisors, and lots of library books. My trunk was noticeably heavier on the long, 10-hours-plus drive home. I even made it into New York City to visit an archive, always fun after spending a while in the small-town mountains!

I find it interesting how the sock's colors are spinning up. I would never have guessed that it would have a large chunk of red like that, and be so mutedly tweedy elsewhere. The yarn is a pleasure to knit with, though, not only because it feels nice but because I made it all by myself! I decided to reinforce the heels with some mohair, or rather, with some Kidsilk Haze, to be precise. Believe you me, my heels cannot wait to slip into that softness!

Well, regardless of whether or not you celebrate this commercially-induced festival of sugary-sweetness, I do hope you get to feel a bit of the fiber-love either way!

For love of sock yarn

2008-01-31T19:19:00.001-05:00

Remember how I said I'd made sock yarn? Well now I have pictures! I'm pretty tempted to let the pictures express how very, very excited I am to have made fingering weight yarn that's enough for socks!!

The Fiber:

4 oz. BFL fiber from The Painted Sheep, in the Dublin Bay colorway

The Fiber, unfurled

I divided this in half lengthwise, and then for half A I split it again, for half B I split it lengthwise four times, following a trick I saw on Ravelry about making space-dyed roving into barberpole-striped yarn.

(Click to make any of these bigger in Flickr!!)

Spinning the fiber:

All plied up, it overflows from this bobbin said to hold 4 ounces:

What it looks like washed and dried:

All bundled up as a pretty little skein:

What we have here is 380 yards, 4 oz., fingering weight. It's not superwash, but it sure sounds like sock yarn to me!

I think I'm in love. I'm half tempted to pull out the sock needles right now and cast on to watch this yarn make socks! The other half wants to stare at it, squeeze and pat it. It's soft. It's squishy. It's enough for socks. I'm a happy, happy spinner. I think I'll hang onto it a bit before turning this FO back into a WIP.

As we close this week and come to the weekend, I only hope you find something fibery that makes you quite this happy!

Handspun yarn or rejected writing?

2008-01-30T16:22:00.000-05:00

As I considered my options this afternoon, I decided I'd rather tell you all about my latest spinning news than spend too much time worrying that an article submission I sent out a couple of months ago was essentially rejected for not having enough postmodern theory in it. Actually, they didn't reject it outright. They wanted me to revise it based upon a whole lot of theory I'm not entirely familiar with, and I'm not at all sure I want to write the article they want to read! Instead, I think I'll try it with another journal! On the bright side of the schoolwork, though, I have finished a draft of a chapter for the dissertation and will send it off to my advisor soon!

I've been procrastinating on showing you my latest bout of spinning, which occupied me from January 4 - sometime last week, at which point I sent it off to its intended recipient, Greta_Jane, for a belated birthday present. I haven't been showing you many pictures of this spinning because I didn't want her to see too much of it (and she tells me she liked what she saw when I let one little image slip through).

What you see here is about 550 yards / 8 oz. of Louet Corriedale fiber in the colorway "warm wine." It worked out to be about worsted weight. Although it wasn't as even as I'd hoped it would be (it never seems to be, once it comes to plying), I was quite pleased to see that the yarn turned out pretty light and fluffy, not nearly as dense and tightly spun as my previous yarns have been. Maybe I'm getting the hang of this!

The first picture is more true-to-color. I had a really hard time getting good close-ups of the yarn that weren't either entirely blurry or entirely washed out from the flash. This one will have to do.

I also managed, over the past few days, to spin up 4 oz. of yarn that, once it's dry, will be worth of the esteemed title "Sock Yarn." At about 17-19 wraps per inch, it ranges between sport and fingering weight, and has enough yardage for socks - 380 yards! This accomplishment, my friends, is a big milestone as a lover of socks and spinning! But you (and I) will have to wait until it dries to see pictures.

I thought I lost the sock love

2008-01-22T16:39:00.000-05:00

I've been having a problem with socks lately. Specifically, socks using those hand-painted yarns I often love so much. I mean, just take a look at this one.

This one, folks, is supposed to have a pattern. A pretty pattern called "Laburnum." (It's in the Sensational Knitted Socks book, a 5-stitch pattern). You can see some examples over there at Flickr. But my sock, it does not have a pattern. Hence, it's been frogged.

Or there's this one, Cascading Leaves. Again, check these out. See those nice little leaves? Now look at this:

Ugh, right? OK, it's not that bad, but it is a little bit, well, blotchy. I haven't quite frogged this one, but I'm tempted.

In desperation, I pulled out some Koigu last night, a nice, reliable handpaint. A colorway, I should add, that hadn't worked well with a pattern involving cables and lace. You'd think I'd have pulled out a nice, and definitely reliable solid color. But no, I decided I wanted to try this particular yarn. After all, it's blue and white and makes me think of winter sunsets. After a bit of poking around on Ravelry, I thought that the Hedera pattern might have just the right amount of interest, but I wasn't so sure about the whole handpainted business. I gave it a shot last night. This is what I found:

I like it. In fact, I really like it. Color me surprised, hand-paint me amazed! I think what you see there must be my personal record for the most sock knit in one evening yet! Thank goodness, my sock love hasn't, as I had feared, quite left me yet.

Handknit and handspun

2008-01-20T12:13:00.000-05:00

Hey guess what everyone! It worked! I knit something with yarn that I spun!

Remember this bit of overspun, blue tweediness?

Well, with it I made a hat!!

Pattern: Tweed Beret from Interweave Knits Winter 2006
Yarn: My Own Handspun!!
Needles: Size 7 in DPNs and various circulars
Time: About a week

The overspun tweediness of the yarn ended up working out really well for the pattern. I also had the perfect amount of yarn: just a tiny, smaller-than-a-ping-pong ball's worth at the end. I was surprised; I'd thought I'd have too little yarn, but no, it was all fine! It was a big tough on my hands: very little stretch to the yarn and therefore not the nicest to knit with. I also could have made the hat a bit floppier. It's pretty thick yarn, and was nice and toasty when Coffeeboy took this picture yesterday during a snowfall. Overall, though, I really like how it came out and am terribly excited that my yarn actually "worked"!

I have another FO that I've been forgetting to post: Coffeeboy's socks. I finished these while we were in Colorado, a few days before New Year's - the last FO of 2007.

Pattern: Retro Rib socks from Interweave's book Favorite Socks
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Pioneer, 2 skeins
Needles: size 1, magic-looped
Time: Nov. 2007-Dec. 2007

I really enjoyed this pattern; the socks were easy to knit and the ribbing controlled some of the pooling of the yarn. Coffeeboy seems to like them too! I "gave" him the yarn as a graduation present, with the promise that they'd become socks, and I finally have kept that promise!

I've been spinning a lot lately, as you might have seen in that last post. For the past almost 2 weeks I've been spinning 8 oz. of red, "warm wine" yarn. It's amazing how much longer it takes when I'm really trying to do things right and spin more even, consistent singles! Last night I plied it onto 2 bobbins; today I need to take that off the bobbins and finish plying the yarn, probably a bobbin and a half. Then I will have a spinning FO to show you, too!

January's Effects

2008-01-18T10:23:00.000-05:00

January has a way of doing things to me. You might guess that what happens in January is hibernation, the effect of darkness, the quiet of the snow. Instead, I often feel a sense of things moving and shifting, as if on some level, I must be able to detect the after-solstice lengthening of the days.

Maybe I'm thinking about all this because a week ago a very good friend converted religions and entered a new decade of life, all in the space of a weekend. Somewhere in there, my talk of spinning into a new phase of life must have got me thinking about the deeper things in life that only rarely write about on this blog. Or maybe it was seeing the past twelve or so years of my life flashing before my eyes, sometimes literally, as I set up my new computer.

Juniper likes the spinning, too, and sometimes checks out the fiber

I'm not kidding about the computer and the flashing. Things really did flash, and it wasn't a trick of the mind or eye. I went quickly through the past seven or so years of digital photos, which is as long ago as my first digital camera. iPhoto for some reason had only imported some of my pictures, so I needed to get it set up in order to download the latest knitting photos. As I merged different collections of pictures together, they literally flashed across the screen. (When there were sets of pictures of the cats, it looked like a movie of squirming and wiggling, I swear). Transferring from Eudora to Mail meant that I had to literally reopen and rebuild files of email that I wrote home during my first semester of college.

So what is it about January? My first January in graduate school, the seclusion of writing papers and exams turned some corner of my brain into a monastic, hermetic retreat. One the one hand, I was totally stressed and anxious (I think I ate nothing but reheat-able, frozen Trader Joe's dinners for two straight weeks I had that little spare time) - and on the other hand I finished the exams, ended a relationship that had gone on far too long, and came out the other side feeling really great. I didn't yet, for that matter, know how to knit, but life was still good.

And now I knit with my own handspun!!

This January, we finally got some snow, just like all the Januarys I used to spend in the northeast. On Wednesday night it finally snowed here in this little mountain town, and the world got really quiet and slippery. I drove home from knitting in Asheville through the snow, doing 25 in a 45 zone so I wouldn't slip down the steep slope. I got out of my car. You could hear the hisses of snow and sleet and ice, but not much else. The world had hunkered down by 10 o'clock at night. I woke up yesterday to the sound of drips and told the cats to look for icicles.

It's supposed to snow again on Saturday!

This January is not the same as all those other Januarys. But the quiet of the snow and the essential aloneness of writing a dissertation makes me pause and think of Januarys past. I wonder what the next ones will bring?

Rest in Peace, Old Mac

2008-01-17T13:07:00.000-05:00

Well, it's finally happened. My trusty old iBook has been set aside and replaced. It didn't die in a horrible crash of unutterable proportions, but simply got old, as few computers get to do. Old, slow, cranky, but thankfully never wrinkly.

RIP: August 2001 - January 2008

The new computer's on-board camera

takes a picture of the old,

now shut down, its sleep light no longer glowing.

Goodbye and Hello.

That old iBook and I have seen a lot together. It's been my trusted technological companion since August of 2001, a few months after Mac OSX and the new, square, white iBooks came out. It saw during its 7.5 years of service:

an upgraded hard drive, from 10 to 40 gigs
new memory added
an airport/wireless card added
a new keyboard (after the cats kindly removed the 'E' key)
an external screen when its own became dim
a new battery after the old one failed to charge

It helped me through many projects, fun times, and transitions:

1 close call in which I nearly left the Mac universe (I've been a Mac user for as long as I've used computers) for the PC universe, and this Mac kept me so securely in the fold that now I can't imagine using anything else
1 master's program and over half of a PhD
2 autumns of PhD applications
seemingly countless term papers and their associated documents
1 breakup (one which was a very good thing, too)
1 wonderful spouse (really and truly: way back when he first met me, Coffeeboy was impressed that I had an iBook and that it was running beta software. He figured I must have been a fellow geek of some sort).
1 year of wedding planning
44716 emails stored in Eudora, now successfully and safely transferred to Apple's Mail program
5 homes in 3 different states
all the photos for a knitting blog, slowly, slowly opening up in iPhoto, and slowly loading in Flickr
innumerable history files in my web browser for knitting patterns and yarn
the beginnings of a dissertation, and its very many documentary demands

You almost never crashed, old friend. You never lost my data. (I have all my emails going back to 1996, freshman year of college, for example. That's almost an insane amount of memory and data). You would have kept on trucking along, maybe at 15 mph instead of 60, if I had let you. You got me through a good majority of the previous decade of my life, and I can only hope that my new computer proves to be as excellent a machine as you were, that it can assist me through whatever comes next with just as much ease and style!

Stranded for the New Year

2008-01-06T20:41:00.000-05:00

Guess what? I've now fulfilled a childhood dream... of being stranded in the mountains by a snowstorm. Coffeeboy and I spent the new year's holiday with his family in Colorado, and a week ago Friday, we went into the mountains to spend time at their condo at a ski resort. We cross-country skiied happily on Saturday, were joined by friends that afternoon, and snowshoed Sunday morning. As you can see, it was quite snowy! After a leisurely late lunch at a local restaurant, we went home to the condo to pack and leave.

We ended up leaving at about 5 pm, the same time as everyone else heading home from the slopes after Christmas week, in this case, east towards Denver on highway 70. (You might have read something about this on the news a few days ago.) About an hour and 5 miles later, we decided to turn around and call it a night. This was a wise decision, as the tunnels and passes were all closed by the time we returned a half-hour later. Everyone decided a trip to the hot tub to relax was in order, followed soon by a plate of what cheese we had left and simple dinner of pizza.

When we woke up on New Year's Eve, we figured they'd open the passes soon, and we'd leave that morning. But the passes didn't open till late afternoon, by which time it was getting dark, snowy, and stormy--not looking much better than the night before.

This is how I came to run out of yarn for Cobblestone, knitting away the time in a condo at Copper Mountain while the snow, -30 windchills, and 0-degree temperatures kept us inside reading and playing games. Being stranded on New Year's Eve turned out to be not so bad, to put it mildly! I'd happily strand myself there any time, for anything!

Speaking of strands, when we returned to my in-law's house on New Year's Day, I found the remaining yarn for Cobblestone (just a partial ball, a lot smaller than I thought it was) and knit up the rest of the sweater, giving it to Coffeeboy late that evening after weaving in all the ends. But now, it is finished. Except for blocking.

Pattern: Cobblestone pullover
Yarn: Mission Falls 1824 Wool, 15 balls
Needles: KP Options size 6
Time: about 2 months

It was a long trip, those two weeks. Great to see family, and i actually finished a bunch of knitting (the sweater, a pair of socks for Coffeeboy, a hat for my BIL, etc). I'm glad to be home with my kitties, my wheel, and my stash. I'm also looking forward to getting back to normal life. My list of to-dos grew and grew while away, and the amount of dissertating shrank considerably as well. It's time to put my brain to the grindstone once again, and turn the wheel on the productivity in more ways than one. With Coffeeboy off in Salzburg Austria this week for a fancy seminar (paid for by school), I'm sure I'll have plenty of quiet time in which to get caught up!

Happy holidays!

2007-12-19T13:40:00.000-05:00

This year December has just flown by. I cannot believe that Coffeeboy and I are leaving tomorrow to visit family for Christmas, and then to visit his family for a belated Hanukah and for New Year's. Is it really that far into December already?

Part of the disbelief, I think, has been caused by the weather. A week and a half ago, it was warm enough to go for a nice hike in our beautiful mountains. The clouds and the light combined to make for a truly eerie backdrop.

Looks a bit like Middle Earth, doesn't it?

This weekend, however, the weather took a turn for the colder, and although it didn't snow (like the forecast said it might) in my little town, on Saturday snow did dust the ground in Asheville where Coffeeboy and I went for dinner and a "Swannanoa Solstice" concert.

I've been knitting and spinning a lot, realizing that the spinning has bitten into my plans for holiday knitting. But, I spun up the BFL from Jessica into about 220 yards. That's enough to actually make something with!

The yarn was still quite unbalanced; I haven't quite figured out how to ply correctly. It also didn't work out to be nearly as many yards as I'd hoped; at only 220 or so yards for 8 oz, I think I made a pretty dense yarn. Oh well. I'll learn. And thank you all so much for your encouragement of the spinning!

I don't have a picture, but I think last night I did get a balanced yarn! I experimented with some plain fiber of unknown variety, only spinning enough to cover a single layer on the bobbin, and then plied it together, this time really trying not to overdo things. It worked! Let's just hope that when I return to my wheel in January, things go as well and I remember what to do!

Besides spinning, there has been a remarkable amount of Cobblestone, and remarkably little sock progress. Cobblestone has just a few inches of sleeve left before I join it all up for the yoke. Fun stuff! But now the crunch is on, and I need to finish those socks up before I can really focus on Cobblestone!

Thankfully, I have until after Christmas for the little red sock, and the brown/blue socks are for Coffeeboy, so that is a bit more flexible as well.

Now, the question remains, what knitting should I take with me this holiday trip? And how much work? I'll have 2 weeks worth of knitting and working and seeing family, so the question always returns, just how much is realistic? So many possibilities!

A new decade

2007-12-04T11:37:00.000-05:00

Now that I've entered a new decade, do I feel older?

The short answer is no, not really. Turning 30 isn't that bad (despite what I've decided is a new sympathy for people trying to read menus in dark restaurants!). Many of my friends have had a lot of 3-0-angst, and I haven't suffered the same. It seems that those who have had angst have had things they're still looking for in life - feeling like they've found a career, buying a house, finding a spouse, having a kid(s).

I've never felt pressure to do any of these by a certain point, but making progress on 3 out of 4 probably eases the transition into this new decade. Turning thirty and thinking about it from this perspective does give me renewed sympathy for those who have already turned that corner (or will do so soon) and are still looking to add to that list, fill in those blanks. I have it pretty good, I think, and I'm really thankful for that. I can only wish the same happinesses for all my many friends! I'm not so sure that I'll be quite so calm when the next decade comes around - but that's not for a long while yet, thank goodness!

What did I do to celebrate, you ask. Coffeeboy and I spend the past weekend in Atlanta, celebrating in the "big city" with my/our friend Greta_Jane at Ivory Needles. We went out to eat at a yummy restaurant, went for a hike, and generally had a good time hanging out. (I'm not sure that GJ's wall appreciated being drilled into, though. We tried to put up a shelf, and in the manner of most housing projects, found that the house provided its own complications - this time in the shape of strange plaster and metal door frames. Yikes!)

My actual birthday was pretty quiet. I spent it at home, working, spinning a very little bit, and starting to listen to holiday music.

I did get some nice gifts, including a reminder that the wheel is a birthday present:

Isn't that sweet?
My wheel was all decked out in pretty blue bows!

As for those packages that kept arriving on Friday, one of them was indeed fiber - 8 oz of reddish Corriedale. And another package was indeed a book from Amazon - Spin to Knit. Thank you, honey!

The third package, it turns out, was for me; it was just vastly larger than anticipated! I'd ordered what I thought was 8 oz. of fiber from Paradise Fibers (I typed "8" in the quantity, which to me implied "per ounce.") They sent me 8 bundles of 8 ounces each - four whole pounds of fiber, apparently by mistake! After a few thoughts of what I could do with 4 pounds of fiber (make an absolutely huge amount of yarn, enough for a couple of sweaters), the good Samaritan in me won out, and I called them to arrange to return the extra 7 bags. Because really, I'm not at a point in my spinning where I want 4 pounds of the same thing! Oh my! In return they've given me a 10% off coupon for my next order, yay! The only problem is... the UPS truck never arrived to pick up the box. I guess I'll need to call them again, hmm?

Fiber on Friday

2007-11-30T12:06:00.000-05:00

What's this? Fiber Friday? I have some finished yarn photos for you! It's as if it were "Fiber Friday" or something!

But first, a word to the non-spinners. A long time ago, before I decided I wanted to spin, I used to read people's spinning posts and feel a bit bewildered by all the different terminology. I felt a bit left behind, if you will. I know it wasn't intentional on the part of those bloggers, and I stuck with them through the spinning (even if I didn't quite read the posts, but simply tuned in for the "oooh, pretty yarn pictures" factor).

So, to the non-spinners reading this, hang in there, this is still a knitting blog, and I sympathize if you're a bit weirded out by the sudden prominence of the word "spinning" in my topic tags. You don't really want to see a few more inches of Cobblestone, though, do you? Because that's all that's happening around here, I swear. Socks? Hats? Other holiday knitting? It's not happening. Cobblestone is on the needles and wants to be worked on, gosh darn it. (I've actually finished the body and started a sleeve, but I don't have a picture. Besides, it would look like a very small version of the body anyways, so my point stands).

That said, how about some fiber?

Thanks for all your hints and suggestions about the overplying of the blue lagoon yarn. I've decided to leave it as-is for now (partially because I lack any easy way to wind a center-pull ball).

Look, a dime shot!

I also spun up all of the not-quite-4-oz. of the "autumn lake" roving. It went really, really quickly, quite possibly because I love the colors. I love how tweedy it turned out. I'm also glad that it's not quite as overplied as the previous skein was.

I don't exactly love that there are only 100 yards; I would have liked something longer. Nor do I like that it's a bit scratchy and scraggly, but that might be because I was playing around with letting the twist eat up the yarn.

Looking at the close-ups, I'm thinking the singles weren't very tightly spun; at least, they don't look that way in the closeups. I wonder if this is why it's scratchy and why there are so many fibers hanging out from the singles? Hmm.

Speaking of fiber, I'm highly suspicious of all the mysterious packages that have arrived at my door in the last half hour. I've seen a mail truck, a DHL truck, and a FedEx truck dropping things off. Good gracious! It's a veritable delivery parade out there. Now I only need to see a UPS truck to collect the full set. You'd think my birthday were on Monday or something, and that I'd be entering a whole new decade to boot!

(My birthday is on Monday, and I'll now have to say that my age is 3x, instead of 2x. I'm going to feel very old, I think. I also suspect I don't get to explore these enticing packages Coffeeboy has ordered until then. One of them, though, has a suspicious Amazon.com marking on the box, and two have really interesting return addresses that I shouldn't have looked at. Bad me! - but this is what happens when one works from home and receives the mail, I guess.)

Happy Friday, all, and have a good weekend!

Overplied!

2007-11-26T17:50:00.000-05:00

On Sunday afternoon, I finally felt well enough to sit by the wheel, so I plied up the two bobbins of pretty blue fluff. Indeed, the bobbins hold about 4 oz. of fiber, as you can see from this crammed bobbin!

I then wound the yarn onto my makeshift niddy-noddy, also known as two posts and one beam from my sweater dryer. It bent a bit, but made an excellent substitution for the tool.

That's 119 yards or so.

I had read on the internet (while I was sick and couldn't spin) that it can be OK to overply the yarn, that overplying gets corrected with hot water and whacking. So I decided to go for the overplied side of things. Apparently, though, I took that little tidbit too far! When I removed the yarn, it went sproing! into a mess of coils and overplied yarny goodness.

A soak in the tub, followed by a few very fun whacks against the side of the shower, seemed to remove most of the little coils.

As you can see, it's still quite overplied. I must have been a bit ply-happy when I was at the wheel. I didn't use the plying head, but just a regular bobbin, and the same whorl I'd used to spin the yarn, which made plying go so much more easily. (Until the flyer started sqeaking and I had to clean it, but that's another story). We'll have to work on the plying! In this picture, the yarn is still pretty wet, so I can't give you the pretty all-skeined-up shot quite yet.

I can't decide whether I like it like the overplied look or not. I really like the blue-lagoon colors of this yarn, and I'd like to make a hat or something out of it. It could make a really funky hat as is, or a really nice and lofty hat if it weren't plied so darn much. I'm half of a mind to reply it once it's dry, to get something that looks a little less squished. How, exactly, does one go about replying something?

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

2007-11-23T17:40:00.000-05:00

I have a cold. Which means I've been curled up reading old, favorite books (An Acceptable Time, by (the late and beloved) Madeleine L'Engle), collapsing after getting the stuffing started in the slow cooker yesterday, and napping in front of Thanksgiving Day football, occasionally sitting up to knit Cobblestone.

That's about 11 inches. Juniper says "hello," by the way.

Coffeeboy (who's a wonderful cook and who loves to cook, by the way) did most of our holiday preparations, in the end, including: our favorite cheese-nut loaf, orange and white sweet potatoes in the slow cooker, cranberry sauce, and the best yet: pumpkin bread pudding. Oh goodness, that stuff is yummy. It turned out to be all right that we didn't have anywhere else to go after the conference in San Diego, and that we didn't have social obligations here in NC, because of the aforementioned cold.

The conference in San Diego was great, but a little long for those of us who had to present on Friday evening (before the conference really started) and Tuesday morning (after almost everyone had left). I think both Coffeeboy and myself had a wonderful time catching up with old friends and making new ones. We also got to relax in the hot tub at our truly spiffy hotel.

Today I've been feeling a little better, a little more upright and less horizontal. Upright enough, at least, to fill you in on some fiber-news.

First, I took some pictures of my 3rd skein of yarn, the first I made on my very own wheel. I kind of like how some of it's quite uneven and some of it is very even, plus, the fiber really glistens. I'm thinking one day I'll dye this (I've been imagining a moss-green shade.)

Click to make 'em bigger in Flickr...

After that, I decided to spin up some of the pretty blue stuff I bought at SAFF. I worked on that last week before the conference; in fact, I forgot to take a picture of the fiber before I started spinning it. So you'll have to survive with this:

I find it really interesting that the fiber looks so much darker on the bobbin than it does in its unspun form. Any thoughts on why?

Last night I spun up the rest of that fiber, but I haven't gotten around to plying yet. My previous experiences of plying is that it's actually pretty hard work on the feet and legs, and given that don't quite want to be sitting up, I'm not sure I feel like plying right now. But I think this fiber will make a very pretty yarn, and not bad at all for a fourth go-round. More pictures of the pretty blue singles:

Finally, I have some roving to show you. This came from the lovely Jessica in NJ. She gave this to me when I saw her and spun with her a few days before my proposal defense (she let me use her wheel, too!). She dyed the fiber herself, with really gorgeous colors: navy blue, browns, greens, a little purple in there too.

So pretty! Thank you, Jessica!

I also couldn't help but purchase 4 oz of this lovely-colored English Leicester roving from Etsy (The Fiber Station), in a colorway aptly named "Autumn Lake."

Oh dear. Now I can't decide which to spin next, they're both so pretty! I wonder if I'm ready to try for sock yarn? Either of those would make some gorgeous socks! Maybe I should content myself with spinning a consistent and thinner yarn before planning anything dramatic like socks. Hmmm.

WIPs roundup

2007-11-15T10:58:00.000-05:00

While I've been spinning, I've also done a bit of sock-knitting lately.

See? We have these Retro Rib socks, coming along nicely.

And also this oddball here, the Cascading Leaves sock by Jeanne Townsend of the Yahoo knitalong group:

I'm using Great Adirondack Yarn in their wool/silk/nylon blend, and it feels heavenly! The colors are knitting up a bit odd, but everyone I've asked says they kind of like it. I kind of like it, too, but I also kind of think it's an odd fit between pattern and yarn.

I have one other pair of socks, but I didn't take their picture, as they are currently suffering from "procrastinating on kitchener stitch syndrome," poor things. It's been a couple of weeks they've had that particular issue; maybe I'd better put them out of their misery soon.

Finally, remember how I finished a sweater recently? Well, I started another one: Cobblestone!

I'm using Mission Falls 1824 wool that I bought years ago to make Rogue. Turns out I need a few more balls to make a guy-sized sweater, and goodness knows if I can find the right dyelot anymore! (Yeah, I know. Another dyelot problem? But this one I know about in advance!) I'm thinking of using a different dyelot to do the yoke; that should hide the change in color fairly well).

I'm thinking of bringing Cobblestone to the conference this weekend (the American Academy of Religion, meeting in sunny San Diego this year), in order to get through the many inches of relatively brainless knitting I have ahead of me. It's still small enough where it might make sense, at least for a little while, to have it with me.

... Speaking of conferences, I made a little mistake yesterday:
I sent an email yesterday to a whole bunch of major scholars in my subfield about logistics for a conference, and I've just now seen that it had a couple of typos. I checked carefully to make sure the dates and times and logistical details about travel were correct, but not that I'd spelled the title of the conference right! Oops! Earlier I was quite worried about this but now I feel a little less anxious. No less embarrassed, but less like hiding is necessary!

Study in contrasts

2007-11-11T18:03:00.000-05:00

I'm now back in the beautiful, mountainous "boonies" where my honey and I now live. After spending a week with my academic colleagues in New Jersey, I fully re-acclimated myself to a more, shall we say, cosmopolitan environment, and I felt a bit sad about leaving. Don't get me wrong, I was excited to see Coffeeboy (and the two cats and Coffeeboy's dad, not to mention the lovely new wheel!), but this switching back and forth from the big ole' northeastern seaboard to the small-town life is definitely a study in contrasts.

Certainly, I've really enjoyed getting a taste of the small-town experience these past three months, but I wonder if a lifetime spent almost entirely in major metropolitan areas hasn't affected me in ways I was hardly aware of. It'll be interesting to see if I like the quiet better for this time surrounded by people, or if I'll miss the people more. The move has certainly been a learning experience, a good one, and I'm looking forward to learning more of what this particular set of contrasts has to teach.

As for this past week, what can I say? In many ways, it was quite stressful, as evidenced by the fact that my stomach felt odd much of the time and I didn't sleep well (whether because of couch-surfing, being away from my own bed, the proposal defense, or the readjustment to grad student life, or all of this, I don't know). Despite the stress, I also had a simply a wonderful week. I got to experience sunny, crisp, cool fall weather with maple leaves blowing and crunching underfoot, something I always love. It felt absolutely great to reconnect with fellow grad students, shoot the breeze with them and faculty about things academic and things non-academic, get advice and feedback from professors, and to attend a workshop/seminar with a visiting scholar. I even feel like things are all right (and fixed if they had been broken) with people I'd parted from awkwardly, and that leaves me much more centered. Now that I know how keenly I can miss the stimulation of intellectual life at the university setting, I can think more clearly about how to take positive steps to alleviate some (but never all) of the loneliness of dissertation-writing. And perhaps it will give me even more impetus to find perspective in the woods.

Or on the spinning wheel and the needles!

ABD!

2007-11-07T11:37:00.000-05:00

That's right, folks! I'm ABD! They passed my dissertation proposal, so I suppose I am now all but dissertation!*

The consensus of the faculty was that might be piled a lot higher and a lot deeper on the way to that Ph.D., in that whichever chapter I write first could well become the whole dissertation. Hearing that was not unexpected; my advisor had warned me that the chapters were vast. I now feel like I have a Very Important Decision to make about where to start. Hmmm.

Some plain socks on the needles might help. All the socks I brought with me to work on have relatively easy patterns, but patterns nonetheless. This has resulted in my getting almost no knitting done, as it hasn't been as relaxing as it could be. I'm craving plain vanilla knitting here, folks (or spinning, but the wheel's at home). Besides, I need to start the plain socks before the conference next weekend!

---

*I might have been ABD in the reckoning of my department after I finished my exams, because finishing the exams (and turning in the necessary paperwork) results in a little M.A. diploma in the mail. I guess that's not quite the same as ABD, but it's fun nonetheless.

Early Birthday: Wheel!

2007-11-02T11:25:00.000-04:00

Just as I'd hoped it might, my big 3-0 birthday came a few weeks early this year, thanks to Coffeeboy who coordinated with my entire family to get me a wonderful present:

Thank you so much, family! I'm going to have such a wonderful time learning to use this new fiber "toy"! Coffeeboy was totally right that I'd enjoy having it be a present from all of you.

These amazing, generous people are all participating in getting me that used Lendrum and accessories I saw listed on Craigslist. Yesterday, I and my visiting relatives went to pick up the wheel, which I managed to avoid trying until after lunch and a stroll around Asheville. Late thtt afternoon, we brought it home and I could try this:

As you can see, I had a busy evening last night spinning up part of a bobbin of singles. I'm not sure what the fiber is; the wheel came with some unlabeled, undyed fiber that the seller included. (She said she included some romney and some Blue-faced Leicester, but I'm not sure which was which!)

I'm very happy with the way the wheel spins; it seems easy to control (for a beginner), solidly made, and intuitive in terms of its construction. The bobbin and/or the flyer seem to be making some sort of awkward clicking noise that's a little annoying. I don't know if the Lendrums we used in class made noises a lot, mostly because I was too concerned with the actual act of attempting to spin to worry about noises. I'm also wondering whether or not it's possible to put a darker stain or color on the wheel without too much mess or trouble?

I won't get too much of a chance to practice on my new lovely wheel in the coming days, as I'm leaving for my academic home this Sunday - my first visit back since moving! I'm very excited to connect to the world of academia again and to see my friends and colleagues. There's a very good reason for this visit: I'll be defending the proposal for my dissertation!

I leave you with a few fiber-related questions: I now wish I'd perused the fiber options at SAFF more carefully, but I didn't want to bite the bullet and buy fiber I might not use, lacking a wheel. Now that I have a wheel, though, I'm going to want some fiber: spinner-readers, what fiber sources and types do you recommend? Also, what are some great spinning blogs I should add to my bloglines?

Have a great weekend!

A real finished sweater!

2007-10-31T23:36:00.000-04:00

Guess what? I finished the sweater! Without further ado, I present:

Eris!

Pattern: Eris
Yarn: Green Mountain Spinnery's Mountain Mohair, in the "spice" colorway
Needles: size 5 for the body, size 6 for the sleeves, and size 3 for the cablework
Observations: I had this sweater on the needles for 2 whole years, give or take a week or two. I knit it slowly, in pieces. My progress was stalled halfway down the body when I discovered I had one skein of the wrong dyelot. I ripped back and reknit. I probably set it aside for a while before working on the cabled edges on the shirttail hem. The sweater seemed a bit too small, so I set it aside. A while later by several months, I picked it up, hoping there'd be enough yarn for the sleeves, that alternating colorways would hide the irregularities. This proved finicky work, so I set it aside about a year ago - and didn't pick it up until last week, when I knit both sleeves that week.

Overall, I'm happy with how it came out. A wet blocking made the sweater fit better; it had been too small because I initially chose too little ease. I had to improvise underarm gussets to make the sleeves fit all right, and I ran out of yarn for the sleeves, so I did the cuffs in a corresponding color.

I learned a lot working on the cables. They really make the sweater what it is, and I really enjoyed seeing them come together. I finished them over a year ago, though - frankly I'm amazed I finished this sweater at all!

The shirttail hem is an interesting look, and I'm not sure I'd do it again for myself. However, it works well with the cabled corners:

But most of all, this sweater has restored in me a belief in my ability to make sweaters and have them turn out all right. I'm looking forward to a few of the new items in the Winter Interweave Knits, and I am pretty sure I have yarn in the stash that would work to make them!

After SAFF

2007-10-29T21:20:00.000-04:00

Some of you might have noticed that I didn't blog a lot during October, nor did I read blogs/comment a whole lot. I kind of dropped out of things for a while. I'm not really sure why, but I expect it had to do with visiting friends, visiting family, and the need to get a little bit of work done in between all the visits. (We have more visitors coming in the future weeks, but SAFF, spinning, and (yes) a finished sweater make me feel like blogging.

So what did I think of the fiber festival?

When I stepped into the barn with all the vendors, I immediately felt overwhelmed! All the yarn! How would I ever make my choices? Remember where I'd seen something?

Would I meet other knitbloggers? I did manage to meet up with Keri, who's blog I've been reading since I started blogging. We had a little adventure driving over to the EarthFare natural supermarket to grab some lunch. After that, though, it was time for my much-awaited spinning class, which I believe I've already mentioned!

Saturday, since my friend couldn't be there, Coffeeboy went with me to the fair. He's such a good sweetie. He encouraged me to try the wheels (which at this point I merely treadled at) and he encouraged me to buy yarn (of which I still need daylight pictures). He looked at sheep and goats with me, but that's not a surprise as he's a big fan of the hooved and horned set. He liked scratching under the chins of the sheep!

Saturday evening, I went back up to the festival and spun some more. I had a blast. 2 oz. of fiber passed like nothing, and after what seemed like very little practice, I was spinning without overtwisting and getting the yarn far more even than only the day before. I'm going to be brave - or is it foolhardy - and show you two pictures of the "skeinlet" I came home with:

Plying, not so much there yet. But for a second bit of yarn ever, I was pretty happy with it.

Sunday, predictably, I made a split-second decision to drive to SAFF again (about 20 miles) and try wheels. At first I was nervous, but then it was just interesting to see how the different ones felt. I really wanted to like one that was "prettier" than the modern-looking Lendrum we used in class, but I'm starting to think it will be a Lendrum for me. (This conclusion is aided by the fact that I have a lead on a barely used one that comes with all the main add-ons and then some, plus possibly fiber, for a reasonable-ish price).

Meanwhile, when I was out on Sunday trying out wheels and learning about making yarn, Coffeeboy was at home, making cheese.

This is a queso fresco with garlic, scallions, and cracked black pepper, his second cheese. Last weekend he made a plain queso fresco. He's had the cheesemaking equipment for a while now, but hasn't made any since a mozzarella attempt a few years ago. I think he might be getting into cheese again though, which is just about as great for me as handknit socks are for him!

A bit of meditation

2007-10-26T21:13:00.000-04:00

The time this evening is just flying by! It turns out that Angel indeed can't visit this weekend because of her beesting. Sadness! Coffeeboy is out for the night, and I'm home, ruminating on my first day of the Southeaster Animal and Fiber Festival. What am I doing with all my free time?

...reading about spinning wheels on the internet.

Um.

Spinning felt like meditation. For at least for a few minutes at a time, and that was quite a few minutes after I might have uttered some under-the-breath cursing about things not working, twisting too much, twisting too little, the wheel turning in the wrong direction, on and on. Little by little, though, things started clicking. I remembered spinning the not-well-prepared fiber at the New Jersey festival last year, and I liked how the wheel kept the tension going, rather than all the stopping and starting of the drop spindle.

Eventually, I forgot that I was sitting on a really hard concrete bench. Somehow, my feet were doing one thing and my hands were doing another, and yarn of some variety found itself on the bobbin. I was spinning (sort of)! I forgot about the concrete bench until I realized a couple of hours had passed and my tired feet reminded me I could barely feel my rear!

Folks, I think I might have turned to the dark side, or whatever you want to call it.

I'll have more to say about the festival in a day or two after it's over; I just wanted to share my excitement about spinning! I guess the big question is: what will come of tonight's internet research? Will the cats have to learn the dos and don'ts of wheels? Can I let the fact that I'm turning the big 3-0 in, oh, about 5 weeks figure in somewhere?

Twas the night before SAFF...

2007-10-26T00:33:00.000-04:00

The sweater is done. It's very wet from its soak in the tub, with which I managed to, I think, increase the size a bit - very necessary. I won't be wearing it tomorrow, but maybe Saturday or Sunday, if I'm lucky?

SAFF is tomorrow! My first wheel spinning class is tomorrow!

Unfortunately, though, my good friend Angel might not be able to join me. She was stung by a bee a couple of days ago and had a very major, extremely scary allergic reaction. I've really been looking forward to seeing her but the doc says travel is out. Sadness! She's hoping she feels better enough to come visit. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for her!

No yarn, no sleeve, no sweater

2007-10-23T14:27:00.000-04:00

In a fit of determination, this past Sunday I decided to bring out one of my oldest UFOs: Eris! Remember that sweater with the cabled collar that I haven't worked on since, well, forever? Maybe, I thought, if I work really hard, I can get it done for SAFF this weekend.

It had a slight problem: I needed to use two dyelots, alternating by row, to finish the sleeves.

Now, here's the tricky part. As far as I can remember, I divided the correct dyelot (of which the least was left) into two balls, and wound the incorrect dyelot into a big ball. (My previous posts on this topic didn't reveal whether or not I'd made two balls, but I'm pretty sure I did). This past Sunday, I switched from DPNs to magic loop for the sleeves and knit away, getting ready for the second sleeve last night.

I couldn't find the second small ball of yarn! I looked everywhere: in the "yarn I most likely won't use soon" tub, the "sock yarn" tub, and the "other yarns I'd like to use sometime" tub - nowhere to be seen. I even checked my random baggies of yarn ends and odd leftover balls. Nowhere. I looked again, and again. I tried to think where I would have packed it. Maybe in the sock yarn, the yarn most likely to be looked at frequently? Nope. Before the move, the little balls sat on a bookshelf in the guestroom. Maybe that was a clue to the yarn's whereabouts? But I had no idea where that might translate into in the new house.

It appears that I'm up a creek without a paddle, or rather, up a sweater without the yarn. No suddenly-revived SAFF-sweater for me. I guess this is what I get for having such a long-delayed UFO.

2 hours after first posting this:
... Nevermind! Crisis averted! I found the missing yarn! It was hiding in a drawer, presumably "where I would find it" and also to "keep away from yarn-loving kittens." I think I'll go knit now.

As promised, a foliage report

2007-10-03T22:20:00.000-04:00

This past weekend - as promised - Coffeeboy and I took a hike to check out the foliage at Blue Ridge Parkway elevations (here, about 5,500 feet). Here's what we found (you can visit flickr for bigger pictures, and for more pictures):

The great blaze of autumnal glory isn't quite here yet. Bits of yellow leaves dusting the tops of trees, as if the hillsides were covered in a light coat of autumnal pollen.

(Isn't it interesting how the vegetation on the hill in the left photo there changes as one moves from one side of the ridge to the other?)

Beautiful fall wildflowers attracted even more beautiful butterflies. (Coffeeboy snapped that butterfly closeup; isn't it gorgeous?)

Shrubs change more quickly than trees, as you might be able to tell from these pictures. This includes the blueberry bushes, which still had a few hardened, only slightly juicy berries left on them. (Believe me, we looked, sampled, and marveled at how many berries remained).

And, oh yes, one hiker saw fit to break out the woolen socks. It was a cold morning, after all, so he thought maybe his feet wanted something a little cozier to wear for this hike. What better than trekking while wearing socks made of Trekking yarn?

On the dissertation front: I've finished a really official, penultimate draft of my dissertation proposal! This feels especially great because tomorrow, I'm heading off to somewhere between Boston and Providence to go to a wedding. The proposal has been sent to not just my advisor, but to several professors and a few trusted friends. I'll defend it in approximately a month, after they've had time to critique it, and after the proposal has had lots of time to sit on a shelf in the department, available for public perusal. Yikes. I mean, I know it's a public proposal defense, but thinking about my proposal hanging around in a public place all by itself, makes me very nervous. (How will I feel when I turn the whole thing in, then, I wonder?)

This weekend, we're off to Massachusetts - south of Boston - for a wedding. I'll be on and off the net till we get back, and when I do, I'll have pretty pictures of beads! And socks. Oh yes, more socks.

Socktoberfest: thinking about handpaints

2007-09-30T22:05:00.000-04:00

Recently, Greta_Jane has been asking me for commentary on what makes a good match between handpainted yarn and sock pattern. Predictably, whenever I've seen her lately, we've been too busy with everything else to pull out socks and ponder patterns. Not to mention that it wasn't yet sock weather. Now that sock weather and Socktoberfest are here, though, I've been thinking about this question of match between pattern and yarn, and I thought I'd try to pull together a few thoughts on the blog.

Looking at the socks I've knit over the past couple of years, it seems there are a few factors I consider:

1) Plain vanilla stockinette socks
I choose these when the yarn is something special, when I want the colors to carry their own weight, or if I just want an easy sock to travel with. I also tend to choose stockinette when the yardage seems likely to be too short for a complicated pattern (as is often the case with the Jitterbug - the two bright blue socks).

2. Socks with ribbings
Ribbing seems to work well since the strong vertical lines counterbalance the horizontal effect of the handpainting. It's also usually easy to memorize, is stretchy, and fits well, all good combinations.

3) Things just go together!
Stylistically, this is my favorite option: when the pattern moves in such a way that it itself highlights the changes in the yarn, and the variegation of the yarn emphasizes the movement in the pattern:

Some patterns are just too intricate for self-striping. Knitty's Hedera strikes me as one example that really needs a solid-colored (or mostly solid) yarn.

What guidelines do you, readers, follow when pairing sock yarn and sock pattern?

Waiting patiently for fall

2007-09-28T17:20:00.000-04:00

I've been waiting for a day like this. Cool breeze, sunny, blue sky, a few leaves dropping and dancing down from the trees. Fall is really here! This week, we baked acorn squash and stuffed it with a rice/almond/parmesan cheese mixture, and we also baked a pumpkin and chocolate chip cake. They were supposed to be bars, but it came out more like cake - very tasty!

This week I finished one knit, came close to finishing another, and started one more. I couldn't help but take pictures on what turns out to be our new, giant mum, just now showing its color. Here's a new sock, the Mock Cable Wave sock from Favorite Socks. The yarn is Lorna's Laces in the Tuscany colorway - and yes, it's another holiday knit.

The Garter Rib socks have just one portion of a toe to go; I expect I'll finish those later tonight.

And finally, the Irish Hiking Scarf, done minus the blocking and weaving in of ends:

Pattern: Irish Hiking Scarf
Yarn: Rowan Yorkshire Tweed Aran, color #416, 2 balls
Needles: Size 8 (ie, treetrunks!)
Reflections: This was a destash project. If it weren't, I probably wouldn't have chosen such a scratchy yarn! I'm hoping it'll soften up once I block it, closer to the actual holiday season. For now, I have enough yarn left to make a hat-brim, with a coordinating yarn for the body of a hat. One holiday present done, several to go! Ho ho ho!

(By the way, I think I'm in love with that giant, beautiful plant.)

While patience has brought me fall and finished objects, it hasn't brought yarn. All week, I've been assiduously checking The Loopy Ewe, waiting for what they call a "sneak-up."* While a sneak-up came, it didn't bring with it the yarn I've been coveting! So I checked the website even more obsessively. Maybe there'd be another sneak-up? No. Sheri's blog now says that they waited-for yarn will be up the week after next! Since I don't even know whether or not they'll have the desired colorway this time around, I feel a bit silly doing all this waiting. I mean really, just how obsessed can one really get about yarn? ... I'm not actually sure I want that question answered about myself. Because then I'd be even more scared than I already am about this particular obsession!

Tomorrow, Coffeeboy and I are going hiking way up on the Parkway, to see if the leaves a couple thousand feet farther up are turning more than the leaves at 2,200 feet. Either way, I'm sure I'll have pretty pictures to show you for next week!

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*This isn't meant as a criticism of The Loopy Ewe. I've used them before and have been very pleased with their services. I realize (mostly) that yarn store owners have lives outside their stores... but that hasn't stopped me from being obsessed!

The Harlot in Atlanta

2007-09-22T16:15:00.000-04:00

This past week, I traveled to Atlanta to visit my friend, "Greta Jane" over at Ivory Needles. The timing of the visit, of course, was September 19th - the Yarn Harlot coming to speak!

We waited in line with lots of other knitters, bravely ignoring that one had to wait outside and beside and virtually inside a Ben and Jerry's to get to the theater.

GJ was lucky enough to get on the Harlot's blog.

She'd brought three first socks with her, all for different pairs and none of them finished, which quite amused the visiting sock-knitter. (Stephanie was particularly amused by the giant Fuzzy Foot sock). Myself, I was just pleased to see the famous sock photographing and to make my own (largely botched) reciprocal attempt.

The rest of the week in Atlanta I spent reading, meeting GJ's grad student peeps, gathering books, and hanging out (with knitting, of course). It was so very much fun to get to interact with grad students! I hadn't quite realized how much I've been missing that. It was great to talk about my research, their research, their classes, their quibbles! I know that the people I currently live among are very nice - but they're not the same.

The other exciting event of the week occurred the following day, when Barbara Kingsolver came to speak about her new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, about a year of eating locally in a place not too terribly far from where I now live. She and her husband read selections from the book, answered questions, and got me sufficiently interested that I bought the book in the very long book-signing line and started reading it later that night. I'm looking forward to reading more, but as the Yom Kippur hunger grows (since Coffeeboy isn't eating, and I don't want to eat in front of him while he's fasting, I've been [mostly] fasting, too) I find that I really don't think I can read it right now!

I need to get a bit of writing done this weekend; I might go attempt that now and see how that fares on a rumbling tummy and a sea of questions.

Rrrravelry!

2007-09-12T16:45:00.000-04:00

*Insert excited noise as an email downloads to my computer and I see its subject line:*

"frecklegirl has invited you to Ravelry!"

Yay! Ravelry! Knitting procrastination, here we come!

I'm glad I turned in that dissertation proposal earlier today! (Well, it's not done, but a sustantial draft is done.)

Find me there as "Lazuli" (go figure...)

(As for those of you with hundreds of spots left to go, it could happen any day now. I was pretty sure when I checked a couple of days ago that there were 350-odd people ahead of me, and the pop! I was on.)

Big catch-up post

2007-09-12T14:24:00.000-04:00

Has it really been over two weeks since my last post? Goodness. Time flies when you're having fun and working hard! I might have to resort to a bullet-esque post, a la Sheepish Annie:

Labor Day weekend: Much fun! Greta Jane at Ivory Needles came up for a visit, so Coffeeboy and I showed her the sights. I think she might have planned on a little more knitting time. Instead, we went to an Apple Festival (which didn't have enough apples, IMHO), wine tasting (really not very good wine), eating (The Laughing Seed, again) and listening to music in Asheville, hiking off the Blue Ridge Parkway, blueberry picking, talking, cooking, knitting, etc. Possibly the best part? She found me an excuse to see her AND a ticket to see the Yarn Harlot in Atlanta next week!!

Dissertation proposal: Last week I sent my advisor a 2-page overview. He wrote back saying, essentially, looks good but vast, show me more. So since sometime last week I turned those 2 pages into about 24 pages of actual dissertation proposal. I was aiming for about half that, but the longer version turned out to be the only way I could articulate myself at this point. But yay! I have an actual draft of a dissertation proposal done! This is excellent!

Libraries: I am very impressed by the ILL service at Coffeeboy's college. They get things here really quickly, which has proven quite beneficial over the past two weeks.

September weather: It's cooling down a bit, more towards the lower temperatures these mountains are known for: low 80s, 70s. I haven't quite felt the first breeze of fall, but it will come, as evidenced by this tree we saw on our recent hike:

Knitting: Oh, you mean frogging and floundering and flourishing? Because there's been a little bit of all three these past couple weeks. Remember the shawl with the psychedelic colors? Frogged. I decided (with a little help from Greta Jane)it was just too psychedelic, after all. Instead, I'm looking for the perfect woodsy, earthy combination of blues, browns, and greens. Any suggestions?*

The socks? Floundering (well, a little bit). One is done, but another pair has yet to make it onto the needles.

But what about flourishing? Well, I decided that a male someone is going to receive a (modified) Irish Hiking Scarf for one of the winter holidays.

As you can see, I've been enjoying knitting cables on size 8 needles. Oh, the treetrunks! They fly so fast! Here's one ball of yarn out of two, almost all the way knit!

Phew! There you go! I think I'm all caught up, for the moment!

---
*I have something rather specific in mind: sky blues to deeper blues, forest greens to sunlit greens, dirty brown to the browns of tree trunks, with maybe the whites of clouds peeking through, dyed in such a way as to look nice knit up into a shawl with a leaf motif.

Equilibrium

2007-08-28T11:36:00.000-04:00

Well, if I finished a shawl and a sock, obviously it wouldn't do to not have one of each on the needles, right? The sock is no surprise: I always have those on the needles, and here's the latest:

I'm following the "garter rib" stitch from Sensational Knitted Socks. With this sock, I've officially started my holiday knitting - yay! I should have one item done at least! The yarn is a variation on the theme of Trekking XXL, in color 41. I first attempted these on size 1 needles, but alas, they were too huge and floppy, so back to the toothpick-sized 0s I went.

Just to keep the balance of finished and unfinished objects right, I've also been working on another feather-and-fan shawl (this one's a few weeks old, actually). Mindless, goes well with beautiful handpainted yarn, and looks great, too! I'm using the Ingrid's Blues colorway from Claudia Handpainted yarn.

This past weekend, Coffeeboy and I continued exploring our new area. This time, our travels took us up, up, up, five-thousand feet up, to the Blue Ridge Parkway, where all was fog, mist, and thunder.

We stopped to pick wild blueberries from the bushes growing along the side of the road - a popular activity, judging by the number of people crawling all over the hillsides and by the lack of actual blueberries on many of the bushes. We didn't, however, get to go on a hike, because when we got to the trailhead, the rain started to come down more and more, a wet answer to the thunder we'd heard as we drove along.

Real-live finished objects

2007-08-24T12:47:00.000-04:00

I wasn't kidding! I actually have two whole FOs to show you!

First, the socks - the monkey socks! They're done! Each sock took a very small amount of time to knit, it was just the small matter of the second sock and, oh yeah, the move that got in the way! Well, here they are:

Pattern: Monkey Socks from knitty.com, by Cookie A.
Yarn: Woolbearers sock yarn in (the yummy colorway) "Autumn Moon"
Needles: K-P Options for magic loop, size 0
Thoughts: This is indeed the fun pattern everyone says it is! I loved making these socks, especially since each one of the pair was knit at an outdoor musical event of some sort! I do think they turned out a bit tight. I'm thinking I might need to size up to 1s for future sock-making purposes, that maybe my gauge on small needles has tightened up. This should be easier to do now that I know that Knitpicks has two versions of size 1 circulars, at 2.25 and 2.5 mm. (I've been wanting the 2.25 size). Nevertheless, I'm in total and complete love with the colorway - lavenders, pinks, purples, oranges, with tiny hints of green and maroon. Yum yum.

Close-up of stitch pattern

In other FO news, a long long time ago (try about a month or so), I finished a feather-and-fan shawl/scarf. But for reasons unknown, I didn't manage to photograph it until this week, right before sending it off to my mom for her birthday.

Pattern: basic feather and fan stitch, repeated 5 times across
Yarn: Three Waters Farm superwash merino fingering weight, colorway "Lilac"
Needles: Size 5 Bryspun circulars (pointy tips, not too slippery)
Thoughts: This shawl was truly a dream to finish and block. The feather and fan pattern opened up beautifully and gave the shawl amazing drape and softness. My mom opened her birthday present yesterday, and was full of compliments about it! Yay!

In the above picture, by the way, I'm standing on our new back patio-area, with the oh-so-threatening creek behind me in the trees. It's an amazingly lush, tangled area right now, with weeds and trees and flowers and invasive kudzu all mixed in together. I can't wait to see how it changes as we move from summer into fall!

Music in the mountains

2007-08-22T21:47:00.000-04:00

I know, I know. This is a knitting blog, and all I can talk about is where I live. (I also know that you'll hang in there for the knitting, too. :-) I promise, you don't need to see pictures of boxes (you've seen your own) and you don't want to hear about the article I'm revising or how I'm easing back into dissertation work. Instead, I have pictures from Asheville's "Shindig on the Green," a weekly, free mountain music festival that takes place every weekend during the summer. Coffeeboy and I caught this past weekend's Shindig, and we had a very nice time, indeed!

I got a little bit of work done on my monkey sock...

...as we watched singers, pickers, fiddlers, and cloggers, adults and kids alike, showing their stuff on the stage.

We even got up to join in the circular square dance! Well, OK, we stayed seated for the first round (that's the one in the photo), we moved our arms around for the "seated dance" ("everyone bow to your neighbor out there in the audience!"), and finally, for the second dance, we got up and ran to the big circle up front, confident this time that everyone else would likely be just as confused about who was "odd" or "even" and how, exactly, to promenade, as we were.

Sunday was Coffeboy's birthday, so to celebrate, we took yet another hike! But before hitting the trail, we stopped to look at a few more waterfalls.

Looking Glass Falls and Daniel Ridge Trail

Then, I took Coffeeboy out to dinner at Asheville's premier vegetarian restaurant, The Laughing Seed. The food was delicious and creative (we had wild mushroom enchiladas with mole sauce and feta, as well as mushroom risotto cakes with a beet-truffle sauce: yum!) and quite reasonably priced compared to what we were expecting! We ended the night at another Asheville establishment, Old Europe Cafe, sharing an "opera slice" and drinking decaffeinated cappuccinos while reminiscing about our favorite locales in Boston's North End. Yum. (And happy birthday, sweetie!!)

Those monkey socks, by the way, are almost done... so I should have an FO - or even two - to show you soon!

Small town life

2007-08-15T11:16:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, Coffeeboy and I decided to check out a weekly summer event in our new town - square dancing on a block of Main Street. Yes, it's really called that! It was quite fun to see!

Older folks, kids, middle-aged people, all tried their hands at the promenade and the doe-see-doe, while a crowd of onlookers sat in their foldable camping chairs and chatted or watched. We didn't dance - at least one of us would have had trouble remembering whether we were an "odd" or "even" couple. In front of the courthouse (that building with a steeple), a band played fiddles and banjoes for the music. It reminded me of nothing so much as, well, "A Prairie Home Companion," except in the mountains of the south, rather than among the Lutherans of the north.

Looking north at dusk from the top of the hill.
We live sort of behind that white steeple next to the phone pole.

I've never lived in a small town before. Prior to this, my life has been either entirely suburban or in cities, the exceptions being two college towns that sported large universities of many thousands of people. This town has 7,000 or 8,000 people to its name, and its population is more affected by the comings in spring and goings in winter of Floridian retirees than by the migrations of 700-or-so students in the summer and fall. This should be a very interesting place to live!

I mentioned that we'd hiked to see some waterfalls? Well, here they are: High Falls and Triple Falls!

(Click to see bigger pictures at Flickr!)

It's amazing to live in a place with such natural beauty so close by!

Settled and unsettled

2007-08-14T00:00:00.000-04:00

We may not be settled in, but we are at least settled down, with many of our boxes unpacked, a sense of where to go to find things we need, and even some time to relax.

We eventually did close on our house. It turned out we needed flood insurance, because the FEMA map the bank had said we were in the 500-year flood plain. Um, yeah. We all know how much anything FEMA says should be trusted! Regardless, it was necessary if we wanted to buy our condo, so we're happily insured against twice-in-a-century disasters!

It's been a long few days, and as usual when I don't blog for a while, I don't know what to say or where to start! Do I tell you about the cats, and how they survived 12 hours in a car, an overnight stay in a hotel room, moving to their new home, a week of guests, and eventual sibling rivalry? Do I mention that in our first week we had Coffeeboy's family who helped us move down here, college friends of his who happened to be driving through town just after we arrived, or a grad school colleague of mine whose family gathered this past weekend a few towns away?

Or do I write about my new neighborhood, this little town? How this small-town, mountainous location is definitely not New Jersey, given that neighbors here have parties by the creekside and actually talk to each other? Should I blog about the culture shock of moving to a place that's like nowhere else I've lived before, given it's in the rural south but is culturally far more liberal than the "rural south?"

Take Asheville, the closest city, about forty-five minutes away. Coffeeboy and I have already found two Asian-fusion noodle places there that we love. After we visited one this past weekend, we stopped to listen to a guy and a girl on the guitar and violin, doing a rendition of "Closer to Fine." A few feet away, a magician performed for kids and adults alike, and a block or two away, on the way to the car, we saw some more musicians, using the entrance to a very modern furnishings gallery to improve their acoustics.

Or what about my dissertation, the books now somewhat organized on a newly set-up shelf? I need to get back into that, but it all feels so far away, and my dreams are of distance and disconnect. I don't know yet how it will be to try to do this crazy amount of work while not "in residence."

Or do I write about the hike that Coffeeboy and I took this afternoon, visiting a few of the waterfalls of our new county. We watched bathers swim and frolic on the rocks, wondered about the pine trees and the deciduous trees and how it would all look in autumn, and marveled that we were most certainly not in suburban New Jersey anymore, Toto! And after watching local trout swim in the streams, we stopped at a natural foods store and bought some local trout, just caught today, and brought them to our new home for a fresh and tasty dinner!

Yes, I could write about all of this, but I'm too busy trying to live it, processing it by mind rather than "pen." Trying to write about even some of it shows me just how "unsettled" we really still are! When I get even more organized, I might even manage to eke out a picture or two to share or a chance to visit the "sit and stitch" at my very local yarn store!

All my bags are packed

2007-08-01T22:01:00.000-04:00

Well, maybe not all of them. Maybe not all my clothes, the kitchen things, last-minute books, or my WIPs! But we're really doing quite well on packing and a Sunday pull-out.

We're having a couple of those "crises" which precede a move. The main one was our sudden realization that, though we're driving our own truck, we still need folks to help us load and unload! While we had a few helpers for the loading, we don't know anyone in our new town to ask to help unload. So, we hired some professional schleppers. This will be wonderful, as Coffeeboy, his parents, brother, and myself probably reasonably couldn't have moved all our stuff. Following the same logic, we realized that the same five people, plus a few odd grad students (all over-libraried and not so hot on the weight-lifting department like yours truly), wouldn't do much better at the starting end. So we've hired professional schleppers for here, too.

The biggest confusion, though, is whether or not our new place is on a floodplain. For the last, oh, few weeks or so, we'd been told that it isn't. Now, the bank says that FEMA says it is, and we need flood insurance. Because our new town is small, the paralegal there has helped close all the condos in our new little development, and flooding hasn't ever been an issue. Until now. Suffice to say, we're hastily working on lining up flood insurance or getting the whole flood plain question sorted out. But really... couldn't this have happened sooner than 5 days before closing?

At least packing is going well, and the cats are only a little spooked:

See all the empty hangers?

We go off-line on Friday, so if you dont hear from me until well into next week, that's why! I can already feel the strangeness of being disconnected from the Great Big Interwebby Thing!

Finished socks!

2007-07-27T17:41:00.000-04:00

I even have a finished object to show you! What's even crazier is that Coffeeboy was excited enough that he tried them on in hot weather! Not outside, mind you, but still! Given his aversion to the heat, it was a true sign of appreciation.

Pattern: Gentleman's Fancy Socks, from Knitting Vintage Socks
Yarn: Brown Sheep Wildfoote, color "Mums", 2 skeins plus a bit of black yarn for the toes
Needles: Size 0 DPNs
Thoughts: These were a fun pattern to knit for the future professor. they had enough patterning not to be boring, but not so much that I didn't memorize it. Designed to be long, they'll sure keep him warm this winter! I added the little black toes because in both cases, I ran out of the skein at the very end, and decided he'd probably think the contrasting toes were neat. (I did have a third skein, but didn't want to use only a small bit of it, preferring instead to have a contrasting toe color).

I've also finished my first Monkey sock; I need to cast on for the second! (Do I smell some second-sock syndrome here? Hopefully not, but moving is mighty distracting.

The weather is hot and heavy. We've been packing and packing. I shredded years worth of old bills and so on yesterday; the more I shred, the less we need to move. You won't believe what I was still carrying around! I found health insurance plan details from jobs I left years and years ago, credit card statements for cards I don't have any more, and possibly the most telling one of all: pamphlets of information on deep vein thrombosis, or a blood clot in the leg, one of which I had in college.

I know I still "carry" that episode around with me in a lot of worrying, so I wasn't too surprised to see just how much I still had from that experience. I kept the important stuff but ditched lists of symptoms, instructions on how to inject anti-coagulating shots, and the like. Maybe if I can ditch the paperwork, the same will happen to my mind? I doubt it, but it's worth a shot nevertheless!

I've been holding out on you!

2007-07-26T00:04:00.000-04:00

There are some bloggers, it seems, that when the going gets tough, the fingers get typing. With me, it seems to be the opposite! The more I have going on, and have to say, the harder it is, in the end, to get it all in the blog. (I suppose it doesn't help that the latest edition of Blogger's posting feature is really, really slow on my computer. As in, type a key, wait a second for it to appear, over and over.) But I won't hold out on you any longer...

Be that as it may, I have some pretty fiber pictures for you, because otherwise you'd see pictures of books moved into boxes and of all the random things we're trying to get rid of (old furniture, random appliances like a breadmaking machine, microwave, yadda, yadda, that we won't need at our new place).

But on to the pictures! First, the second half of my trip to Massachusetts (a week and a half ago, now):

We stopped at WEBS. Yes, I bought yarn. (If I remember, I'll try to take a picture of the booty). I felt a bit silly, posing with my sock outside this shrine of sheepiness, hence the lopsided smile.

After that, we moved on to one of my favorite places ever: Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in Lenox, MA. I spent 2 months there in high school, studying the french horn, lying out under the trees on the lawn and listening to concerts while deciding whether to go to a conservatory for college, or to a liberal arts school. I chose the latter, based partly on that summer.

Now whenever I'm there, I'm transported back to a magical summer full of teenage angst and self-discovery. During that summer, I realized that I didn't have the drive, the will, that would be necessary to succeed (to master those high notes, that lip trill), as a professional hornist. Many of my other colleagues were much more competitive, though, and no doubt thought I wasn't terribly good. Once I realized I didn't want to compete with them, that I was (for once in my lifetime!) all right with being myself, it didn't matter that they were better than me, that they didn't think I was even good enough for second horn.

Maybe that's one reason why I like visiting Tanglewood so much, that by some strange act of sympathetic magic, I think that returning again to a place of importance will somehow bring back that same sense of equilibrium.

Of course, I like Tanglewood for other reasons: magnificent music, its beautiful grounds, stately trees, the variety of fanciness or simplicity with which people picnic on "the lawn," the surrounding mountains, the memories. This time, though, in addition to that and to hearing Sibelius's Second Symphony (which "my" orchestra played during that unforgettable summer), there was knitting:

(Monkey socks!)

Everything cycles back on itself, or at least, that is how I find myself thinking about life, the past and the present each commenting on each other and helping prepare for the future. Going back to Tanglewood before leaving the northeast was Coffeeboy's idea - and I'm so glad he suggested we do it!

Days in Archives

2007-07-18T15:41:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, I really like this researching life. Others, it seems a strange ordeal to put myself through! Cold feet, cold shoulders, no coffee right next to me, a hungry hole in the pit of my belly (no snacks either!). Because what else are you to do in a Rare Books and Manuscripts library but page through folders and of material, hoping for that gem, deciphering handwriting, or worrying about just how much all those photocopies are supposed to cost?

Because certainly, you wouldn't want to spill hot coffee on hundred-year old documents (and you wouldn't want iced coffee given the air conditioning.) Nor would you want to nibble tasty banana bread and get crumbs on those documents for the mice to find! And you certainly couldn't bring in your knitting, because what if you removed a document from the library hidden therein - or punctured a hole in the all-too-fragile paper! (I suppose that's what evenings are for: catching up with the yarn).

Sometimes you find a small, congenial library: the lockers for one's bags are located close to the reading room; there is a small shelf atop the lockers for - you guessed it - coffee storage! Last week, I finally decided to bring my beverage into the locker room, which also held the photocopier. That way, whenever I went in there to make copies, I could take a leisurely sip of coffee. Yum! Or, if the archive is even smaller, there's no pretense: coffee and computer on one table, and on the next table over, the old folders and books and boxes. There's caffeination and a warm beverage to take the chill off, and the air conditioner might even be adjustable! Such, indeed, was my pleasant experience this morning!

Edited to add:The above was written yesterday, when I was indeed freezing (one woman yesterday had on a sweater and two shawls; a man had on a thick wool sweater), under-cafeinated, and hungry (but too engrossed to want to go get lunch). Julia and The Add Knitter are right, though, there's much to enjoy and I do get into a zone, trying to imagine and read and think my way into a life or a movement separated into labels, folders, boxes, finding aids. Someone real touched this paper, someone who fascinates me - and someone else real categorized this same paper, called it X, separated it from all the myriad little things that went into its production. When I'm not dreaming of being covered in wool socks, shawls, and hats it's a lovely world to be a part of, for a little while.

Tomorrow, I need to get back to real life, though, and remind myself that I'm moving in 2 and a half weeks, and haven't started packing!

Stream of thoughts

2007-07-11T00:05:00.000-04:00

How's everyone doing in the heat? I can't wait for it to be over, I can tell you that much! I've been keeping cool in the AC... in fact, I even have a finished object to show you!

How did I make so much progress? I joined Audible.com and downloaded a book, listening to it on my iPod this past Saturday. We were at Borders and I meant to do work, but instead, the very yarny cover of The Friday Night Knitting Club caught my eye, and I read it in the store for about an hour... and I got hooked. Not hooked enough to pay market prices and take time out of knitting for it, but enough to decide I'd listen to the book and knit at the same time! The book is, well, entertaining enough, but that's all I'll say for now since my wrists are in pain from the knitting, fiddling with that little microfilm wheel, and answering a bundle of email.

It's a good thing I'll be stuck in a car for much of tomorrow, heading off to Boston & Camberville for another research visit. (I can't knit in a car; it makes me ill.) Hopefully that will give my wrist time to recover - not to mention more to say about my dissertation proposal progress.

I was up in the middle of the night last night, from about 4-5:30 alternately writing down thoughts and surfing for pretty handpainted yarns. I'm never up in the AM with insomnia. It was very, very weird. At least I got back to sleep for a bit.

This is getting long. I will have to show you my FO pics once I'm home next week, once there are pics to show!

Happy (wet) Fourth!

2007-07-04T23:59:00.000-04:00

Today's Fourth of July was rainy in these parts - no fireworks or BBQ for me! It was also cloudy and cool - quite different from the many, many very hot Fourths I can recall. (I recall with particular clarity several spent camping out all day in public places, waiting for fireworks in the 90-degree heat, waiting for public transportation to take us home afterwards). Coffeeboy and I stayed home, did housework and schoolwork. I concentrated on plunging into some reading for my dissertation, which proved quite fun. I even knit a bit on my Monkey sock (pictures below!)

This past weekend, besides redoing the blog layout and working on writing out more formal notes towards a new dissertation proposal, I finished up a baby sweater for a professor whose young one came early. Luckily, the knitting was mostly done, so all I had to do was the sleeves and the neckband - which, when you're aiming for a 6-month-old size, means knitting something very small and cute!

(Note pincushion for size)

Pattern: Baby Pullover, from Knitting Pure and Simple
Yarn: Mission Falls 1824 Wool, color 016 ("Thyme", 2.5 balls)
Needles: size 8 and 6 circular (16") and DPNs
Time: less than 2 weeks off and on
Thoughts: I haven't had many opportunities to knit for babies, so this was a real treat: so fun, fast, and cute given the small size. Plus, it means I actually finished a sweater! I really have no idea what size babies are, so when I saw the newborn earlier this week, I was stunned by how small he is, how fragile, the parents carefully holding that little pink head. I realized, with relief, that this sweater with a 20" chest diameter would most certainly fit him in future, cooler months. It was fun to work with the Mission Falls, which is really soft (and it's machine-washable, which I took to be a non-negotiable item!).

Well, enough about babies. Let's talk about Monkeys instead - monkey socks, my first socks for the Summer of Socks Knitalong! I've made a lot of progress! They really are quite fun, and totally memorizable, which surprised me for a charted lace pattern with 11 rows. Once you do it once or twice, though, you see the general logic of the pattern and it flows very easily. Especially if you have 3 hours round-trip of train travel to archives like I did last week!

Best news of all? Well, for the monkey sock? There's more train travel to archives in my future! And for me, I get to visit more libraries... and hopefully get a few more steps closer to having this thing relatively well sorted out before the move!

All's well

2007-06-30T15:06:00.000-04:00

Earlier this afternoon, in a slight panic, I wrote:

Call me annoyed. I just tried to "upgrade" my Blogger template... because (foolishly!) I thought their new "customize" feature would allow me to play around more. Hah. If you looked at my blog between 2:30 and 3:06 pm on Saturday, June 30th, it might have looked odd, and this is why.

I might be switching blog providers (or whatever they're called). Or messing with my template. I'd like to have normal margins and so on, but Blogger doesn't want to give those to me unless I'm hemmed in by their templates.

If things look weird, now you'll know why.

I think everything is better. I'm not jumping ship... for now. I seem to have figured out the new system to my satisfaction, and I have a somewhat rearranged layout!

Perfectionism and the Embossed Leaves Socks

2007-06-27T16:15:00.000-04:00

For the past, oh, six weeks or so, I've been working on a particular dissertation topic. You see, I thought I had found my "love in the archives". Everything was going along so well - except for a nagging doubt that the sources I was looking at really didn't specifically answer the questions I was interested in. But maybe it would be OK, I thought, so I trudged along, digging in archives, hoping, writing.

The process, in fact, looked something like my progress on my Embossed Leaves socks: everything was going along really well until it seemed I would run out of yarn, a problem that fast became a reality: I didn't have enough yarn.

Pay no attention to the library-pale toes...

I faced several choices: knit the toe of this sock in a different color (which wouldn't have looked good), try to buy more yarn and probably fail, given the number of colors Koigu has, try to swap for yarn that might not quite match, and finally, unknit the first sock and give both socks a bit of toe in the right color and a bit of toe in a different color.

Coffeeboy repeatedly, these past few weeks, has likened my perfectionist difficulties with my dissertation topic to my perfectionism in knitting - and in this case, the two coincided in time, as well. Last night I decided I needed to change my dissertation topic as well as undo the first sock and reknit it. Besides, I'd messed up on the pattern.

All ready to unravel!

It wasn't so bad, after all. I got all the stitches back on the needle of the first sock and prepared to finish the toes. For the dissertation, I realized I didn't need to go back to the drawing board, either. I haven't finished the proposal yet, and the topic I've been focusing on for the last few weeks is very, very close to what I'd ultimately like it to be, so I just need to sort out what works of that topic from what doesn't. Some of it might even fit as a chapter in the reworked topic.

Ready to reknit!

With that good base to work from, I redid the socks. I also opened a new Word document and started to write things down. Suddenly, just like fixing the socks - and with a little help from my friends - really figuring out the topic seemed as possible as getting going again on these socks.

(The color here is pretty true.)

Maybe reworking the socks even quite literally helped me regain my confidence regarding the dissertation. I'm not sure. I do know, though, that by the end of the evening I had a pair of finished socks, ones I am quite happy with! I just hope their recipient is as happy!

Pattern: Embossed Leaves socks, now in Interweave Knit's book of 25 Favorite Socks from their magazine
Yarn: Koigu KPPPM, obviously from a color and dye lot I've long since forgotten
Needles: size 1 bamboo DPNs
Time: 6/3 t0 6/26

Leaf pattern detail

Thoughts: I really enjoyed knitting this pattern. While I didn't quite memorize it, it was quite easy to follow and worked well for TV and group knitting once I got the hang of it. I'd definitely like to knit it again with a full-length sock! As it was, I had only one skein of this Koigu and decided to use it for anklets. Since the yarn was green and blue and brown, a leafy pattern seemed appropriate.

Up next on the needles: MONKEY SOCKS! I'm actually jumping on a popular sock bandwagon at the same time as, well, virtually everyone else on the internet, it seems. And I promise you, I have some very pretty yarn for it as well, yarn I've been saving for something special:

Yarn in the color "Autum Moon" from Woolbearers

Have you ever done this?

2007-06-26T12:04:00.000-04:00

It's really hot out today - they say it will get up to 95 degrees. So I dressed apprpriately: light skirt, tank top. What I didn't dress for is sitting in a freezing-cold, air-conditioned library. And I forgot to bring anything to keep me warm.

Except, that is, an in-progress rectangular feather-and-fan shawl that conveniently is long enough to cover my shoulders down to about my elbows. This means I'm sitting here with a half-finished shawl on, circular needle dangling somewhere by my left side, yarn running down to my backpack on the ground. It keeps me warm - but I have to say, I've never worn an in-progress garment in public (for anything other than in-progress pictures) before - have you?

Bloglines question

2007-06-25T23:49:00.000-04:00

Those of you on bloglines, has this blog been loading really, really old posts lately? Any ideas why? 'Cause I sure don't know! Thanks!

Maybe bloglines ate my yarn. I have about a yard left and we've just reached the first row of the toe. Uh-oh!

Not so lazy days

2007-06-24T16:04:00.000-04:00

I had such high hopes of showing you in-progress pictures of the bathroom remodel. But when you're brushing your teeth at the kitchen sink, and thinking of how many extra trips you took to Home Depot and Lowe's, and that weekend-long project stretches into a week because it takes time for paint to dry, the excitement of "in-progress" kind of fades away. But there you go: our upstairs bathroom, before and after!

Before: notice how nothing matches?

After: notice now things actually match now? Wow!

We put the finishing touches on about a week ago, hanging the barely-dry mirror and cabinet doors, just in time for a visitor (my parent who actually owns the place) to see the finished bathroom. That's why we're redoing it right before we move out: because we have a small stake in it selling well. Unfortunately, though, we're going to have to rent it for a while until the market picks back up. We now have the oddities of a "for sale/rent" sign out front, as well as a lockbox. Weird - and a sign that this is real, we really are moving!

There's been progress on the knitting front as well. It's now the Summer of Socks knitalong - and since the rules say socks have to start after June 21st, and I have two pairs in progress, it'll be a while. But, I'm making progress on the two other socks I had going. See?

Embossed Leaves

What, you think that little discrepancy of 3 grams is going to be a problem? Especially since the done sock weighs more than the remaining amount of yarn - and I don't have any more than that? Yeah, so do I. I'm about 1/3 into the second anklet and am really hoping to get most of the way into the toe. Then I'll either troll the net looking for some similar yarn, or I'll just knit it with some plain blue or green sock yarn. I do know it's Koigu... I don't have the ballband, so I haven't a clue what I'd be looking for specifically. Shoot. At least the Embossed Leaves sock pattern is tons of fun!

We have winners!

2007-06-08T12:14:00.000-04:00

Thanks so much to everyone who played along in my blog contest! We have some winners! Danielle will be taking home some Shadow in Sunset, and Jeanne will find herself with some tweedy blue-green!

And thanks, all of you, for your sock suggestions! I was truly amazed, at first, at the number of "monkey!" requests that came rolling in, and (though they are certainly on my list) was nonetheless pleased to see things start to diversify. I'll have no end of possibilities for the Summer of Socks!

My research trip was good, if inconclusive. It was especially nice to see so many friends, and to make a spontaneous, if out of the way, trip to my college town for dinner at my favorite restaurant. I really actually meant to go to WEBS while still sort of in the area, but I also wanted to visit my "old stomping grounds," as the waiter in the restaurant said. The timing made it such that I couldn't do both, and instead of stocking up on yarn, I stocked up on popovers with apple butter, salad with almonds and poppy-seed dressing, and seafood bisque for dinner, with many years' worth of happy memories to keep me company. I'm usually uncomfortable having dinner alone in a restaurant, but in this case I was so happy to be there, the first time in years, that I really saw all my old friends, my family, my professors, at all the tables in the room, and strangely enough, the memories really did keep me from feeling alone.

In terms of research, it ended on a happy note, as I "had" to go to that shrine of learning and books, the Boston Athaeneum! Wow, was that a lot of fun! However, it was a bit inconclusive, for several reasons. One, I wasn't quite as focused as I've been on previous trips, so it seemed less immediately helpful. Two, I think that the topic I'm interested in might not quite be the best one to address the broader questions I'm interested in, so the question becomes: to switch topics, or to switch questions. Either are possible at this point. I need to mull things over for a bit... perhaps while redoing the upstairs bathroom. This has been on our "to-do" list for over a year, and finally we're both caught up enough with school to permit another venture into the wild world of tiling, painting, and plumbing!

Off to Boston!

2007-06-03T13:03:00.000-04:00

This week I'm headed off to Boston for a semi-spontaneous research-and-visit trip. I need to see if there are enough sources to pursue a particular possible dissertation topic, and Harvard (not to mention Boston more generally) is one logical place to start looking in detail. It's off to the big university I go! While I'm there, I'll also be visiting old friends and favorite yarn stores, so it should be a nice trip.

Contest update: less than 12 hours to go! But we're well over the magic number of 15, so two prizes will be drawn! Enter your comment on this post by midnight tonight for a chance to win a prize! I'll be able to inform the winners and post sometime during my trip, but it might not be immediate, especially if the archives kind of suck me in. I'll be in touch with the winners over the next few days to get your addresses, and will put the prizes in the mail after I return.

I'm really excited about this trip. It's been a while since I did anything archival (reading for generals kind of got in the way of that) and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm especially curious since I really don't know exactly what I'll find. I'm hoping to find enough sources to be able to say "yes, I have a topic!" which would just be very exciting.

Of course, I'm also bringing knitting - two socks, to be specific! They are neither of them ones recommended in the contest post (though many of those are ones I do want to knit!):

The Gentleman's Fancy Sock by Nancy Bush, in Knitting Vintage Socks, for a certain Professor Coffeeboy

and

The Embossed Leaf Sock, from Interweave's collection Favorite Socks (and from the, what, 2005 edition of Interweave Knits, right before I started subscribing?). These will be ankle-length as I only had one skein of the, yes, pretty soft blue-and-green Koigu. Yum. They're going to a very lucky recipient at some later date this year...

For now, though, it's time to hit the road! See everyone in good old New England! (Or something like that.)

Such a pretty blue!

2007-05-31T00:11:00.000-04:00

Looking for the contest? Click here!

I've been remiss about socks, lately. You see, I thought I'd run out of yarn and have one sock entirely made of pretty blue yarn, and another made mostly of blue, but partially of a partial match. Never fear, I had about a ping-pong sized ball of yarn left when I finished the second sock! Phew!

I do think, though, that as I knit the heel of that second sock - at the rate of about 3 rows a week for a while there - that the apparently shrinking ball of yarn was the cause of my dramatic slowdown. Because what's not to love about pretty blue socks?

Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug in "Jay"
Needles: size 0, magic loop
Time: Don't ask... way too long!
Reason for indoor photo: It was 89 degrees out when I took the picture, and I didn't want to go outside in wool socks!
Why I love this yarn: it's very soft (squishy and sproingy!) and my other pair has worn well thus far!

For those of you just stopping by, don't forget! The contest runs til June the 3rd! Only six more posts to go till we reach the magic number 15!

Blogiversary - and Contest!

2007-05-27T18:03:00.000-04:00

That's right, today this blog is 1 year old! Happy Blogiversary to me! I can't believe it's been a whole year since I started out on the whole knitblogging thing. I've had some dry spells, but on the whole, it's been an enjoyable way to meet new people, chronicle my projects, and pass my time. You all have reminded me that the world can be a very generous place: you've given me yarn, praised my finished (and offered encouragment over the unfinished) objects, and even encouraged not only mine, but also my spouse's, academic pursuits, embracing such non-yarny things as books as an integral part of this blog.

In some small payment for what I've gained from all of you - and because I'm moving in a couple of months and some destashing is in order - I'm having A CONTEST! Here are the details:

What you have to do: leave a comment on this post telling me 1) a sock pattern (or other pattern, if socks aren't your thing) I'd be a fool not to knit (regardless of whether or not I've already done so) and 2) which of the two possible prizes you're interested in, or both.

What you'll win: Here's the tricky part: I'll draw one winner if there are 1-15 entries. If there 16-30 entries, I'll draw a second winner! So, the more people who enter, the more likely you are to win something! (And if it gets above 30 (which would be a real milestone for this blog) I'll add something else... to be determined. The current possibilities, though, are:

A ball of Rowan Felted Tweed, color SH 152, 191 yards. The color is a bit more bluish-green than represented here.

Two skeins of Knit-picks Shadow in the color "Sunset" - enough for a full-sized shawl. The color is a bit darker and less fiery than shown here (appropriately enough, in the sunset).

How I'll pick: Random number generator.

Deadline: midnight, Sunday, June 3rd (for no other reason than it's about a week away, and it's my half birthday)

Enter away!
... and thank you!

Home sweet home

2007-05-26T14:12:00.000-04:00

Thanks for all the compliments on the house, and the get-well wishes! I'm feeling better, but now Coffeeboy (who certainly does know how to keep a knitter happy) is sick instead of me, which was pretty much a foreordained conclusion, but I'm still sorry it happened.

Now that it's the weekend, I can sit down to describe the place for all of you! It's a small 2-story condo, three bedrooms, 2.5 baths, laundry room, fireplace, garage - pretty much all the types of spaces we wanted. We'll actually have a master bath in our bedroom, a more spacious office, and a guestroom. It's right behind a grocery store (a Food Lion, whose truck entrance we share as a driveway for the complex). Thankfully, the units are surrounded by trees, not other grocery stores.

The grocery store complex itself has a small coffeeshop, a pizza place, and a Chinese food place (not sure if it's good yet). The next closest building is the Methodist church, across the street from Coffeeboy's college, which has a Methodist connection. Next to the Methodist church is another small shopping center, this one with the yarn store, a bookstore, a cool little breakfast/lunch cafe, a burrito place, a natural foods (the kind with lots of supplements, bulk items, and books, rather than the kind with those things plus groceries and produce). All in all, a very convenient place to live, especially given that the small downtown area is another 5-10 minutes away up a hill. Exercise and the relative end of suburban living, here we come!

The area itself is really nice, too - a five minute drive from a national forest with hiking trails, a ten minute drive from a summer music festival center, not to mention probably various crafty and fibery places I have yet to discover in western NC!

Brief update!

2007-05-23T21:40:00.000-04:00

We've returned from North Carolina, and well, there's good news, bad news, and really good news:

First the good: we found a place during this second trip, made an offer, and it was accepted!

The bad news: I was ill most of the trip down, and am still sick, so I'll have to post more later. Plus, I'm missing the Lost season finale. Thank goodness for old-fashioned VCRs.

The really good news (since this is a knitting blog): The place we bought is walking distance to the town's yarn store. And by walking distance, I mean 5 minutes max! Coffeeboy and I agree that while this could be a good thing, it also might be very bad. :-)

No knitting while house-hunting

2007-05-18T23:07:00.000-04:00

Have you ever gone house-hunting in a part of the country you don't know at all (or that your spouse only sort of knows)? It's intense! I had no idea! I don't think I can even write about it except to tell you that I'm still here and that... my brain hurts. Three people told me today that I looked tired, or not OK, or like the walking dead, which is true.

Last Friday, we left town for Coffeeboy's PhD graduation ceremonies and a weekend of eating, catching up, and good cheer, speckled by sudden downpours and moments of sunshine. We ate many wonderful meals and saw several of Coffeeboy's colleagues who also had their hoods ceremoniously placed over their heads by their advisors.

The real insanity started Sunday, when we drove to the mountains of western North Carolina, Coffee's future place of work, in order to find a place to live. I had no idea at all what I was getting myself into: houses falling off hills, bathrooms without walls, bathtubs with cracked tiles and yards full of overgrown shrubbery, on the one hand, followed by a reassessment of our needs, which led us to condos with nice layouts located far away from Coffeeboy's school. We had endless discussions in the car, over lunch, over dinner, in the hotel at night, about pros, cons, priorities, advantages, disadvantages - and not to mention this mortgage or that, whether we wanted a homeowner's association fee or would rather put that money into renovating a house of our own. Our parents by now, I'm sure, know the ring of the phone as we called for advice, commiseration, celebration, or just to express confusion.

I've never moved to a place I didn't know at all, it seems, so I had little idea that it could be so totally exhausting to try to figure out neighborhoods, price ranges, expectations, and even where to eat for dinner... all in the space of about 52 hours, the total time we spent in the area. Sunday afternoon to Wednesday morning, there and back again.

No wonder I look like the walking dead. And on Sunday, after I finish grading papers, we're headed back. We thought we had found a place we liked, and we almost put an offer in, but no sooner did we arrive home on Wednesday than we found out that there was actually an affordable condo in our most desired location, the college town where Coffeeboy will be teaching. What confusion! What a tizzy! We need to see the smaller, but more convenient place to know which one we should go with... so we're off, again! No wonder I'm exhausted.

This time, though, I might try knitting in the car, since I know there won't be time to get the needles out in the non-existent evening hours!

Getting a garden going

2007-05-06T18:05:00.000-04:00

Classes are over for the year! While I'm pleased to have more time for my own work, I was a bit sad that it was my last class that I'd be TAing at my school. When next I teach a class, it's likely it'll be my own class, not one I'm TA-ing for, which is a scary thought indeed.

This weekend, rather than go to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival like, oh, some huge, gigantic number of knitters out there, I stayed home and worked on my paper before and after working in the garden for a bit of hands-on, home-grown sun-and-garden therapy. "We're getting back in touch with the sources of production from which we've been alienated," I believe Coffeeboy said, sounding uncharacteristically Marxist. I was merely waving the hoe around, deciding whether or not to quote Edwin Markham's poem "The Man With the Hoe."

The lilac bush is blooming (and it smells wonderful, but I can't put that online), and it's a sunny day, so I thought I'd show you a picture of the lilac shawl I started a while ago. Don't they go well together?

Seriously, though, I'm hoping I'll have enoug yarn to make it long enough. I'm almost at the end of ball one out of two, and it's barely 2 feet long! I'm assuming some good old blocking will help once it's all knit up.

We've had a lovely weekend here in NJ, so Coffeeboy and I planted our garden. Yes, we decided to go ahead and do it even though we're moving halfway through the summer. It'll be hard to pick up and leave our plants behind, though, especially when we're not sure what the next person who lives here will do. Will they garden? Or will they just let everything rot and turn into a nasty mess? Will they enjoy the bulbs that, unless we bring them with us, will be sleeping through the summer? We decided, though, that we'll get some edible enjoyment out of the plants, and that we should go ahead and plant anyways.

Those milk cartons (the things that look like bulky white plants) are keeping our pepper plants warm while the weather is in its early spring state. It's cool at night, and peppers don't really like that. If only the milk cartons didn't blow all over the yard during the dark hours, though! It kind of defeats the purpose!

Here we have an early tomato plant on the left, and on the right, some beans and peas. Yum!

We've also planted eggplant and summer and zucchini squash, plus some canning and salad cucumbers. In front of the beans we planted some old scallion seeds and some lettuce seeds, but those haven't shown their little green heads yet, and they might not - we kind of decided not to add nice compost to the soil, which means the soil there is, um, rather hard indeed, and probably difficult for a small green thing to press through.

If you have a garden, what are you planting this year?

I survived the dentist!

2007-04-30T15:47:00.000-04:00

That's right, everyone! It's been, well, a few years since I had insurance and since a dreaded dentist last looked in my mouth, and today he did so, and I checked out in relatively good oral health! I'm thrilled! Even having one cavity was a relief, compared to the plethora I expected!

Coffeeboy, unfortunately, has to get a "deep cleaning" tomorrow, wherein they'll numb his mouth before starting the cleaning. It sounds like a pore cleanser or something, only ... worse.

I don't really have much knitting news right now - but thanks for all your kind comments on Kiri! I have many goals for this week: presentation on Wednesday, summer funding application due Wednesday, emailing some dissertation thoughts to my advisor, finishing a complete draft of my lit review, and TAing the final two sections of the semester.

I think I got through the worst of it today, especially since I've been dreading this dental visit for, well, years. Makes everything else seem like pancakes.

Why hello there!

2007-04-22T21:19:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone... It's been a long time, but I'm still here! I can't really believe it's been so long. I've been, let's see, trying to keep my head above water for my class, work on my lit review, figure out a dissertation, thinking about moving. The usual. Somewhere in there I stopped feeling like blogging. I think it's because I don't really know what to say about, say, the family gathering in Florida that followed immediately on the one to Colorado. Or about my weekends. Usually they're not all that exciting: maybe I'll get together with some friends, usually Coffeeboy and I spend a night in watching something on the TV. Often I'll be doing schoolwork during the day. It doesn't exactly make for exciting Monday-morning reports about my weekend, but maybe people enjoy those posts? Or they're a necessary part of the blogging ritual?

Needless to say, though, I've been knitting, and I have a finished shawl!

Pattern: Kiri
Yarn: K-P Shadow in "Jewel"
Needles: Size 5
Time: March 18-April 22 (not at all bad!)
Size: 25x51 before blocking; 30x60 after blocking.

I got to wear Kiri to my subfield's party this afternoon, and it received many compliments. I finished it last night and blocked it overnight, in time to wear today. Thankfully the weather's been just right for a new shawl! I also got to use the new shawl clasp Coffeeboy gave me a while ago; it works very well to hold the shawl on. This was a very fast knit, with an easily memorizable pattern. Highly recommended!

It's finally spring, and our garden is in full daffodil form. We've also started thinking about spring vegetables!

Despite the nice weather, though, I'm spending my days in the library or in other places conducive to studying, trying to figure out what I'm going to write my dissertation on. I thought I had some ideas, but right now they're, shall we say, on hold. I just have to assume that one day, as I keep working though stuff, things will fall into place.

Knitter's first hole

2007-04-05T22:42:00.000-04:00

This past week we celebrated Passover in Colorado with Coffeeboy, returning yesterday with plenty to do before we take off to see some of my mom's family in Florida this weekend. Hence the lack of bloggy communications. I managed to do some knitting, but largely ignored the internet and blog-land while there, in the interests of hanging out (and doing some reading). While there, I discovered something on the bottom of my fuzzy foot:

A GIANT THUMB-SIZED HOLE!

... well, I also discovered that under what had been a lot of mohair, the slippers had hardly felted, probably explaining the hole. Harumph. I knew felting wasn't really my friend! Perhaps I will try to add some fiber back in there and send these soles through their watery cycle once more, or maybe I'll just wait until I notice the cold floor leaking through on the ball of my foot... and do something.

Speaking of Coffeeboy, he accepted the job in North Carolina! (I kind of added a "breaking news" section to my previous post as he got the offer soon after I'd posted it). We'll be moving sometime this summer, and until then, we'll be trying to figure out what to do with our current place (rent? sell?) and hopefully buying one somewhere around Asheville, NC.

I hear Asheville is a really fun place to live - music, arts, hiking, a yarn store or two. It probably doesn't quite have the research libraries I'm used to in the heavily-libraried northeastern seaboard, but there are still ILL and related borrowing systems, car trips to visit friends (and their schools's libraries) at cities nearby, and the inevitable longer trips to archives in various places. Other than what I hear are the inevitable awkwardnesses of writing a dissertation from afar, it should be OK - and fun to start off on this adventure! I know I'm going to miss many things about grad student life "in residence," but I'm trying to focus on the positives of the move (living in the mountains! an artsy subculture! great opportunity for the Coffeeboy!) to balance out all my half-panicked thoughts of "how can I possibly read all those volumes of that old, rare journal, before we move?!"

Anyone know of yarn stores near my soon-to-be new digs? Or how to patch a hole?

Lacing along

2007-03-27T10:58:00.000-04:00

*Breaking news! See bottom of post!*

I seem to have revived myself out of a knitting slumber by ignoring my blue, but plain, stockinette socks! Lace has revived my need to knit obsessively, making it something I think about while at work, wishing I could be knitting instead of grading.

I'm through the sixth repeat and into the seventh of the pattern (out of twelve called for repeats; I'm not sure I'll do all twelve; I might do only ten or eleven).

I also started another lace item. While in North Carolina last week, I kind of broke my yarn diet. I don't have pictures, because Coffeeboy had the camera with him at his interview school to take pictures for me, but I can tell you it was all lace. At my favorite yarn store there, Yarns Etc, I picked up a smoky blue skein of Misti Alpaca laceweight, and also this beauty, from the local Three Waters Farm, named "Lilac."

It was a gorgeous, 75-degree day, flowers blooming, and I couldn't resist the name of the colorway and its connotations of spring. Given the name of the yarn and its colors - I thought of English gardens - I decided to cast on for a wide scarf or stole:

I chose the feather and fan motif because it fit with the traditional English garden idea, and because I'm hoping the gatherings in the pattern, its bunches and contours, will suggest clusters of lilac blooms crowding round leaves of green and glimpses of blue sky. It's too early to tell if it will work, though, isn't it!

Speaking of lacing along, time isn't racing, but moves slowly, again, for Dr. Coffeeboy and myself. His interview went pretty well, but now we're stuck in the horrendous process of waiting to hear, and of being confused about what the school actually said or meant about when it would get back to him. It could be today, or Thursday, or next week - or not till they've notified another candidate. We don't know. It's driving one of us batty and leaving the other unsure of how to best help pass the time. I'm sure when we know more I'll let you know.

In the meantime, will I finish my sock for Socktopia this month, or will I just knit lace? Only time will tell!

*BREAKING NEWS!* Coffeeboy got the job! Assuming we take it, he'll be Assistant Professor Coffeeboy now!

Knitting knervously

2007-03-22T16:41:00.000-04:00

Coffeeboy is now Dr. Coffeeboy! He successfully defended his dissertation with flying colors! Congratulations to you, honey! Right now, the new Dr. Coffeeboy is at his on-campus job interview. I'm far away by several states, and I'm knitting. Nervously. With my fingers crossed, if it's possible to do that and knit at the same time. I've tried reading, but I go back to knitting. Fidgeting.

Knitting nervously on a shawl, if that's possible to do without an enormous number of mistakes. Thus far I've only attempted purling back across a row. We'll see how starting on the right side goes. Luckily Kiri - the new shawl shown in my previous post - is pretty easy, and even memorizable, which is wonderful. I can't show you a picture, though, since Dr. Coffeeboy (I promise I won't call him that all the time, but it's fun for now) has the camera.

I'm going to go back to my nervous knitting now. I simply felt the need to share my fidgeting with all of you. I'll let you know as soon as I know anything else!

Days of blue on white

2007-03-18T20:05:00.000-04:00

Between Thursday and Friday nights, it snowed, it hailed, it rained; it sent down slush from the sky. When I awoke Saturday morning, the world looked like this:

I'd hoped it would keep snowing all day - what a perfect excuse to read and/or knit, but instead we're just left with the messy, slushy cleanup effort. I've been doing some reading because I got precious little done this past week, due to my students having questions about their mid-semester papers. I've also been knitting, however:

I might be crawling out of the knitting slump, finally. Last night I dreamed I was in a yarn store, touching beautiful lace yarns for shawls. That's probably because I determined last night that I'd start this:

It's not a sock! Does anyone recognize the pattern? I've just finished chart 1 in that photo and am into chart 2 for the long haul!

I expect that I'll get a lot of knitting done between Monday and Wednesday, as Coffeeboy and I are flying off for his dissertation defense. I'm bringing some books, of course - but ones I want to read more carefully so that I can haul fewer books. I'll be waiting in the same building as his defense, so I imagine I might switch from work to the shawl at some point out of nervousness. Kind of like hospital knitting except he's not actually ill or anything, "just" defending his dissertation!

Meanwhile, Juniper (and Mage - not shown) will be holding down the fort back home, catching up on some much-neglected reading...

"The books make the shelf bow... really, it's the books, not my girth!"

When I get home on Wednesday evening, I'll have two full days of spring break left - not enough time to do all the work I need to do, but still better than nothing. Between reading for my fourth exam and grading student papers, I'd say I'll have plenty to keep me busy while Coffeeboy is at his on-campus interview on Wednesday-Thursday!

Finished socks!

2007-03-09T10:51:00.000-05:00

I've been holding out on you all. These have been finished since Monday and worn twice in the cold weather... and I finally got a chance to photograh them in daylight just now:

Pattern: just a simple cable with ribs over 60 stitches
Yarn: Mega Boots Stretch in... some colorway... the cats (quite literally) ate the ball band so I'm not sure what it is
Needles: K-P size 1 (2.5mm), magic loop

They're very comforting colors; just as Teri S. of the comments said, they're very soothing colors. Since the blues and I seem to be agreeing with each other these days, I dove in to my stash to find this yarn from my most recent birthday:

Ah, easy knitting in shades of blue. (You can see a finished pair of this colorway over at Sheepish Annie's blog.) I've been doing a lot of reading lately for my historiography exam, which means I sometimes also am knitting. Further, we watched The Ten Commandments on Wednesday night for class, so that meant I got, oh, 3 hours and 40 minutes of knitting time, meaning massive sock progress! Stockinette socks are good for that.

Missions: accomplished

2007-03-05T09:59:00.000-05:00

It's been a week of accomplishments here in the Lazuli-Coffeeboy household. Most importantly...

1) Coffeeboy finished his dissertation!
2) Coffeeboy received an email from a press, expressing interest in considering his dissertation for publication!
3) Coffeeboy ALSO had a good phone interview for a tenure-track job AND 3.5 hours later was asked to campus for an on-campus interview, to be held the day after his dissertation defense!

Wow, what a week, huh?

My week wasn't quite so accomplished, but then a week like finishing your dissertation can only come once in a lifetime, right? This past week, I

1) Turned in a draft of my third exam to my advisor
2) Finished Clapotis #2!

Project specs:
Pattern: Clapotis, of course
Yarn: Cestari sock yarn from Woolbearers, in the color "Tuscany"
Needles: Size 7 K-P Options w/ the 24" cord.

This one has much thicker fabric than Clap #1, given that it's a pretty thick sock yarn. I can't really wrap it around my neck without looking like a chipmunk! (I might go for the chipmunk look in the next day or two, given the cold weather we're supposed to have!) However, it works great tucked under my coat for extra warmth, and it also wraps nicely around my back and shoulders for warmth. I haven't blocked this one yet, because I don't want to ruin the twist, but it may help it drape more nicely and fit 'round the neck better if I do. We'll see.

In other knitting news, I'm down to the toes on my cabled blue socks; news of them coming soon!

The great big happy-along

2007-02-26T22:48:00.000-05:00

After I finished my previous post about how I've been enjoying life in academe these days, I got to thinking that this enjoyment is what brought me here in the first place. At the end of my senior year of college, feeling the angst of impending unemployment, I finished my senior thesis. I was so excited! I did well on it, too, which no doubt helped me take the plunge into grad school.

Spring was in the air, and spring in Massachusetts is a beautiful thing. Maybe I was just being my usual self, high on the changing seasons, but did I ever want to just keep that feeling of being high on life - or, as my favorite burrito shop says on its wall, "Drunk on dreams, high on life, and just now seein' the sky!"

I'd also started downloading music, but only a little, since my hard drive was very small. I remember typing into Google - or was it Yahoo back then? - the lyrics to a song that kept coming into my head as I took my "last" walks around favorite haunts on campus: "All I want is to feel this way / to be this close, to feel the same / All I want is to feel this way / the evening speaks, I feel it say...." I don't think that the actual meaning of the song really applied, but something about the sense of joy and longing still came through.

I don't think I really had that rush very much at all during my master's program, at least not for what seemed like days on end - not until I almost got into my current program. They had waitlisted me, and one night, I heard news that made it possible I might get in. I wandered down to the Charles River in Boston on a similar purple-skyed spring evening so like the ones I'd had in college, and thought of those walks and that song that was in my head. I didn't get in that year - so I waited it out and got in another year, and here I am.

Now, strangely, it's back. I'm not asking why (though I think it has to do with my thesis and current area of interest being quite similar) and I'm not expecting it to last (but maybe? Maybe a little something could stick this time?). Regardless, like a marker or a signpost, it's good to see that once again, I'm back where I started, knowing the place for the first time (to borrow my favorite line from T.S. Eliot). Sheepish Annie is right; those weeks are a happy time in my life to look back on, and hopefully in a year or two when I'm stuck in dissertation doldrums, this time will be one too.

In that mode, I've decided to join Zarzuela's Happy Along!
All I have to do is 1) knit something that makes me happy...

Yes, I think that'll do the trick (and so does Mage)!

And 2) make someone else happy. Since Coffeeboy and I are at diametrically opposite points in our grad school careers (he wants a divorce from his dissertation and mine's in that early rush of blushing possibility), I really need to do anything I can to help him finish the darned thing in the next week, to be precise. If finishing will make him happy, then help with the finishing I shall!

Speaking of finishing, we've both gotten a lot accomplished... a finished object, finished exam, and finished dissertation post (or set of posts) is in the works over the next few days!

Knitting, between the times

2007-02-22T23:54:00.000-05:00

Juniper is clearly pleased that I've been working on Clapotis #2 and decided to photograph it!

She seems to think she's going to have a new blanket to knead and suckle (yes, she's odd) but noooo, Juni, it's not for you! (That's not the most flattering picture of the little dear, either... a head, tail, and furry body!)

I really am almost done. See? Just a few more rows!

Coffeeboy and I had a nice time in DC. I knit a bunch. I would have finished the Fetching mitts if I'd had the pattern. Oops! Now I just need to put them and the knitting bag in one place so they actually get done. I didn't manage to get to any yarn stores, unfortunately, we really were stuck out by Dulles, in a hotel surrounded by a few office buildings and tons of surprisingly good restaurants.

It's strange how different life can be from one semester to the next. This one is amazingly busy in comparison to last. You'd think that taking my general exams (last semester) would make me busy, but in reality, it was monotonous to read 3 books a day, and have that be it. This semester has been nothing but teaching, reading, revising a paper, going to lectures, writing proposals for presentations, proofreading Coffeeboy's dissertation, visiting family (this past weekend) or having them visit us (Tuesday-Thursday), and generally zipping around like a chicken with its head cut off. Somewhere in there, I knit a row or two. I read a blog or three (not ten-zillion like when I was procrastinating away from exams) and try to post once a week, but I just don't have time! I've totally ignored Socktopia, having completed only 1/2 of one sock this month.

(Strange how when I'm enjoying life, I feel less like blogging and recording things. When I'm less excited and into life, I dwell more on things in writing. It was like this for me with my old paper journal, and it seems to happen for my blog as well. Anyone else share this same pattern?)

And yet, there's something about the intensity of these days that I really enjoy. I wouldn't say my life is exactly balanced or predictable right now, but it's intense, and I'm enjoying it, which is enough for me. For the moment. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Actual knitting content

2007-02-16T23:57:00.000-05:00

That's right, everyone! I'm here, alive, cold but not snowed in, and I've even been knitting!

Guess what it is! A new sock! Just a very basic cable-with-ribs pattern. I've started cabling w/o a needle, which is the best trick ever for making cabling across a row go faster. It makes knitting cables on socks so much easier!

My other main projects continue to progress slowly. As Angel recently said, I must be in a knitting slump. Gosh. I haven't had one of those in a very, very long time.

Fetching: mitt #1 is done, but I don't think I should have added the extra repeat at the cuff; it makes it hit my sleeves awkwardly so I haven't loved it as I expected to. Maybe it's just a little too tight around my sleeves? This uncertainty has (ironically without doubt) impeded my progress on mitt #2.

Clapotis: I've done the 13 straight row repeats and it's far shorter than I'd like. I'm not sure whether or not I should start the decreases. Last time I waited until it hung right around my neck, and it ended up a little long. Now, I'm thinking that even if I started the decreases, it would be a little short!

The nice thing is, I'll have time to figure out these knitting dilemmas this weekend! Coffeeboy and I are off to DC this weekend to visit his family, who have flown in from Colorado for his littlest brother to participate in a hockey tournament. We'll be going down there to watch him play and to hang out. I'm obviously bringing all this knitting with me that's been languishing while I spend my time elsewhere.

Like at school, for example. The two discussion sections that I'm TAing look like they will both be great groups of kids. It's a Bible As Literature class, so you get an interesting mix of students. The funny thing is that I haven't actually studied the Bible that much, despite studying religion, so I expect this class will be very useful to me as well! Also in terms of school, I've been helping Coffeeboy finish up his dissertation. He has about a week or so left, in which he hopes to write the conclusion. The man is a dissertation writing machine. I hope I'm that produtive in the final stages of my diss writing! Everyone wish him luck as he churns out those final few pages!

Have a good weekend, everyone!

The week of academic meet-and-greet

2007-02-08T12:24:00.000-05:00

Talk about getting all of one's semester of socializing taken care of in a single week! This week marked not only the first week of "spring" classes, but also a busy week for my department. We interviewed potential job candidates in my subfield, meaning that grad students and professors came out of the woodwork to greet them. We ate lovely fancy dinners and drank coffee and discussed potential classes, methods, approaches.

This week also started the spring semester, adding a further element of busyness. I'm a TA for the second time ever, and I was happy to say that this time I felt a little less nervous than last. We'll see how that continues into the actual discussion groups next week!

Not only that, but one of our professors announced that she's pregnant, causing much enthusiastic discussion amongst, well, just about everyone, on top of discussion about new classes and job candidates. That same professor also co-edited a book, the publication of which is being celebrated this afternoon at some kind of eat-drink-and-be-awkwardly-merry event.

To add the final touch of craziness to this week, tomorrow, we grad students are starting a series in which we introduce each other to the rudiments of our subfields. We all take classes on approaches to the study of religion, but this often leaves Islamicists without a working knowledge of the rudiments of Buddhism or Christianity - or vice versa - not to mention what it means to study religion in America or what, after decades and centuries of debate, accurately describes the current state of discussion about the origins of Christianity. Each week is devoted to a different topic with a grad student presenter, and we're all supposed to pretend to be totally ignorant and ask really basic questions. The presenter has 20 minutes, and then there are 40 minutes for questions. I think it'll take about 4 minutes for someone to gripe that "this is an essentializing narrative of X religion that doesn't take into account the Western hegemonic narrative of oppression that causes X religion to be described that way, when really isn't it all just about power?" Thus will commence a great intellectual food-fight amongst overeager graduate students. Yee-haw!

Oh... what's that? This is a knitting blog and you hope I won't mention Foucault? Don't worry, I won't. You want to know if I've been knitting? ... Oh yeah, right...

You see, my various "friends" in the archives have been sort of captivating my attention, making a nice quiet distraction from academic angst. I loved all your comments about love in the archives, by the way! From the way things are going, I certainly know the "type" I'm looking for, just not quite why!

I don't know if I should confess this here, but I haven't actually touched the needles since... Sunday? How... very odd! Am I ill? (Oh, yeah, I did have an upset stomach on Monday or Tuesday that made me want to lie down rather than click the needles). Have I actually posted three times now about academic rather than knitting? Am I actually in a knitting slump? Have I really truly been more interested in school than in socks? How very bizarre! If this course of events continues, I might have to consult Dr. Knit!

Looking for love in the archives

2007-02-01T18:41:00.000-05:00

My meeting with my advisor went very well. Now I'm just trying to find the appropriate love interest to star opposite myself in the forthcoming motion picture "Lazuli and her Dissertation." (The trailer [um, the proposal, that is] is supposed to appear sometime in May, I imagine). Thankfully, this search isn't quite like looking for love on, say, match-dot-com, since most of my potential prospects passed on before World War II or so. So I don't have to write little rejection letters to the catalog entries on OCLC, and apologize that I won't be trysting with them during a visit to their special collections rooms in Chicago, New York, DC, or wherever. I know which subset of potential partners I'm going for, it's just a matter now of brown hair or blond... so to speak.

Seriously? It feels gosh-darn good to be done with incomplete "coursework" and the nasty long exams so that I can actually get back to what really interests me and what I came to grad school for. I was positively giddy as I looked up various names from previous papers and notes and started to think more concretely about possible directions. Yes, I have a couple of papers that count as exams coming up, but they're both in my area of interest so I won't have to read zillions of pages about stuff that's not of primary interest. I've also gathered a bunch of new possiblities since I started grad school, hence the current need to chase around the archives trying to figure out what my "true love" interest is.

Is it true love? I certainly felt a flash of interest upon reading the WorldCat entries of a few potential matches today, but only time will tell where those will lead. My advisor was certainly adamant that my specific topic has to be something I "truly love" - with which I'd tend to agree. I mean, why spend all that time with something if you're not really "into" it, right? Especially now, as I see Coffeeboy stressing during the final months and weeks of his dissertation, I have a very vivid picture of why love in the archives can be so important.

But enough of this blather. I have a date with catalog entry number XYZ; maybe I'll wear a handknit shawl and some wool socks? It can get cold there in the archives.

First socks and "virgin" rocks

2007-01-30T21:26:00.000-05:00

Wow! I should write funny posts more often. You guys crack me up with your responses! Thanks!

A couple of answers - sgeddes,the yarn for the Clap is a sock yarn from an LYS, Woolbearers. It's their Cestari sock yarn (feels practically like worsted weight to me, it's a very thick sock yarn) in the colorway "Tuscany." Holly, feel free to take my word as as note to your DH any time! :-)

But now, on to the socks! My first finished sock of 2007 - the "parrot sock!"

Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug in color "jewel"
Pattern: basic stockinette sock. I added a twisted rib for the cuff, and did a star toe instead of my usual wedge toe.
Needles: Knitpicks size 0 in magic loop
Time: 2 weeks or so
The specs: I think I like the feel of the wedge better, but it was fun to do the star again! Since this yarn is somewhat new, I'll add these details: I made the cuffs 6.5 inches long. My foot is pretty small (a size 5, or 8.5 inches) so I ended up with yarn to spare at the end and probably could have done 7" on the cuff. I'll know for next time. Also, knitting on size 0s gave me a nice, tight gauge of 8 sts per inch. I like how this yarn feels, for me it's a lot like Cherry Tree Hill. I was also pleased that there was relatively little pooling except (predictably) by the ankles and on the cuff ribbing.

See the pretty little star...

Speaking of socks, I now am the happy owner of some Socks That Rock yarn! Remember Cara at January One's contest for STR virgins? I was a winner! And somehow, she or Blue Moon Fiber Arts chose a wonderful colorway for me, "Crazy Lace Agate:"

The package came with one of Cara's pretty yarn cards and a little business card-like thing with her blog address and Blue Moon's name on it. How nice! Thank you so much, I'm sure I will enjoy this yarn!

Doctor, doctor!

2007-01-28T12:14:00.000-05:00

Now, those of you who know me well know that sometimes I have a little penchant for worrying that things are wrong, that I might be getting horribly sick with some sort of strange disease. As far as I know, though, I've never visited Dr. Knit and asked her any questions about my knitting health before. But you see, I cast on for another Clapotis, and that had me kind of worried, so I thought I'd pay a visit to the good doc:

Lazuli: Doctor, can you help me?

Dr: Sure, what are your symptoms?

Lazuli: Well, I think I have Clapotitis. I've just finished my first one, and I've been getting tons of compliments on it. Heck, I just showed it to my knitting group this past Wednesday. And then on Thursday I started another one! And I've already reached the straight rows. (Points to the evidence to show the medic)

Dr: Well, that doesn't look so bad. I mean, the colors are kind of pretty. If I had that yarn lying around, I might cast on again too! I'd say another week - probably two or so - of knitting, and you'll be over that Clapotitis just as fast as you can bind off and wear the new one!

Lazuli: But that's not all! I have other things going on too!

Dr: Oh?

Lazuli: Well, I started a sock. The Lombard Street socks. But you see, they're too big on size 1s, and the pattern calls for size 2s. I mean really? Size 2s for a sock knit with fingering weight yarn? They must be kidding.

Lazuli: So they're too big, and I'm going to have to start over.

Lazuli: Also, you know how it's gotten cold out finally? My hands are cold. I mean, yes, I have these old "voodoo" wristwarmers from Knitty, but they're kind of boring, and mine covered in cat hair. So... I printed out the pattern for Fetching. I think I'm going to start that in the next day or so, too.

Dr: Having cold hands is never a good sign; I think this looks like an excellent solution.

Lazuli: But the problem is, I shouldn't start on Fetching until I finish my parrot socks! they need to be done by the end of January to count for the Socktopia contest!

Dr: Oh, my. You've got Startitis! Well, it's not that bad a case. I've seen worse. Give the needles to a few projects, and once you have those fun new WIPs and maybe a few UFOs, it'll go away soon. I'd say in a day or two, at the rate you're going. Oh, and don't forget to turn in your last incomplete paper from that class a year ago! Then you can knit guilt-free.

Lazuli: Well, the paper's pretty much done, but I'm not sure about guilt-free. I'm meeting on Friday with the professor for I'm TA-ing and even more scary, I'm meeting with my advisor on Wednesday to discuss potential dissertation topics - a prospect which probably has me a lot more nervous than I should be. Yikes! What can I do about that, doc?

Dr: Knit!

... I pick up the needles and begin to fidget, productively...

Am I commitment-phobic about sweaters?

2007-01-24T12:42:00.000-05:00

In my last post (about hats), I mentioned that I might be a commitment-phobe when it comes to knitting sweaters. Specifically, my track record with sweaters is pretty low. I've finished one sweater for myself that I like, a simple striped raglan (finished in early 2005). I've finished one for Coffeegoat; it fits him and he likes it (finished early 2006). I finished two others for myself - both years ago (we're talking 2004, here) and neither of them fit or make it out of their hiding places to be worn. Both successful sweaters were knit in the round and had minimal finishing: just adding a simple collar band. I didn't even have to stitch the sleeves on as they were an organic part of both sweaters .

Lately, I've been writing papers as if they were sweaters that needed extensive finishing: blocking, seaming, button bands and buttonholes, crocheting the edges, sewing on the buttons, tweaking, and a tiny bit of admiring that it all came together so well out of so many fragments and strands. I've been experimenting with a new method of writing papers (well, new for me). Previously, I'd almost always sort of wait until I had most of my materials gathered before writing anything. Then I heard that some of my professors write their books by writing a little bit every day, even if all they write is that they have no idea what's going on in a certain project.

The idea stuck with me. In December, right before going to Panama, I managed to write about 8 pages of 3-4 different sections of a paper. I wrote what I could based on the research, primary and secondary, that I'd yet done. While in Panama I did a lot of the primary source reading because I could carry that with me more easily than the secondary sources. When I got home, I started writing about the primary sources and integrating them into what I'd already written. Since I already had 8 pages, the rest of the paper seemed to fly by. Somehow I was able to take rough ideas, awkward sentences, and sketchy transitions and stitch them together into an actual paper.

I seem to take it for granted that writing is a craft, something that takes time, effort, a little frustration, a little skill, and a little luck. Yes, sometimes it's a bother, but the results of a job well done are worth it. (And yes, I don't always apply this to my blog; maybe I should do so more often!)

Why can't I assume the same about craft for sweaters? Have I been tricked by the instant gratification of buying them in the store into thinking they should pop as easily into existence as a stockinette sock? Aren't they "crafts" - things that need to be shaped, sculpted, cut, worked, labored on with skill, attention, and care? Why can I happily knit a sock when I balk at the idea of starting a sweater?

My use of fiber-artsy metaphors to describe the writing process is partially intentional (this is a knitting blog!) and partially unavoidable: why not speak of "stitching" sentences together, of "finishing" a paper? The metaphor is apt, isn't it?

This thought brought me to another idea about my apparent aversion to knitting sweaters: maybe they are too much like what I do for what I consider to be (at least part of) my job and my career - namely, writing. I knit for a hobby, for relaxation, for enjoyment, right? Perhaps the mental energy that goes into putting a sweater together is too much like work to be adequately relaxing.

Or maybe I'm just making excuses for why I've hardly knit any sweaters, despite a profound love of wearing them, and my problem has nothing to do with anything.

What do you think? Do you have a type of knitting (or related fiber art or other hobby) that you prefer because of how it does or doesn't overlap with your job or whatever you're taking a break from?

Don your caps!

2007-01-22T19:50:00.000-05:00

Thanks, all of you, for your extremely kind comments about my Clapotis! You are all so generous with your praise that I'm sure the Clapster hardly deserves it, but this blogger sure appreciates it!

I finished two hats this weekend, one for myself and one for Coffeeboy. It's cold out, but is it really winter? With daffodils coming up in 25 degree weather? At least they keep our ears warm when we need it!

Pattern: Lusekofte from Hats On! by Charlene Schurch
Yarn: lining: one strand fingering weight wool, one strand Rowan Kidsilk Haze, in greenish colors. Body of hat: The main color is a Cascade 220 yarn from an LYS that's out of business. Brown contrast: Mission Falls 1824 in Cocoa. Dark orange contrast: Knitpicks Swish in Copper.
Time: less than a week
Needles: for the lining, Addi Turbo size 4; for the body, Addi Turbo size 5. Finished off with some bamboo DPNs.
Thoughts: I'm glad I decided to do this pattern in 3 colors. It was fun to see the speckles switching back and forth at the top. Also, it was an obsessive knit: each new row revealed the pattern in greater detail, so I couldn't put it down!

Before blocking / After blocking, inside out

I learned a lot doing this pattern. For example:
1) It's really a good idea to keep the floats loose.
2) I shouldn't have put those first few rows of MC on the body, or I should have ribbed them as the pattern specified. That would have taken out some of the flare on the bottom of the hat.
3) The lining. The pattern didn't call for it, but Coffeeboy likes his ears warm in his hats, so I figured I'd do it. The lining was mighty difficult to attach. I shouldn't have included the mohair on its first few rows, and I should have cast on in such a manner that knitting in the lining wouldn't have been such a messy operation. I also shouldn't have knit so tightly on that row; it makes the lining really obvious. Ribbing the lining also might have helped.
4) Significant negative ease helps a hat fit better. The first hat I knit for Coffeeboy was way too loose; the second was a bit tight, and this one is just right. As Goldilocks might say, the third time's the charm.

The third time's a charm in the world of tams, too. As I mentioned before, I knit one tam to match my Clapotis, but it was too small. I knit it again on Friday; it was better but still too small. Finally I remeasured my gauge and discovered that I'd gone from 3.5 inches to 4 inches. Right! That would explain it!

Pattern: Tam from Ann Budd's Knitter's Book of Handy Patterns
Yarn: brim and sides of tam: 1 strand mohair, 1 strand Koigu in light blue, 1 strand Claudia Hand Painted in Blue Sky (from my Clapotis). Top of tam: 1 strand lighter blue mohair, the same strand of Koigu, 1 strand Lorna's Laces in Jeans, and eventually, at the center, some tan-colored Kidsilk Haze just to add some brown back in
Needles: size 7 Addi Turbo in 16 inch for the brim, followed by size 7 Knitpicks Options in the 24" length for the increase section, and finally size 7 DPNs at the end.
Time: a matter of hours once I had the gauge right!

Thoughts: I modified this pattern a bit, making the brim quite a bit narrower than the size called for, and then increasing to the right size during the increases. I also made the tam about 4.75 inches deep rather than 4, so that it would cover my ears. A good solid steam blocking on a cardboard cutout of a circle the right size really helped this hat assume its present pleasing shape. Before blocking, the decrease seams were causing funny crown-like points on the hat, and now it's much smoother and more round.

I haven't started ~~the~~ any sweaters yet. (I think I might be a sweater commitment-phobe at this point. Note the UFO presence of Eris in the sidebar, mocking me. Not to mention Cozy.) I'm thinking I need a detailed, fun sock and am debating the many, many (many!!) possibilities! I'm sure I'll share the results of my debate with you in a day or two!

Juniper won't let me leave this post without saying hello to you...

...and herself...