Stringtopia Spring String Thing

So I'm good at not blogging Stringtopia, right? Third time's the charm, maybe? There are actual photos this year. Last year I had some blurry things, and never got back around to recording things besides the wondrous return of spinning mojo, which sort of lasted. I still like spinning, but I also still don't do a lot of it. But I'm mostly ok with that. So here, in one fell swoop of a mega-post, is my account of the Stringtopia Spring String Thing. (New addition to the name, you see, because Stringtopia exists all the time as a studio in Lebanon now. This may be dangerous to my car's odometer.)  

Friday
My friend Carol and I drove over on Friday morning, got lunch with new friends we made basically immediately (this is one of the magical things that happen there - I don't know you, but you're a yarn person too, want to have lunch?), and made it back to the Golden Lamb in time for afternoon classes. I took a class on Pre-Columbian textiles. Obviously not making them, because I'm firmly a Post-1492 kind of girl, but we looked at fabrics that are so old I kind of can't imagine it. We were a couple in before I remembered my phone.

I had talked to Abby (Franquemont, the teacher of all the classes I took this weekend) on ravelry and at other fiber events about the weaving she had done growing up in Peru, and one of the things that had me curious was her talk of the complex symmetries involved in weaving, and how the ways in which the Chinchero did things involved mathematics while not actually having names for numbers. It's kind of mind-boggling still.

This piece illustrated all kinds of symmetries, but of course I only got a picture of half of it. I loved the geometric pattern, which was reversed on the other end. There were more ducks or whatever birds on the other end, slightly different from the ones shown in beaks and feet, and facing the other direction. You can almost see the men in the center, flanked above and below by the ducks. There were interesting things done with color here, too, but I can't remember what all. I took notes, and sketched things. It was way cool.

 

The thing most of us related the most to were two boxes full of spinning tools. These boxes were buried with their owners, and included several spindles each, plus bits of fiber and a couple of plying balls. The idea of actually burying all evidence of things unfinished resonated with me.



This was a nifty piece of resist dyeing that's lasted oh, about forever. The two different parts had been dyed differently - one had red and blue, the other just blue. I also like the Abby reflection in the glass.

 

I loved this geometric piece, and not just because of the great green in it.
 

One of the things mentioned in the class description was an authentic quipu. This piece of stuff is an historical record. How? I'm not sure. The knots are turned in both ways, and there are more wraps on some than others. The combination of discrete units and strings and switches and the continuous length of the strings makes it possibly way versatile. I was reminded of Madame Defarge, whose "reading" of her knitting always
 mystified me, and this is the same kind of mysterious. Awesome, though. Definitely sparked my math-brain.



And here's a much larger and more elaborate quipu, held by its owner. Charles Gerhardt owns one of Lebanon's many antique stores (specifically, the one next door to the Stringtopia studio), but his shop is like no antique store I've ever seen. Museum-quality and really old and valuable stuff from all over the world and all of human history. It was full of "oh, wow!" All of the pieces we saw in class were from his collection.




After class Carol and I went to check in at our off-site hotel, then made the 2-block walk back to the Lamb for dinner. Their lamb meatloaf was crazy good. Also I love their house salad in an unreal way. I may be trying with limited success to copy it for my lunches this week. The Friday Bash was a good time, as always. There were spinning contests and door prizes and lots of people and party, oh my! I have no pictures. I barely had a thought in my head by that point.  

Saturday
The next morning, went to breakfast bright and early, then to class. I had a day of Andean Backstrap Weaving. Which was way cool. Those of us who were total n00bs were informed that we were now 5 years old, and so all of the work of warping and setting up the looms had been done for us. We were shown how to tie ourselves into the looms and tension the warp (with our feet) and actually start to weave. Abby was really good about making us try things, and doing things to make us screw up so we would learn how to fix stuff. This was a more hands-on class than the day before, but I still managed a few photos.

 Here's Mandie weaving (She's writing a pattern for those socks - keep an eye out, they're fantastic).


And here's Lara weaving. She's been a favorite pal through all the String Things and I was so glad she was in all my classes this year.
 
And here's mine, as I saw it.


Backstrap weaving is fascinating in that your body essentially becomes multiple parts of the loom. You control the tension with the way you sit, and so of course that changes as you weave down the warp. The pick-up pattern we did is called tanka ch'oro, it's the most basic thing, but lovely in a symmetric way and really clever in the way it minimizes pick-up work. I learned a lot, and I want to learn more. The 7-year-olds (ie, people who had done some of this before) were assisting, and weaving cool stuff I want to learn too.

The classroom was full of people having a really good time learning something hard and totally new, and that gave me such a charge. I loved it. I miss that kind of thing about going to school. And even then, I was often having way more fun than my colleagues (Finite Geometry, I'm looking at you).

Another night, another awesome Golden Lamb dinner. Lamb Shepherd's pie was the entree, just delectable. The Saturday evening gathering was also big and crazy. There were competitions for longest long-draw and creative use of a sample we all got in the amazing goody bag. I was so totally worn out by the end of the night, mostly in a really good way.

Sunday
Woke up, breakfasted, and back to the Lamb. Sunday was the only class Carol and I took together, Spindle Techniques for Long Draw and Double Drafting. I think I might need to take this class again sometime when I'm fresh - it was way cool, and there was lots of good information, but I just couldn't process all of it. Here's Abby coaching a couple students in a cross-classroom long draw. I'm not sure a spindle is even involved here.



And then Carol and I went around the corner for lunch, did some last shopping, and went home. I was on my sofa by the time the afternoon classes got out. I'm sure I missed some things, but I'm sure Monday was better for me not getting home as late as I have in past years. 

All the superlatives, man. What a weekend. Huge thanks to Abby and her whole Stringtopian army. I'm already looking forward to next year, but in the meantime, I might have to spend some of my summer at the studio!

Pi Day

So today is March 14, and in the part of the world that puts months before days, that means it's 3/14 or Pi Day. My friends who are not on break are having various events on their respective campuses. There are bake sales and pi runs (approximately the length of a 5k, or 3.14 miles), and pie-a-prof booths. I am on spring break, and therefore celebrating this fake approximate holiday in a somewhat more staid manner. I had my morning tea in my math mug:

(The sock-in-progress is the handspun from the last post. I'm almost through the gusset on the second sock.)

And I've been watching pi-related videos on youtube. Here are my favorites.
Vi Hart has a whole amazing channel of stuff. This one amuses me, because while she makes the pie crust from scratch, she uses canned filling, which is entirely backward from my pie-making usual. I am neutral on the pi/tau debate, but the math here is excellent. This morning Vi posted a video of herself singing pi, but my favorite of that kind of thing is below.


I've only seen a few Numberphile videos, but I really dig this one. I'm so amused by the process here. Pi calculated in terms of pie. Also note the video length.


This one is just bizarre in a wonderful way. (Warning: there's a little inappropriate language.) I had seen and loved this video a couple years ago, and it turns out it's from Chris Hardwick, the Nerdist, who I have since come to love for other reasons.

As for other celebrations, I don't know. I was thinking of taking myself out to see Life of Pi this afternoon, but I may start knitting a pi shawl instead. 

Handspun and Millspun

So Jillian Moreno wrote a great column about knitting handspun yarn in the new Knitty, and people at knit night last night were talking about it. You should read it, but essentially she knit commercially spun and handdyed yarn and handspun fiber dyed in the same colorway by the same dyer, and there are swatches, oh so many swatches. Of course, I've been (much more slowly) doing the same sort of experiment. In 2010 I knit a pair of socks in Socks That Rock mediumweight, in one of my favorite patterns. The yarn is a softly-spun three-ply with a lot of plying twist for bounciness and density. Here's a ravelry link to my project, but pictures are below The start of the socks with the ball of yarn. Finished socks, which long held court as my favorite pair, but have now been worn through and patched enough times that they have been retired. (I think I darned the heels at least four times before deciding there wasn't enough there to darn anymore.) Sometime in their long and glorious reign, I ordered a sheep-to-shoe kit from Blue Moon in the same colorway (Jabberwocky). I spun the fiber (slowly, I don't spin fast) long-draw from the fold, and three-plied it with a lot of plying twist. This was one of the methods discussed and sampled in a Spinning Sock Yarn class I took with Abby Franquemont at the Trading Post (in 2010). I cast on this past summer, but socks haven't been a thing as much lately, so they've been moving slowly. So these are a handspun equivalent pair of socks - except for the missing garter rib, but no big. They're going to be fantastic, but they're not really at all like the millspun ones, are they? The above is an older picture, I'm halfway through the second sock by now and hope to knock the pair out by the end of my impending Spring Break.

Spinning tales

Ok, so. I know I have posted exactly once so far this year. I'm not going to apologize, I haven't had much to say. But I need to talk about Stringtopia. Last year I went, and by my own report, "The whole experience was an amazing pile of information and sensory overload," and yes, that happened again. But this time was different. This time was better.

I've owned my wheel for about 3 1/2 years. I spindle-spun a very little bit before then, and much more since. I love spinning classes for the way they remind me that learning new things is hard. I love wool, and handspun yarn from crazy-colored tops and batts. I've learned enough that I really think I can make any kind of yarn I want to. But I was starting to think I didn't really like the act of spinning. I couldn't get any momentum with my projects, and I liked my wheel but didn't love it, and I'd tried other wheels but I didn't love them either. Any spinning I did, I did when I could be cajoled into going to our local spinning meetings. I tried starting new projects a few times, but I'd lose interest in the first few minutes. I was starting to give away fiber that I knew I'd never spin, or things that I didn't care what kind of yarn they grew up into. It was not happy for me, and I couldn't figure why. I'd tried to participate in challenges like Tour de Fleece, but I'd get a day or two in and lose motivation.

So I signed up for two days of classes. I gave myself a day in the middle to get some things done for work, to relax and rest and try to not come back to work during finals week entirely used up (it only sort of worked). Friday night there was the Bash, where door prizes were handed out and everything changed. I won a spindle. A Bosworth Mini, in Birds-Eye Maple. I had heard about Bosworths, and yes, whatever they say is true. My new spindle is Really Good. I started spinning right then and didn't stop until I got home Sunday night. There were breaks for sleeping, eating, and my classes, but as Mandie noted a couple times during the weekend, I was spinning in bed before I slept and when I woke up. Saturday afternoon I was grading papers and pulled out a batt that I had thrown in my bag kind of randomly while packing, and I used spinning to entice myself through a stack of tests. I had that batt entirely spun about 36 hours later.

I apparently like spinning again. Mandie, being the good friend that she is, started bugging me right away to try wheels, quick, while I liked spinning and there were all these wheels right there. I tried the few that were there for sale, and they were fine, but still, didn't love them enough to make the switch from my perfectly usable wheel.

And then I took Beth's class Sunday morning. I'll talk more about the other classes later, but in the morning Drafting Methods class I said I felt like I could do all the things, but I didn't feel comfortable spinning a lot, so that's what I was after. And so. I was doing short forward draw, and troubleshooting my sore pinchy finger and Beth tried my wheel. And said that she always raised the treadles when she sold that one. And holy cow, that was it. I'd thought for a while that part of the problem was the treadle angle, but it never occurred to me that that was something I could change. Beth travels with a toolkit, so at the end of class I borrowed a screwdriver. I raised the treadles about 3/4 of an inch along the plastic thing that attaches to the footmen, and all of a sudden my wheel felt completely different and just the way I wanted it to. It was amazing. I cried. The afternoon class was great, and I loved the feel of my "new" wheel. I'm home now, and it's still awesome.

I finished the yarn from the pink batt from Abby:

As always, of course, it was amazing being among the yarn people. This year I was far more relaxed, and it was good to see folks from last year, as well as meeting new people. I'll talk more about what happened with the rest of the weekend later, but today, I wanted to post about how Stringtopia changed the way I feel about spinning. Which, for me, glazed the weekend with unexpected joy.

My Magic Playlist

There was a joke a week or so ago on How I Met Your Mother where Ted said a girl he dated said "her favorite band is Glee." Yeah, that's me. It's not a new phenomenon though - in high school my cds were all movie soundtracks. My first cassette, once my seven-year-old-self could choose my own stuff, was The Monkees (I was so sad to hear of Davy Jones's death today). Music was always something that came along with something else I liked, not anything I sought out for its own sake.

I was out walk/running this afternoon because it was warm and clear and my first 5k of the year is in a week and a half, and it occurred to me that I've been listening to the same running playlist for over a year. My workout playlist of choice is called "January Treadmill" and it dates back to January 2011. So that's thirteen months so far, and I don't see it getting old. I made monthly playlists when I thought to when I was setting out on my 500 mile challenge, but I made one after this one and it wasn't near as good, so I quit.

I have thought of sharing it before, but, given my non-taste in music, I didn't figure anyone would care. Also, there's quite a lot of Glee. But seriously, THIRTEEN MONTHS of this and I still love it. I put it together to last about the time I would spend walking my 2.5 mile route, but last weekend I finished that route with 3 songs left. Go me.

So here you go:
January Treadmill
I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) -- The Proclaimers
Joy to the World -- Three Dog Night
A Beautiful Morning -- The Rascals
Learn To Fly -- Foo Fighters
Hoedown Throwdown -- Miley Cyrus
4 Minutes -- Glee
Hey Julie -- Fountains of Wayne
Sweet Home Alabama -- Lynyrd Skynyrd
Teenage Dream -- Glee
Afternoon Delight -- Starland Vocal Band
September -- Earth Wind and Fire
Forget You -- Glee
Ring of Fire -- Johnny Cash
Party in the USA -- Miley Cyrus
Time After Time -- Cyndi Lauper

Hey...

Maybe I’ll dye my hair (the grey in it is starting to get to me)
Maybe I’ll move somewhere (but probably not)
Maybe I’ll get a car (mine is getting older, I have been thinking this...)
Maybe I’ll drive so far they'll all lose track (I road tripped a lot this year, I could do the same again)

Maybe I’ll sleep real late (yes!)
Maybe I’ll lose some weight (please?)
Maybe I’ll clear my junk (Goodwill needs my stuff, right?)
Maybe I’ll just get drunk on apple wine (not sure about the apple wine, but ok)

Hey, maybe I’ll learn to sew (it's an idea)
Maybe I’ll just lie low (definitely ok with this one)
Maybe I’ll hit the bars (brewpubs?)
Maybe I’ll count the stars until dawn (always a good idea)

Maybe I’ll settle down (pretty settled already, thanks)
Maybe I’ll just leave town (Again, probably not)
Maybe I’ll have some fun (YES)
Maybe I’ll meet someone and make him mine (or not, I like the one I've got).

Either way, I'll be fine and dandy, and I hope you are too. Happy new year.

My take on New Year's Resolutions, with apologies to Dolly Parton and Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

Who's that girl?

I got up this morning and saw it was snowing, so I went for a run/walk, because I like my neighborhood route and it's no fun when it's icy and slushy, so I needed to do that a few more times before the snow makes me have a few months without.

I got up last Saturday, drove downtown, and ran a 5k in the 20F cold because I wanted to do one more race this year and I wasn't in town for the Drumstick Dash. That was my fifth race of that length since September, if you count the 3 mile Run Like Hell (and I do, it was a blast!)

I pay attention to my pace and time and distance, because I have to improve all of that to participate in the half marathon I already signed up for next fall.

I really don't recognize myself in any of those things, but somehow they're a part of who I am and what I'm up to lately. This all started with the 500 mile challenge, which ended in May with about 440 miles done. A year and a half after goading myself off of my sofa with that crazy goal, I get cranky if I don't get some exercise every few days. Which means I've got a habit of exercise, which was really the goal of the 500 mile project. And so now I'll try and get a spreadsheet going for next year, because 500 miles in 2012 sounds entirely doable.

The best part of this is the friends who have come along with me. Mandie, Jill and Bri have their own goals, but have been awesome cheerleaders and pacers for me this fall and all the way through. I'm enjoying learning to run with them and I'm excited to see what we do in the future.

Weekend with Amy

In Nancy Bush's class at Sock Summit two years ago, there was a woman who identified herself as a "class-taker". I resolved a while ago to be the same way, and I think it's really really good for me, and I think I should do a more in-depth post about why later.

So when the Indianapolis Knitting Guild made arrangements to bring in Amy Detjen for a weekend workshop, I jumped to sign up without thinking. (In doing so, I made it so I missed a weekend retreat with my grad school math pals, and I'm still kicking myself a little about that - isn't it grand and terrible to have so many options for good times?)

Camnesia happened again. The only picture I have from the weekend is the one I sent my husband in reply to the "I'm in a happy place" picture he sent me from the racetrack in Phoenix. It's below:


It was fantastic spending the weekend with local knitters outside my usual group. There were several of my Thursday night pals there, too, but I got to talk some with several of the knitters I only see once a month or so. It was excellent to see Lana, who came from Terre Haute for the weekend. She's got a sock pattern in the Twist Collective that went live today!

Amy Detjen is awesome. There were three classes and a more informal evening session, and I learned a lot. Every time I spend time with Amy I leave seriously considering trying to move to Madison just to hang out with her more. I want to knit more colorwork and brioche and sweaters and everything.

Saturday Morning

Most weekend mornings I wake up before my husband.  This morning was no different. It's my nice no-pressure quiet time in the week where I can make myself breakfast, knit and watch tv or listen to podcasts, or read. I love a Saturday morning with a book. 
Here's what this morning looks like.

My sweater's second sleeve is growing quickly. I'm hoping to have the garment finished by the end of the month. We'll see.

Living in the future

I know, I've been a little quiet lately. I haven't had a lot of bloggy mojo, or spinning mojo either. I've knit a few things, but pictures haven't happened. So soon I'm gonna try and fix that. I'm posting this from my phone! Crazy, man.

Back to grading. Maybe I'll get a whole round in tonight on the sock I cast on this morning. Here's hoping.

Camp Camnesia

This past weekend I trekked up to the middle of Wisconsin for Meg Swansen's Knitting Camp. I went last year, and it was exhilarating and empowering and I learned a LOT.

Same for this year. I split the drive up in two, stopping at my pal Kylee's house for the night. Kylee is the one who, five years ago, gave me a scarf kit at exactly the right time and started me down this whole knitting rabbit hole.

I had my camera with me in Wisconsin, but I forgot to pull it out. Every day I'd watch Amy Detjen adjust a camera over Meg Swansen's shoulder as Meg knit and I'd want a picture of that, but I didn't get it. It'll just have to be a mental photo, which I'm sorry I can't share.

Jessica logged a lovely moment from camp, though.

As happened last year, I came home with a heavily expanded project queue, including a pile of things from the new book Knit One Knit All. My sweater-in-progress is progressing, it's one that was added to the queue after last year's camp. Right now it's a twisty wad of stockinette on a big circular needle, but it'll straighten out.

Things finished

Managed to do the photodocumenting of various projects today, so here's an update!

A pair of plain socks in Noro Silk Garden:


These started life as an office emergency project, a designated break when grading was crazy or other things were getting to me. They moved pretty fast, because the thickish yarn required a heftier needle than my usual - they were on 2's and I think 60 stitches around. After classes were over they became my track knitting, and we spent at least one day out at the speedway every weekend that cars were on the track, so they grew fast. They were finished on the Saturday of race weekend, so I just had to start a new sock on race day. That one will show up soon.

I made a little shawly thing:

This is the Little Colonnade shawl, in a nice MCN blend from Pigeonroof Studios. The yarn was the special colorway for Simply Sock Yarn's birthday kit last year, and it was lovely to knit.

And finally, my new favorite thing:


I finished this at knitting on Thursday. I've been sighing about it not being done for months now, and finally it is! This is my first handspun sweater. I finished the yarn last fall, cast on once the orange sweater let go of me in February, and now it's done.

Not really a modeled shot, but a "I finished it tonight and I couldn't wait till the next day for pictures" pic in the mirror in my closet.



I love it, can you tell?

Resolutions

Well, it's pretty obvious that I am not particularly good at blogging daily. It's actually been a frustrating theme this summer, I can't seem to make myself do anything on a daily basis, whether it's eat right, exercise, spin, knit, or do a load of laundry.

I am reading pretty voraciously. I bought a Sony Reader a few months back, and the library's ecollection has become one of my most-visited websites. I'm working my way through several series of romance and mysteries, and I'm currently reading the campus book club selection, even though I can't make next week's meeting.

I'm trying to catch up some on podcasts, because I have a bad habit of getting behind on those. My very favorite that I tend to listen to as soon as I can after it posts every week is an NPR podcast called Pop Culture Happy Hour. I discovered it over Christmas break, and it's just fun. The Monkey See blog hosts it, and the blog (and its host) is a favorite as well.

I'm hoping to kick myself into updating my ravelry notebook in the next day or so, I've finished several projects that need to be documented. There will be knitting pictures then.

Trying new things

One of the things I learned at Stringtopia was how awesome Jacey Boggs is. Jacey blogs and does other stuff at Insubordiknit. At Stringtopia she taught me corespinning and boucle. I still have to practice my boucle. I'm working on it. (Did I mention there wasn't much spinning right post-Stringtopia?) This is my class sample.



The other stuff she was teaching was awesome too. So when I found out she was teaching at Midwest Fiber and Folk, I signed right up. Cables and Crepes was the first class, and Thick-and-Thin and Coils was the second.

I'm going to start with the coils. Coils are AWESOME.

Here are my class samples. Jacey's very good at breaking down the various steps of these yarns.


Thick-and-thin and coils are both rhythmic. I really like them. And coils are a really nice outlet for the control freak in me. I can make them Just Right, and it's awesome.

Here are the coils I spun last week:


They're better. Imagine that!

I don't have my class sample from the Cables and Crepes class. I kind of struggled in there. Balance is very important in cabled yarn, and I'm not used to paying a lot of attention to balance, because sometimes extra twist in one direction or another is useful, and it takes a lot of imbalance to affect a finished knit fabric by biasing it.

But I was determined not to let my unsuccessful class sample keep me down, and I came home and spun this:



Which is pretty good in places, if not as consistent as I'd like. I'll continue to work on it.

So, to conclude: coils are awesome; cables were way harder than expected, but gratifying to get rightish. Jacey is brilliant and fun and I will definitely take classes from her again, and I bought her video so that if I want to try other things, I can see how she does it. (And holy cow, SO MUCH stuff to try in that video!)

squeaker

It's still the second for a few minutes, right?

So, for the Tour de Fleece, I started today by going through my spinning WIPs and figuring out what was what with them. Today I spun a touch on three of them, two spindle projects and one on the wheel.

There are seven projects altogether, three on the wheel and four on spindles. Lots to do, but they should be plenty to keep me occupied this month.

Mid-year, the first of something

Happy Canada Day!

It has occurred to me that I have not been blogging. And sure enough, today I looked and saw that I have posted a grand total of FIVE times so far this year.

People, this is unacceptable. I need to do Something. July, then, is going to be a blog effort month. I plan to try and post something every day. There should be things to post. I have experiences. The Tour de Fleece starts tomorrow, and while I haven't figured out just yet what I'm spinning for it, I'm going to spin for it, you bet. So there will be embryonic yarn pictures, at the very least.

Today, since it ended two months ago and I haven't blogged it yet, here's my ONE and ONLY picture I took at Stringtopia:


There are various things that should be noted about this picture.
1. Yes, that's a Sidekick. It's lovely and smooth and ooh. I kind of want one.
2. No, those are not my feet. Not actually sure whose feet those are. Everyone was told to "try the Sidekick," but we were actually spinning some gorgeous silk for Shelly, one of the amazing organizers behind this event.
3. There is a beer in that ice bucket. It is very likely a New Glarus beer, because the awesome Tracy (woolwine on Ravelry) brought a bunch to share. Spotted Cow was one of my favorite beer discoveries last year at Knitting Camp, and I will be bringing home some later this month. This means this is a picture from Saturday evening.
4. This is the ONLY picture I have, and it's blurry, and of something nonsensical. The whole experience was an amazing pile of information and sensory overload, and I barely remembered to take my camera out. There are other accounts that really cover this all so much better than I can or will. See Melissa's posts, or Iza's or Lisa's or Mandie's.
5. I have not spun as much since Stringtopia as I think I should have. Part of this was that I came back and had finals and finishing the semester, and then the last run at my 500 miles, then houseguests for the 500, and then I went on vacation. Which gets me almost to now. Except that this past weekend I went to Midwest Fiber and Folk, which was just as fantastic in the information and educational aspects. And now I'm going to go spin some coils.

Have a great July, all!

The agony of de feet

Just kidding. Sort of. My feet are really not what's bothering me. I'm two weeks out from the Indy 500, and my personal 500 isn't going to be done in two weeks. I am 428 miles in. I walked 28 miles in the last week, and while I can try that again a time or two, it's not going to be enough to get me to the end. I'm tired from this past week, and I want to get things done this week that will require that energy.



Pictures are from the NCAA 4Kay, which Mandie and I walked (and ran a little) at the beginning of April.

So I'm keeping going, even though I'm not going to make it. The spreadsheet has been effective. Now I'm trying to figure out if I try for the same thing next year.

In like a Lion

I'm on spring break now. It snowed yesterday.

I was talking to Mandie the other day about how I'm not in love with any of my knitting projects right now. She said "you get this way every year." Which, a quick blog check shows, is true. It's understandable. Winter is fading, so things like legwarmers and scarves seem silly to keep on with, but spring isn't really here yet, so shells and tank tops aren't reasonable either.

Anyway, that's my story.

But that said, I realize I've taken pictures of things and not posted them, so here's a quick photo dump:

Thick socks from Twisted Fiber Art Duchess in Ravelry:


And a lightweight sweater-in-progress:

it's going to be the Featherweight Cardigan, someday. That's my handspun green stuff, as seen last fall.

You would think that would be perfect for this interstitial time between winter and spring, and it is, but as it's biggish and slow and mostly stockinette (and I'm still in the yoke, so the rows just.keep.getting.longer), I'm going a bit stir-crazy with it at the moment.

But like I said, it's spring break! I'm planning on spending some good time with the above sweater, and I'm hoping to get past my funk by knitting some small stuff. I have a minor queue of baby things for deserving beloved babies born last year, today supplemented by the purchase of this book at the yarn shop. (Amazon says they don't have it till May, but knitting books are often available to smaller (LYS) retailers before they have wide release. I also want to knit Duck, which looks tough and like a lot of fun (seriously, it's a technique-heavy little pattern, and oh so cute!).

I'm still walking. It's going to be close, but I'm more than 300 miles along, and I'm hoping to walk a LOT this week as well!

Declawing Valentine's Day

I really want to be one of the people who like Valentine's Day. Ostensibly it's a nice holiday about loving the people in your life. And I can definitely get behind flowers and chocolate. But something about the insane pressure and expectations that get put on the holiday really bugs me.

My now husband also feels that the holiday isn't all it's cracked up to be. So once upon a time, when we had been dating not quite a year, we were coming up on Our First Valentine's Day. We compared our ambivalent feelings about the day and came up with this solution: we were going to get each other the most stupid and disgusting holiday stuffed animals we could find.

I combed the mall in the town where I was in grad school and he went to Wal-mart. I got him a monkey. It's pink and pink. It's called Trembles. It vibrates and makes a loud screaming monkey noise and it cracks me up. He got me a snake. It's red and pink with a goofy smile and a heart pattern down its curly length. It cracks me up too. We exchanged them 8 years ago and have not come up with an equivalently awesome observance since. So we don't do Valentine's Day.

I don't think it's misanthropic for us to opt out of the holiday. We don't really, I buy chocolate and (my favorite) SweetTarts Hearts. And I do wish people would have a happy and low-stress day tomorrow in a treat-your-friends and treat-yourself kind of way.



And Trembles and the Love Snake wish that for you too.

Hey look, it's a sweater!

I knit a sweater in May and June of last year. That one was quick, cropped, large-gauge, and all stockinette. I then started another sweater. Not the same. (Link to picture of summer sweater, as apparently I never blogged it, it was that quick.)

I started knitting Boxed from Knitty. Then I went to knitting camp and got the hare-brained idea to knit it with in-the-round set-in sleeves and a steeked v-neck, which is a totally Elizabeth Zimmermann thing to do - as in Spun Out 21.

The sweater first made a blog appearance after camp, back in July. I ignored it for a while and pulled it out in the fall - only to discover the Horrible Sleeve Incident, quickly followed by the unfortunate
too-large body issue as well.

It disappeared for a while around Thanksgiving, while I had a short sock affair and then knit some Christmas things.

But since Christmas, it's been my Thing to Knit. And on Monday, I managed to finish the knitting.


I have to say, the part where the sweater looked like that was the most disconcerting, because there's no trying it on, there's no second-guessing, there's just cutting it open and hoping everything's ok. I had done a steek swatch at Camp, cutting with crocheted reinforcement and then again with no reinforcement - knitting actually doesn't like to unravel sideways, it's a comforting thing.

That said, I referred to Eunny's Crocheted Steek tutorial as I got down to cutting things open, and then I did it.



It still feels nutty.

I wore the sweater on Thursday, when it snowed all day. The yarn is Malabrigo worsted, and it's deliciously soft and warm. I knit it on size 6 needles, at a gauge of somewhere between 5 and 6 stitches to the inch, and it's a beautiful dense fabric that I hope will hold up nicely. So happy that it turned out so well, and that it's done.