Sassiest Girl in America

Greetings from Iowa City

2009-09-12T12:55:00.000-07:00

I'm back! I'm posting this from the deck of my new, huge apartment in Iowa City. Here's what the view looks like:

Leafy, no? It's a long way from the South Side of Chicago.

(The other side of my apartment looks out onto a trailer park, but it's a leafy trailer park. Here's the view from my kitchen window:

I've got zero complaints about the trailer park. As far as I can tell, this is a really nice, quiet neighborhood. And quiet is a good thing in IC, which is filled with drunken, carousing students who are best avoided if you are over the age of approximately 22.)

One very positive thing to be said about Iowa City is that there is good shopping. It's not awesome in the way that Chicago is awesome: you can find pretty much anything you want in Chicago. There are definitely things that you can't find in Iowa City. But, in part because most franchises are banned downtown, there are lots of neat little shops here. For instance, there are two LYSs within bike riding distance. (There's another one, a farm that sells fiber and yarn, that's about 15 miles away, but I think that's out of my bike range at the moment.) I work a few blocks from Home Ec Workshop, a very cute store staffed by very nice people. They have a little coffee shop and awesome yarn, and I could definitely see myself becoming a loyal customer.

Today's big shopping success, though, was not at a LYS. It was at Artifacts, a store downtown that's packed with all manner of second hand and vintage crap. I love this kind of store, even if it does trigger my allergies. They have a little craft section, but there wasn't much there. They do have a huge selection of patterns for crocheted doilies, if you're in IC and are into that kind of thing, but they did not have the $7 copy of Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting that I fantasize I'm going to stumble upon someday in a second hand store. What they did have was these suckers:

Those, as you may or may not be able to tell, are glove blockers. Here's what they look like out of the box:

They're not intended to be used by knitters: they're "glove dryers" to use after you wash commercially-produced gloves. I can't see any reason that I can't use them to block hand-knit mittens and gloves, though, which is pretty cool. A few months ago I made mitten blockers out of a plastic placemat, but these guys look handier, in that they have fingers and those little hanger things on the end. I am (finally!) almost done with my mom's scarf, and after that I think I will start a pair of stranded gloves just to get a chance to try them out.

In other Iowa City-related news, here is a picture of my new, enormous living room:

(Most of you are thinking "what is she talking about? Her apartment isn't enormous! Her street isn't that leafy!" To which I can only say that I have until recently been a grad student in a big city. My apartment is enormous and my street is leafy by my standards.)

I'm looking for something to hang over the T.V. I'm thinking maybe a poster for an interesting museum exhibit. Anyone know of anything cool-looking that is available over the internet?

Fun with crock pots

2009-07-29T19:45:00.000-07:00

So this post isn't really for you, gentle readers. This is a place for me to bookmark some recipes I want to try, now that I have rediscovered the joys of crock pots.

Vegetarian Crock Pot Curry

Indian Crock Pot Curry

Vegan Sweet Potato Chili a la Crock Pot

Crock Pot Jambalaya (I made that, minus the shrimp. It turned out fine.)

Crock-Pot-Free Turkey Burgers

Bad blogger. No cookie.

2009-07-12T14:42:00.001-07:00

I have been a very bad blogger. There's a reason for that, and it's not just that I've signed up for Twitter. This is primarily a knitting blog, and I hate my current knitting project. It's difficult to blog about knitting when you're studiously ignoring the thing you're supposed to be working on.

So I'm making my mom a scarf:

It's Londinium from SMarieK's line of cabled knit scarves all named after Firefly planets. Like the rest of SMarieK's scarves, this guy features very complicated cables, requiring the use of two cable needles at the same time. And it turns out that I hate very complicated cables. I can't seem to memorize the pattern, so there's constant looking at instructions, which is irritating. My second cable needle always falls out while I'm working the first one. It's just annoying. Every time I pick it up to knit, I mysteriously remember something else I should be doing. I need to finish this, because it's my mom's long-overdue Mother's Day present, but I can't bring myself to work on it. I've never hated a knitting project as much as I hate this one. I can't figure out what my deal is: I usually like complicated, involved knitting. Apparently complex cables are not my thing.

On the plus side, the yarn is soft and squishy and delicious. It's Mirasol Tupa, which I am loving and which I will definitely use again, hopefully for a project that I actually enjoy knitting.

My big news is that I'm moving to Iowa City. I have been job hunting, and the job I found is in Iowa. I was secretly a little scared that I would get a job somewhere warm and sunny, where I would never be able to wear the wooly things that I knit. Iowa does not present this problem. After I get my act together and power through my loathsome knitting project, I will get started on lots of hats and scarves and gloves to steel me for the freezing Iowa winter. I'm actually pretty excited about it.

Hopefully there will be more Iowa blogging in the coming weeks. Hopefully there will also soon be a picture of a finished Londinium scarf, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Screw the judgers, I want instant gratification

2009-05-17T14:51:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, I got in an argument with someone on Ravelry about fingerless mittens. It actually wasn't really an argument, because it was all much more passive aggressive than that. Anyway, she implied that people who knit fingerless mitts are lazy, spoiled knitters who want to buy extremely expensive yarn in tiny quantities and then do really easy projects to show it off. Fingerless mitts are totally impractical, she suggested, but they're good if you're a shitty, unskilled knitter in search of a quick, pretty project that looks good because you shelled out money, not because you put in any effort. I implied, in an equally indirect way, that she was a judgmental bitch. I don't feel guilty about implying that she was a judgmental bitch, but I've come to the conclusion that she was at least partially right. And that's not an insult to fingerless mitts or the people who knit them.

I've put my Endpaper Mitts aside for a while. I'm in a bit of a work frenzy at the moment, and my real life has left my brain completely fried. I am in the mood for totally mindless knitting. I am also in the mood for small projects that get finished quickly, since in my non-knitting life I am completely consumed by a huge project on which I have been working forever. Endpaper Mitts aren't particularly difficult, but they do involve looking at a chart, and that's more involved than I want right now.

My partner in the All About Me swap gave me some pretty, pretty yarn. It's Gjestal Bris, which is 50% soy and 50% wool. It's soft and warm and not particularly easy to find in the U.S. I'm using it to make a pair of super simple fingerless mitts. The pattern is the Maine Morning Mitts from the Knitter's Book of Yarn, and it is, indeed, a really easy pattern intended to showcase tiny bits of exquisite, very expensive yarn. (Gjestal Bris is not incredibly expensive if you can find it, but it is pretty and rare, so I think it qualifies.) Here's a picture of me holding out the first mitt in my "fleeing the papparazzi because I haven't combed my hair and am wearing my pajamas" pose:

Ms. Judgmental Bitch was wrong about one aspect of fingerless mitts, and that was her suggestion that they're impractical. Many knitters think that, and it may be true that they're impractical for a lot of people. My hands are constantly cold, though, and I spend a lot of time typing in over-airconditioned libraries, so they're really practical for me. I suspect I will wear my instant gratification mitts all summer long.

After this, I plan to do a couple more instant gratification projects. I'm going to do a square for a group afghan for a rubbernecker whose husband is in the hospital, and I'm thinking about projects for the KfO charity drive for Sylvia's Place. I'm really excited about that one: a close family friend has done some work with kids from Sylvia's Place and speaks really highly of what they do there. I'm thinking some hats, possibly a scarf, and maybe another pair of fingerless mitts. I'm also planning to make my mom a scarf from one of SMarieKnits' stealth geeky series of cabled scarves. (Stealth geeky because they're all named after Firefly planets, but that's not the appeal of the scarves. Ok, it's a bit of the appeal, if you're a stealth geek like me.) That's not really an instant gratification project, but maybe at some point my brain will have de-frazzled enough to be ready for it.

Silly hat pictures

2009-05-06T08:55:00.001-07:00

I finished my hat in record time. That is seriously the fastest knit in the history of knitting.

Getting pictures of my hat has been more of a challenge. The cables don't photograph very well in the green yarn, especially not in my dark apartment. I tried a series of increasingly ridiculous poses, all designed to try to get the light to hit the hat in a way that will make the cables stand out. I think these are, as they say on America's Next Top Model, my best shots. And they're not very good pictures of either me or my hat. Sorry about that.

You will notice that I'm not smiling in either of those. That's because when I smile, you can see my terrible teeth. Like this:

Knitting again

2009-05-03T17:33:00.001-07:00

I'm back! My back and arm aren't totally back to normal yet, but they're a lot better, so I've started knitting again. I've made some progress on my slightly altered Endpaper Mitts. Here's what they look like now:
I like it, although not surprisingly, I prefer the original pattern to mine. In an unusual fit of doing more than one thing at a time, I've also started the Cabled Newsboy Cap from Stitch n' Bitch Nation. It's a nice, goofy little project that uses worsted weight yarn and that I can probably finish in a week. It's fun to knit with thick yarn every once in a while, because your stuff knits up so fast.

But that's not what I'm going to blog about. I'm blogging about my very exciting trip to Jo-Ann's today. Ok, not that exciting, but I don't have a lot to blog about.

The first very exciting thing that I got at Jo-Ann's was these very exciting puzzle blocks. I think I've blogged about my blocking woes in the past. Basically, I only have two appropriate surfaces for blocking in my apartment: my bed and my couch. Sadly, I use both my bed and my couch on a regular basis, which meant that in order to block things I had to curtail basic daily activities in pretty disruptive ways. Well, that problem has been solved! You know the Knitter's Blocks, which cost $50? Or this knock off from KnitPicks, which costs $20 and is sold out until the end of June anyway? Well, Jo-Ann's had these guys on sale for $8:

Yay! Blocking problems solved.

My other Jo-Ann's purchase was their new Deborah Norville sock yarn.

This stuff is clearly meant to compete with Paton's Kroy. The price is right: it's $3.29 per ball, and I think you'd need two balls to do a pair of socks. I'm not crazy about the colors, though. These were the two best ones, and they're not colors I'd generally buy. I'm going to play around with it a little bit after I finish my current projects, though, because I'm curious to see how it knits up.

Knitting hiatus

2009-04-19T12:52:00.000-07:00

I've done something to my left shoulder and arm. The doctor thinks it's a pinched nerve (or rather "some kind of nerve impingement syndrome," which seems to be doctor-ese for "a pinched nerve). I don't think it's a big deal, but it is interfering with my knitting. I will return with pictures of my endpaper mitts once I stop feeling like someone has permanently hit my funny bone.

Endpaper Update

2009-04-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

I am officially having a Bad Day. I think that the universe sends me into Total Vertigo Meltdown occasionally just to remind me how nice it is not to have vertigo. So anyway, I'm having one of those days. I also suspect that I'm getting a migraine, because there are some flashing lights that don't seem to be coming from any actual light source. Exciting.

But I am not blogging to whine about my various boring medical issues. I am blogging because I have made some progress on my slightly-altered Endpaper Mitts. See:

Pretty, no? I'm pretty happy with my random re-design.

Yet more mitten-y goodness

2009-04-01T20:38:00.000-07:00

For the "all about me" swap, I made my partner Endpaper Mitts. She loves pink, so I knit her extremely pink Endpaper Mitts. I forgot to take a picture of the finished pair, but here's the first one, on a mitten blocker that I made out of a plastic placemat:

The yarn is Cascade Heritage in fuchsia and cotton candy. I have a bunch of yarn left over, and I really like the pattern, so I've decided to knit a second pair for myself. However, I can't quite bring myself to knit exactly the same pattern twice in a row, so I've tweaked the stranded motif a little bit. I borrowed again from this gallery of Latvian mitten patterns and came up with this design:

It's pretty close to the original, to be honest, but hopefully it's different enough to keep things interesting.

Teeny tiny

2009-02-19T16:29:00.000-08:00

I made tiny little mittens for my friends' baby. Here's a picture:

The pattern is Knituition's Nordic Baby Mittens, with a few minor design changes. First, I shrank them a little bit to fit a newborn, rather than a six-month-old. I cast on 36 stitches and increased up to 42, instead of the 40 and 46 in the original pattern. I also used Kitchner stitch on the top, instead of three needle bind-off. Finally, I designed my own stranded motif, which was necessary since I'm using fewer stitches than Knituition's pattern. Here's the chart I worked out:

Feel free to nab it if you decide to make your own teeny tiny baby mittens.

All About Meeeeeee

2009-02-03T09:06:00.000-08:00

Through the Odd Ducks Swaps on Ravelry, I'm doing an "all about me" swap. The point of this thing is that everything you send to your partner should represent you in some ways: your background, your interests, your favorite things. This is actually a lot harder than it sounds. The stakes seem so high. What if I misrepresent myself? Even worse, what if I represent myself accurately and the results are ugly, tacky or boring? It's all so angst-worthy! Or maybe it's not, and I'm just the kind of person who can angst about anything. I wonder what swapable item would represent that personal characteristic.

So anyway, yesterday I got a lovely postcard from my partner indicating that she was stumped about what yarn and projects to send me and asking me to blog about what kind of things I would want. I'm happy to oblige, but I suspect this won't be too helpful.

So here's the thing about me and yarn. I'm not really a yarn person. For one thing, I'm in grad school and have been for my entire knitting career. This means that I need to be frugal. I tend, therefore, to use pretty standard, inexpensive, workhorse yarns. I use a lot of Cascade 220. I'm a big colorwork fan, and I mostly use Knitpicks Palette for that. But the issue isn't that I especially love Cascade 220 or Knitpicks Palette. It's that I'm cheap and I'm lazy and therefore when I go to buy yarn, I buy stuff that I know I like and can afford. Whenever I have branched out from my usual, boring yarn, I have been delighted to discover the interesting, new properties of interesting, new yarn. I knit a baby hat for my nephew in Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport and thought that was awesome. I've knit a pair and a half of mittens in Louet Gems, and I love that. Hell, I loved the Paton's Kroy that I used for my mini mittens, because it was my first go round with self-striping yarn, which turns out to be awesome. So what I'm saying is that I'm easy to please. Whatever I get will be novel and interesting and awesome. I think you should do what the swap actually calls for, which is to get something that you like or use a lot and be confident that I will also like it.

As for a project, I can't help. I'm stumped on that, too! I will try to think of some stuff and get back to you.

In other news, I was planning to knit Autumn Rose, but the pattern is temporarily unavailable anywhere, so it's going to have to wait until the summer when the book gets reprinted. In the meantime, I'm swatching for a Yosemite in Knitpicks Comfy. I have no idea if I'm getting gauge, but so far I'm really liking the stitch pattern.

Mitten madness

2009-01-27T11:04:00.000-08:00

I finished my first Briscoe Mitten. I think I need to reblock it, though, because the pattern is a bit distorted. Anyway, here are photos:

The good news with these guys is that now that I've re-designed them, you can really see the Star of David. The bad news is that you can really see the Star of David. My mittens make a somewhat more emphatic religious statement than I'm ordinarily in the habit of making. I'm not usually a person who wears her Jewishness on her sleeve, so to speak, or really any other part of her body. Also, I'm thinking about doing the second mitten in orange, in keeping with the Irish theme, and I'm worried that people will mistake it for some sort of statement of support for Israeli settlers. I think that in the future, I will attempt to be a little less literal-minded when I design mittens. Who knew that stranded colorwork could be such a cultural and political minefield!

I've also knitted some toddler mittens for the KFO service project.

We're knitting things for members of the Mattaponi Native American tribe in Virginia. I did these little mittens in Paton's Kroy. I really liked this yarn. In fact, I think it may be my favorite yarn that's available at big-box craft stores like Michael's. It doesn't feel like plastic, and "crayon" is a nice unisex colorway that is great for kids' stuff. I plan to make at least two more pairs of kids' mittens with it: another one for the KFO project and a baby pair for the forthcoming baby who I am too superstitious to name here.

Itty bitty little projects

2009-01-19T09:26:00.003-08:00

I made a hat for the Knitters for Obama chemo cap drive:

It's a Coronet in Cashsoft Aran. I really like the pattern, and the yarn suits it, but I'm not sure it's a great combination for a chemo cap. It's really warm, which makes it perfect for outdoor wear this time of year, but I think it might be a bit too heavy to wear indoors or in the summer.

I also made some not-entirely-successful Saartje's booties. I'm too superstititious to say who they're for, but here's a picture:

I either had some gauge issues or added a row to one of them, because the one on the left is a lot bigger than the one on the right. Luckily, it takes about an hour to knit one of these suckers, so I think I can churn out another one and hope that it's the same size as one or the other of them. The yarn is Louet Gems fingering. The blue is the leftovers from my Blue Sun mittens. I'm surprised more people haven't used gems for these guys, because it's machine washable, and the colors are really vibrant.

One more Briscoe Mitten Chart

2008-12-31T09:36:00.001-08:00

I couldn't sleep last night, and I had an insomnia-induced revelation about my Briscoe mittens. Specifically, I realized that it was a bad idea to stack two stars on top of each other. Rather than do that, I should center one star in the middle of the mitten and put some other sort of design element above and below it. I hopped over the Latvian mitten chart site and found a nice, vaguely shamrock-y looking flower to borrow and tried my hand at a new chart. Here it is:

And here's the thumb:

That's it. I'm done. I bought some Louet Gems Fingering at Annie and Co. the other day, and I am casting on today or tomorrow. These are my NaKniMitMo (that's National Knit Mittens Month, to the unitiated) project, so they have to be done by Feb. 1st. Wish me luck!

ETA: You know what's sad? Since I posted this, I have tweaked and reposted the picture twice. Would that I were this conscientious about my dissertation!

Greetings from Sunny New York!

2008-12-28T12:56:00.001-08:00

Actually, it's raining in New York. But greetings anyway. I'm not doing anything very cool and New York-like in New York, because I'm holed up trying to write a stupid chapter of my stupid dissertation. Also, the whole reason that I decided to come to New York to write this chapter is so that I'd have access to the New York Public Library, and it turns out to be temporarily closed due to a mysterious lead paint emergency. That's actually not true: the building is open. You just can't get to any books, apparently for lead-paint-related reasons. I can't say that makes any sense to me, but I personally don't want to be the cause of anyone getting lead poisoning, so I'm not going to complain.

So anyway, my big news is that I re-charted my Briscoe mittens in an attempt to make the Star of David look more like a Star of David. I broke some basic rules of stranded colorwork here: I've got some pretty big blocks of a single color, which is supposed to be a no-no. But I've gotten pretty good at the stranded thing, and I'm fairly confident that I can get away with it. Anyway, here's my new chart.

I'm almost done with my first pair. My next big project, I think, is going to be Autumn Rose. It's going to take a while for the yarn for that to arrive from KnitPicks, though, so in the meantime I think I'm going to try a pair of my new and improved Briscoe Mittens. I think I may do them as part of the NaKniMiMo (that's National Knit Mittens Month) Knit-Along, although I don't appear to really need a knit-along in order to knit mittens.

Mitten-y

2008-12-16T14:48:00.000-08:00

Ok, my first mitten is done. I'm not super happy with these, but I'm going to finish the second one, because my hands are cold and I need some mittens. Here are some photos:

And here's a close-up of my only marginally successful attempt to knit a stranded star of David:

I'm sort of tempted to try that again, this time with a higher-contrast color combination and some other modifications. I'll see how I feel about that after my second mitten is done.

Things I have now cooked

2008-11-23T14:42:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I made the pizza. Look! Pizza!

It wasn't entirely successful. The crust is a little raw, and it didn't really rise very much. The dough wasn't really a success from the very beginning: the consistency was all wrong, and I had to add about a cup of flour more than the recipe called for. Even after that, my dough was still pretty gloppy. I might experiment with different crust recipes. But mostly the pizza is pretty good, and it really wasn't that difficult to make. I think I will pursue some further adventures in pizza-making, probably with different topping combinations. I'm thinking next time I might do my classic roasted root veggies with rosemary. It's usually a side dish, but I think it would work as a pizza topping. I'm also thinking about trying to recreate the delicious pear and pinenut pizza that they used to have at Pizza Capri.

I was going to complain about how my tiny kitchen was really not up to the pizza-making task, but then I saw this thingie about Mark Bittman's crappy kitchen. Now, from that photo, it appears that Mark Bittman's kitchen is not quite as crappy as mine. We have similar layouts, but his microwave is mounted on the wall, while mine rests on the counter, meaning that my only available counter space is the bit in front of the microwave. Also, he appears to have a dishwasher, and I doubt there is a wall right in back of him, exactly where the photo ends, the way there is in my kitchen. My kitchen is officially 5X17 feet, and that's before the appliances go in. I doubt that his kitchen is a grand total of five feet wide. But the fact remains that Mark Bittman is a nationally renowned food writer, unlike me, and his kitchen is almost as bad as mine. He has the same problem that I do with his stove being too small to allow him to use all four burners at the same time. So there will be no more excuses from me.

Things I Must Cook Immediately

2008-11-22T13:06:00.000-08:00

I actually can't cook this immediately, because pizza dough needs to rise for a while, but I must make this pizza as soon as possible. I'm going to make the dough right now and then pop over to the produce store for the other ingredients.

In other news, I got cool new Ravelry-esque buttons for the bottom of my blog posts! Now you can tell me if you think I'm interesting, funny or boring. I tried to add a "self-indulgent" one, too, but there wasn't enough space.

Things I Have Learned from my Briscoe Mittens

2008-11-14T18:51:00.000-08:00

So in this episode of "Emily blathers self-indulgently in her blog," we return to our regularly scheduled knitting program. Today I am busy lamenting the fact that I like about a zillion patterns in the new Twist Collective, which requires you to purchase each pattern separately, whereas I'm not crazy about anything in the forthcoming Interweave Knits, which only requires you to shell out once for the whole magazine full of patterns. I am really fond of Twist Collective's Postwar Mittens and Vivian Cardigan, but I'm not sure that I can justify spending $6-7 on a pattern at this stage of my life. I might throw caution to the wind and go ahead and buy the mitten pattern, even though I should be saving that money for things like rent.

It has come to my attention, by the way, that my mitten-knitting fixation is actually part of a larger mitten trend. I'm not sure how I became trendy without realizing it. I think that this is an extension of the sock knitting trend: people are getting a little bored of socks, and mittens are a similarly small project. Personally, I never really got into socks, and I vastly prefer knitting mittens. Mostly, I love stranded colorwork, and I'm not up to doing stranded socks. Stranded knitting has no give at all, so stranded socks would have to fit perfectly in order not to fall down or be too tight. I knit for fun, not to torture myself, so that's not going to happen.

So anyway, my Briscoe Mittens are progressing. Here's where they are right now.
Back:

Palm:

Looking at those pretty, pretty Postwar mittens has reminded me why people generally knit things from actual commercial patterns, rather than making patterns up themselves. Let's just say that my improvised stranded pattern cannot hold a candle to such loveliness. However, knitting these mittens has been educational. Here are some things I've learned from my Briscoe Mittens.

1. If I'm going to knit two-color mittens, I should pick one dark color and one light one. I decided that I would do two contrasting, but equally dark colors, so I've got a medium green and a medium orange. This is driving me nuts. I don't feel like there's enough contrast, and I think the pattern gets lost. I can do monochromatic mittens, like these still-unfinished purple ones:

(Those were the first mittens I ever tried to knit, before I knew anything about mitten construction. I think they've been abandoned. Maybe I'll frog the yarn and knit a real pair of mittens.) Or I can do ones that have a bright or dark color and use white or cream for the contrast color. No more of this orange and green silliness. If I'm going to spend twenty hours producing a pretty pattern, I want people to be able to see it.

2. Stranded knitting is a lot more fun when you have a straight-forward repeating geometrical pattern. My mitten has two parts: a nice, geometrical palm and a fancy, evil Star of David on the back. The palm is really fun and easy: each row has a standard repeat. For instance, my next row will be knit three stitches orange, knit three stitches green, repeat all the way across the row. Easy! The Star of David motif isn't standardized or easy in any way. The only way to know what to do is to look at the chart for each stitch as you're knitting. This is getting really tiresome. In the future, I will not try to draw fancy yarn pictures with my stranded knitting and will instead stick with repeating and geometrical.

Remembrance

2008-11-11T08:25:00.000-08:00

I apologize for this non-knitting post. I don't want to post this over on the Veterans' Day threads on Ravelry, because it would be drama-inducing. But I also want to say it somewhere.

Today is November 11, which is celebrated as Veteran's Day in the U.S. and as Remembrance Day in the countries of the British Commonwealth. It's a day that is set aside to remember those who served in the armed services, and in Commonwealth countries, it's a day to remember members of the military who died in wars. But it means something else to me.

Today is the 90th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I. Three days after that document was signed, my grandmother turned nine years old. In the United States, Britain, and the Commonwealth countries, there was a hard and fast division between the front, where soldiers fought, suffered and died in appalling numbers, and the "home front," where civilians lived their lives more or less as normal. In Vienna, where my grandmother lived, that division did not exist. A central part of the Allied strategy was the "hunger blockade" which the Allies imposed on the civilian population of the Central Powers. The idea was to cut off food supplies to citizens of Germany and Austria, starving the countries' civilian populations and forcing their governments to surrender. This strategy was successful: it's one of the reasons that Germany and Austria lost the war. And it visited tremendous suffering on ordinary Austrian and German people. American visitors like Jane Addams and Mary Heaton Vorst talk about arriving in Vienna immediately after the armistice and encountering crowds of skeletal children, victims of the hunger blockade. My eight-year-old grandmother was one of those children. She never served in the military, but she suffered in the war nonetheless, and she lived with the results of childhood starvation for the rest of her life.

There are veterens in my family. There are people in my family who have served honorably in wars. My grandfather flew the extraordinarily dangerous supply route over "the Hump" during World War II. But mostly, my family has experienced war as civilians, and because until recently my relatives were Eastern and Central European Jews, that means that members of my family have suffered and died in wars as civilians. There are no days set aside to remember refugees and displaced people. There are no days set aside to honor the suffering of children who were victimized by hunger blockades. My great-great-grandmother was shot by the Nazis, so she gets remembered during Yom HaShoah, but there's no day to remember her children, who successfully fled the Nazis and made their way to Leningrad just in time to starve and freeze in the siege.

So on November 11, I remember everyone who has suffered and sacrificed and died in wars: soldiers and civilians alike. I honor their courage. I marvel at the ability of those who survived to create lives for themselves and their families, despite all they'd endured. And I hope we'll find a way someday to make all this suffering and sacrificing unnecessary.

Briscoe Mittens

2008-11-07T06:35:00.000-08:00

After a brief, post-Firefly-swap, election-related knitting hiatus, I have something new on the needles. I've improvised a mitten pattern. (I'm not quite ready to call myself a designer, so I'm going to say "improvised," rather than "designed.") They're orange and green mittens with a Star of David motif, so I've named them Briscoe Mittens, after Robert Briscoe, an Irish Jew who fought in the Irish war of independence, served as a member of the Irish parliament for forty years, and was the first Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin. I realize this is a really obscure reference. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a bit of a geek.

It turns out, upon googling, that Robert Briscoe's son, Ben Briscoe, is still very much around, and apparently he's got an email account. I have a fantasy that he's going to contact me and tell me that his father hated knitting and that I should name my mittens after someone else. In that case, I'll call them Leopold Bloom Mittens, but I like Briscoe Mittens better, just because I'll take an obscure reference over a mainstream one any day.

Anyway, it's too early for good pictures, but here's the back so far:

And here's the palm:

Hey, Meira, this link is just for you!

2008-11-01T15:25:00.000-07:00

I give you Young Adult Authors for Obama.

For some reason, I would have pegged Cecily von Ziegesar as a Republican.

Firefly Swap: Final Report, Part 1

2008-10-22T15:22:00.000-07:00

The Firefly swap is over! This is very exciting, because it means that I can start blogging about my knitting again. Of course, I haven't actually started knitting anything since the end of the Firefly swap, so I have nothing to blog about. But as soon as I come up with something, I will post about it here.

But right now, it is time for the Firefly swap report. I've got two things to report on: what I gave and what I got. What I got is beyond amazing, but I think I'm going to save that for tomorrow, because I'm tired and slightly incoherent. So for now, I will just post a picture of my Blue Sun Mittens:

I basically borrowed the design for this from the Maude Mittens that I knit a few months back. I didn't get gauge with this yarn, though, so I adjusted the size a bit for my actual gauge. The Blue Sun logo bit is my own design, obviously, and I changed the palm motif a little bit, just because I felt like it.

Here's a closeup of the palm:

And here's a closeup of the back:

Real Firefly fanatics may recognize that the logo isn't exactly right. The real Blue Sun logo features a half-circle, not a full one. It looks like this:

The logo is a little too short and squat to fit well on a mitten, though, so I added a top to the globe in order to make it longer and more hand-shaped. If I made a pair for myself, with my exceptionally short, squat hands, I'd take off the top and use the original logo.

I've got the chart on an Excel file, by the way, if anyone would like to use it. Just leave me a comment and I'll email it to you.

Done!

2008-10-14T21:39:00.000-07:00

The mysterious Firefly swap project is officially done. I've woven in all the ends and blocked it, and it's now sitting in front of the fan drying so I can send it out tomorrow. I'll post pictures in a couple of days, after I can be sure that the recipient has received it. I can't decide if I'm happy with it or not. It was a ton of fun to knit, but I have a nagging fear that it's not good enough to give to someone. I think I may be too neurotic to be a very good swapper.

Brief Adorable Interlude

2008-09-30T19:56:00.001-07:00

I had some yarn left over in colors that I would never in a million years wear, so I made a baby hat:

Tomorrow I'm sending it off to Hats for Alex. Baby hats are fun to knit. I might do another one to get rid of some orange acrylic leftovers.

Someone talk me out of this!

2008-09-25T14:29:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the chapter is pretty much done, and therefore I'm back. I'm still working on my secret Firefly swap project, so there's still nothing knitting-related to post. I'm doing a quick little baby hat for Hats for Alex today, just for fun, so I'll post a picture of that when it's done.

So I'm planning to put in a little KnitPicks order to reward myself for finishing the chapter. They're having a sale on books, so I think I'm going to get Selbuvotter: Biography of a Knitting Tradition, which I've been eyeing for some time. I like to knit mittens, so that seems like a safe bet. I was going to also get the warm Palette sampler so I could maybe fool around with designing some stranded mittens of my own.

But I'm seriously, seriously tempted by the Autumn Rose pullover:

The book is on sale, and although it's more than I would usually pay for a pattern, it's not completely out of the realm of possibility. And the yarn is super cheap: it's less than $25 worth of Palette. It would be my first Fair Isle and only my second real sweater (third if you count the vest). It would also be my first try at steeks. But I know I like stranded knitting, and it's so pretty. It looks like so much fun to knit.

Am I insane for even thinking about it?

Radio Silence

2008-09-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

Hi, readers. I'm probably going to be missing in action for the next week or so, because I'm trying desperately to finish a stupid chapter of my stupid dissertation. Also, I'm working on my Firefly swap project in earnest now, and I can't blog about that. Sorry. I will try to have witty or erudite knit-blogging as soon as the chapter is completed.

Stitch Marker Madness

2008-09-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

Sadly, all of my current knitting is secret and can't be blogged about, lest the recipients find my blog and the secrets be spoiled. Sorry. I'll blog it all later. In the meantime, I have been making women's suffrage stitch markers.

"Um, what?," you say.

Women's suffrage stitch markers! When I am not blogging, knitting, or fooling around on Ravelry, I am writing a dissertation on early 20th century history. And it has occurred to me, while writing a dissertation on early 20th century history, that the women's suffrage movement produced quite a lot of awesome posters and postcards. I've been meaning to make Shrinky Dink Stitch Markers, and it occurred to me that I could use the same method to stitch marker charms with women's suffrage posters on them. Here are some of the results:

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I also made some Obama stitch markers, seen here mixed in with some women's suffrage ones:

The technique here is exactly the same as for the photo stitch markers in the link above, but I thought I'd walk people through the process of finding the images, in case you want to make your own political poster stitch markers. It's worth noting that I don't own any of these images and don't know who does, so these are for personal use only.

Step 1: Find Images.

I did a google image search on phrases that I thought would be likely to yield women's suffrage posters. My first search was on the phrase "women's suffrage poster." Then I tried "votes for women."

Once you have found a good image through your google image search, click on it. This will take you to a page that has a google frame and then shows you the image in context. Here's a screen shot of an example:

Don't pay any attention to the image in context. Instead, look at the frame. You want to click on the link that says "See full-size image":

Once you click on that link, it will take you to a copy of the image, set against a plain white background:

Step 2: Grab Image

Ok, what you want to do now is take a screen shot, not of the whole screen, but just of your image. I don't know how to do that on a P.C., but here is how you do it on a Mac. First, you press , shift and 4, all at the same time. (If your keyboard doesn't have an  key, try pushing alt, shift and 4, all at the same time.)

Once you have done that, your cursor should change from an arrow into a target sign. Position the target sign at the top left corner of the image you want to grab and hold down the mouse button. Continue to hold it down while you drag the target to the bottom left corner of the image. The entire image should be covered by a transparent gray box. When you have covered the image, release the button. If your volume is turned up, you should hear a sound like the sound of a camera taking a picture.

You've now saved your image. On my computer, it's saved on the desktop as Picture *, where * is a number. My last screen shot is saved as "users/myname/desktop/picture 61". Your first screenshot will presumably be saved as "users/yourname/desktop/picture 1".

Step 3: Import the Photo into your photo editing software

For my first bunch of shrinky dinks, I imported the images into iPhoto, lightened them there, and then opened them in Powerpoint, where I arranged them on a sheet in order to print them on my shrinky dink paper. This worked fine. Just go to "file" and click on "add to library". From there, select the file name of your image, and it will import it right into iPhoto. Then you can click on the "adjust" icon and adjust the brightness. You want to make your image less bright, because the colors intensify a lot in the shrinking process.

However, I realized that you can also edit your photos directly in Powerpoint. To do that, go to "insert/ picture/ from file." Click on the file name. It will insert the photo onto your powerpoint slide. Drag and click a corner to shrink it down to the size you want, and then use the formating pallate to adjust the brightness. It's somewhat counterintuitive: you have to increase the brightness number to get it to be less bright. I found that somewhere between 70 and 75% was perfect. If you can't find the formatting palatte, go to "format", click on "picture," and then click on the "picture" tab.

Here's a picture of what my Powerpoint shrinky dink slide looked:

Notice that the colors look washed out: that's what you want.

And that's it. Other than that, you just follow the instructions in the Knit Powers to Peace tutorial I linked to above. You can use this to make stitch markers out of any image that you grab from the internet. I'm kicking around doing some other early-Twentieth-Century political posters. I will post them if I get around to making them.

Maybe we need a No Presidential Candidate Left Behind program!

2008-08-29T06:28:00.000-07:00

Someone on Ravelry found this awesomeness from John McCain's official store. I have taken a screen shot to preserve it for posterity!

The Pride of the South Side

2008-08-27T20:07:00.001-07:00

I didn't notice this until a month after they were released, but Lorna's Laces has two new colorways called Woodlawn and South Shore. Here is Woodlawn:

and here is South Shore:

Lorna's Laces is a Chicago-based company, and they have a number of colorways named after Chicago neighborhoods and streets. Until now, they've mostly been North Side streets and neighborhoods, with the exception of the colorway called "Pilsen." They've got Devon, Lakeview, Irving Park and Ravenswood, for instance, but nothing named after neighborhoods in my neck of the woods. And I feel inordinately pleased that this has changed now, even if I don't live in either South Shore or Woodlawn. I live near to South Shore and Woodlawn! Lorna's Laces appreciates neighborhoods near where I live! I am in favor of knitterly recognition of the awesomeness of the South Side.

Olympic Victory!

2008-08-25T17:06:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not talking about Michael Phelps, although there will be swimming in this post. Well, actually there will be talk about my boobs, as per usual, but it will be swimming-related. But first I must show off my Olympic vest, which was completed just in time for the closing ceremonies of the real Olympics.

Cute, no? I have not yet been able to get a decent picture of me in it, but I will try to post one tomorrow.

Today's excitement, aside from it being my birthday, which is really more distressing than exciting at this point in my life, is that I am trying to find a swimsuit so that I can rejoin the master's swim team and become a bit less of a couch potato. This is proving to be a challenge. Last time I bought a swim suit, I went to the very fancy running/ swimming store, where a nice lady helped me pick out a swimsuit that would be appropriate for my rather ample boobage. It was, I seem to recall, a size or two smaller than what would normally be recommended, so that the tight swimsuit would hold my boobs in place. Sadly, I have since misplaced that swimsuit, and the running/ swimming store has apparently gone out of business. At any rate, I would prefer to buy a cheap swimsuit online rather than spend a veritable fortune at the fancy running store. The thing is, I can't remember which size swimsuit to buy. So being a complete fucking moron, I thought I could just google "lap," "swimming" and "big breasts," and I would get some nice tips about how to choose a fitness swimsuit for the top-heavy members of the swimming community.

Now, I have nothing against porn. Truly: I think porn is just great. But it is very annoying when you're looking for perfectly mundane, non-porny advice about fitness apparel and all you can find is links to pictures of hott sexxxy girlz with giant breasts. My giant breasts are neither hot nor sexxy, and I am not interested in giving you a lap dance at this particular moment. I just want swimsuit fitting advice. Google needs a way to filter the porn, for the benefit of those of us with non-porn boob-related questions.

I think I want something along the lines of this utterly boring Speedo, but I can't for the life of me figure out whether I want it in a 6 or an 8.

2008-08-21T11:10:00.000-07:00

While I'm frantically trying to finish my RavOlympics project, you all should enjoy this gallery of Google's awesome holiday logos.

Knitting Pictures

2008-08-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

I've got pictures of the things I knit while I was away.

First, we have the Mother's Day Socks, which turned out to be more than a month late for Mother's Day. These were not successful knitting. Mostly, I'm really glad to be done with them. I messed up the stitch pattern: I knit the stitch below through the front, not through the back loop. I think they would have looked awesome if I'd got the pattern right. I might experiment a bit with the leftovers. Anyway, here's a picture:

And here are my finished Maude Mittens. I'm pretty happy with these.

I'm Back!

2008-08-11T15:24:00.000-07:00

The good news is that I'm back, and that is very good news indeed. I had a nice trip to see my family: my nephews are both suitably adorable, and we all got through the extended stay without anyone over the age of two having a major meltdown. But I am very, very, very glad to be home. I like home, and although my parents are pretty nifty as parents go, eleven days is probably too long to spend at their house. So anyway, I'm home, and I'm pretty darn happy about that.

The bad news is that I'm tired, my internet connection is wonky, and I desperately need to go to the grocery store, so the extended blog post will have to wait. Tomorrow, I will have mitten pictures and sock pictures and vest pictures (or at least vest swatch pictures) and news about my brush with internet geekcraft celebrity. I'm sure you all can hardly stand the anticipation.

Geekcraft Explosion!

2008-07-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

I suspect this will be the last time that Entertainment Weekly blog will scoop me on a Joss-Whedon-related crafting story. Here is a story about CrochetMe's attempt to get an interview with Joss Whedon. I think I might actually be indirectly responsible for this very cool campaign, because I posted on Ravelry about the "Crocheting Monthly" reference in the interview Joss did with Wired. For all I know, though, people had been talking about it on Craftster for days before I noticed it. But I like to think it was all me. Anyway, if anyone reading this has done Whedon-related projects, get thee over to CrochetMe and post a picture. They're hoping that Joss will be so overwhelmed by all the examples of Whedony crafting that he will feel obligated to give an interview.

Can I just say that it's a little odd that the mainstream media has apparently picked up my totally geeky sci-fi crafting obsession?

Brief update

2008-07-28T10:52:00.000-07:00

Hello! Greetings from New York, where I am currently going through a stack of xeroxed historical newspapers, instead of doing cool, New Yorky things. Perhaps this evening I will take a break from manic chapter-writing and attempt to take advantage of the lovely city in which I find myself.

In knitting news, I just finished my second Maude mitten. I'm very impressed with myself for avoiding second mitten syndrome. There won't be any pictures until I get back to Chicago, block this sucker, and reunite it with its mate, but it is done.

While I was in Boston, I went to an LYS and picked up the yarn for my Firefly-swap project. It is going to be really tough not to blog about that one, because I have my fingers crossed that it will be awesome. It could also be a total disaster, but I am hoping for awesome.

And finally, we get to the picture portion of our update. Yesterday, I went to Salem, MA with my friends Lisa, Tracy, and Tracy's sister Julie. We saw a big, fake old boat:

and the custom house where Nathanial Hawthorne worked:
and the original House of the Seven Gables:
and the lovely modern garden attached to it:
We also saw lots of witch-related stuff:

That last picture of was the Salem Witch Museum, which might have been designed with the express intention of pissing off American historians, of which three of the four of us are. It's a mess, but it's an entertaining mess with giant puppets acting out key scenes from the witch trials, and it's hard to argue with that.

Geekcraft of a different color

2008-07-14T22:41:00.001-07:00

Gryffindor Bag, final
Originally uploaded by Quietish

I'm not really a Harry Potter fan girl. I liked the books a lot, but not in the way that makes one want to knit things on the theme. But I'm sort of tempted by this pattern for Harry Potter house themed stranded bags from Quietish, just because they're so very pretty.

Flickr

2008-07-14T22:36:00.001-07:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Better Mitten Pictures

2008-07-09T10:44:00.001-07:00

Here are some post-blocking mitten pictures:

My camera is kind of shot. I think I'm going to ask for a new one for my birthday.

Low-rent mitten blocker

2008-07-08T19:36:00.000-07:00

I finished my mitten. I will try to take pretty pictures tomorrow, with natural light and all that, but in the meantime, here's a picture of it mid-blocking. I wrapped a tube of chapstick in plastic wrap for the thumb, and I stretched out a wire hanger for the hand. I think this is going to be my mitten-blocking method from here on out. Actually, I'll probably use a wire hanger for socks, too. I just can't see spending $30 on sock blockers when a free hanger works just fine.

What I've Been Up To

2008-07-05T12:39:00.001-07:00

What I haven't been up to much is leaving the house, thanks to a visit from the Vertigo Fairy. Here is what I've been doing during my (hopefully soon-to-be-over) period as a shut-in.

First of all, I've been working on my stranded mittens. They're called Maude mittens, and I'm testknitting them for a Raveller named Sophia. I think I'm about a third of the way through the first one. Here is a picture of the front:

And here's the back:

Aren't they pretty? I'm not crazy about the color, which I selected entirely because I had it on hand and therefore could knit it for free. (It's Knitpicks Palette, which is quickly becoming my go-to yarn. It's cheap as can be, and they've recently added all sorts of pretty colors.) But I really like the pattern, and I'm having a blast knitting these mittens. I think that my recent knitting slump can be attributed to the fact that I haven't actually been knitting things that I enjoy knitting. But this is different, because I could do stranded colorwork all day long. In fact, I kind of have been doing stranded colorwork all day long. I may knit nothing but stranded hats and mittens for the rest of my life.

When I haven't been doing stranded colorwork, I have occasionally been eating. This is a bit of a sore spot, because the Vertigo Fairy is making the eating situation difficult. Actually, eating isn't the problem. Actually keeping what I eat down for long enough to digest it has become somewhat difficult. Despite these issues, which I realize are well over the border into TMI-land, yesterday I made popovers, using this recipe that I found at Not Martha. I don't have an upright blender, so I used the immersion blender and the little beaker that comes with the immersion blender. (A whisk would work fine, though.) I also don't have a popover pan, so I used a muffin tin. They came out great. Here's a picture of the batch:

And here's an individual popover:

Considering that I have a fairly crappy oven that doesn't bake very evenly, I think that's pretty impressive! I'm switching to this popover recipe permanently.

As per usual, I have bitten off more than I can chew

2008-07-04T09:45:00.000-07:00

So you know how I said that I wasn't going to do any more geek knitting? I totally lied. I've signed up for the Firefly swap, which means that I have to knit another Firefly-themed thing by September 30 and send it off to my swap partner. I have also signed up for the Knitting Olympics, which means that I have committed to knitting a vest during the Olympics. I have to cast one during the opening ceremonies and cast off before the closing ceremonies. Scary! So here is a list of my outstanding knitting commitments:

1. My mom's socks. I'm almost done with the first one. These need to be done in the next two weeks or so. I'm planning to finish sock number one tonight. I am getting over my disappointment about screwing up the stitch pattern. It doesn't matter. I need to finish them.

2. The stranded mittens that I'm test knitting for SophiaKnits. So far, I'm loving these mittens, but I'm a little worried that I'm a bad test knitter. Basically, I don't trust that I know what I'm doing, so I tend to think that if something isn't clear, the problem is me, not the pattern. I need to remember that the pattern is being designed for idiots as well as experienced knitters, and I'm test knitting it for the moron contingent. Sophia said it was ok to blog about the mittens, so I will post pictures in a couple of days when I'm a bit farther along.

3. I am planning to do Stefanie Japel's Back-to-School vest for the Knitting Olympics, assuming I can get Fitted Knits from the library.

4. I've got some ideas about the Firefly swap, but I'm not going to talk about them here, because it's a secret!

Ok, so this is a lot of knitting. And therefore, I am hereby declaring that I will not start any new projects until I have finished these. My knitting dance card is full for the summer!

Hey, M &G

2008-07-01T10:50:00.000-07:00

This one is for you! I give you the the Chicago pub quiz blog.

Fail!

2008-06-30T21:36:00.001-07:00

So the most interesting thing going on here is my vertigo, which isn't all that interesting. It's mostly just bad. I am irked at the vertigo situation. So apologies for not being especially coherent tonight.

So I set out to do a Shazza's Bucket hat, and it did not work. It's a great pattern, but there's no gauge indicated, and I clearly got it wrong. So it is now Shazza's lamp shade:

I'm going to run it through the washer and dryer to see if it shrinks a little, but I suspect that a lampshade is what it will stay.

I have been frustrated by most of my knitting recently. I don't know if that's a function of my knitting or if I just have higher expectations than I did when I was starting out. I'm going to move on to the stranded mittens that I'm test-knitting and try to get through my current irritating knitting slump.

Oh no!

2008-06-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

So remember how a while back I bought yarn for my mom's socks from Peggy's Strands of Heaven, a cute little LYS way out in the western suburbs? It appears to have closed, albeit hopefully temporarily. I really hope it reopens, because I liked it a lot and would definitely go back there if I were ever out that way again.

I've got to say, though, that I'm skeptical that it was the economy that did in this LYS. The construction situation, which completely obscured the store and made it difficult to get there even if you could find it, must have been a factor. And more than that, it really seemed like a hobby store run by someone who was not what you'd call an ace business person. The store hours were really limited, and I don't think she did a great job with publicity. At least, the only reason I found out about them was that I absolutely stumbled onto them on KnitMap. I'd like to think that when the construction ends and the store re-opens, they'll be a little more business savvy.

Moritorium on Geek Knitting

2008-06-26T17:48:00.000-07:00

I did another Jayne hat for Can't Stop the Serenity. I know that those of you in other cities are thinking "Isn't Can't Stop the Serenity over?", but ours was postponed, so it's not. Anyway, I'm not crazy about the hat. I got gauge exactly, so I'm not sure what's wrong with it, but it fits weirdly. Here's a picture of the hat:

And here's a goofy picture of me in it:

The geek knitting has gotten a little out of control, so I am now switching to projects that have no Firefly tie-in. I've got my mom's socks on hold for a little while. I realized that I messed up the stitch pattern, and I'm taking a break while I get over my frustration with that. In the meantime, I am knitting this summer hat for a fellow Raveler who is going through chemo and has solicited hat donations. For the hat, I'm using some of the GGH Samoa that I purchased for my very first failed project, a baby blanket that I planned to knit to celebrate the birth of my now two-year-old nephew. I don't have any regrets about the now-abortive baby blanket: it was actually a really good way to practice beginning knitting. But I'm clearly never going to finish it, and the yarn is perfect for chemo caps. I'm also test knitting some stranded mittens for another Raveler, which I am very, very excited about. I think I'm going to cast them on when I finish the hat.

Netflix Report: Absolute Beginners

2008-06-21T15:28:00.001-07:00

visit videodetective.com for more info

A lot of people do very high-brow and admirable things while they knit, like listen to philosophy books on tape or actually converse with their friends and family members. Not me. I usually watch T.V. while I knit. Sometimes I watch DVDs from Netflix. Because I don't have much interesting to say right now about my knitting, I am going to start a new feature in which I discuss the movies and T.V. shows which I get from Netflix.

For starters, we have a bit of a dud. I don't know why I expected to like Absolute Beginners. The book is supposed to be good, and it (the book, not the movie) is the subject of a Jam song that I like. But the movie kind of sucked. It's a musical that celebrates the youth culture of multicultural London in the 1950s. The hero, a young aspiring photographer, is obsessed with jazz and the new concept of a "teenager" but has to fend off challenges to this awesomeness in the form of racists and people who want him to sell out. It's kind of like Grease with neo-Nazis and no interest in the female characters' points of view. Sadly, it just didn't do anything for me. In fact, I turned it off before it was over, which is not something I usually do. The characters weren't developed at all, and the movie tells you that London's youth culture was super alluring and exciting but doesn't do a very good job of showing you why that would be. And mostly it was kind of boring.

I still might get around to reading the book sometime.

Next up is Derek Jarman's Jubilee. I'm very curious about that one.

If anyone has any good movie or T.V. recommendations for me to get from Netflix, leave 'em in the comments. I am always looking for good new things to get from Netflix.

Warning: this bike will stab you to death and then die of a heroin overdose

2008-06-19T23:25:00.000-07:00

In a further addition to the annals of inexplicable marketing, I give you Schwinn's Sid and Nancy bikes. They seem like perfectly lovely bicycles, but I'm not sure I would purchase a bike named after either Sid or Nancy. Do you really want a bike that pays homage to someone who famously had trouble staying upright on stage? And call me crazy, but I just wouldn't be that enthused about riding a vehicle named after someone who is mostly known for the manner of her violent death. It just seems like tempting fate a bit.

Futher Adventures in Geekery and Intarsia

2008-06-11T19:21:00.001-07:00

You know how sometimes your knitting seems to have a mind of its own? Today my Browncoat Bag woke up and informed me that it was meant to be a Browncoat Laptop Sleeve. Far be it from me to deny an innocent piece of fabric the opportunity to pursue its destiny, so it now is a laptop sleeve.

It's kind of a mess. I'm not sure how much of that is my knitting and how much of it is the crappy yarn. At any rate, I will try intarsia again at some point, but I think I'm going to give it a rest for a while, so I can forget how annoying I found it. I've got a lot on my plate at the moment anyway. I have to finish my mom's socks in the next week, and then I'm test knitting a mitten pattern for a fellow Raveller. I also have to finish my big-person Jayne hat for Can't Stop the Serenity. So it's not like I'm going to be tempted to make a second pass at intarsia anytime soon.

Warning: This Yarn May Cause You to Fall Flat on Your Face

2008-06-08T20:22:00.000-07:00

I give you: Vertigo Yarn, the slogan of which is:

Each stitch is an adventure that will send you into whirling waves of vertigo!

I guess that's a bit clever. Yarn is spun; vertigo makes you feel like you're spinning; har-dee-har-har-har. Except that I'm willing to believe that whoever named this yarn hasn't dealt with a lot of vertigo. Vertigo yarns has, however, inspired me to come up with some potential yarn lines of my own:

Migraine Yarn: Each stitch will give you a terrible headache and make you want to hide in a dark room!

Nausea Yarn: Each stitch will make you puke your guts out!

Twisted Ankle Yarn: Each stitch will make your ankle hurt a lot!

There's a lot of stuff named after my annoying medical symptom: vertigo lollipops, for instance, and vertigo comics. Here are some vertigo pants, and here is some lovely vertigo perfume. For $650, Bloomingdales will sell you a vertigo pitcher. There are also vertigo shoes for kids, which may very well cause the unsuspecting child to fall flat on his or her ass, as vertigo has been known to do. Wal-Mart sells a lovely line of Vertigo bedding for children and teens. And I've got to admit, I do not understand it. I just don't. I'm not claiming that vertigo is the worst thing in the world. It's not. But it is an unpleasant sensation, and it makes it difficult to do things like, say, walk or drive. You don't want to have whirling waves of vertigo if you can avoid it. What on earth do people find appealing about vertigo? It's just motion sickness, except that it's a hallucination, so you can't stop it by stopping the car or getting off the boat. Does anyone want to have unrelenting motion sickness for months at a time? How did this irritating symptom become a marketing slogan?

On Knitting for Others

2008-06-04T14:56:00.000-07:00

I've got crazy vertigo today, so I don't seem to be getting any work done. This is bad, of course, but it means that I've made a lot of progress on my mom's Mother's Day socks. They look much better now that I've frogged my first attempt and started reknitting them in my new gauge. I will post pictures as soon as I'm done with the first sock.

I'm pretty sure that my mom will appreciate these socks. The reason I think that is because a while back, her friend Faith knit her a pair of socks, and she's been raving every since about how wonderful handknit socks are. So I feel confident that this is a good gift for my mother.

I've been thinking, however, about the whole idea of knitting for other people: both gifts and knitting for charity. Obviously, I've been doing some of both lately. I've knit one hat for Can't Stop the Serenity and am working on another, and I'm knitting these socks for my mom. So it's not like I'm opposed to knitting for other people.

But there's a discussion going on over on Ravelry that was started by a woman who is wondering whether she should feel guilty about not knitting a baby present for her pregnant niece. She has three family members who are expecting babies, and she is knitting presents for two of them. She doesn't want to knit for the third one, her niece, because the last time her niece had a baby, she didn't seem to appreciate the handknit gift that the poster gave to her. She seemed to appreciate trendy baby clothes and gadgets more. The poster was basically asking everyone to validate her decision to slight her ungrateful niece by not knitting anything for her.

Now, this seems to me to be entirely the wrong way of thinking about this. The poster shouldn't knit her niece a gift, but not for the reason that everyone said, which is that the niece was an ungrateful brat. She may be an ungrateful brat, but that's not the point. The point is that a gift is about the recipient, not the giver. You should give someone the thing that you think they'd appreciate getting, not one that you'd appreciate giving.

When push comes to shove, I'm an entirely selfish knitter. I have never knit a project that I didn't want to knit. I'm not sure I've ever knit a stitch that I didn't want to knit. I knit because I enjoy knitting. If someone else derives a benefit, that's just icing on the cake.

That doesn't mean that I won't knit for others. If I think someone will appreciate something that I would like to knit, I will certainly knit it for them. But I'm conscious of the need to avoid giving people things just because I want to knit them, because that's not a gift for them. That's a gift for myself. I also have to avoid thinking that people should be grateful for the enormous amount of time that goes into every knitted gift. I spend that time knitting for my own pleasure, so it's not like I went through 40 hours of miserable toil to make that present.

All of this may have to do with the fact that I'm a process knitter. I know that the process/ product dichotomy is a little trite, but I'm such a totally hard-core process knitter that I think it's a useful one for me. I kind of don't care very much about FOs. I've knit some things that were nice and useful, but I've also finished a lot of things, admired them, and then thrown them on a shelf, never to look at them again. And I have limited shelf space. I really could see myself giving people "gifts" mostly just because I didn't want the things to collect dust in my apartment. It's useful, therefore, to remind myself that gifts are about doing something nice for the recipient, not for the giver.

I have done the impossible, and that makes me mighty

2008-06-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

Yeah, ok, maybe not the impossible. More like the slightly challenging, given my current level of knitting prowess. And maybe I'm not so much mighty as a slightly more experienced knitter than I was a week ago. But I appear to have tackled intarsia. My intarsia experiment was not entirely successful, but given what a chore intarsia has turned out to be, I'm still rather impressed with myself. Here is the browncoat patch panel for a bag that I plan to make:

That looks slightly lumpier than it actually is, because I haven't woven in the ends yet, so it's pinned down on top of all the random strands of yarn. I think it'll look a bit better when it's done.

The pattern, for those who are not quite as obsessively geeky as me, is the patch that's on Mal's uniform in the flashback sequence in the pilot episode of Firefly. I am not quite geeky enough to have found that motif myself: you can buy patches or various things with the patch on them from purveyors of geeky goods. I made this for the Can't Stop the Serenity auction, but I think it's actually probably not good enough to auction off. I'll see when the thing is done, which should be soon. I still have to weave in all the ends, which is going to take approximately as long as it did to knit the thing. After that, I need to connect the front and back panels, knit some straps, and do a lining. I probably won't do the lining unless I'm happy enough with it to think that someone might actually use it.

I knew that a lot of people hated intarsia, but for some reason I got it into my head that their objections were aesthetic. They associated intarsia with hideous Christmas sweaters and clothing with pictures of cloyingly adorable puppies. It didn't occur to me that the issue with intarsia might be that it's actually an enormous pain in the ass. I was deeply surprised by what a pain in the ass it was, because I like stranded knitting, and that seems like it should be harder. But even on DPNs, stranded colorwork is a lot less irritating than intarsia, as far as I'm concerned. I have a feeling that there are a couple of intarsia tricks that one has to figure out for oneself, and then it becomes a little less irksome. For instance, I think that I should keep all the strands of yarn pretty short and just not worry about having to add new yarn fairly frequently. It's less of a pain to weave in a few extra ends than to untangle a really long strand of yarn. But I didn't figure that out until near the end, and I swear that I spent as much time untwisting strands of yarn as I did knitting.

Here, by the way, is the chart that I used, tweaked slightly from the one that I posted way back in February. I'm still not totally happy with it.

Whatever happened to Baby Jayne?

2008-05-27T16:52:00.001-07:00

It's done, that's what. I finished my Baby Jayne hat in record time. Here it is.

I apologize for modeling that on a turquoise balloon. I thought about knocking on my next door neighbors' door and asking if I could borrow their baby, but I decided that would be weird.

I made this to be auctioned off at the silent auction attached to the Chicago screening of Can't Stop the Serenity, a geektastic fan event for Firefly fans. The Chicago CStS organizer is also a knitter, so I figure they'll be set for grown-up Jayne hats, and maybe it would be good for me to do something different. My baby Jayne hat was also, however, part of the extended gauge-fixing project. This was my first real project with my new, reasonably tight gauge. I knit this on size 8 needles and got four stitches to the inch. Go me! I think I am officially declaring my gauge successfully altered.

I'm kicking around the idea of knitting something else for CStS. Maybe I'll do a scarf with that browncoat emblem I charted lo these many months ago. In the meantime, I've got to say that I really enjoyed knitting this baby hat. I think I need to do more small, easy projects. Finishing things is good for the soul.

In which a gauge experiment becomes an FO

2008-05-25T13:19:00.001-07:00

Ever since the great gauge-changing experiment of 2008, I've been playing around with waste yarn and cheap acrylic to try to figure out how my new and improved gauge works. I'm making a Baby Jayne hat out of worsted to figure out my approximate worsted gauge. (I'm getting 4 stitches per inch on 8s, which is pretty awesome.)

Before I made another attempt at my mom's socks, I wanted to experiment a little bit with sock yarn, just to get some sense of what kind of needles I should use and to make sure I was capable of maintaining even tension. I had some leftover yarn from my Hedera socks, so I cast on and started knitting in the pattern I'm using for my mom's socks: Anne Budd's Chevron Lace Socks pattern from Getting Started Knitting Socks. I wasn't planning to do anything with this. It was just a swatch. But then inspiration intervened, in the form of Ms. Pixley, who unfortunately doesn't have a blog and therefore can't be linked. Get a blog, Pixley! Anyway, Pixley posted a pattern for a coffee mug cosy. If you're on Ravelry, you can see it Here. Pixley's introduction to her pattern reads:

Want to keep your hand from burning when you pick up your latte, but you don’t want to use more of those paper sleeves? Feel like maybe your coffee cup could be more attractive? Want to knit socks but are scared of turning the heel? The coffee cuff might be just the thing for you.

Now, I am not afraid of turning the heel of a sock. I enjoy turning sock heels. But I never really intended to make a sock when I started knitting this. I just intended to make an extended gauge swatch. And it hit me, looking at Pixley's pattern, that what I had was not a gauge swatch but a coffee cup cosy. I bound off, and here it is:

I'm not sure how much use this is actually going to get, since I don't buy coffee very often. (I drink coffee all the time, but I generally make it at home and carry it around in a thermos. My thermos works very well and doesn't require a hand-protecting cosy.) But it's an FO, and I'm going to throw it in my bag for the rare instances when I do buy a cup of coffee.

I'm not sure that I'm crazy about this pattern, having swatched it in my new gauge. I think I might look for a different pattern for my mom's socks.

Gauge Update

2008-05-23T10:14:00.000-07:00

Knock wood, but I think I have fixed my gauge issues. At least, I am currently getting 4.5 stitches per inch in worsted on 8s. That is a perfectly reasonable gauge! I am so impressed with myself.

It's been a bit of an ordeal, though. I'm a continental knitter, and after thinking about it and searching the internet for discussions of continental gauge issues, I realized that the problem was that I wasn't gripping the working yarn. Not only did that mean that my stitches were outrageously loose, but they were kind of uneven. I wasn't maintaining any tension at all. So the first thing I did to tighten up was to wrap the working yarn around my pinky twice, rather than once. That tightened me right up. It tightened my knitting up so much, sadly, that I could barely force the needle through each stitch. Knitting like that is deeply unpleasant, so I had to do some experimenting to figure out how to loosen it back up a bit.

I think I've found the solution. Here it is:

I wrap the working yarn around my left pinky twice, but it has to be wrapped loosely. The idea here is that the yarn should slide smoothly when I want it to slide, but it should stay put when I want it to stay put.
When I'm actually making a stitch, I press my left pinky against my left index finger, which prevents the yarn from moving. That makes sure the stitch is the right size.
After I have slipped the stitch off the needle, I spread my fingers to pull more yarn onto my hand. As long as I spread my hand the same amount every time, that means that I have the same amount of working yarn on my hand every stitch and maintain even tension.

And that's it. I am currently knitting with acrylic and leftovers to make sure I've got my tension consistent. Once I'm confident I know what I'm doing, I'm going to frog my mom's socks and start again with my new and improved gauge.

In which I actually finish something!

2008-05-17T15:39:00.000-07:00

Miracle of miracles, I have an actual finished object. I'm not sure what got into me, but in the middle of the night last night I realized that I really needed to finish my Hedera socks. And here they are, all grafted and bound off and the ends woven in and everything. It has been a long time since I've actually finished something, rather than coming close to finishing it and then putting it aside for later. Here is a picture of my totally-finished Hedera socks.

(Erm, that photo is shot from a very weird angle. Also, that's my awesome new rug from IKEA, and if you don't like it, then you are wrong. All rugs should be festooned with pictures of dolphins. My awesome new rug also has pictures of a castle, a hotel, a sports stadium, an igloo, and assorted other random buildings. What's not to like?)

I'm still working on my mom's chevron socks, but in the meantime I've decided I'm also going to do some experimenting with gauge. In order to finish the Hederas, I had to go back to throwing, since my Continental gauge is way too loose to get away with knitting socks on 1s, which is what I started these guys on back when I was an English knitter. I definitely prefer knitting Continental to English, though, so I'm going to see if I can't figure out how to make my Continental gauge a little tighter. I'm going to do that baby Jayne hat that I've been talking about, and I'm going to do it on 6s or 7s. I'm going to make a conscious effort to knit more tightly, knit really slowly and deliberately, and see if I can do it. I don't mind being a loose knitter. I'm completely fine with knitting worsted on 6s. But I would prefer not to knit worsted on 3s, just because that has unfortunate implications for sock knitting. I'm still a little loose on 000s, and it is not that easy to find 0000s.

Actual Knitting-related content

2008-05-14T13:48:00.000-07:00

I'm going to take a brief break from the Green Tea Raglan while I lick my sad gauge-related wounds. I think I have come to terms with my gauge issues. I'm just a crazy loose knitter. I need to admit that and stop fudging my gauge because I think that I can't possibly really need to knit worsted on 3s. I just do, in fact, need to knit worsted on 3s. There are worse things to be than the world's loosest knitter. I could be a kleptomaniac. I'll deal with it.

So that comes to my actual knitting. I am knitting a pair of socks for my mother. They're in light fingering weight Merino, and I am knitting them on size 000 DPNs. Yup, you got that right. I couldn't even enter that into the project data on Ravelry, because they don't have 000s on the pulldown menu. Sadly, my camera is on the fritz, so here are the best pictures I could get.

That's the yarn. It's Mad for Merino sock yarn from Knitting Like Crazy in their colorway "Sweet Dreams." I got it at Peggy's Strands of Heaven, a super nice LYS way the hell out in the Western Chicago suburbs. PSoH seems not to have a lot of online presence, and I didn't have high hopes when M. and I went there. But it's really a nice place, run by nice people, full of nice yarn. I recommend it if you're ever in the way-distant Western Chicago suburbs.

And here are the very beginnings of my socks:

That's a terrible picture. I need to figure out what's going on with my camera. At any rate, the pattern is the Chevron Lace Socks from Getting Started Knitting Socks. It's a really simple lace pattern that can be done in front of the television.

These are supposed to be my mom's Mother's Day gift. I don't know whether they will really be that. I love the yarn, because it's all variegated and pretty, but it's not really her colors. I may finish these socks, keep them for myself or give them to someone else, and make some other socks in bolder colors for my mom. I'm eying Lorna's Laces in Tahoe.

Tater Tot Casserole: a photo essay

2008-05-12T20:07:00.000-07:00

As I said over on Ravelry, I am not willing to judge Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar's reproductive choices. I am, however, totally willing to judge their culinary choices. Because I will do almost anything on a dare, I have made the Duggar family Tater Tot casserole recipe. I didn't follow the recipe exactly: I added some veggies, used ground beef instead of ground turkey, and saved a little bit of money by using one big can of cream of mushroom soup instead of a little can of cream of mushroom and a little can of cream of celery. But it's close enough. Here, in more detail than you probably want, is a report.

First of all, let it be said that Tater Tot casserole is not especially inexpensive. I halved the recipe, because unlike Jana Duggar, the oldest Duggar daughter and the designated Duggar family dinner cooker, I am not cooking for a family of 20. Even so, the ingredients cost me $15. That's almost twice as much as the big vat of veggie chili I made last night, and the veggie chili had actual nutritional value. It's true that I bought brand name ingredients, and I could have saved a little bit by buying generic. (They actually don't have generic tater tots at my supermarket. They only have Oneida Tater Tots. That should tell you something about the kind of supermarket at which I shop.) But this wouldn't be a bargain recipe even if you did get the cheapest ingredients possible.

What it is, however, is very quick to make. Even with the extra step of chopping up veggies, it was a cinch, and the cleanup was pretty easy, too. I didn't time it, but I'd say that my total active cooking time was maybe 15 minutes. Maybe I should fire off an email to suggest to Jana Duggar, whose email I found via google, that she could add the veggies without appreciably increasing the amount of work involved. I chopped the vegetables during Gossip Girl commercial breaks. I doubt there's a lot of Gossip Girl going on in the Duggar household, but perhaps she could chop some carrots, celery and onions in between reading Bible verses.

So I chopped up a large onion, two carrots, and two stalks of celery.

I heated up some olive oil and sautéed my veggies.

Then I scooped the veggies out of the pan, browned the beef, and stuck the veggies back in the pan with the beef. I cooked it all together for a few more minutes.

Then it was time to scoop the meat mixture into my lasagna dish.

I covered the meat with Tater Tots, mixed up my soup and my evaporated milk, and stuck that on top. Note that at this point, the casserole looked disgusting. I have no idea what cat puke actually looks like, but that's how I imagine it looking.

Then I popped the casserole into the oven and watched an episode of Battlestar Gallactica. I suspect the Duggars skip that last bit Perhaps they could read more Bible verses.

An hour later, it was time to take the casserole out of the oven.

I cut it, and it was a little too runny.

So I popped it back in the oven to see if I could get it to firm up a bit. In the meantime, I tried my runny casserole. And I have to say, it was delicious. It had the kind of sickening yummy quality that food has when it derives its deliciousness from being made of fat and salt. You'll see that I cut myself a pretty small piece, and when I tried to eat a little more I felt vaguely ill. In small amounts, though, it's pretty awesome.

The Tater Tots are definitely not crispy, by the way, but you kind of don't even focus on the fact that they're Tater Tots. They're just a soft layer of something potato-y on top of the ground beef.

It did firm up a bit after another ten minutes or so in the oven. Since I've never made a casserole with cream of mushroom soup before, I don't yet know how to gauge its doneness. I think my oven runs a little hot, if anything, so I would plan to possibly bake it for a little more than an hour.

So that's the verdict. As I suspected, the Duggar family's Tater Tot casserole is indeed made of yummy. It's not something that I'd eat on a regular basis, because you probably couldn't come up with a less healthy recipe if you tried. But if you ever need a super quick and easy recipe that will feed a crowd and you don't care at all about nutrition, you could do worse.

Blocked

2008-05-08T21:33:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, I lived in a huge apartment with a crazy roommate. My roommate was not a bad roommate, as genuinely crazy roommates go, but she was still a bit difficult to live with. She had long, worrying periods of melancholy during which she seldom ate and never left the house. She had a hangup about closing her bedroom door, by which I mean that she never did it, which made me feel awkwardly surveilled when I was in our living room or kitchen. She constantly worried that the world was collapsing, and I felt a lot of responsibility to cheer her up, which generally meant getting her to watch bad teen T.V. shows rather than documentaries about genocide. I liked her, and I even sort of miss her, but when she moved back to Eastern Europe I decided that it was time for the roommate stage of my life to end. Sadly, the huge apartment was too expensive for me to afford by myself. I now live in a tiny apartment, but now I don't have to convince anyone that it would be better for their mental health if they watched One Tree Hill rather than The Sorrow and the Pity on a Friday night.

When I moved to my smaller, roommate-free apartment, I had to downsize my possessions. One of the things that didn't make it past the move was my blocking board. It wasn't a very fancy blocking board: I followed the instructions on Knitty and made it out of homosote and the absolute cheapest gingham fabric I could find at Joanne's. It wasn't pretty, but it got the job done. However, there is no space for my blocking board in my new apartment, so I abandoned it. I have been using my couch or my bed to block things.

I'm not especially happy about this state of affairs. First of all, I like to use both my couch and my bed, and blocking my sweater on them made them difficult to use for their intended purposes. Also, they're not as rigid as I think a good blocking board would be.

I had a sort of brilliant idea, which was to make a new blocking board out of fabric-covered homosote, but to cover it with fabric chosen for its decorative properties, not for being the cheapest that I could possibly find. When I was not blocking things with my blocking board, I could hang it above my couch and call it art. I am still kind of kicking around the idea of doing this.

So that was the plan until I saw Knitter's Blocks, a super ingenious solution to the problem of storing a blocking board in a small apartment. Knitter's Blocks are little puzzle-piece like things that snap together to form a blocking board. When you're done with them, you unsnap them, stick them back in their little tote bag, and put them at the top of your closet, where they will not bother anyone. Yay!

Sadly, Knitter's Blocks cost $48. I probably could spend $48 on a blocking board, but it feels like a lot of money. But this blog seems to suggest that similar snap-together puzzle pieces are available from hobby and dollar stores for a lot less money. I'm perfectly happy to supply my own tote bag. I'm going to have to look into this. I think that may be the solution to my blocking board issue.

Bad Blogger

2008-05-06T11:01:00.001-07:00

I am a very, very bad blogger. The thing is, I don't have very much to blog about. Actually, I'm probably just lazy. I apologize.

So I have reswatched for my Green Tea Raglan, with only mixed success. I was able to get gauge for the sleeves, which are done in stockinette. I will be knitting the sleeves in worsted weight yarn on size 3 needles, but that's ok, because I've got gauge. However, my attempts to get gauge in seed stitch have not yet been successful. I got 15 stitches per four inches on size 4s, and the pattern calls for 18 stitches per 4 inches. I am currently swatching in seed stitch on size 3s. If I can't get gauge on size 3s, I may give up and use my Comfy for some other purpose. I cannot knit a sweater on size 2 needles. That's just out of control.

I think I might need to do something about my gauge issues. I know that everyone's gauge is different and there's no wrong way to knit and all that, but this is just ridiculous. There is no reason for anyone to knit as loosely as I do. I must be the most relaxed, unstressed person in the history of humanity. And as the few readers here who know me in real life can attest, that is far from the case. It would be nice if my uptight, stressed out nature would manifest itself in ways that would be better for my knitting.

Aaarggh

2008-04-28T20:34:00.000-07:00

I have a serious, serious gauge issue. I cannot ever get gauge. I must be a sloppy swatcher or something.

I just washed and dried the back of my Green Tea Raglan, and my gauge is totally off. I'm getting 26 rows per 4 inches, instead of the required 28, and that's having gone down two needle sizes from what's suggested. I think I'm going to have to frog the whole thing, because it's definitely going to be too big, and I think this pattern will just look sloppy unless it's pretty form-fitting. It's sad, too, because all that seed stitch looks so pretty.

I'm off to swatch on size 4 needles. Aaargggh!

In the meantime, I think I'm going to knit a baby Jayne hat to be auctioned off at Can't Stop the Serenity. I figure everyone else will be making grown-up Jayne hats, and maybe there will be a market for the tiny ones for tiny, newborn Browncoats. Also, I think I need to knit something really quick and easy to overcome my frustration at screwing up my second sweater.

I have nothing to say

2008-04-26T22:25:00.000-07:00

The good news is that I'm back from D.C. in one piece. The bad news is that I am not feeling particularly witty or articulate at the moment. I think I have blogger's block. I have nothing at all to write about. I'm still working on my Green Tea Raglan, but I haven't got around to taking pictures yet. I'm going to wash and dry the back tomorrow to shrink it down to its correct size, and I'll try to take a picture then.

And other than that, I have no news. I mean, I sort of have news. Here are some things that I have considered blogging about:

1. The new Cynthia Rawley "Whim" line of fun summer things at Target is full of adorableness. I bought pretty much the cheapest and not-cutest thing in the whole line, a lunch box for $3, and it was still pretty darn cute. I'm very excited about my lunch box. It's the perfect size to put a sandwich in to avoid the dreaded sandwich squishage problem. Every time I put a sandwich in my bag in the morning, it gets squished by lunch time. I think the whole point of the Whim line is that it's supposed to be goofy, non-utilitarian stuff, but the lunch boxes are actually pretty practical. And the goofy, non-utilitarian items are awesome, too, for those of you who are into that kind of frivolity.

2. As you may be aware, this has been a bad year for terrible mass death in the Chicago metro area. We've had university shootings and Layne Bryant shootings and a whole rash of horrible murders of school kids. And yet none of that has freaked me out as much as a stupid truck smashing itself into the Chinatown El station. Because the thing is, I can't actually picture Northern Illinois University or the Layne Bryant in Tinley Park (and in fact I have no idea where Tinley Park is), but that El station is totally part of my mental landscape. And apparently, that makes mass death much freakier.

3. It appears that pretty much everyone in my family, or at least every female member of my family, is obsessed with the terrible teensploitation show Gossip Girl. How could it be that a show could have such terrible ratings, and yet everyone I know could watch it? It may be that the audience of Gossip Girl is comprised entirely off people whom I know personally. And that's kind of weird, because I don't actually know any high school-aged girls at the moment.

4. I'm trying very hard to get into Battlestar Gallactica at the moment. I really should love Battlestar Gallactica. It has all sorts of things that should make one love it: its very thoughtful and deep and I'm nearly certain that the people who make it share my basic politics. And yet I'm not sure that I do love it. I think I might prefer Gossip Girl I'm going to reserve judgment until I've finished the first season.

Seed stitch is pretty

2008-04-10T22:38:00.000-07:00

That's the conclusion that I've come to while working on my Green Tea Raglan. It's also much less of a pain in the ass now that I'm a continental knitter. I would post a picture, but my camera's batteries are dead.

That will clearly have to be rectified immediately, because tomorrow morning I leave for NY and D.C., where I will be doing research, celebrating Passover, and ogling my adorable nephew. The camera is necessary for the adorable nephew, but not for the research, since they don't allow cameras at most of my archives. Sadly, there will be no nephew pictures, because I'd have to ask my brother and sister-in-law, and that would entail telling them about this blog, and I'm not sure that's such a good idea. They already think I'm enough of a freak as it is.

For knitting, I am bringing my sweater and the Hedera socks that I abandoned sometime around New Year's. They're really close to done, and I need to bite the bullet and finish them. I've also packed the weird Kaffe Fassett variegated sock yarn that I purchased in December for some inexplicable reason and have since not been able to figure out what to do with. Hopefully a change of scenery will give me some inspiration. There should be lots of time for knitting, because the plan is to drive down to D.C. with the aforementioned brother, sister-in-law and adorable nephew, and then drive back up to NY. Plus, it's anyone's guess whether my plane will actually get out tomorrow. I may be sitting around Midway for a long time.

So anyway, I don't know how much blogging will be going on. It depends entirely on whether my parents' neighbors have wised up and password protected their WiFi.

Musings on being a real knitter

2008-04-10T14:48:00.000-07:00

So I just heard on the news that people who do at least 20 minutes of housework a week are happier than those who don't. Which leads me to the question: is it possible to exist without doing 20 minutes of housework a week? I mean, obviously some people are physically incapacitated and can't do any housework at all, but other than that? That's less than three and a half minutes a day. Even if you hire someone to do your actual cleaning, or even if you just live in a dirty home, wouldn't you spend twenty minutes a week just doing the dishes? Even if you had a dishwasher, I imagine that loading and unloading it would take more than 20 minutes a week. And what about preparing meals? It's got to take more than three and a half minutes to take things out of take-out containers and put them on plates. Taking out the garbage?

Newsflash: people who get out of bed every day are happier than those who don't. Update at 10.

But that's not what I'm writing about. I am writing, again, about my second sweater. I casted on my green tea raglan, and I'm off and running. As I said earlier, this is my second attempt to do this sweater. I first tried it a little over a year ago and gave up after one sleeve and half of the back. And doing it a second time has made me realize how far I have progressed as a knitter. The pattern actually isn't very specific: for instance, it says "decrease one stitch on both sides every tenth row," but it doesn't specifically tell you how to do that. The last time I attempted the sweater, the only decrease I knew was knit two together, so I didn't realize that I should do SSK on one side to mirror the K2T decrease. I just K2T on both sides. I didn't know I should do the decreases one stitch in from the edge, to leave a nice selvage. I don't think I knew what selvage was. At that point, the only cast-on I could do was long tail. Now, I can do long-tail, cable, knit on, backwards loop, tubular, provisional, and figure 8.

I'm not much of a knitter. Perusing Ravelry, it's clear that there are a lot of people who are vastly more technically proficient and more creative than I am. But I realize that I do feel like a real knitter. I don't know when this happened! Is it something that magically occurs around about the time when you finish your first sweater?

Now I want to know how long it will be before I stop being intimidated by LYSs.

Awesome stuff

2008-04-08T10:01:00.000-07:00

I complain a lot about this university and especially about the undergrads. But every once in a while they do something so endearingly geeky that you have to love them. Here is an article about a new fund that has been set up to give money to student initiatives.

The Zombie Readiness Task Force was granted $5,540 to bring Max Brooks, the author of The Zombie Survival Guide, to campus to deliver a speech on how to survive zombie attacks. Because the group was denied RSO status last spring, the Task Force is not eligible for SG funding this year. Second-year Justin Hartmann, co-founder of the Task Force, said receiving UnCommon funding was crucial to the group’s development and growth....
“While discussions on the quad about Kant and Marx are great, every now and then we need a little change of pace. Last year’s grant money went to a lecture by James Carville, which, while ever so academic, hardly provided a break from strenuous academic life. Max Brooks is a wonderful speaker and can help stressed U of C students remember the important things in life, like protecting ourselves from the undead,” he said.
Yesterday I learned from Knitting Daily that silk is hardened worm pee.
Google maps has a nifty little thing that will find the best public transit route for you. For Chicagoans, this is basically the same idea as the RTA trip finder, but it has some nifty features. You can look at a street level view, which is helpful if you have to get off a bus in a strange place, and they compare the price of your public transit journey to how much it would cost to drive to the same place. This is very good for feeling smug about the fact that you're saving money by taking the bus.
My Comfy rocks. Having swatched it, I'm back to thinking I'm going to knit the Green Tea Raglan with it. It just seems like a good match.

The Comfy Has Landed

2008-04-07T15:46:00.000-07:00

My Knitpicks order just arrived, and with it the yarn for my second sweater. Exciting! Is it just me, or has Knitpicks' shipping gotten faster? I ordered Comfy, their new cotton/acrylic blend, in blackberry. Here's the best photo I could take. It's a very dark purple. It's so dark, in fact, that it appears almost black in certain lights. I like it. I'm still not 100% sure what I'm going to do with it, but I'm going to swatch it tonight.

Cables

2008-04-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

I have actually finished the Article of Doom, so I spent today doing things like attending to the sink full of dirty dishes and procuring actual food with actual nutritional value. But I'm still pondering the second sweater. I think I'm going to put these cables on a modified Central Park Hoodie:

That's not my swatch. Actually, someone won a contest with that swatch, and it's easy to see why. It's awesome, which is why I'm going to try to copy it. The central six-stranded cable is a Saxon Braid, and it's not hard to find charts for it. I originally fell in love with it when I checked Barbara Walker's third treasury out from the library, and there are versions of it floating around the internet. But I haven't been able to find a chart for the four-stranded cable, so tonight I decided to try to work it out for myself. Boy, did that not work. I realize that I actually don't totally understand how cables work. I have only done really simple cables, with no purl stitches in between the knit bits. I haven't entirely internalized how you make the cable turn, rather than cross another strand of the cable. I understand it in theory: it's the same as crossing a strand, except that you cross a purl stitch rather than a knit one. But I still can't quite wrap my head around it enough to figure out how to make it work. I think I'm going to try to swatch up the Saxon Braid and see if that makes things clearer for me.

This may all be overly ambitious. It's possible that I should make a bunch of Saxon Braid dishcloths before I attempt a complicated cable on a sweater. I will report back on this after I have attempted to do a swatch.

Further thoughts on the second sweater

2008-04-02T22:15:00.000-07:00

Ok, so here's what I think I'm going to do for my second sweater.

I think I'm going to do another Central Park Hoodie. I like the idea of being able to look at a version of the sweater while I try to map out modifications, and I think that the CPH would work well in the Comfy that I have just ordered from Knit Picks.

I am going to knit the thing in one piece, and I'm going to try to do EZ's fake seams, to give the sweater structure. I'm going to do a 32 inch back and a 36 inch front, in an attempt to make the sweater fit better. I'm also going to add some waist shaping. I'm going to shorten the sleeves a bit more than I did this time, because even though I took three inches off of the finished product, they were still too long. And I'm going to substitute more-awesome cables for the simple ones in the standard CPH. I think I am going to do Barbara Walker's Saxon Braid for the double cables up the back and the sleeves. For the smaller cables, I might try to unvent the braided rib cable here.

I can't decide whether I'm going to do the hood or not, but I don't have to decide that right away.

The CPH is the single most popular cardigan pattern on Ravelry, and I feel like I should choose something more interesting and creative. But I don't think I'm going to. I think I'm going to be boring. The pattern is popular for a reason.

All over but the zipper!

2008-03-31T11:28:00.001-07:00

In a fit of insomnia last night, I put in the sleeves on my Central Park Hoodie. Here's a picture of the finished product. It's a terrible picture, because sadly it doesn't seem to be possible to take a decent picture of me in my bedroom mirror.

There's all sorts of stuff wrong with my CPH. The pattern isn't especially flattering on my body type, there's an error in the ribbing, and the seaming is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. And yet I love it. I made a sweater! Me! I feel like I am finally a "real knitter."

I still need to put in the zipper. The pattern calls for an open cardigan with no fastener, but that definitely would not work with my immense boobage. In that picture, it's held together with a safety pin. However, I'm contemplating holding off on the zipper until the next time I visit my parents and can make use of my mom's sewing skills/ sewing machine. I'm thinking about getting some sort of kilt pin type thing and sticking that where I currently have the safety pin. Is that cheating? Do I care?

This will not be my second sweater

2008-03-29T14:05:00.000-07:00

Has everyone checked out the awesome, beautiful Autumn Rose Pullover that Melissa at KnitPicks did in KP Palette? I've been tempted to try one of Eunny Jang's Fair Isle patterns, but I've been put off not just by the difficulty, but also by the colors and the price. I'm usually an inveterate yarn substituter, but the challenge of coming up with good substitutions for all the colors in a Fair Isle sweater is a tad daunting. That's a problem, because I couldn't afford the yarn Eunny uses even if I did care for her colors, which I generally don't. (No offense to Eunny, who is clearly a genius. My coloring is just different from hers.) But Melissa's choices are really lovely, and Palette is super, super cheap. There's like $20 worth of yarn in that sweater. All of a sudden Fair Isle seems within reach.

Sadly, there's still the difficulty issue. I've done a little bit of stranded colorwork, but doing Fair Isle for one's second sweater seems a little stupid, even for an overly-ambitious soul such as myself. But I'm still going to make a note of those color combinations. Somewhere down the line, I may rip them off for something.

So I've pinned in the first sleeve on my CPH, and now I'm about to seam it up. Scary! Wish me luck.

Second sweater!

2008-03-24T23:21:00.000-07:00

I am so close to done with my Central Park Hoodie! I have finished the ribbing, bound off, and woven in all the ends. All I have to do is put in the sleeves and attend to the zipper, and then I am done. It should definitely be finished by Friday. Woohoo!

Of course, I am deeply neurotic, so all I see when I look at the sweater is its many imperfections. And there are several. In fact, I am sorely tempted to rip out the button band and knit it again, and part of me thinks I should redo the right front, as well. This is totally crazy, and the only cure for it is to get started right away on my second sweater.

My current thought is to revisit the Green Tea Raglan, which I made a failed attempt to knit last year. I think I would do it in Comfy, the new cotton/ acrylic blend from Knitpicks. Comfy is machine washable and light weight, which would be good for a summer sweater. Also, it's cheap: I could knit the whole sweater for about $25. As per usual with Knitpicks, the Comfy colorways are mostly not to my taste, but I think I would look ok in Blackberry, Planetarium, Fedora or Pomegranate. (Someone ought to tell the people at Knitpicks that not everyone looks good in cool colors or pastels. None of those colors is really right for me, and I would look like a ghost in all the other ones.)

The Green Tea Raglan has a seed stitch body and stockinette sleeves, and I think I would reverse those, to facilitate putting in some short row bust darts. I would also leave off the belt, because there is no way that a belted sweater is a good idea. Other than that, I think I will knit it just as written. I will probably order the yarn tomorrow.

An attack of finishitis

2008-03-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

I am not good at finishing things. I like to keep my options open, and the best way to do that is not to complete anything, so everything can continue to be tinkered with and revised. Right now, I am in the process of not finishing two things. The first is my Central Park Hoodie. The second is the stupid, stupid article that I'm supposed to be writing for a Very Important Journal's special issue on the truly obscure subject of my dissertation. (I have no idea why the Very Important Journal decided that this was a good subject for a special issue. I don't think they're going to get enough decent submissions to fill a journal, and I work on this topic. My article really sucks, and I think it may be accepted just because nobody else is going to submit anything. But what do I know?) I'm not going to blog here about my unfinished article, because I can't think of anything more boring in the entire universe. Instead, I am going to blog about the only-slightly-less boring topic of my unfinished Central Park Hoodie.

So I'm really almost done with the stupid sweater. I have knit the body, done the side seams, knit the hood, seamed that, and knit the sleeves. All I have to do is knit the button band and then put the sleeves in. The instructions for the sweater say to pick up 150 stitches from the top of the hood and down one side, knit the the button band on that side, and then pick up 150 stitches on the other side and do the same thing. So I picked up 150 stitches, knit a couple of inches, and then did an i-cord bind off, which took for-frigging-ever. I-cord bindoff is super pretty, but it is definitely time consuming.

After I had spent three days doing that, I realized that the whole operation didn't make any sense. Those instructions assume that you are knitting the button band before you seam the hood. If you've already seamed the hood, it's not immediately apparent how to attach the two sides of the button band. I was going to have to cast on overlapping stitches for selvage and then graft the i-cord stitches. It all seemed very complicated. Also, the main reason to do one side of the button band and then the other is, I think, to facilitate buttonhole placement, and I'm planning to do a zipper. So I ripped out my three days of work, bought a second circular needle, and now I'm knitting the entire button band in one piece. I have picked up the stitches, and now I will probably spend all week doing the knitting and the interminable i-cord bindoff.

The thing is, this is my first sweater. I've been so anxious to do all the seams, just to facilitate the process of admiring my progress. Next time, I will know to be more patient and hold off on the seaming. That is, assuming that there is a next time. It is possible that I will be ripping out and re-knitting parts of this sweater for the rest of my life.

The KnitPicks Podcast is Ruining My Life

2008-03-17T15:59:00.000-07:00

Actually, it's not ruining my life. It's just making me want to do a lot of knitting projects. My new rule is that I have to finish a project before I start another. I currently have at least three unfinished projects, so that shouldn't be so hard. But I just listened to a whole slew of KnitPicks podcasts all in a row, and now I'm feeling dangerously ambitious.

1. I want to dye yarn. This is not a good idea. I do not have the patience or the artistic aptitude to do a good job dying yarn, and as a klutz who lives in a tiny apartment, it is unlikely that I could dye yarn safely. I should buy yarn that has been dyed by professionals, or at least by talented amateurs. But dying yarn sounds like so much fun. It sounds like the arts 'n' crafts projects that I loved so much in elementary school. I have fond memories of tie-dying all of my white t-shirts when I was in high school. Dying yarn has the same appeal.

2. I want to try knitting lace. This, too, is not a good idea. I don't wear lace. I am not patient. I am pretty sure that I would hate knitting lace. And yet it inexplicably appeals to me. Why is that? And should I give in to that impulse?

3. I want to knit an Aran sweater. Years ago, I bought an Aran sweater in Dublin. It was on super sale, because there was a dropped stitch in the sleeve. I don't know why it hasn't unravelled: I think it's been felted together because I wear it so often. Anyway, it is a truly hideous sweater. It has no waist shaping, and it's about four sizes too big. It's about as unflattering a garment as one could find. And yet I love it. It's super warm and cosy and I like to wear it in the dead of a Chicago winter. It occurred to me that if I knit my own Aran sweater, I could make one that actually fit me. It could have narrower shoulders and a little bit of waist shaping, and I could make it so that it wasn't designed to fit a man who was a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier than me. It would be awesome.

I think the reason for my sudden burst of ambition is that I am getting quite bored with my Central Park Hoodie. I decided not to carry the cable up the hood, which means that the hood calls for 11 inches of straight stockinette. That is a whole lot of stockinette. I should finish it tonight, and not a moment too soon. I'm pretty lazy, but the truth of the matter is that I don't like knitting that's quite that boring.

Expressing My Ethnic Identity through Baked Goods

2008-03-14T21:37:00.000-07:00

Next week is Purim, the Jewish holiday devoted to drunkenness, noisemakers, and cookies. No, seriously. Ok, not seriously. Purim isn't really about drunkenness, noisemakers or cookies: like most Jewish holidays, Purim is about triumph over oppression. But you celebrate it by getting drunk, making noise, and eating cookies. There are also costumes. Anyway, it's an awesome holiday. When I was a small child, one of my closest friends was Catholic, and I took her along for Purim services one year. I'm pretty sure that it gave her the entirely wrong idea about Judaism. I probably should have dragged her along to Yom Kippur services just so she'd realize that Jewish holidays aren't usually quite that much fun.

My favorite part of Purim is the cookies, although the costumes and noisemakers and drunkenness are enjoyable, too. Like many of the best things in life, hamantaschen, the aforementioned cookies, involve a yummy filling surrounded by delicious pastry. I am a thoroughly terrible Jew in most respects, but I try to make hamantaschen every year.

I have rather strong feelings about hamantaschen. Many people feel that any triangular cookie is acceptable, but they are wrong. The dough, I believe, must include orange juice, and ideally it should be made with whole wheat flour and oil, rather than butter. The filling may be prune, apricot, or poppy seed. It may not be chocolate or lemon curd or mango or whatever other new-aged abomination you think sounds tasty. Canned filling is very wrong.

(Note: the above is a joke. I am truly not fussed about how you make your Purim goodies.)

I usually make prune hamantaschen, and I'm pretty happy with my prune filling recipe. However, this year I have received a request to make poppyseed. I am now frantically searching the internet for poppyseed filling recipes. After that, there will probably be more frantic searching the city for a source of poppyseeds. I will post pictures and recipes when I am done.

Incidentally, I know that I promised to write about my very exciting trip to the new grocery store, and I have failed to do so. It turns out that the new grocery store is identical to the old grocery store. I am just not a witty or engaging enough writer to come up with anything interesting to say about a standard-issue American supermarket.

An open letter to new-age knitter types

2008-03-11T22:03:00.000-07:00

Dear New Age Tibetan Buddhist Knitter,

There may come a time in your life when you are tempted to publish the following in a major online knitting magazine:

I suppose your relationship with your Stash can be seen as a reflection of your personal style. If you are very tidy and someone who actually finishes one project before you begin another (bless your heart) – you may be the one-plastic-bin type. You may also be someone who keeps a tidy home and are an anti-clutterist. If you are the type to have a closet full of Stash, you may be a little more ambitious than the one-bin yarnie, perhaps with two projects running at once. This appeals to me – one big project that stays home and perhaps another more portable project to throw in the knitting bag. Then we move up to those who’s Stash has its own room, well, these people are a little more serious. They purchase yarn without knowing what they are going to make with it – they’ll figure it out later. Lastly there are those like me – absolute fibergasmic freaks. Every color and texture holds a secret treasure yet to be discovered. We rarely have a project in mind when we have S.E.X., we just know we need to have it in our lives.

If that happens, you should stop. Take a deep breath. Meditate for a minute. As you ponder the infiniteness of the universe, take a moment to consider that not every knitter is an over-privileged yuppie dingbat. Good. Breathe some more. Find your center.

I'm sure I'm not a serious knitter by Ms. Manning's lights, and maybe she'd say that's why my stash fits in a plastic bin that lives at the top of my closet. Anyone who knows me, however, will laugh at the idea that I'm organized, have a tidy home, or am an "anti-clutterist." The reason that my stash doesn't have its own room is that my 500-square-foot apartment only has three rooms, and that includes the bathroom. If I sacrifice one of those rooms to my Stash [note the gratuitous capital "S": that's to signal that one's yarn collection is very deep and significant], then I will either have to stop showering, give up cooking, or sleep on an air mattress on the living room floor. It appears not to have occurred to her that people's stashing habits might owe something to constraints of space or budget, rather than "personal style." This particularly brand of dingbattery seems especially rife in on-line knitting circles, and I find it vaguely irksome. Also, are Tibetan Buddhists supposed to be that attached to their possessions?

Other than that irritating article, I'm really liking this issue of Knitty. I'm seriously contemplating knitting Jaden, although I'd want to change the sleeves.

I've also been doing some research for my Jayne hat bag. I knew I wanted to line the thing, and I've been trying to figure out the best way to line a bag if you don't have a sewing machine. I think my best bet might just be to rent studio space at the Needle Shop, where you can use their sewing machines for $10 an hour, although there is the added complication that I haven't actually used a sewing machine since I was about 10. I hope that it's one of those things that you don't forget once you've known how to do it. I could also wait to line it until the next time I see my mother, who is a sewing genius and has what I'm sure is a very nice sewing machine. Knitting Daily has these suggestions, but none of them really appeals.

Anyway, I have learned all about lining and interfacing and many other fascinating bag-related topics, and I am now rather anxious to start my bag. It is entirely possible that it will be a disaster, but I'm pretty sure that I can eventually figure out how to pull the bag thing off. And I would like to go ahead and do that, because I think bags would be fun places to try out all of those cool Barbara Walker stitch patterns that look like so much fun.

That's all. Tomorrow the new grocery store opens, which I'm sure will be the highlight of my week. Unless I have something better to blog about, I will probably be back tomorrow with a full report.

Futher Adventures in Geekcraft

2008-03-09T19:03:00.000-07:00

I'm still working on my Central Park Hoodie. I'm about halfway done with the sleeves, and I hope to finish them up tonight. After that, all that's left is the hood and the button band. I think I might be able to finish this thing in the next week or so, which is very exciting. Almost as exciting is the fact that I get to choose a new project. And because I am a lazy geek, I plan to do something both easy and geeky. I am going to make a bag that looks like a Jayne hat.

What is a Jayne hat?, you ask. And here is where the geekitude commences. Jayne Cobb, who despite his name is a guy, is a character on the short-lived, geektastic sci-fi T.V. show Firefly. On a ship full of people with rather lofty motivations, Jayne is an uncomplicted mercenary. He's big and kind of dumb, and he pretty much just cares about money, sex and guns. He's also very funny, and a lot of fans love him, even though he's a big, dumb bully. Anyway, in one of the final episodes of the show, Jayne's mother sends him a spectacularly hideous hand-knit hat. It's about the ugliest hat in the history of ugliness, but Jayne is a big lug who loves his mama, so he has no idea that his new hat is ugly. Here is a picture of Jayne in his hideous hat.

So anyway, because Firefly fans are geeks, they have, of course, taken to knitting their very own hideous Jayne hats. And because I am a geek and want to knit something easy, I thought about knitting a Jayne hat for my next project. But there's a hitch. This has been the snowiest winter in Chicago in recent memory. It's snowed all the damn time. It is now March, and it's still snowing. No really: it's snowing as I type this. And I cannot stand the thought of knitting a hat. It is time for hat season to be over. I want to knit things that can be worn when it's warm out.

So I'm thinking that I'm going to make a bag based on a Jayne hat. It'll be like an upside down Jayne hat, with the ear flaps comprising the shoulder strap. I plan to modify this pattern from Knitty. And here is the extremely cheap acrylic yarn that I purchased today to make my big damn bag:

I'm 100% positive that it will be hideous, but here's hoping it will be hideous in the right way.

In which my Central Park Hoodie begins to look like an actual sweater

2008-03-05T10:50:00.000-08:00

I've finished the side seams on the Central Park Hoodie. On further reflection, I've decided that seaming isn't actually that bad. It took a while to get the hang of it, but now I can do it without much trouble. Anyway, I've cast on the sleeves, which I'm knitting at the same time. After that, it's on to the hood and the button band. Very exciting. It's awfully strange to think that I'm actually going to finish this thing.

Seaming has Commenced

2008-03-03T21:56:00.000-08:00

One of the things I love about knitting is the constant opportunity to learn new and interesting thing. For instance, last night and today I have learned why everyone hates seaming so much. I think I've finally got the hang of it, but it sure is tedious and time-consuming. I've attached the right front of my sweater, and tomorrow I will attach the left front. After that, it's on to the sleeves.

The sleeves are another conundrum. I have freakishly short arms, and I think this is my first opportunity ever to own a sweater that didn't require me to roll up the sleeves. I'm very excited. I'm not so excited about doing the math necessary to make this work. I remember reading instructions for shortening sleeves somewhere, but I can't for the life of me remember where. I think after I psot this I'm going to sit down with the pattern and see if I can't figure it out for myself.

Anyway, as soon as the side seams are done, I will post pictures.

Public Service Announcement

2008-03-01T14:20:00.000-08:00

If you're American or have access to American T.V., you really should check out the PBS program African American Lives 2. (I'm sorry I missed African American Lives 1.) It's awesome. It's one of the best examples I've ever seen of using genealogy to put a human face on history. It's also just really well-made television.

Random Ramblings

2008-03-01T09:28:00.000-08:00

1. First, we have muffins.

The night before last, I was all set to make a lovely batch of pumpkin black bean soup, when I opened up my can of pumpkin puree and realized that I had mistakenly bought pumpkin pie filling instead of pumpkin puree. This was not a major tragedy: I used a third of a cup of pumpkin pie filling instead of a whole cup of pumpkin puree, because I didn't want my soup to be sweet. The soup turned out ok, although it definitely isn't as pumpkin-y as it's supposed to be.

But that is not why I'm posting. I'm posting because I used the rest of the pumpkin pie filling to make these delicious muffins, and I thought I'd post the recipe. It's adapted from the one on the back of the label. I made two big changes. First of all, because I didn't have "baking mix," I substituted flour, baking powder, and oil for the "baking mix" in the original recipe. Second, I left off the crumble topping. I think I'm going to frost them with cream cheese icing later on today. However, they're perfectly yummy as is, and if you leave off the crumble topping and don't frost them, I think they're parev. And I know you're thinking "if you're Jewish enough to care about such things, Em, then you shouldn't be posting on shabbat." The thing is, I'm not observant enough to care, but my friend M reads this blog, and her father keeps kosher. So that little observation is for M.

Ok, anyway, here's the recipe.

2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons baking powder
2/3 cup plus 4 teaspoons sugar
3 cups flour
2/3 cups oatmeal (not instant, but quick-cooking is fine.)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 30 oz. can Libby's easy pumpkin pie mix
2 large eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil

Preheat the oven to 400. Grease or line cupcake tins.

Combine the dry ingredients (that is to say, everything up to the cinnamon) in one bowl. Combine everything else in another. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until just moistened. Stick 'em in the muffin tins, stick the tins in the oven, bake 14-16 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean, and eat them. Because they are yummy.

The original recipe calls for optional raisins. I don't really like raisins, but next time I might throw in some dried cranberries or chopped dried apricots.

Mine was slightly different from this, because I had used 1/3 cup of the pumpkin pie filling for my soup. I chucked out a bit of the dry ingredients mix to compensate. It's possible that you'd want to use a bit less oil than I did if you were using the whole can of pumpkin pie filling, but I doubt it would make much difference. I suspect this recipe is going to be pretty forgiving of minor variations.

2. Last night I watched 28 Up, the fourth installment in Michael Apted's series of documentaries in which he meets up with a bunch of British folks every seven years and interviews them about their lives. And as I have been for the past two installments, I was struck by the fact that Michael Apted is actually a bit of a schmuck. He's kind of an asshole to the upper-class guys, at least one of whom makes it easy by being a complete stereotype of the oblivious reactionary upper-class twit. He's a lot more interested in exposing their privilege, which is blindingly obvious and kind of boring, than in exploring who they actually are as people. But where his jerkitude really shines through is in his treatment of most of the working-class men, the one downwardly-mobile, mentally-ill middle-class guy, and all of the women. On the one hand, he has obvious disdain for all of their lives, constantly implying that they ought to be disappointed that they haven't done anything "better." On the other hand, when one of the participant's wives expresses an interest in having a career even after she has children, he has obvious disdain for her, too, suggesting that she's difficult and that her husband, an academic, must find her a handful. This is supposed to be a neutral documentary, but it's clear that Apted doesn't have much respect for certain life paths. And that seems to include almost any female life path. Women are equally shitty if they marry and stay home with children or if they think they're worthy of having a career. Men, on the other hand, are only shitty if they don't have fulfilling jobs. It's all just patronizing and irritating, and it distracts from my enjoyment of what is otherwise a fascinating series of documentaries.

3. The Central Park Hoodie progresses. I'm almost done with the left front, and I think I'll finish it and block it today. After that, I need to take a brief break from knitting to sit down with some swatches and practice seaming. I've never done woven seams before, and they scare me. I will post about my results when there are results to post about.

I have seen the future of television, and it is crap

2008-02-26T19:04:00.000-08:00

As I start this post, I have seen a grand total of nine minutes of Quarterlife, and I've already come to the conclusion that it is the worst thing that has ever been on T.V. I want to punch all of the characters. No, really. I want to bang their heads against their thrift-shop furniture. Is that supposed to be the point of Quarterlife, or is the idea here that we're actually supposed to find these characters and their "problems" interesting? This thing is supposed to be very revolutionary, because it was originally broadcast on the internet and has now made its way to network television. It's a shame that it's so unbelievably awful.

Here are some issues with Quarterlife:

Blogging about your friends' personal lives is really obnoxious. It's horrible, actually. If you can't think of anything to blog about other than that one of your friends gets drunk and sleeps around and that another is in love with his best friend's girlfriend, you really shouldn't have a blog. The protagonist's compulsion to share her friends' secrets with the world doesn't make her cool and artistic. It makes her pretty fucking appalling. And it's hard to build a T.V. show around someone who's kind of the scum of the earth.
Miss Scum-of-the-Earth, the show's protagonist apparently doesn't realize that half of the city is reading her blog. In fact, she's under the mistaken impression that nobody is reading her blog. Have the old guys who made this show never heard of a site counter?
The characters on Quarterlife are unbelievably self-indulgent. 99.9999% of the earth's population would be overjoyed to have the "problems" that they whine about. Miss Scum-of-the-Earth is an editorial associate at a women's magazine. She is not artistically fulfilled. She is amazed that people at her job (at a women's magazine) care that she wears sloppy clothes. She appears to be upset that women's magazines care about selling tampons and prefer content that allows them to sell advertisements. She whines about her job's "inauthenticity." What this person needs is for someone to sit her down and explain the concept of professionalism. Actually, what she needs is for someone to fire her whiny little ass, because she appears to think she's too good for a job that she is, in fact, not really good enough for. Her guy friends, who just graduated from film school, have similar artistic integrity issues about a commercial they have just been hired to make. They've been hired to make a commercial, and they are worried that they're not being true to their artistic vision. What kind of a jackass would even consider that a problem? Nobody ever explained the concept of paying your dues to these people?
This show believes all the stupid stereotypes about Gen Y, and I kind of don't. I don't believe that people that age are that shallow, that entitled, or frankly that dumb. I don't even believe that the shallow, entitled or dumb ones are that shallow, entitled or dumb. I worked with a couple of people that age last year, and they were all pretty normal. They worked hard, they were not self-indulgent twits, and they had real problems.

So yeah, I will not be watching this show again, mostly because it's boring, but also because it's kind of insulting. I'm older than the generation this show is supposed to be about, but I'm still offended on their behalf.

A knitterly confession

2008-02-22T12:15:00.000-08:00

Greetings from vertigo hell. I feel like crap, with a capital C and that rhymes with V and that stands for... well, you know. Between the weather and my crazy, crazy vertigo, I am in a thoroughly pissy mood. Although to be fair, it might be worse to have vicious vertigo if the weather were beautiful and I actually wanted to go outside. I'm planted on my living room couch, and I don't plan to leave until Sunday. Ok, that's an exaggeration. At some point, I must go to bed, and I will probably eat something and go to the bathroom at some point. Also, there will probably be puking. But aside from eating, peeing, puking, and sleeping, I plan to sit here for a few days, barring some unexpected improvement in the vertigo situation. I really hope there's something decent on T.V.

Ok, so it should be clear that I'm in a bad mood, and perhaps that explains why I'm feeling a little ranty. But today I would like to post about how much I dislike going to LYSs. I realize that this is basically blasphemy among the modern, trendy knitter set. For our sort, the Local Yarn Store is supposed to be like a shrine. We go there to bask in the warm, knitterly glow, fondle the beautiful yarn, and converse with fellow trendy knitters. This is not how I feel. I find LYSs totally unpleasant. I wish Jo-Ann's sold the kind of yarn I like, because I massively prefer the big box craft store experience.

First of all, I find LYSs physically unpleasant. This, too, is blasphemy. We're supposed to prefer cozy little nooks to huge, florescently-lit big box monstrosities. This is a sign not just of being a serious knitter, but also of being a good lefty and an urban sophisticate. But I don't. I like big, spacious aisles which don't make me think I'm going to bump into anything. For political reasons, I prefer to shop in places that are accessible to people who use wheelchairs or walkers. I find it easier to find stuff in big box stores than in overcrowded little shops.

Second of all, I don't enjoy my interactions with LYS employees and customers. This is, I'm sure, a function of my being a little bit crazy. The truth of the matter is that I'm kind of anti-social. I don't really want to have a lot of personal interaction with random people, except when I do, which is rare. And dealing with LYS employees always feels like an actual social interaction, rather than just a regular commercial transaction. They want to know about my knitting, which is really not especially interesting knitting. They seem interested in my yarn selection, which is also not very interesting. And frankly, they seem visibly unimpressed by my yarn selection. I'm a broke grad student, and I pretty much knit with Cascade 220 and various yarns from KnitPicks. That means that when I go to an LYS, it's usually to buy Cascade 220, which I realize is extremely boring, unimpressive yarn. But it's boring, unimpressive yarn that is affordable on a student budget, and avoiding credit card debt is more important to me than impressing LYS employees with my awesome taste in yarn.

I enjoy going to big box craft stores. I enjoy the wide aisles, but mostly I enjoy the anonymity. Nobody at Jo-Ann's looks at me funny if I only buy a few notions. In fact, nobody seems to notice me much at all. I went to Jo-Ann's today to get some stuff to seam my Central Park Hoodie. (Thanks for driving, M! ) I got some very exciting yarn needles, some knitters safety pins, and some stitch holders. I spent a grand total of about $5. Nobody seemed at all fazed by the fact I spent so little. Nobody tried to convince me that I really needed extremely fancy yarn needles, safety pins, or stitch holders. It was lovely. I believe in shopping locally, supporting independent stores, and all that, but truth be told, if Jo-Ann's carried Cascade 220, I'd probably never go to LYSs at all.

In which I whine about the weather

2008-02-18T18:27:00.000-08:00

The good news is that I have blocked the back and left front of the Central Park Hoodie, and I think they both look pretty good. The back is looser than the front, which is really the opposite of how it should be, given my rather ample boobage. I think I might compensate by making the button band a little wider than is called for. But at any rate, the back and the left front are both the right size, due to careful blocking, and they both look ok. I've cast on the right front and am hoping to finish it quickly. Then I have to face the dreaded seaming, but I will cross that bridge when I get to it.

The bad news is that the weather sucks. It really and truly stinks. We had flooding over the weekend, and now it's really cold, and all the standing water on the sidewalks and streets has iced over. It's like an ice rink, but without the ice skates. My balance is a bit off, due to my inner ear problem, and the whole thing is scary and treacherous. I would not leave the house, but I have an appointment with my advisor tomorrow. Oh, well. If I break my hip, at least it will give me something to blog about.

And just to make this post even more exciting, I have uploaded a picture of my empanadas from last week. I do not know what possessed me to take a picture of my empanadas, but here they are, in all their flaky deliciousness:

Cross-stitching for the revolution!

2008-02-17T12:17:00.000-08:00

On the Ravelry thread about the Browncoat patch chart, someone linked to KnitPro, which will convert images from your hard drive into knitting or cross-stitch patterns. This is part of some sort of lefty project, the purpose of which is not entirely clear to me. (I'm pretty lefty, but I craft because I like crafting, not because I believe my Central Park Hoodie will singlehandedly end capitalism and smash the patriarchy.) I ran the Browncoat patch through it and came up with this:

It would take some work to convert that to an actual chart, since you'd have to figure out what to do with the gray squares, and I'm not sure that I would like it as much as mine in the end. The skinny star is more like the one on the original patch than my pudgy star, but when you actually chart it out, I think it looks a little choppy and un-star-like. Anyway, it's a cool tool, and I'm putting it here for my friend M, who is a cross-stitching maven and who might want to use it to make her own cross-stitch patterns. Hopefully, they will be suitably revolutionary, or at least cute and nerdy.

(M once did an elaborate and deeply awesome Star Wars cross-stitch for her admirably geeky boyfriend. Someone should start a website in which to display excellent instances of geek craft.)

And again with the geekiness

2008-02-14T07:28:00.000-08:00

I tweaked the Excel formating to make the stitches on my Browncoat insignia stitch shaped, not square. The cool-looking chopped-off triangle no longer looks cool like this, but I think the triangle patch looks ok. Here it is. Once again, feel free to tweak, and let me know if you'd like me to email you the Excel file for easier tweakage. Here's what I've got:

Ok, here's a final effort to fix the star:

No, really. I wasn't kidding about the fangirl thing.

2008-02-13T22:08:00.000-08:00

Someone on Ravelry wanted a chart for a Browncoat insignia, so I have attempted to chart a Browncoat insignia. It looks a little bit like Jayne's mom was commissioned to do Browncoat uniforms, but I suppose that adds to the gritty authenticity. At any rate, you've got to give me credit for being geeky. Unfortunately, I have no idea how one would actually go about knitting this thing. I've never done intarsia, and that's probably the way to go. (I don't know if the gauge is right for intarsia, though. I do stranded colorwork, and I used square graph paper, because that's how my stranded stitches work out.) This would take considerable tweaking if you wanted to make it into a stranded pattern, because there are big, uninterrupted blocks of single colors. I bet someone could come up with something cool, though. At any rate, feel free to tweak it as you see fit. Also, it's an Excel file, and I'd be happy to send it to you if you'd like to fool around with it for yourself.

So anyway, here is what the Browncoat insignia is supposed to look like:

And here is my best effort:

Edited to add this one, which is not strictly accurate but which I think looks kind of cool:

Attack of the Squeeing Fan Girl

2008-02-11T19:56:00.000-08:00

Most of the time, I do a pretty good impression of a normal person. I can dress myself in a reasonably fashionable manner, there is no identifiable fan art in my apartment, and I think my personal grooming habits are acceptable. I think that most of my casual acquaintances believe that I am admirably non-eccentric.

But in truth, it's all a pose. I am an enormous, enormous geek. I seem to have a congenital tendency towards obsession: I was just built to be a fan girl. So here are some of my current geeky interests.

1. Empanadas. Can you be a pastry fangirl? If so, then I am one. I am slightly obsessed with pie. In fact, other than all things Irish, it may be my longest-standing obsession. There are very few pies that I don't love: sweet, savory, tarts, you name it. Making pie is one of my favorite comfort activities: it's what I do when I'm in need of a pick-me-up. (Given my chronic vertigo problem, this has made for some awkward cooking situations recently. I can make pie while the kitchen is whirling, but it's a messy process.)

Anyway, I've had a hankering for empanadas for the past few days, so last night I made a batch. Empanadas, for those not in the know, are sort of like Cornish pasties. You take a circle of pastry, put something in it, fold it over, bake or fry it, and you've got a yummy, portable lunch. Many years ago, I was introduced to this culinary delicacy at a glorious little restaurant in D.C. called Julia's Empanadas. Mine are a poor substitute for Julia's, but since there's nothing like Julia's Empanadas in Chicago, I've been making them periodically ever since.

You can fill an empanada with just about anything, but I like ground beef, which is the most common filling. For the pastry, I used this recipe from epicurious, except that I substituted shortening for half of the butter. This may be sacrelige, but I'm broke, and butter is expensive. Actually, though, an all-butter crust for empanadas seems a little wrong to me. For the filling, I used this recipe, also from epicurious. I used less fancy ground beef, and I substituted capers for the olives, because I had capers on hand, and again with the brokeness. I baked them instead of frying them, because frying is overkill, and I brushed the tops with a little bit of olive oil. They're pretty scrumptious, if I do say so myself. I will be eating them for lunch for the next week or so.

2. I have, God help me, fallen so low that I'm reading Firefly fan fiction. To be fair, it's especially good fan fiction, by an actual published writer. Here it is. It's not perfect, but the characters all sound right, and it's got a particularly good and believable take on River. I also like that it deals with a central, unexplored issue in Firefly, which is the tension between Mal's ethical code and his libertarianism. Mal can't abide exploitation, but he also can't abide any government that would be strong enough to stop exploitation in a systematic way. He's constantly stuck being a Big Damn Hero, because his only model for dealing with injustice is for some crusading individual to come in and beat up the bad guys. I strongly suspect that had the series survived, it would have dealt with this problem and with the idea that the Alliance, for all its brutality, is not all evil. I actually think that ambiguity is part of what makes the series compelling, and I wish it had stuck around for long enough to tackle it.

3. I am a fan of post-apocalyptic literary fun. I really enjoyed World War Z, which is one of those realist sci-fi books that is set in a world exactly identical to our own, with one small tweak. (See, for example, The Time-Traveler's Wife, which was a little cheesy for my tastes but which had a completely believable take on time travel.) In this case, the small tweak is the existence of a plague of flesh-eating zombies. Other than the plague of zombies, World War Z is a totally realistic book, reflecting all of our anxieties about globalization, American arrogance and military overreach, consumerism, the sad state of the news media, and what have you. In fifty years, this will be a pretty great source about American culture in the early 21st century.

If World War Z has a shortcoming, it has to do with characterization. It's really a book about society, not about individuals, and people's individual stories mostly serve to illustrate larger points. If that irks you, you can compensate by reading a really great, totally intimate post-apocalyptic novel: How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff. This is billed as a Young Adult novel, which I think makes it pretty geeky, but it's terrific and I think would appeal to a lot of my fellow grown-ups. It's a post-apocalyptic novel with some fantasy elements, but honestly, I think what I appreciated most about it was its totally unsentimental take on its protagonist's eating disorder. I usually hate eating disorder books, which often end up making anorexia look very romantic and almost admirable. Fifteen-year-old Daisy's anorexia is totally self-indulgent and, in a world that's falling apart, a little bit obscene. You can sympathize with Daisy's pre-apocalyptic problems, even as you realize that she's a bit of a whiny, over-entitled brat. Post-apocalyptic, post-anorexic Daisy is a much more admirable character than pre-apocalyptic, anorexic Daisy. Especially because this is a book aimed at teenagers, I really appreciated Rosoff's skill in pulling that off.

So that's what I've been up to on the geek front. I'm still working on my Central Park Hoodie. I hope to finish the left front tonight and move on to the right front. Fun!

More picture-y goodness

2008-02-07T17:30:00.000-08:00

It's not blocked, but here's a photo of the back of my CPH.

The back is done

2008-02-05T21:48:00.000-08:00

I finished the back of the Central Park Hoodie. Sadly, I am too tired to block it, much less take a pretty photo of it. Will block and photograph tomorrow.

Why yes, I am a little crazy

2008-02-05T16:24:00.000-08:00

I finished the draft of my article and sent it out. Then I sat down with my computer and the internets and figured out who to vote for on all the obscure judge and water commissioner races. Then I went and voted in the primary. I got back at about 4:00 PM, thinking that I'd accomplished the things I needed to accomplish today and wondering why I felt like there was something that I'd forgotten to do. And then I realized what it was. I had forgotten to eat. It was 4:00 PM, and I'd consumed nothing all day except coffee and Jolly Ranchers. Oops!

I am seriously, seriously exhausted. I need to sleep for about twelve hours, and then I need to go to the grocery store, do some laundry, and possibly read some stupid magazines. I'm going to try to finish the back of my Central Park Hoodie tonight, but I think my brain might not be up to figuring out the short row shoulders.

Pictures! Get your fresh, piping hot pictures!

2008-02-03T22:14:00.000-08:00

I took a picture of the back of my Central Park Hoodie. It's not a very good picture, but it is picture-y.

I'm a little concerned about how loose the fabric is. I put the back of the sweater on top of a white towel for better contrast when I took the picture, and you can see bits of the towel through the holes in the fabric. I think that when I'm done with the Central Park Hoodie, I may have to break down and work on knitting a little tighter.

Brief geeky interlude

2008-02-01T19:02:00.000-08:00

I've been watching The Wire on DVD. I'm currently about two thirds of the way through season 2. And while I really like The Wire, I have been repeatedly, inexplicably irritated by one tiny aspect of the show. I don't buy Jimmy McNulty's taste in music. Jimmy McNulty, for non-Wire fans, is probably the closest thing the show has to a main character: he's a screwed up, arrogant jerk of a cop who happens to be very, very good at solving cases and kind of horrible at every other aspect of his life. Every time we see Jimmy McNulty out on a bender, which is fairly often, he's listening to early '60s Motown hits on his car radio. Now, I feel like I have a pretty good handle on Jimmy McNulty. He's supposed to be about my age, and he's supposed to be from the next city over from the city where I grew up. Had Jimmy McNulty been a real person, we probably would have bumped into each other at that Beastie Boys/ L7/ House of Pain concert that my friends and I schlepped up to Baltimore to see in 1992. And it bugged me to no end that we constantly saw him driving around listening to the oldies station. I don't believe that Jimmy McNulty would listen to oldies. What I do believe is that David Simon, the series' creator, listens to that music, and he identifies with the Jimmy McNulty character. Given his obsession with getting the minute details of his characters' lives right, it irked me that one of the show's main characters listened to music that in real life would be more appropriate for his parents.

I was thinking about this tonight, ranting about it in my head, as I was about to watch my nightly episode of The Wire. And then I turned it on, and in the first scene, Jimmy McNulty goes out and gets wasted, gets in his car, turns on the radio, and it's playing...

"Transmetropolitan" by the Pogues. Which, I have to say, is exactly what Jimmy McNulty would be listening to while he was driving around drunk off his ass. Someone clearly noticed the Jimmy McNulty music problem and fixed it.

And then when the episode ended, I checked the credits and realized that this is the first episode of The Wire that was written by George Pelecanos. I actually happen to kind of hate George Pelecanos's books, for a lot of reasons that are too complicated to go into. He's definitely one of the best writers about contemporary D.C., which is a sad, sad commentary about the state of writing on D.C. But you've got to hand it to him: he has an impeccable sense of his characters' musical taste. And some googling reveals that he was, in fact, responsible for fixing the McNulty soundtrack:

As story editor for the popular HBO crime drama The Wire, set up the road in Baltimore, he’s wielded a minor musical influence: in a scene last season Detective Jimmy McNulty, on a bender, seeks his own soundtrack. “When he’s drunk, he throws the Pogues in the tape deck?” Pelecanos recalls. “That was me.”

To which I can only say: thank you, George Pelecanos. You have removed one of the small irritations in my television viewing life.

Knitter's remorse

2008-01-30T22:09:00.000-08:00

Ok, first of all, I am really, really enjoying working on my Central Park Hoodie. Before this, I'd mostly been knitting socks and mittens in tiny, tiny yarn, and it's really fun to knit something in giant, worsted weight wool. It knits up so quickly! I'm making lots of progress and I have high hopes for it being a nice first sweater.

But here's the thing. I am incapable of leaving well enough alone. I am somewhat dissatisfied with my sweater. I am already planning how I will do my next Central Park Hoodie, even though I am not yet a quarter of the way finished the with first one. First of all, while I am utterly enjoying knitting it in Cascade 220, I think I may do the next one in Cotton-ease. (Go ahead and scoff, yarn snobs. I may be cheap, but at least I'm solvent.) Second of all, I think I will knit it in one piece and try the groovy Elizabeth Zimmermann fake seam trick that I just read about in Knitting Without Tears. Third, I will fiddle with the cables. I haven't figured out how exactly I plan to fiddle with the cables, but I think I may do something wild and wacky with the mirror image cables on the back. If I made it into one big cable, instead of two adjacent little ones, I think I could do one of the really complex cables that I fell in love with when I checked one of Barbara Walker's Treasuries out of the library a while back. (Check out that link, folks. That blog is made of awesome. They actually knit the spider! And take a look at the Saxon Braid, because I think that's what I want on the back of my Central Park Hoodie.) Then I'll find something simpler but matching to do for all the other cables on the sweater. I want to do it in a lighter color, so you can see the cables better. Finally, I want to knit the whole thing on circular needles, rather than straights. I have to scrunch up my knitting to fit it all on the straight needle, and it prevents me from admiring my progress.

All of this sounds like fun, but I don't know why I can't just enjoy the knitting that I'm doing without fixating on how I could do it better. And am I really going to want to knit two Central Park Hoodies in a row?

Have I mentioned that the Chicago Public Library has a truly amazing selection of knitting books, by the way? No, of course I haven't, because I've only posted like three times. Well, the Chicago Public Library has a great selection of knitting books. They're mostly new and trendy, which is a little disappointing, because the historian in me enjoys looking at vintage knitting books. But they have pretty much every recent knitting book that I could want to look at, including the elusive Alice Starmore Fair Isle book. I can't decide if I want to check that one out or if I'll just fall in love with it and then be sad that I'll never be able to justify spending $200 on a knitting book.

Just so I don't forget: Zippery goodness

2008-01-28T17:59:00.000-08:00

I think I'm going to put a zipper, not buttons, on my Central Park Hoodie, so I'm saving this little tutorial from Not Martha.

For reasons which I can't entirely explain, I am totally wiped out today. I don't even think I could post anything coherent if I tried. I'm going to go to bed and work on my sweater, and I will try to come up with something fascinating to say tomorrow.

Progress on the Central Park Hoodie

2008-01-27T09:43:00.000-08:00

I'm working on the back of my Central Park Hoodie, and I've finished the ribbing. Instead of doing 4 inches of ribbing, I did 4.5, because I don't really want a cropped sweater. There's nothing worse than that rush of cold air on your back when you sit down and there's a gap of exposed flesh between your sweater and your jeans. Like most people who make the CPH, I've added a little bit of length to the sweater to avoid that eventuality. I actually enjoy doing 2x2 ribbing, which I know makes me a knitting freak, but I'm glad it's done and I'm moving on to the cables. Yay cables! It's been more than a year since I've done anything with cables, and I'm quite excited at the prospect.

So that's great. But before I move on to the cables, I need to figure out what I'm going to do about waist shaping. The Central Park Hoodie doesn't have any shaping at all. It has ribbing at the bottom, and then it's the same diameter for the rest of the sweater. I am inclined to believe that's not a flattering look on me, because I'm quite curvy. Actually, that's not exactly right. For the most part, I'm not very curvy at all. I just have big boobs. I don't think that boxy sweaters are a good look on the big-boobed, so my plan was to add some waist shaping.

In an effort to do that, I went through and measured all of the sweaters that I own and like. (None of these are hand-knit sweaters, mind you, because the CPH will be my first sweater.) Now, none of my clothes fit perfectly, because of my odd shape. Part of the reason that I started knitting was in an effort to finally get my hands on sweaters that fit my big-boobed, small-framed body. But when I measured my favorite sweaters, I realized that they are all 36", which is my bust measurement, and none of them have any waist shaping. And that makes me wonder if maybe I don't need to add any waist shaping to my CPH.

However, when I looked at my most CPH-like sweater, I realized that in a sense it does have waist shaping. Like the CPH it has several inches of 2x2 ribbing at the bottom. Unlike the CPH, the body of the sweater is stockinette. However, there's a panel of 2x2 ribbing that continues up the sides of the sweater to the armholes. I think that allows the sweater to expand where it needs to expand and contract where I'd like the sweater to be a little narrower. The CPH has 14 stitches of stockinette on the sides, and I'm thinking about replacing it with 2x2 ribbing, for quick and easy waist shaping.

I can't decide whether that's crazy. I am a totally inexperienced sweater knitter, and I've never seen ribbing recommended as a way to achieve waist shaping. It feels like going out on a huge limb. But part of me thinks that nothing ventured nothing gained and that I know that I'm the kind of knitter who enjoys figuring things out by trial and error. So I might go ahead and do it, and if it doesn't work out then I'll just rip it out and start again. I think I'm going to post a thing on Ravelry just to see if people think it's a really crazy idea.

Do you hate my blog?

2008-01-27T08:46:00.000-08:00

Find it boring? Think I have nothing worthy to say? Think my blog is fine but have an inexplicable urge to fuck some shit up? Go here and deface my blog with impunity! After that, you can go to the pulldown screen at the top and cause my blog to be attacked by zeppelins, eaten by dinosaurs, or scribbled all over by a giant baby with a crayon. Hours of virtual destructive fun!

On the title of the blog

2008-01-25T18:10:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me that some of y'all aren't going to get the reference. Some of you are not from the U.S. Some of you were not faux-rebellious teenagers, or at least not in the way that led one to read that particular magazine. And horrifyingly, some of you are too young. So here's the deal with the title.

Back in the late '80s and early 1990s, there was an American teen magazine called Sassy, and it was cool. It wasn't nearly as cool as it thought it was, but it was still pretty nifty. It told you how to make your own clothes and featured models in babydoll dresses and combat boots and acknowledged that readers might possibly at least be considering having sex. The Sassy writers were obsessively into bands, and even if they weren't the same bands that I was obsessively into, I recognized them as kindred dorky music-obsessed spirits. Each of the Sassy staffers had a distinctive personality, and you knew them all by name. They went to cool cafes in the East Village, which was the kind of thing that I would have liked to be doing if I hadn't been stuck in a boring city with limited babysitting money to spend on beverages. Every year they had a "reader produced issue," in which readers applied for the staff's jobs and they picked the best ones and let them put together the magazine, for real. Compared to the standard teen girl magazines, which at the time still featured crash diets and the like, Sassy seemed really radical. I was pretty punk rock as a teenager, so I pretended that I thought Sassy was just ok, but I was really pretty obsessed. Besides Heathers, it was pretty much the first mainstream pop culture that seemed to acknowledge that girls like me even existed.

So every year, Sassy had a contest to find the Sassiest Girl in America. This was Sassy's version of the model search contests that magazines like 'Teen had every year, except that Sassiest Girls were smart and accomplished and awesome, on top of being pretty. Readers applied, a bunch of sassy girls were flown to New York for makeovers and interviews and random cool activities, and then the sassiest girl was selected and had her sassy face splashed on the cover of the magazine.

I'm pretty sure that I never applied to be the Sassiest Girl in America. I wasn't really Sassiest Girl material. For one thing, I would have been mortified to have my picture splashed all over anything. (I'm pretty sure that I did apply for the reader produced issue, though. I vaguely think I may have applied for Kim France's job. Scary that I remember that.) But that's the deal with the blog's title. I couldn't tell you what this has to do with knitting, but I'll try to come up with something.

And she's off!

2008-01-25T17:00:00.000-08:00

So today, after making enough gauge swatches to make a gauge-swatch patchwork quilt, I finally cast on for my Central Park Hoodie. Because I have morphed into the loosest knitter in the history of humanity, I am using size 3 needles for the ribbing and size 5 for the rest of the sweater. That's three sizes down from what's suggested, and I'm still not quite getting gauge. I chose the size with zero ease, though, and I've heard the thing runs a bit small, so I'm hoping that it won't matter so much if it's an inch wider than it's supposed to be. We'll see. I cannot bring myself to swatch on size 4 needles, so this is just going to have to do. The current plan is to add some waist shaping right above the ribbing and otherwise knit the pattern as written.

In other news, I finally seem to have mastered tubular cast-on. That means it's time to learn Italian tubular cast-on, which doesn't use waste yarn and is therefore better for my budget and the environment.

In other other news, I have especially vicious vertigo today. Why is it that when I have particularly awful vertigo, I can't concentrate on my work but have no trouble concentrating on various knitting-related websites?

(Some people here may not have heard the saga of my vertigo. It's not much of a saga. Sometimes I have vertigo. It's usually a nuisance and occasionally a rather large pain in my ass. It's also the source of my Ravelry handle. I'm sort of amused at all the people who are horrified by those who name themselves "Madison'sMom" or "MommyofTwo," because clearly it's vastly crazier and more pathological to name yourself after a medical symptom.)

And the only other thing is that I do seem to be making some progress on the article I'm trying to churn out. It may be crappy, but it will at least be done. As my friend Lisa pointed out, even if it's rejected, it'll be good to get feedback from some readers.

In which I enter the world of knit blogging.

2008-01-16T21:21:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'll admit it. I'm mostly starting this blog because it occurred to me that "Sassiest Girl in America" was an awesome name for a blog. Perhaps someday my friend Meira and I will follow through on our ambition to track down all of the Sassiest Girls in America and write "where are they now" pieces on them, and I'll post that here. In the meantime, I will blog about my knitting. I'm sure that will fascinate everyone.