Perspective

I have reached the point one reaches with all toe-up socks, in which it becomes clear that there is no possible way any human being can possibly have a foot that long and skinny.

One despairs, wondering if those hours of knitting have been in vain. 

And then, one remembers negative ease and is merry again.

Obsession

I have a philosophical question for the interwebz.  What is it about knitting (or fiber arts in general) that prompts people to become so obsessed with it?

If we define a casual knitter as someone who knows how to knit, but only owns one or two sets of needles, only buys yarn when they have a specific project in mind, and only makes a scarf or blanket every once in a while, when the mood strikes them, then I can count the number of casual knitters I know on one finger.

Every other knitter I know (which is a lot, if you define 'know' in the loosest, most online-inclusive sense of the word) is genuinely obsessed with the subject, process, history, and practice of knitting.  We laugh at knitters who call the two skeins of yarn they bought this weekend their "stash."  We spend hours agonizing over whether we ought to spend the extra money for the Addi click set, or if the Knitter's Pride set will serve our purpose.  We compulsively refresh the Manos del Uruguay page on Webs to see if any new stock has been added.  We blog, we podcast, we stitch and bitch, we chat in Ravelry's forums, all to share our great love of and obsession with two pointy sticks and some string which may or may not have come from an animal.

Why?

I think it can be assumed, even without scientific study, that knitting must stimulate dopamine output in our brains, giving our reward pathways a feedback loop of awesome.  But what is it about knitting that causes us to have that reaction?  The tactile nature of the fiber?  The math involved in patterning and shaping (I wouldn't think that would be particularly pleasing to my brain, at least)?  The sounds of clicking needles?  The colors?  The repetition?  Or is it all of the above?

What causes people who can be perfectly rational about all facets of their life to, within a few weeks of picking up knitting, crocheting, spinning, or any other fiber art, suddenly be dreaming in fiber and planning their career as a designer/yarn-dyer/shepherd/yarn store owner/etc?

I don't know.

But I sure am glad I'm not alone.

1955 Petal Sweater

Picture (c) Bex.
From Coats & Clark's Sweaters are Fashion News.  Originally knit in Red Heart Super Fingering.

The minute I saw this pattern, I knew I HAD to make it for my grandmother, who has always been a classic, late '50s/early '60s style person.  Plus, she looks fabulous in red.  And I was able to find the booklet easily, at Vintage Knits.  So it had to happen.

Just one problem.  My grandmother lives in Texas, and is very hot natured, so a 100% wool yarn was not going to cut it for this project.  Enter Knitpicks Comfy fingering, which is 75% Cotton/25% Acrylic.  No ability to grab or hold its shape (this will be important later), but fabulously cool and comfy.  I love this yarn.  Does Knitpicks make a bad yarn?  The color is much richer and bluer than the called-for Red Heart, but I was able to get gauge on the first try (that NEVER happens to me), so it seemed like a great substitute (and would have been if I had been more thoughtful from the beginning).

The construction is different than anything I’ve knitted before.  You knit the yoke from the top down, and then knit each subsequent piece flat, and then the side and underarm seams are worked in one go.  It’s actually fairly brilliant, as it reduces the likelihood of that funky bunched seam at the base of the armscye.

However, it is clear that the author wrote and worked up only one or two of the sizes listed, and just did the math out for the rest of the sizes without considering the implications of some of the instructions at the largest size.  For example, if the yoke increases for the largest size were followed as written, the separation for the arms would wind up somewhere around a normal human's mid-waist.  So I doubled up on them, and wound up with something close enough to correct to be serviceable.  Similarly for the arms, if you kept knitting until you reached the appropriate number of decreases, the arms would hit your knees.

As an aside, one thing this sweater has taught me is to appreciate my tininess.  While not overall a petite person, I have a petite top half, which comes in handy for not having to knit for ages just to make a sweater.  Since this sweater is intended for my not-so-petite Grandmother, I made the largest size.  Epic amounts of stockinette, ya’ll.  Epic.

And now for the bad news.  After knitting the whole thing, I came to the realization that a) I had twelve buttonholes, and b) cotton/acrylic does not create the sturdiest of fabrics.  Once washed and blocked, my button placket resembled a particularly viscious roller-coaster ride, full of ripples and wobbles.  No amount of wiggling, tugging, or pinning was going to get that placket study enough to support twelve buttons.

I've already folded the placket under in this shot,
but you can see the wobbles towards the bottom of the sweater.

The only solution I could come up with was to tack down the placket on the inside of the sweater (it unfortunately can't be removed because it's knit as a part of the body), and then pick up and knit a new, denser placket on smaller needles.  Rather than going down just one size for the cuff ribbing and the button bands, I went down two.  After some trial and error, I picked up 138 sts along the inner edge of the original button band and knit 8 rows garter stitch with the yarn held double.  This gave me a much more attractive and sturdy band.  I also reduced the buttonholes to 7, so as to weigh the front down significantly less.  

I also found that the cuffs of the sleeves were too droopy, so I pulled them back out, decreased down to  61 stitches, and then knit them back on the smaller needles as well.

I still need to go back and sew down the original button-bands more neatly, and attach the seven buttons, and then this sucker will finally be finished.  As beautiful as it will be when it's done, I can't wait to have it out of my house.

Plans for 2013

I don't do resolutions.  Partly because I don't keep them and partly because my "new year" starts in July, with the academic calendar.

I do, however, do goals.  Not in a life-coach, reach for the stars kind of way, but in a "here's what I want to accomplish" kind of way.  This year, there are four.

1) Learn to sew.
Luckily, I have a wonderful mother who is talented in this area, and can teach me.  We're planning on one lesson a month, with the end result of making Vintage Vogue 2902.  Either that or a body for poor Hetty...

2) Exercise more.
This is perilously close to a resolution, but it has nothing to do with weight loss or body image.  It has everything to do with how much better you feel about yourself when you get off your backside and do something.  So I'm going to.  This is obviously the goal I'm the least excited about meeting, but the one I think will do me the most immediate good.

3)  Knit only from my queue.
I started by saying I would knit half my queue in 2013.  But then I actually looked at my queue and realized there are 65 items on it, and that even at my best pace I probably can't knit 32 items in a year (notice how I say probably, like I'm not completely convinced - my best total is 30, but that was in the halcyon days when I only made washcloths and socks).  So I've dialed it back.  I joined the Ravelry group - Knit the Queue - and have matched 70% of my stash to projects (There were spreadsheets involved, as well as gratuitous use of Ravelry's advanced pattern search function).  I'm going to get through what I get through, which will help with my stashdown.  My ultimate goal is to get to the point where instead of buying/being given yarn, matching it to pattern through sheer necessity/force of will, and then ending up with a closet full of random accessories and oddly colored squeaky acrylic sweaters, I will buy yarn for the patterns I already know I want to make.  This should help with Cold Sheep, as well, now that I'm back on the sheep after a spectacular three month yarn-buying binge.

4) Move in with the Boy and get married.
Not necessarily in that order.  And sooner, rather than later.  This long-distance relationship stuff is for the birds.

Notes on a Scandal: My take on the USOC event

 I know this is late, but I have to say it.  After the brouhaha that occurred earlier this summer, I wasn't sure I really wanted to participate in Ravel-Greek-Suffix-Which-Happens-to-Also-Be-the-Suffix-in-an-Important-Sporting-Event-s this year.  I admire the athletes, and I appreciate any excuse to wave my Anglophile flag as high as it can go, but the whole thing left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.  While I appreciate what Stephanie said as being fairly logical, I also feel like she missed the point about why at least I, personally, was so outraged.  It wasn't that we had to change the name (although it seems incredibly stupid to me that anyone can "own" a five-letter suffix).  It wasn't even that they said we were denigrating the work of the athletes.  Though that was very, very offensive, I understand that is their standard C&D, and based on their behavior in all other arenas, I wasn't surprised to be denigrated myself by a company who represents the worst of corporate America.  What bothered me the most was how the media commenting on the fiasco spent most of their efforts poking fun at us for being knitters, rather than commenting on the ridiculousness and the injustice of the USOC's claims.  During the whole event, there was only one major article written that did justice to the knitters' side of the argument, and that was on NPR, and even that only really got the point after a knitter commented to correct the initial version of the article.

It bothers me that something that is, for many of us, such an integral part of who we are is still considered by society at large something that makes us odd, bizarre, or objects for derision.  They called us "little old ladies" or "liberal hippie leftists" (conflicted, much?).  They made terrible puns at our expense.  They generally treated our legitimate outrage as a hysterical temper-tantrum by a quaint and clearly unhinged, pre-feminist-movement granny.  Even once the USOC apologized, the tone taken by the media was, "Wow, who knew all those weird old ladies knew how to use social media!"

I am not a little old lady.  I am not a liberal hippie leftist.  I am not denigrating Olympic (can I say that word without permission?) athletes.  And I am not okay with being mocked for what is and was a legitimate complaint against the USOC.

You mock me because I am a knitter, but knitters make, with our own two hands, things that are useful, things that comfort people and keep them warm, things that fit their recipients in a perfect way no high street garment ever will, things that are beautiful.  We make complicated, three-dimensional, intensely mathematical art.  And we do it all with two pointy sticks and some string.

I am a knitter.  I knit in public, in movie theatres and in waiting rooms, at my desk (when I can) and in meetings.  I am not strange or hysterical.  I am not setting the feminist movement back in any way.  I am participating in a proud tradition of hand-crafters that stretches back at least to the 16th century, and in which I am joined by (at the very least) two million people worldwide.

I am a knitter.  What are you?

Blogging: Take Two

Perhaps it's the fact that, as an academic, my new year comes in July.  Perhaps it's the make-over my craft room received this past weekend.  But whatever has prompted this, I want to turn over a new blog-leaf.  I make no promises about the frequency with which I will update, but I certainly hope to make it at least a bi-weekly event.  As I have some ideas for some regular feature posts, I'm sanguine, but we'll have to wait and see.

To start things off, here are some pictures of my newly renovated, but not quite finished craft room.

I have an unfortunate problem with lack of natural light everywhere in my apartment.

Projects in progress include a Vogue repro 1950s dress and new curtains for this room.

Book Review: Inferno (2008) by Niven and Pournelle

Title: Inferno (1976, reissued 2008)

Author: Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Start date: 6/18/11
Finish date: 6/18/11

Thoughts:

This is the second book I’ve read in the last year that uses Dante as a frame-work on which to hang a new story, and while Matthew Pearl’s The Dante Club was a fine effort, Inferno is by far the better of the two. Niven and Pournelle, in their authors’ notes, explain this work as an effort to blend Dante’s geography with C.S. Lewis’ theology. It’s the most fitting description I can think of, as this new version does take away some of the naïve, accepting Catholicism of the original and replace it with a reasoned, logical Christianity (inasmuch as Christianity can ever be logical). And in doing so, they have made the work that much more profound. Though the circles of hell remain the same, those populating them have been updated to include advertisers, science fiction writers, and fascist dictators, and the escape therefrom has become a struggle towards understanding and grace, rather than the divinely gifted get-out-of-hell-free card of Dante’s vision. It is a much richer, more satisfying theology, and the adventure, far from being a mocking litany of all the ways good Catholics can go wrong, is a cautionary tale on how humans misperceive their actions here on earth and fall into sin. In this hell, punishment is not the product of “infinite power and infinite sadism” – as is suggested by the protagonist throughout the novel – but of people’s persistent unwillingness to admit their sins and reform not just their behavior, but their whole mental outlook. In following the characters through each circle, I was frightened and elated by turns, desperate for them to succeed in their escape despite never really being certain that I genuinely liked anyone involved (except possibly the priest-in-armor). And therein, I suppose, lies the genius of Niven and Pournelle, and the whole point of the book - "You must learn to hate the sin, yet love the sinner."

Lamps and Existential Crises

The vagaries of the economy being what they currently are, it has been brought home to me that renting a place with a yard is probably not the wisest choice at this point in my life. Especially considering that I'd like to buy a house eventually, and wasting at least an extra $200 a month (not to mention lawnmower and weed-eater costs) just so I can have the puppies with me is extravagant and not financially sound. So I will continue to be an apartment dweller for at least another year. I think I have found a place, and will hopefully be housed again sometime in the next two weeks.

Which is good, because I start working full-time in eight days. This is equally exciting and terrifying, as are so many things in my life right now. I love my job, and I will work my backside off to be good at it, but because I care about it so much I know that every mistake I make is going to upset me horribly. Not to mention, I am stepping my foot onto the path of adulthood. This is not a job that will be over in a semester. I don't get to do it for a time and then come home and be lazy again. This is my career. This is what I will be doing at least until I have children (I don't know if I'll be able to be a stay-at-home mom, though that is definitely my goal), and there is no telling when that will be - it's looking like at least three or four years from now. Having been a student for 19 years, that's kind of a big transition to make, and it makes me as nervous as it makes me excited.

So. Pretty soon I will have a place to put all of the stuff I have been making, and I will have significantly less time for making. But until then, have another one of my projects. Lamps!

I got two of these lamps free from my thesis mentor and his wife when they moved house a couple years ago. I love them, they are the perfect size and the ivy reminds me of my grandma's kitchen. Unfortunately, the yellow-green of the ivy didn't exactly match my blue and grey decor, so I decided to paint them.

I used 3 shades of acrylic paint, and then sprayed them with several coats of sealer. And after all that work, I couldn't just leave the lampshades plain white, so I decorated them, too.

The shades look a lot bluer when the lamps are on because they're covered with two layers of fabric - a sheer grey over a light blue. It's a really cool (and totally unintentional) effect.

What I'm listening to: "These Bones" by Dashboard Confessional

El Elefante

The Boy and I had a conversation the other night, and it went a little something like this:

Him: What are you doing?
Me: You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.
Him: …Try me.
Me: Baking an elephant.
Him: NO, NOT DUMBO!
Me: Yes. His ears have mocked me one too many times.

(Not without result has Miguel teased me about my big ears all these years.) But I was, in fact, baking an elephant.

Awhile back I saw a really cute wooden elephant ring holder at World Market, but they wanted an outrageous $12 for it.

Rather than fork over all that cash for a piece of balsa wood painted to look like an elephant, I took this crappy camera-phone picture with the intention of making one myself when I got home. Well, needless to say, as is the case with so many projects that require the use of Daddy’s tools, that never happened. So the other night, I sat down and made one out of some of the Fimo that we had in the studio.

It took three of the small, trial-sized blocks of Fimo (in three different colors, no less) to produce this baby, but I think he’s absolutely adorable. I didn’t like the way the ears were just painted on the other one, so I attached a pair that stick out the way elephant ears are supposed to do. I baked him for about 17 minutes at 275, and he came out perfectly.

Then I painted him dark grey, with black eyes. He looks just like a little baby elephant enjoying his bath, which means he fits perfectly in the center of the blue dish I use to hold my post earrings, which is exactly where I wanted him to go.

"Maybe we should up and leave this town..."

It is too hot to knit. At least, that’s the only explanation I can come up with for why took me three weeks to finish Steven’s golf club covers, when it should, by all rights, have taken me three days. We’re trying to save money by not turning on the AC too early, and thus, by the evenings, the temperature upstairs (where I usually do my knitting) more nearly resembles that of the surface of Venus than any place on earth. Now, I’d rather be too hot than too cold, but I’m not going to exacerbate the issue by knitting when my palms are already too sweaty to hold onto the needles. So needless to say, it’s slow going on getting all my knitting-for-other-people out of the way. I think Adin is about to despair of ever getting his mitts.

The woes of house-hunting have come upon me. I am not complaining about having to look for a place – that aspect of the whole experience is wonderful, as it means I am employed, something I could not be more grateful for and excited about. I’m complaining about the fact that it is next to impossible to find a decent place, in a decent neighborhood, with a fenced-in yard. Who knew it would be so difficult to keep big dogs in a part of town that does not have drug-dealers, murders, and thieves? Apparently – according to the rental home industry, at least – only sketchy people have dogs larger than 25 lbs. And supposing you do find a place in a decent part of town that claims to have a fenced-in yard, this is no guarantee that the area that is fenced will in any way resemble a “yard.” I looked at one place the other day with a “fenced-in yard” of – I’m not exaggerating – two feet by two feet. What kind of dog can you keep in that, a tea-cup Chihuahua? But I have until the end of June to have found and moved into a place, so I’m trying to have patience and keep looking.

Something I learned recently: Milk paint is difficult stuff to work with. Or, let me rephrase.It is difficult stuff to use on furniture that has already been painted. It’s hard to get the mix to come out with the right consistency, without lumps, and close to the same color as the previous coats. Even after following the instructions, sanding my side-tables down to almost bare wood and using the extra bonding agent, I’ve still had to put on four coats of the stuff to get it to even remotely resemble paint. The problem may only be that I’m trying to paint something with spindles, which is never easy, no matter the paint, but it’s hard to even get the flat surfaces to come out right. And the thing that bothers me the most about the whole experience is that it cost $30 for a pint of the stuff, and it’s not even coming out the way I want. I feel really bad about wanting to wuss out and use real paint after forking over all that money for the milk paint, but I would also like to get these tables painted some time before I die. It’s a conundrum. I suppose I’ll wait to see how it looks in the morning before I make my final decision.

Here. Have a picture of the puppies to make up for all the whining.

What I'm listening to: "A Little More" by The Audreys