Down time

Work is still a big ol' piece of crazy pie, and looks like it will be for a while. It is inspiring me to think quite a bit about fear, and the overcoming thereof, which I might post about at some point, if I can make all of my thoughts cohere on that topic.

In the meantime, I decided that the better part of valor, when all is nutty in multiple areas of my life, would be to simplify as much as possible in those places where I can, and to insist upon my right not to feel guilty, or like a failure, for doing so. (Note: I am the only one trying to deny me that right, so it's a rather internal sort of insistence.) Yesterday was one of those days with event piled upon event: two soccer games (the last in Older Daughter's season), a play to go to (a dear friend's daughter), and an evening fund-raiser for Younger Daughter and her classmates' trip to New York in the spring for the Montessori Model UN. They are going as delegates of Angola, and she had a little speech to give on the languages, festivals, and history of Angola (very little - a few sentences on each). I'm guessing that her teachers ended up regretting giving her the language bit as I took one look at it, gasped at the mistakes, and reworked it with her (without warning them, but come on! we all know I couldn't let that go). It was much better once it got fixed. (heh) In any case, everything went as smoothly as a day like that could go, and I cast on for another hat like the green one, this time in blue, for Younger Daughter.

In the wake of a few questions about it (for which, thanks!), I have decided to try my hand at writing out the pattern for it. I spent some time during the warm-ups for the first soccer game yesterday charting the cables, using the first hat as a model, then cast on to see if following my chart would get me a hat. I got through the set-up and into the first couple of cable rows before the games were over, and then wasn't able to pick it up again until last night, when Rick and I finally sat down to watch a movie. But somehow my third cable row didn't match the chart, and that's when I decided not to feel guilty, or like a failure, for putting it down and doing something easier for the moment. (She learns! It's a shallow learning curve, but there is progress.) I haven't picked it up yet today, but I think I know what happened, and it was just a matter of picking up too many stitches in one row.

Older Daughter wore hers last night, and I admit to being really rather disgustingly happy with the way it turned out.
It's a little askew there (she'd just been accosted by many small children wanting to buy raffle tickets).
It reminds me a little of the stonework in a cloisters,

or lacey carvings

or of old arches.

In any case, I'll keep working on it when my brain can handle it. I need to figure out how to chart it (outside of my notebook). Anyone know any good charting software that won't break the bank? I suppose Excel is an option, right?

Meanwhile, today was spent here at home, knitting Bel Air, and reading a book. Just what the doctor ordered.

Small successes

I did it! I completed a knitting project successfully!! Hooray!

OK. It's a hat. Probably not worth nearly the number of exclamation points that appear in that first line, but I'll take what I can get these days, you know?
There it is. It's a size that actually fits a human head (as opposed to, say, a hippo head). All of the little cables worked out the way I wanted them to, and they cross in nifty ways, and do you see how it made one triangle inside another triangle? How cool is that? I knitted it on 1/3 fewer stitches than last time (which should give you a sense of how much too big the last one was).
That's the patterning on one of the thirds. It's more hat-like than tam-like, really, and if Older Daughter doesn't end up wearing it, I will. (heh) I'm planning to head on over to my LYS to get some of the same yarn in blue to knit one of these for Younger Daughter, too.
The real color is somewhere between this picture and the last two.

To recap, this is a hat knitted out of Classic Elite Yarns Waterlily, on size eight needles, in my own pattern. Here's my project page on Ravelry.

It's also finally winter squash season at our farmer's market (even though temps today are going to be in the 90s, sigh), so I've been pulling out some of my favorite recipes. Butternut squash tart, anyone?

More things knitters say

Well, not everything that knitters say will be posted here, actually, as some of the things that this knitter has been saying this week might be best represented on a family-friendly blog as: *&^$@#$!!!

Briefly, the shrug won't work. It got bigger in many of the right places, but also in some wrong places, leading to a weird pucker in front of the armscye when it's worn. I am becoming increasingly convinced that the only reason this thing looks the way it does in the pattern photos is because it was put onto a dressmaker's dummy and then steam-ironed to within an inch of its life. Alas that one cannot do that on oneself. I made it (once again) through to halfway down the first sleeve before realizing that this is a lost cause. It is currently in time out. After I can face it again, it will be frogged. Because I love this stitch pattern so much, I have devised a plan to knit a fitted pullover sweater, perhaps with a sweetheart neckline, in the non-lace version of the stitch motif, with long sleeves in the lace version. That will happen at some other time (assuming that the yarn survives a second visit to the frog pond). The only good news in the whole Shrug Saga is that, after searching futilely online for another ball or two of the yarn in my colorway and dyelot, I went into my LYS to drop off my blocking mats for a class, and lo and behold, there in the bin with all the other colors of this yarn, was one lone ball in my colorway and dyelot; someone must have returned it. So when I do knit my sweater, I shall have enough yarn. Small miracles.

Yesterday, in the aftermath of a really bad day that capped off an already-rough couple of weeks (you know how it goes: you just take a sigh of relief, figuring it's Friday and really how much worse could it possibly get, and then something falls down on you like a ton of bricks out of nowhere), I headed off to my LYS, determined to get some yarn to knit this hat that's been noodling around in the back of my brain. I cast on right there and then, before I'd even rung out with the yarn (I love that my friends there understand that sometimes, the only thing that makes anything better is immediate knitting gratification), and I knitted away last night and this morning (even though the smart little voice in the back of my brain was saying, "Isn't this looking a bit too big?"), and finished the hat before lunch. It is meant to be for Older Daughter, and, in fact, it turned out exactly as I'd hoped it would, except for one thing. It's too big.
This is based on EZ's three-cornered tam in The Knitter's Almanac (which I long ago declared would be my desert island knitting book, should I ever need one; it's perfect in every way: it's fun to read, the range of projects is enormous and the ability to vary them infinite, and it's exactly the right size to tuck into a bag and take everywhere - I worry that that last feature might have been lost in the new version, which I may have to buy nevertheless because I want to see what got added). I will be ripping this out once it dries (I somehow thought that blocking might solve my problem - will I never learn?) and starting over on far fewer stitches, but I'm going to try the same thing over again. I'm curious to see whether this travelling cable will work no matter how many stitches I have. This is exactly the kind of cheap, mindless entertainment that I need right now.

I also finished the second sleeve of Bel Air this morning, and will be casting on for the back. In the absence of success with the shrug, this may be my conference sweater. We'll see.
This is the only knitting that has worked out at all for me lately - the rest of my projects have been a litany of disasters and do-overs. It's good to know that good pattern-writing, combined with a nice yarn (fingering weight though it may be) and pretty colors, can still prevail in the face of a dire case of Murphy's Law Syndrome.

My paper remains a struggle. I think I've realized it's because I've become distracted by the thing I want to talk about instead of focusing on the thing I know I can talk about in 15 minutes. (BTW, krb, if this does come together into a shareable form, I'm happy to share; you can email me at jahlersATcsusmDOTedu.) Meanwhile, though, I have a few more quotes for you.

“The quiet, even, regular motion of the needles quiets the nerves and tranquilizes the mind, and lets thought flow free.” (Dorcas Magazine, March 1844; NIH 143)

“When the needles slip through the fingers, your imagination takes flight.” (NYT, May 12, 1936; NIH 267-8)

“Knitting relaxes me, keeps my hands busy but my mind free.” (Survey, 8/9/09)

I think that my mind needs that flowing freedom right about now. My knitting chair calls.

The things knitters say

First, a quick Shrug Slog update: I am about three inches away from finishing the back. Again. At that point, I will seam up the sides and try it on. If it does not seem to more closely approximate the fit that I want and see in the pattern photos, I will concede defeat. The only question left at that point will be whether the yarn will be frogged (again) and repurposed (in several years, when I am less bitter), or whether there will be a bonfire.

Some thoughts on the Shrug Slog and similar: Those of you who are more perspicacious than I (and evidence would suggest that this is all of you) may note that I did this exact same thing last fall, while knitting a sweater for the exact same conference, because I am presenting a paper on knitters and wish to Represent. Not only are those elements all the same, up to and including the frogging of a (this year nearly-, last year entirely-) complete sweater, but there is a structural similarity to the garments as well. They are both origami-type knits. Clever. Interesting. But put together in such a way that it is not possible to try them on as one goes. In fact, it isn't possible to get any sense at all of whether they will fit until they are done. I'm coming to the conclusion that such garments do not best suit my knitting style, and/or my personality (still contemplating where, exactly, the mismatch lies); in any case, I will be forewarned in the future. I should note that these experiences only reinforce my long-standing prejudice against cleverness for cleverness' sake. I'm all for cleverness that addresses an actual problem, or that makes things easier. Cleverness that only exists so that people can gasp in awe at the cleverness of the creator, not so much. I'm fairly ecumenical in my dislike; most of the snide marginalia I append to journal articles/conference presentation handouts/the notes I take during conferences, are for people who make up clever theories that really don't do anything that pre-existing theories don't already do (I'm currently struggling to see what Bakhtin's chronotopes do for us, really - can you tell?).

Harrumph.

Anyway, as I struggle through my conference sweater, so am I struggling through my conference presentation, which is a paper in a session entitled "Circulating Discourses", and which has to do with discourses about knitters through time. I currently have culled 27 pages of quotes, falling into about 12 major themes, from my data and from (in particular) No Idle Hands, a brilliant book with an amazing range of quotes from primary source. (Note: this is a 15-minute presentation; further culling is required.) The common themes are quite striking (either that, or I've spent far too much time thinking about this - also a possibility). Just one set of quotes you might find interesting:

Lydia Sigourney, writing in the early 1800, recommended knitting as “quiet employment, favourable to reflection … a ready vehicle of charity to the poor … [and] well adapted to save those little fragments of time which might else be lost.” (No Idle Hands:54)

From my online survey: “I enjoy the process and the product. Knitting relaxes me, keeps my hands busy but my mind free. And there is nothing better than handknit socks.” (Survey 8/9/09)

Also from my online survey: “Knitting is a creative activity, a productive activity and also provides stress relief. It helps me to concentrate when listening through lectures or difficult meetings.” (Survey 7/28/09)

Some things apparently don't change all that much.

Y'all are the best

Thank you. Thank you to everyone who was brave enough to tell me to frog it. And thank you to everyone who said nice things (both on the pro- and anti-frog side). And thanks especially for coming out of the woodwork at a moment's notice to weigh in so I didn't have to make this decision all by my lonesome. (Although yes, those of you who basically said, "come on, you know what you have to do" were right; sometimes, though, one needs the backing of a few friends to get through something like this - better than a bottle of tequila, right? Look ma, no hangover!)

The semi-sweater from the pictures yesterday is now a bunch of little balls of yarn. It never ceases to amaze me how (relatively) quickly something that took so long to put together can come apart. (By "quickly", I mean an hour of ripping. It went faster once I remembered that I'd seamed the sides. Oops.) Brandy was not required for marination - I managed the whole process on the strength of a single glass of wine.

I think Mary Lou put it best when she said that, from the pictures, it looks like this thing should be a sweater with a shrug-like opening, rather than an actual shrug. And a sweater with a shrug-like opening is what I wanted - frankly, I have tried the shrug thing, and it does not suit.

I not only ripped last night, but I also pulled up my big girl panties and cast on again and finished the first two rows before going to bed. This is part of my general strategy to ensure that I don't fall prey to, for example, second sock syndrome - the (re)starting of a project is somehow much more daunting to me than the continuing of it. That isn't to say that I am not distracted by my share of shiny objects that lure me from the path of project completion, but at least this way it's started and in the bag and ready to go. Updates will be posted as they are warranted.

Meanwhile, have a glass of wine (or single-malt, your call) on me, and may all of your projects go more smoothly than this one has.

Help, help! Opinions needed...

I'm dithering. (I know, contain your shock.) And I need input. (Rick is making faces at me and asking whether he counts as input. I think we all know what the answer is. Yes, but I need knitters.)

I can't decide whether the shrug looks good, or completely stupid. So I have several very bad pictures (because it's a dark and stormy night, and because I didn't pick clothes that best flatter this thing, and because it's the end of a long work day), and I want all y'all's opinions on whether to finish this thing (to the tune of a sleeve and a quarter) or rip it all out, weep into my wine, and cast on for yet another size larger hoping against hope that the ball of yarn that it looks like I'll have at the end of this will be enough for a bigger size. So, without further ado, the side view:
The front view:
(That long sleeve will probably go another couple of inches, and the second one will match it.)

The close-up back view:
The long, full-contextualized back view:
So, honest opinions. Does it look stupid? More specifically, is it too short in the front and back body? I visualized it differently, looking at the pattern pictures, and I think that's part of the problem here. (As a commentary on patterns, it really helps to have pictures of a garment on an actual body - the pictures for this are taken without a full body, over a dress with what looks like a high waist, in hindsight, which really warps the view. And it also helps immensely to know what size was knitted for the photos!!) Take a look at how it's supposed to look, which is how I wanted it to look, and tell me what you think.

I think I know what the answer is. And I think me and the frog pond are on a collision course...

Will she have to knit it twice?

Only time will tell...

I've been working away on Eve's Ribs, and this morning at Older Daughter's double-header soccer game I bound off the body. (I actually timed that pretty badly, as it ended up that I only had about twenty minutes of knitting to do, and that's all I'd brought with me for two games. Alas.) I've been fretting that this is going to be too small (a change from my usual fret that things will be too big, I suppose), so I decided to block out what I have and seam it up to see how it fits before I knit the sleeves. I might even knit the sleeves in the round, we'll see. In any case, here it is.
This isn't a particularly good blocking job (note that bottom edge). Normally I'd run wires through the straight sides, but right I really just want to get a sense of how much stretch it'll hold when it's dry, and how it fits. Then I'll go from there. This thing feels very much like origami to me, but if I understand the plan, I'll fold it right in the middle of the sleeves (those stumpy things sticking out the sides), seam the bottom edges of the sleeves, then seam the side edges of the back (the lower bit) to the side edges of the long collar (the top bit). Has anyone else knit this? Does that sound right?

The stitch pattern is really quite lovely. I truly hope this does turn out, as I still like it very much, and I'd just as soon not rip it out (again) and knit yet one more size larger. (I also think I'd be pushing WAY beyond the yarn I have if I did, although it's looking like I have plenty for this size after all, so maybe not.)(And yes, I did get gauge when I knitted my swatch, but we all know that swatches lie like dogs when they feel like it.)
It is gray and a bit dreary here today - my favorite kind of weather, but not so good for taking pictures which are true to color.

This means that not only does that raspberry pink not show up well, but also that good shots of my finished tam will have to wait. Meanwhile, here's a not-so-good shot.
That's Anne's pattern Hellebores, knitted in my handspun (angora/polworth). This was a tremendously fun and easy knit - knitting candy. Short and sweet. This one is for my mom. It's a bit big for my teeny-tiny head, mostly because I was knitting with handspun which was a bit heavier than that called for in the pattern. I'm going to spin up more of this fiber, so I need to see if I can get it finer, because I really would love to end up with one of these for myself!

I also just wound up my three skeins of Malabrigo Sock (colorway Persia) for a new sweater project (yes, I do realize that I haven't finished the old sweater project yet, but that one's wet! And the sleeves will, if it fits, go quickly in any case)(we shall not speak yet of the potential for it not to fit...). This yarn is for Anne's latest, Bel Air. I've been looking forward to knitting this since it was a gleam in Anne's eye, and I know it's going to be something I'll wear a lot. It's also exactly what I need for the series of stressful meetings that I have coming up - plenty of stockinette in the back and sleeves, with the treat of the front to look forward to at the end. So I'm off to swatch for that momentarily.

One last thing: I got a new fiber storage unit, thanks to my in-laws, who were going to get rid of this cabinet, but who sent it to us instead when I said that I could really use something neat and pretty to keep my (burgeoning and almost out of control)(but I didn't actually say that) fiber collection in. Isn't this neater than a stack of bags of fiber?
Definitely yes.