Doldrums

I think I've entered into the Knitting Doldrums.  Apparently all of the projects I have actively OTN are either stockinette/garter stitch, or involve colorwork and (thus) multiple balls of yarn (making for bad meeting knitting), or both.  So I'm bored.  I mean, Baby Surprise Jackets are fun (and in fact, I just wound on for a third and last one today), but they're garter stitch.  I also cast on for a pair of these scarves, out of a lovely alpaca laceweight.  But it's stockinette.  And really unattractive stockinette, to boot (I know, they'll block out beautifully, but at the moment not so much with the beauty).

Meanwhile, I'm slogging away in the Slough of Linen Stitch.

I'm further along than that, although not a lot.  It takes about 25 minutes to get through a single row on this one.  In many ways, it would make perfect meeting knitting, except that it comes with three huge balls of yarn, which is neither small nor inconspicuous.  That's the Vancouver stole, by the way - I got the yarn for it at Sock Summit, and I cast on a few weeks after getting home.  But as I said, the rows are almost 400 stitches long.  And that's 400 stitches of linen stitch, so not all that fun.  The results are stunning, but it's a slog.

I also finished the first of my second pair of Silk Road socks - this time for me.  And they fit!

These are actually rather fun to knit, and I can do everything without the pattern (since it's my pattern).  But I do have to look at my hands when I knit stranded colorwork like this - again, not so good in meetings, as eye contact is an important part of letting people know that they are being listened to.

As per my usual rule, I promptly cast on for the second sock upon casting off for the first.  I really should make these my evening knitting project, but there's this small part of me that wishes the Vancouver stole would be ready for taking with me to the American Anthropological Association meetings in mid-November.  They're in Montreal this year, and I understand that it's chilly in Canada in November.  (heh)  Of course, the fact that I also have to have a paper written in time for the meetings, as well as a presentation prepared, and a report for the business meeting of my particular association, means that there are a lot of deadlines all coming in at once.  The stole probably won't get done.

So, what does one do in the face of multiple looming deadlines and boring knitting?  Cast on!  I just wound up some gorgeous Jitterbug sock yarn in a deep electric blue that has been marinating in stash more than long enough.  The plan is to cast on for a pair of Isabella D'Este socks just as soon as I finish up here and seam the second BSJ.  I just saw that there is no picture of the socks on the Ravelry site, alas.  These are from the new Knitter's Book of Socks, by Clara Parkes.  I will talk more about how much I love this book in another post, but for now just let me say this: I totally want to be Clara Parkes when I grow up.  The woman thinks about yarn and wool in the most wonderful ways, and the collection of patterns in this book is wonderful.  If you knit socks, and if you like to think about the technical aspects of yarn and yarn choices, then this book is the book for you.  (I guess I just wrote about it; I don't know what else to say, really - I just love anything by Clara.)  I had a lot of fun talking to Rick about some of the more engineeringly observations about tensile strength, etc.  It's kind of fun when our worlds collide that way.

So, off to try to knit my way out of the doldrums!

Coming up for air

It has been a mad couple of weeks, starting with a two-day external program review (two reviewers visiting from off-campus; I chaired the internal review report writing process, so I needed to be heavily involved; twelve-hour days, etc etc), following up with a delightful (but busy!) weekend taking care of the three children of dear friends of ours (leaving me to shake my head in awe at parents who regularly handle five kids), and ending with a twenty-hour stack of papers to grade (as in, it took me close to twenty work hours to grade 35 papers).  I guess I know where the last two weeks have gone!

In all of that, I haven't managed a whole lot of knitting, alas.  I did get two swatches knit with the sample yarn I spun for the gansey.  In fact, I got those done relatively early on in the whole thing and have been carrying the swatches around in the bottom of my book bag for nearly a week and a half, hoping for an opportunity to take a picture - even if it had to be on PhotoBooth - to share.  That actually turned out not to be a bad thing, as I am reassured by how well they survived.  (Also, in answer to a question that someone left about blocking my yarn before I knit with it - yes, I do soak, snap, and hang (unweighted) my skeins of handspun before I knit with them.  I also blocked these swatches after knitting.)

The swatch on the left is knitted with the woolen-spun yarn, size three needles on the bottom, and size two needles on the top.  The swatch on the right was knitted out of the worsted-spun yarn, on size two needles (because I liked them so much better in the first swatch).  I am thinking that the size two needles on the woolen-spun yarn is the way to go; any opinions?  I should say, by the way, that several people pointed out the flaw (that I hoped no one would notice) in my blatherings about spinning style and warmth/weight issues.  Woolen-spun yarn, while lighter than worsted-spun, tends to be warmer, because all of the air in the yarn (which makes it lighter) traps heat.  (I should note that part of the reason why I didn't say that is because ganseys are traditionally knit out of a tightly-spun five-ply, and they were used by fishermen in some of the worst weather you can imagine, so I kept ignoring what I've read again and again about woolen-spun yarn being warmer, because obviously these sweaters kept those guys warm!  I wonder if it's a wind/rain thing?  In other words, perhaps a tightly spun and knitted sweater is more wind- and rain-proof?  That would be even more true if they were spun in the grease.)  In any case, there are three four factors (I feel like the Spanish Inquisition) which make me think that going with the woolen-spun yarn is going to be the way to go:  first, it's going to make Rick happier, as he doesn't tend to like weighty layers; second, I like the way the knit/purl motifs look better in the woolen-spun yarn; third, this fiber seems happier spun woolen - it's a bit more wiry when it's spun worsted; and fourth, I spin faster when I spin woolen, and I'd like to finish this sweater sometime before the girls graduate from college.

Of course, now I need to find the time to actually spin the yarn.  Even though the woolen spinning goes much faster, I still need to get to the wheel.  On the other hand, I also need to get to my spindles, as I'm teaching another intro to spindling class a week from today at my LYS (I don't know if anyone who's reading is from around here, but right now there's plenty of room in the class, if you want to give it a whirl - it's a very low-key commitment to try something that you might like a lot, and we always have a lot of fun)(and yes, I meant that pun-like thing in the last parenthetical).

Meanwhile, I've been knitting a little bit here and there.  I finally knit my very first baby surprise jacket.

And my second.

 And you know what?  It really is quite a surprise the way a total amorphous blob, given the right twists and tweaks, turns - hey presto! - into a sweater.  Very cool, and I haven't the faintest clue how anyone, even the immortal EZ, could have come up with this thing; truly, it must have been inspiration, in the original sense of the word.  I also took a 30-minute skill-building class today on mattress stitch (appalling that I haven't done it before, I know), and stitched up the shoulders on that first sweater like a pro.  I have decided that I am not particularly fond of sewing up garter stitch seams, but at least I know that I'm doing it right.

I knitted the first one (which will be accompanied by little bitty matching booties) for Knit for the Cure, which is a fundraiser that my beloved LYS puts together every year.  The store gathers up knitted donations which they sell in a booth at the end of the Susan Komen Race for the Cure in San Diego.  I'm also walking this year in the 5k (on November 6th), with the team that my friend Pam has put together: Purls for the Girls.  If you happen to like to donate to that particular cause, and you haven't had a chance to do that this year, I know the team would appreciate your support tremendously.  If you do, please let me know, and also (regardless of whether you donate) do let me know if there's anyone you'd like us to be particularly remembering or thinking of as we knit our way through our 5k walk.

The second jacket is for a friend of mine at work whose baby is due soon; there will be booties to accompany that one as well.  These little jackets knit up pretty quickly, and they work well for meeting knitting (garter stitch all the way, and very small).  They also seem to be about all that my brain can handle these days; I am so terminally distracted by my ever-growing and unshrinking to-do list (which now stretches into mid-December at least), that I actually completely forgot to bring my computer to work one day this week.  It's always a bad sign when I forget something that obvious and important (especially when I've left the computer sitting right next to my bookbag, and right under my car keys).  Clearly, it's better not to try something like a pair of Cookie A socks or stranded colorwork at this point in time.

With luck, the next post will come much sooner than two weeks.  Meanwhile, happy weekend - what kinds of fun things are you all doing to celebrate your Saturday?

Spinning math

I've been sampling for the gansey.  This Coopworth was beautifully prepped, and it spins like a dream.  It's definitely a coarser fiber (I'm not sure of the micron count, but I wouldn't wear this next to my skin), but it will make a great woolly sweater, I think.  (The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook says that the typical micron count for Coopworth is in the 30-39 micron count range - that seems about right.)

In spite of the fact that ganseys were traditionally knitted in a tightly-spun 5-ply (at something like 7 stitches to the inch, if I remember correctly), I decided that a three-ply was more realistic.  I also rather thought I'd lean towards a less-tightly-spun yarn, given that my very warm husband would like to be able to wear it once in a while, and a coat of woolen armor doesn't work so well down here in SoCal.  That said, I also wanted to be sure that my assumptions were correct, so I decided to start with two samples: a woollen-spun three-ply, and a worsted-spun three ply.

Here's the woollen-spun one.

This was spun using a long backwards draw, keeping my front hand still (managing the twist only slightly), and pulling the fiber back, letting the twist do most of the drafting work.

Here's the worsted-spun yarn.

This was spun using a short forward draw, keeping my back hand (my fiber hand) still, while pulling fiber out of the fiber supply and smoothing the twist into it with my front hand.

Here's my sample card (sorry for the PhotoBooth photo - it was this or nothing).  For each sample, the right-most one is the singles, middle is two-ply, left-most is three-ply; the worsted-spun is on the left, the woollen-spun on the right.

You can really see the difference there between them - the one on the right is much puffier and less compacted than the one on the left.  It also feels better; I think this particular kind of wool wants to be spun with some air in it - the worsted-spun sample feels a bit wire-y to me (any other Coopworth spinners out there who can tell me their experience?).

The numbers are rather interesting, too.  Both of these yarns came out at 13 wpi (wraps per inch), so between a sport-weight and worsted-weight yarn - exactly what I wanted for this sweater.  The stats on the woollen spun yarn (if I did my math right, and if my niddy-noddy really does give me one-yard loops) are as follows.  I spun 56 yards, which weigh 19g or 5/8oz.  That works out to 1424 yards/lb for the grist of this yarn.  The worsted spun yarn came out at 32 yards and 12g or 3/8oz, which works out to 1344 yds/lb. 

I'm planning to knit these each into a little sample before making the final call on spinning type, but at the moment I'm leaning towards the woollen-spun yarn for a couple of reasons.  First, it's lighter (as I mentioned above), so with luck it'll make a more wearable sweater.  Second, it's softer (so again, more wearable).  Third, I spin woollen faster than I spin worsted (which means that I might have a chance at finishing this sweater in this lifetime).  And finally, looking at that yardage/pound calculation, the woollen spun yarn maximizes what I've got.  (It actually just occurred to me this very minute that this gives me a rough estimate of how many yards I should end up with, if I know how much fiber I have by weight! - Yes, I'm slow, hush. - I need to weigh to be sure, but I think I have a titch under two pounds, which puts me at somewhere around, to lowball it, 2500 yards, which should be enough, right?)(Right?)

OK, I couldn't stand it and went to weight it all (I'm home working today with an erstwhile-sick kid), and the verdict is: 39 oz.  That's about 3400 yards, right?  If so, I'm in like Flynn.  (On the other hand, if my math skillz aren't as good as I think they are, it could all be bad.  If one of you sees that I'm math challenged, could you let me down gently?)

A plan in pictures

So here's the latest plan.

To use this:

To make one of these:

For him:

Even though he has the wingspan of one of these:

Alternate fiber arts

Two weeks down, thirteen to go!

I know how bad that sounds.  This is always the tough part of the semester, when I feel that I am still setting expectations for students, and they're getting used to me and I'm getting used to them.  By about week four, things get good for a while, and I stop counting until week 11 or so rolls around.  At that point, we're all counting down to finals, for better or for worse.

Meanwhile, I mentioned last time that I had a few things to share from our busy Labor Day weekend.  First, Younger Daughter, all got up for her feis.

It's hard to get pictures of her in action dancing, without catching other kids in the photos, too (and I don't want to put some other kid out there on the internet), hence the pose.  Rick did manage to get one action shot without identifiable extras, though:

That gives some idea.

As for the other activities of the weekend, I have to share something that I got myself at the Go Native Days gathering in Tehachapi.  I have long wanted a Native California basket.  In fact, I have long wanted to learn to weave a Native California basket, and someday I will.  However, learning to basketweave generally starts with gathering the basketmaking materials with a master weaver, then waiting for those materials to cure, etc, etc (not unlike asking someone how to knit and being told, "Here's a sheep"; it's an awesome way to learn, and maybe even a right way to learn, but not something I could take on right now).  The time will come when I can do that, but it isn't now.  So instead, I finally committed to buying one, and came home with this.

Isn't it lovely?  It's a Kumeyaay basket.  The Kumeyaay people were split, many many years ago, by the arbitrary imposition of what is now the U.S./Mexico border; the weaver of this basket comes from Baja California.  The pattern is called a whirlwind pattern, and it satisfies my abiding love of spirals.

It's woven of juncus grass; the black is dyed juncus.  It smells nice, too (it must be the knitter in me, but when I see a basket, I automatically smell it; am I the only one who does this with yarn?).

Now, while I do know that I can't dedicate myself appropriately to learning to weave something like this, Rick and I took advantage of the fact that there were weavers at the event who were offering lessons in things like basket starts and pine needle baskets.  We headed off to the pine needle basket booth, and an hour and a bit later, had these.

Little bitty pine needle basket trays.  (Very, very little bitty.)  They're made of pine needles and raffia.  And because one should always give one's first basket away, I'm going to sew hair clips to the backs of these for the girls.  And because I am an honest person I'll answer for you this question:  Guess which one is mine and which is Rick's?

Hint:  Engineers apparently make very good basket weavers.

(His is on the right.)

Mileage

We have certainly put the mileage on this weekend!  On Friday, Rick had to drive down to Coronado (about fifty miles south of here) to help lay floors for Younger Daughter's dance school's feis.  As soon as he got home, we loaded the car up, and headed 200 miles north (about 3.5 hours) to Tehachapi (feeling very grateful that the Cajon pass had reopened after a brush fire shut it down; the traffic still wasn't pretty, but at least it was rolling), where the tribe that I work with was hosting a huge fundraiser on Saturday called Go Native Days.  We worked at that all day on Saturday (well, the girls and I worked; Rick went for a well-earned bike ride), and then drove home on Saturday night.  Then on Sunday, it was back down to Coronado for the feis, before finally coming to a rest here at home last night.

Tilly was really glad when we didn't leave again this morning.

Today has been a catch-up day, and as part of that catch-up, I finally got a few pictures of some recently-finished projects.  Alas, I completely forgot to bring my camera to Saturday's event!  (But I do have a few things to share from that in another post.)

First up, Stripe Study (modelled here by Younger Daughter):

I really love these colors together, but I have to admit something - I'm not 100% sure how to wear this to its best advantage.  By its nature, it is asymmetrical (it reminds me very much of a fiddler crab), and that has me stumped.  In this picture, it is aligned so that the point is at about the middle of the back, with the long arm of the shawl tucked over the shoulder under the shorter arm.

That's how it looks from behind.  I see that as one option.  The other option is to make the arms about even in front, which puts the point over one shoulder.

Then it looks like this from the back.

And front.  Opinions?  Those of you who have knit this, how do you wear it?

In any case, to recap, this is Stripe Study, knitted in Zen Yarn Garden Serenity Lace II, on size 6 needles.  I love the yarn - it was wonderful to work with, it has a lovely hand, and it knitted up beautifully even before I blocked this.  The pattern was clear and easy - very good travel and meeting knitting, in spite of needing to haul two yarn colors around.  This is definitely one I'd knit again (assuming I figure out how to wear it), and that's not something I say often of a garter stitch project.

The next project is a pair of socks that I'm embarrassed to say I started on the trip to Peru and only just recently finished.  Honestly, they should have gone faster, but I got distracted by the siren call of stripes (and cashmere, let's not forget the cashmere).

These went to Younger Daughter, since they fit her perfectly.  They're knitted out of Vintage Purls Vintage Sock yarn, which I have knitted with before and just love, on size 1 needles.  (I am happy to report that there's enough of this left over that I think I'll make myself a pair of clog socks with the rest.)  I used my usual toe-up pattern, with a slip-stitch heel flap under the heel, and the gusset stitch reductions happening on the back of the leg (rather than at the side).  I added a little travelling stitch thing just for fun.  Younger Daughter seems to like them.

So that's it for finished projects.  Right now, I am working my way glacially slowly through the fifteen inches of linen stitch (over about 300+ stitches) that I need to start out Vancouver.  Thank goodness I love the colors and the yarn (BFL, mmm...), because otherwise this one would be a chore.  But I plug away at it, a few rows here and there, and someday it will be done.  I am also working on the pair of Silk Road socks that I am knitting for myself.  I had a totally delusional moment on Saturday night while I was packing them up to go to the feis when I wondered why I couldn't find the first sock to take along (so I could be sure to compare the second sock to it so they match).  Until I realized that there is no first sock - I am still knitting it.  Alas.

And finally, as the secretary of my union local, I would be remiss if I didn't wish you all a happy Labor day, and leave you with this quote from the Department of Labor's description of why we celebrate Labor day:

"The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker."

Hunh

Summer's over!  Summer's over!  Eeeek!  (I feel like Chicken Little.)  Classes started on campus today; my classes start tomorrow.  I've spent all day finalizing my syllabi (why does that always take so much longer than I think it will?), and getting them uploaded into our online course containers (and why does that always take so much longer than I think it should?!), not to mention fighting with our lovely management program to get it to fork over class lists and permission numbers (that would be the multimillion dollar system that takes longer to load pages than my aged grandmother pouring molasses in the Arctic)(note: no aged grandmothers were harmed in the writing of this post).  But that's mostly under control, leaving me to hyperventilate quietly in a corner, worrying that I've forgotten something and that I'll walk into class tomorrow with lipstick on my teeth and toilet paper on my shoe.  You know, a usual beginning-of-semester day.

What this also means is that, although I've been knitting, and have even finished some knitting (Stripe Study is done!  Younger Daughter's socks are done!), and have cast on for something new (more on that next time), I have no photographic evidence of the aforementioned knitting successes.  Alas.

However, I did see something on Erica's lovely blog that caught my attention.  It was a link to this article, entitled Tough Gals: Do They Still Exist?  (Note: The use of the word "gals" in the title probably should have alerted me to its blood-pressure-raising content.)  In that article, knitting (along with, oddly enough, making cupcakes) is explicitly blamed for modern women's lack of toughitude.  (Gun-toting and car-hot-wiring are apparently the skills that we knitters lack that would help us to achieve modern feminist womanhood.  I don't think that the word "feminist" means what the author of the article think it means.)

Now, my first reaction was to foam quietly at the mouth.  I thought long and hard about writing a post about all the reasons why this kind of thing makes me foam at the mouth, but Erica already did it for me, and did it beautifully.  However, after taking some deep breaths, drinking some tea, and spinning with my lovely little office spindle (pttthhhbbttt!), I had calmed down enough for my inner linguistic anthropologist to take hold.

And my inner linguistic anthropologist said:  Hunh?

I love "hunh" moments.  I tell my students to watch for them.  Because the moment you say, "Hunh.  I wonder why that person did/said that, in that way?", in that moment, you've got a little string to pull.  A little string that hangs off the whole fabric of a particular cultural world.  And if you pull on that string, tug at it patiently, slowly but surely you can get to see all kinds of interesting things about how that fabric is put together.  Just as dropping some stitches down a piece of knitting and then working them back up to the needles can teach us more about the structure of a knitted fabric than almost anything else, so can pulling a little "hunh" thread teach us about the world we live in.

In the end, it's all data.

So, hunh.  I wonder what it is about knitting that makes it an index of anti-feminism?  (And I should say that this is by no means the only place I've seen or heard this.)  I mean, as something that is indexical of women, couldn't it also become a symbol of feminism?  Is it a particular kind of womanhood that knitting calls to mind?  (Come to think of it, is it a particular kind of knitting that calls unfeminist womanhood to mind?)  And why knitting and cupcakes, of all things?  Why are cupcakes particularly anti-feminist?  Why isn't woodworking considered a backward-looking symbol of luddite masculinity?

So many questions.  This is why I think the knitting community is worthy of study - we are clearly oversimplified in the mind's eye of the culture within which we live.  And this is just more data, right?