Another f-word - fog!

Thank you all for the many interesting and thoughtful comments on my last post.  I truly enjoyed reading each one of them, and I wrote back to everyone for whom I have an email address (I think one of the best bits about writing a blog is the follow-up conversations).  (And Polly - thanks for sending your students this way; if any of them want to comment, they should please feel free, and/or they are welcome to send me an email.  I wonder if it mightn't be a thought to have our classes have a virtual conversation sometime?  I'd love to know more about your class!)

But in the meantime, today I finally got a bit of another of my favorite f-words - fog.  I really, really love fog, and I have been lamenting the total lack thereof around here.  While the East Coast was getting slammed with Sandy (I hope everyone back there has come through the storm with a minimum of damage, and that you and your loved ones are all safe), we got Santa Anas.  Not nearly so frightening (unless they come with fires, but this time we got lucky), but it does mean wild temperature swings and very very dry air, all of which makes me cranky.  (There's just something weird about going to swim at 6:15, when it's 48 degrees - outdoor pool, btw - and then, by noon, it's 78+ degrees, and the air conditioning is blasting in the building.  Dudes, how do you even dress for that?)(OK, I know the answer - layers.)

But this morning when I woke up, the world was blanketed in fog.  Tilly and I went for our weekly walk at our local open space, about which I've written before, and today it was a new and mysterious world.

I had already determined to try to add another leg onto my usual walk, and I found myself utterly disoriented in the fog.  This little open space is usually dominated visually by what everyone calls "the mountain" (not a mountain) - an old volcanic core that sits in the middle of a network of trails like the one in that picture.  And I couldn't see it at all - it was invisible in the fog.  I wandered along my path, utterly sure that I knew exactly where I was, until I came out in a place that didn't seem familiar at all.  It took me a long moment to realize that I was back where I'd started, heading for the creek crossing from the other direction - everything looked weirdly familiar and utterly strange at the same time.  There's a metaphor in there somewhere, I'm sure.

It's funny how the fog, by blocking those eye-catching long views, calls attention to the immediate and intimate.  Bird-song and laughter were all there to hear, even when the noise-makers were invisible.  I could smell the rotting tules - the water levels are low, and it's that time of year.  Would I notice that, if I could see the ocean in the distance?

And there were beautifully skeletal plants, reminding me that it's Samhain - time to step back and notice that the world is turning again, heading for the dark time, when things rest quietly, when decay makes room for new growth in the spring.

This always feels to me like it should a quiet, contemplative moment in the year's cycle - odd, as it comes right as everyone seems to be gearing up for holiday madness (already!), and I find myself wanting to sit, just quietly, rather like Ferdinand in his field, contemplating the cyclic nature of change.  Somehow this time of the year, my motto goes from being "You can't win for trying", to "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."  (I should note that, in this mood, I tend not to mean it in its wry sense, but instead in the sense that, underneath all the hubbub and busyness and surface changes that catch our eyes from day to day, there is a deeper, longer stillness and coming-around-again that I find comforting.)

I'm knitting some things that feel like foggy weather does to me, too, appropriately enough.  I've finished the body of the Wine Dark Sea II sweater (I'm wearing the old, baggy, comfy one today).

I'm worried that it might be too short, so I'm blocking it, to find out for sure.  If it is, I'm going to rip it back and add a few inches.  I really want to get this one exactly right.  I am, though, very happy with the neckline shaping - I never seem to get v-necks right, but this one fits just the way I wanted it to.

The edging has turned out well, too!

And I'm working on a new pair of socks.  (As a quick update, I turned the heel on the Silk Road socks, only to find out that I'd made an assumption - and you know what they say about assumptions - that was wrong.  So some ripping back is in order.  More on that next time.)

These are, I think, going to be part of a series of socks that I'm calling in my head Longjohns Socks.  Basically, what I wanted from these is a pair of socks that feel like pulling on longjohns - warm and comfy and comforting.  They're knitted from the toe up, so as not to waste an inch of this yarn (Zen Yarn Garden cashmere sock), with my happy bottom-of-the-foot eye-of-partridge heel flap, and, for this pair, a double moss stitch leg.  I've found a couple of other stitch patterns that I think would suit themselves to this kind of sock, so I'll probably knit another few pairs in the series, with some of the "luxury" skeins of sock yarn that I've stashed away for "special".  I might even write these up and put them on Ravelry - do you think this is the sort of thing more people than I would like?

I should mention that this mid-week post came courtesy of a weekend working in Northern California (language revitalization trainings) last weekend, and another trip to Tehachapi this coming weekend.  I tend not to have much energy for posting when I travel that much, so I thought I'd better grab the chance while I could.  So I probably won't post again until mid-next week at the soonest.  In the meantime, I wish you all a contemplative Samhain.

The F word

No, not that f-word, people.  The other one.  The one that should have come up during the Presidential debates this past week.  The one that people seem to avoid like the plague - and as a linguist, I always find it intriguing when people do that, and then I wonder why, and then I write posts like this one.  You know the word I'm talking about: feminism.  For those of you who are less in the mood for that kind of contemplation, there is knitting content in this post (ironically, in a post-modern sort of way); please feel free to skip to the end for that.

I don't know how many of you watched the debate this week, but at one point, one of the questions brought up something near and dear to my heart: a woman asked what each of the candidates would do in the next four years about the fact that women (still) earn about $.73 to the dollar compared to men (for doing the same jobs with the same qualifications, she didn't say, but I will).  There are a couple of things to talk about, vis-a-vis the answers. 

Thing the first is the one that's been all over the interwebs ever since: Mitt Romney's answer and his (now-infamous, and probably never-to-be-lived-down) binders full of women.  As soon as he said that, I thought - this one's sticking, and as a linguist, of course, I find it interesting to think about why that is.  What is it about that part of his answer that is so utterly meme-able?  There were so many other things about his answer that I found noticeable that didn't take to the airwaves in the same way.  For example, when he said that he received no female candidates for posts in his cabinet, the question I think he should have been asking right away is not, how do I get binders full of women to ask to apply, but instead, why aren't women applying to work in my cabinet?  What message am I failing to get across that makes women feel that they don't want to apply?  What broader social forces are at play that make women not apply to positions of power more generally?  What is going on here?  But OK, he didn't.  The next issue with that answer was the fact that his protestations that he knows qualified women sounded all too much like a recognized trope when a person with prejudice is confronted with that prejudice, and they respond: "But I have lots of friends who are X".  That phrase usually doesn't mean what it sounds like it means.

The binders full of women, though, that's what struck a nerve (judging by the amount of space devoted to it on social networks).  Interestingly, it's the way that it's been used to mock another powerful man altogether that I think gets to the heart of the problem with it.  I'm not sure if any of you have seen the Bill Clinton "I heard there's a binder full of women!" pictures going around (I've seen at least three iterations, and heard about several more), but it seems to me that those point to the issue here: it's about objectification.  It's about the idea that women are interchangeable, available, tokens.  Because the binders full of women don't get at the real problem - why women didn't apply, why women are still paid less than 75% of what men are paid, why there wasn't a woman standing on that stage answering those questions - and because those binders don't get at answers to those questions, they seem far too much like a pat on the head, a brushing-aside or covering-over of a very large problem.

Because let's be honest - neither candidate answered the question worth a damn.  Both of them talked about access, about the idea that women should have access to jobs.  They're right, women should.  But if we end up doing the jobs that men do for 25% less, then do we really have access to the "same" jobs, with the same benefits?  Does that really address the question of why women are considered to be 25% less valuable in the workplace?  Or of why that number has been going down again in recent years, rather than up?  Does it address the fact that most single-parent homes with children in them are headed by women, who then must support those families on 3/4 of the income their male counterparts would get for working as hard as they do?  Does it address the fact that when women do, finally, begin to get access to a particular career, that career loses prestige and, concomitantly, pay?  (If you think I'm wrong, look at the difference in pay in medical careers like family practice as opposed to surgery - still male-dominated; or look at what's happened to professorial pay since women gained more, although still not equal, access to the halls of academia; look at the differences in pay between the areas of academia that have more women in them relative to those that are still male-dominated.)

Speaking only as an N of 1, I have seen this same thing happen to me.  A year after I was hired in my current job, my department hired a male professor who had not yet completed his Ph.D.  He earned more than I did, even though I had both the degree and more years of experience in the classroom.  More recently, my department hired another male professor who is, as yet, untenured (note: I have held my job for nearly eleven years, have had tenure for five years, and I am currently the chair of my department); he is paid almost exactly what I am paid.  Both men are valuable colleagues, worth their pay.  But why are my experience and skill (and my degree), not worth more?  I have published as much, earned as many awards, taken as little time on leave, etc etc.  But I am not worth as much.  And for anyone who would say that money isn't everything - that is true in a philosophical and existential sense, but in a capitalist society (which, for our sins, we are), money is one of the most central ways by which we judge, and reward, our perceived sense of what a person is worth in a particular role.  More practically, money is how we feed ourselves and our families, clothe our children, give them opportunities, help others in society.  It might be nice to think it doesn't matter, but it does.

So, what I want to know is, why did neither of those presidential candidates talk about (here it is, brace yourselves) feminism?  About the idea that there should be a social movement that advocates for women, and that continues to do so until women are treated as equal citizens, and that people of both sexes should proudly sign on to such a movement?  Why did neither of them mention the Equal Rights Amendment - you know, the one that would acknowledge, under the law, that women are the equal of men?  Why do people insist that there is no point in such a thing, that women are already equal to men under the law?  If that were true, why is it that women still do not have the opportunities that men have?  Why are we treated differently?  I have two daughters, and I hate like hell the thought that when they grow up, they will still be part of a world that values them less, that tells them that their roles as mothers are critical to our society but then says that their roles as mothers makes them less-valuable people (and it is still true that mothers are paid even less than their single counterparts, while fathers are paid more than their single counterparts - in other words, parenthood makes men good risks, but women bad risks in the workplace).

Dudes.  I am a feminist.  That doesn't mean that I hate men.  It doesn't mean that I think all women should burn their bras, neglect their children, go into the workforce, be the same as one another, create a society in which women dominate men and abuse power.  It does mean that I think that women should have access to a full range of options for personhood, that they should be paid equally to men when the option that they choose is to enter the workforce.  I also think that women who stay at home to raise their children should have access to social security earned during the years they are at home with dependent children, in their own names (rather than having to depend on their husbands' - or, worse yet, trying to access some portion of their ex-husbands'), and, maybe, even access to affordable healthcare?  Call me a socialist, but if we tell people that one important path a person could choose to take is to be home with their children for part of their childrens' growing up, then we should put our money where our mouths are.  (Note: I think stay-at-home dads should have the same benefits.)

I don't think that's going to happen until a couple of other important things happen first.  One of those is for women to stop back-biting when their compatriots choose a different path than their own.  I work outside the home, and have since my girls were little.  That does not make me a bad mother.  It doesn't make my husband a hen-pecked man whose masculinity I have taken away by refusing to allow him to provide for his family alone (I have been told both things more than once).  A woman who stays home with her children is not an anti-feminist by definition.  Breast-feeding neither makes a woman a great mother, nor a bad feminist.  Not breast-feeding neither makes a woman a bad mother, nor a great feminist.  When did we get so judgmental of one another?  When did we decide there was only one path to successful womanhood?

The second thing is that men need to get in on this game.  Until fathers are willing to demand paternity leave in equal amounts to women's maternity leave, until they are willing to say, "I need flexible hours so that I can get home with a sick kid if I have to, so I can leave at 5 and get the kids to soccer, so I can leave earlier two days a week since the kids' #$%*!! schools insist on having early-release days, as if 2:30 weren't already a ludicrously early hour to get out of school", until that happens, workplaces will still think of mothers as drains on company resources.  Until women are paid equally to men, families will be stuck in a cycle of protecting a father's job more than a mother's, because he brings more back to the family.  Men have to stop buying into the (empirically untrue - go ahead and do the research, I have) story that men aren't nurturers, they aren't good at raising children, they don't "bond" with their children the way mothers do, so they don't "like" being with their kids the way mothers do; they have to stop allowing society to cut them off from the pleasures of living a balanced life.

I realize that my rant here has focused on families, on women who have chosen the path of motherhood, and that the choice not to have children at all is yet another one of those equally-legitimate but all-to-often-criticized options that women should have access to.  I also haven't talked about the issue of double jeopardy, women who face both sexism and racism in trying to access their right to the options that should be available to everyone.  I am not ignoring these things because they're not important, but because I was mostly focusing on my personal experience here - I'd love to get comments from folks who are dealing with those things as well, to bring voices of experience to the table here - middle-class white working motherhood isn't the only story (it isn't even the majority story), it's just the one that I know best.

Basically, it's time to be talking about this (again).  It's always been time, but maybe the total non-answers to that question suggest that we need to get a little louder.  Maybe we even need to think about doing what Iceland did a few elections ago - to say that men have had their chance, kick them all out of government, and elect women instead.  Radical, I know - kind of fun to imagine, though, maybe?

So yes, I am a feminist.  AND I knit (not BUT I knit, please note).  And I am knitting, in fact.  I knitted all the way through that debate on Tuesday, and I ended up with these (started fairly recently, out of a need for some quick success):

Those are Plain Jhaynes, a pattern of Anne's that I somehow have missed all these years, made specially for using up a little bit of special yarn.  As soon as I saw them, I realized that they were the perfect pattern for the mitts I've been wanting to make to go with my babushka scarves, which, much as I love them, use a skein and a bit of some very nice yarn, leaving quite a bit to be used up in other ways.  This yarn is Jade Sapphire silk/cashmere 2-ply, and I love it.  The two babushkas I've knitted (this one and a blue one) are probably my most-worn bits of knitting, and I'm really glad now to have mitts to go with one of them.  So, to recap, these mitts are Plain Jhaynes (Anne Hanson), knitted on size one (Signature - how I do love my Signatures) dpns, out of Jade Sapphire silk/cashmere 2-ply, in a size medium.  They are meant to fit fairly snugly, to add just that perfect bit of warmth without getting in the way of, say, typing, and I think they're going to do the job perfectly.

The other thing I've been working on this week is my new version of the Wine Dark Sea sweater.  You may remember from the old version (here, on Rav) that I knitted years ago, that I aimed for a sweat-shirty loose fit.  Well, I got it.  In looking at my old pattern notes and measurements, and comparing them to the measurements I tend to use now for sweaters, I realize that I built in about eight inches of positive ease (!!) when I designed and knitted the first one.  I ended up with quite a bit of yarn left over after I knitted it (my very favorite, can't-get-enough-of-it yarn, Briar Rose Sea Pearl), and after weighing and doing some math, I decided I had enough left to knit another, more fitted (less than 1 inch of positive ease) version.  So I put together some notes for myself, and did some math based on my gauge swatch.

And off I went.  I'm almost done now with the waist shaping.

Only one more set of increases to go, then a bit more plain knitting, then I'll split for the armholes.  At that point, I'll be able to slide it on (I'm knitting this part in the round from the bottom up) and see how I'm doing, both in terms of ease and length.  And I'll go from there.

There are also a few acquisitions of yarn and fiber, plus a cookbook that I'm totally psyched about, but I think I'll save those for the next post.  In the meantime, peace out.

Finding my stride

It's Sunday, and I'm posting.  I think I'm starting to get back into some kind of rhythm (I'm not saying what kind of rhythm exactly).  I am knitting, I am posting.  Laundry is done, the house has been vacuumed, and there are plans for dinner (for which the food is in the house, even). 

We won't talk about the ever-expanding work to-do list, though.  (I got myself a very cool calendar program for my phone which includes a combined to-do list - it even lets me check things off when I get them done, which I find satisfying.  This is really nice on many levels, but on Friday, I changed the "due" date on something like eleven items to Monday.  This is the electronic version of the little post-it to-do list I used to keep in my paper calendar; I kept it on a post-it note so I could move it forward at the end of each week when it wasn't done.  I'm not sure if the fact that I know it won't get done and plan for it speaks of maturity and organization or the exact opposite.)

This week, a couple of things finally got finished.  It is nice to be able to see actual finished knitted objects.  The first is something small that I started last Saturday at Yarning For You's big kick-off for this year's Knit for the Cure.

It still needs buttons, but otherwise it's completely done, seams and all.  It's a Baby Surprise Jacket (which I have decided may just become an annual thing; they apparently sell quickly, and I find them entertaining to knit), knitted on size 3 needles out of Baah La Jolla, with matching booties (no pattern - I just wing those).  I'll try to drop it by the store sometime this week (I'm holding off on the buttons to see if they have anything cute there; otherwise I'll dig into Grandmom's button box for something simple - there are enough small white buttons in there to keep me buttoning Baby Surprise Jackets for years to come).

I also finished Scoria.  I started this one as a September KAL with some friends (we're all doing different patterns, so it's a sweater KAL, rather than a particular pattern KAL), and I did actually have all the pieces knitted by the end of the month, as well as a first pass at the seams.  But two of them turned out badly, so yesterday I undid them and re-seamed (one shoulder and the neck), and then reblocked it, which made a huge different.  I am tolerably pleased.

As Rick says, it's not as fitted as some sweaters I've knitted - I think the waist shaping could have been more, well, shapely.  That said, I still love the parts of this sweater that made me want to knit it in the first place.  The combination of the herringbone pattern and the lace:

 

And the neck:

It's a very well-written pattern, and this yarn, as always, works up beautifully.

To recap, this is the pattern Scoria, from the magazine The Knitter (issue 46).  I knitted the medium on size 3 needles, out of 7 balls of Plymouth Vita (a cotton/cashmere blend).  I think I probably could have knitted the small size (hindsight 20/20), which might have had the added benefit of not giving me fits of nerves over whether I'd have enough yarn (I did, barely).  The happy news is that I dug that yarn out of stash to knit this.  I have been trying to convince myself that for every new thing I start (new in the sense of new pattern or new yarn), I need to work my way through something already cast on, or in stash.  So all in all, a success.  I will wear this - it may even end up being this year's conference sweater.

Keeping in mind that desire to work my way through some languishing projects and languishing yarn, once these were done, I went back and picked up the second pair of Silk Road Socks - it is high time I wrapped those up.  You may remember that I knitted the first pair out of my own pattern, based on a silk woven funerary face covering I saw at an exhibit on textiles from the Silk Road (I saw the exhibit in 2010).  That pair went to Younger Daughter, as they were too small for me.  However, I had plenty of yarn left over, so I set about reworking the pattern to a larger size and knitting them for me.  I had some theory about perhaps entering them into the county fair this past spring, but, as happens, time got away from me and I realized that there was no way I was going to finish the second sock of the pair without making myself very very stressed, and so I set them aside. 

I've been avoiding picking them up again, partly because one of my goals is to write this pattern up, and it's mostly very straightforward, except for the heel turn.  I can describe what to do in an intuitive way that might work for some knitters (it essentially involves turning the heel as one does, using yellow yarn to ssk or p2tog if both stitches are yellow, and blue if both are blue, and if they are different colors, using blue unless that would mean more than three blues in a row), but that kind of description really wouldn't work for some knitters, so I want to work through it this time with my notebook in hand, and to take row-by-row notes.  That's been putting me off.  So I girded my loins and hauled everything out and set back to work.

I am now done with the leg of the second sock, and am working on the heel flap.  I transferred the notes for the pattern to my new knitting notebook (more on that in a moment), and now have some sense of what I already know and what I need to know to write the pattern.  The only question I have for myself is whether I need to knit one more heel turn for the smaller size (in "scratch" yarn, even - and without a sock attached) so that I can write that out row by row as well.  We shall see.

As for that notebook, that's something else I've wanted to post about.  It arrived in the mail from New Zealand, in a little care package from Stella, some time ago, and I've been meaning to share it.  If you don't read her blog, and if you want some inspiration, it is most definitely a place to go.  Not only is she a skilled and veteran knitter and spinner, she is also (among many other things) a lover of fountain pens (a woman after my own heart), and she (fairly) recently learned bookbinding, and has been making lovely books of various sorts, all with fountain-pen-grade paper - and this one has knitter's graph paper on every page.

She bound it so that it will stay open, with plenty of room to add in yarn labels and bits of yarn and swatches and all of the things that make a good knitting notebook.  And she covered it in wonderful paper.

Isn't it lovely?  I have been feeling rather far away, somehow, from my own design work and fooling around (in the creative sense) for the last little while, but this notebook has been rather calling to me to get back to it.  It's hard to ignore that kind of lure, and I'm glad I finally found the time this weekend to breathe a little bit and get my head around this project.  (There's a second project that I hope will get kicked off that's long been on my back burner; more on that in another post.)

And finally, on the subject of inspiration, I have to mention the other impetus I lately had to get back into the more creative side of my knitting.  Ellen and Jan, of Twinset Designs, have begun their own podcast (I think this calls for an exclamation point)!  I was delighted when I found out, and delighted during every second of both of the podcasts they've put out so far, and if you are looking for a new podcast (or if you are new to knitting podcasts and interested in diving in), I highly recommend it.  They are both designers, and prolific knitters - they're also both spinners - and I find that listening to them talk about the way they think about knitting gets my brain moving in interesting ways.  You can find out more about it here. 

And now I think it's time to go contemplate that second project...

Learning something new

I'd meant to post about my new learning experiences last Sunday, since I had a weekend of some very productive new learning, on both work and fibrous fronts.  But one of the new learning experiences is best conveyed through a short video of me engaging in my new-found fun, and I didn't have a chance to get me, my tools, a videographer, and a machine capable of videotaping all into the same space at the same time until today.  Now that I've do so, today's post involves a quick knitting update and some spinning fun.

I should mention first that one of the new learning experiences involved my fieldwork, and it means that we can move forward with a big task that we've been planning for some time.  Last weekend, one of my work colleagues and I headed up to Tehachapi to spend the day getting our heads around a transcription program called Elan (available for free through the Max Planck Institute).  One of our huge goals for Kawaiisu (the language whose speakers and learners we're working with on documentation and revitalization) is to gather high-quality audio- and video-recordings of conversational speech among the three remaining speakers, and then (and here's the really tough part) creating equally high-quality and detailed transcriptions of those conversations.  That, in essence, involves creating a word-perfect transcript of everything everyone says, whether they're speaking Kawaiisu or English, including an indication of when and for how long people are speaking over each other or interrupting each other, etc (with as many as six people involved in the conversation at any one time).  That alone is incredibly intensive work.  But these transcripts then need to include a breakdown of all of the meaningful pieces of each word spoken (called morphemes - not to be confused with morphine, even though people often want some during this part of the process), then providing a gloss for each morpheme (i.e., its exact meaning), then a translation of the sentence.  It can be incredibly hard to organize all of that data into something usable, and very few programs exist to help with that.  I've used Word tables in the past, but Elan looked like it was going to do the trick.  And I think it will - but it took three very smart women five solid hours to get it set up and ready to go (after some prior weeks of processing time separately), and in a few weeks, we'll head back up to train all the transcription teams in its use.  We felt pretty darned smart at the end of our work session, I have to admit, and very excited about how fabulous this level of documentation has the potential to be, both for the purposes of revitalization (the number one purpose), and also for understanding how this language works even better than we already do.

With that level of accomplishment under my belt, I decided the time had come to finally give a new spinning technique a shot.  In the Summer 2012 issue of Spin-Off, I spotted a really interesting article called "Navajo Ply on the Fly", by Rosemary Thomas, in which she describes Tammy Rizzo's technique for both spinning and plying on a spindle, in one pass (in other words, no need to spin all the singles for a yarn, and then ply).  I read about it, and tried to visualize it, and mulled it over for quite some time, and then re-read it, and mulled some more (this is how I tend to learn anything new). Once I'd gotten my head around it (and I admit, I found Rizzo's sidebar made more sense to me in some ways than the version described in the article), I sat down to give it a shot.  I fully expected to make some very serious errors in my attempt - after all, it's a new technique, and (in spite of the caveat that one ought to be familiar with Navajo plying before trying this) I'd never Navajo-plied anything before (oops).

Nope.  This technique makes so much sense, and is so intuitive, that it just happens.  It's more fun than a basket full of kittens, quite frankly, because you spin an arm's-length of singles, chain-ply it and add plying spin, wind it on the spindle, and off you go again.  It's a funny thing to see when you put it down - a spindle full of three-ply yarn, with a length of singles and fiber hanging off the end.  It's harder to describe, I think, than it is to do or see, so this morning I grabbed my iPad and my older daughter and asked her to record me doing it (sidebar note: does anyone else still call that "taping"? I do, and my kids always look at me funny).  I expected that to take a few tries, too, but it turns out she's a natural at this, so here it is.  It's my first effort at this kind of thing, so please let me know what you think.  (And again, because I am big on citing my sources, let me be clear that this is not my technique.  It is a combination of what Thomas shows in her article with what Rizzo describes in her sidebar to the article.)  And if you're a spinner with spindles - I highly recommend giving this technique a shot.  Note: because it's a big file to upload here on Blogger, I've put it over on YouTube - the link is here.

I've also been knitting away at Scoria.  I hadn't thought I'd finish it so quickly, but the front, back, and sleeves are all done and blocking, and I'm knitting the neck right now.  It might even get seamed tonight, depending on drying time, and whether this neck knitting goes quickly.  That would be great, since tomorrow, we're heading up to Burbank (yes, during Carmageddon II, alas) for one of Younger Daughter's feis, so not a good day to being doing things like seaming (although it will be a good day for simpler knitting, of which more in another post).

There are all the pieces, waiting to dry.

 I am pleased with the combination of yarn and pattern.  The yarn is Plymouth Vita, and it's got a fabulous hand - very cushy, and not as hard on the hands to knit as cotton and cotton-blend yarns usually are (at least for me).  (The 15% cashmere probably doesn't hurt.)  I was very worried about having enough yarn, and cut the sleeves a little shorter than they already were, but it looks like I'll have enough, which is a relief.

And now, I will adjourn to my knitting chair to work on that last piece.

It's week what?

I can't be the only faculty member on the face of the earth who counts down the weeks in the semester, right?  There have been many semesters when that countdown seems to go. so. slowly.  Not this semester, though.  This semester, thetimeisflyinglikeaperegrinefalcononspeed.  It's the middle of week four already.  How did that happen?

Part of it, I think, is trying to get used to the new job I'm doing.  I don't yet seem to have in my head all of the categories of things I should be tracking.  I knew what I had to keep an eye on before (have I done my class reading?  am I caught up on grading?  need to work on that paper I'm presenting/chapter I'm writing/research I'm doing, etc etc), but it's a whole new world now - one which includes things like: build the spring schedule - eek!  So I'm working on that.  The biggest sorrow, from my perspective, is that the number of meetings I attend each week has ramped up exponentially, and the percentage of them in which knitting is not an option (either because they're too small, or because I'm running the meeting) is much higher than I'd like.  So, more sitting in rooms for hours on end, less knitting.  Sigh.

I am still trying to get in a little bit each day, though, and that means that I've finished the back of Scoria, and am working away at the front.  I have no pictures, but I am making progress.  Mostly in the evenings where I'm either watching Eureka with the girls (love that show) or Firefly with Rick (also, unexpectedly, really love that show) - hooray for Netflix!  I have also found some time to work on a very very plain sock (perfect for movie knitting, and, I hope, also for meetings where knitting is only marginally appropriate, and must be very subliminal).

I'm actually much further along on that; I'm done with the foot and about to start the heel flap (even on my toe up socks, I am as likely as not to knit a heel flap; there is some small possibility that I might do one of the sweet tomato heels I learned last year from Cat Bordhi - I need to decide).  This is a gorgeous bit of yarn I picked up the other week at Yarning For You; I think it's Zen Yarn Garden sock yarn, but I'll check to be sure.  The plan is to knit a simple foot, then a corrugated rib leg, so that they feel like really luxurious thermal underwear socks.  Mmm...  Comfort knitting at its purest and best.

Other than those two projects, I haven't been working on much.  There's been no spinning (and I miss it), and I haven't had a chance to take a picture of or cast on for the really big project I got some yarn for last week.  With luck, that will happen before my next post.

So that's it, just a drive by posting to say that I'm still alive, still knitting, and that I'm actually, for one brief and shining moment, caught up on grading and class reading.  Does this mean I can knit with my wine tonight?

Plugging away

So, I did finish that sweater I was talking about last time.  And it's too big, I think.  So, since it's linen, I washed it two or three times.  Then I washed it on hot (gasp away - but it's linen, so I can do that!).  And I dried it every single time.  It's still on the big side, but I've decided to think of it as a sweat-shirty sort of sweater, and am calling myself OK with it.  It doesn't help that it's been WAY too hot and humid around here to be wearing any kind of sweater, even for taking photos.  But I finally put it on quickly and made Older Daughter take a few pictures, just so I could prove that it is, indeed, done.  So today's post is about that, and the gardening project I've been working on, and the new-ish things on my needles.

First, the sweater.

See what I mean?  It's too big.  

But it is comfortable.  And the linen is softening up (as linen does) more and more with each wash.  I think that once I can wear it, it will soften up even more.  And I do love the color - it's a very cheerful lime green.  In fact, it is exactly the kind of sweater that should work for what I envisioned it for - something to throw on, once the sun goes down and it cools off.  Which is usually what happens, either because the marine layer blows in from the ocean, or because it's so dry that as soon as there's no solar gain to keep the air warm, the temperature drops by twenty degrees.  But that's not what's been happening around here lately.  No.  Instead, we're getting monsoonal weather, from the Sea of Cortez.  And it's muggy.  The only benefit to this that I can see is that it is now not cold after dark.  This caught me utterly by surprise the other night - I was sitting on the front patio, knitting, and wondering why it seemed so strange to be sitting and knitting outside after dark, and I realized - it was because I wasn't cold.  That said, I hate humidity, and I'd rather need to wear this sweater after dark to stay warm.

I managed to find exactly the right buttons in Grandmom's button box, too.  That made me very happy.  So, all in all, too big or not, I think this will be worn.  Just a quick reprise:  this is Anne Hanson's India Print Henley, from Ann Budd's new top-down sweater book.  I knitted it out of Fibranatura Flax, seven skeins, and just barely made it.  I love the pattern - it's a lot of fun, and because it is knitted from the top down, there is absolutely not a single itty-bitty bit of seaming to be done.  Happy day!

I spent the better part of the morning working on another kind of project altogether.  I should say at the outset that gardening is not one of my strong suits.  I love fresh produce, and I adore cooking with fresh herbs, but if living things can't jump up and down and demand to be fed, I tend to forget about them.  (This means that pets and kids do just fine in my house - plants, not so much.)

(In fact, by way of quick proof, look at how well the chickens are growing!)(That is not their coop; it is their mobile chicken run, which allows them to be out in various parts of the yard during the day without us worrying about cats/hawks/dogs getting to them.  Once they are fully-grown, they may not need it, but they are not, and they do.)

I have a garden bed that I dug out of the gravel parking pad the previous owners of the house had laid (cutting down two producing peach trees, if you can believe), but it's down the driveway, and easy for me to forget about, and given my aforementioned issue with keeping plants alive, and plants' demonstrated inability to make loud noises to attract attention, well.  You can imagine.

There is an odd bit of space by our front walk that up until recently had been the home of many of the kinds of plants that the previous owner liked - palmy, subtropical-y types of things (not my cup of tea)(in fact, he had a habit of layering such plants in front of the plants that were already in the yard, which means that we have a half-acre of wildly over-planted property, and that I dislike half the plants we have; alas, they are often the plants that Rick likes).  In the ten years since we've moved in, it had gotten immensely overgrown, and was utterly dominated by a sago palm that was at least six feet in diameter (I am not exaggerating here)(the sago took up almost the whole space on the left of the picture below, between the post and the black pot).  Not only that, but all the growth was utterly blocking any light from getting into the room that is Rick's office (you can see that window in the second picture).  So I decided it was time to clear it out.  This worried Rick, for whom change is a bit daunting, but I convinced him (it helped that we decided to try transplanting the sago, so it felt less like whole-sale destruction).  I should have taken a before picture, but once we got it cleared out, this is what I was left with.

(Note: I still couldn't convince Rick that we needed to get rid of that camellia.  He just could not let go.)

(Note also: I do not like that camellia.  It was sort of trellised, and it kind of looks like a bas-relief bush.  I don't much like bas-relief bushes, they seem odd to me.  Also, it feels like it's lurking there just as you come in the gate, waiting to mug you with waxy leaves - not welcoming.)

I spent yesterday gathering things - plants, soil, pots, etc, - and once Rick headed out for a bike ride this morning, this bit of space and I spent some quality time together.  I pruned the camellia.  (And now, of course, that I spend blood sweat and tears trying to get it under control without getting rid of it, Rick agrees with me that it really doesn't belong there.)  I planted and potted things.  I arranged and rearranged.  At the end of several hours of work, I ended up with this.

 It's got some filling in to do, of course, and there are plans to add more plants.  The goal is to have California natives and herbs, mostly perennials.  That path in front leads straight to the front door, whence there is a straight shot to the kitchen.  This means fresh herbs for me!

 So far, there are two kinds of thyme, sage, terragon, lemon verbena, both culinary and not-so-culinary lavender, garlic, and lemon balm.  More will go in next week.  I also have several California natives, like sea grass, and a low-growing manzanita, things like that.  The plan is to put some Douglas irises and blue-eyed grass in, too, in that corner to the right.  I think this is going to be much better once it's grown up some.  Time will tell.

 Meanwhile, I have cast on for another sweater.  This is going to be Scoria, when it's all grown up (assuming I have enough yarn; I am still trying to knit at least some things out of stash, and I had what I'm hoping is a sweater's worth of this yarn stashed away, so here I go).  I am knitting it out of Plymouth Yarn Vita, a cotton/cashmere blend whose virtues I have extolled in the past.  I still love it.  It is my hope that this will become this year's conference sweater - we shall see.

I have also been working in fits and starts on Color Affection.  My gut feeling is that I'd be further along with this if it weren't for the fact that managing the three balls of yarn isn't easy.  It's not so much having three balls on the go that's the issue, as the fact that they're those flat little balls that yarn like this tends to come in, which are worked from the outside in, rather than center-pull.  This means that it's not possible to just have them sit nicely in a bag whilst I knit; they have to be able to roll around.  It makes this less good for knitting in meetings than I'd hoped.

I'm (as you can see) trying something different; I'm knitting this out of Cascade Kid Seta, so it's very fuzzy.  I'm still not sure what I'll think of that in the long run.  In the short term, I'm kind of liking the wrong side even better than the right side.  What do you think?

I've cast on for one more thing, and bought yarn for yet another, but I think those can wait until next time.  It's time to settle down and knit by my incipient garden for now.

Round two

Today's post: Our second summer trip, a knitting project (almost done), a spinning project (done except for soaking), and a few more bits and pieces.

Our second trip of the summer was to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where my SIL has family, and where her family was kind enough to give us all a place to stay for the better part of ten days.  It's hard to go wrong with a view like this:

The kids loved it - they could pretty much do what they liked, when they liked, so they spent lots of time in the water, canoeing, kayaking, swimming, or just hanging out.

We also hiked.

And went to Lake Superior.

Lake Superior never ceases to amaze me.  It's just so...big.

And really, really cold.  Which didn't stop the girls from going in.

Brrr...  I preferred playing with rocks.

Oh!  And I learned to drive an outboard!  No photographic evidence, though.  (I know, this is not a big deal if you are a person who grew up around lakes, but I didn't.  So it was.)

It was an awesome week.  We do not get to spend enough time with Rick's brother and sister-in-law, or with our niece, so having a whole week together (and we got to have our niece out here with us for ten days before that!) was an absolute treat.  Younger Daughter and our niece get along like a house on fire, and spent three weeks together happily.  Do you ever have the sense, even as something is happening, that this is one of those things that your kids will remember later?  That's how I felt about this trip, and about having our niece here beforehand; days at the beach, going to the movies, boogie boarding (an achievement for my niece, on the list of the summer's achievements - she got really good at riding those waves!).  I always feel lucky when I recognize those moments even as they're happening, and so get to feel grateful both for the moment, and for the memory that it will be.

Younger Daughter also achieved a long-held goal this summer.  She became the proud owner of five chickens.

This is an older photo; they now have all their feathers and are, as of today, probably ready to start living in their coop full-time (until now, they've spent nights in a smaller cage with a brooder lamp on them).  I should also say that the girls did nearly all of the building work on the coop, too, working from the directions that came with it.  They're pretty proud.

As for me, I picked up a long-languishing sweater, with which I am (finally!!) almost done.  I started it last summer, when I couldn't talk about it yet.  But the pattern is out, so it's fair game, and I'm almost done with it (hooray!).  It's the India Print Henley, by Anne Hanson, in Ann Budd's new book The Knitter's Handy Book of Top-Down Sweaters, which I think I will have to get.  I don't have a picture of the whole sweater yet, but here's the body:

I am finishing the second sleeve now, and then it's all done except for weaving in the ends (I already did the button bands and collar).  I'm pushing it hard on the yarn (which is why I did the button bands, etc, before the sleeves, figuring if I had to go to 3/4 sleeves, that would work), but I think I'm going to make it.  The pattern is fabulous, but what's slowed me down on this sweater is the yarn - I'm knitting it from Fibranatura Flax, in a lovely lime-green color.  I know I'll love it once it's done (I already washed the body, actually, because it looked too big, and I wanted to be sure that my swatch wasn't lying to me before I knitted the rest, and it's softened up beautifully), but it is tremendously hard on my hands to knit with, and it makes all the muscles in my shoulders tighten up.  So I haven't been able to make myself do the kind of marathon knitting that I usually do at this stage of sweater development.  Today may be the day, though.  I'm sooooo close...

Last weekend, I also got through a spinning project that I have long been contemplating, with some fiber that I bought nearly two years ago at Lambtown.

Lovely, isn't it?  That's a two-ply yarn, heavy fingering weight (I think - it still needs to be washed).  One ply is spun out of 100% Bombyx Silk, dyed by Dreamy Goat Design Studio with natural dyes, and the other ply is spun out of a superfine merino/bombyx/tussah blend, also dyed by Dreamy Goat Design Studio; both were spun worsted.  I spun the 100% silk from the fold, which I guess means it's not a purely worsted-spun yarn, but it helped tremendously with drafted and control.  What you can't see in that picture is that there are shades of green and blue in among the more dominant osage orange.  I love it.  It looks antique.  There were 2.5 ounces of the bombyx, and 2 of the blend, so I had some silk left over, which is spun up in that little skein on the bottom.  I have about 400 yards of the mixed two ply, and a bit less than 100 of the pure silk two ply.  I will need to find some kind of beautiful shawl pattern that will allow me to put in the occasional row of the 100% silk, don't you think?

And that's nearly all the news that's fit to report.  Last Monday, Older Daughter started her sophomore year in high school (!!), and Younger Daughter started middle school (which is grades 6-8 here), and I took over as department chair (probably best not to talk about that, but let's just say that "congratulations" is probably a less-appropriate response than, "ooooohhhhhhh.....").  Tomorrow, classes start. 

But today, the sun is shining, I have some chicken wire to buy and make into a portable run, and a sweater to finish.  It's all good.