A New Series

Back in March and April of last year I did a couple of series, one on spam e-mails (which quickly ran out of steam, since they are so repetitive) and one tracking the blooming of an amaryllis, which would have been much more attractive had my camera been, well, not crappy (it was crappy in a bad way, not in a good, artistic way).

I've been thinking for awhile about doing another series, but a more deliberate and ongoing one. I love where I live and while I can be a bit of a complainer, often cranky, and depressed, the colors and textures of the country rarely fail to bring me joy. As I've thought about how to convey this place, the way I am seeing it has been changing, I'm seeing more detail and more color. I think the first days of Spring is an appropriate time to begin, so here is the first in an occasional, as-yet-to-be-titled series:

I live 35 miles from where I work. There a couple of ways to get there, one is the highway which has the advantage of speed but the disadvantage of Traffic. The other is The Back Way. It's slower and has about 3 miles of dirt road which, before it is graded in the spring threatens to take out my tiny little Escort. But it is so pretty and there is much less traffic than the highway. When we moved out there, I thought I would hate the commute. I don't, I love the drive.

Letting Go

My aunt Ann is dying. This has been true for a couple of years -- she has a particularly virulent form of Parkinson's and is being systematically robbed of the use of her body. I don't know what to say about it, really. I didn't know her well; she is my mother's sister and because I grew up with my father and stepmother, I saw her side of the family mostly at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

My mother left yesterday to spend a month in Florida with aunt Ann, my uncle Con and cousin Barb. She will travel back to Michigan with them at the end of April, where, hopefully, home health will be set up and waiting. I am very sad. Sad for my mom, and my uncle and cousin. But sad, especially, for my aunt.

I sent Icarus with my mom. I thought that, at the very least, Ann's shoulders could be warmed by something beautiful. I told my mother to remember, when she sees the shawl to hold Ann's hand and to give her some comfort.

Spring!

This morning it was 30 degrees and we had rain, snow, and sleet in various combinations. But yesterday:

There is something about stuff that I planted months ago coming out of the ground that makes me feel. Optimistic. You know?

Yarn Love

But first things first. I had intended to send my sister an e-mail, but I think it should be a more public announcement (no, not that. Not that either): despite the lack of blogging about it, and the lack of pictures, I have started the Bath Mat. I know, you're dying of excitement. But I have to say, I am pretty pleased with how it is coming out. I decided early on that I wanted to do a striped mat, and since one of the yarns Sarah picked is variegated, the stripes needed to be wide. I remembered a discussion about a number sequence (Fibonacci) from an old listserv I was on (Aranknit) and did some calculating (unusual for me) and am now several inches in. It's oddly compelling, for garter stitch. So, Sarah, you will be getting a mathematically and aesthetically pleasing bath mat in the not-to-distant future.

And now for the yarn love:

I dyed these two skeins this weekend. I'm head-over-heels in love with the colors.

They have shades of the grayish color in common, so my plan (for now) is to measure out a long enough warp for two scarves and paint it with that color. Then (someday) I will weave these up into scarves, which I may or may not be able to part with. As much of that 10/2 cotton I have, I think everyone in my life will be getting some hand dyed, hand woven something or other.

Icarus!

I finished the knitting more than a week ago (here it is in it's unblocked state), and finally got to the blocking this weekend:

Isn't it lovely? I say that not to pat my own back, but as a tribute to such an elegant design.

My camera, as usual, failed to capture the blood red color and the perfection of the yarn (for that we would need Feel-o-Vision): it is Alpaca with a Twist Fino (70% alpaca, 30% silk, yum!)

Simon has no appreciation for my hard work.

In celebration, I finally made it up to Threadbear this weekend and bought (most of) the yarn for Meg Swanson's Fair Isle Cardigan (the sweater doesn't have a name but it needs one). The shop didn't have enough of one of the main colors (Rye), luckily they had already placed an order for the yarn, so I may not have to wait for a very long time.

Knitting News

Len's hat is finished:

Luckily, I wrote down the decreases: the first time Len tried on the hat, it was too short. I tried to convince him otherwise, but he wasn't going for it. Len's head is 22" around and this hat fits him pretty tightly, and is meant to have two folds and it sits just above his ears. Here are the particulars:

Yarn: Fortissima 100 Socka, one 100 gm. ball should be enough for 2 hats.
Needles: Size 2, 16" circular and/or double points
Cast on 168 stitches. Join and knit in K3, P3 rib for 7.5 inches. I started the stripe at 3", but it would have worked better had I started at 3.5". The decreases were worked as follows:

Round 1: *Knit 10 in pattern, p2tog
Round 2: *K3, P3, K3, P2
Round 3: *K3, P1, P2tog, K3, P2
Round 4: *K3, P2
Round 5: *K3, P2, K3, P2tog
Round 6: *K3, P2, K3, P1
Round 7: *K3, P2tog, K3, P1
Round 8: *K3, P1, K3, P1
Round 9: *K3, P1, K2, P2tog
Round 10: *K2, P2tog, K2, P1
Round 11: *K2, P1, K1, P2tog
Round 12: *K1, P2tog, K1, P1
Round 13: *K1, P1, K2tog
Round 14: *K2tog, K1
Round 15: *K2tog
Round 16: *K2tog
repeat from *
Thread stitches through remaining stitches and pull tight. Weave in all ends.

And there you are. A little beanie. The really stupid thing is that I can't remember my own phone number, but I could remember these decreases. When I knit the blue version of this, I had to futz around a lot with the decreases and it still ended up a little pointy at the top, so this time I stopped the non-decrease rounds as soon as the original purl stitches were eaten up (at round 9). The crown is a bit too gathered looking for me when it is off of Len's head, but fits him well enough.

**********
Comment: Thanks for you comment, Valerie. The long the skein hangs in my bathroom the happier with it I am. I think there is some sort of Psych 101 process going on there. I think the yarn will be for weaving -- probably a weft in a twill variation. That's what it's saying to me right now, anyway!

Bad Dye Job

On Sunday, I did my first hand painting with the Procion dyes. Hand squirting is more like it, since I used squeeze bottles.

It's been hanging in my bathroom ever since. By the way, the silver sponged on gray walls? I did not do that, I just haven't gotten around to repainting. The yarn colors are two purples, a blue of some shade or other, and something that came out much more orange than I had intended. I was really hating the colors (which are more intense in the above picture than in reality) until a co-worker sent me a web page of Hundertwasser posters. Suddenly purple, blue and orange makes sense.

However, all is not well. I didn't let the yarn sit long enough before rinsing the dye out, so the color isn't as saturated as I would like, and the orange doesn't play well with others so the colors mixed in a less than attractive way.

I think a way to fix the problem of colors not playing well together is to make sure they share at least one color component. In this case, the purples and blue share navy blue, and the purples have fuchsia and a splash of black. The orange, on the other hand, has carmine red and golden yellow. I might have been happier had I used fuchsia instead of red. Oh well. Dye and learn.

Ugh. That was very bad. Sorry.

Adventures in Dyeing

Bad title rip-off and kind of bad dyeing, too.

Here are the jars of dye as they appeared on Sunday. The difference in color saturation was significant, especially between the dye using distilled water and the dye using unsoftened water.

On Sunday, I used the distilled water dye. I took the plastic wrap off of the gallon jar I was using and shoved just over 2 ounces of Paton's Classic Merino (cream) in and let it sit for about 40 minutes or so. When I did this a year ago, I had too much yarn for the amount of dye and the color was sucked up immediately. That was not the case here, the ammonia/water never went entirely clear. The color you see above (depending on your monitor) is fairly close to the color of the yarn and there are some other views in Flickr. The yarn came out quite mottled -- the jar was too small to allow for even distribution -- but over the last few days the color has been evening out.

On Monday I worked on the dye using my parent's (softened, but very sulphuric) water. This time I pour the stuff into a larger bucket (appropriately, a cat litter bucket, if you must know) and the color is more evenly distributed. It's maybe a little lighter, but essentially the same color.

The other dye, using our own unsoftened well water, has seemed too light to use. Tuesday night I poured some of it off and added more ammonia. That seems to have brought out more blue from the pennies. I dye with it this weekend. If you are thinking about doing this, let me offer one piece of advice: do it outside. The smell. My god.

While playing with the penny dye, I've also been fooling around Procion dyes. After talking to Stef the other night, it turns out I've been using an unorthodox method (read, my own Dumbass-Instruction-Melding Method). In any case, I've managed to get a nice saturation, and the colors, while somewhat unexpected, are pretty enough. I don't really intend to get serious about dyeing, so I will probably make a couple of alterations to my dumbass method (to cut down on dye waste) and continue. To what end, you ask? I don't know. Knitting avoidance?

One Eye Down

I finished the first Tiger Eye sock sometime last week. This was my first experience with a toe-up construction. It has been a learning experience. The second sock will benefit greatly.

This is not even close to the correct color. Think very dark purple, almost black.

The heel called for a standard heel flap and gusset, which I really disliked, both in execution and looks. So I ripped it out and knit a short row heel (based on Priscella's Dreams Socks in an old Interweave Knits and now in IK's Favorite Socks). I pretty much had to hope they would fit because once I turned the heel, I couldn't get the sock on, though I suppose I could have threaded it onto some waste yarn. Once I had knit the specified 5.5" of the leg I cast off using the chrocheted picot cast off. It took several attempts, most of an afternoon and a great deal of foul language, but it was very pretty. Except it was so tight, I couldn't get it over my toes. So I ripped the crochet out. Len suggested I put it away for a few days. He was maybe a little afraid.

That evening, I decided to use the ribbing that goes up the back of the sock all the way around and cast off normally. That was fine, but I decided the leg was too short. So I ripped out the cast off, once again, and added another repeat. While I was knitting the extra repeat, it occurred to me that I may have seen a knitted picot cast off. So I dragged out my trusty Vogue Knitting and there it was. A knitted picot cast off. It took a couple of attempts, but I am very pleased with the results.

Queer Joe once wrote that knitting doesn't take patience, it takes tenacity. This sock is proof.

Oscar Night

I have an unnatural love for the Academy Awards. It would a more natural love if I actually saw most of the nominated movies. But rare are the years that I see even one of them. Len sometimes imagines that I had a Life before him, that I went to movies and he has made me very boring. It is so very untrue. I never went to movies before him, I rarely even rented them. For good or ill, we are well suited.

But, I do love the Oscars, the dresses, the pomp, the pompous. The ceremony is annoying, funny, stupid and it really hasn't been the same since Cher quit showing up in her Bob Mackie finery. This year I had decided that I wouldn't watch, but I got sucked in anyway. This morning it dawned on me: I don't watch for the glamour, the awards, the movies, or even the really bad dresses. I watch because the show reminds me of someone who used to be my best friend. The last vestige of an old friendship. I imagine that he is watching, too, and wishes he could call me and say, "Can you believe that costume Cher is wearing? What is she thinking!?"

Weaving on the Inkle Loom

I finally figured out how to weave the brocade pick up on the inkle loom (or least the method I'm using seems to produce the most reasonable effect). Essentially, the main weft (teal) and the pattern weft (white) go through the same shed:

See? A cute little flower! My hope is that once the piece is cut off and washed, it will not be so elongated. My plan now is to weave a whole lot of bookmarks. There is a bunch of Procion MX dye on the way to my house, so the bookmarks will not be all teal and white; they will be teal and Something Else. I'm planning for the weaving to go quickly (hahahaha!!) because I have wire. And a plan.

Also, it seems that I have extended myself rather far into Knitting for Other People. My sister, Sarah seems to be expecting that bath mat rather sooner than later, especially now that I have the yarn. Len's father is expecting a hat. Len's sister is expecting/hoping for hats for her twins. My other sister, Krista, is hoping very much for a new scarf (and as much as I hate knitting those things, I really don't like the first one I knit for her). Who else? My intention has been to be a selfish knitter. It isn't working!

Actual Knitting Progress

It's been awhile since I posted anything about knitting (ah, January 31st. I've finished that sock and will tell the sordid details in a future post -- I'm still recovering). I also have only four more rows on the last chart of Icarus to go. Once I finish this shawl, I've promised myself a trip to Yarn Heaven (otherwise known as Threadbear). And I have been making progress on Len's hat:

For the moment it is just a tall, skinny tube. In about an inch I will start trying to figure out the decreases. I will, maybe, write down what I do, so that the next time I won't have to try to figure it out again. That would be the intelligent thing to do.

Lazy Sunday

More Penny Dye

A year ago (to the day, it turns out), I posted about penny dyeing. The recipe I was following said that the color would be different depending on the water used. Len (he has some interest in chemistry and has only used that interest for nefarious purposes) and I decided to put that statement to the test:

From left to right: Distilled water, water from my Dad and Stepmother's house (they have some really sulpherous water, and our own unsoftened water. I started the dye less than a week ago, so we have some time to go.

You might wonder why we are using the pre-1982 pennies rather than the more easily obtained copper pipe. Good question! I don't have an answer. Just seemed like cheating, somehow. Now that we have about 300 pennies for this job, I don't think we need more, but it is hard not to go through every handful of change looking for old pennies. What can I say? I am a nerd.

I Didn't Mean to Miss Valentine's Day

...but I did. I was in the process of writing a post yesterday, from my not-very-snowed-in house, but I was kicked off the internet and I didn't particularly want to fight with the connection. Now that we pay for it, our connection has gotten a lot better -- the university used to provide dial-up service to students, faculty and staff for free, but now that dial-up is going the way of 8-track technology no one wants it anymore and the U doesn't provide it anymore. We live in the country so our choices are extremely expensive satellite, some sort of radio signal do-hickey (also expensive) and dial-up. We're too cheap to pay very much for internet, especially since Len only uses it to buy records and I don't use the computer at home. It turns out the service you pay for has made it into the standard cassette tape era and isn't so bad. Except when it kicks me off.

Don't you love it when you have to put up with a long, completely pointless aside?

What I had intended to say, yesterday, before I was so rudely disconnected, was that I am not a Valentine's Day fan. I'm sure that comes as a big shock. I spent way too many years not-very-happily single to find much meaning in the Hallmark presentation of romance. To the contrary, I found the pressure to coupledom quite hurtful. Now, I just find the All Women Want Chocolate/Diamonds/Flowers/Stuffed Bears called The Love Bandit offensive. The most romantic gift I've ever gotten was an atlas from Len during our first year together, I had mentioned in passing that I would like to have one and was blown away that he remembered. Last weekend he spent several hours out in the freezing cold, replacing the alternator in my car so I wouldn't have to take it to the dealership. That's the stuff of Love.

Here are a couple of my favorite quotes on love:

"Love is not a game
Love is not a toy
Love's no romance"
--From "Congratulations"
Paul Simon

And this is from a piece I heard many years ago on NPR, it was a conversation between Matthew Broderick and the playwright, Wendy Wasserstein. They were talking about broken hearts and Wasserstein said this at the end:

"I do find the thought that two people can fall in love really humane. I remember, when I was writing The Sisters Rosensweig, that was my thought that here was this woman who was all closed up, and someone comes into her life and that she- It just seemed terrible human-"

It struck me as such a lovely thought, that love is both humane and human. Unfortunately, NPR doesn't have this archived.

And on a completely different topic: George Clooney has sent me an e-mail offering me a "lucrative part time job"! Yes, I'm very excited too. It seems "the job takes less than 5 hours a week and it a mean by which you can increase your weekly income by about $500 weekly". So if you don't hear from me for a while, that's where I'll be. Swooning at George's feet. With a Love Bandit.

Pick Up Attempts

No no. Not men (I never was any good at that), weaving pick-up. And, it turns out, I'm not much good at that either.

I dragged out my inkle loom again, after many, many months of languishing. I put the warp on during last year's Oscars, so it hasn't been quite a year. Almost immediately, I discovered a warping mishap: I think one warp thread followed the wrong path (here is a picture of a correct warp), it wasn't obvious until I started having a hard time advancing. So I had to cut it off. Darn. So I decided to start playing around with the brocade pick-up technique.

I'm working with cotton yarns, the teal is a 10/2 mill end. It gets fuzzy and sticks to itself. The white in the warp is another mill end labeled 12/3 and it's a little thicker than the teal. In my first pick-up attempt, I used a single strand of the white. It looks stupid. I re-read Bress' instructions; she says to use a thicker, "fluffier" yarn for the pattern weft. So the top bit is some other, unlabeled cotton. It looks a little better, but still not what I'm after. Experiments will continue tonight.

I'm dealing with other deficiencies as well (aside from deficiency of experience or knowledge). I have only one shuttle and someone chewed on it.

A few days ago I listened to the Inklings episode of WeaveCast. Robyn Spady mentioned weaving with 30 gauge wire. Now I want to rip this warp off and put wire on. My head is spinning: what about beads? what about pick-up? maybe I could take a soldering iron to the thing after weaving and create other textures. Maybe I should actually learn how to use my inkle loom before I start putting strange new warps on?

Snow

Molly Ivins

Molly Ivins died yesterday. She was funny, biting, with a healthy dose of righteous anger and an amazing amount of optimism. Read her archive. You'll understand.

Insert Non-Cliche Title Here

Titles. Feh. Especially because what I have to tell you about today is so very ripe for a bad cliche.

Under Construction

I stayed home from work, yesterday and started the Tiger Eye socks from Socks, Socks, Socks. The yarn is Louet Gems Pearl, in Eggplant, and the needles are #2's. I'm a little concerned that the #2's are a bit big for the yarn (I don't remember what the pattern calls for, but it is certainly a sock weight); the knitting looks fine, but I'm concerned that these could wear out more quickly (the density that smaller needles lend the fabric makes socks more durable). How concerned am I? Not enough to rip these out and finding a heavier weight yarn, or to do the work necessary to go down a needle size (I've already tried smaller needles, the sock would have been too small). If they wear out quickly, so be it. Nothing is permanent.

This is a bit closer to the actual color

Now, stop singing "Eye of the Tiger". Seriously. That song will kill brain cells.

Bath Mat!

Since bspinner asked (and my sister is begging for one), here is what I can tell off of my Friday addled brain:

I have used Sugar n' Cream worst weight yarn, doubled, on #10 needles, mostly because I haven't bothered to get #10.5, which would make the knitting more comfortable. I think I will continue to use the #10 needles because I suspect the tightness of the gauge makes the mat a little stronger. I knit using Garter Stitch. The original pattern calls for seed stitch, but I like the cushiness of garter stitch.

The first two mats I knit are 2 colors (2 balls of each color) and checkered. If you have more tolerance for many balls of yarn flying around than I, you can use intarsia. I myself knit 3 strips, 23 stitches each. Knit the first color until relatively square, add the second color and knit that for the same number of rows, repeat the first color. You'll want 2 of these strips, and one in which the colors are reversed. Sew up the strips and Voila! Bathmat!

The balls of Sugar n' Cream I had seemed to be extra large, and I managed to get most of the way to a second mat. This time I just knit 2 rows of each color. It's almost square and I didn't have quite enough yarn to cast off (I cheated, don't tell).