Knit in Public...Columbus too?

This is pretty much a public message to Caterwauler, Knitting Brow, and other central Ohians: what do you think? Is it worth asking Franklin for a customized Columbus Knit In Public Day design?

Which came first: insomnia or inspiration?

Yesterday on Men Who Knit, Hugh Mannity (note pun) wrote that he wanted to make a pair of Fibonacci socks, but he wanted the series to start at the heel and work outwards in both directions.

Yarmando is intrigued. A strange construction method and design-by-math?

I was lying awake at 3:00 a.m. thinking what ways could be used to start socks at the heel. When Dodger had his usual midnight snot attack (Wouldn't it be great if cats could just blow their nose? Or if you could just give them Sudafed?) I got up and tried a couple of the ideas out. I think I see how it can be done.

One way is to do your favorite tubular cast-on (mine is Turkish), knit your favorite short-row heel, and then begin knitting your tube. On the first round, knit half a round in waste yarn. You then either knit up towards the ankle or down towards the toe. When you're finished, remove the waste yarn, pick up the freed stitches, and knit the other half of your sock.

Another method that works but is significantly more cumbersome and confusing (particularly at 4:00 a.m. and with the "magic loop" method -- better to do it with double points I think) is this one: after knitting your heel, put aside half your stitches on a string holder. With your working yarn and a strand of waste yarn, work a provisional cast-on (alternative directions) for the required number of stitches -- at least half of your circumference, more if you want a roomier instep. Connect back up with the live stitches on the opposite side from where you started the provisional cast-on, and then continue knitting either down the foot or up the ankle, reducing any extra instep stitches you added.

Yeah, this is all too much trouble and offers no advantages over other sock construction methods. But it was an interesting experiment to work through when I couldn't sleep.

Sock Leftovers Scarf

I started this scarf in January, 2005, and it was one of the first things I wrote about when I started this blog. It sits untouched for months at a time, and now I really want to buckle down, finish it, and get it out of my life.

To that end, I've moved it up into the study, where I intend it to be the "official" project for that room. While I sit at the computer and listen to my favorite podcasts, or catch up on the television shows that I missed and have to download (yes, I recognize I'm stepping into a gray area of copyright ethics), this is the project I intend to work on.

Of course, I have to remember that knitted things must be picked up after I've taken pictures of them. This morning, Dodger decided that the scarf was another cat bed.

Oh, yeah...I still knit

I notice I haven't posted any knitting pictures lately. Here are the socks I'm currently working on.

Aren't they gorgeous? I've tossed the label already, but I think the colorway is called "Water" from Cherry Tree Hill. I love the feel of the tightly spun merino. Because Mom raved about the fit of the afterthought heel following Dawn Brocco's adaptation, I thought I'd also see if I could do Brocco's version of the star/round toe (but toe-up, of course). Pretty easy -- I just increase at six points every round until I got to 24 stitches on my needles, then increase every third round until I get to the desired circumference (in this case, 60 stitches on size 2 needles). I like it, and I think it will feel better on the toes than the more usual banded toe (here pictured, but since frogged and reknit).

Lead me not into YouTube

One of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life was my friend Russell and his roommate Jim lip-syncing to Whitney and Cissy Houston's duet "I Know Him So Well." There were moments of genius comedy: Jim holding his elbows tight to his sides, clutching the wooden-spoon-microphone, lips quivering artistically; Rus gliding in from stage right, snapping his head forward to fix us with a gaze so serious and earnest it almost read as hostile.

I was reminded of this when I read Sam Anderson's "The Neglected Art of Lip-Syncing" in Slate and followed the links to the work of the Two Chinese Boys. Their performance of "I Want It that Way" is magnificently funny.

I need to stay away from YouTube. If I'm not careful, I will spend all week watching amateur video.

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Update:
Remember the Jello Obelisk of Sethi's Jubilee from this year's 10 Commandments Party? I've uploaded to YouTube the messy video of it being set into place.

Time to try a cardigan?

You have got to check out brooklyn tweed's amazing Urban Aran Cardigan.

Cardigans never appealed to me, but I think I need to make one of these. Paton should pay him for rights to the alterations and publish it as a separate pattern.

Unfortunately, it's not going to look as good on me. Too bad long, skinny bodies weren't all the rage when I had one.

When it absolutely, positively has to be there at a time convenient to us

What good is a blog if you can't bitch impotently about minor inconveniences?

First, the good news. Verizon doesn't seem to define "family" narrowly, so I upgraded to FamilyShare to combine my wireless bill with Mike's, and added a line (yes, they call them "lines") for his mom. I had the bright idea to get her a Migo since she wouldn't really be able to work the number pad. (Pause while I chuckle at the image of a legally blind senior citizen trying to text message.)

So far so good. Everything transferred fine; I see the two additional numbers in my on-line customer account.

I got home from work yesterday to find a FedEx tag stuck to the door. I can pick up the packages after 5:00 or they'll try to deliver it again on Monday. No problem, I thought, I'll just go pick them up on Saturday.

BZZZT!

They're not open on the weekend. I can't imagine why not. I mean, it's perfectly acceptable to me that they won't try to deliver a low priority package on the weekend, but shouldn't I at least be given the option of picking it up?

As Little Edie says, "This is the worst thing to happen ever in the history of America."

Wikipedia Birthday Meme

Duffy and Mel have piqued my curiosity, so I'll pass along the Wikipedia Birthday Meme. The chore is to visit Wikipedia, look up your birth month and day (no year), and post three events, three people who were born, and three people who died on that day.

On December 6, we find:

Events

• 1849 - American abolitionist Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery.
• 1933 - U.S. federal judge John M. Woolsey rules that the James Joyce novel Ulysses is not obscene.
• 1947 - The Everglades National Park in Florida is dedicated.

Births

• 1900 - Agnes Moorehead, American actress (d. 1974)
• 1958 - Nick Park, British filmmaker and animator
• 1971 - Ryan White, American AIDS activist (d. 1990)

Deaths

• 1352 - Pope Clement VI (b. 1291)
• 1889 - Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America (b. 1808)
• 1993 - Don Ameche, American actor (b. 1908)

Give it a try. It's harder to narrow down to just three than you might think. And if you're introspective and given to such things, you might wonder what it says about you that you'd choose to list Endora over scientists, artists, religious leaders, and heads of state.

Kakuro: the next level

For the first time last month I saw a sudoku book that also included kakuro puzzles. I was not interested -- "Sudoku with the addition of math? Why would I want to do that?"

Well, I've just now completed my first two kakuro puzzles. The trick seemed to be starting with the places where two squares add up to 3, 4, 16, or 17.

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Update: 4:40 pm

OK, now I'm hooked. I bought a book of puzzles from Borders and I've completed the first 9. And the trick isn't just looking for those sets of two that I mentioned before; you really need to be able to recognize the combinations of three numbers that make up 6, 7, 23, & 24. Or the four numbers that will add up to 10, 11, 29, & 30. Or the five numbers that....

Yeah. So I'm probably not going to stay hooked. I can solve the easy puzzles fairly quickly as long as I consult a chart of kakuro blocks first and make notes. If I don't do that, I keep wondering why I can't make 8+3+9 = 21.

Logic is easy. Arithmetic is hard. Still, if this keeps me from getting Alzheimer's disease, it's probably worth the private humiliation of not being able to do 2nd grade math in my head.

Oh Moses, Moses, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool!

Mike had enjoyed watching The Ten Commandments at Easter/Passover before I met him, but I think it took the addition of me and our friend Julianna to turn this event into performance art. From the pompous introduction by Cecil B. DeMille to the reference to the Lost Ark of the Covenant at the end, this movie is one, long, participatory celebration for us. We eagerly await our favorite lines, delivered with gusto by this cast of brilliant hams. We cheer as Yul Brynner flourishes his cape, as Anne Baxter slinks and purrs and rages. We love how Charlton Heston over-pronounces his consonants when he says "God" (sounds like "ihGGahDDuh"). By the time we reach the Exodus, we're exhausted from laughter, and we usually watch much of the rest of the movie on fast forward. We pay no attention at all to the actual delivery of the 10 commandments; for us, the movie is effectively over when Rameses returns from the Red Sea, and instead of killing Nefretiri, drops into his throne, and the two stare blankly forward, defeated.

In 1995, Julianna showed up with a theme dessert: a Red Sea of Jello and Cool Whip, parted by a paper Moses standing at one end. The Jello creation immediately became the centerpiece of our holiday tradition. Most of these have been photographed,* so I have used them to create my first Flickr set. The exhibit is best viewed by scrolling to the bottom of the page and working your way up. Enjoy!

*Sadly, no photographic record remains of 2001's creation of the Hounds and Jackals board game, or of 1997, our one departure from "The Ten Commandments" to watch "Ben Hur" (Julianna created, of course, the chariot race in Jello).

Melpomene Socks

In her essay The Knitting Muse, the fabulous Brenda Dayne explores how each of the nine classical Muses watches over our knitting. So today, I want to give a shout out to Melpomene, muse of Tragedy.

She teaches humility, and will give you the courage to rip out large chunks of knitting, and help you appreciate that the best thing about knitting is that most errors are fixable. She wears a raglan garment that is knit from the top down, which she continues to rip out and rework, even as she wears it.

In honor of Melpomene, I wear this tragically ugly sock as I re-knit it.

Don't we experience tragedy because of our hubris? I thought I could cut out the short-row heel pick up the stitches, and knit an afterthought heel with no problem. I should've known better than to tempt the Fates with my o'er-weening pride. The first sock ended up too short, the heel instructions from the KnitPicks pattern resulting in a stunted little heel that clearly will not do.

Something went horribly wrong with picking up heel stitches for the second sock, and I somehow ended up with 70 stitches on my needles (instead of the expected 56). This would've left me with a bizarrely misshapen sock with a hunchback for a heel. Nothing to be done but start over.

But I think good will come of this. A new "Toe-Up Socks" class plan is forming in my head, one without the steep learning curve of my existing class.

Another action alert

The Human Right Campaign is alerting its troops that Senator Frist, prompted by Senator Santorum, intends to force a vote on the "Marriage Protection Amendment" in early June. We are all asked to take action.

I did, but I'm tired of this crap. So instead of leaving the HRC boilerplate text, I wrote this:

I have lived with and loved a man for fifteen years. This relationship shapes my life and gives it meaning. I cannot understand why anyone feels that this poses such a threat to the social order that it must be legally negated in the very document that makes our country real.

If my government honestly believes that I should be singled out for discrimination in the Constitution, then I see no choice but to seek citizenship elsewhere. I find this unutterably sad, because I love this country and the Constitutional principles that I believe make it great. I even had hope that the Federal Government would someday undo the discrimination now written into Ohio's Constitution. But a "Marriage Protection Amendment" mocks the call to establish justice and to secure the blessings of liberty. I will truly understand, then, that I am not welcome here.

I don't know which is worse: that our leaders are ignorant bigots, or that they're merely pandering to ignorant bigots to win elections.

Marital status

Back in the 1990's, when I was the manager of the library's children's department, a patron requested that we get the controversial book Daddy's Roommate. There's a picture in the book of the eponymous Daddy and Roommate sitting on the couch, watching TV, with a bowl of popcorn between them. "There," I said. "That's it. That's the real picture of the 'gay lifestyle.' And do you know what's on that TV? Mary Tyler Moore reruns."

Today I bought the third season of the Mary Tyler Moore Show on DVD, and when Amazon offered me a three month trial to their Amazon Prime service, I took them up on it. (I'm not sure it's going to be worth $79 a year, but three months of free two-day shipping? Seems worth a try.) Amazon says the benefit can be shared with "up to four family members living in the same household," so I followed the steps to invite Mike into the service. I was momentarily fearful when I saw I was going to have to label our relationship from a pre-arranged list, but I'm pleased that "Unmarried partner" is one of the options.

I hate forms that ask me for marital status. It's almost never relevant information, and there is seldom a selection that applies. (No, I'm not married; that's unconstitutional. But you can't seriously think I'm single; Mike and I have been together for nearly 16 years.) So hurray for Amazon.com. I'm almost grateful enough to pay them the $79 just for this momentary feeling of validation.

Knitting in transit

I flew to Boston last week to attend a conference, then took the train up Maine to spend the weekend with my sister. Usually trips like these provide an occasion to do lots of reading, and while I did read one book, I spent much of my travel time working on this pair of socks.

Made from Steinbach Wolle "Stapaz Cotton Effekt." My mom prefers cotton socks, and I like this yarn more than some others I've used, but I'm not thrilled with this colorway. I also think the heels would look better using the after-thought heel method.

The book was Counting Heads by David Marusek. It's the first book reviewed in the new science fiction column "Across the Universe" in the New York Times Book Review. The review wasn't glowing, but I was intrigued enough to give this a try. Densely imaginative, with nanotech, artificial intelligence, cloning, medical immortality, and a planet colonization subplot, it reminded me a bit of Neil Stephenson's Diamond Age. I liked the short story that began the novel, but I thought that later the book gets cluttered, and our emotional attention shifts too much to really care about anyone in the end (kind of like "Diamond Age," now that I think about it).

While in Maine, I stopped into Halcyon Yarn to pick up a skein for replacing the neck of my enormous green sweater. I finished this sweater in October 2004, and was fretting because it was entirely too big. This was before I started keeping the blog, so I created a "Can this sweater be saved?" webpage and asked for advice from the GLBT-Knit crowd. In exchange for a pair of fingerless gloves, a seamstress did the tailoring work to help make the sweater wearable.

As a sweater, it's still a failure, but it makes a nice, big hiking sweater. The neckline was bad though -- too low and too tight. So I decided to unpick the collar and make a turtleneck in dark gray yarn. The picture documents the wad of unraveled collar yarn, and the new charcoal yarn that will become the turtleneck.

Heel experiments

List-sib John pointed out this pattern for basic ribbed socks using the Sherman heel. I've tried the Sherman heel before; the concept appeals to me, but I've never felt like I quite "got it." I knit one trial sock to see if I liked these directions better.

Took me 6 hours, 40 minutes to knit, a little less than I expected. I think it might be faster to knit one sock at a time. It's beautiful, isn't it? The yarn is Trekking XXL, which Brenda says is like knitter's crack-cocaine. I only picked it up because my aunt said she needed brown socks, and the plain brown was just too boring to contemplate. I thought I could use this yarn for accent stripes, but it cried out to be made into a sock of its own.

The heel isn't bad, but it just didn't feel elegant to me. I decided to try it on a light, sport weight cotton so I could really study the structure and analyze the results.

Then once I started, I couldn't stop, and I kept knitting experimental short-row heels:

• Sherman heel, meticulously following directions
• Sherman heel, twisting the lifted stitches
• PGR heel, with yarn-overs
• Short-row heel with wraps
• Catch method (from the article in Interweave Knits)
• Japanese method

Mike says the picture looks like 6 condom tips.

I think the Japanese method yields the best results. It looks exactly like the PGR heel, with its clean exterior. But fiddling with all the stitch markers was a pain, and I don't see myself making a habit of that technique. I've got a few more experiments I'd like to try, but my prediction is that I'll stick with the PGR heel.

I woke up this morning thinking of a couple other experiments to try.

Sixteen hours of socks and Galactica

I made some mistakes with the stop watch -- I once let it run overnight -- but it looks like it took me about sixteen hours, fifteen minutes to knit these socks.



I find this timing thing interesting, and may try to make a habit of it. I'm wondering now if it takes more or less time to knit socks one at a time.

Most of the ribbing was knit this week while I'm taking a slacker break from work -- vacation time with no plans to go anywhere or do anything. I've had small goals: do laundry, get my car serviced, vacuum the house. My biggest goal was to watch the first season of "Battlestar Galactica." I've avoided the series so far, mostly because I'm bitter that SciFi Channel didn't pick up the option of "Firefly." Every time I see the camera effect of a rapid zoom and clumsy focus on a spaceship, I feel a small twinge of rage. And once again, there appear to be no gay people in space.

But over all, I'm liking it, which I suppose isn't a surprise. The people are all very easy on the eyes; Jamie Barber is too hot to be real, but Aaron Douglas seems more my type. (Hmm, maybe there's a slash fiction pairing of Apollo and Tyrol out there somewhere. Distraught over the whole Sharon thing, Galen turns to Lee for comfort?) The Cylons have this interesting "Blade Runner" vibe going for them. The religious themes are intriguing, as are the politics. And this is probably old news to everyone else in the world, but I think it's cool that the producer provides podcast commentary for each episode. A couple years ago I said I wish there was an easy way for talented amateurs to produce good commentary tracks for movies; podcasting seems to have given us that. I'll have to look into those further.

Sentimental Journey Hat

My friends Aubrey and Charles are up from Florida this week, an opportunity for Aubrey to return to his hometown, drop in on relatives, and reconnect with distant friends. Thursday we went on what I kept calling his "Sentimental Journey" around Marion. We visited the house where he grew up (knocked on the door, but no one was home), the comic book store where he worked after high school, his church, the old downtown theater where he performed in some high school productions. It was a marvelous day, full of synchronicity and surprise encounters. And memories: I've always been struck by how revisiting old haunts causes memories to awaken, almost as if those memories are not in your own mind but are waiting there in the places themselves.

We stopped in a big-box store at the edge of town to buy mints and a hoodie (poor Floridians were finding the above average warmth a little chilly), and Aubrey was about to buy a hat. I couldn't have that. I went to the craft section, bought some thick chenille and size 11 double points, and set off trying to finish a hat for him the car. I failed. First attempt was too tightly cast-on. The second attempt, a top-down creation, was going along fine until stitches got dropped (it was a struggle to fit the entire circumference of the hat securely on four needles).

Still, I'm determined, and at home last night, with superior tools (my 60" Addi size 10 circular), I whipped up this creation.

Mike and I are meeting Aubrey and Charles at the zoo later this morning, where I'll give him the hat. He'll have no use for it in Florida, but it was fun to try making something momentarily useful.

My favorite new memory of his visit: getting styrofoam cups from the comic book store so Aubrey and his sister could take some holy water from the church of their youth. They'll bring this water to the ingathering and water ceremonies at their Unitarian churches later this year.

Edelstein on the Oscars

At the beginning of the year, my favorite film critic David Edelstein left Slate for New York Magazine. He seems to have reigned himself in a bit there, but still worth checking out. He continues his annual Oscar chat with Lynda Obst at his new home. The site design is terrible, and the conversation is difficult to follow chronologically. Here's a list of the messages in order:

• First (Labeled page 4 of 6)
• Second (Labeled page 5)
• Third (Labeled page 2)
• Fourth (Labeled page 3)
• Fifth (Labeled page 6)
• Sixth (Labeled page 1)

The discussion over at Slate between Bryan Curtis, Troy Patterson, and Dana Stevens is worth reading even if Edelstein isn't there.

Mike and I probably won't stay up for it all. Gone are the days when we used to have a party and invite people over. Now it's like the Tonys: something we have on in the background while we do Sudoku puzzles.

Nine hours to the cuff

I'm 9 hours into the "timed sock," and I've just set up the ribbing for the cuff. Progress will be slower from this point on, as K2P2 ribbing just takes longer for me.

I still did the heels one-at-a-time on these socks, but I didn't move them to separate sets of needles -- just let one sock flop there while I worked on the other one. Didn't care for it. It wasn't excessively awkward, but it puts too much weight on the working sock, stretching the stitches where the heel joins at the ankle even more than usual.

Modern, Cool Nerd

I followed the link from Mel's blog and took The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test, which rated me...

Modern, Cool Nerd

65 % Nerd, 69% Geek, 34% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd.

Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and 'geek is chic.' The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)!

I also did one Muppets Personality Test that, no matter how I tweaked my answers, I was Miss Piggy. I think it's rigged. So I did another one, and also came out Miss Piggy. It must be a conspiracy. (Although with a little answer tweaking, I came out Scooter, who seems like a Modern, Cool Nerd to me).

Hiya.

Time trials

I didn't join the Knitting Olympics (Go Team Wales!), preferring mild, stress-relieving projects at this particular point in my life. But oddly enough, I started knitting with a stopwatch at my side this week. This is because a stranger asked how long it takes me to knit a pair of socks, and I realized I have no idea. "A couple weeks," I said, "depending on how much time I have to work on them." But it got me thinking: how long does it take me to knit a pair of socks?

While I'm at it, I thought I'd work on some updates to my preferred sock pattern. I could use some new pictures.

I began with a Turkish cast-on, but onto one circular needle (40 inch, size US3). I tied one end of my yarn (Mountain Colors Bearfoot "Indian Corn") to the flexible cable, held the needle next to the cable, and looped my yarn behind, up over, and around 12 times. Then I tied the second strand on to the bottom cable and made 12 more loops.

Trying to keep the tension tight, I knit across these stitches. When I turn to do the other side, I first dropped the temporary knot off the needle, pulled it tight and held it back out of the way, and knit across the other side of the cast-on loops.

I'm increasing for the banded toes this way:

K1, YO, K up to the last stitch on this sock, YO, K1. Repeat around.

On the next round, you'll twist the yarn-overs so they don't leave holes. Knit the first yarn-over through the back loop. You can do the same to the yarn-over at the other end of the sock, or you can twist it the other way to make mirrored increases. (I find it easiest to drop the yarn-over off the left needle, pick it up again from back to front, then twist the stitch by knitting through the front). This has the same effect as lifted increases, but it's easier to do because the stitches aren't pulled so tight.

It took me about an hour and half to make the toes. Here's a picture of the socks after nearly two hours knitting time.

Librarian 2.0

Yesterday, I drove two and a half hours so that my balding, talking head could be digitized for a library e-learning module about MPOW. Five hours in a car requires an audiobook. I've been wanting to listen to Sarah Vowell's "Assassination Vacation," but no store had it in stock and no library had it available. Not being in the mood to fight the digital rights management battles required to download audiobooks from the library (it's totally not worth it), I was going to settle for what I could find on the local library shelves. Then I remembered that iTunes sells audiobooks. In seconds, I found Assassination Vacation on iTunes, bought it, and downloaded it to my computer and Nano.

The book comes in three parts, each part 2.5 hours long, exactly the time it took to drive from my apartment to the regional library system studio where I was taping. It's like it was Meant To Be.

If I ran a library, I would be looking to see what I could do with this. Not just following the Shifted Librarian's suggestion to buy some iPod shuffles to circulate. How about a public iTunes download station? Let library users set up their 'pods on the station and download a title or two to their own devices? The library could even rip their own CD's to the public iTunes station. Look, you know that iPod owners check out the CD's and rip them to their devices; why don't we just save them the trouble? This isn't total anarchy -- we're librarians: we'll find some way to impose rules.

So it was a "good librarian" day for me. I helped create training for new library workers, I was able to explore new media consumption and imagine how it can be brought into the library environment, and I got to wear my new "Don't make me shush your ass" t-shirt out in public.

Starting Socks

(I long to be an ebullient blogger, freely sharing my ample wit with an adoring public. I wish I were more like Franklin or Marilyn, but I'm just not. Instead, the best I can do is boring shit like this. But to the few who faithfully check back hoping I'll say something interesting, bless you).

I've been thinking a lot (too much?) about the toes of my toe-up socks. My usual method has some drawbacks -- not the fact that I don't really do both socks at once (I complete one toe, set it aside, complete the second, then start working both together). No, the problem is that the short-row method creates a line of loops on the inside. I can feel them with my toes.



Despite my fondness for the Patricia Gibson-Roberts yarn-over method of short rows, I admit that the more traditional "wrapping" of a stitch makes a tighter, cleaner result. I seem only last week to have overcome my learning disability with picking up the wraps correctly.



There are still loops on the inside, but they're smaller.




The breakthrough? It wasn't the Short Row How-To Guide published in the Winter 2004 Interweave Knits. It was the Shortrow Spiral afghan square I contributed to the blanket my list siblings made for Charles.

Show off

"I hear you knit socks," someone said to me before a meeting yesterday. Now there's a conversation starter I can't resist. Kinda brings out the show-off in me too, and yesterday I was prepared: when she went on to say,"Have you seen the new Nancy Bush book?" I pulled out the pair of "Gentleman's Fancy Socks" that I'm working on.



In Mountain Colors Bearfoot, adapted to my preferred toe-up, two at once, Magic Loop method. I love the texture of this stitch with its little, staggered bricks. Simple too: 8 rounds of K2P2 rib, 2 rounds plain knit, 8 rounds of P2K2, and then 2 more plain knit rounds.

Moebius obsession

The second issue of MenKnit is out, and the "Cha Ching Moebius Scarf" was one of those patterns that sent me immediately to the stash to start working on. I was pulled up short when I discovered the pattern doesn't actually explain how to do the Moebius Cast-On unvented by Cat Bohrdi. I've knit moebii before, following instructions like these, but I found it hard to get started and disliked the ridge running through the middle of the scarf. Bohrdi's method is superior: a reviewer at Amazon pretty aptly describes it as "the invisible cast on worked with the circular needle's coil serving as the waste 'yarn.'"

Searching for the yarn that the designer recommends -- Reynold's Odyssey -- I hit six LYS's in two days (central Ohio is a knitter's paradise). No Odyssey to be found, but lots of other yummy substitute possibilities. At the last store, I broke down and bought the Manos that I'd been eyeing everywhere else.



In no time at all, I had 200 stitches cast onto my 60" size 9, and I was off, guided by the toss of six coins (a la I Ching) on this Moebius adventure.



Not bad, but I wasn't completely satisfied. I went ahead and ordered some of the recommended Odyssey on-line, so that's on its way. But too impatient to wait for it, I bought some Mountain Colors Twizzle, a beautiful and soft blend of merino and silk.



No I Ching guidance for this one; just 4 rounds knit, 4 rounds purl, repeated three times. Mike is happy -- he'd been clamoring for a soft purple scarf, and this fits the bill nicely. And it wasn't nearly as boring as the plain garter stitch scarf I thought I'd wind up making him.

I'm kind of in a scarf rut now, with three lingering scarves-in-progress, more moebii planned, and a felted chainmail scarf creation still lurking in the wings. I've also got three pair of socks started and an unfinished sweater: more WIPs than I've ever had.

First FO of the New Year

My first finished objects of the new year are, of course, a pair of socks.



From Bearfoot, on size two. The twisted ribbing pattern is an adaptation of the "Conwy" pattern from Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road (suggested to me by knitting sib DianeinChicoCA).

Wild Thing, I think you're groovy

As I said earlier this month, I wanted to try making a felted King of the Wild Things crown, but I was having trouble getting the recommended pattern gauge. But I decided to just wing it. I used Lopi, which is bulkier than called for, but I liked the colors best. And I'm thrilled with how it turned out.



It's more snug than I expected -- I thought it would be bigger, but after two trips through the washer, it felted down to the recommended horizontal gauge. A bit too tight for Logan, so I've been trying to make a bigger one, with mixed success.



On the right is a "medium" sized crown, knit with Heilo from Dalegarn. I tried to make longer points, with dubious success. Anyway, this felted down very small. On the left is another try, this time with Cascade 220, knitting the "extra large" size. Better circumference -- I think this one might actually fit! -- although you can really see that my vertical gauge is off.

Tagging

It was on a visit to Chicago in 1988 that I first saw the spiky signatures scrawled across the wall. They were beautiful and mysterious, like some powerful message in a language I could almost understand. A few years later tagging finally made it to Columbus, and I had to show an i.d. to buy a big black marker. I developed a brief academic interest in these intersections of crime and art, and they sparked my imagination as well. I would see the tags on signs and buildings, and I thought of them as runes, their makers writing spells of influence on the city. I even entertained a story idea that germinated in my head: a teenage boy doodling in a notebook, trying to design his own tag, manages to write a glyph that he has a magical link to.

I am thinking about tags this week for a couple reasons. Primarily, it is because of this story in the Houston Press about crafty knitting taggers. But also because Santa is on his way to our house with an iPod Shuffle for Mike. How will we know which is his and which is mine? I think a little graffiti tag of my own might look quite nice on the bare white plastic Shuffle.

Dan Savage on 'The Commitment'

Dan Savage on 'The Commitment'

One day way back in November, while listening to NPR's "All Things Considered" during my drive home from work, I heard a teaser for an interview that would be broadcast the next morning: Dan Savage talking about the realization that his 7-year-old son DJ was hearing his fathers' relationship discussed as "a threat to all things decent and good." I didn't hear the interview, and for the next few days some glitch at NPR.org kept me from hearing the story online. Knowing the problem would be fixed eventually, I stuck the link in a blog post, saved it as a draft, and promptly forgot about it.

This morning I ran across the unposted draft, and finally followed the working link to listen to the story. The highlight for me was Savage saying, "All kids understand a promise," and DJ coming to realize that marriage is a promise people make to stay related. Which is why when DJ is picking the rings Dan and Terry will use in their marriage ceremony, he chooses rings with skulls on them, saying, "Dad, don't you understand you're going to get married? That means you have to stay together till you die."

(If listening doesn't work for you, the transcript is available in EBSCOhost Newspaper Source. Search for "dan savage" and enter "morning edition" as the newspaper name).

Insanity (updated)

OK, I freely admit this is insane. But I couldn't resist trying the "Magic Loop" circular knitting technique to make the joining loops in a knitted chain.



I will say this: the flexible cord of the circular needles is very easy to pull through the knitted chain links as you move the links around ahead of your working stitches. But all in all, I think doing this with short, double-pointed needles is easiest of all.

It's possible that this insanity will extend to partnering with my fabulous friend Mary to make knitted versions of her beautiful chainmail creations.

---

Update December 17:

The chain felted up very nicely. It's about 6 feet long, and while it probably won't be very functional as a neck warmer, it looks pretty sharp as a decorative accessory.



In the end, I kept up with the Magic Loop experiment; it got easier as I went along.

Quick hat

Going to visit my friend Beth for the first time since she had her baby this fall, and it suddenly occurred to me that knitters are not allowed to meet new babies without bringing a hat.



Hope it fits. I have so much trouble getting baby clothes to fit right. 

Adventures in Felting

Last week, my mom sent me the link for a felted crown inspired by Where the Wild Things Are. I couldn't wait to get started, but all the yarns I've tried have failed to give me the correct gauge. See all these rectangles?



They're supposed to be squares. The pattern designer has been great though, even willing to customize the instructions for whatever gauge I'm getting. I think I'm just going to wing it, however, recognizing that I will need to make my crown a little bigger around and a little shorter than the instructions call for.

But seeking some mindless knitting -- you know, something I don't have to make fit? -- I tried the "Marley's Ghost" felted chain pattern in the latest issue of Knitty. Now this is some fun.

Heel replacement

I was up late on Xmas Eve last year finishing some festive socks for my mom.



But this morning I noticed that the heel was unraveling on one of them.



Supposedly, the big advantage of the short-row heel is how easy it is to replace. We'll see.

I was pleased with these socks. They're not identical: the stripe patterns are reversed. From the toe on one (and the cuff on the other) they follow the striping pattern I created based on the Copenhagen cathedral chimes.

A Sock Yarn Spree

I spent last week in Maine, and it seems I couldn't leave a yarn store without picking up some sock yarn.



Most purchases were from Quiltessentials in Auburn, a quilt store with a small but stellar inventory of yarns. Because I couldn't wait until I got home, I went back to the store the next day to pick up some extra needles and get this skein wound into a ball:



This is Done Roving, and I love it. It's not obvious from the picture, but the colors are really unusual: shades of turquoise and red clay (the colorway is called "Southwestern"). And what do you know...these socks I'm knitting up are sized to fit me.

Gift Season

[Updated December 18]
Miss Manners has always disdained wish lists. That's nice in theory, but when you've got a birthday in December, it's just rude not to help out the people who want to get you something.

I've kept an Amazon.com Wish List since they first started offering them, and that has been great. But if someone doesn't want to buy me books or media, it's hard to let them know what I want.

Last year, I created a Froogle Wish List. Not quite as convenient as Amazon, but it does have a wider range.

This year, I'm discovering that I want stuff from Cafe Press. I haven't had much luck getting Cafe Press stuff to appear on a Froogle list, so here's my Cafe Press wish list:

• Guerrilla Stitcher hoodie. (Although I wear a large shirt, the hoodie should probably be extra large).
• Spiral Pi t-shirt.
• "wtfwjd?"mug.
  

I'll add more as things catch my eye.

Hybrid

A survey by Harris Interactive found that GLBTQ people are more likely than heterosexuals to buy a hybrid car. So I fit the profile. But they also found that gay men are more likely than straight men to have satellite radios (don't have that), and that we prefer luxury cars to economy cars.

I'm eager for the day when having a hybrid isn't a "statement." See, I think there are Rules of Taste for messages on the back of cars: the tasteful driver can have one message and one parking sticker. If you have to have two parking stickers, then you sacrifice a message, but you can't put on two bumper stickers just because you lack a parking sticker. A message can be a license plate frame, an alumni window sticker, a bumper sticker, or a magnet. Vanity plates can, on occasion, be given exemptions on a case-by-case basis, but they usually constitute a message.

Currently, I have no extra message: no HRC icon or rainbow flag, no Darwin fish or Brights emblem, no political messages. The indication that my Civic is a hybrid seems to constitute a message all its own.

[From Wired's Autopia blog]

A new character for Unshelved

A new character has been introduced to the library-themed comic strip "Unshelved": a cataloger. As our hero Dewey descends into the basement (of course) with a stack of graphic novels for recataloging, he encounters the new character, who is knitting.

Kids' Hats

My hands still seemed to want to play with the Peace Fleece, so I whipped up something from a hat pattern I like, the Ireland Mists Hat. (The pattern used to be free on the web, but I get a "Forbidden" message when I go there now. It's still available from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

I had in mind my friend Beth's new baby Faith when I started the hat, but it's too big.



The pumpkin hat is for David, the boy my friends Will and Tiffany adopted last month. I'll give it to them tonight at Game Night.

Wrist Warmers

My mom recently made a poncho for my sister, using a pattern she'd first used in the 70's. She had a few skeins of Peace Fleece left over, and gave them to me. There wasn't enough for a kitty bed (those take a surprising amount of yarn), but I thought that maybe some wrist warmers to match the poncho might be nice. I've just started the second, but here's the first of the pair.



This was loosely adapted from the cable pattern on the poncho. I used two patterns -- Jo Ellyn Wheeler's "Cabled Wristers" from the Fall 2004 (4:3) Twists and Turns and Bonne Marie Burns's "Voodoo Wrist Warmers" from Winter 2002 Knitty -- for inspiration.

Cast 40 stitches onto two size 7 circular needles, joining into round. First round: *k1, p2, k9, p2, k1, p5; repeat once from *.

Beginning with round 2 of the four round pattern below, knit until piece measures about 7 inches. The pattern repeats once each round.

1. K1, p2, k9, p2, k1, p1, k3tog, p1, k3tog, p1
2. K1, p2, k9, p2, k1, p5
3. K1, p2, cross 4 right (instructions below), k1, cross 4 left, p2, k1, p1, increase 3 (k1, p1, k1 in same stitch), p1, increase 3, p1
4. K1, p2, k9, p2, k1, p9

To make thumb hole:

• K1, p2, k1, bind off 7 stitches, continue in pattern to end (round 4)
• K1, p2, k1, cast on 7 stitches, continue in pattern to end (round 1)

Continue knitting until the piece is 9 inches or desired length. Bind off.

I'm generally pleased with the result. I actually think a thumb gusset would be desirable, but I don't really have the gumption to figure that out.

Crossing instructions are from http://www.knitting-crochet.com/terms.html

Cross 4 Left: Slip next st onto cable needle and leave at front of work, knit next 3 sts from left-hand needle then knit st from cable needle.

Cross 4 Right: Slip next 3 sts onto cable needle and leave at back of work, knit next st from left-hand needle then knit sts from cable needle.

Here is my attempt to chart the pattern. Click on the picture to see a larger version.

Sudoku obsession could ruin my life

I'd been hearing about the wild popularity of Sudoku, the number placement puzzle. I finally tried it this week, and suddenly I'm obsessed. Web Sudoku is a good place to try it, because the "How am I doing?" button lets you know when you've made a mistake.

It reminds me a bit of Minesweeper; the logic involved in figuring out where a number must go because of where it can't go appeals to me. As my eyes scan over the grid hunting for certain numbers, I'm reminded of those Mah Jongg tile solitaire games like Shanghai.

The trouble? Sudoku takes attention. Unlike knitting, I can't do Sudoku and watch TV, carry on a conversation, or read. I obviously can't do Sudoku and knit. And if I keep trying to do Sudoku puzzles while Mike wants to play along with Lingo or What's My Line, then my relationship will be on the rocks.

My only hope is to get him hooked too.

A happy ending

You know, I really don't want this blog to be filled with stupid pictures of the cat, but Mike snapped this photo today, and I couldn't resist.



At last, Dodger seems to have abandoned the plastic bag and taken to the felted cat bed.

Larger bottle cozy

So here's a cozy I whipped up for a liter-size bottle.



And as promised, a pattern (of sorts)

I used Sugar 'n' Cream cotton, knitting in the round on two 24 inch size US5 (3.75 mm) needles. But the pattern is adaptable to your preferred yarn and needles.

• Cast on 8 stitches. Join and knit one round.
• (YO, K1) around
• Knit
  
• (YO, K2) around
• Knit
• (YO, K3) around
• Knit

Keep increasing (8 yarnovers every other row) until your disk is the size of the bottom of your preferred bottle. In the picture above, I increased until I reached 48 stitches around.

Knit plain for 8 rounds or so (about an inch, or as long as looks good to you).

The "body" of the bottle cozy can be any stitch pattern you want. I've been experimenting with lacy stitches. Above, I used:

1. (YO, K2tog) around
2. Knit
3. (K2tog, YO) around
4. Knit

Nice effect, but not snug enough for my bottle. Next time, I'll decrease by 8 stitches or so before beginning the lace. Because the lace was too big, I went back to knitting plain rounds and added some ribbing. The moral? Experiment.

End with an inch or so of ribbing and bind off loosely.

Bottle cozies

A few years before I learned to knit, I went through a "waxed linen jewelry" phase, making little charm pouches and pen basket necklaces out of waxed linen. Around that time, my mom began freezing bottles of water to take to work. I used the same looping technique for the charm pouch to make a cotton pouch for the water bottle. I made a couple of these, stopped doing it because it was tedious, learned to knit for real, and forgot about it all.

My sister called this weekend to say her water bottle cozies have now fallen apart. She wants new ones. So I thought I might see what I could do with knitting needles. These are the fruits of my experiments over the past couple days.



Both of these are from worsted weight Sugar 'N' Cream cotton. I made the one on the right first, following this Water Bottle Tote pattern. The one on the left is my attempt at pattern refinements: a flatter bottom and less annoying stitch pattern (using Turkish Stitch instead of Purse Stitch). Both of them are a bit too small; they won't fit around a liter-sized bottle, but they'll work for smaller bottles.



I want to try again, then I'll post my own pattern here.