I'm leavin' on a jet plane. I DO know when I'll be back again.

Don't wreck up the place while I'm gone. The brainslug commands it.




I've ended up with a big pile of minor projects that I haven't talked about. So here they are.

The two green hats are more-or-less from the book Hats On!, which is a great book. The elf-hat was a combination of an earflap hat and a pointy hat from the book. The other one was directly from a pattern, but the bottom part, which according to the pattern shouldn't curl, instead went like crazy. I like the braided edge though; maybe it would work better with a hem.

The gray ribbed thing started life as a scarf, but the friend that started it decided that knitting wasn't for her and gave it back to me to finish. (Why do non-knitters consider things like this to be a gift? I already have enough projects.) I only knit an inch or so until it was big enough to fit around my head, then sewed the ends together. It works great to keep my hair well away when I'm cooking.

The two little bright stripes are hairbands, constructed like I've done before, with a bit of Fair Isle patterning. The first one was much too small, but the second one is about right.

A continuation of what I was talking about yesterday.

Technology. People look at me funny when I talk about spinning or cooking or other arts necessary for our society as "technology". Technology is supposed to be the stuff I do at work, that which pushes the boundaries of what is known. But in a way that's all backwards. The technology of, say, spinning and weaving have been developing for the last 20,000 or so years. There are a lot of things involved in being able to spin wool, and cotton and linen are both more complex still.

It's a technology we take for granted, because it's such hard work to keep your family constantly clothed that as soon as one part of the task was made easier, there was universal acceptance and loss of the earlier knowledge withing a generation or so. A spindle can make yarn quite a bit faster than a hooked stick, while a spinning wheel helps an experienced spinner make yarn about 10 times faster than I can spindle (based on what I've seen some people doing online). A weaving loom speeds fabric production up terrifically over the method you might remember using to make potholders as a kid.

This is technology. It's technology that allows us to survive outside of the tropics, to ask questions beyond those directly impacting our immediate survival, to signal social status, to develop other critical technologies like agriculture. It's technology that allows me the luxury to spend 10 months working on a lightweight shawl full of holes and do a job that is interesting to me.

Is this technology really less deserving of the name than the processes that went into making an iPod?

I've been thinking about the resurgence in handcrafts lately.

Over the weekend, I went to a wedding, and I wore my gray shawl (among other things, of course). I am justafiably proud of my abilities when I wear that shawl, but the most comment I've gotten most often is: "It's so perfect, it looks like it was made by a machine."

The more I consider this, the more annoyed I get. The shawl doesn't look like it was machine knit. There are no seams, yarn cutting was kept to a minimum by picking up stitches. Thought and care was put into its construction. There are single and double-yarnovers (they make small and medium holes in the fabric), and how one responds to either when knitting back across the row depends on the situation, and can't be done mechanically. If the hungry white-winged bastards don't get to it, the shawl can last almost indefinitely.

In other words, it's better than a machine-knit and sewn piece. It's better than anything available commercially.

So why is comparing a person to machinery considered the highest of compliments?

It's sad to me that the aesthetics of the handcrafting world tend to lean towards lumpy things that will fall apart after a few wearings. Granted, the aesthetics of most mass-produced stuff leans towards lumpy things that will fall apart after a few wearings too, but still.

We have bits of linen from Egypt woven more finely than anyone knows how to make, either by machine OR by hand--we've lost that technology. There are white-on-white wedding quilts I've seen with more hand-sewn stitches per inch than threads per inch than in most machine-made cotton fabric, which means I'm utterly unable to approach that level of quality even if I wanted to. Why does the handcrafting world lean towards objects that shriek their handmade status in dropped stitches, lousy crafting, and uneven workmanship, rather than try to surpass the dull and voluminous output of mass-production?

Sweater update:



This is why I don't usually post in-progress pictures--they all look the same after a while. At least I've been taking pictures of different sections of it so you can get a sense of what the whole thing looks like.

This is a shot of the back. When I was figuring out motif placement, I had a difficult time getting the right stitch count for the back; everything was 10 stitches too many or 20 stitches too few. Finally, I thought of setting up a center motif in a way similar to the original pattern (you can see Rebekkah's here. ). The numbers worked, and I like the diamonds of negative space formed by putting several motifs together.

The sweater is coming along slowly. I've been so busy during the day lately that I come home and desire no challenges, so I make macaroni or scrambled eggs and spend my little non-working time sacked out. But I enjoy it when I do pick it up, and I only have one more repeat before I try my first armhole steek.

This was a fun little project in making colors pool. The yarn was part of my prize a few months back, some Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in rainbow colors. It was too much fun to go on my feet, and anyway I only had one skein, so I decided it would be a fun little scarf for when I'm feeling stylish (or marching in pride parades).

Below is not so much a pattern as some general notes. Kim over at String Or Nothing has had a recent run of good entries on working with hand-painted yarns, which are quite detailed, and are another good place to look.

First, open up the skein and have a look:


The way this particular yarn is set up, there are two "reflection points", places I can turn my knitting and still have everything line up. One is halfway through the red section, the other is halfway through the purple. So the shortest complete unit I have at my disposal is 1/2 the length of the skein (about 18 inches). That'll make sort of a big swatch, but since I'm not concerned about the gauge so much as the pooling, it doesn't need to be very long.

Cast on about the number of stitches needed to have a swatch 1/3 the width of your shortest complete unit (each knitting stitch usually takes about 3 times its width in yarn to make). I found that by starting a 2-ended aka slingshot caston at a reflection point and working until the yarn going around the needle had reached another reflection point, I got pretty close for this short length. (don't worry about what the yarn down on the bottom is doing, it gets used at a slightly faster rate and so may look a little off).

Mark the next 3 or 4 reflection points on the yarn to remind yourself of what you're doing, and knit a row. Did you reach the reflection point before the end of the row? That means you're eating yarn too fast--decrease a few stitches. Did you go a whole row without getting close? Then add a few. Keep going in this way until you have the "right" number of stitches, so your first and last stitch hit a reflection point.

Is this width a good one for what you'd like to do? Do the stripes go the way you want them to? I found that my swatch was far too wide, considering I didn't have much yarn to begin with. So I decided to cast on the scarf along the long edge, working until I ran out of yarn. 7 shortest repeats (3.5 times around the skein) was a good length, so I cast on the appropriate number of stitches and began.

Even if you've calculated, you'll probably need to make some gauge adjustments, or add or remove stitches, over the first few rows. I avoided changing the stitch count until I was one whole color unit away from where I wanted to be (in other words, if I was knitting green in an orange section or yellow in a red), because this was a far enough distance that the eye wouldn't be able to link the like colors into a smooth transition. The rest of the time I was pretty lax if things moved in one direction or the other by a stitch or two. There are some odd spots, but you can see from the picture that your eye averages things out to make the in-between spots look pretty uniform.

The trickiest part, for me, was the cast on and bind off. Like I mentioned above, the slingshot caston uses one yarn faster than the other. The knitted and cable castons are even more drastic, though more similar looking to a regular bound off edge. Since these parts didn't use yarn at the same rate as the rest of the scarf, they look a little strange.

If I do this again, I'll probably put in a provisional caston quite a bit longer than what I actually want, knit the first row until I hit my desired reflection point, and work from there, avoiding the remaining provisional stitches. Then I'll do a few rows at the beginning and end with a coordinating solid color, making the bit that scratches at my knitter's brain into a design feature. (you'll note, however, that it doesn't bother me enough to undo this one and start over.)

It was lovely to work on this scarf in the gray, gray, damp cold weather we've been having a lot of. And the scarf is fun and soft and impractical. Perfect. OMG you guys, come look at my yarn stash!

Oh, all right. I'm setting this up for my own reference, so I can see how much stuff I can use up in a year.

Not included:

-Yarn currently being processed into fabric--there are two sweaters and a sock.

-A monstrously large box of acrylic my gramma found at a tag sale for super cheap. I'm not bothered by the fiber content so much as by the fact that there are no two balls the same color, requiring advance planning. I've used about a quarter of it since I got it, and anything left over when I move will be donated.

-My roving, because there's less than a pound of it, because it sits in a little knitting bag that I store in a corner, and because I forgot.

For size reference, all this yarn, plus my small fabric stash and unfinished projects are in this poorly hidden Rubbermaid Tub/coffeetable.

Section 1: Fingering weight

Sock yarn and some Dale Baby Ull I'm using for color experiments. Socks take me so long that this section is likely to see the least change over the next year.

Section 2: Freshman mistakes

These were both among my first yarn purchases a few years back. Notice how little they've changed?

That cotton is so pretty, yet vehemently opposes anything I try to make from it. I knit a hat and fingerless mittens from the other yarn, and had a scarf planned, but then I lost the hat and got sort of down on the whole thing. I probably have enough to do another hat and still make a scarf.

If the Pachuko STILL hasn't joined a useful pattern by next year, I'll Ebay it, because having something sit around useless for over 3 years is a good sign that it's not meant to be.

Section 3: Worsted Leftovers
Technically enough yardage for an exceedingly ugly sweater. I don't mind dribs and drabs of this size; they work as edging or color accents for large pieces, or quickish "I'm bored and want to knit a hat" projects. The nice thing about plain worsted-weight yarn is that it can suit a variety of projects, ages, and styles. This section will likely change the most over the next year as I use up bits, and then have other bits left over.

Section 4: Other Leftovers

Less useful leftovers, generally. A bunch of tiny oddballs I picked up at a knitting swap, thinking of cute little edgings. Too bad I don't really do "cute little edgings". I can't believe I still have multi-ball amounts of that Alpaca/Silk: This time last year I had enough for a sweater, two shawls, and three scarves. I've knit all those and a headband, and I STILL have more left.

Section 5: Actual Useful Stuff

Fantastic. I've got plans for it. There's enough to be useful. It's up next in line. The green is probably first, though I have two sweaters to finish before I get there.

Grand Total:

I have the yarn to make:

-1 sweater
-1 vest
-1 tank top (the cotton, although I don't want to use it in a tank top)
-2 scarves
-About 15 hat, mitten, or slipper-sized projects.
-10 individual socks.

And last year I knit:

-2 sweaters
-5 shawls (jeebus, I never counted)
-2 scarves
-5 individual socks
-18 hat/mitten/slipper sized projects

Now at the rate work has been happening, I'm likely to get a lot less done than last year. But I should be able to put a hefty dent into what I have.

What I'm likely to buy:

Notice the almost total lack of lace-able yarn, despite the fact that I'm almost always knitting lace. That's because I use it as soon as I have it. I'm mildly laced-out right now (I've done 9 lace-involving projects, none of them really small, over the last 12 months), but cones of laceweight are small, and my capacity to plan lace projects is large. While spinning is taking up the lace part of my brain right now, I might do a shawl or something at some point.

The next time I buy roving it is going to be a significant (2+pounds) amount, sufficient to knit a sweater. Unlike laceweight, fluff takes up a lot of space. If I spin through all my roving by this time next year (more likely than finishing up my yarn), that wool will be taking up lots of space. But it's not very dense, so moving it doesn't bother me so much. Rebekkah at Bowerbird Knits is getting annoyed by the attitude that only serious knitters have monstrous collections of yarn. Being uncool as always, I hadn't even heard about the "Flash your Stash" phenomenon, though I've seen pictures of huge disorganized rooms full of fiber before.

Basically, hoarding behavior of any kind makes me nervous, because it often seems to mean that someone is replacing good feelings that should be coming from within with stuff to keep them busy. Knitting is a stereotypically female hobby, and it seems like various online knitting groups often display stereotypically negative female behavior: things like encouraging the "whee! Let's go shopping!" impulse, taking differences of opinion personally, and disingenuous guilt about purchases. A lot of that ugly stuff comes up when people talk about and/or show pictures of their stashes. Apparently so many women sent their significant others to the entry made by the person running "Flash your Stash" to convince them that their stash isn't so big that she needed to include a special note to the SO's to encourage their ladies to buy more. There's something really wrong with that brand of consumerism, but I'm not quite awake enough to pinpoint it. Mostly it seems off that if your yarn purchases are causing marital strife, the response isn't either A: Realizing that you both have a say in all purchases and so maybe you should stop spending so damn much, or B: Knowing your purchases are utterly reasonable and getting rid of the person who picks on every 10$ you spend on yourself, but C: Engaging in a lifetime campaign to convince your partner that other people are crazier than you, and therefore you're completely sane.

There are times that I buy a hefty amount of yarn in one go (last summer, I bought 2 big cabled sweaters' worth of Cascade 220 that was on sale because I love that yarn). There are also times when I don't spend very much at all (the 8-10 months before that, I didn't buy anything because I was working on a laceweight shawl and wasn't making any room in the Rubbermaid tub). I've actually been planning on not buying any more yarn except what I need to finish very specific projects until I finish with grad school (probably about a year, now). First off, I don't have any damn TIME, so anything I buy is going to build up. Second, any way that I can reduce the amount of stuff we'll need to move, the better. Third, *I* feel like I have too much stuff to slog through right now. I should be able to fit my yarn AND my sewing supplies AND my spinning fiber in the container I have. Since I can't, it's time to fix that.

It just doesn't seem like not having any control should be something to be *proud* of.