J and I and Salty went to the Duck Race this past weekend.

The thing: You buy a raffle ticket, with a number between 1 and 3600. There are rubber duckies, each with numbers on them that go from 1 to 3600. You fill a tarp with the 3600 rubber ducks, and release it at the top of a small waterfall in Cascadilla Creek:

J asks that you picture the bandits-cresting-the-hill scene in Seven Samurai (which was apparently the first time that shot was ever used).

Or, hum "Flight of the Valkyries" to yourself. That works too.

By the bottom of the falls, only a few-second ride, the front-runners are already spreading out from the rest of the pack:

But those with an early lead would be foolish to assume that an easy victory was assured. After the falls, there's about a mile of Cascadilla Creek to get through, fraught with perils such as this bit of swirly water from which few ducks escaped.

Walking down towards the finish line, the stream had the quality of a goofy but real-life screensaver--peaceful rippling water, with the occasional sunglasses-clad rubber duck floating by:

We wandered through the neighborhood, enjoying the amazing weather, laughing at a very confused-looking crow who hopped along the rocks trying to figure these bright yellow floating things out, and watching the duck-wrangler check that all the strays got to the end point:

Responsible duck-releasers, these 4-H folks. There was a large funnel at the finish line made of foam noodles, and volunteers were scooping up these slowpokes and tossing them into laundry baskets so they could dry out in the sun. While we were standing there on the pedestrian bridge, a duck managed to slip past the scoopers and escape out the bottom of the funnel, and someone chased after it to cries of "No! It wants to be free! Go duckie!" along with a lot of laughing.

We had fun even though we didn't have a duck in the race (we got there too late to buy a raffle ticket), but the people whose number matched the winning ducks' got all kinds of cool prizes.

It was a good afternoon.

Just misread the word "fungistatic" as "fungitastic". Then I giggled.

I must start working "fungitastic" into my everyday speech. This may involve more mushroom dishes at home than usual.

Okay, choosing to read a book with a known emotional trigger on the bus to work is a Bad Idea. *snif*

(Book topic: Working class to middle class mobility. Chapter subtopic: Parental sacrifices to boost the kids.)


The snow-chickie from a few weeks ago enjoys a nice bath. But what is it bathing with in there?



A Baby Surprise Jacket, the other present for my nephew-to-be. (Normally I wait until the people getting gifts get them before I share, but I'm about 99.999% sure that chunk of family doesn't read the blog. It's safe.)

The BSJ is a pretty popular pattern among knitters. The "surprise" comes from the method of construction, which involves knitting one big lopsided piece of fabric, sewing one seam, and ending up with a complete newborn-sized sweater.

My original idea for the sweater was to have more gradations in color, which would have been done by holding two strands of the Dale Baby Ull together and swapping out one color at a time. If the yarn had been finer, or the pattern had called for heavier yarn, this might have worked, but I was very unhappy with the swatch and decided to just go for single colors knit in a slightly looser gauge than Dale Baby Ull recommends (using US 4s instead of 2s). I like garter stitch at a somewhat loose gauge anyhow, and I wanted this to be useable for a summer baby on a cool breezy day.

Looking at it now I probably could have done some widening stripes of color to soften the edge between the colors some, but between following the funky pattern and knitting to a deadline (baby shower's next weekend) this might have made things more complicated than I wanted.

I had a really hard time picturing what colors would go where, just from the pictures I saw online and the description in the pattern. So if you're going to knit one of these and want to plan things out somewhat, then look at the front and back of this sweater. I started with the white and moved to the yellow, then orange, then red. The seam you sew is across the top of the shoulders (another bit of information I didn't see in a cursory search).

I made a few very minor modifications to the pattern. I did an I-cord bind off to make a nice edge around the bottom and sides of the sweater, and then continued doing an applied I-cord edging around the neckline to neaten that up a bit. I cord edgings and bind offs may be becoming a thing with me. They're so lovely when you want a neat, defined edge.

Another change I made was to forego the button band in favor of a row of snaps.

You can buy snaps pre-added to a firm bit of fabric at big fabric shops (I got these at the Jo-Ann's just down the hill from me). I thought this would be easier for new parents to handle than teeny buttons, and it looks very neat from the front.

I hand-sewed the snap bands in after washing the sweater (it was superwash wool so it grew quite a bit), and spending some time to make sure the snaps were lined up. One thing I had to figure out was how to hide the sewn stitches on the right side of the knitted fabric. I briefly considered sewing halfway through the yarn, but that didn't seem like it would be very sturdy for what, if genetics have a say, will be a very active baby. Also, two stitches of that told me that sewing halfway through a piece of fabric for several hours would send me to the nuthouse. Instead, I just hid the stitches in the groove formed by the garter stitch. This required a lot of checking the public side of the work to make sure I hadn't gone over a ridge, and a bit of unsewing, but with the well-matched sewing thread and a bit of care the stitches are pretty much invisible.

Overall I was really pleased with this project. It used up a bunch of stashed half-balls of yarn (though I bought two more balls of Baby Ull mid-project when I was worried I'd run out). I'd actually planned on the colors before I knew the sex of the baby, because of what I had in the stash, but I think it's a happy cheerful kid color that would work for a boy or a girl. I think that the sweater and the chick strike the balance of practical and adorable that I like to go with for new parents. Everything's machine washable so it can be an everyday thing, but it's also cute and cheerful. Hopefully the parents and baby-to-be will all like it.

Ithaca Lessons I've Had to Relearn: First of what will doubtless become a series.

Walking down long, steep hills is just as hard on your legs as walking up. Possibly harder, because when you're going uphill, you can go as quickly or slowly as you want. Meanwhile going downhill, you have less control and are only barely preventing yourself from going faster, and, if your legs get tired, bouncing end-over-end down Buffalo St. starts to become a real possibility.

(Note to self: Bring camera the next time I plan on walking down Buffalo, so people know I'm not messing with their heads about that end-over-end thing. Google Images isn't bringing up the picture I want.)

I should have remembered this, because I'd walked up and down South Hill twice a few days before I met J, and that gluteal workout led to me saying the first words he ever heard out of my mouth: "Damn, my ass is killing me."

Somehow, he liked me anyway.

Picture yourself at work, doing normal work things, for whatever value of "normal work things" you have. You have a nice view outside from your normal-work-thing location, not many people walking by. Except that once in a while, there is a crowd of people pressed up against the window to the outside, gaping in at you.

This is what it's like to work in the clean room during high-school-kids-touring-colleges season. You wander around in your bunny suit* long enough, and you really do forget that the average person has only maybe seen that one Intel commercial with the folks dancing in full, candy-colored suits as a point of reference.

What do you think you'd do under these conditions? I frequently jump a mile into the air seeing 20 faces staring out of the corner of my eye, but sometimes I smile and wave at the kids and their parents. I don't know if they think it's a one-way mirror, or if it's because their closest similar experience is looking at apes at the zoo, but looking at them and waving tends to really freak them out. The parents more than the kids, though one dad started laughing and waved back.

*We don't have the full face shield and breathing apparatus, but that's a good description of the outfit. Ours are full-face-uncovered, but always wearing goggles. I have a whole theory on clean room culture, but it's not quite in blogging condition.

People who were interested in looking at my scarf pattern for me:

I am actually working on it, crazy promises to finish it in February notwithstanding. Like every bit of writing I do, it took a lot of dinking around to get it right. I'm terrible at writing and following outlines, everything always wants to go in a different direction. So I just had to play with the lace charts and bake lemon cake* while the pattern wrote itself out in my head.

But now all the charts are pretty looking, and will fit on an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper. And the text is mostly-complete, I just have to read it all to myself a few more times. I think the other patterns will go a lot more smoothly than this one, when I get to them--this pattern, because it has a simple repeat which is oddly offset, is hard to explain. Huge-huge charts work, except A: it's an easy little repeat, and B: The huge-huge chart won't fit on a page without making the stitch size teeny.


*Some folks were making fruit batteries at work and most of a bag of lemons was left over, which I brought home. When life hands me lemons, apparently I have slices of lemon in my water, and lemon-poppyseed cake with homemade lemon curd and strawberries, which have nothing to do with the lemon and everything to do with being 2-for-1. So, so good. And then maybe lemon bars when we're done eating all these things, because I STILL have 2.5 lemons. The household is rapidly developing anti-scurvy.

Cornell is doing a production of As You Like It.

J: I'm not sure which one that is.

T: Isn't it one of the comedies? I think it's that one where some people dress as other people, and their friends are implausibly taken in by the ruse, and then in the end all the young couples get married.

J: Oh, yes, that one. Not remotely like all the other Shakespearian comedies.

I looked out on the porch this weekend and found a wee egg!



As you can see, it was cracked, so I left it there for a bit. When I came back, the chickie inside had hatched!



Pattern: Which Came First? From Craft Magazine. I love looking at Craft, but rarely buy it because the 15$ price tag is enough to give me pause when I only have interest in one project. But this issue has it all, baby; a neat reversible sewn skirt, this egg, some funny baby pants, some sewn juggling toys that I'll probably do with spare fabric this weekend, an interview with a scientist that makes molecule-based jewelry, and a well-done embroidery tutorial (I never got the hang of French knots even after hours of practice, and some day I want to actually do one properly). Plus lots of stuff that I like looking at even if I don't want to make it.

The other thing I noticed about Craft when I actually had the issue home? They only have ads* on the first 3 and last 8 pages (out of 150-someodd). With knitting magazines getting ever more in-your-face about the ads, it's refreshing to just browse through and not get hit over the head every other page.

The pattern called for worsted weight non-superwash wool, and for the project to be lightly felted prior to assembly. But I had Dale Baby Ull in all the right colors, and really, how often does that happen? So I used the thinner yarn at an appropriate gauge. The resulting chick is a smidge over 4 inches tall compared to the original's 5.5 inches.

This was a fun, fun knit. I was whipping through making all the accoutrements at my new knitting group on Saturday, and we couldn't stop laughing at the hilarious little feet.

The whole pattern is really well written, sensible enough to follow without sitting looking at the pattern the whole time. The only tricky part was the pattern's reversibility. The egg flips inside-out to reveal the chick, and vice versa, and there's some stuffing that goes between the two. I put as much stuffing in as I could and still manage the flip, but things are still squishier than I'd prefer, although my cast-on edge is pretty stretchy. If I knit another I might start a few increases into the pattern, which would widen that opening without changing the shaping very much.


*Overt ads, that is. There's some of that "here are some cool finds, and here's how to buy them!" stuff, but I mind the change in copy-look on ads more than the ads themselves, so I can stand it.