Ah, the holidays were lovely. *falls over in a stupor* It took us about 20 hours to get home, but that included hanging out in Chicago and relaxing in a sleeper car on the train, so it wasn't too bad.

Sleeper cars are a wonder of space-saving engineering--the two seats facing each other recline to form the lower bunk bed, a toilet is a table when the lid is down, a sink comes out of the wall, space for luggage is carved into the ceiling of the hallway that runs the length of the train. The second bed descends from well above your heads, and the toilet and sink ledge form the stairs to get up there. There are lots of tiny details that are just as fun. It's a good way to travel, it's got none of that cattle-to-the-slaughter feel that traveling usually has.
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Anyone have any good recent book/music/magazine finds? I got a big Amazon gift certificate as a birthday/Christmas combo from my dad, but besides a subscription to Spin Off, I'm paralyzed with the possibilities. I was actually considering a new digital camera, because mine is about 4 years old and I'm really starting to feel the lack of zoom when I'm trying to take detailed pictures. On the other hand, I'm not a pro, and I'm not taking professional pictures. I could always borrow someone else's camera if I wanted to take publication-quality pictures for a pattern, which is the main thing I'm thinking about. Plus, in another 4 years I'll wish my camera had that new-fangled, I don't know, photo-editing software built into the camera or something, so it might make just as much sense to wait until this one completely dies.

So while I'm talking myself out of that, I could use some different ideas. I'm pretty well stocked up on craft books right now (note to self- discuss Heirloom Knitting as soon as you can wrap your mind around how awesome it is). My taste in books I buy run to nonfiction books about tiny historical moments no one knows about any more (see: Salt), short funny personal essays (see: David Sedaris), magic (see: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell), medieval stuff, either translations of old stuff or modern stories (see: Decameron and stuff by Umberto Eco).

Most books I keep, as opposed to those I get at the library or give J to sell on Ebay, are those that benefit from rereading, or are references I'm likely to return to. I almost always keep non-timely magazines and music.

So, recommend away.

Thanks for the birthday wishes, all, and for the interesting comments on the last two entries. Sometimes blogging about blogging can just be too much of a wank, but there's a lot of fascinating stuff there. I think about issues of miscommunication, where people draw their lines of what information is too personal or too boring, the level of thought that gets put into this thing that may be a person's entire image of you, etc., etc. I know myself well enough to know that I can't do the breadth of what's going on out there justice.

So now, some talk of spinning silk, and fibery inspiration.

The silk is coming out beautifully. I've got the first batch of singles off the spindle--as a 2-ply, they'll be around the weight of Jaggerspun Zephyr or a bit heavier, for those of you with that as a reference point. I'm actually making a point of *not* spinning it too finely, because I love the colors and want whatever I knit from it to have some body to it.

The main tricks and tips I've figured out:

Rough hands, bad idea. Mine are all right at the moment but I could see that going really poorly really quick.

Minimal handling of the roving beyond predrafting and holding the fiber while spinning is helping my initial troubles. What I've been doing is to hold the fiber a bit farther back than I normally would, keep spinning for as long as possible without moving that hand until the drafting triangle is as close as possible while still allowing the fibers to pass, then untangle my hand from the remaining fibers, grasp them a bit farther back than I'm comfortable with, and repeat the process. My hands get sweaty easily, and a lot of pinching and releasing was causing the aligned fibers to go every which way, including into the air, on my jeans, in J's hair, you get the idea.

One extension of the minimal handling thing is that now my non-fiber-holding hand is doing everything, including folding back bits to check twist. This is more haphazard than my usual method, since I don't have another hand to smooth the small plied bit, but I'm getting the hang of it.

I still haven't tried spinning from the fold. This would be a good fiber to learn with, except I have so LITTLE of it. Now that I'm getting a yarn I'm happy with I don't feel the need to mess with a good thing.

I still haven't decided what I'll do with it. I'm still leaning towards plying it with itself, though I may play around with a few samples of some undyed tussah silk I have, which is a light yellow color. I'm thinking that the warmth of the undyed silk might play nicely with the handpainted. I also have a tiny bit (maybe .25 ounces) of bright white silk that I got as a little extra from the woman who sold me my wheel. I don't think it would look good plied with this fiber, but it might be neat as an edging if I do ply all this fiber with itself. Hmm. A shallow triangular shawl, in bright shades of red, edged with clean white or light yellow? I'm just itching to spin this all up and start swatching.

I won't be able to spin more of this for about a day, though, because the wheel of my toy wheel spindle broke off in an interesting but fixable-with-glue way, so it's drying now.
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Oddments that have been inspiring my spinning and ideas for handspun lately:

Bright reds and yellows, like the Heraldic sweater in the current issue of Spinoff, and the colors I associate with silk saris (when I first heard of "sari silk", I was imagining what I'm spinning right now, not these muddy colors).

Handspun yarns with variations in color rather than texture, like the stripe in the top of this hat.

Controlling color variation over reasonably long repeats. Not necessarily as a painting technique, but subtly messing around with plying different fibers. (I've already done an experiment with this, actually, which will be coming soon.)

Using Christmas stockings as an opportunity to play (also in Spin Off).

A small amount of very bright color on a dull color field. Or tiny flecks of color on a dull background.

Bright leafy greens.
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I blame the bright color obsession on the coming death-gray season.

Not all of these have projects associated with them yet, but some of them are processing. I'm working on the Sugar on Snow hat with my handspun, and it's working out beautifully. It uses a few of these elements, in ways that are sparking me to try other things. I talked about the red silk already and what I want to do with that. I'm thinking of taking some sock yarn I have (the bright green in this picture) and doing a colorwork project with some gray and black Dale Baby Ull that I have in the stash (also in that picture).

Lots of creative happenings. That seems to happen when I'm working intensely on my research--it's funny how intensity in one sphere will spill over into everything else.

A response to a comment on the previous post, which got so long I bumped it up to Official Blog Entry Status.

I was talking about the Big Knit Blogger phenomenon with some people last night. The blogs I like and read regularly basically boil down into two categories:

1) The blog makes me like that person, and relate to them on a personal level.

Which is a blog that can have whatever's going on in that person's life, comments about their hair, etc., etc. For whatever reason there's an openness there where I sense that this person and I would get along in the real world. I care about what happens to them, and cheer them on. They touch my heart.

2) The blog teaches me about something that's interesting to me.

Which is often yarn-related, but could have to do with food or music or deaf people making effective use of You Tube to communicate. If the person is giving me enough to think about, the lack of a real-seeming person to connect to isn't a problem.

Of course there are blogs that do some of both, but to consistently do both well is really difficult.

I find more and more that a lot of the Big Name Blogs lose BOTH personality AND technical interest over time. Their image gets more corporate as they realize the thousands of potentially crazy people that could be reading their personal thoughts every day, and that the full discussion of interesting techniques could be saved for the book deal.

The rough edges get filed away.

But dangit, I LIKE rough edges. I like hearing stories about holiday knitting gone awry, the swear word from the normally-polite person, unexpected joy in a foolish moment.

For a blog in either rough category, I want to know why. Why did they pick that fiber? Why did a card from their grandmother make them cry? WHY is something good or bad?

When I stop wanting to know what happens next, I stop reading. And actually, my links list is pretty bare right now. I don't know if I'm getting more picky, or other people are going through a boring writing spell, or if I'm just in a bad mood. Maybe a little of all of those.

Maybe other people don't want to read what I do--I know there are people who don't read a word and just look at pictures for inspiration. Or maybe those types of blogs are hard to write. I try to strike a balance between the first and second category, depending on my state of mind that day. But at the same time I recognize that I don't put certain personal things here (work specifics, personal or professional, and talking about family history are the two biggies), which cuts out large swathes of What You Should Know About Me. And sometimes, I just knit a hat without thinking too much, or I wander through life unmindfully and don't have anything interesting to say about the world.

Now, it's very late and my husband desires sleep. I turned 27 today, which is neat because it's 3 cubed. You only get 3 x^x birthdays in a lifetime: 1,4,27.

No one's made it to 256 just yet.

Last night I had dinner at a local pizza place and saw a copy of The Onion on my way in. This story was front and center (safe for work unless you work in a convent), with a huge emboldened headline. It shocked me into fits of laughter. I needed a moment to recover before I could even order my food.

After that, I was walking to the bus stop and saw a new restaurant just off of State St. (next to Community Pharmacy, if there are any interested locals).

Gelato! Of course I had some.

It was really delicious, and they did the thing properly--you get multiple flavors in even the smallest dish, so you can mix and match. It was this time of year when we had our trip to Italy, and the weather's been matching up to Rome and Florence pretty well (chilly and damp, more like it usually is here in October). So eating hazelnut, chocolate, and cherry gelato while walking, Christmas being in the air, was a wonderful reminder of that trip. And anyone local who's interested should go there--it's really good, the kids working the counter were friendly and into it, and the flavors aren't the kind of thing you'll find in other places.

Interesting thing about spinning silk: the fine, fine, sticky fibers will happily attach to damp hands, but not nearly as much to either greasy OR powdered hands. This will probably mean more lotioning on my part while I'm spinning, except I hate the feeling of lotion on my palms. Slimy, dirty, gross feeling, to me. I'll probably just have to deal with it. It's probably too early to say for sure but I don't think I'm going to be much of a silk spinner in the future, as much as I'm enjoying the final product.
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A few weeks back when I was having the cookie-baking day, I tuned to the local radio station that is all Christmas music for the month of December. I like having holiday music on when actual holiday stuff is happening, it makes it part of the tradition. Anyways, over the 4-5 hours I was listening to it, they repeated quite a number of songs (Rudolph, White Christmas, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Jingle Bells), although I was glad they didn't manage to repeat the same *version* of the same song in that time.

I did notice something strange, though. Which songs DIDN'T they play?

Silent Night

Hark the Herald Angels Sing

What Child is This?

O Holy Night

Hallejuliah

We Three Kings

Basically, if the song said that Christmas is about candy canes, Santa Claus, a happy feeling, snowbells ringing, etc, etc., they played it. If it said that Christmas is a Christian celebration, it was out.

I don't have any strong religious leanings (except "my own faith is my own business" and "everyone has their own path"), but Christmas *is* a religious holiday. To me, all the tree-and-eggnog-and-wrapping-paper stuff is fun, but to eliminate the reason for the celebration, which the radio station seemed to be trying to do, eliminates any holiday feelings deeper than "niceness is nice".

Making Christmas into a secular holiday demeans both Christians and non-Christians. It demeans Christians by saying that their reason for celebration is silly and ignorable. It demeans non-Christians by acting like a seedy bait-and-switch operation that fools no one--"we'll suck you in with presents and fun songs, until BAM! Suddenly you're going to our churches! Hah!"

Christmas hymns are beautiful, tuneful, good to sing along to. Pseudo-secularism doesn't help anyone.

I mentioned I bought some roving at Blackberry Ridge recently, here it is:



Just under 2 ounces. I was thinking of plying it with a coordinating color to stretch my handpainted fiber dollar, but I'm not coming up with much online that speaks to me. So it may just end up being a small scarf. It's lovely enough that I don't mind leaving it undiluted.

I've been overcalculating the time to finish the remaining Christmas knitting. The only non-enjoyable gift has to be sent away by Saturday. The last section happens to be exactly 100 rows, and I find myself calculating the percentage completed, the average percentage I can complete per bus ride, per hour, etc. All this calculating showed me that A: I should have no problem finishing it this week, and B: I'm going a little crazy. Popping off for a little while with the silk to see how it spins up was be a lovely and acceptable break.



Only 20 minutes or so of spinning, but ooh, pretty. It amuses me to wind the yarn in a way that lines up like colors together. It's a bit hard to tell, but this slowly goes from dark purpley red to bright orange, top-to-bottom.

This is the first time I've worked with silk. The only trouble I see so far is that when my hands get sweaty, the very fine fibers stick to my palms and get matted up. This appears to be the opposite of the average person's problem, because when I went looking for silk spinning tips, I got a few dozen sites that said the silk fibers catch on their dry scaly skin, and they need to moisturize like crazy when spinning.

All I tried so far was baby powder, which helped but not much. This may get me using my rock climbing chalk bag again.

I'm also considering trying to spin it from the fold, which would at least keep most of the fiber on the top of my hand, though that may mess with the beautiful color progressions.

We'll see. For now I have new things to think about while I finish holiday stuff.

Since this is my own blog, I can say stupid stuff like this:

My ponytail elastic broke this morning. In related news, my hair is long enough to be held up with a pencil now, which is exciting.

I bought a berimbau last week. I'd take some pictures of me playing with it, but I don't have a dobrao yet (the shiny coin in the second picture in that wikipedia link). You don't *need* a heavy brass coin--a smooth roundish rock works fine, and you can see a nice in-action picture here, but our yard has been covered in snow since I got the berimbau, so finding a good stone that fits right hasn't been possible. And the rock-filled stream near our house is nearly frozen over now, so I can't go digging in there, either.

I don't think they have these problems in Brazil.

So for now, there's not much I can do with it, though I've strung it up and given it a few one-note taps. Fortunately, I have a pretty loose one that I can string without pulling my arms out of joint--unlike a guitar or violin, you take the tension off the berimbau string when you're not playing it, and then bend the stick with your knee to get the wire under sufficient tension (another nice Flickr photo which demonstrates). I have a really hard time stringing some of the instruments we have in our practice space, so I was glad I could get this one okay on the first try.
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Holiday knitting progress:

#1: Sent
#2: Sent
#3: 30%
#4: Need to wrap it.
#5 :100%
#6: 5%


All microscopy and no play make T something something.

Today, I got spam email from jesus christ (as he didn't capitalize it, I figure I shouldn't either). If HE'S telling me my male member isn't large enough, then maybe I wasn't meant for this female life after all.


Cookies, cookies everywhere. I had Madam over yesterday, and much cookie making, repetitive Christmas song listening, and knit-talking took place. I was pooped by the end of the night (who knew that just mixing dough could be so tiring?) but I had a lot of fun.

My plan was to make 5-7 different kinds of cookies, finishing when we got tired or bored or ran out of plates, doing something from several different categories--chocolate, almondy, cutouts, fruity. I gave out at 6, though since I have everything for the peanut butter cookies with the Hershey's kiss in the middle, I'll probably make them later and just eat them myself, as they're my favorites.

Together, they make a really nice looking cookie plate--I've got two with me, one for each of the labs I work in.

For anyone who's interested, here are the cookie types and descriptions, going clockwise from the top left (square dish):

-Lemon Date Bars, recipe from "Moosewood Restaurant Cooks At Home". Overcooked the tiniest bit--the bottoms aren't even dark, but the bits in the corners TASTE a bit burned, which is strange. A nice pseudohealthy thing, though. Dates are necessary holiday food for me.

-Almond Strips, from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook (my fallback cookbook for baked goods). Since I'm not going home this year I thought I'd make some sort of Italian cookie substitute. I couldn't picture what these would look like until they'd already been baked; you roll several batches into quarter-diameter cylinders, which flatten considerably after baking. Then you slice them and end up with rectangular cookies with almonds on top. They're much flatter than biscotti, which is what I'd been picturing. They're not quite as almondy as I had in mind, but they are very nice. I get sort of annoyed with making lots of little cookie blobs, so only having to make 4 cookies then cutting them up later is nice.

-Pizzelles, recipe from the booklet that came with the iron. Making them is kind of annoying because you only get two cookies at a time and have to watch the iron pretty carefully (I wish it made a noise when it was done), but people are impressed by the prettiness.

-Gingerbread cutouts from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. We have Christmas-themed cookie cutters that we bought, Hannukah-themed ones from Jeremy's Bubbie, and non-holiday ones that just sort of wandered in (though I could make an argument for a Solstice theme with a couple of them, I'm sure). I like the weirdness of having them all on a plate together.

-Lemon Tea Cookies from the BH&G cookbook. Another set I hadn't made before, and all three of us LOVED them. You make a pretty lemon-heavy batter and after baking drizzle them with lemon goo, so they're pretty intense, while also being light and rich. That doesn't make sense, but it's true. I'll definitely be making these regularly, so long as I can remember to buy a lemon beforehand.

-Fudge Ecstacies, from the BH&G Cookbook. I made a dopey mistake, not reading the recipe through. They're supposed to be chocolate cookies that also have chocolate chips in them, but I put in all the chocolate to melt at the beginning. They're not *bad*--it's hard to go far wrong with a ratio of 2.5 cups of chocolate to .25 cups of flour--but they don't have much star power.