So, Robin tagged me for a meme, and I've been thinking about it a bit. Among the thoughts were "Have I ever actually done a meme before? No, I haven't!" It's not like they disgust me or anything, I just... haven't. Here's the rule stuff.

So here’s the task: Think about the world of fifteen years hence (2022, if you’re counting along at home). Think about how technology might change, how fashions and pop culture might evolve, how the environment might grab our attention, and so forth. Now, take a sentence or two and answer…

• What do you fear we’ll likely see in fifteen years?
• What do you hope we’ll likely see in fifteen years?
• What do you think you’ll be doing in fifteen years?

There are no wrong answers here — only opportunities to surprise, provoke and amuse.

I like this one, because I get to put on my I'm A Scientist Hat, while at the same time being dopey ol' TChem.

-What do you fear we'll likely see in fifteen years?

-All the serious, predicted consequences of global warming are obviously happening (flooding of coastal areas, stronger, more frequent hurricanes, droughts in farmed areas, etc., etc.). And no one cares, or does anything about it.

-A combination of 1) increasingly-strict immigration laws 2) laws restricting stem cell research 3) the increasing strength of the anti-evolution crowd 4) Loss of interest in science leads to the obvious, early signs of brain drain in the US. No one comes here to do science anymore. No American universities are hiring scientists. My friend's kids, who will be high school age, are learning Japanese or German so they can go to a *good* school. And no one cares, or does anything about it.

-Everyone's on some kind of crazily-expensive prescription medication, mostly for syndromes we haven't heard of yet. And no one cares, or does anything about it.

-What do you hope we'll likely see in fifteen years?

-The local/slow food movements gain accessibility for the non-elite, who realize that good food isn't expensive. Food Network has a show called "What's in Season?" that talks about what's good in different regions that week, and when to plant things in your garden.

-People who injure their spinal cord, if they are rapidly treated, can regain significant feeling and movement--people who would have been quadraplegic in 1990 are merely a bit clumsy with their canes. People with older injuries can gain some improvement in mobility.

-Stem cell therapy will be happening somewhere in the world. Diabetics and people with various blood disorders are the most likely beneficiaries in 15 years.

-Tissue engineering's going to be so awesome. There's the spinal cord thing I just talked about, artificial hearts will be reliable over years, we'll be in clinical trials with corneal implants that aren't so dang scary looking, any sort of fresh burn/chemical scar will be nearly invisible. We'll have some cool in vitro muscles, but they won't be in people yet. Non-animal modeling will be *vastly* improved so that we can actually make some reasonable predictions without wasting so much life.

What do you think you’ll be doing in fifteen years?

-Some techy job at which I've convinced people and myself that I'm a grownup.

-Enjoying my knitting book-writing side project.

-Doing *this* thing, which will undoubtedly be called something different.
"God, lady, *blogging*? What are you, 40? Are things 'rad', too?"
"I'm 42, actually, and 'rad' went out of style 15 years before anyone blogged".

-Loving on science. And J.

Tagging?: Talk if you want to. Mention it in the comments with a link if you do. Or, if you want to but are blogless, put it in the comments.

ps--Two things I thought of, and love, but don't think they'll be here in 15 years. In my lifetime, I hope?

-Space travel accessible to the very-but-not-insanely-wealthy. Maybe $75,000 per person, all expenses included? Before I die, but after I have 75k saved? Please? I'd happily live out my retirement on catfood and peanut butter, for that.

-In vitro for gay couples. Guys will still need a lady to donate an egg shell and carry it, though.

The green sweater continues. I'm doing the neck/armhole shaping on the front, so the sleeves will be coming up very soon. The yarn is light enough, and the pieces small enough, that knitting it during the summer heat doesn't hurt too much. Yet another big advantage over working a sweater in the round, to me. I like having portable projects. I get most of my knitting done when I'm taking the bus into work, these days. Sweaters done in the round get hot and unwieldly for me about 1/3 of the way in. That's 2/3 of a project's worth of sub-ideal knitting conditions. If, on the other hand, I knit things flat, each section (front, back, sleeves) is about 1/3 of the knitting, which means that I tend to finish a piece just as I get annoyed with it. Finishing goes comparatively quickly, and it's very satisfying to start with a bunch of funny shapes and end up with a sweater.

For this sweater, I'm planning to do some of the parts in parallel once I finish the front--the side and shoulder seams, and the neck hem, will get worked on at home while I do the sleeves on the bus. The neck is going to be tricky, what with simultaneous decreases and short rows and not being able to perfectly picture what I need to do right now. I'll want to have a pencil and paper handy as I go through it. And, there'll be 2/3 of a sweater in my way as I go. Seems like a frustration best left out of the public sphere. And by seeing how things look before everything's completely done, I'll be able to verify that I've actually knit something sensical. If it's not, I won't have to rip out so much.

One thing I'm thinking about the sleeves that I think will be clever:

You can see the brown edging on the back of the sweater, here. It's a hemmed edging, and the brown part extends for a row or two after the hem.

I want the brown edging on the sleeves to be a bit narrower. I was thinking at first that I'd do this by making the hem narrower too, but I think a less-than-one-inch hem is already pushing it in terms of likelihood to curl. So, I'm going to try moving the color change to before hem attachment.

Madness, I know. Still, it makes me feel clever. I'm not entirely sure of myself; I'm worried that two changes separated by a few rows like this will look strange. But I'm hoping the hem edge will just blend into the background with the rest of the green. And if it doesn't work? It's right at the beginning and easy to rip back.

Thing I didn't know about myself: sudden, unexpected disappearance of food I was looking forward to eating can make me cry.

Actually, I DID know that, thanks to a bowl of delicious bean dip I once dropped on the floor before I could enjoy it. But I forgot. And that time, I may have been crying about the mess on the carpet. Hard to tell.

This time around, J accidentally threw away some candy that a friend had given to me. Fortunately, 'twas well-wrapped, not in very deep, and surrounded by junk mail and an empty bag of flour. My germ-phobia and shame do not extend to marzipan coated in Swiss chocolate, apparently.

We didn't do a CSA this year, because we weren't sure we'd actually be around for the entire season, which typically runs to the first week of November. So it's mostly been the quiet nearby Tuesday farmer's market and the co-op for produce.

This week, though, a friend of mine in the neighborhood was going to be out of town and offered us her CSA share. Free local veggies? Of course! (not completely free--I'll probably make her some cookies, or something, when she gets back.)

Among the haul was a veritable wedding bouquet of Swiss chard. Huge, glorious, multicolored. But what to do with it? A few weeks ago I bought a much smaller bunch at the farmer's market, sauteed it with garlic and onions, and put it on top of some polenta. It was good, but with this bounty I expect the oxalic acid (that stuff that makes your teeth feel kind of strange after eating spinach salad) would just be too much with a monstrous bowl of sauteed chard. Stir-fry would pose the same problem.

Lasagna would be good, except it's July. No baking right now.

Then I got the bright idea of stuffing the leaves with something. Now I'm just trying to decide--with what? I thought of something as I fell asleep last night that seemed brilliant, but of course I can't remember what now. The Internet has lots of ideas, most of which I'd thought of--doing a stuffed cabbage-like thing, with ground (fake) beef and tomato sauce. A sushi-ish thing, with rice and ginger. Something that sounded similar to stuffed grape leaves, minty, though with chickpeas. None are quite right.

I figure I'll just go to the co-op on the way home and look for something that strikes me. Quinoa, barley, or some other grain would be good, maybe mixed with some of the summer squash we have. Not in the mood for beans, nuts, or fakemeat. Tofu might work, though. Or something creamy, like ricotta, but arranged in a way that avoids all that pesky baking.

If something successful comes of all this muttering, I'll take pictures and share the recipe. For that matter, I'll probably share any complete failure too, as a warning.

I'm reading a conversation elsewhere online about the HP series as a whole, where someone is coming away with the feeling that they've been cheated. They're saying this is, at least partly, because the characters' actions aren't the most logical ones--and those responses aren't what *they* would do.

I've seen people say this before, about books, or people, or whatever: "Why did [other person] make that choice? If they'd done [this idea I have], it would have been much more productive/logical/what I would do/in character/etc."

And eventually I'll get over it, but I'm always surprised that these people are 100% intentional all the time. I'm afraid they'll apply that standard to me. I do stupid things all the time. I forget my keys. I say the wrong word. I can't find a check 30 seconds after putting it, er, somewhere (I found it later). I drop expensive, breakable things. I get angry about things that don't normally anger me, because I'm fresh out of cope that day.

I didn't mean to. It wasn't a message, except perhaps one which says "I'm human."

And a character's mistake says that that character (and maybe the author) is human. Thinking about what another person should have done is a fool's errand. We, as a species, just aren't that self aware. We shouldn't* be EXPECTED to be that self aware, because then every dang thing we do needs to be a Message, and everything that anyone else does needs to be Interpreted.

Isn't that tiring? Making sense of all the noise?

*There I go, telling people what they should do. Apparently I'm just as bad.

A while back I was talking about bentos, and I've been continuing to make one or two bento-style lunches per week, but I've mostly been not talking about it here. No particular reason, just hadn't gotten around to it once, and it continued on that way.

But I have been posting some food talk on the LJ bentolunch community, though, and I just set up a flickr stream exclusively for food/bento pics. So, y'know, if you're hungry or curious, there's someplace to go.

I ordered some real boxes for J and I, it'll be ages before they get here (literally on the slow boat from Japan), but I'm looking forward to checking them out.

Mostly, the idea of putting everything for lunch into one small reusable container seems to work pretty well. Sometimes bad combinations of food get together (seaweed on my chocolate chip cookies made me sad), but I'm getting better at ways to separate things without using disposable plastic bits. Edible containers work, food-barriers where flavor transfer is minimized can work, if nothing is too wet. The bento boxes we're getting consist of two stacked containers, which will help too, because that way I can keep the savory/messy things in one tier and the self-contained/sweet things in the second.

Right now I'm looking for some sort of small tupperware-like container that would fit into the containers I have, for very gooey things that don't play well with other foods. Yogurt is what I'm especially thinking of, here; I'd love to get away from the tiny non-recyclable containers. I just keep thinking that what I'm picturing must exist out there somewhere, I'll just have to keep my eyes peeled.

(Warning: contains Harry Potter, if you don't like it, but no spoilers, if you do.)

I went to a teensy local bookstore a little after midnight last night to pick up my copy, and the place was jumping. There were about a dozen people in line, another dozen off to the side, waiting for the people who'd signed up to pick up their copies. Doesn't sound like much compared to the people waiting in line for 3 hours at Borders, but 1) Two dozen people in this place makes it PLENTY full, and 2) Not waiting in line for 3 hours was kind of the point of going there, for me. (actually, I didn't know they'd *be* open at midnight until they called about the order we put in.)

The owner's kids (I think) were ringing everyone up (a teenager and a maybe 10-year old), obviously stressed but handling it well--everyone there was perfectly cheerful, which helped. When some people off to the side who'd seen spoilers started to talk about it, they did a good job of shutting it down right away, warning that everyone in line would beat them if they didn't shut up.

I came back and read until around 4, when I crashed. J had to work today, so I got up with him around 8, chatted, read another 10 pages, and crashed again until noon. :) Just finished a few minutes ago. Now it's J's turn, and incidentally, he said that today was about the slowest day in the library ever.

In the end, JK did all right by me. I don't think of myself as a capital-f Fan of the series, though I like it a lot--I don't write or read fic, or do more than the occasional 10-minute wander through fansites. But even so I was worried I'd spent a little too much time reading theories about the 7th book, because as the various bits of the puzzle came together, I recognized a lot of theories I'd seen. Particularly early on, I felt more like I was doing some fun intellectual exercise rather than reading a story. I got caught up in it eventually, though. And I feel like a writer that can make me laugh my head off when my nose is full of goo from crying a few pages before is probably doing all right.

Now to hold all the talkiness in until J finishes...



Back of the sweater's done. Will probably write out the neck shaping for the front, and the arms as far as the shoulder shaping tomorrow night, and cast on the front on the bus tomorrow.

I'm completely failing on getting a true-color shot of it. The swatch is washed-out, this doesn't show any texture. Oh well.

This sounds kind of silly, but because it's the back of the sweater, it's hard to hold it up to myself and get a sense of if it will actually fit or not, so after I took this I laid back on the floor, on top of it, and saw if everything lined up. It does, exactly! Whoo! I love when math works.

And a note on the yarn: it's Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool, A DK weight wool-silk blend. It's wonderful stuff. Frankly, it's just this side of "too expensive for a sweater for me" normally, which is why I hadn't bought any before, but it was on just enough sale for me to go for it. The yarn itself doesn't feel like anything much--a bit, I don't know, stringy feeling. But worked-up, the fabric has a wonderful texture, like velvet or teflon tape, that sticky-slick thing. It's the silk content, I assume. There's some bits of vegetable matter in the yarn, some of it so thoroughly mixed-in I was worried I'd break the yarn getting it out, but it's not tons. Just one bit every few rows, some of which just falls out as you knit with it. I've been getting more used to that after all the natural-wool spinning I've been doing.

Lavold uses the yarn in a lot of cabled patterns (I have Viking Patterns for Knitting, which I didn't mention in the last entry because I haven't done anything but admire it yet), though I'm not sure I'd do a particularly intricate pattern with this color at least; there's enough contrast in the yarn that just plain old stockinette has plenty of interest. I think a very complex pattern might get a bit lost. Some of the other colors have subtler tweedy bits, they might work okay.

Design talk, "helpful books" edition.

I really don't have a big craft book library--one smallish shelf, which has all the knitting, spinning, and some sewing books. The true pattern books are mostly lace, the rest of the knitting books are reference books--stitch pattern libraries, historical info, design books. And 5-10 magazines; I really have to fall in love with something to buy a magazine.

It's not that I don't love books, it's just that I love reference books most of all, because I can always get something new out of them. Pattern-only books never do that for me, I always get rid of them eventually.

So, here's what I frequently pull off the shelf when putting a sweater or vest together, or making major modifications to a pattern. They're the books I won't get rid of until I stop knitting, or unless someone creates the Ultimate Knitting Reference Book which makes all other obsolete (not sure which of those options is less likely, actually).

Sweater Design in Plain English Excellent descriptions of styles that work for various body types and what measurements need to be taken, and for taking you through the steps of the design process. I like the frequent reminders that "fun to knit" and "quality piece of clothing the recipient will enjoy" are not the same thing. Total lack of advice on armscye shaping beyond "decrease to desired width" (what's the desired width supposed to BE?!?), so I'm crossing my fingers for this part of the sweater. Really dated sweaters, though that doesn't bother me, because the reader isn't supposed to be knitting that exact sweater, they're just examples of how the process works.

Knitting In the Old Way Very good numbers for "jumping off points" using a percentage system, to make sure you're not going to strangle yourself with a 7 inch wide neck opening. Excellent book for someone that needs to get fearless, or to encourage someone that already is. Knitting isn't rocket surgery, never has been, right? I like a lot of the patterns in the book, but they're folk patterns, so nothing very fitted or modern looking.

The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns A good backup for second-guessers; you can figure out that your numbers are pretty close, or choose to make them deviate more if you're trying to avoid a particular effect. Personally I think most of the patterns are set up to be a bit too baggy (I'm particularly unimpressed with the way the set in sleeves fit on the models), but she gives good advice for changing that, and I like all the examples that are based on the pattern but which vary bits.

The New Knitting Stitch Library (Leslie Stanfield) All the patterns are charted, none are written out, and no colorwork (though the knit/purl patterns can be easily used for colorwork, that's what I did for last Christmas' polka dot socks). There's a few bits that I think are strange--for example, there are these beautiful scrollworked ABC's, but you only get the A, the B, and the C, no other letters. And a general tip with lace charts that I haven't seen around: if you want to mirror-image something, lots of copy machines allow you to do so. If the chart is a semi visual one (i.e., / and \ for left and right-leaning decreases), you don't need to change anything.

A Treasury of Knitting Patterns (Barbara Walker #1) Patterns all written, none charted. Starts with stockinette and goes from there, which seems kind of lame, but she shows how many of the very basic stitches look with twisted stitches which I think is very handy, at least for showing a newbie or identifying a problem. The downside: there are tons of designers who use Barbara Walker stitch patterns as their only resource. Once you start to recognize the motifs, you see them EVERYWHERE. It makes me wish that more people did research, or even *gasp!* made up novel stitch patterns. For me, if I'm looking at one of her non-trivial stitches, you can bet I'm usually going to change it around a bit.

I just thought of colorwork stuff, which sends me off in a completely different direction. For some reason I usually take those books out at the library and just let what they say sink in, so here are some very short reviews. Deb Menz has a few books talking about color in a general way--the spinning one is great even if you don't spin, I think, because it makes you carefully look at every bit of yarn you have. Sweaters From Camp, which I do have, has a lot of good "lead by example" type of work, not a ton of advice, but what's there is high quality. Ann Feitelson and Alice Starmore have Fair Isle books with excellent info for design, along with some patterns(though I don't think the out of print Starmore is worth 200$--just find it at the library, or buy the Feitelson). Sheila McGregor's Traditional Fair Isle Knitting has by FAR the most bang for the buck, though no sweater patterns, just loads of stitch patterns and descriptions of what things have been discovered to work over the past 100 years.

More knitting design talk.

So last time I talked about how I got the basic idea of the sweater shape figured out--a reasonably well-fitted v-neck with a bit of a funky thing happening at the neckline.

Then, it was measuring time. I have an excellent diagram of myself with all the numbers filled in, but I never believe them so I started all over again (I should believe them; I haven't changed much in any dimension since high school).

What I measured:
-hips at the widest point
-waist at the smallest point
-hips where the sweater *should* sit (an inch above the widest point, but I wanted that other measurement too in case the sweater droops)
-bust at the widest point
-chest just below the breasts (becomes more necessary the more you've got there, and/or if you're putting in bust darts)
-width across the neck where I wanted the collar to be
-width across shoulders where I want the sleeves to start
-depth of armhole
-circumference of upper arm/mid arm/wrist
-distance from where the armhole will start to the widest point of my chest

Er, I *think* that's all of them. Oh, arm length, too, which I forgot since I haven't written out the pattern for the sleeves yet.

I was pretty sure I wanted 1-2 inches of ease in the sweater--enough to fit a thin shirt underneath, but not so much that it will be sloppy looking if I don't. But I always second guess myself on these things, so I took out one of my favorite sweaters and did some comparative measuring, and tried it on to make sure I had the mental image right. (Alpaca in July, how I suffer for my art.) The Juliet sweater has 3/4 to 1 inch of ease in the bust and waist, a bit more at the hips where it flares out. I want this sweater to be a little less snug (it's thicker yarn, for one, and I really can't wear anything underneath the Juliet sweater), so 2 inches of ease it is. 3 inches at the waist, so I don't feel like I'm sucking in my gut after a big lunch, and because there's no guarantee that a shirt I'll wear underneath has significant waist shaping. And I ended up adding a touch more at the bottom, in case the sweater, which is being knit in a wool-silk blend, droops to the widest point of my waist. Adding more at the bottom also made the numbers for the waist shaping easier, because then I had the same numbers at the beginning and end of the waist shaping--the fewer things to keep in my head when I don't have my notebook with me, the better.

I want to do this sweater knit flat, because I'm the only person in the world that likes sewing things together, so I divided all the circumference numbers by 2 and got to work. The hips, waist, and bust measurements were pretty easy to deal with: cast on x stitches, decrease to y, increase to x (see how nice it is to have the same number in two places?). I arranged it so that I had a set of decreases or increases every 4 rows (nice round easy-to-remember number), then figured out the distance from my waist to the bottom of the sweater and saw, after looking at the row gauge, that I needed to knit 2.5 inches straight before doing the decreases. When I got the increases sorted, I saw that I needed to knit the narrowest part for about 1 inch before starting the increases. I could also have lessened the rate of increase/decrease to once every 6 rows or something, but this method worked for me.

I put some bust darts into the pattern too, arranging them so they'd start the right number of inches from the beginning. I'm not super chesty, but I'm pretty broad in the chest and shoulder, and bust darts have looked good on me before. Not too much, just enough rows to make 1-1.5 inches of extra fabric in the front.

That's as far as I got the second night (the first night was swatching). Figuring out armholes was too complicated for that particular moment, so I left it there and cast on. Starting a pattern that's not finished might sound scary, but I do better with thinking design bits through once I have an actual piece of fabric sitting in front of me--I usually have very little set when I start.

Next up: Probably some arm hole talk, or book recommendations, or a yarn review.

Bike mess is healing nicely, thanks for the well-wishes.

Did I ever talk about this blanket?

I'm pretty sure I didn't, because I was waiting to give it to its owner, which took me forever to get around to. Anyways, it's mostly not my work--some friends and I got together to make a blanket for another friend who had a baby. They mostly knit squares, I put them together and did the border. The yarn is Pachuko organic cotton, which comes in a variety of undyed colors. I'd bought this soon after I got into knitting again, but it wasn't right for the project I was considering, a tank top. Too heavy, and though it's hard to see here I bought it in 4 different colors. I just couldn't come up with something for it, so when we got talking about putting this blanket together, I figured it was perfect--washable, neutral (we didn't know what she was having at the time), nice quality.

I liked how it came out in the end. It took me a while to decide how to arrange the squares (the only rules about the squares were size, and that they have a stitch pattern that wasn't too curly, so there are a lot of different patterns). The first thing I decided on was how to arrange the darker brown squares, because they stood out. Then I tried to keep it so that none of the garter stitch squares were right next to each other. Lastly I just putzed around with the remaining squares, setting it up so that everything looked reasonably even.

The border was pretty basic--I had a bit of the off-white, light brown, and dark brown left, and just cast on the whole way around the blanket, and alternated a bit of stockinette and reverse stockinette until I ran out of each color in turn. I'd tried a bunch of more complicated things, but with all the busy things happening in the middle I felt like it needed a simple frame.

I'll talk more about the sweater soon, today it's time to talk about bike-riding excitement, and losing at a game of Bonk (perhaps even Extreme Bonk).

So, there's this street on one end of campus (local readers: this is the intersecting street at the campus end of State.) It's a busy side street, and is the natural way for cyclists to get on the "bus, bike and ped traffic only" main commercial street of town. It's my normal route home. I ride slowly down it, partly because the thing is paved with potholes, and partly because there's a large parking structure and a parking lot along it, and drivers don't always leave these areas carefully.

There were two or three cars in a row who turned in front of me to go into the parking structure, so I looked over and sure enough the next car was also turning in, but was nice enough to wave me across.

As I passed him, I faced him and put up one arm in a "thank you" wave...

...and hit a pothole.

I've been trying to figure out the physics of what happened right then, based on the combination of scrapes, bruises, and damage to the basket on the front of my bike, but I can't. Suffice it to say, everything went everywhere. Fortunately, I was in good enough shape to immediately get myself and the bike onto the sidewalk (though I had the wind knocked out of me and was panting a bit), get the bike chain back on, and then ride home; I was only about 1 mile into the 4 mile commute. I considered waiting for the bus at that point, but I was so adrenaline-wobbly that I wasn't sure I'd be able to lift the bike onto the bus-rack, or even stand while waiting. Oddly, continuing to ride took less energy. I could sit, anyways.

None of the people walking by, or the guy that waved me past, stopped to check that I was all right. Maybe it was clear enough that I was, but I've stopped to check on people who went splat before--it's always nice to have someone offer help at that kind of moment, even if you don't really need it.

I didn't get that wobbly nauseous "oh god" thing happen until I'd been at home for a few minutes and was cleaning myself up. Then I got a cookie and some orange juice and laid on the floor watching My Name Is Earl for a while because I couldn't reach the remote. Then I got back to normal and made polenta with swiss chard for dinner. J hardly laughed at my clumsiness at all, and expressed his sympathy through wound dressing when he got home (he works late on Thursdays).

The damage: I was wearing shorts, so my legs got scraped up. Left knee is by far the worst; completely scraped, top and bottom, swollen on top, with a funny dent that looks for all the world like there was a button on the ground right where I landed (it's got four little dots in the middle and all). My palms and wrists are a bit bruised but I was wearing cycling gloves, so all the surface damage got done to the gloves--I might need new ones now, but never has 10$ been better spent. A few bruisy spots on my legs and hips, and a tender spot on my chest that I don't think is going to show up as a bruise. (My first, nonsensical thought as I landed was that I popped my boob, but that was mostly the wind getting knocked out of me.) General achiness.

So I thought I'd use this sweater I'm planning as an opportunity to talk about designing stuff. I'm no kind of expert, so it's possible I'll talk for a month about how great this sweater is going to be, only to have it end up ugly, but that's part of the process too.

So, the starting point: I bought this yarn recently. It's a DK weight wool-silk blend, a bit knobbly. I bought a bunch of dark green and one skein of a reddish-brown. My initial thought was to knit a reasonably close-fitting v-necked sweater, and that I'd throw in the brown... somewhere. Since I'll be out there in the Real Job world sometime soonish, I figured it should be something that would work in an office.

I started off by poking through my magazines and books, and doodling a few things. I mentioned yesterday that I was paying extra attention to the Slanted Neck Pullover from the Spring 2007 IK. I liked that it's a nice, clean sweater, with something a little different going on thanks to the off-center v-neck. There's not a lot of shaping, but there's some ribbing along the waist to draw things in in the right places.

I've loved the Union Square Market Pullover on the cover of the Fall 2005 IK since that issue came out. Again, I like how clean it is, but with the interesting neck thing, and I like the use of a tiny bit of color around the edges. I like how the sleeves call attention to the special bit of knitting, but I'd end up with dangerous chemicals and bits of food stuck to them by the end of the day if I wore a sweater with sleeves that belled out like that.

Some other things I considered:

Some sort of intarsia-ed cabled thing going up the center, and breaking off into two smaller cables along the neck. I like this idea so much that I went back in time to make something very similar, so I could enjoy it for longer. And since it's also dark green, I decided to pass this time around.

Er, that's ribbing, and raglan sleeves, in case you couldn't tell. I was thinking the vertical lines would make it nice and clean, and raglan sleeves are pretty easy to design. But I didn't like how the yarn swatched as ribbing, and I guess it just seemed a little too informal for what I was thinking.


The direction I'm 98% sure I'm going. Plain stockinette, hems at the edges in the contrasting color, set in sleeves, and an interesting little thing happening at the neck. Rather than just knit a few rows of ribbing, I'm going to do shortrows around the bottom of the neck, making a wedge shape in the contrasting color. Like the sleeves on the Union Square Pullover, but flipped around and relocated. It incorporates the "something going on at the neck" bit that I liked in the two IK sweaters, it's clean, it's professional. Add a little waist shaping and some bust darts, and I'm all set.

A quick bit of swatching showed me that a combination of short rows and decreases will make something triangular.

With this swatch, I did a double decrease every other row, and set each short row 2 stitches in from its predecessor. The decrease rate seems right, but the shortrows will need to be spaced more widely if I still want a v-neck in the end.

The other tricky thing about the neck that I'll have to think about is that I want to do it in stockinette, not ribbing. That means a hem, and a hem means I'll have to invert that shortrow shaping somehow so that I have two layers of neck stuff that matches up perfectly. I suspect that doing the same thing over again, with increases instead of decreases, will flip the shape around properly, but I'm definitely going to put in a lifeline right where I turn the work, so if it doesn't match up at all I'll be able to rip back to that point.

Next up: playing with the numbers.

Because there's been family visits, housecleaning, various worky things going on recently, that's why. I figure silence is better when I don't know what to say.

In the meantime, however, my brain has gotten full of inspiration, in a way it hasn't in ages and ages. Inspiration breeds mess, so strewn around the bed now are The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns, Sweater Design in Plain English, Knitting in the Old Way, a calculator, a tape measure, my knitting notebooks, and two issues of Interweave Knits. For an idea of what direction I'm going, I'm paying a lot of attention to A: the Slanted Neck Pullover from the Spring 2007 IK, B: The Union Square Market Pullover on the cover of the Fall 2005 IK, and to this swatch:


Which is Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool yarn. Nice stuff, so far, though the knobbliness of the yarn makes it a bit hard to count stitches accurately. I bought a sweater's worth a few weeks ago at the Sow's Ear, and the way it kick-started my desire to knit something makes me wonder if all that stuff sitting in my stash is just going to keep sitting there, stashy, forever. I'm reasonably sure this is still a complexity issue, however--I have plans for the yarn I have, they're just fancy cabled, colorwork, self-designed lace plans. It's still going to be a while before I can devote that much of my brain to a project (and I've still got that blue Fair Isle sweater languishing, once I am ready for more of a challenge).

I'm designing this sweater, but with the exception of one small funny spot it's going to be pretty straightforward and clean. So, I'll stick with it for now. Plus, this way I have something to talk about.