I have a hard time deciding whether I'm an introvert or an extrovert, and I just realized why.

My favorite thing, my favorite, favorite thing, is listening to other people have conversations. I love going out with a group of people, and then eating snacks in the corner, not contributing much. When I was a kid I liked hanging out with my mom and her friends--I was a well-behaved kid, so they didn't mind, and meanwhile I got to listen to lots of talk about people I didn't know doing grownup stuff I didn't understand. (Not *naughty* grownup stuff, just crabbing about work and taxes.)

I hope I don't creep people out, being mostly-quiet and listening.

A friend of mine going through a rough patch asked to be invited to do distracting fun activities.

Rereading my note before sending it, I realized that every single thing I mentioned was food related--did they want to go out to lunch? Or have me bring over some soup? Or did they want to join my Christmas cookie-baking extravaganza? After noticing this, I added some non-food activities, but the thought of my first instinct has stuck with me for the last few days.

Not that bringing someone food is so unusual--I mean, casseroles for the bereaved are all but expected--but it's a funny little instinct. I suppose part of it stems from the desire to do something--anything--to help. Mammals always need food, and complicated things can keep hands busy.

And, at least for me, the other part of it is that I'm no good at saying things to make people feel better. Talk is cheap, and I stumble over my words in the best of times. Neither can I fix what's broken. The only thing I can do to show someone I care about them is to do things for them. And physically sustaining someone with food is one of the most basic things that can be done.

Huh, I just realized how working class I'm being right now--when I took a course on the sociology of the working class, one of the things we talked about was the way friendship is defined. Middle class friendship primarily consists of people doing things WITH each other, while working class friendship consists of people doing things FOR each other. There are a lot of people I spend time with, but I feel like hardly any of them are friends. The ones that are, now that I think of it, are almost all ones that I've fed.

Well, that's an improvement:

Holiday knitting progress:

#1: Washed, blocked, ready to go.
#2:Washed, blocked, ready to go.
#3: 30%
#4: Washed, blocked, ready to go.
#5 : started
#6: 0%
#7(group project): Group part done by the end of this week, my part, 0%

Last week, when I only had one thing knitted and a bunch of half-started projects sitting on needles, I was getting a little nervous about finishing. There are one or two things that could go a little past Christmas without being too tragic, but I'd much rather avoid that stress. I knit a lot this weekend, but I did a lot of other stuff too--I certainly wasn't going feverish, or anything. And even then I got about a third of stuff done. My knitting bag no longer looks like the aftermath of a yip-yip hunting expedition. Victory!

I'm really looking forward to finishing the projects I feel beholden to--not only the Christmas presents, but my Fair Isle sweater, which is again languishing in the yarn bin, a lace sock which is too short, and some Dulaan mittens. I should finish all that right around the time my grad school stuff goes into Really Hitting The Fan Mode. I predict that next year will be mostly spinning and very mindless knitting projects.

I like today's date. 11-22.

I've been feeling particularly fiery the past two weeks--arguing with people about science, getting mad at people that are moving slowly in the lab, just jumping into the fray a lot. I think this is that "okay, I need to finish my graduate career NOW" phase that people talk about. I just want to work all day, all weekend, tell everyone to buzz off because I'm BUSY HERE. I was half-blaming it on PMS last week (although I almost never get like that), but that wasn't a problem by yesterday, when I did the reasoned, businesslike, interest-of-scientific-inquiry equivalent of thwapping a glove across someone's face.

And hot diggity, was it ever fun.

I got about half a paper's worth of data done last week. It's that kind of time. At this point I've got everything working, so the only thing preventing my experiments from getting done is the time it takes to do them.

So, it's scary, but good. Being in a fighting mood is helping.

Holiday knitting progress:

#1: 80% done
#2: 10% done, then 0, then 20, then 0, then 5, then 0, then *95%*, back to 0 again when I realized I couldn't get more of the yarn. It's chunky yarn that knits up quick, anyhow.
#3: 10%
#4: done!
#5 and 6: I have the yarn, and I'll start once 1, 2, and maybe 7 are finished.
#7: Not holiday knitting, but a group thing that I'm doing the finishing for. 80% done in terms of total knitting, 0% of my part done. I'll get started once I have things to work on.

Er, that's a lot of stuff yet to go, but they're all medium-small projects. I should be able to manage.
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Over the weekend Madam and I went out to Blackberry Ridge, which was having an open house (they're a mill, and not usually open for in-person shopping).

I feel sometimes like I'm over-shilling for them, but they do have fantastic yarn. I highly recommend them.

I didn't buy yarn this time out, though. I just got a bit of fiber. Silk top, in the "firecracker" colorway seen here. As far as I see they don't sell any fiber online, though if you're really interested and called or wrote I'm sure they could manage something.

I'm just completely in love with the colorway. I need to finish gift knitting, but I have the silk sitting out so I can look at it and feel encouraged to finish everything. Once I do it's spinning time.

A day of bits.
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Spam email subjects today: "a missionary so jejeune" and "how rude of sandalwood". Each of these makes me hate spammers up to .05% less than before. That's still a lot of hate, though.
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A conversation between my husband and I last night just after we'd both gotten home:

Me: And how are you?
J: *sigh* very... double shift of shelving. And you?
Me: Oh, I'm feeling incredibly full day of microscopy and image analysis.
(a few minutes later)
J: Do you need any help with dinner?
Me: No, it's all set to go, pretty much.
J: Good, because my feet are still double shift.
Me: I bet your feet aren't as double shift as my eyes are microscopy.

I love him most when he makes no sense.
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Working indirectly with vets leads one to discover crazy things that exist in the world. Two examples: Doggles and neuticles (the latter is text-based and only unsafe for work if your boss has no sense of humor).
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Tips on feeding a vegetarian at Thanksgiving. I keep meaning to do more foody entries, but I always forget, what with the hunger and the food getting cold. We're having Thanksgiving with friends this year. I'm leaning towards bringing a vegetarian pot pie, but J wants me to make this vegetable/cream of soup/swiss cheese delicious monstrosity. I like the monstrosity--it's a dish my dad made up, and reminds me of good times with him--but it's not very impressive. We'll see.
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Whenever I'm thirsty and have to pee at the same time, I get a little disappointed with evolution.

I had that "feel like I'm about to come down with a terrible cold" thing all weekend--waking up with a scratchy throat that didn't go away after breakfast, feeling slightly achy and slow. It didn't materialize into anything except the tiniest bit of a chest roughness that was gone by Tuesday, but I found that unthinkingly spinning was a good thing to do while I laid around drinking hot lemon water, waiting for the lurgy to attack.





On the top, 3-ply yarn, from alpaca top, 280 yards, something between 6 and 7 ounces, 10-11 wraps per inch, shiny as a great shining thing.

The bottom yarn is a little complicated. I spun the 3-ply from 3 separate bobbins that I'd filled with the alpaca singles. I had a good amount left on 2 bobbins still, but instead of 2-plying the rest, I spun a bit of gray Shetland top onto the first bobbin and the lighter of the two remaining bobbins until all three were about even. Then I continued spinning a 3-ply yarn. My second guesstimation was quite accurate--there was only a foot of singles left.

I really like the result. The Shetland spun up kind of scratchy but softened up a lot after washing. About 3/4 of the yarn is 2 ply Shetland, 1 ply alpaca, and the remainder is 1 ply of Shetland, 2 plies of alpaca. And it's really springy. About 20 yards, 10 wpi, maybe 1/3 ounce?

I'd been spinning the alpaca for the Sugar On Snow hat/neckwarmer, and what I think I'll do is use the Shetland on the bottom part, to keep it snug around my face, since alpaca on its own doesn't have a lot of memory. The gradation from 2 to 1 to 0 plies of wool should look neat.

Hey, haven't seen this guy around here lately:



As you can see, a fair amount of progress has been made. However, there are a lot of dopey mistakes mixed in there. Little things that aren't real noticable unless you're counting, but they are in there.

The problem? I got the hang of the timing of rows when working on the body, when there were just over twice as many stitches. So I go merrily along and at about the time that I feel a color change coming up, I've gone a few extra rows already. Fortunately the colors are subtle enough that it won't be terribly obvious (and now I'm getting the hang of the sleeve timing), but it is sort of frustrating.

I hemmed and hawed about the motif placement on the sleeves for a while. I knew whatever was there would get slowly eaten up by the decreases from shoulder to wrist, and I didn't want anything that would look out of place or be hard for me to pick up mid-motif.

What I finally decided was to have interesting stuff in the places that wouldn't get decreased away, with the same "filler motifs"--the polymer chain running through the body-- in the space that would get decreased.

I'm pretty happy with that part of the pattern so far. The chains are small enough that it doesn't seem too horrible when the decreases cut into them (you can see this in the picture). And I like the continuity of including them, rather than changing to a small allover pattern like I was considering.

Let's see, other notes: Cutting the steek didn't scare me too much. I happened to finish sewing them all up at my knitting group, and so I cut the first one there with a few people looking over my shoulder. When I finish knitting everything up I'll probably tack them down, but they seem pretty stable.

I think I'll have plenty of yarn to finish. I was starting to get nervous one one or two colors when I was finishing the body, but I forgot that dropped-sleeve patterns seem to eat up less yarn in the sleeves. Now that I'm about 1/4 through sleeve knitting, I see that I have PLENTY left.

Belled, handknit sleeves are a bad idea when there's benchwork to be done.
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And now, a treatise on making a tasty peanut sauce. More of a philosophy than a recipe, but it tastes good.

I was making peanut noodles last night, and making the sauce in my usual way--taking all the applicable ingredients I had handy, putting them on the counter, and adding them until it tasted right. There was something really wrong with the flavor profile--it just didn't have enough *taste*, somehow--and then it struck me that I'd totally forgotten to add sugar. When I did, voila, awesomeness. It didn't make the sauce sweet, but it made all the other things taste *more*, if that makes any sense.

There are a lot of different ways to make a peanut sauce taste good (I make it pretty often--it's a good veggie dip and noodle sauce), but it always needs something from certain categories to make it taste complete. And they all start with S, which is handy: Sweet, Salty, Sour, Spicy, and, er, Sitrusy (hey, it sounds the same! Go with it for now.)

Here's how it goes, to make a small-party-sized bowl of dip, or enough sauce to cover a package of soba noodles*.

Stick a tablespoon all the way into a jar of peanut butter (I like the natural stuff, but go with what's in the pantry). Pull the spoon out. If you've got rather more than what you'd normally consider to be a "heaping tablespoon" stuck on, put the spoon in a bowl and give a half-hearted scrape or two with some other mixy implement. If not, add some more.

Add a bit of at least one thing from each category. I've used all the examples listed. A good starting point? A teaspoon, total, from each category (less for salt if you're using table salt).

Salt: Soy sauce, table salt, hoisin sauce, or, in a pinch, pickle relish. Or, if you're really in a pinch, ketchup.

Sweet: Brown sugar's good, so is molasses. Honey, white sugar, and maple syrup are more identifiable, but fine.

Sour: Lemon or lime juice (double duty in "citrus" category), any vinegar (though go light on anything besides rice wine vinegar).

Spicy: Red pepper flakes, jalapeno jelly, black pepper, chili powder, hot sauce, and I think garlic and onion powder go into this category too, as does fresh garlic (fresh onions are a bit much).

Citrusy: Lime and/or lemon juice, as mentioned above, ginger (fresh, jarred, or dried), fresh lemon or lime rind.

Things That, Not Being Classified By An Adjective Starting With S, Are Not Needed, Though I Sometimes Put Them In And They're Tasty Anyhow: cumin, cilantro, peanut oil, ground peanuts (garnish), paprika (also garnish).

Mix your motley food together until well blended. Add three tablespoons of water, one spoon at a time. Just when you think this gross peanut-water slime was a big mistake, the water fully incorporates and you'll have a nice sauce. Add more water if you're putting it on noodles.

Taste and adjust. If it tastes too "bright", insubstantial and not very peanutty, it needs more salt and/or sugar. If it just tastes like wet peanut butter, it needs more of the other stuff. It always needs more ginger, even if your hand slips and a ton goes in and you can't scoop much of it out.

If you're going to put it on noodles, flavoring it just to the point of "eh, it's a little too strong" is perfect, because the noodles will dilute a lot of the flavor.

*confidential to husband and sis-in-law: It may be enough sauce for one doggie. Depends on the size of doggie.

Tweed yarn experiments, ctd:


Swatched. Stockinette in the middle, with seed stitch on the right, and ribbing on the left, because I wanted to see how the yarn showed off texture. (for a higher-res image of the swatch and the yarns, check out my Flickr account.)

The yarns are in the same order as below, and are separated and edged by a row of dark brown. As a reminder, from top to bottom:

-small, half-attenuated bits (the ones that were folded in half)
-small neps
-large attenuated bits
-one brown ply in a 2/2 cabled yarn
-one brown ply, screwy 4-ply--semi-cabled, 2 underplied 2-plies, plied in the same direction as the first plying

Notes after swatching (going from bottom to top):

The screwy 4-ply knit up interestingly--the two loose plies, loosely plied, knit up in a way that reminded me of some of the commercially produced bulky singles. It's still definitely a plied yarn, and I liked the resulting non-biasing fabric, though I didn't like the way the colors came through. It'd be an interesting solid-color or same-color-family yarn, though, for cozy simple pieces. I'll definitely spin more of this, especially because it's not in a commercially-available style.

The 4-ply cabled yarn came out very nicely too, although it's not what I'm looking for for the sweater. The blips of color seemed more organized and even than that of the other 4-ply. I think a tone-on-tone yarn done in this way would look fantastic--a bit of turquoise in a navy yarn, something like that. Or one ply of handpainted varigated yarn and the other plies of some complimentary neutral would be a good way of stretching a small amount of handpainted, or making it subtle enough to wear as a garment without screaming "handpainted!" everywhere you go. Another good one for the mental filing cabinet.

The yarn with the large fully attenuated bits was not remotely what I was looking for, though it has a Noro-y sort of feel and behavior which is interesting. I bet if you did one ply of a solid light-neutral color, and one ply with different-colored blobs along the length of the roving, you'd end up with a REALLY Noro-y yarn, even though it's plied. It would be fun to do with a lot of bright colors.

The small neps didn't work too well. It's hard to see on a 2-dimensional picture, but they stick well out of the surface, and aren't very firmly anchored. I pulled a few out accidentally while knitting. It's another one that could be fun if done by an experienced spinner with a specific project in mind, but all those blobs of fluff sticking out of the yarn would drive me batty, and eventually get pulled off. I think you really need fiber processed with neps in it to pull this type of yarn off.

I didn't really like the yarn with the folded pieces before knitting it up, but as a fabric it's really interesting. You can sort of see that there are a few stitches tinged with brown, then one or two very dark, somewhat lumpy stitches, then it goes back to white. The lumps are where the fiber is folded in half, and are really part of the fabric, as opposed to the neps which stand out from the plane of the fabric. I also like the textural interest they provide. If done all in one color, this might be a good way of intentionally creating the type of yarn that most people associate with handspun--you'd have a reasonably even fabric with occasional slubs. I found that this technique was much easier for me than intentionally creating thick spots in normal roving. And I like the subtle shading caused by the contrasting color fiber mixing with the light color right before the fold in the fiber.

For me, that one is the winner, though I'm not positive I'll use it in the sweater. I'll definitely spin more yarn in this way, though.