If I'm ever having a day that I feel like I've become a class traitor, I now know that I can simply watch half an episode of Trading Spouses, and all that righteous indignation will come right back to me.

I know, I know. "Reality TV on Fox" is a pretty dangerous phrase to play with. But it shows over and over again: rich people don't know how the other half lives. Working class folks may be a little fuzzy on the details, but we already know that crazy rich people can't take care of themselves, what their houses look like, and what they eat.

On a semirelated topic: how does one go through life without knowing how to cook? If someone reading this is that clueless, allow me to help you:

Step 1: Buy a cookbook.
Step 2: Find recipe that sounds good.
Step 3: Buy ingredients for recipe.
Step 4: Follow recipe, which is typically written at a 4th grade level.

If you need more help than that, I would be willing to come to your house and explain the volume of a teaspoon and how brown "browned" is. For free. Seriously. I consider this to be that much of an unexplainable tragedy.

Granted, there are things I can't do that are RELATED to cooking. I don't have that magic that lets every cooked item get finished at exactly the same time, though I'm getting better at this. I can't wait for baked goods to cool completely before eating them. And, while I follow the recipe, I just can't get my crepes to come out as perfectly as my grandfather's. (They're always either not thin or not crispy, Pepe--I can get one or the other, but not both. Maybe they need more Crisco, or else suspenders and singing.)

But to not be able cook at all? To be an average adult and claim that grilled cheese is beyond your abilities? How do these people not starve to death, or die from the boredom of canned soup?

Maybe when someone says "I can't cook," what they really mean is "I don't do servant work." Which means I'll never really understand.

And what have I cooked lately? Crepes (not so hot: see above, although the raspberry sauce I winged was nice). Fajitas, with J. Whitegirl curry with rice. Zucchini/chocolate/chili cake, a test run for a potluck chili pepper party our lab is having (very tasty, but half a tablespoon of red pepper flakes is plenty for a bright zing). Tonight? An experiment: tofu parmesean. We'll see how it goes. When it comes to academics, I'm a painfully slow writer. Blame it on my storytelling style.

In case you hadn't noticed (and maybe you hadn't, because I do try to edit out the worst of this here), I tend to tell stories in what I think of as a convergent way, rather than the usual linear style.

I never quite believe that someone will enjoy the story properly unless they know all my reasons for enjoying it. So I start off with a lot of seemingly unrelated details X,Y,Z. Then I expand on X,Y,Z as they pertain to what I'm about to say. Then I go off on a tangent about Y and forget that other thing that's SO important about X.

Eventually, I actually tell the dang story.

This works all right for conversations and conversational writing when the story's not more than a couple of pages' worth of info. And it's the reason I think I do well in an interdisciplinary setting: at this point, I understand the basics of about 4 different areas of study, and now it's time to both work outward and inward--broadening my lit searches so I can understand when other people talk, and focus it all in on this thing I think is so interesting.

But this strawberry-picking method doesn't work so well when you're writing an academic paper, where all of X has to be over in this one spot, and all of Y needs to sit in its own corner.

Z is left as an exercise to the student.

So I've found myself writing a lot, and then having to move it all around, or erase it because I said the same thing more succinctly two pages ago. One thing that helps is that I did actually write an outline (for once), so at least I know that when I start to talk about chemistry, I can cut it out from the middle of the paragraph about physics and slap it onto its proper neighbors.

The trouble in my brain is, they're all so interdependent that trying to compartmentalize my explanations freezes me up.

My joke-telling suffers for the same reason.

But I can get through my life without being a good joke teller. My saying "oh, yeah, and the dolphins only like to eat baby seagulls" when the guy gets to the lion isn't going to prevent my career from advancing.

So, I write slowly. slllllooowwwwlly. But linearly.

(and, because I'm so nonlinear, a note about that link to the joke: the person writing up the lyrics didn't get the punchline. Speaking of messing the joke up. It should be "transporting young gulls across the sedate lion for immoral PORPOISES".) And to show that knitting isn't the only thing I do:


There were curtains on this big lovely window when we moved in here. Terrible cheapy black curtains. Considering this is a pseudo-basement apartment, the less darkness the better.

The result was a stashbusting expedition--we had a swaggy thing going across the window at the old place which wasn't getting put to any use, and I had a big pile of white fabric that was going to back my quilt, but I decided it would be a pain in the butt to quilt and had already used some of it elsewhere.

The dark-looking fabric is a nice teal color. I got at one of the 3 fabric stores within a few blocks of me (4, if you count the thrift shop. Don't hate me too much). They needed a bit of color, even though adding stripes required as much sewing fiddliness as I can handle. I'm no great seamstress, but they came out even, and I only had to rip one seam I put in backwards. There's a split down the middle that is also kind of hard to see, so we can open the curtains up during the day.

I like that there's plenty of fabric on the curtain rod--just because it's just cheap cotton and linen in stripes doesn't mean it can't have a certain richness.

Mostly, it was a good excuse to use the sewing machine, which now has a permanent spot across from the computer on a table in our bedroom. You hopefully noticed that J has a blog of his own now, and is updating at a semiregular pace. Now I get to find out what it's like to get written about.

So far, it's fun.
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What is it about the Willy St. Fair that makes it the highlight my year? The sun is beautiful and warm, everyone's in a good mood, the musicians are both in-tune and entertaining. The Taste of Madison also has those elements, but something about the tone of it makes me want to hide in my cozy bed (I didn't even go to the Taste this year). While I try to avoid New-Agey terminology because most people don't take it seriously, there's no better way to describe the fair: it has a great vibe. I guess since offers of aura readings and massages were plentiful, a description of the vibe is acceptable.

So, I danced to rockin' Klezmer music, cheered for small children making huge bubbles, waved at the people who cheered for ME when they saw my "Ithaca is Gorges" t-shirt, and tried valiantly to decide between kettle corn and sugared almonds (the almonds won. I don't really like popcorn, but I always get sucked in by the Kettle Corn Man's spiel).

I patted the heads of many dogs.

In short, I acted like a very happy me. I can't wait for next year. Back to my "spreading out pictures" method, that was working so well before I went and started messing the site all up.

There's something I adore about the very beginning of a shawl, only a few repeats in. It's so tiny, it hasn't sucked up much time yet, and every stitch is perfect. I've only had a few hundred chances to muck things up, compared to the thousands and thousands of stitches that will go into the finished product.

You can see the adorable beginning of the Mediterranean shawl from A Gathering Of Lace, done in gray Zephyr, a wool/silk blend. The comments will go onto Wiseneedle once I've made the whole thing, but so far it's a dream to work with. I love the sheen and strength that the silk gives. At this point I'm quite a bit further on with it (it's a touch over two feet long), and it's just a heck of a lot of fun.

If you look carefully you'll be able to see pics of the finished product in the background. The shawl itself is somewhat difficult to describe, though I've tried to before (the very top entry, there). The back pattern composes an elongated pentagon with the point down the back, while rectangles attached to the upper angled sides are made of a different pattern and hang down the front.

Then there is the frightening 1532 stitch edging, which I'm pretending doesn't exist, for the time being.

You can also see my method of pattern organization. In my first major charted project, I realized that my brain simply isn't good enough to instantly find the EXACT row and EXACT stitch on an uncolored chart. Typically I'll be within 5 stitches of where I should be, but that doesn't quite cut it.

I know that some people use magnetic boards or sticky notes to cover everything except the row they're working on, but part of what I enjoy about lace knitting, and what helps me remember the pattern later, is the causality of it: forgetting to knit two together messes up the count for that row, which isn't such a big deal when you're working on size 2's, but it also affects the location of the yarnover relative to the one below, which can be a big deal. I'd miss out on a lot of that if I forced myself to ignore all the other rows.

What I do instead is go highlighter-crazy, in this approximate pattern:

Row 1: Blank
Row 2: color #1
Row 3: Blank
Row 4: color #2

Using two colors of highlighter along with blank rows strikes the proper balance between "need more roadsigns than a binary color scheme", "Not too insanely psychedelic", and "highlighting for more than 10 minutes makes me crazy". Your mileage may vary.

No discussion of the book itself seems to be complete without mentioning the errata in A Gathering of Lace. I looked at the page, and, even though I have the second edition of the book, two mistakes from the first edition are still there. Plus a rather obvious numbering error--yes, of course the row between 216 and 220 wouldn't be 2138 but someone really should have caught that. Plus, I was able to find the two year old pdf in the errata link above, but there no longer seems to be a link to it from the publisher's website, and there doesn't appear to be an errata sheet for the second edition. Based on what I've seen, it seems quite reasonable that there'd be fresh errors in mine. The book itself is lovely, and there are quite a few projects out of it that I'd like to make, but keep all this in mind if you decide to shell out the bucks for it. Still working out the details of retooling with the site. The "about", "links", and "crafty" sections should all be internally consistent now.

I held onto my Anti-Morning Person award today when my alarm went off. I had my alarm set up on the dresser next to my bed, and what I meant to do was lift myself up on the edge of the bed, lean over, and click the alarm off.

Also, I'm a fairly heavy sleeper, which means I usually only wake up not when the alarm goes off, but sometime between fiddling with the alarm buttons and laying back down. And I was having one of those super-realism dreams.

What happened was: I was laying on the very edge of the bed. When the alarm went off, I reached for the edge of the bed and started to sit up. But my hand wasn't holding anything. A Wile E. Coyote moment.

I had a split second of falling at the end of super-realism dream....

And woke up when the corner of my nightstand intesected with my right temple.

Seeing stars, and conscious but not really awake, I start grabbing at my alarm but can't find the right buttons, so it gets grabbed and ripped out of the socket.

Ow.

I'm all right now, though I have a bit of residual headache from my brains getting jiggled around. I think the alarm is going to move to the other side of the room, though--I get into trouble whenever I can reach my alarm clock from my bed. It's time to do the Nanopants Dance!
Hey, yeah, welcome to the new, but still humble, abode. A whole lot has been changed--a WHOLE lot--but if I've done everything right, you don't see much difference, except that the site may load a little quicker.

If you're a computer geek and want me to get all l33t on you, well, no, I can't do that. My approach to computer programming is similar to the way I do most everything: bang on it with a hammer until it works.

I will mention, though, that most of the blogs on the Links page helped me with the code. Not that any of it's stolen, mind, just that I often need to see things put into practice in order to get them right.

Let me know if they're not. The site will probably take until the end of the month to get all straightened out, in the same style, and under the banner of Johnny's Stew and not TChemgrrl, but I only have the foggiest idea of what this looks like on a Mac, for instance, or those new-fangled browsers you crazy kids are using these days, so if things are jumbly, let me know.
Although I'm miles away in skill and daring, I love the way that Kim of Wiseneedle fame shows the whole thought process behind working through a nonstraightforward project. For some examples, just follow the filet crochet story arc. Just from the clarity of her descriptions, I feel like I could do such a project myself--and my crochet abilities are akin to someone who can only purl, and doesn't know the name for what she's doing except bringing the yarn around and making loopy things. I CAN make things, I just can't tell you how, or follow a pattern. Another person that always gives good descriptions of what is and isn't working in a project is Joe, though his writing style is much different than Kim's.

In just about every other case, I find more than one or two "in-progress" pictures to get real old real fast, because the people don't have anything new to say about the projects. It seems like most knitting bloggers like to have a LOT of pictures on every entry, and the result is often a swampy mess.

I've partially kept away from this problem by keeping the in-progress pictures to a minimum (only for projects I consider "major", of which I'll complete maybe 2 or 3 per year, and then only at points where some part of it has been completed, or if I'm trying to demonstrate something). But then I was also finding my once or twice a month photo extravaganza to be a bit much. I was also making a swampy mess.

So what I did last week was, I took a bunch of pictures I'd been meaning to take, uploaded them to the site, wrote a note to myself that included the file names, then LEFT THEM THERE. And I've taken one out every day or so, and have been trying to take my own advice and talk about the positives and negatives of the design, where I made mistakes, and what I'd do differently in the future. I'm finding this spacing-a-picturefest-over-several-days thing to be working more nicely than my usual glut. It gives me the chance to do some postmortem on every project, in a way that will hopefully help myself and whatever tiny readership is out there. So expect more of the same--a picture every day or week, unless I go on vacation and have tons of fabulous pictures that need no description.

For being so nice slogging through all that metacognition, here's something purely pretty:


When J's parents came at the beginning of the summer, they brought the last of the wedding presents that had been languishing in their closets. This gorgeous leafy plate/bowl thing was among them. We didn't have a good spot for it to just sit on its own, so I made a little Martha-esque arrangement of yarns with similar colors. It's a smorgasbord of natural fibers: the smaller skeined stuff is lovely soft organic cotton (the stuff that may eventually become a shapely tank redux), the lighter of the three balls is even softer alpaca, and the darker two are wool/alpaca blends left over from the hat I made for my mom. The bowl sits under a glass-topped coffee table--a good spot to be seen, and to prevent magazine accumulation under or on top of the table.

The big ball in the middle is some farmer's market wool--not sure if it's handspun, but it's full of lanoliny goodness, a ply from a light-colored sheep, and a ply from a darker brown one. It's lovely stuff, but I've had a heck of a time trying to decide on a project worthy of it. I haven't swatched it, but I'd say it's probably an Aran weight, not soft enough to be right next to the skin, not a ton of yardage. I've been considering making some couch pillows. If I do, I'll probably need to snag another skein from the same shepherd if I want to make a good-sized pillow cover. We shall see.

In the meantime, its presence next to the couch is both an inspiration and a reminder--the mental itch of a project that's not quite there yet.


Another inspiration from Morte D'Arthur:

It's mentioned several times that King Arthur won't sit down to a major feast without a miracle occuring. Sometimes it happens as soon as someone mentions it, other times they all need to sit around for a few hours while the mutton gets cold and the mead gets warm, waiting for the angel to show up. This just begs for the Monty Python Treatment.

Sir Pimpington: Still no miracle?

King Arthur: No, none that I've seen.

(a knight sneezes).

Sir Mixalot: There! A most unusual occurence. He must have... uh... exorcized an evil demon!

King Arthur: Don't be silly, Mixalot, we're waiting for a real miracle!

(painfully long pause as everyone looks sadly at the food).

(Sir Pimpington sneaks out obviously and comes back in, rather poorly disguised under a white sheet with eyeholes cut into it.)

Sir Pimpington: woooOOOOoooo! Arthur, King of the Britains, I'm the angel, uh, Gary! Begin your feast!

King Arthur: Blessed are you, Angel Gary!

etc., etc.
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The picture that goes with this Onion story makes me giggle uncontrollably. The very last item, in particular, as well as "Cheefe Betwixt Two Slices Of Bread".
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Where's the best lighting in the house? Why, let's try the bathroom! Yeah, just stand in the tub and... perfect:



Fog Chaser jacket, from Knitter's Stash, done with 4 strands of dark red wool held together. Two of them were leftovers from previous projects: St. Brigid, and my lace shawl.

I haven't been having the greatest of luck with Knitter's Stash. A lot of what's in it is displayed in a way that makes it look pretty, but the things I've made from it have involved either very unclear directions, or else the thing was so awful when put on a human body that I needed to rip the whole thing away.

The jacket came out all right in the end, though it had a downright inaccurate picture of the flat pieces that led to some fudging with the shawl collar. Also, thoroughly slobbed things up at one point because I interpreted "left side" as "the side that would be on the left if the coat was on a hanger facing you" instead of "the side on the left if you're wearing the coat". Combine that with my occasionally not paying enough attention--knitting 3 inches of fabric on 15's kept going faster than I thought!--and you end up with a lot of ripping and redoing. Also, there's something wrong with the shoulders, but I can't quite put my finger on it. It'll be fine for a slop-around fall jacket, though, which is good enough for me. Just not nearly as classy as the one in the book.

And be somewhat wary of Knitter's Stash. If there's something you love in it, read the directions through 17 times, draw pictures based on the exact instructions, not the pictures in the book, and make sure they fit together the way they're supposed to. This is work the designers or editors should have taken care of, but someone seems to have dropped the ball.



9/2/04

Here's something I've been meaning to take a picture of:



The Shapely Tank pattern, with some minor changes. It's a bit hard to see, but I stuck a princess seam-like line into the front with two-stitch wide purl "seams", and I arranged the increases and decreases in a way that moved the fake seam in at the waist and out at the bust. Not a difficult thing to do, and anything that gives the false illusion that I have a waist or hips is nice. It came out a smidge larger than I'd like, but I was playing reindeer games with gauge, plus I tend to think everything should be baggy up to the point I actually put it on me, so I wasn't shocked. Better than too small, at least. I also found that the armholes came out WAY too big the first time around, and needed to rip out about 10 rows on either side to shorten the straps up.

I'm also wicked happy with the way the picked up stitches at the armholes and neckline came out. This was my nemesis for a long time, and I even left the tank aside for a few weeks while I avoided it, but I got some good advice and managed it without any tears. The next time I do a lot of stitch-picking-up, I believe I'll loop the stitches onto a needle a size or two smaller than the one I'll be working the stitches with. Also, this seems obvious, but at the bottom of the armhole, where stitches are bound off straight across, you really shouldn't pick up every stitch, since the edging should be making a circle towards the middle of the armhole. My not-thinking-about-it result is the tiniest bit of flare under the armpits. Not enough for me to worry about, since I can only see it when I'm not wearing it, but a good lesson for the future.

The overall setup of the pattern was very nice--understandable diagrams, arranged in a way that made it easy for me to futz with gauge and extras.

I wouldn't mind using this pattern again. In fact, I have some cotton yarn that may make it to tankhood one of these days. Here's what I would change were I to use this exact pattern again:
-Make it a size smaller, possibly with a corresponding addition of another bust dart repeat.
-Play with that princess seam, or something like it, a little more. As a first attempt it was fine, but a little more fudging wouldn't hurt.
-The neckline is a bit more square than is good for my monstrous shoulders, so I'd change it to a v-neck, with the bottom of the v starting about 2 inches below the bottom of the current neckline.

On a related note, I've been reading Sweater Design in Plain English, and I can't reccomend it highly enough, even if you don't want to design from scratch. It's absolutely what a fashion-clueless person like me needs, since up to this point I've completely stumbled into what looks good and bad on me (with occasional help from the Gay Brigade).



9/1/04

It turns out that humanity is very pretty if you take a bunch of people's pictures and average them. (via Ernie)

I saw another supposed attack ad that made me like the person getting attacked this weekend (previously, I mentioned an ad that told me that Kerry is one of the most liberal senators, and voted to increase gas taxes in order to encourage alternative fuels. Horrors!). This one was saying how Russ Feingold was the only senator who voted against the Patriot Act, with the images accompanying the voiceover being of a Middle Eastern man taking pictures of the outside of a nuclear power plant.

Considering I've heard a LOT of people who originally supported it saying the Patriot Act was a mistake, again, this doesn't seem like the best way of going about discrediting your opponent. Neither is stirring up racial fear and hate by showing some actor taking pictures with scary music.

A side note/theoretical: Imagine this situation. You're a young, medium-tan man of Middle Eastern descent with the beginnings of an acting portfolio. How much money do you need to get paid in order to appear in a political ad in which you're being displayed as every negative stereotype that will ever follow you around?

Just curious.