Stuff!

I am in a very Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type of mood these days. On the one hand, I think I have too much stuff and am busy de-cluttering. Some of the things that are burdening me right now are my yarn, my knitted sweaters and my fiber books. I love all of them but they are taking up too much space. I am not ready to get rid of them yet but I feel a weight on my shoulders when I think about these.

I have happily donated lots of things from my kitchen and my wardrobe (and more are packed up to go to Goodwill). These are things I have parted with regularly for years. If I don't use it for a couple of years, it gets donated. But knitting books, hand-knit sweaters and yarn are not in that category. They don't lend themselves easily to that sort of black and white decision making.

At the same time, I was ecstatic to get my stuff from China. As you may remember, this came by sea and it was packed up in late August in Shanghai. I missed many things that were in the shipment - my Hansen bobbins, my Hansen orifice hook, my niddy-noddy, a couple of my smaller purses (would have loved to have had those for Rhinebeck last week), my cheap headphones that I wear at night (story to follow), my lemon squeezer, and my chapati and idli making gear.

Re: headphones - I go to sleep listening to podcasts. Over the years, I have realized that this destroys headphone. I go through them about every 2 years or so. Therefore, I will not use my expensive headphones at night. i buy the cheapest ear-hook headphones I can find and use them till they die. Usually one side will die out and then the other. Back in August, the one I was using was working fine so I put its backup in the sea shipment. Of course, as soon as I landed here, the one I was using started acting up. When it is in the process of dying, the sound will sometimes come on and off in the side that is failing which is a very weird sensation. I was very happy to toss the failing one and start using the new one.

Anyway, back to the philosophical struggle. I knit a lot and if I kept everything I knit, I would have a house full of hand-knits. I give away a lot of shawls but it is hard to do this with sweaters. I am just donating 2 sweaters that no longer fit me that were knitted in the 90s. But I have another one I knit earlier that is still something I love and wear. How many sweaters does one person need? Occasionally a family member will ask for a sweater but I am not surrounded by sweater lovers. They like to wear sweatshirts and fleeces rather than sweaters. Or, they are too concerned about the shape of the latest season and  I won't knit sweaters that won't last 2 seasons because the wearer doesn't think they are fashionable enough.

I am actually resisting knitting more sweaters because of this but I really like knitting sweaters. I think my handspun is good enough now for a sweater. But what to do with the old ones?

Most of the stuff in the 32 boxes has been put away. The kitchen stuff needs to be washed so some of it is still on the dining table. Linens have to be put away as do books and fiber/yarn. Gosh, I have a lot of knitting needles!

However, I have been in a fiber-y mood after Rhinebeck and being re-acquainted with my tools has only intensified the mood.

I finished up the yarn I started in the 2 classes:

 First up, a gradient yarn made up of solid fiber. This is a very simple and crude gradient to illustrate the process. I took yellow and rust fiber - 2 ply. First 1/3 is 2 plies of yellow. Second 1/3 is one ply of each color and third 1/3 is 2 plies of rust. It will be better if I had done a 3 ply - or if I had blended the colors to achieve a more subtle gradient.

 Second, a fractal spun yarn. I divided the fiber into half. One single was one half. I divided the other half into 1 quarter and 2 1/8ths and spun them in order for the second single. One of the epiphanies I had in the class is that I don't have to spin it this way. I can actually spin 1 single of the half, the quarter and the 1/8ths in order. Then chain ply that single to create the yarn. This way I have shorter repeats at one end of the fiber and longer ones on the other. This would make great yarn for triangle or circle/half-circle shawls where the shorter stripes can go at the top and the longer ones on the bottom so you get roughly even stripes all the way through.

 Abby gave us fiber to warm-up - adjust our wheels, get used to spinning, etc. I made my warm-up into a leader which I will put on one of the bobbins that has nylon twine for a leader. Judith McKenzie and Maggie Casey both recommend hand-spun leaders so I am gradually spinning leaders for my bobbins. By the way, a warm-up period in class is a wonderful idea.

 You have to look closely at this skein. The white part is the thick and thin fiber that we spun in Jacey's class. It is loosely spun and a single. The colored part was also spun thick and thin but with more twist and then plied into coils. I made a single sample skein of both parts. You can see the coils! I didn't think I could spin either thick and thin yarn or coils but I did both!

 I also started a new spinning project. The one I was in the middle of in China can be continued because I now have the fiber. But I was in the mood for color and now I have enough bobbins to spin 3 projects on the Hansen - one on the WW (the white fiber I am spinning long draw for a DK/worsted weight), this colored one on the Hansen jumbo flyer and something on the lace (I am not doing anything on that right now). Being Halloween week, I decided to get into the mood with a colorway called Moldy Pumpkin from Gale's Art. I got it at Rhinebeck in 2012 or 2011.  I analyzed it based on Abby's class and found that it has a repeat. I've folded the fiber for the second single so the repeat shows up in the picture. I am going to try and make a self-striping yarn out of it.

 It is spinning up beautifully and fast. It is on a Humbug base - which is grey/brown (?) and white BFL blended together. I've spun about 2/3 of the first single already. I am aiming for a heavy fingering-sport weight yarn. Not too thin. The photo is the the spun single and what is left of the fiber.

Lastly, I played with the Zoom Loom a few times last week. It took me 3 tries to get a decent square. But I undid the two failed ones (I hadn't woven the last row on the outside so one of the warp threads just came off) and rewove them. I found this leftover Dale that I used in a fair-isle hat. I'm going to make as many squares as I can and then sew them together to make a scarf. The Zoom Loom is like a potato chip. You can't make just one square. It is now taking me about 30 mins to make one but it gets faster with each square (the first one took me close to an hour and was a fail).

I'm ending with a couple of shots of the Turkish votive holders I bought in Istanbul. I lit them for the 2 nights of Diwali (it is actually 3 nights), but I ran out of tea light candles.

They look very boring without lights inside but are gorgeous when lit up.

Why do some projects strike our fancy?

I made some progress on the VK Sideways Cardigan while I was traveling. However, I didn't do much during the week. My camera is back so I have some pictures to share, though.That is the back. All done. It is pretty after it is completed.Here's the front, partially done. I have to start the neck decreases. It should go fast but I have to sit down and concentrate to deal with the chart and the pattern. Then I have to do the yoke on the other front and sew it all together. I am going to do a round of single crochet around all the edges to make them neater.

I didn't post last weekend as I got back late on Friday, had a lot of catch-up to do around the house on Sat and went to visit family on Sunday. It has been hectic.

For some reason, I am having a lot of trouble motivating myself to work on this sweater. Why is that? Isn't knitting, knitting? Yet, there are some projects I love working on - Bohus sweater for example - even in the boring parts. Here is a project that isn't all that boring. It is very quick but for some reason it hasn't caught my fancy and I don't want to work on it. I'm sure I'll love it when it is done. I like the way it looks and feels. But I don't like knitting on it. Why is that?This weed is what I am going to be pulling out of my garden today. It has taken over the north side bed of my yard and I need to eradicate it. Shallow roots, spreads by runners. Sort of pretty but very invasive.

I have a podcast recommendation, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. Very funny and informative.

Nothing, nada, zilch

No knitting, no beading, nothing to report.

Actually, that is not entirely true. I did work the cuff of the sock in the Shibui sock yarn and am almost finished with the first sock. I am quite surprised because I am almost out of yarn. I won't run short, but I don't have exceptionally large feet - quite the contrary, and I usually have a lot of yarn left over.

Also, I am useless at winding center pull balls without a Nostepinne or a tube of some kind. I wound this on my fingers and it was a huge mess. So much so that I took some time and rewound it into a usual round pull-from-the-outside ball and life is much better. I should be binding that sock off shortly. I am going to try one of the 2x2 rib bind-offs I learned from Jean Wong.

After Ann and Barbara so kindly gave me advice on baking stones and replacements in the comments to last week's post, I went to Target and bought a pizza stone. It is small but it works. I made pizza last night for dinner and also baked the remainder of the bread dough. It came out well. Next week I am going to try a whole grain recipe from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I also found a couple of links via Ravelry that you might be interested in: Manjula's Kitchen (how to make naan in your oven) and Vegan Feast Kitchen (a variation on the no-knead recipe).

I am in a relative state of shock this weekend. A colleague of mine -my age - just passed away this week. My husband spotted her obituary in the newspaper. I had just heard from her a few weeks ago so I am dazed. The wake is tomorrow. What a fine line there is between life and death. It continues to reinforce my philosophy that we have to live each day for that day and not wait till someday to do the things we enjoy - especially the simple things. Spending time doing the things we enjoy, stopping to enjoy precious moments along the way, and making time for the ones we love is something that we have to do all the time. To balance that loss, I also heard that my friend's daughter had a baby girl. 5.5 weeks early but healthy and doing well. In the midst of life there is death but in the midst of death, there is life.

Happy 2008 to all!

A very happy New Year to all of you! Here's to a wonderful 2008 filled with peace and a resolution to the many conflicts plaguing the world.

Once again, thank you for all the comments you left on the last few posts. I have one of them that I want to address.
Rima says:
"I wonder how long it will take knitters using the current trendy crop of expensive merino yarns to find out how badly those yarns can pill when knit too loosely. What a waste.

I used to have faith that the yarns companies knew their products, but over the past couple of years have come to agree with you."

Rima, I hope you are right in that the yarn companies are doing this out of ignorance. I think it is being done deliberately so that knitters are tempted into thinking that the project will be completed quicker and therefore they buy the yarn to begin the project. I also think knitters buy into the delusion because they want to complete things more quickly. Sadly, they don't realize that the few days/weeks of time they save knitting will be lost in the years of wear they won't have. Maybe it is a result of the societal values we have: to acquire quickly and to discard quickly. We buy on impulse and toss indiscriminately when we are tired of things without regard to the resources, effort and time it takes to create and eventually to dispose of each item.
I took this photo last week of my next project but it is almost done already. Talk about instant gratification. I made the bag on the right last summer out of Lopi and Lopi look-alikes. But as you can see, the bottom of the bag is sadly defective. It is concave as I made mistakes on the mitering calculations. But it received a lot of interest at the LYS and made me realize that a felted bag is a great way to learn fair-isle. It is quick to knit (especially in Lopi), you don't have to weave in ends and mistakes vanish in the felting. So I proposed a FI felted bag class and needed to create a sample. I picked two patterns out of Sheila McGregor's Fair Isle book (after looking through Ann Feitelson, Alice Starmore and Sarah Don) and the bag is almost done after a day and a half of knitting. I just have to find the right handles for it (or decide what I want to knit as a handle) and then do the appropriate finishing. I did it right this time. I bought my bag bottom reinforcement and then made the bag to match and I plan on doing the same with the handles. The yarns on the left are the colors in the bag. The main color is the olive (top right-hand 4 balls) and the others are the contrast. I did the patterning in the olive as I wanted a brighter bag and changed the background colors from the green (bottom) to the blue, then the magenta and used the gold as the center accent of the motif before reversing the colors. It looks nice and bright but I'm not sure the FI pattern stands out the way it does in the first bag. Time will tell once it is felted.

I know Alice Starmore's Book of Fair-Isle Knitting is out-of-print and hard to find but it has one lovely section in it missing from the others I looked at. It shows one how to adjust the width of a motif to suit one's needs. I have often done this (along with adjusting the height) but it is nice to see it described. McGregor's book is one of the best and most accessible references for traditional motifs to design one's own. Many of the same designs are in Starmore's book and organized the same way. Feitelson has the best discussion on the use of color. But both McGregor and Don have traditional FI garments pictured and I fell in love with some of the paneled ganseys in McGregor's book.

ESW photos

I have been delinquent. I spent all of last week, and into Christmas Day, finishing up the ESW. So I didn't blog at all.

First, I crocheted around the edge, then I tried the crab stitch. What a disaster! I had too many crochet sts and the edge was all ruffly and wavy. The crab st looked awful in the fuzzy yarn. That took me about 3 evenings worth of work! I decided I really needed to fix it so I spent the next two days ripping out the crochet and re-doing it. I am so glad I did. It looks so much better and supports my philosophy that it is almost always worth redoing if you are unhappy with the result. Over the weekend, I fringed it. I wore it a few times before I washed it. The fringe is very long and another friend (Carol) had knotted her fringe in a decorative manner. So I spent a few hours on Christmas Day knotting the fringe in the same way. And ta-da!And this is a close-up of the edge that I re-did. Doesn't it look nice? I just did two rounds of US single crochet/UK double crochet as called for in the pattern and based on recommendations from crocheting friends. It doesn't really keep the edges from rolling but it is quite a bit more stable than the knitted edge and I think will be more durable.I have been living in the wrap for the past few days. I wear it under my jacket when I go out and wrapped around me in the house. It is snuggly and warm and everything I could have hoped for. I think I'm in love. It is a long time since I loved a knit so much.

I also have a bunch more stuff to blog about so I'll make up for my silence with more frequent posts over the next week.

Podcast review and blog etiquette

I have been listening to Ready, Set, Knit. Like the Knitpicks podcast, it is authored by the owner of an online yarn store. Unlike the Knitpicks podcast, it also appears to be a regular radio show and the yarn store also has a brick and mortar presence. Ready, Set, Knit is created by the owners of Webs. It is very professionally produced and has three major segments. The first discusses new yarns and closeouts at the store, the second is an interview with mention of upcoming events at the store and the third is a knit-along with tips and techniques. It is informative but definitely feels like an infomercial. However, I still enjoyed it as the owners banter with each other and with the interviewee and the knit-along leader. Each is almost exactly 30 mins long and the content is delivered crisply as befits a radio show.

I also happened on a thread on Ravelry which intrigued me. It has to do with blog etiquette. The gist of it is that when someone leaves a comment on your blog, you should leave a comment on their blog. I understand the rationale behind this - to increase traffic to one's blog. But the principle of it bothers me. It is a self-escalating because where do you draw the line? I leave a comment on your blog, you leave a comment on my blog and then I leave a comment on your blog, etc. Where does it end? It is like gift-giving at Christmas where I give you a token gift and then you feel obliged to give me something. Next year, I buy you something a bit more expensive but this time you are prepared and you buy me something. This is how Christmas became commercial - in my humble opinion. However, I am wondering if I have committed a social gaffe in not reciprocating to those of you who have left comments here. Speak up and tell me (in an email if you don't want to leave a comment) if I didn't follow through on something you expected. I promise that I will at least leave a comment after this one instance. What is the proper etiquette in this case?Lastly, here's a photo of my completed Peacock socks.

Blogging as a way of life

I don't think I am cut out for blogging. I see so many other blogs where people post regularly with lovely pictures and knitted items and, while I can always think of things to write about, I am not all that diligent about taking pictures or scouring the Internet so I can put things on my blog.

So that is my pathetic excuse for not writing a second blog entry during the week. I had good intentions but didn't. My week was not that bad in terms of time - busy but not overly busy. However, I spent my free time knitting rather than blogging. And I spent it knitting something that I can't post about. Maybe in the future, you will see it.

Which brings me to this blog entry's topic - am I cut out for blogging?

I am very unlike most knitters I come across on the Internet and like most knitters I know in my local area. I knit. I knit a lot. But I don't knit more than one thing at a time, maybe two. I knit almost every day but I don't knit long enough to finish or start things frequently. Therefore, I don't have a lot of new pattern starts, progress on various fronts, or new yarn coming in to generate content. I knit one thing for a few months and then move on to another thing. I get a lot of knitting done but most of it isn't interesting on a weekly basis. And then, to add to the sad story, a number of the items I knit I can't talk about. If I am knitting for a book, or a yarn company, or a submission that I hope will be picked up by someone, I can't blog about it. That is what I was knitting this week. A submission for a new book by Interweave that will come out in 2009. How boring is that? I can't talk about it now, or next year when I'm (she says hopefully) knitting it. I can talk about it in 2 years, if at all. Because if Interweave doesn't pick up the idea, I hope to sell it to someone else.

This week, besides the above-mentioned unmentionable, I am furiously knitting away on the shawl collar of the wrap. I spent a good bit of time yesterday with the daylight lamp and the magnifier picking up the sts. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT knit a row with scrap yarn when you want to keep two large sets of sts live on black yarn. I had to pick up the sts one at a time with two needles under the magnifying glass to avoid losing them. I've only done this with smaller numbers of sts in sock yarn or worsted weight yarn that wasn't black or a dark color. I should have put each set of sts on its own scrap yarn holder instead of knitting a row joining them with the scrap yarn. Lesson learned.

The good news is that I'm done with that task and am now happily ribbing the shawl collar so that you may have a photo of a blocking wrap by the time the week is over!

The technical part of our program has to do with shawl collar construction. I have all the band sts on my needle, from the bottom of the left front band to the bottom of the right front band. I marked the place where I started short rowing for the V-neck - i.e. where the V neck shaping begins on the fronts. I also marked the spots where I transitioned from the front neck to the back neck on each side.

I started by knitting about one third of the way from the back/front neck transition marker to the beginning of shaping marker on one side, and moving the back/front neck marker on that side to that spot. This is the beginning of the shawl collar shaping. I then turned and went to the corresponding place on the other side and moved that back/front neck transition marker there to set up the beginning of the shawl collar on the other side.

I am shaping the shawl collar by knitting gradually increasing short rows from one marker to the other till I get to the markers that tell me I'm at the bottom of my V-neck. After that I will knit all the way around to create the front bands. My short rows started by increasing 1 st at a time on each side for about one quarter of the rows, 2 sts for another quarter and 3 sts for the last half. I am hoping that this will give me roughly 1/3 of the short rows at 1 st, another third at 2 sts and the last third at 3 sts to create a gradual curve. I haven't done the math to see if it actually works out that way and I leave that as an exercise for all of you dear readers (if I have any at this point).

I had 40 sts for the short row shawl collar shaping on each side. I knit 10 rows of 1 st increments, 10 rows of 2 st increments and 20 rows of 3 sts increments (it is actually 21 sts as I stole a st from the band to make it come out even).

1x1 rib is boring but given it is a lot fewer sts than I was dealing with in the body of the wrap, it is going reasonably fast. I am listening to podcasts now as I knit so you will get a podcast review or two also in this entry. I realize this is a long entry that is going all over the place but that is what happens when I don't post for a few days.

I love Lixieknits It! They are short - 20-25 mins each. She has three or four segments - a blog watch, wool news and then an assortment of various things like what she's knitting or a review of the Ally Pally show at Alexandra Palace. I'm seeing a pattern here. I like international podcasts and I like ones that have some sort of knitting news or information in them.

In the same vein, I didn't like KnitWit: Rantings of a Rabid Knitter, not because there is anything wrong with the podcast but it doesn't contain the aforementioned content. She tells short stories. The part I liked is that these are short - 8-15 mins each. But I'm not looking for stories or essays when I'm knitting so the content doesn't match my mood.

I also listen to podcasts when I walk or run but I can't listen to knitting podcasts when I do that. I need to listen to podcasts that are motivational so I listen to fitness and health related podcasts. If I listen to knitting ones, I want to stop working out and knit.

Over and out!

Designing on the fly part II

Ambition is not a good thing. I thought I could do a theme a week! Well, maybe a theme of every 2 weeks or a theme of a month is more likely. But this is very similar to my knitting. I always think I am going to finish things a lot faster than I actually do.

Anyway, more on the large black thing. You can see the st pattern in the swatch above. That is 1.5 repeats of the pattern above the garter st divider. The swatch is blocked so while you can see the different heights of the knit and purl sections, the swatch is actually quite flat.


I put in the garter st dividers when I switch needle sizes in a swatch, to allow me to compare the qualities of the fabric created by the different sizes side by side. I typically swatch at least 3 needle sizes to see how they affect the resulting fabric. But in this case I didn't see a lot of difference so I went with the smaller size as the yarn is alpaca. A tighter gauge is better for stretch control.


Here you can see the wrap itself. It is scrunched up towards the top as it is still on the needles. At the very top you can see the pins I inserted to mark my short row turns. This is the unblocked fabric and you can see how much more pleated it looks. That is the characteristic of the pattern that I think will counteract the alpaca's tendency to grow. Time will tell if it works.

I have completed the neck shaping on one side and have started on the back. which is unshaped. It is half the width of the wrap. The neck shaping is similar to the neck shaping for a V-neck sideways knit cardigan.

The designing on the fly part comes about because there are times when I just can't count. The pattern repeat is 28 rows but I originally counted it as 14. So my first attempt at calculating the short row turns was off by a lot. I found I was running out of sts faster than I was building up the width of the front. I've modified the schematic I put in the last post on the wrap to add in the measurements and the direction of knitting . You may want to go back and look at the schematic.

After I ripped and re-did the front neck shaping I had a sudden, scary thought. I had partial repeats at the center front! That in itself is not a bad thing as the front bands will break up the front so as long as the two are mirrored, it is not a problem. But the back is a whole 'nother story. The back needs to have a smooth flow so that when I'm done with the other front shaping, the back and the front end up at the same row in the pattern. Also, partial repeats in the center back will look amateurish. Back to the drawing board.

I stopped knitting and started charting. That is the beauty of charting. It allows you to see what is going to happen and you can play with alternatives without too much wasted time and effort. I first put in the rows that matched my completed left front. Then I flipped them to show the rows that would have to be done to match the to-be-knit right front. That left the lovely little gap in the middle where the partial rows are. Here's the math:

My short row shaping is 32 rows each. So there are 64 rows for the two fronts total.

My pattern repeat is 28 rows. So the back is minimally two repeats which is 56 rows.

That leaves a gap of 8 rows.

I tried playing around with little motifs to fill in the 8 rows. Given they have to be mirrored, that is not a lot. So I am just going to put in a set of small triangles that will have their points facing down to the bottom of the wrap. While I'm not there yet in terms of knitting, and I may change my mind when I get there, my mind is now calm because I have a solution to the problem. Whew! I can knit again.

The bottom line is that there are always opportunities to fix problems in such a way that it looks intentional. My mother taught me this when I was a teenager and we made a cake for a party. It fell. Badly. The center was concave. It was dense. We cut it into pieces and made a lovely hard sauce to pour on it and served it that way. No one knew we meant to make a cake. It tasted like pudding. We got compliments on it. My mother said 'Why tell people that it didn't turn out as intended? Tell them we meant to make it the way it turned out' and I have lived by that motto ever since.

Mistakes are good learning experiences and one should learn from them and tell others about them so they can learn from our mistakes. But sometimes it doesn't matter and as long as the finished product makes the creator and the recipients happy, the mistake can be turned into a design feature.

And speaking of admitting mistakes, I have to find knitting friends who are not named Maggie. Darn! Maggie Brown, super lace knitter, I owe you a huge apology. I didn't even see the little 'b' at the end of the name. How can I make it up to you? How about a lovely adult beverage at next year's Camp or some luscious yarn?

For the rest of you who don't know her, Maggie Brown is my travel companion to Knitting Camp and was my room-mate this year. I can't believe that I didn't recognize her scholarly erudition in the Latin correction. Mea culpa, Maggie!

How specific should a pattern be?

On an online knitting list the other day, someone posted asking why designers don't specify the type of cast-on or bind-off or other technique. Her complaint was that the finished object sometimes has problems with a too loose edge or too tight edge or didn't look exactly like the pictured finished object. I was going to post in response but I wasn't sure if it would be received appropriately by the list moderators, so I decided to blog about it.

When I write patterns for publication, I try to be as specific as possible about the techniques I used when it matters. For example, I might specify that a cast-on should be loose or elastic, or to bind off loosely or in pattern. I might even say that the cast-on should be done provisionally if it is going to be removed later. I also sometimes provide alternate methods e.g. I might say that the cast-on could be provisional or knitted on, both of which provide a mechanism to pick up and knit in the opposite direction.

However, unless there is a really good reason to use one technique and one technique only, I don't get more detailed than the above. Why? My teaching has shown me that what is loose for me might not yield the same results for someone else. My knitted-on cast-on has a loopy edge that I find useful for picking up and knitting. But I have had students for whom that very cast-on is tight. If you don't leave enough play in the sts you cast on, it becomes a very tight cast-on. If I specified the knitted-on cast on assuming that it would be loose and it isn't, that is even worse for the knitter.

An excellent example of this is the provisional cast-on where you crochet a chain and then pick up sts in the backs of the chains. When it is time to undo, you unzip the chain from the end and it comes right out. For me, it does. For my students, it does once they understand where to pick up the sts in the chain. But there are many people online who are certain they are picking up in the right spot but that the chain doesn't unzip for them. It won't unzip if you start from the beginning of the chain. But when we discuss this, they are quite certain that they followed the instructions. They prefer other forms of provisional cast-on that I think are quite fiddly.

So being too specific has its drawbacks. I think it is much more useful to the knitter if the pattern specifies the results that should be achieved (e.g. stating that the cast-on should be stretchy) and leaves it up to the knitter to determine which cast-on yields those results. This assumes that the knitter has experimented with different cast-on techniques and knows what results they get individually.

And that brings us to the crux of the problem: knitters don't seem to want to experiment to find techniques that work for them. They want to be told what to do. Unfortunately, this is not going to be satisfactory because we are all unique and our knitting reflects that diversity. I have to find what works for me and what I like. I can execute some techniques perfectly but I don't like them. My fingers don't like working them. My brain doesn't like working them. So I avoid them. There are others that have that perfect blend of visual appeal and kinetic appeal for me. I use them often. But that is me. What about you? What techniques have that perfect blend for you? You have to find that out for yourself.

Decisions, decisions

I like to make sure that I have something to work on at all times. I finished the stole last night and wanted to pick something else up after I wove in the ends. I have a pair of socks and a wrap on the needles but both of them were at work. I needed to bring them home but I worked from home yesterday and so did not have the opportunity to bring them back.

So I took out the Wild Apple Bohus that I have wound into balls and am ready to start. I thought I could cast on and begin the neck. But, my 2mm circular needles are in the sock that was at work! I have lots of 2mm double points but only 2 circular needles as I prefer dpns. However, for a sweater neck, circulars are better. Therefore I could not start that. I only work on one item at a time so beginning another was not an option. I could have started something else but I really want to finish the wrap and start the Bohus. The wrap is my mindless knitting project while the Bohus will be a complex knit until the yoke is done.

I didn't start anything. I toyed with the idea of casting on to dpns and switching to the circulars after I bring them back but I decided against it.

I have a mini-rant today. Why is it that knitters think they are entitled to knit everywhere? I am a really long time knitter - at least 4 decades long. I knit everywhere I can and take my knitting everywhere I can. But I don't knit EVERYwhere and I don't expect to. I don't knit at meetings unless others are OK with it. I don't knit where it clearly says I can't and if someone asks me to put it away, I do. The latest debates seem to center around planes. Apparently there are some airlines (Quantas was one cited) that don't allow knitting needles so people are coming up with ideas on how they can knit on such flights including smuggling needles on board. Why? Isn't being part of a civilized society obeying rules? Anarchy results from people not following the rules.

What is really funny, though, is that this thread is interspersed with another thread about accidents involving dpns on one list. On the one hand we have people reporting how they ended up injuring themselves inadvertently on their needles, and on the other they are claiming that they should be allowed to circumvent security with their needles.

Knito, ergo sum

I have very mixed emotions about blogging. Blogging is a one-many relationship rather than a many-many relationship like a community. In a community, anyone can talk to anyone else and have different relationships within the community. It is a network. Blogging, on the other hand, is a relationship between the blogger and the readers of the blog and all other relationships go through the blogger.

But, there are many times when I want to write about my knitting and share my point of view with others and lists are limited to words. When I post my point of view to most lists, I can almost imagine the confused looks from most members. Having the ability to provide visuals is becoming more important and that is why I am blogging.

So what is this blog about? Mostly it is about me. जया. That is my name in Sanskrit and it is the feminine form of victorious. Many years ago, I was christened the Queen of a project I was working on by a friend and colleague. So the tsarina comes from queen and my philosophy is 'I knit, therefore I am'. For the Latin scholars out there, cringing at my grammar, I apologize in advance. I have never studied Latin. I made this up and if you want to correct me, I would love to get the correct phrase.

I will mostly blog about knitting, but I reserve the right to write about whatever is on my mind. Right now, that is mostly trying to get more hours in the day. I am extremely busy at work, I have books in my queue that I need to read, there are chives growing in my walkway that I need to kill, and I have to prepare for two classes next week. I have to finish editing a pattern for a project in an upcoming Interweave Knits book and finish a stole that is the sample for a class I'm teaching this fall. I don't want to do any of these things. I want to sleep and knit something mindless.

Oh well... some day I will