The Bendi Update.

That's a Bendigo color card in the husbeast's hands. (Let's not tell him I put such an unflattering photo of him on the internet, hmmm?)

Anyway. I'm thinking I'll put in one huge, colossal order the next time the dollar is strong. (Which will be, what, 2025?) Among other things I have up my sleeve?
- A sweater for me (and the state fair) in something beige
- Something for the husbeast for Christmas. He favors the Rustic in Graphite
- My father-in-law's Christmas sweater. I'm thinking cables in Rustic Green Tweed
- Maybe some yarn to dye and resell, dpending on shipping costs.
- Some yarn for a scarf in one of the rose colors.

All that (except the yarn for resale) would probably be in 8 ply. Maybe 12 for the Me Sweater.

Let's just blow that whole 'knit from the stash' thing right out of the water in one big blast, hmmm?

A total lack of planning or forethought.

In other words, duh.

I started to post yarn on my Etsy shop today, which means taking photos. (That's usually the holdup when I do this - I suck at photography and hate doing it.) I got five whole photos done (out of an estimated twelve) when the camera went dead. We have two sets of rechargable batteries we shift in and out of it, so I went and got the other set.

They weren't charged either. Since they were sitting on my desk, this was kind of my fault.

So, new yarn sometime later tonight. Sigh. I've been experimenting with really short color repeats (blobs of color about three inches long, repeating), and there are some randoms, and one skein of Ugly. Some of the names, to make you curious, are "Dancing Egg", "Lemon-Lime", and the one I want to keep most, "Beach".

In other news, I have global warming (or at least evidence of it) sitting off shore and raining on me. They're calling it Sub-Tropical Storm Somebody. Early May. Tropical storm.

I have a bad feeling about hurricane season this year. (Charleston is overdue for a direct hit. Isn't that lovely?)

I also organized my circular knitting needles today. (I'm grasping at topics, here.) It's a clever system that I might have seen over at the Yarn Harlot that she said was invented by somebody else. Or not. At any rate, it was invented by someone other than me and I know I saw it on the internet somewhere. All you do is get a multi-pocket organizer at the office-supply store and label each pocket by size and stuff the appropriate needles in the appropriate pockets. I'd show you guys a photo, but, oh yeah, my camera's dead.

Here. I'll show you a baby photo instead.

Last week in photos.

We forgot our camera, so there are no photos from the trip up or back to Ohio. Not that there was much to see on the way back - we were fogged in and could barely see the car in front of us, most of the way through the mountains.

First, photos for Bells, who asked us to take photos of where we live. This isn't where I live, but it's where the husbeast grew up. I grew up in a similar neighborhood, though mine was further out in the countryside. (Instead of more houses, the house I grew up in had a corn field behind it.)


It's barely spring in Ohio and everything really is that green. (In comparison, 600 miles further south in South Carolina, we're moving steadily into summer.)

The Baby can't play in soil down here due to moles and fire ants, so she was fascinated by the in-law's flower beds:


After about an hour of shredding my father-in-law's flower beds, I noticed The Baby had something in her mouth. When I investigated, I found out it was a rock.

Nice and clean. I'm not going to think about what was on it when it went IN to her mouth.

The husbeast mowed the lawn, and for history's sake (there's a photo of him at about one and a half, sitting on HIS dad's lap on the same exact mower), a photo shoot took place:



The end.

Hands: You only get one set. If you're lucky.

Due to a question in the comments yesterday, I'm worried now that I'm sort of misleading you guys on how you're supposed to care for your hands. So guess what this post is about?

Here's the rule. PAIN BAD. If your knitting causes tingling, or pins and needles, or numbness, or pain, take a break. Period. Pay attention to how you hold yourself when you're knitting, and fix any problems - I tend to hitch my shoulders up weirdly and they get stiff, so I work consciously at relaxing them, or sit in a way that keeps me from hunching up. You've got to do that kind of thing if you plan to knit long-term. (I could also make a comment here about how knitting German style with the yarn in the left hand is more ergonomically friendly than knitting English style with the yarn in the right, but someone will get mad, so I'm not gonna say it. Nope. Not me.) I also suggest sitting in a comfortable seat with good light, but I realize that reality doesn't work that way.

For beginners, remember, knitting is like any other physical activity. You've gotta build up to it. You're using muscles in ways you never have before, so to sit down and use those muscles for twelve hours straight is not good. Would you run for 12 hours straight? Not unless you worked up to it in a big way. If you did suddenly decide to run for 12 hours, you'd develop many of the same cramping, tingling, owie problems in your legs, as you get in your fingers from knitting like that. (When I went back to knitting after a year off to have the baby, I could only knit for about fifteen minutes at a time. I had to build up to it.) Muscle fatigue, that good tiredness you get after a workout, is fine. Anything more than that is not.

When the pain starts, STOP KNITTING. Take a break (a real break, not a quick run to the john), run some hot water over your hands (increases circulation), and kind of wiggle them around to loosen up everything. Slowly build up how long you knit, until you can maintain for longer amounts of time. These stories you hear/read about historic knitters doing crazy things like knitting a pair of socks a day or a Fair-Isle sweater in three days? Those were done by women who'd been knitting since early childhood and were used to it. (Not to mention they had different priorities - they were knitting stuff for sale so they could EAT.) Once you've knit steadily for a couple-five years, you can do the all-day knitathon too. (Though I'm not convinced it's good for you.) You've got to BUILD UP. Think marathon running. Same idea.

If anyone's gotten the idea from reading here that knitting through pain is okay, it's because I have nerve damage in my hand that causes pain for no good reason, all the time. Even then, if I can tell the difference between fatigue and nerve weirdness, I will take breaks from knitting or typing or whatever I'm doing. And I get sent to a hand specialist every few years for a checkup to make sure I'm not ignoring something important. So I'm (as usual, it seems), a weird case. Don't follow my example unless your doctor says it's okay. Seriously.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled sarcasam. I think I've found the Ohio photos. (Bells, I took pics of the neighborhood for you.) And I caught the husbeast sitting under my full-spectrum light looking at my Bendigo Wool color card last night and snapped a picture. Hahaha.

HOLY CRAP!

Fifty thousand hits. You guys are awesome.

Not a lot going on.

I spent the weekend like this:

Note the nesting behavior going on. I've moved my Ott lite and computer over to easy reach from the chair, and the cat has gotten in on the act by lounging on me at every opportunity. In fact, she prefers laying on my lap with her face in my boob. We finally got a picture of it.

You can see I knit on the Steeked Jacket. I'm a woman obsessed. I want it done, now that the sleeves are attatched. I usually get this way at this stage of a seamless knit and there's just the yoke left.

The Baby spent her weekend like this:

Which is to say, face down in her toy boxes. (Yes, plural toy boxes. Every time I turn around, the toys have multiplied.)

So there's not a lot to report around here, though we watched a few movies I have to comment on.

First up, Smokin' Aces. I know why it didn't do too well at the theater - it's not the movie they billed it to be. According to the ads it's supposed to be a hilarious shoot-em-up (which is why I wanted to see it), and it turned out to be a fairly legitimate movie. The basic plot is pretty standard - a Las Vegas showman is going to testify against a mobster, and said mobster puts out a million dollar hit on the showman. The movie is about all the people trying to kill the guy, including a lesbian hit team, three phsychotic brothers, several scary lone hitmen, a bounty hunter, and the FBI. (Well, the bounty hunter and the Feds want him alive, but no one else does.) The movie takes place in a 24 hour period and is amazingly layered with multiple story lines intersecting and branching off and actual character development. So it's a pretty good movie with some great twists and a strange yet satisfying ending (the mobster does get dead - who kills him is the twister). Just not the brainless shoot-em-up I was looking for. Oh, and it's really gory violent, FYI. There are chainsaws involved. And fifty-cal rifles.

And then last night we watched Casino Royale, the latest Bond flick. We take Bond movies seriously in this house, and the husbeast sumed it up best about fifteen minutes into the movie: "What the fuck is this?" Because it's a halfway decent movie (if predictable), but it sure as hell isn't a James Bond movie. Supposedly it's a prequel to the whole series; we see Bond's first kill, the origin of his martini, the first delivery of "Bond, James Bond", etc etc. But the whole thing takes itself WAY too seriously. No kooky bad guys, no freaky gadgets, no Q. NO Q. So if you want a run-of-the-mill suspense movie, it's not bad. But it isn't Bond, James Bond. (And Daniel Craig, while smoking hot, does not have the style of Pierce Brosnan. I don't care how much Brosnan wanted to make another movie, they should have paid him and given him the real script he kept asking for.)

Now I'm gonna go knit again, and try to find a real movie to watch.

Only on the internet.

"Smart bitches, trashy books", the romance novel review web site I read, is having a discussion about extreme niche romance. To wit, and I quote, "Extreme BDSM m/m paranormal were-slug romance". I am vastly impressed with anyone who can come up with this stuff, even in theory. Link.

The day's controversy.

That's the world famous bust of Nefertiti, originally dug up in Amarna (if my memory is reliable, but definitely in Egypt) and now residing in the Berlin Museum, Germany. What's it doing in Germany? Damn good question. A German dude originally dug it up and took it home. It was finders-keepers in grave robbing (I'm not calling it archeology) up until about 1920. The finding of Tut's Tomb finally made the government step in and stop the massive removal of antiquities from the country. Though there was still a lot of smuggling going on, continuing until now.

Zahi Hawass, director of antiquities for the country of Egypt, wants to borrow it for the opening of the new wing of the Cairo Museum in 2010. Germany is - get this - saying no. They claim it's too fragile to move. (IF it's too fragile to move, it's due to bad conservation and there are many things that could be done to stabilize it. Not to mention archeologists schlepped King Tut around the planet decades ago, and some of that stuff was pretty fragile.) Zahi has countered with refusing to ever loan antiquities from Egypt to Germany ever again, and threatening to not loan antiquities to any other country that works with Germany. Plus a ban on Germans excavating in Egypt, etc etc. Basically he's gonna fuck with them as much as he's able, and being pretty damn influential, that's a lot.

So here's the obvious question: If the country of origin of artifacts (in this case, Egypt) is capable of taking proper care of their history, should other museums around the world give back their stuff? Or is it finders-keepers? (I'm not saying we should give back antiquities from countries that are currently selling off the contents of their museums anyway. But for countries that are stable and have the ability to care for the stuff, why can't they have their stuff back?)

Personally I think early 'archeologists' were nothing more than grave robbers and all the stuff should be given back. More modern stuff that was excavated with the agreement of the Egyptian government is okay, but that early stuff was stolen. Give it back. At least to the countries capable of taking care of their stuff. (Turkey should get the stuff from Troy back, too. And they're getting pretty pissed about it being in Russia.)

Details on the Nefertiti argument here.
Listing of articles about it, here.
Troy treasure details, here. Which is as much a story of theft as any I've ever read. Schliemann was a grandstanding theif, not an archeologist. (Okay, so I've got strong opinions on this. Everyone who knows about it does.)

How's that for a nice break from knitting?

Putting it all together.

So you've got two sleeves and a body all knit up for your steeked jacket, and now it's time to join the three pieces together and knit up the rest of the body.

Get out your 100% figure - the number of stitches you cast on for the body - that I told you to write down. You need 8% for the underarm stitches.

100% body figure x 8% = the number of stitches for the underarm.

On my jacket, that comes to 18 stitches.

So I put those stitches on a holder (in my case waste yarn, but you can use an actual stitch holder too, if you want) at the underarm of the sleeve, where the beginning of the round was, and where all the increases took place:


Do the same on your body stitches - put 8% at each underarm on waste yarn or a stitch holder:

You can kind of see the vertical stripes I put in at the sides to make my jacket fit with the pattern repeats. Sorry the photos are blurry -- no idea how that happened. (Except that my photography skills suck.)

These stitches are at the armpit, anatomically speaking, of your jacket. Later they will be grafted together, and I'll show you how to fudge the pattern a bit to make it less noticeable. This is a hallmark of Elizabeth Zimmerman seamless patterns and found in most of her groundbreaking construction methods. At this stage, where you've got the whole thing knit to the arm pits, you can choose to knit a wide variety of shoulder types; yoke, raglan, saddle, hybrid, etc. We'll be knitting her saddle shoulder version.

The stitches you take off should be centered in the pattern; take a look at the above photos. You can see that the pattern on each side of the on-hold stitches ends at the same place. To make it fit, you can add or subtract a stitch and it won't make much difference, but the stitches on hold for the body and the sleeve have to be within one stitch of each other. (For example, if you've got 20 sleeve stitches and 21 body stitches, you can graft them together later with little trouble; if you've got 20 sleeve stitches and 25 body stitches, grafting is going to be a problem.)

Now. At this point you could just shuffle everything around until you've got your body and sleeves on one circular needle: front, sleeve, back, sleeve. And if you wanna do that, go right ahead. But having done this a couple times, I find I constantly drop stitches all over the place when using the Shuffle Method. When I do it, I knit the whole thing together, basically knitting on each bit as needed.

Please note, for the sake of clarity, that in the photos following, the body stitches are on a BLUE circular needle, and the sleeves are on a WHITE circular needle. And the beginning of the round is still the steek in the center front of the jacket.

If you're having trouble visualizing this, actually lay the pieces out on the floor in the anatomically correct layout. Note how the armpit stitches match up, and also how the stitches to be worked flow naturally across the front into the sleeves and into the back and on around.

From the center front, knit across the front of the jacket until you get to the armpit stitches that are on hold. Place a marker. Then knit the SLEEVE STITCHES from a sleeve onto the body needle:

You can see me knitting the sleeve stitches off the white sleeve needle, onto the blue body needle. To the right is a yellow bit of yarn I'm using as a marker.

When you've knit up all the first sleeve's stitches, place another marker and then knit across the back. (See now why I said having the body and sleeves all on the same pattern row for this was important?) When you get to the other arm pit, where the other stitches are on hold, repeat the process; place a marker, knit the sleeve stitches onto the body needle, then place another marker, and continue on to the front.

There you go. All joined up and ready to rock.

Work a few rows in pattern with no decreasing, up to two inches/4.5 cm worth, adjusting where you are in the pattern as you skip between body and sleeve. These non-decrease rows determine the depth of the armhole - the more rows, the deeper. Deeper armholes are generally more comfortable. However it also adds to the sleeve length.

Next, the shoulder decreasing. I'm knitting as fast as I can so I have example photos.

As always, feel free to e-mail me with questions.

Home again

Home again, jiggity jig. (Is that from Mother Goose, or something else? Whatever it is, it's hard-wired into my cerebral cortex.)

There's not much to say about the trip but we survived, and everyone in Ohio is doing as well as expected between heart attacks and major surgeries and getting put in nursing homes and driving me batshit. (I'm actually talking about three different individuals, on the medical problems. One single person did not have all that happen at once. Thankfully. I will not discuss how many are driving me batshit.)


While we were there, my in-laws were cleaning out their basement, and since we drive around in a '91 Suburban large enough to have a stewardess, we got a bunch of stuff. We were planning on taking home the riding lawn-mower, but we wound up with a chair and footstool, too:

Strangely, I had just been saying I needed a wingback chair for the living room. It's very comfortable to knit in (already tried it), and as soon as I figure out how to wedge a table between the chair and the wall to hold knitting stuff, I'm set.

Other photos will be posted, as will a tutorial on how to put your sleeves and body together on the steeked jacket, as soon as we FIND the pictures and I get it together and take some photos.


Once in a while, the insanity actually works around here. Just when I can't take it any more, something cool happens, and I remember Alexander Fleming (the bio does not add that Fleming was a slob and made his discovery of Penicillin by accident because his lab was a mess), and once again give up on any idea of being organized.

When we were getting ready to leave Monday, I realized I had two skeins of yarn soaking, waiting to be dyed. They'd already been there a while and I was afraid to leave them for the next week while we were in Ohio. So I dyed them in a hurry on Monday night - such a hurry I didn't even wash them after the dye process. Just laid them down and left. I got home, and washed them, and am amazed to find that I've discovered a way to produce really intense colors with food coloring. There are deep golden yellows on the green skein and dark ruby red and indigo on the red/purple skein. Hee hee hee. I invented a new dye process.

A few weeks ago, I sent a skein of coffee sock yarn to my mother-in-law to knit; I figured since I taught her to knit socks I owed her a skein of something fun. I'd wound it up into a ball for her, first. Now Gadget Man, my father-in-law, wants to use the ball winder when he comes to visit next. He wants to know how it works. I think I just gained an employee for free. Heh heh heh.

Damned post office.

Beginning May 14, 2007, the US Postal service is going to be hiking rates. Again.

For people shipping yarn to each other within the continetnal US, there won't be much change. For people shipping yarn to anywhere OUTSIDE the US, there will be differences, the biggest being that surface rate no longer exists; everything will go air. I've been shipping things to Europe and Canada by air already, so that shouldn't change, but air mail to Australia is extremely expensive. If I can't find a way around it, I'll have to pass on the extra cost to anyone ordering yarn from me. (And I imagine other shippers of all kinds will do the same, or just quit shipping to Australia and New Zeland.)

My advice? By anything you want, now. Not just from me, but from anyone within the US. I've got no idea how this will affect the shipping rates of other retailers, but it's likely they'll use it as a reason to up the charge.

Rae, I believe, wanted the URL to my etsy shop: it is www.samuraiknitter.etsy.com I tried to keep it simple -- I've got enough other stuff to think about.

Soggy Ohio.

We had a huge storm (rain, thunder, hail, lightning) within hours of arriving. The Baby slept through it and I fell asleep in the middle. I wish I'd been awake and watched from the porch (always one of my favorite things, if I wasn't actually out in it), but I was too tired and too cranky and too drugged. Ah well, a good night's sleep won't kill me.

The drive was as always: twelve hours, and full of dead animals at the side of the road.

Today I'm working on the Mystery Knit. Tomorrow I visit family. Friday, we're back on the road.

We better not miss Stargate.

Whining, and gloating, and tidings of great joy. With more gloating.

The whining first, just to get it out of the way. Due to family weirdness (illness, actually - no hostility or natural disasters involved), we are going on a quick trip to Ohio. Starting tomorrow. One day to drive up, one or two days there, and another day to drive home. We'll be back by Friday night. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to driving 1200 miles in two days. There are no words.

Oh, and did I mention we leave at four in the morning, to fake out The Baby and make her sleep through half the trip? That way she only thinks she's been in the car five hours and we avoid the exhausted hysterics until she collapses. (Been there. Don't wanna go there again.)

So this means, among other things, that I am missing Thursday morning at the Children's Museum, AGAIN. Sorry, guys. I'll get back there again, soon. I swear. (The Baby would be pissed if she knew -- then again, she might not; this trip means quality Grandma time for her.)

Instead of getting organized and packing stuff up today, I put my head in the sand and knit. Lo and behold, look what I did:

Two sleeves! Joined to the body! This may get done soon. (However I'm taking the Mystery Knit on the trip -- being all stressed out with hours of car riding to do, will force me to work on it.) And don't worry, all you happy steekers, I took photos to show how to join it all together. With luck I'll even post it before I leave, but Saturday for sure, when we get home.

Guess what! Bendigo Woolen Mills has joined the 21st century and finally created a web site!! Right now the exchange rate isn't on our side here in the US, but give it a while and then think about an order. Excellent wool yarn, and very economical, even with postage added on. (Look at the yardage in those balls before you complain about the price.) This wool is nice and smooth and perfect for stranded color anything. Bells sent me some of their yarn in our swap, and I'm trying to knit myself out from under this pile of stuff so I can knit up the yarn she sent. Guess what else she sent?

What is probably the only Bendigo color card in North America. Hahahaha. Oh, and Sekhmet, you fucker.

CONTEST WINNER!!

Sorry I took so long to get around to this.

Using a completely random method (I swear), I pulled a name, and that name is...

LOUIZ!!! YAY!!

Louiz, e-mail me and we'll discuss mailing the booty.

Thanks, everyone, for participating, and again, sorry it took so long to pull a name.

Sekhmet, you fucker.

Any art historian types out there??

So I've been reading up on ancient China and their art, and I've got a question. A lot of their ancient bronzes have a diagonal swirly pattern on them:

So what's the name of the pattern? Isn't there some term for it, at least made up by modern curators? It's common enough I think it should have some name. But I'm not finding it. (And yes, I'm trying to figure out how to knit it.)

Anyone?



While I'm puzzling over ancient China, the husbeast has decided we need to shift over to DVR (the cable box with the hard drive in it, so we can record shows and play them back). We got the new box this morning, and this is what the remote looks like.

I ought to be able to launch the fuckin' space shuttle with this thing. Makes me want to forget technology altogether and hole up somewhere with a fire and a book. And some knitting.

Lace and charts and stuff.

Thinking back, I realize I used charts AND written directions for the first couple lace projects I knit, until I got the hang of the charts. Which led me to thinking about books that have both, and I have some suggestions.

Easily the best of the books I have is "The Lacy Knitting of Mary Schiffman" by Nancy Nehring.

Everything in the book has written directions, and (I think) all but one has a chart. Projects vary from simple edgings on up to the most complicated doily I have ever seen. (The turkey doily at the back. No chart. Lace short rows. I haven't knit it. Yet.) There are also 'teaching tips' all through, and comments that point out which projects are good for learning which skills.

The other suggested books are my old favorites, the first and second books of lace knitting from Marianne Kinzel.


These books also contain written directions AND charts for all the projects. There is also a bunch of information on casting on and off, blocking, etc. Other than insane doilies (I say that as a compliment), there are some really nice, more rational projects, including a very cool lace stole in the second book that I wish I had time to knit; it's lace openwork with solid stockinette leaves. I've knit most, if not all, of the doilies in both books, and I don't recall ever finding a mistake in the charts. (I've looked at my notes, too, and I don't see any corrections.) The doily on the cover of the second book is possibly the craziest thing I've ever knit.

Anyway. Hope that's helpful for anyone wanting to figure out charts; I'm still working on some more useful information, but this is a good starting place.

Odds and ends and comments on comments.

There've been some good questions and comments the last couple days that deserve some followup.


One was a question on blocking socks and ribbing and other really stretchy things, and was there any point in it? My first thought is, I wish people would quit using the term 'block' when what they're really doing is 'wash some knitwear and lay it flat to dry'. It's not YOUR fault, it's the fault of all these books and designers. They're always going on about blocking your knitting, and really, unless you're doing lace or something else specialized, it's really an uncomplicated wash. So in other words, there's no point in blocking most things and I don't bother. Just wash and lay flat. (Remember, washing wool is like setting your hair. Not laying it out when you dry it is a lot like going to bed with your hair wet. Not. Pretty.) I'm not wild about sock blockers - those two dimensional foot-forms that people put washed socks on to dry - mostly because they put ridges in the top and bottom of the sock, and stress the fibers along thosse ridges. But to each their own. You like sock blockers, use sock blockers.


As for superwash wool and how it gets that way, well, it's usually considered 'proprietary information', meaning industrial secrets. Each wool mill has their own methods, I suspect, but they're all variations on the glue or burn. Both processes are PROBABLY done in the form of some kind of chemical bath that's part of the dye process. I'm guessing, but it's the only way I can come up with that's cost effective. Incidentally, if your superwash feels sorta stiff or crunchy, it was probably glued; if it's loose and slippery, it was probably burned. But as always there are variations on that.


Thank you all for your concern over my blood pressure; I'm back on my medication, having confirmed that a weird problem I was having IS caused by the medication. Namely, the BP meds make my asthma worse. Very freaky (though most BP medications mess with vascular tissue, and your lungs ARE vascular tissue, so now that I think about it, it's not THAT weird), but definitely confirmed. My asthma was better, and within four days of re-starting the medication, I'm up all night coughing up a lung. So I get to ask the doc for something different. Whee.


I hadn't realized that charts created such strong feelings, but I shouldn't be surprised. I think the prefrence between written out directions and charts hinges on that old right brain/left brain deal. I see it manifested in all kinds of other directional-type things - written directions vs. schematics or maps - so it stands to reason people would have the same prefrences in knitting. (In fact, once I hit on that idea, I realized that I prefer pictures/maps/schematics for EVERYTHING, not just my knitting.) I'm trying to think of a way to do a chart tutorial for left-brain people, but I'm not making much headway. (Headway. Get it? I Crack myself up.) I'll do something about reading charts soon, though.

If anyone wants to think about it and then drop me a line, let me know if you see a sort of general theme to your own directions prefrences -- do you prefer all charts (not just knitting) or all words? Anyone? I'm particularly interested in those who prefer written-out knitting directions and how they prefer other kinds of directions like how to get somewhere or how to put together something. I appreciate any and all input on this one.


I appreciate the suggestions for Knitty articles, ALWAYS, but unfortunately Knitty articles already exist on chart reading and blocking and yarn substitution. Theresa, of Techniques by Theresa, has covered them. (In fact, her tech articles are the reason I don't usually submit truly tech articles to Knitty -- no need to re-invent the wheel or step on toes.) However, I AM considering a 'charts for left-brain people' article, if I can come up with something truly helpful. Guess who gets to be my test audience?? (And just for the record, I like left-brain people. They keep the right-brain folks like me from starving while we think Great Thoughts.)


What am I reading?? THIS:

It starts in prehistory and ends at the Tang Dynasty, an era of history I'm sad to say I know very little about. (Damn Ohio public schools and their bias about western civilization.) I'm enjoying it immensely and am staggered to find amazing art from very early periods that looks NOTHING like what I think of when someone says "Chinese Art." Anyway, I want to knit ten million sweaters, kimono, and jackets based on what I'm finding in this book. It's a Barnes and Noble publication, so you can only find it at their book stores, or here.

The end is in sight for the Steeked Jacket. (Fear not, I am taking photos.) The closer I get to the end of anything, the faster I knit and the more enthusiastic I get about the project. So I may actually manage an FO for April. No swooning.

Now if you'll excuse me, my child seems to be stuck in a box. Hahaha.

More real life crap.

Today was the knit-together at the Charleston Children's Museum (every Thursday morning at nine, for free) and I was really looking forward to it. Then the baby kept me up all night whining. Then another round of suspicious chills hit and I began to wonder if we were still contaigous. After all, we'd caught the damn thing after everyone thought they were well.

So we stayed home. Boo. I was bummed.

The Mystery Knit has hit the black hole stage (the sleeves have been one inch too short for a week. A WEEK! I knit on it every night if I want to or not and NOTHING HAPPENS). My hands are bothering me so knitting lopi (the steeked jacket) isn't too wise but I do it anyway as a change of pace. And I'm trying to ignore the shawl until the other two things get done because they NEED to be done and the shawl is just goofing around. (Even though the shawl is the only thing I feel like knitting. Isn't that always the way?) I'd include photos but it all looks the same as it did the last time I took photos.

Last night I bought more books (sigh), among them a Chinese history book. If I could finish up THESE design projects, I could start on some NEW ones, inspired by all these great art and history and anthropology books I've been buying. I'm starting to face the fact that I need to get some test knitters (or sample knitters, or whatever the hell the going phrase is), but damn it, I want to knit them myself and keep the finished product. As with everything in my life, it's a dilemma. I'll probably fix it by some middle-of-the-road, moderate solution or other.

While the baby was whining and snotting around the house today, my eye fell on the pile of stickers I salvaged from all those easter egg dye packs I bought on sale. What to do seemed really obvious to me.



I'm never gonna get the stickers out of my bed. But she quit whining, so it might be worth it.

Washing wool.

You know how, with glass bakeware, you can do almost anything to it? Bake it, freeze it, broil it. Scratch the crap out of it with knives and spatulas. Clean it with oven cleaner and steel wool. It's indestructable.

Unless you drop it.

Wool's a lot like that. It's pretty darn sturdy - there's a reason our ancestors have worn it for thousands of years - so long as you avoid a few specific things. Those things are temperature shocks, agitation, and alkaline/base chemicals.

Remember. Wool is hair. You have hair on your head. Don't do anything to your sweaters that you wouldn't do in the shower (like washing it in bleach). It's a good thing to keep in mind.

First, let's take a look at our fiber:

This is a scanning electron microscope photo of a wool fiber. In fact, it's a high-quality wool fiber; most are rougher than that. See the shingle-like arrangement of the surface? Those are often called scales, and are mostly, though not entirely, how wool felts together. In heat and moisture, the shingles open up a bit and hook on other shingles, and the whole shebang turns into one giant matted up clump. (Which can be a good thing, if you want felt. Felt's useful. But it can also be horrifying.) Agitation, scrubbing, wringing, that kind of thing all pushes the wool fibers together and helps them snag on each other. So no agitating. Lay wool in a basin of water and prod it as little as possible; let soap do all the cleaning action chemically. Several rinses will remove all the dirt after that, without you having to move the fibers much. (Incidentally, superwash wools are superwash because either the scales have been burned off, or glued down, so they can't hold on to each other.)

Shocks in heat make wool fibers contract and shrink. It's not heat that does it; it's the temperature difference. I regularly boil wool while dyeing it. It's not a problem, so long as you raise the heat slowly so the fibers can adjust. On the other hand, when I'm felting on purpose, I try to get the largest temperature difference possible between the wash and rinse cycles, occasionally going so far as to put ice in the rinse water. (You can also do a slower, less extreme version of felting by putting damp wool in the dryer and letting it tumble while on a hot cycle. That tumble/damp/heat combination is IT for creating felt and shrinkage.)

And last, alkaline solutions. In practical terms that means bleach and ammonia. Wool will completely dissolve in bleach (and I assume ammonia, which is almost as strong). So no bleach. However, nearly all soaps and detergents these days are ph neutral and perfectly safe. Anything considered particularly good for skin or hair is mild (has to be) and safe to use for your woolens. A note on detergents, though; they are chemically different than soaps and work by removing or breaking down OILS. Which means it can dry out your wool and leave it like your hair after a week at the beach with no conditioner. For occasional washes, especially if something's been worn a LOT and is really dirty, detergent is okay. But I don't suggest it as an every-time sort of thing.

So how do I wash wool? Fill up the washing machine (WITHOUT the knitting in it) with room temperature water and soap. (I usually use regular old laundry soap - Tide. I've also been known to use baby shampoo, regular shampoo, dish washing detergent, anti-bacterial hand soap, Woolite, and specialized 'wool wash'. I can't tell a difference, other than smell; the fibers are always the same after.) Once the water's done running, I put the knitting in, push it under the water, and hold it there until it quits bubbling. (Wool holds a lot of air in it; when submerged the air bubbles back out.) Then I leave the knitting alone for about fifteen minutes, though up to a half an hour if it's really dirty. Then I lift (carefully) the knitting out of the water and let the water run out of it; no squeezing or wringing. I put it aside, spin out the wash water, run the washing machine full of clean water (also room temp) for the rinse, and put the sweater back in (often with a bit of prodding to make sure the fresh water's getting all through the knit; poke carefully but still no grinding or wringing). Let it soak for another maybe five or ten minutes, then just turn on the spin cycle. The washer will spin the water out of the sweater, leaving it almost dry. Then spread it out in whatever form you want it to have when dry (think of it like styling your hair as it dries - same exact idea) and leave it alone. It should be dry in an hour or less.

I've never felted anything, using this process, though the husbeast once helpfully took a blanket out of the washer and put it in the dryer for me. It's now a potholder.

This may sound like a lot of trouble, but really it's like doing a load of laundry. You pop it in and forget about it for most of the time involved. And I LOVE wool - it's toasty warm but because it breathes, you can wear at least thin layers of it in warm weather. You can't beat it.