Seed stitch VS. Moss stitch VS. other stuff.

Over on Twitter this morning, we were discussing, well, seed stitch and related stuff. And, I don't know if it's a US to UK to Australia terminology thing, or if it's a two week migraine melting my brain, but I thought I'd clarify in more than 140 characters. With illustrations!

For the purposes of this discussion, I is a knit stitch, * is a purl stitch. AS YOU LOOK AT THE FABRIC. Not necessarily according to direction knit, but what type of stitch is facing you when you look at it.

This is the scarf I'm knitting. It's, gods help me, seed stitch:

It's K1, P1 across with some slipped stitches on the ends. BUT. The stitches look like this:

I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*
*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I
I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*
*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I

It's like a grid, every other stitch in all directions.

For comparison, K1 P1 rib, which we all know, would look like this:

I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*
I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*
I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*
I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*

See?

Moss stitch, on the other hand - this is where it gets weird - is also K1P1, but it's offset a bit:

I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*
I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*
*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I
*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I

Three different patterns, all K1P1. Knitting is a trip.

THEN! We can get into K2P2 fun!

K2P2 rib:

II**II**II**II**
II**II**II**II**
II**II**II**II**
II**II**II**II**

Broken rib (there are twenty billion variations, but this is a common one), ALSO known in some worlds as Irish Moss stitch, which is not ALWAYS the same as the Moss stitch above, but sometimes is:

II**II**II**II**
II**II**II**II**
**II**II**II**II
**II**II**II**II

Maybe we should start specifying American Seed, or Australian Seed, or WTF, but I'm not sure it would clarify things a damn bit.

Gardening!

The way lunatics do!

Yes. I drove the Jeep into the back yard, the hub wrapped a tow strap around the pine tree with mange, and we ripped it out. Also the testicle topiary, and a couple things at the other side of the porch that looked like ass. We dragged them all back to the compost pile, and now I've got this to work with:

It's still going to take days to get all the damn landscaping rocks out of there. And I'll probably be raking up little bits until the end of time. But my very gradual plan is very gradually going. Next step is to get a wagon or wheelbarrow to hall this crap around in.

With luck, our insane rollercoaster weather has finally leveled off, and this two week migraine is gone. (Because if it's not, I'm resorting to a neck tourniquet. Or trephination. I've had it with this shit.) Then things will get moving again. I've also cut way back on the drug that makes me zone out and stare at walls. Woo.

So. Here goes something. I think.

Gratuitous spinning photo!

This is Frabjuous Fibers' merino sparkle blend, in "Purple People Eater". It's almost Purple Trainwreck - just needs a dash of aqua. I love this fiber blend so much (65% merino, 35% firestar nylon) that I went and got two more hunks of it, this time in "Iris" and "Deep Space".

Now if only someone would have the jumbo flyer/bobbin set in stock for my Kiwi, I could really do some damage.

Single ply yarns.

Actually, the name is misleading. Because plying is, by definition, strands of fiber wrapped around each other, single ply yarns should really be called "not plied yarns".

But anyway.

Here is our culprit:

It is simply a column of fiber, loosely twisted together. Unlike a plied yarn, which is several of those columns, twisted around each other:

That's a two ply yarn, one ply of blue and one ply of green.

What holds yarns together, ultimately, is friction. The twist of the yarn holds the fibers together, and the friction of them rubbing together keeps the yarn from pulling apart. The more twist, the more friction, the stronger the hold, the stronger the yarn. (Unless you overtwist to the point the fibers break, but that's not today's problem.) A single ply of yarn simply doesn't have enough friction to hold itself together under stress.

That flaw explains all the problems that single ply yarns have: The pilling, general weakness, and other abrasion issues are all because there's not enough twist/friction to hold the fiber in place. That's the reason single ply yarns are 'splitty' to knit with, too.

Yes, the structure of knitted fabric CAN help hold the fibers in place. But that means knitting so tightly that any softness in the 'hand' of the yarn (how it feels) is lost. See this?

Size two/2.75mm needles. It's still flexible, of course, but it's not the soft fuzz-fest that most people imagine when they first handle a single ply yarn. (Madeline Tosh, I'm lookin' at you.) This is going to be a scarf; single ply yarns are only good for low-abrasion projects like this. Socks, to be worn inside shoes, will be destroyed simply by rubbing on the shoes.

If single ply yarns suck so much, you ask, why am I knitting with one? Well, hell! Look at that color shift! I couldn't resist. But it IS splitty, and quite annoying to work with.

Why do manufacturers keep making them, then? Well, think about it. Plying adds another entire manufacturing step to the yarn making process. It uses a lot of power. Power costs money. Basically, twist is expensive. That explains not only single ply yarns, but all these under-twisted commercial yarns on the market.

If you're still interested in this topic, try "The Knitter's Book of Yarn" by Clara Parkes. She explains all this and more, in fascinating detail. :)

Now, I'm gonna go spin. I've got this glorious merino/nylon sparkle blend from Frabjuous Fibers and I can't wait to see it finished. Which means plying.

Goobisms

(For those new readers I've picked up, hi. I use this blog as a kind of journal, so there's ONE PLACE I know I can always find information. Today you're stuck with my kid.)

This is the Goob's current state:

Jeep tee shirt, purple tie-dyed skirt, and the cat. There you have it.

Lately she's having what I call a "brain spurt". Like a growth spurt, but it's cognitive stuff that she's making huge growth in. Her reading is just AMAZING. She's doing sight reading, the important, useful stuff. She'll see signs go past as we're driving, read them, and start telling me how we need to stop for whatever reason. She sees shows she likes go past on the digital TV guide and yell for me to stop, go back, and turn one on. She's officially beyond the sound-it-out phase, at least for common words. This pleases me immensely, because I think reading is THE skill you need for education. Everything else comes from it. (This was brought home to me when I went back to school at age 35 and was surrounded by kids; some had VERY shaky reading skills and it hampered them at every turn.)

I babble.

Anyway.

Along with the reading is other communication. She's been drawing signs.

This was outside her room, to keep me from looking in:

And this was drawn to warn people the kitchen floor was wet:

I especially like, on the left, she's put a little sign-in-a-sign, that looks like the ones put out in public buildings to warn of water. The action of the stick figure is worthy of XKCD, too. Love it.

The other day, we were watching Top Gear. (Top Gear UK, thank you, no American prissiness needed.) If y'all are curious about what I watch when knitting lately? Top Gear. During one show, one of the hosts gets an automatic weapon and fires enough bullets that he knocks down a tree. The Goober makes an "I am impressed" noise and told me "He's a gun lumberjack!"

There's also been epic yard work across the street. Retaining walls built, poured cement steps jackhammered out, all sorts of craziness. The Goob has watched it all with her nose pressed to the window. When they ripped out the shrubs in the front yard, put them in a dump truck, and drove them off, the Goob started calling them "plant burglars".

Sekhmet, too, is watching the action across the street.

And also the finches in that shrub poking up behind the curtain, to the right.

Now if you'll excuse me, my OT guy has decided spinning and knitting are exercise, and as such must be done every day. I have to do at least fifteen minutes of each.

For the first time, OT seems kind of cool.

Twenty years.

Yup. It's my anniversary today. The husbeast and I have been married for twenty years. I feel like the occasion should be marked by some huge, big deal. But even if it were, I'd still be left feeling like... what? How did this happen? It didn't FEEL like twenty years. (Which, according to the husbeast's grandfather, means you're doing it right. When twenty years feels like an eternity, it's time for divorce.) We had a conversation that went something like this, the other night:

HIM: What's the gift for twenty years?
ME: Electronics.
HIM: Huh. What about twenty five?
ME: Electronics.
HIM: Fifty?
ME: Electronics. And maybe some fiber.
HIM: Uh huh. Right, then.

We're going out for dinner, tomorrow, kid-less, which is something of an event. We'll be sure to enjoy it. And that's another thing. A kid? A cat? A HOUSE? When did this get to be a settled family? Shouldn't we have 2.5 children and a dog? Wait. WHAT?

Twenty years. Where in HELL does the time go?

Spring, then, is it?

I took classes in landscaping and greenskeeping and horticulture and all that. My first, knee-jerk reaction to my house and yard is to bring in a tractor, rip out EVERYTHING (except the lilac and the hibiscus) and start over. Two problems with that: The first and biggest? Money. An overhaul like that ain't cheap. Especially with the plants I want to put in. Second? I really, physically, just can't do it.

Plus there's that bloody damned moderation thing my OT keeps going on about.

My solution: I've picked one spot to try and do this summer. I can gradually work outward from there. Maybe I'll plant a random plant or two in the front beds while I'm at it, and in five years or so, I'll have kinda-sorta overhauled the yard.

So. My mess. Here it is:

That little L shaped mess? Starting on the left hand side of the picture, at the pinus mystery species that looks like it has mange, back along the wall of the porch, and then along the back of the house.

Here's another view, standing on the stairs that you can see on the right, there, looking back toward the porch:

Even allowing that it was very late winter when I took these photos, you can tell it's a fucking mess. None of the shrubs are a bit useful, there's landscaping gravel to scrape up and drag away, and I really will dance on the carcass of that idiotic topiary that's stuck in there.

See? I fucking hate topiary. They're worthless and you have to trim the damn things. And they don't even flower.

If it was a dragon, I could probably be talked into keeping it. But this? Oh, fuck no.

I'm waiting for the ground to dry out enough, so I can rip out those two... monstrosities there. Then I'll pull up the gravel, and I'd like to put in a poison garden. Medicinal herbs, and dye plants that don't taste good and/or are toxic. Because, then, I'd like to plant food plants up next to the house, between the walk and the house:

The idea of the poison garden (other than the obvious fun of it) is to work as a barricade between the food plants and the deer trail out in the back of the yard. The picture directly above, I was standing right next to the house when I took it. Meaning I can run a soaker hose down through there with no trouble at all, in time of drought. (I am willing to water food plants, MAYBE medicinal and/or dye plants, but that's it.) It's a western/southwestern exposure, and the shed you can see at the upper right of the picture acts as a very good wind break.

I've been watching the weather, the micro climates, and sun exposure for a couple years now, and I think I might have it down. (Other side of the garage, where the wind hits? Alpine conditions. It's crazy.) This should work, if I can hold off the deer and I don't fuck up my hand.

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? Anyone?

I sense a theme, here.

I staggered into OT this morning and asked my guy to do something involving tranquilizer darts and knocking me out for a week. Unfortunately, he doesn't have that as a treatment option .

Over the hand massage, we were discussing why I was smashed flat, and it came out that I sorta kinda on Friday drove for five hours almost straight. Which is bad on the face of it, then add in that I don't take any painkillers when driving for obvious reasons, and, well, by the time I got home I was a mess that still hasn't unmessed.

My OT started discussing moderation. How I can still do pretty much anything I want, but the days of four-hour knitting sessions - or five hour drives - are over. It hit me, because, see, FIFTEEN YEARS AGO I got these same talks from Colonel H, the head of OT where I had my hand put back together.

Apparently, I have learned nothing in a decade and a half.

I'd been doing pretty good - I only spin for an hour at a time, only knit for about half an hour without a break. But then I start feeling better and do something stupid, like that drive on Friday.

I think it's time to turn over a new rock, and start acting like a grownup.

I hate that.

To make myself feel better after this realization, I stopped off at Natural Stit

IF THIS GNAT DOES NOT DIE I WILL BURN THE MOTHERFUCKING HOUSE DOWN.

Ahem.

To make myself feel better, I stopped at Natural Stitches and bought two more Crazy Zauberballs. Woohoo! So, that's something. Not much, but, fuck, it was... moderate.

Hell, I hate adulthood.

ETA: I got the motherfucking gnat and so do not have to burn down the motherfucking house.

Fiberhead!

I am slooooowly getting back in the groove of blogging. It's really hard to get back in that head space where you think in blog posts as the world goes by. But! Here are my distractions! I finally got the loom warped.

That's silicone baking paper there on the back beam. My new excuse is, I can't bake cookies because of it. Ha.

I'm now down to the more boring but much less difficult chore of winding up the stick-shuttle-thingie:

Everyone who dropped by and left messages with information on weaving? Thank you. My shoulders are already a mess, so I won't be doing any crazy weaving marathons like I do spinning or knitting.

I'm still knitting on the third shawl:

Crazy Zauberballs are fun!

And spinning. I've got a Pagewood Farm roving, called "Peaceful":

It's all the colors I'm gradually decorating my living room with. I've got some half-assed idea of doing a wall hanging or pillow with it. Maybe some stripes in a blanket? Something.

The reason for all this relative activity is because I missed OT last week. Instead of laying on the couch wishing for morphine, I've been able to do something. In small, short bursts, anyway. For every hour of spinning, there's two hours drooling on the couch. But, it's something.

---

Today, the Goober composed her first poem. I am posting it here, for posterity:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I interrupt,
but Mum does too.

She also correctly used the word "appalling".

I'm gonna just sit here and gloat over the kid's vocabulary. Y'all just go on.

Josephine Baker

If a movie was made of Josephine Baker's life, everyone would say it was too improbable. But it really happened. (I think it was Tom Clancy who said the difference between fiction and reality is, fiction has to make sense. But I digress.)

Right. Josephine Baker.

She started her career as a scandal.

Josephine was born in 1906 in St Louis, Missouri. Which is an unlikely start for her later life, but it just goes to show. She got recruited for Vaudeville at age fifteen, and was part of the Harlem Renaissance She performed as a dancer in clubs and shows in New York, in the Roaring Twenties, working her way up to becoming a headliner. In 1925 she became the toast of Paris, notorious for dancing nearly nude - one description I've read has her wearing a single feather.

She starred in movies. She recorded music. She was the muse of famous artists like Hemmingway, Picasso, and Dior. After a quick tour in the US, she came back to Paris and in 1937, married a Jewish French guy, no doubt causing more scandal. She became a French citizen and by all accounts was extremely happy.

Then World War Two broke out.

Obviously not one to sit back and let life happen to her, Josephine first became an "honorable correspondent". She'd attend parties, listen to gossip, and report anything interesting back to the French Resistance. She put up refugees in her summer home in the south of France. She sent gifts to the soldiers. She did performances for the troops, and for the injured.

She smuggled messages around Europe, in with her sheet music, when she performed.

She was the first American woman to receive the Croix de gurre, France's highest honor.

With the war over, Josephine went back to entertaining. Her way. She racially integrated many concert halls in the US during the fifties and sixties; she's simply refuse to perform in segregated houses.

After running with the French Resistance in World War Two, the Civil Rights Movement in the US probably looked like just her cup of tea. And she stepped in with both feet, offering assistance of all kinds. One woman spoke during the March On Washington.

It was Josephine Baker, in her Free French uniform and all her medals.

After Martin Luther King was murdered, Coretta Scott King offered the informal leadership of the civil rights movement to Josephine Baker.

Baker said no, because she wanted to stay alive long enough to raise her twelve adopted children.

She continued to perform, demonstrate, and be awesome. She was found in her bed in 1975, surrounded by loving reviews of her latest show. She'd had a brain hemorrhage and died a few days later. Her funeral brought Paris to a standstill one last time.

And the planet was short one incredibly badass woman.

Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace was born in 1815 and named Agusta Ada Byron. As in Lord Byron. You know, the poet and crazy dude. She was his only legitimate child. Byron, being something of a jerk, was disappointed she wasn't a boy.

Ada's mum, fed up with high romance, poetry, and the other stuff Byron spouted, countered with a very unusual education for young Ada; it was long on science and math, and short on the subjects usually taught to girls in that era, namely literature and painting. She (Ada, not her mum) had migraines and other health problems, and so spent a lot of her childhood doing math and other tutored subjects.

In 1833, she met Charles Babbage. He was busy working on his 'difference engine', essentially a mechanical calculator. This, a photo from the innards of one built, gives you an idea:

(Image from Wiki commons.)

Metallurgy and machining being what they were in the 1830s, Babbage's machine was never built in his lifetime. The design was solid, though; eventually it was built, and it does work.

In the early 1840s, Ada became acquainted with the concept of the engine, and corresponded with Babbage on the subject, and related topics. In her notes, there is a program she wrote, that calculated Bernoulli Numbers, a sequence important in number theory. Basically, while everyone else, including Babbage himself, saw the Difference Engine as a way to do arithmetic quickly and easily, Ada saw the big picture and the possibilities beyond. In other words - she got the idea of the computer. The program she wrote, when finally put into the working Difference Engine built years after her death, worked just fine.

Ada Lovelace is considered by many to be the world's first programmer, code monkey, or computer geek. Depending on who you ask. Her notes, translations, and mathematical work were vital to the early history of computing. She was writing programs for Babbages Analytical Engine that would have worked. Meaning she was writing useful code for a computer whose hardware never ran.

Not too many people can do that.

What I'm doing when I'm not here.

But first. This last week of Women's History Month, or whatever the fuck we're calling it in the US, I was going to do a post a day, with a bio of an amazing woman. Today was going to be Marie Curie, but really, Badass of the Week already did her, in a style I appreciate. Rather than reinventing the wheel, here you go:

MARIE CURIE, from Badass of the Week.

Tomorrow I'll actually write up someone.

---

There is actual good news from the OT department.

I'm wearing splints to bed every night. I started last Wednesday, and as of today, it doesn't hurt to knit any more! At least for reasonable amounts of time... haven't tried a four hour marathon yet. But it's definitely a move in the right direction.

Maybe I'll get back to spinning, too. Wouldn't that be nice.

And this is in progress as I type:

I have a feeling I'm going to be weaving in my dining room. Might want to clear the nail polish and manicure station off the other end of the table. Hmmm.

---

Also, I've been reading and gaming. What else is there to do when you're zoned out from painkillers after a killer therapy session?

The Disappearing Spoon is what I've been reading. I have to read about five, ten pages, then sit and absorb for a while. It's chemistry, organized around the periodic table. But it's actually HUMANIZED chemistry, with practical application and amusing stories and actual, useful stuff, rather than random letters and numbers and little dots.

While I'm at it, there's a web site called The Periodic Table of Videos. It's just what it sounds like: Short videos on each element. Very cool.

Yes, I'm trying to teach myself chemistry. Again. You're all just stuck with it.

Then, when my brain has totally melted, there are games on the Kindle Fire. (It's an Android platform, so I assume these games are also available for any Android phone. Probably iThings, too.)

Where's my Water is from Disney, believe it or not. You try to get water through pipes to an alligator in a bathtub. You dig dirt, you squirt water and poisons, you deal with algae. Very silly, very fun. You can actually play it on line, HERE. Oh, and you really wanna capture the little duckies.

Angry Birds has a new one - Angry Birds in Space. Apparently they've hit ten MILLION downloads in the three days it's been out. !! It's really wild, compared to the other Angry Birds games. There are gravity wells, and black holes, and inertia. Physics is kind of a bitch. But it's very, very cool.

I'm trying to think of anything else I'm doing, but there isn't anything. I'm waiting for the weather to clear up so I can attempt to garden; it's been raining, and cold. I need to rip out some shrubs in the back yard, and I can't get my Jeep back there to do it while the ground is wet. (Or rather, I can, but it would make a huge mess and the husbeast would go bonkers.)

Right now? Well, for excitement, I think I need to go do some OT exercises.

And finish warping this loom.

Plagiarized by heikeknits.

This morning, I saw a link to a history of knitting article go by on my Twitter feed, so of course I clicked on it. Because, hey, ongoing interest over here. Y'all may have noticed.

I got THIS. My jaw kind of dropped. There was a second half of the article, so I clicked and...

Got THIS.

In case anyone would like to compare, here is THE ORIGINAL KNITTY ARTICLE. Written by ME. She stole the pictures too. For amusement's sake, here's her, defending HER COPYRIGHTS. Yeah. Apparently she missed the two-way-street aspect of those laws.

I did not give this person permission. I didn't know it was going on.

So I went over and left a couple comments on the relevant blog posts. "YOU STOLE MY ARTICLE." With a link to the Knitty article. Seemed little else to say, really. So I didn't.

Woosh. The offending blog posts disappaeard. Poof! The wonders of the internet.

Or NOT, you know, because of Google Archive. (Known to geeks as "The Wayback Machine".)

Right then. I left a comment on the main page of the blog. "YOU STOLE MY ARTICLE." With a link. Because, again, not a whole lot to dither about.

That's when I got an e-mail. (I'd left my full contact info on the messages, because, hey, not stupid.)

I'll just post the e-mails in full. That way no one can cry about 'out of context' later. Or me making shit up, or being a meanie. Or whatever the hell.

HER:
Hi Julie,

I did use your article as the base for mine and asked the V&A museum if I could use images from them.
I am sorry if I offended you and as I do not want to infringe on any copyright issues I have taken these posts of my blog.

I hope that this is settles any misgivings there might be and you will accept my apologies.

Best wishes

ME:
You didn't use it as the base. YOU USED IT WORD FOR WORD. Those images are from MY ARTICLE. All you had to do was ask permission from me and credit me for the info and I'd have given it. AND SINCE YOU DIDN'T ASK MY PERMISSION, I DOUBT YOU ASKED THE V&A. And not all the images are from them, if you'd actually read the credits on my article where I WAS HONEST.

You plagiarized and would have left it there forever if I hadn't called you on it.

Admit it publicly. You do not deserve any credit for that article. It took three months' research with a university librarian helping me, and right now your readers still think YOU DID THE WORK. That is completely unacceptable.

No, this does NOT 'settle it'.

HER:
Julie,
I am really really sorry about this and can only profusely apologise. I have a miniscule readership as this blog hasn't been here for long. I am glad you have made me aware of my huge mistake and it has taught me an invaluable lesson on copyright issues. I need to get much more clued up on all of this.

I will give you a public apology on my blog next time I post and really hope you will now accept my apology.

Best, Heike

ME:
Incidentally, the internet at large has got the bit between their teeth and are now going through other blog posts of yours, looking for other plagiarism. And I think some are looking at your designs.

I did not tell them to do it. They just saw the plagiarism and wondered if you had stolen anything else.

ME AGAIN:
Today would be good. "Sometime" not so much.

HER:
I have taken my blog off the net as the last thing on my mind was to do a wrong thing or to offend anyone.

ME:
I don't care. I WANT YOU TO STATE PUBLICLY THAT YOU STOLE THE INFORMATION. Right now there's folks out there thinking you did all the work on that article. CORRECT IT.

Don't make me escalate this. I'm not in the mood and I've got better crap to deal with. But I will, if you don't do the right thing. All the deletion in the world is not going to fix this. Not until you state, on your unlocked blog, to everyone who reads it, that THAT WAS NOT YOUR WORK.

And the deletion? Doesn't matter. It's in Google Archive for anyone who wants to look.
[Link to Google Archive's relevant bits here.]

HER:
I am doing it now, it will be there in the next 10 min


THIS is the 'apology' I got.

Anyone see any remorse or regret there? 'Cause I don't.

And then, spinning.

Sorta-kinda.

My local yarn store (Natural Stitches) asked me to write a fiber review when I was there last. Any fiber I wanted (so long as they sold it, of course). I said sure, and turned in my little blurb today. To sign up for the newsletter, you can go HERE. Yes, this is the yarn store with the wall of Cascade 220.

The fiber I chose was Northern Lights, from Louet.

It's a pencil roving. Lately I've been all about pencil roving, I think because it's simple and I need simple.

Remember these?

All with Northern Lights fiber.

I'll tell you what I told the newsletter readers: It's awesome. Go buy some. (Okay, I was a little more subtle. But it's awesome. Go buy some.)

---

Otherwise, I'm back in a chronic pain flare. I know this, because of this:

That's a Kromski Harp, 32" rigid heddle loom. It took me two days to get it put together, and I had to ask the hub to help me. It's still not warped. I see my doc on Friday, and am hoping for awesome drugs. I'm gonna tell her I want drugs that make fiber arts easy. BECAUSE THAT IS THE REAL PRIORITY HERE. Forget caring for my family, cleaning the house, or wiping my own butt. No. I WANT TO GET BACK TO MY FIBER STUFF.

Damn it.

---

Oh, and Roxie? The comment about steeking, drafting, and turning the cat? Hilarious. Thanks for that. Laughs is good drugs!

Pre-drafting.

I've been veeeeery gradually getting back to spinning, and noticed the other day that I had a fine example of what pre-drafting is, why you do it, and what it's good for.

For our discussion right now, I'm going to call pre-drafting everything you do between taking the fiber out of the sales bag when you get it home, and actually drawing it out into a ply at the spinning wheel or spindle. In a way it covers a lot of ground, but in a way it's all the same thing. For anyone who's curious, my entire (usual) spinning process is described in more depth, HERE.

In discussions around the 'net and in classes and elsewhere, it seems like pre-drafting is THE mythical skill, like heel-turning or steek-cutting is in knitting. People who aren't experienced are intimidated by it, people who HAVE done it are blase and dismiss it as a non-skill.

In short, what pre-drafting does is this: Whatever it takes to get the fiber loose enough to be drafted easily at the wheel. You want to fight and curse and get sore hands and shoulders, you don't have to pre-draft at all. But for a nice smooth spin (and I think since we're hobby spinners, enjoyment should be a goal), the fiber needs fluffed a bit, or unstuck. How you do it doesn't really matter, so long as there's no destruction of property.

Here, have a photo of what I'm talking about.

These balls of fiber are of equal weight. Due to dye processes, the top or roving (this is pencil roving) emerges smashed flat and slightly stuck together. NOT FELTED, just dense and a bit stuck. The best dyer in the world, doesn't matter, the fiber will be this way. What you've got to do is loosen up the fibers so they draft without you having to swear at them.

What I did was divided the pencil roving lengthwise. (It was so easy, I think the roving was doubled for the dye process, to begin with.) Then, the ball on the left, I went through and every four inches or so, gripped the roving and lightly pulled it apart. It's sort of like a half-draft: It's exactly the same pull-to-make-thinner that I do at the wheel, but not as drastically, and without any twist being added. The other popular way to fluff the fibers is to pull laterally and spread the fibers out that way - basically the opposite direction of this method. Dividing top lengthwise repeatedly is often enough to fluff out the the fibers all on its own, and it is the other method I use for this.

You can see, even if you don't spin, that this loosened the fibers quite a lot. I have since started spinning the pre-drafted fiber and it's drafting smoothly. Awesome.

Here's a more extreme example:

The fiber on the left is one half of the pencil roving as it came out of the package, simply rolled into a ball. The other half, I divided lengthwise and then pre-drafted. The ball on the left and the two on the right are of equal weight.

That's what pre-drafting is for. That's the only point. However you do it doesn't matter. There's no wrong way.

Now, for my next trick, I'm gonna turn a sock heel. Or maybe steek the cat. (Not really. Still knitting the third half-a-washcloth shawl.)

Back in the saddle.

I think.

It has been a really freaky two weeks here at House O Samurai. All of us are well, thanks to everyone who checked in to say hi and see if everything was okay. It is.

The big problem, I think, can be narrowed down to this:

That's my netbook. It had been acting funny, I'd run some virus scans, and it suddenly crashed. CMOS worked, and nothing else. At first I thought it was a virus, but considering reality and how I use my computer and everything, now I'm wavering between motherboard shorts, or the hard drive toasted. It's going to the shop tomorrow.

Then, my annoyance high, the tax return in my account, and a sale on the horizon... well...

Yeah. Fuck it. I've got back up now, damn it.

Plus, I've been doing OT twice a week, and in blinding pain. And, oh yeah.

The Goob's been sick.

Same old, same old.

I've done a little knitting on another Half-A-Washcloth Shawl, done a little spinning (and took pictures for a blog post). And, um, I have a loom scheduled for delivery tomorrow. Just a small one. Nothing extreme. No, really.

Really.

The Oscars! Red carpet!

I'm live-blogging the last two and a half hours of the red carpet festivities before the Oscars.

To put it bluntly, it's all about the clothes.

Now, I don't think it's fair - in fact, it should be illegal - to snap pics of stars at the grocery store, or otherwise on their own time. They're entitled to their privacy like everyone else.

But it's the OSCARS. It is very obviously a work event. Part of an actor's job is to look good. And anyone with 1/100th of a brain knows there are going to be photos and cameras and all sorts of news coverage. So.

Here we go.

ADDED LATER: I was gonna post ten million pictures to go with this, but then I came to my senses. If you're interested, all the photos I'm looking at can be found HERE. I put names to dress comments, so you can figure out who I'm talking about if you really want to.

Wolfgang Puck, food, blah blah. BRING ON THE CLOTHES.

Kelly Osbourne has fixed her hair. Sort of.

HOLLYWOOD. GET OVER THE BLACK. IT ISN'T SLIMMING. IT'S JUST BLACK.

Rose Berg (?) wearing a swathe of sequins. Excellent fitting. VIVIENNE WESTWOOD, BAYBEE.

Melissa McCarthy wearing drapey rose. Eh.

Some other bridesmaid, wearing another well-fitted dress in rose, beaded like mad. Neither one has boobs in her arm pits. I approve. This one's... someone I've never heard of.

Ellie Kemper. This is a badly fitted dress. Droopy boobs in the arm pits. Heavy sigh. Armani. Why didn't they fit it better?

Bernice who? Bejo? (Sorry folks, don't pay much attention to Serious Cinema.) It's a take on the old 'nude dress' that Marlene Deitrich made famous. But, not as sexy. Dress by Ellie Saab. Trying to figure out why it's so unflattering. I like the hair. Beats the scraggly just-rolled-out-of-bed look so many go with.

Hunger Games commercial. I may need to read that book.

George Clooney's girlfriend looks fabulous, but with him as an accessory, how could she miss? Dress by Marchesa.

Missi Pyle gets a salute just because she wore COLOR.

Another bridesmaid. Feh. Seriously?

Whose soul did Janyne Semour sell to Satan? How old is she? She was a Bond Girl back in the freaking SEVENTIES.

Jessica Chastain. Ornate. Looks like a McQueen? She's got the figure and the hair to carry it. Really nice. IT IS A McQUEEN. Go Julie! Though he's so distinctive it's hard to miss. Her boobs are in her arm pits, though. -sigh-

Dude. WTF is that white dress? Shailene Woodsley. (Tagging all this stuff with names so I can find photos for this later.) It's like a mutant Chanel. Is that her tits I'm looking at all through the white dot things? No. Don't want to know.

Judy Greer. THIS IS HOW YOU DO SLIMMING STRIPES BY THE GODS.

E: I don't give a shit what you think is a trend. Just tell me who in hell designed that dress. JUST ADMIT YOU'RE SHOCKED THAT PLUS SIZES CAN LOOK ATTRACTIVE YOU SKINNY BITCHES.

Okay, points to the E folks for calling Chastain's grandma to the camera.

Where is Benedict Cumberbatch, HMMMMM?

Michelle Williams. Peplum from hell, and I'm sorry, her hair always looks like it was cut with a Swiss Army Knife. Louis Vuitton. Sorry, honey, but that peplum? Just no. And why in fuck does my spell check not know 'peplum'.

To tell how well-made a dress is, and fitted, LOOK AT THE BOOOOOBS. Why why why aren't these things fit better?

Tux by Armani, blah blah, MOVE ON TO THE AWESOME DRESSES, MOFO.

This blog post is going to be three feet long.

Ryan Seacrest, a foot shorter than the women he interviews. Love it.

Hosts fawning over people. Blah, blah. Feh. CLOTHES, PEOPLE. CLOTHING.

Great googly-moogly, the commercials! They never end!

They're trying to push the suspense of the Oscars. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Oh, Viola Davis. It's Vera Wang, but... I just don't think it's as awesome as the Golden Globes dress. Heck, you decide.

Maya Rudolph. Uh. Hm. Well, at least you wore decent foundation garments.

Glenn Close in a fancy suit. Really nice! Fabulous. Varying finishes and textures, all in the dark green. So awesome.

Chick (Leslie Mann) complaining about a tight dress. SERIOUSLY? What, you couldn't find anything else??

Diddy getting groomed by some hyper dude with a dust roller. Diddy's ignoring him. Freaky body language stuff. Whoa.

ANOTHER BRIDESMAID. OKAY. I'M NEVER SEEING THE MOVIE. FIND SOMEONE ELSE TO LOOK AT. Good gourd.

Kelly, we aren't interested in your opinion of George. SHOW ME CLOTHES.

People keep TALKING TO ME. Trying to concentrate here! Ah!

Rooney Mara. STAND UP STRAIGHT. QUIT SLOUCHING. WASH THE TEN POUNDS OF LACQUER OUT OF YOUR HAIR. GET OFF MY LAWN. Givenchy. Feh. The hair, the too-dark lipstick, the dress makes her look like a board or a fifteen year old boy.

Rarely have I seen so many badly fitting dresses in one place. How many stylists were involved, and these dresses don't fit??

Octavia Spencer. Lovely. Sparkle, fit, hair, everything. Perfect.

Hour two of really super lameass superficial 'interviews'.

Melanie Griffith looks like a cartoon of herself. Is that Botox talking?

Commentators are fussing and fawning some more. Bluuuurgh.

Socks by K Mart. Okay. Thanks for that, Sacha. (Dude. You're nuts.) He's claiming the gold urn is Kim Jong Il's ashes, to be scattered over Halle Berry's cleavage. Then he dumped it on Ryan Seacrest and got hauled out by security. Not sure if that was staged or not. Points for dumping on Seacrest, though. Wish I could do it myself. Nice publicity stunt. I'm waiting to see how fast this trends on Twitter. (About ten minutes.)

Dear gods, Melanie Griffith, LAY OFF THE COLLAGEN. You look like a muppet.

Black dress. Snore. Least it fits. I think.

JLO MY LOVE! You know how to dress! Yes, it's shiny and over the top. She's presenting an OSCAR! If ever there was a night to overdress, it's tonight! (Zuhar Murad dress.)

If you're a stylist, why do you look like shit?

More armpit boobs and dresses not moving while the body underneath does. Feh.

Emma Stone. Dude. What... DUDE. The neck floof? Very seventies. Well, at least it's color.

E keeps discussing the same six dresses over and over and not showing anyone else. I'm positive there are more people there. Even if the McQueen gown is awesome, I still want to see SOMEONE ELSE.

I DON'T GIVE A FUCK WHAT YOU THINK. SHOW ME SOME CLOTHES.

Well, this was a waste of time. We've got four women talking about clothes. I've got the commentary I want on Twitter. All I want from E is clothing coverage. This is like the opposite of what I want. Whine bitch moan complain.

Eight o'clock. Half hour to go and they're talking about clothes and not showing them. Blarg.

Natalie Portman in a polka-dot red prom dress. She can wear anything, but it's awfully prommy.

More blah blah about dresses we've already seen. Blah blah.

Gwenneth Paltrow in a lovely white dress AND A CAPE. Looks like Calvin Klein... She's another who can wear anything. Plain, but she's Gwenneth freakin' Paltrow. She don't need no freakin' ornament.

Mila Jojovoich, in another white one-shoulder dress. Again, former model who can wear anything. Fits decently, and she knows how to wear it. Plus she'll kick my ass if I say anything negative.

Still can't reconcile Kelly Osborne's tats with her fancy dress. I've got a tat, I know, I know. But it looks weird.

SHOW ME SOME CLOTHES!!!

Someone Ferris. Black sequins. Sleeves, high neck, feh. Kinda boring.

Anyone still reading, I'm impressed. 'Cause I'm sick of watching.

They're talking to Jay Leno. Who in hell cares about Jay Leno? We're here to see clothing!

Sandra Bullock in Marchesa! Fitted skirt (good), loose blouse sorta thing (ugh). Gold lace styling... She looks okay. Not sure 'okay' is what she was going for on Oscars night.

Penelope Cruz looks magnificent in Armani. As always. Fitted beautifully, lovely hair, perfect outfit. THIS is how you dress for the Oscars.

Cameron Diaz with a badly fitted sheath, slouching, with bias ruffling on the skirt. The slouch really bugs me. She was a model! She should do better than that.

Where's Bjork? I wanna see a swan dress.

"As we're sewing her into the dress in the limousine..." Oh, for crying out loud.

Angelina Jolie in black. Again. There's a shock. I like the drape and the fitting, though. It is a pretty dress. She looks happy. It's hard to look bad with a smile like that.

More blah blah. I bet there's people wearing clothes around there. Bet.

Olivia Wilde, wearing a really boring black dress, though it does fit magnificently. Silly black belt.

Okay, more gushing and blah blah. Shutting down.

That concludes the Oscar red carpet. If you enjoyed it, ten points for making it to the end.

The Zauberball keeps me sane. Ish.

This is gonna be a bullet point post, because, well, you'll see why.

•Monday, went to PT/OT. They agreed I've got future problems brewing. The upshot: visits twice a week for six weeks.

•Monday night, realized the new PT exercises set off the fucking RSD.

•Monday night, ran a virus scan on my computer. It was acting weirdly. Deleted three viruses.

•Tuesday, fought urge to kill people because my hand felt like it had been ripped off.

•Tuesday morning, another virus scan came up clean.

•Tuesday afternoon, near as I can tell, the computer deleted its own hard drive. I cannot find any sort of OS on it, not even DOS.

•Did I mention, my fucking hand hurts like hell?

•This afternoon, the kid told me she didn't feel well. I'll skip the details, but she's sick.

•Went into The Pit to find my old lap top. Found it. Not the first clue where the power supply is.

•Am blogging from the Kindle Fire. I hate touch screens.

Now, I'm going to go knit. So I don't kill people.

There are no words.

To describe my adoration for Crazy Zauberballs. I hit Natural Stitches today and bought two more.

I'm knitting another Half-A-Washcloth shawl. (This makes three.) Because on bad days, even stripes (Watson Scarf) is too complicated.

So sad.

While I was there, I lost my head (I swear it's the yarn fumes) and bought this:

HALF A POUND of merino/angora/bamboo blend. In purple. That fiber blend says socks to me... with luck I'll get enough yardage to do ankle socks for me AND the Goob. (Last half pound I spun, I got 500 yards. It's possible.)

---

In other news, yesterday was vaccination day for the Goob. Screaming, crying, fever, crying, oh dear gods. I admit it, I'm a marshmallow. It destroys me when that happens. So, the Goobie was wrapped up on the couch and given unrestricted time with the Kindle Fire.

I may have also treated her to some early Easter candy. And made her favorite for dinner (cheese quesedillas). And gave her an awesome Perry the Platypus bandaid for her arm.

Yeah, marshmallow. It's my widdle baby.

Excuse me. I have to go knit some more and see what color rolls off the Crazy Zauberball next.

Ah, romance.

For Valentine's day, I got these:

Wolverine boots. Waterproof ones, with Thinsulate. I went to the grocery store this morning, in the cold and rain, and my feet STAYED WARM. Absolutely wonderful. And they'll last longer than flowers. (Hub gloated to his buds at work, while they were buying flowers and candy, he took me to the boot store. Hee.)

I've been sloooowly knitting the Watson Scarf:

Really slowly. Half the time I can't make a fist, so that's a lot of knitting time, gone.

OT appointment Monday. I'm hoping the news isn't too bad.

The Goob has been like this today:

I think it's a growth spurt; she's also been eating everything in sight.

Today I got a copy of the new Principles of Knitting. YES! It has finally been printed, after years of postponements! I've given it a quick flick-through, and a lot of holes have been patched. (For instance, there was no mention I remember, at all, of medallion knitting in the original. This time, there's math and cast-ons and other discussion.) Cast-ons listed have gone from around ten to about eighty. I've had enough requests, I think I'm going to do a comparison with the old one, and a review for everyone. But for thirty bucks, how can you possibly go wrong?

Finished!

Another shawl. (That's Sekhmet in there for scale.) I've really been wearing them, especially in bed at night. (The blue one looks sooper klassy with my usual biker tee shirts. I'm sure this one will, too.) It's interesting; this is one of the yarns I dyed myself, in Charleston. It was wound in a ball, and the outside layers of it, the pink faded a bit. You can see it, along the edge:

Still, for years-old hand dyes, that's not bad. 880 yards of laceweight on size fives, for anyone curious.

I've started on the Watson Scarf.

I'm darning in the ends as I go, but I like to wash the knit and wear it a bit before snipping the ends. That way the yarn can 'set' and felt together a little bit, so the ends of the yarn stay where I put them and don't pull loose. (This is Cascade 220, regular, so it WILL felt a tad. For other fibers, I do different stuff.)

Um, otherwise? I got nothin'. Had a bad pain flare over the weekend, combined with a caffeine overdo, so I've been sozzled. AND KNITTING! WHEE!