So, Charleston.

I've been trying to figure out how to post these photos without turning it into a history lesson, but I can't, so to hell with it, we'll have a history lesson. (You're more than welcome to scroll through without reading, of course.) I'm using the medium setting for these photos, but as always you can click to make them larger.

First, the obvious: Where we're talking about.

(Image from Google Earth.)

See the little red circle, under the Charleston label, at the very end of the peninusla? Kinda? (Well, if you click on the photo it's more obvious.) That's Battery Park, so named because they had artillery batteries there during the Civil War (1860-1865). And it's where I parked my Jeep Sunday for my walk-around, so you can get a feel for where these photos were taken. ALLLL the way at the top of the pic is North Charleston. That's where I live. It's like a giant truck stop on the way to Charleston, but affordable. The small river that goes up the left side of the Charleston peninusla is the Ashley River, and I live near it. The larger river (that forks) on the right side of the peninsula is the Cooper River. The husbeast works on the Cooper River. If you look almost directly to the right of Charleston, on the photo, you will find Sullivan's Island, location of Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. (Some people living down here are still proud of that. I'm sure you all know how I feel about that.) You can also see now, why I'm so thrilled at the idea of hurricane season. Charleston regularly (about every sixty years) gets nailed with a hurricane and has to be rebuilt; we're overdue for another major hit. The house I live in has a new roof that was put on in '91 after the last hit.


The drive into the historic district of Charleston is pretty easy; it's a straight shot down I-26, then when it ends, you keep going on Meeting Street until it dead ends at Battery Park. At first it all looks rather normal, except for the church steeples in the distance. (There ARE church steeples in the distance on that photo, taken out the windshield of the Jeep at a stop light; I swear.) Then the odd historic building pops up between the gas stations and the parking lots.


The pink building is now an inn. (Check out the wrought iron balcony.) No idea on the brown building.

When I got to Battery Park, I found a space along the water. The road looked like this:

Facing one way, I could see out across the harbor to the Atlantic, and facing the other way, I could see Battery Park proper.


Charleston was founded in 1670, across the Ashley river on the actual mainland. It moved over to the peninsula soon after, but due to lousy building techniques (early buildings were wood or sod, thrown up as fast as possible to protect settlers) and a series of fires, earth quakes, and hurricanes, most of the buildings in this area date to the 1800's or later. Most of the buildings I've taken photos of date from between 1800 and 1820; there was a boom during that time, and people got rich growing rice and cotton in the surrounding marshes. (Charleston was not damaged much during the Civil War or the following reconstruction. This blows my mind, because it was the place the Civil War started. The next large city further south on this coast - Savannah, Georgia - was wiped out - burned to the ground, on purpose, by the Northern armies as they moved through securing the area. Why Charleston was left standing is a mystery to me.)

Several of the larger houses surrounding Battery Park have been turned into inns.




But a lot of the houses are still privately owned. For something right on the water (there's a breakwater right beside the street - no beach, just a water view) it will run you a couple million dollars. And you better have another million for upkeep. At least. These places are money pits.



Quite a few of the old carriage houses have been turned into darling little cottages, back behind the main house in shady gardens. This one's my favorite.


What really makes the historic district, though, is the detail. Like the old-fashioned version of pavement here in the Low Country - crushed oyster shells for sidewalks.


And the wrought iron - look closely and you can see some fancy boot-scrapers next to the stoop, and a curlicue to hold the shutter, in the brick wall of the house:


And fancy tiles set in the garden walks:


And of course there's the smell.

Dead fish, all over the historic district.

Yum.

All over but the bindoff.

I finished it up around one o'clock today (The Baby got a late lunch), and have been wearily crocheting around the edge ever since. (If you've gotten the idea I hate crochet around here, it's true, I do. Not because of some silly philosophical questions, but because I suck at it. If you DO crochet, I don't sneer. Mostly I envy you quietly.) Anyway, I hope to have this sucker blocked by tomorrow. In an oval. Non-knitters (like the future owner) are impressed as hell by ovals. Knitters, on the other hand, go "Oh, starch."

What else is happening, you ask? (I assume you asked?)

Cinnamon twist yarn. Two skeins. I wound it up today. It tangled like a motherfucker. We won't discuss it further. (An Etsy update will be happening toward the end of the week after I wind up the blueberry ripple and the babycakes skeins.) And what shape is that yarn in? Is that a wombat?

Here, the cat says "Mmmmm, blankies."


Otherwise, I'm still brooding over how I'm going to post the Charleston photos, and I'm warming up to a major rant. Maybe I'll find the energy to do it tomorrow.

Not done.

I thought I'd settle that question, right off.

Today, I blew off most of the day by first sleeping late, then taking the afternoon for myself. I went for a drive to downtown Charleston's historic district and walked around for a while. For once I remembered the camera, and took a bunch of photos (filled the data card). I'll do a real post about it tomorrow, but here's a teaser:

Calhoun House. One of the largest (for most of it's history, THE largest) private home in Charleston. It's now a museum (which in cases like this, I consider a waste of space if someone's willing to live in it).

So I didn't finish the doily. I'm on round 75 (of 82), so I should finish it tomorrow. I'll skip a photo because you wouldn't tell the difference from last night.

My hips are killing me from walking all day, convincing me I need to lose some weight.


There's a new series on History Channel, called "Cities of the Underworld" which basically explores all the stuff under modern cities. The episodes I've seen already were Edinburgh, Istanbul, and now Rome. I always knew cities were built on the ruins of old ones, but I never knew how many ENTIRE BUILDINGS were down there. Undamaged buildings you can walk around in. People are always going "oh yeah, you can get to this secret pagan temple by going through the basement of the Roman Opera costume storehouse". Unreal. It reminds me a lot of Time Team (which is unfortunately off the air here in the US) and their hilarious mission statements at the beginning of the shows - "This weekend we're gonna dig up the lost shipyards of Henry V. Don't worry why we're digging 20 miles inland, we'll explain it."

Plus it's giving me knitting ideas. heeheehee

'Cause I have so much time to knit up all the ideas I have now.

Yet another evening check in.

Row 72 now. And it keeps going slower. And I'm getting bored with it. And my butt still hurts from sitting all this time.

For a change of pace, I dyed some yarn today.

It's a dip dye, from light pink through several reds to a sort of burgundy. (If you can see a little bit of pink peeping over the red at the top of the skein, it's part of the same skein, hung double - it's a long one.) I think I'm gonna call it Cherry Ripple. Red Ripple? Something like that. Cinnamon Ripple. Hm. That works.

Anyway, tomorrow I want to do another dip dye, this one blue. And I've got a thirty-foot skein wound out that I haven't dyed for two weeks because I couldn't think of a color scheme, but now I think I've got one.

Back to the lace mines.

Bedtime check-in.

Row 57. There are about 200 stitches on the needle now, and even shifting it over to a circular, it's starting to slow down. You can see the pattern starting to emerge, though; the center, which I've done so far, is stockinette with columns of eyelets. Very fast to knit. (Many small pattern repeats also make the pattern easy to remember, and therefore, fast to knit.) As I move outward it turns into one-row lace with constant stitch manipulation - then it'll REALLY slow down.

Anyway, about thirty rows to go. Two days to do it. So far, so good. (Now that I said 'so far, so good', the cat will eat it and leave it barfed out for me on the foot stool tomorrow morning.)

And my butt still hurts.

I've given in to peer pressure.

There's this knitting poll going around the internet, basically a 'what kind of knitting have you done?' sort of thing, and I'm sort of curious to see what I HAVE done. It's been a while. What I have done is in ITALICS, what I haven't done is in regular type (hopefully this will translate to Bloglines okay, if not, enjoy the commentary). And I'll add pithy commentary where it seems appropriate.

Afghan
I-cord
Garter stitch
Knitting with metal wire - I'd like to try this but I'm afraid it would destroy my hands
Shawl
Stockinette stitch
Socks: top-down
Socks: toe-up
Knitting with camel yarn
Mittens: Cuff-up - designed my own, Norwegian style
Mittens: Tip-down
Hat
Knitting with silk
Moebius band knitting - dude, it's the trippiest thing ever
Participating in a KAL - and leading one
Sweater - oh for crying out loud
Drop stitch patterns
Knitting with recycled/secondhand yarn
Slip stitch patterns - hate 'em because they make the knitting short and it takes forever to finish
Knitting with banana fiber yarn
Domino knitting (=modular knitting)
Twisted stitch patterns
Knitting with bamboo yarn
Two end knitting - just swatches
Charity knitting
Knitting with soy yarn
Cardigan
Toy/doll clothing
Knitting with circular needles - oh geez
Baby items
Knitting with your own hand-spun yarn - working on that
Slippers - I knit one and quit
Graffiti knitting - HUH? Is this some hip thing??
Continental knitting
Designing knitted garments
Cable stitch patterns
Lace patterns
Publishing a knitting book
Participate in an exchangeScarf
Teaching a child to knit - fun, if they're enthusiastic
American/English knitting - I've tried it
Knitting to make money - all the time, depending on how you look at it
Buttonholes - mine suck
Knitting with alpaca
Fair Isle knitting
Norwegian knitting - love it
Dying with plant colors - coffee. Gag.
Knitting items for a wedding - right now
Household items (dishcloths, washcloths, tea cosies…)
Knitting socks (or other small tubular items) on one or two circulars - the sleeves of the Bohus sweater last year... hated it but I didn't have DPNs the right size
Knitting with someone else’s hand-spun yarn
Knitting with dpns - oh geez
Holiday related knitting - every year, I'm a moron
Teaching a male how to knit - the husbeast
Bobbles - hate 'em
Knitting for a living - it's not a living, but I'm kind of doing it now
Knitting with cotton
Knitting smocking
Dying yarn - hahaha
Steeks - I think they're fun. I'm sick.
Knitting art - that's in the eye of the beholder, now, isn't it?
Knitting two socks on two circulars simultaneously - and screwed them both up simultaneously
Fulling/felting - often with disastrous results
Knitting with wool
Textured knitting
Kitchener stitch - like a party trick
Knitted flowers - I can't remember ever knitting flowers, and yet can't believe I've never knit flowers.
Purses/bags
Knitting with beads - I keep meaning to try this
Swatching - oh, for crying out loud
Long Tail CO
Entrelac - just swatches and experiments
Knitting and purling backwards - I keep meaning to learn this
Machine knitting
Knitting with self patterning/self striping/variegated yarn
Stuffed toys
Knitting with cashmere
Darning - avoided at all costs
Jewelry
Knitting with synthetic yarn
Writing a pattern - hate it, but yes
Gloves
Intarsia
Knitting with linen
Knitting for preemies
Tubular CO - I've got a funky version of it I do, I keep meaning to do an article
Free-form knitting - I'm too organized, I can't do the free part
Short rows
Cuffs/fingerless mits/arm-warmers
Pillows
Knitting a pattern from an on-line knitting magazine
RugKnitting on a loom
Thrummed knitting - I don't live in a cold enough climate, but I'm intrigued.
Knitting a gift
Knitting for pets - this cat sleeps on Australian merino
Shrug/bolero/poncho
Knitting with dog/cat hair
Hair accessories
Knitting in public - always good for a laugh



Tag, you're it.

I hope this is an omen of things to come.

I got a copy of the summer issue of Interweave Knits last night, and as usual I thought "I don't know why I buy these magazines when they piss me off" as I paid for it, and I got it home, and I looked at the patterns, and... and...

There are actually things in there I would wear.

I wouldn't go to the trouble of knitting some of them, but out of 26 patterns, I'd wear probably ten of them, if someone handed them to me. And there are two tanks (the 'sleeveless tuxedo shirt' and the 'Lutea Lace-Shoulder Shell') I am going to try to actually knit this summer. (I can knit the shell out of yarn in the stash, thereby being virtuous. Go me.) The sizes are human - most go up to a 52 inch/125cm bust. The layout has changed recently, but I like it - there's a photo montage of projects in the front, then the patterns with more, detailed photos of the projects.

In addition, there's an article on sock knitting by Ann Budd that might be worth the cost of the magzine, by itself, and their usual columns that I enjoy, like 'the knitted artifact' where they discuss a piece from a museum collection. I found out why Etsy has been bogged down all week - Amy Singer wrote an article about it for this issue.

Interweave Knits has always been the only knitting magazine that was close to rational, IMHO, and it seems to be improving now that Eunny's in charge. She needs to have a word with the stylist, though -- way too many bras hanging out in these photos. (Nothing's perfect, and really I'd prefer the bra exposure to the idiocy I see in other magazines.)

Incidentally Interweave also has a pretty nice collection of free patterns, here.

Sorry this review was positive. Vogue will put something out in the fall, don't worry.

Pre-bedtime check-in.

I'm on row 39. Don't be impressed; it starts off with twelve stitches in the center and each row contains more and more stitches as you increase to make the thing lay flat. I've got about 144 stitches on the needles right now, and it'll only get worse as the thing grows. You can usually knit the first fifteen or twenty rounds of a center-out doily like this in an hour; then it goes slower, and slower, and slower until it can take hours to do a single round. Ah, the fun, the excitement, the entertainment.

I've got a total of 82 rows.

It'll go on the circular needle tomorrow.

My butt hurts from all this sitting.

We're pooped.

The Baby and I did the knit-in at the Children's Museum this morning. We all met up in the art room, and the baby stayed with me instead of running loose in the rest of the museum. (She's a little young yet, and since I stay home with her, she's not used to the idea of going off with strangers.) She had a glorious time and got into EVERYTHING. Here, The Baby says "I don't know anything about the colors under my nails. Or the marker on my face. Or the paint on my shirt. I'm tired. Can I have a snack? Turn on the cartoons."

I took the Mystery Knit (which is getting set aside for a few days), and met some new nice folks, and had a good time. If you're in the area and haven't gone yet, you should. And do it fast - the group will be breaking for summer, so you've only got all the Thursdays left in May to come visit.

Otherwise, I've listed deadlines and projects and priorities and have decided I need to knit a doily this weekend. Not only because I need a wedding gift for the beginning of June, but because I need to finish something soon or I will lose my mind. After it's done, it's back to the Mystery Knit. Then the Steeked Jacket. (Unless someone finishes up their sleeves ahead of plan. Then I don't know what I'll do.)

No more excitement here. The Baby has a diaper on her head, the cat's sleeping on my foot stool, and I'm going to go look at lace patterns and the box of crochet cotton.

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.