Reminder!

Tomorrow is Nigel Tufnel day.

Setting a bad example.

So, you know how you're not supposed to do anything for hours at a time? Especially when you're creaky and have a fucked up nervous system and arthritis in most of your joints?

Um. Hmmm. Yeah.

I feel kind of bad even mentioning this, because, hmmm.

I've got this friend. We will call her W. She is married to an IT dude we will call Moo. He sees and hears about all the really cool games and stuff, and it winds up passed on to me. Remember Plants Vs. Zombies? I know some of you still haven't forgiven me for that one. That was their fault. Well, a while back I got another game recommendation from W and Moo. I knew better, but I went out and bought it, anyway. I stood in the store, with the game in my hand, thinking "this is gonna turn into a time suck of epic proportion". Then I bought it.

Raving Rabbids Party Collection. For Wii. It's three games on one disc. It comes on every gaming platform known to man, but on the Wii you can pretend it's exercise. (Actually, if you ask my arms, I'm pretty sure it really IS exercise.)Today I played the Raving Rabbids TV Party for. Um. -cough- Three hours. Okay, four, but I took a break after hour one, so it's only the three hours straight, after that, that count.

I can't really feel my fingers, and my shoulders are a disaster, but I spent the day shooting zombie chickens with a plunger gun. And dancing to bad 80s music. And... uh, skiing down a mountain on an upside down cow. There were some explosions and flying through space and a gunnery sergeant in there, somewhere. It's kind of a blur.

Yeah, you wouldn't like this game. Really. Think no more about it.

I'm gonna go stick pain patches all over myself and pray to Keith Richards to make the drugs work better.

---

And another thing. The Goob drew a zombie.

This is the best zombie ever.

The Principles of Knitting

Yes, THAT book. The original.

The Principles of Knitting, by June Hemmons Hyatt, published 1988.

I bought it in 1989, when I'd been knitting about a year, because I could see the value in such a thing. Plus I'd been using the copy out of my local library and really wanted it. I paid full price - $29.95. (That was the year I worked at Citibanc and lived on my own, and with no one to stop me, I spent 37% of my income on books. My mother did my taxes that year and about keeled over when she sorted my receipts.)

No one has blogged this book, that I've seen on the internet. Probably because it's been out of print so long and it's so hard to find. An updated and expanded second edition has been in the works for at least three years. I've planned to buy a copy for my mother-in-law as a Christmas gift every year, and every year, they push back the publication again. Amazon was taking pre-orders at the end of this summer, before news broke that they were pushing back the publication date AGAIN, to February 2012. We hope. So, in the mean time, here's what they're building on. It'll give you an idea why this book is kind of mythical.

It's laid out in double columns, with fairly small text, to cram in as much information as possible. There's two-color printing (black for text with a dark aqua as accent color), with black and white photos and hand-drawn diagrams as needed.

The table of contents:

For youse who can't read it off the picture (I understand; my eyes suck these days) as always, my comments in parenthesis:

Part One - Working the Stitches (continental vs. other types; stitch mount; decreases and increases)
1. Learning to Knit and Purl
2. The Stitches
3. Decreases and Increases
4. Decorative Increases and Decreases

Part Two - Constructing a Fabric
5. Circular and Flat Knitting
6. Casting On (about ten methods)
7. Casting Off (ditto)
8. Selvedges (why, how, different types, what they're good for)
9. Contouring the Fabric
10. Picking Up Stitches
11. Hems, Facings, and Folds (why, what they're good for, many methods)
12. Openings
13. Double Knit

Part Three - Decorative Techniques
14. Working with Color
15. Inlay (more data than you can imagine)
16. Decorative Needlework
17. Beads and Sequins (multiple methods)

Part Four - Working a Project
18. Materials and Tools
19. Starting and Carrying Out a Project
20. Finishing Techniques (brain melt)
21. Cleaning and Dressing a Knitted Garment
22. Fulled/Felted Knits

Part Five - Reading and Designing Patterns
23. Reading Written Garment and Stitch Patterns
24. Stitch Gauge (brain melt)
25. Calculations used in Pattern Making and Alterations (DUDE.)
26. Stitch and Color Pattern Charts (now very pedestrian; at the time, huge news)
27. Schematic Drawings and Garment Pattern Charts

Oh, and in case you're wondering how she crammed that much info into one book? Here's how:

That page count isn't including the glossary and index.

"Meticulous" is the word I'd use, if I could only have one to describe the book. When I first got it, 20-odd years ago, I thought the amount of detail was crazy and I'd never use it. Twenty years later? I've referred to all of it, at one time or another. Nowadays, there are other books that rival or surpass this one, on narrow topics - for instance, "The Knitter's Book of Yarn" by Clara Parks is, dare I say it, better and more comprehensive than the "Materials and Tools" section of Principles, where yarn and fiber types are covered. But as an all-in-one, with all layers of needed information in one place? Nothing's ever come close to this book, that I've ever seen, before or since.

If you took "The Knitter's Book of Yarn", "Knitting in the Old Way", "Knitting Lace", "Knitting Without Tears", a couple books on fit by Lily Chin and Wendy Bernard, and had all of those jumbled together by a master knitter who then explained everything with diagrams? That's about what "Principles of Knitting" is.

With luck, the second edition will be out in February. Or by next Christmas. Or the one after that. Until then, you can talk to your local librarian about Inter-Library Loan and have them lay hands on it for you. Unfortunately, you'll have to give that one back.

Sekhmet, you fucker.

It's been a while since one of these, hasn't it? I'm sure it is the cat's fault.

Do you know what season it is? If you ask Sekhmet, she will tell you it is Cold Toe Season. There is only one solution to cold toes; lay on your hoomin's lap. (In principle, I am in favor.)

She hops on my lap, paces around, and stands for long minutes between me and the computer that is usually on my lap. Then she wiggles around. And wiggles. And wiggles. Then she shoves her face in my boobs (usually amusing unless the cold, wet nose lands in my cleavage). Heavy sigh, happy cat. For a minute. Then more wiggling. Eventually she arranges herself so she's laying lengthwise along my lap, shoving my computer away from me as she goes. MY ARMS AREN'T LONG ENOUGH TO REACH THE KEYBOARD by the time she's finally comfy.

If I move her? She bites my feet.

Fucker.

I went a little nuts.

You know how picky I am about colors? (As well as being interested in how they're recreated.) You know how I've said my local yarn store, Natural Stitches, carries the ENTIRE Cascade 220 product line, and STILL sometimes doesn't have the color I want? (I consider this my failing, not theirs.)You know how I have, in the past, dyed my own yarn and spinning fiber to get EXACTLY what I wanted?

Right. Well. I suppose this was just a matter of time.

About twenty years ago, I bought this light blue nail polish. It was the PERFECT light blue color. But it had one problem. It didn't cover for shit. Five layers of nail polish seemed a little extreme to me. Occasionally I would pull it out, be sad that it was so pretty but didn't really work right, and put it away again.

Last week in some fugue state, I fixed it. Well, no, I didn't fix it.

I had a bottle of white nail polish sitting here. Far and away, the most common pigment for white anything these days is titanium dioxide, the stuff used in Liquid Paper to make it cover everything in one coat. (It is also put in skim milk to make it look white rather than blue. Enjoy.) White nail polish? Consider it acetone-based Liquid Paper. For nails. I KNEW it would cover. I even read the label to double check. Yes. Full of titanium dioxide.

So I poured in blue nail polish until it was the color I wanted. Viola. My light blue nail polish, with actual coverage.

I've been wearing it for three days and can't decide if this means I'm really bloody clever or have finally lost my mind. You be the judge. I'll be gloating over my nail polish.

...but I blogged!

Been busy all day, so I didn't have time to research anything interesting. Potential topics: drugs, plant anatomy, and colonial history. I'll try to settle on one tonight and do some poking around online for tomorrow.

This morning was the Goober's last swimming class for a while, and after that I met a blog friend in person finally (more on that later), and we visited. We also got totally lost in Pigsbird, but that gave us more time to chat. (When you cross the river seven times in an hour, you know something ain't right. Or was it eight times?) Nice afternoon. Then I came home and played Wii with my kid. And I didn't have to cook today. Damn. It was almost like a vacation.

---

Yesterday, I finally finished the spinning I've had on my wheel for six months, at least:

There's 500 yards of it (a bit more, actually), so I don't feel totally stupid for taking so long at it. I've no idea what I'm going to do with it.

But, now that I'm done, I've started the annual socks. Every winter (since we moved north), I've spun and knit myself a pair of socks. Last year, it was these:

This year, I've got some merino/silk blend dyed in blues from sky blue to dark indigo, mostly a medium blue. If the pattern works for the second time, I'll write 'em up for everyone.

---

Thanks to everyone who commented on the home schooling. It helped, a lot. You know how it is; you hear enough negative stuff and no matter how much you thought through your decision, you start thinking "crap, am I sure...?" I am reaffirmed.

To celebrate I got the Goob a book on minerals, so we can work on understanding how rocks can bend light. And a Mythbusters book because, hey, it was there, and so was I, and it teaches science with explosions.

And I got a copy of Vogue Knitting. 

And so, the Goob.

(Because we ALL need me to take a break from the news for a while.)

For those of you just tuning in, I've got a six year old daughter who is known on the internet as either "my kid" or "the Goober". The Goober nickname goes all the way back to when I was pregnant and had my first ultrasound at, what, six, eight weeks? At the time, the fetus was the size of a peanut, and resembled one quite a lot. In the southern US (where we were living at the time), an old folk name for peanuts is goobers, so there you have it. Until we found out gender and figured out a name, the fetus was "the Goober" and it just stuck. "Goobie" is a possibly even more humiliating term I use.

These days, the kid has made it known that "Goober" is not her favorite thing, so I've also been calling her "Boo", after the little girl in the movie "Monsters, Inc." She'll stay "the Goober" here until she figures out I'm using the nickname on the internet and has a fit, I guess.

Oh, speaking of the internet? She's figured it out. She watches kid's shows on TV and they say "Go to our web site at ____ and play games!" and she bugs me to use my computer. In the last week, all but one of the really annoying scenes we've had around here have been about her and my computer. (The school issued her a computer, yes. But she needs to be supervised -casually- on the internet, and it's just more convenient to use mine.) And she REALLY doesn't need to be on the internet for more than two hours at a time.

As you can see, she's just thriving away. The photos above are from yesterday. I tried to take her photo, and she yelled "NO!" and ran off, laughing. So I chased her around the house, clicking blurry, bad photos until the camera died. The happiness when she was a baby? Still there. And thank all the gods for that.

We've been doing swimming classes, all summer and into fall. We're in the boonies and don't have a local Y - they're held at the local high school.

Her last class, for now, is tomorrow. We've got this great community recreation center, and they send out quarterly fliers full of classes for kids and adults; the new one is due any day. We'll sign her up for more swimming, karate, and anything else that looks fun, and it'll all start up again after Christmas.

School? We're still doing PA Cyber. It's... interesting. She's at or above where she's supposed to be in math and reading. Writing? Her writing sucks, but she knows how to do it. I'm trying to remember how good my handwriting was at six, and I doubt it was very neat. So, that's fine. She's REALLY interested in science and figuring stuff out. Remember the vikings and rocks post? She found the Iceland Spar while I was in the shower. Burst into the bathroom with it in her hand, demanding to know what it was. I explained. (While in the shower.) I told her she could look at it, if she was VERY careful not to drop it. She raced back out. Eventually I got out of the shower, and what do I find going on in the kitchen?

She was shining a flashlight through it, and was drawing lines on the paper to follow how the light 'bent' as it shone through.

Apparently I'm raising the reincarnation of Issac Newton, without the mercury fumes and related loopiness.

Personally? I hate home schooling. Hate it. I'd love to put her on a bus and have a few hours to myself every day. But I've gotta ask myself - would she have a chance to do stuff like the flashlight and rock, in a classroom? With an adult working one-on-one with her, answering her questions? The local school district has children her age in classrooms that are 35-40 kids per room. I can't see that working well for her. So I'm stuck. Really, it's pissing me off. People in the public school system shit on me because I'm home schooling. Other home schoolers (not all, but the ones I've managed to find locally) shit on me because PA Cyber is considered public school by parents. But if I want to transfer her into public school soon (and holy shit, do I), I need to be following the state curricula so I can say with confidence she's able to go into whatever grade. I'm pretty well stuck.

I'll keep on muddling through the sucky parts, and really enjoying the good stuff. Which, really, is what all parents do, isn't it?

Getting political.

Sorry.

---ETA: Apparently, while I was writing this, the Senate moved to kill not one, but TWO infrastructure jobs bills. S.1769 basically failed to move on to the next step, due to a whole lot of apathy when the Senate voted. Info here.  I haven't been able to find a break down on exactly who voted in what direction. Fuck it. Never mind. Skip the whole damn post. I'm going to write hate letters to my reps.---

Actually, I've always BEEN political, but I kept it off the internet while the hub was active duty because when your husband's in the Navy, calling the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces a flapping twat over the internet is unwise. (But, hey. Bush Jr? Flapping twat is the nicest thing I called him.)

I shall try to remain moderate for all of you, because nothing's more tedious than listening to some extremist rant, and we're all entitled to our own opinions, anyway. But I'm pissed. Have I mentioned I'm pissed?

A short bit of lead-in, for perspective, and because I'm a history geek and today's current events are tomorrow's history, so for crying out loud, get the details right. And because not all of you are from the US (if you're not, and you're still reading, thank you) and don't know this stuff. And because not all of you had the great government teacher I did.

When the president introduces a bill (potential law or appropriation of funds to start a project, declare war*, like that) the Senate (two per state) and the Representatives (determined by population, one per smaller region) vote on what they call a "Cloture Motion" or just Cloture. Think of it like closure. Do they vote yes, and axe the thing dead on the spot, or do they vote no, and discuss it further?

Our economy, like everyone else's, is in the toilet right now. Our president (who I'm rather indifferent about) has been trying to pass bills that would create new jobs. HIS JOB, wouldn't you say? Looking after the citizenry? We're at a stage where unemployment has only been worse, once. Chart here. The country needs jobs.

The president, being a smart guy, figured out one thing that would work would be to put people to work fixing infrastructure (roads, bridges, like that), which is in a pretty sorry state because we spend significantly less than the rest of the world on keeping our country paved and safe. Chart here. (Interesting editorial drawing on that chart, by the way.) This is a tried-and-true plan. It's one of the major ways FDR put people to work during the Great Depression (and where a lot of our really awesome stone bridges come from); top economists NOW are suggesting it. The president put it together with a lot of other, similar ideas for job creation, and introduced the bill.

So what did the Senate do?

Yup. Killed it. It's dead in the water. You can see how your senators voted here.

It was trimmed down and broken into pieces, and the infrastructure portion was re-introduced and is currently under consideration for a motion to proceed. It is bill number S.1769, if you wanna do your own searches on it. (Here's a good summary.) Basically, they're deciding whether to kill it. Since they're proposing to pay for this project by a .7% tax on people whose income is over a million dollars, I bet it get shot down, just like the last time. It's looking REALLY close. Got an opinion on this? I hope you do. Track down your senators and tell them how you feel about it.

You guys who aren't stuck here? Technically it's not your problem, and you're not their jurisdiction, so to speak, but I bet they'd take notice if enough outraged e-mails from outside the country showed up in their in box. If you want, you can e-mail my senator who voted against the last version of the bill, Pat Toomey. I intend to; as always, you're welcome to join in the fun.

There you have it. My radical agenda. Jobs for people and maybe a few fixed bridges. ('Cause the husbeast? The industrial inspector? He'll tell you, the bridges in this country are FRIGHTENING.) I hope you won't all hate me for wanting some millionaires to pony up a few bucks to make it happen.

And just to warn you... I consider myself a conservative because I think the Constitution should be followed strictly (including using the provisions for amending it). But the GOP wouldn't have me as a gift. I think "government by the people, for the people" is a mandate for public health care, among other things.

Yesterday's general strike in Oakland? Except for the vandalism? Awesome.

I am not a pinko commie. I'm a democratic socialist. Also, my dad was in the UAW. I've been blue collar all my life. So. Y'know. Oh, hell, just call me Pinko.

---

*Included for the folks who wouldn't know how the system works here: Yes, Congress has to vote (in favor, obviously) in order to declare war. That's why Iraq is a war and Afghanistan isn't. Afghanistan is a "police action". Total bullshit? You betcha.

Vikings, and navigation. And rocks.

This was supposed to be a post about the culture shock of living in the boonies of Pennsylvania. But then this showed up in my RSS feeds this morning, and, hell, there's always time later to discuss how weirded out I am to be living in an area where people steal bridges.

Right. So, the vikings. Great seafarers, discovered and settled Iceland and Greenland, poked around in N America before most of Europe knew it existed. All very cool. But there's one thing that most people don't think about. Okay, there's more than one, but there's one that's the real biggie. How did they figure out where they were going?

Being vikings and all, a great deal of their sailing activity was done in or near the Arctic Circle. Which means they did most of their traveling (all they could, I'm sure) in summer. Summer, when, in the Arctic, the sun never goes down. How are you supposed to navigate by the stars, in the Land of the Midnight Sun?

I first encountered this question when I had a job selling crystals and jewelry at a job in Waikiki, years ago. Being me, I was geeking out, researching the history of crystals, and ran into the problem, which historians and tech people have been puzzling over for centuries.

There are references in the Sagas about "A stone with which one could see where the sun was in Heaven." There are mentions of "sun stones" in church inventories, descriptions of gifts (a horse and a sun stone), and other discussions. They were definitely a well-known and valuable (obviously) thing.

But WHAT?

Everyone who knew anything about the situation (rocks, navigation, and history) figured it was probably some kind of feldspar - crystals which, due to their crystalline structure, would polarize light. Moonstone, rainbow moonstone, spectralite, and Labradorite are some of the names used for semi-precious stones used in jewelery that have the effect to some degree or other, hence the pretty reflective qualities of them. (Rainbow moonstones are my personal favorite, for jewelry purposes.) Still, there's a shitload of feldspars out there, and no one was quite sure what in hell the vikings were using.

My choice was always iolite, which I'm not sure is technically a feldspar, now that I think of it, though it has similar diffraction behavior. (I use gem terms for rocks, because I learned about them at a jewelry store rather than in a geology class.) There are clear forms of iolite in a gray-blue that, cut properly, would work exactly like a polarized eyeglass. Check it:

See how it refracts light, and makes the stone look like it's different colors, from different angles? Using one of these would be like finding the sun in the clouds, wearing polarized sunglasses. Which I've done. It would work. The nearest source of iolite for the vikings would have been Cornwall, in the UK. Or Connecticut in N America - but how would they have made it to N America to find the stones, if they hadn't had them first? This is a logistical problem, obviously.

But it appears I was wrong. (SHOCK!)

They discovered an "Icelandic Spar" on a shipwreck that went down in 1592. It so happens that, because they're so freaking common, they're really easy to get hold of, and I actually own one. (What? I'm a geek!) Here it is.

You can see, by the way the light's reflecting off it, that it's got some odd refractive index, and I wasn't even trying. You can also see that it breaks along planes in the crystal structure, which would make shaping it for sunglasses purpose really easy. Probably the deciding feature is, it's so common in Iceland that I've heard people could simply pick them up off the ground at one point. It's been confirmed by scientists who know this stuff that yes, it would work to find the sun on cloudy or bright days.

Solar navigation. With rocks. I love history.

PS: I sold a metric assload of iolite and calcite jewelry to sailors, with this information. Geeks, unite!

ETA: An article from Discover News, with a great photo. Thanks to @sharkgrl for the info!

NaNoWriMo. Sorta.

It's November, the month that crazy people try to write a novel in thirty-one days. That's way too extreme for me (good luck to you folks trying it), but I thought I'd use the buzz around the internet to get me back to blogging.

I want to write a blog post every day this month.

Now that (I think) all of the zombie-making drug is finally out of my system, I'm having to get things going again; exercise, knitting, spinning, WRITING. So I'm Just Gonna Do It.

Here we go.

---

I've been pondering WHAT to blog for quite a while. I think really I need to quit thinking and start writing. But, topic ideas include more history, some entries on world religions (history and description, not editorializing), and like that. Plus there's that series I did years ago on color; I could do white, or black, or specific dyes. The discussions of fashion designers remain popular. And I've got decades of fashion left to do.

Plus there's always plants. And with Thanksgiving coming up I'll probably start babbling about food soon.

Right. I shall kick myself in the ass as needed.

Happy Halloween!

The Goob was a fairy princess. She wore her wings over her winter coat - it was raining and forty degrees out there. I'm now stuck with a huge bowl of candy 'cause only the very local kids came around tonight.

She wanted to go as Olivia, but we got to the costume store and she spotted the wall o' wings, and she just had to have the blue and purple ones with GLITTER. So, fairy princess again. For the third or fourth year in a row. I've lost track. But, hey, you're a girl, you're six, you gotta be a fairy goddamn princess, right?

If you can't tell, she's wearing her glasses, under the mask. I was standing around, pondering cutting holes in the sides of the mask for her glasses, or something, and while I was going over every complicated scenario, the Goob solved the problem herself.

Oh, and she also demonstrated her geek heritage.

The husbeast and I mostly carved it, but she picked it. Insisted. ANGRY BIRD! Next year I'm using a hand-held jigsaw. Power tools are my friends.

While everyone was running around trick-or-treating, I ducked over to visit with the neighbors for a bit. One of the first things she asked was, "Hey, that wheel thing you use on the back porch. I keep forgetting to ask. What the hell is that?" It's my spinning wheel. Heeheehee. She wanted to know what I DID with it. I explained how I like to spin and knit socks, then wear them and feel clever. Her husband, an engineer, thought that WAS pretty clever.

KAL 07.1: Where we're at.

And where we're going.

There was some concern about the last round of directions. So to answer them, first, a photo of a finished EPS sweater:

The shaky orange line is where your needles are, right now.

Yes, there is more than 100% of stitches on the needle. You'll need that extra fabric to put your boobs and shoulders into. It is supposed to be there. (As I recall, you should be in the neighborhood of 138% right now, but don't fret if you're of by an inches' worth of stitches.)

Yes, at the moment, the arm pits are giant gaping holes. That's okay. We'll be grafting the arm pits shut as part of the finishing. Think of them kind of like inside-out sock toes, if that helps. (If it confuses you, forget I ever typed it.)

We will begin decreasing all those extra stitches again quite soon, and quickly; eight stitches every other round. It creates the perfect shoulder for a casual sweater.

All is well. You're doing fine.

The global village.

This is one that's been making my brain hurt for a while.

The husbeast, since he retired, has been working at a factory that builds turbines. He inspects them; makes sure they aren't cracked, that the welds are solid, that no one machined it too small by accident. That kind of thing*. The factory is owned by an international conglomerate that builds all sorts of things meant for power plants, refineries, and like that. Major, very large, heavy industry.

A few months ago, he mentioned to me that the factory was going to be doing a new trick; testing the turbines. Not just the bits they build here in SW Pennsylvania out in the boonies, but big, hunormous things shipped in from all over, the finished products built by his factory and others, in working order. It turns out, the conglomerate was running their main 'test floor', as they call it, in Japan. Since the tsunami knocked out the reactors there, they've been on power rationing and don't know when it'll end. Looking around, they decided the best facility to take over the job would be, yes. This place here in the boonies of Pennsylvania.

While all this made sense to me, I was thinking big picture: HOW much were they going to spend, shipping stuff halfway around the world for testing? I knew the turbines the husbeast built were big, but geez, how big could they be? So I asked how much power they were expecting to use, that it was worthwhile.

100 megawatts. They needed 100 megawatts of power.

I didn't run around doing the Doc Brown "ONE POINT TWENTY-ONE JIGAWATTS!?!" while tearing out my hair, but it was a near thing.

The output of an ENTIRE power plant, the WHOLE DAMN THING, is between 400 and 600 megawatts. (It varies a lot; fuel, conditions, design, etc. But that's the neighborhood. Nuclear submarine reactors produce about 20 megawatts, at least according to public info.) That joke we all make about how we turn on the air conditioning in our house, and they know it at the power plant? IT WILL BE TRUE for this test floor. They're having to put in a power grid substation for it. A hundred megawatts.

We are living in the future. A tsunami in Japan has created a shift in the power grid in rural Pennsylvania. Look out for butterflies.

-----

*The husbeast's job consists of all sorts of wild and crazy methods, from the very, exceedingly simple to the really Meet George Jetson futuristic stuff. The first thing he did when he went to work there was make them buy new measuring equipment like calipers. He's the one who calls regular rulers "a fucking wooden stick" with a lot of sneering. One night he was asked to check some parts for cracks, just a quick check. He was in a hurry, so he walked along them and hit them with his flashlight. Ding, ding, ding, thunk. He pointed out the thunk and said it was cracked. He was right. This is where the term 'dead ringer' comes from and goes back into prehistory in bell making. The guys he works with act like he's a combination of Gandalf and Mike Holmes.

KAL 07: Joining it all up.

Yes. FINALLY. Really sorry.

Having read my blathering post, I've come back to the top and am putting in a checklist of steps, so that -hopefully- between the short list and my blather, it will make sense. If it doesn't, you may pelt me with acrylic yarn. Or ask questions. Whichever seems most appropriate.
-Figure 8% of your 100% figure. For me, it is 18 stitches. (222 x 8% = 18) These are your armpit stitches.
-Knit across the body to where you're putting the first sleeve. Put armpit stitches on stitch holders, both on the body and the sleeve. (I suggest using an even number of stitches for the body, and one more for the sleeve, to make grafting easier later; mine was 18 stitches body, 19 stitches sleeve.)
-Put the two arm pits together so they meet, like they will when the sweater is finished.
-Put some kind of stitch marker on the body needle. Knit the sleeve stitches onto the body needle. Put another stitch marker. Knit across the back of sweater.
-Repeat for the other sleeve, when you knit across to it. Don't forget the stitch markers.

Confused? I hope to hell not. Details, blather, and photos of the process below.

So. The whole point of doing a sweater is, you know, having a sweater. It needs sleeves. The sleeves need to be opposite each other, on the body. Can't stress that enough. And if there's a cardigan opening, it needs to be equidistant, between the sleeves. Sure, you're laughing, going "no kidding", but there have been sweaters produced with arms in the wrong place. More than once. And I'm not the only one who has done it.

Now, if you'd marked the sides of your sweater as you knit the body, with stitch markers or loops of string, you know where the arm pits go. If not, you might wanna do that, now. Get your 100% figure, divide it in half. That gives you the number of stitches on front and back. (My 100% figure is 222, so that's 111 each, front and back.)

Remember, steek stitches (for cut cardigans) do not go in the 100% figure. And the steek? It goes in the middle of the front. Between the arms. Just sayin'.

You will put armpit stitches on holders (I suggest actual stitch holders, rather than putting them on a string, because the string allows too much stretch and distortion). Then you will put all the other stitches on a single circular needle: Front of sweater, outside of sleeve, back, outside of other sleeve, then the front again. (Giving a quick overview before digging into details.)

Why don't I shut up now and put up some pictures? There's an idea.

Sleeve with armpit stitches on stitch holders.

Yeah, yeah, I know there's technical terms for this stuff, but y'all know what an armpit is, don't you? If you can't tell, there, the yarn end for the sleeve is right in the middle of the stitches on the holders. It will make grafting a little difficult later, but if you're going to have a bunch of darning and irregular rows meeting, you want it buried in your arm pit, not out on your shoulder for God and everyone to see.

Body, with stitches on stitch holders.

I use the body yarn to knit the sleeve into the needle with; the end of the sleeve yarn is in the armpit.

Getting ready to knit the sleeve into the body needle.

The sleeve is on the left, the body is on the right. Both sets of armpit stitches are together in the middle. The sleeve needle is silver, the body needle is blue. With this manouver, all the stitches will wind up on holders (armpit) or the body needle (body and sleeve).

With the sleeve and body on the body needle.

Reading the stitches left to right, from where my hand is holding the tips of the needles, there are sleeve stitches, then after the stitch marker on the right side, center of the screen, are the front body stitches. (The last stitch marker, upper right corner marks the steek, central front, because I'm making a cardigan.)

From there, I knit across the back and repeated the entire process on the other sleeve.

The advantage of doing it this way, rather than simply shoving stitches on and off needles and shuffling them around that way (which you are welcome to do instead) is, it reduces the odds of dropped stitches. It also makes it possible to knit one of these sweaters with just two circular needles, one for sleeves and one for body. Knit on the first sleeve, knit to where the second sleeve belongs, use your newly empty sleeve needle to make the second sleeve, knit it on, and you're ready to go.

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With the sleeves and body put together, you need to knit an inch or two plain. This dictates the depth of the arm holes in your finished product. That is largely a matter of personal taste. I would do at least one inch, possibly two or three, depending. Things to consider:
-Smaller people need less arm room than larger people. (Kid sweater? One inch is fine. Medium adult sweater? Probably two. Really large adult sweater? Consider three.)
-Jackets and cardigans and pullovers intended to be worn over other clothes are a great deal more comfortable with larger arm holes.

For reference, and if anyone's curious, I'm doing probably two and a half inches on mine. It's a cardigan and I like my clothes on the loose side, usually.

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After this will be shoulder decreasing and possible neck decreasing. Now's the time to decide if you want a crew neck or a V-neck.

Catch up.

You know, I am continually amazed at the drugs that are legal, and the drugs that aren't. I've spent a month going through withdrawal from a prescription drug, AFTER weaning off it for two months before that. And it's been worse than the time I took Percocet several times daily for a year, then quit cold turkey. But marijuana is illegal. This makes no fucking sense to me. (For those just checking in, I've got a chronic pain thing going on, and all this is under doctor's supervision, legal, and blah blah. Just annoying as fuck.)

I don't think I've gone two weeks without blogging since I started this thing in 2006. This whole mess royally pisses me off. Royally.

Anyway. I will comment on comments, because I got nothin', but I wanted to let youse guys know I'm still alive.

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Vogue Knitting. A designer checked in and left a comment on the last review (it's over there). She asked me to correct the spelling of her name. Oops. Sorry about that. Sincerely. I did fix it, and cut and pasted it straight from your e-mail, so I hope it's correct now.

The designer also clarified the sizing issue with VK, and confirmed what we already know - that they dictate the sizes, not the designer. I guess she didn't read back further to realize we know that too. But at this point, I'm over blaming designers for the shitty sizes in VK, and I'm sorry if that last review read differently. Don't get me wrong; I still think it's complete horse shit. I just realize the designers aren't the ones producing stuff in two ridiculous sizes.

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Stink bugs. Someone asked if they really stink. Not exactly. The name, as far as I understand it, is in reference to how they work: When you squish a stink bug, they send off a pheromone or stink or something, and every other damned stink bug in the tri-state area homes in on it, and goes straight for your head. That's why people go to such extreme lengths to avoid smashing them; not the stink, specifically, but the result. I've also been told that inducing death by other means (pesticides and/or soap), they still stink and still bring in all their relatives.

Over the summer, I got mad and smacked one, didn't kill it, just swatted at it as it flew past, and it STILL called in all its icky little friends. They're evil. And disgusting. And pretty damn ugly, too.

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The glasses. I'm calling the Progressives my vertigo goggles. Thanks to the drug fun I'm having, I can't be sure it's the glasses, though, so I'm still wearing them off and on to try getting used to them.

My optician's nurse had shared the "point your nose at what you want to see" tip, thanks to all of you who shared it. It does help some, but now I'm wondering if all the bobbing and weaving I'm doing has something to do with it. Oy. Well, I'll keep experimenting.

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Last week was my birthday. The husbeast got me another folio of Niebling patterns. If I ever get through my current knitting list, there will be lace craziness going on around here. It's a great motivator; I desperately want to cast on the most insane doily I can find, but I can't 'til I get the KAL done, and some Yule gifts.


And speaking of, now that I've done some writing calisthenics (hey! I remember what a sentence is!) I am now off to write the LONG overdue KAL post.

Mud and weeds and stink bugs.

Oh my.

At this point, I don't know if I'm so fucked up because I'm messing with my main pain medication, or because I'm sick. Most likely a combination of the two, 'cause I've definitely got a sinus infection. So, you know, FUCK.

Anyway. Other stuff I've found interesting lately. Let's talk about that. More interesting than green snot.

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The big archeology news of the past week-ish, is this:

See the little lines, there? They're called flutings, and what they are is simply a spot where someone's run their fingers over some damp mud in a cave. Apparently they are found world wide, but the study that's been getting news is about a cave in France. (I don't know if France is REALLY the center of the world for cave art, or whether it just seems like that because they have been settled a looooong time and their countryside has been explored extensively.) The flutings in that picture there are possibly as old as 13,000 years.

See how they look like a kid did them? Ran their fingers through, did some doodling? That's because a kid REALLY DID DO IT. Scientists have done studies that make it possible for them to estimate the ages and genders of the people doing the flutings, and they've found that many of them were made by children! Also, the children have drawn not only on low walls, but up across high ceilings and very deep underground, so adults almost had to be helping them.

No one knows what exactly it means. And it's kind of nice that for once, the archeologists are actually admitting it. Some have admitted it COULD have a ritual purpose, but most of the spin on it seems to be saying it was little kids doodling, JUST LIKE THEY DO NOW.

Taking precise measurements, they can sometimes track on individual's work. They think the most prolific of the doodlers was a little girl, somewhere around age five. What this means is, 13,000 years ago, there was a little girl doing the exact same thing that MY little girl would do in a cave with muddy walls.

The mental image of a group of muddied-up children tumbling out of the cave after a day spent fooling around makes me smile. It's all so, well, NORMAL. Some things don't change.

I love history.

More detail and less editorializing (and also video) available at the NPR web site.

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Also, I've been reading this:

"Weeds", by Richard Mabey. Basically, a history of weeds. Both culturally (what do we consider a weed, and why?) and botanically (how they grow and what they're good for). He's a plant freak, and reading the book kind of reminds me of reading my own blog posts about plants. So if you like the stuff you've read here on leBlog, you'd enjoy this book. It's fairly new, so your library should have it, if you're unwilling to spend money for weeds. Gardeners, it will help you. Plus, hey, plants. Plants are cool.

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All else is much the same. I finished the one sleeve and started the next; this would be the next KAL post, but I don't want to try to explain something clearly while I'm tired and full of snot. So that's coming tomorrow.

There is a stink bug in my living room. This displeases me greatly. But if Sekhmet eats it, I'll try to get photos. CHINA. COME AND GET YOUR BUGS AND TAKE THEM HOME.

Germs should be bigger.

So I could kick them.


Finally off the medication that left me fucked up for more than a year, and within days, I'd contracted the germ that the husbeast brought home and shared with the Goober. Now I'm full of snot and hoping to avoid pneumonia.

I'm knitting on the super-zombie project, because I can't concentrate on anything remotely complex like the KAL sweater or the BSJ I'm knitting. With that in mind, you're stuck with random topic jumble.

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It is still green and pretty in my end of the world, but temperatures are feeling a little autumn-like. The leaves better change quick, because it's not unusual for the first snowfall to hit in mid October.

The Goober is going on and on about how she can't wait for winter. I know she's got sled riding and hot chocolate in mind. I have not called her any names. Yet.

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A while back I made this up to send out to someone I was talking to, so now I offer it for - hopefully - mild interest. This is my neighborhood. We're sitting on a natural gas field, and the little red dots in the picture are gas wells. There are lots more in the area, not much further away, but those are the immediate ones. I think the one at the bottom right of the picture is the one that's getting struck by lightning every storm, that I see out my front window.

The odds of a lightning strike igniting a gas well are low. The odds of igniting the gas field is astronomically low. But I always think of Centralia, and think that Pennsylvania is a very weird place.

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On a related topic... did you know awesome sunsets are usually an effect of lots of dust in the atmosphere? Yup. That's why Hawaiian sunsets are so awesome (Kiluea), and why, when Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, everyone in the world had amazing red sunsets for at least a year.

The picture above? We live east of Pittsburgh, and the sun sets 'behind' the city. Another cause of dust (and other crud) in the atmosphere is city grunge. So thanks to Pittsburgh, we get lovely sunsets almost every day.


And, I'm in danger of coughing up a lung again. I'm going to go drink tea, whine, and be really irritated.

PS: I painted my nails.

Fields of vision, knitting, and annoyance.

Right. Since I've been diagnosed with middle age, developing problems seeing things up close (LIKE KNITTING), I've been looking - ha - for a solution. I'm blogging about it because I'm not the only one aging, and it's likely 90% of us will develop this problem eventually - if we don't have it already.

My quest for a solution has led to this:

Which is, now that I look at it, pretty crazy. On the table there are two pairs of up-close, one pair of distance (with a polarized clip-on thing), and a pair of progressives lenses. Progressives, for you young kids, are the new, high-tech version of tri-focals. They have a 'zone' in the lens for up close, middle distance, and distant distance, with the between spaces ground to sort of middling focus. They're kind of awesome, and kind of suck - they take a lot of getting used to, because you have to get exactly the right bit of lens between your eyes and whatever you're looking at (different distances are DIFFERENT, go figure). And if you're like me and spend a lot of time looking at stuff out of the corner of your eyes, trying to focus on twenty things at once, or one single thing, they may drive you nuts.

This led to me purchasing what are known as single-focus lenses, which are just what they sound like. The driving glasses are ten kinds of awesome, giving me distance and nothing else. (I suspect I love them because this is exactly the type of glasses I've been wearing for twenty-five years and it's what I'm used to.) I use them to see things far away, and for anything else (like the speedometer), I look under or over the lenses.

So, the real point, here. Knitting. For only knitting (or only spinning), the up-close 'cheaters' work great. Fine. Whatever. The problem lies in the fact that, hey, when I knit I don't JUST focus on my knitting. (This should have occurred to me earlier, but no.) I knit, I watch TV, I look at a pattern, I read, I use my computer. Okay, usually not all at once. Usually it's TV or a book, not both. But that still leaves knitting (close), pattern (middle), book (different middle), computer (middle, what the hell, why isn't it the same as the book, damn it?), and TV (mid-distant). No single-focus lens is going to work for all those. So you're back to, dare I say it, progressives or tri-focals (debating ordering a pair of those), or just losing your damn mind.

At the moment, I'm either not wearing glasses (hello, eyestrain headache, you bitch who prompted this whole damn quest in the first place), or wearing eyeglasses for one focus (usually the knitting) and looking over/under/around them for the rest. To wear my progressives and have them work for everything, I'd need to rearrange the living room to get everything into the right spot in the lenses.

Bottom line? There's no easy solution, as with so much else. Oh, and aging is damned irritating, which I always suspected anyway.

Any of you out there also aging, maybe you'll find this useful or at least interesting. Anyone got $150 for a pair of trifocals? I've totally maxed out my insurance policy for eyeglasses and they won't let me sell my kid on eBay.

Fuck it.

These stupid leaf edgings have been kicking my ass for OVER A MONTH. And I know there are knit-alongers waiting for me to move my ass and get these sleeves done so we can move on to the next step.

So, yesterday, I said fuck it.

I'll graft the bloody damned leaves on, later. I used a provisional cast-on and got to knitting. It's about to the elbow (once you add in the missing leaves) and I'm done with the decreasing. With luck, it'll be done damn soon. Damn. Fuck it.

Someone asked if they should bind of their sleeves, or what. Leave the stitches live, either on a string, holders, or a knitting needle. We'll join them up with the body at the arm pits, and knit the whole darn thing together. This is a seamless pattern.

In related news, I found the new best thing ever.

ChiaoGoo (??!?) knitting needles. Lace style. See, the one thing I hate about Boye knitting needles, which were my former favorite (for 20+ years), is the cord. It's a nylon type plastic, and they curl up like cooked freaking shrimp and are super annoying to work with. Even after you heat them up super hot and straighten them out. (Use hot water for that.) These have actual metal CABLES. Coated with some kind of plastic, they naturally try to straighten out, but not obnoxiously. The circular knitting on the needle holds the ends together, but it doesn't curl like crazy. Perfection. And I find the lace points are exactly the right level of pointy. According to the packet they're stainless steel, so those with nickel allergies don't need to worry. It shouldn't discolor your yarn either. I feel mildly bad about buying Chinese, so as soon as an American company produces something similar, I will buy it instead. In the mean time, I am knitting like the wind on this sleeve, and plotting how to replace all my circular needles with these. Without going broke or having the husbeast kill me.

ETA: I got these at my local yarn store, Natural Stitches (Rt. 8/Penn Ave in Pittsburgh). However, a bit of poking around yielded this web site, which sells them, too. 

As I was knitting like the wind this morning, I had the classic "OMGWTFBBQ! I won't have enough yaaaaarn!" So I went and looked in the closet. Um. Over a thousand yards left. I'll, uh, just chill out now.

I fucking love No-Doz.

I am getting back to normal. How do I know? I'm setting stupid goals for myself again, and sometimes meeting them, thanks to the glory of caffeine. This is what I've knit in the past two days:

Two sleeve cuffs. With luck, I'll get the sleeves done in the next week. Maybe less, at this rate. Unless the caffeine burns a hole in my gut first. (Kidding. Really kidding. I'm not taking that much.)

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Spinning? Almost done with that, too. And I can't wait, 'cause I'm a little tired of orange. For now. There's this much to go:

Then the plying, then, hell, then I'll probably knit something with it until I'm doubly sick of orange. But next? For a break?

I'm spinning those socks I meant to do.

Whee, ha!

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In a fine example of the internet corrupting me, well... there's this company called Konad. They've developed this method of using nail polish for what is, essentially, printing on your nails. It's sort of intaglio meets offset lithography; no one seems interested in giving it an official name, in the trade. I'd heard about it, seen videos, and, well.

I got a starter kit.

Look! A butterfly!

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Oh, and one last thing.

Sekhmet, you... freak. Funny how diets make everyone crazy. Now we have scientific proof.