Writing and shawl

Non-Knit

I find this quote from Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda really interesting. He is, for those who weren't wildly geeky net denziens in the mid-late 90's, the founder of Slashdot. It was (and is) sort of a collection of stories, commentary and so on for the hardcore computer geek crowd. A bit of news, a lot of nerdery, forums and social media before anyone knew about social media. I still own a /. shirt, even though I admit, I don't read it much anymore. Anyhow, on to the quote. (Full interview here.)

"I still shun the term Blogging just as I shun the term Tweeting. It’s all just writing. It’s like trying to subdivide Novelist, Columnist, Blogger, Tweeter. Words are words. It’s not really interesting to keep slicing and dicing and sub-categorizing to me. I just write some stuff or share some stuff. Distinguishing between “Journalist” and “Blogger” is a waste of time. I’m all of those things and none of them."

I find it fascinating as I regularly refer to myself as 'not a writer'. Yet I journal (750words.com for the win, even if I haven't in a while), I do online text based gaming (Yes, I'm a MUSHer. Have been for coming up on 17 yrs this coming Jan.), I even took a stab at NaNoWriMo this year. (First time. Failed horribly. 8K words is nowhere near 50K)

But yet I maintain I'm not a writer. It's interesting how we put such stock in labels. I am a knitter. I'm not a writer. I am a larper. I am a gamer. I'm not a whole lot of other things.

Anyhow, you're not here for the writing (or at least I hope not, or we're both in trouble), you're here for the knitting.

Neverending Shawl

It's probably unfair to stick such a label on this shawl just yet. I've only barely started it (Nov 22 says my notes) and it /is/ a laceweight shawl designed to be somewhere between huge and ginormous. The smaller size is a mere 177 rows, and the larger size is 237 rows. I'm not a small person, and why yes, I am selfish enough to make it for me, so I expect I'll be going the 237 rows. Which makes the excitement of having done 72 rows.. well a little flat.

Gwendolyn by Stefanie Bold

The relevant details are that it's Gwendolyn (rav link), by Stefanie Bold. I'm working it in random 'had it forever' blue laceweight on a cone that is probably some flavour of poly-cotton and I'll worry about blocking later. 3.0 mm needles, and I think that photo is from row 61, not row 71. Imagine another 10 rows of the same thing. I only manage to work a pattern row or two a day, so it will look much like this kinda forever.


At least I'll always have something to blog about.

Colourful

I am a colourful person. Even if I tend to err on the side of caution a touch too often. (More black/brown/drab in my wardrobe? Awesome!), at heart.. I'm a colourful soul. I'm drawn to the brights, the variegateds, the splotchy, the stripes, the spotted. I'm not much for patterns, per se, I'd rather random globs of colour here and there, drawn around by the design.

Like my recent mittens.



I happily break the 'rules' on lace and do doilies in variegated thread, or coloured thread. I dye like a colour blind monkey with a paint brush.

I just, only a few hours ago, put in a Knit Picks order, full of rich reds, eye popping yellows, hot pinks, and then I was reading blogs later and it happened. A moment of yarny twinged regret.

The Yarn Harlot (who is awesome, but that is rather besides the point), posts today about a scarf.. and the scarf is lovely, but along with the scarf is a pair of mittens. And those mittens are much like the heavens opened and there was a song of angels and I went 'oooh!'.

And they were neutral on neutral. Go look here. See?

I don't own neutral yarn! AIEE!

Hopefully it passes quickly. I've hot pink on it's way!

Almost there..

The parasol has firmly hit the almost there stage of completion. A mere eight more beads (out of 72), and then I have to decide if I'm patient enough to wash and block it or if I'm tossing that sucker straight onto the frame to call it done, Done, DONE! I was very tempted to nip off to the KW Knitter's Fair today, and I still keep having urges to jump in the car and just go. But with flying to New Orleans on Wednesday, the time to finish costume bits (like the parasol) and the urge to conserve knee cranky is strong, so I am going to be good, and do errands and sewing and beading instead. There's always next year, right? More pictures when I finally finish the parasol. I promise.

Obsession

Not the song, although to be fair, it's a pretty good song.



But a sock. A deliciously challenging, full of twists and turns and surprises sort of sock. Colourful, a bit of a pain in my arse, and compelling to see how the hell it all fits together. I decided, you see, to cast on for Skew, and it's sock origami.

Much like the baby surprise sweater, you knit along with utter blind faith, and find little ah ha moments along the way. This blind faith knitting, well it humbles me. I'm a rookie designer, I think of myself as being reasonably adept at knowing the hows and whys of patterns being put together, and this? Well. It takes what I know, tosses it on it's ear out the door and kicks it to the curb. In my generous moments of strong self esteem, I am inspired by the flexibility of knitting and of the human brain to consider such a thing, and on the bad days I stare in baffled awe at my knitting and think 'Well, no use /me/ designing anything, it's all crap comparatively'.

So behold my obsession, and the parasol? Well it will get washed and blocked and beaded. Just after this section. I have to see how it goes next!

Camp Loopy 2011, number 2!

Wow, summertime and the living is /busy/. It is as if all of my hobbies have combined into one giant sleep depriving mass of enjoyment, that starts being less enjoyable when you're still awake 6 hrs before you have to be at work.

But! Today is the day that knitters near and far are casting on for Camp Loopy Project 2. This time we need to do mittens, socks or gloves with a cable in them. It doesnt say all over cables, just at least /a/ cable.

So I am torn. Do I do nice cozy mittens in patons classic wool to match the Mariah I still need to finish? (I have wool left over, and I'm quite certain sewing in a zipper is not going to take more than 100g of wool. It'll take no wool in fact.), or do I 'accidentally' forget the cable requirements and knit my larp character a pair of lacy white cotton gloves, so that I can manage to outfit her lace bits all in handmade stuff.

I /do/ have a whole month for this (amongst GenCon and parasol knitting and sleeping off irc events), the potential for both exists.

Oh the choices, the choices!

As I dont have any pretty pictures of my chosen yarn, nor have I considered patterns for mittens or gloves, you will have to make do with a parasol in progress picture. 21 repeats done.. only 51 remaining. This could be a while.

More knitting than writing

I think I've written this post in my head about a half dozen times, but every time I consider opening up blogger, I tend to pick up my knitting instead.

There is something to be said for the instant gratification of big thread, big needles and fairly quick moving projects. Usually I'm working in size 30 cotton and 2 mm needles and a week's worth of work requires a magnifying glass to locate. Currently my projects are size 5 cotton and dk cotton. It's such a difference!

So the parasol is currently at this state:



The middle section is done (63 stitches per repeat, 8 repeats around, 504 stitches per round), the border has been test knit and charted and now it waits on the second ball of Clea. Which I'm picking up tomorrow on the way to a wedding, because knitters are awesome. Even during a postal strike, a ball of yarn was found local enough for me to go pick up. The fact that it's half an hour away from the out of town wedding we're going to is just gravy.

So in that pause, I had to start my Camp Loopy shawl. Now, this might be cheating. The requirement was a two colour shawl or scarf, and I took 80's peach yarn (remember 80's peach? Yes, I had flashbacks too), and dyed 3 of the 5 balls a denimy blue/purple/pinky splottered varigated sort of haphazard colour, and the last 2 balls a solid (ish) blue/purple that's in the varigated.

To me? This is two colours. I think. Close enough, I'm working from stash anyhow, so I dont qualify for any prizes or anything, but I can knit along!

DK cotton + 5.5 mm needles = fast moving moose lace.



I've never had to increase lace along the edge of a shawl before, and while there may have been some /words/ and a lot of ripping when I realized I'd managed to extend the lace, but also managed to quit increasing.. 5 rows back. Now that I'm getting the hang of it, I'm kinda chuffed to bits with myself.

I have some vague thoughts of beads on the edge, but that might take it away from denimy casual shawl to trashy. But sometimes, a girl wants a little bit of trashy. *grin*

Just keep knitting..

I do feel a little like Dori in the Finding Nemo movie, the lace has hit the never ending stage. Except for one little detail. Before, I was toddling along on the whole 'oh yeah, I'll know when I've enough'. And then I did the math. And then doing the math became doing a bit more math, with a pencil and graph paper and ended up looking liks this.



And then as a reward for all that spiral knitting, I decided to do the hunt for an edging. I wanted wide, but not a leaf pattern, something that evoked the feel of the spirals, but everything wasn't quite right. So I took two that were close, smushed them together and added a few more holes. I think that's what goes on behind the magic curtain of design, actually. I then tried it out on some size 5 cotton in blue, as well.. the state of my size 5 Clea is a sad one indeed.



I'd hoped for about 3", this is about 6" wide. Which means I can stop knitting spirals about 3" earlier! Huzzah!

I have found more Clea 5. Yay!

In the UK. Okay, still yay-ish.

Canada Post is on strike. (Lock out technically). Decidedly not yay. The progress of the parasol may, at some point, come to a crashing pause while I wait on yarn.

Then I'll just have to toss together a shawl for Camp Loopy, which has also been rattling around in my head for a while.

But for now, back to much more of this.

Wall of lace.

Runners, and I suppose most exercise enthusiasts, talk about the wall. Where at some point things get hard and slow and frustrating and discouraging and you push through anyhow because you are a strong athlete and a warrior and home is 5km thatta way, so either you push through or you suffer the indignities of calling for a cab mid-run. Well at least that's my guess, exercise and I have the sort of relationship where we flirt and talk good, and then someone doesn't call, and then there's accusations and pain and a lot of not talking and it's all downhill from there until the next optimistic reunion where 'this might be the one!'.. and you get the picture.

Anyhow, lace knitting has that wall. 42 stitches per repeat. 8 repeats a round. That's 336 stitches per round, and it increases 8 stitches every other round. It's currently got a radius of about 9 inches. I'm aiming for about 15 inches before the border, which means about 6 inches more before a border. (Borders take forever and use unthinkable amounts of yarn, I'm going to worry about that later.)



Currently I'm getting about 8 rounds an inch, so 48 more rounds. 8 more stitches, every other round.. another 192 stitches. It should be 528 stitches per round by the time I'm starting the never ending edging.

Perhaps I shouldnt have done the math.

13 days

I have long wanted to knit myself enough lace for a parasol, as this fair skinned redhead might be solar powered, but prefers indirect light. I finally scored the perfect umbrella frame at the dollar store on the weekend. Light, not too flimsy or big, white handle and tip and the 'fabric' is perfectly clear plastic. I dont even necesarily need to remove it!

Unfortunately I have no already knit lace in stash that's big enough. My largest current pieces are about half the size needed. Whoops.

A little under two weeks from now is Faery Fest locally, and I suspect we'll be going to it on the Sunday. I'd really like to at the very least. Last year, I baked and broiled in the unrelenting sunshine. This year, well. See the above mentioned parasol plan.

Which gives me 13 days to knit an umbrells sized lace piece and figure out how to attach it. GO!

I decided to go with Spiralen in the centre until I'm so sick of it I can't think, and then either edge it with a good wide edging, or crochet off, or feather and fan, or something else that I'll decide when I get that far. For the moment, a nice big spiral.

Attempt 1 with mystery blue poly-cotton, and 2.5 mm needles up to round 12 and while the mystery yarn has a lovely soft drapy hand, it's awfully thin and this is a structural piece. Soft super drapy hand is actually not a feature here.




Attempt 2 is with Clea 5 and 3 mm needles. It's much bigger and a bit more solid, which is probably good in an umbrella. Especially one that I want to finish in less than two week.



And here they are side by side, to get a sense of the size difference between them. This is the same pattern, knit to the same row, but different thread and needle size.



I apologize for all the crappy iphone photos, I don't usually bring the big camera to work, and that's where I do most of my photographs. Ah well.

The next big puzzle is what to do when I run out of Clea 5.

Mystery Shawlette Clue 2

While I might be smack in the midst of knitting through clue 3 of Wendy's mystery shawlette, I haven't yet shown off clue 2, and my procrastination can be interpreted as keeping the mystery and suspense.

Or something.



Clue 2 was another super short one, only 12 rows, coming up to 2 rows of border and 24 rows of pattern. Just easing us in gently before 72 rows of clue 3.

I have learned, however, that doing the long rows while you're high on the new project fumes? Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I may need to try and figure out how to do all the boring parts first, although perhaps that will just end in my getting bored on something else, but for this little thing? Brilliant. Each row gets shorter than the last, in direct contrast to my usual circular knitting where it rapidly gets huge.

I was going to add another picture, a close up of the first two clues here, but apparently I am incapable of taking a clear photo of it even with a quite nice camera and a monopod. I am that inept, clearly. So have a blurry one and just squint so that it's supposed to look blurry, or something.



It's a gorgeous day out, I think I might have to do some knitting on the front porch this evening.

Lace Knitting to Philosophy

Based on the mouseover for this xkcd comic: Extended Mind, one can get to the wikipedia page for philosophy from.. anywhere. So of course I had to try it.

I started at Lace Knitting and passed through such topics as Matter to Knowledge and Mathematics to get to Philosophy in 18 steps.

An amusing way to spend 5 mins of curious clicking, certainly.

As for actual lace knitting, I'm slowly plugging away on Frosted Ferns (Rav link, sorry about that.. although if you're not on Ravely, why not? You dont need to talk to people, but it's terribly handy for keeping track of your own stuff). It's a Niebling. It's more accurately, my first Niebling.

I am not a novice lace knitter. I have enough hubris to recognize that, I can cope with just about any pattern dropped in front of me, and I've knit a helluva lot of lace. This keeps my attention. Almost too much sometimes. I can't just go on autopilot, and let me tell you, that's pretty rare these days. I am rarely active challenged in my knitting, and I like that. I just wish I liked more of his pieces, but ideally I can eek out enough of his that I do like to keep my needles and thread happy for quite some time to come.



I'm on round 75 of 122, which is not more than halfway it's only 38% completed. Area is a far more accurate measurement than plain row count when you're working from the centre of a circle out.

Basic specs: 2mm needles (currently knitpicks metal circulars), size 60 Oren Bayan cotton in ecru, which is turkish and very nice. I found 5 balls of it at the thrift store for some piddling amount, and I'd guess I'm not even halfway through the first ball of thread.

Less than halfway by area, I am going to be at this for quite some time to come. At least it's reasonably scenic along the way.

Not dead yet.

Alright, mostly dead.

But I am knitting, and as awesome as Ravelry is for letting me keep track of what I'm working on. (How /did/ I manage to keep track of what I was working on before ravelry? Oh right. A little orange notebook I lost a lot.)

Currently in progress is the Summer Mystery Shawlette by Wendy of Wendy Knits. It's adorable, it's like eating potato chips, and if you want to jump in, we're only 24 rows in and they get shorter with each one. Go for it! I only have clue one photographed (and badly at that), so if you don't want spoilers, close your eyes.



Okay, you can come back now. Isn't it adorable? Relevant info is 4.5 mm needles, KnitPicks sock yarn in a tweedy russet. Just yum. In theory, it will only take two balls. I hope that theory pans out, even with the larger needles.

Tomorrow, or later, I will show you the Neibling I'm working on. Call it incentive to come back. If there's anyone still reading, that is. *laugh*