No Tension Knits

Etsy Store Open!

2009-01-27T20:31:00.001-05:00

Just a reminder - this blog will no longer be updated. All new crafty goodness is at http://jenniemaccrafts.blogspot.com/.

The latest news is that my Etsy store - http://jenniemaccrafts.etsy.com/ - is now open! Please check out the blog and store and tell me what you think!

So Long, Farewell..

2009-01-01T11:59:00.000-05:00

... Auf Wiedershen, Goodbye!

Well, not goodbye, per se....

I've decided to start a new blog, to set aside the memories that went into the making of this blog and to start fresh for 2009 with a new vision.

Thanks to all who have stuck with me so far. I'm excited about the new blog, my new approach, and the new Etsy store that will follow shortly on its heels. I'm also looking forward to the new year itself and to sharing with all of you some of the changes that have been percolating away over here.

I hope you'll join me at http://jenniemaccrafts.blogspot.com/. All the best - NTK, signing off.

Why You May Want to Move to Tucson

2008-12-30T15:07:00.002-05:00

My facebook and twitter status last night was:

Jennie is sunburnt. In December. From writing and drinking chai. Really? A-yup. Really.

That it's beautiful enough here to sit outside is a blessing, though remind me how much I enjoyed this when I have skin cancer in ten years.

If anyone can recommend a good, light daily moisturizer with sunblock.... :) And a way to remember to use it.

Happy Holidays

2008-12-24T22:57:00.001-05:00

I'll be candid - I'm sort of a grinch. Actually, that's an exaggeration, but I'm just not that big on the holidays. My husband and I don't really like spending time with my in-laws. I'm a vegetarian, so I don't eat a lot of our families' traditional foods. I don't even really like getting gifts, especially since most of what I get in recent years is stuff someone thinks I might like and actually don't. On a rational level, I know it's the thought that counts, but that doesn't make me appreciate the 36" dancing Jazz Santa or the solar-powered address light (when we lived in an apartment even) any more.

I also still resent how parts of our family fought over how much time we spent with who, etc. when we first married. What little is left that I like - good carols, baking - my husband is either sick of or shouldn't have. (Extra 50 lbs anyone?) So, despite how much I'd like to get excited tonight, I still feel like: holidays = hassle.

That said, I'm hoping all of you are having a great night - especially those with kids. And I'm hoping that maybe, just maybe, this year will be different.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Weekend Wonder #19 - WIP Slinky Gray Sweater

2008-12-20T17:01:00.000-05:00

Hello again! This Weekend Wonder is a sweater that's been on-again-off-again in my life and is now in its third iteration. Originally, I bought the yarn - a soy blend - on clearance to use to make the Five O'Clock Tank from Crochet Me. Alas, I have neither the right hooks nor the patience for that particular pattern right now, and after my problems with the Strapless Corset from Sensual Crochet (three completed tops, three of which didn't fit) I decided to free form the tops with stitches I knew I could do with my current hooks.

After I started it, though, I lost interest, but an idea for a different type of sleeveless sweater, a drapy thing, kept dancing through my brain, so I began this:

Okay, I know it doesn't look like much yet, but it's only the neckline and a few inches of the front and back! It's getting there. The idea is a balletneck yoke in half-double crochet with the body made of alternating double crochets and double crochet clusters. It's more complex than that - the front involves a mitering effect - but it's also free form, meaning I'm still making it up as I go, trying it on every couple rows and doing a two-steps-forward-one-step-back dance of experimentation. But I'm enjoying it, and it's making a fun fabric, I've got to say.

If it turns out really well, I'll have an excuse to go buy more similar yarn - I'm enjoying the feel of it! - and I'll write out and test a pattern, but that's still a long way off.

Before I go, one more little present. My favorite distraction, chomping away on his Kong. This is Luke. Luke, Blog. Blog, Luke.

D-O-N-E and WIP

2008-12-16T19:00:00.001-05:00

Well, I'm writing this post in advance, but by the time you read it, I will be done with my first semester of my MFA. I imagine that it'll feel both like a big load off my mind and also a bit daunting. I have a lot I want to get done over break - a new writing project to start, books to read, family to see - but it'll still be nice to have a change of pace. And school doesn't resume until the week of January 12th(!). Still, that won't be enough time to read the 25+ books I just added to my goodreads wishlist. Yikes!

The WIP I want to share today is my circle rug, which is currently about 20% done (as of Saturday). The great thing about a project like this is you can take it anywhere - you just need a skein, a pair of crochet hooks, and a pair of scissors (unless you're better than me and can tear yarn). I'm making it out of a softer thinner yarn than called for, so I modified the circle pattern (added a repeat I think) and changed hook sizes. My goal is to finish this and make it a holiday present to myself and my roommate. It's going to be our bathroom rug.

Next time - the sweater!

Weekend Wonder #18 - WIPs

2008-12-13T19:00:00.001-05:00

This Weekend Wonder is that I have, yes, actually been crafting. I've got a potluck to get ready for and a couple days of work on a take home exam ahead, but I wanted to take a quick break to share some of my current projects, even though these are all just WIP photos - progress, but not pretty.

First up, today, are two smaller projects I've been working on at bed time and will, with any luck, wrap up this week. One is a small bag based on the Tube Bag pattern from Uncommon Crochet, a book I really like and am going to take the time to finish reading, cover-to-cover, this holiday break, because it is that kind of book. Neat patterns, yes, very(!), but it also deserves attention to the design principles and ideas the author is putting forward.

Any blog followers may recognize this yarn as the lovely stuff I used to make the Boy Chicago Scarf earlier this year. I had a smaller-than-my-fist amount left over when I finished, so I decided to use it for this little experiment. As much as I love the stitch definition, I am planning to felt it and then play with strap or flap design from there.

The second is an even simpler project - a too-be-felted rectangle that will become a hook book, a la Lion Brand Yarn's pattern. I took a photo, but to be honest it didn't really say much. Look at me - I'm a variegated rectangle! I'll take a better shot before felting and share it with the FO.

Next update, my WIP Circle Rug, which you can see a preview of in the corner of a photo above, and after that, my sweater prototype.

So - very - close - to - done

2008-12-09T12:29:00.002-05:00

I'm almost done with the semester and very, very excited. It's hard to believe I'm a quarter of the way done with my MFA already. I'm afraid crochet has been backburnered (Linguist? Is that a word?) in favor of papers and such, but I've brought some with me today and will be enjoying our wintery day by sitting outside and crocheting either circles for the rug or the top I'm doing freeform. I just finished my papers for my last class with two hours to spare and can't start on the last task of the year - a take home exam - until tonight. Sigh of lovely, lovely relief.

Last Friday I had a reading, did I mention that? I may post the piece here, but I may wait until I have a chance to workshop it. We'll see. In the meantime, hope all is going well for all of you...

The end of NaNovember and a return to our irregularly scheduled programming

2008-12-01T13:35:00.002-05:00

Hello again! I apologize for the continuted radio silence in late November. For a little while there, I was behind on NaNoWriMo, and playing mad catch up, but then I just got caught up in the story. I ended up hitting something like 59K (for those who don't know, the challenge is to write 50K in a month), and I have three scenes remaining until the end. I'll admit I broke one of the primary NaNo rules this year. The idea is to start something from scratch, but I was already 53K into a novel, so I started from sort-of-scratch at the start of the second half. If you count the 1500 words I added to the first half during the course of the month, I'm over 114,000 words and expect I'll break 120,000.

Unfortunately, I've got papers and end of the year school work to knock out, as well as an essay to polish before my reading (eep!) this Friday. My goal will be to finish and give one good revision to the book before my husband arrives for the holidays. He's driving(!) from Buffalo here to Tucson, so his exact arrival isn't firm and won't be until he's on the road really.

In the meantime, I'll be continuing to work on (and trying to post about):

The Circle Bathroom Rug (Book: Crochet Me)
A felted hookbook (based on the Lion Brand Yarn website free pattern)
A felted bag (based on the Uncommon Crochet book's tube bag foundation)
Coasters I'm making... which will be for sale on Etsy, hopefully along with other items (more info soon I hope)
and a top I'm designing.

If the last one works out, I plan to put the pattern up for sale on Etsy as well. My goal in the next few weeks is to strike a good balance between schoolwork and crochet, as well as celebrating my big 3-0 later this week.

Wish me luck!

I'm still here!

2008-11-24T13:11:00.002-05:00

I've been caught up in NaNoWriMo goodness lately, as well as schoolwork, but I am still here.
I've been crocheting on four different projects in my bus/waiting/down-time so there will be something new to report soon, with pictures, but in the meantime, I'm caught up on Nano and about to break the 40K word mark! W00t!

Weekend Wonder #17 - Preview

2008-11-15T15:00:00.003-05:00

These little lovelies and some of their cousins will be on sale here in the coming weeks, along with other surprises! More pictures of Blueberries and Cream (above) and Bumble Bee (below) available from my Flickr page.

Best Laid Plans

2008-11-10T15:00:00.002-05:00

Hello, all.
Today is Monday, November tenth, and in less than 36 hours I will be happily visiting Mr. Man in New York. Woot!
Well, now that we got that out of the way...
I will not be blogging while I'm in Buffalo, but I will be crocheting and writing (NaNoWriMo time again!). I've scheduled a special short Weekend Wonder to give you a preview of some things percolating in my mind and growing from my crochet hook of late.
Hope all is well, and to any Marines reading this - Happy Brithday!
Remember to thank a vet tomorrow!

Weekend Wonder #16 - Let's Call it a Poncho

2008-11-08T19:35:00.002-05:00

Blog Readers, let me introduce you to this week's FO and Weekend Wonder - the Desert Poncho [Ravelry] from Kim Werker's "It's a Shawl and a Poncho" pattern in Teach Yourself to Crochet Visually. First of all, let me say this is a lovely and easy pattern I picked for what could have been the wrong two reasons. (1) Because I was frustrated that the yarn wasn't working for the Strapless Corset pattern (I shall not belabor or link to why, but you can search the blog if you want to), and therefore I was desperate for something simple that would use about the same amount of cotton yarn, and (2) because the girl in the picture looks good wearing it, I mean damn good, never mind that she's a gorgeous busty thing and I'm... not. Fortunately, I think it worked out well in spite of my poor reasoning*.

There are more pictures on Flickr (some of the same on Ravelry), including WIP shots and stitch details.

One detail of note: I think that there’s an error in the pattern or the book’s description of the stitch. If you look closely at the pictures in the book, I think 2 dc should be 3 dc. I did it with 2 even though it didn’t look right; I was 75% done by the time I really looked closely at said picture. It still drapes well and I would have run out of yarn if I’d done it with 3 dc, I'm not complaining, but if I were to make another one... Take that for what it’s worth.

I used almost the full six skeins (Bernat's Organic Cotton), alternating four rows of the main color (Hemp) with two of the variegated (Oasis). The leftover yarn I used to lace the shoulder (lace, like you lace a shoe), which you can see in the details on my Flickr stream. I'm wearing it tonight to go to a reading, so if it wears badly, I'll post that right away.

* I say poor reasoning because (1) I normally advocate for thinking things through, especially when desperate(!), and (2) because choosing to do a pattern based on how good it looks with someone else's body type is normally a surefire recipe for disaster.

Weekend Wonder #15 - Even-more-petite Petite Bijoux Bag

2008-11-02T15:00:00.001-05:00

You may remember that a while back I made a petite "Petite Bijoux Bag" (from Sensual Crochet) with the last of the mossy green Bernat bamboo blend yarn left over after my semi-successful moebius shrug. Well, I had an even smaller amount of the colorways of the same yarn that I used for the Girl Chicago scarf: Linen and (light blue?).

Meanwhile, the Petite Petite has been serving as an apple cozy - though it's a little taller than necessary for that purpose. It's perfectly cushy for it though! Well, my housemate saw its cushy greenness hanging in the kitchen and gushed about how soft the material was. So, while she was away this last weekend, I made her a bag of her own.

There are two more pictures on Flickr; they better show the stitch definition and colorwork.

I followed the pattern from memory, roughly gauging how much yarn I had left as I went. When I went about as far up as I thought I could go with the white, I switched to the blue (which was a ball smaller in diameter than a silver dollar) for the double crochet row and the tie - which became two ties because I had enough yarn. I then went around once doing a slip stitch in blue just for contrast (and to use the last of it).

I had to modify the last round - the ripple - because I didn't have enough yarn for the stitch called for (and wasn't ripping back!). But I think it turned out great. You can see above that it's a little smaller than my best-yard-sale-find mug (50 cents!). It just fits a medium organic Gala apple, and she loves it. (An easy gift - this took less than two hours.)

Why this isn't a cooking blog

2008-10-31T15:00:00.000-04:00

I've always liked the PieKnits blog because Jennifer occasionally intersperses yummy-sounding recipes with hunger-inducing pictures. That's not me though. I like to cook in the sense that I enjoy making a meal for myself, but not the whole following (or modifying) a recipe shtick.

No fancy Halloween treats here. I bought that lovely pre-made cookie dough - the break (apart) and bake kind - in chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin to make for a potluck. Despite the fact that the cookies are identical little cubes of dough with identical instructions, the O.R. (on the right in the picture) turned out radically different than the C.C.

But my housemate "loves burnt cookies" and gobbled them right up!

Retro Femme in better light

2008-10-28T13:36:00.002-04:00

Hello again. I'm afraid this is just a quick note to let you know that there are improved pictures up on Flickr of my FO - the Retro Femme top from Sensual Crochet.

For instance:

I also wanted to narrow down what I said last time about how I wouldn't add the extra rows to the top. My reason is that the stitch used on the upper portion really opens up when you block/wear it. Obviously where you want more or less fabric is going to depend on your body, but for me, more on the lower portion - the shells - would have been better than on the top.

That said, the more I wore it that night and when I took these shots, the more I like it, and the compliments have all been flattering. Now if the temps would fall out of the 90s here, I could wear it!

If you poke around Flickr, you'll also get a little preview of some other things I've been working on, including WIP shots of the shawl/poncho. I may very well run out of yarn before it gets long enough to circle my wide shoulders, so it may end up being a "variation" on the pattern. :) We'll have to see! It's gotten too big to bring in my bag with my books most class days, so today I'm carrying yarn for coasters - great bus stop projects.

Have a good week!

Weekend Wonder #14 - Retro Femme

2008-10-25T13:00:00.000-04:00

The Retro Femme top? What's that you say? I thought it was in the "maybe frog" pile and now it's an FO and Weekend Wonder?

Indeed my friends, it's true. The Retro Femme top from Sensual Crochet was on my frownie list because it turned out snugger than I expected once I closed the front (is worked top-down), but I decided to let it sit and see if it fit better if I lost some weight by the end of the year. We recently had a cold snap here in Tucson and I had my husband send me some winter clothes, including this WIP. I tried it on again - being ten pounds lighter than I was when I finished in May/June-ish. Lo and behold, it fits much better. It's still more snug than intended, but I decided to cut the yarn, weave in the ends, and wear it anyway.

First, the pics! (There are stitch detail and rear shots on Flickr.)

Lesson #1 - Swatch all stitches and/or try on more often. I wasn't aware that this was too snug until I reached the bottom because I didn't try it on again after doing the empire waist. I could have backed up a couple rows and added a few stitches to a top round if I'd realized sooner.
Lesson #2 - If you're doing this pattern and you are a tall woman like me and you're concerned about the uppermost section being too short, don't be. If you're bustier than me, maybe it'll be a problem, but I added two rows to the top and wish I hadn't. It would look more balanced - more like the book's pretty pictures! :) - if I hadn't.

This is done with Bernat's alpaca blend, which I enjoyed working. I wore it dancing - just like you see here - last week and it was really well received.

If you win the lottery, sponsor an MFA student!

2008-10-23T18:14:00.003-04:00

Sorry for the recent radio silence. It's been a busy-busy week for me. My workshop class had an extra meeting this week to make up for a previously canceled class, so I had double reading. I also had an essay due - one I really struggled with. This is the first day I've just been able to relax.

Add to all that a couple major financial snafus and you have my current state of mind. I knew - certainly - that going back to grad school would not be cheap, especially since we are operating two separate households. But when we made this decision in the spring, we expected the house to sell within six months. We didn't expect the collapse of the market, etc. It's been more than six months and we haven't even had someone come look in almost three months, despite dropping the price. Setting aside all of the other lovely costs of living, my husband and I are paying about $4000 a month for housing, which, as you can imagine, causes savings and loan moneys to evaporate. My mother said something encouraging to me, which is that things will hopefully turn around after the election, so we're thinking we'll give it another month and then drop the house price again.

So, what time I might spend composing blog posts, even just mentally, has been diverted to drafting essays and query letters to agents, editors, publishers - anyone who pays for words. I'm sending out two commercial pieces as well as a contest entry and half a dozen query letters about my novel in the next couple days. Think positive thoughts.

I'm crafting in the spare moments as I wait for the bus or for class to start. I'm about 65-70% done with the shawl, and I hope to finish it up in time to wear it to a friend's gig Sunday night. I just recently finished (for reals) the Retro Femme - post scheduled for Saturday! - and I'll try to take better pictures of the Retro Femme and the shawl when it's done. And then, I'll be picking up the Inspired-by-the-Five-O'clock-Tank-Dress-Tank again! I'm also hoping to get the supplies I need next week to crochet a bathroom rug for our house. It's getting to be that time of year.

Happy Crafting!

Blankie

2008-10-14T12:00:00.001-04:00

Warning: Not at all a craft related post!

Yesterday was a cold day here in Tucson - meaning it was 43 when I woke up yesterday. Add to that the fact that my roommate and I hadn't turned the heater on, I had no blanket on my bed, and our hot water heater appears to have died, I was stiff and grumpy all day. I also have only two long sleeve shirts here, and both are lightweight, which wasn't enough for walking the dog in 40-degree weather.

Fortunately, my housemate is kind and took me on an eleventh hour trip to Target where I acquired a new blanket, shown here in cell-phone pictures because I was in a hurry to share. (Morning light above, artificial light below.) It's funny what buying something like this can do to change your mood and your space.

I've been enjoying having my own room in a way. More than nine years of marriage have meant nine years with no space of my own. Plus, despite what he says about it being cute, I know Mr. Man never would have chosen this blanket!

Unfortunately? Still no hot water. Think encouraging thoughts for our landlord.

Weekend Wonder #13 - Bag in My Bag

2008-10-10T20:20:00.002-04:00

Bag in My Bag
Originally uploaded by notensionknits

After 5 p.m. on a Friday is the weekend, right?

I made this little bag because I just switched to a different school bag. It's larger than the one I was using before, which had become a must, but it doesn't have as many pockets. So, I used the last of this neat Landscape yarn to make a little bag for my emergency supplies, i.e. Tylenol, Tums, Aleve, a couple band-aids, a granola bar, eye drops, and a travel-sized deodorant! It fits in my bag neatly though I didn't have enough yarn to make the flap or tie as long as I would have liked.

The basic construction comes from the Tube Bag design in Uncommon Crochet. I love that book and recommend it highly. The "paper bag" style bottom is much neater than just crocheting a rectangle base. The stitch is linked doubles in the round - I used linked because I didn't want to have to felt it but I did want a tight fabric.

More pictures on Flickr.

And please, post comments or send emails about my blood donation question a couple posts ago! I'm curious still about why people do or don't donate.

Weekend Wonder #12 - Number Nine Beanie

2008-10-05T20:07:00.002-04:00

Number Nine Beanie
Originally uploaded by notensionknits

My most recent FO and a Weekend Wonder to boot!

I started with the instructions for the beanie in Teach Yourself Crochet and the blue yarn left over from my Swedish flag. I love this color - and it's a soft acrylic wool blend.

I say "started with" because the FO is substantially varied from that pattern - basically everything except the top (which is just a disc) is different. I worked the crown differently and worked the sides in pike stitch (ESC, ch - subsequent rows' ESC go in the ch space). I think it turned out really well - there's a picture of me wearing it on Flickr - but it won't be cold enough here to need it until... January maybe?

Let me know if you might like a pattern for this. It's been a while since I wrote one and this was an easy cap - a good beginner project, too. I'm going to tweak the next one I make a bit to tuck in the brim for snugness...

Oh, I almost forgot! It's named for the busline I crocheted it on! I'm the girl crocheting on the #9 in Tucson - currently on a shawl I'll hopefully share soon.

Next time? An FO called "Bag in my bag" :)

Why do (or don't) you give blood?

2008-10-02T11:39:00.002-04:00

Hello again all.

First, I'd just like to say I'm sorry for the paucity of craft related updates. I do have a couple things to show, but I keep forgetting to download the pictures from my camera in time to catch the bus. I've also got a WIP that is being frogged for the third time so I'm a little grumpy about that. :) It's the strapless top from Sensual Crochet. Let me say that I love the pattern - it's easy and fun and pretty - but it is never going to be flattering on me! I've done the bodice three times, once straight from the pattern and twice with modifications, and it's just not me. I'd encourage anyone out there to try it as a fairly simple "first crochet top", especially with the instructions for spaghetti straps, but I'm re-purposing the yarn to make the odd-V poncho from Teach Yourself Crochet. ;)

On to the real topic of today's post. On Monday I donated blood, and they asked me a question* that I'd never been asked before. During the record/paperwork portion of the process, the nurse came right out and asked me, hands poised over the keyboard to type,

"Why are you giving blood today?"

It seemed like a really strange question to me. If you ran a charity, would you just come right out and ask, check in hand, "and why are you giving to charity today?" If the question had been differently phrased, maybe "Was there a reason for your blood donation that you'd like us to know about?", it might not have confused me so much. But "why are you doing this?", like it was the kind of thing that needed a reason, befuddled me.

So, I started informally polling my friends, two who were equally baffled but can't donate because of the travel restrictions and one who is deathly afraid of needles. I've got a really good reason to donate, but I'll explain more about that next time. I was hoping you all might tell me, why do you donate, or if you don't, why not? Shoot me an email or just comment below!

* There was actually another new question on the private part of the Q&A: "Have you been in juvenile detention, lockdown, jail, or prison for more than 72 hours?" That was the only question I hesitated on not because I've been in any of those places but because my brain immediately asked back, "why on earth do you need to know that?"

Where did that week go?

2008-09-26T20:00:00.002-04:00

Well, hello again! I didn't realize more than a week had gone by since my last post. I'm afraid I won't have any weekend wonders for you any time soon. It's just a busy time of the semester for me. I am getting crafting in - a new beanie (FO), and two tops finally back in progress now that I have all my materials again. I'll try to take some pictures this weekend and get them back to you, but I've got three short papers, a take home exam, and a set of revisions due early next week, so it may be longer than I'd like.
If you live in Tucson, I'm the crocheting girl on the number 9 bus. :)
Hope all is well for you!

Air Guitar

2008-09-17T12:00:00.000-04:00

My husband always picks on me when I play air guitar. My form is off, he says, so badly that I look like I’m playing the air mandolin. A song by The Who or anything with decent rhythm guitar or back beat can’t come on the radio without my hands dropping compulsively into strumming the air strings. And I can’t strum without him giggling, snorting behind his hands.

I get the compulsion itself from my father. I’ve realized at the age of twenty-nine that I drum my fingers on the steering wheel just as he did, and it makes me feel closer to him when I catch myself at it, since he’s been gone more than six years now. This is a contrast to the first time I saw my mother’s hands when looking at my own. Something about the way I pulled a credit card from my wallet and passed it with a flick of my wrist to the cashier (before the days of “just swipe it through there, sweetie”) was undeniably an inheritance from my mom, and it startled me badly, aging me instantly and making me wonder what other habits I’d adopted from them.

Today, however, I wonder if I didn’t get my air guitar technique from my fellow U of Arizona students in my time as an undergrad here, or perhaps even from something in the water in Tucson. It may become an epidemic in the iPod era. My evidence?

1. Between classes, I was walking behind a young man who I thought, at first, had a twitch or a disease. His left hand was held in a light fist at his hip, his fingers pressing alternately into his palm. Then his path turned and I could see his right hand, strumming away at his other hip where his iPod hung in a holster from his pocket. Ah, a bass player, I realized, watching his rhythm, though it would be physically impossible to hold any guitar the way his hands were held.

2. In the computer lab this morning was an older man, staring intently at the screen, typing intently at the keyboard in bursts, and intently strumming the air in front of his bellybutton between thoughts in time to the music that kept him bouncing in his seat for almost an hour.

3. I crossed paths with a young man today who was undeniably scratching an air record floating in front of him. I can’t say he did it unabashedly, but he did it again after we made eye contact, one, then two scritcha-scritchas and his hand went into his pocket.

So, it’s not just me, honey, if that makes it any better.

Los Angeles, Part Three, Conclusion

2008-09-14T12:00:00.000-04:00

Los Angeles, Part Three, The Conclusion

Three days later, midmorning, my mom and I pull away, running a little behind schedule, headed out for the second part of our journey. I’m frustrated by this point, of course, wishing for more time with my husband, impatient with my mother, as I always get after a couple of days.

Somewhere in Pennsylvania or perhaps Ohio, we come around a gentle curve in the divided highway to be greeted by flares, cones, and “Accident Ahead” signs. I slow, wondering aloud what kind of accident warrants this high level of warning. My first thought – train wreck – I dismiss instantly as terribly unlikely. There aren’t many cars on the road, but we all slow and bottleneck in the next quarter-mile, coming upon the accident at fifteen or twenty miles an hour.

On the right, a twenty- or thirty-foot length of guardrail is missing, the empty space and churned up dirt bracketed by metal so twisted my mother points mutely. Immediately after is a tow truck with the cab of a semi truck on its flat bed, except the cab is on its side and the axles are gone, simply stripped away, the bottom of the cab exposed and looking strangely scraped clean. The container is next, blocking the entire right lane and angled such that I wonder if there was another vehicle – perhaps what made the hole in the rail? – that the truck hit head on. The container, too, is on its side, its front axles broken and the tires mangled.

My mom counts the emergency vehicles aloud and wonders at the height of the drop off while I turn my head to the left.

Did he spin? I wonder. He might have jack-knifed.

And then I see them. My breath catches in my throat. Just off the left shoulder, where the cops are carefully directing my lane of traffic, are two furrows in the grass. The car ahead of me drives toward black-as-night tire tracks perpendicular to our flow and I follow them with my eyes into those troughs, which arch out into the swale, across it, briefly disappearing as little more than flattened streaks of grass, reappearing on the far side, seventy or eighty feet away as trenches in the mud at a forty-five degree angle to the oncoming traffic. On that side, I think I can see more rubber on the road.

“Look, Mom. Just look,” I interrupt.

We drive for a minute or two in silence, and I imagine my mom is thinking similar thoughts to my own – I hope no one was hurt, but how could such a thing happen without injury? Or worse. – but what I say aloud is, “If we’d left on time, we might have been caught in that.”

The next day we drive as far as Texas, and sometime midafternoon we see another accident. I’m driving again, and on the far side of the wide grassy median there are two semis, both on their sides. The broken-neck look of the first makes it obvious it jack-knifed, but its angle on the road is what makes me curious.

“Do you think he spun?” I ask. “Or came over from this side?”

Mom has no answer to that. “Look at the blue one’s grill. It hit head on, whatever happened.”

A sick feeling fills the back of my throat. I’m wondering about these drivers, giving voice to my concern, but I’m also thinking, “Third time’s a charm,” and wondering if we’ll be part of the next one.

***

For the first time all trip, I fall asleep for about thirty miles as we’re leaving New Mexico. This is remarkable because I’m notorious for falling asleep when I’m a passenger in the car. When my folks would drive down to get me in college – a ninety-mile trip home – I would be out before we hit the cit limits. I rarely get sleepy driving, but put me in the passenger seat, and I’ll start yawning. (Back seat? I’m out.)

Mom pulls over at the first rest stop in Arizona, the welcome center, to ask what path I want to take to Mesa. I vote for cutting through Winslow and take over the driving again. As we’re pulling out, my mom says casually, “Oh, you missed another semi-truck accident. Wasn’t too bad though.”

I was so relieved to find out we weren’t involved, I don’t remember anything she said about it.

Los Angeles, Part Two

2008-09-13T12:00:00.001-04:00

Los Angeles, Part Two

The embodiment of biker culture is striding toward us across the parking lot, only fifteen feet away now, with an eager smile on his face. We barely say yes before he launches into the task, giving tips, asking about what’s wrong with the battery, insisting it’s the battery, not the alternator, clipping cables and wiping things, and so forth.

I look him over as he works. Forty-ish, unshaved but not quite bearded, freckled and sun-soaked skin, bandana, denim vest with a logo nearly the size of his broad back celebrating his membership of a Christian biker group (Riding for Jesus, or something to that effect), ragged tee shirt, worn, worn jeans and genuine biker boots that look like they’ve kissed asphalt a time or three. Everything about him is used. Grizzly. But not dirty, really. I love it.

I wonder aloud how I should go about replacing the battery if it’s not going to hold a charge, musing about where the next big city will be on our path.

He turns to me and asks which way we’re headed. For the first time I make full eye contact with this Good Samaritan and the sight takes my breath. His irises are like green ice – sharp, jagged crystals of color, and an intensity of intelligence and kindness that strikes me briefly dumb. I’m not sure what I say, but it must be something semi-coherent and accurate, because my mother doesn’t interrupt to correct me. He nods wisely, and I’m staring at his eyes, unable to look away, even after he does.

“Then what I would suggest is staying on this road,” he gestures, “and heading about twelve miles down.” He gives us directions to two auto parts stores, one of which he recommends more highly, where they will replace the battery for us. In the middle of his directions, which I’m concentrating on remembering, easing over my shock now, he makes eye contact with my mom. I see his smile, and I see her expression, eyes briefly startled, blinking, blinking, not breaking eye contact.

Soon enough the car is running, though without enough energy to run the air conditioner. I have to turn off all other electrical systems to roll up the windows. I remember thanking him two or three times, and we’re on the road again.

The kids at the auto parts store are heavily pierced, and girls outnumber guys two-to-one, which briefly surprises me since we’re in the rural Carolinas. But they handle the battery replacement smoothly, even trying to help me reset my radio, which no longer functions without a dealer code because the battery ran too low.

Many hours later, we’ve stopped for food just outside Pennsylvania, somewhere around two a.m. and maybe three or four hours from Buffalo. At this point, we’ve put air in the tire three more times, and I’m praying (metaphorically) it will last just a few hundred more miles. We’re talking about the car troubles and expressing thanks that it wasn’t worse – despite the lost time – when my mom mentions again how fortunate it was the group of young men happened to be outside the hotel.

“Angels were watching over us,” she says idly. “If you hadn’t forgotten the pillow and the car had died somewhere else, like a rest stop, we might not have gotten help so easily.”

I have to admit that she’s right about that, though internally I’m not thinking the young men were particularly angelic. Yet the second she said the word, the first thing I thought of was the biker’s eyes. Knowing the answer, I ask if she noticed.

She nods, and I suspect we’re wearing identical expressions of stupefaction as we try to describe – to each other – how intense they were, how compelling.

“Did you notice he just sort of, disappeared?” I ask. “I turned to make sure you knew which way we were going, then turned back to thank him one more time and wish him a good weekend—”

She’s nodding and nodding. “And he was gone. I noticed it, too. He was there over your shoulder, and then he wasn’t anywhere.”

“The parking lot wasn’t that full either. And I didn’t see any bikes…” I’m realizing this as I say it, becoming more unsettled by the second, but in a strangely serene way. Bothered by the strangeness yet unable to be truly concerned about it despite myself.

Our food arrives and we dig in. Stomachs beginning to be sated, we start talking again, and my mom turns the conversation back to the biker, glad he came along, but remarking on the oddness of his disappearance.

“You know, that happened to me again tonight.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Meaning?”

“When we stopped so you could air the tire, but we didn’t need gas yet? A guy came up to the truck and got my attention through the passenger window. He was a Black man, very dark, but he was wearing a white shirt, and white pants, too, I think, maybe painter’s pants. He asked me for a light, but it was like he was really going to ask if I needed help, someone to help me drive, until he saw the boxes in the passenger seat and changed his mind.”

I’m surprised at this. “I didn’t see anybody.”

She shrugs again. “He was there at the window, and I passed him a lighter out the window and he asked if I was alone. I pointed to you and explained. When he looked at you, I walked around the front of the cab to smoke with him, but he was gone.”

I tilt my head as I swallow my coffee. “There wasn’t anywhere to go,” I remember. Where we had stopped was a gas station with the air pump and vacuum more than seventy-five feet from the station, at the base of an undeveloped slope on the edge of the property.

“I know,” she admits. “I thought you’d think I was crazy if I asked if you saw him.”

***

I tell my husband all this as we fall asleep in bed the next night, and he expresses aloud his gratitude that we seemed to have someone watching over us, whoever it was. I fall asleep wishing I could paint or draw, because I can’t get those green eyes out of my head – so pale – and I normally can’t picture faces, even my family’s with much accuracy.

Los Angeles, Part One

2008-09-12T12:00:00.000-04:00

Pronounce that title as if you speak Spanish for me. Go ahead, say it out loud. The G is like an H – a throaty sound. Out loud, I dare you.

For those of you who actually said it aloud, good for you. More so if you’re in a place of work. For those of you who said it aloud in a computer lab, ssshh.

My mother believes in angels. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that; I just wanted to get it out there.

Specifically, she believes she has parking angels, giving her an uncanny ability to find a good space. I inherited my father’s gene for parking far from an entrance because I like to walk, so I’ve never really needed parking angels. Less so now that I have no car, but I digress.

Recently, I drove from Charleston, South Carolina to Buffalo, New York in a car with five cats and a dog while my mother drove our moving truck. If I ever needed proof she loves me, I don’t any more. Once we got to Buffalo, where we left my car (ours – mine and my husband’s) and moved my things to a more comfortable but more expensive SUV for the longer leg of the trip – Buffalo to Tucson, Arizona. All in all, we did somewhere around fifty hours of driving in about five days, plus rest stops, food, and fuel ups.

When we set out, our first stop was the gas station to top off my tank and put air in my rear left tire, which had grown squishy in the month since my husband had left the country. The car had a complete tune up, including new front brakes, around the time he left, a month before this road trip, so I wasn’t at all concerned about car trouble. Mom and I made it to our hotel for the night, still in South Carolina because of our ridiculously late start, which I don’t have time to explain here, and I don’t want to anyway because it makes me look bad.

We woke early, went through the madness of orchestrating the cats back into carriers and getting everyone in the car. We drove to a nearby gas station, to top off, yes, but mainly to put air in the tire, which was already low again – eight hours later. We realized at the pump that I’d left my good pillow in the hotel room, so I drove back, the car being more maneuverable that the truck, with the plan that I would come back to her and we’d get on the highway together. I parked by the hotel office in the shade, for the sake of the animals, ran inside, explained myself, and ran to the room – door opened by housekeeping but not yet cleaned – and grabbed my pillow.

Relieved, I hopped back into the car and started the engine. Or tried to. Lights flashed, something clicked, and generally, nothing that was supposed to happen happened. After offering up a number of positive and (or) pleading thoughts to the universe, I tried a couple more times, and then called my mom who drove to meet me. I unloaded the cats and dog – because of the heat – while she asked for advice inside. The hotel staff’s only suggestion? Flag down a cab. One of the local companies does jumps for a small fee. Let me just say this wouldn’t likely have worked, given our location.

When she came outside, I noticed a group of young men hovering nearby, military haircuts like beacons.

“Ask them, would you,” I gesture and beseech my mom, loaded down myself with carriers, “if they’ve got jumper cables?”

Turns out these young men are all Army, stationed nearby, on their way somewhere, waiting for their sergeant, and one was a mechanic before he joined up. Two others obviously wish they were, so they launch themselves into my car while another calls the sergeant, who is on his way and, yes, has jumper cables with him.

I notice with a smile that they all have fresh matching tattoos of their unit number gracing their bodies in different places, an upper arm here, a shaved calf there, so I ask them about their service. I’m the wife of an enlisted man – I know how to play this. They appreciate the requests and my admiration. I mention, offhand, that my husband served for nearly nine years. They smile – kindred! – and ask which branch of the armed forces he was in.

“Marine Corps,” I say.

The two nearest me actually bow their heads briefly, as if recognizing a tribal elder in disguise, and one says, without hesitation,

“God bless him.”

This is the first information they pass on to their sergeant when he arrives ten minutes later. “Battery’s dead. Her husband was a Marine.” He jumps it, we let it run, and he advises me to drive for a while before I turn it off.

I nod. “I’ve got a full tank and over two hundred and forty miles to go before we change highways, so that shouldn’t be a problem.” I thank them as they begin loading their van, and by the time Mom and I load up the animals, they are gone.

One hundred and sixty five miles later, we stop for lunch. Surely nearly three hours has been long enough to charge the battery if that was the only problem, but I roll the windows down a little before cutting the engine, just in case, because I have to leave the animals here while we grab food. I turn of the engine, hop out, and try to lock the doors with the key tag. No dice. There’s no charge on the battery at all – even this small task is impossible.

We eat quickly, my mom going immediately to the truck stop shop to buy jumper cables while I go to the car to prep for the jump, though neither of us have done this in ages, if ever. My mother says something about the good fortune of “those military boys” being around this morning when a voice calls over my shoulder.

“You ladies need a hand?”

Weekend Wonder #11 - Traveling Crochet

2008-09-07T12:00:00.003-04:00

These are the completed flags I am contributing to the Peace Project by Sheena Pennell. If you've never heard of it, I suggest you check it out. For those not familiar, these are the flags of Sweden and Norway.

Sweden, above, was the simpler construction. I did the whole thing in hdc stitches, dropping the yellow yarn to hang behind and carefully carrying the blue across. This was easy - so much easier than I expected that I finished it in the first half of the second (and longest) leg of my flight. I hadn't packed anything else in my carry-on but my journal, so needless to say I got a lot of writing done. Those of you who craft while traveling may be thinking, did you sneak scissors on board? How? Nope, I just left excess yarn and trimmed it away when I wove the ends in. A little wasteful, but not too bad.

Norway, below, was the more difficult. I divided the white yarn and used two skeins of the red, though that proved to be far more than I needed. I worked on this while Mr. Man drove on our recent Labor Day trip and on the flight back, weaving the ends in after I returned. Fortunately, he liked the way it looked so much he "commissioned" an iPod case with this design. (His family is Scandinavian.)

Next time, if I do one of these flags this big or bigger, I'll do it with granny squares or a similar technique in order to make it reversible. Would make a fun afghan project, IMO, and easy to do using the grid in Photoshop of similar software.

Both were done in Encore acrylic/wool blend except for the yellow, which is a Lion Brand wool.

No More Travelling ... Please

2008-09-04T17:00:00.000-04:00

I'd like to say I'm glad to be back after recovering from my hectic trip, but I'm not really recovered. For those new to the story, my husband and I just moved from Charleston, SC to Buffalo, NY and Tucson, AZ respectively. There were some things we needed to do in Charleston that unfortunately included needing to drive a carload of stuff from Charleston to NY, so that's how we spend Labor Day weekend. I flew to NY Wednesday, we drove down Thursday, did what we needed to do Friday, and drove back Saturday.

You'd think this meant that I got to spend quality time with my husband on Sunday, but instead we just slept. We were exhausted. He made me breakfast in bed (BONUS POINTS), then we went back to sleep. We got up, ate a late lunch/early dinner, and packed up a big suitcase of my stuff to take back to Tucson. The only fun thing we did was go see Hellboy 2 at a second-run theater. And that was cool, don't get me wrong, but since I'd already seen it, that alone was not worth the travel.

Fortunately, both the flying and driving were uneventful. I came back Monday, had one class Tuesday to prepare for and go to, and I spent yesterday napping and recovering. I'm physically almost all better, but I'm still tired and having that lovely slope of grad school work rising in front of me is not helping. I'm also trying to live without the expense of Internet at home and it's a bummer for getting work done. My profs don't seem to understand I'd like to be able to download the reading for next week's class now.

Please. So I don't have to walk back into campus again tomorrow in the hope that it's there.

Please.

Anyway, my goal for the weekend is to go check out the nearest bookstores and coffee shops for free wifi. And homework. And writing. Which is good (not sarcastically good, just good).

On the crafting front, I'm drafting the flag post next! I'm likely making myself a beanie because my current WIPs are all packed in NY (or maybe en route if my husband remembered to ship them today...). I promise also that the tale of our guardian angels is coming soon!

The Second Act ... or Is It?

2008-08-25T16:43:00.002-04:00

Hello from Tucson! I'm settled in and starting classes today. This is the first chance I've had to get to a campus computer lab, and in less than 48 hours I'll be headed back to the East Coast to take care of some unexpected housekeeping in Charleston. As one of my favorite bloggers, Cass says, le sigh.
In the meantime, I'll be composing blog posts from the road so that I can update you on (a) the road trip (here's a teaser, guardian angels abandoned semi-truck drivers to protect me) and (b) these kindergarten-like first days of classes (yikes!). I'll also be composing a post with pictures of my completed flags for Norway and Sweden.
Today's philosophical lesson? Karma is not as simple as you think. It is not just give and receive. It also includes this complexity: if you ask your husband to tune up the car and he doesn't do it until 20 hours before he leaves the country so that you end up having to take it back in and get brake work done, do not resent him. Put it in a bubble and blow it away. If you get grumpy, karma will make you drive fourteen hours with a bad tire so that you have to put air in it five times en route as well as other engine trouble, none of which could have been prevented by said tune up anyway.

Intermission

2008-08-06T09:06:00.002-04:00

Hello all. I'm afraid this is going to be my last post for a couple of weeks - and it doesn't even have any crafty goodness in it. My mother arrives in town tomorrow to help me drive to Buffalo over the next three days, then I'll be - as my friends here keep saying - in the Buff for three days before driving from NY to AZ. I'm hoping to be back in AZ by the week of the 18th but I won't have any internet for the immediate future. Classes start a week later, so I should at least have access to campus internet by the end of the month. I'll still have email and will be able to read your comments - thanks for the kind words lately.

We do - 99% - have places to live. One landlord (Buffalo) decided they'd like a credit check at the last minute but I don't think they'll find any problems there. The other is supposed to get us word today but we're first in line. At least if something falls through in the Tucson scenario if I get desperate I can stay with my mom a little while and drive down to search in person.

And so today is going to be my last full day of packing. Tomorrow will be packing and cleaning the kitchen/bath, and then the next day - goodbye Charleston! I won't be able to craft much in the next week either because I'll be driving, but at least we'll only have one vehicle Buffalo-to-Tucson, so I can work on the five o'clock tank or one of my three half finished mitts while my mom drives!

Hopefully I'll be able to get back to you all with good tidings by the month's end!

Happy Crafting - Jennie

A Tender Happy Place

2008-07-31T10:34:00.006-04:00

Everyone, hold your breath. (Figuratively, though if you want to do it literally, that's up to you. I'm kind of long winded.)

First, assuming that my future roommate's lease application passes muster, I will actually have a place to live in Tucson.

Second, assuming nothing goes wrong with the place I'm trying to rent for Mr. Man in Buffalo, he'll also have a place to live in a little over a week when he comes home from Turkey. We haven't done any application or paperwork with them yet, but so far things look good. (I'm hesitant, of course, because five places have gotten closer to the deal being done than this and fallen through.)

Third, I'm going to make truck arrangements tomorrow, so even that's not secure yet. (I've been waiting in case things went wrong, but at this point I've got to make them or I won't have them in time.)

I say this is a tender place to be in because it feels a bit like climbing a house of cards. Last night, my mother suggested that maybe it would be best to ship my stuff instead of driving it. That may have been secret code for, do I really have to come help you drive your menagerie to New York? I offered her an out and she didn't take it though, so keep your fingers crossed on that front as well. Even if she bailed, it would just set me back two days and the price of a plane ticket while I wait for my husband to fly down here and drive the truck.

I keep talking myself in circles. Instead, it's time to go meet my packing quota for the day! Maybe then I can make time for a little crochet. I have another mitt half done.

Is anyone else doing the 198 Countries Peace Project? I've got Norway and Sweden. I may have to put the mitts aside and use those as my brainless projects for a while. At least the flags are simple, though not the same shade of blue!

Norway on the left, Sweden on the right.

Belated Wonder

2008-07-28T11:23:00.003-04:00

Hi again. Sorry that this weekend was an off weekend. I helped some friends move away, then spent Saturday getting ready for an unexpected house showing. When I finally was ready yesterday afternoon to do the prep work for the blog, my camera batteries were all dead.

A night in the charger later, I can finally show you my new toy.

One of the friends who moved to Chicago is a professional photographer, and this was an extra tripod he had that he was going to toss. It's too lightweight for his professional rigs, but it's perfect for me, so he let me have it! Go free stuff! (I should add, we have a history of trading with these folks. Five pairs of shoes and god knows what else before now.)

Obviously it's not at its full height here. It's probably less than five feet tall even when fully extended, but it's still about two feet taller than my old tripod. I'm really excited.

On other fronts, the latest apartment for Mr. Man has fallen through, again! But this time, the owner is a real estate agent who is going to look around a bit for us, so maybe he'll find something. My own search seems to be going much better. I've found a good house and a fun-sounding roommate and assuming all the lease application stuff goes through, I've got a place just over one-and-a-half miles from campus and - wait for it - even closer to the knit shop. I'm jazzed, but I'm starting to worry something will go wrong with this one, too.

Rather than spending the day finishing the second mitt - about one third done - I'm going to be spending it walking in to get the faxed application and running other errands.

Keep you fingers crossed for me (or something similar, if you're busy crafting). :)

Semi-FOs and Semi-Frogged Projects

2008-07-23T18:46:00.003-04:00

Time for crafty goodness. Of late I've been working on one of the mitt designs I've mentioned before. I've also been spending a LOT of time looking for housing since so far everything I've lined up or thought I lined up had fallen through, so I haven't been crafting as much as I'd like to. But, I did make the time to frog the two balls worth of yarn you see about - these are the size of large oranges, so this was no small effort when done by hand. I've still got 2-3 mystery panels of the cream, which is an acrylic yarn and about two-thirds of the shrug in gray left to frog. I can only do it when I don't need my hands, and since I've been TV free for 15 days, most entertainment I have involves holding a book or using a keyboard. :)

Here - above and below - you can see what I think is the neat thing about this design. On one side - the reverse of the hand - you can see the spiral technique, and on the other, you can't. No awkward joins, like in the round can sometimes have, and the use of gradual increases and then decreases in stitch height really make the spiral pop.

My main complaint is that the thumb hole looks ungainly. It's finickiness on my part. As you can see, I haven't bound off yet, so my plan is to half-double crochet around the thumb hole once or twice to provide more protection for the pad of my thumb. The need for these mitts - oh mother of invention - comes from the fact that my wrist that is more prone to inflammation sits right on top of my hot laptop battery when I work, so I need some padding between hand and computer. My knitted mitts are great when it's not 80-plus degrees out, so these are meant to be lighter and trimmer.

Think happy thoughts for me as I try to find housing and make the mate to this lonely mitt. Another design involving mesh is on the way!

Weekend Wonder #10 Fieldwork

2008-07-20T12:17:00.003-04:00

Hello again. I wanted to do something a little different for this Weekend Wonder. I've mentioned a number of times in the last few months that I was spending the day outside doing fieldwork. Well, as a preservationist, I'm a theory and policy specialist. Knowing that, you might wonder what my fieldwork is.

Once upon a time it was outreach and legal consulting, but I've been involving myself in interpretation more and more over the last few years - the process and theory of how we convey history or heritage to the public. A project that evolved out of that - I'll spare you the long details - is the work I've been doing this year with the help of a great photographer, my research assistant. Our focus is on how the use of repeat photography can be a tool for interpreting urban change.

First, we spent weeks in various archives trying to find the best photographs - those that were old enough to be interesting, best situated to be retaken, and most likely to either show interesting change or an interesting lack of change. An example is this photograph taken early in the twentieth century from a major park in Charleston, Marion Square.

From left to right you can see a hotel, the statue of John C. Calhoun, row houses, especially an elaborate house that is taller with the Classical cupola of the orphanage behind it, and one of the tall steeple churches Charleston is known for.

Second, after we picked out these pictures, we went out and tried to rephotograph them as accurately as possible using transparent overlays and all kinds of little tricks. About one in three was unrepeatable. For example, there are a couple beautiful panoramic shots of this square that were taken from a distance. Where those photographers stood is now inside a building. Fortunately, this one was one we could retake, but not one of our most accurate. Here's the new shot:

You might not notice if I didn't point it out, but the statue and hotel, now substantially blocked by trees, aren't in the exact same vertical alignment. We could figure out fairly precisely where the photographer stood, but the park has been relandscaped many times. All you would see if we took that shot would be trees. Our solution was to move about fifteen feet closer. It captures the significant and less obvious changes. All of the houses are gone, as is the orphanage. They've been replaced by that parking garage and college buildings respectively. The church still stands, but its polychromatic stucco has been replaced with a single darker color. In combination with the white trim, it really changed the look of the steeple.

We have over twenty pairs like this, as well as a handful of shots that we retook much more casually because the change and demolition was so complete, there's nothing left to line up on. Some of the shots are wonderful, but some are slightly off because of a difference in camera equipment or because of new construction that prevented us from retaking from the exact right location. Now that our camera work is done, it's my turn to take over as the writer.

And that's my Weekend Wonder! On that note, I'll be back soon with another post about the new computer mitt I just crocheted after I take some pictures. Have a good week!

Productivity? Really?

2008-07-14T12:47:00.002-04:00

Today is the most productive day I've had in a week if you don't count writing. Part of me doesn't count writing. I enjoy it so much that if I spend fourteen hours on it in a day, I feel like I'm getting away with something. It's only after four days of that pace that I start to (a) feel the brain fatigue and (b) remember I should clean the house.
I got up at a good time, did what will hopefully be the last of the fieldwork I have to do for the collection of essays I'm working on. Then I cleaned the house for a couple hours. Because hunger's creeping in, I've decided to take a lunch break, update my blog, check facebook, finish my loan paperwork (yay for gradschool!) and then decide where to go from there.
One thing I'm thinking about doing is frogging a couple pieces that have been in my frog pile for a while. I've got two panels on something that may have been supposed to be a sweater when I first started learning to knit. I could probably make it, but it would be way too heavy for Tucson, so I think I'll frog and use the yarn for experimenting instead. The other big item is the shrug that didn't work as planned. I've been thinking about crocheting one from that yarn or, in the alternative, using it to make mitts I can sell. Hmmm. Thinking...
I would like to add one more thing, which is a discovery I've made. It is possible, at least for me, to lose stuff in a mainly empty house. A student gave me a lovely going-away present of a book wrapped in a reproduction of a map of Venice. (When I teach historic preservation, I spend a couple days talking about Venice.) For weeks I kept that paper on top of my crates of books so I could frame it to protect it while I move. Now that I've unearthed the frame, I can't find the map anywhere. Hrm.
Hope all is well with you!
PS I'm also still not even beginning to catch up on other people's blogs. That's my goal for tomorrow. I plan to post here again Thursday - let's see if I can do it!

Weekend Wonder #9 & FO: Chicago Scarves

2008-07-12T08:00:00.001-04:00

These two scarves were made as wedding gifts, oh, so long ago. (Early May.)
This white and blue is the Girl Chicago, a.k.a. the gift for the bride. It matches a hat I gave her as a bridal shower gift.

I knitted it on the yellow straight KK loom out of Bernat Bamboo in Linen and Ocean. Really soft, very cuddly result, though there are always things I'd do differently. The striping pattern was random at first (though I always did the same thing in one color then the other to use equal amounts of the two yarns), but I eventually found a nice pattern of paired stripes best seen in the top picture that I would use exclusively if I did this again. I say "if" because I'm not really sure I liked bi-color knitting enough to do it again. I just felt like it was tedious, and I wanted to enjoy it more. The finishing touch - for strength, to hide the doubled slip stitches, and for balance - was a row of half double crochets down each side.

Also, you might notice these pictures are darker than the previous ones. I took these in slanting late-afternoon sun rather than nearly noon like the earlier WIP pics.

This second scarf in rust and blue is the Guy Chicago for the groom.

I used linked triple crochet for this scarf, which is what gives it the wavy look. I also inserted a row of linked doubles periodically (approximately every seventh row, but sometimes every fifth, sixth, or eighth, if it looked better) to help the colors snake back and forth. Can you see the chevron pattern that developed? It isn't predictable or overly regular, and that was my goal. (Though, to be honest, I'm not sure I could have made it more regular and gotten it done on time.) :)

You also might be able to tell that there were two skeins of yarn with slightly different coloring. I should have alternated when I found a knot, but I didn't think of it until after the fact. The yarns didn't look that different. That said, I think it still turned out really well and would definitely do it again. I've been thinking about making up a pattern for it, but I may make another one first. It's really simple, but not if you don't know linked stitches. I'd like to see how it looks in a heather or multi-colored yarn. Maybe I'll make my husband one to practice.

In this last shot, you can see the color differences between the first and second skein a little bit more clearly. The top layer has darker, more varied blues, where the bottom has paler blues and shows more variation in the rust/brown color.

Questions? Please ask!

Catching Up

2008-07-10T16:45:00.001-04:00

Hello again!
Before I begin, I want to say I do have an FO post planned for the Chicago Scarves, but I wanted to start with a "catching up" post first. I can't believe I only posted once in all of June. I just found this in a draft post I started the first week of June:

As you can tell, I'm feeling a little swamped right now. What we in my house refer to as feeling "Yaaaaaaaaaaa." We've put offers on houses only to be repeatedly beaten to the punch or turned down because our offer has to be contingent on selling our current house first, so we are still looking for a place to live and hoping we'll be able to move there this month. I've got longer to find an apartment in Tucson, but finding a house in Buffalo is more urgent. In the meantime, we're packing and cleaning and trying to sell our house and having a yard sale and I'm still doing some things for work (research related). Add to that some writing I've been really grooving with lately, and I haven't crocheted or knitted since right before the wedding. After pushing out the scarves, I stopped on the retro top when I realized I'd never get it done in time for the wedding. Now that it's breaching 90 here and I have a wicked sunburn from a day of stupidity+field work, I may not resume it for a while.

I had blocked half of that out in self-defense. Rereading it was a trip. We finally had an offer accepted on a house just a day or two later, but it just fell through yesterday, so we're back to the drawing board. No nibbles on our own house, and no place to live in either Buffalo or Tucson. And I need a place no later than one month from tomorrow. Yikes.

We packed up all of "our" stuff - my husband's stuff and mine/ours that was going to Buffalo with him - and put it in a POD. Now it's in a storage facility somewhere and I'm camping out in my own house for a month. Why? Because Mr. Man had to go to Turkey* for a month, and I didn't want to keep paying for a street permit to keep the POD. (We had it delivered when our offer was accepted, and at $10 per day, it was adding up.)

So, I've spent a couple days running moving-related errands and catching up on sleep lost in the 72 hours before Mr. Man and the POD both left. I haven't been knitting or crocheting much. I did finish the Retro femme top before Packing Mania began, but I need to frog and redo the bottom half for fit purposes. Sad, but true. I've started the Five O'Clock Tank from Crochet Me but I'm just an inch in and realizing I'll need to start over. I'd like to get back into it, and I'm thinking about checking out some audio books from the library if I can find my library card... Hmmm. I don't have anything but my craft supplies, laptop, mattress, clothes, and 13 crates of books. Add to that almost a month to find places to live, and to pack up my own stuff (not much really) and my office (urg, nightmare).

I've been spending most of my time on a writing project I mentioned before that is flowing really well. I've decided to run with it for a day or two and then get back on the moving, pack, cleaning, house-selling bandwagon.

Glad to be back!

* He's fine in Turkey. got there within hours of the embassy incident but emailed to say he wasn't affected. His luggage was MIA though. :(

I miss you!

2008-06-18T13:44:00.002-04:00

Oh, blog reading friends. How I miss thee.
I would so much rather be telling you about the scarves I finished - post is half drafted, pictures are still in the camera - or the completed by ill fitting Retro Femme top, or even the swatching I just snuck in clandestinely... but alas. Instead I am packing and freaking out about not having a place to live and various other things.
However, I've decided to make updating my blog one of my rewards, so hopefully you'll be hearing from me 2-3 times in the next couple of weeks. In July, I'll either be settling into a new place or homeless, so you'll either hear from me more, or, well, not. But, in the interim, tonight's reward for packing is a hair dyeing party, so I best go earn my reward!
Hope all is well!

AWOL and Back Again

2008-05-23T19:18:00.002-04:00

Well, hello!

Sorry for my disappearance. As you may know, I was working desperately when last I posted to finish two gift scarves and a ton of other things before graduation and two friends' wedding. Well, graduation ended up being much more time consuming than expected, I had some things come up at work at the last minute, and then my husband and I took a no-laptop house-shopping trip to Buffalo this last week. I'm only now getting home and settled, just in time to put our house on the market and struggle semi-valiantly to get it presentable.

I do have some photos of the finished scarves to share, probably by tomorrow night. Things are still a little crazy, though I suppose any house sale and move is like that. I'll try to post more now that we're back in town and keep you up to date, but sadly, Weekend Wonders are on a hiatus until further notice

Quick crafting update: I'm about 55-60% done with the Retro Femme top and planning to finish that before I start anything else. I have a couple design ideas to play with and Jocelyn's not-yet-identified item to make once the house is done. (For those of you new to the blog, Jocelyn won a recent "contest" I had for the best husband-inspiring techniques for getting my husband to do chores. She suggested, among other things, letting the ants build up to get him to do dishes, which was one of my particular issues. Strangely, the ants didn't quite work. They helped, but it was the discovery that a roach has actually been living in our rarely-used dishwasher that seems to have been the key to getting Mr. Man going on the dishes. Having graduation behind us has gotten him more inspired (though not exactly thirlled) about other chores, too.

Now all we have to do is pack, clean, and sell! No big deal, right?

Short and Sweet

2008-05-08T17:22:00.002-04:00

I'm afraid I don't have much time to type today, as I'm due to go see IRON MAN in a few minutes. (That's the official household spelling.) But I wanted to thank Jocelyn for her comment on my sort-of-contest and to say.

There are ants in the dishes. I'm giving it a couple more days. After all, the man graduates from college officially the day after tomorrow. And ant smooshing makes me feel better.
We discussed adopting older kids to solve this problem - premade chore-doers - but then I remembered (a) we can't afford it, (b) we're not really mature enough for that, and (c) we're both going back to grad school this year. If this idea works though, I'll owe Jocelyn something handmade again in 10 years.
Therapy may also be a viable solution, but see 2(a) and 2(c) above.*

*Can you tell I was a lawyer?

If you still have suggestions, comment away! I do have to say, that I'd rather have quiet lurkers (or no readers, but I'm trying to pretend that's not it) than some of Laurie Perry's crazy fans. (See her May 6, 2008 entry. Dude!)

Have a good rest of the week, and maybe I'll be able to shoot some FOs or WIPs this Saturday.

Weekend Wonder #8

2008-05-04T15:58:00.003-04:00

Hello! Weekend Wonder #8 has NOTHING to do with crafts, but I'll include a crafty preamble.

Sadly, I did not finish the scarf on time. I realized yesterday morning that it was not gong to happen, and had a flash of insight I wish I'd had days before. I intended the scarf to be part of a hat and scarf set and wasn't planning to finish the scarf - originally - until I did the hat first, to make sure the yarn would stretch. Well, the scarf is turning out lopsided - I'll explain that in next week's Weekend Wonder - and will require crochet trim. Suddenly I realized I could make the dang hat and give her the scarf when I finish Guy-Chicago's scarf, too! So that's what I did. Made a ~~scarf~~ [edit] hat, graded like a superfast grading demon, forgot to take a picture of it(!), went to a mature-themed bridal shower, where the hat was a hit all around despite not being mature-themed, and came home very late.

I now have too much to do to do anything but whip this out and get back to work... So, this is my weekend wonder to you - a Challenge. This is especially for you married or committed folk out there. My husband is a wonderful man who will NOT do certain chores lately. First commenter to give me a successful idea - other than mature-themed bribery ;) - for getting him to do chores promptly will win a hat, scarf, eye-mask or mitts handmade by me - your choice of project and yarn colors. Before you say, "No problem!", I have a few pieces of key information.

I've tried asking, begging, bribing with money, and guilting. No dice. You're welcome to suggest variations - please do! - but I thought you should be warned.
The man is, as I type, taking a clean bedsheet (the orphan from a ruined set) and wrapping it around three loads of clean, dry laundry, so that when we go to bed tonight, he'll be able to move it off the bed without having to fold it. Yes, he washed it, he just won't FOLD it.
He also won't do the dishes (we have a dishwasher), but he did take out the trash.

That is your challenge.

P.S. Jen @ PieKnits is having a contest for some beautiful yarn and mystery goodies. Check it out! She does lovely stuff.

Think Sober Thoughts

2008-05-02T18:25:00.002-04:00

Hola. I just came from celebrating the end of my husband's semester - and college career! - with margaritas. He took his last final today; he has nothing left to do!

Must be nice.

Sneer. Smile.

I'm a real lightweight when it comes to drinking, so two margaritas - two mason-jar-sized margaritas - was more than I should have had and reasonably expected to go back to grading any time soon. Now, I'm Ravelry-ing (raveling? Jocelyn?) and sobering up.

Speaking of Jocelyn, she had a great post about gratitude today - and for the record, I thought it was great before the margaritas and before I got em-dash crazy, so there. I've been thinking about similar issues as I get ready to take my leave of absence and launch into a new degree program. I'd like to write nice cards, or at the very least nice emails, to thank my colleagues and tell them where I'm headed, but I'm finding it hard. I haven't been worrying about it much, telling myself grading is more pressing - and it is - but it's still something I'm thinking of a couple times a day.

Most of the nicest things people have done for me while I was here were nothing as above-and-beyond as Jocelyn's friend, but the very act of being good colleagues takes on a new meaning when one of you leaves. It's like saying, "You were great, but not great enough." And while I'm technically only leaving for 1-2 years, I think it's unlikely I'll be coming back, and I want to be as honest and grateful in my parting as possible.

Can't make them all scarves though. Hmmm. Best I wait until I'm sober for that one, too, I guess.

Pre-Bed Post, in which I make dumb jokes

2008-05-01T21:57:00.003-04:00

My husband - Mr. Man - is studying for his statistics final. I'm his human calculator, so our evening conversation has mainly consisted of long periods of keyboard and calculator typing punctuated occasionally by him asking something like, "12 times 52 is...?" The following exchange just occurred as the blog was loading:
Man: 12 times 12 is 144, right?
Me: Ew, that's groooossssss.

**Pause while I giggle some more.**

Today has, again, mainly consisted of grading. I made some significant progress on the scarf during breaks, but I also had to nap when my brain inexplicably shut down midday. I spent my last break looking at a group I recently joined on Ravelry - Natural Dyeing - and I now have a major jones to crochet. There's something about the rhythm of it that's calling me lately, and the moderately complex colorwork knitting isn't doing it for me (though it needs to be done).

I should be off to bed since I'm actually leaving the house tomorrow morning. Happy May Day and Happy Friday!

Dumb People Harsh my Vibe

2008-04-30T21:59:00.002-04:00

Hello again. Today has been (and will continue to be for a little while longer) a long day of grading. I've been checking blogs and knitting the scarf as a reward every two papers, but the going has been tough.

The worst break I took all day was to visit the Craig's List help forums to try to piece together a problem we've been having. I think, but can't say for sure, that people selling the same thing (graduation tickets*) are flagging our post as scalping. But when I explained on the help forum that it wasn't scalping if the tickets didn't have a face value and there was no college policy against selling them, they made their attacks personal. There are eight new posts just today for tickets for sale, hence why I suspect it's our competition that's flagging them more than anyone else. I know flamers are just... well, mean-spirited people, but I still take it far too personally. And being at all emotional screws up my grading mindset.

And I started the day in such an optimistic mood, too.

So, I'm going to try to get 2-4 more done tonight and then head to bed. I'm hoping the assignment I've scheduled myself to grade on Friday will allow for more knitting. (Because I do paperless grading, I listen to the computer read papers out loud once, then grade them carefully while making comments. It helps me avoid making comments out of place or too harshly if I read through once first, and knitting keeps me from hitting pause to type something like, "WHAT?" in the comment field. The assignments I'm grading now are projects, not papers, and don't work so well that way.) If I can knit even a little bit more on Friday, I might actually be able to finish this scarf on time...

Anyway, sorry for the work babble. Back to it!

* Just in case anyone was confused, these aren't my tickets as faculty (no such thing). They are my husband's tickets as a graduating senior who doesn't want to walk at commencement. It's his show, so I left the choice to him. We'll be going to the receptions though. :) Free food and congratulations are the best part.

Plug and Post

2008-04-30T12:12:00.004-04:00

Check out this Contest by Cass. If you've got a joke, a funny story, advice for an about-to-be-seventeen-year-old, a recommended knit project, and/or a recommended yarn (especially vegan), then it could win you goodies!

I'm afraid I don't have much to post about personally. I've just grading, knitting when I can on the Girl-Chicago scarf, because it needs to be done by Saturday(!), and grading some more.

I didn't already make a big post about it, I don't think, but if anyone has any neighborhood, rental or other housing recommendations for either Buffalo, NY or Tucson, AZ, I'm all ears. When I'm not doing something I should be, I'm surfing craigslist. :)

Weekend Wonder #7

2008-04-27T15:02:00.005-04:00

Hello! Welcome to Weekend Wonder No. 7 - an example of colorwork on the loom - part 1.

As any regular readers know, I've been working on two scarves for two friends - a couple - moving to Chicago from here in balmy Charleston. What you see above is the Girl-Chicago scarf in progress. (There's nothing necessarily girly about the pattern, but the yarn and colors make it more feminine. I'm thinking I may make a version in Vikings, Twins, or SUNY Buffalo colors for my husband - but that's a long way off). The recipient isn't a terribly girly-girl, and I wanted something easy to knit but complex enough to be worth making a pattern. I'd been considering designing a plaid for a while, and this slick, bulky yarn doesn't lend itself to a very wide panel, so the above design was invented.

I started by casting on first the white and then the blue - separately - using a crochet chain. I made a chain the length of the number of pegs (16) times two (32) minus one (31). I then slipped the first chain over the first peg, skipped a chain, slipped the next one over the next peg, on down the line. If the last peg is tricky for you, or your chain keeps coming unraveled, then just chain extra, and when you get to the last peg, put your finger or hook in the chain that will be going on that last peg, unravel back to that point, then place the loop on the peg such that the yarn is wrapping around it clockwise. (This assumes you cast on right-to-left like me and that you slip the last peg every time, also like me. As long as the yarn comes around the back of the last peg and crosses to the front of the next peg, you're fine.) The effect, as you can see, is a two-layer look. I really like it, but it will require casting off each color separately if you want your two ends to match. I'll have to save that for next week!

The slip stitches on the ends are both colors held together. I carry both colors across the row simultaneously; the key to getting the varied stripes is twisting the strands between every stitch. What you can see in this picture on the left is that I have knit a blue stitch (on the peg with the green marker) and then a white stitch to its right. I will then cross the blue over the white. If the next stitch was to be blue, that's all I would do - cross blue over white, and knit blue. But because the next stitch will be white (two white stripes in a row) I cross the blue over white, then white over blue as well. Making this twist prevents the loop that would be formed by the blue running along the back without the white to hold it in. This would be fine on a hat or other garment if it didn't go more than three stitches, but I twist in the blue here for two reasons. One, it makes the other side of the scarf more consistent (see below). Two, it creates a dotted stripe of one color (here blue) peeking through the other (here white).

(Needle knitters, please ignore this part.) The scarf is done in garter stitch - all knit left to right, all purl right to left. On the purl pass, I twist the yarns in the opposite direction - right over left - to avoid twisting the skeins up and because it's easier for me.

So, how does the reverse look? Like static, actually, with stripes of solid color. I could have avoided the latter by keeping the alternate color running along with the main color, but I wanted to vary the texture of the scarf. Those solid rows are not knit with both colors. The plaid itself if indiscernible from the reverse, which was my intent. To me, it looks a bit like a blizzard of color - we used to call TV static snow for a reason after all. And that's Chicago.

The other scarf, just to give you a little preview, is done in linked treble crochet and looks like this:

I'll talk more about the rest of both scarves in future posts. In the meantime, enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Tucson or Bust!

2008-04-25T22:35:00.002-04:00

And the decision has been made. This fall Mr. Man will begin the anthropology PhD program at SUNY Buffalo, and I will begin the MFA creative writing at the University of Arizona. To celebrate, Mr. Man bought me a necklace to replace a chain I recently broke for one of my favorite pendants - a little viking ship with an amber sail. It was really sweet of him to think of it, especially all on his own.

Not many days off for me in the near future. We need to get on the apartment hunt big time (if you know of pet friendly rentals in either city, comment or email or Ravelry message JennieMac PLEASE) as well as paying bills, doing laundry, srategizing packing for a move, studying/prepping and grading finals... all that good stuff. But, I will also be getting some good work on the Guy-Chicago scarf done, because I've finally found a stitch I like. And I have to get the Girl-Chicago done by next Saturday, so I'll be working on that as well.

I get a little time to myself tomorrow when Mr. Man goes in for a final, so I hope to work on the next Weekend Wonder then.

Oh, P.S. I've got a fresh haircut and other girly salon stuff. Life is looking up. ;)

Le Tired

2008-04-24T16:43:00.002-04:00

Crash. Pretty soon, I'm going to crash.

Yesterday was the last day of classes, so much joy would have been had, except I had a chunk of grading I sworn I would get done. So I taught and prepped and graded from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. with two meal breaks. Afterward, we went to an end of the semester party and I stupidly stayed out until after 2. The drinks and the dancing were much needed, but especially after spending today in the field, I am le tired, not to mention achy and sore.

Internet at home is down, so I'm limited in my blogging ability. With any luck, it will fix itself or the serviceman coming tomorrow will come early. If he doesn't, I'll have to cancel my much needed hair cut appointment and will be very depressed.

I am dying for some me-time that - hopefully tonight or tomorrow.

The only news on the crafting front is that I am still frustrated with a scarf that is not turning out as wanted. I've got a couple things I can work on that are going better, and that's my plan for the next few days. Right now, I'm going to pack up and work on the strapless top until Mr. Man is ready to walk home.

Sorry for both the radio silence and the bleh post - I blame the latter on my caffeine wearing off!

Weekend Whatever

2008-04-20T22:37:00.002-04:00

Hello all! As I sat here grading - and I'm not as done as I'd like to be by a mile! - I realized I never made up my mind about the Weekend Wonder issue! Well, the clock made up my mind for me. I'm not going to be able to think of something creative in the next hour and a half while I'm grading, so I declare this the first weekend off. I'll probably take every seventh weekend off, though I do have to admit that I've been trying to think of something good to do for post #50, which is coming up soon.
Back to work - have a good week!

The Price of Admission

2008-04-19T15:25:00.002-04:00

Both crafting and not crafting blogging today, folks! Step right up! Two for the price of one!

So, which shall I start with? I think the crafting.

My first admission is that I'm suffering from some serious project polygamy. (Is that polyandry or polygyny, do you think?) I'm currently working on the strapless and retro femme tops from Sensual Crochet, one man's scarf design that I just CANNOT get going, and a woman's knit scarf design which I think is working (take number three is at 45 rows and looks good I think). In my head, I'm also working on three mitten designs in crochet, two of which I've charted (two variations that I'm going to call Scandinavian Sock Monkey Mittens - you'll see why eventually). :) I've also got an eye mask I just remembered that is only waiting to be bound off and seamed; I have no idea why I haven't just done it already.

That man's scarf - specifically a man's scarf because it's intended as a gift for a Guy Friend, as is the woman's scarf meant for a Girl Friend - is really being a pain these last couple weeks. It's yarn I bought two weeks ago; I love working with it, but I'm having a hell of a time designing something I like. The knitted designs I tried were all too open in gauge, and there's no way to get around that except to double the yarn or buy a fine gauge loom, which I'm not willing to do.

I really think Guy Friend will like the colors better than Girl Friend, so I'm sticking with it. I decided to make it in Tunisian crochet, but I know if I just do it in simple stitch it'll curl. Right now, I've been doing six row sections of different stitch patterns (combinations of tss, tks, tps, and staggered tss, as well as what I think might be Tunisian double crochet, but I'm not certain). I'm trying to find one or more I like enough to do the whole scarf out of it, but I'm nearing 30 rows with nothing I love in sight. I'm thinking I'll try a couple rows of seed stitch or a checkerboard pattern. I think one of those will be the winner, but we'll have to see.

The bottom line of all that is the second admission, which is that I have no idea what tomorrow's Weekend Wonder will be. :) I was thinking I might skip it to give myself one weekend off from it every six WWs, but I haven't decided.

I'm also thinking about a bigger admission that I began making public in the last few days, which is the big Opportunity I mentioned a couple posts back. As anyone who has read this blog for a while knows, I'm a college professor getting ready to take a leave of absence because I'm experiencing some serious burn out and career doubt. Part of the reason I became a professor was that I wanted to write, enjoyed teaching, and knew that if I succeeded at it, academia would be a much more secure position than professional writing or a lot of other career options. (Ah, tenure. Here and here, too.) Another part of the reason I became a professor is that I have a very strong tendency to do things because I should. Because I should. Not really for any other reason, just general societal, cultural, sometimes familial, and sometimes personal expectations and shoulds.

There are a lot of things I really enjoy about teaching, but also many things I don't. I won't detail either here because, well, this should be at least a somewhat fun blog, not a diatribe or homily. What I would really like to do is some of the parts of my job, like the writing and the teaching, but perhaps without the service obligations, or perhaps without the heavy course load of my small school, or perhaps at a more interdisciplinary institution, since that's the nature of my work, or perhaps just less.

What I've been planning to do on my leave is focus on my writing and possibly take some graduate classes and begin working toward a PhD.* I say possibly because I wanted Mr. Man to choose the PhD program that was best for him** and then work around that, in no small part because I was being VERY wishy washy during application season. One thing I did last fall was submit applications to MFA programs in writing at the schools where Mr. Man was applying. My first choice in terms of program quality was the University of Arizona, which was Mr. Man's fourth choice out of four.

Surprisingly to both of us (low self esteem much?), not only was he accepted to his two top choices, as you know, but recently I was accepted to Arizona. So, now our tough choice is whether or not to live apart for the two years I'd be in the program. Today, I'm leaning toward it, but yesterday I wasn't. And that was the big admission I made public this week. Many of my colleagues thought I was applying to PhD programs, but to be honest, the only reason I was thinking PhD was so I'd be more competitive in academia. If I'm not going to stay in academia, I don't need to invest the time or energy in a PhD. That said, enrolling in an MFA writing program could be great for my writing, but it would be a really big step away from my current position.

Craft, think, and breathe. Repeat.

Time to go wake my husband from his nap. We're headed out for a busy night - first an a cappella concert, then an awards ceremony for one of his majors, then a gallery opening/art extravaganza/thing for a friend. Should be fun. Should be dinner in there somewhere.

I'll be back tomorrow!

* I have two terminal graduate degrees but no PhD.
** He chose Buffalo! Anyone from Buffalo?

More Optimistic Less Decisive

2008-04-16T19:44:00.003-04:00

Hello again! Thanks for your nice comments and emails. Mr. Man and I have been thinking about Everything in our free moments, which have sadly been few and far between. He is actually supposed to tell his grad schools where he is planning to attend... well, yesterday, but he's not decided yet, which is rough for him. I'm certainly not decided either, but he's got a stack of schoolwork to distract him and I've got a stack of grading to distract me, so we're plodding along.

My stack is (figuratively) a little shorter though. I say figuratively, given that my classes are paperless, so there is no stack, per se. I've got some final thesis revisions I'm going to start after this, but every item I finish is something off the list. The thesis I'm reading right now is about a local neighborhood everyone thinks of as traditionally African-American that actually has a long history of being racially diverse. It made me think of one of my favorite songs:

Talk to the old black men who will make the observation
that we're still grouped into the haves and have-nots.
Yeah, it's been a long time since integration
but it seems some folks here they forgot.
(Jennifer Nettles Band, Round and Round)

(Nettles is always good, and Sugarland is great, but some of us miss JNB.)

I'm going to take a page from Jocelyn, the Knitting Linguist's book, and crochet a couple rows for every chapter, or something like that. I think I'll work on the Retro Femme top since it's now less portable than the Strapless Corset, which is frogged-and-born-anew and in an easy repetition stage, where as the Retro Femme top currently requires scissors. :)

Frogging and Breathing

2008-04-14T16:39:00.005-04:00

Despite my best efforts, I'm doing more frogging lately than crafting, and the combination of (a) one too many dadgummit moments*, (b) my typical end of the semester stress, and (c) pending life decisions for myself and my husband has been a little too much lately. I spent the weekend thinking about these Big Decisions and feeling far too spaced out from my migraine to do anything more complex than laundry. Even that was a stretch.

*The dadgummit moments: At first, it was just the scarf I was working on, though I'll admit to liking my new ideas for it more anyway. The dadgummit moment that really got me was realizing - about 20 rows in - that the strapless top from Sensual Crochet was going to be too big. It's strange, too, because I gauge swatched just fine. It means starting over, though to be honest, I made a couple little glitches I should have ripped back to fix early on, but I didn't because I wasn't sure how. Now I know, so perhaps things will work out for the best in that arena, too.

Hmm, have I struck an optimistic vein? Perhaps, but let's not get carried away.

On the end of the year stress, it's nothing out of the ordinary - i.e. just grading - and a little guilt that in having taken on too much this last year, I didn't really give my best to a couple students. Then again, that constant I-could-do-more feeling is probably why I have migraines, and is definitely why I'm taking a leave of absence. And the students themselves deny my own statements of inadequacy. Sometimes its good to listen to them, too.

As for the Big Decisions, all I can really say here is that I've been offered an opportunity I didn't expect to be offered. An Opportunity, really. It's all good until you hit the part where my husband and I may be living apart for the next two years if we both want to take advantage of the Opportunities in front of us. We've done it before - I do not miss thee, former military life - but we're not exactly ecstatic about doing it again. And we'll probably come out the far side in debt this time since grad school doesn't offer separation pay.

I guess the only thing to do is knit and think and knit.

Weekend Wonder #6

2008-04-13T09:50:00.003-04:00

Hello! Here's Weekend Wonder #6!

This WW is a piece in freeform crochet that I made a couple weeks ago for my husband. He admired my bath mitt, but he wanted something easier to get on and off. I bought some cotton in colors he liked, and this was experiment #1. I call it the Bear Claw.

The construction was simple if you know how to crochet in the round already. (Better tutorials are available at NexStitch or in Kim Werker and Cecily Keim's Teach Yourself Visually Crochet.) I chained 2 and single crocheted 6 into the first chain to form the innermost round. From there, I followed a basic crochet-in-the-round increase pattern in half double crochet: 2 in each stitch for one round, then alternating 1 hdc and 2 hdc in each stitch for one round, then adding one additional hdc between the increases for each round for a total of 6 rounds. I would have stopped one or two rounds sooner for my own, much narrower hands, but he asked for the extra width.

I then chained 8 and skipped 3 between single crochets around the outer edge to make the loops. (I actually didn't use standard sc. I did an sc decrease (sc2tog) so that the pull of the loops would be spread over two stitches.) I had to redo this at least once because the loops weren't big enough for his fingers, so you definitely want your recipient or a similar hand around to test the fit on. The thumb loop was larger; I think 12 chains skipping 6 stitches, but I'm guesstimating that from memory. Then, last but not least, I chained across the circle from the base of the thumb loop almost straight across the wrist to make the strap. I attached that with an sc and a couple slip stitches for good measure, then reversed and put a single crochet in each stitch all along the back of the loops for reinforcement.

Apologies if any of those directions are vague, but I didn't take any notes. I'm describing what I did from memory and from the pictures, because Husband found it so useful that he took it out of town with him for grad school visit #2 this weekend.

I would say this took no more than 40g from a 100g skein of Lily Sugar'n'Cream cotton - I think the colorway is called Denim. I really like making little projects like this for two reasons. One, because it is easy to grab a bit of cotton (or any yarn, really) and a hook to throw into my purse at the beginning of the week. No pattern to worry about, no need for anything but my handy slip-n-snip scissors. Two, because you learn all kinds of things, whether you realize it or not, about what you can do with a hook and yarn when you imagine something and try to manifest it one stitch at a time. I'll admit that they don't always work out as planned - I still have a few dozen yards of the cotton I used for my scrubbing fingertips that I can't seem to make into anything else - but sometimes you end up with something really handy or really cute, or both!

My husband loves that his bear claw is reversible (shown here) and easy-on-easy-off, unlike my mitt, and he's asked for a second one for the other hand. I'll take better notes as I make this second one and see if it's worth making a free pattern.

Happy crafting!

Taking the rest of the day off

2008-04-11T10:39:00.002-04:00

Hello all.

I had the best intentions about writing an entirely craft related post last night but yesterday did not go as planned. I was supposed to spend most of the day in the field working on my research and then take my husband to the airport, return to the office for a little work, go to an evening event, and come home to blog. What really happened is that I came home from the field early with a migraine, slept until it was time to go to the airport, went back in for a little work and the evening event, went minimal-grocery shopping (you know what I mean - what's the least I can buy and still eat until (in this case) Sunday) before going home. I was barely able to feed my cats before collapsing into bed. Even then, I couldn't shake the headache and woke up a couple times between nine and midnight. Then my husband called at 2 a.m. - the second leg of his flight was canceled, leaving him stranded in Chicago until 3 today, which would have negated the whole point of the "campus visit" to Madison. He managed to switch his rental car to Chicago and drove the last leg instead.

Fortunately, my TA was teaching this morning anyway, so my drugged state is our little secret. I'm headed off to a faculty meeting where I'll probably use up the last of my coherence before heading home early. With any luck, I'll feel better this afternoon, but I'm not planning on anything more complicated than laying and reading. Not even, sadly, crocheting or knitting, though I may have enough in me to do some frogging I need to do.

This Just In.

2008-04-08T23:20:00.005-04:00

In a shocking turn of events, we actually finished everything on our agenda for the senate meeting tonight!. Actually, that's not wholly true. Two committees offered to share their year-end reports via the senate website instead of the meeting, and the senate voted to extend debate past our normal two-hour cut-off so that we wouldn't have to reconvene later.

Either way! What matters is the doneness of my senate obligation for the year!

I also got some really great news that I can't blog about yet, which has made me realize how true it is that blogging really serves an important role in my life. The Knitting Linguist explains it much more eloquently than I can right now. I remember getting the same feeling with journaling as a kid, but I didn't expect to become "that blogger". My husband - whose nickname is still under discussion - wants to get me this shirt.

And here's a little preview of the WIPs that I'll blog about later this week, as promised. The crochet is the Sage Corset top from Sensual Crochet. It's actually about 6 rows taller already thanks to tonight's meeting. The knit is to be frogged - I'm still going to knit a scarf out of it, but the cast on and stitch were too girly for the scarf's intended owner.

Weird Questions and Observations

2008-04-08T16:49:00.003-04:00

Q: Can something turn out to be anticlimactic if you know it might be anticlimactic and are therefore steeling yourself for that likelihood?

Context: Tonight should - "should" - be our last faculty senate meeting, but I have little doubt the long agenda will ooze over into our just-in-case day, the last Tuesday of the semester, two weeks from today.

Thought: Why have three people expressed sympathy for me today because I went to the dentist? Am I the only one who enjoys good dental hygiene?

Q: Is it strange that I am somehow proud that my husband - the man with the beard - has been repeatedly mistaken for a man who got on the local news running across the finish line at the Cooper River Bridge Run because they both have giant beards? (Giant.) (Really.) Who am I? (Yes, when they post pictures I'll share.)

P.S. Maybe that should be his knitblog acronym: MHWTB, a.k.a. My Husband with the Beard. Sort of implies I have another husband without a beard though... Can't just call him The Beard. :)

Oh look. Senate time. Yay.

FO: Petite Petite Bijoux Bag

2008-04-06T21:58:00.003-04:00

Lovin' Sensual Crochet by Amy Swenson. I know I've already mentioned that, but I'm gonna say it again and again, so be forewarned. :)

The pattern I modified here is the last one in the book, the Petite Bijoux Bag, which, as you probably guessed, I made smaller. I worked on this in faculty senate one night because it was portable, and I think I got halfway up the sides in less than two hours. (We adjourned early that night.) I was looking for a way to use up the last of my Bernat Bamboo, as you might remember from the One-Hour Eye Mask post, and this was perfect.

It'll hold my digital camera plus credit cards and ID, keys, and the like. It's only about 5-6" in diameter instead of the 8" (I think?) of the pattern.

The picture's a little gray because of the weather we've been having, but you can see two more pictures on Flickr, where you can also see the wrap (blog, Flickr) that matches it.

Last but not least, I'm working on updating my tags and sidebar... Or I would if I weren't going to sleep. :)

Weekend Wonder #5

2008-04-06T20:46:00.004-04:00

Wow! This is my fifth Weekend Wonder! I was starting to think I wasn't going to make it tonight, as if Ravelry, Blogger, and Wordpress were all against me, but it's finally all come together.

This fifth WW is my first knit pattern. I wanted that milestone to go to something more... exciting, like the shrug (that didn't work) but I remembered this simple little number and decided to share it instead. I made these fingerless glove (or mitts, or whatever you want to call them) to have something warm and cushy to wear while typing. I've been working off and on on version 2.0 for the summer (i.e. not warm, but still cushy) and I'll let you know if they ever work out. In the meantime, these maintain their trusty position at my computer desk because my office is frigid any time the building's air conditioner is on. I bet some of you know that feeling.

The pattern is available here and on Ravelry as a PDF. If you would be interested in test knitting a needle knit version, I would be thrilled to send you the draft. I don't needle knit, but I would like my patterns to be ... cross platform whenever possible. Just comment, email, or Ravelry-message me (JennieMac).

P.S. I promise my next post will be about some of my recent FOs.

Survival of the ... Mmmm, Margaritas.

2008-04-03T15:15:00.002-04:00

Last night I took my four graduate students, who all successfully defended their theses this week, out for Mexican food and margaritas. This is one advantage of grad students over undergrads - drinking age. Anyway, we had a lot of fun and celebrated their accomplishments for a little bit before they headed out to celebrate with their families and I went to a play - Dog Sees God - with my adorable husband. The play was directed by a friend of his and done very well, so it was a fun night.

The only thing that would have made the evening better would have been not having to stay up til 2 with computer issues with my grading. My husband was up packing for his trip to visit the first of the two grad programs he was accepted to.

So today I've been preparing for the rest of the week's defenses, tomorrow's classes and the early night I hope to give myself after I drop him off at the airport.

Knitting and crochet has been slow this week. I began a different crochet project as I want to think and read a little more about the Retro Femme Empire Top Thing. It's a strapless top from Sensual Crochet (of course) by Amy Swenson. I got five rows done in the faculty senate meeting Tuesday (the penultimate one with any luck!) but I've only done one row since then.

I'd like to start something new on knit but just don't feel like I have time. You know it's bad when you just don't even want to think about what you could cast on for. Hopefully a quiet weekend of aloneness will cure my blues. I'm thinking about following Kelly Petkun's example and listening to an audiobook while cleaning this weekend. I normally listen to knit and crochet podcasts while I craft if I'm home alone, but I'd like to get some housework done, too. Plus, I just recently bought Audacity of Hope. :)

I've got the Weekend Wonder planned though, and it's knit(!), so at least that's something!

Weekend Wonder #4

2008-03-30T20:10:00.005-04:00

Swatching: An Open Apology from a Recent Proselyte

This week's Weekend Wonder is about my new love/hate relationship with swatching. I've never really swatched before, though I've certainly started and frogged something when I didn't like the emerging result. I've read and read and read the advice of numerous knitbloggers who teach the holy way of swatching, and yet I never really felt it applied to me. (Not the least of which is the Yarn Harlot who teaches by example both the wonder of swatching and of not.) Part of my reasoning was that I had never made anything BIG until the shrug, which might (in retrospect, I say MIGHT) have benefited from swatching. It definitely would have benefited from a book on design. My most complicated project - the Calla Lily Bag translated to the loom - had a swatch only so I could test-felt the fabric, having never done that before.

Having decided to make my first crochet sweater (from Amy Swenson's Sensual Crochet - Ravelry) I initialy went with a yarn I already had in my meager stash - one of only two not committed to an already ongoing project. (Yes, I'm stashless. I know that's weird.) The two are Lion Brand Landscapes a super bulky acrylic that would never work for this sweater and organic cotton from Bernat in (ironically) Hemp and Oasis colorways. I was considering using the Hemp for the sweater - numerically, it matched the pattern suggestions perfectly.

(You'd think this lawyer would know the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of it.)

Finally beginning to see the light, though not yet truly believing in it, I made a swatch per the pattern. A swatch that was supposed to be a 4" square. You can see it in the picture above - a lonely little number that was only 2-and-a-half inches on either side after vigorous wet blocking, even though I used an I hook instead of the smaller H called for. (I sensed the yarn wasn't fluffy enough, but wasn't really understanding what a difference it would make and that a hook size or two wouldn't be enough.)

Facing the obvious shortage of my stash, which I'm okay with, I headed to A.C. Moore and bought a few skeins (plenty) of this alpaca blend from Bernat in Peony. (The last photo below is the truest in terms of color). All swatches are shown above. The alpaca swatches were done with H, J, and finally a K hook (my largest) and all fall short at 3", 3.5" and about 3.75" on a side respectively. This is my third and most recent swatch - all wet blocked and hung to dry with weighted pulls.

I think the yarn is lovely, and it feels very nice to work with. But I'm having a damnable time getting a big enough swatch. This is more open than I expected the fabric to be, so I don't want to try to hunt down a larger crochet hook. K is my favorite anyway. I'm thinking, therefore, of proceeding with this even though I'm a little bit short on the swatch dimensions. (For those of you not into crochet, I can tell you that stitch gauge is much more important than row gauge (height). My swatch may actually be 4" wide if I didn't wet block it so hard to get row height, which is where I fall shortest.

I haven't decided what to do (and therefore am instead making notes on a new pattern idea and finishing up other little projects (more on that later this week)) but I think I'm going to spend a little more time with The Knitter's Book of Yarn by Clara Parkes before I actually begin this project. I love this book. :)

And I am now officially a believer in swatching. Imagine the blog posts you would have had to sit through had I (stupidly) gone ahead with that cotton yarn, or even with the new alpaca and the pattern-suggested hook? Now imagine how I would have felt writing those posts? Save yourselves while you can!

All that said, will I turn into the perfect swatcher? Am I going to swatch for the beanie I'm going to make soon? Heck no. What's the fun in that? My point is only that taking a little time to make something we love better, is definitely worth it, in this girl's book.

Advice done. I'll just add one more thing. I've got 9 thesis defenses to sit through this week and may be neglectful of the blog, against even my own wishes. :) Hopefully I'll be back soon, but if you're interested, my latest FOs are up on Ravelry.

What is means to be college professor

2008-03-28T13:29:00.003-04:00

Teaching at a College: What I've Learned ... So Far

It means competing for students' attention against whatever is going on in their lives, from their roommate's hair-dye crisis to their family member's terminal illness.

It means hearing "I'm really not happy with my grade on [insert assignment or test]" and knowing that most of the time that really means "I want to come in and convince you through cuteness, whining, wheedling, and/or flattery that you should raise my grade. P.S. I tried realllllly hard."

It means always wondering if some of your students really do think you're that stupid, or if they are just irrationally optimistic.

It means having to keep a mental tally of someone else's recently deceased or dying relatives.

It also means being introduced to smiling parents who apparently have heard a lot of really good things about you. (Sometimes it means being grateful you remembered the student's name.)

It means dreading opening your email for 48 hours after returning work and being surprised by the occasional unsolicited grateful email.

It means being thanked by parents who (unfairly to their child) think that you are somehow the only reason their child managed to graduate.

It means being the recipient of secret crushes (and if you're unlucky, a stalker).

It means hearing "Thank you" a lot and wondering where you can get your sincerity detector re-calibrated.

It means being blunt and learning to say no when the situation calls for it.

It means being surrounded by colleagues who are (on average) as smart as you, and who know it. That in turn means learning to argue with flattery and make strategic compromises.

It means inventing novel ways of getting motivated to work on the less appealing aspects of your job. Cough*grading*cough. Ahem.

It means staying up until 4:35 grading because you told your students they could beat you with a big stick if you didn't have their papers graded by the next class period.

Okay, maybe that last one's just me.

Buffalo vs. Madison

2008-03-25T14:32:00.002-04:00

I realized this morning that I'd been remiss in sharing our good news of late, which is that my husband has been accepted to his top two choices for PhD programs: U at Buffalo and U Wisconsin-Madison. I've been sniffing around the Buffalo and Madison groups on Ravelry - have I mentioned that I'm shy? - but until he gets to go visit and hopefully hears a little more about money, we won't know for sure what the future holds.

I'm looking forward to the move either way, but it sure isn't easy waiting and not knowing what will happen next!

If anyone out there is from either of those cities, or went to either of those schools even, shoot me an email. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Sorry so brief today, I've got to get back to work and get a few more things done before this week's faculty senate meeting (where I will be crocheting - you know it!). We may actually be wrapping up tonight on our major motion (the one we've been dealing with every week this year). There's still a secondary motion to deal with separately, but this would be a big step - not to mention a nice treat to get to go home before 7 on a Tuesday. :)

Motivation

2008-03-23T20:03:00.002-04:00

Lots of motivation issues today. The first was motivation to get out of bed, which came in the form of a full Southern revival-style dawn Easter service on the street corner just down from our house. The real down side to waking up that way was that our iPod alarm was set to play Tom Petty songs and since we both woke up with headaches, we both lay there pretending that the cacophony was just going to go away on its own. :)

My next motivation was crochet related. I wanted to start (is it accurate to say "cast on" for crochet really?) the Retro Femme top from Sensual Crochet, but my swatch didn't work out. Even with all the parameters matching the pattern, I got a 2" by 2" square dry instead of a 4" by 4" square. I wet blocked it on advice from the lovely Amy Swenson (the pattern's designer) but it wasn't even 3" on a side. So, my husband and I decided to go out to breakfast before grocery shopping so we'd have an excuse to (1) swing into a craft store for me to get a larger hook (or three) and (2) go to Best Buy to get a movie just out on DVD that he wanted. Well, alas, the craft stores were both closed. We dedicded to hang around Barnes & Noble until Best Buy opened and spent an unnecessary sum, as I always do. Then Best Buy didn't even open. We got out to double check, but there was no sign about Easter hours, and we weren't the only annoyed customers. It was strange.

So we came home, and as we closed the gate behind the car, we realized we hadn't gone grocery shopping. But, the motivation to go back out was gone and we retired to an afternoon of laundry folding and Firefly watching. (Joss Whedon, if you're reading this, Thank You.)

Alas, I'm really lacking motivation to do what I need to be doing now before shower and bed, which is grading. Does anyone out there have a trick or tip for improving your motivation to do things that need to be done?

Weekend Wonder #3

2008-03-22T22:20:00.002-04:00

Hello again! While this was a really long week for me, I'm happy to say that I've still got a Weekend Wonder for you. This week it's a new pattern, which is available on my design site or on Ravelry. I got in just under the wire to beta test the Ravelry shop feature, so you can find PDFs of my first pattern - Vicki's Mittens - and this new one:

One-Hour Eye Mask

For those of you who are exclusively knitters, I have to say that my first knit pattern may still be a while in coming. From my last post, you know the shrug didn't work out as hoped, though thanks to Lacey for letting me know I'm not alone! I do have a loom pattern to put together... BUT! In the meantime, for anyone with a medium size (K +/- 1 mm) crochet hook, some cushy yarn, and a desire to learn something new, this should be a bit of fun!

I planned this eye-mask to use up the last of some Bernat Bamboo that I had, but it didn't take anywhere near as much as I expected! (I used the leftover leftovers to make a petite petite bijoux bag from Sensual Crochet by Amy Swenson. Pictures soon, because I love it!) But I used the eye mask that night and the next night and ever since. It's light and lovely, and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in trying out Tunisian crochet. My new friend and test crocheter, Silver on Ravelry, had never done Tunisian before and found the instructions easy to follow. I hope you will to, and if you give it a try, do let me know!

More soon!

P.S. to Cass

2008-03-18T16:49:00.002-04:00

I'll see your cute dog and call your hand.

To Frog or To Fix?

2008-03-18T14:10:00.008-04:00

Time for a bit of reader feedback. (Come on lurkers, time to contribute!) :)

I made a shrug on a yellow KK long loom in mock rib stitch (my pics below). I love the way the fabric itself turned out, but the design does not fit the way I wanted. Essentially, I was trying to imitate a design I'd seen on Ravelry - something similar to this crochet shrug at left from http://www.crochet.org/. I wanted something that would go across both my shoulders and my collarbone with nice long sleeves for my super long arms. And I wanted to knit it. There was no shoulder shaping involved, essentially it is just a long panel split down the middle for the neck opening and seamed up the undersides of the sleeves. My original plan had been to do short row shaping and to make the front and back wider than just half the sleeve, but I got lazy about the increases and was fooled by the project while it was on the loom.

What's wrong with it? Some things I can fix and some I can't.
1. The neck opening is wider than I intended, but I've already crocheted it shut a little to reinforce it - I could do more.
2. The arms are too narrow to seam up any higher than just above my elbows, meaning that this won't work for its primary purpose (my office is berry, berry cold in the summer, and I had hoped to have something to slip on over sleeveless tops, but this would leave an unattractive swath of ... my husband gets mad if I call it turkey arms, so I'll just leave it at that.
3. The lack of shaping and the long sleeves mean I can't just seam up the neck opening and wear it across my back - it falls down.

So, in the "Frog it" category is the argument that now that I've seen it finished, I know where I could put short rows for the shoulder shaping and how wide the neck should be and how I would like to make one change to the stitching... Plus, I have nearly a skein of yarn left over to add to the height of the front and back.

In the "Fix it" category, I could crochet gussets into the arms to lengthen the sleeves and even add height using crochet with no frogging required. (That won't get rid of the lack of shaping in the shoulders and puckering that results though.) Also, I need to get to work on a time sensitive project for my husband, and I'm not sure I'll have time to do both before he needs his done, and by then, I'll be home for the summer and packing to move to colder climes where a completely redone shrug will be more appropriate.

I'm still debating, and I promised my husband (who needs a cute knitblog nickname) that I wouldn't rush into frogging it. It was time consuming to make 450 rows of 30+ stitches...
What think ye?

Yikes! Must get back to work!

Weekend Wonder #2

2008-03-16T19:57:00.004-04:00

Hello again! I'm sorry for a lack of posting this week. It's a crunch time at work, so there hasn't been much time. And, sadly, my latest FO is also a disappointment. But(!) I'll save that for another post. This one is a Weekend Wonder! wonder... wonder... wonder...

For this Weekend Wonder, I wanted to share with you three of my favorite knitblogs. There's a lot of memes and such out there about top ten blogs, but I wanted to just do three to share something nice about these lovely ladies. As we all know, the great thing about blogs is that they give us a window into someone else's world. For some of us, this satisfies our inner voyeur, but I also think that for many of us, especially crafters, blog reading is about feeling like we are a part of a community.

While these aren't the three blogs that got me sucked into the the Inter-knit (heehee), they are three that make me love knitters and the whole knit community. I don't have everything in common with these ladies - I'm not a homeschooler, a book author, a knit designer, a mom, a divorcé... I don't drink as much ;) as they do, and I'm not even a needle knitter. Because of that last one, I often feel on the outskirts of knitting conversations, which is similar to a lot of the rest of my life. But reading these three blogs gets me excited about my own stuff - knitting, crafting, living. And THAT's what makes for a good blog.

Without further ado:

Knit and Tonic, by Wendy
Wendy has a design eye that I really like, both fresh and classic, but she's also a natural storyteller. She'll make you laugh with stories from the gym and stories about her family. She'll make you feel like you're in her backyard, enjoying knitting on a spring day. I'm not sure I can put it into words she would admire, but I feel like Wendy is a person, that I like her and she would like me and we could hang.

Shut Up, I'm Counting, by Cass
What to say about Cass? She'll crack you up. She's a great mom who makes me want to have teenagers RIGHT NOW, though as far as knitting goes ... she does much more colorful stuff than I do. :) She's real and messy (like me) and reminds me often of the value of laughing at one's self. Her blog is always either the first I read or the one I save for last.

CrazyAuntPurl, by Laurie
Crazy Aunt Purl is a recent discovery for me. I admired her book in the store a few months ago but managed to resist (a feat for me) until recently. The humor on her blog the last few months really drew me in until I couldn't help but buy the book. I haven't started reading it yet, but I did start at the beginning of her blog the other night. Laurie's story... Well, her book is titled Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair, so that says a lot. I'm still happily married and still believe in marriage - and my husband doesn't read this blog, so I'm not just saying that - but Laurie has been helpful to me in my own efforts at self-discovery of late, of remembering and learning who I am as a person. And I'm admiring her journey (as well as laughing at her wonderful writing).

I hope you enjoy these links. I'll try to check in early next week when I've mounted the next hill of grading. :) Future Weekend Wonders may include... (bum, bum, bummm) crochet blogs, loom knitting blogs, patterns that work (the shrug has fallen off that list) and tips and tricks from little ol' me!

Mandatory Advising

2008-03-13T14:50:00.002-04:00

I would much rather be posting about the coolness of my new glasses, but I have no camera and therefore no visual aids. So, instead, I will post about what I've spent most of my day doing. Mandatory advising.

I know a couple of my readers are academics and may already know what I'm talking about, but for the rest of you: mandatory advising is when a college/school/department/program requires its students to come see a designated advisor before they can register for classes each semester. In our case, we divide our students up at random unless the student has a preference, meaning every spring and fall I have to advise around three dozen students. We talk for 20 minutes each, though sometimes more, sometimes less, about what classes the student needs to take and what her/his long term plans are. Grad school, internships, and other issues come up.

For the most part, I don't mind. I like getting to see students I might not have seen in a while, and I enjoy helping some of them on their life paths - though I'll admit to wanting to send some of them off to someone else as swiftly as humanly possible. I feel that mandatory advising is paternalistic - we're babying them a bit - but I also recognize that a lot more of them seem to need it than you would expect. Then again, would so many of them need it, if it was optional? If we didn't hold their hands, could they stand on their own sooner?

I don't know, and I don't think I can even begin to have a good answer. I can say that for those of you who have to do this or something like it, it helps to cultivate a healthy aura of one part approachability and one part fear. My students feel comfortable coming to me and trust my advice, but they also don't dare come to me without having worked on their course schedule first.

I have a colleague who notoriously gripes about the number of students who come to him expecting him to design their schedules. He asked how the rest of us prevent that from happening. Everyone else commiserated but had no solutions. I admitted that it isn't a problem I have, perhaps because when advising starts I announce to my students that if they come unprepared, I'll send them away. I also put the same announcement on my door. And they come with cards and papers and scraps in hand, and we get through the whole thing like two adults 95% of the time.

(One girl this week came with a laminated list. It was awesome.)

My colleague claimed that he too sent them away, after giving them a lecture about behaving like adults, taking responsibility for themselves, and not wasting his time. Now, it's my suspicion, and I could be wrong, that students either sense or seek out the hypocrisy in his lecture. We want you to take responsibility, but don't trust you to do it without us. We'd rather waste some of your time up front than let some of you waste our time later on by coming up short for graduation. You're an adult, but you can't do this for yourself. My time is too important to be spent on you, unless I can spend it admonishing you and being condescending.

I didn't tell him this, because untenured faculty don't advise tenured faculty - no, uh-uh, no way - but what I do is actually much colder than his lecture. I ask the student, "Why didn't you take the time think about your course schedule before you came?" Then, I nod along while they are hemming and hawing, and all the while, I'm writing the address of the website for their degree requirements on the top of a course schedule. Then, I give them that paper and a disappointed smile. I tell them to come back when they can make time to think about it; after that I say as little as possible while looking as disappointed as possible. Out they go, trailed by a thin veil of frost and looking a little bit (or a lot) ashamed. I have fewer every semester, and only one last fall, which is best since I hate making them feel bad only a touch less than I hate making their schedules for them.

And yet, I've had at least one student every semester in my classes or in this major because their parents signed them up for it. And my colleagues wonder why I don't have kids yet!

Knitting next time. I promise.

Weekend Wonder #1

2008-03-08T18:24:00.004-05:00

Hello, hello!
The first ever Weekend Wonder is the premiere of (1) a spin-off of this blog and (2) a new crochet pattern. I know, I know - this is No Tension Knits! I promise the shrug will be posted as soon as it's done - which may be tomorrow if I'm a good girl.

Anyway! The new website is http://notensiondesign.wordpress.com/. I created a WordPress blog to have somewhere easy to post static pages (I use wordpress for my academic blog, so it was an easy set-up). All my designs will be posted there, starting with this first one!

Vicki's Mittens

A simple mitten that - if you're slightly faster than me, or better at concentrating - will take just over three hours. (It took me over four including rip backs and design time.) Details at No Tension Design!

The blog itself will only be used for sharing designs and errata, which will also be announced here, so no need to track a new feed if you don't want to. You can also find them on Ravelry, through me or through No Tension Design.

My long term goal is to post my knitting patterns in two formats - loom and needle - but I'll only be able to do that with the help of a needle knitter. I'll try not to get ahead of myself.
And that's the Weekend Wonder!

In other news, I'm plugging along with my grading and using knitting as a reward. Working well so far, but I better get back to it!

Not really sure I understand irony

2008-03-07T10:25:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure if this is truly ironic or Alanis Morissette ironic, but go with me here.

Any one ever read Stephen King's The Stand? Did you get sick when you read it? As in, did the book give you the superflu? Every time I had read it - and that was three times before this year - I got sick. No, not tubeneck, but a nice cold that left me feeling better after than I did before. I'm not unique in this either, as my husband got sick both times he read it.

Over winter break this year, I read a new copy of it, feeling like I needed to get sick for a couple of days to get the stress of last semester out of my system. (I bought the new copy because the old one is near its end with part of the cover missing.) This year, for the first time, not a sniffle. I don't know if I wasn't ready to let go of last semester or what, but Captain Trips passed me by. A good friend theorizes that maybe I was just sick the first time I read it and that the book itself is contaminated. I like to think not. Ew.

Anyway, now, when I should have had a whole week to grade and work on my writing, I find myself completely tied down with - yep - the flu.

Yesterday I was feeling better, but in a dangerous don't-do-too-much-or-it'll-come-back-worse-than-before way. So, I read some theses and knitted and crocheted, but apparently, that was too much. I'm back on the couch today, with an FO (Vicki's mittens, crochet) and a nearly FO (the shrug, loom knit) and a small mountain of grading. My hands are too shaky to craft or grade - I have a nervous condition that gives me tremors when I'm fatigued, which is a nice canary-in-a-coal-mine stress indicator, but something I do try to avoid. Therefore, I'm blogging, surfing Ravelry, and then napping if I still can't grade.

You may still be asking yourself, self, what's between me and good knitting pictures? This lovely storm is, as seen from my couch on the right or as seen from [begin reverb] SPACE, space... space... space... space...

P.S. Sorry my grammar skillz go away when I'm sick. Leave a comment if you like the blog better this way. ;)

Flu + Karma

2008-03-03T17:45:00.002-05:00

Alas, the weekend passed without either an end to the suspense or an end to the flu. I had something neat I wanted to post sometime over the weekend, but I'm afraid it will have to wait another week. Hopefully, by then the flu - who I am very sorry for insulting in a previous post - will have passed. As it is, I can only knit about four or five rows on the symmetrical shrug before I get tired. I've tried grading, but don't feel like I'm giving it the mental energy it needs, so none of that either. On Saturday, I thought I was getting better and spent a little time at the LYS and Barnes and Noble, so I even have new projects I'd like to be working on, just no energy.
Apologies then for the radio silence, but know that I'm planning to make it up with pictures, a pattern (or two) and positive thinking that none of YOU get sick, too!

Crochet Testers?

2008-02-28T19:38:00.003-05:00

Hello! I spent the day at home sick, but the good news is I wrote up my first detailed pattern for a project I whipped together last night when I got too feverish to grade. (Note that I haven't yet been too feverish to craft, though I did get too sleepy at one point.)
I’m looking for anyone interested in test crocheting the pattern - I call it Slick: the One-Hour Eye Mask. You just need about an hour and 20g/20yds of a yarn similar in weight to a Bernat’s Bamboo. (It's listed as a Bulky 5, but I don’t think it’s that bulky personally). Oh, and a K hook (a J hook or L would also be worth testing).
What you’ll get is this! I slept in it last night, and it was better than the store bought-one I needed to replace. (There's a bazillion candle-power light directly across from our bedroom window, so a mask is a must for both of us to sleep.)
I’m going to make the pattern freely available, but I’d like it to be clean first. Unfortunately, no one I know knows Tunisian crochet. (There’s the kicker!) The pattern includes what I hope are clear instructions on Tunisian stitch (just need the simple stitch, increases and decreases), but there are also great video tutorials at NexStitch. This would be an easy project to try out Tunisian if you haven’t before, I promise! It’s also a great stash buster. If you’re interested, just comment here or send me an email at notensionknits at gmail.

ETA: Notice the texture? Its a little bumpy on the outside, but the inside (what is technically the front of Tunisian fabric) is smooth (see the parts over my fingers?).

Flu is a dumb word

2008-02-26T15:45:00.002-05:00

Okay, so being sick makes me petulant. Sorry.

I'm taking a little break before starting another student's thesis chapter, after which I'm off to the faculty senate. I was stranded on the couch this morning, but I got to play on the blog. What do you think of the new look?

This afternoon I'm feeling better; let's hope it lasts. The best news is that once I get through tomorrow, I'll be riding a wave of catching up on email and grading through Spring Break. No more meetings, no more class prep, just exams on Friday and then a date with the couch. Lovin' it. And then, only seven weeks left in the semester. It's all downhill from here. Lovin' that, too.

Besides the new look, I've been thinking about introducing something I do weekly that has a hook. I don't always have an FO, so no "FO Fridays". I'm thinking about doing tips that I've discovered, or maybe links to some of my favorite blogs, but both have already been done.
... Actually, I just had an idea, but now I'm going to keep you* in suspense about it until I can flesh it out, which I can't do right now, alas. Until next time!

* Yes, you. All two of you that subscribe to this blog on bloglines. :) I know you're out there. And, thanks.

Gray Weekends, Gray Knitting, Gray Crocheting

2008-02-24T17:37:00.002-05:00

Much like the Yarn Harlot, who has recently been knitting much in gray, I've been seeing a lot of gray lately. Gray in the sky outside this weekend to match my stay-in-and-drink-tea, gray mood, as well as both gray knitting and gray crochet.

The shrug is coming along steadily. Having finished a skein's worth of work about a third of the way across the shrug's chest, I've realized I'll have 1-1.5 skeins left over. (Can you tell I'm still new at this?)

Well, a friend's wife is ill and recently has come to the point that she can't put on gloves herself. Not surprisingly, he's having a hard time finding mittens in coastal South Carolina. Supply and demand at work - I've got yarn and ~~an addiction~~ a skill, and they've got a need. I've decided to make her a basic pair in my excess yarn not just because I have it, but because she wears a lot of gray and black, so I know she'll like it.

I've been carrying the spare skein and two crochet hooks around with me this week trying to get a pattern going. I've looked at a lot of different patterns online (thank you Ravelry), and finally ended up with a modified version of this Lion Brand bath mitt in half-double instead of double crochet. I started and frogged at least five designs before this one worked, plus frogging the thumb opening three times, but I've been enjoying it. I'm about 75% done with one, so I'll let you know soon how they turn out.

The shrug has gotten too big for public knitting, so the mitten(s) and a half-finished bath mitt of my own will be in my bag this week. Even last night, at the theater where we saw Quilters, I was crocheting away before the show and at intermission. (Some people stopped to admire my work and a few asked if I thought it was safe to crochet around quilters - that we might come to fisticuffs. It's now given me a tough-to-shake image of gangs of crafters rumbling like the Sharks and the Jets. I think the needlecrafters might band together against the scrapbookers, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it would be fiber versus sewing, or needles versus hooks, with loomers waiting to fight the winner.)

In the meantime, count down with me, because after this week, it's spring break! No vacation here, just grading in my PJs, but I'm still looking forward to it!

My current WIPs and an almost FO

2008-02-19T21:18:00.004-05:00

Wow! A crafting post! Imagine! This is what I've been working on recently, though not as much as I'd like.

1. An FO revisited - I ripped the ribbon lining of the Calla Lily strap out and re-felted the bag. A little denser and a little more pilled, I like it better and have been using it for about two weeks without the ribbon sewn back in. I like it and haven't noticed any stretching; so far, so good. I also haven't put my heaviest item - my journal - in it lately.

2. An almost FO - I improvised a camera bag out of some left over Landscapes yarn but I don't have the ribbon to thread through the top to cinch it, so the effect isn't quite complete. Plus, my husband had his camera, so I couldn't take a picture of it with a camera in it. I wrote my first crochet pattern and put all of this up on Ravelry if you want to take a look. (Please do!)

3. A WIP - The shrug I designed hit the 100 row mark tonight - and stopped on the 135 row mark at the end of tonight's faculty senate meeting. :) It's knit sideways on the yellow KK straight loom. The stitch pattern is described here informally for loom and needles. If anyone knows what the "proper" name for this stitch is, I'd love to know. (Sadly, I spotted my first screw up in this piece tonight, but since it's for me, I'm not going to tink it. It was just a purl where there should have been a knit.)

As Rachel said today, click to embiggen. You can see my crochet cast on in both pictures. I was trying a new technique.

For Loom: Cast on an odd number of stitches, R to L (CW). Row 1: Knit off all stitches. Row 2: K, P, to end of row. Repeat Rows 1-2.

For Needles: Cast on an odd number of stitches. Row 1: Knit all stitches. Row 2: P, K, to end of row. Repeat Rows 1-2.

(Note, I don't think that's actually quite right, because the way I loom knit, you only knit the end pegs once, but I'm too tired to translate it perfectly. This would get the body of the stitch right.) :)

Work... Up To Here...

2008-02-18T16:40:00.002-05:00

Well, some of my grading is done, but it made for a bummer of a weekend. I've got three papers left to grade and three thesis-portions left to read for my advisees. I would very much like to take tonight off and knit(!) but I am waiting to hear from my dear husband. If he has a lot of homework, then I'll probably bring home some grading, but if not, I may just knit while we watch Back to the Future II (and III? perhaps) - part of his birthday present.
I do have an FO to show if I get home in time to take nicely lit pictures. I crocheted a little camera case out of some Lion Brand Landscapes that I've been trying to use. I've got three and a half to three and three quarters skeins of the brown Landscapes colorway I used for my Unoriginal Hat left from a clearance sale and I'm not sure what to do with it. It's my only stash, believe it or not. Everything else is in progress or committed.
Sigh. I need to be committed. Nappy time.

FO: Butterfly Moebius a.k.a twisted wrap

2008-02-10T19:58:00.002-05:00

Ah, the saga of the moebius by Cat Bordhi (Ravelry). Actually, this was a pretty easy and fun knit, and if I had been paying more attention it would have turned out the right size. Begin at the beginning, right?
When I started the wrap, I had four skeins of this bamboo yarn and wanted to do something wrap-like with it. I'm not a shawl kind of girl, and I thought about designing my own wrap, but I was inspired by this pattern's twists. Bernat Bamboo Natural Blends (Ravelry) fit the bill of what Bordhi called for in her description of good substitutes for her pattern.
Well, I liked the way my double moss stitch swatch came out better than what I had been thinking anyway, so I cast on and went to town. Then I went past town. I may have already mentioned this, but I was knitting in a meeting and couldn't hold it up to size. It ended up being a couple inches too wide for my shoulders, and my choices were to rip back or to start over. I considered both, but I'd only screwed up one pair of stitches! Every time I've ripped back I've messed it up and lost two to three times what I meant to, so I reallllly didn't want to rip back. I could have started over and made it taller given that I had over a skein left, but I decided instead to try crocheting a border around the edge to tighten it up. (Single crochet only alternating between a regular sc and sc two together... I can't remember the notation for that.) That worked like a charm. The FO doesn't drape like Bordhi's does - but it did until I put the edge on (in case you're considering using the yarn for this project). I liked the drape, but not with the ill fit, so this was my improvisation. The result is cuddly, and I like that, too.
If you have any recommendations for a simple project with about 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 skeins of this yarn, let me know. I was thinking a calorimetry, but now that I've knit with it, I think it might be too slippery...
Opinions?

My husband repels Death

2008-02-08T20:51:00.000-05:00

I have become convinced that my husband somehow repels Death. I am concerned that I, in fact, somehow attract Death. Let me submit to you the evidence. (Note, some of the evidence is gross. Weak stomach? Consider yourself warned, but I try to keep it above board.)

1. My husband managed to actually roll a car at age 16 with three passengers, none of whom were wearing seatbelts, and no one was hurt. I was not there.

2. When he was in the reserves, my husband had to leave me home alone one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer. On one of said longer trips, I began to have strange encounters with Death. First, there was the very run over snake in the middle of the road down which I walked the dog.

3. Then, on another of these trips, I discovered half a deer carcass off on the side of the road. No, I don't know why only half - I tried to neither look, nor think about it, but it was likely for the same reason that the carcass was one day off the road, one day up on the road and the next day about 20 feet farther down the road.

(N.B. - At this point, I forbid Husband to leave. Fortunately, his service was up anyway.)

4. As an archaeologist, he spends his summers doing field work in faraway places like Turkey, Sweden, and Iceland. One year when he was in Turkey, I found some sort of mole/rat thing in the yard. Let's just say the remains were not conclusively identifiable. (Unlike the others, I couldn't skirt this one and had to throw it out myself. Blech.)

5. The next year, when he was in Sweden or Iceland - can't recall which - I had a similar incident with dead birds, one is a public park looking mauled and the other downtown looking suspiciously like he tried to fly through a building.

6. Then, one autumn, I was hit by a large delivery truck while crossing the street. (One like but not actually this one.) Fortunately, He Who Eschews and Repulses Death was with me. As it was, Mr. Truck came to a stop on my foot, but I'm starting to wonder what would have happened if he hadn't been there. (I really don't like to think about what would have happened had I not randomly chosen to wear my work boots that day. I now fear big tires and combinations of bright blue and silver, as well as truck grilles. You can't blame me really.)

7. My husband is out of town this week. This morning, I took the dog out and brought him back in without incident. I pack up to leave, and as I'm walking out of the house, I nearly step on a dead bird on our porch where I had just been standing, not five minutes earlier. Perhaps a robin, I don't really know, but a bird laying there peacefully as if he died of natural causes.

All a coincidence? Perhaps, but I'm really starting to wonder.

Ups and Downs

2008-02-07T09:41:00.000-05:00

Up: One of my classes is watching a movie this week, which has cut back on my class prep time enough to give me time to grade.
Down: I have to grade.

Up: I discovered I have something else in common with one of my new favorite bloggers, the Knitting Linguist, besides being faculty, which is that she's also a faculty Senate knitter like me!
Down: I had yet another Senate meeting this week at which we continued to not resolve anything and will have to continue meeting weekly until we do.
Double Down: I almost finished the wrap in said meeting but couldn't size it to be sure and have now discovered it to be too wide. Have idea for fix. Will post about that next time.

Fact: My husband is out of town.
Up: More time to craft and edit my writing. Perfect opportunity to acquire his birthday present.
Down: My husband is out of town.
Double Down: His wallet was stolen last night, so I was up and down and up again circa 2 a.m. As a result, I am now less than up. (I think that might be triple or even quadruple down, but I like alliteration, not repetition, so I'm sticking to it.) Oh, and that means there's no one to take pictures even if I get the wrap right.

Up: I don't have to go in today.
Down: That doesn't mean I don't have plenty of work to do. I really shouldn't just spend the day crafting. Grading it is.
Double Down: I'm jonesing to try something with crochet that I thought of last night. Jonesing, damn it.

I guess that's all for now. If I give in to my crochet urge, I'll also give in to my urge to find camera batteries and take a picture to post later.

FO: Fingerless Bath Mitt

2008-02-04T22:00:00.001-05:00

This was an improvised design I made after practicing my technique while watching NexStitch videos. I definitely recommend them. I learned to crochet from my left-handed mother who admitted to not being able to tell if I was doing it right. These little tutorials were a big help, as was the tutorial from Lion Brand (also available as PDF). (The project is on Ravelry or you can just see more pictures here.)
In knitting news, I'm about 70% done with my wrap - the Butterfly Moebius. One of the classrooms I teach in is Arctic-ly cold. I'm not kidding - the students keep their jackets on and some actually cover their mouths with their scarves during class. I'm hoping the wrap and/or the shrug that's up right after it will help. The shrug is still in the design phase though until I finish the wrap, so I'm also hoping to get the wrap done this week so the shrug will be done before the weather warms. (Though when it does, the classroom just gets colder.)
Non-knitting related post tomorrow!

Crochet Compulsion

2008-01-31T14:46:00.000-05:00

I don't have to seriously ask if anyone else is addicted to knitting or looming or crochet, because all I have to do is take one quarter of a lap around the Ravelry forums to know I'm not alone. (Heck, the vast majority of Ravelers spend way more than I do... so far.)
But I have to confess to feeling particularly addicted this week. I cast on for a bath mitt of my own improvised design on Tuesday. The only reason I'm not done with it - and I'm a brand spankin' new crocheter - is because I have to go to a lecture tonight and I want to have it to take with me. I got a few rows done at a club meeting last night and a few more earlier yesterday while listening to a podcast on my lunch break. I've resisted touching it today, which I'm impressed about given that today has been blech.
Anyone who has been reading this blog regularly - and I don't think there's more than maybe one or two of you ;) - knows that I'm taking a leave of absence from my job. Well, that doesn't start until the end of the school year, and I am not patient about the wait. This week, the grading begins, and I think I'm going to have to develop some sort of grade-a-paper-crochet/knit-a-row rule to make sure I get my work done. It's soooo much more interesting for my brain to be thinking about the sweater idea I recently had or the miniature Calla Lily bag I'm planning to test my design modifications before I make a big one. And that's not even when you take into account the time I spend thinking about my writing.
My husband's going out of town next week, and while I hate that in itself, I'm excited about the opportunity to work on editing my novel. I think I've got maybe 30 more days of work on it, but there's no way I'll be able to get more than three days in a normal week. I'm hoping I can get it agent-ready by April or May, and I'm double hoping that doesn't turn out to be a pipe dream.
On one last knitting note, I'm going to try to either take FO pictures this weekend (if the weather clears up) or buy some supplies I need to take better indoor pictures so I can show more FOs, maybe including better Calla Lily shots. If anyone has tips, I'd love to hear them.

Who likes paying bills?

2008-01-27T22:32:00.000-05:00

My husband and I tackled a daunting but necessary project this weekend. We paid bills. This would not be such an inordinately big deal if we hadn't been putting it off for four months. Don't get me wrong - we've been making nearly (all) of the payments, but we haven't balanced any of the accounts or really recorded any transactions except the payments themselves since the end of September.
Anyone who read this blog early on knows that last fall was the proverbial straw on this camel's back at work, causing me to plan a leave of absence from teaching next year. Knitting, writing, and my husband are the only things that kept me sane (with my cats and dog falling into the category of things that made me laugh when nothing else would). Well, we've been saying for a little over a month that we'd get caught up on bills at the end of the year.
Close enough?
The good news is we're not going bankrupt.
We also worked on organizing our books this weekend - we're both compulsive book buyers - and the sheer number of unread books both helped me justify taking most of yesterday off to read but also will probably help keep our book buying under control.
And now to knit a little before bed. Bliss. I'm working on the bamboo wrap. This is my third pattern adaptation, but a much simpler one than the Unoriginal Hat or Calla Lily Bag. It's based on the Butterfly Moebius (Ravelry) in the Big Book of Yarn.
Have a great week!
PS Pictures of my first crochet project as soon as I can arrange the photos.

FO: Calla Lily Bag

2008-01-23T18:43:00.000-05:00

Before:

The bag was assembled in a very rectangular way and completely seamed together at this stage. It was looking big, but not so big that I thought it wouldn't felt down to a good size. The proportions weren't quite looking right for the final product, but I'd had to do a couple of fixes already, and without knowing how it would felt, I took the chance.

I washed it in my environmentally-friendly Kenmore for about half an hour, maybe a little longer, and it felted up well. In retrospect, I might have been more patient and let it felt for one more cycle.

And After:

Apologies for the slightly blurry picture. We were trying desperately to catch the last of the light today. I'd love to set up a place inside for good pictures... but I digress.
I lined the bag handle with a strip of pale blue ribbon (see below) to prevent it from stretching out. Note how the outer walls are higher than the inner - this isn't part of the pattern, nor was it intentional on my part. I didn't notice the inner wall was shorter than the outer until I had two done, and until I finished the third, I thought I might be imagining it. I made the fourth (the other outer wall) ten rows longer to try to make them match up better, and felted you can't tell at all.

I already have ideas for how I will do the next one differently - shorter, slightly tapered corners, garter stitch maybe - but I do think this one turned out well. It holds my basics plus some, and I really like the color.

The Calla Lily Bag, adapted for the loom/rake, ladies and gentlemen.

Contest and the Calla Lily Bag

2008-01-22T21:04:00.000-05:00

First, a plug for a contest on a blog I frequently read - Shut Up I'm Counting - http://shutupimcounting.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/444-contest/. I think contests like these are fun community builders, and I hope some day to have enough readers to do something like that.
Second, a lament. Don't worry, the bag is fine, I think it may even be awesome (one should throw up horns at that moment to get the complete effect), but the weather here has been miserable here, ruining all my chances for pictures. Today it clears, but only because I had to work and didn't get to go outside while it was sunny. Alas, here it is, 9 p.m. and I'm just getting home. I tried to take pictures in my office today, but they did not do her justice.
A measure of how awesome the bag is: my husband wants me to adapt the pattern to make him a bag for the field. (He's a team leader on an archaeological project and needs something with easy access for his supplies.) I'm thinking about making it in Lion's Brand Fisherman's Wool in the somewhat new color way - Nature's Brown. If you've used it, let me know? Or if you have any other suggestions of good felting medium brown wools, pass them on. Patons' dark brown was too dark, so I'm searching for an appropriate ~~sacrifice~~ substitute for him. It needs to be brown to hide the dirt - they'll be in Turkey after all.
We're allowed to knit for husbands if they ask us to, right?
PS I was thinking I might christen him - in the long tradition of knitbloggers using obscure acronyms for spouses - HWAM, but it reminds me too much of Wham!, which always gets - dammit, there it is! - Father Figure by George Michael stuck in my head. If you know why, you are already my friend. If you can guess what HWAM would have stood for, you are my psychic friend.

Calla Lily Bag - almost done!

2008-01-15T16:10:00.001-05:00

And in knitting news...

This is the Calla Lily Bag - though the color I chose is more rose and less lily. The yarn is Patons Classic Merino Wool and the colorway is Rich Red; I'll post all details with the FO and on Ravelry. The picture to the left is where it stands now - knitted assembled, seamed, but not felted. I've never felted before and am a little (lot!) nervous. MAYBE tonight. If you have a tried and true way, please share!

Christmas Scarves and My Little Helper

2008-01-10T22:37:00.000-05:00

The infamous gift scarves! Actually, there's nothing infamous about them. These are just two scarves, modeled by their recipients, that I made in December for two female relatives. The light blue started out as a straight garter stitch, but the yarn was a pain to work with, so I frogged and started doing it in the round so that I only had to knit, not purl. I realized a couple dozen rows in that this scarf was going to be far too thick for Arizona and that I might run out of yarn. So, I got creative. I think the Yarn Harlot would be proud.

I stopped working in the round by reversing at the end of one rotation and then decreased a stitch at the end of the row. Repeat back and forth until you have a flat panel half the width of the loom and you get a scarf end with a tube and a V-shaped opening. What I did then is knit garter stitch to the end of the skein, repeat the same procedure to create another short tube and length of scarf of about the same size, and seam them together roughly in the middle. Finally, I seamed up the end of those tubes so I'd made a scarf with pockets. I would actually do this again if I was going to make another scarf - for an impromptu fix it worked out really well. She dug the pockets, and I certainly didn't tell her they weren't part of the plan.

The other scarf suffered a similar glitch of a different nature. I was using Lion Brand Homespun to make a chevron pattern, which is really a waste of neat stitches since you can't see them in the yarn. I got about 20-25 rows in (I wasn't counting since I planned to do the same pattern for as long as it took) when I realized I wasn't going tob able to finish these in time for Christmas. I needed help. (As it ended up, we were still knitting on Christmas.) Well, my husband isn't a knitter; the chevrons would have been too complicated for him, so I had him knit about half of the scarf in a wide rib pattern, then I made the other end approximately the same squirrelly series of chevrons, and seamed it up. The result? A scarf that looks vaguely frilly on the ends, which is nice enough I guess.

Now I am trying to finish up my Calla Lily bag but struggling to spend as much time as I'd like given that classes started this week. I got a lot done last night ~~despite~~ thanks to My Little Helper, pictured here in a poorly lit shot. :) Fortunately, I'm only 15 rows from the end of the strap, which is my last section, and then the seaming will begin! That's going to take a long time - there are eight 70-stitch seams to attach the four panels to the strap. And then - the last step - I have to felt it.

I'll take progress shots and share the whole thing with you and my Ravelry buddies as soon as I can - hopefully over the weekend. Happy Friday!

Biding time

2008-01-04T14:54:00.000-05:00

Happy new year all! I've been back at work for two days and not loving it, so I decided to take a break to update this blog. Unfortunately, I don't have the memory stick with me I thought I did, so instead of my last-minute-Christmas scarves, you get a vacation photo. So sorry. Will be back soon with better knitting related updates.

Newbie Mistakes and Happy Anniversary

2007-12-22T00:04:00.001-05:00

I made a newbie knitting mistake this week. Not dropped stitches or something like that but an overestimation of my own abilities. I've been working on the Calla Lily Bag for a couple weeks - too late for pictures tonight, but I'll include process pictures when I post the FO next year (probably) - and am down to the LONG strap and the felting. However, a few days ago, Husband and I had the brilliant idea to knit scarves for two of his female relatives that we always struggle to shop for who will probably enjoy the handmade gift a lot more than what we might buy. This was a good idea, but perhaps not a great idea given the time constraints. I've got Husband (a non-knitter) working on one while I do the other, and they are about 25% and 35% done respectively. He's doing the garter stitch main portion and I did cabling at one end with plans to do more at the other. This too wouldn't be such a big challenge except that we have to spend all day tomorrow cleaning our house and we leave the next day.

I'm going to make him knit on his a little before bed and that's what I'm going to go do now. I was even knitting on mine in the car today as we drove to breakfast and the movies. We went to two movies for our anniversary and then came home to frozen pizza. Yum. :)

On to scarves! I'll take pictures and try to post them before we leave. In case I can't - happy holidays and happy knitting!

My Too-Big-Mitts, Mouse Pillow and Unoriginal Hat

2007-12-18T22:05:00.001-05:00

My first FOs! Only a week later than I promised myself, but there's three! I've included details of all of these on my Ravelry account too.

My first knit project was a scarf that is fairly useful but not really worth mentioning. My second was the mitts - I call them my Too-Big-Mitts - at right. (Pictures of all projects are available at my Flickr account.) These were my own design, so to speak, of a tube on the blue KK loom, knit in the round except for the thumb hole created by knitting back and forth without completing the round, and a simple cast off. They work very well for their purpose, which was that I needed something to pad my wrists and palms at my laptop during NaNoWriMo. My currently in progress paper has more design flair, is more fitted, and only has the yarn doubled on the bottom (palm) side in order to make the back more breathable.

This is a mouse pillow inspired by pieKnits' pattern. It's really just a moss-stitch square seamed on three sides except for the little bit of flair created by the cast on. Last but not least, this is a hat I made in my first attempt to convert something complicated - cables - from an existing pattern - the Yarn Harlot's Unoriginal Hat.

I'm happy with how all of these turned out, but I definitely learned a different lesson from each of them. (Make the thumb hole bigger, be more careful with stitch patterns, and that technique of cabling didn't quite work, for example.) If you've got comments or questions about how I did anything, I'm happy to chat about it. Now to sleep!

Deleted Posts

2007-12-16T17:25:00.000-05:00

Hello again, blogland. Anyone who has been checking on this blog has probably noticed that I deleted a few posts. I decided a minor facelift and some house cleaning was in order. For those who never read it before, just know that I vented some feelings about work that I decided were better kept out of the public record and have decided to self-edit.
I fully intended to get out and take some FO pictures this weekend, but I left one of the FOs at work on Friday after a bad day and have seen very little sun this weekend. The good news is that I've made substantial progress on my first to-be-felted project instead. I will document the stages of that and hopefully have time to post here and on Ravelry later this week.
I'll get the hang of this soon enough.

NaNoWriMo

2007-12-02T12:45:00.000-05:00

Awesome-sauce!
NaNoWriMo 2007 - my first - is done, and I finished! Well, I won, meaning I wrote 50K words in 30 days, but "winning" sounds so competitive. Then again, "finished" isn't exactly accurate either since my last three or four chapters are more like outlines with vignettes of critical moments.
I think I'm going to take a couple days off from it and start back up after my birthday. I have a few things to do for work. I was fully intending to start a new WIP this weekend, but am unable to get to my yarn - long story. If I can get through today's work, I'll take some pictures when I get home. If not, Tuesday. I'm promising this to myself, not you. :)

Dear Blogland...

2007-11-18T21:03:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my humble blog. I'm sure you've heard that before.
By the time you're reading this, I've already posted a few more entries (3? 10? dozens? we'll see!) and come out of the blogging closet. For now, I'm keeping it quiet. For now, this is my much-needed outlet of anonymity and knitting goodness. For now, I can confide anything here I want to and hopefully build up to being out about it.
In the meantime, here’s a little about me. I'm a not-quite-thirty with a bit of a problem with tension. Two kinds, really - the kind that makes for good consistent needle knitting (yay!) and the kind that gives you ulcers and chronic pain (boo!). My problem with them is not enough of the first and too much of the latter, but I've recently discovered much love for loom knitting. Tension is important on a loom or rake or board, but it is not so difficult to maintain. Like life, it’s about balance, and yet the act of creation on the loom still takes away a bit of that other deplorable kind of tension.
Having been sucked in by some of your beautiful knitblogs (namely Yarn-a-Go-Go, PieKnits, and brooklyntweed), where I lost time but gained far more invaluable inspiration, I wanted to try to bring the same freshness and personality to knitting without needles (KWON). We'll see if I succeed, right?
I have a houseful of cats, a best-friend dog and a best-friend husband who are the only souls who know about this blog. Only a couple of people even know I knit. Perhaps you're wondering what the big deal is? This new hobby comes at a point in my life where I'm considering leaving the safe comfortable exhausting job for which I spent a lot of time in school in favor of the risky creative job I think I might like a lot more. For me knitting is about more than a hobby. It's about finding out some things about myself. It's about exploring a side of my personality I keep locked up (and shouldn't we all do that?). And most of all, it's about finding pride in what I do... whatever that turns out to be.
And it's all brought to you online. Cool, eh? All hail the gods of bloggy goodness.
FO photos in a couple of days, and more!