When Drinking During the Debates isn't an Option

In The Lion In Winter, Eleanor of Aquitaine picks up a mirror, then puts it down, saying, "I can't look. I'd turn to salt." I felt much the same way about the debates last night. I watched for about eight minutes, and after screaming myself hoarse, I decided to do something productive instead. I organised patterns!

 

After I moved to New Orleans, I never really finished unpacking. There are still a few boxes of oddments and endments that I just don't know what to do with, where to put, how to organise, but at the same time, things I don't want to get rid of. It's hell living in a location that can't have basements because the water table is so high. Our house actually stands on pylons, and there is space between the building and the ground. I don't want to even imagine what lives under the house. I've seen the cockroaches in this burg.

But one of my boxes contained about 20 or so patterns, and I sat and fitted them into plastic sleeves to keep them all together. Some were duplicated, because I'd forgotten I'd printed them, but I just stuffed them in together. There were all sorts of goodies. A peacock shawl, a Canadian maple leaf toque, a red dragon toque, various shawls and cabled scarves, and even an Icelandic sweater pattern, named Oðinn which I'd like to make sometime.

In all, it was a very satisfying experience to get all those patterns into sleeves. I know there are more packed away in various boxes that I haven't gotten to yet, but I will, eventually. 

Off Topic

The little description at the top of this blog thingy says that this is mostly a knitting blog, so sometimes we go a little off topic. Today is one of those days. Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

For the last five years I have used a flip phone. I'd flip it open and have a keyboard to type texts, and it was, more or less, a machine for phoning and texting. Occasionally I'd take pictures with it, but that was never its primary function. It served as a means of communication by texting and phoning.

In August I got caught in one of New Orleans' torrential downpours and my little flip phone got wet. Very wet. Drenched, in fact. When I got it home all I could get it to do was go, "Buzzzzzzzzz." Not useful. I packed it into a zip-lock baggie with those little silica gel packets that you get with electronics, and hoped for the best. Eventually it dried out, though it took the better part of a week, and it was fine, til the front screen went blank. It would buzz when I got a text, but I would have to open it to see who it was from, and if I wanted to make a phone call, I had to open it, jot down the number, and dial it manually. Not an ideal situation, and I knew it was time to bid it farewell and move into the 21st century and get a Smart Phone (well, at least the second decade of the 21st century).

Two weeks ago I went to the store and got my first Smart Phone. It's an android, and does all sorts of wonderful things. It can connect to the internet. I can get on Facebook with it. I can get to Ravelry with it. It plays games. It has a kindle. It even phones and texts.

And I hate it. I hate it with the passion of 10,000 burning suns.

It chirps, cheeps, bings, burps, tweets, and twats all the time. Some of those times are when I have an actual text. Tonight I turned off the Facebook notifications on the phone. I only have two gigs of data and don't want to use it up, and will probably delete Facebook from my phone entirely. Because I don't want to use it get on the internet, or as a GPS, or as a camera, or to be any more intrusive into my life than I need it to be. I need it to make phone calls and to send texts. No more, no less.

I am somewhat of a neo-Luddite. I don't like too much technology, and only want what I need to make life easier. Therefor I like using a washing machine, but not a dryer. If it weren't so damn damp in this state, I'd have a clothesline for all my freshly laundered goods. But it would probably take a week to dry. As it is, most of my clothes get hung up to dry, either on a drying rack or on hangers. I don't really like microwave ovens. I understand that they can be useful, but I prefer a toaster oven, and if I could only have one, I'd prefer the latter. I prefer real books to e-books, and while e-mail has its uses, a hand written letter is so much nicer. In short, I am not what anyone could call an early adopter of most technologies.

But I need to have a phone, and my old phone really was on its last legs (it tended to shut itself off from time to time, sometimes when I was actually on the phone talking to someone). It looks like I'm stuck with this monstrosity, and I will probably have to learn how to use it more effectively. But it doesn't mean I have to like it. It merely means that I have to bow to expedience.

Weekend Catch Up

Over the weekend I finished my gauge swatch for my Icelandic sweater. Honestly, I have always hated knitting swatches, but I understand the need for them. I knit it flat, even though the garment will be knit in the round, and even though I understand that stockinette knit flat has a slightly different gauge from that which is knit in the round, I doggedly knit it flat. No one can ever say that I never engage in exercises in futility.

Because I am absolutely the worst at actually reading the gauge, I walked my swatch over to Miss Bette, and asked her to take a look at it. I had gotten about four stitches to the inch, and she confirmed my findings (OK, maybe I'm not as bad at ascertaining my gauge as I thought). However, the gauge needs to be three and a half stitches to the inch, so I need to change my needle size. I am a tight knitter, I admit, but it used to be I knit to gauge.

Regardless, I shall try to knit a swatch in the round! Something I've never done before. So I need to find the right size double pointed needles and cast on a few stitches and see what I can come up with. Miss Bette showed me a way to get the stitches on the DPNs without twisting, and if I can remember how to do it, I'll try to put them on the needles tonight. If I can find the right size. Which is a wicked big "if".

There are times when I wish I'd brought my knitting with me. I almost always have it, but this weekend I spent time with the Big Easy Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, of which I am a member, and I usually don't need to have my knitting with me when I'm with the Sisters. Novice Sister Shir Madness organised a Safer Sex Symposium as her novice project, which centered around kink. Because I am a Novice Guard in the organisation, I got to sit at the door and collect any donations people wished to make. This is something I did not mind, but I was a little bored and if I'd had my knitting with me, I could have made some progress on some project or another. I shall let this be a lesson: I shall always take my knitting, a small project, even when I might be with the Sisters, and then I won't be bored.

This weekend coming, I plan to go shopping for a light that will brighten up my knitting area. One of the problems I have with knitting in my current house is that there isn't enough light for me to see. My old apartment in Boston had a HUGE window that took up most of one wall in my bedroom, so I had plenty of light in the daytime. And for some reason, enough light with all the electric lights on in the evening to knit. But my house in New Orleans seems to swallow the light and I think if I can find a high intensity floor lamp, I shall acquire it for knitting. I want to knit more than I am currently doing, but feel hampered by the lack of light.

Lopi, Icelandic Sweaters, and Steeking

One of the things I've always wanted to knit, even before I could knit or even knew I wanted to knit, was an Icelandic sweater. For the last couple of years or three I've been perusing and favouriting sweater patterns on Ravelry. Some of them are even in English! Today I visited Bornside Yarns and looked through patterns. I found one I mostly liked, except that it has a zipper, and I want to have buttons. Miss Bette and I spent over an hour talking about the pattern and picking out the colours of Lopi that I'm going to use (Lopi does not have a company website, so this link is to Wikipedia). I wanted to use a very dark-almost-black for the main colour, but she didn't have enough of that so I'm going with a dark grey with the almost black as one of the secondary colours. It's a Fair Isle pattern and it's done on fat needles because it is a bulky yarn. Sweaters like that tend to knit up pretty quickly.

As I mentioned it is Fair Isle pattern and Fair Isle is best knit in the round. So this pattern is also knit in the round and that means steeking. Yes, I am going to knit a garment that I am going to cut so I can wear it as a cardigan. I think I'm going to plotz. I know, intellectually, that if one follows the directions, steeking is not a terrible thing. And I have friends who have steeked and have lived to tell the tale.

I had a mini conversation with Franklin Habit on Facebook about steeking. He said it wasn't all that bad or hard to do. So I might do some practice steeking before the big day. But first, I have to cast on and knit the damn thing. I'm pretty excited, since I will be able to use this as a jacket here in New Orleans. Sweaters take a long time to knit, but I'm hoping I can churn this out. A wee break from my other projects.

These are the yarns I got from Miss Bette:

The yarn on the left is the main body, a dark pewter grey.
The yarns in the centre and on the right are the Fair Isle designs.
I find it interesting how the ball bands on Lopi have changed over the years. Reynolds is no longer carrying it (the two balls on the left), and for a while it was carried by the Icelandic government (the ball on the right). Apparently Berroco is going to carry it from now on, since Reynolds has been bought and dispersed. Even so, I got the yarn I wanted, and I'm very much looking forward to knitting this up.

An Update from the Crescent City

I taught a colleague how to knit over the weekend. It took a while, but eventually she caught on and started to put the needle into the stitch the correct way (it wasn't until I said she had to go "underneath" that my instruction made any sense). Her stitches are not even, and when she showed me what she'd done at home as practice, it was downright ugly. But it was knitting. There were mistakes, and some dropped and/or slipped stitches. She'd increased her practice row from 20 to 23 stitches. But, as Yarn as my witness, it was knitting! We're going to knit together at lunch today.

It is hard for me sometimes to explain what I do so naturally when I'm holding knitting needles. I think that I am probably not a good teacher, or at least not a natural one, whenever I try to teach someone to knit. I barely remember my own struggles to master two sticks and a piece of string, and those early practice pieces have been consigned to the rubbish heap of history. I know I had a hard time figuring out what to do. I still have the first garter stitch scarf I ever made. I pulled those stitches so tight that I could barely get the needle into them as I knit along the row. Eventually I discovered that I didn't need to pull the stitches to a deathgrip on the needles, I developed a sense of even stitches, and I've learned not to knit whilst drinking alcohol, watching suspenseful movies, or while I am in a snit. That snit thing happens more often than I am willing to admit.

In my own knitting, I've been hard at work at both the bear hat and the Paul Shawl. The bear hat is finished and too small. I adjusted the needle size when I worked the Fair Isle portion of the hat, but it only fits on my head with a tug, and the stitches are spread wide and one can see the colour of the floats behind them. Not sure if I should try again using Intarsia to make the bears, or if I should knit a hat and make bear pom-poms (for which the pattern gives instructions, leaving a plain hat and fancy poms). The Paul Shawl is about 3/4 done and I want to get it off the needles sooner rather than later. I reckon one more skein of the Spruced Goose and one full one of the Steel Grey and it will be done. Just in time for the cool weather up in Yankee Heaven!

I bought two new patterns the other day, when I got paid. Drachenfels, by Mairelynd on Ravelry, for only €4.90. I'd seen it advertised on Facebook, and finally broke down and bought it. It uses a DK weight, and I've got so much of that in my stash. I'm hoping to use up some of it so I can empty out some of those damn bins. I also got Faster Than Light from SweetP Designs, for only $5.00. It's a triangular shawl and since the sample was done in blue and white yarn, I couldn't resist. Also, it's kind o' pretty, and I think will make a fun project to knit. It is also a stash busting project.

Stash busting is much on my mind these days, so I'm looking for projects that will use up what I have. While I love Josh Ryke's patterns (Death of the Moon, among others), he designs for fingering weight, and I have very little of that in my stash. DK and worsted are what I have, especially Mad Tosh and Malabrigo. So I hope I can use these yarns with the new patterns. Now I just have to apply myself to my knitting! I have a meeting tonight, so I think I'll bring it along.