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Welcome to my knitting--no, fiber arts--no, artisan blog.
Other knitting blogs inspired me to start a knitting blog. But I also crochet, weave, and make jewelry, and I'm just learning
to make cheese. So I guess that makes this an artisan blog.
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Thursday, May 12, 2005
Commencement
Yesterday I took the train to New York so I could go to Sarah's graduation from NYU this morning. I stayed
at the Skyline Hotel, which is reasonably priced (for New York) and not far from Central Park. They're also pet friendly.
No, the light black NBaT wasn't finished when I arrived at the hotel, but it was finished before I left:
This morning the NBaT and I headed for Washington Square Park, where the NYU commencement exercises were being held. The procession started at 9:00, and they were all finally seated at
10:30. Then it took another hour and a half to perform all the ceremonies. I got a lot knitted on a sock for James. Afterward,
we met up with Sarah the college graduate:
It turns out that I made an inaccurate assumption. Sarah doesn't wear black. Oops. She will wear this, but James, Sarah's
excellent fiancé, says she'll wear something bright with it. It looks like it fits:
Sarah the surrogate niece, wearing Nothin' But a T-shirt, and Beth the actual niece, wearing somethin' else
link
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
In-Flight Entertainment
We spent yesterday traveling back from Tucson. I got Sarah's NBaT done just about to the neck shaping.
I stopped when I knew I was close because once I hit the underarm bindoffs, I started working back and forth on straight needles,
and my gauge tends to be a little different. In fact, it is: On circs I got 6.5 rows to the inch, and on the straights I'm
getting 7 rows. Here it is right now:
Now I have to do the neck shaping, sew the shoulder seams, set in the sleeves, knit the neck, and weave in the ends. All that
has to happen today, because I'm taking the train down to New York tomorrow morning.
Once I got to the stopping point on the NBaT, I switched to Conrad's PowerBook cover. It was a relief to work on circular
needles; those long straight needles are a little too long and straight to use in the limited space you get on an airplane:
And speaking of knitting on the plane, a woman saw me knitting at the Tucson airport and asked if we were allowed to knit
on the plane. There must be some reason the powers that be don't announce that knitting is allowed again, but it just doesn't
seem right.
Anyway, the original deadline for the PBC was last Thursday so Conrad could use it for this trip. But I knew I was off the
hook when he said he wasn't taking his computer with him. So that's 3.1415, and the 9 band is almost finished:
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Saturday, May 7, 2005
It's Different Here
We're in Tucson for the Dead Runners Society World Conference. We're staying at the Westward Look Resort, which is charming and lovely and, best of all, very pet friendly.
I've never been to this part of the country before. Usually when I travel anywhere, I wonder how you can tell you're somewhere
else. Usually it's the vegetation. I can tell I'm in Florida because there are palm trees; I can tell I'm in western Oregon
because there are Douglas firs. I can tell I'm in Tucson because it's different. It's very brown and flat, although there
are short trees and cacti and there are mountains all around. Today I took some pictures:
 
Here's what's right outside our room when we step off the patio:
The cacti bloom once a year for a couple of days. This weekend is it:
   
In knitting news, I got a lot of Sarah's light black NBaT done on the plane while I proofread:
It was just into the waist decreases when we took off, and now the bust increases are done.
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Wednesday, May 4, 2005
WIP or UFO?
What's the difference between a work in progress and an unfinished object? A WIP is being worked on, right?
And a UFO has been abandoned. But what about something that's not really abandoned but that you're not really working on?
Poor Sarah's cardi, for example, is still on the needles, but I haven't worked on it for months. Yet I intend to finish it;
at this point, September seems like a reasonable deadline. I've been setting up garnets for a necklace, but I haven't made
much progress. Still, I'm sure it'll get done. And once I dress that loom, the warp chain will cease to be a warp chain and
will be part of a work in progress.
But what are they now? I think we need a new term and acronym, and I propose "Works on Hold" (WOHs). When I've finished the
WIPs -- Conrad's PowerBook cover and Sarah's NBaT and James's socks -- I'll be able to get back to the WOHs: the Columbia
River Gorge-ous scarf, the Knit-Cro-Sheen pulli (which will have an overlay-crochet collar), and poor Sarah's black cardi.
By mid-May the WIPs should be FOs, the WOHs should be WIPs, and I should be trying to force myself not to start anything new
because I shouldn't start anything until I've dealt with a UFO (or two).
That'll be tough, because today I saw the coolest socks. The self-patterning yarn is still fun, but it's no longer novel.
But how about this: self-patterning sock yarn knit lengthwise?
Quergestrickte Socke (cross-knitted sock)
You can get the instructions (in German) from Sockenwolle. Scroll down to Strickanleitung Quergestrickte Socken. Click on the link to download the PDF. Let
me know if you want a translation.
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Monday, May 2, 2005
Jewelry Monday
Today was pretty much another all-work day. I did get a few more rounds done on the PowerBook cover: 5
is finished and I'm into 9. Tonight, however, was jewelry night.
So far we've been learning a lot of basic skills. Tonight we started to put them together. Last week we learned some texturing.
For me, the tough thing about texturing is having to be imprecise. I suppose with experience you can place your marks where
you want them, but clearly I'm lacking that experience right now. Anyway, tonight we learned a variation on texturing. You
texture a piece of metal (brass was what we used tonight) either by beating it (one way or another) or by applying something
texture-y to it, like strips of sandpaper or a sheet of screen. Then you put the textured side face down on the metal you
really want to apply the texture to, and you crank those through a pair of rollers, sort of like a pasta maker. The
really cool thing about this method is you get a negative image of the original texture. So for example, beating brass strips
with a ball peen or an oval peen gives you indents in the brass, and pressing that into copper gives you a raised surface
on the copper:
I liked the effect from the ball peen. Laurie thought it looked like Styrofoam, which it does, now that she mentions it. So
the next step was to saw a piece of silver for a ring blank and then apply the texture to the ring blank:
Next week the class will form the rings and solder them. I'll be in Tucson. However, I've already done this in the previous
class, so I'm not actually behind, and Laurie says she'll catch me up the following week.
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