I am swatching for the Summer Raglan. Yarn is Madil Eden, 100% bamboo, worsted weight. Started out with my favorite needles, a Knit Picks Options circ using Harmony tips, US#6.
Even ignoring that random purl stitch at upper left that wandered into the stockinette, the result was... unsatisfactory. This yarn is too slippery to do well on slippery needles, and waaayyyyy too splitty for the KP sharp points. I had lots of little extra loopies where I hadn't caught the entire strand of yarn, which is a loosely plied thing of about 20 cobwebby strands.
Moving on, I tried a Denise Interchangeable, US#5. The Denise needles are plastic and have rather blunt tips, which worked perfectly with that splitty yarn.
Much better. No splits at all.
The problem is that the Denise cables suck big time. Every single cable in the set has started to separate between the cable and the cable end. Knitting with them requires fighting the stitches over that little irregularity all the damned time. No way I was gonna set myself up for that frustration.
I could have gone online and bought another cable, but there was a pretty good chance that by the time I was well into the sweater it would have begun to separate, too. So I went needle shopping online, looking for blunt points. An Addi Natura or even an Addi Turbo seemed possible solutions, but the shipping time for either meant I would have to wait, and I wanted to Cast. On. Right. Now. Sometimes living 50 miles from the nearest [full-service] LYS is a pain.
I searched through an assortment of needles I got on eBay last year and came up with a pair of Bryspun US#6 straights. The points, while not blunt, were at least less pointed than the KPs.
Hey, that looks good!(Ignore that loose strand at the edge of the garter
stitch edge. Garter stitch turned out to be hard to do with this yarn, but
there is no garter stitch in the sweater, so I felt safe ignoring that
little problem.)
Yep, definitely good enough.
But the sweater is knit in the round so the straights wouldn't work. I searched a little further in the needle stash and found a Susan Bates 32" US#4 circ.
Let's compare needle points:
From the left, Knit Picks Options US#4, the Susan Bates #4, and a Knit Picks Harmony #5. Although the Harmony point looks similar to the Susan Bates in the photo, believe me, it is much more pointed.
The Susan Bates was perfect.
That swatch has been through the washer and dryer on the hand- washables cycle, so the gauge is ready to be measured. At the top you can see the complex calculations (ha!) needed to rejigger the cast on, which originally called for 112 stitches at 14 st/4". Sometimes my gauge measured at 21-1/2 st/4" and sometimes at 22 st/4", as in the photo. I went with the looser gauge in my calcs because the pattern says the garment is drapey and if one is between sizes one should go with the smaller size, plus I think the bamboo yarn is probably drapier and will stretch more than the Rowan Summer Tweed called for. I think that since the sweater is knit from the neck down, I can finagle the size.
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more
violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move
in the opposite direction."
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
"The only real valuable thing is intuition."
"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."
"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
"The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."
"Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
"Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds."
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
"Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at
it."
"Technological progress is like an ax in the hands of a pathological
criminal."
"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we
created them."
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in
school."
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own
reason for existing."
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure
about the the universe."
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV
will be fought with sticks and stones."
"In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above
all, be a sheep."
"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of
thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If
only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from
mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not
thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and
courageously uses his intelligence."
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education,
and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a
poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward
after death."
"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it
seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the
fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving
after rational knowledge."
"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his
tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand
this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they
receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
"It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war
is nothing but an act of murder."
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can
be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)
"I tell my sons, 'When you bring a
girl home, I don't care about her family background. I don't care what
colour she is, or what she wants to be... just don't bring me a girl
who peers warily at her plate and says, "What's in this?".' "
* * * * * One of the duties of being a mother of a kid who lives faraway is the packing/repacking and shipping of stuff.
This duty also includes removing any hazmat from the shipment.
* * * * *
My newest wallpaper, featuring a hanging basket from my deck.
* * * * *
"You might very well think that. I could not possibly comment."
-- from House of Cards / To Play the King / The Final Cut.
Awhile back I included that quote in a blog post and it got me to remembering the source, this BBC miniseries. A quick trip to the library's online catalog and the 3-CD set was on its way to my house. I watched it last week whilst recuperating from that little bout of food poisoning.
It was every bit as good as I remembered. Ian Richardson plays the most deliciously scheming, malevolent, downright evil politician one can imagine in 20th century politics. Hitler could have taken lessons from this guy. I recommend it highly to anyone looking for something to watch this summer while the TV plays reruns and other assorted crappe.
* * * * *
This business of quoting from stuff I have watched or read can have unanticipated consequences. When I said, Winter is coming, I of course had to go check my reference to be sure I had the title right. Lo and behold, I find that book 5 of the series comes out in September! Can I get a w00t?!
I am speaking of the epic The Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. It is a fantasy series, but unlike many books of that genre, these have engaging, fully-developed characters. The series is great. I listened to the audio books of #1 through #4 a couple-three years ago and was completely captivated. After browsing the plotlines again at Amazon I find I need to refresh my memory before I listen/read #5. Whee! My summer listening has just been decided!
* * * * *
After knitting six pairs of woolly socks since the end of tax season, I think I am ready to move on. I still have 1-1/2 socks to finish before I can truthfully say I knit six full pairs, but still. When those little details are cleaned up I am on to other game. Summer has finally arrived here in the Great North, complete with 80° temps, humidity, and swarms of mosquitoes so thick in the evening that it is problematic to open one's mouth to inhale. The onset of those all-too-brief weeks of balmy weather has inspired me to attempt my worsted-weight bamboo version of the Summer Raglan from More Big Girl Knits.
Right now it is early summer. The birds are singing, the sun is warm, the breeze is soft. Swimmers frolic in the lake. Fisherpersons cast their lines and hope.
But it will not always be so. One day darkness will fall, a heavy chill will descend, and snow will blanket the land. Winter is coming.*
In preparation I am knitting myself a dandy pair of heavy boot socks. Remember this yarn?
It is in the process of becoming a pair of these:
Yeah, that's three photos of my left foot wearing the same sock. Work with me here.
I am in love with the way the two yarns stranded together make such a nifty marled, ragg sock look.
The oatmeal color of the Lana Grossa Megaboot Stretch works perfectly with the greens and turquoises of the tweedy Online yarn. I held the Lana Grossa next to another colorway of tweedy Online yarn, one that is less green and more blue; the two did not do a thing for each other. But these two seem to have just enough yellow in common to be happy together.
When we were camping on the North Shore a couple weeks ago I felt like I should dress in a flannel shirt, jeans, and hiking boots. And maybe sing, "She's a lumberjack and she's okay / She sleeps all night and she works all day." Maybe these socks are my first step in that direction.
While we are admiring these colors, let us take notice of how these same colors may occur in nature:
I missed a photo op earlier this afternoon of a parade of several adult Canada geese and at least a dozen nearly-grown goslings. These five babies (I had to blow up the photo to 100% to count them; you will just have to trust me on the number) are much, much younger. They are also possible loon lunch. This is the first year since 1991, our first summer here, that we have had both loons AND Canada geese on the lake. The loons always chase away the geese and claim this teeny tiny ocean for their own. Good luck, Mama and Daddy Goose! Take care of those babies! (Although the world does not perhaps really need any more Canada geese.)
* Extra points for anyone who can identify the book[s] from which this comes.
I am healed! Woke up this morning with normal temp and feeling fine. Good health is highly underrated when we have it, and longed for when we don't. Thank you all for your generous and thoughtful wishes and your funny comments -- you are The Best!
So. Enough with the food poisoning. Moving on.
* * * * *
I got a new camera!
I wrote about my previous camera, a Fuji FineFix S5100, when my sweetie bought it for me in November 2006, and I have loved almost everything about it. It took great pictures, it didn't eat batteries, it had an awesome 10x optical zoom, it had a ton of features -- included macro -- that I gradually learned to use, and it looked cool. (That last thing was not terribly important to me, but Smokey liked it.) It had two faults, however: it was about 6 months too old to have image stabilization, which I found would have been extremely helpful in low light conditions, and it made my purse or tote bag v-e-r-y heavy.
This little baby has solved those problems.
It is a Canon PowerShot A720 IS. I haven't had the chance to play with it much, having spent the two days since it arrived sick in bed, but I will. It is the camera that Claudiatalkedabout buying a few months ago; I figured that a camera chosen by someone who, 1, already had a digital SLR and was looking for a good small camera to throw in her purse/backpack/knitting; B, did the amount of research she did; and iii, was as smart as she is, would be a good one. It has only a 6x optical zoom, but I figured that limitation would be made up by the increased number of megapixels (the Fuji was only a 4MP). The final factor was when Consumer Reports picked it as a Best Buy in the latest issue.
You want to know what else was cool about buying this camera? It cost me almost zilch. Paid for the camera with a gift certificate I got at work last winter. Bought a 4GB memory card out of my own pocket, ~$15. The vendor that sold me the camera sent me a $20 coupon, so I bought another memory card and paid only the shipping. Heh. Such a deal.
* * * * *
While searching for my post about the Fuji I came upon this, which upon rereading I find to be one of my more thoughtful posts. And so, in the interest of bolstering my ever-expanding ego, I present you a link here.
* * * * *
I planned to give you some knitting photos, but having missed two days this week means I am dreadfully behind in everything else in my life, so I will close this post. Once again, thank you for all your good wishes. It meant a lot to me.
Unfortunately, I'm not quite there yet. Feeling better, still have slight fever and overwhelming fatigue, the latter of which makes an upright position unattainable. Am typing this in bed on Smokey's laptop w/ wireless. A large tumbler of lightly sweetened green tea has been my constant companion, along with a medical team of 2 cats and 2 dogs. Just like Scarlett, I keep saying, "Tomorrow will be better."
You know what sucks? Food poisoning sucks. I spent all day either suffering diarrhea (I knew you wanted to know) or sleeping or taking my temperature (101.4 degrees at the highest) or simply lying in my bed moaning and whimpering. Now, at 8:30 p.m., I feel better than I have since 8 a.m. this morning. Still weak and tired and with a tiny fever, but time and OTC meds have taken care of the worst.
Tomorrow I shall post. Lots to say -- new camera, #1 back to NYC, socks OTN. But for now I think I'll go back to bed.
In the meantime, here is the yarn that is currently making me happy. I'm knitting a pair of very warm socks by holding together a strand of the beige Mega-Boot stretch and a strand of the Online green/black/blue tweed.
Our camping trip last weekend to the North Shore went much better than could have been expected, given the dismal weather forecast for the weekend -- rain, thunderstorms, flash flood warnings, doom/gloom, pack your bags, dude, it's the end of the world. In point of fact, it only rained one night while we were there and even then didn't start until after 10pm, so we didn't mind scattering the embers of the campfire and heading to bed to avoid getting wet.
Perhaps this, which we saw as soon as we caught sight of Lake Superior, was an omen.
It wasn't a very long rainbow, but I think it was the most vivid I have ever seen.
There had been heavy rain earlier in the week, and the many streams and rivers that flow into Lake Superior were still running full. This river was full of debris.
You can see how the guardrail was twisted away from the road and the washout that had occurred.
At the campsite there was tree climbing and dog napping:
There were nature photos galore:
The first and third are the same stump but the third is turned 90°; the second is, I think, trout lilies. They were a week or two past blooming so I only got to see the seed heads. There were hepaticas and wild strawberries and lungwort in bloom, but I got no photos of them.
There was also puking. First Maggie (once), then Matthew (many times), but the rest of us were unaffected. Whew. Perhaps they had eaten some salmonella infested tomatoes before they joined us; but they arrived on Thursday night and didn't get sick until Sunday, so who knows? They were both fine by Monday.
When it was time to break camp Maggie kept Matthew and Andrew on task.
Best of all, there was sock knitting.
The colors are not true in the photo. The background color is more of an olive tan khaki, not as dark as it looks. That ten inches or so of yarn you see lying on my right foot is how much I have left to graft the toe of the left foot. I made the legs extra long; I hate to have cold ankles in January. That little tail is enough to graft, but I want to see exactly how the right foot comes out before I finish off the left. If the second ball -- I wound the 100 gr skein of Colinette Jitterbug into two 50 gr balls -- happens to be slightly shorter, I may finish off both toes with some solid olive green Lang Jawoll that I have in stash. The pair is stalled right now because I ran out of the olive green reinforcing yarn I am using in the heel flaps.The Jitterbug is 100% merino wool, lovely and soft, but I fear it would not wear as well as a yarn with some nylon in it, so I am reinforcing the heels, the spot that I always, always, always wear out first in my purchased socks.
I just noticed that it looks like the columns of purl stitches are wonky in the left sock. They are not, it is just the angle of the photo. I hope.
* * * * *
Back in the heady days of the '60s and '70s there was a saying that dope would get you through times of no money better than money would get you through times of no dope. Be that as it may, I prefer to think that luck will get one through any kind of hard times at all. And my sweetie is Lucky with a Capital L.
On Saturday afternoon he and I took off for a little drive and ended up at Grand Portage at the gas station/convenience store outside the Indian casino there. After we each ate a Haagen Daas ice cream bar with almonds (yum!), he asked if I wanted to watch him throw some quarters down the toilet/into the slot machines in the store. I decided I would rather go back to the parking lot and knit. By the time I had made a pit stop, gotten back out to the car, and settled myself with my knitting, Smokey was back out there, too, with $95 won from a $20 start. That's my Bear.
This fine fellow visited my deck one day last week.
Orioles tend to be rather shy -- or scarce -- so it was amazing to
me to see this guy. He was awfully obliging to pose for me so
willingly.
* * * * *
We are heading out today to go camping on the North Shore (that's the north shore of Lake Superior for those of you not of the MN/WI variety). The weather forecast is cool, rainy, possibly stormy for Friday; slightly better for Saturday; a bit better for Sunday; and totally sunny and warm for Monday. Isn't that always the way? But we will be staying until Monday so we will get to enjoy a little bit of the good weather.
If all our plans had come together properly we would be back in the Little Big Horn mountains near Buffalo, Wyoming right now. It was going to be a 150% family camping trip: Andrew's friend K, whom he met when she came to Chiapas last January for the women's encueñtro and who lives in northern California, was going to meet up with us there; and Maggie, Matthew's girlfriend, was going to come along, too. It would have been 2 weeks of knitting (for me), reading (for me and Andrew and K and Maggie), leisurely walks (for all), and hanging out together (ditto). But various bits of life got in the way and suddenly it was going to be just Smokey and I. Okay, fine, we would still have a good time.
But the long term weather forecast for northern WY did not look good -- chilly, with a side of cold -- so we decided to take our vacation here at home on a lake in northern Wisconsin, a locale that many people drive hours to reach in order that they may vacation here. This weekend camping trip is our last chance to hit the woods with our entire family plus Maggie before Andrew leaves for medical school in New York. I've stocked up on snack food:
Dried fruit, crackers, cheese, granola bars, granola, trail mix, Cheetos, corn chips... and a bottle of Herding Cats wine, product of South Africa :-) Should be a fun time...
Dale-Harriet* tagged me, and what's not to like about blathering on about oneself?
What's the last book you read that you thought was really super, inspiring, you'd recommend it to most anyone?
How about if I tell you of my favorite book of all time? That would be Winterdance : The Fine Magic of Running the Iditarod by Gary Paulsen. It is non-fiction, written by the author of dozens of young adult novels like Hatchet and a handful of adult novels. (No, not ADULT novels, just novels that you would find in the fiction section at the library.) Paulsen lived in northern MN and decided to get some sled dogs and run the Iditarod, the 1,500-mile Anchorage to Nome dog sled race. The book recounts his adventures and misadventures -- the latter outnumber the former by a considerable margin -- along the way. The book is both spiritual and hilarious; the first time I read it I kept chasing down members of my family: "Sit down and listen. You have to hear this!"
My favorite anecdote from the book is this one. At one point during his first running of the Iditarod, Paulsen and his team were following the track across a wide flat valley when they came upon an empty sled with team just sitting in the track. Thinking that the driver might be in trouble, Paulsen stopped and looked for the driver, eventually spotting him (or it might have been a her, I don't remember) lying on a very slight rise about a quarter mile away. He hiked over to see if s/he was okay, and the other driver motioned him to lie down and be quiet, too.
On the other side of the rise was a small frozen lake, blown clear of snow by the ever-present wind. There were two buffalo at the shore. They would take turns running onto the lake, then stopping, stiff-legged, and sliding across the ice, all the while bellowing at the top of their lungs. They were playing! iirc, it was at that point in his life that Paulsen became a vegetarian.
Tattoos: yes or no? Do you have any? Tell us! Do you think they're gross? TELL US!
No tats on me, thankyouverymuch. I'm not a big fan, although I find the artistic and colorful ones intriguing as body art.
Where have you lived?
On a farm in southern MN until age 14, rural northern MN for the 3 years of high school, Minneapolis -- mostly south Mpls -- for the next 32 years, on a lake in n.w. WI for the past 9. Yah, I'm a Midwesterner, fer sure.
But I have traveled a bit. I have hit 48 of the 50 states -- somehow missed Delaware and Louisiana (so far) -- and 8 countries on 4 of the 7 continents: Canada, US, Mexico, Japan, the Philippines, South Africa, Spain, England/Scotland.
Do you listen to the radio? What are your favorite programs, & on what station?
Radio only in the car and only when I don't have my iPod. Then it is Minnesota Public Radio, either The Current or classical, occasionally the news channel. The only programs that I try to catch are A Prairie Home Companion and Car Talk, although I also like This American Life and Whaddya Know? and especially Science Friday. Very occasionally KQ (KQRS, 92.5, classic rock), The Cities 97 (KTCZ, 97.1), or Cool 108 (KQQL 107.9, oldies). Oh, and in my cube during tax season I generally have on JackFM, a station which for some inexplicable reason feels that we all need to hear Smoking in the Boys' Room at least once a week. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
Is there a movie that makes you cry no matter how many times you see it?
Nope, sorry, don't generally cry at movies.
What snacks do you enjoy?
Ah, that is the question I have been waiting for. Let's talk food.
Bleu cheese, whole wheat saltines, and merlot, occasionally supplemented by pecans and/or grapes; that is my favorite bedtime snack ever. White tortilla chips with grated cojack cheese melted over them, topped with lots of Chi-Chi's mild salsa and accompanied by a beer, preferably Dos Equis or Leinie's Creamy Dark. Jarlsberg and pecans and hard cider. Funny how all my favorite snacks involve alcohol of some kind. I guess I only snack in the evening...
* You must follow that link and read her post for today, June 5. Eloquent and wonderful.
For all the glory that is spring in the north woods, there are some less than delightful bits.
I think this guy must have spent his winter burrowed deep into the duff on the floor of the woods. Now he is on our deck railing getting a tan. I let him be; no critter, no matter how capable of giving me a nasty ouch, deserves to be swatted after surviving the winter. Unless it is a mosquito; then all bets are off.
Other less than savory aspects of spring are the wood and deer ticks.
Lower left, something called a star tick, which we do not have here. Middle, an adult female deer tick -- those are the ones that transmit Lyme disease. Upper right, adult wood tick, aka dog tick. I found this photo online and stole it because I couldn't find the ones I took last spring of the eight wood ticks I pulled off Hannibal The Fearless Who Fancies Himself To Be An Outdoor Cat.
Like many things in nature, the tick population varies from year to year. Last year we were inundated with ticks. Boo! Hiss! This year, they are almost non-existent. Yay! I think I have found fewer than half a dozen so far this year, which is, I think, a record low for this date.
Despite that, for the past couple days I have felt them crawling on me everywhere. I have not found a single one for over a week, however, so I attribute this annoyance to an over-active tactile sense.
There are the ubiquitous mosquitoes, vector of the West Nile virus:
Don't worry, we shooed that one away before it bit my boy.
There are other less-than-wonderful aspects of warmer weather. Follow the link if you want to see an over-40 woman wearing a too-young-for-her, way-too-short garment while doing her exercise walk. She was doing laps around the block Saturday while we were stuck for a couple hours with what turned out to be a broken timing belt on the Aveo. I probably shouldn't be snarky; she was, after all, very trim and was doing a good thing. She had just made an unfortunate wardrobe choice.
To remove that last image from your eyeballs, here is a sign on the wall of the diner where we had a very tasty brunch that day, right before we discovered that the car wouldn't start.
I had to pay for my coffee, darn. No gossip to trade.
* * * * *
Thanks to everyone who chimed in with advice on yesterday's post about the Summer Chevron sweater. There is a l-o-n-g thread over in Ravelry (special thanks to those of you who told me to check there) that details all the trials and tribulations of that pattern. Apparently it has a wacky row gauge that no one can achieve, and the deep V neck tends to become a wide V when worn. I am still undecided about whether to attempt it with my bamboo yarn, but now I know where to go for more help. Thanks, guys! You are the best!
* * * * *
As much as I love having #1 son home for a couple months, it has been driving me absolutely NUTS that his computer seems to hog our DSL connection. I have forbade him from using BitTorrent -- or downloading anything -- between the hours of 8 am and 1 pm, which is my preferred internet time. But even though he has been completely cooperative about our agreement, sometimes my connection gets so slow it is impossible to do anything. Every single page gets the "Cannot find www.xyz.com. Please check your spelling..." message.
Today I got so frustrated that while he was out for his daily run and clearly not using his computer, I went downstairs to his bedroom to see what was open on his Mac Pro. I discovered that the problem seems to be that Skype, even when just sitting there with a chat window open but not being used, continues to hog our internet connection. I closed Skype, came back upstairs, and walla! my internet connection was fine. Hurrah! Too bad we didn't figure this out a month ago; he leaves to go back to NY a week from Sunday, and I had been counting the days.
Eddie Izzard is hysterically, riotously, manically funny. And smart and well-educated and does NOT talk down to his audience. If you are not familiar with him, search for his videos on YouTube. No, wait! I've done it for you!
#1 son introduced me to him several years ago by giving me for Christmas the DVD of his Dressed to Kill HBO special. I didn't watch it right away -- had never heard of Eddie Izzard -- so I didn't know what I was missing. But once I watched it I was hooked.
Way back in March I saw that he was coming to Minneapolis in May. Checked with Andrew, still in Mexico, yes, he wanted to go if he were here at the time; his internship application with Partners in Health in Boston was still pending so he didn't know where he would be in May. Checked with Matthew, yes, he wanted to go, absolutely. Checked with Smokey, no, Eddie Izzard was too edgy for him. A quick online trip to Ticketmaster, a virtual swipe of the credit card, and wham!bam! I had three tickets.
A short rant: Ticketmaster, while convenient, yada yada, certainly tacks on a lot of fees -- facilities fee, ticket fee, convenience fee, printing fee, boat payment fee, kickback fee, college tuition fee. Sheesh. All those fees increased the cost of the tickets by something like a third, and those tickets were not cheap to begin with. [/rant]
When the actual day came Andrew was out of town, having gone to a music festival in Illinois that weekend. Smokey still didn't want to go. So Maggie, Matthew's girlfriend -- who had never heard of Eddie Izzard -- got ticket #3. We met up downtown, had dinner, and hit the historic State theater.
Once again I failed to take pictures, but let me paint a word picture of the theater. It opened in 1921 and was considered a technological marvel of the time. Until 1958 it had the largest movie screen west of the Mississippi. It hasn't been a movie theater since the late 1970s, but miraculously, through all its varied uses -- vaudeville house, movie theater, church -- the elaborate murals and wall sculptures have remained intact. There are cupids, there is gold leaf, there are crystal chandeliers. It is BIG, seating around 2,000 people. In other words, it is a special place and one that is fun to go to.
No, wait! I found a couple photos online.
I cannot tell you much about Mr. Izzard's performance except that he touched on many subjects -- Hannibal coming over the Alps, Minneapolis and local humor, Alexander the Great, language, Michelangelo, school, grades -- and that it was all very, very funny. He referred to himself as an off-duty transvestite, so he was dressed more or less normally -- blue jeans, white dress shirt, and a black tail coat, possibly denim, with red lining under the swallowtail. No elaborate makeup, no 4" heels, no sparkly sequined dress, more's the pity. But he was so funny we loved him anyway.
* * * * *
I would like to solicit your ideas on a knitting project. Here is the sweater I am thinking of, a short-sleeved summer number from More Big Girl Knits by Amy Singer (of Knitty.com fame) and Jillian Moreno:
The yarn I am planning to use is at the left in the photo: Madil Eden and Eden print (Ravelry links), 100% bamboo, worsted weight, and 22 st per 4"/10 cm. The pattern calls for Rowan Summer Tweed, 70% silk/30% cotton, 14 st per 4"/10 cm. Obviously, my gauge will be significantly different than that called for in the pattern.
I know that a pattern can be rewritten for a different gauge; it seems to me that this one will be easier than many because of the diagonal construction. The garment is knit top-down in one piece, and the diagonal texture of the front and back is formed by increasing 2 stitches every other row at the top of the sleeves and at center front and back, 8 stitches increased each time.
(This next paragraph is complicated. These word pictures can be tough sometimes.) The center front and back reach the desired length at the same time that the upper yoke reaches armhole depth. (You can see that by following the last narrow stripe from the center front up to the armhole.) At that point the knitter puts the sleeve cap stitches on holders, casts on a few more stitches for the underarm, then works back and forth on one entire side, say, left front and back, at a time, doing double decreases along the side "seam" and short row shaping at the bottom front and back of that side. The short row shaping achieves the straight-across-the-bottom edge. When one entire side is done, the knitter does the same thing on the other entire side. The whole garment is knit in one piece, using double increases at center front and back and double decreases at the sides, plus short-row shaping along the bottom edge, to achieve the tubular shape of the body.
It seems to me that once I recalculate the number of stitches I need to cast on, the rest of the body can be knit according to the pattern. In other words, as long as my row gauge is proportional to the original row gauge in the same ratio as my stitch gauge is to the original stitch gauge, it will all work itself out. I will be knitting on more stitches and will need to knit more rows, but as long as I knit each section to be the desired number of inches long, all will be well.
I generally prefer tops to come just past my hips rather than be as short as this one. To lengthen this top I would continue to knit in the round (after putting the sleeve caps on waste yarn and casting on additional stitches for the underarm) and maintain the tubular shape of the body by double increases front and back and double decreases at each side. On the other hand, many garments are too long waisted for me, plus few summer tops are hip length; if I want mine to be shorter than the pattern is written, I would commence the short-row shaping/filling in each side sooner.
The reason I like this pattern is that, because of the use of different colors of yarns, it seemed to fit my vision for my yarn. I had been picturing my bamboo yarn in some kind of summer t-shirt-like thing using the print for the sleeves and solid brown for the body. This pattern uses three shades of the Rowan, shading top to bottom from lightest to darkest, and creating a deep V yoke effect to echo the neckline. That seems to me to be a far more flattering design than my t-shirt idea. I plan to cast on with the solid brown, switch to the variegated yarn for as long as it lasts and probably no farther than the lightest color yarn is used in the original, do a couple of narrow stripes as the color transition, then switch back to the solid brown for the rest.
I have never used Rowan Summer Tweed so I don't know how it behaves in a knit fabric. My bamboo yarn makes a very soft fabric that drapes well but does not have a lot of body. I had originally cast on the printed yarn for a narrow Clapoutis, but it curled too much and I was not happy with it.
So, my questions are these:
Does my rejiggering of the pattern make sense? Does it seem do-able? Math is easy for me, so the calcs are not an obstacle.
I am rather more, er, well-endowed than the model in the photo. Any ideas on how to make the front bigger without changing the size of the back?
Will the soft bamboo yarn be suitable for this pattern written for the nubbly Summer Tweed?
What say y'all? I know there is a lot of knitting expertise out there, so any and all advice/opinions are welcomed. Thank you for your support.
For the non-naturalists among you, those are trillium (T. grandiflorum), trillium, trillium, elderberry (Sambucus canadensis), trillium, and -- you guessed it! -- more trillium, this time with a tiny side of violets (the blurry purple blotches at back right).
The trillium are fading now.
June 1, 2008.
The white flowers turn pinkish-mauve as they fade.
The purple violets are largely done, but now we have yellow flowers.
Yes, dandelions, of course, but what I really meant were the tiny yellow violets at the left.
Tomorrow we examine some other aspects of spring. Class dismissed.
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I took all these photos in the narrowish band of woods between our house and our neighbors'. If you look very, very closely at the upper left corner of the fifth photo you can see a tiny bit of our neighbor's green LP tank; at the upper right you can see some of his house, happily painted a low-key shade of light brown. I hate it when someone plants a suburban-looking house in the woods and paints it blue or yellow or pink.
This area of woods is carpeted in trillium every spring, and every year it delights me anew. The woods on the other side of the house are more predominantly coniferous (if I were a really good blogger I would go out there right now and identify those conifers. Sorry, too lazy.) and are not good trillium habitat. But there are largish swatches of forest that I pass every time I drive into town to pick up a gallon of milk or a book at the library or even to go to crunch some tax forms in The Big City. And I feel so, so lucky to live here every time I do that.
