Well.

Since I (apparently) won't have my paper back to revise yet this weekend, and since I already cleaned my office (that was yesterday's between-meetings task), and since I have the necessary prep done for teaching next week, I think I may start some new project this weekend. (I have to be in town Saturday; I have a meeting at 10 am)

I'm just not sure yet what it's going to be. I think it will be one of these three:

a. Start the Linus Project quilt out of the cutesy-poo dog fabrics. This is going to be a simple cut-then-sew quilt and it's made of a limited palette of fabrics, so I won't have to lay it out to get the "right" arrangement - once the blocks are made, I can just sew them together in the predetermined order. Once it's done, I think I'm going to pay to have it quilted (Yeah, I know. But I like the idea of being able to deliver a finished quilt even if it costs me something, and doing machine quilting myself: meh.). I may even have enough of the fabrics to make two smallish identical or similar quilts.

b. Start the pi shawl that I've put some of the Noro sock yarn aside for. I don't like Noro sock yarn for socks, but it should be OK for a shawl. (Provided they didn't mess up the color sequence with a big knot in the skein like in the previous skein I had)

c. Pull out the Rosy-Fingered Dawn shawl kit that's been sitting in my stash for several years (since 2004, I think - I think that was the year of the trip to see Blackberry Ridge Woolen Mills), wind off the first color, and start the shawl. (The colors are subtle enough that I think I'm only going to wind them off as I need them, so I don't get confused and use the wrong one.

Yes, I know. I had talked about a couple other shawls earlier but seeing the Noro sockyarn and the Rosy-Fingered Dawn kit in my stash the other day made me think of starting them.

I'm actually leaning towards the Rosy-Fingered Dawn - while it's lace, it's not tee-toncy yarn lace, it's the slightly beefier "handspun feeling" Blackberry Ridge yarn. And the kit was a gift from my dad so it would be nice to actually let him know I'm working on it.

Okay, here are the yarn "cheesecake" shots*

(*for the non-knitters: some knitters refer to photographs of the yarn they've bought/have in stash as "yarn p0rn." I dislike that term, so I consider an older, perhaps slightly more tame, modality...instead of being akin to a picture of a totally naked (and usually anatomically impossibly endowed) person in a pose that leaves nothing to the imagination, I prefer to think of my yarn photographs more like the famous WWII picture of Betty Grable - smiling, more suggestive than hard-core, and with basically a sense of humor and good cheer.

Supposedly one of the old pin-up girls, while having her photo taken, made the remark of "Let's remind these boys of what they're fighting for!" So I kind of like that mental image, instead.)

Remember how I said I wanted to get some of the Silky Wool for Honeycomb, but maybe in a blue or bottle green instead of the brown the original was in?

Found it:



They did have the same yarn in a sort of cobalt blue (and also a lighter blue), but once I saw the green, I knew that was the one I wanted. I really like the color - it's very rich and luminous. (The photograph doesn't totally do it justice).

One of the new lines that they had at the shop was Berroco Ultra Alpaca in the fine (fingering) weight.



This is an absolutely gorgeous chestnut brown, with overtones of green and gold. It's going to become the Gnarled Oakwoods shawl. (Well, once I finish the Bird's Nest shawl - which I am working on - and the Providing Angst to Crowned Heads of Europe. I need to clear out some of the lace projects before I take on a new one).

This yarn was one I chose because I loved the colors in it so much. (You perhaps notice a pattern in the colors I am choosing?)



It's Araucania Aysen, which is very much like the Malabrigo worsted in its feel (it is VERY soft). It's one of those felted-type singles yarns and the colors are so wonderful. I'm going to use it for the Crofter's Cowl (Sorry, that's only a link on Ravelry, so if you're not a member you probably won't be able to see it...). It's a fairly simple lace pattern knit up into a cowl. That I hope won't be too tight to go over my head...but we shall see.

And then, finally:



Some Jo Sharp wool (it's a dk though the pattern I'm going to use calls for sportweight, I think I can gauge down). This is for a colorwork stranded hat called The Running Horse Hat (you can see a picture of the designer's hat here). Now, I know - I'm no fan of stranded work. And I'm not really a fan of horses (I think I've said before I'm honestly a little afraid of them, in the horseflesh, at least). But I love this hat - it looks so autumnal and so "country" that I want to make one.

Oh, and the bag that I was able to carry it all home in?



The yarn is residing there for now. I think probably the cowl will be the first thing I start, because I keep picking up the Aysen yarn and feeling of it. And it's starting to get colder here...so it's time to start thinking about fall and winter things.

It was a good day. A day that I needed. It reminded me that taking time for myself is important, and taking a big chunk of time (not some 15 minutes pencilled in here and there) is sometimes the only thing that fixes things.

(I'll post pictures of the yarn later, for those who aren't too repulsed by enhancement of an already-bloated stash. I will say that the yarn is all project-designated, so it's not like I'm randomly buying up stuff 'cos I like it...

...that's what quilt fabric is for....)

Anyway. It actually FELT like fall today, which was nice - it was cool (I actually wore a sweater vest) and overcast. Unlike some people, I'm really not depressed by gray overcast weather. It's interesting. It's atmospheric. It suits my sensitive eyes better than bright sun does.

The drive down was uneventful. I really don't mind driving long distances provided that there is not heavy traffic. I saw a few weird "oversized load" things, including some stuff that I'm not at all sure what it was (one of them looked like a giant bathysphere but it was wrapped in tarps so I really can't be sure).

I went to Barron's first. I really do wish we had one of these close to me. It's a combination bookstore (though the books do seem to be being squeezed out by other stuff, I note with some annoyance), fancy-home shop, nice restaurant, and place where you can get your Brighton fix.

(I am not sure I understand the popularity. Perhaps you have to be a Southerner to, or a native of Texas/Oklahoma. I am fairly sure Brighton was not a popular property in the upper Midwest where I used to live...it is fairly nice budget-priced jewelry (not quite costume jewelry but not quite "serious" jewelry), and shoes, and handbags. I guess I don't get it because I tend not to be much of a bag or shoe person, and most of the jewelry I like is either antique or one-off stuff that someone I know made. It's a very recognizable style. And that's fine, it just happens not to be my style.)

I picked out a couple of books (while waiting for the cafe to open) and left them at the cash register. (One of the nice things about these small shops is you can DO that; the people working there don't look at you like you're weird when you ask).

I've said before I like the restaurant there because they don't treat single diners like a pox. (And there are some restaurants - and not just upper-end ones - that do. There are a few chain places in which I will never eat again based on how I was treated on a couple exploratory visits).

Based on the server's recommendation, I got a cup of their black-bean soup. And on my own decision, the crab cakes.

The crab cakes were good, but the soup was better. It was a different recipe than I make - sort of a tomato base (I think it was pureed tomatoes and chicken broth, maybe in a 2:1 ratio) and it had, in addition to the beans, corn and fresh cilantro. Both of which were good additions. Corn is always good paired with black beans; the slight sweetness brings out the smoky savory taste of the beans. And the cilantro was surprisingly right. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of fresh cilantro; it seems that cooks that use it tend to OVERuse it and then all you taste is that sharp green off-mint taste that cilantro has. But the cook (chef, I guess you'd properly say) here hadn't used too much - he (I know it was a he; I saw him) used just the right amount.

So it's something I want to try to replicate in my own kitchen if I can.

I also had a big cup of hot spiced chai (the cup it was in is about twice the size of the mugs I usually use for tea. It was sort of an Alice in Wonderland cup, both because of the size and because it was broad and shallow. It felt almost like a little kid playing tea party. It was an oddly pleasant sensation to be drinking from such a large heavy cup).

I also got a slice of chocolate cake but left some of it because I decided I was just too full and reached a point where I wasn't really enjoying it.

Two things I got at Barron's - first, I finally found a suitable replacement for the Dopp kit/toiletries kit that was falling apart (the one I had been using was a freebee from Clinique). This one is sturdier. And it's big enough. One of the sort-of distressing things about being a woman Approaching A Certain Age is that you find you have a lot more impedimentia when you travel. For example, now I drag along two moisturizers (one for at night and one with SPF to go under the foundation by day). And I have my allergy meds and my Excedrin Migraine and some kind of antacid. And I have more cosmetics now. And some months back, I began taking a B-vitamin after having some symptoms that suggested I wasn't absorbing some of them well.* And recently, started taking Calcium with vitamin D - great big honking horse pills, twice a day. (I have pretty bad history of osteoporosis in the family, so I figured it was time)

So I need a big kit for all that - plus all the tooth stuff, plus things like bandaids and nail clippers and all the stuff that you MIGHT need and would rather not be without if you do.

(*Another thing about the B vitamins...I realize just now that I have not had one of those horrible nights where I do not sleep since I started taking them. I still have the occasional bad dream (but less often) and I sometimes wake up too early...but I don't have those nights any more (knock wood) where I lie there and can't shut my brain off. I know that the B vitamins can affect serotonin metabolism, and serotonin can affect mood and alertness....so maybe there's something to that.)

Anyway. So now I have a nice new thing (and probably - hopefully - a sturdier thing that will not need replacing soon) to carry all my junk in.

Next was the yarn shop. It is always lovely to go to a yarn shop. I have never been in one that had the fabled crabby owner or snobbish owner - the only ones I've been to have had enthusiastic owners who are interested in hearing about what you plan to make, and who will proudly show off the newest lines the shop carries.

One nice change, this year? Instead of the big paper sacks they used to use, they give you a cloth bag that is silk-screened with the name and address of the shop. (I suppose the idea is then you can bring it back and they will re-use it for your next purchase. And it's cheap advertising for them when you carry the bag around. And most knitters can use another cloth bag, as many of us store our partly-done projects in cloth bags). Maybe the bag is only if you buy a certain amount, I don't know. It would seem a bit churlish to go in there and buy a $4 reel of crochet cotton and expect one of the cloth sacks. (But I didn't do that, as you'll see in the next post).

The owners of this store are very sweet people. The lady who was there today (I think it was Frances Hughes) commented on the vest I was wearing (well, it was one I had knit) and we discussed the projects I had planned for the yarn.

And it was good. I do wish I were closer to the shop; it would be nice to get there more often than once a year.

I did also get to Michael's and replenished some of the cheap-yarn stash (so I can now do Captain Capacitor, and maybe, Resisty, except I didn't find the right blue for Resisty so I'll either have to dig in the stash or look up other resistor color combinations and see what I can put together. And yes, using the correct color combination for some kind of existing resistor is important to me.)

Again: I wish there were a Michael's closer to me. (I think the closest one is in McKinney). It has much better quality yarn than Hobby Lobby; it concentrates less on the weird hairy plasticky novelty yarn.

And I got a couple of 14" pillow forms. One will be used in a Most Amusing to Me finished-object that I will probably post in a couple of days (it just lacks a bit of sewing); the other will be used in a planned companion piece.

I also hit the Books a Million. The one in Longview is about twice as large as the one in Sherman. And I don't know how much autonomy the buyers for individual stores have, but the Longview store has a FAR better History section than the one in Sherman (that may just be a function of the size difference, though). I wound up buying four books, all history:

One on the battle of Thermopylae (I do not know why but I am fascinated by the ancient Greeks)
One on the "Pirate Wars" which is a segment of marginally-related-to-American-History-history I know next to nothing about.
One on the leper colony at Molokai
and one (a Barbara Tuchman) about the state of the world before the first World War

So: Spartans, pirates, lepers, and (I guess) robber barons.

Interesting. The only thread that connects them is that they are all parts of history that seem interesting to me but about which I don't know a lot.

(Titles and authors? I guess I should supply those in case anyone cares:
"Thermopylae: the battle that changed the world" - Paul Cartledge. "Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army (and on and on...)" - Stephan Talty. "The Colony: The harrowing true story of the exiles of Molokai" - John Tayman. And "The Proud Tower: a portrait of the world before the war, 1890-1914." - Barbara Tuchman).

Okay; I see another thread that connects these: they are all titled in the format of:

Short grabby word: much longer description of what the book is actually about. (The "Pirate Wars" one almost slips into self-parody with the length of its title.)

Of course, I'm currently reading "Euclid in the Rainforest" (about logic...and how a lot of geometric proofs and such were independently figured out by many different people...you almost might say (if you are an Elizabeth Zimmerman fan) that they were "unvented"). And "The Pickwick Papers," which is so entertaining that I'm kind of sad I didn't think to read it before.

So it may be a while before I get to these four new ones. (But as I said before - book SABLE. Or maybe that should be BABLE - Books Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy. Or maybe BABEL - Books Acquired Beyond Expectation of Life, to make it a cute allusion. Though I only can read English and French, and perhaps some German, if it's something simple like a yarn label or a menu).

This post is dedicated to my two favorite simple machine based tools ever.

(Well, they are both based on the wheel-and-axle principle, at least. And they also both have a screw in the clamp that holds them onto the tabletop or whatever, but the screw isn't such an integral part of the mechanism.)

The umbrella swift:



And the ball winder:



There is something simple and pleasing about winding off skeins of yarn using these tools. The pleasure I feel is kind of similar to the pleasure of using other simple, time-honored tools - tools I know my great-grandmother (or even great-great grandmother) would recognize.

The swift I have makes a soft rackety-rack sound as it turns. The ballwinder makes pleasing "cakes" of yarn - the strands overlap in a complex pattern that reminds me a bit of the phyllotaxis seen in sunflower seed heads.

There's also the pleasure of expectation while doing it - winding off yarn is a preparatory step to knitting. (Sometimes, it's the most pleasant preparatory step - next, you have to make your swatch and find the right needle size and maybe figure out the pattern stitch or read through the pattern to make sure it all makes sense). But winding yarn is simple and pleasing and elemental and next to actually knitting, probably the most pleasant part of the process. It carries with it the happy expectation of starting a new project.

You can make do without them - there's the time-honored tradition of getting your "beau" (or later, your husband, or, I suppose, a particularly calm and compliant child) to agree to be manacled with wool for the length of time it takes to wind off a ball. Or, absent a beau, you can drape it around your own knees (and if you are athletic, stick your feet up in the air as you wind...there's a picture in Tracy Ullman's knitting book of her doing just that. I'm afraid my hamstrings would seize.) Or you can drape the hank over a (loosened) lampshade and wind from there.

And a ballwinder isn't totally necessary - in fact, for several years, I had a swift but no ballwinder. The only problems with handwinding balls of yarn (unless you have a nostepinne), is that you have to be very careful not to wind too tightly (which I tended to do), because it puts stress on the yarn (in fact, some "experts" advised to only wind balls right before you were ready to knit with them). The other problem is that I find the balled-up yarn goes rolling across the floor, and winds up in inaccessible places, and (if you're like me and would rather knit than sweep) picks up dust birds as well.

(There are also electrical ball winders but I have to admit I prefer the little hand-cranked one I have - too many gears and motors on things and there are more things that can go wrong. And I understand how the hand-cranked ball winder works, whereas some of the workings of even a simple motor are more mysterious. And the electric ones are, well, electric, and they SOUND electric. Instead of the little soft clatter, there is a mechanical whir, which I find less pleasing).

I like my little ball winder for those reasons - the nice, compact, pleasing-to-the-eye cakes of yarn. The fact that the "cake" stays put when you're knitting from it. (You can either do it as a center-pull, or knit from the outside. I tend to do center-pull with some yarns, and knit-from-the-outside on those that are grabbier and would give what one knitter calls "yarn barf" - where you get a big clump of yarn coming out of the middle all together). I also like that I can tuck the tag or band into the middle of the cake and keep the information with the yarn if I want to.

When I first got back into knitting, I didn't own either. It's a lot harder working with hanked yarn if you don't have a swift...I had one unhappy misadventure with a ball of Koigu that I tried to wind off by "pooling" on the floor, and then walking around and around as I wound the ball...it wound up in a big mess and I had to take hours untangling it. The swift is such a better way of doing it.

I think I also like them because they are "good" tools. They do their job well. There is nothing jury-rigged (and yes, I maintain that "jury rigged" is the right term and not "jerry rigged," which sounds like a WWI-era insult) about them - they do their job right, they do what you expect them to do. There are few things that can go wrong with them and most of those things can be easily fixed. Yes, they are single-use tools (I know some people who refuse to have single-purpose tools in their kitchens...) but I tend to feel I'd rather have a tool that does one job really well than a tool that does five jobs poorly.

So I'm very happy to have both the swift and the ball winder. Winding off yarn feels like kind of an autumnal activity, like something you do in preparation for the long winter ahead. I've been winding the skeins of Araucania into cakes in preparation for starting the Cobblestone Pullover. Even though I probably have at least a week's knitting left on the SitCom Chic I'm working on, I felt like winding yarn this afternoon.

This has been a busy week. I have to leave shortly for an evening meeting, tomorrow late afternoon/evening if it's not storming I have fieldwork to do with a student*, I need to finish weighing my little plants.

(*please let it be. Not that I like having to put off the fieldwork yet again but I could really use that time back).

(I had thought of making a run to McKinney this weekend, seeing as the "economic stimulus" check finally showed itself. But maybe not, now that I look at some of the yarns I have and want to start knitting up...perhaps better to pop a dvd in the player and knit away instead.)

And in the middle of it, I'm hit with startitis. I've been digging in the stash and finding stuff. Stuff I knew I had, but which I had kind of pushed to the back of my mind. Some of it stuff people gave me long ago (eep) which I never knit up: a nice skein of opal-colored not-quite-sure-what-fiber-it-is from Diann...which will someday become a large-ish scarf in the feather and fan pattern. (I even have the pattern card - from my Little Box of Scarves - tucked in the storage bin with the yarn).

And the nice Diaketo that I "won" by coming up with the most repulsive idea for the mis-use of a song in a commercial (James Brown's "Sex Machine" for one of those anti-ED drugs. And mark my words: it will be used someday. I feel it in my gut. It will only come down to who owns the rights to that song and how fast Merck or whomever can pay them off). That came from Em.

Actually, that's going to become another feather-and-fan scarf - I want to use it for the Misty Garden scarf in Scarf Style.

And I ran across lots of sock yarn. Like many knitters (perhaps like most knitters who make socks), I tend to hoard sock yarn. Part of it is that it's comparatively cheap...and you often need only buy a single skein of it to make socks. And the colors. It comes in such lovely colors. Colors to cheer you up when it's cold and grey out. Colors to make you feel the cool breezes of autumn when it's 100* out. Colors that remind you of flowers you can't grow because it's too hot and dry where you live. Colors that are like the coloring on some birds. Colors that you buy as a "treat" for yourself when you're down, or when you've done something particularly treat-worthy.

And I dug out the Andean silk that will someday become that turtleneck shrug I talked about. Looking at it, I decided I like it for that, whereas I don't like it so much for a Clapotis any more.

The problem is, I have so many ongoing projects that all my row-counters are already employed in keeping track of rows I am knitting (and should be knitting) in my existing projects. And that's kind of my stop and my stay - I think I likened it once before to the drinker who uses his diamond pinky ring to scratch a line on the bottle: thus far and no farther.

So I will return to the Gentleman's Winter socks. Or maybe to the sleeves on the SitCom Chic. Or the test-knitting scarf for TChem. And long to finish something...both so I can call something finished, but also so I can start something new.

Some project updates:

I am on the LAST bit of the side section (the long panel with the "Flowers of the Forest") on the Hiawatha shawl. I estimate there's about 25" to go. And I'm a lot faster at the edging now that I have it memorized and don't have to even really keep track of what row I'm on.

I might finish this this week. Wow. I've been working on this since fall of 2004.

The feeling is not unlike the feeling I had as the defense of my dissertation approached (well, without the nagging fear of, "What if someone asks you a question that totally destroys your conclusions?").

It's making me excited to begin new projects.

I pulled out the Rowan "Summer Tweed" that I had in my stash (it's sort of an odd pale turquoise color; in the typical Rowan idiosyncratic naming system it's called "Exotic"). I've decided to start Cozy (no, I'm not abandoning the plan of starting the Landscape Shawl but Cozy is an easy pattern - no shaping, no increases or picots to keep track of - and I need something for proctoring-knitting). I'm going to start it this weekend and take it with me this week while I proctor. I think I'm going to write the lace pattern out on a 3x5 card because in one of the rooms, I really have to circulate (there's a ledge on the front of the desks and I wouldn't be able to detect cheating from just the front of the room). And I can just tuck the "cake" of yarn up under my arm and walk around the room, using the card as a reference for the pattern.

I had originally bought the yarn for a shrug but I think a shawl will be more useful to me. And more flattering on me (broad shoulders, large bosom - shrugs don't work so well). And it won't look dated once shrugs go out of fashion. (Shawls always look a little "dated" but that's okay with me; I don't mind looking anachronistic but I prefer my anachronisms to refer to an earlier time period than last year).

I also dug around and pulled out many balls of wool-ease (and a few of Canadiana) bought for projects I have since forgotten (scarves, hats, or socks, I presume, considering I have but one or two balls of each color).

I've started the crochet blanket. Darn, it's FUN! It's all just double crochets but there's no counting (once you're done with the initial chain), no shaping, you change colors every row...it's kind of like what people say about eating potato chips.* This will be a wonderful project for when I have five minutes (while waiting for tea to steep or something) or if I'm really tired or if I wake up in the middle of the night and cannot get back to sleep.

Sadly, it is not a very portable project, with all those colors of yarn (unless I planned the colors needed for the next several rows and just took partial balls of those...)

(*Except I never liked potato chips well enough to keep eating them. I eat three or four - like if they're served alongside a sandwich - and then I'm like, "okay, I'm done.")

I also found some yarn that I'm going to use for the furry monster pattern I linked the other day. I had a ball of Garnstudio Pelliza in a deep blue-green color that came in a grab bag years ago and which I had never done anything with (once upon I time I had thought of making a "kid hat" with it as the brim, but that never materialized). Well, I also found a skein of Muskoka (yes, I have lots of old stuff in the stash) in Exactly. The. Same. Color. So that tells me they need to become the monster. (The pattern calls for knitting a strand of furry yarn together with a strand of plain, worsted-weight yarn)

Not sure what color I'm going to make its "knobbles" yet. Maybe a cream color - I think that would look kind of natty with the deep teal. (I'm also not sure if the monster's going to be a boy monster or a girl monster yet. And yes, you will be able to tell...girls have long eyelashes. [that was my childhood, innocent way of saying how girls were different from boys]).

I love my stash. I love that I can get an idea for a project, dig in, and find pretty much what I need (as long as it's basic worsted-weight). It makes having NO local yarn shops a little easier.