purlsandmurmers

Light up the night

The baby sweater is on the blocking board:

I am really liking the way it is turning out although for a while there, while I finished up the front and knit the sleeves, I was feeling a bit worried that I had made a miscaclulation.

I wanted to knit this sweater in moss stitch the minute I saw the yarn, and I did not want to knit it in the round.  For one thing, moss stitch is really tedious in the round.  Secondly I wanted to emphasize that this was a self-striping yarn by deliberately not matching the pieces.  But then I had doubts. 

I thought perhaps I should have made the sweater in more pieces, for example making the front and back in thirds, to emphasize the various stripes.  I was afraid that just having a front and back that didn't match wouldn't look intentional, but would look instead like I was too lazy or just didn't care enough about the recipient to go to the effort to do it right.

When I pinned the pieces next to each other on the board though I really like the effect, like the way they stripes almost line up in places but are different.  I think this will be quite nice.

The sweater was blocked Friday AM.  No knitting since, or more exactly knitting and unknitting.

Friday night the house was like an oven.  It had been a warm sunny day.  Our house is situated so that it faces the Hudson river on the West.  The West Wall is mostly glass, and it gets the entire brunt of the afternoon sun, as well as reflected sun off the river.  The AC is still disconnected because the venting ran right next to the old chimney and the masons are still working in that area.  Agony.  I think it was 89 in the house at 9 PM although it had cooled down to the low 50's outside. 

I wish I could be a person that slept with the windows open, but I'm not.  I am allergic to gnat bites.  Gnats can travel through screening.  Waking up with rashes that didn't go away is what prompted the investment in AC to begin with.  I opened some windows and turned on the ceiling fan to pull some cool air through the house and hopefully cool things down a bit.  To do this I had to have all the lights out in the house so as not to attract our insect friends. 

I found a ball of yarn and some needles and started knitting a scarf in the dark.  I got a good bit done.  By daylight I thought it was too wide, and I thought my ad hoc pattern could be improved.  So I ripped it all out.  The ball is waiting for the next hot night.  The yarn is so bright you would think I could see it on even the darkest night.

I'd like to be more green, but as soon as possible the AC is coming back.

Here and there,with a little knitting

The baby sweater progresses:

Now, I am not one to get totally neurotic about matching stripes on hand-dyed or self-striping yarn.  If I wanted a sweater to match exactly, I would simply knit it with a bunch of different colored yarns, were I could exercise total control of the outcome.

That said, some planning is still required:

If I knitted the front of the sweater beginning with the same skein used for the back, I would have a white bottom band, as seen above.  I do not like the white front bottom band when the back of the sweater is dark at the bottom.  Out it went. Rip-it.  Rip-it.

The second attempt, with another skein was much more promising:

The front of the sweater, show here with only half of the neck opening knit up, obviously does not match the back, but the bottom bands are very similar in size and color.  This anchors the sweater and ties it together, at least.   I see that the stripes are quite regular and I probably could have lined this up perfectly.  Perhaps if I had bought another skein.  But then, as G often tells me, "perfect is the enemy of good" and I shall let it be.

I am happy to have gotten this far although I know in my heart I could have been knitting more.  It is not a contest however, and the baby is months away.

In the process of finally moving all my fiber stuff out of the living room and getting it cleaned up I discovered that several books had fallen off the "Trollope Trolley" a round bookcase on wheels which contains the complete works of Anthony Trollope.  Of course, as I put the books back into their respective locations I had to pick one or two up and peruse the pages. Perusal led to complete escapism.  Hence I have been spending more time rereading Trollope than knitting this week.  I have worked my way through some of the lesser known novels:  The Fixed Period,  Framley Parsonage, and Dr. Thorne.  They have provided quite a lovely distraction.

Yesterday I pulled out Tesla for the first time and wore it up to the new yarn shop that opened in Rhinebeck:  Bead and Purl.  It is a lovely shop, bright, cheerful and welcoming.  I wanted to sit right down and stay as soon as I walked into its bright space and turquoise walls.  Reminded me of my own new sewing room with its green and turquoise walls.  They have a nice selection of Karabella and Rowan wools so far, although stock is still coming in; there is a lot of nice, smooth, knitable yarn, as opposed to the bulky and novelty yarns that seem to dominate some new shops I have been in of late.  I wish them great luck.

Tesla was nice to wear, lacy and yet covered.  It was cool so I wore a turtle neck under it, and the stainless steel bits nicely caught the sun as it struggled back and forth between the clouds and rain.  G. tells me that it is quite seductive, the way the sweater slips partially down one shoulder with its interesting texture and combination of matte and shiny.   hmmm...

I was surfing about on the web today and I found Grace's blog, after she left me a comment on Tesla (her's is quite lovely by the way) and I found this test:

If I were a Springer-Verlag Graduate Text in Mathematics, I would be William S. Massey's A Basic Course in Algebraic Topology. I am intended to serve as a textbook for a course in algebraic topology at the beginning graduate level. The main topics covered are the classification of compact 2-manifolds, the fundamental group, covering spaces, singular homology theory, and singular cohomology theory. These topics are developed systematically, avoiding all unecessary definitions, terminology, and technical machinery. Wherever possible, the geometric motivation behind the various concepts is emphasized. Which Springer GTM would you be?  The Springer GTM Test

Sometimes I take these tests and sometimes I don't, mostly they are silly, but what intrigues me about this one is that I love Topology.  I am not a mathematician, I was an English Major in college, although I later went on to work with computers and get an engineering degree.  However one of my college roomates was a math major and she had a lot of trouble with Topology.  One of the math tutors would come over to help her, we later became friends, and he always thought I should have become a mathmetician, and once when she was having trouble with something that he couldn't get across I just explained it to her.  I would listen to these talks and it all seemed so obvious to me.  In retrospect I see that this was probably maddening to my roommate, that the English major could figure out Topology and she couldn't, but I didn't mean it that way.  Topology, like Organic Chemistry (which I did take) was just one of the subjects that clicked with me right away and changed the way I looked at the world.

I told you I was a total nerd, right?

Everything else is on hold.  Construction was supposed to begin this week on the deck that ate my life, but I stopped it on Friday.  It seems the drawings from the engineer aren't ready yet.  The digging was done from an earlier version of the plans and some trenches were dug out for walls that should no longer be there.  The electric pool cover has not been ordered and that will take at least 2 to 3 weeks so obviously the construction schedule I was originally given is wrong, as I was told they would be done in  2 to 3 weeks. 

There was some discussion as to whether the walls could be poured without the plans, but I nixed that idea.  I really don't understand this "don't worry, it'll work out" attitude of so many contractors.  Well, it doesn't always work out, and there is a lot of coordination going on here.  Better to wait and pour the conrete right than risk botching the job.  I suppose the contractors grumble at having a pair of engineers for clients, by gosh and by golly doesn't go very far in this household.

Besides, as I look at all the rain we have had this weekend, and the pile of mud that was once my deck, I see that some drainage issues need to be addressed.  The water has tunnelled under one of the proposed walls (they did not dig down to bedrock) and had a wall been poured there it would have been eventually undermined, and this is in an area where proper drainage and planning is most critical.  There is apparently much more work to be done.

Jamaica me baby

As an impending first time grandmother (or step-grandmother) I have been thinking and dreaming of baby sweaters. 

Finally I began one:

There are a few in mind, but I needed a project in a hurry (what's new there?) and I had just picked up this yarn on a whim.  The colors scream baby sweater to me, although perhaps not to everyone.

I am using a pattern for a Moss Stitch sweater from Debbie Bliss's Noro 2 collection.  The  sweater is the basic shape and stitch I envisioned for this yarn and the calculations for differences in guage are not major.   The smallest size she has is 9-12 months so the baby will probably need to grow into this, even though it will be ever so slightly smaller than the pattern sweater.  My general experience has been that most of these sweaters are on the roomy side so I am not worried.