20 May 2009 · No Comments
The plumbers are here. They are competently and industriously doing…stuff. From a lay perspective, it looks and sounds rather as if they’re trying their damnedest to murder my house by driving a stake through its heart. I am finding it disconcerting. It is rather disruptive. Allow me to demonstrate.
This is my very favorite spot in my whole house.
See that bookcase? It has a twin on the other side of the fireplace. I love those bookcases, love that whole wall, it’s the first thing I see when I walk in my house and I just adore it. The chair is fantastically comfy. I sit there and do the (truly disturbing quantity of) reading for my graduate program. The chair even comes pre-equipped with a kitten for my scholarly convenience. The table beside the chair holds a lamp, an alarm clock (for forcing myself to do just one more hour of reading) and a tiny box of post-its and other note taking supplies.
I camp out here all day long.
Now? Now it looks like this.
This is not conducive to reading. The whole living room is in disarray. The whole damn house is in disarray. Dusty too. I don’t do well with dust.
The scary thing is, everything is going smoothly and is right on track. The lovely plumbers assure me that it will all be as good as new (well, better, in that it won’t rain inside) when they’re done. What the hell is it like when these things don’t go according to plan?
17 May 2009 · 1 Comment
If, when you turn on the shower upstairs, water runs down your living room wall downstairs, you can pretty much guess the next few days are not going to go as you had planned. Nor is your budget for the month going look like you had expected. Not really at all. Especially that last part.
As you might perhaps imagine, this will cut into the production of scintillating knitting content over the next week. It will likely also cut into my reserves of patience and sanity. With luck, I will return victorious in a few days.
15 May 2009 · No Comments
One wee quick peek at the sock for Schaefer – just the barest glimpse. I predict these will be seriously nifty.
14 May 2009 · No Comments
All of the unladylike fuming and vigorous swearing at wordpress were apparently worth it. This website has begun to result in the arrival of real live actual yarn in my mailbox. Yarn – for me!
One arrival is a lovely skein of Nichole by Schaefer. It’s a hypnotic mix of blues and purples, variegated enough to be interesting, solid enough to stand up to all sorts of interesting patterns. My only complaint about it is that it’s a one-of-a-kind colorway and so I won’t be able to get more. This will turn into the sock I knit for Schaefer, and you will be seeing lots more of it in the days to come.
The other is equally lovely and just as exciting, but I am, alas, sworn to pictoral secrecy. I can say that it’s an array of test yarns for a yarn club and that I’m very excited about working with it. I don’t think I’ll be giving too much away if I say the color is fantastic. I’ll be saying more about it as soon as I receive official dispensation!
13 May 2009 · 5 Comments
So, the Pedigreed socks are a bit of a challenge. They will be mirror images of each other and feature four different cable patterns and a wrap around rib. They’re fun to knit, but they are not an entirely simple undertaking. I actually rather like my socks to be challenging, but I’ve learned something. The socks that are tricky to knit are also, not surprisingly, tricky to write up.
The pattern for these would be by far my most complicated yet. It would need 8 charts, 6 of them full-page affairs. The written text would take several pages. The whole pattern would likely be about 12 pages long and represent rather a lot of effort on my part. The testing process would also be quite a bit more intense than usual.
Given all that, I’m not sure it’s worth it to sell the pattern for four or five dollars (the going rate for the other patterns I’ve written). I’m also not sure how much demand there would be if I priced it a bit higher, say six or seven dollars. So I’m taking a poll.
If you would, please let me know if you’d be willing to pay an extra dollar or two for a detailed, twelve-page, chart-laden, photo-heavy pattern for advanced intermediate socks. Feel free to tell me that six or seven dollars is just way too much to spend on socks as well. I’m trying to decide if I should write these up, and don’t have my heart set on it one way or the other.
12 May 2009 · 3 Comments
Pedigreed are coming along nicely. The current push to write patterns up for publication is doing wonders for my knitting fidelity. I’m just about ready to start the toe decreases and should hopefully finish the first one tonight.
I especially like the asymmetrically placed gusset on these socks. On this sock, the right side gusset decreases are in the normal location, while the left side gusset decreases move across the top of the foot forcing the plain rib to wrap around and pull over to the right. It’s still quite comfortable and easy to do, but it really changes the look of the sock. See? It looks like it’s hiding.
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