Annie Knits

This and That

I've got medical stuff.  I've got fiber stuff.  Where to begin?

This is Remsen (that's a Ravelry link).  Well, it's the back of Remsen.  I've just cast on for one of the front pieces.  I'm running counter to my nature here.  Usually, I'm all about the process of things, as you know.  But this highly-textured twist front top?  I tried it on in South Carolina at a knit shop near the beach and had to have the yarn and the pattern.  Had to have it.  

The process of knitting with this tightly chained, thick and thin cotton yarn?  I am not loving it.  It's fiddly and you can't get any rhythm going.  This all-stockinette knit should be quick and mindless, but instead it's arduous.  This, friends, is product knitting all the way.

Here's the thing.  The nubbly fabric?  Killer.  Drape and texture galore.  The pattern support for the yarn?  There are three things in the booklet I'd make and another cute vest in this summer's Interweave Knits.  This top?  Flattering, drapey, different.  I keep conjuring the finished product in my mind's eye to get myself to knit on it.  

The hip replacement recovery is coming along.  You'd think that three and a half weeks at home, sitting around waiting for people to bring me food or visit me would have resulted in quite a bit of fiber related productivity, wouldn't you?  Not so.  Parts of those weeks are a little foggy, I guess, but still.  

On the right, 4 ounces of Dyeabolical Club fiber, merino, Maillot Jaune colorway, about 380 yards.  

In the middle, 8 ounces of Hello Yarn club fiber from May, merino, about 700 yards.

On bobbins at the back, more Hello Yarn club fiber, Prism colorway, Polwarth, still have to ply.

In the front, Corgi Hill Farms alpaca silk, about 2.5 ounces but I lost the other half of the braid so it's not quite done yet.  Foggy, I told you...

There was quite a bit of spinning, but not as much as during the last Tour de Fleece.  I wouldn't say that the hip replacement limited me physically as much as mentally -- vicodin makes for intermittent spinning mojo.

On the wheel right now is the current Spunky Eclectic club fiber, a purple/green/navy Wensleydale.  I'm thinking thick and thin, plied with some Color Mart stuff (cashmere blend?) I have on a cone.  I have 12 ounces.  I might be able to stretch it to a swingy vest.  Any ideas?

I had my first post-operative doctor's appointment yesterday.  I'm doing very well.  No more Crutchie, 4 more weeks of PT, 4 more weeks of hip precautions (can't bend certain ways so I don't pop it out of joint while the muscles and tendons heal to hold it in place).  

The resident spent quite a bit of time explaining that this time period may result in depression as I might feel enough better to want to really get back to my normal routine but that my body is still healing and won't let me and as a result I might have a few days where I feel pretty low.  Husband snorked laughter, and I told this earnest young man that if he substituted crabby for depressed, he'd be right on target.  Whew, crabby it is!

I got so mad trying to bend far enough to put a new drive band on my wheel the other morning that my fussing (ok, not fussing, rhymes with fussing) woke Dear Son (I kid you not... at like 9 a.m.) and he stumbled out of his room bleary eyed to help me.  

"God, Mom, chill.  I'll help, ok?"  

Yes.  Crabby, not depressed.  Boy, that'll encourage you all to visit some more, won't it...  Don't worry.  I'm released to drive too, so I can come to you.  ; )

Handwriting Schmandwriting

This.

 It's a link to the Diane Rehm show from this morning.  I got myself lost retrieving Dear Son's tuba from the tuba repair guy so I got to listen to most of it.  

I had kind of weaned myself from news shows since the last election.  I was getting so overwrought over the studip on the radio, even on the rarified waves purporting to be NPR (sometimes I wondered), that I was yelling at radio personalities ("Mom, they can't hear you...") during car-pool.  A few times, I even forgot to drop off the other kids and pulled into my driveway in a huff with a car full of not-my-progeny who meekly from the back seat asked if they should just walk home.  Time to cut the crazy out of my life.  

For a year or so, I listened to books on tape or on the ipod.  Good enough.  Lately, though, I've been feeling out of the loop.  Like, I totally had no idea Carmageddon was even a word, let alone a big hairy deal and I read about the Norwegian bombings on Twitter.  Time to re enter the fray, I thought to myself.  

The first several car rides with NPR were only mildly upsetting.  The interview with the Tea Party guy yesterday, for instance, who doesn't believe that the Congressional Budget office is telling the truth when they say that the deadline for renewing our credit rating is August 2nd.  He thinks it's probably sometime a week later so we have plenty of time to hammer out something that he and his constituents can swallow.  "I've got something for you to swallow," I muttered as I pulled in to pick up the CSA share.  (Saturn peaches!  OMG!  Who knew?  Not sharing.)  See?  No ranting, just muttering.

But this morning had me yelling again.  Several states, it turns out, are eliminating the Palmer method of cursive from their curriculum.  Actually, Missouri did just this 12 years ago.  Doesn't mean it's not taught, just not tested.  Sheesh.  Duh, the handwriting grade having been the bane of my 3rd graders' existences -- both of 'em.  Not fine motor kids.  Anyway.

The panel on the show today discussed (ad nauseum) the merits of cursive writing, with the lone dissenter being a scientist from Oberlin talking about kids and the digital age.  

Wah, wah, kids should be able to read and write in cursive, wah, wha, cursive taps into the creative part of the brain that's left un tapped by a computer, wah, wah, your cursive signature is your calling card, wah, wah, no one writes anymore and no one saves any of their writing and look I have a shelf full of Edith Wharton's letters to her friend which I treasure, wah, wah.

Gah!

1.  Kids should be able to read cursive, yes, and it is nice to have a familiarity with writing cursive as it's much quicker than printing (Scientist woman discussed the origin of the Palmer method in businesses in the 19th century -- it was called joined writing then I think and was the precursor to shorthand.)  Having to copy cursive letters a la Palmer had my son doing just that.  Copying them.  Laboriously, one at a time.  When you have to think too much about forming the letters, you are not thinking about content.  (An OT caller pointed this out, to no avail.)

2.  There is no science (according to Scientist Lady or SL from now on) to back up the idea that centering yourself in front of a notebook with a pen and writing in cursive taps into any different part of your brain than typing does.  Like they hooked people up to brain scans -- no science.  What there is evidence of is the increased level of thoughtful revision that takes place using a key board as opposed to a pen and paper.  And the measurable increase in sheer volume or number of words.  Not always a good thing, but hey, measurable.  I mean, duh, I type way more words than I'm willing to hand write.  And I revise both on the fly and after the fact much more easily using a word processing program than I can on paper.  More neatly too.

3.  Yeah, a signature means something.  But you don't need one to file your taxes any more.  Or to use a credit card.  My kids' signatures are pitiful.  Not the least bit flowery or Declaration-of-Independence worthy.  They should probably work on that.  Hubster's signature consists of some humps, some ticks, and a straight line.  Seriously.  So easy to forge it's a shame.  And the caller who said she doesn't even consider a teen applicant to her mall shop who can't sign the application with a nice cursive signature?  Discriminate much?  What else ya got?

4.  No one writes any more?  Are you kidding?  My kids write way more than I ever did as a kid. I wrote thank you notes to Grandma Buckley and that was it.  Well, and this one weird chapter thing in 7th grade because I was in love with David Galucci and had to get my feelings on paper.  My kids text and post on Facebook and blog.  They write stories and comment on news websites.  All of that is writing.  Heck, I write way more now than I ever did before I started blogging.  And look at the sidebar... see?  All saved for posterity.  These are my letters to all of you.  Seriously?  Have you read Edith Wharton's letters?  She would totally have had a blog.  

Oh, I guess some of this is tongue in cheek.  I love beautiful handwriting and aspire to it myself.  

But, the fact that these folks stuck dogmatically to their ideas in the face of science which proved the opposite made me angry.  And of course there was a generational divide.  Older folks seemed to prefer what they've been taught and eschewed texting and tweeting and the language engendered by electronic media.  They also tended not to categorize those activities as "writing".  I disagree is all.  

The show ended with a giant can of worms, though, and I really enjoyed the near sputtering that ensued.  SL admitted to the fact that is is indeed much easier for kids to plagiarize now, with cut and paste, than it used to be, although most colleges, and even high schools, have a program that pretty effectively weeds this out if you have an electronic copy of the work.  Yes, that is true.  She also dropped the bomb that she thinks we need to have a more fluid idea of what constitutes plagiarism in the face of modern technology.  I thought the host's head (not Diane) might explode.  

I guess I'd like to hear what Science Lady's idea of this more fluid approach might be.  To do that, I'll have to get her book.  There are probably no naked Highland warriors in it though.

And speaking of naked, now, I am going to spin the new Spunky Eclectic Wensleydale fiber I got in the mail yesterday.  And I'm going to listen to a bodice ripper while I do it.  (Oh, this one's good -- long-lost daughter of a Russian nobleman raised by Dakota Indians, transplanted to Regency England, takes the ton by storm and captivates a brooding duke... fluff, fluff, fluff.)  No more news programs for me today. 

Giddyap!

Yeah, I'm up on my high horse again.  Mostly knitting content for those who care.

Last week, my Interweave Knits daily email linked to one of their new Interweave Galleries where folks wear the sweaters from the magazine.  Usually, the gals (seemingly from the Interweave offices) wear the one sweater sent in as a sample and you get to see how it fits lots of differently sized women.  Helpful.

This week, the newsletter linked to a set of gallery pictures where staffers had knit the sweater themselves.  They discuss their processes and the modifications they've made.  Also interesting.  

As I read through the comments concerning the Al Fresco Camisole, I started to hyperventilate.  Well, not really, but I wanted too.  Truth is, the story told in the comments has lost it's shock value for me.  

In a nutshell, the gals wanting to make this camisole, the specs of which call for a bamboo blend (red flag, red flag, gauge alert, gauge alert!) swatched and decided that to get the gauge called for in the final product, each had to go up 4 needle sizes.  Four.  As a LYS worker, that's a red flag, too.  Rarely are needle recommendations so far off.  Even Starmore gauge often requires only a 2 or 3 needle size drop.

The next part of the story is predictable.  When each knitter made the thing, it was ginormous.  Like twice the size of the original finished product.  No surprise when you're knitting on needles almost twice the size called for in the pattern.  Neither says specifically that she washed and blocked her swatch.  I'm betting neither did. 

Each knitter then comes to the realization that after knitting the thing, it stretched.  A lot.  You think?

Ok, I'm lucky to work in a yarn shop.  I have lots and lots of experience with gauge issues and I get experience with lots of different fibers without having to knit them myself.  

And I'm about to start lobbying for the standard swatch warning to include an admonition ... in ALL CAPS ... to wash your swatch.  Wool grows.  Bamboo and rayon REALLY grow.  Super wash wool REALLY REALLY grows.  

Please, please, please, knit a swatch and wash it the way you are going to wash the sweater.  Really.  

On Ravelry this morning, a Raveler complained about a lovely yarn, Rowan Lima, growing after she'd knit the garment.  She swatched, she said, but didn't say she'd washed her swatch.  I swatched Lima too, and had to drop 2 needle sizes to get it to maintain it's shape after washing it.  It's nearly half alpaca.  And it's a chained yarn.  It's gonna grow. 

I see this in the shop all the time.  Folks want to get started on the project already.  Swatch? Oh, I always get gauge.  Fine, I tell them.  But you can't felt this alpaca to get it to fit later.  In fact, I've never seen felting help a sweater unless it was meant to be totally felted a la boiled wool to begin with.  Felting shrinks a garment lengthwise, but almost not at all width wise.  

"If you want to knit on a sweater for 100 hours," I say,"and have it not fit, that's fine with me.  But the only thing I'll be able to do for you in the end is help you rip it out."  I'm pretty firm about this.  Like I say this in the tone I used with my 9th grade English students during final exams.

Mostly then, customers swatch.  And then they let me take it to the bathroom in the back and rinse it.  Then they are believers.  

I guess the point of this post is that I don't understand how we as a knitting community have not communicated this amongst ourselves sufficiently.  How is it that so many folks end up with items that don't fit?  I've seen the lack of swatch washing affect hats, mittens, scarves, sweaters ... you name it, if it has to fit something, I've seen it go wrong.  And mostly?  The garments are too big and folks want to felt them.  Which, I repeat, never works.  And then?  You can't re knit it so that it fits.  

Part of the problem may be that a little knowledge gives you just enough to hang yourself with.  Inexperienced knitters look at all of the yarn choices listed for projects in Ravelry tabs and think, oh, I'll sub this kitchen cotton for this aran wool and it'll be perfect.  No. It. Will. Not.  

Subbing yarn can be tricky.  I help customers do it all the time, but you have to take fiber and yarn construction and a myriad of other factors under consideration to do it.  If you're downloading a free pattern and doing all the subbing yourself, it can get tricky to just conjure up those intricately shaped pieces of that sweater on your own.  Just saying.

Have I had gauge issues?  You bet.  Have I ripped an entire sweater due to the fact that after washing, it would have fit both hubster and I at the same time?  Absolutely.  I can't face those balls of yarn yet, but I will sometime.  Were these issues due to not washing my swatch?  Yes, indeedy.  

We've all done it.  Walked on the wild side.  Played gauge roulette.  Hoped for the best.  

Another thing I say is, "Do you feel lucky, punk?"  (I really do say this but I used discretion and don't say it to just anyone ... )

Sheesh.  I need a T-Shirt.  

WASH YOUR SWATCH.  

Ok, Prancer, back out to pasture.  I'm through.  ; )

A Room With a View

Here's mine.

In case you live under a a rock or aren't my friend on Ravelry, Twitter, or Facebook, since I posted last, I've had my right hip replaced.  I chose something called the anterior procedure and I'm now almost exactly two weeks post surgery.

Today I can go up and down stairs, bending my right leg like a normal person, unassisted, a thing I haven't done since last calendar year.  I can get up and down from chairs reliably, of course, and I can walk nearly without a hobble.  Crutchie is still a constant companion though, because I'm afraid to fall and injure this miraculous thing that is my new hip.

Today, I am also still housebound so as to keep my insurance coverage for the home health care folks who come to do PT and OT and Home Health.  It was major surgery after all, and I kind of like that my vital signs are monitored most days, etc.  I'm here, with this view, until a week from Thursday -- a quirk of the calendar and vacations and husband's travel schedule, I could technically be released from my homebound precautions as of tomorrow if the appointment with my surgeon had worked out.

So.  Here I sit.  Spinning (finally) and listening to books and reading and Tweeting about how if my friends really loved me they'd come over and visit me.  Most of them really do.  Love me that is.

My family and I've had tons of lovely friend-cooked dinners and desserts.  I've had visitors nearly every day and many visitors some days - back to back all day.  They've laughed at my Vicodin induced hazy conversations and bemoaned the fact that they missed them all together.  I am truly blessed.  

Bullets of Hip Surgery Humor:

• I was bemoaning the fact that my surgeon didn't even come talk to me before the operation and how rude that was, when Hubster informed me that I chatted with him for 10 minutes that morning.  So now we know that the stuff they put in your IV an hour before surgery to relax you is a BLACKOUT drug for me.  Sheesh.  I remember nothing except that it wore off just as I got into the operating room and I saw the table they use for the anterior hip replacement procedure.  Yikes.  They shouldn't let you see that thing before they strap you onto it... (I've watched the videos but I won't link to them.  They're graphic and scary and make your stomach hurt.  I'm not an orthopedic surgeon for a reason.  Google them if you want.  Gack.)
• The night I got home from the hospital (two days post operation) I (apparently because I have no memory of this either) thrashed around crabbing that "There's something wrong!" and it was that my foot was tangled up in the sheet and Hubster had to try to wrestle my still ham-like right leg clear before I stopped my whining.  His words.  Gosh.  Tough crowd.
• My fourteen-year-old Dear Son asked last Tuesday (5 days post op -- at least I could feel my right leg by then) if I could drive him and a few of his friends to a movie the next day.  I blinked at him and told him probably not.  Oh, he said, well, we could try to take the bus, I guess...  He's Captain Oblivious.  I'm going to have a cape and tights made for him.
• Physical Therapists are tricksy.  When they tell you to drink at least 96 ounces of water a day, implying that with all that hydration your body will heal faster, what they really mean is that you'll have to get up to go to the bathroom every hour or so and all that walking is what does it.  

I've complete just a little over 8 ounces of spinning, most of which I'm not allowed to blog about until an indie dyer who shall remain nameless says it's ok.  It's this month's fiber club after all, and I was test driving it.  In the photo, you see some Hello Yarn club fiber, a Polworth top, colorway Prism.  It's pretty and sproingy to spin.  

While spinning, I've been listening to the novelized version of the Scottish Play that Audible's been pushing.  It's pretty good.  Gory, of course.   What did I expect?  It focuses on what happens behind the scenes.  No Shakesperean language or even scenes directly from the play, which I was actually hoping for.  Now I'll have to go online and re-read the plot highlights since it's been forever since I studied that play.  

Oh well, something else to occupy my time until I can cajole another friend into dropping by.  ; )