The week of blah

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Yesterday, I typed up this wonderful entry that described quite clearly how my week was going… and Blogger ate it… Blogger glupped it down, and unlike the previous entry Blogger ate, this one will not come back. Why? Because I tried to post yesterday’s entry 2 minutes after they began updating their servers…. who the hell updates their public servers at 3 pm?! *groan*

A prime example of my week.

Most of the blahs were work related. I was rushing to get things done as I was taking off today for school purposes and taking off the part of next week that I do not already get off for Thanksgiving… because I need a break.

Unfortunately, part of my week off will be spent with the family… the husband and I are driving down to Monterey to have dinner with my parents, my sister, and my future brother-in-law. Fun fun. The other unfortunate part of my week off is the looming paper… 15-20 pages due on Dec. 4th. My topic is digitization as preservation… geez, is it thick… what was I thinking? I think the lack of knitting a couple weeks back affected my thinking. But I’m committed now.

I am planning to take the shawl with me… hours of waiting for a turkey to be cooked should provide for hours of knitting undisturbed. I’m not sure about giving my sister a chance to see the shawl, especially since it will be her Christmas gift from me (just in time for her wedding… isn’t that a cunning plan?). But the unoccupied time won’t be available for studying since my family likes to gab when amongst themselves.

New projects include a beaded lace bookmark that I need to finish off, block and get into the mail so that it can be whisked off to my bookmark exchange partner. A picture will certainly be taken before said whisking… and I say this knowing I’ve never taken a photo of any of my other bookmarks. *sigh*

Another project is super secretive… I decided to knit up a little something for the husband to augment his Christmas gifts. Sadly, the super secretive project may be running into a road block. I knit a gauge swatch (and even did it in the round since that’s how the item is knitted) and now I may be getting a whole extra stitch to the inch… I won’t be able to tell if it is truly a bad thing till I have enough to try it on… if it fits me well, it’s too small, and I will either have to relax a little or try another needle size… don’t know if I’d need to go to a 10.5 or an 11 (part of me hopes, if I do need to change needles, that an 11 will work because I already have one along with a set of double points*).

*Boy, that gives it away doesn’t it? Good thing the husband doesn’t read my blog. Haha!

Now you know why I didn’t become a computer programmer*

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I fiddled with the math some more cause something didn’t seem right, but all is well. My math:

1 leaf pattern repeat = 16 rows

16 rows knitted = 1.5 inches = 10.67 rows/inch

16 rows blocked = 2 inches = 8 rows/inch

To get 18 inches in length with a blocked gauge of 8 rows/inch = 144 rows

144 rows at 10.67 rows/inch gauge = 13.5 inches

Of course, there is the fiddly little issue of wondering if my gauge swatch is over blocked. The lace is opened beautifully… but looks a little flat… I don’t know if this means I over-stretched it or if it’s because it’s a 5 inch gauge swatch.

“Bah!” I say. Maybe I should take a break and work on my lace bookmark that needs to get into the mail by the end of the month. I want to try something with beads… so I will need to plan a trip to the bead store. I going to go simple for the lace pattern itself; I’m planning on using the Diagonal Maderia Lace pattern from Barbara Walker’s Treasury of Knitting Patterns. I’m thinking of adding a bead at each yo after a sl1-k2tog-psso… the beads should then sort of underline the diagonal lines. The yarn I’m using is a pretty french blue color… so I need to figure out if I want lighter beads… darker beads… or something completely contrasting.

*I couldn’t get passed the 3rd semester of calculus, and I didn’t even want to try the 2nd semester of physics. I understand theories… they make perfect sense… it’s the implementation of them (especially in relation to exams) that I have trouble with.

Where am I going?

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It dawned on me last night that I could measure the current knitted state of the lace shawl and compare it to my blocked swatch and just get a reliable preblocked/blocked ratio. Thus, I now know that one leaf pattern knitted to one leaf pattern blocked is 1.5:2 inches. This is good to know because it means I will have to knit 13.5 inches to attain 18 inches of blocked shawl. I’ve got 7.5 inches knitted so far. Makes me feel a little better…. cause part of me feels it’s going to go on forever and I won’t get it done in time.

Confusion reigns supreme

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It appears that the entry I thought Blogger had eaten wasn’t very tasty as it’s been returned… you can see it below… you can also see it was nothing spectacular.

It also appears that I am losing my mind at the young age of 27. Of course, I know people who would claim I never had one of my own to begin with… I am a blonde after all… for all I know my brain case is just full of hot air… which would explain some of the things that come out of my mouth.

Sadly, there will be no knitting tonight as the husband and I are heading into the city (that’s SF, for those of you either south or east of my location) to see Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing at the American Conservatory Theater. The lace is too complicated to try and knit during the show. At least I got 4 more rows done last night, bringing the total to 60 rows completed… only about 84 more rows to go, which certainly sounds better than 144 rows to go or even 100 rows to go. Twelve more rows and I’m half way through the row count, if not the shawl. I need to ignore the fact that each row is going to take longer to knit as I go along.

I’m still thankful that the pattern is not a pain to knit, and it’s not boring either. The last lace shawl I did was getting tedious by the end because it was a 3 pattern row repeat. The Sister Shawl is a 4 pattern row repeat… but the way the repeating section is written it looks twice as long…. so my mentality has been “Which row is next?” rather than “Row 1, Row 3, Row 5… and back again.”

Finally getting back to knitting

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The last week has been grumpy… well… okay… I was grumpy. Between the election results and having a paper comparing Terry Cook’s and Luciana Duranti’s appraisal models* due on Saturday not much knitting was done… okay, no knitting was done until Saturday evening.

I had written an entry about the lack of knitting and furious paper source reading that had been occurring, but Blogger ate it. Hope it was yummy.

But, now, thankfully, knitting has recommenced. I got 12 rows done on the lace shawl. Somehow I feel accomplished, but I also feel like I’m getting nowhere. I have to keep remembering that every 4 inches stretches out to 6 inches. But the end still feel a long ways off… I’m on row 56 and I estimated that I need to have 144 rows done to get the desired length without the edging, which I’m guessing will add approximately 2 inches in length… the numbers all work out nicely that way, which could mean I’m horribly wrong**. I have decided that I need to get cracking on it again since December 28th is looming, and I need enough time to block the thing.

Now, back to work.

*This particular link goes to Cook’s theory, which is the one I sided with… cause I know you all care. *grin*

**I did, in fact, knit a gauge swatch… which I promptly forgot to measure before blocking, so my 4 inches knit = 6 inches blocked is, simply put, a guess… an edumicated guess, but a guess nonetheless.

One of those weeks

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I am sorry to say that there has been no knitting since I finished Lavender Twist on Tuesday. This is due to a mixture of sore wrist muscles after speeding through a hat with cables not using a cable needle (and I blame it on the circular needles… I always seem to tightly curl my pinkie fingers when knitting on circulars in the round. Why? It’s a mystery to me.) and the general crappiness that followed Tuesday. I have a lowered amount of motivation at the moment and a paper to write, so no knitting until after class tomorrow (and if I’m not sick by then… knitting and sick just don’t mix well with me, and I seem to be trying to fight something off). *blah*

Slow going

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The decreasing rows on Lavender Twist are going much…. much… slower than the cabling rows. I blame this on them being wacky. Unlike the cabling rows, which have a symmetry to them, each row of the decreasing rows requires constant vigilance as I work my way across. In fact, I had to set down the knitting for a moment last night to hand out candy* and when I came back, I had no idea where I was and could not figure it out without going back to the beginning of the round and counting stitches. On the cabling rows, this would have been unnecessary because of aforementioned symmetry.

I plan on buckling down and, hopefully, finishing the hat tonight. This should be made easier by the fact that I have a paper due on Saturday that I am avoiding.

*The husband was busy taking the roast chicken out of the oven, and since I love his roast chicken, answering the door and handing out candy to cute trick-or-treaters was an easy task.

Happy Halloween!

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Lavender Twist is progressing nicely. Although, now I need to tink back a row, so I can begin the decreases. I measured my head…. if I do the pattern as written, it will have a depth of 9 inches… that would cover my eyes. But, if I leave out one pattern repeat it should fit well. I keep forgetting what a small head I have.

I finally have an in-progress picture… Yea!


Class yesterday went well… paper turned in, 7 rows completed on Lavender Twist, disaster planning discussed*, and wet book received. Yes, wet book. My prof has given us an extra credit project… a wet book… that we must dry out and write up a report about the experience. I’m going to try the freezer drying method. The book I got is not a hardcover, so standing it up and fanning the pages won’t work very well… and I don’t want mold to develop. Mold growth = game over… we can still get extra credit, but we’re supposed to throw the book out so we don’t risk our health. I have to admit the Preservation Management class had been quite interesting… protecting books and protecting wool have a lot in common… there are pests to worry about… disasters to plan for… that sort of thing.

Hope everyone has a good Halloween!

*I never realized that practically every kind of disaster involves water damage… hurricanes and floods are obvious… but fires have water to put out the fire, earthquakes and tornadoes can break pipes… so, in a library anyways, you always need to be prepared to handle wet books and papers.

Lavender Twist

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I do believe the Mountain Colors yarn will be really nice, if not perfect, for the Shedir pattern from Knitty’s 2004 Fall Surprise. However, I was wrong about it being 100% wool; it’s Mountain Goat, which is 55% mohair and 45% wool. The color is called Sweet Lavender.


I got it started on Wednesday and am on row 24 so far, just haven’t had a chance to take an in-progress picture yet. The only thing that is confusing me so far is the twists and cables. I keep wondering if there’s an easier way to do them. According to the pattern, for a left twist you slip the next st onto a cable needle and hold it to the front, purl next st, then knit st from cable needle. I once made socks that used a twisting pattern, but to make the twists you knit into second st, then knit into first st. or knit second st tbl, then knit first st. Now, if I could substitute one or both of these for the way the twists or cables are done, this would knit up a little quicker. Right now I’m doing each cable/twist per the instructions, but without a cable needle, and it seems a bit cumbersome. The twists I did on my socks went smoothly compared to the ones on this hat. Unfortunately, my brain gets tied up in knots when I try to think too deeply in three dimensions.

By now, you’re probably confused as to why I’m thinking so hard about this… well, I have a paper due tomorrow, and this is how I avoid working on it. *grin* I had to perform a building survey (with preservation management in mind) and now have to type up a 5 page report on the risks I found. I’m having problems with where to start… and how to get 5 pages out of this. So, I started a new project instead. *sigh* Geez, is that sad, or what?

The new project has been added to the sidebar, and it will be updated when I get an in-progress picture taken. I’ve also reorganized my Fotopic photo page. I started with just a knitting section, but decided to split it up into finished objects and works in progress. Ah, organization… yet another of my distractions from school work. I’m such a procrastinator.

Now for something a bit different… I usually don’t go in for quizzes, but this one is knitting related and kind of cute.

Knitting Guru
You appear to be a Knitting Guru. You love knitting
and do it all the time. While finishing a piece
is the plan, you still love the process, and
can’t imagine a day going by without giving
some time to your yarn. Packing for vacation
involves leaving ample space for the stash and
supplies. It can be hard to tell where the yarn
ends and you begin.

http://marniemaclean.com

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