End of row

This week I came up with a new plan to trick myself into doing more writing. I bribed myself with new pens — Pentel EnerGel 0.7mm pens in purple and blue liquid gel ink — and gave myself permission to start using a journal that proclaims on the cover that “Anything is Possible.” So far, the plan is to only allow myself to use the pens and the journal on the weekends, until such time as I truly can’t take the wait any more and insist on having half-hour free-writing sessions during the week.

We’ll see how it goes. And for those whose neurology is as unconventional as mine, you may be intrigued to know that the blue (cyan) EnerGel pen is made in Japan, while the purple (violet) EnerGel pen is made in Mexico. I am not making this up. And now you know, too.

Zoom in for more similarities and differences!

I don’t have any progress to report on actual typewriter maintenance. I did purchase a can of something called PB Blaster that is supposed to help with loosening the tight screw on the spool cover, but I haven’t had enough time to devote any of it to the Galaxie II. Maybe next weekend — or maybe not, if I have to go out of town (see below).

I haven’t found any time to do any reading for the Impossible Read, either, but this weekend I purchased two of the books on the list (The Old Man and the Sea and A Tale of Two Cities) and two of the movies I’ll watch between groups of books (The Sword in the Stone and Aladdin). That doesn’t really keep me moving forward on the project, but it does make me more prepared for forward progress when I have some. It will be a long time before I need a copy of the next text, which is Grendel by John Gardner, which I am reluctant to purchase because I think that I already have a copy that I can’t find.

I’m also collecting DVDs for a Kevin Smith movie watchathon over spring break at the end of March. At first I thought I would watch Clerks-Clerks II-Clerks III, but now I’m wondering if the order should really be Clerks-Mallrats-Chasing Amy-Dogma-Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and then Clerks II and Clerks III. What do you think? What do you think Kevin will suggest? (I’ll ask him.) For this project I’ll blow the dust off one of my other blogs, Take Five Movie Reviews, and link to it from here.

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Knitwise, I cast on for a new project this week. The yarn is Patons Classic Wool, worsted weight, which I bought three skeins of by mistake when I was searching in vain for Plymouth Encore last fall to use in the recently finished Stripe Scarf.

This pattern, by Madison knitter and knitting designer Elizabeth Morrison, is called “Habit Forming” and is modeled on the pattern sheet by Friend-to-All-Knitters Franklin Habit. The pattern, which is a free download on Ravelry, was designed with Noro Kureyon in mind — whether or not you choose to edit the colorway — but I think this grey wool will look rather elegant. I have been finding it easy to sit down and knit two rows of the pattern at a time to take a break from the other items on my task list, so it’s slowly growing. I’m finding that breaking some tasks into tiny chunks is allowing me to devote larger chunks to other tasks. Imagine that.

I did mention earlier that the Stripe Scarf was finally completed. After I found the Perfect Box™ it was also shipped, but unfortunately I didn’t have the apartment number for my son. USPS returned the package to me, I obtained the apartment number, and I re-shipped the package. It arrived today (!) to some acclaim. Or perhaps it arrived yesterday and the acclaim was sent today. ANYway, the scarf has made it to its requestor. Will it snow again this winter? Who knows, but it sure has been cold. I do like knowing that Liam can now be more bundled up against the cold and the wind.

I think the Habit Forming scarf will be for me. The knitting itself is therapy, and it’s been a little while since I intentionally made something for myself to wear. (As you can imagine, I already have several hand-knitted shawls, hats, scarves, cowls, and pairs of socks.) Lately I have been trying to find patterns that will give me some pleasurable knitting and allow me to use up bunches of yarn. “You know, I could make myself a scarf” hasn’t exactly been the first thought on my mind. But now I’d like to give myself a nice cozy gift.

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This week’s post has been brought to you by the memory of my grandmother, Elizabeth Christine (Chris) Walker, who departed this world earlier today at the age of 101-1/2. She was a force of nature and there will never be another one like her. She also loved the slippers I knitted for her over the years; I stopped making them because she became unsteady on her feet and I didn’t want her to slip. On Ravelry, where I haven’t updated my project records in several years, I found photos and notes for ten pairs of slippers that I knitted for her — so there may well have been more. She did wrap herself up in a throw that I knitted for her. Rest in peace, Grandmother.

Decreasing responsibilities

This weekend was the 2022 Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival, held ten miles away from my house, in Jefferson. The first year I attended it (2008), I started organizing a little get-together on Saturday night of the Festival that came to be called “Unwind.” With a little (okay, a LOT) of help from my friends, I kept this event going for nine years. I would have liked to have done it for ten years, but the venue rented the space without telling me in the tenth year, and I let it go. (It was for a wedding, so I didn’t want to be the *sshole.)

Facebook has spent all weekend sending me reminders of Unwind, from the first, cobbled-together event held at Fireman’s Park in Rome to the more recent events. Those were good times, and I’m glad that I pulled that kind of thing together so many times. I made a lot of good friends and — more importantly — created a social space in which crafters could meet, eat, relax, and have fun.

Door prizes, some of them (2008)

On Saturday morning I did some grocery shopping at the store just on the other side of the fairgrounds, then took the Highway 26 bypass to Johnson Creek to shop at Penzeys before heading home. From the bypass you get a great view of the County Fair Park, where the Festival is held. The camping area was full, and the parking lot was filling up. And in a small field between the fairgrounds and the bypass, I spotted a small herd of sheep that was being driven and guided, incrementally, by a diligent and well-trained little black dog.

The good times don’t last forever, so it’s important to make the memories when you can — to take that leap of faith and see what can happen.

Door prizes (2010)

I didn’t attend the Festival this year, but I knew people who couldn’t wait to be there to take classes, to shop, and to wander around amongst all of the wooly and sheepy fun with their friends. In the weeks that led up to the Festival, I started to receive requests to join a Facebook group that I had set up several years ago to help me plan Unwind. After telling the first few people that my group was no longer active, then trying to steer them to the valid and official group, I finally made my group private and hidden. That door is closed now. I do hope that everyone who was looking for information on the Festival found what they were looking for, made their way to the site, and had a wonderful time.

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One of the door prizes offered at that first Unwind event was an umbrella skein winder built by my father. A woodworker in Stevens Point had published patterns for the winder and for a couple of styles of spinning wheel, and while I was living in Point I bought copies of the patterns from his daughter. My father didn’t try to make a spinning wheel, but he was intrigued by the construction method of the skein winder.

He made two of them. One I kept, and one I gave away 14 years ago. I don’t know if I wrote down who the fortunate recipient was, but I hope they still have it and use it. My father signed it and glued a 2008 US penny to the piece that clamps on to the table (see my penny in the photo below). Fun fact for the owner: Dad held together the wooden slats with sections of plastic-coated cotton that he cut too short. Try twist ties instead!

This afternoon I used my winder to turn the skeins of the Laurenspun Shetland wool (thank you, Leroy!) into paired cakes so I can get closer to starting the cowl project in the fall.

Note twist ties.

Why would I want to start another project when I’m not done with the pink project yet? Well, that’s a good question. I’m not sure that my answer will make sense, but I seem to have gotten closer to finishing it than I had previously thought.

Last weekend while I was watching the Dutch Grand Prix I knitted 16 more rows. Sixteen out of thirty-seven, not bad — one more race and I could get a lot closer. I kept track of the rows on a little index card, and then eventually lost the index card between last weekend and this Saturday. No worries: I kept knitting and counted the rows in my head. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Twenty out of thirty-seven.

So there I was with seventeen rows left to do during Monza — thirty-seven minus twenty, right? — but for some reason I decided to check the work before I started watching the recording, to see how far I really had to go before starting the decrease rows.

Huh. Ready to decrease!

So… I’m now at the decrease point. I can’t explain it, but there I am. And then I promptly put the work aside, as the race was likely to be too exciting to serve as TV knitting when I actually had to pay a tiny bit of attention to the knitting (the pattern will now change to “K2, K2tog, YO, K2tog, K to the end” until I get to approximately 10 stitches on the needles).

“No dyelots,” they said….

It’s time for the home stretch on the pink project, and I can only hope that the color differences in the yarn will magically fade when the project has been finished, washed, and dried. (The cats who will be sleeping on it probably won’t care.) I can’t say that I am looking forward to weaving in all of the ends that I have been craftily keeping out of the shot for these many months, but I must do what must be done.

Tiny little steps

This week I started spending more time getting ready for my foot surgery in early January. So far I have met with two doctors and made phone calls to a couple of schedulers. Eldest is also in the middle of scheduling some health-related appointments, and I became concerned that we might eventually double-book ourselves. Our [shared] primary care physician said they couldn’t link our files, but she suggested that we create a shared Google calendar to record our upcoming appointments.

We tried that this afternoon. Reflecting upon our profound lack of success, I would almost give up on describing us as technical people. Eventually I discovered how to add my appointments to the correct calendar, but at one point I thought we might have better luck by telling our information to a Mynah bird that flies back and forth between us. The shared calendar still hasn’t shown up on his phone even though I sent a share request, he accepted it, and I confirmed his acceptance hours ago.

When I wasn’t busy falling behind on my daily reading or racing through texts to catch up again, I was looking through books about watercolors. Or watching YouTube videos on watercolors. Or watching the clock and wondering when I would finally have uninterrupted time to play with my watercolors. On Friday night I broke out the cheap watercolor paper and some of my watercolor brush markers, and I attempted to make a few stems, leaves, and flowers in the way that I had seen in one of the videos. Just doodling, but the colors were very satisfying. I need to start designing my bullet journal for 2022, and I’ll probably do something related to watercolor style even if I can’t paint in my journal.

Today I finally got to set up my painting table, put water in the jars, wet the brushes, and apply water to the paint-pans. I did wet the paper before painting, but not as much as I probably should have. Next time I’ll use more water and notice how things are different.

“Trees,” watercolor, 10cm by 25cm.

It’s a wash of Ultramarine over a pencil sketch. It’s also on the back side of a piece of Arches cold press watercolor paper. I purchased a block of paper, which is something I hadn’t even heard of before a few weeks ago. The paper is glued together on the edges almost all the way around so it is all stretched out and stays flat when you paint. You paint on the top piece of paper in the block, then separate the sheet from the rest of the block with a palette knife (note to self: get a real palette knife and put the steak knife back in the cutlery drawer). What I didn’t expect was that there would be a sort of black seal over the top of the topmost sheet. So I cut free the top sheet and painted on the back of it. Ultimately there was enough water in the paper to make it curl, and a gap between the paper and the black piece started to open up. I’ll let this little painting dry before I remove the backing.

There will probably be a few more surprises along the way as I get used to painting a little bit every day. Thank you to Maggie, Ann, Marj, Marilyn, Sheila, John, and Rick for your guidance, encouragement, links, and painting supplies!

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Knitwise, I wove in the [Four! Count them! Four!] ends of the little holiday shawl. I still need to pull the trailing ends into the work with a crochet hook, and after that it will be time to carefully wash and air-dry the shawl. If I take one step a day, I’ll probably be blocking the shawl on my dining room table just when I’ll need it for other things. On the other hand, if I put it off I won’t be able to actually use the shawl in December. Hmm, maybe I’ll go ahead and take it to work where almost no one will see it now that the semester is over, then bring it home for the final steps. That will be a good opportunity for a photo shoot.

I haven’t done one more stitch on the giftknit, so I’d better put it in front of my eyes again so I remember to pick it up.

During the next couple of weeks as I prepare for the surgery, I’ll probably do [even] less knitting and more organization of potential knitting projects that will be simple to do when I’m recovering — and easy to put down if I get too tired. If you have any suggestions, let me know in the comments.

The changing of the books

The fall semester is coming to an end, so at work we’ve been trying to remember how to do all of the end-of-semester tasks that we haven’t had to do for several semesters now, on new or updated software, with new co-workers. It’s all going swimmingly, as you might imagine. That means it’s time for end-of-year wrap-ups as well.

Spotify sort of jumped the gun with theirs, but all of the wrap-ups and countdowns have reminded me that as the pages in my bullet journal are running out, it’s time to draft designs for next year’s journal and set up all of the pages. In the past my practice has been to set up only January and some specialty tracking pages, so I get the joy (yes, the joy!) of laying out the next month’s pages on the last weekend of the current month.

Not my BuJo.

This usually works out well because (a) I like laying out pages and (b) this gives me a chance to learn from what didn’t work in the current month so that I can make any necessary adjustments. This year it didn’t work out well for November, as my dining room table was covered for so much of October and November that I didn’t have the room to lay out any pages. I wound up just leaving those pages blank, as the lack of a record turned out to be the truest record. But I was frustrated all month with those blank pages. When it came time to lay out pages for the month of December, I was so excited that I managed to skip over December 6th when I was numbering the days. Sadly, I did not realize this until I was numbering the last week of the month. The tall and bold hand-drawn numbers are still sitting there, confusing me now that I’m past the 6th of the month, until I figure out what to do with them. At this point, I think that laying out all of the months of 2022 might be a good thing to do in the final days of December 2021. With a calendar next to me. And a big eraser. Drafting in pencil.

I’m closing some books and getting ready to open others. I have foot surgery scheduled in the beginning of January, and I’m planning to take a week off to kick off begin my recovery. What will I read? Which books will I start? Which books will I finish? I’m evaluating the stacks of books near each end table, and re-prioritizing them. I can’t read what I can’t reach.

How does one plan for a reading binge? Do you try first to finish what you have started? Re-read a beloved favorite story? Line up a bunch of short books or finally tackle a big one? Read the book and then watch the movie?

I could also work on language learning or on watercolors (the art supplies that I ordered last weekend may arrive tomorrow), but I’m trying to stay focused on books right now. Of course, I could also knit.

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Knitwise, I’m not any closer to the end of the little holiday shawl. We had an end-of-semester social event on the same day that we usually have a meeting of the yarning group, and (gasp) I spent the hour eating and socializing (with another member of the yarning group, who also was not knitting).

I haven’t made any progress on the Stripe Scarf, either. I recorded all of the practice sessions for this weekend’s championship-settling Grand Prix (during which I do the most knitting on this scarf as I watch the sessions), and Charter/Spectrum decided to air completely different events during the first two time slots. In a way, it made it easier to catch up with the goings-on without being spoiled, but this isn’t the first time this season that the recording schedule has changed after I’ve set up my recordings. The only solution seems to be to purchase yet another subscription to give me access to all the events. I could call Charter/Spectrum to find out my options, but you can imagine how much I’m looking forward to making that phone call. How many subscriptions do I need to follow exactly one sport? Anyway…

I did cast on for a new project, though. It’s a giftknit for someone who might read this post, so I shan’t be showing any pictures of the item until after it has been knitted and gifted.

Here’s the yarn, though.

It’s a blend of superwash merino wool, acrylic, and bamboo. I have to work slowly and carefully with it because it’s a single ply yarn, but the colors are just delightful. I hope the giftee will feel the same way.

painting & knitting & math & chickens

Last week was a long one, spent getting on top of things at work, catching up on a podcast I had been binge-listening to for a couple of months, and watching YouTube videos about watercolors. A generous and kind member of my department brought in two sheets of high-quality watercolor paper for me, then a set of paints and a brush. I finally ordered a batch of art supplies last night and will need to create a space where I will be able to use them. The perky and popular artists who make YouTube videos seem to have white rooms that are completely empty except for a painting space, a cute plant, and an inspiringly scented candle. My space will not look like that, but it’s good to have goals.

The coming week will be another busy one at work, so I’m looking for ways to incorporate some of the things that keep me healthy and relaxed. It’s almost the end of the semester, folks. We can do it!

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Knitwise, I added several stripes to the Stripe Scarf this weekend while I watched practice sessions, qualifying, and the actual race of the Grand Prix of Saudi Arabia. We are chugging steadily along, and I hope that I can donate it to someone who really really likes long scarves. I’ll go until I use up one color of yarn (probably the white) and make fringe with the other color (probably the blue). Next weekend will be the final (and title-deciding) race of the Formula One season, so it would be nice to be able to finish the scarf by then. We’ll see.

This morning I bound off the little holiday shawl for which I had done so many calculations. Using the pattern (increase by 4 stitches every other row) as a series, my friend and I worked out the equation that would determine how many stitches I could get out of one ball of yarn. Then we used that number to estimate how many more rows I could knit with a second ball of yarn. This algebraic solution suggested that I would have enough yarn to complete 37 right-side rows.

Now, on Thursday evening I was knitting along and I was suddenly able to visualize the same problem in a geometric way. I sketched it out and sent a photo to my mathematical consultant, who confirmed that I seemed to have it right. The geometric method couldn’t tell me directly how many more rows I had, but it did indicate that if the short sides of the triangle I was knitting measured 12 inches (measuring one side of the shawl), I could extend those sides by another 5 inches before running out of yarn.

While I was working out all of that, I thought of a third method that was more of a way to check my work: starting from the stitch count estimated for the second ball of yarn, subtract off the stitches as I knitted them. This would have been super easy to code, and a computer would have given me the answer in a second. Instead, I worked it out row by row on a calculator and wrote the numbers down in pencil.

But this told me that on the last row, right-side row 37 or possibly the wrong-side row after it, I would have only 90 stitches worth of yarn left. That would not be enough to knit across even half of the shawl, and it certainly wouldn’t be enough to bind off, which takes a bit more yarn than just knitting across in the pattern. (Knitters often estimate the yarn necessary for the bind-off row by measuring out three times the width of the work they have on the needles.)

This distressed my friend, to whom it implied that the mathematical models might not just be inaccurate, but also might not be giving identical results. Since I couldn’t do any final calculations until the shawl was done, I pushed ahead (eyeing the remaining yarn warily every time I started a new row).

Ready to knit Row 36.

Ready to bind off across row “36b.”

After the bind-off (1 stitch on the needle).

I was able to knit from row 35 and the following wrong-side row, but after I knitted right-side row 36 I had only 241 stitches left. I decided to bind off as I came back on the wrong-side row, using 151 stitches and leaving me with the 90 stitches’ worth as previously calculated.

So the third method (basically a series of subtractions) gave me the heads-up about when I needed to bind off.

The second method (the geometry) gave me a very close estimate of the finished size of the shawl. Each side of the shawl turned out to be not quite a right triangle, but I might be able to block it out closer to that shape (though it is cotton and not as malleable at the blocking stage as wool would be). But where I had estimated (half) sides of 17 inches, the finished size was about 16 inches.

The first method (the algebra) puzzled me with what looked like its inaccuracy, until I realized that I hadn’t come close to using all of the yarn in both balls. I got out the kitchen scale and weighed the shawl (104 grams) and the unused yarn (11 grams). I hadn’t used all of the second ball because it added up to only 90 stitches, and I hadn’t used all of the first ball because I had wanted to add the new yarn at the end of a row. (This wouldn’t have been an issue with wool because it can be easy to splice the yarn ends together in a way that’s almost invisible. With cotton you have to tie a knot and hope that it doesn’t fall in an obvious place in the work. There was no good hiding place for a knot in this shawl, so I did have to cut and discard some yarn.) I had about 10 percent wastage on the project — which should have been able to carry me to (and through) right-side row 37.

What it looks like to lose at yarn chicken (not my project).

Was it a waste of time to do so much math instead of just knitting and guessing? I don’t think so. The complicated math helped me get an estimate that I used to count down the actual number of stitches I had to work with. “Just guessing” often works — but when it doesn’t work you can have a lot of knitting to undo and redo, which is more frustrating than fun. And the geometric method of estimating, which didn’t tell me anything about the row count or the stitch count — though it might have if I had inserted my gauge in the reckoning — did estimate that two balls were enough to produce a shawl that would span a doorway, which is one of the things that I needed to know.

I have a few more things to do to really finish the shawl: weave in the ends, wash the shawl (hoping the colors don’t bleed), and pin it out to try to block it into a regular shape. I’d like it to be a triangle, but right now it’s somewhere between a triangle and a diamond. I’ll take some blocking pictures so those of you who aren’t knitters can have a better idea of what I’m talking about.