Nebulous


I've been pondering the stunning colorway of Ray Whiting's new "Carina" yarn, inspired by the Carina Nebula, and available on his web store, Knitivity. Right up front I have to admit that I am beyond admiration. I deeply and profoundly envy (but in a good way) Ray's skill with capturing color in the dyepot:








I knit seriously. I spin seriously.


But with dye? I am on the same skill level as a six-year-old at the kitchen table on Easter Saturday with a bunch of boiled eggs and those tiny plastic squeeze bottles of food coloring: Splat! Goop! Purple! Whee!

My creative energy has been drained lately (thus the dearth of posts) for various reasons, not the least of which is the process of writing grants, which consists of a tremendous amount of detail, and cost projections, and projected supply inventories. While I can competently perform number crunching tasks, they eat my soul. I'm much, much better at the persuasive part -- why Giant Philanthropic Foundation, Inc., should give me money to open a non-profit spay/neuter clinic. But somebody has to do the numbers, and right now the grant-writing staff consists of me, moi and yo.


So this evening when I got home, I realized that part of my creative block has been a lack of balance: lots of exhaustive attention to minute details at work. Chores at home. Bills to pay. A knitting project on a deadline, which has now been met. Charting out an original lace pattern and writing it out in line-by-line form so knitters of both verbal and visual inclinations can use the instructions. Proofreading the pattern. Gah!

Lots of fastidious, detailed things. Lots of micro.


I realized I hadn't had any playtime. No macro.


So I lit some incense to clear the air and I made this:









And I shamelessly admit to being a copycat, at least insofar as pirating other people's sources of inspiration. All day long I have been thinking: nebulae. What a great inspirational source. I have always loved how nebulae look like gargantuan pre-dyed fleeces waiting to be spun by some cosmic hand.


(Note to self: add nebula-spinning to do-list in afterlife)


Anyways, I perused my large plastic kitty litter buckets of oddments, scraps and partial balls, and I looked for a nebula to inspire me, and I glommed on this one, which is a closeup section of the Dumbbell Nebula:

Photo courtesy of www.noao.edu.

I wasn't ready for a dyeing adventure, but I was very much ready for an adventure in tying random bits of yarn together, and then plying them into a chunky three-ply to be knit up on really fat US17 needles -- an outside-the-box creative exercise for me, as my favorite needle size range is US one through five.


So here is a swatch. The colors in the first picture (above, on the niddy-noddy) are much more true to the actual yarn, although the green bits are a bit obscured. While everything looks a bit washed out in the picture below, you can see a swatch on the needles, and you can also see my groovy niddy-noddy from New Zealand without any yarn on it:

The niddy noddy is supposed to resemble a dolphin. I also like it because it has a handle, and it stands up on its own on the flukes when you set it down. Sadly, I bought this about 15 years ago, and I cannot remember the name of the namufacturer to save my life, though at the time I was buying most of my knitting and spinning supplies from ethnic and indigenous sources.

Total yarn: 82 meters, 3ply.

Approximate method: Trust chaos. That is the first and only rule. Trust the random and use a weaver's knot to secure the end of one oddment to the beginning of another.

Assembly: Choose a range of yarn oddments in a pile of coordinating and/or complimentary colors that inspire you. Divide by type: textured yarn (eyelash, chenille, etc) ... ribbon-type yarn (ladder, ribbon, mesh, metallic, etc.) ... and smooth yarns (various thicknesses and colors). It's good to have a little of everything: bits of metallic and bits of weird nubby yarn to throw in at random. You can use everything from a few inches to a partial ball of leftover yarn.

Close your eyes, and grab a small leftover ball from the first pile. Let's say it's eyelash. Now grab a yarn of a different texture (say, chenille). Attach and start winding that onto the first ball. When you run out, randomly choose another textured yarn, making sure only that it is not exactly the same as the previous yarn. You might alternate eyelash, chenille, a fuzzy yarn, some loopy mohair, more eyelash, more chenille, some boucle, some eyelash.

Do not try to arrange or graduate or blend colors or textures. Your choice must be random. The only rule is not to repeat an identical texture or color. Reach into the pile, randomly grab an oddball, and use it. You may only make an alternate choice if you managed to grab two yarns of the same texture or color in sequence.

When you run out of textures, do the same with smooth colored yarns, randomly tying one to another.

When you run out of smooth colored yarns, go through your ribbon and ladder scraps in the same way. You should have your metallic bits (whatever type or texture) in this pile.

Now you have three balls: a texture ball, a smooth-colors ball, and a ribbony/shiny stuff/ladder yarn ball.

Holding one end from each ball , start winding them together in a three-stranded ball. If one or more balls run short, add more yarn as needed ... just randomly tie any remaing oddments to the end, until all three balls have been wound into one big fluffy ball.

Note: you will not be able to do this on a mechanical winder. You will have to make the ball by hand.

Now grab some big needles. For starters, make a scarf. But the possibilities are endless: afghans, rugs, you name it. Use thicker needles if you like, or make thicker yarn.

This one is the beginning of an art piece, because all the oddment yarns were salvaged. Some salvaged embellishments will be added, and the end result will remain a secret until it it submitted to Artes Descartes.

More on that later.

And Ray? Thanks for the inspiration.

--Mambocat

Non Sequitur


Sunday



My writing mojo is away on spring break, so here are some thoughts for today, in no particular order or relation to one another whatsoever.



Random Cat Photo:

"Hello, my name is Seven. I am three years old. When I am not busy looking fetching in my fur tuxedo, I am an Assistant Yarn Manager here at the Knitting Asylum, and I am the chief engineer in charge of Needle Tooth-Tolerance Assessment. I am also developing a secret plan to take over Captain Sig's boat and get me some of that codfish and king crab I see on TV."

"Or maybe Captain Phil. He seems like more of a cat person."


Garage Sale:


Helped a good friend unload a lot of stuff on the unsuspecting public yesterday morning.


She follows that most sensible of Garage Sale Rules: once it goes outside, it's like Elvis -- it has left the building.


What didn't sell by three o'clock, went to the charity store. Truly hopeless crap went to the curb. It's amazing what the neighborhood scavengers will load up on, once things hit the curb. In this case, three broken lamps, two rickety weight benches, mismatched weights for both, and a partly disassembled Nordic Track -- all compenents present, just not together. In a box, even.


Left my camera at home, which was a shame, because, like any normal garage sale in Louisiana in May, there were friends peeling boiled crawfish in the kitchen for dinner later on, which is what happens when you celebrate the Kentucky Derby and Cajun Cinco de Mayo. You have crawfish enchiladas.


And beer, once the garage sale is done.


The event attracted the usual cast of garage sale characters: The retired gent who wants to buy everything that's not for sale ("you want that sawhorse?") ... the uber-early birds trying to haggle for mega-bargains before sunrise so they can have more merchandise for their own garage sales ... the dude who comes around looking for broken junk to recycle ... and the lady who wants to know if you have "another shirt like this one, but in blue."


Junk morphed into enough cash to pay a household bill and buy some beer ... three large sacks of crawfish were peeled (enough for about 5 pounds of meat) ... and the thrift store got a carload of useful clothing, toys and oddments. We did have misgivings about donating a bunch of nekkid and dismembered Barbies, but we were assured by the lady at the thrift store that they have a volunteer who will take a bagful of Barbie components and reassemble them into as many Frankenbarbies as possible.



Horses

And ... a Louisiana boy named Calvin Borel rode Street Sense to win the Kentucky Derby. That's something to celebrate.




Wet

It's a good thing the garage sale wasn't scheduled on Friday, because we got something like eight inches of rain in a two-hour period here in Baton Rouge, and even though our house is not in a low-lying area, our street looked like this:

It's only about three inches deep in the yard and right up there on the walk at the bottom of the photo, but it's about calf-deep out by the street.

Yarn from Knitivity

A package of yarn arrived a few days back from Ray Whiting at Knitivity. Ain't it purty?

Gorgeous stuff, and soft like you would not believe. These are Ray's hand-dyed colorways. The "Sock" yarn (top) is in a colorway called "New Jeans." At center, worsted weight "Southern Purls," colorway "She Made Me Do It." At the bottom, "Biagio" sportweight wool singles in colorway "Fairies of the Forest." Ray has a wide variety of colorways and weights to choose from. Knitivity is a home-based business; Ray is a displaced New Orleanian now living in Texas. Fast service, very reasonable shipping, and truly beautiful yarns. Each batch is truly a work of art.

Knitting:

Having safely transported the "Socks That Rock" fundraising version of the Voodoo Shawl to Hawaii for Lisa to knit her share, I started on the Voodoo Shawl that's for me (finally, one for memememememe!) in Koigu, in shades of spring green and teal. This is the most fun pattern I have ever come up with and I can't wait to get a final proofread and that critical "blind" test-knit for pattern errors before releasing it for sale.

You see, I am part of a very small online yarn and pattern business. Some huge yarn companies (who shall remain unnamed) are in the habit of nonchalantly releasing error-ridden patterns, yet their customers, addicted to their luscious yarns, often take this inconvenience in stride, search for the corrections online, and loyally plug along with the flawed, expensive pattern and the very expensive yarn that goes along with it.

Unlike these large and unnamed yarn companies, we don't have yarn groupies who will tolerate YO's where there should be SSK's and figure it out for themselves. We don't have a loyal following who say things like, "Oh their patterns are just crappy with mistakes, you really have to be careful, but the designs are so gorgeous and the yarns are so yummy that it doesn't matter!"

Alas, we have to build a reputation, and we hope that reputation will be for error-free and easy-to-comprehend patterns, whether it is a shawl, a sweater or a lace cozy for the Golden Gate Bridge.

So here's a sneaky unblocked peek at the beginning bit of my own personal Voodoo Shawl. I've worked it up in several yarns and colorways in the past year, and the end result is good no matter what yarn you use. In this case, the yarn is Koigu, which is doing a bit of interesting color-dappling but so far, no actual color-pooling.

Oh, and happy Cinco de Mayo!

Now about those crawfish enchiladas...

--Mambocat

Listen...

(doo wah doo)

Do you want to know a secret?

(doo wah doo)

Do you promise not to tell?

(oh ... oh ... oh ... oh)

Closer...

(doo wah doo)

Let me whisper in your ear...

Say the words you want to hear....

This shawl will be completed and up for auction, soon, for a very good cause.

Upon completion, the shawl will be auctioned on Ebay as a fundraiser for the

Kagyu Thubten Choling Monastery

in memory of

the mother and sister

of knitwear designer Lily Chin,

both of whom died

earlier this year.

Pattern: Voodoo Shawl by Dez Crawford (soon to be available)

Knitted by: Dez Crawford and Lisa Louie

Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts -- Socks that Rock -- lightweight -- 360 yards -- 4.5 oz. -- "Chapman Springs" colorway

Funds donated in memory of Lily's mother (Linda) and sister (Mabel) will be contributed to the construction fund for a prayer hall and cultural center at the monastery.

Stay tuned to this blog for the announcement of the auction.

Private donations can also be sent to:

Kagyu Thubten Choling Monastery

245 Sheafe Road

Wappingers Falls, NY

12590

Lisa Louie and I have embarked on this project together. We will each knit half of the shawl. I completed my half the other day, and put the shawl and yarn in the mail to Lisa. She will finish, photograph and block the completed shawl, set up the auction on Ebay, and mail the shawl to the winner.

While I was knitting my share of the shawl, I gave a lot of thought to the Buddhist concept of the "Field of Merit." Put simply, this is the idea that all of our actions, however great or small, affect others, and that no being exists in this world without an entire network of other beings who work in ways, large and small, for the benefit of one another.

I meditated on the yarn going through my hands. There were people who raised, nourished and cared for the sheep. Someone sheared the wool, which was then carded and spun into yarn. Dye was produced, and the dyers at Blue Moon Fiber Arts then infused this yarn with their energy, which then came into my hands, and passed across fingers and needles, and which now is in route to Lisa in Hawaii, who will infuse it with her own energy.

Many people have been involved in smaller, but no less important ways: the people who tend the machines at the yarn mill, the people who manufactured the needles, the many people who carried packages so that yarn and wool could travel to and fro, and Tom the mail carrier who put the box in my hands.

And then there is Lily Chin,

who has given us all so much beauty, and her mother and sister, who gave beauty to her, and all of their interactions, which played their part in making Lily the person she is.

And so we want to remember these two women, and we think this is the best way to honor them, and to honor Lily as well for all she has given to us in the world of knitting.

And

there is also the person who will win the bid on this shawl,

perhaps as a present to celebrate a joyful occasion,

perhaps to give as a comfort to a grieving friend,

or maybe simply for the pleasure of having a good shawl, and the satisfaction of donating money

to people who,

in their turn, do good for others.

Stay tuned for updates on the progress of the shawl,

more information about the monastery,

the opening date of the auction,

and for the introduction of Pineapple Gumbo, the collaborated knitting efforts

of Dez Crawford and Lisa Louie.

--Mambocat

p.s. --my apologies for the odd spacing; I will try to correct it on Blogger.

My Split-Leaf Philodendron

Is Bigger Than

Your Split-Leaf Philodendron

If you live in Canada, and you have a split-leaf philodendron, it lives in a pot, and it is about as big as a basketball, and you bring it indoors during the winter, carefully protecting it from drafts and placing it so that it is not near a window through which it can even see snow.

We, however, have a split-leaf philodendron the size of a Volkswagen. See? At the base, it is wider than the Golf is long, and it's considerably taller. I considered, and rejected, an idea to park the Golf lengthwise in front of it to prove this point, as there is a weak spot in the concrete directly in the center-front of the philodendron.

That would not have been a good idea, for reasons which shall be disclosed later in this post. But. I did measure the frond-span of the thing, and it is indeed about 20 inches (roughly half a metre) wider than the Golf is long.

It's so good to have my dear little VW Golf all shiny and repaired again, what with great, huge dents last autumn caused by uninsured strippers, and little-bitty dents caused by road debris in the months after Katrina. It's amazing to me, that some people actually do not believe in either physics in general or gravity in particular, and these people heap unsecured cinderblocks and scrap metal on flimsy lawn trailers, which they then drive down the Interstate at alarming speeds, merrily spilling their contents on the road to entertain other drivers.

But I digress. Back to the split-leaf philodendron. We didn't have any freezes cold enough or long enough in duration to kill it back to the trunk this past winter, so it has started into spring with a decided advantage. Some tropical plants, like banana trees, survive in this manner in moderate climates, in our bi-polar weather that ranges from tropically steamy to pond-freezin' cold. They can die back to the trunk and start over in the spring if they need to.

If you wander back to one of my posts from the summer of 2005 regarding the Big Shawl For Me, you will see a close-up photo of the same plant. This is possibly the largest split-leaf philodendron in captivity outside of its native habitat (and no, I do not know where that is), but this is not because I am a talented gardener. Far from it. I am rather skilled at taking care of animals and people, but any plant that manages to survive anywhere within range of my lethal gaze does so out of sheer botanical luck. Our plants have been known to uproot themselves and crawl to the neighbors, like the French Foreign Legion lost in the desert, pleading for water.

Since last summer, while Plantzilla thrived in spite of the fact that the rest of our yard was barely suriving the searing August heat, and later during the winter, in which it remained robust despite freezing rain and also being sleeted upon, I considered the possibility that perhaps, long ago, I may have sprinkled Special Miracle-Gro Fairy Dust in the soil in the planting bed in which resides the split-leaf phildendron.

Magic Dirt or something. Fairy Fertilizer.

But noooooo.....

It turns out that the philodendron is so lush and ginormous because we had a leaky sewer line, and this particular piece of foliage sits directly on top of the leak.

Oooeeewwwyuuuk.

The leak, in fact, is so prodigious that it has washed away the dirt under part of the pavement there and caused some subsidence, and there is also an alarming crack in the concrete -- thus, the inadvisability of providing a lengthwise comparison photo of Das Golf.

But back to knitting. I have been up to my ears in grants and proposals lately, and my knitting mojo has gone just a little south-by-southwest in the past several weeks while I relocated office space and buried myself in paperwork.

I have also been trying to help my friend Joan Hamer a bit by guest-blogging now and then while she recovers from surgery, and I have a highly classified project going on with Lisa Louie for a charitable benefit, which shall be revealed over the course of the next week.

lately I have taken a break from re-knitting the yoke of my green fisherman's sweater, which I keep putting aside to knit things for other people, so I could finish a shawl I started a long while back. It's a complete idiot's delight triangle, in garter stitch on fat needles in Lion Brand ribbon yarn in the City Lights colorway. No technical accomplishment whatsoever, just fun with color, something utterly mindless to tote around in the car for Knitting While Waiting. I also made fringe. See?

I sprawled the thing across an ancient butterfly chair frame. I had to dispose of the old canvas seats, as they had rotted. Does anybody know if there is a sensible manufacturer our there who makes butterfly chair covers out of some rot-resistant material like ballistic nylon?

I mean, these things sit outside. They are patio furniture. It rains here. It rains a lot. Butterfly chairs have bucket seats. They make little ponds. Little ponds rot fabric. Anybody awake out there in seat-manufacturing land? Not everybody lives in the desert, dudes.

On the needles: less than two hours away from completion -- gotta find the two hours first -- a tank top, with a lace hem, in blue Unger Cotton Plantation. Yes, this is almost exactly like the one I made my Mom, but I finished hers first, so it would be in time for Christmas.

Early this morning, Shamu, who is employed as a Tactile Assessment Engineer here at the Knitting Asylum, inspected my work for softness and even stitchery:

I like the design, but I feel very ambivalent about this particular shade of blue on me. It looks great on my Mom, who is ultra-fair-skinned, but I inherited my Dad's olive complexion, so I tend to look seasick in "dusty" shades. Later this spring, I plan to prowl the local creekbeds in search of enough wild indigo to overdye the garment. If I can't find enough, I will use a commerical dye in either indigo or deep purple.

Although the color shown is not the best possible shade of blue for me to wear, Unger Plantation is my favorite cotton yarn, and it's out of production, so I take what I can get and occasionally have a little dyeing adventure. If I finish it while the weather is such that it still gets cool in the evening, I can always top it off with a shawl.

While Shamu was inspecting the tank-top-to-be, I heard the familiar sound of chainsaws next door. Normally, I don't pay much attention to the chainsaws, because I have heard them for about seventy-five weekends in a row, but this morning, the sawing was interrupted by a resounding whump.

Backstory:

During Hurricane Katrina, the neighbors lost a 90-foot, multi-ton red oak, which fell katty-corner across their yard and the adjacent neighbors, flattening the cedar fence between them on its way down. Dave and I have admired our neighbors' persistence weekend after weekend as they have chipped away at this gargantuan heap of botany.

Because the tree did not fall directly upon a dwelling, their insurance company did not want to pay the many-thousand dollars necessary to remove the tree, so the neighbors took on the job themselves. For a year and a half, they have whacked away at the monster almost every Saturday morning. Then they chainsaw each weekend's efforts -- usually half a cord or so -- into fireplace-sized pieces, and stack them neatly at the curb ... and by Sunday morning, all the wood is gone, thanks to firewood scavengers (including ourselves).

Not a bad little urban ecosystem, I think.

Why do they cut it up and put it out so nicely, so other people can have free firewood? "We have to cut it up anyway," says the neighbor. "And it's easier to manage small pieces in the wheelbarrow. Why not let somebody get some use out of it?"

Gotta love that.

This weekend marked a milestone in Project Tree: until today, the fallen tree had, of course, rested in the horizonal position while the major trunk was chipped away by our industrious neighbors. But this morning, amidst the usual whining chainsaw sounds, we heard a loud "WHOOSH," followed by a house-shaking "THUMP." Investigation of the noises revealed that the wide root base had had enough of the major trunk chipped away to fall naturally back into its accustomed postion.

Here, the neighbor's father-in-law (a regular participant in the weekly, year-and-a-half-long, oak-sawing marathon) is seen walking away from the stump, which sits against the back property line. I wasn't fast enough with the camera to get a shot while he was still standing next to it. The stump is about six feet high and ... well ... wider than a Volkswagen is long.

It's probably wider than an SUV is long, really.

This is not the forest primeval. This is the backyard in a perfectly ordinary Baton Rouge subdivision, in a heavily trafficked part of the city, within sight of the Interstate.

Oh, and the hazy look in this photo? There is nothing wrong with my camera. That's the ... um ... air.

--Mambocat

Would you knit this hat?


I thought so.

















You can do it in grownup size too -- picture not yet available.

I bet the urge to knit this hat would be even stronger if you knew that knitting this hat could help impoverished people find economic independence and dignity through Heifer International.

This remarkable hat was designed by Knitting Asylum correspondent Mary Lou Egan.

I like the fact that this particular animal hat looks much more realistic than the stuck-on-ears look which is so typical of the animal-hat genre. I like the fact that the contrasting stitching on the ears quite nicely mimics the guard hairs on a real tiger's fur, and the ear structure seems to be organic.




















But this hat is remarkable in other ways, too. Mary Lou wants the sales of her hat pattern to benefit Heifer International. I am trying to help her in that end, and I believe the most direct way for me to help is to start by giving the hat a review here on my blog, urging you knitters to buy the pattern, and encouraging yarn stores to sell the pattern and forward the proceeds to Heifer International.

My review of the pattern assures you that it is well-written and easy to follow. It's all easy stranded work too, for those of you who fear intarsia in the round.

To purchase this pattern directly, contact Mary Lou at:


marylou DOT egan AT gmail DOT com.


Of course, substitute periods for "DOT" and @ for "AT."


This is a fun hat to knit and a fantastic charity. I hope you give it your most serious consideration. Christmas is only nine months away.

P.S. - No, patterns for the ridiculously adorable kids are not available yet. Mary Lou is damn good at charting tiger stripes, but I think it would take her a while to chart the human genome.

--Mambocat

On Being in A Loop

Today's blog entry is provided by the ever-generous Lisa Louie, out there in Paradise, otherwise known as Maui, where I would really, really like to be starring in a Corona beer ad right about now. You know the ones, where all you see is somebody's arm hanging out of a hammock slung beneath a palm tree, and nothing else but surf noises and beer?

Like that.

Update on clinic: The Board of Veterinary Medicine has accepted my proposal for consideration. This does not mean I have approval yet. What it does mean is that they did not fall on the floor in helpless laughter and fling it back in my face. Which means that they will have lots of questions that I will have to answer with a modicum of intelligence and clinical terminology and Dilbert words. I do expect to have some sort of feedback on my proposal by the end of the week.

Until I can get a grip and write something about knitting, here is a cat picture (a cat on a sweater, double points) and a guest blog from Lisa.

Say, "Thank you, Lisa."

Lisa writes:

Our fearless leader, the Yarn Harlot herself has reported substantial computer problems in a recent entry. This, is apparently, a new skein, if you will, in the recent sweater of computer difficulties. I empathize. Even worse, I can completely relate.

I myself have a brand new computer as of a few months ago. This would be cause for great joy had the previous computer gone toes up on me, not once, but twice prior to this purchase. Both times, apparently viable components have ceased functioning earlier than expected for no obvious reason. In other words, the sucker broke twice just because it could.

Both times it “ate” most of my documents and my entire schedule and address book. I was left scrambling to try and recreate all that information. Before you ask, yes I had backed up the documentation. Due to electronic evil beings, all files were corrupted due to some sort of glitch in the programs and my backups couldn’t be saved either. Needless to say, I used copious amounts of language Grandma Gremel would NOT have approved of.

The pc fiasco came after several weeks of trying to install a single, functioning wireless router that actually cooperated with our then-internet source. The only good thing I can say about calling an 1 800 customer service number that connects you to somewhere you can’t find on a map, is that none of the people they have answering the phones really and truly understand enough English to make sense of some of the things that are said to them when my husband gets truly unhappy with their company’s performance.

Just before the PC was diagnosed as terminal, the electronic menehunes were playing with other items in my life. Among other failures, the digital readout on my car’s dashboard quit reading out and went totally blank. At first I thought it was some kind of a weird eye test: can you read your numbers? But no, the sucker malfunctioned.

I won’t bore you with the recital of cell phone miseries. Those were next. I’m sure you can write your own book on that story. Suffice it to say, we’re counting down until the phone contract expires and we can get a new contract with a new carrier, and a new free phone.

In addition, the stereo and CD player completely freak out every time we turn them off. The stereo flips in and out of tuning, fades in and out and the CD player stops, restarts and stops again after only a few seconds. Either it has developed a severe case of attention deficit disorder, combined with a loss of short term memory, or it too has succumbed to the curse of things with wires.

Next, my laptop kept locking up for no apparent reason. My husband told me it was “in a loop.” That’s when this all finally made sense. Or at least as much sense as it can make. In a LOOP. What do we do with our lives? We put yarn in loops and create something wonderful. Ah ha. Our nature, our essence, our karma, our life force, whatever name it is within us, has caused us to dedicate our existence and seek joy and fulfillment by putting yarn into loops using two needles. This force within us is intuitive and so ingrained and such a part of our basic nature that other items in our lives respond to it also. It takes complicated and unsuspecting gizmos like laptops, PCs, routers, cell phones, stereos and turns their internal structures into loops, causing them to malfunction, break down, lock up and generally drive us crazy.

It makes me feel better to know I’m not alone. The Yarn Harlot herself is apparently also a victim of this looping problem, being an extremely dedicated yarn looper herself. On the other hand, my husband rarely has problems with electronics and is perplexed by my on-going issues. His lack of problems is explainable because, with the exception of an occasional garden hose, he rarely puts anything in a loop.

While I know there is no scientific rationale or data to prove my theory, it makes as much sense as any of the competent, logical, rational explanations any of the people trying to solve my electronics issues have come up with.

“Beats the *&^%$# out of me” was the best they had to offer.

Now I’m going to go sit in the living room and attempt to loop more yarn around needles. I’m backing up this piece, emailing it to Dez, and I’m touching nothing else electronic between here and there.

Wish me luck. If you are reading this, I was successful in this endea…………………

--Lisa Louie, Maui

The Few.
The Proud.
The Readers.

I want to thank all of you nice, wonderful and exceedingly patient knitters for your patience these past few weeks while my poor blog lay neglected and forlorn. I simply haven't had the creative energy to blog.

Not only did I have to move my office all of a sudden in February, but couple of deadlines have caught up with me. One is a grant proposal for a low-cost spay-neuter clinic, and one is a proposal to put before the Board of Veterinary Medicine for the operating plan for the aformentioned clinic.

The BVM proposal is due tomorrow.

Morning.

Early.

But it's not like I'm nervous or anything. That slight quaking you detect in the text here?

The text is supposed to look out of focus and squiggly.

New typeface. It's called, "Trepidation Italic." Like it?

It's not from nerves or insomnia or mainlining Maui coffee (thanks again, Lisa).

Honest.

Really.

Okay, okay ... my Mom didn't believe me either.

The truth?

I am as nervous as a cat in a roomful of two-year-olds.

Here is my whole labor of love, on paper, about to be picked to shreds.

Ulp.

I hope to be back to knitting content by the weekend ... unless you really want to know how many different types of suture we plan to buy and what the instrument sterilization procedure will be.

Best,

--Mambocat

"P"

Since I probably will lack photos for at least another day or two, I present you with the letter "P."

Diann has tagged me in an ongoing game of Alphabet Blog-Tag.

The game goes like this: somebody tags you and gives you a letter of the alphabet.

Now you're It.

You list ten things you like that start with that letter.

When people respond to your post, you randomly assign a letter to them, and, if they have a blog, then they list ten things. And so on.

Diann gave me "P."

Pets, of course, is a little too obvious for me. That's what I live and breathe and it's also my job. I could stay with Pets, and come up with Paws, Purring, Puppies, Palominos, Pythons, Ponies, Pugs, Persians, Parrots, Pyrenees, Pharoah Hounds, Pomeranians, etc. and tons and tons of other living things I dearly love that start with "P," without ever leaving one topic or even getting into veterinary terminology or non-companion animals like Pumas and Pangoliins.

So I'll venture outside the realm of things a reader might immediately suspect about me, which means I will also leave out things like Purling (which I do love), and Peace Fleece, and Prism yarn, and Koigu KPPPM, which technically does not start with a P but contains a lot of them.


The Letter P:


Pastures. Preferably dotted with sheep.

Pink; not the color but:
a.) Floyd
b.) Flamingos
c.) Panther
d.) all of the above.

Poe, Edgar Allen.

Pisceans (it is amazing how many Pisceans are in my life -- including my husband and mother. Also lots of Capricorns in my close circle, too).

Porches. Big honking old-fashioned front porches, not open decks baking in the summer sun, and not those nondescript little modern concrete ground-level landings which don't hold much more than a mailbox and a potted plant. I like deep, shady porches with steps, and a good solid railing, and a ceiling fan, and a screen door, and porch furniture, and a swing, and maybe even a hammock. The kind of front porch where you can sit and drink coffee and read the newspaper on a rainy Sunday morning in your pajamas without the neighbors pointing fingers at you and snickering.

Professor Longhair (how can you be from New Orleans and not love Professor Longhair?)

Portland, Oregon, where I would dearly love to live one day, which is full of ...

Pine trees and...

Precipitation. Okay, I'm a freak. I love rain and snow and most other things that come out of the sky in reasonable quantities, unless it is precipitation in some extreme form, or a tornado, or an object being hurled at me by a hurricane. I am a high-energy, high-anxiety horse, and few things besides knitting soothe me they way rain does. Rain on a tin roof ... damn, if I had a continuous loop tape of that, I probably would not need sleep aids. Not just rain-sounds like on those little noise machines that make surf sounds and waterfall noises. Rain on a tin roof, specifically.

Pekoe. Love me some strong, black tea.

Hopefully, I will have photos tomorrow.

--Mambocat

OTN and OCD

So. I am sitting here contemplating knitting a pair of cotton pants, trying to calculate the gauge I need, the effect of gravity on cotton that I need to account for, the effect of humidity on cotton that I also need to account for, the eccentric orbit of Pluto (as well as its new non-planetary status), the migratory patterns of purple martins, the inexplicable and profound disagreement between the scale at the YMCA and the scale at our house, global warming, and other factors that might come into play regarding the fit, drape and potential attractiveness of said pants when they are actually applied to my personage.

Yup. I am knitting a pair of pants. Cotton pants.

I can't be the only knitter out there to fall off the deep end of knitterly OCD contemplation and consider what it might be like to replace nearly every item in my wardrobe, with things I have knitted myself.

What might it be like to actually have this pursuit of nearly complete wardrobe self-sufficiency as a sort of side-mission in my life?

Okay, the Levis and Hawaiian shirts stay, as well as the T-shirts and Haynes undies and the cotton turtlenecks for under-sweater wear in winter. And the medical scrubs I need for work. But most everything else?

I am reminded of an old '70s BBC sitcom ... the name escapes me ... it involved a young couple working on "self-sufficiency." In a town, somewhere in England. In various episodes they grew a garden, canned vegetables, wove clothing ... all with hilariously disastrous results. Does anyone remember it? I am utterly drawing a blank, and I admit a bit of shame here, because I am a hopeless BBC junkie. I should recall the name of this show. After all, I can quote many Monty Python episodes verbatim.

Regardless, I like to think what it would be like to slowly replace most of my wardrobe with things I have made myself. Specifically knitted things. I don't enjoy sewing very much, unless it's something quite plain and flat, like curtains. I'll leave the mastery of seamtressing to LornaJay.

I've been thinking about this self-sufficiency thing a fair bit lately and I've considered that, although in real life I work for government and non-profit animal welfare agencies and as a result do not earn the sort of income that affords me a whole lot of power and influence in the world ... I do have a set of skills that would make me a highly valuable commodity in a post-apocalyptic situation. Of course, I hope this never happens. Just sayin.'

But have you other knitters ever sat down and considered the skills you could use if, for some horrid reason, this whole techno-bubble that we all inhabit came crashing down around our ears one day?

Have you ever made a list of what low-tech skills you could offer for trade in desperate times?

I actually made an inventory of mine the other day, and was actually quite surprised at the extent of the list.

• I can raise and care properly for a wide variety of animals, both for domestic companions, transportation and farm use. In my post-apocalyptic world we'd have lots of milk and eggs and cheese and wool.
• I can grow a garden. It is not my favorite pasttime, because the beastly summer and billions of bugs and weeds are major components of gardening where we live, but I can do it. If you could do a garden with only the spring-planting and fall-harvesting parts, and none of the de-weeding and de-bugging in July, I would even enjoy it.
• I have only sheared one sheep, but I have the general idea, and could get better at it with practice.
• I can wash, process and card a fleece.
• I can dye wool.
• I can spin wool/alpaca etc. into yarn, both on a drop spindle and on a wheel. I am considerably more adept at spinning wool and other animal fibers than I am at spinning cotton.
• I can knit any kind of garment. Know a chilly octopus? I can help.
• I can weave presentably, if not with great skill. That could improve.
• I can fish quite well.
• I can cook, I know how to can vegetables, and I know how to salt and pickle things.
• I know how to find edible mushrooms and other wild food. Not that there would be much of that in a post-apocalyptic urban world, but perhaps if we had to hide in the woods...
• I can train dogs and horses.
• I know a fair bit about healing herbs and home remedies.

So I think if things ever got desperate, I'd be in high demand.

I would hope.

Anybody else ever go off on knitterly wanderings like this?

I've also, when stuck in slow traffic and unable to knit, created a Sci-Fi world in which I am at the helm of a starship full of artisans engaged in the interplanetary trade of handmade goods.

In my future-world, Earth has gone off the deep end into a babbling techno-hell, as if Tokyo and Times Square had conspired to do a complete Techno-Terraforming, so the entire planet is covered in huge glass buildings bristling with squawking plasma TVs and hideous traffic, like that in which I am stuck while I imagine all this.

So the only way for us artisans to survive and preserve our skills (as well as our fleece-bearing animals and companion animals) was to load a bunch of us up onto: Art-Ark.

For example, amongst our many trade adventures, we buy rare fleeces from the mountain goats of the Klingon homeworld, and we knit and weave them into magnificent things that we sell to the Vulcans for fair prices and for which we totally skin the Ferengi. We have also created a major upheaval in Ferengi culture, having convinced them that keeping their females unclothed does little to show off their vast wealth. The Ferengi females have taken to this notion quite well, so we have lots of gold-pressed latinum on Art-Ark with which we can purchase plasma cores and other things we need to get along out in space.

We also have the occasional battle in which we soundly tromp the Borg, who, in addition to being evil, also have no appreciation for Art in any form.

Generally I have a mental Borg-tromping battle when some jerk in a Hummer cuts off my little Golf.

Black Hummers are always driven by the Borg.

An essential perk to being the Captain of Art-Ark is that there is an awful lot of knitting time sitting there at the helm, in between planets and battles.

I could go on, but I promised to answer a few questions from previous posts. I'm usually spotty at best about answering questions, so I'll tackle a whole bunch at once by way of repentance.

Criquette .... thanks for the thoughtful burning of king cake scented gris gris candles. I need all the luck I can get with this clinic endeavor.

Joan, I'd be delighted to take a bit of your nasty winter weather off your hands. We don't have snow plows or salt machines, so that would mean I could have all kinds of excuses to sit home and knit.

And Gae, our Tessie sends warm, purry greetings to your Vegemite (I've always wondered what it tastes like -- the spread, not your cat -- as anything yeasty gets my interest in a hurry). You are so fortunate to have your dear old gal for so long. I wish her several more happy, healthy (if a bit creaky) years. Tessie wants Vegemite to know that she is eighteen and mightily annoyed that she cannot vote simply because she is a cat, as she is certainly much smarter than most of the peeps out there.

Barbara Kay, the clinic will be somewhere in the Baton Rouge area. I need volunteers for everything from fund-raising, to actual daily help in the clinic, to hooking me up with people with fat checkbooks.

Jo, we are eagerly awaiting your official state visit as Ambassador of West Cork and do I have an itinerary planned for you! Don't be surprised if you have an entourage of your local fans besides myself, either.

Southern Gal, I will mail you some details of the clinic quite soon -- and thanks ever so much for your kind offer.

Carol: Dave rates socks because somebody has to wear them, eh? And is was his birthday, after all.

And Diann, thanks for your offer to help with clinic funding ideas. Every idea helps. I'll contact you soon. I also can't wait to read more on your blog about Stitches!

I hope all this reading material makes up a bit for the lack of photos, until The Mighty Jake is done with my regular computer.

Jake, of course, is the Computer Officer on Art-Ark and gets to wear lots of handknit sweaters on the show.

--Mambocat

Question of the Day:

Excuse me. I just went to get a cup of hot tea (Irish Breakfast, in case you are interested, Jo). My husband asked me if I had a piece of string, and I laughed so hard, I poured a full cup of tea into the sugar bowl before I realized it wasn't a cup.

"Do you have a piece of string?"

String? In this house? That's like asking Clint Eastwood if he has any guns.

What kind of string? How many wraps per inch? What color? What fiber content?

"Plain thin white string like for wrapping a package."

Oh, okay. Yes, I have that too.

Snort. Okay, I've collected myself. I have also rinsed out the sugar bowl and plonked it in the dishwasher. Good thing it didn't have much sugar in it. Hate to waste, you know.

--Mambocat

Before we get on
to knitting:


This is what my husband wants to eat for breakfast.

Purina Clown Chow.




















Granted, Dave is old enough to know better, and it is his birthday today, so he can eat whatever he wants. But he also eats this when it is not his birthday.

And since it is his birthday, he gets birthday socks, fetchingly modeled by our eldest, Tessie ...



















Among other things, Dave's birthday adventures will include the Traditional Annual Birthday Bookstore Splurge. As a knitter, I feel privileged to be married to a Pisces man who does not fear the judicious use of color. And yes, you have seen socks very much like these on this blog recently. Dave saw mine and wanted a pair of his very own in the exact same colors. Who am I to refuse?

Y'all, it is already spring today, and while I am sure some of you folks in Toronto and Yonkers and maybe even in Patagonia might envy us, it's disturbing for me to have spring arrive before St. Patrick's Day. Not because I don't like spring. But in South Louisiana, winter is short enough already as it is, and the early arrival of spring does not herald an extended season of lovely spring weather. It merely portends the early onset of summer, when sun is the enemy.

Granted, the leaves have not unfurled on the critical trees which officially usher in spring -- not even a blush of green on the cypress and crepe myrtles -- so I can cling to the hope of another cool front or two. But the Japanese plum, redbud trees, red clover and other flowering things are starting to get busy.

Birthday socks for Dave were completed on time, but due to a screw-up on the part of the cable-internet people, I only got Mom's sweater finished up to the joining of armpits and sleeves.

Whoops! Sorry! Moms don't have armpits. Especially Southern moms. I meant to say, "lower armholes."

Mom got an IOU on the nearly done sweater and received other goodies for her birthday. She turned 39 again, by the way (it always amazes me how much younger than me my mother is). I was also tickled that my dear cousin Andrea could join us for Mom's birthday dinner. Andrea was one of the first victims ... er, I mean recipients ... of my knitterly adventures back when we were kids.

I should be able to finish Mom's sweater this weekend, allowing for the vagaries of the weather and the cable-internet people. There just might be one more cold front in store for us, so she may have a chance to wear it once or twice before next winter. We shall see.

"Wait a dadgum minute," you say. "And don't try to distract me with all that drivel about armpits and the weather. How are the cable-internet people responsible for you not finishing Mom's sweater on time? "

Simple. When I went to babysit my new office space and wait for the cable-internet guy to show up, I brought only Dave's unifinished second sock, which had only half a foot and the toe to go. I should have been wise enough to recognize the sort of Bad Cable Installation Karma that I was invoking by not taking Mom's sweater-in-progress along as well, and of course, as we all know, when the cable dude says he'll be there "sometime" between 9am and 6pm, he shows up at 5:15.

And the sock was finished by ten.

If I had brought along Mom's unfinished sweater, that would have allowed me the excuse of several uninterrupted hours of internet-less time at my office, in which I could have knitted the yoke of Mom's sweater, but no. I found myself with finished socks, and unable to run out for Mom's sweater, because if I did, of course, that would be the exact moment the cable guy chose to arrive at my door, and I would have missed him. Thus is the capricious nature of the Cable Internet Goddess as she directs her minions.

So instead of knitting the yoke of Mom's sweater, I found myself doing what work I could manage in a halfway-moved-into office: unpacking file boxes, throwing away outdated materials, that sort of thing.

Since my office has been what's distracted me from my blogly and knitterly duties for the past couple of weeks, I'll bring you up to date. I finally found some affordable office space for the purpose of grant-writing, meeting and planning for a low-cost spay and neuter clinic in our city. Our goal will be to provide at-cost spay and neuter services, caregiver education, and to create a client relationship with the caregiver of a freshly sterilized pet and the veterinarian of their choice, for the pet's ongoing health needs.

I will be going through the 501 (C) 3 process -- for my international readers, that means I will be generating prodigious amounts of paperwork to convince the U.S. Internal Revenue Service that we are indeed operating a humane services clinic and not laundering money for the Mafia, although I could probably afford to spay a whole lot more animals if I were.

I am sub-leasing office space from a nice massage therapist who has an extra space in her suite. We share a waiting room, restroom and break/copier area. Exept for the scary peach-and-teal drapes, it's a pleasant space, centrally located, and convenient for the other people with whom I must meet over the next several months to get this project off the ground. The best part is, the rental is month-to-month, as I hope we will soon be able to move our operations into a proper vet clinic as funding and equipment manifests.

I suspect that my office space is having a bit of an identity crisis, because the landlord, who was the prior occupant of this space, was a prodigious Mary Kay distributor (she even left a pink couch in the waiting area), who recently retired. After so many years of Mary-Kay-coordinated pinkness going on in there, my room is suddenly full of file boxes and folding tables and pet supplies and a motley crew of people scurrying about in humane society T-shirts and scarcely a shred of makeup in sight.

I hope the office doesn't mind too much.

More soon. I have a birthday dinner to get ready.

--Mambocat

Only eleventy-thousand,
three hundred and
eighty-four stitches to go.


I spent last night on the windy plains of Upper Nerdlandia, watching the SciFi Channel on cable TV and knitting away like mad on my Mom's birthday sweater. This is where I am on the body:































Bwahahahahahaha!

Oh ye of little faith. Not only do I believe in fairies, I believe in wormholes, too. Time isn't linear, or so says my soul-sis Leef. Especially on Mardi Gras weekend. I am fretting because it seems that the entire population of south Louisiana is not at their workplaces from Saturday through Wednesday morning, so I have been put on a sort of involuntary hold from getting any significant earning-money sort of work done. This situation does, however, provide ample kntting time.

I am disgruntled with the color quality in this photo. I have learned that I can get a certain amount of stitch definition and something besides glaring, blazing, neon redness if I pose red garments against this sage green blanket. But the background does something to make the red warmer, more russet in color than it actually is. This yarn is actually more of a ruby color than it looks in the picture (at least on my monitor). Someday I really, really promise to go to a digital photography class and simply ask, "RED. What the hell is going on with RED already?"

I've been absent from the blog ... and for this I apologize sincerely. I could say that I was abducted by aliens or something, but in fact I have spent the last few weeks moving into new office space and having some extra memory and a wireless card added to my notebook computer.

Please do not ask me what sort of techie stuff the darling young lad at CompUSA installed in my notebook. I am one of those people who is ever-so-politely referred to as an "end user."


Being an "end user" means I think HTML is short for, "Hate The Miserable Laptop."

It means that I need point-click-and-drag programs.

It also means that when the shiny machine offends me, I simply drag it to CompUSA, invoke my Instant Three-Year-Old Superpower and say, "Waaaaaah! Computer slow! Sob! Computer don't work at coffeehouse! Waaaah! Make computer fast!"


I am also being a three-year-old because everyone else in the world except me (and possibly Jo in West Cork) is at Stitches West.

Hi Lisa, hope you're having fun!

So since I can't quite use my new office until Wednesday, I am on a mission: Dave's socks and Mom's sweater, to be done for their respective birthdays, by Friday.

Yes, I am surrounded by Pisceans.


Oh, what did you say? What yarn is that? It's a yarn I scooped up on massive discount at Michael's awhile back. It's been marinating in my stash for awhile. The yarn is "Dublin" from their "Passports" yarn selection, which I think has been discontinued. It's a heavy worsted/light bulky 51% wool, 49% acrylic, machine washable on gentle. Works up at 3.5 st./inch on size 11 needles, which is as big as I go.

My apologies for the long absence. I'll try to make it up to y'all. I am also trying to stunt blog for Joan Hamer while she is in hospital.


--Mambocat

Garter

On one of the knitting lists I subscribe to, there was a recent discussion of Sally Melville's Einstein Coat, its use of garter stitch, and the various results achieved by different knitters. Several people reported droopy results.

I am afraid that these were the people who did not swatch.

The Einstein is designed specifically to counteract the effect of gravity on garter stitch -- and it holds up quite nicely in real life. The pattern also says quite clearly that it is absolutely essential to get the correct gauge. Thus, it is essential to swatch.

I strongly suspected (and this was confirmed by some individual correspondences) that the disappointed knitters either chose an incompatbile yarn or failed to get exact gauge, or both.

Among those who admitted not bothering to get precise gauge, the most common argument was, "but it's only garter stitch."

There is no such thing as "only garter stitch."

When I went to Stitches West last year, I wore a simple serape to the classes and yarn market one day, and I received what most people would have thought to be an exceedingly odd compliment from a number of hard-core knitting people, including both Rick Mondragon and the Xenakises:

"You do very good garter stitch."

I did not think this odd.

In fact, I was delighted to get such a fine compliment from the sponsors of Stitches and some of my other knitting gurus, like Lily Chin. The same people had also commented on my cables and lace the previous days, but I figured that they were mostly being gracious, and that they fussed over everyone's work to be supportive and encouraging. But having such people notice your garter stitch is something else entirely.

I suspect that most people would think this is an uremarkable thing to get excited about being complimented on, because garter is the first thing we learn, and so we may assume it is the easiest thing to do, and not worth giving serious consideration. Surely we must be on, and quickly, to the business of knitting a beaded Orenberg shawl, or a show-stopping cape with intarsia cables using Bohus techniques, with shadow-knitting in the background panels and enough colors to make even Kaffee Fasset run out of crayons, shouldn't we?

But good garter stitch is the basic. Garter is to knitting what breathing is to yoga.

Garter stitch is the first and most basic thing taught a new knitter, but, contrary to popular belief, "basic" does not mean "simplest."

"Basic" means "essential."

The base of any object is its foundation.

Garter stitch follows all the rules of texture knitting. Just as you would ordinarily choose a firmly twisted, robust yarn to showcase textures, you often need a similar yarn to make garter stitch sing.

You also need to store garter (and all other knitted items) in the folded state, not using hangers for storage, and not even leaving your garment hanging off the back of a chair overnight.

Garter stitch can be glorious if you choose the right yarn (an elastic, firmly plied yarn in most cases) and if you pay attention to both the yarn manufacturer's recommended gauge and the gauge called for in the pattern.

If the yarn manufacturer recommends that paricular yarn to be knitted at five stitches to the inch, and it's worsted weight ... and your pattern calls for worsted weight at four stitches to the inch, do not knit that yarn at 4 stitches to the inch in garter st. and expect good results -- you will not get them.

You will, however, get droopy garter stitch.

How many of you faithfully compare the recommended gauge of the yarn manufacturer to the gauge in the pattern, or do you just look at "worsted weight" on the label and figure that one worsted will do as well as another?

Hmmm .... (squinting toward the rear of the auditorium...) I don't see too many hands.

What about swatching? Do you swatch to make sure you are getting the correct gauge?

What's that I hear? "I don't need to swatch ... it's only garter stitch?"

I have a lovely Brie to go with that whine.

Sorry, but you still are best advised to swatch, and hang it up from a skirt hanger overnight, and regard it in the morning, and then wash and block it, and then let that hang overnight, and measure and regard that. Compare your results. Repeat until desired result is achieved.

I know washing the swatch sounds like a pain the the tookas, and it is. But you do want to know how your yarn will wash, and you do want to know how the resulting fabric will look, and behave, after washing.

You do not want to knit an entire garment and discover, far too late in the game, that the yarn runs and the fabric grows after washing.

Nobody can force you to swatch. It's not a law. But it is best practice. And it is knitting.

You do like knitting don't you? Then don't think of the swatch as an obstacle to remove before you begin your main project.


Just think of it as more to knit.

If you still want to use that yarn in your pattern, you may need to go down a needle size or two, and make your pattern adjustments accordingly, or simply knit the next size up, after you have swatched and measured and calculated and compared results.

On the yarn itself: in any given pattern, you are usually best advised to use either the recommended yarn or another yarn very much like it, that is, a subsitute yarn with very similar construction (number of plies, number of wraps per inch, firmness of twist) and similar behavioral attributes (weight, fiber content, drape). Don't expect comparable results if you substitute Icelandic unspun roving for a four-ply heavy worsted.

The trick is knowing your yarn, swatching, and otherwise respecting your garter stitch. Go down a needle size (or more) if you need to, especially if you wish to use a loosely spun or un-spun yarn. But do your homework. I know this sounds a tad preachy ... but .... um .... well ... it is.

But not in a bad way.

--Mambocat