It’s Furious Balancing

The recipient of the Baby Viking Helm was pleased.  The following is a direct copy-paste from her email to me.

I’m not even going to begin trying to explain this to non-gamers.

Textured Woven Valkyrie Helm of Dryness and Agility

RARE MASTERCRAFTED

Required level: 1

Mitigation: 200

Weight: 1.0

Frequency: Mythical

+50 health, +35 power, +15 intelligence, +15 wisdom, +50 agility

+150 vs. poison, disease, divine, heat, magic, and mental

+300 vs. cold

+200 resistance to diaper rash

+50 drool avoidance (applies to self and canine opponents only)

Effects:

• Casts Dispersion of Baby Powder when activated, creating a defensive shield against wetness and blinding all opponents in the area.
• Looks DAMN good.

On we sweep with threshing oar,
Our only goal will be the western shore.

The Viking Baby Hat is now - officially - an FO. A Finished Object. Completed. Done. Stick a fork in it.

My highly cooperative model for this photo shoot is Socks the Cat. He usually sits on the back of our living room sofa, looking out the front window. Our other cats sit up there with him sometimes and watch the world go by. I wonder what our mailman thinks.¹

Socks is also responsible for all the Led Zeppelin lyrics scattered throughout this post. If you’re totally lost, go check out the Viking Kittens. (WARNING: Plays Led Zeppelin music and a Flash animation.) ²

We come from the land of the ice and snow
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.

The hammer of the gods
Will drive our ships to new lands
To fight the horde — singing and crying:
Valhalla I am coming!

This was my first FO for Ravelympics 2008. If you’re a knitter on Ravelry, you may have heard about this. The idea is to complete a challenging project, or several challenging projects,³ during the Beijing Summer Olympics. You couldn’t cast on before the Olympic flame was lit at the opening ceremonies, and you need to finish before the flame is extinguished at the end of the games.⁴

Knitting events were named after “real” Olympic events, and I signed up for Baby Dressage and the Glove Decathlon.⁵ We also joined up in teams, either by geographical region or Ravelry Group.  You didn’t have to pick a team to participate, but I did.   I’m a member of Team Obama and Team Michigan.

This is very loosely organized. You can be a member of multiple teams, but you must limit a project to one team only (i.e., I couldn’t count this one baby hat for both Team Obama and Team Michigan.  I had to choose one of them). You are competing only against yourself; you aren’t out to “beat” other knitters.⁶ Once you finish your project, you get a bloggy widget thing at the end of the games.  It’s sort of like the Special Olympics – all participants get a medal.⁷

PROJECT NOTES

Ravelympics Team:  Obama

Made for:  A gal in our old EverQuest 2 guild who is expecting her first baby.  I don’t know when she’s due, but it must be soon!  Edited to Add:  Baby Nicolai will make his appearance on or about November 3rd.

Pattern: Baby Viking Hat Kit from Bella Knitting.

Yarn: Karabella Aurora 8, Dark Gray (approx. ¼ ball, 25 yards); Brown (approx. ⅔ ball, 65 yards); and Cream (a teeny, tiny amount; they didn’t send a full ball of yarn with the kit).

Needles: US Size 6, both DPN’s and 16″ circular.

Mods: I made the hat ½ inch shorter (3½” instead of 4″) before beginning the “every other row” decreases.  I started doing the “every row” decreases for the crown about 4 rows earlier than the pattern called for.  I wanted to shorten the length a wee bit.  I saw too many FO pictures where the hat looked more like a stocking cap (or the Pope’s mitre) than a helmet.

Challenges: Sewing on those damned wings was the hardest part. Making 21 bobbles on the same row was the most tedious knitting I’ve done in a long time.  I consider overcoming Bobble Boredom a challenge. My personal preference is No Bobbles Whatsoever On Any Knitted Item,⁸ but the hat really needed them to get that certain je ne sais quoi that says “Viking Helmet.”

How soft your fields so green,
Can whisper tales of gore,
of how we calmed the tides of war.
We are your overlords.

My next Ravelympics challenge is the Welig Gloves from Robin Melanson’s Knitting New Mittens & Gloves for Team Michigan.

Those bobbles have got to go.

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1. If I had to guess, it would be something like “Real Cat. Real Cat. Fake Cat. <pause> Wait a minute…” [↩]
2. Stay away if you’re allergic to Led Zeppelin and Flash animations, and don’t blame me if you have Immigrant Song stuck in your head for three days. [↩]
3. There’s even an event for finishing already-started, languishing projects — dubbed “WIP Wrestling” — with the goal of completing as many of your Works in Progress as you could during the games. [↩]
4. August 24th, a few minutes before noon, Eastern time. [↩]
5. Decathlon as in ten fingers, not that you have to churn out ten pairs of gloves. [↩]
6. I will confess, however, that I’m a little smirky that Team Obama outnumbers Team McCain in terms of members (90 vs. 25), number of projects planned (315 vs. 60), and FO’s (37 vs. 6 as of this writing). Neener, neener, neener. [↩]
7. Political Correctness Note: I’m not dissing the Special Olympics. I was a volunteer for them one year in high school. [↩]
8. The notable exception to this rule is bobbles as mouse ears on felted catnip mice. [↩]

That should read “Baby Hats and Moose Burgers,” but my mind tends toward the alliterative.

The moose burgers appear in my wee little head courtesy of The Yarn Harlot’s blog post from yesterday.  She and her family are visiting Newfoundland, and I am profoundly jealous.  Curiosity compelled me to look up the average monthly temperatures for St. John’s, Newfoundland and in August - August, mind you - the average daily high temperature is 67 degrees Farenheit.

Sweet Jesus, book me a flight for Newfoundland.  Now.  I knew the Canadians were culturally and spiritually ahead of us when I discovered the existence of poutine.  I am convinced I was born a bit too south and bit too west of Heaven on Earth.  Well, I would still need a high-speed internet connection, but we’re talking lighthouses, sheep, rugged coastline, and french fries with cheese curds and gravy, not to mention the Canadian wonderfulness of curling and Tim Horton’s doughnuts.  Cold weather, carbohydrates, and wool.  Sign me up.

But I digress.

Today’s post is about a current knitting project and some past knitting projects that haven’t made an appearance here yet.  Baby Hats.

Even though I am Child-Free By Choice, I do love knitting up cute little baby hats.  For the most part, they’re fast, Instant Gratification projects.  I’ve made a few Umbilical Cord Hats from Stitch N’ Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook:

the first in red

and the second in cream.

Then there was the hat resurrected from the yarn I tried to use for the Baby Nemesis Jacket:¹

And then another with cables.

However, my all-time favorite Bebeh Hat, until now, was the Pumpkin Beanie  I modified from Crazy Aunt Purl’s pattern:

Yes, yes, very cute, but none of them have anything over the Viking Baby Hat:

It’s a Work of Art in Progress and my first project for the 2008 Ravelympics, which is yet one more blog post in and of itself.  I’ll write that one up later.  I want to keep knitting.

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1. This is a whole ‘nother blog post.  I can cut a steek and wield DPN’s with impunity, but I’m incapable of knitting a garter stitch baby sweater. [↩]

Why does this reminder me of The Ladykillers?¹

1. That’s the 1955 British version wtih Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers, not the insipid 2004 American version with Tom Hanks. [↩]

You know you spend too much time at I Can Has Cheezburger when you start thinking in LOLspeak.  You’d never know I was a Phi Beta Kappa English major, would you?  Well, the title of this post does derive from a Robert Burns’ poem,¹  so it has a small amount of literary merit.  I’m not claiming much.

My Red Red Rose is actually a handknit beret — Rose Red — designed by Ysolda Teague.  I’m sure she was referencing the fairytale character Rose Red, but my searches on the fairytale didn’t yield much I could work with in a humorous vein.  I mean, the girl marries the brother of the prince bewitched into the form of a bear; her sister, Snow White, gets the prince.  This isn’t the Snow White with the dwarf fetish, although a dwarf does appear in the story, but another Snow White.  Oh, go read the whole thing here.

But anyway.  Rose Red.  Knitting.

This is not the first Ysolda Teague pattern I’ve done,² and it most definitely will not be the last.  I love her designs; her patterns are well-written and clear.  Even though there are tons of free patterns on the Internet, I most happily will pay $6.00 to $7.00 for one of Ysolda’s.³

I did my first Rose Red in Cascade Cloud 9 yarn in the Chili Pepper colorway.⁴  The Cloud 9 was perfect for this project.  Even though it’s an angora blend, I had very little shedding.  It did shed quite a bit when I had to frog and re-knit a part of it, but not excessively.  It has an understated angora “halo” and the red did not bleed when I wet blocked it. ⁵

However, since it’s red, it means that my pictures simply don’t do it justice.  I think the second photo is the closest to the yarn’s true color.

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My photography is getting a smidge better.  Not phenomenally better.  A smidge.  A tad.  An infinitesimal degree of better-ness.  I’m home from work with stomach issues, so I’m afraid there’s not any photos in natural light today.  It’s also 86°F outside, which is a little warm for a wool-angora beret, no matter how much I adore it.

Adore it I do.  I want seven in different colors so I can wear one each day of the week.  I would use the Cloud 9 all seven times, too.

This is my first finished project with cables, and it’s beautiful.

/sigh

I wish it were snowing.

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1. As an aside, while I was searching online for Red, Red Rose, I also found a Burns’ poem about haggis.  If you don’t know what a haggis is, let’s just say it’s among the least poetic of subjects.  Srsly.  The poem has the word entrails.  You have been warned. [↩]
2. That was another hat, Verity.  I don’t care for how it turned out.  The pattern was great, but the yarn I picked for it was just too loud and it didn’t work out in the end.  I think Verity needs to be done in a more subdued color than varigated hot pink and bright red. [↩]
3. In case anyone is curious, I have the patterns for Matilda Jane, Snow White, Verity, and Briar Rose, too, and I just may have to buy Gretel and Coraline.  You can find all of these on this one page.  Don’t worry - even though she is Scottish, there are no haggis - haggises? - on this page. [↩]
4. 146 for those of you who would like the reference number. [↩]
5. This is important to me because I had one project that turned the water into the color of Hawaiian Punch.  Eeeeew.  I had to bake the FO in the oven in a pan of vinegar water to set the dye. [↩]

I’ve got a love/hate relationship with my insomnia.  While I adore the wee morning hours, it definitely puts me on a radically different schedule than the rest of the people I live and work with at GMT -4 hours.¹

1. Cartoon courtesy of xkcd. [↩]

Steek (stēk) To pierce with a sharp instrument; hence, to stitch; to sew; also, to fix; to fasten.¹

From a knitter’s point of view, that’s an extremely tepid definition.  It concentrates far too much on the fixing/fastenening/sewing side of things and says far too little about taking scissors and hacking apart an almost-finished sweater.  The Wikipedia entry is more enlightening:

In knitting, steeking is a shortcut used to knit things like sweaters in the round without interruption for openings or sleeves until the end.  After completing a tube, a straight line is cut along the center of a column of stitches in order to make room for an opening…. The steek itself is a bridge of extra stitches in which the cut is made and is usually 6-10 stitches wide.  This technique was developed by the knitters of the Shetland archipelago and is particularly associated with Fair Isle sweaters, although it can be used for solid colors as well, blah, blah, blah.

The magic of knitting is that you can create a garment out of a length of string. The horror of steeking is that you must make a Leap of Faith and cut into the garment, praying all the while that it doesn’t unravel before your eyes.

Steeking is the one technique most likely to cause knitters to self-impale on their own needles.  It is seriously scary stuff.  Worse than turning the heel of a sock.  Worse than p3togtbl² with Rowan Kidsilk Haze. Worse than, oh, I don’t know what, but I think that cutting a steek is the one technique most likely to cause a Major Knitting Freak Out.

To tell the truth, it really wasn’t all that bad.  I didn’t even need alcohol or chocolate cake to fortify myself beforehand — just a hot bath.

I think part of the Lack of Panic is because I chose a steek-appropriate yarn for my project.  I’ve been working on a Noro Kureyon striped vest the past few weeks.  The original pattern over on Knitty.com called for alternating two different colorways of Noro, but I fell in love with Colorway 195 (blue, black, olive, gray) and wanted a vest made entirely with that.

Steeking is best done with rougher, stickier wool, and Noro Kureyon is definitely sticky.  I wouldn’t have been so confident with something smoother (like Noro Silk Garden) or a less “rustic” (i.e., more processed) yarn.  The Kureyon, however, is perfect for steeking.

Despite this, I did have The Husband sew in a reinforcing zig-zag on either side of the line of knit stitches to go under the knife scissors.   I have heard of knitters who don’t use sewn or crocheted reinforcements and just cut a naked, unreinforced steek.  I might be crazy, but I’m not that crazy.   I basted a line of red yarn through the stitches to be cut and he obliged me with his l33t sewing skillz.  Click the Pic for “Really Big” Size.

I must apologize for my horrible pictures.  There is something about this colorway that defies a decent shot.  I think the “gray” stripes, which are an amalgam of purple, green, and silver, throw off the color balance feature on my digital camera.  I have not yet been able to take a halfway acceptable photograph of it. ³

When it came time to actually take scissors to my knitting — the knitting I had worked on for 3 weeks, the knitting made with my favorite color of Noro Kureyon — I was quite calm.  I’m the sort of person who doesn’t see much sense in making a fuss about inevitabilities.  The vest was knitted; the steek was sewn.  What’s to be gained by wringing my hands and whining about it?

Not much, aside from looking weak and/or foolish.  So I just got ‘er done.

I get to use my nifty Addi Cro-Hook to pick up stitches for the neck and armhole bands once she dries from her wet block.  I should have Finished Object pictures soon.

Permission to look smug?

Every now and then, since I’ve watched the Lord of the Rings movies half a dozen times, I get bits of dialogue stuck in my head.  Gollum’s dialogue usually.  I wonder where this bit came from?

Sam:  What are you up to?  Sneaking off, are we?

Gollum:  Sneaking?  Sneaking?  Fat hobbit is always so polite.  Smeagol shows them secret ways that nobody else could find and they say “sneak.”  Sneak?  Very nice friend.  Oh, yes, my precious.  Very nice, very nice.

Sam:  All right, all right!  You just startled me is all.  What were you doing?

Gollum:  Steeking.  Sneaking.

1. Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co. [↩]
2. Purl 3 together through the back loops [↩]
3. I also have issues with red yarn, too.  If any of you out there have any tips for photographing red yarn, please speak up.  I need all the help I can get. [↩]

The cat picture is gratuitous, but I told Kissy he would get some screen time.

Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.¹

I’ve had those two lines of poetry rattling around in my head because I’m feeling quite smug about two new knitting tools I’ve discovered.  “New to me” anyway; they’ve been around a while.

The first will warm the cockles of anyone’s heart — anyone who has ever felt discouraged or apprehensive about those ubiquitous finishing instructions, “Pick up and knit 124² stitches around the neckline.”

That’s an Addi Turbo Cro-Needle — a 32-inch circular needle with a US size 2 crochet hook on one end and a US size 3 needle tip on the other.  I believe that the person who came up with this one should be beatified; I certainly think it’s a miracle.  In my Innernet surfing research, it appears that there was a Sticks & String podcast some 6 months or so ago that mentioned the Cro-Needle, but I found out about it on Ravelry.

Ravelry is also to blame for my next purchase, which arrived on my doorstep yesterday.  I’ve been looking for an organizational solution to the circular needle mess that is currently breeding in a shoebox in my study.  Perhaps if I contain the prurient little buggers in individual self-sealing PVC sleeves (sorted by size) things will settle down.³

This was an inexpensive purchase.  A short Innernet shopping search found an equivalent knitting needle organizer for $34.99.  I paid $17.99 for this.  The explanation for the price difference?

Yes, cats and kittens, it’s a fishing tackle organizer.  I am the proud owner of a Bass Pro Shop Extreme Worm Binder. Since it came, I’ve been dying to write a faux review on the Bass Pro Web site⁴ raving about how the circular knitting needle mess on my boat is a thing of the past, how well it stands up to a salt-water knitting environment, and does it come in pink?

1. With my apologies to Anne Sexton; these lines come from her poem Wanting to Die.  Well, not the part about knitters.  The actual line in the poem reads “But suicides have a special language.”  Don’t worry.  Despite my chronic pain and dysthymia, I am JUST FINE THANK YOU. I think in my entire life, I’ve had approximately 5 seconds of what they call suicidal ideation.  I realized it wouldn’t work for me because there would be no one around to feed my cats.  I’m such the pragmatist. [↩]
2. Or 78, or 182, or whatever. [↩]
3. I intend to sort, categorize and label all my circular needles this weekend, and I’ll try to remember to take a picture once I get the pages loaded. [↩]
4. Using a name like “Billy Bob.” [↩]

There are a few¹ enjoyable things about the warmer weather.  Click the pretty flowers for the Big Shiny Pictures.

***

1. Very, very few.  Like, almost none.  Summer means something is trying to sting you, leak poison sap on you, or give you second degree sunburn.  I like the inside. [↩]

When I heard of “The Game,” my first thought was of Thomas Tryon’s book The Other.  “The Game” referred to the twins’ ability to psychically project their awareness outside of themselves and into another.  For me, there’s all sorts of malevolent overtones to the phrase.

However, The Game I’m writing about today is wholly¹ different, completely innocuous, and gives me something moderately interesting to post on the blog since I can’t think of a damned thing to write about this morning.   The Game is an Internet Flickr meme that I discovered on Pierre, The Yarn Snob’s blog.

What you do is:

1. Type your answer to each of the questions in the Flickr search feature.
2. Pick an image on the first page of the search results.
3. Copy/paste the image’s URL into the Mosaic Maker, using whatever layout you desire — providing it shows the 12 images.²

You’ll wind up with something like this (Click for biggie size.  It looks much better) :

So, here are the questions (with my answers).

1. What is your first name? [edited out for privacy reasons]
2. What is your favorite food? Chocolate
3. What high school did you attend? [edited out for privacy reasons]
4. What is your favorite color? Cobalt blue
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Michael Kitchen
6. What is your favorite drink? Latte
7. Where would your dream vacation be? Paris
8. What is your favorite dessert? Ice cream
9. What do you want to be when you grow up? What?
10. What do you love most in life? Quiet
11. What is one word you use to describe yourself? Introverted
12. What is your Flickr user name?³ Laiane (I find it terribly amusing there’s a supermodel out there somewhere who shares my name.)
    

Et voilà.

Here’s another version of The Game where you keyword search (your answer) + sign.  I think I like this one on a more aesthetic level.⁴

There are some fun things you can do with Big Huge Labs and your uploaded photos on Flickr. ⁵  I’ve posted a mosaic of my raindrop laden irises, and here’s a mosaic of my yarn pr0n pictures.  Well, my valiant attempt at yarn pr0n pictures.

Ooooo…..shiny.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, cats and kittens.  I’m off to do some knitting.

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1. Yes, that’s spelled correctly.  I looked it up.  :P [↩]
2. If a Flickr user opts out of Big Huge Labs, your selected image will not appear and you’ll see an empty box in your mosaic.  If that happens, click the edit button at the bottom of the mosaic, not your browser’s back button. [↩]
3. If you’re not a Flickr user, I suppose using any screen name would suffice here. [↩]
4. I did have to cheat on the last one, though, since there wasn’t anything for Laiane sign.  I typed in Laine sign instead. [↩]
5. Faux motivational posters, trading cards, magazine covers, etc. [↩]

I am Teh Suck at photography. My Standard Operating Procedure for all the pictures you see on this blog is:

1. Point.
2. Shoot.
3. Repeat nos. 1 and 2 six dozen times.
4. Use judicious editing and l33t Paint Shop Pro skillz to make picture look slightly decent and a reasonable facsimile of the actual object.

I love my little Fuji digital camera.¹ Yes, it’s low budget, poky, and sucks the life out of my rechargable batteries like no one’s business, but it gets the job done 90% of the time.  Sometimes, when I’m lucky and the stars are aligned properly, I can take a passable photograph.

Mostly, I photograph yarn.  I received a batch of Noro Kureyon the other day and catalogued it for my Ravelry Yarn Stash.²

Yeah, I know.  Not particularly impressive in and of itself.  Go check it out in its original size.

That’s Color 149 up above.  This is Color 102 (click here for original size on Flickr).

Noro Kureyon is an acquired taste.  A lot of people say it’s too scratchy for them.³ I prefer to think of Kureyon as “rustic.”  It washes up soft enough for me, delicate hothouse flower that I am.  It’s a love-hate yarn, I suppose.  The “haters” are certainly entitled to their opinions, misguided though they are, and are welcome to stick to 100% plastic Caron Simply Soft.    More Kureyon for me!

Why, as a matter of fact I am a Yarn Snob, now that you mention it….

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1. Fujifilm FinePix A500. I paid about $130 for it back in December 2006, including shipping. [↩]
2. The link only works if you’re a Ravelry member, sorry.  If you’re not on Ravelry yet (and you’re a knitter), I don’t know which rock you’ve been hiding under this past year.  Ravelry has completely changed the face of Online Knitting. [↩]
3. I wonder what they would think of Reynold’s Lopi, which is the roughest wool I’ve ever encountered. [↩]

Today, a Friday, is a pre-scheduled Mental Health Day for Laiane.  Since (a) my boss is on vacation this week, and (b)  law firms are notoriously slow in the summer,¹ it seemed like it was time for some Planned Relaxation.

Unlike a lot of women, I don’t suffer from the “let’s take care of everyone else before I take care of myself” thing.  I indulge myself, gladly.  Today has included:

• Chocolate cake for breakfast.
• A nap on the couch with a purring kitteh curled up under my chin.
• Knitting.
• Online shopping — Some birthday presents to indulge my friends and some organic cotton sheets to indulge The Husband and me.
• DVD watching — Red Dwarf in the morning and a few episodes of Planet Earth for this evening.
• Oh, and a LOLCat.  It is Friday, you know.

1. Unless there’s a heat wave and my clients start dropping like flies [↩]