It’s Furious Balancing

Some time ago, I posted photos of baby hats that included the ones I made for a highly-regarded co-worker (and first-time Mom).  These were my first-ever handknit  baby hats.  I now offer proof that my gauge wasn’t complete wonky and that they actually fit the recipient.

This is Josh.  His Mama emailed me today with some photos.  If these were taken recently, Josh is 4 to 5 months old in the pictures.

I love his facial expressions, especially this one of Grave Concern:

This next one is particularly fitting for today.  Happy Samhain, everyone.

“Someone told me there was going to be chocolate.”

I love this interview of Sen. Joe Biden.  I’m sure I’ll watch it a few times during the next nine days.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is the best time of year.    A phrase I recently discovered is Winter Finding – the time between the autumnal equinox and the first of November.  The intolerable heat and humidity of the summer is over and we’re running headlong into frost.  Light becomes muted.  The days smell cleaner.  I keep telling myself that I need to get out and photograph the changing leaves, but between doubting my ability as a photographer and the swiftness of the season, I don’t think that will happen.

Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, “You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams.”

Said the leaf indignant, “Low-born and low-dwelling! Songless, peevish thing! You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing.”

Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept. And when spring came she waked again — and she was a blade of grass.

And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, “O these autumn leaves! They make such a noise! They scatter all my winter dreams.”  –Kahlil Gibran, The Madman

There’s nothing like autumn and its soft decay to bring out the pseudo-gothy Miss Havisham-y part of my personality.

This is the Vintage Velvet scarf I’ve been working on the past two weeks.  I cranked it out in record time — record time for me, in any event.  One of the reasons it went so quickly was because I truly dislike the yarn.  I wanted to be done knitting with it as soon as I possibly could so I wouldn’t have to handle it any longer than I had to.

It’s Muench’s Touch Me, a rayon microfiber and wool blend.  It sheds like a mangy cat, has no stitch definition to speak of and, being chenille, it worms.  While chenille yarn is pretty and plush, it is a bitch to work with — its tendency to worm being the major problem.  I can’t explain exactly why chenille does what it does, but there’s an explanation here.

In a fit of pique, I stayed up until all hours one night last week to finish this scarf and felt it.  I had never before thrown yarn into soapy hot water with such heartfelt abandon.  I was ready to drown this thing.  It was loose and loopy going into the washer, and I was praying that the Felting Gods would work their magic.

They did.

For this pattern, you need to use the yarn it calls for — not any chenille yarn will give you the same effect.   The wool core of the yarn constricts and tightens, and the fluffy rayon bits come together to give the scarf its crushed velvet patina.  A trip through the dryer lifts the nap on the velvet.

Project Notes  – Vintage Velvet

Pattern: “Vintage Velvet” from the book, Scarf Style

Size: After felting – 54 inches by 5 1/2 inches.  Since I stretched and pinned it for the final blocking, there was remarkably little shrinkage.

Yarn: Muench Touch Me, 5 balls, in Slate Blue

Needles: Denise Interchangables, U.S. Size 8.  They are my least slippery needles, which is important when working with chenille.

Mods: None

Other Stuff: I would gladly pay through the snout to buy this yarn in another color for the same project.  However, before that happens, I need must let the horror of my first experience fade.

Copper dragons…are born tricksters and jokesters. They are quite devious and clever, but their intent is purely benign.  They do not seek to harm  ‘lesser’ creatures, but merely wish to impress them with superior intelligence and wit…. When it comes to combat, copper dragons prefer to avoid it.  Rather than fighting openly, they prefer to taunt, humiliate, and tease their opponents until they simply give up and run away…. When forced, however, a copper dragon will fight to the very end, and is an incredibly devious antagonist.  (Source:  Dungeons & Dragons Wikipedia)

I’m a quiet person, for the most part:  Introverted; decidedly not flashy; dressing primarily in black, gray, and shades of blue.  Every now and then, however, I want something outside my comfort zone.  The last time this happened, it was yarn.

Yeah, yeah;  I know.  “Yarn?  You’re really riding the razor’s edge, aren’t you, Laiane?  Yarn?  Big whoop.”

This yarn was different.  This yarn sang to the deepest, darkest corner in my heart.  It was a precious metal, sunlight on gemstones, the color of the treasures of the earth.  It was Alchemy Silk Purse in the Desert Song colorway, and it made me think of dragon scales.

I wanted a lightweight scarf to go with my lightweight leather jacket, and the pattern I chose was perfect.

PROJECT NOTES – Copper Dragon Scarf

Pattern: Dragon Scales Scarf, a free knitting pattern from Heritage Yarns.

Size: After blocking, 6 inches by 42 inches.   I got to block lace for the first time with this project.   I bought lace blocking wires and everything.

Yarn: The aforementioned Alchemy Silk Purse, a 100% silk yarn, slubbed and highly reflective.  My only complaint with silk is that it doesn’t have a lot of “give” to it, so it’s almost like knitting with cotton.  Almost, not quite.  Silk is much sexier.  The silk also presented a blocking challenge to me, since I didn’t want to do my usual wet blocking.  I had read that silk becomes very fragile if you soak it, and I wasn’t taking any chances with this scarf.  I used the blocking wires to stretch the project first, then I sprayed it with water to “set” the stitches.  I did this on the futon in the Cat Room, after carefully covering it with towels to avoid the transfer of cat hair.  I covered the blocked, stretched, wet scarf with a bed sheet.  Cats and lace knitting is An Accident Waiting To Happen.

Needles:  Addi Turbo Lace Needles, 24″ circular, U.S. Size 6 

Mods: None.

Challenges and Stuff: The aforementioned blocking of silk.  My first real lace project.  The Rose Red Beret had lots of what I call “lace elements,” but it wasn’t a super-fiddly charted pattern with fine yarn and lots of yarnovers and ssk’s and k2tog’s and such.  You know – Real Lace.

I’m going to doom myself right now and declare that Lace Knitting is Fun.  Well, taking something that looks like ramen noodles and transforming it with water is the fun part.  The actual knitting part of the equation isn’t so fun since it requires higher standards of perfection on the part of the knitter.   You can’t fudge a few accidental yarnovers and expect your scarf to look like the FO pictures that come with the pattern.

Not too much, anyway.

I found this essay in the early hours this Sunday morning  — those pre-dawn hours when the world seems sane and clear.  This is from Tim Wise, an anti-racist writer and activist.

For those who have seen the ugliness and heard the vitriol emanating from the mouths of persons attending McCain/Palin rallies this past week–what with their demands to kill Barack Obama, slurs that he is a terrorist and a traitor, and paranoid delusions about his crypto-Muslim designs on America–please know this: This is how fascism comes to an ostensible democracy.

If it comes–and if those whose poisonous, unhinged verbiage has been so ubiquitous this week have any say over it, it surely will–this is how it will happen: not with tanks and jackbooted storm troopers, but carried in the hearts of men and women dressed in comfortable shoes, with baseball caps, and What Would Jesus Do? wristbands.

—

If fascism comes, it will spring from the soil of middle America, from people known as values voters but whose values are toxic, from simple folk whose simplicity, far from being admirable, is better labeled ignorance, from “all-American” types whose patriotism is a dagger pointed at the very heart of the national interest, for it so forsakes all the best principles upon which the republic was founded, choosing instead to elevate and ratify the narrow-mindedness, the bigotry, and the intolerance that also marked our country’s origins.

—

If fascism comes it will be welcomed, lock stock and barrel by persons who pray at every meal to a God they visualize as white, whose son they also think was white, and who they believe is going to rapture them all into the sky upon the blowing of some heavenly trumpet, after which point all those who don’t think as they think will be burned in an eternal lake of fire. Their vision and version of God is itself fascistic–to love a God who would do such a thing is to love an abusive, sadistic and evil deity after all–so it should come as little surprise that their conception of the state would be equally authoritarian or worse.

If fascism comes it will be at the behest of those who hold a contempt for what they call “book learnin,” who prefer Presidents who mispronounce basic words because they make them feel smarter, and who are looking for nothing so much as a commander-in-chief with whom they would enjoy having a beer, or two, or twelve at some backyard barbecue.

—

If fascism comes it will come because a lot of people who aren’t like the folks I’m talking about here, won’t stand up to the ones who are. Because we’re too busy, don’t want to make waves, don’t want to lose friends, or alienate family. It will come, in other words, because those who know better are cowards, more concerned with getting along, making nice, and being liked than with telling the truth, calling out evil and saving their country.

—

If fascism comes it will come because those liberals thought voting for Barack Obama was all they needed to do; it will come because they allowed themselves to believe that politics is what a person does every four years, but not at work, and not in the neighborhood, and not at the dinner table. Meanwhile, know-nothings filled with hate, nurtured on racial and religious bigotry and who have overdosed on the kind of hypernationalism that has always proved fatal to those places foolish or craven enough to allow it a foothold, talk of their visions for America at every opportunity. They raise their kids on that sickness, they build churches whose very foundation is rooted in that cancerous rot, and they will think nothing of steamrolling those who get in their way.

So when, exactly, do we fight back? When do we say enough?

The entire essay is here.  Pass it on, cats and kittens; please read it all and pass it on.

Well, to tell the truth, it’s not so much writer’s block as it is paying far too much attention to the Presidential Election.  I’ve been hanging out in the Knitters for Obama Ravelry discussion forum, obsessively checking the polls, and generally reading all the political news articles and watching all the political videos — satirical and otherwise –  I’m able to find online.

I’ve been busy, in other words.

I’ve already decided to take the day off from work on Wednesday, November 5th.  I plan on being up for most of the night on the 4th.  I won’t be able to sleep until Obama gives his “thank you” speech.

I do have some Election 2008 knitting projects in the works, but I’m not posting them until they’re done.  You’ll just have to wait until then.  In the meantime, here’s another finished object for your knitting consideration:  Jen’s Chica Scarf.

PROJECT NOTES

Made for: Jen, my manicurist of many years.  Jen’s much more of a friend then a “manicurist.”  I’ve been seeing her a few times a month for the past seven or eight years.  After He Who Buys Large Diamonds and I were engaged, I wanted my hands to look nicer so I could show off The Rock.  Jen is also The Husband’s hair stylist. 

Pattern: Chicabean Scarf by the Kelly Green Rogue.

Size: After blocking – 60 inches by 8 inches.

Yarn: Paton’s Classic Wool Merino in Paprika (approx. 350 yards)

Needles: US size 8, Pony Pearl 20″ circulars

Mods: None.

Challenges: There wasn’t a chart for this pattern, so it went slowly for me.  I’m not an absolute beginner with cables and lace, and I prefer charts over line-by-line instructions.  There are a few spots in the scarf where I fudged some missing or some extra stitches, but the pattern’s complex enough to cover it.  I hope.  Jen, thankfully, doesn’t expect perfection.  She’s known me too long.