Pattern: Anthera from Twist Collective.  For a mere $6.00, you get a pattern for a beret, cowl, and cuffs.  Instructions are charted, not written out.  Twist Collective has great charts in terms of legibility and ease of use, so don’t wimp out if you’re chart-phobic.  If you can knit, purl, yarn over, ssk, and k2tog, you can make this beret.  I can’t believe that I’m the only person on Ravelry who has made this beret thus far.

Yarn: Louisa Harding Kimono Angora Pure (70% angora, 25% wool, 5% nylon) in Color No. 6, Teal.  I say it’s Turquoise.  Approx. 90 yards.

Size: One size.

Needles: US size 4 and 5 (3.5 mm  and 3.75 mm, respectively) both Brittany Birch DPN’s and Addi Natura 16″ circular

Mods: None, other than the absence of a dorky i-cord macaroni thingy on top.  I’m not fond of dorky i-cord macaroni thingies, so I just left it out.

Comments: This needed Aggressive Blocking to get it to the point where I thought it had enough slouch to be called a beret.   Aggressive Blocking translates to a full 30-minute soak in Soak and a 10½ inch dinner plate.   The lace pattern really opened up.  If you like a lot of slouch in your berets, I think you could do an additional repeat of Rows 1-12 from Chart A and add about 1½ to 2 inches to the depth of the hat.

This is perfect for fall.  I plan on wearing it with my brown leather jacket and Norovirus Scarf v. 2.0

These are photos of my twin brother and me, taken somewhere in the neighborhood of 1970-1972 or so.  Teh Husband and I bought a printer cum photocopier cum scanner, and I’ve been messing around with scanning old photographs.  You know, the ones from back in The Dark Ages when everything wasn’t digitized and there were such things as film and negatives.

I scanned these with the idea that I would update my Facebook avatar with a photo of myself, albeit one taken almost 40 years ago.  It may sound odd, but every time I see this avatar of myself, I feel happier.  It reminds me, somehow, of when I was feisty and playful and had all those years stretching out ahead of me.

I’m not saying that I’m no longer feisty, or that I feel that I’m out of time.  No, it’s not that.  I see this little girl and know that she’s still a part of me, that I’m still pretty damn feisty, and that I would like to get out of this dress, please, and into my playclothes so I can go climb trees or play down by the creek.  Milk and cookies afterward.

That 95% percentile business is from the Myers-Briggs personality test that’s on the bar graph to the right.  My four-letter personality “type” is an ISTJ.  I had emailed a similar test to my co-worker a few years ago, an she came out as an ESTJ.  You would think that we would get along really well, but I have to tell you that’s just not the case.  The person at the office with whom I get along best is diametrically opposed to me – an ENFP.

Despite this conflict personality-wise I have with the Birthday Girl, I thought it would be a good idea to knit her a pair of socks.  There are several reasons behind this:

• Every time I wear my Tonks’ Socks, she compliments them, my knitting skills, or the cool self-striping sock yarn.
• She’s had a rough year.  Her father passed away not too long ago and her family is, to put it mildly, dysfunctional.
• It would help me get over myself.

So, here they are:

Pattern: Basic Sock Pattern, Ann Budd, The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns: Basic Designs in Multiple Sizes & Gauges.

Yarn: Opal Rainforest 6-ply. This is a sport weight yarn, and you can fly through a pair of socks. Of course, it took me three months to finish these because I am… uh… easily distracted by other knitting projects.

Size: Woman’s M/L. I hope they fit!  I had to sorta/kinda guess.

Needles: US size 2.0 (2.75 mm) Brittany Birch DPN’s.

Mods: None.  Even though I do modifications on socks I knit for myself, I needed to follow the generic pattern on this one.  Customizing a fit by guess work is not something I wanted to do.

I’ll take them in to work tomorrow.  They’re all wrapped and ready to go, along with a sample of Soak wool wash and care instruction sheet.  Yep, I’m an ISTJ all right.

It’s really more righteous indignation than anger, but if it’s enough to get me off my butt and write a post, I’ll take it.

There are two things that push my Anger Buttons:

• Intolerance in any form, from your garden-variety racism to intolerance based on a person’s sexual orientation, religion, social class, etc.
• Stomping on someone’s civil liberties.  I’m a proud, card-carrying member of the ACLU, and Teh Husband and I send in a monthly contribution via automatic withdrawals from our checking account.  I believe his main concern is privacy issues, while mine is the straightforward First Amendment stuff:  Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press.

If you’re paying any attention to current events in the United States you will know exactly what I’m talking about.  I’m not here to write a post discussing the issue in detail, I just need to say this:

If you’re wrapping yourself in the flag and claiming what a “real American” you are for opposing Park51, it’s painfully obvious that you have no concept of the principles set forth in the Bill of Rights.  None.  You are a “faux American.”   Pathetic.  My suggestion to you is to grab a Sharpie and write “IGNORANT BIGOT” on your forehead in really big letters.  That will save us the trouble of having to listen to you.

Okay, I’m being facetious here.  My summer blues are hitting me very hard  and I’m feeling rather grim and cynical.  I’m functioning, but the days are long and draining.  I find myself dreaming of cooler weather.  Long nights.  Frost.

I thought it would be a good idea to write a post — even a short one — to let the Innernets know that I’m still alive — just in a truly foul mood. When I’m “like this” writing is a chore.  Actually, just about everything is a chore.  Meh.

I’ll be back when I feel better.

The problem with Stealth Knitting is that you really can’t do a blog post until the gift is given.  My notes on Ravelry say that I finished the second pair a month ago!

Pattern: Infant Socks by Judy Ellis

Yarn: Shibui Knits Sock in the Lily colorway, 100% merino wool, approx. 70 yards

Needles: US size 0 (2.0 mm)

Size: Bebeh sized.  I really can’t tell if these are too big for a newborn or not, but considering how quickly babies grow, I know they will fit soon.

Mods: I cast on 36 stitches instead of the 40 the pattern called for, and did 2×2 ribbing instead of 1×1.

I made three socks for each of these projects; I just don’t have a photo of all three of the orange ones.

Yarn:  ONline Supersocke 100, 75% wool, 25% nylon, approximately 115 yards.

No mods, same sized needles.

These were an incredibly fast knit and might very well become my go-to baby project.  Knitted socks are (in my mind) more impressive than a plain hat or blanket, since it takes a certain level of skill to knit them.  They are also incredibly cute.  When I was showing them to some of the other people in my office, even some of the men were on the verge of squealing from the Cuteness of It All.

I’ve got another batch of Stealth Knitting underway, but this is Christmas Stealth Knitting.  You’re going to have a bit of a wait.

Information junkie that I am, I did look up blue curaçao in Wikipedia and discovered that the liqueur — made from bitter oranges — is actually colorless.  Further link-clicking divulged that Curaçao is an island off the coast of Venezuela, whose name may have derived from  the Portuguese word for the state of becoming cured (curação).  Oranges.  Sailors.  Scurvy.  You get the picture.

Pattern:  Hermione’s Everyday Socks; the link is to the designer’s blog, for those of you not on Ravelry.   I think this is a great pattern for just about any sock yarn:  semi-solids, wild handpaints, not-wild handpaints, self-striping.  The texture is subtle and the pattern is easy to memorize.

Yarn:   Wollmeise 100% Merino Superwash in the aforementioned Blue Curaçao colorway.  Wollmeise is, indeed, Everything and All That.  These socks have amazing drape, which makes them feel and look “dressier” than any of the other socks I’ve made.  One significant problem with the Wollmeise, though, is that it is a Cat Hair Magnet.  I was constantly using the lint roller on these socks while they were WIP’s.  I couldn’t set them down without them sucking up all the cat hair in a ten-foot radius.

Needles:  Kollage Square DPN’s, US size 1 and 0.  I started with the 1′s, then switched to the 0′s when about 75-80% of the leg was done.

Size:  Women’s Small.  My shoe size is 6½, so I can get away with making a pair of socks AND a scarf out of one skein of Wollmeise.  I am shamelessly smug about this.

Mods:  Cast on 60 stitches instead of 64.  I didn’t do the garter-stitch edging for the heel flap which, in retrospect, was not the best choice.  There is one spot on one of the heels where my half-assed picking up of stitches sticks out like a sore thumb.  My half-assed-ness would be better hidden by the garter stitch.  I console myself with the idea that (a) I could have still had the half-assed-ness even with the garter stitch border and (b) no one will see it while I’m wearing the socks.

I started the next pair of socks almost immediately, using this yarn:

Those colors will help me cope with the awful sunlight and heat.  Three more months…  Gack.  Time to turn up the air conditioning.

Or something like that.  You call it summer – I call it Three Months of Hell.

I have four pairs of adult socks on the needles right now — one for Teh Husband, two for me, and one for a birthday gift for a co-worker.  I don’t have pictures, mainly because I don’t want to traipse outside  to take photos in 85+ degree weather.   I know one is supposed to suffer for art, but I’m drawing the line right there.

]]> http://itsfuriousbalancing.com/index.php/2010/05/31/chilling/feed/ 0 http://itsfuriousbalancing.com/index.php/2010/05/21/things-fall-apart/ http://itsfuriousbalancing.com/index.php/2010/05/21/things-fall-apart/#comments Sat, 22 May 2010 02:39:56 +0000 Laiane http://itsfuriousbalancing.com/?p=1543

When…everyone was competing for airtime, I felt invisible and became over-stimulated and anxious.  My anxiety was not about the pressure to socialize; there were more than enough bodies to take care of that.  I became anxious because I couldn’t think, and, without my own mind, I felt like I was disintegrating….In my solitude, I could regain contact with myself and become solid again. Laurie Helgoe, PhD.

That is the most apt, most accurate description of the life of an introvert in an extroverted world that I have ever read.  Truly.  When I read it, I felt as if I had the breath knocked out of me, almost like I had been punched in the stomach.  Someone understands.  Someone gets it.

I haven’t been showing up here too frequently because I haven’t been able to recover very well from my work.  For whatever unknown reason, my work load has doubled in the past two weeks.  It is utterly insane.  It’s not my boss dumping stuff on me; he is as gobsmacked as I am.  By the end of the day, I’m ready to curl up in the fetal position and eat ice cream for dinner.  I find that I’m needing more and more time to regroup so I can go back to the office the next day.

I’m around.  I am basically okay.  I’m just not feeling very chatty lately.  I’ve been knitting and reading and watching documentaries.

I’ve been rebuilding myself daily.

I did go back over this inchoate list of notes to make it look somewhat formatted, and I added in my links.  It’s not all off the cuff.  Hopefully, there is a gram of sense in it.  Somewhere.  All I know is that I need to go back to my World War II/German history books and do a lot of re-reading.

————————————-

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
– George Santayana

William L. Shirer made these words the epigraph for his Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959).

Note that I should finish Rise and Fall, former bedtime reading, having only made it up to the Anschluss.  I would read two pages before falling asleep, worry of breaking nose from hardcover book.

Don’t Ignore the Tea Party’s Toxic Take on History, Slate article by Ron Rosenbaum.

Tea Party movement = Ignorance of History.  Ignorance of meaning of the words socialism, Nazism, Communism, etc.

Rosenbaum is the author of Explaining Hitler, which is not a Hitler apologia apologist (determine noun, an historical apologist writes what?  Apologies, certainly, but there must be a better word, based on root apolog-.) My reading of that and of personal narratives of German citizens during the Hitler years has been met with unspoken condescension — usually from people unable to cope with anything that actually requires them to think about what they read.

These books are not a glorification or a rationalization of Hitler or of Nazi Germany, but stem from a need to understand; and I read them due to my own German descent and my interest in the complicated nature of human evil and in the lack of black/white dichotomies.

My fascination with shades of gray in the human psyche, how easy it is to push someone from sanity/rationality over the edge.  Incremental and unnoticed for the most part.  Similar to ease of losing humanity under extreme duress [lack of food, example of Primo Levi (?) -- or was it Elie Weisel (?) --in Auschwitz listening to father's death rattle in hopes of getting his stuff.  Boots?  Blanket?]; or not [1950's or 1960's psychological research study at U.S. college of prisoners vs. wardens - find link The Stanford Prison Experiment, 1971].

If it is that simple — simple as in “not complicated,” not “easy” — to become inhuman to others, how simple is it to manipulate the narrative to merely plant the seeds of a social movement that takes us backwards towards intolerance, racism, xenophobia, and worse.  A spiral into madness.

Weimar Republic, social history.  Analogous to today?  Tea Party, by their inability to understand history, is becoming a tool to lead us into a repeat of that not-understood history.