Etherknitter

"What the hell is brushed alpaca?"

It's time to get back to the chat-chat thing on knitting.  I've been planning out my near-term knitting projects.  Ski season means planes.  Waiting for planes.  Inns with fireplaces and easy chairs.  All this points to a need for brain-dead knitting.  (Oops.  Maybe others refer to it as mindless WIPs.  The boundaries between job and not-job sometimes blurs.) 

I started a project about which ambivalence reigns.  I'm knitting an af****.  Just as Cassie can't say the "s" word, I'm having trouble with this one.  It's an afgh**.  Oh never mind.  Here's a picture. 

This is a stark lesson as to why I tend to not stash copious quantities of yarn.  This looked like a really good idea about 18 months ago.  I fall out of love.  I've actually found an alpaca yarn that I don't like.  The pattern is mildly interesting (strike ONE!).  The yarn is hell to tink (strike TWO!).  Despite the absence of thought that is necessary to knit this, one must still count.  The knitter has to do the right pattern in each repeat.  So when I put the cables in the ribs, and the ribs in the cables, tinking becomes an exercise in pulling the yarn out of an as-yet-unnamed dimension.  Think kidsilk haze, but thicker.  It's not clear to me if that fuzz is part of the yarn, or some unthinkable residue from the unnamed dimension.  What else is wrong with this?  It is supposed to be my airplane knitting.  Didn't I just say I was planning my knitting projects?  It's on metal needles.  32".  The TSA guidelines clearly state "plastic or wood" and "31 inches or less, circular".   
Looks like I'll be working on socks on aeroplanes (stee-rike THREE!).  Please tell me why I'm still working on this. 

I guess the short answer to that question is because Mr. Etherknitter thinks it will be a nice addition to our family room coziness.  Yesterday, he was watching me knit, and asked "what is brushed alpaca?"  My fuzzy explanation wasn't satisfying him.  He kept peppering me with questions, until I turned to him and gave the 2005 answer:  "Just google it, for gawd's sake."   He did.  We ran into a blog that had us in hysterical tears.  It was completely TMI.

Etherknitter:  What DID you type into the google search field??
Mr. Etherknitter:  "What the hell is brushed alpaca?"
Etherknitter:  You aren't kidding, are you?  (I checked his Google page and he wasn't kidding.)

We also found this site.  You, too, can attend Alpaca University.

I have finished spinning four ounces of Polwarth (blues) and four ounces of Coopworth/alpaca mix (brown).   The Coopworth/alpaca is from Dorchester Farms (no web link).
These will be plyed together so that a hat can be transmogrified from my handspun.  I bailed on the grey baby alpaca because I could not spin it.  That will have to wait for lower stakes, and simple practice.  It wasn't working for a project-oriented mindset.

The wheel has Indigo Moon merino/alpaca/silk on the active bobbin.  I'll wait til I'm done before I flash that. 

Good cheer!

Happy holidays to my blogbuds!  I wish warmth, happiness, tranquility, and joy to you during your celebrations!

Holiday Letter

Dear Fill In The Blank,

If I wrote Christmas letters, this would be it.  I've always had a love-hate relationship with the critters.  The impersonality is counterbalanced by the sharing of information, which is negated by the utter banality of some of the news.  So how would an Etherknitter Holiday Letter sound?

The year began when I stopped lurking.  That tells you that my blogiversary is approaching.  I don't know what I was thinking when I was thinking that all the people I read every day would be psychic and just KNOW that my blog appeared in the blogiverse.  I learned a lot about knitting.  I learned even more about knitters.  And the mechanics of blogging?  I'd love to say priceless, but I'd be lying.  Typepad isn't free. 

I skied with the usual suspects in the usual places, and finished up at the end of February.  That was just not enough time to get ready for my foot surgery.  No matter what you think you know, you never know enough.  I spent the next eight weeks flat on my ass, and reinventing myself in the form of a blog.  The computer would emit a contented *sigh* whenever a new email popped up in Gmail, and life was good.  I even got some knitting done.  I watched 43 movies.  Would you like to hear about what I thought of each one?  I didn't think so.

The Spindicate had their opportunity to insidiously inveigle into my vulnerable psyche.  I thought buying a Bosworth spindle was my own idea.  They were V E R Y clever about this one.  One of my first crutchless acts was to rent a wheel, and the downward slide began with that simple act.  Soon, fluff was exploding outward from drawers, cabinets, closets, and boxes.  Wooden tools that had nothing to do with the husband's workbench started appearing in random locations in the house.  Strange women would come over, smile, eat, spin, knit and leave.  My husband considered his new sweater and new scarves sufficient bribe to not question my motives, activities, or possible switch in sexual orientation.  Opportunistic man that he is, he embraced it as an chance to justify acquiring more computer hardware.  Sometimes life balances itself in peculiar ways. 

The garden coasted on last year's hard work.  By the time bipedal gardening was possible, it was far too late to have any impact whatsoever.  The Valkyrie made a brief appearance, and was soon gone.  September arrived just in time to keep the weeds from invading between the clapboards and through any open window. 

October brought the magnificence of Rhinebeck.  A confluence of people, personalities and yarn, it was a blogland landmark in time.  Since this is MY christmas letter, I can frame the experience any way I want, and that is how it was for me.  Since then, people have succeeded in continuing to be people.  The same issues that surface in F2F relationships, the same insecurities and anxieties that rule nonknitting relationships are evolving in our blogging fantasyland.  Balance is key, and I work to maintain my particular positioning on the tightrope.  This is the time for me to say big thank yous to all who have made my fibrous fantasies come true.  You know who you are.

I hope you will let the holidays be good to you.  There is such joy to be had in being alive and active.  It takes only a clear, crisp day,  a house full of cookie smells, a fuzzy cat's contented purring as it lines up under your hand, or a child's unselfconscious giggles to frame a perfect day.

Yours,
Etherknitter

 

Overexposed

voy·eur    (voi-yûr)
n.

An obsessive observer of sordid or sensational subjects.

---

[French, from Old French, one who lies in wait, from voir, to see, from Latin vidre, to see.]

I have clearly eliminated the more prurient first definition offered by dictionary.com.   We switch roles here; instead of me watching you, you will be peeking in on me.  Here's the meme.
This is where I knit most of the time.  #1, the footstool (I gave you the clickability to expand the scene) serves as a table.  It has the start of the Karabella Boise scarf, a cache of circular needles that were just delivered, the notebook I use to keep track of all my row counts, etc.  Some patterns that I want to keep in my near consciousness are also on the footstool. 

#2 is the magazine case next to the chair.  It is a polyglot of ballbands, spindle/pen/pencil storage (in a jar I threw in college), knitting accessories, scraps of paper with patterns jotted down, and the outdated reading glasses that never worked for knitting.  The shelves are filled with pattern books, knitting magazines, and yarn catalogues.  It's double-sided.

#3 and #9 are on the bookcase next to the magazine case.  The USPS box has a collection of ball bands.  The box in front has yarn ends for the birds.  That's Jade Sapphire silk/cashmere, the case I use to store buttons.  You can see notecards, and blocking pins.   

#4 and #5 are on the bookcase.  The books, as well as the mascots, are self-explanatory.  Surprised to see a llama there?  I didn't think so.  It was the closest I could get to an alpaca from Rhinebeck.  The yarn is my other skein of Karabella, and Berocco that I use for wrapping gifts.

#6 between the footstool and the chair is my to-be-organized stack (sounds better than pile) of patterns printed off the Web, purchased patterns, and notebook of single patterns in their sleeves.  The notebook usually lives on the bottom shelf of the bookcase.

My pseudo-Photoshop skills failed me.  The #8 (upper) is one stack of stash.  The lower #8 shows the envelope(s) I carry when I travel.  They are to be used to mail my needles  if the TSA said no transporting of dangerous knitting needles on the aircraft.

TMI, eh?

Sunday morning found me heading to Lunenburg for a workshop with Melissa Leapman.  One of my LYS, Woolpack, hosted her for the weekend.  Three hours of knitting on the edge - how to create decorative borders.  She does a really good job of inspiring, motivating, and participating in making sure that the workshoppers GET it.  The Woolpack staff fed us chocolate and tea all morning.  Melissa NEVER stops moving.  I took twenty pictures of her, and most of them looked like this:
This was a little better:
With the final, overexposed pose looking a little more like Ms. Leapman:

Future history

Life proceeds apace.   That seems to be my most consistent internal commentary (i.e. the Voice), when I see life shooting past my slower psyche, lickety split.  Then I breathe deeply, relax, and answer the Voice:  "You do yoga, grrl, you should understand this by now." 

Rosemary is visionary.  She answered my email yelp, "I CAN'T SPIN.  There is no take-up!"  I didn't anticipate the endorphin withdrawal this represented.  Can we discuss dysphoria?  Frustration?  But Rosemary spoke of the wheel and its mysterious currents.  I will show you two pictures.  Can you tell the difference?  The first picture is wheel no go.  The second picture is wheel with adequate take-up and reactivation of the flow of endorphins.  Comme ca^:

The difference is  which hooks I'm using.   Alden Amos, in his most famous book of handspinning, which truly is the only book that even thinks to address these issues, had very little to contribute to solving my dilemma.  He notes eleven reasons why "nothing you do in a gentle, peaceful way will get the idiotic thing to wind-on."  The twelfth reason?  Drove me wild.  After describing eleven possibilities that I either had checked, or lacked the experience to evaluate, he  notes that the problem could be "all of the above, plus about a hundred other little things that experience will help with."   My screams could be heard throughout blogland and my surrounding communities.

My sock proceeds apace.  I'm lying.  I picked up the stitches on one side of the heel flap flawlessly.  Knit them a'la Grumperina.  Beautiful.  I've now picked up the stitches on the other side of the heel flap four times.  Gaposis.  That's medicalese for lots and lots of gaps.  But you knew that.  I've given up, continued knitting the gusset, deciding that if the gaposis is pathologically hideous, I will do some whipstitching.  I've had it with trying to attain perfection that eludes me.   I tried doing it different these three times.  All I've managed to accomplish is stretched out slipped stitches, which will not get me closer to my goals.  Time to move on.  (Is that how maturity is define?  I sure hope so.)

Today, I had my retinas checked.  My ophthalmologist commented on my sweater.  Astute man.  My mother knit it over 20 years ago, and it is a stunner in a wool/alpaca blend.  You know what's coming.  His wife knits.  He and I talked of spinning, and I told him about the Etherknitter blogging phenom.  So I hope she will see this (hi Kathy!) and email me so that she can ignore what I just wrote about my wheel, and decide that she needs to learn how to spin.  He seems to think she doesn't know about fiber festivals.  (The Etherknitter rubs her hands together, planning great corruption in the future.)  The future is impossible to predict, and that makes it all the more interesting.

Requiem for a squirrel

When words don't flow, pictures elbow their way onto the blog.  Drama usually works, too.  Life and death struggles add spice to the mix.   Nothing unusual in a hospital setting?  How about outside the hospital?

Everyone in the Unit was plastered against the window, silent.  The hawk is a frequent flier in the courtyard, and doesn't usually merit this amount of attention.    One of the OR techs caught these pictures.

If you are squeamish, you probably shouldn't double-click.
The grey fluff in the first picture is revealed as breakfast and lunch in the second picture. 
The big guy is a red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis.  By the end of the morning, a flattened squirrel pelt lying on the ground was all that remained.

Knitting?  Yes.  The road trip to visit Julia on Wednesday was great good fun.  There was no drama, but there WAS a yarn purchase.  Breakfast and lunch were vastly more civilized, at the local tea emporium.  As promised per prior post, the sock's heel has been turned, and you can see how Trekking XXL color #71 is unfolding:
Other knitting has stalled, and it's my own damn fault.  I'm waiting on a 10.5 Addi Turbo needle for one project, and the Elsebeth Lavold book for the Viking sweater pattern.  I saved money by ordering from NYC, and lost customer service in the transaction.  That lesson may have made its way to the right spot in this thick Yankee head; time is SO worth more than money.

I'm felting the Elizabeth bag, and trying to recall why I thought a felted project would be FUN.  I'm seeing a misshapen, boggy, wrinkled mass exit the washing machine after each pass.  I don't let it spin, I reshape it, and it still looks dreadful.  It's probably one or two more cycles before all the stitch definition disappears.  I think I've stopping crossing my fingers on this one.   Pictures only when the bag lady has sung.

On a happier, more holiday note, go look at the Christmas display on this website.  You need high speed internet access, or a dollop of patience.  This is low budget lighting choices, high budget electronics, and thank the stars they don't live across the street from me.

Snopes has this to say about that:

"This display was the work of Carson Williams of Mason, Ohio, who spent about three hours sequencing the 88 Light-O-Rama channels that control the 16,000 Christmas lights in his 2004 holiday lighting spectacular. The musical accompaniment is broadcast over a low-power radio station so that it is only audible to visitors tuned in to the correct frquency and doesn't disturb the neighbors.

The rough quality of the video has led some viewers to believe it was put together in stop-action form from still photographs, but that is an artifact of the high compression used in the clip circulated via e-mail."

Wow.