National Poetry Month

Inspired by Samurai Knitter, my favorite E.E. Cummings poem. A line from it was printed on our wedding invitations:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                  i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

It is, at the same time, a satire of love poems and a beautiful love poem.

Methods vs. Products

I've been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and was delighted to read this truism about welders:

I have heard that there are two kinds of welders: production welders, who don't like tricky setups and enjoy doing the same thing over and over again, and maintenance welders, who hate it when they have to do the same job twice ...

In the knitting community, this is a very common dichotomy, referred to as process vs. product. Stereotypically, process knitters are interested in new or challenging techniques, or uncommon ways of knitting common items. On the other hand, product knitters are interested in the finished item itself, no matter how boring it is or how many other times they've knit it.

Of course, there are shades of grey. Among popular bloggers, Wendy considers herself to be a process knitter, and admits that her knits just sort of pile up in the closet! However, she has no problem kitting 45 different pairs of socks last year! On the other hand, The Yarn Harlot knits to survive long Canadian winters, but she'll also try to mix up wearable items with complicated or innovative techniques. But still, it seems like most knitters identify with one side or the other.

Is this common in other production-based jobs or crafts? Is there a similar dichotomy between decoy-duck carvers? Decoupage enthusiasts? Bookbinders? I'm dying to find out.

(Book cover photo courtesy of sharpwits)

Nothin for Christmas

I'm a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad knitter.

Faced with the prospects of knitting Christmas presents, I approached the project with the same "tool" I always use - procrastination.

In other words, I knit nothing for Christmas. Nada. Zip. I haven't even picked up the needles since the beginning of December. Furthermore, I suppose I've been a bit ashamed of this fact - for awhile, I stopped reading knitting blogs, and I don't think I've logged on to Ravelry in over a month.

So what have I been doing since November? Well, I've got some pictures, but the camera's currently Not Here. Hopefully I'll post them tomorrow.

Fifteen steps, then a sheer drop...

Yay, Christmas yarn! More specifically, yarn I've bought to make Christmas presents for others. It seems like many bloggers and Ravelry users are starting their Christmas projects - hopefully I'm not too far behind. This will be my first knits Christmas, so I don't really know how long a few scarves and gloves will take me. I'm also planning to make a pair of thick wooly socks for a certain someone, despite my earlier complaints against them. Hopefully, thick wooly socks will be much more forgiving of gauge and sizing problems!

Lately, my biggest difficulty has been deciding whether I should work on current projects (to be discussed later), do finishing on projects that have been set aside (wristbands for Andy, another project to be discussed later), or swatch all these yarn goodies I've got in my stash. So far "current projects" have been winning out, because they're so much fun!

For example, the Brea Bag. I admit, this bag is NOT for Andy (although he's joked about wanting a "murse"); nor is it a Christmas gift. It's all for me, baby! I couldn't resist the yarn or the cute shape, and I want to learn how to line knit projects. This is also my very first attempt at cables, and I'm learning a lot about their construction. I'm knitting with two strands of Cascade 220 held together, so it's gone super-quick. I've probably spent about 4 hours on it so far, not counting an hour or so for the swatch.

I also started knitting a little robot for my friend, 2nd Lieutenant Smart Guy. He's currently stationed in Iraq, and I want to make him something that will remind him of brighter and more hopeful times. Smart Guy is a big fan of the Autobots (but sometimes he roots for the Decepticons), so I'm trying to make the robot look like Optimus Prime. Hopefully, I finish it by the beginning of December, so we can send it off in time for Christmas.

Catherine has released the pattern for the sweater I test-knit - it's called Samantha and I love it. Except, I blocked it way too big and I'm too ashamed to post pictures for the internet to ridicule. Someday, I'll fix it. Someday.

Physics and Knitting: Which way does yarn wrap on knits and purls?

(This post was inspired by a discussion on SamuraiKnit's blog about Western vs. Eastern vs. Combined knitting)

I've been seeing a lot of confusion on the knitterwebs about whether we wrap our yarn clockwise our counter-clockwise for knit and purl stitches. This confusion stems in part from popular books like "Stitch and Bitch", which a lot of knitters (including me) learned many techniques from; when I look at those tiny little diagrams in books and read "wrap the yarn counter-clockwise," I can't imagine how anyone DOESN'T get confused.

From my perspective, as I'm knitting, knit stitches are wrapped clockwise - under the needle from my right-hand-side to my left-hand-side, then over the needle the other way. But, in relation to the tip of the needle (and who takes that perspective?), the yarn is wrapped counter-clockwise! See, CCW from the perspective of the tip of the needle is CW when looked at the other way.

Let's complicate things further: when I turn the needle around to point towards me(i.e., to purl), I wrap the yarn counter-clockwise: from my right-hand-side over the needle to my left hand side. If you think about it, the yarn is wrapped around the needle exactly the same direction each time, but it's often described differently in books. It seems like this confusion of terms causes some new knitters to start knitting Combined without even realizing it, since they're "following the directions in the book."

Thankfully, scientists and mathematicians have faced the same problems, and developed standard solutions for describing the direction of rotation. Anyone who's taken a physics course should recognize the Right-Hand Rule, which is actually more like a convention. They needed a way to communicate the direction of rotation without all this, "well, it looks clockwise to ME - it's going from your top LEFT to your bottom RIGHT" and so on. For example, a wire charged with electricity also produces a magnetic field around the wire. Scientists who study that field take the convention that the magnetic field curls "right-handedly" around the wire, meaning that if you point your thumb in the direction of the flowing current, your fingers curl around in the direction of the magnetic field.

So lets get back to knitting. Point your right thumb along the needle from the base to the tip (the one that you knit with, if you're using dpns) and think about making a knit stitch. Look, your fingers curl around in the direction of the wrapped yarn. (if you knit Western style) Now do the same with a purl stitch - it's "right-handed," too.

I've got a stitch stuck in my head.

I got within 40 stitches of finishing the bind-off around the collar of my raglan sweater last night. I was so desperately tempted to stay up another half hour and finish, but my fiance was sighing, rolling his eyes, and complaining about how he was so tired. He could hardly keep his eyes open. What a baby!

So now, I'm at work and I cannot concentrate at all. I keep imagining those stitches, waiting at home for me. I can feel how difficult the bind-off is, how I'll have to push the tighter stitches off the needle carefully, making sure I don't drop any stitches. I like watching my very last ball of yarn slowly dwindle, and basking in the knowledge that I bought just the right amount (well, the second time...) Also, I'm looking forward to finishing it and getting some good pictures - I'm ridiculously proud of how well this sweater is turning out, especially given the knitting disasters I've suffered recently.

In other words, I want to go home, and its only 3:30. This day will never end.

The meaning of haste

Hurrah, I've finished the body of my first raglan sweater! I'm absolutely enamoured with this style of construction, from attaching the sleeves in the round to the matched ahoulder decreases. I tried it on for a few minutes, until I started dropping some of the stitches at the neck, (hence the lack of pictures), and it fits well in length and around my mid-section. I'm guessing it'll block much bigger if I do the traditional "soak and pin" method, which will be much closer to Catherine's original sweater.


The last piece of the sweater is a lace collar. Right now, it =ooks a little bit like a blurry, green pomeranian, but trust me, it'll soon be so delicate and pretty. It's such an ingenious little pattern, and I love how easy it is to "read" what to do next from the previous row (with a little help from the chart).

I've also been "working" on Jaywalker Socks: Take 3. No pictures, but imagine this sock, with longer stripes. The heel flap is STILL 3 inches long! It seems like I've got three options:

1. Keep going and assume it'll turn out OK,
2. Rip back to the heel flap and start turning 1 inch earlier, or
3. Frog the whole sock and try a more elastic, possibly toe-up pattern.

You know, Grumperina recently confessed that she's not a sweater knitter, meaning she prefers knitting socks, scarves, and other fast-but-challenging projects. Maybe I should accept the fact that I don't particularly enjoy knitting socks, especially when I can't seem to make a pattern work to my satisfaction.