subdue it with a sweater

A litle bit worried

2009-06-02T20:58:00.001-05:00

We got a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art so I'm back to knitting worsted weight stockings after a short hiatus. Yesterday I turned a heel on the bus in about half the time with about half the difficulty it normally takes me to turn a heel. Now, if I were the kind of person who believed that "sometimes it just works", I would be content. Unfortunately I'm not that kind of person and when I factor in the time it's been since I last turned a heel, the fact that I didn't even glance at the pattern and that I was deeply engrossed in conversation, I'm a bit worried. The heel actually looks good, but I wonder if this is one of those Fight Club-type situations where a string of seemingly innocuous mistakes go unnoticed until they meet a catalyst and transform into woolen napalm. What if the moment they make contact with a sink with the exact ratio of water/woolwash they detonate and take out half a city block? Wish me luck friends.

Hurdling Towards Spring

2009-02-28T15:45:00.002-05:00

So I'm in my last semester of grad school, trying to complete (and by complete I mean start) my MFA thesis project. It's not that I've been slacking, quite the contrary. I have made a huge body of work in the last year and a half, but I still think there's one more new idea I can finalize before I'm flung into the Real World. Right now I'm waiting on the equipment I've ordered to begin working on the piece. More on this later.

In the meantime, as I am conflicted with impending deadlines and too little to do, I'm knitting a pair of socks for Andrew.

Due to my busy production schedule this past year nobody has received much knitting love from me, least of all Andrew. So, I grabbed the yarn he picked out and cast on. The yarn is Patons Kroy and the color is Summer Moss. Which when knit up, alternates between lavender pastel with mint stripes and in-your-freaking-face acid green with red stripes

It's a little loud, like when I knit in front of people they are overcome by the magnitude of its visual volume. I, however, like it and appreciate the change from knitting brown and grey socks exclusively for the past six months.

And besides, in the right environment it fits right in.

Who else has socks that match the houseplants, hmm?

Cluck

2009-01-14T15:25:00.002-05:00

I eat meat like it's going out of style. I like it fried, grilled, roasted, barbecued. As long as it once had a face, I'll eat it and with gusto. Andrew, a vegetarian, has expressed some concern due to the great joy I take in consuming animals. My theory is that if something is going to die for me to eat, I should really enjoy it. I think we should acknowledge where our food comes from and appreciate the life that was given up for it. So this weekend I took a chicken from a live hen, to freaking delicious.

And it was good.

Squirrels!

2008-12-22T21:08:00.003-05:00

Check it out y'all!

*Note: Please pardon the photo-heavy post. We got a new camera, and it's a stud.

After knitting plain stockings for the past three months, I had a physical need to knit a fair isle hat. The VDB Christmas party was coming up so I figured I'd pull one out.

BTW, No new yarn was harmed in the making of this hat. It's knit in Knit Picks Wool of the Andes (I love me some cheap wool) remnants from the stash whish always delivers on the practical front. It's inexpensive, easy to knit and soft after washing. But I digress.

The squirrel pattern is from Stephieface's Squirrel Chart, and I charted the acorns by my little ol' lonesome.

Here's the inside for my fellow stranding nerds:

This hat had to be washed, blocked, dried and wrapped by today, so I was up knitting this mofo 'til 5:30 yesterday morning. Everything looked good until I blocked it, then I realized my fatal mistake:

The fair isle patterns get smooshed when they are too close to the crown decreases. Oh well, it looks fine in 3-D.

Happy Holidays, my friends. Keep knitting, keep warm.

Black Friday

2008-11-28T14:04:00.004-05:00

*Note: I'd like to preface this post with the fact that this is my first Thanksgiving where I didn't see my family and I apologize if I wax nostalgicly. Also, as unbelievable as this story may seem, it is the honest to God truth, so that should give you some insight into how I became the person I am today.

While Thanksgiving is nice, my favorite late November Holiday is Black Friday. Ever since I was a young boy, my dad would wake me up at 3:30 AM the morning after Thanksgiving so that we could sneak out of the house without waking anybody and whisk ourselves away to the Winter wonderland that is the shopping mall. Now, my more obsessively organized father has always had the Christmas shopping done for the entire family in July, so shopping was the last thing on our minds this early in the morning. Our mission, and we accepted it with pride and humility, was to seriously fuck with the days of every other crazed shopper in the Metro Atlanta area.

The reason we got up so early was so that we could score one of the highly coveted parking spaces close to the doors of the mall. *Note: this information will be useful later.

Inside, we would stroll leisurely looking in windows and silently applauding the efforts of the few women in reindeer sweaters milling about over christmas ornament soup turines who had enough forsight to get to the mall before even God woke up in order to avoid the crowds that would come around 7:00. These women are virtuous and do not deserve our wrath.

7:00 am. All. Hell. Breaks. Loose. Thousands of people descend on the mall, raping and pillaging the sale tables in the doorways of every store. Every thirty feet is another door way into an alternate universe where moms in sweatpants and grandmas in Reeboks fight over artfully ripped polo shirts to the soundtrack of canned techno muzak (oonce-oonce-oonce o-o-oonce).

Once the carnage begins, Dad and I jump into action. I don't know if it comes from raising small kids or what, but my dad has an uncanny ability to read someone's mind and know exactly what they are going to reach for a split second later. While useful with children to keep them from grabbing hot or sharp objects, on Black Friday he uses this skill to grab anything and everything that anoher shopper has eyed and is reaching for. It doesn't matter what it is or how much of it there is, he will grab it and grab it all. T-shirt? He'll grab the whole stack out from under the nose of another shopper. Batman action figure? I've never seen a man balancing that much vacuu-formed plastic while running to the back of the store in order to price check each one.

Since retail staff is stretched so thinnly the day after Thanksgiving, we always do our best to step in when someone needs assistance. "Can you bring me this in another size?" Absolutely. "Is this a band my son would like?" Uh-huh. After we've expended our welcome, but not before we've liberally sampled the perfume testers, we move on to our most challenging feat.

The Parking Lot Game.

So, because we, unlike our fellow shoppers, had the forsight to arrive in plenty of time to snag a coveted parking space we are in a position of power. Cars circle the parking lot, looking for a space, any space. They see my father and I walking down the aisles to our car, past our car, back around and around until they lose interest. When we get back to our car, we start the motor, adjust the heat and radio then begin to pull out. At this point it is certain that another driver sees this and patiently waits for us to pull out. If this is the case, we pull back into the spot, get out of the car and go back into the mall.

Yes, I know that these are innocent humans minding their own business and that we are the kind of jerks that really take the fun out of the holidays. However, my most cherished memories of my Dad came to be at the expense of others, and I wouldn't trade that for all the good karma in the world.

Happy Holidays, y'all. I'm off to eat gravy in bed.

Work

2008-11-22T11:32:00.008-05:00

Hey y'all! Long time no internet see. I've missed you all dearly. I have some things to show you guys.

So do you remember how I thought I could knit five pair of knee high stockings in six weeks? Yeah that didn't happen so much. It was more like half that. Five socks. Five performers. What is a resourcefull knitter to do? This would be a great time to show you a photo of five men, two wearing a pair of socks, me wearing one sock while furiously knitting the other. Unfortunately that photo doesn't exist s so we'll just have to look at the ones I do have.

The performance is called "The Body Parlor: Rudimentary rituals for biological self-production" and it's a collaboration between myself and Katrina Erickson. Why am I showing a bunch of knitters performance art you ask? Well, because it happens to be about sheep.

We've been working with the idea of sheep and humans as combined sacrificial bodies in religion and science, the products produced from their bodies turned into sacred objects and medicines.

These are the lamb masks Katrina made. They're cast foam felted with lambs wool.

Here the sheep's socks are removed and collected before his feet are washed in lamb fat soap and milk.

The milk was then syphoned from the basin and is now in being processed into cheese.

This sheep is being sheared and his fleece is collected as a relic.

So that's what I've been doing lately. Later on in the week I'll show you guys how I made the soap from butcher shop to bars, er... art. Yeah that's it.

Till then I need to get my ass knitting.

How To Look Like You're Actually Working

2008-09-20T17:27:00.003-05:00

There's always a constant struggle between feeling like you need to be working and the shear all-consuming hatred of whatever you're being forced to work on. I'm navigating this slippery slope by knitting stockings for an upcoming project. Now, I've always tried to keep my kniting and my art seperate, but this project is a strong culmination of the work I've been doing for the past six years and it just happens to require five pair of handknit men's wool knee high stockings It's working out perfectly because I can carry them around with me and work on them anytime I can. It's psychologically fulfilling because I'm constantly working on my project, but they don't require me to focus on the mind-n
umbing ins and outs of conceptual art while I knit.

Let's look at some, eh?

This is the first one finished.

Please excuse the blurry photo. Have you ever tried to take a picture of your leg in a knee high stocking? It sucks. Find a friend to do it for you.

This is the one I'm currently working on. It's going pretty fast, knit on size sevens with worsted weight wool
.

The astute among you may notice that these socks are knit from two very differnt colors of wool. This occured because I didn't order enough yarn for these black holes passing as socks. More yarn will arrive shortly so I can make actual pairs.

There's a fairly handsome cable running down the leg of the first sock, but it has been eschewed for the future generations of socks, as it is both a time suck and yarn eater.

It does look mighty fine though, if I do say so myself.

This One's for My Infants

2008-08-27T12:23:00.002-05:00

I don't know if it's the unseasonably cool weather, the rush before the start of school or the coming apocalypse, but I'm finishing my knitting projects.
Check it:

I wish I had a closer photo of the collar because it's a bit wonky, not helped by the fact that I crocheted it four times. Apparently I'm going for the artfully handmade aesthetic. No worries. Wonky collars like this go for $75 in my 'hood. It will look smashing on the daughter of a militant reformist-feminist performance artist.

I left the jacket buttoned while it blocked, and I must say it made for some pretty sweet button holes. Look how nicely the buttons stand up, too! Sigh, it's the small things that keep us from being cool.

Okay, I'm wrapping this mofo and sending it on it's way, but first I'm going to go out today and do all of the things I said I was going to do this summer, but never got around to.

Keep it real y'all

Something Finished

2008-08-16T19:14:00.004-05:00

It's easy to get jaded in the land of internet knitting. We put ourselves under constant pressure to make something fancier ("maybe I should make it in lace with fair isle!") , more complicated ("so, if I start with a knit octagon which will eventually be the bottom of the foot, pick up stitches...") and with more exotic, hand-painted-ier than thou yarn. While all of these things are awesome and I do love a challenge, I've lost a little bit of perspective.

While I was knitting my latest pair of socks, I just saw them as a rookie stockinette project that took up space on the shelf in my studio. I can't tell you how many times I whined to my overly patient friends about my inability to make things while I knit round after round on these bastards. My colleagues, incredible painters and metal workers, would reply "How can you say that? Look at what you're making!"

While I was washing my new socks for the first time today I remembered my first pair. I had only been knitting for a few months and somehow decided that striped socks were the answer to all of my construction-induced anxiety. If I could knit a sock, I could make anything. I started with the most awesome red/white/orange and blue self-striping yarn (I love this color so much I have another ball of it for when my first pair wear out) and a photocopy of a pattern from the yarn shop. I knit my socks while I soldered, fiber-glassed, cast plastic, welded (this I really shouldn't do strictly for the safety of anyone within 15 feet of me). After four months I had a pile of mediocre sculpture and a pair of freaking striped socks!

The moral of the story is that at one time stockinette socks were the pinnacle of my engineering aspirations. Since then I have knit way more complicated things, made some really weird objects etc. but before all of the antibiotic marshmallows and leeching tables, there were the damn striped socks.

Let's Make One Out of You and Me

2008-07-20T17:20:00.006-05:00

Today's post is based on assumptions. Shall we begin?

Assumption 1: James likes to knit.
Evidence: He has sixty pounds of wool and tons of knitting equipment (i.e. needles, swift, ball winder, row counters, special little scissors, tape measures etc.). Not to mention more patterns and books than a whole family of cold Swedes (I like to think they knit quickly and beautifully even in their sleep [yes I understand that this is ethnic profiling and completely unfounded in reality] ) could knit in a life time.

Assumption 2: James likes taking pictures of his knitting successes (few) and failures (many) in order to post them on the internet for the world to see.
Evidence: Scroll down a few months.

Why then, dear reader, have I not knit a stitch or blogged in three weeks before today? Where has the mojo gone? I could try to blame it on the muggy weather, but as any knit blogger will tell you, that is no excuse. Alas. Let's look at stuff.

Despite all of my efforts to not finish until the kid is able to drive, the Baby Surprise Jacket is coming along well. I will not let this baby face a Chicago winter without a sturdy wool/mohair casing.

I've been baking, and it's improved if I do say so myself.

This is braided sweet pastry filled with apples and golden raisins. It tasted pretty awesome. Notice the distinctive fish-like shape? I think this occurred due to some inexperience on my part. Whatever it is, I'm into. I'm going to attempt to recreate it with challah filled with smoked salmon and chived cream cheese for an upcoming Yemaya Celebration in Chicago.

And look!

Tomatoes! Now with 35% less salmonella! (Brought to you by roof top gardners everywhere).

What's up

2008-07-01T14:12:00.004-05:00

I figured I should finish a project once in a while, so I picked up my sock and knit the toe. I was pleased that I would have such a snappy pair of striped socks and was already planning the charming photos I would take of the pair. That's until I noticed that I'm an idiot.

This is the top of the sock. Looks ok, right? Well, this is the bottom:

I forgot to redistribute the stitches so my decreases are really poorly placed. The top of the toe curls in and the decreases on the bottom of the toe will suck to walk on. Don't even get me started on the impossibility of grafting the mofo shut. I'll just rip the sucker back.

At least I have new yarn.

It's Valley Yarns Berkshire (obviously) in Navy. I've got ten more of its bretheren chilling in my office. Together they will join forces and become a sweater for little ol' me. Well, that is after I finish the three other sweaters I've started in the last year. I'll get around to it.

In other news, a local Chicago man made brioche while under the influence of alcohol.

And it was good.

7 Things

2008-06-14T10:38:00.007-05:00

My home boy in jersey tagged me for the 7 things meme. "The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer."

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

10 years ago I was in 9th grade. I played the mellophone in marching band and got excused from gym everyday because of my chronic nosebleeds. I grew 12 inches and lost twenty pounds in about thirteen months and went from Jabba the Hut to spindley and awkward. I spent all of my free time in my room reading books on witchcraft and body piercing, listening to The Fugees, Bush and Eve 6, and talking on the phone for hours about boys.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today?
a. go to the grocery
b. read
c. knit the toe on my sock (it could happen)
d. go to a birthday party
e. draft proposal for exhibition

3) Snacks I enjoy:
- twizzlers
- cold chinese food
- pears

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
I would open hospitals and a school in Haiti, fund my nephew's college career etc. After that I would buy the house on Sedwick that used to be a rectory, then open a botanica in one of the victorian gingerbread storefronts on Armitage where I could sell my work, santos, cloth and fresh herbs.

5) Places I have lived:
- Overland Park, Kansas
- Richmond, Virginia
- Dallas, Texas
- Atlanta, Georgia
- Athens, Georgia
- Chicago, Illinois

6) Jobs I have had:
- Regal Pets, an neighborhood pet shop that was open for 28 years before it sadly closed
- Apprentice then finally piercer at cool tattoo shop
- Piercer in a not so cool tattoo shop
- Assistant manager of now defunct bakery
- Piercer and manager of awesome tattoo/hair studio
- Line cook
- Collections assistant of a Video Art distributor

7) Friends I want to know more about (if you've done the meme, please disregard)
Heather
Kim
Andy
Wendy
Vaxgirl

Hey there's more! So I've come across a minature internet phenomenon, Iyawo Blogs. Iyawos are newly initiated priests of Lukumi, Candomble and other Orisha traditions. The first year after their consecration they have to be dressed completely in white, observe dietary and social taboos such as no shaking of hands, they can't take or recieve anything from non-intiate's hands( i.e. money, purchases, flyers) no dirty jokes etc. They also have to observe a curfew of sundown for an entire year. Several iyawos have turned to blogging for their year in white in order to pass the time normally used for a social life, as well as to document their day to day experiences of navigating the modern world dressed entirely in white and observing West African spiritual traditions.

Here are some I've been reading. I'm spending all of my time trying to find more.
Spiritualworker
Candomble in the USA

Alafia, y'all

Surely There's an Ointment for That

2008-06-04T12:57:00.003-05:00

Life around these parts has been pretty docile as of late. There's been a lot of baking of bread. A Lot. I mean like everyday. I've gotten to the point where I'm really tired of eating bread but I just can't stop until I make a decent loaf. I'm getting there.

I also took advantage of summer by reading a non-school book, Chuck Palahniuk's "Snuff", which is about a porn star's attempt to break the gang bang world record (hint: 600). Read it before Oprah's bookclub ruins it with a raving endorsement.

And look! Yarn!

The reasons I'm excited about using the Noro sock yarn are the same reasons many people hate it. I love crunchy wool yarn and the fact that it's single-ply makes me swoon. As always, check back when I have blisters running along the tops of my fingers and the yarn has broken for the 300th time.

Keep knitting y'all!

New

2008-05-20T22:28:00.003-05:00

I've decided that I need a new project to get the whole summer knitting thing started. When most people think of summer knitting, cotton, linen and hemp spring to mind.

I think wool. Light colored wool, but wool nonetheless.

I had two almost full skeins of Lambs Pride in "Oatmeal", a copy of the Oppionated Knitter and a friend who's getting fatter by the day. Enter the Baby Surprise Jacket:

For some reason, I thought I could cast on and knit a baby sweater in, like, twenty minutes. Not so much. But hey, it's garter stitch, and I just happen to think that garter stitch is super fun.

And look at the wrong side decreases!

I'm off to the ATL this weekend and I'm totally procuring more yarn I won't knit for about three years. Wish me luck

Summer Vacation

2008-05-07T13:23:00.003-05:00

The end of the semester is nigh. This means one of two things:
1. I spend the summer reading, baking bread, knitting, blogging etc. I could take up running, I could visit family and friends and tend to my garden. I could explore all of the botanicas in chi-town to see who has the best selection of candles, fresh herbs and livestock (sometimes a man needs a new rooster) or I could catch up on all of the theory readings I didn't understand this semester and produce a grand body of proposals for the upcoming school year. Any and all of this could be done while enjoying the beautiful Chicago summer.

2. I get a second job. I spend said glorious days in a kitchen making food for the million people enjoying the beautiful Chicago summer. I pay off some credit card debt, buy a new camera and restock my savings account during the absolute last summer vacation of my life.

We shall see.

Speaking of summer and school, I have produced some work that, while existing in the dark gloom of my studio, can be reproduced through the magic of photography fo you, my dear friends.

eh?

This project doubles as grad school studio work and my summer garden. Priceless.

I have been knitting, covertly. There's alot of pressure to be focused 'round these parts. I guess that has something to do with learning, credentials, etc. I, however, being the flightiest, most prone to daydream weeks away at a time, need to present the outward appearance that I'm avoiding distractions.

Imbetween these boughts of posturing, I knit this:

I have an eight hour departmental meeting on Saturday, so I plan to really blast through this sucker.
Well, that's the plan anyway.

Resurfacing

2008-04-16T09:22:00.004-05:00

Hey guys! I always said that I would never apologize for not blogging enough, because frankly, we all have lives and it makes for some seriously boring reading. So I won't do that. What I will do is take you all on the adventure that has been my life since my last (meager) post.

After searching my rat's nest of a house for my camera cord with no success, I resigned myself to buying a new one. I had to go to seven (7!) stores to find the correct cable. With this small success under my belt, I can show you photos.

So, this may or may not be the bread I wrote about in my last post. I'm not sure of the stigma and or ethics of posting photos taken a month ago and already blogged about. But look! Apparently I can bake now!

This is no small miracle, my friends. I managed a freakin' artisan bakery for two (2!) years, worked with some of the finest bakers in the south, and never made a desirable loaf of bread.

On to production:
So my knitting has been moving at the most zen-like pace for months now. For example, I sat down in my studio the other day after a really tough critique, picked up the sock (singular) that I have been working on since, oh, August, and turned the heel. So I'm averaging about 1.5 stitches a day. I'm okay with this. My production focus has been on other things as the end of the semester looms.

Take these for example:

These are Num-Nums, The World's First Antibiotic Marshmallows. They're cute and kind of creepy.

This is what I do with my time. I create companies, factories, labs and stores that make and sell the world's most antagonistic products. And my parents are worried about the practical applications of a Master's degree in performance art. Pshaw.

At least I get to knit today while I wait for help de-installing this monstrocity.

Imagine the Bunny!

2008-03-23T22:03:00.003-05:00

I had a wonderful Easter today, and I made sure to take pictures to share with my beloved internet friends. Unfortunately, I seem to have misplaced my camera cable, so this post is pictureless.

Maybe if I describe the pictures I took, after reading the descriptions, y'all could close your eyes and imagine the photos in all of their digital glory. Let's try it.

I woke up this morning to bake bread for Easter. I made sure to position my kneading board where it would get the best diffused spring morning light. I arranged the dough (after shaping it into an even, yet rustic blob) on a lightly floured board. Snap! Picture one! See isn't this fun?

I joined the sleeves to my sweater and began knitting the raglan decreases. If you look closely, you can see that the ribbing is probably going to line up along the decreases just like in the book. Snap! Picture two! I swear to god this whole imagination thing is the technology of the future.

After returning from an afternoon at the theater, I made a pot of vegan jambalaya (I know, oxy-moron, but it's passable and I like having someone to sleep next to). I also made (vegan) fried cabbage and (so not vegan it hurts) macaroni and cheese. Arranged artfully with the rustic, yet perfect bread from this morning, embroidered napkins, buckets of cold beer and raspberry malt liquor and you have Snap! Picture three!

Wasn't that fun? Mental pictures are often richer and more saturated than the origional, anyway. (maybe while my head is hanging in shame my camera cord will pass into my field of vision.)

Thorpe

2008-03-01T18:54:00.003-05:00

This is the most useful hat I've ever knit for my self. Due to my large, stretched earlobes and their susceptablity to frostbite, I have very particular needs for my headgear. As many hats as I've knit in the past few months, I usually wear a hat bought at Target for my day to day adventures. That has all changed now.

It's Thorpe, Kirsten Kapur's über hat. It's supa warm, it fits well and it looks cool enough for everyday wear. Knit from the top down, the construction is simple and intuitive. I did start this hat three times due to gauge issues and the difficulty of joining four stitches to work in the round on dpns, but I'm sure someone of average intellegence will have an easier time at it.

The yarn is the left over Unikat from my scarf, which coincedentaly, is finished as well. It's supposedly super-bulky, but I used #7 needles to achieve an appropriate fabric. I just added two more increase rounds and it fits like a head-shaped glove. It feels like having a very well behaved rabbit strapped to my head. I mean it's soft.

Oh, I've been silk screening some t-shirts for one of my installations. There are seven designs, but this one is the winner, hands down:

Here's the front:

And this is the back:

That's all I got.

In Search of Spring

2008-02-20T16:29:00.006-05:00

As much as I've enjoyed these last 3 months of winter, I can't wait for spring. Given that we have a good 2 more months of winter, Jill and I spent most of the morning doing this:

We started the seeds for the culinary herb garden today. I specify culinary herb garden because there are many, many, seeds to be planted this year. Andrew and I have felt an incessant yearning for our homeland and have projected said feelings of homesickness into balcony agriculture. He plans on making a full vegetable container garden while I'm growing hundreds of specimens of southern medicinal root plants in my studio at school.

Even though we like fresh herbs in our food and we can always give extra plants to friends, I'm not sure what one does with 18 basil plants, 9 lemon balms, 9 rosemary bushes, or 9 thyme plants. Oh, and yes I did start 9 catnip plants and no, I'm not going to make any "jill insisted" jokes because I don't think I'd be able to recover from the amount of self-hatred that would cause.

I've also been knitting. School is really kicking my ass this semester so knitting has been very low key, straight foward stuff. I knit some more on Andrew's cardigan (no pictures), I knit a few more rows on the heel flap of my sock (can't slip stitches while I read). That leaves me to my go-to pattern, The Mistake Rib scarf.

I freaking love this scarf. I started it way back in the fall and put it down because I was mangling the yarn. Now that every molecule of moisture has left my skin and my hands resemble paper lanterns, it's coming along brilliantly. At 170 yds a ball, the unikat is rocking my face off. I think I might knit a hat with the second ball, then finish the scarf with whatever is left over.
And a close up:

Oh, and for this week's "Boy Makes Things. Sometimes Badly", I present:

Choclinics. Antibiotic chocolates.
Each one of these bad boys has 250mg of tetracyclene which can be used to clear up minor bacterial STDs and acne. I made them for a show on Valentines Day called "Unlucky at Love".

Back to the Laboratory

2008-02-10T17:50:00.000-05:00

It's official, my 18-month conceptual art hiatus is over. The past two weeks have been balls-to-the-wall in my little world. I'm not sure why I thought I would be able to knit sweater after sweater during my first year of grad school. Perhaps it was wishful thinking that I would be so organized and productive that the socks and sweaters and sculptures would just fall off my needles. I need not tell you, my faithful readers, that this has not been the case.

I have been knitting a little over the past few weeks. I knit the second sleeve for the zipped raglan and now everything is ready for the joining:

I'm nervous about this procedure because the body segment looks soooooo short. I knit it to the length of the XL size, but I'm terrified that it's going to hit just below my ribs. Unfortunatly, as soon as I join this sucker, there's no easy turn around. I may knit another inch to be safe.

I also allowed myself a 15 minute diversion the other day to knit the swatch for Scott (RYC Classic Winter).

The guage is a little loose for my taste, so I'm going to go down a needle size. I'm completely re-writing this pattern anyway, so gauge is no real issue. Most everyone on ravelry has said that steeking this bad boy ends up in disaster. I choose to cover my ears and say "lalalalalalala", 'cause there is no way on God's green earth that I'm knitting a fair isle raglan flat. Period. I will make it work. (be sure to tune in next time to see a young man, faced with adversity, learn from his mistakes and inflated sense of self confidence and become a better knitter for it).

I spent the day outside (in the balmy 1 degree F and -20 wind chill) building a snow retort. Before the age of the Frigidare, one method alchemists used to distill laboratory alcohol was by burying flasks of wine in the snow. Water and alcohol freeze at different temperatures so the flasks would be turned upside down and the alcohol would be drained and collected, leaving the frozen water behind in the flask.

The more you know

Make My Day

2008-01-26T21:21:00.000-05:00

The lovely ladies at Team Knit have graciously appointed me a "You make my day award".

It makes my "two sizes too small" heart flutter to receive such a wonder. It's now my turn to share the love, and I'm feeling generous.

All of these lovely people really make my day. I check your blogs at least twice a day and you always make me smile:

Heather at The ADD Knitter
Kim at Yarn Abuse
Robbie at Knitxcore
Roger at Over Abundance
Franklin at The Panopticon
Stephen at Watch Stephen Knit

Thank you guys for making my day!

Boys in Love

2008-01-22T19:22:00.000-05:00

Check it out! I knit a hat. I hear your gasps of surprise. "Another hat? No he couldn't. He wouldn't." Oh, but I did.

I knit this for Andrew. Look, its even got little norwegian boys wearing some sort of breeches and holding hands.

I know this is going to sound pretentious, but I really didn't expect the Wool of the Andes to be so soft and nice. I think I might use it for all of my general wool needs in the future.

So this hat finished, all of my christmas knitting 2007 is complete. Now I can get back to knitting for me. I may even get to adjust something over on my progress bars. Bet.

Vegan Knitting

2008-01-13T18:39:00.000-05:00

I have a very good friend named Jack who is also a very angry vegan. In my efforts to cover all of my loved ones in hand knits, I decided to knit him a hat. Well, actually I decided that Andrew would knit him a hat. We went to the yarn store and Andrew picked out the yarn and began knitting. The yarn is Classic Elite Premiere, which is a 60/40 cotton/tencel blend. After about 10 hours of knitting, He had about 1 1/2". With only the mildest patronizing tone in my voice, I offered to finish it for him.

Let me just say that I hate knitting with cotton. I know all of the properties that make cotton the wonderful fiber that it is, such as it's ability to keep one cool and supa crisp stitch definition, but these very qualities make it an incredibly bad choice for a hat.

The first problem I came across is the blown out ribbing. The more I attempted to maintain even tension, the more it prolapsed into some unmentionable blob of stringy entrails. Whatever. I figured that once I got to the stockinette, all would be gravy. Like any good knitter, I used a jogless join for the stripes. With wool, this would result in beautifully even stitches. On cotton, it makes a really gross ladder of gaping stitches 100x more fugly than a little jog in the stripes.

In the end it came out okay. A hat was made using no animal products and therefore another vegan is kept warm.

Note: Next year he gets a juicer.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-01T16:28:00.000-05:00

It's been a pretty big year for me. I moved cross country, started school, and subsequently lost any glimmer of my former care-free nature. All in all, it's been a good year. Our power went out last night so we spent the night huddled under seven blankets, praying that we would have all of our toes in the morning. Thankfully our heat came back on about 20 minutes ago and we can take our parkas off.
I was going through my yearly New Year's knitting roll call of FOs and realized that the list is pretty short. I've been knitting constantly, and yet my stack of woolen goods is light. I planned on knitting four sweaters this year. How many sweaters did I start? Three. How many finished sweaters do I have? Zero. Not a damn one. Eek. That's okay. I managed to finish some other stuff.

This is what my mom's cowl ended up looking like:

She really liked it, so I guess that's a success. Oh and by the way, LMKG times this one at 6-8 hours. It took me about twelve. Go fig.

Andrew had the flu on Christmas eve so I stayed home with him while my family was busy merry-making. I used the extra hour or so to finish my dad's scarf. Here's my dad. He likes it.

I spent Suday night knitting the Army Earflap cap for my friend Atom:

Due to the lack of heat and the densly knit bulky wool, this fucker has had a hell of a time drying. I don't have to give it to Atom until Saturday, so hopefully it will dry by then.

One last thing I knitted way back in February for our first trip to Chicago:

Blurry mittens! Actually, these are about 30% less blurry in person. They're knit out of Plymouth Galway with D.B. Cashmerino stripes. The left mitten is about 1/2 an inch longer than the right. Would you believe that I have a grotesquely misproportate left flipper? I don't, but it's awful to admit that I can't hold an unfinished mitten to it's partner and think "Hey, one of these is not like the other!" Alas.

I started something for Andrew last night before the power went out. Let me preface this by saying he picked out the colors.

Andrew has a unique sense of color that clicks about 70% of the time. I have knit him some truely horrendous creations over the years from yarn he picked out. I'm trying to both forget everything I know about color theory as well as save this hat from being able to be used as a method of torture akin to water boarding. Wish me luck.

Have a fantastic 2008, my friends.

'Tis The Season

2007-12-19T13:03:00.000-05:00

Isn't it weird how you forget you haven't blogged in a week or so because you're knitting constantly? Am I alone on this one? Anyone? Bueller? I normally start my Christmas knitting in January but somehow this year it snuck up on me. I've started three projects in the past week in preparation for the most wonderful time of the year.

I went through my stash and found a ball of Knitpicks Elegance in Fog so I started a cowl for my mom.

I used the pattern from Last Minuted Knitted Gifts for the Pashmina Cowl. My mom loves cowls. It's weird. It's even a weird word to say. Cowl. It sounds like a eugenics experiment gone wrong. "It hoots and flies but you can milk it too!"
I really love knitting it though because it's just round after round of plain stockinette. Unfortunately this project isn't a genuine stash buster 'cause I ordered 2 additional balls of yarn and I'm probably going to have one left over. So if we do our math, that leaves me with exactly what I started with. Oh well.

I'm also knitting a scarf for my dad.

The yarn is Cascade Pastaza from my stash, bought specifically for this purpose. I chose the color (Antique Gold) as a nod to his Alma Mater, Georgia Tech, which just coincedentally happens to be the rival of my Alma Mater, UGA.
I am a good son.

I added a last minute present to my list. My friend Atom is a good friend indeed, and I figured he needed a warm hat to battle the bitter Chicago winter on his bike. Enter the Army Earflap Cap.

I really like this pattern. I substituted Brown Sheep Lambs Pride Bulky for the Misty Alpaca to make a sturdy man-version of the Interweave Knits pattern. While knitting, I discovered that the increases on the center back create a lace-like eyelet pattern. I'm into it. Dudes need more eyelets. Thankfully this hat doesn't have to be done until after the New Year.

We leave for our holiday travels tomorrow so I'm going to be busting it in order to finish these projects by next week. I wish you all luck with your gift knitting and I hope you all have a fantastic holiday!

That's How We Do

2007-12-08T21:36:00.000-05:00

I've been so busy with school lately that all of my knitting time comes in 20 minute spurts. After that, I'm overcome with guilt and must get back to my death grip on the semester. Couple that with the miles of brown ribbing I'm churning out and my knitting life seems to be rather lack luster. However, now that the semester is almost over, I allowed myself to sit and knit a project from start to finish.

I needed a gift for an exchange at work, so I decided to knit a hat. Unlike my usual M.O., this hat has color, stripes and the illest reindeer you've ever seen.

How 'bout we see that one more time.

That's right. Can you say dope?

I love this hat so much, I didn't even mind weaving in the mounds of ends.

I asked Andrew to model it for me:

The hat fits perfectly, which kind of sucks because it grew substantially after blocking. We'll see what it looks like when it dries. If it's still huge, I'm bringing the world's most bad ass tea cozy to the company holiday party.

Whew!

2007-12-05T17:45:00.000-05:00

I spent about 30 hours silkscreening this weekend in order to get ready for my semester critique. A responsible blogger would have photographed the process so they could share it with the fiber-obsessed of the world. This blogger on the other hand, has failed you. I apologize. I was spending so much time trying to line up my screens, mixing colors that would transfer well and cleaning up gallons of spilled ink that my camera did not make it into the equation.

I do have more pictures of this, though:

It's snow. 'Bout six inches of the stuff. I'm still amused by it, but slightly intimidated by what six inches of snow before the start of winter could mean.

This is the corner of my house. I don't think I've ever seen an icicle that big before. It's practically a weapon!

Thankfully, my winter reading has started to arrive in the mail:

I think you all recognize Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac which is filled with awesome patterns and prose for the snowed in, and what's the holiday season without
Critical Art Ensemble's Flesh Machine:Cyborgs, Designer Babies and New Eugenic Consciousness? It's practically the new The Night Before Christmas.

As far as knitting goes, there's not much exciting progress here. I was able to knit on the second sleeve of the Zipped Raglan for a few hours last night and was pleased with how much knitting gets done when you actually, well, knit. I've been looking at other patterns and I'm afraid I may have to detatch the first sleeve from the body in order to knit a few more inches on the fronts and back of the sweater. I knit it to the length of the XL size, but it still seems like it may be about 3-4 inches too short.

I told you about the scarves my mom knit me:

They're knit in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino and I think they are the most wonderful things I own. Funny how that works sometimes.

I knit a swatch for the army earflap hat using a double strand of malabrigo:

The origional pattern calls for chunky weight yarn whereas malabrigo is definately a standard worsted weight. The versions of this hat I've seen using a single strand makes a hat that looks almost unwearable, it's so small. Trouble is, a double strand works up to 3.75 sts/inch. it would be easy to adjust the pattern to make up for this if it told you at any point how many stitches around it is. i think i may just knit the hat as is and revel in the wooly gigantic-ness of it. if nothing else, it'll be amusing disastor which is always good blog fodder.

Anyway, keep warm and fed wherever you are and have a swell day.

First Signs of Encroaching Winter

2007-11-27T15:48:00.000-05:00

I hope you all had a fantastic holiday, I certainly did. My family came up and we sat around for almost a week straight, knitting, eating and playing cards. I traded my mom the pastel ball of mountain goat for a few additions to my sportweight alpaca stockpile and I received not one, but TWO handknit scarves for my birthday (which is in march, but she made up for it by doubling the bounty).

I made progress on my zipped raglan. Even though it's nowhere near finished, I'm okay with it. Unfortunately I spent all morning writing a paper, so the light outside kind of sucks for taking pictures, so we'll just have to look at a picture from Thanksgiving morning:

That, my friends, is real live snow. Now, many of you who live in colder climates could give a damn about a few flakes of snow, but I, a transplanted southerner, was enamoured with the powdery stuff. Yes, it snows in the south sometimes, but it's much more like lumpy rain than bonafide snow. I'm sure that in my eighth month of winter I'll be less impressed with snow, but for now it sure is pretty. Well, it would be if it hadn't melted the next day.

And look! Jill likes it:

Likes/ Hates; Terror/ Tomato.

I bought the new Son of a Stitch n Bitch this weekend and I am absolutely enthused! Who would have guessed that non-ugly/tacky/dorky men's knitwear patterns existed? I really did find like twelve things I want to make.

Oh by the way, Thumbs down to interweave knits for leaving out even the perfunctory men's pattern in the winter issue. Yes we get it. Women knit. Men can check back in 6 months to see if there's something available then.

Oh well. At least Debbie Stoller's got my back.

2007-11-13T14:05:00.000-05:00

I've been on a crash course, heading straight into the end of the semester for the past few weeks. Crit week is 13 days away and I've been in the studio cranking out as much work as possible. I still have a long way to go, but I'll get there.

The sleeve for the zipped raglan is just about done. I want to knit it a few inches longer so it will cover my long monkey arms, but that won't take any time at all. I was really hoping to get this sweater finished by Thanksgiving, but that may not be entirely possible. My entire family is coming from Hotlanta to visit us next week, so hopefully I'll be able to get all of the knitting on the sweater done before school starts the next Monday.

I bought some yarn for my winter hat today to replace the Mountain Goat of easter egg brilliance.

It's malabrigo and the shade is called Autumn forest (224). While yes, it's varigated, the colors are so muddy one would be hardpressed to call it unmanly. I need to find a good pattern for it. I'm thinking the Army Girl Earflap Hat from Interweave knits. (I really tried to get the link to work and it was ugly. Trust me.) Mine, however will just be the Army Earflap Hat, 'cause that's how I roll. I need to knit a swatch to see if I should double my yarn or not. I really don't want to have to buy new needles, but I may just have to bite the bullet.

What will happen with the Mountain Goat, you ask? I think it'll end up being a pair of socks for my mom. We'll see if I can knit a pair in the 8 days between the end of the semester and Christmas. Oh the joys of holiday knitting.

Speaking of the holidays, I bought some ornaments for our first Christmas in Chicago.

They're made out of what I assume to be tiny gourds. The owl belongs to Andrew and this one is mine:

That is a wild-eyed panda if I ever saw one.

Crunch Time

2007-10-30T10:18:00.000-05:00

Hey y'all! So, for the past three weeks I've been busting it in the studio, trying to get ready for a show on Sunday and finish some entries for a few film festivals. While I like to consider myself a relatively laidback kind of guy, when I have deadlines, I'm more of a wild-eyed, don't know if I'm gonna knife ya or cry kinda guy.

I will post some pictures after the show so we can all look, discuss, and determine if I'd be more suited to a career in the sitting at home and watching The People's Court industry.
Until then, I have this:

These are some t-shirts I've been dyeing for a project in May. There are 30lbs of 'em in 7 colors. While most every 12 year old can successfully dye a t-shirt, it took me three tries to get it right. Three freaking times. You would think that with all of my experience dyeing wool and reading about fiber that I would have been smart enough to realize that the dye I was using was acid dye and not cellulose-reactive dye. Hmmm. Strike one.

At least while I waited for each load of [7(colors)x3(dye failures)=loser] to wash and dry, I knit the sleeve of my Zipped Raglan. I would be able to show you said sleeve if I hadn't left it in my studio. Strike two.
However, I can show you guys the beautiful yarn I bought months ago to make my winter hat:

See that? My colorblind ass thought that was grey. If I knit a hat out of that, I'll look like a freaking easter egg. That's right, strike three. Damn.

So let's recap. Colorblind artist can't figure out why he can't dye cotton with wool dye on the first two tries. Thank god I love Judge Joe Matthus.

What Homework?

2007-10-12T10:41:00.000-05:00

Like I said, I've been fitting knitting time in whenever possible, which is completely unlike me. I'm normally a very lazy knitter who prefers to read blogs, buy yarn and plan sweaters 3 years in advance. This is everything I've been knitting for the past few weeks:

I was caught downtown a few days ago in a t-shirt in fifty degree weather, necessatating a store bought sweater. I bought one on my break that looks like something i would knit myself, except it was missing elbow patches, so I knit some:

The patches are knit out of knitpicks telemark on size 2 needles. I haven't had time to block them and sew the suckers on, but all in good time.

I'm knitting a scarf on the train:

This scarf is really killing my fragile knitter ego. First of all, the yarn is beautiful, soft and spongey. Run it through my grubby man-hands and it becomes snagged, pilled and hairy. I'm trying to compensate by handling it more gently, but that results in really ugly stitches. It kind of looks like I was knitting baby cables. The best I can hope for at this point is a bohemian look. Le sigh.

I started knitting Major from Rowan. Well, kind of. I had to use a completely different pattern due to Rowan's really awful sizing issues and worse schematics. I'll add the details from the origional pattern to a sweater sized for a human being and all will be well.

*Note: Please ignore the awful lighting. I knit this in my studio, where natural light is only spoken about in rumor. That also explains why I've only knit 5 inches of the back of a sweater knit on size 17 needles. Don't judge me. I do plan on passing this semester.

I'm still knitting the zipped raglan. I finished the body and have started a sleeve. I'm knitting the smallest size, but I knit it to the length of the large. This may be finished one day. I'm aiming for Thanksgiving. Please do not hold back ridicule if the end of November comes and I have a body and half of a sleeve knit. Be cruel, otherwise how am I ever going to learn?

And a sleeve:

Knitting like a Mofo

2007-10-07T21:25:00.000-05:00

Now that I've decided that I'm knitting for the shear pleasure of it, I'm knitting everywhere and everything that will sit still long enough for me to wrap it around a needle. I have a project to knit on the train, one for when I'm waiting at the dentist, or what have you, one to work on while I dub videos, one for my studio when I want to feel productive and one for when I watch tv at home.
Wow, that may be a little excessive, as I'm sure that several of those could be consolidated. No matter. I will show pictures when I have a second and some decent lighting. Until then, be good and fruitfull and all of that.

Old School

2007-09-26T12:08:00.000-05:00

I spent my day Monday dubbing betamax masters (who here remembers beta?). This process involves some initial set up and then watching several hours of footage, making sure that the audio levels and the video synch up, etc. I figured that it would be most industrious to knit while I kept an eye on the video. The footage was from the 1970 National Woman's Day Women's Liberation Rally and it was really fantastic!

There was an interview with a man on the street where the camera person questioned this young fellow's views on feminism and liberation, where it was determined that the man not only cooks and cleans for his female roommates, but they had also taught him how to sew the patches on his jeans. I have a feeling that this gentleman has gone on to do well with the ladies.

I wonder how many of these activists ever dreamed that 40 years later, a man would sit in a studio, watching and preserving the footage from these rallies, marches and performances, while knitting socks.

Right on.

Zen. Well, Not Yet

2007-09-21T12:07:00.000-05:00

I found a copy of Bernadette Murphy's Zen and the Art of Knitting in a used book store the other day (as well as A Guide for the Jewish Homemaker from 1956, which I also bought, but I digress). It's been my subway reading for the past week or so and I must say, it is enthralling. For the past few years I've definatly been what one could call a product knitter. I stress over how well I can knit something and how fast it gets done. No matter how fat the yarn is or how simple the pattern, I always find myself racing for the finish line with white knuckles and my naturaly colorful dialect erupting from between my cleched and grinding teeth. Either that, or I abandon a project in the second half if it's not going as fast as I want it to.

I realized this morning that it's been 10 days since my last post (horrors!) and how while I've been knitting, I didn't have much to show for it. I found my sweater stopped halfway through a row and on the first row of a new stripe. While this would normally infuriate me to no end (I'm a really laid back guy, I just seem to have some completely misdirected yarn rage issues) I just picked it up to finish my row and and continued worrying about the fact that in just two years I would be jobless, and 100k in the hole. When I noticed that I was knitting a sweater out of $15 balls of wool while stressing about money, I laughed. Hard.

I looked at my big pile o' wool and wondered how I was able to afford all of the yarn for this sweater when three years ago I considered buying lambspride a luxury. I remembered that Andrew bought me a ball for our first Valentines Day, and I bought three more in the same color with a gift certificate I got for my birthday. Two balls came from a day I aced a Botany exam and so on.
While normally I try to avoid the corny, the wistful and the hopeful, I had an ephiphany. A lot of small steps go a long way. My knitting will get done. My work will get done. The house cleaning probably won't get done ( let's be honest here).

Okay. that being said, Here's where I'm at on the sweater:

Here's the yarn:

Oh knitting, you are wise and have many lessons to teach us.

School

2007-09-11T09:59:00.000-05:00

I finally have a minute to post after my first week of school, and sadly, the knitting is not very impressive. I've knit a few rounds on the sock and about 2 inches on the body of the sweater. I think I may need to get into gear because Fall is pretty much here in the windy city. I know those of you who live in the colder regions of this fine planet may scoff, but I'm from the South and when the weather drops below 60F, I start mentally cataloging my woolen goods and whether or not I have something for each of my extremities. I know that it's going to get a lot colder, I'm just saying.

But for now, the weather is awesome! To prove it, here is a picture of where I've been whiling away my former knitting time:

Pretty great, huh? Here's my little corner of it:

While it may not look very stimulating, I'm so freaking excited that I have a studio so I don't have to search for clean socks amidst a mountain of spot lights, electrical cords and surgical supplies (don't ask).

If you look in the corner of my table ( mere feet from my freaking sweet new computer) you will see a pair of socks that probably wants to be finished. In due time, I'm sure. Until then, there is work to be done.

Long Time No See

2007-09-01T11:52:00.000-05:00

So this past week was orientation and the beginning of school. I seem to have forgotten how to blog in all of the excitement. I also got interviewed and got a kick ass job this week, which is good, because it was getting to the point that we were going to have to start eating the stash. The cats were extremely happy that it didn't come to that. In honor of the start of school and work, I started a new project.

It's the Men's Zipped Raglan from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. The color is 108 and the picture looks nothing like the actual color, which is grey and brown, not blue. I wish I had some yarn the color of that picture, though. I'm really digging the knitting. It's going fast and easy. It's slightly combersome because I'm being a good knitter and alternating balls of yarn.

The real reason I'm using two balls is because I ripped half of the yarn from a previous sweater that I am glad only exists in my veiled memories. The old yarn is slightly thinner because I washed it and wound the balls tightly. I'm ok with this. As long as I knit from a new ball and an old ball at all times everything will even out, right? I also like knitting the whole thing in one piece. It soothes my mind into believing that I will actually have this finished by the time it's cool enough to wear it.

While I was photographing the sweater I took the liberty of shooting one of my favorite statues.

This is Quan Yin. She is the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy and Compassion. I collect idols of all kinds and she is one of my favorites and by far the biggest (she's 4 feet of solid concrete. You do the math, a lady never declares her weight). Namaste, y'all.

Just Waiting

2007-08-22T11:57:00.002-05:00

* Note: please excuse repeat photos. I've been knitting a stockinette sock that looks just like the one that came before it, so I'm showing you yarn for upcoming projects. If you've seen it before, color me embarrassed. End Note*

I bought mounds of yarn to knit sweaters for winter and I can't wait to start them! Just a few small problems. First of all, I ordered needle tips but forgot to order extra needle cables. They will be coming in the mail sometime soon so I can start my knitting escapades. As some of you may know, I've owed Andrew a sweater for years. I started Bob Dobbs for him, and unfortunately I'm not picking that up again for a while.

I have enough Rowan Big Wool to knit him a certain cardigan that he picked out, but again, there are complications. For some wholly unknown reason, Rowan men's patterns are designed for the truly gigantic. The small chest measurement (not finished mind you, just flesh and bone girth) is 40" around. Andrew's chest measures in at a whopping 32" around. The finished measurement on the size small sweater he picked out is something like 46" around. That would make 14 inches of ease. I know the fat yarn eats up some of that, but seriously?
I'm debating ordering the handy book of sweater patterns so I can replicate the cardigan shape and just add the details from the Rowan Book. While I do enjoy the challenge of refiguring a pattern with ye olde calculator and graph paper, Rowan schematics also leave something to be desired. If they didn't make such awesome yarn...

I'm also going to knit a cardigan from last minute knits. While I haven't found the sleeve errata yet, I'm sure it won't take long to set my self straight on that pattern.

My winter knitting will be a fair isle cardigan from Rowan in soft tweed. Again, the Rowan sweater construction has let me down a bit. Who wants to knit a fair isle raglan flat? Seriously. I'm going to try knitting it in the round then steeking it. 6 months from now when I've completely ruined a poorly fitting, ugly sweater that would have been perfect if I would have just followed the pattern, I may consider taking back my harsh words.

1 Out of 2 Ain't Bad

2007-08-17T17:50:00.000-05:00

I finished one of the socks yesterday and cast on or the second. This is how it looks:

I'm a big fan of the long leg. My feet are really big so my socks generally look kinda wonky when the foot is about a third longer than the leg. These are pretty fantastic though. We'll see if I have enough yarn to knit the second sock. If not, I'll just sub mint green for the rest of the foot.

In other news, I got my school I.D. today and look more than adequately dorky in the photo. I've also been touring my new fair city and scouting out the specialty stores that will both horrify my mother as well as supply me with art materials for the next two years. Oh, big city living is the life for me.

Sock!

Scarf

2007-08-14T17:12:00.000-05:00

I've been knitting. I finished the Alpaca scarf in just a few days, and I must say, I'm a fan of the pattern.

It's misti alpaca chunky in a mistake rib pattern on size 9 needles. I really like how this turned out on in a solid color. I think I'll use it to knit my dad a scarf for christmas. This one is going out to my dear friend Joe who does many wonderful things for me like waxing my unibrow without asking first. Friends like that deserve to be protected from the cold.

I'm Back

2007-08-10T22:14:00.000-05:00

I know it's been a few weeks, but I just got my internet connected today. I have hours of blog reading to catch up on.
Let's begin! The move was a success! Well I guess that as long as I left there and I'm here now, like most moves, I was successful. I'm freaking in love with my new digs and my surrounding area. Let's take a walking tour of my neighborhood, shall we?

Closest and possibly most important, there is yarn.

The closest yarn shop is a grueling walk across the street and 20 feet up the sidewalk. No lie. It's a small shop but it's filled with really nice yarn. More on that later.

Next up we have this:

Nice, right?

Right outside the door of the tattoo shop is some public art.

That is some genuine crocheted graffiti.

A few blocks up on the left is Boystown, home of some of the best leather shops in the country.

A long haul over to Lincoln Park and we find my bretheren.

I have a thing about giraffes. They're tall, I'm tall etc. Like I said, it's a thing. And this fella lives in a free zoo 2 miles from my house. It's kismet.

While it not exactly within walking distance, there's a botanica a short bus ride away.

Sigh. It feels like home already.

I have been knitting. When I went to the yarn shop I bought some Alpaca on mad sale.
I'm knitting a scarf for a friend.

I'm so glad to be settled and can't wait to get some intense pre-autumn knitting.

Out Like Trout in a Drought, Y'all

2007-07-30T07:32:00.000-05:00

It's 8:30am on Moving day and I'm stoked! This is the most chilled out, or at least cheerful I've ever been on moving day. Am I packed? Nope. Is the house clean? Pshaw. Do I have any idea of what's staying or going? Uh-uh. Maybe it's just delirium, or maybe I'm just so excited to be out of here nothing is gonna stand in my way. It's a very Mary Tyler Moore show moment. I will be without the Internet for about a week so I will miss you all terribly. I will post as soon I get around some wireless cloud action. We're gonna make it after all.

Packing

2007-07-26T16:07:00.001-05:00

So I thought it would be really fun to pack my yarn, organize it and reminisce about projects of yore. Turns out that packing my stash is really depressing. I saw a picture online of a woman's destash efforts once. There were hundreds of plastic grocery bags filled with yarn on two folding tables. I always said to myself that I wouldn't let it get that far.
Well, I may not have a metric ton of wool, But I have much more than I'm comfortable with. I filled two giant rubbermaid tubs with yarn. While that may not sound like a lot, one of those is filled completely by ends and partial balls left over from other projects. What the hell am I going to do with 35lbs (I weighed it, AND remembered to subtract the weight of the empty container) of half-used skeins? I feel like I just binged on an entire apple pie and chocolate cake and now I have to live with nausea and self hatred.
Oh well. I also found this!

It's an apron I had made for an installation last year. The outside is red-orange vinyl with white trim and the inside is lined with a grey sheepskin. It's freaking beautiful. I can say that modestly because I didn't sew it and I totally forgot that I had it. I'm hoping I'll find a good use for it.

In knitting news, I've been working on the sock as a packing avoidance tactic. Andrew used Harry Potter. So we're pretty much screwed.

The heel is knit with the same yarn as the leg I dyed in a mint green color. I used a strand of grey lace weight mohair as the reinforcement and I think it lends the whole sock a Grinch Who Stole Christmas feel.

I like how the red borders the green.

I hope y'all have a wonderful day. I'm gonna pack.

It's On

2007-07-22T14:44:00.000-05:00

Oh my god. y'all. Have you seen this?

Well, I don't think I need to inform you guys of my level of excitement here. I can not wait to get my grubby man hands on this thing.
I haven't been super impressed with the pattern books for men that have come out in the last little while. Either the patterns are a stretch that no man, gay or straight, is really going to leave the house in, or the entire premise of the book is entirely degrading to women. I am frightened by a woman who follows "The Rules" and knits hideous sweater vests for dorky looking guys in order to trap them into some kind of temporary "I guess I can't do any better" legally binding union.
Granted, I've only knit two patterns from my SnB books, but this one will change everything! I may knit all forty-five! Okay, most likely not. I'll probably find two or three patterns (at best) that I will completely change to my liking. It's the principle of the matter.
I was knitting (sort of) before I read SnB, but I never knit anything well or that anybody would want to use. No more acrylic afghan squares! Debbie Stoller rocked my face off and there was no turning back. This led to Melanie Falick, Teva Durham and Elizabeth Zimmerman when I realized that my taste ran more to the classic than the punk rock. While sometimes more difficult to wear than to knit, Kaffe Fasset's designs always inspire me to try something more interesting.
I digress. I'm really hoping that this book is good. You should probably get it. Knit for yourself, your boyfriend/husband/houseboy/gimp or whatever you've got. I'm sure he'll like it.

Insert Bad "Dye" Pun Here.

2007-07-20T16:29:00.000-05:00

I really like dyeing yarn but I don't get around to it as much as I would like to. This is probably because I am constantly lining up new projects that don't require my beloved hand dyed yarn. Oh well, at least I have pictures.

This is a hank of merino lace weight I dyed for my cousin Amy. Does she knit lace? Couldn't tell you. It's pretty, though.

Here's a close up:

I also dyed a skein of self striping sock yarn last fall that lingered in my stash for months.

Close up:

This is it in ball form:

And in sock form:

These will serve me well in the winter months. Carry on.

19:19

2007-07-17T11:37:00.000-05:00

In the Bible, Leviticus prohibits the mixing of textiles under the penalty of death. "..neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee." -Leviticus 19:19. While shellfish and pork are prohibited most likely to avoid nasty bouts of trichinosis, I wonder what the purpose of this mandate is. Perhaps it was some form of consumer protection? You pay your last shekel for a halug, you want it to be 100% linen or wool, depending on your needs. Whatever the case may be, the death penalty is a little extreme, don't you think?

Well start gathering the mob and pass out some stones.

75% wool, 25% bamboo, 100% worth being bludgeoned to death.

If that doesn't condemn me, I also loaded up on Rowan Soft Tweed as it was on mad sale.

56% wool, 20% viscose, 14% polyamide, 10% silk. Yeah, that should do me in for sure.

Why does sin feel so soft?

Done!

2007-07-12T12:49:00.000-05:00

Andrew went up to Chicago this week to find us an apartment and took the computer with him. My job was to pack the kitchen. Andrew: mission accomplished. James: heh. I got absolutely no packing done since the last post, but I did bang out a serious pile of finished objects. Chicago gets cold.

First off we have the gloves:

I freaking love them. I've been planning this project for two years and I'm so excited that they're finished. I loved knitting them so much that I was genuinely sad when I cast off the last stitch. There is a hand modeling shot coming up, I couldn't wear 'em yet because they're still wet.

Next we have the cowl thing:

This came out a little weird due to the shorter (one skein) length that I preferred to the slouched Edwardian look of the original pattern. The cowl fits over my head, but is too loose to adequately warm the neck. I think I'm in love with the diagonal feather and fan action, though.

Finally there is the Manly Angora Scarf:

I'll weave in the ends and wash it this afternoon, but I declare it done. It measures a good seven and a half feet, plenty long enough to wrap twice. I really like the random striping, especially since the colors are so subtle I wasn't able to tell the difference in incandescent light.

Fluffy, fluffy angora.

Only Today

2007-07-07T20:34:00.000-05:00

*Note: while this entry may not have pictures and may seem to run off on tangents, I swear to God that it's so worth it. Continue*
So, I normally carry a camera with me to capture exciting moments, only to never find anything exciting. This was not the case today, in both regards. I left my camera battery charging while I was at work and figured I'd come home and try to work on the manual focus function. As I was finishing up work, my friend Michelle called me and asked me if I wanted to go with her to feed a bull. I said "Of course!" (duh). So, we traveled out to the UGA pastures to pet the boy cow. Unfortunatly, he felt like hanging out in the other side of his pen. That's ok, 'cause the pen next to him had sheep! I'd never seen sheep in real life and I was super excited. That is why I didn't expect my particular first sheep reaction. Frankly I was terrified.
First of all, the male sheep was the size of Michelle and I put together. Second he had those crazy coin slot pupils. Third he had balls the size of two Nerf footballs! All this covered in wool. Michelle started to pet him and he began grunting, licking and urinating. I was intrigued. I had to try this for myself (petting the sheep). He was super friendly and wanted more attention. I decide that I should knit him a testicle cozy. I was thinking something in a coral and aqua self-striping sock yarn. The pasture fun ended when Michelle jumped the fence into the bull pen and offered the boy cow a carrot. The Bull took this as a threat, or at least an annoyance, and decided to kick up dirt and half heartedly charge at her. It was time to go.
We then went to Goodwill where I found a hand knit Dale of Norway. Unfortunatly, it was handknit in the eighties, and while remarkably well preserved, it was fugly. I'm talking navy, fuschia, purple and white. It had ribbing instead of hems at the sleeves and body. It was really itchy and I looked like street hustler who raided Heathcliff Huxtable's closet (again, no camera to be found). I could have looked past most of this if it weren't for the really ugly purl stitch pattern on the body and sleeves. I debated for a while because normally I would have bought it ($4.29!) but I couldn't justify moving a 4lb sweater that I would never wear to Chicago with me. Alas. We decide to leave and stuff our sweet faces with Chinese food.
On the way to dinner, we totally saw a car chase! Some fool driving down a two lane country road at breakneck speed evading the six police cars behind him. While I still didn't have my camera, it was not unlike this. What a day to be without documentation! Maybe it was the Fates' way of showing me to pay more attention to my truly bizarre surroundings.
I must give warning that I will be without a computer for the next few days as Andrew is off to Chicago to find us an apartment. I will miss you all dearly, but I will spend the week packing, knitting, weaving in ends, blocking etc. so there will be something to look at on Thursday. Y'all be good and I'll see you next week!

Knitting Dorks Unite!

2007-07-05T22:08:00.000-05:00

So, I'm super excited to have received my invitation to be a beta tester for ravelry.
While I know that the site is open to everyone (it really is! Just put your name on the waiting list!), I still feel like I got asked to sit at the cool-kids' table in the high school cafeteria of online knitting. I'm using the stash documentation process as a motivation to pack. Take a picture of yarn, it goes in the box. Take picture of book, put your junk in dat box.
Seriously, how dorky (seriously cool!) is it to catalog every ball of yarn you ever bought so that you can look for the dyelot? Even better, you can look at other people's dyelots! Before I started reading blogs I never knew that I could spend days looking at partially knit sweaters and socks on the internet. Just give me a week and I'll be cross checking dyelots of the same yarns world wide! Yipee-ki-yay y'all! Please! Get on the waiting list so I can look at your stash! If you're already a raveler, I'm James on the site, drop bye and say hi!

Alchemical Process

2007-07-03T11:26:00.000-05:00

I know, lofty, convoluted title, but bear with me. I had a ball of Noro Silk Garden left over from a scarf project that was just sitting around with no apparent purpose, so I cast on to see what I could make.

The colors are amazing, no? They remind me of alchemical process changing lead into copper and gold. I was knitting at Main Street
yesterday and everyone asked me what I was knitting, to which I could only shrug and say "I dunno". Anita said, "Sometimes projects let you know what they want to be in time." To which the other James responded, "More so for James'(me) projects than anyone else, though."
That is a jab at my ability to accidentally screw myself over by altering patterns for size and loftier technical difficulty. They have seen more than one "Hey I have an idea!" turn out badly. I would have loved to remind them that I haven't made anymore major knitting disasters than they have, however, upon blocking my new one-ball masterpiece, I discovered that I have created my very own lace pattern.
The feather and fan pattern I had intended on using turned into a diagonal feather and fan due to some fiddling I did with my stitch markers to make the pattern easier to memorize. It didn't help that I forgot that I made said adjustments a third of the way through and didn't remember until I was two-thirds done. Oh well. It got me again. I've got to hand it to myself, though. Apparently I'm becoming increasingly adept at divining the intended existential destiny of fiber. I'm sure that this is exactly what this particular ball of yarn wanted to be. Join me tomorrow so we can figure out what the hell this object wants to be.

Moving On

2007-06-27T11:55:00.000-05:00

The last couple of days I've gotten home from work, picked up my knitting for about 3-4 stitches and then passed out. I imagine that working at this pace indefinitely would really make for poor progress, not to mention increase the impossible nature of Christmas knitting. Unfortunately, the knitting is going to stay at a tortoise-like pace for the next month as I'm packing up my kittens and my Andrew and moving cross country at the end of July. I did make some progress on my left glove.

Yes, this is the same amount of knitting I was able to do in two days on the right glove, only it took twelve.
Right now I'm staring at a pile of flattened boxes and shelves of stuff that really needs to go in them. So I think I'm going to knit for a while. Don't judge me.

What's Next?

2007-06-14T12:08:00.000-05:00

Alright, the second glove is moving along a wee bit slower than the first and Bob is, ahem, taking a breather as my feeble brain can't handle the ever changing amount of yarn strands that grace his beautiful face right now. So, I will show you yarn for my next few projects. Note: I am a deceptively slow knitter so please ignore the dust on the yarn.

First we have some Rowan Big Wool in Best Brown.

This will be a cardigan of some type to keep Andrew's skinny ass warm in Chicago. I'm betting I can knit this sucker in a week.

Next we have my new winter sweater.

This is about 11-12 balls of Manos in color 108. It will be a zip up raglan from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I'm super stoked about this because I've had half of the yarn for about 3 years and now my plan for my first sweater that I'm not embarrassed to leave the house in is almost complete.

The next collection of yarn is much more speculative in nature.

It's 8 balls of sport weight alpaca that have no intended purpose whatsoever. For some reason I have a tendency to buy single balls of sport weight alpaca just because. I don't get it either. Anyway, I know that I'm a big fan of the solid dreary man-colors, but I was thinking that this could be the start of a really great Kaffe Fasset-esque sweater, much like this one...

Too Heathecliff Huxtable? I don't know. I figured it would be perfect for a baby sweater but the only baby I know lives in San Diego and what freak in their right mind knits a baby sweater out of alpaca? (Note: if you happen to be knitting a baby sweater out of alpaca, I'm totally not talking about you.) Do I really want to knit a sweater in sport weight that I will probably never wear? Maybe I'll find a new friend with really bad taste. Let's hope.

Research v. Knitting

2007-06-12T10:33:00.000-05:00

Research is going well. I've read five books cover to cover in the last week and yet I still managed to knit. Well, knit slowly.

The right glove is finished and the left is on the way.

Probably Jane came through with a completely accurate appraisal of my mystery fiber. They are in fact a set of microfibre pinch braided dread extensions that once graced Andrew's lovely head.

They look a lot like Ozark Handspun and I think they'll make a pretty awesome hat knit on large needles.

They were done by Heather McClure at Black Cherry Hair Salon in Atlanta. She is amazing with the color, no?

Like a...

2007-06-06T11:01:00.000-05:00

I spent most of this past weekend doing research and attending to some family matters but I was able to get some knitting done yesterday.

I went to knit at Main Street last night and thankfully Stephanie gave me some advice on glove construction. My pattern has all of the fingers knit from the same round. This would result in an ill fitting fouchette around the little and ring fingers. Right now I'm sort of terracing the fingers so it fits much more comfortably.

I also got some knitting done on Bob.

I'm really enjoying the intarsia. I have, however, been known to break out into a sweat when I realize that after starting a new length of yarn, the next row needs another length, in the same color and general area, just six stitches over. I'm 12 rows into the chart and this is what the back looks like:

I'm pumped.

In other news, do any of you guys know what this is?

It's the most unusual thing I have. More on this later. Y'all have a bang up day.

New Books

2007-06-01T16:57:00.000-05:00

I bought some books this week. One is Knit Two Together by Tracey Ullman and Mel Clark. The first time I looked at the book I was underwhelmed and Andrew said I called it "stupid" and "tacky". I saw some images online the other day and was all "Those are freaking awesome! What book is that?" Yep. I bought it immediately. I'm pretty sure I love it still, which is good, because I've loved Tracey Ullman since I was a little knitter. This is not a critique, but I'm a little frightened by the amount of pattern books being produced by Los Angeles yarn stores. If you happen to own a yarn shop in Los Angeles and have published, are publishing or thinking of publishing a completely different book of your own super original patterns, disregard me. I'm only talking about the other Los Angeles yarn shops that have, are or will produce a completely different book of their own super original patterns. That said, Mel Clark does have some mad design skills and her book really is worth having.

The other book is a 1972 10th edition of Davis-Chris Textbook of Surgery. I snagged it for $2.50 at Goodwill. Score!

What's the likely hood of me knitting anything from Knit 2 Together?
About as likely as me performing a Clinical Pulmonary Transplant, but the pictures are fun to look at.

Diversion

2007-05-30T13:27:00.000-05:00

I haven't touched Bob Dobbs in the last few days. I've looked at it. I've looked at the chart, felt the yarn but I have not knit. I did, however, start this...

It will be a fingerless glove one day. I cast on yesterday and I'm finished with the thumb gusset. The yarn is Blue sky alpaca silk that I got for Christmas 2 years ago. While I may be slightly ignoring a difficult project that needs to be done soon so I can bust out a whole mess of brown sweaters before the cold hits, I am using up ignored stash and the gloves will keep my hands warm.

I thought the gussets looked a little weird, but they look fine in the photo. If you can't see sloppy stitches on the interweb, you can't see them on my (possibly rapidly moving) hands.

and for all of those suckers for wrongside shots:

Nice, right?

The Begining of Bob

2007-05-28T11:00:00.000-05:00

I was so excited to start the front of my Bob Dobbs sweater. I had so many ideas about how I can challenge my little knitter mind and skill set by tinkering with the perfect techniques to make the perfect sweater. I was convinced that nothing could stop this knitter from producing a masterpiece with ease and finesse. Let's see how that worked out, shall we?

1. Intarsia/Fair Isle
I had this charming notion of how I could just join two colors for the center intarsia panel and work them in fair isle across the face. How could that go wrong? What's that you say? The face would become a double-thick, completely inflexable mass front and center of a potentially negative ease sweater (I'll go into the potential negative ease at a later date)? No way! I'm glad I thought of that before I started!

2. Inarsia/Duplicate stitch

See that? That's my duplicate stitch. In my infinite wisdom, I decided to knit the sweater using yarn I already had and just adjusted my needle size to get gauge. That results in a really nice, soft, drapey fabric that just happens to be a thousand times looser than it should be in order to keep the stitches from showing through from beneath the duplicate stitch. I deserve a big "You Suck" sticker for that one.

3. Straight up, no F-ing around Intarsia
I've resigned myself to working the chart using a new strand for each block of color. I'm okay with this. I really like intarsia. My first ever knitting project was intarsia. How hard can it be? This is the chart.

Do you see all of those tiny-ass blocks of color? Oh you do? Me too. I think I'm going to have to do some stranding and some duplicate stitch to keep me from going insane, but only in dire circumstances. Here goes.

How about one more for the road?

They're Done

2007-05-22T14:13:00.000-05:00

These are the official first finished object of subdue it with a sweater. Apparently if you knit on a project, it gets finished. Who would've guessed?

What we have here is a pair of Trekking XXL socks in a mens size twelve. These are knit is a 5x1 rib in a standard sock pattern on size one addi turbos (2.25mm) using the magic loop method. Somebody really ought to come up with a less dorky name for a relatively sophisticated technique.
I started these last August and finished on the 21st of May. I know. Laziness is next to, I don't know, awesomeness? Maybe not, but hey look! Socks!

I really need to work on that focus thing.

That is one handsome sock, if I do say so myself.

Meme

2007-05-21T11:34:00.000-05:00

Everybody has a favorite part of the knitting process. Some people like to cast on for new projects, some like blocking, some like the tricky parts and some like the mindless parts. My absolute favorite part of the knitting process is washing my project for the first time. It's at this point where the yarn you've been playing with for an eternity becomes a real life garment. I love how yarn gets softer when you wash off the milling oil and the wool relaxes into the stitches you've set up for it. Oh, full immersion! How I love thee.

I have been tagged by the intriguing sacha for a meme. Yes, that's right. I am a grown man and now the term "meme" has been added to my vocabulary. Maybe I should balance this out with a trip to the hardware store so I can look at power tools (I heart my random orbital sander). Each person tagged gives 7 random facts about themselves. Those tagged need to write in their blogs 7 facts, as well as the rules of the game. You need to tag seven others and list their names on your blog. You have to leave those you plan on tagging a note in their comments so they know that they
have been tagged and need to read your blog.
Here goes.

1. I am enamored with Afro-Caribbean religions such as Santeria, Vodou and Candomble. I see them as beautiful expressions of the human spirit as it relates to the life force and the world around it. I do not actively practice these religions but I have an intense respect for the men, women and children who do.

2. I put myself through undergrad as a professional body piercer. It was a very important part of my life where I got to meet many wonderful people and develop a respect for the individual, whether they were heavily modified or just getting their ears pierced. I was very fortunate to be able to interact with people by calming them in a potentially frightening or vulnerable situation and help them celebrate when they were excited about making themselves more beautiful in their own eyes.

3. I am heavily tattooed. It's hard to determine an overall surface coverage but I'll venture to guess that about 35% of my body has been tattooed over a total of 60 hours. I never thought I would have more than a few tattoos because I was much more interested in piercing, but over the years I have developed a respect for the art of tattoo. I get my work done here by wonderful people who are extremely talented. I love all of my tattoos and have none that I regret.

4. I am a performance artist. My undergraduate degree is in digital media and I will be starting my MFA in performance this fall. You can see pictures of my work here
Many people don't know what performance art is. Most people ask me if I'm studying to be an actor. I have resorted to telling those folks I'm a sculptor.

5. I love Swedish Fish

6. I am obsessed with Sweden. Many have asked me why and the only thing I can come up with (besides the freaking awesome knitting, weaving and nalbinding) is that any country that has a huge death metal scene and yet maintains its place as the world's largest consumer of milk per capita, not to mention this, is fascinating.

7. I am an avid pacer. I pace for hours a day. I have ever since I could walk. My parents soon discovered that toys were wasted on me because I preferred to pace back in forth during my conscious hours. As I have matured, jumping, skipping and my preferred loping have been added to the mix.

Alright, that's seven. I have to demure from tagging because I really don't know anyone who hasn't done this meme yet and I really don't think I can bring myself to send someone a comment with the word "meme" in it. Alright, off to the manly world of drill bits and spackle.

Almost There

2007-05-19T17:03:00.000-05:00

I swear to God the socks are going to be finished soon. I would show you pictures, but I figure that seeing another 3/4" worth of progress really won't excite you the way it does me, so here's the photo of my next project:

It's the Bobb Dobbs sweater from Domiknitrix. The astute of you will notice that the vest has already made an appearance on the blog and has its own progress bar indicating that it is 40% done. This is because I have the back finished and I'm pretty sure the knitting of the intarsia fair isle front will be much more entertaining to watch than the brown stockinette back. For those of you who like looking at picture after picture of brown stockinette, have no fear. I am a huge fan of brown and happen to have a LOT of brown yarn with which to entertain ya'll with.
I'm really hoping that the immense amount of brown knitting that is going to cover these pages in the next few months will be informative, interesting and or moving really quickly. I promise to throw in some color to keep us all from dying of boredom. Over and out.

Still Going

2007-05-16T09:43:00.000-05:00

I am not a sock a week kind of knitter. I normally work on them for not only months, but seasons. The trekking sock is moving right along, though. It's amazing that I can knit 4 inches of foot in 3 days but I started these socks last August. Hopefully I will be done pretty close to the start of next week.

Unfortunately, I've already picked out two new pairs of socks I want to knit. I'll just add them to the next pair I have to knit, the two sweaters, pair of gloves, hat and multiple scarves in the line up. Those items can be started as soon as I knock out the WIPs I've got now. I'm sure I'll have plenty of time while I start grad school this fall, right? Oh well, at least projects in yarn form are nice to look at too.

That's Pastaza, a bulky single ply 50/50 wool/llama blend. It really is that color, too. Be still my heart.

Mother's Day

2007-05-15T10:16:00.000-05:00

Although I worked on Sunday, I got to go to Atlanta yesterday and hang out with my mom for Mother's day. I met her at her office and we ate cheeseburgers, talked about art, childhood trauma and the nature of existence. Of course, there was much knitting to be had as well.

My mom just learned to knit this past year in expectation of her first grandkid. We had a false start about 2 years ago that involved a pound 'o love and a garter stitch blanket that never should have been allowed into existence, but now we're on the right track. She has knit some really awesome stuff for my nephew out of really beautiful yarn. Check this out:

See that? That's for me! She's knitting me a scarf out of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran to keep me warm in Chicago. What a lucky boy am I! That panel will be sewn to a chocolate brown panel she knit me for my birthday and soon I will have the hippest scarf in the Midwest!

While she has knit for her friends and family, my mom has never knit for herself. Enter the presents.

I got her two balls of Artyarns Regal Silk in color 137. Apparently it's pink. My color blind ass thought it was off-white and grey. No matter, she loves it and when she visits me in Chicago this winter I'll help her make something really awesome out of it. In the meantime, if you had about 300 yards of sportweight silk, what would you make?
I hope you all had a great Mother's day and called your moms to thank them for resisting the urge to bury you under the back deck numerous times during your adolescence. There were several close calls for me.

Progress

2007-05-14T08:55:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Knitterbug, I now have working progress bars! She is a genius, I say. I also got some work done on my sock.

The black strip of mystery turned out fine. I should have known to trust those clever Germans to correctly ply my beloved yarn. The heel and gusset are done, now just 10 more inches of foot to go.

(you can make it, you can make it...)

Better Half.

2007-05-11T16:38:00.000-05:00

This is my better half Andrew.

Andrew is great, let me count the ways.
1. He buys me much better yarn than I would buy myself
2. He buys really expensive yarn for himself that he will never knit therefore I appropriate it.
3. He never questions my need for pattern books.
4. He wears things I knit for him. Well, sort of. He picked out a series of lime green and orange accessories that remain relatively unworn. To be fair, the striped stocking cap could comfortably fit one of those 4 foot tall genetically modified watermelons.
5. Last but not least, he knits. A little.

I promise that I'm not using this picture for some gratuitous skin in order to boost my readership. This is what he happened to be wearing when I came across him knitting. Since that only happens about once every three months, I had to take the picture super fast.

The Black Stripe of Mystery

2007-05-10T18:48:00.000-05:00

So I was working on my sock, hoping to make decent progress to show ya'll like any good blogger would, when I came across something unusual.

You can see it in the stitches on the right needle. My multi-hued yarn has a black ply. Now this may not seem unusual except that this, my friends, is the first time black has shown up in the yarn. I've already knit one whole sock, as well as the leg heel and gussets of the second sock. Was it intentional? I don't know, but there be a good length of black yarn in the middle of my second sock.

This is what the stripe looks like so far. Keep in mind there's still a whole lot of black left.

At least there is the unparalleled joy that reverse stockinette brings me.

Le sigh...

The Line Up

2007-05-09T10:09:00.000-05:00

Alright. we're going to start this blog just as our ancestors did before us. That's right, it's roll call.

First up we have socks

This is a pair of trekking men's size 12 socks in a 5x1 rib pattern. I started these, oh, last August. I think I only knit a round or two every few days. I'm knitting the heel flap on the second sock now. Likely hood of finishing? Strong.

Next we have a scarf:

This is Elsebeth Lavold Angora in a 2x2 rib. If manlier colors ever existed, I want to know about them. In a subtle army green, subdued brown and grey blue stripe, it will work with everything I own. I started this February and I've got about three feet done and four to go. Finishing? In the bag, yo.

Okay, moving along. There is a vest. Yes, I did say vest.

This is the back of the Bob Dobbs vest from Domiknitrix. I'm going the intarsia route because I really didn't want to spend the next seven years of my life doing duplicate stitch. Her instructions on the website for converting the pattern are really helpful. I just happened to find them after I figured it out with a calculator and finished the back. All that's left is the intarsia front and the facings. Odds of finishing this year? It could happen, right?

Last but not least, we have the stole.

What we have here is a lace stole knit in Euroflax sport weight. The pattern is Drooping Elm Leaf from Barbara Walker's Treasury 1. I really love this pattern and the yarn, but there are some downsides to this particular project, or at least my ability to finish this project. I started the stole as a wedding present for a friend who is getting married in about 4 days. I'm 30 hours into the pattern and about a third of the way done. Also, I was sure that 520 yards of yarn would be enough. I was wrong. Very, very wrong. Maybe it'll be done for a one year anniversary gift.

Finally, in other news we have the yarn I can't wait to use.

This is Unikat. It's distributed by skacel and I'm pretty sure it is the best thing that has ever happened to a sheep product. It's a felted single ply and I want to make love to it. Eh, maybe not, but it is super dope.

All in all I think I have a good assortment of stuff to keep me occupied until I cast on for the winter knitting. I'm thinking that having the entire world know what a lazy knitter I am will force me to finish them all a hell of a lot quicker. Otherwise I'm going to have to get a lot better at the art of distraction.
Look! Buddhist kittens!

In the Begining

2007-05-08T23:01:00.000-05:00

There was a boy who desperately wanted to make things. Anything really. He just wasn't any good at anything he tried. In desperation he taught himself to knit. This he could do.
And it was good.