Is Alden Amos good for anything?

A few years ago I borrowed Alden Amos' Big Book of Handspinning from the library, and I was less than impressed. Even if the book had been completely accurate, I would have turned off by the ego, the constant pimping of his products and dissing on others', and also the lavish praise on a seemingly unrelated person's products who if you look it up, you'll learn is his significant other. But the book is NOT completely accurate. It is littered with errors. From telling you to wind spindles off the end (please do not do that. Depending on the yarn you might be OK or you might end up with a horrendous mess, but it is always better to wind off the side), to the directions for measuring WPI that are completely wrong (he says to pack to refusal. No. It's not measured that way. The yarn should be gently laid next to itself, no gaps and no crowding).

However, he does have the only really detailed explanation of how a double-drive wheel's ratios work to produce take-up, so when I ordered a double-drive wheel, and got one of Borders' rare really good coupons that brought the book down to a reasonable cost, I bought myself a copy just for that section. I read it over again, and... it's basically bunk.

The math is perfectly fine, but it only works on paper. He's neglecting major contributors like, say, driveband drag -- which is the single biggest factor in determining take-up once your whorl ratios are set. Adjusting driveband drag is how you set your take-up rate. So the three pages of calculations are basically worthless except as academic interest to set your minimum. He does eventually talk about driveband drag, after many many pages of theoretical babblings. So the whole theoretical thing is basically worthless.

Just like Scotch tension, with double-drive you set your whorls, and then tighten something to adjust your take-up. Double-drive pulls in more gently and adds twist as it does. That's all you need to know.

Then, just to add insult to injury, another huge glaring error. Alden tells you that your driveband MUST cross a certain way on a double-drive wheel, and you must change the crossing to the other direction when you switch between spinning and plying. The only way to change this crossing is to either cut the driveband off and tie on a new one, or take the drive wheel off.

Luckily, I stopped, blinked a few times, and said to myself "There is no way our foremothers were destroying their precious hand-spun drivebands or taking their wheels apart several times a year." So I went elsewhere and looked it up.

You know you switch from spinning to plying on a double-drive wheel? You pedal the other way. That's all. You don't do a damn thing to the driveband.

Honestly, I have never seen another instructional book with so much that's just flat out, disasterously wrong. I'm honestly getting to the point where I wonder if anything in this book is right. I really do think it's more wrong than right, so it is really sad that this book is one of the "spinning bibles" out there. Luckily most people either can't afford it or aren't that interested in the theory, and own better more correct books, because if this had been the most common book for new spinners, the community would spend the next two hundred years undoing the damage that man had done. It absolutely blows my mind.

I was right!

Over the summer, I called bullshit on the old "whatever group that isn't us makes intentional mistakes to show only God is perfect" crap.

Someone kindly directed me to this article, specifically the second on Humility Blocks. End result of research: it is crap!
Amish do not intentionally put a mistake into quilts, and are aghast at the idea that they would or would think they would need to.
I lambasted the idea towards Navajo work last time.
And the article there talks about how experts in Persian rug and that history also believe the Humility Boof to be BS.

So, enough with the racist crap, fellow artisans.

First Ornaments!

Straight off the scroll saw, so not sanded or finished or anything:

Enjoy my geekery

I want to decorate my house for Halloween.

I don't have a lot storage space for decorations after the season this year.

I do have an Internet connection and a buttload of spare paper. Thus, lookit the awesome stuff I found:

This site is the best. LOVE the mechanical bat. Oh, and I think I need to wear a shirt with a pocket on Halloween just so I can have a pocket monster in it.

I think these will be too much work for this year, but they've got some cute things. I like the winged jack-o'-lantern.

These little buggers are cute. I need to put a couple of them together soon.

Spin-In News

Whew. Just got back from the Spin-in. Downtime was not a significant problem. Ooh, let's see...

My gloves won second place in their category! Go me.

I was not insane-impressed with most of the vendors. I didn't come home with any yarn. I did come home with a bunch of roving, because I'm like that. I am a sucker for silk, especially tussah roving and mawata (i.e. silk "hankies"). But I didn't spend nearly the amount of "petty cash" that I took.

I did, however, buy a spinning wheel. Actually, a bit more than that. I bought THE spinning wheel: a Schacht Matchless. I got to try one there, and it was soooo nice. Absolutely lives up to the hype.

I was planning to order a Kromski after this event unless I found a wheel I liked, but I did have in the back of my mind that if I found a Matchless for a good price, I'd go for it. I did, so I did. Got some nice freebies, too. The only down sides are 1) it's an order, not a carry-out, so I'll have to wait a week or two to play with my new toy, and 2) it's a single treadle. Under normal circumstances I slightly prefer a double, but the huge treadle of a Schacht makes it not normal circumstances. Because of the design, I think a single will be just great, and quite a bit cheaper.

So, very soon I will have in my possession a spinning wheel that will do everything I ever ask of it. So of course, then I HAD to buy roving, you see. :)

I think I've gotten enough big toys until after November, though. ^_~

I also tried the Schacht Ladybug. That is also a very nice wheel. It can have a place on my short list, too.

Oh, and I learned microwave dyeing. Given my love of insane-bright varigates, hand-dyeing may be in my future.

I don't have a project?! What do you mean, I don't have a project.

This posts is actually about three posts. And I'm running around trying to get ready for the spin-in/itty bitty fiber festival I'm going to, so it might be disjointed as well.

Lookie what I finished!



They're blocked and everything, but still a tiny skosh damp. At the suggestion of my knitting group, I'm planning to enter them into the "Viewer's Choice" awards at the spin-in tomorrow. Unless I get lost and don't get there in time to enter. Think kind of like a county fair type of competition. Just friendly, the most you stand to win is a ribbon.

It's always amazing to me what is hard or easy to people. One of the ladies at my knitting group brings these amazing lacework shawls and she's just whipping through them while chatting up a storm. I have to be completely alone in relative quiet to handle lace. On the other hand, just about everyone went insane over these little guys and were absolutely amazed (and asking me to teach a class on it). Yet the reason that I brought these is because up until I got to the original colorwork fingers (not used because they were too tight), they were a project I didn't have to pay much attention to.

At least to me, the hardest part about colorwork is learning to knit with your off hand. Once you know that, you're just switching which hand you wrap the yarn with.
However, motif work like this is the one time I wish I was primarily an American knitting instead of continental. For absolute best appearance, for most people and myself included, the background yarn should be knit with the right hand and the motif yarn in the left. Because of the way the yarns lay on the back, the left-hand yarn pops out a tiny bit more. However, I am MUCH faster and more natural wrapping with my left hand. Trying to do all the background with my right would not be all that much fun, not to mention slooooow. And the effect is so subtle that it's literally a subconscious perception; only the most absolute expert would be able to tell which yarn was in which hand looking at the finished pieces. As long as you're consistent, no one will consciously notice.

Anyway, spin-in tomorrow. If I'm entering something, I've got to be there for at least five hours. It's an hour away, so I can't really leave and come back. I've never been to this before, so I don't know if that's a problem or not. There are workshops, but I'm unclear whether the ones I most wanted to take have been cancelled or just aren't on the online schedule for some reason. I've heard the vendors are amazing, though. I'm hoping to stock up on pretty yarn (dude, I need buttloads of fingerweights in bright multi-colored colorways), and if I'm really super-duper lucky maybe I'll even find a spinning wheel -- but I won't hold my breath there.

Nonetheless, being a spin-in, eventually I'm probably going to want to sit down and work on a project. I'll throw a spindle in my bag, but knitting is cool too and keeps me occupied longer. But, I've discovered I don't have a project I can take!

What have I got going right now? Um... two lace things. I can't work on lace and be friendly and social at the same time. (And one's going to be frogged anyway.) I finished my gloves. I haven't started my sweater, and I need to measure, wash, and re-measure the swatch first because I've never used the yarn before and I'm going to basically rewrite the pattern. I guess I'll start something. I was going to start a sweater for an MSD, but that has to be custom fit and I do NOT want to carry a doll around. So I think I'll take the stuff for the nerdly mittens I want.

I have got to just buy a metric buttload of Dale of Norway Baby Ull in black and in white. I'm thinking 5 to 10 skeins of each color. I love the stuff.

Anyway, I need to be getting stuff together for tomorrow, so ja ma!

Options, I still haz dem.

So, I'm working on this pair of gloves:


And ya know what? They're gonna be too small. The hand is OK, if a little tight, but the fingers? Totally not going to happen. It's time I faced that fact.

So, my options:
1) Finish them by the pattern and give them away. :P No! Mine! Mine, mine, mine!
I think that shows what the inner child thinks about that option.
2) Frog the pinkies and turn them into fingerless gloves. I'm thinking do a couple of rounds of ribbing at each finger, and half the colorwork thumb then a couple rounds of ribbing there. That should give me enough width at the fingers, but I don't know if I'll have enough length in the right hand to be comfy.
3) If that doesn't work, tranform them into fingerless mitts. No finger divisions, just a few rounds of ribbing around the top. I'm not huge on fingerless mitts, but if it's the only way these will fit, it's the only way they'll fit.

Fountain Pens

Dear Red Platinum Preppy, If you wanted to be an eyedropper filler, you could have just asked. You did not have to spontaneously split your cartridge and send hot pink ink sloshing all over the inside of the barrel. Nice seal on those threads even without silicone, though. New rule: Noodler's Bulletproof inks only go in cheap, easily replaceable pens. There was so much stuff in my poor pink Cavalier, I think I'm going to run a load of J. Herbin through it to try to redissolve/suspend some of it. Just rinsing wouldn't do it. Sadly, most of my Esterbrooks meet the criteria of of cheap and easily replaceable. Not the Icicle (no way in hell), but right now I've got a plain black SJ with strange shrinkage issues filled with Zhivago (which is actually near bulletproof). Once that's empty, well, I've got a Platinum Preppy that wants to be an eyedropper filler. ;)

Some foot fetishist is going to love me.

I don't usually keep a design notebook, so you all will have to put up with my ramblings instead. (Well, not really, you can always scroll right by me.) Anyway, the socks in progress:



Learning process. First, learned that I really am pale enough to glow in the dark. Lookit my ankle blow the top right off the photo histogram there.

Ahem, anyway. I did an afterthought heel, but next time I think I might use Charlene Schurch's "forethought heel" method instead to avoid ungodly fighting with getting stitches picked up without getting needles tangle while having two balls of yarn hanging off the project. OK, the two balls of yarn part would have been inevitable, but I think the picking up stitches bit would have been easier still. I probably did not start the heel in the right place; next time I'll do the math with the row gauge, conveniently available there on the sole of the sock. Still less frustrating than a short row heel is for me, though. I might also work the heel over closer to 2/3 of the sock stitches instead of 1/2, but that needs some playing around with.

Ignore the gaping hole of death right at the ankle. I know that happened because I didn't pick up a stitch across the end. At that point, I'd literally been fighting with needles for 45 minutes, I couldn't figure out how to nab that stitch in the two-at-a-time method, and I didn't bloody well care anymore anyway. I'll duplicate-stitch that closed later.

I also learned that my ankle is about an inch larger around than the ball of my foot. This is not what designers usually assume; socks are basically designed as a tube with a heel stuck somewhere in the middle. In the future, I'll try to sneak in a few increases between the toe and the heel to compensate for this. It kind of pisses me off on these particular socks, because I thought about doing a chevron pattern on the cuff, but it has an 8-stitch repeat and I was at 60 -- about half an inch off of either interval that would work. Didn't realize I could use those extra four stitches anyway, and now I don't want to rip back. Although there or a little higher up might not be a bad place to switch to the chevron. What do you guys think?

I may have spoiled myself doing my first real pair of socks two-at-a-time, because I don't think I'll ever want to do them one-by-one after this. I think the magic loop method is growing on me, too, which is good. I discovered by accident that two-at-a-time two-circular method won't work with one of the circulars being a 16", so I'd have to buy extra needles for that method that I wouldn't normally otherwise. Ultimately, I am a cheapskate, and magic loop has the advantage that one long circular needle is usually cheaper than two shorter circulars or two sets of DPNs.

Unfortunately, I realized that I may not have needles for the next project I want to do. When I finish these, I'd like to start either another pair of socks, or a pair of mittens, and I don't have a lot of bunch of needles in smaller sizes -- and none other than the one I'm using long and flexible enough for two-at-a-time. If I get lucky I might hit gauge for something on the current needle, but I've got nothing else in the house to try if I don't. So now I'm trying to get up the guts to push the "order" button on a fairly large Knitpicks order to fix that needle deficiency. :P

Heading out to the old frog pond

So, working on these socks with the Red Heart sock yarn to try out the two-at-a-time magic loop technique.

And... I need to frog back a bit. I was a little overzealous with the toe increases. I need that blue part there to be 6 to 8 rows shorter, I think. Guess I'll toss in a life life and go for it.

So, what I think about the technique. Magic loop two-at-a-time I'm not liking so much, because the cord is under my fingers as I knit, especially on the second sock. I'm thinking two circulars might work better, so I may give that a go next time.
The two-at-a-time part had to grow on me, but I think it has. Managing pulling from both the inside and outside isn't as bad as I feared it would be, and it is nice knowing the numbers of rows match without having to count. Not to mention the future when I cast off, and get to be finished instead of having to start all over again.

At least I can haz squid:

Yes, his eyes are uneven. No, I don't really care. I've never been quite thrilled with the way the yarn eyes look on this pattern. I'm thinking next time I make it, maybe I'll go for big wigglely eyes instead.
Was a pretty fun pattern, though. I can see myself making it again.

You know what I hate?

The old "Navajo/Persians/Amish/Islamic Artists/whatever group isn't us always put a mistake in their artwork to show that only God is perfect" BS. It's the definition of glurge, in that something that's supposed to be 'sweet' and 'inspiring' is actually amazingly racist.

1. It's completely out of touch with reality. Example: A Persian rug has a few hundred thousand knots in it. Hell yes there's there's going to be a mistake in it somewhere. There's no need to add a fake mistake.
2. It accuses the other group of amazing ego. They think they could make something perfect and Godlike, so they chose not to.
3. With some groups, it's a major projection of Western Christian belief on others. For example, why would the Navajo feel the need to show only God is perfect? I know little about their religion, but enough to know that they have multiple deities, and perfection is not a requirement. Just the idea itself reflects the Western belief that perfection is desirable and the goal that must be aspired to in any endeavor.
   
4. With some cases, it's disrespectful and denigrating to the actual work. Again with a Navajo example, an odd bead in a piece of beadwork is not necessarily a mistake. Often they are intentionally added to mark some event that happened in the maker's life, which might be minor or major.
5. What group hasn't been accused of this at some time or other?

Suffice to say, every time I hear that troupe, I want to gouge my eyes out with a spoon.

Knitting Fiendery

So, as I think I've remarked, I'm taking an online class on Reversible Cables. Practice projects are scarves. Class started Saturday. Check out this baby:



Three days, four feet of cabled scarfy goodness. And not only is it reversible, it's wonderfully smooshy, too. A little shorter than I usually like my scarves, but out of yarn, so what can I do? The color doesn't look as nice on me as it could anyway, so I might end up giving it away. It still needs to be blocked, which will nicen up the somewhat icky end. That'll have to wait until next weekend, though, because lesson two involves some tips on doing it. And I need to get my hot little hands on some blocking wires, too.

Monogamy Is Overrated.

Project monogamy, that is. Like in knitting and stuff.

Somewhere along the line, the idea spread among knitters that project monogamy is the ideal to be aspired to. I don't know where it started; probably with some Big Name Knitter. I know Wendy Johnson is a monogamous knitter, which certainly helped the propagate this idea even if it started elsewhere.

There's nothing inherently wrong with project monogamy, if it works for you. It does help finish projects sooner. Some people express that as "faster", but that's not really accurate. A knitter might get a small benefit from monogamous knitting if it helps him memorize the pattern, thus spending less time looking at the sheet and more time making stitches. But even that's going to add up to a very small advantage. Nonetheless, if a project takes a month of solid knitting time, you will finish one worked singly sooner than you will finish either of two worked in parallel. But two projects get finished in the same amount of cumulative working time.

However, there are disadvantages for many people in monogamous knitting. A big one: the project slog. Sometimes when you're working on a project, you just get flippin' bored with it. Sometimes you even get to the point where you just don't want to do another stitch on it. Twice this weekend alone I've seen people say that they've been avoiding knitting because they just don't work on their monogamous project. Dude, put it away and cast on something else! This is supposed to be fun. If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong.

I'm coming to embrace my polygamy. On the other hand, I am trying to keep it under control. Right now I've got three project bags. My idea is to have that many going at a time, and not to start another until I've either finished or frogged one of those. I'm not sure three is the optimum number, but it's a starting place. (Right now I've got a scarf for my Reversible Cables class, the Baby Draco sweater I'm so bloody sick of that I just can't work on it much right now, and a lace scarf that turned out harder and slower than expected. I might need a fourth bag for a 'definite no-brainer' project.)

---

Next topic: Maybe I need to rethink my approach to online patterns. Currently I've been bookmarking just about everything I like, and then going back as I have time and saving them to my hard drive in neat formats. That means I've got, according to file count, 183 patterns saved in neat formats, and another 9 or 10 that need some cleaning.

Now, saving patterns isn't a bad idea. The internet is not a permanent media, after all, and the Wayback Machine is far from perfect, especially on anything graphic intensive. But, I'm never going to make all those things. I find myself thinking, if I don't like something enough to put it in my Ravelry queue, or at least on my favorite patterns list, maybe I don't really need to take the time to save it. The odds are good that I will NEVER get to it. And frankly, with the exception of some toys, I think at this point that there are few patterns that I couldn't recreate if I realized that yes, I do absolutely need that after all, and no, it isn't available any more. It's not as easy, granted, but I think for me its doable.
I think I could at least handle cutting down. Of course, this is an invitation for my Ravelry queue to grow out of control, but that's OK. It's fairly easy to manage.

Yay, Dobby socks!

Here, in all its unblocked glory, is the sockmark.



And the photo even came out all Slytherin-y this time. It'll be a bit better behaved once it's blocked (sometime this weekend), but is very cute in person nonetheless. I don't plan to do this pattern again unless I get some wood or bamboo glove needles, though, and even then it's unlikely. LOTSA work in that little guy.

It's time for me to accept that I'm just evil.

(I shouldn't use that subject line the same day I do a religious rant. Ah well.)

I decided to try making a Dobby-style sockmark, which is a bookmark with miniature socks at the ends. Guess what colors I used.

Slytherin. (That's green on there. Really. Stupid indoor lighting.)

The baby Draco sweater's coming along.

Slytherin again.

On the planned list is a Weasley Sweater Cell Phone cozy. Only I don't care for the Gryffindor theme, so when I make it with a "K", what color scheme will it be in?
Slytherin.

Of course, I had to get worsted weight yarn for that, and I'll only need a little. And I also need two colors of worsted yarn for the squid I'm going to make, and there's no sense being wasteful, so what color scheme will my squid have?
Slytherin.

OK, I like the idea of the Slytherin squid. But I still think it's time for me to just accept that I'm evil.
Actually, I'm not evil  I'm ambitious and clever. :)

Actually, if you went by personality, I'd be a solid Ravenclaw. But bronze does not look good on redheads with classic Celt coloring. (And I thought the change to silver in the movies was a cop out.) Likewise, red and gold is right out, and yellow-black not much better. But green, green I can wear. Green I look fabulous in. Green and gold is better, but silver'll work OK.

That little sockmark thing is far more evil than you'd ever guess. Ignore it's size; that bugger has a LOT of stitches on tiny needles. The thing is an absolute hand-killer, too. I don't know if it's because I'm using metal needles, or because there's so much extra needle compared to the stitches on each, or the low number of stitches that doesn't give me a lot of working room to begin with, or what, but it'll make you stiff fast. This little guy is a good reason to practice project polygamy, so when your fingers can't take him anymore, you switch to something with bigger needles you can actually get a grip on.

I am also sooo sick of working on the baby Draco sweater. No more baby shower knits unless it's for someone I know well and really like, or it's quick socks or a bib or something. I've got one more sleeve, and two rounds of stockinette stitch on the body bottom. Then I'm going to neaten up the color joins on the side and do a border of two garter stitch ridge along the fronts and around the collar, then return to the bottom and do a similar garter stitch border there. The ideal thing would be to do the bottom and sides at the same time, but I don't have a circular needle that long, and I don't care about this project enough to go buy one. I'd like to just leave the side of the fronts as they are, but they look very unfinished in person. I think the garter stitch border will be a big improvement if I can figure out the right number of stitches to pick up for it.

Zealots ruin everything.

During my last chain store visit, I was frustrated to discover that prayer shawls are going the way of the WWJD bracelet: something that had good meaning and intention when it was limited to a small group who believed in it, moved into yet another brainwashing technique, and is now on its way to becoming meaningless commercial fluff.

I suppose first I should specify that I'm talking about Christian prayer shawls, not to be confused with the Jewish Tallit or any other article of religious clothing. A Christian prayer shawl is given to someone during a time of hardship. The very original seed of the idea was a wonderful one. The idea was to mindfully knit a comforting items for a (preferably specific) person in a difficult time in their lives, keeping them in mind while working. It was to be a very spiritual, meditative practice, basically a physical manifestation of a prayer.

Well, it went wrong almost as soon as it started with The Prayer Shawl Ministry. Yes, I am aware that I'm saying the people who first codified the idea are doing it wrong. You know why? 'Cause they're doing it wrong. As soon as just about anything becomes a 'ministry', it becomes a failure at its original purpose. Why? Because the focus is no longer about helping people in need; it's about 'spreading the word of Jesus'. Only last I checked, the 'word of Jesus' was about loving and helping people. If you stop concentrating on loving and helping people in favor of talking about it, you've failed. It's a terribly tragic spiral. People are the message, and if you've put aside the people in favor of the message, you've put aside the real message.

In the case of the Prayer Shawl Ministry itself, almost immediately the focus was no longer the people in need, but rather the shawls. Prayer Shawls became yet another way for churches to get face time, and giving aid to people in pain was a convenient side effect. Many makers are not mindful, but rather crank them out, just thinking or praying for the recipient "when they come to mind" as one maker put it on Ravelry. Some churches keep a stock of them back to hand out whenever they're 'needed', which can be anything from a tragic accident to a birthday gift. It doesn't matter who gets them; it only matters who from what organization makes them. So, basically the original idea is in the toilet.

Naturally, Lion Brand yarn is very happy to help you with your Prayer Shawl. They recommend Lion Homespun. Interestingly enough, it seems that most prayer shawls are made out of Homespun. So much for grass-roots and non-profit.

Suffice to say, I'm pretty disgusted, both in how this particular idea was corrupted into a propaganda scheme, and how that seems inevitable with anything spiritual in modern American Christianity.

Well, baby Slytherins have to wear something, don't they?

There is a very good reason why I'm knitting a baby sweater in Slytherin colors. When stash yarns will work for a project I want to do, I should use them, right? Efficient resource usage and environmental friendliness and all that. These were the were two coordinating baby yarns in my stash that I did not have earmarked for another project, and I don't think I have quite enough of the green to make the baby sweater I've been wanting to try in a solid color.
It's a very cute color combination, the bright green with the "thought about being white but it seemed like a lot of work, so I went with this" grey.


The grey is a little blow out, maybe, and the green is really a bit more subdued, but I think this gives you an idea. I can see little baby Draco wearing something like this (when it's done, of course) -- except it'd probably be professionally knit out of unicorn hair or something. Bet baby Sirius got subjected to one, and it's left him bitter ever since. ^_~

We just bought a new camera, and if I may say so, it totally rocks. It was actually able to get this picture, no color correction needed, in the crappy lighting in my room.

I zoomed in to the eye white to get a sample to color correct, and found the color was already correct. And no blurring even thought it was hand-held in my bedroom's crappy lighting.

The hat there is another FO, btw. It's dollfie-sized by coincidence, though. It's actually a cap for premature babies. I wanted to play with how I held and tensioned my yarn, and it's a pretty quick and yet utilitarian project. And one I basically have the pattern memorized for; I just have to look up measurements. On this one I did a tubular cast-off with the "proper" four set-up rounds, and I don't like the effect the set-up rounds had. Probably none of you noticed until I said something, but it tightens up and there's a bit of a ridge there. You can see it especially right in the middle of Nick's forehead. Someday when I've got some of these together, I'll see which of the local hospitals takes them and drop them off. Or mail them somewhere if no one local does. Or maybe there'll be another event like Caps to the Capital.

I love my cat Angelina, but she really tries my patience. I caught her chewing on the wrist strap of the brand new, not even a week old camera -- which she had hauled off my desk for the purpose. And then later she went for the transfer cord. I'm not having a good day to begin with, so this did not help in the least. (Any day that starts with a fasting blood draw is not going to be a good one.) It also reminded me why we never put on the wrist straps, so I took it off again. I feel bad that the lady at the camera store spent so much time and trouble trying to get it on. :(

Darn it, I'm going to have to practice what I preach.

I once again tried swatching for the Fiber Trends Felted Clog pattern, and I once again completely failed to make gauge. My unfelted gauge on the suggested needles are right where the felted gauge is supposed to be. This is positively bewildering to me, because I usually knit more loosely than patterns call for. It's also very annoying, because there's not a lot of larger needles sizes for me to try.

I'm starting at a 13. I own a pair of 19s, and I have absolutely no idea why. Probably for this pattern, because otherwise I do NOT do 'big needle' knits. But, I flat out refuse to use those things. They're evil, and the points are stupidly long, and I won't do it, no I wont. You can't make me, you can't make me.

The next biggest size I own are 15s, which are only 1mm larger than the 13s (because US sizes are stupid); that is not going to get me what I need. My odds of finding 17s are not good. Clover doesn't make them that size, so it's unlikely any of the big-box brands do, either. Unless they're in plastic, and I am not buying plastic needles that I will never use again. Actually, the 'will never use again' is why I won't order 17s, either; that and the $29 the two pairs (24" and 16") would set me back.

So what I will be doing, nonnegotiably, is using the 15s from my interchangeable set for this. Which means to match the sizing I can either try it with three strands, or follow my own advice for figuring out what size to actually knit when your gauge is off. Although of COURSE this pattern has to NOT give finished sizes. :P
I should have enough yarn to use three strands if I need to, though. (At least in theory; I bought an extra ball of each.)

I suppose I'll go ahead and do swatches with both of those options, throw everything into the washer to felt it, and see which fabric I like better. But not tonight. I'm tired of dealing with the evil pattern tonight. (And I haven't even started knitting on the clogs themselves!)

Things That Bug Me (Knitting Edition)

Well, not all knitting, but they're knitting triggered.

1. DOC is a lousy file format for sharing. People who use it, please go look up the word 'proprietary' in the dictionary, kthnx. Microsoft Word, you have to pay for. And it's an expensive SOB, too. Yes, there are other programs out there that will open that format, but Microsoft doesn't like to admit it for starters, and depending on the respective versions, sometimes it doesn't work well. PDF is also a proprietary format, but the viewer is free. (And you can make them for free, too, with CutePDF. Not even any ads. It's easy; you'll like it.) RTF and HTML are both non-proprietary formats.
   OK, funny story. One of my coworkers needed something that would print to PDF, so I told him to call up the corporate help desk and ask for it to be installed under one of our corporate licenses. He thought for sure I was putting him on. "You're setting me up, aren't you? They're going to laugh and ask what I'm talking about when I ask for a program called CutePDF, right?"
2. People who have their head up their ass about intellectual property, please at least learn what is copyrightable and what is patentable, and what each entails.
3. Enough with the five bagillion patterns for fingerless gloves! I'll allow a few exceptions for actual design-element driven patterns, but most of y'all aren't fooling anyone. You're just doing "sleeve with thumbhole" fingerless gloves because you're scared of fingers. Don't be! They're easy! And frankly, 99% of fingerless gloves are more effective with little finger cuffs just a little short of the first knuckle. Maximum warmth, much better fit, and still leaves your fingertips with maximum dexterity.
4. With rare exceptions, Snap.com previews are not cool; they're terribly terribly annoying. Look, if I wanted them, I could install the end-user add-on. If your blog provider turns them on automatically (LiveJournal, I'm snarling at you), turn them off. If you put them on yourself, don't!
5. Elizabeth Zimmerman was not a deity. If you like her, that's cool. But she is not the end-all and be-all of knitting, she's not infallibly correct, and are some of y'all actually reading what she wrote, or are you skimming over what you wanted her to write? Because I don't think she said what you think she said.
   
6. The current knitting fashion of strongly shaped sweaters. It seems every time I find a sweater pattern I like, especially tanks and tees, the designer is bragging about how they "aggressively decrease at the waist." Um... My body does not aggressively decrease at the waist. And I'm so short-waisted that even if it did, their waist shaping would probably be at the point of my hip.
7. When I hit the "Publish Post" instead of "Save As Draft" button. Oops. Um, post away!
   

Flickr is owned by Yahoo, isn't it?

*scrolls down* Yup, Yahoo. I went to go make a Flickr account, only to discover myself automatically logged in. And since Yahoo is the only place I've used the name Fyrejinnayah, I figured they must be the same company. It's actually very rare for the name Jinnayah to be taken when I sign up somewhere. I guess it is a pretty obscure word, and not the usual English spelling besides. (OK, this is funny. Throw Jinnayah into a Google search, and pages by or about me make up 6 of the first 10 returns.)

Ironically, the reason I even wanted a Flickr account is for an entirely different site. I finally got my invite to Ravelry, and wanted to start loading up some projects. Particularly, I want to prove that I actually do make things and not just talk about it. Admittedly, I probably research and talk about more than I actually do, but I do do! See, proof, right here:


OK, so Da Bunny helped a little. She's actually on top of the second slipper. I've been doing them more or less at the same time (a section on one, then same section on the other) to ensure I don't have radically different gauges between them. I'm not terribly far off from finishing them; just need to finish turning the heel, and put ribbing around the top. Of course, it would help if I were actually knitting on them right now instead of setting up my Ravelry account and writing this blog post, wouldn't it?

I'm cute, though. :)

It is really time to get a new digital camera. Actually, it's probably past time. I'm thinking about maybe one of Fuji's FinePix line, but I'm not sure. I want a compact digital with a fast response time and good low-light performance, because most of my pictures are taken indoors under nighttime lighting. I don't like that, but there it sits, and it's not changing any time soon. I'm thinking maybe this weekend of going to the local camera store and asking for a recommendation.

Knitting Tip For The Only-Slightly Math Phobic

Don't fear math in knitting. Math is your friend. And I'm not even going to ask you to do anything hard like algebra or calculus, and I'll only ask you to do it once per project.

I'm going to say something blasphemous, but you have to wait for the but afterwards. Ya ready?

Blasphemy: That gauge on a pattern? That's just a suggestion.
BUT.
You need to know how to take that suggestion.

And yes, you do have to make a gauge swatch in order to take that suggestion. Maybe several. I'm not helping you weasel out of that now. ^_~

I've seen so many people tear their hair out because either they can't quite hit a pattern's gauge, or they decided they were close enough and weren't happy with the results when they actually knit it. This doesn't have to happen, if you just know how to do a tiny bit of mathematical finessing figure out what's going to happen, and how (sometimes if) you can work around that using the pattern as it's written, if it's a multi-size pattern.

Let's take for an example, you want to make Knitty's "Banff" (which I will probably always try to say 'Bamf', X-men fan that I was.) The gauge on that is 14 stitches per 4 inches. But, the yarn you want to use is TERRIBLE at the gauge when you made your swatch. It's like armor, it'll never work. So, try again until you get a fabric you like, and measure that gauge. Let's say, so I'll get some dramatic numbers here, that it comes to 12 stitches per four inches instead. And you want to make the large one.

Well, if you follow the pattern for the large one, your finished sweater is not going to be the 57 inches it was designed at. It's going to be a whopping 66 1/2".

What butt did I pull that number out of? Actually, it's pretty easy. Take the measurement, 57". Multiply it by the pattern gauge, 14. Yes, I know that's 14 per 4 inches, but you can ignore the "4 inches" for now (and I'll explain why in a minute). So, 57 x 14 = 798. This number doesn't actually equate to anything in real life, but it's an important step. Now, take that number, and divide by your gauge. In this case, that's 798/12, which equals 66.5".

To summarize, to figure out the actual size a garment is going to be, take the pattern's finished measurement, multiply it by the pattern gauge, and divide it by your guage.
(Pattern's finished measurement) * (pattern gauge)/(your gauge).

The reason you didn't have to worry about the "4 inches" is because both your gauge and the original are done over the same distance. They cancel out, so you can ignore them. Now, if the original was 4 inches, and you only measured yours over 3, then when you did the math, the gauges would have been (14/4) and (12/3).

If you're slightly math phobic, do it the easy way. Take both gauges over the same distance.

Anyway, back to the example. You don't want a 67" sweater, you want a 57" one. Is there another size you can knit to get what you want? Well, let's find out. (And, um, let's pretend there's more than one alternative there. ^_^;)

What to do? Just flip the gauges. In other words, take the size you want to make, multiply it by your gauge, and divide by the pattern gauge. So, take 57", multiply by 12, and divide by 14. That comes to 48.9". The Banff sweater doesn't have a 49" size, but it does have a 50" one. Would that be close enough?

Let's find out again! Do the first part again; use your gauge to figure out how big the sweater would actually be if you knit the smaller instructions with your gauge. Take 50", multiply it by 14 (the original gauge), and divide by 12 (your gauge). That's about 58 1/3". Now, take out a tape measure, put it around yourself, and see if you would be happy if your sweater was 58" instead of 57". With something this bulky, I imagine the answer is yes. But if it isn't, at least you don't have to knit the whole sweater to find it out. You've already done so without knitting a stitch.

So, to summarize again. You know what gauge you want to knit at (your gauge, of course).
To figure out what size THEIR pattern will actually be, multiple the supposed finished size by THEIR gauge, and then divide by yours.
To figure out what pattern size YOU should knit to get what you actually want, multiply the desired finished size by YOUR gauge, and then divide by theirs.

OK, let's take another example. Say you want to knit Knitty's Thermal in the 32" size, which has an itty bitty gauge for a people sweater. But, you're knitting just a skosh smaller. Instead of the 28 stitches per 4 inches it calls for, you're getting 28.5. You're thinking that half stitch won't matter, but everyone on the forum says it will. Will it really?
Let's find out! Take 32", multiply by their 28 stitches, and divide by your 28.5. That ends up with an actual finished size of 31.4". Decide if that's acceptable or not.

For the sake of argument, let's say that if this sweater is any smaller than 32", you're going to pop right out of the darn thing. So, what size would you need to knit to avoid spronging boobage? Take 32" (your minimum size), multiply by 28.5, and divide by 28. That gets 32.6 inches. Since you already know 32 is going to have you embarrassing yourself, you'll have to go up to 34". Which, if you repeat the math, will be 33.4 on you.

By the way, notice how this half stitch actually isn't making THAT much of a difference? In this case, it's half an inch all around, on a sweater made in a very elastic fabric. If I may say so, 'exact gauge' is kind of a bogyman. A half stitch off is not necessarily going to immediately equate to a sweater that would either be big on Goliath or stretch on a Barbie doll. So when someone tries to tell you "oh noes, your gauge will change if you get stressed or unstressed or if the humidity changes or with the moon phase, and if you don't measure it constantly and it shifts a tiny bit your project will be ruined, and the world will end!" Please blow them a big raspberry and go back to your knitting. Unless you're seeing wild changes in gauge, your base is probably going to be close enough. And if you are seeing wild changes in gauge, that's probably going to bother you well before the sizing does.

And now you know how to predict just how much that will affect you, and how to figure out what size to switch to get what you want.

This is supposed to be a professional?

Magknits, a free online knitting magazine, has vanished with no notice at all except for a message from the editor that was posted in its place. Seriously, I was just there yesterday or the day before, and everything looked fine. Now the editor is throwing in the towel -- and apparently throwing out the baby with the bathwater too, while she's in a pitching mood.

A couple of points that particularly bewilder me:
"However, MagKnits has always been a huge investment in terms of time and effort and to date hasn't actually paid me any kind of salary."

... Did she actually expect to make money off a free e-zine? Has anyone ever pulled that off? I mean, Knitty's probably about the most successful one out there in the knitting community, and I always got the impression that the main benefit there was exposure for the personnel and it just kinda broke even. (Not that I have any idea for sure, but...) Furthermore, Knitty is quarterly; Magknits was, IIRC, monthly -- making it all the more difficult and expensive. And I'm afraid MagKnits was never as polished as Knitty. It just didn't look like a really professional endeavor; it came across more as a very dedicated fan effort. Honestly, I never realized it was supposed to be a serious business venture.

Seriously, so was there any sort of business plan involved before going into this? Market research? Anything like that?

Next: 'Someone made a comment about us earlier in the week that we would be stupid to run a business that didn't pay us a salary, this made us sit back and think "Yes, you're right. We would be stupid to carry on giving so much and getting little in return.'
Earlier in the week? Dude, it's flippin' Tuesday! Talk about snap decisions! Just toss away 4 years of work (including other people's work) on a whim like that? If I take her at her word, I can't think highly of that.

What's worst, though, is the complete lack of warning. According to the notice, if I read it right, this all happened today. You know, if I were one of the designers who contributed to the April issue, I'd be pretty upset. A pattern is a lot of work, to have it go up for a week and then vanish on one person's whim.

I gotta say, too, this can't reflect well on her print magazine, Yarn Forward. I mean, knowing that she has a history of flaking on a moment's notice on one magazine (albeit a free virtual one), I wouldn't be terribly inclined to subscribe to that if I were in her market. What if she suddenly decides Yarn Forward isn't worth the effort, either? Bye bye subscription fee, I suppose. And honestly, the web design of the Yarn Forward site doesn't instill a lot of confidence (nor has the magazine itself when I've seen it at B&N, which often gets British craft magazines.) The poor image resizing, the lack of sample content, the errata links that "will be available week beginning 7th April" (ma'am, I think you forgot one or more words there) that aren't yet active... What's really stylish is that the "free patterns" link still leads to Magknits. Except for one, the Cloud Bolero -- with all the images broken.

Maybe I'm just being harsh from the surprise and annoyance, but if Magknits was supposed to be a professional endeavor, and if Yarn Forward is still supposed to be one... Well, it isn't coming across to me as professional at all.

Sometimes other people embarrass me.

Have you ever read something so stupid that you are embarrassed for the writer, even though you don't know them?
I've been getting that every time I see an article by Grace Hutton on Fiber Femmes. Every time she has one, she sounds like a flaming moron. Her articles are poorly researched, poorly thought out rants.
Take Predator Friendly -- Not Me. There are organizations out there that encourage livestock owners not to kill naturally occurring predators. There are areas with a near-natural wildlife balance where this is practical. She doesn't live in one; she apparently lives in an area where the black bear population is greater than the natural wildlife can support. Fine, predator-friendly livestock management is not a viable option for her. There's nothing wrong with that. But no, she has to go off on how the very concept is stupid, and makes herself look like a complete moron in the process. Some representative, but non-exhaustive examples:

1. She complains that yearly elk calf survival in Yellowstone is 14 calves per 100 elk cows, and obviously this horrible number must be because of predators.
1. Problem: Wild elk have an average lifespan of 10 to 13 years, which means the sustainable replacement rate is 7 to 10 elk per 100. So, depending on the number of males in that population and the adult lifespan for same, that could very well be a sustainable number.
2. Problem: Predation is not the only cause of death. There's also disease (sometimes transmitted, interestingly enough, by livestock), human hunting/poaching, lack of correct food, and so on.
2. She says that the Pennsylvania Game Commission advised her to bait her electric fence with bacon so that bears will learn this is not a place they want to be, and then states "Bear baiting and dog fights are regarded to be cruelty of the worst sort."
1. Hold on, so she's in Pennsylvania. Then what in the world does Yellowstone, a completely different ecosystem 1500 miles away, have to do with her situation?
2. 'Bear baiting' was the practice of using a bear as bait for dogs, not of baiting the bear. The term is sometimes used for a hunting practice of leaving bait for a bear until it has established a pattern of taking it, and then waiting for the bear to show up and shoot it. It has nothing to do with developing a negative association in the bear against your property.
3. She attempts to redefine predator to include parasites, so she can then dismiss the idea of predatory-friendly as ludicrous because it protects parasites. *eye roll*
4. And at the end of the article, we have a nice little appeal to tradition. Killing predators was good enough for her ancestors, dammit, so it's good enough for her, and anyone who "ignores the lessons of history" must be a moron. Ma'am, I'd like to point out that one of the lessons of that exact same history and those very same ancestors is that if you eliminate the natural prey sources and provide an alternative one, you're going to have closer encounters with predators, while at the same time if you eliminate all of the predators you're going to have a terrible time with destructive, unchecked prey animals.

That was bad enough, but then I looked through some of the archives at the site, and found an article that made me want to curl up and whine, and then take her hand and say "Honey, you're making a complete ass of yourself. "'Ethical' Issues with Wool".

The very first sentence: "Lately what is making me so mad my hair is about to catch on fire is the notion that there are “ethical” issues with using wool."

The article argues that there are absolutely no ethical issues with wool. That's ludicrous! I've previously ripped PETA a new one for their misrepresentation of the issues, but going to the other extreme is just as insane and irresponsible. Again, let's take some key, but non-exhaustive, points from this article.

1. "Most of the plant and man-made fibers require some powerful chemicals to dye them pretty colors. Wool on the other hand can be dyed permanently with food safe colors - - think Kool Aid and Easter egg dyes plus diluted vinegar." This one's my favorite.
   
1. Yes, you heard it here. There were absolutely positively NO dyed cotton or linen ever before the invention of industrial aniline dyes in 1856. Except, um, there were. Even today some of our cotton jeans are dyed with indigo. Plant fibers can be dyed very well with natural dyes and safe mordants.
2. Food safe dyes on wool do not produce results that most people would call "permanent". They are infamously fragile and prone to fading, not to mention generally starting in very pastel shades.
2. She brings in the cattle industry, and then denies that existence of factory farms that never pasture their cows. Not only is that delusional, it's not even remotely topical. Last I checked, cows don't produce wool.
3. Because short-tailed sheep exist and there is an "ethnic market" (her term) that desires uncastrated lambs, the issues of tail docking and castration without anesthesia simply do not exist. She's not arguing that they aren't as cruel as they seem to an uninformed outsider; she's saying that because it is not an issue in all cases, it is not an issue in any case.

Every industry and every fiber has ethical issues. Cotton is usually raised with massive amounts of pesticides and fertilizers. Even organic cotton requires massive amounts of water, which is not a problem in some areas but could be in others. Hemp is illegal to grow in the U.S. Synthetics produce pollution. Corn can use genetically modified plants, with the issues that come with them. Soy fibers are a biproduct of a food industry that pumps them into foods as cheap filler with no regard for the long-term health effects of the extra plant estrogens. Cashmere can be made finer by underfeeding the goat from which it comes and there are currently huge problems with overgrazing causing widespread desertification. Sheep can be treated poorly, their waste can be managed poorly, or wool can be imported from countries with serious human rights violations. Any and all fibers can be harvested or produced and processed with dangerous chemicals, and by child labor, political prisoners, or underpaid workers.

It's up to each individual to determine what the ethical issues are with each fibers, and which best align with their values. Thus for some people acrylic is preferable to leather ethically, and for others the reverse is true. By all means address and, if possible, correct the ethical concerns with your own fiber of choice. But pretending that those simply don't exist is flat-out delusional.

Bwa ha! I know what let's do!

This requires backstory.

A while back, I found a pattern for The Harry Potter Dark Mark Bag. I'm not huge on most knit bags, however. If you don't line them with fabric (a procedure which I suspect would suck) or felt them, they tend to stretch badly when used.

So, I thought maybe I'd make a sweater for myself with that design instead. Maybe a tank or at least a shell.

The problem: I couldn't find a pattern I liked to put it on. I want wide straps, a fairly high neck (for room for the emblem), and minimal waist shaping, and haven't had luck finding one. Furthermore, the time the search took got me wondering, do I really want to do this?
1) As is typical for me, I'm a much bigger fan of the series' potential than I am of the actual execution. In fact, I think the actual series taken as a whole is made of botch -- it is beyond made of fail.
2) Let's not forget what that thing actually stands for. It's basically a magical swastika.

So, I was about to put the idea aside, and it hit me. I can make it for him:

One of my dolls, Lord Mandali, whose character is a child vampire, one of the vampire lords of New Orleans, and a bit of an HP geek. (The snake's name is Nagini.) With any luck, I can find some fingering or lace weight yarn in black and green, and knit him up a sweater. A pattern is no problem: I've got both Knitting from the Top and Knitting in the Old Way. And believe it or not, a plain stockinette stitch sweater is really easy. I've done it (doll size) before.

That's one of the things I love about knitting. It can be so logical and mathematical if you want it to be. Sewing requires careful, in the cloth tweaking. Knitting you can map out on paper and get good results.

So I took the measurements, and... Oh, this isn't quite going to work. The Dark Mark motif is 40 stitches across, and I only have about 2 inches of room in which to work. 20 stitches per inch, that's beyond lace weight and into miniature territory. Out of curiosity, I pulled out a commercial sweater of far finer yarn than I would ever use singly for stockinette stitch and measured it, and it was 16 stitches per inch. No, not going to happen as is, so I can either find a different Dark Mark to chart smaller, or reduce this one, or abandon the project.

Long story short, I reduced the graph by hand so that it was half sized, 20 stitches wide instead of 40, and it ended up not looking too bad. That should be doable. I'm thinking of getting some Knitpicks Shadow Lace yarn in Midnight and Juniper, and at that price maybe a ball of Lost Lake just in case the Juniper doesn't have enough contrast. I'd like to smack someone for that gauge, though. "Gauge: Laceweight." Thanks so much! That can be anything under 8 stitches an inch, from my needed 10 down to 50, or even more insanity-tempting numbers. Judging from the weight compared to Baby Ull, which Lord Mandali already has a Slytherin scarf of, I'm afraid it may be too thin. But I KNOW the fingering weights are too large, and either doubling the yarn or knitting looser will look better than trying to cram too many stitches on. Although since it'll be a while before I place an order, I may try to do a swatch with the Baby Ull to see if I can get where I need to be without ending up with something like cardboard. That was nice stuff to work with.

What I'd like to do, at least academically, is make out a list of projects I plan to do, go through the stash to see what can be done with yarn I already have, and then for the rest of it do a big yarn order somewhere with swatching balls for each project. Then after I've swatched stuff, I can do another order for the actual project, and no risk of having a huge project's worth of yarn that turned out to be inappropriate.

I'd prefer to buy yarn from a local yarn store, of course. Unfortunately, we don't exactly have one. The nearest is a 20 minute drive away by major highway, and it's a bit on the small and limited side -- although I will grant that the staff is very friendly. I went there during my last knitting go to get yarn for the Fiber Trends Felted Clog pattern, and ended up having to settle because I just couldn't find a feltable color combination I liked. One of the yarns is now being used to make a pair of psuedo-ballet slippers, because I absolutely could NOT make the gauge on those. I just couldn't get big enough.
I'd like to try again, only this time get plenty of extra yarn, enough that I could work with an extra strand if I needed to.

You know, I need to get over my fear of felting. Maybe I'll whip up a mouse for the kitties and felt that. I'd like to try this handdone method, because I am REALLY iffy about felting in our washing machine. It's rather old, and I don't want the risk of wrecking it with wool fluff. And I'd feel bad about using so much water for a small item.
So, that sounds like a plan. I'll nit up a kitty toy with the feltable wool I'm not using for the ballet slippers, pop down to Lowe's for a 5-gallon bucket and an unused plunger, give hand felting a try, get incredibly frustrated, and then using a pillowcase in the washing machine will look MUCH more reasonable. :) [And frankly, I've wanted a 5-gallon bucket around the house, and an extra plunger won't hurt.]
Next time we're at a department store, I ought to see if I can find a zippered pillowcase, or a very fine mesh lingerie bag -- the one we already have is too widely spaced for safe machine felting. They're cheap; it wouldn't hurt to have one around.

OK, I've babbled enough. I think I'm actually going to go do something now.

Men's Crafts versus Women's Crafts

OK, first off, apologies for the title. Naturally there's no such thing as a "man's" craft or a "woman's" craft. I don't know of a single craft done with the use of a penis, and you could probably use a dildo if there was. Likewise female genitalia is not used in any craft I can think of. So properly speaking, the title should be "Predominately men's crafts versus predominately women's crafts." But that's not as pithy and doesn't fit in the subject line as well. And certainly doesn't let me share the mental image of penile and vaginal craft projects.

Anyway, what I'm actually hear to talk about are attitudes towards intellectual property rights in scroll sawing and wood carving (traditionally male-dominated crafts) and knitting, crocheting, and sewing (traditionally female-oriented crafts). For some reason, women seem to be a LOT more stingy about the IPRs. You would be hard pressed to find a modern fiber craft book that does not have a "patterns may be made for personal use only" disclaimer in the front. I've seen ones that try to put limits on how many copies you can make for yourself to mark up as you work -- copies no one else ever even sees.

On the other hand, you pop open a scroll saw book or magazine, and there's good odds that there's advice on how to sell what you've made from the patterns. (For example, Scroll Saw Scandinavian has a nice little section on how best to display the items it's giving you patterns for.) Not to say I've never seen the complaint about someone making money off of a designer's work. I did once, from someone who walked into a Hallmark store and saw hundreds of lasercut ornaments made with his pattern and without a license.

Ladies, what are we doing here? They're worried about mass production; we're worried about a church raffle. Why is this?

I know it's not that the men's crafts are harder or slower. I've been knitting and crocheting since I was a kid, but give me a choice of making a coaster with an elaborate design with yarn or on the scroll-saw, and I'll be down making some sawdust. It's so much faster.

Are men more secure in their IPs? I'll be the first to admit that men's crafts are more respected; it's much rarer for a woodworker to be told "you know, you can buy one of those" compared to a yarn artist. The hypothetical coasters: I strongly suspect the scroll-sawed one will get more wow's than the yarn.

I don't think the men's crafts have a larger customer base, and I'm quite certain that's not the cause in any event. In the 1980s, when knitting was a terribly niche market, many American patterns had a limited license (allowance to make 100 items/year for sale, or for 'pin money', or some other non-mass-production commercial use OK).

Is it related to the way women are taught to hate each other and view each other as competition? This is the one I always suspect, although I wouldn't try to say whether it's an effect or part of a cause. Is it really that horrible for your work to help another woman ease her financial burden? It's insanely rare for a crafter to be in direct competition with the designer selling the finished article, and the sort of person who would buy the pattern is not the sort to buy the finished article. (Otherwise we wouldn't be in this knitting thing; it's faster and cheaper to buy sweaters from the store.) So why not let other women sell what they've made?

I'd really like to see women's crafts open sharing back up. I mean, isn't it cool to think that the thing you designed has helped pay for another woman's car, or a meal, or a doctor's visit? Or even just a couple of balls of yarn? Designers don't have to close it off to individuals in order to prevent mass manufacturing. Heck, you will almost never see me suggest this, but grab a Creative Commons license. Instead of worrying about small losses, let's think about the big helps we can provide.

I hate the nonword "unvent"

"Unvent" is an amazingly annoying knitting thing started by Elizabeth Zimmerman.

Now, I personally despise Elizabeth Zimmerman's writings. I find her unforgivably arrogant, and amazingly ignorant on some topics. The "grandmother of knitting" didn't know why wool felts, OK? (And the math on the Pi shawl is wrong, and I hate to break it to people, but laymen think the Baby Surprise Jacket is UGLY. I did a poll; only knitters think it's cool. And I don't care what gift recipients say to your face; there is a little thing called 'politeness' still in effect in most areas.)

One of Ms. Zimmerman's false modesties was the word "unvent". You see, she never invented anything, because surely someone somewhere in history had done it before. But she'd never seen it, so she "unvented" it.

I hate this pseudo-word, and I especially hate that I'm seeing it so commonly used on so many innovative knitting blogs, like TECHknitting. Why do I hate it? Because it robs women of self-respect, and appreciation (not to mention credit) for their innovations. It doesn't matter even if someone 600 years ago in the backwaters of Germany figured this out and never shared it. You figured it out now, on your own, in a vacuum, when no one else in recorded history has. Take credit. Have a little respect for yourself. Put the modesty aside, and have some pride in what you've shared with the world.

Dammit dammit dammit dammit DAMMIT!

Lumpy, misshapen baby sweater. I now know WHY it's lumpy and misshapen. It's missing a few hundred stitches.

You take a pattern that has you start with two segments of W stitches and 6 small segments, and increase at markers every 2 out of 3 rows until "there [are] two times W stitches in the largest segment and W stitches in the others", you'd think that one of those W segments just stays vertical and the other gets increased, right? You would if you were me, and you would right now be titling a blog post with a string of mild curses. No, that should be "two times W stitches in the largest segments", plural. I'm missing two important wedges of fabric. And without those wedges I have a very nice... blob. And absolutely no way viable way to repair it short of taking it all the way to the frog pond* and starting completely over. Or calling it modern art, but I don't think anyone would fall for it.
*smolders*

I am not having a good week.

Well, I can finish one of the other two knit projects I had started, or I can restart this one the easy, better looking (for this pattern) way, or I can start swatching for a baby kimono pattern I wanted to try. Options 1 and 3 are looking best. I need some time to decide how much of this yarn I want to try to reuse.

*For my non-knitting readers, "frogging" is slang for unraveling a chunk of knitting, and "going to the frog pond" means unraveling a LOT of fabric, often an entire project. Why frogging? Because you "rip-it, rip-it." Hey, I didn't make it up; I just infect other people with it.

We now enter the 'I hate it' phase of the project.

So, the baby sweater I was knitting. I got it ready to stitch up seams, and...
Ew. This doesn't look like I thought it would. It's lumpy and misshapen at the moment. And on top of that, there's an easy version and a hard version of this pattern. I did the harder version thinking it would look better. Now that it's put together, I see the easy version actually would have looked better. And on top of that, the color changes I thought were going on the side back are actually on the right front. ^_^; (I think they'll look OK once I get the ends work in, but... OOPS!)
And it's ginormous. I think my baby sweater may actually be a toddler sweater. ^_^;

Oh well, I'm SURE it will look better once it's seamed, edgings are knit on, and it's blocked. In any event, there's nowhere to go but forward, because I will NOT have knit several thousand stitches for nothing.

Maybe I'll hold off on those socks for a while, though.

Dear Knitting Drawer

It's no use hiding them from me. I know, for a fact, that I have a 5-needle set of US4 Crystal Palace bamboo double-pointed needles, because I drove all the way to our not-terribly-local yarn store specifically to buy them and a matching circular for this bizarre baby sweater. So you might as well cough 'em up.

You know what makes me sad? Casein is too brittle to make circular needles. Actually, let's get more basic than that. It makes me sad that casein is brittle, period. I've had the tips of double-points break in my bag. That's sad. I love casein needles. But I love working on circular needles FAR more than straights, so I only get to use casein on small projects (suitable for 8 inch straights or all on double-points.)

When I can't get those, bamboo's a good second. Wood's nice, too, but the small sizes feel more brittle. And Bunny (Angelina, one of my cats) has eaten wooden needles before. Of course, last night..

OK, last night, I finish up the knitting on the body of the baby sweater, get it taken off the needles. Needles are on the arm of the couch, all my stitch markers on the side table, and a fountain pen is on the notebook on the couch beside me. I leave the room for FIVE MINUTES, and when I come back, Bunny and Keiko (another cat) are playing with my needles in the kitchen, all my stitch markers are on the living room carpet, and my fountain pen is behind the couch! Don't think I don't know who's responsible for that, Demon-Klepto-Bunny!

She didn't chew on the needles, though. She was still busy playing with the cord.
She tries to eat the casein needles, too. Although being made of a milk protein, I guess that's to be expected.

P.S. I did find my bamboo double points. They were, interestingly enough, in my nicer double-point case. (Yes, I have two double-point cases. Maybe more.)

P.S.S. Yes, I really do have a knitting drawer. Well, there's some crochet stuff in there, too. And some Kumihimo stuff I haven't tried for want of a real braiding stand.

OK, where can I steal a baby?

I'm getting back into the knitting thing, and I'm one row away from finishing the body of a baby sweater I had started during the last go. I'm going to have a metric buttload of the yarn left over, so I thought it'd be cute to make a matching pair of socks and maybe mitts. (There should already be a hat running around here -- that's how I did my gauge swatch -- but I think I might have lost it.)

The thing is, the yarn is already set, and I don't like torturing it to match a pre-existing pattern gauge. This may sound geeky or pretentious or just plain weird, but I actually somewhat dislike row-by-row patterns for just that reason. Sometimes you need them, when there's complex shaping or patterning or just plain fiddly stuff. But I'm looking for basic toe-up socks here. Hell, I know how to make socks (well, know where to look it up), but I need to know how big a baby's foot is. I've got some baby feetie jammies running around, I guess I can use those, but I'm afraid I'll end up with huge socks that way since feetie jammies are looser. I wonder if I can find a size chart with length and circumference somewhere.

...

Nope, best I found find was a pattern that gave both for one size, and a chart of foot lengths. :P Damn, babies have big feet.
See, this is why I need to borrow a baby for a minute. Actually, I wish an actual life-sized baby doll was sold at toy prices (rather than collector prices), because that would be perfect for this stuff. Maybe I should try making Runo's baby doll sometime. That just seems like an awful lot of work, though.

Oh well, if I make them too big, the kid will grow into them eventually, right?

[And no, I can't just borrow the baby I'm making this stuff for, because it's baby shower and charity stuff.]

Now, mittens. That might be harder to find a size for. (But admit it, the bunny mittens here are cute!)

Kati-chan done good.

Pens arrived today! The pink Cavelier is nice. Except it has a squeezey converter, and I hate squeeze fillers. The bar seems pretty substantial, though, some maybe it'll be OK.

The Tucky, though. Sa-weet! It is carmine, but beautifully bright and clear, and the transparent section is just about PERFECT. I'm eager to get it restored; I think it'll be a great little pen. I'd definitely prefer to go the Fountainbel (less invasive) restoration method with this little guy. Alas, we've already got four pens with Dillo between Laura and I, so I should probably wait until we get those back and I can try Regulus Black's pen, which will be repaired with that method. (What Regulus was doing with a women's pen, I don't know, but I'm not willing to ask too hard. ^_~ Maybe he likes a bit of a breeze about his pen cap. *<:^) )

*does the Happy Djinn dance*

Buttloads of pen-related toys arrived today. I had orders to both Pendemonium and Pear Tree, and they both came in. I've now quadrupled my supply of bottled Waterman ink (from 1 bottle to 4), which is nice because I like to use Waterman for a pen's first fill and I don't like to have the same color going in more than one pen at once. I like to change which color I write my story in each day so I can tell what I did when. Not that I really have a deep need to know what I did when, but it's nice to be able to.
And a nice bottle of Magenta from Rohrer & Klingner, which I'll probably load up one of my Kulturs with and try tonight.
And a couple of insanely fine Platinum Preppies and a fountain pen ink fed rollerball. I'm hoping one of those will be able to pwn the cheap paper we use at work.

Most importantly, though, my new customized nib from Pendemonium arrived, and that's what's got me doing the happy dance! Yes! THIS is what I tried to order from Binder almost two months ago now. Now, I haven't done a full day's story writing with it and won't get to until tomorrow or Friday, but just testing it out, it feels so smooth! There may be a little less variation than the Binder nib, but it's also usable. And as an extra perk, it cost $40 as opposed to $70.
I'll give an updated opinion in a few days after I've put it through its paces.

Oh, BTW, the Falcon arrived... Monday. It's not quite what I expected. I knew it wouldn't be a highly flexible nib, but I expected it to feel somewhat like a sweet little BCHR I have. That little guy doesn't have any line variation to speak of, but the nib is rather springy, maybe even spongy. The Falcon right out of the box felt rather stiff. However, that seems to be loosening up a little as I use it. The fine nib is also VERY fine. At the same time, though, I don't want to go up to a medium because it would be almost twice as large according to Mottishaw's page, and that would be too big. It is very smooth, though.
Overall opinion: Well, I'm not sure what to say about it, except I find that I keep wanting to go back and use it some more. :)

Yay! I'm getting a Namiki Falcon!

I know I talked about it for a while, but this morning I went and ordered it. World Lux is having a 1-day sale in honor of Feb 29; everything is 15% off their list price. Their price for the Falcon is usually $135, which is not the best but not bad either for it. With the discount, that brings it down to just under $115, hands down the cheapest I've ever seen retail on one. So I went for it. On top of that, some sort of glitch seems to have given me free shipping. ^_^ Even if that gets corrected I'll still be getting it for less than $125 shipped, good price. If the free shipping stands, it'll be a great price! Kati's starting the day great. :)

Oh no. "Snap"? Pens aren't supposed to go "Snap".

And yet snap it did. Last time we were at an antique mall, I picked up a Cub Scout fountain pen. Yeah, Boy Scouts. Sac felt good, so I filled it up with obscenely bright pink ink and tried it out for a while. Nib actually isn't that great. Folded tipping. It feels pretty smooth, and it has a nifty stub effect, but the ink flow isn't so good. Well, got sick of it, decided to empty out the last three drops (I counted) of ink left and rinse it out. While doing that, the sac didn't seem to be re-inflating as quickly as it should, so I thought I should maybe resac it after all. Only, I tried to take the section off, and that bugger is NOT coming. Heat didn't do it, section pliers didn't budge it, and I didn't want to risk breaking it because I plan to resell this pen. (Or, if no one will pay the price I want, keep filling it with painfully girly colors. :) )

So, I decided to just finish rinsing it out, and warn potential buyers that it may need a resac soon. Only as I was filling, "Snap!" The J-bar broke! Right in the pen! Just snapped right under the lever while I was filling it! The thing is, it doesn't look rusted or anything. I do hope it's not a design flaw. It does seem like the lever might be longer than it should be.
...
Although, if the sac is going bad, it may have hardened more near the nipple, where I can't feel it. Maybe the J-bar's end was getting held up there, and so the sac was pushing it down into a bow shape.

I may actually send this one out for professional repair. When I get my vacuum filler back from Binder, I was going to send it to Dillo, so I'm thinking I'll send this along. He'll have more experience with really stuck sections, and he can adjust the nib while it's there, too.
Of course, if I'm going to do that, I'm half tempted to send along a nicer nib if I have one the right size, and have him put it in. ^_~

Oh yeah, Jinnayah's gettin' herself a new nib.

...
Doesn't quite have a ring to it, does it?
My 0.5 mm cursive italic nib from Binder sucks. Bad. It's rough. And since the writing sample included with it (this time, grr) suggests that Binder thinks this is acceptable quality, I'm not inclined to send it back to him AGAIN to get it fixed. Actually, as soon as I get the pen written out of ink, I'm just going to sell it. There are people out there who like a lot of feedback from their nibs; I'm just not one of them. At all. So, this is what the penultimate nibmeister can do, huh? I am unimpressed.

(I am also unimpressed that I'm STILL trying to get the Taccia sorted out, too. It's been in his workshop for a week without so much as a peep beyond 'it's here', so I finally gave up, wrote again, and asked for an update. You know what? I had three items in that order, and they messed up every one of them.)

But ya know what? I learned that Pendemonium does custom nib grinding. Well, I knew that, but it took me a while to figure out how to arrange it. Best of all, the nib grinding fee is only $15. Hell, I'll bite for that. Can't do much worse than Binder did, for less than a third of the grinding cost, and if it's better, I'll (finally) have a nice 0.5 mm cursive italic for $40 -- much better than the $70 the current POS cost.

(I'm resentful about the quality level of my expensive custom nib. Does it show? ^_~)

In any event, at worst I'll end up with another data point on what a fine cursive italic should feel like when writing. Of course, if I don't like Pendemonium's either, I may give Deb Kinney a try. I'd give Mottishaw a go, but I don't know that he'll work on the steel M200 nibs, and I don't want to either pay for gold or wait 6 months to get through his queue with a pen of my own.

While I was ordering from Pendemonium, I was a bad girl and got a bottle of Rohrer and Klingner ink in magenta. Sight unseen except for the monitor swatch, since Pear Tree doesn't carry this brand. Here's hoping I like it. (Like I've ever met a magenta I didn't like. ^_~) And a few other things, but that's the big one, and the one I feel guilty about.

Sadly, I crunched the numbers, and we won't be able to go to the Chicago Pen show this year. But, assuming I'm still on the pen thing, I'm wanting to drive up to Pendemonium and test drive a Namiki Vanishing Point. They fascinate me, but the way I hold my pens and the way they've placed their clips may not get along. I'd like to try one in person. If I like it, I'll get myself one. It not, I'm thinking a Sailor Sapporo. (I don't know if Pendemonium carries those. But I'm sure they'll have something I want.)

Let's talk ink

OK, it's more "let's listen to me rant about inks".

First, international short cartridges: Whose stupid idea were these things? I bet it was someone in marketing. "Hey, let's find out the smallest amount of ink a pen user will tolerate having available in a fill, and build pens around that! And then we can sell lots and lots of carts because they're so bloody small!"
Seriously, one of those things would probably hold maybe a day or two of ink for me. What a pain in the hinder.
____
Next...
You know, I want to support privately owned American businesses. But I'm ready to make an exception for Noodler's. I'm starting to feel towards Nathan Tardiff about like Tolkien. I'm not really thrilled with his work to start with, but his fans push me right over the edge.

What are my problems with Noodler's?
1) He mistakes quantity for quality.
a) Most of his inks are over-saturated, in the scientific sense. There is so much pigment that the ink base cannot hold it, and it falls out of solution. This leads to poor performance and clogging problems in pens. On paper, it causes slow dry times and smearing after dry. Let me really stress this: the excessive amount of pigment is a serious detriment to the performance of the ink. And yet if you point this out and suggest that he'd be better to balance with amount of pigment with the amount of carrier, he pulls out his favorite straw man. You see, if you don't like his overly saturated inks, you must "desire a weak ink akin to food coloring". That is a direct, word for word quote. Yes, you want his ink or you want diluted food coloring. There's nothing in between.
b) His ink bottles are often full to the point where it's hard to open them the first time. Of course, I'm sure if you pointed this out, he'd mock you for wanting less product. No, I don't want less ink; I want more bottle.
2) He puts his conservative politics in your face. Now, I do generally try to buy blue from corporations where I can, but privately-owned businesses, I'm not going to judge on the owner's politics unless he makes it an issue. Nathan does. From his "Iraqi Indigo" ink to the kerfluffle he purposely stirred up with his "would anyone call me a racist if I named an ink 'Heart of Darkness'?" thread to removing the mL measurements from his bottles because he's pissed about European regulations, he keeps forcing his political views into nonpolitical items, and often mocking the opposite side.
3) He's recently taken to answering complaints about product quality with whining about his business financials. Look, Nathan, your financially viable return rate has absolutely no bearing on whether one of your inks will instantly stain modern pens or not.
4) And in general, a constant attitude of victimhood whenever addressing the community, combined with a clear "I cannot possibly make mistakes, so the error must be yours. It's not my inks that's the problem; it's your use of them" or the pen company or whoever else is convenient and not him.
5) Questionable "tests" to show the superiority of his inks. The most famous is his pH test using aluminum foil -- a material not used in pens due to its reactivity with ink ingredients in general. But the only that really pushed me over was his "freeze" test with a bottle of water. He says it froze to the point of breaking the bottle in less than 80 minutes at 22F (-5.5C). There's only one way that would happen: he filled the bottle ALL the way to the top. No one with any sense, and no good ink company, would do that.

Now, let me share two specific examples which have led me to the "throw up my hands and give up" stage.
First, Nathan recently released a new ink called Baystate Blue, an eye-seeringly bright blue. This ink instantly stained the section of a brand new pen. In the time it took to dip the pen, fill it, and wipe it off, the pen was permanently, irreparably stained. Ammonia wouldn't take it off. Bleach wouldn't take it off. It ain't coming off. Someone later tried it on acrylic pen blanks (for lathe workers) and found the same result. This ink permanently stains the materials many pens are made of. What were Nathan's responses to this?
First post:
1) He quickly pulled out his favorite straw man again, the "if you don't want my ink, you want food coloring in water" one.
b) started whining about low profit margin, high taxes, European regulations, and return rates. What this has to do about the staining characteristics of this particular ink is anyone's guess.
c) threatened to pull Baystate from the market if return rates exceeded 3%. This caused a run on the ink. (IMHO, the people who bit are now getting what they deserve, as it's being widely discovered that the ink is also so prone to feathering as to be largely useless, and that if you really love the color, you're better off with a blue Sharpie marker.)
d) claim that this behavior should be expected because it is a "vintage style ink". And because it is labeled as such, anyone who didn't expect pen staining doesn't know what vintage inks were really like and the fault is thus theirs.

Vintage style ink. *nose wiggle* Well, I'm sure it was an interesting experiment, but I don't think the world really wanted the return of Superchrome 51. :P
(That's a terribly geeky joke. Superchrome 51 was a Parker ink that destroyed pens. When it was released, it would literally eat any pen except for one that was specifically designed for it, the Parker 51, and even those didn't do wonderfully with it.)
What a load of bullshit! My pen box is filled with cheap vintage users -- pens that were used and abused with impunity every day of their lives until they were thrown in a drawer with a full load of ink and left with it there for 40 years or more. Let's go and find one that was stained by real vintage inks, shall we?
Let's see... Um... Hmm. I don't see a lot of stains. What about that green tip dip I gave Laura? No, they came off with water. Red Esterbrook? Nope, came off with Simichrome, and good old pen cleaner probably would have done it if we'd had some.
OK, how about visulated sections? They're supposed to be terribly prone to staining. Surely one of THOSE has been stained by a vintage ink. Um... Nope. I can line up half a dozen Touchdowns of various models, including one I've just been working on that I've been soaking for DAYS to get all the old ink residue out of, and every one of them is perfectly clear, maybe ambered with age but not an ink stain in sight.
Vintage inks did not stain pens when used properly.

Nathan also likes to keep repeating what a "small" company Noodler's is. I question how useful that statement is regarding a company that sold product on five continents until just recently, and still sells on four.

Some of his fans took his statements and ran with them, basically boiling them down to "ink stains, duh."
Not only is this rude, it's not true. Actually, most fountain pen inks do NOT stain permanently. Many can be washed right out of paper and other fibers. This is also, perhaps moreso, true with vintage inks, as I was inadvertently forced to prove this morning. (While standing on carpet, do not play with the newly restored filler of a pen you've been soaking to get ink residue out of. But, the 50-year-old ink came right out with a little water. ^_^;)

So, Nathan's second response:
a) ink stains. Duh.
b) Oh, poor me, living in a lawsuit happy country. (That's, um... where did that even come from? And lawsuit-happiness is FAR overstated from truth in the U.S.)
c) Threats to completely drop a retailer who did not want to keep carrying Baystate Blue due to its risks.
d) Blame the plastics that the pen is made from, because obviously the problem must be with the pen since it can't handle his vintage-style ink. (Besides my counter-argument above, I'd also like to point out that LOTS of people use vintage inks -- actual 50-year-old inks -- in their modern pens without problems.)

Suffice to say, I lost a lot of respect for Nathan for the way he handled this. And then, the final straw: Polar Bear Inks.
Polar bear inks were originally formulated to be liquid at temperatures down to -114F. Thus, they performed best at -20F, and started to suck above 30F. Now, obviously this is going to have a very niche market -- people running cold room tests, working outside in arctic conditions, and... that's about it. Not realizing its odd temperature range, people bought it, had poor results at room temperature, and returned it at a rate higher than his 3% threshold (as he again likes to remind people of in his explanation.)
Nathan whines that he had a four-panel informational explaining this and telling how to mix it for better properties, and retailers didn't like it. Dumbass. Proper labelling, if I may say so? "For temperatures from -100F to 30F. Will not work at room temperature." None of this four-page shit. Short, simple, to the point, no confusion.
But, that's beyond Nathan, So he reformulated the ink so that it's usable at higher temps. To do this, it partially freezes but is still usable at 22F. Colder temperatures, like those found in a normal kitchen freezer, will freeze it solid.
Small problem. Nathan apparently neglected to inform some key people about this change. Many retailers still advertise it as being good to -120F. Absolutely everyone who wrote in on FPN was shocked when a member's bottle froze solid in his kitchen freezer, and several advised him that he must have gotten a bad bottle* and should contact Nathan.

*Any time there's a problem with Noodler's ink, the immediate Cult of Noodler's knee-jerk is "oh, you must have gotten a bad bottle." It's an anomaly, it must be. If they were right, it still wouldn't be a positive, because Nathan would have such a high fail rate that I'd wonder if he had any QC at all.

You know, I see an ethical problem here. Nathan HAD to know when he formulated the original that it would be a very niche market. I don't have a problem with him discontinuing that, or with developing a more mass-market friendly "chilly weather" ink. But I have a serious problem with him using the same name and not informing retailers or buyers that the formula was VASTLY different. May I suggest that perhaps he would have been better with a "Polar Bear" niche ink labeled as I stated above, and a second "Penguin" or "Husky" ink for the less extreme temperatures?