A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Finally, I finished my purple socks. The yarn is a variegated that made strips when knit. I didn’t know that when I started as the swatch in the yarn shop wasn’t striped. So, nice surprise, since the pattern is a plain jane just knit’em one. The best kind of knitting when one’s brain is not working on all thrusters.

Besides, I figured it’s about time to post an update on my knitting and fiber. I’ve been working on finishing things. So far since the start of the year, I’ve finished a sweater, these socks, and have about half another sweater done. I’ll post a picture of the work in progress soon.

I bought sock yarn at Maryland Sheep and Wool and have been itching to get a new pair on the needles but decided to finish some of what I’d already started. Currently, that’s another pair of socks in a heavier yarn, the sweater (of cotton yarn for summer wear), and a sweater I started last year of acrylic.

It’s been raining for days with bits of scattered sunshine so the purple yarn made me happy and the knitting was very simple so it was a way to relax and imagine flowers and sunshine. Today, I walked through all the puddles to the mailbox. I haven’t done that in a while and found myself really tired when I reached the mailbox. Of course, suspecting that I’d be wiped with so little exertion, I’d had Paul call me when he was a few minutes out so I could ride the rest of the way back with him. The mailbox is quite a hike from the house (a quarter mile–a breeze of a walk most days for me).

Got a lot done today because I had a lot of little things to do. I keep saying that I’ll do the little things as soon as they come up in email, but somehow I end up with an In Box full of small tasks to do. At least when you get them done, you feel like you accomplished something–in this case reducing the messages in my In Box by down to a third of what it was. Yeah, me! I take my successes where I can. Now it’s off to read for a while and to sleep…perchance to dream…unless insomnia bops me over the head again.

I’m rather proud of myself in finishing this sweater. It’s not just that I finished it. It’s that for the very first time, I’m made a sweater from scratch with no pattern. I had a book on top-down sweaters and that told me that I had to increase every row or if not every row then when I did I had to do the equivalent number of increases for the total of the rows that I’d done. I swatched and swatched and still had a few problems.

I used the swatch and measurements to decide just how many stitches to cast on and then once I got about an inch found out it was way to big. Frogged. Reduced the number of stitches by a third and started again. It looked like it was going to be all right until I did the join under the arms and tried it on and found the neck was too loose again. What the heck, I decided I’d pick up stitches around the neck after I finished and knit up an inch or inch and a half — that’s what I did this weekend.

So, I finally finished the neck and wove in the few ends there were and tried it on. It may not look like much to you but it’s a real accomplishment to me. My first sweater that’s from my mind — to yarn — to finish. It’s rather exciting. I did a happy dance and glowed a bit after it was done.

Of course, now that the temps are in the 80s and above, I won’t be wearing it much until fall. It was in the 60s and rainy outside all day. We walked down to the road to get the paper between downpours. But, with the furnace out of it, it was 80 in the house. We kept the sliding doors open with just the screen to let fresh (cooler) air in and the living room was fine. Of course, we had to close it when the rain sheeted at a slant. The rain also meant we didn’t get to do any of the yard work we had planned for today.

Since we couldn’t work outside, we moved some basement boxes and got ready for some major clean up. I dug out a sweater project I had on the needles last spring for a short cotton cardigan. I finished the back and half of one front so guess that’s now on the top of the to-be-finished list. I’m on a roll in the finishing knit projects. I’ve got to make a list of all the things on my needles and figure out a way to get them done.

Maryland Sheep and Wool is the first weekend May and I intend to have a few of these lingering projects finished and a list of projects I want to do so I can have a bit of organization to my wandering the booths. Who am I kidding? I don’t know. I’ll have a great time just breathing in the wool fumes and patting the fiber.

I was at a meeting a week or so ago and a friend mentioned that they’re doing a fund raising party for cancer and calling it Liver for Boobs. Raising money for breast cancer research is something that I’m committed to since I was diagnosed with breast cancer six years ago. While mine was found very early and I just had a lumpectomy, my mother and my uncle both had to have mastectomies. So, before I knew what I was doing, my mouth opened and I said, “I can knit you a boob or two and maybe a liver for your event.”

Then I get home and the panic sets in. What was I thinking. A quick search found a pattern for a boob but it couldn’t be sold, only made for personal use — wasn’t sure whether fund raisers counted so gave it a pass (Yes, I know I should have checked but I was under a deadline here). I looked at the photo and decided it couldn’t be that difficult, after all I’ve got two of my own to build a design on. In the past, I’ve done several circular objects: hats, tea cozies, bowls (felted), so the basics should be the same. I ended up making two different ones, each in one piece using the top down sweater increase only knitting one row and decreasing 6 stitches or increasing 6 stitches in the next round depending on whether I was knitting up to the fold or decreasing down to the forward tip. (In the first you can see I tried increasing and decreasing on each row but I didn’t like the swirl that it made so on the second I did the increase and decrease ever other row and then spaced them randomly to get smoother look.

For the liver I found a pattern, which for some reason (probably the migraine I had the day I made it) I totally misread the pattern and did it back and forth instead of in the round. Because of that it was in garter stitch so then I had to keep it that way when I did figure out it should be in the round. But by then it was a lot of short rows so I could cope with keeping the garter stitch with an occasional stockinette row popping up here and there. Figure we’ll explain that the liver is from too much drinking to raise money — moderation in all things, etc., etc., and so forth. It’s not much of a liver, but that’s my fault — but it was for a good cause and if I ever knit another one, I’ll try to time it for a non-migraine/headache day — though duress does make for some interesting and weird results.  Someday I figure I might make a liver using the pattern as written to see what it would really look like — this one is only an approximation of a liver — if you squint.

So, I finished my promised boobs and the liver so they could have visuals at the party. Hopefully, they’ll have fun and raise money for a good cause. It was the least I could do since I don’t drink. But I must say, I never expected to knit body parts — but it was fun.

I was lucky enough to attend the book event at Borders in the Annapolis Maryland mall and hear Stephanie Pearl-McPhee speak about life, knitting, and some of the things she’s learned. It was an entertaining talk. I’d bought the book at the event and brought it home to read.

The book is small (about 6.3 inches by 4.2 inches) and fits in a purse for quick moments of reading just about anywhere you’re stuck waiting. There’s an introduction and 45 things learned with a few lists interspersed. So, it’s a perfect book for short breaks as most of the ‘things’ are on average about three pages. It took me a while to read because I chose to read it in short spurts reading 1 or 2 or 3 things at a time.

If you’ve read the Yarn Harlot’s blog you have a good idea of her writing style. It’s simple and down to earth, witty, humorous, and often slyly thought provoking. I say slyly thought provoking because she often says she writes knitting humor and she does. But, what she doesn’t stress is that her writing is humorous because it based in the knitting culture and in society in general. The introduction talks about attention and filter theories in science and psychology and how they apply to knitters. Often knitters take a lot of flack for knitting items that could be purchased cheaper elsewhere or for wasting time (usually said by someone just sitting and doing nothing). Stephanie Pearl-McPhee uses science and common sense to refute some of those charges and to prove to knitters that not only are they taking part in an activity that brings them joy but that also keeps their brains active and engaged, produces usable products (mittens, sweaters, socks, scarfs, and so on), and teaches them new things about life and the world everyday.

She has short essays on lesson learned such as: “Patience is a Virtue”. Knitters, she writes, aren’t knitters because they are patient but patient because they knit. Basically, on observation, she believes that if you took a knitters knitting away when they are in a situation that requires patience, such as waiting in a doctor’s office, the knitter would shortly be climbing the walls. I can certainly agree with this lesson since I find knitting is superior to picking lint out of the air, pacing, or “gasp” staring at the walls wondering if I could climb one.

Another lesson is Practice Makes Perfect. Knitting is an activity that is done over and over again. It’s basically of two stitches — knit and purl — and with these two stitches you can make socks, sweaters, mittens, and so on. The more you knit the better at it you get. It’s a simple concept, but with knitting it is easily seen by an individual. Of course, the book explains this lesson in a much more humorous and illustrative manner. A knitter who wouldn’t dream of do-overs for many of life’s mistakes will with no prompting unravel and reknit something over and over again until they get it right. This ‘practice’ can transfer and allow knitters to keep trying when things get difficult because with knitting eventually you’ll succeed. In life that doesn’t always happen but some people never learn to try, try again — they give up. Knitters persevere.

If you are a knitter, you’ll enjoy the book for those flashes of recognition of your own behavior or the behavior of other knitters that you know. You’ll also find that after the laughter, when you remember and think about all the lessons learned, that this is not just knitting humor, this is a litany of what knitters know and what they should recognize about themselves and their craft. They are persistent, meditative, creative, good at math, thoughtful, generous, and caring. If you’re not a knitter, but know some or hope to be one someday, reading this book to give you an idea of the sorts of things that are involved in knitting. It’s not just a craft but as with any art — a way of life that can profoundly effect how you look at the world.

Highly recommended.

I read the Yarn Harlot blog, which is written by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. She also writes books on knitting humor and I’ve enjoyed her writing since, I don’t know when — I guess since she was on the Knitlist and posted short items there. She’s always seemed to be to be a person who thinks a lot about life, the universe, and everything, and finds the absurd and the joyful in it.

So, when the tour for her new book was listed and I checked and saw that she’d be giving a talk at Borders at the Annapolis, Maryland mall, I marked my calendar and waited patiently. Last night was the night. I figured they’d be a crowd but my husband worked late and we only got there thirty minutes before the event started. We purchased the books and got signing number 173. One of the women there said that she’d heard that when the phone calls confirming the event started to come in Borders realized that they’d better do numbers for the signing. Since I was 173 and more than a few came in after I did there was a large crowd.

The crowd filled practically all of the space available on the second floor of the bookstore. But the wait was pleasant as we all oogled each others knitting projects and shared tips and hints on various patterns and yarns. There was a pretty good mix of young, old, and all in between as well as a mix of sexes and racial backgrounds. In other words the usual non-demographically defined crowd of knitters.

The talk was very interesting. First, she spoke more on the inability of anyone to define knitters as in ending the phrase, “Knitters are ____” with a word or phrase that would work for every knitter. She then went on to talk about how knitting and its repetitive nature allows us to enter a theta state that is good for reducing stress, giving us access to our creative side, and many other good side effects. Some of this information on brain wave states was from a study done with Buddhist Monks before, during, and after mediation. The researchers specifically mentioned knitting as a way to achieve this theta state but also stated that it was unreasonable to expect people to carry around emergency knitting in order to reduce stress. This got a big laugh from the audience as most of us had brought our knitting with us to avoid the stress of waiting for the event to begin.

As you can see, I managed to get my copy of my book signed and a photo of Stephanie and myself holding each other’s sock-in-progress. I can’t believe she was still friendly and approachable after signing for nearly three hours.

If you get a chance to go to a talk by Stephanie, make the effort, it’s well worth it. I’m certainly glad we went. It was a great evening with wonderful people — they were all knitters — what more can be said.

What better way to celebrate the Monday blues than with a blue rose. Got to thinking about blue roses in a round about way and found science has managed to create a true blue rose. Last year sometime there was a big thing about rainbow colored roses — horribly expensive and they looked more like melted crayons in all the pictures or that scene in What Dreams May Come when the Robin Williams character is in the painted landscape and the colors are being smeared as he walks through.

Today was a cool blue day. Did the minimum on the PC that I had to do. Then I curled up and read all day (with of course a break to make the traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner). Finished reading Murder is Binding by Lorna Barrett (the review will be in Gumshoe Review for the April issue). Then I started another mystery, Poison Pen by Sheila Lowe, also for the April issue. It was really nice to just sit with a warm afghan and coffee and read. I think I’m coming down with a cold or something because it was just so hard to move today to start anything — maybe I’m still trying to gather spoons.

I did manage to search some of my stash areas and find a spare bobbin for my Majacraft Rose. Now all I have to find is my Lazy Kate and I can ply my singles and finish the blue yarn I’ve been spinning up. The thing is I’ve been spinning and spinning and I’ve now got 3 bobbins full and there’s just as much wool in the basket as there was when I started. Honest, it sure looks that way anyway. I think it’s breeding in there — the problem is I’m now getting sick of all these shades of blue. However, next I have a lot of white wool that I plan to spin and then dye. Now I’m wondering if I should dye and then spin. What do you think?

In between all the other things I’ve been doing lately, I’ve been working on these socks. I turned the heel last night. I was going to knit plain until one inch from top but just switched to 2×2 ribbing since I want to make them a bit higher and I hope the ribbing will help them stay up.

But, alas I’m not a one project kind of person so I have a pair of traveler socks in the bedroom that I’ve done the top pattern and just started the second pattern. The pattern is by Nancy Bush in her book, Knitting on the Road. I’ve made a couple of pair of socks from this books and I just love the simple clear directions.

I’ve also finished the body of my sweater I was working on. Now I just have to pick up for the sleeves and knit down to the wrist. No finishing required since it’s top down and I used an i-cord for the bottom. Hopefully, that one will show up here in the blog with a week or two. Depends on my knitting time. I’ve about finished the follow up to all the zines going live — now it’s gearing up for the 1st of April — and that means lots of reading time. I found one of my book holders and I bought a weighted bookmark so I’m going to try reading and knitting (at least the plain knitting).

I’ve spun up a bobbin of wool/angora mix that I bought a few years ago. I’m not caring for the color as much as I did when I bought it but it spins up nice. I’m hoping to get a cardigan from it when I’m done. It’s sort of scratchy so I’m thinking outer garment not next to the skin.

Lots of plan. Little time. But full of joy at the thought that soon spring will be here.

And if you laugh at that, you’re probably tired-er than I am. It’s been really hectic the last couple of days and I really needed a break. I think I mentioned a while back that my favorite kicking around the house sweater is falling apart after years and years of faithful service. So, I bought yarn and decided that I wanted to learn to do a top down sweater. I got all my books out and decided to do a full yoke but I wanted it to be loose so I could wear it comfortably with turtlenecks and shirts.

So, I did a gauge swatch, measured it, then calculated how many stitches I’d need for to get the neck size I wanted (I measured that with a cloth measuring tape). I cast on the stitches and started with my knit 2, purl 2 border. Well lets just say as with my usual experience with gauge that it could have fit me and several of my close friends. So, back to the frog pond with it. Since it’s a fuzzy boucle-type yarn, I lost some of it in trying to rip it out.

Now that I got the obligatory lying scumbag of a gauge swatch out of the way, I eye-balled the stitches as I added them on giving care to remember that once I knit a few rows they’d loosen up a bit. Looks like I’m on my way. I’ve got 10 rows of K2P2 ribbing and then increased 20 stitiches, then I’ve been increasing 20 stitches every 6th row since. Now I’ve got to figure out the depth of the yoke.

I may decide I’m getting the hang of this flying by the seat of my pants knitting. Guess this will be my knitting challenge this year to just try out different things and not be afraid to fail. Knitting as a metaphor for life I guess. I’m writing down the directions as I go and hope to have them available when I finish this — then I’ll post as a pdf. If anyone’s done a full yoke top-down sweater and has some sage advice/helpful tips, believe me I’m all ears (or eyes in the case of reading off screen).