Household Opera

Lacemaking as metaphor

Adamas shawl in progress
Originally uploaded by amndw2

This is a shot of my in-progress Sci-Fi Shawl, which is finally starting to look like the pattern. It occurred to me, as I started it, that lacemaking ought to be a metaphor for something: you start off with no idea what you're doing, it all looks completely chaotic and makes no sense, and you can't see how it's going to get from the first few random-looking stitches to the finished object it's supposed to be. And you keep checking what you're doing because you're sure you're screwing it up somehow or other. But as it progresses, it starts to make more sense, and then there comes a point where the pattern becomes clear and you understand how it works. And eventually (I'm not there yet), you understand it well enough to adapt the pattern, or improvise, or design something of your own.

It's not a metaphor for life, because life is too random and haphazard. But it's not a bad metaphor for adjusting to a new job, or learning to work in an unfamiliar art form, or (supply your own analogy).

Also? It took me well into the second chart in the pattern to figure out which end was up. Literally.

Knitting projects update: The sci-fi shawl

So I've had this lovely, slightly iridescent Blue Heron Rayon Flake yarn (in more or less this colorway) in my yarn stash for ages and ages, always planning to make a shawl out of it, but never getting very far with my plans for it. That's just changed, for two reasons: regular knitting time with fellow knitters at Conn College, and Ravelry, with its huge and easily searchable database of excellent patterns. The result: my next big, ambitious project, the Sci-Fi Shawl.

Okay, it's not all that science-fictional. But the pattern I've chosen involves a chevron-esque lace pattern that looks sleeker and rather more futuristic than your average lace — an effect that I think the colors of the yarn will enhance. And then there's the name: the Adamas Shawl. It's really named after the Greek word for "diamond," on account of the repeating diamond shape. But I keep wanting to read it as "Adama's Shawl," and trying to picture Admiral Adama wearing it, and snorting to myself at the incongruity. And yet the design wouldn't be out of place on an episode of Battlestar Galactica. Hence my unofficial name for the shawl.

The only drawback to this project is that it's too complicated a pattern to work on while actually watching BSG when it returns in April. But I'm psyched, all the same. Expect pictures if I make any kind of regular progress.

Hey fellow knitters...

...is anyone else doing world wide knit in public day?

I'm planning to go to the one in Rittenhouse Square, if it's a nice day, with either the Sweater That's Almost Done But Just Needs Sewing Together* or the Adorable Baby Hat.

* Which is why it's not done yet. I like to knit, but I don't like to sew. I'm hoping maybe the encouragement of a horde of fellow knitters will help me get over the sewing block.

In the knitting queue

Thanks to Ravelry, I can now stick potential knitting projects into a virtual queue to remind myself of what I want to knit next. In my queue at present, for whenever I finish the sweater I'm working on (or whenever I need a break from it):

• Lace-up opera gloves, to which I was drawn both by the name and by their beautiful impracticality
• A Jayne Cobb hat, the favorite pattern of Firefly fans who knit
• A cleverly engineered copy of this hat (I was thrilled to see that someone on Ravelry had developed a pattern for it)
• The Binary Scarf, from Knitty, because it's such a wonderfully geeky project

And then what shall I knit? Fortunately, I've got several dozen more projects bookmarked for later.

Ravel'd sleeves of something or other

By the way, speaking of knitting: I just joined Ravelry, which is a bit like LibraryThing, only for knitters and crocheters. You use it to keep track of patterns you like, projects you're working on and the progress you've made, yarn in your stash, and whether you really have a set of size 3 double-pointed needles. There are forums and user groups and all kinds of goodness. It works like a massive pattern database, and for every pattern you can read other people's advice on it and see their photos of how it turned out for them. It's still in beta, but you can sign up and get in line to be invited. My invite took less time to show up than I thought it would.

I've been wanting to try it ever since I saw Rachel's post about it on frizzyLogic. (As she says: who needs Facebook?) And while I'm probably not going to be terribly active on it for a while (too much stuff to do, too little time), I'm curious if any of you reading this are on it.

A markup language for geeky knitters

Just as I'm wrapping up work on my controlled vocabulary for knitting (final project #2, almost done), I come across this: KnitML, the knitting markup language. As the About page puts it,

Imagine being able to do the following for any KnitML-based pattern:

• Render a pattern in either written directions or a chart, dependent on a preference setting
• Render a pattern in any language, using conventions familiar to that language and dialect
• Validate that a pattern is physically possible to knit (eliminating some types of errata)
• Automatically convert English measurements to and from metric measurements
• Size a pattern up or down to any size, not just the sizes that come with the pattern
• Recalculate a pattern for your gauge rather than the one that came with the pattern

...among other things. You can view a proof-of-concept sock pattern, all marked up in its angle-brackety glory. I'm intensely happy, both as a knitter and as a geek, that such a project exists. If I had time to sign up to beta-test Ravelry and join the KnitML group there, I would. (Right now it's on the ever-growing list of "things to do when I finish library school.")

Incidentally, I heard someone say recently that knitting had "skipped a generation," meaning that it's popular with younger people and their grandmas, but not with the generation in between. I suspect that the strong affinity of knitters and geeks, together with the expansion of the web, has a lot to do with the recent resurgence. Though I'd also like to claim geek-cred for older generations of knitters, like my own grandmother, who designed her own patterns and would no doubt be very happy to see that I finally took up knitting.

Knitting, the cure for midterms

It's midpoint in the quarter at Drexel. I'm just beginning to get freaked out over all the assignments that have to be turned in over the next couple of weeks. So, naturally, it's time to obsess over future knitting projects!

Earlier this fall I decided that this year, I would manage to knit a sweater during cold-weather season. There followed much looking for patterns, much philosophical consideration of the merits of cardigans and pullovers, and much scouring the web for creative inspiration. Eventually I decided that the Next Big Project should be 1) fitted, not boxy; 2) not insanely complicated, but not plain-vanilla either; and 3) cabled, if at all possible. Eventually serendipity and Google (or possibly del.icio.us) led me to this very cool cable-edged sweater. I figure if I blog about it at the outset, I'll be more likely to follow through and actually knit it. Now, to find the yarn.

Speaking of cables: I've been intermittently following the news about the (by all reports) depressingly altered film adaptation of Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising. And amid remembering how much I loved that book when I was twelve, and shuddering at the thought the disappearance of so much of what I loved about it, it occurred to me that one could probably design a cable pattern to look like the six Signs (a circle quartered by a cross, repeated six times). Maybe when I've knitted enough sweaters to design my own patterns, I'll try it. But only well after the movie buzz has faded into oblivion.

[Update: Woe! I went to my local knitting store and found a wonderful yarn (luxurious but not bank-breaking, subtly variegated, with a really lovely texture), in a color like winter twilight. Did they have any more of that color, I asked. They checked, and no: they only had four balls of it left, and a bit of web searching revealed that the yarn in question has been discontinued. I may just have go with brown or dark blue instead.]

Knitting project jamboree

I don't know why, but my brain's been feeling logy of late. Maybe it's just because it's summer and part of me still equates this time of year with school vacations and laziness. At any rate, I've got a bit of blogger's block going on; most of my writing energy is going into thinking about conference paper topics.

But at least I don't have knitter's block. My current list of projects:

• putting the finishing touches on this top in a light neutral green shade of Rowan Cashcotton;
• a cabled hat to use up a skein of  gorgeous blue/green yarn from Woolarina; and
• blanket squares for Loop Knits' charity knitting club.

The latter is an ongoing project, and they just posted pictures of the first meeting (in which you can see the back of my head). It was good to hang out with a new bunch of knitters, and to make something for someone who needs it. Come to think of it, it's good to be juggling knitting projects again. Maybe the left brain will wake up a bit if the right brain gets a workout.

Every city needs a Knitting Map.

Commissioned by Cork 2005, European Capital of Culture, The Knitting Map drew its inspiration from Cork City, celebrating its place at the cultural heart of Europe. The Knitting Map is not a literal map; instead of a single still image, it is a moving, evolving translation of the busy-ness of Patrick Street; the wetness of May or the frostiness of November. The Knitting Map took the pulse of the city throughout 2005.

Different technologies observed and measured aspects of the city centre: the movement of people, as well as the weather – how rainy, warm or windy it was. The Knitting Map translated this information into a vast knitting pattern which was updated daily. In the Crypt of St Luke's Church overlooking the city of Cork, up to twenty knitters were knitting every day, and the Knitting Map grew into a vast, textured, colourful textile, that documents what happened in Cork in 2005.

(from the Knitting Map's about page)

The Knitting Map is on display not far from here, but I probably won't have a chance to go see it. I love the idea of translating information into knitting patterns and recording a year in the life of a city as an enormous swath of fabric. I think Philadelphia needs its own knitting map, don't you?

Geek knitting redux

The winter Knitty is up, and I have fallen madly in love with this binary code scarf pattern, which I've decided will be one of my next large projects. And yes, I have every intention of encoding an actual message into the scarf. I found a handy little Unicode-to-binary tool that can convert a short message into ones and zeroes; now the only thing to decide is: What should the scarf say, in roughly 120 characters?

Right now, I'm considering S. R. Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science, which would officially make this the geekiest knitting project in the history of the universe. But I'm also thinking of Latin mottoes, Oscar Wilde aphorisms, memorable Buffy and Firefly quotes, and first lines of favorite poems. If all else fails, I could always put "Hello World" on it about 10 times. So: any suggestions?

And also: God bless geeky knitters, every one.