st_catherine's Xanga

Saturday, August 09, 2003

Sat, 09 Aug 2003 23:02:34 GMT

This is from the new Rowan catalogue. I'm really taken with Morris and his creepy girlfriend, Entice.
I

Friday, May 30, 2003

Fri, 30 May 2003 23:17:22 GMT

Spinning
Oops, I wonder if I am still part of the Knitting Bloggers ring. It's been hectic- I finished three research papers, graduated, moved, and job-hunted, all within the past two weeks. Oh yeah, and I had a nasty cold.

I also started spinning. Erin and I went down to The Yarn Tree in Williamsburg yesterday, and I bought a beautiful Kundert spindle and some soft Merino/Corriedale blend. Spinning is so much better when you have good fiber and a well-balanced spindle. I used to have a cute little hand-painted affair I got for ten dollars off of e-bay. I had trouble with it, however, and blamed myself until I realized that it was actually a wooden dowel stuck in a wheelie from the woodcrafts section of Michael's (or Hobby Lobby, take your pick)! So it wasn't me! Wow!

Also, drafting the fiber out underhand makes it somewhat easier to control.

The yarn is turning out great, and I'm going to try to figure out to Andean ply. Unfortunately, I don't have a digital camera right now, because I had to return my old pet to Student Affairs.

You know, a digital camera costs as much as a... spinning wheel.

Saturday, May 10, 2003

Sat, 10 May 2003 23:40:05 GMT

I'm so excited! I made my first quiz- I hope it isn't libelous.

On the knitting front, I discovered that it was not the Blueberry Borscht Peace Fleece that I wanted, but the Mir-Atlantis Periwinkle. I remember taking the skein out of the package and thinking "it's been three years, but surely the dye-lot couldn't have changed that much!"

After a bit of pouting, I realized that the Blueberry Borscht, with its deep flecks of raspberry and blue, would make the perfect pair of Fuzzy Feet. Onwards!

Here is my own result of my own quiz, which I suppose is cheating:

You are Allegra Kent. Married to photographer Bert
Cook, Kent was renowned for her hyperextensions
and winsome sensuality. Like Allegra, you are
whimisical and lyrical, but also rebellious and
individualistic.

Which Balanchine Dancer are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

and here's another quiz result, just for kicks-

500 Internal Server Error - The server encountered
an unexpected condition which prevented it from
fulfilling the request.

I'm afraid you're proved to be broken. You need a
fix and there is no way around that. You need
to find someone to debug you and quickly,
before you hurt yourself.

What's your HTTP Status Code?
brought to you by Quizilla

Wednesday, May 07, 2003

Wed, 07 May 2003 06:57:42 GMT

BLOODY FINAL WEEKS
I wonder if I will miss school. I tend to do the opposite of nostalgicize... i.e. everything becomes worse in hindsight.

In the knitting realm... I unraveled a back and front of a tunic I had knit my freshman year here... it made me feel a bit wistful, as I was knitting the front in a photo taken for a New York Times article that I was quoted in. It was on the front page of the Sunday Styles section a few years ago.

I decided I would rather use the yarn for a nice Aran cardigan. And besides, I needed a reason to procrasinate, so I consulted Bonne Marie Burns'
article in the Winter '02 Knitty and started yanking away. Good times. I ordered the yarn from Peace Fleece three years ago. I remembered I actually ordered a sample card to decide which color I wanted. Wow! Anyway, I got Blueberry Borscht, a fabulous deep violet with flecks of fuschia and blue twisted in.

What Monty Python Character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Mean lil fellow, arn't you?

Sunday, May 04, 2003

Sun, 04 May 2003 21:33:37 GMT

You are an Amethyst. You are quiet and tend to be
shy. You don't like attention to be pointed
towards you, yet your beauty and uniqueness
draw people to you.

What Jewel Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Ooooh, a quiz result that I like. And it matches the color schema of my blog.

As for knitting, I'm not allowed to knit. And since half of the knit blog universe is also in college- you shouldn't be knitting either! Unless your knitting while reading (or should I say reading while knitting) skills are somehow more developed than mine. Wait, what am I saying? I'm blogging for heaven's sake! ARRRRRGGGGHHHHH! Boo-hoo-hoo!

Thursday, May 01, 2003

Thu, 01 May 2003 14:41:55 GMT

NESTING

No updates for a while, someone has to graduate...

As for the Pie is Square shawl, it grows and it grows and it grows- lengthwise. It would be a rather interestingly shaped scarf, but I am still waiting for it to morph into a shawl. Patience, me!

Sigh.

I'm rather stressed out with the amount of work that I have to do. I was thinking that it would be most comforting to make a bed out of all the yarn that I own and just nest in it. Oh, it would be so nice, 'cause I do own some soft stuff. I'm afraid, however, I might ruin some of the skeins. The Koigu, especially, might not like it.

On the sunny side, I took advantage of the library's interlibrary loan thing (ILL) and got AS's "Aran Knitting." It's a very serious book. I mean, I like my knitting but I do take it out of my mouth sometimes.

Thursday, April 24, 2003

Thu, 24 Apr 2003 02:53:25 GMT

THE BLOB, CONTINENTAL STYLE

This is how my Pie is Square shawl is coming along:

As you can see, it has strangled the sheep from whence it came. Yes, it is getting rather unwieldy as EZ warned it would.

I am using the Pie is Square shawl, with its rows and rows of garter stitch, to practice knitting continental-style. It has gotten a good deal easier since I started yesterday, but I find that I still crook my left hand fingers a bit too far out in order to control the tension in the working yarn. It's making my hands cramped. My right one, after all, needs to pick at the yarn, and I think I overcompensate for the newness by forcing the movements too much.

In addition, my gauge becomes looser when I knit continental-style, but I have noticed that giving a little tug on the working needle after each stitch helps things tighten. My consistency has been rather spotty, however. Anyway, since I am barely done with the shawl (amorphous as it already may be), I have plenty of opportunity left to practice.

I'm trying to figure out colorways for my next work-in-progress, the Koigu Charlotte's Web shawl. The design calls for five colors, but I am thinking of using all of these if I cannot decide which skein to eliminate. I threw in a 122 I already got.

As I have said already about Koigu, however, the yarn just seems to pretty to unwind into balls. Maybe this is one of those things I wouldn't mind staring at forever in its embroynic state.

Speaking of which, here is some Tibet Silk yarn I got off of ebay. It's wonderful stuff. I had wanted to work with it for a while. Recycled silk scarves have been a rage at my college, and I suspect they continue to be for some time, since winter has won over spring yet again. Or so it seems, but I know I will miss this in the 100F degree heat over the summer.

Instead of a cat pic, here is a pic of Erin modeling what I had of my Pie is Square shawl by this Sunday. It was also, incidentally, the day Becca, Erin, and I celebrated finding our new apartment in Queens. And what better way to celebrate than forcing your dearest friend to wear a choker of metal, nylon, and wool/acrylic blend?

But I am not that bad a friend. In keeping with the recent cake pic trend on knitting blogs, I present to you the Windmill Cake I got for Erin from a bakery in Grand Central.

Saturday, April 19, 2003

Sat, 19 Apr 2003 18:56:09 GMT

GRRRRRRR!!!

Nobody showed up for my knitting workshop. I mean, no one ever shows up for these things at my school, but still!

I made needles out of wooden dowels. It was quite simple really- first I cut/broke them into the length I wanted, then I jammed one end into a pencil sharpener. I then smoothed the dowels down with rough, then fine sandpaper (or rather, a foot scrubber with rough/fine sides). Afterwards, I rubbed the needles with a combination of lemon oil and Dr. Marten's Wonder Shoe Balsam, and capped them off with rubber erasers.

And of course, all this for nothing!

All the plus side I have some free chunky yarn I suppose I get to keep.

Thursday, April 17, 2003

Thu, 17 Apr 2003 01:07:13 GMT

THE UNKNOWN YARN

I don't know how many people read my blog, but I was wandering if any of you would be able to help me identify the above bit of business. I bought three balls of the stuff (two in this colorway and one in a scheme I like to call "booger") in the winter of 1999 whilst in London. I got it at Liberty's of London, in fact. I have no idea what the manufacturer, name, or fiber is, and I'd be most grateful to know. It's a beautiful turquoise color, much brighter than the picture, and is flecked with bits of pink, orange, yellow, and green. I'm wandering if I could felt it...

I finally sewed the color onto my Modliagni sweater from the Winter 2002 issue of Interweave Knits. I knit it out of Noro Kureyon, which in hindsight was structurally unsound because the pattern called for merino, which has a great deal more memory than Kureyon. The colors are gorgeous, however, as you can see. I'm in love with the Noro Kureyon bunch. Very unlikely, albeit successful, use of color. In order to get the off-the-shoulder design to stay just off my shoulders, and not past my bosom, I had to sew a band of elastic under the cowl. I will post a picture of it here when I clean my room and have room to manuever.

I just started on the Pi is Square shawl from Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Around. I love her technical bravado, and her practically adventurous approach to knitting. I used to look at the in-the-round sweaters and think beeee-oooo-or-ing!, but as with the Lopi sweater I was won over. The shawl has been great fun to knit so far, and I'm sorry I had to leave it home while I went to the library to do a reading response that was due ten hours ago. I will miss college so much but right now I do wander if the increase in knitting time will undercut the painful loss of meaningful work and carefree, financially-independent youthfulness. Probably not, but it'll alleviate it at least. Sigh.

It's been downright warm and spring-like for the past few days. Unfortunately that means a divorce from the Lopi sweater for now. Strange, I started it two weeks ago, when it was so freezing cold I kept on wishing I could wear it "right now."

Must go now, work. Boo-hoo. But before I go I'd like to shout-out to Glampyre and Knit By Nora, two blogs whose owners very nicely left comments.

Wednesday, April 16, 2003

Wed, 16 Apr 2003 02:04:15 GMT

FLITTY FLITTY FLIT FLIT

I have decided to work on new knitting manifesto for myself. It'll have something to do with knitting everything from Rowan to Red Heart, Starmore fair isles to Sugar N' Cream dishcloths, while acknowledging that knitting is my hobby and not my life. Seriously. Knitting is supposed to be fun! I mean, pragmatically speaking, why do it otherwise? Sometimes I long for the days of yore when knitting was the only way to get a new jumper, it would give me a reason to presevere _and_ justification for the time I spend knitting. It could also very well mean, however, that I would be forever jumper-less.

Anyway, a sad progress on my Lopi sweater, and now that it's getting warm it doesn't seem like the most appealing WIP in the world. I was thinking of frogging it and turning it into My Constant Compansion from "The Knitter's Stash," but I do have to learn discipline. I'm a most undisciplined knitter. I flit from object to object. Maybe that's a reaction to having to remain so responsible and committed in my non-knitting life.

Speaking of flitting, yesterday I got a pillowy package from http://www.sheeweknits.com in Canada. Anne had told me it might take up to three weeks for the package to get here, but it cleared customs in a week. It's Jamieson Spindrift, and now I have all the materials I need for the Mary Tudor cardigan from "Tudor Roses." I even have the button, left over from the last go I had at the cardigan in 1999. It pays to keep these things laying around. Justification for packrats!

Here are some obligatory cat pics- spot the cat in the first one. That's DeeDee, and that's MeiMei in the second. Their names are Chinese for little brother and little sister, respectively.