Fiber Raven Soiree

Mom's the Word

Apropos of Nothing

Do you remember the first needlework project that you didn't finish? I do, and I also remember the remorse and feelings of lack of completion that bothered me for days. I was 10 years old. My mother would get these craft-of-the-month kits and sometimes she would let me do one. This particular one was a crewel picture of something-- all I really remember was that it had a lot of orange in it. I broke out in huge hives and we ended up associating the hives with the yarn and/or the kit, so it was abandoned.

Of course, back in those days, my mom would never let me get away with leaving something unfinished. I remember "designing" a dress when I was 14 based on a doll dress that I liked. The dress had a skirt to the floor which was composed of tiers of ruffles, from narrow ones toward the waist (what was I thinking?) to larger ones at the bottom. The fabric was small gingham cotton in pastels of pink, lavender and blue. I made it-- I had to, since my mom bought the fabric! The style was more fit for a doll than a human, I assure you. And I was no doll. I don't recall ever wearing it, and I have no idea what happened to it.

We did a lot of sewing, as money was never plentiful and in those days it was cheaper to make than to buy. My grandmother was very proud of having worked in "the factory" during WWII, some kind of apparel factory that must have made uniforms (but I don't think military uniforms). It was her only job outside the home all of her long life. She brought home lots of fabric miscuts and ends that were a medium blue twill. I grew to hate the sight of that fabric. We made dresses, pants, shirts, shorts, you name it-- all that same boring endless blue. It was torture to have to figure out how to align the pattern since there was no selvedge. I'll bet my mom still has some of it packed away somewhere. I don't want to know.

Apropos of Knitting

It was a long busy day at Two Swans yesterday, but exciting to see all the new yarn, much of it in its new put-up (yay! no more winding!). You know I couldn't resist "swatching" such a colorful thing as the Kaleidoscope 2 jacket, right? I like the colors much more in real life-- they don't look too over-bright, and they flow together beautifully.

For the Short Attention Span knitter, this type of design is perfect. You make several panels seperately, each of them 4.5 inches wide and made on the diagonal after some initial shaping. Then you put them together with applied I-cord. Sweet! The nice thing is that the size would be easily adjustable simply by making the panels narrower or wider.

Today is the last day of August... enjoy!

Menyou for Knitting

The Gray and I employed ourselves throughout the weekend in getting ready for "Company". My sister and her husband, from Alabama, are coming for Labor Day weekend and my other sister and her husband, from Oregon, are coming right after that. Neither of these sisters share a parent in common, and they have never met. It's a weird world we live in.

While we were moving things around, cleaning carpets and so forth, I stubbed my toe. Really hard. I think I broke it, but of course there's naught to be done about that. But this toe-breaking incident led to some fun conversation at breakfast. The Gray had made his delicious french toast and bacon, and we were eating. I said, "Do you know what cannibals have for breakfast?" He didn't. "French Toes!"

This led to a discussion of the cannibal restaurant menu. We decided it would include Hungarian Goulash, Swedish meatballs, Hot Buttered Danish, American Cheese, Polish Sausage, Spanish Rice and English Peas. **

**This just in... my friend Kim says we left out the Lady Fingers. And I remembered that I forgot the Bob-e-cue Sandwiches.

Speaking of the Gray... shhhh, don't tell, but there is now a Project Gray underway. One of the very best Knitter's magazine issues (when Knitter's was still good) is Winter of 2001. There is a design called woven cables that I have wanted to knit for the Gray ever since I saw it. I figure this is August, and Christmas is in December, so that makes about six months to knit a sweater. Surely I can do that?

I took the Blackwater Abbey yarn that is about the most masculine I could find in my stash and actually swatched it, then started the sweater. It's going to be beautiful if my wrists will hold up.

After I finished one ball of the Kid Classic on the topdown raglan, I put it on a strand of yarn and tried it on. Hmmm. The pattern has you calculate the number of cast-on neck stitches based on the diameter of your neck. In my case, that is 13.5 inches. You increase at eight points every other row until you get to the bottom of the armpit. This should fit you "incredibly".

The problem is, I think, that folks with 13.5" necks should have really skinny arms and shouldn't be so broad-shouldered. Being the freak of nature I am, I don't comply with either of these factors. This means that the arm-top isn't going to be big enough by the time I get to the armpit. Kit, who is a wizard at fitting and engineering of most anything, assures me that This Sweater Can Be Saved. I will put my faith in her wise teachings.

And the Big News!!! -- Simply Shetland is now here, and so is all the yarn!!! As soon as we can, we'll get the book up on the website.

There is something for everyone in this book. Two of the designs are particularly suited for larger women, and I may knit one of those for someone dear to me. Those designs are the Kaleidoscope Jacket and the Windowpanes pullover. Windowpanes is one size -- a 68" chest. But it looks good on someone with half that endowment. The collar and cuffs with their checkerboard pattern are a classy touch.

Kaleidoscope 2 has a 60" chest, and its zigzag lines draw attention to the garment rather than the body beneath it.

I swatched the Sand Lodge Pullover-- a small swatch, to be sure-- because I couldn't see how those colors could fit together! But they do, and it is a unique look, very understated and heathery. It would look great with jeans on male or female.

I need to take a break from creating my Swatch Slave, but I managed to get a working prototype built and to generate the same swatch as what I knit. The stitches need some tweaking, but that just requires time. Maybe three or four stitches for each color, each a different part of the yarn, would be good. So the question is, if you see a swatch like this, would it be good enough for you to have an idea of whether it was something you would knit?

I think that's enough for today, don't you? Sherlock is looking at me with those eyes....

I Flash, Sometimes

I got a call on my self-phone early this morning, waking me up. It was me. I said "do I realize that I didn't get to sleep until after 3:00 a.m.?" I did.

This makes for the beginning of a weird day. Anything could happen.

I've been diving into Flash and ActionScript. ActionScript is the (see my fingers doing the "quote" thing) "Programming Language" for Macromedia Flash, which is the software that allows folks to create all those cool animated things. Like my friend Brian, who likes to play around with Flash, has created with DanceFatBoyDance. Or this very intelligent dog. There are more professional uses, I assure you.

My purpose for flashing is not animation per se, but rather the use of its low-resource graphic features. It's the only language I can hope to use to create my (hear cackling laughter) Swatch Slave.

ActionScript is a cruel taskmaster. It's not really a programming language, it's a scripting language.

Let's say a programming language is like good English, with all kinds of rules and syntax. It has its own police force that won't let you get away with bad grammar. In a real programming language I could write this:

The odd stockbroker took one look at Veronica and I and fled.

I'd never get away with it. I'd get all kinds of boxes popping up tellilng me things like "invalid object" or "ambiguous predicate". I'd have to correct it or the program wouldn't run.

But in ActionScript, I could write the same thing, and the program would run, it just wouldn't do what I want. Or maybe it would, you never know. It approves and runs flawlessly something like this:

dont Touch me with those Pointy double needles you filthy beest;

But if I should dare to write this:

The capitol of illinois is Springfield.

It will not run and I just have to keep guessing until I figure out that "Illinois" has to be capitalized.

I do have a few remaining hairs.

The knitting isn't real exciting lately, I have to tell you. I'm experimenting with swatches, tweaking, approving, tweaking more, throwing it in the air in disgust and returning to it later to try again.

I'm also working on a relatively quick knit using the Rowan Kid Classic I've had aging in my stash. I'm doing the Incredible Custom-Fit Top-Down Raglan that is somewhere on the net. At 4.5 spi, it's a relief and the yarn is incredibly soft and delicious to work with.

My apologies to the Visualites, and the Plague of No Photos which you must endure for another day...

Deep Thoughts

Have you read about Ryan's Cuzzin Tom, the Mad Monk, lately? This is a man for the birds. Since I love birds, although I've never kept one as a pet, I wandered over to the website that Ryan has linked to her entries. Sure enough, just as she said, there on the home page is a picture of Juliet who picked herself featherless out of boredom. Not birdom. Boredom. Reading a bit further, I learned that tropical birds are so used to the stimulation and activity of the rain forest that without constant stimulation and attention, they get so neurotic that they will deplumage themselves, and their feathers will never grow back.

Shift scenes. See Madame Glitchbane yesterday as she reads her friend Syne Mitchell's book Technogenesis. Syne weaves, knits, spins, grows vegetables in her garden, grew up in Mississippi, has her Masters in Physics.... a true anomaly among a vast population of same-o, same-o. Technogenesis is about a future where (most) everyone is always connected to the Net via glasses, headsets, implants, whatever-- and without it they feel lost and are unable to do basic things like open locked doors, pay for purchases or make phone calls. With it they are able to instantly connect with friends, simultaneously play games, work and shop for groceries. Without the constant stimulation of interconnectedness they feel anxious, afraid, bored. Out of the prolonged interconnectedness of all these people there is formed Gestalt, an Overbeing which subtly controls... well, you should read it. It kept me up late last night finishing it. Once I start a good book it's hard to do anything else until I've finished it.

What does this all have to do with knitting? Before I go there, let me mention one more thing. A recent article cited results of studies conducted with monkeys; the scientists were experimenting with the effects of a genetic treatment that blocked the production of dopamine. It seems that monkeys with regular dopamine levels, when faced with a task and a deadline will, like most people, internally calculate how much time they have to finish a task in order to get the reward, how much time it takes to actually finish the task, and then work at a pace that suits them until they understand that they must hurry to finish or else they will get no reward. Until they are focused at the last, they tend to make more mistakes. Once they are focused, few mistakes are made.

However, when dopamine blockers are introduced to their systems, the monkeys work just as hard at completing their tasks as if it were the last minute, make few mistakes, and stay on task.

I have several thoughts here. First, do you think there a difference between distraction and stimulation?

Second, do you think all people do things for a reward? Can that reward simply be "occupation"?

When we are knitting, I believe we are stimulated as long as the knitting is new and exciting and we are approaching a reward of seeing the first pattern completed, or the first color repeat. Then we become bored; it is no longer stimulating-- rather, it is a task whose reward is supposedly the fulfillment of having completed a beautiful item. But as we approach the second sleeve or the seaming, we get a fresh rush of enthusiasm-- we see the reward dangling in front of us like a Dove Bar on a string in 100 degree weather.

Where does this put us? Does it mean that, like the parrot and the Connected, we have becomed so used to stimulation and activity that without it we become knitters who are stuck in an endless cycle of starting and not finishing? Is the rain forest of wide variety and availability of yarn and knitting resources, coupled with the influential "enabling" effects of knitting groups on the net, causing us to be overstimulated?

Would it be better if we had what is perhaps the equivalent of a dopamine blocker: living with just a few people away from the internet and with only one yarn store which is a 50-mile drive and has only a basic, but nice, selection of yarn? Would we be more focused, more calm and more likely to complete our items, or would we still be bored, allegorically plucking ourselves featherless, unable to revert to normality?

I have noticed one very interesting thing in the last few days. I have been forcing myself to "work" at least 6 hours a day on learning new technical skills. My mind is engaged in a challenge that it is capable of meeting yet which does not come as easily as picking up paw-paws and putting them in your pocket. As a result of this mental exercise, I am then able to focus on knitting despite its potential boredom, and I make progress. Is this technical learning a sort of dopamine blocker or is it stimulation?

This stuff is going to keep me thinking for a long time.

The Feral Report: August 23, 2004

Ferally we knit along,
knit along,
knit along
Ferally we knit along
All the fair isle way...

Well, some of us appear to need a refresher from Janine about what fair isle is. That being so, most of the knitters at the meeting were indeed knitting with two or more colors, it's just that some of them were mixed up in one yarn.

Take Margarite's stunning Colinette jacket:

Definitely more than two colors... puts us all to shame on those big needles that finish things so quickly.

Then there was Betsey, similarly engaged in a multi-colored tank from Ironstone yarns, and showing the felted purse she had knit for a niece graduating from high school:

Kit was just beginning her pooled color scarf from hand-dyed-by-her yarn. At least it is on tiny needles. 500 points for Kit!

Ryan, the Most Popular Speaker of the Seattle Knitter's Guild, had her fair isle pillow with her, but was mostly involved with working on her baby sweater. She claimed that it had been photographed to death, but little did she know that it could be....

...a real bear to finish.

June gets 5000 points for being there first, and for knitting her own version of the fair isle vest from Folk Vests on tiny needles. I simply love the curly peerie at the bottom!

Karen get lots of points, too, for her progress on Alba. Love the turqouisey color in the band, don't you?

Devorah has made awesome progress with her fair isle, the name of which escapes me. Devorah? Would you post in the comments what this is, pretty please?

And last but certainly not least, Norma was knitting at least her second one of these pretty Landscape scarves, using Lorna's Laces sock yarn:

As for me,

I knit a little bit
on the vested Dragonfly
Then hied away to home
and drank my flagon dry.

Val-deri

I think I know why neighbors get violent with each other. A perfect example is what my neighbor John does to drive me crazy. He's always cheerful, always working on his house or yard or spending time with his 3yo son. Saturday he and the little guy walked out to the mailbox together. In his usual ever-happy mood, John was singing a song. I heard this from my kitchen:

"Val-deri,Val-dera,
Val-deri, Val-dera-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Val-deri,Val-dera.
My knapsack on my back!"

You know the one I mean? "I love to go a wandering...." and all that? It is insidious. It gets inside your brain and you can think of no other tune. It keeps you awake all night and makes you want to go hiking and wear liederhosen and a hat with a feather in it.

By Sunday morning I had had it. Lisa, John's wife, called to let me know that Jojo had taken our bedroom curtain out on the roof with him, and I took the opportunity to let her know just how I felt about John's Fal-de-ra. Her response?

"Hey Jude, don’t make it bad.
Take a sad song and make it better.
Remember to let her into your heart,
Then you can start to make it better..."

I'll never complain again. I listened to the radio all day, and Hey Jude is still in my head.

There's been a change in the weather, and the northwest pole is looking more familiar: comforting gray skies accompany the sound of rain soft through the trees; cool refreshing breezes greet us in the morning and stay with us all day; poodles and other creatures track wet footprints throughout the house. This is good knitting weather.

In the past few days I have made progress on Trip-Trap, Little Rivers, and Dragonfly.

Although I like my Trip-Trap, I look forward to knitting another one. The rules of the knit seem deceptively simple, but as I continue I realize there are a lot of little tricks to making it look perfect. These tricks are well documented by Ms. Hoxbro, but my eyes like to pretend they know what they are reading when they skim. They don't notice the little things, like that on every row you slip the first stitch knitwise except for the first row, which you knit regularly, or the last row, on which you slip the first stitch purlwise.

TT uses the knit cast-on, and there are two different ways to do this cast-on. The one I use for lace a la Sharon Miller produces a lacey edge, and as far as I knew this was the way to do a knit cast-on. However, I accidentally discovered that if I twist the stitch as I put it back over the left needle, I get a much more attractive starting edge, which is better for TT. So, advised by my Knitting Consultant to continue with this cardigan rather than frog it, I will see how much more I can learn before I devise the perfect trip-trap.

I am continuing to enhance my online Jamieson color palette. You may have noticed that there are now little buttons beside Yellow, Turquoise and Magenta, with an "A" on them. These are temporary buttons (i.e. the buttons will change, not the functionality) which lead to another page on which you will find the colors analagous to the main color. Analogous colors are those that lie on either side of a color. I have chosen to include three colors to each side. I have also chosen some of these colors for a "virtual swatch" which is also shown on this page to illustrate an analogous use from the colors. I'm happy with the Yellow Analogous swatch, but the others leave something to be desired. It will get easier once my Swatch Slave comes to life. I'm working on it. If I had time, I would actually knit the swatch to see how it compares to the virtual one.

As time allows, I will be adding similar pages to all the colors, and also pages for complementary, split-complementary and triadic schemes. This is my further attempt at self-education and an intense familiarity with good color combinations, especially with Jamieson yarn.

Going through my yarn yesterday, I find that I have an awful lot of partial balls of Jamieson & Smith Shetland yarn, too, and if I still have half an ounce of motivation after Spindrift is exhausted, I'll see what I can do with that.

I was very surprised that there is only one color that is in the Magenta group. It would be interesting to see if I can use my recently-acquired dyeing knowledge to dye yarns that would fill out the short groups. So much to do!

The Ferals meet tonight, and I will try to remember to take my camera for updates for our Miss(ed) Janine.

The Rectangular Spindrift Color Wheel

My mania for color and the understanding thereof has led me to create this categorization page for the Jamieson Spindrift colors in preparation for making other pages based on color studies.

See it here

Some of the colors surprised me with where they fit in, and this explains some of those "wacky" color combos that actually work.

Pray tell!

Was there ever any doubt that Ryan's talk about knitting on the net would be more than wonderful? Yet it was just that at the monthly Seattle Knitting Guild meeting. Only for her would I brave the rush hour traffic to make sure I got there on time!

While she was holding forth, I finished the first strip of the right back on Trip Trap and a couple of more eddies on the flowing of the Rivers. Really, you would be totally bored with update photos, so let's just keep you in suspense, shall we?

I have to say that I was overcome by memories of times past at the meeting. The guild meets in a medium sized church, in the basement, on Wednesday night, which coincides with the church's choir practice, all of which is very familiar to my youth...

In days gone by, yours truly was extremely Baptist. Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings and Wednesday evenings would find me in church. Sunday School, morning service, Training Union, evening service, prayer meeting... I just hate the thought of how much time I wasted there. I sang in a trio, I played the piano, I edited the youth group's newsletter, I was on the quiz team, I went to all the youth activities.

Wednesday evenings were the worst. "Prayer meeting" at my hometown church went like this: We'd sing a few hymns, then have a couple of announcements. Sing some more hymns (the singing was the best part) and the bald aldermen or deacons or whatever they called them would pass around collection plates, which looked pretty empty to me.

For a time after Mr. Lippermann's wife died, and especially if I was the pianist for the evening, I would find some flowery poem he had written for me. I didn't realize at the time exactly how icky this was-- I, a 16 or 17-year old and he in his 60s, a vision of rotundity ensconced in a halo of halitosis. He was often a vocal soloist, and for this reason I still find it difficult to listen to "How Great Thou Art" because of the image it conjures of him, a solid bass, holding on to that one note-- "how Greeeeeeaaaaaaaatttttttt Thouuu Art!" which was just a little high for his range and a little too long for his breath support.

Prayer requests were taken. I knew more about everyone's business and personal life than any kid had a right to know. It was there that I first learned about the torrid love affair between my high school guidance counselor's wife (she with the hair to her ankles) and one of the church members' sons. All because they were in a worldly theatre production together!! Gasp! Horrors! We were asked to pray that the wayward son would repent and not be tempted by this bad bad woman, that the woman would find Jesus and return to her husband; that they would partake of theatrical productions no more. (The guidance counselor and his wife got a divorce and the torrid love affair couple married eventually and as far as I know are still happy).

There were prayer requests for the "shut-ins", those elderly folk who couldn't get out of the house due to health reasons, prayer requests for sicknesses and grades and jobs and finances. And my favorite: the "unspokens". Somebody would raise their hand tentatively and say "I have an unspoken request". Everyone would nod solemnly and rub their chins thoughtfully, and my mind would start to invent all kinds of predicaments and sins that this person was involved in, predicaments of the type that would surely require anonymous prayer. The preacher, in the meantime, would nod and write down the request and say "Ok, all right" and "next?". (Later the preacher would be run out of town because of his perceived total lack of compassion for, say, church members in the hospital and his lack of visiting "backsliding" members who hadn't been to church in a while.)

After the requests were taken, "with heads bowed and eyes closed" and "as the Spirit moves you" you were supposed to pray for one or as many of these requests as you wanted. The problem was, sometimes the Spirit must have gone to a ball game or taken a vacation or a bathroom break, because there were really long silences. Then somebody would get twitchy and feel guilty and start praying. All I was praying for was that everybody else would make their prayers short, quick and to the point. My favorite kind of prayer for someone else to pray went something like, "Dear Lord, please answer all these prayer requests. Thank you. Amen". They happened all too seldom. Instead, we'd all get very familiar with the patterns in the carpet... heads bowed was doable, but eyes closed for two hours? I think not.

The flowery pray-ers were the worst. You know the kind-- they liked to use lines like "we know that thou wouldst seek our minds to know if our thoughts art pure, and we know that thou dost find us wanting in so many ways.... and after a few hundred more "we know what you seek and find" type of statements, some heartrending supplications also cloaked in some facsimile of King James's English. God was probably snoring by then.

The guild meeting didn't take prayer requests, and certainly nobody bowed their heads unless it was over their knitting, but Ryan was up there a'preachin the Word, hallelujah! With the internet as her gospel and Knittin' as the religion, she was spreadin' the joy, Amen!

We really could have used were those old-timey paper fans that churches and funeral homes used to have in the hymnbook holders on the backs of the pews. It was hot and humid and just a little too remindful of those old days stuck in church. I don't know if they ended by singing Amazing Grace for a thousand verses or not-- I had to get out of there!

You should probably pray for me.

Crossroads Currents

I was sitting at the local watering hole yesterday, knitting as I enjoyed my coffee. Two ladies walked by. One of them said "One day I'm going to learn to do that." I smiled at her approvingly.

This watering hole of which I speak is something between a shopping center and a mall-- not quite big enough to be a mall, but more like a mall than a shopping center. It has no huge department stores or endless lines of franchises, but rather has the essentials of a neighborhood-- grocery store, stationers, shoe repair, drugstore, library, Starbucks, Jo-Ann's, 1/2 price books, etc.

The giant chess set is always in use with several kibitzers absorbed in the game as players challenge each other with great seriousness.

The place is aptly named Crossroads. Not only does it sit at the intersection of two major streets-- it is located in the heart of a district heavily populated with immigrants of many countries. These new Americans bring many of their own lovely customs and traditions with them. They are able to sit and enjoy each others' company for hours; they walk rather than drive.

There are a fair amount of handicapped citizens living around Crossroads, too. It is not at all unusual to see several wheelchairs with their cerebrally palsied occupants enjoying the day, happy to be there.

Most delightfully, Crossroads has the most extensive international food court I have ever seen; and each food vendor is an authentic representation of the food that they serve. Indians serve Indian food. Chinese serve Chinese food. Koreans serve Korean, Japanese Japanese, Vietnamese, Mexican, Greek...

All they need at Crossroads is a nice yarn shop.

I took Little Rivers to Crossroads and added a few currents to it. I'm hoping that its exposure to multicultural activities will make it a better sweater when it is full grown.

Trip Trap got another strip strap, and Jojo wasn't really in the guitar case... but he wanted to be!

In a Days-d Mood

Yesterday. It seems odd that despite the type of day you might have had just before today, it always begins with "yes". This may be falsely representative. Why can't we have a selection? Yesterday or Noterday. Maybe throw in a neutral to be fair? Neuterday. Hmmm.

No matter what it is called, yesterday was just plain weird and I'm glad it's over. With the exception of a lovely visit from a friend, the day was consumed with one question: what do I want to do today? When you spend the whole day wondering what you should do, you end up doing nothing except picking at your cuticles. I managed to rescue myself and what was left of my cuticles from nothingness late in the evening, when I picked up Trip-Trap and finished the left back.

It was good to remember how much I enjoy this design. It has been languishing in my bag ever since my trip to Maryland in May, and expressed its gratitude by glowing goodness towards me with its odd mix of colors and surrounding me with positive vibrations.

Today is Tuesday, the second day of the week. I wonder why all the days aren't numbered appropriately. Tomorrow is Threesday...

Changing Faces

Hi, is anyone still there?! I'm back from my blogue vacation and just full of ... well, you'll see.

First of all, note the "blogue". Doesn't that sound ever so much more classy than something that rhymes with 'hog'? The blog en vogue. The rogue blog. Either definition works for me.

On my vacation I went many places: downstairs; outside; in the attic; to the drugstore. Whatever I wanted to do, I did it. The hotel allowed all my pets, the weather was hot, dry and sunny. I had an affair with the chef called Gray. There was so much dust in the garage I could pretend it was sand, and there were none of those annoying American tourists with their big clunky cameras and loud abrasive voices demanding without gratitude.

I had high hopes on my vacation. I dreamt of how I would return victorious to my blogue, presenting a vast array of wonderful projects and progress. We have fallen a bit short of that, but I offer what I have.

I have long admired the Spring 2003 Interweave's pattern for a knitted wedding ring afghan. I thought I would knit it. When I actually read the instructions I was A. Ghast. That I should knit a thousand little pieces and then sew them together was a violation of all my knitting principles. Being a little under the weather and able to spend a lot of time knitting garter stitch over and over again, I determined to figure out a better way.

Of course, after I finished figuring out the melon and strip pieces and end squares to my satisfaction-- and even put in a circle and figured out the triangle that goes in there, that is to say, once I figured it all out I was too sick of it to actually put an example together. Fizzle, fizzle.

I dreamed of presenting an entire completed front of Little Rivers. Oh yes, I worked on LR, even took it to coffee with me several times. I love LR. But I'm not quite complete with the front.

What I did mostly was study color. I took Joen Wolfrom's wonderful book Color Play and devoured it. I categorized every color of Jamieson Spindrift into one of 24 color groups. I developed a Supreme Master Plan of swatching every color with its analogous, complementary, split complementary and triadic partners. I swatched one and a half of these and realized the folly of my plan.

I decided to knit something someone else had designed... something new, of course. Always having admired Ann Feitelson's shirt-tail fair isle in Sweaters From Camp, I chose it. But I didn't particularly like those colors, and besides they were J&S colors, which I don't have many of. So, using my newly acquired knowledge of color, I chose a splendiferous groups of colors.

So pleased was I that I thought, why should I knit someone else's design with these wonderful colors? I should try the old Chippendale with them.

So I started swatching Chippendale. Again.

After figuring out that the colors were too light for Chippendale, I was discouraged. Looking at all the colors that were amassing around me, I started playing dominoes. But just knitting domino squares seemed kind of pointless, so I searched online for tile patterns. Don't ask me why, I'm not sure I know. But I came up with something called the Versailles layout of tiles, and so at least had a goal.

After a few dominoes I was a little tired of knitting. I decided to spin. I've had some little 1 oz bags of Ashland Bay merino for a couple of years, and thought maybe I could spin one up and feel like I had finished something. The one I found first was red and blue and a little purple, nothing very exciting. But once it was spun, wow!! It is a gorgeous garnet, rich and complex and beautiful! I'll have to find more of this. The color is called "cranberry". I think this is DK weight, and I got about 95 yards from an ounce.

Then I decided to try spinning the cashgora that a dear friend gave me. It just goes on and on, but should be wonderful when completed and I can't wait to see how it dyes!!

And that, my friends, brings you up to date on Madame's doings. Almost.

A Dear Reader was kind enough to inform me that the NWKniterati site had been defaced. Apparently it is the highlight of some peoples' days to deface websites. I took the opportunity to redesign the front page and my header here on FRS. I hope you like it.

Going ABLOG

It's time to pack up the blog and go on holiday for a while. As I so remember reading in my first year French text:

Dans le mois d'août les francaises allez aux vacances.

Since I'm half or so French I must follow my heritage and allez myself for half the month of August. Where am I going? Ah, that's a secret. Some people think Tanbonia, but I'll never tell.

I'll be around on ASOF, otherwise look for me to return Monday the 16th.

A bientôt!

Looming in the Future

That man of future fame, my son Randy Watkins, slept here. One day when he becomes President you will remember this. And remember that he helped me put together my "new" antique Gallinger loom. Some things aren't quite right yet, but with the help of the wonderful folks on the Weaving list, I'll soon be up and running. This is a loom that I saw on ebay, and she spoke to me. I didn't even know she was solid cherry or that she was a counterbalance loom, both of which would have been on my dream list if I had had one.

Sadly, Randy had to leave this morning to get back to Ole Miss but before he went I videotaped him playing a short classical guitar piece. I think. Even though I can't seem to find it. Luckily I took still photos as well.

And in knitting news, I have progressed on Little Rivers even though I did have company.

Also in knitting news, check out ASOF's new group project which is more like a bunch of individual projects done in concert. Vogue Knitting magazine, along with the Book-of-the-Month Club, is sponsoring a scarf contest to benefit breast cancer research. Check out the details in the newest magazine or at ASOF.

Last night we had fabulous sushi and then went to Tula's, a Seattle jazz club that is laid back and consistently has the most wonderful jazz players. We saw Jay Thomas and his big band, wow!

I need to recover before I can write anything more entertaining, but I hope that you all have had half as much fun as I have these last couple of days.

Project Authority

Do you ever see those bumper stickers that say "Question Authority"?

Did you ever hear of the story of the way Grandma cooks pot roast-- she always cuts the end off before she puts it in the pan, and therefore so does all her family. When finally asked why, she says it was because otherwise it wouldn't fit in the pan. But everyone else cut the end off just because Grandma did it that way.

I'm hear to tell you: when it comes to weaving, do not question authority. Do it the way "grandma" does it. Listen to the sultry stereo Voice Of Experience. It will save you hours of time.

Let's just make up an example of the top of our head, shall we?

There's a hypothetical new weaver, we'll call her Sheila. She attends Judith MacKenzie's workshop, where Judith talks about heddles and tension and specifically states that you should remove all extra heddles from your harnesses or the weight of those heddles will affect your tension.

Sheila hears, but does not heed. She has about a hundred extra heddles on each of four harnesses and 20 or so extra ones on the other four. She hears the words of the VOE as she is putting the warp on, but ignores it. Question Authority, the other, pointy-eared red guy whispers in her ear.

She sleys, threads, ties on, starts to weave and has lots of problems. Does she think about the fact that she spit in the face of the VOE? No, she tries multiple maneuvers to get the shed to open evenly, curses, threatens to cut the whole thing off, yells epithets to the weaving devils and utters fervent prayers to the weaving goddess. All to no avail.

After exhausting all other possibilities, Sheila considers the fact that the harnesses that don't rise enough seem to have a lot of extra heddles on them.

She ponders the fact that flat steel heddles in quantities weigh a lot.

She acknowledges that extra weight might keep harnesses from rising.

She asks for forgiveness and pardon from the deities of the web, and goes about the danger-fraught task of removing heddles while the warp is threaded. This is not easy. Two metal bars hold the heddles in the harness. The bars are seated in slots at either end of the wooden harness frame. To get heddles off, one must bend the bar to release it from the slot, then slide the heddles off. But if the project is threaded, well, I don't have the hours it would take to adequately describe the issues. All this time you have to be sure that the heddles don't get misaligned.

Sheila found that after the removal of the heddles, the scarf looks much nicer. She will no longer question the Voice of Authority. She will be humble and solicitous of other wisdom. When the opportunity arises, she will preach the gospel of removing extra heddles from your harnesses. She is converted, hallelujah.

Little Rivers has another wave in it, and just makes me happy. I like the fact that it has virtually no shaping on the front or back except for a moue to a neckline. This means I don't have to count rows or measure much, so I can just knit happily along.

I would take pictures for you, but I dare not disturb the sleeper downstairs where the projects are. The prodigal son has arrived to visit his mama and it is so good to see him.

We have an extra special project to work on today that I'll report on tomorrow. Ferals meet tonight; I probably won't be going so I hope the rest of them can give a precise accounting and hopefully pictures of the progress of the Order of the Feralites.

And speaking of projects, have you heard about the impending courtship of Prince Sherlock and Princess Sandy? The Princess lives in the palace of Her Royal Highness Queen Greta, and though yet young, may possess the royal qualities desireable to the Prince in the future establishment of heirs. Sherlock is planning to write a letter to the Queen asking her permission to correspond with Sandy and ultimately to win her paw in marriage. Such exciting times.