Knitty Banter: My 100th Post!

Sunday, February 18, 2007

My 100th Post!

Milestone
I was over on Carson's blog and saw that she'd arrived at her 100th post, which got me thinking: as jabber-jawed as I can be, is it possible that I'm nearing that mark myself? Knitty Banter has only been in existence since September 2006. One hundred posts sounds like a lot, doesn't it?

But to my surprise, my last post was #99. Which means...

THIS IS MY 100th POST!

Anyhoo.

School was back in session Thursday. Every professor is wigged out at being "behind" according to their syllabi. I spent 13 hours total (7 Thursday 6.5 Friday) in the weaving lab catching up on samples and I still have two to do, which doesn't sound like a lot until I explain what they are.

Weaving
All 15 students in the class received a different pattern draft and weaving instructions. We each warped our loom accordingly and wove eight inches of the pattern. Then we wove a shot of—oh crap, what is it called? sheeting?—anyway, to separate my sample from the next girl's. (And the one guy's.) Then we go around and weave eight inches on the next loom, etcetera, until we have completed all 15 patterns. At the end, we'll put our samples into a notebook to have and love forever and ever and ever. *imagine me hugging it to my chest swinging back and forth like a toddler hugging the stuffing out of her bunny*

Mine was Finnish Towel, an overshot pattern. Complex because it incorporates two weft yarns—a thin one like the warp for the tabby shots, and a thicker one for the pattern shots. The way the loom is threaded, I have four out of the six treadles that lift the harnesses that create the pattern, and the other two lift every other strand of warp. I'm not good at explaining it visually yet, but Anne at How the West was Spun has it down. It's complicated because first you weave a shot of tabby, then a shot of pattern, then a shot of tabby, then pattern, etc. You have to stay focused or you get lost fast.

I blew through all but the last three after doing my own; most of that was on Thursday. On Friday after Law and Econ, I braved the 5 below wind chills to walk to the art building with the intention of finishing up the last three.

WRONG.

I chose to do Pile first. Think "carpet". It involves NOT throwing the shuttle back and forth; rather it involves tying individual pieces of yarn in knots in various ways for eight whole inches so they create pile. NEVER AGAIN will I do pile, unless it's a small area for a wall hanging or something. It took me six and a half hours to do one stinkin' sample! ACK! My fingers were aching by the time I left, past 7:00, to run home and change my sweater and baseball hat (one of those showerless days), grab my knitting, and run to meet my friend B for our standing Friday-night personal S&B.

(Interjecting to add that I finished and pulled off the home loom the scarf for the Weaver's Guild Scarf Exchange; all it needs is to have its ends woven in and its fringe knotted, then washing and blocking... but I have until the April meeting to do that. Photos to come.)

Oh. The remaining two samples? One is another overshot (Star of Bethlehem) and the last is a double-weave pickup. That's the one that scares me. Instead of one shed's worth of warp, there are two. I can't begin to explain it. Here are two references if you are interested. One shows examples of doubleweaves; the other is a PDF from the Jan/Feb 2007 Handwoven magazine about designing doubleweaves. It looks complicated–another 7-hour sample, I imagine.

Knitting
Not much knitting got done Friday night. I re-seamed the toe of the first of the belated Xmas socks for Ceramicist Niece for the third time because I realized what I'd done wrong. Again. If you recall, the first time I somehow managed to seam so the toe was running perpendicular to the way the toes go.

The second time, I thought I had it—turned it inside out, did a three-needle bind off. What was I high on? I looked at it Friday night and thought "DOH!" I meant to do Kitchener. Not a bind off. *sigh* Yanked it out, put it back on the needles, and Kitchenered. The sock looks tired. All that surgery.

I tried to start Sock #2 but had a major brain fart—I cast-on just fine, then I could not for the life of me figure out which way was up! How do I join this thing? Where is the incoming yarn supposed to come from—the top? The bottom? The left-hand needle of the triangle or the right? I stared at it for several minutes while B rambled on and finally I just gave up. It occurred to me that it's been about four months since I cast on a sock. Somehow I forgot how to do it.

It came back to me last night and I cast on and knit the ribbing. Silly, silly me. Senior moment and I'm not even 45 yet. What I need to do is set up a mnemonic to remember how it is done. Especially since I've agreed to do some sock test-knitting. *blush* *ahem* Might look a bit foolish having to admit I can knit the sock, I just can't figure out how to cast it on. (I can; I think I was just tired, and distracted by the band playing in the coffeehouse, the kids running around the bookstore, and my friend's ramblings. I need silence to think it through.)

Well, I suppose I should stop procrastinating and get back to the schoolwork I'm obviously trying to avoid. It irks me that I have no true "weekends". I need them to recharge but somehow I always wind up studying. I even studied on the snow days! (That's just wrong.) Yesterday I worked up a PowerPoint presentation for Law for Monday (group thing, this time I have a group that actually works). It took longer than anticipated but it looks great. Today, I have:

a brief paper (1-2 pages) for Creativity & Innovation to demonstrate my understanding of a problem-solving technique we learned last week (due Tues)
four chapters of Econ to read (likely we'll have another "homework" pop quiz Mon, Exam is Fri)
two or three chapters of Law to read for Mon (Exam Weds)
two chapters in one book and one in the other for C&I (Tues)
it won't happen today, but I really need to get to the surface design lab and do the pole-wrapping portion for the background of my project since we lost Wednesday's work time. That was supposedly due for a half-done critique tomorrow. Not gonna happen. I'll see what I can do during class.
a load of laundry (no clean undies for this week!!!! help!!!)
a load of dishes (same as #6!)
clean the catboxes
shower (about time, too)

Yeesh. Where does the time go?

PS: I've done really well with Knit From Your Stash. So far, I've only bought three skeins of yarn—two red and black angoras intended for the Red Scarf Project but on ice until next year and one ball of black fuzz for the Weaving Guild scarf. I suppose it takes the edge off having four huge yarn closets to "shop" from in Weaving class, though! Then there is the floss loophole I discovered. If I absolutely must buy something yarn-like, floss IS the way to go.

OK. I'm really really going back to my homework now.

Really.

For sure this time.

Honest.

I mean it.

Bye...

Labels: Christmas knitting, college life, loom, musings