Un Amuse-mains

Knitting monogamy is not easy for me, and yet, I have been rather monogamous for the past couple months. I finally broke down, though. With the prospect of working two nights in a row - 30+ hours of work in two days - and sleeping in a tiny overnight room here at the clinic, I decided it was time for a little something easy & mindless. The knitting equivalent of a palate cleanser, if you will. So I picked up a ball of Friendz Blendz I had gotten at Spa from my friends Pogo & Marcia at Friends' Folly Farm and cast on for my first new Dulaan project for 2008.



Just a basic two-layer hat - circular cast on working out to full diameter, then tube, purl turning row, more tube, then decrease to point & cast off, invert one side into the other & voilà. Lots and lots of plain and easy stockinette. I'm kntiting it fairly loosely, so there's been a bit of laddering, but I expect that'll come out in the wash. Because the photo was taken with the cheap work camera, the colors appear horribly washed out.

I like the pointy top because I think it makes the hat look a bit like a stupa.

Deathly Hallows

So the book has officially been released now, and I shall be headed to Portsmouth when I get off work to go pick up my copy, doubtless one of many who shall be waiting in line. I won't be absolutely devastated if I should inadvertently come across a spoiler before I've finished, but I'm hoping not to and trying to avoid it. For those who are planning on getting it but are worried about spoilers, I shall not be posting any information about the plot on this blog. Neither shall any commenters, since those have to get through me first.

Two By Two

Today was quite a day for things in pairs. First off, it was David's birthday, which means it was also Landlady Paula's birthday. They are exactly twenty years apart in age, and next year will be their 100th birthday. We are in the pre-planning stages for that one, but for today we decided to celebrate by, what else, doing a couple of alpaca castrations!

Here are the victims patients pre-surgery, Spirit on the left and Otis on the right. I cropped out Paula & Wendy because Paula didn't want to be seen in her mucking-about-the-farm attire, but they're both smiling, perhaps a bit too gleefully.



Some good drugs, and then it was just a little incision, a clamp



a tie, and a cut,



and repeat,



followed by a few sutures. David intrepidly managed to take photos for the first one, but decided that was enough for him. Otis's surgery was much the same, though, and at the end we were left with what the folks across the Pond might refer to as a "bloody, bollocky mess".



Literally.

Nonetheless, within a very short period, both boys were up and about and none little the worse for wear.



Lest you think that was all our excitement, afterwards I put on some nicer clothes and took David out for pizza (his request) at a restaurant we hadn't been to before but were told has the best pizza around. I'm not certain about that claim, but it was decent, at any rate. After dinner, we came home and had some fudge that I made up last night from a mix - I was dubious, but it was a gift we'd had for a while - but with extra cocoa and walnuts added. We also watched Helen Mirren as The Queen, and I finished up these for Dulaan:

Toddler socks in Cleckheaton Country 8 ply, Sherman short row toe up pattern, 3.25mm (US3) dpn's

So, to recap - two birthdays, two alpaca castrations, two balls each, two small pizzas, and two socks ready to go. There was only one thing today that didn't fit into the pattern of twos. While we were watching the movie, there was a little bit of a ruckus downstairs, which I assumed was Tolo getting into some sort of trouble (as he does). After the movie, David started down the stairs and I heard him exclaim, "OH! MY! GOD!"

It turns out our little troublemaker was earning his keep.



He was quite proud of himself, but he was having fun playing and wasn't being too quick about dispatching the poor thing, although it was barely moving by then. So I gave him some praise and told him what a good little hunter he was, then took the mouse away and (after David had gone upstairs so he wouldn't have to watch) euthanized it to spare it a lingering demise.

I'm still proud of my little man, though.

Hat #2

I finished it tonight with about 8 inches left of the darker color. It's now been washed and will be added to my Dulaan pile once it's dry.

As soon as I was finished I went through the Dulaan stash and dug out 5 skeins of Tahki yarns - 3 of Donegal Tweed and two of a very similar, though less tweedy, variegated yarn in colors that are complementary to the Donegal Tweed. There should be enough here for a child's vest, so that's what I've cast on for.



The plan in my head is to do most of the body with lice patterning using the pinkish yarn, then some other patterning in the greenish-purplish yarn over the chest & shoulders.

An Afternoon's Labour

The weather was quite nice this afternoon, so I decided to try to tackle some of our overgrown front yard. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that our front yard is a very steep little hill. Once upon a time, the landladies had it well mulched and planted in daylilies. The daylilies are still there, but not so much with the mulch these days. Last summer it got very jungley, and the daylilies were practically choked out by grass and weeds and evil, evil, evil, evil bittersweet (I don't think I can, in fact, convey how awful this vine is. Anyone who promotes it, whether as an ornamental or for use in floral arrangements, should be dragged out and quartered, then shot in non-vital places, then cut into little pieces and burned, with their souls being sent to the deepest level of hell. They probably deserve worse, but I'm just soft that way.).

So after four hours of raking, and pulling, and digging, and throwing, and hauling, I had this to show for it:



Unfortunately, there's nothing in this photo that really gives a good sense of scale, but this pile probably contains at least a couple hundred pounds of yard waste. This represents about a third of our front yard. There's still the flattish (by which I mean "less steep") part, which needs to be prepared for two apple trees I've ordered and will be picking up in a month, and the western side of the yard, which is overgrown with rambling rose and staghorn sumac. It was all I could manage in one afternoon, though, and the effort has left me quite sore.

The Latest Word Around Town

Bray House, the oldest house in town - and, consequently, the oldest house in the state - was put on the auction block this past weekend. It sold for $1.8M, which is fairly average for the high end homes (i.e., much, much nicer than our house) around here. Rumor has it that the winning bidder was 80's pop star Daryl Hall. Coincidentally, the other half of Hall & Oates is also an alpaca breeder. So who knows, maybe we can get them to come sing Maneater to the 'pacas.

Le Tricot Machine C'est Moi

My sleep schedule is a bit screwier than usual tonight, because I didn't get up in the evening and just kept right on sleeping, which meant I woke up at 3:30AM. So I sat down to do a bit of knitting until I got sleepy enough to go back to bed. As I often do, I opened up iTunes to catch up on my podcasts a bit, and it whined at me that I hadn't listened to the Bande à Part podcast for a while.

Now, I don't really speak French. I've taught myself enough over the years that I can sort of almost understand it, though I'm sure there's a lot that gets lost in translation. Still, I live in a state with a large francophone community that shares more of its border with francophone Canadian provinces than it does with the one state it also borders (Québec and New/Nouveau Brunswick license plates are almost as common a sight as New Hampshire and Masshole ones). And one thing that I've learned from that proximity is that francophone Canada has a phenomenal music scene. Since corporate radio doesn't see fit to let us hear any more of that scene than Céline Dion (wailing at us en anglais, naturellement), I keep up with it via podcast.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see that last week's podcast, which I had yet to listen to, featured a duo who go by the name Tricot Machine. With a name like that, I was a little worried that I'd not like them and feel really, really cheated, but it turns out that I love their music - indie folk pop with a very sweet & whimsical, slightly melancholic feel. In fact, I loved it so much, I started looking for somewhere to buy the album, and I found it here. I can hardly wait.

Des Chapeaux

While listening to my brand new favorite band, I made some progress on the second hat for Dulaan in the lite lopi type yarn.



I did a 2x2 rib for the band of this hat, and I'm still working out in my head what I want to do with the decreases at the top. It looks like I'll have just barely enough of the darker yarn to finish it off. If not, there's enough of the lighter yarn that I can start working from the other end and maintain the thickness of the stranding and have a top that's finished off in one color.

At work, I have another hat-in-progress that is destined for Dulaan. This one is a Fair Isle that I'm doing in Limbo from Halcyon Yarn.



Anyone recognize the motif? Isn't it cuuuuuuute?


Questions Gladly, If Not Promptly, Answered

KnitNZu asked the other day, "Do you have a good way to catch the color you carry in two-color knitting?" She has a post with photos of one way to do it here.

My answer is that I try not to, if at all possible. Elizabeth Zimmermann addressed the reason for this in Knitting Around, I believe, but I had already discovered it on my own. If you catch up a float by wrapping the carried yarn around the yarn in use, the color being carried will tend to show through between the stitches where it is wrapped. A better option might be to use a singles from one of the yarns (or a finer thread) and a sharp needle and lightly tack the float down later, if necessary. Either that or I would probably do segments that would otherwise require long floats in intarsia instead (Priscilla Gibson-Roberts discusses methods for doing this in tubular garments in several of her books & articles).

The standard rule with Fair Isle knitting is to avoid floats longer than 5 stitches, and since a lot of EZ's designs were worked at 5st/inch, I will stretch that rule a little bit to floats of no more than an inch. In the bunny motif above, the space between the ears is 6 stitches. Since my gauge is around 6st/inch, I wouldn't want anything longer than that, but as it's not going on a part of the body where there are appendages that would be likely to snag those floats, it should be just fine. In a patterned sock, I'd probably try to avoid floats longer than 3-4 stitches, just to minimize the risk of snags.

That and I'd keep my toenails trimmed.

About Time!

I haven't done any Dulaan knitting for a bit, so I cast on for this hat last night and finished it tonight.



The pattern is extremely basic - a one inch band of twin rib, then two alternating colors - in this case, tone on tone - stranded for a thicker garment. The only thing I don't much care for about this one is the twin rib. I knew that it wouldn't pull in much and thought about frogging it, but I figured I'd keep going and see how I felt about it off the needles. I still think it'll make a nice hat for a toddler, but next time I think I will stick with regular ribbing for a snugger fit at the bottom.

The yarn is part of a big bag I got from Debbie Gremlitz at Nordic Fiber Arts. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but she had a bunch of stash yarns she had wanted to get rid of and offered them to me to pick through for Dulaan. This particular yarn is one of the lighter weight ones I picked up. Both skeins had been wound into balls, so I have no ball bands to identify the brand, but they're a lite lopi type yarn and the two colors were obviously meant to go together. I believe there is also enough yarn to make another hat, so I hope to do that soon.

Sheep Eyes

Knitnzu has tagged me for a meme to come up with several lists of sevens. Right now, though, I can barely keep my eyes open, let alone actually think about seven of anything, so it'll have to wait a bit. I do, however, owe her an answer about sheep's eyes and why they have horizontal pupils.

Of course, in the time it's taken me to get to this question, she's gone off and done some of her own research. She cites a Wikipedia article - "Pupil" - which suggests that sheep and goats may have evolved the horizontal slit pupil the better to climb mountainous terrain. Of course, this doesn't adequately explain why all ungulates (hooved animals) have this type of pupil, since most of them evolved to inhabit plains and grasslands.

The two most basic explanations are a) this pupil shape is the result of a chance mutation that turned out to be benign in terms of survivabilty and managed to perpetuate itsef, or b) this particular pupil shape conferred some sort of survival advantage (better visual acuity, better depth perception, etc.) on ancestral prey animals with this sort of pupil. Because there's essentially no variation across this huge group of mammals, this suggests that b) is the most likely explanation, but I quite honestly couldn't answer with complete certainty as to what that advantage is (though I suspect it has something to do with ability to spot predators).