Knitting in the Parthenon

Well, not really.

The recreated Parthenon in the British Museum (a.k.a. the Elgin Marbles) was my favorite part of the whole museum (and that's saying something).

I found a lone chair by the sculptures of Athena and Poseidon, and broke out the Pi Shawl. I'm on the last panel, the round of 576, and I'm working the whole thing in gull stitch, inspired by indigoblue's on Ravelry.

The gull stitch, FYI, is available in Knitter's Almanac, but is so simple and lovely that we should all know it by heart.

Here it is, written for working the round:
Round 1: K all sts.
Round 2: K1, k2tog, yo, k1, yo, ssk, k1.
Round 3: K all sts.
Round 4: k2tog, yo, k3, yo, ssk.

This is a 7-stitch repeat, and that doesn't work mathematically with the round of 576 on the Pi Shawl. You have to add a couple of sts near the end of the first round to get the math right.

But what's a few sts between friends?

Knitting Travels: Gastonia, NC, and other Crafts

I've been out of town the past few days with my husband M.A.P., visiting his parents in Gastonia.

I've been wrestling with a knitting project, that must remain secret because it's off to a magazine as a submission when it's finished. I have knit and ripped this project 5 times now, which is a lot even for a trial-and-error designer like me. I had to set it down and take a walk today, and realized as I was walking that I had a bone-crunching headache--I didn't even notice the headache because I was so caught up in the project. My sister called as I was walking and I told her about the project, and she said, That doesn't sound like fun.

So true.

Question: Is knitting always supposed to be fun? If you knit a project for weeks on end and you feel frustrated, or even miserable, shouldn't you QUIT? I'm calling this knitter's angst. Has anyone else ever experienced this? What did you do to get over it?

While I've been here, I commandeered the garage and worked on some wood. A good break from yarn. Two bed-side tables that I inherited from friends, received a refinishing.

And my M.A.P., a fabulous carpenter/cabinet-maker, built custom cabinets for the laundry room we built.

That's a link to another blog I keep, where I've tracked the DIY construction work at our home. The thing is, crafting is crafting, right? So if I rehabilitate found furniture (like this) I can talk about it here, can't I? I added sewing a few posts ago, since fabric is fiber (right?). Well wood is fibrous too, isn't it? I'm kind of tired of keeping up with two blogs. Does anyone have any opinions on this? Um, like Jordynn?

My mother-in-law offered to take me to the local yarn shop one afternoon this week. It's really a yarn corner tucked into a frame shop. I bought a ball of sock yarn and some size 3 dpns (the size recommended on the ball band) but I should have bought 2s, because that's what Cookie A. always uses in her patterns. And I got to have me some of those socks.

Here's my mother-in-law shopping in the store, Things Remembered (isn't that also the name of a chain store in shopping malls?):

They have Berroco and Cascade mostly, and a few other things.

Here's my small haul:

I'm doing well keeping to my promise to support my knitting expenditures solely with knitting earnings. The paypal account looks small right now, though. I need to launch another pattern.

Coming up:
1. Durham Centerfest, where some knitting buddies and I will be selling knitting wares. If you're local come out and find us. We're called the Durham String Thing.

2. The N.C. State Fair. I'll be entering a project in the crafts category come September. (Another secret project. I hate not being able to share WIP pics on the blog.)

Knitting in Seattle

Katie and I flew into Seattle last weekend for the Rhetoric Society of America conference. Within hours of arriving, and checking into our kick ass hotel room in the Westin, (see view from our room above), what did we do? Register for the conference? Meet up with professional acquaintances? Hells no! We got our priorities in line and headed straight for So Much Yarn, a great little shop just down the street from our hotel. Katie had forgotten her size 5 needles, which she needed to work on a secret new project she's designing, so we hightailed it to the store for our first visit. We were greeted by Ginger and Teresa, who (little did they know) were about to receive daily visits from us.



The store is well stocked and organized by type of fiber--wools, cottons, etc. The dark woods make it a cozy store, and there's a nook in the back with books to consult and chairs to sit and knit in. Ginger and Teresa were super friendly and glad just to chat. I ended up buying five skeins of Araucania Patagonia Nature Cotton in a light emerald green shade, while Katie bought some gorgeous plum-colored Takhi Sierra to make Plath.

At the conference, we tried our best to live up to the Knitty Professors name. I was working mainly on a pale blue version of Plath for my sister's birthday and Dalloway, while Katie was working on her secret project, Plath, and Desdemona (pattern coming soon). One of the surprising things about knitting at the conference was the number of people who came up to talk to us. The reactions varied, but were mostly positive. One woman came and showed us a pair of bright blue and green socks she was working on. Steven Mailloux sitting next to me at a featured session mentioned that he wished he had something similar to work on--his wife is an avid knitter. Greg Wilson--my fellow panel member for our presentation on nuclear rhetorics--mentioned that he's a quilter, an equally engaging (if less portable) activity. There were a few skeptics who wondered how we could knit and concentrate on a talk at the same time, but we both replied--truthfully--that knitting actually makes it easier to listen attentively. I'm not sure what the scientific reason for this might be, but it is definitely true. I started knitting during a long series of job talks in my department last year, and while I think some of the candidates were a little unnerved at the site of someone knitting in the audience, I definitely found that I was able to follow the talk better if I had something to do with my hands.

Our second visit to So Much Yarn occurred on the second day of the conference, when Katie realized that she hadn't bought enough of the Takhi yarn for Plath. Teresa was working on a Noro Silk Garden project, and we persuaded her to check out Xylem instead--which will look gorgeous in Silk Garden. We can't wait to see how it turns out! We also showed off some of our patterns--Plath and Dalloway, namely.

All in all, it was a happy knitting conference. I took off for the San Juan Islands on Monday and brought all my knitting projects--but unfortunately my time was taken up with hiking, biking, and swimming in the freezing waters of Puget Sound. There are tons of sheep on Lopez Island (and goats and cows), and I had hoped to come across some local spinners/dyers/yarnies, but to no avail. Had I done my research, I would've come across this. Definitely a reason to go back to Seattle/Puget Sound sometime soon!

On Knitting in Japan

Japan was a riot. A land of ironies and contradictions. I f*ing loved it. I'm homesick for Japan.

For instance, I've never seen such excellent yarn stores (Yuzawaya, Okadaya), yet I never saw anyone knitting. Ever. Not once. And when C. and I would pull our knitting out in public, folks would stare at us like we were insane. Granted, as gaijin,* we got stared at anyway, but apparently only obasan** knit in Japan. So we started rebelling, knitting in the strangest places we could think of. On the train, for example. You're not supposed to do anything on the train except whisper and send text messages.

Another thing--sex and sexuality erupt publicly in entirely different ways there. Here's a sign I often saw on the train--advertising porn. Like it's no big thing:


And here's a sign indicating that this train car is designated for women only during rush hour because of the problem of men who a**-grab on crowded trains. (Read more about that on C.'s Japan blog here.):


And everyone obeys signs. There's a sign for everything. People even line up to board the trains, following these painted stripes on the ground:


When I came back, everything seemed loud and large. Large (cars, furniture, houses) and loud (people's voices, mostly). I'm in a permanent state of annoyance. I don't leave the house.

For some FOs from Japan, go to this earlier post.

*foreigner
**old ladies