Halfway questions

Today is halfway, or at least that is second hand information from the Yarn Harlot’s blog post.  Am I halfway?  Well, I could be.  I could stop here.

Olympic Socks

I could bind off now, and have this be the top of my sock.  I have completed a couple of inches of ribbing and decreased for the upper calf.  But do I want knee highs, or thigh highs?

I am a thigh high person.  I like to wear skirts.  Long ones, but skirts nonetheless.  And to be honest there is nothing I find sexier than thigh high socks hidden under skirts. I typically where knee high wool socks, because they don’t come in thigh high length. Thus, the hubster has expressed that practically ‘ you would wear the knee highs more often’.  But how do I know this is an honest answer, or that he doesn’t just want me to stop shaking him by the shoulders moping about the house, glancing backwards at the sock and saying ‘do I keep knitting?’

I could even knit the thigh high, and then scrunch it down ontop of my boot when I didn’t want to hike ‘er all the way up.

Oh, did I mention that the goddamn Noro people tied a knot in the middle!  And I came to it in the middle of what could be the cuff?  You know the one, the classic “heh, we’ll change balls in the middle here, and not only that but go backwards from the colour progression we ended with, plus, we’ll make the change real sudden like so you can totally tell in the final knitted piece.”  Yes, I did cut off a bunch of the ball to try and make it look right.  Jerks.  So, but continuing, I will be knitting an un colour progression.

Keep that in mind when giving me your opinions.  I’ll knit away here and see what it looks like.

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Knitting Olympics

The Knitting Olympics / 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games have both been points of contention for me, for different reasons of course, but I only got a handle on it today as I was standing in the shower.

Basically I have two conflicting feelings: one, that the olympics are an amazing time for an individual, a community, a country to see what they are made of.  The motto – higher, faster, stronger – is so beautiful, because it doesn’t say ‘… than the other guy’.  It implies that each individual is responsible for surpassing their own personal best, and each team, each country is responsible for being greater than the sum of their parts.

The second feeling begins with the fact that I live in Vancouver, I am a middle class, white female with a fairly sporty body.  I have both the money and the physique not only to enjoy the winter games as a spectator (if I so choose) or as a competitor, if I desired that.  Not only are the tickets to the winter games out of reach for the better part of most working class people, but there are a lot of people in Vancouver who have been marginalized by the winter games.  Homeless have been displaced, problems in our society such as the economy have been swept under the carpet because the worlds eyes are on us, and the powers that be would like us to look good.  We would all like to look good, but realistically, we are a normal city with normal problems.

I hadn’t been able to make up my mind just what I would do about these conflicting issues when the idea of the Knitting Olympics came around.  How can I support an idea, sit and watch the opening ceremonies, when I can’t make up my mind as to what I think?  I don’t want to be saying one thing and doing another.

To be honest, I still don’t know exactly what to think.  I sway back and forth between my conflicting feelings, crying as we won gold for the first time on our soil, and then stopping to feel the hardship of my fellow canadians who are shoved into the background.  Generally, when I am conflicted, I knit.  So, I’m knitting a pair of socks for the knitting olympics. I realize that sometimes we can’t just pick a side.  I’m a Canadian, and a human being.  I can be excited and torn apart at the same time.  I am proud of the world for trying to put differences aside and come together to be great, even if we have a ways to go all of the rest of the time.

Olympic Sock

I think they are too big.  I think I’m going to have to rip back down to the toe and minus a few increases.  17 days?  We’ll have to see!

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A Postcard

I was going to send this while I was in Brazil, I swear.

The thing is, is that when you are in the middle of a tropical country where the most important thing you have to do in a day is trek the sinfully short 1 block commute to the healing and meditation oasis that is The Casa de Dom Ignacio overlooking this…

View from the Casa

And sometimes this:

Storm Cloud

You quickly reorganize your priorities from staring at a computer monitor, to staring across the balcony at this…

Balcony

while sucking up every millilitre of healing energy that is abundantly floating through the air.

You don’t even end up getting a ton of knitting done.  But you are energized to pick up the sticks at home (why at home, and not on the plane?  Because of the rediculous security between the US and Brazil.  What I wanted to say was ‘trust me, I am more dangerous without the knitting needles.’  Thankfully I still had wits about me enough to know that a comment like that would get me more than I bargained for!)

So really, this ends up being a postcard to Brazil…

Dear Brazil,

I miss you, and all of your beauteous summer.  I am glad to be back in the wet and wonderful North West, in fact, the smell of your amazon really made me appreciate the smell of the coniferous forests that I had begun to take for granted.  The papaya trees growing in your ally ways

Papaya in the Allyway

inspired me to try the same here, but with kale, and maybe some brussel sprouts.

Maybe we will meet again,

With love,

MK.

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Movieless Monday: The waning crescent

Well, here is is, 5:08pm on Monday.  I haven’t left the house yet.  I am dressed… but not presentably, nor appropriately for the astonishingly dreary weather we are having.  I am in the  middle of painting all the kitchen cupboards.  I will be starting dinner soon, and then finishing the kitchen and boxing up the Sally Anne’s boxes for transport tomorrow.

I’m also finishing my wedding album.  Yes.  It has been just past exactly 2.5 years since Justin and I merged our lives in marrital bliss. AND I still haven’t finished putting together the wedding album.

Yup… today, I am finishing.  I’m finishing a lot of things right now, which is no coincidence.  First and foremost in the line up of reasons why I (we) are doing this, it is the time of the waning crescent left over from New Year’s Eve’s full moon, which was synchronistically a blue moon.  It is time to exhale last year, and in less than a week, it will be time to inhale this year.  I don’t want to be inhaling a bunch of junk that I have stashed away in the corners of my house.

Second, the hubster and I are making a trip to Brazil to see John of God.  Both of us have a multitude of issues relating to having sustained spinal cord injuries 12 and 10 years ago respectively.  Thus, we are making space in our psyches for the new and healthier bodies that we hope to achive while we are there, by cleaning out the ‘old’ us.  Anything we have been hanging onto from those days – physical or otherwise – is ousted.

Third, part of being in the Waldorf Teacher Training with my teacher and mentor, Gene Campell, is that I get my life in order.  I get my house and home working smoothly, I get my intentions set and I get my body and mind working and thinking clearly.  For this, she prescribes, as I am sure I have mentioned, a paper called the Labours of Herculese – 29 pages of detailed process for doing life right.

So, seeing that we leave for the hubsters school on Thursday, and then Brazil on Saturday, I may be lost in the abyss for a couple of days, until I get my feet out the door.

Wish me luck!

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FO Friday: The Fibonacci Pullover

The Fibonacci Pullover is the first step I have taken into designing my own knitwear.  Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Brook’s Classic Pullover pattern from The Opinionated Knitter was an excellent place to start because it gave me the experience of measuring a body and creating a sweater from the gauge I got out of those measurements.  Also, being plain stockinette stitch, it leaves room for cables and modifications.

I took on the challenge of designing a cable that would work with the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, and to make it a larger cable, used the value of 8 as the base number.  The cable turned out rather well, and was easy and enjoyable to knit.

Classic Brooks Sweater - The Fibonacci Pullover

I decided to place the cable in the front of the sweater where it’s beginning synchronistically lines up with the heart centre of the his chest. This cable was a little bit longer, but not long enough to include a complete amount of purl stitches for the next number in the sequence. So, I decided to continue purling all the way around his neck line, giving the rolled hem a place to rest and finishing the number in the sequence at the same time.  Then, I decided to balance the sweater by doing one slightly shorter cable on the outside of each arm.  The hubster is eager to greet the person who recognizes the symbolism of the cables on his sweater.

Classic Brooks Sweater - The Fibonacci Pullover

The shoulder decreases didn’t work when I tried to do the right under the shoulder bones.  I ended up with a bunch of extra fabric, like little wings.  So, I ripped it back and did the decreases starting three inches above armpit instead of two, and right over the armpits.  Worked like a charm.  Tight enough, but with enough space to reach and move.

Classic Brooks Sweater - The Fibonacci Pullover

Classic Brooks Sweater - The Fibonacci Pul</p> <p>As for the seemless bit, I loved it.  Grafting the armpits was so satisfying, and you can't even tell!  The only thing is, the gauge I knit was so tight that it made my hands a bit sore to knit on circulars.  If it wasn't for that, I might never knit flat again!</p> <p><a href=

As for the seemless bit, I loved it.  Grafting the armpits was so satisfying, and you can’t even tell!  The only thing is, the gauge I knit was so tight that it made my hands a bit sore to knit on circulars.  If it wasn’t for that, I might never knit flat again!

Classic Brooks Sweater - The Fibonacci Pullover

As per the pattern, I left the bottom hem band of the sweater until the end, for which I am glad.  I hadn’t really knitted up enough on the body before I started the arm pits, and thus that ability to add extra onto the bottom without the sweater looking cobbled together was much welcomed!  Plus, I have the option of adding more to the sweater if he decides that he would like it longer at some point, or the washing of it does something curious to the length.  I decreased about 10% of the stitches for the bottom band*.

Classic Brooks Sweater - The Fibonacci Pullover

So, there you have it, the Fibonacci Pullover

Yarn: Cascades Ecological Wool in the 8025 shade/colourway, just over three skeins.
Needles: 3.5 mm needles (a little bit small in my opinion, the sweater is rather stiff but we’ll see how it washes up)
Size: 44″ chest (cast on 184 stitches)

Merry Christmas my love!

Classic Brooks Sweater - The Fibonacci Pullover

* One issue with adding the bottom band, post torso, is that it seems to fold up on itself. I don’t know if this is because he is sitting in a wheelchair all the time, or if it is because there is a seam there and it needs to be blocked straight (hubster maintains that his body heat will block it, and there is no need to wait any longer) If you have an answer… send a signal!

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