scifiknitter

Blown glass is magical. I’m not a person who spends a lot of time with my memories, but I have fond ones of a visit to the Corning Glass Museum when I was a child. So when we went up to Montreal recently to visit our daughter, a visit to the Chihuly exhibit currently on display at the Museum of Fine Arts was in order. I was very happy that I was allowed to take pictures. I only had my cellphone camera, however, so the quality of these photos is not the greatest. Some colors are hard to photograph in any circumstances (I’m talking to you, bright red), and if what you are trying to photograph is also shiny... there were many wonderful objects that I didn’t even try to capture. The magic starts at the front of the museum. The museum is showing a short stop-motion video of this piece being assembled. Wonderful! You walk, walk, walk from the entrance in the modern part of the museum complex, under the street, up the most unnerving stairs I know (very wide steps with a very shall...

Finally - a second project for the year is off the needles! I have a new pair of socks that are in a different color than the warm peachy and burgundy tones that dominate my pile of handknit socks. The pattern is Hickory, designed by Jane Cochran, and published in Clara Parkes’ The Knitter’s Book of Socks. This is a fine sock pattern, relatively quick to knit, and incorporating a subtle rib pattern that is an excellent choice for the kettle dyed yarn. The yarn is Araucania Ranco Solid, a toothy sockweight yarn that seems slightly less civilized than other brands I have knit. Contrast these to Lorna Miser’s Escher socks, which I knit a while ago: There is a similar effect, but let me tell you, the Hickories were a much easier, faster knit, and they are considerably more stretchy and comfortable. I might well make another pair of Hickories (they would be a good choice for gift socks), but I will never knit another pair of Eschers. Still on the needles: the emerald Lorelei ca...

The social blogging site where I first cut my teeth as a blogger is about to be transformed. It will either go dark, or become a somewhat pricey paid membership club, where you can drop in and read for free but you have to pay to publish. I won’t be one of the people who pays to play. It’s not that I think “FREE” is the only way to blog, but I established a mirror blog on Blogger years ago, and it is now my home site. Impending change is a kick in the pants, and a jolt to the thought process. I’ve been thinking about what I’ve learned about how to blog, Here are my guiding principles. Is this my story, or does it belong to someone else? I can be much freer when I write about my stories and thoughts. When I write about someone else’s story or when I include someone else in a post, I’ve learned to be careful with my words. Several years ago I realized that I don’t know who is reading my blog. A post about events in my town that I thought was harmless was printed and posted in the lo...

Matching a yarn with a knitting pattern can be harder than it would seem. The first major consideration is gauge. You can’t use a fine yarn to make a heavy cabled sweater, nor can you use a bulky yarn to make a delicate lace shawl. Gauge distinctions can be subtle; a yarn that looks like it would be appropriate for a given pattern may not “make gauge” no matter what size or type of needles you try. The power of multiplication means that being off by just a wee bit from the pattern gauge can have an enormous effect on the size of a knitted item, as a small discrepancy multiplies over the inches of the item’s width. The next consideration is color. There is a rule of thumb: complex patterns require a simple coloration, complex colorations require a simple pattern. In my experience, this rule of thumb is almost as immutable as the laws of physics. Sometimes you fall in love with a yarn, and you buy that yarn, and then you realize that both major knitting considerations are making it ...

There seem to be two points of view on the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, and the global warming that we are starting to notice. One is that there is no problem, it’s all just the weather which is unpredictable and changeable. The other is that rising carbon levels are an unmitigated evil, dooming the planet to catastrophic change. Could there be a third way to look at this issue? A middle way? I’m not talking about a political compromise, but a rational, fact-based analysis that points the way towards acceptance of what has happened, relieves eco-guilt, and offers policy guidelines for going forward. Curt Stager’s book Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth lays out a just such a rational middle path by taking a long view. Carbon pollution has happened, and will affect global climate and ecology for thousands of years. There is more than one scenario of what these effects will be, depending on whether we can taper off from our carbon-based en...

My winter route to work takes me past a house that has a story to tell. It’s a private story about a woman who died too young, and I don’t know more than a few intriguing pieces of the tale. A couple of jobs ago I was an account clerk in a county highway office. One summer we hired a young woman, still in college, to work in the office. We were working with a map publisher to revise and reprint the county highway map in conjunction with implementation of a county-wide 911 emergency call system. It was important for the map to match the information at the call center, especially since many roads had been renamed and renumbered. One of M.’s main jobs that summer was to pore over the proofs we got from the publisher, looking for errors. It was a harder job than it sounds, and a big responsibility entrusted to a young person. She fully engaged in the social life of the office. M. had strong opinions, loved the draft horses that she and her father owned, and managed her money carefully. ...

I’ve not been very good this year about reporting my knitting projects on my blog. Let me assure you, there has been knitting and several finished projects. I’ve become very good about recording each project on ravelry.com , and I think that has robbed some of the impetus behind my knitting blog posts of the past. Technical data recorded in a place where it is most likely to be useful to other practitioners - my knitting blog posts seem superfluous in contrast. I will end the year with a report on what I did with the needles this year. Sunrise Circle Jacket (completed January 8) Obviously most of the knitting on this project happened during 2011. It’s knit in Cascade Yarns Ecological Wool, an undyed yarn that is soft and lofty. This is a very warm sweater with flattering shaping and a professional flair. I would feel comfortable wearing it to any business meeting. The designer, Kate Gilbert, created a precise pattern that sewed up perfectly despite some very unconventionally...