Gauge? Pah!

I am a mere mortal, and therefore never manage to get gauge on published patterns. We all know everyone knits differently, depending on all sorts of factors: yarn, type and size of needle, knitting flat or in the round, using magic loop or dpn's, English or continental, etc., etc. Basically, the chances that two people would get the same garment using the same pattern, even with identical yarn and needles, are close to nil. (Not one in a million, because as we've all learned from Terry Pratchett, one in a million odds comes up in your favour nine times out of ten.)

A while ago, I read of a strategy wherein one knits to a tighter gauge, and then simply blocks to required measurements. (As a scientist, I like to cite my sources, so I'm slightly embarrassed that I can't remember where I read this.) As soon as I read it, my brain went, "Duh." I've tried this with a couple of sweaters (since frogged, of course, although for reasons other than gauge/size), and it works for me. I knit really loosely, so I always do my gauge swatches with needles a couple of millimeters smaller than recommended. I never get 24 stitches over 10 cm, or whatever. I get 25, or 24-1/2. Like I said, mere mortal. And, should I, by some miracle, get stitch gauge, my row gauge is of course way way off. Instead of worrying over it, though, I wash and block my swatch to whatever size it should be. If I like the resulting fabric, then I'm ready to go.

This works best on something springy and amenable to blocking, obviously. Although I did it for a sweater knit from alpaca (famous for not having much memory) and it worked wonderfully. It also makes it much easier to substitute yarns. I like this method because it means I don't have to beat myself up over getting exact gauge. More importantly, it's an active way of getting correct tension. With this method, perfect gauge isn't something that I have little control over and can only hope to passively luck into. If I knit to a close enough gauge, I can make the knitting conform to whatever the desired dimensions are. Then my only issue is whether I like that particular yarn at that particular gauge, i.e., if I like the fabric I got. And that makes it my decision- I'm not abandoning a yarn and fabric I like because the vague, mysterious gauge fairies have decided I should be a half stitch off per inch. This is especially important when I remember that tension may change as I knit! I like that this method gives me an extra measure of control over the knitting.

Not that I'm a control freak.

They're forcing me to it

I'm sure most everyone has heard of the vast pet food recalls in the US in the last month. It turns out a factory making wheat gluten, corn gluten and rice protein had contaminated these common pet food ingredients with melamine. This is a good site keeping up with the news on this.

Anyway, I had noticed Chloe was not altogether herself a couple weeks ago, when I started her on the newest batch of food I'd bought. Fortunately, it seems to have passed and she's fine. Even though her food isn't on the recall list, the company who makes it, Hill's, has recalled some of its products, and the recall widens all the time.

This recall has led me to revisit an idea that, I'm sure, is guaranteed to add the 'crazy' to my existing 'cat lady' moniker: a home made all raw food diet.

See, the thing is, pet shops in Ireland don't really carry decent wet food. They carry the low-end, supermarket crap like Whiskas or Frisky, or whatever. I refuse to feed this stuff to Chloe, and, in the past, when I've been in a pinch and run out of her normal food, I've given shit I've bought in Tesco to her, and she either refuses it (difficult to imagine her refusing food, but it happened) or she ate it and threw it up a few minutes later. On my bed. Some pet shops do sell the somewhat nicer Royal Canin or Eukanuba stuff, but here's the kicker: only the dry food. Dry food is bad for cats, m'kay? Chloe got bladder stones twice on the stuff. The second time was totally my fault.

After the first $1200 bladder stone incident, the vet told me no more dry food. This was fine, as it was easy to get stuff like Hill's tinned wet food at the pet shops at home. When I moved her over to Ireland, I found it was impossible to buy decent wet food at the pet shops here. They don't sell them and UK internet shops won't deliver pet food to the Republic of Ireland. I could only get it by special ordering it from the vet. It was a pain in the ass. I was ordering from a vet in Malahide, who after a few months, stopped doing it. In addition, higher end brands like Wellness, California Natural, Innova, Evo and others which specialize in quality pet foods aren't sold here, so I went back to the dry food. Sure enough, a few months later, more bladder stones and another €1000 at the vet.

So, now my vet special orders tinned Hill's food for Chloe. This was okay by me (though I'd prefer something nicer than Hill's) until this recall business. I haven't spent thousands of dollars/euros on this cat to have her die on me from kidney failure. So, since I can't buy food from a company whom I trust to have the health and welfare of pets as their goal (honestly, big pet food manufacturers don't- they want to make as much money as possible, and the fillers and crap they put in their pet food is disgusting), I'm just going to have to do it myself. So from now on, the damned cat will definitely be eating better than I am.

For now

I had a great time at the city centre SnB on Saturday. When I got home, I picked up Print O' the Wave. A few days ago, I'd finished the 34 repeats the pattern called for on the centre panel and still had more than half my yarn left, so I'd gone for for 40 repeats. On Saturday I sat down to the task of picking up the stitches along the edge...ugh. But, actually, it went pretty well.

First, I had to figure out how many extra stitches to pick up for those 6 extra repeats. Here's the math:
240 stitches for 34 pattern repeats means 7.06 stitches per repeat (240/34 = 7.06). An extra 6 repeats therefore means 42.35 extra stitches (6 x 7.06 = 42.35). 240 + 42 = 282 stitches. However, the edging pattern requires 8 stitches per edging repeat, so I rounded up to a multiple of 8, which is 288. Actually, I should probably just have rounded down to 280, and saved myself those extra 16 stitches (for both long sides of the stole).

Aaaanyway, forging ahead. I'd put in the vertical lifeline, so I used my 100 cm - 2 mm Addis to pick up all around the edge: I started with a long edge (I didn't break my yarn) and just slid the needle through the loops around the lifeline, then the provisionally cast-on edge, then the other long side through the lifeline loops, then finally the live stitches from the last row of my centre panel. The lifeline only went through every other row, so I needed to pick up some extra stitches. Easy enough- I marked off sections of five repeats each. Therefore, in each section, I needed 36 stitches. I counted how many stitches I had in each section before starting it and, evenly, added in the extra stitches needed to make 36. So, if a section had 30 stitches, I needed an extra 6, so I added one stitch after every fifth stitch. I did this as I knitted off the picked up stitches.

So here it is, all 712 stitches picked up and knitted. Yes, seven fecking hundred and twelve stitches.


It took maybe a couple hours and lots and lots of counting. And it looks like crap, but I believe in the magic of blocking.

After this was done, and I had convinced myself that I really had all 712 stitches (lots and lots of counting), I took a deep breath, and realized my right wrist and left hand really hurt. I think I've been knitting- gasp!- too much. My last few projects have been with 2 mm needles, and my hands must really feel it. Plus, I've been puttering around in the yard digging up dandelions, and those unfamiliar but repetitive motions have put some strain in them. So I've decided to stop knitting for a few days. I really don't want to stop- I'm dying to get POtW finished and see it in all its blocked glory, but I'd hate to find that I've really messed up my hands.

Negative net progress

I am on the thirtieth repeat for the centre panel of Print O' The Wave. Nearly there!

The 100 mm Addis were not so good for lace knitting: they're blunt-tipped, slippery, and the long cable got in the way. So I bought some bamboo dpn's and turned them into straights:


I switched to these in the middle of the centre panel, and I don't think there's a noticeable change in gauge, so I'll just cross my fingers and hope it blocks out alright. The funny thing is, the bamboos are better for this project in almost every way: they're pointier, they grip the cobweb-weight yarn much better, and they're short and easy to work with. However, it's nearly impossible for me to thread a lifeline through when the knitting's on the bamboo needles- the cord of the Addis is so useful for that. So I do the last row of every repeat on the Addis, just so I can thread the lifeline afterwards.

Although I've had nothing else but this on the needles since I finished the Cathay top last week, I have been busy thinking. Since I bought all that yarn a couple weeks ago, and since, um, I don't actually have a job enabling me to buy more random non-essential stuff, I'd decided no more yarn buying until I use up at least a sweater's worth of stash yarn. (As an out for me: sock yarn doesn't count, but I'm going to try not to buy more than I use.) However, using up stash yarn is kind of a problem at the moment, because I only have wool, mohair and alpaca yarns in sweater quantities. Not spring/summer friendly.

So the yarn diet, combined with a recent Knittyboard thread about how unhappy some people are about their finished objects made me think about and go through some of my finished stuff. Among the countless scarves and hats, and recently, socks, I've also knit, oh, six or seven sweaters. Among them are these:

• The first was a disaster. Ah, the joys of yarn substitution.
  
• I was proud of myself on the second and wore it a few times before I came to my senses and realized it's not for me, so it's been frogged.
  
• The mohair cardigan based on Knitty's Candy, but, uh, without all the interesting bits. So a raglan cardigan, basically. Although I like it well enough, and I wore it half a dozen times last winter, the fit and shaping could be better, and the only reason it hasn't been frogged is that it's mohair, and I need my sanity in case I have job interviews.
  
• A seamless yoke raglan knit in alpaca. I actually wore this for quite a bit before I decided that the yoke decreases looked messy and that the yarn would look much better knitted on smaller needles. That's been frogged.
• An Hourglass Sweater from Joelle Hoverson's Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I made lots of modifications to the pattern, and I'm actually quite happy with it. It could be better, though. I think this will get to live. For now.

Before the Cathay top, my last attempt at a cap-sleeved tee was this:


I tried to copy the shaping of a favourite t-shirt. It was an okay attempt, and the result looked pretty good when worn. Made from Rowan's Calmer, the top was knit to the same dimensions as the green t-shirt, but has grown considerably since, and now looks quite loose on. Plus, my tension on this stretchy, stretchy yarn was all over the place, and all I could see when I looked at it lately were the rows and rows of uneven stitches.


So, given the yarn diet and my stash's lack of spring/summer appropriate yarns, the top has been turned into this:


This will become some kind of summer tee. Close fitting but not figure hugging tight. I can't decide what kind of sleeves and neckline it will have, though.

My, I've been wordy lately, haven't I?

Finally!

Have the camera back, so can actually show some pictures now.

The scoop neck Cathay top is finally done!


Scoop neck tee
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cathay, 5 balls
Needles: 2.5 mm circular (used as straights) and 2.5 dpn's (for the sleeves)
Pattern: my own

Before I go into the details of the knitting, let me tell you a little story about the evils of yarn acquisition. A year and a half ago, I went to Nottingham for the weekend. We were staying with friends in Beeston, who just happened to live right down the road from a lovely yarn shop called, fittingly, Yarn. So of course I went. Among some other things, I got three balls of Cathay in a lovely magenta-ish shade. I'd meant to get enough to make Grumperina's Tivoli/Picovoli, but for some reason, my brain refused to work that morning, and despite having the pattern with me, I only bought three balls. When I got back to Dublin, I smacked myself, and thought, well, there are some nice examples of striped Picovolis, I'll just get a few balls of a matching colour, and do that. At Springwools, there were only two colours, an icy blue-grey, and black. So black it was. The two colours sat there for a while, as I stewed over the stripey possibilities. After a bit, I started to fall out of love with the Picovoli. So then the six balls of Cathay sat in my modest stash for a year.

Fast forward to a few months ago, and I have an idea for a fitted, deeply scoop necked, cap-sleeved t-shirt. I thought through what I had, and decided the black Cathay would be perfect. As I started to knit it, I realized I wouldn't have enough yarn. I scaled it back to a sleeveless tank, but still had to face the truth- I was going to need an extra ball. I'd bought this yarn a year ago, so I had no hopes of finding the same dyelot. Around this time, my birthday came up, and The Limey took a day off work and surprised me with a trip out to Springwools. Well, just for yuks, I looked through their Cathay stash- they had black, still, and waaay in the back, one ball of the dyelot from my original yarn! I praised whoever is the patron saint of yarn (there must be one) and grabbed it. With this one extra ball, it was just enough to finish off the tank. But then I was left with a black tank top. Which...eh. I looked at my original design, and decided I really like the cap sleeves. In fact, I have a lot of cap-sleeved tops in my closet. So I thought, well, what the hell, I'll buy another ball and if I'm using them for the sleeves, a different dyelot won't be the end of the world. So I bought another ball at This Is Knit, and you see the finished product here.

Mind you, I still have the original three balls of the magenta. I'd only bought the first balls of the black to be able to use the magenta! But two extra balls, three yarn shops, and a year and a half later, here I am, still with the three balls of magenta I can't use! Aaargh!

Notes: Now, on to the actual top and the knitting. I knit the front and back separately, then washed and blocked the pieces before seaming them together. I then picked up stitches around the neckline for the ribbing and around the armscye for the sleeves. I really like the fabric I got with this yarn, but knitting with it is a pain in the ass. It's a cotton blend, and has no stretch, and to get gauge, I had to go down to 2.5 mm needles. The knitting actually hurt my hands. Plus, this is a multiple-plied yarn that isn't so much spun together as just sort of...put together into a single strand and then wound into a ball. So it's splitty. I was forever just knitting into part of a stitch with my pointy Pony's.

This top took way longer than it should have, because I hate -hate- picking up stitches. I did the sleeves and neckline twice, so in between, the project would just sit there for a week or so while I psyched myself up for the picking up of stitches. I just hate it so much. Even when I divided the armholes into sections where I'd only have to pick up 10 or 11 stitches, did I manage to? No, of course not. I'd always reach the end of the section with three stitches left to go, or use up my alloted stitches three-quarters of the way into the section. I hate picking up stitches. Did I mention that?

Having said all that, however, I'm really happy with the way this top turned out. I'm proud I figured out how to do the cap sleeves. They were done with short rows until I liked the length, then finished off with ribbing.


You can see how uneven the tension between my knit and purl rows are on the sleeve. I really have to work on that, but having no give in the yarn didn't help.

This was done early last week, so for the past few days, I've only had one project on the needles: Print O' The Wave. I just keep chugging along on it.

A sad day

Kurt Vonnegut dies, at 84.

I shall go re-read some of his books now.

Why was this happy news, again?

I've spent the day going through all the job advertising and recruitment sites on the web, and it is depressing. Out of the dozens of jobs that come up during a search for science jobs, only a handful require a PhD, and only two aren't in the pharmaceutical industry. That's right: two. 2. Dos. Deux. Two, out of nearly a hundred. Just as well, the pharma companies seem only to want "quality assurance" and "process validation" people. I don't even know what those terms mean. From the vague job descriptions attached, it doesn't seem like the recruiters know, either.

That's another gripe I have. I'm used to academic job descriptions, where they basically tell you in the ad what you'll be doing: SEM, AFM, synthesis of specific compounds, this project or that project, which can be looked up. But these recruiters seem to write job descriptions to be as vague as possible. Sure, everyone wants "a team player" and someone with "excellent organisational, communication and interpersonal skills" but what the hell would I actually be *doing* with my day if I worked there? No clue.

I can't really complain about the job search to friends, because they usually just look at all those years of schooling, and assume that I would be able to find a job quickly and without any problems. I mean, just look at all that education and those degrees! They don't understand that all those years and those degrees mean I've educated and specialized myself out of all hope of gainful employment.

I'm thinking seriously of leaving the PhD off of my CV, but then how would I explain the huge hole in the first half the decade? And then, the pay would be pitiful. Even the jobs that require a PhD pay barely more than I was getting as a post-doc. I'm incensed! For years, I've been told that academia pays shit, but that industry would make up for its less flexible schedule/less overall research and experimental freedom with higher pay. Well, that's crap, apparently. Or maybe the fact that academia pay scales actually look good says a lot about my job options right now.

Newly discovered

One of my favorite blog-type things is the newly-discovered Separated By a Common Language blog. It's written by an American linguist living in the UK. It's fascinating, and satisfies my love of geekiness AND linguistics, with culture thrown in, of course. Although I don't live in the UK, there are enough similarities between British-English and Hiberno-English that it explains a lot of the English I hear every day over here (not to mention on the TV, as we get a lot of British programming). Also, of course, it explains some of The Limey's utterances. Whenever I read it, there's always a point at which I turn to The Limey and say something like, "What do you call the piece of furniture you sit on to watch TV?" to see if he speaks the way the linguist describes or not. Also, her analysis of math vs. maths has, somewhat, settled the argument we're always having. Great reading. I love it.

In which I discover that it's really difficult to take pictures of yarn

As if my housemate doesn't already think I have a problem...
I spent yesterday afternoon trying to take pictures of some yarn I've acquired in the last two weeks (the last two weeks have been really good for yarn, but not so good for knitting). It's finally nice and sunny, so I figured that would be ideal for pictures...but, no. Or, at least, not with my powers of photography.

A couple of weekends ago, The Limey and I went back to the UK for a wedding reception with his family. Of course, the first thing I do nowadays when I know I'm going somewhere is to look up possible yarn shops to visit. The closest to Stoke is Knit2Together, in Wolstanton. They also run the on-line site Cucumberpatch. Reason my in-laws are awesome #1: The Limey's dad drove us up to Wolstanton, then sat in the car to wait while we went into the shop! It was great...so much yarn...and when I asked if they had Rowan 4-ply Soft, they said, Yes, down the road in our other store. Indeed, a block down the road was another store, just as big, and just as full of lovely yarn. I felt guilty about The Limey's dad waiting for us, so I did a quick run-through to see what they had and picked up a flier for their website (one of the reasons I don't buy very much yarn on-line is that I like to feel stuff and poke at the yarn in person first). I also didn't want to spend any more of the money that I don't have. So I got just a few balls of nice stuff.

Some Rowan 4-ply Soft in a nice rich red. I'm thinking of making myself a pair of Anna socks with it.


A couple skeins of oatmeal-y coloured Rowanspun Chunky, for a bag, I'm thinking. Something in a herringbone stitch, maybe, or, at any rate, something woven-like. I also asked The Limey to pick himself some sock yarn for his next pair of socks. He chose some Patons in blue and black. I'll be looking for suggestions for a good pattern for men's socks; I'm sick of plain ribbing or plain stockinette. Any ideas?

Reason my in-laws are awesome #2: Sunday morning, The Limey and his mother dragged a TV-sized box and another huge bag of stuff down the stairs and set them in front of me. What the hey? I said. It turns out: YARN, and lots of it. From way back when she used to knit. In fact, as we happily rummaged through it, we found half an Aran sweater. She'd finished the front and a whole sleeve before she gave up. It looked great, and must have taken lots of work. Now, we'd flown Ryanair, so there was no way I'd be able to take even a quarter of that stash back with me. I chose half a dozen balls of this Jaeger mohair, figuring on a shawl or lacy scarf.


The pink is a little too baby pink for me, but I figure I could use it somehow. The blue is nice and dark and lovely, though. Maybe the reversible rib shawl? There were lots of other stuff in the box, if only I had room in my bag! She had some chunkier superwash wool in a creamy natural colour that I could totally see in a cabled cardigan. She's promised to bring some more over when they come visit.

Last week, I also heard rumours that The Wool Shop in Bray was closing down. (The dire situation of nice yarn shops in Dublin is ameliorated by This Is Knit moving to better, slightly bigger, sunnier premises.) I took myself down to Bray to see if this was true, and, alas, it is so. The owner, Bernadette, said she was closing down at the end of April to go sailing around the world. Great for her, bad for us. Most of the stuff in her shop, including lots of new products from Rowan, Jaeger, etc. was on sale. I made myself leave after getting just a few things (the only people who say money can't buy happiness are people who already have lots of it):














Six balls of Jaeger Merino DK, in a great deep red (more red?!), for a cardigan or sweater, I think. Can't decide what yet, though. And two hanks of Rowan Summer Tweed, possibly for something like this. The colour of this tweed is like...fields of wheat in the sun. Excuse the purple prose, but, really, it fairly shone out at me in the cramped, low sunlight shop. I also bought a couple balls of a Regia sock yarn, a very slightly variegated light blue. No pictures, 'cause I just couldn't capture the colours well. But I'm thinking lacy socks for me.

As I said, a good couple of weeks for yarn acquisition, but knitting? I plug along on the Print O' The Wave. I'm on the 11th repeat, almost a third of the way through the centre panel!

Pater socks

Basic ribbed socks for my father
Yarn: Lang Jawoll from Springwools (just less than 100g for the pair)
Needles: 2.0mm dpn's
Pattern: none, just basic 4x2 rib

Notes: I did these toe-up, with short row toes. A few new techniques were learned for these socks. 1) Norwegian purl. I've been unhappy with the way my ribbing usually turns out- the knit stitches before and after purls are definitely not uniform. So for this, I used the Norwegian purl, a way of purling that keeps the working yarn to the back, instead of bringing it to the front. It's slower than my normal purling, and hurts my hands a bit after a while, but I really like it for the ribbing. I think it makes the ribbing much more even. 2) Fleegle heel. In my quest to find a good, non-fiddly heel, this time, I used Fleegle's. It's good- it's definitely non-fiddly, and gives a gusset, unlike my so-far-preferred short row heel. It makes a triangle-shaped heel, which looks kinda weird, but looks fine when actually being worn. Here's a closer picture of the heel:
I reduced the number of increases on the gusset, partially because my dad's feet aren't that wide, and partially because it was clear that, by the time I'd increased as much as Fleegle recommends, the sock was going to be waaaaay too long. That's one thing that may keep me from using the Fleegle heel more- not being able to predict exactly when to start the gusset increases. This would improve with practice. 3) Sewn bind-off. I finished up the cuff with 1x1 rib, and used Elizabeth Zimmermann's sewn bind-off. I won't be using it again, I don't think. For one, it's not any stretchier than, say, Grumperina's bind-off, and second, it's a bitch to frog! Yes, after I'd finished off the second sock, I realized it was a full 1.5 cm shorter than the first, so undoing the sewn bind-off was adding insult to injury. Lastly, I like toe-up socks because when you're done, you're done. No kitchenering or other fussy finishing. Having to whip out the tapestry needle and sew the bind-off seems like more finishing work to me.

These will go off in the post with my sister's Anna socks, and some HP sauce that The Limey has promised to send.

A little experiment

So I've been looking at job websites. It turns out there's not much call for science PhDs in Ireland. Even the Big Pharma companies who have manufacturing sites over here don't need PhDs; they just need someone to sit in front of their gas chromatographs and press the "On" and "Off" buttons when beeped at to do so by the machine. This is interesting, because apparently the Irish government has a goal to double the number of science PhDs produced in the country by 2013. Hmmm...great way to guarantee a steady export of your brightest young people: over-educate them, then have no available jobs to offer them.

But that is another rant. Today I'm going to talk about my little experiment, which will hopefully find me a job, and keep me entertained for a little while.

My name (full name, as well as its individual components) is unpronounceable for most English speakers. Not only that, it just looks really...foreign. When confronted with its full 3-syllable glory, I think most people just blank it out, or go "Wha?" and their eyes just sort of slide past it to something safe and recognizable. It doesn't help that it's really short, and so seems like it should be simple, but the strange combination of letters gets 'em every time. I've always quite liked my name, and it's been relatively simple to learn to spell it every time someone asks for it. However, I get the feeling that, in a very competitive job market, it may make it awkward or difficult for someone reading through a stack of CVs. ("Let's call Mr Smith first, and if he's not there, we can call this...uh...this...person from the second CV here.")

However, now I have another name at my disposal: The Limey's. The Limey has a nice, safe, recognizable, common, easily-pronounced surname. What I'm going to do is write one CV using his surname, and one using my name. Then I distribute them on different websites and with different agencies, and monitor the difference, if any, among the responses to them.

I'm totally excited to see what happens. On the one hand, of course, I kind of hope they don't treat the two CVs any differently. On the other hand, if it gets me a job, or even job interviews, hey, I won't be overly upset.

tacky souvenirs

When The Limey and I decided to cement our unholy union, we did it in New Zealand, which was conveniently so far away that no family members would be able to make it, even given months of notice. When the officiant (apparently wearing an Elvish Lord of the Rings-type ring himself) asked if we were going to include rings in the ceremony, we said, Uh...no?, and he said, Great, that's 5 minutes off of the ceremony then. Making it a two minute ceremony. Afterwards, we hung around and chatted to him for a quarter of an hour or so. Really nice, friendly guy (like all the Kiwis, really).

A couple weeks later in Auckland, and we were due to fly to San Francisco a few days later. Since we would never dream of lying to immigration, The Limey would tell them that he was in the US to visit his wife's family. At this point, we decided it might help things along if we at least tried to convey the appearance of marriage, at least to the average person. So we picked two simple jade bands from the little bowl full of them at the counter of the souvenir shop at Te Puia when we visited Rotorua. At the equivalent of EUR 6 per ring, those were the cheapest wedding rings ever.

Now, The Limey actually wears his ring all the time, more or less. I, however, hardly ever wear jewelry, and anyway, my parents never had wedding rings. So I wear mine if I happen to pass by my dresser on the way out and remember to put it on.

Well, fast forward a few months, and we are due to fly to the UK to have a wedding reception for his family. On the aircoach, halfway to the airport, I notice, of course, that I'd forgotten my ring! The Limey was not happy- his family were half convinced it was all fake, anyway. I figured they wouldn't notice, but he said, No, they'd want to see the rings. So we had to think fast. At the airport, we passed by a Carroll's gift shop- you know, the green one, that sells all kinds of Oirish shite. This one had a stand of jewelry! We were saved! It took two seconds to find one plain enough to pass as a wedding ring (plain Celtic knotwork), although at EUR 20, it's kinda pricey for a wedding ring, for us. But it was convincing enough for his family, anyway (although I think some of them did wonder why it didn't match his ring).

I'm strangely pleased that both my wedding rings are cheap, tacky, touristy souvenirs.

In progress

This was a great yarn weekend, but I'll talk about that later. Meanwhile, some progress in certain projects.


My father's socks. This is mostly through the gusset increases on the second one. I'd decideded to go with Fleegle's No-Flap, No-Hassle heel. This makes a triangular shaped heel, and I haven't decided whether I like it yet. Part of the problem is that my father isn't here to try on the sock, and I'm just guessing at the size. I think it may look better on the actual foot it's meant for.

As for the black Cathay scoop neck top...well, it turns out there was just enough yarn to finish it, but then I looked at it and thought, Oh, it's just a black tank top. Blah. So I decided to buy another ball of the Cathay (at This Is Knit, and of course, totally different dye lot, but it's for the sleeves/ribbing, so I'm going to call it okay) and I'm going to do the cap sleeves. I have a lot of cap sleeve tees, and I love them, so why not one more? Plus, I'm excited about trying to figure out how to do a cap sleeve. I have some ideas.

Third project on the needles is this:

Looks terrible, but that's the curse of unblocked lace. It's Eunny Jang's Print O' The Wave Stole, knit in a cobweb-weight merino from Margaret Stove I got in New Zealand last year. Here's a better picture of the lace pattern:
I'm on the fourth repeat, and if I do say so myself, it's gorgeous. I can't wait 'til it's done. It's slow going, because, although the lace pattern isn't difficult at all, I'm scared to death of making a mistake, and so I've been too nervous to work the pattern from memory. I sit there with the chart in front of me. I put in the lifeline after every repeat, too, which slows things down only a little bit.

Speaking of lifelines, if it seems like there are a lot of random ends of yarn in that first picture of the lace, it's because I've got the normal lifeline, and two vertical lifelines. I first heard about them on either the Knittyboard or Knitter's Review forums, and found a description in Fleegle's blog. Basically, it's a way to help pick up stitches around the vertical edge of a piece of knitting. After I'm done with the centre panel of the stole, the instructions say to pick up 240 stitches at each long edge of the piece. 240! I hate picking up stitches. It's probably why I will never do a standard heel flap for a sock again. No matter how careful I am, it always seems messy and haphazard to me- more an art than a science. Putting in a vertical lifeline is easy- I just have to remember to loop my working yarn around a piece of waste yarn at the beginning of every row, thus "carrying" a piece of waste yarn up the side of my work. This means every other loop at the vertical edges of my work will have a lifeline through it. When it comes time to pick up the stitches, they'll be picked up already, almost- I just have to run my needle through those loops. Since it's only every other row, I'll probably also have to pick up a few extra here and there, it's way better than 240 all at once! Here's a blurry close-up of the vertical lifeline:

I remembered it after I'd done most of the first repeat, but it'll definitely be a life- and sanity-saver when the time comes, I think.

Oh, happy day!

Just as I was getting bored with sitting around all day as a "lucky jobless bastard", I hear a rumour that the DETE (Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment) will grant work permits to spouses of EU citizens living in Ireland while they wait for the Department of Justice to process EU1 applications! I don't have to wait for over six months while the DoJ s....l....o.....w....l....y processes their backlog of EU1's. They've already entered into illegal EU territory by taking longer than the EU-mandated six months.

I called the DETE this morning, just to see if this was too good to be true, and apparently, all the rumours are right. The DETE will fast track applications from spouses of EU citizens. You still have to apply for a work permit, but there will be no fee, and the normal rules for non-EU work permits will be waived (i.e., the employer will no longer have to prove that they've advertised for x number of months, and no EU citizen can fill the vacancy). Also, the "fast track" means that the permit should be granted in 1-2 weeks. I will still have to get a job first, though, and have the potential employer fill out the work permit form.

Ooooh, now I can actually look for jobs!

Oh, wait. That's no fun at all. Now I'm not sure why I was so excited.

An anniversary

Last week was the one year anniversary of the day The Limey quit his 11-year smoking habit. A cause for celebration if there ever was one. Clearly, this called for cake.


I asked him what kind he wanted, and he sort of went off into a dreamy "mmm...cake" free association for a bit, when his eyes grew round and he said, "Jaffa cake...cake!" So this is my first-order approximation of a Jaffa cake.
I used orange marmalade for the centre bit, but I also made an orange sponge cake for the base. I topped it off with ganache and called it done. It tastes good, but absolutely nothing like a Jaffa cake. Oh, well. I think, more research next time before I attempt something like this.

A few things

Three projects in various stages today.

Finished: Lace socks officially done. After looking through Hickey's and the Dublin Woollen Mills, I found a spool of gray elastic sewing thread. I wove this through the ribbing on the lace socks, and it works perfectly! Stays up like a dream, but without cutting off circulation, either. And the thread is easy to work with and easy enough to lace through the ribbing without showing on the outside (as you can see...or not...on the sock on the right there).


Finishing: Scoop neck top. I've just got the one armhole to finish the ribbing on. I've already picked up the stitches there. I'm in total denial about this, though. See that little tangle of yarn there at the right? That's all the yarn I have left. This won't be enough for the four rounds of ribbing and binding off. I know this. In fact, I knew this while I was doing the ribbing for the first armhole. But did I stop? Did I get more yarn, or rethink the design? No. I went on anyway, knowing full well that I won't have enough yarn, and that I will have to rip out most of the ribbing I've already done...and continue to do.

See, if I have to buy another ball of yarn anyway, I may just put in those little cap sleeves that were in my original design, and also make the armscye a little longer- it's a bit snug at the moment. So I'm going to have to rip out all the ribbing. But for some reason, even after I figured this out, I refused to stop, and in fact, continued to add more ribbing. Sigh. I think basically what will happen is, my brain will refuse to see the truth here until I actually run out of yarn at around the second row of ribbing.

Starting: Basic ribbed socks, for my father. I figure if I'm going to pay the postage to send off my sister's socks, I may as well add in another pair. It's from some Lang Jawoll I got from Springwools. I'm not sure why I picked this colour- it's a tweedy blue that isn't particularly to my taste, but as sooon as I thought about knitting some socks for my dad, I knew it would be perfect. It kinda knits up into a denim-y fabric. As you can see, I knit this toe up, with short rows. I'm not sure right now whether I will do the short row heel, or maybe the upside down heel flap, a la Baudelaire, or Fleegle.

Less than a month late!

Anna socks (aka Cute Librarian Stockings)
Yarn: Two balls (100 g) of Jaeger's Matchmaker merino 4-ply, from This Is Knit
Needles: 3.0 mm, 2.5 mm, and 2.0 mm dpn's
Pattern: Anna socks from Rowan 40

Notes: These are a -belated!- birthday gift for my sister, who is a librarian. I thought lace knee highs would be super cute, and kept imagining her wearing them with a gray wool skirt. I chose this purply colour just to match this imaginary wool skirt. This lace pattern is easy. YOs and K2togs, no purls, even. 4 row repeat, easily memorised and easy for learning how to read your knitting, as well, since the pattern is so simple.
I had reservations about this pattern. It only comes in one size, and some have found it too large. It has no calf shaping, so everyone who has knit these in the blogosphere (The Daily Purl, Knitlit, and basically every link that comes up when you google "Rowan Anna socks") has suggested switching needle sizes for calf shaping.
So I took everyone's advice. I started with 3.0 mm needles, switched to 2.5 mm once past the largest part of the calf, and switched down even further to 2.0 mm needles at the ankle and for the foot. As for the sizing issue, I basically ignored the pattern altogether. I used it to get the lace pattern, but then just knit until it fit. I'm a small person, and my sister is an inch shorter and a size smaller in shoes, so I figured it was definitely going to be too big for her if I followed instructions. In addition, these are lace, so I knew they'd look better if the lace had a chance to stretch, so, whenever I could (one lace repeat more or less, needle sizing, etc), I estimated to err on the small side. I also did my preferred short row heel instead of the pattern's heel flap one.

I think they turned out really well. They mostly stay up, but I think I will add elastic to the ribbing, just so there's no need to pull them up during a busy library day.

Thinking about food

...And not just in a "Mmmm...lunch" kind of way.

I've just finished reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. In this book, Pollan has three meals, following their production from the ground up, from the three different "philosophies" of eating that he can think of. The first is the big agribusiness monoculture way of getting calories and the subsequent meal is, not surprisingly, McDonald's, eaten in the car. For the second meal, Pollan goes to work for a week at a "beyond organic" farm in Virginia. The farmer there uses his livestock to fertilize his fields, and his fields to feed his livestock, and does everything sustainably, organically, and, importantly for me, humanely. Pollan uses meat and vegetables from this farm, as well as other locally sourced ingredients, to cook his friends a meal. The third meal is one that Pollan gathers, grows and hunts himself. Veggies from his garden, mushrooms gathered from the forests and fields of northern California, yeast for the bread from the Berkeley air around his home, and pork from a wild boar killed by Pollan himself.

I've always read Pollan's articles for the New York Times Magazine and I found this book fascinating. This is a subject that I'm very much interested in. My personal way of eating can be summed up as "no mammals or birds, but I'll try anything once." I eat fish and seafood, so I am not a vegetarian. I haven't eaten mammals or birds for just over ten years now, from my second year in college, when I realized that I would never be able to cook the meat dishes the way my family does, and that I didn't find the choice available from the school's kitchens that appetizing. Also, and most importantly, I had learned about how meat was produced in the US, and I was not impressed.

I have nothing against the eating of animals. Hey, we invented the spears, and we have the teeth and digestion system to deal with meat. I have no issue with this. I do have an issue with the way meat animals are treated. I believe we owe it them, simply as fellow living things, to treat them humanely and with respect. Beef cattle, crowded together by the tens of thousands, standing knee-deep in their own feces and being fed corn instead of the grass they are evolved to eat, and then dosing them with antibiotics because they get ill easily from this lifestyle to which they are not adapted? No. Cutting the beaks off of chicks because chickens get stressed from being piled together in mesh cages with no room to move in and will peck each other to death? No. Cutting off the tails of pigs because these highly intelligent animals get depressed when crowded together and will chew each other's tails, causing infection and therefore a less "efficient" farm? No.

However, this is how the vast majority of meat is produced in the US. So I refused to contribute to it by eating the results. (Not to mention the health issues of ingesting the vast amounts of antibiotics and hormones that these animals are subjected to.) When I moved to Ireland, I thought about starting to eat mammals and birds again. I had a vague thought that farming was done differently in Ireland and in Europe. But I don't know whether this is true. I haven't found anything telling me how it's done here. I know I can find "organic" food and meat. But what does it mean here? What are the standards? What does the "free-range" on the egg carton actually mean for the laying hens?

I guess I'll be thinking about food for a while yet. Hopefully, I'll be thinking about food every time I eat or think of eating.

Two and a half months

When I tell people that I'm not allowed to work for six months until the Justice Department and immigration people process some paperwork (go on, ask me how efficient the Irish government is at this), usually they put on a "you lucky bastard" face and tell me they'd love that and to enjoy it. A few people who have actually had large amounts of work-less time, for whatever reason, had more sobering advice: make the most of it during the short amount of time that this will be enjoyable. They told me that they loved it for the first 2 to 3 months, after which they nearly went of their minds with the pointless, aimless, dull sameness of the days. Apparently, there are only so many days that you would enjoy not showering, sitting around in your robe, and having no reason to leave the house or talk to people. At that point, asking yourself, What am I going to do today? leads to despair, because the answer is moot- whatever it is you decide to do, it really doesn't matter.

Well. I officially entered this second stage yesterday. I did the usual: got up, had a bagel (toasted, with cream cheese), had some juice (orange, usually with added calcium, but not this time), fired up the computer, looked at my knitting for a bit, checked my e-mail, and then, suddenly thought, Oh Jesus, I can't be doing this all day again.

I know, I know... more energetic and gung-ho people have said, Get out of the house! Do something! But it's March in Dublin; it's wet, and cold, and it's freakin' miserable outside. Plus, I'm not supposed to spend any money, so outside + no money needs a bit of creativity. At any rate, I'm really just lazy. If there's no compelling reason for me to put on proper clothes and shoes and step outside, I just won't do it.

But now, this four more months of doing nothing, stretching away in front of me, is making me totally depressed. The thing is, with six months of no job, I should have had a Project. Something big that I should have taken advantage of the time to do. Write the great American novel, started a knitwear design company, learned how to paint, trained to become a plumber...something! But, no, not only have I not done anything, I don't even have enough energy to think about it at this point. I've wasted two and a half months, and I look set to waste the next four.

Oooh, I've totally failed at this "having no job" business. Yuck.

I'm officially old

I didn't have that much of a problem with turning 30 last month. I'm still living in my student-y lifestyle, so the Big 3-0 was not accompanied by much angst or panic. Until today.

I was flipping through the monthly Irish Film Institute schedule. It's a great place- my preferred theatre to spend film-related money. They show new artsy and foreign films, as well as old classics, usually in mini-film festival blocks. Well, this time, a showing of "Kiss Me, Kate" caught my eye. I got really excited, 'cause I've only seen it done at the university theatre level in Seattle, and it was great. I may have let out a little squeal.

Then I read on, and realized this was their selection for their "Wild Strawberries" group: a "film club for older people". So there you have it: I'm officially old. (Housemate said that I would totally fit in there if I went in with my knitting.)