zen socks

arrrgh enough ranting and raving. people are stupid. get used to it kylie.

today i have been practising zen by thinking about socks and socks alone. i went down to nowra to teach my second last class with these guys for this session and i am sad because they are a great class and i will miss them. on the way i stopped in berry and popped into a little yarn store there. debbie bliss, sublime, noro, mission falls. i bought none of it. thats right, if its not sock wool, im not buying. applaud my fortitude please!

i went there with one purpose in mind and that was to acquire trimmings for the finishing of the berry stripey picot socks. i did, and now i cant decide.

pure silk ribbon in 'pansy':

or black velvet?:


i like the effect of the silk but fear it is too little and gets lost among the sock. the black stands out and is striking but my ribbon threading/tying leaves something to be desired and looks a little clunky. i have them here side by side, if you can tell me what you think honestly i would be most grateful:


while looking at (and now wearing) these gorgeous socks, i am reminded of why toe up socks are NOT zen. i frogged the stupid short row heel this morning. it was disgusting:


i like the challenge of this, and i like the 2x2 rib oddly enough, but i just dont think that this way of knitting socks is going to give the proper construction that one gets from the top down. and the whole yarn over thing and p3tog tbl, good god. on 2.25mm dpns? please!! over it.

but, being zen, i will finish them, as they are a gift, and i will finish them with love, and give them in the same vein (she says through gritted teeth).

k xx

ribbing and a rant

my second post in one day. somethings afoot. so to speak.

bad things first.

i am a scorpio. the relevance of this is that i am slow to trust but when i do i do it completely. if however, you piss me off, or 'betray' that trust, then you are off my christmas card list. just like that. its very hard for me to forgive and forget. i am a vengeful creature and tend to hold onto things. there are people in the world at the moment (outside of every politician, war lord or religious zealot) with very negative energies having a direct impact on my peace of mind and i am feeling very CRANKY with the world. a lot of this angst is from long running issues, some of which are beyond my control to sort out. i hate that. some of the sorting out i would like to do involves taking someone behind the wool shed and dealing with things in a less than civilised manner. apparently, however, this is not kocher, and i must suck it up, and 'hand it over'. i'll frigging hand it over alright if a certain red headed so-and-so comes near me!!

this is not helped by the fact that i am stressed to the max re the pensky file. one of my supervisors has decided to take 3 months leave without notice. the other one doesnt answer my emails. i am hoping to submit before christmas. personally, i dont care, i am past the point of needing them and dont want to talk to them anyway. but if i get one hold up on my submission process because someone doesnt read a chapter in time, the proverbial will hit the fan.

on a lighter note on that front, i have packed up the pensky file ready to take it back to the office where it belongs. i feel lighter already, although a little anxious at the thought of being around people every day.

now the good stuff.

today i have been unashamedly playing with my dogs, taking them to the park, doing some washing and ironing, and ribbing my way up the foot of a certain sock. its a present, but i dont know if shes going to be feeling the love - my first attempt at a short row heel is giving me RSI.


the pattern is for 64 stitches but it seems very small, i am hoping the rib has a looooot of stretch in it.

jem thought the ball of wool was something for him to play with and made a grab for it.


saved, just in time.

one other good thing, anger is a very useful way of keeping the black dog at bay.

anger and yarn shopping. someone had better let me near a credit card soon!

k xx

thank god

i am doing my monday morning read of everyone elses blog and i came across the link to the nerd test, so i took it. thank god i am not as big a nerd as i thought i was.




i know someone, however, whos going to score through the roof on this one!

there are different types of nerds however, dont you think? im very nerdy in other ways, that make people look at me strange. just not about computers. or star trek.

happpy monday
k xx

sock evangelism

for once i am home on the weekend, that is, we have no organised running-around-after-our-dogs-like-soccer-parent type events. we did do some training yesterday, and it was quite amusing because in between runs amanda, jo and i sat under a tree pouring over 25 favourite socks. after our adventures at herding last weekend where we talked sock blocking templates and oohed and aahhed over georginas koigu, amanda has been inspired to take up sock knitting and has already turned the heel on her first patonyle womens sock. with no assistance mind you. hhhmph. i needed someone literally to take my hands and show me what to do!

and now jo, who used to knit very complicated intarsia jumpers in the round, is thinking she could do socks too. of course, shes thinking the latvian ones look like a nice challenge!

so the sock-evangelism is going well in this part of the world.

however, the point of the story is that it is a perfect day for the southern summer of socks, and i have been able to make some progress on the toe ups:


this is a nice pattern with the rib front and plain sole, and because of the ribbing i am not getting bad ladders on the joins. the first stitch on the rib is a purl, and sometimes this leaves a bit of a gap between needles so every so often i just pick up the gap and purl it together with the first stitch and this is tightening it up.

this weekend at home also means we have an extremely clean house and now i have to go outside and help do something to the car.

also, i have made a decision in relation to the pensky file. i have been working from home because its easy and comfortable but i am getting too distracted and running out of time. i have an office on campus and i am going to pack it all up and take it in there where this is no crap day time tv, no dogs to play with, no washing to do and no other reason to procrastinate.

i am not yet sure if this is a good or bad idea!

have a good rest of weekend.

k xx

ps jo bought down some heuheutenango coffee from guatemala, check out the coffee blog for a 'review' of this amazing coffee!!

rising to the challenge

i need to go into town to craplight to get some ribbon for the stripey eyelet socks but am teaching today, so instead i started my new, not-listed, SSS challenge, which was the challenge from george to try toe-up socks. last night i gathered my materials, after an hour spent hand winding that skein into a ball:


and tried the eastern cast on as demonstrated in interweave knits mag, but could not, for the life of me, figure it out. loops just kept sliding off everywhere refusing to become stitches. i scoured the internet-thingy for help and found some good stuff, if you also wanted to do toe ups on two circs or using magic loop at the same time, or even 4 DPNs but this was all too hard, i just wanted a cast on that would get me three DPNs with stitches like in the ann budd pattern.

eventually i found this, and away i went - a few trial and errors but then something started to happen:



at one point i managed to go backwards in the round, so there is a line of purl stitches at one spot in the sole, but there is no freaking way i am frogging these, so i carried on, and lo and behold, it looks like a toe....


it is a toe! this is very cool. it is very fiddly to work on dpns with only 4 stitches and i thought i might lose another knitpick there for a minute, but now its moving along nicely. there is a little bump there on one side of the toe, but i can sew that in, and at first my increases were making holes but then i remembered to knit through the back of the lifted loop and they're gone. i can see why you would make socks like this, it involves a bit of improvising i am usually not comfortable with but im trying to be more zen about my sock making and letting it take me somewhere new.

now i just have the whole short row heel thing to work out. and how great is this colourway knitting up!

a happily sock-challenged
k xx

sneak peek

yes the berry stripey spider socks are finished but i cant show you more till i get the ribbon (black velvet?) to thread through the picot eyelet edge.


is there anything nicer than the feel of fresh knitted socks? beautiful yarn spidey, thanks!

k xx

pigs ears, colour coding and sock patterns

it is early morning on the east coast of australia and i just tried to take the dogs for a run on the beach only to find it is covered with bluebottles. i dont mean a few, i mean a carpet. as we came round the point i thought oh, lots of shells on the beach this morning. only to discover they were little blue jelly nasties. jem has a habit of rolling in things so i took them straight home again. unpleasant. i assume this is because of the nor-easters from the storms they are having up north.

so, i will have to take them to the park instead this arvo, and here they are at home with their compensatory dried pigs ears.


they are not happy because i am making them wait. good puppies.

the other day i mentioned colour coding the pensky file. here it is:


i am working on a chapter that is purely primary source driven, that is, a collation of all the material i could find in the archives etc about the group of people im writing about. i did this part of my research more than three years ago and because i did not have my theory worked out then, i was not sure what parts of it would be relevant. so when i sat down to write i realised i had no idea what i had to write about. so, now that i have my 'categories of analysis' sorted out, i have to go back and re-read it and tag everything with a colour post-it note depending on which category it refers to. this is time consuming and labourious but at least it is re-familiarising myself with my sources. the writing should be relatively simple now.

and who said i wasnt pensky material?!

meanwhile, i have made some decisions about what wool for what sock pattern. i am going to heed everyones advice about using solid yarns with lace, and have talked to the german fibre whore about supplying some, and i am waiting to see what the birthday (note: 27th) throws up before ordering any koigu/lornas laces for the waving lace and embossed leaves patterns. in the meantime i am going to go ahead with the anne budd toe ups in the desert 5 ply, and also make jaywalkers out of this opal (a possible gift if i get them done in time) and this bamboo. this cotton remains temporarily pattern-less, although i am thinking it could cope with the pattern it is sitting on top of in that picture.

and, just because i was skiting the other day about how easy stocking stitch socks are now, and how ive figured out how to do it without a pattern, the knitting fairy decided that i would not be able to correctly measure 16 cms. can you see what im talking about:

sigh.

they are going to be inside boots or under pants so it doesnt really matter but i do wonder where my head's at some days.

oh thats right, in the pensky file!

k xx

a very socky weekend

the weekend just gone was spent hanging out in camp chairs and trying to not chase sheep around a paddock at michelago. possum and i followed up on some things i learnt from the trial last weekend, including me learning how to draft sheep that didnt involve chopping their heads off. some more practice still required! but we worked very nicely out in the open paddock, no running around like mad things anymore, fine tuning, moving by inches. starting to feel very nice! and it was great to see some friends go round in great style as well - especially fun was watching scott get bitten by the herding bug, and jo finally working kobe 'so well it was boring' (quote, robert cox).

but dont let this preamble fool you. there was so much socky goodness you'd be forgiven for thinking we were there for no other reason.

firstly, some significant progress was made on berry stripey number two and we are now finishing off gusset decreases and heading down the foot:


you know how i have been whinging about being bored with stocking stitch socks, well i take this back a little. firstly, stripey socks are my favourite. there is something soooo magic about self-striping wool. fellow herders had their minds blown when i explained to them how the self-striping works. (you will be pleased to note spidey that people think that hand died self striping sock wool is nothing short of miraculous). secondly, this is the first sock where the aspects of sock construction finally clicked with me. because i always up the stitch count a little for my wide foot, i sometimes struggle with the heel turning, but this time, with some mathematical help, i figured out where i needed to turn for my particular heel. then i did the decreases without having to write down each row, each needle. i know now where a K2TOG is required, and where a SKPO. this felt good.

i am thinking that striped picot edge socks with a ribbon may become my signature item.

anyway, thats not all. scott is a bit of a dab hand at making things, so george (not the george you all know from the blogosphere but another georgina who we herd with, who lives in canberra, and is a spinner/knitter, now a maker of socks extraordinaire) and i talked to scott about sock blockers, what sort of material one might use, different sizing etc. he says if we get him a template he will make them for us. george already has a template, so i may yet become a blocker of socks.

then, something truly amazing happened. george lent me this!:


yes people, the number one sock book on my wish list. obviously, its for loan only. obviously, it needs to be studied much more closely, but these are the patterns that most grab me so far (pictured here with stash wool that could be used for each pattern, although i am not sure about stripey wool with lace, in which case, i am going to need to do some stash enhancement):





anyone got any ideas/advice about lace and solid vs variegated/stripey wool?

george showed me some of her impressive collection of socks, including some awesome jaywalkers (i am going to go ahead and make those with that opal) and her socks in progress which are in koigu. i held koigu in my hand. what an amazing yarn it is. i must have some.

george also set me another challenge. she is trying to figure out how to do toe-up socks. the more i think about it, the more useful a technique this would be. it isnt in my list of SSS personal challenges, but it is now, because george said i have to try them and then help her. interestingly, the pattern she wants to use actually looks like the perfect pattern for the desert variegated that i need to make into a present very quickly:


so several birds will get killed with this stone, despite my near pathological hatred of rib (thank you, amy swenson, and your gorgeous lift and separate wrap with the endless single rib ties and edging). i will suck it up for the cause.

well, i have a lot to be getting on with today, shopping, washing, colour-coding for the pensky file (dont ask).

till next time,

k xx

passed the first test

yesterday was SOOO hot along the eastern seaboard it was enough to make you want to go live in antarctica. i locked the house up and put a heat absorbing tarp (yes, a tarp. i was making do!) across the north facing glass wall which makes my office so attractive in winter and so completely unattractive for the other 9 months of the year. no air conditioning in this little beach shack, apart from the odd sea breeze. i have a self-imposed deadline of finishing the chapter im working on by the end of next week, that means i really need to get the most out of the morning hours when i work best and its cooler etc.

even with the tarp and the little fan thing, this room got too hot to be in past 1, so i lay down with the dogs on the slate floor for a while and then picked up the second berry stripe sock to cast on. an hour later and i had this:


i was pleased. i have, i think, passed the first test of the southern summer of socks and that is the capacity to knit even when its really freakin' hot. the little beach shack held its cool and there was merely a hint of sweat on the fingers.

some of this may have had more to do with issues i was having with the picot edge. its been many moons since i made the first sock of this pair and of course in that time the knowing of how to do the picot had deserted me. i had great trouble with the folding over and attaching because you have to pick up the edge of your cast on stitch and knit it together with the stitch on the needle. if you knit a little tight like me (cough - what bent knit pick - cough), then this can get tricky. the result is a facing that slants a little because you have not matched up your stitches properly.

the first one has a nice straight facing but the second one slants ever so slightly:


i am a very resistant frogger, and i know this is going to have a ribbon through it as well, and in this perspective you cant really tell, so im just gonna live with it.

meanwhile, no sooner do i blog my ideas for sock patterns and get lovely comments from people when i start to doubt myself. this is what i am thinking.

firstly, the yarn that i said was for monkey socks, its a fairly thick 5 ply, not smooth or fine. im starting to think it may not be monkey material. if i wanted to knit fairly good sturdy desert boot type socks (they're for that type of girl, by the way) then what might be a better pattern, thats not just plain old sticking stitch cos im gonna stab someone with a dpn if i have to do another one of those after the two pairs i have going.

this raises a second issue. the red black and white is not actually for st kilda fans (sorry q-mick) but for trents flyball* team, the st george phoenix. i wanted to make a pair of fibonacci socks for each of the other three members. not real long but not ankle socks, just long enough so you can get away with no shaping. and i thought fibonacci rather than straight stripes just to mix it up a bit. but thats a whole heap more stocking stitch right there, and they just are not getting done for christmas. not all three of them, and not when there is italian/german cotton sitting there bleating at me. any suggestions for a stitch that you can work with stripes that isnt boring!

also, a question re jaywalkers. i really like the zigzag effect of them, and i will be making a pair this summer. however, the yarn i had slated was the opal, in pale colours. every pair of jaywalkers ive seen are bold strong colours. im thinking the effect might get lost with this particular opal, and it would be more suited to something delicate.

which means i might have to buy some really bright coloured self striping (koigu, did i hear someone say?!) especially for jaywalkers instead. or i could try them with the red, black and white. would that work?

and another thought. i dont block my socks. does this make me bad? should i block socks?

oh so many questions.....

k xx

* flyball= another weird dog sport where 4 dogs race in team against another team, like a relay, and they run over four short jumps, grab a tennis ball and come back. seriously major fun for the dogs, if youve ever seen it.

all about the socks

we had a fabulous long weekend, detailed accounts in three parts can be had at the coffee blog, including a lengthy analysis of my yard dog trial. it didnt go too bad, all things considered!

knitting of socks did take place, in the car:

and at the camp site:


the first contrast sock was finished this morning:


they are not for me, but my foot is the model/fit-tester. knitting the second one is part one of my sock challenge.

knitting the second one of these is also part of part one:


these are the picot eyelet socks from black dog knits, in hand made berry stipey spider sock yarn.

then i am thinking along the following lines - for something different some lace bootie types with this cotton:


then some monkeys with this, for a friend:


then some jaywalkers with this:


then some embossed leaves or other part-lace with this:



then a whole heap of fibonacci socks (need at least three pairs for the dog sports team) with these:


phew. im exhausted already!

k xx

long weekend

if you saw the post with the quiz in it (you can find a link to the quiz here), i didnt like the picture so i took it down, but if anyone cares, i am, apparently, a 'knitting adventurer'. its true too.

anyway, i am busy at the moment trying to get together all the bits and pieces for our camping trip this weekend. we havent been camping in ages, so we are looking forward to it. we are going to wyangala waters near cowra, the reason being that miss possum and i have entered a yard dog trial* at the morongla show on the monday of this long weekend, and given i will be in and out of the ring in less than 10 minutes, and you only get one go at it, we thought we might as well go find some nice little spot under a tree to hang out for a few days as well.

if any canberrans happen to be up that way, do come say hi! (its halfway between boorowa and cowra). speaking of boorowra, the irish wool fest is on the sunday and is worth a visit as well, they have a scarf competition there, and there is more dog fun in the park with a flyball competition, but we arent entering this year.

so, have a nice relaxing long weekend ( what are we celebrating again?) and see you next week sometime.

k xx
* yard dog trial = bizarre affair where my crazy koolie 'possum' works sheep in and out of pens, through gates and up a race while i pretend to look like i know what im doing and yell stupid things like 'round' 'here' and 'go way up'. dont ask me why im doing it, the potential for humiliation is staggering!

the problem of 'friends' in a postmodern world

i was at uni yesterday talking to the good doctor k, and she was telling me about the problem with people wanting to add themselves as her friend etc on facebook when she may actually know and dislike said person. what does one do? how long can one ignore this imposter? and how are we to deal with this particularly post modern situation where we make these web communities in order to reach out from our isolation, only to find ourselves creating virtual gated communities?

it was funny that dr k should be talking about this yesterday given a dilemma i have encountered with ravelry. firstly, its gated, and im totally, completely and utterly anti-elitist, but i do realise its still in beta, theres server bandwidth to consider, and theres also the marketing angle, where you create desire for something by keeping it a little bit hidden for a while. still, its weird being part of something that other non-members cant look at, so i hope they open it up as soon as is practicable.

then, theres the friend issue. i added some people to my ravelry friends, people i have actually met and some i have communicated with via blogs. i stayed at 6 friends for a while (like a whole 24 hours), because they were the only ones i felt comfortable adding, given that people are told you are being added as a friend. but 6 is a very little amount of friends in ravelry world, and then theres the fact that people here are friends to the extent that i want to gawk at their projects and steal their ideas (again, a very post modern notion of friendship, i suspect). anyway, today i have been adding people whose blogs i have read, or who i know about from other peoples blogs, but i have not really communicated with them much myself.

so im feeling a little bit uneasy about it, and im sure they will be like, well who is this person? but at least in ravelry its all about the yarn, and yarn does not discriminate.

i hope.

the puzzled
k (i need an emoticon for 'puzzled')

sock challenge

firstly, very impressed with ravelry. only had a little bit of time to play but its a very well designed site. looking forward to adding lots of projects to my queue!

secondly, the southern summer of socks personal challenge.

some of the other ones i have read have been very ambitious! i have a few simple goals

1. finish the second socks of the two pairs i have on the go
2. work out how to do socks with a fibonnaci sequence
3. make some monkey/embossed leaves/jaywalker and/or lace socks
4. try the magic loop technique
5. dispel ladders for ever!! (ok, this one doesnt really count).

my reward is either a skein of lornas laces or koigu, and yes, it will be in some shade of red!

k xx

i'm in!

this was waiting in my inbox this morning:

>Hey there,
frecklegirl has invited you to Ravelry!
"Here you go! Thanks for your interest in our little site.
Let me know if you have any questions or problems!
Jess"

of course, someone is working at home today and needs the computer, and i have a conference to go to tomorrow, so it will be a few days before i get anything up there, but my user name is kms anyway.

very excited!

k xx

too many books

this is the pile i am working my way through this week:



you will be pleased to know that there is a link between this pile and knitting. see the book on top, that's foucault's 'discipline and punish'. it talks about the history of crime and of incarceration, there is a chapter in there im using a lot about the creation and function of delinquency as a tool of ruling class 'othering' and surveillance. and of course, he gives an excellent history of the prison as an institution, in which he talks about the panopticon, bentham's ultimate prison building. anyway, because i am reading this, something caught my eye on bells blog, and this was the link to The Panopticon in her list of blogs. i'd never noticed it before, so off i went, and have discovered franklin, who i think is hilarious. so there you go, not even six degrees of separation between foucault, the pensky file and knitting.

back to the issue of books, i mentioned that i might be checking out some book stores this weekend up in sydney. we started at borders in pitt st, i was a bit tentative about borders because i am, for the most part, an anti-multinational (dont get me wrong, i am a big fan of the espresso frappacinno at starbucks, and i am not a buy-australian-nationalistic type, but i do try and support the little guy where possible). its hard tho when you walk in and they have EVERYTHING you could ever want in the way of books, and they're cheaper than anywhere else. i had already decided however, that i would only buy a knitting book from here, because i knew i was going elsewhere, and you dont want to blow it all at the first shop, do you?

anyway, im happy to report that borders let me down. perhaps their store in canberra is better in this department, but there was nothing in the way of knitting books worth buying, especially considering i am only in the market for sock books, and i dont mean daggy old socks either (im talking 'vintage socks', or 'sensational socks', or 'interweave socks').

so nothing there.

then we went to kinokunya. in my mind, this is the pick of sydney book stores at the moment. this was going to be my fiction-only purchase, but i wandered round to the philosophy section and they had some zizek and lacan there that are hard to find and i held them and turned them over and they were $60 each, and i know they give me a headache when i read them, and i can probly get them on interlibrary loan anyway, so i put them back. it was hard, but i did it. anyway, i thought abbeys would have a better theory section.

so i made do with just one novel. i usually only buy novels for christmas, given every spare minute when im not reading foucault, zizek or lacan, should be spent on knitting, but here i was surrounded by hundreds, no thousands, of fantastically sparkley covered novels, and i got completely and utterly overwhelmed. so i limited myself to one:



alexis wright's carpentaria, and made note of all the ones i am coming back for in a couple of months.

then we stopped for coffee and went on to abbeys, with which i was bitterly disappointed. they do have the whole freud library, and they had one volume of lacan and a cute little paperback of 'history of sexuality' but i am already reading the library copy, so why buy it? their non-fiction is pretty good but only if its new, they dont seem to be stocking nearly as much cultural or social theory as they used to. like, no zizek. i know hes a crazy yugoslav communist post-structuralist, but still....not one.

so i left there empty handed. jo bought some very groovy old style star trek comics at galaxy then we dawdled down the hill to cockle bay wharf where we ate chocolate.



i did buy something there for trent:

(you have to go the coffee blog to open the box and see what $20 buys you at lindt. also i made a coffe blog button. i have gone button mad. did you notice?!)

then we caught the train home. i am disappointed in myself. once upon a time i could easily have spent hundreds of dollars in book stores. i could have done it yesterday. how is it possible to be so overwhelmed with choice, you just cant choose?! it was a lovely weekend tho, faheem's was fantastic as always, the company was brilliant, i am feeling better about things all round, tho still not sure how to deal with Someone at work - perhaps by doing nothing?

but in the meantime i am only 200 people away from getting my ravelry invite, i have a list of sock challenges to write, and a section called 'the repressive hypothesis' to read, so i think i have enough to be getting on with.

love
k xx
ps. carpentaria (yes jo i did start it!) is brilliant.

antsy

yes yes i am a ravelry tragic too:

Found you!

* You signed up on July 15, 2007
* You are #16844 on the list.
* 1040 people are ahead of you in line.
* 17658 people are behind you in line.
* 45% of the list has been invited so far

only a thousand people ahead of me, looking good!

of course i have no idea what i will do when i get my invite. i have enough trouble putting anything interesting on this blog, let alone finding time to knit stuff to show other people.

anyone else suffer from knit/blog envy?!

meanwhile, i have a busy weekend of socialising planned - The Other Half has gone to The Can this weekend to judge a flyball comp and im not going. i am helping jo buy a tent this morning instead, then hanging out with mandy and her dogs for a while (we might do some training, depends if the weather holds) then we are going up to The Big Smoke to have dinner with dave at Faheems. ahhhhhh faheeeeeeemmmmms.... and then tomorrow perhaps another visit to the lindt shop and some book stores i think. so i will have no reason to be whingy anymore, promise!

k :)

shameless cross promotion

so, there is a knitpicks comp where you can win heaps of stuff, so i spent some time just now figuring out how to put the button up without hotlinking. it was tricky, but its there. only thing is, i am not buying anything, cos i bought 4 pairs of dpns at tapestry craft not that long ago, and in about a month its my birthday and i have told everyone who is listening and even those who arent, that the one and only present i want is a deluxe set of options. so i am not buying anything. sorry. but i have the button up. does that count?

also, here is the link to the fantastic southern summer of socks site (try saying that with a mouth full of weatbix), which i am very excited about and cant wait to have a button for! it will be my first KAL. i only hope i can keep up the pace, there are some formidable knitters out there. im scared.

today, i was reminded that there are some nice people in the world, and they are mostly knitters. thanks guys ((((big hug)))).

(snip) yesterday i wrote something here about gossip and friendship and academia which i woke up suddenly and decided to delete, largely cos its possible that some people from said academy may in fact read this. suffice to say people arent always as they seem (/snip)

and then there are other people who give selflessly of their time and advice for no real benefit of their own meaning that today, it was worth leaving home.

k xx

walkin' the plank

just when you think all hope is lost, someone sends you a link to something hilarious. did you know it was International Talk like a Pirate Day?

who needs a revolution when there's swashbuckling to be had. let alone the pirate knitting. something to match the scarf spidey?!

thanks so much for the kind words from my previous post, there has been a lot going on around me that isnt directly about me, but its affecting people i care about, and making something we usually do for fun not fun, and that affects me, and i tend to get angry as my first response and then when the anger runs out i am at a bit of a loss. the last few weeks i have not been wanting to leave the house or talk to people much, it just seems like too much effort, and i mentioned this on the weekend as though it was normal and it was brought to my attention that it is not, really. i forget sometimes that i have a bit of history of not reacting 'normally' to the rest of the world, and when you spend most of your time in front of a computer on your own, you tend to think how you are feeling is normal. so a reality check was in order.

apart from the horror of that video, yesterday was a good day for that, because i went down to nowra where my lovely students restored my faith in humanity somewhat, and today, despite some early hair-pulling, i have managed to write a few pages to add to the pensky file.

and despite my desire not to, i have made arrangements to meet up with some people at uni tomorrow because its good for me and because one person is in more need of comfort and support than i am, and it will make me feel better despite myself.

and if all else fails you can just talk like a pirate!

aarrrr!
k xx

a little bit bent outta shape....

anyone know what this is?


yes, thats right, one straight knit pick dpn. one bent one:


i have no idea how this happened but am glad they come in packs of five. does anyone else have this issue with knitpicks?

on a rather more sombre note, i have been feeling a little like the world is a shit hole of a place recently, nothing specific, just people being their usual crap selves to each other.

then, trent shows me this:

liberty, freedom, democracy

why isnt there a riot? why are people clapping? what sort of sick, f*cked up world have we become?

k :(

the pensky file

i started back at work on the t-word* yesterday. i havent decided on a final title - i knew someone who called hers Fred until it was finished - so yesterday mine became known as The Pensky File:


for those of you watched seinfeld you will know that this means i now have a very well organised t-word.

seriously, i read over it and am pretty happy with where its at and with what i still have to do. it feels manageable, even doable.

but i have been out of the loop for a while with the book and there is some reading i need to catch up on. these are on the agenda for today:


just a few light pieces.

on a more interesting front, the bendi/patonyle sock is coming along, i have turned the heel using bendi:


it knits up nicely, especially on these fabulous knitpicks, but it was very hard to pick up and knit, firstly cos its solid black, and secondly cos its a bit strandy, if you know what i mean. i am still experimenting with methods for getting rid of ladders, which threw my rounds out a bit because i dont usually use a marker for socks but i am going to have to in future.

and i am bored with stocking stitch socks and want to do something with a pattern in it now. monkeys, or leaves, or fake cables or something.

anyway, back to the pensky file.

k xx

* t-word: new descriptor, substitute for the thing that can not be named.

the other side of monday

here we are then, wednesday upon us already and piles of essays to mark and i am irritated that i am not working on the thesis yet. this is a good sign i think - perhaps my brain is on its way back. i have also been back to the gym after an enforced short break while the book pressure was on. that felt good too.

i have some lovely pictures of our weekend in kioloa but dont ask about the flyball. the racing was a debacle. our team had to withdraw after only one race. enough said.

moving right along.

the weather was divine the friday when we got there, after checking into our little cabin:


we headed straight for the beach:



the dogs love it here, they get to run around like mad things:


and have toys thrown into the ocean to chase:


the people had some fun too, here is trent with our two, jem and possum:


and the kelpie owners plus one:


speaking of obeying the cattle dog:

hmmm.

in knitting news the bendi/patonyle sock is progressing nicely. on the main leg part, i got sick of seeing ladders appear again so i tried the shuffling around of stitches so that the join was never in the same place and this worked a treat:


the red circle indicates where there were ladders, after that, none.

i am not sure how to continue with it now that i am in the decrease for calf part, conceptually it remains beyond me. a fellow knitter/herding friend of mine sent me some sock books she bought and doesnt like and they dont have great patterns in them, but there is one thats about knitting socks on two circs. i really think this is the way to go but i cant get my head around how to do it. i need a visual demonstration but will i ever get to an snb again......

i have so many socks to knit its not funny. i am looking forward to hearing more about rosered and bells summer of socks idea. subset: "socks on two circs" would be great!!

k xx