But who cares about retirement fund stupidity? I GET TO SEE MY MOMMY TONIGHT. *yay*

Oh! I forgot to set up the stuffed animal diorama in the guest room. I'll have to call J and get him to take care of it for me.

You can keep your thousand-year traditions, walking in on my childhood bear with his nose stuck in Gender Outlaw or askew on the floor next to an empty wine glass is the Way Of My People.

Retirement fund related stuff? Most. Frustrating. Thing. Ever.

It's a "I don't have any record of you on file even though you called the number on your statement,"
"We put your account number here in this entirely blank space, of course it's there don't be silly,"
"you can't talk to representative without the account number that you DON'T HAVE"
-level frustrating.

This would be a petty upper-class problem, except that I'm getting totally enraged about barely 200$, which no sane upper-class person would do.

Hmmph. I'm going to go on Ravelry and look at pretty shawls. (Non-knitters will substitute looking at catalogs or photography books.)

The design problem I posted about just below here percolated for a few days, as I thought about hydrangeas and bluebells, until I walked home through the rain on Saturday night and it hit me. Rain! The blues are of a slightly grayish cloudy sort, and the yarn's not delicate enough for teensy little flowers. An appropriate and practical Upstate New York-themed shawl, for keeping warm on gray days.

There are surprisingly few patterns based on watery themes, especially when compared to patterns that deal with other natural phenomenon, like trees and leaves and flowers and cats. Perhaps the idea of snuggling with a rainstorm doesn't appeal to most.

And this is a cool thing about Ravelry. I can just go over there and type in "clouds" or whatever. Out of over 100,000 knitters, many with hundreds of finished projects posted, there's always someone who's done something neat. It'll be interesting to see how a really focused social site like that will inspire creativity over the long run.

1) Today is the First of May. Too bad that it's chilly today, and I'm headed out of town for a work thing.

2) I'm making good progress on the second sleeve of the Fair Isle sweater that's been wandering around here off and on for over two years:

(Last picture, one-sleeved.)

The second sleeve is over half done, and then it's just the button bands on the front. But now that I'm getting close to finished with it, I've been thinking about what to do with the leftover yarn, because it looks like there's going to be *tons*. My original plan was to do a vest in some kind of inverted colorway, but at this point I'm so tired of stranded projects that I'm ready to scream. But at the same time, the colors blend so beautifully together, so what to do?

So now I'm thinking about doing a big lace shawl with color shifts in it. There's another lace project that I've been using as a carrot to get me to finish the sweater, but using up these colors would be very satisfying, and the knitting would go way faster than for the carrot-project.

There was an article in the most recent issue of Spin-Off about traditional Danish shawls, which are tied around the back and make a sort of v-necked thing in the front (I'd link, but they don't have a good overall shot on the website). I think a light-to-dark top-to-bottom slow progression of color would be pretty and interesting.

Now, to figure out lace patterns. Something to go with varying shades of blue, something that won't be overly obscured by color changes, something that won't get all strange and boobular by going reasonably tightly across my front if I tie the shawl in the traditional way, something that'll work with the increases as written in the shawl (6 every other row, versus the typical triangular 4). At this point, I'm leaning away from leafy patterns, away from larger stitch patterns, and away from getting too involved with designing a lace pattern, but a quick jaunt through a pattern book last night didn't set off any ideas.

Anything pop into mind?

J and I and Salty went to the Duck Race this past weekend.

The thing: You buy a raffle ticket, with a number between 1 and 3600. There are rubber duckies, each with numbers on them that go from 1 to 3600. You fill a tarp with the 3600 rubber ducks, and release it at the top of a small waterfall in Cascadilla Creek:

J asks that you picture the bandits-cresting-the-hill scene in Seven Samurai (which was apparently the first time that shot was ever used).

Or, hum "Flight of the Valkyries" to yourself. That works too.

By the bottom of the falls, only a few-second ride, the front-runners are already spreading out from the rest of the pack:

But those with an early lead would be foolish to assume that an easy victory was assured. After the falls, there's about a mile of Cascadilla Creek to get through, fraught with perils such as this bit of swirly water from which few ducks escaped.

Walking down towards the finish line, the stream had the quality of a goofy but real-life screensaver--peaceful rippling water, with the occasional sunglasses-clad rubber duck floating by:

We wandered through the neighborhood, enjoying the amazing weather, laughing at a very confused-looking crow who hopped along the rocks trying to figure these bright yellow floating things out, and watching the duck-wrangler check that all the strays got to the end point:

Responsible duck-releasers, these 4-H folks. There was a large funnel at the finish line made of foam noodles, and volunteers were scooping up these slowpokes and tossing them into laundry baskets so they could dry out in the sun. While we were standing there on the pedestrian bridge, a duck managed to slip past the scoopers and escape out the bottom of the funnel, and someone chased after it to cries of "No! It wants to be free! Go duckie!" along with a lot of laughing.

We had fun even though we didn't have a duck in the race (we got there too late to buy a raffle ticket), but the people whose number matched the winning ducks' got all kinds of cool prizes.

It was a good afternoon.

Just misread the word "fungistatic" as "fungitastic". Then I giggled.

I must start working "fungitastic" into my everyday speech. This may involve more mushroom dishes at home than usual.

Okay, choosing to read a book with a known emotional trigger on the bus to work is a Bad Idea. *snif*

(Book topic: Working class to middle class mobility. Chapter subtopic: Parental sacrifices to boost the kids.)


The snow-chickie from a few weeks ago enjoys a nice bath. But what is it bathing with in there?



A Baby Surprise Jacket, the other present for my nephew-to-be. (Normally I wait until the people getting gifts get them before I share, but I'm about 99.999% sure that chunk of family doesn't read the blog. It's safe.)

The BSJ is a pretty popular pattern among knitters. The "surprise" comes from the method of construction, which involves knitting one big lopsided piece of fabric, sewing one seam, and ending up with a complete newborn-sized sweater.

My original idea for the sweater was to have more gradations in color, which would have been done by holding two strands of the Dale Baby Ull together and swapping out one color at a time. If the yarn had been finer, or the pattern had called for heavier yarn, this might have worked, but I was very unhappy with the swatch and decided to just go for single colors knit in a slightly looser gauge than Dale Baby Ull recommends (using US 4s instead of 2s). I like garter stitch at a somewhat loose gauge anyhow, and I wanted this to be useable for a summer baby on a cool breezy day.

Looking at it now I probably could have done some widening stripes of color to soften the edge between the colors some, but between following the funky pattern and knitting to a deadline (baby shower's next weekend) this might have made things more complicated than I wanted.

I had a really hard time picturing what colors would go where, just from the pictures I saw online and the description in the pattern. So if you're going to knit one of these and want to plan things out somewhat, then look at the front and back of this sweater. I started with the white and moved to the yellow, then orange, then red. The seam you sew is across the top of the shoulders (another bit of information I didn't see in a cursory search).

I made a few very minor modifications to the pattern. I did an I-cord bind off to make a nice edge around the bottom and sides of the sweater, and then continued doing an applied I-cord edging around the neckline to neaten that up a bit. I cord edgings and bind offs may be becoming a thing with me. They're so lovely when you want a neat, defined edge.

Another change I made was to forego the button band in favor of a row of snaps.

You can buy snaps pre-added to a firm bit of fabric at big fabric shops (I got these at the Jo-Ann's just down the hill from me). I thought this would be easier for new parents to handle than teeny buttons, and it looks very neat from the front.

I hand-sewed the snap bands in after washing the sweater (it was superwash wool so it grew quite a bit), and spending some time to make sure the snaps were lined up. One thing I had to figure out was how to hide the sewn stitches on the right side of the knitted fabric. I briefly considered sewing halfway through the yarn, but that didn't seem like it would be very sturdy for what, if genetics have a say, will be a very active baby. Also, two stitches of that told me that sewing halfway through a piece of fabric for several hours would send me to the nuthouse. Instead, I just hid the stitches in the groove formed by the garter stitch. This required a lot of checking the public side of the work to make sure I hadn't gone over a ridge, and a bit of unsewing, but with the well-matched sewing thread and a bit of care the stitches are pretty much invisible.

Overall I was really pleased with this project. It used up a bunch of stashed half-balls of yarn (though I bought two more balls of Baby Ull mid-project when I was worried I'd run out). I'd actually planned on the colors before I knew the sex of the baby, because of what I had in the stash, but I think it's a happy cheerful kid color that would work for a boy or a girl. I think that the sweater and the chick strike the balance of practical and adorable that I like to go with for new parents. Everything's machine washable so it can be an everyday thing, but it's also cute and cheerful. Hopefully the parents and baby-to-be will all like it.

Ithaca Lessons I've Had to Relearn: First of what will doubtless become a series.

Walking down long, steep hills is just as hard on your legs as walking up. Possibly harder, because when you're going uphill, you can go as quickly or slowly as you want. Meanwhile going downhill, you have less control and are only barely preventing yourself from going faster, and, if your legs get tired, bouncing end-over-end down Buffalo St. starts to become a real possibility.

(Note to self: Bring camera the next time I plan on walking down Buffalo, so people know I'm not messing with their heads about that end-over-end thing. Google Images isn't bringing up the picture I want.)

I should have remembered this, because I'd walked up and down South Hill twice a few days before I met J, and that gluteal workout led to me saying the first words he ever heard out of my mouth: "Damn, my ass is killing me."

Somehow, he liked me anyway.

Picture yourself at work, doing normal work things, for whatever value of "normal work things" you have. You have a nice view outside from your normal-work-thing location, not many people walking by. Except that once in a while, there is a crowd of people pressed up against the window to the outside, gaping in at you.

This is what it's like to work in the clean room during high-school-kids-touring-colleges season. You wander around in your bunny suit* long enough, and you really do forget that the average person has only maybe seen that one Intel commercial with the folks dancing in full, candy-colored suits as a point of reference.

What do you think you'd do under these conditions? I frequently jump a mile into the air seeing 20 faces staring out of the corner of my eye, but sometimes I smile and wave at the kids and their parents. I don't know if they think it's a one-way mirror, or if it's because their closest similar experience is looking at apes at the zoo, but looking at them and waving tends to really freak them out. The parents more than the kids, though one dad started laughing and waved back.

*We don't have the full face shield and breathing apparatus, but that's a good description of the outfit. Ours are full-face-uncovered, but always wearing goggles. I have a whole theory on clean room culture, but it's not quite in blogging condition.

People who were interested in looking at my scarf pattern for me:

I am actually working on it, crazy promises to finish it in February notwithstanding. Like every bit of writing I do, it took a lot of dinking around to get it right. I'm terrible at writing and following outlines, everything always wants to go in a different direction. So I just had to play with the lace charts and bake lemon cake* while the pattern wrote itself out in my head.

But now all the charts are pretty looking, and will fit on an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper. And the text is mostly-complete, I just have to read it all to myself a few more times. I think the other patterns will go a lot more smoothly than this one, when I get to them--this pattern, because it has a simple repeat which is oddly offset, is hard to explain. Huge-huge charts work, except A: it's an easy little repeat, and B: The huge-huge chart won't fit on a page without making the stitch size teeny.


*Some folks were making fruit batteries at work and most of a bag of lemons was left over, which I brought home. When life hands me lemons, apparently I have slices of lemon in my water, and lemon-poppyseed cake with homemade lemon curd and strawberries, which have nothing to do with the lemon and everything to do with being 2-for-1. So, so good. And then maybe lemon bars when we're done eating all these things, because I STILL have 2.5 lemons. The household is rapidly developing anti-scurvy.

Cornell is doing a production of As You Like It.

J: I'm not sure which one that is.

T: Isn't it one of the comedies? I think it's that one where some people dress as other people, and their friends are implausibly taken in by the ruse, and then in the end all the young couples get married.

J: Oh, yes, that one. Not remotely like all the other Shakespearian comedies.

I looked out on the porch this weekend and found a wee egg!



As you can see, it was cracked, so I left it there for a bit. When I came back, the chickie inside had hatched!



Pattern: Which Came First? From Craft Magazine. I love looking at Craft, but rarely buy it because the 15$ price tag is enough to give me pause when I only have interest in one project. But this issue has it all, baby; a neat reversible sewn skirt, this egg, some funny baby pants, some sewn juggling toys that I'll probably do with spare fabric this weekend, an interview with a scientist that makes molecule-based jewelry, and a well-done embroidery tutorial (I never got the hang of French knots even after hours of practice, and some day I want to actually do one properly). Plus lots of stuff that I like looking at even if I don't want to make it.

The other thing I noticed about Craft when I actually had the issue home? They only have ads* on the first 3 and last 8 pages (out of 150-someodd). With knitting magazines getting ever more in-your-face about the ads, it's refreshing to just browse through and not get hit over the head every other page.

The pattern called for worsted weight non-superwash wool, and for the project to be lightly felted prior to assembly. But I had Dale Baby Ull in all the right colors, and really, how often does that happen? So I used the thinner yarn at an appropriate gauge. The resulting chick is a smidge over 4 inches tall compared to the original's 5.5 inches.

This was a fun, fun knit. I was whipping through making all the accoutrements at my new knitting group on Saturday, and we couldn't stop laughing at the hilarious little feet.

The whole pattern is really well written, sensible enough to follow without sitting looking at the pattern the whole time. The only tricky part was the pattern's reversibility. The egg flips inside-out to reveal the chick, and vice versa, and there's some stuffing that goes between the two. I put as much stuffing in as I could and still manage the flip, but things are still squishier than I'd prefer, although my cast-on edge is pretty stretchy. If I knit another I might start a few increases into the pattern, which would widen that opening without changing the shaping very much.


*Overt ads, that is. There's some of that "here are some cool finds, and here's how to buy them!" stuff, but I mind the change in copy-look on ads more than the ads themselves, so I can stand it.

For some reason I've only wanted to write listlike blog entries lately. And here's some more of that.

I like the idea of the "read 50 books in a year" challenge. A few years in a row now I've considered it, but realized I'd feel guilty whether I didn't accomplish the goal (because reading should be fun) or if I did (because I should have spent some of that time reading journal articles instead.) Since I started thinking it was a good idea in.. *checks notebook* '05, I have, however, made a point of writing down the books I've read, with a paragraph or two about what I thought of them. This works pretty well, because I have a tendency to read books without any analysis, as a purely passive observer. It's made me better at noting things I like, and helps during those occasional "I have nothing to read" slumps, when I can look through and remember particular authors or themes that I enjoyed.

Over the last 3 years, I've read 53, 41, and 41 books, respectively*, and I'm in the mood to make the thing a bit more public. So occasionally I'll review some books here, which I've done before anyhow, but now that it's an official thing I might get around to doing it semi-regularly. Making it to 50 shouldn't be too much of a struggle except that the first two months of the year were pretty much a wash. We'll see if I make it.

Commentary on the ones I feel like commentarying:

1) Me Talk Pretty One Day: A reread.

2) The Tiger In the Well: Third in a mystery series written by Phillip Pullman (who wrote the His Dark Materials Trilogy). After reading the first two, I got to seeing a bit too much of the machinery in this one.

3) Misconceptions: I read some Naomi Wolf as an undergrad and liked the particular style of righteous anger she inspired in me. This was no different, though I'll have to read it again sometime when I haven't just defended my thesis.

4) Genshiken Vol. 1, and Japan Ai: Japan Ai is adorable and I recommend it if you need something light and pretty to look at. Genshiken is great if you know the references for the manga/anime jokes, and mildly charming if you hung out with geeks growing up. I only know enough of otaku culture to recognize the jokes in a general way, but I liked it more than when I saw it the first time around as an anime.

5) The Code of the Woosters: The characters in the books read quite a bit different than they do in the BBC adaptation. I don't like the book Jeeves and Wooster half as much, as people. But maybe I just really like Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. Tough call.

6) The Ode Less Travelled: What was I saying about Stephen Fry? Oh, yeah.

7) When they Severed Earth from Sky: A very cool book, a bit hard to explain. Basically it's a discussion of how myths might've evolved from discussions of actual phenomenon. "That mountain over there, it looked like a giant with firey-red hair was hurling boulders into the air, so stay away from the mountain" turns into "Once upon a time there was a giant with red hair, and he threw boulders down the mountain to keep someone away. Stay away from the mountain." It's a small step, really, when you don't have written words to build up scientific knowledge. The writers go back and forth between describing common myths, and determining likely physical causes for these myths. It's cooler than it sounds. If you like books where the twist at the end changes everything, read this book. A lifetime of mythology will get all swirly.

The last chapter's about dragons, and it's so awesome that I don't even want to give the trick away. It feels like a trick--I have no idea if their theories are full of it, but I was totally convinced while I was reading.

8)Jezebel: The story about the famous whore, with some visits to the actual sites and far too little archaeological data. Reading this after #7 was a bit mind bending; I kept thinking Jezebel was going to turn out to be a tidal wave or something. It was all right, and neat to know some of the background behind certain changes in translation and such, but there was a bit too much of the author in it for a non-fiction book.

9) Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm: This book joins "James and the Giant Peach", "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn", and "A Wrinkle In Time" as a children's classic I missed in childhood, but read as an adult. If anyone in my family had read it, I'm quite sure they would have pressed it on me, what with my pre-existing love of the Little House On the Prairie series, and what with Rebecca having a dark complexion and being too much of a wiseass for her own good. There were some parts that were considerably more shrewdly witty than I was expecting. The little bit about her spinster aunt having a heart that had only ever been used for circulation of the blood was pretty good.

On the other hand, the combination of an adult point of view and a *modern* point of view gave some really awful twists to things. One of the main characters is an adult man, and every time his name comes up in a new group of people, they say something along the lines of "Oh, too bad he doesn't have a wife, though he doesn't seem interested in marrying. He sure loves spending time with children, though!" Always those two bits of information. Loves kids, lifelong bachelor.

Nowadays, a 30 year old man known for not having ladyfriends but spending lots of time alone with children is not going to have children to spend time with for long. Especially when he starts sending expensive jewelry to 10 year old girls. It took me most of the book to realize that he was actually *supposed* to be a Good Guy. Every time he got Rebecca alone I cringed, waiting for something horrific to happen, in spite of knowing it's supposed to be a book for children! That's a rather drastic cultural shift, along with it being acceptable for someone to say they don't want a girl to have a career because they want to marry her instead. The frequent icks killed the enjoyability.

*I do count these things funny. For some knitting books and manga, I count two or three books read together over a few nights as "one book", or occasionally I count a quick-moving series like the first few books of the "Spiderwick Chronicles" that way. I'm complicated.

Argh, baby sweater plan failure. I hate when a project that looks good in your head goes downhill the second you start trying to make it a reality. It just takes all the wind out of my sails. Something that fails right at the end, I can rip back a ways, or tear the whole thing apart, but I have the momentum of knowing it started all right to sustain me. When you're looking at a project you were excited about that has no redeeming quality--a gauge swatch that is totally off, and ugly, and the stitch pattern makes one of your favorite yarns suddenly feels terrible--it just sucks all the fun away. I just would have liked to take something out of my plan besides "that was bad in every way", but I suppose it happens sometimes.

Mmm, delicious Easter sushi. My husband is awesome.
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Various projects going right now:

-This sweater

has a long and sordid history of not being finished. I started it a bit over two *years* ago. I got the whole body done before summer hit, at which point it got too warm to sit around with a pile of yarn on my lap.

Winter last year, I got one sleeve done, before experiment-finishing stress took over and I could hardly string two words together much less keep track of the dance of stitch counting, yarn-switching, and decreases required to knit the second sleeve.

Now is the perfect time to get back to it again. It's been taking up a bunch of room in my yarn box, and I don't like having more than one complex project sitting around at a time. Complex projects have been building up in my head over the last two years and are ready for the world, so this bad boy has got to go.

I always forget what an enjoyable knit this is. I love playing with the colors, the charts make sense, and colorwork means that every row has something new to see, and progress is obvious. I'm just to the end of the first repeat (of five), and since the sleeves in this sweater are worked by picking up stitches around the shoulder and working down to the wrist, each repeat goes a bit faster than the one before. I'm hoping to finish this up before the weather gets too warm to work on it again. It'd be nice to be able to wear it this season, but I'll settle for completion.

-Baby stuff: My stepbrother and his wife are going to become parents early this summer, and my stepmom and I will ensure that this is kid will never get cold (she's a crocheter, and when she emailed me to tell me the news she said she already had a blanket started). I've got a clever little toy started, and I ordered a copy of the Baby Surprise Jacket pattern. I've got a fun idea for the colorway of the jacket (inspiration here), and I'm really curious to see how it comes out.

-Designing: I've been slowly but surely working on the pattern for the Crowned Heads scarf. If I'm awesome I'll finish typing it up and have it out to my reader-helpers this week. I showed the scarf to the knitting group here last week and they really liked it, so that was a nice real-world kick in the pants.

I have a few other patterns I've been thinking about writing up and selling. There's this:

And this:

And this:

And somewhere in there I want to post this one here for free, as I mentioned recently:



(better pictures ma?)

I'm just loving having plans right now; it's so nice to come home and not feel the weight of school on my shoulders. I'm still doing a bit of my job outside of the 9-5 timeframe (and finishing up some papers on my Madison work that I want to submit), but it feels like I'm doing extra rather than barely keeping my head above water. The thing about grad student-hood is that there's a sense that you should be thinking about school as much as possible--24 hours per day 7 days per week is an A+, but anything below that means you're not standing up to expectations. Constantly feeling like I wasn't working enough was really hard on me, so moving away from that is so freeing. That stuff I just listed? If I never do it, I won't be letting anyone down, I won't lose financial aid or wreck a chance at a satisfying career. Isn't that wonderful?

Things I didn't notice weren't in Madison until I left it:

Ears popping, not just on planes. (The location of Ithaca's downtown is easy to remember, geographically--it's *down*.)

Non-white middle class people.

Snow falling hard enough to seriously affect visibility, without sticking at all.

Judaism. (Well, that did exist in Madison, but it was less visible. Wegman's has a whole huge seasonal Passover section.)

Country people, hipsters, and professionals in the same bar, non-ironically.

Microclimates. It's a 15 minute bus ride from campus to my house, and it's frequently raining or snowing in one place but not the other. Low clouds mean that the hills are *in* the clouds, while downtown is merely cloudy.
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When J and I went to visit his grandmother a few weekends ago, we drove up along the lake and went through Seneca Falls and Geneva on our way to the freeway. Somewhere between those two towns was a neighborhood called "Canalside". There was a Canalside mechanic's shop, a hair dresser's, and some sort of antique/collectible shop.

The collectible shop had a bunch of driftwood-ey branches around the base of the sign. One is propped up at an angle that obscures the "C" on the sign until a car gets within, oh, 10 yards or so of driving by.

If you, like us, happen to be taking this route, I guarantee that you and your car-partner will be first shocked into silence, then into relieved laughter, all thanks to the shop that is NOT called "Analside Gifts".

This is starting to get silly.

That'd be 5 finished objects in the last month and a half, thank you very much. But it'll probably be the last one for a while, because the only project semifinished project left is a ways from being done. Well, I did just do a good job of hemming up some pants, but I don't consider my short-leggedness to be especially blogworthy.

I started these socks the day we moved to Ithaca. We had an empty house, and I only had odd bits of yarns that no mental gymnastics could turn into an actual project. The one unread book I had was boring. This gave me a perfectly reasonable excuse to go to my new local yarn shop and buy yarn despite the overgenerous amount I already have. But like the reasonable person I am, I avoided the huge piles of Schaefer (a local yarn producer!), and instead got some fairly plain sock yarn, with the thought that doing some interesting stitch patterning would keep my brain occupied and take more time while I was waiting for the movers.

Except that all my knitting books were on a truck....somewhere (3 days later, we found out they were still in Chicago). I can start a toe-up sock without a pattern, but this yarn really needed some texture. So, as I knit the toe of the sock, I thought about what I could do with patterning. Any patterning on the sole of a sock hurts my feet, so I decided on a simple panel up on the top. I doodled around with a few different cables before I came up with this one. Unlike the more traditional Aran-style braids, the individual strands here don't move all the way from the left to right side; each intertwines with one neighbor, then heads in the other direction. The behavior of the individual moving strands reminded me of a chain link fence.

When I got to the leg portion, I thought a bit about how I wanted to do the back. I didn't want to add more cables in; I continued to think of the patterning as a fence, and chain link fences don't just separate in mid-air. Instead, I added the ribbing in slowly, which you can see on the sideways foot above. I was thinking of a picket fence going into the distance. I'm not sure that worked, but I like the diagonal line of ribbing anyways.

A few weekends ago we spent many hours sitting at J's baube's bedside with his family, and I pretty much knit the entire foot of the second sock in the car on the way to Buffalo or at the nursing home. It's nice to have something to do when you don't even want to go to the bathroom "just in case", and it lent a bit of normalcy to my world at that moment.

I finished the socks yesterday. They're the same size as each other (which is my usual sock problem), but they're both the teensiest bit baggy. I'm hoping that a run through the wash will help tighten them up, but they're pretty comfortable even if that doesn't happen. They took me just over a month to knit, but it feels considerably longer, since more happened in the last month than in the last several years all put together.

I'll be posting this pattern here for free soon, because it's been a while since I've done that. I'm still working on the Crowned Heads scarf pattern, though, so it may be a bit.

The FO's just keep on coming:

(I got the giggles mid-picture. It always happens when you're me.)

A sweater I started working on... when? early July, apparently. Yikes. 95% of it was knit within a month of my buying the yarn, but it sat in my knitting bag, half-basted together with two different sleeve caps, until about a week ago. Then I finished it in two nights.

The hardest part was choosing a sleeve cap. I used methods I roughly lifted from two separate places to design the sleeve caps; one was short and wide, the other taller and narrower (each I would describe as "more like the way I just described them than a usual sleeve cap", for what it's worth). Interestingly, I now know from ripping one out and redoing it that each used almost exactly the same amount of yarn, and so both covered nearly the same area in spite of their very different shape. When I first basted the sweater together, I tried to get some pictures to make you all decide, but it just wasn't working.

What was the difference? Well, although it wasn't photographable, they did look different to me, which again, is interesting since they each covered the same number of square inches of arm. Each seemed to fit well; there was no particular bunching or tightness on either. I finally decided that the wider sleeve cap looked slightly less "formal", in a way I can't define. It just had a slouchier way about it, in spite of the similar overall fit.

If this sweater was intended for lounging, I would have chosen the wider sleeve cap. But I wanted it for work, so I went with the narrower one. The next time I'm doing any sleeve cap, either following a pattern, or striking out on my own, I'll probably keep this in mind and adjust accordingly. I'm sure this stuff is in seamstressing books, somewhere, but I just pick it up where I can. (Anyone know of a good seamstressing book? I'm tired of unfitting buttondown shirts.)

I am sooo happy with how this sweater turned out, though. The sleeves are the teensiest touch of a bit too long for the lab, but it's super clean, professional-looking but not too stuffy, and the short-rowed v-neck makes me feel more clever than my Ph.D. does.

I mean, just compare it to the my initial doodle:

That's it!

I'll probably post the pattern at some point, but as a one-shot, one-size-only- fits-my-broad-shoulders thing. I got into a fair amount of detail about the design process along the way, so go look at the July and August archives for some ideas, if you're interested.

A reason for a few days of quietness.

I'll be back this weekend.