Showing posts with label Knitting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Knitting. Show all posts
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Kate Reports!
It turns out that one of my co-campers, Kate Buchanan, was sent by a Simply Knitting British Knitting Magazine, to report daily from France on camp activities. Kate did a fantastic job, with photos. Scroll down if you don't see her report after you click. Saturday and Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Mesdames Defarge*
We three dascha residents resident humans have been knitting up a storm. Literally...it's now thundering and lightninging to beat the band. I finished a pair of socks for my niece and started a pair for Renaissance Woman (she covets a pair just like elswhere's only slightly longer). 15-year-old has finished her first knitting project under my tutelage: a bear hat. That is, a white hat with ears, eyes and a nose. It's just as well that he doesn't have a mouth, don't you think? 9-year-old has completed her patch, which we plan to turn into a small purse this afternoon. Or possibly a cellphone cover. The kitties have been ecstatically battling with the yarn. If I had brought my camera you would have photos to look at, but I didn't, so you don't. Sorry.
The reason I didn't bring the camera is it continues to be too big and heavy. My technical advisor recommended I buy an Olympus 4000z several years ago, simply because he had researched the one he wanted, bought it, and could therefore solve any problems I might encounter. The trouble is, the camera is too good. It has features I don't need, don't understand, and don't use. It is feature-heavy. I just wanted a point-and-shoot, but at the time I bought it, the point-and-shoots weren't as good as they are now. The irony is, in the meantime my advisor suffered a massive burglary during which his camera was stolen. And the one problem he couldn't solve for me, burglary or no, is how to put my camera on a weight-loss program. It occurred to me that if he bought a point-and-shoot, we could trade, but then I would have to go through another learning curve and I am just too lazy for that. I would rather have fine photos when I take them, and complain when I don't.
Note: JenT graciously offered her photography expertise, as she recently acquired the same camera. On purpose! And she even hand-delivered a hard-copy version of the user's manual fron the CD. The user's guide is supposed to be a significant improvement on the reference book distributed with the camera, and if I were a grownup, I would study it and stop kvetching.
I was especially frugal in packing for this excursion to the dascha because I came by train. Not just any train, as it turns out, but the very train that she rides home from work! This discovery was made only when we disembarked, but there was still time to meet Mr. She, and Little Boy She, who came to the station to collect mommy.
Anyhow, having limited myself to a modest-sized backpack and a dog, I trusted I would find suitable reading material in the Professor's home library. And I was right! I am now in the middle of the eminently readable and suitably scholarly The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz. My children have been my primary coaches in the ongoing redefinition of "family," but Coontz puts it all into a cultural and historical context.
*In case you've forgotten, Madame Defarge is the villain of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. She is constantly knitting, and uses patterns in the knitting to register names and descriptions of the enemies of the French Revolution. The names she knits are those of the people who must die for the Revolution. Thank you Wikipedia!
The reason I didn't bring the camera is it continues to be too big and heavy. My technical advisor recommended I buy an Olympus 4000z several years ago, simply because he had researched the one he wanted, bought it, and could therefore solve any problems I might encounter. The trouble is, the camera is too good. It has features I don't need, don't understand, and don't use. It is feature-heavy. I just wanted a point-and-shoot, but at the time I bought it, the point-and-shoots weren't as good as they are now. The irony is, in the meantime my advisor suffered a massive burglary during which his camera was stolen. And the one problem he couldn't solve for me, burglary or no, is how to put my camera on a weight-loss program. It occurred to me that if he bought a point-and-shoot, we could trade, but then I would have to go through another learning curve and I am just too lazy for that. I would rather have fine photos when I take them, and complain when I don't.
Note: JenT graciously offered her photography expertise, as she recently acquired the same camera. On purpose! And she even hand-delivered a hard-copy version of the user's manual fron the CD. The user's guide is supposed to be a significant improvement on the reference book distributed with the camera, and if I were a grownup, I would study it and stop kvetching.
I was especially frugal in packing for this excursion to the dascha because I came by train. Not just any train, as it turns out, but the very train that she rides home from work! This discovery was made only when we disembarked, but there was still time to meet Mr. She, and Little Boy She, who came to the station to collect mommy.
Anyhow, having limited myself to a modest-sized backpack and a dog, I trusted I would find suitable reading material in the Professor's home library. And I was right! I am now in the middle of the eminently readable and suitably scholarly The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz. My children have been my primary coaches in the ongoing redefinition of "family," but Coontz puts it all into a cultural and historical context.
*In case you've forgotten, Madame Defarge is the villain of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. She is constantly knitting, and uses patterns in the knitting to register names and descriptions of the enemies of the French Revolution. The names she knits are those of the people who must die for the Revolution. Thank you Wikipedia!
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Vested Interest
Finally completed, the improvised design-as-you-go vest with the big-enough pockets. Here's how it looked six weeks ago. I broke the M & M code of knitting design: Measure and Multiply. 
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Angels, the Backstory
For knitters only.
A few weeks ago I thought I'd take an "in progress" picture of Mermaid Girl's Angels. All the pieces except the lacy edging were finished, and what remained was primarily weaving in many lose ends and sewing up the seams. I hate weaving in lose ends, so in true procrastinatorial fashion I sewed up one side seam, hoping to get motivated.
What anyone except me can see from this photo, the two sleeves are not exactly aligned. And I happened to pick the seam you see on the left. Starting from the cuff of the left sleeve, I made it all the way to the bottom past the angels before I got irrefutible proof that the front and the back were not the same length. Well, duh, you say. Of course not.
What to do? In true hacker fashion, I went ahead and picked up all the stitches on the shorter back and knitted an extra two inches to match up with the front. Brilliant! Only when I stitched up the right side seam did the truth emerge. Suddenly, with the addition of the extra two inches, the front became shorter than the back.
My mother's voice came again to haunt me: "To become a knitter, you must learn to rip." Hi, Mom.
A few weeks ago I thought I'd take an "in progress" picture of Mermaid Girl's Angels. All the pieces except the lacy edging were finished, and what remained was primarily weaving in many lose ends and sewing up the seams. I hate weaving in lose ends, so in true procrastinatorial fashion I sewed up one side seam, hoping to get motivated.
What anyone except me can see from this photo, the two sleeves are not exactly aligned. And I happened to pick the seam you see on the left. Starting from the cuff of the left sleeve, I made it all the way to the bottom past the angels before I got irrefutible proof that the front and the back were not the same length. Well, duh, you say. Of course not.
What to do? In true hacker fashion, I went ahead and picked up all the stitches on the shorter back and knitted an extra two inches to match up with the front. Brilliant! Only when I stitched up the right side seam did the truth emerge. Suddenly, with the addition of the extra two inches, the front became shorter than the back.
My mother's voice came again to haunt me: "To become a knitter, you must learn to rip." Hi, Mom.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Total Tinky Winky
After the rousing success of Laa Laa and the Laa Laa hat last week, Little Bear said wistfully, "Tinky Winky hat someday." Someday came today.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Socks, Finished
After a walk in the rain with the dog, dry warm socks are really the best! The keenly observant viewer will see that I ran out of main color on the second sock, creating a more fanciful pair than one usually finds in shops.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Holiday Gift for Little Bear
The whole Christmas-shopping-thing doesn't happen where I live, and it does where most of my loved-ones live, so this is the season I feel farthest away. I try to send my granddaughters something I make by hand, because it's the next best thing to touching them (sigh).
Another distancing thing is the time-space continuum: packages to the USA from Israel normally take two weeks to arrive, so I have sent most gift packages by now. Unless I get lucky (a web-cam package-opening session), my participation in their holidays is about over. I forgot to photograph the knitted Barbie-outfits I sent to Mermaid Girl.
Can you tell I'm a bit blue? Speaking of blue, the color of Little Bear's sweater is much more lavender than it appears in the photo. I finally learned how to make bobbles, and, drunk with bobbling power, I even made bobble buttons.
Another distancing thing is the time-space continuum: packages to the USA from Israel normally take two weeks to arrive, so I have sent most gift packages by now. Unless I get lucky (a web-cam package-opening session), my participation in their holidays is about over. I forgot to photograph the knitted Barbie-outfits I sent to Mermaid Girl.
Can you tell I'm a bit blue? Speaking of blue, the color of Little Bear's sweater is much more lavender than it appears in the photo. I finally learned how to make bobbles, and, drunk with bobbling power, I even made bobble buttons.
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Sweater Finished
I forgot to mention in my earlier post, it's for Mermaid Girl's fourth cousin, the one who was named after Aristedes de Sousa Mendes, the man who saved his grandmother's life in 1942.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Sweater for MermaidGirl
Another knitting project completed. This one is for Mermaid Girl. Don't tell her - it's a birthday surprise!
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