the girly who shall end all girls

this is the worst spring allergy season i've ever had. maybe at this point i have a dollop of con crud on top. sneezing, itchy eyes and ears, running nose, postnasal drip that leads to sore throat--the gang's all here.

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Norwescon continues to fill my cup. i think when it comes down to it, a few thousand people are busy being happy for a few days and that's infectious. i periodically think that the internet has made conventions irrelevant, then i find myself locking arms with Dr. Doom in a kick line and i get over it. this year we stayed at a boutique hotel off the reservation, which may be what we do every year from now on. we had great food, free ice cream, beautiful grounds*, and a giant bathtub that were all a brief walk away from the crowds. (it's probably no further from the center of the con hotel than the party wing.) i ate well, and i still managed a nap on Saturday when i needed it. i got to lots of space science programming, i saw solcita in rockstar mode backing up Molly Lewis, and the "Supporters Anonymous" viewing event in the con bar was a good time even though my Sounders lost. for the most part the convention runs more smoothly every year, although i worry that the schedule conflict with Sakuracon is depressing attendance in the 15-30 year old bracket. i've heard rumors that a dual-membership pass is in the works. transit between the convention center and seatac is so easy; i'd love to make the light rail a little more surreal for a weekend.

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Molly Lewis graduated from high school in 2008. we're all old.

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i recently learned that a cat is a station master in Japan. why was i surprised?

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i've been trying to make C a pair of socks for a good six months. stuff just kept going wrong with the gauge or my hand health or the yarn tangling into a hideous snarl. i've probably knit and unraveled enough stitches to make three or four pairs. but i finally finished them! the legs aren't as long as C would normally like, but now that i have a pair done and good measurements logged, there's nothing stopping me from doing more. he's wearing them today, let's see if they give him blisters or something.

i am making myself ridiculous sparkly ones.

i've lost interest in my ambitious shawl project. i seem to need to be doing some thumb sucking, and the lace just isn't comforting. nor apparently do i find something endlessly large and complex as satisfying as knocking out a pair of socks.

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i started watching Call the Midwife last night. i described it to C as All Creatures Great and Small with people instead of animals.

i'm also digging into the new Cartoon Network content on Netflix. (frex, we got rid of cable before Adventure Time started airing. so that's all new to me even though all of the characters are familiar sights from using the internets.)

i haven't seen the new Doctor Who yet. or not in its entirety - i caught part of it at the hotel on BBC America and was completely offended by the hack job they do with adding commercials. i liked what i saw of the episode when i wasn't busy putting together the profile of the typical BBCA viewer: cat owner, with a weedy garden and terrible allergies.

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i read some of this a while ago, but came across a hard copy of the original article today: a linkfest about the connection between lead exposure and crime. compelling stuff.










* which included a movie moment of kissing in a cloud of falling cherry blossoms. magic.

on Friday i was toiling away on a lace scarf before game. Pirate B sat down on the futon beside me and watched me knit for a moment.

B: are you reading a bunch of numbers while you do that?
Me: yup.
B: you're a computer!

it's not a bad analogy. as noted in the link, knitting patterns really do look like source code. (or sometimes a punch card. i'll get to that in a bit.)

one of my frustrations as a nOOb knitter has been the amount of energy and focus it takes to read a pattern while i knit. in response, i've developed a habit of having a project that requires less focus to take with me, and a more complex thing that stays at home by the couch.

i was discussing the lace project with scarlettina and noted that i felt like knitting from a pattern should be the same experience as playing the piano or singing; i read the music with my eyes while my body does the thing the music says to do. but somehow after more than 15 repeats of the 12-row knit pattern, i wasn't memorizing any phrases. i couldn't hum the tune without the music in front of me.

so i started to think more about the analogy. there are two ways to notate knitting patterns, written and charted. they both look like gobbeldygook without a key.

• written patterns are easy to understand as a beginner. once you know the abbreviations you read each line and execute.


• charts are often called "scary" (plus my very experienced mom hates them and will translate them into written directions for her convenience). charted patterns are a symbolic representation of the instructions.

the music analogy led to a revelation: musical notation shows me without using words what came before, what to do now, and what i'm going to do next. it goes in my eyes and out my hands without verbal processing.

frex, with a written pattern i was reading Twinkle Twinkle Little Star like this:
start from middle C, all notes are quarter notes unless they are called out as a half note.
Row 1: C2, G2, A2, Ghalf1, F2, E2, D2, Chalf1
Row 2: G2, F2, E2, Dhalf1, G2, F2, E2, Dhalf1
Row 3: C2, G2, A2, Ghalf1, F2, E2, D2, Chalf1

instead of this:


(here's the pattern i was working on, written and charted both...and the finished scarf.)

so for me, charts are music. once i wrapped my brain around scanning right to left, left to right, bottom to top* i found a noticable increase in speed. i also started to hum the tune, feeling the relationships of the stitches and anticipating the shape of the next phrase.



*sounds crazy, but if you're looking at a two-sided thing from one side and as you work it grows on the right and down this is what you have to do. i didn't immediately grasp that and had to tear out an evening's work as part of the learning process because i am totally into doing first, checking the instructions later. fortunately knitting forgives charging ahead, since all you lose is time.

now that it has been consistently warm outside, C has a new tuque. because i have a special talent for reaching for the luxury item, its fiber content is alpaca, silk, kid mohair, and lambswool. pretty colors! so soft! handwash only! may lose shape over time!



the designer has asked to use it as an example on the pattern page. (this is because i am the first person to finish the hat, since the pattern is relatively new. i did not magically make the best hat ever after last making one hat 20 years ago.)

quilting is unforgiving at most stages. if you miscut fabric you can certainly reuse it in another project, but not in this one. get a seam allowance too wide or too narrow at the piecing stage, and the top won't come together. block pieces have to go in a certain order. there are right sides and wrong sides to fabric, points and patterns to match. one can unsew, but i can say from grim experience that you can only poke a row of holes in something so many times before you destroy it. then there are issues other than the fabric itself...your sharp blade won't ever be sharp again if you find a forgotten pin with it.

so for me at least, it takes laser focus. steady hands. the ability to plan several steps into the future and hold that in my head. and i haven't been able to do that for months. i've ruined a few things. i'm not an absolute perfectionist, and i learn best from making mistakes. but damn, i hate destroying materials and tools.

in some ways this applies to painting models and baking as well. plus i have a love/hate relationship with baking since i'm healthier when i don't eat baked goods. while experimenting with sugar-free and lower carbohydrate materials is interesting, it also comes with a high cost (the best sugar substitute IMO is erythritol...$.52 an ounce vs $.38 a POUND for granulated sugar) and failure rate.

i've been feeling lost without being able to quilt. i've lost track of when it was that i last Made A Thing (my attempted handmade Yule gifts were scrapped due to design flaws, learning to use a drop spindle was just sad, my last batch of baked goods both tasted bad and had a lousy texture).

i learned to knit as a teenager. (i took classes because my mother knew that attempting to teach me herself would lead to fighting.) but i never finished many projects because it was so damn boring.

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i was knitting in the hallway at Norwescon this weekend while waiting to get into a panel, sitting beside a woman probably twenty years my senior who was making tiny lace hexagons at lighting speed. after she inquired about my project, i mentioned that i stopped knitting previously because it was boring. to which she replied "and now you knit because it's boring". yes.

a couple weeks ago i was buying yarn to take to PA for my mother. and i desperately needed a thing to do with my hands, a thing i could do on the plane when my kindle was supposed to be turned off, and in the hospital. that's when i realized that i should just get some yarn i'd like to look at and knit a scarf and it's not like i needed to do anything with the product. and so i made a ribbed scarf on the trip, and it was a sort of thumb-sucking. no thinking, just meditative motion. make a mistake, pull it out. the yarn is unharmed, it's safe to try again. after the scarf, i made a shawl. and i knew by the time i had started on the final edging that it was too small (because of course i didn't use the size of yarn or needles that the pattern called for) and there were mistakes i wouldn't tolerate that had made it past various attempts to fix them. i finished it off anyway to practice the lacy edge and the cast off. then i frogged the entire thing. i'm starting over with new gauge math and more experience.

i look like a bandwagoner, but whatever. i've decided to stop giving a shit and enjoy the only creative thing i seem to be able to do right now.