Oh man.

What a horribly hectic week. Nothing really major happened classwise - I had a particularly tedious group project to do and some heavier than usual reading. It was pretty light research-wise too. So what was so bad? Probably some combination of a continued lack of sleep and the psychology graduate program recruitment weekend. I'll start at the beginning.

Monday went pretty well until I got another migraine. I spent the afternoon and a lot of the evening on the bathroom floor because it's the only room in our apartment without windows, and therefore the darkest and most migraine-friendly. Once I started feeling a bit better, I had to finish a problem set for stats, which meant I got to sleep far later than I was planning to. Oh well. Tuesday went well enough, except that I agreed to host a student for recruitment weekend (my research assistant on my honors project! Oberlin represent!), so I spent much of the day trying to clean up. During my questionnaire design class, I got really bored and scribbled some cable designs for a pair of socks I'm planning. Here's said charts all knitted into swatches:

(click for bigger)

I want to do a cable on the side of the sock that splits at the gusset, and half runs down the foot and half runs down the heel. See the little wedge of stockinette at the bottom? Those would be the half cables running next to it. And I really wanted a cable design that had six strands to it so the half-cables would be braids or braid-like and not just rope cables. Which one do you like? I'm leaning towards the first, I think, but I like the sharpness of the diamond in the second one too. Leave me a comment with your vote! And I'll draw the name of someone who voted for the winner and name the socks after you. How exciting.

Wednesday, I was in Oberlin! Yay! I gave a leadoff for the socialist group there for International Women's Day. Well, women's day was actually Thursday, but that's when the student I was hosting for recruitment weekend was supposed to come in, so we held it a day early. While I was there, I visited my favorite professors, wen to taco night at Dascomb....and the local yarn shop. Where I spent entirely too much money last year because it was on the walk home from campus.

(click for bigger)

The skein underneath the dinosaur is Andes by EA yarns in color 19 (blue/orange). Now, I'm generally not a fan of complimentary color combinations, but I've been loving me some orange and blue. Still not down with red and green or yellow and purple, though. I'm planning a slouchy cap...perhaps with wee cables? We all know I'm a fan of wee cables. The yarn with the wee people dolls (Texas Renaissance Festival, represent!) on the right is a skein of Noro Transitions in gold/blue/purple. I have been dying to knit with this stuff since I first heard about it. It was on sale, so I let Jon pick a color and have promised him a hat with it. Speaking of Jon, though he has a well-documented disinterest in the art of knitting, he loves him some yarn. He's taken to rolling unwound skeins into balls, and has developed a distinct yarn palate (if you will), with a taste for thicker, high quality yarn and a particular weakness for variegated colors. He's also taken to posing unwound skeins around our apartment for mini-photoshoots, so expect to see more pictures like those above in the future.

So, on Thursday, we scrambled around the apartment trying to make it guest-ready. We cleaned up and put stuff away, blew up the air mattress, jon even mopped the kitchen! All the movment startled the cats, and they ran for cover.


The rest of recruitment weekend went well. And I finally finished said tedious group project. hopefully life is all settled and ironed out now that I'm past the post-Spring Break adjustment period and I can start churning out some FO's again. Speaking of which, the body of Flair is done and about half of one sleeve! Stay tuned for more.

Jon hit the jackpot

So, you know how it always takes you a week or so to get readjusted after breaks and things? I know it takes me at least a week or two, as I'm a creature of habit, and the shift in schedules from one semester to the other always hits me kind of hard. I've finally fallen into the rhythm of this semester, but it's pretty vicious. This semester is shaping up to fairly light class-wise, but very, very heavy research-wise. I'm working on four projects in various stages of completion, so I usually have to do some combination of administrative work to get through red tape, data analysis in the inexplicably hot and stuffy computer lab, data collection (thankfully, mostly online), and meet with professors and/or undergraduate research assistants. And then do a bunch of reading.

Basically, I have two options to manage this workload, which is apparently a bit larger than the typical first year grad student gets stuck with.

1. Work for several hours every day of the week with no breaks. This has the distinct advantage of allowing me to go to bed at a decent hour every night, but renders any other activities (such as moderate exercise) virtually impossible.
   
2. Work ridiculously hard during the week and do no work at all on the weekends. This requires me to work until 2 or 3 am and get up by 9 at the latest every morning, which means that I'm a mess by Friday. But, it also means I get to sleep all weekend and recharge.

I tried Option 1 for a couple of weeks and crashed and burned. It sounds good in theory, but the constant working meant that I needed more and more downtime, which meant that I was going to bed later and later. The lack of sleep turned out to be a huge drain on me emotionally, as I tended to burst into tears whenever my cats ran away from me.

So, I switched to Option 2. Which worked really well for the last couple of weeks, even if it meant I was a mess on Fridays and spent the weekends catnapping all day instead of hanging out with people. But, now I'm sick. It's not a big deal, just a cold that should pass in a couple of days, but I wonder if taking Option 2 has made me especially susceptible to germs.

Anyway, the bright side of Option 2 is that when I'm not passed out on the couch over the weekend, I'm knitting like a fiend. And this weekend, Jon scored big time! First, witness the Resurrection of the Cosby Socks:
Remember them? I made them waaaaay back in October and then this happened:

Yep, Jon ripped the toe of one of them right on the second or so time he wore them. And I avoided repairing them for, oh, about three months. I'm not sure why....I'm not their biggest fan, to be sure, and I was sure it would be a hassle to pick up all the stitches and reknit the toe, and I was a bit miffed that he took such bad care of them. But, it's cold now, and I felt bad, so I fixed them up good as new.


His voluminous amounts of gratitude then caused the Return of Sick Kitten and Sweatpant Gray yarn:
I made him his hat! Friday I had him go through the Vogue Stitchionary 2: Cables to pick out a bigger, bolder motif that could stand up against the texture of the yarn. He picked the Horseshoe I pattern. I started it yesterday and finished it this morning! I'm quite pleased with the result, in spite of the vomit-colored stripes.
Yarn - 1 skein each of Rowan Harris DK tweed (100% wool, 123 yards) in lewis gray and thatch. Which I still say is a misleading name for that color.
Needles - 40" size 5 addi turbos. I have to say that one reason this iteration of the sick kitten hat went so much better than the last is that I used these needles. The yarn is kind of felted and grippy, which makes it a real pain to use anything other than super-slippery metal needles.
Pattern - My own! It follows below, in case I (or, for that matter, anyone else) want to use it again:

Jon's Horseshoe Cap

This hat is knit from the brim to crown, and is 10" wide and 9" long unstretched.

Notations:

• m1 = make 1 stitch by picking up and knitting/purling through bar between stitch just worked and next stitch
• horseshoe cable pattern
• rounds 1 & 2: k12, p4
• round 3: Work 6st right leaning cable, then immediately work 6st left leaning cable, p4
• rounds 4-8: k12, p4
• stripe pattern:
• rounds 1-6: work in pattern in MC (gray)
• rounds 7-8: work in pattern in CC (vomit)

Pattern:

• CO 84 st in CC, work in 1x1 ribbing for 1 inch or so
• next round: switch to MC, [k4, m1, k4, m1 knitwise, k2, p1, m1 purlwise, p1] repeat to end (105 sts)
• next round: [k12, p2, m1 purlwise, p1] repeat to end (112 st)
• work rounds 3-8 of Horseshoe cable pattern, maintaining stripe pattern
• work Horseshoe cable pattern 4 more times (5 times total)
• when work is 2" shorter than desires, begin crown decreases over next 15 rounds:
  o in MC [k1, k2tog, k9, p4] repeat to end (105 sts)
  o in MC [k8, ssk, k1, p4] repeat to end (98 sts)
  o in MC [cable 5 to the right (hold first 2 sts to back), cable 5 to the left (hold first 3 sts to front), p1, p2tog, p1] repeat to end (91 sts)
  o in MC [k2, k2tog, k6, p3] repeat to end (84 sts)
  o in MC [k4, ssk, k3, p3] repeat to end (77 sts)
  o in MC [k8, p2tog, p1] repeat to end (70 sts)
  o in CC [k2tog, k6, p2], repeat to end (63 sts)
  o in CC [k5, ssk, p2], repeat to end (56 sts)
  o in MC [k1, k2tog, k3, p2] repeat to end (49 sts)
  o in MC [k2, ssk, k1, p2] repeat to end (42 sts)
  o in MC [right leaning twist, left leaning twist, p2tog] repeat to end (35 sts)
  o in MC [k1, k2tog, k1, p1] repeat to end (28 sts)
  o in MC [k1, ssk, p1] repeat to end (21 sts)
  o in MC [k2tog, p1] repeat to end (14 sts)
  o in MC [ssk] repeat to end (7 sts)
• break yarn and draw tightly through last 7 sts
• weave in all ends, attach pom-pom if demanded to by your significant other

Here's a closeup of the cable motif and the crown decreases. I'm really pleased with the way the crown decreases turned out and took a picture of them before I added the pom-pom.

But that not all! I started Jon a pair of peekaboo mittens tonight as well:
It'll be fairly simple. All stockinette, all in the round, and I'll probably substitute an afterthought thumb for ease. I'm using the leftover skein of the alpaca tweed from my totally awesome first sweater ever, but I'm holding two strands together and knitting it on 7's to make it nice and thick (and fast).

Between the hat, socks, and mittens, Jon should be nice and toasty when he drives around all night delivering pizzas. I'm making all this stuff for him in large part because it's gotten soooo cold here. In my phlegmatic, fevered stats, I've spent the night watching the Grease: You're the One that I Want marathon, which has been interrupted three times with weather advisories talking about polar fronts and windchill temperatures hovering around -12 degrees. I guess I just wanted to make sure he didn't lose his ears to frostbite, because, let's face it: ear stumps are not sexy.

I have seen the future, and in it I am a crazy cat lady

So, with that in mind, I thought I'd get a head start on my Crazy Cat Lady-hood with this post. Because, guys? I'm kind of an over-achiever and I really enjoy getting head starts.

Now I had this epiphany earlier when I was working on Tamar's monkey socks, which are coming along quite nicely:

Look how much I got done at the psych conference! I finished the first one and then got all the way through the leg of the second one. See, I'm not usually the kind of girl that knits during events. I've never knitted in class, and typically reserve my public displays of knitting to airplanes and movie theaters. But, I was totally zonked for a lot of the conference, and ended up taking my knitting with me to the symposiums The repetitve nature of knitting helps me focus sometimes, and also kept me awake.

The conference, by the way, went well. I dressed like a fancy-schmancy adult, and my poster was well-received. I think I may have even networked a little bit, but I'm not entirely sure. I'm new to this kind of thing.

"But," you ask, "how does being a young, professionally dressed, psychology-conference-attending go-getter make you destined for a life of Crazy Cat Lady-hood?"

Good question, dear reader. I'm destined because this has been the highlight of my week so far:
Yes, the sight of my cat grooming Tamar's sock set me all a-tizzy today and I took a bajillion pictures of it. Jon looked at me like I was crazy. This cat, though, she's something else. Every morning I have to find all the skeins of yarn and single handknit socks she stole from my knitting basket in the wee hours of the night in a haze of catnip and good taste. In all honesty, she's kind of a klepto with some major drug dependency issues.

And because every Crazy Cat Lady has to have multiple cats, I give you Fatty:
Who is apparently embarking on a career as a bookend. Is it coincidence that he's chosen this esteemed occupation just as his namesake has applied to library science programs? You decide!

Oh, for the love of sweet Moroccan mint tea...

Ok, first I'm really sorry about the delay, but let me tell you, grad school is hard. Not like oh-man-I-wish-I-didn't-have-to-study-for-this-midterm hard, but dear-god-in-heaven-why-can't-I-ever-finish-working-before-2AM hard. And I'm not good at existing on less than nine hours of sleep. So, I've essentially been a zombie for the last week or so. Zombies have no brains. And you can't write a knitting blog without brains, ask anyone.

Now back to the point. Why does my boyfriend pick the least attractive yarn in the store every single time!? Case in point, the local yarn store was having an awesome sale, so I forced Jon to drive me there. As a reward for the chauffering and waiting patiently as I browsed with glee, I let him pick out some yarn for himself. So, he grabs a couple of skeins of Rowan Harris tweed and demands a hat. This is as far as I got with it:
Now, it's clear from his deranged, unfocused grinning that he adores this yarn, but look at it! Look at those terrible colors! Does it remind you of something?
Vomit perhaps? Rowan refers to the colors as 'lewis grey' and 'thatch'. I refer to them as 'hideous sweatpant gray' and 'sick kitten.'

But, there is good news! Have y'all heard about the psychological concept of flow? Now, I try not to delve in to psychology too much since this is a knitting blog, but bear with me. Flow experiences are times when you're doing something you really enjoy and time disappears. We've all had this happen, right? You get really immersed in something and BOOM! It's an hour later.

Well (shockingly enough), I've had flow experiences with knitting. See?
Pretty! I finished up the Bayerische socks a couple of days ago. And I totally flowed right through the second one. I was just knitting and reading the chart and knitting and reading the chart and knitting....until the wee hours of the morning. But they are totally worth it. Check out this closeup:
And this one!
Yarn - Louet Gems Pearl (100% wool, 185 yards) in citrus orange
Pattern - Eunny's Bayerische socks. So much fun to knit, in a weirdly masochistic way.
Needles - 29" size 1 Susan Bates quicksilver circular. The only substantial modification I made to the pattern was going up a needle size, as the pattern is written for a size 6 foot and mine hovers somewhere between an 8 and 9 (but, curiously, not an 8 1/2...feet are strange).

You wanna know what else I have flow experiences with?
Statistics. Seriously. In the last weeks, I've been working on a couple of different projects that are in the data analysis stage. So, I'll head to the computer lab after class and plan to just run a couple of tests, shouldn't take me more than twenty minutes or so.....and realize that an hour and a half has just flown by and I've done maybe a half dozen MANOVAs complete with pairwise contrasts. And it's fun. As if there wasn't enough mounting evidence of my inherent, overwhelming dorkiness out there already.

Back to knitting. I've also started the socks for Tamar, my Other.
They're the Monkey socks from the current issue of Knitty. Since the yarn she picked out is just shy of sportweight and she has biggish feet for a girl, I'm knitting them on size 3's. And as glorious as knitting the Bayerische socks was, I'm enjoying the easy-to-memorize lace pattern and quick progress of the bigger gauge. I'm going to a psychology conference this weekend in Memphis, so I'll have some prime airplane knitting time to knock these little babies out.

I'll leave you with one more thing:
Moroccan mint tea! As many of you know, I studied abroad in Estonia and Morocco as an undergraduate, which fostered a love of tea. I got my taste in black teas from Eastern Europe and mint tea from Morocco. While in North Africa, I drank the mint tea at every meal, several times a day. For me, at least, it was an acquired taste because it's prepared with a truly amazing amount of sugar. Seriously, there's no sense of too sweet with this stuff, just not sweet enough.

I bought the teapot and dried mint and green tea for Jon. Despite the fact that the unmarked package of dried vegetable matter gave me some trouble going through customs, he never used it (bad taste in yarn and tea, that one), and I fell out of the habit of drinking it.

I've started drinking it again, though. Dani, Tamar, and I went to a hookah bar that served it at New Year's, which made me remember how good it was, and then I had it again at a tea party I went to last weekend. Jon also went to said tea party, and it was like he'd died and gone to heaven.

The dust has settled

Hallelujah! Finals are over, and even though I have to do pilot testing and data coding over Christmas break, I don't have any tests, or papers, or classes to go to until January! I have survived my first semester at grad school. Cheers to me.

So, how much knitting have I gotten done? Not too terribly much. I'm about halfway done with the second of the Red Herring socks, which is exciting. I really love this pattern, though as you can see in the photo, I did occasionally butcher the stranded pattern. But, it doesn't bother me enought to take it out, so I guess that's cool. I've noticed that I'm actually kind of a half-assed knitter when it comes to myself, and can deal with messed up stitches and decreases that aren't mirrored. But knitting for other people makes me a perfectionist. Weird, huh?






I also started designing a sweater for myself. Here's the sketchy schematic-y thing of it. I'm envisioning it as a kicky little bolero/cocoon shrug thing, all cozy and warm and fitted with a little shawl collar. I'm pretty excited about it.

I'm using Malabrigo yarn in Bobby Blue, which is really gorgeous. My Other bought it for me in New York months and months ago and I haven't been able to think of the right thing to do with it until now. I'm working it in a really basic twisted stitch pattern based on braided cables. If you look closely at the picture underneath the sketch, you can kind of see the wee little twisty braids. I like the texture, but it eats yarn like nobody's business.


The last picture shows you how far along I am. I'm attempting to knit it all in one peice because I hate seaming, so I'm using the raglan decreases from the top-down all-in-the-round sweater pattern here. But, I am knitting it flat since it's supposed to flare open in the front. I figured it was either knit it flat and shape it as I go (sensible), or knit it in the round and steek the bejesus out of it to beat it into the right shape (totally, utterly foolish). Anyway, I'm just past the armholes, so there's not much to show just yet.

And I have completely finished Sam's bag! I've washed all three bags and blocked them, but hers was the first to dry out, so it was the first to get lined and strapped and the like. Isn't it pretty? The final measurements are 10" wide x 12" long x 1" deep. I made it in the round and used the slip-stitch pattern from Via Diagonale. I made the flap by continuing the slip-stitch pattern for half the stitches flat. Today I sewed on the strap (a 1" wide, 6 ' long peice of black cotton twill), lined it with about 1/2 yard of pink cotton, and sewed on a big button to close it. I braided three strands of Lopi and sewed it to the inside of the flap to make a button loop. You know what I like best about it? The way the color shifts on the flap and the bag match up perfectly.
Yarn - 1 skein Noro Big Kuryeon (100% wool, 176 yards) in colorway 18 (purple/navy) and 1 skein Lopi (100% wool, 110 yards) in black. I ended up with about 1/2 a skein of each left.
Needles - size 11 bamboo circulars
Pattern - I used a simple common-sense bag pattern in the Via Diagonale slip-stitch pattern: knit in the round until your work is an inch or so longer than what you want the finished bag to be, turn it inside out and work a three-needle bind off, and make a gusset (described beautifully here). I prefer to sew straps on rather than knit them, especially if the bag isn't going to be felted, since knitted fabric stretches so much, and I definetly advise lining bags. It makes them prettier, and more durable. And if it's a colorwork bag like this one, you won't be catching your keys on the floats every six seconds. Pretty damn simple.

Update

The end of the semester pressure-cooker is turned all the way up, so there's little time for knitting and even less for blogging. Nonetheless, I valiantly march onward. Here I am finishing up the Point Five scarf instead of submitting an IRB... proving procrastination can be productive after all. It is all done and wearable, and I'll post final pictures and details about it after the finals dust has cleared.



In the meantime, I've started a pair of Red Herring socks from the last issue of Knitty in turquoise and black. I knit about 1/2 inch or so whenever I need a break from my more pressing academic pursuits. I'm finding that although I do it very, very slowly, stranded colorwork can be really satisfying. Still hate intarsia though.

Fever Dream

Ok. I'm not gonna lie, I'm fairly certain that I'm feverish. So, if this post seems a bit scattered and nonsensical, that's why.

Now that the pesky disclaimer's out of the way, let's get down to business! First, I realized today that my cats are now completely incapable of surviving in the wild. Not that I was about to drop them alone in the woods somehwere with only a book of matches and a tarp like they do with those super-rugged survival people or anything. But look at Mittens! Lolling about with her vulnerable belly exposed with a devil-may-care attitude. It's like they've turned into dodo birds, with no concept of fear or understanding that predators could be after them. If only we could all be so lucky, right?


I, on the other hand, am totally swamped with work. and when I say swamped, I mean swamped! I currently have four, count 'em, four projects in the works. I'm designing what will turn into my master's thesis, working on a qualitative data set with my advisor, designing a correlational study with another professor for a book chapter (yay! I'll finally have something real on my CV!), and finally, trying to pull together a couple of studies to beef up my undregraduate honors thesis and make it possibly publishable. We'll see how that goes. So, basically, all the stress and constant pressure has me feeling and looking like this picture: all bug-eyed and confused. I'm going to visit my friend in Chicago for Thanksgiving, and I'm determined to finish all the work than needs to be done by next week today and tomorrow so that all I have to do this weekend is knit, eat turkey, and sleep. Rest and recharge, if you will.


Of course, I know that the few of you out there reading this blog probably weren't attracted by the almost-psychologist part as you were the fiber-arts part. Well, last night, I cracked under the pressure mentioned above and rebelliously refused to do any sort of academic work and instead knitted this nifty little case for my fancy new digital camera. I used a little bit of pink and black Lopi yarn I had lying around and worked it in the slip-stitch pattern I used for Sam's bag. This was actually a very practical thing to make because the camera's been laying on the coffee table and the cats keep playing with the little string/handle thing and pulling it onto the floor (which, thank god, is carpeted.....but still).

The picture on the left is the yarn for the projects I have yet to knit into people's Christmas presents. I was going to include a picture of all the yarn I have that's slated for projects only for me, but I just bought some more online, and I'll wait to take it until it's arrived. The big gray mass is Henry's Attic Alpaca Tweed that will be made into a matching scarf and mittens set for my boyfriend (although it is very likely that he won't get the entire set until his birthday in February). The bright green Malabrigo yarn underneath it is going to be made into a hat for him. The white and black Lopi to the left of the alpaca will turn into a bag for Mandy, Sam's sister. The black ball and skein (Cash Iroha) and the purple skeins (Artyarns Supermerino) just above it at the bottom of the picture will be made into armwarmers for my exiled friends. The picture on the right is a closeup of the Supermerino. It's gorgeous! All purple with subtley shifting shades. I think I'll miss it when it's gone. Hopefully some of this will be converted into wearable objects by the time I get back from Chicago.

A new city, a new blog, a new set of Christmas knitting

So, here I am, almost a year to the day after I first learned to knit withmy very own, brand-spankin' new knitting blog. My plan is that it shall be awesome.

And who am I? I am a brand-new grad student in the University of Michigan's psychology Ph.D. program. I moved away from my comfortable nest of friends and knitting companions in Ohio and I've been feeling a tad bit lonesome out here by myself. All I have for company is my big goofy boyfriend and our two cats, Mittens (the littly gray one) and Jonnikins McFattington (the orange one), whom we call Fatty for short.

In general terms, I'm a huge dork, which I have come to accept and treasure. Need proof? I enjoy statistics...a lot. I titled my blog Captian Knitpicky because my compulsive rationality soemtimes gets me into trouble. I once went off on how much the space-time incosistencies in the Chronicles of Narnia bother me, to which a friend of mine responded, "That's ridiculous. You're the most illogically logical person I have ever met." Which, I think, makes me nitpicky. Add a K and you get a nerdy pun!

Anyway, this blog is supposed to focus on knitting. I have tackled the Christmas list, because I am too poor to buy proper presents. Knitted gifts would be acceptable, except that most of the people I knit for live in Texas, and my family keeps the air conditioner on even in December. Here are the things I have already completed:

A Clapotis for my mom. I used about 3 1/2 skeins of Katia Ingunea Print in color 5652 and knitted it on size 7 needles. I started on a really awful pair of pink plastic ones, but I lost one at some oint in an airport coming back from my friend's wedding and finished them on wooden ones. Honestly, how do you lose a 14 inch knitting needle without noticing it?



Also, a pair of socks for my mom. Although, technically they were for her birthday. But whatever. I used 2 skeins of Artyarns Supermerino in color 105 on 40" size 3 addi turbos. You can't really tell, but I used a traveling eyelet pattern that looks really nifty. The pattern is my own, although this is certainly not the first time someone has used traveling eyelets.





Here's a pair of socks I knitted for my boyfriend. I knitted them on my size 3 addi turbos and used 1 skein of Lorna's Laces sock yarn in Amish and another in Black Watch because he demanded that the socks be complementary, not matching. So, I chose a basic rib with stripes based on the Fibonacci sequence. See? I told you I was a dork. Anyway, the colors overwhelmed the stripes, and they turned out looking suspiciously like a Cosby sweater.

Here's what I have yet to knit:

• the second cabled sock for my stepdad (one down, one to go)
• felted bags for my sister and her best friend and her best friend's sister, who are like sisters to me
• fingerless gloves for my boyfriend
• socks for my Other (see I Heart Huckabees)
• felted slippers for my bestest buddy

Wish me luck.