Sorry for the lack of posts...

...but it's hard to blog from the PICKET LINE!

Basically, I've spent all of my free time preparing and mobilizing for the grad student's strike here at UMich (because we need a GODDAMN CONTRACT! Right? YEAH!). Today was the first day, and I am achy and covered in blisters.

Regular blogging will resume when the dust has settled and I get a living wage.

FO: Proletariat Socks

(click for bigger)

My stepdad's socks are done! I know I'm already a few months late, but I'm starting to really bang through the sock queue! It's a good feeling. Check out the progress:

1. Charade socks for Brian
2. River Rapid socks for Jennie
3. Vinnland socks for Van
4. Millicent socks for Sam
5. Rhiannon socks for Mandy
6. Spiral boots socks for Leila
   
7. Socks for Mom
8. Socks for Stepdad
9. Something sockish for Dani (possibly booties?)
   
10. Indestructible socks for Jon

Despite the top picture, I think these turned out pretty good. They're totally inoffensive to one's masculine, both in color (a nice manly gray) and texture (just ribs and seed stitch), and machine washable to ensure optimal low maintenance care.

Yarn - 2 skeins of Knitpicks Swish DK (123 yards, 100% superwash merino) in mist. This is awesome yarn for thickish socks - it's squishy and soft, but still stretchy and not too heavy.

Needles - magic looped 'em on my trusty 40" size 3 addi turbo circulars

Pattern - I totally made this up as I went along at the socialist thingy. Here's how it went:

• CO 28 sts using figure 8 technique, and increase 1 st at beginning and end of each needle every other row until there's 60 sts total
• For the top of the foot: p1, k2, p2, work 20 in seed st, p2, k2, p1. Knit across sole.
• Around round 40, start gusset increases by increasing 1 at the beg. and end of the sole section every other round. Continue the top of foot pattern. Repeat until you have worked 10 increase rounds.
  
• For the heel: p1, k2, p2, work 20 in seed st, p2, k2, p2tog. Turn work and sl1, then: p2, k2, work 20 in seed st, k2, p2, k2tog. Repeat until all the increased sts have been used up, which should be 20 rows (PS - notice something missing? Like short rows? Yeah, I totally blanked on that. I think they turned ok anyway).
• Keep knitting the leg in the rib/seed st pattern as established until you run out of yarn. BO loosely.
  

Returning to the Sock Queue

Yeah, about that sock queue...no improvements since my mom's socks. I started these a really long time ago, back before new years, but have only been working on them off and on. Part of that is because I've only been knitting, period, off and on due to a more hectic semester than I predicted (and that I kind of selfishly only want to knit for myself when I am able to carve out the time for it), and part of it is due to the odd amount of difficulty I've been having memorizing the pattern. It's not a particularly difficult pattern, but for some reason, I am just not getting the logic of it.

So, bottom line is that I have 2/3 of one of my sister's spiral boots socks done. Slowly, tediously, it will get finished.

Socialism + Knitting = Awesome Hats (and other stuff, too)

(click for bigger)

I've apparently developed a habit of associating hats and those long-ass socialism meeting that have been alluded to in the last couple of posts. Case in point: last year, I made this hat at the meeting, and this year, I made the chapeau above in preparation for the meeting.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "as a faithful and dedicated reader of your blog, I am fully aware that you already have quality hats! What could you really call this and this but awesome headgear? You don't need another one!" And you'd be right about that, reader, if the aforementioned commie get-together was held in Boston, like last year. But it wasn't...it was in Minneapolis. So, while I do have some pretty snazzy hats, I feared they were only Michigan-compatible - not really appropriate for the Icebox of America, you know?

Besides, I was buying yarn as a birthday present for Jon anyway (he's expressed interest in working in the round, maybe even making his own awesome hats), which served as a good excuse to buy some more yarn for myself.

Yarn - 2 skeins of Rowan Big Wool (100% wool, 87 yards), one in glamour and one in stormy. Since time was of the essence, I used really bulky yarn. To be honest, I've been looking for a good excuse to use big, puffy yarn since knitting with it so quick and satisfying.

Needles - I stole the clover size 11 bamboo straights Jon's been using for his scarf. You know, it's really weird to knit a hat on straight needles.

Pattern - Tychus from Knitty, modified for my gigantic gauge, a pom-pom, and earflaps.

The best part was that after the hat was done, I realized that a lot of yarn was leftover - enough to make these slipper-socks!

(click for bigger)

Aren't they awesome? They're great for me, since I have ridiculously cold feet.

Yarn - clearly, the same as above

Needles - set of 4 Brittany size 11 birch dpns

Pattern - a basic toe-up sock with 1 x 1 ribbing on the cuff and top of the foot. I casted on 10 sts using the figure 8 method, increased to 26 sts, and then worked the foot with ribbing on the top and a stockinette sole for 15 rounds using the other color. I worked a short row heel in the first color, then worked 4 rounds in the second color in 1 x 1 ribbing. The last round was worked using the first color before binding off.

My 100th post: the 80th Annual Oscars

So....last weekend was another one of those socialist extravaganzas that I’m prone to going to – you know, trapped in a room discussing the evils of capitalism and how to fix it for 14 hours straight 3 days in a row. By Sunday night, Dani and I were understandably exhausted and decided to watch the Oscars. We thought we'd let you in on how that little adventure went for us. The following was composed as we watched it and then edited for clarity later:
_________________________________________________________________
As Jon Stewart emerges from some sort of tube:
Me: that set….looks like plumbing

Best costumes:
Dani: I love Cate Blanchett
Me: me too
(Elizabeth:The Golden Age wins)
Dani: I agree with that. Period pieces always win.
Me: hey, that winner’s dress rocks! I suppose it would have to, considering the category.
Dani: Whatev. She has veiny hands and looks like an elementary school art teacher.

Weird 80th anniversary montage:
Jon: Is that when Peter O’Toole won the lifetime achievement award?
Me: Don’t even get me started. It’s a crime he hasn’t actually won one yet. That’s a big reason why the Oscars are bullshit, if you ask me.
Dani: Wait – is that old guy giving a speech Charlie Chaplin?! Creepy.
Jon: IMDB says he died in the 70s.
Me: Hearing him speak is so weird…I feel like I’ve seen him naked now.

Best animated feature:
Dani: These choices are lame. Why no simpson's movie?
Me: Maybe because it was a TV show before?
(Ratatouille wins)
Dani: WHAT? Ratatouille won best animated feature over Persepolis?? That is so not cool. {lame point #1}

Best makeup:
Dani: Whoa, Katherine Heigl looks scary.
Jon: Yeah…like a robot.
Me: Norbit was nominated for best make up? Wha? How could it be nominated for anything? {lame point #2}
(La Vie En Rose wins)
Dani: Marion Cottillard is beyond thrilled.
Me: imagine if she actually wins…

(Amy Adams, who Dani found awesome, sings a song from Enchanted which Jon found bizarre. Then, we watched a creepy mastercard commercial with a guy with a strange, creepy independently moving eye and were profoundly disturbed.)

Visual effects:
Dani: did they just call him dwayne johnson?? the hell?
Me: Well yeah. He's...THE ROCK.
(while the visual effects team from The Golden Compass accept their Oscars)
Me: Those dudes look like a barbershop quartet.

Art direction:
Dani: This is a hard category. I’d be happy with any of these winning.
(a pair of presumably Italian people accept awards for Sweeney Todd and give an extraordinarily stilted speech)
Me: Man. They are not so good at English…this is kind of painful.

Supporting actor:
Dani: What is with Jennifer Hudson’s boobs?
Me: They’re, like, 3D! Also, did Phillip Seymour Hoffman highlight hair?
(Javier Bardem wins)
Me: Aww! He brought his mom! That’s nice.

(A montage of binouculars and periscopes that way made before the writer’s strike ended was played, which I found awesome {highlight #1}, and Keri Russell came out in a lovely dress to introduce a song from August Rush. Jon, who actually really wanted to see the movie, started incoherently singing along.)

Live action short film:
Dani: Why are all of these foreign?
Craig (Dani’s Gentlemen Friend): Tonto Woman looks awesome!

Animated Short:
(Peter and the Wolf wins)
Dani: are the cutting out all the pauses? And opening the envelope ahead of time?! {lame point #3}
Jon: the winners brought scary peter doll!
Me: It kind of looks like you, dude.

Best Supporting Actress:
(while watching a montage of past winners)
Me: I do love alan arkin
Jon: I hate alan alda.
Me: I do love tilda swinton, as well! That lady behind her has way too much cleavage happenng, though…
Dani: Tilda Swinton is looking a little scary alien-bowie-esque.
Me: Hey, did she just mention the Clooney Batman Nipple-suit?
Dani: Yes! We should hang out with her. {highlight #2}

Best Adapted Screenplay:
Me: Man, could the Coen Brother’s acceptance speech have been any more awkward?

(we were subjected to yet another lame montage, but noticed a mysterious Jerry Orbach look alike in audience before it played. Then, Hannah Montana introduced the third musical number, which turned out to be some vaguely racist extravaganza from Enchanted) {lame point #4}

Best Actress:
Jon: Forest Whitaker lost a ton of weight – what an amazing face!
(Marion Cottilard wins and gives a speech that includes the following direct quotations: "you rocked my life!!" and "thank you life, thank you love, it is true there are some angels in this city!") highlight #3
Me: Her dress is…scaly. She’s like a scaly Sally Field up there.

(a song from Once was played by the earnest-looking pair from the movie, and then there was an extremely enjoyable montage of the past best picture winners, where Craig made fun of my deep love of overly long dramas where nothing happens)

Honorary Oscar:
Me: Is Nicole Kidman wearing tinsel?
Jon: She looks like robot!
(tiny old man takes the stage to give the longest and most rambling acceptance speech in history, which brough Harrison Ford to the brink of tears and made Laure Linney actually cry. Tommy Lee Jones, on the other hand, has a mean poker face) {lame point #4}

Best Foreign Film:
Dani: Kazakhstan made a film?

(the last song from Enchanted is performed – all watching agree it is very lame indeed)

Best Song:
(that song from Once is announced as the winner)
Dani: I called it! Hey, why'd she change out of her awesome dress?
Me: Look! Laura Linney’s crying again!
Dani: zzzzzzzzz (she passed out on the couch) {highlight #4}

(during the people who died montage, I shocked to find out that Deborah Kerr had passed on. I deeply mourned the loss of Bergman, and was once again made fun of for my movie-dorkness by Craig and Jon)

Best Actor
Me: How weird is it that the dude from Eastern Promises is Aragon?
Jon: He is?? I had no idea!
(Daniel Day-Lewis wins and gives a speech where he mentions his fantastically-named children: Gabriel, Ronan, and Cashel)
Jon: I predicted that after I saw the SAG awards.
Me: What?! When did you see the SAG awards? Since when do you watch awards shows in secret by yourself?

Best Director:
Me: Hee! Martin Scorcese and his caterpillar eyebrows…
(The Coen brothers win and awkwardly explain that they made a movie when they were twelvish entitled Henry Kissinger: Man On The Go.) {highlight #5}

Best Picture:
Craig: Oh, hey! A third rousing speech by the Coen brothers!

Jon: You know who was conspicuously absent? Lindsay Lohan, that’s who.

Fighting the Good Fight

So, as alluded to in my last post, I spent the weekend at another one of those three-day-long socialist meetings. These meetings are so odd - on the one hand, I really enjoy them because I no longer live near a proper branch and thus no longer get these kinds of awesome conversations and get all pumped and inspired to do stuff (instead, as you know, I watch a lot of of ANTM). On the other hand, as much as I like the people there, they do tend to be a bit pretentious and drop terms like 'historical materialism' and 'radicalized youth' like they were the names of celebrities and they were desperately trying to get in to a club on Saturday night.

Mostly though, it was just exhausting. I stayed focused by writing really detailed notes and by knitting these socks:

Check out the TV: It's SPRING BREAK and I'm rewatching as much of Lost as is humanly possible.

They don't really have a name yet, but they're gray, not fancy at all, and for my mechanic stepfather. Given the atmosphere, I was toying with calling them proletariat socks of something equally ridiculous.

If you've ever wondered what our kind does for fun, stay tuned - Dani and I blogged the Oscars and it will be posted this week.

Happy Birthday Jon!

Today you're entering your mid-twenties, which makes you a lame old person as much in body as you always have been in spirit. Since you're still in Minneapolis and I'm not, I'm banking on Dani throwing you an awesome birthday like we did for her back in january. Who knows, maybe you'll even get a fort!

In any case, I wanted to celebrate your birthday by sharing your slick dance moves with the world:

People deserve to know! Besides, this way there's something they can play for you on the TV in case, you know....you get hit by a drunk driver or something. Just saying.

PS - Call your mom, Greg, and Van. They've all called your cell phone.

One Step Foward, Two Steps Back

So, remeber the Eton Sweater? And how it looked like this?


I haven't mentioned it for awhile...because I hit a bit of a knitting pothole with it. I tried it on and it was just not going to work. I mean, I have narrow shoulders and all, but I apparently had made a miscalculation at some point that not even Marilyn Monroe's tiny shoulders could squeeze into. So I made it wade around in the frog pound for a minute.


Not quite back to square one, just back to square September. Which sucks. And I need to recalibrate. But before I do that, I thought I'd cheer myself up by showing you exactly how much work has already gone into this puppy. Behold the original schematic:


Ok. Granted, it's not that much to behold. But, it did beget the Chart of Charts:


I know it's split into two pictures, but it's really one gigantic chart. The bottom half is most of the repeating body section, and the top part is how it splits for the neckline. and before you think I just crazily overcharted the damn thing, look at the detail in the middle - it means that the two halves are mirrored and thus worked differently. So just the once chart wouldn't do.

Ok. I feel a little better now. I will finish this sweater, because I made that damned mega-chart by god! Now I just have to figure out what went wrong with those sleeves.

How do you like the new layout?

I thought it was time to update it, since....well, there's no real good reason except that I didn't want to do my homework and kind of felt like tinkering with HTML instead. It's weird, but sometimes I get minor cravings for it. In any case, I'm quite proud of the third column.

Surprise FO: Calorimetry

Along with being a surprise FO, it's also the inaugural FO of 2008! Just in time, too, because Michigan got cold. Not as cold as Minneapolis (where I'm headed later this week for socialist doings and much hanging out with a certain BFF), but certainly cold enough to warrant a headwrap-y thing. I'm not entirely sure what the proper name for this is.

Yarn - Lana Grossa Mega Stoppino (99 yards, 65% wool/35% acrylic) in color 218. This yarn is awesome! It was only, like, $8 and I still have half a skein or so left. Though, I'm not sure what to make with the rest of it. It's also got a higher acrylic content than I tend to knit with (I, like just about everyone, started with plastic-y Red Heart and then quickly became a yarn snob), but it's fluffy and soft and not weird feeling at all.

Needles - Clover 16" bamboo circulars. Worked just fine.

Pattern - Calorimetry from Knitty. I've been meaning to make this for awhile, especially since my hair is growing out and I have taken to wearing it in a big, messy half-bun thing that looks unsightly in hats (and often out of them, too). I changed the gauge informally (meaning no swatches) and guestimated how big to make it. I got it kind of right, but after wearing it a few times, it started to stretch and sag a little. To make it tighter, I put the button through another hole left by the short rows and just safety pinned the other flap into place. That's why it's off-center in that picture up there.

Blast from the past

First, sorry about the irregular posting. Prelims + classes + catching up from all the stuff I put off doing union work = complete overload. Bear with me for another month and I promise contact will be frequent and full of content (note: same goes for those of you guilt-tripping me about the lack of non-blogging contact...YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!). Ok, now that that's out of the way...

Man. I have been working on this thing forever. I started it waaay back in April. Can you believe it? A year for a scarf! I could've gestated and given birth to a fetus in that span of time! Of course, the really ridiculous thing is that I am still working on it.

But, I can't quit now - I'm too far in! I've got, easily, 75% of it done. All I need to do is make another foot and half or so of crazy checkerboarded material, then graft the other disintegrating check end onto it, and I'm done. And can wear it proudly, pretending that I started and ended it in the same calendar year.

I've actually been working on it a decent amount lately. It floundered in my tub o' WIP for a few months because I was fed up with the fiddliness of the double knitting and seeming lack of progress. Now it's my go-to knitting for things that do not require visual attention, like podcasting for Jarthen. So, the possibility of getting this thing finished before I get my degree is looking more and more realistic.

Somewhere....

....Tom Brady is crying like a little girl, and I'm ok with that. I'm alright with the suffering that Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are enduring right now because it is but the bitter fruit of the NY Giants' victory in tonight's Super Bowl.

Now, I don't approve of jumping on the bandwagon just because a team is doing well -- I never have. I will also admit, that I have not been the most pious of fans: I certainly haven't kept the sabbath holy, or borne witness to many of the faithfuls' recent trials, but I never, ever went so far as to root for false idols. I am penitent for my lack of observance, and I am proud to say that my faith has been renewed by the glorious spectacle of the New England Patriots getting spanked in possibly the finest Super Bowl ever played.

Truly, young Eli, you are the chosen one.

Year in Review: 2007

I feel like if I get it in before the end of January, it still counts.

Knitting wise, it was a great year, even if it did slow down a bit at the end. Of course there was standard cold weather gear:





The clear winner, in terms of number of completed objects alone (and, I might add, continuous wear) are the socks! I went totally sock-crazy last year - but if this is wrong, I don't know if I want to be right. Because then I'd have really cold feet. Instead, I have these (well, some of them):






This year I made tons of real clothes, too! Well, not tons, but there was a 600% increase in sweater production from last year. Warm outer garments abound!




So that was the year in knitting, finally. Exciting right? But not half so exciting as this weekend....when I tell you what I've got on the needles! Oh, the possibilities of another 11 months of knitted goodness.