Home is…wait where is home supposed to be again?

It’s been a while since I felt the kind of displacement that comes from spending a few weeks on someone else’s floor and hunting down guest Internet connections in a city that’s theoretically home. In what I’m finding is a fairly regular alignment of the stages of various things in different parts of my life, the BrewFest vacation, my computer projects, my knitting projects and my academic projects are all simultaneously in conjunction, contributing equally to this odd feeling of disjointedness. It’s both encouraging and a little unsettling, since displacement comes from change and change is usually a varying combination of fun and scary.

For a long time when I went back to Portland, I slept in the house that had been home since before I was a self-supporting life-form. The last several years, of course, the sleeping quarters were my own and when I flew somewhere, coming home really was exactly that. This trip came at the transition point, where the new city wasn’t quite home in the real sense of the word but the old city didn’t have quite the familiarity it once had. Even though the old haunts are still there and the things newly discovered just before our departure a year ago are still making their imprints on the psyches of the people who walk by everyday, the simple act of scanning for an open public wi-fi network brings with it a certain amount of other-worldliness.

As much as we all long for excitement and the thrill of the undiscovered, there is something to be said for predictability. I just never figured that Bloomington would be the latter and Portland the former…. My knitting group has a lot do to with that.

The knitting itself, however…. I’m working on a new sock design, which is unusual for me. I knit a lot of socks and I futz with sock designs all the time, but I rarely think about designing socks for publication, much less designing a cables-and-lace pattern from scratch. Still, a new heel turn method (yes, more teasers) deserves a completely new pattern. And this is what it looks like right now:

With help from my knitting group (Thanks, Huan-Hua and Nicole!), I have a substantial part of the charting done on an exciting and very knittable sock pattern. In a desperate effort to get the damn thing done quickly, I’ve set it up as my Ravelympics project.

Out of the desperate effort to get a sock pattern done also comes a desperate need to redesign my pattern stylesheet, and that’s where the current computer project comes in: a complete reinstall. Again.

Thanks to Adobe’s shoddy programming and inability to mandate the use of case-sensitive code, I’ve had to reinstall my OS for the second time in six weeks. Fool me once, etc., etc., etc.

In any case, the reinstall prompted a rethinking of my computer set up, and boy, has it changed. Unfamiliar computer surroundings apparently translate to real-world unease. Weird. Though I do have to admit, as I was transitioning my Time Machine backups from one hard drive to a bigger external hard drive, that I was perversely disappointed by the fact that my old backups were only 50K short of 2 million trashed files. Two million! (Ah ah aaah! Maybe I should change my nickname to The Count?)

Of course, before the knitting starts, and before the sock design really gets underway, we have the academic projects to tackle. I use the royal we because first-person discussion is much harder here. I have a total of four paragraphs in 8,000 words that are dragging down an otherwise fantastic project, and once I solve the problems in those four paragraphs, my life will take on a very different shape. These are the key paragraphs; they define the framework of a Big Project, set out the methodology for what I want to do for the next few years, and I can’t fix them because I can’t quite justify the building of mental research walls yet. I don’t want to have a focus because I like futzing with a wide variety of things, but I can’t move on to the next stage of Big Project until I focus on this one and just get it the hell done.

On the other hand, the socks are coming along nicely.

July 26, 2008 | Tags: , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Une bière avec les tricoteurs? Mais oui!

The Oregon Brewers Festival is usually unpredictable, owing to the flammable combination of copious amounts of beer, an even greater assortment of people and the heat of an Oregon summer afternoon.

This year, BrewFest exceeded even my expectations–which are admittedly high–thanks to the sprightly combination of knitters and the open vibes inspired by Portland’s friendly atmosphere. (Or the beer. I’m not sure which.)

As one should do when one’s entertainment is only made possible thanks to those in the service industry, one must also give credit where credit is due. OBF always has cheerful, knowledgeable staff working the pitchers, and this year was no exception. They even got a standing ovation from the crowd of beer connoisseurs!

In addition to ogling the sock-tastic projects conspicuously and proudly displayed by fellow Ravelers triners and lavandarknits, we also spotted the elusive Blogger (image rotated for her own protection) hard at work on her July Skif-A-Long project. A brave choice, I might add, given the fact that the many-stranded goodness required by a Skif project also means a penchant for tangling the likes of which one might only see when…. Well, when The Blogger tries to brush her hair in the morning….

Standouts included Dragon’s Milk (sweet, malty goodness), Coffee Bender (what coffee would taste like if it were alcoholic), the new heel-turn technique I worked on, a dark head-turner called Quilter’s Irish Death, and a lovely Foggy Goggle belgian that you either loved or hated. I even managed to document the heel-turn technique in one of the pages of the low-tech BrewFest blog we’ve taken to keeping as a group.

More on that later….

July 25, 2008 | Tags: , , | 1 Comment »

Drink more

The last 10 rows of Icarus are slow going, partly because of the repetitive stitch pattern, partly because of the length of the rows and partly because I keep working on it while I taste beer.

BrewFest has been amazing so far. If you’re going, Dragon’s Milk is a definite must-try as is the Scurvy Coffee Bender.

I have mitgated the drinking by using a new iPhone 2.0 app, FileMagnet, to read Icarus’ lovely charts. I may never get over the novelty of having a lace chart in full color displayed in my iPod Touch screen. Photos later.

July 22, 2008 | Tags: , , | 1 Comment »

Law and Order: Ninja Knitter Crime-Fighting Unit

I hadn’t realized until last night just how pervasive the knitter’s mindset is. In the interest of preventing any undue stress, the story you’re about to read does end well, with no bodily injury or serious mental damage inflicted on anyone. (Given the outcome, I might even suggest that we were more amused by our little adventure than frightened.)

My sister, The Blogger Formerly Known as T-Bone and I went to Conference Room C (also known as Rogue Ales Public House) for drinks last night, where we responsibly purchased mugs and tokens in advance for the Oregon Brewer’s Festival. Shortly after our purchase, we had a chance meeting with yet another Former Knitting Store Employee (bringing the total up to 4 former or current employees of said fantastic LYS), whereupon we decided to go get some food and catch up.

That’s when our evening took an odd, unexpected turn. One of Portland’s many denizens of the streets–most of whom are really quite harmless–snatched the bag containing said mugs out of The Blogger’s hands and threw it at her because she refused to give him a quarter. All hell broke loose, and in the ensuing 911 phone call, I was asked to describe the attacker.

“Well, he’s 5′11″ with bright blond short hair and darker mutton chops. Light tan baseball cap, khaki pants. Um…” (Brief pause while I collect my thoughts because Former Employee #4 has engaged physically with the attacker in order to keep him from hitting The Blogger. Or perhaps to keep The Blogger from hitting him, I’m not sure.) “Gray hoodie sweater, light blue bandana tied around his neck.” (Another brief pause while I wrack my brain for more distinguishing features.) “The hoodie has raglan sleeves!”

The hoodie had raglan sleeves.

One of my friends had just been attacked by a violent panhandler, another was holding said panhandler at arm’s length trying not to get punched in the face, my sister’s phone battery died in the middle of her 911 call, and as this was all going on, I was describing to a bemused 911 operator the sleeve styling of the attacker’s hoodie. Clearly, I cannot be trusted in difficult situations (though it should be noted that my sister’s 911 call did not actually include a description of the attacker, so perhaps we should both not be allowed in public).

All’s well that ends well, as the saying goes. Our OBF beer mugs caught the brunt of it (see photo below), and when we went back to Rogue to fall on the mercy of their OBF-mug-dispensing staff, The Blogger animatedly chatted to the staff about how she’d have kicked that guy’s ass if she’d gotten the chance. The bartender and our lovely waitress sprang into action and got us two replacement mugs lickety-split, and my sister and The Blogger will now have proof of the attack to take to court without having to drink their BrewFest tasters from the palms of their hands. (P.S. Thanks, awesome Rogue Public House staff!)

We also proselytized about OBF to the only non-Former-Knitting-Store-employee witness to the whole event, a really nice guy who moved to Portland a week ago and didn’t realize he was moving to beer nirvana.

The moral of the story is three-fold:

  1. Make sure The Blogger and Former Employee #4 are on your side in a fight.
  2. Ignore the kinds of knitting observations you’d normally make about a person when you’re on the phone with 911.
  3. Be responsible and follow through on your court date when the police ask you to press charges so they can keep Scary Attacking Guy and people like him from attacking other people too.

The poor police officer who took our statements wasn’t overly optimistic about the chances of keeping Scary Attacking Guy in jail for long, because many people who say they’ll show up in court just never do. When the people who have just been accosted feel sorry for the police officer who’s taking statements, that just means the system needs a little more support from its citizens.

July 17, 2008 | Tags: , | 5 Comments »

Did Icarus look at his feet when he was upside down?

Today has been a confusing day. To wit: I drove around the Indy 500 racetrack (in a bus), rode on 2 planes (for a total 7 hours), knit 8 rows on my nearly-done Icarus shawl (more than 2.5 hours of knitting, or over 20 minutes a row), took a fantastic photograph with 3 major Cascade mountains contained therein, sang the national anthem of Canada to Eddie Izzard (with my sister as my singing partner, despite the fact that we’re not Canadian), and then watched as an unsuspecting Eddie gracefully–if confusedly–agreed to allow a fellow crowd member to take photos of his feet for inclusion in a photo collage (which makes me wonder if Icarus looked at his feet and wished he’d just asked for Apollo’s winged* shoes instead of asking for something fancy like inclusion in a famous persons’** feet photo collage).

Eddie as we’d like to remember him (except for the red eye):

Eddie wondering why his feet are suddenly the center of attention:

Tomorrow night: the actual Eddie Izzard stand-up show. We crashed the Q&A tonight without having seen the show itself. Life is good.

*Winged is a two syllable word. Wing-Ed. Try it out. It sounds better that way. More learned. “Learned” being another two-syllable word.
**Mr. Izzard’s response was that he was “only a minor celebrity.” In the words of another minor celebrity (with bunny rabbit ears), Cher Horowitz, “As if!”

Photos courtesy of my sister.

July 15, 2008 | Tags: , | 2 Comments »

How not to steek….

Steeking requires a very specific set of tools. Usually, that tool set requires scissors, a crochet hook, a ruler or a gauge tool, swatches, a tapestry needle here or there, and maybe a spare DPN in case of serious emergency…. The tool set that is on my floor tonight is altogether different, because the steeking is of an entirely different nature.

Truly, this is a lesson in how not to write, rather than in how not to steek.

Organizationally, one of the sections in my current research is a complete, utter, bloody mess. And by “bloody,” I don’t mean the British swear word; I mean really, actually bloody from the gallon of red ink that I’ve spilled on it. This organizational mess is not unusual. That’s just how I write. I word-vomit on my computer whenever I have an idea and then use my favorite writing tool to tag each paragraph with an outline sentence so I can reorganize from there.

The thing is, though, that I spent too much time inside each paragraph this time around, so the topic sentences didn’t fully reflect the extent of repetition in the body of the paper. Thus, a new kind of application for the scariest technique in a knitter’s repertoire: the research steek. I have reverted to kindergarten methods. My tool set tonight includes a stapler, scotch tape, my fountain pen, and a whole lot of paper.

Note that a glass of wine is still a requirement for cutting into one’s own creations, knitted or otherwise, to fend off the thought that it might not all hold together when it’s been cut apart like this. The only other tool to make the crossover from knitted-steek toolset to research-steek toolset: my fabric scissors. And let me tell you, I’d rather use those scissors to steek a cardigan made of pure silk rather than use them on my research again….

July 9, 2008 | Tags: | 1 Comment »

Stash math and other scary things

I accidentally clicked on the Excel link on Ravelry’s stash page today, and out of a desperate need to avoid the analysis of yet another Latin proximity search, I went with it.

33,000. Yards. In. My. Stash.

That is a scary number. How long does it take to knit that much? I also can’t decide if it’s good or bad that about 29K of that yardage is lace or fingering weight yarn.

My coping mechanism* has been to push myself to reach the end of a large seemingly-neverending project in hopes that the cessation of said project will alleviate my stash-induced panic.

Looky! I’m well into (by which I really mean, “I’m halfway done with row 1 of”) the very last chart of Icarus. Of course, I’ve been spending so much time immersed in the world of written-record-as-prescriptive-text that I’m beginning to question my motives for starting Icarus in the first place. When all you can think about is whether records of the past (mythological or otherwise) were written in order to influence the future, is it really wise to knit a shawl designed in honor of some dumb kid who thought wax was an effective fixative for the only thing standing between him and a badly planned base-jumping experiment? That thought, too, is scary….

But not scary enough to stop me from wearing it as soon as it’s done, and if the echoes of a potential disaster of mythological proportions aren’t enough to scare me, neither are the scalding summer forecasts appearing on the horizon.

___
* OK, my knitting-based coping mechanism, ’cause one look at the sum cell in that Excel doc drove me to write obsessively for several hours in an effort not to think about the sheer yardage of yarn in the next room…. Procrastination is a curious phenomenon.

July 7, 2008 | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment »

Melting pot or just melting plastic?

The Fourth of July is an odd holiday. You eat and drink goodies generally invented and perfected in other countries–the hamburger providing the lone exception to a list which included guacamole, salsa, tortilla chips, bratwurst, sauerkraut, tabouleh, rice, beer, sangria, rum, vodka, chocolate and cake–while peacefully celebrating the birth of your country by blowing up gunpowder in creative formations.

Still, that’s not the full extent of the oddity in a day that might have finally and forever rendered “odd” and “fun” synonymous in my worldview. Photographic proof, as follows:

You are looking at a German child’s toy (probably manufactured in Japan) that was delivered via Swiss-chocolate egg, and placed by a Lebanese-Mexican man who had just returned from Brazil and South Africa onto the overcooked surface of a Johnsonville Bratwurst roasting on a US-manufactured grill. This melting-pot toy–and several other plastic toys that were eventually subjected to melting experiments on the aforementioned grill–merely prefigured other equally odd events, which included the playing of Michael Jackson’s Bad in LP format and suicide drills up and down a very wet, slippery hill placed in an almost-but-not-quite-ideal location for firework watching.

I suppose if I hadn’t woken up to the following flag-flying, court-house-shining-in-the-sun view, the rest of the day wouldn’t have seemed so striking by comparison:

Life wouldn’t be any fun if it were predictable, no?

Today, the beginning of the editing process and, with a bit of luck (and a lot of solid writing), the end of the Icarus shawl.

July 5, 2008 | 1 Comment »

“His roar is long and loud….”

By which the movie producers mean, “He died a badly planned death in an inevitable battle and his warriors were equally grateful that he sent them into a hopeless fight to die similarly gruesome deaths.” Aren’t those warriors swell?

So I’ve just finished watching 300. I knew it was likely to be thin on plot, but I was still interested because the special effects and the cartoon-style visuals looked more than promising. Until Gerard Butler’s King Leonidas uttered, with his dying breath, a phrase no Spartan would ever say out loud: “My queen! My wife! My love!” Because Spartans had only a few great loves, and women were certainly not among them.

Yeah, that’s right. In a movie full of obvious racism, insulting jingoism and an over-abundance of leather tighty-whiteys, I was offended by blatantly historically inaccurate depictions of gender relations.

In the immortal words of Larry Gonnick, Jr., author of Cartoon History of the Universe, the Spartans had very specific predilections: “Our only pleasures are a job well done, a glorious death, and humping little boys!” The Spartans at Thermopylae would certainly not have taken up their swords in defense of freedom (of their own slaves), liberty (from their own considerable property rights) and their loving wives (who weren’t considered people at the time).

Good thing I’d gotten to the more complicated part of the Icarus Shawl, ’cause if I had been knitting something simple, the universe would have imploded from the sheer mind-numbingness of an ill-conceived movie coupled with a mindless stitch pattern.

Unfortunately, my installation of Photoshop Elements 4 (legal and licensed, thank you very much) just imploded when I tried to test out a new feature in Photoshop Elements 6 and ultimately decided not to partiipate in the final upgrade. WTF? I have no image editor and can therefore not post updated WIP images of Icarus in all his glory, not to mention images of my beautiful, tasty and newly bottled lime-cello and grapefruit-cello. Soon, my pretties. Soon.

July 3, 2008 | 2 Comments »