Ply and Burl

Just like that, the blog is awake again. I tried to move servers and upgrade versions last spring and found I couldn’t import my posts. Sadness reigned, and my efforts thwarted, I tabled it. Then, yesterday morning, I had an epiphany, untangled the threads, and got the blog back up again!

This morning was my weekly Ashtanga yoga class. It was  a strenuous and expanding class, and I felt renewed and light and I eased into a deep relaxation during Sivasana. Just when I had melted away into a near doze, a cell phone rang out a ridiculous digital tune, and Just like that, I was awake again.  But beautifully, what crossed my face not a frown, but a big grin and a cascade of laughter. Most of the rest of the class did the same. It was the perfect ending to a perfect class… I hope it’s easy to understand why. Yoga is a brief respite from the chaos, and a chance to cultivate the focus, patience, and disengagement to deal with the world the rest of the time. The phone was that world creeping in, the unwelcome guest welcome again.

Remember this hat from ages ago?

Well, here’s the pattern, finally!

Yarn: One skein Noro Kureyon, pick your colorway
Needles: US 7 DPs or Circular (I love knitting on two circulars, more on that later.)
Gauge: 16 to 17 sts per 4″
Size: Men’s hat, made for 22 to 23″ head circumference.

Notes:

This hat is meant to fit snugly on a man’s head, so it actually fits quite comfortably on a woman’s head too. If you wanted to adapt it for a gal, I’d suggest nixing an inch from the circumference for a tighter hat, or just keeping it the same for a fitting but not-too-snug hat, and reducing the stockinette section by 1 to 1.5″. (I did that on my first try, and the hat fit me well, but I had to rip out because it was for the boy!)

Pattern:

Cast on 88 sts.

Work, in the round, 2×2 ribbing for about 1″.

Work in stockinette for 4.5″. In last row, place marker every 11 sts.

Switch to the following pattern until 5 sts remain between markers:
Rnd 1: k2tog before each marker (reducing 11 sts in total)
Rnd 2: Knit.

When five sts remain between markers, k2tog before each marker on every row until 1 st remains between markers.

Remove markers, thread yarn through remaining sts, cinch up, tie or graft off and voila!

As I send this out into cyberspace, I expect to hear a resounding echo of my own voice, signaling that there is no one left reading my poor, abandoned blog. Sorry, digital friends, for having been gone so long. Who knew grad school would crumple up my life like a ball of tin foil, stomp it into a pancake and then swallow it whole in one big bite?

As you can tell, I’m still learning the grad school time management thing. Until I do, I can only steal a few minutes here and there to myself. Which has meant not much knitting. Also, dangit, I’ve lost the cord to download photos from my camera, so the few pictures I do have are locked in. As for gardening, moving to a new town and renting a house with virtually no yard has meant only a few neglected potted veggies on the front stoop.

From the above perspective, it’s looks a sad state. But I swear, there are fun parts! I’m designing a technical system that tries to help the homeless! I’m doing systems consulting for a creative group at GM! I’m learning to scrape data from the web and elicit interesting things from it using Perl! Yay!

I’m also not sleeping much and reading hundreds of pages of papers a week. The thorn on the rose, I suppose.

One good thing — since the last time I wrote, in the thick of my lazy summer, I’ve lost 25 pounds. So I’m no longer shy about posting pictures of myself in the Sunrise Circle Jacket! It turned out quite beautifully, though I had to felt it a little in the dryer to get it to fit better. Sadly, however, the Airy Cardigan turned out to be a boxy, floppy thing, that was bad even before I shrunk out of it.

Also, in the next post (which I’m going to write RIGHT NOW!) — the pattern for Joel’s Kuryeon hat, which has been waiting in the wings for months.

I’ve missed you all, my blogger friends, so if you get this, my golden record, do send me a sign!

Hey knitting blog-o-verse, you may be the only one that can share my unbridled, adrenalin soaked excitement. I just NABBED a skein of sock yarn on YARNTINI! Anyone who’s tried this before knows it’s an incredible feat. I got one of the last two skeins posted on the site, and I bought it only 23 minutes after the owner mentioned on her blog that she was adding products to the store.

It was Sandra and Domesticat’s incredible socks that gave me the Yarntini bug, and I’ve been trying to get a skein for months, always missing the tiny windows of opportunity when she updates the site. It’s so discouraging to scroll down her pages and see giant red “OUT OF STOCK”s after every item.

But no more! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaa! Cosmopolitan flavored sock yarny goodness is coming my way.

As you may recall from the post that made me famous (ha), I have a thing for data. Not Data, although his pale visage and robotic affect always gave me a tingle, but data, that deep well of information that if coaxed and cajoled (with scruples and skepticism) can produce exciting insights into almost any question.

This data-love would explain the lost half hour I spent playing with Google Trends this morning, a tool from Google Labs that allows you to compare the frequency of different search terms over the course of several years and in various geographic regions. Considering my recent dilemma, can you image what I searched?

You guessed it! It was a Data Showdown: Knit vs. Crochet.

I expected knit to roundly trounce crochet — my intuition about web trends just said it would be so. But behold:

Crochet pretty much won that round. Who’d have guessed, perhaps my dirty little secret is not dirty at all!

Now, here’s where the skepticism comes in, and where the beauty of thinking subtly shows itself (I do know that this is a weak example of subtle thinking, but consider it an homage to greater minds). Change the word “Knit” to “Knitting” and BAM! Sudden data morph! Behold, Knitting vs. Crochet.

Knitting wins that round! Maybe I need to put my crochet secret back in my pocket?

In the end, crochet wins one round and knitting the other. Though Bangladeshis have absolutely no interest in crochet, and South Africans are mad for it, most countries come out somewhere close to 50/50. Does this mean there’s really no show-down in the end? I can have them both? Needles and Hooks united? The gang wars are over! They must be — the data says so. (He he. Go ahead, smack me for saying that. I was asking for it).

Somebody please help. First it’s the crochet and now it’s curtains. I’ve started envisioning this lovely (see?) “Dappled Lace Cafe Curtain” from Knit Picks on every window in my house. I’m undergoing an alien metamorphosis into somebody’s daffy great aunt! The only hope I can find is at least I’m not yet longing for the fuzzy edge or silk flowers to go with it.

Finally, the in-betweens are over! We left Ithaca a last Tuesday and have been in Ann Arbor for one week as of today. Recycling night was Sunday, so were finally able to clear the boxes and newspapers out of the living room. I took a load to Salvation Army yesterday, and have been posting the things on Craigslist that I should have sold before the move rather than after. The house is slowly getting organized and is starting to feel like home.

Our new place is essentially a cottage in the city, and is just a hair less funky than I can take, which is perfect. It’s at the back of another lot, meaning our front door opens onto one street, and our back door opens onto the driveway of a house on another. We have a perimeter of about three feet of yard on two sides of the house, one of which is shady, and one of which is overgrown with burdock. Where our front yard would be, there is poured cement.

As you can imagine, this is putting an interesting twist on my gardening. I’ve arrived in A2 too late to start a veggie plot at a community garden site. However, in anticipation of needing to scratch my gardening itch, I planted some basil, peppers, and geraniums in pots early in the summer, which I then transported out here during the move. Since arriving, we’ve picked up a few herbs and put those in pots, and I’ve also planted some Scarlet Runner Beans in hopes that they’ll bolt up and obscure the not-so-classy posts for the porch that overhangs our front door. It’s no gardener’s paradise, but it’s something!

Knitting has been, well, neglected. There, I admit it. That’s part of the reason I haven’t blogged in so long! I had no time for it, with the work and the travel and the move and all the heart-wrenching goodbye dates before we left. I was working through the spring on the Airy Cardigan, and made a lot of progress. All that remains to finish it is a single sleeve, but I’m finding the kid mohair so irritating to knit that I can barely look at the thing. Not to mention that it fits like a mumu… not my sartorial favorite.

Weirdly, a few days ago, as I was unpacking, I picked up a crochet hook. I ran across my copy of Stitch and Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker, which a friend gave me for my birthday last year. Now, let me not mince words: I hate crocheting! I hate how it looks, I am a klutz with the hook, and it just generally bugs me.

But guess what? I’m actually enjoying it! Gah — Internet, don’t repeat that to anyone. I can’t believe I actually let it out of my mouth. But there it is, the truth laid bare, probably destined to alienate all my knitter friends. Oh well, try to still love me, OK? I can’t help that I’m open-minded, and crocheting just walked right in the door.

My house right now is littered with little purple crochet bits — my practice swatches. I’ve learned single crochet, double crochet, triple crochet, the shell stitch, and the fishnet stitch. My mind is full of the tackiest ideas, too: I’ll crochet plant hangers for the house! I’ll make a purse out of the shell stitch! I’ll crochet the cowboy hat pattern from the book!

Look, knitters, I know this is a dangerous path I’m going down. But hear me out, ’cause I’m one of you: a knitter through and through. At the same time, I’m thinking that there are several instances of crochet that aren’t tacky! Think beautiful crocheted lace our foremothers made from fine thread. Or the afghans that keep us warm in the winter! My grandmother and her mother both crocheted afghans for all their kids and grandkids. Mine, which I got to pick out the yarn for, is one of my most treasured possessions. My grandma passed away 11 years ago, and I still love and guard that blanket like a mama bear guards her cubs. It’s got my gram’s touch in every stitch, and her hands, which look like my hands, held every thread in it. It revives her in my mind, and brings her closer to me. (That could make a good advertisement no? “Crochet: It brings people back from the dead!”)

So this crochet phase? I think it’s kind of sweet, don’t you? I know it’s illogical, sentimental, and entirely misguided, but still, don’t deny it: crochet just melted a little bit of your sappy heart.

p.s. As a cure for my homesickness (and wet feet in the rain) I bought these new stylin’ shoes!

p.p.s. Also, even better news: the boy and I got engaged on July 2!

Yay! I finally got my invitation to Ravelry! If only I wasn’t in a knitting slump due to the heat — I’d have more than just frogging to report. Alas.

Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, the guys behind Freakonomics, wrote a column in last week’s New York Times Magazine about the modern practice of doing “menial labor” as leisure activity. Gardening, knitting, and cooking were at the top of their list of examples. Clearly, by the subject of this blog, I’m one of these fun-laboring people they’re talking about. They say that middle-class people engaging in these activities is a paradox: the cost of growing your own food or knitting yourself a scarf, when you include the labor as well as the supplies, often far exceeds the cost of simply buying the the same items in a store.

One example they give is the $140 dollar scarf — that’s $40 in supplies, plus 10 hours of knitting at $10 per hour. True, that’s a pricey scarf. Nevertheless, I think their math, as calculated, is meaningless. Nay, I’ll add to that: it’s dehumanizing. By this equation only, the logic would say, why knit or garden, when you could work more hours in front of the computer/at the counter/in the factory and just buy the items instead?

The answer seems so obvious, doesn’t it?

The authors discuss the economic reasoning at length, but only briefly touch on the psychological, ecological, and sociological reasons behind the phenomenon. Now, I don’t claim to have expertise in any of the above areas, but I do have a gestalt opinion:

Freakonomics guys, we knit and garden and cook for ourselves because we’d be drones if we didn’t. Our lives would be devoid of self-sufficiency, devoid of the gratification of caring, feeding and clothing ourselves and our loved ones. We express creativity when we do these tasks in a way that would not be accessible to us if creativity was only limited to fine art and music. We share an irrepressible desire to engage the world in a physical way, to alter the landscape and surroundings we occupy, and these tasks provide us that outlet. When we do them together, or for each other, we are able to connect and build communities to boot. Money aside, statistics aside, “pure leisure” vs. “home production” aside, these tasks have value in much deeper and wider ways than traditional economics would allow to enter the calculation. To me, the explanation just seems a matter of common sense. We all do it, so why is it remarkable at all?

The past month has been the harbinger of a boat-load of inner turmoil and endless off-hours slogging as a result. The big change (gulp)? Ply and Burl is moving to Ann Arbor, MI! Me, the boy, the kitties, the G5, my wheelbarrow and my yarn.

The emotional end of move is proving more grueling than anticipated. Twelve years in a place can make some roots run very deep.

But still, I’m determined. It’s now or never for grad school, and I’m excited to become a bigger part of the digital revolution. So instead of trying to tackle all of the deep sadness, I’m going for the superficial stuff that’s been nagging at me.

Calling anyone who’s every been to / lived in / or left Ann Arbor, MI, I’ve got questions!

1. Where is the absolute best place to get an incredible haircut in Ann Arbor, and who should I get it from?
I’m the biggest whiner when it comes to my hair. I want it great, and I’ll pay a lot for it. Speaking of, I chopped off nine inches last week. Wahoo!

2. Where can I buy Noro yarn in lots of shapes and sizes in Ann Arbor?
I’ve got that Clapotis itch to scratch, and Lion Brand just ain’t gonna cut it.

3. Where can I do some ass-kicking yoga in a mostly non-competitive atmosphere in Ann Arbor?
I want to sweat buckets without feeling judged by my mat-mates.

4. Where can I find a lap pool that is not full of boogers and bandaids in Ann Arbor?
One thing I won’t be missing is the cesspool at the local Y.

Thanks in advance for the answers — more questions coming soon, along with a knitting update, including the long overdue shot of my finished sunrise circle jacket!