When I started working on this project. I swatched with the Naturally Yarn 10-ply (worsted weight). I decided it was too light for the afghan I was planning (I wanted something substantial), so I switched to the 14-ply version. However, I forgot to change the needle size and gauge in the pattern. If you manage to get gauge on the needles specified with the 14-ply yarn, I salute you!
- If you want to make the afghan using the 10-ply yarn, use the needle size specified in the pattern (US #8, 5 mm) and match the gauge given (20 sts and 24 rows per 4"/10 cm). Your afghan will come out a bit lighter and narrower than the heavier version.
- If you want to use the 14-ply yarn (that's what I am using), the needle size should be US #9 (5.5 mm) and the gauge should be 16 sts and 20 rows per 4" (10 cm).
My apologies for the confusion. I do like the yarn, in both weights, but I want a thick, cushy afghan; hence, the 14-ply.
A whole day here at home is so rare, and lately, days like that have been devoted to Cables 2. I felt like I needed to spend some time with yarn, though, so I set aside the book and spent all of yesterday swatching for some new designs. I've had this nagging worry that if I didn't flex the designing side of my brain a bit, it might atrophy. I am happy to report that I was able to knock out swatches for a couple of new designs, and I sketched out ideas for a few more. I am really excited about one of the designs—it's going to be in the Summer issue of the newsletter.
I also cleaned up my knitting area, putting away leftover skeins from recent projects. And late in the afternoon I had a lovely phone conversation with a designer friend of mine. All in all, it was a very productive day.
Now, to some comments:
Fran and Joanne, I am a big fan of peace and quiet. Big fan.
Dawn, I also wondered why having a drain sticking out of his head wasn't stressful, but having my mother here was. Who knows? I think he actually likes going to the vet, so maybe that isn't stressful at all.
DebbieT, I hope all turned out well with your medical tests. Believe me, I know how stressful THEY can be!
Raye, I love that wimple. I am not a hat person, but I need something to keep my head warm when I am running the snowblower. Sometimes I wrap a scarf around my head but I like the wimple better.
Today I am off to town for a much-needed haircut (now that I stopped dyeing my hair, I don't remember to go as often) and a quick visit to my naturopath. I need to ask him why I've developed a mild form of cystic acne all of a sudden. I've had three cyst-like pimples on my face over the past three weeks. They go away after a week or so, but they are deep in the skin and they hurt. Something must be happening with my hormones again. Oh joy.
Oh, and a quick question for those of you using Internet Explorer: can someone tell me if the navigation box at the left appears where it's supposed to, or if it's pushed down the page? When I set up my new site in DW, I tested it in Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, and Safari and it appeared correct in all of them. I validated the code, too, and it didn't have any errors. However, I was on a PC at school on Monday using Explorer, and the box wasn't appearing where it should (yes, I am on a Mac, always). Thanks!
|
November 25, 2007: My High-Maintenance Dog
You all know Chester, my Chesapeake Bay Retriever, don't you?
Chester is a doofus, but we love him anyway. About six months ago he was diagnosed with Addison's disease, which is normally a disease of standard poodles. It means his adrenal glands don't kick out a sufficient amount of cortisol. There is no cure, just management in the form of daily doses of prednisone and a mineral corticoid that we have to have specially formulated for him.
Every so often Chester gets a little stressed out (I know, how could a dog with this cushy a life have any stress?—it's beyond me) . . . anyway, every couple of months he "crashes" and it's usually without warning and on a day when
the vet is enjoying some well-deserved time off. We went to town yesterday morning and when we got home a few hours later, he was lying on his dog bed looking totally out of it. That's my cue to get his meds into him, after which he always perks right up. I called the vet and he said to give him a whole 20 mgs of prednisone instead of the 5 mg he usually gets, and more if he looked like he needed it.
We usually hide his pills in some food, but he would not eat anything—no peanut butter sandwich, no cheese, not even pumpkin pie (this dog is the reason we have to keep our jack o' lanterns in the house—otherwise he eats them whole).
The husband pried his mouth open and we got one of the pills into him, but then he turned around and snapped at the husband and spit out the prednisone. The husband and I put on some gloves and tried again, and got the prednisone down. Chester is usually pretty mild-mannered for a Chessie, except when he's not feeling good. I sat with him for a few minutes but he kept doing this low growling thing so I finally left him alone.
The five of us went off to enjoy my birthday dinner (thank you all for the good wishes!) which was fabulous—I had french onion soup followed by Alaskan king crab legs (superb), topped off with a wonderful chocolate souffle.
Chester still hadn't perked up when we got home. The husband and I got another prednisone into him. I tried to go up and go to bed but unfortunately, the after-dinner decaf coffee I had asked for at the restaurant was NOT decaf and I was all revved up until way past my bedtime. I couldn't sleep, so I checked on Chester. The second prednisone did the trick and by 10 p.m. he was up and walking around. This morning he looks almost back to normal, but we'll give him another prednisone just to make sure.
So this has been a learning experience, trying to figure out where Chester's stress threshold is.
Apparently having someone else in the house (my mother is here) throws him for a loop. We need to remember this at Christmas when my in-laws and my sister-in-law are here (and she's bringing her little chihauha with her). The vet said we can "stress dose" him with a little extra prednisone every day to keep him from crashing.
My mother goes home today. It's been a fun week.
She bought us an early Christmas present—a new dishwasher—so the husband installed that yesterday. Tomorrow it's back to the regular schedule. I did get some knitting done this week: a hat for our neighbor down the road who has leukemia and half a scarf for a friend of mine for Chiristmas (that's a funny story—I'll tell you that one tomorrow). And yesterday I watched some Doctor Who. It's all good.
|
November 24, 2007: Happy Birthday to Me
Today is my 42nd birthday. This is always a bittersweet time of the year for me. I have always loved the fact that my birthday fell near Thanksgiving, and my mother's father's birthday was the day after mine so we often celebrated them together. During the week of Thanksgiving in 1991, though, I got two very devestating pieces of news: my father had (terminal) cancer and the baby I was carrying (four months pregnant) was anencephalic—the baby didn't have a brain and wouldn't survive. Needless to say, the husband and I hunkered down that Thanksgiving and stayed home because there didn't seem a whole lot for which to be thankful.
The week of Thanksgiving in 1994, I had just gotten back to Montana after being in Cleveland for six months undergoing chemo. While I was thankful still to be alive, it was a tentative, fear-tinged thankfulness.
So while I am celebrating all the things I have to be thankful for (and they are too numerous to count), I can't help but remember those Thanksgivings when the gratitude was a bit harder to come by.
I long ago decided to embrace getting older, because there was a time I wasn't sure I'd live to see my 30th birthday, let alone my 42nd. This year I decided to stop dyeing my hair. I actually like seeing the silver strands in among the black ones, and I wish there were more! Yesterday we did a little shopping and my birthday present to myself was Season Two of the new Doctor Who series (I asked for Season One for a Christmas present). Tonight we will all go out to dinner at a fabulous restaurant and I will stuff myself with chocolate souffle.
There may be some knitting in there, too, if I can manage it.
Happy birthday to me. :-)
|
November 22, 2007
May you have many blessings—large and small—to be thankful for this year. I am thankful for all of you, my blog readers and friends.
|
November 20, 2007: Getting Ready for Thursday
My mother is here. We spent all day in town yesterday running errands: the bank, the post office, picking up newsletters and mailing labels, the grocery store, buying eight tubes of sand as ballast for the bed of my truck (that was new to my mother), Costco—and we took some time to eat lunch at this great restaurant in town that we both love. I had a shrimp quesadilla with black beans, rice, tomatoes, and a spicy sour cream topping. It was so good. I wish that restaurant would publish a cookbook. I've alrready tried recreating one of their other recipes (a tortilla stuffed with a curried coconut rice and bean mixture) but my version just isn't the same.
I also stopped at a local yarn store and picked up some Berroco Comfort to make a hat for our neighbor down the road. Last year he donated a kidney for his middle child (their kids go to school with my kids), and a few weeks ago
he was diagnosed with the same kind of leukemia that I had. (It really makes you wonder why the universe decides to pick on some people and not others.) He's here for a few weeks before he has to go to Salt Lake City for more chemo and a bone marrow transplant.
I talked to his wife yesterday. She said he's lost all his hair and he's cold all the time. I can relate.
We headed home mid-afternoon with a truck full of groceries, unloaded, then turned around and headed back into town with the girls to meet the husband for dinner before the National Honor Society induction ceremony.
It was a nice event.
Today I will stuff envelopes with newsletters and get them ready to mail. If I have any time, I plan to get back to working on Cables 2. I have another half a dozen swatches scanned in that need to be placed into the layout.
|
November 17, 2007: Unintended Consequences
I realize that the process of migrating my website to DW and creating a new RSS feed means that some people (those who use aggregators like Bloglines) are wondering where the heck my blog went. I'm sorry about that! The new RSS software I am using to provide a whole feed instead of just the citation made me change the name of the feed. If it's any consolation, I can't get the new feed to show up in Bloglines so I can subscribe to it; I am hoping that it's just a matter of waiting for the new feed to propogate.
I'll work on that some more today, but this morning I am off to judge at our high school's speech and debate competition. This is the third year that I have done this. We have an awesome speech and debate team, and judging at this meet is a coveted job.
I always feel so much better about the future of our country when I'm done judging; there are some pretty smart kids out there.
Last night the 5-8th graders had "game night" at DD#2's school.
She told me last week that the 5th grade put the names of all the parents on the board and I got the most votes so I was elected to chaperone (I had no idea I was even running!). The kids told me I could bring my knitting (they know me so well), so I did. It was a lot of fun. Our school has an awesome 8th grade teacher who knows how to keep kids moving and interested. The kids alternated between board games in the cafeteria and ping-pong and musical chairs in the gym. I played some ping-pong and then got a couple more swatches knocked out for Cables 2.
My mother arrives tomorrow for the week. She'll get to see DD#1's induction into the National Honor Society—the ceremony was supposed to be last Monday night but the school had an electrical problem so they rescheduled it for this Monday night. For my birthday (which is next Saturday), we'll go out to eat at this lovely little French restaurant in nearby Bigfork.
They have the most excellent food and we always end the meal with chocolate soufffle. Yum.
Tonight is Dr. Who night again. I am thinking I need to ask for that series on DVD for Christmas. Then I can watch it whenever I want to, and not torture the poor husband.
|
November 16, 2007: Re-tooling
It took most of this week, but I got the website migrated over to Dreamweaver. I know, I lied—I said it would have to wait until 2008 but I started working on it Monday morning just out of curiosity and it snowballed. I have to say that I like DW much better than GoLive, which isn't hard to imagine—I *never* liked GL. I am used to using InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop, which I find very intuitive. GL wasn't like any of them and it frustrated me to no end. It was easy to set up a template in DW and move over the code and images that I needed.
I've checked all the links and they all work, as far as I know. I did move a few things around; you can get anywhere in the website from the navigation bar at left. I'd like to do some tweaking, but
my mother is coming to visit on Sunday for a week and I really need to get some more work done on Cables 2.
But if there is something I missed that you'd really like to see, let me know.
I am not putting up the blog archives—no time to do that right now. I may eventually get the archive up for 2007. I am hoping to provide a full RSS feed, not just a citation. Stay tuned.
|
November 11, 2007: Administrative Nuts and Bolts
One of the things I need to get organized between now and when the newsletter goes digital are the two different subscriber lists—one for those who want hard copy and one for those who want digital. In order to speed that process up, I created a form for subscribers to fill out so that I have updated contact information. E-mail addresses are critical if you want to receive the digital version. There you can indicate your preference and give me current contact info. Please don't fill it out if you're NOT a subscriber, though—that will just muddy the waters for me.
So I spent a couple of hours yesterday morning teaching myself how to create a form page (thank goodness for my Adobe GoLive Classroom in a Book) and finding a way to collect the information (a free Perl script). It seems to be working nicely, though.
Left on the to-do list: installing a software module in my store to make digital downloading easy and painless (hopefully for all of us), and re-coding the subscription page to make digital subscriptions an option. I think migrating to Dreamweaver is going to have to wait until 2008.
Last night I was deep into the new episode of Torchwood when the power went out. Darn. We had a fire in the fireplace so I had some light, but the husband was in his office in the basement and the girls were upstairs. They found the flashlight I keep up there and we all gathered in the living room for a while. Eventually there was nothing else to do but go to bed so we did. I was awakened several times during the night by the temporary flash of the numbers on my clock radio; it took the power company a good half a dozen attempts to get the power back on, which they finally did about 3 a.m. A front came through early last evening and it was very windy. I suspect a power line got taken down somewhere.
It's probably a good thing that the power goes out periodically; it reminds me how fortunate we are to have it in the first place. It is very dark outside when the power is out. And the stars are amazingly bright.
Saturday night is my night to have the TV to myself: Dr. Who is on for two hours, followed by two hours of Torchwood. I used to watch the old (well, one of the old) versions of Dr. Who on PBS when I was in high schoolÑit was the series with the scarf-wearing Tom Baker, and he was always battling the Daleks. I remember having a "Dr. Who and the Daleks" computer game for my Mac SE when I was in college. Ah, the good old days.
I do like the new series, tooÑthe new Doctor is quite cute and not at all hard on the eyes. I'm not so fond of his girlfriend, though.
November 9, 2007: Going Digital
I've been mulling over this for some time, and now I am going to make the leap. I plan to transition Twists and Turns from hard copy format to digital download. Fear not! The newsletter will still be available as a hard copy for those who want that, for at least one more year. We'll see what happens after that.
- The advantages to offering it as a digital download are many:
I can make it as big as I want (within reason). I've left stuff out of some issues that I would have liked to include, simply because of space constraints. Yes, I could make the newsletter 24 pages, but when I do that, the printing and mailing costs jump exponentially. The USPS does not like large envelopes and last year decided to penalize those of us who use them by charging us way more than they used to.
- I can include more color photos. Color printing is prohibitively expensive in hard copy, but not in digital form.
- When I sell out of hard copies of back issues, I can offer them as downloads and this save a LOT of storage space in my office. Right now I have 28 back issues that I need to keep on hand.
The disadvantages? I know I have some subscribers who may not have ready access to computers and printers. That's why I am still making the hard copy option available. I plan to set it up, though, so that the hard copy remains at 20 pages, but digital subscribers will get a "bonus" pattern in every issue.
It requires some work on my end to get my online store set up for digital downloads.
I may have to deal with the possibility of file sharing and piracy (but I sure hope not!).
A letter explaining all of this will be included with the next newsletter mailing (in another week or so). In the meantime, feel free to spread the word and weigh in with your preferences. You can either leave a comment or send me an e-mail at Janet AT BigSkyKnitting DOT com.
November 7, 2007: Designing Original Cables
I made another decision about the content of Cables 2 yesterday. Rather than use existing cable patterns to illustrate the techniques I'm including, I plan to design completely new cable stitch patterns. The reason for this is twofold: 1) It helps to reinforce the idea that anyone can design cable patterns and 2) it helps to avoid any possible copyright or trademark infringement on my part. The cable stitch patterns in Cables 1 were basic and could be found in many stitch dictionaries. Some of the ones I wanted to use as examples in Cables 2 are unique and found in only one source.
This is such a gray area and I wish it weren't. I operate best with clearly-defined boundaries. I've seen information which suggests that stitch patterns are like recipes and cannot be considered proprietaryÑimplying that they can be used by anyoneÑand I've seen information which indicates exactly the opposite. I am sure that only a court can decide which position is correct, and I have no desire to be the test case for stitch pattern infringement. I may run it past my IP lawyer and see what he says, but I think I'm going to stick with the plan of making up original patterns.
It means that a good dozen of the swatches and accompanying charts/instructions need to be redoneÑmostly the ones in the first chapter. I think it will be a great challenge, though, and an opportunity to contribute some stitch patterns to the knitting world (I have no desire for my original stitch patterns to be considered mine and mine alone).
November 5, 2007: It Always Comes Down to Money
Remember my rant about high fructose corn syrup? Today I ran across this link on someone else's blog:
Why Eating Healthy Food Costs More Than Eating Junk
Food has always been a hefty line item in our budget, and I've watched it creep increasingly upward over the 14 years we've lived in Montana. The husband requires massive quantities of food to keep his internal engine going every day (and he's got about 12% body fat—life is so unfair). I'm not kidding when I tell people that Costco is my grocery store.
Also, everything is more expensive here because it has to get trucked in. The growing season is (if we're lucky—ask me about the year it snowed on my tomato plants in June) about 60 days, which means that fresh, local fruits and vegetables are only available for short periods of time. Have a hankering for fresh asparagus with your steak dinner in January? The asparagus will cost more than the steak. I love the idea of eating locally; it's just not always practical where we live.
But one of my favorite cookbooks is this one:
One of the authors, Cathleen Hockman-Wert, belongs to a church in the Pacific Northwest Mennonite Conference (to which our church also belongs). She was at a conference our church hosted in June 2006, and made some of the recipes from this book. It's divided into seasons, with recipes featuring ingredients which are readily available in that season. For instance, in the spring when asparagus is cheap cheap cheap, I make Lemon Asparagus Pasta. In the summer, I do Curried Beans and Potatoes. This week someone at church made the Upside-Down Pear Gingerbread which was fantastic. I have a couple of Mennonite cookbooks and they are always the ones I turn to first when I need something good to make.
Yesterday at our noon potluck meal after church, a few of us were talking about ethanol and biodiesel (which I love) and other alternative fuels. Someone mentioned one of the countries in South America (Brazil?) which makes its own supply of ethanol from the waste of sugar cane. That's all they sell thereÑno gasoline made from crude oil. I know the technology exists and this country could become energy indepedent (and make salads cheaper than junk food), but a lot of policies have to change, first.
November 4, 2007: I Hate Mistakes
Arrrgggghhh. I've received two e-mails recently about errors in Cables 1. Granted, they are (relatively) minor errors, but they are errors nontheless and seeing as I am pretty committed to having as few errors as possible in my work, they annoy me. I've put the corrections up on a Cables 1 page under "Pattern Support."
I know of one additional error in the Aran book (the stitch counts don't add up on the back of the blue pullover sweater in that book), but I haven't had time to do the math and figure out where the problem is.
Yes, considering the number of errors in books which have been published recently, I have a pretty darned good track record. But it isn't my intent to confuse anyone, so I apologize if that's happened to you.
I finished the charts and written instructions in the Cables and Lace chapter yesterday. I finally had to tell myself "Enough is as good as it gets" because I have so many favorite stitch patterns that I would love to include. Part of the criteria for including a stitch pattern is that it has to illustrate a point I want to make; if it can't do that, it becomes a greedy gobbler of precious layout space and has to go. A couple of the stitch patterns I included in that chapter are actually original ones designed by meÑinspired by looking at hundreds of existing stitch patterns. We'll see if the knitted version looks as good as the charted version. Sometimes stitch patterns look better on paper than they do in person.
And I finished another round of swatches, which will now be blocked and scanned into the layout. I am hoping to keep up this pace; If I can, there is a good chance I'll have this book ready to go ahead of schedule (thereÑnow that I've said that, I am just about guranteed a smackdown from the universe to remind me of my place.) With no mistakes, if I can help it.
November 2, 2007: How Do You Define "Intermediate"?
One of the things I am struggling with at the moment is how to define what is an "intermediate" cabling technique vs. an "advanced" one. I have to make that distinction because if I try to put everything in Volume 2, it will be close to 400 pages and I don't want that (for a variety of reasons). So what is the difference between an "intermediate" technique and an "advanced" one? For some topics it's easy: I think that textured cables (e.g., ones with accents like smocking or bound stitches) are intermediate, while mitered cables (which require some mastery of short rows) are advanced.
Where I am really falling down with this is in places like the slip-stitch cables chapter. A thorough investigation of slip-stitch cables would include a discussion on multi-color slip-stitch cables. My preference, however, is to put that information in a chapter on color and cables. That chapter would include ALL the techniques for using multiple colors in cable patterns, including slip-stitch cables. However, there simply isn't room for that chapter in Volume 2Ñso I have it scheduled for Volume 3. (Slip-stitch cables aren't the only example of this issue; I have a few others.) Besides, many of the techniques for knitting multi-colored cables require the knitter to manage multiple strands of yarnÑwhich I think takes some experience.
The concrete sequential part of my brain would like things to be neatly organized into discrete categories; the (much smaller and quieter) abstract random part of my brain sees all the inter-relationships between cabling techniques and wonders if we shouldn't just talk about color in the relevant chapters. The dominant CS side of my brain will likely win out, but the two sides need to have this conversation.
And here I thought that writing a book simply meant putting words down on paper. Silly me.
I would really be worried if I were trying to do this book without InDesignÑone of the wonderful features of ID's book layout is that if I move things around, it automatically updates the page information. So I have a fair bit of freedom to reorganize and rearrange material once it's all done. I'd love to be able to get enough of Cables 2 done that I could start attacking Cables 3; I think if I were able to do that, I would be able to see very clearly what belongs in which book.
I've been putting off working on the two biggest chapters in Cables 2 and yesterday I couldn't procrastinate any longer (believe me, I tried; I was even going to mop my kitchen floor). I made some decent progress on one of them, getting about a third of the charts in place. Today I will either make up the rest of the charts or finish the written instructions for the charts I did yesterdayÑor both, if I am lucky.
November 1, 2007: A PhD in Cables
Debbie and Missy, I get to your questions in this post.
I feel like I am preparing a PhD dissertation on cabling techniques with this series of books. I'm not just picking cable stitches, dropping them into the layout, and knitting swatches. I wish it were that simple. No, this is a research project, not just a compilation. Each technique gets a thorough exploration of its possibilities. I start with a basic swatch and ask myself all sorts of questions as I knit:
- What is the best way to illustrate this technique?
- How could this technique be modified/expanded/adapted?
- Where is this technique applicable?
- Can it be combined with other techniques?
- Can I come up with a new use for this technique?
Right now I am working on the chapter that deals with cables over Brioche stitch. I've gathered all the resources I have about these kinds of cables, and I've experimented with half a dozen swatches already. Not all of them will make it into Cables 2, but they are giving me lots of ideas for future projects.
My goal with these books is to provide as comprehensive a reference on cabling techniques as I possibly can. If you can't find it in my books when they are all done, it probably hasn't been invented yet.
Debbie asked how long it takes to put a book like this together. Hmmm, it depends. The revision of the Aran book took a lot longer than I wanted it to because I completely revamped the material and the layout, and it was the first book I had ever done in InDesign. I had a learning curve to go up.
Cables 1 took about ten months, and most of the first three months of that project were spent trying to decide how to organize the material and figuring out what layout I wanted to use.
Cables 2 is going faster (I think) because I'm using the same layout as Cables 1 and I am much more familiar with InDesign and its capabilities (although I am so annoyed that Adobe changed a couple of the shortcut keystrokes in this latest update and weird things happen when I forget and use the old ones).
Books also have to fit in with my tech editor's and my schedules. We decided that I would work on getting as much of Cables 2 put together by January, at which time she would begin editing it. It seems to work really well to release my books in late spring or during the summer, so between the editing and the release date I already have a lot of built-in deadlines. I've scheduled the photo shoot for the cover for next week, after which I'll need to have the graphic artist design the cover so it can get sent to the distributor for marketing purposes.
Missy wondered about the software I use: I have Adobe Creative Suite 3 which includes InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop, and I use all three when putting a book together. For charts, I use Knitter's Symbol Fonts from David Xenakis (one of the Knitter's Magazine people), although they came with a very basic cable set so I've had to create most of the more complicated cable symbols.
I do really enjoy book production—almost as much as knitting.
Skip this if you're squeamish: Yesterday morning I went to town for a couple of hours to run some errands. I left the dogs in the house because Chester's head is still healing. When I came home, I noticed a flock of about 20 big ravens in the woods over on the side of the house by my office (about 100 feet from my office door). I went over to investigate and discovered what looked like the remains of a large animal.
The husband checked it out further when he got home and said it looked like someone had shot a deer there, field-dressed it, and left the gut pile. Lovely. First of all, if they did shoot it on our property, that's illegal (not to mention too damn close to my house). Second, even if they shot it elsewhere and wounded it and then trailed it over here, it's the height of rudeness to leave a fresh gut pile on someone else's property. It attracts dogs, birds, and all sorts of other vermin. I called the game warden to file a complaint, but if we don't know who's responsible, they can't do anything. I am just glad the dogs were in the house.
Is it just me or are other people tired of sharing oxygen with people who do idiotic and rude things? Ignorance is one thing; willifully stupid behavior is another thing entirely.
