In case you weren't aware.

And you're American.

And you haven't done it yet.

<teacher voice>THERE'S AN ELECTION TODAY. GO VOTE.</teacher voice>

Never let it be said that I do not use my powers for good.

The lovely tanac has provided me with a feed for el journal de knitting-- subscribe to me at http://syndicated.livejournal.com/knittingharpy/ !

Thanks, T!

Mike and I are ashamed to admit that we own the 3rd edition Scrabble dictionary-- the one where they took out all the dirty words, so that it would be suitable for "recreational and school play." Naturally, our response to that was to look up dirty words with alternate, cleaner meanings, to see how far the purging had gone.

I discovered that "pussy" was in there twice, once as a noun describing a cat, and once as an adjective describing something that had pus on it. Ew! Ultimate boner-death.

But then I discovered the best purple-prose word ever. Feast your eyes on this: Vaginate. An adjective, describing the condition of being sheathed within something.

For example: "The knight rode boldly into battle, his sword vaginate at his side."

Try to use it in a sentence today, boys and girls!

Also, new post on teh knitting blog, but it's not the next CY. I got ambitious about taking photos and knitting swatches, and have managed to push things back to Monday. But at this point I can tell you one thing-- Monday will be AWESOME.

The knitting has been taking over the blog lately. Although it gives me perverse delight when Certain People are forced to read through my fibery musings as part of their irritating stalking of me (and you know who you are), I think a certain re-focusing might be enjoyable for the rest of us. I don't want to feel like I'm perpetrating false advertising!

To that end, I've established a knitting blog, The Knitting Harpy, and all new knitting, spinning and fibery content will be posted there, including the rest of the Choosing Yarn series. Speaking of which, the next CY post won't be up until Sunday, since I need to take a bunch of photos for it and the light at 8:30 pm isn't so great. I've also moved some of the most recent lj-knitting content there, so you'll see some duplication at the moment.

This LJ will continue to be the home of navel-gazing, opinionated ranting, discussions of graduate school et al.-- everything but knitting. Posts will be friends-locked.

Density
This is the feature of yarn most likely to trip up newish knitters. While every pattern tells you the thickness of the yarn you should buy, none of them particularly address density. When handling individual balls of yarn, density isn't obviously an issue-- most yarns are sold in balls of 50 grams, and when they're all wound up it's not obvious to the eye or hand that Yarn A will give you 120 yards per ball while Yarn B will only give 82 yards. The label says so, of course, but the yarns don't feel that different...

There's good psychophysical reasons why we're not equipped to evaluate differences in density when comparing small quantities, but that doesn't mean they don't matter. In these modern days, most projects ask you for N yards of x-weight yarn (they used to ask for N grams of x-weight yarn, which created different problems). So if you're knitting a sweater that asks for 1,500 yards of sport-weight yarn and you use Yarn A, your final product will weigh 625 grams, or 1.4 lbs. If you use Yarn B, your sweater will weigh 915 grams, or 2 lbs.

Your gauge will probably be the same, and obviously .6 lbs isn't going to take you down, or prematurely bow your back, or anything. But using a denser yarn, and therefore getting a denser final product that weighs more per square inch, can substantially affect the look and feel of your finished product.

( Six ways that yarn density can influence knitted fabrics. )

When we talk about plying and texture (which may not be until Saturday), I'll get into why it is that animal fibers are usually more airy and plant fibers more dense.

Here are some pictures from my recent spinning!

( Pictures under cut )

Choosing yarn is hard. I don't know about you, but I generally go into "choice paralysis" the minute I hit a yarn store, a craft store, or the internet. The days when you could choose a yarn by "weight" because everything was either wool or acrylic are long, long over-- there's so many different yarns, with so many different properties! So how do you pick?

After four years of yarn shopping and lots of mistakes, I have my yarn-shopping criteria whittled down to six dimensions, which I'll go over here. I'll present the dimensions in the order that you should consider them to make an efficient yarn choice. We'll start with the dimensional criteria that will eliminate the largest possible amount of yarns, then move on to the next dimension's criterion, which you'll apply within your diminished set to shrink that set as much as possible, and so on. This way, we can get down to a manageable number of options quickly and efficiently. I would order them by importance, but as it happens I think all the dimensions are equally important.

Nota bene 1: These dimensions only work if you already know what you're buying yarn for. The yarn you'd buy for a winter sweater will fall differently on the dimensions than a yarn you'd buy for an afghan, or even a spring sweater. So pick your project, decide when and how and how often you plan to use your finished object, and then refer to the criteria below to pick your yarn.

Nota bene 2: This isn't a lesson on gauge, and I won't be discussing the effects of the size of needles you choose on the properties described here. Suffice it to say that if you choose a needle size highly different from the size recommended by the yarn you choose, don't come crying to me if your carefully-chosen yarn doesn't behave the way these criteria say it should. If you bash in your TV with a wrench, no amount of instructions for how to change the channel will help you.

In order of consideration:

1. Weight
   
2. Density
   
3. Ply/Texture
   
4. Washability
   
5. Quality
   
6. Feel

( We'll start with the traditional dimension of Weight )

Attentive readers may notice that this isn't exactly the treatise on fiber-types that I promised. Upon further consideration and attempting to write, I discovered that knowledge of fiber-types is important not for itself, but because of the way that the various fibers are differently situated within the six criteria. Furthermore, yarns can have the exact same fiber-content and yet be different on almost every one of the six dimensions I describe here. That kind of variability will be more consequential to a person's final project than the fact that both yarns are made of unmercerized cotton.

Density will follow tomorrow. Additional comments or reflections on yarn weight/thickness always welcome!

Ooh, punny.

Would people be interested in a blog post or a few by me on the properties of various fibers, in the context of knitting? I'd cover things like yarn substitutions in patterns, fibers for different purposes, durability, maybe even a tiny little bit of yarn physics if I talk about single ply vs. multi-ply yarns and how different fibers take that.

My inner didact is clamoring, but I do try to restrict my lectures to issues where there is at least a bit of audience interest.

Today is wet and drippy and gray and cool, and the cats are being adorable and friendly (even the shy one!). It's a good day. I like rainy days.

...maybe I should look into Seattle or the west coast, when I'm looking for places to live and work post-graduate-school?

Also: The spinning, she is going very well. At some point there may even be pictures, since I've finally graduated from "dark, amorphous, fuzzy, badly-spun blobs" to "colorful, slightly less amorphous, slightly better-spun blobs." Much more photogenic.

Also also: I've started keeping a record of knitting gauges for various things I've done, so that if I ever use that yarn/needle combo again, I won't have to swatch. Also it scratches my deep-seated itch for documentation and order. Yes, you may laugh and point.

What I've learned so far? I mostly use my size 6 Addi-turbo needle (the first knitting needle I ever bought, awww), and I'm a minor fiber snob. My list of yarns goes something like this: Merino wool, merino wool/silk, mohair/silk, merino wool/pima cotton, wool... I have a merino problem! (What am I spinning right now? Merino wool fiber. Ach.)

Back to comps studying. Big day is Friday!

I never thought of TVGuide as a haven for editorial and film criticism, so I can only assume that somebody on their writing staff must be having a very bad day.

( And he (or she) is taking it out on the movies! Click for screencappery. )

Strangely enough, Batman Forever was spared this treatment. Perhaps the writer thought it was just too easy.

Today I'm moonlighting over at avengangle's book review blog, Someone's Read It Already, reviewing the "new" David Weber short story collection. I'm grouchy about it, so there is entertainment for all.

Check it out! and also check out the blog in general, as most reviews are much more articulate than mine and also arrive on a regular, daily basis.

I am normally totally okay with the fact that there are things I can't do. For example, I cannot: do a pull-up, speak or read German, solve for a derivative (without a reference book), talk to my brother like a normal person, etc, etc.

And these are all okay, because A) I've set up my life so that I don't need to do these things to accomplish my goals, and B) I believe that if I really wanted to do any of them, I could develop the skill to do so with time and practice.

Unfortunately, there's one other thing that I can't do and lately it's been pissing me off: I can't draw.

Now, the inability to draw used to be placed quite firmly in the "A" column: I couldn't do it, but who cares? Psychologists don't need to be able to draw. And this is good, because art class in seventh and eighth grades taught me exactly two things: how to achieve perspective effects, and that I cannot draw in any way, shape or form.

Now I'm trying to design sweaters and cardigans and other knitted items, and it is driving me up a tree that I can't sketch things. This means it's almost impossible to check proportions, and for some complex designs, it's really, REALLY hard to keep the whole thing in my head at once. Right now, I've got this fun fair-isle cardigan sweater in my brain, and I can't decide what to do with the sleeves. I have four or five ideas in mind, and none of them will stay still-- each time I try to envision the sweater, it rotates through all five design ideas over and over in a fast and flickering way so I can't actually think about them. And I can't draw it, because of my whole "inability to draw" problem.

Not to mention that if I ever get serious about this knit designing thing, most proposals require sketches-- and, in my place, epic fail. It's just so frustrating to have the whole enjoyable process stopped short by such a stupid thing. And of course, there are no "I want to design my own clothes but I can't draw" tutorials or anythings on the internet. Apparently everybody can draw? So I hear? I dunno? And what happens if I do draw something, and the drawing is ugly, and then I lose the real object that I'm imagining in my head and it gets replaced by the ugly thing with freakish disproportionate shoulders and other weirdness? That would suck.

Anyway, argh. This is me in my corner with my pencils, making with the growly noises and the trial and error.

I've recently finished knitting a cardigan, which is extremely pretty. Cardigans have, historically, been a problem for topographical reasons. They often gap open in a terribly unflattering way, which is vexing and lowering to the spirit. In designing my own personal cardigan, I resolved that none of that nonsense would be allowed to go down.

I did a few things to avoid gappage:

1. Included two inches of ease in the final product, to minimize pulling.
   
2. Used horizontal rather than vertical buttonholes.
   
3. Used shaping at all the topographical high-points in my landscape.
   
4. Placed a button at the widest point of my bust, the place most likely to gap.
   
5. Reinforced the button-bands by sewing on grosgrain-ribbon facings.

It is of this last item that I want to talk about today, mainly because that's the thing that I took pictures of. If you'd like to learn how to add ribbon facings to cardigan button-bands, sweater necklines, wavy hems or any other garment element that could use some stiffening-up, ( click through here. )

It's actually crocheting. EVEN WORSE.

I distinctly remember some serious bitching about this afghan appearing on the blog, but as it looks like I didn't tag it as "knitting," it is nowhere to be found. Ah, well. We shall persevere.

So, I don't really like to crochet. I mean, it's okay, but it's not my thing. And I don't really like most acrylic yarns, because they catch on my raggedy chewed nails and they squeak and aren't very giving, so the tactile experience is therefore unpleasant. Finally, I absolutely hate doing counted cross-stitch, because I am crap at keeping track of the color and position of a dot in two dimensions and hobbies should be fun, not hair-pullingly-frustrating.

( Behold, therefore, my nemesis. )

But mine is the last word, for I have finished it and can now gift it to my MIL for Christmas, thus getting it out of my sight. Hah!

Knitting is a hobby. It is a time-consuming leisure activity enjoyed by a minority of individuals and temporarily experiencing a popular vogue. In the First World, one could easily conceive of knitting as a luxury.

Now, I like knitting. Most of my free spending money probably goes into yarn, needles, storage, paraphenalia, pattern books and magazine subscriptions. A goodly portion of my free time is likewise devoted to pulling loops of string through other loops of string using two sticks, in the eventual hope of creating a garment that is twice as hard to maintain as anything purchased from a store and half as flattering.

Despite this devotion, I recognize that what I'm doing is a hobby. I do not particularly believe that we need a National Knitting Day. I've never even considered smuggling circular needles onto an airplane in my underwire. I don't call non-knitters "muggles," nor do I consider public knitting "freaking the mundanes." I don't believe that theaters ought to offer special, well-lighted seating for knitters, and in fact I think people who knit during movies in theaters are wasting their money in both directions. I don't believe that I have the right to knit whenever and wherever I want, and I don't think it's funny when people joke about stabbing non-knitters with their DPNs for asking irritating questions.

And I most especially, definitely, totally and utterly do not understand paying $53 for 81 yards of yarn. In case you were wondering, that's enough yarn to make you a very soft skinny cashmere headband. Obviously, you buy the yarn your budget lets you afford, but really.

The problem exemplified by $53 skeins of cashmere yarn is that there seems to be a school of thought among knitters that one should not consider the price of yarn when planning a project. Guided by the 0.1% of knitters who are able to do their knitting professionally, we're urged to find the "perfect" yarn for our projects, to "collect" yarn and fill whole rooms with wool. Our artistic muse should move us, without regard for budget, storage or what on earth we're going to do with the thing when we take it home. There's even an acronym, SABLE: Stash Aquisition Beyond Life Expectancy. Now, this may not seem like a big deal (though it gives me a chill), but when you consider that sock yarns (very popular aquisitions) run to $20 a skein, and then you imagine people who have whole closets of just sock yarn... well, it can get a little crazy. We're talking the potential for tens of thousands of dollars of yarn, buying-a-whole-car-with-it amounts of yarn, sitting around in closets. People write about hiding their stash from their spouses and exchange tips for putting yarn in suitcases, under the bed or even (encased in plastic bags, natch) behind the plastic moulding on the side of the bathtub. And the standard response to a person's report that their husband or wife is unhappy with the size of their stash? "Divorce 'em, keep the yarn!"

In any other circumstance, this kind of ridiculous consumptive hoarding would be considered grounds for psychiatric treatment, but in the knitting community, it is applauded. Look how spunky we are! We embrace our total obsession totally and allow it to dominate our lives! This is healthy and cheeky, not weird or creepy! People compete for stash size, and knitting "from the stash" instead of buying fresh is considered an impressive achievement in self-control.

Maybe all hobbies have a subculture like this, and maybe knitting's is just one of the more vocal. But even a well-behaved, non-SABLE knitter can burn through money like nobody's business. Take famous knitblogger and author Wendy Johnson. Wendy is renowned for her knitting speed and consistency; nothing but illness or spinning keeps her from putting in knitting time each day. Wendy is able to design and knit a pair of socks in approximately four days from start to finish. That's 91 pairs of socks a year (of course, she does knit other things, but let's assume this is a good representation of her rate). At one skein of sock yarn per pair, and $20 per skein, that adds up to nearly $2,000 a year of sock yarn consumed. Now, obviously not many knitters are that persistently productive. And I don't mean to pick on Wendy, whose blog I read with great enjoyment. Knitting is a large part of her life, she's published knitting books and patterns; in many ways, she is a professional knitter. And even if that weren't the case, a person is allowed to spend money on their hobbies.

My point is that knitting is an expensive hobby by default, and can easily grow even more expensive due to the hyper-consumerist culture in which it is situated, which glorifies the aquisition of yarn to the point where "stash expansion" (otherwise known as SEX)can be more important than actually knitting.

So what does this have to do with me? Well, I can't exactly afford to buy new yarn every few months; I am budgetarily constrained to virtue. Even if I could, sitting down and doing the math like this has made vicerally clear that, unlike kayaking or board games, knitting is a consuming hobby. I buy stuff, use it up and then my end products sit around taking up space. I've been uncomfortable with that for a while (who needs 10 hats?), and as my skill and speed have increased, my discomfort has grown. I'm good enough at knitting now that I can knit a sweater in two weeks (Wedgewood, pictures forthcoming). Sweaters use a lot of yarn, and I live in a hot climate. Are my knitting habits really making the best use of my money, not to mention planetary resources? As far as I can see, I'm going to be knitting for a long time, and I'd like to reduce the financial and environmental impact of my hobby.

To that end, I've made a few decisions.
From June 2008 to June 2009, I will:

1. Knit only my own designs. This will make my knitting progress much slower, since I'll have to create the designs first, decreasing my yarn consumption and cash expenditure over time.
   
2. Write up and sell or give away the patterns I write, for the good of my household finances and because I think it's fun.
   
3. Research and pursue local sources for yarn, instead of working with stuff shipped from Peru.
   
4. Research and pursue environmentally friendly fibers.
   
5. Buy only yarns that are sport-weight or lighter, because it takes longer to finish an object knit in thin yarns (less yarn used, less money spent-- the two-week sweater was in heavier yarn).
   
6. Buy yarn only with a specific project in mind.
   
7. Give away or frog finished objects that I won't use.
   
8. Buy no new knitting books; used bookstore knitting books are acceptable.
   
9. Whenever possible, knit from stash.

Please note that I'm pretty sure, with the exception of the environmental impact elements and the book clause, these criteria fit Wendy Johnson's knitting habits pretty darn well. When you knit a lot, this sort of strategy is just practical. What I'm hoping to gain here is not so much the glow of extraordinary virtue as a greater tendency to mindfulness in my knitting consumption. We'll see how it goes.

Other ideas for reducing the monetary and environmental impact of my knitting while keeping the fun always welcome.

Knitpicks Bare Superwash Merino Yarn is 75% merino wool, 25% nylon, 462 yards/100 grams for $5.99.

Knitpicks Bare Sock Yarn Dye Blank is 75% merino wool, 25% nylon, 462 yards/100 grams for $11.99.

The only difference? The Sock Yarn Dye Blank has been held double and machine-knitted into a rectangle, so that people can dye it, unwind it, and knit two idential stripey or otherwise patterned socks with it.

To put this in perspective-- knitters are happily paying $6 more than they need to for the privilege of avoiding having to knit 231 yards of yarn (about a hat's worth) on size 6 needles. The horror.

And here I thought knitters actually liked knitting.

Following the instructions from Strobist, Mike and I built a lightbox to take photos of stuff! It is very high tech, as you can see:


And then we tried it out on my latest knitting project, a cardigan! Here you have the yarn, Main Line, worsted weight. The color is called "Wedgewood" and is discontinued.


The swatch, in all its glory:


( The cardigan, so far: )

Additional work is clearly needed.

Three projects, nine photos, a lot of shop talk.

Predictably Irrational

First, a baby blanket to celebrate the birth of a new book! This was a commission from a friend to give as a gift to the author of Predictably Irrational, a new social psychology book that just came out this spring. The colors are designed to match the colors of the book’s U.S. cover and the colors of the mock 'birth announcement' the author sent out when the book was published.

( Predictably Irrational Baby Blanket )

Hemlock Ring Blanket

Everybody and their uncle has knit the Hemlock Ring Blanket already, but who am I to argue with everybody? It's a fun, quick project. I knit my Hemlock Ring on size 8 and 9 needles with aran weight rather than bulky weight yarn, and it was still quick and easy to do. This blanket will go to tanac if she still wants it.

( Hemlock Ring Blanket )

Atlantis

The story of Atlantis was for a time very sad, but it has a happy ending.

I began knitting Atlantis in the summer of 2005. It was my first lace project, a self-designed wrap alternating a leafy pattern with feather-and-fan sections, using Knitpicks Shimmer (alpaca and silk) in the grape hyacinth colorway. It was very hot in Minnesota (believe it or not) and there was no air conditioning. My roommate went to bed early, so I had to turn off the lamps while it was still too hot to sleep. I knit doggedly on too-blunt size 8 needles in the heat and humidity and the dark, by the light of the House episodes I had downloaded onto my computer to distract myself from missing Mike (then my fiance), who had a job in Nebraska. It sucked.

( Atlantis- The Saga Continues )

Tonight I finished a big project! While it's drying, I thought I'd post some in-progress pictures and teasers, because I'm like that. Mainly about the dyeing process.

( Mystery Project Dyeing! )

Tonight I bind off on the Pi Shawl O'Doom!!!

It has been a harrowing journey of beads, little needles and ever-increasing stitch counts, ending with the challenge of finding a sufficiently stretchy bind off for faggot-lace.

Well, I say "ending," but the greatest challenges remain:

1) Constructing the custom color to dye the shawl (currently white with green beads, tres ugly). I want a kind of bluish grey weathered wood color.

2) Blocking a large circle. Imma gonna need more pins.

And then, if it all turns out alright, I might write up the pattern and make it available. We'll see.

Pictures of the bound-off "yarn barf" that is unblocked lace will appear tonight, if only for my sake.