kaberett | Entries tagged with knitting

Something is going wrong with it such that I'm winding up with picking up slipped stitches progressing faster down one side of the glove than the other, and the flap consequently winding up all askew. I cannot work out what I am doing wrong here -- the slipped stitch columns are very definitely slipped stitch columns! I don't think I made sufficient Errors to possibly account for this?!

At present I am grimly -- well, okay, at present I am grimly doing YET MORE FROGGING to unfuck a cable I made go the wrong way when I was busy concentrating on the slipped stitches -- going "fuck it, just skip some of the slipped stitches on the questionable side, you can come back and reknit the whole pair for yourself once you have sorted out the netting for the peas and also A's gloves". But I don't understand what I did wrooooooooong and I am suuuuuuuuulking a little about it.

BUT TODAY HAS ALSO FEATURED GOOD THINGS. The ridiculous volunteer tomato is nearly as tall as I am and has flowers with yellow bits and everything. (I have no idea what flavour of tomato it is. I'll find out or I won't...) The peas I sowed in the greenhouse are Going (more slowly than the peas I sowed at home, but nonetheless Going). One of the quick brassicas in the greenhouse bed is coming up. There is still so much garlic. And!!! I have successfully Removed one of the self-layered Extremely Jostaberry Bushes!!! and relocated it to a new home!!!

I do this thing where it gets to 3.30 p.m. and most of me is like "well there's no point in trying to leave the house and go to the allotment NOW, you've WASTED the WHOLE AFTERNOON, --" and actually it consistently turns out that if I nonetheless get up and get moving I can still spend a very very happy hour or so Pottering, productively, and feel vastly better for having achieved same. I wish I could maintain the emotional permanence required to not have this knowledge disappear into defeatism every damn time. But! Did the thing, and lo, it was good.

This afternoon, for "was sadly knitting to help self-regulate while reading the [Benefits & Work] ESA to UC migration guide, and also doing some amount of form-filling", I messed up (part of) a row of the cable pattern including a crossover.

I did not spot this until three rounds later. Thankfully, this was before the next crossover.

... it took me two attempts but I fixed it by dropping only the eight stitches concerned. I have the vaguest rattlings of an intimation of a memory suggesting that this is a thing I have done in some dim and distant past, but it's the first time I've done it with this project (and therefore in like a decade), and I was feeling Extremely Intimidated by it, so I am Proud. Good job me.

I HAVE LEGITIMATELY SOURCED A COPY OF THE (I'll stop shouting now) pattern for the Firstfall mitts! About which I am delighted, not least because it means I've got something fiddly to do in hospital/etc -- working out genypher's short row faff seems to me vastly more approachable than trying to reconstruct the whole damn pattern!

Other delights today have included "delivery of a pair of ridiculously fancy leggings" and "Glow Wild 2024" (photos of which to follow), but -- I woke up to the e-mail notification and have been buzzing happily ever since. (And occasionally forgetting why I'm buzzing -- but buzzing nonetheless!)

I am presently in the market for convertible mittens/arm warmers/... primarily for Admin: the LRP purposes. Also, I am picky.

Consequently I spent some of this afternoon (while A was napping on me) scrolling through fifteen pages of patterns on Rav, culminating in the frustrating experience of finding three different variations on a pattern I'm interested in, all by the same designer, none of which are available online any more. (The Wayback Machine will get me to the pages where I can click the "buy" button, but no further. The designer has rav messages turned off. I have left a forlorn comment on one of the patterns, and messaged the person with the project marked as started and finished in January 2024 to ask if they have a secret source that would let me pay the designer money.)

Relatedly I have been reminding myself of the state of the art on plant fibres that are good for cables (still "none") and, also, contemplating asking someone with An Appropriate Stash whether I can put some of their alpaca on my face to check it's still bad. In the event that alpaca is still bad, the problem reduces from "go hunting for reversible cable patterns, I SUPPOSE" to "ugh, fine, I can reverse engineer this and just do it all in rib" despite the fact that I'm decidedly out of practice at same.

But. One of the places I wound up while doing these checks was a KnitPal blog post. It's not particularly exciting but it's a fairly solid intro, and while I might disagree with their choices about infographic design I do respect that they've clearly put thought into making them.

... AND THEN YOU GET TO THE LAST FOUR PARAGRAPHS. For maximum effect (insofar as that's possible given this introduction) I recommend reading in situ, but I excerpt the relevant section below.

( Read more... )

WHY has nobody uploaded to Ravelry a pattern for a shawl inspired by the Nicobar pigeon? Reference photo, plus many excellent birds. Am I going to have to design one myself??? that seems GROSSLY unfair.

Shaking the internet a bit harder disgorges this example but that's not quite the take I am after.

Lucy Hague's designs various (for which I glower at lireavue in particular), feat. lots of Celtic knotwork
the Endpaper Mitts, which I flung at a cousin I was also taunting with Lucy Hague's stuff, who hadn't previously seen them (and which are still on my todo list...)

(As an aside: it is slowly dawning on me that my desire for PATTERNS and GOOD COLOURS, which is largely incompatible with my allergy to animal fibres in the context of knitting, might yet drag me into Learning To Quilt. I am probably going to be saved from this by the simple fact that quilts are beautiful pieces of art but there's a limit to how many of them a single person, even a single me[1], can reasonably used, such that obviously if I quilt it'll have to be to use up fabric offcuts from making Something More Useful, which... in turn makes me go "the entire concept of clothes is still Difficult" and then I nope off into the sunset without acquiring an additional hobby, which is probably all to the good, really.)

[1] I am currently routinely sleeping under: one (1) summer-weight duvet, one (1) weighted blanket, and one (1) superking winter-weight duvet folded in half because Adam doesn't want it, with occasional addition of fleece blankets and hot water bottles when I still wind up too cold to go to sleep. On memory foam, which is Known To Be Warm. In a house that we keep at a minimum of 20°C. With a self-heating body pillow that runs its own testosterone-dominant endocrine system for Greater Production Of Warms.

The context, such as it is, is that I was attempting to persuade a friend that their Norwegian was really definitely and for realsies up to the job of Reading A Knitting Pattern. They responded, dubiously, "I was pretty sure 'genser' would be a honk but it's a sweater, so we're not off to a good start."

Psh, I said. It's the geansaí/gansey word. It's All Fine. You're Fine. (This is, to be clear, a friend with whom Etymology is a longstanding mutual interest.)

Anyway! From here we rapidly realised that (1) it's also the same word as "Guernsey", (2) "Guernsey" and "Jersey" are actually the same word too just wearing different hats, and (picture a slow dawning) (3) THEY BOTH MEAN ISLAND. THAT'S IT. THEY JUST CALLED THE ISLANDS "ISLAND".

Have I mentioned recently that I think humans are great? Because humans are pretty great.

In that I accidentally made a post that's currently sitting at 1.3k notes, and one of today's reblogs involved the addition of "Reasons to be better at knitting #[large number]".

The pattern's eight dollars so they've probably not seen it so they probably don't know that it's literally just knit stitches plus a straightforward make one. Consequently I am kind of itching to go "you can actually totally do this! if you can knit at all you already have all the necessary skills, I promise, and if you don't knit at all you can probably learn them fairly rapidly!" and I have... no idea if that would count as creepy or invasive in tumblr terms.

I suspect that sending an ask to this effect would be perceived as more invasive than replying/reblogging with cheerleading (but it's also my preferred option because the point of my main tumblr is very definitely A Gallery Of Things That Make Me Smile, not interaction or whatever). But... mostly I am still just at "tumblr ????????"

Advice from people more au fait with this shit very welcome!

So. Lo these many years ago, when I was young and carefree and taking many many fewer pills per day, I acquired a chunky seven-compartment dosette box not unlike this one.

Shit happened.

I replaced it with something more suited to my new world order (and in all seriousness I've now been using this style of box for a couple of years and I strongly recommend them).

I'm about to embark on a knitting project that uses seven types of bead (yes I know that lists six, there's also the pole star, which I'm doing as a distinct bead).

... guess what.

1. About twenty minutes ago I thought something to the effect of "hmm, okay, I want to do something intellectually engaging this evening, now what sha-- HOLY SHIT MY ANTIDEPRESSANTS ARE WORKING." This is a glimmer as yet, but thank fuck. ( PHQ-9. ) I'll have been at 30mg for two weeks come Sunday.

2. Woolstack continue absolutely brilliant - the colourway I'd asked them to special-order came in today, and Lisa-who-seems-to-handle-communications-at-least-with-me sent me photos of all ten skeins so that I could tell her which of them I wanted for my specific project. (And then in the follow-up e-mail commented enthusiastically on how good my chosen colours looked together!) They're going in the post Monday - I just missed today's post - whereupon I'll be able to start making the skyscape shawls.

3. In related news, I am utterly baffled that my quick and dirty picspam of those shawls is the most popular thing I've ever put on tumblr by, like, two orders of magnitude. (I mention this in part because it's picked up another 150 notes in the past 24 hours.)

4. Braided nylon hoses for track pumps exist. I have contacted the UK importer for the pump I currently own asking if there's an appropriate part; if not I'll sell it on ebay (resale value high) and buy myself one of the brand that manufactures the hoses I got linked to, because holy shit being able to top up my tyres without worrying about allergen exposure. ♥_♥ (Context for those of you missing it: I've gone and done that thing where it's super easy to develop a contact allergy to latex, and it's easier still if you've got a bunch of other misc autoimmune/autoinflammatory bullshit going on. The hose on my current pump is latex, which is A Pity. This is additionally the context for the one-line story about The Time I Made An Unauthorised Purchase Of Latex-Free Gloves Using A NASA Grant.)

5. Food! ( Read more... )

you're welcome

1. I've dealt with two scary e-mails this evening.

2. DW work! Cackling with

azurelunatic over spite-driven development, updating the list of babydev bait in

dw_dev_training, staring in horror at the codebase a bit but then writing a fix that seems (after very cursory testing) to largely behave as intended (so I have submitted a PR so

karzilla can tell me to nest conditions instead of replacing them). (The horror in question: the if-statement that determines whether notifications of new entries/comments/whatever provide http or https links? Currently lives in LJ::User::Styles. NOPE NOPE NOPE.)

3. Bimbling about my mother's garden this evening; I've got a box or so of blackberries to take back to London with me, my hands still smell of Liebstoeckel, and I got to eat ripe raspberries and figs straight off their respective plants.

4. Three games of Scrabble with my mother over the past few days! And it is sort of telling that they just went, unlike the last several months, which strongly suggests that this round of antidepressant is starting to work properly. (I normally score 350-400ish. Game the first: opened with three bingos, ended up scoring over five hundred slightly to my surprise. Game the second: I remain extremely pleased about GAZeTTED for 92 and WASH/Ski/Ham for 50ish, finishing comfortably over 400 and on a tie prior to sorting out deductions. Game the third: actually significantly more lacklustre scorewise, but I was still pleased at getting out with OO/bOa/rOte for 15.)

5. I picked up beads for the shawls on Tuesday, and have been cooing gently over them ever since. They are tactile and pleasing and I am making a scientific joke with them that I find far, far too amusing.

6. Cambridge-Oxford-Cambridge over 5 days is actually a really sensible way to spend time: it means middle brother and I aren't in the same building for more than 48 hours at a stretch, which means that we don't hit him actually starting to set me off badly but we do get a high incidence background neutral-to-positive interactions.

7. Lovely grounding restorative reassuring extended conversation with

sebastienne this afternoon once I'd finally dragged myself out of bed. I have more of a sense of purpose and more of a sense of where I'm going.

8. That first tattoo makes me think that all of a sudden I know what I actually want Westminster Bridge to be, if I get it. An idea to sit with for sure, but seeing that photo felt like things clicking into place.

9. Pushing home up the hill from the bus stop, toward fiercely atmospheric sunset clouds, followed by turning toward a nearly full moon suspended in the pale blue sky.

10. Here is temporarily who I am.

-- two recommendations, of a craft persuasion, given that I'm currently placing orders and such for the first iteration of Celestarium I'll be making--

Woolstack are online-only and do knitting needles, crochet hooks, embroidery supplies, and lots of fantastic yarn including being the best UK supplier of Malabrigo I found in a poking-at-the-internet sort of a way. On top of which I e-mailed to say, excuse me, I'm after this particular colourway of this particular Malabrigo yarn, but you don't list it, are you willing to order it in? And they e-mailed back to say, Malabrigo is currently out of stock but if you're willing to wait I'll get in touch with them and ask when they next expect a supply, but we've got it in in a different size so here's a photo of the four colourways you wanted next to each other so you can see how they look. And I e-mailed back and said yes, please do ask them; and they e-mailed back to say it should be coming back in stock sometime in the next couple of weeks, but please do place an order now with an extra skein of a different colourway and leave us a note that you're wanting the Abril when it comes in, because that way we definitely won't sell out of any of the other things you want while you're waiting. To which I say: CUSTOMER SERVICE YOU ARE DOING IT RIGHT.

Secondly, there is a small independent beading supplies shop in Cambridge called the Beaderie. I've bought small quantities of stuff from them in the past, and they've done some excellent repair work for my mum; I know they do good quality and good customer service. Anyway, the point is I've been having heaps of fun over the past few days poking around the various supplies (seriously just look at all the semi-precious stones and tell me I'm wrong for wanting an excuse to use the labradorite and rutilated quartz as stars), and in particular it's cheered me right up just now.

shanaqui MADE ME BEDLINEN. IT IS A SUPERKING SIZE DUVET COVER WITH DINOSAURS AND VOLCANOES ON LOOK AT IT

Also, I did some knitting.
( Read more... )

{and you have done your best to medicate and regulate/the dark clouds forming in my brain...}

( Ten good things! )

1. I do actively like getting up with dawn and being in work by 8am. If I could find a way to do that sustainably (given insomnia, fatigue, etc) then I'd be all over it. (Two days running this week; aiming to replicate tomorrow. Though, to be fair, I did come home very early this afternoon and then sleep. But -- I got labwork done before 9am, I taught for three hours, and I booked mass spec time. And I'm doing some more faff at home. Writing abstracts is haaard. I mean, actually I think formal writing is hard, but perhaps I will work out how to get past this, sigh.)

2. Facesfriend is great, though - I stayed over at theirs last night, and sometime in the wee hours they very gently woke me up enough for me to disentangle myself from the nightmare I was having (whimpery rather than screamy, thank goodness; once a year or so I wake myself up screaming, and I'm always very embarrassed about the disruption to other people) and then they coaxed me back to sleep and... gosh, that was nice.

3. Guiltknitting progresses apace. It was supposed to be done 18 months ago. I was stalled on it for all sorts of reasons, largely boiling down to "autism" (it became apparent I hadn't bought enough of the main colour; no more of that dye lot was to be had; I couldn't work out what on earth to do about this; and then for the primary gifting period largest smallcousin bought me some very tasteful yarn, some medium-tasteful yarn, and some yarn that um looks kind of like a sunset got overly excited and has a terrible hangover; the sunset yarn goes very well with the purple). I am unblocked and nearly halfway through the section I charted up. Weaving in the ends is going to be a pain and a half - why I thought learning to do intarsia with two strands no less in the context of double-knitting I have no idea but hey, it's working and legible, so.

4. I have acquired the rest of the Toby Daye books in paperback from eBay, to my immense frustration, because apparently it's impossible to buy the ebooks from anyone but Amazon in the UK, and my preferred UK booksellers aren't carrying the volumes I want, so... eBay. And in attempting to locate the short stories I have spoiled myself for something that was starting to really irritate me, so I can now read on secure in the knowledge that the characters are going to stop being so infuriatingly oblivious sometime soon (well, two books' time, but). (I am also feeling kind of guilty for spending money on books by white folk -

calissa posted recently about diversity and reading; one of the ways I try to (1) ~broaden my horizons~ and (2) restrict my spending on books, in addition to "don't buy anything while the to-read pile on the ereader is greater than $number" [currently 25, previously 50], is to by-and-large avoid buying books by whitey? On the grounds that I get loaned lots of them and I can satisfy most of my desire-to-read-white-people via loans, so. AND ON THE OTHER HAND I am working super hard this month in lab terms, I'm helping teach a maths course which is a massive deal, I am a bit ill, paper books are good for reading in lab because not metal, and for all I'm finding them gently frustrating they are excellent brain-candy.)

5. I really do need to set up that review blog. Which in turn means that I need to get my act together to choose a CMS for my personal website, siiigh.

Approx my current mental state.

Two important realisations:
1. I don't have the foggiest what an operating curve is supposed to be in this context. BETTER FIX THAT.
2. The reason I was wiped today is that I forgot my psych meds last night, so took them this morning rather than risking withdrawal, having, um, forgotten that there's a reason I take my citalopram and amitriptyline at night...

Good things:
1. Thank you all, so much, for helpful suggestions about various bits and bobs, especially the gifts for counsellors etc.

2. For the first time in my undergraduate career, I have come home for the weekend in order to be looked after and concentrate better. This... is something I'm going to want to unpack a LOT with my counsellor, but is fundamentally probably a Really Good Sign.

3. Wove in the ends of project #1, got properly going with project #2.

4. Fannish conversation with

randomling ♥

5. ALL the people are dating. :-)

6. Three lectures to go on this wretched course, and then I can call it good (enough).

7. My lovely mum, for just saying "yes sure when would you like to be picked up what would you like me to cook you for dinner" when I phoned her up at 10pm and pathetically asked if I could come home for the weekend.

8. And also for buying me an AMAZING COMFORTABLE MATTRESS last year, when I was really ill, on the grounds that if I was going to be spending a lot of time in bed I might as well be comfortable there. ♥ (And also my lovely goose-down quilt, which was a... Christmas present? When I was quite small.)

9. Ran lots of errands, including collecting nice post and paying in cheques and lunch with lovely director of studies and all the other geologists from my college.

10. Boything came to see me last night and we got to spend time together and I was reasonably sane and. Boything! Hurrah compatible neurodiversities. Hurrah people who recognise that curling up on each other and then Lying Very Still with occasional squeezes counts as snuggling. Hurrah all round, basically.

hurrah also being more-or-less in one piece. ♥

I've had extremely intermittent internet access for much of the past week (home internet was, er, internot). The connection's been up and stable-ish for several hours at this point, so I'm tentatively hopeful, but given that it's a Virgin account administered by college affecting a relatively small number of users (no, we're not on the university network) I... yeah. Not promising I'm back just yet, but I am starting to work through the e-mail backlog, so if you're expecting to hear from me and haven't by the end of the week please feel free to kick me.
fannishness! This would be much easier if my computer would reliably play DVDs, grump, but nonetheless I have done a fair bit of writing and I am looking forward to getting the current piece of fic polished & Made Public And No Longer My Problem (A:tLA, ~1000 words on the political aftermath of the first three-quarters of the show finale)
had another PhD funding interview on Tuesday; I don't think I did especially well (off-day), but I was the only applicant (of four) for that project that they shortlisted for interview, and they were interviewing 29 candidates for ~15 studentships & some of those will be going off to other places, so. I think I managed to address their major concerns, and I will hear by Friday at the earliest and the end of three weeks at the latest. Fret fret fret. Supervisor bought me another hot chocolate, whinged gently (& justifiably!) about some recon experiments misbehaving a little, and took me to the fortnightly group lab meeting which I really enjoyed. Ugh. I really want this, and I need to not be thrown utterly off-kilter if I don't get it.
I took on London buses and won. (Last time I tried London buses was during the Olympics and I ended up sprinting [unnecessarily, as it turns out] for a train; the time before that I misinterpreted the front of the bus and ended up at the wrong terminus having travelled in the wrong direction, at which point I gave up and got the tube instead and wasn't actually late for my appointment at the US embassy, but. Nonetheless London buses are a slightly hyperventilatory experience for me.)
also also on Tuesday, I met up with a good friend I hadn't seen in over six months and they don't hate me and I had been half-convinced they did, and several other times that day I managed to apply logic to my kneejerk "I DID IT WRONG EVERYONE HATES ME" reaction. Go counselling & go applied techniques.
other making-stuff-wise, I have ~40 rows of ~300 stitches each left on the current project, and then I get to block it and I will have FINISHED MY FIRST SHAWL and then I just have to hope the recipient likes it. (They've said they like the principle; I then just Got On With Making It and didn't exactly, er, double-check with them. But if they don't like it I'm sure I'll find someone else to take it, and in any case BABY'S FIRST SHAWL and BABY'S FIRST SERIOUS BLOCKING.)

You remember that I, er, mentioned a hat a few days ago?

( Well... [NSFW] )

I am genuinely pretty proud of this project, okay. It involves vast quantities of yarn in a colour that's coded female, applied in a craft that's coded female, to produce an article of clothing that... is not quite what people probably expected when they saw me working on it in public. :D And it's a pattern I pretty much entirely made up, and I taught myself to crochet for this project.

(Also, in brainwrong terms, I think it's a pretty good sign that I managed to go from creative concept to product in under a week.)

So. I spend quite a lot of my time, one way or another, dispensing sex ed. This is cool. It makes me feel useful, and I like helping people have safer sex.

What I need, right, is a sex ed hat. ( Explicit discussion of crafting plots. )

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30

who only by moving can balance

only by balancing move

I am feeling decidedly peevish about this glove

achievement unlocked!

GREAT EXCITEMENT

[knitting] two things

existential (crafting) question of the day

[linkspam] briefly, on knitting

adventures in etymology

I seriously still do not even slightly understand tumblr etiquette

Weirdly enough, I suspect several of you will get a kick out of this

\o/

tonight's adventures in ravelry

ten good things // {at this truth we have arrived/god damn, it's great to be alive}

AND having got that out of my system [which title references an access-locked post]

[picspam] Crafts edition

{I'll keep running from the storm}

someone is gathering every crumb that you drop

-

Bits and pieces

Um.

My most recent endeavour

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June 2025

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