I need a new knitting project

I think that about sums it up. I killed an hour of time searching patterns on Ravelry and couldn't come up with anything inspiring.

I don't really like knitting socks, though since I don't really mind wearing handknit socks, maybe I should get over it and try starting a new pair. Knitting for db is always fun, but summer is coming and it seems that all the good children's patterns are in Danish, Icelandic, or French.

Hats are fun - and in fact, I just knit this one. Hineri, a free ravelry download. Love it, love the yarn, and maybe if the predicted blizzard actually happens, I will be able to wear it this year. If I knit it again I'll be more careful about not pulling the first cable too tightly - it fits, but let's just say it's good I have a small head.

















I used to like knitting myself sweaters, but they all seem to be just not very exciting after they're done, and the fit is often not exactly right - they generally end up feeling not really worth the cost of yarn and labor. I do seem to be much more interested in knitting classic, fairisle-type things lately - there's just a stunning amount of bad design out there on Ravelry and elsewhere. Elizabeth Zimmermann, save us!

Work, db, and Words with Friends also conspire to keep me from knitting - though with work, it's not all bad. I've decided that since I'm not likely to leave my current university before I get tenure and I've done more than enough for tenure, the time has come to read again - the grind of production for teaching and publication has really rendered me a shell of whatever I was before this process started. I spent this afternoon reading the first third of a recent study of the rise of the cult of Hanuman in modern Hinduism and it was so absolutely wonderful to be learning something for a change.

Yeah, I didn't get an offer from either place I gave a talk. At school #1, I was sorry not to get an offer; at school #2, I was not. They were rude and terrible when I was there; rumor has it that it's been declared a failed search and if that's not a sign of a divided and screwed up department and/or university, I don't know what is. They certainly seem to have lived up to their bad reputation!

Though of course I desperately wanted an offer from them so I could leverage a better situation here in NYC, where we remain deeply strapped for cash and barely (not really) able to pay for preschool next year. Db ended up getting into a few places, but after the requisite amount of upper west side parent hand-wringing, we decided to go with the Montessori option.

I was pretty sceptical about Montessori at first, but then I really liked the way that the teachers worked with db when we went for our "audition" and having done a little reading, it also seemed to me that Montessori generally seems to project less parental baggage onto childhood, particularly the idea that kids need to feel "free" and to be "creative" and have "fun." Most people deeply desire some combination of these these things because they feel dehumanized, exhausted, and otherwise gutted by their jobs, and then I think they project their own set of needs onto their thoroughly modern notion of childhood. However, it does seem to me that what db wants more than anything else - including having "fun" - is to feel accomplished, and properly executed Montessori education seems to gives kids structured and valuable opportunities to feel accomplished. I also liked that Montessori classrooms seem to be much more equipped to accommodate kids who want to work alone. Db is not outgoing, and while I of course want her to learn to be friendly with other kids, what I saw happening at the "play-based" preschools was the shy kids getting left out and then having nowhere to go that is primarily designed for solitary play.

Of course, I think that more than anything else, what matters is a good teacher, and of course, that is the one thing that you can't see before you fork over your security deposit.

Oh, yeah. Security deposit. For preschool.

Anyway. How interesting it will be to see all my preschool theories crushed by actual experience!

Aviatrix

Posting photos in haste - it's midterm week (and curse email for making students think they can ask me questions 24/7), book deadline looming, not a lot of quality sleeping going on at the moment...but despite the general mayhem involved in living a relatively normal life, I have somehow managed to knit a cute little aviator cap for a friend's incoming baby girl. The almost finished cap is being modeled by db, who was fascinated with the un-sewn-in end:




















Aviatrix, a Ravelry freebie, is truly an amazing pattern. I also think it may be the only reasonably cute baby hat that will actually stay on a baby's head. I knit it in Blue Sky Alpacas worsted weight 50 merino/50 alpaca - an absolutely lovely yarn. To get gauge for the worsted version of the pattern (which is written for three different yarn weights!) I knit the body of the hat on a 10 and the ribbing on an 8.



















All that remains is to sew on buttons so it has a functioning chin strap - let's see if I manage to get a finished object photo posted. I hate to bet against myself, but I don't think it's going to happen.

bottoms, tops, and a disturbing bustier

We haven't been so much with the blogging this past month here at knitcrit mission control, though there has been a fair amount of knitting and also a fair amount of criticism, the latter mainly taking the form of yelling at the TV whilst helplessly watching the public option die a slow, painful death. The former, a much more pleasant subject, involved knitting a soaker to go with Topaz out of the leftover light green - baby girls don't sit like ladies (the bulky diaper gets in the way, I suppose), so one way to help them pull off the dress is to provide a coordinated underlayer. In this case, the soaker I knit to go with Topaz also looks very cute with db's monkey onesie.

This was a freebie on Ravelry, searchable under the name "Fancy Pants." I had no idea what a soaker was before about three weeks ago and it turns out there's quite a range of soaker patterns out there, so I can't say that I had any reason for choosing this one - I can't even remember how I found it, actually.

For the past few winters, Todd has worn an embarrassingly ugly black knit hat emblazoned with the ASCAP logo (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers). In some ways, this is the type of hat that one can indeed get away with wearing on the northern fringes of the Upper West Side, but I finally got sick enough of looking at it to make him probably the millionth Koolhaas to be worn on the streets of New York City. No matter - it looks great, of course - it's really a bulletproof pattern.

Db wonders why her dad gets the cool hat.























And finally, as I begin to contemplate my return to work at the end of January, I find myself looking at this this lovely image and wondering what exactly I find to be profoundly wrong with it. Besides everything.

Baby Pope of the Fuzzy Purple People, Pray for Us

We're just back from the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Montreal. Having db at the conference was a lot easier and more fun than I thought. People sure do love babies - I had the distinct impression that, if given a choice between attending a paper session or kissing db's tiny soft adorable baby feet, probably about 99% of the conference attendees would select the latter, without hesitation.

Somehow, we had made it to November without a handknit winter hat for db; I briefly considered buying one for Montreal, but quickly realized that were I to put something store bought on her head, I would regret it forever and secretly regard it as indicative of my failure as both a knitter and a mother. Plus of course I love knitting dorky hats for babies too helpless to resist having them put on their tiny bald heads. So I bought a ball of the fine 50% merino/50% angora Cloud Nine (Cascade Yarns) and by the time we pulled up to our friend's house in Montreal, I had produced a hat that kind of makes db look like the child-pope of the fuzzy purple people.























I couldn't stop laughing at for the whole first day it was on her head, and had Montreal not gotten unseasonably warm and therefore not good fuzzy hat weather, I probably would have continued laughing over the next few days, too.

Speaking of weather, the friend we stayed with is a climate scientist who so completely embodies the absentminded scientist archetype that he had seven, count'em, SEVEN expired jars of aspirin and ibuprofen in his medicine cabinet.















The collection ranges in vintage from 2002 (an excellent year for ibuprofen) to 2008 and had been moved from at least one apartment in New York City to two different apartments in Montreal.

The internet (so reliable...) says that the US military (again, so reliable...) has done tests on ibuprofen that indicate that the medicine retains full potency for at least a year after the expiration date and that older medication loses potency but does not turn into deadly poison (which was our concern). Todd went for the 2008 ibuprofen; he's still alive and well as of this writing.

I had a job interview at the conference, about which I am deeply, deeply ambivalent. My current job has a crap sabbatical policy and a high teaching load, but other than that, I am very happy at it. The potential new job is at one of the richest and most selective liberal arts colleges in the country, located in rural Vermont in between the Green Mountains and the Adirondack Mountains. The nearest real city is Montreal, actually - three hours by car. In terms of cost of living and school for db, the job would be a real improvement, and the teaching load is much lighter and the sabbatical policy much better. The school is so rich that it OWNS ITS OWN SKI SLOPE. Anyway, I think I interviewed very, very well and now I am afraid I am going to have to go give a job talk in January. It's too early to be having this crisis since they won't announce their short list until mid-December, but I can't help but wonder if I would adjust to the rural life and vastly improve my skiing skills or go absolutely out of my mind because the nearest good sushi would be a 3 hour drive away.

quickie

I knit a tiny newborn size hat for my incoming niece:






















Between this and the pirate hat, she'll easily be the coolest baby in Portland, which given the hipster population of Portland is really a meaningful title.

The hat was made on #5 dpns with scraps of Zara from baby projects past - the beautiful green is, alas, discontinued. I used the proportions of the hospital hat that db wore right after she was born - basically, I cast on 70 stitches and knit random stripes in the round in a 1x1 rib for 3.5 inches; I then switched to stockinette and reduced as follows: k8, k2tog for one round; knit one round; k7, k2tog for one round; knit one round; continue in pattern until you reach k4, k2tog round, at which point eliminate the knit rounds. When only 5 stitches remain (you'll have to improvise at the very end since the pattern of reductions only gets you to about 8 stitches at the end - for the final round, I think I k1, k2tog to get the final stitch count down to 5), change colors and knit about 1.5 inches of i-cord.

















The flower itself comes from this Knitty pattern: http://knitty.com/ISSUEfall07/PATTflowerpower.html

Having a baby has given me great insight into the uselessness of most baby knits - I can't imagine a newborn hat staying on unless it's knit in 1x1 rib and for slightly older babies, unless the hat ties under the chin, I don't see it staying on, either. Or maybe my hat-despising daughter is exceptional (well, of course she's exceptional in every way...) and she's given me a warped perspective on babywear.























Together with the pirate hat, I think this is a great gift, which is to say a gift I'd like to receive. It's amazing to look at the tiny flower hat and the pirate hat together - babies' heads really do expand at a disturbing rate during the first three months. The only thing that immediately strikes me as more disturbing (crossing my legs as I type) is the thought of pushing out a three-month-old size head rather than a newborn-sized head.

Arrrr

The baby pirate hat is finished - icord around the edges and a good blocking on a cereal bowl worked wonders for both the evenness of the colorwork and the curling of the earflaps.
















Db was obliging enough to model the hat - and I do mean obliging, since she absolutely hates having anything on her head. It's a bit large for her eight week old head - I figure it's about the right size for a three month old, which is about what I was going for, amazingly enough.

Basically, I knit this free earflap hat pattern

http://heyjulie.wordpress.com/2007/03/20/babykids-earflap-hat/

on 100 stitches (the jolly roger is a 20 stitch pattern from this pattern: http://cmeknit.blogspot.com/2006/10/skull-flap-hat.html) and made these few modifications which make sense if read alongside the original pattern:

I used Zara (salmon) and Aurora 8 (gray); it was exactly enough Aurora 8 - hardly any leftovers. Knitting the hat with two colors of Zara would be safer since Zara has more yardage. I knit the non-fairisle parts of the hat on threes and the fairisle on fives. Gauge for the threes was 6 stitches per inch and gauge for the fives was 7 stitches per inch.


















Increase to 19 stitches for the earflaps; after knitting both earflaps, cast on 15, knit the first earflap, cast on 36, knit the second earflap, cast on 15, join to work in round. 104 stitches (which becomes 100 stitches after one round if you follow pattern's advice of k2tog four times on the first round after the join). Begin working the jolly roger motif after knitting two or so rounds in the base color.


















After the jolly roger motif is finished, knit one or two rounds in base color and then decrease every other round as indicated in the pattern (knitting a round in between every decrease round) until there are 68 stitches on the needle; then decrease every round until 5 (?) stitches remain.

Finish with 3-stitch applied i-cord; tassels are 4-stitch i-cord.

Rage, rage against the pale pink blight

Despite a recent trip to the local second hand store with several bags of the most egregiously pink baby gifts, I still feel as though there's way too much pink in db's wardrobe. Not that pink seems to bother her.















She's just started smiling.















On the one hand, it's very gratifying to finally have an interactive baby after six weeks of newborn aloofness. Adorable aloofness, of course, but still. On the other hand, I feel strangely sad about db's passage from newborn to baby - she's totally different now. Probably this won't be the last time I marvel at how much she's changed.

I've also been forced to take it really easy for the past few weeks because of the abnormally long hard labor, and one can only watch so many episodes of the Sopranos before cabin fever sets in. The solution to both problems was, obviously, stenciling. The internet is full of free stencil images, and a few trips to the local art store and several swipes of the exacto knife later, we've begun to build a onesie wardrobe befitting a thinking, hip baby girl (as opposed to a wardrobe befitting a Barbie dream mansion-esque baby girl):































I'm quite pleased with the results so far.






















Probably db is, too.

The stencil patterns are all from this website: http://www.kittybuttons.com/stencils/categories/index.html

Instructions on stenciling here:
http://www.melissaclifton.com/tutorial-stencilb.html

In other thinking-hip-girl-baby wardrobe news, I'm knitting an earflap hat for Todd's brother's incoming baby girl. This is the swatch of the jolly roger motif:















The pattern is a highly improvised combination of this free adult-size hat design:

http://cmeknit.blogspot.com/2006/10/skull-flap-hat.html






















With this free baby hat pattern

http://heyjulie.wordpress.com/2007/03/20/babykids-earflap-hat/














I'm knitting it in Zara (salmon) and Aurora 8 (gray) merino. So far, so good, except of course the earflaps curl. I'm hoping blocking and applied i-cord will solve the problem but thinking maybe I should have done the earflaps in garter stitch. Oh, well. It's amazing what acute sleep deprivation will do to one's perfectionistic tendencies.

If the baby is not really cute, at least its hat will be

I am so pleased with my newborn hat.

















So cute. And probably the first thing I've designed that I really like. Good omen?


















Stats and (loosely speaking) pattern (and yeah, I am almost certainly not the first person to come up with the idea of putting a leaf on top of a hat):

gauge: 2 x 2 inch square is 15 by 22 in stockinette (15 st wide by 22 st high)

Makes one newborn hat; bottom band circumference 12 1/2 inches (ustretched); 5 inches from bottom of band to top of hat (excluding i-cord and leaf).

Supplies:

1 ball green Mandarin Petit by Sandensgarn
1 ball white Mandarin Petit by Sandensgarn
4 #1 dpn

Cast on 108 stitches with white. Knit 2 Purl 2 rib for 8 rounds. Knit 4 rounds. Join green, knit 3 rounds (to avoid ugly "step," use jogless jog at end of first green round). Join white, knit two rounds (to avoid ugly "step," use jogless jog at end of first white round). Join green, work one round in k 1 green, k 1 white. Knit two rounds in white. Knit one round in k 1 white, k 1 green. (I carried the yarn up) Knit in white until piece measures approximately 3 1/2 inches.

















Decrease top as follows: *k 15, k 2 tog; repeat from * until end of round. Yeah, I know there are three stitches left over after your final k 2 tog. Feel free to figure out a better starting stitch number if you are anal and want to make a PERFECT baby hat. Otherwise, k 3 remaining stitches in round. That said, look at the decreases. I bet you can't tell where I fudged.


















(and no, I didn't hide the fudge decreases with the leaf)

K one round.

*K 14, k 2 tog; repeat from * until the last repetition, at which point you fudge slightly and K 15, K2 tog, and then K remaining stitches in round (I think from now on 3 remain).

K one round.

*K 13, K 2 tog; repeat from * until last repetition, at which point you fudge again: K 14, K2 tog, and then k remaining stitches in round.

K one round.

Continue decreasing as indicated as described above (also continuing with fudge factor on last repeat) until you complete a round in which you only K 2 tog. At this point I think I had five stitches left. Work white in i-cord for 1 round. Join green and work i-cord for approximately 8 rounds. Make 1 stitch using the method of your choice for a total of 6 stitches on the needle. For the excellent double-sided leaf (no purl side! reversible!), Use "Just a Leaf," an excellent Ravelry free pattern by Hink.

Weave in ends (duh).

eating my hat

Just in time for spring, we've been experiencing the first really cold weather of the year in NYC this week, and as I walk around the city with numb ears, I've had the opportunity to reflect on all my slightly failed hat projects.
















This one is pretty warm and it covers my ears, but it's also a little too Groverskin-esque to really pass muster on the streets of Manhattan. A hat, shall we say, from a more innocent time.
















And then there' s this one, knit using guidelines from The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns out of some lovely Noro that a friend gave me on the occasion of my dissertation defense. I cranked it out on a particularly rocking new year's eve two years ago - it was the year that Todd and I really tried to boycott the whole despair-inducing vomit-fest, but then at midnight there was a virtuoso illegal fireworks show in our neighborhood and, drawn by the explosions and generally festive noise of sirens, we scuttled around the streets for a bit, me wearing my new hat. This one is both lovely and capable of covering my ears (making it the ice skating hat of choice), but it's pure wool, and more than a little itchy. The scarf is, of course, the Multidirectional Diagonal Scarf, a wonder of a pattern with a refreshingly or disappointingly prosaic name, depending on your perspective.
















This one is knit from totally gorgeous soft hand-spun alpaca that I picked up in a town outside of Boulder whilst on vacation with friends a few years ago. Actually, it was vacation for me - they were in the thick of research for this excellent book. Anyway, we went to the alpaca ranch, met the very adorable alpacas, and I came home with enough yarn for a scarf and hat and also a deep desire to become an alpaca farmer. Seriously. Especially after teaching days like today.
















Note the subtle silver thread. It's brilliant yarn, truly. Alas, I loved Grumperina's Odessa pattern too much to let petty gauge concerns keep me from knitting it in this alpaca, and the result is a very warm hat that doesn't quite make it over my ears and that also gives me a deeply ferocious case of hathead (not pictured).























And the matching scarf I knit from the rest of it is really warm and lovely but I did learn the hard way that a 3x4 ribbing will in fact roll. I actually figured this out when I was knitting it, but mostly I knit the scarf while waiting for Todd to come out of surgery during that truly excellent period of our lives when he got attacked in Georgia and his jaw was shattered and then wired shut for six weeks. So anyway, it was the only knitting I had in the hospital and I just decided to go with it despite the rolling. I toy with the idea of unraveling both the hat and the scarf and starting over. Maybe someday. After those wedding stoles are done.
















And this one, knit with fuzzy slightly itchy mystery yarn purchased in the old bazaar of Shimla during my first trip to India - very cool design (Todd's, actually) and the height of hipster fashion a few years ago in the city. While it does cover my ears, let's just say that India is not the place to buy really warm yarn (I have this whole idea about opening high-end yarn stores in India, actually. After I start the alpaca farm.)
















The beret was the star of my very first blog post, and I do love it, but it's actually a bit too large for my small head - no fault of the pattern - and so, while it covers the ears, it doesn't exactly keep the wind out. On the bright side, the hathead factor is minimal, which is what inspired me to knit a beret in the first place. Plus, Ksar's Bouton d'Or is brilliantly soft.

So: dorky but warm; warm but itchy; soft but cold ears and terminal hathead; formerly stylish and cold; and soft with no hathead but cold ears.























But it will be spring soon.

It's that time of the year again

And coupled with that time of the month, my friends, I think we can safely say that this is not the best week on record.

By that time of the year of course I mean the time of year when professors everywhere find themselves drowning in - or smothered beneath - or perhaps crushed by - papers written by underslept and overcaffeinated undergraduates. In addition to the despair arising from the sheer volume of work, there is the bonus despair arising from the revelation that many students have not been significantly influenced by all that their longsuffering professors have done to rescue them from their academic mediocrity. On the bright side, as this gem from one of my many, many, many Anthro 1001 student ethnographies attests, academic mediocrity is sometimes very funny:

"They all wear t-shirts that have La Bella's logo and the phone number for deliveries on the back of it, and caps in order to cover their hair for sanity purposes."

I should wear hats more often.

Hats like this one:
















Gretel by Ysolda Teague, knit in the regular size with two balls of Bouton d'Or's Ksar in Encre. Because this is also a knitting blog.