brilliant at breakfast

2007-01-01T15:54:00.000-08:00

The quarter ended well, and I've been enjoying the break immensely! My knee has most of its flexibility back, and I'll be working for the next few months on getting my strength back.

Excitement! I've been knitting the first of my pair of Urban Necessity convertible mitts, out of Elann Super Tweed in Cranberry Wine. (Photos are forthcoming!)

Four balls of Baby Silk came in the same yummy shipment as the Super Tweed — two in Parchment and two in Oxblood, destined to become a pair of Eunny Jang's Endpaper Mitts. It feels deliciously soft, and I'm really hoping my fingers won't feel too big and clumsy for the tiny needles.

I'm also thinking about (later, much later) knitting a Scenester Scarf-Hat, maybe in KnitPicks Suri Dream? I was considering the Decadence yarn in Winter Berry, but I'd have to double it to get gauge.

Remember that Not-Quite-Straight Scarf I'd almost finished a month or so ago for a friend of mine? It took me this long to polish it off, and now it's soaking. It'll be my first blocking adventure; I hope it works out! This pattern is fabulous, and I can't wait to knit my own.

2006-12-02T22:50:00.000-08:00

Knit Unto Others Wrap-Up

(A cap to the capital, modeled by a teddy bear going to an ROTC toy drive. We are so virtuous over here Chez Brilliant.)

The Knit Unto Others knitting is a success! Eleven hats for Caps to the Capital, plus a scarf for The Red Scarf Project, for a lucky total of 12. (The green mittens never quite got off the ground, sadly; they simply were not to be under these circumstances.) I am very happy about this.

That Frankenhat in the bottom left corner has me completely charmed. Yarns are Swish Superwash in Wisteria, Ocean, and Deep Navy, and brown Patons Classic some-such (aka Sweet Fancy Moses It's An Enormous Loaf of Yarn).

Please forgive the mediocre scarf photo. Here's a mediocre scarf close-up, for variety. It's a mistake rib stitch for texture yumminess.

Another major source of pride:

Knitty's Fetching in less than one ball of Lily Chin Gramercy yarn (teal), for a friend of mine (the first photo is me modeling it).

This is definitely the most intricate project I've ever attempted, not to mention completed. I honed my dpn skills on this one, learned cabling without a cable needle (thanks Grumperina! And I'd never done a project with cables before, just swatches), learned the picot bind-off, did my first thumb thingy (picking up stitches and all!)... big milestones for me all around.

It's been a few good weeks for knitting, albeit a few bad weeks for my health. Only a few papers and tests are standing between me and the end of the quarter—I'm really looking forward to being home for a while.

Anyway, I really enjoy this selfless knitting, but it's getting pretty cold outside and I've realized that after knitting for a year, I have nothing hand-knit for myself. And it's cold. This makes me feel slightly foolish. So I think it's time to start some green tweedy handwarmers, because I love green. And tweed. And warmed hands.

2006-11-27T21:11:00.001-08:00

Novio and I having fun with the most fun of all types of mail—yarn and books!

In the spirit of Vicki's post here, I'm making an official declaration of my good-cause knitting for the next long while. I should have posted this, oh, around the 18th, since I've had this in my head since before then and been acting on since then with the Knit Unto Others knit-a-long, so it's nice to lay it out in words (and pictures).

From Hearts to Hands: a pair of mittens from two balls of Swish Superwash (aka Cushy Superwash Yarn of Joy) in Dublin (yay green!). (December 10.)

Their current progress is rather disappointing considering how far I've gotten on everyone else that's due so much later, but they're my first mittens, and I'm a bit overwhelmed. I'm trying this cabled mitten pattern, though you would never know it from this current progress photo.

Caps to the Capital: many many many. (Okay, six.) All done except one needs seaming. (Send by January 2.)

The Red Scarf Project (knit-a-long here): a scarf out of three balls of Swish Superwash in Fired Brick. (Send in January.)

(I also have enough sock yarn for three pairs, and two balls of Shamrock because I loves me some tweed and I could use some fingerless mitts, but they'll wait, because I don't need them nearly as much as the recipients of these projects do.)

Once I finish with these projects, Dulaan and Warm Woolies are on my list.

Knitting for a good cause just makes sense, at least for me; it's easy to feel overwhelmed and impotent in the face of the suffering that goes on in the world every day, but this is a tangible expression of love that will make it to a real person who needs it. I know first-hand how important it is, when your life is tough, to receive help that's genuine, not condescending or resentful. And I love knitting way out of proportion to how much I need or can use knitted things, so it works on multiple selfish levels, really.

2006-11-13T12:11:00.000-08:00

Last weekend the Sports Injury Gods paid me a visit. I thought I was immune, having never played, you know, a sport. Apparently, however, ballroom dancing counts, and the hubris I displayed in joining the team about a month ago has been punished accordingly.

I dislocated my left kneecap. Yeah that hurts. And when you're not really used to the idea that parts of your body can shift in ways they never have before and really shouldn't, it's scary too. Thank god for insurance and painkillers. Especially insurance. And painkillers.

Fortunately nothing tore, and now I'm even able to hobble along without crutches! Oh the things you can be proud of after a week in bed. This was my view for that week:

Things could always be worse.

At this point I really need to be catching up on some work, but for a few days there it was completely acceptable for me to knit and listen to Sufjan Stevens all day. In that spirit of gleeful sloth, Brilliant at Breakfast brings you two opuses (opi?): the Not-Quite-Straight scarf and the Training Sock.

Opus the first:

The Not-Quite-Straight scarf, from an ingenious and quickly-memorized pattern by All Buttoned Up. I love this pattern and its results. This one is a gift for a fellow Southern Californian who goes to school in Massachusetts (brr) and is definitely not enjoying weather as clement as that shown in the previous photograph, so it's nice that I had so much downtime to make a lot of progress. If he gets this before winter is over (since it's Massachusetts, isn't that anytime before May?), I'll consider it a major victory.

Speaking of major victories, this past week marked a huge turning point in my knitting career: I may be ready for socks. Opus the second:

After a few hours/days/millennia of squinting at the Socks 101 article by Kate Atherley at Knitty, I created that work of art.

Of course it's not perfect. The block of reverse stockinette after the heel is from when I forgot how to hold the needles (Craftster be praised for setting me straight), and see that yarn needle up above it, threaded but hopeless? I was going to finish it and weave in ends and enjoy a happy life with my training sock before I realized I had no clue what the hell I was doing.

Finishing. I don't know how to do it. The baby kimono is all knitted, the baby is alive and well, and I'm wondering how long babies can fit into a size called "newborn" because I don't know how to graft it. Or seam it. Or whatever it's called. And I fear the same fate for the Not-Quite-Straight gift scarf. It's just pathetic to finish such nice gifts and then not be able to give them because of one last hurdle, so this next week—Thanksgiving break!—I'll have to set aside some time for figuring it out. It'll be handy during a few of the many hours Novio will no doubt be completely absorbed in his programming and I will no doubt shun studies to return to The Days of Sufjan and Knitting*.

*According to the musical genius' online bio, knitting and crocheting number among his interests, so this combination may have been more apt than I realized at the time. And my friend met him and he was sweet and reserved and talked to her much longer than he had to. I promise I'm not usually such a hipster, but god his work is gorgeous.

2006-08-20T18:51:00.000-07:00

There hasn't been much knitting since returning home -- having my luggage (and therefore all my projects), eh, misplaced for a few days broke my stride. (Air Canada took care of it pretty quickly, though. I'm impressed with how favorably the experience compared to the nightmares my mind immediately conjured up.)

Instead of knitting, I've been teaching myself to crochet! I've got the chain stitch and single crochet down. At least I hope so. I'll have to keep practicing to come out with a constant number of stitches every row. There's a lot I like about it, including how intricate-looking mere single crochet is.

Also, lots of stash enhancement. (Such a nice euphemism for unbridled consumption! I like.) Lots.

I made my first-ever trip to my actual Local Yarn Store, at least the one that's local when I'm home: Unwind. Very nice, friendly and knowledgeable owner and staff, and plenty of yarn on sale, including all Lily Chin yarn for $1 a ball. Yes, really. I nearly cleaned them out.

The trip taught a valuable lesson: My mother is an unexpectedly dangerous woman to shop for yarn with. She immediately gravitated toward the cashmere and silk, and finally decided on this for a simple black scarf and hat:

Finally, two sites brilliantly appeal to my love for tidiness and cataloging: LibraryThing and CraftMemo. Hours of soothing organizational enjoyment to be had!

2006-08-15T07:48:00.000-07:00

To give myself a break from the temporary daunting nature of the lace-up gloves, I started the Mason-Dixon Knitting baby kimono for my pregnant aunt. (Well, for her baby. Ha.)

I'm about half-done now, and the pattern is so simple but ingenious that I'm learning a lot (casting on at the end of rows? binding off in the middle of rows? you can do that?) and gaining tons of confidence. It's great fun to watch it grow on the needles into something that actually looks like... a baby kimono.

The eyelet edging created by the yarnovers has me utterly charmed.

2006-08-11T08:38:00.000-07:00

So after almost-finishing a third Caps to the Capital hat, I gave in and started on Ysolda's lace-up opera gloves. I'm at that tricky fifth row, with the picking-up-and-knitting, and I'm afraid I'm doing it wrong. Hopefully the fiddlyness and the crazy tightness just come with the territory and it will all turn out okay.

The Craftster thread about them has helped, especially since Ysolda herself has answered the most likely questions there! Such is the wonder of the internet.

Yesterday was a great day in my life: I learned how to ride a bike! Yes, at my ripe old age. I vaguely remember learning how when I was five (training wheels!), doing well for a month or so, and then moving somewhere (city-like, I assume) where I had no bike opportunities.

That suited me fine for another, oh, thirteen years or so, but my college's campus is enormous. This past year my dorm was a good ten or fifteen minutes away from most classes by foot, not to mention a very daunting twenty to thirty minutes away from the gym. I made it through, but with many envious looks at the students zipping by me.

This coming year I am living a few minutes further from the center of campus, so in the interest of my not wasting hours a week walking to class, Novio had given me a lesson (i.e., gotten me outside on my bike falling over a lot) during the school year a few months ago, and yesterday we had the follow-up.

"How long do you think it'll be until I can bike to class?" I asked him before we found an empty parking lot.

"Until you believe you can." Oh, Novio, you and your Marquez-like Latin wisdom.

What followed seemed like magical realism indeed -- there were only a few, eh, unplanned stops, and no real wipe-outs. I cheerfully wheeled around the curved lot, making sharper and sharper turns and even (almost) biking in a straight line. Then I fell and scraped my hands up and thought more handlebar-gripping might not be in the cards, so we headed home.

On the way I started biking again, up a hill even (!), and finally we had the option of taking a shortcut down an inviting hill or going longer down a flat road.

Obviously I made the intrepid choice.

And of course construction had apparently just begun on the hill, creating invisible-from-the-top but big-and-terrifying-and-painful-from-the-middle craters in it.

I wiped out, ending up on my back looking up the the hill, and the bike landed on top of me. Fortunately all my organs are intact, but I've got impressive-looking bruises all over my legs and scrapes on my hands and a particularly nasty half-moon scrape on my belly, where I think the end of a handle landed. Eesh.

But now I can finally ride a bike. The bruises are so worth it.

2006-08-08T14:08:00.000-07:00

best. summer. ever.

Today's phrase you can be proud of yourself for saying only if you are a three-year-old or a foreign language-learner:
"He encontrado la billetera de Novio!"

I have several FO's to show off — all of them, actually, as none has ever been photographed and shown off to an adoring public. They include:

my first project, a scarf in pimptastic purple eyelash yarn for my mother (I am repentant, but that's the yarn she asked for)
the ballband dishcloth, the knitting of which was almost a spiritual experience
the drawstring gift bag, to hold gift yarn and needles for my boyfriend's little sister, who is learning
the first Caps to the Capital hat, complete with baby's (my) first (horrifically ugly) sewn seam
and the second ballband dishcloth (lovely soothing airport-knitting, especially once I — much to my surprise — memorized the pattern)

I'm working on my second Caps to the Capital hat — an unqualified pleasure thanks in part to the yarn, which I'm completely in love with. It's superwash wool and it knits up into this almost cushy fabric... glorious. Altogether, this yarn (one ball Wisteria and one Deep Ocean) will make about four little hats (10" diameter, because third-world babies tend to have low birth weight... I can't even talk about it).

In the same KnitPicks order that brought the Cushy Superwash Yarn of Joy, I also got several sizes of double-pointed needles. Oh boy. I am attempting to muster up the courage and know-how to make my first full-sized hat (the Caps to the Capital hats are knit flat. In 1x1 ribbing and stockinette. Make one, you could do it in a catatonic state and finish it before you come to).