Fidget

From the Winter 2005 issue of Interweave Knits magazine; pattern by Katy Ryan.
Yarn: Katia Tundra, 50% wool / 40% acrylic / 10% viscose

In honor of the solstice (first day of yay, summer!) I’m finally posting this finished project, my first full-size sweater. I actually finished it awhile back, in April I think, and it has been cool enough to wear it a few times. It’s quite warm and cozy so I’ll be happy to have it come winter.

I think the thing I am most pleased about with this sweater is how the yarn looks, knitted up. It’s multicolored in a sort of heathery way, and space-dyed on very, very long repeats. So the bottom edge of a sleeve starts out with the yarn as a blend of aqua, purple, and gray; and then it very gradually changes to a mix of teal, pink, and brown. It was kind of a step out of my comfort zone to choose a purple/pinky yarn since those generally aren’t the colors I choose - but I figured with all those base colors this sweater would match a lot of things, whether warm neutrals, cool neutrals, denim… even pink. Though I don’t own many pink things, it matches my favorite jeans quite nicely!

The thing I am least satisfied with is the upper sleeve area. Those came out a little bulky, and my shoulders are somewhat broad for my overall size and shape anyway, so I’m sure it’s one of those things where I notice it because it’s a sensitive figure-area for me. For the next sweater I knit, I will probably go for a raglan-style sleeve instead of set-in.

I’m not sure if this had an impact on the sleeve issue, but I knit a larger size at a smaller gauge. That took some figuring, and maybe I miscalculated somewhere. But I found this trick worked out pretty well so I definitely won’t hesitate to try it again, maybe just not with a design with set-in sleeves. Another change that I made to the pattern was working the top few inches of the back in ribbing. I was afraid that just binding off stockinette would make the back neckline look really unfinished (and it would most likely curl.) Also I used short-row shaping instead of stepped bind-off, to avoid a jaggedy effect in that same area; and that allowed me to use 3-needle bind off as the shoulder seams. (I avoid seaming whenever I can.) So that all worked out well. The straps were very long, but I decided to leave them that way and wear them criss-crossed in front and tied in back (to avoid the belly-bow look. I am not a teddy bear.) Here’s the back view:

A genius. My husband, that is.

Yep, as if I needed more proof, BN has spent a few days mastering the Rubik’s Cube. He’s got it all deconstructed and can solve it now, while hardly batting an eye. I mixed it up thoroughly for him and he walked me through his solution. The general concepts made sense, but I just can’t hold long strings of sequential images or spacial positions in my head for long enough to ever be able to do this myself. It’s still like magic to watch.

I learned from BN that if you repeat any sequence of moves enough times you will end up with the same configuration that you had at the start. That makes sense, right? (What’s shown in the image on the left is part way through an experiment with this - don’t worry, I mixed it up a lot better than that to challenge BN!) But, the magical part that I still can’t get my brain around is how you change one of those little cubes, move it and rotate it just the way you want, while all the other ones go back to their original positions.

… is a wilderness area where we went backpacking this past weekend. It’s west of Portland, near Mount Hood. We didn’t see Mount Hood except in the dark while we were driving out to our target base camp, a campground near the Salmon River. We got a late start and when we arrived the road was unexpectedly closed, ahead of the campground, due to a wash-out. So we pitched our tent on the road, just beyond the barrier, and waited to see what the morning light would show.

As it turned out, this road-closure area was a fine place to park our car and our hike was not very much longer than planned. We did have to drive out to get a recreation pass before we started, though.

On that first day it was overcast but not too cold. Much of our trail was along a narrow path on the side of a steep hill. Tall, narrow trees densely covered the slopes and masked most of the scenery except for smaller bushes and trees, and thick underbrush, near the trail. There were lots of interesting sights - moss-covered trees and logs, luminous green maples, various wildflowers, and pink rhododendrons - only a bit more wild-looking than the ones you see in gardens all over Eugene during this time of year. Beautiful.

The first night we camped quite a scramble down from the trail, near a rushing creek. At first it seemed like a good idea to soak my hot, nearly-blistered feet but it was so, so cold that a quick dip was all I could manage without my knees starting to ache! There had been a constant sort of mist for most of the afternoon and evening. It didn’t actually rain much, but there was always moisture floating down from the sky and dripping off of the trees. BN gave it a good long try to build a fire, but it was just too wet. Wet ground, wet wood, wet rocks around the firepit. Oh, well.

Here’s a picture of some trees in our first campsite:

Some parts of Oregon are significantly covered in moss! When you spend time outdoors in places like this Salmon river area, you know why. It’s like a rainforest, there’s always a “rain” falling from the branches.

On our second day we had slightly heavier, more continuous rain. Walking along the narrow trail thickly lined with wet ferns and bushes, one gets pretty soaked from the knees down. And, this trip really brought home the point that it’s really hard, once something gets wet, to dry it out with no sun and no fire. We camped on the edge of a clearing that sloped steeply down to the river, which we could hear but not really see.

BN set up one of our ponchos as a makeshift shelter, and water collected and ran out through the opening where the poncho’s hood was. We collected enough water during the night to fill several Nalgene bottles. Wow!

The area that we were in had several waterfalls along the Salmon river, but we never saw any of them because they were down in steep, inaccessible canyons. We crossed various little tributary creeks on our hikes, and camped and rested at several sizeable creeks. The most visibility that we got of the Salmon river itself was on our hike back out to our car. It was lovely, and made me dream of hot sunny days where some of the spots we saw would have definite swimming-hole potential.

An interesting note about this trip - no mosquitoes. Anywhere to be seen - we didn’t get a single bug bite. Though, after our trip to the Antelope Refuge last June, we had been careful to stock up on bug repellent spray and packed our bug hats. Both items stayed in the packs. Fine with me! Well, we earned a different scout badge this time - the Damp Conditions badge.

My favorite music:

It’s pretty hard for me to say I like or don’t like a given genre of music - except there are some that I truly despise: like country! (I think it’s mostly an attitude thing. Country singers sound cheesy and sentimental to me…) And some of my tastes rule out other genres like heavy metal or hardcore because I don’t like vocals that are screamed rather than sung. I guess that’s how I would sum up what I like: I like guys and girls who sing, with natural style (not too much affectation) and with meaningful/interesting lyrics. My favorite songs are ones I can sing along to. I tend to like bands rather than pop diva/divo? [what’s the male equivalent of diva? Sister-in-law, help me out here…] types. I like it when rock bands mix in some fancy instruments like piano, strings, and brass. I notice the singing first, and it’s kind of a make-or-break thing for me, but I also pay attention to the instruments. One of my favorite songs is by Sarah Masen and it’s got her pretty voice, and then an interlude that mixes a kind of wail-y electric guitar with twangy banjo. Nice! I like classic/old school jazz, ever since I took a history-of-jazz class for my senior semester and got turned on to Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and Duke Ellington. I like the Beatles, because they deserve it. I liked Ska during that fad - tons of fun!

My favorite artists:

These ones I like pretty much every song they’ve played, and I’m loyal to them for my own reasons (regardless of popularity or cultural “importance”):

Coldplay

Switchfoot

the Newsboys* (my first rock music love)

the Waiting*

Jack Johnson

Some other top favorites:

Collective Soul

Lemon Jelly (I usually don’t care for electronic music but this is in a class by itself)

Sarah Masen*

Barenaked Ladies (Go, Canada!)

Dave Matthews Band

R.E.M.

U2

Beatles

Dianogah (scant on the vocals; drums and bass play the melody. Cool!)

Thelonious Monk

Miles Davis

Jars of Clay

Sixpence None the Richer

the Sundays

Cranberries

Silage*

Dido

Simon & Garfunkel

Enya

Five Iron Frenzy*

These artists, while I can’t say I like everything I’ve heard (and maybe haven’t heard much anyway) have songs on my favorites list:

Alanis Morissette

Burlap to Cashmere*

Built to Spill

Cat Stevens

Counting Crows

Cracker

Death Cab for Cutie

Flaming Lips

Frou Frou

Goo Goo Dolls

Modest Mouse

Natalie Merchant

Norah Jones

Phish

the Police

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Sheryl Crow

Smash Mouth

Squirrel Nut Zippers

Tori Amos

The Cloud Room

*If you haven’t heard of these people or can’t find them on iTunes or Pandora, it’s probably because they are in the “Contemporary Christian” pigeonhole. But I think they’re just as cool… goes back to that meaningful lyrics thing…