More on TKGA: Stash enhancement

My earlier post about TKGA Oakland lacked a shopping report. Here are some photos of delicious yarns I bought at TKGA last weekend:

Heavy worsted: Manos del Uruguay - color 113 - bought to attempt the Hot Lava cardi seen most recently on Janice. I have some worries about whether this cropped shape will suit me, but the only way to really find out is to make one & see. This yarn has all my new favorite colors: salmon, seafoam, yellow, chestnut.. mmm!

Worsted weight: This wasn't really a purchase - just a trade. I traded in some brick red/navy/evergreen yarn for this brighter color palette - it turned out I had the wrong yarn for the pattern

Sock yarn:Koigu, Wildfoote, & On Line sock yarn. Such restraint! At Foxy Knits, I only added one skein of KPPPM plus two different shades of navy - I already had the orange. I plan to make Illinois team color items in Koigu. I'm keeping the details to myself until I see if it works. The On Line is going to make a lovely Devan some day, with that gorgeous turquoise Wildfoote as the contrasting color for the back & trim. I also picked up a skein of cashmere in a scarf kit and two skeins of Hand Jive yarns and a jazzy fingerless glove pattern. My last sock yarn acquisition is a muted khaki green Wildfoote. I'm practicing my new skills in continental knitting on Devan.

      

Woo! A breath of fresh air in the stash - new springy colors!

Pick up vs Pick up and knit

This post answers a question C posted on Christina's blog: What's the difference between picking up and picking up and knitting.

Almost all the time, when a pattern says "pick up", it means "pick up and knit", ie, use a new piece of yarn to make new loops along an edge where there were no live stitches before. But there really are two techniques, and you do have to think about which one to use. When I was describing to Christina how I pick up stitches on a sock heel, she realized she had not used another piece of yarn, but had "picked up" one side of each stitch in the heel flap and then knit across those loops. It's a legitimate technique, but not what was wanted in this case

Picking up and knitting is very common, and it's probably what you do already. You have the working needle in the right hand and the yarn maybe in the left... with the working needle, you reach thru the fabric where you are picking up stitches and grab a loop of the new yarn to make a stitch. Repeat until you have the desired number of stitches on the needle. If you pulled the needle out at this point, your new stitches will be probably turn back into string.

Picking up without knitting is very rare, but sometimes a pattern author actually wants you to do it. Usually the pattern will make a big deal about this: pick up WITHOUT KNITTING, it might say. That would mean: without any working yarn at all, just grab a loop from the existing fabric. You might slip an extra double point thru the stitches to be picked up, to get loops on the needle. If you pulled the needle out again, the loops would flatten back into the existing fabric. No string. The next step usually involves using the picked-up loops as stitches.

If you've never done either, knitty has a nice article on picking up and knitting stitches with very clear photos.

TKGA in Oakland

[Editor's note: As of July 27th, both knuknitter and I have confirmed that we were NOT charged twice. The confirmation email we recieved & printed as reciepts was not actually attached to any financial transactions. That means I was not charged at all by their thoughtful online registration process and did owe them the money. So it wasn't robbery... just vexing! - spinnity]

Wow, that was a busy no-sleep weekend - a play Thursday night (Lorca in a Green Dress by at the Renegade Theater Experience), a late night at work Friday and then two solid days of commuting, knitting classes & shopping at The Knitting Guild Association regional conference in Oakland.

About the conference
TKGA, even combined with CGOA, is much, much smaller than Stitches. They ran 6 (not 36) knitting classes at a time. Vendors in the marketplace tended to be based in the West - White Lies, Skein Lane, Hand Jive Knits, Foxy Knits - not the entire country. I was hoping Jordana Paige would have the new Knitter's Messenger Bag, but I had to be content with a very intriguing picture postcard for now. The marketplace filled about half of the vendor hall in the Oakland Convention Center with very wide aisles. I think the marketplace is a nice, manageable size. Worth the trip to get that much variety in one place, but 70 vendors is doable, unlike the onslaught that was Stitches marketplace.

Classes
I took 3 classes: Continental Knitting, Color in Shortrows, and Slim Stash Reduction Plan. I'll just show you the swatches I made in class for now..

        

        

Problems
Organizationally and person-to-person wise, this conference was terrible. My evidence:

• Online registration didn't work Both knuknitter and I registered on the internet. We received confirmation email. We got charged on our credit cards. But when we arrived at the conference, they'd never heard of us. We both had to pay a second time to get into the classes we'd already paid for. So I'm out $140 until I can prove to them that they already charged me. That's crap. Knuknitter was smart enough to bring her email confirmation letter with her, but they wouldn't even accept that as proof she'd paid. Unbelievable.
  
• No TKGA representatives were visible anywhere There was a little area next to registration with flyers, but not a single person. What? We should join a guild so as to collect more flyers? I expected a hospitality something. Somewhere. I expected some hustle from TKGA to get new members. I saw nada.
  
• Complaints about instructors This was not my experience, but others were talking so I gotta pass this on. knuknitter and others had rotten experiences, especially with a 6 hour class on finishing which covered essentially only grafting and mattress stitch. Zzzzzz. I'm sure knuknitter will tell us all about it. Personally, I enjoyed both my classes and appreciated the time Nancie Wiseman and Maureen Mason-Jamieson put into thinking about teaching as well as their knitting expertise.

Bottom line: it was OK.
Personally.. I had a very successful conference. I loved my 3 classes, I shopped a bunch, but not too much, and I got to hang out with friends - including lunch and shopping with Janice on Saturday afternoon and meeting Ada from the San Mateo County knitting meetup. But I was not connected to the wider world of TKGA and I was totally not impressed with their customer service or money management. And I'm way pissed off for those who had to sit through 6 hours of not-so-useful instruction, hoping it would get better. This is not how we make the craft better.

Knitting in the park

I had such a lovely Sunday of knitting after a knit-less week. Stitch-n-Bitch group at OVC was all regulars, just 7 of us. I asked for feedback on the Summer Sweater and we decided it was too long - especially between the armholes and the neckshaping. Janice helped me measure it on my body. I'm going to ravel back 3 inches above the armholes & re-knit the neck shaping. K & C and Abigail were of the opinion that it is too shapeless, and that shapeless people need structure in their sweaters, but they wouldn't offer any opinions about whether I am the sort of shapeless person to whom that applies. For the rest of my time at SnB, I also worked out how to make the sleeve caps for the whales and then knit the first one completely wrong. That was all the time I had for SnB and off I dashed.

Hubby and I swung by Whole Foods for delicious picnic items (Mango Arugula Salad - my new favorite!) and arrived at Free Shakespeare in the Park in Cupertino by 6:10 pm. Knuknitter had staked out a fabulous set of lawn seats for us. We got to attend a bit of the SF Shakes reception before the knitters arrived around 6:30. Knitting Meetup members Christina, Jeff and Sheetal joined us for the performance of Much Ado About Nothing - Sheetal sporting her gorgeous Rosedale. We knit right through to the intermission with good light and some of us kept going in the dark.

The play was very well done - spouse-o and I thought it was their best show in Cupertino yet. The setting looked like WWI era Spain and the ladies' dresses were very evocative of small town life. Beatrice and Benedick were both well-played with a bit more emotion than usual and a very fine scene when Beatrice asks Benedick to kill Claudio. Two minor characters who really struck us were Don John and Dogsbody - Don John was more of a comic villain than in recent productions we've seen, and honestly, he makes a bit more sense that way. Dogsbody, on the other hand, was more human, especially in the speech where he is upset about not having been writ down an ass - where he sobbed a bit in "that hath had losses". Margaret, also, was sharp-witted & bright.

My accomplishments for the day: finished sleeve #1 of the whales and worked sleeve #2 up to the point where the whale motif is required. Just a bit of intarsia and sleeve cap shaping left to go, hurray.

Harry Potter release party

There's been no knitting this week. My hands have really been hurting for the past 2 weeks and I've avoided knitting while letting my paws heal. My only progress was a bit of seaming at Friday night's release party for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. knuknitter turned me on to this event, since some of her students from Shakespeare camp were performing at the party. A group of younger kids performed scenese from Midsummer Night's Dream and then the older group performed a more or less complete (abbridged) version of Much Ado About Nothing. Both groups did really well, getting some good audience reactions.

San Mateo bookstore "M is for Murder" hosted the book release event and did a great job of putting together fun & entertaining stops for the kids visiting "Hogsmeade". They had converted the sidewalks behind all the shops into a series of booths for various Harry Potter topics. They had some fortune telling, Quidditch sign up, a sorting hat, and some vendors selling book lights, stuffed wizard dolls, and Hogwarts school ties. Some of it was hokey and some probably didn't sell very well, but there were a LOT of people on the streets and in "Hogsmeade" all evening.

Our group wandered through Hogsmeade and the bookstore between performances and then queued up around 11:30 to wait for midnight. by this time our group was 8 people, including my brother, knuknitter, my
husband, Mel and her husband plus two more friends of knuknitter's from the SF Shakespeare organization. Mel, of course, brought her knitting and so we gals stood in line talking about brioche stitch patterns until we drove the men to drink. There was a midnight countdown and our group of 8 adults walked away with , um, 8 copies of the book.

Today after a some unavoidable engagements in the morning, I settled in around 3pm to read Half-blood Prince. At 12:30, I finished the book and handed it over to my DH for his turn. (He meanwhile enjoyed our lazy afternoon & evening by re-reading (no joke) books 4 and 5. He's a machine!)

Book report: This is my favorite Harry Potter book yet. After 5 books in which Dumbledore and McGonigall ask multiple times per book "Is there anything you want to tell us, Harry?", finally Harry is starting to have grownup relationships with his teachers. I enjoyed Harry in another leadership role, as in Book 4 where he led the covert defence against the dark arts lessons.

I think Rowling is improving as a writer. The writing style was more engaging and let me stay in the story world better than some previous books (Book 4 seemed especially clunky, with very uninventive sentence structure. Book 5 just needed editing. The angry Harry was no fun to live with for, what?, 800 pages?)

More good things: We saw more different points of view in this book, which increased my interest. The sheer number of characters and relationships qualifies the book for "epic" status. But even with so many lines to follow, the plot moves along quickly and makes pretty good sense, with one really dumb hole on page 434.

Some bad things: There were a couple of big "whaaaaaa?" moments for me - a typo on page 10 had me worried that this book would be a tough slog, and a detail as late as p 521 had me asking "what did I miss."

The middle section had the most laughs, starting around page 195 with a very funny encounter with Professor Trelawny. Around page 400 or so, humor takes a back seat as the plot pace quickens. I was writing down page numbers where interesting things happened and my notes got much denser as we move towards the end.

So. Engaging, well-structured, a bit busy with characters & concepts from all the previous books. Possibly not a great book for young readers, like 7 - 9, just due to number of people to track and motivations which may not make senbse to them. But I dug it. I have a ton of ideas about what happens next - what we will see in Book 7. Can't wait to find some other big geeks like myself who have finished the book to discuss it with!

Summer knitting progress photos

Well, I asked for a summer of cotton, and I've got it in spades. I didn't realize this would also be my blue period! Just call me Ms Picasso. All of today's progress photos are blue cotton UFOs.

First, the Summer Sweater Along, Week 10 update, from July 6. J was on vacation last week, so she either made tons of progress or got a tan... I'll find out tomorrow. T is nearly to the armholes of her first piece. T is acutally making the "Where's the Opaque" sweater, so she started on the front, which is the only opaque piece in the sweater. She is doing the dense work first, ending the front with a sheer bit. We had a little session on how to do decreases and armhole bindoffs before she left for HER week of vacation, so I expect a finished piece when she comes back. After that, all her pieces will be sheer and move much more quickly than the front. H did her gauge swatch, is off by a little bit, and needs to borrow some needles.

Me, I managed to produce a front to the Summer Sweater from June 25 to July 10, and here it is:

The silver line across the chest is the (stupid. 14". straight.) needle as of Saturday. Sunday I did the shoulders and the cute pick up/bind off trim around the neckline, which will have to wait for another photo day.

I love the drape of this fabric and the color. Tiny worries plague my mind: But you didn't wash the swatch. What if it stretches? It already hangs at ass-level. Will it reach your knees as it stretches during the day? I'm a little nervous, but I _WILL_ re-knit this if it comes out too large. I love the shape so far.

Next, whales. (Yes, they are really dolphins or porpoises or similar.. but they are stuck with their name.)

Here we have 2 fronts, seamed at the shoulders to the back, and half a sleeve. The baby for whom this was designated is already 3 weeks old (today!) and so I am working my hardest on finishing this sweater.

Finally, "Cotton Candy", or Blue Stripes:

I *love* this sweater. I love the yarn, the pattern, the trim details. I'm apparently hanging back a little on finishing it - needs only seams on the pockets, buttons and one more trip through the washer to improve shrinkage. Baby Rebekka's birthday is next Wednesday.

And, for those who still remember.. the most significant UFO of them all has seen ZERO action in the past 3 months. Poor OXO Gansey. Poor spouse-o.

How you like these buttons?

On Saturday, Wendy phoned from the streets of Cupertino for help. She had ridden her bike several miles to the last known location of 3 Beads and a Button and discovered, as I did about 6 months ago, that they are no longer where we left them. Apparently sometime in the past 2 years they moved about a mile west.

Using the Internet, I was able to tell Wendy the new location at Stevens Creek and De Anza. I decided to meet her there to hunt for buttons for Nearly-Finished-Objects - three of hers and one of mine. After digging through many, many vintage buttons stored at knee level, I bought 2 set of candidate buttons for the Fog Chaser jacket. Wendy found contenders for all three of her projects. Two Vietnamese sandwiches later, we were on our way back home.

So here are the candidate buttons and the body of Fog Chaser (click for bigger picture):

Gold-edged, with purple centers and a slight feeling of irregularity. I like the way the square shape echos the seed stitch texture of the jacket. But even with buttons chosen, I don't think this NFO will be finished any time soon. I can't imagine working on this project just now... it's too dang summer to work on bulky mohair.

How to start a grass fire

So, I mentioned we'd been birding in the mountains. The area we were in blends from desert vegetation (cholla cactus, Joshua trees) to grasslands, to pine forests. It's dry. Even near the Kern River and Isabella lake, the hillsides are brown, dry grass. In other words: tinder.

On the day we arrived, at about 5 pm, we witnessed the start of a grass fire on Sierra Way, right next to the river. We were birding (of course) at a spot known as Migrant Corner, where Sierra Way crosses one fork of the Kern River. A pickup truck loaded with poorly-packed camping gear screeched into the pullout across from us, and we could see flames pretty much covering the bed of the truck. Michael, a native of the area, recognized the situation very quickly. "Here comes trouble."

Mom & two teenagers hopped out & started pulling burning objects out of the truck onto the road. Second truck pulls up. A guy jumps out, grabs the water jugs from the back of the truck and says "Pour these on the flames!", so we do.

After water is applied, most of the flames are out, but everything is still smoldering. To save the truck and ensure the fire is really out, son pulls a few more items. One of the smoldering items lands at the edge of the road, where weeds are growing thru the pavement. Whoompf! A 6-foot section of weeds lights on fire. Shouting. Excitement. "Call 9-1-1!". Flames cross from the road to the grass beside the road. Whoompf! 15 feet of flames along the ground. And, ROAR! Off go the flames up the hillside.

From the time the kid pulled the smoldering item out of the truck to full hillside in flames was less than a minute.

At this point, we ran back across the road, and watched the fire climb the hillside. It would burn through an area of scrub brush as far as it could go, then settle down to burn up what it had touched. Then wind or a stray blade of grass would provide the bridge to a new area and, Whoompf! A whole new area catches fire. We watched small mammals running away from the flames and bats flying through the smoke towards us. Orioles in the trees by the river are fleeing the scene.

We left after watching the fire for about 10 minutes. We were late to rendezvous with the rest of our party and we were just in the way at the scene. Our birding buddy Michael stayed on and watched helicopters bring water from the lake in long dangly tubes to drop on the fire. The firefighters had it contained and out that evening. As we left the scene, the kid who had been pulling stuff out of the truck bed was trying to get bandages and burn cream for his hands.

Lessons learned:

Do not drive around in a fire danger area with flammable camping gear in your truck bed. We assume the fire started with a cigarette landing the the camping gear or matches amongst the gear somehow igniting.

When ditching burning items out of your truck, throw them TOWARDS the road, not away. The road won't burn.

Carry trashbags in your car, in case you need to dispose of all your formerly-useful camping gear now charred beyond recognition.

Once the fire gets into the grass, do not try to put it out. Call the pros.

Know which way the wind is blowing.

Seriously. Keep fire and items which were previously on fire away from the grass.

No knitting... we've been birding!

Spouse-o and I have been off birding and/or working lately, so I'm afraid there's very little knitting going on here. We spent last weekend at the Audubon Kern River Preserve near Isabella Lake, 50 miles east of Bakersfield, California. The trip was organized by Bob Power, birder & teacher extraordinnaire, for his Palo Alto Adult School class in beginning birding. Most of the birders were new-ish, but very motivated and very well trained through Bob's class.

We stayed in a lovely motel called the Sequoia Lodge with a moose, loon & fish theme to the decor. Breakfast and lunch every day came from the Golden Trout Baking Company. The area is just beautiful and looks like a great place to go rafting, fishing, hiking... The weather ranged from perfect to beastly hot, but cooled off every evening.

Our trip lists are posted online at BirdWalker, in case you want to know what kinds of birds we saw, but I think a little visual might give you a better idea why this trip was so great:

          

I know. They're all birds. But I love them. For all the photos from this trip, see the birdWalker photo index. And, if you like the photos, please drop by my spouse-o's blog and tell him so!
[All photos copyright Bill Walker, 2005. Please ask for permission to use them elsewhere.]

I learned several important lessons on this trip.

• It's time to cut the apron strings. So much homework goes into planning a successful birding trip. For ten years, we've been letting our birding guide friends do the work. But we should do it. By ourselves. In 2005.
• Anything that doesn't kill you, makes you a better birder
• It's easier to get up at 5:30 if you are in bed before 10:30
• When they say fire danger is high, it's no joke. See next post.

[Obligatory knitting content] I had hoped to knit a bit on the Summer Sweater on the trip, but our cars were just packed with birders and I didn't feel like I could take up the extra space with my knitting. But I did make about 3 inches of progress on the way home. I'm now nearly done with the sheer portion of the front & ready to crank on this project to ensure *any* summer wearing time for this awesome-looking sweater.