We're all pink this month for breast cancer research, right? Well knitters, what do you think about this chair, designed by Sara Rotman? Looks to me like yarn gone wild, with knitting needles protruding from the seat.
Think I'll just make a direct donation.
Scene: EK's bedroom. She is alone in the house except for the collies and birds.
Action: The Evenstar "toe" is on the needles, ready for more wrestling into submission.
EK: (takes deep breath) OK, I boiled the cables of the Addi Lace needles beyond al dente. Oh I like that, cables with no minds at all! Let's move these stitches onto compliant needles. (moves stitches, starts knitting). Behold!! Sharp tips really matter! Soft cables are so much nicer. Joins could be a tad smoother, but what an improvement.
In the space of a few hours, what looks like a shawl, and not a toe, is created:
EK: Wow, 3/4 of the way through the chart. If I didn't have to go out tonight, I'd finish it. What joy!
DH walks in; is shown infant shawl.
DH: Lovely lace but it doesn't look like a shawl yet.
EK is left pondering other uses for sharp needles.
End of Act II.
Well, now that I've tried these cheapie Inox Prym needles, I must say that they are quite nice. Oh the joins aren't as lovely-smooth as on the Addis but the cord relaxed without needing to be heated to near 100 deg C, and the Teflon coating moves the yarn along with just enough grab that I don't fear dropping sts (Addi Turbos are a little too slick sometimes; not the Golds though). And besides, Addis do not come in 2.75 mm, so there! And you can see how one knits a watermelon out of wool. It's fascinating to watch the pattern develop just by doing stockinette st over and over and over again. I do find the wool to be a bit on the scratchy side; Marian says it softens and fluffs up with washing, so these will be washed in Eucalan until they soften enough.
Ah, the reason for the mindless knitting project - Tuesday night, the neighboring town's council decided to pull the pending ordinance in the face of impending implosion from the flood of at least 50 of us who opposed it - and a lot of us came from out of town. Good to see democracy in action.
Or some other bit of incantation dribble, that about sums up my take on the long-awaited HP Book 7. I am disappointed. Really disappointed in the writing quality (very uneven), the red herrings (far too many of them, big detraction and distraction from the plot), the parts that didn't jibe with what we've come to know about wizards and witches in JK Rowling's world (there's a scene where Hermione and I forgot after only 2 days whether it was Harry or Ron, but Hermione and male companion #1 drag, yes drag, male companion #2. Did they forget they had wands and could do magic? Levicorpus? Wingardia leviosa? McGonagall should expel them!), the too-rushed deaths of characters we've come to love, the rather bland end to the evil Voldemort wrought (unlike LOTR, where Sauron's end builds to a might climax, Voldemort's was just so expected, really) and the unanswered questions. And the Epilogue! As if from a different book, all cutesy-pie, sweetness and light. What happened in those 19 years? How did the wizarding world rebuild? JKR read a lot of Tolkien, it is obvious. How could she have missed "The Scouring of the Shire?" Oh, maybe she only saw the movie version of "Return of the King," that could explain it. My biggest problems:
1) the picaresque subnovel - the entire "we've got no plan, let's go here, let's go there, kids" in search of the deathly hallows. Deathly? Together they defeat death. Hallows? Coming from the Peverell brothers, maybe unhallows. This entire subplot should have been lost with a capital L. Was James descended from a Peverell? That should have made him a Slytherin. Still do not know how he came to have the invisibility cloak. My guess- won it in a bet.
2) the whole wand thing. In the first book, much is made of the wand choosing the wizard. As the series progressed, this seemed to go by the wayside until Book 7, where it doesn't matter anymore who uses whose wand. Harry repairing his wand with the elder wand? Because we never do find out what happens to Ollivander (tempted by the dark side of the force too much, eh?) and Grindelwald is dead. Speaking of whom, how come dark wizards like the Malfoys and Lestranges didn't buy their wands from Grindelwald?
3) the lack of closure. It's a kids' series, wrap it up nicely. Even the end of Snape didn't satisfy anything. How could someone who was a sentimentalist enough to have a silver doe for a patronus to show his love for Lily acted so beastly to Harry for 6 books? It does not hang at all.
4) the Dumbledore backstory. Did we need this? Couldn't Aberforth have been PO'd over being left with a fragile sister (cursed by some Death-Eater, say) while big brother Albus is courted for Minister of magic and gets to live in the nice castle that is Hogwarts. Muggle boys attacking a young witch like Ariana would have gotten something in return - remember what Harry did to Aunt Marge in Book 3? Fragile baby sister succumbs to curse, Aberforth takes up inn-keeping, no story about Aberforth and goat (as if it was necessary).
I am done ranting and with the non-knitting content of this post. I found a detailed review, almost page by page HERE, if you are interested. Warning: some vulgar and not too nice language in places, but the writing is funny for the most part.
OK, back to knitting. Notice how the "wand" in the photo resembles Brittany walnut knitting needles? If I take one and wave it around, do you think I can enchant my needles to finish all my FOs for me, like Molly Weasley and Hermione? Guess the only magic around here will be the loop on my sock needle.
I am spoiled. I am spoiled by Addi Turbos. I should have expected it from reading about everyone's experiences with Addi Turbo circular needles and finding out for myself in the short time I've been sock and otherwise knitting circularly. But what's a knitter who needs a 2.75 mm needles to do? Addi doesn't make needles in that diameter, but Yarn Cubby does, with a clever elastic cord between the the pins. A brillian idea, I thought at first, and rushed to buy whatever length I could find. Last night was the moment of truth as I casted on for a new pair of socks using my lovely and now discontinued Sundara Meridian sport merino wool. The Lilacs pattern by Jeanie Townsend (check out her blog, Just Jeanie, to see the pattern; there's a link on my list) calls for more stitches around, so I figured I should go down from a 3 mm to a 2.75 mm, and I still don't have a 2.5 mm set of circulars (whatever was I thinking? I have 2 mm but not 2.5 mm??). Anyway, I casted on using the tubular cast-on I like so much from the Embossed Leaves pattern - and the yarn does not slide nicely from cord to pin. Not at all. The pins are not tapered down to the cord, so there is not as smooth a join as the Addis have. The elastic cord is kind of grabby, and the plating on the pins has more a sand-blasted or matte finish, rather than a smooth finish, so yarn does not glide along but has to be pushed along. I don't mind the pin part; I live in fear of losing sts on the Addis; sometime I think they are too smooth for some yarns. But these stretchy circulars really make it difficult to move sts from pin to cord to pin when I use the magic loop technique. Any others have experiences to share with these needles? Are the 10" long sock needles by yarn Cubby better for sock knitting? I suppose with those you just knit around, but how you do really small circumferences on them is not obvious, at least to me, with the cord being too short for magic loop and my loathing of dpns.
