Tour de Fleece

As you might have guessed from the photos, below, I’ve been spinning a lot lately. I’m participating in the Tour de Fleece, which is a (fiber) spinning event that coincides in time with the Tour de France. Different categories separate different spinners, and you can join teams. I’m in Team Rookies since it really is less than a year since I got my wheel, hard to believe. I’m also in Team JulieSpins because the fiber I’m spinning — a soft-as-butter Blue-faced Leicester — was dyed by the hugely talented Julie Sandell of Massachusetts, whose work can be found here and here.

The Tour de France ends on Sunday, and I find myself gathering my wits, cats, and early hours to try and get all the fiber spun. I separated all 30 ounces out into vague color likenesses, and decided on a traditional 3-ply (versus Navajo, or chain, ply, which would have preserved longer color repeats but which is inherently less stable and uneven than the teutonic solidity of a 3-ply). I could have made this a lot easier for myself and gotten a lot more yarn if I’d chosen a 2-ply, but 3-ply blends the colors better and the yarn is more rounded.

I’m going to use this stuff to make a side-to-side jacket, inspired by kimono construction but tapered at the waist by means of short rows. Designing as you go results in some ripping out. I don’t mind this, I’ve discovered. Maybe in my old age i really am becoming more patient. I just hope I have enough yarn…

Yellow, pinky yellow, pinky magenta, magenta plum: I’m calling this yarn Nectarinada.

Added July 26, 2010: I finished the whole 2.5 lbs. It’s dense!!

Rivalry

Occasionally there is a game to remind us that there is more to the Giants-Dodgers rivalry (which dates back 120 years) than mocking the Dodgers fans for tossing beach balls around their home stadium. Last night was one of these. We missed all the good bits: the Giants’ ace pitcher, Tim Lincecum, started off badly, walking the first batter of the game on four pitches and giving up a home run in the first inning to put the Giants behind 3-0. Things were showing no sign of improving, so I turned off the radio. Checking in online in the top of the 9th, I delight to see an update come in where the Giants take the lead 6-5 on an Andres Torres double, and turn the radio back on. I learn that in the interim, the following has happened:

1) Tim Lincecum (who is lacking control this evening, remember) hits Dodgers batter Matt Kemp with a pitch. He charges the mound; players swarm to restrain the two. The Dodgers’ bench coach gets quite irate. The umpire warns both benches.

2) The reliever who takes over for Lincecum, Denny Bautista, throws a couple of pitches that go inside; the Dodgers’ bench coach yells something about this and gets ejected as a result.

3) The Dodgers retaliate. In the top of the 7th, their starter Clayton Kershaw hits Aaron Rowand with his first pitch of the inning. Having been warned, Kershaw and Dodgers manager Joe Torre get ejected. Dodgers coach Don Mattingly steps in for Torre.

4) Somehow through all this the Giants claw back from 5-1 to 5-4.

5) It is the top of the 9th. Dodgers closer Jonathan Broxton struggles a bit, and the bases are loaded. There is a conference on the mound, and acting manager Mattingly comes out to the mound. He steps off the mound, thinks “oh, one more thing”, and returns to the mound. Giants manager Bruce Bochy notices this, points it out to the umpire. The umpire concurs. According to the rules, two visits by a manager to the mound means the pitcher must be taken out of the game. The Dodgers are forced to take off their closer, and bring on their struggling-this-year reliever George Sherrill, who is allowed (according to the rules) only eight pitches to warm up.

6) Torres hits his double, and the Giants take the lead. Buster Posey, the Giants top-prospect-turned-hottest-of-rookies, gets an additional RBI and the Giants lead 7-5.

7) The Giants’ usual closer, Brian Wilson has pitched in the previous four games and is unavailable, but Jeremy Affeldt takes over closing duties, and the Giants win it.

See, just another usual day at the park.

Spinning: Different Day, Different Cat

Soccer Quandaries

I listened to my first baseball game following the World Cup, the Giants beating the New York Mets 2-0, Tim Lincecum throwing a complete game shutout. I’m not quite ready to give up soccer for another four years, and for now continue to pay attention to the sport. So far this means a) finishing Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett’s latest novel about the wizards at Unseen University being coerced into fielding a football team against the town folk of Ankh-Morpork, the ending of which bearing more than a slight resemblance to the Spain-Netherlands final b) reading Jonathan Wilson’s recent treatise Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics c) learning that Billy Beane, the much-heralded general manager for the baseball team the Oakland Athletics, has in recent years become a soccer fanatic; indeed some suspect he’s gotten bored with baseball and only cares about soccer these days d) wondering if Billy Beane’s favorite English Premier League team, Tottenham Hotspur, would be a good one for me to follow and maybe adopt (it would not do to become a fan of any of the EPL “Big Four” — that’s like defaulting to being a Yankees fan) But chances for me to watch soccer without broadband or any sort of cable TV are few and far between, so maybe I stick to baseball on the radio…

Gané,

Ganaste, ganó, ganamos, ganasteis, ganaron.

(I’m still in shock but we are back from Oregon where we saw Rana Rachel and Dan get married in the most gorgeous spot, had a lovely Thai lunch with Dale prior to a focused expedition to Powells, met the Knitting Rabbi as Numenius mentioned, and watched two football matches. One of which was very, very key. It involved my wearing a red shirt and I’m afraid I made a bit of a spectacle of myself in a bar at the Portland airport, but I may well get over it.)

Wayfarers From The Land Of Knitting

We’re in Corvallis, Oregon this weekend for a wedding. The wedding is tomorrow late afternoon; today there was a mixer for the guests. We were talking to the bride’s parents for a bit, and Pica was certain she recognized one of the guests. She got into a conversation with him, and he turned out to be the rabbi who is officiating the wedding. Pica tried about everywhere in her past where she might have run into him — nothing seemed likely. “Ravelry?” he suggested, thinking of his online social networks. We were awestruck — never in a million years would Pica have thought of a connection through that most famous of knitting social websites. His username on Ravelry is RabbiDave; Pica was pretty sure she had seen his name there. But Pica was still convinced she had run across him in person. They eventually solved the mystery. When Pica was traveling to Maine back in March, she got stuck in Portland, Oregon for a day. Having a free afternoon there, she wandered into the store The Yarn Garden on Hawthorne Blvd. and got into an animated conversation with the clerk about her trip to Maine. Behind them entered a guy who was very intent on looking at the sock yarn. That was, it turned out, our rabbi, who lives up in Portland. The bride is also on Ravelry; conversation strayed little from the Land of Knitting hence.

Superstition

Spain face Germany in a few hours. Like Maradona and his rosary beads, elaborate wardrobe shifts, and no doubt favorite drawers, I am filled with the irrational urge to don a red shirt, but wonder whether that will jinx the team.

Many athletes have elaborate superstitious rituals some of which border, like Maradona’s, on the theatrically absurd. Fans do as well. I’m trying to resist, trying to talk myself out of it. But what I’ve noticed for sure is that my syntax has become more British in the fast three weeks. It’s something to do with the language of football and I don’t think it’s a superstition, it’s more elemental.

So do I believe Paul the Octopus in his prognostications? do I believe they are always flawed when he is pitching Spain against Germany? Sigh. To any non-soccer types reading the blog, at least it will all be over soon, one way or the other.

And Then There Were Eight

We get a bit of a breather until the next World Cup matches; the quarterfinals don’t begin until Friday. I’m not quite sure how I will deal without this diet of twice or thrice-daily footie matches. In the quarterfinals I am rooting for Netherlands over Brazil, Germany over Argentina, Spain over Paraguay, and am indifferent in Ghana vs. Uruguay (it will be neat seeing either team in the semis). I’m afraid attending to what is happening in baseball is quite difficult now. The two sports are just on completely different elemental planes of action, especially when you compare the intensity of the World Cup to the middle of a baseball season.

Back from Pennsylvania

Spending a week just outside Gettysburg, studying 9th-century European lettering: bliss. Bliss was the long table with papers and ink and writing easels. Bliss was the conversation with other letterform devotees, sharing table and morning coffee (well, tea in my case) outside in the warm humid dawn. Bliss was rising on the solstice before the sun and greeting it accompanied by a gold flute echoing back the mourning dove’s soft song. Bliss was the delight of learning how to grind stick ink.

Bliss, too, the discovery of voices that haunt this landscape and seem to want to find their way onto paper. I will try and do this as soon as I can before the memory of the lush green rotting landscape evaporates in the Central Valley heat.

I sketched at Little Round Top and from Cemetery Ridge, looking down on the field with fences faced by Pickett’s division, marching double time up into Union canister. Ghosts.

One Week Behind The Jabulani

We’re deep in the trenches of following the World Cup, and will be in that mode for the next three weeks. Mexico’s win today 2-0 over France has brought the most satisfaction of any match to date; with 44 matches remaining in the tournament more delights and disappointments are surely to come. Not having a television I am quite happy that ESPN Radio has stepped up to broadcasting all the matches on radio. The flip side of this intense focus on the sport one month out of every four years is I don’t really have much access to following top-flight soccer the other forty-seven months. It’s a tad of a predicament.