13 March 09
A Different Kind of Detection
Oxbridge attracts a particular kind of American — the academically-inclined if not outright academic, often more than ordinarily anglophilic, and, if male, spreading a bit (okay, a lot) above the beltline and sporting a bow tie. (If you’ve read any David Lodge, Maurice Zapp, though not in fact at Oxbridge though certainly wishing he were, rather than at my alma mater Rummidge/Birmingham, is the perfect portrait.) My many years away from Cambridge — 20, at this point — and my now more than 10 years away from Harvard — where this kind of person occurs in some profusion — have dulled my sensitivity to the type. To be fair, there aren’t many of them in Davis. (Thank God. Davis is, as I have said elsewhere, a cross between Berkeley and North Dakota, and such types are ridiculed in Berkeley and nonexistent in North Dakota. But I digress.)
I ran into one the other night, though, at, of all places, the Davis Knitting Group. A late-middle-aged gent expertly unwinding a skein (hank, if you’re American) of undyed Shetland yarn (horrified there was so much — gasp — color on the knitting needles around the table, not like in Yurp), expostulating on what a backwater Davis was; how when he lived in London he could go to a different play every night; how he hadn’t unpacked all his stuff yet (he owns a ball winder and swifter); how he had taught at Oxford. (Ears prick up; you don’t “teach” at Oxford.) Apparently a doctor, though interested in the intersection of music, philosophy, and the brain. (I thought oh, maybe an Oliver Sacks wannabe?)
My bullshit detector, already on amber alert, started screaming loudly the minute he pronounced Nuffield “Noofield” and I’m afraid I rather rudely concentrated on my yarnovers and knit-two-togethers rather than engage him in a lengthy discourse about London, Oxford, Cambridge, and why Europe is more interesting than Davis. (If it’s theatre you want, buddy, you should have moved to New York.) He turned his attentions to a fascinated and more easily-impressable nurse and they gabbed for three hours about the lamentable state of American medicine.
I was startled at the vehemence of my reaction to this fairly harmless, probably lonely, and certainly rudderless old bumbler. I think it’s partly because I finally, really, feel very protective of Davis. It’s my home now. I have had it with snobs, particularly American ones of the Oxbridgephilic kind. (I’ll make an exception, I think, for Yarn Snobs, but that’s another blog post.)
1 March 09
The Longest Capitol Corridor Train Ever...
… was what we rode on yesterday, some friends and I.
It was full of knitters.
A train with 486 knitters, one knitter’s husband, fifteen staff. Knitters got on in Sacramento (described as lemmings over the cliff by Yvette who got carried along in that current), Davis, Martinez, Richmond, Emeryville, Oakland, and got swept down the east bay to Santa Clara. They had to put two trains together to fit us all in.
I have now, gentle reader, fondled qiviut hair, which costs $90 for a small ball. (And bison, which costs $50.) I bought some luscious Blue Moon yarn (hand-dyed silk/merino worsted). I gave myself a budget and stayed within it (this was nothing short of miraculous, let me tell you; I could have spent ten times my budget within the space of say 10 minutes, and that’s including the queues for paying). (I have, as I believe I mentioned, fondled qiviut.) It was like Macworld on steroids, this place. I overheard the gal at the Calistoga-based button shop say she was really glad she wasn’t into yarn. Ha.
Mostly the fun was the trip down and back, with Mary knitting up her hay bale twine to the amusement of the news crew and Maria working on the mobius scarf Mary had started just because she needed a knitting fix and Yvette learning how to knit on two different-sized needles and Elizabeth bringing her wit and smarts to the whole proceedings. I spent many a slackjawed moment yesterday. I ran into two people I didn’t even know were knitters.
I’m still a bit overwhelmed. But I will dream of qiviut.
5 February 09
Social Media
I’m about to head out to a social media forum at UC Davis. The idea is that there is a need to understand ways to communicate with college applicants if you want to attract them to your campus, but there are many other ways the technology can be useful to university work, and I want to find out more about those sort of things…
Being a social person I’m interested in social media but have resisted, for a long time, signing on to things like MySpace and Facebook, because, well, I have two blogs, they are already getting neglected.
And then Ravelry came into my life.
Ravelry is a social network for knitters and crocheters that this morning stands at 281,975 members. Lest this sound completely innocuous and old-lady-ish, I should fess up that among the 25 or so groups I’m a member of (some of them genuinely dedicated to bits of knitting and fiber arts) out of the by now thousands of groups (some are outlined here ), several are shall we say not particularly old ladyish. An IVF doctor, interested in a sudden spike in traffic directed to his blog from Ravelry, discovered not just one but TWO groups of knitters and crocheters who are childfree by choice, one of them a great deal more vociferous about it than the other, which at least tolerates the presence of self-professed parents (“parenttrolls” are apparently a feature of CFBC groups on the web). The Lazy, Stupid and Godless group not only tolerates but encourages profanity (“twatweasel” is the most interesting word to have entered my lexicon since my twenties, I think).
I will be interested to see what transpires at this forum. But I doubt they’ll be discussing much knitting.
(A phenomenon I’ve encountered though is that people don’t tell you they’re on Facebook. If they are, they’ll find you; if you aren’t, you don’t get it, and they’re not going to waste their breath. No such restraint exercises itself among Ravellers, though.)
28 January 09
Pre-Felting: Socks for a Giant
I’m taking a woodworking class in order to be able to build simple things (like bluebird boxes or a cold frame for my tomatoes and peppers). Carpentry is not unlike knitting, bookmaking, or dressmaking. Cut or make the pieces and put them together. Adornments optional.
6 January 09
Alpaca Koolaid
I found myself in this funky yarn store in Woodland with a scary McCain truck outside and plastic lining on the windows looking for bulky cashmere for my mother’s birthday scarf but all they had was baby alpaca so I took it and ran away but the color wasn’t quite right so remembering you could dye yarn with Koolaid I dove into Safeway where I never go and where I won’t be recognized buying koolaid for god’s sake but I don’t even know what aisle it would be on is it with spices or sodas or even controlled substances but a kindly mother helped me without raising any eyebrows which gave me pause because she ought to have unless she dyes her own yarn too and I got home and filled the crockpot with water and four packets of grape koolaid and the alpaca and the house stank of summer 1967 and I pulled out this bordeaux-colored handful of worms and rinsed it and dried it and rolled it up and knitted it and the cats would just NOT leave it alone worse than catnip it was and they pulled and snagged at it so I had to do it over and this time it’s blocking in the car with no way for cats to get in. But you should smell the car.
You probably can. From wherever you are.
24 December 08
Tvåändsstickning
Which is to say, the Swedish way of knitting from two ends of the same yarn, making a think double stitch and solid fabric on which it is possible to construct raised designs with clever positioning of the two strands.
Bit like burning the candle at both ends, though in theory you get something at the end of it (unless you have to rip it apart, no longer able to deny to yourself that if you were to continue to knit these gloves, they’d be three sizes too large).
It’s all a bit like my life, really.
I have many holiday cards left unwritten, unsent — forgive me if you’re one of the recipients, at this point it may make it as a new year’s card; the stacks of things to do around here don’t seem to diminish on their own. And tomorrow I leave to see a dear internet-free friend for a few days, leaving the cats in the capable hands of Numenius, who looks set to do a scary amount of radio.
But a wonderful surprise, today: picking up a copy of George Johnson’s sumptuously designed new book, The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, I found four illustrations of mine I’d done for him, last year, following my trip to the Santa Fe Science Writers Workshop. I know. It wasn’t writing, but it’s science…
Jennifer: I think this is pronounced tvo-end-stickning?
29 November 08
Second Pair of Socks
I’m getting the hang of turning a heel. I have now taught myself continental knitting, and purling (!), demonstrated to an accomplished continental knitter who said “you’re doing it.” Look out.
Ravelry (still in Beta!) continues to astonish and amaze. Over 200,000 participants, it’s a much larger community than Daily Kos. There are sub-groups (I now belong to, in no particular order, the ham radio Knitters, the thrifty knitters [why buy yarn when you can get a great sweater at the thrift store and frog it, or rip it up and knit it again?], the Terry Pratchett knitters, the birding knitters, composting knitters, the Patrick O’Brian knitters, the Continental knitters, plus the defaults I’m not sure whether to get rid of yet. There isn’t just one Linux knitting group: there’s general Linux and Ubuntu. There are numerous baseball knitting groups (the Red Sox one is predictably huge; the Giants one less so). There are no doubt hundreds of groups of fans of TV shows I’ve never heard of. No shortage of cat groups.
I’ve started entering my stash and needles and future projects (one of which is taking shape now, some fingerless bike commuting gloves for Numenius).
Jeez. I mean, who knew?
18 November 08
Ravelling
In other news, the warm weather we’re having is giving me lots of hope for the yellow beet seeds I put in on Sunday. I have no such hope for the carrot seeds I put in at the same time. Carrots are a bust. I found what grew out of the packet of seeds I dropped sometime over the summer — arugula? — and have put it next to the beet hopefuls.
We have bought a food mill and put a hopperful of cherry tomatoes through it. What emerged was pulp from one bit and seeds and skins from another. I made a slow-cooked tomato sauce, started in the solar cooker and reduced down on the stove. Yum.
20 October 08
A Day in San Francisco
As Numenius said, I had a wonderful day in San Francisco yesterday, hitting Open Studios, a cooking supply place in Japantown, Chloe’s cafe for lunch (see sketch), and the unbelievably fabulous Imagiknit in the Castro. An Irish customer in the shop explained to her friend she had spent months exploring all the yarn stores in San Francisco, and this was by far the best one, she should have started here; mostly, she said, because they were so helpful. (But also, I should add, because the place is like a dream palace of color and texture; it left me speechless.)
Yes, they were helpful. I haven’t done any knitting for over 20 years and I’ve never knit socks, but I have had the WORST hankering to do this. Kurt-the-helpful organized me with a beginner’s pattern and took me over to the fingering yarns. Then he sat me down to do a tension gauge. Hmm, he said. You were taught to knit by a Spanish person… (You have to picture this because I don’t have, and am not likely to provide, a photo: needle under my right arm, balanced on my right boob, and yes, my hands remembered what to do… fast. It’s a fast way to knit).
I ended up with some small bamboo needles for the socks. I can’t fit them under my arm and over my boob, alas. But I’ll just have to draw on my memory of English knitting (thumb under, rather than over, the needle). It’s slower for me but not excruciating, and the needles are lovely. The cats agree. Oh dear.