journal

New cable charts

Two new charts: the Simple Celtic Panel and the Composite Celtic Panel.

They are both worked on a foundation of 15 stitches, which means that they can be used as a non-waist-shaping alternative side panel for Rogue.

The Corbimite maneuver

Thanks to the two of you who tagged me as a thinking blogger.  The only problem is that I certainly don’t post enough, do I?  (That’d be for the same reasons resulting in a serious curtailment in knitting quality time.) 

I’m glad that some people like to think about knitting and intellectual property at the same time… well, at least once in a while.  I have to get other people to do it, because it’s not the sort of thing that can form the basis of a thriving legal practice.

Now, like Carol, I need to reserve the right to add to my list of bloggers who make me think:

• Kim always writes analytically about knitting, and causes useful information about knitting to be preserved for posterity.
• We made the decision to homeschool (this is probably the most personal thing I’ve ever posted in this blog; you can only infer that I have children based on my writing), but I’m not the one who’s doing the work or participating in homeschooling communities.  But I bookmark and think about Jo’s posts on education.

In the meantime, something to save brainpower, and something to ponder.

First, please play with this yarn count converter and tell me if I’ve messed up anything.  It’s a converter/calculator that translates your yarn count (such as 2/3.4 Nm) into a knitter-friendly put-up (metres/yards per 50g/1.75 oz), estimates the gauge, and computes the length of yarn from the mass. 

There’s already a handy conversion tool out there for switching between Tex, worsted count, and so forth, but it doesn’t have the most knitter-friendly output.  So, after I finished up my cashmere-mill-end-buying-binge, I realized I wanted to have a more convenient conversion tool.  And there you go. (The other function I wrote up is an adding machine, which adds up two or more yarn counts and estimates your gauge when you knit with them held together.  I need to finish that part and upload it.)

Secondly, something I discovered while I was searching about for DK yarn in just the right shade of red. 

You know this:
www.yarndex.com

This is, of course, the online database run by Yarnmarket, a U.S. retailer.  They have a U.S. registered trademark for YARNDEX for use in association with “[p]romoting the goods and services of others by means of operating an on-line shopping mall with links to the retail services of others and providing an on-line computer database featuring trade information in the field of yarn, thread, and floss”. 

Now look at this:
www.yarndexforyarn.com

Whoops.

The business behind this second link is woolneedlework.com, a Canadian-based retailer that ships to the U.S.  How long has this site actually been running?  The domain name was registered in August 2005, about six months after Yarndex was launched. 

(The woolneedlework.com and yarndexforyarn.com domains were registered through a provider called Corbimite Web Solutions, hence the title of this post.  It’s not because I don’t know how to spell the names of fictional materials in the Star Trek universe.)

In the end, I went with cheap.  KnitPicks Merino Style in Maple Leaf.

Back from the listserv grave

The play.

That thing is nearly five years old. If I were to write it today, it’d wind up being longer. And it would involve a fiber holy war after the acrylic rug burn remark. And extra quoted posts so that the length of the giant ASCII sig was doubled through line breaks.

And I’d add someone dumping on a second person dumping on a third person for asking a newbie question.

And someone griping about so-called “direct from the mill to you” retailers stealing revenue from bricks-and-mortar shops.

And someone pointing out that while it’s generally easier to ask Google first before asking several thousand other people, in that specific case maybe that wouldn’t be true because the OP can’t spell. (And someone asking what “OP” means.)

And someone complaining about the way the listowner manages the list.

Oh, and some kind of trademark dispute. That’d be funny too.

And another tiny slice of irony

The funny thing is, before the most recent rash of trademark-related activity, I was in the process of renaming and redeploying the so-called “stitch and bitch” part of my site.

Here’s the lame old main page for my first site design, circa April 2001 (the March 2001 link wasn’t working just now). Likely not all of the graphics will load, but there you see in the text– “Stitch & Bitch”. At the time, that section comprised only the mailing list digest “parody” and a poll — interactive content! (I’m still fond of that digest; I should resurrect it.) I don’t know where I heard the expression “stitch and bitch” that caused me to use it as a heading. Obviously I must have heard or read it somewhere at least as early as late 2000 or early 2001. I’m guessing it was on the knitlist, because that was my primary source of knitting gab at the time.

I did add other things to the section intermittently. There was a piece that was (kind of) about innovation in knitting (which I still mean to repost and write a sequel about! someday!), and another sort-of interactive knitting list drinking game (you know, take a drink when someone posts about their surgery, or misspells “copyright”). The drinking game used a bog-standard guestbook script so that people could add to the list. Then other stuff got added: the agony aunt (another thing I keep meaning to restore), the garter stitch scarf instructions. And an explanation that the rantings were mine with only the occasional opportunity for reader participation, because a couple of times I was asked by readers how they could participate. (Yup, blogging software made life a lot easier.) Later, I reorganized the site, and subdivided the “stitch” and the “bitch”: “stitch” for useful stuff, “bitch” for less useful.

But late last year, I started thinking that the “stitch and bitch” title wasn’t really suitable: if you saw that title, you wouldn’t think, “oh, here’s where to find all the useful tips and humorous articles”, you’d think of… something else.

So in planning a site redesign, I thought I’d put the useful stuff into “tips and techniques”, the funny stuff into “diversions” (that’s something else that’s been defunct for a while — there used to be knitting-related wordsearches and memory games), and the ranty stuff, um, in the journal, I guess, because that’s where I’ve been putting it lately. The splash page for the site reflects this reorganization, although all those links don’t work yet.

(And the “knitting form and function” bit? Snooty? Well, I had to put something there. If it wasn’t there, for all you know the website could be about spinning or salad or something. And there’s form — clothing and other things that are knit — and function — the widgets I’m still working on and techniques. Get it? Get it?)

So, in short, if you had actually noticed that I had a stitch & bitch section on my website at one point, and then noticed that it was gone, I’m just saying that it had nothing to do with anybody’s real or purported trademark rights.

This is why we back up.

I’m about to install WordPress 2.0 here. So if anything goes wrong, that’s what happened.

Now where the hell did the comments link go?

Okay, good. Minor CSS tweaks tomorrow. The rest of the site later.

Monthly archives are back

Over to the right, you’ll see two drop-down selection boxes for month and year. In theory, once you select two values, you’ll be transported to the posts from that period. You won’t be transported anywhere unless two values are selected. If no posts exist for the month you chose, you’ll have to use your back button.

Let there be joy and celebration. Let jubilation reign.

(Yes, I know 2006 hasn’t happened yet. And you’ll find that there’s maybe, like, one post for each of 2001 through 2003. In fact, I can’t remember if there actually is a post in 2003, since I didn’t restore all the old posts after the Great Server Crash of 2004. So have fun.)

Toys for knitting geeks (now with edits!)

… of the widget variety. Yeah, I’m no graphic designer, and good heavens, I was surprised to see that I could zip a file with no effort (um, did every version of OS X have that built in? because I wasn’t paying attention).

Anyway. If you slogged through my most recent Knitty article, you might have run out of energy and therefore need assistance with even the most trivial of tasks. So here’s little tool to help you with your number-crunching.

If you have a Mac and you’re running OS X Tiger, you can download the same calculator tool in widget form (scroll down to the bottom of the page). If you install it and think that the format is grotesquely huge (it’s 514 pixels wide), let me know so I can reduce the size for future widgets (oh, there are so many I want to write! such fun! they’ll be listed here, in the stitch & bitch section). I’m running at 1680 x 1050 so most widget fonts look too small for me.

[Note: um. The person whom I currently consider the lowest common denominator of computer users (can you feel the love?) claims that it’s confusing that one sets the side to be calculated to zero. This person wants three checkboxes or radio buttons that say “calculate this side” or something like that. If you’ve got a viewpoint and you can actually knit, I’d like to hear it.]

Pondering sleeves reminded me of this Fassett gem from Rowan 38:

Do you know what’s wrong with this picture? (Other than the fact that it’s a stranded colourwork sweater made from DK-weight yarn — gorgeous, but not for wearing indoors.)

What kind of sleeves does it have?

They’re not raglan, although the colourwork suggests that style line.

They’re not set-in, although the sweater seems to be a close fit on the model.

As with most Kaffe Fassett designs, which are great on artistic composition but not so great on fitting, they’re drop shoulders (or modified drop, can’t recall). If you’ve got the magazine, you can see the seamlines crossing the model’s upper arms. The sweater was clearly pinned to give it a tighter fit. And the model’s odd pose suggests that there’s something odd about the fit — while the body is close-fitting, the sleeves are clearly baggy. Bah. It would be gorgeous, and wearable, too, if it had been knit to fit at a finer gauge.

Edit: Along the same lines, take a look at the Monday offering at YKW. Note the apparently semi-fitted body, with baggy drop-shoulder sleeves. I’d venture a guess that this was pinned at the back as well, although I’ve never seen the schematic for this pattern. (If it turned out to be a set-in sleeve, well, that’s just wrong because nobody’s shoulders are that wide. And if they were, they couldn’t fit into that sweater body.)

It’s all in the phonics

Mood toque. It just sounds funnier than “mood hat.”

You say combination, I say combined

The leading/trailing edge thing on this page has been corrected.

I blame the same thing as before. Bah.

I don’t care if you’re real or not

I finally got around to posting my general, hand-waving commentary on upsizing Rogue here.