Well, it’s not Wednesday yet, but I think I am actually going to make it to Wednesday, which means that I should make it through the week. Whew. As I’m sure you discerned, I had a bit of a breakdown on Saturday over all the deadlines piling up, but somehow making a public list of the things I was freaking out about seemed to help (private lists had not helped at all…I tried). Really, a seven item list isn’t that bad, especially when one of the items is “all the things I forgot to be stressed about.” I’m not generally the sort to freak out about having to get things done, so I really don’t know what came over me. Anyway, some deadline-based triage has gotten me (mostly) back on track.

Oh, yeah. About that “I can’t make a mistake” bit? The best way to get over that is to just go ahead and make one, on the first day of class. Perfect. At least it’s over with. It’s bound to happen sooner or later, but I really wanted to avoid it for at least one set of quiz sections. The annoying bit is that I’d gone back and double and triple checked in the book on this specific problem, because I wasn’t sure about it. Oh well. I guess that’s teaching. At least this bunch of students seems slightly less hostile than the last set of premeds that I had. They weren’t antagonistic on the first day, at least, which is a relief.

Despite (or perhaps because of) my unexpected catching up on deadlines before disaster struck, I have to say that knitting progress has been non-existent. I did manage to cast on for a pair of socks, as the sweater has grown too big to be portable. And I’ve made a couple inches of stockinette on the sweater arm. But that’s about it. Fortunately, there is no group meeting tomorrow, so I might be able to actually sit down, knit, and relax a bit now that most of the craziness is under control. Is it Friday yet? =)

Don’t do any of it! Always a good plan. And what do we do when we’re avoiding the things we need to be doing? That’s right…get knitting done!

At least it makes blog fodder. =)

I’ve discovered that I knit much faster when stressed, though I don’t seem to be able to concentrate enough to work on complicated things (i.e. Irtfa’a). At least I got the ribbing done on the sweater! Just the arms left now, and they should be pretty quick. At least I feel like I’ve made progress on something, though it isn’t something that actually has pressure and a deadline attached. Oh well. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and I didn’t spend all day inside working. And, I did get the first 5 or so chapters of the organic chem catch-up done. At least it’s only the second class in the series rather than the third, so I only have one quarter’s worth of back reading to do!

Now that the whining is over, let’s talk about knitting. Given the tone of this week, I think you won’t be surprised to hear that I haven’t gotten much done. I did, however, manage to finish the shoulder drop section of Irtfa’a, and am ready to begin the small feathers part. Yay!

(warning: egregious whining to follow)

I can’t believe how delinquent I’ve been about posting this week. Ever had one of those weeks when you get lots done but there are still about a billion things left to do that all need to be done yesterday? I know you have. We all have. This was mine. If I make it to next Wednesday, things should get a bit better, but really it’ll be at least the end of the month before I can breathe again. What’s keeping me so busy?

1) I have a fellowship application that I’m working on, due at the end of the month. It’s actually coming together quite nicely, but it still needs a lot of work, and I just don’t have time.

2) The new schedule is starting, where I get to stay at work until 8:30 three nights out of the week. Blech.

3) I have to teach on Tuesday. This wouldn’t be so bad except:

a) I haven’t taught this class in almost 3 years, and it’s the most precise of the classes that we teach, so I can’t afford to forget anything. Not even one little detail. Guess who’s reading the first 11 chapters (350 pages) of an organic chemistry textbook before Tuesday, just to brush up?

b) The prof is tough, which I like, but the students will hate. It will also increase their stress levels, and encourage them to blame the TA for all of their shortcomings (like not reading the book).

c) The students are premeds. Now, don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against people that want to be doctors. Some of my best friends in undergrad were premeds. I believe that there are many nice people in the premed field. I have had some great premed students. That said, the prevailing culture in our department’s premed students is that they already know it all, the prof and the TA are incompetent and useless, and that class is a waste of time. It also means that they are not interested in learning; they’re interested in a 4.0. They don’t care that they get it right, or understand. It just matters that they’re ahead of the curve. I went to the first lecture last week, and it was a good one. At least 10 students got up at various times during the lecture and climbed over everyone in their row to leave, some only 10 or 15 minutes into the lecture. This sort of attitude obviously makes it less than fun to go in and teach, and it means that I have to know everything and make no mistakes to avoid reinforcing their preconceived ideas. Pressure? Nah.

d) I got my first really horrible TA assessment ever. I’ve taught over 900 students just in grad school (not counting the hundreds in undergrad), and I always get very good reviews, or at worst constructive criticism. I got my evals back this week, and I had one in which I was described variously as condescending, full of myself, arrogant, and smarmy. Ouch. I know that this is one student in well over 1000. I know that this shouldn’t bother me. I know that this evaluation probably doesn’t have anything to do with me. And yet, ouch. That kind of drop-kick makes it harder to be excited about going back into the classroom.

4) My research experiments have taken a decided turn towards the unpredictable. This is bad. I am at the stage in my graduate student career when things should be getting easier to understand, not harder. Researching this topic is something like trying to catch a bar of soap that you dropped in a bathtub. Just when you think you’ve finally got the darned thing, it goes shooting off again in some other direction and you start all over. Sometimes this is fun. This week, I am not amused.

5) I just found out that I have to give group meeting in 2 weeks and present my work to my advisor (who hasn’t really been keeping up in months, so it’s extra important to impress him) and fellow grad students. This is generally fun, but given #4, is adding to the stress level.

5) I was asked this past week and agreed to give a guest lecture in a friend’s class at a community college. The date that she set? Wednesday. (Gasp!)

6) I’m taking a class this quarter on building a teaching portfolio. Our first draft of a teaching statement is due on Wednesday.

7) various and sundry other items that I’m sure I’m forgetting at the moment but will suddenly come due on me within the next 4 days, out of spite.

In short, I worked all week to shorten my list of pressing items, and it’s still a mile long. Yay for working weekends.

The quarter has started, and real life has begun to blur again. It’s amazing how that happens. This quarter is going to be bad for my knitting time, I’m afraid, so I probably won’t be posting as often as I have been (unless, of course, you really want me to ramble on with nothing to say…). I guess it’s no worse than last quarter. Basically, Mon-Wed I will have no knitting time to speak of, Thursday and Friday I may have a bit more, and the weekends will be catch-up time. Fun, fun.

I don’t have much progress for these reasons. I’ve added another 16 rows to Irtfa’a, and they’re starting to get pretty long, too. I guess that’s what happens when you increase a few times every other row. It’s starting to look like a real piece of knitting, though, which is exciting. The sweater is moving slowly again, but I have about 5 inches of the dark bod color added now. I will post pics soon.

I’m really happy about how well my hands have been doing with the sweater. I was worried for a while that I’d have to forswear thick yarns forever. After knitting Sarah sweater this summer, my carpal tunnel or whatever it is decided to flare up and remind me that it’s still there (that was the reason I gave up knitting in high school, so I wansn’t pleased to have it resurface). It seems to have calmed down after a lace and sock break, however, so I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to get back to sweaters, too. That’s really exciting, because sweaters are my favorite project. I think I like to knit lace better as far as the process goes, but sweaters are far and away my favorite knitted thing to wear. I’m trying to decide what I’ll do once the cabled one is done. I think I might need to make Branden another, to make up for the shapeless thing that his Paton’s Merino has turned into. Well, it was pretty odd-shaped to begin with, but it’s gotten worse. He could use a new one. That’s for later, though. For now, I need to spend some quality time with the sideways cable sweater. At least we’re half way to the weekend already. Happy Wednesday!

I did long distance running in high school, way back before my body made it clear that it would leave me if I didn’t start being nicer to it. I loved running. It hurt like crazy to get in shape; it was hard, you couldn’t breathe right, and it was just exhausting. And then all of a sudden, one day your body just got it, and from then on it was pure joy. Something would just click, and you’d fall into step and everything would be perfect. More like flying than running, really.

I can’t run anymore, but I can study science. I find that it’s very similar; it’s hard to get going, nothing makes any sense, and then suddenly you just get it, and it’s worth every moment of struggle to gain the clarity that comes when you finally see what you’ve been missing.

I’ve been slogging through the lace charts all week. Loving it, but slogging. Like running through mud. Or molasses. Or trying to understand quantum mechanics equations. You can see that there’s something there, and you can almost make it out. If only you could stay with it just a little longer…but no, the brain has just given up, and that thing you thought you saw is gone. It’s been getting better as I go, and I’d gotten pretty good at it by last night. I could read the charts and knit without stopping, I wasn’t getting tired, and I wasn’t making mistakes.

But today…today I finally fell into step. I made it through the whole shoulder increase section in a couple of hours, and I’m still up for going back and starting the shoulder drop section, now that I remember that it exists. Today there was no slogging, but simply flying. It’s been so much fun. I think it was probably worth all of the extra time spent playing with different needles just to feel the exhilaration of finally owning the pattern. Not following it, not just being able to recognize it, but owning it and understanding how it works from the inside out. I’ve barely looked at the chart all day, and I have made no mistakes, either. Today, my brain finally learned how to step in time with Irtfa’a, and we’ve been dancing all afternoon. What a great way to spend a day. I’d have been a lot further along if I’d read the pattern right the first time. But then I’d have missed the fun of gliding through the shoulder increases again. Overall, I’m pretty happy that I managed to forget that the shoulder drop section existed.

It’s funny that I should be elated and laughing over the fact that I misread a pattern and spent all day doing unecessary work. But then, isn’t all knitting unnecessary, when you get right down to it? We knit for the pure joy of it, because we like the process. I think that people forget about the process too often while trying to race to the finished object. Sometimes it’s nice to take a day off and just go wandering off through the stitches, getting lost, and perhaps even finding your way to better mastery. I think, on the whole, I’m glad that I never turned on my computer to check my blog comments this morning.

When that fails, have someone else read it for you.

I’ll start where I left off last night. My gauge was crazy short compared to the length that the pattern said I should have. This was not shocking, since I often have to increase a couple of needle sizes to match gauge. What was shocking was that my size 5 knitting was half what it was supposed to be. This seemed odd.

I went out this afternoon (as soon as the knitting store opened) and bought some size 6 Addi’s. They don’t come any bigger than that in lace, so I figured I’d just have to make due with the Pryms if the 6’s weren’t big enough. I cast on again, and worked through to row 18 of the shoulder increase section. I figured that this was more than enough swatch to figure out if I had the right needle size this time, at least. Well, I didn’t. Going up a size increased my row gauge by about 33%, which meant that I was a lot closer, but nowhere near close enough. This is a picture of the two pieces side by side.

The piece on the needles is 18 rows plus edging, and the one off of the needles is the one that’s 28 rows plus edging. You can see that I was at least catching up.

The problem is, that with this gauge I would still only make 5 inches, and I was heading for 7.5. This seemed crazy. I was knitting as loosely as I possibly could, and there was no way I was going to make 7.5 inches with this. I switched to the Prym 6’s for a while, to see if maybe I could increase the size by going back to the typing with my elbow method. Since my original swatch had shrunk when I switched to the Addis, it seemed to make sense that the piece should get bigger if I went back to the Pryms. It made a tiny difference, but not much. It wasn’t really even measurable, so I think the original swatch shrinkage probably had more to do with me getting used to the Addis than anything else.

Well, if the Pryms wouldn’t do it, I’d have to go up in size again. Judging by the fact that one size change had gotten me 30% increase and I needed another 50% increase, it seemed that two sizes were the way to go. So I switched to 8’s. At this point, it was really stretching my credulity to think that Anne could possibly have gotten this gauge on size 4 needles. I mean, really. The world’s tightest knitter couldn’t cut the gauge in half, could they? Especially not just the row gauge?

I reread the part where it talked about the measurement. I was certain that she meant the same measurement that I was taking, and it very clearly said that it should be 7.5 inches. I sat back and thought about this while knitting with the 8’s. At 28 rows plus 5, say, for the edging, 7.5 inches for the final piece would have to mean between 4 and 5 stitches per inch. Now, no matter how loose you knit, that’s just crazy talk. 4 stiches to the inch with laceweight on size 4 needles??? No way.

So I gave Branden the pattern to read while I continued incredulously knitting along on my size 8 needles, and thinking how there was no way in heck I was getting 4 stitches to the inch. He noticed a subtle little point that I saw when I first read the pattern but had forgotten while working through it. See, I’ve worked the shoulder increase section. But the measurement was given after the instructions for the shoulder drop section. I distinctly remember looking at this and telling myself to be careful not to confuse these two terms. I also distinctly forgot by the time I got to that part of the pattern.

Guess how many rows are in the shoulder drop section? That’s right…28. Precisely twice the number that I had at the end of the shoulder increase section. Ahhh. My gauge was precisely half of 7.5 because that’s what it should have been. Fancy that.

I’m still not quite over laughing at myself for this one. At least we caught it before I worked the whole section on size 8 needles. And, I decided against frogging the original swatch because of you. That’s right. I wanted to take a picture to compare the different gauges I was getting as I went along, so I just ran a lifeline through the last row and put it aside. Which means that it’s sitting next to me ready to go back on the needles now that it has been redeemed. And, I am now still finished with the shoulder increase section, and apparently ready to move on to the shoulder drop section. A happy ending, I think.

Edited to add: I now notice that Anne had kindly caught this error for me before I went on a gauge-testing foray. Unfortunately, I have been so caught up in knitting all day that I never turned my computer on and saw the comment. Thanks for trying to save me from myself, while I blissfully wandered off in my own little world. =)

While I’ve been mostly wanting to work on Irtfa’a lately, it’s not a good project for me to just pick up for a few minutes here or there. I need time and mental space and focus for Irtfa’a, so I can’t just pick it up when I have a moment. Instead, I’ve been working on the sideways cable sweater. It feels like I’m cheating working on something other than Irtfa’a, but I can’t help it; I need to knit on something, and it can’t always be lace. =) I have to say that it is really nice to work with 4.5 stitch per inch yarn in between stretches of laceweight (except that switching back and forth between them makes my hands really confused). Things have been just flying along.

I separated the arms from the body this morning, and have started the next color. I decided to go with a slipped stitch rib, since I want something that stays ribby looking rather than stretching and flattening out. Maybe it’s just the Paton’s yarn, but my last sweater only held the tight ribbing look for a few wearings before stretching into just knit and purl columns. The slipped stitch should help the ribs stay puffy, I hope. I also considered using one of the many small cable ribs, since I really like the look of cables. I didn’t want too much going on, though, and I think a more interesting rib will take the focus away from the sideways band, which is what I want to highlight. The color changes already distract from it a little bit, and I don’t want to go overboard with ornate things. A simple rib it is.

I debated whether I should stick with the original plan to make a form-fitting sweater, or go for the bell-shaped look of one of my all-time favorite sweaters, which is also a raglan. I really love the bell-shaped one that I have, but it’s not exactly figure flattering, though it has fit me through all of my size changes over the past 6 years (and those are big changes, ranging from a size 4 to a 14, and now heading back down again). In this case, I decided to stick with the fitted sweater, so I did a quick decrease row just below the bust, and am staying with ribbing for the main body. At this rate, this should be done pretty quickly. I really miss sweater knitting; I think it’s my favorite kind behind lace. But, when the hands act up, the sweaters must go on hold for a while. Today wasn’t bad, though, and I did a lot on the sweater at a stretch, so I’m hoping that I’ll be able to keep up the current pace. I’d cross my fingers, but that would make it hard to knit.

I didn’t post pics of the mistake I made in Irtfaa the other night. Here’s the right way:

And here’s the wrong way:

In the first one, the faggoting between the increase sections continues right down to the edge, where Branden’s pointer is. In the second one, it should continue down to the point where the two needles cross, but it sort of hiccups a few rows before the edge. I couldn’t figure out what the heck I’d done, until I pulled it back and started working through that section again, where I promptly repeated the mistake and caught myself in the act. Simple misreading of the chart, putting in a second repeat of something that should only have happened once. I feel better now that I know what I did. I don’t like it when the universe throws inexplicable problems my way, but when it’s clearly my fault and I can see what I did I don’t mind so much.

That’s a good thing, because I have another one of those situations now. Remember the swatch? It turned out a little bit smaller than gauge, and I briefly considered switching to size 6 needles. It was close (within half an inch, I think…it was too big with the Pryms, and then it shrunk an inch), and I didn’t have size 6 needles, so I decided to just continue as planned and hope that blocking would do the trick.

Well, blocking will cure half an inch, but it won’t cure 4 inches. That’s right, four inches. It turns out that the shoulder increase that I just finished is supposed to be 7.5 inches long. Mine is 3.5 inches long. The more I try to use patterns, the more I realize that my row gauge is just wonky. If someone says I should get 7 rpi, I get 10 or 11. I was actually surprised how close the row gauge was to right when I swatched for Irtfaa. But that was in stockinette. Apparently, when I switched to lace, I lost half of my length. I find this slightly mystifying. My stitches per inch are a little bit small, but only by maybe 10%, meaning that the width for the shawl is a little short, but it’s just about right. Not wrong enough to make me think that I should expect to be 4 inches short of Anne’s length, anyway, and just about what I’d expect for being one needle size too small. Judging by her post-blocking photos, my version is only about an inch narrower than hers, but it’s 4 inches shorter. Very odd. I had intended to do some experimenting as part of the knitting grammary to see if I could get to the bottom of this recurrent issue, but I haven’t gotten there yet. Maybe I should bump it up the list. Here’s the completed (correct) shoulder increase part of the shawl:

Sorry for the asymmetrical pinning; my needles weren’t long enough to stretch the whole thing.

Isn’t it pretty? How about some closer-ups? (As always, click for a really big picture)

I really love how it’s coming out. It’s a really beautiful lace, and I love the color of the Thraven. Pretty, pretty.

It’s too bad that I’m going to have to frog this piece. I can’t come up with anything useful for it to do, though, and I definitely need to go up at least one and probably two needle sizes. Now, don’t go feeling bad for me. This is why I never rely on swatches when I start a project. Somehow, no matter how much I swatch or how careful I am to knit the same way that I always do, something happens and the final product is different than my swatch would predict. When I made a sweater for my sister, I swatched carefully, and ended up with about a foot of extra width in the original piece. That’s just the way it is, and I’m ok with ripping.

Really, I am. I usually end up ripping the first 6 to 8 inches of something, once I’ve gotten a good solid feel for how it’s shaping up and how to change it. That’s most of the reason that I didn’t run out and get new needles when I realized that my gauge was a little off of the pattern. If I had changed then and reswatched, I would be angry now to discover that the gauge on the actual piece is wrong. This is one of those “know thyself” things. If I’d measured and altered and measured again, I would expect my gauge to be perfect, given that I’d put all that effort into checking that it would be. Since I didn’t do more than a very basic swatch, I started out accepting the fact that this might not end up perfect, and I am perfectly ok with ripping it out and starting over. Maybe it’s a personality quirk, but I am much happier doing a quick swatch to test, changing if it appears necessary, and then just diving in and re-doing if I have to, which, in this case, I do.

Further items on the plus side are as follows:
1) I have now swatched the entire shoulder increase section twice, and have a pretty good sense of what’s going on, and where I’m likely to mess it up.
2) I’ve gotten much better (and faster) at reading charts, which will make redoing a lot easier.
3) I was actually kind of sad to leave this lace behind, because I really liked working it. Now I get to work it again.

So, on the whole, I think this has been a successful venture so far. And, I’ve really been enjoying the mental stretch, even if it means I can’t work on it for very long at one go. I think my biggest complaint so far is that I get tired too easily, which means that I have to put it down sooner than I’d like. Then I resist putting it down for “just one more row” and end up making mistakes because my brain isn’t up to it anymore. But, if that’s the worst thing I have to say about a project, I think I’m in pretty good shape. =)

It’s absolutely amazing that the 8 hours I spend at work are really eternity (I was thinking it had to be at least 3 by now when I looked up and realized that it was only 11 this morning…), and the hours I spend at home are moments long. Now, I realize that 3 hours after dinner isn’t much time to have before bed, but I’d like to feel like I managed to get something done in that time.

Well, I did get something done. I finished the shoulder increases on Irtfa’a. And then I decided that I really need to go back and fix a mistake I made and thought I’d already fixed when I went back the first time. So, I will be ripping back first thing tomorrow night, which leaves me three rows closer to done than when I started working this fine evening. How annoying.

The good news is that I really feel like I can follow this lace, and it’s going a lot faster (minus the frogging) than it was before. The even better news is that after I redo these rows I will be into the main part of the pattern which has a much smaller pattern width, and so I am less prone to silly mistakes that end with me pulling out a whole night’s worth of work. Despite the pulling I am enjoying the knitting immensely. I might gripe about it a lot, but I really do like it. Until I mess it up. But once I get it going smoothly again I’ll remember that I really do like knitting lace after all.

I am so glad that tomorrow is Friday. Then it will be the weekend, and I can actually get something done. I have no idea how I’m going to make it through an entire 5 days of work next week. I feel like the last two days have been a month long! I love breaks, and I had an unusually long one this year, but I think in some ways that they make things worse. It’s hard to keep plugging along when you don’t feel like it, but it’s harder when you have to go back to plugging along after having been free for a week. Oh well. To bed, so that I can get up tomorrow and plug through to the weekend!