Argyle Socks

This is what I learned to make this weekend:



Isn't it cute? I took a class at Stitches West with Suzann Thompson on how to knit Argyle socks. I was yet undecided on what to knit for my sock swap victim but, after taking this class, I am very tempted to scale up this sock and make a pair, of course, with more attention to detail. Some of the cross hatch stitches are not tight enough and there's a few twisted stitches on my little sample.

The only thing that worries me is the color scheme. A lot of people complimented it, but the spouse does not like it. He says I should ditch the purple, and make blue the main color with yellow diamonds.  Should I? Or should I stick with these colors?

Beheading

Yes, it is a horrible concept. But according to these two websites, it had to be done. My African violet (remember her?) had stopped flowering, and was starting to look like a miniature tree.


So I gathered all the courage I could and beheaded my dear potted plant, who's been with me for more than four years. It broke my heart. Then I discovered that she actually had three heads instead of one, and I felt better. I hope at least one of them survives.



Here's the picture of the fingerless mitts I made last month.



I'm looking at the last issue of knotions and trying to figure out whether or not I should knit bifröst for my swap victim. I love the look of it, but it is a top down sock. I'm not sure if I should try converting it to toe-up or try toe grafting once more and see if I do a better job this time. What would you do?

Sock Swap

This will be the third time I participate in Swapetines. This has always been a very small exchange, which gives it a very intimate feeling. By now I feel I know most of the people participating in the swap. I might have never met them in person but, with the exception of some new faces, I have been more or less following their blogs for two years.

Things at work have kept me busier than expected. One more person at work is also under treatment for breast cancer. That's two in a row and it makes us all very depressed. Plus, we had to find someone to substitute her during her leave, and even though we found three wonderful people (yes, it takes three part time people to cover one full time person), they are all on their learning curve and that puts a heavier load on some of us.

So I make no promises regarding blog updates. I will, however, make sure that I do not disappoint my swap recipient.

Somewhere in my camera there's a picture of the mittens I made for the other coworker that underwent chemotherapy last semester. I'll get it later.

Meanwhile, let me bore you with books I've read since my last post:

The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie
Buzón de Tiempo, by Mario Benedetti
Before they are Hanged, by Joe Abercrombie
The Well of Ascension, by Brandon Sanderson
New Moon, by Stephenie Meyer
When you are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris
Last Argument of Kings, by Joe Abercrombie
La Cena Secreta, by Javier Sierra
Novela de Ajedrez, by Stefan Zwieg (The original novel was written in German).

My, it seems that when I'm under stress I read a lot. Not all of it was good. I did not like neither The Well of Ascension nor New Moon. Both are second parts in their own series. There's a pattern here. An author can write a wonderful first novel in a series but then become very sloppy with the second one.

It had been a long time since I last read a book in Spanish. The Stefan Zwieg novel was a gift, that's why I read a Spanish translation. Otherwise I would have probably read an English translation. I should maybe ask for some more recommendations for books written in Spanish.

Booties

Yes, and happy new year, along with hope that recession is not getting to you either. I've been a bad blogger but still trying to keep up. I never posted a picture of the pair of booties after finishing them, so here they are.


I finished them at about the same time that I was reading The Hype About Hydrogen, an interesting book, even if a little outdated. That's the problem when writing about technology.  I know new nanomaterials are lowering the costs. There are also some uses for fuel cells that were not covered in this book, like using them to power laptops and other portable devices.

But the bottom line still applies: If you're making hydrogen from fossil fuels, you're still producing CO2 and contributing to global warming. The technology is not cost effective, neither for power plants nor for vehicles, and it comes with many risks attached.

Baby sweater? One sleeve seam down and that's it. I am in the middle of an urgent project. A person close to me underwent five months of chemotherapy and among all the unpleasantness of it, she ended up with peripheral neuropathy. In her own words, it feels like getting her hands and feet constantly pricked by a thousand needles, and the cold was making it much worse. Given that she has to work in an unheated environment (yes, she ran out of sick leave and vacation and even extended sick leave, so she must go back to work), I set out to make her a pair of fingerless mitts (pattern here, though I of course made some changes to it).

By now she might not need them, given that it is so much warmer now in California, but I am going to finish them anyway. I finished one and am in the middle of the second one.

And finally, happy Martin Luther King's day. I feel quite cheerful knowing that his dream is closer to becoming reality. But having an African American president will not magically set things right. Back in North Carolina,  I used to live on a street with a really dull name, and when the name of the street was changed to "Martin Luther King Blvd" there was a public uproar. Homeowners complained that the value of their property would go down. Incomprehensible, but true. There's still people out there that refuse to live on a street named after a black man, no matter how noble and wise he was.

Sleeves

The two sleeves are finished, though they don't look too cheerful.



The winter light makes everything look gray and I am too lazy to play around with my camera to fix that. I am bracing myself for the seaming.  Side seams are not so bad, but I have to tackle the sleeve seams first, which, at least to me, are harder.

That book is Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. I thought that after so much fantasy, some science fiction might be a nice change. Well, if you like techno-geek teen stories, this book is all right. There is little consolation in knowing how plausible this "big brother" scenario might actually be. Having a geeky teenager take on the Patriot Act is quite entertaining, but there were some parts of the book that got me yawning.

One more birthday went past, which I celebrated at work with my lab assistants and two of my co-workers with an excess of the really bad carbohydrates: cake, cookies and soda. I gave in because it was a very nice detail. Most people, including myself, take off long before my birthday comes around. In fact, we must have been the only people left in the whole building. Later the spouse took me out for dinner to my favorite sushi place.

Christmas itself was a quiet affair. We spent the afternoon having cookies and cake (more  bad carbs) with some friends, and later went to have dinner proper with a different group of people my husband had met through someone from work. All of us came from different countries and we were all in different trades. The only thing we had in common was that we had all decided that flying home for Christmas was not worth the expense.

I am not complaining. I started this year with my family in Mexico and I actually got to travel home two more times during the year. I do hope everyone out there had a nice Christmas, hopefully with their families, unlike myself.

Still knitting

I've been too busy lately but I've managed to keep knitting and reading. Here's proof:



The left front joined to the back, with markers where buttons will be, so I can knit matching buttonholes on the right front. That novel is Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson. It is the first of a fantasy series and so far so good. Fantasy worlds can be very repetitive but this one is very original. It made me want to read the first novel he wrote:



As often happens, his first novel, Elantris, was not as well written as the second. Nevertheless, I found it as original as Mistborn. It seems to me that he was testing the waters before embarking in a larger project. I finished it along with the right front of the baby jacket, which has an endless amounts of ends to weave in. I should start doing that soon.


But first I will work on the sleeves. As much as I hate sleeves (and sleeve seams), knitting them is better than weaving in ends. That last book, Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer, has my husband constantly making fun of me for reading teenager chick lit. I remember Jennifer mentioning to me that she was reading the second book. Well, if she liked it enough to read the second one, I reasoned that the first one must be good. And it is. It is not something my husband would enjoy, but hey, it's letting me progress nicely on the baby jacket. I don't ask for more.

Errata

I wish I had taken a look in ravelry before knitting this jacket, because they have a link to this pattern's errata.

Not that it did me any good. By now I am done with the first pocket. And that's a problem. According to the pattern, you place the liner, leave the pocket  stitches  on a stitch holder, and there is no further mention about what to do about them later on.

Because I did not know about the errata page, I had to come up with something, so I based myself on the pictures in the book. I did not knit the liner separately, I picked up stitches from the bottom, saving
myself a seam, like my mother taught me. She also taught me to bind off
my pocket edges prior to joining the liner, so that's what I did. And because there appeared to be a seed stitch border, I knit that border before casting off.


That picture was taken before the liner was finished and joined.

Now that I've checked the errata, it appears that I should have added the border after placing the liner. I did think of that possibility, but then I would have to sew the border on the right side of the jacket. Having all seams on the wrong side made more sense to me. And really, there is no difference, except that the pocket is a tad narrow.

I don't mind, and I'm sure that my friend's baby will not mind either. I will have to remember what I did so I can repeat it on the right side of the jacket.

But once more I am glad this was a library book, and that  I don't bother buying knitting books.

Not that I'm buying many books lately. That's the blessing of having a well stocked library.



That is the Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss, another fantasy book that kept me turning page after page. That is the spouse's recommendation. I am very happy I married a guy who shares my reading tastes.

In that picture you can also see the pocket after joining the liner. It needs a couple of side seams on the inside, but no seams on the outside will be needed.

Slideshow and baby jacket

I made a slideshow out of some of my pictures form Oaxaca.



And here's the new project, cable and moss stitch jacket, from a Debbie Bliss book I checked out of the library.


That's the back of it, posing next to Lia's recommendation: The thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield. This novel has a little of everything: mistery, romance, madness and a few skeletons in the closet. It was a good read.

I am much less pleased by the Debbie Bliss book. The amount of mistakes and omissions in the pattern makes me wonder why they bother paying an editor. I had to figure out some stuff in order to work the back. I cringe to think of what awaits me as I begin the left front.


That novel is Comfort Food, by Kate Jacobs. I don't watch TV and I don't like to cook, so reading a novel about a cooking show host seemed like a bad idea. But I kept on reading, trusting Pilar's judgement. It is not my type of story, in that I like conflicts to be a bit less inane than a simple rivalry between TV hosts. And yet, once in a while I can enjoy a lightweight, friendly story.

Progression

This is how the socks were progressing as I was reading some of the recommended books .

First, another Hellboy comic (I'm going through a phase, I guess).



And then, The Spanish Gardener, by A.J. Cronin, recommended to me by Sandra:



This is a very bittersweet story that I would have enjoyed much more if the main character had been more credible: a very poor Spanish boy who, even though he could not afford an education and never left his native  hometown, could easily speak, read and write in English.  And though his English is perfect, the author has him constantly repeating "señor" and "amigo", as if those were the two words he did not bother to learn. I had read another  A.J. Cronin book before: The Green Years. Perhaps that raised my expectations too much.

I took a break from sad stories and from the socks (the colors were becoming too dull to my eyes) with Letters from the Earth, by Mark Twain. This was Thuy's recommendation. The first part, the actual letters from the Earth, is very funny and invites you to reflection. The rest of the book contained many unrelated pieces of writing, some of them more interesting than others.



Those booties are for a friend of mine who is having a baby in February. Knitting them was a breeze but I hated seaming them. I am still not done with the second one. I did keep knitting the socks and finished them before packing, but I did not have time to wash them. I did so on my first day in Oaxaca and took a picture of them in my hotel room before meeting the recipient for breakfast on the day of the wedding.



By the way, Oaxaca was great. The people are fun, they dress beautifully, they cook wonderfully and the roads are a disaster. But every sight was worth the drive.  I wanted to make a collage of all my sightseeing, but I hardly found the time to make this post.

I already started another project because those booties seem like a smallish present. I will post about it later.

More Hellboy and another book

Don't ask me why, but I enjoy Hellboy comics.



For me to like a comic book, the art and the plot must be good enough. The drawings are wonderful, no question about it. The stories... well, those are quite absurd, but amusing, and I've always liked fantasy.

Talking of fantasy, here's some from Lois McMaster Bujold: Passage, which is the third book of a series called The Sharing Knife.



I believe I have read all of her books. I liked her more when she was writing militaristic science fiction, though she's also written excellent fantasy books, my favorite being The Curse of Chalion.  I don't think that The Sharing Knife is as good as other stuff she's written, but maybe it's just that her style has changed, or she may be trying to accomodate other type of readers. I do feel she is now concentrating heavily on the romance, which she was not doing before.

The idea of not doing any patterning made these socks go fast, didn't it? I do want to finish them soon, because I will be going to a wedding in Mexico and these are a gift for a friend I will be meeting there. And no, they are not a wedding gift! The couple will be getting money.  Boring, but that's what they asked for.