Give me a break

Tara Calashain's very excellent ResearchBuzz newsletter recently brought to my attention a Silicon.com article about how Google doesn't want people to use Google as a verb anymore, arguing that such use is "potentially damaging to its brand."

*blinks*

Are they kidding? Do they not realize that use of this the word Google in this manner is an indication of Google's incredible dominance of the tech world? ("Potentially damaging" indeed!) Shouldn't Google have thought of this before Google was added to the OED and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate 11th earlier this summer?

So what's next? Is Google going to sue mathematicians for using the word googol, arguing that it might cause the general public to expect any Internet search through Google to yield a 1 followed by one hundred zeroes?

Revelation

Secret Pal 8 is drawing to a close, and my SP8 sent me an e-mail telling me who she is. She's Chrissie, she lives in Singapore, and her blog is here. When the list of participants in my group was posted on the SP8 site a couple of weeks ago, I visited the various blogs to see if I could identify my SP8. When I read Chrissie's blog, I was 99 percent sure that was her--partly because she was in Singapore (and the gifts she sent me arrived in envelopes from the National University of Singapore), and partly because she described the contents of the packages she had sent to me. But I didn't want to say anything about it in my own blog until I was sure. After all, what if I was wrong? What if there was another SP8 participant in Singapore who was sending her pal gifts like the ones I received? How embarrassing if I was wrong!

Anyway, now that I know who my SP8 is, it's been fun to look through her blog and get to know her a bit. Aside from an interest in knitting, we also have graduate school in common (though it sounds like she'll finish her dissertation before I finish mine!).

In her e-mail to me, Chrissie suggested some sites to look at for information on spinning: here, here, and here. I am really looking forward to trying this out!

"One ring to rule them all..."

Who knew that Sauron's playground was near East Montpelier, Vermont?


(Props to Jan for coming up with the idea for this post. We are two geek-peas in a pod...)

Image update

I've added images to most of the posts I wrote while I was vacationing in Vermont. I was in a dial-up connection up there, which, after living with broadband for several years, felt positively glacial. I tried once to upload a photo there, but the computer's response was something along the lines of "Are you kidding me?" So I decided to wait until I was reunited with my broadband connection.

These are the updated posts:

• Sunday, 6 August: TOOT! TOOT!
• Wednesday, 9 August: Heaven
• Saturday, 12 August: Currently Crazy for Cables
• Friday, 18 August: End of the idylls

Three for three

On my vacation I started--and finished--three new projects. The first was a cabled Irish hiking scarf, and I am delighted with how it turned out. The pattern is from Hello Yarn, and I used somewhere between 2.5 and 3 skeins of worsted Wool of the Andes (color: fern) from KnitPicks. The second project, pictured here with the scarf, is my Not-Quite-Noro hat, a beehive-shaped piece made with one skein of Lamb's Pride worsted (color: red baron). I was actually about one yard short of yarn to make the complete pattern, so I had to eliminate the last set of purl-knit rows and closed the hat a bit earlier than called for. The result isn't quite as pointy on top as the original hat, but when it's one someone's head you can't really tell.

The third project was this twelve-inch square done in a ripple pattern. The members of my local knitting group are each making one square, and all the pieces will be sewn together to great an afghan to be donated to charity. I don't know what yarn I used for this--it was some unlabeled acrylic yarn that I received at our June get-together.

I'm already looking through patterns and trying to decide what to make next...but maybe I'll wrap up some of my unfinished projects first.

Belated thank you

Thanks to my SP8 for another terrific package! I'm a little late in opening it, but the wait was definitely worthwhile. The envelope labeled "New Skill" lived up to its name: in addition to a skein of Australian yarn (in beautiful brown-blue-purple hues), it contained a drop spindle with some unspun yarn (in a fabulous gray to which, unfortunately, this photo does not do justice). She even started the spinning bit, so I can see what the finished product is supposed to look like. Good thing, too, because I have no idea how to do this--but I'm looking forward to giving it a spin. (Insert groan here.) Googling around has revealed a few sites with instructions, so I should be able to figure this out eventually. Does anyone have any suggestions?

End of the idylls

Today is our last day in Vermont, and tomorrow we head back to the Mid-Atlantic. In the midst of canoeing, hiking, swimming, and berry-picking (and berry-eating!) I've actually managed to do a fair amount of knitting. That cabled scarf I mentioned a few days ago? Finished. It looks cool. Dare I say it looks super cool? Yes, I do believe I dare.

That afghan square I hadn't yet started when I wrote my last post? That one's finished, too. The pattern has a nice rippled look to it (the pattern is even called Ripple, I think), but even though the result it pleasing to the eye I did not love the execution. For one thing, it was done in an acrylic yarn (that's what everyone who's knitting one of the squares is using). I've tried really hard not to be a yarn snob, and even though I've been less than keen on acrylic in the past, I approached this project with a "Now let's see if I can discover my inner acrylic lover" attitude. But this project has convinced me to surrender and just admit to myself and the world that I absolutely cannot stand acrylic.

The other thing I didn't like about this square was the pattern itself. It's a ten-row repeat, with each row being different and not easily memorized (for me, at least). So that means I kept having to look at the pattern printout. I usually prefer to knit patterns that have good chunks of no-change space--say, "continue in st st until piece measures 5.5 inches from the cast-on edge" or whatever. Of course, in these cases I almost always forget to check the length until I've knit 7 or 8 inches and then have to rip out some rows, but at least this sort of pattern gives me a chance to get into the "knitting zone." With this afghan square, having to look at the pattern every few minutes made it very difficult for me to achieve that Zen-like state of knitting meditation ("knititation"?).

I still have the Not-Quite-Noro hat to finish during the trip home tomorrow. After than, I'm not sure what I'll do. I should probably finish some of the many UFOs I have around the house. But I'm awfully tempted to dive into the shawl project that my SP8 sent me. And of course there's all of that amazing yarn I bought at Green Mountain Spinnery and the local farmer's market up here. Decisions, decisions...

Currently crazy for cables

Still in Vermont. There is a frost advisory tonight for the Northeast Kingdom. Yes, that's right: a frost advisory in August. I know I'm up north, where it's supposed to be a bit colder than the Mid-Atlantic. But even the locals I've talked to tell me that this cold spell is abnormal. It's definitely putting a damper on taking dips in the lake, but there is something nice about putting on layers of warm clothing after months of how-close-to-naked-can-you-get-without-breaking-the-law heat and humidity.

It goes without saying that my trip preparations included putting together some knitting to bring with me. It took me about an hour to choose and pack clothing for three people for two weeks. It took me about three days to choose and pack three knitting projects to work on.

One project is a square for the charity afghan that my local knitting group is working on. I haven't started on this yet, so there's no real news on this front.

The second project is Saartje's Noro hat. It looks like a multicolored beehive in this yarn--what fun! I'm using bright red Lamb's Pride worsted, though, so I guess what I'm actually knitting is a Not-Quite-Noro hat. This is my in-the-car project, since it takes very little brain power and is easy to put down if Sylvia gets fussy and needs attention. I knit about thirty or so rounds on this on the drive up to Vermont, and it's sitting in the glove box waiting for our trip home.

Here is my current project. This is my first foray into the wonderful world of cables...and I am hooked. (And yes, I totally meant that pun. So there.) The Irish Hiking Scarf is a great introduction to cables because it's fairly uncomplicated, it's easy to remember, and the results are stunning. Click on the link at the beginning of this paragraph to see what the scarf looks like. Then imagine it in a lovely fern-green worsted yarn, which is what I'm using. I love this pattern! I want to knit Irish hiking scarves for everyone I know!

Heaven

Still in Vermont, where the weather is nothing short of spectacular. So far we've had sunny days with temperatures in the low 80s and low humidity. Nights have been cold enough for warm socks, long pants, and a fleece jacket. Ahhhhh. What a welcome change of pace from the summer swelter of the Mid-Atlantic.

Yesterday we took a day trip to Waitsfield, Vermont. It's in the Mad River Valley, around the middle of the state. While we were there I did look at yarn in two different stores. One had stuff from Green Mountain Spinnery, and the other had interesting (but too rich for my budget, I'm afraid) locally spun yarns that had been dyed with different plants.

Our trip to Waitsfield included stops at some of our favorite places:

• The Inn at Lareau Farm, where Jan and I were married in front of a huge rock face next to a meadow behind the inn, right up against the Green Mountains. We showed the site to Sylvia, but she was far more interested in eating her crackers. Oh well. Maybe in a few years...
• American Flatbread, home of amazing pizza cooked in a wood-fired oven.
• Mad River Massage, a very-hippie not-fancy-spa place and home of the greatest massage therapists I've ever met. And yes, I had a massage yesterday.
• Michael's Good to Go, a terrific take-out place with amazing vegetarian food (among many non-vegetarian options). Go ahead and look at the menu. I dare you. If you don't start salivating while reading it then your taste buds are probably dead.

Yeah, the day entailed a bit of driving. But the scenery along the route was beautiful, and the destination was full of nostalgia. Even though Sylvia was new to Waitsfield, she had a pretty good time there, too.

Aw, phooey!

So last weekend, as I was starting to prepare to go on vacation, I thought, "Oh, it's almost August! That means it's almost time for me to open the last package I have from my secret pal!" (You may recall that in early June my SP8 sent me a big package, which included, among other goodies, two smaller bundles to be opened in July and August.)

Trip preparation--especially with a fifteen-month-old--always leaves me a little fried. I worry that I'll forget to bring something essential or forget to leave enough food out for the cats or forget to have my mail held by the post office or forget one of a million other things. Amazingly, when we got to Vermont I found that I had pretty much remembered to bring and take care of everything I needed...except that last package from my SP8. Yup, it's sitting on my desk right where I left it. So now I have to wait until I'm home again before I can open it. D'oh!

TOOT! TOOT!

No, I have not been magically transformed into a train. (Sylvia, who adores the ceiling-mounted electric train at our usual grocery store, would probably find that pretty neat.) I am Temporarily Out Of Town.

Yesterday we made the long drive up to Vermont. It seems that everyone in the Mid-Atlantic was heading toward the New Jersey shore--in the opposite direction we were going--so we encountered little traffic and made good time. With brief stops for meals and yarn, we arrived in the late afternoon, with plenty of time to unpack and go grocery shopping.

We're staying in a rustic lakeside cabin in the Northeast Kingdom, which is the northeast (duh) part of Vermont. As far as place names go, this is surely one of the best. Around here they just call it "the Kingdom." That is so cool.

At the July meeting of my local knitting group, when I mentioned I was heading up to Vermont and asked if anyone had any yarn-related suggestions for me, about half the people present shouted, "Green Mountain Spinnery! Green Mountain Spinnery!" Then they got this shining look in their eyes and started talking about the place in reverential tones. Since we made such good time on the road yesterday, when we hit Putney in southern Vermont, Jan insisted we stop by the spinnery. And then he insisted I buy some yarn. (How sweet!)

And what a place. The shop/workroom is right next to the exit ramp, so you run into it as soon as you leave the interstate. When we got there, no other customers were in the shop, so the woman working there very kindly gave us a tour of the workroom and machinery, some of which is a hundred years old. Wow. We saw piles of unwashed, freshly shorn fleece, carding machines, wooden bobbins, batting and roving, spinning machines, and all sorts of other things that I can't possibly begin to describe. I took lots of photos--when I wasn't being amazed by everything I saw, of course. Then Jan and Sylvia went for a walk outside while I browsed the yarn shop.

And by "shop" I mean "room." It's a very small space, with a counter opposite the door and cubby-holes and bins on the two sides. If there are more than four people standing in that space, it gets difficult to move around--seriously. There aren't that many types of yarn, either. Yet I still had trouble deciding. My option paralysis here was worse than when I'm in an ice-cream parlor. After much agonizing, I settled on five skeins of Cotton Comfort (80% wool, 20% organic cotton) in Weathered Green and four skeins of shimmery Sylvan Spirit (50% wool, 50% tencel) in Moonshadow (brownish-gray). I'm not sure yet what I will do with this--something for Sylvia is definitely in mind. Three skeins should be enough for a simple pullover sweater in size 2T, so I've got plenty to make a larger-sized sweater or maybe even a dress. Oh, the possibilities! Suggestions, anyone?

The hats are hits

Aaron and Angie loved the hats I made for them! Hooray!

Corny

Yesterday's issue of Knitter's Review features an article about a new type of organic yarn: Cornucopia, which is made out of corn.

That fact alone makes me want to give it a spin on the needles. I love knitting with natural fibers, and on my must-try-soon list are the newer yarns made from recycled silk saris and bamboo. I'm also a big fan of recycling and environmentally conscious living, so these yarns are doubly appealing to me.

But then I read the review and found even more to love about yarn made out of corn:
--Has a nice hand.
--Low pilling rate.
--No blocking required.
--Lots of different colors.
--Machine washable and dryable.

Wow! I have to try this stuff soon! The reviewer says that "simple styling and a medium women's size would run you about $62." So I'll probably make something for Sylvia first. Smaller sizes = less yarn = less money. (And the machine-washable aspect is a big bonus when it comes to clothing for little ones who are, shall we say, less than tidy at the dinner table.)

Plus she'll be able to tell people that it's made of corn (well, once she masters the word "corn," of course)--how cool is that?