August 2006 Archives
I went to a meetup and a spin-in. Yes, I was sociable! Usually I'm in the gym, or on the track, or slapped up against a rock, or ensconced firmly in my chair with a looming deadline, or spending face time with clients/project managers. However, I did find time to hang out with some of my favorite bloggers.
Five weeks ago (wow, long time) Lauren, her FHBF (he of the startlingly frank reviews), Lori and I met in Irvine for a little dinner and lots of gossip! Well, it wasn't all gossip, as we did talk about other things, like scientific research, theses, and climbing. And Aeron chairs. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures. Just imagine 3 girls and a guy in a bar talking into the night. It was great seeing them again!
Two weekends ago I attended the spin-in I hinted about. Andrea hosted the affair in her charming little Koreatown apartment. Also in attendance were blogless Caroline, Rose, Julia, Marnie, and Lori. It was great--fiber, spindles, wheels, and good company. Lori it seemed showed a fine aptitude for wheel spinning, but she's very cautious, not wanting to give in to the spinning dieties just yet.
I leave you with a picture of socks... Top-down versus toe-up.
Know any gnomes wanting socks?
Gallery Update: Bernadette knit up a Liesel in a lovely blue color. Thanks for emailing me, Bernadette!
Fiber: Pink, green, and white Clun/Cormo mix, 8 oz; gifted by Secret Pal 2 Mia
Vendor: Spirit Trail Fiber Works
Yield: 456 yards
Weight: Worsted
In preparation for the spin-in, I decided to empty out my bobbins. This was an interesting fiber to work with, because of the breeds (Clun Forest and Corriedale x Merino) and the color blend. I had experimented with weights and plying, and decided to go with a finer single and Navajo ply, to preserve the color variegations. Knowing that I didn't want a muddy mix, I separated the roving into piles of pink, green, and pink/green and spun those alternately in varying amounts, to create a truly variegated single.
I'd rather show off my mistakes and have someone give me suggestions on how to fix them than hide them. A little humility does some good! Yes, some lengths of singles were either under- or over-spun. Yes, my chain ply is a bit loose. The skeins, off the niddy-noddy, were somewhat balanced--1 twist, not bad. I don't know if it was my "meh" attitude halfway through spinning this, because I know I could've done a lot better.
Samples from the very beginning of this project. Back when days were cloudy and grey. What a difference sunlight makes.
Nevertheless, these are *my pretties*, and I'll probably use them for socks. Someday! Thanks again for the great fiber, Mia!
Listening to: So Long and Thanks for all the Fish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy soundtrack. It's a ridiculous song, and I'm in the mood for the ridiculous!
Blogworthy: It's occurred to me that perhaps Bloglines has been dropping a few of my subscriptions. I know I subscribe to June's, and if I hadn't dropped by on my own, I never would've found minimiam! How clever the photography is. If you check out the Sports section, you'll find climbers on Mont Blanc, ha!
BF: I know you didn't do any knitting at all during the trip. So are you going to get back to the socks after all this.... this spinning stuff?
MJ: You bet your sweet little bun bun I am!
BF: (rolls eyes) I've been dreaming about those socks.
MJ: Hey, I found something called the Twisted German Cast-on. Does that mean it was invented by a twisted German, or was it from Germany and has a twist to it?
BF: I'm going outside. I think I need to go back to Maple Canyon.
You'd expect me to use the Twisted German Cast-on, wouldn't you, for the German Boyfriend socks, right? He he. These socks will be my attempt to try new techniques, the first one being a different cast-on. I decided to go with Judy Becker's Magic Cast-On. It was a little fiddly at the beginning--but toe-up sock cast-ons always are, anyway.
Then I decided to do something different with the arch. BF has a beautiful arch on his big ol' foot, and I want to make sure the sock is flexible in that area and not have to stretch rather unattractively over it. Rather than have plain old stockinette throughout, I decided to incorporate some ribbing. 1x1 ribbing, done in a smaller needle size than the rest of the sock. Switching needles wasn't too much of a challenge. I rather liked the break in the knitting. But 1x1 ribbing, gah. I'm going to take up Marnie's offer on a better technique for it.
Also: Who wants to try rock-climbing? Don't say you're afraid of heights, because yours truly is. Honest. If you're interested, and if you happen to be in the L.A. area, let me know! :-)
We're back from Maple Canyon, Utah! What can I say, we've been there quite a few times before, and once again it was great. The weather cooled as the days went by, with scattered thundershowers here and there. It's been known that Maple Canyon's sport climbing routes are "soft" on the ratings; however, there are a number of very good climbs. Even though Jen and Wendy (both have "spaz" or "spaaz" in their urls, kinda interesting) will likely be the only ones who'll understand what I'm talking about, I'll just mention that I led the following routes: onsight 10b, 10d, 11b, 11d; redpoint warmup 10s, 11c, 12a, 12b. BF redpointed his projects, a 12b (same one I did) and a 12d that had one of those make-or-break moves at the top. All the climbs were looong, between 50 and 90 feet high. Since we'll be returning in 4 weeks (just in time to see the leaves change color), my goal will be to increase my power endurance. I was tired half the time from all the hiking and climbing!
Of course, I took pictures. It was so frickin' gorgeous, I just stared. Didn't knit a damn thing. Margene, how do you do it?
Pretty blue flowers.
And blue berries. I have no idea what they were, but the Resident Mouse seemed to like them.
We caught this beautiful rainbow after a particularly heavy rain. It must be all that expanse of sky and land, the colors were brilliant.
Sunsets, whatever we saw of them, weren't too bad either.
Here's a closeup of the rock we were climbing on: basically river rock in a hardened mud matrix. Note the American Indian paintings: these were fenced-off in the Left Fork hiking/climbing area. It's a hand at the top right, some type of magic symbol on the bottom left.
Friend of ours on a long route that starts off vertically, traverses up through a roof (very, very burly) and then up the rest of the cave. Nail-bitingly good climbing! And yes, he finally redpointed the route after 6 or 7 tries.
A very rare picture of BF (okay, it's a stretch), who got soaked in the rain while climbing one of the routes on the right. It just so happened that we were on *the* route that got wet during the rain. Of course.
And finally, me getting friendly with the local bear in Park City. It's a nice little town, a tad too commercial for us. All the magazines and papers I looked through advertised all these housing communities, and the stores on Main Street were either gift shops or restaurants. Where's the substance? I've seen the transformation of small towns like Big Bear and Mammoth into overpriced developments (back in the day when I used to snowboard and traveled often to those places), so I was a bit disappointed knowing Park City's future. *Others* may disagree.
Anyway. Next post I'll be back to knitted content. Those socks!
Blogworthy:
◊ This cool ceramic egg holder, for a dozen eggs. Interestingly enough, if you get brown eggs and white eggs, you could play tic-tac-toe. That was BF's suggestion, not mine.
◊ I was just talking to a friend that Patagonia should redesign their site, and guess what: they did.
◊ Speaking of the company Patagonia, you may or may not recall that one of its "ambassadors" Dean Potter climbed the Delicate Arch. I find it particularly sad that Potter found a loophole in the National Park Service rules to climb one of the state's most recognized natural features (photo here). Can't he at least say sorry? And what is Patagonia, leader of environmental activism, doing about this?
