tychoish, now without a net

My life has otherwise been proceeding as it has been, so I don’t have anything ground breaking to report to you all. Ho hum.

I thought I’d offer you all some noes on my knitting/fiber art progress.

I finished the green shawl. I did end up needing a bit more of the Zephyr, but I think it worked out just fine, and frankly you can’t really see it. I still have to block the shawl, but it’s really nifty.

In the mean time I’m working on a shawl using a very royal blue tencel yarn. It has the dental floss look at the moment, but I think it’ll be quite nice. I’m embarking on a very nifty lace pattern, supposedly Japanese in origin, but I’m not really aware of Japanese knitting traditions, so I think it’s just inspired and all. From Nancy Oberly’s Folk Shawls book.

I finished spinning the merino roving. this was a massive project… two pounds of yarn. I’ll probably hand dye it all and get something really cool. I foresee a sweater. It’s a little thick and thin, but I think if I knit it tightly the texture will be really interesting. and blocking can do wonderful things, and I have a lot of it.

As a shorter interim spinning project, I’ve begun work on a small amount of silk and wool roving, that I hope to spin into heavy lace lace or some sort of fingering weight yarn. Single ply, if I can set the twist enough so that it it’ll be knit-able in as singles. If not I’ll roll a center pull ball and two-ply it.

After that, I’m either going to start spinning from my stash of really pretty corriedale, or from some brown alpaca. I have some soy silk at home, but I think that will make far better winter spinning. My logic is that if spinning is a year round activity, you don’t really need to spin yarn seasonally. That is that, you don’t need to spin fine light cellulose fibers in the summer for summer knitting. In fact, if you’re trying to make yarn to knit with, you’d be better off spinning winter yarns in the summer and summer yarns in the winter. But then I suppose it doesn’t matter much.

Anyway.

There you have it. Cheers.

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tagged: knitting • TealArt

Ok, for all of you who I know are waiting for this one, I offer you a knitting post unencumbered by tales of my personal life, discussions of my current technological setup or weird creative tangents. All Knitting, one paragraph away.

I’m almost done with my latest shawl. I ran out of yarn, nary 3 rows away from the bind off. Which means I need to buy two more ozs of the stuff. Thank god I have a discount. Probably in the same direction I’m going to buy another ball of the blue yarn that I have, just because the fear of running out of yarn is really too much for me.

That shawl, “the green shawl” is really amazing. It’s going to be big, and very lacy, and I hope to sell it for a fair price. (While knitting isn’t a viable way to earn all of one’s money, selling a shawl or two might me to relax a little when I’m ordering books or some such next year.

I’m currently working on finishing a sweater I’m making out of fisherman’s wool. This is lion brand yarn, that you can get at just about any craft store for about a dollar an oz. Pretty good deal. It’s ecru (”sheep”) color, but it dyes well. It’ll be a nice sweater, and I like the feel of the wool. I had plans to sell the design, but as I’m watching it unfold, I’m not sure that I like the way that it looks. On the upside, I think I’ve finally figured out how to make a crew neck, so I might just revert back to doing that. I finished the neck treatment, so now all I have to do, is make the sleeves, and block the hell out of the sucker.

You might remember me talking about my “sock project” as the never ending pair of socks that I was supposedly making. Well, I think I’m going to give up on it. I mean what I’ve done looks really good, and if I was interested, I could probably finish them in a reasonable amount of time, but I’ve lost the desire to make this pair of socks. I think it’s something to do with such fine wool. It’s such nice yarn too, I feel really bad for not being able to make the socks, but, I can’t pull it off. for anything. But then I’m in no hurry, so I don’t really need to take them off those needles, so it might linger for a while.

In other news, I have enough yarn set aside for me, to make a sweater. It’ll be a great deal of fun. I’m thinking drop shouldered crew neck. The yarn is this kettle/space dyed worsted weight wool, that’s just pretty. I might make two (another in red, I’m so predictable, really), later on in the summer. I’ll probably have a shawl project going at the same time, just to keep entertained.

Well that’s all for the moment.

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tagged: knitting

I’m one of those people. You know, the people who can forgive George Lucas for lots of grievous foul ups, and still love Star Wars. The idea of it. (That will not only read all those damn books, but also give them a great deal of priority over a host of far better options.) I think at the heart of it, I attach to saga’s, and I’ve attached to this one. So deal with it. What follows is a critique of the most recent movie. I hope you enjoy. Continue reading We’ll Always Have Star Wars…

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tagged: TealArt

There are, in my estimation a thousand clever names for a blog like ours. Our fellow bloggers/journalists have some pretty clever names. Rather than surrender to just calling this “TealArt” or something painfully clever, I generally pick a name I like, and leave it up for a few design cycles. Before, I had “The Times Of TealArt” because, mostly I thought newspapers that took the long form “The Times of ” rather than the shorter, “_ Times” was an interesting construction, and it as as a way of putting emphasis on the observed rather than the observer, and given the nature of our medium, I think that’s an interesting statement.

But like all good things, I thought a fresh name would be fun. So for the moment, we have the somewhat loner. “TealArt: You Can’t Take the Sky From Us.” Modified of course, from the following:

Take my love, take my land Take me where I cannot stand. I don’t care, I’m still free, You can’t take the sky from me. Take me out to the black, Tell them I ain’t comin’ back. Burn the land and boil the sea, You can’t take the sky from me. There’s no place I can be. Since I found Serenity. But you can’t take the sky from me…

Clever little ditty. Inspiring and all that. This also reflects on TealArts history, as a spark in the imagination of two fan boys. It’s the lyrics to the theme song for Firefly the short lived Joss Whedon TV series. Anyway, I like it so there. And I think I’m going to have to write a Morris Dance called “The Firefly”, stay tuned.

So that explains that little change, I’m going to go see the new Star Wars movie soon, finaly. I don’t care if it stinks really. Expect a report on that and concerning knitting things. Cool. Cheers!

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tagged: TealArt

I’d like to take a moment to recognize the fact that there are 450 entries on this site. That’s a lot. Well I suppose it could/should be more, but I think its worth noting. It’s yet another fact that draw attention to the idea that, we’ve been around for a REALLY long time. shrug.

I think my new computer and I have finally bonded. I think it generally takes one trying design process to bond with a computer. Graphics, web pages, long form prose writing, etc. Its like you need to push yourself to some limit with the computer to be able to trust it, to know it’s limits and yours, and then it becomes easier to work with it in the future. So I think we’re there. Now all I need to do is send off the last thing for the rebate, and I’ll be really happy.

The other thing, and what I initially intended to post here about, is the fact that, pretty much without my realizing it, Ranchero Software released a new version of NetNewsWire, which has been my news reader of preference. The interface is more Tiger-Esque, which is just fine by me (now if we can only get Mac to drop this steel look on finder, we’ll be good). But the really cool thing is that it will cope with Atom feeds. Basically it’s yet another RSS, except not as simple (RSS stands for really simple syndication.) I think it works great frankly it doesn’t matter much to me, except Blogger supports Atom and only Atom. Whereas before, I wouldn’t dedicate the time to reading Blogger powered weblogs, because my news reader wouldn’t cope with it, now my only reasoning is pure snobbery. Blogger, like LiveJournal, Xanga, etc. tend to be too easy for people to use, so EVERYONE gets one, which inspires even more people to get them. And it’s a downward spiral. I’ve had to put a lot of time into getting tealart to work the way it does. Not to mention money/work for the domain name and the hosting account, and I’d like to think that this kind of commitment leads to a higher level of quality, and I think this is confirmed. It doesn’t matter much which program you use, but blogs that are powered by freestanding software packages tend to be better than website services. And I’ll go ahead and lump TypePad in with the freestanding packages, even though it’s not, really. But I digress.

In addition to the new and better version of NetNewsWire, I’ve also found that Ranchero has what I think is a rather good offline blog editor. I’ve seen all manner of these programs, and they tend to be rather crappy. Now this isn’t all the developers fault. It’s taken a while for the protocols that allow such offline programs to connect with site to develop into allowing communication of enough features. But I think everything is starting to line up. Which is a very good thing indeed. So yeah. I’ve found what passes for blogging nirvana, for the moment.

But, and I think I’ll save this thought for later. Have you noticed how so called “traditional/old” media have been fascinated with the the development of the “blog”? I can’t help but think that they’re missing something. Or maybe they have it all right, and it just stings, but when ever I read or see one of those pieces, I cringe.

Anyway, Stay Tuned.

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tagged: TealArt

Ok, Here I go again. I up and figured out how the new WordPress template system works after months of hemming and hawing. I finally have something that I think I kind of like. Whatever. Uses the awesome graphic that Indi made for us, and I think we have a winner.

Confidential to Chris: You can stop laughing and pointing at me now. Thank You.

So here we are. Enough of this introspective crap about writing. It’ll happen. And no more of these 2,000 word posts once a month either.

One thing about writing that I remembered, or at any rate have decided to begin to act on. Is it doesn’t matter much what you write, so long as your fingers are making the right motions on the keyboard. Write emails, write blog posts, whatever, just move them fingers, and eventually you’ll be forced to get something out of use. I hope at least. In this dirrection, I for one am going to start back up a more strenuous TealArt posting schedule, so get those RSS readers all fired up.

I’m also in the process of trying to revive my Speculative Fiction writer’s yahoo group, which is almost five years old and has 233 people. Wow! And I’ve joined a lace knitters yahoo group which is a lot of fun, and gives me occassiton to muse on lace knitting which I think I will also do here, a fair piece.

Now all I need to do is some how figure out how to inspire TealArt Readers (and that means you) to comment on what we/I write here. It’s been a six year battle, maybe this time will be different, because the software actually works reliably. shrug

Anyway, Cheers!

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tagged: TealArt