A Bear For All Seasons

My birthday is in October so I sometimes get a little Halloween silliness among my presents.  Several years ago, in a package from my parents, I received this bear wearing a cute jack-o'-lantern sweater.

At the time I was in graduate school, studying physical oceanography at Oregon State.  The package with Teddy came to my campus address.  As part of my graduate research assistantship, I was responsible for upkeep of a string of coastal-based radar sites that measure the surface currents in the ocean.  The technology was relatively new and the sites could be temperamental.  We wanted a continuous record of the currents so it was a problem when a site went down.  Sometimes things could be fixed through a remote log in, but frequently I found my day's plans upended with an unexpected trip to the coast to cycle power on a system.  Believe me, driving an hour or two each way just to push a power button and head back home gets old really quick.

I doubt I'm alone in my tendency to anthropomorphize flaky computer systems, and I often felt the sites would wait until I turned my back to crash.  Theorizing that the computers got lonely, I set Teddy to watch over them when I wasn't there.  He looked so cute perched on top of a monitor, supervising everything.

Then, of course, Halloween was over and his jack-o'-lantern sweater was suddenly out of season.  This was Oregon State, home to the orange and black Beavers, so I tried for a little while to say it wasn't a Halloween sweater, but a Beaver sweater.  Even I didn't really fall for that.

There was nothing for it.  I knit him a fall sweater, then a Christmas sweater, and so on.  Soon Teddy had a seasonal wardrobe that he'd change into as the year cycled.

I'll have to confess he's spent most of the last few years in a box, ever since I finished grad school.  But last Christmas he came out in his Christmas sweater and he didn't get quite forgotten after the holiday was over.

A few weeks ago I joined Nerd Wars on Ravelry.  This is a competition among knitters representing various fandoms.  I joined Team UU (Unseen University), the team for Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. I love these novels. They’re a great mixture of fantasy, science fiction, and social satire. Plus they’re just plain laugh-out-loud funny. If you haven’t read them, get ye to your library today. While some characters do appear in multiple books, this isn’t a series in the traditional sense. There’s no need to read them in order from the beginning. Start wherever you like.

In Round 1 of Tournament 3 of Nerd Wars, the Nerd Culture challenge was to make a costume, for yourself, a pet, or a doll. Our Team Unity project was cheese. Death is one of my favorite characters, so I chose to make a Death costume for my teddy bear.

Death of Teddies

A recent reaping of a wizard at UU happened to occur while the wizards were at their cheeseboard (hardly surprising, given the wizards’ fondness for their cheeseboard). Death was feeling peckish so he used his scythe to help himself to a chunk of cheddar - you can see a cheddar crumb still attached to his scythe. He really needs to clean that.

Death of Teddies is available as a free pattern download from Ravelry until November 15, 2011.  Teddy's seasonal wardrobe of sweaters will each be posted free for one month over the course of the next year.  In October 2012 I intend to release an ebook for sale with a pattern for a knitted bear along with his entire seasonal wardrobe.

So download Death of Teddies now, before he's gone.

Ten Years of War

Okay, this post is a bit off topic for this blog, but there is fiber involved.  As you'll learn from this post, I'm pretty far left on the political spectrum.  I intend this blog to be mainly about knitting and design, but I'm sure my views will bleed into some posts.  Particularly as we move into next year's election.

Ten years ago Friday the USA started bombing Afghanistan and our country has been at war ever since.  I'm largely a pacifist.  War doesn't often seem to fix much of anything, and the costs, in both blood and money, seem too high.  Look at Afghanistan today.  What has ten years of war there gotten us or the Afghans?

Ten years ago Friday a group of concerned citizens gathered in Corvallis, Oregon, to hold a vigil protesting the war. I wasn't there.  I was opposed to the invasion of Afghanistan and emailed my representative and senators, but it didn't piss me off quite enough to make me take to the streets.

Some of those people came back to protest again the next day.  And the day after.  And the day after that.  And every day since.  From 5pm to 6pm every day for the last ten years there has been someone standing for peace in front of the Benton County Courthouse.

Isn't it a beautiful old courthouse?  Built in 1888.  We're lucky to have such a nice place to protest.  That old VW van is Ed Epley's.  He brings the signs in it most every day.  Ed's the one in the Beaver orange fleece.  Corvallis is the home Oregon State University so you see a lot of orange around town.

I got involved in the vigil in the fall of 2002.  That was when the Bush administration started pushing the invasion of Iraq, based on nothing but bald-faced lies.  That pissed me off enough to make me take to the streets.  So I started going to the vigil on a fairly regular basis.  I found a community of like-minded people there and made some really good friends.

So this weekend was a landmark.  Ten years of war for the nation.  And ten years of protesting for the vigil. To mark the occasion, one of the vigil regulars, Carolyn Latierra, organized the exhibition of the Remembrance Rug created by Roger Asai, a former Marine who lives one town over in Albany.

This is an amazing latch-hook rug commemorating those who have died in Iraq.  (Told you there'd be fiber content).

I can't imagine how much work Roger has put into this.  Here he is talking about the rug with some community members.

As well as the rug, he has 17 binders holding information on each of the fallen soldiers as well as civilians and journalists killed in the war.  Those are the binders lain out on the foreground tables.  It's possible to locate a soldier in the binders and then find the symbol representing them on the rug.






Each symbol represents one fallen soldier, with the color denoting the service branch.  The browns represent Army, the greens Marines, dark blue Navy, light blue Air Force, and medium blue Coast Guard.



The rug is beautifully made and a moving memorial to the dead of the Iraq war.

I helped with set up in the morning.  When we unrolled the rug on the tables and canvas along the steps, as a fiber artist, I of course wanted to pet it.  That felt disrespectful though, and I tried to resist.  Then Roger walked up with lint brushes, looking for people to brush the rug all in one direction, since rolling it can mush the yarn in places. Needless to say, I immediately volunteered and thereby got to pet the rug without feeling disrespectful.


I don't go to the vigil much since Obama's inauguration.  I know he's escalated the war in Afghanistan, but he is getting us out of Iraq. I just don't feel the need to actively protest.  Obama is much more militaristic than I am, but so is the country.  So I'm resigned to not getting the foreign policy I'd ideally like and feel that Obama's foreign policy is better than I could have hoped for after the disaster that was Bush.  I'm glad I went yesterday though.  It felt right to commemorate ten years of war.  Plus I got to see a lot of old friends who I don't see often enough anymore.

Here's yesterday's organizer, Carolyn.  Thank you Carolyn for all the work you put into making yesterday such a successful event.

I'm glad I have a picture of her to add - I really took this picture because of the t-shirt she's holding up.  I can see those doves as part of a colorwork knitting motif.  Hmm... or maybe in lace?  See, I managed to bring the post back to fiber arts.

You can see the local news coverage of the vigil here and of the Remembrance Rug here.

Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival

This past weekend I headed up to Canby for OFFF, the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival.  Saturday was sunny and hot.  I got to the festival a bit after noon and met up with my friend Amy and her son Lance.  We spent a while admiring all the adorable animals.

Sheep

I'm not sure what breed this guy is

Scottish Blackface

This guy belongs to a friend of Amy's
 (that's Amy scritching his chin)

Icelandic

Alpacas

Alpacas are the cutest critters.  Amy and I discussed our daydreams of owning farms with fiber animals.  I don't think either of us really wants to deal with the reality of owning animals: the long hours, the day-to-day slog, the vet bills, etc.  But, oh, it is a nice fantasy.  A beautiful piece of land somewhere, with Alpacas, or maybe sheep, growing your own fiber.  Mind you, I don't even spin, so it's really a fantasy for me.

Goats

Curly Angoras

Recently sheared, but still pretty cute

The forecast called for rain Saturday night and Sunday, so Amy and her family wussed out on camping.  I debated it, but I'd gone to the trouble of getting my tent down from my hot, hot, hot, attic, so I danged well was gonna use it.  Plus while we'd looked at lots of yarn, I hadn't picked what I wanted to buy.  So I set up camp over in the Pine Grove area.  I knit and enjoyed the cool evening breezes. 


It did rain and get windy during the night, but my little tent kept me dry.  The wind was blowing through the trees, causing a steady stream of pine needles plopping onto my tent.  Once something bigger bonged into the tent and woke me up.  Probably just a pine cone, but in the middle of the night it sounded like something huge.


The rain had stopped in the morning but I had to deal with my packing stupidity.  I brought the Coleman stove, the french press, the coffee, the tea kettle to heat the water in, but I forgot the propane canister.  Oops, gonna be hard to make coffee.  Luckily the Old River Coffee booth was open early to sell me a cup, cuz you don't want to deal with me if I don't get my coffee in the morning.  The rain held off a while and I was able to get my tent packed up fairly dryly.


I wandered thru all the booths looking at all the pretty yarn and attended a couple demos.  While I was wandering, I met one of the test knitters for my Diamond Cap pattern, MystykDream on Rav.  She recognized me from the pattern photo.  The Testing Pool group on Rav is a wonderful resource - I found such a great group of test knitters and it was fun to meet one in real life.


There was so much gorgeous yarn, it was so hard not to just buy one of everything.  But I was good.  I ended up getting two Socks That Rock mill ends at Blue Moon Fiber Arts, and a beautiful purple super fine Alpaca skein from Dicentra. 

The photograph doesn't do the colors justice because the sun just doesn't want to come out here in Oregon.  The leftmost is a gorgeous blend of olive greens, the center one is a beautiful mix of teal and gray, and the right is sumptuous shades of purple.  I'm going to have to improve my photography skills.  I guess I'm going to have to get a good artificial lighting setup.  I live in Oregon, after all.  Natural light is low to non-existent most of the year.

The green sock yarn will be used for socks (since I foolishy signed up for Socktoberfest on Rav).  I can't decide if the teal/gray skein should be socks or gloves.  The purple alpaca will be some type of neckwarmer.  Shawl?  Scarf? Cowl?  Probably a small shawl, but I'm not sure.

It had been raining on and off throughout the day.  After I bought my yarn, it was just pouring down rain.  I waited for a brief lull to sprint to my Jeep and headed home around 3pm.  OFFF was a lot of fun and I'm definitely planning to go back next year.  Maybe with a bigger yarn budget :^)

My first pattern sale on Ravelry

Last Friday I released my first for-sale pattern on Ravelry.

















Diamond Cap $5.00

I've had a hat something like this in mind for a while.  Last February I met my sister Monica in Portland for a few days.  She was on her way home to Alaska from a vacation in Mexico and, the way her flights worked, she had to spend at least one night somewhere on the West coast.  So she stopped in Portland for a few nights and I took the Amtrak up from Corvallis to meet her there.

We had a fun visit exploring Portland.  It turned out we were there during the REI end-of-winter sale, so of course we had to check it out.  They had some cute cabled caps with bills, kind of like this one, but in brown and with traditional braided cables, instead of my seeded diamonds.  Being good knitters, my sister and I looked at the caps and said "I could make that".

I found some Cascade 220 in my favorite teal color, on sale cheap at a local craft store, and in August I finally got around to making my cap.  I wrote it up, had it test knit in the Ravelry Testing Pool group, and released it last Friday.  And then I anxiously awaited my first sale.

I had fantasies of selling 100 patterns the first day, like most new designers I suppose.  I also had fears that no one would ever buy a single copy.  Worse yet, what if someone bought it and found a bajillion errors?  I spent Friday afternoon anxiously clicking on my Ravelry pro link to see if I had any sales.

The first time, I gasped.  10 sales already!?!  Oh, wait, I had ten test knitters and had gifted the finished pattern to each of them.  No actual sales.  Pooey.  :^(

I obsessively checked back.  Still no sales.  I tried to distract myself with other tasks and got depressed.  Obviously I was a failure as a designer.  It had been a whole 3 hours and no one had bought my pattern yet.

Then, late in the evening, after staying off the computer for a few hours, I checked my email.  And there was a notification from Paypal of received funds!  Huzzah!!!   Someone bought my pattern!  And now I'd learned that I didn't need to look at my Ravelry pro link to see if I had any sales.  I'd get an email from Paypal when I made a sale.

So now, every time I open my browser, I eagerly look.  Do I have any new emails to that account?  Ooh, I do!  Is it a pattern sale?  Pooey, just a library book due notice.  But every now and then there's an email from Paypal.  I expect the novelty will wear off, but for now it makes checking my email an exciting event.

Yet another knitting blog

Yup, just what the world needs.  Yet another knitting blog.  But I'm going to start one anyway.

I'm beginning to sell my patterns on Ravelry, so it seems like a good idea to have a blog to update folks about new designs.


ABOUT ME

I learned to knit from my mom as a child, but didn't stick with it.  In 1995 I quit my career in electronics and moved from Texas to Oregon to attend graduate school at Oregon State University. That first dark and rainy winter I realized I needed an indoor hobby (besides TV and chocolate).  Over the winter holiday break, I checked out some books from the local library, bought some needles and yarn, and re-taught myself how to knit.







Being either ambitious or ignorant (or both), I decided my first project would be an Irish fisherman's sweater that I'd design myself.  I at least had the sense to do a matching cable scarf first.













I found a book in the library called Knitting in the Old Way by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts.  It gave me some guidelines for a traditional raglan shape and I started knitting my sweater.  I didn't know a few basics like using a smaller needle and/or fewer stitches for the ribbing, so my ribbing flares out a bit, rather than drawing in.  And if I remember right, it took three or four tries to get the neckline anywhere near the right shape and size.  But for all it's flaws, I've worn this sweater into the ground and still love it.

I've been knitting ever since and rarely followed a pattern.  I've recently started writing up my designs for others to make and released my first pattern free on Ravelry a month or so ago.

It's a pattern for a knitted candy cane, made with Red Heart Supersaver yarn.   You can download the pdf from Ravelry

My first for-sale pattern, Diamond Cap, just finished test knitting and should be released any day now.