Double Helix

trifecta

The "Quotes of the Day" gadget is installed on my iGoogle page. Typically, I find one quote that resonates. Today, I enjoyed all three, especially as a set:

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.
  - Aldous Huxley

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.
  - Ray Bradbury

back to back

This year, I've been knitting up the mountain of Sheep One I picked up last summer on deep discount, seduced by the price and the colors. After much hand-wringing, I concluded that the colors best suited a blanket.

I picked up some plum and deep teal to ground the wild palette. Even with a mitigating influence, I had too much watermelon pink. PeachPit's taste offers a handy option for any surplus of pink yarn.

Shortly after presenting her with the angora vest, PeachPit gently suggested that my next project for her should involve several colors. After removing much pink from the equation, I achieved a pleasing color balance for the blanket and was disinclined to subtract anything else. To flesh out PeachPit's sweater, I picked up more darks. (Wrong direction on stash-busting goal: two deep teal, three plum, and two olive.)

Plan A was executed twice.

The first time, I plunged in and knit to Ann Budd's dimensions for a child aged six, calculating stitch and row dimensions based on a stockinette swash. Good on length, bad on width; front and back frogged.

The second time, I calculated the proper dimensions more carefully, but I ignored the shortening effect resulting from the garter ridges. Bad call! Front, back, and sleeve frogged, the last of which illustrated painfully well my error in judgment.

Plan B retains the math from Plan A.2, shows off the darker colors to better advantage, but uses less pink.

Next moves:

• Block pieces.
• Seam sweater.
• Add bottom edging, cuffs, and collar.
• Finish blanket.
• Make seed stitch scarf with inevitable remnants.

makeshift

Anyone who's been here knows that, in the classic battle of steps versus weather, our steps had been getting trounced. The spring came, and brought the carpenter.

Our porch held the mailbox, as porches often do. We felt disinclined to ask our mail carrier to vault the construction site. The only approach to our front porch involves crossing the driveway and passing the enormous maple tree, which certainly predates the paving around it.

Mail Tree!

trading down

Sunday, I was poking around web sites looking for suppliers of Kertzer Super 10, and discovered that one local yarn store is running a pattern contest this summer:

Design - must call for yarn carried by the store (natch)

Prize - $40 gift certificate, publication in the store's zine

Cost - "Patterns must be the entrants’ original, previously unpublished work and all entries become the property of (the store), will not be acknowledged or returned and may be used by (the store) in any manner or media in perpetuity without compensation."

I don't think so.

If I come up with an original idea, make the object, and commit the pattern to paper, there's no way I'm giving that up for $40 and a modicum of publicity.

Surprisingly, you must relinquish copyright just to get into the game. Even Cell, Science, and Nature release manuscripts they decline so you can publish elsewhere.