Booking Through Thursday

Pick one of your favorite authors.

I tend to have more favorite books than favorite authors but Jhumpa Lahiri is a writer whose writing I love unequivocally.

What are some of your favorite books by this author?
Jhumpa Lahiri is a relatively new writer and has only published a collection of short stories and one novel thus far. I like both so much that I just can’t pick a favorite between the two.

Why do you like this author?
I like Ms. Lahiri’s books because I love her writing. The narratives manage to be both simply written and incredibly lyrical. Her characters are drawn as complex, realistic figures and the evocative writing makes one feel their every emotion. I am really failing at finding the proper words to describe just how gifted a writer she is. I think the best I can say is go read the books. You’ll see.

Have you read everything by this author? Why or why not?
As I answered in the first question, I have read both her books. She also publishes some short stories in magazines like the New Yorker and in multi-author collected works of short fiction. Really, I try to read everything of hers that I can get my hands on.

A public service announcement

I have noticed that a significant number of people (all four of them) who come across my blog via a search engine find me while looking for sites containing some combination of the words hedgehog + pattern + knitting. Of course, my curiosity was piqued and I did a search too. So, now as a public service to those seekers (should any of the four of you ever come back) and future searchers of hedgehog patterns, here are some road signs for you on the information superhighway (hm…does anyone still use that term?).
Fibertrends makes a pattern for a Huggable Hedgehog. In fact, Rose-Kim just made one such fuzzball in lovely lilac. (Very cute, I might add). You can even buy a Huggable Hedgehog kit including yarn and all from here. Should you be disinclined to purchase a pattern, you can also find a free one here.
So there you have it. Knitted hedgehogs. Who knew?

One pointy stick

For the past two nights, I have been abandoning my wooden needles in favor of a single needle of the small, eyed, sharp, and metal persuasion. You see, lots of craft-bog reading, a Japanese craft book, and a small fabric binge later, I finally joined the Sew? I Knit!-along. I had been eyeing the sew-along all month but the project for March, skirts, was beyond me, both skill-wise and in terms of sewing-machine literacy. Fortunately, the project of the sew-along for April is bags! Just when I’d been dreaming about one day making the ones in my new book, along comes the perfect opportunity for me to frog-leap those projects to the head of my to-do queue.
Here is one of the bags that I want to make (though I am still debating between that and this one).


Do those spots look familiar? Here is yesterday’s mystery picture eight spots later and zoomed out.


This is actually just a very simple round-bottom bag and not the purse in the book. I wasn’t sure how the linen I have would hold up in terms of fraying at the raw edge of the hole so I decided to do a test version. Since I was getting sick of carrying my knitting around in plastic bags made holey and ragged by knitting needles, making a test version in the form of a draw-string bag was a perfectly practical solution (and is conveniently my red project for this month). So, some ironing and stitching of the spotted rectangle later, et voila!

I still need stitch up the top of the bag but that has to wait until I can go by the fabric store to pick up some cord. For the most part, though, the bag is finished and I have learned two things. One, leaving the raw edges at the circles certainly won’t work since the linen frays as soon as you look at it. Two, while I really like the spots close-up, especially those where the calico fabric shows through,


I’m not sure if I like the effect of the entire bag. Perhaps fewer spots? Spots of the same size? Some circles not cut out but just outlined on the background fabric? Or does the whole dark spots on light fabric not work at all? What do you think?

I'm seeing spots

T'was a spotty Sunday evening around here.


More details to follow tomorrow. Any guesses in the mean time as to what this might be?

If I had a million dollars...

No fur coats or green dresses for me (apologies to the Bare Naked Ladies) but this instead. All of the plays and even some of the sonnets (!). Yup, one million dollars, a year in Britain, 37 plays, total happiness.
Well, a girl can dream.
Happily though, since the celebration does last for a year from Will’s birthday this April 23rd, there will be festival plays until the April of next year. Hmm…better start saving now for a flight and some theater tickets.
(Here is a summary of the festival in the NY Times. The RSC site can be a bit daunting for quick browsing.)

Thanks, thanks, and thanks again

To everyone who took the time to drop by and to those who left such kind and lovely words about Klaralund both here and at the Knitty Coffeeshop, THANK YOU! If this isn’t positive reinforcement to keep on knitting, I don’t know what is. So again,

Booking Through Thursday

Today's questions were suggested by Christine.

1. How do you decide to read a book by an author you haven't read before?
   A myriad of ways...on a whim, at the insistence of a friend, by way of a glowing book review, because it is on a subject I find interesting,...and of course, dare I say it, because the cover is pretty. In fact, I really like hearing book recommendations from people since it exposes me to new books that I otherwise wouldn't have known about. I'm not daunted by new authors and am always searching for my next favorite. I'm only daunted by the new vogue that seems to demand all well-written narratives to be heart-wrenchingly, shoot-yourself-in-the-head-afterwards depressing, as if a book is not worthy or edifying without the pain. Am I alone in wanting to read books that are engaging and thought-provoking without the excessive emotional baggage?



2. What sort of recommendations count most highly in making that decision?
   I tend to be a bit of a book snob, though in an odd way. I just ask that my books be very well written. I guess that is the former literary magazine editor in me. I will happily read what is considered "low" literature (though IMHO they shouldn't be) like mystery and fantasy as long as the writing is good. Therefore, the recommendations that count most highly for me are those from people I know who have similar tastes in reading. Recommendations from the New Yorker and New York Times, as well as author interviews on NPR, also tend to have some influence. In the end, though, all a recommendation does is make me go by the store or library and glance through the book to see if I really want to read it. I've never had a good experience with just reading something at the behest of other --- all of these times I found that I thoroughly disliked the books .

Spring!

Coming to terms

Perhaps I was overly ambitious (as usual, those who know me would chorus) but I blame the odd frame of mind that sets in whenever I plan projects. Somehow, when I sit down with a pattern and a deadline, all known knowledge of work and life obligations melt way and I plan everything as if I live in that wonderful fantasyland where free time is limitless. So, as much as it galls me to admit it, Mom’s vest is not going to be finished anywhere close to her birthday at the beginning of next month. Unfortunately, five repeats of the back does not a finished garment make (the sharp-eyed reader will notice those repeats as the background for the A Sweet Quartet photo in the last post…knowing that the book is only ten inches tall, you can see how pathetically little of the vest I have managed to knit). So sort of learning my lesson (this time) and being slightly more realistic as a result, Mother’s Day is my new deadline. Despite the annoyance of being reminded, yet again, that time does not bend to my desires, I am relieved that I will not be trying to rush it out by the end of the month. Working on the vest had become a chore and was no longer enjoyable. This may sound silly but I don’t want to be making a gift for a loved one in that mindset. Not that I believe the knitting will somehow be imbued with resentment and that Mom will instantly suffer ill effects when she puts it on. I just think if one were to take the time and trouble to hand make gifts, they should be done in a, well, more generous and happy frame of mind. It is hardly a good thing to suddenly notice that in all thoughts in reference to the project, the project name had been replaced by “the albatross”…
Despite the lifting of my self-imposed vest knitting exclusivity, the past few days have been hectic enough to ensure that no amount of knitting (or crafting) can possibly take place. Sadly, the next couple of days look to be much the same. So, in lieu of pictures of my works-in-progress, here are some much more inspirational images from my new books. I certainly will be looking at these and dreaming.




(incidentally, does anyone know what the brands of the yarn used in the Japanese glove book are? The fiber of the entrelac scarf and the gloves are the cover of the books are gorgeous...)

Happiness is...

This weekend brought an embarrassement of riches by way of the mail and second-hand bookshops. Unlike the writer of yarnstorm, I am a great amasser of objects. When I become very interested in something, I find myself obsessively collecting everything relevant to that subject, even those only tangentially related. Because I have a finite amount of space in which to store and display things, I do attempt to place limits on what I acquire by putting purchases to the question of "do I really want this or do I just want to have it for the sake of adding to the collection?" However, probably to the consternation of anyone who has ever or will ever help me move, book collecting is not something that I apply that selective criteria to. As of the last time I changed residences a year ago, boxes of books far out numbered anything else I own. Really, I can't stop buying books for the simple reason that they give me an unequivocal sense of happiness. I love that I can lose myself anywhere anytime I want just by opening a simple, text-filled oblong object. Accordingly, I have stuffed my bookshelves with narratives that I love, volumes of instruction that I feel I can't live without (yes, I consider a book on the esoteric subject of mathematically designing Celtic knots to be one of such), and books that are simply beautiful. Speaking of the last category, I found this little gem.


I first picked it up because I find the cover utterly delightful. The colors used, along with the quirky typeface of the title and the simple depiction of the four essential baking ingredients all comes together to form a wonderful image. I flipped through the book and quickly found myself enthralled. The author writes very well and very engagingly about the histories of the use of sugar, butter, eggs, and almonds in baking. And there are recipes! (It bears mentioning here that I have not so much a sweet tooth as many sweet teeth...and I love baking.) This is only second book in which I have ever come across a recipe for financiers, which I had never heard of until this terrific book, even if they are supposedly "the little black dress of French desserts." Since I loved the little cakes the first time I made them, I am very excited about trying out another alternate recipe.
I'll leave you with an image from another book that arrived this weekend. This one falls into the beautiful books category (you can see more of TD's magical and whimsical illustrations here).
Will-o-wisps...ever wondered what they might look like?

At home

pink

pink

red

Booking through Thursday

This week's questions about self-help books are from Nicki.

1. Have you ever read a self-help book?
   Hmm...I think the only one I ever read was Women are from Mars, Men are from Venus. I picked it up out of curiosity when it was being touted as the ultimate treatise on relationships and behavior of the sexes. Can't say I found it terribly useful but it was an amusing read.


2. What do you think about self-help books in general?
   I personally have never looked to them for advice. I'm sure that like any genre of book, there are good ones and bad ones. I do tend to look a bit askance at them though since there seem to be so many misleading ones that promise to cure all ills.


3. Would you ever recommend a self-help book?
   I don't think I would. I think choosing books in general is a very personal act. Even recommending recreational reading is hit and miss so to urge something upon someone that is intended to be actually useful is even dicier.

Purveyors of Cute

Crafting blog, just a code word for cuteness pusher?
Oh cuteness, that oh-so-hard to define quality that we (or at least, I) seem to be hardwired to go all wobbly and gushy over… Perhaps my particular response threshold is just set much lower than that of others. In any case, the further I venture into crafting blogland, the more I see and the more I covet. Just look at this...and this...and this! It’s enough to make one want to quite work and devote life to sewing up small stuffed creatures. There are even ready-made items of cuteness out there to tide one over if there isn’t time to whip up something oneself. Speaking of which, look what arrived in the mail today! (I know, I’m weak…)


Yes, that’s a cat and a hedgehog…each with their own pull-toy, no less! And they are practical too. Little clips that don’t mangle the cards they can hold. (Am I rationalizing? Yes, I’m rationalizing)
And there's also this


Wait, it’s so much more than a wooden mushroom with a bird clip on top!


The little guy inside holds paper clips. Is your cuteness quotient over-loaded yet?
All three came from loloko. They and lots of their friends can be found on the site…go look!
And least you think there have been no knitterly activities going on (since this is a knitting blog), let me reassure you that there have! Lots of purple cabling. Up to four repeats now. No photos though since the knitting looks exactly like all the other pictures of it I have posted, only slightly longer. It’s not quite a black hole of knitting a la Yarn Harlot but boy, has it been boring and slow.

A pair of fine eyes?

I keep coming across these fun little quizzes on other blogs and finally took a few. According to the following two...


Which Jane Austen Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla


You are Eliza Bennett from Pride and Prejudice!

Yay, you! Perhaps the brightest and best character in all of English literature, you are intelligent, lively, lovely-- in short, you are the best of company. Your only foibles are that you stick with your first impressions... and your family is quite intolerable.

Which Jane Austen Character are You? (For Females) Long Quiz!!!
created with QuizFarm.com


You scored as Elizabeth Bennet. As one of Austen's most beloved characters, Elizabeth Bennet represents what most women would like to become: strong, independent, and loyal. Of course, she has her faults including a stubborn will of iron and a clinging to first impressions. Overall, Lizzie is bright and lovable...something to admire and aspire to.

Elizabeth Bennet -------------------- 91%
Elinor Dashwood -------------------- 88%
Jane Bennet ------------------------ 66%
Marianne Dashwood ------------------ 47%
Emma Woodhouse ------------------- 44%
Charlotte Lucas --------------------- 44%
Lady Catherine ---------------------- 13%


Huh. Perhaps I should start addressing my boyfriend as Mr. Darcy.

Multi-tasking, of sorts

Why do so many useful abilities vanish just when we hit adulthood and need them the most? Like being able to easily pick up languages and being able to do more than one thing at a time --- I strongly suspect these aptitudes all permanently moved to the same place my memory keep taking vacations to. In terms of the latter capability, I distinctly remember being able to multi-task (though I didn’t know it yet by this modular, efficiency-evoking name) with ease when I was young and being puzzled when my parents would scold me and asked how I could possibly focus on more than one thing at a time. Now, when my life practically demands that I always juggle multiple tasks at the same time, I’m finding that, well, I can’t. While I can still safely chew gum and walk at the same time without doing myself damage, anything that involves trying to partition my brain into two separate thought paths ends in disaster. Sadly, this limitation seems to extend to knitting and crafting as well. Since I started knitting, my reading has seen a precipitous drop. I just don’t have enough free time to both read the piles of books I have out from the library and knit all the projects I want. So far, all my attempts to do both has resulted in split and dropped stitches. I am quite amazed when I hear about people who manage to knit without looking, even so much as to do it in a darkened theater. Does anyone have any tips on simultaneous reading and knitting (besides practice, practice, practice)? I can only renew my library books so many times…
The upside of no reading during knitting, though, has been the NPR and Podcast listening I do instead. Now, during the evening when I would normally read, I knit and listen to the radio or my iPod (yes, I am well on my way to skipping straight on to grannyhood). Last week, I was very excited to find one of my favorite shows, Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me (a sort of humorous news quiz show), was available as a podcast. Now if they would only do the same for All Things Considered, This American Life, and A Prairie Home Companion…
Today I found some wonderful fabrics for a Project Spectrum project. (My camera is terrible at capturing color...the white fabric is actually a light gray/flax color and the background of the crane fabric much more of a blue-gray)


Since sewing is less time consuming than knitting, this will replace the Noro scarf as a red project for this month so that I might possibly finish the vest in time for Mom’s birthday. Speaking of the vest, it is growing ever so slowly. I was entirely too optimistic when I thought I could finish any significant amount of the back by the end of this week. I am now at 2.5 repeats out of the 5 before shaping for the armholes occurs. So, there will be much purple knitting in the next few days and very, very little reading.

Monkey see, monkey do

And thus this fox was born.



Knitting blog reading inevitably leads to crafting blog reading, which inevitably leads to wanting to manipulate fabric into something cute. I recently stumbled upon the wealth of crafting blogs out there in the web-verse . A few pictures of adorable stuffed animals later, I was a goner. I have always been a sucker for anything cute and soft and after reading through a few blogs, I was determined to make my own stuffie. So, mix together some suede-like pumpkin orange fabric, muslin bought for blocking knitted items, and left over yarn from my branching-out scarf and ta-da, a fox! I am quite happy with how he turned out since this is my first attempt at making a three-dimensional object in fabric and I more or less made up the pattern as I went. Knitting the little scarf was a nice break as well from the exclusive purple cably project I have been trying to devote myself to this week. Now, what to call him?
Another inevitable effect of craft-blog reading is the coveting of Japanese craft books. There are some amazing books available on just about anything…knitting, quilting, embroidery, felting, bag-making, stuff-animal construction… While I can’t read a word of Japanese, these books often provide very clear illustrated step-by-step instructions and/or understandable patterns that make them accessible for those illiterate in the language. So yesterday, I finally made the pilgrimage to the Kinokuniya bookstore in Japantown. The weather was glorious (Though cold. It actually snowed in some parts of the city for a few minutes yesterday. Snow! In San Francisco! In March!)



The first half hour or so in the bookstore before the shelves and shelves of craft books was a bit of a sensory overload. I felt like a kid in a candy store for the very first time. The variety was so overwhelming that I didn’t know what to look at first. After shuffling through books in a bit of a delirium for the next hour or so, I finally narrowed down my purchases to two. The first I had been eying for a while on other blogs. I am especially enamored with this hedgehog (any cuter and my head might explode).



The second book was more of an impulse buy.



I had been observing the amigurumi explosion at a distance. Since I don’t know how to crochet, I haven't been too interested. Then I casually flipped through this book and saw these.



Hey, I can learn to crochet...

Here is the rest of the loot from my shopping trip.


I was ecstatic to see that the new DVD of My Neighbor Totoro had finally been released. For the longest time, the only version available was the dubbed one. As this is one of my favorites of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, I had to buy the DVD then and there. The rest were more impulse purchases…though I really did need a new eraser and if said eraser happens to have two adorable pigs that say “boo” on them, all the better. (And I dare you to walk past the blue-eyed white bunny/dog stuffie without feeling at least a bit of temptation to take it home with you…)
All in all, this was a wonderful break after a hectic week. Hopefully, the coming week will be more normal with more knitting and blogging time...and more sleep.

Booking Through Thursday...3 days late

This week's questions are from Cate.

1. Do you have any books that are signed by the author?
   I’ve never had any great interest in having books signed and since I am too scattered to ever learn about readings in time to actually attend them, I only have one signed book: Ronald Takaki’s A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America.


2. Do you have a story behind the autograph?
   This is more of a non-story. I had really enjoyed Takaki’s Strangers from A Different Shore so wanted to read his new book. The day I bought A Different Mirror, he had happen to be there doing a signing so…

Reds and Pinks

Life keeps intruding so there has been very little knitting of late. I offer you instead a meme. Margene tagged everyone of Project Spectrum to find the reds and pinks in their homes. I seem to own very little that is solidly of either of those colors but here is what I found.

Reality Check

Reality keeps intruding on my happy little blog-knitting-crafting-verse. Not only did I get the sudden shock of what I will tell you below yesterday, I also came home to find my phone line completely non-function, as in, absolutely no dial tone. A call to the phone company and a nice chat with their automated voice system later, I found out that my service could potentially be disrupted by repairs (?!) that they are conducting in the area and that I can be assured of service restoration on THURSDAY evening. Since I use dial-up for the internet, I am currently web-less at home so the blog entries will be spotty this week until my phone line returns to life. Sigh. Here is the entry I meant to post up last night. Thanks to everyone who commented on my knitting journal! It makes the little Type-A person inside me feel validated and happy. :)
There is something about sick days and glum, raining weather (yes, the rain is back) that deludes me into thinking that time has slowed…like the whole world is on vacation. Then, reality intervenes to whack me over the head when I look at the calendar and realize that it is already March. Already the second week of March, in fact. And, as my calendar stubbornly insists no matter how I count up the days, less than four weeks lie between now and my mother’s birthday. That is less than four week I have to work on the vest that is her present, the vest that I have so far knitted zero rows on (after I finally purchased the correct size needles). That is also the less than four weeks during which stretches of time-consuming experiments were planned. So, a mild panic attack later, I have decided to attempt to knit exclusively on the vest so that I at least finish the back by the end of this week. These projects are now (sadly) going on the backburner for now.


Here is the result of some exclusive knitting today while I waited in lab for yeast cells to grow. (Those who know me know that a preponderance of my days in lab revolve around this activity. The end results of science are really quite exciting but the day-to-day portion of it often leaves much to be desired.)


I am finding the knitting rather slow going and I’m not sure why. While having to fiddle with the cable needle every few stitches slows things down a great deal, that only happens every seven rows. The rest of the time I am just knitting and purling. Perhaps it is the enforced exclusive knitting… I did try cabling without a cable needle but the yarn isn’t stiff enough to hold the loops while I switch their position so it ends up taking more time as I struggle to keep the stitches from dropping. Does anyone have any suggestions/pointers about cabling without a needle?

The benefits of an education in science

Aside from the highly specific and largely esoteric molecular biology knowledge, of course, one of the benefits of being a scientist-in-training is the idea of keeping a lab notebook. For those of you who do not spend your days moving tiny, precise amounts of clear liquids from tube to tube and manipulating cells, the lab notebook is where one records one’s experiments…how they are set up, the data collected along the way, and the conclusions reached at the end. Ever since my undergraduate days, the importance of keeping such a record has been pounded into my brain. When I started knitting, I automatically thought (like the well-trained nerd that I am) “hey, I can keep a knitting journal!” So here it is for show-and-tell as requested by Jeanne.
I initially started with just having loose-leaf pages that noted the pattern, yarn used, and dates of beginning and completion. I would also include in a piece of the yarn and the skein label.


However, when I progressed beyond just knitting long rectangles, the number of rows and stitches suddenly begin to matter. Also, given my proclivity for starting projects left and right (as you can see from my sidebar), I needed a cohesive way to keep track of everything. Fortunately, I had gone through a brief fling with book-binding in last year and had many small blank books that I made lying around. This one turned out to be perfect.


Here is a sample page (with the lovely assistant Baa).


I start with the specifics of the projects: pattern, yarn, needles, gauge, and such. For Klaralund, I drew in a schematic of the sweater with measurements. The rest of the entry I use to keep track of rows, modifications, and anything else I have to say about the yarn or pattern. I tape in the yarn label at the end and if the shape works, I make a sort of pocket out of it to hold a sample of the yarn I used (here is the one for the Hermione mittens).


And that’s it. All those years of science training in anal-retentive notebook keeping and I end up with an impeccable knitting journal and a real mess of an actual lab notebook (I dare not show actual pictures for shame).
What do you do to keep track of your knitting?

Heroines

Since it is National Women’s History month, Jeanne at A Bluestocking Knits celebrated her heroines in a post a few days ago. This got me thinking...who are my heroines? This was always a question I puzzled over in elementary school. While the other kids shouted out famous names, I always drew a blank. Somehow, all those great thinkers and scientists and other “do-ers” seemed entirely too distant for me to even begin to think about relating to them. While I did find their accomplishments impressive and even awe-inspiring, there was a disconnect between that wanting to “be like them one day.” In the years since then, though, I have come to realize that I do have a heroine, someone who always inspires me to do better and to fulfill my dreams. That person is my mother. Like many immigrant parents, she pulled up roots and gave up her career to move somewhere with an entirely foreign language and culture just so that I would have greater opportunities in life. Mom has always been a stalwart presence in my life, the one who tells me that I can accomplish anything I set my mind to and encourages me to do just that, all else be damned. In fact, the first time I was asked, as a woman in science, how I had withstood the societal pressure against those of my gender taking the education and career path that I have chosen, I was flummoxed. Mom had so well ingrained the concept of “you can accomplish anything” in my head that it never even occurred to me that a girl would have to modify her goals just because other people raised their eyebrows, much less feel inferior and less capable because of her gender. Of course, in the grand scheme of the universe, my mother is just a mother, but for me, I wouldn’t be me without her. So, that’s the heroine I will be celebrating this month.
Today’s splash of red is from the necklace I made for her up-coming birthday.


(Actual knitting content tomorrow, I promise. Here is a peek at my new scarf-in-progress.)

Booking Through Thursday: Finishing

Today's questions are from me (!). Wow, thanks Laura!

1. Do you finish every book you start, no matter how bad it gets? Why?
   
   This is my dark little secret…a large portion of the books I start I never finish. It’s odd. I used to assiduously plow through every book that I started, no matter how tedious the read became but for the last few years, if the book isn’t doing it for me, it gets put away. As a consequence, I have well over ten books at all times lying around that I am started and couldn’t bring myself to finish. Some just got really, really bad, some I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind to read, and some made me dread the ending so much that I just couldn’t read on anymore. (Empire Falls, a book by Richard Russo falls into this last category. I was so distressed by the sense of impending doom and so attached to the well-being of the characters that by the last third of the book, I just couldn’t read further.)


2. Do you ever sneak-read the ending before you finish the book? If so, what about the book tends to cause you to do so?
   
   Most of the time I don’t but there are two exceptions…books where it becomes so dreary (but I feel compelled for some reason to finish) that I skip ahead so that I can be done sooner and books where it becomes so nail-bitingly intense that I look ahead (just a peek at a sentence or two!) to reassure myself or just to relieve the tension. Silly, isn’t it?

Late-bloomer

Down Day

Today was a knitting day. I was blindsided by the cold virus that has been circulating and spent much of the day in bed. Fiery bolero grew another two inches and Pomatomus gained some scales.



The weather has turned and intermittently during the day, the sun would peek through my windows. Oddly, this made me miss flowers and gardens. My mother’s garden, especially. I have a photo I took this year of a flowering quince in full bloom from her garden. It makes me happy. Here it is in honor of this month's Project Spectrum color theme.