I am a Machine

I am a machine! Or at least, I own one. I bought a very basic knitting machine.

I have successfully knit several swatches and this lovely hat. You can see it being knit above, and modeled on the ever patient Chatham below.

I also knit the back of a vest. Unfortunately, I misread my swatch information and used the wrong size plate, so the vest is...rather too long. I'm pretty sure I could wear it as a dress. A dress with gigantic arm holes. Since I don't think I can pull off the sideboob showing dress vest look (can anyone?), I'm going to rip it all out and try again.

Before I do, though, I needed better weights. My machine came with a cast on comb, the black thing at the bottom of the hat hem and s hooks/rubber bands to hold the edge stitches on. I kinda hate that method, and didn't want to wait to order expensive claw weights for the machine. Instead, I broke out the scrap fabric bag and visited the gun section of Wal-Mart. I was carded to make sure I was over 16 too. Yeah. I turned 25 like a week ago.

Oh yeah. Gonna help me knit.

First, I weighed out about 4 oz of BBs. Be careful, they bounce!

BBs and Bumbles, obviously related.

I cut out a piece of fabric about 4 x 5 inches. I wasn't too careful about being straight, I didn't even iron the fabric. I did make sure to put right sides facing, at least. Then I sewed down one side and across the bottom. To reinforce it, I turned around and went back over it. If you use heavy duty thread, that might not be necessary.

Turn it right side out and put the BBs in. I recommend a funnel. Chatham said he always used a spoon, but that sounded like it would take forever.

I cut a second strip of fabric, about an inch wide and a little longer than the opening of the bag. I folded it in half and sewed them together. I wasn't very careful about staying near the edge and I didn't turn it so there weren't raw edges. Because I wasn't turning it, I used a decorative stitch, but it's not particularly important either way.

Finally, I folded down the edge of the bag and placed the handle inside it. Then I sewed it shut.

And voila!

A weight that can hang. I had some drapery hook things (I'm not sure why, I don't even know what they're actually called, why did I buy them??) and thought they'd work pretty well for now. This is hung on the completed vest, so there's no weight on the bottom. If there were, that little dimple under the hooks wouldn't exist.

The last step was to make a few more. I even made one in a more horizontal shape. That was...interesting, to say the least. I cut it too small, which resulted in BBs escaping the first couple tries at sewing the handle in and the bag shut. I eventually sewed half of it shut before I added the BBs, so I only had to wrestle with one side.

So there you have it! Homemade claw weights. I feel ready to take on short rows now, and hopefully I'll have a lovely pair of slippers to show for it in the near future.

Lizarding Along

I've worked on a few more hats. They both turned out the size I expected and was aiming for. This has left me a little mystified as to what happened with the duck hat, and I'm considering trying again to experiment. First, I made a hat with squirrels on it. I also did a contrast color seed stitch brim and a little icord at the top to make it look like an acorn. I think it turned out amazing, and I will have to revisit the pattern soon.

Then, I picked out a pattern with penguins. I was worried about how big the chart would be, so I did a less traditional brim. It has a little picot brim, and the colorwork begins before I even finished it. It worked out really well, and I love the way the brim flares just a little.

The final thing I've been working on isn't a hat. It will eventually be a project bag, but right now it's just an unfinished stockinette square with a pair of legs duplicate stitched on. The rest of the dragon's body will be joining it eventually, but duplicate stitch takes quite a bit longer than stranded colorwork.

Tap Dancing Lizard?

A coupe evenings ago, after going out for dinner with Chatham and his parents, I stopped by the used bookstore just to see if they had any new knitting books. While I was looking, I saw a book called The Tap Dancing Lizard. I thought maybe it had been shelved in the wrong area, so I pulled out out to see better.

It was decidedly not in the wrong section, and as soon as I saw the cover I was in love. It says it's for "Adventurous Knitters" and that pretty well describes me. Plus, I mean c'mon, tap dancing! So I flipped through it and realized just how goofy some of the pictures in it were. I think my favorite is the "Bicycat" sweater. It's so bad it's good, right?

In with the goofy cat motifs (some of which I actually like, but I'll never admit it in person) are some really awesome ones. Inspired, I decided to make a project bag out of at least one of the charts. Of course, I don't have any of the colors I'd prefer, so I decided to do some swatches with the yarn I intend to use, if not the color. I picked out a cool chart of a chameleon, and cast on a hat.

I think it's super adorable, but it was smaller than I expected. It will maybe fit a 6-12 month old. Glad I swatched, I decided to make another swatch hat. I wanted the hat to be bigger, so I cast on more stitches and used the same brand of yarn, just different colors. This time I let Chatham pick out the colors and the chart. I cast on the number of stitches I thought would get me a kid/teen sized hat.

Yeah, that hat? That's on Chatham's head. He has stolen it, and apparently really likes it. I'm a little stuck on what to do, though. Same brand, same needles, same techniques, different gauges. Now I'm left not having any idea how big the chart for this bag is going to turn out. At this point, I'm tempted to just start the darn thing.

Hat Binge

I'm in the middle of a hat binge. I've finished 10 hats this month, with another one on the needles and a bunch more planned this year. First up is 8 hats made from yarn given to me by an aunt. She made a blanket with the colors and was tired of them, so she gave me the leftover skeins. I used several different patterns, including my own design!

I also made a few stockinette hats. First up was a striped one from leftover yarn that's the same color as the above hats but not the same yarn. The color combo looked really good with the hats, so I thought I'd make a hat with them together!

Finally, a last hat made from leftovers of Christmas gifts. I knit ribbing with the brown until I was down to a tail to weave in, then joined the blue and knit until it was a good length, decreased, and the hat was finished. It's just a basic pattern, but it is very soft and a really great size. It fits me perfectly, and I hope that it fits it's eventual owner just as well.

Foreword

I've had the chance to actually read the first 22 pages of the book, which encompasses the Foreword and the main eugenics section, though I'm focusing on the Foreword today. I think I could say something about every single sentence so far, but that would take forever. I'll try not to get bogged down and pick the best sentences. The book was originally published in 1922 by The John A. Hertel Company, and the copy I have seems to be a reprint from 1935.Without further ado, Ethical Sex Relations or The New Eugenics.

I'll keep that in mind! Think of the children is the name of the game. There's one other thing I think is important to keep in mind, since you all don't have the book in front of you. This book has what I'm going to call marginalia. I'm not sure it's exactly the correct term, but it has little summaries of paragraphs on it. They look like this:

I suspect Drs. Whitehead and Hoff are prone to dramatics. Just a hunch. That is on the first page of text, and the second marginalia in the entire book.

The first marginalia says "Parents Are God's First and Best Teachers." Sure, okay, why not?

In this age of progress along all lines and especially along the line of sociology and sexology, the question presents itself to the authors, shall our boys and girls be instructed on subjects pertaining to their sex life by parents in the home, and by teachers of virtue and intelligence, or shall they be permitted to go along in a haphazard way and get this information from the ignorant and evil-minded and foul-mouthed libertines?

Oh those kinky English libertines! They're just waiting to teach your kids "the functions of the sexual organs." The horror! How will they accept practicing eugenics if sex is about something other than breeding? Gotta get 'em early or they develop ideas of their own.

So ignorant of their moral and physical welfare have many parents been, even in the most refined circles, that they seem to think they or their physician have the moral and legal right to destroy their offspring, which act is red-handed murder and illegal in the extreme.

They really need an editor, because the entire foreword consists of run on sentences and bombastic phrasing. At the time of the book's first printing, abortion had been illegal for ~10 years except in cases that threatened the life of the woman. That's not a very long time, and we're already calling it red-handed murder? Also, how extreme is it's illegality? Is it eXtreme?

Pardon the accented e, I stole this from a site that sells cell phone cases. Apparently they're also eXtreme. At the end of the Foreword they reiterate their mission. Prepare for a paragraph long sentence!

With a sincere hope that these plain facts relative to the  various epochs of human life may be inculcated into the lives of our readers and especially into the lives of their offspring who may thus become a strong, clean, virtuous and happy people, this volume is sent out on its mission for good.

THE AUTHORS 

See you in the text, guys.


Snarkless sidebar:

I actually wrote a paper about some of the things they say about abortion. The history of abortion is quite interesting. Though both pro-choice and pro-life movements currently act as though abortions have always been illegal, before the mid 1800s it was completely unregulated. Doctors routinely performed abortions on women who had not quickened, or felt the baby move, though the procedures were quite risky. Doctors in the US began pushing for regulations being placed upon abortions and other medical procedures to solidify their income and prevent people who were not trained in their colleges from taking away their patient fees.

After the regulations requiring a doctors approval were in place, doctors had two different interpretations of the phrase "to save the life of the mother." One faction took it in a very strict sense, only approving abortions in cases where some sort of physical harm was happening that would kill the pregnant woman. The other faction read it more liberally, taking into account things like mental state, the ability for the woman to take care of her existing family, and other things that were didn't threaten imminent death. Immediately after the regulations took effect, both factions assumed the way they interpreted the law was the way everyone did. After a few years, it became more normal for a committee of doctors to decide if a woman was eligible for an abortion, which is when the discrepancy in interpretations became evident.

Whether or not a woman was granted permission for an abortion depended entirely on the doctors in their area. Women had to rely on word of mouth about which committees and doctors would consider their situation a threat to their life. Many turned to unlicensed people to perform abortions, which was much more likely to harm the woman than the procedures used in a hospital.

This continued until 1973 when Roe v. Wade came before the Supreme Court and redefined abortion as a right to privacy for a patient. Abortion was illegal for about 100 years in total. The demand for abortions didn't go down in that time, despite the difficulty and cost in obtaining one. The biggest difference is that the procedures were more dangerous and caused more damage.

Surprise!

My SO brought me a surprise. There's a shelf of free books at a local college, and he makes a point of stopping by every once in a while to peruse the offerings. This is the only time he's ever found something I might like, though. It's not in the best shape, but it seems to be mostly intact.

It's Ethical Sex Relations, or, The New Eugenics. I'm not going to take any of it on today, but if you're interested I found a blog talking about the advertising for the book which is just as hilariously outdated.

I've flipped through it and it's ripe for mocking. There's a bunch of really awful stuff in it, but I'm going to try to come at it from a ribald, OMGWTFBBQ how could they think of that way. Getting bogged down in the ideas is bad for my health. Here's a little tidbit to get you started, The Most Valuable Table Ever Published for Parents (TM).

Advent Scarf

So I'm not really religious, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy things like an advent scarf counting down the days till Christmas with yummy knitting, right? I'm supposed to be on day 9, but I'm only halfway through with day 7 right now. I have had a few commissions I can't post about to take care of before working on the scarf.

First 4 Days

I'm doing my version with worsted weight scraps instead of fingering weight, which means I'm also doing fewer stitches per row and fewer pattern repeats. Even with this, I'm a little worried about how long it's going to end up being. I like long scarves, but this one might end up extra super long. All the better to wrap around myself, I suppose!