Skip to main content

Minerva

So I was walking the boy to school this morning, and I saw a little girl walking along with her hoodie on backwards. She was eating chips, which I thought was kind of gross, because all those crumbs would be getting in the catch basin there. And I thought to myself, "Wow, I am so fashion out of it, that cover on the TKGA magazine a couple of months back, where the hood was being worn in the front, that's actually in style." TKGA is totally fashion forward, and I'm out of it again. And then we got down to the school, and I saw more children dressed like this, and I thought to myself, wow, this trend sure came out of nowhere. And then I saw a child wearing his backpack on his stomach, and the boy said to me, "Oh, mom, it's backwards day!" And he strapped his backpack on his front too.

Phew. Spirit day. I am relieved.

Webs is having their annual birthday sale, and it includes Harrisville Shetland style. I bought two cones of this last year, and it comes in a great range of colors and the price is awesome. So, if I can finish off three more projects, I'd like to buy six cones (a cone counts as a ball, and I have three balls already in the ball-buying bank, BBB for short). But I thought to myself, "Self, what if this stuff sucks to knit with? What if it cuts an actual bleeding hole in my left index finger? What if it skews?" The skewing is more of a concern, because Pat at Kirtland's Yarn Barn told me, when I asked a couple of years ago on KBTH, that she's had customers that had problems with skewing and weren't able to correct it. So on Monday night I pulled out Barbara Walker's "Knitting from the Top" and started a top-down set-in-sleeve sweater. For this, I learned the invisible cast-on. And after two inches, no skewing.

Last night I also learned how to crochet seams. This is not very hard. I would say I inherently knew how to do this already, having picked out an invisible seam before. Picking them out, the trick is to find the strand on the back, and then you can use it as a rip cord. I chose to crochet the seams because I was using a very elastic-y ribbon yarn, Filatura di Crosa Pasta, and I couldn't see running it through a needle, and I couldn't imagine using just regular thread or anything else in a needle. Basically I couldn't imagine poking a needle through this yarn. So, I crocheted the seams. And it worked very well, if I do say so myself.

Popular posts from this blog

What I read: September 2025

LHC #295: "The Last to Leave the Room" by Caitlin Starling. Audiobook. Workplace horror? Loved it.  "Careless People" by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Hard copy, for office Data Ethics book club. The stories about Sheryl Sandberg really made me like my boss better.  LHC #296: "The Fated Sky" by Mary Robinette Kowal. Hard copy. This got moved up the list because Ed had read book 1 in the series and got the rest out of the library. Loved it. He's got the next one in the series upstairs, I suppose I'll read it when he's done.  LHC #297: "Bluegrass: A History" by Neil V. Rosenberg. Hard copy. No idea why it was on my list, I don't care that much about bluegrass. Nevertheless, the second half was interesting. I guess the first half was necessary, as it described in great length the way people came and went in Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys band, and also how technology and social pressures affect how music is made and performed.   LHC #298: ...

What I read -- October 2025

"The Moomins and the Great Flood" by Tove Jansson.  eBook. I read this because Marissa Lingen loves them. It was fine? This was the first one in the series and the only one available online; maybe the later ones are better. Maybe they're better if you read them as a child.  "The Relentless Moon" by Mary Robinette Kowal.  Hard copy. Read it because Ed had the whole series out of the library. It took a long time to get going, and sometimes I find MRK exhausting. Her white main characters all seem oddly aware of the Black experience.  "The Martian Contingency" by Mary Robinette Kowal.  Hard copy. Read it because Ed had the whole series out of the library. I don't often read subsequent books in a series in quick succession, and my reaction to this one is a lot of why: I found Alma's voice too similar to Nicole's -- sure, Nicole obsessed about food much more, but they both went on and on about "must support black guy in management" an...

In progress - January 2026

  Wind/Water/Salt  Chapters 39-51:   Nothing  Persephone  (probably not its real name): NOthing Vinterlys:  Worked on Chapter 2 some more.  Critted  4  Got back  1 Submissions  0  Out there   0   Rejects   0 Knitting Georgia  (Norah Gaughan). Started the month with one sleeve and half a front to go. Finished. Love this sweater.  Aberlady  (AS Celtic Collection). Did a few rows while listening to podcasts.  Summer in Tokyo  (Isager): Started. I was looking at the pictures and the charts, and the pattern as written is not what is in the pictures! So odd. I am going to finish up two cones of yarn with this project! Pretty exciting. I hope I don't run out of light blue.  I was working along on it, and if you go and look at the sweater, it's knit bottom-up, and I was at the part where I only had two colors, about 5" maybe. And I was thinking, "wow, this is pretty ugly! Maybe I should stop...