Photobooth

I've never been a huge fan of having icons, but there's a story behind this one.

At the beginning of the year, my house had a week long Big Sib-Little Sib project. All of the first years and transfers were secretly given a Big Sib, who would leave little presents outside their door, or make a chalking outside, or generally do something nice for them without revealing the identity of the Big Sib. I ended up being a Big Sib almost by accident, and I'm glad I did because planning secret little presents to leave was a lot of fun.

We were supposed to leave little clues with each present, and I wrote mine on the backs of postcards I got this summer. Towards the end of the week I realized that all of my clues had been very tricky, so I decided that some photobooth action was necessary. I happened to know that my little sib is a huge fan of Amelie (as am I, please forgive the lack of accent), so I headed down to the photobooth in town with some requisite disguises.

It's hard to read, but the sign says "Can you guess?"

I love how the glasses start falling off my face from trying to change hats too quickly.


I actually had another layer of disguise which never quite got pictured. I cut out a Zorro mask, but then I forgot about taking off the sunglasses.

Coming soon: The Annual Mum Show, in which plants pretend they were drawn by Dr. Seuss.

We have a winner! (and some serious sweater progress)

This, my friends, is an Italian Cauliflower. Weird, huh? Our anonymous winner is, in fact, my mom, so I will be bringing the aforementioned Prize home with me for Thanksgiving.

While I have been cleverly distracting you with Contests and Disasters, I have been feverishly working on the sweater behind your backs. Oh, right, remember the sweater?

I have finished the front, which I was stuck on the last time I posted about it. I have finished the sleeves. I have even, you will note, sewn together my first pieces of knitting ever. And I have started working on the collar. Not bad!

I really like the collar on this sweater. See that circular knitting needle? I started with a pair of regular needles and I got about halfway around the neck before I decided that it most definitely would not work.

One unfortunate aspect of starting this project was that it required buying a lot of yarn. I could have made a sweater for me with the yarn I bought for this project. Granted, it would have had crazy proportions of colors, but it would still be a wearable garment. On the upside, I now have enough yarn to start thinking about trying a simple intarsia project. Here are the leftovers, pictured without the full skein of white for the collar:


P.S. Firefox should learn how to spell intarsia. Seriously.

The Contest, continued

Such a pretty green color! Send more guesses my way.
First post about the contest here.

Disaster averted

This is the case of type before:

This sheet acts as a helpful reminder about where everything actually belongs.

And four hours later, with everything in its place:

On the upside, I will never need to use that sheet again. Ever.

Another book

This is one of the other books I made last summer. I found the fabric in a thrift store in the basement of a church. They were only open for three hours a week, and somehow I managed to show up when an entire grocery bag of stuff sold for less than $3. Quite the find.

As soon as I saw the square of this fabric it reminded me of my friend from school. She has a fantastic wardrobe, full of vintage clothes from her grandparents, and she has quite a few dresses and skirts which remind me of illustrations in children's books.


I recycle a stack of paper from high school, so I'm always running across advice on creating a biblio-
graphy or getting into college. I started using this book to write down vocabulary for my German class, but it's the perfect size to fit in a purse or carry around, so I ended up taking a lot of miscellaneous notes down inside.

I didn't want the writable side of the paper to reverse in the middle, so that meant doing without a fold. I used the board from an empty box of airmail stationary for the back. It's held up well, even though it isn't protected by anything, and I love the map. One of my favorite things about this book is that the front and the back are so different.

The next project we're working on in my typo-
graphy class is setting and then binding a story that Ann Patchett wrote when she was 19. Yes, that Ann Patchett, the Ann Patchett who wrote The Magician's Assistant; The Patron Saint of Liars; Taft; Truth and Beauty; and Bel Canto. Yesterday in class we decided on the size of the margins around the text. The dimensions of the page are predetermined by the paper we're using, so that was one less thing to worry about.

Contest!

What follows is a picture of a Weird Thing.


If you can identify said Weird Thing, please leave a comment. Extra brownie points awarded for mentioning mathematical concepts related to this Weird Thing or for Totally Crazy Guesses. If you've seen this Thing in person, please leave only Totally Crazy Guesses. The Winner shall receive a Prize.

In a few days I will post a second picture which is less blurry and shows the entire Weird Thing. As they used to say in Chicago, "Vote early! Vote often!"

Book binding

Last summer I decided that I wanted to bind books. Immediately. Lucky for me I found a great book in the library which explained the entire process. Over about two days I made three bound books. A lot of the materials I used are either recycled or things I found in our "art cabinet", which at that point had a fairly high proportion of junk (but which has since been cleaned out and re-stocked).

I wanted to make a journal with lines, so I ended up taking apart one of those composition notebooks everyone uses in elementary school to get paper. I did a good job with the binding on this one. The cover is smooth, the bookcloth is cut well and lines up. I took a long time to decide what I would use for the endpapers, and I'm very satisfied with the result.

The only thing I should have done differently are the stitches which attach the signature of paper to the cover. Somehow they got loose enough while I was tying the knot for the signature to move by an eighth of an inch vertically.

Today in class Barry told us a horror story about a press which had printed a limited edition book on handmade paper and then sent it out to a commercial bindery. The bindery misread the order form, and so instead of sewing signatures together they bound the book like a cheap paperback. Yikes.

I started to write something in here once but I ended up tearing in out. I guess the elegance of the cover papers is intimidating. My favorite of the three books I made is the one with the most imperfections. I'll be posting about that one shortly.

Bicycle card

One of the students in my typography class set the poem "The Emperor of Ice Cream" by Wallace Stevens. For the facing page in the French fold she made a carving on an ice cream cone out of some plastic/rubbery material from the art store. I think I may follow suit with this bicycle. Bicycles certainly deserve as much respect as an ice cream cone. Stencils are fun to cut out, but it's time consuming to print more than once, especially when there are so many small fussy bits that need to be taped down.

I've also been spurred on by this typewriter (scroll down a bit) made by abbytrysagain, it's very much the type of look I was going for with these. The brown cover and the stamp go so well together.

I finally got a picture while I'm wearing the earrings:

You don't want to know how many pictures I deleted before deciding on this one. Thank goodness for digital cameras! This green is currently one of my favorite colors. As much as I hate to say it, blue tones may have been completely overthrown. If you take a glimpse behind the wispy hairs on my neck you can even see a hint of green from my walls. I bought three large sheets of green paper with a white magnolia and chrysanthemum pattern, and it makes such a huge difference having a large block of color on my wall.

Disaster number one

Every bit of free wall space in the typography studio is lined with cabinets. They each have about 25 shallow drawers, the cases of type. Each case is like a huge drawer for dinner utensils, or one of those beading boxes with the tiny squares. The only difference is that type is composed of lead and antimony, which is quite a bit heavier than your average bead material. The emptier cases, which have been around for a while and are missing lots of letters, aren't terribly heavy; neither are the cases which only have a set of capitals for book titles and the like. The 14 and 16 pt Centaur cases in the studio were cast within the last two years, so they are full and heavy.


When you want to pull out a case of type, you give it support by extending the drawer underneath. That allows you to get a good grip and lift it properly onto the top of the cabinet, which has a banked edge. When you plan on setting type for a long time, it makes sense to take the drawer out. Lifting it is better than standing in front of a half open case for three hours, never quite able to reach k or the numbers. Frequently, however, one does not anticipate setting type for three hours. One must replace a single letter, or add a single word. In this situation, the hassle of getting out the case just doesn't seem worth it.

And now for the disaster.

One of the projects we are working on right now is printing a French fold with a title page, a poem on the inside, and a colophon on the back. I've finished setting my poem ("First Love" by Wislawa Szymborska) and the colophon, and the last thing I had to set for my title page was Apiary Press 2006. In my estimation, this falls squarely into the category of "It's not worth it to pull out the case". So I was working in front of the case, and I had nearly finished when a classmate came over to look for a hyphen.

I can't remember the entire sequence of events clearly, but I do know that with one hand holding my composing stick, I pulled out the case far enough to check for a hyphen without pulling out the drawer underneath. Hyphens are stored in the very back row, right in there with the numbers and k. The right side got to the edge of the track and started to fall, while the left side was still caught in the cabinet. At this point I was still in a position to pull the case forward, and the law of gravity was still far from my mind when the case began to tip over and slip out of my grasp.

As dozens of letters fell out of the case L. and I managed to catch the right corner. Not too many pieces fell on the floor, but the entire case got jumbled around. Hundreds and hundreds of pieces of type. The worst thing about it is that this is a new case of type, where there haven't been as many chances for people to accidentally put a u in the n slot, or an s in the i slot, or even an i in the i slot for a different font. Barry heard the ruckus from across the room and asked loudly, "Did somebody pie the type?" He didn't get angry, and he said not to deal with it right then. He put the jumbled case on the top shelf in the cabinet, and pushed it to the very back so that everyone is less likely to see it and pull it out, and then started talking with L. about the hyphen problem. The worst part was that my composing stick was right there between them, and I hadn't finished setting Apiary Press 2006, so I had to stand there when the only thing I really wanted to do was disappear. I have a long weekend of sorting type ahead of me.

And what do we learn from this? Apparently the newly cast Centaur does not have a hyphen.

No longer an etsy virgin

The trip to San Antonio was good. We performed well, and all of the conductors had positive things to say. The river walk reminded me of lazy rivers in water parks. I'm excited about our trip to Italy at the end of the year; as my dad would say, "It's a good group. It seems like a good group of kids."

So a small secret about me is that I don't check my mail very frequently. This is due in part to my living on the other side of campus, and partly to my disinterest in walking around in the cold after dinner any farther than necessary. However, we have had some bizarrely warm weather around these parts for the past few days, so when we got back from San Antonio on Sunday I was willing to trek across campus in the dark. I was prepared for an empty mailbox (besides the usual letters from the college about registration) because I thought that the earrings couldn't possibly have arrived, but there they were! It was quite the welcome back. My first etsy purchase!


The earrings are such a great color of orange. I don't have that many earrings with me up at school, and most of the earrings I do have lean towards the cooler blue-green side of the spectrum. I think my favorite thing about them is how the color varies slightly throughout. They are the perfect length for my face, and they make me want to wear my hair down, which is highly unusual. More earrings by sulu (as well as a more artful and appealing shot of this pair) can be found online, and Susan writes about forthcoming designs here.

Disaster number one will have to wait until tomorrow.

Voy a Tejas!

If I finish my exam and get packed, that is...

The chamber choir I sing in has been invited to some inaugural collegiate choral convention conference whoosie whatsit, which is in San Antonio. The hotel we're staying in is right on the river walk, which I've heard is the coolest thing in the whole city (town? I clearly know nothing about Texas). We're singing a set of Dvorjak and Rachmaninoff pieces and it's pretty exciting seeing how far we've come with them. At the beginning of the semester it was tough just getting through them; today during sectionals we paid attention to all of the dynamic markings even though our conductor wasn't there.

Unfortunately I have an exam to take tonight, for which I must write up some notes. Adieu!

Bizarre knot

I've come across this kind of knot in Noro before, but this surprised me. The Rowan cotton has so far seemed predictable and uniform. I wonder what made this skein different. There were a few other small problems around this point, but this was the only one I thought looked interesting.

And what were you doing at one o'clock this morning?

I'm hoping that my inability to understand the next two lines in the pattern will be enough to keep me from repeating this behavior. At least temporarily. But look! A shoulder!
I didn't sit and read through the entire pattern until I was almost done with my ill-advised late night jaunt of knitting. Now that I understand when and where the collar will be worked I feel more confident that A) I have not already screwed up, and B) I will be able to complete this project.

That still leaves the mysterious directions:
With right side facing, join on yarn, bind off center 4 sts, k to end.

Perhaps an investigation into exactly how one is meant to join on yarn will provide a clue. At this point, however, my interpretation of this line is that I am supposed to start knitting backwards, towards the right, from the center. This feat seems much more easily accomplished by purling, with the wrong side facing front. Go ahead, call me crazy. Based on the assumption that all things appearing in a pattern happen for a reason, I think it is time to consult the forum at knittinghelp.com.

Hooray for pictures!

It's at the point where I have a hard time putting down my needles. I can tell that something exciting will happen in 10 minutes-no, 5! One more row and I can start decreasing!

Yeah, right, thinks the sweater, Keep on dreaming.

Let me interject here that these pictures were taken on a borrowed camera, which I clearly do not know how to use. The stripes below the garish red color are actually a pale pink, not a washed out cream. When I first glanced at the pictures I couldn't figure out what was making the colors so bizarre. The camera is fancy enough that I would be able to correct this problem were I knowledgeable enough to use the manual settings.

This is a closer view where you can see the split for the neck and collar:
I'm using Rowan yarn instead of Debbie Bliss yarn, but the colors are pretty much identical to the pictures in the book. Although I do keep catching glimpses of purple in the brown skeins...

Back in action

I've started a Debbie Bliss sweater for my oldest niece, who received the teddy bear Henrietta. I'm almost done with knitting the back, but not quite as close as I thought I was. I nearly started binding off stitches for the shoulders 3 inches too soon, because I started looking at the instructions for the smallest size, instead of the size for 4 year olds.

A quick, random interjection: I'm takinga class on hand set type, and so I've started noticing things about letters that I never noticed before. I mention this because I'm very impressed that the default font for Blogger uses ranging numbers.

My house has a weekly meeting of the Molly Weasley society, in which Harry Potter books are read out loud and handicrafts are knit or crocheted or cut and pasted or, in one case, math proofs are proved. I've never gone before because they are a Sunday evening affair, but now that I have a rehearsal from 8 until 10 pm every week my homework should be done early enough that I can go.

Scarf completed

Done and done. I haven't blocked it yet, but I'll get around to it soon. I won't have any pictures until September, though, unless I buy a camera. Hmm. Perhaps.

Bread!

Another loaf! I made it a few days ago, so we've actually eaten all of it already.

It's strange being able to see exactly how much yarn is left before the scarf is done by folding it at the join.

I think my next project will be a sweater. A strong contender is Sesame at Magknits. I also may have found a pattern for the cabled sweater I'd like to do. Jenna Adorno, who has had designs published by Knitty, has a photo on her website of the Close Cable Cardigan by Vogue.

Halfway point for scarf

Halfway with the scarf! I can now wrap it all the way around my neck, and still leave some dangling on one side. Somehow I zoned out, and I only reentered the world when my skein disappeared. As I used up the yarn it reminded me of the melting witches in The Wizard of Oz:
The only problem with not paying attention is that now I have two patches where I didn't stick exactly the the pattern. Here they are in all their glory:
Each time I forgot to continue knitting to the end of the row when the right side was facing me and I was on the last four stitches. I'm not terribly bothered by it though, especially since I discovered the mistakes far past the point of ripping out to correct them.

I've successfully wound the second skein, which was pleasently knot-free, and attached the new strand. For some reason I had a difficult time making a slip knot while holding both pieces of yarn, but I figured it out in the end.

In other exciting news, Mo won sock yarn from I Heart Knitting, which there might be a picture of here if I'm doing this right.

Catch up on the baby socks

This is one of Mo's socks on top of the garish version of the scarf. Below are the socks just before being sent off.
I wrote Z. a short note, which told her that Henrietta had never met real cats before, but she is a brave teddy bear and should be introduced to Castor and Pollux, their two Siamese cats.

Baklava

The baking holiday is over. All ovens are now open for business.

When Mo and I eat out, we are most likely to end up at the local Moroccan restaurant. We especially love their mint tea and sweet nut-based desserts. A while ago we brought my parents and Mo's sister to the restaurant for tea. Tea eventually led to two rounds of dessert, and my father proclaiming, "These people really know their nuts. You know? They really know their nuts."

It's true. They do know their nuts. I don't know why I though baklava was supposed to be made with pistachios, but the walnut baklava at Amanouz has completely won me over. The last few times we ate there, though, they've been out of baklava. In addition to sampling some of the other desserts, we decided to fill the void by trying to make our own. The recipe we followed says we have to leave it out for 24 hours, and so far we've done a pretty good job of keeping it intact. One thing I like about phyllo dough is that no one can tell if you sneak a layer off the top.

Now that I've worked with phyllo dough, I'm less intimidated by the idea of making hojaldres. My grandmother has made them a few times and I cannot convey to you how delicious spinach becomes when encased in phyllo dough with sesame seeds. I think I'll see if we can set up a cooking date while I'm at home.