read, knit, sleep
Well I’ve been reading lots, and that means I’ve been working on my reading hoodie. (As it has now been named).
After 17 rounds of pink, I switched to the gray wool and knit one round. I then purled one round for a turning row, which isn’t strictly necessary - other options would be to leave it out for a softer edge or to (k2tog, yo) around for a picot edge - but I quite like the crispness of the edge it creates. For the outside of the hem I knit it until the stitches on the needle lined up with the cast on stitches (well the stitches being held by the provisional cast on). This ended up being 17 rounds.
The main reason I like this method of working a provisional cast on is that it unzips so easily. If you’ve ever had to unpick a provisional cast on by pulling the spare yarn through the stitches individually you’ll know that’s invaluable. I unzipped the stitches onto a 2.25mm needle, 2 sizes smaller than my working needle. If I’d had a smaller needle I would probably have used it, this one was quite tight.
Once I had all my cast on stitches on the smaller needle I performed a crazy wrestling with a squirming octopus act until I had everything arranged like this. You can see here why I knit the very first row of the hem in gray - it means that I don’t have to knit stitches of two different colours together which would look messy on the outside.
The tutorial I linked to in my last post suggested using a needle several sizes larger than the working needle to knit the 2 sets of live stitches together in order to avoid this row being too tight and pulling in. I used a 3.25mm needle and there is no noticeable difference in the sizes of the stitches in this row and in the others. There is a noticeable dip, but I think this is just an integral feature of this kind of hem. In future I might try using an even bigger needle to see what effect that would have, but this whole operation took about an hour and a half, so I wasn’t about to rip it out to satisfy my curiosity.
When I switched colours on the hem I wove a couple of the yarn tails in while knitting. I didn’t think to do this with the very first tails, but when I folded up the hem they were conveniently positioned so I wove in the gray tails individually on the following two rows and now I only have one pink end to darn in at the end. I weave the yarn ends in by holding the tail in my left hand (I generally knit English with the working yarn in my right hand) and lifting it alternately over and under the working yarn between stitches.
Here’s my progress this morning, I’d just worked the first round of decreases.
And how the hem looks on the inside, I’m delighted with this colour combination and the neatness of everything.
Right now I’ve completed the waist decreases and I’m going to allow myself to break my self imposed no knitting on this while not reading rule. I can’t find a 60 cm (24″) circular needle in the right size and the last round of decreases made it just too tight for the 80 cm (32″) needle I’d been using. Luckily I have two of them so I’m knitting the waist section on two needles. Not ideal for reading what with the switching so I’m going to watch the L Word now and hopefully, at least get most of the 15 rounds I have left to knit before I can increase it back onto one needle. Tomorrow I’ll post how I calculated the shaping.
And because this is my reading hoodie I thought I’d keep track of everything I read while knitting it.
While swatching: The second half of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood - I first read this when I was 12 or 13, and although I enjoyed it more then it’s still one of those books that I think everyone should read. I’m doing a course on 20th century utopias (including dystopias) and the book we studied last week, Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy also most definitely falls into that category. I hadn’t encountered it before, and I’m already looking forward to re-reading it before exam time.
While knitting the hem: Giving an Account of Oneself by Judith Butler.
So far on the body:
Extracts from Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses by Louis Althusser. This made me, and the rest of my study group feel fairly stupid. I don’t think it would be at all easy to understand without a thorough knowledge of Marxism (which I certainly don’t have) but it did make for some interesting discussion in relation to ideology and subjectivity in The Handmaid’s Tale.
The Laugh of the Medusa by Helene Cixous (I have no idea how to add the accents that should be there) and A Manifesto for Cyborgs by Donna Haraway.
I have a dissertation* on blogging and female self-narratives due in a week on Friday, so most of what I’m reading is in relation to that. There isn’t a lot of specific material out there, so if you happen to know of something I might find interesting let me know. Yes I got to choose my own topic, I intentionally decided on something that would mean procrastination counted as research. Which has, incidentally been very interesting.
* I know that my use of this term has confused before. The thing is only 6000 words. I’m not sure how well it fits with conventions but that’s what my department (and to my knowledge other Universities in the country) call it. I’m in my final year of my undergraduate degree in English Literature, I’m not a prodigy working on a phd at 21.
Posted: January 29th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 22
Comments
Comment from Risa
Time: January 29, 2007, 11:47 pm
I love how neat it looks! And your color combination is perfect. How do you read and knit at the same time?!? I wish I could do that :)
Comment from Mama Urchin
Time: January 30, 2007, 12:30 am
At my college (in the US) we called it a Senior Thesis.The pink and grey look very nice together and I love the hem. Can’t wait to see more.
Comment from Shannon
Time: January 30, 2007, 1:36 am
I love the topic of your dissertation. Have you considered posting the text as you write it? You could set up a separate blog for it…entirely appropriate field testing for your research. There are a lot of us auto-narrative females out here - you might get some good discussion.
The only title I’ve read is the Handmaid’s Tale, but then Atwood is pretty standard fare for a Canadian woman.
Out of curiousity, since you are probably in more of a position to say than I am: do you know of any utopian fiction set in a matriarchy? or at least a female-dominant society? I am trying to think of any, and I’m coming up with nothing.
Comment from Anne
Time: January 30, 2007, 2:32 am
The hoodie looks wonderful love the color! The slight variation in grays reminds me of my warmest hoodie strangely enough.
Comment from Cirilia
Time: January 30, 2007, 2:36 am
Hi, this might be a de-lurking first comment. Just writing to say that I’m a first year graduate student and I’m planning to write my Master’s thesis on that very subject! It needs to be more than 6000 words, so that particular topic will most likely be a part of a larger treatise on the new domesticity and it’s implications for feminism. I haven’t started to look for solid work on blogging but I will keep in touch as I begin the process.
Also–I’m knitting Enid from Interweave’s Winter issue and I really wish I’d seen this hemming tutorial of yours–I’m going to have to sew down my hem facing ‘invisibly’, whatever that means. No directions are given beyond that, it’s a total guessing game. Sigh. Yours look fab!
Comment from Heather
Time: January 30, 2007, 3:42 am
What a lovely hem and such great colours! I’m envying you your reading list - I read Handmaid’s Tale eons ago, as well as Woman on the Edge of Time (which sticks with me even now), and the Harroway and Cixous stuff when I was in art school. I’m glad it’s still considered relevant. But I’m racking my brain trying to think of something that might be useful for your dissertation - I’ll let you know if anything comes up!
Comment from Dani
Time: January 30, 2007, 5:21 am
Love the hoodie! I just learned how to do that sort of hem over the holidays while making a cardi for my boyfriend, and it makes me excruciatingly happy. I say excruciatingly because I knit the sleeves from the wrist up, and they are too short. So I’m picking apart the two strands of yarn and snipping the ‘cast on’ edge, unravelling, picking up, and knitting downward :( Excruciating, I tell you!
I can’t imagine that you wouldn’t have read about her, but just in case: Have you read Dooce? There are myriad articles about her in a variety of media, her archives go back at least four years, and she’s pretty ‘powerful’, if you will, in female and domestic blogdom. Good luck! I handed in something similar (on Adrian Willaert’s musical interpretation of Petrarchan Sonnets) just before xmas, and it’s incredibly satisfying to have completed an opus like that.
Comment from Sarah
Time: January 30, 2007, 10:04 am
I wrote an essay on Internet communication last semester and never got bored of going, “I’m just having a wee study…” as I read some blogs!
Am I right in thinking you’re at Edinburgh? If so; fellow Edinburger here (Linguistics)! If not, sorry!
Comment from Ginny
Time: January 30, 2007, 10:52 am
I love Shannon’s idea of blogging your dissertation (of course there’s no consistency between universities - we’d have called that an essay, and a dissertation is 25000 words for a masters, but WTF). I’d certainly be interested in reading it myself.
My dissertation is at the ’should be reading’ stage (but I’m not) and is on the subject of the different choices made by transgendered people regarding gender reassignment, and I’m thinking about the feminist ungendered utopias, like the one in Woman on the Edge of Time, too.
Comment from Ulrike
Time: January 30, 2007, 11:51 am
Hello,
best wishes for your dissertation! I am currently writing my final thesis and am so bored (it is linguistics!). I really have to stay away from knitting and reading interesting stuff for the next weeks. :-(
I wanted to tell you that you are a knitting prodigy most definitely!
Comment from barbara
Time: January 30, 2007, 2:51 pm
hey ysolda
first of all, thanks for your great christmas card! i hope you got mine, sorry i have only just said thanks now, i have been swamped with work.
as for blogging, i wrote a linguistics paper on blogging last year. you are right that there isn’t much in the form of books out there, although i found quite a few scholarly journal articles. you might need access via your university to download them though (we get a client for our pc to access journals online). i can send you my bibliography and the articles i have (most are pdfs), i can also check if i have kept the links to the journals i searched (most stuff on blogging will be online, mostly in tech-journals). anyhoo, let me know!
x barbara
Comment from alice
Time: January 30, 2007, 3:19 pm
I assume you’ve read Sherry Turkle’s book Life on the Screen?
Also Rheingold’s book on the well might be interesting.
It’s been a while since I did any of this stuff though - I did a great sociology/ eng lit course on internet communication 3rd year of my Undergrad, which was 2002/3 (arrg! feel old now…)
My FAVOURITE (tho it’s not about blogging, it is about self identity and realism on the net) is this article. Orgionally popular press, but ended up being much cited in academic circles. It’s worth reading for entertainment anyway.
Comment from Daphne
Time: January 30, 2007, 5:32 pm
Your reading hoodie has indeed inspired me! It looks terrific, and I love reading about your process. Thanks!
Comment from weeza
Time: January 30, 2007, 6:19 pm
I’m just nearing the end of my first reading of Woman on the Edge of Time, I’m loving it. Up next is How to Suppress Women’s Writing by Joanna Russ, which thinking about it could be an interesting sidetrack for your dissertation! My Masters dissertation is looming at 15,000 words…urk. Shannon… interesting you should mention matriarchal utopias, I’m trying to write a Creative Writing PhD proposal to do just that! My brain hurts.
Comment from Fiona
Time: January 30, 2007, 7:52 pm
Nice hoodie —
I’ll have to read Althusser too for my dissertation - which is what we call the 10000 word effort that rounds up an MA. (The thing for a PhD we’d call a thesis.)
My MA’s in global media and we cover blogging at some point so I’ll have a look for you.
Good luck with Louis!
Comment from clarabelle
Time: January 30, 2007, 9:16 pm
Have you read any of the works of Anna Kavan? She is definitely someone involved in self-narrative….
Clarabelle
ps I can recommend her books, largely out of print…..
Comment from nush
Time: January 30, 2007, 9:32 pm
I like the neatness of it all. Very much. That’s an excellent way of doing a hem.
x
Comment from Corvus
Time: January 30, 2007, 11:11 pm
I’m a new reader and thus likely already missed an answer to this, but how do you read and knit at the same time? Only limit yourself to big heavy books that will stay open to the right page themselves (barring a breeze)? Do you have a book-holding contraption of some sort (ie http://www.uncommongoods.com/item/item.jsp?source=family&itemId=14116)?
As a bookworm and knitter, it seems like a handy talent to develop. I’ve tried to do so in the past (2×2 ribbing is inextricably linked with Organic Chemistry 2 in my brain), but never managed to juggle a book and knitting well enough to make it a comfortable habit.
Comment from sheila
Time: January 30, 2007, 11:51 pm
Wow. You are way ahead of me… thinking about provisional cast-ons give me a headache. sounds like fun, knitting and reading and burning the candle at both ends. I got my BA seven years ago in New York. Now I am looking into going back to school and I’m not sure if I’m ready to cram my brain full of stuff again. should be exciting though. love reading your blog.
Comment from lupinbunny
Time: January 31, 2007, 1:46 am
ah…. sweet haraway. she brings back memories of arguing with a friend as to whether wearing glasses = cyborg.
if you have time, try Oryx & Crake by atwood, instead of THT. It’s a lot newer, and very non-feminine, for atwood. but another dystopian fiction. this time informed by genetic modification, viral pandemics and the gap between rich and poor. i *think* i prefer it.
i’m about to head off to a meeting with my supervisor, to get started on my (much less interesting) dissertation proposal. i’m pretty scared right now. while i found arts interesting and creative and challenging, i find my *other* degree a real struggle when it comes to independent thought. i only have one angle on my topic, and i hope to god he doesn’t reject it. i’m clinging to that angle for dear life.
Comment from Holly Burnham
Time: January 31, 2007, 2:05 pm
I’ve used this hem technique myself for many of my grandchildrens sweater….if anyone out there hasn’t tried it, it’s worth the effort for a professional finish.
Comment from Kelly
Time: February 6, 2007, 3:32 pm
I just wanted to put a plug in for Marge Piercy, I don’t see her books come up often in what people are reading, but Woman on the Edge of Time was a powerful book–my favorite of hers, though, is He, She, and It.
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