Oh, Cat

This morning, I told Maggie that it was time for her to get off my lap so I could get to work. Sometimes she gets up easily, sometimes she is reluctant, and then there was … this.

Why, What's That I See?

The future is now! Sneak peek:

Details to come!

Starring Maggie

I know I keep posting lots of Maggie photos, but seriously, how cute is this cat? 

Answer to Pamela's Question

Pamela left a question on an old post of mine, wondering about the never-explained title of "Oh, vat vader" I had given that post. The answer to that is, unsurprisingly, that it came out of a book. Specifically, Anne Lamott's book on writing, Bird by Bird.

In a section on dialog, she writes of hearing someone say it:

This may have resonated with me due to having older Scandinavian relatives, because I could definitely 'hear' it in one of their voices. But in any case, that's all it is: "Oh, what weather."

On a side note, goodness, how I disliked commuting into Boston for work! I am so not a city person.

Shawl Progress: Wavedeck

I've been knitting away on Wavedeck by Kate Atherley (Ravelry link) and mostly enjoying it. I say mostly only because I have to keep checking-and-correcting the pattern rows; I'm in chart 3, and it's 151 stitches now, which I regularly mess up and have to fix. Sigh. That's me, not the pattern. But I do love how it's coming out, and I only have a half-dozen more pattern rows before I move on to the edging section, which repeats two rows and should hopefully be easier for me to manage, without so much counting and recounting.. 

At the moment, the project looks like this:

This needle is a good size for working on it, but I can't stretch it out to get an idea of how it will look after blocking. The yarn is Amy March DK, by Yarn Love (Ravelry link), in the colorway Worsted Witch Cottage (Lot B), which I got from Eat.Sleep.Knit last year. I do like how the pattern and the yarn are looking together:

So many colors, but it doesn't seem messy to me. I described it to someone as a bowl of many-colored jelly beans.

If I try to zoom in on just one section, it can stretch to show a bit better:

But it works even better on a towel, which keeps it spread out a little more easily.

Blocking is going to do a lot for this one!

Book Review: Knitting Comfortably

 

As I mentioned in my recent post on reading, I got Knitting Comfortably: The Ergonomics of Handknitting by Carson Demers (via interlibrary loan [all the way from New Mexico!]), and though this isn't exactly a proper book review, I did want to share some of my thoughts on it (which I guess is a book review? I don't know; it's not going to be very organized, anyway).

The author is a physical therapist as well as a knitter, and thus brings a knitter's eye to ergonomics and presents information in a way that is very specifically helpful to knitters. Not that a non-knitter couldn't learn a lot about ergonomics from it, but there's something about mention of the specific issues and tools and techniques relating to knitting that brought it all home to me more.

By issues, I mean that he discusses the potentially problematic ways a knitter might be sitting while knitting, as well suggesting specific fixes with knitting in mind: not just "if you sit in this way, it can cause these problems," but "if you sit with your knitting pattern where the light falls on it, the glare can cause a problem, as well as your having to turn to look at it, which can hurt your neck in this way, but if you use a document holder, or just a binder clip and a binder, you can have it better positioned for both issues"*.

*These are not actual quotes, obviously.

By tools, I mean that he discusses different types of needles, and why one might work better for you than another, and how different needle materials will interact differently with different types of yarn and the effect that can have on the body, and how different styles of project bags can be good or bad for different situations.

By techniques, I mean that he goes through different ways of knitting, and what effect certain motions can have on the body over the long term, and suggests ways to tweak how you do things to minimize problems. He suggests certain exercises and stretches that can help keep the body working, using knitterly language: "Sit tall and imagine a piece of yarn tied to an imaginary button on the top front of your shirt. Imagine the yarn being pulled gently toward the ceiling, raising your chest and rib cage until your spine is erect."

The book has plenty of photographs and diagrams to illustrate what he's saying, and the writing style is comfortable and accessible. Ironically, the book itself is rather heavy! I felt several times that there was no way to read it without straining my hands or my neck. But it's well worth reading all the same.

Things to Be

I saw this on Facebook this morning; it was attributed to someone named Kimberly Kwon. More power to her!

And then I saw Sandra Boynton's contribution, inadvertent though it was.

Be.

Maggie on Wednesday

Herself, showing off: