The Bog of Lost Scholars

31 March 2007

Drowning in Sock Yarn

Filed under: Crafts — Castiron @ 15:56

I need to ride the bus more often.

I say this having looked at Webs‘s closeouts page and discovered that they’d gotten a clearance load of Regia sock yarn, including two colors I’ve wanted and three others that just looked interesting. My number of socks-in-waiting is now 24, with two pairs in progress (and this doesn’t count the sock yarn scraps, some of which are lengthy enough to do child’s socks or to be combined with another scrap ball into an interesting pair; plus there’s still several more sock yarns that I want to try).

When I get these all done, I’ll be in good shape for socks for quite some time!

I also went to my LYS recently, having a free evening on their open-late night. I got some DPNs for the felted mitts (the ones I had were too small) and two skeins of unfamiliar yarns to swatch for a possible cardigan.

Other craft progress:

  • Square Dance socks: heels are half done. I tried starting the short row heel with more stitches, and so far think it’s going to work well, but we’ll see when it’s done. (I also started it in the wrong part of the sock, so the heel is on what should be the side rather than the back. I’ve decided not to rip; the toe will stretch.)
  • Ivy socks: a few stitches.
  • Pink oven mitt: well over halfway done — after working with sock yarn and #1 needles, it’s a nice change to use bulky yarn and #11s. I’m using KnitPicks Sierra, an 80% wool/20% alpaca blend; it feels very nice.
  • Irina tank: I got an extra skein (same dye lot, yay!) when I ordered my Regia. I need to put it on an extra needle cable to see how the diameter is now that I’ve decreased a bunch and figure out how soon I need to increase for the hip. (I also found that my LYS has this color if not this dye lot, so if I do need one last skein and don’t feel like making a big enough Webs order to justify the shipping, I could get it locally.)
  • Wildwood shawl: I started this a couple weeks ago. I’m debating on ripping (though it’d be difficult, since this is a fuzzy yarn) — it’s turned out wider than I’d expected, and I’m not sure I have enough yarn to make it the right size. But I’m going to experiment with a wrap-and-drop stitch to get more shawl length per yarn length; it may turn out OK, and it certainly looks nice.
  • Aran sweater: I finally got the oomph to rip one sleeve back to the ribbing; the design wasn’t working, so I’m going to just use the main cable in the center of the sleeve instead of a different cable, and leave the rest plain.
  • Mesa shawl: I hit a snag on one row and haven’t decided whether to rip back or improvise around it. Needs to be thought about, as if it’s going to the person I originally intended it for, it needs finishing within a month.
  • Fair Isle swatch cap: Untouched. I should go in with #3 needles and repeat the patterns to see how it works with those.
  • In the near future knitting queue: More Regia socks, Apple Laine socks, felted clogs.
  • A smidge on the bobbin lace doily.
  • No progress on cross-stitch, crochet, or sewing.

30 March 2007

Sundry Books

Filed under: The Castiron Reading Journal — Castiron @ 19:15

Mason-Dixon Knitting. I can see why this book (and the blog) is so popular. The authors sound interesting, and the projects do indeed make me think about knitting in other ways. I’m not about to knit a jersey-loop rug, but I admit to being tempted by the linen nightdress and the felted boxes. (And I did break down and buy a skein of Euroflax linen to knit a towel.) I don’t see myself buying this new, but if it shows up in the used bookstore, I might pick it up.

M. M. Kaye, The Ordinary Princess. A fun little children’s fantasy about a princess who, in addition to the traditional christening gifts from the fairies, is given the gift of being ordinary.

Kirsten Miller, Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City. A band of girls, led by the mysterious Kiki Strike, explore secret underground tunnels in NYC and get more than they bargained for. Very good. The various threads come together well, and I love the narrator’s advice lists at the chapter ends (and none of them were things to which I said “no fricking way!”).

J.R.R. Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring. My slow LOTR reread is in progress.

Three unfinished books, all “good writing, just not what I’m in the mood for”:

  • Sandra Hill, The Very Virile Viking.
  • Beverly Jenkins, The Taming of Jessie Rose.
  • Jasper Fforde, The Big Over Easy.

25 March 2007

Wandering Myers Kin

Filed under: Genealogy — Castiron @ 23:02

The latest chunk of my database has been Myers relatives. My Myers family comes from the Adams County area of Pennsylvania. I don’t know much about them, so I’ve been busy tracking what happened to my scattered Nth-great-aunts and -uncles.

In the case of most of them, it’s “leave Pennsylvania”. Two of them seem to have gone to Trumbull County, Ohio; a few went to Tippecanoe County, IN; some ended up in Michigan. I’ve managed to find most of them on the census, though there’s one daughter who I’m uncertain on (I don’t have her husband’s first name, and if it’s the guy that the 1850 census suggests, something unfortunately clearly happened before 1860).

I am, however, mystified as to why my great-aunt, who compiled the initial genealogy that I’m working from, put a non-existent son named Dan in almost every single family. Seriously. Every single Myers son in this family should have a son named Dan, according to her; unless every single one of them traditionally used the name for any stillborn sons, it’s a major error on my great-aunt’s part. (Or else the guy who initially compiled this information was named Dan Myers, and she accidentally copied his name off all his family group sheets.) Yes, I have learned that my great-aunt’s research, while accurate most of the time, must nonetheless be independently verified.

23 March 2007

Socks and Mittens

Filed under: Crafts — Castiron @ 23:01

The Panda Cotton socks are done. I love the way this yarn feels on my feet, but next time I use it, I want to try smaller needles; I’m not sure this pair will last terribly long. (48 stitches around on #2 needles — they work up fast, but not necessarily durably!)

I also finished my son’s mittens, just in time for spring. That’s okay; they’re big enough that they should still fit next winter.

The Irina tank/vest is coming along, now that I’ve gotten back to it; I still suspect I may need to order more (in which case I hope they won’t run out, but if they do, then the bottom and borders are going to be a different color!). The fit is a titch roomy — okay for a vest, but too loose for a tank top. That’s okay, as I’m more likely to wear a vest than a tank….

Having knit about five inches on the Aran sleeves, I’m looking at the design and realizing that it doesn’t work; I’m going to have to rip back to the ribbing and try something else. Grumble.

I actually did a few rows on the lace socks, finishing one repeat of the huge lace pattern. This is a project that takes a little too much concentration for multitasking knitting, which is probably why I’m progressing so slowly on it. I’m also slowly progessing on the Square Dance socks; that colorway is not one of my favorites, but it’s easy knitting.

The yarn is wound for three upcoming projects: the Apple Laine socks (waiting for the #1 needles to come free; yes, I am tempted to buy more, but I’m going to resist and finish the Square Dance socks first), felted oven mitts, and a linen lace towel. I’m also ready to start a pair of FiberTrends felted clogs for myself. But I’d like to get a little further on a couple of the other projects first; the number of knitting UFOs is getting somewhat unwieldly. Clearly I’m not riding the bus often enough!

22 March 2007

Mummies on the Big Screen!

Filed under: Film and Media — Castiron @ 08:35

I’d been given a free ticket to the local IMAX theater, so I went to see Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs.

Eh.

Overall, this isn’t the kind of movie that translates well to IMAX. The views of ancient Egyptian statuary and temples, now, were nifty; the IMAX scene conveys the size and majesty in a way my television doesn’t. So as an advertisement for Egyptian tourism (assuming any of those sites are open to the public), it worked.

(On a tangent, I have to put in a plug for a forthcoming UTP book that I kept thinking of while watching this movie: L. L. Wynn, Pyramids and Nightclubs. Wynn compares Western and Arab tourism of Egypt: Westerners go for the archaeology, the grand treasures of an ancient civilization, while Arabs go for the modern culture, the live entertainment — rather like Americans go to Vegas.)

The dramatizations of scenes from ancient Egypt were quite neat too, although they’d have worked as well on a small screen. The temple scenes were especially interesting. And they picked a very, er, visually intriguing actor to play Ramses. Ramses the Great, indeed! (wipes off drool)

But mummified human bodies aren’t especially enhanced by presentation on big screen. And the dramatization of the search for and finding of the mummies of Egyptian pharaohs — well, it certainly made me ponder European colonialism, if that’s what they intended to do. And while I learned a little bit from the movie, I left wishing there’d been a little more information presented. (Yes, I can certainly go find out more on my own at places like the British Museum’s Egypt page. But since my free hours are limited, it’d have been nice to have a bit more meat in the one I just spent.)

So overall, if I’d seen this on PBS, it would have been a reasonably enjoyable program to watch. If I’d actually paid for the ticket instead of receiving it as a freebie, I’d feel a little cheated.

21 March 2007

Lion King: The Musical

Filed under: Music — Castiron @ 08:16

My boyfriend’s sister very generously took us to see The Lion King. My thoughts:

If you like spectacle, gorgeous and amazing costumes, cool effects with puppetry, and nifty tricks with scenery, buy the cheap seats and bring binoculars.

If you like story accompanied by music, stay home and watch the original movie.

It wasn’t bad, mind you. The singing was quite good, and the puppetry was neat (though after about fifteen minutes, the neatness wore off). But the actor playing Scar was the only one whose words were easy to understand; I’m not sure if this was a factor of the sound system, the particular actor’s voice, or the other actors’ abilities to project while being miked. My boyfriend, who’s never seen the movie all the way through, had a lot of trouble figuring out what was going on in the first half.

As for the music, there were several songs that I liked, but the only ones I remember enough of to hum the tunes are the ones I already knew from the movie. Clearly they weren’t THAT great. (That said, I retain an irrational love of “They Live in You” and an irrational dislike of “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?”.)

Overall, a good spectacle, but it feels hollow. On my personal scale of musicals, it falls much closer to Andrew Lloyd Weber than to Les Miserables or Into the Woods.

16 March 2007

Dance Performance

Filed under: Dance — Castiron @ 18:23

Last weekend was the San Antonio Folk Dance Festival, a weekend-long workshop with a dance concert on Saturday night.

I’m told that the teachers, Daniela Ivanova (Bulgarian) and Daniel Sandu (Romanian), were excellent. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do the workshop because I was in the concert with Village International Folk Dancers (or rather, I could have, but I’d have missed the entire afternoon for dress rehearsal, so I decided against it).

But the concert was fun, with lots of excellent dance groups including some amazing kids from a Serbian dance group in Houston. (Several of the groups did use similar dances, though; after a while we began to joke about the preponderance of csardas dances and guys jumping over sticks.) And our group did a good job with our Israeli set, considering that half of us had never performed before and that the dress rehearsal was the first time one person had been able to come to practice in three weeks. We got a lot of compliments on the staging for Likrat Shabat, which we did with the stage lights turned down and the dancers silhouetted against the background.

Learning dances for performance was a good experience for me, and I’m glad I did it, but I find I don’t have the performing bug. Next time, if VIFD is performing, I’ll probably pass so I can actually do the workshop and learn dances well enough to bring them back to our group.

12 March 2007

Craft Update: Socks, More Socks, and Minimal Sewing

Filed under: Crafts — Castiron @ 00:37

The Bearfoot socks are done. They’re very comfortable and fuzzy. I should probably handwash them most of the time to keep the colors nice, but they survived one trip through the washer just fine.

I’ll be experimenting with more sock yarns in the near future. I bought three unfamiliar sock yarns at The Loopy Ewe: Apple Laine’s Apple Pie (not the color I really wanted, alas, but a nice one anyway), Euroyarn OnLine’s Supersocke Cool, and Crystal Palace Panda Cotton. I also bought a skein of Trekking XXL during my occasional pilgrimage to The Yarn Barn of San Antonio.

I’ve started the Panda Cotton pair of socks; so far, it’s fairly pleasant to work with; the plies separate easily, and it might be a pain if I were using a smaller needle, but as it is I find it manageable.

Other knitting progress: The KP Dancing socks are growing steadily. I worked a bit on my son’s mittens; the thumb gussets are done. The top of the Irina tank is done; I need to put it on long cables sometime and see how it actually fits (and knit quickly on it so I still have any faint hope of getting an extra skein in the same dye lot if needed).

Other craft progress: The bobbin lace doily is in the home stretch, but I expect about three of the bobbins to run out of thread just short of the end, sigh. I’ve done a few stitches on the Fantasy Sampler. And I sewed a skirt for a performance, which has made me realize two things:

  1. There is no point in my doing further sewing until I repair my sewing machine.
  2. Actually? I really hate sewing.

I still want to fix the machine, as it does come in handy. But I’m starting to think hard about unloading a lot of my fabrics. I’m having fairly good luck finding clothes for myself and my son in thrift stores (for less than what the fabric and notions would cost me!), and I find that most of the things I sew for myself don’t get worn much. I may yet make another quilt, and it’s nice to be able to quickly sew a pillow if I want some fresh color in my living room, but overall, sewing isn’t that essential to my wardrobe or home.

4 March 2007

The Importance of Initial Letters

Filed under: Genealogy — Castiron @ 14:10

The Soundex system, a method of coding surnames to make it easier to find names on census and other records in spite of variant spellings, is a wonderful thing, but it has its limits. In particular, if the initial letter of the name is spelled wrong, you’re never going to find the person unless you get lucky.

This weekend I got lucky.

In my census crawl, I’m currently up to my relatives in Adams County, Pennsylvania. These folks are more challenging to research than my Frederick relatives, because while I have plenty of books on Frederick (marriage license records, church records, the sometimes wrong but generally helpful biographies in History of Frederick County, Maryland), I don’t have this data for Adams County; I’m stuck with the undocumented family tree my great-aunt made.

So I’m up to my several-times great-uncle George Myers, born about 1817. I have names for a few of his kids, but no name for his wife, and I was having no luck finding him on the census. But one of his daughters, Elvina/Alvina, was listed as marrying someone surnamed Worthway — no first name, alas. So I tried searching on Worthway.

This is not a common name at all, and even so, I didn’t find the daughter.

But I had one last thing to check: she’d had a daughter named Nellie, who married someone surnamed Terry. I checked the census for Nellie Terry.

Lo and behold, on the 1920 census for Cleveland, I find a Nellie Terry, her husband Theodore, and her parents: Elisha and Elvina Northway.

Yeah. No wonder I wasn’t finding Elvina. The Soundex search does you no good when you’ve got the wrong first letter!

At any rate, once I had the correct surname, I could track them back, find that Elvina was born in Ohio, and ultimately find her father George Myers. Hurrah!

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