I'm torn, these days, between keeping caught up on the news and finding a nice big rock to live under. Preferably with some nice, warm sands (because the German idiom is to stick one's head into the sand). But it's not helpful, and I know that, so I try to stay up to date at least more or less - on that fine line between knowing too little and knowing too much, or between blissful ignorance and total despair. Because, well, I probably don't need to tell you, it doesn't look so good in many corners of this world. 

In case you have red yarn and a few dollars left over, and would like to do some political knitting, you could knit yourself a Melt the ICE hat. The pattern is available in that wonderful time sink for knitters called Ravelry, and - in case you don't do Ravelry - also via payhip. All proceeds from sales of the hat go to immigrant aid organisations, and will benefit the victims of ICE.

And let me join in, even though I'm pretty far away from the happenings: Fuck ICE. Fuck the political climate that allows this to happen. Fuck the general human incompetence to learn from history in order to avoid repeat performances of shit (brown, obviously) hitting the proverbial fan.

Wherever you are, I hope that you are as safe as can be, and that you are doing your part to keep this world a sane and livable one. Because we need every little bit of that right now.

Well, not much to tell about here today - there was stuff to be done on the computer, so there wasn't even sneaking away for a good bit to do some more sprang. (Which is still growing too quickly, by the way, so I'll only need about half the original row count for the original length. Grrr.) The Little Cat had a vet checkup today to get blood drawn, and she was understandably not very amused. The vet was, though, when I told him that the Little Cat's newest medication seems to be the tastiest thing ever available to a cat, and goes absolutely bonkers for it. (Apparently that's not normal.)

Otherwise, texts, reading, phone, writing, emails, stuff. And because you deserve something not as unexciting as hearing about this, here's a link for you to a new kind of sock heel that can be knit in top-down or toe-up, and a link to a paper about cats doing the "fetch" thing. Enjoy. 

Welcome back here on the blog - which should have declared my winter break until today, but the post got stuck in the publishing process. Anyways, I'm happy you're here (still or again), and I'm already looking forward to an interesting year with a lot of things going on...

One of my first shenanigans will be going down to Italy to teach a tiny bit of spinning to the participants of the Winter School "Textiles make the world go round". Then there's a knit-along starting on ravelry on January 18 that I'm sort of involved in (I made the pattern). Most of the knit-along will probably be in German, but the pattern is available in both German and English, so if you're interested, you can check it out here. 

And speaking of knitting - the Knitting History Forum this year is taking place on February 1 (a Saturday). It's an online conference with six presentations, followed by discussion, and the tickets are available now on the Knitting History Forum Website.

In case you're a knitter and enjoy looking at, and thinking about, different stitch structures and what a special move does to the surrounding stitches, you might want to check out Naomi Parkhurst's Stitch Structure series.  She's looking at increases and a cast-on technique as well as some other things like elongated stitches - with lovely drawings that make it very clear what is happening. I do enjoy blog posts such as that, and it's always nice to get this slightly different look at knitting!

You know that effect when you do something textile-y, and you totally expect a certain outcome, or behaviour of the stuff, and then it just - thwarts you by doing something entirely different? 

Aargh. Yes. And yes, that happened... the knitted test pieces that I made did not exactly what they were supposed to do. So at least it proves the old adage that whatever number of questions you go into an experiment with, you will go out with even more! 

These are two close-ups of knitting, done with plied threads and done with threads held together. Can you tell which is which? And why? 

After washing, they were supposed to look a bit more different... but if there are differences to be seen, well, they are more subtle than what I'd have wished for. So I feel a bit thwarted by my own work, and I'm also wondering why. Was there not enough twist? (There was plenty, I'd have said.) Does it depend on yarn thickness? The last test I did was with thinner yarns, and I had more of an effect there. Or maybe I was knitting too tighly?

Questions, questions, more questions. Well, at least life never gets boring that way!

Happy New Year, dear readers of this blog - I hope you had a good end of the last one and a glorious start into this year! Mine was partly spent with a rather obnoxious cold, so there was a bit more sneezing and a lot more sleeping than I had planned for.

Of couse I'm well again in time to get back to work... timing, right? But it's nice and interesting work that I'm getting back to, so that is definitely on the pro side. (Well, mostly nice and interesting - I just remembered there's tax paperwork to file in the next few weeks, too...)

There's also planning for some conferences and events in the current year. I will be at the Nadelwelt again in May, and then there's the NESAT conference in May as well. The museum in Syke plans a Bronze Age weekend event in August, where I will show things... but the next thing coming up is the Knitting History Forum conference on February 3. 

I will talk about spinning, twist, and its influence on knitting at that event, and some bits for that paper are still in the works. So here's a sneak peek for you:

These are knit from the same wool, spun once in z and once in s, with two threads held together (not plied). I've done this before, the not-plied-thing, with rather... interesting results once it got washed. This time, I'm also going to see about the differences in spin direction, including the visual ones. Next up will be the same knitting, but with plied yarns instead of yarns held parallel.

(I was hoping for the two bits to turn out the same size, but alas, the threads of one were a bit thinner than the others, or else I messed up the tension. Ah well.)

If you're interested in the outcome, consider joining the conference! It's online only, so you can attend from wherever you are. More about it, including the programme and the link to get tickets, can be found on the conference website. 

I stumbled across a post about knitting cables (1/1 cables, to be exact) in different ways (which was, however, not very substantial), and that brought to mind again the many very detailed and very cool posts on the Techknitter's blog, and on a whim I looked it up again. I had noticed a long while ago that the blog seemed to be on hiatus. 

As many blogs who go off for a while do that to never return, that was sort of what I had expected. So I was very pleasantly surprised that the Technknitter is back! (I also discovered the reason for the hiatus.)

So if you're looking for knitting tricks such as how to make jogless stripes, or how to fix curling scarves, or how to handle several colours at once - go check out the blog. It is a fantastic resource, with really neat solutions for a lot of knitting problems, very well explained and nicely illustrated. Even if it's something I'm pretty sure I will not use in my knitting, I still enjoyed reading the posts about it!