I have finally finished and blocked my Vodka Lemonade - now it's only the last few ends that have to be woven in, and it will be ready to wear!

I have not yet decided whether I will stick with the "worn-open" version that it's intended to be by the designer, or whether I would like to have a closing option - and if the latter, what it will be. Some small and unobtrusive press studs? A slim, hidden zipper? Some kind of brooch, or a hook-and-eye closure? I tend towards the zipper, though - provided I can find one that is a good length (or can be cut to a good length) and that is a fitting colour. Ah, decisions, decisions...

It's time for a stack of links again!

There's a "rare sheep breed wool challenge" going on in the US, started by The Livestock Conservancy. It runs under the delightful name of "Shave 'Em to Save 'Em", and you can read more about it here and here.

The Council of British Archaeology has a number of research reports online for free download, on a variety of topics. You find the list (including the Archaeology of York volumes) here.

Speaking of publications, here is an article about the completely fucked-up system that is academic publishing, where you pay to get access to publications on research... which had been paid for by the state (usually), and where the authors and peer reviewers do not see a penny for their work. Yes, really. It's a complete gnah situation.

And finally, an art project with knitted sweaters that let their wearers blend into the background.

If you are a knitter, you will know that there is more or less maths involved in knitting. While it's quite possible to avoid maths-ing to a large degree, not doing so can make things much, much easier - like adjusting a pattern to your gauge instead of endlessly fiddling around with different needles, and maybe trying a different yarn, to "get gauge" exactly as stated in the pattern. Or figuring out how much yarn you'll need from knitting a sample swatch and weighing plus measuring it. Or other things like that.

I was reminded of all that maths stuff when looking for an article about early compound knitting on JSTOR and found instead this one here:

Belcastro, Sarah marie, and Carolyn Yackel. “About Knitting...” Math Horizons, vol. 14, no. 2, 2006, pp. 24–39. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25678655. (JSTOR is a paywall thing, but they offer a free registration that allows you to read up to six articles per month for free. So if you are interested in that article, or in other stuff, you can sign up there and get some sciencey goodness.)

I found it amusing - and if you are tickled by the combination maths and knitting, Sarah Marie Belcastro also has a webpage about these things, with plenty of links to keep you amused and/or occupied. And a photo tutorial for a knitting increase that looks like a reverse ssk or k2tog!

There has been a bit more knitting going on here - some on the train, some in the café, and some at home... which means my current project #1, Vodka Lemonade, does have almost two sleeves now:



I've opted to do the sleeves earlier than the pattern states (which, as usual, lets you knit the sleeves once the body is finished), as I was so annoyed about having the large, heavy rest of the thing hanging around when I was knitting the sleeves on Moyen Age. There's still a bit of residual annoyance with this now, but it's not as bad by far - and I'll find out how much the sleeves will annoy me when I knit the rest of the body.

The brioche stitch travel knitting needs some loving attention with an awake brain at the moment, as I have managed to drop a stitch and now need to figure out how to get it back up into line again... which is not as straightforward in two-colour brioche as it is in normal knitting.

While we're at the topic of knitting, here's the record of train delays as documented in a scarf by a woman commuting in Germany.

It's time for a link roundup again - here you go:

In German: Why a bicycle manufacturer sends his bicycles in cartons with a TV printed on them.

There's a knitting card game on Kickstarter - where you can knit (virtually, and thus much faster than in real life) objects based on actual existing patterns, with actual existing yarns. The video doesn't show much about how the game is played, but if you are into knitting and card games, it might be interesting for you.

Medieval Histories has an article about Viking dress, more specifically: about royal Viking dress.

BBC has an article about women explorers in the 19th century craze for getting mummies and related artefacts out of Egypt and into museums and collections... and modern researchers as well.

Anne Marie Decker has put her presentation about "Charting the Nalbinding of the Nile" online. If you're interested at all in nalbinding, do take a look at this - if only for the pictures!

So... I've swatched (to get an idea of how to do the brioching thing), I've cast on, and I've made sure the travel project actually does fit the "travel project requirement" - which is, coincidentally, "fitting into the project bag".



You can see all the stuff that lives in there, permanently or temporarily. Permanent inhabitants are: measuring tape, a pencil (with eraser endcap), a needle gauge/ruler, endcaps for the interchangeable needle cables, a bit of string, my row-counting ring, the little bag for stitch holders and darning needles and cable needles, and last but of course not least an emergency cookie and emergency chocolate. (You never know.)

Non-permanent residents are the needles for the current project, the yarns for it and the printed instructions (or in some cases, when the instructions are on my phone only, a bit of paper to scribble notes on).

Unfortunately, the bag is not bigger on the inside, probably because it's the Exploding Tardis motif and not the proper, normal, intact one.

In any case, to be deemed a travel project, the thing has to fit inside. In this case, it just does:



So. Train pastime - checked.



And since this is rather slow, meditative knitting, I will surely not run out!

 

While my honeypot Vodka Lemonade is progressing nicely - I'm a bit below arm separation now, and it's mostly plain stockinette for the moment, nice, breezy, easygoing knitting - it really is too cumbersome to take along on a train trip now.

So I spent a little time on Ravelry in search of a nice portable project, preferrably some kind of scarf that would be reversible. (Speaking of reversible, here's a fun little article about how to make reversible cables. Which is sort of genius - I'll have to try this one day!) After a while of looking, I finally found a shawl pattern called "Arabian Nights"... something using two-colour brioche stitch, worked flat. Aaah. New things to figure out!

Brioche stitch, for those of you not clued into that yet, is a combination of slipped stitches and yarnovers. It makes a reversible, rib-like, cushy fabric. Worked in two colours, you get the one colour as knit-looking on one side and purl-looking on the other side... which is something I find very nice in general, and the Arabian Nights pattern looks mesmerizing to me with this effect. Here's a tutorial in case you are curious on how to knit brioche in two colours. The downside? Much as in illusion knitting, you need to work two rows to get one visible row, unless you do wild shenanigans.

Anyway, I'm now going to find out a bit more about this, and fiddle with it a little so I can have a project with me when I travel to Liège on Friday. One needs to fill one's work breaks somehow, right?