Oolong knits

Colour pooling can occur when using variegated yarns. This is usually an undesired effect, which occurs when the colours instead of being distributed in a pleasing even way, end up blotched together, resulting in an unattractive pattern in the final project. However, Karla Stuebing realized that in many industrial variegated yarns the colour distribution is completely regular. This allows to make what she calls planned pooling , which means using this regularity to plan beautiful pooling effects. For lovers of geometric colour patterns, like myself, I recommend reading Karla Stuebing's really good tutorial. If you go along and give it a try, you'll probably find this planned pooling calculator very helpful. Note: on the paragraph on Argyle socks, Karla mentions a technique called sliding loop join in Intarsia, I think she is referring to the technique explained in this tutorial . She also mentions a planned pooling group in Ravelry which I believe to be this one , che...

Note: This post is not entirely correct. In fact there are 4 types of twisted stitches, not just 2, because you can either twist a stitch to the right or the left before purling or knitting it. I've written an errata to this post that explains it in more detail. There are only 4 stitches you can knit: (1) knit , (2) purl , (3) knit through the back loop and (4) purl through the back loop . Stitches worked through the back loop are twisted . These correspond to the 4 ways you can place a needle: from the back or front and from the left or right. From back to front you purl, from front to back you knit, more precisely: (1) from the front and left, you make a knit stitch, (2) from the back and right you make a purl stitch, (3) from the front and right, a knit through the back loop, (3) from the back and left, a purl through the back loop. You may think that you can also wrap the yarn around the needle in two different directions, but doing that actually does not affect the st...

Oh oh... I must apologize, I don't know how I published this post with some many typos, wrong punctuation and all other sorts of grammar mistakes. It is so confusing that in more than one passage I seem to be saying exactly the opposite of what I intended. Unfortunately I'm too busy right now to rewrite it. I think I need to completely rephrase several paragraphs and that is going to need more time than I have now. I was reading this very interesting essay by Eva Illouz which I'd mentioned in my previous post about Grey and it suggested to me a point that is not mentioned in the essay but that I think is very important when discussing the modern/feminist approach to women's sexuality and sexual role. When discussing the contradictions that are obvious in the aforementioned books between the apparent anti-feminist dichotomy of woman as submissive-man as dominant, woman as dependent-man as provider, and the many aspects of the novel that are indeed feminist, that I w...

When I first read Fifty Shades, the thing that most struck me about the book was not the sex, I'm not easily shocked, but the fact that its author is a woman who is very evidently oppressed by her role of carer: as a wife, a mother, and (I presume) also in her profession. Despite the achievements of feminism, it is still true that both in the private sphere of the family and in the public sphere of their profession, women are expected to take the role of carers. They are more often teachers, nurses, doctors, social workers, personal assistants, and any other profession that involves taking care of others. They are also the one's responsible for the great part of their children care, the house chores, the care of the elderly, and even their 'eternally young' (to be read as privileged immature, why grow up when you don't have to?) husbands. This is many times a secret that many of us carry with a certain shame (as we perceive ourselves as traitors to our feminist be...