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...

In a previous post I've mentioned that one of the reasons I've learned to knit so late in life is that I didn't know anyone who knitted. Actually, I still don't and that is also the reason I've learned it through the internet. I was thinking about the reasons for this decline on the number of people who do, despite the claims that it is now fashionable. Which is true but only up to a certain point, knitters are still a very small tribe, no matter how many of them claim to be legion. On my own I found a few reasons for this. 1. Technological progress aka. time and money With the development of more and more efficient knitting machines, there is no longer a justification to spend so much time and money on something you can simply buy. The fact that knitting takes time is evident. The fact that it is expensive is not so obvious, but it is still true. Take the example of the sweater I'm knitting right now, I've spent more money on the yarn alone than I...

EL James following Kant. You cannot accuse me of being highbrow after this one. I'll start with an introduction to my experience of the 50 shades sequence. Some years ago, probably before you ever heard of James' books (unless you were an early reader), I was interested in BDSM books for a very simple reason: I think that novels are often a better way to understand human psychology than psychology treatises. Why BDSM? because it is so foreign to my experience that I could not even begin to phantom the reasons people might be into it. My curiosity was aroused by Sacher-Masoch's "Venus in Furs",  which I'd read because I wanted to know what was so influential about it that it generated the word masochism (and it still surprises me that we didn't have a word for it until so recently!). So I'd started reading, but did not finish because I'd got really bored with it, Ann Rice's Sleeping Beauty. I'd also began reading "The story of O...

While I'm at it. I just want to add the following to my previous post .  Why are the media and our society so worried about the consequences of mother's working on children's welfare? Isn't it more than obvious that, in our society, it is the fact that most fathers do not feel more responsibility for their children's upbringing that is causing the greater damage on children? Why are we not talking about this instead then? What justifies the attention given to the responsibilities of motherhood in place of those of fatherhood? Why so much pressure is put on women, making them feel guilty about not being better mums, dedicating more time to their children, sacrificing their lives and careers to them? Why none on men? I repeat children need their father too.