Tubular Cast On - I learned it for my latest project

Here's something I learned while knitting a hat which Daniel wouldn't wear:

Tubular Cast On (Sometimes Called "Double Knitting")
for K1, P1 Ribbing in Circular Knitting

In order to work tubular cast on, you must know how to cast on using the double cast on (also called "long-tail") method. For tubular cast on in circular knitting, you will cast on half the number of stitches you need. This will be an even number, because K1, P1 knitting in the round requires an even number.

You will need:

• Circular or double pointed needles (DPNs) of the correct size to achieve your gauge over 1x1 ribbing
• Circular or DPNs one or two sizes smaller, if desired (tubular cast on is very elastic, so you may want to use needles one or two sizes smaller for the cast on rows)
• The yarn for your ribbing (main yarn)
  
• Yarn of a contrasting color that is the same weight as your main yarn (contrasting yarn)

Now:

1. Using a slip knot, tie together the main yarn for your project and a length of scrap yarn of the same weight but in a contrasting color.
   The scrap yarn will eventually be pulled or clipped out of the ribbing and discarded.
   
   
2. Put the slip knot on the needle.
   Use the smaller needles if you are using 2 sizes of needles.
   The yarn that makes the slip knot will not count as a stitch. At the end of the round you'll just push it off the needle.
   
   
3. Cast on half the number of stitches you need.
   The main yarn for your project should form the loops over the needle.
   
   
4. K 1, P into the running thread between the stitches.
   Repeat until the round is complete.
   To work the last stitch, purl the running thread and the last stitch together.
   Remove the slip knot from the needle.
   Join the beginning and the end of your cast on row, being careful not to twist the stitches.
   
   
5. Repeat these rows at least twice:
   
   • K 1, bring yarn forward, sl 1 as if to P, take yarn back. Repeat until the round is complete.
   • Take yarn to the back, sl 1 as if to P, bring yarn forward, P1. Repeat until the round is complete.
     
     
6. Switch to larger needles and work K1, P1 ribbing for required length.
   
   
7. Pull or clip the scrap yarn out of the ribbing.

Wicked good method. Looks great.

I have a somewhat loose tension, it seems, because I achieve pattern gauges pretty reliably using needles 2 sizes smaller than those specified in patterns. I have had good luck using smaller needles for the first few rows of tubular cast on.

Cool: the Yoshimoto cube, invented by Japanese Naoki Yoshimoto in 1971.

Video by körner union

Am I crazy, or does this message read like porno spam?

I have a 3 bedroom apartment that I rent out. Right now there's only one guy in the apartment renting one bedroom, because I had some tenants vacate the apartment in the middle of their lease term. They left me kinda high and dry. I had trouble finding 3 people who wanted to sign a lease together. After many prospective tenants asked me whether I'd just rent a single room, I decided to offer the bedrooms for rent individually. I hate doing this, and won't do it again if I can help it. I'd rather just have one lease signed by all the tenants.

Anyway, because 2 bedrooms are empty, I advertised them in the "Rooms and Shares" section of Craigslist. I've gotten a few responses, some weirder than others... Am I crazy, or is this message really reminiscent of those suggestive quasi-pornographic spam emails?

From: Raeann Rose
To: "fakeaddress@craigslist.org" <fakeaddress@craigslist.org>
Date: Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 6:55 PM
Subject: Interested!!!!

Ciao!

My name is Raeann Rose and i am a student at the University of Pittsburgh school of nursing....I am also a young professional banker....Nursing is my second carreer path. You can look me up on facebook under Raeann Rose I am an impressionistic artist, who loves to cook, loves sports, and is a lot of fun:) I'm looking to rent ASAP for the time you have specified. My family is from Germany and Slovenia....I speak a decent bit of German....I am very neat, love the sciences....and am really looking forward to meeting you. Give me a call if you might be interested!

a presto,
Raeann Rose
412-nn-nnnn

Art celebrating whiskey

Design consultancy Johnson Banks has developed this stunning exhibit of art from whiskey barrels that was designed to celebrate Glenfiddich Single Malt. My favorite is the piece designed for the 30-year-old single malt, an age-darkened barrel lid that states, "I will wait for 11,000 nights."

Wonderfully, the designers have shared posts (with photos!) revealing some of their process and inspirations. An unexpected Friday treat.

Aside: I love the term, "the angel's share."

No more farmshare

I canceled the farmshare yesterday.

I enjoyed the vegetable boxes I got in the summer. They had an interesting variety of produce, and sometimes contained more than I could eat. The winter boxes have been disappointing, containing a reliable supply of dirty potatoes and weird prepared foods (I mean -- a ziploc bag of sauerkraut? Really?), and there's less in the box even though they're charging me more.

Last week, Daniel and I were doing our weekly grocery shopping at the Market District Giant Eagle, and while we were buying our apples we noticed a display of turnips, a root vegetable that had been included in a recent farmshare box. "Hm," said Daniel, giving me a significant look. "99 cents a pound."

The turnips were lovely, fat and firm and gorgeously purple and white. The ones in the farmshare box had been whithered and fading, still edible but in their last hours of viabilty. A vision of those flaccid, dirt encrusted turnips taunted me. They and their similarly undesirable brethren (moldy onion, wrinkled beets, and rotten potatoes) had cost me $19.50 the previous week. I looked at Daniel in disbelief. "I'm getting raped."

"I didn't want to say."

"Why not? I kept asking you if you thought the farmshare box was worthwhile!"

He shrugged. "I wanted you to draw your own conclusions." I gaped at him. "It's your thing. I didn't want to tell you whether to keep doing it."

I glared and turned back to the bin of turnips. They fairly glowed there on their bed of plastic moss. "Well, I want to support local farms," I muttered.

Daniel spun the plastic bag of apples to close it. Turning toward the produce scale, he said, "These are local."

Thus it came to pass that the farmshare operation made me feel like a fool, whereupon I cancelled my subscription.

I am pretty much in love with this:

From a New York Times slideshow, "Making Home Into Art."

The wallpaper is a series of paper targets. For marksmanship. You know, good aim.

In a bathroom.

Why, why can I never have the good ideas myself?

Sometimes I Think J. Crew Is Just Messing with Me

Maybe J. Crew hasn't heard about the recession?

It's becoming unthawed, is it?

"Slowly but surely, the system is becoming unthawed, and it's going to take time for the system to become unthawed," he said. "What the American people have got to know is we've taken the steps to unthaw it, which is the first step to recovery."

--George W. Bush, in ABC interview of 1 December 2008

The new black

“Sixty percent off is the new black.”
-- Patricia Marx in The New Yorker

She's a man, baby

The Gender Analyzer purports to be able to tell the gender of bloggers by examining the contents of the blog.

"Results: We think http://crosshatched.blogspot.com/ is written by a man (87%)."

Greaaaat. I feel pretty.

Back to the drywall project. (Wait a minute....)

Effort is no myth

"If you somehow pulled this off, then six months from now, you would be the fittest, best rested, most intelligent, best funded and motivated person in your office or your field. You would know how to do things other people don't, you'd have a wider network and you'd be more focused."
--Seth Godin, Is effort a myth?

Maverick Descendant Challenges John McCain

From Who You Callin’ a Maverick? in today's New York Times:
In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand. ...Considering the family’s long history of association with liberalism and progressive ideals, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Maverick insists that John McCain, who has voted so often with his party, “is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase.”

“It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’ ”

“He’s a Republican,” she said. “He’s branded.”

Library of Congress on flickr

My newest flickr contact is the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS! Yeah, for real -- the Library of Congress is on flickr. Check it out.

What I learned from the NYT today

Among the strongest critics of inflated executive pay have been Warren Buffett and the late management guru, Peter Drucker, who argued that C.E.O. salaries should peak at no more than 20 or 25 times those of the average worker. (Last year, C.E.O.’s got an average of 344 times the wages of the typical worker.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/opinion/02kristof.html?em

“People love that toasted-rice taste,” he said. “It’s even a flavor of ice cream in Seoul.” (Japanese cooks, however, consider toasted rice overcooked and highly undesirable. The unwanted crust left stuck to the bottom of the rice cooker is called okoge — the same word used as slang for a single woman who spends a lot of time with gay men.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/dining/01rice.html?em

Alex Payne's Rules for Computing

Good rules for computing:
al3x's Rules for Computing Happiness
Although I am no techie, I am pleased to note that several of these are the same as my rules. One big difference between our sets of rules is probably that he can support his rules with rational arguments, which I cannot.

I love this!

I think it's awesome that some guys were just fooling around one day and came up with this.

Daniel thinks it's creepy.

This freaks me out.

I am just learning of Monica Bonvicini's 2003 art installation, "Don't Miss a Sec," which is permanently (and operationally) installed outside the Tate Modern in London:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/toilet.asp

Free

My mom sent me one of those email messages that periodically makes the rounds. It included an inspirational poem. Normally I just delete that stuff, but for a change it really meant something to me. It introduced me to Portia Nelson, a lounge singer and actress in the 50s (she played one of the nuns who sabotage the Nazis' car in The Sound of Music) who also happened to write poetry. I immediately ran to the library to check out her book of poetry, There's a Hole in My Sidewalk.

The title poem, "There's a Hole in My Sidewalk: Autobiography in Five Short Chapters," is the one that was reproduced in my mom's email. It goes like this:


I.
I walk down the street.
     There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
     I fall in.
     I am lost...I am helpless.
          It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.


II.
I walk down the same street.
     There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
     I pretend I don't see it.
     I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in this same place.
          But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.


III.
I walk down the same street.
     There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
     I see it is there.
     I still fall in...it's a habit...but,
          my eyes are open.
          I know where I am.
     It is my fault.
     I get out immediately.


IV.
I walk down the same street.
     There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
     I walk around it.


V.
I walk down another street.


The book also had this untitled gem:

I am so free with you
I never wish to be
          free of you.

True dat. :-)

Rotary

On the Library of Congress site, I found this poem reflecting on the disappearance of the rotary phone. It reads in part,

Why did no one think
to conserve the peal?

Just try once
to sing it to yourself:
it's gone,

like the sound of breath
if your body left.