Ravelympics Update!

After spending a day and a half on ripping out the band around the bottom of the hood and knitting it again, I finally finished it. Here you can see the end of the band, which includes a buttonloop. The top rib of the band was knitted with shaping and kitchnered to the lower rib.

Note, try to get the buttonloop the right size. This will probably mean it'll be a little big. At least it always winds up that way for me. Remember, you have to adjust in increments of the height of one stitch. And it's hard to estimate without the completed buttonhole to put the button through.

So, when you get it a smidge big, use the yarn tail from the kitchner row and do a little overcast reinforcing at the point where the two ends of the buttonloop join the body. Slide the button through. See how it fits. Do you need more overcasting a  little higher to make the loop smaller?

Remember, your goal is to have the loop expand a bit to get the button through, but not make it so small that you have to fight with it to get the button through. We're looking for snug, not tight here.

The buttonloops down the front will be a little different.

In the photo above, you see the saddle shoulder. Note that the rib from the band around the bottom of the hood runs off the edge and forms two of the cable segments.

I think I did something pretty slick here.

Two strands of the cable will run onto the sleeve and make a loop. The other two strands of the cable will do the same thing as the bottom hood band and run onto the edge of the shoulder and down the front and back (see photo below).

This is the saddle at the top of the shoulder, and the left front has been knit down to the bottom of the sleeve opening. Note that the shoulder band has one of it's strands running down the edge of the sleeve opening.

Since taking that photo, I have started on the right front, and am to the beginning of the first buttonloop. Once I get it finished, I'll pick up stitches across the back of one saddle strap, the bottom of the back of the hood and the other saddle strap. The back of the band at the bottom of the hood has the cable run off the edge, and it will make another small loop on the back. 

Then, I'll work down the back for a short distance and start the Saint John's cross for the back. You can see the finished cross as a swatch in Viking Patterns for Knitting. It will be spectacular!

Partway through the cross, I'll get to the bottom of the sleeve opening and add extra stitches for the underarm shaping (which will join the fronts and back), and then probably continue until the cross is done.

Then, I'll pick up stitches around the armhole for a sleeve, knit that, do the other, and then finish down the front of the sweater.

The end of this description is just to give you an overview of what is planned.

Pennsic Aftermath and Ravelympics

Today is the day I really don't envy people who had a chance to go to Pennsic!

Today is laundry day for them, and there's generally SO much laundry that the only thing to do is go to a laundromat and get it over with. There are mundane clothes, garb, and textile camping stuff, not to mention bedding. And they've all been out in the ragweed for a week or more, gathering up all sorts of other potential allergens in addition to the ragweed and grass pollen.

I don't miss that part at all.

Celtic sweater update: I spent all day yesterday and this morning trying to get the band around the neckline knitted. I've ripped it out so many times that I've lost count.

At this point, it seems as though it's going to be all right. I just have an inch to go, and the buttonloop, but I tried on the hood, and I think it's going to be good.

Because the neck opening is lower in front, it means that the hood fits fairly closely around the face, but blouses out nicely over the shoulders and around the back. It doesn't look like a sweatshirt hood, it looks like a hood on a cloak. The kind you see in Medieval movies.

I've run the rib off the band at the shoulders and the back. The shoulder break will go into the cable on the saddle shoulder band, and the back break will go into a loop at the back neck on the back of the sweater. That last wasn't needed, but I can, so I did.

Right now, it doesn't look like anything. Once I knit the shoulder cables, it will start to look recognizable.

Tonight there's a new Middleman! And I've figured out how to get to see the closed captioning, even though Comcast is not sending out the signal correctly. I'd be happier with them if they could just send it out correctly, but NO, they just don't care.

So, the first episode of Middleman I've seen with the sound available was last week. It's so much funnier than it is without sound!

I need to get back to the band around the bottom of the hood so that I can get it finished, start on the top of the fronts, and maybe even get started on the top of the back today. If I can do all that, I have a shot at finishing it for the Ravelympics.

Have a great Monday!

Pennsic is Over, but the Ravelympics Goes On...

Well, Pennsic is officially over. There's just enough time today to pack stuff into the vehicle and get on the road before you have to be off the site.

And the trip home isn't always fun.

One year, we were so disorganized, that it took us most of the day to get ourselves packed and on the road. After a week out in the ragweed (to witch I'm allergic), I carried/moved/dragged a lot more stuff then I should have that day, and went to sleep in the back of the van.

Steve woke me up and told me that I would have to drive home because he was tired. Then he climbed into the back of the van, leaving me half asleep, disoriented, and whining "But where are we?" in the middle of a snow/sleet storm.

Well we were somewhere near Breezewood, but all I could do was drive out of the parking lot he had stopped in (after I tried to clear the snow/sleet off the windows) and keep driving until I saw enough road signs that I could guess where I was and figure out how to get home. There wasn't much visibility with the precipitation, and it was almost dark when we left Pennsic, so it wasn't really easy. 

So, this is the one day of Pennsic where I can feel smug because I don't have to drag an entire encampment home in a six or seven hour trip. Especially when I look out the window at what the weather's doing. It's not overcast. Overcast is bright and cheerful compared to the day outside my window. It's raining, and it looks like it's going to develop into a storm any time, now.

Ooooh! Lightening! Yep, a storm for sure.

Well, so much for my plans to go to the grocery store.

But the Ravelympics is really just getting under way.

The wimple is up to a point where all the shoulder decreasing is done. I have pulled the needle tips off the Options needles in the wimple, and put stoppers on the cable. I'm going to have to go somewhere on the bus sometime this week, and it'll be a good project to take with me for the half hour ride (each way) to anywhere nearby.

In the meantime, I've picked up stitches around the bottom of the hood, and I'm knitting a band around it which will eventually have a button at one end and (when I get to the other end) will have a button loop knit into it.

Here is the hood with the stitches picked up.

This is something I should've swatched for, but couldn't really without reknitting the whole hood, which isn't something I was willing to do. 

So, I've ripped out the band twice, and I'm about to have a third try at it.

If I get too frustrated, I may go back to the wimple for a bit.

There are going to be two ribs from a 2x2 rib running around the bottom of the hood, and one rib is going to circle back and continue into the other rib at the end, making a buttonloop.

I bought some really beautiful buttons, but I've lost some of them since then. I have found some more on the internet, and I plan to buy them, but it's possible that when the Ravelympics deadline arrives, the buttons may not have. So, the sweater may not have all it's buttons at the end.

You can see the buttons here.

All the buttons down the front will be the same size, but I think the one that's going to be right at my neck may do better with one of the slightly smaller ones I bought at the same time. I'm glad I thought to buy some smaller ones. And I'm glad I was able to find them on the internet. They look so pretty with the yarn! 

I'm starting to love everything about this sweater!

Tomorrow and Tuesday, around 5 or 6 in the afternoon/evening, there will be the two-part episode of Stargate SG-1 called Mobius on the SciFi Channel. It's very good. And if you look at the schedule, you may notice that Charlie Jade is on every Monday night (actually, Tuesday morning).

The Sarah Connor Chronicles is back in reruns on Monday night, too!

I need to get back to another stab at the band around the bottom of the hood, so wish me luck!

Have a great evening!

Pennsic, Ravelympics and Bureaucracy

I can tell this post is going to have a lot in it already, but it can't be too long because I have Ravelympics knitting to do.

Before we even get into the main part of this post, John finally put up some information about Steve Canyon at Comic Con! Click the link, or check the link in the sidebar for all the information! 

The first episode of Primeval will be airing on BBC in America tonight. Check schedules. Somebody on Ravelry was talking about it, and they liked it. I haven't had the opportunity to see it yet, but pass on the info in case you're interested.

Pennsic

Today is the last day of Pennsic. Yes, I know that tomorrow is officially the  last day, but there's just enough time tomorrow to get your stuff shoved into your vehicle and escape before you have to be off the site.

So, today is the day that you hunt down friends to say goodbye, check out the merchants to see if they still have those beautiful buttons/trim/knife/etc. It's a time for finishing up and making sure that you do all the things that you wanted to do at Pennsic. It's an intensely happy time while still being just the tiniest bit sad that it's over.

I'm still reading Murder at the War, which means my personal Pennsic experience will continue for a little while.

Ravelympics!

The Bejing Olympics opening ceremonies started last night at 8 pm their time. I live exactly 12 hours ahead of them, so it started at 8 am here, even though the ceremonies weren't broadcast here until 8 pm.

I woke up at almost exactly 8 am, so I lost no time in casting on the wimple for Team Hogwarts and Team Hopelessly Overcommitted. I had a lot of things to do yesterday, and wanted an easy project where I wouldn't lose my place, and was small enough to drag around in my knitting bag all day, and the wimple was perfect for that.

This is the wimple at this point. The bottom border is done. The bottom border alone is about 1/4 of the project, so this is off to a good start. This is the result of knitting on the bus, and a little knitting last night. I was too tired when I got home to do any knitting on anything that required thought.

I watched some TV programs and switched to the Olympic opening ceremonies during commercials. I had planned to watch more of it, but every time the president blinked, the news people had to cover it, and they missed a lot of the ceremonies and drove me crazy.

Bureaucracy

I did a lot of riding on busses yesterday and a lot of walking and accomplished nothing!

I had talked to someone at Social Security that suggested that a little more information might get me more money on a monthly basis. The people that saw me in person at the office said (basically) "In your dreams!"

So, I bopped on down to Comcast, and, once again, they treated me as though I had just arrived from Mars. Obviously, all their other customers are masochists! So, showing up in person was obviously a waste of time.

Etc.

I got up this morning, in pain everywhere from all the walking. The Aleve is starting to kick in, so I'm feeling better now than I was earlier.

Holly and I went out this morning. I had a coupon good for $15 of merchandise there. I found a really neat little clip-on light in blue with stars on it for about $10, and also bought a copy of Knitters Magazine. It cost a total of $.99! Knitters has several shawl patterns that I love in it, plus one shawl in a star shape! I've seen several star shaped shawls/afghans/blankets, but this is the first knitted one I've seen.

As you can tell, stars are my favorites.

So, I got some really neat stuff!

Holly gave me my birthday present early. $50!

I plan to use it to live on for the nearly two weeks coming up, and then get it together as if to pay her back and buy my real birthday present from her then. I expect to add $10 to it and buy a set of Options needles from Knit Picks.

I need to go, now. I need to do some knitting on the Celtic Sweater for the Ravelympics.

Have a great weekend!

Thursday at Pennsic

First of all, I have to thank Crandall, who sent me this link so that I (and you) can read the Pennisc newspaper. I haven't read it all yet, but the parts that I have read are great! He also sent me to the following quiz...

Your result for The hardcore SCA Test...

The Lord or Lady

You scored 42% hardcore SCA!

You really enjoy the SCA and like to go to events when you can. However it doesn't take over you life or anything. You've probably got an AOA or will have one soon. Sometimes folks wonder where you've been when you make it back to a meeting or event.

Take The hardcore SCA Test at HelloQuizzy

We now return you to your interrupted Pennsic information.

After finishing my post last evening, I suddenly realized that I forgot to tell you about the meteor shower! How could I possibly have left that out?

You can find info about the Perseids meteor shower here. Of course, the shower happens everywhere, but being up in the mountains and away from major cities makes it so much more impressive. If you wake up at night and wander to the portacastle, you can stand out in the middle of the road, look up at the sky and see the meteor shower. It's always been a part of Pennsic for me. A part I love.

By the way, this has nothing to do with Pennsic, but while we're on the subject of things in the sky, there will be an eclipse of the moon on the sixteenth of August (my birthday!). The total eclipse will be visible in the North (pretty far north) with other areas seeing only a partial eclipse. What a great birthday present! Thanks, universe! There's a countdown to the eclipse (and my birthday) at the bottom of the blog.

So, on Tuesday, you're probably recovering from the previous night. Wednesday night is "Moonlight Madness" at Pennsic. All the merchants stay open until midnight, and most goods are on sale.

The wares are staggering! You can buy almost anything at Pennsic that you could buy during the middle ages. I bought a bead whorl spindle there with an amethyst whorl. For under $10! It's a work of art.

You can expect to find places selling jewelry, especially penannulars, circlets, coronets, and even crowns. My friend, Brock (the Magik Badger blacksmith) is usually there selling and making his wares. The thing he made that amazed me most (and that I was really brokenhearted that I could not afford) was a small forgewelded knife. Some people call forgewelded goods "Damascus" steel. This particular one didn't have the traditional wavy patterns in it. It had shiny stars against a dark background. I fell in love with it.

You'll find people selling garb, feast gear, miscellaneous period camping gear, shoes, boots, leather goods, scribners' supplies, handwoven goods, and lots more.

Another thing that I couldn't afford at Pennsic and have been looking for ever since was a pocket watch. This was a very special pocket watch. When you flip the top open, there was a scale model of Stonehenge underneath. If you flipped that up, there was an actual watch below.

I take that back. I looked on the internet and found this! It's not the one I saw a Pennsic, but it's pretty neat!

Then, later on Thursday, you'll want to take a nap so you'll be fresh for the party to end all parties at Chez D'Argent. This usually involves flaming and other drinks (Baron Silver invented the flaming dragon, and at least one other flaming drink in addition to my favorite, the Irish Fog), bagpipers, kings of several kingdoms, bards and drums! A mere blog cannot begin to do it justice, so I won't even try.

Then there are the things people do.

During my first Pennsic, two of my camp-mates, Lavender and Aurora, got bored. How you could possibly be bored at Pennsic is beyond me, but they claimed that they did.

So, they went over to camp security and volunteered.

The overworked people at security weren't too careful about looking at their motives. They gave them a golf cart and a little authority and sent them off.

So Lavender and Aurora proceeded to stage a mobile "kilt check" on the theory that you could never be sure what those guys might be smuggling under there. 

Eventually, security caught on, and that was the end of their fun, but not before they'd had several amusing adventures. They left one Count, who had been waiting in line, shouting at a Portacastle "Your Grace! Your Grace! You should have been out here a moment ago in a kilt!"

**********************

Switching gears in my train of thought...

I was about to swing into action, run out and catch the bus this morning, and then I thought to check the weather forecast. They said there would be thunderstorms this afternoon, but none tomorrow. So, I went back to sleep and plan to go tomorrow.

If I understand it correctly, sign-ups for the Ravelympics are over, buy you can still watch the fun if you didn't join. The board to watch will be the Finished Objects board.

Oddly enough, there is a list of projects signed up for competition that lists many projects that are already finished according to their creators. I think that something or someone is a little confused.

I've been dreaming about the Celtic sweater, and have even been doing a little swatching. I've decided that the bottom edge of the hood that I've already knit is a little bigger than I want the neckline to be. I had originally intended to make the cables that will go down the front overlap, but after thinking about it, I now think it would look better if the fronts butted together and the two cables ran parallel to each other. So that means that the hood is now too big around the bottom.

I'm going to put a band around the bottom of the hood that will extend into a loop for a button, and will also extend into the cable on the shoulder. I've started a swatch for this. It's not finished, but I have refined the buttonloops already. 

The I-cord that I did on the other swatch is thicker and bulkier than I really liked. I found that if I continue the two-stitch cable segment as three stitches in stockinet stitch, it looks good, not thinner, like the I-cord does. The edges turn under and it looks finished. 

If I do short rows on the loop, I can make it assume a nice buttonloop shape without all the extra bulk, and it looks much better and will button more nicely. I'm about to start the shoulder part of the swatch.

I'm also reevaluating the cable around the armhole idea. The more I think about it, the more I think I want to do something else.

On TV tonight, we have a rerun of Supernatural, and a brand new Burn Notice!

Don't forget the Doctor Who marathon on SciFi during the daytime tomorrow, too! And in the evening, there's a brand new Psych on USA.

And have a great Thursday!

The Pennsic Experience

The previous piece of art and humor was put together by Michael.

Each year that I haven't been able to go to Pennsic, I wind up sad and missing it for the duration.

This year, I didn't miss half of it because they moved the timeframe up a week and I didn't realize it until Pennsic was half over.

A friend of mine, Crandall, drew my attention to himself, and others who have never had the opportunity to go.

So I have resolved to stop feeling sorry for myself and enjoy my wonderful memories of Pennsic, and write up some of my most favorite memories for those of you who haven't had the opportunity to go.

Steve (my ex-husband) and I joined SCA (the Society for Creative Anachronism) in 1992. We chose our Scadian names, Etienne le couteau des Roches, and Ariane la Fileuse, and got them approved. My name is from the French version of the name Ariadne, who was the daughter of King Minos, and saved her boyfriend, Theseus from being lost forever in the labrynth by giving him a ball of yarn to unreel behind him which would later show him the way out. 

Most people had bynames instead of surnames during my period. Bynames are ones that denote some characteristic of the person, such as smith, cooper, webber, etc. Smith, of course, is a blacksmith, coopers made barrels, webbers were weavers, and la Fileuse is French for "the spinner."

Since we joined in the fall of 1992, we didn't get the chance to go to Pennsic until the following year.

The weather that year was unbelievably wonderful! We had hot, but dry days, followed by chilly evenings. On Thursday night, it rained a bit sometime between 2 and 4 am. Just enough to keep down the dust on the dirt roads. It normally gets cold enough in the evening at Pennsic that you can see your breath.

The second year I was there, we had almost constant rain, wind and storms. Really bad storms! I think on Thursday morning it was actually sunny for a few hours, but the rest of it was solid rain at the least. The roads were solid churned-up mud, and Saturday night I had the opportunity to hear what an approaching tornado sounds like in real life. Yes, it does sound like an approaching train. And it's even more scary when the only shelter  you have is a pavilion.

The tradition is that dry and wet Pennisics alternate every year. My third Pennsic (1995) was also dry and unusually warm. The field battle was called off before it started because one of the marshals was smart enough to bring a thermometer to the field. Once they realized that the temperature on the battlefield was 110 degrees, they called it off before it even began. That year, during the coldest part of the coldest night, it didn't get below 80 degrees! Thursday afternoon, there was a sudden thunderstorm, and it brought the coolest air of the entire encampment. It was the first time in my life I've seen a large group of people notice a thunderstorm starting and run outside to enjoy it!

We arrived on the second Saturday in the afternoon. Pennsic runs for the first week in a very informal kind of just-camping-out-way, and I've never been there for the first week. The second Saturday is the first day that Medieval garb is required. After that, you can arrive in mundane dress, but must change as soon as possible into Medieval or Renaissance garb. And you have to get your vehicle out of there right away, too, as soon as you've unloaded.

Some of our friends had been there for a week and had taken our pavilion, so when we arrived it was already set up, and all we had to do was move in and get dressed. We were camped with Clan Lurkr, and there was a large rented tent at the entrance to our camp. This serves as not only the entrance, but the party area.

Etienne and I went to walk around the market area, and had a lot of fun admiring the tents, the buildings, and the wares of the merchants. We spent a couple of hours walking around, and Etienne remarked on how big the market area was. Then I had to tell him that he'd seen less than half of it.

That first day I bought a circlet, having gotten my AoA a few months before. Then I had the fun of going back to the main tent at camp and hanging my circlet up with the rest of the "hats." Clan Lurkr has a rule that when you arrive, you have to hang up your "hat" on one of the main tent poles. The idea is that no matter what your rank, we are all equal in camp. But there were very few circlets there. Most were coronets or crowns. Wookie's place is a favorite haunt of Royalty, mainly because of the hat rule. It gives them a chance to get away from the responsibilities of ruling and just have a good time.

Clan Lurkr is run by Wookie, whose correct Scadian name is Viscount Sir Wulfbrand Lurkr. He is the most regal and king-like person I have ever met. I have no end of respect for him.

Pennsic is one of those things that you can never see all of. There are too many things happening, and not enough time to see them all.

For the fighting enthusiasts, there is a woods battle (everyone's favorite), a field battle, a siege, a bridge battle, archery competition, rapier competition, a melee, champion's battle, and more.

There is an Arts and Sciences competition with lots of different categories to win ribbons in, and tons of classes in everything that was done during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. I have gone to classes for washing and carding wool, spinning, knitting, lucet, and lots more. There have been classes in how to make a penannular, Middle Eastern dance, other kinds of Medieval dance, and more things than I can possibly remember.

And PARTIES! Almost every camp has a party almost every night. They don't call them parties. That's just what you do at Pennsic. Thursday evening is always party night at Clan Lurkr, and that means a real blow-out, complete with bagpipers, and every other outrageous party-type behavior you can imagine.

The first night we were there, Etienne insisted that we take a walk around the whole campsite. The names of the roads are wonderful! Clan Lurkr has been at the corner of Chandler and Wainwright every year I've been there, although they moved diagonally across the intersection a while back. Etienne and I walked down a road called "Good Intentions" until we got to a fork in the road and had to choose between taking the left-hand fork, "Free Will" or the right fork, "Abandon Hope." There is humor, even in the street names. There's also a small spit of land that sticks out into the stream called "Moot Point." The whole place is a delight all by itself.

We came back to camp, and got to enjoy a Medieval story-telling session by some of the best bards in the SCA. It was magical!

Tomorrow I plan to do all the stuff that I didn't do on Monday, so I'll add more about Pennsic then, but late in the day (maybe evening).

Last night I dreamt about cables and how I could possibly do the shoulder cable for the sweater and have it lead into the edging of the sleeve. I realized that it didn't have to actually divide itself in half and turn, all I have to do is run the cables off the side edges and pick them up in the other direction. I also realized that the cable could continue into a small stand-alone motif for the top of the sleeve. 

You'll have to see it to understand what I mean. So far, it's just a vague picture in my head with many possibilities.

Have a good Wednesday!