Getting Closer!

Today I finished knitting the back yoke of Catherine Parr. This was knit in the round to the armholes, split, and the yokes are knit separately. I've already threaded the live front stitches onto the needle, and it's ready to go.

My original hope was to have this done by the end of the year. But I've also been working hard on the crapghan -- I'm into the last 6 oz. ball on that, and believe me, 6 ounces is nothing when the whole thing tips the scales at 84. Yeah, that's right, it's a seven-pounder. I want that thing done so bad I can almost taste it. It's too big and heavy to lug from room to room, so I keep ducking into the back bedroom, where it lays on the couch in all its eye-killing glory, to add a few stitches.

If I can finish the crapghan this week, I still have an outside chance of finishing Catherine Parr before the end of the year, which is another one so close to the finish line that I can hardly stand it. Much depends upon my job. We keep having these odd production issues due to technical/software problems, and every time that happens, I lose several hours trying to repair things. And I don't have spare multi-hour blocks of time laying around just waiting for a technical disaster to claim them.

Take Saturday. Case in point. I rarely take a whole day off -- I'm almost always reading or editing for at least a few hours each day. But I planned to take Saturday off and wrap gifts, do some cooking, and, of course, play with my yarn. I'd bought a new movie some weeks ago and still hadn't watched it. (Marie Antoinette, the "new romantics" version.) And you know, a day off once every few months or so doesn't make me a slacker.

But then one of our books came back from the typesetter loaded with major errors due to this technical glitch, and I spent 10.5 hours in my chair, fixing the manuscript. Pissed me off.

I'm starting to give some serious thought to goals for the New Year, and much of my thinking now revolves around time management. Change begins with me. It may affect others, and they may resist it, but I have to initiate it or it won't happen. And you know, I'd like to actually wear Catherine Parr someday.

One of my favorite time management tricks is the kitchen timer. I keep one on my desk. Set it for 45 minutes or however long, and buckle down on a project. Then when the timer goes off, I stop. No matter what. I get up, walk around, refill my mug or water bottle. Throw a load of laundry in the machine, wash the dishes, anything that keeps me on my feet. I usually set the timer for between 5 and 15 minutes during this stage, and when it goes off, I stop, return to my desk, and dig back in to my task for another timed sprint.

It may sound counterintuitive, but it's a technique that can keep me fresh throughout the course of a day, alternating desk work (in long sprints) with short bursts of physical activity. And there's something mentally satisfying about portioning out my tasks -- so many turns of the timer for editing, so many for submissions, so many for management tasks. As an added bonus, I always know exactly how much time I've put in on any particular project. (It's an old lawyer thing -- tracking time per task and project for billing and productivity purposes.)

So do you have any time management or productivity tricks that you can recommend?

There has been a bit of knitting. Not as much as during a typical week, because work and the holidays shook up my schedule, but there has been knitting.

On Sunday, I read submissions and finished this sock. The second is cast on, but barely so.





















And here's the latest view of Catherine Parr. I'm knitting the back yoke now. It's at roughly 6 inches, maybe a touch more. Once it reaches ten inches, I'll probably put it on stitch holders and knit the front. Or maybe -- brace yourselves -- I'll take the time to figure out just what I'm going to do about the neckline before knitting the front yoke. My current thinking is V-neck with colorwork bands to match those at the sleeve cuffs.

My second choice might just be a turtleneck with no colorwork.

Then again, that colorwork is nice, and it would feel so toasty warm around my neck, and it would be easier if I didn't have to do any math. So maybe I'll just follow the pattern.

(Yeah, right.)

Oh, Snap!

Someone out there is shaking her fist at this picture right now. Heh. We're not racing or anything, but I know she wants to finish her Catherine Parr sleeves, too. So we'll call this photo extra motivation.

I'm really glad to have these sleeves done. Cascade 220 is a dependable, reliable yarn, but it isn't all that glamourous. Now that the sleeves are done, I'm going to knit something softer for a while to break up all that Peruvian crunch. The skin on my fingers needs a rest. I'm starting to develop a callous on my index finger from the yarn, and no amount of lotion seems to help with the dryness.

Still churning along in my no-new-projects groove. I left for San Francisco on July 29, and that's also the last day I cast on something new, a pair of plain socks perfect for the airplane. The embargo is in effect until September 29, two months later.

And I feel like this is a worthwhile experiment. I'm making progress on outstanding projects despite not having a lot of knitting time. I think I'm down to 6 projects OTN, which is as low as it's been in quite a while. And of those projects, I have two pairs of socks, both of which are on the second sock now, and neither of which is all that exciting. Catherine Parr, which now just needs a yoke and some reknitting on the hem. Fulmar, a forever project, and the cabled cardigan which has been in almost perpetual time-out. And the felted bag, which is rough felting wool, irritating to the touch, which I almost have to bribe myself to work on.

In other words, I'm not feeling that any of the current projects are at the top of the queue, yearning for my attention, for various reasons. But I will chug onward until the 29th, because these are all projects I'd like to finish.

And then on the 29th? I have something planned for that gorgeous Kyoto. 'Nuff said.

Status Report: Catherine Parr

This is the first sleeve for Catherine Parr. Another two inches or so, and I will shape the sleeve cap. I've already cast on the second sleeve but haven't started the colorwork yet. That won't happen until I wind off another skein of yarn.

The Catherine Parr knitters are starting back on our informal KAL this week. We're meeting Friday to tackle the sleeve shaping. The pattern is written with standard drop shoulders, but I'm doing a modified drop, and I'm going to show the others how to make this absurdly easy modification.

I suspect the first sleeve will be off the needles within a week. We'll see. A lot depends on work and other issues, and how much knitting time is available to me.

Back on the politics thing. I don't often talk about politics, but you should probably know that I'm what pollsters call an independent or a swing voter. (And believe me, once the pollsters identify you as such, your phone tends to ring a lot during election season. I've already been surveyed a half-dozen or so times in this election cycle.) I have in the past voted for Republicans and Democrats for president. And for other offices.

In any event, I make it a practice of watching both conventions and watching the debates, as much as possible of all of it. I generally know who I intend to vote for before all that coverage starts, but I have changed my mind in past elections based on things I learned during the election season. So my scrutiny of both conventions is nothing unusual.

I was very interested in knowing who McCain would pick for VP, because this was one of the factors I knew might sway my vote. Plus, let's be real here. McCain's getting up there in years. I wish him a long and fruitful life, but still. His VP pick matters more that it might otherwise matter with a younger candidate. Right now, I'm listening for evidence that Palin deviates from her party platform on any particulars. And I'm not hearing it, but it's a little hard to hear real politics at the moment when all anyone wants to talk about is the unwed teen mother thing.

It's not easy being a swing voter. I have to listen to a lot of rabid outrage from both ends. I do listen to it, but frequently from an abstract rhetorician's mindset. Spin is fascinating stuff.

And as long as we're on the topic of full disclosure here, I worked in the government long enough to gain a good understanding of the way things really work. I worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations. The two sides have very different approaches to managing a government office, but I must say I met good people and bad people on both sides.

So I'm going to do my best to drop the topic now, even though this is going to be a hot topic for the next two months. But just in case I do start waxing political, I thought it made sense to lay this foundation now so that people might understand where I'm coming from.

Greensleeves

(To the tune of Greensleeves)

At last, my sweater's been cast on
The sleeve's in progress at the cuff.
And I will be so toasty warm
If ever I finish the thing.

Greensleeves will keep me warm
Greensleeves will be fun to knit
Greensleeves is more than half done...
And what but my sweater Greensleeves.


I finished my secret knitting project (viewable under my ravelry profile, if you have access), and I won't be able to show it her until August. But now the Catherine Parr sweater is underway again, and what better way to celebrate that than by ripping off a song allegedly written by her whoring murdering husband Henry? Heh.

Catherine Partial

Woo hoo! I made it to the armscyes on Catherine Parr today. This piece measures 15.875" in length. So this will now go onto holders as I knit the sleeves. When the sleeves are done, I will knit the armscyes to fit the sleeve caps. (I'm modifying the drop on the sleeve caps to take out some of the underarm bulk.)

I just cast on the sleeves for Fulmar, too! So. Looks like I'll be a sleeve knitting machine this spring.

By the way, Catherine Parr is an incredibly easy knit. If you're looking for an easy Starmore to get your feet wet, this might be a good choice. The mix of stranded knitting and cabled knitting means there's enough variety for knitterly interest, too. And it goes pretty quickly for a sweater with this much detail. All in all, a happy project.

Curly Girl

Here's a current picture of Catherine Parr. It's curling badly at the bottom hem, but I have plans to fix that later. Right now this measures just about 14", maybe a notch less, in length, so I'm within two inches of the place where I will have to divide for the sleeves.

I don't have anything new to say about this project, but wanted to post the picture now that I can post pictures!

Star(t)more

Awww, lookit this cute widdle baby Catherine Parr.

What's that you say? It doesn't look like Catherine Parr?

Well...yeah. In my usual damn-the-torpedoes fashion, I decided to skip the row of bobbles outlining the big fair isle section at the hem. It's not that I hate all bobbles. I just hate them on me. Curse of the cleavage and all -- why encourage anyone looking at me to think about nipples or any other part of the breast any more than they already will? I'm about as likely to knit bobbles as I am to wear a t-shirt with a picture of two side-by-side cantaloupes.

So I started playing around with other border options, things I could use in place of the bobbles that would preserve the fluency of the design. I tried a couple of checkerboard and lice designs, but none of them really had the look I was after. I wanted something fluid. Curved. Something that might mimic a few of the lines in the wide fair isle border at the hips and cuffs.

Out came the Ann Feitelson book and a few other books with plentiful charts. Catherine Parr's main fair isle chart at the hips is 24 stitches wide, so I was looking for something I could pattern in a 24-stitch repeat. It had to have some visual impact, but it had to avoid any eye-fights with the rest of the sweater. And I wanted something a little more gentle than all those colored bobbles.

I was beginning to lose hope when I hit on the curvy V scallops used above. The shape is actually part of a Feitelson chart -- I clipped a little section of one of her medallions and decided to flip it up and down as I go around the hem. Each piece is 12 stitches wide, so a pair is 24 stitches, just the size I needed.

Unfortunately, the hem is curling so much that it may never matter. Nobody may ever see the beautiful little shapes if I can't figure out how to flatten this section later. Current ideas include the use of crocheted edging, grosgrain ribbon, many four letter words, and a mallet. OK, so the mallet is more for show than for results....

This will probably be the last thing I cast on for a while. At the moment, this gives me three pairs of socks, three sweaters, one blouse and one bag on the needles. Oh, and the clapotis. I'm still not back up in double digits of projects OTN, and I want to keep it that way!

PS. Thanks for all the great tips, on and offsite, for computer stuff. My new computer was ordered today and should arrive the first week of December. Here's hoping the current one lasts that long!

She Who Lived

This is one of the gauge swatches for Catherine Parr. I'd show you some of the other gauge swatches, but this yarn -- a deep, heathery pine green Cascade 220 -- tends to photograph as one giant black patch. The above picture is the only one that shows the stitchwork at all, and I had to really monkey with the photo settings to get it to this point.

In real life, this yarn has an almost luminous quality. The green is lush and deep with strong blue undertones. There are hints of deep gold and grey and blue and silvery green in the heathering. Where other knitters may be entranced by the flash and sizzle of a variegated yarn, this yarn exhibits the exact characteristics that make me all swoony over solids. The color is enchanting and subtle and makes me think of standing under the leaf canopy in a dense, quiet summer forest. Maybe I'm just a plain jane, but when a solid is this appealing, I'll take a solid any day.

It seems a fitting yarn for a sweater named after Catherine Parr. Just as the camera treats this yarn as a two-dimensional and textureless, history has dismissed Catherine as "the wife who nursed Henry through his final illness." But there was so much more to her than that. Henry was her third husband, but not her last. My favorite story about her involves her second husband, an aging warrior aristocrat whose lands were in a strategically important stretch of English ground.

As I understand the story, a monk in this neighborhood arranged to have a saint's body exhumed to display the purity of the corpse. At a time when monasteries were being torn down brick by brick to undercut the Catholic church's hold over the people, this bordered on an act of treason. The body was brought out and was described by witnesses to be miraculously preserved and sweet-smelling. People from the area rallied under the saint's banner, and civil war was imminent. Armies were mustered, battles fought. Things looked pretty grim, all because of a saint with a corpse that had not decomposed.

Or had it? Catherine discovered that the body was not that of the saint, but of a village girl who had died quite recently. She found the girl's grieiving mother and brought her to chapel to venerate the "saint." When the mother identified her daughter's body in the saint's place, the rebellion fell apart. Henry later credited Catherine with saving his kingdom. These are not the acts of a mere nursemaid married only to provide fresh bandages during a final illness.

Catherine was a complex woman, beautiful without being dramatic or arrogant, and sometimes overlooked by her peers in favor of ladies with more sparkle or flair. She had a warm and sturdy nature and a quick intellect, and she wasn't afraid to speak up, a fact which almost cost her her life. Yes, that's right, Henry nearly ordered her arrest and death for arguing church doctrine with him. Catherine's enemies used her intellect and her piety against her and accused her of both treason and heresy, but she managed to outwit them and preserve her pretty neck. Smart? Yep. You bet. You have to be pretty smart to outlive a king who thought little of beheading his wives for political gain and who had all but placed the head of his sixth wife on the chopping block.

So, my green yarn may not dazzle, but like Catherine, it's got hidden depths. Look closely, and you might just find that there's more there than you first realized. You might just see the kind of quiet beauty that can outlive a bloodthirsty king.