Führ mich ans Licht

We had a short power outage last night.  The darkness all around makes what is in the light all the more visible.

 I've been counting the days from last thursday. I guess I like the stage after all. =D

So, quoting Xavier Naidoo out of context:

Zähl' ich die Tage  /  when I count the days

Ich erhebe die Klage  /   I raise the clamor

Führ mich ans Licht  /  lead me to the light

Ich enttäusch' dich nicht  /  I don't let you down

Happy Half-Nekkid Thursday!

Finding forgotten stash

I don't remember buying it at all, but yesterday I found Madame Bovary's ovaries on my shelf. I remember a fast reading of the first chapter in a bookstory once, but only that it happened; not what was written.  I'm curious now. At the time my interest was picked, I was reading The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. 

Ovaries is supposed to be a funny critic of literary classics under a sociobiology lens, and sociobiology is so often taken as a kind of apocaliptic beast. I mean, there are hordes of studies pointing out to evolutionary pressures influencing genetically human behavior, but yet just as many people go against the whole idea from the start, because apparently influence & innate tendencies = determinism, the end of free will, eugenics & politically incorrect. Now I'm having trouble putting the right words out there, but the way I see it, explaining how things came to be in one way or another isn't the same as justifying these things, and even less the same as saying things ought to stay the same. And saying a theory isn't right because you don't think it's pretty isn't refuting. It's sulking.

I believe in Biology. I also believe in Morals, and I think the human brain, created by evolution, is capable of recognizing moral principles and acting accordingly. I know that not everybody agrees with what principles are the right ones (hello, understatement), and that the standards changed along History, but as a whole we're better off now, concerning human rights, for example, than 6 thousand years ago. 

I don't know if this is because cultures are making it up as they go, creating "better Morals" with time, or if the cultures always had a sense of the Golden Rule and just evolve to apply it to a larger monkeysphere. 

I guess that goes into Philosophy. Are Morals an entity independent of humanity, and we recognize it (or not), or is it a cultural creation? Is the universe good, bad, indiferent, or not even there at all? And there come Kant, Schopenhauer, lots of asian religions and the Matrix. I confess, I never really understood the philosophers...

HNT - All buttered up.

Playing with butter isn't something I do everyday, but sometimes it's all good.

Happy Half-Nekkid Thursday!

Liberal until you call me fat?

Yesterday I read a series of posts on Figleaf's blog about bras, breasts, nipples, and how those relate (or not) to libido, feminism, cold weather, modesty, etc. Leaving aside the discussion of deeper subjects addressed on the posts and on the comments, one thing seems clear from reading the comments in there: each woman likes different styles of bras, for different reasons. Which comes as no surprise if you have any familiarity with women at all.

I talked about this with friends and pointed out what's my problem with clothes manufacturers. I hate shopping for bras because all I find is underwired bras with foam padding on the cup (that kind of padding that adds fake volume to cleavage). Not to discuss why some girls feel the need to resort to that, but when I can't find a D-cup bra that _still_ has extra pads inside, I get to wonder if this is really necessary, or even desired. That's my beef. I don't believe customers think they need to fake bigger breasts. I don't think the manufacturers made some poll and discovered they'd sell more if every bra was padded. 

I think manufacturers decided to do things this way and tell the customers that's what they always wanted. Same with skinny fit jeans trousers. Same with cropped jackets, cropped jackets, button-up shirts that just won't close on the front (ironic that the bras get bigger and the shirts get smaller). 

The last shirt I bought from a women's store was labelled as extra large and it's still a little tight. A man's t-shirt in a small size is too big for me. I was once told, in 5 stores in a roll, that they didn't make clothes large enough to me, and to try on stores for bigger women. This worries me, and not because I think I'm getting obese. I worry that we'll end up like Argentina.  

I read this article a few years ago, about how stores in Argentina only stocked up on very small clothes. Things got to the point where a new law was introduced to force stores to offer normal sizes to try to stop the raising rates of anorexia on the country (Article on BBC Radio 4 in english). 

Which brings me to my point: I told my (male) friend this story and he replies: "Oh, I hate those stupid laws! Government shouldn't interfere on economy more than the absolute necessary. Why don't these people just don't buy on other stores?"

Yeah. Easy to say that. But what do you do when _no_ stores have your size? I've always felt liberalism was closer to my heart than state-controlled anything. But I don't need the clothing industry trying to convince me that I'm fat. My mom is already enough.

Ontem eu li uma série de posts no blog do Figleaf que começaram sobre sutiãs, passaram por feminismo e adiante. Deixando de lado a disicussão sociológica mais profunda que aconteceu nos comentários, o que ficou mais claro é que toda mulher tem gostos diferentes com relação a roupas (includindo roupas de baixo). 

Tava falando disso com uns amigos depois, e aí eu comecei a falar do meu grande problema com a indústria da moda. Eu não acredito que os fabricantes fornecem o que os clientes querem ou precisam. O que eu acho é que os fabricantes decidem que um certo estilo é o que vai vender, e aí dizem pra nós, consumidores, que esse estilo é o que nós devemos querer. Exemplos: é quase impossível encontrar um sutiã 44 ou mesmo 46 sem enchimento. Fala sério, uma pessoa que precisa de um sutiã 44 _realmente_ precisa de enchimento extra? E a dificuldade de encontrar qualquer calça jeans que calça que não seja cintura alta, boca reta ou cigarrette e coladíssima? Ou uma blusa que abotoe direito na frente?

A última blusa que eu comprei é tamanho extragrande e ainda fica apertada. Mas se eu comprar uma camiseta masculina, a pequena é grande demais pra mim. Uma vez me disseram em 5 lojas seguidas que eles não trabalhavam com tamanho grande, e me mandaram procurar lojas pra "pessoas cheinhas". O que me preocupa nisso não é que eu esteja ficando obesa, mas que a gente vai acabar feito a Argentina, onde as lojas só vendiam roupas superpequenas, e foi preciso uma lei pra forçar as lojas a venderem roupas de tamanho normal, pra parar a onda de anorexia (Artigo na Veja, Artigo na BBC Radio 4 em inglês). 

Aí eu conto essa história pra um amigo e ele responde: "Nossa, odeio essas leis idiotas. O governo tem que se meter o mínimo necessário; é só deixar de comprar na loja ruim e comprar em outras lojas."

Fácil dizer isso, mas o que que se faz quando loja nenhuma tem o seu tamanho, ou o seu estilo? Em teoria, politicamente, eu sou liberal. Mas eu não preciso da indústria da moda tentando me convencer de que eu sou gorda, já basta minha mãe.

Note to self

Stitch markers aren't just for n00bs.

Usando alpaca

Saber de algumas coisas sobre alpaca ajuda quando você quer planejar seu trabalho e evitar frustração. O mais importante desses fatos é que a fibra da alpaca é escorregadia. Mas vamos começar do começo.
O fio é feito de fibras, certo? As fibras da alpaca possuem características diferentes daquelas da lã. Elas são em geral mais longas que fibras de lã de ovelha, com um diâmetro que varia entre cerca de 18 microns a 25,5 microns, considerando a maioria dos fios de alpaca disponíveis no mercado pra quem tricota a mão. Os fios mais finos são classificados de Royal Baby ou Royal Alpaca, com fibras abaixo de 18 microns; Baby Alpaca tem diâmetro entre 19 e 22 microns (aprox. o mesmo das melhores lãs de merino), e Superfine fica entre 23 e 25,5 microns. O fio que eu usei tem 25 microns.

Alpaca absorve umidade tão bem quando a lã, sem dar sensação de molhado nem ficar frio. Não contém lanolina, o que ajuda a evitar alergias. A alpaca é também muitas vezes mais quente que a lã, porque as fibras têm um núcleo oco que ajuda no isolamento térmico.

Esse xale Wisp, por exemplo, é todo furadinho mas é tão quentinho quanto uma jaqueta jeans pra usar no cinema ( e evita ter que sair no meio do filme pra fazer xixi ).
A diferença mais importante entre alpaca e lã, no entanto, são as escamas na superfície da fibra. Alpaca tem menos escamas e elas são maiores que as da lã. Isso torna as fibras lustrosas, escorregadias, mais difíceis de feltrar (leva mais tempo, mas feltra), escorregadias, mais resistentes a branqueamento químico, escorregadias, inelásticas, e escorregadias.
Assim, o que realmente precisa ser lembrado é que o fio de alpaca é:

• Quente - usar fios mais finos e leves, e pontos abertos e rendados, cria trabalhos quentes mas confortáveis. Fios mais grossos são melhores pra usar fora de casa, no inverno (inverno de verdade!). Trabalhos em cores funcionam melhor em intarsia, porque aqueles trabalhos com o fio carregado pelo avesso criam uma dupla camada que pode se tornar quente demais e pesado demais.
• Inelástico -se você tricota apertadinho, o fio não vai esticar pra enfiar a agulha naqueles pontos mais apertados, como k4tog ou nupps. O fio também não se ajusta a irregularidades dos pontos, e essas irregularidades ficam mais visíveis em ponto stockinette que se fosse feito em lã. Ah, e roupas mais coladas ao corpo esticam e se ajustam, mas depois que você tira a roupa, ela não volta pro formato original. Ribbing/ponto barra tem que ser feito extra apertado (com agulha menor, por exemplo), e torcer os pontos ajuda também, mas se possível, melhor evitar acabamento em barra.
• Escorregadio - não é que os pontos vão escorregar e cair das agulhas (apesar de que pode acontecer - agulhas de madeira ou bambu são mais ásperas e ajudam a segurar os pontos com fios escorregadios). É que as fibras que fazem o fio escorregam entre si, e fazem o fio crescer! Um trabalho pesado, com muitas tranças, por exemplo, pode começar um sweater e terminar do tamanho de um vestido. A amostra é a salvação. Antes de começar, faça uma amostra, lave, deixe secar pendurada, se possível até com um pesinho embaixo, e depois disso tudo, meça a tensão e número de pontos e carreiras por centímetro. Dá trabalho mas você fica preparado pra não terminar seu trabalho com mangas de camisa de força. Trabalhos com costura lateral, costura reforçada nos ombros, ou tricotados na vertical são boas idéias, ou então tricotar de cima pra baixo (porque fica fácil desmanchar uma parte se for preciso encurtar). Ou então usar alpaca pra trabalhos em quea diferença de tamanho não importa, como cobertores. Pros meus xales, quanto maior, melhor.

A última coisa a se lembrar é ter cuidado com as pontas soltas no fim. Arrematar em zigzag, dar uns nozinhos sutis, reforçar bem, pro fio não sair e desmanchar. Eu tô pensando seriamente em colocar um pouquinho de cola maluca, mas eu sou paranóica...

Além de diversos site que achei no Google, as principais fontes que usei foram:

• The Knitter's Book of Yarn, Clara Parkes
• Alpaca, an Ancient Luxury, Charlotte Quiggle, publicado pela Interweave.

English text

Slippery, not only when wet.

There are some facts about alpaca yarn that help you plan better your work and avoid a great deal of frustation, if you know those beforehand. The most important one is that alpaca fiber is slippery. But starting from the start.

The yarn is made of fibers, right? Alpaca fibers have some different characteristics when compared to wool. They are in general longer than sheep wool fibers., with a diameter that varies from around 18 microns to 25.5 microns, if you consider most commercial yarns available to the hand knitter. The finest yarns are classified as Royal Baby, or Royal Alpaca, and are under 18 microns. Baby Alpaca means the fiber diameter goes from 19 to 22 microns (about the same as the finest merino wool), and Superfine stays between 23 to 25.5 microns. The alpaca I've used was 25 microns.

Alpaca yarn absorbs moisture as well as wool, while staying warm and dry. It doesn't contain lanolin, thus causing less allergies. It's also several times warmer than wool, because the fibers have a hollow core. See this baby:

Holey and lacy and light as it is, it keeps me as warm in the movies theater as my denim jackets (plus I don't need to get out in the middle of the movie to pee).

The most important difference between alpaca and wool, though, is the scales on the fiber surface. Alpaca has less scales, larger than wool. That makes the fibers lustrous, slippery, makes it take more time to felt, slippery, more resistant to bleaching, slippery, inelastic, and slippery. So, what needs to be remembered is that alpaca is:

1. Warm - using lighweight yarns and open stitches gives warm and comfortable projects. thicker yarns are better for clothes to wear outdoors in winter. Color work is better in intarsia, because stranded knitting creates a double layer that can get just too warm and heavy for comfort.
2. Inelastic - if you knit tight, your yarn won't stretch much when you insert the needle to help you with the most tight stitches, like k4tog, or the occasional p7tog (nupps, anyone?) Also, the yarn won't accomodate irregularities the way wool does, so those will be very visible on plain stockinette. And if you make a tight garment, it will stretch to accomodate your body, but it won't come back to the original shape afterwards. Ribbing needs to be done extra tight. Twisted stitches help. Not ribbed edgings are even better.
3. Slippery - it's not that the stitches will fall from the needles and run down the WIP (Although they might. Wooden needles FTW). It's that the fibers that make the yarn will slip past each other and make the yarn grow. Put lots and lots of cables and the weight of the sweater will give you a dress. Forget knitting a sizable swatch, washing the swatch, hanging the swatch to dry, using something to weight down the swatch and then, after the swatch grew, counting accurately your row gauge before starting your project, and you'll have sleeves of doom. Garments with seams, reinforced shoulder seams or knit sideways are good ideas, and if you knit top-down it's easier to shorten if needed too. Or you can use alpaca to knit things where the potential growth isn't a problem. Afghans are good and warm and cuddly. My lace shawls? I like the big, babeh.

The last thing to remember is to take extra care when weaving in the ends, so that they won't slip out of the fabric. When I made the Wisp, I first used buttons, before deciding that the buttons were too heavy for the yarn and would weight down the fabric and stretch it and deform it completely and make my FO ugly forever, but by the time I decided I wanted to remove the buttons the pieces of yarn I used to attach them had already slipped from the special knots I learned with the sailors and the buttons just fell down. Right now I'm eyeing the tube of superglue, but I'm just paranoid.

I used several sites I found on Google as information sources but these 2 sources have really lots of info and tips on how to best use alpaca yarns:

• The Knitter's Book of Yarn, by Clara Parkes
• Alpaca, an Ancient Luxury, by Charlotte Quiggle, in Interweave Knits.

Texto em português

Estonian Lace Stole

First: I don't have a camera. I use my laptop webcam for everything, and so there are some limits to what I can do with it. I think I showed enough details of this project on the partial shots on previous posts, so I chose to give a view of the total on this post about the completed project. I played with the camera settings and the best I could do with sharpness to make the lace more visible was on black and white. So I played a little bit more. ;)

Aviso: eu não tenho uma câmera. Eu uso a webcam do laptop pra tudo, então tem certas limitações de qualidade das fotos. Como os outros posts sobre o xale mostravam detalhes dos pontos, eu decidi mostrar o xale inteiro nesse aqui. Eu mexi nas configurações da câmera e a que dava melhor definição da renda era em preto e branco. Aí eu brinquei só mais um pouquinho.

Pattern: Estonian Lace Scarf
Yarn: Alpaca Coproca - little less than 2 skeins - pouco menos de 2 novelos
Needles: US5 (3.75mm)
Modifications: I knit only chart 1 and 2 from the pattern and added the knitted on border from the Cap Shawl in Victorian Lace Today.

Usei os gráficos 1 e 2 da receita original e adicionei a borda do Cap Shawl de Victorian Lace Today.
Final dimensions: 45cm x 110 cm (17.71in x 43.30in)

I love it so much!  

Perfect size for me.

Tamanho perfeito.

I wish the nupps were visible on the center panel...

Eu queria mostrar os nupps do painel central...

Cuddos to my friend Strikey who gave me support all the time I worked on this.

And you? Do you know where your towel is?

136 pins. But: knitting is hot; blocking is hotter.

 

City Weather

Current conditions as of 3:00 pm BST (The Weather Channel) / Condições do tempo

Partly cloudy (from my window, looks it looks like scorching sunny) / Parcialmente nublado (absolutamente ensolarado)

Temperature: 84 F - 29 C / temperatura

Feels like: 89 F - 32 C / sensação térmica

Humidity: 66% / umidade

Current knitting in progress: alpaca lace shawl / Trabalho em progresso: xale rendado em alpaca

Resulting in (resultado) :

Is it worth it? Hell yeah. Just the grafting to finish it.

Vale a pena. Só falta costurar o fim da borda.

The reason

I just realized I started a blog and didn't write to say why I was starting it and what my objectives from writing here were. So, I'm doing it now by quoting Terry Pratchett, in The Last Hero:

"The reason for the story was a mix of many things. There was humanity's desire to do forbidden deeds merely because they were forbidden. There was its desire to find new horizons and kill the people who live beyond them. There were the mysterious scrolls. There was the cucumber. But mostly there was the knowledge that one day, quite soon, it would be all over."

I swear I can see a context here for everything, except for the cucumber. Please don't look for that. And not everything will be over soon. I have some UFOs that will take a good part of my life yet.

Eu percebi que comecei o blog sem explicar por quê, nem o que queria com isso. Então vou usar um trecho do Terry Pratchett, do começo de The Last Hero (tradução minha):

"O motivo da história foi uma mistura de muitas coisas. Havia o desejo da humanidade de fazer coisas proibidas só porque eram proibidas. Havia o desejo de descobrir novos horizontes e matar as pessoas que vivem além deles. Haviam os pergaminhos misteriosos. Havia o pepino. Mas principalmente havia o conhecimento de que um dia, logo, tudo iria acabar."

Eu juro que eu vejo um contexto aí, se tirar o pepino. Por favor, não procurem um contexto pro pepino. E nem tudo vai estar acabado logo. Eu tenho trabalhos começados que vão durar boa parte da minha vida até eu terminar.

Alpaca fluff from my bed - making Gufnork happy.

The yarn for my black stole sheds a lot. I know it gets better after washing and blocking, because most of the extra fluff goes away on the washing, but for now it sheds and sheds even more because I had to frog what came out to be half of the skein.
Today there was so much fluff on my bed that I got this piece of almost-yarn just from rubbing my hand on the bedcover.

O fio de alpaca desse xale solta um monte de pêlo. Eu sei que melhora depois que lavar e blocar, porque os pelinhos extra são removidos, mas por enquanto tá soltando ainda mais pêlo que o normal porque eu desmanchei metade de um novelo já tricotado.

Hoje tinha tanto pelinho na minha cama que, depois de esfregar a mão por um tempo, eu praticamente fiz um pedaço de fio...

Project monogamy, once in my life

I've been knitting for little more than 6 months, and crochetting for little more than a year. In this time I already noticed that I tend to have multiple projects going on at the same time. 

Well, I do have lots of UFOs right now, but at least for now I'm focusing on just one project that I want to finish, before going back to something else, or cast on a new project.

Faz pouco mais de 6 meses que eu comecei a tricotar, e pouco mais de um ano de crochê. Nesse tempo eu percebi que eu sempre tenho vários projetos acontecendo ao mesmo tempo.  Agora não é diferente, tem um monte de coisa a terminar, mas pelo mesmo por enquanto eu tô concentrada em terminar esse projeto antes de voltar pra algum outro, ou começar um novo.

I started this a month ago, and the pic only shows the first panel. The pattern is Estonian Lace Scarf, by Helene Wallin, and it's just gorgeous. I wanted to make it wider, though, so I'm adding a border that I found on Victorian Lace Today. First I tried the Torchon Lace border, but it was too wide and I wouldn't have enough yarn, so I frogged it all when I had already a whole side done, and started again with the border from the Cap Shawl, same book. Frogging +300 rows of border hurt way less than I expected.

Eu comecei esse xale um mês atrás, e a foto mostra só o primeiro painel terminado. A receita é pra um cachecol, mas eu queria mais largo, então tô acrescentando uma borda. Primeiro eu tentei a borda Torchon Lace, do livro Victorian Lace today, mas era tão larga que eu não teria fio suficiente. Então desmanchei todo o lado que tinha completado e comecei de novo com a borda do Cap Shawl. 

Desmanchar mais de 300 carreiras nem doeu tanto assim...