Diana Has Taken Over

Poor Kilt Hose, left neglected ... no leg for you! (I watched the entire Lord of the Rings the other day... Leg - o - las, get it? ::snort::snort::)
Poor Sonnet, left neglected ... no prose for you!
No, I'm am smitten, a smitten kitten, by Diana. It's fun, it's fast and I don't want to do anything else.

Besides, every time I take it out various songs from the 80s run rampant through my head:

Dirty Diana

I preferred the other 80s Diana song but have completely blanked on the group. But, here...listen...it's playing over and OVER and OVER in my head. (scha scha oooooh Diana, what you see it what you get...ooooh Diana.) Of course, I could be completely massacring the words but if you know, too, you'll know. It was more in the alternative genre, out about the same time The The did Infected. (added later) Just found a better snippet here. Now you have insight into how I spent all my nights during my 20s.

Might just send a prezzie along to the person who can email or comment with information about Diana by that 80s band along with a sample...

I'm so excited

and sick. This is tragically predictable. The instant I no longer have my own classroom or am taking classes from another, I get sick. Hopefully, it will pass quickly.

AND, here's the excited part: I signed up for (trumpet fanfare) Shakespeare in the Sock. I AM SO EXCITED.
AND, my oldest asked if I could get her copies and tell her a little about ::quiver with glee::
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
OH OH OH OH! Well, for about the next half hour she could not shut me up. I ran, or as well as I could with my stomach the way it is, to get my tattered copy of Shakespeare's Collected Works, ordered her nice, new copies of annotated plays (did you know you could get the original text along with modern translation??!!) Well, ya know, that line about the Zamboni from Mystery, Alaska...yup, that's me about Shakespeare (scroll down to the 11th set of quotes). I started thinking about movies, which is my other "I wish I could get paid for having an inhumanly vast pool of knowledge about" subject. There are so many that have Shakespearean themes or are adaptations ::cough::ripoff::cough:: and we're going to sit, knit, chat, watch movies, pause so I can explain the Bard concepts, oooh it's truly a mother/daughter bonding day. I.am.in.heaven.

KAL Anyone?

I actually have a couple projects on needles:
My sister's Sonnet of lovely Jo Sharp wool
Socks with a nice 3-ply I spun of Crown Mtn wool
A Kimono Baby Sweater my mother demanded by August of stash ACKrylic variegated
I want to cast on as soon as the Sonnet and Baby sweater are done, but may be only when the baby sweater's done:
Shell Tank with Cottonease
Diane with Cottonease which is actually a knit along with a couple friends

Howevah...

I am determined to get more kilthose, hats, scarves, socks and sweaters up as patterns. One I thought I'd do right away is a traditional pair I saw pictured in Veronica Gainford's Designs for Knitting Kilt Hose and Knickerbocker Stockings. There aren't instructions for it but I'm unsure if I can write it up and put the pattern up, with proper credit, for people to use free. Does anyone know or have an opinion? I actually was going to do this a while ago and put it off until I was a little more knowledgable about it.

In the meantime, I had a really bad photo of these hose but lost (maybe gave away, I tend to do that) the hose themselves so need to make a new pair. Until I know if I can write up a pattern, I'll let you know what I'm doing, step by step.

My New Kilt Hose based on a photo in VG's DforKKHandKS (still long but not so bad...heh)
Yarn - Cleckheaton Country 8 Ply
Needles - 2 Addi Turbo (and I always mentally hear Brenda Dayne's sound effect...I love that woman) circulars size 3s for a firm fabric on the foot, size 4s for the leg for a bit more elasticity
Gauge - with 3s 13st/2inches
This pair is being made for AL, although he thinks they're "boot socks" (heh...think he'll be fooled?). Edge circumference at knee - 14", widest point on calf - 15.5", ankle - 9.5, widest point around foot - 10", foot length - 10.25"

Begin with one circular size 4, cast on 5 stitches
Increasing side
Row 1: Knit, turn - this edge/cuff is knit as a flat strip
Row 2: Knit to last stitch, increase in last stitches , turn
Repeat these two rows until there are 12 stitches
Decreasing side
Row 1: Knit, turn
Row 2: Knit to last 2 stitches, k2tog, turn
Repeat these two rows until there are 5 stitches
This will make a triangle shape. Continue repeating until there are 5 total points.
This is the top of the cuff. This cuff doesn't have a folded cuff; it has a castellated edge. The next step will be to join the ends and pick up along the straight side to begin the leg.

A Day Late

Everything in today's post happened yesterday except for one thing...

my friend is out of ICU. Yay! HUZZAHH! ZOUNDS! Happy Exclamation of Choice!

It's truly miraculous and she's doing quite well.

So, back to yesterday. Girlies and I went to the little lake in our neighborhood. There was a family of geese and a family of ducks. The goslings and ducklings were actually quite grown.

Here's DD#2. Feel I can't really call her "smallest" one anymore. She's sprouted up into long and lanky tween girl.

This is DD#1 looking very teenager...woe is me, forelorn and alas girl.

Uck! Eese!

And, when I got home, this was waiting for me. It's a Goth Sack. It's very well constructed, very cool fabrics and is just the perfect size for a small project. That's a sock in there.

Back to reality

Back home, back in classes, back to reality. A friend was confused when I said something about "writing for my class" and say "but...you're the teacher now, right?" Yes and no. I'm slowly inching my way towards a Master's degree in ESL (English as a second language). There are a lot of teachers taking up to three classes at a time. Not me, I'll stick with just one at a time but slow and steady gets the job done, eh?

Another friend asked me about my book (see in the column to the right) "I thought you self published that...it looks a lot like an Interweave book. And, do you really have 20 patterns in there? I read through it and they look a lot alike." Ok, let me explain:
The Cover - it looks like an Interweave cover because my sister did the front cover and cover photo as a gift for me. She worked as a graphic artist for Interweave Press for many years before moving on about a year or so ago to another company. That's her layout which she also used many times while at IP.
The Patterns - I am re-doing the charts and instructions using Knit Visualizer. They will be much better. The reason I only have a few single patterns at martaschmarta is because I'm adding each of the patterns as singles as I improve them. As I mention in the opening of the book, all of these designs are based on historical garments so they might look a lot like other things you've seen in books as the motifs have been around for hundreds of years...I mean a sock is still a basic sock but that's not what you're paying for in a pattern. I researched geographical areas and the patterns most prevalent in history for that area and named the item for it. There are commonalities between type of project and between themed projects:
The hats, kilt hose, scarves and socks (toe-up and toe-down) are all the same basic construction, respectively. Hence, at the end of the hat and kilt hose chapters you will find a "Making It Your Own" chart and instructions so you can take that basic construction and customize it. I guess I kind of assumed the knitter with the skills appropriate to use this book would already know how to adjust their socks and scarves to suit their preferences. The "Making It Your Own" for kilt hose can always serve to note differences for socks easily enough, too.
The hats and scarves are paired in style and have matching names. The scarves include instructions for both a modern style and a seaman's style with a ribbed neck. They are Armadale, Dunvegan, Rowallan (my personal favorite) and Stirling. So, four designs and three constructions (hat, modern scarf and seaman's scarf).
The kilt hose and socks are paired (tripled, actually) in style and have matching names. The socks have instructions for cuff-down and toe-up. They are Banais (my personal favorite of this batch), Edinburgh, Filey and Hebrides. So, four designs and three constructions (kilt hose, toe-up sock and cuff-down sock). And, let me say this: Doing the Edinburgh cuff-down after having it originally designed in the other direction for kilt hose was quite an adventure.
I hope that clears up some questions. Please, please don't hesitate to ask about anything, though, I would rather address things and am very open to suggestions.

Thus, I leave you to return to this:

In my rocker with my Ladybug from Amy at Spunky Eclectic, my Kindle, and my knitting...and sometimes my laptop.