Summer Vacation

The end of the semester is nigh. This means one of two things:
1. I spend the summer reading, baking bread, knitting, blogging etc. I could take up running, I could visit family and friends and tend to my garden. I could explore all of the botanicas in chi-town to see who has the best selection of candles, fresh herbs and livestock (sometimes a man needs a new rooster) or I could catch up on all of the theory readings I didn't understand this semester and produce a grand body of proposals for the upcoming school year. Any and all of this could be done while enjoying the beautiful Chicago summer.

2. I get a second job. I spend said glorious days in a kitchen making food for the million people enjoying the beautiful Chicago summer. I pay off some credit card debt, buy a new camera and restock my savings account during the absolute last summer vacation of my life.

We shall see.

Speaking of summer and school, I have produced some work that, while existing in the dark gloom of my studio, can be reproduced through the magic of photography fo you, my dear friends.


eh?



This project doubles as grad school studio work and my summer garden. Priceless.

I have been knitting, covertly. There's alot of pressure to be focused 'round these parts. I guess that has something to do with learning, credentials, etc. I, however, being the flightiest, most prone to daydream weeks away at a time, need to present the outward appearance that I'm avoiding distractions.

Imbetween these boughts of posturing, I knit this:



I have an eight hour departmental meeting on Saturday, so I plan to really blast through this sucker.
Well, that's the plan anyway.

Resurfacing

Hey guys! I always said that I would never apologize for not blogging enough, because frankly, we all have lives and it makes for some seriously boring reading. So I won't do that. What I will do is take you all on the adventure that has been my life since my last (meager) post.

After searching my rat's nest of a house for my camera cord with no success, I resigned myself to buying a new one. I had to got to seven (7!) stores to find the correct cable. With this small success under my belt, I can show you photos.



So, this may or may not be the bread I wrote about in my last post. I'm not sure of the stigma and or ethics of posting photos taken a month ago and already blogged about. But look! Apparently I can bake now!



This is no small miracle, my friends. I managed a freakin' artisan bakery for two (2!) years, worked with some of the finest bakers in the south, and never made a desirable loaf of bread.

On to production:
So my knitting has been moving at the most zen-like pace for months now. For example, I sat down in my studio the other day after a really tough critique, picked up the sock (singular) that I have been working on since, oh, August, and turned the heel. So I'm averaging about 1.5 stitches a day. I'm okay with this. My production focus has been on other things as the end of the semester looms.

Take these for example:



These are Num-Nums, The World's First Antibiotic Marshmallows. They're cute and kind of creepy.



This is what I do with my time. I create companies, factories, labs and stores that make and sell the world's most antagonistic products. And my parents are worried about the practical applications of a Master's degree in performance art. Pshaw.



At least I get to knit today while I wait for help de-installing this monstrocity.

Imagine the Bunny!

I had a wonderful Easter today, and I made sure to take pictures to share with my beloved internet friends. Unfortunately, I seem to have misplaced my camera cable, so this post is pictureless.

Maybe if I describe the pictures I took, after reading the descriptions, y'all could close your eyes and imagine the photos in all of their digital glory. Let's try it.

I woke up this morning to bake bread for Easter. I made sure to position my kneading board where it would get the best diffused spring morning light. I arranged the dough (after shaping it into an even, yet rustic blob) on a lightly floured board. Snap! Picture one! See isn't this fun?

I joined the sleeves to my sweater and began knitting the raglan decreases. If you look closely, you can see that the ribbing is probably going to line up along the decreases just like in the book. Snap! Picture two! I swear to god this whole imagination thing is the technology of the future.

After returning from an afternoon at the theater, I made a pot of vegan jambalaya (I know, oxy-moron, but it's passable and I like having someone to sleep next to). I also made (vegan) fried cabbage and (so not vegan it hurts) macaroni and cheese. Arranged artfully with the rustic, yet perfect bread from this morning, embroidered napkins, buckets of cold beer and raspberry malt liquor and you have Snap! Picture three!

Wasn't that fun? Mental pictures are often richer and more saturated than the origional, anyway. (maybe while my head is hanging in shame my camera cord will pass into my field of vision.)

Thorpe

This is the most useful hat I've ever knit for my self. Due to my large, stretched earlobes and their susceptablity to frostbite, I have very particular needs for my headgear. As many hats as I've knit in the past few months, I usually wear a hat bought at Target for my day to day adventures. That has all changed now.



It's Thorpe, Kirsten Kapur's über hat. It's supa warm, it fits well and it looks cool enough for everyday wear. Knit from the top down, the construction is simple and intuitive. I did start this hat three times due to gauge issues and the difficulty of joining four stitches to work in the round on dpns, but I'm sure someone of average intellegence will have an easier time at it.

The yarn is the left over Unikat from my scarf, which coincedentaly, is finished as well. It's supposedly super-bulky, but I used #7 needles to achieve an appropriate fabric. I just added two more increase rounds and it fits like a head-shaped glove. It feels like having a very well behaved rabbit strapped to my head. I mean it's soft.



Oh, I've been silk screening some t-shirts for one of my installations. There are seven designs, but this one is the winner, hands down:

Here's the front:



And this is the back:



That's all I got.

In Search of Spring

As much as I've enjoyed these last 3 months of winter, I can't wait for spring. Given that we have a good 2 more months of winter, Jill and I spent most of the morning doing this:



We started the seeds for the culinary herb garden today. I specify culinary herb garden because there are many, many, seeds to be planted this year. Andrew and I have felt an incessant yearning for our homeland and have projected said feelings of homesickness into balcony agriculture. He plans on making a full vegetable container garden while I'm growing hundreds of specimens of southern medicinal root plants in my studio at school.

Even though we like fresh herbs in our food and we can always give extra plants to friends, I'm not sure what one does with 18 basil plants, 9 lemon balms, 9 rosemary bushes, or 9 thyme plants. Oh, and yes I did start 9 catnip plants and no, I'm not going to make any "jill insisted" jokes because I don't think I'd be able to recover from the amount of self-hatred that would cause.

I've also been knitting. School is really kicking my ass this semester so knitting has been very low key, straight foward stuff. I knit some more on Andrew's cardigan (no pictures), I knit a few more rows on the heel flap of my sock (can't slip stitches while I read). That leaves me to my go-to pattern, The Mistake Rib scarf.



I freaking love this scarf. I started it way back in the fall and put it down because I was mangling the yarn. Now that every molecule of moisture has left my skin and my hands resemble paper lanterns, it's coming along brilliantly. At 170 yds a ball, the unikat is rocking my face off. I think I might knit a hat with the second ball, then finish the scarf with whatever is left over.
And a close up:




Oh, and for this week's "Boy Makes Things. Sometimes Badly", I present:



Choclinics. Antibiotic chocolates.
Each one of these bad boys has 250mg of tetracyclene which can be used to clear up minor bacterial STDs and acne. I made them for a show on Valentines Day called "Unlucky at Love".

Back to the Laboratory

It's official, my 18-month conceptual art hiatus is over. The past two weeks have been balls-to-the-wall in my little world. I'm not sure why I thought I would be able to knit sweater after sweater during my first year of grad school. Perhaps it was wishful thinking that I would be so organized and productive that the socks and sweaters and sculptures would just fall off my needles. I need not tell you, my faithful readers, that this has not been the case.

I have been knitting a little over the past few weeks. I knit the second sleeve for the zipped raglan and now everything is ready for the joining:



I'm nervous about this procedure because the body segment looks soooooo short. I knit it to the length of the XL size, but I'm terrified that it's going to hit just below my ribs. Unfortunatly, as soon as I join this sucker, there's no easy turn around. I may knit another inch to be safe.

I also allowed myself a 15 minute diversion the other day to knit the swatch for Scott (RYC Classic Winter).



The guage is a little loose for my taste, so I'm going to go down a needle size. I'm completely re-writing this pattern anyway, so gauge is no real issue. Most everyone on ravelry has said that steeking this bad boy ends up in disaster. I choose to cover my ears and say "lalalalalalala", 'cause there is no way on God's green earth that I'm knitting a fair isle raglan flat. Period. I will make it work. (be sure to tune in next time to see a young man, faced with adversity, learn from his mistakes and inflated sense of self confidence and become a better knitter for it).

I spent the day outside (in the balmy 1 degree F and -20 wind chill) building a snow retort. Before the age of the Frigidare, one method alchemists used to distill laboratory alcohol was by burying flasks of wine in the snow. Water and alcohol freeze at different temperatures so the flasks would be turned upside down and the alcohol would be drained and collected, leaving the frozen water behind in the flask.





The more you know

Make My Day

The lovely ladies at Team Knit have graciously appointed me a "You make my day award".



It makes my "two sizes too small" heart flutter to receive such a wonder. It's now my turn to share the love, and I'm feeling generous.

All of these lovely people really make my day. I check your blogs at least twice a day and you always make me smile:

Heather at The ADD Knitter
Kim at Yarn Abuse
Robbie at Knitxcore
Roger at Over Abundance
Franklin at The Panopticon
Stephen at Watch Stephen Knit

Thank you guys for making my day!