She knitted something fast

…and I don’t mean “she completed the project quickly.”

The Happy Hooker

I can only imagine what sorts of attention this post title will generate, but here I’m merely providing a short book review (she said, batting her eyes innocently).

While visiting my husband’s family in south Florida, I found a good local yarn store in which to perform a yarn hunt. By the time we arrived in town I had managed to generate a blanket and three scarves for gifts, and with yarn purchased at the LYS, I’ve already created a fourth scarf while hanging out on holiday. (Pix to follow eventually, I hope.) I also found a copy of the new book Stitch ‘n Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker. (If you thought I was referring to this book, get your mind out of the gutter.)

I now own several dead-tree-based resources that explain the basics of crocheting, as well as having studied numerous websites and recently borrowed Crocheting in Plain English from Lauren. No one resource seems to have all the answers nor does a perfectly good job of the ones it does provide. Plain English has a wonderful friendly style and good advice about crocheting paraphernalia, whereas Happy Hooker is breezy — okay, even saucy — in style and excels at the explanations and pictures for basic stitches and other tasks. (I’m afraid the English isn’t quite Plain enough for me in the other book when it comes to actual instructions.) Neither bothers to reverse the explanations and pictures for the left-handed — which I am — but I’m used to that now and I just reverse everything in my head. Isn’t that one of the tests for Mensa or something?

Hooker is the first book that’s gotten me to try fringes and add new yarn in the “approved” fashion. Here’s a passage that provides one key piece of information, without which I’d been having a rougher time than necessary. It’s from a section called Swinging Singles:

If you examine the last row of stitches you made, you’ll see that a single crochet stitch is three-dimensional and, seen from the front, looks like a V with another V lying across the top of it, sort of like a lid. In fact, you can think of your crochet stitches as being a bit like a to-go cup of latte from your favorite java hut. A single crochet stitch is a short shot, while later on you’ll learn to make taller stitches — more like those grande and venti cups. They’ll always have that lid on top, though, just like all good coffee does. Also, observe that the “cup” Vs are not stacked directly on top of each other, but are a bit offset, which is probably just how you’d stack ‘em, too, if you had to make a wall of coffee cups.

Hooker suffers from the same structural difficulty that lots of other crochet books do: Many complex crocheted items look kind of frumpy, no matter how beautiful the models you put them on, so lots of the patterns are things I probably wouldn’t make (a cowboy hat??). But it does offer a skull pattern that can be applied to sweaters and bags, and even has some fun with a purposely ironic crocheted anarchy symbol. These patterns ratchet up the coolness factor quite a bit. If I’m ever going to get past crochet kindergarten, I think I’ll have to do it with a Jolly Roger sweater.

Important breaking news about Snoop Dogg

My first thought after I saw this article? “What a cute cap, and such a pretty color — I bet I could crochet that in no time.” Help me…

Actually, so that this post wouldn’t be a total waste of time (though you be the judge), I dug up some patterns that might just do the trick:

Lady’s Skull Hat
Cool Crochet Skull Cap
Men’s Hat with Optional Chin Strap (with a picture that must be seen to be believed — just picture Calvin Broadus in this!)

Procrastination blanket bingo

Many years ago, more than fifteen to be (somewhat) precise, I had a thing for crocheting. This obsession lasted long enough for me to finish two fairly nice blankets that I still use today (we won’t count the ugly potholder prototypes). I also managed to finish about two-thirds of another blanket, with the intent of giving it to my sister when it was finished.

My mistake? Telling her about it before I lost interest in finishing the damn thing. She never let me forget it.

So I’ve been carting around a blanket fragment for my last two house moves, in the course of which I lost the pattern. It’s not the most complicated one in the world — it’s a simple Vs-and-shells deal — but that didn’t help me want to pick up the whole thing again. In the meantime, I pretty much forgot how to crochet entirely.

My brilliant move? Going to visit Lauren. Watching her work on several knitting projects in timesharing fashion (one project for home, one project for the car…) inspired me to figure the whole silly thing out again. It helped that my sister’s birthday was approaching, and I was determined to surprise her with the finished article.

So while I hung out at Lauren’s place one evening, I clumsily re-taught myself how to do the basic crochet stitches, working from a wonderful book she loaned me, and over the next week I stitched away, reconstructing the pattern by staring at one of my completed blankets at home.

The result?

Blue crocheted blanket in Vs and shells

Blanket detail

When my sister received the package, her reaction was: “Oh, is this my potholder?” Snarky. But, I thought, the outcome wasn’t too horribly bad for a project whose schedule slipped into a whole ‘nother decade.

After this I really got the bug — both literally and figuratively. I found myself fighting a cold a couple of weekends ago, and couldn’t sleep. So I dug up some old yarn and a new pattern and made this overnight.

Testosterone-soaked scarf

I tried to make it as masculine-looking as possible, because my intent was for Eli to wear it. He seemed appreciative (but so far I haven’t seen it on him!).

I’m not sure what new projects I’ll pick up now. Unlike KnitBot, who has talent and hoarded yarn to spare, I have no yarn stock worth the name (and, uh, not much talent either). I suspect that the key is having some excellent yarn on hand and then running across an irresistible pattern. Actually, I’m thinking it would be cool to work in thread rather than yarn — lots harder on the eyes and fingers, but really pretty.

XML haiku project, finished at last

Well, that took a long time… This week I finally finished the XML haiku cross-stitch project that I started in July of last year. The corner parts were just a killer — of course I saved them till last, and since they’re all the same color (and not terribly different from the fabric color), they were not exactly stimulating to work on, so I went several whole plane trips without pulling out the project even once. With hindsight, I can say that the lettering and the boat were the most fun to implement, and the design process (done oh so long ago), especially getting the “O” to echo the sunset, was the most fun overall. Biggest lesson learned: If I pass up stitching on a plane for some reason, and I continue to have terrible lighting in my TV room, stitching will simply Not Happen.

Completed XML Haiku cross-stitch project

In case you’re having trouble reading that cool Asian-style font, yes, it does say:

Well-formed XML
Parsing is such sweet sorrow
Order but no gist

I’ve decided to try my hand at identity-stitching next, so stay tuned for more about that design process…

The smell of software

Recently I’ve been working with my team of XML Summer School lecturers on our materials, and Jeff floated the idea of a using a visual metaphor to show how each topic fills in another piece of the web services/SOA story. Paul advised against using “puzzle pieces”, which imply that the picture isn’t complete until you use every last piece. So we brainstormed some alternatives. (My unserious suggestions: onions and bricks…)

A common metaphor is Lego(R) and Duplo(R) pieces, which, due to a single standard (in this case imposed by the Lego company itself) for fit, always go together. But we can see that different “stacks” might not:

Lego-like conference swag

(It’s hard to see, but the upper one comes from DataChannel.) I found these while cleaning out my home office desk a few weeks ago, and immediately noted that they were not interoperable…

While hunting for additional useful metaphors, I googled “layering metaphors” and came across this fascinating paper on Software Metaphors. From the introduction, titled “Software as Fiction”:

As fiction, software is entirely and thoroughly metaphorical. Metaphors pervade every element and aspect of software, from the lowliest variable name to the largest of enterprise architectures. Software is so steeped in metaphors that we often overlook the extent and nature of these metaphors. Like fish in water, software developers often do not perceive the medium that surrounds us: our natural languages, natural conceptual models, and the natural and linguistic metaphors we use every day in our software designs. Even so, software developers borrow ideas, terminology and organizational structures from every field they encounter and every problem they solve.

Indeed, our brains can’t help applying patterns — and the most concrete and atom-based patterns, like the “Bad is Stinky” and “Categories are Containers” examples given in the paper, are the easiest to make because we’ve been familiar with those referents for a whole lifetime. In fact, every time we use a preposition, we’re making an implicit physical-relationship metaphor (this module hands control to that module; the UI goes in front of the business logic).

The paper is chock-full of interesting thoughts and even advice on effective naming of things like variables, taking into account their metaphorical roles. Its stated goal — “This essay explores a wide variety of these metaphors in hopes of awakening a greater awareness of them in software developers and in hopes of making their acknowledgement more common and explicit in the general practice of software development” — is pretty modest, but its encyclopedic collection of metaphors used in the creation and maintenance of software is impressive and fun to read. (The attempt to catalog every metaphor puts me in mind of Douglas Hofstadter’s Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies, which describes his team’s attempts to duplicate in software the sorts of nano-analogy-making that minds do all the time — sort of a reverse view of this paper.)

Imagine my delight when I found the section connecting code threads to stitch patterns (for which this is a reverse view!):

Computer processors are now generally fast enough that they can usually switch between and effectively trace several execution threads “concurrently” according to human perception. Thus, execution threads can be likened to the straight warp on a loom, around which intricate patterns of code are entwined and intertwined to produce a fabric of data as results.

And there’s a section called “Mathematical Formulas, Impurities and Stench”, which explores the “bad is stinky” realm — for example, discussing a book on software refactoring that refers to “(deodorant) comments” used “to mask bad smells in the code”.

With apologies to William Steig and Ted Elliott (and thanks to Robin), perhaps software really is most like onions. (They stink?) Yes — no! (They make you cry?) No! (You leave them in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin’ little white hairs?) No! Layers! Onions have layers. Software has layers! Onions have layers. You get it? They both have layers.

The logic seems irrefutable.

BobDC!

Very cool: Bob DuCharme, all-around XML smart guy and my most prolific source of weird crafting links, has started his first general-purpose blog. It’s already interesting and informative, and he says it’ll go beyond the scope of his Thinking about Linking space at O’Reilly.

Just to take the pressure off him, since he’s sure to be extra-busy now :-), here are a couple of saved-up crafting links sent to me by others:

#1: A pattern for a crocheted snowman, brought to my attention by Marc Hadley. I’ll have to check out this Roxycraft site in more detail when time allows; its slogan is “patterns that don’t suck”, and most of the crochet patterns I’ve come across truly do. (Why is it that the results of knitting usually look cool and the results of crocheting usually look dopey?)

#2: A story passed along by John Kemp about metal knitting needles and an easily frightened airline passenger. I have no idea why said passenger isn’t also afraid of sharpened pencils — or perhaps he is. Just for the record, the needles you use for cross-stitch are actually tapestry needles, and they’re pretty blunt. This means that it’s hard to break skin with them in the course of stitching, but I have no doubt that if you applied yourself to the job, they’d go right through. It wouldn’t be pretty.

Thanks, guys!

More science fun with knitting

It seems my true purpose in life is to be an aggregator for weird crafting links. Here we have the knitted digestive system — complete with a beautifully colored liver that sits atop the stomach like a jaunty beret. (H/t Pat.)

UPDATE: Lauren made me do it! — Link to this knitted “cute, cuddly uterus doll” in bubblegum pink, that is…

XML haiku project

Lauren has informed me (and the rest of the world) that the XML 2005 conference website had a problem accepting poster and artwork submissions. The deadline for both has been extended. If you had already filled out these forms, I’m afraid you’ll have to redo them (or, if you like, you can drop me a line if you’re just submitting artwork).

I figured I might as well take this opportunity to share a snapshot of my stitching project for this year’s conference. I already mentioned it’s sort of a sampler that has a haiku about XML parsing in it. I haven’t stitched the actual lettering yet, but you can see half of an “O” at the beginning of what I will admit is the third line of the poem. Any guesses? :-)

XML haiku project as of 28 October 2005

So far this has been a very enjoyable project. Here are some thoughts on the feel of this piece, along the lines of the analysis I did here for another project in February (which languishes unfinished, by the way).

• Under pressure. I’ve never cranked on stitching like this! If I get really desperate I may have to keep stitching through the beginning of the conference. Lynne Price did that when she first submitted her XML with Koalas piece; each day she’d return it to its display location with more done. She’s one fast stitcher…
• Small but pleasant selection of floss colors. I was a little bored doing the monochromatic border, with only a few tricky holes and the corners for relief. I can’t believe I completed the border first on the theory that it would be a quick way into the piece. That sucker took me about 20 hours! But it was the right decision since it gave me the interoperable framework (heh) that I could now fill in.
• Back to 14-count fabric. Yay! I was really killing my eyes on the siapo project at 18-ct. Of course, I’ve also since found out that I had incipient presbyopia by that point, so that explains a lot. Now I’ve got modern bifocals (they call them “progressive lenses” but I rather think they’re all about regression, don’t you?) and stitching is back to being a breeze.
• Huge canvas. I mentioned at the beginning of this project that the piece of fabric was so large that it’s hard to work with. I managed to figure out how to stitch on airplanes with it nonetheless, but it looks wrinkled right now because I work free-hand, without hoops or frames. They mar the fabric and they keep me from getting right close up to the location where I’m working. But that means I’m constantly rolling or even lightly crushing the fabric. It’ll all come out with a steam iron later (heck, that’s easier to smooth out than the original fold lines from when I got the fabric in the first place — I much prefer buying it in rolls for that reason).
• A hybrid design formed by adapting the work of a real professional. The main pattern came from Pat Emlet at Cross-Stitch-Art.com, who has some gorgeous designs, including –as noted on her home page — Oriental, Celtic, Art Nouveau, and Mackintosh styles. It was the Oriental angle that got me interested, and the pattern I selected even conveniently came with a “hole” for me to put my own wording in. Pat kindly also supplied me with a very cool Asian-style stitched font for my haiku. The trouble was, the haiku didn’t quite fit in the space, so I had to extend the border vertically by more than an inch; move the boat-against-the-sunset picture; ensure that the fabric that came with the kit I bought was big enough for the result; and transfer enough of the original design to my own online pattern to doublecheck that the whole thing hung together. This process was really really fun. (For some definition of fun.)
• Flying blind. Even though it was all designed by computer, I had no real idea how big this project was because I didn’t have a stitch count. Pat uses Pattern Maker software to design her pieces (which I first described here as the program that amusingly uses the .xsd file extension) and she sent me the files to work with in modifying the piece. But I only got the free viewer for Pattern Maker, which doesn’t allow you see stitch counts, and of course the portion that I designed in PC Stitch would give me an incomplete count. I’m starting to be able to eyeball the size of projects now, though.
• Process optimization. The thing that looks like a dashed line in the middle is a guideline that I’ll pull out soon. I’ve finally gotten smart about how to parcel off the work — the guideline corresponds exactly to the horizontal page boundary of my pattern printout, which runs to four pages, and to the 10×10 grid markings provided by the software (I already pulled out a vertical guide-line that I no longer need). Maybe that’s why I stitch — it gives me new ways to feel efficient!

I’m hoping that exposing my obsession with this pastime will inspire someone out there to say, “Hey, I could make something better-looking and more related to XML than that in far fewer hours, and I’m willing to come to Atlanta to show it off…”

Geekiest needlepoint yet

Bob comes through again, with a picture of an astonishing cross-stitch project called dos-stitch. The crafter is explicitly re-inventing traditional stitched samplers for the computer era.

This piece is very much in the spirit of artwork that we’ve seen in past XML conferences and that I hope to see at the XML 2005 artwork exhibit. Are you working on your entry yet? The deadline to fill out the submission form is October 28, so there’s not much time! Drop me a line or leave a comment if you want to bat ideas around.

I’m a bit behind on my XML 2005 project, but I’ve got a bunch of really loooooong flights coming up this month, so I hope to make good progress then. No pictures yet, but I will admit that it involves a haiku about XML parsing, so I guess it’s a kind of sampler too, as well as being painfully geeky.