Technology and Transportation - A Good Thing

 In my last post I talked about technology and why it might not always be the answer. Transportation is definitely an area where technology is helping the traveller. Firstly just being able to check different routes and different modes on your internet enabled device. (That sounds old-fashioned but so many options now.) makes it easier to pick the right one for you, rather than the ticket office giving you one option because there is a long line behind you. With the added benefit that most transportation websites have an English option.

Tickets can be purchased and sent to your phone. Nothing to print which is difficult when you are not at home. Although I have been surprised by how many people have printed tickets. But it is a good back up. What if your phone loses power or you can't access the app? I take screen shots in case of an internet problem but that doesn't help with the power problem; so you have to keep an eye on battery level if you've been using your phone throughout the day.

Now at railway stations not only do they have the information on the next trains arriving at the platform, when the train is about to arrive the screen will indicate the number of carriages, which are for bicycles and first class and where they will be at the platform and in the UK the screen shows how full each carriage is. 

But even with all this information at your point of departure, you can follow the journey of your bus or train to see where it is and follow along once you are on. This is very useful when buses do not have information inside to indicate the next stop.

Although all this technology can cause angst, like when we were waiting for a bus in Finland at a stop with no screen just the timetable and the bus stop sign. The website had been very helpful in getting us from our hotel to the bus stop but watching the passage of the bus arrive and leave "our" bus stop was very worrying and while trying to decide what we should do, the bus turned up. We were at the stop after the one we thought we were at. We never did find the original stop and wondered if it was one of those places where the locals knew the buses stopped.

Technology and Museums - Not Always a Good Thing

We have visited many museums of many different types and it has been noticeable how they are changing -  the displays are becoming tidier and cleaner and more information is being provided. Quite often you can scan a QR code that takes you to a link where you can hear and/or read about the item. Information is provided in at least two languages - the home country's and English so many more people can learn about the displays.

So why is this not a good thing? Many museums have now added touch screens so that you can read about the objects. The problem with this is that it limits the number of people who can read about the items. You may be able to read over someone's shoulder depending on how the touch screen is placed but that doesn't help if they are reading in a different language than the one you want. Also, so much information is provided on these screens that a person could be standing at one for quite a while.

Therefore you can have two different reviews of the same museum that are both true:- great displays with much information stayed longer than expected; boring museum, not much information, not worth the money we paid.

Like anything, you are not going to please all the people and museum curators are passionate about their subject and want to spread the information and this is an easy end result. Although I am sure that it is much more work than a numbered display.

Personally, this is a dilemma, I appreciate the information but found that sometimes I was spending more time reading than looking. Technology is a good way to provide information but not the only way.

 

Blogging About Our Trip

Remember in the early days of social media when you were warned not to post that you were on vacation, at a concert etc? And now everybody's lives are spread all over the internet. 

Way back when, but only two posts ago, I wrote about choosing yarn to take on a trip, and have been silent since the end of March in a way indicating that that trip was taking place. Initially it was so that I was not giving away the exact dates of our trip and then posts were delayed because I was wondering what to write about. If it was just about knitting, there wouldn't be much to say. How many variations of, long train journey spent knitting, out all day hiking/touristing too tired to knit, could I make sound interesting?

I was unsure what I could add to what is already out there, if I wrote about the places we visited. I thought about just writing about why we chose the different forms of transport when travelling between cities, in the hopes it would be of use to someone but I wasn't sure that would be of much interest to most people. In the end I've decided to just do what I have always done for this blog - write about my crafting and whatever else interests me.

And if anyone had wanted to take the time to find my exact address during this absence, they would have been disappointed to find that there were people living in it.

 

The Yarn That Keeps on Giving

In 2014 on the first San Diego Yarn Crawl, I purchased four skeins of madeline tosh sock yarn to make a specific cardigan. I was concerned that I would not have enough yarn so I went back after the Yarn Crawl and purchased the last skein. Luckily it was the yarn store closest to me.

I actually didn’t use the yarn until 2022 as I could not get gauge for the original pattern I had chosen and working a different size to compensate etc wasn’t an option. Finally I found something I liked and worked with my gauge and I love it but, I used only four skeins. Yes, the original number I had purchased.

The small amount I had left over from the fourth skein went into my scrappy crochet blanket and the remaining complete skein was saved for socks. I used the yarn pretty quickly after finishing the cardigan but the pattern I chose was two colours so I still had more than half the skein remaining. I put that to use this month as I used it in another two colour sock. This time combining it with yarn from my friend’s destash to knit a pattern that I had been "given".

I have been destashing full skeins of yarn that are left over from projects and have just asked for payment of postage. Rather than people have to deal with PayPal or Zelle or similar I decided to be paid in patterns. Very handy when I am only supposed to be using patterns I own.

I followed the pattern as written, reversing the colours for the second sock. Unfortunately I did not have enough of the multi-coloured to complete the toe. So I worked it in the grey. I don’t think it looks too bad, but my preference would have been for cuff, heel and toe to all be in grey. In a previous post I had written how quickly a project grows when that is all you work on and having completed these socks in three weeks, I understand how I was able to complete two pairs of socks in a month.

Preparing Yarn for Travelling

 

Over the past few years, most of our vacations have involved driving to our destination. This is very convenient as you can just throw whatever you want in the car. Though I am at the stage where I know what I will need and pack just that; from a knitting/crochet point of view it means that I can take all my tools and just in case projects. I have gone away from the cast-on-something-new-on-the-first-day as this has not always worked out for me and now I am just as likely to take a work in progress in addition to unused yarn.

But what to do if the journey involves different forms of transport, you are limiting your luggage but you want to use your stash?

Over the past couple of months I have been thinking about what I would like to knit when I am away and what yarn I would like to knit with. At first I thought it would be fun to make a garment but there are too many down sides to that. What if I run out of yarn, what if there is a problem with the pattern and I can’t or don’t want to continue. I would have to work an easy pattern knit in pieces so that it covered all knitting occasions but did not become too big to carry around. In the same way I dismissed a crochet blanket as an option because the yarn could be spread around the luggage but a crocheted blanket would get big quickly.

I am not against buying yarn while we are away but I’d rather not be in a position where I have to buy yarn. Plus it would be nice to come back to a diminished stash.

Looking at my stash, socks and hats it is. Wouldn’t it be nice to use up all the sock yarn I have purchased? For a flight last year I knit on a double layer hat and I have plans for that again this year and I will get it started before we leave so that I am confident with the needle size and number of stitches.

I had put to one side all the yarn I was considering and last week I spent a morning evaluating what I had chosen and winding up the yarn that had passed the extended vacation test. I immediately dismissed one option – the leftover Advent yarn - I would like to make a cowl with it but this will definitely be a project where I will worry about running out of yarn.

I wound up a few skeins of sock yarn and a couple of skeins of DK weight yarn. There were a couple of skeins that I had originally chosen that I did not wind, I have a picture in my mind of the type of pattern that they would be suited for and I do not want to take them and then be forced to use them in a less than ideal pattern. Never fear, a couple of other skeins replaced them.

Before we leave I will get some projects started - the aforementioned hat, some socks and a crochet project. That way I will always have something to work on.

The Joy of One Project Knitting

 

2024 was the year where I really tried to reduce the number of projects I had on the go at any one time. I didn’t help my cause by starting two yearlong blankets but I had two sweeps during the year to get the numbers down. And now I am enjoying this effort by having very few WIPs and reducing the ones I work on over the same period of time. 

I have put all the blankets into one category of –well,-blankets – so that I work on just one until it is finished before working on another. Sometimes a blanket comes under the easy category and sometimes under the requires concentration category which means that I have to have an easy project ready to grab when both my main project and the blanket project are at require concentration stage. Not quite one project knitting.

In addition to the blanket project I have a main project. And, does it go quickly when that is all you work on. I wrote a post in 2021 that a project will take the same amount of time whether it is spread over a month or a year. Although that is not strictly true as if you are working consistently on the same project you are not delayed by having to check where you are in a pattern which happens when you haven’t worked on something for a while.

I have said many times, I do not know when I became a multi-project knitter. I think it comes from making a gift or participating in a knitalong and when that item is finished, not going back to the project that had been put aside. And that morphed into starting all the things at the beginning of the year so everything I wanted to knit, or thought I wanted to knit got started and then all the projects were worked on throughout the year. This resulted in many finished items in the last quarter of the year but gave me little to show during the year for all the time I was putting in to knitting.

The joy is working on one project and seeing it grow and knowing that when it is finished I can start something new and not go back to a project that was started months previously.

This piece was originally titled The Joy of Monogamous Knitting. Many knitters that work on one project at a time call themselves monogamous knitters. As I was writing and mentioning projects and blanket projects and back up projects, I realized monogamous was a misnomer but as I was searching for synonyms the definition of monogamous always came up in relation to a human relationship. Thus, I felt it was inappropriate to use in a title

 

 

An Unpopular Opinion

 

For the purpose of my discussion I am talking about wool, not cotton, linen or other plant-based/man-made fibers that have different qualities.

Also, this does not apply to 100% of knitted garments.

There is a trend to add darts to knitting patterns. Ostensibly to make the garment fit better – whatever that means. And for some people with big differences in various circumferential measurements, darts might be helpful but for the majority of people darts are not necessary.

Why is this? Knit fabric made from wool is a stretch fabric. Stretch fabric moves and drapes in a different way to woven fabric so openings, fastenings and shapings are not the same. Imagine using a T-shirt as a pattern base for a cotton top and then you try to put it on. Even if you do manage to get into it, it is not going to look or fit the same as your t-shirt even though they are both the same size. That delicate little button and loop at the back neck makes a lot of difference in being able to wear the garment.

Knit fabrics have less seamed shaping because any stitching stops the stretch of the fabric. Which may be what is required to stabilize the garment but if the fabric needs to stretch where the seam is placed what is going to happen? The seam will break.

Knitted garments have been fitting fine (not always perfectly because knitters and wearers are human after all) for many decades but now garments need shaping. Why this change? Let’s blame the internet. The internet has been good for the proliferation of knitting patterns and hand dyed yarns but this comes with the downside of the influx of people who have no idea what they are doing. They learn to knit, add some colourwork to a basic sweater design and know they’re a designer. But they know nothing about design or fabric characteristics. And with so much poor quality work on the internet, they are too inexperienced to know if the sweater pattern they are using as their base is any good or not. So a garment doesn’t fit, let’s add shaping rather than analyzing the problem.

The other reason for the change? Designers need a new thing to draw attention to themselves again. So let’s make a size-inclusive pattern with horizontal bust darts. And the person who can drum up the most attention for their pattern is the expert even if they were not the first nor the best.