Fiber Dreams

As Susan so astutely noticed, cables are involved in the stitch pattern for my new socks. At least, cable needles are. No, actually, I didn’t mis-type that. Two cable needles are involved, used at the same time; one stitch goes on one of them, three on the other, and various manipulations ensue. It’s not difficult, per se, but it is unusual, and sort of complicated, though easy to remember as it’s the same every time. Most of the rows don’t involve these machinations, so over all it’s a fairly easy knit so far. And the bright color is most entertaining. I’m not quite sure I’d call the results a cable, though. It’ll be easier to see as I get more done.

I’m not sure how one would manage the stitch manipulation without a cable needle. It would be worth some experimentation, though not by me. I have always loved my cable needles—especially the nice little grooved wood ones—and have a hard time doing even a simple cable without them.

I modified a stitch pattern I found called Bow Tie. The original pattern stitch looked pretty cool, but the background stitches were fussy to do, and I find the two-cable-needles-at-a-time thing to be fussy enough. I removed those fussy background stitches, as well as a couple rows so that I could center the pattern more easily, and staggered the bow ties so they’ll go marching down the feet.

Fires

The great state of California has an entire web site dedicated to fires, Cal Fire. I’m not sure what that says about us exactly, but it is useful. And interesting. From their home page I have found that there are 23 fires currently burning in southern California, though 13 of them are now 100% contained. As fires are contained, a portion of the manpower is transferred to fires that are still uncontained, like the Santiago fire near me. Up until yesterday, the Santiago fire had at most 600 firefighters assigned to it, but now there are 1,100 firefighters working it. More equipment has been assigned to it, too, which is good as it’s still growing. This one fire has now burned 23,000 acres of land and consumed 14 homes. It’s nothing like the horrible Witch Fire down in San Diego, of course. That one’s still an incredible blaze, having burned nearly 200,000 acres and 645 homes so far; thousands more are threatened. And that’s just that one fire. Poor San Diego has nine fires currently going, though four of them are listed this morning as being contained.

The Santa Ana winds have finally blown themselves out. This is fabulous for the firefighters, but in a way bad for the rest of us, as they’re no longer blowing most of the smoke out to sea. Instead, the smoke is sitting here, collecting in the greater Los Angeles basin, making visibility non-existent; breathing remains a difficult challenge when outside in that stuff. Yesterday afternoon a combination of the angle of the sun and all that smoke made the day light orange, giving a post-holocaust feel to the world. Eerie. It’s not quite as orange out there right now. No telling what the afternoon will bring, though.

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Spam protection by WP Captcha-Free