Gails Yarns, Hooks & Needles

Translation: Friends, Romans, Countrymen.

This morning I listened to Wil Wheaton’s Radio Free Burrito, in which he recommends some other podcasts, and briefly mentions his spoken intro, “Hipsters, Flipsters, and Finger-Poppin’ Daddies, knock me your lobes,” mostly to say he never chooses music from the same hip era.

At the blog posting for this episode, where I looked for the recommended podcasts, I found a comment with links to improve Wil’s knowledge of Lord Buckley, the man who speaks that spoken intro.

I went to improve my knowledge.

If half what the website says in one article (specifically, A Most Immaculately Hip Aristocrat ) is true, then Lord Buckley more or less invented life as we know it! This is seriously amazing, and worth a look. Lord Buckley influenced so many cultural icons, and has been parodied so many times that he sounds familiar, even though I never heard of him, before today.

It seems to me I saw a reference Lord Buckley made to the hiposphere, which would be a direct ancestor of the words podosphere and blogosphere, and why we knew to spell and pronounce them exactly that way. I have hunted for a more precise reference but keep getting distracted, so now I’m giving it up and going to watch videos of the Lord.

A new supply of Brittany crochet hooks arrived today for the store! Supplies were getting low, but no more.

There is a movement to get a Hugo for StarShipSofa: The Audio Science Fiction Magazine, in the category Best Fanzine. This would make StarShipSofa the first ever podcast to get a Hugo and that would really make Editor Tony’s day. If you’re eligible (anyone who attended Worldcon in 2009 or will attend in 2010) to make nominations for Hugo Awards, they would appreciate some love.

I am connected to StarShipSofa because I volunteered to transcribe an episode for them. Tony wants to make a book using transcriptions of several of the earliest episodes, and I helped.It has been an enjoyable experience.

The beautiful organic cotton from Pakucho, via ecobutterfly, is on clearance, and marked down as far as I can mark it.

I have a swatch.

The Pakucho Organic Cotton is in the Moka Chocolate colorway. 100% Certified Organic Cotton, Sport Weight, 24 stitches and 36 rows to 4 inches with a 3.75 mm needle (US 5).

Left. Knit on size 4 KnitPicks circulars, 23.5 stitches to 4 inches, which is 5.875 stitches to the inch; the swatch measures 6.25 inches wide and 6 inches long, and has 37 stitches and 48 rows.

Right. Hand washed in Eucalan, it blocked out a bit larger than pre-blocking size, to 6 7/8” by 6”. It relaxed and squared up nicely. Gauge is now closer to 5 stitches per inch, which is a bit of a surprise.
The fabric is soft and supple; drapey, even. I’ve never blocked cotton before, and I’m pleased.

Currently I’m trying to knit a swatch with smaller size 3 needles, but it is heavy going. This cotton does not like the size three needles. Your mileage may vary! What I’m calling a size 3 is actually Kollage square 40″ circular needles. They measure as threes using any of my measuring devices.

Now that I have all these measurements and statistics, I am ready to try machine washing. Cold water first, then hot.

These have been entirely out of stock for a while, but now that’s fixed. Three more sets of each size are now in the store, and a new Brittany order is not far away.

Brittany Classic Double Pointed Needles, US size 11, (8 mm)                    Brittany Classic Double Pointed Needles, US size 13, (9 mm)