19 September 2006

Sunday is for Sandisk corruption/scramble

Since I wrote that I knew of three sets of stairs acting as streets and/or bridging two streets, I've discovered another and remembered one I'd forgotten.

The one I found is part of the weird set of streets one finds tucked up in Mission Hills South of Washington Street and above the Shake's and El Indio.

Since I'd not done a Whistlestop outing this month I'd forgotten about the Cypress Street stairs that run from the North end of Cypress at Florida up to Cypress at Alabama.

I also hadn't gone up Upas from Florida to Alabama in a while and since the route that follows Upas to 30th is the more challenging route, I decided to push myself a bit.

Being inspired to do a bit of documenting the differences, I packed the digital camera along with the knitting and set out for the Whistlestop.

One the way I dipped down and took a shot of the Cypress Street stairs, then proceeded on to Upas where I took a shot looking up both hills (Florida to Park) and Florida to Alabama before heading East to Alabama.

Along the way, I took shots of the hills, my knitting, the bocce courts and the route back including the Cypress street stairs from Alabama and also the Cypress hill from Florida up to Indiana. Sunday is for Sandisk corruption/scramble.

Now that I have two "can the images be retrieved" media cards I can either shrug it off and reformat the cards or check out some of the local data recovery firms. Since the firms tend to have a free eval and/or a no recovery no charge, I'm inclined to go that route before wiping them clean and hoping that it is just the media and not the camera in death throes causing the corruption.

On the knitting front, one of my on again off again play/puzzle me this projects is Montse Stanley's "Oblique" sweater vest shown in one of the colour plates of my edition of Knitter's Handbook. Her pithy description and the dark colour of the garment makes for an interesting puzzle. Over the years I've not broken the code to what she did but my efforts have produced some interesting construction options that make even failure a valuable effort.

For some reason or another the pentagon sleeves project continues to be a push me, pull you three steps forward and back affair. Maybe I'm just distracted but I decided that another day of knitting that ends with frogging was something to be avoided so I returned to the Stanley problem.

The idea was a ribbed diagonal/bias knit vest that would shift the direction of the rib welts from diagonal to vertical and back through short rows. The original idea was to start from the bottom side and knit diagonally until one side reached the armhole length before turning the short rows on what would be the centre front.

Since the whole idea was just a what if exercise, it made for perfect walkabout and Whistlestop (read social) knitting. Before heading out the door, I marked my turning point with to track my progress and ease documenting the knitting (after all this was to be one of two symmetrical fronts). I chose to stairstep/turn by two stitches rather than one which made for gentler turn of the corner by the ribbing welts.

By the time I had 8 or so welts rounding the corner, I was seeing a good neckline treatment and I wasn't 100% certain that the sharp mitre from using one stitch at a time mightn't have been a better choice for my original purpose. I took a couple of digital images while crossing Sweitzer Canyon just in case I opted to frog rather than shift purposes.

The more I worked, the less I found myself wanting to tear back and pursue the original plan with this yarn. Again, I've not cracked the code but I've found something of value to add to my bag of design tricks. Although it would only have been an afternoon's knitting lost, given the Sunday media meltdown, I'm glad I opted to follow this particular design detour.

Roughly 2/3rd (40 stitches out of 61) of the stitches turn the corner with short rows. Instead of being a bottom up knit garment it's a top down that begins on a diagonal with side increases that shape the neckline and the armhole. The short row shaping gently curves the neckline and shifts the diagonal ribbing to a vertical.

I'm nearing the end of the first skein of Plymouth's Stone Cotton (Needlecraft Cottage sale drawer 2004/2005?). I'm about 7.5 more inches shy of my preferred garment length, so I don't think this skein will stretch to that. With a total of four skeins (106 yds per 50grs), I suspect that either the back will be knit from some other yarn or be a very low back indeed.

In addition to a nice stash of fine gauge Lang cottons in an appropriate colour, I also have a single skein of another smaller gauge cotton that will do very nicely for an edge treatment.

If I decide to create the back out of something else, I might just do fronts to two different garments -- one based on this treatment and a second that follows the original design plan/path.

The yarn reminds me of Classic Elite's Sand. It isn't as nubby and it may just be the rather rough hand combined with the interplay of the dark and light of this particular shade.

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