Afghan Accountability Pix 2

[which_chick]

What it says on the tin, plus a Pothos Pole Project picture and some whining about doing stuff for my mother.



While in Harrisburg for Farm Show, I visited my mom, who handed over like six or eight small skeins of reclaimed silk yarn. (I hate knitting with nonstretchy bast fibers like linen, cotton, and silk, but I do it sometimes because failure to learn from prior experience is a hallmark personality trait of mine at this point.) These were skeins my mom got as a present from one of her friends who doesn't understand that my mom is never going to knit with skinny yarn. I am to make "a scarf" out of at least some of this skinny silk yarn so that mom can wear it in front of the friend or whatever.

So I got that underway. Mom doesn't often ask me for stupid projects but it happens sometimes and this is one of the times. It is a far less involved project than some of the ones I get suckered into doing, so... OK?

The last project I despised was The Heirloom Doily. (Mom got me a book of string crochet patterns and some string and some teeny crochet hooks and said "I like the picture on the cover, make me that one and then I will have an heirloom doily that I can pass down to you when I die." As you might reasonably expect, I was less than thrilled about that whole thing. (There are a series of very whiny but flocked blog posts about the heirloom doily project buried in the archives. Here's one of them, if you have the ability to read flocked posts. I used to be a lot funnier.)

Shitty xmas gift.
Very high-handed expectations.
Complete lack of understanding about how heirlooms WORK. If you know me at all, you have spotted that the last one was what pissed me off the most.

But, because I am, in my own way, a dutiful daughter, I made the fucking doily and I had it framed. While I was at my mom's house (having unexpectedly received this reclaimed silk yarn) I snapped a picture of the heirloom doily so that I could then produce this whiny-ass bitch of a blog post about my relationship with my mother. And here it is:



This time it's going to be a scarf. I've been through a couple of drafts (process knitter) of scarf with various patterns and needle sizes and so forth and I've gotten to where I am "This project is going to be television knitting, Onward Atheist Combatants!" Pics will follow at a later time.

I took a picture of the pothos which does seem to be "sizing up" its leaves as it climbs. (I also bought it its own personal fancy expensive lightbulb so that it would have an artificial sun to climb towards.)



And I did some spinning, this is the second spool of white single:



There will be plying this weekend, super exciting! And I have to round up my pvc niddy-noddy and stuff.

And I did some knitting. I got tired of House once Amber died (spoiler, I guess?) so now it's Weeds for knitting TV.

This is square #2, in progress.

Comments

[rattfan]

What sort of fancy expensive lightbulb did you get for your plant? If it's something available here, maybe my Devil's Ivy currently heading for the ceiling would like one! I *think* that's the same as pothos. If I know a plant's everyday name I tend to use that, except with stuff like Tradescantia, which used to be called Wandering Jew.

[which_chick]

I bought a "SANSI Grow Light Bulb with COC Technology, Full Spectrum 24W Grow Lamp (300 Watt Equivalent) with Optical Lens for High PPFD, Perfect for Seeding and Growing of Indoor Plants, Flowers and Garden" for $22 (all prices are US dollars) off Amazon. Locally there aren't tons of options and I'm not sure if WalMart is any better than Amazon on exploitation of workers, destruction of the local retail landscape... the whole thing feels very six of one, half dozen of the other when your choices are Amazon or WalMart.

It fits into a standard light bulb outlet and draws power like a traditional 24W bulb but like all LED grow lights, you get lots of light and not lots of heat. I also purchased a super-cheap "lightbulb socket on a cord" item for $15 from the hardware so that I'd have something to put the lightbulb into. It's currently suspended at an appropriate height using paracord tied to hooks set in the ceiling beams so that I can move the light higher as the plant grows. (I am not concerned about home decor. It's a plant room. For plants.)

Most of my plants (smaller and not expected to grow huge in a columnar form factor) are under standard 4' LED shop lights and do not have fancy special plant lights. My cacti grow under a pair of 10K lumen 4'shop lights, the orchids get one.

[unicornduke]

That doily is so amazing and I very much understand why it was a pain in the butt to make. Wow!

[which_chick]

I'm fundamentally uninterested in fiddly useless confections of white string, but it does look nice as a picture. And it was twenty years ago (2004). I should probably work on my Elsa for this sort of thing. (Let it go, let it go...)

[jlumen]

That doily is so intricate! But I get it. As much as I miss my mother, a small part of me thinks it for the best I picked up the fiber arts after she passed. I could see her now, with her lists of requests, likely for garments.