14/30: The Double Magic Highlighter Hoodie

[darkemeralds]

It's probably a coincidence, but following Friday's migraine-aura-neurotransmitter-cascade-hangover-hormonally-induced-brainstorm*, my brain shifted gears.





I recently bought some ridiculous yarn, merino wool in neon yellow, with ideas of making myself a hoodie.

Recent realizations about the limitations of my mind have led me to undertake relatively simple knitting projects from clear patterns designed by others. This has gone well. I've finished two successful projects and am nearly done with a third.

I wanted the Burn-Your-Retinas-Yellow Hoodie of Cycling Safety to incorporate some techniques I've barely begun to grasp, and for that, I needed a nice, clear pattern written by a pro. Unfortunately, hours of searching Ravelry turned up nothing remotely right.

So yesterday, in my slightly befogged neurochemical state, I started fiddling. I sketched. I examined commercial hoodies. I looked at sewing patterns. I cut shapes out of grocery bags. I was getting frustrated because my damn brain just would not grasp what I wanted it to grasp, to wit: how a hood could be worked seamlessly from the top down and then flow into the body of a seamless garment.

Then this weird thing happened. It was like I'd been accelerating and accelerating in second gear, tachometer edging worryingly into the red zone, when all at once, clutch, shift, and bam! I leaped ahead. Ten disparate things I already knew (some of them about knitting, some not) just coalesced into a method, and I understood what to do.

Fortunately I had a pen in my hand at the time. I'm 80% sure that I couldn't have retained the idea for more than a few seconds if I hadn't immediately scribbled some notes.

An unknown number of hours later (six, maybe? I know I looked up at one point astonished to see that it was dark out) I had a prototype of the shape that earlier in the day I'd been incapable of visualizing. And what's even stranger is that I think the technique I hit on might almost, maybe, be original.


You start in the center with Judy's Magic Cast On and knit in U-shaped rows with Magic Loop, so it's Double Magic, see?...


See how that works? No, I can barely grasp it myself. But it's cool!


I'm not saying that I want more migraines, but whatever's going on in my brain sure is productive right now.

I'm keeping project notes on Ravelrydarkemeralds if anyone's interested in details.

*which, by the way, is my wholly legitimate reason for being now two days behind in my commitment to Post Daily in June

Comments

[grrlpup]

That is so cool! My knitting is best described as "mostly rectangles...slowly," but I just friended you on Ravelry and look forward to following along. :)

[darkemeralds]

Mostly rectangles...slowly, is where I didn't spend nearly enough time originally, and hence my broken knitting-brain of recent years. This hood-shaping thing was the first sign that maybe connections are being rewired in there.

I've friended you back on Rav!

[dine]

wow, when your brain kicks into gear, you go places fast! that's going be so awesome; it's terrific that you've figured out a technique that's working so well - it won't be hard to spot you on the road wearing that, that's for sure

[darkemeralds]

This damn yarn is blinding! LOL.

[lamentables]

That's my experience with understanding most complicated stuff.
The PhD I've been working on for the last 10 million years proceeds in a similar way, including drawing on stuff that is not obviously connected. And in the opposite direction, sometimes extensive PhD thinking causes unrelated issues from years ago to spontaneously resolve themselves.

[darkemeralds]

I would love to know more about this, particularly that second part, where unrelated issues resolve themselves. Got a handy example?

[ravurian]

As I said in chat: well done! Those magic moments are few and far between, but when you get that synthesis of skill, talent, and intention, there's very little to match it.

Are you planning to treat that hoodie so it's waterproof?

[darkemeralds]

For some reason the concept of waterproofing a piece of merino wool handknitting makes me laugh. I'm picturing fuzzy fibers encased in a kind of semi-flexible transparent silicone. Then I turn into a sort of stiff-armed bike-riding robot, or maybe a character from Riddley Walker with my "hardclof" jacket.

In actual fact, the climate here is such that when it's cold enough to warrant full merino coverage, it's probably not going to be raining, and when it is raining, it's probably slightly too warm for bike-riding in full merino coverage.

Or, to be uncharacteristically brief: Nope.

A Pillar of Salt

[executrix]

I realize that there are serious problems with health-info-by-proxy but I had the same visual phenomenon (I thought of mine like a crumpled ribbon of bar code) twice in the past two weeks. I never had it before. I had an eye exam today and told the optometrist, who agreed with me that it sure sounded like an optical migraine. He said that as long as they're infrequent and of short duration they're trivial, and said that there were so many possible triggers it would be hard to guess what caused it.

Re: A Pillar of Salt

[darkemeralds]

Thank you for the extra corroboration! After much research and the comments of so many friends here, I'm not worried about the single incident--and probably won't worry if it recurs, unless it becomes a seriously frequent event, or its character changes.

I'm beginning to picture a kind of menu of triggers: low barometer, hormonal fluctuations, other neuro-chemical events (mild shock or trauma-reactivation, for instance), impending earthquake, high levels of common stress, bad dietary choices, inadequate hydration, and probably a dozen others. Any one of them is probably inconsequential, but get two or more going in close proximity and I'd bet on a migraine.

My week leading up to this particular aura-migraine contained everything but the earthquake. In retrospect, the event doesn't surprise me at all.

[tehomet]

Clever!

Looking at the pictures is like that moment when I was learning to sew, when I figured out how to change the pattern pieces into actual trousers. It was like magic! *shazam*

[darkemeralds]

Oh my gosh, yes! For me it was setting a sleeve into an armscye, making a complex set of opposing curves go together from two flat pieces of fabric. Amazing. I still wonder at the minds who originally thought up tailoring.

[tehomet]

Yes, they were awesome, whoever they were.

I remember when I was eleven or twelve, reading The Valley of the Horses, or one of the books in that series. There's a bit where the lead character invents stitching two things together by shoving a sinew through holes made by an awl, and my tiny mind boggled: the inventions of the awl! The sinew as thread! The idea of stitching or lacing things together! And the eventual inventor of the needle was a further exponential step forwards, of course. We really do take them for granted.

[darkemeralds]

In "A History of the World in 100 Objects" (which BBC Radio aired a few years ago), they move through human history on the framework of objects in the collection of the British Museum. The first one is a stone tool--a hand-size piece of stone with some bits flaked off it to form a primitive edge. They talk about how this portable tool expanded the horizons of early homo sapiens (I think it was sapiens)--now people could travel, make stuff along the way, literally cut a swath in the world.

The whole series was like that, suggesting the million ways in which one invention forms the basis for other inventions in an exponential growth of human ingenuity (with all the good and evil that gives rise to).

It's a subject that fascinates me endlessly.

(I never read the Clan of the Cave Bear books, but their author, Jean Auel, is a fellow Portlander, and I used to see the modest compact car she drove after her massive book success, with the vanity license plate "AYLA".)

[tehomet]

It's a subject that fascinates me endlessly.

Me, too.

(I never read the Clan of the Cave Bear books, but their author, Jean Auel, is a fellow Portlander, and I used to see the modest compact car she drove after her massive book success, with the vanity license plate "AYLA".)

Ooh, awesome. :)