KTS: also-ran / predictive

Tonight is the deadline for the first knitting sprint, and in case the previous posts did not tip you off: no, I didn't make it to the armholes on the double knitted jacket. However, I did make decent progress, and I got a lot of the planning (re)done, so I'm pleased. I'm sure I'll be even more pleased when I get to wear said jacket, but tonight I'll take what I can get.

Usually I post a KTS blog just after I've given up on knitting for the day. Today I'm about to start (okay, after a little bit more of tooling around on the computer). The Cheshin is visiting Toronto this weekend, so I did a bit of tidying up in readiness. Although far from as tidy as I want it to be (that's partly what KTS is about, clearing up space), it's a lot better than it was twenty-four hours ago.

If it's still the weekend when you read this, enjoy.

KTS: the light pours out of me

I wound up working on the double knitted jacket on the TTC again today, and had one of Those Conversations. If you've ever made stuff in public, you know how they go.

A woman asked what I was making, so I told her and showed her the photo of the finished jacket in my pattern book. She oohed and aaahed over it for a few seconds, then said she could barely manage granny squares. Uh huh. In point of  fact, granny squares and double knitting are roughly equal in complexity, but I knew I wasn't going to win that argument. Instead I just said you can do a lot with granny squares (it's true, after all), and told her about Attic 24. Attic 24 is a great place to go if you need inspiration.

That was the other thing: the woman told me I was inspiring several times during our brief conversation. She asked me twice about Attic 24 and said she was going to hit the internet and find it as soon as she got home.

It's funny: if you work on something creative in public, sooner or later you will get told you are inspirational. Yet most people don't even bring a book to read on their commute.

I think the perfect transit situation would be everyone on the bus or subway reading, knitting, embroidering, or whatever else took their fancy. Machine-knit sock and mitten sales would plummet, but there would be fewer bored people in the world.

KTS: health

Well that didn't take long.

I was supposed to go out tonight. Instead, I went home, had a nap, and woke up around half an hour ago — just in time to go to bed properly.

So no knitting tonight, but I think I did the right thing by staying in and taking care. There will be even less getting done if burnout occurs.

I did get some mental knitting done at lunch today — I'm pretty sure I have the rows figured out to get the double knitted jacket done without running out of yarn.

Stay tuned...

KTS: better

Tonight I went to Yonge & Dundas Square for a free outdoor screening of Harold and Maude. It was all the ever-cool Tara's idea, and we went together.

On the way downtown I managed to cast on and knit a few rounds of the second hearts & harps (aka Kristi) sock. So that is finally underway properly again.

But it's past midnight, and this is the second day this week that I haven't worked on the double knitted jacket. I'm going to lose that sprint I planned. Still, I have tomorrow night (except I'm going out), Thursday night (ditto), and Friday night to catch up. Let's see how close to the goal I can get.

KTS: curse you, Newtonian physics!

In another branch of the multiverse, I had a fabulous night knitting my double knitted jacket. The second hearts & harps sock got cast on and started correctly. Everything was peachy.

In this reality, I got home at 8 PM and proceeded to get my Tuesday serial episode out. Some weeks it only takes half an hour. This time it took all night. Ironically, it's a much shorter word count than I usually do.

So, no new knitting news today. Means I have to catch up tomorrow.

KTS: context is everything

Today I got up relatively early for a Sunday, knitted, got ready to go out, knitted some more, got on the streetcar, and knitted whilst in transit. I knitted standing up waiting with J-A for her friend Geoffrey to show up so we could all watch The Amazing Spider-Man together. I knitted before and after the meal at the restaurant we went to, and sitting at the Starbucks we went to afterwards. Then I knitted on the streetcar all the way home.

(I didn't knit during the film because it can bother other people, and because, since I was working on the colourwork double knitted jacket, I need light to see what I'm doing. Also, I'm not going to spend twenty bucks to sit in the dark and knit.)

The double knitted jacket got some appreciable progress made on it, although not as much as I was hoping for the weekend. It did, however, make me think.

I've never been shy about knitting in public the way some people are. I know sometimes strangers tell you it's offensive. Why it should be so, I've never been able to figure out. Are you making everyone else feel bad because they're sitting there like lumps while you get something done? That might explain why no-one with a book to read in public has ever told me I'm being offensive.

But knitting on transit and during "wait" times meant that I got a lot more knitting done today than I have on the days when I've just worked on it at home. At home I only last a few rows. Today, in public, I just wanted to knit.

It made me a little worried. What if all this knitting in transit and knitting socially has kind of ruined me for knitting by myself?

The other thing to consider is that the double knitted jacket is not "TV knitting." I can't sit down with it and pop a DVD on to watch. That means that since this meta-project started, I've been rediscovering my music collection. Before, I'd drifted into the habit of only listening to music in the car — stupid since I've actually got a decent-sounding (if inexpensive) home stereo, whereas my car stereo is noticeably awful.

Maybe that's one of the reasons why these projects weren't getting done: they didn't have a proper context. Making the deadline is forcing me to create contexts where they can be worked.

KTS: this is your brain on knitting

Late last night (more like early this morning) I managed to find some of the yarn I'm going to need for some of the things on the project list. I found the most likely candidate for the black sock yarn I need to complete the Space Invaders socks:

I also discovered that the most likely candidate for the correct grey yarn was already stowed away with the partially finished sock in the photo above.

The fractal cardigan that is already on the needles and therefore counts as a fifteenth project had its photo taken today:

I found some of the yarn I need with it, but not all. Still, it's something. What's in the photo is the lower back and the start of the sleeves.

Today I was on the subway and hanging out downtown a lot. I took the first timeslot to go see the Picasso exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario, met J-A for lunch, did some bookstore shopping, and then hit the library on the way home to pick up some DVDs I'd put on hold. During that time, I made zero progress on my knitting. Oh, I was knitting. I even knitted a lot. But I kept screwing up the casting on and first two rounds of the mate to the hearts and harps (Kristi) sock:

So the only thing for it (obviously) is to sit down quietly tomorrow morning and get that sucker going before it completely kills my progress. The thing is, the second sock is a mirror image of the first one, so I have to read the charts backwards. This should not be a big deal. I have been reading charts backwards for as long as I have been reading charts — since the early 80s. And I've read a lot of charts. I got into knitting right during the height of the last Great Age of Intarsia, when conversations about knitting would go like this:

"What are you working on?"

"Oh, you know, the koala bear."

"Is there anything on the back?"

We were all using DK and worsted weight yarns, and we were all making oversized pullovers with dropped sleeves, the better to knit pictures into them. The pictures were all that was left to talk about.

I screwed up that sock chart three times this morning.  I really don't want to make it a fourth.

Speaking of chart knitting, the last bit of yarn hunting I did in the wee hours of the morning was to find the rest of the yarn for the double knitted jacket:

I did find it, which is good. I even figured out which rows to omit to get the jacket to work. I think.

Speaking of the jacket, the yarn sprint is going... haltingly. Already the amount done in the photo is noticeably shorter than what I have now, but I need to get a lot more done. Which is as good a prompt as any to go do it.

KTS: the numbers

I don't seem to be having any trouble finding opportunities to work on my easier, more portable projects. Tomorrow I'm going to the Picasso exhibit at the AGO, then run around getting some errands done downtown. Sunday I may wind up watching the new Spider-Man film with J-A & G (woo hoo! culture weekend!).

That leaves the double knitting jacket to work on. It's still portable enough to, say, bring over to someone's house (if it's a knitting-friendly environment), but it's too awkward to work on in transit.

There's also a time-and-labour factor to it. There's about 60 rows to the armholes (depending on how much I wind up taking out to accommodate how much yarn I have left). A row takes nearly half an hour to work. So if I get 3 rows done every day on it, that means it will take 20 days just to get to the armholes. That leaves the upper back, upper fronts, and sleeves to do on top of that.

That's too long. Thus starts the first Knit that Shit Sprint: get to the armholes by this time (Friday night) next week.

There's a temptation to say, "Okay, so 12 rows in 5 days, plus a couple of days for slack," but in real life stuff like this gets done on the weekends. In other words, Saturday and Sunday nights' posts better show some real progress.

On that joyful note, I'm going to settle in to do a few more rows before I go to bed tonight.

that shit is KNIT

Tonight I got together with a bunch of knit friends for dinner. Because we were out and about, I packed my hearts & harps socks (the Kristi sock from Sock Innovations).

Progress at last. I managed to finish the first sock of the pair. Here's the evidence (photo taken at the restaurant to prove I do get out and about):

See the teeny tiny ball of yarn beside the sock? That's how much I had left. It's about five metres. In terms of sock-making, that's really going down to the wire, especially on a pattern like that has lots of cables (cabled patterns use up more yarn than plain).

So: the work is on its way. Now what I'd really like to do tonight (except it's getting late and I have to finish off my Friday Flash for tomorrow) is get another row and a half done on the double knitted jacket.

KTS: well that sucks

This morning I found four of the crocheted flowers I need for the Doris Daymat Mark II, plus the yarn with which to make some more. This is reassuring, because I only remembered two flowers, and it means that I'm a little bit further ahead than I thought I was.

That's the good news. The bad news is that I also discovered one more project to go on the KTS list: a fractal jacket I started about four years ago whilst standing in queues at the Toronto International Film Festival. The previous year I had knitted most of a Sunrise Circle jacket in the queues (people would check nervously on my progress, realising it was a tangible way to see just how long you wind up standing in those queues with your pre-ordered ticket).

So the year after the Sunrise Circle I decided to make a fractal jacket with random stripes using the snakeskin rule from Debbie New. Because, you know, nothing makes standing in line at a film festival more fun than carting around 600g of knitting yarn and constantly searching for flat surfaces on which to roll a six-sided die (to determine the row height of the next stripe). Any time I got a weird look from someone, I'd explain that I finished nearly an entire jacket in line the previous year, so I needed a bigger challenge. Usually they'd come around and say something encouraging. Usually.

Tonight I got some more done on the double knitted jacket, but also had some more depressing thoughts about it. More on that tomorrow.

KTS: strategy development

The first day of KTS had a lot of opportunities for reaching goals. It also had some conclusions that were, well, shitty.

After a good discussion with the ever-practical J-A last night, I did a rough sort of the projects into two categories: "easy to knit in public/socially" and "headbreakingly difficult".

Easy to knit in public/socially means:

• small enough to carry around comfortably
• able to talk to other people and knit without screwing up the pattern
• not so weird-looking that strangers on the subway will keep asking what the hell it is

Headbreakingly difficult means:

• the project and/or amount of yarn needed to be on hand is too large to carry around comfortably in a garbage bag
• the knitter is slave to the pattern, needing to check the instructions several times per round/row
• the project has previously encouraged strangers on the subway to ask what the hell it is

The current strategy is to keep one project in the "easy" category in a small bag and take it out in public/socially. The first project up for this are the "hearts and harps" socks, whose proper pattern name is "Kristi":

Since this photo was taken on the weekend, I've got one more motif repeat done. One more repeat after that and some toe shaping, and I should have a finished sock to blog about. Which means... I'll be at the 50% mark with that particular project.

I picked the double knitted jacket as the difficult project. It really is freaking difficult, and tedious, and heavy, and impossible to work on when there are other people around. I've tried in the past, and I always wind up ripping out what I did. On 420 stitches, that is no fun. Each row of that thing takes over half an hour.

On the other hand, unlike some of the other stuff on this list, I'm looking forward to wearing this one.

This isn't going to be a series of daily "ta-da" moments. This is going to be more like watching a marathon or the Tour de France. Except, you know, knitting. Stay tuned...

and so it begins

When the film Julie & Julia came out, some of my friends were very insistent that I see it.

"It'll be inspiring," they said.

"It'll give you confidence you can be published," they said.

Instead I sat through a film that was all about getting published thanks to an almost always-supportive husband (which I don't have), and thanks to a blog written in 2002 (which I didn't have, and it's not 2002 anymore). Although I thought Julie Powell's Project was super-cool, it was pretty depressing as far as "inspiring" films go.

But since Nora Ephron passed away recently, it reminded me that I always wanted to give the Julie and Julia book a go, so I read it this past weekend.

And it was still depressing, for much the same reasons.

But, because I finished these socks during the same weekend, it gave me an idea for a Project of my own. So I went around the apartment, gathered all the stuff I already had on the needles (or hook), and made a blog page, and a title.

I called it Knit That Shit (and Crochet, Too!). The goal is to get all the stuff in the photos done before 1 January 2013. So I have almost exactly six months to finish the fourteen projects I already have on the go. I also have beading and sewing stuff to do, but those will be kind of... bonus things.

Usually I keep my posts pretty G-rated (but not always), but it was the only catchy thing I could think of that had the appropriate attitude. Besides, it goes with the whole Julie & Julia aesthetic.

If I'm going to make this work, I'm going to have to check in once a week day and whenever I finish something. I doubt very much this will lead to a book deal, but it will definitely lead to a tidier apartment, and I'm all for that.

Stay tuned.

milestone socks

They are done.

These are one of the three pairs of socks I was working on when my back went out just over a year ago, thanks to a drunk driver rear-ending me two years prior to that (actually, he rear-ended the car behind me — he hit three cars in total that night). For a while, I couldn't knit at all, although I did find I could crochet whilst lying down. If you scan back through my blog posts, you'll see that I have been making a certain amount of stuff since I've gone into spinal maintenance mode. There were a lot of things lying around half-done though, these socks included.

I know they're just socks, but it feels so good to have this pair off the needles. For one thing, the needles I was using for them were my favourite set — the grandmother who taught me how to knit gave them to me when I was in high school, and I use them for almost every pair of socks I make. For another, the pattern is a lace-and-cables super-complex thing from Cookie A's Sock Innovations book. I love Cookie A's designs, but I have the earlier edition of the book that only has everything in small sizes, so I had to do some extra work to make a version that would actually fit me.

Finishing these socks made me more aware of just how much stuff is lying around on the needles in my apartment. Some of it I started but set aside because it was wool and the Toronto summer squelched down on us like a sponge soaked in boiling water. Some of it got put away before I had friends over and then wasn't dug out again after they left. Some of it isn't very portable, or needs a lot of attention paid to a pattern chart. Some of it got set aside while I made a gift for someone, and then I never found my way back to it.

So I'm going to start a Project, with a capital P. Yesterday was the first day of the second half of 2012. My goal is to have all the stuff I'm going to list finished by New Year's Eve.

As I wrote those last two sentences, I thought of two more things I need to photograph and add to the list. Julie Powell ain't got nothing on me in the nutty deadline department.

all settled in for the zombie apocalypse

The interesting thing about DIY is that you can do a completely accurate estimate for how long something should take... and then be off by several weeks because one simple task pushes you way out of your comfort zone.

For Cheshin's birthday (13 March), I started working these zombie cross-stitch embroideries I got as a kit of all things. No problem: cross-stitching was one of the first things I ever learned how to do with a needle. I was three or four years old when I mastered this stitch.

The cross-stitching went well and was easy enough, although the floss from the kit had a bad habit of tangling and knotting on itself.

Then came the part where I had to cut the fabric into strips of the correct height and width, sew a cushion top, and then sew a matching back. I'd decided to make "sandwich baggie" backs with overlapping panels instead of installing a zipper. Partly this is because I've never installed a zipper in my life, and partly because I hate it when you lean your head on a cushion and get a cold metal zipper tab pressing into your face.

All well and good, except that I am absolutely awful at cutting fabric. I mean seriously awful. It doesn't matter how carefully I measure, or how painstaking I am about cutting on the line — the fabric will shift and come out crooked, every single time. In point of fact, there is a sample of fabric missing from the these photos, because one length of fabric got so butchered that I couldn't get anything usable out of it and had to buy a replacement.

Once I got to the sewing part, it wasn't so bad. I can operate a sewing machine well enough to do basic straight stitch without embarrassing myself too much. I even remembered to not reinforce the top stitching around the embroidery, and to bring the threads to the back to knot instead. (In case you are good at sewing and are having a good laugh because this is such a basic thing... hey, I'm a phobic sewer. Everyone has their weak spots.)

The happiest coincidence in this process is that when I went to buy the replacement fabric, I found something that repeated a motif from fabric I already had: the brain-cushion's white flowers are a scaled-up version of the ones on the hand-cushion.

These were also good confidence-builders. I now feel better about sewing the dining room chair covers I reverse-engineered the pattern for months ago, and about sewing the vintage-style purses I got the pattern book for even more months ago.

Here's the trio in their new home on Cheshin's chaise longue (photo by Cheshin, naturally):

two designs in one

Sometimes I think each issue of Knitty is a challenge whereby knitters have to pull inspiration and recombine the pattern ideas to make something totally new. Or, as many of my knitting friends would tell me, I think too much.

It's hard to ignore coincidences like this, though. I've been wanting to make one of those cardigans with very long fronts, sort of like shawls with sleeves, and Knitty featured one called Daedalus in its Spring + Summer 2011 issue. I loved the shape, the instructions, and the faux cable border. Even though I liked the staggered eyelet pattern called for in the original design, though, I thought it was a shame that there wasn't a feather pattern. I've had a thing for shawls with feather patterns ever since I saw a magnificent example of one someone else had made at the Naked Sheep.

As it happens, in the very same issue of Knitty, there was a shawl pattern called Lilah that featured lace feather motifs. Again, the original pattern is goregeous, but it was just one of those peanut-butter-and-chocolate moments where two separate things combined very well.

I decided to just keep the faux cable pattern at the top of the Daedalus cardigan (instead of the top and bottom as in the original), and use the Lilah feathers for the rest of the body and the sleeves. To make things symmetrical, I knitted from the centre back on a provisional cast-on for one half of the jacket, then from the centre back again for the other half. The feather motifs were lengthened to match the pattern repeat length of the faux cables, the faux cables were mirror imaged to make knitting from the centre back easier, and the sleeves were knitted from the top down instead of side to side as in the original.

Hardly took any work at all. No, really, it didn't. The feather motifs all have a central part where you just repeat the same pattern row X amount of times to make up the length, and the Daedalus schematic clearly shows how big the sleeves need to be (and they're just plain rectangles, so no shaping to recalculate).

I decided that the final feathers should be twice the length of the overlapping ones. Because of how the motif transitions work, the final row of feathers is slightly longer than the second-last row — perfect. Here's the body drying on the floor after being stretched out with blocking wires (the light-coloured short lines in the cardigan are waste yarn which was unpicked to create armholes):

I did a little bit of fudging at the centre back so that the flip line where the lace mirror images is a true flip, instead of being half a stitch off as in "normal" knitting in the reverse direction. Since I rotated the working of the sleeves by ninety degrees, I set them into the body of the cardigan using a three-needle bind-off.

The finished cardigan is wonderful warm to wear, but light and comfortable.

Should mention: the yarn is Tove by SandnesGarn, and it was only five dollars a ball at Romni. It's not the softest stuff in the world, but I've just been wearing a t-shirt under the cardigan and it's been fine. It comes in lots of colours, and is a heavy fingering/light sport weight. The dark colour rubbed off on my hands when I was knitting it, but since washing and block it's behaved itself.

getting warmer

I finally found a beret pattern I liked to go with the mittens I made last winter, which in turn were made to be in the same colour scheme as the gloves (scroll down) I made the winter before that. The pattern is Ogiku from Knitty; the original has beautiful colours, but it renders into the red-and-black theme I have going very well:

The sides of the beret feature profile views of a similar Japanese chrysanthemum motif.

Now I just need a red-and-black scarf to go with all of this, and I might be ready for winter after all.

faux twinset

I made this faux twinset cardigan from a knit.1 pattern:

It's knit from the top down, and since I had already bought both the purple yarn and the buttons for a different project, it even counts as stash reduction.

Modifications: the original pattern instructed the knitter to work the cardigan in intarsia after the collar was completed. No thanks — I made the olive green part first, then worked the blackberry stitch fronts. I'm okay with intarsia when it's the right technique to use, but managing five full balls of yarn just to avoid four perfectly straight seams is silly.

I also got rid of the strip of contrast-colour blackberry stitch that was supposed to go in the back. The whole reason I wanted to make this is because it looks like you're wearing a cardigan under another cardigan. Having a stripe down the back would ruin the effect.

The third major modification was to change the straight neck to a deep crew neck. The original pattern didn't have the collar dip down like that. I noticed that the photo in the magazine showed the model wearing the top few buttons undone to create a neckline, and decided to knit that in. It makes for a more comfortable neck, and it sits better.

The one thing I wish I had done was make the collar deeper as well. It needs it with the more-rounded neckline, but that wasn't obvious to me when I was working it top-down. Live and learn.

creative leftovers

Over ten years ago I bought a pair of classic Roots boots with some gift certificates I'd won at work. It was definitely not about fashion — I was just sick of having to worry about falling down on Toronto's icy sidewalks every winter.

To my great surprise, the boots have held up, although they're no longer as waterproof as they used to be. Usually at the most I get two seasons out of a pair of winter boots.

The one thing that does keep wearing out on these are the bootlaces. For years I would buy replacement laces, but this was a bigger deal than it sounds because for some reason it's hard to find replacement laces for boots (shoes are easy, but not boots).

I finally remembered reading about I-cord laces in an old copy of Interweave Knits, grabbed my Inox I-cord maker, and cranked off some of my own.

Turns out I-cord makes great laces for hiking-style boots. If you leave the tails on the ends of the I-cord, it's easy to pull the laces through the grommits, and if you use leftover variegated sock yarn like I did, you can get a nice funky look going:

Just make sure to take into account that the laces will stretch a little once you use them a few times. I couldn't get the laces comfortably into the top grommits when I first made the laces, but now they not only fit, but they're plenty left over for tying them up.

a new adventure in bread

Things I Shouldn't Get So Excited About #402: bread-making. It's not like it's that hard. It's just that the variables are so fun to play with, and even when you screw up, the results are often edible. Okay, not always by humans, but something.

Last night I decided to make the walnut and onion bread I'd originally planned for 2 February (Candlemas). The ingredients listing was definitely wrong (2/3 cup of flour to 1 cup of milk? Really?), so I kept adding flour until it seemed right to me. I also read the instructions incorrectly and proofed the yeast with all of the milk instead of just a quarter-cup. Oh well, the yeast didn't seem to mind. I made a single one-pound loaf instead of shaping the dough into two baguette-type loaves as well, and had to adjust the baking accordingly.

I refuse to be one of those stereotypical Canadians who overheat their homes in the winter, so my apartment is a little cooler than average. That's fine for me, but not yeast. Usually I let the dough rise in a cold oven, reasoning that it's at least draft-free, but last night I had a brainwave: why not turn the oven light on to warm up the inside of the oven, but not so much that it will kill the yeast? I tried it, and the yeast loved it. I bake with wholegrain spelt flour, so usually I wind up with denser bread than if I used white wheat flour anyhow, but dough rose much better this way.

Here's what the results looked like:

It tasted wonderful, especially with the soft cheese the recipe recommended. I put some brie on a slice and it was divine.

The adventure didn't have a completely happy ending — I underbaked it a little and so the centre was still a little on the moist side. Next time I'll add 10 more minutes to the baking time.

Final version of the recipe:

Ingredients

• 1 cup of warm milk
• 1 sachet of regular bread yeast (not instant)
• 1 generous teaspoon of honey
• 1.5 teaspoons sea salt
• 2 tablespoons butter at room temperature
• about 2 1/2 cups of wholegrain spelt flour (aha! maybe it was 2-3 cups originally)
• half a red onion, finely chopped
• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Method

• Mix the honey into the warm milk.
• Add the yeast and let proof for 10 minutes. The mixture should be foaming.
• Meanwhile, measure the flour, place in a mixing bowl, and make a well.
• Add the butter and salt to the milk/yeast mixture and stir until combined.
• Add the milk/yeast mixture to the flour and mix/knead until combined.
• Turn the dough out onto a floured board or a nonstick pastry sheet (my preference) and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic —10-15 minutes.
• Place the dough in the mixing bowl, cover with clingfilm and place in a cold oven. Turn the oven light on to warm up the oven just a little. Leave until the dough is almost doubled in size — about 2 hours.
• Punch down the dough and gradually knead in the chopped onion and walnuts until they are evenly distributed throughout the dough.
• Form the dough into a loaf shape and place it in a loaf pan (I use silicon; if you use a regular tin, grease it first). Cover with clingfilm and return it to the cold oven with the light on for 30 minutes.
• Remove the loaf from the oven and preheat the oven to 350F. Leave the loaf in a draft-free area until the oven is preheated.
• Remove the clingfilm and bake the bread until it is golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped. I baked mine for 30 minutes, but 40 minutes is probably better.

sugru you

I know I haven't updated this blog in ages, but it's not because I haven't been doing any DIY — far from it. A few of the bigger projects are still not yet ready for prime time, but a lot of other ones are completed.

The ever-cool Cathy gave me several packs of Sugru for my birthday last year. Sugru is a kind of silicon clay that has the texture and viscosity of stiff plasticine when fresh, and is sort of like an old-school pink pencil eraser when cured. It comes in lots of fun colours, and is intended to be used to "hack things better" — to repair, make, and improve things.

I went on the web site and had a look at the suggested uses to get an idea of what to do with the stuff. It's one of those things that when you first encounter it, you think, "that's interesting, but I don't know if I'd ever use it," but then once you find the first use, you can't stop finding things to do with it.

Not all of my attempts were successful (the web site warns you about that), but everything I made with it last autumn is still working great.

The very first thing I did was use a pack of Sugru to make better (and semi-permanent) cushions for a pair of cell phone earbuds I have. The original ones were constantly coming off and getting lost, and just weren't that comfortable. I got this straight off the Sugru web site, so no photos.

The next thing I did was a bit more original. My laundry room (more like a laundry closet) just has a bare light bulb sticking out of the wall to illuminate it. The room is so tiny and crowded the bare bulb has a hard time lighting what I need to see, so a proper shade did not appeal. Instead, I made this so-ugly-it's-fun beaded cage to put around the light. The Sugru is the blue and orange stuff next to the wall. It holds the main structural wires together and pads the wall against the wire of the cage:



The idea for a light bulb cage came from a photo of Little Edie's room at Grey Gardens.

My first experiments showed that Sugru is best for sealing something (including something that needs to be waterproof, since it's silicon), or making something more ergonomic, or padding something. Next time I get some packets of it I'm going to check over the suggestions for shoe repair on the web site very carefully.