Pâté Chinois

What do you get when you take this



and knit it up into a panel for the bridge knitting project? Answer: this



This square is plain old stockinette with a bunch of garter ridges for interest. I really like how this "circus" yarn knit up.

(Just so you know, the yarn was custom-made for me by Liz. She took a ball each of two colourways of Wendy Fusion, Saffron and Allspice, and plied them together on her spinning wheel. I am currently trying to imagine whether I might be capable of accomplishing the same outcome somehow with my drop spindle, so that I can have more of this wonderful custom yarn to work with.)

I have to ration my knitting now. I can do a couple of hours in one night, like I did last night for the SWK Knit & Chat, but I have to make a point of skipping at least a day in between. (For the record, I did not. I continued to knit today. I am...feeling it. Unfortunately.)

In the meantime, I am having fun dreaming up wild combinations of yarn for striped panels I will knit for the bridge. I might also branch out into wonky log cabin squares, which would be a fun way to take scraps of ordinary yarn and do something funky with it.
* * *
On a different note, this was one of the entries in the World Wide Words newsletter today, 27 March 2010:

MATHEMATICAL CROCHETERS TRIUMPH In the issue of 27 February (see
http://wwwords.org?I679N4), you may have read about the shortlisted
entrants for the Diagram prize run by The Bookseller, which rewards
the oddest book title of the year. Following an online poll, the
2009 winner was announced yesterday (Friday): Crocheting Adventures
with Hyperbolic Planes by Dr Daina Taimina. The prize's organiser,
Harold Bent, commented that, even in these credit-crunched times,
oddly-titled books are proving highly recession-resistant. "This
book is a worthy champion to stand alongside the likes of Greek
Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers and Living with Crazy
Buttocks as winners." Philip Stone of The Bookseller said, "What
won it for Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes is that,
very simply, the title is completely bonkers. One hopes that Dr
Taimina's win prompts other enlightened crocheters, knitters and
embroiderers to produce similar works, so I look forward to seeing
books such as Cross-stitching String Theory and Felting Feats with
Phenomenology adorning bookshop shelves in the near future."

What I find really funny is that the man in question is familiar enough with the world of fibre arts that he knows about "felting" (which some would call "fulling") as a craft. I don't think he'd make fun of it if he were himself a knitter or crocheter, but he might be married to someone who enjoys these crafts. Or maybe, since he represents The Bookseller, he just sells the books.

Oh, and I forgot to add that the connection between math and fibre arts (in this case knitting) has been known to me for quite a while, ever since I attended the Woolly Thoughts workshop at Shall We Knit in May 2008. Apparently, that was the first time I ever bought anything from Karen's shop. Wow! I've come a long way since then.