Rachel Rayner

Friday, 11 January 2013

Wrapping and Turning - Short Rows and Continental Knitters

Posted by Rachel | 12:20 | Craft, G Unit, Knitting, Lists

Short rows are a knitting technique which add more fabric to a piece. They're used to make heels of socks and add shaping in cardigans and all sorts of useful things.

To knit a short row, you knit halfway across a row, turn your work, and purl back. This can leave a gap, which is where you'd wrap and turn: the wrap and turn hides the gap.

I learned short rows before I knew what I was doing and didn't have the sense to be intimidated by them. This is the best way to learn anything.

A friend who is a much better knitter than I am is having trouble because most of the instructions out there are written for English knitters (who hold the yarn in their right hands) rather than Continental knitters (who hold the yarn in their left hands, and scoop it up. Any newbie who wanders into G Unit is taught to knit Continental it's a wee bit more efficient and more importantly makes transitioning between crochet and knitting easier).

Here's a list of short row tutorials for Continental knitters:

My advice for my friend was bugger it - if you can't manage to wrap and turn, you can always darn the finished product.

Thursday, 10 January 2013

On Privacy

Posted by Rachel | 11:44 | Issues

Privacy isn't a thing I'm too worried about. I Tweet under my real name. I have a Facebook, and I haven't even met some of my "friends". But I've been thinking a lot about privacy here.

The way I deal with privacy online is by omission. There are things - some things that are quite large parts of my life - that I simply do not speak about.

This may surprise Twitter followers, but it's true.

Some things are too long-form to discuss coherently. Some things I find triggering when others talk about them, so I avoid talking about them myself. Some things are to protect other people's privacy. Some things are simply too personal.

Writing about myself is one thing - but can I write about my friends? How about friends of friends? Strangers?

On my Twitter, there's a cast of characters, as well as real-life people I interact with. I live with Flatmate, and work with Boss and Coworkers 1 through 5. There's also Pal, Paramour and Flatmate's Girlfriend. Some of these people are real people with identities that don't shift (like Flatmate), and others are just a convenient marker (like a conversation between Coworker 1 and Coworker 2). Some of these characters read my Twitter - some don't. There's privacy issues there, and I make an effort to obfuscate things where people aren't aware they're being talked about (like Flatmate - I honestly don't think you could identify Flatmate. I've never used their name, or even precisely pinned down their gender). When a person doesn't know they're being talked about, it's important to me that I don't insult them or identify them.

When a person - like Paramour - is reading my tweets - well - that's a little different. Their identities aren't very secret. They're often sitting right there as I tweet, and I can ask "Is this okay?" or they can ask me to delete it.

I have deleted things on request.

There are things I cannot post about. Things that I have been a part of but belong to other people. Things that would break their hearts to write about, which is a shame because they're just so damn funny.

Ask me about those things in person instead.