Saturday, September 02, 2006

About knitting...and not about knitting

I was leaving work the other day and walked past the office mailboxes and did a double take when I spied this on the table:

But alas, it's not about knitting. I work with physicists (although I am not one) and Symmetry is their publication about particle physics. I flipped through it hoping to find something linking knitting with physics but no, it was just cover art. The website for the magazine says about the cover:

After years of knitting together skein after skein of components and contributions from far and wide, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is close to putting the final stitches in place. And like this handmade sweater, the final product should wear well on particle physicists for many years to come.


Too bad. However, I do think that's a sweater only a particle physicist would love, though it may not be the knitter's fault. I thought maybe the knitter is a physicist (one of the women I work with, who is a physicist, knits. We got a laugh out of this issue and shared our disappointment that there was no knitting content inside). The publication gives credit for knitting the sweater to Corrine Niessner, who in fact is not a physicist and knits much, much nicer things. She was hired to knit this sweater and writes about it in her blog.

As far as my knitting is concerned, I have almost finished my socks. I have a few rows left and the Kitchener stitch to do to close them up. Having only done the Kitchener stitch in my Knitter's class last February, I don't think it's commuter-friendly so I started a new project - the Top Down Tunic from Knitting Pure and Simple.

(picture from their website

I'm using Rowanspun Aran in "Gables", a dark red color. The gauge was exactly right, so I'm off and knitting. This is a top-down sweater, which I've never done before. So far so good. The instructions are pretty thorough, even telling you that it'll look weird in the beginning but just follow the instructions and keep knitting. The website also has instructions and help on knitting top-down.

1 comment:

  1. Hi, Lori--I'm in complete agreement with you. The sweater is something that I think only a physicist could love, and I'm curious if anyone will actually wear the finished garment. It's now in the possession of someone at Fermilab.

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