A Knitting Academic

Instead of relieving stress by shopping, I relieve stress by perusing public library e-book collections. All of the items from the public library are free, and they can be instantly downloaded and read if there's at least one copy available. Also, the books take up zero extra space in my home - which is a plus. If I don't like the book, I can just return it guilt free. In fact, returning it just means that another eager reader has the opportunity to enjoy it! Today, my search topic was "ghost stories". I've always loved stories about spirits haunting people trying to gain closure to something that happened in their lives. I stopped reading ghost stories after high school, but they have a special place in my heart. I recently reignited my love for ghost stories when I bought a book of stories called "Haunted Georgia: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Peach State" and rediscovered "Haunted Looking Glass", a book I bought but didn't read i...

Your car probably weighs more than 20 times what you weigh, averaging about 4,000 lbs. If you consider high school physics, the amount of energy needed to move an object is at minimum the weight times the distance. That means the car could be using 20 times more energy than is really needed to move you from your house to work or wherever you want to go. Enter the scooter: A cute little moped for moving one or two people, or even more if you are reckless (I once saw a family in Vietnam transporting a kid-size barbie car on top of their scooter - it was unusual even for Vietnam). Mopeds weigh 200-500 pounds, and they need a lot less parking space.  Parents dropping off the kids at school on scooters Despite using less fuel, many scooters create more pollution than cars. As shown in this Nature article  , scooters emit from 10-100 times the mass of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as primary and secondary organic aerosals (POA and SOA), as light and heavy duty veh...

I hate grafting pieces of knitting. If a pattern is written to be knit as separate pieces, such as a front and back, I will convert it to be in the round with as few seams as possible. The act of threading a tapestry needle and running yarn through my stitches is tedious and always feels synthetic. It takes part of the magic away. Knitting without seams seems to me to be much harder and more creative. You have to find ways to grow the fabric organically to create the construction that you want. That is the magic of knitting to me, to create a novel and pleasing construction using only a piece of yarn and two knitting needles. A seam marks where my hand knitted garment became a sewn piece reminiscent of mass manufacture.  (Yes, I know many fabrics are knit!) Thus, imagine my surprise when I read someone's comment that seamless knitting is less desirable when it comes to clean construction. In the comment section of Franklin Habits review of Amy Herzog's books " At La...

It's surprisingly hard to find 100% organic cotton panties that are less than $20 a pair. I managed to get the last remaining nude pair of Skin bikini panty in my size on Zappos at 55% off.  But I choose not to wash and wear the same underwear every day of the week. Since I grew up getting the multi-pack of Fruit of the Loom, the cost of additional organic cotton underwear is quite the sticker shock. None of the retailers that I found had a clear Fair Trade commitment to make the cost more worthwhile.  So, I was very excited to find Pact clothing sells organic cotton products at lower prices. Unfortunately, these panties are only 95% organic cotton and 5% elastane. Elastane is an obvious problem for women's genitalia. It doesn't breath very well, and so could disrupt the very fragile natural balance of vaginal flora. Sure, it makes the boy shorts stay in place throughout the day, but it's not quite clear how well 5% elastane panties breath. Based on how hot and uncomf...