Knitting -- Adventures in Argyle 5, the lines

I originally had this pegged for the final post, but once I finished the body, I realized it would be clunky to do the sleeves before the lines.

Here's the video and why this is displayed differently from other video links, I don't know. Musta been something I done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9St7SyHOeJA

Starting about minute 6:15 she starts showing you how to actually do the stitching.

So here's what my pullover looks like with the lines added.

If you had a close-up, you would notice that these are not perfectly even. Part of that is my fault. I obviously was not as obsessive as you are about following my spreadsheet pattern, where the same things happen on every pattern repeat.

The other issue is that it's almost impossible to get symmetrical diamonds and also symmetrical lines. RoxTalks shows a couple of ways of dealing with it. It will always be a trade-off. I did work out a chart that has single-stitch lines all the way through but, as Rox said, the diamonds are not all of identical sizes.  I can send it to you if you email me or post a comment with your email address, but since we are not all the same size and you might be using a different weight yarn from what the chart is for (worsted), it's probably better for you to work it out in your own spreadsheet.

My duplicate stitch looks more like feather stitch than lines when seen close-up.

The color I picked for the lines blends into the light color. If you don't like that, you can do the lines there in a dark color that stands out.  You could use the light color for the lines in the dark diamonds, and vice versa. But if you're doing something in three colors, just pick something that either coordinates or contrasts with all three of them and don't worry about it blending in.

And finally, do NOT pull your duplicate stitch tight. It will disappear behind the stitch where you made it, instead of lying on top of it. This is another reason to train yourself out of working stitches tightly.

Now you're saying, "yeah, but what does the seam look like where I wrapped the stitches?"  Here.  This shows that you might be happier leaving that seam open and knitting it closed, but do it before you do the lines so that things match up on both sides.

Duplicate stitch is worth learning. You can use it to make picture patterns; it's the knitted version of cross stitch.  You handle the many colors of yarns with sewing type needles, instead of trying to control both the yarns and the knitting needles when you have only two hands.

Remember back on the Fair Isle posts, I said I thought you should balance warm and cool colors, pastels and non-pastels, lights and darks.
I feel the same way about argyle.
So the diamonds are in chocolate and almond.
The lines are in purple haze. I did not make that up. When you go on the Knitpicks site and find their Wool of the Andes yarns, sort the colors by color instead of price or name. You'll see that among the purples, they have a light shade that they call Haze. Jimi Hendrix fan must have named that one.
(Please don't embarrass me by asking who Jimi Hendrix is. Google it if you must or look on Spotify or iTunes.)

A classic three color version would have black, red, and beige, white or gray. That gives you a lot of options for a contrasting or coordinating line.
When you see argyles in movies or on TV, they are often in shades of gray.  Lines could be in blue, beige, or some warm color, whether pastel or dark.
You could conceivable do each diamond in a different color. Then I would recommend something very neutral, like beige or gray, for a line.

BUT HOW MUCH YARN DO THE LINES TAKE?  Just under 1 (one) 50 gram skein. If you do diamonds and lines on the sleeves, you'll need at least one more skein for the lines. If you're making argyle socks to go with it, you might want one more skein since the leftovers from the other two parts might not be enough.

And finally, you could do a V neck vest. I am planning to do a pattern for that in houndstooth some months from now, after I finish a buncha other projects. But don't wait for me. If you have a V-neck pattern, chart some Argyle onto it and go for it. (And send me a link.)

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2020 All Rights Reserved

Fact-Checkng the Torah -- What IS DH

Now, did you notice what I did in the last post?

Here’s the question some of you have been sitting on the edge of your seats waiting to ask.

I said for three whole sections of this blog that Jewish literature has to be discussed within its context as an expression of Jewish culture.

Your objection should be why doesn’t DH have to be discussed in ITS context?

Well, what is that context?

What does DH claim its context is?

The truth about Jewish scripture?

But we’ve come across more than one example that DH does not speak the truth about Jewish scripture.

And in the last post I showed that within the context of DH, some people realize there’s something wrong with it.

They say it might violate Occam’s Razor by proposing the E text; it’s too much complexity.

There’s no sense dragging in Occam’s Razor unless DH is supposed to be scientific or at least logical. You don’t need Occam’s Razor if you’re an art critic, something I’ll come back to at the end of the blog. You don’t need Occam’s Razor when you discuss religion as a matter of belief. If Occam’s Razor is an important test for DH to pass, it’s because of an impression or claim that DH is scientific or logical.

Israel Abrahams, who translated Cassuto’s work for its 1961 publication, certainly uses “science” with reference to DH, even if the Hebrew word Cassuto used in 1941 doesn’t strictly mean science.

Even if fans of DH would agree it’s not a science, they probably think it’s logical. But I’ve identified that it incorporates fallacies so that even if its basis wasn’t false or outdated information, it cannot be true. At all.

An objection strictly to complexity is not what Occam’s Razor is about. It also requires covering all the facts accurately. The complexity of DH is only a problem if it has also committed sampling bias or misrepresented some of the material.

We know it has misrepresented some of the material and committed sampling bias.

So its results are invalid for a science.  And it’s not logical.

DH can say anything it wants and still be relevant to its fans. But if it pretends to be a science or even just logical, it’s a colossal failure.

There are plenty of fans of colossal failures. There are websites and books out there by a fan of cosmic ether, a concept that Michelson and Morley showed 130 years ago did not live up to its own predictions. Failure of predictions is a classic way that science discredits concepts. DH can be construed to predict that its documents can be found by archaeology – but isolating itself from archaeology prevents it from making any such claims.

We’re not talking a science here. I’ll say more about this at the end of the blog. In the mean time...

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2020 All Rights Reserved

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- blessing the crocs

Genesis 1:20-23

כ וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֔ים יִשְׁרְצ֣וּ הַמַּ֔יִם שֶׁ֖רֶץ נֶ֣פֶשׁ חַיָּ֑ה וְעוֹף֙ יְעוֹפֵ֣ף עַל־הָאָ֔רֶץ עַל־פְּנֵ֖י רְקִ֥יעַ הַשָּׁמָֽיִם:

כא וַיִּבְרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֔ים אֶת־הַתַּנִּינִ֖ם הַגְּדֹלִ֑ים וְאֵ֣ת כָּל־נֶ֣פֶשׁ הַֽחַיָּ֣ה ׀ הָֽרֹמֶ֡שֶׂת אֲשֶׁר֩ שָֽׁרְצ֨וּ הַמַּ֜יִם לְמִֽינֵהֶ֗ם וְאֵ֨ת כָּל־ע֤וֹף כָּנָף֙ לְמִינֵ֔הוּ וַיַּ֥רְא אֱלֹהִ֖ים כִּי־טֽוֹב:

כב וַיְבָ֧רֶךְ אֹתָ֛ם אֱלֹהִ֖ים לֵאמֹ֑ר פְּר֣וּ וּרְב֗וּ וּמִלְא֤וּ אֶת־הַמַּ֨יִם֙ בַּיַּמִּ֔ים וְהָע֖וֹף יִ֥רֶב בָּאָֽרֶץ:

כג וַֽיְהִי־עֶ֥רֶב וַֽיְהִי־בֹ֖קֶר י֥וֹם חֲמִישִֽׁי:

Translation: Gd said the waters will swarm with swarming things, soul of life; and fliers will fly over the earth against the raqia of heaven.

Gd created the large taninim; and all souls of life that creep that swarm the waters for their kinds, and all the fliers of wing for its kind, Gd manifested its goodness.

Gd blessed them saying: fruit and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, flyer multiply on earth.

There was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

I added two verses here to point out a couple of things.

First, here are examples of what I said about that little word et.  The taninim use the version with the segol to set them apart from the other animals.

Then each of the other two types of life forms get the tseire version with kal, meaning “all” not “every”.  The translation on the Mechon Mamre page is the 1917 JPS version which is despised as basically a slightly edited version of the KJV, which is based on the horrible Septuagint. JPS got this wrong.

In verse 22 you get otam, the direct object pronoun. When you see it, there is usually a version of et nearby. It’s not 100% in either direction, but it’s very common and we have it here.

Now I have another reason for you why the taninim are called out separately. We all know that crocs need dry land for part of their life cycle. But verse 20 obviously sees them as water creatures. We know (spoiler alert if you never read Genesis before) that the time will come when the taninim will be seriously stressed. It’s the same issue as having the imperfect when the seas withdraw from the dry land. The dry land will go away – temporarily, it’s true, but for longer than the hatching cycle of either crocs or serpents. He might not want to, but Noach is going to have to take these animals into the ark. Unlike another type of animal. Go read the flood story and see if you can tell me what it is.

I’ll do 2 lessons on verbs next and then give you the new vocabulary from verses 22 and 23.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2020 All Rights Reserved

Knitting -- Adventures in Argyle 4, locking purl stitches

You've knitted the bottom of the argyle pullover, wrapped the middle stitch and turned to purl back. You have one stitch left in the diamond and then you have to lock the diamond and rib colors to prevent gaps.

Now you need the technique in the next video.

This video shows how to prevent gaps between colors on purled rows

About minute 2:19 it shows how to work the left hand yarn in without leaving a gap. 

So you are going to wrap the diamond color clockwise around your right-hand needle.

Then you are going to wrap the rib color counterclockwise around that same needle like for a normal purl stitch.
Then you are going to unwrap the diamond color. Make sure it layers on top of the rib color instead of between it and the needle or it won't lock.
Then you are going to pull the rib color through.
Purl in rib color to the next diamond.

Now you are going to pick up the bobbin of diamond color for that diamond.

You're going to wrap rib clockwise, wrap diamond counterclockwise, unwrap rib, and purl in diamond color across this diamond.

Then you're going to do the same thing to lock together the colors, picking up the rib color from the new bobbin, and so on.

When you get back to your first diamond, you have a situation. The bobbin with the diamond color is on the other side of this diamond.  If you bring it back to you, you'll create a floatie, a tail of yarn which is prone to catch on things and break. What a terrible end to all your hard work!

What you have to do is add in a second bobbin of diamond color to work this particular diamond from both sides. Lock it in with your rib color, knit the diamond stitches to the center. This center stitch is the one you wrapped in the knit round.

Purl it with the stitch wrapped around it, wrap the next stitch, and turn to do the next knit round.

Here's what it looks like at the middle of the pale diamonds. Sorry for the crumpling, you'll see it better when I finish.

And here's what it looks like with ALL the bobbins. Now you can see why you probably don't want to travel with this.

The yarn from the bobbins easily gets tangled. Leave only about 4 inches and they'll have less room to play in. Also as you work the body, it will help keep them separated.

All right, now let's test how much you've learned. Do your first 15 rounds and then stop and check something out.

Look at the diamond where you are doing your stitch wrapping.  Can you smooth it out or does it pooch up?

If it pooches up, there are two possible reasons.

One is you weren't doing the wrap stitches loosely enough.  So when you picked up the wrap stitch while finishing the purl round, you had to pull all the stitches out of alignment.

The other is that on your purl rounds, you forgot about picking up the wrap stitch and purling it together with the stitch it's wrapped around. All you did was wrap the stitches in a solid vertical line.

Unfortunately in both cases you have to ask yourself if you want to wear this top out in public. If so, you have to unwind all 15 rounds, wind the yarn back up on the bobbins, and start over. To me, sacrificing 15 rounds is a lot better than making a whole sweater with that poochy diamond.

And now, the question you have all been asking for 4 posts: HOW MUCH YARN DO I BUY?

When I make a top, the body usually takes 6 skeins (50 grams a skein) of worsted weight yarn. It did work out that I needed 3 skeins of each color in this two-color top. The sleeves will be solid and I usually need 3 skeins each to make sure they're long enough, although plenty is left over. So calculate your purchase based on a) your size; b) the weight of yarn you're using and c) whether you're doing two colors or three.

There are two more steps, putting on the sleeves and putting on the lines. Next post I'll show you which one I did first and why.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2020 All Rights Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Whybray

I keep saying that some people raised on DH have now rejected it, and I named Gordon for one. Cassuto is another. I also named Whybray. I think. Anyway.

Whybray’s book mentions more than one person who supported DH but now reject it. He cites to Rendtorff and van Seters as finding problems with DH. Here are a few of the objections Whybray documents.

Probably the most damaging is that some now believe E never existed. They believe it doesn’t pass the test of Occam’s Razor; Whybray doesn’t say why not, he simply says they consider it an unnecessary complication. Some, who believe it might have existed, have decided that it was fragmentary or incomplete, meaning that their definition of complete does not match the “option 3” I floated some time ago. Some also believe that the remnants of E do not completely agree with E’s purported viewpoint.

Whybray points out that since 66% of the verses in Torah don’t have either name of Gd, that proposal cannot be implemented in assigning those verses. He says that scholars have declared that their assignments are correct if one of the other criteria holds. Just remember, it better not be “style and language” and it probably should not be “composites” or “repetitions” without a total overhaul of the criteria.

Another issue that Whybray documents is that the splitting has run amok. There are people “practicing” DH who have declared that they can determine the source of a single word without considering any other word around it in Torah. Remember my SWLT Rule 3, context is king. You can’t tell what a word means without context, as I showed in examining what “hypothesis” means. Let alone determine that it comes from this or that document without a sample of the purported source. This is a conjunction fallacy on steroids and none of the participants have realized it.

Whybray says that despite the original claim that there was no legal material in J, Wellhausen went back and realized that his presumed contents of JE had legal material in them. He decided that the legal material WAS in J, and got there AFTER J and E had been combined. Whybray probably didn’t realize that this is a perfect description of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy. Fellow took a bet about his shooting, shoots at a barn, looks at the bullet-holes, then draws his target so that some of them fall in the center of it so as to claim the bet money. As a fallacy, it makes DH’s probability zero.

Finally, Whybray shows that modern critics know Graf was right, and the criteria of style, viewpoint, and unity are subjective. Nobody working in the DH field has to accept any other scholar’s claims because there is no objective way to determine that your rivals are wrong. A real science consists of objective standards that everybody accepts, absent evidence that change is required. Just another way DH needs to get its act together.

If you now ask whom to consult to find that agreement – you have just smacked into a modern problem with DH. Who are THE authorities in the field and how have they filled their bucket lists or earned their chops or whatever you want to call it? Where are they teaching and where can I get their textbooks? I mean, is there any red-blooded professor with tenure out there who hasn’t written a textbook? Get me a citation to something that incorporates 21^st century material and doesn’t rely on translations. I haven’t seen one yet.

Ditching E doesn’t save DH.  The probability that DH is true is calculated by multiplication because it is a conjunction, and the conjunction includes D and P as well as E.  The probability of truth for every claim in DH, since none of them are supported by external evidence, multiplies out to an infinitesimal number.  Which has to be multiplied by zero due to the fallacies in DH. DH is not true.

And a short wrap-up.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2020 All Rights Reserved

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- pronoun suffixes

Genesis 1:20-21

כ וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֔ים יִשְׁרְצ֣וּ הַמַּ֔יִם שֶׁ֖רֶץ נֶ֣פֶשׁ חַיָּ֑ה וְעוֹף֙ יְעוֹפֵ֣ף עַל־הָאָ֔רֶץ עַל־פְּנֵ֖י רְקִ֥יעַ הַשָּׁמָֽיִם:

כא וַיִּבְרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֔ים אֶת־הַתַּנִּינִ֖ם הַגְּדֹלִ֑ים וְאֵ֣ת כָּל־נֶ֣פֶשׁ הַֽחַיָּ֣ה ׀ הָֽרֹמֶ֡שֶׂת אֲשֶׁר֩ שָֽׁרְצ֨וּ הַמַּ֜יִם לְמִֽינֵהֶ֗ם וְאֵ֨ת כָּל־ע֤וֹף כָּנָף֙ לְמִינֵ֔הוּ וַיַּ֥רְא אֱלֹהִ֖ים כִּי־טֽוֹב:

Translation: Gd said the waters will swarm with swarming things, soul of life; and fliers will fly over the earth against the raqia of heaven.

Gd created the large taninim; and all souls of life that creep that swarm the waters for their kinds, and all the fliers of wing for its kind, Gd manifested its goodness.

The following words are examples of pronominal suffixes:  לְמִינֵהוּ; לְמִינֵהֶם; לְמִינָהּ.

You will also see לְמִינוֹ sometimes.

Two of these words mean the same thing: “according to his kind”. I don’t know what the difference is. There are only about 30 examples of these words in the whole Jewish Bible.

If you look back at the direct object pronoun, you will see that the endings are the same. What is different is the body. You’ll see more of the same when I get to other pronouns.

The body is a noun.  Any noun -- actually any substantive -- can be turned into a substantive phrase with a preposition prefix and an optional pronoun suffix.  I'll show what I mean by "substantive" when we come across one.

It's important because there’s another word that looks like it.  Here, min means “kind, sort, class, group”.  The other min means “from”. It’s related to mi, which will come up in chapter 2, but as far as I remember, min only means “from”. 

So  just like in English, there are words that look alike but mean different things, even when you have the vowels. And of course just like with English, if you leave the vowels out, it’s harder to guess what the word is unless you have other information.

Like context. There’s a scene in War and Peace where Levin uses an old parlor game to propose to Kitty. He writes words with chalk (in Russian of course) on a card table with a baize cover. Because of the context of their conversation, Kitty guesses every word.

There’s no such thing as a street language where every word can mean what you want it to mean. Languages form as ways of communicating between people, and if every individual person has their own meaning for every word, communication breaks down.

I have known people who thought that Hebrew, and Biblical Hebrew in particular, was different, and I’ve read books by other such people. Don’t believe the hype. It’s the opposite argument from saying each and every word means only one thing in every context, and both are false.

And that’s why languages can be so hard to use and so hard to learn. 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2020 All Rights Reserved

Knitting -- Adventures in Argyle part 3 close the gap

This is turning out to be a real warts-on project, I mean, I'm showing you every problem I run into. One is at the end of this post.

This might be the most complicated part of knitting an argyle top so let's review the bidding.

1. You cabled on enough stitches for the dimensions of your pullover.
2. You did your bottom rib plus one knitted round.
3. You knitted one round, adding the base stitches of all the diamonds using bobbins of yarn in that color.
4. You knitted one more round adding the second stage of the diamonds, which had 3 stitches each. Between the diamonds you added in bobbins of yarn in the rib color to knit to the next diamond.
5. The first diamond only had 2 stitches so you added the third one.

Now you have to purl the next round to prevent floaties.
To do that, you have to turn the garment.
But turning to purl would leave a gap running up the underarm to the sleeve and you would have to sew that shut, matching the sides of the diamond. Yuck.

Instead, I'll help you with the technique in this video. Go to about minute 9:30 where she gets to the absolute end of the round. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_fb7nf2pP0

If you are used to knitting tightly, you must train yourself out of it.  Before you try this on a real sweater, knit a sample and do one wrap on a knit round. Put a marker through the stitch that you use in this wrap and when you come back you'll see why you have to knit loosely at the wrap.

So what you do is, bring the yarn under the right-hand needle and to the front. So let me explain this photo. I did this with the bottom stitch of the diamond so it would be crystal clear.  You have the dark brown rib. You have the single stitch at the base of the diamond. You have the dark brown yarn brought forward and laid over scrap yarn of a contrasting color so you can see it's there. You have the right-hand needle inserted purlwise into the bottom stitch of the diamond, ready to slip.







Now slip the stitch onto the right-hand needle.

Third, move the yarn under the right-hand needle again and to the back. That's what's in this picture.

Finally, put the left-hand needle knitwise through the BACK of the stitch that you just slipped, and slip it from the right-hand needle back onto the left-hand needle. So here's the photo of what it means to go knitwise through the BACK of a stitch.

Slip that stitch to the left-hand needle. Now you are ready to turn the knitting around and purl.

Now go to minute 17:10 of the video. Watch as she picks up the wrap stitch and the stitch it is wrapped around, TOGETHER. Then she purls them to produce one stitch. Then she wraps the next stitch as follows: she moves the yarn back; she puts the needle purlwise into this stitch and slips it; she moves the yarn forward; she puts the needle through the back loop knitwise and slips it.

If you don't train yourself to do the wrap loosely, purling it up on the purl side will be nearly impossible.

Be careful to count your stitches before you do the wrap. You only want to wrap the center stitch of the diamond on the knit round. Then you want to purl that with the wrap stitch on the purl round and wrap the next stitch over. 

If you wrap all the center stitches on both sides, you wind up with an unforgiving line up through the center of the diamond. The knitting on both sides will pooch up. No amount of blocking will let the diamond lie flat. On the knit round, you wrap the center stitch. On the purl round you purl this stitch with its wrap, and you wrap the next stitch.

Next session will tell you how to lock colors on the purl round, so don't purl the round until you see the video there.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2020 All Rights  Reserved