KIAWOL

I Have Insomnia!!! \0/

2010-03-06T07:56:00.000-08:00

Okay, so, insomnia doesn't usually occasion glee, but because of the sleep apnea, for a year I have struggled with the problem of being constantly sleepy and the sleep I get never being quite enough. I have had to take three-hour naps every day for probably over a year, and while doing so has kept me functionally rested and able to drive cars without falling asleep at the wheel (well, except for that one time), it's not exactly convenient.

For the last week or so, however, I've had some insomnia. I can't seem to nap during the day as easily as I usually do, and it takes a lot longer to fall asleep at night. Yeah, it's made it a bit harder to get up on the mornings where I haven't been able to get to sleep until 2am, but to be honest? I don't care. :) It's okay to be a bit tired when you've only had four hours sleep. But guess what? I go through my day and when night comes, I'm not so tired that I feel like crying. I'm not so tired that I can't even get up. I'm just normal, everyday, "Gee, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night" tired. I had honestly forgotten what that feels like.

I had a follow-up visit to my doctor yesterday about my new migraine prevention medication and my new dose of anti-depressants (both of which appear to be working well), and I mentioned the insomnia. He said, "I think that's a good sign," and I said, "Yeah, I think so, too." :)

NOTE: I apologize for not crossposting to this blog lately. To read recent posts, please visit my Livejournal:

http://jinjifore.livejournal.com

It's Easy Being Green

2009-03-26T17:52:00.000-07:00

I got a new cast today. It is, as the subject line suggests, green (at the request of Her Booness).

Boo had decorated the pink cast with kitties, sunshine, a flamingo and family portraits. I made sure to take pictures, because I was pretty sure the cast would be too unsanitary to keep around. As it turns out, though, the unsanitary inner layers of gauze and stockinette could be peeled away and discarded, allowing me to preserve the fiberglass part. If I can find my camera cable, I'll try to post the pictures.

They did more x-rays, and everything still seems to be in place. The doctor says I'll be in this cast for three more weeks, then in a splint for two weeks, then I'll have one more surgery to take the pins out. The pin removal is apparently miles simpler and less painful than the first surgery, and I should be ready for physical therapy within a couple of weeks. Physical therapy should take six months to a year, so in the shortest-case scenario I'll be finishing up my recovery a little over a year after I first fell. Next time, I'm landing on my head.

I actually had to have two casts put on today. The first time, I felt like the bottom of the cast was too tight, and they had to wait for the fiberglass to harden at bit, then cut off the cast they'd just put on and start over. I felt silly, especially since I could stick my whole finger between my arm and the bottom of the cast and run it all the way around, but I couldn't convince myself that it wasn't cutting off my circulation. My doctor was very patient and kind about it, when in all likelihood it was just me panicking because I (apparently) have an aversion to anything on my body that feels too tight. He made sure he didn't pull the bandage at all when he was wrapping the second cast, and it feels fine. Probably the danger now will be it falling off.

I'm still dropping back on the painkillers, although today has been a "take lots" day because of all the moving around between casts. My pinkie continues to be very sore, and the doctor was a bit surprised when I mentioned it, because apparently it's not a typical symptom. It doesn't impair me much, and I can even type with it now, but I have to be careful when I'm gripping or when I'm rubbing lotion on my hands. I'm not too worried about it, considering all the rearrangement that's gone on inside my hand.

Onward and upward. :) I feel that I can do everything that's really important (well, okay, almost everything :)). I certainly can find plenty of ways to be occupied and happy. The good things are getting better, and the bad things are diminishing. Can't ask for more than that.

Note to Self

2009-03-21T03:54:00.001-07:00

Note to self:

If you haven't driven in a month, and therefore haven't drunk your regular post-school-delivery regimen of coffee, it's entirely possible that when you do test your cast-impaired driving ability by going to the coffee shop and drinking a large coffee at four in the afternoon, you will find yourself writing journal posts at 5:45am.

Just FYI.

Five Things

2009-03-16T20:05:00.001-07:00

Five Ways In Which My Life Has Improved A Lot:

1. I can type using up to nine fingers with minimal discomfort (for some reason my pinkie is taking a while to get back in the game). Only short periods right now, but considering that on Friday I couldn't even press the keys, this is pretty darn stellar.

2. I can open bottles, cans and other food packaging. This means that my husband no longer has to leave a cooler of sandwiches and a certain number of pre-opened bottles of water for me when he goes to work.

3. I can go up and down the stairs as I darn well please. Free access to the kitchen is good.

4. I can take a shower almost all by myself, instead of having to have the assisstance of my entire family. If I could just figure out how to open and squirt out the shampoo with one hand (okay, and wrap my own right arm in plastic), I'd be golden.

5. I am taking about half the amount of pain medication I was taking last week. It might *sound* fun to spend six weeks stoned on various members of the -codone family, but the reality is that I can't wait to get off the stuff. Obviously, I'm choosing to continue to take it because, well, pain sucks, but I feel that the pain is also approaching the point where I can see the end of it.

In short:

:)

Belated Update

2009-03-12T14:18:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not updating lately. I fell and tore a ligament in my wrist about four months ago, and ended up having surgery on it ten days ago. I've been updating my Livejournal, but forgot to include this one in the updates. If you want to read the details (including my recent post about my exciting pink cast) you can find them here:

http://jinjifore.livejournal.com/tag/wrist+injury

Take Care!

An Observation on Marketing

2008-09-10T18:40:00.001-07:00

Trivial observation of the day:

I've finally gotten around to reading Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner series. At the time I first ordered the books, there were only three, so I ordered the fourth and got it today.

I would like to mention that I don't measure the font size of every book I read. But when I've just finished reading three books printed in a relatively small font on paper thin enough to make 500 pages a not-exceedingly-thick book, only to open the fourth book and feel like I've accidentally gotten the large print edition, I notice. So, I did a quick page feel, then a page count. Surprise of surprises, the new book, despite being slightly thicker than its companions, runs about 300 pages. That's 200 pages shorter. And whereas the first three clocked around 450 words a page, this one hit closer to 300. Net result? Despite being the same size, Book 4 is about 75,000 words shorter.

I should emphasize that this is not a complaint, merely an observation on the mysteries of book marketing. Presumably someone who has purchased the fourth book wouldn't be doing so unless they had also enjoyed the first three. So what does a publisher do when the fourth book turns out to be something less than 70% the length of the others, and they don't want readers immediately saying "Gosh, it's not nearly as long as the others"? They make it look as long as the others.

It's not even as if this is news. At some point in the last couple of decades book publishers realized that thick books sell better, and so books became thicker. Anyone who's wrestled a Neal Stephenson book into bed knows that sometimes this is achieved through sheer word count. But anyone who's had the chance to compare two printings of the same Nero Wolfe novel published forty years apart can see that this is also achieved through thicker paper and bigger fonts (the refuge of college freshman everywhere).

Again, this is not a criticism of the writing, the book or the author. I have so far enjoyed the series, and in fact I'm looking forward to seeing what the author does with a tighter book (which, really, was one of the few quibbles I had about her in the first place). This is just me marveling at a very simple marketing tool that, had I not just finished reading the previous books, I might never have noticed. Well, until I read them all through again. :)

Sore Throat: 1; Red Cross: 0

2008-09-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

Well, crap. I made an appointment to donate blood this morning, but instead I woke up with a sore throat. I did wallow around in denial for a while, but then I sucked it up and admitted to myself that the Red Cross doesn't *want* my infected blood, even if it is O-.

I'm especially bummed because between the three bouts of bronchitis, the feeling crappy after the bronchitis, the feeling crappy before the bronchitis and in general feeling crappy between the bronchitis, it's been well over a year since I donated. Still, there's always next week. :)

In the good news department, my service appointment for my car only cost me $425. You may wonder why this is good news. I will tell you.

On the way to DragonCon, the automatic sliding doors on my van quit working. If it wasn't for Jamie cleverly figuring out that we needed to turn the doors off, we would all have been driven insane by the buzz of the door alarms. As it was, all I had to do was push the doors open and closed manually. This is okay in the short term, but it's a severe drawback in the school drop-off, pick-up lines, which are run on timing similar to a NASCAR pit crew. In addition, I have been receiving complaints from the passengers (ie, Boo) about the lack of air conditioning in the back of the car.

Now, the door problem was, I hoped, a minor one. Maybe a reset or cleaning the contacts. But the A/C problem was one I dreaded. My mom had had similar problems in her last two cars, and both times hadn't fixed them because they were prohibitively expensive. As in $1200 or more of prohibition. Also, if the door issue was some kind of electrical snafu, I could be looking at hours and hours of labor. Needless to say, I was wasn't looking forward it.

You can imagine my relief when it turned out that both problems were relatively simple wiring problems. One of the wires on the door system had gotten kinked up and subsequently shorted out. One hour of labor, no parts. The A/C problem took longer, but it turned out to be an unplugged connection, so the only cost was in the time spent tracking it down. Again, no parts, just the labor.

Now, it might seem that $275 (the maintenance check/upkeep stuff was $150) for two simple wiring problems is a lot of money, and it is, but I was seriously anticipating that these repairs might run me into the $1000 or more range. Electric problems *suck,* and I felt pretty darn lucky that they were solved with only three hours of labor and not with many more expensive hours spent finding expensive problems. Bullet dodged.

ETA: Finally located the thermometer and took my temperature. 99.7. I don't think the Red Cross wants me today.

Dragon*Con

2008-08-27T08:36:00.000-07:00

I have packed for Dragcon*Con. Actually, I did it yesterday. I need to bring along an inflatable mattress, but I'm also going to have to haul all my luggage on Marta. So, I did a test pack to see if I could fit everything into my rolling backpack, or if I'd have to suck it up and use my daughter's very small--but also very girly pink--suitcase.

I did manage to fit it in, but it's a tight fit and I'm thinking that the girly pink suitcase is the better option. Still, I'm kind of impressed that an entire inflatable mattress + pump + usual crap for a four-night stay all fit into the backpack.

Yesterday I picked up all the miscellaneous crap I needed: power strips, band-aids, cash, power bars, hand wipes, etc. Today I cleaned out my car in anticipation of loading up extra luggage. This means that at 10:30am the day *before* I leave I am a) packed and b) actually prepared to leave.

I'm not sure what this all portends, except that I've probably ensured that I will forget at least sixteen really important things and that I will really, really need extra space in my luggage on the way home.

Oh Joy, Oh Bliss

2008-08-13T19:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm way behind the news on this, but the other day I decided, on a whim, to re-read Elizabeth Peters' last Vicky Bliss novel, Night Train to Memphis which led me to think "Hey, it's been a while since her last book, let's check Amazon, see if there's a new Amelia Peabody book."

There wasn't a new Amelia Peabody book.

There was a new Vicky Bliss book.

The first new Vicky Bliss book in fourteen years.

Now, the Amelia Peabody books are awesome, but the Vicky Bliss books are freakin' rare from this woman. Well, okay, comaparatively rare, as in a mere five books (now six!) instead of eighteen Amelia Peabody books, not to mention the other gazillion books the woman has written.

The other good thing is that the book comes out the day after my mother's birthday, and the CD version *also* comes out the day after my mother's birthday, instead of later as used to be the case. This is good because my mother doesn't actually read books anymore. Instead, she listens to them. All the time. (Seriously, all the time. She has two iPods.) I have, therefore, ordered the audio CD for her. Unfortunately, she has an annoying habit of keeping up with this stuff herself and ordering things on her own, so I'll probably have to spill the beans to keep her from buying it.

Feline Hunger Strike Ends--Cats Say "No More Kroger Brand"

2008-07-11T16:12:00.000-07:00

In general, we feed the cats whatever food is available where we're shopping, and is cheap. The cats have always happily gobbled up whatever we put in front of them, so we never worry too much about brand names and what-not.

Last week, however, my husband bought some Kroger brand cat food. The cats, to a feline, refused to eat it. Not only our cats--both indoor and outdoor--but the two neighborhood cats, the skunk and the possum who also feast uninvited at our back door left the food bowls untouched.

I admit, I didn't really catch on until second or third day of the strike, when Mimi kept pawing at the deck door even after I'd put out fresh food and water for her multiple times (despite the fact that there was food still in the bowls). It wasn't until the third day, when I realized that *none* of the food had been touched by any creature, that I understood that I had a full-blown hunger strike on my hands.

Yesterday we bought some of the usual cheap-o Wal-Mart Special Kitty cat food, and they fell upon like ravening beasts. Today my home has fat, full kitty bellies, and all is well.

Yet, I still have to wonder what the heck was in the Kroger food that even the possum wouldn't eat it...

ETA: Until I responded to another commenter, I'd forgotten that one subject detected no difference in the cat food: "Well, when I fed the kitties I licked some off my fingers and it tasted the same," reported Boo.

There you have it.

Holiday Knitting 2007

2007-12-17T19:51:00.000-08:00

I realize that I haven't been updating lately, but I have two very good reasons. Really.

First is that I've been doing a lot of knitting. As in, most of my holiday gift knitting. Last year, I was smart enough to start knitting in September, so that when NaNoWriMo came along (not that I'd actually planned that far in advance, but never mind) I had time to do both. This year, I wasn't nearly as smart, and found myself starting my holiday knitting over Thanksgiving.

Of course, there is a difference between this year's knitting and last year's. Last year, I made several pairs of socks, a lace scarf, and a Clapotis. This year? Hats. Lots of hats.

The good news is that my family seems to appreciate knitted hats. And I happen to think that they make good gifts because they're the kind of thing that the recipient will actually wear, especially considering that all the people for whom I knitted hats this year will be going to Wyoming to ski right after the holidays. So, I knitted all of them using a basic 2 x 2 ribbed watchcap formula. I make them fairly long, usually 11 to 12 inches of ribbing, so that they can be folded up around the ears for extra warmth. I then decrease fairly rapidly for the crown, and voila! A nice gift.

The other reason for not posting is that many of the people who will be receiving said gifts read this blog. And, okay, now they might have some idea that they might, perhaps, be getting a hat this year, but at this point it's not much of a secret, considering how much frantic hat knitting I was doing at Thanksgiving. Still, I won't be posting the pictures until afterwards, because I want to leave some mystery about the color and so on.

The good news is that I am, in fact, done. I finished the last hat on Friday, so any other knitting that I get done will be a bonus. And the first thing on my bonus knitting list is a sweater for my daughter. I have been a crappy knitting mommy because I haven't yet made her one at any point in the last five years, but I really, really wanted her to have a nice wool sweater for her first skiing experience.

I'm using a pattern from Cabin Fever's Top Down For Toddlers, and I now feel doubly guilty for not having done one before because it's so easy. I started it on Friday, knitted a lot on Saturday, and now (Monday) have 10 of the 13 body inches done. I'm working it at a slightly larger gauge than the one called for (5 stitches to the inch instead of 5.5), which means that I'm working the pattern for a size smaller than what I actually need, which means that I'm doing a wee bit less knitting than I might otherwise have to.

I have also made a serendipitous discovery, which is more or less what inspired me to make a post today. I had 16-inch and 32-inch 3.75mm needles, but the body of the sweater is only 28 inches around. Not wanting to have to stretch the body around my 32-inch needles, I bought a pair of 24-inch needles. The only 24-inch Addi needles available were Addi lace needles, and I figured it wouldn't make much difference.

I was wrong.

The Addi lace needles were the best thing I could have ever bought for this project.

The sweater is cabled, and for years now I've been working my cables without a cable needle. Instead, I slip stitches from my working needles and pick them back up to rearrange the stitches. This means that I do a lot of delicate maneuvering with my needles, slipping the needles into stitches out of working order, dropping stitches and picking them back up, etc. The lace tips are amazingly good for this. They're pointy and tapered, perfect for slipping into stitches and picking up newly-dropped ones.

I also love working with the brass. For years, I've only used nickel-plated needles because anything else feels like I'm knitting with sandpaper, but the brass has been a pleasant surprise. It's not quite as slick as the nickel, but it's still well within my parameters for fast and fun knitting. The real joy, though, is the smooth-oiled feel to the way the needles rub together. It's made knitting with them a genuine pleasure.

The only drawback is that I can't hold the needles as close to the tips as I normally do, seeing as the tips are significantly longer, but that's been a very minor adjustment. Overall, I've been quite impressed with the Addi lace, and I think I'll have to look into investing in a few pairs for my actual lace knitting.

Yeah, probably should have asked for a Patternworks gift certificate for Christmas...

LibraryThing Progress

2007-10-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

The LibraryThing process is proceeding. I've entered 3,000 books now.

I've moved from working from the card catalog to the actual books. While I was unable to get up and down the stairs, the cards were very useful. I could just lie in bed and work off them and when I got sleepy--bed! But since the catalog isn't complete, and since the CueCat scanner makes it about 10,000 times easier to just scan the barcodes rather than typing off crappy dot-matrix printouts--where I may or may not have written down the correct ISBN ten years ago--I learned that it was quicker to just work from the shelves.

I have all the hardbacks done now, except for the oversize ones and the ones that are mixed in with my husband's books. I did the hardbacks first because I have a lot of old and unusual books that I knew would require more research and possibly manual entry. From there I've moved to the one bookshelf I have of non-science fiction, non-mystery paperbacks and paperback-sized hardbacks, for pretty much the same reason.

Some observations: I have close to a hundred books that aren't shared by any other members, and about two hundred and fifty others that are shared by fewer than ten others. Some of them aren't suprising. Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the Word : Money, Images, and Reference in Late Medieval Poetry is a good example. I'm a bit surprised that no one else shares The Writings of Medieval Women : An Anthology, though. And I'm kind of sad that no one else has The Alps as Seen by the Poets or Billy-Boy because they're both beautiful books and I'd like to think that someone else has had the opportunity to enjoy them.

According to my stats, my median book obscurity is currently 107, and my mean book obscurity is 590. This means that, on average, I share books with 590 other members. But half of my library is shared by 107 members or less, and half is shared by 107 or more. Kinda cool.

This will also be an interesting exercise in Total Book Estimates. For a while now I've been tossing around 4,500 as the number of books I have without having any real idea about the true totals, and now I'll have the chance to see how close I am. Based on how many books I've entered, and how many I estimate I have left, I think it's going to be pretty close.

Cathedral Mittens--One (Almost) Down

2007-10-09T14:12:00.000-07:00

After a pause for bronchitis, I started in on the Cathedral Mittens again. I got all the way to the end of the first mitten, and all I have to do now is the thumb.

The decreases caused some thought and planning. I caught on pretty quick that the instructions would leave a very nice gold-black-gold three-stitch symmetrical border at the decreases. This worked great for the window pattern rows. Where it didn't work so great were the two black rows in between the window pattern. I concluded, after some squinting at my crappy black and white photocopy of the pattern (because, yes, I forgot to check while I was home and in the same room as the book), that the black rows didn't include the gold stitch. Which is fine with me, because it was enough of a pain to carry the black all the way across the row for two--count them two--stitches per round.

I'm still really pleased with how these are turning out. They're going much faster than I had ever imagined, bronchitis aside, and they're truly beautiful. I'm amazed at the work that went into developing this pattern.

2007-09-19T09:05:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned several times, I've been putting my books on LibraryThing, and it is good. This is partly because I'm an anal-retentive freak who already cataloged my books, so all I'm having to do (mostly) is type the ISBNs or other info off the cards I have.

As you can see, it looks like I'm making progress.

At least until I compare all four drawers. To add insult to injury, the A-C drawer is a bit short because everything up to Anderson was either lost or destroyed in a tragic cat pee incident. (Don't ask.)

One issue that I'm having, though, is that I printed out the catalog quite a while ago. As in, over ten years ago, before laser printers were affordable to the likes of me. So...

A close-up of one of the cards, in all its dot-matrix glory.

Another card, in a somewhat more typical state of inkless ribbon glory.

Still, the cards are (mostly) legible, and it's much nicer to read the information off them than have to physically work my way through every book. Too bad, really, that I haven't actually updated the catalog in something like eight or nine years. At the moment, though, I'm enjoying the luxury of being able to do my searches from the comfort of my bedroom, armed with my cards. I'll worry about the un-cataloged books later.

A bit more about the LibraryThing process.

The easiest way to enter a book is to do a search through the numerous online databases that LibraryThing is linked with, including the Library of Congress, the Folger Shakespeare Library (useful for my Marlowe stuff), and various Amazon.coms. This means, of course, that it's most helpful when the specific edition of the specific book you're entering is correctly and thoroughly entered into said database. Since the Amazon results also include those entered by the various affiliated sellers, you can imagine that the accuracy and consistency of the listings can be...erratic.

Still, I'm getting the hang of it. I'm learning how to make the Library of Congress work for me on my older books (you can even search with LC catalog numbers, which is a godsend for books published before ISBNs became the standard), and I've learned that it's more efficient to just set the cards for problem books aside rather than waste time trying to track them down as I go. I've also scanned in quite a few covers for the database, but again I think I'm going to let them accumulate rather than doing them as I come to them.

I did, however, take the time to track down edition and printing information for my Three Investigators collection (which is how I learned about the movie, actually). I'd been actively buying and reading the books since about 1970, and frankly never had a clue about the differences in the various editions, other than the fact that they seemed to change at random (which is actually pretty close to the truth). I was surprised that several of my used hardbacks were, indeed, first printings. I was even more surprised to find out that I was only missing one book, and two clicks later I'd found it for under $10 on Amazon. The internet is an awesome thing.

The big issue for me with this database, like any other, is longevity. One reason I quit maintaining my catalog was that the software I was using--Hypercard--finally became obsolete. I had a hard copy, but to move my books to a new electronic database would entail re-entering the information for all my thousands of books. It's also one reason that I made the card catalog. I knew that it would probably be my only truly lasting record. My hope is that LibraryThing stays around long enough for me to get everything entered and printed and maybe even saved to a nice stable ASCII text file. :)

Health Update

2007-09-17T20:27:00.001-07:00

Daily pill intake: 27
Books entered on LibraryThing: 409
Number of times cursed at crappy dot-matrix library catalog printout: 409
Items checked off on "When to Call Your Doctor" bronchitis fact sheet: 4
Secondary bacterial infections: 1
Pneumonias: 0
New prescriptions: 3
Stargate episodes watched: 10
Crappy fanfics read: 90234857

Bronchitis: 1, Jinjifore: 0

The good news is that I have approximately 4,000 more books to enter on LibraryThing, so it's not like I'm going to run out of things to do from bed. Also, among the numerous new pills I'm taking are antibiotics and steroids, which should hopefully help me feel better sooner rather than later. Here's hoping. :)

PSA, FYI, ETC

2007-09-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

Right. So I have bronchitis again, and it seems to be of a slightly nastier variety than the previous one. According to the literature I was given, I can expect this to last for 1-2 weeks. This is, therefore, my blanket statement to not be totally surprised if I don't show up for my usual social engagements. I will, of course, try to give all due advance notice of my absence, but I wanted to give a heads-up that is going to be a bit more long-term than usual.

The really bad news is that I have now seen every episode of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, and listened to all the commentaries ever made for both shows. More than once. The good news is that I finally decided to see what LibraryThing was all about, and I suspect that typing in ISBNs for 4,500 books will keep me occupied for a while.

Take care, all, and I'll see you soon. :)

Cathedral Mittens in Progress

2007-09-08T09:28:00.000-07:00

I'm still composing my DragonCon report, so instead I'm going to talk about mittens.

I'm really, really pleased with the way these are turning out. I was worried for a while about the gauge, because the swatch is measured over the palm stitch, and the cuff stitch is a lot wider. I was knitting on these huge cuffs thinking the things would swallow my hand, but now that I've gotten an inch above the thumb I'm thinking it's going to be okay. The hand stitch is, as my swatch told me, a lot more compressed horizontally than the cuffs, and the contrast is going to give a nice gauntlet effect to the cuff.

I had to rip back a row when I first made the thumb opening, but so far that's only my second big mistake. My first big mistake, you ask?

Imagine, if you will, the purple and gold chevron pattern at the top of the cuff with the last row of gold stitches offset by half a repeat. It was actually a very nice effect, and if I had done it for the whole row I would have gladly kept it because it was pretty. Unfortunately, I did half the row correctly, and the other half not.

I had already knitted another two or three rows by the time I discovered this. I didn't want to rip out, so what I did instead was to slip stitches along the row until I reached the point above an incorrect stitch. I laddered down, then, using a crochet hook, snagged the correct color that was already stranded across the back of the work and knitted the column back up. It worked out fine, since the colors were already stranded, just in a different order than they should have been. I really should have taken pictures of the process, though.

These are also knitting up a good deal quicker than I thought they would. So far it's taken about four knitting days to reach the point where I am now, and the pattern is very easy to remember after the first repeat. It's going to take some time, but not nearly as much as I had feared.

Fifteen Years Later...

2007-08-30T06:35:00.000-07:00

Because I have nothing else to do today, such as get dressed, finish packing, help daughter do same, and drive to Atlanta, I'm going to talk a bit about my new knitting project.

I've wanted to do Lizbeth Upitis's Cathedral Mittens for fifteen years. I've been making projects out of the book Homespun Handknit for at least that long, and the Cathedral Mittens were one of the ones that had to wait a while. Thanks to Maggie Righetti's Dumb Baby Bonnet, Stupid Baby Sweater, and Baby Booties, I did have a good basic skill set, but the Cathedral Mittens were completely out of my league. Furthermore, I didn't even have access to needles small enough to knit at twelve stitches to the inch, and if I had I didn't have access to good enough yarn, either. So the mittens waited.

As the years passed, I got better at knitting, and from time to time I'd look at the Cathedral Mittens and think, "Yeah, I could probably do those now." But there was always something else to do before tackling such a finely knitted project that would be only for myself. I had, apparently, a lot of selfless knitting to get through first. And I still hadn't found any yarn that said, "Hey, remember the Cathedral Mittens? Use me!" For one thing, I really wanted to do the mittens in the actual colors from the original pattern--which I rarely do--and finding a fine yarn in just the right shades of gold, purple, blue, orange, and red that also came in black proved harder than it might seem.

A few months ago, though, events converged. I'd added 000 and 0 size needles to my tools some time ago, and had knitted a couple of projects at twelve and ten stitches to the inch, so I knew I had the dogged bloody-mindedness required. Not to mention the insanity of the 160-fish fish blanket. Then I spotted some Garnstudio Drops Alpaca black, gold, and other cathedral-esque colors, and my brain finally dredged up "Cathedral Mittens!"

The picture above is my gauge swatch, knitted first on 000 needles, then 0s. The 000s gave me a gauge of about fourteen to the inch, so I switched to 0s. The gauge was a little closer, thirteen stitches per inch, and the "windows" opened up a lot more. 0s it was. I didn't want to go any bigger on the needle size because I wanted the stitches to remain fairly dense, and the Drops Alpaca isn't as tight, I suspect, as the original yarn.

According to the math of the original pattern, the gloves are about seven inches around. I need about eight and a quarter inches. The gauge is calculated based on the stitch pattern for the hand, which calls for slip stitches that compress the work a lot more than normal stranding. The cuff is worked with stranded knitting, and there's a big, big difference in the gauge. The mittens will be the correct size around the palm--well, theoretically--but the cuffs are huge. Seriously, they're going to be something like ten-plus inches

Now, it's possible that these mittens are supposed to have huge, gauntlet-esque cuffs, but it's difficult to tell from the pictures. The cuffs do look bigger, but I'm not sure they're that much bigger. Or that I want them that much bigger, even if that's how they're supposed to be. It's also possible that I'm the loosest stranded knitter on the planet and most normal humans wouldn't have such a huge difference in gauges. I've considered dropping down a couple of needle sizes for the cuffs, but I'll probably have to knit the whole cuff and some of the hand before I know for sure if I want to rip it all out and go with smaller needles.

I'm also waiting to make a decision about the thumb. The pattern uses a gore-less thumb, which is understandable given the colorwork, but I'm not horribly fond of them. To change it would require a lot of work, and I'm not sure it would turn out looking anything but a mess. But, as I said, I've got some knitting to go before I get there.

Sensational Socks!

2007-08-29T18:16:00.000-07:00

Pattern: Based on the "Pine and Neon" Four-Stitch Reticulated Patterns socks from Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch.
Yarn: 3 skeins Koigu KPPPM/KPM (100% wool). 2 skeins KPM 7160 (Purple), 1 skein KPPPM 841 (Greens and Black)
Needles: 2.5mm (US 1)
Gauge: 19 sts x 21 rows = 2 inches over stranded stockinette
Knitting Time and Date Completed: 4 weeks, completed 08/27/07
Notes: There were two things that I'd wanted to do for a long time: Try Koigu, and knit some patterned socks. This project from Sensational Knitted Socks was just the thing to satisfy both desires. I love purple and green, and the moment I spotted these two colors I knew what I wanted to do with them. This was my first experience with Koigu, and I understand now why people rave about it. It's lovely to knit with, soft and springy, and even the solids in plain stockinette create all manner of interesting textures. It was a joy to work with, and I was sorry to reach the end of the project.

As always with any technique I've not tried before, these were a learning experience. I'd done stranded work, so the knitting part wasn't difficult. But I'd never done colorwork with a variegated yarn before and I made a basic mistake when I picked my colors, namely that the variegated yarn contained some colors that were as dark as the main solid. This meant that part of the pattern would be lost when the contrast yarn matched the solid yarn. I considered choosing another color, but I really liked the way the green and purple looked together and decided that I could live with some pattern blurring. It turned out to a be a good decision. Yes, some of the pattern fades into the background, and it's not an effect that everyone would find pleasing, but I love the two yarns together so much that I find that I don't really care.

The second learning experience involved the heel turning. Because of the colorwork, the entire sock is knitted with two strands of yarn, with the exception of the heel turning and the toe. I didn't really think about it while I was turning the heel, but once I started on the foot I realized that the bottom of the heel, knitted with only one color and one strand, was a very different thickness and texture than the rest of the sock. Since this isn't an area that typically wears out on my socks, I decided I wouldn't worry about it, but when I got to the toe I simply dropped the contrast yarn and picked up a second strand of the solid, working the toe by alternating the two yarns as in two-end/tvaandstickning. I was very pleased with the result. Although it's still a solid color, the toes match the rest of the sock in texture and thickness.

Speaking of toes, I also ran into a bit of a toe problem with the first sock. In the pictures, you can see the first sock as I originally finished it, worked with decreases every other round. For every other sock I've ever made, decreasing every other round has made a perfect toe. For some reason, though, my row gauge was considerably larger than I'm used to, and by the time the toe was more than long enough, I still had about twice as many stitches as I wanted. I went ahead and finished it, figuring I could knit the second sock while I was considering whether or not to alter the toe. I decided rather quickly that I didn't like the wide toe, so for the second sock I decreased every round. It came out perfect, so I cut the tip off the first toe, ripped it back, and re-knitted it the same way as the second.

Kiawah Beach Pictures

2007-08-11T07:41:00.000-07:00

I have returned!

Well, okay, I returned last Sunday. But I returned with a horrible cough and sinus infection, and it's only been in the last couple of days that I've felt like uploading and organizing the mass of pictures I took on vacation. I'm composing a more detailed post, but I think it will be more efficient to begin with the pictorial highlights.

To that end, I've made a set on Flickr. It's big, with 129 pictures, and most of them have comments about the trip. If this does not deter you, and you'd like to experience the full chronicle of our Kiawah holiday in pictures (well, not really the full because I took a little over 500 pictures and only uploaded 129), go here:

Kiawah Beach Trip 2007 Photo Set on Flickr

For those wishing a less comprehensive photo tour, visit the quickie ten-picture tour below.

.5 seconds after we reached the beach.

The beach later in the afternoon, not quite low tide. This was taken just before it started to rain. You can see a fishing boat on the far right. For some reason, we only saw the fishing boats the first couple of days. It was very sunny for the rest of our trip (well, except for the last day, when it rained all day), but this is otherwise a very typical scene from our little cluster of rented chairs and umbrellas. The tide has, I'd guess, about fifty more yards before it hits the low point of the day, usually around 4 or 4:30. I wish I'd consulted tide charts while I was there.

A picture from our third day at the beach. Boo and my mom are playing in the sand.

Another picture from day three. We have one very tired little girl. This is also, by the way, not long after I was stung by a jellyfish, so I'm a bit pooped myself. It wasn't a very severe sting, but it hurt like crazy for a couple of hours. Needless to say, I was glad to relax and get some knitting done. And also very glad that it was me and not Boo.

My brother-in-law.

My sister in her preferred beach posture.

On Day Five, we built Kitty Castle.

It's not a trip to the beach unless you get buried in the sand.

Our next to last day, we biked along the beach after supper.

Bye-bye, beach. See you next year!

Pictures and Text Don't Taste Great Smushed Together

2007-07-13T05:15:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you've probably noticed that the pictures I've been posting have been encroaching on the sidebar items, making it difficult to see both the pictures and the sidebar. Today, I exerted some embarassingly minimal effort (ie, opened the template editor and scrolled down three times), and widened the blog window so it shouldn't be a problem any more. I hope.

Boo's Sparkly Socks

2007-07-13T05:02:00.000-07:00

Pattern: Boo's Sparkly Socks.
Yarn: 1 100g/425m skein South West Trading Company Tofutsies (50% superwash wool/25% Soysilk fibers/22.5% cotton/2.5% chitin) in #730 (Light Foot). 1 87yd skein Lana Gatto Crystal (63% viscose/20% Nylon/17% Polyester) in #4112 (Pinks)
Needles: 2.5mm (US 1)
Gauge: 9 sts = 1"
Notes: Flush with the success of the Fixation socks, I decided to make Boo a pair of pink socks. I showed her the pink yarn I'd bought, and she asked if it was "sparkly." I said I'd see what I could do. The next day, I went back to where I'd bought the Tofutsies, and found a matching pink eyelash yarn that certainly qualified as "sparkly." (And it was on sale.) So, I cast on more stitches than I needed, added the sparkly yarn, and ribbed the cuff in sparklies. After the cuff ribbing, I reduced the stitches to a more normal circumference and just knitted a basic sock. If I had it all to do again I might not double the yarn, and I almost certainly won't rib the eyelash parts, but the effect of the cuff was exactly as I'd hoped: big and floppy and foldable down to a nice anklet, but also capable of staying up.

Boo modeling her socks.

Close up of the sparklies, and the folded-down cuff feature.

Some more details about the pattern:

I cast on 64 stitches, because I wanted a big fluffy cuff that I could ruffle and fold down. I cast on with the main yarn (Tofutsies), then added the eyelash and knitted 6 rows of 2x2 ribbing with both yarns held together. 6 rows was enough to a) give a nice fluffy, sparkly cuff and b) drive me insane.

After dropping the eyelash, I knitted 5 more rows of 2x2 ribbing, then switched to stockinette and K2, K2tog around to reduce the 64 stitches to 48. After that, I just made a regular old sock. Well, with about two extra inches in the toe because Boo has long feet. I actually clipped the toe out, ripped back, and added an extra inch after finishing the first sock, because I realized it was just too short.

I really liked knitting with the Tofutsies. I'd heard it was splitty, and it was for a bit until I adjusted my stitch style. I was using Addi Turbos, which aren't particularly pointy (well, I don't think so, anyway :)), and I didn't have much trouble. The yarn knitted up into a beautifully soft and stretchy fabric, even at 9 sts to the inch. We'll see how it wears, but I liked the first impression.

Fixation Socks

2007-06-30T06:52:00.000-07:00

Pattern: Socks
Yarn: 1 50g/100 yd ball Cascade Fixation (98.3% cotton/1.7% elastic) in #9464. One ball actually made three socks, the two shown here and a *cough* rather smaller one. It was a swatch sock. Really.
Needles: 3.0mm (US 3)
Gauge: 7.5 sts = 1"
Knitting Time and Date Completed: Four hours each, completed 06/30/07
Notes: Although Boo's first socks were beautiful, they weren't exactly a success in the knittability and wearability departments. Knitting anything at 12 stitches to the inch is asking for a nervous breakdown, and after they were done Boo said the socks were "itchy." She loved them when she saw them, she really did, but she only wore them once before refusing to wear them again (cf. "itchy").

So, for my second attempt, I went with cotton, and I went with bigger yarn. Much bigger yarn. I used Cascade Fixation, which is cotton with a deceptively small amount of elastic blended in. It says 1.7%, but that 1.7% goes a long, long way. It's a very pleasant yarn to work with, soft and springy, but it took me a while to get the hang of what tension to use (for the record, really, really loose). It's very easy to have a lot of tension on the yarn without noticing, and I had to make a special effort to make sure that there was plenty of yarn pulled free and that I wasn't just stretching the same three inches of yarn over more and more stitches. But the results were very nice, and Boo loves them and declares them non-itchy. That's good enough for me.

Detail of heel flap

I happened to be starting my heel flap at the same moment that I was sitting next to someone working from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks, and I decided to try the garter-stitch border for the heel flap. It worked up quite nicely, and I liked both the effect of the border and how nicely the stitches picked up.

So, about the"ruffle"; at the top. This is not a ruffle, per se, it's actually just your everyday 2x2 ribbing that didn't rib because of the elastic. Presumably. But it looked nice, so I decided that it was a feature instead of a bug and carried on.

Poor Greebo. I really have no idea why he doesn't just run, run for his life every time he sees Boo coming. And yet, he will seek her out. Go figure.

Boo's Trip to the Bicentennial Mall

2007-06-28T17:24:00.000-07:00

I took approximately three billion pictures during Boo's field trip to the Bicentennial Mall and Farmer's Market yesterday. For those of you not native to Nashville, there's a huge mall in front of the state capitol. It was constructed in 1996 to celebrate Tennessee's bicentennial, and includes a 1,400-foot wall of history, a ninety-five bell carillion (one for each of the counties in the state), an amphitheater, a nine-ton floating marble globe of the world as it was during World War II, and a plaza with thirty-one fountains (to represent each of the rivers that flow through Tennessee). The fountains are pretty much designed to be played in, and the kids had a fantastic time:

There's something about turning the fountains off and on with one's bottom that's a universal toddler pleasure.

Another feature of the mall is a map plaza in front of the fountains. It has an enormous to-scale map of Tennessee. Boo is crushing our house under her mighty croc.

So, About The Lawn Mower...

2007-06-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

I don't think I was alone in thinking that the saga of the lawn mower was over. Yesterday, though, as I was pulling out of my garage, I noticed this:

Or rather, I noticed that I didn't have to be careful about running over the lawn mower because it wasn't there. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, our brand-new lawn mower had been stolen.

Operating on the dual assumption that your average lawn mower thief a) probably couldn't get far and b) isn't likely to be all that smart, Albert made a brief tour of our street that evening and, in fact, spotted our mower sitting in a yard about a mile away. Armed with the serial number from the delivery form and a cell phone, he called the police and filed a report. He gave up on the cops around midnight (understandably, there seemed to be more urgent matters afoot than a stolen lawn mower), but returned to his post and phoned again this morning.

The residents of the house denied all knowledge of the mower, but since the serial numbers matched we were allowed to bring the mower back.

Sadly, though, not undamaged.

On the plus side, Albert saw some people returning to the house with a gas can, and there appears to be at least two or three gallons of gas in the mower. Eight or nine bucks worth of gas is nothing to sneeze at.

On our to-do list for the weekend: Buy a yard shed.

Two Weeks Later...

2007-06-14T15:45:00.000-07:00

The final tally: 9 scarves, 3 hats. Not bad for two weeks work. :)

Now We Have a Lawn Mower, Ho Ho Ho

2007-06-14T08:32:00.000-07:00

The lawn mower repair folks delivered our shiny new lawn mower this morning. They also installed the mulch kit, no charge. So, while losing an entire lawn tractor = not so good, replacing it with a brand new one definitely counts as a save in a customer service department. Plus, it's been so darn dry around here that we haven't even needed to mow for something like three weeks, so not having a mower hasn't even been much of an inconvenience.

In Hypericon news, I'm washing my pile o' Potter scarves in preparation for tasselling this afternoon. I have two ear flaps left to knit on my fourth Jayne hat, and I'm fairly certain I have enough yarn for a fifth, which I feel confident that I can finish during the con. I used Elann's Highland Wool, and it's actually not a bad yarn, especially for a project that's supposed to look rustic. And, when I mentioned here that I was waiting for yarn, the yarn was, in fact, sitting on my front porch at that very moment, so I was able to get started a couple of days earlier than I'd hoped. Cheap yarn delivered fast. :)

Jinjifore's Fourth Law of Knitting

2007-06-09T12:02:00.000-07:00

The pile of scarves is bigger, but the bucket of yarn appears no emptier. Is this some kind of new knitting physics?

I've run off eight scarves on the machine now, two for each house. I'm making a third Gryffindor scarf because I ended up with one old-style scarf and one new for each of the houses except Gryffindor, and I'd like to keep the symmetry. Besides, the first scarf I did has all the expected flaws of a prototype, and I'd like to have two non-crappy scarves for each house.

I've ordered yarn to make some Jayne hats, but I have no idea if it will arrive in a timely enough fashion. In any case, I've met my minimum Harry Potter production goal, so that's something. :)

Six days to Hypericon!

Harry Potter and the Knitting Machine

2007-06-04T20:00:00.000-07:00

Allow me to present my life for the next two weeks:

Hypericon is weekend after next, and my plan is to turn the contents of the big green bucket into scarves and hats before then. I've run off five so far, and number six is on the machine. (Actually, I'm making this post because my daughter complained that the machine was too loud. :))

So far, I've made two Gryffindor scarves, one Hufflepuff, two Slytherins, and am mid-way through a Ravenclaw. Unfortunately, I used up all the Slytherin green I had, so if I want to make any more Slytherin stuff I'm going to have to re-scour JoAnn's and Michaels and other cheap yarn venues for dark green yarn. In retrospect, it might not have been my smartest move ever to make one of the nearly-all-green scarves from the third and fourth movies. But it is very pretty.

Well, it'll be pretty once it's seamed up. :)

My plan is to make at least two scarves for each house, and hopefully I'll be able to make some others based on the third movie design. It takes me about two hours to run off one scarf on my machine, and two to three more hours to do the seaming up. The seaming, though, can be done in spare moments, whereas getting blocks of time to use the machine are more of a challenge.

Greebo is a big help with this:

Boo at the Zoo

2007-06-04T11:13:00.000-07:00

Boo's playschool class went to the zoo last week. A dozen 4-year-olds were set loose in the wilds of the Nashville Zoo, with the following results (some numbers estimated):

Number of children per adult: 1.5
Escapes: None successful
Rest stops in two-hour period: 6
Bottles of water consumed: 60
Organized pee breaks: 2
Emergency pee breaks: 47
Animals seen: 10
Meltdowns for reasons of fear: 2
Meltdowns for reasons of hunger: 23
Meltdowns of unknown origins: 3
Children lost: 0
Parents lost: 2
Moment most likely to be remembered: The peeing giraffe

More pictures here

Since Boo and I met up with the rest of the playschool on our own, we were able to stay a bit after the others left. We continued on from the Unseen Adventures building (this is where they have fish, snakes, insects, and other smaller critters) and set off to see tigers. The tigers were sleeping in the far corner of their enclosure, but we did get to glimpse them, so it was all good. Being there with the rest of the class was fun, but I really enjoyed the one-on-one time with Boo afterwards.

How Do You Lose a Lawn Mower?

2007-06-01T06:05:00.000-07:00

We have an update on the lawn mower saga.

Apparently, the shop has lost our mower. Their best guess is that it was mistakenly shipped off to one of our many local home improvement stores, because they do a lot of contract repair work for them.

Albert finally found this out by talking to the owner of the shop, and also found out that Ms. Customer Service was the one who failed to tag the mowers when they came in. This makes her annoyance with myself and Albert all the more special.

The good news, though, is that the owner of the shop has promised to make it good, one way or another. If he can't find our mower (and he's not too optimistic), they'll replace it with a new one.

I'm okay with that. :)

Welcome to the Machine

2007-05-31T19:45:00.000-07:00

Some folks have asked about my humble knitting machine, so I've taken a few pictures. There are more pictures here, and if you click on the pictures in this post you can read notes about the various parts of the machine.

This is a Bond Sweater Machine. (A very old one, I might add. I bought it probably ten years ago.) It's the simplest, most basic type of knitting machine, with only one bed and a manual carriage. The single-bed part means that it can only do knit-based stitches, no purling. This machine has a 30-needle expansion bed on it, which means it can knit up to 130 stitches at a time. It takes something like four feet of machine to create two feet of knitting, so yeah, it needs a lot of space.

Here's a picture of The Machine In Action. You can see here why the darn thing has to be so long, because the knitting needs to be under a lot of downward tension to make it hang from the working needles and not just pop off. The scarf in this picture is 70 stitches wide, a little more than half the total capacity of the machine. This is about 90 rows of knitting, and took about 10-15 minutes. When I get a good rhythm going, I can average an easy 10 rows a minute.

A look at the machine mid-row. I took the pictures on a color-change row so you could see how the new, yellow yarn is working into the old red yarn.

The nitty-gritty insides of the carriage. In this picture, the carriage is moving from left to right, and you can see how the ridges of the template are pushing the needles back and forth. As each needle moves forward, the old loop of yarn is pushed back over the latch, opening the latch and leaving the hook ready for the new yarn. As the needle is pushed back, it carries the new yarn, and the whole hook is pulled through the old loop, leaving the new loop of yarn resting in the hook ready for the next row.

A closer look at the knitting, and the latch construction on the needles.

Well, there it is, the knitting machine in all its glory. :)

Adventures in Customer Service

2007-05-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

Adventures in Customer Service, Part 1

'I'm sorry. That's not my lawn mower.'

As my fellow homeowners are no doubt aware, with spring comes the most vigorous time of lawn mowing. My neighbors all keep tidy lawns, and are very patient and uncomplaining when our lawn--as it often does--shows signs of scraggliness. This year, we were late with the first ritual lawn mowing, and when Albert did try to start up the lawn mower, engaging the blade resulting in a horrible screeching noise and clouds of white smoke. Sure enough, the blade belt was broken.

We called Bolen, the manufacturer of our mower, and they gave us the name of their local authorized repair shop. They came and picked up our mower. My husband taped a note to it explaining what the problem was and also asking them to install the mulch kit we'd never gotten around to putting on.

On Monday, I get a phone call from the repair shop. Our mower, the woman said, was ready. But they had three mowers that were all alike, and didn't know which one was ours. Based on the serial numbers, they could tell where each one was purchased, so she wanted to know where we'd bought ours (two years ago). Her attitude was that it was somehow my problem for not remembering off the top of my head which of the three local hardware stores (all of which we'd patronized) we'd bought the mower from, and not at all *their* problem for not having, say, stuck a tag on our mower when it arrived at their shop.

Luckily, Albert remembered where we'd bought it, and they said they would deliver it. Someone needed to be there, they said, to pay for the repairs. No problem, Albert said, How much is it? Once again, our fault for asking, not hers for not knowing, or being able to look it up and find out.

Finally, later that afternoon, the lawn mower repair person arrives. The doorbell rings, and I am ready with my checkbook. I'm still ignorant of the amount I need to pay, but what the heck. The man comes in, I sign the delivery slip, and ask how much. He says, "Nothing. It was under warranty."

Great! But as I start to hand the paperwork back, I remember the mulch kit, which was certainly not covered under any warranty. What about the mulch kit? I ask. He has no idea. I look at the second sheet of the paperwork, which details the repairs, and see words like "won't start," and "faulty switch."

"I don't think this is my tractor," I say, and step outside and walk around to look, for the first time, at the lawn mower on the back of the trailer (admittedly, this probably should have been my first step).

I can say this much: the mower they brought us was also green.

It's two weeks later. We've called a couple of times about our mower, and heard nothing. I suspect that we're going to have to go down there and pick it out of a lineup.

Adventures in Customer Service, Part 2

'What do you mean by Deadwood?'

In my ongoing quest to organize my yarn, I decided that I needed some shelving for my closet. I went to Sam's, and picked out some nice sturdy metal shelves on wheels. I got the checkout slip for the shelves, picked up some other stuff I needed, and was passing the DVD section when I spotted the first season of Deadwood. I'd heard good things about it, and am a huge fan of Ian McShane, so I decided what the heck. All the DVD sets are locked down, so once again I got a checkout slip with a barcode in lieu of the actual item. I was a little concerned because, unlike many other slips, there was no title printed or written above the barcode, and I couldn't confirm that it was the correct slip for that DVD. Still, it was the only slip there, so I presumed I was okay.

I got the checkout, and a lady was doing pre-checkout, which means that your membership card is scanned, then all your items, so that when you get to the cashier all she has to do is scan your card and the total pops up, without any loading and unloading. Easy peasy.

When the woman scanned the Deadwood slip, I asked her if it was the correct slip for Deadwood. There was no title written on it, I explained, and I wanted to be sure I'd gotten the right one. "What do you mean, Deadwood?" she asked. I explained, again, that that was the name of the DVD I was trying to buy. She turned without answering and starting calling someone to fetch my shelves. Okay.

I get up to the cashier, and ask where I should go to pick up my shelves and DVD. She gives me an utterly blank look, and asks who pre-checked me. I look around, and the lady is gone, vanished, absent. The cashier asks me to wait near the food tables. No problem.

Very soon, a guy comes up clutching the my ill-fated slip. Which season do I want? he asks. I said I wasn't sure, I just wanted the Deadwood DVD. He explained that the barcodes didn't indicate seasons, and I said, Okay, no sweat, first season.

He returns a few minutes later with my shelves on a flatbed and the first season of The Sopranos.

Once more, I explain that I want Deadwood (which I have explained at least twice to each person I've encountered). He goes away again. Finally, he comes back and says that I'll have to show him, he has no idea what I'm looking for. I smile, say "Sure," and walk right up to the Deadwood DVD. He gets it for me, I say thanks, sorry it was so much trouble.

He says, "Just take the shelves on out and tell the girl at the door you need someone to help you."

Now, my understanding--based on him saying so--was that he was going to take the shelves out, but fine, whatever. It's only when I get back to the front door that I realize that it's impossible for me to pull both the flatbed and my own shopping cart with the rest of my stuff. So, I transfer everything to the flatbed, explain (twice) to the lady a the front door that I need someone to help me load up the shelves, and finally, finally, meet someone who gives a crap.

I parked the flatbed outside the door, and told the loading person that I'd be back in a minute with my van. When I started to back out, though, I almost ran him over because he'd followed me out. He helped me load the shelves. He helped me load my stuff. I apologized again for nearly running him over. He said no problem.

Bless you, shelf-loading guy.

Party Pictures!

2007-05-28T22:04:00.000-07:00

For any interested parties, I've uploaded pictures from Riley's 5th birthday party. I just went ahead and uploaded files that are, theoretically, big enough to make prints from. The pictures are all in this set, here:

Riley's 5th Birthday

Or you can just click on the picture above.

If you would like to make a print, look at the right side of the individual photo page, in the "Additional Information" section. You'll see a link called "different sizes." Click on that link, and it will take you to a page where you can select from several size options.

Swatching, a Cautionary Tale

2007-05-18T18:19:00.000-07:00

While I was taking pictures and uploading and making notes, I decided to take a photograph that vividly demonstrates the importance of washing one's swatches.

In the picture, the smaller piece is the aforementioned swatch, laid on top of the in-progress back of the sweater. As you can see, there's a dramatic difference between the washed swatch and the unwashed sweater piece, to the tune of 3 1/2 inches extra width. (Don't worry, I knew this before I cast on the sweater, and the in-progress piece will be the correct size post-blocking. I hope.)

Now, I will admit that I'm not the world's most diligent swatcher. There are, really, only so many times that one can swatch the same yarn on the same needles and come up with the same result before giving up swatching every single time. I'll also admit that I'm fairly lax about washing and blocking my swatches. If it's a yarn I've used before, a stitch I've used before, and a project where the fit is negotiable, I don't always wash and block. At least, I didn't used to.

This time, however, I knew that the numerous cables would play merry hell with gauge, and I was also going to have to re-tool the pattern to make it fit me. Alice Starmore notoriously includes excess ease in her patterns, but even her generous largest size wasn't big enough for me. So, I knew I needed a big swatch, and I knew it would have to be an accurate one.

I turned, therefore, to some advice from Elizabeth Zimmermann, from Knitting Without Tears. In it, she suggests making a "swatch hat" for complex cabled patterns, especially if one is creating one's own pattern combination. The idea is to knit a swatch half the circumference of the sweater, which generally falls into the range of a typical hat circumference. Not only do you get a very accurate swatch out of it, you get a matching hat for your sweater. So, after making yarn calculations, I ordered quite a bit of excess yarn and included an allowance of one skein just for swatching.

As I was working on the swatch pictured above, I was thinking only in terms of figuring my gauge across all those cables. I hadn't really thought about washing and blocking the swatch yet. Then I saw a sweater that a lady had knitted based on a washed and blocked swatch. It fit her beautifully...until she washed and blocked the full sweater. She had swatched the cables and blocked them, but the ribbing bloomed hideously on the final blocking, and the sweater no longer fit. So, when I finished my swatch, I washed it and laid it flat to dry. I didn't stretch or pin it, just laid it out, let it dry, and then gave it a couple of days to relax back into whatever shape it wanted.

It wanted, apparently, to be 3 1/2 inches wider.

I like a lot of ease in my clothes. But no so much that 7 extra inches, added on top of the generous ease I was already planning, would have made the finished product look like anything other than an intricately cabled tent. I dodged the bullet mostly by accident, and I'm just grateful that I decided to be diligent.

Photograph Upload

2007-05-18T16:52:00.000-07:00

I've just finished a massive upload of photographs to Flickr. There are a lot of new pictures of Boo and my friends and family, but I've also put up just about every picture I've ever taken of my knitting.

Jinjifore's Photographs on Flickr

If you want to look at pictures of people and animals, you can visit the "People, Places and Things" collection, which you can also get to by clicking the icon to the right of my main page on Flickr.

If, on the other hand, you'd like to look at thrilling knitting pictures, visit the "Knitting" collection.

There are several subsets in each category that will, hopefully, be self-explanatory. I've also tried to tag the pictures with years and subjects. In the knitting pictures, the "Project Main Entry" tag is used for the picture that has the complete notes for that particular project.

We bought a car! For nearly twenty-four hours!

2007-02-04T11:27:00.000-08:00

So. My husband has been looking for a car. His old car still runs pretty well, except for the thing where it has to be parked correctly or it won't start, and the thing where it doesn't go into gear and won't start, and the thing were it slips mysteriously into gear if you leave it running, and the thing where the driver's door doesn't close all the way and wind and rain tend to blow onto the driver. You know, small stuff.

His dream car is a Chevy Aveo hatchback, one of the reasons for the word "subcompact" to be coined. He wants a manual transmission, manual locks, manual windows, low mileage, and, oh yeah, air conditioning. (The last thing is important.) He also wants all this for as close to under $10K as can be managed, which is actually pretty darn close.

For the last few months, Al has been searching Carmax for such a car. He thought he'd found one in New Hampshire, but it turns out that that particular car had become famous in Carmax lore for:

Having no air conditioning

Having a black interior
and

Trying to be sold from a lot in Miami

The car had been in the system for eighteen months before the Miami dealership persuaded someone to take the car to New Hampshire.

Last week, however, he found another one in Virginia. It wasn't listed as having A/C, so he called the local Carmax and they called the one in Virginia and had someone walk out and look at the car. "Yep," said Virginia Carmax, "the car has A/C." "Yay," said Al and I. We paid the $450 transfer fee, and the car arrived in Nashville Thursday. We looked at it, were assured once again that it had A/C, and bought it. They even agreed to give us $50 for Albert's old Taurus, which for us was a step up from having to pay someone else to take it off our hands. Since each of us thought that the other one was supposed to have brought the title to the Taurus, we agreed to come by the next day and sign it over.

The next day, Al is looking through the manual to the Aveo and discovers that the A/C works on a separate system from the heat. In order to turn on the cooling system, one has to push a little button on the console...which wasn't there. He drove to the Carmax lot to meet me to sign over the Taurus, and the salespeople looked at the car, and the manual, and finally someone opened the hood and looked for an air compressor. The verdict? No A/C.

Carmax took the car back without a fuss, and also refunded the transfer fee because the lot in Virginia had assured them in writing that the car had A/C. (This, by the way, is why we're so going to continue to deal with Carmax.) They'll be sending us a refund check in the mail, and the guy who sold us the car is now motivated to find a replacement. We have also succeeded in educating at least half a dozen people, including ourselves, on what doesn't constitute "A/C included" in a Chevy Aveo.

Somewhere out there is a manual-everything Chevy Aveo hatchback with A/C, and we're going to find it. Someday.

Exploding Flour

2007-02-01T18:51:00.000-08:00

At Stitch N' Bitch tonight, I--for reasons that escape me at the moment--brought up the topic of exploding flour. There was an important plot point in the movie Once a Thief about the explosive properties of loose flour, and I never bothered to find out if it this was fact or fiction. Thanks to the curiosity of those around me, I took the time to look it up.

Well, ladies, it's true:

"Flour dust suspended in air is explosive, as is any mixture of a finely powdered flammable substance with air[...]. Some devastating and fatal explosions have occurred at flour mills, including an explosion in 1878 at a mill in Minneapolis, the largest flour mill in the United States at the time."

There you have it.

Holiday and Wedding Knitting--Update

2006-10-05T10:44:00.000-07:00

Holiday knitting is proceeding. I have completed:

3 pairs of socks + 1 sock (Please note these socks are now mostly in pairs instead of as individuals. This is a step up.)

1 hat

1 scarf

Still to go:

4 pairs of socks + 1

1 set of wristwarmers

1 hat (forgotten on last tally, oops)

At present, though, I've stopped work on all holiday knitting in order to make my sister's wedding reception shawl. After much consultation, I realized that my sister didn't want anything frilly, lacy, or, really, complex. I was just at the point of steeling myself for the grim prospect of miles and miles of teeny stockinette when it occurred to me that there was, in fact, a simple yet attractive shawl pattern in existence that nearly every single damn knitter on the planet had already made.

Yep, I'm making my sister a Clapotis.

I'm knitting it out of GGH's Mystik, a cotton/viscose blend that's very smooth and satiny and quite wedding-dressy, especially in the white that I'm using. It's also very, very slippery. When Boo dropped a hand puppet on the cord of the needle as I was knitting, I had the somewhat heart-stopping experience of the needles shooting right out of each and every stitch. It was pretty impressive, really, to be sitting there knitting and suddenly be holding nothing but the knitting. (And yes, I got all the stitches back on, no harm done.)

Sylvester--Now With 9% More!

2006-10-02T09:48:00.000-07:00

Took Sylvester to the vet this morning, and the news is quite good. He's gained 3/4 of a pound, bringing his weight up to 7.25 pounds. He's still way below his optimal 11 pounds, but the gain means that he's got an appetite and isn't throwing it all up. This can only be good.

The vet sent me home with a sample bag of three different brands of prescription cat food, with wet and dry varieties of each. They started making up these sample bags at my vets so that owners wouldn't have to invest in 5lb sacks of food--that their pet might not like--in order to find the one that the pet *did* like. Very clever. Of course, Sylvester usually gobbles up whatever I put in front of him, but it's good to be able to see if he has a preference.

We've also pared down his medications down to three: The thyroid medication, a potassium supplement, and the Pepcid. And if he keeps eating well, he doesn't really need the Pepcid.

The tricky bit, the vet says, will be to keep a balance between the thyroid medicine and the needs of his kidneys. In some ways, a quicker metabolism is actually beneficial to his kidney problem, and I'll need to make sure that we don't correct his hyperthyroidism to the point that it suppresses his appetite.

The best news is that Sylvester seems to be feeling very much better. He's active and curious and even playful, and has returned to being the pain in my ass that I know and love. And the vet is now talking in terms of maybe a year or more instead of months. So, all in all, it's been a good morning.

Holiday Knitting Tally

2006-09-23T08:40:00.000-07:00

So far, I have completed:

4 socks (please note, I did not say "2 pairs of socks." This is an important distinction.)

1 hat

It may not seem very impressive, considering that my holiday knitting list includes:

10 more socks

1 scarf

1 hat

1 set of wrist warmers

That, or it might seem a bit premature to be knitting for the holidays in September. But my non-holiday knitting due on December 30th--a shawl for my sister's wedding--has necessitated a bit of a fore-planning this year.

To that end, I'm going for quite a few projects with larger gauges. The finished hat, for instance, was made of Colinette Prism to the gauge of 3 stitches per inch, and took me a day to make. The socks for my nieces were 8 stitches to the inch for slightly smaller than adult-sized socks, and the socks for my stepsister are hitting about 5.5 stitches per inch. They're going pretty darn fast.

The scarf should be a fairly quick project as well. I'm making Knitty's Branching Out in cashmere, which is a good project to get to use some really nice yarn without going bankrupt. The hat and wrist warmers will also take not a whole lot of time, and one pair of socks will be knit at a fairly large gauge. No worries there.

It's the last three pairs of socks that will be the time-killers. I don't have elaborate plans for either of them in terms of stitch patterns, but they'll be knitted at around 8-10 stitches per inch, and that will take time. Also, two pairs have to be finished for Chanukah (gee, I wonder what Boo and Albert are getting this year?), which ends on (I think) December 22nd this year.

Still, it's only September 23rd. That's three months. No need to panic. Yet.

Monsters in the Poodle

2006-09-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

Transcript of recent mother/daughter exchange:

Boo: Mama?

Me: Yes?

Boo: I'm going to go fight some monsters in the poodle (trans: "pool"). I'll be back in a minute.

Me: You go do that.

Boo (to her invisible cast of thousands): Okay! Let's go!

Those monsters don't stand a chance.

Upgrade

2006-09-21T11:02:00.000-07:00

In Boo news, she is now 38.75 inches tall. She grew a half-inch at some point last week. Seriously, you blink and you miss it. In another 1.25 inches, she'll be tall enough for a booster seat, and in about five weeks she'll be old enough for said booster seat. She's probably way short on the weight requirement, though, so we'll have to see if two out of three is good enough.

I'm not actually that anxious to upgrade her. Although the standard is 40 inches, 40 pounds, and 4 years old, she can still stay in the seat she's using until she weighs more than 40 pounds or her head sticks up more than halfway over the back of the seat. She's quite a ways from both of those benchmarks, and my understanding is that if kids can keep riding in their restraint seats even when they're bigger than the Tennessee Dept of Safety says they have to be, so much the better. Well, so long as they're within the height and weight said seat is rated for.

Speaking of 4s, we had an amusing exchange last week. Boo was asking about her birthday, and told me her birthday was in October and she'd be 4, etc. I reminded her that Mama's birthday was also in October, and she asked me how old I would be. I told her I would be 40. She was delighted. "We'll be the same!" she said. And I said that, yes, our ages would certainly start with the same number...

Boo's latest fascination is gymnastics. She adores the Angelina Ballerina books, and I bought her a couple of DVDs of the TV series, one of which includes an episode about Angelina's friend Alice being in a gymnastics competition. Our bed has now become a balance beam and a floor exercise area. I nearly had a heart attack watching her leap from the bed, announcing mid-leap that she's going to do a split, see her assume that position mid-air and land splat on the floor in said split, grinning in triumph. I do give myself points for stoicism for witnessing this without screaming, shrieking, or otherwise freaking out, and saying instead, "Very good, now please don't ever do that again."

Conversion Ethics

2006-09-18T14:23:00.000-07:00

I'm preparing to launch a project that's been in the making for several years: converting all my VHS tapes to DVD.

I've been wanting to do it ever since the DVR technology came out, but for ages the recorders and the media were just too expensive to justify scrapping my considerable investment in VHS. I mean, I've got four VCRs and 1,200 video tapes. That's a lot of converting. Plus, so long as I could buy a video tape for less than a dollar, it didn't make sense to spend $5 a pop for a recordable DVD disc (which, admittedly, was a drastic drop from the $20 they used to cost).

But now, the time has come. DVR machines are becoming reasonably priced, the CD media seem to be settling into a more or less consistent group of video formats, and said CDs are pretty darn cheap. I am poised to enter the Age of DVD.

Well, except for one thing.

I've got a lot of video tapes. A lot of video tapes. I have, in fact, one thousand and two hundred self-recorded video tapes. If I buy two DVRs and consistently copy two tapes morning and evening, it will take me something approaching a year just to copy them all.

That, however, is not the big problem.

The problem is the catalog system. Or, as I should probably say, The Catalog System.

See, I used to tape a lot of television programs. During any given television season, I would be taping ten or more shows at once. With that much taping going on, organization is essential, and there are two ways to go about it. (Well, three ways if you count not organizing at all, but never mind.)

The first way is the way that most reasonable humans do it. They use one (1) tape for each show. They tape nothing but that show on that tape. This is an excellent system, and leads to efficient, easily grouped sets of tapes that contain the entirety of a single show, usually more or less in order.

That's not the system I used. I tried it, but it just didn't work for me. I found that, while I am perfectly capable of cataloging, organizing, and detailing, I was simply taping too many shows to afford the luxury of one tape for one show. For one thing, it meant that I would have to be on the spot to swap tapes on nights when I was taping multiple shows (this was back in my primitive phase, when I only had two VCRs), and that just wasn't going to happen. One of the reasons I have four VCRs is so I can *not* have to sit at home every night. Also, every time I went out of town, I could be taping 12 or more hours of different shows, and asking Albert to swap through ten different tapes in careful sequence (assuming that he was even home and not with me), was a bit much.

So, I came up with The Catalog. And it worked. I did keep each show more or less segregated on its own set of tapes using a system of color-coded dots, but if I couldn't manage it, no big deal. Each tape is eventually numbered and labeled, and I maintain a (huge) catalog that lists each tape and its contents by number, and is cross-referenced to an episode guide catalog that lists the number of the tape on which each episode of each show appears. The Catalog is currently about a hundred pages. It's a bit inefficient in terms of having episodes of a series scattered over multiple multi-purpose tapes, but by golly I can lay my hands on any episode in a matter of moments.

But now I have a dilemma. Some of those shows I taped I now have on DVD. And there are even a few I don't have on DVD that I doubt I'll ever have the desire to see again. There are, in short, quite a few tapes that are now redundant. If I re-compiled and re-numbered, I could probably eliminate close to two hundred tapes. That's nearly two months of copying, and a hundred dollars in media. This is not an insignificant amount of time or money.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. If I decided to eliminate redundant episodes, I would pretty much have to start the whole hundred-page Catalog over from scratch. I would have to track down the episodes I needed on a tape and isolate them from the episodes I didn't need, and figure out how to compile the former in their own DVDs without losing track of them. I could do it, and it would really be the best way, but it would also take buckets of time. Not only time spent re-configuring the numbers and re-typing and re-printing, but in hovering over the DVRs to swap out tapes.

On the other hand, if I just slavishly copied the entire collection, I could slap a tape and a disc in, hit Record, and forget about it. The Catalog is already done, and the only work required would be to write a number on the disc.

So. Spend hours slaving over a hot DVR, losing reading, viewing, and (most important) knitting time in order re-organize the enire collection, or keep the old Catalog and scribble a number.

Dude, even I'm not that anal.

Vive le Catalogue!

Crazy Socks

2006-09-12T13:35:00.000-07:00

Well, the double-point experiment has gone away. I just didn't like the gauge I was getting with the 00000s, so I switched to some 000 (1.5mm, for those keeping count at home) circulars I had. They're a bit short for ordinary magic loop socks, but these socks are small enough that I can still have sufficient slack even at the heel turning.

(Actually, I think I initially described the first needles as 0000s, when in fact they're .75mm needles, which I think makes them 00000s. And really, when you get down to the multiple zeros, who really cares anymore?)

The yarn I'm using (Schaefer's Anne) is described as a fingering weight, getting about 7-8 stitches per inch. Because I'm apparently insane, I'm working these socks at a gauge of 12 stitches per inch. This means that I'm working on 80 stitches for a pair of socks that's about 6 1/2" around. See above re: insane.

The socks are actually just a wee bit big for Boo, which is more or less what I intended in order to maximize the number of winters she'll be able to wear them before I have to face 12-stitch-per-inch socks again.

They are also gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. The yarn is 25% mohair, which gives it this beautiful sheen and a lovely, silky feel. The colors are unbelievably brilliant, and in fact Melissa, on seeing the yarn, told me it would be a crime for whatever I knitted with it to leave my house. And honestly, I think that even if I'd initially intended to give these away, I would probably have been tempted to keep them anyway.

DragonCon

2006-09-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

I have returned from DragonCon. Rather than posting the entirety of my very, very long con report here, I will direct interested parties to the following entries in my Livejournal:

The DragonCon Overview: 1 pair of socks, 15 episodes of Doctor Who, 6 days of fun, and 1 cheap set of DS9. No partridges.

DragonCon 2006, Part 1

DragonCon 2006, Part 2

Doilies Rock!

2006-08-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

I decided on Wednesday that I needed to make my mother some doilies for her birthday. She plays bridge every Monday, and when she hosts she buys the little paper doilies to put under the snacks and so on. Well, I hadn't had any ideas about what to do for her birthday and was going to just get her a book when the words "knit" and "doily" collided in my head.

I picked out the "'Plastic' Doily" pattern from The Lacy Knitting of Mary Schiffmann. This one is called "'Plastic' Doily" because she copied the pattern from a well, plastic doily. But the plastic version had been pressed from a real knitted doily, and she could still see the stitches imprinted in the plastic well enough to, apparently, knit a duplicate. Little old lady lace knitters are not to be messed with.

I cast on Thursday morning, and finished Friday night (which, FYI, was my mother's actual birthday, but since I'm not going to see her until next Thursday I have several days in which to cheat on making presents). This is not as impressive as it sounds, because I only knitted 60 of the 102 charted rows, and ended with a mere 384 stitches per round, instead of the 600 one had by the end of the full pattern.

I shortened the pattern because I was using my beloved Cotton Fine and not teeny-tiny crochet cotton, and didn't want to end up with a doily three feet across. My finished doily blocked to 12" in diameter, which is right where I wanted. I bound off just after a big increase row, which caused a bit of a ruffle effect along the edge. I'm going to call that a "feature."

My ultimate plan is to make eight more, to use as coasters for the bridge players. I was going to use a different pattern, but then I looked at the center of the just-finished doily and thought, hey, if I just did the center of that, they would all match! Sweet!

Convention Knitting

2006-08-23T21:43:00.000-07:00

Right. DragonCon is a week away. Well, tomorrow it will be a week away. Naturally, the most urgent, burning issue of my preparations is "What am I going to knit?"

Of my in-progress works, the St. Brigid sweater is right out. Not only is it far too large for easy toting, it's too complex for running around, roleplaying, panelling, and (most significantly) drinking. Also, I'm getting to the point where I need to take a break from it. I've made four minor mistakes in the last two repeats, nothing I even had to actually fix because they were so minor, but I'm apparently losing my will to focus on it properly. The back will done in 12 more rows, and after that I'm going to knit hats for a while. Possibly socks. Or gloves (I have a nifty idea for a glove done in heel stitch). So, St. Brigid is staying home. (Okay, I might tuck it into a wee little bag just in case...)

I'm not even going to dignify the Seaweed Afghan with an explanation.

So, it's going to be socks. Being the forethoughtful person that I am, I decided to go ahead and get both socks past the ribbing before trying to wander around knitting while walking. (The reason I started on said socks more than a week before the convention is a matter I'm going to gloss over. Let's just say it was a very close thing that I didn't show up in downtown Atlanta tomorrow and wonder where the other 25,000 people were.)

I initially cast on 76 stitches, but after a few rows I tried them on and convinced myself that they were too big. So I ripped and cast on 72 stitches. After completing 15 rows of ribbing on both socks and about as many rows of stockinette on one sock, I didn't have to do any convincing to realize that the socks were too small. So, I ripped and started over with--you guessed it--76 stitches. The really pathetic part of this story? The first thing I did was, in fact, a gauge swatch. Gauge is no proof against overthinking.

The bright side is that now I'll have time to get both socks past the ribbing before the con. And knit my mother a doily, too.

More Sylvester News

2006-08-21T16:36:00.000-07:00

I took Sylvester to the vet today to get a read on how he's doing and what needs to be done. Although he's still doing better, eating and drinking and purring and sleeping and complaining, the kidney failure is still an issue, and isn't going to go away. The vet is putting him on a variety of medications to mimic various kidney functions, and to help him put on some weight. So, he'll be taking:

Tapazole, his thyroid medication

Potassium to replace the potassium lost because of the kidney failure

Pepcid AC to control the excess tummy acid caused by same

Epakitin (crushed shrimp and crab shells) mixed in his food to absorb phosphorus

Anti-nausea medication for a week or two, so he'll keep in all down and hopefully gain weight

Everything except the Pepcid has to be given twice a day. Apparently, the kidneys are a complex organ.

The bottom line, though, is that even if all the medications do what they're supposed to, the kidney failure is going to catch up with him, probably within the next few months. Again, not unexpected, and it's certainly a lot longer than I (or the vet) thought he was going to have when I took him in last week. He'll also, hopefully, have a relatively comfortable and happy life until that happens. Well, as happy as any cat can be when its owner is pushing five kinds of meds down its throat twice a day. So, as always, we'll wait and see what happens.

It's Not Quite Like Riding a Bicycle

2006-08-20T00:56:00.000-07:00

Remember the cursed socks? Well, I finished their replacements tonight. I used Lane Cervinia Forever Jacquard, in a blue, gray, black, and white colorway. I like it a lot more than most self-patterning sock yarns because the colors change more quickly, especially the short bits where the colors are supposed to mimic alternating stitches. Plus, it's slightly cheaper.

I immediately started on a pair of socks for Boo that I'd been dying to get started. I bought a skein of Schaeffer's Anne in a bright pink, red, orange, and purple colorway, just the thing for the discerning toddler. When I say "immediately," of course, what I mean is "immediately after winding 560 yards of fine sock yarn into a ball by hand." (The alcohol had nothing to do with the fact that it took me something like two hours to accomplish this.)

Because the Anne is a bit thinner than the sock yarns I'd been using, I had to go down from the 0's I'd used for Al's socks to a some 00000's. This isn't really a problem, except that the only 00000's I have are two sets of steel double-pointed needles. Again, not a problem, because I've knitted fifty billion pairs of mittens and hat tops on double-points, no big deal. And, yay, I have two sets, so I can still work on both socks at once, which is my preferred method.

Well, okay. So it's been probably six or seven years since I've actually used double-pointed needles, not since I learned about the technique of knitting on two circulars and let out a whoop of joy at the thought of never laddering again. It didn't take me long to invest in a duplicate set of circulars, and I've never looked back. I still carry my double-points around because they're very useful for picking up and fixing, but I haven't actually knitted in the round with them for some time.

So far, I've knitted one (1) round. It didn't take long for it all to come back to me, the needles sticking every which way and flopping around, the winding the yarn around the wrong needles, the dropping the emptied needle under the desk five times. Plus, these are, in case I haven't mentioned, very thin needles. Very thin, 7" long needles, which is an inch longer than the ones I'd normally use, on a project that's 2" shorter around than the average adult sock, which means that there's a lot more extra pointy bits waving around than I'm used to.

Still, one round down, and while it's not quite the whizzing along I can manage on two circulars, the enjoyment of working with double-pointed needles is still there. Plus, I don't have to worry about whipping my needle around and smacking a cat in the face like I do when I change from one circular to the other. There's always a bright side, after all.

A Little Knowledge Is a Dangerous Thing

2006-08-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of people who don't see the point of hand knitting. Why, they wonder, would any sane person spend hours upon hours carefully wrapping bits of yarn around a pair of needles when one can buy equivalents of the finished product at Wal-Mart? Especially when said Wal-Mart product is a hell of a lot cheaper. Luckily, I don't know anyone with that attitude. I'm very fortunate, in fact, to have friends and family who appreciate my love of knitting, in the fullest sense of the word.

I have to wonder what the former group says, though, about knitters who spin their own yarn first. Because, damn, if I had a few hundred spare bucks lying around, I'd be surreptitiously Googling spinning wheels. And it'd be all Sheila's fault.

A couple of days ago, at the regular Thursday Stich N' Bitch at Threaded Bliss, a lady named Marlene Gruetter from Timber Ridge Farm in Ohio came to talk to us about where little yarns come from.

Five years ago, Marlene and her husband bought a farm, and, told they needed some animals, decided to purchase two (2) goats. They came home with six goats, and now they have goats, sheep, rabbits, and llamas, all of whom produce bags and bags of fiber every year. (Okay, in the case of the bunnies it's a very small bag.) Her husband shears the animals, and Marlene sorts, cleans (there's a separate technical term for "picking out the bits of hay, mud and poo," but I can't remember it now, bad student), washes, cards, spins, and weaves.

There were about a dozen knitters there that night, and only two of them had ever done any spinning at all. A tabula rasa, as it were, of knowledge about raw fiber and what to do with it. Marlene started by talking about the critters themselves, and showed us samples of the different fibers that came from them. She even brought along her award-winning mohair fleece. Now, when I think "fleece," I can't help but picture a single, cohesive mass of fiber. This was simply a bag of large locks of goat hair. Marlene had removed the trash from it, but it was otherwise unwashed, un-brushed, and pretty much just as it it come off the goat.

She also brought along some samples of llama, alpaca (she doesn't raise alpacas, but she has a friend who gave her some alpaca fiber), and angora from the rabbits. Brief nomenclature lesson: There are Angora rabbits and Angora goats. The fiber that comes from the rabbits is called angora, but the fiber that comes from the goats is called mohair, not angora. Just to clear that up.

Anyway, the angora in particular was amazing. I really can't do it justice. One person said it was as if your fingers weren't sensitive enough to really feel it, it was so fine and smooth and soft. Marlene also had some yarn spun from 100% mohair, which was much slicker and smoother than I had ever thought. Most mohair yarns are blended with nylon or wool (For those who have seen the purple shawl I just finished, that yarn was about 75% mohair, 22% wool, and 3% nylon), and I was surprised at the difference the blends had made to the mohair.

After showing us some different fleeces and fibers, Marlene demonstrated how to blend and card. This is a labor-intensive process, even with a drum-carder that combs the fibers by turning a crank, instead of using two combs to manually brush the fibers. Depending on how smooth one wants the finished yarn to be, the same fleece might need to be run through the carding process multiple times, and one can only card relatively small pieces at a time. This is why, Marlene explained, when her husband asks "What are you doing today?" she can simply say "carding," and he'll know she'll be busy all day long. This is also the reason that many fiber farmers send their fleeces out to be carded and spun. Even with a modest number of animals, it's far too much work for a single person.

When the fiber comes off the drum, it's in a flat piece about an inch thick. This is called a "batting," and I had something of a belated epiphany when Marlene mentioned that these bats are used by quilters. Duh. I've known for years that the stuff one puts between the layers of a quilt is called batting, but I'd never connected it with the spinning term. Live and learn. When one buys fiber for spinning, one can buy it in the bats, or in rovings, which (if I'm understanding the terminology correctly) is a bat that has been teased out into a longer, thinner shape.

The roving is a very thick, very puffy, very loose collection of fiber. Think cotton balls. You can't make anything out the roving that won't fall apart as soon as it's tugged or pushed or pulled or had, really, any pressure at all put on it. To make the fibers hold together, there are two things to do: felting and spinning. You can felt raw fiber the same way you felt knitted yarn, and Marlene does quite a bit of this. She says that it is, sadly, a dying art form, and she's determined to do her part to revive it.

The second way to make the fiber hold together is by spinning it into yarn. Spinning is, essentially, the process of twisting the fibers together so that they cling to one another enough to hold their shape. A spinning wheel automates the twisting process, nothing more. The spinner determines everything else, including how thick, thin, loose or tight the yarn is.

Marlene brought out the spinning wheel, and demonstrated. She asked for volunteers to try it, and I pretty much jumped at the chance. To spin, one holds the raw fiber in both hands, using one hand to feed the twisted yarn onto the bobbin, and the other to tease out the un-spun fiber so that it can be twisted. There is, obviously, a great deal of practice, skill, and know-how involved in said process, but it amazed me how easily that big puff of fiber turned into an object resembling yarn.

I spun about three yards of yarn, which in its modest length contains many different spinning techniques. Parts of it are very loosely twisted--one might go so far as to describe them as "un-spun lumps." Other parts are very firmly twisted, and have a charming habit of kinking into tight little piggy tails at the least provocation. There are even some parts that combine the two techniques, resembling densely matted lumps. And there are even a couple of inches, here and there, that look like yarn. It was amazingly, amazingly fun, and I can see now why not only are there many knitters who enjoy spinning their own yarn, there are folks out there who have no interest in knitting, weaving, or crocheting, they just love making the yarn.

I wonder if there are cheap spinning wheels on E-bay...

Sylvester FYI

2006-08-18T17:52:00.000-07:00

Belated update from my Livejournal.

So, last Saturday I made a big ol' emo post about Sylvester, my 16-year-old kitty, being very ill and not likely to make it through the week.

Naturally, two days later Sylvester made a semi-miraculous recovery.

In a nutshell, I took him to the vet last Saturday because he couldn't lift his head at all, even to eat or drink, had dwindled to a skeletal weight in the last week or so (6 pounds--his normal weight should be about 11-12 pounds), and did nothing but lie by his water bowl staring straight ahead. The vet diagnosed potassium deficiency as a side-effect of kidney failure. He gave me some potassium supplements and gave Sylvester some under-the-skin fluids, and told me to come back if he didn't improve. Frankly, both of us expected that I'd be back in a couple of days, hence the aformentioned emo post.

After the first two days of potassium, Sylvester was darn near his old self. Not only is he able to lift his head, he's able to jump up on chairs, complain, eat, and drink. Mind you, the only thing the potassium supplements did was treat the most obvious symptoms of the bigger problem, but now that he *can* drink more fluids, there's a better chance that he can get some kidney function back.

To that end, I've positioned water bowls strategically around the house. The vet suggested changing them a couple of times a day, because for most cats the first impulse with a freshly filled water bowl is "Neat! Water! Drink!" I've also purchased a bubbling water bowl for him which, if he's not terrified of it and vows never to drink again, might encourage him to drink a little more because, you know, bubbles = fun. At least that's the theory. I haven't yet caught him actually drinking from it.

So. If he drinks a lot, and if that gets his kidneys going again, and if he starts gaining weight again, and if he can get back on his thyroid medication without throwing it up, then we might get him on some prescription kitty food that will, hopefully, be of more long-term help. The kidney failure is still a serious problem, and we might be right where we started tomorrow, or next week, or next month, but I can't deny that right now, things are looking a bit better. We'll see what happens.

UFOs

2006-08-13T15:39:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Jen, here are my current UFOs, such as they are.

1. The Seaweed Afghan From Hell. I don't know if I'll ever finish this. It's an enormous afghan done in--you guessed it--a pattern called Seaweed. I started it in 1997, and it's the only project left from the Great UFO Finishing Drive of 2006. I'm still thinking I might just bind it off where it is and call it a lap robe.

2. St. Brigid Sweater. Moving along quite well. I've got the back almost done, just one more pattern repeat to go.

3. Al's socks. Proceeding apace. For a while the purse sock was way ahead of the computer sock, but I started toting the latter around and now they're about even. (I keep one sock at the computer and work on it while waiting for web pages to load--yes, I'm on dial-up. The other I carry around in my purse for working on while chasing Boo around the library and waiting in line, etc.) Both socks are now about two inches away from the toe decreases.

And, er, that seems to be it. I suppose I could count the Sweetpea dress I started and then ripped out, since I still intend to make it, but seeing as it's currently in the state of "piled in a heap of yarn bobbins," it's more an Un-Done Project than Un-Finished.

Knitting While Sober

2006-07-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

The St. Brigid sweater is coming along nicely. I've done three repeats of the cable pattern on the back, which translates into about 10", or about a third of the needed length.

So far, I've only screwed it up twice, and both screw-ups happened on the braided cable borders. The first time, I only had to ladder one cable back about four rows. Last night, though, I had to ladder all four dratted braids back, because I'd done the entire row wrong without noticing. Sadly, there was no alcohol involved (well, not at that point), and in fact I had virtuously set aside the sweater and switched to a sock once I started drinking.

The irony of this is that I purposely stopped knitting the cable pattern solely because the last time I did a project with that same braided border while drinking, I had had to ladder all nine cable stitches back about 30 rows to fix the same freakin' mistake I made last night while dead sober.

I'm sure there's a moral in there somewhere, and I'm not entirely sure that it's not along the lines of "it doesn't matter if you drink or not, you will find a way to screw up your knitting."

St. Brigid Sweater

2006-07-17T16:56:00.000-07:00

I am, at long last, knitting a sweater for myself. I've lusted after the St. Brigid sweater in Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting for many years, and today cast on to begin the back.

That may sound simple, but there were a number of factors that made said cast-on something of a triumph.

First, the largest pattern size for said sweater finishes at 48" (supposedly for a 40" person, who apparently needs 8" of ease, but never mind that). My bust is 50".

Second, since the yarn called for in the pattern doesn't seem to exist anymore (and would probably be prohibitively expensive if it did), I chose a different yarn, which is also a slightly heavier weight.

Third, when I knit a single column of one knit stitch between a purl background, it looks like crap, so I knew (from having made small objects with this same chart before) that I would need an extra stitch for every chart repeat.

Fourth, the gauge for the orginal pattern was given over a 2 x 2 basket stitch instead of stockinette, so I really had no idea how my usual gauge compared.

I knew going in that these things would be a factor, so when I purchased my yarn (Cascade 220, for the record), I tried to wildly overestimate and then ordered three skeins more than that, to (hopefully) ensure that I would have a full skein just for swatching. Last week, I cast on my "swatch."

In one of her books, Elizabeth Zimmermann made the observation that half a sweater was more or less the same length as an adult's head circumference, and suggested doing a "swatch hat" for patterns that involved lots of cables, since cables tend to have their own idiosyncratic gauge that might have little or nothing to do with stockinette (or 2 x 2 basket stitch) gauge.

I thought this was a good project to try it out, so I cast on the full pattern for the back of the sweater, minus the basket stitch edging. I worked two full pattern repeats, and came up with a swatch that was 19" wide, or about 7 1/2" short of what I needed for one half of the sweater.

Now, I admit that I don't often block my swatches. The vast majority of my knitting is either knitting I've done so many times before that I know what's going to happen, or it's a design where blocking and/or gauge doesn't matter enough to bother. This time, though, I wasn't taking any chances. Sure enough, my 19" swatch bloomed two whole inches. It was 23" after it first dried, then shrank down to 21" after a couple of days (just the right size for a hat, amazing!). Now, I don't mind oversize clothes, but 6" of ease was a bit more than I'd counted on. Yay for blocking.

So, today, I did the math. I figured up my swatch, and how many basket stitch stitches I'd need to make up the extra inches on the sides, and cast on. I bought one of those spiffy Clover row counters, the small ones that can be worn as pendant and locked (very important with a toddler in the house), so I have no excuses. Onward and upward!

How to Knit a Sock, Part Two

2006-07-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

After planning, scrapping, planning, ripping, ripping, ripping...

Try socks on. Realize that cables are making socks way too small, despite math.

Say very bad word in front of friends' four-year old.

Decide yarn is cursed.

Send husband to house on sock yarn mission.

Begin pair of different socks for said husband.

Watch socks whiz like magic from needles.

Ponder mysteries of the universe.

Internet Anniversary

2006-06-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

Ahem.

Today is the tenth anniversary of my very very first post to Usenet. Ten years of farting around the internet, wasting time, and boggling at crazy people. Time flies when you're having fun. :)

In honor of this little anniversary, I'd like to do something I don't often do. This is a meme I saw when I was first poking around Usenet, and I thought it'd be fun to do it again:

Take a look around you. Apart from your computer and its peripherals, and your computer desk/table/milk crate and chair, what, in order of their physical closeness, are the five things nearest to you right now?

1. An eyeglass repair kit

2. 2 AA batteries

3. A cat

4. A pencil

5. A stale beer

How to Knit a Sock

2006-06-05T16:54:00.000-07:00

How to Knit a Sock

Plan sock. Do math. Do math again.

Change mind about pattern. Do more math. Check math again.

Find yarn. Find needles. Find spare time.

Cast on stitches. Knit 2 rounds. Discover that *&^%$#@! yarn company spliced two pieces of yarn by tying a *&^%$#@! knot instead of splicing or plying yarn together like any decent human would.

Swear a lot.

Write blog entry.

Feel better.

Rip out sock and start over.

ETA: When starting over, cast on half the stitches using the wrong cast-on. Rip. Start over...

Ode to Socks

2006-06-04T17:20:00.000-07:00

I'd like to take a moment to discuss a very important matter: The awesomeness of wool socks.

Over the years, I've knitted probably twenty pairs of socks. The only pair I had knitted for myself was a nice thick worsted-weight wool pair that I wore when bitter cold demanded foot warmth.

Then, recently, I knitted myself a second pair in actual sock-weight wool yarn. I washed them and blocked them, and then, because it was, you know, summer, balled them up and put them away.

Soon after, though, my husband, for reasons known only to himself, set the thermostat to about 65 degrees and I found myself with freezing cold feet in the middle of summer. I pulled out my new socks and put them on.

Oh, my God.

They are soft. They are warm. They are comfy. And when I had to go outside in the 80 degree heat, they were still soft and comfy and--get this--not hot! I'm not saying that wool socks will be my footwear of choice all summer or anything, but my feet remained at the same pleasant warm temperature they had been inside.

So, that's it. No more store-bought cotton socks. Well, at least after I've knit some more wool ones. :)

I Came, I Saw, I Felted

2006-05-10T21:12:00.000-07:00

I have just completed my first successful felting project (my first felting attempt, many years ago, having been a tragic lesson in yarn labels, specifically about that mysterious stuff called "superwash").

The story: When at home, my mother listens to books on audio all the time. I mean, *all the time.* A few years ago my stepfather had my sister-in-law make her a special little tote bag for her CD and tape players, which she carried around until it wore out. When I was home last weekend, I mentioned that I needed to run to the fabric store to get some Woolly Nylon, intending to experiment with using it as reinforcement thread for knitted socks. My mom said, "Oh, really? What a coincidence." Turns out she'd planned to have another fabric bag made, so I offered to knit her a felted one.

Having never a) felted anything successfully or b) knit a bag of any kind ever before, I decided to use up some leftover Brown Sheep Nature Spun and make the Ultimate Swatch, aka an entire prototype bag. With unusual foresight, I had accepted Vogue Knitting's free preview offer for their first Sitchionary for the sole purpose of getting the free copy of Felting on the Go. I cracked it open and absorbed certain important pieces of information, for instance the importance of knitting to a fairly open gauge, top-loading washing machines, and what does and doesn't felt (yes, yes, superwash bad, thank you).

The one thing that none of felting sources I consulted mentioned was math. Specifically, how one expanded a design proportionally so that it would shrink to the desired dimensions without one side being too long or short in relation to the others and so on. Felting is not an exact science, but I did have certain dimensional needs, and I wanted to keep the bag as compact as I could. So, math.

Now, as some of you may know, I do not have a perfect track record as a math whiz, despite the fact that I actually like math and at one point was capable of doing all that nifty calculus and whatnot. But surely I could figure out a simple ratio and plug it in, right?

Well, sorta. It only took three different formulas, two false starts, and an unfortunate height error resulting from adding said ratio to the desired value instead of dividing by it (tip: cell phone calculators are tricky with that "one extra touch on the button will radically change your result" problem). Still, no real harm done. This was one reason I wanted to knit the prototype first, after all.

I based the design on a carpet bag pattern I had bought, only much, much smaller, and it turned out to be fairly simple. I knitted a flat bottom to the dimensions of the sides, then picked up stitches around and knitted a tube until I got my desired height. The trickiest part was figuring out the strap, since I had no desire to sew one on afterwards. I did it by knitting across the short side stitches while binding off the long sides, leaving one side on holders while I knitted up the strap from the other end, then grafted it together. One piece knitting, my favorite.

I made the strap 2 inches wide, using seed stitch, and longer by the same ratio as the other bag dimensions. I learned after felting that narrow strips don't seem to shrink to the same degree as the rest of the bag, and that wider is better. Other than that, though, the bag turned out pretty much the way I wanted, so I think I can proceed to the real thing next.

I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with the bright purple-and-green striped bag I've created. I suspect that when Boo sees it she'll decide for me.

Tag-Team Shawls

2006-05-02T20:15:00.000-07:00

I finally, finally finished the Theatrical Lace shawl Friday evening (no pictures yet, because I'm still in the dark ages and have to get them developed). I'm very pleased with the way it turned out. One day I might get over the "Gosh, it looks like the picture!" phase.

Of course, finishing it left me at something of a loose end, since it was the next-to-last unfinished project lying around and I have no intention of tackling the last one yet. I dithered for a couple of days and knitted on some socks, then decided that it was time to tackle a very, very old unstarted project.

It's from the same book that the Theatrical Lace pattern came from (Best of Knitter's Shawls and Scarves), and in fact is from the same designer, Eugen Buegler. It's called Lace Dream, and is basically a shawl made using the lovely Peacock Plumes/Ostrich Feathers lace pattern. I've wanted to make it ever since I got the book, and even bought three skeins of Mountain Colors mohair years ago for it. The Mountain Colors mohair is heavier than the called-for Cascade Kid, but I wanted very badly to use the Mountain Twilight colorway for a shawl.

I swatched today, and was very, very happy with the results. The yarn is so gorgeous that it's okay that it's too dark to really emphasize the lace pattern, and in fact the lace made the colors swirl in really unexpected and beautiful ways. I'll have to do it again in another yarn if I want to appreciate the full beauty of the Peacock Plumes, but that's not really a hardship.

I just hope I bought enough yarn five years ago...

2006-04-29T14:15:00.000-07:00

It has been a Good Week for my knitting psyche. Crappy for my budget, but good for the inner knitter.

Last week, I got to see the marvelous Ann and Kay, authors of the Mason-Dixon Knitting blog and the brand-new book, Mason-Dixon Knitting. Thursday, I got to see Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, The Yarn Harlot herself, out promoting her third book, Knitting Rules! I've been meaning to write about both these events here, but as I sat down to do it I found myself thinking. Thinking not so much about what they said and did, but how I could explain what I got out of it.

These days, there are a heck of a lot of knitting books out there. When I first started knitting in the mid-1980s, this was not so much the case. Other knitters than myself have observed the Great Knitting Drought of the 80s, when local yarn shops folded, Elizabeth Zimmerman and Barbara Walker went out of print, and pretty much the only yarn widely available was Red Heart. Now, there are new knitting books nearly every week, it seems, and where there were no yarn stores at all there are often two or three to choose from with more different kinds of fiber than any one person can use in a lifetime.

So what makes Ann, Kay, and Stephanie stand out from the newly-expanded crowd? Why would nearly 100 knitters come to see them? Why are their names nearly as quick on the lips of knitters as those of Elizabeth Zimmerman and Barbara Walker and the other Great Knitters? Me, I have a theory.

We've probably all heard the saying, "if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, give him a hook and teach him to fish and you feed him for life." Well, at the risk of abusing the analogy, the three ladies I heard over the last week are the type that give folks hooks instead of fish. Most knitting books are pattern books, and are geared to giving the buyer as many specific and detailed patterns as possible within their pages. Mason-Dixon Knitting has quite a few patterns, true, but they're tucked in between quite a lot of talk about other things, and none of Stephanie's three books have a single pattern. If you pick up either of them expecting to see diagrams of stitches and drawings of the difference between K2tog and SSK, you'll be disappointed (which, yeah, kind of breaks the "teach to fish" analogy, but never mind).

What they do give their readers are ideas. They tell their readers that They Aren't the Only Ones to drop stitches, screw up patterns, and hide their yarn in the piano. They say, "Don't be afraid of color/gauge/purling/double-pointed needles: We've screwed up with them, too." Some of the advice is practical, of course, tips about dyeing, felting, designing, what not to do when knitting at the movies and so on, but that's not the core of their books.

If I had to give it a word, I would call it inspiration. By the time you've finished Mason-Dixon Knitting, or At Knit's End or Knitting Rules!, you might not have in your hands a perfect stitch-by-stitch guide to a traditional Fair Isle sweater, but you're very, very likely to be thinking, "By golly, I can make one of those, and I'm not scared to try! And now I know that even if I have to rip it back to the hem five times, It's Okay."

So, here I am, enriched not so much with information as with inspiration. Ann, Kay, Stephanie...You Rock!

The Experiment Begins

2006-04-29T10:50:00.000-07:00

Although I already have a Livejournal, it's not terribly accessible to folks who don't have an LJ themselves. So, I'm going to experiment with a bit of double posting hither and thither and see what happens. This is more or less my knitting journal, with the occasional bout of life thrown in.

For earlier posts, visit my Livejournal:

http://jinjifore.livejournal.com

For my knitting projects, visit my Knitting Gallery:

http://jinjifore.googlepages.com/home

Onward!

2006-01-01T08:58:00.000-08:00