Monthly Archives: July 2011

Friday Gauge Check: End of July Already?

Well, this has been an exciting week.  Remember how I said that today should be my last day at work?  Okay, it was.  But it was touch-and-go for a while there.  Monday, the department manager called me in and asked if I’d be willing to switch to a different project starting the next Monday, to last into October.  I discussed it with Jack, and on Tuesday I let him know I’d be willing to stay.  However, he was told that he wasn’t able to bring a temp onto this highly confidential project.  He told me he was going to fight it, but I didn’t find out for certain that the decision would stand until Thursday evening.  All in all, it was a long and anxious week. Having everything up in the air was incredibly stressful, even if nothing ended up changing in the end.

We gave notice on our apartment today, so it’s official: we’re moving at the end of August.  Now comes the more focused work of getting everything ready to go, selling off the furniture, cleaning, and packing ALL THE THINGS.  I’ve also got some commissions I want to get finished before I move, and some craft projects I want to actually try before I decide to move the supplies.

I’m officially halfway through the December Little Shawl (finished the first skein, about to start on the second), I’m about to start the final chart of the Emily shawlette, and I’ve finished the foot on the first Scottish Boxes sock.  Now I have to open the foot up and work on the leg.

Tour de Fleece is over, but I’ve still managed to spin nearly every night this week.  It’s ingrained enough that it doesn’t feel right to go to bed without sitting down at my wheel first.  I’m still working through the hand-dyed blue wool, still loving the way it looks.

That’s about it for this week.  Having the uncertainty hanging over my head has just kept me from getting much of anything done.  Hopefully next week will be better.

Friday Gauge Check: Blue Fiber Edition

Happy Friday!  As you can probably guess, I finished the merino-silk blend. I Navajo-plied it, and it turned out to be about 135 yards of heavy fingering/DK weight.  It’s wet, but as soon as I get it skeined I’ll try and get you guys a picture, if you’re interested.

Blue-green handspun yarn

What I’m working on now is hand-dyed fiber gifted to me by Becca of A Song to Spin.  This stuff is gorgeous, and I love the way it’s spinning up.  It’s shifting between bright blue and teal, with patches of white, and it’s just lovely.

I worked on the December Little Shawl last night, and I’ve been getting in a row or two on the Emily Shawlette every night.  I managed to place the leglines on the first Scottish Boxes sock, and am now working on the rest of the foot.

Work has been crazy, so unfortunately I haven’t been able to do any knitting (no downtime=no knitting).  The project is almost complete, and unless something dramatic happens, I expect next Friday to be my last day on the job.  It makes me sad, but at the same time, I’m ready to put my full energy into getting ready to move.

I’m still working on the post I mentioned last Friday, but it’s percolating slower than I expected.  If I don’t get to it next week, you’ll definitely see it in early August.

Jack and I have been doing a lot of purging in preparation for the move.  We’re going through our book collection, getting rid of books we have electronic copies of, things we haven’t re-read in a long time, and so forth – basically everything in our apartment has to pass the, “Would I move this across the country?” test.  On one hand, it’s kind of freeing to get rid of things we don’t need.  On the other, I keep running into stuff that I got from Isabel, or at her instigation, and I keep finding pictures of her, and so on – so it’s a huge emotional morass.  This morning, Jack found another box of CDs.  Most of the cases were empty, or with the wrong discs, and the discs we did find were frequently scratched, the cases were cracked, and so on.  I started going through the box, and it upset me so much, all out of proportion to what I was actually doing.  “I hate her,” I ranted to Jack.  Most of the time, I don’t.  Most of the time, it doesn’t bother me.  In that moment, though, what it reminded me of was how careless Isabel was with things – her own or anyone else’s – and it just seemed so emblematic of everything I came away with after that relationship.  Walking away from her, I felt damaged and misplaced.  Parts of myself that had been precious to me were scratched or even missing outright.  It has taken a lot of hard work to repair the damage and replace the missing pieces, and every time I find a new damaged area – even if it’s just a box of CDs – I resent having to do it again.

Next Monday is our anniversary.  It marks two years of freedom, two years of life without Isabel.  I’m happier than I’ve ever been, despite the scars and chipped corners.  And even if I have to occasionally buff out a scratch or add a new coat of paint, I’m still sound.

Tell me about your blessings, would you?  Or if you’re feeling particularly un-blessed right now, you can just tell me about your week and I’ll give you an e-hug.

Friday Gauge Check: Tour de Fleece, Week 2

Well, we’ve successfully made it through Friday, which, for quite a few people I know, is probably a relief.

My week has been just fine, for the most part.  I’ve been doing my spinning every night, and I’m almost done with the bump of fiber I talked about last week.  I finished the second repeat of Chart B for the blue Emily shawlette, made it up to the leg line placement on the first Scottish Boxes sock, and tonight we rented a couple of movies and I worked on the December little shawl, which is an excellent background knit.  Oh, and I did a few rows of the Argyle State University scarf!

Yeah, I still hate it.

Incidentally? Do you guys think commercials are getting weirder and more surreal, or is it just me?  I normally don’t pay much attention when Jack has the TV on, but tonight I’m actually watching and… I don’t know, guys, they’re just weird.  Have you seen the commercial with the human-sized plushies getting chased by a bear?  I think it’s for a car.  And now…there’s a breakdancing duck.  Surreal.

Because I’m behind the times or something, I watched Voyage of the Dawn Treader and that CGI movie with the owls whose title I don’t feel like looking up.  It’s past my bedtime, kids, I’m grumpy.  Deal with it. I did enjoy both movies, and I wish I’d managed to see Dawn Treader on the big screen.  It was always my favorite chronicle of Narnia, and I have to say, the visuals were amazing – and in the best possible way for a book translation.  There were several sequences where I thought, “That’s exactly the way it looked in my head.”  The Dawn Treader herself was perfect.

I can’t think of anything else to say.  I’ll probably have a post later in the week, tentatively titled, “The Invisibility of Happiness.”  So you have that to look forward to.

Otherwise, kids, have a great weekend, stay safe, and take care of each other.  Check your gauge in the comments, or let me know your favorite surreal commercial.

I’m on a horse.

 

Friday Gauge Check: Reading Lace Charts

Bobbin after TDF W1

Happy Friday!  Are you participating in the Tour de Fleece?  I most certainly am, and though my goal is fairly simple and attainable – spinning 15 minutes a day – I’ve been very consistent about hitting it each day.  This is what I’m spinning, a gorgeous silk and merino blend that’s an absolute pleasure.  I’m playing with drafting techniques, including a little bit of spinning over the fold.  Having the wheel in my living room, set up and ready, makes it easy to sit down and do a short burst of spinning as the mood takes me, rather than having to drag myself and my fiber up to my LYS and feeling like I should devote hours to it.

In knitting – I almost didn’t knit yesterday!  Don’t worry, I made myself sit down and do a row.  I’m not inclined to break my streak.  But here’s what happened.

 

Well, what really happened is that I finished the Nutkin socks!  I don’t have any pictures of them just yet, because I handed them to Jack to try on and I haven’t managed to get them back yet.  Maybe over the weekend.  I have a distinct lack of finished pictures of my socks on my Ravelry page for this very reason; I should steal all his socks, wash them, and get some pictures.

Then there’s the Emily Shawlette.  I got through all three repeats of Chart B, went to start Chart C, and… realized I had a problem.

Okay, I have kind of a complaint.  There’s not nearly enough good information about the mechanics of reading lace charts out there.  I mean, there’s great information about what a chart looks like, and what the symbols mean, but there are apparently established ways to read lace charts, which many lace charts have in common, that are distinct from reading cable charts.  So I picked up this chart, went, “Oh, I love charts!” and sailed into it.

I figured out, by looking back and forth between the chart and the written instructions, that the chart only refers to half the row – so you knit the chart, knit the center stitch (mark the center stitch, guys, even if the chart doesn’t tell you to.  It’ll save you so much headache.), and then knit the chart again.  Everybody still with me?  Okay.

Then, you have multiple charts. For the Emily Shawlette, you knit Chart A, then Chart B 3 times, then Chart B again through row 20, and finish with Chart C.  Now, obviously, when you start Chart A, and the first time through Chart B, you have the same number of stitches on the chart as you do on the shawl, but obviously, when you’re done with Chart B, you have a lot more stitches on the needles than you do on the chart.

Here’s where my error, a combination of ignorance and technology fail, comes in.  It would appear that Chart B has an intro series of stitches, a “core” set, and then an end series.  The core set is set apart from the others on my pattern, which (as a test pattern) is an Excel file, with a pair of red bars.  Now, while I was working on Emily at home, doing the first chart repeat, I didn’t notice the red bars.  When I got to work, I ended up opening the pattern in Google Docs – which didn’t display the bars.  Since I hadn’t noticed the bars before, I didn’t realize they were gone.

The first time through the chart, I ended up adding two stitches per side every four rows, and they created a triangular stockinette section in between the static rectangular lace panels, so (without those red bars) I assumed that this pattern was just meant to continue on through the chart repeats.  The resulting shawl is quite lovely.  The problem is, that’s not what’s actually supposed to happen.

What you’re supposed to do is knit the intro stitches, repeat the core stitches until you’re almost done with the section, then knit the exit stitches.  Slip marker, knit center stitch, slip marker, repeat.  So since I didn’t do this right, I have the wrong number of stitches to knit Chart C.

You guys, I spent about twenty minutes trying to come up with a solution that didn’t involve ripping back half my shawl.  More than half, because guess who didn’t put in any lifelines?  Yeah, this girl.  The odds were pretty good that I’d have to start over at the beginning, because how likely was it that I’d be able to figure out where I was when I stopped ripping?  Not very.

I’m having this conversation, a little despairingly, with Jack.  “Can’t you fudge it?” he asked.  I looked at the chart, and I looked at the shawl.  I was some twenty stitches off.  Maybe I could fudge it.  (No.  Not really at all.)  The other problem was that this was a test knit, which meant I was supposed to replicate the pattern, based on the instructions.  The fact that I couldn’t read the chart correctly wasn’t an issue with the pattern.  I couldn’t very well just… adapt the pattern.

I was on the verge of pulling out my ball winder, when Jack suggested, if I liked what I had, and I was going to start over anyway, that I knit it with something else.  When I was done correctly replicating the pattern, and sending the pictures off to the designer, I could sit down with Chart C (or a stitch dictionary, because I don’t believe in doing things halfway) and figure out a new edging for the shawl.

Knit Happens had a sale a few weeks ago, and I picked up an absolutely gorgeous skein of Malabrigo Sock.  I looked at the shawl, and the skein, and… went to hunt out my ball winder.

I cast on, knit about half of Chart A, frowned at my results, knit a few more rows.  It wasn’t improving.  I remembered my own advice – you know, if you don’t like it now, you’re not going to like it later?  The yarn was far too vibrant for the pattern.  So I ripped it back, tucked the ball away to wait for the perfect project, and went and picked up a couple of skeins of Premier Serenity Sock in a different colorway, since I knew I liked the way that was knitting up.  This version will be blue, and I’ve gotten through Chart A, the first repeat of Chart B, and now I’m working on the second.  It’s going to be a home-only pattern, because I don’t want any more mistakes.

Toe of Mystery Sock

But between finishing the Nutkin sock and banishing the Emily shawlette to my living room, I didn’t have any actual purse knitting.  I had a skein of navy  Ironstone Warehouse Flake Cotton, a different colorway of the yarn I made the Hiss socks out of, and my favorite sock needles tucked in my purse, but I hadn’t figured out exactly what I was going to do with it. (Despite the picture, I promise that the yarn is navy, not black.)

After some thought, and poking around, and wandering through Ravelry, I’ve decided to go ahead and do another Personal Footprint sock from Cat Bordhi’s book, this time the Scottish Boxes pattern.  Jack raves about the fit of the other one, so I’m thinking about going back and forth between more traditional sock patterns and the Personal Footprint pattern.  This way I can continue to turn heels and do the occasional cuff-down pattern, like Nutkin (and everything Cookie A’s ever designed).

I cast it on today, and am making good progress.  I really like toe-up socks, because there’s a lot that’s going on when you’re first starting out.  The long tedious part (i.e., the leg) is saved for the end, when you get the excitement of almost being done to balance out the period of knitting in circles.

That’s most of my life, really.  I’m still very ready to move, and Jack and I are doing the initial stages of purging stuff we don’t need/want.  Next week, I need to finish the blue Emily shawlette, keep spinning for TDF, go through my knitting books, and seriously take a look at my yarn and fabric stash.

How’s your week been?

 

Surprise Thursday Post

After I got home from work on Friday, I took a nap.  It was hot (it got up to 118F) and bright and I resent the influx of the Protestant Work Ethic that ignores the fact that smart people sleep during the hottest part of the day.  Anyway, while I was asleep, my boss called and let me know that they wanted to keep me until the end of July, more or less.

This is more or less perfect, because it will give me enough time to get everything done before we move.  Moving has become the all-encompassing thought pattern.  I want it to be done, to be moved already, and I’m sort of resenting the intervening time that I have to wait to get to it.  Especially since it’s keeping me from enjoying things I normally love, like browsing at the used bookstore or thrift shopping, because everything I think about has to pass the Would I move it across the country? test before I can bring it home, and almost everything fails.

Meanwhile, it’s hard to do anything other than browse in stores (no longer fun!) or go to movies because it’s just too hot to go outside.  Monday I indulged in the kind of outright complaining about the heat that I normally stop myself from doing, and I realized how absolutely tired I am of the unrelenting heat.  Late October to early April, more or less, this is a beautiful state to live in, and I’ve always joked about how everywhere you go has a lousy season, and at least you don’t have to shovel sunshine. Which is true, certainly, but unless you live in the extreme north, most places don’t have up to seven months of crappy weather.

I’ve lived in Arizona most of my life.  I moved to Phoenix with my parents when I was in elementary school.  We moved to Tucson a few years later, and I spent junior high and high school there, but I moved back to Phoenix for college when I was 18.  Aside from a brief period in Pennsylvania, I’ve spent my entire adult life in the East Valley.

I started this post on Tuesday morning, and was basically going to go into a paen about the bittersweet nature of leaving somewhere you’ve been for a long time, particularly with the idea that I might never return to Phoenix again.

And then, on Tuesday night, we had the worst dust storm in modern history.  Bad enough that the news channels stole a word to describe it that has its origins in a desert much more terrible and unforgiving than ours.  It struck my part of the Valley around 7:45, almost immediately after I got in the car to go pick Jack up from work.  I drove through the worst part of it, through an unnatural darkness that reminded me of nothing so much as a blizzard.  There was a tiny bit of moisture in the storm, just enough that my car looks like it was raining mud.

I’m ready to leave now.