Haloscan comments

I finally got Haloscan commenting to work. (tip: you have to upgrade your template. I guessed this, but I thought I'd have to restore all the links--turns out it transfers over. I do have to restore the formatting, though. Bah). However, it's 86ed all the old comments, I'm very sorry. I've got an archive of everything but I have to figure a way around the generic template so that haloscan works only from this day forward, so I can restore the old commentary. Hmph.

(Probably easier just to get around to switching to Wordpress and import the sucker.)
There you go. I need to go to bed.

And now for something completely different

This is my current commuter project. The one I ripped out the entire foot the other day. I took 8 more stitches off the gusset and it's now pleasantly tighter.

The pattern's my own, just a combination of a ribbing and a Barbara Walker pattern (it's easy, just a right twist every other row). Looks like little knots but it doesn't feel like it. I didn't feel much like doing a regular rib. There's calf shaping at the top, via an extra purl in each of those purl troughs.

The yarn's Trekking XXL that I bought from Weaving Works in Seattle more than a year ago. It's marled yarn, a mixture of mostly browns and greys with other subtle flashes of color, and it reminds me of beachcombing on the Oregon coast, with all the surprises of jaspar and agate in among the granite. I love marled yarn. Nobody seems to make it except handspinners, Trekking, Mellenweit, and Noro. Oh, I think there was a Cascade cotton that got discontinued last year? It's almost enough to suck me into handspinning. ALMOST. Not going there.

So Angry

I read today that the Texas state legislature has voted against instituting a statewide vaccination of teenage girls against certain strains of cervical cancer, using the vaccine Gardasil which has proved effective against several varieties of the virus.

I'm not going to comment on that. When it comes to a politically mandated vaccination, there's often more sides to the argument than just public health. I don't necessarily agree, but I don't know enough to have a studied opinion. However, it's this quotation that has me shaking I'm so angry. All excerpts are from the New York Times article.

"There was no public testimony — why we were jumping so fast into a vaccine that was not for a true communicable disease," said Senator Glenn Hegar Jr., a Republican representing a district just west of Houston...

I would like to know just what the FUCK do you think a communicable disease is, then? Somehow you must live in a little universe where women don't die from cervical cancer, contracted from their partners? Last time I checked the dictionary (5 seconds ago), communicable meant that an infection can be transmitted from one person to another. 400 women die each year in Texas from cervical cancer (ref: also the NY Times article)

I love this one, too:

"We did not want to be the first in offering young girls for the experiment to see if this vaccine is effective or not," said Representative Dennis H. Bonnen, a Republican from Angleton, who sponsored the ban in the House.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other health authorities, describe Gardasil as safe and effective when given as approved to girls ages 9 to 26 in three shots over eight months.

Why do people believe the lies and filth pouring out of these people's mouths? This isn't an experiment. The experiment's already been done. It's called clinical trials. Perhaps you have heard of them?

And this isn't about girls, either: the vaccine is only available to women less than 26 years of age, and is effective over a lifetime. So these men wish to control these women's sexual behavior for their entire lives, by holding a death sentence punishment over their heads.

Let's cut to the chase here. Some people opposing this vaccine would rather a woman dies a horrible death by cancer than have sex. With anyone. Even her husband. Who, I don't know, is of course ALWAYS FAITHFUL because no one ever gets divorces for adultery in Texas. Or gets raped. All this because of the possibility that a woman might have multiple sexual partners of her own choosing.

I cannot express in words how repellent it is to me that people would rather cause pain and suffering rather than prevent it.

Yo, Yo! (happily drunken)

Tonight we walked over to the local and had a couple pints of their new IPA and it's truly fantastic (as are most of their short runs). Too bad that they usually sell out of the seasonals within a couple days. And I am happily drunken and not pretty much caring about crap right now except the purring cat on my lap. Oops, kitty has Places to Go and Things to Do so she is gone (as have I, but I don't care. So I'm staying put. As mentioned before).

It's one of those lovely Spring nights where it's finally amazingly clear and there was a gorgeous crescent moon and Venus hovering near. The kind of moon where you can see the rest of the moon because the crescent is so brilliant. It's the sort of night where you think of how lucky you are to see this night and how much you'll treasure it, because of its perfect clear brilliancy (except cold. Because sunny==cold for most of the winter here, so it's a rare Spring day that it's both warm and clear. Usually clear means->no clouds to hold in heat, so happy 50 degree temps)

I have to rip out all of my progress, several thousand stiches (sob), on the Cheshire Cat stole, because I cannot add. 130 + 10 + 3 does not equal 133, at least in any base that I know of. SHIT. Oh well. It's official RIPPIT day, as I also pulled out the current commuter sock back to the last gusset decrease row today. It took me 6 stops to rip that all out and ball it up, and I barely finished reinserting the DPNS onto the row-o-choice by the time I had to get off the train. More colorful expletives. However, I figure if I'm going to make handknit socks for myself, they should damn well fit like I want them to. Else why bother? Also a learning note: if the foot feels too loose just after the heel, it's not going to get any better working the foot farther. Bah. Ah well, it's just the commuter project. There's a reason I don't bother to track how long it takes to complete those.

I drown'ed myself in retail therapy today at Let it Bead today (I KNOW. YES, THE NAME), because I had something for beading part of the silk lace stole (oh, the abject consumptionist embarassment) but nothing that really FIT the edges. So I spent an hour suckered in by Czech glass, aquamarine, labrodorite, and quartz. I couldn't decide (ha, what ELSE is new) and so went with several. And then was wracked by indecision in the later afternoon, thinking all of my choices were too heavy. Perhaps I will hit the other 2 fine bead shops wihtin 5 miles of my house. um, embarassment of riches? Spending too much cash on little sparkly things?

And La, I do apologize, because I know you've got the jones for Dyeing and I've got some supply for you (hey, can't let a fellow Knit-From-Your-Stasher break her commitment: less of my stash might mean more of hers but only temporarily; it's all good) but I've been superlame about packaging things up. I will try mightily to get my crap together tomorrow. After the marathon ripping today, it's the least I can do.

I'll leave you with a pic of my babies:

In another month or so, they'll be 6 feet high. Fresh snap peas are what makes life worth living.

Sucker for attention

Thank you all so much for your complements on Faina. I hadn't posted the pictures because, well, I went outside, took a billion pictures of Faina, worn and unworn, and once I uploaded them I didn't like any of them. So I tried again, with the same results. I went ahead and posted them anyway. I need a model on demand.

Thanks to La for the Knit-A-Long! I wait with heady anticipation of seeing other finished Fainas (HINT HINT).

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I knit like a madwoman on Saturday (Sunday involved GRASS and ITS EXCESSIVE LENGTH and HOW IT INVADES EVERYTHING, as well as other catch-up-on-the-yardwork stuff), as I have been doing all other free nights, since I need to be finished with a certain lace stole sample by the end of April for my first (hopefully) to-be-published pattern (does this make me a lace professional then? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA).

And here's the LOOK AT ME!!!!!!!!! part that the title warned you about. Purlescence has posted up pictures of the winners & runners-up, so if you'd like a peek at my stole swatch, you can look at part of my entry. I was idiotic enough to choose to knit this in laceweight silk. Shoot me now.

Has anyone ever messed with beads and lace? I'm thinking of beading the center of each inner motif, but I'm worried that the bead edges will be too sharp and cut the silk thread. I once made my Mom a beaded necklace using fishing line, and it later fell apart because the beads cut the line. Has anyone else ran into this problem? Is lace loose enough that it won't matter?

Also, is adding beads to this a Bad Idea (tm)? As I'm working this I'm consumed with worry that I'm making a lace Folly, in the sense of it's more interesting to design than beautiful to wear. It sure was fun coming up with the story. Alice while in Wonderland tries to recite her school poems and they come out all wrong, yet still obeying the same meter and rhyme. I wanted to make a stole that looks like you screwed it up by forgetting some decreases or increases somewhere, yet it's still following symmetrical rules. A pattern that has been transformed unexpectedly into another. I didn't realize until the end of the swatch it reminded me of cats: tails swishing, cheshire grins, cats' eyes. Ha.

Hmmm, I probably should just thread a beed onto a fake stitch and worry at it and see if it breaks. Argh, I do NOT have time for more swatches.

Faina, I just met a girl named Faina

Are you all humming West Side Story now? Then my job here is finished.

Faina's Scarf

Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Royal Alpaca, color 707, Patina, which I overdyed grass green. 288 yards/100g per skein, 2 skeins. I had 22g left over - about 60 yards.

Needles: Crystal Palace bamboo circulars, 3.5 mm (US 4)

Pattern: Faina's Scarf, available from Fiber Trends. Knit as part of the Faina Scarf-along!


Mofications: None besides my modified SSKs (explained below).

Notes about the yarn:
This stuff is fantastically, rub-your-cheek-against-it soft. I admit, had a gift certificate and splurged. I'm a little embarassed about the cost but this yarn is awfully nice stuff. Wen worked a project with it and thought it was softer than the cashmere she was using for a differnt project.

The alpaca's got a gorgeous drape to it. However, there's this one incongruous thing: as soft as it is to touch, it's just a little bit scratchy on my neck. Stupid neck. Enh, not scratchy enough that I care. I did manage to fluff it up a bit during the dyeing process, perhaps that's the cause.

The patina color was more brown than I was expecting, so I overdyed the yarn with an emerald green mix (1/2 primary yellow, 1/2 primary blue), hoping I would get mostly vibrant green toned down a bit by the brownish base color. I used Jacquard Acid Dyes purchased from Dharma Trading Co. I'm very pleased with the final color. In the pictures you can see some subtle shading, which is what I get when I try to dye wool yarn a solid color but I like the very small variegation.

For some inexplicable reason it's very hard to capture the color as I see it. Even natural light and neutral background doesn't do it. On the other hand, the yarn looks different even to me in different lights (I LOVE colors that do that), so I shouldn't be too hard on the camera. This blocking picture isn't soooo far off:


This yarn doesn't take a lot of frogging. After 3 ripped out beginnings, my cast-on was looking a little tired. The yarn didn't seem spun particularly tightly (who'd do that to gorgeous, drapey alpaca, anyway.)

Notes about the needles:
I used the same size needle as recommended. I probably could've gone down a size (or 2) but I liked the fabric produced with the 3.5 mm. I prefer bamboo or wood for lace; they are grabbier than metal, I naturally knit lace loosely, and I like to have more purchase on all those YOs and passovers. Bamboo also gives me a bit better control over stitch shape. I use circs almost entirely because I'm a big klutz and if I can drop a needle somewhere inconvenient, I will.

Notes about the pattern:
Very nice, well written, and not too difficult. I didn't run across any errors. At first, it seems as if a many-row-repeat (was it 100?) would be hell, but this one is very predictable. Not that I was able to memorize it, but I didn't have to watch the chart for every stitch after I finished the first body repeat. It's also very clear when you've made a mistake and forgotten a yarn over, and slightly less clear but still obvious when you've done a decrease wrong (or forgotten one). The stitch count stays constant each row during the body. I found the best preventative for errors was to stop and admire frequently.

I did modify the SSKs. I ripped out the beginning several times, once because my left-facing decreases (the SSKs) looked very sloppy. Instead of:
slip-as-if-to-knit, slip-as-if-to-knit, transfer both back to the left needle then knit them together through the back loop, I did:
slip-as-if-to-purl, slip-as-if-to-knit, transfer both back to the left needle then knit them together through the back loop.
I got this idea from the book Knitting Tips and Trade Secrets, Expanded from the Editors of Threads. For some reason, this straightened out my leftware decreases. They're not perfect, but they're not sloppy-looking either.

Old SSKs

New S(p)SKs

I've never slipped every stitch of every row before for a selvedge, and I found with this lace I had to be EXTREMELY loose in slipping the first stitch or the edging was far too tight. This was especially true for the beginning and end of the scarf, where the stitch count is increasing and decreasing, respectively. I ripped out the beginning a couple times because I was not allowing enough give on the edges.

I wove the ends in because my Russian joins look like crap with plied yarn. The yarn is fuzzy enough to grip itself firmly, and the ends are hidden either along the cast-on edge, cast-off edge, or in the seed stitch border and don't show at all. I was unhappy about how crappy my cast-on looked, so I used the weaving-in-the-ends opportunity to make it look a little better. The fringe also helps hide some of it.

Fringing! This was my first fringed scarf and I actually enjoyed it, despite the fringe boredom I've heard of. I made my fringe groups 3 strands each, about 21" length before folding in half. I chose to do fewer fringes than the picture, but did 4 instead of 3 fringes across the bottom (I learned this from quilting: if you try to divide something into 2 equal parts, it's very obvious if the middle line is even slightly off. Dividing an area into 3 instead of 2 makes the lines dividing the sections much less noticeable).

I fringed every 4th stitch up the sides, and I specifically did not tighten any of the knots until I had the fringe exactly how I wanted it. Then I tied the lower knots so that I liked them, then trimmed each grouping to approximately the same length from the scarf. Can you tell I'm anal-retentive about my fringe? It's like a Rorschach blot test, except I don't know what it says about my personality that I Enjoy the Fringe.


Blocking: I don't have blocking wires, so I used the thread-crochet-cotton-up-each-side method to get a mostly-crisp edge. Blocking helped to orthogonalize the wonky stockinette stitches, although it did nothing for my decreases. Alpaca doesn't have any give like wool does, so it's easy to get messy stockinette.

Also: wet alpaca smells BAD. I don't care how royal it is. Yes, I did a full, submerged-in-water wet block.

All in all, a fun knit! It went much faster after that first body repeat, once I realized the logical progressions of the pattern. Me and my glamorous Faina! (y'all can just ignore the head. Also, when did I turn blond?)

HOWdy

I've been (mentally) away, but for no good reason. Let's just say that every time I felt like writing, it just sounded hideous and whiny and boring. Not as if I've let that stop me before, but I didn't see the point. My raging narcissism was retrenched against the crushing self-doubt and didn't emerge from the trenches until lately. It's still got a sniper trained on it, so I don't know how lucid I'm going to be.

Damn, that makes THREE fire trucks I've seen today. Sorry, quick aside there.

The sky is doing what I call a Simpsons sky, with picture perfect soft blue shading to pale green on the horizon and big puffy cumulus clouds picking up the beginning yellows of the sunset. I bet Mt. Hood looks all regal and is starting to pink up. And Mt. St. Helens probably still looks flat.

For distraction, here are my neices:

NYC neice (two months shy of 2 years)
Talking, walking, and biting the heads off of chocolate bunnies. She has the most fabulous hair. I'm envious as I didn't have such cute baby hair. Her daddy and my love monkey both had those gorgeous blonde curls as babies, too.

Utah neice (two months shy of 1 year)
Just getting her teeth in and crawling everywhere. My brother says she took her first steps on Sunday.

Yo, I know, pictures of other peoples' relatives are the most boring ever. Tough.

We saw Utah girl at Christmas and she's changed so much even since then. We're thinking of going out to see NYC girl and her 'rents in late May or June. I hear it's kind of nice that time of year and we only ever visited once, 5 years ago (for the nuptials, so not a lot of sightseeing time).

----------------
I've just gotten so wrapped up in myself lately that I can't even seem to manage a fucking normal conversation with anyone anymore. I'm terrified of talking to people. When did THAT happen? And for this last month I've been not coping well. A cookie a day makes the depression go away (for a couple minutes). I'm not a binger nor an overeater. I've just got a raging sweettooth that I haven't had the willpower to control lately. Or I should say chocolatetooth.

And winetooth. My lovely alcohol. Although I have come to the conclusion that I get my hangovers early. I just can't marathon drink. Any more than a couple or three hours and I feel like death, although I'm fine in the morning.

Even the Red Cross rejected me. Not enough iron; I failed the hemocrit at 1% lower than the cutoff. We've rescheduled for this Saturday and I'm taking iron supplements and hopefully those little red blood cells have been reproducing. It's not unusual, I've been turned away before.

By the way, the R.C. called (I was JUST past the 2 month deadline) because their blood supply for certain types is at extremely low levels. It's not Christmas, neither has there been a national disaster nor anyone I know is dying, and I know not everyone is able to donate (K the Love Monkey himself passes out) but please consider blood donation right now if you meet the criteria. Your blood could make a real, concrete difference in someone else's life.

Kicking ass and taking names

Do you ever just want to be someone else? Something else? Just like magically transform in another person entirely? (uh, besides physically)

I'm tired of feeling all wussy and inadequate; it's time to let that inner bitch out again.

Helpful socialization hint of the day:
If you're riding public transit, DO NOT DISCUSS your private sexual kinks in loud voices. They do not turn me on. Slapping each other and various riffs off "you know you want it bitch" and "you sure know how to please a man in bed" make me want to puke out the window. Except the window doesn't open.

The best part was when the girl said "you know what I hate, when the cops push you down and then shove their knee in your neck. I hate that, it hurts." "Yeah, that hurts a lot" replied her boyfriend. Then they got off and headed to the Nordstrom Rack.

Spring

I've been taking a photo a day (or more, or sometimes forgetting) this year. Some random meme I ran across. Mostly it's just an excuse for me to take as many pictures of anything that I feel like. It's also a way to recapture a little bit of the time that seems to be slipping by so quickly. Bah. Too much wine, too much philosophizing.

New apple blossoms

Flowering plum

Glorious unapologetically orange ranunculus

Leo needs a new pair of shoes

New rose leaves in the morning after a rainy night

Not quite so menacing

Does not play well with others

Ann & Kay of Mason Dixon Knitting are visiting Portland this week -- Wednesday afternoon. The yarn store isn't close by but it's not far either. To go or not to go.

I'd like to meet them and hear them read/talk/throw mitered squares into the air, since I find their blog entertaining and I think they'd be entertaining too in person. Some people have mentioned how their book makes them feel free to play around with yarn, to experiment with pattern and color and texture. I think that's fantastic, because it's my personal belief that my entire culture is losing that feeling of playfulness. People don't sing, because they're not good enough and the message is that they should Leave That To the Professionals. Or dance or joke make movies or write books. Because we're just amateurs and why bother when THE PROFESSIONALS do it so much better? Anything that encourages people to be creative, to think on their own - I think that's valuable and useful. Just because I don't do dishclothes (another story, not for now) doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy listening to Ann & Kay.

But I'm hesitant and torn, see? Because the last time I did one of these Big Author Events (last year's Yarn Harlot signing), I felt so profoundly alienated I felt alone for days. It's perverse, considering I was, for the first time, completely surrounding by masses of knitting women. My people. People who laugh at the cardigan/pullover joke. People whose eyes glitter and shine when you talk about yarn instead of glazing over with boredom. People who understand your obsession with decreases.

Yet in all that crowd, they all seemed to know each other, and nobody knew me. They were all very polite, I'm not saying otherwise, I just felt as if it was at a big cocktail party for the wrong company. Everybody was there with their own friends. And I didn't know how to break in. Did I even want to break in?

It's me, OK, not anyone else who's doing this to me, but just me. I don't blame anyone but my nasty twisted psyche. If I weren't quite so sequestered into my own personality, if I practiced harder at my socialization skills, I would have joined into the conversations, been less on the fringes and more involved. It's just hard, and I don't know if I have the energy for it. I don't want to cope with the alienation again right now (I also would prefer not to stand again for 3 hours, but hopefully I could get there early enough to get a chair. Or a bit of floor).

I know part of my reticence is because I work almost entirely with men. I'm extremely bad and out of practice with talking to women, face to face. I'm also, how do I say this?, not so good at the acting-like-a-girl thing. I identify as female, I just don't do a lot of the same things most women I know do. I don't even want to get into some gender-identity argument, I'm just staing facts. My mother-in-law, who is much better at the girl thing, and I get along best of all when we're both extremely drunk.

So there you go, too much information about my psychological hangups. I should just get over myself and go, huh?

Wax Philosophical

I could, but no. I'm feeling all babble-ey. Babble babble babble. After almost a week of feeling not full of words at all. Now, lots of words, just not useful ones.

The moon is waxing. Good enough?

First I am sad because I can't make it to the ASK hookup in L.A. this weekend. I had this crazy insane scheme of flying down there and crashing the party with some Kahlua fudge. I was looking forward to actually meeting some of these cool people in person, despite that I am terrified they would think I was boring and annoying and a killjoy. The Scheme was not so crazy, really, because sometimes Alaska or Southwest offers these last minute el-cheapo plane fares, but there was no joy in Mudville for this weekend. So. lame.

Second I had hot pot for lunch (shabu shabu - uh, like the scene in Lost in Translation where they are at the restaurant and she says "you have to cook your own food? This is the worst restaurant ever". It's really pretty good ("really" "pretty"-- arggh, SUCH descriptive adjectives), like a cross between a buffet salad bar and fondue (broth, not cheese).) But I go there with these coworkers and they are very snarky and bitter and really I can't take so much cynicism right now so I can only handle lunch with them once a month or so. This also makes me sad because I miss eating lunch with people, but people don't seem to do it here (except snark group).

Third, Faina is blocked and I wove in the ends. The alpaca was more slippery for end-weaving than I was expecting. I didn't use Russian joins because they look like ass when I do them for most yarn. The blocking really evened up the stockinette but did nothing for my somewhat wonky decreases. I'm over it.

Third.5: I am afraid of The Fringe, which I have never done before. I am afraid I will be VERY ANAL about the length of The Fringe and position of the knots.

Fourth, I'm inexplicably reluctant to just forge on ahead with the whole blog hosting thing. What am I scared of?

Fifth, Spring proceeds apace. My peas are up. HOORAH! Still waiting to see if the Echinacea seeds are a complete bust.

Sixth, Wen sent me yarn and other cool stuff! Fabulous red Lacey Lamb that I have been lusting after for ages and ages. She also sent a plethora of fabulous things (the candy is already gone gone gone). I was floored when I got the box. I gotta post pictures. Thank you!

Seventh, Zoe sent me yarn too! Floored #2! It's wonderful, wonderful Socks that Rock, a whole other skein to finish off the Pomatomous socks (and another pair after that, there'll be plenty left over), and TWO (2!) other skeins in a gorgeous pinky-peachy-brown. Thank you!

Eighth, I have news. I sold a pattern I designed! I'm still reeling. I'm working on the sample now.

Ninth, messing about with the camera. This one was the best of the bunch. I think I look kind of worried.

Woop woop!

Friday WOOOOOOOO!

I cast on for some socks last night, my own pattern, and worked more than an inch and was just about to start the pattern when a big yarn mump appeared before me. One of those big unspun bits that you can NEVER disguise. I'll have to cut the yarn and start over.

However, I DON'T CARE, because it's FRIDAY! HOORAY!

And it was actually a productive day for me, AND the weather is GORGEOUS today (hello, sunny and 65 degrees), AND I will be walking to a microbrewery for dinner tonight, oh yes, I will NOT BE DENIED. The air is perfumed with the scent of jasmine and sweet box and weigela and the birds are... well, the birds are asleep, but the possoms and raccoons are trundling about.

Even wild blackberries look beautiful when they're popping out new leaves.

Aw, the hell with it, I'm in a good mood. Let's post another flower pic. Call it dye inspiration:

Mental Meh

It has been a loose ends kind of week.

The Daylight Savings Time switch, better known as Jet Lag for the Entire Nation, did me in. I still haven't caught up. Every day I have to rip myself out of bed and I'm just not feeling like negotiating with the universe today. I'd rather have stayed in bed.

Every day's work feels like more and more pedantry. I'm proud of my efforts and I like to do a job well, but lately it's hard to make myself care. Yo ho ho and a bottle of ruination.

ANYWAY

Faina's main body is DONE. Woop woop! I cast off Tuesday night. Now she just needs a block and some fringe. Block and Fringe! It always sounds like "lock and load" in my head. I think block first, then fringe, but I have never done The Fringe before. I might have to re-do the cast-off first, it looks a little too tight.

Now I'm casting about trying to figure out what's next. What with my lack of concentration and just general flightiness lately, I really want something IN PROGRESS RIGHT NOW. Something I do not have to think about. Lace is fine, lace can be Follow-The-Charts,-You-Automaton which is great because I still feel as if I'm accomplishing something even though I'm plopped on the couch, vegetating. Geez, I haven't even felt like starting the new video game K bought lately.

There are several things I *want* to do, and several UFOs, but I just don't feel enough energy to care. And I need a new commuter knit, dammit. K's raglan needs some love, and there's a partially finished baby sweater that looks at me sadly from the knitting basket. I've thumbed through sock recipes and everything is looking distinctly meh (it's just me, they looked a lot better pre-loose-end-period).

BAH. Need more braincells! Send neurons fast!

Looking for Yarn in All the Wrong Places

Thank you for the suggestions on what to do on the Pomatos. Heh, signature orange toe. I would feel better about doing that if I hadn't already finished and woven in all the ends on the first sock. Also I might be more inclined if I happened to have some complementary sock yarn lying about, but I don't. I may just suck it up and buy another skein. I can always just make another pair of socks, some plain vanillas that don't slurp up as much yarn as do all those twisted stitches in the Pomatomus.

I'm flirting with an idea right now of making a need yarn/got yarn website. It would superficially similar Good Yarn Karma, but allow you to post requests for specific kinds and dyelots of yarns that you needed. The site would also also allow people to offer extra partial or odd balls for swap or payment.

The site would be MUCH less hands-on than Good Yarn Karma, as I don't have that kind of time in my life. Instead of a blog, it'd have a more automated format: submit a request or offer by form, then let people respond to that request or offer. The site also would NOT be involved in arranging and guaranteeing payment and shipment -- it would only help connect the yarn-less with the yarn-enabled, who'd then figure out their own exchange. There'd be a search functionality so you wouldn't need to comb through all the posts to find something.

It'd be somewhat like the skein list that yarn store owners keep. The goal would be to connect people with extra skeins with people who need them. I see requests all the time for needing just one extra or partial skein of X in dyelot Y. What do you think? Would such a service be useful? Or would it be unnecessary or easily abused?

ARGGGGH

I didn't make it.

And not even close enough to just fudge the decreases.
Anyone got about 10 yards of Socks That Rock lightweight in the color Puck's Mischief?

Yeah, didn't think so.

Friday Night Sock Smackdown

FRIDAY!   FRIDAY!!   FRIDAY!!!

ONE NIGHT ONLY


LameSockKnitter Co. Presents:

The End of the Sock

Big Alice & her Pomatomus socks go HEAD TO HEAD! You've NEVER SEEN this kind of action!

Marvel at the 24 decreasing rows left to the final sock -- only the toe to go!
Gasp at the dwindling yarn supply!
Wonder at the seething inner passions and denouement of the Pomatomus socks!

Will she make it!? Will she complete the pair with a SINGLE SKEIN of SOCKS THAT ROCK?

This Friday night only! No repeat performances!

We'll sell you the whole seat, but you'll only need THE EDGE!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



I don't think I'm going to make it.

Roses, before and after

These are kind of bigger-than-normal images, so click for bigger. I apologize that they're somewhat hard to see, too.
Roses, before prune.


Roses, after prune.

(The stuff underneath is St. John's Wort, which grows wild here. I like how it looks and I REALLY like the big yellow blossoms in summer, so I let it be)

They look decimated, don't they? They actually prefer it and will grow much better and stronger after this. Pain in the bazunga to do it, though. Just because I imagine I can hear plants screaming.

Whole lot of nothing

Roses: pruned
Faina Scarf: slightly over halfway (about 20 rows into the 3rd main chart)
Floors: vacuumed
Tasty Sunday Brunch: consumed
Yarn: fondled
Guest Room: cleaned out of all the junk that accumulates there.
Studio: disaster area
Weather: too nice to be stuck inside today.
Peas: pre-sprouting

Hmm, I guess I accomplished more than I thought I did this weekend.

Ugh I hate pruning roses. The inner perfectionist makes a play for dominance and I spend hours squatting down looking for outward facing buds and agonizing over which branches to cut. I like roses and all but I once read a quotation calling roses the "Poor sickly children of the flower world" and boy howdy do I resonate with that. They get EVERY disease. I think the black spot and rust is endemic now. And the camellia is trying to eat the red one (perhaps because the camellia is also red?).

On the other hand, the blooms are nice and my goodness you can cut those suckers down to nothing and they don't care, they LIKE it. I always feel like I'm decimating the roses when I cut them. Ha. Sickly yet tenacious. It gets easier to prune as I go along, once I get the first few thorn puncture wounds.

I didn't put them in, we purchased the house avec rose bushes, and when I first hit the Net trying to find out to prune them - HA HA HA. Because every pruning manual ever written assumes you have perfect new roses and not hoary old things with stems that are inches thick. INCHES. I have to use a saw to cut things out sometimes. No way can I form a "perfect 5-fingered open hand" or cut them down to 1 foot. So I just kind of try to thin them out, cut them down to not very tall but generally not into the old wood. Whatever. Only one's died on me so far. And that was probably from the black spot, rust, and lack of light. Yeah, for sure. Not me at all.

The old(er) previous owners had a Thing for Pink, as ALL of the flowering things in the backyard are pink (except the lilac, which I think was planted after the era of the pink-lovers). Roses? All pink. (And all hybrid teas. FEH). Rhododendron, azalea, even a Mountain Laurel (Kalmia) - pink. Let us not forget the pink tulip bulbs. Oh yeah, and except for the hydrangea. Which can be made to bloom pink.

I gotta go to Powell's technical tonight because Microsoft is making my life HELL and it'd be nice to know why, and please please please to make it stop.

Public Knitting

It's raining today (as it has been all week, not to make you think that the weather's unusual), but it's heavier than a drizzle and steady and the air is completely saturated. I wore my full hazmat raingear to walk to work today: 100% waterproof ripstop nylon, baby, and none of that breathable crap either, that stuff leaks after 10 minutes. I may make a dorky swishy sound with every step, but by heaven and hell I'll have dry jeans.

Some extremely stoned-sounding man on the train today said "Yo, what you knittin', bro?" He then apologized once I turned around and revealed my gender. I displayed the current sock and described its sockiness (I'm used to the excuse-me-sir by now. I doesn't annoy me, I'm kind of big and it's any easy mistake. What pisses me off is that the catalog for Patagonia had many women's clothes that crested in a size L but their men's clothes went to XXL. Thanks, Patagonia, I see there's no double standard AT ALL). He told me his grandmother had taught him how to knit a long time ago but he'd kind of forgotten. I should have encouraged him to knit again but I wasn't feeling very chipper this morning and I don't think on my feet quickly, especially in the morning.

Now that the current sock has its heel turned, it actually does look like most of a sock and not some stylin' fabric tube. Which is a boon to identification during random train encounters. That makes 2 this week, a bit of a record: Wednesday was the "Oh, look at YOU! You're doing needlework!" lady, who really was quite nice despite how she came off in that exclamation.

My favorites were the teenage girls who were completely engrossed in what I was doing. They kept asking these questions in awed voices. And people, I am not cool. I do not look cool or sound cool or act cool. But they thought my knitting was cool. There's a reason why I stick with DPNs--makes me look like some kind of badass look-what-I-can-do-with-toothpicks knitter.

Blush

I'm flattered by all of your attention in my Random Things I Like list; it was fun to compile. Run with it, I love reading all your lists! I get these great mental pictures reading them, like Pacalaga sitting on the deck and scratching her dogs' ears and laughing with her kid.

And nah, I'm not terminally depressed, it was just a bit of a cold grey day and I'm doing something at work that isn't exactly attention-grabbing and I was (ahem) daydreaming a bit since Spring's been a kind of fickle mistress this year and keeps tease, tease, teasing. Hey, I stayed late afterwards. Also, I can't seem to stop writing as if I were a nature-obsessed prose poet. Shoot me now.

Kristen made an impassioned plea to escape the tyranny of blogger comments and use haloscan, but I've just been too damn lazy to figure out why I don't have the necessary options on my interface. Or even to switch hosting. Um, yeah. Maybe this weekend?

She also pointed out this awesome little utility which will generate email-me pictures so as to foil spammers. How cool is that? However, I'm going to keep my pleasantly techno-crude current image for now, mainly because it made her laugh :)

Carol, if you're ever up in Oregon, or I ever happen to be in Florida, we're on for a Twilight Zone marathon. Yes, we've got stars at night here (when it's not cloudy. Which is a lot of the winter), though not a whole lot. It's still in the city-ish, but it's not that big of a city.

Thanks all for the comments on Faina, I appreciate the love.