living in a knit-free zone

No knitting news. Life is consumed right now with work (the fun of having two jobs is not apparent this week), and in the bit of free time, trying to meet my goal of having the Sadie blankie ends all woven in by Halloween. I have been most successful by trying to carve it up into do-able bits: two rows worth of ends per day. There are 15 rows, with ends to weave on both the front and back sides. The other night my fingers itched for another project, but I am resolute: no more casting on until this one has been delivered to Sadie and her patient mommy. It would be too embarrassing to have her birth blanket finished for her first birthday.

Heidi got the socks. She was kind about it: "They will stretch a bit, won't they?" Damn. Now I have to make her another pair, but it won't be until January. Maybe some nice Fixation, so it won't be the end of the world if they end up a little snug. And I just might as well put those 2.25 mm needles away for good.

socks done and more yarn

Heidi's socks finally done--I tried them on the other night, and the tightness problem was not as bad as I originally thought. So I finished them off (see the FO's in my sidebar--not very exciting, just a plain old jacquard sock, but they're done!).

Had coffee with my friend Aimee in the harbor yesterday and of course, had to make a trip to Yarn Garden, to see if they had anything new. More sock yarn, yea! but out of Addi's in sock sizes/lengths. It's such a pleasant shop, great location with an almost-view of the harbor. I just wished they had less novelty yarn and more basic stuff. But they were having a sale, and I couldn't pass this up:

Big soft flat plumps of Anny Blatt No. 5 in Raisin, a yummy purplish brown, at 30% off. I couldn't afford enough of it to make something really big, so I just got enough for a scarf (like I or any of my friends need more scarves). I think I'll do something from Scarf Style--maybe Backyard Leaves, which seems to be the right gauge. Can't wait to try the Denise needles.

The owner said that it was just beyond the price point most were willing to pay. I can't help wondering if they stocked more natural fibers, they'd get more hardcore customers. But perhaps Tacoma just isn't the market for it.

Oh, and I went to exchange the red laceweight. I met the woman who took the job I was originally thinking about--seems nice. Both she and the owner looked at me kind of funny when I was talking about the weight being off and said, essentially, it's the yardage, dummy. (Though they were very kind about it and the dummy part was just me feeling stupid.) And the worst part is--I know it's all about the yardage. It's just that the pattern was so specific, referring to grams/yards in two places, that I thought it must matter for this design!

And then of course when I got back into the car, I thought of all kinds of ways I could've checked that little fact out while preserving my dignity: Google, a phone call. . .I was just so fixated on needing to get my money back.

But tangles seem to follow me everywhere: now the laceweight is in a big hanky mess on the dining room table. I am winding it slowly. But I actually did some work on Sadie's blankie last night and have vowed! to get it done by Halloween. I will have to weave in two rows' worth of ends every day to do it (which seems to take about an hour), but I am so ready to have it done. I really have made myself promise that I will not start another project while it's unfinished. I will allow myself to wind laceweight yarn, which I can only do in bits because it is so frustrating, but nothing else.

will heidi really notice. . .

. . .if one sock is blood-flow-constricting tight and the other is a little loosey-goosey?

Don't mess with me, I'm in denial.

hell of a day

I swear to God, if it's not one thing, it's another.

We are STILL battling fleas. After 8 weeks of this, I'm finally ready to call the steam cleaners, the flea busters, the yogic swami, to get rid of them. 'Nuff said about that (though I wondered yesterday, when I was at a client's home, and she picked a flea off her dog, if maybe I have been unknowingly fighting the battle on more than one front, hmmm).

I spent the weekend really tucking into my work. I don't know if it's the prospect of the newly designed job in the future that re-energized me, but something has. I delivered a training today, and I really dug in and worked hard on it. Not perfect, but I felt good about it.

But when I was leaving at 7 a.m., I pulled out of the driveway and noticed that B's car window was smashed: yup, a CD-player grab. That might've been what woke Harvey up at 2:30 a.m., then me, when I was thinking it was just my poor itchy body. I hope the $3.50 the little druggies got for it at the local pawn was worth it for GOING TO HELL FOR STEALING. Just when there seems to be a light at the end of the money-going-out tunnel, something else happens, so I have decided just not to stress about it. Life's little emergencies are what Visa is made for, right?

Wishing tonight

I am really feeling a little wistful tonight. I think it has something to do with it being a beautiful October night, a time I’d typically feel a little of the dying light.

(There seems to be spooky around every corner, which I love. Last night we had friends over for soto and fun, and we started telling our true-life “ghost” stories. I was surprised to find that I have a bunch of these! B freaked me out, though, telling everyone that when he was sitting in the family room the other night, he thought he saw the glass move from one spot on the table to another. Because it was him, he easily convinced himself it was just a trick of the eye.)

Our house is the coziest place in the world tonight: Sunday evening, dinner in the oven, laundry going, night settling down in the softest way around the eaves, peace and quiet and tremendous love. All material needs met, even abundance in many things. This is the time of year when my Cancer-ness comes out in full swing. And I even felt extremely lucky when I went to work this afternoon for a couple of hours: I have a great little office with every tool I need to be successful, and despite my procrastination, I got really excited about the training I’m doing on Tuesday when I finally sank my teeth into it. This job change, while it eliminates my knitting time, is, in many ways, my dream job. In it, as David Whyte says, all my experiences and learnings and talents will come together in a way that feels really good.

stinky day of knitting boo-boo's

I'm just generally having a pretty grotty day, knit-concerned. This morning, I tried on Heidi's nearly finished sock #2. My gauge is clearly way the hell off, and the sock is too damn tight. First one fits fine but has holey gussets, and now this. Can't bear to think of frogging it, but as B says, nann, you can't give people s---!

I also realized that, in my LYS lust yesterday, I bought lace-weight yarn that has some off-kilter WPI. The pattern calls for 183 grams for 1275 yards, and my 1300-odd-yards skein weighs 100 grams. I set it up against another lace-weight I had, and it's definitely much finer. Damn.

I am a take-backer, so I will swallow my embarrassment (remember, when I was angling for a job, I told the Owner that I was pretty good at yarn substitutions) and exchange it, but for what? More sock yarn? Zephyr (which, while I have been wanting to try it, will push the cost of this project beyond what I was hoping for the SIL Christmas gift)? And I'm not sure Zephyr has a red this beautiful.

If I were contemplating any other lace projects, I might keep it, but I am also feeling the push of pending job changes which will compound my tortoise-osity by getting rid of all my knittable time. This turns the stash from a pleasant indulgence into an albatross around my neck.

And, though I generally think I've lucked out massively, career-wise, with the pending changes, this makes me slightly less enthusiastic about them.

an intervention, please?

I cannot be trusted at the LYS.

Despite vowing I would not buy another project until the Sadie Blankie ends are woven (and Heidi's socks are finished), I not only bought this today

(didn't my KA cakes turn out lovely? But I've had to tell B to stop calling the device a "yarn baller"--it makes me a little squeamish)

but also this


In my own defense, I told MIL that I could make the SIL a shawl/stole for the Christmas cruise to Mexico. But I recently decided, with job changes pending and my tortoisey pace, I would have to renege and hope MIL found the pashminas she bought in Turkey last summer for Christmas gifts.

But isn't the laceweight pretty? I was going to order from KnitPicks (almost guaranteeing I'd fail to deliver the project by our sail date of December 17), but I didn't like any of their reddish lace yarns. This is a true, beautiful clear and deep red, not a touch of orange. And even though I have patterns that would surely do for a shawl/stole, this one just seemed like a good balance of lace complexity and consistent fabric. That's my story, anyway.

I also decided (same reasons as above) that the yarn store job was an absolute fantasy. Fortunately when I went today, the help wanted sign was gone and Owner said she'd found someone perfect.

Never doo-doo where you eat, is my motto: this is turning out to be my favorite LYS without having to travel to Seattle, and I wouldn't want to spoil it by having to work there and tarnish the dream. And it's weird: all my local knitting friends said, steer clear of that place, the owner's really mean. I've found no meanness whatsoever, just a person who's pretty intense (hmm, sounds familiar), serious and knowledgeable about the craft, and carries all the stuff I want to try: Manos, Koigu, Shepherd Sock, rosewood needles, Zephyr, a healthy selection of sock yarns. Even some of the stores in Seattle don't have it all in one place. The shop's in a rotten neighborhood, doesn't have classroom space, and the parking stinks. But I'm finding that, while ambience is nice, if the shop doesn't have the stuff, it's useless. So if you live in the South Sound and want to know which LYS it is (I'm really bad about being discreet, surely you can already figure it out), e-mail me.

top 10 lessons learned while kool-aid dye-ing

10. I will never, ever drink KoolAid again (not a lot of danger of that anyway, but now I understand the powers of Red Dye #10--all the KA I ingested between ages 6-11 is maybe just now starting to wear off my innards)

9. It isn't over until the fat lady knits: both dye jobs look better at every new stage. The red/orange/purple/brown batch will make lovely sockies.

8. The zipper on the Saran Wrap is really sharp. (Casualties: one thumb)

7. Just when you think you have an untangling "system," it will fall all to hell, and you'll be back with the "the bunny goes under this branch and into this hole" method. (Hey! a new system--I should get a kid who just learned to tie his shoes to ungangle my yarn!)

6. If you're not a pink-loving girl, leave the pink lemonade KA on the shelf. (It seems like a good idea but probably never is.)

5. If you hang the drying yarn where DH's bath towel normally goes, make sure to move it before he takes a shower.

4. Expect the DH to say, "What the [bleep] is that smell?" for 3-5 days afterward. (Even if, like mine, your DH rarely bleeps.)

3. The smell is not really improved by hanging yarn over a heater, like where DH's bath towel usually goes.

2. "It's very harmful for yarn to remain in a hand-balled state. A ball-winder is essential for reaching optimal resting tension. Therefore, I must purchase a ball-winder for the good of my yarn. It's necessary to protect our yarn investment." (Some DH's might need a few more scientific words thrown in to find this convincing, and the our in the last sentence is really a judgement call--it could go either way.)

1. When the "ubiquitous they" say to tie your yarn in four places, they aren't kidding.

NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month--50,000 words in one month. This is my "come to Jesus" moment. I'm going to do it. The 30-day part fits with my ephemeral attention span, and there's no better shock to a stuck system than just jumping in. I'll take a break from clients and do it. Now which one will I write? I'm trying to just let myself tell a story. I recognize the bones of a story in lots of other places but seem to struggle with the map when it's time for me to tell one.

Yesterday had The Job Conversation. Since we also talked about being "dooced" in staff meeting, I won't say much about it, except to say that my gut says it's about the best of all possible worlds. I have been itching to get back in the full-time game. I've had my year and a half of half-time, of leisurely meet the pals for coffee days (I'm glad I recognized they were special and enjoyed them). There has also been a fair bit of sittin' around, trying to figure out what to do next. I am a little bit structurally challenged. The full-time paycheck also seems like a really good thing, too. I haven't mostly minded being poor-er, having to think twice about things I didn't before.

The idea of Utah hasn't faded entirely, but I think we're still on the hook waiting to find out what happens with B's business plans. Why does it seem to take us three times as long as anyone else to do stuff? I have begun to recognize the extent to which I wait until the right possible moment. I am hounded by perfectionism, and I think I must get over it this next several months. It's killing my effectiveness in so many areas of my life.

So NaNoWriMo is my shock treatment of choice.

kool aid day

With the fruity scent still hanging around in a nauseating wet-wool kind of way, here's pics of this weekend's Kool Aid dye day.

I started with KnitPicks dye-your-own merino fingering weight for socks--doesn't it look nice and cooperative?

I am an impatient girl. Stubborn, even. Perhaps what comes next is predictable.

Not much later, here's what it looked like (I even called KnitPicks customer service to see if there were some trick to it, but apparently God help you if you try to separate the one big hank into bits, since it's wound with a weird layering at one end and tied in triplicate).

I'm still fighting it, and I expect it will be near Christmas before I finally get it wound. The silver lining, though, is that I'm not missing the ball winder--it would be absolutely no help with this fiasco.

Not feeling as enthusiastic at this point, but I press on with hank #2, mixing colors:


And leapt in! What the hell is this mess???Fortunately, I liked the skein somewhat better once it came out of the microwave.

And the next one, while so Easter-eggy I can hardly imagine wearing a pair of socks made from it, seemed a little better yet, technique-wise, though still a little splotchy.

I am unimpressed with my color skills, and grateful that yarn comes in lovely colors all made. Don't think I'll be doing this again. But here's something I'm really good at, cooking at the same time: