TWC is both Santa and Satan

Okay, quick word here.

1) I have wireless internet in my apartment now! I can finally use my lovely Powerbook again, at my leisure. This means blogs, blogging, and picture uploading are again within the realm of possibility.

2) I have no leisure to speak of. And I don't even have a job yet. See this?

Manning Hall at UNC-Chapel Hill

This is school. Let's be honest, kids, a masters program is a butt-load of work. Interesting, engaging work, but work nevertheless. The job hunt continues, and when it eventually succeeds (pleasepleaseplease), I will have even less time.

This is not all to say that the blog is defunct. Oh no. But it is to say that it will be intermittent at best. Blog reading will be limited. Knitting will be rather limited. Geekery will abound, but perhaps not here. I will do what I can, and since I have to be up at an absurdly early hour on Monday mornings I will attempt to re-instate the funny bits ('cause I find 'em funny, whether y'all do or not), but I want to draw your attention to the "try" and "attempt."

We'll see what happens, hey? I'll definitely post a picture of my socks when they're done, and the Prepster if that ever finishes. But otherwise, have yourselves an excellent autumn, and I'll be seeing you.

It's the Ides of May, so Tracy must be blogging.

Hey, kids! Whoa, I have been gone a while. I am terribly sorry, honestly.

It's just that, for some reason, my job has suddenly required me to work. Like, the whole time. And when I'm at home, I have been way, waaaaaaayy too lazy to do anything, you know, productive.

So here's a brief report and I will attempt to do better from here on out, but I can promise nothing, since I expect the next two months before I leave Yatsushiro to continue being super busy. After those two months, of course, there's the whole "going home" bit, followed by the "moving" bit, succeeded by the "high school reunion," "starting school," and "working" bits (that last one is more of a hopefully), and so who knows?

But for now, a few loose ends.The Leaf Blanket. It is done. It has been done for over a week. It is still in my apartment. It moved from the blocking futon to the coffee table pile of stuff to ship, to a box, to the spot next to the door where I put things I need to take out of the house - so there's been some progress - but still, it's in Japan and Mary Kathleen, the very Catholic-ly named baby girl for whom it is intended, turns three months old today. Not in Japan.

Details, anyway.

Name: Leaf Blanket, for the daughter of my good friend Sheila, whose other child is my godson (and shamefully neglected as such).
Pattern: Lace Paneled Baby Blanket, by Sarah Bradberry.
Yarn: Hamanaka Wanpaku Denis in color #2, an off-white leaning towards yellow.
Needles: A Japan size 7 round needle. Maybe 40 cm? Not sure. For the edging, Japan size 7 straight needles.Finished Measurements: Um. What an excellent question.
Pattern Mods: None for the body - it was a really nice pattern, actually. My first few major failures in counting took place before the revelation of regularly placed stitch-markers. I cannot recommend those strongly enough. As for the edging, the pattern suggests a couple, and it became clear that the yardage for those was not included in the pattern yardage. I used one sent to me by my mom - something she scanned, so I don't know where it's from. But it was quite easy, and aside from the fact that it took FOREVER, is very pleasing.Knitting in Public/Movies Watched: Please. I worked on this thing for months. Most notably, though, I took it with me to the top of the 777 steps a couple of times, and while at first I could not watch tv while doing the pattern, I got comfortable and enough and only knit on the edging at all while I was watching something. Mostly, it's been episodes of CSI season 6, the first half of Heroes season 1, and the first season of Battlestar Galactica (and no, I'm not done yet, I've been sidetracked by Star Trek and will return soon).
Number of Times Frogged: Body, three times. Edging, once, when I changed to another pattern completely.
Things I Would Change Next Time: I think it's a beautiful blanket, in need of no changes as is except a better understanding of how to attach the edging, especially at the corners. I would certainly give myself a lot more time, though. This thing took me three and a half months from yarn purchase to shipping (assuming I do ship it today as fully intended).

Yar. That's that. The Moon Booties that go with it are also finished, now that I finally bought ribbon, and will go out with the same package, but I don't have a finished picture of those so it'll have to wait. I swear, I will update again next week.

Surely that's enough for one entry? Anything else I have to report is just about how I'm trying to get ready to go home - freaking out about packing and shipping and plane tickets and money and resumes and laptops and getting rid of furniture and having to buy new furniture and all that mess. Nasty. Oh, and Star Trek comes out here on the 29th, and it had just damn well better come to Yats. Else we will have a problem on our hands.

I've been re-watching the movies in preparation, and will get to watch my old favorite, The Voyage Home, tonight. Score!

Friday night at my house sure is kickin', ain't it?

Going Postal

Argh. I lied. I spoke waaaaaaayy too soon, as I should have known.

Last week my neighbor, who is way more skilled in Japanese, came with me to the Post Office to verify whether I could ship my trunk home. This trunk is something I got at the Container Store in Pasadena in 2007, before I went on a film shoot to the Philippines. I brought it to Japan because it's a giant piece of luggage, and it carried a lot of my stuff when I moved. But it is cumbersome, and since my plans when I leave involve a domestic flight followed by a week in Tokyo (during which I'll be climbing Mount Fuji) before my international flight home to Orlando, I didn't want to have to deal with it then. The perfect solution seemed to be to ship it home. I mean, hey! It's like, a big box! Ship it!

So when the Japan Post man, who looked, as they often do, terrified to be dealing with foreigners, confirmed that I could in fact mail something that big to America, and that it would in fact be cheaper than I had feared, I was ecstatic. Tuesday night I packed it, and Wednesday that same neighbor helped me haul it in to the PO. When we walked in with the trunk and I saw the faces of the two people behind the counter, I sensed trouble. First thing we were told was that they only ship boxes.

Of course.

I was very frustrated, feeling like that had to have been part of our first conversation. But apparently not. Of course, if I could speak the freaking language, if I was actually capable of basic communication with people in shops and businesses, this could have been cleared up immediately. But we all stood around trying to think of options, while my trunk sat on the floor and got in everybody's way, and everyone sucked their teeth and said it was difficult, and eventually realized that it wasn't going to happen. My favorite possibility was unpacking the trunk and sending the contents in boxes, then shipping the empty trunk EMS (not the trunk with stuff in it, oh no) for ¥8000. That's $80. Wanna know how much I paid the Container Store for it two years ago? About $30 (I think - now it's $40). So thanks, but no thanks.

Grr.

Anyway. I'm going to unpack it and ship the stuff inside next week, and sit on the trunk for a while until I decide if it's worth the trouble to take it home. I mean, I know, for $40 I could get another one from the Container Store at Christmas when I go back to LA to pick up all my stuff from the storage unit. But this one has sentimental value! It has stickers from international voyages! Like caricatures of luggage have! I have that!

Sigh.

In other news, last night I began sewing the edging on to the Leaf Blanket. Wow, is it so much easier and quicker than I feared. And when I had one whole side, a corner, and part of the top done, I looked at it and squealed in accomplishment. The end is in sight! And the finished blanket will look good! I'll really have to block the hell out of it again, but maybe it'll be ready to send by next weekend when I ship the boxes. Sweet!

That's about all I have. It's Friday, thank God. Tonight is game night at Jon's - Settlers of Catan, woo-hoo! Tomorrow is poker night at Geoff's, after another couple rounds of the 777 Steps, and then Sunday is set for being Indian for a day. I'll get to wear a sari, apparently. I'll let you know how all that goes.

Also, I would like to apologize for the excessive use of exclamation marks in this post. Clearly, my writing skills have degenerated to an embarrassing degree.

10 Things I Want to Share

So!

1) I am now caught up on all the blogs I read. Mostly anyway - I did skip over a few, but I will continue reading them now that I can just read the most recent one rather than have to wade through three weeks worth of blogs from a variety of sources.

2) I have posted some of my pictures from China and two little explanations of such. I'm not finished, but iWeb is making me want to hurt somebody. Those are available at my Japan blog. The reason that blog is separate, by the way, is because when I first got here I needed a way to post pictures and talk about what I was doing in a way that would be easy for my friends and family, but especially my mother, to access, and I started this blog much later. The Japan blog is unsearchable and only available to the people I give the link to, whereas this is available through Ravelry and is searchable (but who the hell would be searching or me?). I like my privacy. But iWeb is getting increasingly more slow and difficult, and access to that blog seems less likely to disrupt my life than it used to, so feel free to enjoy.

3) I bought hiking boots the other day. They are very pretty and I love them. I will wear them tomorrow when I do the 777 again, so I can start breaking them in at the same time I continue my quest to get in shape for Fuji-san. Last weekend I did the 777 twice right in a row, and I wasn't all that sore afterwards. Good sign.

4) I saw Watchmen, finally. I enjoyed it, but not as much as the book. Several of the actors were not just terrible, but terrible choices for the role. Rorschach was the notable exception - he was note-perfect, as far as I was concerned. The change to the ending made sense for the movie, but I was still disappointed. The fight scenes were great and very sexy, but all wrong considering the whole point was that these were normal people acting as superheroes. Anyway, if nothing else the release of the movie prompted me to read the graphic novel, and I loved it, so at least there's that.

5) I saw the Twilight movie, too, finally. It was even more terrible than I expected. Way more terrible than the books, and they weren't in line for the Pulitzer to begin with. Oh, well, now I know.

6) I am still working on the lace edging for the Leaf Blanket. The child for whom it is intended is now two months old. I feel sort of like a failure. In the failure vein, I also still have not mailed my dad's birthday present, even though his birthday was April 2 and I called from China and had a Chinese beer for him (several, actually), just as I said I would.

7) Just when I thought I was done with baby things for a while, another friend is pregnant, and for once it's a friend who I know will genuinely enjoy and appreciate a hand-knit item. Sigh.

8) I started the Prepster, because every time I looked at the lace edging and thought how I needed to work on it, I talked myself into doing something else instead, and I needed to get back into the knitting groove. Also, I needed to knit something for myself. I adore the yarn I'm using, because it feels so soft and squishy and slippery-in-a-good-way. Here's hoping I've done my math right, cause I'm doing it in the round.

9) I have decided to attend the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill's School of Library and Information Science in the fall. This decision and process, and the financial implications that I am only now fully grasping, have caused me a great deal of stress and taken up a great deal of my time lately. I am excited, but also sort of feel like I might vomit. If anyone has a few spare tens of thousands of dollars lying around, I am a very worthy recipient.

10) I am tired of my job. Also, today I am extremely grumpy. There is a bachelorete party tonight for someone I don't actually know, but to which I am invited because I'm American and am friends with the organizer of said party. Part of me is insanely curious about the stripper that has supposedly been procured (this being rural, backwater Japan, I'm having a hard time with the visuals), the rest of me wants to just sit at home, knit, and watch the Full Monty (either way, I get strippers). Regardless, two and a half more hours of work and grumpiness. Bleah.

But here's some Engrish for you, from the Lama Temple in Beijing:

Oh, but I am excessively diverted.

Ed: Because I am retarded.

Yarn Travails

So, I went yarn shopping over the weekend.

I spent some time on Friday figuring out possible yarns for the Prepster and the baby blanket that I thought I might be able to find at the craft store I like in Kumamoto city. Thanks to Ravelry, I could scope out some Japanese yarn brands and look at weights in English. I smartly changed the blanket pattern I intended to do, after seeing a note somebody wrote on my #1 choice saying "What was I thinking? This is taking forever." Bad sign when Sheila's due in three weeks. I changed it to the Lace Panel blanket, which called for a size 7 needle, same as the Prepster.

I also tried to work out what needle size I would need if I was going to do the vest in the round - I took the gauge, worked out how many inches each piece would be according to that, and converted the inches to centimeters. 18 stitches to four inches, 80 stitches for the back piece, 80 divided by 18 (4.44), multiply by four (17.78) for the inches, then convert to centimeters (45 cm). Perfect, right? So I thought I'd better go small, and cram more stitches on a smaller needle, than stretch out on a bigger. Something about that process seemed wrong, but I couldn't think what.

About this time was when I first began to clue in that US needle size numbers and Japanese needle size numbers do not match up. I was shocked to discover this, as I had gone along blithely assuming they were the same this whole time, buying and using Japanese needles for US patterns calling for US needle sizes. It hasn't been a problem, really, but still! I felt betrayed. And stupid. I realized I needed Japan sizes 6 and 8 needles, since the pattern calls for US sizes 5 and 7.

Not one to let a little thing like "budget" or "being able to eat for the next three weeks" stop me, I decided to get yarn for the vest and the blanket. I poked around and found Diaepoca. The Diaepoca is Gorgeous (with a capital G, right) and I've been lusting after it since I first went in to that store - I originally thought to do it for the Origami Cardi. They have a huge selection of beautiful colors in this yarn at that store, including an eye-popping dark pink that was perfect for the color scheme in my head. There's also a nice grey. Color cards here (click on Diaepoca, then color sample - mine is 319). The label said it was good for sizes 7-8 needles, and so while it seemed pretty thin, I figured it would work.

Then I looked for the baby yarn, and settled on the Wanpaku Denis, an acrylic wool blend. I realized I had written down the yardage needed but not the meters, and the labels here show meters. Whoops. I decided I would need six skeins for the blanket, to be on the safe side, plus an extra skein for the booties. Seven skeins.


Now, what about the vest? I decided to get the pink yarn now, and come back for the grey later - I couldn't afford all of it. I bought three beautiful, luscious balls of this beautiful, luscious pink. I almost forgot, but quickly went back for the needles - 40 cm Japan sizes 6 and 8. They looked short, but I'd worked it out, so I grabbed them, and went to the register.

Way too much money later, I had oodles of yarn and two new needles, and I was ready to start the blanket and was only six skeins of the main color away from starting the vest! Yippee!

When I got home, it all started to crumble.

First, I pulled out the needles so I could start the baby blanket. I took the size 8, same as the US 7, out of the package. 40 cm. It was tiny. It was incredibly short. It was the same size as the needle I have for a hat. I put it against my waist, trying to imagine knitting a top on it. Fail.

As I wigged out for a moment, I mentally reviewed my calculations and came up with the problem: I calculated for the back piece, forgetting to double it. This despite the whole point being to knit both pieces at once without having to seam. Fail.

Could I start the blanket then? 166 stitches on a 40 cm circular? Fail.

Then, the next morning I did a small swatch of the Diaepoca, since it was just so pretty I couldn't resist. I measured it. 18 stitches over 4 inches? Hah. Try 20 stitches over 3 inches. Fail.

The yarn is too thin. Way too thin. Ravelry says it can be used US sizes 6-8, and it is a DK. Is it me? Probably, but since I'll be knitting the vest, that's the important part. Can I get gauge with this yarn and have it look right? No. Fail.

Now I still need the needles, and the yarn. Fail.

But yesterday I bought a 60 cm size 8 so I can start the blanket, which I did (5 rows, which took ages - not a good sign), and I think that the Tokai Heart store at Youme Town has an adequate yarn for the Prepster, for when I get paid next. And now I have three balls of pink to use for something else.

Win.

Booties All Weekend

Boy, am I a knit gift failure.

I still haven't given Katie and Aashima their gloves yet. They live right across the parking lot, too, so this is pretty inexcusable. I'd do it right now but it's just too damn cold out.

Haven't started Brenda's headband yet, either, although on the plus side, I did give her a knitting lesson this week! She told me way before Christmas that she wanted to take it up again (having learned as a very young girl) and make her fiance a hat. We bought the yarn and needles before the break, but finally did the first lesson on Wednesday. She picked it up again very quickly, I must say. Right now she's just doing a swatch and I'll print out the pattern she wants and show her how to cast on this week.

I also did not knit a single stitch on Reidy's blanket, in spite of the fact that her birthday is a week from today. The reason, my little chickadees, is that my only knitting project this weekend was this travesty:
Remember how I said that these booties were one of my favorite patterns from last year? Ha! Not anymore. Not after banging out three pairs this weekend while also trying to do the FAFSA and three more graduate school applications.

On Thursday, one of the English teachers (proper English teachers, not just some native speaker they pay to surf the internet) at my school asked me how long it had taken me to knit the first pair. She was the one who took the first pair to the music teacher's new baby for me, and she thought they were darling (well, who wouldn't?). I said, oh, maybe two hours for the pair (note: I am exceptionally bad at estimating things like how long something takes, how many somethings there are, etc. Exceptionally bad.), and she said, oh really?

Next thing you know, I'm agreeing to make three pairs for her by Tuesday. Today, Monday, was a national holiday (I know, I know, back from vacation one week and then a long weekend. I have it easy), so I thought, no problem!

Foolish, foolish creature. I spent Saturday finishing the Watchmen (awesome, awesome - highly recommended) then learning this new game that seems to be quite popular in the States - Settlers of Catan, and then we had our James Bond movie night, even though we couldn't get Dr. No or GoldenEye and ended up with just You Only Live Twice (fun - for a group that had all seen Austen Powers first and live in Japan, it was pretty hilarious) and the Family Guy Star Wars special. I did work on the booties during the movies, but without accomplishing much. Then yesterday was the FAFSA and applications to LIU, Simmons, and USF. All day. So that left today for the booties - Hayashi-sensei called at 5 to check on progress and I said something like, oh, another hour or so. I still had to sew them all up and attach snaps. I had everything sewed up by 6:15, and then I discovered that the thing of snaps I bought for the first pair had up and disappeared. I'm serious, I tossed this place looking for them. Nada. I found a pair that came with a small sewing kit, so I finished one pair of booties, but then, as I'm frantically turning over this disgusting trashpit of an apartment upside down to find the rest, there's a knock on my door. It's Hayashi-sensei, coming to bring me dinner because she realized I hadn't eaten to work on these guys. Argh!

But she said she had snaps at home and she'd finish them for me. She then handed me a giant tub of soup, veggies, and mochi she and her daughter had made themselves. The hospitality in this country is awesome. She had offered to pay for the booties, but I felt uncomfortable with that - it seems unethical. Anyway, she has paid for more than one of my booze-fest enkai fees. She tucked some money into the dinner bag but I'm going to return it to her on Thursday when I'm back at junior high.

So, finished a bunch of stuff school-wise, but knit-wise, I am so, so behind. And I only got these two lousy pictures as I pretended to be looking for a bag to put them in and Hayashi-sensei and her daughter stood out in the freezing wind (my apartment, remember, was beyond trashed, and with only one big room downstairs, there's nowhere to hide it from guests).
Be honest, terrible picture, right?

I think that maybe if I put in a good solid hour per night for the next week, I might finish the blanket next weekend and at least get Chussie's birthday packet in the mail on her birthday. Maybe. Sigh.

Anyway, FO stuff:

Name: Rainbow MJ Madness
Pattern: Knit Mary Jane Booties, by April Cromwell
Yarn: Patons Astra in Kool Aid Ombre. Decent yarn for this project, but the color variegation just looks like a bad trip. She requested it, though, so I used up the last of it.
Needles: Bamboo size 4 short round needle. Couldn't find the straight fours.
Finished Measurements: Yeah, right, like I had time for that.
Pattern Mods: Didn't bother with button hole (never came out right first time around) so just knit four rows for the strap and attached snaps at end. Well, a couple of snaps, anyway.
Knitting in Public/Movies Watched While Knitting: Well, that would be the Family Guy SW Movie, You Only Live Twice, and today was the five hour BBC/A&E Pride and Prejudice. I don't even have to watch that one anymore, I just listen. Though I did put down the knitting for my favorite part, the showdown scene between Darcy and Elizabeth. "I had not known you a month before I was convinced that you were the last man in the world I could ever marry!" Man, love it.
Number of Times Frogged: Well, I frogged the first two I made when I was originally feeling this pattern out, so that I would have enough yarn.
Things I Would Change Next Time: I'd like to try it with a softer yarn in a solid color, honestly.

Okay, now I think I'll find a movie and pretend I don't have to actually work tomorrow, for the first time in a month.

Where We See Yet Again My Shining Brilliance

At last, an update. You were starting to worry, weren't you?

(yes, I love talking to my imaginary friends)

Took me a while to update because once again, I am having technological issues. For a geek, I am remarkably computer-retarded. For a geek with an Apple computer, I have the IQ of pond scum. As I mentioned previously, my computer is full. I got a temporary reprieve by learning how to actually delete photos, instead of just thinking I'd deleted them, but I'm still a little too full to do very much. Since I love to take photos with my stupidly-huge megapixel camera, this creates a problem. Now, the solution according to some dude on the Apple support forums was to buy an external hard drive, clone my internal drive, and then boot from the external until I could get around to buying a new and bigger internal drive. This I tried to do, buying a 500 GB external HDD, eventually, and cloning my current drive. Then I tried to boot from the external, and this is when I discovered the crucial point I had overlooked when I went to buy the external HDD: firewire. I bought a drive with a USB connection, and apparently, that makes it unbootable. (@*$^#%^!&*!)#*#^&$. So I'm right back where I was before, except now I have a useless $100 external HDD. Also, it turns out that I could have just bought a firewire enclosure and a new internal drive and cloned my old one directly to the new one without doing this stupid external nonsense. As an added move to tick me off, I can't buy music from the iTunes store, because I live in Japan and my debit card is from America. Apple sure is trying really hard to make me not spend any more money on them.

Anyway, I deleted enough photos over the weekend to upload more, although a video I very much wanted to upload wouldn't. And then I forgot to take a picture of my newest project. Dolt!

The Xmas Nebraska Hat is done, yea. The yarn was not pleasant to work with, although I think it's fine in the hat. As for the hat itself, I don't love it. The pattern is not my perfect hat, but I'm not sure how much had to do with the yarn I ended up using. I did end up casting on the 100 stitches the pattern calls for, after realizing that the 90 stitches I first had just didn't look nice, but I think the ideal would be in between. Since the pattern needs multiples of ten, that wouldn't have worked anyway. The hat feels too big, even though it fits fine, as you can see on the head of my neighbor, Geoff. It's definitely a little long - the pattern tells you to knit for 20 cm, which when I stopped to convert to inches seemed a bit long, but I figured she knew better than me and kept going. In the end, I started the decreases before 20 cm, and I still think it's too long. Then the decreases themselves just don't look as nice as I want them to. That might be me, but I definitely think that the second k2t in the pattern should be a ssk instead.

FO details:
Name: Christmas Nebraska Hat, for Stu in NYC
Pattern: That Chocolate's Gone Straight to Your Ribs Hat, by Leonie Connellan
Finished Meaurements: Forgot again, next time!
Yarn: ¥100 stuff from Daiso, wool/acrylic blend, in red and white.
Needles: Clover bamboo size US #8s, 16" circular.
Pattern mods: Not in the end.
Number of Times Frogged: Once, when I already had a good two or three inches, so I could cast on the proper number of stitches.
Knitting in Public: Um, no.
Next Time I Would Change: Definitely a different yarn, one not so scratchy. Probably a smaller needle. Definitely shorter by a couple centimeters. Decrease differently - k2t on the wider rib first, then a ssk. Also take the advice of Norma in her blog about ribbed hats regarding color changes. Hers looks way nicer than mine. Live and learn.

Now, about the knitting that is not-so-finished. The Diamond and Smocked has been done away with. Bad yarn choice for the pattern. I did the swatch and enjoyed the yarn and the color and even knitting the pattern, but it just didn't look right. So I finished off the swatch and went straight into the Basketweave pattern. I wanted to make it bigger than the pattern size, so I decided to add some pattern repeats. In my head, it went something like this:

"Okay, it says cast on 158 stitches. 7 stitch borders, pattern repeat in multiples of 8. So, add 8 to 158, that's 164. Plus 8 is 172, plus 8 is 180. Okay, cast on 180." Bam, I cast on 180.

Maybe you saw the glaring flaw in there, but I certainly didn't see it until it was time to start the pattern (ten rows in), when all of a sudden I thought, is this a 7 stitch border on each side, or is it 14 stitches? I started doing the math in my head and suddenly nothing was adding up. I looked back at the pattern, I re-counted my stitches, and then it hit me: 158 + 8 does not equal 164. It equals 166. I was missing two stitches. So now I have a 6-stitch border on each side.

Otherwise, it's going fine. I'm alredy bored and the thing is barely 4 inches, but hey. It looks nice, although the yarn is a little dark for the pattern, but seriously what pattern can you do with a yarn this dark? Lace, really, or stockinette. Then there's the fact that I might run out of yarn, in spite of my ten skeins. The first skein gave me 2 3/4", so assuming that each additional skein will give me 3" (I did a fairly substantial swatch of the D&S), that'll get me to just under 30" x 33", assuming my measurement of the bottom taken in the car yesterday was accurate. All of that's not to mention that this was a silly project to attempt anyway, because she specifically asked for a blanket for her four cats that would match her living room, and I heard: Christmas gift! Find pattern! Here's one, and even though it's baby-sized, I'll make it a little bigger and all will be well! Um.

Note to self: when people request a knitted something, they can pick a pattern or an exact color, not both. And if they've actually requested a knitted something, you should give them that something, not something else that you've decided would be better. Sigh. I think the kitties will be disappointed.

Ribbit.

Oi.

Here are the pics for the lovely finished Diakeito Fetching for Robin. I think they turned out quite nice. I didn't screw up very much (you might notice the slight difference in length here - difference in tension? an extra row somewhere? I have no idea), and they look very sweet. The yarn is nice, not itchy, feminine and pretty without being obnoxiously so. They are quite tiny, though - here they are shown on Katie, a five-foot-tall Asian, and they fit nicely. Since Robin is a five-foot-tall Texan, I'm still assuming all will be well. Then the question remains, will she actually wear them?

FO Details:
Name: Christmas Gloves, pair #2 for Robin in LA
Pattern: Fetching, by Cheryl Niamath
Finished Measurements: Whoops, forgot to measure - will go back and edit this later...
Yarn: Diakeito Dia Tasmanian Merino Lame in color #604, a slightly lavendar pink with sparkly bits in it. A bit splitty and much finer than the label claims, but lovely. I still have a bunch left in the first skein, maybe even another glove's worth.
Needles: Clover Bamboo DPNs in size 5 in US size 5.
Pattern mods: The now-standard extra cable twist at the end, two extra stitches on each side of thumb which get decreased in the next row, and I didn't bother with the funky extra-stitch cast-off. I just did a regular bind off.
Number of Times Frogged: It's been a while now, but I think just the one thumb, once. It's a dang miracle.
Knitting in Public: None, weird. These gloves were clearly flukes.


Last night was all about the frogging. First I ripped out the "swatch" for the Diamond and Smocked, because once I got into the pattern stitches I had clearly cast on a completely random number of stitches, and I immediately got completely confused. So I ripped all of that right back out, and then sat down and figured out how many stitches to cast on for a proper swatch, which will then give me an idea of how many stitches I will want to cast on for the blanket. It will also be good to do an actual swatch so I can figure out how the heck to do that funky wrap around thing in the tenth row.

I really do like this Vittoria yarn so far. It's surprisingly soft and a nice color. Regardless of whether it's just so nice in comparison to the Nebraska Hat yarn that is ripping up my cuticles or whether I've talked myself into liking it because I couldn't find anything else, it's fun to work with. But now we'll have to see all about the how much and how's it look with the full pattern and can I even do this pattern. I've already gotten screwed up on which row I'm on and how many stitches are even on the needles and will I be decreasing at any point? There's no key for the w.r. n and w.o.p. listed on the pattern, but I read in someone's blog that it's just a fancy way of saying yarn over, which makes sense but when will I decrease? It might help if I'd actually read the pattern all the way through...

And then I brought the Nebraska Hat over to Jon's to work on while watching the UK Office. It was finally long enough to actually try on, and since Katie was already modeling the gloves for me, I had her try on the hat, too. And while it fit, it just looked too stretched. I didn't like it. Bleah.

Thus, the Nebraska Hat got frogged, and I cast on 100 stitches, like a real knitter. The slight difference in needle size is obviously not enough to make up for a 10% reduction in width. Dolt. This time I will also make an effort to carry up the different colors properly rather than letting them hang out with their wangs out.

Oh, Christmas knitting, how will I ever complete thee?

[Insert Expletive of Choice] Christmas Gloves

So.  Yesterday I was talking about thumbs, and I finished those last night and was feeling quite happy about having finished the first pair of Christmas Gloves, another present to check off the list.  Yea!

Then I tried them on.  Both, at the same time, which I had not yet done.  And I thought to myself, Huh, the right one feels different.  I look more closely.  This is when I discover that on the first glove I knit, I did an extra cable repeat at the beginning that I FORGOT TO DO ON THE SECOND GLOVE!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAAARRRRRGGGHH!!!!

I really hate frogging.  Avoid it like the plague unless I'm within the first inch or two or a project.  I had FINISHED this one.  DONE THE THUMB.  AAARRGGHH!!!

This is what I get for knitting while watching movies.  Actually, I'm not entirely sure when this major brain fart happened.  I realized last night that I had neglected one knitting in public spot for these gloves, because I actually cast on and did the first bit at work on Friday.  Yeah, work.  I don't usually do much at work, so there's loads of discreet goofing off, but this was the first time I'd actually started knitting, so I was nervous.  All the teachers left junior high to go to some meeting (naturally, they forgot to tell me until that morning. they forget to tell me stuff about 50% of the time, though that's just a guess because, um, obviously I don't always know when they forget to tell me things), and since that was when my computer was totally full and I couldn't do anything with it, I left and went to the Board of Education, which is where we always go when there's no school and we still have to sit somewhere and look like there's a reason we're getting paid.  Sorry, run-on sentence.  Anyway, I decided to cast on the second glove since it's small and I was only going to be there for an hour and a half, anyway.  There was hardly anybody there either, not even the big boss, so I was safe.  But maybe not, since I effed up so badly.  It also could have been that night, during scary movie night, when I finished most of the rest of it watching Alien.  

In any case, big boo-boo.  So, I discover this last night while watching Aliens, and start thinking about how to fix it.  In retrospect, the obvious choice would be to unravel the bottom of the longer glove, but instead I ultimately decided to cast on and knit the first cable on one set of needles, then unravel the beginning of the shorter glove and graft the two together.  Sounds simple, right?  Well, relative to redoing the whole thing, anyway.  But it turns out that unraveling ribs from the bottom is way trickier then unraveling from the top.  I don't know what the hell I do to my purl stitches, but it was a total bitch to undo them, and I ended up unraveling a whole extra row I hadn't intended, because I couldn't get the right number of stitches from what I was unraveling.  Then I was going to attempt to knit them together last night, but it was getting late and I knew I'd be a zombie if I stayed up too late, plus I was still watching Aliens on the laptop and I wanted to watch that video of kitchener stitch again before I started, but there was no point stopping the movie when I was ten minutes from the end.  So I put it aside and said "Get away from her, you BITCH!" right along with Ripley (I love that movie), then went to bed.

And tonight... heartbreak.

I had to frog the whole [see title of blog] glove.  It is now in several wound bits of yarn on the arm of my couch.  I could cry.  I'm going to bed.

Thumbs the Word

So, here is the Stripey Zo, all pictured up for your viewing pleasure.  Well, sort of.  I'm having trouble getting the other pics up. Bleah.

This makes blog #6 for this project, which is a bit silly.  Most people on Ravelry finished this thing in about five minutes flat.  I took more than a month and had to go on and on about it all over the internet.  But, at least he's cute.  I'm very pleased.

So, while I was waiting for the second picture to NOT load just now, I finished the thumb on one of the first pair of Xmas Gloves, the dusty rose pink ones for Jessica.  I finished most of the rest of glove one while waiting for the fireworks to start last weekend, and the other glove was done this week, mostly Thursday and last night while watching scary movies at a friend's house.  

Knitting while waiting for the fireworks was funny to me - I kept wondering what the Japanese people around us must have thought.  Three of us showed up way early to secure a good spot for one of the most awesome fireworks display one can see (it's a competition for professional fireworks people), so there were three foreigners sitting in a large field of Japanese people, and I'm there knitting.  Do they think, Oh, look at that foreigner doing something normal! or maybe, What?! Foreigners know how to knit? or maybe, Quit playing that damn disco music! because I brought my iPod speakers?  Doesn't matter.  One of my students saw me, though.  He came running by, stared for a few seconds, said "Suge!" (cool! or wow!) and wandered off.  Then he proudly told the teacher what he saw when I was in that class this week.  Good thing he did, 'cause I never recognize them out of their uniforms.

Anyway, I joined the Fetching group on Ravelry, since it seemed the thing to do, and saw what others have done to combat the big ol' holes that appear when you pick up the thumb stitches. I decided to try the picking up extra stitches and then decreasing on the next round. And... I'm still not completely pleased, but it seems better than the last pair, and I'll try to fudge it with the sewing up. That means one thumb and ends weaving to go on this pair, and that's Xmas knit #2 owarimashita. That's finished to you lay people. Let's look at the totals, shall we?

Christmas Knitting Tallies:

WIPs: 1

FPs: 1

Knitting in Public:

   Stripey Zo: train to Kumamoto, dentist's office

   Xmas Gloves: Naha hostel, Naha Starbucks, Yats Fireworks Fest

Oh, and it turns out that at least a portion of the computer full problem was solved when I emptied the internal trash in iPhoto. Why iPhoto has to have a separate trash can that does NOT get emptied when one empties the main garbage can, I do not know, but I felt like a real dolt when someone on the Apple help forum told me this. I have never, in the three years I've owned and extensively used the photo application with this computer, emptied that trash. There were 3995 items in it, and emptying it bought me about 8 gigs of space. Sigh. Dolt. I'll still have to get an external hard drive, but at least it bought me some time. I am even more afraid of grad school now, though, since it is once again clear that I am no computer genius. Well, you do what you can.

Stripey Zo is Done, Done, Done!

I love knitting, I really do. But towards the end of a project with any level of complexity, there is always a time when I start to hate it. The seaming, sewing, blocking, making it all look put together part is by far my least favorite part. By the time I was finishing this little guy, I was calling him the Little Bastard. But he's done now, and he's so incredibly adorable that he is completely forgiven for the pain he put me through.

As I mentioned, I barely finished the ears. I had to take apart the crochet attempt to finish the second one, but all turned out well. I was able to sew the ears to the head with the tails from the bind-off, and there was even plenty left over to attach the legs and body. After the various ear fiascos that made me believe crocheting requires some special ability I lack, I thought sewing would be easy. No. The first leg was fine, but after that it became an exercise of knitting yoga. And the head! I attached it a bit and thought, hey, that's fine, but he flopped around like a movie corpse. Since I was listening to some NIN at the time, I considered leaving him as a head-banging elephant (he keeps good time), but then I recalled that this was being given to a two-and-a-half year old. So I tried again, and while he is definitely a bit crooked, he is just plain adorable. Oh, and no eyes yet, but I kind of like him this way. I'll look for some buttons this weekend and see if anything strikes me.

Name: Stripey Zo (btw, "zo" with a long 'o' means elephant in Japanese)

Pattern: Elephante, by Susan B. Anderson

Finished measurements: 5 and 1/2" tall, 6" long, and 6" from ear to ear.

Yarn: Used up the last of my Patons Classic Merino in Good Earth, which I was only guessing at 3/4 of a skein, or 167 yards. I didn't weigh or measure, so that's only an estimate.

Needles: Clover Bamboo size 5 dpns.

Stuffing: Some sort of acrylic stuffing I got at the ¥100 store. No pellets.

Pattern mods: I used the knit ear pattern posted by BettyBoops in her project notes.

Knitting in Public: The train to Kumamoto and the street outside the dentist.

Cuteness Level: Off the scale.

Now, as for why there are no pictures. Sigh. My computer is full. My beautiful, trusty, never messes up Powerbook G4 purchased on credit at the beginning of my make-up career, is full. And I don't know what the hell to do with it. It totally sucks. I have the Halloween video clips on the camera as well as the Stripey Zo pics, and nada. They may as well be on the moon. It's one of those fun aspects of digital technology that makes me pause - none of it physically exists except as tiny switches until you do something with it. Pictures, patterns, all that knowledge - it's intangible until you suddenly have a picture in your hands or an elephant on your table. But anyway, I posted a question to the Apple support forums and expect to get an answer soon. I know that is likely to involve buying some sort of external hard drive, and that sounds like a pain in the ass. Quite frankly, I'm nervous about doing it, but since my next career will certainly require far more computer knowledge than I currently possess, I'm sure it will be good for me. But in the meantime, no new pictures. You'll have to imagine it. However, I promise to provide pics as soon as they are available.

Just make sure you imagine cute.

Damn Your Ears!

I cannot get the Elephante ears.  I watched the designer's video about fifty times, pausing and doing it along with her, consulting my one measly book on crochet, making at least four attempts on some spare yarn (hard to tell how many cause I kept frogging), and THEY ALL SUCKED.  I'm sure it's not the pattern or the yarn or the designer or anything but ME.  They would not lie flat, not a single one, no matter how loosely I tried to do it or which awkward part of the stitch I crocheted into (since at one point I suddenly had a seizure of doubt that I'd been doing the whole thing wrong all along - since I tried several ways, my technique is unverified but it was all the same result), they all turned into a cone with a big lumpy bottom, and they were all too small.  I even wasted some of my project yarn making up the best one I could, going two extra rounds (and increasing accordingly) to make it bigger, and it was pointless.  It was still conical (so that when I folded it in half, as the pattern instructs, it was a freakin' triangle), still not the right size, and still super lumpy in the middle where I made the ring around the joined chain of four.  And I also just didn't like the way it looked, the way the stitches looked in comparison to the rest of the little guy.  When Ms. Anderson did it, it looked great.  When I did it, it looked like crap.

I did the crochet part, which is at least a step in the right direction for growing as a craft geek, but crimony.  It's just not going to work.  Now, of the 572 people who are doing or have done this project on Ravelry (as of just now), I know that some of them noted the knit patterns they improvised for the ears, but do I really want to go back through all of those to find one?  Or will I just improvise a half-assed one of my own?  Sigh.  I really wanted this thing DONE already so I could move on and focus on the rest of my Christmas knitting, including the gloves and figuring out the Diamond and Smock pattern that my friend has finally chosen.  And the fireworks are tomorrow, so I'll have plenty of time to work on the gloves, but this stupid Zo will still be at home, sitting there on my couch being incomplete, taunting me.

It is especially ridiculous when you consider that my godson, for whom this thing is intended, has already received a far more fabulous elephant from me.  I gave him this Goliath for his birthday in June, in the hope that he will one day remember me as an awesome godmother in spite of my lengthy absence.  But he can hardly sleep with that one, can he?