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.

Christmas Knitting Begins

Technically, it began when I started the Stripey Zo, which is for my godson, but now it has started in earnest with the beginning of the first of several pairs of Fetching for friends.  Now, I love knitting these gloves - they are quick, easy but interesting, and pretty.  But I finished my pair a while ago and am not sure if I will ever actually wear them.  Yet here I am planning on pairs for three of my friends.  Am I thinking more of them or myself?  Well, myself, obviously.  But since I will be spending Christmas in Vietnam without a single member of my family within three thousand miles, they can suck it up and accept a thoughtful hand-crafted gift that they damn well better feel too guilty to throw out.

So I began this first pair of gloves in a Naha, Okinawa hostel.  I was waiting for my phone to charge so I could wander off, and I cast on.  Naturally, some chick about my own age wanders in and acts all astonished at me.  She politely asked what I was doing and I answered pleasantly enough.  She had kind of a creepy vibe, though, and she didn't seem to know what to say, so I volunteered that Japan had all kinds of great yarn.  She replies, "Who knew?" and I thought myself, "Duh, knitters and crocheters everywhere."  I have hereby resolved not to say "Who knew?" to people when it's clear that plenty of people knew besides myself.  Anyway, I continued knitting the next day at a Naha Starbucks, and didn't get any reaction at all.  

That brings the Christmas Knitting tallies so far to this:

WIPs: 2

FPs: 0

Knitting in Public: 

Stripey Zo - train to Kumamoto, dentist's office

Xmas Fetching - Naha hostel, Naha Starbucks

Also, while in Okinawa I did not end up seeking out any yarn shops.  I posted to the Knitters in Japan forum kinda late and never got any responses (bummer), so I didn't know where to go, and I really didn't need to be spending money on that anyway.  Nevertheless, yarn found me. While attempting to browse the Tsuboya Pottery area, but finding only one store that just had the same kinds of shiisa as everyone else, I wandered back to the shopping arcades.  Down one little street, rather far off Kokusai-dori where most of the tourists, especially foreigners, were conspicuously absent, I found the saddest little craft store you've ever seen.  There were some tables with stuff outside, and a fair number of 80's-era buttons on one wall, but most of the shop was empty.  Shelves with maybe a scrap of fabric, drawers of thread that mostly empty and covered in dust.  I mean, it was like a going-out-of-business sale on it's last day, but I feel certain that they weren't intentionally going out of business.  The only yarn they had was this Hamanaka Garcon (not in Ravelry) stuff I bought for ¥105, and some fingering weight stuff that was an odd shade of yellow.

I also went ahead and got the size 1 dpns for those bab

y booties topping my queue that I'll need to get around to before Sheila is due.  The old lady who worked there was giving me the evil eye at first (tall white woman, likely American, wandering around desolate Okinawan store and getting evil eye from old Japanese lady is not surprising), but then she seemed so happy that I bought stuff.  I'd like to think that I impressed her with my polite Japanese, but let's not get too carried away.  I'm sure she was just glad when I paid and left.

But for real, no more yarn!  How on earth will I save anything for grad school when I'm buying ¥100 yarn every time I turn around?

And the geek knitting project I am YEARNing to start is still so far away.  Sigh.