Battlestar Galactica Blanket

Hey, kids.

Lord, it's Thursday already. Sometimes the weeks just fly by - usually when you're going to reach the end of it going, "Oh, crap, how did I manage to let five days go by and accomplish SO VERY LITTLE?!"

Actually, this week hasn't been too bad. I'm behind, as usual, but I did get a chunk of my to-do list finished. Mount Fuji cabin - booked. Laptop loan application - completed (also approved two hours later, apparently based solely on my wizened, mature old age of 28. brilliant). Baby shower invitations - printed, cut, and awaiting glue, addressing, and handing out. Successor - emailed.
The October Baby Blanket is now sort of the Battlestar Galactica Baby Blanket. I knit the vast majority of it while watching the end of season one and the entirety of season two, and now that there are no more discs to be rented from Tsutaya I am having difficulty making myself finish, despite the fact that I have maybe three more pattern repeats. The pattern repeats, by the way, are four rows.

Heh. Somehow I just typed "despot" instead of "despite." Don't you wonder what goes on in our subconscious when we do stuff like that?

Anyway, blanket should be finished tonight or tomorrow, ends woven in and blocked this weekend. Score! I should even have time to make a hat and finally finish this stupid thing before the shower. The shower will be an experience, too. We're inviting sixteen people (including the parents-to-be), and of those, five are dudes, eight are Japanese ladies who are likely completely unfamiliar with western baby showers, one is an Indian friend who was also totally mystified when we explained this, and the rest are American/Canadian girls who barely know how to hold a baby, much less birth one (I fall into that last category, in case you're wondering). But I found a website that, aside from insanely obnoxious use of the word "mommy" to refer to the shower honoree, gives pretty useful info, so we'll see what happens.

But meanwhile, I am desperate to get a hold of more BSG. I am a proponent of renting or buying over streaming/downloading, because even aside from the legality and space-on-my-hard-drive issues, I firmly believe in puting your money where your mouth is. Or however you use that phrase.

However, --SPOILER ALERT-- season two ended with everyone on that crappy planet because Balthar is a douche, Starbuck married to that pro athlete hot guy when she was supposed to end up with Apollo (hello? am I the only one that realizes they're destined for each other?), and the freaking Cylons showing up to turn everybody into batteries or walking wombs or whatever! Adama and his freaky mustache and newly-pudgy Apollo jumped away! What happened to good-Cylon-Sharon (whose one-year-old baby appeared about six months old - how did nobody notice that?)? Why isn't Starbuck a pilot anymore? How could Cally and the Chief move in together after she shot Sharon and he punched her face in? How can I not want to immediately start on season three? This is also why I can't watch tv shows when they're on the air - there's too much time in between and once the initial excitement to find out what happens fades, I lose interest. If I don't start watching the rest now, who knows when I will? Once I get home there's school and moving and being flat broke and how will I manage two more seasons of a tv show? And then some jerk will probably tell me how the show ends and I'll punch them and end up getting arrested.

This is not to advocate illegal streaming or downloading. Oh, no. THAT IS BAD. YOU SHOULD PAY MONEY FOR THE EXPENSIVE-TO-MAKE ENTERTAINMENT YOU WATCH. All I'm saying is, I'm desperate. And if a friend tells me they have more episodes for me to watch, but I have to go to their house, maybe I just won't ask any questions. You know, if.

Yarn and Piles of Stuff

Yarn! Delicious, silky soft wool!
This will shortly become the October Baby Blanket, for Brenda's firstborn, due in (come on now, you can guess this one). She hits five months very soon, and in two weeks she's going to find out the baby's gender, as long as the bouncing fetus cooperates for the camera. Either way, this color will go nicely with even the most gender-specific colors and clothes. And since the winters here in Yats are cold and the heating/insulation non-existent, baby will be happy with a wool blanket. I haven't discussed yet how much of a pain in the ass this is going to be to wash with Brenda yet, though. I'm saving that until it's way too late.So as soon as I got the yarn I had to try it out. The pattern calls for size 9s, and the only ones I have are the standard scarf-knitting length, which will clearly not work for a blanket. I cast on some anyway, because if I had to go buy new needles I wanted to be sure that 9 is really the size I want. I was a bit nervous that this yarn was a little too thin for that size, but actually I rather like the way it looks. And it seems to be a quick knit, which will certainly save my skin in the next two months.

Speaking of how much time I have left, I bought my ticket home! SQUEAL! I leave Japan for good on July 29th, stop over in Seattle long enough to make my sister and her husband drive all the way out to the airport to have coffee with me, before moving on to Orlando by way of Detroit, for some reason. Though I leave Tokyo at four in the afternoon on the 29th, I arrive in Seattle at 9:15 am on the 29th, so I gain a whole day - which I then immediately waste almost entirely by flying to Detroit, sitting there for over an hour, and then landing in Orlando at midnight of the same day. So in a way, it's like it only takes seven and a half hours to get to Orlando - by the calendar. In reality, it takes me twenty-three hours, and will seem interminable.

Anyway, I'm going home. Awesome. And once I get there - well, things are going up and down, and I am alternately seriously depressed/worried about finances and starting over, and incredibly elated/thrilled about everything else.

Someone was telling me (I forget who now, so if it was you, bear with me) that this isn't starting over, it's just moving on. This person should definitely be made to be in charge of the packing, throwing stuff away, and then re-buying, re-locating, and re-acquainting me with America, as well as making all my new friends for me. You should see the giant pile of STUFF I've made in the corner that will need to be dealt with. Hang on, actually -And that, my friends, is not even all of what I have to deal with before July. Bleah.

Well, anyway. The Prepster Librarian is coming along swimmingly, even if I am heartily sick of 1x1 ribbing. I've tried it on and realized I will need to make the 1x1 ribbing longer than I originally thought to make it fit the way I want, but that's okay. It is pretty and it will be nice and warm when it's finished.

In other news, Star Trek is coming to Yatsushiro! Yea! And that's what I'm doing next weekend.

Hilarity Monday

We're trying a new feature here at Geek My Stitch Up, which I am calling Hilarity Monday. Let's face it, Monday sucks. You're going along, living your life, camped out on the couch or hanging with the pooches or taking your kid for a stroll or whatever it is you like to do, and WHAMMO! Monday comes around and screws everything up by making you work.

Well, with any luck your soul-sucking job allows you internet access. If that be the case, you can at least come here on Monday mornings and get a chuckle in before you commence the mind-numbing tedium.

Without further ado, I give you: Black and White People Furniture.



Also, please go check out Puff The Magic Rabbit's blog about the Boston AIDS Walk and donate if you can.

Hump Day, Slump Day

Ah, blog. I do love you, I really do. I've just been distracted. I will probably continue to be distracted for a while.

There's just a lot to do. Loan applications, class registration, packing and shipping, avoiding thinking about all the stuff I need to do by reading and watching movies. Why not the blog as a procrastination tactic? Unfortunately, sometimes it falls into the "things I need to do" category, and therefore becomes undesirable even though it's really sort of a pleasurable thing.

Anyway, I just wanted to post because I've actually attached progress pictures of the things I'm working on to their Ravelry details. The Prepster Librarian is progressing, and I'm just about ready to start attaching the edging to the Leaf Blanket. The edging is easy to do but interminable, and now the same goes for the Prepster, I think. 1 x 1 rib sucks. I'm bored of it, and am thoroughly disappointed in how uneven my stitches are appearing. I usually knit with a pretty regular tension, that first Bamboozled notwithstanding, but somehow there are a ton of stitches on the Prepster that have completely wacky tension. What gives? It doesn't bug me enough to start over, however I am concerned that it will fit. It seems very narrow, and narrow is exactly what my hips are not. I'm going to keep going for a while and then see if I can try it on somehow. Otherwise, I'm happy with the yarn and color.

Also, Battlestar Galactica is the awesomest thing to come along since Firefly. If only the DVDs had more than two freaking episodes each. If only I didn't already know the show is over, and that therefore my enjoyment will be limited. If only I could fly a space fighter.

Ha! They'd never let me fly anything, my vision is too crap.

Oh, and I finished the third ridiculous glittery vampire book. Not sure how I felt about it. I have the fourth and am forcing myself to wait until this weekend before starting it, as I know that once I start it will be very hard to stop until it ends. And then it will end, and my guilty pleasures books will be all done. I know, I have a bunch of quality books to read, but I like to switch them up with rubbish. Keeps me balanced. Three more months with nothing but genuine literature (Dostoevsky? really?) and academic type things might fatigue my brain before I even start school, and then where will I be?

On the other hand, perhaps it will allow me to speak two sentences together without any obvious grammatical flubs. That's gotten pretty rare these days.

Tonight I will be sending the first package home. A trunk full of winter things, souvenirs, the knit blanket my mother made me years and years ago (a blanket that implies she was on some very powerful narcotics at the time, though she wasn't), and yarn. Glorious yarn. Must go buy more while I still have a job, and send it on. It's light, it's squashable, it's delightful.

Oh, crap, I almost forgot! Yes, I went to the bachelorete (sp?) party. It was extremely weird. The stripper turned out to be another ALT from the next city, and I think that the #1 Rule of Attending a Party That Has A Stripper is that you are not supposed to know said stripper. I knew this dude's name and job (teacher, btw) and had a distinct memory of him hitting on my friend at last year's Christmas party. Eeeeeeewwwww. Then of course, there was the fact that the party was made up of five Japanese girls who spoke very little English and four or five Western girls with varying degrees of Japanese (I, at Level Really Bad, was the worst), and neither group actually knows the other. But it was fine, and the food was good. When I uploaded my pictures this morning I may have blushed a little, but then, I blush at anything.

Two more hours. Sigh.

Travel Planning!

Here's where I'll be in just over three weeks:
Even knowing that the baby has arrived and time is short, I haven't really knit anything in the past couple of days.

First, there was drama. Now, I'm a little too old for drama, but I basically live in the equivalent of Melrose Place for the foreigners of Yatsushiro. Except with less sex. As far as I know. Anyway, there was drama and that involved coffee and gossip sessions, and I got distracted. Bad Tracy.

Second, my books on Beijing and China arrived. Yea! At the end of this month, I will be leaving to spend eight days in Beijing, but all I've got booked so far is the flight, the first two nights at a hostel, and my visa. So there is a lot to research and plan. I got the Lonely Planet guide to Beijing city, and Fodor's China. They both seem pretty good so far, and I got them both slightly used but in excellent condition from BetterWorld Books, who sent them promptly. I love that site.

Originally I had hoped to have the Prepster done by that trip. Now I think I'll be lucky to have sent off the Leaf Blanket.

In either case, however, I will be in China at the end of the month. How rad is that?

Introducing Mary Kathleen

It happened! Here she is, Sheila's new baby:

How the heck do I rotate this?

Mary Kathleen, born February 15th. She was early but apparently hefty - eight pounds. Not exactly in Big Fat Baby Tracy range, but hefty. Isn't she cute? Well, as cute as a wrinkled red ball of baby can be, I guess. This does confirm my belief that newborns all look a bit like aliens, but she's a precious alien, anyway.

Naturally, what with a newborn, a two-year-old, and a large extended family, it took a while for the news to reach me. Yes, that crushed me just a little, but it's one of the consequences of moving across the world. Her first child is my godson, and I've seen him once, at his baptism - two-and-a-half years ago. Bleah. Five more months, I keep telling myself, five more months.

If you want more cute baby-ness, another friend's wee one is now teething. That's Ben, my friend Trish's son. He looks adorable, but I'm awfully glad I'm not having to deal with teething noises. Shudder. Trish is nice enough to be my first blog follower, even though I suspect that with a teething child, a husband, a doctoral thesis, and no interest in knitting that I'm aware of, she doesn't read much of my whining about needle sizes.

Also, this means that the blanket is two more weeks overdue than I thought. Yurk!

Go Ahead, Waste a Few Minutes. Nobody's Watching.

I didn't work on the blanket at all, all weekend. I was a very bad knitter.

Instead I watched a bunch of sci-fi/apocalyptic movies and went to a really lame club despite being sick.

So, I offer you this for your Monday:


What I think is going on here: The man is going, "Thanks, honey! No one will make fun of me, now!" and the woman is laughing because the flowers are slowly poisoning her a-hole of a husband.

Write your own caption! Because honestly, what the hell is going on in this picture, which appeared on the back of some fabric softener I bought?

Also check out these websites I discovered today, which are entertaining.

http://www.buttafly.com/starbucks/index.php

http://www.earthalbum.com/

Thank you, StumbleUpon!

Fetching Just Will Not Die.

I started a new project. Yea! After the blanket and the catnip balls were finally finished (but still not mailed - knit gift failure!), I was absolutely itching to start something else, and so I did what anybody does when they're about to start a new project: I stood in the middle of my apartment quivering in indecision two minutes before I needed to leave the house.

Tuesday was a very long and crappy day for me, so Tuesday night I was delighted to go for coffee with the girls. Coffee is our almost weekly trip to Starbucks to sit and gossip/bitch and moan, and since both Katie and Brenda have had me show them how to knit (have I told you about that? I think so...), I feel like this is my public knitting time. Therefore, Tuesday night right before I was to leave for coffee, I needed a project. Projects I need/want to start right now: Brenda's gloves, baby blanket for Sheila's kid, Prepster vest, wristbands, Brenda's headband, Emily's gloves. Do you see why my brain started to melt a bit under the pressure? Of course, I didn't actually have the yarn for any of that, but I tossed some of the leftover Vittoria in a bag, thinking I might do Brenda's gloves in that. By the time we got to Jusco I had nixed that idea, though - acrylic Fetching? I think not.

Luckily, Jusco is also the location of Pandora House, the new craft store that is inexpensive and carries the yarn I used to make Aashima's gloves, which turned out lovely. And who really needs even that much of an excuse to go yarn shopping? Brenda picked out this nice rusty red color, and I've got something fun and brainless to work on. Started it during coffee and continued last night during the first disc of Heroes (new addiction - thank you for your 4 for ¥1000 deal, Tsutaya!). I tried the cables without a cable needle for the first time, thanks to the article that subliminalrabbit cited in her blog. And hey, thanks for the comment! I feel special.

In other news, I bought the pattern for the Prepster Vest. I'm pretty excited about it, but a bit nervous as well. For one thing, I don't really like the way the pattern is written - I've read it through twice and there are bits that don't make a lot of sense to me. I think a chart would be better, honestly. And it's knit in two pieces, which I really don't like. I really hate seaming. I'm going to try to figure out how to do it in the round, because that would make me much happier - seaming = hibernation. Then there's the bit at the bottom of the pattern where it says: This Pattern Is Designed for SWTC Yarn Only.

Well, dang. Does that mean if I do it with something else they'll sue me or something? I mean, I was totally willing to buy the pattern for $3 online, but buying a yarn I've never felt (at $10.50/skein) and paying for it to be shipped internationally is just a bit of a stretch for me, when there are plenty of great yarns here. That little issue does not take much convincing for me, but what does trouble me is the issue of what yarn to use instead. See, I have this feeling that the first time around doing this pattern is going to turn out a bit off, because let's face it, all of my projects kinda turn out that way the first time around. But I haven't found anything at my cheap yarn sources that's really grabbed me, and I don't think I want to do it in ¥100 store acrylic, because ... well, because I don't. All that work for acrylic? Scratchy, inflexible? But then, if I use the yarn I really want to use, which is the love of my life in Japan, Exceed Wool, this is going to be a mighty pricey vest, especially if the first try doesn't turn out so hot.

So I'm stumped. But I need to go into the city soon anyway for some glasses, so I guess I'll just check out what they've got at that store in Shimatori, and see whether buying that yarn will allow me to eat for the rest of the month.

Also, check out what I found when I cut open an apple the other night. What the hell, man?

Keep Reading for the Secret to World Peace! Not.

All right, updates!

Christmas gloves are all given out. Both Katie and Aashima seem to love them. In fact, I took this picture on the spur of the moment when we were out to dinner and I noticed that they had both worn them out, all on their own. They turned out well and were well-received, so yea!

Brenda was also out with us and she was very complimentary, so I asked if she wanted the gloves instead of the headband, and she hemmed and hawed a bit and said yes. Sigh. That means two more pairs, since Emily also fussed a bit. I might still do the headband for Brenda eventually anyway, since I think she's the only person I know who might actually wear it. In either case, Emily's gloves and Brenda's headband are on the back burner, and Brenda's gloves won't even be started until this monstrosity is over:Yikes. That far done, which is great, but guess when Reidy's birthday was? Oh, you know, yesterday. And while it isn't so much an occasion gift right now, since I bought her some birthday stuff in Vietnam, I wanted to send it all in the same package so she'd get it around her birthday. Alas, it is not to be.

But I was getting too bored with just the blanket, so I started these:and they are fun and easy. I'm making the first few as cat toys. I bought what I think might be catnip at the pet store the other day, so I'm making a couple for Reidy's cats, to include with the blanket (and to make sure the cats like the blanket, hee hee), and then I figured I'd make a couple for Brenda's cats as well, while I'm at it. I like the way the colors are turning out with these lovely short rows, and now I finally have a use for this one silly skein of Patons Decor!

So now there are just under 10 inches of Reidy's cat blanket left, and the spheres are quick and easy, and then it'll be time to do Brenda's gloves and start on the baby stuff for Sheila. And maybe, just maybe, I'll go ahead and squeeze in buying the pattern and yarn for the Prepster. Because I really want it, and I want to do something for me, dangit.

Also, if you have not tried Haagen-Dazs' Maple Cookie flavor...GUUUUUHHH!! Run, don't walk, to your nearest Haagen-Dazs retailer and get some. Happiness in my mouth. Seriously.