knit-n-gib

All Gibbing, All The Time

2009-01-13T01:11:00.000-08:00

As the calendrical odometer turns over once again, a young lass's fancy naturally turns to zombie squashing. I first fell in love with Dead Rising, in January 2007, I think. We were in California for the Zombie Brother's birthday, and we spent about 7 hours watching the ZK play. The ZB kept gently suggesting that the ZK pay attention to the various missions, survivors, and so on. To each gentle reminder, the ZK serenely replied, "Dammit, Jim, I'm a PhotoJOURNALIST!" as he snapped yet another comedy crotch shot.

This was all in good fun, but it wasn't until the ZK picked up a framed oil painting, smashed it over the head of a zombie, and then proceeded to dance around, taunting the very frustrated zombie that could no longer reach him, thanks to the frame he was now sporting as a belt. Add a traffic cone on said zombie's head, and there is no higher art form so far as I'm concerned.

For his birthday (this would be March 2007), the ZK received a copy of DR from one of our more "thoughtful" friends. I believe the ZK's eloquent thanks went something along the lines of, "You bastard, you realize you've essentially just handed me a bill for $300!" (We, of course, did not have a 360 at this time.)

The $300 bill was paid sometime around my birthday in June. For whatever reason, though, I didn't get into the game until around Christmas, at which point I well and truly got into it. As any good game should, it made me angry much of the time. Choice phrases like, "Goddamn you, you dirty mother fucking clown, hold still and give me your sweet, sweet, chainsaws!" became commonplace in my home.

When I actually finished out the game and strove for the true ending, we just scrapped the rage meter altogether. We still maintain that the final two boss fights to get the "true" ending are the most punk-ass, po, po boss fights EVAH. They're linked, and they both involve doing things completely unlike the rest of the gameplay. The first involves manning a tailgun with an endless supply of ammo as your driver takes you in circles until you can blow up a tank. The ZK's sage advice for this fight comprised, "KEEP SHOOTING. FINGER ON THE DAMN BUTTON. YOU SHOULD NEVER NOT BE SHOOTING!" The second involves barehanded fighting on top of the tank you have just putatively blown up, and oh yeah, the tank is surrounded by the zombies that were completely absent in the previous fight. Beating or not beating the final boss is more attributable to chance than anything else. Not even top quality button mashing can save you, and you would be SURPRISED at how often button mashing has saved my ass. Lose to the boss, and you're back doing the fucking tank fight all over again, too.

BUT NO MATTER! It has been a year or so since I beat the game and got the true ending. Once you've done that, however, there are a number of highly classy achievements to gain, including Frank the Pimp (escort 8 female survivors simultaneously, bearing in mind that web of calls that you must and must not answer, the survivors you must and must not speak to, is slightly more complex than the US tax code for the self-employed), Clothes Horse (dress Frank in all available clothing in the mall, including some swell sundresses and disturbing little boy shorts), and Saint (save at least 50 survivors [there are only 54 total, you MUST sacrifice at least one to get one other, so really only 53, and every last one is a WHINY, STUPID IDIOT WHO CANNOT FEND OF A ZOMBIE WITH A SHOTGUN FIRED POINT BLANK]).

Before I picked the game back up around Christmas, I'd gotten most of the achievements, save Saint (just finished that one), Zombie genocider (kill a number of zombies equivalent to the population of Willamette, the suburb in which this particular Zombie Apocalypse is set), and Transmissionary (answer all calls from Otis, the incredibly odious security guard, who is constantly telling you not to cut him off like that, it's rude. WELL EXCUSE THE FUCK OUT OF ME, OTIS, MY FINGER SLIPPED OFF THE BUTTON WHEN ONE OF THE INEXPLICABLE ZOMBIE HOOKERS STARTED FEASTING ON MY JUNK!). Did Saint, FINALLY, and was working long and hard on the other two, hoping against hope that I could accomplish them simultaneously, because Transmissionary actually requires very little in the way of saving people or doing missions, so long as you answer the calls.

On my first try at Transmissionary, I gave up with about 24 hours to go because that fat bastard Ronald hadn't sparked a call about his food anxiety. I figured I'd just missed it somehow, and I devoted myself to squishing zombies for the rest of the game. With about an hour and 15 minutes of game time to spare, I saw the blessed "Zombie Genocider Achievement Unlocked." I drove carefully out of the maintenance tunnels, ran to the door of Paradise Plaza (which contains the door to the warehouse, security room, and helipad) . . . and got the classic "This Disk is Unreadable" error for which the 360 is famous. Mother. Fucker.

However, I checked my profile, saw that I was credited with the achievement (and indeed, every other achievement has been saved as it was unlocked) and figured I could just finish out the game from my last save, which had been about 5 thousand zombies or so shy of the Genocider level. Please note that doing genocider is really pretty boring. It involves driving back and forth through the maintenance tunnel, blowing up propane tanks and squishing zombies until the car you're in breaks down, getting into the next car, repeating, then stepping into a redrawn scene so that the cars will respawn.

On a practical note, I would like to know why we are not making planes out of whatever the fuck the shopping carts at the Willamette Mall are made of. Those bad boys can withstand a freaking propane tank exploding on them, and they can upend a goddamn refrigerated meat truck. A shopping cart like that can plan my castle onslaught anytime.

To continue . . . To kill 53,000+ zombies, you're talking about 4 hours of real time or so. Given that I'd already unlocked the achievement, I didn't see any reason to hit the total again, and I just ran around creatively squishing until I got an ending. Started a new game with a song in my heart, headed into the security room to pick up my real megablaster (the reward for the genocider achievement) and . . . nothing. Poking around online, I found that you have to finish the game with the requisite number of smooshed zombies in your pocket to get the megablaster. Yeah, shoulda checked on that before my ending overwrote my saved game. FUCK.

Moving on to the Transmissionary, I had several false starts there, as well. The walk-throughs helpfully tell you which survivors you MUST save, because they spawn later calls, and they all advise you to kill the other survivors quickly so that you don't end up with a full docket of missions, resulting in Otis not calling you for something. I'd already had the mysterious case of Ronald not being hungry once. When it happened again, I dug a little deeper and found that the two mutinous survivors and the wino won't mutiny (or ask for wine) without company, meaning you not only have to save a few other folks, you have to save a few other VERY SPECIFIC folks, thus ensuring that the mutineers have company in their rooms (the survivors assort themselves into 4 different rooms based on predetermined coding, and you can't herd them into other rooms).

SO, I aborted another attempt at that and decided to try once again for my megablaster. Sadly, I got knocked out by the raincoat loonies and was mistaken in my belief that I still had enough to time to knock out the needed number of zombies. I had a save at 48K, and try as I might, I could not get to the Genocider mark before running out of time.

Finally, I accepted that the Transmissionary and Genocider achievements were incompatible. I knocked off Transmissionary first, then devoted an entire 72-hr game to getting my goddamned megablaster. And, finally, after many "disk unreadable" tragedies and a lot of profanity under the bridge, IT IS MINE.

I've strictly been playing Infinity mode: Every nonzombie is a enemy, and in a award-winningly weird metaphysical turn that could only be brought to you by the Japanese, when you kill them, they turn into levitating cardboard boxes, which then explode, spewing forth weapons and food. The first enemy Frank encounters in Infinity mode is Otis, and it is difficult to convey the sense of satisfaction I gained from aiming my BFG at his whiny pinhead and reducing him to a steak, a push-broom, a mailbox, and a frying pan.

DysFUNction and Games

2008-05-14T10:26:00.001-07:00

A post about my very first double-knitting project has been sizzling through my brain for months. However, the sizzle could not find its market until now, because this gift was for a baby who was only just born last week, and for maximum home-wrecking potential, I didn't want to ruin the surprise.

A friend of mine first piqued my interest about double knitting by sharing pictures of her first attempt. It was inspired by Games magazine and involved switching up the yarns for the cool photo-negative design effect that double knitting can have. Just looking at her creation, my dumb cracker mind was both befuddled and intrigued.

Having done Skully for my very first sweater (my very first non-rectilinear garment, in fact), I knew that a design was a Bad Idea, but that didn't mean I couldn't do a simpler double-knitting project. When I saw the Hoover Blanket pattern on Knitty, I realized that I could produce a double-knit item AND contemplate how to ruin my nation at the same time. Then I remembered that my nation had been pre-ruined for my convenience, so I could turn all my attention to knitting.

The Hoover pattern on Knitty has instructions for a double-knit one-color blanket or a double-knit 2-color blanket. My first issue was that I wanted a three-color blanket for nefarious purposes: You see, the new parents are a mixed marriage. Although they were both primarily raised in scenic State College, PA, one of them has an affinity for Herbie Cornhusker. (Personally, I decline to comment on whether this affinity is regrettable or not.) In fact, when the Zombie King and I were attending their wedding shower in SC, he spied the animatronic Herbie Husker in the hearth room, and before I could throw my body in front of him with a mighty "Nooooooooooo!" he had already pushed the button, very nearly queering the whole marriage deal for our friends.

No permanent damage appears to have been done at the wedding shower, but if anyone can fix that, it's an anthropologist hell bent on syncretism in college sports preferences. That would be me. I wanted a blanket that would be Penn State Blue on one side and Nebraska Red on the other. And, obviously, in the interests of peace, love, and understanding, the border needed to be white (cream, actually) in honor of the teams' shared color.

So the Hoover Blanket pattern was a good starting place, but I needed more help than that. I actually did the world's most clashing proof-of-concept swatch with some lemondrop Lamb's Pride Bulky, Bears Orange Mirasol Miski, and Noro Kureyon Kochoran in the lime-blue-grey colorway. PRETTY! The swatch demonstrated that double knitting was doable, if aggravating, and I decided to press on.

Time out for a postmodern aside: Chicagowench CLAIMS that somewhere in this time period, she warned me that I was essentially knitting TWO baby blankets. I remember no such warning. No such warning at all. Perhaps I could not hear her over my own Lost-in-Space flailing and shouting of DANGER! DANGER! DANGER! in her direction, because she was plotting something made entirely of crazy for her contribution to this child's early life. End of postmodern aside.

The most baffling thing to me about this whole double-knitting exercise at the gamma-irradiated swatch stage were these two parts of the pattern instructions:

"When working with two colors, double-knit, you must always move both yarns together. That is, both yarns should either be in front or in back of the work, never one in front and one in back."

Check. Understood. But then:
"*K1 CC, sl 1 purlwise* across row to border.
Turn and work back the same *K1 CC, sl 1 purlwise*."

Now, see above re: dumb cracker mind, but doesn't that mean that one lonely strand is moved aaaaaallll the way across the piece without being worked into it (because you're just slipping every other stitch, rather than doing anything with them). I pondered this for a while and was about to embark on something truly stupid until some uncharacteristically helpful spirit suggested I have a looksee at knittinghelp.com's video on double knitting, wherein I discovered that this slipping business is strictly for CHUMPS and SUCKERS, because you can just PURL those babies and not have any issues with sad, limp, and neglected strands of yarns. Rockstar.

From there, it was comparatively smooth sailing. Of course, it's just stockinette and garter stitch, which can be boring, but the contrasting colors and remembering to move the yarn back and forth correctly saved me from total boredom. I was also relieved to find that I could pretty easily fix any you-got-your-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter errors when I moved the yarns improperly (usually just a matter of dropping and ducking stitches under the offending strand), although I did end up doing something monumentally stupid and more difficult to fix when I was trying to knit in the dark while volunteering at a Magnetic Fields concert at the Old Town School of Folk Music. (I do this all the time without fucking up much more difficult projects, so I'm going to blame the fact that I was ALSO trying to have a simultaneous conversation with another knitter about Firefly, Buffy, and the fact that Women & Children First has a monthly Buffy discussion, which I Did Not Know.)

The other difficulty I encountered with the project is that I am not nearly anal enough to responsibly handle a project that has 4 skeins of yarns going simultaneously (1 each for the body colors, plus 1 for each side of the border). When you add to my innate slovenliness to the fact that I knit the majority of this in the hospital during the ZK's month-long, life-threatening-illness-palooza, that is a metric assload of seriously tangled yarn under the bridge. My half-assed ways also led me to untangle just enough to make it through the row a lot of the time. This, in turn, led to some ugly-ass interfaces between the colored center and the borders. No problem, thought I! Wouldn't it be a nice little detail to have ACRES AND ACRES AND ACRES of applied I-Cord to mask that interface? ZOMG. It has been a while since knitting has brought me that close to seppuku. (But it does look really nice, if I do say so myself.) The other problem with the multi-skein nature is, of course, befuzzing. Before shipping off this baby, I shaved and lint-brushed it within an inch of its life, and STILL it has fuzzies, even if they are nanofuzzies that I can see.

Somewhere along the way, I did realize that red, cream, and blue ends up looking like the perfect blankie in which to swaddle your fresh batch of America baby, but by then I was so in love with the comedy gold of this blanket concept that I was happy to explain the premise with more zeal and commitment to the bit than wench's little man brought to his dragon-knight costume.

Just yesterday, I got my first picture of the bebe greatly enhancing the blanket's beauty. This was accompanied by a sly note from one parent noting that she clearly prefers the red side. Let the games begin!

Scandal! Child Labor Thrives in Knit-N-Gib-er's Home!

2007-12-01T23:36:00.000-08:00

"Murfle," Chicagowench patiently addresses her son, who, despite an hour or so of morning quiet time devoted to WoW, is once again clamoring to play his "14 Guy." Moreover, he wants Chicagowench's "Guy," and his to team up, "After I finish doing something with my guy, I'll watch while you play yours."

"But I want to help. I want your guy and my 14 guy to . . ." he explains in something not quite slow, loud English, but dangerously close to it.

"No," Chicagowench continues patiently, "I have to finish . . . "

"But you can help!" Mr. Wench breaks in brightly and Chicagowench fixes him with a well-deserved glare. The Lad adds, sotto voce, "No, he really can help. At his level, he's a great meat shield."

"Right!" Chicagowench's eyes shine with avarice and bloodlust, "Murfle, your guy and my guy can do this together."

"Meat? Shield?" Matilda has the luxury of the high ground occupied by the geratric and others wholly forgotten by Western society who have never played an MMORPG, "This, my friends, will be noted in the godparent notebook."

2007-11-30T21:03:00.001-08:00

"I think no matter what, playing Weezer in a jailhouse is a guaranteed way to get yourself a$$f@cked."

-From night one of Guitar Hero III

No matter who wins in the playoffs, you and me, we're swappin wives

2007-10-09T21:44:00.000-07:00

OK, this post actually has nothing to do with wife swapping, and I've likely just earned us no shortage of trolls. Truly, it's a quote from a very old Daily Show.

So I'm in this swap, coffeeswap three, which combines two great tastes which so long as one is not dunked in the other taste great together: coffee and yarn. My answers are here, and yes, I am fully aware that this is a co-op blog with 3 other people, 2 of whom have witnessed me pre coffee which is truly a horror no man nor woman should ever have to endure. I fully anticipate their snark in the comments.

1. Whole bean or ground? Whole.

2. Fully-loaded or decaf? Leaded. High octane. Fully loaded. Sweet god, I shopped Ob/gyns until I found one willing to let me have a cup of coffee in the morning.

3. Regular or flavored? Regular

4. How do you drink your coffee? From an IV. No no no. Skim milk and sugar (sugar in the raw if I have it) from a giant 22 ounce mug.

5. Favorite coffee ever? Fair trade organic costa rican SHB.

6. Are you fussy about your coffee or will any old bean do? I'm a little fussy. We do go to defcon 1 if the fair trade bag is empty, and will press cheap beans into service. We have been known to ask Chicagoan friends to drug mule Stewarts ground down for us (beats the pants off of regular ground coffee). Chickory in my coffee is a crime against god and nature.

7. Favorite treats to have with your coffee? Biscotti. Heavy on the chocolate and almonds.

8. Anything else about your coffee preferences? Please not a very very very dark roast.

9. Yarn/fiber you love? Alpaca. Wool-silk. Cashmere (hah! yarn snob!). I adore posh yarns, am growing increasingly besotted with sea silk and soy blends, and can't stop petting the handpainted sock yarn at the lys.

10. Yarn/fiber you hate? Acrylic. Novelty yarns. Angora in quantity makes me sneeze

11. What's on your needles? A clapotis in regal silk (Artyarns), a diagonal lace wrap in silk rhapsody (artyarns), thuja socks in posh sophia sock weight, and a men's sweater in nashua creative chunk wool/alpaca is about to be started.

12. Favorite colors? Black, greys, browns, blues, purples. Think like a bruise or a smudge.

13. Allergies? Cats, olives, peppers, eggplant. Not that I think any of these things would be involved.

14. Anything you really love, really don't like, or just need to get off your chest? To whomever my pal is, thank you so much. (Angeltiger, Matilda, you pipe down. I'm being restrained here, on the 'need to get off of your chest' count. Be proud!)

I learned it from you, mom!

2007-09-07T07:07:00.000-07:00

The scene: the mailbox.
The actors: one 4 year old boy, one yarn whore mother.

(mother pulls pink package out of mailbox)
"Mom, mom is that FOR ME?"
"No sweetie it's mine."
"Can I see what's in it?"
"Sure." Mom takes package in house, rips open- revealing two skeins of Emily from Posh Yarns. A small hand shoots out, fingers the yarn.
"Oh! Sock yarn! Are you going to make socks for me with that?"
"...how do you know it's sock yarn?"
(child graces mother with a look of 'lordabove, you are dumber than a sack of hair.')
"Mom. It is sock yarn weight. It's the right gauge. Trust me."

Going over to the dark side

2007-08-25T08:18:00.000-07:00

So about this time last year, I promised myself I would learn to crochet before my 40th birthday. I'm not sure why that seemed important to me, but it did, and just like pretty much every other resolution I've ever made, I let it slip almost immediately after making it. Other than purchasing a few crochet hooks in likely sizes and a copy of the Stitch 'n Bitch crochet book, I did nothing at all to forward this particular goal. I'm really good at shopping for resolutions, but not so good on the follow-through. Hey, I had the book, I had the tools, I had the time. Just not right now.

But there it was, Wednesday night, with about four hours of my thirties left. I was bored and not in the mood to work on any of my current knitting projects when I remembered the stupid resolution. My past attempts at learning how to crochet had all failed, but I thought, eh, what the hell. I poured a glass of wine and got out some smooth, reasonably tightly-spun DK weight, a 4 mm hook, and the book. And I did it. I carefully read the instructions, managed to hold everything right, remembered to keep the yarn in my left hand, and finally had the conceptual breakthrough I'd been missing in every previous attempt.

I made a long and ugly swatch of single, half-double, double, and then triple crochet. As I felt confident I'd conquered each stitch, I threw in a row of slip stitch and moved on to the next. Wonky as fuck, my gauge wildly off, and oh, so very ugly, nonetheless, I had something that was recognizably crochet when I put down my hook with 45 minutes to go until my deadline. And I've been plugging away at it ever since. As it turns out, crochet is a lot of fun. I like working with the hook, I like twirling it around and pulling it through, and I love the feeling of slowly and surely mastering a new skill.

The only problem is that crochet? Has almost no practical application to my life. Practically every crochet pattern I have ever seen has seemed to be tragically ugly. I cannot imagine a sweater made out of this stuff. I can all-too-easily imagine toilet paper covers and granny squares in hideous colour combinations. Doilies. When I was learning to crochet in a circle, I was all pleased with myself and my progress until I put it down, looked at it, and realised I had just basically made a doily. A doily in claret DK Cashsoft, so it was like, a nice doily, but a doily all the same. Me. Crocheting doilies. I should probably seek help.

Rightly or wrongly, crochet feels hopelessly naff to me, and yet, I cannot stop doing it. Those twirls and loops are just so goddamn much fun to make. It's addictive. I have ordered copies of every issue of Interweave Crochet I can find in the UK, in the hopes that there will be something in at least one of them that I actually want to crochet, and am willing to be seen wearing. That's how much fun this is. Crochet isn't a problem, I tell myself. I just need the right pattern, and then everything will be OK. The right pattern will save me. I have to believe that.

If I fail in my search, should you happen to come across me, wandering the aisles of Hobbycraft, clutching petrochemical yarn in my hands, please do me a favour and KILL ME.

. . . And the Rest: A Gibbing Update

2007-08-15T20:51:00.000-07:00

Despite evidence to the contrary, we have not forgotten our initial mission statement: To knit, to gib. To gib perchance to pull off a groin shot . . .

Where was I? Oh, gibbing. That we knit is obvious, but we do, in fact, gib. Sometimes we do both simultaneously, but, on the advice of council, we do not commit anything on that score to print. (Hint: Do NOT ask chicagowench how she single-handedly raised our nation's terror-level alert with nothing more than her knitting needles.)

But on the gibbing front. Just a week or so ago, I had only to say two short phrases to chicagowench ("Shooting at the walls of heartache" and "It was the HEEEEAAAAAT of the moment) and she was off to obtain the means of rocking '80s style. (Our short, collective review of Guitar Hero Rocks the 80s? Awesome costumes [should have had alternates], several great song choices, many, many more egregious holes in the catalog. No Night Ranger? I bloody well ask you!)

Chicagowench got her own back, though. There was brazen, shameless Wii flaunting on my recent visit Chez 'Wench. Before Herself had to leave town, she'd had me hooked on the bowling. By the next day, DevilKitty had lured me into golfing. (GOLFING?! Moi? It is the greatest understatement to say that I do not golf.)

But it was not until Tuesday, my head heavy with math, that I found my gibbing calling. The Lad had talked up Red Steel quite a lot, and I'm very big on wandering around and mindlessly killing (despite the fact that we've had an xBox 360 for almost 3 months, and I have yet to smash a painting over the head of a single zombie, thus preventing him from reaching beyond the border of the picture's frame). So in the down-time between math! and murfle swim lesson, DK and the Lad tried to de-spazz me sufficiently to play. The result was me finding my Native American/Hobbit/Pylean gibbing name: Twitching, Twirling, Reloading Princess of the Junk-Touching Clan.

See, I have some pretty serious gibbing affliction, probably attributable to my complete lack of art brain. This plays merry hell with my sense of spatial relationships. For example, in racing games, I cannot back up and turn at the same time. So trying to navigate with the remote + nunchuck is a bit of a personal nightmare (especially as I had not understood some instruction regarding this "aiming" thing). My first attempt at the game culminated in me spinning uncontrollably in place, shooting---among many other things, few of them the bastards shooting at me---the overhead lights. One of the very few kill shots I did manage to get off? Right to the groin. Take THAT, dirty pudendum-touching bus boy.

When I returned to the game, after much rocking, golfing, bowling, and the retirement of chicagowench for the evening. I managed to develop what I thought to be quite a stylish mode of play. This involved shooting away any and all shelter that the bad guys might take (no wall is safe from me!) and then emptying roughly 2 clips of automatic ammunition into each and every bad guy. I cut them in half. I blew off their heads by shooting up through the underside of their chins. And, yes, I shot them in the junk. Repeatedly. After a while, I realized that I'd been totally bogarting the gaming console, but then I realized that me playing Red Steel was the most fun that any three people could have. I'm sure my companions would have concurred, but they were too busy rolling around, crying, and pissing themselves in convulsions of envy for my m@d 5k1llz. Oh YEAH!

Ravelry ate me alive, and the world is unfair

2007-08-15T06:07:00.000-07:00

I fell down the rabbit hole of Ravelry. I am feeling the love, people; more important, I am so excited and jazzed about knitting again it's hilarious. Clearly, the DEA will be stepping in and scheduling Ravelry any day now. The clapotis which has been languishing? Suddenly done with the 10th repeat of the straightaway. The slogalong socks? Done. Already into the 3rd, 24 row repeat of a new pattern. Planning to knit myself in a reality based (aka, not the largest size possible) sweater. Banging out felted boxes.

Ravelry should so totally come with a black box warning.

As for the world being unfair, Matilda has been here since Sunday. Monday I had to fly out on business. As I was driving to the airport, I got a call from the LYS- their handmaiden shipment had come in and did I want to swing on by? I got back into town late yesterday, and Matilda leaves....today. So. Not. Fair.

La Bebita! Thank God You Are Here! You Must Leave Immediately!

2007-08-03T10:44:00.000-07:00

So I've had a somewhat unusual request from a friend. A knitting request, people. Sheesh.

She wants me to mask her baby: not because her baby is hideously deformed (she's adorable!) and she wants to save her from a life on the carnie circuit (save her? Sign me up!); not because she has dreams of raising a luchadora (more's the pity).

No, the baby, at the tender age of 6 months as already decided that she is NOT TIRED thank you very much, even when her floppy, still-mostly-cartilaginous little limbs are drooping with weariness. Fortunately, her growing brain is still squishy, meaning she is easily tricked. When she's rubbing her eyes and fussing up a storm, but refuses to conk out, she's sure to fall for the old "blanket over the head" routine. But, blah blah blah suffocation, choking, DCFS, blah blah blah.

The blanket, in short, leads to rest for la bebita and anxiety for the parents. Initially, my pal had thought of sewing a sleep mask, but even with a velcro closure that the baby could easily pull open or push off, anything circumferential, in the mind of the new parent, has other unpleasant potentials.

So she came up with the idea of a "sleep hat" (this is the rare 1 in 1 billion baby that already consents to have things strapped on to its head pretty regularly). The sleep hat will, ideally, be a kind of demi-inverse-balaclava (so almost entirely, but not quite unlike a balaclava . . .). It'll have a snug-fitting back and sort of a dual-swag front, arching up in the middle to leave the tiny wee nosie free, but covering the eyes.

Really, I screw things up so regularly that I could probably just try earnestly to knit a cotton balaclava and end up with something about right, but I'll try putting a bit more thought into it at the outset. Stay tuned as Matilda attempts to make up a pattern, in all probability, bringing the world to an end in the process!

Closer she came

2007-07-27T07:10:00.000-07:00

598! I need to start organizing and photographing!

I'm such a geek.

Patience

2007-07-17T16:20:00.001-07:00

A MERE 1565 people in line ahead of me on Ravelry.

Closer, and closer, and closer she came. Inch. By inch. By terrible short-row inch.

I cast thee aside (not to be confused with casting on)

2007-07-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

What am I knitting right now?
I'm working on the lovely, soothing, uneven rib scarf from some of Dee's chunky weight cashmere.

The project which shall not be named is still menacingly occupying the better part of my desk, but once I finish my first cup of coffee I am going upstairs and frogging that fucker.

A hateful thing of hatey hate

2007-07-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

I hate this project.
No, I mean, I really hate this project.
I hate how it looks.
I hate the crimp it's putting in my neck.
I hate all the knitting it's keeping me from doing.
I hate tinking.
I hate ripping back to the lifeline.
I hate picking up from there and not having enough stitches on the needle.
I hate the thought of giving over so much of my free time to something which is filling me with rage.

Haaaaaaaaaaate.

Crafty fucktard: lace edition part 1 (because I have a feeling there will be many many parts)

2007-07-02T07:49:00.000-07:00

If Gabby was Matilda's never-ending carnival of WHAT the SHIT is THIS, then Mystery Stole 3 will be my Waterloo. This will be the project by which all future projects are measured (I'd give that sweater in this season's Rowan Magazine a 1 MS3 for difficulty but 3 MS3s for sheer what the fuck value.). Unlike Gabby, which at least had the advantage of built in cameraderie and commiseration from myself and Angeltiger, MS3 has the built in cameraderie, commiseration, and sheer unending email onslaught of several thousand participants, all of whom save one (kiss kiss, Ana, and here's the gin and tonics) seem to:

1. Be doing this in a pale pretty sweet colorway
2. Knit at the speed of lightning
3. Channel the perky at any hour of the day or night.

Gentle readers, let us contrast this with the native knitting state of the wench:

1. Be doing this in the darkest colorway possible. In this case, Habu superfine merino in steel grey. Please note the hardcooooore use of the word 'steel' in the color, yo. This project also involves beading (upping the twee factor by approximately a factor of pi), and whereas others were debating the merits of swarvoski crystals or rose quartz, I opted for 2 different beads- one for edge beading, one for internal. The internal ones are Toho matte raku blue iris/grey triangles not cubes and the external ones are matte metallic dark blue hex nut shaped. That's right. I'm making a steel grey lace shall with grey and matte metallic hexagonal beads. It'll be goth industrial lace. Trent Reznor, Robert Smith, and Morrisey walk into a yarn shop for a stitch n bitch. The comedy just writes itself.
2. Has absolutely no familiarity with charts, and so is knitting at a snail's pace and cursing at a clip which would make Samuel L. Jackson reverentially wipe away a tear.
3. Never perky. Ever. I am the woman Matilda got an Oscar the Grouch magnet which states "Fuck y'all. Fuck alla y'all."

The first clue was released last Friday. I have already had to recast on six times, due to multiple fuckups, yarn breakage, a regrettable knitting-flying-right-off-the-needles incident, and finally a decision that the size needle I was working on- despite looking ok on the gauge swatch- really wasn't working with the pattern. Ana has mailed me a new lace needle in the right size.

Please note that the day after she mailed it, Royal Mail in the UK went on strike.

It's going to be a long, long summer.

The yarn sale debriefing.

2007-07-02T05:11:00.000-07:00

My initial reconnaissance of the yarn sale indicated that there was little in the way of wool, or indeed, Rowan, on offer at the sweet, sweet price of 50% off. A few odd balls of Big Wool, 4 ply soft, and some remarkably ugly fruit-punch-plus-glitter Kidsilk Night did it for the animal fibres, and there was plenty of Cotton Rope and that squiggly-looking cotton tape stuff, neither of which appealed to me, so I turned from the Rowan shelves with mild regret. Not a good Rowan day.

It was, however, a good day for fans of Debbie Bliss. It was such a good day that it made me wonder if JL is ditching Bliss, but many of her books were still at full price, and it looks as if they just moved the non-sale Bliss off the shop floor for the duration of the sale, so probably not. Huge amounts of Pure Silk, Stella, Pure Cotton, Cathay, Cotton Cashmere, Denim Aran, Alpaca Silk, Cashmerino Superchunky (aka the Pilly-est Fucking Yarn in the World) and a fair amount of Cotton DK were available, plus some smaller amounts of stuff I can't remember right now. Debbie Bliss has terrible, shitty, chintzy yardage, and this pisses me off so much that I have to REALLY want the yarn to buy it at full retail. At 50% off, however, I am filled with wild glee, and totally lose my self-control.

The (uh, first, because I'm already wanting to go back for more silk and some Pure Cotton) haul: 14 balls of Stella in a rather lovely emerald, with faint hints of blue, 9 skeins of Pure Silk (chocolate brown, rose, black), 4 balls of Cotton DK in various colours (more washcloths, which, with bars of fancy soap picked up for a song at TK Maxx will be my 'oh, right, I need to give you an Xmas pressie, don't I, temporary girlfriend of random cousin?' gifts this year), the Stella/Pure Cotton pattern book, and some different beads for my Mystery Stole, in case I don't like the beads I've already got.

The Stella will be a 3/4 sleeve cardi for my mum's Xmas present, and the Pure Silk is going straight into my hoard, except for the rose, which, added to my already huge stash of it, is going to be something for MEEEEEE. I'm actually tempted to go back and get even more rose silk and made a twinset, instead of just a cardi, as I had planned, since it's all the same dyelot. Looking through the Pure Cotton section of the book, I'm thinking I might just go ahead and get enough for one of the projects, since I'll be able to make something pretty nice for less than £20, and my mum, blast her, will not be convinced that there is such a thing as completely non-scratchy wool. So I kill my hands knitting a lot of cotton and silk blends for her, although I am getting a lot better with the non-bouncy fibres than I used to be. I think I also need to get a couple more balls of Stella, since she'll whine if I don't lengthen the cardi enough to cover her ass. (I routinely lengthen things by, like, four to six inches for her, figuring the extra yarn and knitting time is nowhere near as irritating as the thought of her not wearing it because "it doesn't cover my butt!")

In all, a pretty good sale, and I wish to god I could control myself from going back, but dudes: 50% off!

grrrrr

2007-06-30T09:58:00.000-07:00

So John Lewis has two big sales every year. One starts the day after Christmas, the other traditionally starts on July 1st. These sales are where I usually pick up the bulk of my year's sweater yarn purchases, because the Liverpool John Lewis really only sells Rowan (including RYC), Jaeger and Debbie Bliss (and crap like Wendy and Sirdar, but I'm not interested in those), and these are all nice, mainstream yarns ideal for sweater-making. My workhorse yarns, if you will. JL's a nice department store, not as posh as Selfridges or Harvey Nichols, but really, just a damn good place to buy good, solid stuff, and none of that bloody sniffy attitude. And this sale is fantastic -- 50% off selected yarns. The bargains, they are mighty.

So Sunday was looking like a good day. I was going to get up, make breakfast, then ditch the spouse and go see what's on sale this time around, doubtless buy a bunch of yarn, and then wander around central Liverpool for a little bit, maybe have some lunch, then go home and roll around in a soft cloud of extra-fine merino, alpaca and silk. Spend some quality time with my stash. Plan the year's sweaters.

I just checked John Lewis's webpage to see what time they open tomorrow, so I could, ahem, be there waiting, and those BASTARDS started their sale TODAY. I missed the first charge! I am not leading the vanguard, as usual, but stuck in the freaking reserve! I base my entire yarn-purchasing life around this sale, and I missed the first, sweet fruits to be had.

This is so not fair. I want a do-over.

This bodes ill.

2007-06-26T18:34:00.001-07:00

I have these 2 cones of Habu (ok, really, I have 4. 2 of them are for the mystery stole. Shut up! One of the other two has a stainless steel core covered in silk. YOU WOULD HAVE BOUGHT IT TOO.) Today I dutifully cast on for the gauge swatch.

And promptly fucked up.

Cast on again.

And promptly fucked up. Again. In exactly the same way. Because it turns out, mon petit dumbass that where a chart says 'yarnover' it means only 'do a yarnover' not 'do a yarnover AND knit a stitch'.

It's gonna be a looooong summer.

New depths of pitiful

2007-06-22T14:07:00.000-07:00

I brought along the dreaded second sock (WHY did I decide to do 2x2 ribbing ALL THE WAY DOWN THE LEG, WHY) on this last business trip.

And realized, as I hit the 6 inch mark, I had no idea how long I'd made the leg on the first sock, since I was damn skippy sure I'd looked at the '9 inches' in the pattern and gone 'no fucking way', after that much ribbing, and shortened it.

I did the only logical thing, on my heavily delayed flight back home. I pounded my complimentary wine, cranked up my iPod, and passed out instead of knitting too far and having to rip, or knitting too little and god help me having to rip the heel turn I'd have done too soon.

Oh, and did I mention?

2007-06-21T14:47:00.001-07:00

I'd already signed up for another knitalong, the Summer of Socks. So any doubts I had as to what my knitting plans are for the rest of the summer have been erased: I will be knitting socks when I am not knitting the Mystery Stole. Fortunately, the Summer of Socks is a pretty laid-back knitalong, with the rules being, basically, knit socks. No requirements as to pattern or how many, which is good, because while I can crank out a sock in pretty good time, I'm not so big on the fancy patterns. I like a good, plain sock, and I like to let the handpainted yarn do all the hard work. Socks are my mindless, portable knit, and while, one day, I may very well get around to making something like Hedera or Jaywalkers, I am probably just going to knit boring socks in pretty yarns for this knitalong.

Here's my first one:

Posh Yarn "Emily," colourway "Frog," (and my, how delightfully, violently green it is) done on five-inch 2.75 Brittanys. I like to use all five needles, because I like to evenly divide my stitches. I'm sort of cranky and neurotic like that. This is a pretty thick sock yarn, and I am using the recommended needle size, but if I had to start all over again, I think I'd take my tight knitting into account, and go up to 3.0 mm needles, and knock off a few stitches. I am not starting all over again, because I hate 2X2 ribbing with such an unholy passion that the idea of ripping out two whole inches of perfectly good ribbing isn't to be seriously considered.

There always comes a point, when I am grimly slogging my way through those two wretched inches of ribbing, that I tell myself a mere 1 1/2 inches would be enough, but I always stick it out and do the two full inches, because of that cranky and neurotic thing I mentioned above. I cannot bear to be less than generous with the ribbing, as much as I hate it. I will not knit a stingy sock! Which is also why I do the full goddamn minimum of five inches of stockinette once the wretched ribbing is done. Anything else would be cheating, not that anybody at all would care but me.

You know, I did start knitting again for stress relief. HA HA HA.

The fifth Beatle.

2007-06-18T18:33:00.001-07:00

Or fourth knit-n-gibber, whatever. I, too, have joined in the Mystery Stole 3 madness, and will be keeping you all apprised of the progression of my mental illness. I knit, I spin, and while I don't actually gib, I do hope the fact that I married into a half share of the world's largest collection of GURPS supplements counts for something.

And yes, I am incredibly dumb.

2007-06-18T18:24:00.000-07:00

So I'm in this arm brace, and I'm going to be for a good long while. At this point, I cannot knit on straight sticks, but I can on dpns and circs.

So what did I do?

Why, I signed up for the Mystery Stole 3 knit along! Who WOULDN'T tackle their first hella major lace project which also conveniently involves learning to read charts and beading yarn as you knit it, while festively sporting an arm brace which makes me look like Darth Vadar's prom date?

Please, if you have some land to sell in Florida (or, better yet, gorgeous hand dyed sea silk or silk or cashmere yarn), I am your rube.

Where have all the knitters gone?

2007-06-17T17:03:00.001-07:00

We're still here. Brace yourselves, all...2 of you who read this. This blog lives! LIIIIIIIIVES.

(and this is a test of the new blogger system. Watch this space, yo)

Smack-Gabby: Episode IV, A New Hope

2006-10-28T11:38:00.000-07:00

So guess what's blocking right the hell now in my upstairs bedroom? That would be Gabby. Who fucking wants to bow down before me, son of Jor-El?

Should any of our gentle readers want to knit Gabby (and I must advise against this crack-addled path), here are some useful statistics:

Number of times you can expect to knit the hem border: Approximately 4. And that's after you spend an inordinate amount of time for a southerly wind that will allow you to distinguish between a yarn forward, a yarn over, and a yarn around the needle. Here are some problems you can expect to encounter:
- You really, REALLY want to keep track of stitch and row counts. There's nothing more frustrating than having one of those freaking points oriented the wrong way, pointing, mocking, and shouting "J'accuse!" in odious French accents.
- Sewing it on is not at all straightforward, because the top edge of it is little popcorn bumps created by the YF-KTOG convergence (in this knitter's experience, this is more damaging than the K-T meteor impact, more and more crazy-making than a Queller impact).
- Because of the weirdness of sewing it on, trying to estimate when it's long enough, but not too long, is a real bitch. I wound up knitting a length that looked like it would fit when pinned out, but not binding off. I moved things to a stitch holder and started to sew on. When it inevitably came up short, I could then knit another section or two. Or 78. This was a lesson learned the hard way, as I ripped the whole thing apart 3 times before getting it right.
The cowl. It may actually be too soon to talk about the cowl, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway.
- I concur with the learned chicagowench that Hargreave intends for the cowl to be attached across the full length of the back of the sweater and maybe a few stitches across the shoulders and on to the front, leaving the stockinette at the neckline visible. Gee, it would have been nice to have that WRITTEN INTO THE PATTERN or even to have a picture that actually focused on elements of the finished sweater, rather than on the disaffected model contemplating her next collagen injections.
- As written, the cowl is 26 stitches tall and 168 rows long. Should you knit a cowl to those specs, plan a Cowls Across America party, because that's what your cowl will be good for. Seriously, chicagowench had already sewed the collar on for me, and when I finally got the hem sewed on, I tried on the sweater only to discover that I could have easily used the cowl as a jockstrap, had I a need for one.
- Don't get me wrong, this has immense comedy potential. We'd already decided that Gabby's new name was "Serpent Guard Sweater" in Kansas City, so I was able to amuse the spouse by assuming a Teal'c-like demeanor and intoning "The Enkaren Homeworld has no Stargate" and "Woman be silent!" I'm just saying that such uses are, perhaps, sweater adjacent.
- Ultimately, I went with a 21-stitch-tall cowl and I've no idea how many rows. As with the hem, when it looked like it was close to long enough, I moved the end stitches to a holder, knit on the first part, then knit sections on to the end until it had a reasonable amount of droop and minimal overlap with Serpent Guard armor specs.
The antics at both ends WILL cause you to buy a 14th ball of panic yarn.
You will then end up with about 1.8 balls of extraneous yarn after you reduce the cowl to reasonable dimensions and get the hem geometry right.
Please resist the urge to make a 100% merino noose with this extra yarn. You're in the home stretch.

For the moment, I'm not thinking about the fact that I should have knit this one size down. For the moment, I'm just occasionally sneaking upstairs and muttering "That's right, bitch, block. I'm BLOCKING you. I'm BENDING YOU TO MY WILL." But other than the fact that I'll never experience joy again, I don't think knitting Gabby had any effect on me at all.

Lace as a goddamn metaphor

2006-10-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

As Angeltiger and Matilda can attest, I am approximately as feminine as a raging case of prostate cancer (which is to say...not at all). For that and many other reasons, I shied away from lace knitting. Rather, I crossed my fingers, hissed, and backed away like Nosferatu confronted with a plate of Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic and a chaser of holy water.

But there seem to be certain things in knitting that all roads lead to, whether you like it or not. You can bang out only so many big chunky yarn sweaters in short order, or darling hats, or boring blankets, or stripey sweaters before you just get bored. Before the mental high from another hit of Rowan Big Wool begins to lose its edge. And eventually, despite swearing and snarling and vowing you'll never do anything on size oh my god I can't see the needle if I drop it needles, you find yourself fondling the handpainted sock yarn and going, "But I get a finished project out of a skein of this, it's so much more fiscally responsible than a whole sweater..." or the gossamer like softness of a mohair lace yarn and you think "how bad could it be?"

Lace knitting, for me at least, is not mindless. It is mindful, and scary. That yarn slips everywhere, and counting is integral and we all know math is haaard, and for something so airy good goddamn does it show every single fucking mistake. Lace is fraught with connotations- of femininity, of luxury, of uselessness and leisure and emblematic of a giant time suck for something which does not soothe a baby or warm a body.

But there is a point, when you relax, and it becomes something else entirely. It is beauty on a scale you do not get with a sweater. It is miniscule and yet breathtaking. It is like an ode to the incredible geometry of nature- I see in it waves, feathers, shells, snowflakes, geometric and perfect.

It is also a riotous pain in the ass still, and so help me GOD I am never knitting a lace scarf in kidsilk haze ever again.

Convergence: Matilda and Angeltiger on the Town

2006-09-29T20:46:00.000-07:00

So, my adorable, darling Angeltiger had occasion to visit the Windy City yesterday. Normally, this would produce in me only joy. In this instance, it produced mostly joy with just a soupcon of "Oh, crap. My house is a crack den." Before her arrival, I am happy to say, most of the crack den tendencies of the Painful Acres were of the past; furthermore, we were (I think) 100% stealth-cat-vomit free.

When she arrived, she was absolutely Teh H0tn355 +eleventy against male characters in her new pirate boots, her kickin' pencil skirt, and a side-button sweater that I have often coveted. I, in contrast, was in one of my shirts that blurs the line between adjunct slave and cafeteria lady.

Having balanced Angeltiger's fluids (urine out, Diet Coke ["It tastes like a mixture of Regular Coke and Tab. {pause} It is not heinous.] in), we needed A Plan. Delicious and spicy food was a must. A trip to Lush was requested on an "if possible" basis. Yarn whoring was inevitable.

Angeltiger had arrived at exactly that time of day when Gil the Wonderhound goes into a little routine I like to call Crack Pony. This involves indicating that he will explode all over me, my stash, and everything I hold dear if he does not get a walk RIGHT THE HELL NOW!

I changed into my fair isle sweater dress (complete with furry hood for those occasions when one needs to hide among the jawas of the tundra), tights, and boots that are cute, but no match for the piratey goodness. We put the harness on the dog (upside down, as it happened, but only for the first block or so. STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!) and we headed to my lucious, dog-friendly LYS, My Sisters Knits.

Gil, completely without regard for our hot, hot boots, zigzagged merrily in front of us and kept the pace of our walk brisk. At the shop, he, Goldie, and Cody did their time-honored rituals. Cody and Goldie then began showing off for him, mock-wrestling (Cody has a very convincing growl, but he ruined the effect by kissing his best girl). And, of course, Gil completely subjugated the owner and got a cookie. Other than occasionally letting me know that he was ready to gooooooo, he was a very good boy.

Oh, and I had to admit that I did not, in fact, make the fair isle dress. Hoist on my own fashionable petard.

The shop is pretty small (Carol would like to expand, but we are DEFINITELY NOT taking out a contract on the beauty shop owner next door, nossir, not us), but she's always made the most of the space. However, I was not prepared for the embarassment of riches yesterday. She's reorganized and made even more space. For example this pretty space, which used to house needles now has floor-to-ceiling cubbies full of yarn. Lots more stock, beautiful color options, all Noro 50% off. SQUEEE!

I picked up some Kochoran in the 41 colorway. Angeltiger fawned appropriately over my yarn choice and asked what I had planned for it. When I named the hourglass from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts. She blinked twice said, "I WANT THAT, but I keep forgetting about it!" and dove headfirst back into the Noro.

She emerged with enough for a totally hot ballet wrap (but we then forgot to buy the magazine with the pattern in it DOH!) and a bit short on another colorway for her own superhot hourglass. Carol offered to check at home to see if she had two more skeins in the second colorway. No joy as of last night, but she's also going to check in the box she sent to Washington State for an impending Yarn Thing. If it's not there, we're totally NOT going after the woman who'd walked out of the store earlier with three skeins of it. Nossir, not us.

Smackhead Smackdown: Gabby of Rowan, Smackier Picture

2006-09-29T18:45:00.000-07:00

I don't really believe in writing hate mail. I'd like to feel that I've grown enough as a person that my days of gathering all objects associated with one who has betrayed me, setting fire to them, salting the ashes, driving a stake through each individual piece, and burying them at a crossroads are behind me. But let me tell you something: Kim Hargreave's patterns would have Penelope on the lookout for some accelerant and unconsecrated ground.

Knitting her Gabby from Rowan: Smackier Picture is rather like a high school relationship. There's the infatuation phase: You're knitting pretty, pretty stockinette to beat the band and you want nothing more than to feel the weight of your Cheeky, pullulating, 100% merino boyfriend in your lap 24/7. It's all you can do to keep from sleeping with it under your pillow. Under persistent questioning, you might be forced to admit that you lick him from time to time, even though this is a very, very bad idea with natural animal fibers.

But every couple has to have its first fight. This will usually occur when it's about time to start shaping the armholes on the back. "Complete to match first side, reversing shapings." Well what the hell does he mean by that? How could he strand me here on the wrong side of cast off stitches this way? Why does he think that I am arranged in some kind of nonstandard shoulder, shoulder, THEN NECK anatomical order? And then on the front, you can either choose to have a different number of rows on each side OR you can end on a wrong side. Is this a test? IS HE GETTING BORED WITH ME?

But you get through it. Your 100% merino boyfriend is no less soft and he's given you so much in such a short period of time. You think back to your old and busted wool and mohair boyfriend and you know that HE'D never have given you a whole front and back so soon.

The sleeves are a second honeymoon. You're older and wiser and your love is richer for it. Yes, you resent the fact that you're increasing as you knit upward toward the shoulder. But you don't complain. You don't point out that one should always decrease while knitting down toward the wrist as the elder gods intended. Instead you smile a secret, smug, self-satisfied smile and think of yourself as a giver.

The collar is the Cape Horn of the relationship: You will either weather it or wreck on it. My 100% merino boyfriend and I had a little from column A, a little from column B. Accusations are traded: Would it really have KILLED him to provide a freaking picture of the fucking 168-row, 800-lb swag from hell?

It's time for third-party involvement. No, not a threesome, but I suppose that might make for some highly reconciliatory make-up sex. A mediator. A counselor. And if you are lucky enough to have chicagowench play that role for you, you might just make it.

She tries to break the news about the collar gently, but there's bound to be rage. Does he SERIOUSLY mean to tell you that the thing is only to be attached in the back and left hanging free in the front to expose the stockinette AND the shaped neck, which features a freaking HOLE where one side's shaping leaves off and the other's picks up? No, you didn't fucking realize that the geometry wouldn't work if the thing was attached all the way around, because there is NO FUCKING PICTURE and not a single mention of any such thing. And little does he know the reckoning he is bringing down upon himself when he points out that you knew about the set-in sleeves before you set needle to skein. Don't lecture ME, 100% merino boyfriend, because I look like a serpent guard and I carry the wrath of the Jaffa. In my culture, I would be well within my rights to dismember you, indeed. (Still, serpent guard or not, it's kinda hot, even without side seams sewed. So, yah, the 100% merino sex is still good.)

If you're lucky, you emerge from this process with 98% of a sweater and a lot of wisdom. (And if you're SUPREMELY lucky, you get to observe 100% of the odious sewing, rather than living it.)

And then there's that last, baffling 2%. Not even chicagowench can lead you through the yarn fowards (which might or might not just be a goddamned yarn over). Not even she can tell you what the hell it looks like beyond: "Um, I guess it makes kind of a jagged line?" Not even she can save you from dorking on a row and ending up with one of the goddamned triangles pointing up. And she's probably not going to fly in to sew that new, improved, 100%-triangles-pointing-down motherfucker.

I'm goin' in.

Send lawyers, guns, and money.

7 deadly sins

2006-09-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

Is it lust or greed that I just cruised past the lexie barnes outlet store and snapped up a heavily discounted Flo in 'little miss perfect'.

Clapotis is at 7 repeats in to the straight section. And now dutifully set it aside to work on hats in honor of a friend's recently departed mum.

Knitting to the Tiger Beat

2006-09-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

So. I Volunteered at a teen open mic night last week. Yes, it's true. Rowan: Smackier Picture's Gabby has apparently driven me 'round the bend.

Before I realized that I'd committed to a 5-hour shift ending at 10:30 PM, I'd rather planned on taking the train up to the Armitage location, then enticing my spouse to come fetch me so we could go out to dinner or something. Of course, this is all a ruse of Bond-Villain-Level Complexity to facilitate knitting (train = quality knitting time with hundreds of your favorite crazy people).

But I ended up driving, so no strangely peaceful knitting time on the train, alas. The first part of my evening was spent in the concert hall where I mostly watched the performers, kept hooligans from exiting through the main door, and lusted after various shoes. Midway through the evening, though, we swapped with the folks outside the doors. This meant less to do, more light, and a chair. Ideal circumstances for knitting.

So I grabbed my dual counters, the collar, and my spare skein and got to work. Can I just tell you that every person, male or female, knitter or novice, who sees the Gabby collar says, "That's . . . a collar? Is it for . . . a giant sweater?" I got some idle curiosity from my covolunteers, and some strange looks and giggles from the under-18 set. But nothing builds self esteem like Toaster, stand-up comic and emcee, stopping dead in front of your chair, pointing to the knitting and LAUGHING.

Do I know how to build street cred or what?

DONE DONE DONE

2006-09-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

Blocked, finished, and handed off on Saturday.

The freakin Clapotis is a joy to knit, after that. Le omg.

Rage

2006-09-04T13:02:00.000-07:00

My hate for this pattern knows no bounds.
I have 3 inches left to go which will likely take the better part of 2 days, minimum, it's that obnoxious.

And I am sick.
And just got my period.

And want to do anything- ANYTHING- but work on this goddamn thing.

Unfortunately, I must finish it, as it's on deadline for a photoshoot.

2006-08-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

Reader, I have gibbed. If Guitar Hero can be considered gibbing. For some inexplicable reason, I'm just not into console games. If it has a joystick or a controller, it's not my thing. I even resisted guitar hero for weeks.

No longer. Granted, I'm not as badass as Autercakes or the Lad, but I can now not only happily head bob along, knitting away as they rule the school, but I will also avail them of the guitar so they may refuel (read: drink, as we've noted a distinct improvement in scores the drunker we are) and I rip through 'Hey You' en route to a new high score.

I'll point out this means there are now two things I do that I said I would be too clummish for: gaming, and knitting.

Gibbers for Equality!

2006-08-25T14:02:00.000-07:00

So, gibbing tends to be somewhat underrepresented on this August Forum. (Angeltiger, a little bird told me that you've been facing ZZTop in honorable combat until the wee hours of the morning . . .).

But I see a new dawn for gibbing and it is Live-Action Gibbing.

My Sisters Let Us Let Uwe Boll Be Our Guide!

Checklist

2006-08-23T06:43:00.000-07:00

Bunch of Nashua handknits 'Cilantro' (cotton/poly) in eye searing red for skirt? Check.
Instructions from C? Check.
Size 9, 24 inch circ needle on which to cast on one hundred fucking thirty six some odd stitches? Why no, because she and I had discussed needing long straights for this! Fucking fucker FUCK FUCK.

Hi, I'll just be calling C.

In the meantime, I cast on the Clapotis on size 10s. After working up the color on the 'set pattern' first chunk, I looked at it and thought, "This is a meeeeee colorway, not a colorway for K." I was thus presented with a challenge: do I frog, go buy yarn in a very K colorway, and cast on for her? Or do I....slant my gaze over at the Be Sweet Magic Ball I picked up 2 skeins of for a song (given they normally retail for $37.50, getting two for that was ridiculous) in a co-op. One skein and a pair of size 13 needles equals a fabulous, funky scarf which one can feel all smug bleeding heart liberal about. It is shameful how easy it is to make something gorgeous from that yarn, making it look like one has slaved all fall on a Christmas present for someone when, in reality, you've been greedily making a clapotis for yourself. I began to slide the clap off of the needles.

The little Matilda-devil popped up on my shoulder and hissed something about my shameful, shameful lack of self knitting this year. While I have acquired yarn for projects for ME ME ME, stuff for other people has taken priority (even during the Knitting Olympics when Autercakes lectured me about knitting for me and ripped me a new one when I thought about using the time for a sweater for someone else. I banged out 2 sweaters for meeee, but I continued to knit for other people, cracking out some baby hats). The little Matilda devil began to remind me of all the luscious, wonderful things she's knit for herself, while I have a rollicking RSI and nothing to show for it but thank you notes and one hat which my child has promptly attempted to claim for his own (I don't think so, pal, but I will make you your own).

Tonight, I'm winding one of the Magic Balls.

Irony, you whore

2006-08-21T22:02:00.000-07:00

So, once upon a time, the manager at the LYS put out a call for pattern testers for a book of hers. Sure, I emailed her, signing up. It's a book of objects small-by-necessity, thus, it shouldn't take long to knit these things up, right?

Wrooooong.

The pattern I tested had been edited into a shell of its former trig and sensible self. C. had written a brilliant, straightforward pattern, which the editors had then fubared into an unholy incomprehenislbe nightmare. So I knit it once, it came out like ass, I had to knit it again, in this damn variegated yarn so I had to start pulling yarn from elsewhere in the skein so it would match up, all the while cursing and swearing because i-fuckin-rony, it was for a purse. Me. Knitting a purse. As anyone who knows me can tell you, the concept of wench ever willfully acquiring- much less making with her own two hands- a purse is a sign of the apocalypse. (Which is not to say I will not someday make, say, the farmer's market bag, or zeeby's bag. These are bags, useful for toting larger objects. They are not purses. Still, they apparently tread too close to the purse line, as I have yet to make something as damn easy as a bag)

Today I was in the midst of work hell, pleasantly letting myself think about casting on a gauge swatch for the clapotis (survey says: size 8s for the 100purewool hand dyed merino turns a gorgeous yarn into tight, inflexible cardboard. I'm levelling up to 10s for this), when the phone rang. C breathlessly explained new editor, new publisher, they've asked her to add in a few more garmenty patterns, and she needs people to knit these things up fast and she thought of me and she'll swap me yarn and pretty please and she's so sorry she accidentally called my husband's cell first and he said he could pick up the yarn and pattern at the store tomorrow for me if I said yes.

Sure. I said, thinking of the pleasantness of banging out a wee sweater, knowing it'd likely be donated to the women and children's shelter the store supports when all was said and done. Granted, it means I shouldn't cast on the Clapotis till next week. How big are we talking, what are the skills involved, when do you need it by. Sept 4, 700 yards of worsted weight, knitting in the round, yarnovers. And then, the words that put a chill into my heart.

Oh you'll love it, she said. It's a straightforward flippy little....skirt.

I'm going in!

2006-08-14T19:26:00.000-07:00

I am finally making a clapotis. For one of my favorite people at work, for Christmas. I need to buy the yarn (artyarns supermerino 8), and I don't think I'm even going to get this sucker on the needles before October. But after months of looking at the pattern and whining, I'm finally just taking the damn plunge.

And then I will, in all likelihood, fall in love with it and order yarn for myself and crank it out again, because that's the kind of dweeb I am.

First, however, I must finish this goddamn albatross of a baby blanket, and Sean has informed me in no uncertain terms I must make him a hat just like mine (the two-tassel cable hat from Hip Knits, in Rowan Big Wool periwinkle. Yes, I made myself a stash reduction hat, and now he wants one too) and finish his mittens.

Mittens?
Oh that's a story. For later.

2006-08-04T12:04:00.000-07:00

I skipped the 25% off Christmas in July sale at the Studio, under the logic of my PMS fueled rage meant subjecting myself to hordes of avid knitters all trying to get at the goddamn Noro and cashmere blends would not be especially wise if I wished to avoid getting to spend significant time in lockup in County.

So instead, I hit the web for good deals. Like 40% off Jade Sapphire Keja 100% pure Mongolian cashmere, in lilac. And 40% off Blue Sky bulky in fawn, and 100% alpaca sportweight in a variety of colors. For socks.

YES, ANA, DID YOU HEAR ME? I BOUGHT SOCK YARN.
Pure alpaca and cashmere for socks.
I apparently felt I needed to treat myself.

Zeus Knits, and Zeus Will Fuck Your Shit Up

2006-07-28T13:34:00.000-07:00

Consider the scene yesterday: Matilda has some serious time to kill before her Guitar 4 class at that den of hippy iniquity, the Old Town School of Folk Music, because her Sea Shanties class is not meeting this week. After a fruitless search for staitonery that would allow her to answer her young nerdy nephew's letter, Matilda decides to head for The Grind Cafe, which has free wireless and yummy food.

The Grind also boasts outdoor tables and on a day like yesterday, Matilda was confident that very few people indeed would be availing themselves of them (a) because it was really fucking hot and (b) because the evil sun was not beating down every nanosecond of the day. Chicagoans fear rain, but not Matilda. And given that Matilda was feeling generally grumpy and unhappy with the world, an isolated table outside seemed much preferrable to bumping elbows with everyone inside.

But just in case not everyone is properly reading Matilda's "Leave me the FUCK alone" body language, she deploys some redundant security measures: Sunglasses on, despite overcast day? Check. Headphones plugged into laptop and ears? Check. Intimidating-looking book propped up on bookstand? Check.

So where did Matilda go wrong? What did Matilda do to deserve the possibly demented old man on a bike deciding to interview me about the grind? Knitting. That's where Matilda went wrong. When a certain kind of person see knitting, s/he sees softness. S/he see woolyness. S/he sees the knitter frisking about like a little space lamb. S/he fail to see sharp pointy death in its various dark materials heading straight for his/ehr damnably unobservant eyes.

But Matilda digresses. Matilda was telling you about the gathering fury as she tried to shake the interloper, despite the fact that SHE was physically unable to vacate until her goddamned grilled cheese arrived. So Matilda pretended to focus ever more intently on her knitting in the vain hopes that this guy would get the message. And yet, Matilda's attention was sorely divided between knitting lace and mentally examining all the places in which she could ditch the body if it came to that. And so Matilda fucked up the entire row by forgetting the second bloody-fucking yarnover. AGGGH! Matilda SMASH.

Ultimately, the guy left (probably because Matilda stopped responding at all), and Matilda set to backtracking to salvage the row. But such rage has its climatological consequences, it seems, because the temperature suddenly dropped at least 15 degrees and things started looking distinctly Ark-of-the-Covenant-y overhead. Shit, shit, shit shit. If Matilda were to be interruped in mid--row fix, she felt certain that she'd wind up having to pull out a number of rows. But the desire NOT to have the laptop as well as the cotton-silk yarn smoted was as strong as the desire to never have to undo another fucking row of that lace pattern ever fucking again.

So Matilda knit like the hounds of hell were snapping at her stitchmarkers. She finished the row and shoved the shawl tadpole into the safe confines of her shit hot Lexie Barnes Mimic Bag, shoved everything else into her backpack, and strode purposefully libraryward as the entire employee population of Lincoln Avenue emerged from their places of business to look at something above and behind Matilda.

Matilda still has no clue what that was about, but if she had looked back and turned into a pillar of salt, her last earthly thought would have been "It fucking figures." And, of course, it never did rain. Not a drop.

Matilda's Knitting CAN stop the Weather Machine!

2006-07-22T20:07:00.000-07:00

WTF?! This turning the heel bullshit? IS EASY.

Cashmere or cash blend sockyarn, here I fucking come.

2006-07-12T19:57:00.000-07:00

I am on a yarn diet, people. No yarn purchases till September.

I totally see some sock yarn action happening then though. You had all better hold my hand as I hyperventillate my way through the first sock.

2006-07-11T20:03:00.000-07:00

'Turning the heel' and slipping stitches terrifies me, yet the thought of handpainted cashmere sock yarn allures me.

2006-07-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

Oh Rowan, you whore, you whore for taunting Matilda so. Matilda, bring the parts with to Kansas, and I will sew the fucker for you in trade for alcohol, the next time you're in town. Seriously.

Tell me you didn't size Gabby up like Skully. TELL ME. Says the woman who also sized up in Rowan, and is now contemplating how to magically shrink a Jude a size, short of ripping the seams, steeking, and resewing. At least I got my second Jude and the Beth right.

My knitting life atm:

One log cabin baby blanket. For the office manager at the, uh, office. When I handed over the last stinking albatross, aka Big Bad Baby Blanket number 5? 6? I have buried that knowledge deep so as to avert the need for therapy, I announced I was not knitting another baby blankie for months. That night I got heavily guilt tripped at dinner about how baby blankets are much more classic and enduring than a bunch of hats and sweaters, and and and.

Nnnnngh.
I am doing this in the 50% alpaca 50% wool 'Shenandoah' from Valley yarns, aka WEBS. I am wondering why I picked a pattern than involves picking up a bajillion fucking stitches.
I am wondering if I can say, next time, I have taken a blood vow to never knit another baby blanket again, except for a select limited group of people (all of whom are unlikely to spawn). As I type this I have just remembered other friends of ours are pregnant. FUCKING FUCKER FUCK FUCK FUCK.
Why yes, I am raising a sweet child and talk like that.

Garter cuff gloves from Weekend Knitting, in blue sky's 100% alpaca, various cream and beige shades. Yes yes, this is one step away from socks. Shut up.

Color block sweater from miss Bea's Playground, the back's done, now for front and sleeves. Will be resumed once blanket is done.

Matilda, if I start spinning and dying, how much would you mock me if I gave you handspun, hand dyed yarn? (why yes, what is your price?)

Rowan: Smackier Picture

2006-07-09T00:08:00.000-07:00

So continuing in the "Knitting and Low Self-Esteem" series, I'm now done with both the front and back of Gabby from Rowan Bigger Picture (because nothing says "I feel sexy" like knitting---in the middle of July, no less---an unshaped sweater that takes its cowl neck seriously).

The neck- and shoulder-shaping directions were a little special, and I actually awoke in a cold sweat the other night, positively CERTAIN that I'd read part of them wrong and decreased at both ends of rows when I was only supposed to decrease at the end of the row. But I got through it, and it's all nice and soft and I've only been working on it 10 days and hey! 75% of a pretty sweater, right? Rowan Big Wool might just be my new 100% merino boyfriend.

I'm volunteering tomorrow at the Old Town School of Folk Music's Folk and Roots Festival. I may be handstamping madly all day, or I may have lots of knitting friendly downtime. Certainly, I'll have a good chunk of public transit time for knitting, though, and I thought how ideal it was that I should have come to the very portable sleeve portion of the exercise. So I read through the sleeve directions a few times to banish the crafty fucktard.

I kind of think that knitting sleeves separately is cruel and unusual punishment, though, so I was half toying with the idea of joining a shoulder seam and knitting them right on, upside down (my fearless working without a net is either charming in its wide-eyed innocence or tragically pathetic in its delusional nature---I can never decide which), but blergh, I don't want to drag the front, back, and shiny new sleeve all over Chicago with me. Also, I don't want to try any math and reverse patterning highwire acts in a situation where I'm likely to get distracted and heyanywaylookatthecollardirect . . . WHAT. THE. WOOLY. HELL? They've got me knitting the goddamned COLLAR separately and then sewing it on? I bloody well ask you, is this knitting or sewing?

I think I'm breaking up with my new 100% merino boyfriend.

TMI Gibbing Update

2006-07-01T15:51:00.000-07:00

I suppose I should have worked this into my last self-esteem post. So sue me.

Um, my ass hurts. Kind of a lot. And it's rather baffling, because I have achieved loyalty to my work-out schedule that I previously believed to be impossible. At least 5 days per week, I take the hound out for a walk lasting somewhere between 35 and 50 minutes, and at night I work out on the elliptical machine for at least 45 minutes.

The elliptical workouts have been going on with religious regularity for a year, so that's unlikely to be the source of my ass pain. The dog walking is more recent, because the dog is recent. (And because I'm not yet insane enough to walk a fake dog harness. Give it time.) So, dog-related ass pain is not at the top of the list, either.

That leaves . . . Guitar Hero. We have a mammoth hi-def television (thank you, tail end of the dot.com boom) that sits on the floor. It's a touch too low for comfort viewing, but we haven't found anything that sits low enough and will bear its weight. Not a major problem for sitting on the couch. For the purposes of rocking out, though, it means that I spend most of my time in the Kimase stance (so called, because it looks like you're sitting on a horse---feet spread wide, a slight bend to the knee) when I'm playing. Bingo. Ass pain. (I've been playing a lot recently, and I just unlocked THE RIPPER, who has a guitar scythe. Crazy awesome, man.)

Now I just need to figure out how to turn knitting into an upper-body workout and I'll RULE THE WORLD!

Felting Dr. Freud

2006-07-01T00:18:00.000-07:00

I don't have what you'd call a robust sense of self-esteem when it comes to my appearance. I'm not, like, all emo about it or anything. I leave the house, rarely listen to The Smiths, and I couldn't recite more than 4 or 5 lines of Emily Dickinson by heart. I just think of myself as kind of . . . lumpen.

And that's ok, too. We can't all have hot bods, regardless of the fat netting of lies that the good folks at Xenical would like you to eat. And all things considered, it's better to err on the side of lumpen than to head out in your ultra low-rise jeans and belly top singing "Have Beer Gut, Will Travel." Trust me, I live in the midwest.

So y'all don't need to pass the hat for my therapy. Or do you? Dun dun DUUUUUUUNNN. Here's the complicating factor: In addition to a body image of already suspect accuracy, I've also lost a bunch of weight recently. But the self-esteem meter seems to be stuck on lumpen, because here are a few things that I've knit for myself:

Skully from Stitch N Bitch in size XL, that's a 54-inch bust. Never, in my whole born life, have I had a 54-inch bust. But that's ok, right? After all, it's an oversized sweater. It just takes about 75 years (and 3 more skeins than the instructions call for) to knit, that's all.
Tank Girl, also from Stitch N Bitch in size large, which should be a reasonable 39-inch bust. Uh, apparently yarn subsitution didn't go right, because that baby could easily accommodate me AND a baby.
But the pisser. OH THE PISSER. is Tempting from Knitty, which I've just finished. And, apparently, though I CLEARLY remember casting on for the size large (40-inch bust . . . I should've gone a size down) . . . uh, I'm a za'tarc or something, because I seem to have cast on for the XL and the majestic 44-inch bust.

So, yeah, it's not about my quality of life. It's not about enhancing my relationships by being able to love myself. It's about the goddamned knitting.

Spinning wheel.

2006-06-30T13:12:00.000-07:00

I've got yarn on the swift for the next baby blanket- yes, I was talked into it, but I'm going a log cabin instead of a big bad, lest I go barking mad.

Winding yarn is soothing, relaxing, contemplative if I just let my mind go. The gentle whoosh of the swift as it spins, the way the pale wood catches the light. It makes me wonder if spinning yarn would be as relaxing.

And then I tell myself to cut that line of thinking RIGHT the fuck out.

Lordabove

2006-06-14T19:23:00.000-07:00

I am never doing another big bad baby blanket again. The Albatross is done.
So what do I do?
Immediately cast on a new sweater for little man.

I. Need. Help.

Knittus interruptus

2006-06-09T13:10:00.000-07:00

First, I have to recount a slightly surreal experience I had yesterday. The spouse and I signed up for a 4-part series on the history of the Blues at a suburban community college. Sounds good, right? Somehow, we didn't get the memo that this series is for the Grandpa Simpson set (and I don't mean those, like yours truly, who have a gift for the rampling story). So basically we walked into a room full of people whose cumulative age is greater than that of our sun, we sat down, and I continued winding my skein of Cascade 220. If that isn't just a picture that epitomizes the hipster whippersnapper reclamation of knitting, I don't know what is.

However, though I may have begun the day in Badass Bitch with Needles Territory, I wound up mired in the Bad Planner Impasse of Sadness. See, I'm still working on Tempting, and the body tube reached its maximum tubular height just after I joined in the "Hey, I'm KNITTING here" skein.

So what are the next two steps, I ask myself as I prepare for what is likely to be a long drive home, replete with knitting time? (Uh, the spouse was driving, not to worry about me commiting seppuku via ill-advised multitasking.) I was even able to answer that question as I had the laptop with me and Castle Methuselah actually had an open wireless connection. However, in my life, two things in a row going right equals foreshadowing.

The next body step? Move the next 18 stitches on to waste yarn (no waste yarn, no needle with which to accomplish this), k2p2 rib over the next 82 stitches (wtf? Am I swinging the yarn over past the 18 stitches I've just skipped? KAAAAAHHHHN!), move 18 stitches on to waste yarn (see above re: tragic lack of boy scout genes), k2p2 rib to the end of the round (again with the KAAAAAAAAHNNN! and the swinging and the wtf?).

Well, screw you, tubular body, I've got two sleeves to knit and I actually have my set of appropriate DPNs in my bag. So nee-fucking-ner. What's that you say, Mistress Pattern? Under pain of death do not cut the yarn from the body (which may or may not be swung across two sets of 18 stitches?). But Mistress! Although I have a whole nother skein of 220, it's on my end table at home. This round to you, pattern. I remain knitless in Chicago.

Anyone Know Any Good Panty Patterns?

2006-05-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

So in my last, I jokingly said that my guitar-stringing post would be transformed into glorious blog relevance, if only chicagowench or angeltiger happened to have Guitar Hero for their PS2s. Add to that my spouse's somewhwat cracked idea of a host gift, and you've got late-night gibbing.

Yes, I assure you that Casa 'Wench has gibs of many things all over her living room floor: dignity, panties, prentensions to musical ability (and I didn't even know I had those), etc. On Sunday night, fuelled by the power of Agua Loca, angeltiger and I stayed up with 'wench's spouse, my spouse, and a small but determined group of BBQ lingerers, trying to deflect bullets of shame with the power of our rocking. I'm torn between relief and regret that angeltiger hadn't turned on the flash when taking the picture of me with a pull-up (in lieu of the panties I so richly deserved) on my head.

On Monday, we snuck in a bit more while the kid slept. Chicagowench really helped me reduce Black Sabbath's Iron Man to its component atoms by providing a hot lesbian naked shoulderblade rub at a critical moment.

Apropos of nothing, did you know that there are, apparently, no 24-hour Best Buys in Chicago?

Vive la proletariat

2006-05-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

This is not really about knitting. It's also not particularly about gibbing. (However, if one or both people I know, love, and will be visiting over the long weekend bought Guitar Hero for his/her PlayStation2, this could be veritably gibbing adjacent.) It's about things that I do myself even though I could pay someone else to do them: Specifically, restringing my guitar.

For the low, low price of, I think $7 (including strings) and about 10 minutes of my time, I could take my guitar to the nice folks at Different Strummer and hum a happy little tune while someone competent put on shiny new strings that stay in tune and don't sound like old steel pennies on silver dental fillings. I could, I daresay, even spend that 10 minutes or so knitting. But I don't. The only time I've ever paid to have someone put a string on my guitar was when my high E-string tried to kill me right before class.

Now, the thing is, I HATE restringing my guitar. I hate it because my insane tabby cat things that string changing is the BEST GAME EVAR and can I just wait until she takes a hit of crack so she can fully enjoy the experience. I hate it because I always manage to stab myself in an important fingertip with one of the high strings. (It's usually the E. E hates me and my capo's laughing at me.) I hate it because the strings never wind up (heh, an impromptu pun!) curled all neat and tight and sexy around the tuning pegs the way they're supposed to. I hate it because I'm BAD at it and it takes me a ridiculous amount of time.

I hate to do it, and yet I have just done it. It took me almost 40 minutes and my right index finger has stopped bleeding and is now turning purple around a most impressive puncture wound. It was probably my most successful attempt to date. Plus I put on my bitchin' new Bad Batz Maru strap. Why do I have a Bad Batz Maru strap, you might ask, given that I am not a 11-year-old girl? I have a Bad Batz Maru strap because I did NOT buy a Bad Batz Maru bass in an effort to keep the instruments at which I suck at 2.

But I digress. I hate changing my strings and I have an affordable, easy out. But I do it myself under the principle that if I CAN do it, I SHOULD do it. That way, in the words of Ms. Willow Rosenberg, lies churning one's own butter and making sweaters out of sheep. So this does actually have something to do with knitting, because don't look now, but I think that's a sheep behind me.

I have become ridiculously snooty about knit clothing since I started knitting. Yes, I am aware of the irony in that fact, given that I am the primary purveyor of fine Crafty Fucktard entries around here. I'm a horrible snob about material, but that's merely an elaboration of a tendency I've always had. But looking at a piece, being able to take it apart into its component techniques, and thinking "I could make that . . . "? That's new. New and ever-so-slightly crazy. Ok, so not so slightly. Shut up.

This isn't some kind of personal economic revolution. I recently paid (or, rather, my spouse paid) to have my house cleaned. It's lucky I wasn't here, otherwise I think I would have wept and cleaned the feet of the housecleaners with my tears and hair. I am oh-so-very-willing to have someone else grow, raise, and/or slaughter my food (though I have bourgeoise guilt about this). I don't feel the need to start a cotton field so that I can raise denim from seeds. And despite the sheep eye I'm getting, I can't see myself ever wanting to spin or dye my own yarn.

Knitting and stringing: It's a weird line in the sand, but 'tis mine own.

In completely unrelated news, Frankenblankie is blocked and ready to be shipped to my brand new niece, who was born yesterday.

Sisyphus Knits

2006-05-07T16:29:00.000-07:00

I appear to be weaving my way in and out of Greek tragedies. Good thing I have ample yarn for navigating the labyrinth (just to slather on another layer of metaphor).

We are in California this week, and I brought two projects: Frankeblanket and Tempting, which I started a while ago. I started in on the blanket with the new green and it became clear it just was not going to work. The moss was, as advertised, muddy and mossy looking, not at all the ocean-spray green-blue of the classic elite.

Ironically, back when I first hit Arcadia, hoping for a color match, I found some Jo Sharp silk road aran tweed in "Willow" that was a pretty darn spiffy color match, but I thought it was too rough and tweedy. Having since incorporated the Classic Elite "Cinnamon," though, which is also coarser and tweedier than the cotton/silk Attitude, I thought that if I again mixed and matched the new green with old brown it might work.

Accordingly I was headed Arcadiaward on Wednesday. Unfortunately, someone decided throw a Stupid Person Apocalypse on Ashland and I didn't get the memo (sadly, this is not an Apocalypse where all the stupid people are raptured the fuck away, this is an SPA where stupid people, alerted to my plans by Stupid Person Central hop into their motorized vehicles and form a Matilda Blockade). Seriously, traffic on Ashland was backed up for over 4 miles because one single fucking stoplight had been temporarily converted to a 4-way stop.

I finally bailed from Ashland and thought I'd try The Knitting Workshop first. I don't know who wrote that review of the store, but apparently they got the complimentary bong hit and oral sex at the door. I did not. The place is a complete wreck. All the balls of Debbie Bliss (yes, at the time, I was having a brane fart and thinking that I was looking for DB yarn) are shoved into a cubicle without regard for weight, material, or color. If one is so unwise as to take one out, roughly 12,000 center-pull balls leap to their deaths. There are colors wedged behind others that one would miss if one weren't so bold as to hunt through the cubes. It's actually a good deal that I didn't know I was looking for Jo Sharp at the time, because one glance toward their JS supply revealed that most of the center pull balls in there were partly unwound and shoved back into a kind of rat's nest within the cubes.

As for help, it's pretty nonexistent. There were two women working there. One grudgingly indicated that I could ask her for help if I needed it (with strong undertones that she hoped I wouldn't). The other was sitting at the big table in the window and seemed genuinely irritated that I might want to examine some of the yarn on the 4 shelves that she was blocking. Seriously, fuck that place. Fuck Lincoln Park in general (except for the zoo). Never again.

With difficulty, I made it up to Arcadia (traffic was so bad I was seriously considering bailing on my car and taking the El up, but Arcadia's out of the way for that). And, of course, the yarn was nowhere to be seen. I was seriously on the verge of either Hulking out or crying like a motherfucking girly woman when I suddenly spied a 40% off bin with two, count 'em, TWO center-pull balls of exactly the yarn I wanted. So not only did I have a more workable color match, I didn't have to shell out an organ to pay for it. WOOT!

Of course, it took me three rows of the wrong green to decide that it was completely hopeless, so I now needed to unknit those three rows, wind up the wrong green and the right brown, and start incorporating the Jo Sharp. WAAAAH. Nonetheless, I went to my happy place (aka Welles Park in Lincoln Square---a shady little spot close enough to the Sulzer Regional Library that I can sponge the Wifi) and started unknitting. Sweet fancy jeebus it did not go well. But I finally got the wrong green free and thought I was golden.

Yeah, not so much. Fast forward to Friday, a very full Southwest flight to LAX. Something is just WRONG and I can't quite put my finger on it. It's like a large number of stitches just got all twisted up and are pulling unpleasantly. I started dropping each stitch in sequence and making sure that all was on the up and up. Two and a half hours later, I find myself with a completely fucked up section 30 stitches wide and 12 rows tall. Somehow it was like certain rows had gotten transposed, so if I traced the yarn from the left side of the piece to the right side, many of the rows crossed over one another. This is not a time for atheism. This is a time for recognizing that the Universe is run by malevolent fucking deities.

But I try to take a deep breath and I think "I can fix this." Slowly, carefully, patiently, unable to really stretch the work out, thanks to the skinny bitch in gauchos (see above re: malevolent deities) to my left, I start picking the stitched up through the 12 rows. And fucking things up over and over and over and over and over again. Finally, before someone has to subdue me with deadly force, I shoved the whole fucking thing into the bag and and took out my kinder, gentler, 100% non-moebiused Temptation project.

I happily knit a round, then realize that when I'm back to the join, there's this very odd loop sticking out of the side of the first stitch, and the first stitch of the new round seems curiously tight. I thought maybe it was twisted, but it didn't seem to be. I started to knit the round and realized that there's a big, gaping hole at the join where this stupid loop is. I unknit the first stitch of the round, pull on the loop, and the stitch is dropped down two rows. I pick up the two rows and now I have a nice, holeless join, and the loop is sticking out of the right side of the second stitch. I knit the second stitch, same problem. I try the same solution. Excellent. My first two knit stitches are closed nicely, a slightly longer loop is sticking out to the right of the third stitch.

I complete an entire round in this fashion, the loop getting longer and longer. I think that somehow when I come around to the join again, the loop will resolve itself. Uh, not so much. Exactly the same problems, and dropping each stitch down 2 rows, picking it back up along the correct yarn, and continuing on seems to be the only solution. I have no idea how that fucking happened, nor do I know how to fix it. I can, however, tell you that drop-two-pick-up-two-knit/purl is no fucking way to live.

Today, I brought all my patience to the plate and went back to Frankenblanket. I laid it out on the coffee table and checked and checked and checked again that all the rows were in the correct order, and picked up each and every fucking one of those 30 stitches over 12 rows. Yes, at this point, I've invested about 5 hours in "No I WILL NOT fucking frog this blanket," but I am now a row beyond the trouble spot. I'll need to do some tugging to even out the AIYEEE very tight--Hey Baby I'm Berry White and Very Loose stitches, but Frankenblanket is ALIVE!!!!! AAAALLLIIIIIIIVVVEEE!

Knarcissus Knits

2006-04-27T10:02:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I have frogged all I can frog, and I can'ts frog no more.

Seriously, I frog stuff all the time, which is a kind of personal progress for me. Usually when tasked with something with even the tiniest creative/productive component, I fuck up early, realize the fuck up later, and stubbornly refuse to correct it. I then burn the project, bury it at a crossroads, and salt the Earth so that my bastard child can't spawn some kind of B-movie monster of popsicle sticks. But with knitting, I just pull it apart (sometimes multiple times) and start over again.

But this baby blanket has resurrected my inner mule (this would, of course, be the mule that Jesus rode in on; I have it on solid 4-year-old authority that this poor beastie was nailed up shortly after Himself, so resurrection is somewhat seasonally appropriate). I had ceased knitting it so that I could investigate my options for finishing it in all its megabbb glory. All the Classic Elite Attitude has disappeared from the 'verse, as though it never existed. I've been trawling through Yarndex and websites hoping against hope to find a gauge, texture, and color match. And then I thought I'd look into this Cold Fusion thing and clear up all this sillyness in the Middle East.

So all my LYSeses have received a visitation from Me on a Mission. I've turned up pretty much bupkus. Online searching is, of course, riskier because of the color-matching aspects. But finally, I got desperate enough to order some of a new Classic Elite line that's cotton, silk, and (ew) nylon. The nexus of gauge, appearance, and material similiarity was the best I could find. Colorwise, from what I could tell from holding hanks up to my laptop screen (this is professional driver on closed course territory, my friends, don't try this at home), it seemed that their "moss" and "cinnamon" colors might serve, and Patternworks.com happened to have these in stock.

The yarn arrived Tuesday, and it's a good news/bad news situation. The hand feel and look will do. As an added bonus, the cinnamon is a great color match (it has a slightly "tweedier" look to it, but it's in no way an eyesore). The moss . . . well, the moss is much greener than my green. There's no getting around that. But my inner Zombie Jesus mule is powerful. I'm thinking that if I knit on with the old green/new brown and new green/old brown, the difference will be subtle enough that the blanket won't evoke images of Peter Boyle belting out "PUTTIN' ON THE RITZ!"

So far, the old green/new brown looks great. I can only find the row where the new brown was introduced by feeling around really carefully. Of course, the old brown/new green is the real test, but we're not going there just yet. In my ultimate fantasy, I can knit with old green/new brown to the turnaround, and then the introduction of the new green will look quasi-deliberate. I mean, it's for a baby. A baby with a soft, squishy, developing brain. Who's gonna trust a baby's color-discrimination ability over mine, hmmm?

In any case, yesterday I was knitting away in blissful oblivion, not worrying about green, not giving any thought at all to the fact that this baby seemed INTENT on vexing me with threats of C-sections and early arrivals. And then when I got home, I had an e-mail from my mother: the baby has moved into birthing position. That means no C-section, no early arrival, and vast acres of time during which I can knit the rest of that fucking blanket off. Now some of you may be wondering about my poor sister-in-law, who is facing the prospect of vaginally delivering what may turn out to be some kind of giant superbaby. You seem to be missing the point that this is ALL ABOUT ME. Bitches.

Rage Against Gauge: 7843rd in the Crafty Fucktard Cycle

2006-04-09T13:23:00.000-07:00

Back at Thanksgiving when we were vacationing at Casta Wombata, your three intrepid heroines journeyed to Knit-Wit in scenic Olathe. Yours truly scored some very pretty Classic Elite "Attitude" in a seafoamy green and a nice silvery-brown taupe. This was slated for a 2-strand Big Bad Baby Blanket for my impending neiphewlet person thingy, who is due in May. The only problem on the horizon with this project seemed to be my usual overwhelming desire for ME to have this pretty pretty cotton/silk blend.

About 2 weeks ago, I dutifully did my gauge swatch on my Addi Turbo 13s. Conveniently, it seemed that the gauge came out exactly the same as when I did the blanket in Misti Alpaca on 10s. I cast on, knit pretty seed stitch with no fuck ups, and I saw that it was good.

Except I seemed to run through my first two balls right quick. I wound the second two and knit away and though "Jeebus on a swift, how much of this did I buy?" as they end of those came up. I peeked into my bag of tricks and I've got exactly six (2 sets of 3) hanks left. Dude, WTF?

Clever duck that I am, at 45 rows in, I think to measure the width. The width of my majestic 36-inch-wide blanket (it's supposed to knit up at 28" square and block out to 31"), which is now about 11 inches tall. If all goes SPECTACULARLY as planned, that results in a 36 x 27.5" blanket. And, of course, Attitude has long since been discontinued. That had better be one fucking weirdly shaped baby. Because knitting is fundamentally about me.

Crafty Fucktard: Thinking Ahead of the Pattern Edition

2006-03-31T09:36:00.000-08:00

Knitting Pure and Simple has a lot going for it. The notion of knitting a sweater entirely in one piece and thereby avoiding the dreaded seaming inherent in other patterns definitely appeals. There's just one problem. Either I have some kind of serious pattern-reading defect, or these patterns tend to suffer from at least one critical failure each. And, Crafty Fucktard that I am, I always, always, always miss them.

Take Le Murfle's Metrosexual Roll-Neck. At least this particular error happened early. Instead of, like any sane person would, having one cast on the proper number of stitches to begin with, the pattern's author instructs one to cast on a certain number of stitches and then increase in the first, pesty row (making holes all the merry way).

So, Crafty Fucktarding my way along, I followed the directions (see? this is why I NEVER read the directions for IKEA furniture, or computer assembly, or whatever) and ended up with something quite akin to eyelet. On a boy's sweater. Now, I'm open-minded about gender roles and all, but given that the perfectly boyish-looking Murfle already gets called a girl because he doesn't have a buzz cut at the age of three, fuck that ladies and gentlemen, let's try again.

Which I duly did, starting with the proper number of stitches at the cast-on. An hour of knitting later, it turns out that even at the gauge the pattern was written for, there aren't enough freaking stitches on the needle for a 16" circ to work at the point one is supposed to do the join. Haaaaaaaate. Haaaaaaate!

Ah, well. After that minor bit of frogging all was well. Murfle has a lovely, variegated blue Roll-Neck waiting for his Chanukah over-the-shoulder-tossing pleasure. (*which he duly did.)

On to the Weekend sweater, which I attempted for Wench last year and ended with something akin to a very warm, fuzzy, red circus tent. There were reasons for this. I was a measuring novice at the time, and didn't know I should send Wench off to measure herself in her favorite/normal bra and nothing else. Le sigh. The other reason, unsurprisingly, is in the pattern, which I discovered this year as I was knitting the Weekend Sweater Redux so Wench would have a knitted item from me that's appropriate for wear not involving fifteen layers of clothing under it.

All went well, until I was very near the roll bottom I'd added (broken-rib bottoms flatter noone). Then I noticed that the lovely alpaca seemed to resemble nothing so much as a warm, lusciously soft, cream....

...circus tent.

Cue wailing and gnashing of teeth as I measured and realized the freaking thing was eight inches wider than it should be. MOTHERFUCKER! So, I frogged, count them, dear readers, about twenty vertical inches of circular knitting. When I was done crying, I figured out that the flaw lies in the number of stitches the pattern author tells one to cast on for the armholes. Eight inches total, kids. Given the front and back gauge, it should be more like three. KHAAAAAN!

However. After running out of yarn (bless Blue Sky Alpacas. the dye lots are so consistent it's impossible to tell where I joined the Emergency Yarn Infusion), it's finally done. Now I just have to haul its four-pound bulk off to the cleaners.

The moral of the story? Knit KPaS patterns all you like--just be sure the gauge adds up.

Apropos of nothing, much kowtowing to Matilda for completing a sweater that includes intarsia. Woot!

Battling Symmetry

2006-02-08T15:19:00.000-08:00

Bitches, I have an announcement: Skully c'est fini! I wore her yesterday in my drafty office and I can declare her toasty. And bloody fucking heavy. That's a lot of tightly knit former sheep, that is.

A few reflections on my first wearable, nonrectilinear accomplishment: it's always going to be a Goofus and Gallant experience, isn't it?

The back of Skully has a few not-entirely-disguised mistakes from which the front is relatively free, simply because I'd already done it once:

Goofus contains five "purled when I shoulda ought've knitted" stitches. Let us never speak of it.
Gallant is comparatively flawless garter stitch on the bottom and stockinette the rest of the way up.

Goofus contains two obviously places with ineptly joined yarn that needed behind the scenes repair.
Gallant smugly points out that all of his new yarn is joined at the ENDS OF ROWS AS GOD/YHWH/ALLAH/JEHOVAH/ZEUS/CHRONOS/APOPHIS INTENDED.

And shall we even talk about the sleeves? How foolish to pop my intarsial cherry on something symmetrical. The role of Goofus is now being played by the left sleeve:

Goofus has a black hole in his brain and started doing the intarsia pattern upside down. Twice.
Gallant knows enough to just turn the fucking book upside down.

Goofus has several dire yarn breaks that unravel row upon row of hard won intarsia.
Gallant has an eye for the sturdiest of skeins and would not think of breaking.

Goofus has Avogadro's number of ends that need to be woven in.
Gallant was bold enough to do the occasionally "swing over," thus avoiding loose-end weaving from here to eternity.

But then at the end, the right sleeve wants a turn at Goofus:
Goofus snickers, knowing full well that the last skein of black yarn (which is already one more skein than the pattern called for) will run out with just the 7 rows of garter stitch to go.
Gallant knows there's another sleeve to be knit and generously leaves more than a skein of black for other sleevey purposes.

(It is unclear why the left sleeve took less than 1 skein of black and the right took about a skein and a half.)

And the seams. Oh dear. the left side seam is ultra-Goofusy, as is the left sleeve seam. The right ones came out fine comparatively, but seaming black on black bulky yarn? Never again.

All in all, though, I'm happy with it. It's not perfect, but the pattern and the yarn are pretty forgiving. Rather than being compeltely shapeless, it has kind of an A-line to it. The sleeves are monstrous all the way to the ends (there are no decreases in the pattern), but on the other hand the garter-stitch cuffs roll back nicely and the wide cuff looks kind of cute that way.

But most importantly, I finished a freaking SWEATER. You may kiss my stitch markers.

Wow did we

2006-01-29T08:19:00.000-08:00

Up and die over the hols.

My completely non humorous knitting update.

Husband out of town for almost a week.
Cleaning and organizing ENTIRE STASH into project bags with copies of their intended patterns.
Cleaned, organized, sorted, labelled, bagged all needles last night.
Finally blocked my two rowan sweaters. Finished, seamed, blocked two sweaters for little man. Banging out husband's sweater now.
I have so fucking much yarn to wind, if someone has a house elf or enslaved pixie they could loan me, I'd be damn grateful.

I am doing the knitting olympics. God help me.

Can I get an Amen?

2005-12-14T22:42:00.000-08:00

I have made three-needle bind off my bitch. Three-needle bind off has, in turn, taken my seam virginity. Someone say Hallelujah.

Reader, I gibbed

2005-12-11T11:27:00.000-08:00

Would you like to know what I am not thinking about right now? I am not thinking about having frogged that fucking hat AGAIN. In fact, the hat is on hold. I'm going back to either Skully or Tank Girl, one of my SUCCESSFUL projects, for a while. Actually, I'm going to make up an exam before I do anything. But even before that, I'm going to bore y'all with tales of gibbing.

Yesterday, my spouse (aka the Dogfacedboy) and I agreed to meet the King of the Hill People for some solstice shopping. Although we got waylaid by a headache and a snowstorm much more extensive than the weatherbitches in these parts had led us to believe it would be, we actually made it to the mall. Eventually. Even better, most of the suburbanites had fled from the horrible SNOW, thus confirming my diagnosis that they are evil robots built from evil, non-rust-resistant evil parts, built to do evil as weather permits.

We trounced around for a bit, had a bite to eat, and then went our separate ways. TKotHP had a party to go to and the spouse and I thought we might take in a film. We arrived at the theatre at a somewhat awkward time. Although our choices were many (provided we were willing to wait at least 40 minutes), we decided on Aeon Flux on the grounds that it would likely be disappearing soon.

The arcade games at the theatre seemed to be slim pickings. We tried to race one another at a NASCAR game, but my machine ate one token, fucking up the timing. I went to get another and a surly teen tried to slide in and steal my three lucious credits. "EXCUSE ME!" I said in my best soccer mom voice, and he trembled in fear. Driving games are never my favorites, and since I couldn't even try to kill my husband, there was little fun to be had.

Mi esposo likes driving games, so he picked the most metrosexual big rig in the county to drive in another game. The bouncing tassels in his cab were a particularly nice faux!realistic touch. They would have been helped significantly by the ubiquitous generic Asian cat bouncing even a little bit on the dash, but alas, no.

While watching him drive his manly big rig, I developed a desire to shoot things, cooperatively, if possible. The two Time Crisis consoles next door seemed to fit the bill. (I make no comment on the pink and blue guns except to note that the grand Pottery Barn Kids conspiracy has spread farther than I'd feared. Initiate Fuck You, Male Oppressor Protocol.) My shooting things career was short lived, however, partly because I was unclear on how to reload.

Having exhausted our game options (or so we thought), we still had about 35 minutes until movie time. We were wandering theatreward when we looked up and realized that there was a much more extensive collection of games upstairs. We trotted up there to check it out, but there wasn't much that seemed tempting. The spouse was eyeing up Offroad Thunder (at which he knows he could kick my ass with a flick of his powersliding pinky), but surly teens were hogging it.

I was drawn to a generic Namco game with two back-to-back consoles in the middle of the floor. It was so nondescript, I could've been in the CIA. Even now, coming up with Namco taxed the slippery parts of my brane where the memory of this game is stored. It was only one token to play, and in this capitalist world, what does THAT say about its desirability?

However, on closer examination, it proved to be My Kind of Game. First of all, it was a fighting game in the style of Soul Calibur or Marvel vs. Capcom. These are what I like to call Button Mashing Game. I excel at BMGs. Second, it had this bizarre character in a red leather dominatrix outfit with a pointy red witch hat who appeared to battle for the honor of her family by rocking out on her guitar. I HAD to play this game.

Although my spouse could already taste his failure, he gave me a dollar and we got tokens to play each other. Of course, I fucked up immediately and did not choose my axe-grinding, fashion-challenged dominatrix. I wound up playing some bland anime boy. My spouse chose this bizarre shape-shifting guy who seemed to have some cool powers. This, as always, worked against him. He has the "what's that do?" approach that slows him down while I MASH! CRUSH! DEEEEEEESTROY! The matchups were best of 5 and I took him 3 in a row. He did, occasionally, turn into a little boy and hit me with a baseball bat, though. Good for you, honey.

I was happily crushing computer opponents for a while (pussies all), and gearing up to take on hentai hair chyck when a teenage girl cut in on the other console. I destroyed her handily the first time, then dismantled the chyck with the feeble hair tentacles. She cut in again with a character that, tragically, exploited my big weakness: my muscley katana boy had shit for weapons with any kind of reach. This character had Cousin It hair and a bitchin' spear. I still took her to 5 battles and only lost by a hair (but not a disturbing hentai hair tentacle, a winsome flop of hair secured by the bandana of my grandfather [plus three against hygiene-challenged hopping vampires]).

As I hauled myself off my now-stiff knees (these consoles were clearly intended to have chairs in front of them, but did not), my spouse looked at me fondly and said, "You're like a fighting game savant!"

Alpaca as metaphor OR When in doubt, level up

2005-12-09T13:54:00.000-08:00

My Inca Alpaca hat was not going well. It was in danger of making me cry. Perhaps finals week was not the time to attempt this.

While stamping down hard on my hat emotion, I was wondering if it might not be better to do a hat that explicitly matches my scarf (which, by the way, I am loving). I have a bit of that Misti Alpaca in camel leftover (yes, THAT Misti Alpaca, which I recently vowed in this august forum never to touch again) and a full skein of the Big Baby Twisty Alpaca. The two colors look swell together, the heavier weight is easier for my clumsy hands to handle, and that stupid Inca Alpaca hate it so much right now. All of that's well and good. I fully support rejecting the skinny bitch in favor of her zaftig sister.

But then I decided that what I really wanted was to REALLY make a matchy hat. So, my inner lunatic reasoned, why not do a basketweave band in the camel and do the crown of the hat in the twisty? Yes, inept Big Wheel rider that I am, I decided that it was a good idea to head directly into driving the triple trailer big rig filled with C4 and caffeinated puppies through the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Here's the funny part (well, not ha ha funny, unless you're Fate, in which case it's a laugh riot): It was going fucking splendidly. The math on the pattern is easy to do (it's a series of 6 stitches), and it was looking great. But something not-quite-right was niggling at my brain. My first instinct was to worry that it was going to be either way too big or way too small. I wanted to check, so I capped off the circulars and tried to let the whole thing hang down off the needles so I could wear it like a nubbly crown.

And the horrible truth became clear: I had knit a moebius band.

I am enough of a nerd that my first reaction was really: Cool! My second, however, was the more predictable: MOTHERFUCKER! My third was the inevitable: Dude, WTF? How could this have happened? I had watched my stitch butts with lascivious attention. They were ALWAYS hanging down. Knitting moebius didn't turn up much other than a scarf pattern.

A search on Knitting Round Stitch Twist turned up a hit that had my stomach sinking. I'd hit on "Combined Purling" complete with a warning that this creates a twisted stitch in the round, so one has to knit into the back round a row up. Who knew?

Well, anyone who knits solely in Combined/Composite style, I guess. I don't. I knit Continental and purl Composite. This is a feature (bug, apparently) of the fact that the Evil One only taught me knit. I taught myself purling way back when, and Stitch N Bitch's Continental purling instructions seemed so bizarre that I just dinked around until I hit on a purl that made sense to me.

Knitting on straight needles, this has never been a problem, for whatever reason. I do have a tendency to add stitched in at the beginning unless I'm really careful to pull my work all the way around at the beginning of a row, but that seems to be the only problem encountered so far.

In trying to tackle the hat, however, I find myself saying "Fuck that shit!" about knitting into the back of stitches and whatnot. So I'm purling in the accepted Continental manner and now learning why purling strikes fear into many a knitter's heart. But as the Flying Spaghetti Monster is my witness, I WILL have a toasty fucking hat.

In which Angeltiger remembers this is a trifeminate

2005-12-05T22:07:00.000-08:00

Not a solipsism. Therefore, introductions are required, as dear readers cannot be expected to follow the tortured logic of my many names. Possibly, they cannot be bothered to care much, either, but I'll at least make the effort.

Like a certain rainmaking member of the Endless, I give myself web identities about as often as I make friends. Over at Wench's blog, I'm known as LPG, or Leatherpants Grrl, auntie of the murfle and companion in Wench sanity on occasional girlie outings and yarn squee. At LJ, I was auteurcakes, a name I thought of on the fly and never particularly liked. Here at Blogger, on my now-deceased solo blog, I came up with Angeltiger, which suits if you know the Piercy, and which I like regardless.

I've been knitting for nearly two years. Like Silk Road Ultra, drool over Blue Sky Alpacas anything, but particularly the silk blends. For the record, I am noone's bitch, dammit.

Or...

Well...

All right. Shameful as it is to say, I suppose I'm Vittadini's (eeeeek!) bitch until I finish that damn pullover. Anyway, my knitting interests range from fingerless gloves knit at Crazy-Person Gauge to the on-size-35-dildoes wrap (hello, googlers) I'm about to begin when my knitting gets to go back to being all about MEEEEEE.

Gaming, like knitting, depends entirely on mood. I like FPS with the Lad from time to time (even a single-player if there's a decent plot), but get sucked into RPGs most often regardless of format. I particularly enjoy the Knights of the Old Republic series. Nothing like running around with a lightsaber and a can of whupazz for forty-odd hours. Sure, The Sith Lords left a hole in my soul, but for anyone who doesn't hang out at the Obsidian forums, there are several very blessed geniuses over here who are restoring cut content. Deadline fluid, but it should be worth it.

WIP:

Making CJ other than useless on the increasingly mean streets of Los Santos (So what if I started a gang war? Can't a bro-vatar walk anywhere without getting shot? Shit!)
Waiting very, very patiently for above-mentioned mod
Weekend sweater for Wench in Blue Sky Bulky
Sonnet cardigan for Informatrix (aka Trash) in...crap...some luscious alpaca thingy or other
Haiku cardigan for M. Giant-Informatrix spawn M. Small in Malabrigo
Crazy-Person Gauge fingerless gloves for Zen Viking in Regia self-striping 4-ply

Oh, how I love the holidays.

In which the nictone-deprivation addled contributor...

2005-12-05T13:41:00.000-08:00

...finally finds the title field. YAY!

As long as we're relating fucktard moments, let's just say that instead of looking for it in the settings like any sane person would, I went looking for it in the CSS template first. But that's neither here nor there. This ain't a design blog. In honor of the lovely Matilda's undead, cursed hat (bleargh! sorry, beautiful), I will also share a crafty fucktard moment.

A while ago, when I was about seven months into my shiny, new knitting obsession, I made the mistake of buying Vogue Knitting. Not that there's anything wrong with Vogue Knitting per se, but this particular issue just so happened to contain a full-page ad for the new Vittadini pattern book, the poster child for which is the Martina eyelet cable pullover . Little tart seduced me immediately, despite her rather putrid coloration. Oh, how delicious it would be in the black-like-my-soul Cashmerino I was eyeing with lust in my heart at my local last week, I thought, all momentarily Pollyanna-optimistic and completely ignoring the part where it says "skill level: experienced."

My crafty fucktard moments have a tendency to result from over-ambition. Like the time I decided that a braided, cabled scarf that I made up myself was a good idea after I'd been knitting for about two months. Six months later, I finally managed to put a stake through the thing's heart, and it is rather purty, but it had given me an aversion to cables, which relates. I promise. My nifty new pullover pattern had, count 'em, complicated shaping, complicated, cabled lace and full lace, belled sleeves. In my own defense, I can only say I had to have this pullover, and hadn't realized that "experienced" really means those amazing, grandmother types who can knit Continental without looking and don't need no stinking stitch markers. In other words, knitters who can still eat me for breakfast.

But I duly started the little monster. Made it through the shaping okay. And then I hit the lace. YO, no problem. s3k, no problem. Cable 1ox per row every fourth row?? KHAAAAAAN! We will not speak of the sleeves. Fourteen months later, I have a front, a back, and two-thirds of a sleeve. Le sigh. The day I finish that thing, I think I'll be burning my cable needle and avoiding the things for at least a year. Ah, hubris.

The Crafty Fucktard weighs in

2005-12-05T09:12:00.000-08:00

This will not, as promised, be about the Crafty Fucktard's recent attempts to take hir knitting on the road. Instead, the Crafty Fucktard would like to discuss a recent conversion in hir way of thinking on the subject of hats.

On the road to Wenchville for Thanksgiving, I brought my basketweave scarf as well as the Skully project. Somewhere around the Quad Cities, I decided that I was fucking DONE with that scarf. No, it wasn't the 68" in length specified, but to my Crafty Fucktard's delight, I've never been the pattern's bitch. (As an aside, I learned after knocking out the six rows of seed stich that I had no scissors on me, and that last stitch stayed on the needle, mocking my ill-prepared ass until I unearthed the multitool with a knife on it from under the passenger seat.)

The scarf is lovely: Big Baby's twisty Alpaca in a soft green-grey-blue, which really held up to the pattern better than I was expecting. I'd initially bought it to make a ribbed scarf, but decided "BORED NOW!" and went for the more complex pattern. Of course, that pattern switch meant that I found myself having purchased nothing like enough yarn at the Studio in KC. I went trawling on line and found a place in Manhattan who carried my color, thankfully. Let us never speak of dye lots. Lovely as the scarf is, it's not really wide enough to pull off the Virgin Mary headwrap so vital to emerging from Chicago's winter with ears intact. So clearly I need a hat.

Wench was kind enough to lay out her pattern stash for me, and we agreed that we were kind of digging Jo Sharp's Piper hat. Part of its appeal was that the pattern called for some double points and, therefore, seemed not to be a victim of Jo's previously undiscovered fear of knitting in the round. Seamed hats are whack, Jo. Never forget it. As Wench sped for the oxymoronic downtown Suburbia, I looked more closely at the pattern and realized that the hat actually was knit flat on straight needles. The double points? For knitting an I-Cord Head Belt and SEWING IT ON as a faux band/crown delimiter. Jo, Jo, Jo, seek help.

But Jo has dark mojo, though, and sensed that Crafty Fucktard was indulging in some smote-worthy hubris. This is my verbose way of saying "My hat is cursed."

First fucktarded moment: I decide I'm just going to buy DPNs. I don't feel like figuring out what size circular I want and I am laboring under the delusion that DPNs will be more generally useful. So I pick up a set of size 7 Brittanys (I love me some Brittanys) and somehow fail to notice that these are about 4 inches long. I was going to end up casting on 42 stitches to each of 3 when I decided on a different non-CF-induced pattern. Good luck with that. Two rounds in, a pinky's worth of stitches leapt off the needle and raveled before I even had a chance to notice. That would be frogging the first.

Last night, back in my home, I decided that I was going to shun the metric assload of work that I have to do and start on my hat anew on my size 7, 16-inch clovers. Far too lazy to dig my tape measure out of my suitcase or whever the hell it is when it's at home, I decided that it would be genius to measure out my tail for double cast on by using the diagonal of my 14-inch iBook's display.

Spouse: You're knitting a screen cosy?
Me: Shut up.
Spouse: Seriously, what are you doing?
Me: I need about 66 inches of yarn tail. This is 14.
Spouse: Is it exactly 14?
Crafy Fucktard: It doesn't need to be exact! SHUT UP STUPID HEAD!

Naturally, I ended up with a tail that was at least 17 inches too long and getting the fuck in my way. But I knit and I knit and I knit, round and around. I went to my Zen knitter place, thinking how nicely the shadings in the Inca Alpaca were turning up in a simple stockinette and how cute the roll brim was. I'd probably knit about an inch and a half of it when I decided it was time to turn in. In trying to put the project away more neatly than is typically my wont, I noticed that the odious tail had gotten pulled through somewhere along the line in my work. So I did what all Crafty Fucktards would do and yanked on it. It was as if a dozen stitches from a dozen different rows cried out and suddenly were dropped. Poor little hat looked as though it had wandered into Angeltiger's path in San Andreas at a particularly nicotine-deprived time. Don't worry, I put it out of its misery before I went to bed.

At this point the hat should, in all deference to its ded-resurrected-ded-resurrected history, should be Zombie themed.

In which Angeltiger knits and gibs

2005-12-04T17:47:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, I quit smoking. This has left my brain in an addled, chemically deprived state which resembles nothing so much as cork and which, strangely enough, seems to facilitate both of the pursuits we intend to cover on this blog. Since last Wednesday, my schedule reads something like: (1) stay asleep as long as possible to avoid horrible, rage-inducing desire for cigarette; (2) get up and inhale two cups of coffee to satisfy poor, poor jonesing stimulant receptors; (3) knit until cat-like attention span forbids further knitting; (4) create maximum mayhem in San Andreas (yes, yes, the game is aeons old by now, but the thought of having to develop my driving skill over many hours while still taking crap about the abs and sartorial imperfections I couldn't yet improve was simply too much for me last fall). Repeat steps three and four until rage-inducing desire for nicotine sends me back to bed.

Possibly because my processing faculties are somewhat lacking at the moment, I can't decide which activity is more satisfying. I started knitting and continue to enjoy it primarily because it's a craft. It can be evaluated objectively (viz, are all the fingers on the glove, does the sweater fit, are the stitches even, etc.), but it's also wonderfully mindless and tactile (play with a Blue Sky Alpacas Bulky for a few minutes and try to walk out of the store without a hank--first cuddle's free), perfect for my befuddled and loopy state.

However, the above is making me sound a little too Zen-Master, because I'm enjoying starting riots in front of my safe house in Los Santos just about as much as I'm enjoying checking projects off that pesty Holiday Frag List. There is that whole "rage-inducing desire for cigarette" problem. Addictively soft and fuzzy is all well and good when one's body is not in a state of loopy, moronic, uncoordinated shock, but for the loopy, moronic, uncoordinated shock, I'll take the crotch rocket and machine pistol.

At least for now. Five minutes hence, the cat-like attention span may've rendered the whole point moot by knocking me unconscious on the sofa again.

2005-12-02T18:40:00.000-08:00

Ah, Fate, you bitch. Not only do you induce a senior moment rendering me completely unable to remember my blogger login (if I have one [high likelihood {say hello to curly quotes, which are the third line of parenthetical defense}, far from certainty], that is), you then slap my name-choosing nose with a rolled up newspaper. Leaving me with the, admittedly full-of-full-disclosure-y-goodness, "Matilduh" was a nice touch. Please feel free to bite my juicy, delicious crank.

Any of you now gasping for breath and thinking "this tortured sentence structure is miserably familiar . . ." might recognize me as Matilda, occasional commenter on blog-o-'wench and permanent godless parent of the Murfle. Angeltiger/auteurcakes's m@d Kn1tt1ng 5k1llz shamed me into unearthing and sanctifying my own rudimentary knitting knowledge. (I was taught the basics by a truly evil individual years ago, so we were deep into Native American burial ground territory.)

Once I had Stitch N Bitch in my hot little hands, my instant gratification whore reared her ugly head. I soon found myself in possession of a metric assload of Lamb's Pride Bulky, preperatory to doing Skully. Now, those of you who are not the inspiration for the coinage of "Crafty Fucktard" might think that a sweater with int-fucking-arsia is a swell first project. I urge you to put down the crack pipe and seek help. The Skully project will actually be my first Crafty Fucktard offering: Crafty Fucktard on the Road, but I digress.

Humbled and chastened, bloodied and bowed by the sweater, I backtracked to a square object, namely a baby blanket. Having failed to read the Big Bad Baby blanket pattern correctly, I feared knitting in the round. Instead, I opted for an odious check pattern monstrosity. Having brutalized a hank and a half of Misti Alpaca and my spouse (Him: "You're quiet."; Me: "I'm counting"; Him: "What comes after one?"; GIANT SMACK TO THE BACK OF HIS HEAD, greatly embiggening his external occipital protuberance), 'wench kindly helped me frog the bitch and start the fucker over in Big Bad form on Memorial Day weekend.

Interesting fact about the Big Bad Blanket in camel-colored Misti Alpaca: They asexually reproduce. If you're me, that is. Made the mistake of bringing the in-progress blanket to my cousin's baby shower (because the punk ass po po bitches at Knitter's Workshop in Chicago are closed on Fridays), she cooed over it and uttered the words that sealed my fate: "OOOOH, I just LOVE the color! I can't imagine a better color!" Well, fuck. Suffice it to say, if I ever see a single hair of camel Misti Alpaca again, there will be a reckoning. I did eventually send out both blankets, warts and all, after an extended NO WIRE HANGERS EVER! experience trying to block those motherfuckers.

Since then, I've done a Twisty Alpaca basketweave scarf for MEEEEEEE and turned my attention back to Skully. I'm vacationing Chez 'Wench this weekend and, courtesy of aforementioned fucktardedness, needed to purchase the goods for another project. I'm currently working a ribbed tank pattern on Auraucania Nature Cotton in plum and it's very much akin to knitting Alice in the midst of her experimental Sub phase. Big. Little. Eat me. Drink me. Touch one more substance through the looking glass, bitch, and I WILL fuck your shit up. But sooooo pretty. That project was obtained under the able enablement of Angeltiger. Not to be outdone, 'wench enabled the purchase of some Inca Alpaca for a hat. I officially have A Stash. Kill me now.

On the jibbing front, my spouse is an avid gamer in several MMOs, as well as rampantly consuming PC and XBox games. Among his cross-game guild, there exists the move known as the Matilda Strike. It tends to get called when someone won't STOP TALKING WRONG ANTHROPOLOGY. My personal jibbing primarily takes the form of enabling his habit when I'm not playing Abe Simpsons ("I LIKED moving around on the two-dimensional map in Ultima IV. Why the hell do you need all this shit? I LOVE MY DEAD GAY GREEN AVATAR!"). I did jib with 'Wench's spouse last night as an emergency stand-in for Angeltiger. I admit that once I got out of the corner in which I was stuck and stopped (mostly) throwing grenades into walls and blowing myself up, I enjoyed the feel of the HMG in my hand. The bloodlust, she rises anew. Watch this space for hot jibbing action.

2005-12-02T10:50:00.000-08:00

Welcome, folks, to Knit-n-Jib, a collaborative blog between three hawt women who engage in knitting, jibbing, and lesbian subtext aplenty. I am your host, Mr. Rour---wait a minute. I'll let the other two laaaaadies introduce themselves.

I'm Chicagowench. I actually prefer RPGs to first person shooters, but I will happily sprawl on the couch knitting while mocking the jibtastic action of Autercakes and Prof BS Dinobaby (the latter being my spouse). I've been knitting since last November, and have a serious yarn whore problem. I've also got about 4 projects on needles right now. Because I suck.

I tend to have a love/hate relationship with Rowan patterns (but mad love for the yarns) and am Jo Sharp's bitch. Right now I'm working on a Jo Sharp sweater for my mom, 2 projects which will NOT BE DISCUSSED HERE, a sweater for my kid, and need to bang out a big bad baby blanket.

The three of us tend to be obscene, honest, sarcastic, and blunt. You have been warned. (Also, we all tend to clum majorly from time to time. Look for posts entitled 'Crafty Fucktard' for tales of our incredible stupidities)

2005-11-21T19:51:00.000-08:00

Testing testing, one two three