I'm an Olympiad

in the first ever Knitting Olympics! Yarn Harlot had the brilliant idea of a little event in which we choose a project that we think will be a personal challenge to complete in sixteen days, and then knit it during the Olympics. I say "little event," but actually, the following has become quite large, and poor Harlot is having to add hundreds of people to her Olympiads page. I often lament the fact that all the brilliant ideas are had by people other than myself, but I'll happily admit that this is one bit of ingenuity that I do not wish had been mine. Good luck, Harlot!

Anyway, I couldn't resist the call, and so I signed up to knit Thuja, a pattern by Bobby Ziegler on knitty.com. It will be two firsts for me: first socks and first dpn project. This and the fact that I don't have a lot of time to knit will certainly make it challenging. It was my intention to make these socks anyway for my father's birthday, but now I'm committed to making them early - definitely a good thing after the late Christmas gifts. I had already bought the yarn as well: ArtYarns Supermerino in a lovely blue colorway, #121. It's not as dark a color as it had seemed in the picture on the internet (a hazard of buying yarn online), so it's not the manly blue I had anticipated, but instead, a dreamy, tropical sea blue. It's not vareigated, but it does have subtle variations that make it very appealing. It seemed less girly to me once I knit some up in a swatch. If Dad doesn't think the color is masculine enough... well, he can just wear them around the house, or frame them and call them art.

In retrospect, while I like the yarn for its softness and its color - it just has this depth to it! - I probably would have chosen something else had I been a more experienced knitter. Like, something with some nylon in it, as I was advised by the kind posters at knitty.com, so that it doesn't pill. Oh, well. Hopefully the fact that he's getting my first ever socks will make Dad proud, even if the yarn turns out to not be the best choice. Next time, I'll know better.

So, now that I've committed myself, and now that I am completely bored to tears with trying to get that Hairy Poop scarf done (gee, I don't sound hostile toward the thing at all), I am antsy and squirmy at the starting line. I've done my gauge swatch, I've pet the yarn and admired it in various lights, I've toyed with the dpns - although I haven't practiced any in-the-round stuff with them yet, which I should do - and I want to GO! So, yeah. I'm excited.

My husband is a wonderful human being.

But he kind of p*ssed me off last night when he said, "Gee, that Harry Potter scarf sure will be great to wear when you finish it this summer."

Hey. I've been working on it. I was working on it when that little bit o' sarcastic malevolence erupted from his lips. I know he was joking, but really. This may be the first and last knitted anything he gets from me with an attitude like that. Keep it up, buddy - I dare you.

Airy Scarf: Check

I should have posted this a while ago, but I was kind of too lazy to upload the pictures to my computer. Last week was the first week back at work after the lovely holiday break, and… you know how it goes. I gave the Airy Scarf to its happy recipient about two weeks after Christmas. Although the k2tog eyelet rows were kind of a pain, they weren’t that terrible, and I liked the way it came out well enough to perhaps make one for myself at a later time. I have some KSH in Liqueur, which I had originally bought for the Purl Scarf but which I didn’t end up using for that project. It’s a very pretty dark maroon or burgundy – I don’t usually go for the so-barely-pink-it’s-almost-white color that I used for this particular scarf. But my friend loved it, and that’s the important thing.

I tried to take a decent photo of the scarf in action, but didn’t anticipate just how crappy the picture would be if I held the camera in front of me. Since I’d forgotten to take photos at a more opportune time when, say, my husband could hold the camera for me, this was the best I could manage. Here’s another that shows the pattern a bit more clearly (not that everyone hasn’t already done this one themselves and / or seen 300 pictures of it).
I ended up with sixteen repeats instead of ten; I knew I wasn’t on gauge, but I’m not sure that it would have come out to the correct length even if I had been. I just can’t believe that ten pattern repeats would get you 32” – unless, as one knittyboard poster suggested, you stretch it to the breaking point during blocking. Which would get you a nice, long, CORD.

Oh – also? When I blocked this thing, it reeked. It smelled like my goats (we have two, and no, we don’t milk them – they’re boys). The smell disappeared once it was completely dry, but Oh. My. God. Didn’t see that one coming.

Harry Potter and the Dumpster of Doom

Because that's where I'm about ready to put this $%*@$# scarf. I have exactly three million other things I need to accomplish tonight, yet here I sit, venting on my blog.

It's not that I'm having any difficulty knitting it. On the contrary; I've been clipping along for the last couple of days, determined to finish it before I start any other project. It's the only project I have on my needles, and I've been knitting it every chance I get. I've got six sets of gold bars completed. It's been easy, albeit mind numbing. This evening, when I ran out of my second skein of burgundy yarn, though, I had a horrible, ugly, and very rude awakening: I'm not quite to the halfway point, but I've used up half my yarn. Which means.... NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

I don't know how this can be. I bought the amount that the pattern called for. I checked my gauge, and checked again. I checked yet again tonight, to see if I'd loosened up my stitches partway through. No, I am right on. And yet, there it is: I'm not going to have enough yarn to finish. Is this a normal knitting nightmare? What am I supposed to do - buy an extra skein of everything, just in case, and then knit two dozen one-skein scarves at the end of the year to get rid of the accumulated extras? Sell them as a giant grab bag on ebay?

There's no way I can get more in the same dye lot; I bought it on the internet, and fat chance that retailer will have any more since I bought it in October (although I probably will ask them, anyway). I called my husband at work in a panic when I realized the magnitude of the catastrophe that had struck this scarf that I have worked on for so long, that I have endured knitter's purgatory for (as Brenda Dayne calls any project that's just plain 'ol boring knit stitch with no excitement whatsoever), that my husband has been eagerly awaiting since Thanksgiving. Here's how that conversation went:

Me, in tragic tones: I have to tell you something.

Him: What? What's wrong? Did something happen to the baby? Is everything okay?

Me: No... yes, everything is okay. But the scarf! I just realized that I don't have enough yarn to finish it.

Him: Oh. Silence.

Me: Well, I'm not halfway done yet, and I have just used half the yarn. I won't even have enough to get to the end, and that's without the fringe.

Him: Soooo... make it shorter? Or can you just leave off the fringe? Or use the gold yarn for fringe?

Me, feeling not only sad about the scarf but now also very foolish for having called my husband. At work. About a scarf. The sky is not falling, Chicken Little- although I kind of wish it would fall on my head right about now: Well, I could try getting another skein, but it will probably be another dye lot, which means the color might be a little off.

Him: Well, why don't you finish as much as you can and see where you are, and we'll go from there if it isn't long enough. You've bought enough yarn lately, don't you think?

Me - Damnation - he noticed?! Well, I guess all those UPS boxes are kind of hard to miss... : Oh. Well, okay. I guess I could do that. It's just that I'm frustrated that I did all this and then I'm going to run out... voice trails off mumbling about yardage and gauge and the sky falling

Him: Well, I'm going to let you go. Calm down, it's not that big a deal. I'll talk to you later.

Me - sheepishly: Okayloveyoubye.

So, I was thinking that if I can block the scarf wide enough once I am finished - oops I mean, once I run out of %@&%^ yarn - I can squeeze my shoulders though and use it as a sweater sans sleeves. A body tube - a straight jacket of sorts, which would perhaps prevent me from making idiotic, dramatic, completely-lacking-in-perspective phone calls to my husband about knitting tragedies.

My arms are stuttering.

I love coffee for the "HEY! I'M AWAKE! WOOOOOO!!!" reaction I always have, but I don't love the nasty little side effects that sometimes crop up. I never drink it before going to work (unless I am in extreme danger of falling asleep while standing) because it can make me a very irritable super beeyotch. Sometimes I feel as though I can't even stand to be touched: innocuous, small things, like a hug from my husband, put my teeth on edge and it's all I can do to not shout "HANDS OFF." Also, one cup of coffee = three trips to the toilet within an hour. And another effect, just as bad as the "hands off" syndrome, is that if I don't have enough food in my stomach, it gives me such jitters that I can hardly describe what it feels like. Like my hands - really, my arms, up to my elbows- are stuttering. I don't visibly shake, but I can't do anything requiring any degree of precision, like write or knit. The only hope of ridding myself of this discomfort is to eat something, especially something with sugar. Doesn't always work... and it doesn't seem to be working today. So, stutter along I will, but it means that I won't likely get much knitting done until the coffee finally wears off. Damn.

What I did get done today, before the stuttering began, is a handy little organizational tool to keep track of my knitting needles. It occured to me that I run the risk of duplicate buying, since I can't seem to remember what I have when I'm out shopping; also, it would be handy to be able to look at something while browsing patterns to quickly ascertain whether or not I have the required needle size in my stash. Here's what I came up with (please excuse the horrid, dark pictures): a little bit 'o origami. I folded a paper in half lengthwise two times, so that it is a single strip. Then, I folded the strip into five more or less equal squares by folding it four times, until I had a single square in my hand. Clear as mud? It's really simple, but I guess my brain is stuttering too, since I'm not explaining it very well. I then folded again along each crease and rubbed an ink pad across the folds to create lines (I'm not neat enough to just draw). Finally, I stamped needle sizes in each square (hey - gotta find some use for the shelves full of scrapbook supplies I never touch, right?). I filled each square with information about the needles I have: length, material, manufacturer, and circular and dpn notations.

I will probably use the space on the back of the paper to keep track of other knitting supplies - cable needles, row counters, stitch holders, etc. - just so that I can see at a glance what I do and do not have. The nice thing about this format is that it is easily adapted to your day-to-day needs. It can be slipped into a page protector at the front of a knitting journal if you keep yours in a binder, or kept in your knitting bag. Also, it can be folded up into a little square and stashed in your purse or wallet so that you have it handy while shopping. Hope someone finds this useful!

Airing grievances... airy scarf and more

I'm almost done with the airy scarf. I'd have finished already, but several things have been distracting me: giving the house a good cleaning while I have the time, bumming around to various knitting sites on the Internet, and dog drama. The scarf is not matching up to the specs in the LMKG book. I knew it would be slightly off because I chose to use size 10 needles even though the gauge wasn't quite on the mark and was a bit tight, but I'm having to add many more repeats of the pattern than I had anticipated I would need to compensate for gauge. A couple of posters at knitty kindly informed me of their experiences with this scarf, and it would seem that my problem is not an unusual one with this pattern - which is good to know, because I was wondering if it was the pattern, or me.

When I have been knitting, I've been trying to catch up on episodes of podcasts about knitting, provided my son is taking a nap and my husband is otherwise occupied (yeah, I'm rapidly metamorphosing into a real knitting nerd). The big three I've been enjoying: KnitCast, Cast-On, and the new-but-promising Knitting News Cast - can also be found in iTunes by searching with the keyword "knitting." A highlight of the most recent Knitting News Cast was a news story about knit graffiti. A couple of knitters - tagger names AKrylik and PolyCotN- in Montrose (Texas?) have been taking their UFOs and tagging with them by randoming attaching them to trees, cars, shop doors, etc.; or by leaving them as coasters in bars. See news story from the Houston Press here and the Knitta's blog here. Hilarious.

Be warned - this last bit of VENTING is wholly unrelated to knitting. My neighbor, who has until now been a decent guy, shot my dog, Jake, in the butt with a BB gun on Friday! You know, the adorable dog with the bow on his head in my Dec. 28th post. He claims that Jake went into his yard and chased his wife into his house with the intent to attack her, and that his dogs then got into it with Jake, so he shot him to break up the fight. There are several things that aren't adding up here, however: like, he claims that this is not the first time our allegedly vicious dog has done this. Well, why is it the first time we're hearing about it, then? If one of his dogs came into our yard and acted aggressively toward one of us, you'd better believe we'd be ringing him up or standing on his doorstep THE FIRST TIME IT HAPPENED. Not after it had happened so many times that we'd gotten fed up and decided to shoot. Or, if talking wasn't an option, there are entities like the police and animal control that he could have called, before the situation got to the point that he felt the need to take matters into his own hands.

Also? Interesting that he's the only neighbor who has a problem with Jake. We spoke to several other neighbors on our street, all of whom said no, Jake has never acted in any way that could be construed as aggression. The one that Shooting Neighbor quoted as saying that he is afraid of Jake, said nothing of the sort to us - in fact, he said that Jake is a good dog and that he shouldn't be euthanized (which is what we were going to do if it turned out that Jake was indeed being aggressive), and he was dismayed to hear that Jake had been shot by this guy. Also Shooting Neighbor claimed to have seen Jake chase the mailman. My husband asked our mailman about this, and he said, no, that never happened - and that he'd remember if it had.

Admittedly, we have had recurring problems with trying to contain Jake in the yard, because once we're gone, he decides to go try and find us - or to try to chew his way into the house, which he succeeded in doing once around the 4th of July when some kids were illegally setting off fireworks... We've done hotwire, tying him up, crating him in the house, etc. etc. ad nauseam. We absolutely know it's our responsibility to keep that dog in the yard - but what irks us - p*sses us off, really - is that we can't know that there is a problem, again, unless we are told. We had no idea that when we let Jake out in the morning to "do business," he was taking the opportunity to visit the neighbors. Allegedly. Like I said, his story doesn't add up, so now we are mulling over the possibility that the neighbor has some other agenda - like, he's ticked at our dog for chasing the squirrels that HE won't stop feeding and that, to our perpetual annoyance, make their homes in OUR yard... So now, my husband has run hotwire on that side of the yard, which he'd not done before because Jake had never been interested in the neighbors until now; and we are looking at additional confinement options, AGAIN. Which is fine, if he's in their yard. But guess who has to pay the vet bill to get the BB removed? Not the neighbor. No, his job is just to shoot the dog first and then tell us there is a problem after the fact.

2006!

A very short post - just wanted to say Happy New Year! I hope it's a great year for everyone...