I need...

I should be rearranging the books in my shelves. I started - I'm moving all the less attractive or oversized books to the office, and prettying up the shelves in the livingroom. I've got stacks of books on the floors of both rooms. It's my spring break, and I am spring cleaning and rearranging. But, I guess I just need a break, because I'm suddenly feeling very unmotivated and finding blogs much more to my liking. I was perusing Rachel's blog to read past posts about her bee-yoo-ti-ful Reversible Rib Shawl (I've discovered that I love Rachel's blog, period, and will be adding a link to my sidebar), when I discovered her October 14, 2005, post, in which she googled her name + the word "needs" and reported what came up. Since I am still working on the you-know-what (or not working on it - such a busy week that I made NO progress) and have nothing to report, I thought I'd try it. What's a bit of frivolity in an already mostly frivolous blog, right? Here are my needs:

1. Vanessa needs to know about Italy.
2. Vanessa needs to be empowered to provide for herself and her children by having the kind of job that allows her to work from home [okay, that's just scary - because it's true. Well, maybe it's true for many other mommies, but I've been really feeling this lately! *edit* This was just wishful thinking and is financially impossible for us at this time, so please refrain from leaving ads for cosmetics sales rep opportunities and secret shopping in the comments - I'll just delete them, anyway. Thanks].
3. Vanessa needs your help deciding. [also kind of scary, because I'm very indecisive and usually can't resist asking for others' opinions]
4. Vanessa needs to obey God and not man, forget that John Prince Kee ever was in her life [ummmmmm.... who?]!
5. Vanessa needs the senator's spring schedules.
6. Vanessa needs guidance.
7. Vanessa needs to take some regular daytime courses [uhhh, NO. Been there, done that. For many years.].
8. Vanessa needs no introduction. She needs an explanation.
9. Vanessa needs to find another family in a country which will accept her as she is.
10. Vanessa says she just needs her son [why, yes. I do! along with my husband, of course].

IT Yarn

You know IT's out there. It's a Quest for the Holy Grail in the world of knitting. You've thought you had IT countless times, only to be eluded again and again. You are perfectly satisfied with what you've got, but then see something that you haven't got, that you suddenly want more than you thought possible, and thus, once again, IT is not safely waiting in your stash for the perfect pattern to transform it into what it yearns to be - but is still in the store, or in your web browser...or in your dreams. And you cannot rest until you buy IT. This is the explanation behind the Stash Explosion that so many of us suffer from: the search for IT forces us to buy more and more, always thinking that the next one will be IT. And sometimes it is IT, for a while. But it never lasts. Because the other one, that you thought was IT? You realize, with sudden clarity, that no, that one could never be IT. It's not (fill in the blank) pretty/soft/warm/heavy/drapey/thin/shiny/handpainted/thick/light/wooly/stripey/crisp/colorfast enough to be IT. How could you have ever thought it was?

But IT is purposely elusive. After all, if it wasn't, you would only ever buy one kind of yarn. The stash, without variety, would be dull. There would be no reason to look into it and revel in the colors, the textures... because it would all be the same. You could show visitors your stash by pulling out a single skein, and then perhaps listing the other colors it comes in. ITs elusiveness gives us an excuse for continuing to buy yarn. We can say to our significant others, "But I HAD to have this, because it is much more (fill in the blank) pretty/soft/warm/heavy/drapey/thin/shiny/handpainted/thick/light/wooly/stripey/crisp/colorfast than anything I have right now." "Oh," he or she will say, not really caring what IT has that the other three hundred skeins in your possession don't have, but instead wondering exactly how a stupid ball of yarn could cost (fill in the blank) $6/$10/$15/$30. Was it made from golden fleece?

As for myself, I have already discovered a lot of IT yarns in my months-old knitting career, and most of them are still lying languorously in my stash, waiting for me to say that it's their time. The latest? Fleece Artist Kasula, in the beautiful Mermaid colorway. It shimmers. It shines. The colors shift with the light. Pretty. I have no idea what I'll use it for. But who cares? For now, I've found IT.

Until I do some more online shopping tomorrow.

Have you seen me?

I'm the one with my foot wedged, it would seem perpetually, in my mouth. I have daily opportunities to put it there. I have grown accustomed to the taste of my shoe. It has become an easy fit. Like the man with marbles in his mouth, I've even learned to continue to speak clearly while it's in there, thus allowing myself to shove it in completely and sometimes even a bit down my throat.

Of course I won't tell you what I said, or to whom. Isn't it enough to know that I am the real-life, American Bridget Jones? No, no autographs, no pictures.

I only got five rows of the HP scarf done this afternoon, due to the necessary Mommy job. I will be thinking of ways to try to get myself to keep my mouth shut while I work on it tonight (if I don't fall asleep first). It's not that I'm particularly talkative; just that when I do talk, I make a point of saying something embarrassing that I can dwell on and feel really humiliated about later. Gives me something to do while knitting, right?

kpm

(no, not about Koigu!)

I'm still working on the HP scarf. I'll be nice and not call it any names today. I told my husband yesterday that if I could just work on it all weekend, I could probably finish it. He is so ready to see it done (as am I!) that he was fine with giving up on doing anything for two days besides watch our son while I knit; unfortunately, when this deal was struck, we forgot one important detail: we have lives. And so we spent our lives running errands yesterday, and I got about an hour and a half's worth of knitting completed. Just as I had cast the knitting behind me on the couch last night and was drifting off to sleep, I heard, "So, is my scarf done yet?" How he loves to razz me.

This morning, I decided to get some knitting time in while husband and son were both still asleep. Between eight and nine o'clock, I got exactly ten rows done. Ten. In an hour. No time wasted. That's it?? This got me to thinking about exactly why this scarf is taking me so long - I think of the finished size and the number of repeats, but what about the number of stitches? The time it takes to knit those stitches? As I continued to knit, I began doing calculations in my head (very easy to let my mind wander to just about anywhere with this project, and mind you, I'm no mathematician, so my mind was really wandering off the beaten path):

Number of stitches completed in an hour: 900
Number of stitches completed in six minutes: 90 = one row
Hours it takes to do each repeat: 3.75
Hours it will take to knit scarf from start to finish: 55.25
Hours it will take to finish knitting from where I am: 15
(These figures do not, of course, take into account additional time that will be spent on weaving in ends, making fringe, washing and blocking)

I also thought about my kpm (knits per minute) speed: 15 kpm. This, of course, is just knit stitches and no purling, and would vary depending on the project, the yarn, and the needles used - so there is no way for me to compare my speed to that of other knitters to see if I'm slow or average unless they were using the exact same needles, yarn, and pattern. It seemed like an interesting idea at the time, though - to try to calculate how long a project will actually take me depending on how much progress I can make in a minute or an hour. It also makes knitting seem incredibly slow. It also makes the notion that I could finish this this weekend entirely laughable. My husband said, "You could just stop after this last repeat and I'll just have a short scarf." Nice of him, but... a bit like a marathon runner in sight of the finish line suddenly deciding he'd rather quit and duck into the nearest pub.

Here's a few more interesting numbers regarding this scarf, done with the aid of a calculator (only simple math in my head, you see):
Number of stitches in each pattern repeat: 3,420
Number of stitches I have left: 13,680
Number of stitches in entire scarf: 50,310

On with the scarf!

I have determined, once again, to stick to only one project until I finish it: the HP / neverending / boring scarf. I'm just coming up to the 10th repeat, so that's what? about 70% done? Once I am finished, I think I'm going to have a knitting multiple personalities disorder and not be able to confine myself to one, five, or ten projects. I certainly have the yarn - oh. That's right, I didn't tell you.

You haven't seen my stash lately.

You should see it. I'll try and post pictures soon. I got a CUTE crate from Pottery Barn - on sale, two for $20! - to hold all of it, and the crate is a pretty good size. Doesn't matter, though - my stash is still overflowing with all the yarn I've bought for things I want to make but for which I've had no time. And there's yet more yarn on the way: Lady Godiva yarn by Handmaiden from Red Bird Knits, and a skein of Kasula from a Fleece Artist coop. I need to knit faster and / or quit shopping, because I really don't want to be one of those people who have more yarn than they can knit in their lifetime. Hell, I already have that many novels.

And now, excuse me while I whine about my personal life:
REASONS WHY THE LAST 36 HOURS HAVE SUCKED

1. I have random bouts of nausea, which are as yet unexplainable. My doctor hypothesizes that I may have ulcerations in my esophagus (or some such mumbo jumbo) or gall stones. I had an ultrasound and find out about the gall stones by Monday. No, I'm not pregnant - they checked.

2. My dog (the Mean, Vicious, Neighbor-Eater) is in the hospital with bloat and is lucky to be alive. Apparently his spleen squeezed up near his stomach, and this may have saved his life because it prevented his stomach from twisting further and cutting off circulation to his bowels. The next three days are critical, and he is still in danger. Our estimate is $1800 - $2500. He is SUCH a good dog, and he doesn't deserve all the pain that he's gone through lately - the BB in the butt, and now this.

3. A serious error in judgment at work today. You know, I don't even want to talk about it, but just want to put it out there that my day became even worse when I transformed into the Queen of Stupidshire. Others say it wasn't really my fault, but you know how you just keep beating yourself up about some things... and I am not sure that the administration will see it quite the same way as my friends do.

Something cute. Something scary.

Something super cute that I got in the mail this week (huge thanks to Knaughty Knitter in Tennessee for allowing me to buy their LAST ONE over the phone!): click
I am SO excited to have this. Toy sweetness!

Something that I heard about on a new podcast I was checking out, Mosh Knit, that kind of creeps me out: click
The houses are what I went to the site to look at, never expecting to see all the other freaky knitted stuff. WT? Somebody took knitting to the dark side, that's for sure. I think I'll stay in happy land with Jess's toys, thanks.