OMFG! Pictures!

While up in BC this past weekend, Angela gave me a little bump of wool in various shades of green and blue and rust(?)*, which as I’m pretty sure I mentioned at some point below, I spun up on Sunday morning. Last night and this afternoon I took a bunch of pictures of it. NONE of which really show what it actually looks like. (*I’m red/green colorblind, so, really, wtf do I know about it?). This one:

I think is the closest. I could be wrong. See above. The others… not quite. See? and see? and again with the not quite. And yes, totally wrong. Meh. Whatever. It’s green. With some other pretty colors in it. And it’s soft. And nice. And no, I haven’t measured it yet, so I don’t know how much I ended up with when all was said and done.

Moving right along.

Disastah! Terrah!
I’ve been working on a SUPER SECRET PROJECT (and, oh bugger, here I go showing a bunch of pictures of it… sheesh), and was cruising along until I got to the 11th damn pattern repeat. At which point it all went to crap. THREE TIMES. I had to completely reknit repeat 11 twice (I forget why now. short attention span, I know), and was 5 or 6 rows into repeat 12 when I noticed: BIG GODDAMNED HOLE. Not only was it a BGDH, mind you, but it was (insert much profanity here) many, many rows BELOW the last lifeline. What’s a girl to do? Each row is…. um… lots of stitches at this point. 5+155+37+155+5. That many. No way no how was I going to rip it ALL back and redo that many stitches and rows and omg it’s garter stitch and please make it stop. But oh ho! I am crafty!

Check it out, yo:
First things first: Gather your supplies.

Here we have: the offending piece of knitting (the pink blob), the pattern, a good magnifying lamp, needles, scissors, and yummy Canadian microbrew (and, apparently, a can of highly flammable spray-stuff in the background, just in case…). Wait! Where is the chocolate?! Crap. Oh well. Soldiering on.

Then! Um. I forget what comes next so Unicorns! Unicorns make everything better.

Ok, ok. Moving right along with the repair project.
I guess now is the time to really look at what we’re up against:

And then? What then?
Rip it! Rip it good! (just make sure you’ve put a lifeline in at the bottom of the section you are gonna fix.

Then you just pick up the stitches along the lifeline and go to town. Really.

Here we have, I think, 4 rows reknit.

And here we have 8 rows reknit, with only 13 to go. But I was tired, and I started making mistakes which had to be unknit and reknit and… decided to stop for the night.

There you have it. Updates! Photos! And yeah, I’ll post another picture when I get the reknitting of the lace section finished.

Edit: In response to Angela’s question in the comments, here’s how I did the green spinning:
I weighed the whole thing, and then just divvied it up into three roughly equal piles without regard to color. Then I split each sliver up into three or four lengthwise pieces, laid them on my left knee, and just grabbed them randomly as I spun. From that I got three bobbins full, which I then plied. I probably should have done it as a two-ply instead of a three-ply, but I really liked the way it came out as a three-ply.

And… I finished the repair on the lace last night. I still have to go through and even out the stitches in a couple of places in that section, but I figure that can wait until I block it (if any of you know different, PLEASE tell me now!). Pictures to follow, probably over the weekend.

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But I have an excuse! Several, really. All prepared and ready! And a note! Ok, well, maybe I don’t have the note, but the excuses? Yeah, I got those in spades, baby.

First up, I’b behd sibk. By hebd? Fulla snobt. And I know how much y’all love it when I share with you, but I ain’t sharin’ snot. It’s mine, and you can’t have it.

Then there’s work, which as been kee-razy! Nuff said on that.

And then… Everything on my damn needles at the moment, save for one pair of socks, is for other folks for xmas. So I can’t share! Ooh! And I found THE coolest thing EVER and got several of them for some of my knitterly friends (Kim and Mel and Angela among others…).

So, although I’ve been busy, busy, busy, and knitting up a storm, y’all are just going to have to wait and see. So there.

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If you’ve looked at the gallery any time in the last two weeks or so, you will have noticed that it was all kind of broken…

My (omg beyond wonderful) web host sent out a message a couple of weeks ago, asking us all to upgrade any scripts we have running on the servers to whatever the latest version is. My happy little photo gallery was the only script I had running, so I dutifully followed all the instructions to upgrade, and…. it ate itself. Even the owner of the hosting company was perplexed at why and HOW it had done what it did, and neither of us could fix it. We tried. Then I tried just totally wiping it out, deleting the database, and starting totally from scratch. That didn’t work either. NO clue as to why Gallery continued to mangle the paths to everything, but it did, so Gallery is now gone.

I ended up having to switch software, and ended up with Coppermine, which seems to work, but takes an enormous amount of tweaking to get stripped down enough to be something I’m willing to deal with (’cos, really, I don’t give a flying fuck which pictures are ‘most popular’. Really. I don’t. Makes no damn difference to me.)

Most of the photos are back up at any rate, at this point, and I’ll keep tweaking until I get it the way I actually like it, and there it will be. And no, there’s not a damn thing in there that’s new. That will come later this week when I will have pictures of Shoal Waters (which I finished yesterday), and two lone socks, both of which (I swear) will have mates soon. Soon, I tellya, soon!

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Yesterday I had a Me Day. It involved a)not getting out of my jammies until it was time to go back to bed, b)a hell of a lot of sitting-on-my-ass, c)11 episodes of Homicide: Life on the Streets (the end of season 4 and the beginning of season 5 to be specific), d)the first baked acorn squash of the season (for me anyway. fresh from the garden.)(and OMG I had totally forgotten how yummy that is*), e)hot kettle corn from the Whirley Pop, and f)bubbles in my tub. Through most of that I knit the second sleeve of Shoal Waters. For whatever reason that sleeve felt like it took forever, and not just the whole day. Alas. This morning I picked up the majority of the roughly 450 stitches all the way around the front for the button bands and trim, so, with any luck I’ll be able to finish it off tonight. And then comes…. buttons. I will be getting ‘real’ buttons for it when I go to Vancouver in November, but in the mean time I’ll have to find some temps. Have I mentioned how much I hate shopping for buttons? Maybe I’ll just go back to the quilt store and the vat of vintage buttons and pick three random ones. Probably save myself a LOT of grief that way…

* Remember when you were a kid and your mom used to have this obsession with baked squash during the fall and you thought licking the cat’s ass might be preferable to ever putting another forkful of baked squash in your mouth? And your mom totally didn’t get why you did not feel the love that was baked squash? Um… yeah. So now I’m all growed up and… um… my daughter loathes baked squash more even than the green vegetables and brushing her hair, and… um…. I TOTALLY DON’T GET IT. And no. I have no clue when the baked squash suddenly became not just palatable to me, but downright OMG wonderful, but it did (it was probably the first time CritterBoy made it for me). The Booger doesn’t believe me when I tell her it will happen to her too, and that suddenly one day that’s all she’s going to want to eat forever. Ha!

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Let me just say that Really Bad Things happen to Elsebeth Lavold’s Silky Wool when you accidentally run it through the washer with a load of socks and jeans on the heavy duty cycle. Really Bad Things.

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So, here I am on Saturday morning, sitting in front of the computer (typical, really), wrapped up in the PFS. And, really, it’s doing a stellar job of keeping the chill off. And it is damn chilly in here, ‘cos, well, fall is definitely upon us. It’s POURING down rain, the sky is grey, the trees are all kinds of colors. But dood! I’m actually wearing this big lacy thing that I made with my own two hands! And… and… and… it’s really cool. Lace is magical.

And yesterday, I done picked m’self up a copy of Knitting Vintage Socks. Not that I don’t have a ton of sock knitting books downstairs already, but I needed another one. Just one more. It’s totally sock knittin’ weather out there, and I have every intention of getting started on a new pair of socks at some point this weekend.

And… What else? Oooh! Shoal Waters is coming right along. The fronts are done, and the back is more than half way there, so I should be casting the sleeves on this weekend at some point. Guess I should start looking for buttons soon, no?

Last but not least, in my totally random stream of consciousness post this morning - we went and saw Serenity last night. Well worth the year+ wait for it. And OMG. That thing? I TOTALLY didn’t see that one coming. And the people in the theater? Worth the price of admission alone. There were lots of Blue Sun t’s (Critter Boy’s was in the laundry), several Jayne hats (Critter Boy among them - a gift last night from his cousin), and more than a few guys dressed as Captain Tight-Pants, and some girl dressed up as Zoe (but not quite carrying it off). If there were any guys in dark suits and blue latex gloves I missed them (sadly, ‘cos that woulda rocked), but I love it when the people take the movie stuff this seriously. It makes me smile, and this week? I needed that.

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First and foremost, Barb had her baby this weekend! Yay baby! It was definitely an E Ticket Ride, but both mom and baby are doing great. And OMG he’s cute. And his papa? So proud he’s glowin’ like Three Mile Island. Go see! It’s (obviously) the one at the top of the list.

I finally found the cable to the camera, so today, my dearies, you get photoz! Do try to contain yourselves, mkay?

First up, just for the cute factor the new office pup (wiggly as all getout, and standing on my office mate’s desk. shhh! Don’t tell him!). Our office is chock full ‘o dogs. Big dogs, little dogs, all kinds of dogs. This one belongs to one of the accounting folk, and is generally here on Fridays.

Then we have BFM (big frackin’ mistake) #2. I was toolin’ right along on Shoal Waters and looked down and saw this:

Doh! Proof that I’m blonde and can’t count. Even the basics like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…

So I dropped those two columns back and fixed it and reknit those 16 stitches back up, and now it looks like this:

The color on that totally isn’t representing the way it looks in person, btw.

And then, the finished PFS with BFM #1:

Which looks all kinds of not straight on the bottom edges, but it is, it’s just that the board it was laying on wasn’t even remotely flat when the picture was taken… And

The green arrow shows the broken bit, and the pink arrow shows where the run got to before I stuck a pin in it and stopped it (the yellow and white pins there are keeping it from totally unravelling). If you have any helpful hints on how to fix this, please throw them my direction!

There’s a bunch of other stuff happening in my world at the moment, none of which I’m going to go into, but suffice it to say there’s a great deal of stress and upset and fear and anger, so if my posting continues to be erratic, don’t be surprised.

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Next up!

Next up, now that the PFS is finally out of the way, are the following things:

Shoal Waters from Needle Beetle (in what used to be some of the ugliest yarn ever - some Filatura di Crossa 501 in the most icky shade of light, sickly aqua. It had a close encounter with the dye pot, and is now a very yummy dark blue/purple/blackish kind of color with subtle variations). Brenda rocks. This pattern rocks. I have to admit I started having an affair with it between charts 6 and 7 of the PFS, but it was only that one time! I swear! Now we can be together in public and live happily ever after. The end.

And Leaves in Relief from Knitty. Oooh! Hey! Speaking of Knitty…. Go check this out: Evil Plot #147, which is actually a brilliant idea. Support Team Knitty in the Canadian Breast Cancer Walk by donating a buck for every Knitty pattern you’ve knit. Anywaaaayyyy…. Leaves in Relief. Not 100% positive on the yarn selection yet, but I’m kind of leaning towards… now that I look at my inventory, I’m obviously leaning towards buying some yarn for it, because I have nothing in that weight other than some really yummy alpaca from Great Adirondack that totally wouldn’t work. So. Whatever. I’m gonna make that very very soon.

And the Oregon shawl from K1C2. In Shadow from Knitpicks.

And some more socks. Ooh! And the new pattern from Girl From Auntie. And and and. It’s SO time for me to have 8 or 9 or 15 things going at the same time again. I’ve missed that.

There you have it. Your morning should be complete, now that you know what all I’ve got coming up. I knew you were having trouble getting going without that.

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See? See the lovely picture of the finished shawl? No? That’s ‘cos I’ve lost the damn cable to the camera and can’t upload it. Welcome to my life in a nutshell.

The Peacock Feathers shawl is, however, really and truly, finally finished. Except for that one leeeeeeeetle issue… As I was blocking the hell right out of it last night a stitch broke. Thankfully that stitch was a) right by the edge and b) way up on one of the corners and c)caught before too much unravelling had occurred. I *think* I can spit-splice a new piece in there and redo the damaged place with a teeny little crochet hook. I think. Maybe not. I could be smokin’ that cheap Canadian crack again on this, but I’m pretty sure I can do it. Lord knows I don’t want to try to figure out how to pick up 495 stitches and fix it the real way. I’m pretty sure that would land me in the nuthatch for sure, so this will have to do. It’s a tiny, tiny place, as you’ll see as soon as I find that damn cable…

… which may well not be until tomorrow, mind you, ‘cos I have WAY too much to do today, including going to the hospital to visit a good friend who had a frackin’ heart attack night before last. You’d think my friends would be too young for that kind of thing, but apparently not - he just turned 50 a couple of months ago, but still, that’s 22 years younger than my dad, so the fact that he had a heart attack is freakin’ me the hell out. I’m sure it’s totally and completely freakin’ his wife and kids out too, along with everyone else in the union who knows him. He’s a Good Egg, that Kevin is. Keep a good thought or say a prayer for him and his family, wontcha?

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Oy Frieda!

So here I am, all chugging along on The Last Frackin’ Row of the PFS, and what happens? Yeah, I drop two stitches. And the little bastards run all the way back to the last lifeline. Which is 8 rows back. Being that there were 2 moves of the stitch marker that this happened right next to, and everything in those last few rows involved either yarn-overs or decreases, I was, in the truest sense of the word, fucked. Sigh. I am a pebble, I am calm, the river rushes by me, but I am calm. Calm, I tell you, CALM! Fuck. Fuckity fuck. Hooray! I had so much fun knitting those rows the first damn time, I just had to do it again. goddammit.

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That’s the number of rows I have left to go on the Peacock Feathers shawl. And it’s the number of days I’ve been sick. And… no, guess it’s just those two things.

Just three and a half rows to go and that shawl will be DONE! Fini! The end is so close I can practically taste it. I want to go sit in my car and finish it, but, alas, that’d prolly get my lazy ass fired, which would be a Bad Thing.

And, in the useless trivia column, we have this little tidbit:

skein (skayn) noun

1. A length of yarn wound around a reel.

2. A flock of geese, ducks, or other similar birds in flight.

3. Something suggesting complex twists and tangles.

Who knew? I do love that word of the day list.

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I survived the weeks of too much work, too little sleep, almost no knitting, a baby shower, and a wedding in NYC. Y’all have NO idea how glad I was to get home and not have anything else looming on the horizon.

I accomplished fuck all nothing in the way of knitting while in NYC. Not one damn stitch all weekend. I was too heavily sedated on the flight out there to knit, and too freaked out on the flight back to really do more than one row, so the Peacock Feathers shawl is still not finished. I have 14 rows of chart 7 to go, and all of the edging chart(s). Each row is taking about 6 months at this point, or so it seems. And now I’m totally jonesing to be making sweaters instead… Alas. Good thing I’m all over the whole having multiple projects going thing, no?

I’ll write out the NYC trip at some point in detail probably, but the short version:
Thursday: arrived late, slept well
Friday: wandered around midtown, went to the wedding, drank heavily, dropped the moms off at the hotel, drank more, slept well
Saturday: oh god it hurts, cajun breakfest, 3-hour boat tour, dinner in Little Italy, loooooong walk back to Times Square with omgwtfbbqfishstix dessert on the way back, slept well
Sunday: OMG Brasilian fest!, wandered more, beer garden in Queens, subway back to hotel, slept well
Monday: Food? where’s the food? Packed, scary taxi ride to airport, loooooong drive to the house, ahhh home!, slept like a freakin’ log.
The End.

Note the total lack of yarn store action…

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Peacock Feathers is kickin’ my butt at the moment. Not the complexity, ‘cos, really, it’s not that bad. But the slow factor. I’ve hit that point in the process (half way through chart 7) where the end is in sight, but my god, each row takes at least half an hour. I’m really really really hoping to have this thing done before I leave for New York on Thursday. The thought of trying to find enough empty floor space in a NYC hotel room to block it is… um…. not so pretty.

If I didn’t have a baby shower to cook for and go to tomorrow, I’d totally spend the entire weekend in my jammies watching old episodes of Hommicide: Life On The Streets and Spooks. But, alas, not an option.

Who needs to sleep, right?

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(yeah, yeah, gratuitous bathroom mirror self portrait, I know)
It only took me how long? Multiple months.
Had to laugh, though, when I tried it on tonight. Critter Boy took one look, giggled, and said “yeah, those are huge”. He, um… likes it.

In other news:
Go check out Booga’s site. Do the world a favor and buy a pattern (or two or ten) from her and send a nasty note to Belle Armoire about their blatant and admitted copyright violation. And don’t ever buy another copy of BA. People that so callously violate copyrights don’t deserve to be supported.

(An interesting thought about crappy treatment - the prevailing thought seems to be that folks who work mostly online are somehow less deserving of respect and are also less of a threat. I’ve heard it countless times, but can’t imagine how that idea still has such a foothold. If you treat someone crappily in person, be it a customer or a copyright holder or whatever, chances are they might tell a few people. But piss off a blogger? Good lord, that’s asking for damage. People from all over the world are going to read about it, and post about it on their own sites, and so on and so on and so on until a measurable amount of business has been lost. Dumb, dumb, dumb.)

And, in further news of people treating each other badly, I was the recipient of some quality road rage this afternoon. While waiting at the ferry tollbooth for my credit card to be processed (I was buying a book of commuter tickets, so all you ferry commuters can getcher panties outta yer cracks now - I’m not one of *those* people), some guy on a bicycle pulls up behind me. He apparently thought I was ‘chit chatting’ with the tollbooth chickie, and got pissy about it. The ferry was due to leave in TWENTY FIVE minutes. It’s not like there was a)any hurry, or b)a line. Not that there was any chit chatting going on anyway. So he starts bashing the back of my car with his bike. And then proceeds to start yelling about it with the “what the hell is going on up there???” crap, and then, get this, he SPITS on the back of my car and rides around flashing what was presumably his bike pass at the ticket taker.

Now, I’m not one to sit back and take this kind of shit offa anyone, especially some asshat in logo’d up lycra. And, really, if you’re going to be an ass, a closed off ferry dock covered with state troopers isn’t the place to do it. Damn those boys are nice.

I talked to one of the troopers, he looked at the back of my car and confirmed the spit, and went and had a chat with the guy. Came back a little bit later with the guy’s name, address, phone number, drivers license number, and date of birth. Just in case I wanted to follow it all up with a call and a claim to the guy’s insurance company. Woo!

Best part of the whole thing? Dude was SIXTY. I kid you not. And he’s damn lucky I didn’t throw it into reverse and back over his uppity old ass.

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Have you ever had one of *those* projects? You know the ones. You love the pattern, you love the yarn, you love it as you’re knitting it, as you’re seaming it, as you’re blocking it, and as you pull it on over your head? And then… 15 minutes later you learn to hate everything about it. Passionately. Bugger all. I had one of those last week.

The project was the Sunburst Pullover from the Summer 2002 Interweave Knits. I made it with Blue Sky’s Organic Cotton. The pattern was all kinds of fun to knit. The yarn? Divine. Yummy even. The finished sweater? Cute as hell until I wore it for 15 minutes. Then the inherent satan in it took over and it committed messy hara kiri before my eyes. The hem rolled in weird ways. The sleeves got shorter by the minute, until they were no longer the wonderful fingertip length that I love, but some god-awful chunky just-below-the-elbows nightmare. Other than that it was ok, but ferfuxake the ever shortening sleeves and the flippy hem action made me crazy. Alas. I’m pissed off at it, and am going to rip it right the hell apart and make a baby blanket out of it. So there. I’ll show *that* damn sweater. Ha!

In other news… uh… hmmm… Oh!
The Rogue for the booger? Yeah, in the, what, three weeks since she’s been down here (! yes! three whole weeks! it has been beyond freakin’ great), she has managed to grow. So it’s too short now. Alas. I’ll get some more yarn and make her a new one, bigger and thicker for winter.

Um, what else? Ooooh, there was the ugly yarn. Which isn’t quite so ugly any more. It’s not wearable yet, but at least I don’t cringe when I see the ugliness of it’s color anymore. (It was, btw, not something I originally dyed, it came to me in a trade and while it looked lovely in the photos, in real life it was the most sickly shade of aqua imaginable. It is now a VERY nice, saturated cobalt blue, which will, in due time, become a wonderful, saturated, dark greyish cobalt, which I will cheerfully wear. Huzzah!)

And pickles! I made dill pickles yesterday. 7 quarts of plain kosher dills (which ain’t kosher in any way, shape, or form), and two jars of spicy garlic dills for Critter Boy. Mmmm, and some raspberry/strawberry jam. It’s yummy. I’ll let y’all know how the pickles turn out when a) they’re done pickling and b) I can get someone to taste them. I hate dill pickles, but Critter Boy likes them, as do most of my friends, so I’m sure that six weeks from now we’ll have a verdict.

Beyond that there hasn’t been much to report. I did finish a super cute round lacy washcloth from the new new pattern from Fiber Trends. Fun pattern, that. And I’m almost ALMOST finished with the Lavold tank that I started a majillion years ago. Might even wear it tomorrow. We shall see.

I’ll try to bust out with the camera and actually post some pictures of some stuff tonight. That’d be nice, no?

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