Monstrous scarves and Stash Reorganization

Life post-chocolate is good. Watching house, working on Ben’s scarf.

He had originally stated that he wanted a scarf about a foot wide. I laughed. This one is about eight and three quarters inches wide when relaxed. It’s pretty monstrous, as I documented this evening:

He saw the picture and said, “Maybe the second one should be half that size…” But I think everyone should have a scarf that’s absolutely monstrous. It’s a great replacement for outerwear. But, making a second one half that size would be a fantastic excuse to con him into buying me some addi turbo 12″ circular needles, which I’ve never tried. Follow my logic here:

-Striped scarves should NEVER be made flat, as this involves a ridiculous amount of weaving in of ends. It’s enough to make any sane knitter dive overboard, even if they’re not on a boat. In a tube, one *can* weave in the ends if one is stupid enough, *or* one can just carry them up the inside like a normal person and let them hang. No one will ever know. Plus, you get that nice flat stockinette look which is nice with stripes.

-A skinny striped scarf would therefore have to be made on either DPNs or a small circular needle. Now, before you get all righteous and tell me that of course I could make an entire scarf on DPNs, let me mention that I have done this thing, which I’m sure few knitters have. When I was poor and could afford few needles, I did *everything* on DPNs, including a couple tube scarves. But I really don’t want to revisit that time in my life. As I prefer metal needles, the obvious choice for non-DPN small-circumference circular knitting is the addis.

-I just love luxury tools for my craft. Don’t you? I think part of this obsession comes from the fact that this current scarf is on Susan Bates needles that I *hate* with the fire of 1000 suns. It’s making me dream dreams of lovely slick shiny pointy addi turbos at night.

I also cleaned my room (well, got a good dent in it at least. I found my floor and have clean sheets.) And I started the Great Stash Organization of 2008. This year, I’m going for a shape-driven organization, rather than a color or weight organization. Thus, WIPs will be in one place, skeined yarns in another, hanked yarns in another, and caked yarns in a fourth. The idea is that it’ll be space-efficient and the yarns will be less likely to tangle if they’re stacked neatly with their own kind. My dad gave me an awesome plastic bin, so I set to work on the cake bin and did a ton of rewinding of tangles and frog-worthy projects, resulting finally in this:

It’s a start. I’m contemplating all of my random leftover yarn and thinking I should start making squares for a picnic blanket. And make Ashley and Lily and Felicity make squares out of their leftovers too. And then recruit others. And then form a Society for Picnic Knitting. (and no, I will not replace the C’s in “picnic” with K’s. That’s just bad.)

All in all, not a bad day, at least yarn-wise.

And there’s a cool secret message hidden in the stripes in Ben’s scarf, and secret stripe patterns ALWAYS make me happy.

 

Accidental Gauge Competence

We all know about gauge accidents. But accidental gauge competence? Now there’s a creature you don’t see very often.

So, I made this raglan cardigan, up to the armholes, with a big and simple but elegant cable up the front: (grey tweed does not photograph that well, especially in bad light. I apologize.)

I turned off the flash, so we could all see the cable, and it made the color weird:

Anyways, so poor photography, but trust me, it’s lovely wool and a lovely sweater.

But it was about 4 inches too small. I got very, very angry with it. I hid it in a corner until I could decide what to do with the yarn, since I suspected enlarging it would involve running out of yarn.

And then I found it cleaning today, and remembered that since I hid it, I’d lost about 30 pounds. I stared at it, wondering…..

And it’s perfect. So I didn’t have a gauge accident. I’m just psychic.

 

Making myself crazy over nothing…

Like this is new.

One of my friends asked me to make him a “striped scarf” in brown and gray “because it would go well with his steampunk attire.”  Awesome.

Except how do you take a delicious aesthetic like steampunk, and then ask me to make stripes?  To be fair, I totally do think that a brown and gray striped scarf would be lovely with his vests, pocketwatches, and random futuristically Victorian gear.  And yet, you say “steampunk,” and I want to play with gears and clocks and chains and belts and and and…

Ya know?

My first concept was to use a trapped bar design, but to warp the stripes into chains/belts going around a small sprocket on one side of the scarf.  But at that size, it’s impossible to tell what the shape is supposed to be, especially since I’m only working in two colors, so the sprocket and chain are the same color.  It was a lovely idea.  AND, it would have allowed me to make a scarf that was worked circularly with NO color jog at the side, since the stripes wouldn’t actually be wrapping all the way around.  Brilliant.  Seriously brilliant.

But I’m staring at my swatch and I can’t really figure out a way to make it work without going down to about size 2 needles.  And is Jess going to finish a foot-wide six foot-long scarf on size 2 needles?  No, no she is not.  So that’s that.

My other two ideas are: Chart a bunch of sprockets and mechanical-looking things for the end of the scarf, then use stripes for the  middle four feet or so.

Abandon trying to wrap the stripe around the sprockets, and just have sprockets hanging out between the stripes.

Obsess over the swatch some more and make it flippin work!

 

Reasons Self-Striping Sock Yarns are Like Drugs

Disclaimer: I am not, by any means, endorsing the abuse of drugs and/or socks.

1) Effort involved is minimal. Ribbing and stockinette are pretty much your only options. There is, of course, the matter of obtaining the yarn, and then the preparation (casting on), but after that, you can pretty much just sit back and let whatever happens, happen. (The same is true of drugs– there is a process of obtaining and preparing, but once you’ve both obtained and imbibed them, there’s not much left to do.)

2) If you unwisely decide to make some effort to do something complicated, it probably will not work out. Trying to, say, incorporate a lace or cable pattern onto self-striping yarn is much like trying to execute a well-choreographed dance while wasted. It’s not pretty.

3) There’s a little bit of surprise every few minutes.

4) The cost is not prohibitive the first time, but if you let it get out of control, it can be bad.

5) I finished one self-striping sock last night, and am only a few rows into the cuff of the next, and I find myself thinking, “I wonder if I should go out and get another ball, just in case I run out today….”

Things have been kind of crazy for me. My attention span is at self-striping sock level, and I’m finding them immensely comforting.

 

Just thinkin…

I totally want to make this scarf, except I think I’d do rainbow skulls instead of white. Too intense?

And the thought for the day:
Things can’t possibly be that bad if you can make tea to match the sock in progress.

Hmm. Well, I think the green wall in the background kinda mucked things up, color wise. But really, this hibiscus tea looked amazing next to my kind of hibiscussy sock. It was quite pleasant and serendipitous=)

 

Been a while…

Blame the insanity. I’ve been trying to get this blanket done for my partner’s birthday, which is Sunday:

It’s only halfway done, so it’s going to be late. Though I plan to spend like all day tomorrow and Saturday working on it anyway. But it won’t be done. That would be a knitterly miracle of epic proportions, which I’ve accepted is just not happening.

I was working on it like an hour or two a day for a while. Then I got into the disgust phase, where I didn’t want to work on it, but couldn’t work on anything else either, because I felt too guilty. Now I’m in the bargaining phase, where I’m working on it a little bit, but also spending some time cheating with some sweet young things.

I cast on the bottom of a little spring cardigan for Sadie:

I spent a lot of time trying and tearing out things for this. I loved the yarn (Plymouth Wildflower DK 50 cotton/50 acrylic), and the purple just made me want to do lots of little girly things. It’s a majestic purple, and I wanted a sweater fit for The Princess.
But the complicated laces and ruffles that I kept trying out just went against my whole philosophy that kids clothes should be functional. So I’m going for something cutesy that doesn’t violate that. I started with a basic k2tog ruffle at the bottom, but I’m going to resist the urge to mirror it on the sleeves and go for functional ribbed cuffs instead. I decided on a lace, but a really simple ladder pattern that won’t be super distracting or look too… frou frou. I’m sort of anti-frou in general. So I like it. I haven’t really decided on how the construction is going to come together–I was thinking even a basic raglan with a small cable or eyelets for emphasis might work (then again, it could be too many lines). I’m gonna sketch it then go from there. I think I’m going to install a zipper closure, maybe with a cute beaded pull or something. The collar is totally blank right now–I sort of like the idea of a lacy hood, but I feel like that may not happen. So who knows?

However, finicky stitches on size four needles are not the *best* break from my stupidly huge project, so today I’ve started to listen to the cries of that skein of Malabrigo in Amoroso that just is dying to be a scarf. Since I already used some of this on another project (so yardage is iffy), and it seems to want to be a scarf now, I decided for a quick meshy crochet. I like this. Malabrigo washes out so soft, it’ll be all fluffy and light, a good transition scarf as we (hopefully) move into warmer days. The big open spaces at the bottom will be perfect for some fringey goodness as well. So yay.
(I apologize for the horrid photography. I’m tired.)

So I think I’m going to work on that instant gratification thing while watching a movie before work. I rented a documentary on Iraq war profiteers, so I think I’m going to give that a shot. Unless it’s too depressing, in which case I have the second season of Rome. ‘Cause crazy sick violence from a long time ago is entertainment, while the crazy sick violence of today is horrifying and awful.

That makes no sense. But it’s strangely true.

 

NunuYaya Pattern

So, I became obsessed with making these star-shaped washcloths a couple weeks ago, and thought I’d share the love. They really are fun to make, and unexpectedly, my two-year old cousin Sadie loves them as much as I do. She especially loves to put them on her head, and has apparently started voluntarily washing the walls with them (something she’s never done before). So there might be special wall-washing juju in them, and if you have a crayon-happy toddler or two in your life, whip up some NunuYayas for them!*

I’m sure that knitting stars isn’t exactly a revolutionary idea– it’s a pentagram and five triangles– but I’ve never come across a pattern, so I came up with this and decided to share it.

A note about the name– Sadie is just beginning to talk, and is smart enough to rename things that she can’t pronounce. As S’s are especially tough, she’s renamed herself “Nunu” and washcloth is “‘yaya.” NunuYaya.

 

NunuYaya

Requires: yarn and appropriate dpn—any gauge will work! This would even make a great baby blanket in a much larger version.

This version: Red Heart Crème de la Crème on size 6

Body of washcloth:

CO 1 stitch by tying a (loose) slipknot onto a dpn.

Row 1: Make 5 by knitting front and back twice, then front again.

Divide sort of evenly among 3 dpn (or cheat like I do and slide the 5 stitches down to the end like an I cord and then just knit them onto the 3 dpn in the next row. Less squirrelly.)

Row 2: (Kfb, pm, kfb) on first two needles, kfb on third needle.

Row 3: * K1, kfb * repeat around.

Row 4: *K 2, kfb * repeat around.

Continue as established, working one more stitch between the kfb’s and always increasing in the stitch before your marker and at the end of needles (yes, that’s redundant–deal with it).  At some point, you may want to switch to using 5 dpn instead of four–just make sure that you know where your increases go, whether you’re counting or marking.

Keep working until the center section of your yaya is the desired size. The number of stitches between each marker (we’ll call this number p) should be odd, but it can be any odd number. The yayas pictured increased to 19 stitches for each point.

Points:

Row 1: K p stitches (to first marker). Turn.

Row 2 (and all WS unless marked): K3, P to last 3, K3.

Row 3: K3, K2tog, K to last 5, ssk, K3

Repeat rows 2 and 3 until 9 stitches remain, ending with row 2.

Finishing off:

Row 1 (RS): K3, Sl 1, K2tog, psso, k3.

Row 2 and all remaining WS: K.

Row 3: K 2, sl 1, k2tog, psso, k2.

Row 5: K 1, sl 1, k2tog, psso, k1.

Row 7: Sl 1, k2tog, psso.

Fasten by pulling yarn through last stitch. Break yarn. (You might want to consider weaving in ends here. Just consider it.) Join and work point over next p stitches 4 more times. Tada!

*No guarantee of wall-washing is made by amoral fiber or affiliates, and neither this website nor its contributors will be held accountable for drawings that are not washed off walls.

 

the fashionable agree,

Tea cozies are out.  That is to say, almost all tea cozy patterns I can find are absolutely atrocious, style-wise.  And I wanted to make my parents a tea cozy for Chanukah, so I’m just going to have to start from scratch.

I’m all thrown out of whack because Ashley, whom, the fashionable agree, is in, made me such a fantastic tea cozy out of stone blue Malabrigo.  I just want to molest it all day, and I mistakenly think that’s the norm for tea cozies: not so.

The problem is, my parents just redid their kitchen, and their existing teapot emphatically does not match.  So the gift would be both teapot and tea cozy, and if I don’t give my mom the teapot right away, she might buy a new one before I get to give it to her.  Disaster, obviously.  For those of us who are normal, having two teapots is a fantastic state of being.  But for some reason I don’t understand, my parents are practical people and having two of something that they consider to be a utilitarian item bothers them a great deal.  So, the errand for today might be to find both a fantastic teapot that my parents cannot reject and give it to them as an early present (so that they can reject it if they must) and so I can start designing a tea cozy that the fashionable will agree is in– or at least, they will agree that it does not look like an overgrown hat or have an animal, fruit, or flower motif of any kind.

I just woke up, so please excuse any grammatical excesses.
PS– thought I might tell you what I’ve been up to or apologize profusely for being away so long?  Nah.  Not my style.  I periodically become hermit-like and reject the internet almost entirely for a while, and that’s just the way it is.  I’m back, so rejoice and keep your snide remarks to yourself, thank you=)  My ravelry handle is jae1213, btw.

 

I am so dumb sometimes

So, being unemployed has left me financially in a tad bit of a tight spot.  My parents lent me money to pay my last month’s rent, and Taylor’s been picking up things like food.  My parents also loaned me some cash, and I’ve been living pretty frugally, and basically haven’t used my debit card in a really long time.

In addition to this, two or three months ago, I thought I had lost my wallet.  I had my debit card in my pocket, but I called my bank to cancel my credit card (about five minutes before my gym called me to tell me that I had left my wallet at The Yarn Place).  My new credit card arrived, but I never use it, so it sat in an envelope on my desk.  About two weeks ago, I figured that with moving I may need the credit card for whatever unexpected expenses, so I activated it, cut up the old one, and put the new one in my wallet.  Again, let me emphasize that in living frugally, I hadn’t been using my card at all.

Last Thursday, I ran across the street to Rite Aid to buy hair dye (cause purple isn’t really an interviewing color) and forgot to grab a twenty from my desk.  I tried to use my debit card for the $10 charge and it was denied.  This is not good.  At this point, let me also explain that in my sophomore year I overdrafted my checking account by quite a bit–only 50 bucks or so in charges, but since they charged me a $20 fee for each and every charge that I had made (and they were small charges–coffee and whatnot), I was a couple hundred dollars in the red before I realized it.  Even though I had since switched banks, I suspected that for my debit card to actually be denied, it must be bad.  What had happened?  Had my rent been processed late and thrown me into the negative numbers?  I was freaked.

Taylor wrote me a check for a couple hundred dollars, which I planned to deposit Thursday Friday Saturday today.  (I’ve been busy, ok?)  I went down to the bank, terrified of what they might tell me, and gave them the check, then swiped the card.  It doesn’t ask me for my pin, which is strange.  The very nice man behind the counter looks at me and says, “Oh.  That’s your credit card.”  I think, “No, it’s not.  My credit card is silver.  This one is blue.”  Then slowly, the memory of cutting up the old credit card a couple weeks ago surfaces.  Was it possible that my debit card had been in the credit slot of my wallet and the credit card was (and still is) in the debit card slot?  That I had cut my totally usable debit card into little, tiny pieces and put it in the trash two weeks ago?  I thought so.  I explained my stupidity to the man, who kindly agreed to send me a new debit card, and used the new credit card to pull up my accounts so he could deposit the check.  At this point, it occurs to me to ask, “Wait.  How much money is in my checking account?”

“320 dollars.”

“Oh.  Can I have that check back and withdraw $40?”

 

most stressful day ever

So, I hit really awful traffic on Thursday going from Santa Cruz to Sacramento, on top of which I realized I had *nothing* to wear to an interview situation, so I had to stop twice–once at the mall and once at Target.  At the mall, it took me about an hour and I found one skirt that sort of worked, and had to pay an ungodly (at least, ungodly when one has no money) $48 for it.  Still without a top (and really without shoes, although I suspected I had some knee-high boots somewhere in the stuff I’d already moved to Sac–which would be ridiculous for Sacramento August), I stopped at Target outside of Sac.  It was 9 pm at this point, and I was still 45 minutes from my parents’ house.  Here, the gods were with me, and I found a skirt, top, shoes, AND the razors I would need to shave my legs for a grand total of $52 dollars.  I love Target!  I still have to return the mall skirt though.  Le sigh.

I got into my parents house around ten, had dinner and talked, and wasn’t really ready for bed until about midnight, at which point I discovered that between being keyed up and my incredible difficulty sleeping in unfamiliar places, I couldn’t sleep.  I dozed from about 1:30 to about 5:30, a far cry from the 9 hours solid I usually need.  At the very least, I thought, I couldn’t possibly be late for my 8:30 interview!  I left Granite Bay about 7 am, and the gods were with me again–there was no traffic, and I breezed into downtown at 7:35.  Score!  In my unfamiliarity with downtown, it took a few runs around the block to park in the correct lot, which I did at 7:48.  I knew I had the right library building, and I figured that maybe there was a separate area for administration, so I circled the building a few times.  The library itself wouldn’t open until 10 AM.  There was an office building open, but that had the wrong address on it.  At 8 am, I called the contact number that I had from an email they had sent me and left a voicemail saying that I needed to confirm the location.  I had a coffee and croissant  nextdoor, and circled the building a few more times.  I called my dad and had him double-check the info on the Sac Library website.  Yes, I was in the right place.  So why couldn’t I find the door?  I amused several homeless people by repeatedly trying every door in the building, to no avail.  It’s 8:15.  I’m beginning to panic.  Am I supposed to wait at the front, and someone will come and get me?  I try the phone number I have again.  No answer.  Do I have the wrong date and I drove all the way to Sac and bought $50 of decent clothing for nothing?  More circling and panicking.

Finally, I approach a door in the alley behind the library that says “Shipping and Receiving” in huge letters on it, thinking maybe they’re there earlier than the rest of the staff, and someone can take pity on me and figure out where I need to go.  Lo and behold, to the right of the door, there’s a tiny doorbell that says, “Visitors Ring Here,” and when I enter, there’s a guy with my name on a list and a nametag for me who tells me where to go.  I anxiously wait at the elevator, looking at my phone.  8:33.  I’m officially late.  By the time I find the correct office, it’s 8:39.  I am 9 minutes late to an interview that I arrived 42 minutes early for.  This is not happening.

Of course, although the HR receptionist was super sympathetic to my tale of woe, they had already given my spot in the morning group to someone who arrived early, so they have to reschedule me for 1 pm.  My parents’ house is 45 minutes away, so I’m not going home and coming back, so I have to hang out for a while.  I should also mention at this point that I gave myself a giant blister on my left toe circling the building in my new shoes, so I limp to RiteAid for socks and bandaids.  Then I…hang out.   Once the library opened, I returned there.  This was the highlight of my day.  I grabbed Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s Knitting Rules! and a desk by the window and propped open the book and knit and read (and tried not to laugh too hard).

I won’t bore you with the actual test/interview process, which could have been worse.  The test was easier than I had expected, while the panel was harder.  I don’t interview as well as I should, and I think I’ve figured out why.  I’m an incredibly honest and straightforward person, and interview questions tend to be kind of backwards and sideways, to try and sort of trick or surprise you into telling the truth.  I do well on the straightforward questions: “Why do you want to work here?” or “Tell us about a time you worked on a team.”  But I totally flub the backwards ones, like asking about how things effect me– when I got good customer service or how it effects me when someone on my work team is late.  Why not just ask me what kind of customer service I give, or whether or not I’m usually late– I’m happy to tell you what my general philosophies are, and what things I have an issue with, and that I’m generally punctual or early, but have been caught in traffic once or twice in my professional career, and if I’m caught in traffic, I’ve tried to call at least 15 minutes before my shift to tell them that I’m on my way and will be there x minutes late.  I’m always stupidly honest in interviews.

I know there are all sorts of reasons why they ask the kind of questions they do, but it certainly throws me off.  In any case, I finished around 3:30, and the traffic gods were with me again and I got home to Santa Cruz around 6:15 (blasting Tool and MSI helped keep me awake for the second half of the drive).  Tay got me fast food (I’m delirious at this point).  I then took Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith into the bedroom, where I read about 5 pages before I passed out completely and didn’t wake up until the phone rang this morning.  A wrong number at 7:30 AM– screw you, phone gods!

A comforting thought for your next interview:  “I don’t know how I’d answer half the questions I ask!”  ~My mother, who’s been running HR departments for years.

What’s your personal motto?