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January 31, 2007
the rage and the cranky ... and did i mention the rage?
Have I mentioned the new gal upstairs? As neighbors go, she is pretty alright--mostly because she is hardly ever home. Unfortunately, when she is home, she is very noisy and quite possibly DRUNK. Also, she bathes a lot. For example, let's look at last Friday. She got up in the morning, about an hour after me, and hit the shower. I assume she left for work shortly after I did. When I arrived home from work, she was in the shower again, and left the house shortly thereafter. I had a lovely evening which included beers with my Pops (discussing some very exciting upcoming stuff that I hope I get to share!), a bit of knitting on the sofa after dinner, and an early bedtime.
At 5:28 a.m. the new upstairs neighbor, let's call her Drunk Girl, got home. She wasn't up for long, but she sure clomped around (and ran the noisy shower ) long enough to wake me up. So there it is, Saturday morning, and I'm up at 5:30. While I got a bunch of stuff done, I would have enjoyed snoozing for another hour or so. Let's move on to last night. I was crazily knitting on my silly Chullo that I want to wear skiing this weekend, and didn't notice my bedtime had come and gone until the door upstairs slammed shut and someone started weaving around my ceiling. I (inside my head) thanked her for reminding me it was bedtime, brushed my toofies, and cuddled under the covers. I was just about to snooze off when some truly awful dude-with-guitar of the hipster/singer/songwriter variety turned on, with quite possibly one of those little subs that go with decent computer speakers set directly above my head.
I don't bemoan anyone listening to a little music while working on the computer in your home office. But if it is nearly midnight on a weeknight and your home office happens to be directly above someone's bedroom, maybe keeping the volume WAY down or investing in some headphones might be a good plan. I laid there with an extra pillow over my head for about 30 minutes before grabbing the broom from the other room and pounding on the ceiling. The music immediately turned off, but man, I don't want to be That Neighbor. I don't want to be the biddy pounding on the ceiling with the broom handle. Respect your neighbors, Drunk Girl Upstairs. Seriously. When you woke me up at 5:30 in the morning, I didn't turn on my music which I am guessing is directly below your bed. Well, at least I waited until 9 before turning the music on quietly. Nice, huh?
Anyway, I am having one of those preturnaturally cranky days with reduced coping skills, primarily because I am TIRED and didn't get my morning exercise in because I was awake much too late last night and missed the bus this morning. Or maybe it isn't unreasonable to be having a RAGE BLACKOUT over the fact that my work database is saying I (the primary administrator) don't have priviledges to access the system. I think it's time for lunch. And a long-ass nap, but that won't be happening.
Posted by amy at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: bedtime, crankypants, Drunk Girl, neighbors, sleep
January 27, 2007
Six Steps to Living Happily Ever After
Over the last few years I've been making this funny joke about how I am working Step One--as in "Step One, Get Date". While the joke was definitely funnier the first thousand times I said it, I really think a series of steps is a good way to approach things. Have I ever mentioned how much I adore a good list? And steps are basically a list of instructions! Anyway, I've been thinking about this recently and decided that if I'm going to keep making my Step One joke, I should also maybe be putting it into practice--attempting to move on to Step Two. Grand plan there Amy, but what is Step Two? How many steps are there? What are you after here? After much thinking on the subject I have come up with Amy's Six Steps to Living Happily Ever After. In 1/2 as many steps as a recommended to give up an addiction, you too can fight over who's turn it is to take out the trash!
Step One: Get Date.
I'm really single, but I've been working this one for years. Misleadingly simple, while working this step you meet a possible object of your affection and plan a social outing. At the end of this outing, you may decide to schedule another outing, or you may realize you would rather gouge out your eyeball with a rusty fork than ever spend another second with this person. Unfortunately, the latter seems to be more common. Keep trying. Statistically, if you work Step One long enough, you've GOT to find someone worth taking to Step Two--at least this is what I keep telling myself. I've been single a long, long time.
Step Two: Get Boyfriend (or, I suppose, Girlfriend).
You've been out on a few dates and you haven't scared each other off with your loud chewing, horrible taste in footwear, coming on way too strong, or whatever other reasons people have for wanting to gouge out eyeballs with a rusty fork at the end of the first few dates. Now you have made it to the point where you are both thinking maybe you want to stop the Step One cycle and test the current of just one person. It's not super serious, but you are dating exclusively. I hope to get here again someday.
Step Three: Get Serious.
Here is where you do things like meet each other's families, start bandying about with the "L" word, and probably irritating your friends with your goo-goo eyes and dreamy smiles. Get a room, or ...
Step Four: Get a House.
You're serious about each other, you are in love, you still aren't sure that this is it forever, but you are spending all your time together anyway and somebody's apartment is sitting empty with some smelly leftovers in the fridge. Suck it up, merge those finances, and see if your shoe collection will fit in the same closet as his. Chances are high that this step will doom the project. You maybe on a superhighway back to Step One, but wouldn't you like to know about his inability to stick a dish in the dishwasher before you are legally bound together?
Step Five: Get a Ring.
Somebody proposes, somebody says yes, you both lose your minds (and your shirts) while trying to figure out how to get that carpet of yellow roses over the roof of the church.
Step Six: Get Married.
You made it, and you had a party to celebrate. Now get on with living happily ever after. Hopefully. It's hard work, they say, but so was all the rest of it. You've worked the steps. You're prepared.
There you have it. Anybody got any quirky, dorky, cute single friends of the male variety? Even though I made the list, I'm still stuck on Step One.
Posted by amy at 5:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: dating, lists, single, step one
January 24, 2007
i am NOT a cat person.
This week I've been having some telephone issues. Because I am me, just me, my primary phone is cellular (though since it doesn't work inside my house, I also have a Skype setup for use when I don't feel like standing in the front yard to make a call). On Monday I discovered that the cell would no longer connect to the network. There would be signal bars galore, but whenever I pressed the Send button a scary yellow exclamation point would tell me that Service was Unavailable. So yesterday after work I traipsed down to ye olde trusty Cingular store. The guy there was very helpful--apparently the phone ate my SIM card for lunch, and he hooked me up with a new one. Thanks! Unfortunately, while he was dinking with my phone, he noticed the pink French Kitty wallpaper and in an attempt to make conversation asked, "So, are you a cat person?".
Obviously, this freaked me out. While I know and love many normal and lovely people who enjoy an affinity for cats, the phrase "Cat Person" in my brain alludes to some disconcerting stereotypes with headlines like "Lonely Spinster Dies Alone, Surrounded Only by 100 Feral Cats". Directly on returning home from the phone store, I hopped online to find myself some new and improved wallpaper. I first grabbed this adorable Betty Boop image with her holding a dangling phone cord, but it didn't load right on my screen (Betty's face is cut in half). Next I attempted an adorable picture of a cuddly Golden Retriever puppy. Apparently taking my phone from Cat to Dog was more than it could handle. The dang thing is forever frozen trying to load that image of doggy goodness. Back to the Cingular store I go!
Do you think they'll feel so sorry for me, they'll drop an iPhone on my lap months before they're available? Shuddup, a girl can dream.
Update: Puppies killed my phone. There's a replacement in the mail. In the meantime I have a crappy loaner. I hope the replacement is nifty.
Updated again: Apparently they overnighted the new phone to me and I will have it in less than 24 hours. That, my friends, is some awesome service. Go Cingular!
Posted by amy at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: cats, Cingular, harumpf, phone, puppy
January 23, 2007
i am not a patient person
I recently A few weeks ago I placed an order with KnitPicks, a company I like a whole lot. The first time I ordered from them, my package arrived lightening fast--just a few days. Swoon. My second order was a little slower. I was gnawing my fingernails because I NEEDED those skeins of Memories and size 1 circs, but it was December and so I expected the mail to be a little backed up.
Okay FedEx SmartPost or USPS or whomever is responsible for detaining my package for a week in limbo betwen Denver and Salt Lake! There's a pair of size 2 circs in that box that are holding up multiple projects, plus of course some glorious fibery goodness. This is unacceptable:
Date Time Description Location
January 22, 2007 9:49 AM Sortation Center Arrival SALT LAKE CITY, UT
January 16, 2007 5:56 AM Sortation Center Departure DENVER, CO
January 15, 2007 8:24 AM Sortation Center Arrival DENVER, CO
January 13, 2007 11:53 AM Sortation Center Departure GROVE CITY, OH
January 12, 2007 9:06 PM Sortation Center Arrival GROVE CITY, OH
January 12, 2007 5:00 PM Pickup GROVE CITY, OH
And if that box isn't on my doorstep when I get home, heads are going to roll. (Okay, maybe just my head lagging in grief, but still!) UNACCEPTABLE. I wish they'd sent my package by the Pony Express! Covered wagons could cover Denver to Salt Lake in less than a week. Cripes on a stick.
Posted by amy at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: knitpicks, online shopping, shipping, wine wine wine, yarn
January 18, 2007
neckline woes
Necklines are tricky. I'm guessing this is old news to most sweater-knitters, but it is just beginning to hit home as I work towards the end of sweater #2--my first non-cardigan. I figured, correctly, that I am not the only person to ever try to do a one-piece in-the-round no-seaming-necessary pullover. The man (my Pops) that I am making this sweater for has a giant noggin, so I need a large top hole and I want a little shaping. So yesterday I did a little googling about and discovered that one great way to create neck shaping in the round is with short rows.
Let me tell you a little something about short rows. Short rows are BRILLIANT and I love them in every possible way. The shapes you can make with a flat fabric are genius. Having some experience with short rows and the brilliance they entail, I sat down last night with yarn and needles to shape myself a neckline. By bedtime it was done, but my plan for tonight? Ripping it out and trying again.
Let me enumerate the ways this neckline went wrong. First, I placed my short-rows one stitch apart which made for a very steep curve. The sweater now has a very fetching scoop neck, but I'm guessing that's way to girly for Pops. Second, I discovered (belatedly) that while the front was too scoopy, the back of the neck was much too high. Because of this I created the third problem, some shorter short rows just over the shoulders. Tacking these on at the last minute messed up my decrease math--leading to somehow unmatched shoulders. I'm really not sure how that happened. Black magic? The most unforgivable problem is the last--a lot of this other stuff could be masked by the neckline finish and some blocking. However, I was doing that fancy wrapping a slipped stitch to supposedly hide a hole created by the short row turn. Let me tell you right now that this was a HORRIBLE mistake. The giant gaps are AWFUL. It looks like I was attempting to create some neckline eyelets. Wrong-o. Lace and tough guy pullovers do not go together. Le duh. On my next attempt, I think I'm going to twist the stitches to attempt to bulk them up a bit to mask those holes, or maybe even M1 at the turn, and K2tog when I get back there in the round. And tug really really tight. Wish me luck.
Here's the plan:
And most importantly:
This better work because the only thing I hate more than seaming is ripping out inches and inches (or HOURS and HOURS) and not dropping any of the stitches. Does anyone have any helpful tips for simplifying the frogging process? Something tells me that with my make-it-up-as-I-go approach to patterning I better get used to ripping stuff out.
(Note to self: Before you rip the thing out, insert a picture of the current neck with the woes pointed out.)
Posted by amy at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: avast, frogging, knitting, shaping, short rows
January 15, 2007
i think i'm so smart
Before I begin, if you are someone that I call Pop and you have decided for the first time ever to actually look at my webpage, please close your eyes and don't read any more of this entry until after February 9. Thank you.
For Christmas I knitted up the Avast sweater for my brother with minimal alterations to the pattern. I made the pieces a little longer than indicated, and I did the sleeves in the round. It turned out very nice and fits really well. As this was the first sweater I've ever completed, I feel pretty much like a knitting rock star. I did discover that my method of joining the sleeves in the round, with a 4-stitch bind off in the armpit was not as clever as one might have hoped. The first few rounds after the join were very persnickity, and finishing the armpit was tricky and ended up looking a little, well, homemade.
I mention these "what I learned" thoughts because I am making a second Avast-ish sweater, a pullover, for my father's birthday. He is definitely not a cardigan guy (even a cool cardigan like this one), and I didn't think my brother would enjoy having totally matching sweaters even if he does live 500 miles away. So I'm going with a pullover in a different color. It'll be great. This weekend I joined the arms (again, stitched in the round) to the body (which I am also doing in the round). Planning for this event, instead of a 4-stitch bind off, I bound off 6 stitches--because 2 stitches makes a huge difference! Let's be realistic. In the grand scheme of a sweater, 2 stitches don't mean squat. For about an inch after the join, things were very tight, but I perservered and started to get a bit worried about neck shaping. Having never actually shaped a neck, especially in the round with raglan shoulders, I've got no idea what I'm doing. I, very belatedly, turned to my trusty Vogue Knitting and discovered all sorts of helpful tips--including the brilliant idea to put armpit stitches on some waste yarn to work at the end, maybe with some sneaky Kirchiner action.
All those super tight rows making me crazy crazy crazy were unnecessary! If only I'd looked up how to do this intelligently I could have refrained from turning the air in my apartment blue! Of course, since I spent a lot of the weekend watching The Sopranos while I was knitting, the air was pretty blue already. I have a question about this, though. If I put a bunch of stitches aside on some waste yarn, would my raglan decreases still work out right? Or would the shoulder-to-armpit length shrink, and a sag be created in the armpital area? I guess this is something I'll have to discover through trial and error, the next time I sort-of make up my own pattern on the fly. Is it wrong that I am seriously considering, out of fear, little-to-no neck shaping? Sometimes sweaters have identical fronts and backs, right?
Just to let y'all know I didn't spend ALL weekend with my hiney ensconced on the sofa, I applied myself to some geekery work I've taken on and had some fun times with my Mammacita yesterday eating the glart, going to the movies, and having the children teach me the wonders of the Wii! I took my Mii bowling*, and kicked those children's asses (even if my two highest scoring frames were actually bowled by the youngest child in residence). Oh! And I was very pleased with my penchant for having multiple project going at once as I could feign pure dedication to my Bobbles & Brambles project when Pop stopped my to work some wizardry on my new washing machine cover counter top!
*Now if only I could erase the Camper Van on repeat in my cranium ...
Posted by amy at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: avast, design, knitting, movies, pattern review, vogue
January 6, 2007
amy go boom, without the years of pain
Just to prove it is possible for me to do something besides knit, I should tell you about the snowshoeing outing I had with those crazy kids from So Pedestrian while they were in town for the holidays. The Saturday before Christmas, we loaded up in my car and drove up to Whoop-Um-Up. Even though I roll in an AWD Subaru, I am a very skittish winter driver. It takes wheel-less out-of-towners to get me behind the wheel. Although the roads were slick AND it started snowing right before we headed home, we didn't slide a bit. This makes me think perhaps I overreact to potentially bad-conditions driving.
Anyhoot, this was my first ever snowshoeing adventure and I can't wait to go again. Amazingly, it is a lot like walking, though a ton more work. Even though I did somehow fall down, there was zero potential for knee injury--just the way I have come to like my winter sports. David took a bunch of photos. Wanna see?
Posted by amy at 6:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: move your booty, snowshoeing
January 5, 2007
thanks bunches, job o' mine
Every year around the holidays the place I work at gives each of the employees a gift card to the Downtown Boise Association. Although I may be remembering this incorrectly, in the decade I have worked here I have always used this gift card to supplement my meager "Buy Things for Others" holiday budget. This year, by planning ahead, I was able to save my DBA gift card to spend all on myself! With card in hand, I've been looking foward to my next trip to Drop a Stitch.
Yesterday evening I popped in yearning for some Cascade 220 for Bobbles & Brambles, knowing I'd have enough credit left for some fancypants sock yarn. My intention was to discover the magic of the Koigu KPPPM, a favorite of the lovely Ms. Pink and Ms. Tonic (two of my favorite internet celebrities). While kneeling on the floor trying to choose a colorway and listening to my favorite Yarn Pusher discuss a felting project with another visiting fiber addict, my eye kept flickering to a non-Koigu shelf. After lots of fingering and thinking and fingering some more I ended up with some Fire to get a sock Monkey off my back!
Even more exciting? With my semi-planned purchases waiting on the counter I knew I still had a few dollars to spend. I wandered the store high and low, looking for one more hank. I thought about finding something to pair with my Boxing Day mohair for the Mrs. Beeton's, or maybe a bit of angora for Fetching, and I looked wistfully at a hank of ($50!!!) Pashmina, but nothing begged to come home with me (well, except the Pashmina that I can't afford). When I was nearly ready to just head out and come back later, I happened to glance at the gorgeous Manos del Uruguay right across from the counter. See the colorway I chose? I'm thinking I'll turn it into another Calorimetry with a matching scarf of some sort. Though at only 132 yards it might be a really short scarf!
I've been having way too much fun planning new projects but I promise I'll start writing some entries about finished projects, or even (the horror!) non-knitting topics, in the nearish future.
Posted by amy at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: bobbles & brambles, calorimetry, knitting, socks, yarn
January 3, 2007
k2, p2, turn, sl1, p1, k2, pm, p2 ...
I am having too much fun with needles these days. Last night I stayed up well past my senior citizenish bedtime to work on Calorimetry, a project I cast on for yesterday around 7 pm. Just what I needed--another project! For reasons outside my control I had to pause on my primary project, and found a verigated worsted weight wool (blend?) in my coffee table. Obviously I had to turn it into a heat-keeping headband. This was especially necessary since I finished another new hat just a weekish ago. Geez.
I arrived about 15 minutes early to work, and instead of turning on the computers and getting down to it, I worked a couple of rows until an early patron interrupted me. Oh! While I was knitting I FINALLY remembered to make an 8-5 EST phone call to cancel an extraneous expense that is automatically charged to my debit card each quarter. Go me! Bashing budget busters and knocking out projects like they're going out of style! Wait. None of this stuff I am making is going out of style for reals, right?
Anyway, back to the pattern. Since I am almost finished, I will share my review:
To attain gauge I had to drop a couple needle sizes, and I also added a couple repeats of the short rows to make it a little wider. It is possible that the apparent narrowness was a result of my needle substitution. This is a fun and adaptable pattern that any skill-level knitter could whip up in a flash, and an easy way to learn the magic of the short row. I'll definitely be making more of these!
Posted by amy at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: calorimetry, knitting, knitty
January 2, 2007
obligatory new year post
I will restate, for the record, that New Year's is my all time favorite holiday. I love the idea of fresh starts and new beginnings and change on the horizon and all that jazz. This year, however, I opted out of celebrating the whole thing. Saturday night I got together with a pack of old high school buddies and partied it up at the bar, leaving me in no shape to do the same the following evening (not that I really wanted that sort of entre in to 2007 anyway). I entered into 2007 in a manner befitting the old lady I am becoming--snug as a bug in my jammers asleep in bed. Bo-ring, but NICE.
Much like Laurie over at Crazy Aunt Purl, I like the year to have some sort of theme. The last year has been about retying the knots that hold me together. For 2007 I hope to keep those threads all looped into a cohesive fabric (can you tell I've still got knitting on the brain 24/7?), but not through the isolation I found so comforting in 2006. So here's a list of my 2007 goals, written in the irritatingly condescending first person to myself:
