O to the M to the F’n G

18Oct09

Sometimes you really have a week. Sometimes you have two, back to back. Sometimes you find yourself dealing with four major project deadlines straddling either side of a conference for which you aren’t really prepared for. And as you try to stay calm and power through, even in the face of a million other things that pop up unexpectedly, sometimes you get to the end of it all only to find that Satan’s cat has literally soaked the bag containing your still-not-unpacked stash of (mostly) sock yarn with his rancid pee. Seriously.

Really, I should have known better than to leave all of that yarn sitting in a bag on the floor for so long. And really, the thought that it might be in danger did cross my mind, but I am lazy and prone to distraction. What was lost in the great Cat Pee Yarn Massacre of 2009? A lot. About a quarter of the yarn was relatively unscathed, including most of the stuff I was really looking forward to using, so that’s good. About another quarter was stained and even (I shudder at the grossness) still wet. I’m treating all of this as unsalvagable. DOA. Disgusting. The rest of it just stinks. Unfortunately, this critically injured group includes the remainder of the yarn waiting to be used for the Essential Boatneck pullover and a pair of socks that I’ve been working on, plus a sweater’s worth of KnitPicks gloss that I had big plans for. I’m going to attempt an elaborate rescue mission on this yarn, but the rest of it is headed for the curb. It’s going to take a lot of vinegar, but I’m optimistic.

Unfortunately, Aidan’s beloved duffel bag that represents so many wonderful camp memories was also lost. A tribute to the early ’90s in all of its purple and teal glory, it will be seriously missed. It is preceded in death by Aidan’s soccer bag, which was also the victim of an unfortunate cat pee accident.

This cat is treading on some seriously thin ice. Seriously thin. In fact, it just might be cracking . . .

I have good things to post about, but I will wait until I am less, well, pissed about what has gone down today. I don’t want news about new projects and awesome baking pursuits to become likewise tainted by the gut-wrenching disgusting-ness of this debacle. For now, I’m just going to try to find a way to calm myself, get the cat pee smell out of my nostrils, and leave it all behind me.

Stupid cat.

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Tags: angst, cats, blather

Nothing but Crazy Eyes

02Oct09

We live about 2 miles from campus, and I’ve been walking to class a lot. It would be a lie to say that I walk all the time, but I end up hoofing it a good deal of the time. This week, we’ve had about five consecutive days of rain so after walking to class twice in the rain (with an umbrella, of course–I’m not an idiot) I was lucky enough to catch a ride to campus on Thursday with two of my fellow students. It’s tough to find a decent spot near campus, so when my friend who was driving saw someone getting into her car, she went ahead and put her hazards on and we waited . . . and waited. The woman looked like she was digging through her purse, as though she was looking for her keys, but then she started rummaging around the back seat, literally climbing half way into the back of her car. Missy eventually pulled up next to the car, rolled the window down and tried to ask, complete with gestures, if this woman was leaving. But she just stared at us, totally unmoved. She didn’t roll her window down, she didn’t make any kind of gesture, she didn’t even try to avoid eye contact. She just stared at us with crazy eyes until it was so creepy-weird that Missy drove off in search of a new parking space.

This is basically indicative of the way that things seem to be going for me lately. I try to do something that seems like it should be relatively simple, that seems like the kind of thing that other people would understand, and it quickly becomes . . . weird. The line between weird things that make you want to laugh and weird things that make you want to repeatedly hit your head against a wall is a fine one indeed. For now, I’m choosing to believe that all of the awkward frustrations were merely a special feature of September. I’m really hoping October is going to be different. If not, I’ll just keep applying my three part knitting/beer/baking remedy.

Anyway, during one of the brief breaks of sunshine this week, I decided to finally snap some quick finished shots of the Whisper cardigan I finished over the summer.

The finished cardigan turned out great, and it looks really lovely on the hanger. It’s knit using Knit Picks Shadow in Snorkel, which is a really fantastic heathered shade of what I like to think of as Lisa Frank blue.

Unfortunately, it looks all wrong on me. For whatever reason, when I put it on I instantly transform into someone who looks like they should be on What Not to Wear. And since I finished this thing back in July, I haven’t worn it for more than about 30 seconds at a time–just long enough to confirm that it, indeed, looks awful on me. This sweater and I both make each other look bad.

Luckily for the cardigan, it’s found a new home where it will be well-loved and cared for. Come Monday, this baby is headed back to Ohio to live with Abby who will look infinitely better in it than I do. That is, unless the people at the post office decide to go on strike or something and all my mailing plans are delayed. Because that’s pretty much how things have been working out for me recently.

Seriously, life. Enough with the foolishness and mayhem already.

Filed under: Knitting, Life   |  1 Comment
Tags: angst, blather, FOs, Sweater

Weekend Achievements

27Sep09

I achieved a new personal best over the weekend in the form of pie. Apple pie, to be specific.

The picture doesn’t really do justice to this pie’s awesomeness. You just have to trust me. (Actually, six other people partook of this pie, so if you really don’t trust me I’m sure I can provide you with some testimonials.) What made this pie really stand above the many, many pies I’ve made in the past was that it was much better in both of the pie’s key components: the crust and the filling.

First the filling. In the past, my concern for finding a firm and tart apple good for baking has almost always led me to pick Granny Smith apples. Now that I think about it, this apple choice may have also been influenced by the fact that in Wisconsin, Granny Smith apples are just about the only baking-worthy apples you can find in bags at your run of the mill grocery store. So as a college student, it was also a more affordable choice. Using Granny Smith apples always worked out all right–they just never resulted in a particularly impressive or interesting filling.

This time, my choice was also determined by my circumstances. I was on a deadline and didn’t have time to go shopping anywhere but the corner market where they had MacIntosh (no good for baking), Golden Delicious (a good week past their prime), and Ginger Gold. I had no idea what the hell a Ginger Gold apple was like, but it was my only decent option so I went for it. And, damn, did it work out well. The filling I ended up with was full of great flavor–just the right mix of tart and sweet. It was definitely a much more interesting, complex flavor than I’ve ever gotten from using Granny Smith apples. I went grocery shopping today (not at the corner market) and I had to resist buying multiple varieties of apples for multiple pies. Note to self: experimenting is good.

For the crust, I decided to seek out a recipe I’d seen on The Barefoot Contessa awhile ago. I’ve used several different pre-made crusts in the past, and have found them all very blah. I’ve also used the crust recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, but it’s never turned out that great. It’s usually been overly-dry and crumbly when I’ve tried to roll it out and I’ve never ended up with the kind of flaky crust I dream about. But Ina Garten’s recipe is amazing. Her instructions and the using a food processor make this crust basically fool-proof. It was fantastic, and I highly recommend it.

The rest of my weekend has involved a lot of reading, a lot of housework, and plenty of knitting. I’ve got a sleeve!

Actually, I have about 15″ of a sleeve, but I will no doubt finish the rest of it tonight. After tonight, this sweater is definitely going on hold for just a bit, so that I can finish up my Featherweight cardi.

It’s not a fantastic picture, but you can at least see that after being on hold for months, it is in desperate need of a second sleeve. (I’m sure you can also see that it is wrinkled through and through–a testament to how long it’s been sitting around.) It also still needs ribbing around the neck and sides to finish it off. I’m pretty sure that the first sleeve only took me two days, so I’m hoping I can finish this cardigan up in a week or so. We’ll see what happens.

And now, its back to the last bit of weekend housework on my to-do list so I can enjoy a day off with Aidan tomorrow. Woo!

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Tags: baking, desserts, Sweater, WIPS

Change Your Yarn, Change Your Life

26Sep09

Here I go, giving this whole blog thing another whirl . . .

Aidan and I have been in Syracuse for about a month now. And although we’re still feeling some of the residual stress that inevitably comes with significant life changes, we’re both enjoying the city, our new apartment, the cats, each other, etc. Over the summer, I had a really productive burst of knitting–mostly when Aidan was off studying philosophy in Berlin for a month and knitting was the only buffer I had between me and my thesis. But aside from that period of time, I haven’t been knitting very much, especially compared to the amount of knitting that I usually do.

If you ask Aidan, he’ll say that I don’t knit when I’m stressed (which, he also notes, is weird given that knitting is supposed to be a relaxing activity). After giving it a bit of thought, I’d tweak Aidan’s observation just a bit. I don’t think it’s just stress, because there are times when the amout of knitting I do increases in direct proportion to the amount of stress I’m feeling. For instance, I all but finished an entire sweater during the first finals week of my graduate career. Really, I think I find it hard to knit when I’m feeling unsettled. And the later part of this past summer–what with all the moving and school-switching I did–was nothing if not unsettling. I’m just not very good at adjusting to new circumstances, and I think I find it hard to sit down, relax, and knit when I’m feeling out of my element.

Towards the end of August when things had settled down substantially, I tried to pick my knitting up again. I had pair of plain socks and two sweaters–the Featherweight Cardigan and the Elemental Boatneck–all sitting in my knitting box, but working on them wasn’t bringing me any kind of pleasure, and I started to feel more like I was having to force myself to pick them up. No good. And on top of it all, I was having a hard time feeling motivated and excited about school-related stuff.

But I finally reached my breaking point, and realized that if I didn’t want to work on a project, I should just put it away. And that’s exactly what I did. I bagged both of the sweaters up and put them in the closet with the rest of my stash to be pulled out at a later time and date when I feel reenergized about working on them. And the socks went to the bottom of the knitting box–they’re there if I want to work on them, but they’re not staring me in the face anymore. As I was putting the two sweaters into the closet, I came across some Karaoke yarn that I got at a pretty deep discount from a yarn sale awhile back and realized that it was exactly what I needed in my life at that moment. That was last week, and now I’m just a few rows short of being done with the body on my Hourglass Sweater (Rav link).

The Hourglass Sweater pattern comes from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, which was my Christmas gift from my brother last year. It is (clearly) coming along quickly. I think the speed with which this baby is knitting up is only surprising to me given the fact that I haven’t knit anything with worsted weight yarn since back in January. Things definitely go a lot quicker when you’re dealing with bigger needles and thicker yarn. I dig it.

I put the Featherweight cardi and Elemental Boatneck pullover away thinking that I wouldn’t pull them out again until next spring, but I’m already thinking about putting the Hourglass sweater on hold briefly while I finish the Featherweight cardi. It’s getting a bit cooler and I’ve got a conference coming up, so I could definitely use a light black cardigan. We’ll see.

In short, I’m glad to be excited about knitting again. But I’m also really happy to say that all of my work/school related anxieties have subsided, and I’m feeling pretty damn good about where I’m at and what I’m doing.

Am I ridiculous enough to think that my renewed optimism and motivation are knitting related? Hell yeah.

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Tags: blather, Sweater, WIPS

Moving, Step One

21May09

Aidan and I just got  back yesterday from a whirlwind trip to Syracuse where we did some seriously exhausting apartment hunting in preparation for our big move in August. We only spent two full days in Syracuse–we even came home a day early–but I have never been so tired and so ready to go home. The trip was, however, successful. We found three possible places, and we’re currently working on securing our first choice: a second-story two bedroom apartment in this house:

We didn’t get any pictures of the inside of the apartment, but it’s fantastic. The bedrooms are big, there are skylights in every room, it has a split-level living area with a dining nook, and a kitchen that opens into the living room. One of the graduate students who is graduating and leaving for a job has been living in this place for the duration of her PhD work and raved about the place. I really hope we get it, and I’ll be a little heartbroken if things don’t work out. So keep your fingers crossed for us.

We also spent a little time walking around the campus. In case you suspect I’m lying, I have photographic proof that I was there, thanks to Aidan.

As you can probably tell from my face, I hate “go stand in front of that” pictures. But don’t let my seeming lack of enthusiasm fool you. I am excited to move to Syracuse, even as I try to prepare myself for the persistant ass-kicking of a PhD program.

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Tags: blather, School

Y Control

12May09

You can tell it’s summer. The cats seem vaguely annoyed that we’re home all the time interrupting their naps, Aidan is heavy into a new video game, and the joy of being done with the semester is offset by the anxiety of knowing the next steady paycheck is months away. I’m just glad that it isn’t ridiculously hot yet. 70 and sunny is the kind of weather I can get behind.

I took the weekend off and managed to get a fair amount of knitting done. I’m an inch away from the center of the back on the Whisper Cardi, which means I’m close to the part where I have to do some kind of crazy back gathering. I’m also close to halfway done with the the waist shaping I’m doing on the hot pink cardigan. And since I started reading for my thesis yesterday, I pulled out the long-neglected Chevron Scarf to work on in between brief reading breaks.

But I started to get bored with all of that stockinette on Sunday, so I wound the Arcaunia Itata I bought last week into a ball and cast on for a new pair of socks.

This is Cookie A’s Marlene pattern (Rav link), which is in the Fall/Winter 2008 issue of Knit.1–a pattern that Aidan helped me pick out to use with this yarn. I am thoroughly pleased with the pattern/yarn combination. This pattern, like Cookie A’s Pomatomus pattern, is basically a variation of 1×1 twisted ribbing shaped with decreases and yarn overs. It looks fancy, but it’s easy. And there are two things about this sock that amaze me: first, that the 1×1 twisted ribbing would seem less tedious than plain stockinette; and second, that this pattern knits up so quickly. I managed to knit the entire leg of the sock up to the point where I need to begin the heel flap–that’s just short of seven pattern repeats and about 7.5-8 inches of knitting–before the end of the day on Sunday.

Now, if only reading Judith Butler when that quickly, I’d be golden.

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Tags: Socks, WIPS

All Done

08May09

With the semester, that is. So far, I’ve celebrated with knitting night and a dinner/Ikea date with Aidan. I bought a new desk and desk chair. Together, the two pieces create an awesome study space combo which screams, “Yeah, I like reading and writing. What?”

I’ve also been doing a fair amount of knitting, thanks in no small part to the fact that Aidan and I have started watching the first season of Veronica Mars. So far, I’m diggin’ it. The whisper cardi is progressing well–I’ve finished the first sleeve and I’m about 5″ into the body. Last night, however, I finally finished the Clover socks that I blogged about way back here. The second sock took me longer to finish only because I got caught up in other projects, namely the whisper cardi and the re-do of the hot pink cardigan. I still stand by my claim that it’s a great, fun pattern and I love the yarn.

I’m choosing to be lazy and not take new pictures of these socks. You can use your own powers of imagination to visualize the finished pair. It’s basically the above picture, times two. The dorky exciting thing about these socks is that shortly after I finished them, I got a Ravelry message asking if I was willing to have my sock picture featured on the Clover pattern page. Clearly, I consented.

And when I told Aidan about it he said, “That’s blog-worthy.” So there. I blogged about it.

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Tags: FOs, Ridiculosity, Socks

Procrastination is perfectly normal. There is no reason to be concerned.

05May09

Last week at our knit night, Abby and I cast on for the Whisper Cardi (Rav link) together.

I’m using Knitpicks Shadow in Snorkel, and I really like the way the yarn is knitting up. It’s a heathered blue with green undertones so the color has a lot of dimension. It’s also insanely soft. Unfortunately, the only needles I had available were some rather long, rather heavy metal needles. They were so heavy that they kept pulling at the stitches creating big ugly jogs that I’m pretty sure even serious blocking couldn’t entirely fix. Still, I forged ahead, knitting 10 rounds short of the point where the sleeve ends and the body of the cardigan ends when I realized the sleeve seemed pretty wide. I measured the gauge I was getting on the sleeve and discovered that it was off enough that it was giving me an extra 1.25″. No good.

I figured I needed to come up with another plan of attach so after  an intense (and intensely successful) writing session finishing up a collaborative paper with a friend, I took a major detour to the yarn store on my way home and picked up a pair of bamboo dpns. I frogged the original sleeve and started over using the bamboo needles, and things are definitely working out better. The lighter needles make working with the lace-weight yarn a lot less awkward and the ugly jogs I was experiencing before are all but non-existent in the second version of the sleeve. Originally, Abby and I had both cast on for an extra 8 sts so that the sleeve would be wider at the bicep. But given my gauge issues, I decided to only cast on for the number of sts recommended by that pattern. According to my math, the recommended number of stitches should give me right around the same measurement Abby and I hoped to get by adding the extra 8 sts. I guess we’ll see if it actually works out that way . . .

While I was at the yarn store, I discovered that they had recently beefed up their sock yarn selection with a bunch of new sock yarns. I remembered that I had a little bit of money left over from the previous month and decided to treat myself to a couple of skeins. First, I grabbed a skein of Malabrigo sock in Impressionist Sky.

Then I noticed that they had the new Araucania sock yarn, Itata, which is a superwash wool/bamboo/silk blend. I’m excited for this new yarn line because I love the Ranco colorways (my Spring Forward socks and Chevron scarf are proof) but the fact that Ranco is hand-wash only makes it less than ideal for socks. Plus, it’s not the softest.

The Itata, however, is pretty damn soft. And it has a really nice sheen to boot. I’m pretty sure that this color way is almost exactly the same as the pinkish/purplish Ranco colorway I’m using for my Chevron scarf, but I’m looking forward to being able to use these colors for socks. I’m pretty sure that both of these skeins are destined to become socks from Cookie A’s new book, Sock Innovation. I’m pretty much set on using the Itata to make the Kai-Mei pattern (Rav link), and I’m considering using the Malabrigo for the Rick pattern (Rav link).

When I went to pay, I found out that I had $20 in frequent buyer vouchers to use up, which was a most excellent surprise. A wiser person probably would have just reveled in the fact that their $50 purchase had suddenly become $30, but I felt the vouchers were a damn good reason to go back and grab another skein of sock yarn.

This is J. Knits Superwash Me-Sock in the Tampa colorway. As far as I’m concerned, purple+gray=major win. I love it.

In other unimportant news, I decided to frog the hot pink cardigan I started a long time ago because the sizing was making me nervous. To soothe my anxiety about sizing, I restarted the cardigan as a top-down raglan.

This, again, is knit using Knitpicks Telemark in Passion Heather, a color that I’m coming to appreciate more and more as time goes on. The hot pink is heathered with red undertones and, for reasons that I can’t really identify, it looks particularly awesome in the sun. I dig it. Over the weekend, I finished all of the raglan increases, put the sleeve stitches on waste yarn, and have started knitting the body. I suppose it’s a pretty boring knit, but I’m find it particularly soothing right now, especially in the middle of finals craziness.

My current finals count: two papers down, one to go. I’ll be so freakin’ glad when I’m done.

Filed under: Knitting   |  3 Comments
Tags: Frogged, queue, Stash, Sweater, WIPS

On a relatively insignificant significant event . . .

02May09

Today, I taught my last class at Miami. And I suppose that since I’m going to be on fellowship next year, it will be my last class for a pretty long time. I feel relieved that the end of the semester is nearing, relieved that the end of my MA is nearing, but also a little sad that the classes I taught this semester are over. In what was an otherwise ‘blah’ semester, I was lucky to end up with a fantastic group of students who were just the right mix of earnest, funny, quirky, and brilliant. While I probably would do a lot of things differently given another go-around, they were all great and I’m glad to say that my teaching experience here definitely ended on a high note.

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Tags: blather, School

A quick and dirty update

27Apr09

Oh, end of the semester–how you make me want to bang my head against the wall.

I have a ton of work to get done, and I am happy to report that I’m actually making progress. I feel like everything that was laid out before me was a gigantic boulder stuck in a rut in the ground, and I’ve spent too much time trying to push it out. But now, its appears to be out of the rut and rollin’. Now, I just need the next week and a half to (productively) fly by so that I can have my life and my sanity back.

Of course, having a lot to do just makes me obsess about knitting, which is probably why I’ve been a more productive knitter over the last couple of weeks than I have at any other point this semester. To start with, I finished one pair of socks and immediately began another.

This is the Mirrorsocks pattern (Rav link), which I made using Knitpicks Essential in Mermaid. I love everything about these socks. The color is great, the faux-cable lace pattern was fun and easy, they fit like a dream, and they feel like butter. These are the kind of socks that make you remember all over again why hand-knit socks freakin’ rock.

This second pair is still in progress, but pretty damn close to being done. The first sock is completely finished (naturally–how else would I have been able to come up with this picture of a finished sock) and I’m working through the gusset decreases on the second. This is the Clover pattern (Rav link again) knit up using Knitpicks Risata in Fairytale. This is the first time I’ve used this yarn, and I am more than pleased. I like the way it feels, I like the stitch definition it provides, and I really like the fact that unlike other yarns with elastic (I’m looking at you Cascade Fixation) it’s not so stretchy that maintaining an even tension is a problem. I like this yarn so much, as soon as I’m finished with this pair of socks I’m planning on casting on for another pair using the Risata in the Grass colorway that I’ve had stashed for awhile. I’m thinking that the Shell Pattern sock (Rav link) from Nancy Bush’s Vintage Sock book will pair nicely with the yarn.

Clover is also a fantastic pattern. The cable and the lace are fun and easy to knit up, and I love the way they look together. On the sock front, it’s a win all around. If only that were the case for my homework situation.

Filed under: Knitting   |  3 Comments
Tags: FOs, queue, Socks, WIPS