Deflowered

It's the only thing I can think - I am no longer a nupp virgin. I have nupped the nupps. I love the word nupp. I wanna name my next kid nupp. In George Foreman style, I wanna change the Bug's name to nupp. I want quadruplets named nupp. Nupp nupp nupp.


Nupp nupp nupp.

Swallowtail is proving to be a very satisfying knit. We got word yesterday that the friend for whom this is being knit will have to do several rounds of chemotherapy, so I'm even more glad I chose the Sea Silk to knit it. I know chemo can do funky things to the body and affects everyone differently, so I hope that the yarn is gentle and soothing to her. And I hope she likes nupps.

Bug likes nupps.


Whadda ham.


Not now, Daddy, I haven't had my coffee yet.

This weekend, Mystery Stole 3 and Hogwarts Socks!

Fiberific

That's me, today.

In the last little while I won two blog contests - one from Pretending to Farm, and one from Trailing Yarn.


Desert Sunset roving from Carmela the Shetland Sheep


Snap roving from Yarn Witch

Then I spun my first ever yarn! Yippee!


Bad bad 2-ply

And now here's an artsy shot.

Up close and personal.

I started to catalog all my yarn and fiber for my eventual Ravelry invite. Oh boy I can't wait!
The Bug is overwhelmed by all the fiber.

Thank you

Thanks for all the words of support. I have been doing well, actually - it's Saturday night, which means it's been four days without a cigarette and it's gotten easier. Actually, I can't quite remember what night it was that I had my last, but since I only smoked a few days, I'm sticking with my original quit date (1/5/05, the day I found out I was pregnant) and calling this a relapse. I still have a low flash point on my temper, but it's mostly aimed at DH. He got an inkling early on that I was quitting (I didn't tell him) and has spent most of his free time in the garage tinkering with his Harley. The first night, when we were about to argue about dinner, he asked me with exasperation, "FINE, what do YOU want?" I thought about it a minute and said, "I want you to go away for a while." He did, and after I got over the irritation that he didn't ask me what was wrong (I never said my brain made sense) I knitted all night and enjoyed myself thoroughly. The temper is getting better, and tomorrow I might actually go out in the back yard for a cup of coffee.
I am chugging along on Swallowtail - 11 body repeats down, three to go. I also started the heel of the first Hogwarts sock (must knit faster on that one) and swatched for my mystery stole, which starts next Friday. Here 'tis - yarn color is fairly accurate on this, although the beads are the same color as the yarn when you look at them directly. (They change to that pretty teal when viewed at an angle - I dunno what that effect is called, but I like it.)


Crappy crappy swatch.

I did a terrible job on the swatch (20 rows, 35 stitches, and at least three unfixed mistakes. Oy.) but I don't care - I like the fabric it made, and I practiced with the beads, and that's the whole point of swatching for an item that has no required finished size. This is my first laceweight project (though not first lace, obviously) and I'm wondering about the sanity of the person who invented laceweight. It's like how the Japanese as a culture are constantly inventing or creating ever-tinier things. It'll kill me, sooner or later.

In the meantime, I'm going to wander off with my aches and pains, projectile phlegm, hacking cough (isn't that supposed to go away when you quit smoking?), infected tastebuds and bad attitude, all indications that my body is pissed at me for poisoning it again, and leave you with these quotes from Nic. (What, so I named the nicotine voice in my head, and it's not creative. Shut up or I'll have to kill something.)

• I can't believe he is going to the garage and didn't ask about my mood. I should go have a cigarette.


• I can't wait until I'm not addicted anymore and then I can go have a cigarette.


• I lost three pounds and ate chocolate every day. I should totally keep smoking until I'm at goal. (That one almost got me, I admit.)


• (My fave) Five days isn't really addicted. No one will be impressed about quitting after five days. I should smoke longer so it will be cooler when I quit.*
  

The reason I quit in the first place.

*I never said I was smart, or that Nic made sense.

Things I Have Learned Thursday

Because it's too late to do random Wednesday.

• The summer solstice means nothing to me because I live where summer starts in April and lasts until the end of October.


• If, before the start of a lace repeat, you think to yourself, "Wow, I haven't moved my lifeline up in a while," MOVE YOUR LIFELINE. It's your brain's way of telling you you're about to hose something up very seriously.


• If you have four bobbins, and you fill up two with practice singles, and a third has decent singles that you want to ply, you are not clever if you save that fourth bobbin to make more singles to ply with bobbin #3.


I want to be Dave when I grow up.


• You always need more bobbins.


• If you've quit smoking, you should never assume you can have "just one".


• There is a part of my brain that lies outside of my direct control, and it's fueled by nicotine. And it argues with the part of my brain I do control. And it's almost like hearing voices. And it's been about 10 hours (and counting) since my last cigarette, and it's starving and it's LOUD.


• The Bug enjoys breakfast al fresco.
  
  Loves me some nanas.
  
  
• I LURVE the new autosave draft feature on Blogger. Because when you preview your post, you should NOT click Back to close the preview.

Tuesday is the cruelest day.

On Monday, you're still a little fresh from the weekend (or at least, your exhaustion is countered by all the fun you had). Wednesday is the tipping point of the week, heading into the weekend. Tuesday just sucks.

However! Mondays are for spinning, and spin I did. Do I have pictures? Why, yes I do! Did I upload them this morning before leaving for work? Why, no I didn't!
The spinning isn't terribly great anyway. It's been (yikes, really?) almost a month since I had a chance to spin on the wheel, and it shows. I got out the greens I dyed to ply with the easter egg stuff and spun away. Somewhere I got it into my head that I would finish the whole bobbin last night and still have time to ply. Uh huh, yeah. Not so much. I tried to rush it, and broke the singles a zillion times, and made a mess. I know I can do better if I just slow down. Maybe when I do the second half of the bobbin I will remember that.

I did knit yesterday, too - it was a fibery kind of day. Over the weekend I knit the new possible Hogwarts colorway and decided I wasn't happy with it. The colors of Judy's Ball and Skein (maple leaf colorway) are so vibrant and rich, and have such depth, that it made the Lorna's look positively dull. So, I went back to the cursed yarn. I decided that a week in a ziploc baggie was enough to drive out the demons, or at least shame the yarn into submission. I cajoled it with the promise of a newly-learned jogless join courtesy of TechKnitter (who is that woman? She's brilliant!) I promised that they'd be the first to try out the little sockie stitch markers from Blogless Lynn. I promised they'd be first on the blog today. The Lorna's and the Addis were placated and decided they would work with me.


Hogwarts Mad Cows.

Do please compliment them, so their good behavior will be rewarded. (Not for me, no no no - it's all for the yarn and the needles. It's all about them.)

I got a little more work done on my Swallowtail. I probably could have finished two repeats yesterday, except I took up the time needed to knit one repeat trying to figure out what drugs I'd been on when I knit the last row yesterday morning. Whatever they were, they musta been powerful. Anyway, fixes are fixed and all is well again.


Sweet little baby shawl.

Over the weekend, DH finished the drywall on the ceiling of my dad's patio. Bug wants you to know how much he helped Daddy.


Mixing the mud.


Daddy says, if you're working, you're gonna get dirty.

[contented sigh]

Boy, for a Monday, I am sure in a good mood. Even for a regular weekday, I'm in a good mood. I got decent sleep last night (love you, Tylenol PM), woke up early to a Bug in a good mood, and was ready early enough to savor my coffee and even knit a row on Swallowtail.
(Incidentally, Bug-in-a-good-mood is loud and impossible to ignore. First, he hears Daddy up and about and calls for him. Then he drops the binky, and it's oh no! oh no! oh no! and before it gets to a deafening shriek, I haul my carcass out of bed to get the binky. I'm generally cursing having to get up, but it's so cute I don't really mind.)
I'm not going to talk about the Hogwarts socks for a while. I don't want to spoil my good mood.
I'm halfway through the rows of the body of Swallowtail, and I haven't gotten bored yet. Of course, the rows increase in length every time, so I'm not really half-way, but I'm loving loving loving it. The sea silk is cool and crisp in my hands, but still stretchy, the knitpicks options I'm using are just sharp enough, and the pattern is clear and easy without being boring (to me). Also, whoever it was that realized that threading a string through the hole in the options needles for an automatic lifeline? Sheer brilliance - I toast you, whoever you are.
Sadly, I have no pictures. Swallowtail looks much the same, only bigger, and I made no progress either spinning or on the eyelet sweater, because I was too busy playing with seaweed lace. I sure hope Friederike likes it, because I'm going to have a hard time letting it go.
I will give you another Bug pose, though.


The crossed ankles really make the look.

Back in the saddle

Ahhhh, nothing like a new project to help you recover from the Curse of the Unknittable Socks.
My sea silk decided it did not want to be a design I came up with - it wanted to be a Swallowtail Shawl.

Smooth and crunchy. All good things.

I love it even though I am apparently honor-bound to forget one YO per row.

More lovelies to assuage my pain.


Mmmmm, soft and lacey.

Elann Peruvian Baby Lace Merino in Irish Moss for the Mystery Stole 3. Now I just need to find the beads.

Sadly, I believe my Gryffindor socks are still cursed. I decided to switch to the Ball and Skein maple leaves, with toes and heels in Lorna's cranberry, but I just don't think the dratted yarns work together. (I am not so secretly okay with this because I covet the Ball and Skein socks for myself.)


Close enough? You tell me.

I will probably knit the toe and part of a foot with the two yarns to see if they work better knitted up. I'm kinda running out of options AND time, and y'all, it's pissing me off.


Standing on the corner, watching all the Disney go by.

I. GIVE. UP.

My Hogwarts sock is cursed. CURSED, I TELL YOU!
Some proof: I started argyles. Fancy schmancy, I was smug, I thought my socks would be the best ever and my pal would want to be my lackey forever, because I was that good. (Humble? Yes thanks.)
I found mistakes. And more, and more and more and more. I ripped. I tinked. I cursed.
I finally gave up:

Big ridiculous mess.

I thought I'd do a cute little checkerboard pattern at the cuff. I knitted a turned-hem cuff. Hated it. Ripped. No picture.
I knitted ribbing, added a cute little checkerboard pattern. Loved it. Wouldn't fit over my foot. Hated that. Ripped. No picture.

I decided to knit some Gryffindor Mad Cows. Yeah, it's stripes, so what. I was giving up on the stranding and the intarsia because it's getting close to the deadline and I didn't want to let my pal down. Stripes is better than late socks.

I went to SnB. I knitted one row of gold before it occurred to me that I didn't look up the instructions for jogless-stripes-in-the-round. I sighed. I unknotted someone else's yarn for her (that should have given me good knitting karma, but NO.)
I picked up my sock to try to figure it out.

I discovered:


Bad, dark cell phone picture.

The effing Velcro on my effing Teva ate my effing yarn.

I hereby give up on that yarn. It is clearly cursed. It hates me. I have another skein of cranberry Lorna's (though it's suspect - it's from the same lot number) and some Ball and Skein in maple leaves, and by FSM, I will not touch that cursed yarn again. I'm considering burning it all, Addi included.

(I wonder if I would be permitted by whoever cursed that yarn to knit socks for my dad - it's in ASU colors [shudder] and maybe it just wants to be ASU socks. For the record, ASU sucks rocks, but I would knit socks for my dad to wear to their baseball games, because I am a good daughter and don't wanna waste my yarn, either, curse or no.)

Priorities

Sadly, knitting is high on my Want To Do list, but after I finish all my Have To Do's for the day, I have little time to indulge. So far I have managed a few rows every day, but not as much as I'd like. To that end, I am revising my schedule. Some things can sit while the other things get more love, until I get a few things finished.
So, the blue Vermont sock, while an enjoyable knit, has no deadline (and really, I couldn't wear 100% wool socks in the summer here anyway).
Sidelined.
Faina has a mid-August deadline, but it's a loose one. Sidelined.
The former argyle has an early July deadline. Still in the lineup.
Shrek lace is supposed to be a gift for a friend who just had a hysterectomy. Still in the lineup, although I reserve the right to can the attempt at knitting my own pattern if I find something else suitable. Still in the lineup.
The eyelet sweater is slow going. It's supposed to go with a halter dress, so I can wear the dress to work. At the rate I'm going, it's not going to be done this summer, but I could finish it in time to wear it for the fall. I might continue to work on that in fits and starts.
What I really need is my Ravelry invite, so I can catalog my sh...shtuff.

Oh yeah, and I joined


Oy. Gotta knit faster...

Bug says:

Dude.

All good things

must come to me!
(Well, I shouldn't say "must", but I feel like I'm on the receiving end of some extra knitterly love lately.)

First, look at the cute stitch markers Blogless Lynn made me!


Tiny purple sockies.

Next, I won Elizabeth's contest and am to be the recipient of some yummy roving! (It's the top one, with the purple, colorway Snaps.)

I am in love with my eyelet sweater and Classic Elite Four Seasons. Especially the little scalloped edging.


Pretty scallops, blurriness notwithstanding.

But seriously, how on earth does one finish an actual sweater when one row (of the back only!) takes like 15 minutes?!

Finally, the Yarn Goddess has taken pity on me and has sent me a Gryffindor pattern in a dream. I must swatch before I talk about it, but I think it can work, and IT'S NOT STRIPES! YAY!


Why do y'all let her do this kind of thing?

Good fiber, bad fiber

YAY! My Rabbitch special yarn came in the mail yesterday! Squooshy, squishy, and PINK! It's love. (It's not just any yarn that gets posed in the flowers.)


Jazzberry Toe Jam.

Go now, to her store. Buy some, then come back.

Mondays are for spinning in pacaland, and so I did. I finished up the little bit of easter egg roving I was working on, but only had one spare bobbin, and hadn't dyed up the roving that I want to ply the easter egg with. So I did that after. I just used the little food coloring droppers, 3:1 green to blue, and got creative with the vinegar. (Pouring it on the fiber directly is what caused the light spots, which was what I was going for.)


It's really that bright. Mebbe brighter.


I think it will match pretty nicely with the easter egg, but not be too boring. Hurry, roving, DRY already!

And now for the bad. Juno posted yesterday about how she started thinking of her hair as fiber, and how it was important to get it cut regularly so the fiber would stay in good condition. Along the lines of Hair As Fiber, I present:


Bad to the Bone.


Mommy loves me.

Now where's that photographer with the kiddie-sized Harley?

Defeat or Impasse?

At what point do you admit that the cool idea you had isn't working out?


[sigh] Argyles.

I love the idea of the Gryffindor argyles, and I can scarcely stand to make striped socks like everyone else, but really, they weren't working out. I haven't given up on argyles in general, but at this time, they're too complex, and I have too many other complex things to finish. [sigh again]
So, any ideas for maroon and gold socks that aren't horizontally striped? I have considered checkerboard, checkboard-on-point, and barberpole stripes, all of which would be stranded and therefore a helluva lot easier to do. Should I just suck it up and do plain ol' stripes and quit being s'damn picky?
As for the rest of my projects on the schedule, I had a modicum of success. I actually did knit a few rows on the eyelet sweater, I knit quite a bit on the blue Vermont socks (they're my work knitting too), and actually picked Faina up, although I didn't knit on her any. I would feel better about all of it if I could FIND the shrek lace. Dammit. I might actually have to clean or tidy something to find it, which is drastic measures indeed.
And now for the requisite bug picture:


Box-o-Bug