SuperSocks To the Rescue

I came home from work to the most wonderful package. My sockpal socks had arrived! Here are a few reasons why my sockpaller, Rae, rocks:

1. These socks are absolutely gorgeous. Look at that lace! And beading too! These socks are a lot of "firsts" for me. They are my first pair of lace socks, since I always guilted myself into knitting socks that were supposedly more practical. I was wrong- beauty is completely practical for the soul. They're also my first beaded knit, and my first pair of purple socks. I can't get over how lovely they are, and I wore them for the rest of the day, August be damned.

2. They fit perfectly. I gave her wacky measurements, because I may or may not have been drunk. Or terribly stupid. But she realized my error, e-mailed me, and then knitted them to fit instead of writing me off as a terminal idiot.

3. She owns a yarn store in Lansing, MI. The awesome factor of being a LYS owner needs not be explained. However, she is even more awesome because she lives in Michigan, home state of one of my Dad's favourite college sports teams. Every year, the Wolverines and the Penn State Nittany Lions battle it out for my Dad's heart. I'll see to it that U of Mich wins it this year, although since she is in Lansing maybe I should push for Michigan State.

4. Two words: sheltie. puppy. The big dice in the sky works in mysterious ways, and so the owner of adorable Robin became the sockpal of Smitty's food dispensing unit and playtime fun machine. Sheltie owners are better people. It's science. And in another strange coincidence, the name of her Sheltie is the same as the first name of Smitty's breeder. Creepy!

5. In a display of generosity, she sent me sock yarn for more socks. And not just any sock yarn, but one ball of Mirage Fire and one ball of Landscape Fire, from Kaffe Fassett's new Regia sock yarn collection. She must have creepy voodoo powers, because I was drooling over an ad for the Fassett sock yarn in the newest Interweave. Not only that, but Fire was my favourite colourway.

Seriously, Rae, you rock but I'm putting my tinfoil hat back on now. The coincidences are too uncanny. I've also decided that my fabulous sockpal recipient deserves new yarn of her own if I do. So, watch that mail, Jill B.!

Weekly Digest

I grew a Jalapeño pepper. Gaze upon its spicy beauty!*

I. Sockapalooza Update
My sockpal, Two Sticks and Yarn, got her socks! My sockpal got her socks! SOCKS! PAL! VICTORY! Forgive me if I'm a little bit excited, but I spent the week since I sent them going over various horror scenarios in my head. The socks would get lost in the mail. The socks would take weeks to get there. The socks would be destroyed at the border as a national security threat to the U.S. Before you laugh at the last one, my roomie's grandmother sent her a crocheted blanket during first year. It was incinerated by some, shall we say, unhealthily dedicated Canadian border security. Or, they would get there but they wouldn't fit, or they would unravel. After seeing some of the other lovely packages, I was convinced she would bemoan my lack of classy packaging and tasteful bonus geegaws, and that Yarnstorm (incisively described as "the knitting Martha Stewart" by mote) would preside over my trial. But Jill B seems to really like them, so I'm both pleased and proud.
Read her touching write-up on my socks- I made everyone at work and in my family do so. Yay!

II. Roomie Update
My hetero wife and her family are all okay, but when I checked in last a boy from her little sister's class was still missing in the bridge collapse. It's been a while, and I know a lot of names have been taken off the list since I heard from her. I hope his was one of them.

III. Neglected Hillside Anecdote
I forgot to mention the best part of Hillside. My brother and I were down by the shore, trying to dodge hippie wang and bush in its natural habitat, when from behind the bend came the Pervatron in his pontoon. He wore tight cut-off chinos, no shirt, a life jacket, and huge early 90s sunglasses, striking the "Tino" as he sailed up. At first I was confused about what he was doing. He was slowly moving closer and closer to the shore, to the point where it was becoming alarmingly shallow for his boat. But then I realized he was on the hunt. The hunt for a group of nubile, skinnydipping Hillsiders.
First he purred:
"Helloooooooooo"
and then
"How's the waterrrrrrrrr"
As he passed the buffet of boob. He went a few meters further, not even to the next bend, when he swung around and did the perv loop again. And again. I'm sure he's still out there, forlornly calling "Helloooooo" to the void, wondering if he would ever know how the "waterrrrrrrr" was.




*Actually, I grew many Jalapeño peppers. If anyone in Guelph could give a few garden-fresh peppers a good home in some salsa, I can hook you up.

Protagitron's Folly

The Big Green Fuzzy thing has been reincarnated as a Boatneck Bluebell Sweater from Stefanie Japel's Fitted Knits. Look at the following progress picture to see if you can spot my peewee-level error. And, again, I apologize for the fact that my knitwear looks like re-fried ass in my photo. It's 9:30pm in the basement. I'm not brooklyn tweed. Things will return to normal soon.

No, it's not the part where my stitches go all wacky. That's from not steaming kinked yarn before knitting with it again (learn this lesson well, children!). How about we do a comparison shot with the book?

That's right! There are only two purl ridges instead of three. Two does not equal three, silly Protagitron! Here, I've made a handy clip n' save reminder so no one else makes the same error.Laminate it, tape it to the fridge, tattoo it to your body. Just remember it, folks. I had been knitting from a photocopy, but just reading the text, and not looking at the full body picture on the other page. There isn't anything wrong with the pattern- my brain just somehow skipped over the third purl 3 rows, knit 2 rows, and I didn't notice until 24 rows into the ribbing.

But all may not be lost. I have a short little body, and I'm wondering if maybe three horizontal bars will visually shorten and widen me even more. I think I'll try on the sweater, decide if it's more flattering this way, or whether I want the dramatic pop of three purl ridges. And if I like it this way, it was always meant to be so. Okay?

Sockapa-done-za

Hooray! These are currently on their way to my sockpal. Estimated delivery in 5 days or less. They're late because I totally misread the deadline, and thought that it was for the second week of August, when it was really the second. With one sock finished, I realized this at about 11:00pm... August 1.
Shockingly, I did pass my grade 10 literacy test.
Also, these socks are much more attractive in person than the cruddy pictures allow. I was working under restrictions, more precisely at work with a 400 page list that needed sorting on my desk. Also, the lighting was crappy. So, keep your eyes on the cute sock band, okay?

Pattern: Brigit by
Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug in Velvet Damson
Needles: Addi Turbo DPNs, 2.00 mm
Mods: Because of the aforementioned row gauge issues, I shortened the rows on the heel flap, and thus reduced the number of stitches I picked up and decreased for. I decreased an extra four stitches over the stockinette portion of the foot, so that it wouldn't be too wide. The row gauge also screwed up the cabling on the foot. There's supposed to be one and a half repeats of the cable pattern on the foot, in other words three of those cables, but with the different row gauge I was getting it probably would have fit my sockpal's Irish husband better than her. So, I cut it down to two and just did ribbing for a few more rows until working on the toe. Changed the decreases on the two very slightly too.

I think I'm even more proud of the sock label I made than my socks, and I like my socks. The rather folk art, over-caffeinated, mouse was a doodle I made at work, and I just taped it onto the sock info and photocopied it onto some bright pink cardstock. Access to these supplies for free, along with access to the lovely and talented K who actually knows how to work the machines, are some of the benefits of my job.

A Letter to my Roommate, or: Too Lazy to Write a New Post

Dearest Roommate!
I can't believe you're home already! Are your parents spoiling you yet?

I've assumed that you are okay, and not hurt in the awful bridge collapse (note: she lives in MN). My scientific reasoning for this was the infallible, "She's MY ROOMMATE and I LOVE HER" argument. How are Minnesotans handling it?

Not much news to report on from here. I ordered myself a new iPod, and have decided to finally lay old, cracked, Greenie to rest. However, instead of throwing it out, I've decided to decorate it with nail polish and resurrect it as that most useful of items... the paperweight. Especially in this digital age. Ahem. It should be here any day now.

I also went to a local music festival in Guelph last weekend, called Hillside. If you're not from Guelph, you may be unaware of what A VERY BIG DEAL Hillside is to Guelphites. In the newspaper, an article has quotes from residents describing it as "like Christmas". As you walk in to the festival, giant letters spell out ANTICIPATION in all-caps, like a particularly earnest LiveJournaller. A write-up i one of our local newspapers thought that was an accurate description of the mood of festival-goers, which is a lie, since mine would have read GASSY. It's an annual weekend where the crunchiest portion of Guelph can create their own little Utopia, and glad-hand each other on how socially conscious they are. The programmes are not only printed on post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks, but in a printshop powered by biodiesel fuels. Gear is transported from stage to stage not in a truck, but in a large tricycle. Food vendors use plastic plates that are washed and re-used as the festival goes on.

This year, the big craze were these stainless steel water bottles. After Wal-Mart had finally built their store, the anti-Wal Mart squad needed to funnel their energies into other projects, and so they set their sights on Nestlé. Nestlé bottles water that comes from a spring near Guelph (i.e. the very same water that runs through our taps), and with our annual water rationing in summer, their application to get their water-taking permit renewed was not well-received. I look forward to the cause celebre CD local Guelpherati put out, to follow the Wal-Mart volume. Since plastic water bottles were a waste problem at Hillside anyway, they came up with the idea of offering bottles for sale, and hiring a big tank truck to bus in city water. But with the recent health concerns of off-gassing plastic, they went one further and got Klean Kanteens, (whose name is one K away from awful hilarity). What ensued? Water bottle mania. 30 minute long lines to get these bottles. To obtain one would give you immeasurable Guelph cred. To be without one would make you a lesser man. I decided I couldn't care less, and that if I really wanted an off-gassing free water bottle, I would just head down to the local hippie health store, pay the extra $ and get myself one of those pretty Sigg bottles. However, my Mother wanted one. And her lovely daughter spent twenty minutes in line and got her one before they sold out. I'm only a little more curmudgeonly to show for all that!

Now, these are all very noble endeavours, but after the first twelve hours I always feel a distinct urge to drive over to the festival in my Hummer, eating McDonald's take out and running over some endangered waterfowl on the way, while blasting Toby Keith. Fortunately, I hate Toby Keith. Almost as much as I hate the goddamned water fowl.

In spite of my deeply cynical and lazy nature, I continue to go to Hillside because the music is usually quite good. If you want me to, I can YouSendIt or whatever a sampler of my favourite Hillside artists. I highly recommend the Klezmer hip hop of socalled, and the insane stage show of Shout Out Out Out Out. I also had a weird moment when I found myself attracted to a rather aged member of one of my brother's favourite groups, although it's probably just all my repressed sexuality beginning to boil over. In my defense, however, it was at a really fabulous workshop where a bunch of Hillside artists got together and played the music of The Band. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down was amazing- everyone stood up and sang, and even I pretended to know the lyrics.

How are you? How's the family? How is le boyfriend? Write back! Also, would it be okay if I ordered something from a US-only company for delivery to your fair abode? It's very small, 9"x6", and I would be forever in your debt.

Off to see Ratatouille,

Protagitron

Ratatouille was adorable, by the way. I'm curious about the particular alchemy of Pixar- how they can transmit humanity so easily through animation, and how different it can be from something like the Uncanny Valley fest of the Polar Express. All the Polar Express does is CGI over human actors, but there's something unnatural about the final product- like a horror film set at Madame Tussaud's. Pixar shows that movies don't have to sacrifice emotional reality for a bit of visual fun. Be warned- it will make you hungry. I'm trying to teach my degu how to cook me a cassoulet as we speak, but his lack of opposable thumbs and long-term memory is proving to be an obstacle.

Harry Potter and the Rebellious Wand

Smitty demonstrates the "Beseeching Sheltie Pose"

I liked the new Harry Potter, right up until the epilogue. I won't give the ending away, but while I found the content satisfying, I found the writing clunky and lousy with exposition in the last few pages. Since there's a lot more death and violence, and even curse(!) words that aren't cut off in time by other characters, I'll be interested to see what rating the movie gets when it's made.

Oh, screw it. Spoiler time.

Harry is lives and, marries Ginny. Ron marries Hermione. Draco marries some lady who doesn't even get a name. They all have babies with meaningful first- and last- names who all look like their parents. Does this mean that all the Potterites reproduce by binary fission or budding instead of sexual reproduction? Damn it, that would deprive me of the amusing idea of a Snape-lead sex ed class where he breaks down over Lily and makes Harry stare at him until third period. End Spoiler Time.
I haven't been up to much, lately, except advanced sloth. I went to my first Yoga class on Monday. It's work! I was expecting two hours of breathing to sitar music, but instead I ended up sweating. A little. it did make my back feel better, although I am unsure if I am the ideal student. During relaxation time, when we were supposed to concentrate on our breathing, I instead pondered that great, pressing question: Is it the borrowed yoga mat that smells of feet, or do my feet.... smell of feet? I'm also curious how one of the few guys in our class managed to achieve his magnificent pompadour. It was rockabilly fabulous, and no amount of cat pose or downward dog would deflate its splendour. He also had a pair of tight little shorts, and I found myself immediately fascinated. My thoughts went something like this: "Did he dress like that at home? Did he sleep in a hair net like those beehive girls did in the sixties? Had I just checked out his ass from sheer desperation?" Torn between giggling and collapsing into tears I instead looked mildly constipated, and lost my balance.

The next day, I wasted my new spiritual transcendence on my first manicure/pedicure, in a very un-Namaste shade of deep burgundy with bronze glitter.

Life After Potter(mania)

This "Harry Potter Lost in the Medieval Times Gift Shoppe " cover isn't piquing my interest either.

So, the latest, and final, Harry Potter came out today, in case you somehow missed the hype in the media. Or the legions of duelling articles: "Potter is a bit of magical storytelling that has turned our children into readers" vs. "Potter is crap that will make our children terrible writers and worse, awful people". Or the confounding stuffed puppet Sorting Hats, I noticed at Chapters, surely one of the few secondary characters/objects to get the full plush puppet treatment since the stuffed "Gabbin' Jacob Marley Doorknob" of 1843.

I have my copy, but I realized months ago, when it was time to pre-order, that I didn't care all that much. I started reading Potter when I was 11, and now, almost twenty, Harry has been a cultural phenomenon that has dominated almost a decade of my life. In spite of the naysayers like my Dad, who was convinced that the Potter craze had "blown its wad".... after the release of Goblet of Fire. I had always been excited about Potter. Not to the point where I would write fanfic, or make fanart, or worse- make fanart depicting lewd acts between Snape and Harry where you think Harry has rabies. But that ain't rabies, baby. Just to the point where I'd wait for the postman to come the day of the release, rip off the packaging and close myself off from the world for a few hours. Then, I would re-read parts for comfort, keen on the idea that a world existed seemingly designed by an eccentric uncle, with about twelve stores in the whole world and no damn Wal-Marts. Although the idea of being able to buy club-sized packages of beetle eyes is amusing. I even liked the smell of the books.

But... something has changed. I bought my copy this year at a drugstore, at the same time as deodorant and dish soap. I've only made my way about half-way through the book, and didn't mind leaving to see Hairspray with my mom. It's not that I've grown out of them, since I think that attitude is pretentious, and furthermore that you don't need to grow out of fantasy. Maybe we've just grown apart. But I'll still wear my Harry Potter scarf with pride. After all, I am a Ravenclaw.

The Many Faces of My Spinning

When I was going through that rough patch a few months back, I made a few lists of Goals I Had In Life (yes, avec capitalization). There were themes. Goals I Had For Travel, Goals I Had For My Career, Goals For This Funny Little Thing Called Love, etc. And one for knitting, currently closer to completion than any of my other lists including Goals For The Week of May 13. The knitting goals ranged from knitting a fair isle sweater, to designing my own pattern. One of them was to learn how to spin, and when the lovely ScarletMote held a workshop a few weeks ago, I got to cross another goal off the list.

Attempt at Yarn, #1
Involves: Libertina Yarns Merino top, hand-dyed by ScarletMote . Plied with green thread. Aren't the colours she picked lovely? Is it top? Seriously, my spinning lingo is limited.
Resembles: The stool of Puff the Magic Dragon with gastrointestinal distress.

Attempt at Yarn, #2
Involves: Libertina Yarns Merino top, 2-ply.
Resembles: Primitive yarn found preserved in an African Cave.

Attempt at Yarn, #3
Involves: Un-dyed Merino Roving
Resembles: Thick and thin art yarn that would be sold at 35$/a skein.

Attempt at Yarn, #4
Involves: Un-dyed Merino Roving
Resembles: Yarn. Success! All flaws, including some very slapdash repair of breaks during plying, are behind the outer layer of yarn. Almost there.

I know this entry is 2 days late, but I've had an exceptionally busy week, a week when it seems like I have three things, or more, to run around to after work. For example, last Wednesday I worked until 4, gave blood, practiced driving, and went to see Waitress with an acquaintance. I'm also working on my sockpal's socks. Unfortunately, last Tuesday I realized that the heel, with the row gauge I was getting, would fit a knee better. I had knit lovely, cabled, Tensor Knee Supports. So, I dutifully ripped back until a few rows of the heel were gone. They are lovely, but everything else is stagnant.

GOALS I HAVE FOR TOMORROW
-locate a tape measure, and make sure I take an accurate measure of my feet this time, so my Sockpal doesn't have to deal with my idiocy any longer.
-practice parallel parking so I don't look sloshed
- make a pie

Up Yours, Hypothalamus!

The last few weeks have been a series of annoyances and mistakes, somewhere along the spectrum of the banal.

Which is why I thank God that tea and Roy Orbison's music are both readily available. Roy Orbison reminds me that things could be worse, and tea makes me believe that things are just about to get better. I've finally righted all of the knitting wrongs I made, and am caught up with e-mails, bills, and all the rest of my many annoyances.

Speaking of e-mails: for a few months, I was convinced that those nonsense Spam e-mails were really secret codes some mysterious (but wealthy!) figure was sending to me. Really, I had just read The Westing Game and other kids caper books too much as a kid, and was desperate for adventure. Which... would be a good excuse if I had been twelve. But I was eighteen. Finally, a computer geek I had a passing acquaintance with loudly and publicly informed me that they were just Spam after I had printed them all out and spent months trying to decode what Karamazov had to do with stock tips.

And further embarrassments: For many years, I had a long-standing, and secret, crush on a certain boy in high school.

Well, I thought it was a secret, until I found out that a middle-aged woman I worked with at work knew who he was. Which means either my mom told her, which is bad enough, or worse- the crush's mom knows! Which means he knows! Forgive me for being unbearably high school about the whole thing, but he was much better-looking, more popular, and more athletic than I was. And taller. Oh, how very much taller. Even though I'm way past it now, it would still be embarrassing to the pimply teen aged girl that lives in us all, in my case, in the monstrous zit right between my eyebrows.

So, I was hanging out with some high school friends last Thursday, when we ran into a raving bitch working the late shift at the local all-night grocer's. This led to a conversation about how you never seem to run into the people you want to see again, and I said that I wanted to run into the ex-crush, to see if he was worth all the hormones I wasted on him. Well, the next day, I was walking with my Dad downtown. When, out of his native habitat sprung the Exus-Crushinus, in a family herd of mother and brother. I didn't say hi. I didn't wave. I didn't even make eye contact. Instead, I abruptly turned to my Dad, and launched into a rapid twelve point discussion of my hatred for Mondays. I narrowly avoided whiplash and a collision with a pole. I finally went into the bank to withdraw some money, and as I stabbed my PIN into the keypad, I wondered if maturity would ever catch up with puberty.

Tomorrow, I promise to talk about the spinning and the tank top graveyard. I can even make the girl guide hand thing, and there will be sockpal news! Yay.

Happy Indepence Day, American Swine! Here are your socks!

Just kidding my Southern brethren, I love you all. Especially my most beloved Midwest room mate, who has sadly abandoned our continent to have fun in Europe. I'm not madly jealous, oh no. See, I even finished her socks, because I'm a nice person like that.

I also finished my Mom's socks, which, in spite of being lovely, foamy, soft things I grew to hate after the nearly two months (heh) it took me to knit them. They became my lazy project, the thing I did a few rows of here and there while watching a movie or going somewhere in the car. Which, would seem like a recipe for completion, but it's really a recipe for ennui. Anyway, belated Mother's Day present: finally completed.
On the needles: my much-delayed Sockpal socks. Brigit, in Colinette Jitterbug. Let's hope these go quicker than my Mom's socks, so I won't be known as a total flake. Although, I kind of don't want to part with these. The deep shadings of blue, the vaguely Celtic feel... No! I refuse to give in! The socks will go to my sockpal, and they better damn well fit. But maybe if they don't... would it be too outré to send a SAS envelope in the package, just in case?

So, at work these people bring around random crap every now and then for you to purchase. Usually it involves a mildly frightening singing stuffed animal. This month featured a canine Barry White in a cummerbund. You start ordering one thing, and then to get the special deal on the cheaply-made discount item, you get more, until you have the singing animal lulling you to bed with its tinny song. I know. It happened to me this month. It started off innocuously enough. I was still a little burnt out from spending Canada Day in London (Ontario, alack), and decided I wanted a Sudoku. And then I saw a gardening book my mother would like. And well, I was just a few bucks short of making the rolling cooler, apparently for those days when lifting mid-sized soft cooler just seems too damn hard.
So, I bought the "Mapquest" road map atlas. Now, my brain may be feeble, but road atlas of North America + rolling cooler= road trip, yes? My arithmetic is correct, no? Road trip to Mexico with friends sounds fun to me. Margaritas, ahoy.

Tomorrow: Misadventures in Spinning and the Tank Top Chronicles.