Remus sweater jumper: back on track.

I know I've said it before, but this time I've finally got the sleeves worked out. Last time I picked up my armscye stitches and tried a few different ways of using short rows (kind of like the first part of turning a sock heel, but in the round), and I kept ending up with a horrible combination of puckering and poofing. It seemed this sweater really wanted to be a vest.

But! With the help of an experienced designer and the pythagorean theorem, I've got a sleeve pattern written down that should work.

In other knitting news, I am *this close* to finishing my Goodwill raglan. I have a few inches of the second sleeve to go, and I've decided to make it a Weasley sweater, because apparently everything I knit has to be Harry Potter. And what's happened?

I fucking ran out of yarn.

Today was so ridiculous. I've been working like such a Huffle recently, but today... sheesh. It just wasn't meant to happen, I guess.

Accomplishments of the day:
- got coffee
- went to a planning meeting for a grant I'd never heard about before
- attended a (very interesting) forum on the achievement gap in Seattle schools that was redonculously irrelevant to our program
- got back to the office, heated up my lunch
- got a call from Angelo, saying it was snowing and that I should drive home before the freeway turned into an icy clusterfuck again
- ate my food, knit a little, and drove home before 3.

Waste of a day!

I've been making smashing progress on my Remus sweater though. I abandoned it a while ago when I realized the pattern's directions for sleeves would look awful, and couldn't figure out how to alter it (having never made a set-in sleeve sweater before). It's been in a weird unfinished-vest-like state, but last night I picked it up and did the math on some short-row shaping for top-down sleeves. I even went out and bought some beautiful buttons tonight. WILL POST PHOTOS OF THE FO SOON.

I can't wait until I've got this website up and running so I can have a little bit of my life back. I needs gets more knitting time in before Xmas.

A few days ago, I started thinking about Christmas knitting. Last year I started way too late and planned way too little, and only a few people on my list got hand-knitted gifts.

"But not this year," I told myself.

I even made Angelo install FileMaker on my new lappy so that I could keep all my knitting on track this year. I figured that, if I complete 2 ⅓ projects a week from here on out, I'll be fine. (For the record, I've already done 3 ½ this week.)

But then, earlier tonight, STUPID Angelo had to STUPIDLY remind me that I knit his STUPID brother a STUPID hat for his STUPIDSTUPIDSTUPID birthday in August. I've set a precedent. And the whole damn family was there to see him unwrap it. There's no denying it.

He has three sisters, one brother, two neices, one nephew, not to mention mom, dad, step-dad, aunts, grandmas, and significant others. By my count, there are 15 of them that I've spent enough time with to feel like I ought to give them something. Oh jeez.

32 + 15. We'll see.

It didn't really occur to me before how humungous the difference is between moving with your parents and moving without them. I moved around a fair amount as a kid/teenager, and I thought I'd gotten the hang of it. But damn, when you're actually *entirely* responsible for *all* your own shit, it's a whole different game.

You wouldn't believe how hard it is to donate food around here. It'll break my heart to throw those cans in the trash.

It's really crazy-go-nuts time. Angelo and I have been yelling at each other all day, though we've only really gotten pissed off once or twice. (And the one time I did get really angry? Because he asked me to screw a wingnut onto a table leg while I was writing out an address label, and I said no, and he yelled at me. Dunno why that was such a big deal, on either side...

But we're fine. We're just being silly and selfish and stressed, but at least we know it and can let most of it go. Blargh. Still doesn't feel too good though.

We may not be getting on the road quite as early as we'd hoped, but we will certainly leave Boston (forever!) tomorrow morning. Yay! Exciting! We're taking eight days to haul our asses out to Emerald City, aka Rainy City, aka Gateway to Alaska, aka Queen City, aka Jet City. Yes, I just looked that up.

Night one: Buffalo (hopefully), NY
Night two: Chicago, IL
Nights three through seven: The Goddamn Middle of No Where, US (this will definitely include Badlands National Park and Glacier National Park)
Night eight until we get an apartment: crappy campground outside of North Seattle, because we are HELLA poor cheap. Hopefully it'll have a shower and an honest-to-gosh flush toilet, but I'm not counting on it. ::shudder::

I probably won't have access to Internet® for a nearly unbearably long time, but I will try to make good use of my wonderful new paid account (courtesy of the lovely modly people over at weasleysweaters) by making a phone post or two. It should be interesting. Or, you know, extraordinarily boring for you, but really fun for me. =D

I will leave you with this:

1. NEWSFLASH! Books have been mailed. In fact, Angelo and his brother just sent off 330 pounds (!!!) of books and DVD cases (the discs themselves are coming with us in the car, because there is no friggin way I trust the US Postal Service with my copy of "Firefly"), which includes all the requests from you fine folks. Well, almost. hijklmnop, I haven't sent your book yet because I found a truly embarrassing amount of notes in the margins that I want to erase first. greysilhouette and huemulera, I'm very sorry but each of you will be one book short. Y'all asked for the same two books on the SAME DAY, and I agreed to both before I realized what was going on. So you each get one of them.
2. ( Sweater photo! )
3. Dark side or Light side?

There are a gazillion things to write about -- the Big Dig disaster, which seems to have most of Boston (including myself) pretty freaked out, the insane lawsuit that Angelo's now caught up in with DoggieDay (don't worry, he's suing them, not the other way around), the pile of crap that John is dumping on my mom now that the divorce is getting ugly, and, of course, the move (don't ask). But I don't feel like talking about all that. I'd rather talk about knitting.

My mother made me promise that I'd stop buying yarn, since I obviously don't have the budget to back it up. But this weekend, Angelo's awesome dad gave us a scratch ticket worth $1000. Yesterday I went downtown to cash it, and between the scary government building and the T station there is.... my favorite yarn store. ::hangs head in shame::

I only got $40 worth! Only 4% of the prize money! Honestly, it could have been much worse.

Anyways, I got 5 skeins of Cascade 220 in a gorgeous green-gold-brown heather (9338) that is absolutely perfect for that dorky sweater I mentioned before. I suppose now that I've actually knit two inches of the back side there's no use hiding it anymore. This is my version of Remus's favorite jumper in shoebox_project. Yes, I'm designing and knitting a sweater based on Harry Potter slash! Urk. I love it so far.

Well, that's it I guess. I'm really only saying all this to postpone the pain of packing a little bit longer. Consolidating two households worth of crap and moving across the country at the same time is kinda, um, fucking crazy.

ETA: ( Sweater-in-progress photos! )

Alright, Rich is officially my least favorite landlord ever.

He called me up at 8:45 this morning, which is an UNGODLY hour for me these days, because he lost my downstairs neighbor's number. He made me (1) wake up, (2) put clothes on, (3) walk downstairs, (4) knock on her door, and (5) hand my stupid phone to her. Then I had to stand around looking like an idiot in front of her open door. Fucking horrible way to wake up from a few hours sleep.

I finished my alpaca swatch and duplicate-stitched a badger on it, and now I face the horrible prospect of having nothing to knit until my KnitPicks order gets here in a couple days. Crazy.

Speaking of crazy, we're leaving in 10 days. Words alone cannot describe how unprepared we are. My to-do list is five miles long, and I only have TWO things checked off: "Get Mandi's pan back to her," and, "Send email to Betsy, for fuck's sake."

This does not bode well for our heros.

I have yarn woes. And money woes. A very clever person might suggest that the two are related.

And they would be right.

( Whine whine yarn )

So I just bought some yarn. Online. I could here my debit card cry out with pain as I chose the 3-day shipping. Little one, I need this yarn.

I need to have 6 balls of Knitpicks Shine Sport so that I can make my Aunt Kathy this silly thing, because it's a lovely, simple project that just might calm this crazy mind.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I don't deal well with stress.

I feel terrible about taking Jo back to the rescue. I'm going to be heart-broken, and I'm going to cry like a baby. But I'm starting to realize that, after that, I'll be able to live my life in a more reasonable way. Angelo and I can leave the house together. We can go on dates! We can move into pretty much any place we want in Seattle. And we can *gasp* make friends and hang out at cafes and bars and work and have LIVES. It's amazing.

Oh man, MOVING. I'm still having fun packing things up -- I did books today! Yesterday Angelo discovered that posting an item on the "free" section of craigslist virtually guarantees that it will be taken away within three hours, so I'm no longer doing the "oh-my-god-what-if-we-can't-sell-everything-and-we-have-to-pay-to-take-shit-to-the-dump-and-OH-MY-GOD-I'm-such-a-bad-environmentalist!" freaking out thing.

I'm just making to-do list after to-do list, and making hardly a dent in any of them.

CALIFORNIA PEOPLE: I will be in the Golden State for the bulk of August. I'll be dividing my time between the Bay Area and socal and pretty coastal driving (and maybe even rugged outdoorsy backpacking in Big Sur or Yosemite or Trinity Wilderness or whatever if someone's up for it). Now is the time to tell me if you're only available for much needed hangings-out on certain Augustly dates. I'd hate to miss anyone.

Holy crap, we're moving in two weeks. Holy crap holy crap holy crap.

To all of you who "ordered" books: they are packed up and labeled (er, mostly), and probably won't be mailed off until right before we hit the road. Sorry.

Last night I stayed up past 4 knitting swatches. I finally ended up inventing a stitch pattern because I couldn't find the perfect one, and this is it:

(worked on 3x + 1 stitches)
Row 1 (RS): *k1, yf, sl2, yb, repeat from * to last st, k1
Row 2: purl
Row 3: *sl1, k2, repeat from * to last st, sl1
Row 4: purl

Repeat these 4 rows indefinitely.

( I call it grid stitch. Cool, huh? )

If you're wondering why I needed just the right stitch -- well, I have an idea for a sweater that is absolutely the dorkiest thing ever. Seriously. I don't think you could handle it.

Two more things:

( [1] Photos of the dog, because she'll be gone in a week and I will miss her insanely for the rest of my life. )

( [2] Photos of my hair, because I dyed it a goddamn week ago. )

Anything else? Oh, apparently my insomnia has returned. It doesn't matter how tired I feel, I just can't sleep. Boo.

ETA:

I'm toying with the idea of making this journal public again. Meh.

I just finished my postcards for an art/recipe swap, and I'm pretty pleased with the results.

( For your viewing pleasure )

House Unity iPod Cozy



Techniques: knit, purl, dpns, changing colors, kitchener stitch (optional)

Yarn: Encore Worsted in black (217), navy (848), forest green (204), yellow (1382), dark red (999). Substitute any worsted weight yarn

Needles: set of 4 or 5 US6 dpns, or size to get gauge

Gauge: 12 st x 18 rows = 2" square

[Note: this pattern will give you a cozy that fits one of the fairly large, 3rd generation iPods. If you're making it for one of the slimmer ones, you may want to cast on 28 stitches instead of 30 and follow the pattern from there.]

Pattern: Cast on 30 stitches fairly loosely. Divide stitches evenly between 3 or 4 needles and join. Work in k1p1 ribbing for 6 rounds. Work in stockinette (knit every stitch) for 12 rounds. Switch to navy and knit for 5 rounds. Switch to black and knit for 1 round. Switch to forest green and knit for 5 rounds. Switch to black and knit for 1 round. Switch to yellow and knit for 5 rounds. Switch to black and knit for 1 round. Switch to dark red and knit for 5 rounds. Switch to black and knit for 3 rounds.

(At this point, your work should be the length of your iPod. If it's too short, continue knitting in black until it's long enough.)

Divide stitches evenly between 2 needles. Break yarn and thread tapestry needle. Seam the two sides of the tube together with kitchener stitch for a clean finish.

Alternatively, use a 3-needle bind off, or simply bind off normally and then sew the tube shut.

Weave in ends and slip onto your favorite iPod!