Monkey Days and Candlelit Nights

Do you want to block my monkey?†




Blocking is magic. Why have I been so resistant to blocking? I only do it when I absolutley have to,‡ but it's always such a thrill to see a wad of knitting go all smooth and competent.§

The Monkey Pack has this keen design element, kinda like racing stripes designed by Garanimals.¶

[SUMMARY: You say potayto, I say potahto.]




It has a lining. With frogs.#




Monkey Pack
Punk Rock Backpack pattern from Stitch 'n' Bitch (Debbie Stoller)
Elann Superwash Worsted in 3 moss green (wasn't quite enough), 1 each ivory, russet, rich chestnut and deep rose (which was more than enough -- I'm making mousies with the leftovers)
Size 4 needles (the yarn called for size 6, the pattern called for size 5, the fabric was just better tighter. And it was kind of an accident.)
Lined with frogs, which was a pain in the ass. The lining... not the frogs.
Zippered, which was scary. I've never done a zipper before. It's not so bad.
Serious modification: I knit for size, rather than stitch count, so I cast on 65 rather than 45 to get the right size.
Another modification: I didn't knit straps. I thought they would be too stretchy. So I went to my local Ross (dress for less!) store and bought a very small, very cheap backpack and cut the straps off of it.

Due to unforeseen sewing machine circumstances,†† I was more than an hour late and missed dinner.

I did not, however, miss cake.

[SUMMARY: Not rain nor snow nor vagaries of sewing machine...]




Or singing Happy Birthday. I like singing.

Throughout the construction of this backpack, I was worried it was too small. The finished size was supposed to be 9.5"‡‡ across, and when I stretched out the little snake sweaters, it was going to be right to scale, but it looked way small.

Dr. Doom pulled it out of the gift bag and the first thing he said?

"It's HUGE!"

[SUMMARY: Yeah, buddy... that's what she said.]

Turns out in all its lumpy, bumpy, dorky glory, it's perfectly Dr. Doom-sized.




And that's all I ever really wanted.§§


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): You couldn't have told me this earlier? I spent an hour and a half blocking the monkey. You could have saved me a lot of time.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Like when the Monkey Pack looks like a garter snake cosy and I have to explain to someone for the fifteenth time, while holding various resistant edgepoints out with my fingers, that it's really 10.5" and will make a fine small-person backpack.

(When I said 10.5", did anyone else get a little chill?)

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Despite its procedural pain in the assedness.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): We will continue to refer to it as a "design element" through all the nagging little voices in our heads trying to remind us we ran out of green yarn with *that* much left to go on the gusset.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): And many hidden treasures in the form of jungles of thread loops where I didn't have the bobbin threaded correctly. Then I had the tension set wrong. Then I found out the bobbin winder isn't working and I had to wind all my bobbins by hand, just like they did in the old days. All this, buried between the wrong side of the knitting and the back side of the lining, lurking, waiting to pop forth and expose me for the hot mess I am.

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Well, and issues of thinking I have superpowers and can line a backpack and set a zipper, even never having done these things before, in a couple of hours. See Hat Attack for delusional thought process.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): There's that chill again. Did anybody feel that?

§§FOOTNOTE (turnaroun): Well, that and a pony. And a Brasilian houseboy with very little chest hair and a knack with a refreshing rum beverage.

Touch My Monkey

Go on... you know you want to.

In other intarsia news, I am frogging† Brother's Father's Day Arrrgyles. Not all the way... not even back to dick warmer. Just enough to get rid of the colourwork I've already done.

While I stand fast to the idea that you can do unstranded colourwork in the round, I am conceding you probably shouldn't.

After my test Arrrgyle and after the operative part‡ of the Monkey Pack, I believe it will go a LOT faster if I just work the picture portion flat.

I'm still debating with myself as to whether to try to do it completely flat, sew it into a tube, then graft it onto the sock part... or just start working back and forth on the existing sock, sewing up the back when I'm done.

[SUMMARY: Too many options, too little experience.]

And the red silk thing is holding steady at 5", no matter how hard I knit on it.§

[SUMMARY: Still a knitblog!]

Let's just be twelve today and not think of silly things like objects in the mirror that aren't as large as they appear and taxes and werk...


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Note to Brother: That's the "rip it, rip it" thing.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): That would be the monkey.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): So many opportunities for Brainless Twelvehood, I hardly know where to start...

Here, Piggy, Piggy...

A luscious little lapping of lickable pig today!†

*************

I live in fear.‡

Brother's boss§ is a little... anal.

I like sitting at his desk before he arrives in the office and skewing his stapler just a tiny bit out of true just to watch him put it right when he gets there. Then he systematically touches and arranges everything on the desk just to be sure nothing else got fucked up while he wasn't looking.

I've dealt with worse, but he definitely teeters toward that end of the spectrum.

Yesterday, I had chicken fajitas for lunch while I was in his Littleton office. And I got a tiny, annoying shred of chicken stuck between my teeth. Brother's boss reached a toothpick down for me,¶ and I attended to the chicken and went on to groom my other teeth because... well, if nothing else, I kinda like chewing on toothpicks.#

I woke up this morning all groggy and warm and with a cat purring in my ear, then sat bolt upright, heart pounding like a footnote,†† suddenly aware I couldn't remember throwing the toothpick away. Try as I might, I can't visualise when or where I may have thrown it away and that means it could be anywhere.

It could be sitting in the middle of his desk.

Or chair.

Or dining room table.

Not only would this be disgusting and an abuse of toothpick privileges, but it would annoy him more than it would annoy most people. And he'd never let me forget it.

[SUMMARY: The petroleum industry: no country for odd women.]

*************

They've gone to a new recycling program here at Patrick's dad's office.‡‡

We used to have individual paper recycling in our offices, with similar, larger recycling bins in the copy rooms. And there is a recycling can in the kitchen for aluminum and plastic.

Under the new system, they've taken away our individual recycling boxes and our trash can liners. We are supposed to use the trash cans for recycling and they're supposed to provide us a "piggy back" to attach to the side of our trash cans to put trash that can't be recycled.§§

For one, I fail to see how this is better than the old way. It's certainly more of a pain in the ass because, for two, our recycling boxes and trash can liners have already disappeared, but the mysterious "piggy backs" have yet to be installed.

I know the dedicated enviroweenies are too caught up in the beauty of recycling to realise that the PTB basically expect us to live without trash cans.

And it may seem like a small thing to whine about, but if you are rolling your eyes at me right now, I challenge you to get rid of the trash can in your office for a week and see how you like it.

[SUMMARY: This may be kharmic payback for leaving my disgusting, chicken-blobbed toothpick on John's desk.]

*************

I knitted a monkey this weekend. No pictures, no details, I'm just thrilled to be able to utter that sentence.

Camera work to follow.

[SUMMARY: Non Sequiturs¶¶ backwards-R Us.]

*************

There is a new plague.

It seems like everybody's getting it -- Hans, Genius Sarah, Bag Lady Kathryn... and I thought it was the same thing I had from mid-December until some time the first week in February, but it appears it may be an entirely different animal. In which case, I'm probably not immune.

In fact, I'm a little headachy and tired today and that's apparently how it starts.

Now, I figure I can look at this one of three ways:

In the glass half empty way, I am being punished for digressions both known and inferred.##

In the glass half full way, Job had to suffer plagues on his way to biblical stardom, right? And my primary resolution for 2008 is still to reach sainthood.

In the not-getting-the-cart-before-the-horse way, I'm not actually sick yet.

[SUMMARY: Inside my head is a swirling, volatile place. Watch your footing.]

*************

Remember the big ol' deadline I had January 31? Well, the buyer to whom we sold bought us lunch today.†††

That is not what this little porcine tongue tango is about.

No, I started giggling helplessly to myself -- but in front of all the key players in Patrick's dad's office -- because of a whole tangential story in my head.

**WARNING**

Please see previous summary for caveat. Not responsible for dizziness, headache, nausea or disorientation.

See, the nice delivery girl was setting up on the conference table. She wanted to put this red-checkered, disposable tablecloth on the table, but there was a conference call thingie in the middle, which couldn't be moved without an ethernet expert, so the consensus was to leave said conference call thingie and just throw the tablecloth over it.

Which took me back a few years to when my parents‡‡‡ had their roof replaced right before they went on their annual four-week vacation. The roof didn't pass inspection, so they asked me to handle what I could in getting the job done right while they were out of town.

So after the second round of inspection rejection, I called the roofing company to read them the latest litany of inspection woes, and I added, "And there's a big lump in the top, eastern portion of the roof at the front of the house that looks like you shingled over a squirrel." Which I didn't really know I was going to say until it was out of my mouth.

It caught me so by surprise that I started laughing. The customer service wench at the roofing company didn't think it was funny at all,§§§ which made me laugh harder. I excused myself and said I'd call back later.

When I saw the conference call thingie lumping under the tablecloth today, it reminded me of the squirrel bump in Brother's parents' roof.

And I giggled. And excused myself.

[SUMMARY: Some of us will never rise above our own dorkedness in this world.]

*************

Last but not least, stealing from Lyda once again:




[SUMMARY: That's what he said!]

Probably because I can spell "fellatio."


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): I linked to the picture's source, but you may not want to go there. There are PIG RECIPES, and that seems a little wrong, like having Cat Foo Yung recipe cards at the desk at the Denver Dumb Friends League.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Good start!

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): We also occasionally talk about Brother's father, Brother's grandmother or Brother's cousin Tani.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): John is 6'2" or 6'3". I am 5'4". It's a math thing. Or a physics thing. Both. I couldn't reach the damned toothpicks and had to ask for help.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Until I get splinters in my tongue.

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): That's pretty funny. Or at least self-referential in the extreme.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): See? Now Patrick's practically family.

§§FOOTNOTE (like two enviroweenies dancing in the glen): What can't be recycled? I quote: "We can recycle most items; here are the exceptions Kleenex tissues, food, gum, paper towels, styrofoam, light bulbs, plastic bags and garbage." [sic, mostly because I feel they're missing a period and a colon and have tossed in an ill-advised semi-colon]. I take great exception, much like Kraft claiming to have salad dressing with ingredients. As "ingredients" means nothing specific, "garbage" means fuck-all. It's like saying, "and other stuff."

¶¶FOOTNOTE (noses!): I can spell "non sequitur." Also? Take *that* elementary school readers!

##FOOTNOTE (pounding like a flu ache): Y'know... like, "I may not know why I'm grounding you, but YOU know why I'm grounding you."

†††FOOTNOTE (cross purposes?): Maggiano's, for those of you scoring at home.

‡‡‡FOOTNOTE (bird tracks): Or, as we like to call them, "Brother's parents."

§§§FOOTNOTE (marching monkeys): In fact, she took me so seriously she wanted details of how I knew it was a squirrel and it took me a good fifteen minutes (when I called back) to talk her into the idea that I was just being flip and was pretty sure there was no squirrel involved, just a lump that suggested what it might look like if a squirrel had been shingled over.

All New! All Fibre!

Knitting. Ah, there is knitting to be had. Knitting to be bad.†

First, I was taken out rather unceremoniously‡ in Hat Attack. At least I reached my stated goal not to go out in the first round.




This is the hat that killed me, gleefully knit by Ravelry's llamamama. She also sent some lovely Scharfenberger's dark dark chocolate, so that helped take the sting out. Also? Cat for Scale LURVES this hat. He nuzzles and burrows and gets this dopey look on his face. I'm pretty sure the hat is 100% wool, but he's treating it the way he treats alpaca.

[SUMMARY: Like mother, like son.]

On the other end of the fibre spectrum, I finished a birthday present for SusieQ, intrepid manager/bartender at the Coral Room. I told her I'd like to knit her a scarf. She said she wanted rainbow and she said she's allergic to wool.

Off to Michael's and the five-pound wad of crayon-coloured acrylic!

I knitted this out of Caron Simply Soft worsted, two strands held together, then used the double-stranding to sort of blend the colours. Two strands of red, then one red and one orange, then two strands of orange, then one orange and one yellow, etc.

She loves it and I have enough yarn left over to keep the nephews in stuff until they're too old for rainbows.§




[SUMMARY: You can use cheap acrylic for good or evil. I choose good.]

When I got the Noro sock yarn, I was all hype for an attempt at making Lizard Ridge socks. Of course, Lizard Ridge uses short rows, so -- of course -- it can't be knit in the round. So I knitted and knitted and knitted and no Lizard bumps were evident.




I sighed, determined maybe the colour repeats were too long or too short and frogged back to the heel, where I started knitting stockinette and simply enjoying the fading of one colour into the other.

Raise your hand if you see the problem.¶

I never switched to the other end of the ball of Noro. Like you're supposed to@ in the middle of every Lizardy pattern repeat. This is KEY in getting the Lizard Ridge to Lizard Ridge.

Ah, well. I still have the other ball of Noro sock yarn. I'll do that one right and let you know how it all goes.

Meanwhile, here's a picture of the Noro socks from a couple of weeks ago. As you can see, the colour changes are starting to catch up with each other and soon we will be able to see that the socks are not only related, but definitely from the same run of yarn.




[SUMMARY: Dork dork dork dork dork.]

Meanwhile, back at the other socks...

Don't despair, Brother. I fully intend to have last year's Father's Day present done before this Father's Day.




I have to admit to having dorked these as well. I've been blithely knitting long with the 80-stitch Arrrgyle pattern, not realising until a couple of days ago that each diamond is 40 stitches across and the whole pattern spans 80 stitches. Ah, well. I'm going to have to re-chart the skull and crossbones, but I don't think I'll frog the twenty rows of intarsia# to make it right.

Call it a modifcation to the design. Call it a deliberate one, if it's OK with you.

[SUMMARY: *ahem*]

And ANOTHER dork moment in Marin's knitting: Sylvia, Grand Purveyor of Fuzzy Crack, got the Schaefer Yarn catalog and in a moment of wool fume-induced euphoria, we decided to do a Mr. Greenjeans KAL.

What we didn't know at the time was that Schaefer only dyes in batches of ten or twelve, so if you don't order ten or twelve,†† you have to wait until someone else orders enough to make a full batch.

Two months later, I was kinda climbing the walls, dreaming of my greengreengreen yarn, stroking my size 8s in eager anticipation‡‡... and I came up with a brilliant idea: Ravelry.

Surely, a plea to the Ravelers could dig up someone dying§§ to own their own collection of Rafael¶¶ yarn.

Within a couple of hours of posting my plight, Sylvia emailed to say my yarn had showed up. Apparently, they dyed so much for TNNA or Stitches or one of those big fibre fests that they could send my yarn.




Isn't it... green?

I knit a gauge swatch and found I'm getting 5 stitches to the inch instead of the 4.5 the pattern calls for. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise, since I'm apparently a tight knitter, but I've never NOT gotten gauge before. And it was on my gorgeous new Colonial rosewood needles, so I didn't want to switch needle sizes, so...

I did some math. And I had already had a little heartburn over the sizing, not quite wanting the small and not quite wanting the medium. Turns out if I knit at 5 stitches per inch and knit like I'm knitting a large, it'll come out between a medium and a small,% which seems just about perfect to me.

NOTE: Keep this little story in mind. It'll turn up again in a few minutes. You might laugh.

Friday, in the Sheridan airport, I finished "Making Money," so I cast on Greenjeans and started knitting.

I find top-down raglan construction a little magical, the way the increases line up all smooth and neat...




...and, given my adventure in Maths Land, the magic of begin able to try it on before it's finished so I don't knit a whole freakin' sweater before I find out it's all wrong.

I dropped by Sylvia's on Saturday and discovered I'd done the knitting equivalent of starting in on dinner before everybody has their food. I've never been in a KAL where anybody actually AL'd. Everybody just kinda goes their own way, occasionally asking questions or sorting out pattern translation issues.

Oops.

But I'm so intrigued and so stoked I can't stop. I don't knit it a lot, not obsessively, but I've added nine or ten rows to what you see here.

Sylvia gets her yarn very soon. I'm trying to be good.

[SUMMARY: I lied in the footnotes. It doesn't just sound cool, I *am* knitting to be bad.]

Let's move from WIPs to USOs,## shall we?

Partly because I'm a notorious joiner and partly because I want to learn how to do the leaves because they might fit in with a scarf I'm half-assedly designing, I ordered the Vintage sock kit.




I truly love the way the pattern is printed on heavy paper, on half sheets††† and held with a ring. I'm tempted to go get the whole thing laminated to keep it pristine.

Next, I became enamoured of the Silk Ribbed Camisole from Vintage Knits, so I went in search of the perfect yarn to make my own.

I came up with this:




The deep, rich red -- poorly represented here -- will be edged with the mossy green. The problem? It is a completely different gauge than the yarn called for in the pattern.

For the record? The yarn called for in the pattern is discontinued. I *had* to improvise.

So I spent one night in Sheridan at the little hotel writing desk with a calculator and a notebook, revamping the pattern to (hopefully) fit the fibre.

NOTE: Keep this little story in mind. It'll turn up again in a few minutes. You might laugh.

I've never ordered from elann.com before, but I found their new collections so exciting and afordable I decided to give them a whirl to knit the monkey version of the Punk Rock Backpack‡‡‡ from Stitch 'n' Bitch for Dr. Doom's birthday.




I'm a little worried the two browns aren't different enough. I guess we'll burn that bridge when we get to it.

Meanwhile, in tracking down the right yarn for Stacey for her part in the Black Valentine thingie, I ran across some Shibui sock yarn I needed. No, I didn't *want* it, I *needed* it.





Isn't it lovely and soft and beachy? It's called Pebble, but I'm going to love it and hug it and name it George.

And I FINALLY got some Black Bunny yarn. For ages, I've been visiting every time I see Carol is updating, and I always show up a little late, when there are colours I already sort of have or only laceweight left or something.

But this time, oh, this time was special. This is a bamboo/merino sock yarn and it feels as misty soft as it looks. The colour is Bamboo Shoots and it is now named George II.




I got all turned on by Eunny Jang's Ladylike Gloves and went looking for fun yarn to knit them and came across this Habu silk.




I have no idea if it will work properly, but I think it's hellacool, so I'll give it the old college try.

Last, but not least, I got this gorgeous creature at Sylvia's. It's Red Rocks Fiber Works Aspen Sock in Artichoke.

One of these^ is going to eca for *her* participation in the Black Valentine thingie.





I've been waiting for something good for the Waterfall Sock pattern I bought from Knit Spot last summer, and I think this is it.

[SUMMARY: Superconsumer! Just doing my part to boost our flagging economy! Just wait 'til the dyes come in this week!]

Now, let's chat a little about my sudden surge into the world of mathematics and knitting.

WHAT THE HELL DO I THINK I'M DOING? Do we remember who we are talking about? Little-miss-can't-count-to-four wants to re-size whole patterns? I fear a fiery, fiery crash is in the offing.

You wanna know something funny? I was invited to join a Ravelry group called Woolly Thoughts Fans, dedicated to geeky mathematical knitting pursuits (pis, Fibonaccis, etc). It's kinda like when I get penis enlargement offers and I wonder who these people have been talking to that I'm on their mailing list.

I joined, of course.§§§

And I'll let y'all know how that all goes.


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): OK, not really, but I like the way it sounds.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Mostly 'cause I was in Sheridan. Y'all know if I'd gone to the mailbox last Wednesday and found a hat, there would have been... lots of words. Plenty of ceremony. Histrionics.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Ooooh... dagger through the heart! Maybe one will be gay and will never completely outgrow rainbows.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Stacey, I'm pretty sure this is the point where you call me a hot mess and I can do naught but agree.

@FOOTNOTE (atted): And by, "you," I mean, "I."

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Yeah, this picture is a couple of weeks old too. I've been thinking of you guys for weeks and setting up to give you knit-it-and-make-it-all-better.

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Four. We each ordered four.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): That's what she said!

§§FOOTNOTE (wound up like a skein of sock yarn): No pun intended. OK, maybe a little.

¶¶FOOTNOTE (gophers): It was in the kids' yarn section, so I think it's probably named after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

%FOOTNOTE (percented): I think.

##FOOTNOTE (pounded like a dollar): UnStarted Objects.

†††FOOTNOTE (cross my blog and hope to dye): I fold all my patterns in half anyway.

‡‡‡FOOTNOTE (in stitches!): Hereafter ever dubbed "Monkey Pack."

^FOOTNOTE (careted): Yes, I bought two. I'd already named mine George III... how could I let it go?

§§§FOOTNOTE (a veritable jacuzzi): Don't laugh. It could happen to you.