Fuck you, Murphy's Law!

Man, I must have some messed up karma or something, because because everything that could have gone wrong since leaving Houston has. Well, I guess not everything, but most things. Let me start at the begining:

1) the plane trip to Minnesota:
So, yeah, here's what happened. I got to the airport in plenty of time and checked in. I got pulled out of the security line ("randomly," of course, like always. I don't know if it's my affiliation with revolutionary politics, or the fact that I look vaguely Middle Eastern or what, but the Houston security dudes are totally suspicious of me), but that was alright. Whatever. So, I go to my gate, plop down with some knitting and....the lane is delayed for an hour and half.

Eventually, we get on the plane (yay!)....and pull away from the gate (yay!)....and.....sit there. The captain then comes on to tell us that there's weather issues in Dallas, where I had a layover, and that we won't be flying for another 3 HOURS. So we get off the plane and I get rebooked on a direct flight to Minneapolis (yay!)....on another airline (gah).

I leave the gate and terminal, and have to pick up my baggage at the lost luggage counter at airline #2 (which took forever), change terminals, and check in again. Only now it's later and there are a bazillion people in the airport so it takes forever. this flight is delayed an hour and a half too, but I do eventually make it to Minneapolis.

2) The gigantic socialist thingy:
Remember that? I was totally psyched because a)nothing's better than spending Memorial Day weekend plotting to over through the capitalist system and b) my bestest buddy ever was housing me! Sweet!

Except that not even the most hardcore socialist can really handle 30 straight hours in one room talking about dialectic materialism. Seriously, we were all zombies by the end. But that wasn't too bad. The bad thing was....

3) attack of the headcold
...I got totally sick. Jon was sick last week, and must have passed it to me at some point when we were not sleeping enough or eating properly during said gigantic socialist thingy. I was feeling kinda nasty on the second day, but didn't think much of it, and the third day I was really tired, but who wouldn't be at that point?

I'd decided to stay in Minneapolis a few extra days to bond with Dani the Wonder Friend, and we had plans! Awesome plans! Yesterday, our plans involved a baseball game.

See how happy we are? Dani and her nachos and me and my delicious bratwurst.

Too bad we left in the seventh inning. We couldn't make it, we were tired and congested and generally grumpy. And today, we both woke up feeling absolutely horrible. Seriously, I didn't even know the human body could produce this much mucus! We've spent the day whimpering staring vacantly into space.

This is where Murphy's Law gets cruel. I haven't seen Dani in like, 6 months! And instead of hanging out together and being generally awesome, we're napping in separate rooms. I swear to god, if something else goes wrong its a government conspiracy.

I did finish the other end section of the scarf, though. So that's good news.

Shenanigans in Houston

Soooo......I'm leaving Houston in a couple of hours, but before I go, I wanted to catch everybody up on all the cool, fun stuff that happened while I was down here. I tried to keep you posted as it all happened, I really did, but my ungodly workoad (writing two papers up for publiation and trying to get the data collection for two separate projects underway) ate up all of my time. Sorry about that.

Cool thing #1: My sister and I got tattoos!

(click for bigger)

We got them a couple of days ago, but we'd been thinking about it for awhile now. Leila already has a tattoo. They're both variations of the arrows of chaos symbol (which I mostly just think looks cool), so they're from the same family but not identical. Getting it was surprisingly not at all painful, and I think it hurt less than when I used to bleach my hair with industrial strength chemicals to dye it funny colors. I totally psyched myself out, though, right before the guy actually started tattooing me. I'm such a loser.

Cool Thing #2: 3rd Annual Fat Girl Face Off

A couple of years ago, my sister and her friends decided to have an eating contest and dubbed it the Fat Girl Face Off. It's turned into kind of an ordeal around here. Last year, the girls let Jon participate as long as he dressed in drag, and he kicked their asses.

So, who took home the gold for eating a ton of tacos, doughnuts and watermelon?

Sam did! It was a rousing return to form for the 1st annual champion. Which means....

Jon lost. He went from reigning champion to last place. I was his coach and I was truly shamed by his dismal performance. He didn't even bring his C game! I've since dropped him as my athlete and adopted Mandy (who came in at a very close second) who was basically coachless.

Cool Thing #4: Leila finished her scarf!

I made her frolic in the backyard so I could take pictures. I'm very proud.

And finally, Cool Thing #5: IHOP!

Man, I love IHOP. Always have. I met my friend Lisa there for breakfast yesterday. Here she is stealing ketchup from a nearby table:

Everytime I go to IHOP, I order the happy face pancakes from the kids menu. I know it's silly, but those things are tasty. Also, I really believe that few things in life are more fun than getting food that's happy to see you and gleefully eating it, especially when you pour strawberry syrup on it and pretedn it's blood. I guess it awakens a werid Godzilla impulse in me or something.

So that's what happened while I was in Houston. I'm flying to Minneapolis today to hang out with Dani (who the penguin on the sidebar is named after) and go to another of those big socialist thingies.

FO: Ampergrabbers

The ampergrabbers are done!

(click for bigger)

And just in time, too. I finished them last night and wove in all the ends this morning. I was running out of time because I'm leaving tomorrow, and I certainly didn't want to leave my sister stranded with just one glove, looking all King of Pop-ish, you know? You just don't do that to someone you love. Anyway, they're done, they look cute, and she loves them! Yay! Everyone's a winner!

Yarn - 1 skein of Mama Llama self-striping sock yarn (100% superwash wool, 430 yards) in the Earth colorway from Kpixie. It's a colorway that's really grown on me. My first imprssion was that it was a bit too Christmas-y with all the red and green. My next impression was that it was too brown. But, actually, that burnt orange color is a deeply saturated gold. And the red and geen are these lovely jewel tones. The yarn has a lot of lustern and depth to it.

Needles - set of 5 size 1 bamboo dpns. I think they're clover, but I'm not sure. I was a bit worried about using them because I have freakishly strng man-hands that tend to bend flimsy wooden needles. They're all a little bowed out now, but still usable.

Pattern - I knit them cuff to fingers and made it up as I went along. I don't even have notes! Basically, I ripped of the Jaywalker pattern for the chevron and ripped off the ribbing on the sides from the Ampersand pattern. I made the thumb gusset by scanning the directions from the peeakboo mittens pattern, and increased in a 1x1 rib. For the fingers, I used 1/4 of the existing stitches plus 3 that I cast on over the gaps (I picked up stitches from the cast on edge for the adjacent finger).

Seriously, the construction is super-simple and intuitive. I did most of the knitting in movie theaters and on planes, so it's totally zombie-riffic. I'm pretty sure I'll end up making a bunch more pairs for me and everyone I know.

PS - see the flower in the top picture? That's a magnolia from the tree outside our living room window. I adore magonlias and they're one of the things I miss most about Texas. Sadly, they're not yet in full bloom, and I'm leaving before I'll get to see them in all their splendor.

FO: Thelonious knee socks

Presenting Thelonious:

Yep, they're done! I finished them a couple of days ago, but I've been too swamped to post about them yet. I really like the way they turned out! They're warm and comfy, but fit snugly and aren't too bulky. They'll be perfect for the slightly chilly early spring/late fall days (but not quite as perfect for a warm day in late spring in Texas). Also, isn's my family's backyard pretty? I can't tell you how nice it was to take pictures in real sunlight.

(click for bigger)

Here's the specs:
Yarn - 2 skeins of Mountain Colors Bearfoot (60% wool, 40% mohair; 350 yards) in purple mountain. The yarn was really nice to work with. It was sightly thicker than the sock yarn I've been using, which makes it perfect for knee socks, and the mohair makes it a little fuzzy too. I really love the colors, with the bright purple flecks poping up out of the navy.
Needles - 29" size 1 Susan Bates quicksilver circulars. They're kind of old and beat up, but hooray for magic loop! I also used a 47" size 0 addi turbo circular and a 39" size 2 addi turbo circular, but only for, like, a minute.
Pattern - Thelonious by Cookie A, I made the small size. The pattern's really well-written and easy to follow....but I made bajillion modifcations. I'm totally planning to make just a regular pair though! Here's what I changed:

• I knit them toe-up (using the figure 8 cast on described here) instead of cuff-down so I could work the calf increases as I went. This was the first pair of toe-up socks I've made, and I think I'm hooked. I always end up with way more yarn leftover than I thought I would and I tend to make my socks on the shorter side because I don't want to figure out how to add calf shaping before start the cuff. Two birds with one stone, eh? One thing I didn't change when I went toe-up was the heel. Cookie wrote the pattern with a ribbed flap heel, and I really wanted to keep it. I figured out how to work the toe-up heel flap from the Widdershins pattern, and just replaced the slipped-stitch heel with ribbing.
• As previously documented, I found that the original lace stitch didn't work well with this yarn or my gauge or wahtever, so I replaced it with a cable panel. It's nothing fancy, just a 4-stitch wide 6-row repeate of open cables:

row 1: k, p2, k

row 2: RT, LT

row 3: p, k2, p

row 4: p, then cross the two knit stitches in whichever direction you prefer (I had them mirrored), p

row 5: p, k2, p

row 6: LT, RT

• After knitting the leg charts as written (albeit in reverse), I wrote charts for the upper leg. I continued the cables up the front without moving them, but kept the back panels going based on the logic of the harts in the pattern until they crossed. I wrote two charts because I got all fancy and decided I wanted the crosses in the back to mirror each other. I am inordinatley proud of this.
• I worked calf shaping starting with the charts I wrote by increasing 1 stitch at the begining and end of each needle (placing the shaping on the sides of the sock instead ofthe center abck) every 4 rows. I put the shaping there because placing it in the back would have disrupted the crossing panels. Also, it makes a pretty leaf shape.
• When the sock was about 2.5" shorter than I wanted, I switched to size 0 needles and worked 1 x 1 ribbing. I initially decreased from 112 sts to 100 sts, and then decreased an additional 10 sts every 5 rows. I bound off loosely using size 2 needles.

Tomorrow I'll tell you some stories about my stay in Texas so far, since I won't have much knitting-related to report on.

I'm still alive!

Hey everybody! I'm still alive, and I'm in Houston! I finally convinced my mom to get high-speed internet, so I thought I'd drop y'all a line.

Well, truth be told, we used to have it, and then my sister's computer broke, like, 2 years ago, but nobody ever called a technician to fix it or work it so that the family computer could get in on the high-speed action. But, we were still paying for it. My family rolls like that.

Anyway, it's getting late and I have to watch The Last Unicorn with m sister and her friend, so I'll be brief. Progress has been made on the ampergrabbers!

This s the first pair of gloves I've made, and they're actually quite fun. I've only made afterthought thumbs, so I decided to make this a learning experience and worked a gusset instead. I did hit a pitfall, though.

See how the middle fingers are tiny? Well, I knit them the same length as the outer fingers, but they turned out all stumpy. After far too much head-scratching, I figured out that it's the biasing that's doing it, so I picked out the bound off edge and kept knitting until they all matched. See?

Actually, if you look closely at that picture, you'll notice that the glove is being modelled not big my gigantic blond boyfriend, but my adorable younger (though older-looking) sister. That's because Jon was wrong (as I suspected) about the glove being big enough to fit his giant catcher mitts. But they fit Leila's fine! HA!

Ok. That's all for now. I do have stories (knitting and non-knitting related) to tell you. I'll just say that this has been a wacky month.

Happy May Day

First things first: it's May Day! I prefer to celebrate the International Worker's day part of it, and ignore the whole Loyalty Day thing, but do whatever works for you. so go out there and fight the man! Or be loyal to him! Or you can listen to this funny song that has nothing to do with either.

In other news, I'm going homw to Texas for a month! My flight leaves this evening (although, I have a really bizarre and stupid layover in chicago. Not only is it, like, 45 seconds from Detroit, but it's also in the wrong direction to get to Houston). I'm not entirely sure how well I'll be able to keep up with the blog, since my family still has dial-up, but I'll give it my best shot. In case you don't hear from me in an absurdly long time, because dial-up totally sucks, I'll leave you with this:

This is the lace mohair sweater I'm working on. It's a pretty standard top-down raglan, with a mock turtleneck. It's got lace panels (picked up from Hedera) running done the body and arms. I haven't blogged about it before because there wasn't anything substantial to report, but today I finished the yoke! I'm putting it on hold because I don't have the space to bring it with me to Texas, so I won't get back to working on it until June. No rush for a mohair sweater this time of year, though.

Don't worry, dear readers, I will keep my hands busy. I've got the other knee sock to make and supplies for another pair of socks. I may start orangina while I'm down there. And on the plane, I'll work on this some more:

Remember the amperwalkers? My movie-knitting? Well, the colors are really more Jon-ish, so I offered it to him and it's turning into fingerless gloves instead of socks. So...I guess I should call them ampergrabbers?