It has begun.

The color stranded yoke on the Blue Shimmer.



Don't let that really long chunk of ribbing and the ucky pink cast-on bother you; later the ribbing will be folded in half, the pink taken out, and the cast-on edge grafted down. (At that gauge it'll be like doing brain surgery, but I'll worry about that when I get there.)

For now I just posted this mainly for my own records; I want to know how long it's going to take to knit this yoke, to get an idea for the rest of the sweater.

Oh, and the needle, from Susan Bates, is going to be replaced at first opportunity. It's a piece of shit. I've never seen a worse join between the point and the cable.

ARRRRRRGH!!!!!

Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.
Eyes and ears and mouth and nose.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.
Eyes and ears and mouth and nose.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.
Eyes and ears and mouth and nose.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.


WILL THIS HELL NEVER END!!!????!?

For my own amusement.

This is another science heavy post, but it contains a faint whiff of knitting. To be fair and warn you guys. This is like "What would Jesus do?" only it's "What would Tesla knit?"

In the comments, Annie pointed out that Archimedes probably would have been an interesting knitter (and I bet he would have, too), and then Trish asked if Einstein would have knit a Blue Shimmer on size zeros (I'm thinking yes, if he wanted one badly enough), and it made me think.

Which is probably not a good thing, but hey. No one's perfect.

I started thinking about great minds through history and knitting and who might have made an interesting knitter. (I am curious why more hard-science/engineer types don't knit, because it's perfect for that brain type - form and function, structure, and a zone out phase where you can think Deep Thoughts.)

Archimedes, being an engineer (I know they call him a mathematician, and he was, but crap, have you seen the stuff he BUILT?) probably would have loved knitting. Unfortunately he was a thousand-odd years too early for the invention of it, and too busy kicking Roman ass to learn it, most likely. He probably would have come up with knit armor or electrified knit fencing or something else that should have been impossible at his level of technology.

Ditto for Leonardo DaVinci. Knitting was around by then but he'd have seen it as socks. It wouldn't have occurred to him to use some wire and crank out who-knows-what, or better yet, use some colored yarn and make some art. Or knit a statue.

I have always wanted to know what Issac Newton would have done with knitting. He was brilliant, we all agree, but he was also barking-dog crazy. (He was an alchemist and spent his weekends huffing mercury, arsenic, and lead fumes. It's a miracle he lived.) His background, being split about equally between 'hard science' and the occult, probably would have produced some cool stuff. (I still, however, have a bone to pick with him over Exponent Law and Imaginary Numbers.)

Nicola Tesla... well. That would have been interesting, though weird and possibly invisible. (Joke there. Indulge me.)

Buckminster Fuller would probably have only cranked out geodeisic domes, but it would have been a hoot. (To my knowledge he did not knit, though it's probable he knew how. He was a learn-everything kind of guy.)

Einstein probably would have knit accretion discs for black holes; the flexibility of knitting would have allowed him to demonstrate a couple of those extra dimensions he was always talking about. (Other physicists are doing that with crochet, these days. Something about how crochet stitches are 'square' - length and width are equal - and it allows them to make 3D graph paper.)

And of course Richard Feynman, who would have knit tapestries of naked girls and come up with brilliant mathematical proofs while doing it. (He won a Nobel Prize for an idea he got while watching a food fight in a university dining hall.) Quite the bon vivant, Richard Feynman. He wanted to name quarks (the sub-atomic particles that he helped discover) 'Partons' after, yes, Dolly Parton. Can you imagine what he'd have knit? Can you imagine him at Stitch and Bitch night??!!?


When I go back to school I have a pile of math, chemistry, and other science courses ahead of me. I have already plotted how to knit a model of a cell, if I'm ever called upon to make one. (Why not have fun while dealing with bullshit homework? I once cooked a meal for my entire horticulture class to make a point about legumes, grains, and hunter-gatherers.) I'm pretty sure I can knit molecules and atoms, too. Sub-atomic particles might be tricky since we aren't sure what they look like. But I can fake it. Heh heh heh.

Right now I wanna go knit a chloroplast. But I'm gonna go do more neck ribbing. Sigh.

Oh, come on.

No takers on the Grand Unification Theory debate? (Does it exist? Doesn't it?) In some circles that topic would result in pistols at dawn. (Sort of like double-points vs. long circular debates among sock knitters.) NOBODY left a comment, not even "Stephen Hawking thinks you're a poop-head" ??

Boy. Have a knitting blog and the people reading it seem to expect knitting. Next thing, you'll be expecting me to FINISH stuff.

In more math-geniuses-who-didn't-knit news, they seem to have turned up some unknown writings from Archimedes (you know, 'give me a lever and I shall move the world'? Engineer? Ass-kicker? Eureka?) They ran some of his old texts through X-ray or a particle accellerator or some insanity like that and the particles either shifted some ink molecules and made them visible, or shifted the light reflected into something the human eye can see (or both). For all one of you out there who are interested, there's an article here on the subject. (The new text probably contains Einstein's Grand Unification Theory.) Anyway, cool stuff. I always enjoy seeing technology applied to LEARNING STUFF. Even if it isn't knitting.

So, the knitting.

Friday Night Me Knitting was canceled in favor of the neck-ribbing for the Blue Shimmer. (1x1 rib. On size zeros. Two inches' worth. I'm still not done.) Today I'm taking a break and working on the wrap (which seems huge, on size nines), partly in the hopes that I can figure out for sure if I have enough yarn for the darn thing.

The yarn for the next bloody Doucer et Soie scarf stares at me from the pile of finished scarves and I get guilt attacks every time I go past; partly because I need to do that scarf (State Fair fodder), and partly because I need to post the patterns for the scarves already done. I'm hoping to get to that this weekend, but then I was hoping to get to it last weekend.

The husbeast wants to watch a movie tonight, I hope to hem the cuffs of the brown and red jacket, sew on the buttons, and call it done. (Except for needing a second damn wash to get the grease off.)

And I still dont' think the Grand Unification Theory exists. Nyeah.

Yesterday's 'knitting'.

Was this:



Okay, and I did a couple rows on the wrap while resting my brain in front of the TV at the end of the day. (Even alternating yarns on different rows, the color is pooling, damn it. But at least I'm not getting lightnong bolts or anything. Yet.)

After this, I think I'm gonna chuck the knitting, move to Switzerland, join CERN, and spend the rest of my days chasing Einstein's Grand Unification Theory. (Actually, I don't think the GUT exists, but there are worse ways to spend a life - rebuttals welcome in the comments.) At any rate, between the line drawing and all the little jotted numbers and the percentages and whozits, I think I know where I'm going on the Blue Shimmer. (And if I don't, I sure as hell don't want to know about it.) The most pitiful thing of all is, I found it all kind of fun. (Fun like a crossword puzzle, not fun like sex with Hugh Jackman and Chocolate Lava Muffins after.)

Now I have to gird my loins (figuratively speaking) and cast on those 207 stitches and get started. (Was loin-girding something women did? Or was it just for men, to protect their, uh, dangly bits, in battle? I'm afraid to do an internet search on it, for fear of the porn sites that will pop.)

Anyway, I wanna enter a scarf, a doily, and the Blue Shimmer in the State Fair (due October 2, and I really need to get off my ass and enter), plus finish this wrap and get it in the mail before cold weather hits Connecticut (which will be, uh, the start of the next Ice age in five thousand years, right?) so Friday Night Me Knitting may not be happening for a while. At least until I have a handle on these projects. (We never saw that coming, me canceling ME stuff to knit for others, no siree, that never happens.)

As always, the situation is complicated by a trip out of town. We're headed to Ohio for the baby's first birthday (and a HS reunion of sorts for me) the last week of August. And since the Blue Shimmer is a gift for someone for Christmas (that's right, I'm GIVING IT AWAY - though with the way the coned yarn is working out, I'll have enough yarn left over to knit another one for me if I can stand it), I can't work on it then. So I wanna work on it now. I figure if I get the color yoke done before we leave, that'll give me a month to do with solid light blue arms and body when we get home. (Hopefully I'll have more than the yoke done before we leave, but if not, I'd still have a month.)

I'm babbling. I'm drugged. Ugh. Gonna take a nap. Maybe my brain cells will fire after that.

Oh, yeah, and for those who like books and learning and stuff:
*The yoke increase percentage system is from "Knitting in the Old Way" by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts and Deborah Robson. (Though their version is from the waist up, not the neck down, math is math and it works either way.)
*The specific lines for increases and the color pattern itself are from "Poems of Color" by Wendy Keele, which contains a pattern for the Blue Shimmer, just at the wrong gauge and not big enough. I used the color chart (which has built-in increase rows) and added my own numbers.
*The idea of doing a line-drawing on graph paper as a starting point is from "Designing Knitwear" by Deborah Newton. I think she does 'one square equals two inches' and I do 'one square equals one inch', but the concept definitely came from her. I do most of my design work that way (I should scan in some more pages from the notebook, you guys would get a kick out of it). Plus the rest of the book is educational.

Anyway. Babbling. Nap. Cast on 207 stitches. Arg.

It rained last night.

But not for long. It just got steamy and sticky after. But I will say, South Carolina knows how to RAIN.


That's the view from my front porch. (Forgive that bare patch by the drive; we killed a massive fire-ant nest there about a month ago.) The sparkly white things in the air? Rain drops. That's right. It's not quite up there with the golf-ball sized rain drops in Hawaii, where it felt like you were getting hit in the head with a hammer, but still, that's pretty respectable. If only the rain had lasted more than ten minutes, it might have cooled things off. But no. We're back to a heat index of six thousand degrees Kelvin out there. But, hey, Bush says there's no such thing as Global Warming so we must all be imagining it.

Ahem.

I went to the craft store today and picked up the sixteen inch size one needle I need, to start the Blue Shimmer. I got to checkout and the lady says "Oh, knitting socks?" and I said "Uh, no... a sweater." and she gave me a Gravely Concerned look and proceeded to check me out in silence, shooting me worried looks when she thought I wasn't paying attention.

My work on the Blue Shimmer is math, at the moment, involving things like "increase by 33% to a number of stitches with a multiple of 7". (So as to fit the pattern repeats in.) I had the husbeast on the phone for "Increase by 20% for a number that's a multiple of 6 AND 8." I figured it out myself (432), and that kind of scares me. (I was never good at the numerators devisors multiples thingies.) The numbers I'm playing with scare me too. Cast-on is 207 stitches. The body circumference is something like 450 (my notes are in the other room). This is either going to be totally cool or a complete disaster. I'm not sure which, yet. (Oh, and I think I forgot to mention -- gauge is 9.5 stitches to the inch.)

Last night we went out and bought some baby gates and came home and put them up. The reaction from the four-legged creatures has been interesting. The baby crawls to one, kind of goes "Well, shoot." and goes somewhere else, not making a big issue of it. The cat (who is a very healthy six-ish years old and MORE than capable of jumping over the damn things) has reacted like she's suddenly been thrown into a prison camp. You'd think we stuck her in a shoe box from the way she's carrying on. She stands at the gates and meows like she wants an elevator. Idiot cat.

Anyway, I just took my blood pressure medication (which makes me dopey) and now have to go find a number increased by 13% and divisible by 27. Or something. And it all has to come out to 590 when I'm done.

Sure does feel like Monday again...

First, the good news. I got the okay, and this is the little doll sweater that was knit with the percentage system (the knitee, a veritable genius, asks to remain anonymous):


Isn't it great? And just goes to show: this system really does work for ANY size (except you gotta be careful, getting the neck holes big enough on children's sweaters, 'cause their heads are proportionately a lot bigger than an adult's).

Any time any of you use one of my patterns, articles, or wild-ass ideas for a project, I'd LOVE to see photos of it. They really make my day.

Anyway. On to the disaster. (There's always a disaster. At least this one doesn't involve the baby and cat food.)



This is the wrap. There's about a ball's worth of yarn knit up, there... (I'm doing the old 'knit two rows off one ball, and then two rows off another ball' to try to avoid color pooling. It's about half working.) The wrap is aboug 7 inches/18cm long. I've got eight balls of this yarn. That means if I use every last scrap it will come out to about 56 inches. I wanted 60. And this is assuming that nothing goes wrong. So... do I buy more yarn or not? (The good news is, Webs, where I got this stuff, has another 550 balls in stock, so I probably have a while to make up my mind.)

My other two chores for the day are to try to get out in this heat (it's like a summer in hell out there - 95 degrees with a heat index of 106. If you're wondering what that is in Celsius, it's DAMN HOT.) and find a sixteen inch size one knitting needle. (I also need assorted lengths of size zero circulars, but the one will do for a start.) Then I need to sit down and do all the freaking math needed for the Blue Shimmer (remember, I'm using a different gauge and making a size larger than the pattern goes up to). Yoke sweaters are about as complex as math gets when it comes to knitting. I will BET you there's an algorythm that works for calculating yoke decreases. But of course that IS the part of math I suck the most at. Right now I'm staring at a chart that's written for WAIST UP knitting involving formulas like "Y2 = Y1 - 33%" which is jolly good BUT I'M KNITTING IT FROM THE NECK DOWN.

When I'm done I'm bloody well posting it on the internet. After all, it's MY math.

Y = 138% Pass the Newcastle Brown Ale.

It ought to be Monday.

This morning I got a lovely e-mail from a woman who used my "Knit by Numbers" article (link in the sidebar under 'read me') to do a test sweater for a doll she owns and hopes to use the system again. I'm waiting to hear back about permission to post the photo here, but it was a very nice letter, she even offered a suggestion for future article topics (which I'm always on the lookout for).

I'm very grateful for the letter, even more grateful than I USUALLY am for pleasant things in me e-mail box, because it's the only thing that went right today.

My kid is currently locked in my office with me, smacking the cat with a spatula. (Why the cat will not move is a mystery of the ages.) She (the baby, not the cat) is shut in my office because she can't be trusted loose in the house. Every time my back is turned, the little shit goes out and eats a handful of cat food (the baby, not the cat). And if it's not cat food, it's electrical wires. And NO, she won't eat reglar baby food, she wants the cat food (the baby, not the cat).

Today is payday, and that means baby gates, but I'm not sure how much good it will do us.

Then I fell asleep during the baby's nap (stupid new medication) and got zero accomplished.

Noggin redid their programming (AGAIN), so that the Three Banned Shows are on one after the other, and even if ethically I could put up with it, I can't take the obnoxiousness.

And there are GREASE STAINS ON THE DAMN RED AND BROWN JACKET.

One dead husbeast, coming up.

About two weeks ago, the husbeast did a load of 'shop rags' in the washing machine. You know, squares of cloth covered in grease and oil and RTV (whateverthefuck that is), in my regular old washing machine. Supposedly he wiped down the interior when he was finished, and all was spick-and-span after that. (I wonder what, precisely, he wiped down the interior with -- more grease?)

A week ago, I used the washing machine to block the brown and red jacket. (Soak with soap; spin out water, rinse cycle with no agitation, spin out water.) It is neccessary to do this in the washing machine because my Ebeneezer Scrooge of a landlord doesn't allow for a laundry sink. (The plumbing isn't THERE. We can't even buy our own - there's nothing to hook it to.)

Everything looked fine. Until today when I sat down to hem the damn thing. Then I started noticing weird little spots all over the jacket:

See that little black spot? It's grease. And they're ALL OVER THE SWEATER.

I keep telling myself that wool has a positive elctron charge, and that dirt kind of sits on the fiber and doesn't molecularly bond to it, and that it's very easy to clean for that reason...

...if this grease doesn't come out, I'm going to kill him.

While grinding my teeth, I did finish the hem. This is one of the bottom corners, with the button band edging and the hem all working in sync and it's all relatively square and I'm quite pleased with how good it looks (except for the grease spots):


And here's the interior of the hem for those who like to see these things. I do realize that the hem thread, the hem yarn, and the exterior of the jacket totally do not match in any remote way. I should be flogged for how bad this match is. But, hell, it's a hem, the only person who'll see it will be my father-in-law (who gets it for Christmas). We have a theory he's color blind, but really I suspect he's another subscriber of the "Eight Colors of the World" school of thought.


And here's one, last, final (maybe) photo of the shoulder shaping:


That's me in the jacket. I know I'm swimming in it; it's for a much larger person. That's fine. Makes me feel like the diet's starting to work.

Oh, and the baby? The husbeast just caught her eating cat food.

This morning I cut open the tube that was the Blue Shimmer gauge swatch (I was SO close to putting a heel on it, but I knew I was going to cut it open like this), and pinned it out flat on a board. It's propped in my office so I can look at it and decide if I'm really going to tinker with that brown band slap in the center (it's highly likely I'll order a different color).


See the edges? See how they aren't unraveling? Notice I haven't been struck by lightning and there's no plague of locusts or rivers of blood showing up in my yard? YOU CAN JUST CUT KNITTING. (Vertically along the columns, anyway. Horizontally along the rows and you'll have an unraveling mess on your hands.) This is the basis of steeking. The world really doesn't end. I'd do something to stabilize that edge if I planned on wearing it or even washing it again, but all it's gonna do is sit there, pinned to that board, so it'll be fine.

Go cut up some knitting and see how it works. It's really educational. I swear. Hack up one of your kid's old sweaters, if you're too attatched to your own work.

So, anyway. Now I'm down to the wrap/overgrown scarf until the rest of the yarn gets here for the Blue Shimmer.

Today I was researching projects and entry forms and other things for the SC state fair and I had a rather humorous thought... shouldn't I enter a scarf? I think I should.

Hey out there...

Anyone know what's going on with the hits to my lace blocking page? I got a whole bunch (a whole bunch for me) of hits direct to it yesterday (usually people hit the home page and wander around from there), and, well, it's strange and I was wondering what was going on.

Morbid curiosity. If you read, I'm happy. That's the bottom line. But I'm curious. (You may have noticed that about me by now. The curiosity thing.)

Oh, and Annie? I have ants. Time for the gasoline and matches.

Really finishing.

I got in a mood today and tore into the ten million half-finished projects sitting around here. Those damned Doucer et Soie scarves? The ones I was going to pin out and spray carefully with water?

Hell with it. Into the drink they went. I stretched them out on the bed after, and they're looking pretty good. I will probably post patterns for both of them tomorrow, after they've dried and I can get fairly accurate 'finished' photos. Here's some detail on the purple, kind of in focus. I like how it looks. (Now that I can try to forget the obnoxiousness of those k3tog columns.)



The Blue Shimmer swatch has been finished and is soaking in a sink full of water and Eucalan at the moment, soon to be rescued. (It's knit with coned yarn and I wanna be sure to get all that machine oil and gunk out of it.)

I wasted no time last night after finishing the purple scarf, and cast on the neutrals wrap for my friend. I was about halfway through row eight when it hit me: You know what a wrap is?

It's a big fuckin' scarf.

Once I fish the Shimmer swatch out of the drink, I hope to stay motivated and get to work on the hems of the brown and red jacket. It'd be nice to finish out the month with a bunch of stuff DONE.

In the mean time, genetics has raised it's ugly head (again) and the baby is teething on, yes, a Susan Bates knitting needle sizer. Isn't that cuuuute?

You post something on the internet...

...And EVERYONE reads it.

I know, I know. This seems pretty damned obvious in retrospect, but my brain is swimming, all the same. Having readers as far away as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Europe is mind boggling, but I half expected that and it's cool (hi, guys!)

It's the corporate organization stuff that's starting to freak me out.

I assume the hits from the Federal Government are knitters who are bored at work. (I was not aware until now that there WAS a Marshal at Arms for the US Senate, but I can see how that would be useful -- does the yarn snag on the holster of your sidearm when you knit?) Hits from the Canadian government, it's GOTTA be a bored knitter in the Great White North -- what on earth would the Canadian government want with me? I don't even drink Screech. So, I try not to hyperventilate when I get hits from courthouses ALL OVER THE COUNTRY (do baliffs knit? Is it part of being a baliff? Call order, arrest criminals, protect the judge, knit socks?) but yesterday. Yesterday finally did it.

I got hits from Starz (the people producing Thirty Second Bunny Theater, which I mention occasionally), and, get this, from THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM. IN LONDON.

Near as I can figure, they're searching blogs to see what people say about them. Makes sense in a kind of quality-control, feedback sort of thing. Not to mention I said nice things about both, so I don't have to sit here wondering what posessed me to be rude on the internet where everyone can see it. (We won't discuss that one review of Vogue Knitting.)

Either that or people are Starz and the V&A are bored at work. Can't rule that out.

So, with this in mind, I got bored and ran a google search for 'knitting gauge swatch'. My humble little blog POPPED UP AHEAD OF MARTHA STEWART'S!!! I have topped Martha Stewart. This is... this is... I dunno what this is. Trippy. Weird. Cool. Amusing. I want to make up a song. (Something that goes "Google likes me more than Martha Stewart, neener neener neener.")

Anyway. Thank you, loyal readers, for making all this possible. I'm gonna go lay down. My ego can't take this. Hahaha.

PS. Found a really great series of blog entries on steeking over at "See Eunny Knit!" Here's the link, and I'm going to post it in the side bar under knitting links, too. Just in case someone gets the urge to cut up their knitting.

HAH!

Done.

And the cat bugged me so much while knitting it that I wrapped it around her neck for the photo. She was annoyed. Served her right.

An end!

I'm not there yet, but it's in sight:


See how you can SEE through the yarn skein?? That means there's NOT MUCH YARN LEFT. (I know I'm stating the vastly obvious, here. Cut me some slack. I'm happy.) Three or four more pattern repeats, I'm thinking. Then I'm donedonedone. I might manage that today. Wouldn't that be exciting?

As it is, the scarf has lengthened quite a lot, and yes, I finally did notice some growth of the whole thing:


If any of you have wondered what in heck that background is (since it appears here regularly), I'll tell you: It's my couch. I tend to just fling stuff down where I've been sitting and snap photos of it. Now you know the awful truth. And the white backgrounds I use? Cloth diapers. (Clean, I promise.) It's what's handy. I've been thinking of getting some colored paper to use for smaller projects, but so far... it's couches and diapers. A sad commentary on the contents of my house. The Yarn Harlot drapes her work over flowers. I put mine on diapers.


In other news, the cat has suddenly discovered that the stuff on the tray of the baby's high chair is FOOD!



This was the last day the baby got to eat lunch on the floor. Since then she's been on the table, away from the snacking cat. (Ever seen a cat eat puffed rice cereal? It's pretty hilarious.)

Back to the purple scarf. I've got my second wind now that there's an end in sight.

What if...

I am considering an article for Knitty, tentatively entitled 'how lace works'. What would you want to read in it? Basics like how to make a yarnover, or the more esoteric stuff like why columns of stitches lean, and lace fabric often has uneven edges or is wavy?

What would you want to learn in an artcile like that?

Come on. I need to know.

New developments in the pharmacy war.

I'll try to keep this short... no need for yet another ranting post.

There was a meeting today of the 'patient advocates' (in the general scheme of things, that's who I'm supposed to talk to about a problem like getting the wrong medication from the pharmacy). Instead I found the head of the "Quality Services" department, who was very kind, took my name and number and two pages of notes on my situation. She assured me she is turning it over to the head of Customer Service. It seems the head of Customer Service is a Lieutenant Colonel and has the rank to 'make this an issue' to quote the lady I talked to. She seemed more angered by the fact that I couldn't get anyone in the pharmacy to answer the phone, and that once I finally did call them, they admitted to knowing of the mistake but no one had cared enough to call me and let me know.

I pointed out that older folks (we have a lot of veterans using this clinic) have trouble reading perscription bottles and this could have become a MASSIVE safety issue. She assured me that she realized that, and the issue would be treated as a safety problem, not general customer service BS.

It sucks to be the pharmacy over there, today.

But the good news!!

I got my bum hand X-rayed (first time in about five, six years) and it turns out all the holes in my bone where the doctor drilled holes have healed over. That means I have less risk of re-breaking my arm in the future. Not to mention, 'people my age' don't normally have their bones heal over like that, which implies my calcium uptake is going well and my bones are solid and doing what they're supposed to. (Instead of melting away in preparation for osteoporosis later in life.) Yay! I'm blaming it on the dairy products.

There is an end in sight on the Blue Shimmer swatch, and right now it looks like I'm getting the same gauge, on plain stockinette and stranded color. Weird. We'll see how it measures after I wash it, but I might just knit the whole thing straight through on ones. Wouldn't that be nice?

Off to knit fuzzy purple things. Bah.

Nothing about knitting.

Sorry. It's ranting Wednesday, instead.

So I went to the Air Force Base this morning. (If you're a regluar reader, you're snickering right now and you just know this won't end well.) Massive security at the gate, getting in, to the point I was worried I was going to be tagged for a random search and miss my doctor's appointment. (Apparently when Middle-Eastern countries INVADE EACH OTHER, it increases our threat of terrorism, but when the US unjustly invades Middle-Eastern countries, we're perfectly safe. Yeah, RIGHT. Assholes.)

Anyway.

The last three times I talked to my doctor, it was for stress-related problems (shingles, migraines) and I knew I was probably in for it when I saw her today. What I didn't know is that my blood pressure is so high that not only did I wind up on BP medication, but the doc is sending me to an optometrist to make sure my eyes haven't sprung any leaks. Apparently stress and chronic pain are an ugly combination. (My blood pressure goes up when I'm in pain. My pain goes up when I'm stressed. So apparently I've got this unending pain/stress/high BP thing going on.)

The bottom line to all this is, more drugged knitting. At least until the pain and BP level off. Won't that be interesting? I'll make sure to document the madness.

So anyway. I'm stressed and getting sent to specialits and having lab work done, and I go to the pharmacy to pick up my perscriptions. This is the pharmacy that made me wait an hour and a half for some narcotics and I finally had to almost pry them away from the pharmacist's hands, back in January. I was out this time in half an hour and wondering what the catch was.

Then I got home, and figured it out: They sent me off with someone else's medication.

That's right. And it gets better. It's an old-fashioned antihistimine that can RAISE BLOOD PRESSURE. My doctor's worried about my eyes springing leaks, and the jackasses in the pharmacy give me a drug that could make it worse. Morons.

Tomorrow, I go see the Commanding Officer. We've moved into dangerous levels of stupidity; being slow is one thing. Handing out wrong medications is something else again.

Anyway. The funny bit. I swear there's a funny bit.

Going in and out of the base, I always pass O'Neil Avenue and Jackson Drive. I seriously doubt the streets are named after this O'Neil and this Jackson, but it still makes me giggle every time I drive past.

So it's not much of a funny bit... I'm annoyed, here. Work with me.

Oh, and I'm still knitting the stupid purple scarf.

Allow me to clarify...

...just why I hate these stupid scarves.

Apparently I'm making some people nervous about trying lace knitting. I feel bad about that, because it's not the lace knitting part that's driving me batshit. In fact, I think I'd hate these scarves MORE if they weren't lace. At least the lace knitting is adding a bit of interest to them.

Ultimately, it comes down to repetition. I get bored easily. (Ask me about my collection of one-armed sweaters.) So to knit one of these, knowing when I'm done I've still got two, three, or more to go, gives me heart burn. I'm using different lace patterns for each scarf to try to make each one seem different, but it's not working. It's coming down to having to knit scarf after stupid scarf, while cursing myself for wanting to knit all the Christmas presents this year and buying all this damn yarn up front.

The yarn isn't helping either. It's glorious enough when knit up to make me persevere, but it's really a bitch to deal with. It can take me literally a minute or two to do a 'knit three together' manouver because it's like brain surgery to get the end of the needle through all three fuzzyass stitches at the same time. I have yet to block the first one I did, because at THAT end of the project it requires special handling, too.

I never liked knitting scarves. Now I remember why. Next year everyone's getting cookies for Christmas.

So don't let my hatred of small, fiddly projects that have no end scare you off lace. Lace is fun. Lace is deceptively easy; wrap the yarn over your needle, knit it like a stitch in the next row, and you've got an eyelet. It's that simple. And people who don't knit lace think you're a genius. It may be the best kept secret in knitting.

Scarves bad. Lace good. Don't let it intimidate you. I'll try to keep the grousing to a minimum.

The purple scarf.

I did two more pattern repeats on this today. Still can't tell a difference, though I think the ball of yarn feels a little lighter. It could be my mind is playing tricks on me, influenced by mohair fumes and boredom.

I'm thinking of adding on two more of these damn things to the Christmas list. I'm out of my mind.

The dead zone.

You know the place. It's in every project. Where you knit and knit and knit and knit and nothing happens, and then after a week of knitting with no obvious size increase, it's suddenly two inches too long?

Yup.

And now Blogger isn't letting me upload photos. Imagine a lacy purple scarf here. (I'll upload it later if I can.)

I knit three pattern repeats on this thing yesterday and damn if I can tell the difference. No obvious change in length on the scarf or in the ball of yarn. It's like I didn't do anything.

The Blue Shimmer swatch is almost done. I finished up with the plain stockinette section on size ones last night and switched over to zeros. But since it's plain old stockinette, I can read while I'm knitting it so even though it's not going any faster, I don't really care.

I wanna knit socks. Or... a bag. Or, gee, I dunno, anything but this freaking swatch and these damn scarves.