5.6 earthquake, epicenter around 30 miles from where we are. Yeah, we felt it. ("Felt" as in past tense of "feel," not "felt" as in "washing wool in hot water and agitating." Just thought I'd clear that up.)
All is well, knary a knick-knack askew. Thanks for axin'.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Travels and Travails
First of all, do not stay at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo without wearing your sunglasses. Emerald green high-gloss paint on the ceiling and trim, gold wallpaper on the walls that weren't rocks, zebra-print rug. I'm just sayin'...
This was the room.
This was their fancy steak house. Yes, a manly steak house, done in Pepto-Bismol pink.
Second, the short-row technique in the Marble Arches pattern? Wow. It's an... interesting brain who thought that one up. I'm just sayin'...
(Poor picture quality due to shots being taken with phone in camera.) (Which is pretty cool technology when you think about it, but, let's face it, it's an old camera and the lens is plastic and fairly well scratched.) (But still, I took the damn things with my *phone*.)
Saturday, October 27, 2007
The Furball and an Unvention
So, like, I have this knitting project... I bought the yarn in June of 2005 (mind you, I had only learned how to knit in August of 2004...) because I found a pattern I liked. The pattern had the presence of mind to (a) be easy, made of nothing but knits and purls; (b) give left and right instructions completely, none of this "make it just like the other one but reverse shaping"; (c) give stitch counts every time you increased or decreased; and (d) did I mention it was easy?
It was a pattern from a little Paton's booklet and it, of course, looked lovely on the model. So I bought the pattern and bought the yarn... and there it sat, in my stash in the condo... got moved to my 'active' pile when we shuffled from the condo to the apartment... and got moved again when we left the condo for the new house. And there it still sat, 2 years after purchase, in our lovely craft room, in my lovely yarn cubby-holes... mocking me, because now... now, after a couple of years of knitting, I Know Better. Use novelty yarn sparingly, pick patterns with a little challenge, and for god's sake, pick something you think you might actually wear!
A few weeks ago, in a fit of start-aholicism, I cast on. Oh dear. The yarn, while a perfectly lovely yarn for some other project (Paton's Divine, 82% acrylic/polyester, 18% mohair), knits like a cross between kitchen string and a scruffy poodle. Scratch that... a cross between kitchen string and what a scruffy poodle would have coughed up if it ate Great Aunt Lydia's antimacassars. The pattern, while perfectly lovely, is perfectly boring. The wasteland that is stockinette. In its favor, the front is like a ballet wrap, with a criss-cross tie, so you don't have to knit a full front of stockinette, row after row after row after row after... oh, sorry.
Anyway, I put up with the yarn and I put up with the pattern, and since it knits as a bulky, it worked up rather quickly. When I got to the sleeves, I stopped knitting and thunk for a bit. I *hate* knitting sleeves from the cuff up. If I make them to pattern, they drag on the floor. If I try to measure them against my arm, I'm invariably off - one will be too long, one will be too short and both will be too tight. So, I've been knitting sleeves from the shoulder down, by picking up stitches around the armhole.
With KW's cabled sweater, let's just say I didn't pay very close attention, so one sleeve has somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 stitches at the shoulder while the other has... about 80. To answer your questions, I did one sleeve, then the other, and had already knit the 120-stitch sleeve down to the cuff when I picked up what became the 80-stitch sleeve. I wasn't about to rip out a full sleeve's length of alpaca... and I didn't try to find 40 more stitches on the 80-stitch sleeve either. Both numbers seemed right, it fits KW fine (don't think about what that might mean for how he's built....), and he's happy.
But I did learn that if I'm going to pick up and knit down, I should try to get the numbers right before getting to the cuff... especially with a mohair blend that doesn't knit well going forward, never mind going backwards. So this time, I picked up 70 stitches on one arm, then got another needle and picked up...68 stitches on the other! I thought I figured out where I missed the 2 stitches, so I pulled the second sleeve out and re-picked up, this time getting to 69. Close enough! I added a stitch and started knitting down, first one arm, then the other, doing both using the Magic Loop technique.
It was a pattern from a little Paton's booklet and it, of course, looked lovely on the model. So I bought the pattern and bought the yarn... and there it sat, in my stash in the condo... got moved to my 'active' pile when we shuffled from the condo to the apartment... and got moved again when we left the condo for the new house. And there it still sat, 2 years after purchase, in our lovely craft room, in my lovely yarn cubby-holes... mocking me, because now... now, after a couple of years of knitting, I Know Better. Use novelty yarn sparingly, pick patterns with a little challenge, and for god's sake, pick something you think you might actually wear!
A few weeks ago, in a fit of start-aholicism, I cast on. Oh dear. The yarn, while a perfectly lovely yarn for some other project (Paton's Divine, 82% acrylic/polyester, 18% mohair), knits like a cross between kitchen string and a scruffy poodle. Scratch that... a cross between kitchen string and what a scruffy poodle would have coughed up if it ate Great Aunt Lydia's antimacassars. The pattern, while perfectly lovely, is perfectly boring. The wasteland that is stockinette. In its favor, the front is like a ballet wrap, with a criss-cross tie, so you don't have to knit a full front of stockinette, row after row after row after row after... oh, sorry.
Anyway, I put up with the yarn and I put up with the pattern, and since it knits as a bulky, it worked up rather quickly. When I got to the sleeves, I stopped knitting and thunk for a bit. I *hate* knitting sleeves from the cuff up. If I make them to pattern, they drag on the floor. If I try to measure them against my arm, I'm invariably off - one will be too long, one will be too short and both will be too tight. So, I've been knitting sleeves from the shoulder down, by picking up stitches around the armhole.
With KW's cabled sweater, let's just say I didn't pay very close attention, so one sleeve has somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 stitches at the shoulder while the other has... about 80. To answer your questions, I did one sleeve, then the other, and had already knit the 120-stitch sleeve down to the cuff when I picked up what became the 80-stitch sleeve. I wasn't about to rip out a full sleeve's length of alpaca... and I didn't try to find 40 more stitches on the 80-stitch sleeve either. Both numbers seemed right, it fits KW fine (don't think about what that might mean for how he's built....), and he's happy.
But I did learn that if I'm going to pick up and knit down, I should try to get the numbers right before getting to the cuff... especially with a mohair blend that doesn't knit well going forward, never mind going backwards. So this time, I picked up 70 stitches on one arm, then got another needle and picked up...
Light bulb time! Hey... two cylinders, heading the same direction... can't I Magic Loop *both* of them at the same time? Why, yes I can! I now have 2 sleeves on 1 long needle, knitting right-sleeve-back-left-sleeve-back-left-sleeve-front-right-sleeve-front! I came upstairs to get the camera to show off, but got sidetracked with the words; will add photo when done. I unvented 2 sleeves at once! Go, me! (yeah, like it hasn't been done before... well, I was happy that *I* had come up with it, so :-P )
(It happens to make the furball a little easier to knit because I'm so impressed with myself, so there might actually be a finished object soon... Now the only problem I have is... who gets it? It's definitely "what was I thinking?" yarn...)
Thursday, October 25, 2007
When Is Too Much Too Much?
More. Keep going. Bigger. Don't stop. Super-sized.
At what point is it too much? "Not having" can be a pain, "having" can be a burden. The less you have, the more you need, but the more you have, the more you need, too, to keep it all going. That is, of course, if you want to keep it all going.
Faced as we are with our current uncertainty, we are mulling over our various options. At this point, I'd like to be able to un-do a few things, but life doesn't go in reverse. So, somewhat counter-intuitively, we are going away this weekend to talk about "what now?" Although KW hasn't found a "real" job yet (not for lack of applying places), there are some leads that pop up from time to time. His consulting gig pays what would normally be considered a fabulous salary... but take away 30% (what we'll have to pay in taxes) and take away what his ex-wife bleeds from us, there's not enough left over to pay all the bills (part of "too much," even after cutting back many optional things). So we dip into savings. And dip. And dip. And now what had been "enough" is not going to be enough for too much longer. Even if I went out and got a "real" job, too, I can't make enough to fill the gap.
Slot-machine gambling I can do. You put your money in, you push some buttons, you watch the blinky lights, and clap when you get back between 50% and 70% of what you put in. Gambling with a 401(k) is another story. Do we pull the future to pay for the now, hoping that he'll get a job before the money runs out and we have to do it again with a different account? Or do we put the house on the (sluggish) market and hope it sells before the current liquid accounts run dry? Or do we sell everything on eBay, then take our cash (and yarn) and run away to start over again (a la "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin)? (Okay, so maybe that's not a viable option, but it sure sounds nice...)
So. Worries and hand-wringing blend with a hefty soupcon of denial, to create Meg Flambe', able to go up in flames at a moment's notice, tears putting out the flames so the cycle can be repeated, until we figure everything out.
At what point is it too much? "Not having" can be a pain, "having" can be a burden. The less you have, the more you need, but the more you have, the more you need, too, to keep it all going. That is, of course, if you want to keep it all going.
Faced as we are with our current uncertainty, we are mulling over our various options. At this point, I'd like to be able to un-do a few things, but life doesn't go in reverse. So, somewhat counter-intuitively, we are going away this weekend to talk about "what now?" Although KW hasn't found a "real" job yet (not for lack of applying places), there are some leads that pop up from time to time. His consulting gig pays what would normally be considered a fabulous salary... but take away 30% (what we'll have to pay in taxes) and take away what his ex-wife bleeds from us, there's not enough left over to pay all the bills (part of "too much," even after cutting back many optional things). So we dip into savings. And dip. And dip. And now what had been "enough" is not going to be enough for too much longer. Even if I went out and got a "real" job, too, I can't make enough to fill the gap.
Slot-machine gambling I can do. You put your money in, you push some buttons, you watch the blinky lights, and clap when you get back between 50% and 70% of what you put in. Gambling with a 401(k) is another story. Do we pull the future to pay for the now, hoping that he'll get a job before the money runs out and we have to do it again with a different account? Or do we put the house on the (sluggish) market and hope it sells before the current liquid accounts run dry? Or do we sell everything on eBay, then take our cash (and yarn) and run away to start over again (a la "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin)? (Okay, so maybe that's not a viable option, but it sure sounds nice...)
So. Worries and hand-wringing blend with a hefty soupcon of denial, to create Meg Flambe', able to go up in flames at a moment's notice, tears putting out the flames so the cycle can be repeated, until we figure everything out.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Vegas, Baby!
Just back from my first trip to Vegas since March of 2006. I used to visit 3 or 4 times a year; once I quit my job in October of 2005, I'm down to maybe once a year. From the vantage point of a year-and-a-half away, it's fun to see how much has changed...
The Aladdin Resort, which was only around 8 years old, is no more. (It opened up on the heels of the Paris casino.) It's been refurbished into a Planet Hollywood hotel and casino, and looks FABULOUS. It's got lots of chrome and crystal, and the vibe is much edgier and quicker than Aladdin, which used to feel like an old-people's casino.
The Stardust is gone completely, nothing but an empty lot since they imploded it earlier this year, which means that when you walk north from the Wynn, you can see Circus-Circus across the empty lot.
Speaking of the Wynn, before it opened in 2005, the Venetian had announced it was going to build another tower, "Palazzo," at the corner of Las Vegas Blvd and Sands Avenue (where the Sands used to be until IT was imploded to build the Venetian). So when Wynn opened the Wynn, HE immediately announced plans to build a second tower, called "Encore." Now, I've heard that Wynn is going to tear up the golf course to put in more hotel rooms, plus a condo complex.
A whole series of buildings have been taken down: the old (and dumpy) Holiday Inn Boardwalk is gone, the odd collection of tacky souvenir shops and a nightclub, and the corner where the helicopters used to take off have all been leveled. There's some construction going on, but no definitive signs of what's going in.
Caesar's opened their Augustus Tower a few months ago and wound up redesigning their entire registration area. (They still have the worst organized taxi line of all the casinos, though.) And of course they had expanded their Forum Shops, so now it takes about a half-hour to walk from the Strip in to the casino. Oh, and Celine Dion's show - the one they built the Coliseum Theater for - is ending, and it looks like Bette Midler will be coming to town.
We stayed at the Wynn... their rooms are fabulous. Gradually, even since I've been going to Vegas (1995), the 'center' of the Strip has moved. It used to be at the corner of Las Vegas Blvd and Tropicana at the south end. From there, you had nearby access to Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur, Tropicana, MGM, and New York New York. Now it's shifted to the Strip and Flamingo Road, by Paris, Bally's, Flamingo, Bellagio, and Caesars. With Wynn opening up, he's skootching it up north another bit, where you have Wynn, Venetian, TI, and the Mirage - with more opening between the Wynn and the Riviera in the next couple of years.
Enough traveloguing... I also got some knitting done. I finished a hat made from Yarn Place's Adalie yarn (modified chevron pattern), started a felted bowl using Joann's Licorice yarn (just a hat-like thing that will get felted and turned upside down - voila! Instant bowl!), and made progress on my Marble Arches socks. Oh, and I also tried to work the Magknits Rainbow socks, once I learned the right direction for the short rows. Alas, I think I may have to resort to actually putting them on DPNs (grrrr) and doing it the way the pattern writer wrote it. 'cuz with one circular, it didn't work. Not with the brain I currently have, anyway.
Off to read through the emails that accumulated over these past 4 days. Should be lots!
The Aladdin Resort, which was only around 8 years old, is no more. (It opened up on the heels of the Paris casino.) It's been refurbished into a Planet Hollywood hotel and casino, and looks FABULOUS. It's got lots of chrome and crystal, and the vibe is much edgier and quicker than Aladdin, which used to feel like an old-people's casino.
The Stardust is gone completely, nothing but an empty lot since they imploded it earlier this year, which means that when you walk north from the Wynn, you can see Circus-Circus across the empty lot.
Speaking of the Wynn, before it opened in 2005, the Venetian had announced it was going to build another tower, "Palazzo," at the corner of Las Vegas Blvd and Sands Avenue (where the Sands used to be until IT was imploded to build the Venetian). So when Wynn opened the Wynn, HE immediately announced plans to build a second tower, called "Encore." Now, I've heard that Wynn is going to tear up the golf course to put in more hotel rooms, plus a condo complex.
A whole series of buildings have been taken down: the old (and dumpy) Holiday Inn Boardwalk is gone, the odd collection of tacky souvenir shops and a nightclub, and the corner where the helicopters used to take off have all been leveled. There's some construction going on, but no definitive signs of what's going in.
Caesar's opened their Augustus Tower a few months ago and wound up redesigning their entire registration area. (They still have the worst organized taxi line of all the casinos, though.) And of course they had expanded their Forum Shops, so now it takes about a half-hour to walk from the Strip in to the casino. Oh, and Celine Dion's show - the one they built the Coliseum Theater for - is ending, and it looks like Bette Midler will be coming to town.
We stayed at the Wynn... their rooms are fabulous. Gradually, even since I've been going to Vegas (1995), the 'center' of the Strip has moved. It used to be at the corner of Las Vegas Blvd and Tropicana at the south end. From there, you had nearby access to Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur, Tropicana, MGM, and New York New York. Now it's shifted to the Strip and Flamingo Road, by Paris, Bally's, Flamingo, Bellagio, and Caesars. With Wynn opening up, he's skootching it up north another bit, where you have Wynn, Venetian, TI, and the Mirage - with more opening between the Wynn and the Riviera in the next couple of years.
Enough traveloguing... I also got some knitting done. I finished a hat made from Yarn Place's Adalie yarn (modified chevron pattern), started a felted bowl using Joann's Licorice yarn (just a hat-like thing that will get felted and turned upside down - voila! Instant bowl!), and made progress on my Marble Arches socks. Oh, and I also tried to work the Magknits Rainbow socks, once I learned the right direction for the short rows. Alas, I think I may have to resort to actually putting them on DPNs (grrrr) and doing it the way the pattern writer wrote it. 'cuz with one circular, it didn't work. Not with the brain I currently have, anyway.
Off to read through the emails that accumulated over these past 4 days. Should be lots!
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
I'll Tell Ya What It Was....
I still don't know what it's called, but it was FUN! DH was playing an online game and talking on the phone with his daughter, and every so often she would ask, "What IS that noise?"
Yeah, we had a good time. Ten of us sat around the dining room table (yes, it's big enough) knitting and yakking and eating and browsing patterns and admiring and LEARNING! Yes, even though I have never taught someone to knit from scratch, I taught 2, count 'em, 2 people on Saturday. Actually, I should more precisely say that my students learned despite what I was showing them. Regardless, it was a lot of fun.
Yeah, we had a good time. Ten of us sat around the dining room table (yes, it's big enough) knitting and yakking and eating and browsing patterns and admiring and LEARNING! Yes, even though I have never taught someone to knit from scratch, I taught 2, count 'em, 2 people on Saturday. Actually, I should more precisely say that my students learned despite what I was showing them. Regardless, it was a lot of fun.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Gaggle? Quorum? Pride?
So, what's a gathering of knitters called, anyway? Maybe it's "gathering," as in "A Gathering of Lace." A "herd" of knitters? (I've heard of knitters!) Drove? Pack? Rabble?
Well, whatever they're called, they'll be at The Ranch today... The meshing and melding of three knitting groups, plus 2 or 3 newbies who'll just be learning how to knit. I'm expecting 10 or so, the house is vacuumed, drinks are chillin' in the bucket, pumpkin muffins and pumpkin cookies are baked and ready... DH will be upstairs on his computer, playing an online game with his daughter in Maryland.
If he's smart, he'll put his headphones on, because I may not know what to call us, but I know what we are: LOUD!
Well, whatever they're called, they'll be at The Ranch today... The meshing and melding of three knitting groups, plus 2 or 3 newbies who'll just be learning how to knit. I'm expecting 10 or so, the house is vacuumed, drinks are chillin' in the bucket, pumpkin muffins and pumpkin cookies are baked and ready... DH will be upstairs on his computer, playing an online game with his daughter in Maryland.
If he's smart, he'll put his headphones on, because I may not know what to call us, but I know what we are: LOUD!
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