I live! Promise.

Sorry it's been so dead around here, folks, I've been so busy knitting (and frogging and knitting and frogging and knitting again) that I completely forgot to blog about it. Plus, I've been finishing up a couple of small side projects for/with friends. For example, Hastur and I are working on a cross-stitch for a contest in some magazine she subscribes to - I forget the one, but the prize is a cubic fuck-ton of hand-dyed silk threads by her absolute favorite dyer, dinky dyes. Something about their five-year anniversary, I believe ;) We designed it together, and she's stitching it up this week. I hope it makes it into the finals.

In other news, HarlotWatch continues! I have reserved three seats at the event, either for myself, Sweetie, and Hastur (who I am trying to convince to come with me), or myself, Hastur, and Meagan (if I can convince them to do a girl's day out). I'll be taking my littlest brother to see Lucy at the Houston Museum of Natural Science that weekend, so it should be good times all around.

In knitting news, not much is going on. I've tried two or three different types of cuddlefish eye-bulges before settling on the final version (you'll never guess how it works. I'm so excited), so now all I've got to do is actually finish the damn thing! Luckily, I've decided to start the mouth shaping just after the apex of the eye-bulge, so I'm ready for that now. It's good times. I'm so eager to show off the Cuddlefish, I don't know if I'll be able to keep him out of photographs so I can submit him to Knitty, or if I should just give in, post him everywhere, and submit him to MagKnits. Knitty seems to have a higher readership, and be a better stepping-stone to eventual author-dom, so I will resist the urge (like anyone's here for the photographs anyway, right?).

Anyway, that's all for now. I ordered some Mama Llama merino lace yarn, and it's time to start obsessively checking the mailbox, on the off-chance that the postal service was three hours late today. Sweetie says my belief in the six-o'-clock mail pixies is silly, but I think knitters know better than that. If you truly believe, then the yarn will come.

It looks like the internet

is back up, for now. Sorry for the delay.

So I got a raise. How cool is that, right? I'm almost making as much now as I would have at the pathology lab, and I'm not cutting into dead things. A $0.50 difference per hour is definitely worth it for that, and I'm hoping it will help ease the blow to my dad when I tell him that I like my job and will not be looking for another one (in this city, at least) any time soon, even if it means he doesn't give me the car, which is what I'm betting on.

At any rate, knitting is going well. I started a pair of socks with some Louet Gems dyed by Cherry Tree Hill (beautiful gem tones), top-down picot-hemmed Jaywalkers with twined-knit heels (which takes forever, in case you were wondering, but makes a wonderful, thick, elastic fabric. Remind me to borrow Hastur's camera and post a tutorial on it), and guess what? I ran foul of the usual complaint with Jaywalkers: Too small. I can get them over my heels, but with major effort, so they're going to be undergoing some major surgery when I can bear to look at them again. I'm going to rip back to where I picked up for the gusset, snip the final row of cuff before I started the heel, provisionally cast on over the instep, and do plain stockinette down to the toes. Then I can pick up around the ankle, knit up a cuff with what's left, and yay! Socks. Just not socks right now.

Right now it's all Cuddlefish, all the time! I finally figured out what pattern I want to use on the head (staggered diamonds, the simplest thing ever, with lice patterns on bottom), so I've attached the siphon and started working in earnest. It should definitely be done by the time Yarn Harlot comes to Houston.

Internet at home currently dead

I'm working on the Cuddlefish, I'm working on some socks, and Hastur has got me designing some cross-stitch with her (who'd've thunk?). Also, got in some lovely fiber from the Painted Sheep. Sweetie's making beer tonight!

The First Step

is admitting you have a problem. I ...may have a small problem.

My name is Persian Pen Name, and I buy yarn.

This realization started yesterday, when I picked up an awesome glass-fronted cabinet off of Freecycle (which if you haven't checked out yet, you should, because it's awesome), and my first thought was yarn cabinet! So I took it home, cleaned it out, and set out to Organize The Stash.

Step 1: Centralize. All yarn that is not currently in the first yarn cabinet (now Cabinet Prime) is gathered in the dining room.

Step 2: Separate. It's yarn. It tangles. It happens.

Step 3: Wind. I hooked up the swift and ball winder to the cabinet (and how cool is it that I can hook up my swift and winder to my cabinet?) and wound like a woman gone mad.

Step 4: Stack. I've heard it said that winding your yarn into cakes before putting it into storage is a bad idea - that it stretches out the fibers, and you end up with a less fluffy yarn. I don't know if this is true (though it sounds convincing), but I will say this about cakes: they sure as hell stack better than hanks. I have made of my cabinet a veritable brick wall of yarn, completely unsorted by fiber, weight, or color. I am running out of cabinet, and still have plenty of yarn to stack. Do you know what this means?

I have two cabinets full of yarn. Two cabinets. Full. Of yarn. Just yarn. Not yarn-and-fiber, not yarn-and-whatever-else-you-put0in-a-cabinet-that-isn't-yarn. Plus, my approximately 10 lb fiber stash (admittedly, 5 lbs is still that one fleece I need to scour and send to Becky). Yarn Harlot talks of "wool blindness" affecting family members of knitters - being surrounded by so much yarn, they become so used to it, it's practically invisible. I think that knitters are maybe not immune to this themselves.

So I think I'm going to cut down on the yarn buying for a little while. I'm not going to say no yarn, because then I always end up impuse buying a few thousand yards of ColourMart Silk in a moment of weakness. And I'm not going to get back on Hastur's Challenge, because hey, I do need patterns to use up all this yarn! And of course, I'm nowhere near SABLE (I plan to live for a very LONG time, after all). But definitely I'll try and show a little more restraint.

I don't think it helps that I'm expecting both more yarn and more fiber in the mail soon.

HatlotWatch 2007

Day: 01
Goals:
a) Knit 3000 stitches on Galveston Prime (check)
b) Put numbers on my schematic
c) Build the Rat Castle (check - not knitting related, but happy making)
d) Plot the final shaping of the Cuddlefish (check)

Thus begins HarlotWatch 2007. If successful, I will knit 3000 stitches a day for 55 days, culminating in one very finished Galveston Prime, in time enough to show off for the Yarn Harlot when she comes to Houston. In the event that I get Galvy done and blocked and can't get the day off, I will set fire to all of College Station and escape in the ensuing chaos.

UPDATE: In the interests of not upsetting the Margarita Provider, I hereby promise never to set fire to Hastur's house on pain on hangover.

Things are great

Except for the fact that Yarn Harlot's coming to Houston September 18th, which is not only a tuesday, it's a work day in my no-vacation-having probationary time. I wonder if I can swing something with my boss.

In other news, schematic! (no numbers on it as of yet)

Chugging Along

... on my Galveston shawl. Yup. Halfway through Chart C, after ripping back the point-shaping and border charts. It's sad to see so much knitting gone at once, but it's got that satisfying gut feeling you get when you're sacrificing time to do something right.

I think they call it insanity?

Anyway, seeing the near-finished Galveston shawls on Flickr and in various blogs has really motivated me to get crackin' on the original (Galveston Prime?) so I can hurry up and wear it already. It's still light enough that I can get multiple rows finished walking to and from work and on breaks, which is a nice feeling. I've ended up with an odd stitch marker system, though - my fancy-shmancy bead-and-wire markers at the beginning of the round and between each of the sections, and then cut up straw bits in between pattern repeats on the wave section. It doesn't really make the actual knitting easier, but it makes me feel good to count how many pattern repeats I've done, and it makes tinking back to fix mistakes a little easier.

In other news, Mr. Hastur came up with a great gaming idea, and we've been talking about it almost non-stop since tuesday. I don't want to say too much on it right now, but it might make me have to go buy one of those freakishly large 1" hex battle maps.

Herringbone Socks Finished!

Whohoo!

As of yet there's no pictures of the finished socks, but hopefully Hastur will let me borrow her camera so I can post it here and on Ravelry. Ready for the rundown?

Pattern: Web Socks, by Erica Alexander (IK Winter 2005)
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, chocolate. 2 skeins.
Needles: 2.00 mm/US 0
Modifications: Toe up instead of cuff down, short row garter stitch heels and toes, 80 stitches in the foot and 88 in the cuff, small gusset before the heel. 2x2 ribbing at the top, tubular bind off (which I learned for these socks).

Total knitting time: 2 months, because I'm easily distracted.

I Loves My In-Laws

So, the Galveston loan thing? Taken care of. Sweetie's parents said that since they were planning to give us a large wedding gift anyway, they would help us make half-now amount, so I can pay off the other half and get some savings going myself. I am so grateful that the man I love happens to come from an awesome family. I'm going to have to start some serious christmas knitting this year for them! Come mid-August, it is all presents all the time for these people (at least until I finish, or panic, both).

This also speaks well for a smaller-scale wedding, which we're both still hoping for. Having to borrow several hundred dollars from people you're not technically related to yet goes a long way in the "I'm not buying dinner for three hundred people" department (not that we're inviting three hundred people or anything. Honestly, I'd like to keep it at less than 50 total, but I don't think that's likely. We both have big families).

So all in all, things are going splendidly right now. I've gotten in my first paycheck, and knowing how many hours were on it, I can now calculate my monthly income, minus bills, loans, food and savings, and I have enough left over for a modest yarn budget. If I could knit a pair of socks in two weeks, my stash would be in complete stasis.

FUCK.

Today I spent two and a half hours asking A&M Galveston why they said I owed them $2,000, why they hadn't mentioned this in the three and a half years I've been at A&M College Station, and how quickly did they expect someone who has been living paycheck to paycheck all her college life (and who, coincidentally, has not yet had the first paycheck of her post-college life) to get that $2,000 to them.

In short, the answers are: They fucked up and gave me money they shouldn't have, while leading me to think it was part of my student loans; They supposedly emailed me once, three years ago, on an email account I did not have set up but which technically existed on the campus servers; and half immediately, half in six months.

This last bit would be fine, except for that whole half immediately thing. I don't have a savings account worth the name right now, much less a grand to spare.

Grar. Now I have to get another loan, so I can pay off this amount, but in a sane amount of time. Fuckers are lucky I don't just declare bankruptcy on their asses.