Before I Sputter Out

Hi kids. Here's the washed swatch. It grew about an inch wider, call it 7". But because I'm a twit I have no idea how much longer it got, but it's currentlehhh 4.75". I know, i need to be more exact in my measurements, because it's going to be the difference between a garment fitted for me or for the late great Andre the Giant. Either way, riveting, I'm sure. I am glad that I seem to be a very even knitter, as I read Recently in Stephanie Pearl-McFee's blog that 'rowing out' winds her up, & frankly it does me too, vis a vis my OCD perfectionist issues. So I'm happy with the cogwheel lace except for a few minor points:

1. Even one repeat is too long to use for the collar, because my neck is approximately 4x thick than it is long. Genetics, feh.
2. If I tack in another repeat on the wrist it's going to be baggy which defeats the purpose of lace, which, like insecure celebrities, is to be seen. I'm thinking about tacking the daisy lace if the repeat slots in because then i could put in buttons as a neat little design feature. Only problem with that idea it that the YO's in this yarn/gauge is that the holes are nearly big enough to put my pinkie through, so hm...

So I shall jack with more swatching, this time with the idea of the sleeve caps. Which if things go like they do in my head, will be brimming over with W1N. There might even be tuck pleating. Of course things in my head also progress with me being waited on with stern devotion by giant bald twins, so don't put too much money on my psyche.

For all my extempore knitting, I need to let go of the idea that something can only be constructed in one direction and only of one fiber art (only knitting, only crochet, &c). It literally makes me queasy to think about making part of this sideways, as I *insert jazz hands HERE* envisioned as necessary for the construction. There are times when my gut is sright & other times when I'm fairly sure it rides the short bus.

I need to get some rechargeable batteries for my camera. It's a perfectly decent, actually quite nice camera other than its rampaging case of gluttony. It was given to me by my darling Best Friend (International Division) Crystal, due to the fact that most Canadians are sweet like that unless you give them a hockey stick or take away their poutine.

Ok I need to go swatch & get in a little drawing & plan out a secret friend project. SO secret I can't even hint, as the recipient will totally twig to its making with even one of the factors *tiptoes away giggling*

Steamshrug Sketches

Okidoki then. My first swatch came out ok. Little short even after washing, I'll post links to those later, but first I shall post the sketches for the idea, thusly:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8188160@N08/4612098988/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8188160@N08/4612099094/in/set-72157624071815140/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8188160@N08/4611487993/in/set-72157624071815140/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8188160@N08/4611488171/in/set-72157624071815140/

I like the swatch, though after washing it's short about an inch for going around my wrist, so I'm going to tinker with tacking in a single skinny lace repeat to make up that inch & see how that works out. The length is good though. For the fiber geeks who like the technical side of things, it's Lion's Pride Fisherman's Wool in 'natural' & 'nature's brown'. That might only be for the swatching progress if I find something nicer & it doesn't cost a metric-ass ton of shekels. But LB is way cheap for a pretty standard, solid yarn. I think I'm just grexing over it because my ODC perfectionist thing makes me frog the everliving shit out of swatches, let alone actual projects to *grind teeth in perfectionist existential histronics HERE* make sure it's right the 1st time even though:

• It's a goddam SWATCH, it's supposed to be all eff'd up
• I have, oh, FIVE MILES of this friggin yarn, I can spare 1/10th of a mile for swatching
• They makin' that shit eeeeveryday. Both wool & the sheep it comes off of

I was worried @ first about people nicking the idea, or 'bitin' my steez' as the hip kids say. But where

1. I'm winging it
2. It might likely be a one-off
3. The pretty solid assumption that about 10 people read this blog

I'm not losing much of the miniscule amount of sleep I already get.

Other than that, nothing much new, posting this from the bagel joint, where apparently their hiring guidelines include somewhere near the top:

1. Hire the most miserable, pissy, overprivileged, currently societal accepted standard of pretty TWATS for public customer service
2. Insist that they make NO attempt to be personable at all whatsoever

K, I'm off for an espresso bean frappe & some more swatching. Talk amongst yerselves

Getting my fecal matter conglomerated

Alternate title: Yeah, That's Right, I Said It



OK. Confession time: I have been a slacker punk ass bitch & I need to cut it out. I spent ALL of last Sunday in bed & That Will Not Do. I am a world class-black belt-high test-you betcha-no joke-straight up procrastinatrix & all around asshat @ tripping myself up & I'm making a list to hammer out exactly what needs doing. Go get a drink, snack, hit the bathroom this is gonna be a compendium, no lie:

1. Embroidery/Sewing - Mom's eyeglass case, my favorite skirt, a secret project for a friend *shifty eyes*, decorating a favorite jacket, various 'sampler' ideas, fake fur wrap with embroidered satin lining, contemplating making my own skirts


2. Knitting - 3 secret friend projects *again with the shifty eyes, don't trust me as far as you can throw me. Just because I'm generally polite doesn't mean I'm not a blackhearted weasel who'll sell you to Mos Eisley slave traders for your weight in lace weight alpaca yarn given the chance* Anyway. Swatching & designing for steampunk lace shawl & steampunk knitted shrug. knitting decorative apron to get rid of some ack-rylic yarn, because I dasn't set it aflame since the burn test *terrified squealing @ flash-flare & horrible bubbling stench*. Meh, it'll be easy to clean & give me practice @ seaming & short rows. Final tweaking the Fin & Haddie Pattern & finally posting it for sale.


3. Spinning - Finish the length of green I have on the spindolyn, wash & set the twist before plying it with the black already done. Practice finer weight yarn with the variegated I have as well as making yarn with two colors IE: blackredblackred, repeat as needed. Sigh wistfully at ridiculously priced spinning wheels, including secondhand ones. You'd think the effin things were made from the crosses @ Golgotha for fucksake. Chew lip thoughtfully & narrow eyes @ kick spindle online pointed out to me by friend Moonie who wants one as well & apparently misheard 'misery loves company' as 'ENVY loves company', lol...


4. Drawing - Swear furiously @ Gimp for eating several key pieces of art. Work on redrawing key scenes from first 3 chapters of Nonesuch Papers while contemplating the kind of unholy pain that would make Mengele's eyes water on Gimp's creators. Try different techniques for digital drawing & actual styles of drawing.
5. Writing - Blog more regularly if nothing more than updating that I spent yackitysmackity hours on whatever above I pick up on whatever day. Redo Chapters 1-3 of The Nonesuch Papers as they are utter puerile crap & need paring. Work on idea spoofing the supernatural detective/cop chick lit glut, tentative title: Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

I will try taking update pix, as it will encourage *kofguilttripkof* me into actually getting off my copious caboose to get this shite done. The camera stone cold SNARFS batteries, but it's currently cheaper than buying one.

Love you, & it's years past time I started loving myself.

Good Morning, Goddamit!

Hi there I've been awake since 3am waiting for the rest of you to get the hell up so I can get things done SIX HOURS WASTED ZOMG, so I got breakfast at the overpriced bagel place because the place that just has good coffee which is really all I wanted didn't open until NINE WTF, I mean like, yunno? They're losing 3 hours worth of MONEY, so I had to settle for substandard coffee and FLOCKS, HERDS, PODS of yuppies all BELLOWING their dominance calls at one another & completely invading my personal space & one of the runner lesbians who was like the LOUDEST was really sweet and complemented my tattoos because chicks DIG me, *dance* Doncha wish yer girfren was WRONG like ME & I REALLY SHOULDNA had that coffee because now I can hear YOUR hair growing & the good coffee shop didn't have an internet connection today so I hadda walk alla way over to the library with all the skeevy street people (aka garbage blanc) bellowing THEIR dominance calls, but I'm just checking my email to let you know on the way to the library I saw a squirrel that scored a WHOLE GRANOLA bar & he was eating it like a fat man in a fur coat eating a whole rack of ribs & it was so flipping funny & I hafta go knit now kthxbailuvlol

OMG I almost totally forgot I got to return the dark yarn for lighter yarn even though they shook their fingers at me & I batted my eyelashes at them & solemnly promised not to ball up the yarn again until I was SURE I was gonna use it. HEE! You cannot resist me, you can only hope to contain me!

I Wish To Register A Complaint

Alternate Title: Caveat Fucking Emptor

So. I knit, as most of you know. I figure with the economy being what it is that I would knit my gifts for my parents, & show my love with my hands insteada my wallet.

Well. I went out & bought Cascade 128 Superwash wool yarn (128 yard, decent variety of colors, but I be GADDAM if I will provide a link for you to go purchase any. You're on yer own there. I bought it in (ugh) yellow for my mother & blue for my father, to match a scarf I'd made him last year. My mother's love of yellow, usually with purple is a personality quirk that I put up with her only, due to the facts:

1. I love my mother above all others & I would kill or be killed for her
2. Those 2 colors, especially together makes my fashion sense feel dizzy. & I figured superwash wool would be easier for her in that she could just bung both items in the washer instead of having to jack around with regular wool, in which (perform all actions below GENTLY):

• Put article in a sink with cool water
• Swish or let soak for 10-15 minutes
• Squeeze water from article
• Lay flat to dry

It would basically take longer to cleanse the frickin things than it did to make it. Anyway.

So, like an idiot, I read the ball band & it said the suggest needle size for knitting this craptastic trainwreck of a yarn is #10. I didn't have #10's in circular needles & figured that it was an investment & bought them, then trundled home to make with the knitting.

I made mom's neckwarmer 1st, very generic idea, k2p2, join in the round & zip through the entire ball right quick. It knitted up nice, if a bit loose, but I'm a loose/average knitter & didn't think much of it. The yarn itself, I must admit feels soft & cushy & the yellow wasn't sickly or searing. So I toted into the bathroom to wash/block it (insert ominous music of your choice here)

It hit that water and GREW. I mean like, SRS. It was no longer a neckwarmer, it was a friggin' cummerbund for a HIPPO, no lie. & to make matters worse, the sumbitch had opened up from KNIT to NET. Well, ain't this a raggedy BITCH, thinks I, drying it on my bailing hot radiator & reskeining it.

Now I have a jumble of needles. I pondered, pondered like the very wind, as Xmas was breathing down my neck like a rabid reindeer. I finally chose #7 THREE SIZES SMALLER, as they were the next 16” circulars that I have. Flailing away I tore it off again & it went off without a hitch, even after washing/blocking. There was a smidge left over & I swatched it so I could get my father's hat right the first time. That last sentence is, I believe, filed under the heading: 'Famous Last Words'

There, ya squirrely shit, thinks I. I've got the number & the measure of ya and you WILL do what I tell you, god damn your strands!

Yeahhh, not so much. I'm not so good @ the maths, which I freely admit. As previously mentioned, I need to take off my shoes AND my shirt to count to 22. But if you give me a basic formula like, oh, say swatching/washing/blocking, it's not exactly rocket surgery. & I knitted that bitch tight enough to make my pinkies go numb.

That hat was BIG. I mean like, the aforementioned hippo coulda used it for a hammock. & the gapping in that hat was even bigger than the neckwarmer debacle. Well, WHAT the everloving moaning azure festering hell ass balls is up with THIS? At this point I'm on the verge of taking up smoking again in the form of sticking an entire pack of smokes in my mouth, still wrapped & lighting it on fire.

By now it was 10p Xmas Eve's Eve (12/23) & I was doing the gift swap Xmas Eve with my mom @ Friendlys. No pressure, you understand. After 20 healthy minutes of swearing myself black in the face, I flung the still damp knitted BUCKET onto my radiator & laid down for a power nap. I thank every god I can think of that I have insomnia or I would NEVER get anything done.

So, 2a came around & chased me out of bed to cast on with the mental revisions I'd gnashed myself to sleep with & started thrashing. I got it done & by Athena, done properly, but by the end of this rediculous little exercise, the neckwarmer had been named The Yellow-Bellied Crapsucker & the hat, of course, named the Norwegian Blue (“BEAUTIFUL PLUMAGE!”).

The moral of this story: I don't often bitch about products I don't like. If I don't like something I usually review it in a little snit either mentally or to friends/family, then never touch it again. If anyone else wants the crappy item, then by gods, go grab it with both hands & keep it away from me. People: I didn't even keep the scraps of the yarn left over, I flung them out with malicious aforethought & I have scraps of yarn under 12” in length in my Yarn scrap drawer. I will NEVER touch Cascade 128 Superwash again, not even with a 14” straight needle & I would strongly suggest you don't either.

Working 9 To 5

OR: Everything I Needed To Know I Learned In The Office Part II

(click here for Part I).

I was speaking with someone recently *kofDonnaBarrkof* on my job history. I have spent 20+ years as an office assistant/receptionist/switchboard operator/dispatcher. I am DAMN good at it, though it can bore me to tears. But also, it's a relatively low responsibility job, go in tranfer info or people from one place to another & leave at 5p. It can be hard work, when people are cranky about their policy/account/whatever. It can be a serious bitch when you have a huge copy project for someone, especially when they change their mind repeatedly. Three ring punch, stapled, spiral bound, one sided, double-sided, oy, the decisions! Jobs that have to be done in three days, when they really are a week long project. Basically I shovel the shit that the CE-whatevers can't or won't do.

Donna said it best when she stated the maxim: “Don't fire the secretary.” And people just don't GET IT. They really don't. I was on craigslist & asking about job relocation & a guy said something along the lines of “It's not a job set that anyone would do that for.”
Now you tell me. Do you need ANOTHER six-figure-someone rolling in just long enough to shmooze with the other VIPs & jet off on 'business trips' to rack up unholy bills, fleece the company and/or throw around his/her weigh making enemies or knocking up his 'assistant' if you know what I mean, & I think you do. Or do you need someone who knows how to run the postage machine, tranfer all the calls correctly and make sure the coffee machine always runs? 500 words or less, single spaced answers, plskthxbai.

Some stories from my checkered past: I had one of the aforemented gigantic copy jobs to do, in color. Color copies are a BITCH to do. The paper is slippery AND sticky at the same time & just loves to jam. The toner runs out fast & as it runs out it dicks the color on the actual copies. You have to HOVER is what I'm saying. Now in this company there were two copiers for the entire company, which meant they were continually hopping. I fell up in the copy room to find a guy who I'd sat and listened to his bitching about how hard college was & all the money he owed. The woman with him was some sort of VIP, I don't remember which, but very high up. But both of them were standing by the color copier, him with his graduate hands in his khaki pockets and she with her blazer-clad arms crossed, standing next to the unresponsive copier.

“Ok, what's the situation? How are we doing? Why isn't it running? I got a big job going on here.” I said, all business. They looked at the copier then me and shrugged.

Here I give you one of the copier laws. Unless shit has changed drastically since I was last in an office setting, it is basic in all copiers *jazz hands* alllll over the world:

CHECK THE FUCKING PAPER TRAYS! So I asked if either one had a weird copy size & sure enough, our boy from Whatsamatta U had a 11”x14” job. So I CHECKED THE FUCKING PAPER TRAY.

And bigods, wouldn't you know it? That sumbitch was emptier than a bimbo's brainpan.

“How's that college degree workin' for ya?” I quizzed him as I slapped in the paper, giving it a little flip to get the paper 'aired', a little trick to keep it from jamming. And goddamn if that thing didn't start cranking out the copies. The she-VIP seemed a little touchy, so I kept the ragging to a minimum, but the Eyebrow of DOOM was 'in mad full effect' as the hip kids say. We had a fluffy little bimbo temp in at one time that pulled the same shit on the black & white copier.
“Nothing's coming out!” She whined. Glancing at the screen, I saw the BIG BLINKING RED LIGHT that showed the paper trays were empty. Both of them. That held three reams of paper EACH. She'd run through at least one thousand sheets of paper or up to SIX THOUSAND sheets & couldn't figure out that there is NO PAPER FAIRY. Well, she figured it out when I started flinging paper in, trying not to set it alight from the sparks off my grinding teeth.

So. Another time at the same place we had a 6 figure fella prodding away at the black & white copier, Rolex & gold ID bracelet twinkling in the flourescent lights. He was basically underfoot, MY foot to be exact, & I had what's know as 'shit to do'. So, tactfully I asked what the hell the problem was and he told me that he had a page in to be copied & blanks were coming out. Well. Another little copier law:

MAKE SURE THE FRIGGIN' PAPER IS FACEDOWN ON THE GLASS. The glass is a great big camera lens that takes the picture to print on the paper. Big juju. And when you put the paper face UP on the camera lens it only take a picture of the blank back. So again, tactfully, forehead vein THROBBING with indignation at the injustice in pay rates versus competency, I explained this & got him straightened out. Now I can kinda understand that top loading copiers can be misleading in that you put originals in face up, they feed through and then pop out again, face DOWN. It TWIRLS around, MAGICALLY, to go facedown over the lens to take the picture & comes out facedown so your originals are in correct order. Again, powerful juju.

Copiers are wild & magnificent creatures. And you betcher ASS they can smell fear. These creatures, when gentled to the hand can be very useful and make you the most powerful person in the office. When you figure them out, you are L33T in a way that is useful, insteada being a h4x0r that gets off on fucking up websites out of sexual frustration *eyeroll*. Which is why I'm NOT telling anyone about the biggest secret of all concerning them, tralala & teehee.

I know how to use pretty much all office equipment, folders, collators, postage machines, copiers, multiline phone systems, laminators, spiral binding machines. Any of them I don't know due to different makes, models, whatever, give me an ½ hour to tinker & they'll roll over & show their belly, never you worry. Now, I work 3rd shift weekends, which means that I have to make decisions that can be very important. And yet I make crap pay, as do so many others in the field that I am skilled in. Some people do make very good pay for very hard work, but they have to pony up for union dues *kofextortionkof*. How much longer is the world going to ignore the fact that the power pyramid is upside down?

Any road, they'd better hurry up & smell the coffee. The toner needs changing.

Ima take pics of a bunch of crocheted items that I did for a Christmas Fair last year that didn't sell but 1 item *shifty eyes* I'm quite sure it was due to the economy, because my friend who asked me to contribute said nothing much was selling. So stay tuned as I'm posting the items in 3 different places including here, my deviantart page: http://inkerbel.deviantart.com/ & also over @ myspace: http://www.myspace.com/inkerbel

Not only do I crochet, but I knit as well & I am available for commissions.Stay tuned!

Listening to Fastball, The Way