Skirt weather

Apparently I’m not done complaining about clothing – Skirt weather, it is not.  I spent far too much time yesterday thinking about how much I hate pants, and how much I can’t wait for it to be warm enough for me to wear skirts all the time.  And when I left the house today?  Hail.

Pants Rant

So normally I respond privately to comments, but for some reason I sort of got on a roll with my reply to Mamma’s comment, and it turned into a rant, and while I don’t normally post rants I’m curious as to what the response to this one will be. Does anyone actually understand what the @&$ is going on with current fashion?

First, Mamma asked whether I wound yarn or went dancing. I did both – skipped out of work a little early, wound one skein of yarn, went to the dance a little late, and wound another skein of yarn when I got home. And I didn’t sleep much. =)

Then, she said that as for my laundry woes, I could just buy more underwear and thus delay the necessity of laundry. I’ve done that in the past, a lot, so now I actually have plenty of underwear – the problem is that I don’t have enough pants, and I just tried to buy more pants but it was a very depressing experience resulting in no new pants and necessitating the purchase of therapy yarn. Bah. One of these days, clothing manufacturers will make pants that actually fit real people! What the @#^&*# is up with “low-rise” and “ultra-low-rise” pants, anyway, and why can’t they still make normal pants for people who don’t enjoy showing the entire world their butt-cleavage? (And now I’m imagining the Google traffic I’m going to get from talking about butt-cleavage…)

Really, though. What normal-shaped woman can actually wear low-rise jeans? My butt is (gasp!) bigger than my waist. Really. It is. This means that there needs to be fabric to cover my butt, and then there needs to be waist shaping that comes in over the top of my butt, so that my butt doesn’t hang out. For those who do wear low-rise jeans, what underwear can you wear with them? I wear bikini underwear, which covers me all the way to the top of my butt-cleavage. Low-rise jeans don’t, which means there’s this expanse of white cotton sticking out over the top of the jeans – very stylish! The only other option I can see is to just not wear underwear at all in these jeans, which means that there’s an expanse of butt-cleavage sticking out over the top of the jeans! Not really the image I want to give – I am neither Britney Spears nor a plumber.

And I’ve probably talked about my butt plenty – this is, after all, a knitting blog, not a Real Women Have Curves blog. But I’m still angry. And I need to do laundry.

Pondering Round 3

More Madness starts on Wednesday.

I had intended to wind yarn (yay Bearfoot!), finish off Bayerische (about 1/2 inch of toe left), and start the Cardigan for Arwen yesterday, but then I got a call from Mr. Potential and ended up spending the day in Portsmouth with him (he even cooked dinner!). So I’m quite happy about that, but I didn’t knit at all, or wind my yarn. And Tuesday night is normally my midweek night off to do everything that I didn’t get around to on the previous weekend because I was busy going to two more Girlyman concerts and spending Sunday in Portsmouth with Mr. Potential… but this Tuesday I’ve got dinner plans with an old friend I haven’t seen in forever, and I expect to be out pretty late.

So now I’m torn.

The timing of this round is not great for me, since I work 10-hour days on Wednesday and Thursday. And I can’t skip dancing on Thursday because Mr. P is coming down. So that means the only knitting time I’ll have before Friday is Wednesday evening after work. If I don’t wind the yarn before Wednesday, I’ll be even further behind – but since I didn’t do it yesterday and can’t do it tomorrow, it seems that I have to do it tonight. But I go dancing on Mondays, too, and I promised myself at the beginning of the Madness that I wouldn’t let it interfere with my life… too much… but it’s still early in the competition and while I wouldn’t be horribly disappointed to lose now (go say hi to my partner/opponent Julie!) it’d be a shame if I didn’t at least give it my best effort. Unless this round is a lot more complicated than the last two, I’m fairly sure I can finish on Friday (before going up to spend a probably-mostly-knitless weekend with my parents) – but only if I can get a good chunk done on Wednesday, which would mean winding the yarn tonight. Which would mean not dancing tonight.

So what do I do? I also need to do laundry… it probably would actually be a good idea to do laundry tonight and not dance anyway. But I don’t think the landlord has fixed the washing machine yet, so I’d have to go to the laundromat, and that’s not really a great place for yarn-winding. Maybe I’ll just hope the washing machine gets fixed soon, go dancing, and stay up half the night winding yarn.

Meh. My life really isn’t that complicated. I just keep forgetting that there really is enough time to do everything – I just have to not sleep. I was really good at that, in college.

Yarn Therapy

I tried to give blood today, and they rejected me! Apparently my iron wasn’t high enough, or something – that test they do where they prick your finger and see how fast your blood sinks. I’ve had plenty of problems giving blood before, what with the tiny veins in my arms and the rather major needle phobia and the almost passing out, and stuff, but I have never had my blood fail to sink like a stone! I’m still well within the normal range, and not actually anemic, but it just wasn’t quite good enough for them to accept my blood. They blamed the tea I drink constantly. I was very surprised, and somewhat upset. So I went to the yarn store.

I was only going to get one, but I couldn’t help it. You can see why, can’t you?

I didn’t get a good closeup of the red (“Ruby River”), but it’s beautiful, rich, complex and wonderfully shaded. Here are the others:

“Alpine”: wonderful deep blues and greens, with little shots of rich, vibrant brown. I think it’ll go well with the “Glaciar Teal” (Madtini sock #2), which has those same wonderful brown streaks.

And “Crazy Woman.” I couldn’t pass it up, even though it’s a fair bit more pink than I usually use. We’ll see how the socks come out; I may end up giving them away. It is slightly less pink in person, and it’s got the same wonderful browns, blues, and greens, as well as some lovely purples. I hope it works up well!

So after this yarn store stop, I was feeling better. Then I attempted to go pants shopping. Suffice it to say that I have no new pants, and was again somewhat depressed. But when I got home, there was a package I hadn’t expected to arrive for at least another few days:

Superwash wool/nylon sock yarn, hand-dyed by Ray, from www.knitivity.com. I just ordered it a day or two ago, and I was expecting shipping to take a lot longer – not that I’m complaining! A lot of Ray’s color selections are too bright for me, or have too many colors going on with too much contrast, but some are just lovely:

This is his color “Blue Jeans,” and I believe I got the last skein of it. Have I mentioned that I love blue?

“Wading Pool” is a bit brighter than I expected:

Those greens are really neon! But I think my cousin will like it. And I am happy once again, despite still having all of my blood and no new pants.

Time to go wind some yarn!

J’ai fini!

May I present… Madtini socks!

Now I need to take a shower, clean up a bit, eat some food… oh, and the doorbell rang while I was knitting, and it was the mail carrier with a promising-looking package from Knit Picks…

There may be a real FO post coming later today.  Or I might just wait and do FO for all of the Sock Madness socks when the contest is over.  We’ll see how lazy I end up being.

Time for a stretch

and maybe some food.

Love the Bearfoot.  Hate the Magic Stripes.  I’m bribing myself (or possibly blackmailing?) to keep going on the Magic Stripes by not allowing myself to do any more on the gorgeous, luscious Bearfoot sock than I do on the icky gross Magic Stripes sock.  Right now, Icky’s gusset is done, and I just picked up the gusset on Luscious.  Time for some brainless stockinette!

Go! to sleep

It’s 4 a.m. I’ve finished the heel flap on Madtini Sock #1. No artsy photos for you! Not even non-blurry photos! Me go pass out now…

Glee!

I just ran into my uber-boss (not my immediate superior, but HIS superior) at the water fountain, and she complimented my sweater – then when I told her I’d made it, she gushed over it for almost a full fifteen seconds!

And now I have to take a conference call. My day is so exciting!

FO: Shedir

Surprise!

(click for bigger)

Pattern: Shedir hat, from a special edition PDF knitty

Yarn: Knit Picks Swish Superwash, black

Needles: Knit Picks 32″ size 2 (3.0 mm) circulars

Started: Sunday, March 11

Finished: Saturday, March 16

Not really much to say about the pattern – I love it. Aside from the yarn substitution (because it’s what I had on hand), I made no changes at all. It’s beautiful, and it worked perfectly as is – and it even fits!

(And yes, that’s the Seamless Hybrid you can see under the hat in these pictures. I’ve been wearing it rather a lot.)

I’m not, however, a huge fan of worsted-weight superwash wool on size 2 needles, cabling without a cable needle. I’ve never really encountered the problem that some people have with superwash wool – they say it feels squeaky like acrylic, and they won’t work with anything but normal, untreated wool. Now I know what they mean. I still love superwash for its washability (duh) and I still refuse to knit socks in anything but superwash (because if I made one non-machine-washable sock, I’d definitely get it mixed up and ruin it!)… but in this pattern, this yarn, and on these needles, I did feel some squeak. I think in the future, I’ll just avoid working with superwash worsted on size 2 needles with eight million tiny cables.

But wow, do I love those eight million tiny cables.

With enough pictures

…who needs words?

 

Mountain Colors Bearfoot, Glacier Teal

I’m ready.