Last night in Madison

A wise man named Tom Petty once said, "The waiting is the hardest part." Truer words...being in Madison these past two weeks after my defense have been painful knowing that we have to leave. We got married here.

Literally, here.

We live here.

Literally, here.

Right next to the halfway house. OK, I might not miss that so much. Although it made for some interesting stories. Like the time the lady who never wears shoes and always carries a broom approached me while Sammy was taking a dump in the side yard and said "By the hearth of Hestia, how I wish that all the creatures of this domain could relieve themselves in a civilized manner...[insert more world salad of New Age bullshit here, I can't remember exactly what she said]" but it amounted to that she wished that domestic animals could use a toilet. "You and me both, dude," I said. She wandered off, then apparently sensing I could be offended she turned around and said, "But I do thank you for cleaning it up." "No problem."

Eh, weird people have to live somewhere.

Sammy will miss the nearby park.

Orton Park

And his favorite person....

The mail lady--she carries treats. When he see her, he sits his ass down and refuses to go until he gets to greet her.

And his vet just down the block.

We're so used to walking everywhere. Restaurants, the hippie co-op grocery, the hemp store (for real. There's an entire store devoted to hemp and hemp products). The people watching is fabulous, as you might imagine.

My husband and I did our last bit of Wisconsin duty this morning by going down to City Hall to vote (early) in the governor recall election. Here's a quick recap of what happened to ignite the powder keg:

Governor Scott Walker: OK, government workers, we have to cut your pay because we need to balance the budget.

Wisconsin Government Workers: 'Kay, gotta do what you gotta do.

GSW: Benefits too.

WGW: Sucks, but 'kay.

GSW: And I'm going to revoke your right to organize and negotiate for your rights, pay and benefits.

WGW: 'Ka--wait what? No!

GSW: Yep. Except for the firemen and police. Their unions supported me in the election so...ya know.

14 WI senators: No way dude, we're going to a different state since you can't vote on any monetary matters without us, so you can't vote on this BS.

GSW: OK, well, forget all the budget balancing stuff. Let's just get rid of those rights!

This really pissed people off, as you might imagine.  He continued with an uber-conservative agenda under the guise of creating jobs for Wisconsinites. An admirable goal, but as recently reported by the WI Department of Revenue, we're suffering the some of the worst job losses in the nation. What, even after repealing the Equal Pay Enforcement Act?? The one protecting from discrimination based on gender, race, age, disability, religion, or sexual orientation? Republican WI senator Glenn Grothman explains the pay gap between men and women:

 "You could argue that money is more important for men. I think a guy in their first job, maybe because they expect to be a breadwinner someday, maybe a little more money-conscious. To attribute everything to a so-called bias in the workplace is just not true.” (emphasis mine)

Ass. Yeah, who needs money for like, food and shelter and stuff, amirite ladies? For obvious reasons, we were glad that we could perform a little civic duty before we left.

I hit up Lakeside Fibers, the yarn shop, one last time. The Cascade 220 wall was calling my name.  I was inspired by Autumn Geisha's post about her fav designer, Heidi Kirrmaier. The Nanook she's making in a sweet neon green color was too good to pass up. I'm making mine in purple!

I have no idea how to artfully photograph it though. It's a construction that I've never done before, where you do the sleeves before the bulk of the body. I'm kinda digging it. And I love the detail on the collar.

Collar 'bear tracks'.

Well, we've got a couple thousand mile drive in the next couple of days....how much do you think I'll get done?

In limbo

Let's get this out of the way: I passed my defense. It wasn't exactly smooth sailing, but when something is pass/fail, it ultimately doesn't matter. Let's not discuss whether or not I wasted six years of my life, it's just too depressing to contemplate at the moment.

Last weekend we headed to one of our favorite spots in Wisconsin, Little Pond Lodge. It was nice to get out of town instead of sitting around and fretting. The weather didn't particularly agree with us though:

Not everyone in our party was troubled by the rain.

Enjoying the prairie.

The juxtaposition of prairie and wilderness is one of my favorite things about Wisconsin. Not too many wildflowers growing in the fields yet. We visited Roche a Cri State Park, a relatively small park in the state system near our cabin. Since the weather was miserable, we were the only people there and were free to let Sammy roam.  Roche a Cri boasts an unusual feature--a towering rock with carvings ranging from as recent as nineteenth century explorers carving their name to petroglyphs made by native Americans that are hundreds of years old.

The weather improved around the time that we were ready to leave, natch. It's actually pretty fun to go places when the weather is lousy, you feel like a badass while simultaneously avoiding the crowd.

Walking around Little Pond.

Rainy day activities included visiting the Carr Valley Cheese Factory in Mauston, WI. BEST CURDS EVER.

And of course I had plenty of time for knitting in the cozy cabin. Around the time the larger sized needles I'd ordered arrived, I ran out of yarn. I had no idea how far in the pattern I would get (answer: about 5/8 the way through) because the pattern listed no gauge, recommended needle size, or estimate about amount of yarn needed. Thanks a lot, Martha Waterman.

I used my handy shawl blocking wire to give it a shape, but seem to have misplaced my box of needles.

Operation Hold Shawl Down With Junk is go

An inelegant solution, but it works.

He pretends to not be interested.

Then as soon as my back is turned.... (Murray the penguin does nothing to intervene)

This was my first serious foray into crocheting an edge. Seriously, I have zero crochet knowledge so I was a little intimidated, but it was just some chaining. Crochet is so weird to me, you only have one stitch on the needle at a time. I was a little thrown by the nomenclature used for one of the stitches: ch3tog, which I interpreted as chain three together. Google couldn't find this term, it claimed that it was literally not found on the entirety of the internet. So for posterity, in the context of using crochet to bind of a knit edge, ch3tog means to slip 3 stitches from your knitting needle to the crochet hook, and chain them together. You're welcome, Google.

It was worked in a square from the middle outward, and the various sections serve like rings in the cross-section of a tree. Each area is a nice reminder of whatever the hell I was doing at the time (although it was usually television or movie related...I unabashedly love TV, but 'hey, this was during the premiere of Mad Men!' isn't super inspiring).

I wore it last night to the Dane County Humane Society fund raiser "Bark and Wine", and felt sufficiently fancy. One thing, though--it was a little bit of a pain to wrangle it. I'd like to get a shawl pin, but I don't know where I'd buy such a thing. Any thoughts? Ya'll I have a few reservations with Etsy, unless I know the seller from another context. Any of you guys happen to make shawl pins? Because that would be, you know, problem solved.

Stressing out

Guys and gals, I'm stressed. The PhD (or fud, as we like to call it) defense is coming up early next month, and I seem to be metaphorically crapping my drawers. In my college days I used to get sick every finals week simply from mentally psyching myself out, and now I'm having a month's worth of that awesomeness. It's not even like I'm rushing around at the last minute, I'm on track to get everything done early and excised a section that was looking like it wouldn't come together in time. PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER. And all the while, what do I really want to do? Extrapolate my dog sweater to difference sizes and put that puppy (heh) out there.

I did, however, finish my sweater. It is less bag-like than the first edition, and lighter. Check out the inaugural wearage:

Of course I didn't just roll out of bed and throw this on without showering, why on earth would you think that?

One issue I have that's not really pattern specific, but more a complaint about the stitch pattern in general, is that it's not symmetrical. This always happens to me when I have some holes created going into a knit stitch and others created going into a purl. Is this a common issue? There was a note on the pattern for this hat (which I swear I'm following up on it's janky sagginess and all of your suggestions were invaluable) that said these types of yarn overs "should even out with blocking". I even went though and tried to adjust each of the smaller ones after wetting it but before blocking. I achieved soaking my lap and not much else.

Right side /= left side...oh well.

I really struggled with where to go from here. I don't have a huge stash of yarn right now--not really an intentional thing, but more of a subconscious "You have yarn from several years ago, why don't you use that before buying more?" kind of feeling. I went through my yarn basket and some other yarn spots, and found some undyed alpaca yarn from last year's Alpaca Festival in Madison hiding in the base of a vase that our glass-blowing friend made for our wedding. What the hell? Weighting it down, I guess?

Alpaca goodness.

Apparently the 2012 Alpaca Festival is next weekend; I need to use this yarn, so I have an excuse to buy more, natch. I turned to the dependable Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls book, which is a trove of resources and tools to craft a shawl in just about any style you could want. And I realized that what I really wanted was for someone to explicitly tell me what to knit, line by line, and not have to make any choices. Seriously, the only shawl I've ever knit was in the shape of a rectangle. I'm not exactly an expert. So I'm relying on Martha Waterman to just tell me what to do.

It's a square knitting in the round (phrasing?), increases over every quarter. And it went so fast in the beginning! But then the increases. It's a little depressing that each round takes longer than the last. I keep looking at the pattern and thinking, "Oh, I'm halfway done! Except the last fifth of the rounds have stitch counts in the 600s. So...maybe a quarter of the way done. Oh."

It's hard to get a feel for what it looks like.

Since I'm using circular needles that are way too small and make it look like a ball of fabric.

Time to invest in some big ass needles!

A month's time

Around a month ago, we were regularly walking on the lake.

About three weeks ago, we went cross-country skiing.

Sammy helped.

A week later, Sammy was in the lake instead of on it.

And in another week, the grass was green and the trees and flowers were budding.

Hey that's my shoe!

These people haven't done jack to their lawn in at least a year, and yet pretty flowers happen anyway.

What a weird winter. On the one hand, I'm enjoying being able to wear short-sleeves, on the other hand, it's totally ominous and creepy.

I've actually been doing a fair amount of knitting over the past month, but for some reason have kept it a secret. I mean, it's not really a secret, but I think I was subconsciously dubious as to whether or not it would work, and kind of confused as to why I was doing it in the first place.

It started with the revelation that I don't particularly care for this sweater. I never even bothered having someone take a picture of me actually in it. I've worn it a total of one time, and I felt a little like a jackass the entire day. The fabric is heavy and ultimately it's too big. I remember thinking that I liked it when I finished it (after several iterations of ripping apart and fixing), but now I'm thinking that I was suffering from a form of knitting Stockholm syndrome. So when I saw a sale on Tilli Tomas yarn back in November, I picked up a sweater appropriate amount with the seed of an idea.

Sammy opened the yarn shipment while I was at work. He does love yarn.

Thanks for your 'help'.

About a month ago, I decided that I would bite the bullet and try the same sweater again (#10 Tunis). But it also seemed kind of stupid to possibly get burned again. I just re-read my review of the pattern on Ravelry and it's bordering on brutal. I really hated the sweater. So I wasn't entirely sure it was going to work, nor entirely sure why I was doing it in the first place. Sometimes once you finish a pattern though, you realize what you (think you) needed to do to make it work.

I worked up most of the torso while I was in Japan, and spent the lion's share of a delayed-sit-on-the-tarmac-for-hours-flight picking up the sleeves (Orlando: worst conference venue EVER--the flight home was the cherry on the shit sundae). Just the neckline remains.

I'm willing to declare success only with the addition of a question mark (success?). Got to get that neckline before I start counting chickens in earnest.

Bits and pieces: part deux

Just one more mental dump. Bear with me, as the weather cools, I'll start to compose more frequent and possibly even coherent posts.

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I've heard quite a few people within the past few years assert something to the effect of, "I never go to the movie theater anymore." The reason most commonly cited is cost, but I've also heard laments about sticky floors, noisy kids, obnoxious old people (apparently we just take free license to do whatever we want at both ends of the age spectrum) crappy projectors, the list goes on. Despite my propensity for crotchety-old-ladyism, I'll be the first to admit that I LOVE the moviegoing experience despite the pitfalls. There's something strangely charming about the ritual of sitting in a dark room with thirty or so strangers, feet sticking to the floor, trying desperately to hold in your urine for two hours while simultaneously chugging a giant pop--all while enjoying anything from a subtitled art film to the latest Micheal Bay 'splosion fest. Seriously, how could it get any better?

 Well worth the 30 min drive.

Answer: the drive-in movie theater, my addiction of the summer. You still get a bit of the communal experience of watching a movie with fellow cinephiles, without the chance of a sitting behind a group of obnoxious kids or next to the guy who keeps texting. And always a double feature! AND I don't have to worry that I'm annoying people with the click-click of my needles. I took Mystery Wedding Project (now officially a year since the wedding, and counting) to every movie this summer and made a respectable bit of progress.

There's even a retro snack bar--with real mid-western food like cheese curds and pork tenderloins. Especially fun were movies that were a little scary, being outside in the dark added to the suspense. I was glum when Labor Day rolled around...closed for the season.

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I often feel a little guilty because we don't have a have a yard for our highly active husky-shepherd to run around in, since we live in a condo. In a way though, it ends up being a pretty sweet deal for him--he tends to get two or three long walks a day.

One morning a couple of weeks ago, we were sauntering through the park when a the sound of a fire truck stopped Sammy in his tracks. He's always fascinated with sirens--when he hears one, he'll drop whatever shoe he's chewing on and listen, tilting his head back and forth in the way that all dogs do. In this case, he plopped his butt down and refused to go any further.

The fire truck appeared in our view and made it's way slowly down the street while Sammy tracked it, totally captivated. After a few seconds, he raised his head to the sky and howled in tune with the siren. I was so surprised that I melodramatically clapped my hand over my mouth. Never has he made a sound like that, as far as I know.

In that moment I saw him as something wild--despite looking quite a bit like a wolf, he's never acted like one before in the least. I saw him running through the woods, hunting prey with his pack, and howling at the moon. Then he looked back at me with his big doggy grin and the illusion was gone. Just sweet Sammy, tongue hanging out of his mouth like the goofball he is.

How is that even comfortable?

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Finally. FINALLY. The sweater is done....and I love it! Check it:

I currently don't have anyone to take pictures of me actually inside of it, so this'll have to suffice for now. I went though about four iterations of sleeves since we last spoke and you verified my suspicions that the sleeves were too tight. The next iteration was a total overcorrection, kind of like what they tell you never to do if you're driving on the highway and you go off the road and onto the berm--I twisted the steering wheel too far the the left and ended up in the oncoming traffic of a huge-ass sleeve. After settling somewhere in the middle, I tried the cap sleeve that we agreed should look nice, but I didn't like it for two reasons.

1) The fabric is actually quite a bit heavier than I thought it would be, and I foresee wearing it in cold weather. Not having the top half of your arm covered really makes a difference in how warm a sweater makes you. (Rational reason)

2) I hate my upper arms. Always have. (Irrational reason)

So instead of seeing a therapist to work through those issues, I made it a little longer. I also continued the pattern on the sleeves wherever it had happened to intersect the armhole--so there's a bit of the pattern on the sleeve, but it's not as dense as on the body. I seem to be a little obsessed with transitions like that, so it satisfied my OCD tendencies.

When I cast-off the first sleeve, I didn't like how loose and floppy it still was. But the other sleeve was still on the circular needles, and the stitches on that sleeve kind of gathered together when I tried it on. I loved the look! Ah, serendipity. I ended up with something I like to call "poofy sleeves" (not to be confused with the Seinfeld poofy shirt).

Booties are also done, they still need to be sent to their recipients. I'm hoping the babes' feet aren't growing freakishly fast. I also got some news that I have cause to make another set, but I can say no more for now (in case this isn't obvious--it's not for me).

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I traveled to Richland, WA to do some work at the lab there for what I thought might be the last time before I graduate. It was a little bittersweet at the time (I kept thinking, "This could be the last time I dine at Dr. Bill's Bistro", ""This could be the last time I check into my mildly dumpy motel", stuff like that) but I've since convinced myself that I need just one teensy more visit to get a little more data.

However, it was my last time visiting their LYS--or rather, I found that my previous visit had been my last. I made the trip without all the knitting supplied I needed (Sammy has successfully chewed up all of my darning needles) but was confident that I could get what I needed at the Richland Knitty Gritty.

I went down to my favorite shopping area ("Maybe for the last time!") and went up to what I thought was the yarn shop. An arcade? Hmm, must have gone to the wrong store. I walked around the entire area twice, then looked closer at the arcade--the layout of the front room appeared to be the same as the ol' LYS.

Using my amazing powers of deduction, I sensed that something was amiss. I asked around at a couple of the other stores, but no one seemed to know what happened. When I searched for their website to try to get some info, all I got was this. What a bummer. The last thing I bought there was this skein:

They even wound it for me! I'm easily impressed.

I took the photo on my iTouch the day I got it and deemed it non-blog quality, but now it seems fitting. I feel like I need to make something extra special with this one.

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I feel a little bit lost without the sweater to work on......

Bits and pieces

I've had an almost intangible block on posting recently. If I had to guess, I think I felt I needed to finish the sweater I've been working on before I could update the like, four of you who read this. I suppose I wanted something to show you, some kind of accomplishment. This is not to say that the sweater's done--I've finished the body and one sleeve--but that much broke the sweater-trance of being unable to post. We'll get to the details of that later. (SPOILER ALERT: Because I hate the sleeve and need a sanity check. Hate, hate, hate it. OK, that's a little strong. Just hate hate.) For now, a mental dump of thoughts and happenings from the last three weeks.

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I never quite understood why knitting was so strongly associated with babies and baby items before. What's the appeal? I always figured that it was because having a baby was all special and stuff, so worthy of commemoration by a hand-knit object. And they don't complain about your style and workmanship, simple shapes and colors are cosmopolitan enough (also, they can't speak English). But one pair of booties and I am totally riding the baby knits train.

These little darlings took me all of two hours to whip out. I've never felt so productive. Did I mention I was done with them in two hours? Other than sewing up the seams, as you can see from the photo. Turns out that the resident chewing machine has destroyed every single one of my darning needles.

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The co-pilot and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary earlier this month. A year ago, we decided to try out a rental cabin for the occasion about an hour and a half north of Madison at a place called Little Pond Lodge.

The cabin was sweet. Which was good, since we spent most of the weekend hiding inside it in an attempt to avoid the army of mosquitoes waiting outside to devour our supple young flesh. Layers upon layers of deep woods bug spray didn't faze them in the least. The icing on the cake was when I got a call from one of my friends, coming home from vacation. I had been watering his plants. 'So, I'll swing by your place and pick up the key to my apartment?' 'You gave me your only key???' The upshot: I drove the 3 hour round trip as the co-pilot grilled our dinner, vainly trying to preserve some of his blood for, you know, living.

For whatever reason, we decided to give it another shot in the winter (probably off-season rates--never underestimate the power of a good deal to a cheap-ass). And...

Relaxing on the porch

Playing some ball

Stomping through the woods

...it was pretty great. Cross-country skiing, a warm fireplace, and a nice dinner on Valentine's Day (which was a coincidence, I swear! We're a couple of those killjoys that love to bitch that V-day is a corporation-y holiday, possibly in part to avoid having to buy gifts), you couldn't ask for much more.

So we gave it another shot for the summer, and we only needed about two coats of deep woods bug spray this time around. Also, Sammy knew how to swim this time and spent as much time as he could in Little Pond.



Not 100% on the retrieving though, which is why we usually throw sticks.

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The sweater has mostly gotten down to finishing and detail work, which is where my anal retentive-osity kicks in and progress really slows down. I've been thinking for about a week now that I'm going to finish it up, then I backtrack some more, then something takes way longer than expected, repeat. I watched Blade Runner on TV in the time that it took me to pick up all the stitches for the neckline. That's with commercials. Did you know that movie came out almost 30 years ago? It's set in a 'far-off dystopian future' of something like 2015 (LA could potentially look like that five years from now, I guess). This fact astonished me because a) the special effects really look fabulous and b) that makes me feel old. In Back to the Future II, I think they also go to 2015. Where in the hell are our flying cars?


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OK, back to that sleeve. I made it according to the directions, correcting for the fact that the pattern wasn't written to be seamless (i.e. short rows instead of bind-offs). I'll show it to you without comment:

I asked the opinions of some (non-knitting) friends and their assessment was:

a) It looks weird that the branch pattern doesn't continue on the sleeve.

b) The sleeve fabric looks thicker than the body.

c) Fabric is bunching up under the armpit.

It was observation c) that was the crux of my distaste--I cannot stand a top that bunches around the armpit. The rest of their observations just increases my neuroses. The potential solution for the bunching is to make a cap sleeve, but what do you think about keeping the sleeve in pattern? Since I would be doing the sleeve upside-down relative to the way the body was made, the branch pattern would go backwards. Would that be dumb? Or should I try to rework the branch pattern so that it's sort of not upside-down? Or screw the pattern? Sanity check requested.

Summer rolls on

Thanks for the advice in baby-making, it was very enlightening. I mean, in making stuff for babies. The other way would be weird. I got as far as yarn:

Acrylic, natch (though some people claim that acrylic is a bad choice for babies because it melts in a fire--but my feeling is that if your baby is on fire, you probably have bigger problems than that). As you might have noticed, Sammy has already 'tested' the durability of the yellow yarn. He couldn't even leave me in peace to take a picture of it.

This yarn was really freaking cheap, and momentarily made me question my dedication to yarn snobbery. I might have to mix acrylic into my repertoire. I found myself really drawn to this neon purple shade, but fortunately was talking to my mother on the phone at the time whose assessment of "For a baby??? Come on." made me realize that perhaps it wasn't an appropriate choice for a baby. I hate pastels, though, so I think this was a good compromise. Next up, actually making something.

Here's the thing--I keep putting off writing, because I want to be able to actually show you something that I've made. The new and exciting sweater that I started in, oh let's see, the beginning of JUNE is becoming a never ending chore. And I'm starting to realize I'm such a slow knitter because I keep doing crap like this...

So I realized that I had read part of the (poorly written) pattern wrong, and had run part of the branch pattern right up next to the selvage edge where it wasn't supposed to be:

The whole problem area was about three times the length of what you see in the picture. I internally debated for a while--it would probably look better the correct way, but it didn't really matter, right? My inner perfectionist won that round, but what she didn't seem to remember was that whenever you do lace type stuffs, i.e. use yarn overs and decreases that functionally create new stitches, the column of stitches truncates when you get down where it was created. Stops. Does not go down any further. Which I figured out about here:

Which was a hot mess already and only was about a third of the way down to the start of the problem. Why do I do shit like this? When I realized exactly how many stitches I'd have to drop down (around 30) to actually get everything undone, I begrudgingly started bringing it all back up. Here's about halfway:

And two episodes of Top Gear later, we were back to where we started.

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO STOP DOING THIS KIND OF CRAZY. This is why things never get done.