It's that time of year again

You know. Where I start bitching about the weather. I hate the heat. The main factor is the fact that I sweat much, much more than the average person. When most people are starting to feel a tiny swath of moisture across their brow, I've already taken off my shirt and am wringing it out.

And nothing. NOTHING. Is worse than sweaty underwear ("swunderwear", if you will).

Suffice to say, I was not pleased that work was beckoning me to the City of Sin once again. I wasn't worried about the sin part so much as the BLAZING SUMMER HEAT (when I thought about it, it was always in ALL CAPS). Weather forecasts let me know it was going to be in the 90s all week, and I grudgingly packed many pairs of shorts. I hate my legs almost as much as sweating, and I tend to hide them as much as possible--so I was Serious with a capital S.

When I arrived, bracing myself for the blast as I stepped out of the airport, I found....it wasn't that bad. Actually, it was kind of nice. My copious amounts of sweat seemed to immediately evaporate. I realized that I need to amend my complaints post haste, even though it's a cliche: it ain't the heat, it's the humidity. I'm glad we got that clarified.  It's still a little disturbing when you chugging water all day and never seem to have to pee.  My host tried to convince me that it was healthy to keep cycling all of that moisture right out of my pores, but I remain unconvinced.

I sampled some local fare:

Classy and white-trash - is it a meal or an oxymoron?

Sometimes after work you're too tired to walk 10 blocks to find a restaurant that fits the price range of measly government per diem.  Don't hate. 

Las Vegas, save (maybe) the Strip, is not a particularly pedestrian friendly place. Though your eyes tell you otherwise, the hotel that appears to be just a few minutes walk away might be several miles down the road. Occasionally the berm on an eight lane highway has to suffice as your sidewalk. So I'm always delighted by this fixture on a 6 lane highway that runs past the university:

Simply push the button

The sign lights up

And theoretically cars stop for you to cross. Unless they are assholes.

I was excited to see this plant growing in some of the landscaping for UNLV.  Despite my apparent black thumb, I keep trying to raise plants.  I happen to have a pot of this stuff growing out on my balcony at home.

I figure, if it's growing in the middle of the desert out of clay and sand, it's got to survive for me, right? Or else it'll be that much more depressing when it does die.

Travel does have the advantage of extra knitting time. After realizing that making a bobble with (K, P, K) on the same stitch is in fact not the same as a (K, Ktbl, K) I figured out that my wine tote prototype did indeed have many, many errors. The whole thing came apart, and I worked it up to the same point where we were two weeks ago. I didn't even have the heart to take a picture; it looks like this with no strange green yarn in the grape bunches. I also worked on the sock that I'm coming to think of as 'that stupid sock that I hate'. Maybe it's time to start a new project....

Going to the dogs

Oh, how the time flies. I see it's been over a week since I was chatting you up about my cowl. I found myself back in eastern Washington state for work last week, and was immersed in productivity (I even worked the weekend--I know!) Less on the knitting productivity front. Let's get the boring, uninspired stuff out of the way first.

Yay! Replacement sock! Moving on.

I occasionally check out my Blogger stats.  It's something that one could get obsessed over--but considering I have, like, 5 readers (including my mother-hi Mom!) I don't worry about it too much.  The most read posts tend to be from Knit and Crochet Blog Week (duh) but surprisingly this post is consistently always in the top 5.  Written almost a year ago (also while I was in eastern WA), this was an experimental knit I was doing--making a wine tote.  Internets traffic indicates that there's a demand for something like this; apparently, you knitters are total lushes.  No surprises there.

The first prototype was a bit heavy in intarsia for such a texturally complicated piece.  It was the wrong size for a wine bottle, and it was obnoxious having a million (approximately) little balls of yarn hanging from the back.  I stuffed it in the bottom of a bag.  Since I was headed back to WA, and since warm weather was on its way that I'd re-attempt this non-winter related item--scaled-down in size and difficulty.

A little bit of progress:

Prototype No. 2

I thought I took your advice on how to mix the colors for the grapes, but frankly this version doesn't look like either of the versions I was attempting a year ago.  More investigation necessary.  Speaking of investigation:

I'm investigating some yarn in my mouth.

Which brings me to another topic I wanted to talk to you guys about.  I was taking the Sam-ster for a long lunchtime walk today, when a guy came jogging up behind us with his dog.  Nothing out of the ordinary there, we pass by at least a few dogs on every walk.  We stepped to the side so they could pass, and I distracted Sammy by having him do a couple of tricks for me to earn some treats.  The other dog was pulling to come greet Sammy and getting pulled off of his hind legs--at first I thought that it was just because he was pulling at the leash, but then I realized his owner was actively pulling him back.  Harder and harder, really jerking him until he was basically choking him.  He kept jerking at him, even though the dog didn't seem to be doing anything wrong--he wasn't being aggressive at all, he just wanted to greet another dog.

Then instead of going past, he walks to the curb and forces his dog onto it's side.  At this point, I'm staring at him with my mouth open and probably have an expression on my face like he's just popped a turd into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed right in front of me.  He looks at me and says, "We have to do this pretty much every day."  A million thoughts are running through my head.   "Why don't you have him in a harness if he's so hard to control?" "You know all of that dominance stuff is total bullshit, right?" "If you have to do it every day, maybe it's not working," "Would you do that to a kid?""You're going to get your ass bitten doing that," and really, the bottom line, "You're abusing your dog."  I started to ask for his name, like you do when someone gives you shitty customer service, but stopped short.  What was I going to do with it?  The fearless side of me said that I needed to say something, the conservative side said that he could kick my ass and wouldn't have listened to a word I said.  I ended up stalking off with a scoff, having Sammy heel and giving him a treat to, I dunno, try and demonstrate good dog handling. 

I feel bad.  The walk ended up being a bummer, and I wish I had done things differently.  What would you have done?  What should I do next time?

Knitting for winos

I've been working on a super-secret knitting project for the past two weeks or so. The only reason it's been classified as 'super-secret' is that I wasn't entirely sure I was going to be able to pull it off. Nobody wants to puff themselves up only to be deflated later like so many euros. However, I think that I've progressed far enough that success is imminent, so I'm downgrading it's status to 'not-so-secret'. What is this mystery project? Three words: wine bottle carrier.



I can't take credit for the Grapes on the Vine idea: that's courtesy of The Knitter's Bible's stitch library. But, I will claim credit for incorporating two colors (however poorly executed). This was another one of those ideas I had while trying to fall asleep, which tend to be pretty hit or miss. I started out working in the round, because hey, wine bottles are round. That meant that I had to carry along both strands of yarn the whole time. Two colors of yarn, and cabling? I wanted to shoot myself in the face. No one is interested in that kind of a pattern, aside from total masochists. I turned to intarsia, which I had previously never tried.

The Knitter's Bible informed me that intarsia wasn't suitable for working in the round. It took a shamefully long time for me to realize out why. Ohhhhhh, right, each time you come around the color you want it's on the wrong side. Oops. Flat knitting it is. I've made a little circle for the bottom, which is at home. The bottom and the first two inches of the tote used both strands for each stitch, in the hopes that it will beef up the strength. No one wants their wine bottle to end up on the ground after it's ripped through the handknits. Intarsia isn't hard persay, but I think I need to invest in some real bobbins. My jerry-rigged version seemed to unravel a lot and then the strands would get tangled and the work would get mysteriously drop-kicked every now and then.

I'm experimenting with a couple of ways to use color in the grapes. First design:


Second design, more green stems:


What do you think? I'm not sure it's a fair comparison yet, since the second design doesn't have it's main stem yet. I may have to ask for your assessment a second time!