playing with my layout

I have a wide screen, so I don't know how this all looks on a normal square screen. Is the picture (of the mug/endpaper mitts) on the top right too large? Is it all out of wack? How's it lookin'?

In other news, I have decided that, rather than taking my attention away from schoolwork, knitting helps me to concentrate. Last weekend, after I finished the bulky pom-pom hat, I made myself not knit. Instead of getting tons of work done, I got absolutely nothing done, despite my hands being free to type. I just stared slack-jawed at the laptop as I perused the internets. So now I am going to try to knit in moderation. I started these herringbone mittens (ravelink) last night and can't decide if they look totally wack (that's my word today, apparently) or not. I'll have to knit a few more rows and see, and then maybe try it with different yarns, because I think the contrast between the two colors is too great. I love all the versions I've seen on the Rav, so it must just be me.

note to self: chunky knits go fast. do these more.

FO: One-day chunky beanie, loosely based on Knittingdropout's Really Warm hat (ravelry link).
Yarn: Cascade 128 tweed in cerulean.
Needles: 10 1/2 dpns, which I think they should make longer. It's pretty hard to keep all those chunky stitches on such short needles.
What I was supposed to be doing instead: writing a paper on motivation, which I am ironically unmotivated to finish.

"you look like woolly madonna"

That's what I was told by a classmate yesterday, on account of my Endpapers. I'm taking it as a compliment.
I took them for a test hike last night, followed by test wine drinking.
Woolly Madonna strikes a pose:





















Woolly Madonna's hard-partying lifestyle gets the better of her:

stick a fork in 'em

they're done. FO: Endpaper mitts by the awesome, awesome Eunny Jang. The orange is Dale Baby Ull and the grey is Paton's Kroy sock yarn. The gargoyle mug is a high school graduation gift (yes, an eleven-year-old mug, having survived roughly eleventy-billion different apartments and houses) made by an art professor at the local university who's a friend of my mom's. (I should see if she has a website.) I can't wait til the second mitt dries so I can wear them EVERY DAY.

Oh, and you guys--it's really, really hard to take a picture of your own hands when no one else is home. I had to hit the "take" button with my chin. Next camera I own will have a self-timer.

dammit.

The skein of orange leftover from my Anemois, which I am using to make some Endpaper mitts, just ran out with only six rows of colorwork to go on the second mitt. I do have another skein, but was hoping to return it for store credit. Now I'll have an almost-full skein of orange sock yarn. Well, I'll figure something out. It will come in handy sometime.

I dug through the many, many boxes of books and pre-digital photos in my parents' attic yesterday and found my 1,000 Great Knitting Motifs, and am now plotting a follow-up to the Endpapers. I'm trying to decide between a pattern that looks like a wave, bunnies, or hearts. Yeah. I'm thinking if I go with the hearts, I'm just going to be super-obnoxiously girly and use red on pink, or pink on red. Depends how much pink I have left, of course, since I'm ALMOST DONE WITH MY ENDPAPERS and ran out of orange. Dammit.

ETA It's done and blocking! Wheeeeeee!

it's mitten season

When I was sixteen, my cat died five days before Christmas. Around New Year's we started looking for a new cat. (I know, so soon, we're heartless etc.--but the house seemed so empty without a cat.) Multiple pet stores and the SPCA told us "It's not kitten season." Which we thought was ridiculous the first time, but after the fourth or fifth time, you start to doubt yourself, like maybe cat fertility is seasonal after all, and you'll just have to wait until spring or something. When the cats come out of hibernation and start pollinating. Or something. Finally my older sister bought a kitten on the spur of the moment, out of pity, from a dirty, ill-kept pet shop. She was so skinny that petting her was like playing the xylophone and she had mange and all kinds of gastrointestinal issues. She had been a Christmas kitten who'd been taken from her mother too young and given to a family with small children who didn't know how to treat a pet. So that's why it wasn't kitten season. All the kittens, regardless of age, had been sold for Christmas presents. (We named her Amelia, and she is now an old lady, even if she doesn't know it.)

All that was to explain the title. Mitten season, kitten season. Yeah. Give me a break, I'm having a tough semester.

I took my mittens and my friend Candice hiking yesterday. We took a bajillion pictures of the changing leaves, some of which actually came out, and complained about school. It was awesome.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

That visual squeal of excitement translates to: they're done, they're done, they're done! My Anemois are finished! I can't believe I knit something a) so complicated b) in such a short time--less than a month, even less if you subtract the two weeks in the middle when I didn't work on them at all c) during such a difficult semester d) without going insane.

(In case you're wondering, the answer is ALL OF THE ABOVE. I rock!)

The only problems I had were curbing my to-hell-with-the-pattern tendencies enough to make sure everything was done right, and my tension. I loosened up a lot as I got better at fair isle. The second mitten turned out MUCH bigger than the first, and floppy. You know how I hate floppy knits, so I was sad. Then I decided to try to shrink the mitten in the dryer to make it match the first, which is a little long but perfect width. This sounds like the beginning of a tale of woe, doesn't it? But it isn't!!! It actually worked! And, bonus, the mitten is now dry (hence the name "dryer") from its blocking and ready to wear when I go hiking with my friend Candice this evening! Cue Preston Myers: "It was like everything was falling into place... as if it were fate!"

Naturally, my camera battery just died, so I'll leave you with this tiny snippet of an Endpaper mitt, which I cast on for last night as soon as I broke the yarns at the tip of the second Anemoi thumb. (I am voracious for fair isle. Fair isle is my anti-drug. Ooh, that's good, I should've saved that for a post title.)

the headless scarfwoman

Long-belated FO post.
Last summer, I completed a Tivoli. Elated, I wore it to work to show off. It stretched. It stretched like a mofo. It was embarrassing to wear. I did not admit to anyone that I'd made it, and that's saying a lot, considering I usually say, "And I made it! Don't believe me? Here's where I made a mistake!" No, it looked baggy and saggy and awful. (The yarn, by the way, was Knitpicks Shine sport. This was my second great mishap with cotton. May it be my last, for I have learned my lesson.) So, weeping, I frogged it as I knit it in a long, skinny Clapotis. (Yes, another Clapotis.) And you know what? I still don't like it. It's heavy, but yet has no substance--it's floppy and droopy and generally in need of fiber-Viagra. (This photo was preceded by significant "fluffing," as they say in show biz. And by "show biz" I mean p0rnogr@phy.) And it's slippery whereas I prefer my yarn a little more on the grabby side. I like my scarves to put up some resistance to the forces of gravity, so that they don't slide further and further into the chokehold position--not only because it's dangerous to my air supply, but because it visually shortens the neck. So unflattering. (Don't believe me? Ask Tyra Banks!)
And the best part? I still have half a Tivoli to frog! I should've made this wider, but I was afraid I wouldn't have enough! And here it is, long enough to wrap around twice and still fall past my waist. Maybe if I double-stranded it and knit at a pretty tight gauge, I could get it up (heh) to my desired level of sturdiness...

In other news, my Anemois are so close to being finished! I just have to close the top of the second mitten and then do the thumb. Yay! Warm, insanely-bright mittens just in time for October! And in other other news, I've decided I need to get back to bringing my camera with me everywhere. Taking the back way to school today, I crested a hill and saw the most beautiful sunrise-on-valley-fog, complete with fall foliage and whatnot, and I thought how very, very important it was to share that with my blog readers, probably with a significant portion of it blocked by my big head making a silly face.

new! improved! now with 75% less sinus infection!

FO: finals socks
Yarn: Mama E's C*EYE*ber Fiber in colorway Mermaids
Needles: size 1 dpns

I wish the ankle/leg area were tighter on these, but there's no way I'm going back to fix them now. Next time I'll know to cast on fewer stitches.

In other news, I was sick, but now am feeling better. This post is riveting, I know.

so it's just plain anemois, then?

Awww, you guys have no flava! All right then, I'll get over it and call them Anemois. I'm taking a little break from them right now though. I did the cuff of the second mitten and then decided I really need something I can knit while I read (so, not the Anemois) and something that's portable (so, not the Plain Jane raglan). No, of course I didn't make this decision while standing in a yarn store fondling delicious purple sock yarn. Why do you ask? Did Steve tell you that? Well, what kind of a rap name is Steve?

a mitten, a vote, and some advice

Since apparently the Anemoi are the wind gods, I thought it would be more appropriate for my color scheme to call these mittens... what ever the fire god(s) are called. I thought about it (i.e., I googled) and remembered (a.k.a. found on a website) that the Greek god of fire and metalworking is Hephaestus. So I uploaded some photos to flickr, all, "check out my hephaestus mittens!" and then I read the wikipedia page about him. It was this part in particular: "...Athena refused a union with Hephaestus, and that when he tried to rape her she disappeared from the bed. Hephaestus ejaculated on the earth, impregnating Gaia," that gave me pause. I just don't want to name my mittens after a rapist, you know? So--Hestia mittens? Prometheus mittens? Pele mittens? Get over it and just call 'em Anemoi mittens?





And now for the advice segment of our blog post. It has been noted by many before me that drinking and stranded colorwork do not mix. However, I thought I could just have one casual lunchtime beer and keep knitting. I did keep knitting. I did not keep knitting according to the chart. Which, with stranded colorwork, is kind of essential. In fact, it's kind of the point. I didn't frog because a) it's my first colorwork and I like that you can see the learning curve, b) I kind of just want to get them done and c) the whole thing is supposed to be stress relief for my busy semester, so I'm not going to make it more stressful by insisting that it be perfect. It's actually pretty hilarious.



p.s. I've decided the aged picnic table on my parents' deck is the perfect backdrop for knitting photos. It's a neutral shade, but not boring, doesn't have to be set up (like draping a table in a beige tablecloth would, for example), it's in natural light, and it's right out the back door.

flickr meme, or, playing with big huge labs to avoid homework

(edited to, you know, ADD THE ACTUAL PICTURE. GOD.)

Saw this at my knitting and me, whose Deep V Argyle Vest I admired on Ravelry:

The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The Questions:
1. What is your first name? Cari
2. What is your favorite food? pizza (don't know why this photo was tagged pizza, but liked it)
3. What high school did you go to? Pocono Mountain
4. What is your favorite color? red
5. Who is your celebrity crush? David Benedek
6. Favorite drink? Yuengling (photo of cavelike area on brewery tour)
7. Dream vacation? Chile
8. Favorite dessert? cheesecake
9. What you want to be when you grow up? teacher
10. What do you love most in life? snowboarding
11. One Word to describe you. dreadnought
12. Your flickr name. safety dance

Here's the links, so you can give props to the OPs (the last one is especially worth checking out, I think, since the key to the graph is cut off).

1. Cari Pizzalolo, 2. Just a Perfect Day, 3. DWG - Pocono Mountains (1), 4. Autumn walk, 5. n40106817_30265402_5986, 6. D. G. Yuengling & Son Brewery Tour Caves - Pottsville, PA, 7. Lago Pehoe Panorama, 8. cheesecake for Lianna!, 9. Teacher in environment, 10. Face Shots, 11. Clipper Ship "Dreadnought", 12. Song Chart

i heart eunny jang

This pattern is, as I hoped, keeping me sane during this difficult semester. Just one row and I feel better. I'm about one-third of the way done, I estimate, with the first mitten, which means I'm one-sixth of the way done with the pair (relax! here at implosionexplosion, the math is done for you!).









Also pictured: my new love, my Skullcandy headphones purchased in anticipation of the snowboard season (ipod earbuds tend to fall out), which will look totally awesome with the new jacket I scored a couple weeks ago for $62. Yay summer sales!

I can't wait to finish this and walk around wearing just one mitten yelling, "HEY! I totally made this!" Because that's what I'm going to do.

I lied!

I'm posting again almost immediately! Here's the corrugated ribbing of my first Anemoi--so far, so good! I can't decide if this is an insane, eye-bleedingly ugly color scheme or awesome and bright and fiery. (The orange is not quite right on the screen, but the red is.) I'm just going to push onward and see how it looks when I get into the swirly pattern.

three knitting-related items, no pictures, very dull title

1. My mom is working on prayer shawls with some other ladies from her church. While she was teaching some of them to knit, she put her own shawl down for a minute, whereupon another lady picked up it and said, "Oh, what are you working on?" and started knitting! On her project! My mom's reaction, to me: "I mean, that's like using someone else's toothbrush!" Awesome, and true.
2. I know I said I was tired of colors and wanted to work on something natural and brown for a while, but I have lost momentum on the Plain Jane Raglan and, in the midst of school-related frustration this afternoon, decided to knit some Anemoi mittens. My theory on this is that they will drive me crazy and give me something else to focus my frustration on, so that I don't go crazy from school.
3. I went back to the notorious LYS that I said I wouldn't go back to. Well, I continue to be unimpressed. I was holding some Trekking XXL Pro Natura and said to the shop lady, "do you have any sock yarn--" and meant to continue "--that's less expensive, and comes in a wider variety of solid colors" but she interrupted, "that's sock yarn!" I continued with my sentence, and she pointed me over to the Dale section, which I had missed. I looked at the babyish colors of Baby Ull (well named!) and fumed for a minute, because... doesn't it say "sock yarn" right on the label? Did she think I couldn't read? I'm sure she gets lots of idiotic questions, but couldn't she let me finish?

So yeah, next post (so... next month, or maybe next year) I should have some pictures of the almost-finished-yoke of the PJR and my nascent Anemois, which I've already ignored some instructions on--I cast on long-tail instead of tubular, because I'm a rebel!

Oh, and I began student-teaching. Seventh grade geography, what what! On the first day of school, my mentor teacher was telling the kids what to expect this year and said we're going out to the swamp and we'll all get muddy and someone will probably fall in. Probably him, or maybe me. And this kid in the front room looks at me and says, "Wear heels."

the miracle of blocking

nataliedee.com

In other news, I have finished my finals socks (although I have yet to take an FO photo), and I have cast on for a sweater. And no, I still have not finished the horrible acrylic Tomten Jacket I was making for my best friend's daughter. And no, I probably never will. And no, it's not because EZ is not a genius. It is because horrible yarn is still horrible whether or not it is free, and whether or not the recipient is a small child who wouldn't know cashmere from snotty Kleenex.

The sweater is the aforementioned copycat raglan--the Plain Jane, I'm going to call it, since I'm using no-nonsense sturdy brown Fisherman's Wool. I have to say, the FW smells fantastic. Very rustic and natural and sheep-y. It feels good, too. If you like rustic things, I mean.

And in other other news, I somehow went to the outlet mall today, during some kind of out-of-body experience (because I would never go shopping on purpose when I'm supposed to be saving money!), and bought three sweaters. THREE sweaters. And I already own upwards of twenty sweaters. And I am knitting another. And yet, sweaters.... mmmmm. I love them. I miss them all summer. Well, I don't miss the cotton ones, because I'm too busy wearing them. But I wear one nearly every day, all winter. I mean, I'm back in the northeast now. I need sweaters! Right? It's not MY fault I live near a GAP outlet. And a J Crew outlet. And Ann Taylor and Banana Republic outlets. That, despite the fact that I live about 2 miles from my work, somehow all manage to be right there, between home and work. It's clearly my parents' fault for buying this house. So when they come home (they're out of town) and they notice the addition of two more summer sweaters to the rotation (in addition to the other, warmer sweater I bought today, and oh crap... the one I bought on a whim online yesterday in a sudden hope that I might become a turtleneck person), I'll tell them. Yes, I own HOLY CRAP I JUST COUNTED THIRTY-EIGHT SWEATERS plus the online turtleneck makes thirty-nine sweet jebus I think I have a problem.

I'm going to go lie down with a cold compress over my eyes. Well, either a cold compress or my new hunter's-orange v-neck. Whatever.

kick out the jams

People, we have strawberry jam. Repeat, we have HOMEMADE strawberry jam. Twenty-seven jars of it. Beautiful, beautiful jam.

I was at work and didn't get to help, but my sister Katie and my mom did some serious jamification, and I will now be reaping all the benefit. PB&J every day. Awwww yeah.

indecision! help.

So I went to the craft store to get the summer Interweave because I was lusting for the Apres-surf Hoodie (which some people on ravelry keep hilariously insisting must be made of cotton, because wool at the beach just doesn't make sense, as if one can't decide that it's going to be one's apres-snowboard or apres-apple-picking or apres-cherry-blossom-party hoodie instead), and I ended up bringing home some plain old Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool in Nature's Brown with me. Because in addition to lace, I also am suddenly really into natural (or at least natural-looking) wool and simplicity and am craving a simple raglan that, once knit, I don't know how I ever lived without. I blame Elizabeth Zimmerman. Well, also, I must blame the yarn choices in my last two projects--my dad's Illini socks in very, very contrasting orange and navy and my finals socks in very, very bright pink and green. Good colors, lovely yarn, but damn, my eyes are tired. I want some lovely natural brown.

Anyway, I am now torn between two basic concepts for my plain jane brown sweater. Either something like Knitty's BPT (possibly with buttons instead, since I feel about zipper insertion the same way I feel about seaming, i.e., very very negatively) or something like knittingschooldropout's scottish tweed raglan with deep green or dark red buttons.

Actually, the more I look at the Scottish tweed raglan, the more I remember how much I liked it when I first saw it and how I dreamed of a life we could have together. Snuggling in front of the fire, hiking in the mountains, the two of us, my sweater and me... It's love, it really is. This sweater could be the one! Time to break up with my dad's stalled Sweater of Misery so I can free up my Addis. Forward to a brighter yet more natural-colored future!

adventures in lifeguarding

Among the many things you learn as a lifeguard, number one is, you have a better body than you think you do. Seriously. Look around you. Damn, girl. Next to these people--especially the lady with the hairy chest--you are SMOKIN'. Have you been working out? Number two is, any operation that orders the lifeguard swimsuit without the built-in shelf bra because it's a few dollars cheaper is an operation owned and operated by men. And number three is, people really do not appreciate help. The Good Samaritan was lucky he didn't get punched. People would apparently rather drown than suffer the humiliation of being helped by a lifeguard. My sister Katie is working with me this summer and we've been hoarding stories of the ridiculous things people (including us) say and do. Here's a choice selection.

• Katie: Sir, I'd like you to stay behind the 5-foot line. Man: What? I can swim! All Puerto Ricans can swim! We surrounded by water!
• A man sits down on the back of an inner tube, rather than in the hole in the middle. Me: Sir, can you slide forward into the hole, please? Man: Ooooh, I think she comin' on to me!
• Someone vomits on the wave pool beach; lifeguards blow whistles and clear the pool. Me: Clear the pool, please! Stand up and walk out of the wave pool! Ma'am! Stand up and walk out of the wave pool. [Awkward pause as I realize she is still sitting in the water because she only has one leg.]
• Weird kid: This pool is soft! And comfortable!
• Different kid: Hey, is it true that if a lady is having a baby and she let go of it in the water, that it's gonna be a good swimmer? Me: It's certainly possible...
• Man with thick German accent at the top of a waterslide: Is it compulsory to scream all the way down? Me: Well, it's not compulsory, but it is strongly encouraged.

i'm a hot new topic. i'm all the rage.

Check it out, I'm (for now) a hot new knitting topic on Craftster. My dialogue-spurring post:

It will be a cold day in hell before I pay to knit in your shop.
So I moved recently, and I just checked out my new LYS, and I have to say I'm disappointed. The shop employees were perfectly nice and the selection was fine, if small. But when I asked if they knew of any local knitting groups, I was told that they have a group that meets twice a week, in the shop, and it's $5 per person.

@#$^#$^^#$#$^#$$%^$^!!!!

I understand that a business has a perfect right to charge anything they please for the use of their premises, and they did mention that help is available during those times, but... but... Maybe I'm just spoiled, coming from an LYS that gave help anytime for free and allowed my Stitch n Bitch (which met in a coffee shop, which only charged us for our food and let us sit there as long as we liked) to post fliers, and the employee who came to our SNB to give out business cards. It's perfectly legal and acceptable business, yes, but it's not exactly the open-arms customer service response you'd expect from a brick-and-mortar shop in the dot-com age. I think I'll be sticking to knitpicks and ebay and looking elsewhere for my IRL knit community (because as awesome as craftster and the blogiverse are, I still want one).

Thoughts?