i might not be around much

The season's begun.

Two hour snowboard clinic in the rain = wet, cold, happy.

Less stupid. More awesome.

Awesome: I got picked by my boss at the mountain to go to a women's snowboarding clinic in Vermont. The mountain is paying for the hotel room and everything.

Stupid: My infuriatingly vague and pompous professor had scheduled two dates for our portfolio presentations for this hellish program I'm so glad I'm almost done with. He then decided we didn't need both and of course cancelled the one that doesn't coincide with the clinic.

Awesome: I never would've thought to ask him if I could present on a different date if I hadn't been encouraged to by my mom and another professor, but I did (after all, there's a football player in my program, and he got to miss class for practice all the time!), and he said yes!

Stupid: Instead of just letting me present my portfolio on the other date he had originally scheduled, my professor picked a date two weeks in advance of those two original dates. So instead of a month to finish all the papers and assignments for the entire semester and prepare my portfolio, I had two weeks.

Awesome: I am almost done with everything...

Stupid: ...except that he keeps giving me back assignments with the recommendation that I revise them. Which I wouldn't need to do if the assignment had been sufficiently explained in the first place. AND I am working on an assignment right now that he describes in the syllabus thusly: "grading plan." Yep, that's all. I don't know what the hell that means. I've googled it and I was working on something similar to what I found, but then I got a reply to my desperate-cry-for-help email to my fellow studets, and discovered that instead of a plan directed to him, the professor, I am supposed to write a plan directed to the students and parents. The semester in a microcosm: Well, if that's what you wanted, you should have said so!

And here's the capper.

Awesome: My best friend, who lives in Dallas (and whom I've seen three times since we graduated from college in 2001), is going to be in the area right after Thanksgiving.

Stupid: On the same damn day as the snowboarding clinic that I rearranged heaven and earth to attend.

Oh, wait, one more.

Awesome: The same boss that gave me this clinic opportunity also picked me for a pro form (a card with a PIN and a password that entitles you to massive discounts from the snowboard company that issued it).

Stupid: Even though I need a new board--mine's six years old--I can't afford anything because I couldn't work this semester because I was doing this ridiculous, overrated, completely disorganized and unstructured program. (Bitter much?)

yarn theory

It's gonna be years before I get into that theoretical knitting stuff.

I finished a sock! Woo! Now before I cast on for the other one, I'm doing a sleeve of my Plain Jane Raglan (which, just to refresh your memory, was supposed to be my Ravelympics project, back before I become obsessed with mittens). Check out my sock and my incredibly flat feet:

snow day!

...and I'm giddy as a schoolgirl! Snow before Halloween! This bodes well for the coming winter-- at least I hope! Blurry cell phone pics of my drive to school:















The school parking lot--note the snowplow piles--where I ran into another teacher and discovered school had just been canceled, which explained the odd lack of buses in the other lot:
















And a church that I passed on my way home:
















And because we're crazy about photos here at implosion explosion today, here's my sister's Christmas mitten taking a bath. I love how you can see the reflection of the lace curtains in the surface of the water.





















And because we're also crazy about other people's photos, check out the Library of Congress's 1930s-1940s in color photo set. I do wish, however, that random jackholes were not enabled to put notes on them, like this one for example, or this one. Why aren't assy comments enough? Why mar the actual photo with an assy note?

odds and ends

1. Rehire meeting at the mountain yesterday. I got to see all my snowboard-instructor buddies and plot this winter's adventures (upside) and remember what a gossip factory the place is (downside). I may be going to a women's clinic in Vermont in December and taking my AASI Level 1 in New York in January. Yay! And better yet--I'm supposed to be getting a Burton pro form, with which I can order massively discounted stuff! I love my old board and its spray-paint customization (see my avatar), but it's a little stiff and I want a new, shorter, poppier one. I'll save the old one for teaching (kids are always running over your board, grr) and rocky spring days.

2. Restarted the Herringbone mittens with some Paton's classic merino and finished the first one, with kind of a weird thumb that I refuse to fix. These will be going to my older sister for Christmas and will be the only gift I knit. (Famous last words.)

3. I am teaching all this week--from my own lesson plans, I mean; my mentor teacher has been letting (making?) me teach since the first week of school. So I'm not too nervous, but now my professors will be coming to observe me. So that's going to be a bit tough, but then, I passed my six-month observation while teaching in Japan with flying colors even though I was nervous as hell, so hopefully this won't go too badly.

4. And speaking of Japan, today is the anniversary of the day my company filed for bankruptcy protection. I'm not marking the day with anything special, just noting. It's satisfying to think about how far I've come. Then: miserable, directionless, angry, broke. Now: happier, directed, ...still broke. But the semester will end and the season will start, and I'll be riding (hopefully on a new board!) every day again.

5. Dinner's ready. Gotta go.

finding a balance

I just ripped out the Herringbone mittens I had started because a) I screwed up and misread the thumb chart and b) I decided there was too much contrast between the white and dark blue yarns. Even though I like all the finished products in black and white and other high-contrast schemes on Ravelry. For some reason mine just looked bad. Possibly partly because my gauge was a little loose and it all looked sloppy. I don't know.

I forced myself to take a knitting hiatus after finishing my Endpaper mitts to try to force myself to get some schoolwork done, on the theory that I can't type if I'm knitting. You know what I ending up doing? Nothing. I know it's a cliche to say that knitting is meditative, but I got nothing done for a whole weekend. I managed to bang out a really crappy conclusion to a paper and that's it. Then I started some mittens and all of a sudden, I was back on track. Thought up a really great activity for a lesson plan, thought of a couple of sources to use for a resource anthology, etc. It's so funny to have it brought home so literally--all the jokes we knitters make about knitting to stay sane, etc. Although isn't that the definition of dependence? That you can't get by without it?

My name is Cari, and I am knit-dependent.

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.