mamacate

Big Hole in My House: Day 1

It's 9 pm.

This is the scene outside my living room window:

At 6 pm, it looked like this:

I'm not sure how long this is going for, but I guess we're starting, eh?  Interesting first day--when we came home, there was no way to get into the house.  We now have a single entrance that involves going around the back through the neighbor's yard.

So, all that promising you won't have to sit through construction tales?  Yah.  I've created a category.  Sorry.

Save me from myself

So first of all, may I just take a moment to say that blogging rocks.  Because we all have days where we want to go home, pour ourselves a great big old glass of wine, and then storm around the room for a few minutes sneering "fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck FUCK!," before snorfing up the aforementioned glass.  As I believe I made plain in my prior post, Wednesday was that kind of a day.

While those sorts of days are generally unavoidable, I can think of no better antidote than to invite the internets to join you in the pacing and the muttering of profanity, and to have thirty or so of your friends join in the fuck-muttering and the complaining (and heck, the wine too if they're so inclined).

What does it say about me that I'm deeply moved by people emailing me curse words?  Oh, who knows.

As I acknowledged on Wednesday, hormones are playing a not-insignificant role in this whole thing, and the storm has not quite abated.  (As an aside, I decided a while ago that I would stop blogging my PMS when it got to the point where I really needed a category for it, but apparently I've broken my self-imposed rule and now is not the time to deal with it, OKAY?)  Anyway, stash acquisition seems to be a feature of my hormone storm, and this month is no different.  I have been looking at sweaters.

Did I mention that the vast majority of my stash is in storage, and I've cast on almost everything that's out of storage and none of it (none of it!) is doing it for me?  It is.  And it's not.  I'd probably be casting on Mermaid right about now if I could get at it.  And Elizabeth I is stalled because I can't figure out how to make the triangle the right size if my row gauge is on and my stitch gauge is way off and I found another yarn that might work that would knit to gauge but for some reason the people I ordered it from haven't sent it (do you know anything about JKL Needles?). 

Anyway, save me from myself:

St. Columba

(click to embiggen; you know the deal)

Do you understand what I'm up against here?  Worse, AS herself describes this project as "a challenge":

"However I have included one very complex design - St Columba - which requires a lot of time and concentration, and is intended for those who like a challenge."

It's also alarmingly expensive.  But my Fair Isle is giving me all sorts of fits--it's going to take forever (forever!  and St. Columba is in 3-ply/DK!  and has no sleeves!), and the colors of the FI aren't really quite right, and I've flubbed centering the motifs *completely*, though I did finish another motif and I like it.  So I want to knit something else, something from a pattern.  Something that I'll finish, and love, and be proud of.  And I want this sweater, despite the fact that it costs an arm and a leg.

And did I mention the size of my new mortgage payment?

Somebody talk me off the ledge, won't you?  Or at least point me to another wonderful DK-weight cabled (better--twisted stitch) vest that I can knit from a pattern.  Please.

Wednesday's Random Crapitude

Okay, here is your warning.  This is one whiny post.  This is like the exact opposite of such soul-renewing, life-affirming memes as "Monday Positives" or "Happiness is..." or even balanced approaches like "Good, Bad, and Ugly."  This is just ugly.  Run away now.

So there's all kinds of crap I could complain about.  PLENTY.  But all I have to say is this: I struggled all day with a complicated piece of writing in which I had to summarize a complex and controversial topic using unweildy data in, you know, five pages or less.  I was on page four and a half, minding my own business, finally having wrangled the damn thing into submission, and feeling pretty damn good about myself, or at least feeling like I might survive The Summer of Two Jobs Plus Construction, when some fucking thing happened to the fucking network and the fucking file got corrupted and I lost three of my four-and-a-half pages of single spaced prose (as well as the restructuring and reformatting I did to the first page and a half).

And you know that annoying thing that Word does when you shut down without saving (or, you know, sneeze) and when you re-start word it retrieves the most recent copy of your document and asks you if you want to save it in a separate file?  Yeah, it didn't do that.  And all the hidden word files, the ones that start with a tilde and shit?  None of those have any of my lost pages either.

This is the second time this happened at exactly 6 pm (why yes, after a full day of work with lunch eaten at my desk writing this damn thing).  But tech support doesn't answer the phone at 6 pm.  I guess they're too busy playing with the buttons on the network servers.

If anyone gives me advice about the value of frequent saving, well, I'm just saying...don't.  Mkay?  I know you wouldn't but, in case you would?  Don't.

And you missed the part where I broke down sobbing in front of someone I supervise.  Because it's really all about the professionalism here.  Yup.  That's me.

It's all made especially fine by the fact that I'm PMSing and was up all night last night worrying about how I'm going to get all my "summer projects" done.  Oh, and the fact that when Rhys pulled one carseat and a box of travel toys out of the car to take her sister and nephews to the airport this morning, someone stole them out of our fucking driveway in the middle of the morning.  We have to hope they thought they were free.  But we don't exactly live on the highway, and they weren't on the side of the road; they were halfway down our driveway, between the fence and the dumpster.  Who does that?  Who says "hey, look at that carseat sitting in that driveway, think I'll take it!"  The fuck?

Have I said fuck enough for you yet?  No? 

Fuck. 

There.  At least I feel better.  Now go look at something cute.

Idle Hands

There has been precious little knitting round these parts.  But I have not been entirely idle.

• there's the j-o-b, or technically two of them.  We're now at the point where there's one job during the week, and another on the weekend.  Lovin it. NOT.
• there was the part where Rhys' sister came to visit (the picture is when she and I shared wasabi shumai--whoo! That's my MIL's finger, btw) and I took the kids to Mystic aquarium and we had an AWESOME time.  Great place in the summer--I think it would be kind of limited in the winter, though, for those in range.

• there was the part when we packed up our entire house (except the kitchen, but including the basement) and moved into 3 rooms of our house.

• there was also the part where a giant backhoe came to our house and replaced the sewer line  (which had a charming habit of periodically deciding that *out* was not its only direction, and liked to spill our own raw sewage into the basement, which, I'm here to tell you, is a charming feature in a sewer line, (again) NOT).  We're looking forward to not experiencing that springtime ritual again.
• a giant freakin loan has been taken out, and a giant freakin check was deposited into our bank account, which will soon become a giant freakin money suck out of our bank account and into the builders' bank account, and strangely we're eager for this process to begin in earnest (see above with the moving into three rooms, note for the record that the mamas will be on a futon couch in the *dining room* until further notice).
• let's pause now for a moment to breathe deeply with me, find our roots down through the charkas, here, as a group, and say, collectively "motherfucker, bloody hell, that's a lot of shit you got going on!"  Because we wouldn't be wrong about that part.
• On the upside, it means more sleeping space for Cummington next year, just saying.
• Sadly, it means my fantasies of a party for the Fiber Twist will not come true this year.  Next year, people, we'll be roasting marshmallows over our new fireplace (!!!) while comparing purchases, okay?  This is what keeps me going.
• I also have fantasies of re-establishing the old solstice party, though it's not entirely clear that construction will be complete by Yuletide (kill me now, won't you?).
• But yeah, all you five people still reading here are invited, 'kay?
• There are socks, but they're not done.  There's spinning, and I haven't sent the wheel off to Marcy yet either, yet I'm not spinning much either.
• I'm seriously trying not to become one of those people who can talk of nothing but her home renovation.  And on one level, I think I might be successful: there are people in my life who have heard almost nothing about it, and I have no interest in reviewing the great Oak vs. Maple Debate with the vast majority of people in my life (verdict: maple, somewhat to my chagrin; don't ask).  I mean, if you're not living here, how could you possibly care, right?  Yet I have been captive to a few friends' renovations (not you, and not you either, and not you, except mom, maybe you a little, but since you're my mom you get a pass), and I really don't want to bore people with the minutiae of my renovation.  Yet, my life will, for the next few months, consist primarily of the following scintillating topics:

               - the main job, which I pretty much can't blog about except to say that I have attained what appears to be the pinnacle of my career as measured by syllables and punctuation, sporting, as I do as of July 1, not one but TWO ampersands, and a twenty-one syllable title.  Envy me.  I know you do.

                - the old job, in which I must work weekends to make exciting (!) SPSS tables, in addition to the SPSS tables I'll be making at the main job (I will note for the record here, as a follow-up to my last, scintillating statistical software-related post--because I know what keeps readers coming back!--that SPSS tables is worth learning if anyone but you reads your tables.)  Email me for more info if this is relevant to your life.  n=3, I know.

                - the renovation, and all the ways I'm enslaving myself to a salary and a regular job.  You know, the good stuff.

• I'm just hoping there will be a little knitting between now and then.  And of course, you know, the nervous breakdown, which Henry, Rhys, and I seem to be pacing each other on (Eleanor being the world's most flexible and easygoing child person).
• No promises.
• As an aside, is this actually my government? Okay, a) we're sorry, still, world, truly.  Apologies.  Also, I'm someone who has actually donated embryos to research, personally, like, yes, me, and my personal gametes.  As I mentioned to you in prior letters Mr. Bush, on a variety of topics, I shall repeat myself when I say MY BODY MY CHOICE.  Motherfucker.  I think I left off the "motherfucker" part in the letter to the white house, though.  Because I, unlike some other people (see first link above), have a concept of propriety.  In some contexts.  Shut up.
• Lee Ann is okay.  We IM'd a couple nights ago (I was like "whoa, this is actually *her*!) and she's just as Lee Ann as she ever was.  When they went spelunking inside her skull, they didn't take any of the Lee Ann-ness out.  She's theorizing they did something to amplify it, and she might not be wrong.  Spiff better stock up on chocolate is all I'm saying.
• In other net-connection news, I've had lovely meetups with Wooly Headed Ruth and Kat with a K over the last couple of weeks.  I ran into the manager of Webs at the pastry shop (don't ask) the other day, and she said most of their traffic these days comes from people stopping by on their way to somewhere else on vacation.  Apparently I'm not the only one who plans yarn stores in their itineraries.  I only got one ball of sock yarn, and I haven't even cast it on yet.   I may not be entirely well.  I'll try to keep in touch, but if I don't, just figure I'm too busy watching them tear down my house and writing large checks for the privilege.

On the Road

I haven't disappeared.  Unless you call hiding under a giant pile of work disappearing.  Right now I'm sitting in a training room waiting to learn all about how to make tables pretty with SPSS.  I'm taking it on faith that this is actually possible, since as users of this software know, it hasn't been the software's strong suit.  Still, I'm going to whatever I can to avoid having to spend hours fiddling with borders and such in excel, or paying someone to do same.  I will let you know how it goes.  Because I know that half of you (the half that aren't already asleep or off reading the next bloglines thing) are dying to know.

I'm still knitting socks.  I cast on the Peace Fleece top-down cardigan and promptly made two mistakes, both of which involved completely forgetting to think and just continuing on with the same thing, when I should have started doing something else.  So duh.  Back to socks.  There has been some other casting on--the new STR I got had to start in on its destiny as a picot-edged sock.  I suppose that's it.

No spinning.  Lots of packing but totally not as much as there should have been.  Work remains interesting, but besides bellyaching about SPSS, not much more to say about that.

Class is starting.  See ya later.

A Change of Plan

So the big pack-up has begun.  Rhys is doing most of the work.  Mostly, I'm just kid wrangling.  We were supposed to go to NYC this weekend, but my mom threw out her back and we canceled at the last minute.  To be honest, I'm a little relieved.   Pushing through sweaty throngs of tourists on a 95-degree holiday weekend with two four-year-olds might not have been as much fun as it seems like it would.  So we're home, here, in a house full of boxes.  I took them to the Berkshire Museum on Saturday because they wanted to see dinosaurs; tomorrow I've promised the Mystic Aquarium (we'll get our share of sweaty throngs there, thanks).  But we're getting ready to move into the dining room, the playroom, and the kitchen (and one bathroom) for the next SIX months while our house is dismantled.  It's going to be interesting.  And despite the fact that the whole idea of renovating is that you don't have to move, well, we have to move out of every room but those (the dining room will become Rhys' and my bedroom/living room; we'll eat in the kitchen).  The rest goes into storage.

We have a lot of shit.  Much of it is 100% wool.  Coming to terms with this can be a bit scary.  Coming to terms with the fact that I have to pick and choose my stash access for the next six months is even scarier.

So here it is: this is what I have to work on until sometime in December.  And you know that means January (since they said November).

It's Elizabeth I, some Peace Fleece for a simple top-down cardi, a cotton Tivoli I've already started, two skeins of STR, a skein of Fleece Artist cashmere for a lace scarf, some locally-grown cashmere to spin from NHS&W, the Charkha (which has not seen the light of day), some cotton to spin, a couple spindles, a small quantity of silk, and a corriedale fleece in roving form.  And the Lendrum.  And my long-neglected fair isle lumber.

About that one, suddenly, I'm in love again.  Or at least I'm back in like.  It has been in time out for a year now (okay, my last post on the topic was April 2005), and I just wasn't feeling it.  But in selecting projects for this fall, I looked at it and said, "hey, why did I put this down, again?"  And pick it up I have.  I've knitted two rounds and set out the colors for the current motif.  It's all good.  Keep on keeping on.  Could get finished someday, you never know.  And at least it will keep me from getting bored, right?

So that's a lot of crap for living in one room.  Rhys is a saint.  She even set the swift and ball winder aside because she thought I'd need them.  Love.  I know.

In other knitting news, socks.  Socks socks socks.  In between infrequent bursts of fair isle, there is an unending spiral of 60 stitches. 

Am I the only person feeling a little "eh" about Trekking 100?  I have other Trekking colors that look cooler, and I've seen socks knitted out of 100 that were totally awesome, but this skein is not rocking my world.  Still I knit around those three little needles...so close to starting the toe, mustn't stop now...

It's with a bit more enthusiasm that I'm knitting these Meilenweit Boots Stretch (catchy name, huh?) socks.  I think they're actually kind of a Trekking knockoff, but I like them better.  The color changes are more subtle and, well, the colors are better.  The yarn seems like it would be splittier, but it knit up very nicely.  I'm a fan, what can I say?

Speaking of being a fan, it's another Claudia picot stockinette sock.  I used to knit all my sock legs in a pattern stitch so they'd stay up.  Now, well, it's just around and around and around and around until I pause for the heel and then around and around and around until I do the toe (which is just like the heel) and then a three-needle bind-off and I've got a sock.  It's addicting enchanting.  It's also perfect for my current knitting brainpower availability (n=0).  It's good.

I'm off to bed; if I owe you an email, apologies.  I'm scattered, as you might imagine.  One more thing, though.  The new Webs catalog is out, and it's really quite wonderful.  They did a catalog for just their house yarn line, and they've got a store employee modeling the sweaters (beautifully, I might add, nice job Cirilia!), and most of the designs featured are by folks who work at the store.  Plus, most are not your usual free-with-yarn-purchase patterns--many of these patterns are simple, classic, and lovely, with not an eyelash in sight.  I'm really proud of my fellow valley knitters, and of Webs for doing it right.  Melissa Morgan-Oakes' Flutter Sweater is adorable (scroll down).  Now I'm thinking of Kathy Elkins' crocheted baby blanket for a certain young someone who'll be showing up in town this winter (that's Minh's wife's blog, in case it seemed too random).  And Pixie's tank in Brillioso is pretty faboo too.  What's with all the hooking, anyway?  I packed all but two of my crochet hooks.  Hmm.  There's always the LYS. ;)  NAYY, truly, I'm just giving credit where credit is due.  Well, plus it's always good to be nice to your LYS.

I understand the car's spare tire compartment can hold at least a sweater's worth, right?  In the event of a crochet emergency?