My functions are overloaded.

Just when you thought it was safe
to have a nice long soak in the bathtub....

I'd say it's quiet over here, but if it were quiet, hell, I'd have time to do something and show it to you. Instead, I have discovered that there are such things as tubsharks, and I have been immersed in the "Spiff's Special Don'tGetYourProgrammerAssFired Intensive C++ Tutorial" so that I can write the programs for my homework properly (read: not the way the notes say to do them) and study for my final on Tuesday.

We've also had a massive power outage right when said homework was due, just to make my life interesting and necessitate a complete restocking of the freezer and refrigerator. That and the teachers' strike that has delayed the opening of school by one day, completely obliterating any chance that I will study anything without a tubshark climbing out of the bath and running down the hall, giggling maniacally and tracking suds everywhere, naked except for a pair of swim goggles, has essentially caused my functions to be overloaded, as it were.

So, you know, I'd show you a white bunny, but it turns out I need to spin more to make the ears, and if I could spin yarn from my own whirling self, well, I'd be golden. But it doesn't work that way. So the bunny will have to wait, although she promises to be quite lovely. She will even be sporting a few choice accessories. I refuse to say more. But they're...special.

Meanwhile, the SyndiCate and one of her trusted cohorts have cooked up a plan to send me a wheel. Yep, you read that right. A freaking wheel. Looms land on some people, but a wheel is about to land on me. It's a Hitchhiker, appropriately enough, and it's hitching my way, to live with me until I buy myself a wheel. It's one hell of a wonderful gesture, a measure of generosity that came out of the blue, and I get close to tears if I really think about it. I'm pretty sure I'll cry when it arrives. Yeah, I'm like that....

We also have a new victim of Pony friend in town, who is actually an old friend if you don't count the fact that we have never met in person before last week:

Kate has finally moved to our fair city, and we were so thrilled,
we gave her our most enthusiastic, fitted welcome, as it were.

It's so cool to finally meet someone with whom I've been whining talking online for so long, and clearly, she's got as much of a sense of humour in person as she does on her blog. Otherwise, how could we explain this:

Now, that's a good friend.
We give you the Pony Burka.
Pardon the blur...we were a bit excited.

So, that's all the news that's fit to blog, at the moment. I'm hoping to do some really intensive spinning, knitting, cleaning, and vegetating after Tuesday, because in two weeks I start all over again with two more programming courses. All in the interest of quality technical communication, dontcha know. Either that, or I'm insane. Shut up. I'm relaxing as hard as I can.

Meanwhile, check your tub.
You never know what might be lurking in there.

August 27, 2005 5:56 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (19)  | Print

All Your Fiber Are Belong To Us.

A small alien came home early because she couldn't breathe.
However, Maman the Rocket Scientist knows how to administer inhalers.
Suddenly, we know no limits and we are very hungry for knitwear....

Twinkletoes is back. I don't want to talk about the crisis that led her to be back a day early, because I might explode. So, to alleviate a little stress, she and I decided to go through my projects and see what was what. Yep, I'm still slogging away on the back of the 2 x 2 Black Rib Sweater That, So Far, Looks Like Everything Else He Wears. No photos necessary there. But the Frankentank has also made a bit of progress. It has passed the rack separation, and I'm thinking I need to rip back and raise the V. Because I may like things that are "too scoopy," but I do have my standards. See, my philosophy is this: It's perfectly fine to ask if I've "got milk," but if you can see the cookies too, I've gone way too far. Friends don't let friends show cookies. Please don't ask me where I got this lovely way to describe a nipple. You don't want to know.

Anyway...odd breast-part metaphors aside, I've been gathering up my courage to ply. Because the stuff I spun out of Stephanie's gorgeous white fluffy some-kinda-wool (mostly merino and some Corriedale thrown in to keep me on my toes) was laceweight. String, almost. Utterly pliable into something smaller than polar-bear-on-steroids weight. Holy moly, who knew I could spin that kind of thing. Well, it turns out I can't, or at least not evenly, because once you ply, you realise how uneven your spinning actually is. But I'm getting ahead of myself....

I decided that because I am a lazy ass and because I only have three spindles and because it just looked cool, I would ply on the spindle using an Andean bracelet technique. Oh. My. WhateverTheHellMakesStarsTwinkle. It's freaking magic. Except for one minor problem:

I'm a little...heu...uptight, shall we say. Mayyybe I pulled the singles
a bit too tightly in making the bracelet. (Duh, ya think?)
So, instead of the Andean Way, I give you the Fuck You Plying Technique.

Which just goes to show you: you can be rude as hell and still create complete magic. It practically plied itself. Took no time at all. I briefly considered having a cigarette afterward, and then remembered I'm not supposed to smoke anymore....

You can also nearly cut off your circulation of your very crucial middle finger and still be able to Andean ply...should you be able to pry the sucker off your finger, that is. I managed it, and it worked like the proverbial charm. Man, physics is so sexy:

It's all in the pinch. Curly bits are completely controlled.
The Ss turn into Zs. The spindle needs but a gentle nudge.
It almost makes me forget I don't have a wheel. Oh, shut up....

I made real yarn. I can't f**ing believe it. And I can't f**ing believe I just said fuck earlier on this supposedly family-friendly blog, with no stars or hypens in the middle, to signify that I know I'm being completely rude. (This restraint does not always apply at home, however.) Blame the spindle. Blame the wool. Blame Stephanie. On second thought, don't blame Stephanie. She's still turning her cups back the right way and reorienting the children to their filial duties, not the least of which includes actually acting on the knowledge that the cat has upchucked on the carpet. Just don't blame me because, I swear, this spinning addiction is absolutely not my fault. (The cat thing is also not my fault. They do that. It's just a law of cat nature.) So. Spindle-plying is utterly magical and I'm hooked.

By the way, see that little tied thingy holding the mini-skein together?
Twinkletoes informed me that she made that because I forgot it.
Child labour is underrated. Damn, my singles
are really uneven, aren't they....

And now we come to the subject of the wheel. I'm holding out. Mostly because I know exactly what I want. I am nothing if not an obsessive researcher, and although no one has been near enough to me to allow me to even touch a wheel, I know exactly which one trips my trigger. And I know how much it costs. It costs one server.

By the time I go to Vermont Sheep and Wool, I will have money in pocket for this thing. (Look, I know. I'm sad about Rhinebeck, too. But I can't afford Rhinebeck with a kid on a weekend stay. And Norma is meeting me at Vermont. And I'm going to try to convince a very pregnant Kate to come with me. So...People, you are feeling sheeeeepyyyyy...you are unexplicably making an obnoxiously long drive to a small, yet wonderful sheep and wool festival and you are meeting up on Saturday, October 1, with little me, to help me decide on something I'm not supposed to be buying...). I can't afford the wheel right now, but I'm working my ass off toward that goal. We are not even mentioning the fact that if network cards and video cards and games and other various and sundry computer accessories were all tallied up, well...I would be thoroughly justified in rewarding my hard work with a wheel, come October.

Don't you think so? Thank you. I knew I could count on you.

August 17, 2005 11:26 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (24)  | Print

It's A Wool Thong.

I mean, Thing.

I mean...well...
somebody did mention she needed better underwear....

Spiff is very much afraid. First, he is afraid because I take this kind of thing out in public. Everybody can now see what a dork his wife is.

Hell, even my C++ programming teacher (hi, Bob, if you ever end up reading this...) has seen it. He mentioned that he'd seen people eating bizarre things on break amidst 4.5 hours of lectures, but this was the first time he'd ever seen anyone spin in his class. It won't be the last. Because Bob's the only teacher I've ever met who can keep everyone awake during a lecture that long, but if I don't spin on break, I am absolutely screwed for staying awake for the second half of programming excitement. (You should see this guy. He's unreal. He literally sparkles with enthusiasm, and it's contagious. Although the guy sleeping in the middle of the classroom appears to be immune. Maybe I should teach him to spin.)

Anyway, as I was saying, Spiff is very much afraid. He's felt up the llama, and he wants a sweater out of it. However, even Spiff knows that if you plan on spinning up a sweater's worth of llama, you'd better have a...wheel. Shhhhhh....

I warned him. His solution? "Well, this stuff is so soft...you could always knit me a pair of llama underwear...that's small enough for spindle-spinning, isn't it?"

Okay, ladies. You heard it here first. Husbands are so frightened of things large enough to possibly be called furniture entering their living rooms (and costing the amount of a new and badly needed server, I might add) that they are willing to risk the embarrassment of receiving (and wearing—I bother to spin it and knit it, you had better believe he'll wear it)...

A Llama Thong. Cause honey, if I'm knitting you boxers, I'm getting a wheel.

The long view of the fiber, the spun-up result,
and the kid's chair. When she comes back,
I plan on photographing everything in her lap.

You may have noticed that Spiff is actually jumping on a trend. There is an abundance of really cool thong production and although these are not knit thongs, they are still so very stylish. I mean, how can you resist a thong with an unreliable narrator on it? or one asking you if you've got gauge? (Spiff thinks I really should resist that one and just buy a t-shirt, for chrissakes, because no man wants to be asked by his wife's underwear if he's got gauge, if you know what I mean.)

In any case, let's take a look at the lineup, here. If you were to replace the white with blue, you would have my entire wardrobe represented on three spindles (I am extremely white. Thus, I do not wear white. I would disappear, and then my husband would never find me unless I wore the llama thong, and that option is not open for discussion at the moment):

You've seen this little lady before, and you've called her pink.
She is actually Rouge. Very soft, and really lovely to spin,
but rumor has it she can be easily plied
with a good glass of bordeaux.

You've seen this lady all undone and fuzzified.
Noire is trying to pull herself together, but it's been a bit tougher
than we thought. I mean, how would you feel
if you thought you were going to be turned into a thong?

This little lady is being twirled around using "something. Merino,
I think. And then something else." Blanche was carded
by Stephanie. Who apparently needs better underwear.
(Oh, come on. You know it'll be a bunny. Unless she's really in need....)

While we are on the subject of my darling Spiff, I actually did knit this week, in his honour. But it's the 2 x 2 black rib back with no design. So I'm not showing it here because I fall asleep taking pictures of it. When we get to the elven name up the front, that will the the interesting part. But I put in a good four centimetres on it, because he put in a great deal of time last night fixing blog bugs and getting all inspired by how he can make my blogging software better and by the way, did I know I was the love of his life?

I love that geeky sweetieface no matter how scared of wheels he is. So, in hopes of possibly finishing a sweater for him before we are into version 4.0 of this software, I'm trying to put in a little time on this lovely black thing every day now.

Time on the sweater, not the thong.

Although...

Well, it sure would beat knitting for a chick with plastic bazoombas*, wouldn't it?

*Thank you, Ryan. That's even better than rack.

August 10, 2005 4:41 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (14)  | Print

Back From The Bombshell-ter

Or, The Kind Of Eye-Opener We Did Not Ask For And Do Not Need.

I've been a bit absent from the posting screen lately, and it's not for lack of things to say. In fact, it's been more to restrain myself from saying too much. You see, I've been in the middle of what my father would call "a situation." Some incredibly inappropriate behaviour has been flung my way for the past several weeks, at the university where I take classes, and I came very close to having to file a formal complaint about it.

This "blonde bombshell" does not take kindly to "situations." I dealt with it, though I wish I'd had the wherewithall to deliver the smackdown sooner. I got a written apology from the party in question, along with a promise to act more like a professional/mentor and less like an InsertFavouriteExpletiveHere. Hopefully, this means the bullshit will cease to hit the fan. I did not need this on top of everything else.

Meanwhile, not much spinning has been going on, and I haven't knit a stitch. I'm a lousy knitter when I'm a nervous wreck. But I did acquire a few things...

Will this teal-coloured madness never stop?
The KH was my Rowan "free gift."
I see a lace scarf in my mother's future.

God, I hate teal.

The fingering-weight silk is from Ami-Ami in Hudson, Québec, and I'm being too lazy to link it, but go there. Google it. You won't be sorry. She's got gorgeous yarns. Trouble is, that colour-may-appear-differently-on-screen problem has given me a 100-gram hank of wine. I should have asked her about the trueness of the colour. I thought it would be red. This is not red. I see a lace shawl in my mother's future.

My mother is really lucking out, here....

I've been consoling myself with knit blogs and gorgeous photos from the Hubble Telescope. Please tell me I'm not the only one who looks at this picture and, rather than think "wow, that nebula looks like a paramecium" like any normal person would do, well...

What does this picture make you think of?

Am I the only weirdo who looks at Planetary Nebula IC 4406 and thinks,
"hand-dyed silk and wool, two colourways, lace stole"?
Please say no.

Here's hoping I will be more like my usual self soon. I plan on spinning the llama to make myself feel better. Hopefully he won't upchuck all over me when I'm done.

August 7, 2005 11:54 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (25)  | Print