Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Stash busting. Stash busting? Stash...using? Complementing? What would I call this project? Yes, it started as an attempt to get rid of the yarn left over after Starsky plus a couple of balls that I bought for not particular reason last year, but now I've bought four more balls of yarn in order to finish it. Is that really stash busting or is it something else? If I end up with seven fewer balls in the bin, but I spent forty-five bucks to do it, does it count? I don't know.

What I do know is that I'm not all that good at Fair Isle, but I refuse to rip back and redo those sections so that the floats are looser, so the finished pieces is going to have a charming gathered effect at the yoke and sleeves. Another checkerboard and another cross section left, and then I can put the Fair Isle to my rudder and never look back.

I love these colors together, which is a good thing since I'm going to take whatever's left and crochet a scarf with it. That Silkroad Aran is not going back into the stash again. God knows how much more money I'd end up spending the next time I came across it and decided to 'use it up'.

I wanted something quick and this is coming along at a good clip. It became too unweildly to carry around, so it's my evening project. I'm optimistic about finishing it this week. On the other hand, my optimism is almost always misplaced, so it's more likely that it'll be finished sometime in mid-October.

Head Case

Fragments from the worst detective novel ever written --

...working a case, like any other day. Sun shining, birds singing, happy world. That's how it's supposed to be, every day a garden party.

Keeping it that way, that's our job. Every day, we go out into it. We turn over the rocks and see the grubs. We look under the bushes and into the dark corners at the back of the old shed. We're...


...wasn't expecting to find this. Poor stiff was buried up to his neck and spray painted with bright green Krylon...


..."into the trees", she'd said. "Into the trees." I didn't know what she'd meant, until I saw it hanging up in the high branches, like some beautiful, horrible treasure sack...


"...oxblood flowers. Funny, that term. They don't look the color of oxblood at all."

"I wouldn't know, ma'am. My bloody ox experience doesn't go beyond watching 'Apocalypse Now'.

Then she said something interesting, something that flicked a switch in my mind. Suddenly, it was all...


...partner was unconsolable. I guess in this job you see some things that are too much to get past...


...and like I said, that's our job. Turning over stones, poking sticks in the snake hole. Whatever it takes to keep the flowers in bloom and the bees buzzing. Some garden party...

************
The Details:

Pattern: Starsky, knit in the small size.

Yarn: Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran in Venetian. 14.5 balls, including the swatch, which comes out to 1350 yards. That puts it to the medium in yardage, but that's probably about right when you consider that I knit a little looser than gauge as I went along, and I made it longer. We'll get to that in a minute.

Needles: I used Brittany #10(US) for the body, and an Addi Turbo 12" circular #9(US) for the arms. The belt was done on a #9 bamboo double-point.

Time: Whooo...boy. Let's see. I started it right after the pattern came out, put it down after two repeats on the back, and didn't pick it back up again until right after Frog-Fest 2007. So, technically, more than a year to knit. More accurately, it took about two months.

I only deviated from the pattern once. I decided it would be easier to tell where to stop for the armhole shaping if it ended at the beginning of the chart. That worked great because it meant that the shaping ended up at the same point on all three pieces. It also meant that each of the body pieces ended up about an inch too long. Other than that, I stuck to the pattern as written.

One thing that really helped me, not being much of a chart reader, was rewriting the written instructions in a way that I'd understand. I renamed some of the cable labels. For example, '2-st LPC' became 'FPP', short for front-purl-purl. All of the cable cross abbreviations got that treatment. It really helped me to write it out in my own words. I had that piece of steno paper with me for every row of the body.

I love this sweater. I've worn it several times since finishing it a couple of weeks ago. It came out a little large after washing and blocking, large enough that I wasn't quite comfortable in it. I saw its future ahead of it, a future of being tried on, and then folded and placed back in the closet. No way was I taking it apart and reknitting it, so when it was about due for another wash n' block, I did the scariest thing one can do to woolen knitwear. I threw it in the dryer and walked away. But look what happened! It's perfect now.

I couldn't be happier with it. As much as I bellyached about the cabling and the fact that I had to concentrate through the whole thing, I really did have a fun time with it. If I were to knit another one, and I probably will, although maybe with a simpler cable pattern instead of the banana leaf, I'd add a little waist shaping. I think it'd be cute with a slightly sleeker, more feminine shape. I've even got what I think will be the perfect stash yarn for it.

So, all in all, great experience knitting Starsky. It boosted my confidence in my knitting again, and I got a comfortable, attractive sweater out of the deal. I'm glad I didn't look at the six inches of the back and decide to frog it with the rest of my WIPs back in February.

Cripes!

First off, thanks to everyone giving suggestions so far on the future shrug-o-lero. I've had a great time seeing so many patterns that I hadn't come across before. I'm putting all names in the big hat at 11:59 on Wednesday night and drawing out a winner for the Mountain Colors. There's still time to enter, and I'm still undecided on the pattern, so don't be shy.

Oh, so many things happening, no new pictures.

Accountant Boy and I got it in our heads that we should finish landscaping the yards this year, so we've spent the last three weekends working outside. We also got it in our heads that Daisy and Falstaff's yard would be easy to landscape if we applied some principles of xeriscaping to it, so we've actually been working in three yards simultaneously. My main jobs were bark shoveling and sprinkler line maintenance. My ankles ache from all of the time spent sitting on my heels to adjust the drip manifolds. The pain wakes me up at night. Note to self: give up dream of being an MLB catcher.

Starsky's almost done! Just the belt left, now. The boring, boring belt. No, I won't call it done and take pictures and be all proud of it without the belt, because it's not completely done, and if I'm allowed to pretend like it is at this point, it never will be. Note to self: knitted belts suck.

Buddy's old owner swung by yesterday while we were toiling in the yard and asked if he could see him. Buddy has now been with us longer than he was with them and, with all of the time and money and love we've poured over him in our eight years, I don't think there's any doubt that he's our cat now. I know the old owner just wanted to say hello to him. Old owner's a sentimental guy. He still owns the house he grew up in on the other side of our back fence. He still has Buddy's mom after fifteen years, along with a few new cats that they adopted to keep her company. They're a big-hearted family, and he's a good man. When I brought Buddy to the door, he didn't quite recognize the booming voice of his old owner and he pushed back against my shoulder. I felt kind of bad about it, because I could see that the old owner's feelings were a little hurt by it. "You guys should come by when you have a few minutes to sit down inside. He doesn't understand why I'm holding him in the open doorway. He'll come right up to you if you're sitting on the couch..." We said that, and we meant it, but still. Note to self: formulate plan for spiriting Buddy away in the dead of night and living on the run with him, should his old owners decide to reclaim him.

Resolutions? Oh, yeah. Those friggin' things. Well, the exercise part's going well, and it's been three weeks since I had a Casper's chili cheese dog. I swam fifty laps in a row last Thursday without using the kickboard, and I felt like I finally understood how to breathe and swim at the same time. Knit from stash is still on track since I've been knitting the same damn sweater for the past four months, and it's out of stash yarn. Be a better programmer is hit-and-miss. I have some days where I feel really good about it, and some days where I don't know what I'm doing, in both the literal and figurative senses. Oh, and we're the crappiest friends in the world, because we STILL haven't written to any of our long-lost pals. So I'm still three for five on the resolutions, but at least it hasn't gotten worse.

Gripey as this sounded, I'm actually in a great mood. My yards are going to be lovely this year, and Daisy and Falstaff's front yard will be, too. The peach tree might actually produce peaches for the first time. I'm almost done with a really involved sweater, just in time for lighter, simpler Spring knitting. I'm getting stronger and sleaker. My ankles hurt, uh, less? Yeah, that's a good thing. My ankles hurt less today than they did last night.

Oh, and since I'm throwing everything but the kitchen sink in this post, here's a gratitude. I'm grateful for this lovely April day, and that I'm less than two hours away from stepping out into it. Maybe I'll go home and take some pictures.

The Strange Public Lives of Birds

Where I grew up, there wasn't much in the way of wildlife. I was born and raised in a town surrounded by heavily farmed land. We didn't have squirrels because there weren't enough trees clustered in one spot to support them. We didn't have ducks or geese flying overhead because we were dozens of miles from any natural wetlands. When you fly over the Central Valley and look down and see the fields all laid out like a patchwork quilt, and there doesn't seem to be any ungroomed land, that's pretty much correct. There's no wildlife because there's no wilderness.

Having grown up this way, I'm especially prone to irrational glee at the sight of squirrels, raccoons, and wild birds. "Honey, LOOK! Squirrel on a telephone wire!!!" Accountant Boy loves it when I shout like that when he's driving.


I can't help it. I've been late to meetings in the other building because I've stopped in the courtyard to listen to the geese honk as they fly overhead. Maybe it's this joyous wonderment that makes me pay more attention than most of the people around me, too much attention. Because lately, y'all? The birds have gone weird.

Exhibit A: Our office park has two resident wild turkeys. Perhaps the better term for them would be half-wild turkeys, because they're not exactly living the rugged, hardscrabble life. A woman from the first floor of my old building feeds them. She stands on the sidewalk and throws kashi at them, and they happily peck it up. Here's where it gets awkward. When the wild turkeys do, you know, what wild turkeys with a high-fiber diet do, she coos her congratulations to them. "Good turkey! Good poopies! Krrrrooowowowowoodle... (Strange cooing sound that she must think is comforting to them.) GOOD poopies!" They stare up at her, waiting for more kashi. I back away slowly.

Exhibit B: I was startled by the sound of ambulance sirens on the way into the office last week. We're right below a hospital, so it's not uncommon to hear sirens, but these were really loud. I guess the little sparrow in the nearby tree got startled, too. He flew right in front of me, and right into a window. "Dude!" I exclaimed, because I couldn't think of anything better to say, "Are you O.K.?" Like the bird understood me. But in a way, it was like he did, like he was saying, "Yeah, I'm an idiot. What the hell did I just do?". He fluttered a little bit in mid-flight, almost like he was walking off the hit, then turned and flew back to his perch in the tree. "Alright then," I said as I walked past. "You be more careful next time, 'kay?"


Exhibit C: Driving to work a few days ago, I kept pace with a couple of Canada geese, flying straight up the freeway. Not across the freeway, but directly above it, like they were commuting with me.

Exhibit D: Driving to work a couple of days ago, stopped at a light on Treat Boulevard, I saw a man riding a bicycle down the sidewalk. He turned to look back, and I swear it looked like he was making sure that his pet duck was following him, because there was a mallard coming up fast behind him.

Exhibit E: This morning at the Crow Canyon offramp, right out in the triangle of dirt between the ramps, two crows f&%king.

It's been a weird few weeks in avian observation. Human observation, too.

In other news, I'm still knitting, although I've slowed down a bit. I haven't figured out how to position my keyboard tray in my new cubicle. I realized this morning that my fingers hurt because I'm curling my wrists backward when I type. As a result, my hands are really sore, but I'm not going to let a little thing like that stop me. I finished the back of Starsky, and now I'm on to the fronts. I want to be done by April.

La Grenouillère

Mordecai: "What about after? What about after we do it?"

Stranger: "Hmm?"

Mordecai: "What do we do then?"

Stranger: "Well then you live with it."

--High Plains Drifter



Bienvenue vers l'étang de grenouille! That's French for 'welcome to the frog pond', my friends.

Well that wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. It was like ripping off a Bandaid. I did it quickly.

"That reminds me. I still have to buy some of that Tilli Tomas in the 'Ant' colorway," said Daisy.

"Buy mine."

"You don't want it?"

"No, it's pissing me off to look at it. Take it away."

I still have a couple of things on needles shoved into the stash bin, but I couldn't get to them tonight because Accountant Boy was sleeping. Expeditions into the Yarn Cave are noisy. I'm going in there tomorrow to finish the job. It's exciting, this all-out frog fest. I'm happy thinking about everything I could knit, without the mental clutter of all of the things I've started to knit and then set aside.

That leaves two things on needles that aren't getting destroyed. I'm still trying to save Starsky, and I started a new cardigan using double-stranded Manos on US17 needles. It should take about three days to complete. I've knit three inches of the left front in only 15 minutes.