Question 3

3) How many published authors do I know (1-1 communication, not fan-based)?
a) None
b) One
c) Two
d) Three
e) Four

More knitting photos for filler! I know that I should have been working on the Rivendell socks, but for some reason (!) my stress levels have been rather high over the past few days. Since the Rivendell socks are important, and I don't want to ruin them, I have been working on kids socks for Warm Woolies, for their 6 for 6 project. So far I've completed 2 pairs and cast on for a third. I've started calling them Potato Chip Socks, since apparently I can't knit just one (pair). Please note that I'm not really a fast knitter, it's just that I'm not doing much else right now, and these are knitted with 2 strands of worsted weight yarn on 4.5mm needles, so they work up very quickly.

















In case anyone's interested, these are worked according to the Yarn Harlot's Sock Recipe (available in Knitting Rules), with some numbers (cast-on stitches, start for the heel turn) snitched from Kimberly Turnbow's Warm Woolies Socks (to save me from doing the math myself). The legs and the top of the feet are ribbed, so that the socks will fit a wider range of foot and leg widths well. Unfortunately, that also makes them look really narrow in the photos. Also, the brown yarn at the toes of the brighter pair is because I tied them before digging out my camera. Anyone who has ever had to match socks after doing a load of laundry will immediately understand why Warm Woolies asks that you tie your socks together in pairs before sending them.

The answer to Question 3 is ... tricky. When I wrote the question, I thought the answer was 2: Susan Greene and Rachel Herron, both of whom I met online and don't know terribly well or anything, but I do know them (and knew them before they were published, to boot). Two of my friends got this question right, according to my original answer. However, when my sister took the quiz, she pointed out that I actually know, or knew, three published authors, because I did know Karen Wynn Fonstad, who died about 4 years ago. Of course, that's just two/three at this point in time. I fully expect to know more just as soon as some friends connect with decent agents/publishers.

(These questions are coming from my "How well do you know Beccaie Jamieson?" quiz on Facebook. Thus far, the high scores are 35% among my friends, with my sister scoring 74%. I'm bringing the questions to my blog in the hopes that some more people will get to know me better.)

All Right, What's Next?

This is not my weekend.

Erin, the other part-time cashier/receptionist at my dealership is in a wedding today, so I was planning to work both shifts. I got up at 4 a.m., dragged through my morning routine with lots of sore muscles and aching joints because of the fall yesterday, and headed off into (okay, technically away from) the sunrise. When I was about 5 minutes from the building, my cell phone rang -- unusual in and of itself, but particularly so early. It was Erin, and she was calling to tell me that the service manager had just called her and said that the service advisor who opened today called him (Is anyone else reminded of junior high here?) to say that all of the managers from the other store were there, and they were taking all of the new and used cars, and apparently they're closing our dealership. Oh. This should be interesting.

I continued to work, figured I'd at least find out the official version. Cursed a lot in my head about that 4 a.m. wake-up call for nothing. When I got there, I found out that they wanted me to work until 11, basically answering the phone and telling people to go to the other store. After half an hour or so, they decided that I should call all of the customers who had left cars at our location for service and tell them that they'd have to pick up their vehicles at the other store. You know what? Absolutely none of those customers were happy to hear that. Most of them stopped yelling at me when I explained that I had arrived at work and been told that we were closing, and that I would have loved to have given them more notice, because that would have meant that I'd had, yunno, ANY. One didn't, but I think I'd woken him up. Maybe he's always grumpy in the mornings.

So this weekend officially sucks. And now I get to launch a job hunt. J.O.Y.

Well, Blast!

I want an attached garage.

This is not a new want. I've thought for years that it would be nice to have a garage that's closer to the house, so it wouldn't be so far to carry things. Attached would be wonderful so that it wouldn't be quite so cold or so hot on the way to the car. So I wouldn't get rained or snowed on. Basically, I wanted one because I was lazy.

Well, okay, maybe the lazy still applies a little bit.

I fell again tonight, because it was raining hard when I got home. Rather than spend the night in my car in the garage, I chose to walk to the house. In retrospect, this may not have been my brightest moment. Balance is never my strong suit, but when it's raining hard enough that not only are my shoes slipping on the sidewalk/driveway/porch/lawn, my feet are also slipping around inside my shoes, things do not go well. My cane was steady on the ground (non-slip tip -- truth in advertising FTW!), but the manufacturer never claimed that the handle would be equally steady in my hand. Rats. Insult to injury (however minor): I didn't fall until I was taking the final step into the house. In my defense, opening the door did not magically dry my feet, shoes, porch, cane, or hand, and there's actually a fairly steady fall of water through a poorly designed roof/gutter join right over the door. However.

The good news is that I think I'm only going to lose half of a toenail this time, and a good whack off the tip of the one that got ripped off last September and had nearly grown back completely. I've also got two cuts and a bunch of scrapes, but that's it. Not even any bruises. Well, okay, a bunch of banged up places that will probably still be sore for a few days, too. Anyway, it could be much worse.

But I'm still sick of the can't-walk-well thing.

Question 2

(These questions are coming from my "How well do you know Beccaie Jamieson?" quiz on Facebook. Thus far, the high scores are 35% among my friends, with my sister scoring 74%. I'm bringing the questions to my blog in the hopes that some more people will get to know me better.)

2) Who is my favorite author?
a) Laurie R. King
b) Lois McMaster Bujold
c) Dorothy Gilman
d) Charlotte MacLeod
e) There is no possible way to choose just one.

I have no knitting photo this week. I am still making progress on the second Rivendell sock -- the heel is complete and I'm nearly halfway through the foot. I just haven't taken a photo of it yet, and I don't have one of the first sock at this stage, either. I haven't worked on the Warm Woolies sweater at all this week, since I've been focusing on the sock even for my at-home knitting. This is a good thing because something is wrong with the fan of the computer at work, and it's making so much noise that I want to smash things with sledgehammers (yes, plural) by halfway through my shift. I'm fairly certain that this would interfere with my ability to maintain the correct yarn tension (typically the higher the tension in the knitter, the more tightly they pull the yarn) for any project whatsoever. Since the Rivendell socks are meant to fit one specific person, with specific-sized feet, this would be a problem. I suppose I could cast on for something new and work on it only at work, so at least the tension would be uniform. However, I'm very reluctant to admit, even tacitly, that the fan will never be fixed and the noise is permanent.

Also, I'm very grateful to have 2 days off in a row at the moment. Just saying.

I was going to whine for a bit this week about how I'm so tired of dealing with depression and dysthymia, especially when it's exacerbated by PMS and the injudicious reading of some online fiction (recommended by a friend of mine) that turned out to be way more S&M than the light Dom/Sub vibe that I was expecting. In a rare display of sense, I stopped reading it about 15% of the way into it, even though I'd really kind of like to know if they ever resolve the non-human racial discrimination of the ... immediate setting. I still kind of want to toss my brain into the washing machine though. However, I've decided to skip the long, rambly whining rant-ish blather on the subject and go with one long, rambly whining sentence instead. I hope you appreciate it. ;-)

The answer to Question 2 is Lois McMaster Bujold. It's not easy to pick just one favorite author, but it is possible, so answer e is out. Laurie R. King writes great books, and one of her series includes the character Mary Russell, who is an option in my still-to-come question about my favorite character. She also wrote Keeping Watch, which is great and wonderful and suspenseful and powerful and haunting. Dorothy Gilman wrote Thale's Folly, which I used to list as my favorite book. It's still in the running, although I now have more trouble with that question. Charlotte MacLeod wrote "screwball myster[ies]" according to one reviewer, and I think that adjective is very apt. They're also a lot of fun. Nonetheless, Lois McMaster Bujold beats them all. She has 3 series: the Vorkosigan saga, the Chalion books, and the Sharing Knife series. I love them all, with the possible exception of Falling Free, which is set in the Vorkosigan universe although it has no Vorkosigans in it. FF is a good book, but the villian(s) is(are) just too believable for me to really love it. They don't win, but their defeat isn't quite complete enough for me -- I'm much more vindictive than most of the characters. But for sheer rereadability and shininess, LMB can't be beat.

Question 1

1) What is my favorite curse?
a) Shit!
b) Fuck!
c) Frak!
d) Da-shiong bao tse shr la doo tze!
e) Blight it!

Obligatory knitting picture, so the answer isn't revealed unless you scroll down a bit:


This is the Warm Woolies Mystery Knitalong II Sweater at the end of Part 3. Well, it needs 2 more rows on the left shoulder to be completely done, but since I'm using these HUGE skeins of yarn, I've already started the second-and-final skein. The sleeves are just knit straight down from the edges, so I didn't see any reason to cut the yarn on the right shoulder so I could work 2 rows on the left, and then later go back and reattach the yarn to the edge of the right shoulder (and thus have extra ends to weave in). I have begun the right sleeve, but I'm only about a third of the way done. There will be another picture when at least one sleeve is complete.

The second Rivendell sock is still coming along, but since it's almost exactly at the same stage as the first sock was in my May 24th post, I thought a picture might be a bit boring. Besides, then I'd have to drag my camera out and get the cord to upload it and all that jazz. (Yes, the camera and its cord live in the desk drawer directly under my keyboard. And the sock is currently sitting about 8 inches to my left. What's your point?)

So, the answer to Question 1 is b) Fuck! I like Fuck! (It requires the exclamation point.) because of its versatility. It's been my favorite curse for about 22 years now. Shit! is fine, and I do use it. Frak! comes into play when I'm at work or somewhere else where pure cursing would be looked askance at. It's also a relatively recent curse for me, since BSG isn't something that I watched on TV. Da-shiong bao tse shr la doo tze! made the list because several of my Facebook friends are also Firefly fans. Blight it! is there because (so far as I know) none of them have yet read Lois McMaster Bujold's The Sharing Knife series, and they all should.

Sock Update

I have a new status photo of the Rivendell sock:


Yep, that's the sock that's currently on my needles. Looks a bit shorter than last week, doesn't it? That's because this happened yesterday evening:

Want to see the whole thing?

(I promise the heel will look more normal once it's been blocked.)


And in case anyone suspects me of recycling a photo of the first sock, here's proof that they both exist at this very moment. :)


Also, as some of you know, my friends are not scoring very highly on the "How well do you know Beccaie Jamieson?" quiz I created on Facebook. Therefore, I will be adding a brief explanation of at least one question on the quiz for the next however many weeks. (I'm thinking of doing 1 question per week, but we'll see how it goes.) The good news for you is that this means I've got ready-made topics for a while, so my blog posts should be on time. The bad news is that some of the information may be redundant, if it's a question you got right. I will start this next week, in case anyone wants to take a bash at the quiz before I begin.

And if you wait until I've covered all the questions and then ace the quiz, there are no prizes. :-p