Finished!

I have completed Clue 2 of the second Mystery Sweater for the Warm Woolies knitalong! Woohoo! Of course, those of you who read and remember every detail that I post here (lol) will remember that Clue 3 was released on April 24. But better late than never, right?


That white stripe down the center is actually a measuring tape, which shows that the body of the sweater is 13.5 inches long at this point. On to the shoulders.

The Rivendell sock is also coming along. The heel is completed and I'm nearly halfway through the foot. I hope to have a completed sock to photograph for my next post.

In other news, I have now turned in my completed application to the appropriate office at school, along with the required side trips to pay the application fee and request a(nother) transcript audit. Then there was the extra "field trip" to the office where the application packet said I was supposed to submit it. Of course, once I got there, I found a sign on the door telling me to go to another office in a different building. For the record, I printed off this new, updated application on Tuesday, May 26 (because before that the online version still said it was for the June 1, 2008 deadline) and submitted it on Friday, May 29. Quick move for an entire office! And with construction vehicles blocking two doorways, I ended up walking about half a mile (from the handicapped parking area!) to get everything properly submitted. Perhaps they're hoping that a percentage of the applicants will just give up and apply to another school?

Knitting Again

Finally, some more knitting! I'm currently working on some socks for a friend. She bought me the yarn and the pattern, and it was months and months ago. Unfortunately, the Rivendell sock pattern is entirely dependent on gauge for correct measurements, so I've had to switch needles several times before being able to get socks that would actually fit this friend. (There is no other way to adjust the circumference of these sock. Usually it's possible to add or subtract a motif or a repeat of a stitch pattern to allow for different sized feet/ankles.) The really frustrating part is that it takes a couple of inches before being able to get an accurate measurement, so I've done a lot more knitting (and frogging) than it looks like. However, I've got the right size now! This picture was taken just at the beginning of the heel, and I've even added a bit since then. Also, the color is a little off, but this shot shows the pattern, which I think is more important at this point. :)



Also, 2 of the secret projects that I've been working on are now completed and sent to their new homes. Woohoo! One of my scarf groups has had quite a few problems, including having the original moderator step down suddenly and having one of the members kidnap two of the scarves. However, a number of very kind people volunteered to help me make "Angel scarves" for them. They all knit one or more sections for each of the scarves and mailed them to me. I then kitchenered/grafted all of the sections together, added my own sections, and bound off. One scarf is already home and the other's owner doesn't read my blog, so here are the pictures.

Silence

"Dark have been my dreams of late." -- Theoden

That quote explains quite clearly the blog silence for the past couple of weeks. I've been knitting things that are secret/surprise gifts, so I can't post about that. Work is normally so boring that it's of no use as blog fodder. (Although I am pleased that the dealership where I work is not one of the ones that's being forced to close, the other two dealerships owned by "my" auto group are on that black list, so who knows what's going to happen as they scramble to consolidate positions and job descriptions?)

My mom and sister are on vacation right now -- at this moment I believe they're still on their whale watching cruise out of Port Angeles, WA. That's been another fun thing lately -- explaining to all who ask (and they all ask!) why I'm not going with them. Vacations/trips used to be something I lived for. As soon as I returned from one, I was planning the next. Getting over that is proving to be more difficult than I'd like.

Oh, and I might be becoming more proof that anxiety frequently goes with depression. For example, since I'm home alone for 10 days, I've got my cell phone within 3 feet of me at all times, just in case I fall and break a leg or something. What fun! [/sarcasm] It turns out that I internalized a lot more of the "Ella's so stupid, always nervous about everything. And lazy! Depressed. Hmph. She should just snap out of it." comments about my grandmother (that I'm sure I wasn't really supposed to hear when I was a child) than I'd realized. Fun again! Joy and rapture even.

Oh. Um. [/sarcasm] Again. No, I mean it this time. See? I've stopped typing.

Not Quite

Well, I was right -- I'm behind again with the sweater. As the knitters among you know, one of the reasons that swatches are so hated is because they lie. They lie like dogs, like cheap rugs, like ... any way at all that you'd like to finish that simile. My non-swatches told me that I was getting close-to gauge (which is close enough when the sweater is for charity, because even if it's not a perfect size 10, surely someone somewhere wears a size 10.9). They promised that a US8 produced reasonably tight, warm fabric. After all, the yarn calls for a US10. Surely going down 2 needle sizes means that the sweater will be very warm.

My mistake? I believed the non-swatches. For 6 days, I looked at my knitting and wondered, but then reminded myself of what the non-swatches had said. After all, it's a mystery pattern. Maybe it's suppose to be a little lighter in this section or something.

Sadly, I finally -- after 8 inches of knitting and 6 days of wondering -- I finally stopped looking at and listening to the non-swatches and paid close attention to the sweater. I measured it. I was no longer getting close-to gauge. Gauge is 4.5 stitches/inch. The non-swatches told me I was getting 4.25; the sweater itself proved to be just a shade over 3 stitches/inch. I measured the circumference of the section. Supposed to be 32 inches. Per the non-swatches, it should have been 33.8 inches. It was actually 44 inches. Blast. To the frog pond it went, and I'm now up to 8 inches of a sweater (on US6 needles) that's only 34 inches around. That, I can live with. And the fabric is now much more dense. I'm officially behind though. I've only glanced at the next section of the sweater, which came out last Thursday. Maybe I'll catch up, but I'm not holding my breath.



On a completely unrelated note, here's your Depressing Thought of the Week:
(note: Any god metaphors spotted in the following blather were NOT god metaphors when they were written, no matter how much they seem to lean in that direction.)

I belong to a writing forum, and one of my friends there (call her A) has been having a tough time lately -- no monumental tragedies, but big problem after big problem compounded by other big problem, followed by yet another big problem, etc. Another friend (E) was encouraging her that things will have to get better, because if A's author was bothering to torture A this much, she must have a really great plotline/story/character arc. Naturally, this got me thinking about my life (because the entire world revolves around me. What, you didn't know that?) and I wondered what my author was playing at, with how things have gone for me. Then I realized something -- I think maybe I've been cut out of the book. I wasn't advancing the plot or I didn't fit in as originally envisioned or whatever. My pages are lying on the metaphorical floor somewhere, my story abandoned. It would certainly explain why I don't seem to have a plotline or a character arc, and why nothing shiny or really bad ever seems to happen to me.

All Caught Up!

I've joined another Mystery Sweater Knit-along for Warm Woolies, and as of yesterday morning, I was all caught up!


Of course, the Week 1 section was 2 non-swatches -- so-named because most knitters (including me!) hate to swatch, but swatches are/can be important. So this pattern has you make 2 swatches that later become integral parts of the sweater. In some mysterious fashion. Well, it is a mystery sweater knit-along.

This week's section is 12.5 inches of the body, which is 144 stitches around. I think I might be running behind again.

I'm just sayin...

The first minute-and-a-half is the really pertinent part, although it's hard to go wrong with Eddie Izzard.

Knitting

Overview:
I've been thinking for the past couple of weeks, trying to come up with something to blog about, and it seems like the only safe subject for me is really knitting.

A couple of months ago, I was talking with my sister, and realized that there were a certain number of things I wanted to do before I die. And most of those are knitting.

One of the very few things that is consistently able to make my mind stop racing in circles, trying to run itself to pieces, is knitting.

Does this mean that I'm hanging by a yarn? I mean, I don't do such fine lace knitting that you could really call it thread.

Details:
I work for a car dealership -- one associated with an American car manufacturer. I won't say which brand, but I will tell you that I strongly recommend that you don't buy their cars -- after all, I process a portion (just 25% or so, really) of the recall paperwork on the vehicles. Layoffs have been happening, and we're starting to get the feeling that this particular location may not be open much longer. Par for the course, really, I suppose, with this economy.

My mom is 65 this year. She has arthritis in one knee and has been having a lot of trouble with it this winter. She'd been planning to work until she was 66-and-however-many-months, for Social Security payment reasons. Now she can't decide if she should retire sooner because of her knee, hold on another year-and-a-bit because that's what she's been planning, or shift her mindset to working indefinitely. And the hospital has started laying people off. Not excess management, of course. They got bonuses in December. It's the regular employees who's jobs are in jeopardy. Again, par for the course, although I'd have thought that hospitals would be safe a little longer.

Part of the floor in our only full bath is getting "squishy." In the course of getting estimates for that, we discovered that there's water in the crawlspace -- but not consistently. Currently, the estimates to fix everything range from about $3,000 to over $35,000.

School is currently a lot of deadlines (pressure) interspersed with such incredibly boring curriculum (curricula?) that my brain is in danger of leaking out of my ears. And the application deadline for the program I'm currently pursuing is (a) rapidly approaching (June 1), and (b) about as far as I can lower that bar.

I'm still not in terribly good shape -- my lungs and the neuropathy being the two biggest (physical) problems. I doubt I'm capable of working full-time.

I have actually become accustomed to being suicidally depressed. This is either a good thing (because it's been going on for quite a while and isn't likely to change) or really, really bad. Either way, it's very risky to say, since saying it means that I'll be legally judged to be mentally incompetent as soon as someone decides to start persecuting me for my own good.

I'm not Mooting this year, and I'm not even that upset about it. Even though the person I most don't want to see isn't going anyway. I have become (relatively) resigned to not traveling anymore. (Relatively meaning that I know travel is not possible, but it still makes me cry sometimes.)

On a brighter note, I've learned how to drive (and more difficultly -- turn on) those riding carts at Target, so I can actually get a bit of shopping done again.

Conclusion:
So that's my life in a nutshell. I'm going to go play with two sticks and some string now.