One Crazy Fiber Lady

…resistance is futile. I could withstand it no longer. All the futzing around with different phones was because I really wanted one of these:

I could fight it no longer. I just got back to the office after waiting in line here. I picked up the 16g black sweet heart. Anyone who remembers the fight I had a while ago porting my number from T-Mobile to Sprint (and yes there will be hell to pay at Sprint for breaking my contract early) will be happy to know that while it took over a week then, it was done in no more than 5 minutes this time. Totally amazing.

No real pictures to show of knitting or spinning. Last night I didn’t touch the wheel but played two games of spring training baseball in MLB the show while listening to the Sox beat up on the Royals. I spent a good bit of the ride home yesterday trying to web browse on my tiny little screen on the Katana phone (eBay bound) to get more than a row done. I didn’t fare too much better this morning though I did manage to complete 3 ridges of the solid blue on Ballerina. I’ll be knitting more tonight. Promise. It is SnB night afterall

Live long and prosper \\//_

edited to add:  I had a pretty decent experience waiting on the line.  When I jumped on, was given my choice of which one I wanted, they told me it was @2.5 hour wait from there.  Turned out to be only 1.5 or so but it went fast and was pretty darn enjoyable.  I made friends with the guys ahead of me.  It was sunny and hot as we turned the corner.  The store folks were passing out these big umbrellas so that we could shade ourselves and well, not pass out on their property.  One of the two guys volunteered to hold an umbrella for me.  Very nice.  The feller in front of him picked up the tab for a couple of bottles of water from the hot dog cart guy and the three of us had an enjoyable wait.  Who said New Yorkers aren’t nice?!?

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It has been ages since I posted regularly.  I’ve mentioned this is the past that the longer I go without posting, the more I want to write, the more time is necessary to write it and as a result, the less likely that an actual post is going to happen.  This morning on the train I decided it was time to break my radio silence and just move on.  Declare tabula rasa and start fresh.  That was my approach to blogging in the first place as well as how I’ve handled Ravelry.  So no more waiting for me to organize and upload the gajillion pictures I took from the boat over vacation.  I might eventually get around to it, but don’t hold your breath.

So…..

I’ve been plurking.  Go figure, I’m crazyfiberlady there.  Seriously fun timesuck.  Good for slow days in the office for sure.

What else?  Oh yes.  There’s the spinning.  I’ve been trying to do the 10 minute a day thing.  While it didn’t work while on vacation (no didn’t bring a wheel on the boat) and took me a long while to get back into it after returning home, I’m back to it now.  First, I finished the merino that I’m hoping will be a sweater for Alexander.  I just need to break out the Fricke eSpinner and ply.  I have to admit, I honestly didn’t enjoy spinning this.  The dyed merino was slightly felted and made for uneven spinning.  The solid stuff had clumps and shorter bits in it that also made for uneven spinning.  Bleh.  I still have 8oz of each left and hoping that plied, this is enough for A-man’s sweater.

Once done with those singles, I pulled out some fiber that hasn’t been marinating for very long.  It is kettle dyed BFL from Wool Peddler in Neapolitan that I blame credit Jess with making me buy.  It is so very worth it.  First, most of ya know my tendency towards the Neapolitan colorway.  I’ve gone through a bit of it over the years in both yarn and fiber form.

I’ve got 8oz of this heaven.  I tore the roving in half and have been taking arm length sections of one half, splitting that into finger width sections or so and then spinning those in the same orientation.  This stuff is spinning itself!  The fiber is perfect.  No clumps.  No felting.  No fuzzballs.  Nuthing.  I nearly bought myself a birthday present yesterday of enough in the Moulin Rouge colorway to spin myself a cardigan.  Hmm.. might have to do a little destashing sale to support that idea.  Check back soon on that all right????  Anyway…I’m making slow but seriously enjoyable progress on this and might take it slower than normal to savor the experience!

I’ve also been knitting.  Here’s my progress on WRS.  No you aren’t seeing things and I’m not trying to trick ya with some photoshop color change magic.  I did restart it, this time using a light heathered grey.  Same yarn though.  I’d been looking at the Dark Rose and as the knitting progressed, I just wasn’t loving the color.  It isn’t me.  Its also a huge project and to not love love love love the yarn was the kiss of death for it.  I liked the yarn itself, so I ordered more in this more traditional color.  I cast on for it on 7/15, this time using red perle cotton as my waste yarn.   I really like the light grey and the heathering has some lovely effects that my camera couldn’t catch this morning on the ferry.  At some point, I might be able to relay those.

We’ve got a new lunch spot near the office.  Well, it isn’t exactly around the corner, but it is a free ferry ride away!  NY Watertaxi runs free shuttles from Pier 11 (4 blocks from my office and where I pick up my commuter ferry) over to this spot behind Ikea in Brooklyn.  Ride takes about 15 minutes.  A couple of us took the trip last week, or was it the week before.  Excellent lunch.  Had a pair of Ikea newbies with us so lunch took longer than normal as we walked them through the store

Finally, I spotted this bus on the way to the office one day parked near the South Street Seaport.  We speculated that the back section is a sleeper area.  Anyone know for sure what’s up with this thing?

That’s it for now.  More sooner than later this time.  I promised.

Craft on!

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sorry for the dreaded second post in a single day but I wanted to try out a moblogging solution beyond flickr. I am not keen with how flickr puts the text in both places. soooo a little googling turned up a .NET app for win mobile devices that reminds of the app that I had for typepad on my treo. fingers crossed.

craft on!

Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile

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Oh geez it has been a while since my last post.  So much for the frequent updates eh?  Alot has happened since my last update that we’ll just hit on the bullet points.

What I thought was allergies bringing me down wasn’t really.  Felt like them but Wednesday morning (um 2 weeks ago now) I woke up with a fever and body aches that kept me down for the remainder of the work week.  Looked more like the flu then.  I started with my spring allergy meds of once daily claritin and flonase/nasonex so I’m better now.

I’ve been knitting.  I even made it to the sleeve on the Boatneck BlueOrangebell.  I took this picture on the ferry yesterday.

Sadly, the fate of Orangebell is a sad one.  I tried it on last night to check sleeve length and my fears were confirmed.  The peeps at MY SnB can corroborate, but I suspected that the decorative elements around the waist would not be so friendly with my post twin pregnancy body.  This fear became a reality when I tried this sucker on.  Ew.  It is a gorgeous sweater and a great knit, but just not for me.  I know if I have to wear a girdle or kin below a sweater, it just ain’t going to be worn.   I started frogging it immediately.  I liked the yarn too much.

This morning on the train it was officially re-purposed into a sweater I’ve been dying to knit since I first saw Kim’s.  It is a Knitting Pure & Simple top down v-neck cardigan.  I’ll definitely get some serious usage out of this sucker.

Monday was one of those EXCELLENT mail days.  My first fleece of the year arrived.  Let’s backtrack a tad.  For a few years now, I’ve been buying CVM fleece from White Barn Farm.  Well last year, a lamb was named for me.  Here’s her picture…

Aint’ she a cutie?!  Anyway, it is spring and beyond new lambs, it means shearing season!  ‘Natch I had her lamb fleece reserved since early fall :)  It arrived Monday. 

My favorite, a black variegated fleece!  I might be feeling a little over ambitious, but I’d really love to use this particular fleece to make my first adult sized sweater from handspun.

The other arrival on Monday was this…

Yay.  A box full of bubble wrap and styrofoam!!!  My favorites :)  Unwrapped and assembled, it became this..

Anyone who didn’t see this coming doesn’t know me very well ;)  And no, I don’t have three of these suckers.  I shipped the no-name eBay purchse off to New Zealand as a trade-in credit towards the NZAK.  Also, the Canadian AK is up for sale (email or comment for details).  It needs a new home.  Soon.

Deborah served as a key supporter on this purchase.  We had an excellent email discussion after my post regarding Jessica’s NZAK wherein she gave me the same advice I would have given someone else. 

If you REALLY want that one then you should definitely sell the two you have and
get that baby.  Everyone should be totally happy with what they got and if that one is what will do it for ya, then why not?

Amen Deborah and thank you! 

One last thing, Deborah is fundraising for a worthy cause. 

 Craft on!

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While I have plenty to blog, I feel like crud (stupid trees are budding already) and highly incensed that my spring allergies have kicked in even though it is still COLD out there.   My sister just sent me this super email that I just had to post and I hope it will distract you all from the fact I owe you a real post…

EVE : “I’ve got a problem.”

GOD: “What’s the problem, Eve?”

EVE : “I know that you created me and provided this
beautiful garden and all of these wonderful animals as
well as that hilarious comedic snake, but I’m just not
happy.”

GOD: “And why is that Eve?”

EVE : “I am lonely, and I’m sick to death of apples.”

GOD: “Well, Eve, in that case, I have a solution. I
shall create a man for you.”

EVE : “Man? What is that?”

GOD: “A flawed creature, with many bad traits. He’ll
lie, cheat and be vain; all in all, he’ll give you a
hard time. But he’ll be bigger, faster and will like
to hunt and kill things. I’ll create him in such a way
that he will satisfy your physical needs. He will be
witless and will revel in childish things like
fighting and kicking a ball about. He won’t be as
smart as you, so he will also need your advice to
think properly.”

EVE : “Sounds great,” but what’s the catch?”

GOD: “Well. .. you can have him on one condition.”

EVE : “And what’s that, dear God?”

GOD: “As I said, he’ll be proud, arrogant and
self-admiring… so you’ll have to let him believe
that I made him first. And it will have to be our
little secret… you know, woman to woman.”

Craft on!

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Well even if it isn’t Wednesday, I think this will be a very random posting.

1.  Alex is still sick.  Tuesday he spent the day fever free.  Yay.  This meant he could go to school on Wednesday and I could go back to the office.  It happened.  Then yesterday he woke up, kinda whiney but cool.  I dragged him and his sister off to school.  He whimpered the entire ride, which really is only about 3 miles so it could have been way worse.  All right, I’m no mother of the year.   I got a call from mom at about 11 that she heard from his teacher, he was running 102F, and that she was on her way to get him.  I left work early, met up with Jessica on the train, picked up Kat at daycare and then dad at a different train station further down the same line.  Oy.  The Logistics!  So, Kat is at school today, and Alex is at home with mom.  Again, I have to leave work early to get her. 

2.  I got a new cell phone having been lured by a decent plan at Sprint.  I’ve had T-Mobile now for a couple of years and while it was okay, nothing to really write about.  A coworker has been chipping away at me to go to the Sprint deal since shortly after starting here.   I finally caved and free unlimited data was the final kicker.  I got me a new HTC Mogul telephone which runs Windows Mobile (really geeky in that I can develop my own software for it :)  The downside is that I’m going through a bit of hell trying to port my number over from T-Mo.  Been on the phone with Sprint for almost 2 hours over as many days trying to get it straight.  One less than helpful CSR told me they couldn’t port the number because it was still active.  Um.  Wrong.  Thankfully I knew better and didn’t run off to call T-Mo and cancel my account.  I’m still hopeful it will all work out eventually, but in the meantime, I now have my old number forwarded to the new Sprint number.  Incidentally, the phone is pretty darn cool

3.  I don’t know about everyone else, but I just LOVE online tracking of shipments.  I placed an order for a microSD card (for the new phone) and a memory upgrade kit for my iMac.  The company shipped it FEDEX.  I LOVE how Fedex routes stuff.  Take a look at this interesting routing. 

4.  Getting geekier now for a quick bit. Sorry.  There will be a fiber-y reward if you make it through the next bit.  I promise.  For those who are still using Windows based computers and haven’t been lured to MacWorld yet because of the fear of not being able to run essential software (not including the intensive games) because they either don’t want to buy Mac equivalents or there aren’t any, there is a solution.   Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac (Intel Mac).  I mentioned it before I believe, but now here is a real world example.  The development suite that I primarily use is Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and with it, write web and windows based applications.  While there is an attempt at making a runtime environment for the Mac for the .NET framework, this isn’t a complete solution as not all the libraries are available, blah blah and Microsoft has not yet released a version of Studio for the Mac (nor do I ever expect them to). No other solution and a great example of why someone wouldn’t make the switch to the Mac.  Aha. 

Enter Parallels.  This nifty piece of software allows me to have what is essentially another computer running on my iMac, and this one is Windows XP based.  Sounds good?  Gets better.  It isn’t some odd dual booting scenario where if I want to run Studio and happen to be surfing with Safari under Mac, I don’t have to shut down everything, restart the computer and select a different operating system when starting back up.  Cool huh?  Starting up Parallels and the familar Windows XP logo shows up and I have a full fledged, network recognized, windows based puter running at the same time.  Now this can run in a single window like a remote desktop, but this is where Coherence enters the picture.  Applications running on the windows ”computer” can appear as if they were natively running on the Mac.   Behold….

Here is a screen Grab of my actual desktop one day on my iMac.  At the bottom of the picture you can see both the Mac Dock and the Windows Taskbar.  Cool enough.  But cooler are the actual applications that are running.  The foremost window is Mac’s Finder.  The one under it is the aforementioned Visual Studio with the beginnings of an application (win mo no less ;).  All seriously good slickness if you ask me.  They run seamlessly together, you can cut and paste between the two, etc.  The only thing that gives away that they are running on different OS’s is the frame, Windows’ apps look like Windows’ apps, and Mac apps look like Mac apps.  I couldn’t recommend it more!

5.  And now for the fiber-y reward for those of you who managed to make it this far.  I’ve been playing with the CSM and the gloss is coming off the machine a bit for me.  I have super narrow feet, measuring in at a whopping 7.25″ circumference.  I’m having difficulties getting the socks narrow enough from the CSM.  If I dial up the tension to get more stitches to the inch, the machine doesn’t work right, skipping LOTS of needles and making a huge mess.  Switching to the 54 cylinder has helped somewhat but still the socks off there are still too large.  Compare the Regia Kaffe Fasset sock that I did on the 54 this week with a sock I started yesterday on the train (Tempted in Roxanne for the curious, US0 - 56St):

Notice the huge gauge difference.  My handknit is about 9st/in and the CSM comes in at @6or so.  Ugh.  I’m not sure where to go from here or to branch out and start selling grown up normal sized socks

In more satisfying knitting, I tossed aside that no-pattern top down raglan last night at SnB as being a seriously boring knit in favor of something else.  This SnB is bad for the stash knitting ;)  Anyway, I was tempted by something else.  Enter Fitted Knits and the Boatneck Bluebell, which Jessica happened to be wearing.  I went scouring the Cascade cubes at the store and narrowed down the color with the help the ever wonderful SnB ladies to the orange-y heather of the Quatro.  Love that 220.  I cast on.  I took this picture on the train this morning.

Mmmmmm.  So far so good

Craft on!

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Insert a Lurch {ugh} here please.  You see, every morning when I’m taking a shower, one of the cats, if not more, is in the bathroom with me.  This morning is was two of them:  Earl and Sara.  I got out of the shower to see this:

Nice huh?  Figures the wee beast hit a brand new roll of t.p.  If it isn’t a kid making a huge mess out of my bathroom, the cats have to do it.

I haven’t done a huge amount of knitting recently as I worked from home yesterday.  Alex woke up with a fever and had had stomach issues during the knit (all over grandma’s bed).  Kat refused to go to school without her brother for a change.  So I worked from home so that we could employ zone defense.  The kids got a bit of a distraction when the mail arrived bring this:

I bought it primarily for the boy, and yes I got the bundle with the wireless guitar controller.  However he doesn’t quite have the coordination necessary to play it.  Oh boy did I have fun with it last night though.  Worked up a bit of a sweat during my first gig. ;) 

Fingers crossed, my order (thanks to wiialerts.com) at Sears.com wasn’t against backordered merchandise but actually in stock, the kids will have a Wii to play with soon.  Nintendo has always been the children friendly platform and well, it is kinda cool even if the Xbox will kill it processor/graphicswise.  It will be great for things the kids can play.

To further distract you from the lack of knitting pictures around here today, I thought I’d show this.  Have I mentioned how very cool my office is?  Yes, I still very much love this job and the people.  It is a web based company and we are early adopters of various technologies.  But then again, we have one of these in the kitchen:

Neat-o huh?  It dispenses those cute 8oz glass bottles.  See that rectangle basket on top of the machine?  Well it has the change that came out of the machine.  Yes, we recycle the same coins over and over and over again.  Free $.50 soda.  Sweet.  Oh and next to the change bin?  Yes, that’s one of those 2lb Royal Dansk butter cookie tins.  There’s ALWAYS one of those up there.  Just like there’s ALWAYS buckets of pretzel logs on a file cabinet near the developer’s cage. 

It is getting even better, I now have the VP of HR knitting at lunch with me.  We had our first SnB at the office last Friday.  I came in to find a post-it on my desk, “let’s do lunch and knit today”.  Yah baby. 

Craft on!

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First some obligatory fiber content:  I’m just shy of the heel shaping on the second of the Tulip socks as of now.  I should have it started during the commute home tonight.  I did manage to finish the first clue of the MS3 last night.  YAY!  So now I’m ready for clue 2 which is to be posted tomorrow.

….and now the real reason for a post, the second in the same week as the last.  Oh my.  I’ve gotten a few phone calls today from my recruiter.  The same guy who is handling the law firm thing and he asked me if I would be interested in continuing to interview while waiting for the firm.  While he’s pretty confident that an offer is indeed coming from the law firm, he’d be remiss in not advising me to be aggressive though if I told him I wanted to wait, he’d support me.  Well that’s fine.  I appreciate it.  So while I could do that job at the law firm and the other open prospect that is still somewhat on the table is at the other end of the spectrum, I’m not 100% enamored with the whole law firm thing.  It sounds, still, a little too touchy-feely hand-holding user support to make me happy for very long.  I may be wrong about the position, but my gut says that it is wrong for me.  So I said, yes.  If something better is out there, then by all means, I’ll continue to interview (as much as I hate it).  Sigh.  Well he can set something up for tomorrow:  12:30 (Nancy, I  have to reschedule our lunch till after your vacation ). 

He called back about a half hour later, would I entertain the idea of going back to BN?  But this time, it wouldn’t be .com, but the bookstore.  Oh hell yeah.  He’s working on that now.  I just heard from him, the BN guy is on vacation and back in the office next week so he’ll proceed then.

And then, I got a call out of the blue from a recruiter I worked with briefly last year that wanted to know my Oracle skills.  Having gotten burned recently at the last two companies with having only passable Oracle skills, I may have downgraded them a tad.  Though he did proceed to see if I was looking anyway.  Turns out he has a position for a C#/Sql Server (My preferred database) in the Montvale area  (read drive to work) that he’ll pitch me on tomorrow.  I sent him an updated resume.

I’m seriously thinking that all these events, taken as a whole, are some message from the big guy that I shouldn’t be taking any offer from the law firm.  Sure it is a decent job, but is it really the right job.  There’s a bit of it that is making me nervous, like that they haven’t "teched" me at all but are chasing me down.  As eager as I am to leave this position, the first offer isn’t necessarily the same as the "right" offer.  Hell.  I’m seriously confused.  I’ve talked myself into the law firm position.  The price is good.  The flexibility is there.  But really, it seems really boring and way too much like the job I don’t like and already have (which carries a pretty decent discount) and no lawyers (yours truly excluded ;).

Sigh…

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First, yes, I am alive.  I know its been a long while since my last post.  Things have been seriously nuts.

Work seriously sucks.  And it sucks more and more each and every day.  I have two ridiculously crappy issues that I just can’t get rid of including one that is caused by the security software they’ve installed but somehow all complaints still come to me.  Screw it.  It is only a matter of time.  As I was wisely advised, accept no counter offers and don’t bother to negotiate from strength:  there is no such thing.  And whoopee, today is my one year anniversary with said employer.

On the upside, I’ve had a number of interviews, including two second rounds tomorrow.  The earlier of the two is actually the first face-to-face as the first interview was a quickie on the phone.  The latter of the two is ironically in a very large law firm.  Full circle indeed.  Right now, as odd as it seems, that would be my first choice.

All in all, I’m really freakin exhausted.  I’ve been interviewing without letting the current jerks know that I am.  Which means a lot of leaving early, long lunches and coming in late.  Thank goodness for summer Friday’s, which at least allows me freedom after 1pm.  I’ll be happy when this is all over as my stomach is in knots and I have one continual headache.

Knitting time has been minimized.  I did finish Spring Things, but need to block her.  The monkey socks have been tossed aside and are living on my dresser while I carry around a small paper bag with interview shoes and a knitting project in it.  I’m working on the Essential Tank from Lace Style.  I’ve seriously modified the thing.  I subbed in Louet Gems in the fingering weight in Eggplant for the laceweight alpaca the pattern calls for.  I’ve also converted it to knit in the round.  I’ve been pretty much knitting on this exclusively since last Monday night and have hit the last pattern repeat below the armpits.  I’ll be, naturally, converting to knitting it flat at that point.  The pattern is easy to remember and proving to be somewhat soothing as I give my metro card a good exercise traveling all over Manhattan.

Hopefully things will return to a more normal state.  Soon.

Craft on!

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The verdict is in. Torn ligament in the ankle. I re-sprained it in the pothole. I’m back wearing a brace holding a prescription for 3x week physical therapy and an MRI with a follow up appointment in 3 weeks. Woo hoo. I’ll be one one with the silly walk next weekend at MDSW. Now I really need a single treadle wheel.

I’m kicking back for the rest of the afternoon, doing a little code, foot up, DVR remote near at hand.

Thanks for all the well wishes!

Craft on!

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