November » 2008 » hapagirl

More cute baby things

This time, the baby stuff is even tinier and cuter! Little baby forked-heel booties! Now with extra exclamation points!

Knitting these make me think that the writers at How I Met Your Mother had it exactly right when they had several characters fawn over the tiny socks of a newborn.

Baby Fish Mouth Is Sweeping The Nation

I’m not sure why, but the phrase from When Harry Met Sally is what I think of when I picture a cartoon baby in my head.

And for some reason, this little baby sweater makes me think of a cartoon baby.

Seriously, how cute is this? I’ve, of course, modified the pattern somewhat to accommodate the worsted-weight silk that will work well in a tropical climate, but the asymmetrical appeal of this little sweater is undeniable. So, of course, is the appeal of the new mom and her new baby, but that goes without saying.

A Tangled Mess

Twisted. Kinked. Matted. Torturous. Snarled. Chaotic.

I could go on.

The sock blank is a truly wondrous thing; its swift changes of color heed not the worrisome siren call of the Fraternal Twin Sock Syndrome, creating a thing of beauty that is, in fact, paralleled by the other thing of beauty right next to it. And knitting two socks at the same time, toe-up, is equally awesome (in the original sense of the word, “something fantastic that inspires awe,” rather than in the Bill-And-Ted’s-Excellent-Adventure sense of the word, “something random that makes Keanu Reeves say, ‘Whoa!’”). The two things together?

Apparently, two rights make a wrong. A very big one.

Things were humming along swimmingly until I hit the heel turn and started to use yarn from one strand at a different rate than yarn from the other. I’m halfway through the heel turn on one sock and have had to slip stitches across to the other heel to work on it just to bring the second, long, unwieldy, difficult, wearisome, obstreperous strand into the world of seemly, appropriate yarn behavior.

As usual, life and art imitate each other, so the week, too, has been twisted, torturous, snarled, chaotic, wearisome and obstreperous. As a reminder that my wounded knitting and wounded week will eventually work themselves out, however, I have full use of my faculties. And my thesaurus.

News flash: Pepto Bismol overdose cured by heartburn and indigestion

Yesterday I lamented a lack of knitting on the home front.

Today, I made up for it with both knitting and dyeing. The former was relaxing, mindless and entirely satisfying, done on a pair of 2×2 rib socks with my forked heel using my own hand-dyed yarn. The latter? Well, let’s just say I needed a little heartburn to go with my Pepto Bismol.

A brief pictorial recap:

Not good. Not good at all, particularly for a woman who eschews pink, mauve, lilac, lavender and many other pastel staples of the I’m-A-Barbie-Girl lifestyle. Thankfully, I have superhero friends. Nicole, of All Buttoned Up, who’s a quiet administrator by day, moonlights as The Dastardly Dyer, and she rallied her considerable powers in service of a good cause: de-Barbie-fying my Pepto yarn.

The dyepot alone was enough to help heal the retinal burns I suffered from simply transferring the original Pepto yarn from its storage bin to a paper bag for transportation to and from The Dastardly Dyer’s lair.

But the finished product? Its burgundy depths have character. Each strand exhibits a vibrant glow that belies its original sickly-sweet color, even though its likely that the final color would never have been possible without that awful intermediate step.

I may just call this color “Heartburn.”

The Gerbil Wheel

I spend most of my days–all but a very few a year–on a gerbil wheel, walking the same 20-block route to and from the markers that divide day from night, work from home, classroom duties from research duties.

Friday’s trip took me off of the gerbil wheel and on an almost overwhelmingly sentimental trip to one of the biggest landmarks in a geek’s life: Frys. There were, admittedly, a few non-geek things thrown in for good measure, including a very satisfying trip to an Ann Taylor store that resulted in one of the most coveted shopping experiences a well-endowed woman can have (a good-quality perfectly fitted white button-down shirt in the right size, on sale for less than $20). Still, the indisputable stars of the day were the fumes of computery goodness in that most precious of geek meccas.

On those rare instances when I do set foot off of the gerbil wheel, it’s always a little strange, a little limiting, to come back to it, especially when a trip to Frys feels just a little bit like a homecoming. It’s times like this when I appreciate more than ever one of the projects I undertook at the beginning of the year: a pictorial of change to remind me that my gerbil wheel is as much a thing of beauty as the unchanging haven of silicon that is Frys.

These three photos are all from October of this year, taken from my living-room window, spaced evenly 2 weeks apart. It’s amazing how much can change in the space of a month.