rant · Zombies

Ranty Monday is Ranty

Jen4 Comments

Okay, I admit that I support the Occupy Wall Street movement and would definitely like to see more economic equality in this country, but this petition which was just emailed to me from Change.org pissed me right the fuck off.

Having to work on Thanksgiving day is nothing new. I’ve done it. My dad has done it. I’m pretty sure my mom has done it too. This guy is complaining that he has to “interrupt” his Thanksgiving meal to go to his Target job at midnight? Firstly, NO ONE IS STILL EATING THANKSGIVING DINNER AT MIDNIGHT. And if you are, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.

Secondly, here’s a story for you: when I was in my late teens and early 20’s, I worked at a movie theater. I actually had to report to work at NOON on Thanksgiving day, and stay at work until 8 or 9 pm, because guess what? A surprising number of people like to go out and see a movie after they eat their turkey dinner. (Now that’s what I call “interrupting” a family meal.) Here’s another story: while I was in college, I worked in a call center for a local DirectTV/Internet provider (which also took calls for other local providers across the country) I had to report to work for my regular shift (I worked swing shift, so from 3pm-11pm) on Thanksgiving day, because guess what? People like to watch TV after they eat their Turkey dinner and sometimes they needed technical support and/or someone to order a pay-per-view movie for them. Oh and you know what? THE WORLD DIDN’T FUCKING END BECAUSE I HAD TO WORK ON THANKSGIVING DAY.

The fact of the matter is that the world doesn’t stop spinning because it’s a holiday. Some people are going to have to work while others are celebrating to keep the wheels of society turning. Doctors and nurses, truck drivers, train operators, police officers and firefighters, 911 operators, Chinese food restauranteurs and their staff, they all work on holidays. THAT’S JUST THE WAY IT IS. And frankly, unless you are living off family money, odds are that at some point in your working life, you will have to report to work on a holiday (I worked the concession stand at the theater on Christmas day, too, and believe it or not, we were SLAMMED).

Being a working stiff sucks, but seriously? You’re going to publicly petition your company and risk not having an income during the holiday shopping season because you didn’t feel like working the graveyard shift at Target on a Thursday night? No, I shall not be signing your stupid petition because you are a dumbass.

Moreover, if you have a problem with Target opening at midnight for Black Friday, don’t go shopping at Target at midnight. Stores are pushing back the start of the holiday shopping season because people are playing along with them. If it costs them more money to open the store at midnight than they make from having the store open, they won’t do it anymore. Got a problem with the whole “Black Friday” thing in general? DON’T PLAY ALONG. Stay home! Do your shopping during the month of December or on November 1st or throughout the year. Seriously people it’s not that hard.

Adventures · Knitting

Big Day Today

Jen4 Comments

1. I finally got around to picking up a couch we ordered from Ikea back at the beginning of October. Now that it is in my house I despise the color, but I know I’ll get used to it. Also, I will be able to tone it down with some contrasting throw pillows and our gigantic sheepskin. We haven’t had a couch since June (or before, I can’t really remember when the last one gave up the ghost) so the cats are extremely excited to finally have something to sit on. I am too, I admit, even though the thing is rather a bit more orange than I had expected.

2. I finally succumbed to peer pressure and talked my husband into upgrading from our crappy little cell phones to iPhones! After I finished assembling the couch we packed up the boys and headed over to the Apple store. We had to wait in line about 2 hours, and then it took a while to get the account set up since we switched from AT&T to Sprint (sorry AT&T!). But now I has an iPhone!! w00t!! Follow me on Twitter (@kniterrupted) because, theoretically, I can now tweet the crap out of everything.

3. I continue the slow march through Catkin chart 1. Here I am, a little way past the halfway point where I am very nearly about to run out of orange yarn. I suspected the yardage would be extremely tight, but I took a gamble on it anyway. Needless to say I’m not thrilled. Option 1: buy another hank of STR and be guaranteed the colorways won’t match. Option 2: frog it and reknit without the orange garter stripes in the first section. The colorway will match, but reknitting. Neither option is particularly appealing.

4. I cast on a plain and simple sock, specifically for knitting abroad. Isn’t it purty?

Knitting · nanowrimo

These Clogs Are Made For Writing

Jen4 Comments

1. I made some slippers! Felted Clogs to be precise.

[ravelry]

I love this pattern and I’ve already committed myself to making two more pairs. One pair for the Mister and I think my sis might like a pair too.

2. I’ve been working on NaNoWriMo, but was unable to write yesterday because of some random family drama and didn’t write again today because of my arm is feeling all hurty again. I need to have a totally doable 6,200 word weekend to catch up, but am seriously considering just dropping out again this year. If my arm is going to be hurty, I think I’d kind of prefer to have some slippers at the end of it, if you know what I mean.

If you had to choose between NaNoWriMo and knitting, which would it be?

holiday cheer · Weather

Happy Snolloween!

Jen2 Comments

The boys spent the afternoon carving Snolloween pumpkins and singing Christmas carols with their father.

Appropriate given the 14 inches of snow out there.

Knitting · Weather

SnowtoberFest 2011

Jen1 Comment

So we are having a bit of a snow event here today. It’s been snowing steadily since about noon and we have about 8 inches on the ground as of this writing. It’s a wild and crazy early season nor’easter!

They are saying we’ll get about 15 inches of snow by tomorrow morning, which is pretty fucking wild, considering it’s only October and all the leaves aren’t even off the trees yet. I heard on Twitter that 2 trees are down on my street, making the street totally impassable.

My plan today was to carve jack o’lanterns with the boys, but it seems so out of place on a day where we are holed up inside hoping the power stays on and the snow just keeps piling up outside. Instead I am knitting:

Catkin is coming along. My needle is too short to spread it out for you, so you’ll just have to trust me, it’s gorgeous!

And, I started a pair of felted clogs:

I am trying to finish these up as quickly as possible because it is freakin’ freezing in here, Mr. Bigglesworth.

life

Toemaggeddon 2011, briefly.

Jen1 Comment

Last week, after waffling back and forth for a while, I finally decided I would to go to Rhinebeck on Sunday after all. I had already been planning on a Saturday trip to Ikea, so it would’ve worked out just fine. Saturday, I headed up to Ikea, popping into the cafe/grocery to get something to eat. While waiting on-line, the man in front of me caused one of his large and heavy boxes to fall off of his trolly and onto my toe.

It felt as if my toe had been hit with a large hammer, and couldn’t tell if it was broken or not. Somehow I managed not to curse in front of the long line of people waiting to buy their hot dogs and frozen yogurts. Luckily, I was there with my sis, who was able to help me collect E from the children’s play area and drive me to the ER (and then home when we were done).

It turns out that my toe wasn’t broken, but it did ultimately keep me from going to Rhinebeck the next day. That was last week and now my toe looks like this:

This week I have a cold, which I hear is going around. My head feels like it is packed with wool, which, I suppose is apropos for a fiber enthusiast. Still. It suuuuucks.

And to the spammer who included a joke with your spam link I say, well-played, sir. Well played. I totally lol’d.

grumble · Knitting

Frogged

Jen1 Comment

Remember this?

Yeah, I frogged that. I just had a hard time accepting the way the colors wanted to line up across a large number of stitches. So I frogged the crap out of that sock and cast on a baktus. Naturally, that was fine until I’d worked about an inch and then blech. So then I just wanted to see how many stitches I could get out of each color. It was something crazy tiny like 10 or 15 stitches per color. AAARGH. I am never ever going to make a long ass 15 stitch wide sock yarn scarf. And you know what I realized? This is just one of those colorways that looked gorgeous in the skein but that I hate knitted up. Once I got my head around that, I was able to just let it go. I balled it up and handed it to my friend Weaver at the park today. I’m sure that whatever she ends up making with it will be so fabulous that I’ll be pissed at myself for giving it to her, but at this point… Well, at this point it was all I could do not the throw the damn thing at her head.

Knitting · life · Zombies

So Many Plans

Jen4 Comments

Yesterday I cleaned the house. Really cleaned it, for the first time in a good long while, thanks to that dreaded fatigue I’ve been struggling with. I put stuff away, I pulled out appliances and wiped the counters behind them. The only thing I didn’t do, even though it’s long overdue, was clean out the fridge and wash it. I spent most of the afternoon and early evening on it, so by the time it was bedtime, I was pretty pumped, and bubbling with plans for today. As I lay awake, trying to fall asleep, I made a list of all the stuff I would do today:

Finish Laundry
Clean Bathrooms & Bedroom
Warp Loom
Wind off a bunch of yarn
Sew pants for E
Sew some drawstring bags
Clean off my desk
Do some NaNoWriMo prep work

I’m pretty sure at this point that my list was over-ambitious. It took me a really long time to fall asleep last night, and I didn’t sleep well. It was one of those nights where I was aware of trying to sleep (or being asleep) for most of the night. I was too excited about doing moar stuff!!! To top it off, I got up early. Blargh. I did do most of the laundry, which helped a bit with the mess in the bedroom, and I managed to tidy up the bathrooms too. I spent the rest of today trying, rather unsuccessfully, to nap. Everything else was just icing, but dammit, I like icing.

Ah well. How about some knitting then?

[ravelry]

I love this colorway from the Yarn Pirate, but when I got it up to the right number of stitches for my toe, it became kind of muddied. See how pretty it is right in the first 3/4″ of the toe? I wanted my whole sock to look like that. Hence the slip stitch pattern. It helps, but not as much as I would’ve liked.

[ravelry]

Catkin is coming along too, but since it requires all of the concentration forever, I haven’t really worked on it in a couple of days. Furthermore, it looks all bunched up and lumpy there because, clearly, my needle is too short. You’ll have to wait for the finished product to see it in all of its orange and turquoise glory. Yes, I did just say orange and turquoise glory. IT WILL BE GLORIOUS I TELL YOU!

 

Doozer · Knitting · random

Random Monday

Jen1 Comment

1. I’m such a big fat liar. I never stopped by here this weekend to post pictures of my knitting. Mostly it’s because this weekend was kind of weird and partly because I haven’t taken any pictures of knitting in a good long while.

2. I have knitted the first section of my Catkin, the section with the garter stitch stripes, and have moved on to the textured section which is a single color. It’s extremely slow going because I have to pay attention to the chart and literally cannot do anything else. I can’t watch TV or even attempt to carry on a conversation. Must. Focus. On the. Chart. Ugh.

3. I still have not blocked my sister’s shawl. 2 weekends ago, she came over and we were going to do it together, but we pretty much forgot all about it. And, as I said, this weekend was kind of weird so it still isn’t done.

4. I want to do it on the weekend so she can help me with it, because that thing is enormous.

5. I suddenly realized that I may not have enough pins for blocking it. Crap.

6. The NY S&W festival is this coming weekend. I have to be honest, my enthusiasm for going this year is waning. There isn’t really anything I want (or have to) buy there, and I can’t eat the food, so there is a whole other level of schlep involved which makes the idea of going much less appealing. Hrm.

7. I’m pretty sure that even if I do decide to go, I won’t be wearing a finished Catkin as I’d originally planned. The damn thing just requires too much concentration.

8. Here is a picture of Doozer in a box.

links

Drive By Link

Jen1 Comment

Hey, I was going to come and do an update post, but since I don’t really have anything to update y’all about, I’m just going to leave this here instead.

Have a fantastic weekend, everyone! I might stop by with some knitting photos on Sunday.