Pickup and pish

Theoretical goal on fishies was to:

1. Finish up sewing the front to back fishies
2. Undo the two knitted together panels with the live stitches
3. Graft those panels by connecting live to picked up stitches

And get all of that and more done by the 19th so -- stretch goal -- I could have it written up, finished and ready to hand off to Tony, Jen and Theo.

I actually got the sewing bit done, one of the panels all happily grafted and was well chuffed with my progress in picking up stitches for the other grafting job until it became crazy clear that the pick up ratio I'd used was not even close to the number of live stitches I needed to graft them to.

Hrumph. I could not bribe anyone into taking them up and picking up the required number of stitches -- pish.

Psychic, a little late, or just forget something?

Note the dates the road will be closed. Here's the problem, I took the photo on the 11th of April.
Some possible explanations that come to mind are that:

• This is a super early heads up for 2109
  (psychic city planning)
• They are little late getting the sign up for 2009
• They forgot to pick the sign up
  

Foil bunnies, files, acetone, eff and Fkeys

If my mastery of my new phone with its camera capability was better, or if I'd get off my bum and go buy a new battery for the digital camera (can you say not holding the charge it should?), a slightly different version of this image would have graced the blog on Easter Sunday (okay, so Easter Monday at the latest).

Readers of the blog and/or people who know me understand that I like the unexpected and I just notice stuff. I especially notice the unexpected.

I was walking through one of the alleys 'round here the other day when I looked down and saw a little sign of Easter in the form of two small foil wrapped presumably chocolate bunnies. I pulled out my trusty digital camera to discover that the battery was pau. Tried the cell phone's camera but wasn't terribly successful.

I was surprised that they were still there when I snapped this shot. Oddly, the bunnies were not in the same position as when I first saw them but they were still there. Okay, well, either that or someone is just randomly putting foil wrapped choco bunnies out and replenishing the supply when people take the bunny bait.

I do not recommend having acetone anywhere near today's computer keyboards. The relatively thin plastic (light weight is good but has consequences) key caps melt rather quickly. Quick action, turn upside down and blot, blot, blot mostly worked out but for some reason the X key did not want to behave properly in its home position but is perfectly happy and functional as a function key 12 and function key 12 is happy to play X and we are so not talking about why the lower right "what the hell is that silly flaggy" key literally took a flyer and has not been seen nor missed other than for me to wonder WTF it was supposed to do on the Linux box.

It's all about the Bobmas

Since last year I didn't have an April, well, not on the blog at least, I'm making up for it this year and I knit a zero carb cupcake that I prefer to think of as a cuppy cake.

For an idea of size, the bottom covers a Crystal Light container and is knit from yarn from an elann.com sample skein.

The whole thing measures less than 3.5 inches tall by 2.5 inches wide.

I've not yet decided whether to sew top and bottom together and fill/stuff it or if I want to keep it as container. If container, my idea is to glue bottom to Crystal Light little tub, add a base to the top and fill it for plush/pin cushion factor.

It was a silly quick knit when I needed a bit of distraction.

Also in the spirit of Bobmas and all things revelling in Ravelry is this slightly edited photo from fairly recent walkabout sidewalk snaps.

Random Query on a day -- professional status

What makes a building professional and have you ever seen an unprofessional one?

Ravelry is so educational

One of the things I like most about Ravelry, and actually the winning argument for why I finally joined, is seeing response to things I've designed.

I haven't seen a lot of this design is junque on Ravelry and given some of the doozy support questions I've fielded on my "public" email, I've taken to suggesting to the seemingly seriously not getting it folks that they hele on over to Ravelry and see how other people have managed to muddle through.

It shouldn't come as a huge shock that knitters who find the good, the gilded, and the goth something worth knitting, queuing or favouriting covers a broad range of people. That fact is part of what I enjoy the most about clicking over onto user activity and getting to know fellow Ravelers.

Recently, I stumbled upon a few of those silly blogthing quizzes and couldn't quite resist.

Clearly the quizzes are just of fun and lack the ability to parse input or the what's your preppy name would note that I already have one and simply feed it back to me.

However, the total boy brain may help explain why it its that classic cars have a habit of popping up on this blog.

Speaking of which, in days gone by late spouse and I would have shouted "parts" upon seeing the little turquoise number in this posting. We had a similar Bronco at one point. Ours was yellow, lift kit, with a rather impressive (read menacing) looking root catcher. Anyone who had or has one, understand the parts issue. I miss it, just not the constant tinkering and search for parts. I still have a 4x even though it doesn't go off road very often.

Your Brain is 27% Female, 73% Male

You have a total boy brain Logical and detailed, you tend to look at the facts And while your emotions do sway you sometimes... You never like to get feelings too involved

What Gender Is Your Brain?

Your Brain is Complex

Your mind is a multi dimensional wonderland, with many layers. You're the type that always has multiple streams of thoughts. And you can keep these thoughts going at any time. You're very likely to be engaged in deep thought - and deep conversation.

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

You Are Disturbingly Profound

You're contemplative, thoughtful, and very intense. Taking time to figure out the meaning of life is a priority for you. Because you're so introspective, you often react in ways that surprise people. No one can really understand how you are on the inside... and that disturbs them.

Are You Disturbingly Profound or Profoundly Disturbing?

A day or so's diagonal

During Knit@Nite, Stacy and I talked a bit about wanting to have more larger sized sweaters and more sweaters that are clearly geared for boys.

Easy enough to make a baby sweater and fun to make something cute for a girl but kids come in all sizes and boys need sweaters too.

I had actually been thinking about doing another medium sized girl's sweater out of the stash of pink that became irrelevant once a certain young lady in Ohio got too old for too much pink but boys need sweaters too and in larger sizes.

I know I have more Woolease and/or the seemingly endless supply of navy Anna Belle City (that I thought I had used up) hiding somewhere but what I could find was four hanks of the City and two each of two colours of Woolease.

Since the City doesn't knit up to the same gauge and the two blue colours of Woolease need something else to make them not butt ugly, I spent a little more time digging around a bit in the stash room for more use it up possibilities.

That's when I remembered the stash of nice acrylic I bought at ColdSpring Mills forever ago. I pulled out a couple of hanks of a taupe/brown acrylic and I'm estimating that my gauge is going to yield a 32 to 34 inch chest pullover for some kiddo.

I got going with a bottom up diagonal rib over 150 stitches.

At 12.5 inches or so I'll be dividing for front and back.

I think that I'm going to go with a raglan sleeve and was considering having the bottom of the sleeves spiral like the bottom of the sweater.

I'm still trying to decide whether to keep the spiral going all the way up to the divide for front and back or whether to do "stripes" of diagonal rib and plain stocking stitch.

This was yesterday's progress and the four inches or so after the rolled bottom reflects about a day or so's knitting.

Needle size is my way too often US 5 (3.75mm) and while I should be able to knock it out in about a week, I may well need to shift gears and work small.

I'm not making huge progress with the Ravelry store. I need to do some print quality (as opposed to web quality) photos of things like the daffs, the shell scarves, the elephant hat, baseball, etc. Since I gave away the Senso daffodil to Carmen of Bergere de France at TNNA, I need to knit another one or two for photos. Might not be a bad idea to shift gears that way so I can photograph the knitted daff with the more organic ones.

Wonderous Whistlestop and some skully stuff

I finished sewing fishies onto the afghan the other day.

On the same day I took out one of the two knitted together but still live stitches connections, picked up stitches and completed the grafting.

Barreling right along, I started to do the same with the last panel but the pick up ratio was just way too off to fudge so I put it aside and

The plan for Whistlestop was to revisit the picking up of stitches to do the last graft instead of bind off, but when I finally got there, Jen was visiting with baby Theo.

So we went for catch up time and show the blanket in progress and the not yet delivered to Stacy sweater instead of picking up stitches and grafting.

Theo is the most adorable baby. Seriously, all the work and effort with the blanket totally, totally worth it.

Skull is sidewalk art from the other day's ramble.

Hello April

If you look closely you can spot the two cavorting tree lizards that distracted me while the icord made a break for it.

Today's news on the shorted circuit or the tale of the missing tome was that, indeed, the book had gone missing somewhere in the San Diego County library system. Good news? Not my responsibility but the bad news is that I still don't have it in hand.

The other piece of good news is that supposedly, there's another copy on the shelves at one of the participating schools and I have a request in for that copy. It would be nice if it arrived in time for me to spend this weekend the way I planned to spend the last but I'm not holding my breath.

Two post RIF tasks that got my attention today. The first one was phoning to figure out what was up with the pension payout/rollover money.

Thought we'd filed all the right paperwork almost three weeks ago, but apparently we missed a couple of highly non-intuitive pages. So the guy on the other end walked me through how I needed to navigate the paperwork and I had it ready to hit the post before I needed to head out for the other post-RIF task.

The benefit is a job coach/development whatever service (San Diego office is in inland Encinitas -- eek) but I figured I'd get that going and combine it with Knit@Nite and sweater delivery.

I don't honestly know if I can do the programme while I'm juggling school and all the other fun life's been throwing at me of late. It may make more sense to delay the benefit until I'm finished with this semester and just doing the single Summer session I plan to take. But at least now I know it can be delayed and not yet another someone else's timeline story.

It wasn't a bad run up the way and being on that stretch of El Camino Real is a real blast to the past when life revolved around teenagers and movies at the AMC Theatres on El Camino Real.

I managed to find some cute buttons at the nearby Michael's and drop the pension paperwork into the post before rolling South to La Jolla and Knit @ Nite.

I was running fairly early and got a little turned around and ended up in Cardiff so I swung North to see if Karen & co had any better button options (they didn't although we tried).

Note to self, you have to swing Northeast from the Manchester/El Camino Real merger to Rancho Santa Fe and a few variants to get back onto a stretch of El Camino Real on the other side of the lagoon.

By the time I left Black Sheep, it was late enough that I was not inclined to jump on the 5 and play merge games so I took the coast road to Via De La Valle and then inland to my old miss the merge trick which, fortunately, I remembered better than the whole Manchester to El Camino Real route.

The miss the merge trick worked even better than it used to since my Knit@Nite destination meant that I only needed to go one exit on the 805 and that was one exit before things were getting seriously ugly.

The other suitably foolish photo on the day I shot on the Friday. Clearly some kid's balloon sculpture decided to make a break for it and found this plant irresistible.