In which I bemoan my hard drive

So: the good news: we have replaced the camera cable (only took us 3 months) and now have uploading capability once more. Huzzah!

The bad news: our hard drive is AT CAPACITY. We can't foer the life of us figure out how or why. We moved all of our iTunes and our iPhoto files to a peripheral hard drive last year...but this 8-year-old purple iMac with its itsy-bitsy 10 gig hard drive is simply stuffed.

Side note: remember when 1 gig was huge? Now one gig is a key chain, and I'm complaining to the guys at the Mac store on Friday night--I was dropping off three of my school lab computers, long story--that the new iPod touch, which I covet covet COVET is "too small to be practical."

Anyway, the Grape Ape here didn't even have enough memory to make a new FOLDER for me to put in my one knitting photo so's I could link it here. That's how dire the situation is. And it leaves me yet a photo-less knitblogger. I think the issue is that we're still running both OS X and OS 9, since much, ok, most, ok, ALL of our software is pre-21st century. Might be time to let go of a) the "Classic" environment or b) the computer itself.

Here's a list of works in progress:

1. Celtic Cap, in black Cascade 220 superwash, for M. I'm making it on size 7s (my last one was on 6s) with a 1.25" hem instead of the rollbrim in the hopes it will fit his huge-ish noggin (24.5"). I'm a little nervous that I may not have enough yarn because the hem, of course, ate up a lot of real estate. (Should have used a different color on the inside of the hem. D'oh.) Worst comes to worst? I'll frog back to the halfway point and finish in a different color--I don't think I can match this yarn because I lost the ballband and the store where I bought it closed in August.
   I'm on row 28 of the 48-row chart; over halfway row-wise but (obviously) more like 3/4 yarn-wise since we're decreasing every 3-4 rows.
2. Baby E's sweater: still on the left front.
3. Panda Wool socks: riverbed architecture from New Pathways for Sock Knitters. Size 1s. For me! Moving up the leg on sock 1.
   
4. two cabled baby hats in my school colors for colleauges with new babies. Hope they still fit by the time I finish. Another colleague just adopted a child from Ethiopia, so I need to get a child-sized one on the needles for him.
5. NO LACE!
   

Happy Thanksgiving--I'm hoping to be thankful for some hard drive space.

In which pandas mate with sheep

Reward yarn. Is there any better?

Now that Swan Lake is behind me (and never mind baby E's sweater) I craved a trip to the yarn store. And I wanted to reward myself with Cat Bordhi's new book. So down to Apple Yarns I went yesterday, snagging two balls of Crystal Palace Panda Wool (bamboo/wool blend) and New Pathways for Sock Knitters. I know I could have gotten New Pathways cheaper elsewhere (I paid $28.95), but I really want Apple Yarns to stick around for a while. So I'm choosing local.

Both purchases: fabu. The yarn is smooth and warm and swatches up well on size 1s. The colorway I chose is greens, yellows, and sort of browns and blues--I thought they could be my Friday school pride socks, since the primary colors, at least in the ball, are green and gold.

The book: ingenious. I've already done two of the basic coriolis pathway, from when Cat was on Knitty Gritty, so now I'm trying to decide whether I want to go toe-up or toe-down, and which pathway to explore. I usually think the word "genius" is overused, but in this case I can't think of a better descriptor. How else do you describe someone who has engineered eight revolutionary ways of creating socks? Plus 28 patterns? And made it understandable to someone with basic knitting skills?

Bless you, Cat!

In which I fall, reluctantly, in love

Swan Lake is blocked, and I looooooooooove her.

Much has been said on the internets about the miracle that is blocking lace. I didn't do anything special--just a soaking-through in the bathroom sink with some Suave lavender shampoo, then a rolling-up in a towel to get out most of the moisture, then a stretching-out and pinning-down with plain old sewing pins on the hide-a-bed downstairs while watching "30 Rock" (my new favorite show).

And, lo and behold: Friday morning the wrinkly, crinkly, bubbly mass had transformed--spread its wings, as it were--into a soft, fluid, drapey charcoal-gray fabric punctuated by hematite gleams.

I'm ordering Romi's swan pin. Now. I crave wearing this stole like I crave a Diet Coke during fifth period (Oy! those sophomores have ENERGY TO BURN!) I NEED to wear it.

In which the ugly duckling swims

I just cast off my Mystery Stole, aka Swan Lake. It's a bit of an ugly duckling still, pre-blocking, but it's off the needles and ready to go from duckling to swan. Hooray!

In which I still have no pictures

First it was the mysterious "loss" of the camera, which, of course, I found where I had stashed it, in the garage, in a pile. (That's pretty much where I find most things I've lost.)

Now it's the mysterious loss of the camera cord. I'm still pretty sure I left it at a workshop in August (August!!) but since I already e-mailed the person at the workshop location and thus discovered I had ALSO left the power supply for the school laptop there, and that's the cord she thought I was e-mailing about, and thankfully she returned it quickly so I didn't have to pay oodles for a new one, and so I'm sort of sheepish to ask for my camera cord, too.

But a knitblog is not a knitblog without pictures! So I plan on getting us a card reader--an eminently practical and helpful device, I'm finding at school--so if and when we upgrade our camera, the cost of replacing a cord won't be a waste. Because I would have not done so. If that makes sense.

DEPARTMENT OF BLOG-EXCUSES
(MOTTO: We meant to to post, but...)

• the knitting has been sparse. Still slogging on MS3 (10 rows from the finish line, though, so perhaps this week!) and am bound and determined not to give in to start-itis until that damn stole is finished. Because I know myself, and the stole will be sitting forever. I still think it's pretty, and I'm still glad I did it, if only for the skillz I've learned, but as I knit on and on and on I came to the realization that I literally could have clothed my whole family in an EZ or Barbara Walker or Stefanie Japel seamless design in the time I've spent with the size 4s and the laceweight. Plus hats.
  
• School. Essays. Yearbook. Translation: reality.
• Blogger + my 2000 vintage iMac = trubs. This new "autosave" feature, well, it may be autosaving, but it is autoslow. I think each keystroke has to first travel transcontinental by pony then bounce back via trampoline to my screen. I make jillions of typos, and I get frustrated--it's like one of those typing tests in keyboarding class where you can't see what you're typing and then you get graded on speed and accuracy. Yes, i could be typing in Word or Text Edit and then cutting/pasting, but ...
  
• ... I am lazy.
• ... clarification: lazy about blogging. I am working at hyperspeed in everything else. (Except housework.)
  
• I've also decided to branch out from knitting here. There's only so much I can say about my projects, much as I love them, and I have a lot of other stuff to say about things that are only tangentially related to knitting, i.e., they are part of my life, and I also knit. So...

Deep breath, plunge in--pictures soon, and thanks for reading.

In which school ate my brain

Two weeks into the school year, I remember what life used to be like. Up at the bumcrack of dawn, ready me, ready kiddos, drop off, plan plan, teach teach teach, yearbook yearbook, grade, copy, visit, pick up kids, home, dinner, baths, stories, grade some more (or maybe just procrastinate), to bed, lather, rinse, repeat.

I'm trying to keep my NEW favorite verb in there: knit.

MS3 update: I finally finished clue 6 and am about 10 rows into clue 7. Wahoo! I had to rip back about 20 or 30 long rows when the slip stitch at the short-rowed join slithered off the needles and wiggled down. Trying to hook it all back up proved to be just too confusing: p2togs, plus yos, plus the short rows? No can do. It was about 50 rows back to my nearest lifeline, unfortunately, but when I was ripping I was able to pick up -- carefully! -- a purl row without a lifeline. Thank goodness for the peace and quiet and good lighting of my new LYS.

I'm back to being excited about this project, after a long period of sour grapes following the Escaping Slip Stitch and the stole's Subsequent Incarceration ("I wouldn't have worn a stole, anyway; humph!") But now that I'm closer to completion and keep seeing the lovely stoles posted on the yahoo site, I am jonesing to be done.

That said, when I realized the other day that I probably could have knit both me AND M sweaters in the time it's taken to make a stole which will get sporadic use, if any, I think I may hang up my large-scale-lace spurs for good. Melanie's designs are gorgeous, but when all's said and done, I think I'd rather have an Aran sweater.

(Of course, never have I done so much knitting for so little moolah; lace and socks are truly the more-bang-for-your-buck options for us knitters of little budget.)

In which I steal a time-out

What is the etymology of "stole," I wonder? Does it have anything to do with the verb?

My stole, little thief that it is, has taken me for a joy ride. The kind of joy ride that ends with a white bronco pursued by police and helicopters at 10 mph on a freeway somewhere; the kind of joy ride that ends with a red Chevy Malibu on fire on the side of the road, teenage hoodlums fleeing the scene on foot. Rubberneckers beware!

Lace hubris has done me in. Zipping along (for me, that is) on clue 6, nearly halfway through, I thought about placing a lifeline. Next row, I thought. I'll just count this one and make sure I'm still on track. Maybe I don't need a lifeline at all. Breezily, I began to count the tidy line of purls I had just completed.

And, as I blissfully counted, humming a merry lace-expert sort of tune, the YO stitch at the end of the short row--so in the middle of my circular--surreptitiously hopped off and dropped about 15 rows down. It's hard to tell, because in trying to fix this error, I realized that I can read lace when I'm doing it, I can even fix small errors and tink back successfully, but I can't for the grace of sweet Horus figure out how to repair a line of dropped yarn overs. Just. Can't. Do. It.

I'm off to the yarn store this afternoon to beg help. And perhaps whiskey.